From: doris Andrew < dorisandrew1@hotmail.com > Sent: Tue, Feb 2, 2016 1:37 pm Subject: I need your assistance to claim and invest my inheritance He llo Dearest, How are you today ? Please accept my sincere apolog y for sending this mail to you, I really like to have good relationship with you, I have a reason why I decided to contact you because of the urgency of my situation. I know that my communication shall be a great surprise to you considering the fact that we did not know each other , It necessary to introduce myself in detail for you. I need your assistance to claim and invest my inheritance for me, I am Miss Doris Andrew 24years old girl from Benghazi Region of Libya. Living in orphanage home here in Senegal. My l ate Father Dr. John Andrew was a Neurological consultant in our government hospital he was a wealthy man and loving father. One faithful day he was coming home from the hospital after work, and he ran into a failed brake lorry at a junction he died instantly and at that moment, I was with my mum, she received a distress call telling her the news and she loosed control and developed high blood pressure, people around help me to took her to the hospital, after three mouth, she pass away. I contact you because of the maltreatment am receiving from my Uncle. He planned to take away all my late father's treasury and properties from me since the unexpected death of my beloved parents. I wanted to escape to the Europe but he hide many of my valuable traveling documents. Luckily he did not discover where I kept my Father's File which contains important documents. So I decided to run to the Orphanage home where I am presently seeking asylum under the United Nations High Commission. Life is not all that easy for me here, we eat only once a day coupled with the bad water we drink. My father secretly deposited the sum of US$3.800.000.000 ( Three Million Eight Hundred Thousand US Dollar in a bank in custody of my name as the next of kin. However, I shall forward you with the necessary information of the deposit on confirmation of your acceptance to assist me for the transfer and investment of the fund in your country. and I will like to continue my studies, as I was in the school, before the death of my parents in Libya. It is my intention to compensate you with 25% of the total money for your services and the balance shall be my investment capital. This is the reason why I decided to contact you. Confidential purposes. As soon as I receive your positive response showing your interest I will put things into action immediately. The Reverend father that is in charge of this orphanage home his name is David Francis who is the priest of the Church of God Missionand his contact phone number is +221.3781221040 if you call and ask him that you want to speak with me (Doris) then he will send for me in the hostel to come and answer your call. I am staying at the female hostel waiting your urgent and positive response. Please do keep this only to your self please I beg you not to disclose it to a third party till I come over to your country because am afraid of loosing my life and the money, once the fund has been transferred into your account. I am using the orphanage computer to write you this mail. I hope my explanation is very clear? but if you need further clarification, then send in your questions. I have attached my picture in the body of this mail hope you will like it. Thanks as I hope to receive a mail from you soon. I want you to send me your contact information's such as your Name. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Age. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Country. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Telephone. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Occupation. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Yours sincerely, Miss Doris Andrew From: doris Andrew < dorisandrew1@hotmail.com > Sent: Wed, Feb 3, 2016 12:05 am Subject: With love and trust, contact this bank today Hello m y Dearest, How are you today? I hope all is well with you over there in your country as i am believing God that soon we shall meet to share our love together. I am so much happy to have somebody like you across my life. My dear please i will like to be with you over there. you really seems to be caring,honest and loving but what am promising you is that you will never regret having someone like me in your life. I am very happy to read from your mail once today despaired that i read it with weakness and hungry. You can't believe that we eat only once a day coupled with the bad water we drink here too. But i believe with your love and help i will come out here soon. God will bless and reward you for every effort you are about to make to see me out from this horrible prison called refugee camp where i am living today as a result of the untimely death of my parents ( may their gentle souls rest in peace). Well my dear i have really read your mail and it was quite understood to me and i want you to know that my contact with you is just by the will of God and i want you to see yourself as God sent to help me out of this predicament. I am really happy with you today and I wonder if God have totally forgotten me, w hy i am facing all this kind of difficulties, God have given you to me to stand for me for the claim of my father's wealth which i know that i did not make any mistake by choosing you, I want to let you know earlier enough that my contact with you is not a mistake, it is by the grace of God almighty because i got you immediately after my 7 days fasting and prayers that was conducted here in the camp that's why i gave you all my trust and i believe that you will not betray me or let me down. God says in the book of life that people should be doing good to the orphanages,Knowing you has brought some kind of relieve to me thereby making me to feel the womanhood in me and also the way that those who have parents do. please i want you to contact the bank today to confirm about this transfer. Already i have informed this bank about my intention to claim my late father's deposit of which my name appears as the next of kin. The only thing the bank told me is to look for a foreign partner who will assist me in the transfer due to my refugee status here in Senegal that as a refugee i am not allowed to direct claim of the money but through an appointed representative as the united refugee law governing refugee all over the world states. Here is the contact information of the bank in London where the money was deposited by my late father. it is as follows, ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND PLC REGISTERED IN SCOTLAND No. 90312. Office: 36 St ANDREW SQUARE, EDINBURGH EH2 2YB.SCOTLAND, Telephone; +447811184268 Fax : +447031863763 TRANSFER MANAGER: SIR STEPHEN HESTER Based on this information i will like you to send an email to the transfer department of the bank with this email address : mailtoroyalbankscotland@iname.com Attention to MR . STEPHEN HESTER the foreign transfer officer of the bank telling him that you are my representative and that you want to assist me transfer my $3.800.000.00 US dollars deposited by my late father of which i am the next of kin. THE ACCOUNT INFORMATION ARE AS FOLLOWS. ACCOUNT NAME IS DR. JOHN ANDREW AMOUNT $3.800.000.00 MILLION DOLLARS. NEXT OF KIN. MISS DORIS ANDREW Swift Code: (NIB-LNUK) ACCOUNT NUMBER RBS/43483002/QB/91/A HONEY YOU CAN CONTACT THE BANK WITH THIS LETTER BELOW VIA THEIR EMAIL CONTACT HERE TO AVOID MISTAKE AND PLEASE TRY TO FILL IN YOUR NAME, AGE, ADDRESS AND YOUR PHONE NUMBER ON THE SPACES BEFORE SENDING THE LETTER TO THE BANK. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - To the Office of The Transfer Manager, Royal Bank of Scotland Plc. Mr Stephen Hester Dear Sir, TRANSFER APPLICATION LETTER. To whom it may concern. Greetings to you. This is to certify that I,. . . . . . . . . age. . . . . . . . . . from . . . . . . . . . Phone No . . . . . . . . . . Occupation . . . . . . . . I am hereby to let you know that i am a partner to Miss Doris Andrew the next of kin to $3,800,000.00 US Dollars deposited by her late father Dr. John Andrew. Please Sir, as her partner I am contacting this honorable Bank to know the procedures and the requirements which it needs to get my partners fund transferred to my account. I here by ask that this honorable Bank should please grant my request and inform me on the possibility of getting my partners inheritance fund transferred to my account because such fund cannot be directed to her due to her present status right now as a refugee. I will furnish my account details for the transfer in approval of my letter of transfer. This is my partner's late father's Account Details. Account No: ( RBS/43483002/QB/91/A) Swift Code: (NIB-LNUK) Account holder: (Dr. John Andrew) Amount Deposited: ($3,800,000.00 US dollars) Next Of Kin / Beneficiary: (Miss Doris Andrew) Thank you sir. Yours Sincerely,. . . . . . . . . . . . . Please do not forget to call me with this reverend father number + 221.781221040 Based on this information i will like you to send an email to the transfer department of the bank with this email address : rbstransferdptcare@scotlandmail.com + 221.781221040 From: doris Andrew < dorisandrew1@hotmail.com > Sent: Tue, Feb 23, 2016 2:27 pm Subject: FW: TRANSFER DEPARTMENT From: rbstransferdptcare@scotlandmail.com CC: dorisandrew1@hotmail.com Subject: TRANSFER DEPARTMENT Date: Tue, 23 Feb 2016 13:56:24 +0100 WELCOME ROYAL BANK OF SCOTLAND PLC REGISTERED IN SCOTLAND No. 90312 Office: 36 St ANDREW SQUARE, EDINBURGH EH2 2YB.SCOTLAND, Telephone, +447811184268 Fax : +447031863763 23/ FEBRUARY /201 6 ATTENTION: SIR. . . I have been directed by the director of Foreign Operation/Wire Transfer to write you in respect to the mail which we have received from you. Actually, we have earlier been told about you by the young lady Miss Doris Andrew, that she wishes you to be her trustee/representative for the claim of her late father's deposit with our bank. The late father Dr Andrew John was our late customer with substantial amount deposited with us. Hence you have been really appointed as a trustee to represent the next of Kin. Perhaps, before our bank will transact any business concerning the transfer of the fund with you, we will like you to send the following documents to our bank: 1. A power of attorney permitting you to claim and transfer the fund to your bank account on her behalf. This document must be endorsed by a Senegalese resident lawyer because the money originated from Africa. 2. The death certificate of (Her deceased father) confirming the death. 3. A copy of Certificate of Deposit of the Account Issued to Late Dr Andrew John by the Royal Bank of Scotland plc.(RBS). 4. An affidavit of oath from the Senegalese high court. 6.also you have to provide your account information which will facilitate transfer of this found into your account in your given bank as soon these documents are provided. N ote: that the above are compulsory, and are needed to protect our interest, yours,the next of kin after the claims. These shall also ensure that a smooth, quick and successful transfer of the fund is made , these documents can not be over emphasized and this is to empower us legally to do the transfer of the money and to allow a smooth and successful transfer of the money. On receipts of the above documents/information's, we shall verify them and once we are satisfied,we shall process your claim and effect the transfer. We promise to give our customers the best of our services. In case you have any question(s), please contact our foreign transfer officer Mr. B Wallis. Regards Mr. B. Wallis. Foreign operations / Wire Transfer Dept. (Royal Bank o f Scotland Plc Of United Kingdom) = = = =END OF MESSAGE= = = The Royal Bank of Scotland plc, Registered in Scotland No. 90312. Registered Office: 36 St Andrew Square,Edinburgh EH2 2YBAuthorized and regulated by the Financial Services Authority. This e-mail message is confidential and for use by the addressee only. If the message is received by anyone other than the addressee, please return the message and do not replying to it and then delete the message from your computer.Internet e-mails are not necessarily secure.The Royal Bank of Scotland plc does not accept responsibility for changes made to this message after it was sent. Whilst all reasonable care has been taken to avoid the transmission of viruses,it is the responsibility of the recipient to ensure that the onward transmission, opening or use of this message and any attachments will not adversely affect its systems or data.No responsibility is accepted by The Royal Bank of Scotland plc in this regard,and the recipient should carry out such virus and other checks as it Honey this is the mail i receive from the bank and i hope you receive it also. please reply me immediately. From: doris Andrew < dorisandrew1@hotmail.com > Sent: Wed, Feb 24, 2016 3:37 pm Subject: Please contact this lawyer Hello m y Love. How are you doing today ? I want you to know that i received the below mail from the bank with all they requirements needed before this transfer can be made, I am very glad for the way things is going on now, believing by the special grace of God, we will finish this soon so that I will come over immediately to your country where I will start up my new life and further up my education together over there with you, Now regarding the requests the bank needs from us I have the statement of account of my late father and his death certificate here with me which i will give to the lawyer, I thought the only thing the bank needs from us but since they need the power of attorney and affidavit of oath / support. I have informed the Reverend about it and he gave me the contact of this lawyer below, is an attorney registered with the United Nations here and is also a registered member of the Bar Senegal that will help in the preparation of documents for us, Please I will like you to contact him through email when talking to him i will like you say that u are my foreign partner and you want him to prepare a power of attorney and also get the affidavit of oath / support from high court here in Dakar, Senegal, and will do in your name to enable the transfer of my late father's account at Royal Bank Of Scotland PLC to your account in your country. bellow is his contact informations , Name. Bar. William Edward Phone. . +221-766180521 williamworldlinkchamber@hotmail.com barristerwilliamedward@gmail.com Therefore, I would like you to contact him for the preparation of the power of attorney and affidavit of oath / support. please try and contact me when you contact thelawyer, and let me know if he agrees to help, please I would like to first get the money transferred and from it you can send some money for me prepare my traveling documents and I will start to coming to meet with you over there in your country. thanks once again when I think of you always. I love you from my heart of hearts, Yours lovely Doris Andrew From: doris Andrew < dorisandrew1@hotmail.com > Sent: Mon, Feb 29, 2016 7:41 pm Subject: Please Send This To The Lawyer My Dearest One, How are you and how is your day ? l hope everything is alright. My darling l am so much happy,you have made me to feel happy in my life. Please as soon as you receive a reply from the lawyer try to call him or you e-mail me. His contact information are as follows, Name. Bar William Edward Phone. . + 221-766180521 Email. . williamworldlinkchamber@hotmail.com Email. . barristerwilliamedward@gmail.com Office Telephone Number is + 221-766180521 This is what you will write to the lawyer which i have given you his full contact information just now. You have to address to the Lawyer this way, Dear Sir, BAR (DR) William Edward My name is . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . I am a foreign partner to Miss Doris Andrew Please i want you to help us get a power of attorney that will permit me to transfer the deposit of her late father's money deposited with the Royal Bank of Scotland by Late Dr. JOHN ANDREW to my account in my country of which she ( Doris Andrew ) is the next of kin but due to her refugee status here in Dakar Senegal, she cannot stand to direct claim of the money. Please sir, kindly render us your good services. His contact information are as follows,Name. Bar William EdwardPhone. . + 221-766180521+ 221-766180521 I am awaiting for your response sir, Yours in love, Doris Andrew From: doris Andrew < dorisandrew1@hotmail.com > Sent: Wed, Mar 2, 2016 2:15 pm Subject: please my love, i really need your help. . Hello Good Morning my love How are you doing today and your healthy which is so important to me now, hope you are fine and okay by the grace of God, am very happy and i thank you so much forcaring towards me in this my critical condition due to the untimely death of my Beloved parent. My love i want to let you knowi was once a student when my parents was alive but after there death i stop my education. My dear i don't have any body with metoday expect you, please you are the only person i have in my life, i don't have any relation now, and i have never been in love before that is why i don't want you to disappoint me or betray me. Please i really need your help am suffering and crying here in they camp every day and night for help. do you know we only eat once day coupled with they dirty and unhealthy water we drink. i am24years old girl from Benghazi Region of Libya. Living in orphanage home here in Senegal.My Late Father Dr. John Andrew was a Neurological consultant in our government hospital he was a wealthy man andloving father. One faithful day he was coming home from the hospital after work, and he ran into a failed brake lorry at a junction he died instantly and at that moment, I was with my mum, she received a distress call telling her the news and she loosed control and developed high blood pressure, people around help me to took her to the hospital, after three mouth, she pass away. I contact you because of the maltreatment am receiving from my Uncle. He planned to take away all my late father's treasury and properties from me since the unexpected death of my beloved parents. I wanted to escape to the Europe but he hide many of my valuable traveling documents. Luckily he did not discover where I kept my Father's file which contains important documents. So I decided to run to the Orphanage home where I am presently seeking asylum under the United Nations High Commission. Life is not all that easy for me here, we eat only once a day coupled with the bad water we drink. Thanks for yourunderstanding, may God help you in all the effort you are making in this transfer. Your sweetheart Doris Andrew From: doris Andrew < dorisandrew1@hotmail.com > Sent: Fri, Mar 4, 2016 1:50 pm Subject: Please contact this lawyer Hello my Love. How are you doing today? I want you to know that i received the below mail from the bank with all their requirements needed before this transfer can be made, I am very glad for the way things is going on now, believing by the special grace of God, we will finish this soon so that I will come over immediately to your country where I will start up my new life and further up my education together over there with you,Now regarding the requests the bank needs from us I have the statement of account of my late father and his death certificate here with me which i will give to the lawyer, I thought the only thing the bank needs from us but since they need the power of attorney and affidavit of oath / support. I have informed the Reverend about it and he gave me the contact of this lawyer below, is an attorney registered with the United Nations here and is also a registered member of the Bar Senegal that will help in the preparation of documents for us, Please I will like you to contact him through email when talking to him i will like you say that u are my foreign partner and you want him to prepare a power of attorney and also get the affidavit of oath / support from high court here in Dakar, Senegal, and will do in your name to enable the transfer of my late father's account at Royal Bank Of Scotland PLC to your account in your country. bellow is his contact informations, Bar William Edward +221- 766180521 williamworldlinkchamber@hotmail.com barristerwilliamedward@gmail.com Therefore, I would like you to contact him for the preparation of the power of attorney and affidavit of oath / support.P lease try and contact me when you contact thelawyer, and let me know if he agrees to help, please I would like to first get the money transferred and from it you can send some money for me prepare my traveling documents and I will start to coming to meet with you over there in your country. thanks once again when I think of you always. I love you from my heart of hearts, Yours lovely Doris From: Barrister.William Edward < williamworldlinkchamber@hotmail.com > Cc: dorisandrew1 < dorisandrew1@hotmail.com > Sent: Wed, Mar 16, 2016 12:10 am Subject: ACKNOWLEDGMENT/PROCEDURE LEGAL PRACTITIONER & ATTORNEYS OF SUPREME COURT OF JUSTICE B-S-WILLIAM CHAMBERS CONSULTANT. SOLICITORS AND ADVOCATES. JUDICIARY OFFICE No 101 USMAN DIOP YOFF DAKAR SENEGAL OFFICE TEL: + 221-766-180-521 Attention. . . . This is to inform you that your email was receive today been 15 of March 2016, as regards thepreparation of a power of attorney and affidavit of oath for you and your partner Miss Faith Andrew the content of your mail is well understood to me. Our noble law firm wish to bring to your notice that before we can proceed with this services we will want you to forward to our law firm immediately your full contact information's as follows below, Full name . . . . . . . . Office address . . . . . . Your age. . . . . . . . . Phone number . . . . . . . Fax number . . . . . . . . Profession . . . . . . . . Nationalities . . . . . . Country of resident . . . . . . . And if possible a scan copy of your international passport or your driving license or ID Card. So that we will ascertain from the federal high court cost of the authentication of the power of attorney and affidavit of oath before it becomes valid for the bank to transfer of the funds into your account. Have a nice day. Yours sincerely in service, Barrister, William Edward (ESQ) Solicitors & Advocates No 101 Usman Diop Yoff Dakar Senegal. (Principal Attorney) Yours sincerely in service,Barrister, William Edward (ESQ)Solicitors & AdvocatesNo 101 Usman Diop Yoff Dakar Senegal.(Principal Attorney) From: doris Andrew < dorisandrew1@hotmail.com > Sent: Wed, Mar 16, 2016 1:33 pm Subject: My love, please send your informations to the lawyer immediately. . Hello my love How are you doing today and your health which is so important to me now, hope you are fine and okay by the grace of God, i want to let you know that i am once a student but after they death of my late parents i stop my education.i don't have any lover or boyfriend, you are they only person i have in my life today. My love, please send your informations to the lawyer immediately so that he will be able to prepare the document in your name in they federal high court so as to enable they transfer to done. please send your informations to the lawyer immediately. Your sweetheart Doris From: doris Andrew < dorisandrew1@hotmail.com > Sent: Sun, Mar 20, 2016 11:23 pm Subject: Please forward us immediately your full contact informations CC: Subject: Please forward us immediately your full contact informations Date: Sun, 20 Mar 2016 22:01:23 +0000 LEGAL PRACTITIONER & ATTORNEYS OF SUPREME COURT OF JUSTICE B-S-WILLIAM CHAMBERS CONSULTANT SOLICITORS AND ADVOCATES. JUDICIARY OFFICE No 101 USMAN DIOP YOFF DAKAR SENEGAL OFFICE TEL: + 221-766-180-521 Attention. . . . This is to inform you that your email was receive today been 20 of March 2016, as regards thepreparation of a power of attorney and affidavit of oath for you and your partner Miss Doris Andrew the content of your mail is well understood to me. Our noble law firm wish to bring to your notice that before we can proceed with this services we will want you to forward to our law firm immediately your full contact informations as follows below, Full name . . . . . . . . Office address . . . . . . Your age. . . . . . . . . Phone number . . . . . . . Fax number . . . . . . . . Profession . . . . . . . . Nationalities . . . . . . Country of resident . . . . . . .. And if possible a scan copy of your international passport or your driving license or ID Card. So that we will ascertain from the federal high court cost of the authentication of the power of attorney and affidavit of oath before it becomes valid for the bank to transfer of the funds into your account. Have a nice day. Yours sincerely in service, Barrister, William Edward (ESQ) Solicitors & Advocates Tel; +221-766180521 No 101 Usman Diop Yoff Dakar Senegal. (Principal Attorney) Yours sincerely in service,Barrister, William Edward (ESQ)Solicitors & AdvocatesTel;No 101 Usman Diop Yoff Dakar Senegal.(Principal Attorney) From: williamworldlinkchamber@hotmail.com CC: dorisandrew1@hotmail.com Subject: Please forward us immediately your full contact informationsDate: Sun, 20 Mar 2016 22:01:23 +0000 From: doris Andrew < dorisandrew1@hotmail.com > Sent: Tue, Mar 22, 2016 12:05 am Subject: My love, please send your information to the lawyer immediately. . Hello my love How are you doing today and your health which is so important to me now, hope you are fine and okay by the grace of God, am very happy to read your mail today and your mail is well understood to me, i want to let you know that i am once a student but after they death of my late parents i stop my education. i don't have any lover or boyfriend , you are they only person i have in my life today. My love, please send your information to the lawyer immediately so that he will be able to prepare they document in your name in they federal high court so as to enable they transfer to done. please send your information to the lawyer immediately. Your sweetheart Doris Andrew From: doris Andrew < dorisandrew1@hotmail.com > Sent: Wed, May 4, 2016 11:55 am Subject: Ask him to send you your certified bank draft of $200,000 Hello Dearest, I am very happy to inform you about my success in getting the total fund transferred under the co-operation of a new partner from India. Presently I am in Malaysia for investment projects with my own share of the total FUND. Meanwhile, I didn't forget your past efforts and attempts to assist me in transferring the funds despite that it failed us some how. Now you need to contact the Rev. Father whom used to be a Good-Father to me when i was in the refugee camp in Dakar Senegal,the name is Rev. Father David Francis and his email address is revdavidfrancis100@hotmail.com write to him immediately to get package. Ask him to send you your certified bank d raft of $200.000.00 ( Two hundred thousand US dollars) which i prepared signed and kept for your compensation for all the past efforts and attempts to assist me in this matter then. . I appreciated your efforts at that time very much so feel free and get in contact with Rev. father David Francis . and instruct him on how to send you the Draft cheque via post. Please do let me know immediately you receive the Draft so that we can share our joy and happiness after all the sufferings at that time. At the moment, i am very busy here because of the investment projects which i and the new partner are having at hand, finally, remember that I had forwarded instruction to Rev .father David Francis. on your behalf to receive the draft. Therefore get in touch with him today and he will send the cheque to you without delay. Take care, i missed you a lot. . Yours Doris If you received a similar letter, please ignore it. Do not answer it. If you do, you will end up on more of the mailing lists used by the criminals behind this fraud. Read more.... When Cafe Bruges opened in 2009, it set itself apart from other area restaurants by offering cuisine unique to the area. Within a short period, the restaurant gained popularity, and Belgium cuisine was soon on everyones lips. Today they rank No. 2 on the popular Internet review site TripAdvisor, disabusing any notion that they are little more than just a flash in the frying pan. When making plans to dine at the casual eatery located at 16 N. Pitt St., in Carlisle, keep in mind that they dont take reservations, so save yourself the trouble of a phone call. It also may be helpful to know that street parking is the only option available and a short walk may be in order. During our visit on an early Thursday evening, business was steady with just a few dozen customers seated at tables in the middle of the room, a few perched at the bar up front and others taking their place at the long wooden bench along the wall where I was seated. Shortly after being settling in, our waitress presented the menu, with a little booklet of Belgian beers. If I hadnt figured out beforehand that Belgian beer was big here, that booklet should have given me a clue. Cafe Bruges does its best to keep 100 Belgian beer offerings on hand at any given time, with two taps in daily rotation and 10 different styles on tap. If cocktails or wine rank high on your beverage choice, youre out of luck. Each beer (or ale) is served in an authentic glass designated especially for that particular libation. I enlisted the help of the waitress who recommended the refreshing Wittekerke, which evidently rates highly among Belgium beer connoisseurs, of which I am not. Tastings are often offered as well so that you can hone in on what you enjoy the most. While sipping on my Wittekerke, I decided to try the Liege salad as a prelude to my entree. Comprised of warm, perfectly done green beans, potatoes and bacon lightly tossed in a shallot-parsley vinaigrette, the hearty salad was satisfying, and the vinaigrette a nice complement to the flavors of the potatoes and beans. For my entree, I chose the steak frites an eight-ounce sirloin served with herb butter, Flemish green beans and a huge cone of frites ($21). The frites, which could have easily served three, are twice fried in beef tallow and served in the traditional Belgian style (with mayonnaise), or a choice of other house-made sauces like curry ketchup, Dijon mustard and horseradish sauce, to name a few. The steak was flavorful and perfectly cooked. My only complaint was that the herb butter was much too salty, but it was easy enough to move it aside and enjoy my steak without it. My dining partner chose the Stoemp Saucisse ($18), a sausage trio comprised of knockwurst, bratwurst and Nuremberg sausage, which was procured from a small, family-run German establishment in Maryland. It received rave reviews and will likely enjoy an encore in the future. Other dinner entrees include the popular mussels, the hearty Waterzooi of Chicken a creamy chicken stew with red potatoes, leeks, carrots, mushroom and garlicand a Flemish beef stew slow-cooked in dark ale and served with parsley potatoes known as Carbonade Flamande. House-made sorbets came highly recommended by a neighboring diner. The waffle topped with fresh fruit compote and whipped cream served with a side of Belgian dark chocolate sauce was also tempting, if only we had room. The proprietors of Cafe Bruges have been successful throughout the years, and it all started with taking a chance on a concept unique to the area. Seven years down the road, the restaurant is still going strong, drawing both locals and non-locals alike to sample a little taste of Belgium. To view the menu, hours and pricing, visit cafebruges.com Up next: Lunch at the Colony House restaurant in Mechanicsburg Pop Art, Street Art style painting of Mr Monopoly Guy, Painted by Mike Mozart, also known as the Street Artist MiMo! Mike Mozart was the ghost artist / designer behind many of famed street artist Alec Monopoly's most famous artworks! #Alec #Monopoly (Image by JeepersMedia) Details DMCA A good place to start looking at price fixing is the pharmaceutical industry. This industry is but one important example of where we see that the consumer is at the mercy of the producers. So too are patients of many of the health care professionals who are protected by qualification that restrict entry of competition: education, licensing and board qualification requirements, and institutions privileges such as hospital privileges needed to provide their services. Limitation on competition, for whatever reason, will give the price advantage to the providers; this was one of the strongest arguments made against health licensing laws in the eighteenth century. Today it is even used by supposed "Pro-Lifers" to block access to, and make more expensive, legal terminations of pregnancies. Outside of the political rhetoric, there is no hesitancy in either of our major parties to limit the market so neither truly supports a Free Market. Thom Hartman reminded us on March 14, 2016 that Henry Wallace, former vice president under Franklin Delano Roosevelt wrote i n the New York Times in 1944 saying that fascists: "...claim to be super-patriots, but they would destroy every liberty guaranteed by the Constitution. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective...is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection." Thus, the propaganda of fascism in disguise is another reason to be on guard against those who promise a "Free Market". Price Fixing is an agreement between participants on the same side in a market to buy or sell a product, service, or commodity at a fixed price; or to maintain the market conditions such that the price is maintained at a given level by controlling supply and/or demand. In the United States, price fixing can be prosecuted as a criminal federal offense under section 1 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). (Image by Commons) Details DMCA As is typical during an election season with well-meaning but ultimately low information voters, decisions are not based on who is the best candidate. They are based on a meme successfully generated and carefully nurtured by one or the other side. The tragedy is the truth can be just the opposite. A large number of Democratic primary voters are reluctantly voting for Clinton, although they agree more often with Sanders, because of the idea put forth early in the race by the Clinton campaign, experts in the dark arts, that Clinton is more electable than Sanders against Donald Trump. But polls show consistently otherwise, and if Hillary is nominated, and loses to Trump, unfortunately and tragically it will be the fault of these voters. Consider an RCP average of multiple polls. Sanders tops Trump in head-to-head matches by double the margins Hillary does. Anyone who doubts Sanders' strength need only look at the margin of his wins in states as diverse as Kansas, MN, Maine, and Oklahoma. Sanders won Kansas by 35 points, OK by 10, MN by 22, and Maine by 35 points. Kansas? The heart of the conservative heartland? A nominal "socialist?" Yup. Trump has already chickened out of a one-on-one debate with Sanders, which Fox News attempted to put together. Trump keeps saying he thinks it will be Hillary. This backhanded boost to her candidacy betrays his true emotion: He wants it to be Hillary. Bernie was and is a streetfighter who has been dealing with bullies like Trump all his life. Beyond the small world of Democrats who agree with each other on most things political, is a huge world of independents who could go either way, who would never pull the lever for Hillary in a million years. Among general election voters Hillary has the highest negative ratings of any presidential candidate in history, since such polls were taken. RCP Charts (Image by Real Clear Politics) Details DMCA (Image by Real Clear Politics) Details DMCA (Article changed on March 22, 2016 at 13:30) (Article changed on March 22, 2016 at 13:34) (Article changed on March 22, 2016 at 15:14) While the nation contends with elected officials who continue to insist that climate change is a hoax, there are others who stand as an example to being ahead of the curve understanding the environmental challenges facing the country. Rep. Barbara J. Lee (D-CA), has a long history of standing up to those who would consciously chip away at the rights of citizens to have clean air and water. Lee was an early adopter of the premise that there is an inherent connection between environmental hazards and the quality of daily life. Most specifically, she understood how poor and minority communities were inequitably burdened. The League of Conservation Voters has calculated that Lee has a 95 percent lifetime score for her votes on environmental issues. She has consistently disagreed with efforts to prevent the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases, fought against the subsidies that keep Big Oil in receivership of generous government subsidies, and promoted a renewable energy trajectory that would be a boost to the economy. While others were on the fence about the Keystone XL Pipeline, Lee was clear that she believed it was an ill-advised option. In Oakland, situated in Lee's district, stats show that the asthma rate is at the top levels in America. Lee has noted, "Children in West Oakland are seven times more likely to be hospitalized for asthma than children in the rest of California." I contacted Lee's office with some questions about her ongoing activism in protecting her constituency and promoting proactive solutions. You are a founding member of the Safe Climate Caucus (SCC ) which originated in 2013. A brief was recently filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington presenting the premise that the EPA has "overstepped it legal authority" through its proposed regulation of carbon dioxide emissions. 171 House members have signed on, in an effort to disrupt the Clean Power Plan . How do you and your colleagues in the caucus plan to respond? For the last seven years, Congressional Republicans have worked to derail the President's agenda at any cost, including the health of our environment and families. As a proud Member of the SCC and Sustainable Energy & Environment Coalition (SEEC), we are working to help the President implement his Clean Power Plan and advance legislation that preserves our planet for future generations. Focusing on Environmental Justice, you have worked to advocate for the health issues of families and children from low-income communities of color. Can you discuss your initiatives on this important front? For generations, African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and low-income communities have been disproportionately hurt by pollution. You can clearly see these disparities in the childhood asthma rates for these communities. Recently, I joined several of my colleagues in introducing the Low-Income Solar Access Act (H.R. 3041). This legislation would expand solar energy access to low-income communities and empower them to build sustainable, community-based energy generation that doesn't further pollute our communities. The repercussions from climate disruption threaten all areas of the country with severe weather occurrences, rising sea levels, fires and more. However, we still have those in public office who refute the science. Are you concerned that this will impede America in meeting its agreements from the Paris accords if carbon emissions aren't reduced? The American people know that climate change is a serious economic, national security and environmental challenge; they also understand that leadership and action is needed. Unfortunately, a small minority has chosen to ignore science in favor of supporting special interests that have derailed our work on this issue. Next Page 1 | 2 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Republicans are vowing not to confirm any Supreme Court nominee Obama makes, and have done so both in deed and on a signed pledge. Just yesterday, Senate majority leader McConnell said Republicans will not vote on any nominee, even if a Democrat is elected in November and even in the subsequent lame duck session. In an act of unknowing prescience, Chief Justice Roberts wrote just weeks before Justice Scalia died that the process of nominating a Justice should be free of politics. "Anytime Judge Garland disagrees, you know you're in a difficult area," Chief Justice Roberts said at his own 2005 confirmation hearing. "We don't work as Democrats or Republicans," the chief justice said, "and I think it's a very unfortunate impression the public might get from the confirmation process." But if anything, the Republican majority has dug in its heels, even as nominee Marrick Garland meets with Democrats and some truly patriotic Republicans. In response, Robert Reich posted a video through moveon.org saying people should apply public pressure to their Senators through phone calls and letters. Robert Reich: How to Fix the Supreme Court. How do we get the #GOP to release their choke hold on #SCOTUS? Robert Reich has an answer. Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Above Board Chamber of Florida Explores The Value of Giving www.aboveboardchamber.com www.aboveboardchamber.com Above Board Chamber of Florida is pleased to present The Value of Giving Charity Begins at Work from 11:30 a.m. 1 p.m. on Monday, April 11 at the Hilton Naples, 5111 Tamiami Trail N. in Naples and on Thursday, April 14 at Harborside Event Center, 1375 Monroe Street in Fort Myers. Reservations are required atWe all know it feels good to give back to our community. Aside from the intrinsic rewards, when charity begins at work, organic business growth often follows. Aprils Above Board Chamber luncheons are an opportunity to learn from local business leaders how to grow goodwill to benefit the community and the success of your company.The Naples meeting will feature a panel including Connie Byrne, Recruiting Manager for Arthrex; Steve Sanderson, President and CEO of United Way of Collier County; Lisetee E. Homes, CFO of Community Foundation of Collier County; and Jim Henderson, President at Williams C. Huff Companies.The Fort Myers meeting will feature a panel including J. Tom Uhler, Founder and Principal of Uhler and Vertich Financial Planners LLC; Cliff Smith, Executive Director of United Way of Lee, Hendry, Glades, and Okeechobee; Carolyn Rogers, Vice President of Development & Communications Southwest Florida Community Foundation; and Attorney Vera Bergermann of Bergermann Law Firm.The Naples meeting will be emceed by Sue Huff, President of E. Sue Huff and Associates. The Fort Myers meeting will be emceed by Connie-Ramos Williams, President and Chief Marketing Officer at CONRIC PR & Marketing. The Naples meeting is sponsored by Michael Longo: Naples Floral Design. The Fort Myers meeting is sponsored by Goodwill Industries of Southwest Florida.Annual sponsors for the Above Board Chamber of Florida are CONRIC PR & Marketing and Fuller Online Solutions.Naples lunch registrationRegistration on or before Thursday, April 7 will be $25 for members, $30 for friends. After April 7, registration will be $28 for members, $33 for guests.Fort Myers registrationRegistration on or before Friday, April 8 will be $25 for members, $30 for guests. After April 8, registration will be $30 for members and $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 PR6216 Whiskey Creek DrSuite BFort Myers, FL 33919 Global Coal Market 2015 Industry Key Trends, Growth, Demand, Share, Analysis to 2019 http://www.9dresearchgroup.com/market-analysis/coal-market-2016-global-industry-size-trends-growth.html http://www.9dresearchgroup.com/report/54955/request-sample Global Coal Industry 2016 Market Research Report was a professional and depth research report on Global Coal industry that you would know the world's major regional market conditions of Coal industry, the main region including North American, Europe and Asia etc, and the main country including United States ,Germany ,Japan and China etc.Browse full report with TOC @The report firstly introduced Coal basic information including Coal definition, classification, application and industry chain overview; Coal industry policy and plan, Coal product specification, manufacturing process, cost structure etc. Then we deeply analyzed the world's main region market conditions that including the product price, profit, capacity, production, capacity utilization, supply, demand and industry growth rate etc.In the end, the report introduced Coal new project SWOT analysis, investment feasibility analysis, and investment return analysis and Global Twin-screw Extruder industry.In a word, it was a depth research report on Global Coal industry. And thanks to the support and assistance from Coal industry chain related technical experts and marketing experts during Research Team survey and interviews.For sample request click onThe report including six parts, the first part mainly introduced the product basic information; the second part mainly analyzed the Asia Coal industry; the third part mainly analyzed the North American Coal industry; the fourth part mainly analyzed the Europe Coal industry; the fifth part mainly analyzed the market entry and investment feasibility; the sixth part was the report conclusion chapter.Table of ContentPart I Coal Industry OverviewChapter One Coal Industry Overview1.1 Coal Definition1.2 Coal Classification Analysis1.2.1 Coal Main Classification Analysis1.2.2 Coal Main Classification Share Analysis1.3 Coal Application Analysis1.3.1 Coal Main Application Analysis1.3.2 Coal Main Application Share Analysis1.4 Coal Industry Chain Structure Analysis1.5 Coal Industry Development Overview1.5.1 Coal Product History Development Overview1.5.1 Coal Product Market Development Overview1.6 Coal Global Market Comparison Analysis1.6.1 Coal Global Import Market Analysis1.6.2 Coal Global Export Market Analysis1.6.3 Coal Global Main Region Market Analysis1.6.4 Coal Global Market Comparison Analysis1.6.5 Coal Global Market Development Trend AnalysisChapter Two Coal Up and Down Stream Industry Analysis2.1 Upstream Raw Materials Analysis2.1.1 Upstream Raw Materials Price Analysis2.1.2 Upstream Raw Materials Market Analysis2.1.3 Upstream Raw Materials Market Trend2.2 Down Stream Market Analysis2.1.1 Down Stream Market Analysis2.2.2 Down Stream Demand Analysis2.2.3 Down Stream Market Trend AnalysisChem Gadgets is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations.Contact UsJoel John3422 SW 15 Street, Suit #8138,Deerfield Beach, Florida 33442,United StatesTel: +1-386-310-3803GMT Tel: +49-322 210 92714USA/Canada Toll Free No. 1-855-465-4651 Global Telecom Billing Outsourcing Market 2016 Industry Size, Research, Review, Demand & Forecast 2022 http://goo.gl/g3Sp2N Tablets Market in the US 2016-2020A tablet is a wireless mobile computer with a touchscreen display, equipped with a processor, camera, a microphone, and an accelerometer. The different kinds of tables include convertible tablets, where the display rotates to 180 degrees, hybrid tablets, and rugged tablets designed for extreme conditions and rough handling.The tablets market in US to grow at a CAGR of 3% by revenue over the period 2014-2019.Covered in this ReportThe report includes the present scenario and the growth prospects of the tablets market in US for the period 2015-2019. The market can be segmented on the basis of different operating systems and age groups.Get Free Sample Report :Tablets Market in US 2015-2019, has been prepared based on in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts. The report covers its growth prospects in the coming years. The report includes a discussion of the key vendors.Key Vendors Apple Amazon Google Samsung MicrosoftOther Prominent Vendors Acer Asus VerizonKey Market Driver Advantages of Tablets over Laptops For a full, detailed list, view our reportKey Market Challenge Emergence of Phablets For a full, detailed list, view our reportKey Market Trend Segmentation in Tablet Market For a full, detailed list, view our reportAbout Us:QY Market Research is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations.Contact Us:Joel JohnDeerfield Beach, Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803Web: QY Market ResearchEmail: sales@qymarketresearch.com Taking on the Little Sisters of the Poor should have been the public-relations equivalent of slapping babies. Mary Eberstadt, author of the upcoming book "It's Dangerous to Believe," used that turn of phrase when speaking at the Catholic University of America at a conference on human ecology co-sponsored by the Napa Institute. She was referring to the religious group that finds itself headed to the Supreme Court this week, fighting an Obamacare mandate that clashes with its religious views. From the very beginning, it was a perplexing situation. Perplexing unless you understand that the hostility to lived religious faith in the public square is itself something of a religion for secular liberals. But what about the Christians? Come to think of it: Why haven't they been marching in the streets for those precious sisters? Could it be that they haven't been living what they believe? Speaking after Eberstadt at the same conference, Atlanta businessman Frank Hanna addressed this. As Hanna put it, modern American Christians are probably not in the best position today to lecture anyone. It has nothing to do with the blessed sisters who are living radically, but with the rest of us who go about our days and don't show our neighbors that gracious generosity and mercy that Gospel living necessitates. There's a lack of credibility, he says, including himself in his criticism. He knows he's not alone. If you've read the accounts of the final moments and last words of the four nuns killed by ISIS terrorists in Yemen earlier this month, you know what a true Christian example looks like. When ISIS moved into their home for elderly and disabled people, they heard women there beg "Don't kill the sisters! Don't kill the sisters!" But that's exactly what ISIS was there to do. The ISIS terrorists caught Sister Judith and Sister Reginette first, tied them up and shot them in the head. Then they caught Sister Anselm and Sister Marguerite, and murdered them in the same fashion. This graphic testimony comes from Sister Sally, the fifth of the sisters in the house, who the terrorists looked for but never found. The sisters were killed just days before the Vatican announced that the founder of their order, Mother Teresa, would be canonized in September. But what about those who won't be murdered by ISIS, who face challenges to their faith much less grave? As Hanna put it: "I'm not sure right now (that Christians) have the credibility to lecture society. But we can have credibility if we decide to be witnesses." We decide to be witnesses to Christ by living virtuously. By living less selfishly and more sacrificially. By wanting others to prosper, and helping them to do so. We also do so by having a frank discussion with Americans who are hostile to Christianity. In her upcoming book, Eberstadt explains the secular left as a rival faith to Christianity, one with reasonable and unreasonable people. We can work out some compromise with the reasonable ones, in the tradition of our pluralistic society. But to do so, we also have to clearly and truly believe in something in the same way that an administration that would let the Little Sisters of the Poor go all the way to the Supreme Court does. Father Douglas Bazi, an Iraqi priest, was in the U.S. recently, begging us to join the rest of the world in calling what ISIS is doing to his people a genocide. When he gives his testimony about his own capture and torture, he assures me of two things: 1) In the same circumstances, you would have the same faith he did 2) There is no reason to feel guilty about our freedoms -- we must protect them and speak out for others. The courage of Christians abroad makes us better. But by how we live our daily lives, we, too, can make the world better. Global Wireless Charging Market Boosted by High Adoption Rate of Mobile Devices http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/pressrelease/1126 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/494439 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ MarketResearchReports.biz has added a research report to its expanding database on the global market for semiconductors. This report is titled Global Wireless Charging Market 2016-2020 and provides key data on the trends that affect this market and will continue to affect it in the near future. Within the report are included statistics for market size, future growth rate, and key vendor data.According to the report, the global wireless charging market is progressing at an extremely optimistic CAGR of 33.0% within a forecast period that starts in 2016 and ends in 2020. The primary driver for this high growth rate of this market is the consistently increasing adoption of wireless electronics such as mobile devices and portable computing devices. Smartphones form one of the greatest segments of consumer electronics and are responsible for a large portion of the current growth rate of the global wireless charging market. Users of smartphones are attracted to the idea of wirelessly charging their phones, as it eliminates the need for a mechanical connection between a charging port and the phone. It also allows a user to use their phone whenever required.View Press Release Report at :Another augmentation of wireless charging that is boosting its global market is the integration of wireless chargers into automobiles. With this addition, a consumer does not have to worry about carrying a charger, or carrying different chargers, with them on drives. As long as a mobile device has wireless charging capabilities, it can be charged using the port given in the vehicle. The global wireless charging market will thus grow through the increase in the number of automobile companies placing wireless charging devices into their production vehicles.In terms of applications, the two major segments of the global wireless charging market are electric vehicles and consumer electronics. In terms of geography, this market is segmented into EMEA, APAC, and the Americas.For Sample Copy, click here:The competitive landscape of the global wireless charging market is considered to be a challenging one, filled with older players that previously were operating in other electronics and semiconductor technologies, such as Duracell, along with promising startups such as Ubeam. This market is still in a nascent stage, which means that while research and development efforts are strong, competitors have to look for top positions using strategies such as providing high-quality products at cheaper rates. Players are using both technology as well as design attributes to distinguish their products in this market in order to create a significant consumer base and gain a larger market share.The key competitors in the global wireless charging market are WiTricity, Qualcomm, Fulton, and Duracell. Other significant shareholders in the market are Leggett and Platt, Wisepower, Texas Instruments, Pure Energy Solutions, Oregon Scientific, LS Cable & System, Energizer Holding, and Anker.MarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.Mr. NachiketState Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA: Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Website:E : sales@marketresearchreports.biz New Report On 3PL Market in the US 2016 Size, Review, Demand & Forecast 2022 http://goo.gl/0zxHz7 3PL Market in the US 2016-20203PL is a business process through which companies outsource their logistics and distribution functions to a service provider that specializes in handling logistics such as transportation, warehousing, and freight and forwarding. A service provider that provides these services is called a 3PL provider. Often, 3PL providers go beyond logistics and provide value-added services such as inventory management, cross-docking, door-to-door delivery, and packaging of products. They also provide strategic and operational value to many shippers worldwide. 3PL uses new and innovative SCM to enhance efficiency.The 3PL market in US to grow at a CAGR of 5.37 percent over the period 2014-2019.Get Free Sample Report :Covered in this reportThis report covers the present scenario and the growth prospects of the 3PL market in the US for the period 2015-2019. To calculate the market size, this report considers net revenue generated by 3PL providers. The report also presents the vendor landscape and a corresponding detailed analysis of the top seven vendors in the 3PL market in the US. In addition, it discusses the major drivers that influence the growth of the market. It also summarizes the challenges faced by the vendors and the market at large, and the key trends that are emerging in the market.3PL Market in US 2015-2019, has been prepared based on an in-depth market analysis with inputs from industry experts.Key vendors CH Robinson Worldwide Deutsche Post Expeditors International of Washington J.B. Hunt Transport Kuehne + Nagel International United Parcel Service UTi WorldwideOther prominent vendors Agility AN Deringer APL Logistics Arnold Logistics BAX Global BDP International BNSF Logistics Cardinal Logistics Cat Logistics CEVA Logistics Cornerstone Logistics Coyote Logistics CRST Logistics DB Schenker Logistics DSC LogisticsMarket driver Increase in cross border trade between US and Mexico For a full, detailed list, view our reportMarket challenge Shortage of skilled truck drivers For a full, detailed list, view our reportAbout Us:Market Research Store is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics released by reputed private publishers and public organizations.Contact Us:Joel JohnDeerfield Beach, Florida 33442United StatesToll Free: +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-386-310-3803Web: Market Research StoreEmail: sales@marketresearchstore.com BlueCielo ECM Solutions and Kinsmen Group Announce Global Partnership BlueCielo ECM Solutions www.kinsmengroup.com www.bluecieloecm.com Providing Asset Lifecycle Information Management (ALIM) Solutions to Owner OperatorsHoofddorp, Netherlands., March 22, 2016 - BlueCielo ECM Solutions has appointed Kinsmen Group as a global reseller and implementation partner. With offices in the U.S. and United Kingdom, the appointment of Kinsmen Group provides a trusted BlueCielo partner with worldwide coverage.BlueCielo works with a comprehensive network of certified partners to deliver global solutions with local support and expertise. Each BlueCielo partner is able to advise customers and provide all the services necessary to implement, maintain and improve BlueCielo software.BlueCielo customers increasingly operate at a global level. As a result, BlueCielo selects partners who can support our customers growing needs with high level consultancy, implementation services and support. Kinsmen Group offers a team of highly experienced specialists with in-depth knowledge of the business requirements of asset-intensive industries.BlueCielo is pleased to announce the formal appointment of Kinsmen Group as a BlueCielo global partner, said Willem-Jan Scholten, CEO of BlueCielo. Kinsmen Group is an ideal partner for BlueCielo as they bring a wealth of highly specialized knowledge and experience of the company's solutions and services. In addition, Kinsmen Group is a proven local partner that can deliver the highest level of implementation and support for Meridian software, including our cloud-based Meridian360 Portal.Brian Sallade, CEO of Kinsmen Group added: The agreement with BlueCielo is a natural extension of Kinsmen Group's ALIM services and consulting business. It enables Kinsmen Group to provide complete engineering, asset lifecycle information management and document control solutions to help organizations increase efficiency, improve safety and assure compliance of their operational assets.About Kinsmen GroupOperating globally from locations in the U.S. and the U.K., Kinsmen Group provides specialized and practical ALIM (Asset Lifecycle Information Management) including engineering, asset lifecycle information management and document control services to help meet the compliance, safety, efficiency and business goals of owner operators in asset intensive industries.BlueCielo is a registered trademark of BlueCielo ECM Solutions. All other brand names, product names, or trademarks belong to their respective holders. 2016 BlueCielo ECM Solutions. All Rights Reserved.About BlueCielo ECM SolutionsBlueCielo provides the leading software solution to discover, monitor and protect technical asset information throughout the asset lifecycle. BlueCielo Engineering Information Management (EIM) and Asset Lifecycle Information Management (ALIM) solutions provide a single point of truth for asset-related data to ensure that accurate, up-to-date information is always easily accessible. BlueCielos solutions reduce costs, improve efficiency and increase data quality, enabling customers to maximize profitability and demonstrate regulatory compliance by measurably reducing risk. The company is headquartered in The Netherlands and has offices across the United States, Brazil and Europe, as well as an international network of partners that ensures local service and support for our software solution BlueCielo Meridian. BlueCielo is an official partner of Autodesk, IBM, Microsoft, SolidWorks, Oracle and SAP. For more information, visitEdwin van DijkBlueCielo ECM SolutionsPolarisavenue 1, 2132 JH Hoofddorp, The Netherlandsmail@bluecieloecm.com+31 88 022 5700 New Study Traces Growth Of European Light Fidelity (Li-Fi) Industry In 2016 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/pressrelease/1150 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/566533 http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ LiFi is a revolutionary wireless technology that is several times faster than Wi-Fi. LiFi, short for Light Fidelity, is a technology that helps light bulbs function as wireless hotspots, with speeds that are way faster than the current generation of Wi-Fi. A new report featured on MarketResearchReports.biz presents a detailed overview of the European LiFi technology industry for 2016. The report studies every important facet of the technology and its evolution as well as its adoption across various industries. Although a relatively new technology, the blistering speed it proffers has roused the interest of people in Li-Fi. All of these details are captured in the report, titled European LiFi (Light Fidelity) Technology Industry 2016 Market Research Report.The report begins with an overview of the global Li-Fi industry and then turns the focus on the European Li-Fi market. Prepared by a team of highly experienced analysts, the report is designed to function as a support tool for making course-altering business decisions.View Press Release atThe market for Li-Fi is finally about to take off commercially with recent tests showing that this wireless technology can deliver speeds that are about a hundred times faster than Wi-Fi. For instance, Velmenni, a startup based in Estonia (Europe), demonstrated that data could be transmitted at speeds of 1 Gbps using Li-Fi. If successfully deployed commercially, Li-Fi could help download high definition films in a matter of seconds, revolutionizing the technology and media industry.Spurred by the promise of unprecedented data transfer speeds, governments and technology companies alike have begun to explore how to bring Li-Fi technology to more and more people in Europe. With developed and developing European nations being a hotbed of technology-related innovation, it the prospects of the European Li-Fi market look promising.For Sample Copy, click here:An analysis of latest and potential investments in Li-Fi in Europe is conducted in the report. To better demonstrate the potential of the market, the report profiles companies that have made strides in the European Li-Fi industry. These companies include Velmenni, Apple, Sanan, PureVLC, and KingSun. The report presents predictions and forecasts for the European Li-Fi industry for the period ranging from 2016 to 2021.The other highlights of the report include an analysis of traders and distributors playing an active role in the development of the European Li-Fi market. Milestone developments in this space are also captured and analyzed in the report. Whether or not making an investment in specific Li-Fi projects is feasible is also studied under the purview of the report. Moreover, the report encapsulates all of the important regulatory moves that have either benefited or hindered the growth of the European Li-Fi industry.MarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries.Mr. NachiketState Tower90 State Street, Suite 700Albany, NY 12207Tel: +1-518-618-1030USA: Canada Toll Free: 866-997-4948Website:E : sales@marketresearchreports.biz Global Roll Waterproofing Membranes for Floor Industry 2016 Market Analysis, Research, Growth Rate, Developments & Forecasts http://www.qyresearchreports.com/sample/sample.php?rep_id=665923&type=E http://www.qyresearchreports.com/report/global-roll-waterproofing-membranes-for-floor-industry-2016-market-research-report.htm http://www.qyresearchreports.com This study on the global Roll Waterproofing Membranes for Floor market is a lucrative guide providing exhaustive information on the market including the current and past scenario of the market. A number of factors are responsible for the growth of the market. These include market dynamics such as the prime drivers, inhibitors, challengers, and opportunities within the market. All of the emerging trends within the market have been scrutinized for understanding their impact on the growth of the market in the forecast period. The market dynamics are responsible for the continuous changes happening in the market and thus, a detailed review of the market dynamics forms an important part of the report. The report commences by providing an overview of the global Roll Waterproofing Membranes for Floor market and this section also includes the classifications, applications, and specifications of the global Roll Waterproofing Membranes for Floor market.To Get Sample Copy of Report visit @The parent segments as well as sub-segments have also been described. In this part, the market shares of the top segments and the expected share of each segment by the end of the forecasting horizon have been presented. A section on the technical data analysis of the global Roll Waterproofing Membranes for Floor market also forms an integral part of this study. This section includes an evaluation on the prime trends in the Roll Waterproofing Membranes for Floor market, along with the key statistics and important market forecasts. The regional landscape of the Roll Waterproofing Membranes for Floor market has also been covered and the prime countries dominant in the market have been highlighted. In addition, within this section, the leading countries and their expected market shares by the end of the forecast horizon have also been provided.In the last section of the report, a comprehensive evaluation of the key companies dominant within the global Roll Waterproofing Membranes for Floor market has been presented. In addition, figures related to price, capacity, gross, and revenue of the chief companies have also been included under this section of the report.Browse Complete Report with TOC @QYresearchreports.com delivers the latest strategic market intelligence to build a successful business footprint in China. Our syndicated and customized research reports provide companies with vital background information of the market and in-depth analysis on the Chinese trade and investment framework, which directly affects their business operations. Reports from QYReseachReports.com feature valuable recommendations on how to navigate in the extremely unpredictable yet highly attractive Chinese market.QYResearchReports1820 AvenueM Suite #1047Brooklyn, NY 11230United StatesToll Free: 866-997-4948 (USA-CANADA)Tel: +1-518-618-1030Web:Email: sales@qyresearchreports.com Global Commercial Telematics Market is Expected to Reach Around $ 49.12 Billion by 2020 http://www.mrrse.com/commercial-telematics-market http://www.mrrse.com/commercial-telematics-market/toc http://www.mrrse.com/sample/682 A featured report, titled Commercial Telematics Market (By Type - OEM Telematics (Embedded and Hybrid) and Aftermarket Telematics (Embedded and Portable); By Application - Fleet/Asset Management, Satellite Navigation, Infotainment, Insurance Telematics, Telehealth Solutions, Remote Alarm and Monitoring, and Others) - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends and Forecast 2014 - 2020, has been added to the repository of Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE).In 2013, the commercial telematics market was estimated at US$14.7 bn. According to the report, the global commercial telematics market will expand at a healthy CAGR of 18.0% during the forecast period from 2014 to 2020. Several factors will drive the global commercial telematics market. The widespread application of telematics technology across many industries such as insurance and healthcare will drive the commercial telematics market. Moreover, the growing number of partnerships between telematics solution providers and automobile manufacturers will also propel the market. Another key trend that will drive the global telematics market is the emergence of government regulations mandating the use of telematics technology.Browse Full Global Commercial Telematics Market Report withAlthough the global commercial telematics market will be driven by the aforesaid factors, it will be restrained by the high initial costs related to deploying this technology. Moreover, the privacy concerns related to exposure of sensitive data will also challenge the market.Broadly, the global commercial telematics market is segmented on the basis of type, application, end use, and geography. By type, the global commercial telematics market is divided into portable aftermarket telematics, embedded aftermarket telematics, aftermarket telematics, hybrid OEM systems, and OEM telematics. Application-wise, the global commercial telematics market is classified into remote alarm and monitoring, telehealth solutions, insurance telematics, infotainment, satellite navigation, fleet/asset management, and others. By end use, the global commercial telematics market is divided into manufacturing, insurance, government and utilities, construction, healthcare, and transportation and logistics.Read Full Table of Content @On the basis of region, the global commercial telematics market is segmented into Asia Pacific, Europe, North America, and Rest of the World (RoW). In 2013, North America dominated the global commercial telematics market due to the significant adoption of commercial telematics in this regions major industries such as government and utilities and transportation and logistics.Players in the global commercial telematics market will benefit from the integration of web and mobility solutions into industrial processes. The use of telematics for fleet management in emerging nations will also offer a good growth opportunity to players. The key players operating in the global commercial telematics market are OnStar, TomTom, ORBCOMM, Trimble Navigation, MiX Telematics, and Verizon Communications.Request a Sample Copy of the Report @Market Research Reports Search Engine (MRRSE) is an industry-leading database of market intelligence reports. Headquartered in New York, U.S., MRRSE is driven by a stellar team of research experts and advisors trained to offer objective advice. Our sophisticated search algorithm returns results based on the report title, geographical region, publisher, or other keywords.MRRSE partners exclusively with leading global publishers to provide clients single-point access to top-of-the-line market research. MRRSEs repository is updated every day to keep its clients ahead of the next new trend in market research, be it competitive intelligence, product or service trends or strategic consulting.90 Sate Street, Suite 700 Global Isopropanol Market 2016 Industry Trends, Sales, Supply, Demand, Analysis & Forecast to 2021 http://www.qyresearchgroup.com/market-analysis/global-isopropanol-market-2016-industry-trends-sales-supply.html http://www.qyresearchgroup.com/report/54614#request-sample Global Isopropanol Industry 2015 Market Size Share Growth Forecast Research and DevelopmentThe Global Isopropanol Industry report gives a comprehensive account of the Global Isopropanol market. Details such as the size, key players, segmentation, SWOT analysis, most influential trends, and business environment of the market are mentioned in this report. Furthermore, this report features tables and figures that render a clear perspective of the Isopropanol market. The report features an up-to-date data on key companies product details, revenue figures, and sales. Furthermore, the details also gives the Global Isopropanol market revenue and its forecasts. The business model strategies of the key firms in the Isopropanol market are also included. Key strengths, weaknesses, and threats shaping the leading players in the market have also been included in this research report.The report gives a detailed overview of the key segments in the market. The fastest and slowest growing market segments are covered in this report. The key emerging opportunities of the fastest growing Global Isopropanol market segments are also covered in this report. Each segments and sub-segments market size, share, and forecast are available in this report. Additionally, the region-wise segmentation and the trends driving the leading geographical region and the emerging region has been presented in this report.Get Complete Report with TOC :The study on the Global Isopropanol market also features a history of the tactical mergers, acquisitions, collaborations, and partnerships activity in the market. Valuable recommendations by senior analysts about investing strategically in research and development can help new entrants or established players penetrate the emerging sectors in the Isopropanol market. Investors will gain a clear insight on the dominant players in this industry and their future forecasts. Furthermore, readers will get a clear perspective on the high demand and the unmet needs of consumers that will enhance the growth of this market.Table of ContentChapter One Isopropanol Industry Overview1.1 Isopropanol Definition1.1.1 Isopropanol Definition1.1.2 Product Specifications1.2 Isopropanol Classification1.3 Isopropanol Application Field1.4 Isopropanol Industry Chain Structure1.5 Isopropanol Industry Regional Overview1.6 Isopropanol Industry Policy Analysis1.7 Isopropanol Industry Related Companies Contact InformationGet Sample Copy of Report @QYResearch Group is a single destination for all the industry, company and country reports. QYResearch Group also carries the capability to assist you with your customized market research requirements including in-depth market surveys, primary interviews, competitive landscaping, and company profiles. We feature large repository of latest industry reports, leading and niche company profiles, and market statistics. 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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 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 25-31. The Few, Coho MacArthur genius grant recipient Samuel D. Hunter workshopped this play at Portland's JAW Festival in 2012. It premiered in San Diego, followed by an off-Broadway run (which was extended). And now this very Northwestern tale - Hunter is from Idaho - about a newspaper for long-haul truckers is back in Portland, at CoHo. 7:30 p.m. Thursdays-Saturdays, 2 p.m. Sundays, through April 16, CoHo Theatre, 2257 NW Raleigh St., $17.50 and up, cohoproductions.org Ten Grands, Snowman Foundation Once a year, ten pianists take the stage of the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall - and perform both together and individually. This year, those pianists include a Portland police offer, a New Age pianist, a local prodigy, and a jazz legend. It's not often you can catch such an eclectic group performing together. 7 p.m. Saturday, March 26, Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 S.W. Broadway, $25-$150, snowmanfoundation.org Grupo Corpo, White Bird For the past four decades, Grupo Corpo has aimed to represent Brazil and its culture to the larger world through dance. The company returns to Portland with two new works by choreographer Rodrigo Pederneiras. 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, March 30, Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, 1037 S.W. Broadway, $26-$78, whitebird.org Mallory Morrison's "FOG," Camerawork Gallery L.A. photographer Morrison holds her breath underwater to capture the ethereal, otherworldly photographs that make up "FOG," and they are every bit as breathtaking for those of us gazing at the finished works. March 26-April 27, gallery hours 9 a.m.-4 p.m. Mondays-Fridays, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturdays, Cameraworks Gallery, Peterson Hall, Linfield College Nursing School Campus, 2255 N.W. Northrup St., thecameraworkgallery.org "Why Can't You Stay Dead?" From the creator and team behind Portland dinner theater mainstay, "Who Stole My Dead Husband?" comes a sequel to the long-running tale. Stan Foote - far from his regular gig as Oregon Children's Theatre's artistic director - directs. 7 p.m. various Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, March 31 (preview) through May 21, Tony Starlight Showroom, 1125 S.E. Madison St., $64-$74 (dinner included), thedeadhusband.com "Shackleton: The Untold Story," Portland Story Theatre Armchair Series Portland Story Theatre founder Lawrence Howard returns to the story that kicked off the traveling Armchair Series with a return to the Antarctic explorer Ernest Shackleton. This time, Howard will focus his storytelling on the crew working to make sure Shackleton had food and fuel along his treacherous route. 7:30 p.m. Saturday, March 26, Marine Park Pavilion, 395 S.W. Portage Road, Cascade Locks, free, claim tickets online at pdxstorytheater.org Kidd Pivot, White Bird Uncaged White Bird wraps up its "Uncaged" series with Canadian dance companies Kidd Pivot and Electric Company Theatre in a dance-theater hybrid, "Betroffenheit." White Bird says "Betroffenheit" is German for "Bewilderment," so expect the unexpected in this well-reviewed performance (The Toronto Star called it "a testament to the redemptive power of art.") 8 p.m. Thursday-Saturday, March 31-April 2, Newmark Theatre, 1111 S.W. Broadway, $25-$34, whitebird.org Temporal Ecologies, Portland Building Jenna Reineking's exhibit in the installation space in the Portland Building's lobby kicks off a year of exhibitions from nine artists chosen for their "challenging and diverse work that encourages visitors to reexamine their expectations of what art is and can be." Reineking accomplishes this with brown paper bags as art, asking visitors look at an everyday object in a new way. Currently running, through April 15, installation hours 8 a.m.-5 p.m. Mondays-Fridays, Portland Building, 1120 S.W. 5th Ave., racc.org/installationspace East Coasters might never have hiked Black Butte, but now they can drink like they have. Deschutes Brewery is opening its fourth facility in Roanoke, Virginia, to expand distribution. The family-owned company announced the decision Tuesday. It is one of few of West Coast breweries that have the reach to require a production plant on the eastern seaboard. The brewery is spending $85 million for the new facility -- dubbed "Brew 4," after the three locations in Bend and Portland -- and is expected to employ 108 people, according to a statement from Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe's office. Construction on the new facility will start in 2019 and Deschutes officials plan to ramp up production from a starting point of 150,000 barrels when it opens. Virginia lobbied hard to nab the beloved Oregon brewery, beating out North Carolina and South Carolina. The state even started its own Twitter hashtag: #Deschutes2Rke. The state is matching enthusiasm with dollars, ponying up a $3 million grant and more than $250,000 worth of funds from several agencies available that Deschutes could tap into. "Virginia's competitive bid for Deschutes Brewery's coveted East Coast location was tireless and aggressive, and we are gratified that the company has chosen the city of Roanoke for this major operation," McAuliffe said. Virginia is trying to pitch itself as a leader in craft beer. The state is 15th in the country for amount of craft breweries, with 78, according to the national Craft Brewers Association. The 195,957 barrels of beer produced per year generates more than $1 billion in revenue. Oregon has the fourth-most craft breweries in the country, with 216. Deschutes is a major driver in the more than 1 million barrels produced, becoming a household name for much of the West Coast. "We started Deschutes Brewery when craft beer wasn't burgeoning and led with a beer style that wasn't popular at the time - Black Butte Porter," said Gary Fish, CEO and founder of Deschutes. "This pioneering approach was a key driver behind our decision to go with Roanoke, as that same spirit exists in this community and its fast-growing beer culture." Deschutes opened in Bend in 1988, becoming one of Oregon's flagship breweries over time. It is already distributed in 28 states and Washington, D.C. -- Molly Harbarger mharbarger@oregonian.com 503-294-5923 @MollyHarbarger Bergquist court appearance.jpg Former Washington County sheriff's deputy David Bergquist pleaded guilty to one count of sexual harassment in Clackamas County Circuit Court Tuesday morning. (Rebecca Woolington/The Oregonian/OregonLive ) A former Washington County sheriff's deputy pleaded guilty to one count of sexual harassment in Clackamas County Circuit Court Tuesday morning and was sentenced to probation. David Bergquist, 49, touched a coworker's breast in January 2015 while off duty at a sheriff's office union party, said Clackamas County Deputy District Attorney Bryan Brock, who prosecuted the case. The party was held in Clackamas County. On Tuesday, Bergquist was arraigned, pleaded guilty and was sentenced as part of a plea deal he and his attorney reached with Brock before he was charged. Bergquist, who has not been arrested, is required to report to the Clackamas County Jail before 8 p.m. Tuesday to be booked and released. Judge Robert Herndon sentenced Bergquist to 18 months formal probation, to complete 24 hours of community service and to continue alcohol treatment. As part of a plea agreement, Bergquist was also required to leave the sheriff's office and voluntarily surrender his police certification with the state. Bergquist retired from the sheriff's office Friday, after spending 11 months on paid administrative leave, said Sgt. Vance Stimler, a Washington County Sheriff's Office spokesman. Bergquist worked for the sheriff's office for more than 20 years. Brock told the court Tuesday that the investigation into Bergquist started as part of a much larger inquiry into allegations of misconduct at the sheriff's office. The coworker didn't immediately report Bergquist's conduct, but did so during the larger investigation, Brock said. Until Tuesday, the sheriff's office never commented on why Bergquist was removed from his patrol duties last April. Bergquist was placed on paid leave after the Sheriff's Office and The Oregonian/OregonLive received an anonymous letter April 17 alleging widespread sexual misconduct in the agency. Bergquist wasn't named in the letter. Soon after the Sheriff's Office received the anonymous letter, Sgt. Dan Cardinal, Cpl. Jon Christensen and a third deputy were placed on paid administrative leave. Sheriff's officials declined to name the third deputy, but sources identified him as Bergquist. The sheriff's office asked the Portland Police Bureau to investigate the letter's allegations. During that time, Sheriff Pat Garrett learned of the allegations against Bergquist and placed him on leave, said Sgt. Bob Ray, a sheriff's office spokesman. "While Mr. Bergquist's conduct happened off duty, I continue to enforce the highest standards of conduct and professionalism while strengthening the foundation for change," Garrett said in a statement. "I am committed to ensuring this type of behavior, whether on or off duty, is not part of our future. While some changes have been implemented, additional improvements may be appropriate as more information is received. I extend my gratitude to the Portland Police Bureau and the Clackamas County Sheriff's Office for their important work on this case." Cardinal and Christensen also no longer work for the sheriff's office. Christensen was fired in August. He has been accused of coercing a co-worker into continuing a sexual relationship with him. He was arrested in December and charged with coercion, strangulation, fourth-degree assault and official misconduct. He has pleaded not guilty and his case is pending in Washington County Circuit Court with trial set for September. In January, Cardinal pleaded no contest to official misconduct in Washington County Circuit Court for engaging in sexual activity while on duty. Cardinal, who resigned from the agency last May, received probation. This story will be updated with more information. -- Rebecca Woolington 503-294-4049; @rwoolington foodcart.JPG Megan Walhood and Jeremy Daniels, owners of Southeast Portland's popular Viking Soul Food cart, will open a Scando-Germanic restaurant inside a vintage school bus this spring. (Tyler Tjomsland/The Oregonian) In Europe, The Wild Hunt refers to a spectral horde that roams through the mid-winter forest, snatching up unsuspecting onlookers and depositing them several miles away. In Portland, The Wild Hunt is a new restaurant that hopes to induce a similar fugue state through the strength of its Scando-Germanic menu. Megan Walhood and Jeremy Daniels, owners of Southeast Portland's popular Viking Soul Food cart, will launch The Wild Hunt this spring from a souped-up 1987 school bus parked at Teutonic Wine Company's upcoming urban winery. "I like that we can expose a greater audience to the Scandinavian palate," says Walhood, whose first food business specializes in Norwegian lefse wraps. "My hope is that we're going to appeal to a slightly different market. It's not so much the food-cart folks, it's the wine-drinking folks." Walhood and Daniels had been planning a brick-and-mortar restaurant, but health problems got in the way. Instead, they found an ideal compromise, a vintage bus painted with a "hippy mural" and already tricked out with a fully functioning kitchen -- the perfect place to experiment with the longer menu they'd already been developing. That menu includes a number of Scandinavian- and German-inspired small and large plates, including a blood sausage smorrebrod, pickled eggs with black-pepper mayo and caviar, a pork steak topped with Jarlsberg apple mustard and a chicken under a brick served with Jansson's Temptation, a rich potato gratin. Deviled eggs The bus will sit on Teutonic's new lot, found just off Southeast Powell Boulevard in a light industrial pocket not far from the currently under-fire Bullseye Glass Co. Customers will be allowed to bring The Wild Hunt's food inside the winery, which specializes in German-style wines. An outdoor seating area, possibly with realistic-looking Astroturf, is planned for the summer. "We felt like this is a happy medium for us," Walhood says. "We want to focus on food, without having a whole host of other things to deal with. We almost couldn't have asked for a better opportunity." It's also an opportunity to highlight a more rustic form of Scandinavian food, a cuisine more commonly represented in glossy magazines by the locally foraged, tweezer-chic cooking of Copenhagen's Noma and its celebrated chef, Rene Redzepi. "I think more people are familiar with (Scandinavian food) than they used to be, but there's still a huge gap with people's understanding," Walhood says. "People think, 'Are you going to be serving me little leaves on a plate?' We want to take some of those New Nordic principles, but no, we're not going to go forage leaves around the winery and Bullseye Glass." As for the bus, Walhood says they might turn that "hippy mural" into something more Viking-themed. "We've talked about turning a witch into Odin," Walhood says. "He's a god. He has ravens. He has an eight legged horse named Sleipnir, which, incidentally, is what we're going to call the bus." The Wild Hunt will be located at Teutonic Wine Company's new location, 3303 S.E. 20th Ave. No opening date has been announced, though it could come as soon as April. Small bites from the restaurant's menu will be served at the Urban Winery's grand opening on March 28. -- Michael Russell University of Oregon baseball plays the University of Portland EUGENE, OREGON - Feb 25, 2014 - The University of Oregon baseball head coach George Horton watches warmups from the dugout before playing the University of Portland, Tue, Feb 25, 2014. Thomas Boyd/The Oregonian (Thomas Boyd) Oregon Ducks at Seattle Redhawks When: 3 p.m. (PT) Where: Bannerwood Park; Seattle, Washington Records: Oregon (9-7, 1-2 Pac-12 Conference) at Seattle (11-8) On the air: 1360 AM, Tunein Radio Probable starters: LHP Kyle Robeniol (1-1, 3.00 ERA) vs. TBD Briefly: The Oregon Ducks have lost five of their last six and tumbled from the No. 7 team in the country to outside the top 25 over the past two weeks. Much of that has to do with Oregon's offensive woes, as the program ranks 245th or lower (out of 295) in runs scored, on-base percentage and batting average. The Ducks have been able to combat the early season slump with a team earned run average of 2.77, highlighted by a left-handed starting trio of Cole Irvin, Matt Krook and David Peterson, who have all been solid-to-spectacular so far. Robeniol takes the mound Tuesday, as Oregon has prioritized Pac-12 Conference contests against Washington later this week and elected to maintain the current rotation. Seattle enters the mid-week contest on a four-game losing streak, including a three-game sweep by UC-Irvine over the weekend. -- Andrew Nemec anemec@oregonian.com @AndrewNemec Much in the style of its popular Flugtag flight event, Red Bull takes to the slopes with a sledding contest as outrageous as the costumed sledders and homemade sleds it will send over a treacherous jump. Expect many crashes. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. March 26, first sled launches at 1 p.m.; Mount Hood Ski Bowl, 87000 U.S. 26, Government Camp; Free to watch; skibowl.com. Portland International Raceway Auto Swap Meet With five miles of cars, car parts and car paraphernalia wrapping around the Portland International Raceway, there's more than enough to keep motor heads happy at the swap meet. When paired with the unaffiliated Portland Swap Meet opening nearby April 1, it's practically unbeatable for sheer enormity. 7 a.m.-5 p.m. March 31-April 2; Portland International Raceway, 1940 N. Victory Blvd.; $7; portlandraceway.com. Alpenrose Easter egg hunt Alpenrose Dairy's enormous annual Easter egg hunt will get the kids hopped up ahead of Easter. Bring a basket and set them loose at this 54-year-old tradition. Kids ages 3-5 run first at 10:30 a.m. followed by ages 6-8 at 12:30. 10:30 a.m. and 12:30 a.m. March 26; Alpenrose Dairy, 6149 SW Shattuck Rd.; Free; alpenrose.com. Kinkfest Come as you are to this conference for kink, where it's safe to be open about who you are behind closed doors. With workshops on everything from spanking to primal knife play and a host of vendors, folks from any level and category of kink will find something to get excited about. All day March 25-27; Portland Expo Center, 2060 N. Marine Dr.; $15 for vendor area, $70-$130 for workshops and dungeon access (required preregistration closes at midnight March 22); kinkfest.org. Frankenstein's Comic Book Swap Clear out your old comic book collection and trade it in for a new library. This kooky comic book swap celebrates the non-sleeve-worthy comics of the world with all manner of Frankenstein's Monster paraphernalia. 12-6 p.m. March 26; Hawthorne Eagle Lodge, 4904 SE Hawthorne Blvd; $1; frankensteinscomicbookswap.com. Bloomfest Not feeling a drive out to Woodburn for a tulip fix? The flowers will decorate Pioneer Courthouse Square for Easter Seals Oregon's annual fundraiser for kids and adults with special needs. It's quite a spectacle to see the heart of the city in bloom. 7:30 a.m.-6 p.m. March 24-25; Pioneer Courthouse Square, 701 SW 6th Ave.; Free to view, $5 for 10 tulips; easterseals.com/oregon. Spring Whale Watching Week Migrating gray whales are on their way north to Alaska from their birthing waters off the coast of Mexico, and they'll pass Oregon's coast in droves along the way. They can be seen from almost any good viewpoint along the coast, but Depoe Bay, Cape Kiwanda and a few others are our favorites. Continues March 22-26; Just about anywhere on the coast; Free, or small state park admission fee; oregonstateparks.org. --Dillon Pilorget 503-294-5927 DSC_0221.jpg DiscoverOrg CEO Henry Schuck's ninth-floor office in Vancouver looks out on the I-5 Bridge and, in the distance, downtown Portland. (Mike Rogoway/The Oregonian) DiscoverOrg, a rapidly growing Vancouver company that helps companies identify marketing leads, said Tuesday it has attracted "sizable" new investment from a panel of investors. The company didn't say how much money it had raised, but told The Columbian newspaper the total is at least a "seven-figure number." DiscoverOrg currently employs 230 and said it will use Tuesday's funding to double its engineering staff, acquire other companies and develop more data on the companies it profiles. Founded in 2007, privately held DiscoverOrg reported $32.3 million in revenue in 2014, the last year for which it disclosed financial results. Tuesday's backers include Goldman Sachs BDC, NXT Capital, Silicon Valley Bank and Antares Management. Prior investors were TA Associates and FiveW Capital. -- Mike Rogoway mrogoway@oregonian.com 503-294-7699 @rogoway 2015 High School Journalism Institute Students of the 2015 High School Journalism Institute: (top row, left to right) Sara Crouch, Reynolds High School; Ritapa Neogi, Westview High School; Reagan Slater, Jefferson High School; Nana Adjepong, Westview High School; Casey Chaffin, West Salem High School; Anya Caro, Marshfield High School; (middle row, left to right) Joshua Akins, Grants Pass High School; Emily Chan, Clackamas High School; Kelly Flynn, Reynolds High School; Jamari Gilbert, Parkrose High School; Tieonna Jenkins, Parkrose High School; Auche Bishop, Jefferson High School; (bottom row, left to right) Hayden Slater, Jefferson High School; Bailey Hayes, Grant High School; Nina Lopez, Parkrose High School; Elise Gellman, Lincoln High School; Aida Damian Silva, Reynolds High School; Zanya Andrade Fitz, Lincoln High School. (The Pride/Staff) Be part of the next generation of talented young journalists by applying to the annual High School Journalism Institute. The all-expenses-paid program will take place June 18 to 25, 2016, at Oregon State University in Corvallis. Over the course of one week, you will discover what it's like to be a working journalist. You will report, write and take photos, all while working alongside professional editors and photographers from The Oregonian/OregonLive and other newsrooms. By the time the program ends, your work will fill a 36-page newspaper and appear online at OregonLive.com/teens. Students stay in campus residence halls, eat in dining halls and enjoy nightly activities such as bowling and movies. High School Journalism Institute is a collaboration between Oregon State University and the Oregonian Media Group with the help of other organizations. Since its inception roughly 20 years ago, the program has reached hundreds of aspiring young journalists. Students in grades 9 to 12 in the 2015-16 school year are eligible to apply. Students must reside and attend high school in Oregon or Southwest Washington. The institute is a cornerstone of The Oregonian's commitment to increase diversity in newsrooms. Applicants must: have a linguistic or cultural background different from those that predominate in Oregon's secondary school system, or be from a low-income household, or be from a household with an educational attainment level of a high school diploma or less, or have a documented disability, or attend a high school without a newspaper or journalism program. The sent-by deadline is April 30, 2016. Students may email the completed applications to myoung@oregonian.com or mail them to Molly Young, The Oregonian, 1500 S.W. First Ave. Ste. 400, Portland, OR 97201. -- Molly Young, Co-Director myoung@oregonian.com 503-412-7056 @mollykyoung 403 Forbidden 403 Forbidden Code: AccessDenied Message: Access Denied RequestId: 915E3A5388263A27 HostId: QA9AAdKrPppzDKDaLr5pILF2HAjPHYiB9dn2lvhXQtS80dspAPFF0v0Pb57SwlLOCNcGGIZrLrM= An Error Occurred While Attempting to Retrieve a Custom Error Document Code: AccessDenied Message: Access Denied LIVE UPDATES: Explosions put Belgium on high terror alert; Obama briefed. PDX airport security increased. BRUSSELS (AP) -- Bombs struck the Brussels airport and one of the city's metro stations Tuesday, killing at least 31 people and wounding dozens, as a European capital was again locked down amid heightened security threats. The two airport blasts, at least one of which was blamed on a suicide bomber, left behind a chaotic scene of splattered blood in the departure lounge as windows were blown out, ceilings collapsed and travelers streamed out of the smoky building. About an hour later, another bomb exploded on a rush-hour subway train near the European Union headquarters. Terrified passengers had to evacuate through darkened tunnels to safety. "What we feared has happened," Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel told reporters. "In this time of tragedy, this black moment for our country, I appeal to everyone to remain calm but also to show solidarity." Belgium raised its terror alert to the highest level, diverting planes and trains and ordering people to stay where they were. Airports across Europe immediately tightened security. "We are at war," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said after a crisis meeting called by the French president. "We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war." European security officials have been bracing for a major attack for weeks, and warned that the Islamic State group was actively preparing to strike. The arrest Friday of a key suspect in the November attacks in Paris heightened those fears, as investigators said many more people were involved than originally thought, and that some are still on the loose. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Tuesday's attacks, and Michel said there was no immediate evidence linking key Paris suspect Salah Abdeslam to them. After his arrest Friday, Abdeslam told authorities he had created a new network and was planning new attacks. At Brussels' Zaventem airport, the two explosions hit the departures area during the busy morning rush. Belgian Health Minister Maggie de Block told Belgian media that 11 people were killed and 81 injured. Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, told BFM television that the second, louder explosion brought down ceilings and ruptured pipes, mixing water with victims' blood. "It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed," he said. "There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere." "We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene," he said. Anthony Deloos, an airport worker for Swissport, which handles check-in and baggage services, said the first explosion took place near the Swissport counters where customers pay for overweight baggage. He and a colleague said the second blast hit near the Starbucks cafe. "We heard a big explosion. It's like when you're in a party and suddenly your hearing goes out, from like a big noise," Deloos said, adding that shredded paper floated through the air as a colleague told him to run. "I jumped into a luggage chute to be safe," he said. The bomb that went off an hour later on the subway train killed 20 people and injured more than 100, Brussels Mayor Yvan Majeur said. "The metro was leaving Maelbeek station for Schuman when there was a really loud explosion," said Alexandre Brans, 32, wiping blood from his face. "It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the metro." Near the entrance to the station, rescue workers set up a makeshift medical treatment center in a pub. Dazed and shocked morning commuters streamed from the metro entrances as police tried to set up a security cordon. The metro shut down after the attacks, as did the airport. More than 200 flights to Brussels were diverted or canceled, according to flight tracking service Flightradar24. At least one and possibly two Kalashnikovs were found in the departure lounge at the airport, according to a European security official in contact with Belgian police who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the ongoing investigation. It was not immediately clear whether the firearms were used in the attacks. Amateur video showed passengers fleeing as quickly as they could. In a video shown on France's i-Tele television, passengers, including a child running with a backpack, dashed out of the terminal in different directions as they tugged luggage. Another image showed a security officer patrolling inside a hall with blown-out paneling and what appeared to be ceiling insulation covering the floor. Marc Noel, 63, was about to board a Delta flight to Atlanta, to return to his home in Raleigh, North Carolina. A Belgian native, Noel says he was in an airport shop buying automobile magazines when the first explosion occurred 50 yards away. "People were crying, shouting, children. It was a horrible experience," he told AP. He said his decision to shop might have saved his life. "I would probably have been in that place when the bomb went off." -- The Associated Press 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. The Michigan Campaign Finance Network (MCFN) is reporting that presidential candidates and SuperPACs supporting them spent more than $10.6 million on TV ads in Michigan during the states March 8 primary. The amount was significantly more than the $6.4 million spent on TV ads for the 2012 presidential primary in Michigan. The primary saw approximately 2.5 million voters head to the polls, which works out to about $4 per voter. Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vermont, led the way with approximately $4.2 million in ads based on tracking data from Kantar Media. However, it paid off as Sanders upset favored Hillary Clinton. Sanders ran more than 8,400 ad spots compared to approximately 7,000 ad spots for Clinton, who spent about $3.4 million on TV ads. The analysis did not include ad buys in the Toledo market nor the Duluth, Minn., market. Many of the ads purchased in those two markets were aimed at the Ohio and Minnesota primaries. The two Democratic candidates received some benefit from SuperPACs, which may receive unlimited contributions while acting independently of the candidates. But Republicans candidates definitely took advantage of the controversial SuperPACs, which accounted for the majority of spending on TV ads during the primary. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio was the largest Republican benefactor of the SuperPACs. Conservative Solutions spent the most ($1.5 million) on TV ads in Michigan in support of Rubio. Republican Ohio Gov. John Kasich, who finished third, ahead of Rubio, benefitted from the second most TV ads in Michigan. Kasichs campaign bought $272,299 in ads while the Super PAC that supports him, New Day for America, purchased $670,128 in ads. Republican primary winner Donald Trump bought $480,236 in ads in Michigan while second-place finisher Ted Cruz, a Texas senator, bought only $1,112 in ads. According to Federal Election Commission filings, SuperPACs reported more than $2.5 million in spending that was independent of the candidates in Michigan. Besides TV ads, the funds were spent on aerial advertising, T-shirts, digital ad buys and other items. Planned Parenthood Votes bought $125,519 in online ads supporting Clinton and the pro-Clinton Priorities USA bought $291,428 in radio ads. Sanders, who opposes SuperPACs, benefitted from $2,340 in aerial advertising from National Nurses United for Patient Protection. The MCFN is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that conducts research and public education on how money influences Michigan politics. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate BRUSSELS (AP) Belgian federal prosecutors say a house search in the Brussels neighborhood of Schaerbeek has "led to the discovery of an explosive device containing among other things nails." Investigators also found chemical products and an Islamic State flag. Their statement said the Islamic State group had claimed responsibility for the attacks in Brussels via a press agency but that this information still needs to be verified. Prosecutors say it's not possible at this stage to establish any links between the attacks Tuesday in Brussels and those in Paris on Nov. 13 that left 130 people dead. ___ 6:55 p.m. A Belgian prosecutor says police raids are happening around the country after two men "probably" staged suicide bombings at the Brussels airport and a third fled. Prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said Tuesday that the third suspect is actively being sought by police. At least 31 people were killed and nearly 190 wounded in the two airport bombings and another in the Brussels subway system. Prime Minister Charles Michel said the country will tighten security at its borders. He declared three days of national mourning after what he says were probably the most tragic attacks the country has seen in peacetime. ___ 6:20 p.m. Federal police in Belgium have issued a wanted notice for a suspect in the Brussels airport bombing that they are still trying to identify. A man wearing a thick light-colored jacket with a black hat and glasses is suspected of committing an attack at Zaventem airport on Tuesday morning. They are urging the public to call them if they recognize the man. ___ 6:15 p.m. Ralph Usbeck, 55, an electronics technician from Berlin, was checking his baggage for an American Airlines flight to Florida when the first blast struck in Brussels. He assumed it was a training exercise. He says "seconds later, a much more heavy, heavy detonation happened, some more distance (away) but much more heavy. This was the moment I realized this was a terrorist act." He says few people appeared worried after the first bomb went off but the second did spark panic and crying amid billows of "dirty dust, like from concrete." He says "it took a very, very long time till the ambulances came" maybe 30 minutes. ___ 6 p.m. The British government is warning Britons against all but essential travel to Brussels in the wake of the bomb attacks. Prime Minister David Cameron's office said the travel advice was being changed in line with the advice issued by Belgium authorities. Belgium on Tuesday raised its terror threat to the highest level denoting "a serious and imminent threat" and told residents to stay where they were after Tuesday's bomb attacks on the city's main airport and a subway train. The city's transit network was shut down for several hours. Downing St. said a team of British police had been sent to Brussels to help with the investigation into the attacks that have killed at least 31 people and wounded nearly 190. ___ 5:50 p.m. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has pledged Belgium's prime minister her country's "full solidarity" following the Brussels attacks and says her Cabinet will discuss the bombings on Wednesday. Merkel spoke with Prime Minister Charles Michel and promised that "we will work in every way with his government and the Belgian security forces to find those responsible for today's crimes, detain and punish them." Merkel says "our strength lies in our unity, and our free societies will prove to be stronger than terrorism." ___ 5:45 p.m. Airport security has been boosted across Europe and even across the Atlantic Ocean following the attacks in Brussels. Police and aviation officials in the Nordic countries boosted security at major airports in Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway. German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said security measures were increased at "critical infrastructure" in Germany and along its borders with France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Authorities also stepped up security around New York City even though there was no known link to the Brussels attacks that killed 31 people and left nearly 190 wounded. The Port Authority Police Department increased security at New York City's three area airports John F. Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark Liberty and bridges, tunnels and the bus terminal. It placed anti-terrorist patrols throughout its trans-Hudson River system and the World Trade Center site. Additional bag checks also were being conducted at PATH stations. ___ 5:35 p.m. Florence Muls, a spokeswoman for the Brussels Airport, says a third bomb has been neutralized at the airport after two other bombs killed at least 10 people there Tuesday morning. Muls told The Associated Press the third bomb was dispensed of "with a controlled action" once the chaos of the first explosives had eased somewhat. Elsewhere in the Belgian capital, anti-bomb squads detonated suspicious objects in at least two locations the Maelbeek subway station and close to Brussels University a few miles further away. Authorities said those two did not contain explosives. A U.S. official has told the AP the explosives in Brussels appear sophisticated, and investigators will examine them to see if they bear the same characteristics to those used in the Paris attacks last year. ___ 5:20 p.m. Russian President Vladimir Putin says the terror attacks in Brussels have underlined the need to pool global efforts for combating terrorism. Putin spoke in televised remarks Tuesday as he met with visiting Finnish President President Sauli Niinisto. Putin began by offering condolences to the families of the victims in Brussels. He added "we have repeatedly discussed the issues related to the fight against terrorism, and it's possible to efficiently combat it only by united efforts." Some other Russian officials and lawmakers have criticized Western reluctance to cooperate with Moscow on fighting terrorism amid the strain in Russia-West ties over the Ukrainian crisis. ___ 5:15 p.m. The White House says President Barack Obama has expressed his condolences to Belgium and its people during a telephone conversation with Prime Minister Charles Michel following deadly terrorist attacks at the airport and a subway station. Obama also offered assistance with the investigation and with bringing the perpetrators to justice. The White House says the president reiterated U.S. support for the people of Belgium, NATO and the European Union. And he pledged the full cooperation by the U.S. in efforts to end terrorism. Obama placed the call from Havana, where he was closing a historic three-day visit on Tuesday. ___ 6:05 p.m. The head of the Brussels Airport says the airport will remain closed at least through Wednesday. Airport CEO Arnaud Feist says two bombs ripped through the airport's departure hall, killing at least 10 people there and injuring scores. Feist said it was still too early to assess the damage to the terminal and indicated the airport could be closed even longer. He said thousands of passengers and personnel were at the airport during the morning rush hour when the attacks hit Tuesday. The exact number killed at the airport is still unclear. Regional governor Lodewijk De Witte says there are "more than 10 deaths" there. ___ 5:55 p.m. European Union leaders are pledging to tackle the terrorism threat with "all necessary means" after attacks on Brussels the EU capital that killed at least 31. The heads of state and government of the 28-nation union said in a statement that Tuesday's attack "only strengthens our resolve to defend European values and tolerance from the attacks of the intolerant." They pledged to be "united and firm in the fight against hatred, violent extremism and terrorism." The statement didn't elaborate on possible EU measures in response to the attacks. ___ 4:50 p.m. The Belgian federal prosecutor's office has made a new plea to the media not to spread any information about the investigation in the wake of the bombing attacks early Tuesday. Belgian authorities had already made a similar plea during the days following the Nov. 13 Paris attacks when they were certain an attack in Brussels was imminent. It was largely followed by the media. On Tuesday, the office again asked the media to immediately desist from spreading information from the ongoing investigation. ___ 4:40 p.m. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks in Brussels, saying its extremists opened fire in the airport and "several of them" detonated suicide belts. The posting in the group's Amaq news agency said another suicide attacker detonated in the metro. The posting claimed the attack was in response to Belgium's support of the international coalition arrayed against it. ___ 4:25 p.m. People can start moving around Brussels once more after being told to stay in place for hours after bombing attacks Tuesday morning at the airport and on a subway station. Peter Mertens of the Belgian crisis center says "the threat is still real and serious" of more attacks. But he says air traffic at Brussels' Zaventem airport "remains closed for the day under any circumstance" but people in the Belgian capital can start walking outside again and train stations are reopening. At least 31 people were killed and nearly 190 wounded Tuesday after bombs went off in Brussels airport. ___ 4:15 p.m. Florence Muls, the Brussels airport communications manager, is defending the security at the airport. She tells The Associated Press that the terminal zone is open. That means there are no checks on luggage or passengers at the entry to the terminal and European rules do not require closing it off. She says the airport is does not have the ability or the mandate to impose controls at the airport terminal entry. ___ 4:05 p.m. An Iraqi intelligence official says sources in the Syrian city of Raqqa have told them that the Islamic State group has been planning terrorist attacks in Europe for two months which would "target airports and train stations." The official tells The Associated Press on Tuesday that Iraqi officials told European countries about the plans "but Brussels was not part of the plans" at the time. He says IS militants changed the operation and moved it to Brussels "because of the detention of Salah Abdeslam" the Paris attacks suspect arrested Friday in Brussels. Another senior Iraqi intelligence official said "Daesh (IS) was behind this operation and it was planned in Raqqa two months ago and there are three suicide attackers who will carry out another attack." The officials spoke on condition of anonymity since the investigation was ongoing. Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad ___ 3:45 p.m. A U.S. official says security officials believe at least one suitcase bomb was detonated at Brussels Airport on Tuesday morning. The official, who wasn't authorized to speak publicly on the early investigations, confirmed a statement by a Brussels official that there is also concrete evidence of one suicide bombing at the airport Tuesday as well. U.S. intelligence agencies had been on alert for possible attacks since Friday's arrest in Belgium of accused Paris attacks conspirator Salah Abdeslam. But the official said it was unclear if Tuesday's bombings were already planned and set in motion by his or another existing network, or if they were a direct response to Abdeslam's arrest. The official said the explosives seen in Brussels on Tuesday appear sophisticated. Investigators will examine them to see if they bear the same characteristics as those used in Paris last year. Bradley Klapper in Washington. 3:30 p.m. Pope Francis has condemned the "blind violence" of the Brussels attacks and has offered prayers for the victims, their families and emergency responders. Francis' secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, sent a telegram of condolences Tuesday to the archbishop of Brussels, Mons. Jozef De Kesel. In it, Francis said he "condemns once again the blind violence that breeds so much suffering and implores the gift of peace from God" for all Belgians. ___ 3:20 p.m. Nations around Europe are declaring with solidarity with Brussels after three bombing attacks left at least 31 people dead in the Belgian capital. The French National Assembly opened its session on Tuesday with a minute of silence for the victims. Lawmakers in the Czech parliament in Prague and lawmakers in Spain also held a minute of silence. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo and Belgium's ambassador plan a silent gathering Tuesday evening and the Eiffel Tower will be lit in the colors of the Belgian flag. In London, the British prime minister's office at Downing Street in London has also raised the Belgian flag in solidarity. ___ 3:10 p.m. Czech Prime Minister Bohuslav Sobotka has expressed solidarity with the Belgian government and says: "The fight against terrorism is our common fight." Interior Minister Milan Chovanec says security has been boosted at Prague's international airport, the capital's subway network, at some foreign embassies, other airports and all across the country, including at the Temelin nuclear plant. Czech President Milos Zeman, who is known for his anti-Muslim rhetoric, says "we underestimate the threat of terrorism linked to the wave of migrants." No group has claimed responsibility for the three bombings Tuesday morning that killed at least 31 people and wounded nearly 200 in Brussels. ___ 3 p.m. A Belgian TV station is reporting that at least one of the bombs at the Brussels airport contained nails. Flemish language broadcaster VTM interviewed Marc Decramer of the Gasthuisberg hospital in Leuven, who says the hospital is treating 11 people with serious injuries, three of them in critical condition. Decramer says the wounded have fractures and deep cuts caused by flying glass and nails. Belgian officials say 31 people were killed Tuesday and 187 wounded in two explosions at the Belgium airport and one at a city subway station. ___ 2:45 p.m. Passenger Cedric Vanderswalm says a late train and a full elevator at Brussels airport probably saved his life. The 20-year-old from the coastal Belgian town of Knokke was at the Brussels airport on Tuesday planning to fly to London for his job as an animator. He says was heading to the airport's departures level but the elevator was full "so I didn't get in. I waited and I was about to step into the elevator when there was a big explosion." He says people started running, dropping their luggage. He says "if I had taken the previous elevator, I would have been right in the explosion. My train also had a 5 minute delay, so I was lucky." The explosion coated the left side of his face with soot and dust. ___ 2:30 p.m. The mayor of Brussels is raising the toll of dead and injured from a subway bombing. Mayor Yvan Majeur now says at least 20 people have died and 106 people were injured in the attack on the Maelbeek subway station, which is close to the European Union headquarters. Earlier, another top Belgian official said 11 people were killed and 81 have wounded in twin explosions at the Brussels airport. So in all, 31 people have been killed and 187 wounded in the three blasts. ___ 2:25 p.m. A minute of silence has been held outside the Spanish parliament and Madrid's town hall at noon in memory of the victims in Brussels. The Spanish government says the attacks Tuesday in Brussels show "the most brutal and inhumane side of those who know only the language of violence and terror." Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Garcia Margallo linked the attacks to the Islamic State armed group. He says previous attacks in Paris claimed by IS militants had shown the assailants acting "like well-coordinated and militarily well-structured commandos" instead of lone wolves. Top Spanish officials were meeting later on the situation but the Interior Ministry said for now Spain is keeping its national security alert at one step below the maximum. ___ 2:10 p.m. A European security official in contact with Belgian police says least one and possibly two Kalashnikov rifles have been found in the departure lounge at the Brussels airport after the attacks. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the ongoing investigation. Shiraz Maher, a senior researcher at The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence in London, calls the presence of guns in these attacks "quite significant." Maher says this "presents an incredible challenge to continental Europe, where guns are much more freely available as opposed to here in the United Kingdom." Maher says guns make it "much more difficult to secure soft targets like transport sites." Paisley Dodds, Europe correspondent ___ 2 p.m. London police are appealing for images and video footage from Britons who may have witnessed the attacks in Belgium. The Metropolitan Police say they have "activated an online platform where images and videos can be uploaded which could provide important information for the investigating authorities." Earlier, British police stepped up security across the country, including transport hubs like London's Heathrow and Gatwick airports. London Mayor Boris Johnson says the increased police is to reassure the public "rather than because of any intelligence of an attack." Scotland Yard Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley says his agency is working closely with Belgium authorities on anti-terror efforts. Britain's threat level remains at "severe," which means an attack is highly likely. It has been at that level since 2014. ___ 1:50 p.m. Police in the Netherlands say they have halted an international train from Brussels to Amsterdam at a station just one stop from the Dutch capital's busy Schiphol Airport as a precaution and are searching the train and its passengers. Local police said on Twitter that Hoofddorp station had been evacuated and will stay closed until the investigation is completed. Passengers were being put up in nearby hotels. There was no immediate word of any arrests and police did not say what prompted them to stop the train. The incident came just hours after deadly attacks on the Brussels airport and a city subway station. Photos spread on social media are showing armed police patrolling the Dutch train station. ___ 1:35 p.m. Hundreds of stranded passengers, some wheeling luggage carts from the Brussels airport, have gathered at a municipal sports hall in nearby town of Zaventem. Henry Dewespelaere, a 22-year-old butcher, was one of the local volunteers in fluorescent yellow vests compiling lists of the passengers' names and nationalities. He says the travelers would have the option of being taken to a hotel in Leuven by train. If people elect to stay in Zaventem, he says "we don't know yet what will happen, we're waiting for further instructions." The Brussels airport was shut down Tuesday after it was hit by two explosions. Another explosion hit a city subway station. In all, 26 people have been killed and over 130 have been wounded in the attacks. ___ 1:25 p.m. Belgian officials say the casualty toll from three explosions in the capital on Tuesday morning is 26 dead and at least 136 wounded. Belgian Health Minister Maggie de Block says 11 people are dead and 81 have been injured in twin explosions at the Brussels airport. A Brussels subway spokesman says 15 people have been killed and 55 were injured in an explosion at the Maelbeek train station. No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks, which come after a top suspect in the deadly Nov. 13 attacks in Paris was arrested Friday in a massive police raid in Brussels. ___ 1:15 p.m. The U.S. Embassy in Brussels is recommending that Americans in Belgium stay where they are and avoid public transportation. The embassy noted Tuesday that with the threat rating in Brussels at its highest alert, attacks can take place with little or no notice. It urged U.S. citizens to monitor media reports, follow instructions from the authorities, and "take the appropriate steps to bolster your personal security." ___ 1:10 p.m. More than 200 flights to Brussels have been diverted or canceled after three explosions that authorities are calling terror attacks, according to the flight tracking service Flightradar24. Scores of people are dead after two explosions hit Brussels airport Tuesday morning and a third hit the city's Maelbeek metro station. The Brussels airport has been shut down and airport security has been tightened across Europe. ___ 1 p.m. The European Union's top official says he's appalled by the attacks on Brussels' main airport and a metro near the EU's institutions and has offered Europe's support. EU Council President Donald Tusk says Tuesday "these attacks mark another low by the terrorists in the service of hatred and violence." He says the EU "will fulfill its role to help Brussels, Belgium and Europe as a whole counter the terror threat which we are all facing." Staff at the EU institutions near the Maelbeek metro station where at least 15 people have been killed by a blast been warned to stay in their offices or at home. ___ 12:45 p.m. French officials are condemning the Brussels attacks in the strongest terms. Prime Minister Manuel Valls, speaking after a crisis meeting called by the French president, says "we are at war. We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war." President Francois Hollande says "terrorists struck Brussels but it was Europe that was targeted and all the world that is concerned." Hollande also warned that "this war will be long" so sang froid and lucidity are needed. Paris says it will light the Eiffel Tower in the colors of the Belgian flag. The city's mayor, Anne Hidalgo, described it in a tweet as a measure of "solidarity with Brussels." ___ 12:35 p.m. German Chancellor Angela Merkel's chief of staff has called for solidarity with Belgium following the Brussels attacks that left scores dead. Peter Altmaier tweeted Tuesday: "Terrorists will never win." He added: "Our European values much stronger than hate, violence, terror!" ___ 12:30 p.m. Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova says the West's politics of "double standards" have led to terrorist attacks and that frozen diplomatic relations between NATO and Russia have slowed the fight with terrorism. The Kremlin, meanwhile, has offered its condolences to Belgium and expressed solidarity after the attacks Tuesday that left scores dead. While Russia and the United States have brokered a fragile peace agreement in Syria, the two countries still disagree on how to tackle terrorist threats posed by the Islamic State group. Prominent Russian lawmaker Alexei Pushkov also had a jab at Europe and NATO following the Brussels attacks. Pushkov later offered his condolences, but said "it's time for Europe to understand where the genuine threat is coming from and join efforts with Russia." ___ 12:20 p.m. Facebook has activated its "safety check" system to help people check on friends and loved ones in the aftermath of the attacks in Brussels. The company says Tuesday the system was put in use within hours of the three explosions at the Brussels airport and a metro station. It says the system can provide an easy way for people to mark themselves as "safe" after a major disaster or crisis so that people searching for them will know they are unharmed. The system has been used recently to help people communicate after major floods and earthquakes as well as terrorist attacks. ___ 12:15 p.m. A Belgian subway official says there are 15 dead, 55 injured in the subway station attack. Spokesman Guy Sablon gave the toll to The Associated Press after two explosions hit the Brussels airport on Tuesday morning and a third hit the city's Maelbeek metro station. ___ 12:05 p.m. European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, fighting back tears, has stopped short a news conference in Jordan after saying that "today is a difficult day," in reference to the Brussels attacks. Mogherini was wrapping up her opening statement Tuesday at a joint news conference with Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh when she was overcome by emotion. When Judeh resumed speaking, she walked over to him, said "sorry" and briefly embraced him. The two then walked off the stage. Mogherini and Judeh had been speaking for about 16 minutes when the news conference ended abruptly. In her opening remarks, she had talked about the importance of her visit to Jordan, praising the kingdom's stance against militant Islam. ___ 11:55 a.m. Belgian federal prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw is calling all three explosions in Brussels "terrorist attacks." Two of the explosions on Tuesday morning hit Brussels' Zavantem airport and the third struck in the city's Maelbeek metro station. Belgian media report that at least 13 are dead, and authorities are saying there are dead at both sites. Van Leeuw says "one attack was probably done by a suicide bomber." ___ 11:50 a.m. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel says "what we feared has happened" and says authorities are worried there will be more attacks. Speaking a news conference in Brussels, Michel says "there are many dead, many injured" from the attacks earlier Tuesday at the airport and a subway station. He says border controls have been reinforced. Michel says "we realize we face a tragic moment. We have to be calm and show solidarity." ___ 11:30 a.m. Brussels police spokesman Christian De Coninck says there were deaths at the Maelbeek police station near European Union headquarters. He says: "There are victims, serious injury, people have died. I have no idea yet on the numbers of injured or dead." ___ 11:25 a.m. France's top security official said the country is reinforcing security at airports, train stations and metros after Tuesday's attacks in Brussels. Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said France immediately increased its vigilance after the attacks. France has been on highest alert since the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris that left 130 dead. ___ 11:05 a.m. Anthony Deloos, an employee of services company Swissport, said the first explosion took place near a counter where customers pay for overweight baggage. He and colleague said second blast was near the Starbucks. "Twenty meters (yards) from us we heard a big explosion," and shredded paper was flying through the air, Deloos said. He first thought a billboard had fallen down, but a colleague told him to run. "I jumped into a luggage chute to be safe," he said. ___ 11:00 a.m. In a statement marked "aanslagen" terror attacks in Dutch the prosecutor's office in Brussels has warned people to stay inside until the situation is cleared up. After a few hours of uncertainty on the explosion during morning rush hour, it was the first official indication that indeed, they were expected to be terror attacks. ___ 10:50 p.m. Eurostar has suspended high-speed rail service to Brussels-Midi station following the attacks at the airport and a metro station in Belgium The rail service links London with Brussels and Paris via the Channel Tunnel. ___ 10:45 a.m. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte says Belgium has "again been hit by cowardly and murderous attacks. Our hearts go out to the victims and next of kin. The Netherlands stands ready to help and support our southern neighbors in any possible way." Rutte says that "extra alertness is necessary, also in our country. We will take all necessary precautionary measures." Rutte called a meeting Tuesday of his government's Ministerial Crisis Committee to discuss the attacks. The Dutch anti-terror authority said the country's threat level was unchanged at "substantial." It said extra security measures would be in place at the country's airports and borders. ___ 10:40 a.m. British airports are increasing security and Prime Minister David Cameron is convening the government's emergency committee after the explosions at Brussels airport and on the city's subway system. Cameron said Britain would "do everything we can to help." Britain's official terrorist threat level stands at "severe," the second-highest level on a five-point scale, meaning an attack is highly likely. Gatwick airport said that "as a result of the terrible incidents in Brussels we have increased our security presence and patrols around the airport." Heathrow said it was working with police to provide a "high-visibility" presence on light of the attacks. ___ 10:35 a.m. Germany's justice minister says "today is a black day for Europe" following the attacks in Brussels. Heiko Maas said Tuesday on Twitter that "the horrible events in Brussels affect us all." He added: "We are steadfastly at the Belgians' side." ___ 10:20 a.m. French President Francois Hollande is holding an emergency meeting after explosions targeted Brussels airport and a metro station at morning rush hour. The blasts came days after the arrest of the top suspect in last year's Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, in Brussels. Hollande is meeting with Prime Minister Manuel Valls, Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve. France remains in a state of emergency after the Nov. 13 attacks, which killed 130 people. Several attackers were also killed. ___ 10:00 a.m. Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov tells Russian news agencies that authorities will re-evaluate security at Russian airports. In 2011, a suicide bombing at a Moscow airport killed 37 and injured many more. ___ 9:50 a.m. Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, told France's BFM television that the second louder explosion brought down ceilings and ruptured pipes, mixing water with blood from victims. "It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed," he said. "There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere." "We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene," ___ 9:40 a.m. An Associated Press reporter saw several people with facial injuries following an explosion in a Brussels metro station near European Union headquarters. At least two people were seen being moved on stretchers Alexandre Brans, 32, who was wiping blood from his face, said: "The metro was leaving Maelbeek station when there was a really loud explosion. It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the metro." ___ 8:55 a.m. Police say that at least one person was killed when two explosions ripped through the departure hall at Brussels airport. "One person has died and perhaps there are several more," said a police official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the situation was developing. The official urged people to stay away from the airport. ___ 8:30 a.m. Two explosions ripped through Brussels airport Tuesday during the morning rush hour as hundreds of passengers were trying to check in. Airport authorities said the explosions caused several injuries. Airport spokeswoman Anke Fransen said: "There were two blasts in the departure hall. First aid team are in place for help." Passengers were led onto the tarmac and the crisis center urged people not to come to the airport. The explosions happened only days after the prime suspect in the Paris attacks Salah Abdeslam was arrested in Brussels. 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 Update: A Winter Storm Watch is in effect from Wednesday afternoon through Thursday evening. The earlier watch was expanded to include Midland, Bay, Huron, Saginaw and Tuscola counties. There is potential for six inches or greater of heavy wet snow as well as ice accumulations. Northeast winds of 15 to 25 miles per hour with 35 mile per hour gusts are possible. To the editor: Tolerance, forgiveness and mistake are three words that are close to societal extinction. They would be great candidates for this years Lake Superior State University list of banished words. Listen for them in our society and you will be hard-pressed to see them used in a correct context, or many times, even used at all. Three more common words are alive and well. They have unfortunately staked their claim as replacements and are becoming the new norm in our culture. They are vengeance, hypersensitive and enmity. These words are being shaped and saturated into the fabric of our daily lives. They are flourishing in an angry society; one that is hungry for justice, entitlements and fairness. We are blindly adding a skewed validity to them every day, and its effect is evident in many avenues of our daily walk. Instead of enabling and reinforcing this decay, my prayer is that we as a society look for ways to revive our moral compass, strive to strengthen relationships and free ourselves from the weight of anger, frustration and despair. My hope is that in our daily walks, we be energized and encouraged by positive and reassuring words, ones like those found in scripture. Even if we are not all of the same faith journey, we can agree that the words we chose and the actions and meanings that we place behind them are a powerful force. They will continue to shape us for better or worse and will continue to either build relational bridges or build walls between us. Luke 6:37 Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Romans 12:14 Bless those who persecute you; bless and do not curse them. Proverbs 12:18 The words of the reckless pierce like swords, but the tongue of the wise brings healing. Matthew 18:21-22 Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times? Jesus answered, I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times. KURT FAUST Midland The Fewer, the Proud: Female Marines By Cpl. Brittany A. James III Marine Expeditionary Force / Marine Corps Installations Pacific CAMP FOSTER, Japan -- The month of March is designated as Womens History Month where women are recognized for their accomplishments and progression in society nation-wide. According to Department of Defense statistics, of the approximately 183,000 active duty Marines, only about 14,100 are women making up only about 7.7 percent of the Marine Corps. Since 1918, when first female Marine, Pvt. Opha Mae Johnson enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve, the presence of females in the Marine Corps has been steadily evolving, according to Gunnery Sgt. Syndy Shelton, career planner for Marine Corps Installations Pacific, Marine Corps Base, Camp Butler-Japan. Being such a small percentage of the Marine Corps, I dont focus on being the only female amongst a group of Marines, said Shelton. I think of it as, Im a gunnery sergeant of Marines, and Im going to do the best that I can. In December 2015, Ashton Carter, defense secretary announced that the Marine Corps would open combat arms positions to women for the first time. This announcement applies to all branches of armed services. Following this announcement, the more than 230 enlisted female Marines who graduated the Marine Corps' Ground Combat Element Integrated Task Force study, qualifying for various combat-related military occupational specialties were granted their earned MOS, per Marine Administrative Message 017/16. In addition to physical standards, the Marine Corps is beginning to incorporate a standard unisex dress blue and service uniform Marine Corps-wide, according to Shelton. The Marine Corps has already authorized the male campaign cover, the larger more formal hat for dress uniforms, into female uniform regulations. Society is changing and evolving. said Shelton. Female Marines long ago were maintained as women in (the Marine Corps), and now they arent necessarily taking us as women out of the institution, but they are moving us forward to uphold one kind of standard for the Marine Corps as a whole. We are all Marines. We wear the same uniform. We take care of one another. Airmen, Cargo Ready for Operation Beverly Sunrise By Airman 1st Class Jordyn Fetter and Senior Airman Deana Heitzman 35th Fighter Wing MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan -- Members of the 35th Fighter Wings supporting agencies conducted mock personnel and cargo deployment functions during Phase I of Beverly Sunrise 16-03, an operational readiness exercise, here, March 15. Almost as quickly as operational readiness exercise Beverly Sunrise 16-03 kicked off, Airmen and cargo were ready to deploy. Members from all squadrons on base joined forces to conduct mock personnel and cargo deployment functions here during Phase I to ensure they were prepared to fight at a moment's notice. The personnel deployment function takes place to ensure deploying Airmen possess all necessary paperwork and equipment, as well as confirming their medical records are up-to-date. "We are the first to set up shop and secure what is needed for a smooth mission operation," said Senior Airman Raphael Eames, a 35th Operations Support Squadron aircrew flight equipment journeyman. "Exercises give me the opportunity to learn the process of this important task." PDF personnel check individual's mobility folders for emergency data cards, computer-based training completion and weapons qualification. They also organize pre-deployment briefings performed by several agencies from across the base. While attending the PDF, each Airman receives individual protection equipment, consisting of a gas mask, vest, helmet, sleeping bag, first aid kit and a weapon. Airmen then transport all these items to the cargo deployment function, the first checkpoint for all cargo accompanying personnel on a deployment. During Beverly Sunrise 16-03, the wing commander directed the assembling of the CDF to combat the influx of approximately 170 increments of cargo needing to be processed. Once pieces are assigned to move, the squadrons deliver them to the cargo yard. Then they are measured, weighted and inspected to determine where each piece is going to be located once loaded on the aircraft. "If the CDF was not functioning, we would not be able to prepare our deploying forces to be down range and operational," said Master Sgt. Donald Thompson, the 35th Logistics Readiness Squadron CDF chief. "The collaboration with all the units across the wing during this exercise has been the best I have seen." BLOOMINGTON A Bloomington business will rebuild after a Tuesday morning fire that authorities are calling suspicious in nature. Firefighters were called to Miller Whiteside Woodworking at 505 S. McClun St. at 6:04 a.m. Tuesday and found flames visible through an air conditioning unit on the south side of the building. Firefighters were forced back from the front of the building "due to the heavy fire load and wood finishes" inside, said a statement from the Bloomington Fire Department. When they arrived, they said the glass had been broken on the front of the door and it looked like someone had reached in and turned the deadbolt, said Kent Whiteside who owns the building that was being demolished Tuesday afternoon. An investigation into the fire determined suspicious circumstances, fire officials said Tuesday afternoon, but no other details were available. The Bloomington Police Departments Criminal Investigation Division is assisting the BFD in the investigation. Whiteside sold the business to his son, Nathan, three months ago, but still works there. The business makes cabinets and counter tops and repairs furniture. Why someone would break in, I have no idea," he said. "We dont have any enemies. We have very happy customers. Its wherever your mind can go with kids and drugs. Who knows? We have no idea. Whiteside said he received a phone call at about 6:30 a.m. from Bloomington fire officials, informing him that a fire was reported at the business. I just couldnt believe it, he said, adding, We will be back. We will build another building right here. Romans 8:28 says, We know in all things that God works together with those who love him to bring about what is good, said Whiteside. That is what we are going to live by and we will come back stronger. The fire caused smoke that could be seen from downtown. Several blocks were closed while firefighters fought the blaze that was fueled by wind gusts of about 20 mph. There was a lot of noise and commotion, said Mildred Coughlin, who lives in the 1000 block of East Jackson Street. I could see the flames from my back yard. Thats a shame. They have been there for a long time. Since 1987, Whiteside said. I was hoping that at least some of the building could be saved the four walls, if nothing else. But thats not going to be the case. Demolition crews began tearing down the building while aerial apparatus continued to shoot water onto the building, nine hours after the fire was discovered. A monetary damage estimate was not available, but the building was a total loss. Ive got good insurance, Whiteside said. I talked with them already and they are already working on it. Whiteside was 17 when he began his woodworking career at the company he eventually bought and sold. It was then owned by founder Louis Miller and was known as Miller Woodworking. Whiteside branched out on his own in 1981 and when Miller retired in 1987, he and his father-in-law, Ed Huffington, bought the business. The block building was built around 1930 and was originally the Ainsworth Ice Factory. The business currently has five employees, Whiteside said. McLean County Crime Stoppers is asking anyone with information about the fire to call the agency at 309-828-1111. People, who can remain anonymous, can be rewarded up to $1,000 if the information leads to the arrest and indictment of a suspect or suspects, states the release. Anyone with information also can contact BPD detective Matt Dick at 309-434-2475 or mdick@cityblm.org. The American Red Cross provided food and water to firefighters and others at the scene. A new hybrid species of butterfly was discovered by a University of Florida researcher in Alaska. It is said the new butterfly could be a source of new findings of the state's history and its climate change. Andrew Warren, a lepidopterist, stated that the newly discovered hybrid species of butterfly, called the Tanana Arctic, came from a cross breed of two different but related species of butterflies, the White-veined Arctic and the Chryxus Arctic. He thinks that all the three species existed before the last ice age in the Beringia region, Washington Post reported. Although the scientists have been seeing the Tanana Arctic butterfly for more than six decades, they believe that it is the same species as the Chryxus Arctic butterfly because of their similarity. Warren noticed its clear characteristics. The Tanana Arctic butterfly has penny-colored wings with white speck on the underside where it gets its "frosted" appearance. It is also darker and larger than other species. What made Warren believe that it is a hybrid is the butterfly's unique DNA sequence which is similar to nearby populations of White-veined Arctics. "Hybrid species demonstrate that animals evolved in a way that people haven't really thought about much before, although the phenomenon is fairly well studied in plants," said Warren. "Scientists who study plants and fish have suggested that unglaciated parts of ancient Alaska known as Beringia, including the strip of land that once connected Asia and what's now Alaska, served as a refuge where plants and animals waited out the last ice age and then moved eastward or southward from there," Warren explained. "This is potentially a supporting piece of evidence for that." The ice age forced the Chryxus Arctic butterflies to move south to the Rockies, and the Tanana Arctic butterflies and the White-veined Arctic butterflies stayed in Beringia, as reported by UPI. Today, the Tanana Arctic butterflies are staying at Alaska's Tanana-Yukon River Basin's spruce and aspen forests. The Maldives is one of the countries most people want to visit. Unfortunately, those dreaming to do so can only visit within the next 30 years, before it sinks and becomes the next Atlantis. As it turns out, those looking to visit the islands for some much needed R&R might want to book their trip sooner. Reports claim that the country is either doomed to vanish like the famous Atlantis or simply not look the same as it does now. "Majority of the hundreds of islands in Maldives are less than a meter to two meters above sea level," Style Bible reports. "Which means its floating beauty is also the reason it could [be] wiped off the map soon." A photo posted by Maldives (@maldives) on Mar 7, 2016 at 8:23am PST The phenomenon is attributed to climate change: as sea levels rise, islands like the Maldives - along with the Arctic and Italy's Venice - could soon see an unfavorable fate. "For us, climate change is real," Maldives President Mohamed Nasheed told Costas Christ of National Geographic. "We are already relocating people from 16 islands affected by rising seas to other areas of our country." Apparently, the December 2004 earthquake prompted a tsunami. Although Indonesia was left devastated, the Maldives was also badly affected after the disaster devoured two-thirds of the Indian Ocean archipelago, including the extinction of 20 "pristine islands." In an effort to save the islands, local establishments have been pushing initiatives to make the archipelago more environment-friendly. In fact, tourism claims to be a big factor in helping save the country. Spearheading this initiative is Sonu Shivadasani, the founder of Six Senses, which is behind the operations of "intelligent luxury" resorts and spas - two of which are in the Maldives: Soneva Fushi and Soneva Gili. Aside from sustainable tourism, the company aims to prove that the country is carbon negative, rather than settling for carbon neutral. The eco-hotelier claims that they are removing more CO2 emissions in the air than they produce. "We have designed this to be a biodegradable resort," claims the eco-hotelier. A three-month-old boy suffered from an immersion burn under the supervision of his babysitter in Mesa, Arizona on February. The court charged the babysitter with child abuse. The infant experienced multiple surgeries after the incident. The baby's name is Elliot and is now four months old. His mother, Michelle Sabbagh told the publication, 12 News, about how this all happened to her child. It all started when she received a message from their babysitter, Brittany Marlene Morton, in the middle of her day job saying she thought that the baby was having rashes on his body. Morton also sent a picture of the baby's hand and some part of his arms that has blisters. Elliot's mom went home and rushed her child to the hospital telling nurses that Morton thought the baby's rashes were from a hot bottle. The nurses took a look at the baby's skin and told Sabbagh that her child suffered from an immersion burn and it was intentional. "It's a dip," Elliot's mom said. "There's a perfect line around his arm." Local police arrested the 24-year-old babysitter the next day after the baby was rushed to the hospital. She was handcuffed from her house and brought in the Mesa police department for questioning. During the investigation, police said that Morton was very inconsistent with her statement. READ ALSO: 3 Family Members Found Dead Near Edmonton: A Possible Murder-Suicide Case @helenasiero A photo posted by Baby Children (@just.baby) on Mar 21, 2016 at 3:12pm PDT Her statement went from the child experiencing the burn through a hot bottle, then she changed it to hot coffee and then finally saying that it was actually from a hot water coming out of a water dispenser while she was trying to clean some sour gummies. The defendant pleaded not guilty of her child abuse charge and the judge is still yet to make a final decision. The family is gaining a lot of help from people who are supporting their giant medical bill. If you want to help the family and four-month-old baby Elliot, check out their crowd-funding site here for more information on how you could help. This is not the first time that baby made the news because of being burned. Check out this story below. Parents should really screen their babysitters before hiring them. The city of Houston, Texas is bracing itself for the possible arrival of the ZIka virus this summer. State and local officials have assured people that they are doing their best to eliminate potential mosquito breeding grounds in the city. Meanwhile, federal health authorities say they have beefed up their Zika surveillance at the George Bush Intercontinental Airport. During a recent press conference at the Good Neighbor Healthcare Center, Texas representative Sheila Jackson Lee pointed out that state and city officials are devising a method in which they can respond immediately in the event the Zika virus hits Houston. The city mayor and other health authorities then took to the podium to deliver similar messages, as per NPR. Peter Hotez, the dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine, cited three points as to why Houston is at great risk for Zika. He said the city's geography, economy and weather make it vulnerable to an epidemic. "Houston is a gateway city. We're on the coast; we're not far from the Panama Canal. We're an immigrant hub," he explained. "Every day there are hundreds and thousands of people coming from all over the world to Houston." Hotez added that Zika is a "disease of poverty." He noted that Houston has a high concentration of impoverished areas. The city's humidity doesn't help either. Hotez mentioned that Houston's warm temperature is perfect for the Aedes aegypti mosquito. Mosquitoes require warm and stable temperatures to hatch their eggs. Ambient temperatures dictate how fast the virus travels from the mosquito's gut to its saliva. In an ideal setting, it only takes a week for a mosquito to be fully capable of transmitting Zika. Researchers shared to Houston Chronicle that mosquitoes could thrive in the hottest parts of California, Arizona and Texas this summer. This is because long-range forecasts for June to September show a 40 to 45 percent shift to warmer-than-normal temperatures in most parts of the US. Parents who leave their children alone have more than a few "tsk tsk" to worry about. The lawmakers in the state of Rhode Island are discussing a bill that will punish parents who will be caught leaving their children under the age 7 years old alone in a car or at home. These legislators have also suggested a bill that prohibits children under age 10 from being left alone at home and some preschoolers from going outside to have their recess in a temperature that is considered to be too cold for kids that age to tolerate, parenting.com reported. Although the legislators' intentions are geared towards protecting children from possible harm, some parents are voicing their sentiments out and saying that it is too much and have decided to fight it. According to fox40, a mother from Smithfield said it's just impossible to pass a law on common sense and how to parent your child. You can't legislate parenting, and you can't legislate common sense. I'm in one of those neighborhoods where the children run free. They all know their boundaries, and we keep an eye on them," Rhode Island resident Rema Tomka. In other 19 states, there are laws punishing parents for leaving their children alone in the care and some of those specify how old a child must be to be left home alone. But according to people who oppose the law, it is not the government's job to tell parents how to raise their children. According to Kids and Cars, there are at least 38 children who die from being left inside a hot car every year. Parents understand that the lawmakers only intend to protect the kids, however, there should be a fine line between preventing child cruelty and attempting to mandate how parents raise their children. Doctors in Seattle had resort to a new experimental treatment in order to relieve a little girl from her excruciating leg pain. Fortunately, the procedure was a success and the child can now walk normally after years of intolerable discomfort. Madison Fairchild was just 3 years old when she began feeling a bruise on her leg. Kristen Fairchild was convinced her daughter had an injury even though no scars were visible. "Every time we bumped it she would scream or start crying," Kristen told ABC News. "After a month of constantly complaining about why her leg hurt, we got her leg checked." A CT scan showed that Madison had an unusual mass of entangled veins in her leg. The clumps stretched from her calf to her thigh. Doctors said the irregularity was a form of venous malformation. According to Boston Children's Hospital, venous malformation is a birth defect in which abnormally shaped veins widen as a child grows older. The disorganized veins do not untangle on their own and usually reverts to its original state even after treatment. Doctors told the Fairchilds in 2014 that all they could do is to let Madison undergo palliative treatments which would temporarily minimize the discomfort. Kristen said her daughter tried therapy and pain management, but the pain would recur in just a few weeks. Dr. Jonathan Perkins, a pediatric otolaryngologist at Seattle Children's Hospital, recently talked to the Fairchilds about an experimental treatment which involves the introduction of medical-grade superglue into the veins. This would allow the veins to be removed with less complications. Kristen admitted that she was initially sceptical about the procedure, but doctors later reassured her of the merits of the new treatment. Surgeons carefully mapped out the veins so that the substance would not enter the child's bloodstream. It took them two procedures to successfully remove the malformations in Madison's leg. Dr. Giridhar Shivaram said Madison may require additional surgery if doctors had missed some part of the malformation which might inflame in the future. However, the chances of this happening are slim to none. Kirsten pointed out that Madison's condition greatly improved shortly after the procedure. The happy mother said, "Four days later, she's walking. It's a totally different child. Her outlook is more positive." A photo of two toddlers whose hands and mouths were duct-taped, and captioned as "for sale," sparked outrage on social media. The cousin of the woman who posted the picture, believed to be the mother of one of the toddlers "for sale," said it was just a joke that "people just went overboard about." Jaton Justsilly Jaibabi, the woman who posted the disturbing image on Friday, captioned it with, "Kids for sale, 45 percent because they bad." The toddlers were at the back of an unidentified car, with one toddler already having tears in his eyes. According to the cousin of Jaibabi, Derion King, it was just intended as a joke. He justified his cousin's act saying, "Our family and friends know the love we have for all the kids in our family. It's just crazy that out of a whole lifetime they judge a person off of this one event." He added that it was one of those mistakes that people make, and the lesson from the whole incident has been learned. Although King said that the children are safe and unharmed, there was no stopping the uproar that the horrible photo caused among online users. Metro reports that one user said, "I could not breathe. It took my breath away, caused extreme emotional distress. These are children. These are human beings." The disturbing photo was brought to the attention of Memphis Police Department in Tennessee, which immediately investigated the image, Mirror notes. A high school student, who resides in the same area where Jaibabi is, said that the photo offended her. After the shocking photo of the toddlers with duct-taped mouth and hands circulated on social media, Jaibabi has deleted her account. Who wouldn't? Most of the posts that followed were mostly in the negative. How about you? What can you say about a mom who duct-tapes her toddler's mouth and hands? Democratic rivals Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are still neck and neck in the race to represent the party for the presidential race. Hillary Clinton reportedly raised as much as $30.1 million and currently has $31 million in cash at Super Tuesday's opening. However, Hillary Clinton is not yet in the clear as Bernie Sanders is raising bulks of funds as well. According to The Jerusalem Post, one of the main sectors through which funds pour in for Bernie Sanders is the online fundraising sector. Still Hillary Clinton and her team acknowledged the help of their supporters. "Thanks to the 1 million people who have now contributed to our campaign and the more than 8.6 million people who have supported Hillary Clinton with their votes (in primaries and caucuses), we have the resources we need to continue to run a strong campaign all across the country and a nearly insurmountable pledged delegate lead," campaign manager Robby Mook expressed. "With the majority of our fundraising coming from grassroots online donations, this campaign continues to gain momentum and feed off the energy of millions of supporters across the country." NPR reports that polls from Democrats who live abroad have been cast with Hillary Clinton trailing after Bernie Sanders in the majority of the countries. Bernie Sanders was a clear favorite over Hillary Clinton among Democrats in the United Kingdom, Canada, Germany, France and Spain. A majority of the Democrats in the Dominican Republic, Nigeria and Singapore, on the other hand, support Hillary Clinton over Bernie Sanders. Hillary Clinton is nothing but confident and continues in strength to tussle with Republican frontrunner Donald Trump. The Guardian reports that during her speech for American Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) Hillary Clinton directed her tactics against Donald Trump by latching onto the latter's statement that he is neutral on the matter of Israel. Hillary Clinton points out that Donald Trump cannot be trusted because such a stance means that the Republican candidate is easily swayed. .@andersoncooper asked: Do you think it's sexist when you're told to smile or stop yelling?https://t.co/vwXl3BelOi Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 22, 2016 On his end, Donald Trump believes that negotiating a peace deal with the Palestinians is one of the most difficult deals to accomplish and he is the best person for it. At this point, as Donald Trump stanced, neutrality is essential. Donald Trump openly expressed that deal-making is one of his best strengths. Hillary Clinton reduced the hope by Donald Trump to talk peace between Israel and Palestine by stating that Israel's security is foremost and is non-negotiable. 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 Thirsty? Youre in luck. In Pastes drinking-and-traveling series, City in a Glass, we mix up a citys signature swills and slide them down the bar to readers. Grab a stool. This round, in Detroit, Michigan, is on us. The buzzword surrounding Detroit is rebuilding. The city is still living in the shadow of its 2013 bankruptcy, but new high-rise condo buildings and public art spaces are attracting a population of young, creative talent downtown. One industry that has piggybacked off of this revitalization has been the bar scene; craft cocktails only entered the lexicon here about three years ago. While craft cocktail culture may be young in Detroit, we are seeing a lot of experimenting in restaurants and bars and a great willingness by customers to try new things, says Tim Ziegler, operations manager of the Green Dot Stables restaurant group. Local barman Joe Robinson agrees: Craft cocktails are still a fairly new thing in Detroit, but people are very receptive to it. To ease drinkers into this movement, many bartenders are adding their own personal touches to classic drinks many customers are already familiar with. The most important thing for us to remember as bartenders is that its about the guests experience, not about the cocktail, Robinson says. A bar is still about having fun and letting loose. We cant let the cocktail get in the way of that. On this city drinks tour, were going to introduce you to three craft cocktail densfound in alleyways, markets and fish shackswhere you can sip on a few only-in-Detroit drinks. And none of them will get in the way of you having fun, letting loose or contributing to the growing vitality of The Motor City. Where to order: Standby Located in a former garment district downtown, the Belt is a bustling alleyway thats been redeveloped as a public art space. Murals by street artists including Shepard Fairey cover benches, doors and the exterior walls of businesses along this block-wide strip. One of these businesses is Standby, an inspired cocktail bar whose entrance is through an old elevator shaft. Here, partner and bartender Joe Robinson creates a surprising drink menu using the most unique ingredients he can find. Anything Im unfamiliar with Im always eager to work with, Robinson says. Especially in the winter here in Detroit you have to get creative with whats available. He actually came up with his neon green Snake in the Grass cocktailmade with gin and mustard greens (yes, as in the vegetable)in the warmer months (pictured at top). My friends had some mustard greens growing in their backyard last summer that had such great flavor and spice that you could just eat a plate of them on their own, he says. Ever since then I wanted to somehow incorporate the flavor into a cocktail. I thought the sharp, spicy bite of the mustard greens would work great with gin. At the bar, he uses liquid nitrogen to muddle the greens into the gin, but says you can use a blender at home to get similar results. He also adds lime juice, simple syrup and celery bitters to the drink. The end result is a cocktail that he says is bright, tart and reminiscent of springtimeeven in the winter. Snake in the Grass 2 oz. Citadelle gin oz. lime juice oz. simple syrup (1 part sugar: 1 part water) 3 dashes The Bitter Truth celery bitters 3 leaves mustard greens Combine the mustard greens with the gin in a blender and blend on high for a few seconds. (This works best if you are making two drinks at a time.) Add the rest of the ingredients and blend for a few more seconds. Strain the mixture out through a tea strainer into a mixing tin. Shake with ice. Strain into a cocktail glass. Where to order: Detroit City Distillery Photo courtesy of Detroit City Distillery Detroit City Distillery is a small-batch whiskey, gin and vodka producer located in the citys historic Eastern Market. This 4-acre bazaar is the largest in the country, supplying the city with produce and artisanal goods sourced from all over Southeastern Michigan, Northern Ohio and Ontario, Canada. Not only does Detroit City Distillery make its spirits from these local ingredients, but the bartenders tasked with designing cocktails for the tasting room also take full advantage of the markets ever-changing goods. Being in Eastern Market means we can pretty much find anything to create delicious cocktails, bartender Coleman Alexander says. On the flip side, we like to keep things simple. While cool and complex cocktails are fantastic, we really focus on making drinks that everybody can relate to and enjoy. We might introduce a few lesser-known ingredients here and there to broaden a persons exposure, but overall our goal is to have our spirits be the focus. Right now, the lesser-known ingredients on the menu tend to be of Southeast Asian origin. There are drinks made with homemade Thai iced tea and lychee fruit, for example. Then theres the Wakame, a cocktail that gives a Japanese accent to the Old Fashioned. It contains bourbon from the distillery, lemon-peppercorn bitters, and sugar syrup made from demerara and Wakame seaweed. The Wakame-demerara syrup is savory and mellow, Alexander says. And adding a dash of lemon-peppercorn bitters leads the drinker into a fantastic ride rising up to meet the heat of our Two Faced blended bourbon. Its a perfectly balanced cocktail that delicately dances around the spirit. Where to order: Huron Room Photo courtesy Huron Room Taste an extensive collection of Michigan spirits, beers and wines at Huron Room, a fish and chips joint in Mexican Town. We wanted to create an up north feel, operations manager Tim Ziegler says, referring to the outdoorsy parts of northern Michigan. Wherever possible, the bar uses products produced in the Great Lakes region. Michigan has more than 150 breweries and the states small yet diverse wine industry has also taken off over the past decade. But its the spirits list that gets Ziegler the most excited. We were able to build our entire liquor program from Michigan-owned and -operated distilleries, he says. Supporting local Detroit and state-wide business by building our beverage program this waywhile not sacrificing quality or varietywas of huge importance for us. In addition to featuring all locally made beverages, Huron Room also focuses on making approachable, classic cocktails with an up north twist. The Country Bumpkin cocktail, for example, is a Michigan-style Cosmopolitan. Being up north is truly the opposite of cosmopolitan, Ziegler says. The name Country Bumpkin was thrown out there and it just stuck. The drink contains a half-dozen local ingredients: cherry vodka distilled in Traverse City, orange liqueur produced in Holland, more vodka distilled in Chelsea, and Michigan-grown cherry juice. Ziegler says it tastes a bit sweeter than a Cosmo and has a good punch of cherry flavor. Country Bumpkin 1 oz. True North cherry-flavored vodka oz. Ugly Dog Distillery Workers vodka oz. New Holland Brewing Clockwork Orange liqueur 1 oz. Michigan cherry juice oz. lime juice Combine all ingredients in a cocktail shaker with ice. Shake. Strain into a coupe. Garnish with a lime wheel. City in a Glass columnist Alyson Sheppard writes about travel, restaurants and bars for Playboy.com. She spent many years drinking in New York before resettling in the great state of Texas. Looking back, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend has always been a show about the aftershocks of divorce. Way back in episode two, when Valencia taunted Rebecca by singing, My father didnt leave me, I thought it was just a one-off joke. But the next episode next episode touched on Rebeccas childhood again, addressing the effects of her fathers exit from her life on her relationships with men in the song A Boy Band Made of Four Joshes. By episode eight, we got a firsthand look at Rebeccas chilly relationship with her mother Naomi (Tovah Feldshuh), whose disapproval had loomed large for weeks. Now, in Josh Has No Idea Where I Am! Crazy Ex-Girlfriend finally dives deep into the childhood trauma at the shows epicenter. Thats heavy subject matter for an episode that sheds off its B-story and largely confines itself to two setsthe airplane from the end of the previous episode and Rebeccas apartmentbut, as usual, Crazy Ex tempers it with a healthy dose of silliness. In this case, that much-needed levity comes in the form of a Dreamgirls-inspired number called Dream Ghosts featuring guest appearances from Amber Riley (Glee) and Ricki Lake. Dreamghosts introduces the Christmas Carol-esque conceit of the episode, in which a dream version of Rebeccas therapist Dr. Akopian (Michael Hyatt) takes her on a journey through past and present to teach her a lesson about love. Its a delightful musical number that recalls the best episodes of Community in its ability to break the fourth wall while maintaining a certain earnestness. You know the tropein storytelling its a norm, Dr. Akopian sings. When a persons in trouble, a manifestation of their subconscious appears in the form of a dream ghost! But even though the trope has been called out, the show doubles down on it nonetheless, exploring a young Rebeccas surprise visit to her fathers house with Dr. Akopian as emotional guide. What present-day Rebecca remembers as proof that her mother interrupted her bonding time with her dad is revealed to be the exact opposite: her dad had actually asked Naomi to come retrieve Rebecca so he could have alone time. Its an event that explains a lot about the series so far. Rebeccas impulsive behavior, her resentment for her mother, and her pursuit of Josh all have their roots here. And true, this subtext was almost better left as subtext, but if it had to be depicted, this was the way to do it, with great performances from Feldshuh, Jay Huguely, and Ava Acres, who reprises her role as Young Rebecca. Rebeccas dream journey continues with a memory of her short-lived fling with theater in college. She slept with the director of a Moby Dick musical, ignoring a less attractive but kinder castmate in the process. I get what youre saying, Rebecca says to Dr. Akopian, rolling her eyes. I should have seen past my superficial feelings for the roguish jerk to see the value of a nice guy like Peter. Oh God, no, the frustrated dream ghost replies. Forget about the guys! The moral of the story, Dr. Akopian explains, is that Rebecca allowed her entanglements with men interfere with her love of theater. Quietly, its one of the most revolutionary moments in a series full of them. No one expected a show with the title Crazy Ex-Girlfriend to so forcefully make the point that women dont need men to be happy but here we are. The episode tends to lose energy during the scant B-story, in which Paula, Darryl, Greg, and Josh worry about Rebeccas seeming departure from West Covina. And while the Dream Ghost trope makes for a fun musical number, an hour of dealing with its internal contradictions can be a little much, even for an often-fantastical musical comedy. But these issues just barely weigh down what is otherwise terrific exploration of the throughlines between childhood and quarter-life growing pains. May Saunders is a professional dog walker living in Minneapolis and an occasional freelance writer. In her spare time, she enjoys hanging out with her cat, who does not need to be walked. Follow her on Twitter. Among big name Democrats, Elizabeth Warren is probably the most notable name to have remained mum on a presidential endorsement. Thats pissed off a fair number of Bernie Sanders supporters, many of whom see her as his most powerful potential ally and felt betrayed when she sat on the sidelines and watched him lose to Hillary Clinton in Massachusetts. (For the record, were fine with her decision.) Today, though, Senator Warren spoke out, very powerfully, against a candidate: Donald Trump. In what can only be described as an evisceration, she called him a loser and thoroughly destroyed both his business record and his claims to be a unifier. Warren posted her message on both Facebook and Twitter. These are all things that Democrats know (or should know) about Trump, and theyre all things that establishment Republicans are saying, too. For all intents and purposes, Warren appears to be preaching to the choir. So the question is this: why did Warren post this, if not simply to feel good about herself? One possible answer that immediately comes to mind is that she wants to keep Bernies supporters in the democratic fold when Hillary wins the nomination (a Bernie comeback at this point would be a bigger shock than Texas A&M erasing a 12-point deficit in 34 seconds against Northern Iowa in the NCAA Tournament). Theres been some talk among progressives, including on this website, of a coming split in the Democratic Party that would sever the establishment wing of the party from the economic outsiders represented by Bernieto the point that many of Sanders supporters might actually support Donald Trump over Clinton in a general election. Warren, unlike Sanders, has been a Democrat for decades, and the last thing she probably wants to see is for disillusioned progressives to vote a Republican into office, especially when that Republican is a loose cannon like Trump. So with the above rant against Trump, it seems likely that Senator Warren is using her influence among progressives to make a play to bring Bernies more radical fans back into the Democratic fold. This explanation would align nicely with her officially neutral stance in the primary, which indicates that Warren sees the establishment as a viable, even preferable, avenue through which to create progressive change. Even if she privately supports Sanders (many of the commenters on her Facebook rant read it as a de facto endorsement of Bernieits not), she sees him as unlikely to win the nomination and, like Clinton, is gearing up for a fight against Donald Trump. And its becoming increasingly clear that her role in that fight is going to be to keep the far left and anti-establishment Democrats from voting en masse for Trump as a protestor, almost as bad, staying at home on election day. Some might admire Warrens pragmatic approach to progressivism, but if youre a staunch progressive hoping that Warren supports your desire to completely overturn establishment politics, her ethering of Donald Trump could be pretty disappointing news. SXSW interactive is a massive gathering of exciting new technology. Technology has a great impact on the world around us, from the planets we may visit to the food on our plates. Food technology could lead to changes, large and small in the way we approach our food. Here are some of the companies at SXSW that are using technology to change food: At the SXSW Interactive trade show, in a booth right beside the NASA booth, is the booth for Bee Hex, a 3D printer for food. There, I spoke to Ben Feltner, legal counsel for Bee Hex and he explained some of what their company is doing. Ben spoke highly of the creative intellect of Anjan Contractor. He invented the demo version of the 3D food printer that NASA adopted and plan on taking to the Mars Mission. One of the critical issues that NASA faced was how to rehydrate their dehydrated food in a palatable form. Anjan provided the solution in the form of a 3D printer. The printer could rehydrate the food in a form that the astronauts would be comfortable with. He won an award and grant to develop this even further, but that funding was cut. The printer will still be going up to space, but not with the further development that Anjan wanted for it. Anjan went off and created his own company to take his dream to the next level. He developed a pneumatic extruder that solved the consistency problem. Previously there was only a certain type of consistency that was available for extrusion. His developments allowed for extrusions of multiple consistencies, as thick as mozzarella cheese or as thin as water. As soon as extrusion ceases, the machine holds the fluid with perfection. Meanwhile at the trade show the printer is humming along and printing tiny pizzas shaped like Texas. They smell good, but we are not allowed to try them because of legal regulations surrounding food samplings. There a large crowd has gathered and they are snapping pictures and gazing in wonder. But soon this space pizza as it is affectionately named, will be available to the public. If you back them Kickstarter, you can order your own 3D printed pizza that will be mailed to you in frozen form. They plan on making the printers available for events in places all over the world where people may be amused by this novelty. The Mad Hatter is so named for their seemingly irrational behavior that was associated with hatters in a time period when many hatters may have had mercury poisoning from the materials they worked with. Mercury is a neurotoxin which could have very damaging effects. Safe Catch works to stop that. Safe catch is marketed as an extremely mercury free canned tuna. I spoke with Sean Wittenberg about their innovations. Apparently the product was inspired by an article in a womens magazine about how pregnant women in particular couldnt eat fish because of the risk of being exposed to mercury. This inspired a mission to develop a more advanced mercury test that could work in real time and allow for tuna made from virtually mercury free tuna. They developed a machine that can take a small tissue sample and in relatively real time tell you exact mercury concentrations. The fish is tested and only if it reaches approval, is it canned. The technology has been verified by the California Attorney Generals office in conjunction with the FDA and is sensitive to almost one part per billion. The results are canned tuna has 10 times less mercury than the minimum standards set by the FDA. Thats ten times safer from a mercury avoidance perspective. The tuna is hand cut and put into BPA free cans that are then sealed and cooked with the fish in their own natural oils. They are cooked with precise algorithm looking at the optimum temperature and time to provide the richest flavor. Thats some high tech tuna. The cup of tea seem like a simple sort of things. But what if you had a machine that could use data from the network automatically brew the perfect cup of tea? Teforia claims to do just that. Teforia was set up at the SXSW Trade show in the Austin demonstrating their intelligent tea machine. It uses Intel Edison technology to give the machine a learning component so it can actually get to know the tea drinker and their preferences. It is a smart device with a companion app. The machine works with the app because it is both WiFi and Bluetooth enabled. There is an RFID reader in the machine and it pairs with the RFID chipped tea packages that hold loose tea and are sold for the machine. When the tea packages are scanned, the machine knows exactly how to brew the tea. If the tea is just loose leaf then you measure the tea out and use the app to decide brewing details. The app will answer some basic questions to figure out what type of tea is being brewed then pull a recipe from the database to match. The machine also allows you to lower the caffeine levels. You can save any particular recipes for tea that you like, and the more tea you drink the more the machine learns about your preferences. This may lead to the perfect cup of tea. For centuries, people have enjoyed wine relaxing beverage to accompany a meal, a celebration, or really any occasion at all. However, for some people, sulfite sensitivity can interfere with this. Sulfite sensitivity, according to the Australian Society of Clinical Immunology, can cause allergy like reactions, most commonly asthma symptoms in those with underlying asthma. The Wand offers to provide a solution to this. The Wand is a Brita filter for wine. Their website describes how in the process of wine-making, sulfites are used to help extend shelf life and improve consistency. In the US wines with more than 10 parts per million of sulfites are labeled, but even those not bearing that label may still contain those dreaded sulfites. Additionally, histamines in wine may also cause problems for some people, triggering allergic reactions. Particular wines contain varying amounts of these histamines, depending on fermentation process, harvesting processes, and the environment of growth. The Wand is a small spoon sized object that offers a solution to this problem. The wand is a filter at the end of a stick that may be swirled around in a glass of wine to reduce these histamines and sulfites. They claim their product will alleviate the symptoms that might occur in individual with sensitivities. The result are said to be a slightly smoother and rounder. The wands are individually packaged and may be used for a single glass of wine. They will also be producing a spout type filter that will allow an entire bottle of wine to be filtered at a time. They will be available for purchase at some point in 2016. Just as the war between the FBI and Apple was set to resume tomorrow, a bizarre last minute development by the FBI was made public. Citing a new possible way to access a locked iPhone used by a shooter in the San Bernardino terrorist attack, the Justice Department earlier today convinced a federal court to cancel a Tuesday hearing on whether Apple should be forced to help the FBI break into the device. A DOJ spokeswoman said in a statement that "As a result of these efforts, an outside party demonstrated to the FBI this past weekend a possible method for unlocking the phone. We must first test this method to ensure that it doesn't destroy the data on the phone, but we remain cautiously optimistic. That is why we asked the court to give us some time to explore this option." For the moment, the DOJ's move hits the pause button on a case that has pitted Washington against Silicon Valley in a fierce debate over the role tech companies should play in terrorism investigations. The Justice Department now has until April 5 to test its prospective technical fix, which law enforcement sources, speaking with reporters on Monday, repeatedly declined to detail. For more on this development, read Politico's full report here In part, Cook noted today during Apple's special event that "We did not expect to be in this position at odds with our own government. But we believe strongly that we have a responsibility to help you protect your data and protect your privacy. We owe it to our customers and we owe it to our country. This is an issue that impacts all of us and we will not shrink from this responsibility." Has the FBI legitimately found a workaround method to open the locked iPhone 5c or is there some form of politics being playing out here? Is the FBI trying to delay until legislation in California passes? Considering that the FBI is refusing to provide details for the requested delay, anything is possible so stay tuned. 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. Tenzin Pelkyi, a writer, law student, and editor at tibetanfeministcollective.org (and recent interviewee at this blog) has an intriguing article up today at medium.com examining some of the idiosyncrasies and unintended consequences of US-China-Tibet politics. In it she examines two allegedly Tibetan men holding up a sign reading Tibetans for Trump. Kick China in the Balls for us, Donald #MakeAmericaGreatAgain. As odd as it may seem for card carrying liberals and others who are simply confused by the popularity of Donald Trump, there are at least a couple historical reasons why Tibetans would prefer the brash Republican in the White House. The normalization of trade relations with China and the effective de-linking of human rights and trade with the renewal of Most Favored Nation (MFN) trade status in 2000 under the Clinton administration was a significant blow to the human rights lobby and Tibetan Americans who seek to hold China accountable for continued rights violations in Tibet. And: Thats why, when then-President Bush awarded Tibets Nobel Prize-winning spiritual leader, His Holiness the Dalai Lama, the Congressional Gold Medal in 2007, Tibetan Americans considered the act a significant victory, evident by the marking of this event every year across the diaspora in gratitude to the Bush administration. And despite President Obama warmly welcoming the Dalai Lama at a National Prayer Breakfast last February, the meeting did nothing to change US-China policy, leading one writer to (quite convincingly) state that Obamas Meeting With The Dalai Lama Is An Empty Gesture. So, over the last 25 years, the only US President to offer a victory to Tibetans was George W. Bush. And now it is Trump who is providing the strongest anti-China rhetoric in the 2016 Presidential campaign. Despite that, Pelkyi assures us that: Young, politically engaged Tibetan Americans, however, still overwhelmingly favor liberal values and policies. This election year, I have seen Tibetan community leaders and figures endorse and support either or both of the democratic presidential candidates. Hillary Clinton, on a recent visit to Minnesota, was confronted about the latest Tibetan self-immolation last month, which renewed Tibetan and Tibet activists interest in her candidacy. Many Tibetans have, notably, shown immense enthusiasm for the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign. Many have noted his key role in the release of Tibetan political prisoners during his time in the U.S. Senate. His website also reaffirms his commitment to Tibets political question, and his campaign has even sparked a Tibetans for Bernie offshoot. The topography of the contemporary US political landscape is complex and, admittedly, at times perplexing. Ill be posting a new poll to try to gather more/better data very soon. Read Tenzin Pelkyis full article here. Stay in touch with American Buddhist Perspectives on Facebook: Look, Ill be honest with you: when I first read about the bombings in Brussels (link to CNN for convenience), my immediate reaction was not concern for the victims, but, instead, concern for our own vacation this summer. Weve got it all planned out now, you see. Are the places were visiting likely terrorist targets? London, the Netherlands (a spot halfway between Amsterdam and Rotterdam, by the coast), the Moselle Valley, Augsburg, and Munich. Theyre all safe, right? At least 26 dead, and 130 wounded in 3 separate attacks, with two blasts at the airport, at about 8 am local time, and another an hour later at the Maalbeek subway station. Why that station? Its in the city center, and just 400 yards from the EU headquarters, according to the Daily Mail (Drudge link). Its not clear to me from the reporting if these were suicide bombs or, well, just bombs. But after the Charlie Hebdo attacks, and the Bataclan attacks (see here for a brief timeline), and especially because of the revelations during the course of that news coverage of Belgian links, todays attack feels inevitable. And whats also surely inevitable is the coming debate: Is this ISIS-fueled, and another reason the West needs to more forcefully intervene in Syria and Iraq? Or is this the fault of the Belgians and French themselves, for having failed for decades to integrate their Muslim immigrant communities? the latter explanation being the favorite way Americans like to tell themselves that we in the United States arent at risk because weve been nice to our Muslims. But being nice to our Muslims didnt keep the victims in San Bernadino safe, did it? Theres an ongoing theme among some in American politics and punditry that we shouldnt worry excessively about terrorism. Sure, there have been scattered attacks, some dramatic, such as the Santa Barbara attacks, and some barely reported, such as various lone wolf attacks on individuals. But any given individuals risk of dying from a terrorist attack is pretty dang low, so it shouldnt be a cause for concern, or change much about the way we go about our business, or how the administration manages international affairs. Heres a New York Times analysis piece from just before the State of the Union, Balancing Terror and Reality in State of the Union Address: Here is what he probably will not say, at least not this bluntly: Americans are more likely to die in a car crash, drown in a bathtub or be struck by lightning than be killed by a terrorist. The news media is complicit in inflating the sense of danger. The Islamic State does not pose an existential threat to the United States. He will presumably not say this, either: Given how hard it is for intelligence and law enforcement agencies to detect people who have become radicalized, like those who opened fire at a holiday party in San Bernardino, Calif., a certain number of relatively low-level terrorist attacks may be inevitable, and Americans may have to learn to adapt the way Israel has. By all accounts, Mr. Obama is sympathetic to this view, which is shared by a number of counterterrorism veterans who contend that anxiety has warped the American publics perspective. But the idea that more people are killed by X than by terrorism misses the point of terrorism the very objective of which is to terrorize people, due to the public nature of the attacks, and the fear that you could be next. And I dont think the residents of Brussels are telling themselves, hey, all in all, no big deal. So, this happened: A member of the Kansas Senate compared long-term contraceptives to fascist eugenics during a debate Monday. Sen. Mary Pilcher-Cook, R-Shawnee, opposed an amendment that would have instructed the Kansas Department of Health and Environment to contract with family planning providers to offer long-acting reversible contraceptives, similar to a Colorado initiative that reduced teen pregnancy rates. I think its government treading on very dangerous territory, Pilcher-Cook said. Because government should not be in the authoritative position of being discriminatory by promoting contraception. These long-acting contraceptions are being recommended by HHS (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services) to target the poor and minority populations. And in the 30s and 40s, our country firmly and finally rejected eugenics. Lets not bring it back. In considering an amendment that would have offered state funding for longterm contraceptives like implants and IUDs, Mary Pilcher-Cook, an anti-abortion state senator in Kansas, argued that the program would target the poor and minority populations and is therefore comparable to eugenics as practiced in Nazi Germany. Heres a bit more background: The Kansas Senate has rejected a proposal for encouraging the state to provide long-acting birth control to poor residents after a Republican member likened it to the discredited 20th Century eugenics movement that sought to control who could have children. Democratic Sen. Marci Francisco of Lawrence offered the proposal Thursday as an amendment to a bill that would permanently block the state from sending federal family planning dollars for non-abortion services to Planned Parenthood. Her amendment failed on a voice vote. In other words, the Kansas legislature is currently in the process of limiting poor womens contraceptive access by depriving Planned Parenthood of federal money for contraceptives. The remark about eugenics came after a pro-choice lawmaker proposed an amendment that would have provided state funding for longterm birth control for poor Kansans, likely as an attempt to mitigate the effects of the bill. It was at this point that Pilcher-Cook evoked eugenics. Pincher-Cook seems to have been arguing that because the funding for longterm contraceptives would have been for poor women only, the measure amounted to eugenics. Lets take a moment to consider why she would think that. Is it because middle and upper class white women dont use contraceptives? No. Its because middle and upper class white women already have access to these contraceptives through their insurance and through their regular doctor. Poor and minority women often dont have insurance, or have subpar insurance, or dont have regular doctors. Indeed, Pilcher-Cook suggested that a program to provide longterm contraceptives to poor and minority women would be discriminatory when in fact it would be the oppositeit would break down the barriers to longterm contraceptives currently faced by poor and minority women and not by other women. Providing poor and minority women with services other women already have is not discriminatory. And frankly, providing contraceptive access in a way that is wholly voluntary and not in any way coercive is by definition not eugenics. And just what is the Colorado initiative that was similar? Oh look: Over the past six years, Colorado has conducted one of the largest experiments with long-acting birth control. If teenagers and poor women were offered free intrauterine devices and implants that prevent pregnancy for years, state officials asked, would those women choose them? They did in a big way, and the results were startling. The birthrate among teenagers across the state plunged by 40 percent from 2009 to 2013, while their rate of abortions fell by 42 percent, according to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. It turns out that when they have the option, many teenage girls opt for longterm contraceptives, and the results are predictabledeclines in unplanned pregnancies and abortions. Note that no one is forcing these women to access the longterm contraceptives theyre being offered. Its their free choice. See also this article from 2014, discussing another study: The new study, conducted at Washington University in St. Louis, involved teenagers at high risk for unintended pregnancy because they were sexually active or were planning to be within six months. About 18 percent had had an abortion, and 60 percent were using no birth control or using withdrawal or condoms all methods with failure rates of more than 15 percent, said an author of the study, Dr. Jeffrey Peipert, an obstetrics and gynecology professor. Dr. Peipert said that because long-acting contraceptives have failure rates of less than 1 percent, they were discussed with teenagers before enrolling and as the first options listed. As further encouragement, the clinic could usually put in the implants or IUDs right away. The yearly pregnancy rate in the study was 34 per 1,000 teenagers, and the abortion rate was 9.7 per 1,000. Pregnancy and abortion rates for sexually experienced teenagers nationally were far higher 158.5 and 41.5 in 2008. For all teenagers, the pregnancy and abortion rates were 57.4 and 14.7 in 2010. Pilcher-Cook needs to be honest about what shes opposing. Shes opposing access to contraceptives, not eugenics. If she doesnt want poor and minority women to have access to longterm contraceptivesthe most effective form we haveshe needs to come out and say that. Instead, shes cloaking her opposition to giving poor women the same access to contraceptives that other women already have in an assumed opposition to eugenics. The best way to repudiate eugenics is to empower poor women to make their own choices. Pilcher-Cook does the opposite. Shes not opposing eugenics so much as she is using the rhetoric of opposition to eugenics to deprive women of exactly what eugenics sought to deprive them ofthe freedom to make their own choices. Here we are once again. Once again, those motivated by fear, by anger, by deep anguish within their own souls have made the choice to take the lives of dozens of other people and throw a nation, and indeed, the world, into a state of peril. Every time we hear about a terrorist attack in the media, there is an immediate sense of solidarity with the people who were attacked. We must stand with Brussels. Pray for Brussels. We must show Brussels that there are far more people standing with them than against them in this dark hour. At the same time, we are drawn into solidarity against the attackers. The nations of the world will vow to fight against the threat of terrorism globally and to support the armed forces and law enforcement of Brussels to fight those who are responsible for these heinous acts. In moments like these, around the world, Islamaphobia will increase. Muslims will fear for their own well being as leaders and influencers begin to take to the airwaves to talk about the threat of Islam on our society. In a moment like this, we stand in solidarity both in the pain and in the anger. One force has the power to make progress and to heal, the other has the power to destroy and perpetuate fear. In a moment like this, we must chose. In a moment like this, we must take a step back and, for those of us who are Christians, look towards the cross of Jesus. The crucifixion of Jesus was an act of terror. The Romans beat, mocked, and degraded Jesus in front of the eyes of hundreds of onlookers. They paraded his bloody body through the streets of Jerusalem, carrying the very means of his own torture and death on his shoulders. And then they hung him on a cross, high above Jerusalem, where everyone could gaze upon his torn flesh and see the agony in his face. The message was clear: If you oppose Rome, you will be killed. The crucifixion of Jesus was meant to keep the people of Jerusalem in line. To cause them to fear and in that fear to refuse to follow anyone but Caesar. It was an act of terror, and in those moments of Jesus death, many of the people of Jerusalem stood in solidarity against Jesus and with Rome. They bought the narrative that it was people like Jesus that sought to undermine their empire and way of life. And as they gazed upon his corpse, they were both afraid and united. But as Jesus life slipped away, he uttered some of the most destabilizing words in all of history. Words that undermined the entire agenda of Rome. Words that expelled fear in an instant. Father, he uttered. Forgive them. For they dont know what theyre doing. In an instant, Jesus overturns the system of terror and ruptures through fear with unconditional love. Jesus was unjustly murdered. He was being accused and scapegoated for things he was not guilty of. He had every right to be angry. Every right to call on his disciples to fight. To seek to kill those who had killed him. And we have good reason to believe that if Jesus did in fact use his dying breath to call on his disciples to seek vengeance, they would have. Fear emboldens us to act in the most illogical and harmful ways. But this isnt what Jesus did. Instead, he asked God to forgive his murderers. To forgive those who mocked him, spat on him, and viewed him as the source of all of their problems. He had mercy on those who didnt ask for it and certainly didnt deserve it. He understood that the Romans really believed that they were doing the right thing. That in their ignorance, they were perpetuating a system of violence and fear that would never result in true peace, but only more bloodshed. Jesus looked down upon these wicked individuals and instead of cursing them, he blesses them. He forgives them. And it is this one singular act of forgiveness that has forever transformed the world. The entirety of the Christian Gospel is built upon the actions of Christ on the cross. The example he set. The earth shattering, subversive path of love, grace, and forgiveness that Jesus demonstrates as the way of salvation for humanity. It is the only way. The narrow way. And very few people, Jesus said, ever find it. Yet it is our only hope. The only way that leads to life. The only answer to the plague of fear. Jesus act of forgiveness shattered the blindness of the centurion who likely beat and tortured him, revealing the great act of injustice he was perpetuating and causing him to cry out, Truly this man is the Son of God! Jesus act of forgiveness removed the veil from the eyes of the Roman officials, revealing that the cycle of terror and violence they were perpetuating was futile. Jesus act of forgiveness transformed the lives of all who witnessed it and emboldened his followers to give their lives to this radical way of self-sacrificial love and unconditional grace. As billions of Christians around the world spend this Holy Week reflecting on the sufferings of Jesus, may we also consider the ramifications of his life and death in our lives and world today. May we consider what the crucifixion of Jesus teaches us about how to respond to the evil we have witnessed in Belgium and to those who are guilty of perpetuating such terror and violence. As we reflect on the image of that frail, innocent man hanging on a rugged cross, may we see the love in his eyes. May we see his heart beating with compassion and desperation. May we hear his word of forgiveness and heed his desire for the restoration of even the vilest and most guilty of offenders. Every year at the US Varsities, the Indian student association invites prospective freshman and other students to celebrate Holi and to take part in one of the largest, muddiest colourful balloon fights in the United States. The festival of Holi is an annual celebration marked in Indian culture with many bonfires, color, and outlandish fun for the arrival of spring. The festival celebrates the colors of spring during the month of Phagun, or February-March, immediately following the wheat harvest. Traditionally, people throw colored water in the afternoon and smear colored powder on each other in the evening. In addition, relatives often visit and exchange sweets with the children of the family. Whether you are celebrating your own culture or another tradition, participating in Holi celebration has now become a tradition at Washington University in St. Louis. "While playing Holi, I met a lot of good people," said Sania Suri, the co-president of the Indian Students Association. "It was a good experience because I did integrate myself into Indian culture". There are various religious and cultural implications to the celebration of Holi. But for the students at Washington University, it is a matter of great pride to be associated and learn more about their cultural traditions. After a short speech by the student on the history of Holi, the festive of colour began: people sprinted from trash can to trash can, darting water balloons like speeding bullets. Few minutes after, the supply of balloons became scarce, and those desperate for ammo were forced to hide from the lucky few who had rationed well. When the last balloon had been thrown, an inevitable mud fight broke out in the middle of the swamp, as everyone dragged their friends, kicking and screaming, into the mud pit formed from the worn-down grass and puddles of water. "Planning Holi is a great way to unite the Washington University student body and give everyone a taste of Indian culture," said Rasika Reddy, co-cultural chair. After the festivities of the colourful water fight were over, many went home to clean the mud and colored water from their clothes and bodies, while others remained in the swamp to enjoy the music and the breezy weather. In India, Holi is celebrated with much colour, where people go to the temple and then visit one another's houses to play in color and water, as well as drink a marijuana based drink known as bhang. There, the celebration is centered mainly on family, and close friends, as well as religion and culture. There is a definite pride in one's culture when one celebrates Holi in India, and it is always marked in the morning in prayer towards Shiva, Krishna, or the Vishnu, for blessings for the new spring. It signifies of prosperity for the new agriculture crops that comes in, and the birth of spring and its growth. For an US citizen who was born and brought up in the states, this is a totally new world for Katie Marcus, who has never really encountered Holi until she came to Washington University, having only heard of it and not really participated. "I'm really not sure what the significance is, but I enjoy watching it on the swamp," said Katie". As an outsider to Indian culture and a student at Washington University in St. Louis, Taylor had no idea what to expect about Holi. "I had just heard that it was a huge play and fight with colours and that people got really messy, which I didn't understand how until when I actually saw the event myself. It was so much fun, I'm sorry I didn't get to experience it as a prospective freshman", said Taylor. With very little colour, students are unable to parallel this fun event with the coming of spring and have very little understanding as to how this event was founded on both cultural and religious aspects of Indian culture. While in India people pray each other with color in order to assimilate with nature the blooming of spring, at Washington University students are rolling in mud where they look more like the mud and slush of winter. "It would be nice to know why this celebration is done in India, because a lot of students here probably take it for granted what it's about and what its significance is," Maddie said. While Holi in India and to those that understand its religious and cultural significance revere with some posterity and love, students who are known to much of Indian culture look at it as a good time. While this is part of the celebration, it is always wise to know the significance of an event, and to celebrate it properly. May be one year Washington University will too celebrate the opening of spring with actual color, and a bonfire, to commemorate Indian mythology, as well as the coming of the blossoming of spring. While students here mimic this festival from India in great fun, as it is a fun festival, it would be more fruitful to have people do things with knowledge or understanding of where and how it came to be. M J Warsi, Ph.D., is a well-known linguist and teaches at Washington University in St. Louis, USA. He may be reached at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. News and commentary on organized crime, street crime, white collar crime, cyber crime, sex crime, crime fiction, crime prevention, espionage and terrorism. "We're not used to seeing growth in our check business," said Deluxe's Tracey Engelhardt, who reports a 6% to 7% increase in revenue for check orders from businesses and consumers in each of the last three quarters, driven by various factors originating from the pandemic. The Gulf Arab States Versus Hezbollah 03/22/16 by Giorgio Cafiero and Daniel Wagner (source: LobeLog) A Hezbollah rally in Beirut, Lebanon in February 2015 (photo by Islamic Republic News Agency) In recent weeks, Lebanon has become a brighter flashpoint in the intensifying geopolitical rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Since the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), and subsequently the League of Arab States, designated Hezbollah a terrorist organization earlier this month, GCC authorities have announced plans to deport thousands of Lebanese living in the Gulf, three Kuwaitis were found killed in Lebanon, and a United Arab Emirates (UAE) court case began involving seven people charged with Hezbollah links. Although Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and the UAE had previously classified Hezbollah a terrorist organization, Kuwait, Qatar, and the Sultanate of Oman have now backed the GCC and Arab Leagues designation. This followed Saudi Arabias comprehensive review of its relations with Lebanon last month, and Riyadhs decision to suspend and cancel approximately $4 billion in annual aid to the Lebanese Armed Forces and police, accused of being heavily infiltrated by Hezbollah. Several days later Bahrain, Kuwait, Qatar, and the UAE joined Riyadh in imposing travel restrictions on Lebanon, which has potentially serious economic implications given that Gulf Arab tourists are known to be big spenders in the Mediterranean country. Officials in Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Pakistan, and Tunisia-as well as representatives of Yemens Houthi rebel movement and Palestinian groups such as Islamic Jihad and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine- condemned the GCCs move against Hezbollah, with some accusing the Council of serving Zionist interests. Although supportive of the GCCs terrorist designation, the U.S. government warned Riyadh against placing additional financial pressure on Lebanons already fragile economy, expressing concern that Iran could ultimately become the biggest beneficiary and strengthen its influence in the country. Tension between Lebanons Party of God and the Gulf Arab sheikdoms is not new. For many years the vitriol between GCC and Hezbollah leaders has been evident in their recurring exchange of tense words. Gulf Arab officials repeatedly accuse the group of operating terror cells in the GCC and elsewhere in the region. In its info-war, Riyadh is strongly pushing the idea that Hezbollah and Iran were behind the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, invoking an emotive issue for America in the hopes of interrupting the thaw in Washington-Tehran relations. Hezbollahs leadership maintains that this is all propaganda and frequently alleges that Saudi Arabia orchestrates terrorism across the Muslim world, including inside Lebanon. Part of what prompted Riyadhs action was Lebanons refusal to side with Saudi Arabia in the Arab League as the diplomatic crisis with Iran escalated after the violent attacks on Riyadhs diplomatic missions in the Islamic Republic in early January. Saudi Arabias review of relations with Lebanon was Riyadhs way of telling its allies in the March 14 alliance (led by former Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri) that the degree to which Hezbollah has seized power in Lebanon and closely aligned the country with Tehran is unacceptable. The message is simple. Unless Lebanese officials do more to chip away at Hezbollahs power, the country will come under greater economic pressure from the GCC, which plays an important role in its economy. The Geopolitical Stakes The GCCs move against Hezbollah takes place within the context of the Middle Easts shifting geopolitical fault lines. Moscow and Tehrans common cause across the region has led to a tripartite axis of power between Iran, Russia, and Hezbollah, which has demonstrated its collective strength in recent battles across Syria. By removing billions of dollars in aid to resource-poor Lebanon, and by calling on their citizens to avoid Beirut as a tourist destination, the GCC is seeking to exploit a weakness in this axis-the Lebanese economy. By withholding aid from Lebanons security apparatus at a time when the countrys stability is already fragile, and by simultaneously putting pressure on the countrys tourism sector, the Saudi/GCC leadership seeks to weaken Hezbollahs ability to influence the countrys domestic and foreign policies. This is consistent with the GCCs tradition of utilizing its powerful financial leverage in the global economy to further the geopolitical interests of its members, rather than wage direct military intervention in conflicts. The GCC states are going after Hezbollah supporters in their own countries like never before. Since the GCC designation, Bahrain, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE have made historic legal moves against a variety of expats and nationals seen as colluding with Hezbollah. In the Emirates, for instance, a UAE State Security court is trying seven people charged with handing state secrets to the Lebanese group. The timing of the UAEs announcement is said to indicate the Emirates intention to serve as the GCCs model for cracking down on Hezbollah-linked individuals in the Gulf Arab kingdoms. Although the GCCs designation of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization has clear domestic implications, the impact on foreign policy appears uncertain. Given that the group comprises a sizeable portion of Lebanons democratically-elected government, does the GCCs label imply that the state of Lebanon itself constitutes a terrorist entity? Does the government of Lebanon actually have the ability to meaningfully curb Hezbollahs power in the country, or abroad? And, given that Iraq and Syria were two of the countries where the Saudi Arabia-led 34-nation Islamic military coalition was said to be planning their campaign against global terrorism, if the alliance were to project its military in to either country, would their forces actually target Hezbollah? Lebanon Under Pressure After the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps established Hezbollah-an Islamic resistance movement that essentially became a state-within-a-state-the balance of power in the Levant shifted as the Lebanese Shiite group prevented Israel from achieving any of its stated objectives during its 18-year occupation of southern Lebanon. Although many on the Arab street (including Sunnis) championed Hezbollahs success in fighting Israel to a standstill in the 2006 war, the emergence of Hezbollah in Lebanon has always been a source of unease among GCC officials. The group represents Irans most successful effort to export its revolutionary ideology to Arab lands and has delivered a severe blow to Saudi Arabias traditional position as the anchor of the Middle East and North Africas political order. From the perspective of Riyadh and other GCC capitals, it is no longer logical to funnel billions of dollars into Lebanon given the extent to which Hezbollah and its allies influence Beiruts foreign policy. Saudi Arabia sees itself as encircled by countries under increasing Iranian influence-as a result of post-Saddam Iraqs closer orientation toward Iran, the ongoing quagmire in Yemen (where the Iranian-backed Houthi rebel movement remains in control of Sanaa and other parts of Yemen one year after Riyadh launched Operation Decisive Storm), and embattled Syria having turned in Assads favor after the direct military intervention of Russia and Iran. The move against Hezbollah represents an effort to strike at an area of weakness in Irans web of alliances-the Lebanese economy-and assert Saudi influence in a country where the kingdom has maintained deep ties with the countrys elites for many years. As Lebanons difficult economic problems have worsened as a result of the destabilizing impact of the Syrian crisis, the country has grown increasingly reliant on money from the Gulf. The GCCs cessation of aid and imposition of travel restrictions therefore has much potential to exacerbate the countrys already challenging economic environment. Rather than deploying an Arab force to Lebanon in an effort to crush Hezbollah-a proposal made by Prince Saud al-Faisal in 2008, according to WikiLeaks-the GCCs latest move is aimed at pressuring Riyadhs allies in Lebanon to forcefully confront Hezbollahs ability to impose its will there. Consistent with the Gulf Arabs traditional foreign policy strategy of maintaining and pursuing influence through financial leverage, the Saudi campaign against the Lebanese resistance group and its patron Iran is nevertheless intensifying. Giorgio Cafiero is founder of Gulf State Analytics. Daniel Wagner is CEO of Country Risk Solutions and co-author of the forthcoming book Global Risk Agility and Decision Making. 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. Iran hosts celebrations marking Norooz at UN in New York 03/22/16 Source: Press TV Iran has hosted an event at the United Nations to celebrate Norooz or the Persian New Year, with senior diplomats from the world body and a dozen Asian countries in attendance. The annual festivities were held at the UN headquarters in New York on Monday, with Gholam-Ali Khoshroo, the Iranian Ambassador and permanent representative to the world body, as the host. Among the senior guests at the celebrations were UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon as UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova as well as diplomats from Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, India, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. This is while millions of Iranians are celebrating Norooz, which marks the advent of spring. In harmony with the rebirth of nature, the Norooz festivities always begin on the first day of spring, which has fallen on March 20 this year. Along with Iranians, millions of others in countries such as Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Tajikistan and Turkey also celebrate Norooz. Addressing the participants, Gholam-Ali Khoshroo described Norooz as a "social and cultural" tradition, which has the message of "hope, happiness, livelihood and love." Norooz offers the opportunity for the world to make collective efforts towards the achievement of sustainable development, the Iranian official said. "In a world, where extremism and radicalism have led to wars, deaths and destruction, Norooz carries the message of peace and toleration," he stressed. During the ceremony, the UN chief also felicitated the Iranian nation and other countries celebrating the arrival of spring, describing Norooz as an ancient tradition with modern relevance. Ban also highlighted the crises and human rights violations plaguing many world nations and said, "We must respond with compassionate action that addresses immediate suffering while tackling root causes." "Let us enable all people who celebrate Norooz to celebrate with joy and meaning - and let us spread its essential message of hope and renewal around the world," he said in his message. In a separate message to the event, the UNESCO chief also hailed Norooz as "an outstanding manifestation of how living cultural heritage expresses the way we understand the world and the means by which we shape it for the good of all." In 2010, the United Nations recognized March 21st as the International Day of Norooz, or the Persian New Year. The Haftsin spread for Norooz (cartoon by Ehsan Ganji, Ghanoon daily) Related Article: Intel said Monday evening that Intel co-founder and former chief executive Andy Grove has died. He was 79. Grove, who cofounded Intel with Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce, leaves behind his wife, Eva, as well as two daughters and eight grandchildren. Intel did not disclose the cause of Groves death, though in a Forbes profile during 2008, Grove disclosed that he had Parkinsons disease and had been previously diagnosed with prostate cancer. Grove immigrated to the United States from Hungary about 1956, escaping the Soviet Communist occupation. Years before, his family had narrowly avoided being imprisoned by the Nazis. Once in the United States, Grove studied chemical engineering at the City College of New York, and later completed his doctorate at the University of California at Berkeley. He was hired by Gordon Moorewho later became famous for Moores Lawat Fairchild, then left with Moore to found Intel with Moore and Noyce. Grove served as president at Intel in 1979 and ascended to the chair of chief executive in 1987. He oversaw the rise of the company as a household name, killing off Intels DRAM business in favor of the microprocessor, the component that would become synonymous with Intel. Specifically, Intels rise began with the 386 microprocessor and extended through the Pentiumwhich, though marred by a notorious floating-point flaw, helped put Intels name on the map. Grove was also CEO during the time when Intel began marketing itself as Intel Inside, and the company rose into a leadership position as competitors like Cyrix and Via Technologies were pushed out of the market. After Grove stepped down in 1997, he served as a special advisor to the company. Grove wrote Only the Paranoid Survive, a popular business book of the time. He did not suffer fools lightly, and was not afraid to challenge reporters who he thought were asking the wrong questions. Andy approached corporate strategy and leadership in ways that continue to influence prominent thinkers and companies around the world, said Intel chairman Andy Bryant, the companys former chief financial officer, in a statement. He combined the analytic approach of a scientist with an ability to engage others in honest and deep conversation, which sustained Intels success over a period that saw the rise of the personal computer, the Internet and Silicon Valley. Clarification: When Grove escaped Hungary, he did so to escape the Soviet occupation. The FBI says it may have discovered a way to break into the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino mass shooters, and the agency has asked a judge to postpone a court hearing in the matter that was scheduled for Tuesday. On Sunday, March 20, 2016, an outside party demonstrated to the FBI a possible method for unlocking Farooks iPhone, lawyers for the government said in a court filing Monday afternoon, referring to the shooter Syed Farook. Testing is required to determine whether it is a viable method that will not compromise data on Farooks iPhone. If the method is viable, it should eliminate the need for the assistance from Apple set forth in the All Writs Act Order in this case, the government lawyers wrote. The court filing doesnt describe the proposed method, but the government says it received suggestions for how it could break into the phone from various outside parties. Its an unexpected development in a high-profile case that has pitted Apple against the U.S. Department of Justice. The conflict highlights the tension between the need for strong encryption and the requirements of law enforcement to investigate crimes. The FBI has said it needs help getting around Apples encryption so it can access Farooks device, an iPhone 5C. It says the phone may hold clues about whether Farook and his wife acted alone when they went on a killing spree in San Bernardino last December. The government has said the couple were suspected terrorist sympathizers. Apple has fought back, saying providing access to the device would require it to create a new version of its iOS software for that purpose, and that doing so would weaken security for all its users. Apple is also worried that the case could set a legal precedent that would require Apple and other companies to give the government access to encrypted personal data in the future. If the government has indeed found its own way in, it may get the data it needs without a court battle, meaning no precedent will be set. In February, Apple said it would fight a U.S. magistrate judges order requiring it to assist the FBI. A hearing was set to take place in Los Angeles Tuesday afternoon, where lawyers for Apple and the government were expected to square off. Its unclear now if the hearing will go ahead. In its court filing Monday, the FBI says it has continued to look for a way to access the data on the phone, even as it pursues its case against Apple. It doesnt describe the method it plans to try, but some researchers have theorized that the device could be accessed through cloning. A key protection that the government is up against is a mechanism that will permanently lock the phone if an incorrect pass code is tried 10 times. With cloning, multiple copies are made of the phones memory and pass codes are tried against each copy. It doesnt matter if one copy becomes locked, because investigators can move on to another copy. In essence, it gives the FBI multiple tries at guessing the pass code without having to worry about the phone destroying its data. The method was brought up at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee earlier this month, when Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican, suggested it could be used. But to date, no one has publicly demonstrated that it would work. Its unknown if thats the method the government now plans to use, and other techniques may have been suggested as well. Whatever method it is, the government now wants to postpone Tuesdays hearing until it can try it out. It suggests it will file a status report by April 5, when presumably it will reveal the outcome of its efforts. Apple didnt immediately respond to a request for comment. Government lawyers said in the court filing that they contacted Apple to ask its position and that Apples lawyers requested a conference call with the court. Micro Focus hopes to boost its dev-ops chops with the acquisition of application lifecycle management specialist Serena Software. The companies are waiting for approval for the US$540 million deal from competition authorities in the U.S. and Germany, and hope to complete it in May. U.K.-based Micro Focus, long a specialist in enterprise application modernization, has a broader portfolio following its 2009 purchase of another application lifecycle management vendor, Borland, and its $1.2 billion acquisition of Attachmate in 2014. That company had itself added to a range of terminal emulation, legacy modernization and managed file transfer software through a series of acquisitions including Novell, SUSE and NetIQ. Micro Focus chose to integrate under its own brand the Attachmate, Novell, Borland and NetIQ product lines, maintaining Attachmates SUSE Linux portfolio as a separate brand. Acquiring Serena will allow Micro Focus to deploy existing core business applications on a wider variety of platforms, the company said. It will also gain access to Serenas automated release and deployment tools. Serena is also, according to Micro Focus, a pioneer in true DevOps, with processes and solutions bridging application development and operations. Dont expect the U.S. government to back off its push for technology vendors to build encryption workarounds into their products, even though the FBI acknowledged it may have a way to crack into an iPhone used in the San Bernardino, California, mass shooting case. Some lawmakers and President Barack Obamas administration will continue to look for ways to compel tech vendors to help law enforcement agencies defeat encryption and other security controls on smartphones and other devices, security and legal experts said. Even if the FBI can break into the iPhone used by San Bernardino mass shooter Syed Rizwan Farook, it doesnt significantly change the larger discussion about encryption, said Ed Black, president and CEO of trade group the Computer and Communications Industry Association. There is an ongoing effort by our government and every government around the world to want more information. The California mass shooting case, with ties to terrorism, has whet the appetite to get perfection in surveillance, Black added. Late Monday, the FBI and Department of Justice asked a California judge to delay a hearing, scheduled for Tuesday afternoon, on the agencies request for Apple to help them unlock Farooks iPhone. On Sunday, an outside party demonstrated to the FBI a possible method for unlocking the phone, the DOJ said in a court filing. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym has ordered the DOJ to submit a status report on its unlocking efforts by April 5. Also on Monday, there were news reports of two prominent senators distributing long-rumored draft legislation that would require U.S. tech companies to help law enforcement agencies access encrypted communications. While a newly discovered iPhone unlocking method may help the FBI in this case, theres still a broader issue, legal experts said. In early March, Cyrus Vance Jr., district attorney for New York County in New York, told lawmakers his office was in possession of 205 locked smartphones that could be used as evidence in criminal cases. A legal precedent may be more beneficial to the FBI as cracking this device will not provide a long-term solution for future technologies, said Jennifer Dukarski, a technology lawyer with the Butzel Long law firm in Ann Arbor, Michigan. If the cracking method does work, that one intrusion wouldnt necessarily be a solution for every system or future iterations. Law enforcement agencies will continue to push for new rules, even as a successful cracking would also suggest that there isnt a need for such legislation, she added by email. The case, and the potential for cracking into the phone, shows the risks involved with requiring security holes, added Elad Yoran, executive chairman of mobile security vendor KoolSpan. What this demonstrates is that providing strong cyber security and encryption is extremely difficult, even for well-resourced companies like Apple, Yoran said by email. It is impossible to do so with so-called workarounds and backdoors that the FBI seeks. Sonys PlayStation VR headset wont launch until October, but pre-orders are already almost all spoken for. Several retailers started taking orders for the PlayStation VR Launch Bundle on Tuesday at 10 a.m. Eastern. As of this writing, those bundles are sold out through Amazon, Walmart, and Target. Best Buy is still taking pre-orders, as is Gamestop, which requires a $100 deposit according to Polygon. The PlayStation VR Launch Bundle costs $499 and includes the headset, cables, stereo headphones, a demo disc, a PlayStation Camera, two PlayStation Move motion controllers, and a PlayStation VR Worlds disc. Sony also plans to sell a VR core bundle for $399, with just the headset, cables, headphones, and demo disc. Pre-orders for this bundle will begin on March 29 at 10 a.m. Eastern. Keep in mind that neither bundle includes the PlayStation 4 itself, which currently sells for $350. But those who dont already own the console may want to consider holding off; anonymous sources recently told Kotaku that Sony is working on a new version of the PlayStation 4, with 4K support and more processing power for VR. (Sony would not comment on the rumors, of course.) For those who miss this round of pre-orders, Sony says not to despair, as itll offer a second wave this summer. Why this matters: After what seemed like endless delays, VR is finally getting real, with the $600 Oculus Rift set to launch on March 28, while HTCs SteamVR-powered Vive will follow in early April for $800. The fact that Sony is taking pre-orders on its own headset before its rivals hit the market is probably no coincidence, as the three platforms jockey for mindshare from players and developers alike. UPDATE 12:51 p.m. Tuesday, March 22: Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson says there is no specific, credible intelligence of any plots against the United States like those carried out in Brussels. As a precaution, the Homeland Security Department is stepping up security at major U.S. airports and rail and transit stations around the country. Officials from the Ontario International Airport and Metrolink are asking travelers to be vigilant following the terrorist attacks in Brussels on Tuesday, March 22. Security at the airport was not officially changed, but spokesman Harold Johnson said people may notice more patrol cars, officers on foot and police K-9s. The airport does not comment specifically on security deployment, Johnson said, but no immediate threat to the airport existed. No flights were affected by the attacks in Brussels, he said. Mid-morning Tuesday, three unarmed Transportation Security Administration guards stood together, chatting, inside Terminal 2, while a Los Angeles World Airports patrol car sat outside, unoccupied. No armed officers were visible. At 10 a.m., a bomb-sniffing K-9 inspected a large carry on piece of luggage that had been left outside Terminal 2. It turned out to be empty, a Los Angeles World Airports officer said. Minh Vu flew into Ontario from Portland, Oregon on Tuesday with his daughter to spend a week at the Disney parks. If we got more security, its good for the people, but its more (delay) for the people, Vu said. Christine Taylor, of Fontana, was at ONT with her young daughter and niece to pick up a relative. Taylor said even though the Brussels attacks appear to be linked to the arrest there of a Paris bombing suspect, she wouldnt rule out an attack in Ontario. Its tied, but it doesnt separate from what can happen here. Theres always a concern here, especially with what happened in San Bernardino, Taylor said. You have to be more vigilant and aware of your surroundings, she added. Harold Johnson, the Ontario airport spokesman, advised travelers to be aware of their surroundings. Be on high state of looking around noticing anything unusual, he said. Report unattended bags things like that. Metrolink stations across Southern California were expected to have added security officials on-site, said spokesman Scott Johnson. He said Metrolink was working with local law enforcement officials and the Department of Homeland Security to increase police presence on Tuesday. Safety is obviously always a top priority, Scott Johnson said. If a rider sees something suspicious, he or she is asked to report it at 1-800-371-5465 or call 911. Train schedules also remained unaffected by the incident, he said. The Riverside County Sheriffs Department said by email Tuesday that department officials will remain vigilant in light of the attacks. Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of #Brussels and all of those affected by this tragedy #InSolidarity pic.twitter.com/UbjXNzwSWv SB County Sheriff (@sbcountysheriff) March 22, 2016 http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js Our thoughts and prayers are with those affected by the #BrusselsAttack this morning. pic.twitter.com/69Vg0j28jU San Bernardino PD (@SanBernardinoPD) March 22, 2016 http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js We stand with the people of Brussels who today were faced with the inhuman evil of terrorism https://t.co/Iqncmu0txf pic.twitter.com/n4VbG27sPt San Bernardino POA (@TheSBPOA) March 22, 2016 http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js This story is developing. Check back for updates. RELATED Inland officials ask travelers to be vigilant following attacks President Obama pledges support, calls for unity Trump calls Brussels attacks a disaster Presidential candidates weigh in on attack Witnesses describe blood, chaos in Brussels attacks A beetle that has devastated vegetation in sections of the Tijuana River Valley has been found in the Santa Ana River habitat in Riverside. The polyphagous shot hole borer, an invasive species from Asia, attacks more than 40 different kinds of trees. There is no known way to treat the pest. UCR researcher Akif Eskalen has been monitoring the riverbed near Martha McLean-Anza Narrows Park. Six months ago, he said, there was no visible sign of the tiny intruder. There is still no sign of the beetle itself, but two weeks ago, Eskalen found willow and cottonwood trees peppered with the holes the borer makes as it eats its way into trees. Look at this, Eskalen said, pointing to a tree trunk with dark tear-drop spots on it, willow, willow, willow, all infested. This is a forest and almost all of them are infested. We have a very big problem and this problem is spreading very fast. Eskalen, a plant pathology professor, said the riparian habitat along the river is serving as a corridor through which the beetle is entering the Riverside area. I knew this was a vulnerable area, he said. I knew the southern part of the river was infested in Orange County. How fast that infestation will move is unknown. Scientists are still in the dark about much of the beetles habits since it lives out of sight nearly its entirely life. In fact, generations of beetles breed inside the trees they inhabit, never seeing the light of day. But the scope of the infestation is troubling to Eskalen. In the Tijuana River Valley, near San Diego, he said, the beetle is estimated to have attacked 140,000 trees, 500 of which have died. A similar scenario is possible here, he said. The sesame-seed-sized beetle doesnt actually kill the host tree itself, its food does. When the beetle bores into the heart of the tree, it brings its lunch with it. On its body is the Fusarium fungus, and possibly two other fungi. The fungi grow inside the tree, serving as a food source for the bug, but also, eventually, cutting off the trees water transport system and killing the tree. The process takes two to three years. Eskalen said the challenge in combating the beetle is getting to it. Topical chemicals wont reach the pests inside and, as of yet, no systemic pesticides which can either be injected or taken up by the roots have been approved. One such chemical is close to being approved for the market, Eskalen said, but it is specific to avocado trees. Avocado trees are a favorite of the beetle. It was the infestation of avocado groves that first alerted scientists and pest-management experts in 2012 when the bug was first reported in California. As soon as I found this, I went to the Avocado Commission, Eskalen said, seeking funding to face down the threat. Since then, we have been chasing this beetle. Every week were learning something new about it. That includes what it likes to eat, how far it will fly and what might slow it down. While Eskalen and his fellow researchers UCR entomologist Richard Stouthamer and UC Santa Cruz grad student Shannon Lynch have found some promising pesticides, he believes fighting the beetle with biological controls is the only effective way to handle it. The pest has also been found in De Anza Park in Ontario. This beetle is not going anywhere, he said. From now on we are going to have live with (it). We cannot eradicate this beetle. Eskalen said he and Stouthamer began field-testing a biological agent two weeks ago, a bacteria that kills the Fusarium fungus. The two men will make their fifth trip to Asia this week, visiting Taiwan where they are working with forest service scientists to identify other possible biological controls. So far, a wasp that attacks the beetle has been identified, but it has not been approved for release into the Southern California environment. Already, the beetle is going beyond the river area. Eskalen pointed out several sycamore trees in the park that were littered with pockmarks from the beetle. Hes seeking more funding to continue trying to find a solution. This is a threat throughout Southern California, he said. We need to do more research. Contact the writer: mmuckenfuss@pressenterprise.com or 951-368-9595 4 PM UPDATE A Belgian security official says the death toll has risen to 34 in attacks on the Brussels airport and a subway station. The official did not specify how many people were killed and wounded at each site. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because precise numbers were expected to be announced early Wednesday. Earlier, the government had reported 20 dead at the Maelbeek metro station, in the heart of the European Unions capital, and 11 dead at the airport, and scores of injured. PREVIOUS COVERAGE: Bombs exploded Tuesday at the Brussels airport and in the citys subway, killing at least 31 people and wounding dozens, as a European capital was again locked down amid heightened security threats. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks. The two airport blasts, at least one of them blamed on a suicide bomber, left behind a chaotic scene of splattered blood in the departure lounge as windows were blown out, ceilings collapsed and travelers streamed out of the smoky building. About an hour later, another bomb exploded on a rush-hour subway train near the European Union headquarters. Terrified passengers had to evacuate through darkened tunnels to safety. What we feared has happened, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said. In this time of tragedy, this black moment for our country, I appeal to everyone to remain calm but also to show solidarity. Belgium raised its terror alert to the highest level, diverting planes and trains and ordering people to stay where they were for most of the workday. Authorities also released a photo taken from closed-circuit TV of three men pushing luggage carts, saying two of them apparently were the suicide bombers and that the third dressed in a light-colored coat, black hat and glasses was at large. They urged the public to contact them if they recognized him. Police later conducted raids in Brussels searching for one of the suspects, and found a nail-filled bomb, chemical products and an Islamic State flag in the search of a house in the Schaerbeek neighborhood, the state prosecutors office said in a statement. Airports across Europe and in the New York area tightened security. We are at war, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said after a crisis meeting in Paris. We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war. Added French President Francois Hollande: Terrorists struck Brussels, but it was Europe that was targeted, and it is all the world which is concerned by this. European security officials have been bracing for a major attack for weeks and warned that the Islamic State group was actively preparing to strike. The arrest Friday of Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, heightened those fears, as investigators said many more people were involved than originally thought and that some are still on the loose. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the Brussels attacks, saying in a post on the groups Amaq news agency that its extremists opened fire in the airport and several of them detonated suicide belts. It said another suicide attacker struck in the subway. The post claimed the attack was in response to Belgiums support of the international coalition arrayed against the group. Authorities found and neutralized a third bomb at the airport once the chaos after the two initial blasts had eased, said Florence Muls, a spokeswoman for the airport told The Associated Press. Bomb squads also detonated suspicious objects found in at least two locations elsewhere in the capital, but neither contained explosives, authorities said. Michel said there was no immediate evidence linking the attacks with Abdeslam. After his arrest, Abdeslam told authorities he had created a new network and was planning new attacks. U.S. President Barack Obama pledged to do whatever is necessary to help Belgian authorities seek justice. We stand in solidarity with them in condemning these outrageous attacks against innocent people, Obama said in Havana, where he was closing a three-day visit. Western Europe has lived for decades under the threat of violence from homegrown nationalist and revolutionary movements. Extremists from North Africa and the Middle East have attacked civilian targets without warning, ranging from Frances 1960s war in Algeria through Libyas 1988 downing of an airline over Scotland to the 2004-05 attacks on the public transportation systems of London and Madrid. Certain neighborhoods in Brussels, like the Molenbeek quarter, have bred extremists and supplied foreign fighters. Plotters linked to the Paris attacks and others have either moved through or lived in parts of the city. Tuesdays explosions at the airport in the Brussels suburb of Zaventem came shortly after 8 a.m., one of its busiest periods when thousands of people were inside. Belgian Health Minister Maggie de Block said 11 people were killed and 81 wounded. Eleven people had serious injuries, Marc Decramer of the Gasthuisberg hospital in Leuven told broadcaster VTM. The nails apparently came from one of the bombs. Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, told BFM television that the second, louder explosion brought down ceilings and ruptured pipes, mixing water with victims blood. It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed, he said. There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere. We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene, he said. Video from moments after the blasts showed travelers huddled next to check-in counters and lying near luggage and trolleys as dust and the cries of the wounded filled the air. Dazed people stumbled from the scene, some with clothes and shoes blown off. Anthony Deloos, an airport worker for Swissport, which handles check-in and baggage services, said the first explosion took place near the counters where customers pay for overweight bags. He and a colleague said the second blast hit near a Starbucks cafe. I jumped into a luggage chute to be safe, Deloos said. The subway bombing came after 9 a.m., killing 20 people and wounding more than 100, Mayor Yvan Majeur said. The metro was leaving Maelbeek station for Schuman when there was a really loud explosion, said Alexandre Brans, 32, wiping blood from his face. It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the metro. Near the entrance to the station, rescue workers set up a makeshift medical treatment center in a pub. Dazed and shocked morning commuters streamed from the metro entrances as police tried to set up a security cordon. The airport was ordered closed for the rest of the day and CEO Arnaud Feist said the facility would be closed at least through Wednesday. About 600 flights in or out of Brussels were diverted or canceled, Muls said. The metro also was ordered closed as the city was locked down. By the end of the workday, city officials said residents could begin moving around on the streets of the capital and train stations were reopening. But Peter Mertens of the Belgian crisis center said the threat of more attacks is still real and serious. At least one and possibly two Kalashnikovs were found in the departure lounge at the airport, according to a European security official in contact with a Belgian police official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the ongoing investigation. It was not immediately clear whether the firearms were used in the attacks. Travelers fled the airport as quickly as they could. In video shown on Frances i-Tele television, men, women and children dashed from the terminal in different directions. Security officers patrolled a hall with blown-out paneling and ceiling panels covering the floor. Marc Noel, 63, was about to board a Delta flight to Atlanta, to return to his home in Raleigh, North Carolina. A Belgian native, Noel said he was in an airport shop buying automotive magazines when the first blast struck about 50 yards away. People were crying, shouting children. It was a horrible experience, he said, adding that his decision to shop might have saved his life. I would probably have been in that place when the bomb went off. Mormon church officials say three missionaries from Utah were seriously injured in the attack. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued a statement Tuesday identifying them as 66-year-old Richard Norby of Lehi, 20-year-old Joseph Empey of Santa Clara and 19-year-old Mason Wells of Sandy. They were near the explosion when it occurred and have been hospitalized. The three men were serving in Paris and were at the airport with a fourth missionary who was on her way to an assignment in Ohio. UPDATE: President Barack Obama is pledging that the U.S. will do whatever is necessary to help Belgium bring to justice the perpetrators of terrorist attacks that killed more than two dozen people at the airport and a subway station. He says the U.S. stands in solidarity with Belgium in condemning these outrageous attacks against innocent people. Belgian officials say 31 people were killed Tuesday and 187 wounded in two explosions at the Belgium airport and one at a city subway station. Obama says the attacks are another reminder that the world must unite against the scourge of terrorism. ORIGINAL STORY President Barack Obama, traveling in Cuba, was briefed Tuesday morning on the Brussels attacks that killed dozens of people. The White House said the U.S. was in contact with Belgian officials about the explosions at the Brussels airport and subway system. Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement that the U.S. was working to determine the status of all American citizens in Brussels. The embassy there issued a statement telling Americans to stay where they are and take the appropriate steps to bolster your personal security. At least one of the attacks was believed to be caused by a suicide bomber, and Belgium raised its terror alert to its highest level. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the ranking member of the House intelligence committee, said the attacks bear all the hallmarks of an Islamic State group coordinated or inspired attack. His staff said he received a preliminary briefing Tuesday from U.S. officials. Schiff says its unclear if encrypted communications played a role in the attacks but noted that the Brussels attacks occurred despite the city being under constant vigilance. BRUSSELS ATTACK: California senator Barbara Boxer releases statement The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said it was closely monitoring the unfolding events and would not hesitate to adjust our security posture, as appropriate, to protect the American people. DHS reiterated that members of the public should report any suspicious activity in their communities to law enforcement authorities. Attorney General Loretta Lynch was also briefed on the attacks, Justice Department officials in Washington said. They said the Justice Department and the FBI was coordinating with other U.S. government agencies, as well as with Belgian counterparts. Last week U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Homeland Security officials constantly monitor world events and evaluate whether there is a need to either publicly raise the nations security posture or issue another bulletin via the governments National Terror Advisory System. Such a bulletin was issued in December advising the public that federal law enforcement was concerned about the possibility of homegrown violent extremists and terrorist-inspired individuals. Caldwell and Associated Press writer Tami Abdollah contributed reporting from Washington. Elected officials in California expressed sorrow and solidarity with the Belgian people following the terrorist attacks in Brussels. California stands with the people of Belgium on this difficult day and we extend our prayers and condolences to all of those impacted by this latest round of terrorist assault, California Gov. Jerry Brown said in an emailed statement. U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer, a senior member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, issued the following statement: My thoughts and prayers are with the families who lost loved ones in these horrific attacks and all of the injured. We stand with the people of Brussels and all of Europe as we join together to defeat these cowardly and barbaric terrorists. Vice Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee Dianne Feinstein released the following statement on the terrorist attacks: This morning we woke to the devastating news of yet another horrific terrorist attack that claimed dozens of innocent lives in Brussels. My thoughts are with the victims, their families and all the Belgian people, and Im wishing a speedy recovery for those wounded. Today, as on all days, the United States stands in solidarity with Belgium and all our allies in the global fight against terror. As we gather the facts of the blasts at Zaventem airport and near Maelbeek metro station, its clear me that terrorists remain hell-bent on attacking the West and inflicting mass carnage on innocent civilians. I refuse to accept this as the new normal. We must use all the tools at our disposal to fight back. The way to prevent attacks like this is to develop good intelligence and always be vigilant. We can and must root out terrorist organizations like ISIL, interrupt plots before they are executed and protect innocent civilians. San Bernardino County Sheriff John McMahon also commented on the attacks in a statement. Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Brussels and all of those affected by this tragedy. The continued attacks on the innocent people of civilized countries, and law enforcement, reinforces the need to never let our guard down. Remain vigilant and always remember, If you see something, say something. Any and all information that is perceived as a possible threat, is investigated fully to ensure the safety of our residents, McMahon said. The San Bernardino County Sheriffs Department also released a statement. The San Bernardino County Sheriffs Department continues to remain vigilant. Our investigators work closely with all surrounding law enforcement agencies to include state and federal levels. Any and all information that is perceived as a possible threat, is investigated fully to ensure the safety of our residents. I dont think that publicizing specific information regarding security measures will benefit public safety. We continue to encourage citizens to remain vigilant and if they see something, say something. Others took to Twitter to comment on the attacks: Horrified by this mornings attack on Brussels. My heart is with the people of Belgium. We must stand united to rid the world of this evil. Mark Takano (@RepMarkTakano) March 22, 2016 http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js Those who attacked Brussels should know 1 thing: the worlds resolve to destroy them is stronger than their hate. #UnitedWeStand MM Melissa Melendez (@asmMelendez) March 22, 2016 http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js Shocked & saddened to learn of the senseless terror attacks in #Brussels. My thoughts are w/ the victims & their families #StandWithBrussels Senator Richard Roth (@GeneralRoth) March 22, 2016 http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js My heart goes out to victims & their loved ones in #Brussels. We stand w/ you in the fight against terror & seeking justice for those lost. Pete Aguilar (@RepPeteAguilar) March 22, 2016 http://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js RELATED Inland officials ask travelers to be vigilant following attacks President Obama pledges support, calls for unity Trump calls Brussels attacks a disaster Presidential candidates weigh in on attack Witnesses describe blood, chaos in Brussels attacks William Bill Link, who helped draft the new city of Eastvales first general plan and zoning code as a member of the Planning Commission and then brought that expertise to the City Council, announced he is resigning. Although he expects his resignation to be official by then, Link said he plans to attend the March 23 meeting to address council members and the audience. Im kind of sad but the city is headed in the right direction, Link said in a telephone interview Monday, March 21. Link, 66, said he and his wife, Sharyn, plan to embark on a nationwide odyssey in a 45-foot motorhome when she retires in January 2017. Sharyn Link is executive director of the Eastvale Community Foundation, a nonprofit organization created by the City Council, to raise money for programs and scholarships that benefit city residents. The couple listed their Eastvale home for sale on Feb. 29, expecting it to sit on the market for months before it sold. It actually sold two days later and escrow closed on March 18, Link said. Who would have known? he said. The couple moved into an Extended Stay America over the weekend. It is outside of the city limits. The Links moved to Eastvale in 2008. Bill Link, who was a retired building contractor and developer, was appointed to the first Eastvale Planning Commission. On Jan. 8, 2014, Link was appointed to serve the remaining term of former Councilwoman Kelly Howell, who had resigned. He was elected to a full four-year term in November 2014. Mayor Ike Bootsma said Links departure would be a loss for the ccouncil. Bill was a retired developer and he knew how thing worked, Bootsma said. He brought a lot of insight to the City Council. City Manager Michele Nissen agreed. He was an extremely hard worker, very dedicated to the city and had an amazing attention to detail, Nissen said. Hes left some very big shoes to fill. City attorney John Cavanaugh said council members have the option of appointing a replacement or calling a special election within 60 days of the vacancy. Under Assembly Bill 952, which went into effect in January, if the vacancy occurs in the first half of the term and at least 130 days before the next general election, the person appointed holds office until the next general election, which is Nov. 8. Contact the writer: 951-368-9647 or sstokley@pressenterprise.com San Bernardino County will hire temporary employees because many public and environmental health workers are still on leave recovering from the Dec. 2 terror attack. On Tuesday, March 22, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors in a 3-0 vote unanimously approved an agreement for up to $1.5 million with the California Association of Environmental Health Administrators to provide up to 30 temporary employees to perform a variety of professional environmental health activities. The contract was approved with no discussion. Supervisors Janice Rutherford and Robert Lovingood were absent. The association is the legislative arm of the California Conference of Directors of Environmental Health, whose members are environmental health directors from the 58 counties in the state, a county report stated. The contract would run from March 22 through Feb. 28, 2017. County spokesman David Wert said the county needs help filling environmental health specialists who conduct public health inspections. The terror attack killed 14 and injured 22 others. A number of employees of the County Public Health Department and its Environmental Health Services Division were victims or co-workers of victims of the attack, the report said. Those divisions, especially the Environmental Health Services Division, have been severely impacted, the report stated. Many of the divisions employees are still on extended leaves of absence, the report states. After the shooting, the division has been run with help from surrounding agencies, the report stated. That arrangement has put an unfair burden on the partners and affected the countys long-term staffing plans, the report stated. Through this contract, the county will tap into the associations trained membership many of them retired to provide longer term assistance than neighboring counties have been able to spare from their own staffs, Wert said. Tuesdays meeting began with a moment of silence in the wake of the terror attack in Brussels. We know what its like to go through these difficult and trying times, Supervisor James Ramos, the boards chair, said at the beginning of the meeting. Ramos adjourned the meeting saying the Brussels terror attack serves as a warning. Its no longer happening in other parts of the world, its affecting us all. So lets be vigilant as we go out there and conduct our daily lives, Ramos said. Complete coverage of the San Bernardino shooting, aftermath The chief of the FBIs Los Angeles office says it will take at least two weeks to know whether an alternate method will unlock an encrypted iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino attackers. Assistant Director in Charge David Bowdich said thats why the government asked to cancel a court hearing that had been set in the matter Tuesday. Now the government will be testing whether the alternate method will unlock the phone without compromising its data. They will have to file a status report on the testing by April 5. The hearing that was canceled was centered on the FBIs demand for Apple to help unlock the iPhone used by one of the shooters in the Dec. 2 San Bernardino terror attack. Bowdich says the government was very ready to argue its points at the hearing when a third party came emerged with a possible alternate method. He says the government feels that the alternate method is a good shot. Apple attorneys said that they have no idea who the government is working with and that they had not been made aware during the litigation that the FBI still was seeking other parties to find ways to enter the device. The government disclosed the development Monday afternoon in a motion filed with U.S. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym. She vacated a much-anticipated hearing Tuesday in federal court in Riverside in a case that put the tech company and the government at odds over issues of privacy, encryption of electronic devices and national security. Pym also stayed her Feb. 16 order for Apple engineers to create software to help the FBI get to the iPhones data. Apple attorneys said the stay on the order had been granted because one of the governments chief arguments that only Apple could devise the software to get into the device had been undercut by the disclosure Monday that another party might be able to do it. Pym ordered the government to file a status update on the hacking work by April 5 The Justice Department wants to see if there is any useful data on the iPhone 5c that San Bernardino County issued to health inspector Syed Rizwan Farook, who with his wife, Tashfeen Malik, attacked a gathering of Farooks co-workers Dec. 2 at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino. The shooting left 14 dead and 22 wounded. Farook and Malik died a few hours later in a shootout with police. The phone was recovered Dec. 3 in a warrant search of Farooks mothers car, the government said in the papers it filed Monday. Without knowing the pass code Farook set for the iPhone, the FBI obtained the order from Pym for Apple to create the software. Agents said the iPhone, with Apples iOS9 operating system, is programmed to shut down after 10 failed attempts at the pass code. The software sought by the FBI would allow it to bypass that shutdown and feed pass code combinations into the device until it gets the right one. Apple attorneys said someone claiming they can get into the phone proves what Apple has been saying about hacking and device vulnerability, that the work to keep data safe is a continuing fight with hackers worldwide and that developments are constantly underway to counter their activities. UPDATE (Tuesday, March 22): County to hire temp environmental health workers San Bernardino County is looking to hire temporary employees because many public and environmental health workers are still on leave recovering from the Dec. 2 terror attack. On Tuesday, March 22, the San Bernardino County Board of Supervisors will consider an agreement for up to $1.5 million with the California Association of Environmental Health Administrators to provide up to 30 temporary employees to perform a variety of professional environmental health activities. The association is the legislative arm of the California Conference of Directors of Environmental Health, whose members are environmental health directors from the 58 counties in the state, a county report stated. The contract would run from March 22 through Feb. 28, 2017. The terror attack killed 14 and injured 22 others. A number of employees of the County Public Health Department and its Environmental Health Services Division were victims or co-workers of victims of the attack, the report said. Those divisions, especially the Environmental Health Services Division, have been severely impacted, the report stated. Many of the divisions employees are still on extended leaves of absence, the report states. After the shooting, the division has been run with help from surrounding agencies, the report stated. That arrangement has put an unfair burden on the partners and affected the countys long-term staffing plans, the report stated. Contact the writer: 951- 368-9462 or amolina@pressenterprise.com Inland Islamic leaders on Tuesday, March 22, rejected calls from Republic presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ted Cruz to monitor mosques in the U.S. for terrorist activity, with one declaring We are as American as Donald Trump. The candidates made the statements in response to the deadly terrorist attacks in Brussels, Belgium, on Tuesday morning. The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the terror organization that authorities believe inspired, but not directed, Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik to kill 14 people and wound 22 others on Dec. 2 in San Bernardino, claimed responsibility for the Brussels bombings. Businessman Trump, in an interview with Fox Business Networks Mornings with Maria Bartiromo, said: We need surveillance. You need to deal with the mosques, whether you like it or not. We have to be smart, we have to be vigilant. I mean these attacks arent done by Swedish people. We have to watch very closely whats going on. Cruz, a senator from Texas, released a statement with a call to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods. We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized. Cruz also told Fox News: We are at war with ISIS, with radical Islamic terrorists who have declared jihad on Europe, declared jihad on America. They intend to carry out more and more and more of these terror attacks, whether Paris, whether San Bernardino, whether Brussels. Azmi Hason, manager of the Islamic Society of Corona-Norco, condemned the Brussels attack and said there was no justification for putting mosques under surveillance. We are a very peaceful people. We are as American as Donald Trump, he said. Our mosques are always open to anyone who wants to come in. We reach out to the police department and the FBI, become part of us. Listen to us. Sit down with us. There is nothing going on (illegal) in the mosque. Hason added: When politics comes, the bigotry shows up. Mahmoud Harmoush,imam of the Islamic Center of Temecula Valley, said monitoring mosques in the U.S. because of an attack on another continent would amount to profiling. It would be a gross mistake to burden the Muslim community with somebody elses crime, Harmoush said. If somebody commits a crime in Africa, how is it my fault here if I am an African-American? There should be a good reason to follow or observe Muslims, he said. If there is not, then the Muslim community is feeling like they are the victims, Harmoush said. Like Hason, Harmoush said he believes politics played a role in the comments of Trump and Cruz. I think the presidential candidates have little understanding of the citizens of this country. Its the political season, so everyone is trying to score some points, Harmoush said. Could there be a good reason to monitor mosques? Mohammad Hossain,imam of the Islamic Center of Redlands, said yes, under certain circumstances. Surveillance could be good for both sides, he said. Anyone who would attack the mosques, and anyone who could come from the mosques doing suspicious activities. He added: We would not be supportive of any kind of violence. That is not Islamic law. Those people (attackers) are violent outside Islam. Islam never says go kill people. Hossain said that he believes mosques are already under surveillance. He couldnt say by whom, however. NBA Hall of Famer Dikembe Mutombo was at the Brussels airport during a deadly terrorist attack early Tuesday. Mutombo posted two messages on his Facebook page to let everyone know he was not injured. The Atlanta Hawks confirmed that he was in Belgium when the terrorists struck at both the airport and on a subway, killing at least 31 people and wounding scores. Mutombo posted one photo showing people walking around outside the airport, accompanied by the message, God is good. I am in Brussels Airport with this craziness. I am fine. He followed with a selfie and another message, Thank you everyone. I am safe here. God is good. The 49-year-old Mutombo is a native of the Congo who now lives in Atlanta. The eight-time All-Star retired in 2009. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton says the United States must stand in solidarity with European allies after the deadly bombing attacks in Brussels. Belgian officials say 31 people were killed Tuesday and 187 wounded in two explosions at the Belgium airport and one at a city subway station. The former secretary of state told NBC News that the U.S. must intensify efforts to prevent terrorism in conjunction with its allies. Weve got to be absolutely strong and smart and steady in how we respond, she says. But Clinton also said that it is unrealistic to say that the United States can completely shut its borders. Clinton is campaigning in Washington state ahead of the primaries there tonight. BELGIUM: Brussels attacks and isolationism of Donald Trump Republican presidential hopeful Ted Cruz said Tuesday that radical Islam is at war with us, following the attacks on the Brussels metro and airport. The Texas senator took to Twitter Tuesday to attack President Barack Obamas approach to tackling extremism, writing that for over seven years, we have had a president who refuses to acknowledge this reality. Cruz declared in his final tweet that such an approach ends on January 20, 2017, when I am sworn in as president. Gov. John Kasich, R-Ohio, responded quickly to the terrorist attack in Brussels, expressing solidarity with the people of Belgium but pointedly not mentioning or blaming Islam. Along with every American, I am sickened by the pictures of the carnage, by the injuries and by the loss of life, said Kasich in a statement sent to reporters. The wave of terror that has been unleashed in Europe and elsewhere around the world are attacks against our very way of life and against the democratic values upon which our political systems have been built. We and our allies must rededicate ourselves to these values of freedom and human rights. We must utterly reject the use of deadly acts of terror. We must also redouble our efforts with our allies to identify, root out and destroy the perpetrators of such acts of evil. We must strengthen our alliances as our way of life and the international system that has been built on our common values since the end of the Second World War comes under challenge from these and other actors of evil. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders issued a similar statement: Todays attack is a brutal reminder that the international community must come together to destroy ISIS. This type of barbarism cannot be allowed to continue. RELATED Inland officials ask travelers to be vigilant following attacks President Obama pledges support, calls for unity Trump calls Brussels attacks a disaster Witnesses describe blood, chaos in Brussels attacks The body of U.S. Marine Staff Sgt. Louis F. Cardin of Temecula will be buried at Riverside National Cemetery, but his family hasnt decided yet how to accommodate members of the public who want to pay their last respects. The public verses private services will be decided later, said Fred Cardin, Louis Cardins father, in an email Tuesday, March 22, to The Press-Enterprise. Cardin, 27, was killed Saturday in a rocket attack on an Iraqi base that was attributed to the Islamic State. His body was flown to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware on Monday. His remains are expected to be turned over to his family and then flown to California sometime this week. His parents have expressed concerns about the security of a public ceremony in the wake of the attacks in San Bernardino which were carried out by terrorists who reportedly sympathized with the Islamic State, also known as ISIS and Tuesdays bombings in Brussels, which appear to have been linked to the arrest of a man suspected of being involved with last years terror attacks in France. The family picked Riverside National Cemetery, in part, because one of Cardins grandfathers is buried there. Cardin also is a Riverside native, born in Riverside Community Hospital in 1988. Cardin enlisted with the Marines shortly after graduating from Temeculas Chaparral High School in 2006. He served three tours in Afghanistan in addition to his recent tour in Iraq and was aiming for at least a 20-year career, according to his brother, Vince Cardin. I had told him, if youre enjoying it, why not? recalled Vince Cardin, who served in the U.S. Army shortly after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Another brother, Danny Cardin, said earlier this week that he is still wrapping his head around the finality of his brothers death. In one of the last times they spoke, Danny Cardin said the siblings talked about getting their mother, Mary Pat, a special ring for her upcoming birthday that featured all of her childrens birthstones. Its a hard thing. It comes in waves, he said. Ive never dealt with death like this. Louis Cardin would return to his mothers home in San Jacinto for weeks at a time between deployments but he was always prepping for his next trip. Family members and friends said he seemed more comfortable while serving and he had recently secured a promotion that allowed him to be a mentor to younger Marines, which had long been one of his goals. The terror attacks at Brussels-Zaventem international airport and the Maelbeek subway stationin Brussels, Belgium that claimed at least 31 lives and injured a reported 30 more has resulted in heightened security on Metro lines including the Red Line subway, a sheriffs Transit Services Bureau spokesman said. Metro announced in a news statement that they will be increasing security at Union Station, Rosa Parks station and 7th/Metro said. There is no known tangible threat to any transit system in Los Angeles, Transit Services Bureau spokesman Ramon Montenegro told City News Service. Right now, we are monitoring the situation in Brussels and maintaining close contact and communications with our county Emergency Operations Center, Homeland Security and LA Metro, Montenegro said. Im certain that we will increase security in the aftermath of these attacks on all transit lines, Montenegro said. We also have special security teams that we will likely deploy later today. Montenegro said the security patrols include bomb-sniffing dogs that are regularly deployed along the Red Line subway route. Our hearts go out to the people of Brussels and to the first responders, he said. We just pray that no one else gets hurt there. Gen. Joseph Dunford says eight Marines were injured in the Islamic State attack at a fire base in Iraq Saturday that killed one U.S. service member, who was from Temecula. Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, tells the House Armed Services Committee that the U.S. has not compromised security as it deploys forces to Iraq. He says President Barack Obama has approved any requests that have reached his desk. The Pentagon previously said several Marines were injured, including some that were evacuated for treatment. Others were able to immediately return to duty. Marine Staff Sgt. Louis F. Cardin of Temecula, California, was killed by rocket fire at Fire Base Bell on Saturday. It is the first such base established by the U.S. since it returned forces to Iraq in 2014. RELATED TEMECULA: Body of Marine lands at Dover Air Force Base TEMECULA: President Obama pays tribute to fallen Marine Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump says the city of Brussels is a total disaster and said hes warned about such attacks taking place. Speaking to Fox News Tuesday, as developments were still unfolding in Belgium, Trump said Brussels was a beautiful city, a beautiful place with zero crime, and now its a disaster city. Trump has called for a temporary ban on Muslims coming to the United States following terror attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California. He previously called Brussels a hellhole. RELATED Inland officials ask travelers to be vigilant following attacks President Obama pledges support, calls for unity Presidential candidates weigh in on attack Witnesses describe blood, chaos in Brussels attacks Last nights episode of Q&A might have been perfectly (and accidentally) timed with Malcolm Turnbulls threat of a double dissolution, but that doesnt mean important topics like the much-maligned Safe Schools program wouldnt be discussed. After all, Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews one of Safe Schools most staunch defendants was on the panel, as was feminist Clementine Ford, another strong and vocal supporter. It was VIC student Carter Smith who brought the subject to the forefront: SAFE SCHOOLS SAFE SCHOOLSAs a Queer student with many gender and sexually diverse friends, I can say that despite what people are saying, nothing in the safe schools program is radical theory. Kids and students need to be taught that it is okay not to fit into the accepted norm early, yet these changes and attacks on the Safe schools program are trying to take that away. Ive always been proud to see Mr Andrews standing up for the LGBTI community and I would like to know; will he continue this fight, even in the face of backlash and what will he do to ensure that students are kept safe and educated?What do you think? Posted by Q&A on Monday, 21 March 2016 Im a queer student, and as thus have many queer friends, sexually and gender, he said. The notion that the Safe Schools program is radical gender theory is absolutely ridiculous. And what Clementine said earlier about young queer people having a higher rate of suicide and mental health is absolutely true, trust me. I see it. Im very proud to see my premier standing up for the rights of LGBT people and standing up for the Safe Schools program, and I just want to know that he will continue to fight for that in the face of adversity and what he will do to ensure that people are educated on these issues and also the kids are kept safe. Andrews reaffirmed his vow to protect the Safe Schools program, which was to be expected. Thats not to lessen his response it was a damn good one, and geez it would be nice if other premiers took point from him but its Liberal MP Josh Frydenberg we want to get to, as its his government thats messing around with this very vital program, anti-bullying program. He gave some pansy answer about the recent changes to the program (which will see it gutted and then only offered in secondary schools) as wise and necessary. Carter smacked that weak excuse right back. I think the problem is politicians are using young, innocent, in-pain children as political bullets, he said. That is unacceptable. Kids are being hurt when they hear this entire debate about, Oh, well, no we cant really talk about that, its not really safe. It is still creating this idea that they are different, they are wrong, that they are not accepted. That is driving kids to hurt themselves, that is driving kids to kill themselves. I know no one wants that, so its ridiculous that this debate has to keep going on. I actually do believe that it should be mandatory in schools because most kids arent bigoted, no-one is born bigoted, they learn bigotry it is detrimental to kids health, so why does this have to continue? Why does the government have to push back? This ignited a head-to-head between Andrews and Frydenberg, with the latter definitely coming off worse. Why would you tamper with something that is actually saving lives, asked Andrews. I would ask Daniel Andrews, before he rushes out and goes beyond even what the Safe Schools coalition itself has asked for because it said this program should be optional youre now saying it should be mandatory and youve gone much further than theyve even asked for, said Frydenberg. Having introduced it back in 2010, we are not rushing mate, countered Andrews. We have been on this for a long time because it works. And just in case Frydenberg wasnt *quite* far enough up shit creek, he then tried to accuse Andrews of being outrageous. But what problems do you have with getting more parental engagement? he said. I actually think, Daniel, it was completely outrageous of you to go out and criticise To which Andrew cut in with: I created the outrage here? NO YOU BLOODY WELL DID NOT. The eye-rolling / applause was 100% justified. Booyah. If you need to talk to someone, please call BeyondBlue on 1300 22 4636 or the suicide helpline Lifeline on 13 11 14. Source / Photo: ABC. Carpe Diem, Robin Williams once told us. Seize the day. We are all food for worms. You could argue that most of us forgo seizing the day for merely surviving it and argue that point well but today that description could not be applied to a gentlemen and Rihanna fan by the name of Terah Jay, who not just seized the day but fucking made it his bitch. Terah found himself front-row of RiRis Anti World Tour in Cincinnati, Ohio over the weekend, and when she handed him the mix mid-song which, yknow, every single artist does, usually to cringe results he let his 10/10 vocal chords rip and straight-up stole the show. Rihannas WTF face upon hearing them belt out FourFiveSeconds is nothing short of priceless. Watch Rihannas reaction when she allowed lucky @terahjay to sing #FourFiveSeconds in Cincinnati this Saturday. #ANTIWorldTour ?? A video posted by Rihanna Daily (@rihannadaily) on Mar 19, 2016 at 9:10pm PDT THAT FACE. That is the contorted face of shock and wonderment. That is the face of someone who just got her sold-out show stolen from her and aint even mad. Heres ya reaction gif: Rihanna came back later for seconds: You ready? they both snatched me LAWD pic.twitter.com/U0ECKnW6Z6 pose bitch (@classifiedhoe) March 20, 2016 Slay. Goddamn slay. Source / Photo: Instagram. JP Morgan is the seventh foreign sponsored fund house to exit the Indian asset management business in the last three years. Mumbai: JP Morgan Asset Management would sell its onshore India-based mutual funds business, including its fund of funds (funds investing overseas), to Edelweiss Asset Management. JP Morgan is the seventh foreign sponsored fund house to exit the Indian asset management business in the last three years. The total asset managed by JP Morgan is four times higher than the assets managed by Edelweiss AMC. Though the companies did not reveal the deal size, citing confidentiality, market sources said the JP Morgan netted Rs 110 crore from the deal. As of December 31, 2015, JP Morgans asset under management (AUM) stood at Rs 7,081 crores while that of Edelweiss AMC stood at Rs 1,676 crore. Post acquisition, the assets under management (AUM) of the combined entity would be Rs 8,757 crore. This move will strengthen Edelweiss Groups global asset management businesses, which include the groups existing mutual fund business, credit alternative funds, offshore funds and equity funds. Along with the schemes, Edelweiss said it is committed to absorbing majority of JP Morgan MF staff ensuring business continuity as well as a platform for enhan-ced growth. Most of the foreign sponsored fund house have their own business dynamics and may not be fitting well into their overall game plan. Lot of these funds have found it difficult to scale up their assets and distribution channels. They will stay in the business only if they foresee strong growth in AUM, said Dhirendra Kumar, chief executive officer, Value Researchonline, a mutual fund tracking firm. Vroman.jpg Brian Matthew Vroman is escorted by Lycoming County Deputy Sheriff Brian Rockwell into the office of District Judge Gary A. Whitman March 4 where he waived his preliminary hearing on charges stemming from an armed home invasion in the Montoursville area. WILLIAMSPORT -- The murder of a Montoursville-area woman who had been missing since late January could affect the guilty plea plans of one of the men who is accused of breaking into her parents' home, robbing them and setting the bi-level on fire. Brian Matthew Vroman, 27, of Canton, is scheduled to plead guilty May 5, but his attorney, Robert Cronin, said Monday the determination that Michelle Lynn Inch was murdered could affect that. Any plea negotiations likely would have involved Inch's disappearance, which no longer is an issue, he said An autopsy Monday determined Inch bled to death from a shotgun wound to the right arm. She also suffered stab wounds and blunt force trauma to the torso, Bradford County Coroner Thomas M. Carman said. Her partially decomposed body, identified through dental records, was discovered about 6:30 p.m. Friday by a passerby along Schrader Creek, southwest of Monroeton. Inch, 32, was last seen Jan. 26 in her car with her boyfriend, Michael James Houseweart, 27, in Canton. He had a shotgun, and they told others they were going target shooting, police said. State police search warrant affidavits state two shotguns were recovered, including one from the residence in Canton where Houseweart was living. Investigators would not say if they considered Houseweart a person of interest in his girlfriend's death. Houseweart is facing the same 43 counts as Vroman in the home invasion case. An arrest affidavit states he admitted the two broke into the home of Gary and Linda Inch on Sechler Drive northeast of Montoursville early on Jan. 27 and restrained them with duct tape. Lycoming County Chief Public Defender William J. Miele, who represents Houseweart, said his client has no plans to plead guilty at this time. There have been no discussions with the defense attorneys about guilty pleas, Lycoming County District Attorney Eric R. Linhardt said. But he acknowledged Vroman has indicated he plans to plead. Linhardt said he already has talked with and anticipates working closely with Bradford County District Attorney Daniel Barrett as the investigation by Montoursville and Towanda state police continues. Police say Houseweart and Vroman were driving Michelle Inch's car the night of the home invasion. It was found abandoned in a rural area outside Canton on Jan. 28. Charges against Houseweart and Vroman from the home invasion include attempted homicide, robbery and arson. They are jailed without bail. Houseweart also is charged in a related case with stealing and forging checks taken from the Inch home. He lived there for a period after Christmas with his girlfriend. 300-teen-bash-busted-by-PA-cops-parents-charged.PNG A mammoth, weekend beer and marijuana bash at a Upper Darby, Pa., residence attracted 300 teens and then the attention of law enforcement, all while the parents were home and the 54-year-old father was allegedly partying along with the kids. (screen shot/CBS-3) Police in Upper Darby, Pa., are still shaking their heads over a mammoth, weekend beer and marijuana bash at a local residence that attracted 300 teens and then the attention of law enforcement, all while the parents were home and the 54-year-old father was allegedly partying along with the kids. All this, according to DelcoTimes.com, which broke the story. Upper Darby Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood describes the scene like this to the news website: "It was the house from hell Saturday night," he said. "There were 300 teenagers smoking dope, drinking beer, drinking whiskey. "It was totally out of control." As for the father, who was home at the time, identified as Abdul Ahmaddiya, 54, police tell DecoTimes.com that the dad was "drunk and nasty" when he confronted officers inside the house: At one point, Adhmaddiya reportedly told police, "Ain't nothing wrong with kids drinking and smoking dope in my house," Chitwood said. "He is partying with the kids," Chitwood added. The news website reports that Adhmaddiya was arrested Sunday on charges including corruption of minors, furnishing alcohol to minors and disorderly conduct. His 45-year-old wife, Nichelle Davis-Ahmaddiya, who police say was also home at the time, also was arrested on similar offenses. The couple's 17-year-old daughter, who apparently promoted the party on social media, was cited for alleged consumption and possession of alcohol, DelcoTimes.com reports. For more details go here. Thousands of petitioners are calling on federal energy regulators to establish an office that was approved by Congress nearly 40 years ago. More than two dozen organizations and nearly 7,200 individuals have signed a petition asking the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to set up the Office of Public Participation. The office, which was commissioned in 1978 as part of the Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act, was designed to help citizens navigate the complicated documents that accompany the commission's cases and assist them with legal fees. Federal regulators have never requested or allocated funds for the office, though fully funding it would be less than 2 percent of its budget. The commission's website currently directs landowners seeking help to the Office of External Affairs. Christine Asmann, who is among the thousands of petitioners, said there needs to be "a dedicated liaison between FERC and the public," which would act and investigate in the public interest. "It's time for this government agency to serve the people instead of the energy corporations," she wrote on the petition. The commission this month rejected a pipeline plan for the first time. The decision came five days after a PennLive/Patriot-News report revealed the commission had approved every pipeline plan it reviewed for several decades. Some 31 organizations, from Vermont to Oregon, filed a petition last week to establish the office they say will increase transparency and accountability of the commission's decision-making process. None of the 31 organizations that filed the petition are based in Pennsylvania, but some of them represent clients in the state. Earlier this month, the Delaware Riverkeeper Network filed a lawsuit against the federal regulatory agency and named the lack of a public participation office as one of the commission's deficiencies. The office would help level the playing field for consumers and industry, according to Richard Berkley, executive director of the Public Utility Law Project of New York, one of the petitioners. Government and industry always have expert attorneys and other expensive resources at their fingertips, while low-income residents impacted by commission decisions can't afford them. "If you're not at the table, you are on the menu," he said. Seniors, the disabled, veterans and other fixed- and low-income residents deserve a voice in the process, Berkley said. Right now, industry holds a strong advantage - and consumers a disadvantage - due to its ability to hire all the lawyers and experts it needs, said Charles Harak, senior attorney for energy and utility issues at National Consumer Law Center in Boston. "We hope to gain an effective voice at FERC that will correct the current imbalance, where industry's viewpoints don't face enough analysis and the interests of consumers in lower prices and a truly competitive marketplace simply are not well-represented," he said. The Ohio Partners for Affordable Energy wants the commission to fund the public participation office so consumers' interests are adequately represented before the commission, said Dave Rinebolt, executive director and counsel at the organization. "As the utility industry evolves we are constantly identifying federal issues that need to be contended with, but we lack the resources to effectively participate at the federal level," he said. The commission has not responded to the petition and would not comment on it through the media, a spokeswoman said. WILLIAMSPORT -- The state has asked a federal judge to dismiss the lawsuit filed by Sunbury man who state police detained in 2014 because they mistakenly thought he was a fugitive from New Jersey. Senior Deputy Attorney General Lisa Wojdak Basial argued in a motion for summary judgment filed Monday in U.S. Middle District Court that there are no genuine factual issues. Herbert Schminkey Jr. contends he was subjected to unreasonable and false arrest and false imprisonment. He claims minimal investigation would have determined he was not the fugitive. Since his lawsuit was filed in 2014, he has dropped allegations of malicious prosecution, intentional inflection of emotional distress, defamation and malicious prosecution. Schminkey went to the Stonington barracks in Northumberland County on June 24, 2015 to be fingerprinted on a drunken driving charge, according to court documents. Trooper Mark Adams told Schminkey a check of his driver's license showed an association with Stanley Lesnefsky, a fugitive wanted in New Jersey. After his fingerprints were taken, he was told to remain until they could be run. He was questioned about Lesnefsky, and police noted both men had tattoos in similar locations. State police were unable, however, to find a picture of Lefnesky. Schminkey was placed under arrest and his ankle shackled to the floor when the fingerprint response came back belonging to Lesnefsky. Schminkey was detained several hours until Magistrate Judge John Gembic released him on personal recognizance. The defendant, Adams, said the two men have a similar build, and both have birthdays on the same day and year, although in different months. Adams said he received a phone call in early July 2014 from Northumberland County Assistant District Attorney Michael Toomey, who was trying to verify Schminkey's identity, because Schminkey was fighting extradition. Adams found a photograph of Lesnefsky, but it was decades old, showed Lesnefsky with a beard and long car, and was not helpful. On July 14, 2014, Adams received a requested report from the Pennsylvania Criminal Intelligence Center contains a photograph that confirmed Schminkey was not Lesnefsky. Charges against Schminkey were withdrawn the following day. Adams claims probable cause existed to charge Schminkey and argues he is not entitled to recover any damages. TOM RIDGE HEADSHOT ART Former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge (JOHN C. WHITEHEAD/The Patriot-Ne) Hours after terrorist attacks claimed lives and shutdown the airport and subway in Brussels, former Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Ridge advised Americans to be vigilant. Speaking from his experience as the nation's first Homeland Security director - a position created during the Bush administration less than a month after 9/11 - Ridge said, "We don't secure the homeland from Washington." Federal authorities will be advising states and local communities as information is collected after the Brussels attacks, notifying them of potential counter-measures and how to be prepared, he said. At this time, there are no known threats to Pennsylvania, according to the governor's office. Gov. Tom Wolf talked to Homeland Security Direct Marcus Brown, who was briefed by federal officials on the European attacks. The Pennsylvania State Police and Office of Homeland Security are monitoring the situation for any changes, according to a news release. "My top priority is the safety of the people of Pennsylvania and we will continue to work with federal and local partners to ensure the commonwealth is safe and prepared," Wolf said. The Belgian people are "victims of yet another horrific attack targeting our democratic values. All Americans stand with our friends in Europe at this difficult moment," Ridge said. The details are still unfolding, "but Americans already are rightly asking what does this mean to us," Ridge said. The terrorism in Brussels is the latest reminder to be vigilant, he said. "Not breathless and not hunkered down in fear. But vigilant. If you see something, say something," Ridge said. Otherwise, Americans should go about their daily lives, he said. "Terrorists want us to live in fear and we're not going to do that," Ridge said. New Delhi: The Centre has amended its ambitious pension scheme Atal Pension Yojana (APY) to give an option to the spouse to continue to contribute for balance period even in the event of the premature death of the subscriber. After the death of both the subscriber and the spouse, the nominee of the subscriber shall be entitled to receive the pension wealth, as accumulated till age of 60 years of the subscriber. The government had received feedback that present provision under Atal Pension Yojana (APY) of handing-over lump sum amount to spouse on premature death of the subscriber is not preferred by many subscribers. It was also highlighted that there is growing demand to give an option to the spouse to continue contribution after the death of subscriber to enable him / her to draw pension when the deceased subscriber would have turned 60 years of age. Therefore, after considering the feedback, the government has decided to give an option to the spouse of the subscriber to continue contributing to APY account of the subscriber, for the remaining vesting period, till the original subscriber would have attained the age of 60 years instead of present provision of handing-over lumpsum amount to spouse on the premature death (death before 60 years of age) of the subscriber, said finance ministry. The spouse of the subscriber will be entitled to receive the same pension amount as that of the subscriber until the death of the spouse. After the death of both the subscriber and the spouse, the nominee of the subscriber shall be entitled to receive the pension wealth, as accumulated till age of 60 years of the subscriber. To address the longevity risks among the workers and to encourage voluntarily saving for retirement, last year government launched Atal Pension Yojana (APY). Under APY, each subscriber, on completion of 60 years of age, will get the guaranteed minimum monthly pension, or higher monthly pension, if the investment returns are higher than the assumed returns for minimum guaranteed pension, over the period of contribution. Donald Trump FILE - In this March 9, 2016, file photo, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally in Fayetteville, N.C. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome) By Rogette Harris James Brown used to famously say that "there's a difference between the lounge act and the acts that play the main room. When you get on the main stage, what you did to get out of the lounge, don't do that on the main stage." Rogette Harris (PennLive file) Donald Trump is a lounge act. The GOP presidential frontrunner has no intention of meeting high expectations. Andhe continues to make up his own rules. While these tactics are working on a portion of the Republican primary electorate, he will fail to make the transition to the main stage. And his nativist, sexist, xenophobic and racist rhetoric will doom him and the Republican Party come November 8. The recent revolt in Chicago after Donald Trump canceled his rally at the University of Illinois due to "safety concerns" was tragic because he continues to refuse to take any responsibility for creating the environment that caused the violent behavior. The whole 2016 Presidential race is turning out to be a con. Trump is masterful at deflecting any negative attention away from himself. I'm sure I'm not the only one to notice that Trump's campaign now holds press conferences after each primary/caucus election that manages to eclipse any victories from his opponents, as well as overshadow any negative coverage that follows Republican debates. Over the past several months, we watched Trump retweet racist images and lies. We watched him take days to firmly disavow David Duke and the KKK. We've watched him encourage violence, with comments like "knock the crap out of them." "I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees." and "I'd like to punch him in the face." We've watched him gleefully tell stories of executing Muslims with bullets dipped in pig blood, and compare refugees to snakes, and claim that all Islam hates the U.S. This is not adult behavior let alone presidential behavior. As MSNBC host and former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough recently wrote, Trump is a master of "manufactured chaos." The GOP front-runner has a gift for showmanship that changes the subject and makes his opponents invisible. As Scarborough points out, that showmanship is all about provocation. For me, there are two main reasons why a person runs for public office. He or she is either running to win or to promote an issue or cause. Donald Trump's only purpose to run for President seems to be to further his brand and to advance his popularity and businesses so anything goes. It feels like one of his reality shows, except its real life. Donald Trump is not an accident. The Republican Party had it coming. This road began a time long ago, when ideological soldiers of the right took over the Republican Party. Moderates are an endangered species. A moderate Republican cannot move up within the party if he or she questions any part of the dominating ideology, for fear of facing a primary challenger. Many brushed President Barack Obama off, but he was right in his recent assessment. Donald Trump's language and tactics are not shocking. As Obama said "This is the guy, who was sure that I was born in Kenya -- who just wouldn't let it go. And all this same Republican establishment, they weren't saying nothing. As long as it was directed at me, they were fine with it. They thought it was a hoot, wanted to get his endorsement. And then now, suddenly, we're shocked." During the Obama years, the Republican establishment tacitly encouraged and accepted endorsements and campaign contributions from people who said the president was a "Kenyan Islamic atheist socialist friend of terrorists." Donald Trump is just louder and blunter with these racial dog whistles. Now, the Republican establishment is paying the price as it is being destroyed by the very monster it created. In 2008, President Barack Obama put together a coalition now famously known as "the Obama Coalition," a voting base that historically votes at lower percentages. This coalition, made up of Blacks, Hispanics, women, the LGBT community, Independents, millennials of all races, etc., for the first time ever surpassed in vote totals. It wasn't about the demographics of the person or even political party. What brought them together are two simple principles: change and moving forward. I believe Donald Trump's candidacy does have an expiration date. Even if he becomes the Republican nominee, he faces an uphill climb in the General Election. When he shouts that he's going to "Make America Great Again" what does he mean? How does keeping Muslims and immigrants out of the U.S. make America Great? How does making fun of the disabled make America great? Trump often compares himself to former President Franklin D. Roosevelt; but I guess he forgets that one of our greatest presidents was in a wheelchair? Only women with model looks are allowed in the country too? If he dislikes America so bad with all its rich diversity, maybe he is the one who should leave. I have faith that the coalition that elected our first black president with Barack Obama, is not going to allow a hate monger to follow. If Donald Trump is the Republican nominee, on November 8th, decent people everywhere, Republican, Democrat, Independent. must rise up and say with our vote: "Donald Trump, You're Fired." Rogette Harris, a regular PennLive Opinion columnist, is chairwoman of the Dauphin County Democratic Party. Per PennLive's policy governing candidates for public office, this is the only politically themed column she will write during the 2016 primary season. FullSizeRender 1.jpeg U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta, R-Hazleton, has endorsed Donald Trump for president (Christian Alexandersen, Pennlive) U.S. Rep. Lou Barletta, R-11th, has become the second member of Pennsylvania's GOP Congressional delegation to endorse billionaire Donald Trump's presidential candidacy. Trump has already received the endorsement of U.S. Rep. Tom Marino, R-10th, whose district borders Barletta's. This is the full text of the statement the Hazleton Republican released this afternoon: "Like millions of Americans, I want our next president to be a leader who fights for the American people and gets things done, not a politician who tries to say all the right things but will never be able to deliver on more broken promises. "Throughout his campaign, Donald Trump has proven that he is the leader our country needs to change the way Washington does business, and I am proud to give my full endorsement and support to his candidacy. "I think that Donald Trump has the ability to attract Democrats and Independents who are frustrated with Washington and is our best candidate to defeat Hillary Clinton in November. "Americans are frustrated that Washington has turned its back on them. Both Republicans and Democrats are tired of Congress working for special interests instead of the national interest, and talking about our nation's problems instead of fixing them. "I share these frustrations. I came to Congress to work for the American people, not just do or say things that please the Washington structure. "When I was Mayor of Hazleton, I introduced the first law of its kind cracking down on illegal immigration. "Since coming to Congress, I have continued to lead the fight to secure our border and enforce our immigration laws. "Donald Trump was criticized, the same way I was criticized, when he addressed this important issue. I hope that together we can tackle this critical national security challenge and stand up for working Americans. "As I have said before, I am discouraged that certain members of the Republican Party have spent more time trying to figure out how to stop Donald Trump than they have trying to understand why he is so popular in the first place. "Voters are smart. We need to listen to the voters instead of elitists trying to tell us right from wrong. In state after state, voters have made it clear that they want change and are tired of the way things are being done in Washington. "I think Donald Trump is the best person to bring the change that Americans are demanding." Voters in Arizona, Idaho and Utah head to the polls this Tuesday for Republican and Democratic primaries. Trump is ahead on the critical delegate count. His two rivals, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Ohio Gov. John Kasich are trying to close the gap. Hoping to prevent their newly formed group Parents Against Impaired Driving from growing much larger, parents who have lost loved ones as a result of a drunk driver came to the state Capitol on Tuesday to call for stricter drunk driving laws. Noting studies that indicate Pennsylvania has some of the weakest laws to prevent and punish drunk drivers in the nation, they, along with Lancaster County District Attorney Craig Stedman, urged state lawmakers to take action to change that. "We've come together to ask state legislators, and especially leadership, to focus on the DUI crisis and move forward with effective DUI legislation," said parent Chris Demko at the news conference, flanked by more than a dozen other individuals who like him, lost a family member or members to a drunk driver. He noted in 2014, DUI offenders caused 333 deaths - his youngest daughter Meredith, 18, was among them. She was killed in a car accident involving an individual who he said was drunk, high on heroin, and driving with a suspended license due to prior DUI conviction. To reinforce the impact of the drunk driving problem in Pennsylvania, Demko called on some of the other families who have experienced the kind of loss he has to share their stories. Maggie and Paul Hannagan of Chester County spoke of their two children, Miles, 19, and Charlotte, 16, who were killed when the family's car was rear-ended by a drunk driver on an illegal prescription drug traveling at 100 mph on a slick snow-covered road while texting. "In an instant, our lives changed," Maggie Hannagan said. Patrick and Diane Crowley lost their son Liam in 2013 when a drunk driver, who had seven prior drunk driving convictions made an illegal left turn in front of their son's motorcycle. "What we hope is that someday there won't be habitual offenders because they would have been stopped after the first offense," Diane Crowley said. Paul and Elaine Miller lost their son Rodney, the Loganville Volunteer Fire Company chief while responding to a crash on I-83 in 2013 by two drunk drivers. Paul Miller also shared that another member of the fire company, Zac Sweitzer, lost his life to a drunk driver five years before. To those who don't think stronger driving while impaired laws are not needed, Miller asked them to "take a couple seconds and visualize your son or your daughter in a casket and you are about to bury them as a result of a DUI offender." While the parents praised the momentum that a bill that would require first-time DUI offenders with a blood-alcohol level of .10 or greater to be required to use an ignition interlock for at least a year as opposed to the current law that requires that after a second or subsequent offenses, they want more. Stedman offered a litany of laws he would like to see enacted to curb the problem of impaired driving. He said 41 states have immediate license suspensions for someone arrested for a DUI. "Guess where we are? We're one of the nine that don't," he said. Stedman also would like to give prosecutors the ability to charge a drunk driver who is involved in a crash that results in another person's death with third-degree murder. He also thinks the state needs to stiffen the penalties for habitual drunk drivers. He said anyone caught stealing a pen three times from Walmart can be charged with a felony. But someone who is convicted of DUI three, four or an infinite number of times is only charged with a misdemeanor "unless you kill somebody. Then it's too late. Let's make a third offense DUI at least consistent with three thefts of a pen or pencil from Walmart," Stedman said. In addition, the Lancaster County district attorney advocates forfeiture of a vehicle for repeat DUI offenders. "If you keep getting behind the wheel of an instrument of death, risking the death of others or yourself, at some point the state should say, 'you know what. We're taking the car.' That will resonate." Also participating in the news conference were Sens. John Rafferty, R-Montgomery County, and Lloyd Smucker, R-Lancaster County, both of whom are among the lawmakers who have sponsored legislation to strengthen the state's DUI laws. Alluding to the photos that the parents held of their family member killed by a drunk driver, Rafferty said each photo represents two lives lost. "The life they were leading at that time and the life that each one would have been able to lead had a drunk driver not killed them and irrevocably change the lives of their loved ones," Rafferty said. "It's incumbent on us in Pennsylvania to do all we can to curb drunk driving on our highways. " By doing so, Smucker said, "We may be able to prevent the grief that the Demkos and all the families walk with everyday. " Kangana said, "It is not that I won't talk about it, I will, but as of now please grant me that space and let's talk about what we are here for." Mumbai: Keeping mum on questions pertaining to her legal battle with actor Hrithik Roshan, Kangana Ranaut today asked media to give celebrities their personal space. The actress, who had warned the organisers about not being asked any personal questions, was quizzed about her recent controversy involving Hrithik, where the duo had sent legal notices to each other. When prodded further, she said people should respect the private life of a celebrity. She said, "Sometimes you guys (the media) have to allow that sort of personal space to a celebrity also. It can be very overwhelming. Strong just doesn't mean you walk through life without being affected or intimidated. Being strong means standing up amidst things in spite of all of this." Kangana further added that she was not shying away from talking about the issue but wants her own space as of now. "... So you have got to give us a little more personal space. It is not that I won't talk about it, I will, but as of now please grant me that space and let's talk about what we are here for." Hrithik had sent a legal notice to Kangana last month, demanding an 'unconditional apology' for a 'defaming' remark in an interview where she allegedly referred to him as 'silly ex'. Kangana, however, retaliated with a 21-page reply, charging Hrithik with 'intimidation and threat'. Hrithik had accused Kangana of stalking him online by sending up to 50 e-mails a day, some of them explicit in nature. Hrithik put forth his ultimatum that if Kangana doesn't apologise, he will go ahead and make her emails public. Kangana retaliated by saying if Hrithik goes ahead to circulate her emails, images or any other material, she will have no option but to file a criminal case. Later, it surfaced that Hrithik had popped the question to Kangana in Paris way back in 2014, a month after his divorce with Sussanne Khan. However, after several ups and downs, their relationship was officially over by December 2014 and it was only in March 2016 that their affair became public. Lawyers of both the stars had earlier said there is a need for a closure to the matter which had turned 'ugly'. Abbas Tyrewala had signed a contract for writing eight lines of voiceover for a film Preity Zinta's 'Ishq in Paris', which he failed to deliver. Mumbai: A metropolitan magistrate's court here today acquitted Bollywood actress Preity Zinta in a cheque bouncing case filed by a script writer. "Zinta was acquitted in the case filed by script writer Abbas Tyrewala," said her lawyer Hitesh Jain. The case was filed in 2013 by well-known dialogue-writer Abbas Tyrewala, who had the contract for writing eight lines of voiceover for a film 'Ishkq in Paris'. He was asked to deliver it in a short time frame. He was issued a cheque in advance which he could encash on delivery of work. Read: First photo of Preity and husband Gene Goodenough post marriage! However, when Abbas Tyrewalla tried to encash it in November, the cheque bounced. The bank had been instructed to stop payment as he had not delivered the work as stipulated under the contract and hence was not supposed to encash the amount. Laywer Hitesh Jain argued that Preity gave the cheque to Tyrewala on the undertaking that he would not deposit it without informing her, a contention which was accepted by the magistrate, who acquitted her. (With inputs from PTI) The specified legacy item Id was not found. for Sale - Petpeoplesplace.com Chennai: The friendly voice which said Anandan when you dialled his number will be missed by journalists wanting to get any information about Tamil films since first talkie Kalidas. He is none other than acclaimed film historian Film News Anandan who passed away in the city on Monday morning. Anandan had recalled that his tryst with films began with his camera. His first photographs of Sivaji Ganesan won appreciation from Kollywood artistes. While working as reporter for film chamber, he used to meticulously collect details of films released on Fridays, actors, directors and musicians involved in them. Considered one of the first PROs of Kollywood, his consistent and systematic recording of film details and monthly and yearly compilations in a prescribed format specially designed by him, soon made Anandan a veritable storehouse of information of Tamil movies. He also had a vast knowledge of films made in other South Indian languages and Hindi. His passion remained till the end. He had given us the compilation of movies released in January 2016, said a film correspondent. Since Anandan had been collecting significant details, the rarest of photographs and prominent aspects of all Tamil Films, he documented the history of Tamil cinema in his 800-page book accompanied by 1,200 photographs. The book, Sadhanaigal Padaitha Thamizthiraipada Varalaru (Tamil Film History and its Achievements), released by Chief Minister J.Jayalalithaa in 2004,had trivia on Tamil films from 1931, details of women who made a mark as editors, producers, lyricists, scriptwriters and directors, of postage stamps released to honour film personalities, novels and plays made into films, actors who played dual and multiple roles and honours won by artistes. Winner of the Kalaimamani award, he had conducted a number of exhibitions in various parts of the country and won accolades. Besides, Anandan handed over his entire collection to the state government. I could not bear to see my things being taken in a lorry. It was like a child being given away, he told this correspondent at that time. A treasure house of knowledge, Anandan will be remembered for his simplicity and readiness to share details about any film at any time with undying passion. Tamil superstar Vijays Theri is hitting the screens on April 14. The Telugu version of the film is also releasing on the same date. This means that he will be competing with Tollywood superstars Pawan Kalyan and Allu Arjun whose films are also releasing during the month. Pawan Kalyans Sardar Gabbar Singh will be releasing on April 8, while Allu Arjuns Sarrainodu will release a week after Theri, on April 22. Producer Dil Raju attended the Tamil audio release in Chennai and he is planning to buy the rights for the Telugu version, says a source. We will have to wait and see whether Vijays film will survive the onslaught of the two big Telugu films. In honour of World Poetry Day on March 21, an international chain of cafes offered its patrons coffee in exchange for poems. Most poets may struggle to make an actual income from their writing, but on Monday, they at least got a free cup of coffee. In honour of World Poetry Day on March 21, an international chain of cafes offered its patrons coffee in exchange for poems, The Guardian reports. The Austrian coffee-roasting company The Austrian coffee-roasting company Julius Meinl first launched their Pay With a Poem initiative in 2013. Julius Meinl first launched their Pay With a Poem initiative in 2013. Last year, more than 100,000 customers took part and on Monday, 1280 locations accepted poems as payment in 34 countries, including Australia, Canada, China, England, and the US. The poems collected from the coffee shops will be put on display as part of an art installation in London. The coffee chain's passion for poetry is something it celebrates throughout the year. Source: www.mentalfloss.com Nyeema C. Watson was raised at 34th and Mitchell in East Camden, two blocks from a drug corner and 30 blocks from her future. "I was the ninth of 11 children, and my parents sheltered and protected me," says Watson, 38, who was named assistant chancellor for civic engagement at Rutgers-Camden last July. "All of who I am is prefaced by my growing up here." An ebullient, energetic woman who stays fit doing yoga - and climbing three flights to her Cooper Street office - Watson nurtures connections between a university and a community in which her roots are deep and deeply intertwined. She knows Camden not just as a place where there's lots of poverty, but where plenty of people go to work, come home, and play with their children. "Kids are going to birthday parties," she notes. "They have childhoods. They have dreams." Watson has a master's from the University of Pennsylvania, and undergraduate and doctoral degrees from Rutgers-Camden. Her parents and many of her siblings and other relatives live in the city. And so does she. "Nyeema knows Camden, she's of Camden, she loves Camden," says chancellor Phoebe A. Haddon. "She's a tremendous resource." But were it not for a chance conversation at Woodrow Wilson High School in the early 1990s, Watson might never have considered Rutgers-Camden. Or gotten into college at all. "A teacher asked me where I was going to go to college, and I said, 'I don't know,' " Watson recalls. Earlier, "a counselor had told me, 'You should be a beautician,' " she says, adding that while she deeply respects that profession, "I wanted to go to college." So the thought of Camden students falling through the cracks and missing opportunities "drives my work," Watson says. "I can look back on my childhood and understand what happens when [an institution] doesn't reach out to underrepresented students of color," she says. "Now I have the resources to change that, to help students who look like me, who live in conditions like mine were. I can give them, and their families, information, resources, a pathway." Rutgers students pursuing degrees in education, social work, and other fields traditionally have had off-campus internships, or performed community service. With established public service programs such as the Rutgers Law School's legal clinic and the RAND Institute's local public policy research, "Rutgers-Camden has always engaged with the community," Watson notes. "But historically, it wasn't strategic," she adds. "There were resources and knowledge that never seemed to get beyond [campus] in an intentional way." As Watson sees it, civic engagement also is two-way: Students, and the university itself, can learn from and not merely serve the community. In the 2014-15 academic year, 50 undergraduate "civic scholars" worked with 100 community organizations, such as Project H.O.P.E. (Homeless Outreach Program Enrichment), Cathedral Kitchen, and the Cooper-Grant Neighborhood Association. Watson's office also is involved with after-school and summer programs in four district, charter, and parochial schools in North Camden aimed at boosting student achievement and strengthening the neighborhood. "Nyeema is dedicated to helping improve the place she came from," says Melissa DePino, the Woodrow Wilson teacher who two decades ago asked Watson about her college plans. "She pushed me to apply, and helped me apply, to Rutgers-Camden and Temple and other schools," Watson says. "If it wasn't for her -." DePino, who left teaching and is now a Philadelphia communications consultant, vividly remembers students like Watson who "had amazing potential, but were in an environment that was hard to break out of." Watson says that's one reason why she continues to live in the city that helped make her who she is today. "It's important for people like me to stay here," she says, "because we understand what it's like to live here." kriordan@phillynews.com 856-779-3845@inqkriordan www.philly.com/blinq A study has found that the average IQ of blondes was actually slightly higher than those with other hair colours. (Photo: Pixabay) Washington: The stereotype that "blondes are dumb" is simply wrong, according to a new US study which found that the average IQ of light-haired people may actually be slightly higher than those with other hair colours. The study of 10,878 Americans found that white women who said their natural hair colour was blonde had an average intelligence quotient (IQ) score within 3 points of brunettes and those with red or black hair. "Research shows that stereotypes often have an impact on hiring, promotions and other social experiences," said Jay Zagorsky from Ohio State University. "This study provides compelling evidence that there should not be any discrimination against blondes based on their intelligence," said Zagorsky. The study found that the average IQ of blondes was actually slightly higher than those with other hair colours, but that finding is not statistically significant, he said. "I do not think you can say with certainty that blondes are smarter than others, but you can definitely say they are not any dumber," he added. The results for blonde white men were similar - they also had IQs roughly equal to men with other hair colours. Data from the study came from the US National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79), a national survey of people who were between 14 and 21 years old when they were first interviewed in 1979. The findings showed that blonde-haired white women had an average IQ of 103.2, compared to 102.7 for those with brown hair, 101.2 for those with red hair and 100.5 for those with black hair, Zagorsky said. Blonde women were slightly more likely to be in the highest IQ category than those with other hair colours, and slightly less likely to be in the lowest IQ category, he said. The findings were published in the journal Economics Bulletin. MEDIA QUESTIONNAIRE Name of Publication Established (Give exact date) ADDRESS TELEPHONE FAX NO NAME OF EDITOR Name of Printer Language Frequency Please attach a copy of declaration certificate Off Days Please specify whether morning, evening or state the date of issue Date on which the first issue was brought out Any special edition Price per copy Annual subscription Editorial Objectives and policy Appeal to any special community, class or section News services subscribed to Special regular features (i.e Womens or Children page etc) & when appearing Hyderabad: Thanks to the recent ban on fixed dose combinations, diabetes patients will now have to opt for new dual combination drugs or single dose drugs, increasing their pill burden from seven to 15 drugs. Endocrinologists, diabetologists and general physicians say that 85 per cent of the banned combination drugs were regularly used by diabetics who will be adversely affected. Senior consultant physician Dr Shiva Raju said, The major problem is the increased pill burden, which will increase the cost of the medicines. This will be the first comparison made by patients. If earlier their medicines cost Rs 3,000 per month, it is likely to double. At the same time, the huge pill burden brings up the question of compliance levels. Senior general physician Dr Rahul Aggarwal said, Compliance levels are a cause of concern among diabetic patients. Given the range of medicines they take, they will have to remember to take them at the right time. FDCs (fixed dose combinations) helped to do away with these problems to some extent as the combinations ensured that the drugs were present in the body and would act. But now, patients and their family members will require proper counseling. This means that the general physician has to put in extra time and explain to the patients the importance of these single doses and why FDCs are not being given. But a section of endocrinologists say that there were too many irrational combinations in the market. Dr V. Sri Nagesh, consultant endocrinologist, said, In diabetics the drugs have to act to control the blood sugar levels. But certain combinations like Metformin + Glimepiride + Methylcobalamin did not work properly. Glimepride is to be taken before meals while Voglibose is to be taken after meals. So in combination drugs like Voglibose + Metformin + Chromium Picolinate, the efficacy of the drugs was a cause of concern. Experts say that the rationality of combination drugs had been a cause of concern from the time they started mixing more than two to three molecules. A senior doctor on condition of anonymity said, To treat multiple diseases like diabetes, hypertension and renal issues combination drugs were being loosely prescribed without understanding whether it really helped the diabetic. The problem now is that patients have got used to combination drugs and they are going to take time to adjust to the new drug regime. Providing a healthy breakfast to students at school helps alleviate food insecurity and is associated with students maintaining a healthy weight. Middle school students who eat breakfast at school even if they have already had breakfast at home are less likely to be overweight or obese than students who skip breakfast all together. The findings add to the ongoing debate over policy efforts to increase the number of children who receive daily school breakfasts. Previous research has shown that eating breakfast is associated with improved academic performance, better health, and healthy body weight for students. But there have been concerns that a second breakfast at school following breakfast at home could increase the risk of unhealthy weight gain. Our study does not support those concerns, says Jeannette Ickovics, a professor at the Yale University School of Public Health. Providing a healthy breakfast to students at school helps alleviate food insecurity and is associated with students maintaining a healthy weight. Second breakfast at school following breakfast at home could increase the risk of unhealthy weight gain. Published in the journal Pediatric Obesity, the study included 584 middle school students from 12 schools in an urban school district where breakfast and lunch are provided to all students at no cost. Researchers tracked the students breakfast-eating locations and patterns, and their weight over a two-year period from 5th grade in 2011-2012 to 7th grade in 2013-2014. The findings hold implications for advocates and policy makers working to reverse the nation's childhood obesity problem. Approximately one-third of American children between the ages of 6 and 11 are overweight or obese, with higher rates among black and Hispanic children than white children. School breakfast promotion initiatives have begun, but evidence is needed to ensure these efforts do not lead to the consumption of excess calories among children at risk for obesity. Source: www.futurity.org 2016 News Archive This page includes links to all the news articles published on pokernews.com during 2016. For your convenience, the articles are segmented by month. A police officer in North Carolina was shot by a peeping suspect in the booking area of the county jail, authorities said Monday. The city of Durham said in a news release that Durham police Officer R.S. Turner saw the suspect reach for a gun in the back of his pants after unlocking his handcuffs in the booking area of the Durham County Detention Facility early Monday, reports the Associated Press. The officer and 44-year-old Danny McMillen struggled over the gun, which fired once, grazing Turner's abdomen, authorities said. Turner has been released from the hospital. Turner was responding to a peeping call when he arrested McMillen about 90 minutes earlier, investigators said. McMillen faces secret peeping, assault with a deadly weapon on a government official, and other charges. It wasn't known if he had a lawyer. Chief William Smith (center right) accepted the Spirit of Blue safety grant on behalf of the officers of the Holbrook Police Department, along with Town Administrator Timothy Gordon (far right). Presenting the grant was Spirit of Blue Executive Director, Ryan T. Smith (center left), and local Dunkin' Donuts franchise owners Monica MacFarlane and Nicole Loredo. The Spirit of Blue Foundation has awarded a Safety Equipment Grant to the Holbrook (MA) Police Department in the form of a mobile data terminal (MDT) solution for use by the Department's motorcycle traffic officer. The grant, valued at $3,625, provides one Panasonic ToughPad, a wireless modem and detachable keyboard to aid with communication, report writing, and investigative work primarily while on motorcycle duty. "This device will provide much needed information instantaneously to the officer who is assigned to the motorcycle traffic division, which will allow him to perform his duties more efficiently and safely," commented Chief William Smith of the Holbrook Police Department. The Panasonic ToughPad will act as a the motorcycle officer's MDT and will give the officer the capability of running plates, obtaining information on registered owners, checking for warrants, criminal background checks, obtaining officer safety alerts and other additional information without needing to request it over the radio. This improves the safety of the officer with greater access to information on the scene and reduces wait times associated with broadcasting and receiving back radio information. HPD operates its motorcycle unit from April to November each year and the ToughPad will be utilized by the same officer as he transitions to a traffic car for the winter months. Funding for the grant was provided by a generous gift from The Dunkin' Donuts & Baskin-Robbins Community Foundation (DDBRCF), a nonprofit organization of volunteer Dunkin' Donuts and Baskin-Robbins franchisees and Dunkin' Brands employees that ensure the basic needs of the community are being met in areas of hunger relief, children's health, and community safety. In total the DDBRCF has enabled Spirit of Blue to make 17 Safety Equipment Grants throughout New England with a total value of more than $100,000. "Access to information is a critical officer safety concern," commented Ryan T. Smith, Executive Director of the Spirit of Blue. "An officer needs to know if the person they are contacting has a criminal history, has made threats against police, or is currently wanted. Knowing those things can prepare an officer to be ready in a situation that may turn out to be anything but routine." Statistics preliminarily released by the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial Fund show that 26 law enforcement officers have already lost their lives in 2016, an increase of 4% from the prior year. 15 of those deaths were firearm related, a 200% increase over the same period in 2015. The reality of these statistics, and the increasing number of underfunded law enforcement agencies across the country, fuel the Spirit of Blue safety grant initiative. The Spirit of Blue Foundation actively encourages the public at large to honor and appreciate law enforcement officers who serve to protect our communities. By supporting the Spirit of Blue Foundation, the public can make an impact in the lives of law enforcement officers every day. To learn more about the Spirit of Blue, or make a donation, visit www.spiritofblue.com. About The Spirit of Blue Foundation The Spirit of Blue Foundation, based out of Chicago, IL, is a 501(c)(3) public charity dedicated to the enhancement of officer safety and vitality throughout the law enforcement community by promoting public awareness for their protection and fulfilling safety equipment and training needs. The Spirit of Blue Foundation develops and executes fundraising campaigns nationally with the support of partner non-profits, national retailers and safety equipment manufacturers. Fundraising proceeds are distributed in the form of Safety Equipment Grants to law enforcement agencies across the country from local to federal levels. Since 2011 the Foundation has awarded 39 grants valued at over $200,000. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders blew Donald Trumps child like AIPAC remarks away by delivering a foreign policy speech that put the Republican frontrunner to shame. Video: https://youtu.be/51fy5GzceAk Unlike Trump, who did nothing more than bash the Iran deal at AIPAC, Sen. Sanders said: We all agree that Iran must not get a nuclear weapon. Where we may disagree is how to achieve that goal. I personally supported the nuclear agreement with the United States, France, China, Germany, Russia, the United Kingdom and Iran because I believe it is the best hope to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon. I believe we have an obligation to pursue diplomatic solutions before resorting to military intervention. If we have learned anything from history it is that we must pursue every diplomatic option. Sen. Sanders vowed to be a friend to Israel, but he also called for a path to peace and a two-state solution, I am here to tell you that, if elected president, I will work tirelessly to advance the cause of peace as a partner and as a friend to Israel. But to be successful, we have also got to be a friend not only to Israel, but to the Palestinian people, where in Gaza, unemployment today is 44 percent and the poverty rate is almost as high. That cannot be ignored. Sanders also called for the international community to come together to help to rebuild Gaza, and said that the path towards peace will require tapping into our shared humanity to make hard, but just decisions. Sanders also promised an unwavering commitment to the safety and security of the people of Israel. Sanders also called for an international coalition to destroy ISIS, While the U.S. has an important role to play in defeating ISIS, it must be led by the countries in the region. I agree with King Abdullah of Jordan who said this is nothing less than a battle for the soul of Islam and that the only people that will destroy ISIS will be Muslim troops on the ground. There was no comparison between the speeches of both Sec. Clinton and Sen. Sanders to the empty bluster of Trump. Sanders has a clear vision of US foreign policy. Sanders was not bellowing about things that he will never allow to happen. Instead, he laid out a vision of peace in the Middle East, and the role that the wealthy nations in the region should be playing in their own security. It is a shame that Sanders was not able to be AIPAC to deliver his speech because his address blew Trumps remarks out of the water. There was no comparison between the two speeches. Sen. Sanders (I-VT) was a candidate with a vision for the Middle East while Donald Trump behaved as if the presidency is a reality television show that he is looking to star in for next four years Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Bernie Sanders dropped a reality bomb on the corporate media by declaring that Donald Trump will not be elected president. Sanders was asked by CNNs Anderson Cooper about his comment that Donald Trump is a pathological liar. The Democratic presidential candidate responded by unloading on Trump. Video: https://youtu.be/ILcl0fyF4Xc Sen. Sanders (I-VT) pointed to Politico and PolitiFact fact checks that found Trump statements untrue and said: Overwhelmingly, almost everything he says is just not true. He just says things off the top of his headTime after time, he says things that are just not true, and I think more and more people understand that. That is above and beyond the fact that almost every day he is insulting Latinos, and Mexicans, Muslims, women, African-Americans. I mean there is a reason why this guy will not be elected President Of The United States. That type of temperament. That kind of divisiveness which his engendering. The kind of violence that he is encouraging is not what the American people want. In Utah, when I beating Donald Trump by eleven points in what is one of the most conservative states in the country, it is clear to me that Donald Trump is not going to be elected President Of The United States of America. Sanders went on to say that Trump has authoritarian tendencies that are alarming to many Republicans. The corporate media is too busy chasing ratings and dollars to admit the truth, but Bernie Sanders has no fear of speaking the truth. Donald Trump spends every waking day on the presidential campaign trail alienating people. Presidential nominees who anger and alienate voters dont win in November. Sure people are afraid that Trump might win, or that Trump could win, but the reality is that he barely has the support of a majority of the Republican Party. Trump has angered so many groups of voters that will be thrilled to come out and vote against him on Election Day. If Republicans thought that Trump had a snowballs chance of winning, they would not be trying so hard to get rid of him. The threat that Trump poses should be taken seriously. Donald Trump is energizing a national coalition of concerned Americans that want to make certain that he is not the next President Of The United States. Trump has a punchers chance if he is the Republican nominee, but the odds are that Bernie Sanders is correct. If nominated, Trump wont win in November. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Donald Trump gave a speech at AIPAC that part self-promotion, part delusion, but definitely 100% lies. Video: https://youtu.be/ygKgnd8CrIQ Trump immediately went off the rails by touting his support for Israel by being the grand marshall of a parade in 2004. Trump said that his number one priority is to dismantle the Iran nuclear deal. Trump repeated his usual talking points on Iran while claiming that he has studied this issue more than anyone else. Trump then launched into three points on how he is going to deal with Iran. Trump claimed that he knows how to deal with trouble, and thats why he is going to be elected president. Trump lied and said that he is leading in every poll. Trump later claimed that Irans global terror network, is big and powerful, but not as big and powerful as us. When not incoherent rambling about Iran and the United Nations, Trump was mangling the English language by managing to mispronounce the word resolutions. Trump called President Obama the worst thing to happen to Israel. Trump gave a speech which was supposed to be heavy on policy, but what he offered was empty bluster and lies. Trump repeated his claim that the United States is giving Iran $150 billion, but this claim has already been proven to be a lie. Trump speech was full of claims about things that he is not going to let happen when he is president, but what was missing in his speech was any actual policy. Trump did was prove that he is not fit to be president. The AIPAC speech was supposed to Trumps serious moment on the world stage. Instead, it was more of the same. Trumps speech would have been great comedy if he wasnt on the verge of becoming the Republican presidential nominee. Hillary Clinton delivered a speech at the same venue that showed why she is ready to be president. Donald Trumps speech illustrated why the United States of America will be a laughingstock if he is elected president. Washington: If you get aroused by weird things, then don't worry, you are not alone. A new study has revealed that nearly half of us have deviant sexual fantasies. Researchers asked 1,040 Quebec residents and revealed that sexual tastes which are considered abnormal by psychiatrists are actually a lot more normal than you might think. Out of the eight "paraphilic" fetishes listed, voyeurism, exhibitionism, frotteurism, masochism, sadism, fetishism and transvestism, four of them were found to be surprisingly common desires. "Overall, nearly half of the sample subjects were interested in at least one type of sexual behaviour that is considered anomalous, whereas one third (33%) had experienced the behaviour at least once," Christian Joyal, one of the study's authors, said. Joyal added these facts suggest that people need to know what normal sexual practices are before we label a legal sexual interest as anomalous, noting that some paraphilic interests are more common than people might think, not only in terms of fantasies but also in terms of desire and behavior. Of the sample, 35 per cent said they were interested in voyeurism, 26 per cent in fetishism, another 26 per cent in frotteurism and 19 per cent in masochism. The researchers also found people were more likely to acknowledge their interests in fetishes in an online, rather than telephone, survey. Joyal concluded that in general, it is true that men are more interested in paraphilic behaviors than women, but this doesn't mean that women don't have these interests at all. In fact, women who report an interest in sexual submission have more varied sexual interests and report greater satisfaction with their sex lives. Sexual submission is therefore not an abnormal interest. The study is published in The Journal of Sex Research. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print The term institutional sexism refers to the selectively unjustified negative behavior against women as members of a social category. Although it can target men, the term is generally used to denote discrimination against girls and women. It has also been the explicit purview of the conservative movement and all its iterations whether they are congressional Republicans or religious fundamentalists. Although America is a still a patriarchal and misogynistic society, until the past seven months Democrats were loath to engage in the sexism game either overtly or covertly. It has been disappointing to watch a fair number of people on the Left, many avowed Democrats, attack a fellow Democrat based on their gender. Although it is not what one would necessarily label blatant sexism, it is sexism all the same. That professed liberals are doing it so readily informs that either they are unaware of their actions, or are deliberately on a crusade to besmear the reputation of a womans character for no other reason than for political expediency. Coming from alleged progressives and the Left, this covert and subtle sexism is simply disgusting. Over the past six months Hillary Rodham Clinton has been labeled everything from a warmonger to a neocon to a dispassionate corporatist and no kind of progressive from many on the Left. This is in spite of the National Journal giving her a liberal score of 84 percent, and earning an F from the NRA. She is regularly accused of being corrupt and bought by Wall Street as proof she is not a Liberal, even though leading Democrats, including her Democratic opponent, have received donations from the same Wall Street organizations. In fact, Hillary Clinton is regarded as more liberal than President Obama by the people the liberal movement oppose as a matter of course. When Republicans launched their dubious investigation into a corrupt, manipulative and dirty Hillary Clinton for doing what Republican Secretary of State Colin Powell did in using his own personal email server, it was beyond the pale. It was also the continuation of a 24 year smear campaign of Clintons character; not her politics. That 24-year long smear campaign commenced when Clinton was First Lady and began her crusade for universal healthcare in 1993. Sadly, many people calling themselves liberals and progressives have implemented the same character assassination practices that were implemented by Republicans to defame and sully Clintons character. It certainly disabuses anyone of the idea that these liberals are anything remotely progressive; their selectively unjustified negative behavior against an accomplished woman portrays them as sexists and nothing else. The implication, although not directly verbalized, is that the only way a woman could ascend to greatness in a patriarchal society like America is through criminality, corruption, and subterfuge. It is a blatantly sexist assertion. One expects the Republicans and their conservative pundits and media to continue the nearly quarter century of attacks on Clintons character; it is just what misogynists are prone to do. However, for anyone on the Left to embrace these dirty attacks and parrot the GOP rhetoric ad nauseam is an abomination. This is particularly true since, as former Democratic congressman Barney Franks recently wrote in an op-ed; every Republican rumor, false accusation and charge of criminality against Hillary Clinton ever leveled has been debunked; some recently and many two decades ago. There are plenty on the Left who are likely too young to understand, but in their political zeal they have unknowingly adopted nearly everything created by the vast right wing conspiracy to destroy a powerful and accomplished womans character. Knowingly or not, her critics on the left are engaging in institutional sexism because their claims insinuate that Hillary Clinton could have never achieved what she has thus far without subterfuge, corruption, and depravity. It is curious, and disappointing, that Democrats are employing character assassination tactics against another Democrat simply because she is an accomplished woman who is not their candidate of choice; they certainly withheld their harsh attacks from Martin OMalley, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Sexism may not be their overt intent but that is not the point. The point is that parroting unfounded and debunked assertions against a woman who reached the upper echelons of power in her field implies that her achievements were gained through dirty tricks and corruption. These insinuations are not a respectable Democratic campaign ploy; they feed an argument that Clintons success is undeserved and she is unworthy of a real progressives trust. It also gives credence to Americas age-old patriarchal culture that celebrates and works tirelessly to brutally teardown accomplished women. Hillary Clinton, like her career politician opponent, is as her critics on the Left claim part of the the establishment. Like all ambitious women, and men as well, she is aware that in patriarchal America gender constrains one to work within the system, rather than from outside of it. However, despite every man in politics working within the system to achieve their political ambition, a woman aspiring to the Presidency is corrupt, deceitful, and manipulative according to every Republican alive and far too many on the Left. Assigning a different standard to a woman than a man is, whether deliberate or not, a blatant display of institutional sexism. It is ugly when Republicans do it, and simply hideous when it is coming from some on the Left. Facebook Twitter Pinterest Email Print Serial Adulterer and misogynist extraordinaire Donald Trump has attracted extremists of all stripes to his campaign of hate, and no surprise: he hates nearly everybody while claiming he loves them. His movement is full of people who hate Jews, women, blacks, Mexicans, atheists, gays and lesbians, and yes, despite his fulsome praise of Mormons the other day in Salt Lake City Do I love the Mormons? Mormons. Southern Baptist megachurch Pastor Robert Jeffress, a frequent contributor to Fox News and so firmly in the Trump camp that Media Matters calls him a Trump surrogate, says in his new book, Not All Roads Lead to Heaven, that just about everybody who doesnt think like he does has embraced lies on a highway to hell. Of Joseph Smith he writes that the founder of Mormonism is one of the servants of Satan. Here is Trump denouncing every other religion in the world, including Mormonism back in 2011: Donald Trump loves Robert Jeffress. How is it possible he loves Mormons if he loves Jeffress, who says they follow a servant of Satan? Trump likes Jeffress so much he brings him out on stage at his rallies. In Jeffress hometown of Dallas in September, Trump asked, Where is Pastor Jeffress? and made a show of looking around for him. Hes around here someplace. What a good guy. Where is he? Come here. When Jeffress joined him onstage, Trump exclaimed: I love this guy! Jeffress, for his part, says of Trump, What a good guy. I love this guy. By all appearances, the love between them leaves no room for love of anyone else. It certainly gives the lie to Trumps claim that he loves any of the groups Jeffress hates, because his failure to denounce Jeffress represents tacit approval of his position on those faiths. For anyone paying attention (is anyone in GOP-land paying attention?) this means it is little tough for Trump to sound convincing when he tells not only various religious minorities (Judaism and Hinduism lead people to an eternity of separation from God in Hell) how much he loves them, but Catholics. Attacks on Catholics (a cult-like, pagan religion) are nothing new in this country. Kennedy was the first one who managed to get elected president after all, and even then there were fears hed do what the Pope told him to do. And dont even get Jeffress started on Islam, which he calls an evil, evil religion. Jeffress might get away with hating on Islam, because it seems to be a popular pastime in Cracker Country, but Catholics? He says nearly the same thing of Catholicism as he does Islam, that the Catholic Church represents the genius of Satan and that it is the Great Whore of Babylon out of the book of Revelation. And Jews? Arent white supremacists supposed to be the only antisemites these days? Is Trump trying to mainstream antisemitism? There are a lot of conservative Catholics out there and there are even conservative Jews. What is Trump thinking while risking alienating those groups? There is no evidence that Trump is doing any thinking at all. He has gathered all these haters together who are united in support of Trump, but if their collective rhetoric limits the ideal Trumpboy or Trumpgirl demographic to somebody who is white and a very narrowly-defined, specific type of Christian, that doesnt leave a lot of prospective voters come Election Day. The Republicans have shown they can win various states and through gerrymandering and voter suppression, keep them. They have not shown they can even dream of taking the White House. Exclusionary politics have been their problem, and it seems Trump has no more learned the lesson than any of the so-called establishment candidates. Trumps campaign is destined to collapse under the weight of its own hate, and the sooner people realize they are hated by Trump the faster that collapse will come. You might remember Jeffress as one of the Religious Right spokesmen who claimed President Obama had paved the way for the Anti-Christ. We havent seen the Anti-Christ put in an appearance yet, though ironically Trumps Republican opponents claim Obama did pave the way for Trump, so you can infer from that what you want. The point is that Trump, like Hitler, has attracted all manner of haters to his movement. Hitler managed to sort them out, in part thanks to a violent purge of actual socialists and moderates, and then he let loose the sadists on those who werent real Germans. We have already seen Trump take his first Hitlerian steps in promoting the ejection of 11 million people from our country. You cant win a country over by demonizing nearly half its citizens and prospective voters. Trump can be God on Earth to the other quarter to one-third, but thats not going to win any national elections. What Trump has done is taken a success-proof Republican strategy of excluding nearly everybody from the American franchise, and then expecting to win. It didnt work for John McCain, it didnt work for Mitt Romney, and it is not going to work for Donald Trump. Photo: DonaldTrump.com Mozambique News Agency AIM Reports No. 526, 22nd March 2016 Contents The Mozambican and Zambian Presidents, Filipe Nyusi and Edgar Lungu, on 19 March inaugurated a 100 megawatt floating power station in Nacala in the northern province of Nampula. The Turkish vessel containing the power station has been docked at Nacala port since 18 February. 110 kilovolt cables were connected, linking the ship to two special reception pylons, 65 and 85 metres tall. According to the chairperson of EDM (the publicly-owned electricity company) Mateus Magala, the electricity produced by the floating power station will be injected into the national grid at the Nacala sub-station. The purpose of the power station, he said, is to guarantee the power supply to northern Mozambique for the next two years. In addition, the supply from this station allows EDM to sell power to Zambia. Magala said a new source of power was needed for the northern provinces because of the limited capacity of the centre-north line, which carries power from the Cahora Bassa dam on the Zambezi to the north of the country. That limited capacity was cruelly exposed in January 2015, when major flooding on the Licungo River, in Zambezia province swept away ten pylons on the line, and cut power supplies to the three northern provinces of Nampula, Niassa and Cabo Delgado, and to the northern districts of Zambezia. It took a month before normal power was restored to the north. Zambia has long had a serious electricity deficit. Recently matters have been made much worse by critically low levels of water in the Kariba dam, a major source of power for both Zambia and Zimbabwe. The ship carrying the power station is owned by Karpowership, a subsidiary of the Turkish company Karadeniz Holding. President Nyusi declared that the floating power station is an example of energy cooperation to the benefit of the citizens and the economies of Mozambique and Zambia. The Mozambican government, he recalled, has defined electricity as a priority, and recently the supply of power has been growing at an average rate of 12 per cent a year, contributing significantly to the countrys Gross Domestic Product. He noted that the SADC (Southern African Development Community) region currently faces an electricity deficit of 7.9 gigawatts at peak hours. This, plus the drive to industrialise the region, provided opportunities for Mozambique to become a centre for the generation and transmission of energy for the entire region. Already, the major source of power in Mozambique, the Cahora Bassa dam, sells most of the power it generates to South Africa (and a smaller amount to Zimbabwe). The country has enormous hydro-power potential, plus coal and natural gas deposits, most of which are so far untapped. President Nyusi added that bringing the floating power station into operation results from a long experience of partnership between the Mozambican and Zambian electricity companies, and the need to provide more electricity of good quality. President Lungu was on a three day state visit to Mozambique, during which a memorandum of understanding on electricity was signed. President Nyusi said that a coal fired power station will be built in Tete province, plus a new transmission line interconnecting the Mozambican and Zambian grids. We are hopeful that, in the future, with an increase in good quality energy, we shall have greater and better productivity in agriculture, in agro-processing, and a greater guarantee of food and nutritional security, declared President Nyusi. Other benefits would include the emergence of new tourism projects, the development of the fisheries sector, and improvement in the supply of electricity for schools, health units and water supply. The Municipal Council in the town of Nhamayabwe in the western province of Tete, on 15 March decided to suspend the collection of market fees from sellers of maize, vegetables, firewood and other products, due to the drought hitting this part of Tete. The suspension is intended to alleviate the plight of the vendors, allowing them to spend on the subsistence of their households money that would otherwise go to the municipality. Speaking to reporters, the mayor of Nhamayabwe, Alberto Amade, said the council believed it should not take money which the vendors need to feed themselves in this time of drought-induced food shortages. In Tete, the drought affects not only Mutarara district (of which Nhamayabwe is the capital), but also the districts of Changara, Magoe, Cahora Bassa, Marara, Moatize and part of Chiuta. More than 63,000 Tete households are suffering from the drought, according to figures announced recently by the agriculture and food security authorities. Two people died on 18 March during a clash between the police and a gang of kidnappers in Patrice Lumumba neighbourhood, in the southern city of Matola. One of the kidnap gang was shot dead in the shootout, but the other person who died was a passer-by struck by a stray bullet. The drama began when a gang of six people kidnapped a woman named Felizarda Cohote, as she was opening the gate to her home in the Maputo neighbourhood of Mahotas. Two of the kidnappers took control of Cohotes vehicle and drove it towards Patrice Lumumba. But the car was fitted with an electronic tracking device of the company Cartrack. When members of Cohotes family alerted the police, a police unit and Cartrack agents were able to follow the kidnappers. Near the Patrice Lumumba market the criminals realised that they were being followed. They opened fire against the police, and in the exchange of shots one of the kidnappers and a bystander were killed. According to the spokesperson for the Maputo Provincial Police Command, Juarce Martins, another member of the kidnap gang was seriously injured and is now in police custody, while the other four criminals, some of whom may also be injured, fled and are still at large. The kidnappers left behind them two pistols and 14 bullets. Cohote was unharmed and the police returned her to her family later that evening. Prosecutors in the central province of Sofala have ordered the arrest of five health officials in connection with the theft of medical equipment donated in February 2015 by the Rotary Club of Australia to Beira Central Hospital. Those detained include officials from the Beira hospital and from the Sofala Provincial Health Directorate. Some of the stolen equipment was found at the Sorridente private clinic in Beira. The Sofala Provincial Attorneys office also ordered the seizure of the surgical beds and other material found at this clinic. The search will be extended to other Beira private clinics where it is believed that the equipment donated by the Rotary Club was diverted. Although so far there is so sign of the parallel government which Afonso Dhlakama, leader of the opposition party Renamo, promised to establish in six northern and central provinces in March, a prominent Renamo parliamentary deputy, Jose Manteigas, on 16 March insisted that Renamo will govern in the provinces where it won. Speaking in parliament Manteigas declared Renamo governance is coming. He pledged the takeover would be a peaceful transfer without violence, and urged Frelimo to cooperate. Despite the threats, Manteigas insisted Renamo has no plan to divide the country. His speech was met with rapturous applause from the Renamo benches, but the Frelimo deputies regarded it as an assault against the Mozambican state. The spokesperson for the Frelimo parliamentary group, Edmundo Galiza-Matos Junior, told AIM we feel indignant. We feel this is a provocation against a democratically established state. All Mozambicans should be indignant. But Galiza-Matos said Frelimo has no plans to ask for Manteigass parliamentary immunity to be lifted, so that he can be prosecuted for incitement to rebellion. Maritime authorities have decided to confiscate the Nessa 7, a longline tuna fishing boat flying the Panamanian flag, which was seized in December when it was caught fishing illegally in Mozambican waters. The boat and all the fishing gear on board revert to the Mozambican state. In addition, the owner must pay a fine of 4.5 million meticais (US$94,000), and the captain is banned from fishing in Mozambican waters for 36 months. The national director of operations in the Ministry of the Sea, Inland Waters and Fisheries, Leonild Chimarizene, showed the confiscated boat to reporters on 16 March. The owner of the Nessa 7 has been named as Anthony Rowan Pentz, with a professional address in the South African city of Durban. The captain is Anthony Clement, from Myanmar. He and eight crew members were on board when the boat was seized. Clement is awaiting deportation. The authorities intend to turn the Nessa 7 from poacher into gamekeeper. It will join the vessels used by the maritime authorities to patrol the countrys waters just as the Antillas Reefer, seized for illegal fishing in 2008, was converted into a patrol vessel, equipped with high technology surveillance equipment. Indeed, it was inspectors on the Antillas Reefer who in December seized the Nessa 7. The Antillas Reefer was flying the Namibian flag when it was caught, but its crew consisted mainly of Spaniards. It was fishing illegally for sharks when it was seized. Labour Minister Vitoria Diogo declared on 11 March that foreign workers must possess the relevant academic and professional qualifications if they are to work in Mozambique. Speaking in Maputo at a seminar on Chinese companies and labour questions in Mozambique, Diogo stressed that foreigners can only be admitted to work places when there are no Mozambicans with the required qualifications, or there are not enough of them. Data from the Labour Ministry indicate that during 2015 inspectors found that 1,182 foreigners were being employed illegally, and they were suspended from their posts. Diogo stressed that when recruiting workers, employers must establish the conditions for including skilled Mozambicans in jobs of the greatest technical complexity, and in administrative positions in the company. They must also guarantee that expatriates work with Mozambicans to transmit their knowledge and experience For his part, Chinese ambassador, Sun Jian, stressed that in recent years, cooperation between Mozambique and China has greatly increased, and consequently there has been a flow of Chinese companies into Mozambique. He recognized the difficulties Chinese companies face in interpreting Mozambican labour legislation, but claimed we are overcoming the various difficulties of language and culture. We believe that in this seminar we shall increase still further knowledge about labour laws and issues. Sun declared that the Chinese companies operating in Mozambique are helping to create a good business environment. The ambassador said the main foci of Chinese interest in Mozambique were infrastructures, the training of human resources, and financial support. Of these, the most essential in our cooperation is the training of human resources, he stressed. Among those who have attempted to claim military pensions are men who deserted from the Mozambican armed forces during the war of destabilization that raged between 1977 and 1992. According to the Minister for Veterans Affairs, Eusebio Lambo, giving a report to President Filipe Nyusi on 14 March, the deserters have been coming forward now, decades later, attempting to obtain pensions. He warned that those who deserted from the army have no right to any pension. There were 1,170 deserters from Tete province now claiming pensions, said Lambo. From Sofala province, 220 deserters had fled into Malawi, while in Manica an entire battalion of 429 men were informally and illegally demobilized by their commander. Mistakenly, the daily newspaper O Pais reported these desertions as something recent, in the context of the current clashes between the defence and security forces and gunmen of the opposition party Renamo. Clarifying the matter, the spokesperson for the Ministry of Veterans Affairs, Horacio Massangai, said the deserters were not from the current armed forces, the FADM, set up in 1994, under the peace agreement between the government and Renamo, but from the old government army, the FAM/FPLM, which had been disbanded to make way for the FADM. Yes, there were desertions, said Massangai, but the numbers mentioned refer to the period before 1992 (the year of the peace agreement). There were two separate situations soldiers who had deserted and now claim pensions to which they are not entitled, and soldiers who were irregularly demobilized. In the latter case, the fault may well lie with their commanders. As for the procedures that should now be followed, Massangai said the guideline laid down by President Nyusi was that the requests for pensions should be dealt with on a case by case basis. Lambos report claimed that there are 189,687 veterans. Of these, 95,743 are veterans from the national liberation struggle of 1964-1974, while the remaining 93,944 fought during the war of destabilization, on both the government and the Renamo sides. One problem is that some of the Renamo demobilized fighters have not yet registered, apparently due to the Renamo leaderships distrust of anything organized by the government. The police have seized over 76 kilos of rhinoceros horn at Maputo International Airport. Announcing the seizure at a press conference on 14 March, the spokesperson for the Maputo City Police Command, Orlando Mudumane, said the horns were discovered in two suitcases, as they were being put on a flight to Kenya. The Mozambican police, in coordination with customs, seized two suitcases containing 76.6 kilos of rhinoceros horn and six kilos of lion claws and teeth, said Mudumane. The owner of the suitcases and their illicit contents has not yet been identified. Since both African species of rhinoceros, the white and the black, are believed to be extinct in southern Mozambique, it is more than likely that the rhinos from which these horns were taken were poached in the Kruger National Park in South Africa. The final destination of the horns is most unlikely to have been Kenya. The main market for rhino horn is the Far East, particularly Vietnam, where the powdered horn is believed to have near miraculous healing powers, curing everything from hangovers to cancer. Such claims are entirely bogus since rhino horn consists mostly of keratin, the same protein found in human hair and fingernails. The Asian demand for rhino horn has turned it into a more expensive substance than gold or cocaine. The price quoted last year was US$60,000 for a kilo of horn. So last weeks haul at the airport was worth about US$4.6 million on the illegal market. An anonymous tip-off allowed the Forestry and Wildlife Services in the central province of Zambezia on 12 March to abort an attempt to smuggle large amounts of illegally logged timber out of the Muaquiua area, in Mocuba district. Forestry wardens, accompanied by members of the environmental police unit, followed the tip-off and found a man named Agostinho Madembe loading over 20 logs of a precious hardwood known as chanfuta onto the truck he was driving. The wardens warned him that, under Mozambican environmental legislation, equipment used in illegal logging can be seized which means that his truck will be forfeit to the state. Madembe paid little attention to the warning. He managed to lock the cab of the truck and slip away into the bush. The authorities reacted by emptying all the tyres of air, so that the truck cannot be moved. The wardens found that the local community was collaborating with the illegal loggers. A community leader said the loggers had promised them 70,000 meticais (US$1,430) for their cooperation. But, if properly marketed, the 20 chanfuta logs could sell for around a million meticais. So not only were members of the community participating in the destruction of their own environment, but they were also being swindled out of large sums. Fearing that the community leader was about to be arrested, local peasants barricaded the road to prevent the wardens and police from leaving. Eventually the removal of the barricades was negotiated but not before the vehicles leaving the area were inspected to make sure that the community leader was not a prisoner inside them. Eugenio Manhica, head of the Zambezia forestry and wild life department, said that, regardless of the attitude of the local community, the authorities would pursue the case so that the authors of the crime are held responsible for their acts. The illegal logging took place inside a legally granted timber concession. A representative of the concession, Erasmo Valente, said he had every intention of taking the case to court, so that the illegal loggers and their accomplices in the community would learn that they cannot cut down trees however and wherever they like. President Filipe Nyusi on 12 March invited Vietnamese businesses to invest in Mozambique. He was speaking in Maputo at a Mozambique/Vietnam Business Forum, which was also attended by the Vietnamese President, Truong Tan Sang, on the second day of a three day state visit to Mozambique. I am addressing a special invitation to those Vietnamese business people here today, and to those who did not have the opportunity to be here, to come and invest in Mozambique, alongside Mozambican partners, urged President Nyusi. This invitation arose in recognition of Vietnams experience in producing such goods as rice, clothing, footwear, electrical appliances, and fishing gear. President Nyusi challenged Vietnamese companies to include in their business initiatives projects to process locally Mozambican natural resources, thus creating jobs and increasing household income. He added that the government is also interested in learning from Vietnams experience in reviving coastal shipping. The Mozambican coast is over two and a half thousand kilometres and would be a cheap transport option for moving goods from one end of the country to the other. President Nyusi said that, in order to attract investment and establish strategic partnerships, the government is committed to speeding up reforms that will improve the competitiveness of the national economy. These reforms are intended to simplify the bureaucratic circuits in the services provided by the state which affect companies, he said. They are reforms which seek to increase the viability and sustainability of all types of companies, but particularly the small and medium enterprises, which can create jobs, involve young entrepreneurs and improve the living conditions of many Mozambicans. For his part, President Truong described Mozambique as a great partner in Africa, a potential market, with many business opportunities. President Truong was sure that trade between the two countries would rise from US$100 million to US$500 million in the near future. President Filipe Nyusi on 11 March stressed that the task of the Higher Mass Media Council (CSCS) is to defend press freedom and the right of citizens to information. He was speaking after swearing into office four members of the CSCS these were the representative of media companies, Jose Guerra, and members chosen by the countrys parliament, the Assembly of the Republic, Carmen dos Santos, Sauzande Jeque and Florentina Escova. The first two were appointed by the parliamentary group of Frelimo, and the third by the main opposition party Renamo. The CSCS is a watchdog body set up under the Mozambican constitution. The constitution states that it must ensure the independence of the mass media, in the exercise of the right to information and freedom of the press. It also ensures respect for the right or reply, and broadcasting time for political parties. The CSCS should also be consulted before the government appoints directors of the publicly owned media, and before private television and radio channels are licensed. This body has 11 members two appointed by the President, four elected by the Assembly, three representatives of journalists, one representative of media companies, and a judge appointed by the Supreme Council of the Judicial Magistracy (CSMJ). At the ceremony, President Nyusi urged the CSCS to ensure that journalists and media companies can freely collect, process and disseminate information of public interest. The fundamental rights and freedoms enshrined in the constitution, he said, will only be fully exercised with truly balanced information, which includes currents of opinions from all the relevant parties. The media should, however, respect the right of citizens to their privacy, to their honour and to their good name, as stipulated in the relevant legislation, he added. About a million people in the northern province of Nampula have been deprived of health care because dishonest contractors have taken the money for building eight health units, but have then abandoned them unfinished. The provincial health director, Munira Abubakar, told a press conference in Nampula city on 9 March that the building work on these eight health units cost around 70 million meticais (US$1.43 million). The abandonment of these jobs by contractors, she said, has compromised the governments effort to expand the Nampula health network and to reduce the distance citizens must walk to reach the nearest health unit. Currently the average distance is more than ten kilometres. When the health authorities looked into the matter they found that in none of the eight cases were the health units as much as 50 per cent complete. We have taken certain measures, said Abubakar. We have notified the contractors. Some have promised to resume the work. We have given them a short time to complete the jobs, since some of them date from 2012. Nampula is the most populous province in Mozambique with over four million inhabitants, many of whom face serious problems in access to medical care. For this year, the provincial government had hoped to build 11 new health units, but we are not going to able to build all of them because of our budget, said the director. So we have to study strategies of how to complete the jobs that are unfinished, for they too compromise our budget, added Abubakar, The abandoned jobs were financed by the World Bank and the Mozambican government. They particularly affect residents in the districts of Mogovolas, Moma, Ribaue, Memba and Rapale. Students stand in queue at an SSC examination centre in city to write their tests on Monday. (Photo: DC) Hyderabad: It may sound strange but the number of teacher invigilators that were suspended for dereliction of duty were more than the students caught using unfair means on the first day of SSC exams that started in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh on Monday. While in TS, 12 invigilators were suspended from duties, in AP the figure was 13. In Andhra Pradesh, four invigilators were relieved from duties on suspicion of helping students in four different centres-Visakhapatnam (2), Vizianagaram (1) and Chittoor(1).Malpractice cases were booked against four students as well in these centres,Prasanna Kumar, director of government examinations(AP) said. On the other hand in TS, officials relieved 12 invigilators from duties besides booking malpractice cases against 6 students. Also, one impersonation case was noticed in Sister Nivedita High School in Saroornagar. The flying squads inspected 880 centres in all in ten districts. All flights to and from Brussels airport have been cancelled and the airport is being evacuated. (Photo: PTI) New Delhi: As twin explosions rocked Brussels airport leaving several dead and injured, Jet Airways has said in a statement that its aircraft at the airport is safe. "We are aware of the bomb explosion at the Brussels airport. Jet Airways is making all efforts to confirm the status of all its staff and guests. As per first information the Jet Airways aircraft in Brussels is safe," the airline said in a statement. Brussels airport serves as Jet Airways' European hub for international operations. The airline had, however, recently announced relocation of this gateway to the Dutch capital Amsterdam from coming Sunday. Jet Airways operates daily flights between Brussels and New Delhi and Mumbai in India and Newark and Toronto in North America. The Naresh Goyal-promoted airline started using the Belgian capital as a hub in September 2007, when it began flying to Europe, making it the first Indian airline to have full-scale operations outside the country, besides national carrier Air India. Jet Airways has two hubs in India -- Mumbai and Delhi -- while its equity partner Etihad Airways operates through its hub in Abu Dhabi. All flights to and from Brussels airport have been cancelled and the airport is being evacuated. The airport has been shut down until further notice, Eurocontrol, the European organisation for air navigation safety, confirmed on its website. Meanwhile, the Ministry of External Affairs in India said that they had spoken to the Ambassador. "No report of any Indian casualty," the MEA said on explosions at Brussels airport. 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. ST. PAUL A push to bring the state's driver's licenses into compliance with federal law cleared its first major legislative hurdle on Monday. The Senate voted 63-2 in support of a bill that would repeal a law banning the Minnesota Department of Public Safety from planning to bring the state into compliance with the federal Real ID law. The issue was thrust into the media spotlight last fall when the U.S. Department of Homeland Security suggested Minnesotans would be unable to board commercial flights with their driver's licenses beginning in 2016. The department later backed off that timeline, setting a new deadline of January 2018. Still, lawmakers said they heard from constituents concerned they would have to show an enhanced driver's license or passport in order to board a domestic flight. Sen. Carla Nelson, R-Rochester, praised the bill as an important first step in resolving the issue. "This uncertainty regarding Minnesotans' ability to board airplanes with their current licensure and the fact Minnesota is not compliant, nor has an extension, has caused great concern in my district," Nelson said. Congress passed the Real ID Act in 2005 based recommendations from the 9/11 Commission. This heightened ID requires verification of an individual's identity, residency and lawful status in the country. Minnesota is one of five states not in compliance with the law. ADVERTISEMENT The bill, sponsored by Sen. Scott Dibble, DFL-Minneapolis, instructs the state's public safety commissioner to begin planning so the state will be ready to issue Real ID-compliant driver's licenses and identification cards by Oct. 1. Those planning efforts include estimating the potential cost of implementing Real ID and recommending steps that can be taken to protect license holders' private data. The commissioner is required to submit a report to the Legislature by March 31 with a plan for implementing the law. The bill also requires the state to seek an exemption from the federal government to Real ID requirements that prohibit Minnesotans from using their driver's licenses to enter military bases, nuclear power plants and other federally run facilities. A similar bill is advancing in the Minnesota House and could be up for a vote as early as Thursday. Monday's vote to move ahead on Real ID is in stark contrast to 2009, when Minnesota lawmakers voted overwhelmingly in favor of a Real ID planning ban. The author of that bill, Sen. Warren Limmer, R-Maple Grove, said at that time, legislators opposed being forced to comply with an unfunded mandate and had serious data privacy concerns. Limmer said he appreciates that Dibble's bill at this point only allows for planning and doesn't move ahead yet with Real ID compliance. He said he remains concerned that the move to Real ID amounts to establishing a national ID. "Minnesota is a privacy state. We're very proud of that history in recent decades. We have found that the priority is to protect the privacy of our citizens. Not so with other states. Not so with other bureaucrats that will have access to our citizens' records," Limmer said. Dibble told senators he hopes to bring forward another bill before the end of session that would implement Real ID in the state. Sen. Terri Bonoff, DFL-Minnetonka, said she thinks it's critical lawmakers move ahead with Real ID in order to protect the public. She added, "I do think it's in the best interest of national security." Carlos Eire is professor of history at Yale and author of the National Book Award-winning memoir Waiting for Snow in Havana: Confessions of a Cuban Boy. At Babalu Blog, which is providing invaluable commentary on President Obamas Cuban interlude, Professor Eire has posted the column below as The speech never given, the op-ed never published. Professor Eire provides a prefatory note indicating that he offered the essay below to The Washington Post and The New York Times. The Post was decent enough to tell me very quickly at least that they had already published too many op-ed pieces on Cuba for the week and couldnt publish any more. The NYT predictably didnt even reply. Three days later, this insignificant uppity little spic is still waiting for a reply. Its written for non-Cubans. We Cubans know all this stuff all too well. But here it is. Maybe it will get passed around beyond the confines of South Florida and other places of exile around the globe. In the interest of widening the reach of Professor Eires column, and with Professor Eires kind permission, Im posting the column below. Professor Eire writes: The speech Obama should deliver in Havana, but never will President Obama will have a unique opportunity [this] week. No, its not his trip to Cuba itself that is so unique; after all, Calvin Coolidge visited the island when Fidel Castro was a little boy. His golden opportunity is the chance he will have to deliver a memorable speech to the Cuban people in the presence of Raul Castro and the military junta that has ruled Cuba for fifty-seven years. President Obama could deliver an iconic speech that would forever enshrine his legacy in the annals of American presidential history, placing him in the same league with Lincoln at Gettysburg, Roosevelt at his first inauguration, or Kennedy and Reagan at the Berlin Wall. Its an opportunity he will squander, however. No doubt about it. Instead of telling Raul Castro what he needs to hear, or exposing the dictators human rights abuses to the world, President Obama will probably focus on his own legacy and dwell on platitudes carefully crafted to placate his host and irritate his critics. Nonetheless, in the highly unlikely chance that he might want to take a stab at genuine statesmanship, here is a speech he could deliver in Havana , sufficiently laced with the presidents usual references to himself and his own place in history. Obamas Havana Address President Raul Castro, I am proud to come to this city as your guest, and grateful for the chance to address you, your Council of Ministers, your Council of State, and the Cuban people.. I have not come here to praise you, however. Sometimes, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for guests to speak frankly and lay aside the gilded norms of diplomatic etiquette. Seven years and half a century ago, you and your brother stole this country from the Cuban people and established yourselves as absolute monarchs. Your brother Fidel sat on the throne first, ruthlessly crushing all opponents for forty-seven long years, and then, when he became too feeble to rule, you assumed his blood-soaked mantle. Your shameful record of human rights abuses speaks for itself. You have executed and disappeared so many thousands of Cubans that a precise number of victims cannot be reckoned. You have crushed dissent and imprisoned a higher percentage of your own people than most other modern dictators, including Stalin. You have condoned and encouraged torture and extrajudicial killings, and continue to do so, flagrantly. You have censored and continue to censor all means of expression and communication. You have driven nearly twenty percent of your people into exile, and prompted thousands to meet their deaths at sea, unseen and uncounted. Enslaving your own people is not your only crime against humanity, however. Shortly after I was born, you and your brother aimed nuclear warheads at my country and brought the entire world to the brink of annihilation. Ever since, you have allied yourself with my countrys deadliest enemies, fomented violence overseas, and striven to turn other nations against us. Now, fifteen months after I extended a hand of friendship to you, I have come here to remind you of the words of Martin Luther King, Jr. : Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. Now, here in Havana, I urge you to free your own people, the Cuban people. Let your fellow Cubans breathe free, let them join the rest of the civilized world. Tear down your repressive machinery, Raul. Step down from your throne and call for free and fair elections, and freedom of expression and assembly. Free your political prisoners. Allow Cubans to travel freely. Open up the internet in Cuba, open up a free market economy, tear down all your state-owned and state-run monopolies. Do the right thing, Raul, drop dead or go away, and take your brother and your military junta with you. Srinagar: The Indian army on Tuesday accorded full military honours to Sepoy Vijay Kumar K, the Army jawan who was killed during an avalanche, in a solemn wreath laying ceremony held in Leh. The jawans frozen lifeless body was pulled from beneath fifteen feet deep snow by rescuers on Sunday days after he with another soldier was swept away by the avalanche in frontier Kargil district of Jammu and Kashmir. After the ceremony in Leh, his mortal remains were flown to Delhi where Army Chief General Dalbir Singh was scheduled to pay his homage by laying a wreath. Then, his remains would be sent to Vallaramapuram, the victims native village in Thirunelvelli district of Tamil Nadu. His funeral ceremony will be held at Vallaramapuram with full military honours, defence spokesman Colonel S.D. Goswami said. Soldiers pay homage to Sepoy Vijay Kumar in Leh. (Photo: DC) At the wreath laying ceremony held at Ladakhs cultural capital Leh, senior Army officers paid homage to Sepoy Kumar and saluted his bravely. At 10.45 pm on March 17, an avalanche triggered by a mild earthquake hit an Army post in Biamah area at an altitude of 17,500 feet above sea level close to the Line of Control (LoC) in Kargil sector. Sepoy Kumar was along with another soldier Sujit on surveillance duty in the area. Both were swept away by the avalanche and while Sepoy Sujit was rescued by a team of Army rescuers early next day, Sepoy Kumar went missing. A three-day search operation during which avalanche rescue dogs, deep penetration radars and metal detectors were also pressed into service by the rescuers led to the discovery of his frozen lifeless body lying beneath 15 feet of snow accumulated in the area of avalanche occurrence on March 20. Sepoy Sujit who was injured during the incident is, meanwhile, recovering at a military hospital near Leh, Army sources said. On February 3, nine Army soldiers including a junior commissioned officer were buried alive when a huge wall of frost and snow crashed into the remote Siachen Glacier, smothering a vast area which also had an Army camp located on it in the southern side of the area at a height of 19,600 feet in eastern Ladakh. A tenth soldier Lance Naik Hanamanthappa Koppad, a resident of Betadur village in Dharwad district of Karnataka, was miraculously pulled out alive from an arctic tent buried under 25 feet of frost and snow though in critical condition by the rescuers on February 8, six days after the incident. But he too died in Army's Research and Referral Hospital three days later. Nigeria Customs Service on Tuesday announced the re-introduction of ban on importation of rice through land borders across the country. The Comptroller-General of Customs, Hameed Ali, said the presidency had given approval for the reversal of an earlier policy in October 2015 which allowed rice imports through land borders, once appropriate duty and charges were paid. Mr. Ali, who made the announcement at a review meeting with Comptrollers of Border Commands and Federal Operation Units in Abuja, said the Service had observed that dwindling revenue from rice imports through the land borders hardly matched the volume of rice arriving in neighbouring ports. He said reports from border commands indicated an upsurge in rice smuggling, adding that implementation of the restriction order had already taken off smoothly since October 2015, with a high level of compliance. The Comptroller noted, however, that revenue began to dwindle from January 2016, with importers blaming access to foreign exchange their as major impediments. During the five-month period October 2015 and March 17, 2016 when the importation was allowed, he said a total of 24.992 metric tonnes of rice valued at N2.34 billion were imported through the land borders. The total revenue generated for the period stood at about N1.69 billion, considered lower than the projected revenue to be generated with the removal of import restrictions. He said an upsurge in the number of the seizures has been reported across the land borders since January 2016, with about 9,238 bags of rice seized within the first two months of the year, with about N64.67 million as duty paid value received by the Customs anti-smuggling patrol teams of Federal operations and Border commands. Although the Comptroller-General of Customs said his officials cannot be totally exonerated from the abuses associated with the implementation of the order on rice, he disclosed that his office has been inundated with reports of collusion between them and some rice importers. Consequently, he directed full investigation into the reports, assuring that all indicted personnel would be sanctioned. I have directed a zero-tolerance to rice imports through the land borders irrespective of volume with immediate effect. Importers who have already initiated import processes will have a grace period ending Friday March 25, 2016 to clear their consignments, the Comptroller-General declared. Fidelity Bank on Tuesday said it foresaw an imminent growth in non-oil export as more Nigerians, governments begin to wake up to the huge prospects inherent in the Agricultural and Small Medium Enterprise (SMEs) sectors. Nnamdi Okonkwo, managing director of the bank, who made this remark at a one-day workshop/training on exports organised by Koinonia Ventures Limited in conjunction with the bank, expressed high optimism that these sectors, if properly positioned could play significant roles in diversifying Nigerias monolithic economy. Mr. Okonkwo however pointed out that no other time is the subject of import and export substitution more important than now when the country is grappling with a revenue crisis precipitated by the steep decline in crude oil prices and widespread corruption. The Nigerian Export Promotion Council (NEPC) has predicted that Nigerias non-oil sector will generate about $100 billion in export earnings in the next 12 years. To assist export-oriented MSMEs raise their level of competitiveness in the global market, Mr. Okonkwo said the bank had raised N30 billion in corporate bonds on the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE). He said the capital raising exercise is expected to enable the bank fulfil its promise to increase MSME lending to 50 percent by 2017, further adding that the bank has earmarked 80 percent of the net proceed of the bond to finance MSMEs which have been peddled as the next cash cow. Mr. Okonkwo, who was represented by Chijioke Ugochukwu, the banks executive director, Shared Services & Products, said the lenders renewed focus on MSMEs was driven by its growing role in the transformation of economies. Speaking on Turning Adversity to Prosperity: A Case for a Radical Repositioning of Nigerias Non-Oil Export Sector, Olufemi Boyede, MD/CEO, Koinonia Ventures noted that the Nigerian economy can only make progress if local entrepreneurs become export-ready. Commenting on the countrys competitive advantage, particularly as it relates to export trade, Mr. Boyede said Nigeria currently has over 5, 000 exportable products, explaining that about 21 of such products can be quickly harnessed for the benefit of the nations economy. Alluding to the enormous successes of Obamas National Export Initiative (NEI), the Koinonia boss urged the federal government to create the much needed environment for Nigerian exporters to thrive. The Barack Obama Administration has made it a top priority to improve the conditions that directly affect the private sectors ability to export, he said. According to him, the Nigerian government must ensure that trade barrier abroad are completely removed, stating that government at all levels must channel their energies towards helping firms of all sizes and farmers overcome hurdles of financing and access to new markets. Mr. Boyede applauded the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN), the nations apex financial institution for establishing a N550 billion intervention fund aimed at upscaling Nigerias export performance, urging Fidelity Bank Plc to help exporters take advantage of the facility. In her keynote address at the training programme, Aisha Abubakar, minister of state, Industry Trade & Investment, said government is more than ever dogged in its quest to revive agriculture as an alternative to crude oil through better reforms, value chain/addition and discouragement of export of raw materials. There are a sizeable number of agricultural commodities grown in Nigeria that are quoted in the international commodities market and these include cocoa, palm oil, groundnut, Sesame seed, Shea Nuts, cotton and even fish, Ms. Abubakar said. She noted that the fundamental drawback to the growth of export is standardization, explaining that Nigerian exporters are struggling to meet the quality requirements of their trading partners. Exporters must go further to add value to produce, package properly and then they will attract higher prices, he added. The workshop, which had as its theme, Key Trends & Opportunities in the Non-Oil Export Sector brought together subject matter experts, government agencies as well as private sector players in export business, to share knowledge and insights on the key trends and opportunities in the non-oil export sector. The Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN governor, Godwin Emefiele, on Tuesday allayed fears by owners of domiciliary accounts that the government planned to confiscate or covert the funds in such accounts for any reason. The governor, who was speaking in Abuja at the end of the 248th meeting of the Monetary Policy Committee, MPC, said allegation that the government was contemplating converting the $20 billion reportedly idling away in individual domiciliary accounts was unfounded. There is no intention; there will never be that intention, Mr. Emefiele said in answer to a question on the issue. It is not within the view of the bank to begin to talk about converting peoples domiciliary accounts. This should be taken seriously. The banks will continue to allow domiciliary account holders unfettered access to the funds in their accounts. What we are trying to do is to make the market open as much as possible and not create further tightening situations that would create problems for the economy. He described as wrong insinuations that the funds in the accounts were idle, explaining that they were liabilities in the balance sheets funding certain various assets on the side of their owners. Mr. Emefiele, who spoke on some of the resolutions from the two-day meeting, said members resolved to raise the monetary policy rate, MPR, which is the approved rate banks would lend money to investors, by 100 basis points from 11 per cent to 12 per cent and cash reserve ratio, CRR by 250 basis points 20 per cent to 22.5 per cent. The committee also agreed to retain liquidity ratio at 30 per cent, while narrowing the asymmetry corridor from +200 and -700 to 200 basis points and -500 basis points. On the proposed streamlining of foreign exchange guidelines, the CBN governor apologised that the decision was being delayed, saying consultations were on-going with various interest groups on how to improve FX supply. As soon as we are able to achieve tangible success in this direction we will unfold this to Nigerians. We are hoping that with time the supply of foreign exchange would be improve, he said. Mr. Emefiele said during the previous meeting, the CBN had adopted an accommodating monetary policy introduced since July 2015 to address the growth concerns in the economy. The policy of lowering both the CRR and MPR, he pointed out, was to effectively free more funds for the deposit money banks to have excess liquidity to lend to those who were able to submit verifiable investment proposals in the real sector of the economy. He however expressed regrets that the funds have not impacted the market yet, because the banks were still processing some of the proposals submitted to them. The CBN governor noted the impact of the delay in passing the 2016 budget on the economy, saying this worsened the difficult financial conditions of economic agents, as output continued to decline due to low investment arising from weak demand. He identified factors that hampered economic growth during the period under review, namely the dismal performance in growth in credits to the private sector, lingering scarcity of refined petroleum products, seasonal factors and increased electricity tariffs. The International Criminal Court (ICC) has on Monday in The Hague convicted Democratic Republic of Congos (DRC) Jean-Pierre Bemba, who served as vice president from 2003 to 2006. The prosecutors said on Tuesday in The Hague the conviction made Bemba the highest-ranking politician convicted by the international war crimes court. The prosecutors said Bemba was judged as being responsible for a campaign of rape and murder in Central African Republic. Sylvia Steiner, the International Criminal Courts Presiding Judge, said Bemba, who served as vice president from 2003 to 2006, failed to discipline or restrain his Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC) soldiers. The judge said the soldiers rampaged through the neighbouring country in 2002 and 2003. Steiner, reading from an unusually graphic judgement, said the MLC soldiers by force knowingly and intentionally invaded the bodies of the victims. He said they penetrated the victims anuses, vaginas or other bodily openings with their penises. Steiner said the case was the first in which the ICC had found a high official directly responsible for the crimes of his subordinates, as well as the first to focus primarily on crimes of sexual violence committed in war. The Presiding Judge ordered that Bemba be held in custody pending sentencing at a later date. Meanwhile, Zeid AlHussein, UN Human Rights Commissioner, has described the verdict as a step toward eradicating the horrendous sexual crimes which had blighted the lives of so many women. The verdict is satisfying but comes too late. Some of the victims of Jean-Pierre Bembas men are dead now, he must pay, because hes guilty, he said. Jean-Pierre Boga, a teacher in Bangui, said the victims must be compensated. Bembas supporters in Congo reacted indignantly to the verdict. (Reuters/NAN). A Burundian army commander who had allegedly participated in repression against government opponents was Tuesday shot dead at army headquarters. Army officials said on condition of anonymity that Lt. Col. Darius Ikurakure was shot dead from a vehicle that drove past the entrance to the headquarters. The official from the communication department of the presidency said the officer was standing near a notice board in the yard, when he was fired at. He said the killing took place when many officers had left the headquarters for lunch. Meanwhile, opposition politicians and family members of people who have disappeared have accused Ikurakure of involvement in torture and extra-judicial killings. The lieutenant colonel had never responded to such accusations. The East African country has been in turmoil since President Pierre Nkurunziza announced a nearly a year ago that he would seek a third term in office, in spite a constitutional two-term limit, and won an election in July. The UN noted that more than 400 people have been killed and more than 250,000 have fled abroad. (dpa/NAN) Belgium has been placed on lock-down after a series of bomb blasts suspected to be terrorist attacks hit the Zaventem Airport and the metro Station in Brussels. Local media are reporting that two blasts minutes apart went off at the departure area and runway of the airport around 8 a.m local time. Another explosion went off at the metro station near the European Union headquarters in the countrys capital, Brussel. The European commission has locked down its staff after the attacks. Kristalina Georgieva, the EUs vice-president in charge of personnel told staff to stay inside, the Guardian reports. The newspaper is reporting that at least 13 people have been confirmed dead in the airport attacks believed to have been carried out by suicide bombers while 35 others are said to be in critical condition. Several people are believed injured by the blast at Maelbeeck metro station, AP reports. Belgian authorities have raised the security alert to the highest level following the incidents. The countrys security agencies have been engaged in a series of operations to arrest the perpetrators of the Paris attack of November 13, 2015. One such operation led to the arrest of an alleged mastermind of the attack, Salah Abdeslam, last week. I am shocked and concerned by the events in Brussels. We will do everything we can to help, tweeted British prime minister, David Cameron. Thirty minutes later, he added that he had called an emergency security meeting in the event of the bombing in Brussels. I will be chairing a COBRA meeting on the events in Brussels later this morning. A Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms (COBRA) meeting is often called by the UK government to coordinate instant response to national or regional crisis. Patna: Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar on Tuesday solicited people's cooperation in the implementation of a complete ban on country-made liquor in the state from next month. "The ban (on the manufacture, trade and sale of country made) on liquor will be implemented with people's cooperation and not with the fear of either government's machinery or the law," Kumar said while inaugurating a two-day Bihar Diwas celebrations at the historic Gandhi Maidan. He said that the government would take the help of school children who would take pledge from their parents not to consume liquor. Kumar said that teachers, Vikas Mitra, Tola Sewak, Anganwadi workers and others would be roped in for creation of a positive atmosphere for implementation of ban on country-made liquor in the state. Kumar said that some women had demanded a total prohibition on alcohol in the state during an official function last year in Patna to which "I promised them that I would enforce ban on liquor if I return to power." Kumar said that he had announced on November 26 on the occasion of 'Prohibition Day' that his government would implement a complete ban on country made liquor from April 1, 2016. The government will bring a bill in the ongoing budget session of state legislature that would have a provision of death penalty for those caught manufacturing illicit liquor, he said adding that country made liquor must be destroyed by March 31. Kumar asserted that he would not allow 'home delivery' of liquor in the state. The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission on Tuesday arraigned the former boss of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency, Patrick Akpobolokemi, and eight others over alleged N35 billion fraud. The arraignment had been continuously stalled due to the inability of the EFCC to arrest Government Ekpemupolo (also known as Tompolo). At the last court sitting, last month, Festus Keyamo, counsel to the EFCC, requested an adjournment to enable him separate the charges, leaving out Mr. Ekpemupolo who would face a separate charge when arrested. In the new charge, Mr. Akpobolokemi, Global West Vessel Ltd, Odimiri Electrical Ltd, Kime Engozu, Boloboere Property and Estate Ltd, Rex Elem, Destre Consult Ltd, Gregory Mbonu, and Captain Warredi Enisuoh are accused of conspiracy to commit the fraud between 2012 and 2015. All the defendants pleaded not guilty. The defendants lawyers prayed the court to grant their clients bail in the most liberal terms. Mr. Keyamo did not oppose the bail applications. Because the accused persons are already on bail in another charge before this court, I pray my Lord to grant them bail in a condition good enough to enable them attend this trial, Mr. Keyamo said. Justice Ibrahim Buba granted bail to all the defendants, except Mr. Enisuoh, in the sum N50 million with one reliable surety in like sum. Mr. Enisuoh, who was charged on two out of the 40 counts (totalling N8 million), received a N10 million bail with one surety. The defendants who are already on bail are to perfect their bail conditions within 24 hours or be remanded in prison, said Mr. Buba. Those appearing before me for the first time should perfect their bail conditions today or be remanded in prison. The judge adjourned the case till May 23, 24, 25, and 26 for trial. The judge also adjourned till April 18, for arraignment, another 22-count charge of fraud involving Messrs Ekpemupolo and Akpobolokemi and about 11 others. Mr. Akpobolokemi is also facing four other fraud charges before different judges. Speaking to journalists outside the courtroom, Mr. Keyamo said Mr. Ekpemupolo would be charged separately when we get him. It is the duty of the security forces and they are still making efforts to get him, he said. Hes on the run and he cannot continue to be on the run for ever. We will get him. A federal high court had, on January 14, issued a warrant for the arrest of Mr. Ekpemupolo after he shunned an invitation to appear before the EFCC last December. On February 8, Judge Buba renewed the arrest warrant, paving the way for the EFCC to declare Mr. Ekpemupolo wanted. Two weeks later, Mr. Ekpemupolo, through his lawyer, Ebun Adegboruwa, headed to the Court of Appeal to challenge the warrant for his arrest, insisting that it was not competently placed before the court. The former militant leader also asked the appellate court to transfer the charges against him to a different judge. On March 11, Mr. Ekpemupolo filed his Appellants Brief of Argument before the Court of Appeal in further demonstration of his commitment to the rule of law and due process, Mr. Adegboruwa in a press statement on March 15th. Tompolo is thus asking the Court of Appeal to set aside the warrant for his arrest and vacate all subsequent proceedings emanating from the flawed process of the criminal charge. President Muhammadu Buhari has approved the establishment of a naval command post in the Lake Chad region in a bid to strengthen the fight against insurgency in the North-East. The Director of Naval Information, Chris Ezekobe, disclosed this during a courtesy visit to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Lagos. There is a presidential directive to set up a command post in the Lake Chad Region and that is ongoing, said Mr. Ezekobe, a naval commodore. According to him, naval personnel for the command post are currently undergoing training in the North East and would be deployed once it becomes operational. Mr. Ezekobe said the navy already had three categories of forces working in the North-East. Similarly, the naval spokesman said that the navy had acquired 30 repellent boats and was expecting 50 more by the end of May to enhance security in the Niger Delta Region. According to him, this will make it difficult for the criminals to operate in that domain. We have improved on our surveillance capability and the regional maritime awareness capability. We have increased the number of satellite stations along the coasts. Essentially, our territorial waters are well covered by the surveillance system. We have acquired one Offshore Patrol Vessel from China and the other will arrive before the end of May, he said. The naval spokesman said that between 70 and 80 per cent of the nations wealth comes from the maritime environment, hence the need to secure the terrain. We need to partner with other maritime security agencies, the media and other stakeholders. It is a collective effort and we must secure that environment to make our nation prosperous and great again, Mr. Ezekobe said. (NAN) The Nigerian government says it will inject N350 billion to stimulate its economy, which is facing a severe crisis occasioned by falling oil prices. Nigerias economic growth in the last quarter stood at 2.1 percent. The total growth recorded in 2015 was 2.8 percent, the slowest since 1999, according to data released by the National Bureau of Statistics, NBS. Briefing journalists at the end of a two-day National Economic Council (NEC) retreat at the conference hall of the Presidential Villa, the minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun, said the N350 billion would be spent mostly on capital projects and job creation. From the Federal Ministry of Finance in anticipation of the approval of the budget, we have virtually lined up about N350billion which we would be pumping into the Nigerian economy in the forthcoming months. We explained our rationale and the processes that we have put in place, safeguards to ensure that this money actually achieve the desired objective, which is to stimulate the economy. We are already discussing with some of the contractors who will be paid these monies and the objectives from the overall criteria is how many Nigerians would be re-engaged. We are specifically looking at contractors who have laid off staff and how many Nigerians are you going to put back to work as a result of this money that we are planning to release. We believe this would bring significant economic activity, she said. Ms. Adeosun said the retreat, which was the first by the present administration, deliberated extensively on the drop in revenue, particularly as to how it affects the state government and their ability to pay salaries and fulfil other obligations. According to her, the general resolve of the council was that there was a need to bring in more cost efficiency in the operations of government, specifically the setting up an efficiency unit within the state governments, to rationalize expenditure and to increase IGR. She said there was a need to generate data because data is the basis of any revenue collecting efforts, just as there was a need to develop incentives for both federal and state revenue generating agencies to ensure alignment of interest between the two arms of government. The governors, Ms. Adeosun said, were tasked to focus on property and consumption taxes in their states to help improve their revenue in a fair manner. Tax payer education must be intensified and to expand the tax base and ensure that there is a buy-in in the revenue collection agencies from the populace she said. State governors were also encouraged to, where possible, rationalize the number of commissioners and general political appointees as well as adopt cost control measures to be able to sustain their states. NEC also discussed the need to review the counterpart funding needed to access the Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC) fund from 50 percent to 10 percent. The states currently need to have a counterpart fund of 50 percent to access the UBEC grants, Upon review, it would become 10 and 90 percent contribution. According to the minister, this will release an estimated 58 billion naira that is currently un-accessed. The minister said the council discussed that with N53billion, Nigeria could revamp at least 1,000 of the worst classrooms in each of the 36 states. She said the council also discussed getting a legislative approval to change the need for counterpart funding on the part of state governments. The United States and the United Kingdom Embassies in Nigeria on Tuesday expressed deep concerns over reported breakout of violence and attacks on electoral officials during last Saturdays re-run national and state assembly elections in Rivers State. The embassies of the two governments said in separate statements in Abuja that the breakout of violence during the polls, particularly those targeted at electoral officials, and other forms of electoral irregularities, were totally condemnable and unacceptable. We condemn the use of violence and disruptions of the democratic process, the U.S. said in a statement from its embassy in Abuja. We call upon the leadership of Nigerias political parties to urge their supporters to conduct themselves peacefully throughout the electoral process. We call on those dissatisfied to pursue a resolution of their grievances peacefully in accordance with the rule of law, the statement added. On its part, the British High Commission in Nigeria said the UK government was disappointed by reports of violence, in particular against electoral officials and the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC. UK observers in Rivers state saw irregularities around the voting and noted the low turn-out of voters at polling units which was in part a consequence of fear of violence, the embassy said in a statement by its spokesperson, Joe Abuku. The British High Commission urges the leadership of both major political parties to encourage their supporters in Rivers to behave peacefully and call on those still dissatisfied to pursue resolution of their grievances through the courts in accordance with the rule of law, it said. The exercise was marred by massive violence perpetrated by the supporters of the two leading political parties, the All Progressive Congress, APC and the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, during which about four persons, including a National Youth Service Corps, NYSC member, were killed. Many other supporters of the two political parties were wounded amid reports of pockets of violence and ballots materials snatching by desperate political thugs. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for attacks on an airport and a metro train in Brussels, Belgian capital, which killed 34 people on Tuesday, a news agency affiliated to the group said. The AMAQ reported that, Islamic State fighters carried out a series of bombings with explosive belts and devices on Tuesday, targeting an airport and a central metro station in the center of the Belgian capital Brussels, it said. Belgium officials have confirmed that 34 people were killed and over 170 others wounded in the coordinated bomb attacks at the Zaventem Airport and the Maelbeek metro station in Brussels, on Tuesday. Local media reported that the police were engaged in an active man hunt for some of the suspects of the attack. Police have released the image of a man they what to question in connection to the attacks. Reacting to earlier reports that the suicide bomber at the airport detonated his bomb at the checking counter of American Airlines, the airline released statement saying its employees and crew members were not injured in the blast. American is taking of employees and customers at Brussels Airport. At this time all our airport employees and crew members are safe and accounted for with no report of injuries, the statement read. As the country is struggling to come to grasp with the attack, local media have made appeals to people living near Zaventem airport to bring blankets, water, food and other essential medical supplies to a local gym being used as a temporary shelter. Belgium officials have confirmed that 34 people were killed and over 170 others wounded in the coordinated bomb attacks at the Zaventem Airport and the Maelbeek metro station in Brussels, on Tuesday. Local media reported that the police were engaged in an active man hunt for some of the suspects of the attack. Reacting to earlier reports that the suicide bomber at the airport detonated his bomb at the checking counter of American Airlines, the airline released statement saying its employees and crew members were not injured in the blast. American is taking of employees and customers at Brussels Airport. At this time all our airport employees and crew members are safe and accounted for with no report of injuries, the statement read. As the country is struggling to come to grasp with the attack, local media have made appeals to people living near Zaventem airport to bring blankets, water, food and other essential medical supplies to a local gym being used as a temporary shelter. Meanwhile, the CNN is reporting that President Barack Obama who is on a state visit to Cuba has been briefed on the blasts. The president was apprised this morning of the explosions in Brussels, Belgium. US officials have been and will continue to be in close contact with their Belgian counterparts, an official said after the blasts at Brussels airport and a metro station. U.S. Republican party front-runner, Donald Trump, has reacted to blast characteristically saying he will close the U.S. border if elected president in November to stem the entry of would-be terrorists into the country. I would close up our borders We are lax and we are foolish, he told Fox News. Similarly, the United Kingdoms Ukip Partys defence spokesperson, Mike Hooken, blamed the success of the attack on the freedom of movement within the European Union. He said: This horrific act of terrorism shows that Schengen free movement and lax border controls are a threat to our security. The Ukip is opposed to greater regional alliances in the EU. Some of the casualties have been identified. The Slovenian foreign minister, Karl Erjavec, told journalists that one of his countrys diplomats was among the wounded. He said the unnamed diplomat was in hospital and his life was not in danger. President Muhammadu Buhari has joined leaders across Europe and the rest of the world in condemning the atrocious terrorist attacks at the Zaventem Airport and Maalbeek Metro Station in Brussels earlier Tuesday, a statement from his office said. The statement, signed by the presidents spokesperson, Femi Adesina, said Mr. Buhari commiserated with Prime Minister Charles Michel and Belgians over the loss of over 30 lives in the attacks. The president assures Prime Minister Michel and the people of Belgium that having suffered the horror and anguish of incessant terrorist attacks over several years, Nigeria stands in full solidarity with them on this day of national pain and trauma. President Buhari believes that the appalling attack on Brussels reinforces the need for greater international cooperation to effectively confront and destroy global terrorism and its perpetrators. The president assures the global community that under his leadership, Nigeria will continue to work with other countries of the world to ensure that terrorism never triumphs over free, peaceful and law-abiding nations and people of the world. He wishes the more than 100 persons injured in the attacks a speedy recovery, the statement adds. Troops of the Nigerian Army on Monday killed at least 58 Boko Haram terrorists and seized arms and foodstuff being ferried to the group, the Army has said. The Acting Director, Army Public Relations, Sani Usman, said in a statement made available to PREMIUM TIMES Tuesday that the terrorists were killed by troops of the Armys 153 Task Force Brigade and 5 Brigade who executed a clearance operation at the Musari area of Borno State. In continuation with the clearance of the remnants of the Boko Haram terrorists, troops of 153 Task Force Brigade, 5 Brigade on Monday had an encounter with terrorists at Musari village on Monday, Mr. Usman, a colonel said in the statement. During the clearance operations, a soldier paid the supreme price, while the troops killed 58 terrorist and recovered 2 hand grenades, 52 motorcycles, several bags of foodstuffs such as beans, onions, sweet potatoes and guinea corn, as well as cartons of fish. News of the terrorists death came shortly before the Army announced the remarkable success its 29 Task Force Brigade was making in another clearance operation aimed at smoking out more insurgents from their hideouts. Within the last two days the units under the Brigade cleared the remnants of Boko Haram terrorists hibernating in the following areas; Abukarti, Baradili, Borgozo, Gaijaribul Abukar, kolomi, Marguba, Umarumi and Yasori 1 and 2, Mr. Usman said. The gallant troops also recovered several items including one single barrel gun, motorcycles, drums and bags of millet and dead cattle that ran into Improvised Explosive Device (IED) buried by the Boko Haram terrorists. Similarly, the troops detonated an IED in one of the buildings at Yasori 1. It was equally discovered that prior to the clearance, the terrorists have also been frequenting Borgozo general area which they used as harbour and staging area when conducting their nefarious activities. The president of Fellowship of Churches of Christ in Nigeria, Emmanuel Dziggau, has been kidnapped in Kaduna State. Mr. Dziggau, who doubles as the president of Haddiya Ekklesiya Kristi a Nigeria, was kidnapped Monday alongside two other clerics by unknown gunmen. Addressing a press conference at the TEKAN headquarters in Jos on Tuesday, the general secretary of the church, Moses Ebuga, said the abductors demanded N100million ransom. The general secretary noted with regret that the entire TEKAN family received with deep shock and pains the sudden kidnapping of the TEKAN president, Revered Dr. Emmanuel N. Dziggau. He said the leader was kidnapped in Kaduna on Monday alongside with two other clerics. Also, Rev. Iliya Anto, the vice president of Haddiya Ekklesiya Kristi a Nigeria and Rev. Yakuba Dzarma (rtd) were kidnapped on 21st March, 2016 in Kaduna State, he said. The church scribe said the abduction of the church leaders may not be unconnected with the forthcoming national elections of Christian Association of Nigeria, CAN. We are not ignorant of the recent scheming against the Nigeria church regarding the upcoming CAN national election, where the leaders, particularly the leadership of TEKAN/ECWA bloc in CAN, have become subject of attack, he said. He however revealed that one of the kidnapped clerics, Iliya Anto, who just left his hospital bed after an operation, was released on Tuesdayby the abductors. The abductors used the mobile phone of the Rev. Iliya Anto, (rtd) to call and demanded payment of N100million ransom, he said. The TEKAN secretary appealed to the Kaduna State government, the federal government and security agents to ensure quick and safe release of the rest of the religious leaders. The National Chairman of All Progressives Congress (APC), John Odigie-Oyegun, has urged Gov. Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano State to resolve the conflict between him and his predecessor, Rabiu Kwankwaso. Mr. Odigie-Oyegun spoke on Tuesday when a delegation of executives from the state chapter of APC paid a courtesy call to the APC national secretariat in Abuja. The governor and his predecessor have been embroiled in a bitter row in recent weeks. This is an internal matter between two friends, between two brothers and these differences unfortunately have developed between them, Mr. Odigie-Oyegun said. All of us, all the party, the totality of the party must unite behind our chief executives, the president and the governors. So, we are going to do everything we can to resolve the issue amicably, Mr. Odigie-Oyegun said. The leader of the delegation and Chief Whip, Kano State House of Assembly, Ado Doguwa, said they were at the secretariat at the behest of the people of Kano State. What we did was present to you this document which is the resolution of the State Working Committee of our party. While we appreciate all the efforts you are making here at the centre to make peace within the rank of the party, we will like you to, with due respect, respect the voice of the people. We will like you to respect the voice of change, respect a position that will put the party on the right track and to be in tandem with the dictates of the party, Mr. Doguwa said. He said the governor of the state was the leader of government and the political party hence there could not be two captains in one ship. In an interview, the state Acting Chairman of APC, Abdullahi Sanusi, said before now, it was mandatory for men to wear red caps to complement their dressing. Now, there is change. Kano APC members now have a free hand to do whatever they want to do. If you want red you put it on, if you want green, if you want black, it is optional. You can put on anything you want, Mr. Sanusi said. The delegation included 36 members of the Kano State House of Assembly, members of Kano Elders Committee, 38 local government chairmen, 36 local government chapter chairmen of APC and 19 members of the House of Representatives. (NAN) The chief minister would ask the Governor to accept the resignation of Advocate General Shreehari Aney. (Photo: ANI Twitter) Mumbai: Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Tuesday said the government would ask the Governor to accept the resignation of Advocate General Shreehari Aney, who put in his papers in the backdrop of the controversy generated over his espousal of separate Marathwada state. "Shreehari Aney has made some statements which are not in accordance with the state government's stand. He has given his clarification to the government. Also, Aney has submitted his resignation to the Governor and as per procedure, he is taking cognisance of the same," Fadnavis said while making a joint statement in both Houses of the state Legislature. Leader of Opposition in the Legislative Assembly, Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil then asked if Aney's resignation has been accepted as the AG had made statements that were "intended at breaking the state." "What he said is wrong. He should apologise to the House for making such statements," he said. Responding to Vikhe Patil, Fadnavis asked the Opposition to remain serious on the issue. "According to Constitutional provisions, he has been appointed by the Governor. Opposition should remain serious on the issue. According to protocol, the Governor will ask for an opinion from the government. We will take the decision in the Cabinet and convey to the Governor that his resignation be accepted," the CM said. Meanwhile, Shiv Sena legislators staged a dharna at the main entrance of Vidhan Bhavan shouting slogans demanding Aney be tried under the "sedition" charge. Following the Chief Minister's statement, the Sena members and ministers, who had earlier announced they would not take part in House proceedings and attend Cabinet meetings, later joined the proceedings during Question Hour. The Minister of State for Education, Anthony Anwukah, has constituted a panel to investigate alleged sexual assault on a female student of Queens College, Lagos, by a male teacher. Ben Bem Goong, the Director of Press, Federal Ministry of Education, in a statement on Monday in Abuja, said the minister was worried over the allegation. The statement said Mr. Anwukah urged the panel to unravel the truth behind the allegation and make recommendations to government based on the principles of truth, justice and fairness to all parties. It advised parents, guardians, students and staff of Queens College who had credible information on the matter to avail same to the committee via the following telephone number: 07034613096 and email: saniabdu59@yahoo.com. Apparently disturbed by media reports over alleged sexual assault on a JSS II female student of Queens College, Lagos by a male teacher in the same school, the minister has set up a panel to unravel the veracity of the allegations being levelled against the teacher. Several reports from the conventional and social media networks in the past few days have indicated that there was an alleged case of sexual molestation on a JSS II student by a teacher in the same school. The minister has assured the general public, particularly parents and guardians whose wards are in any of the Unity Schools and other Federal Government Colleges that their children are in safe hands. He said that the government will continue to do everything possible within the ambit of the law to protect their wards in all government schools across the country, including Queens College, Lagos, the statement said. The minister also advised all parents to remain calm and avoid taking rash decisions that may affect their wards adversely. According to the statement, the investigation panel has two weeks within which to submit its report. (NAN) A 44-year-old man, Deji Babington-Asaye, was on Tuesday arraigned before Chief Magistrates Court in Abeokuta for calling the senator representing Ogun East, Buruji Kashamu, a drug baron and jail breaker on WhatsApp group. The prosecuting counsel, Sunday Eigbejiale, told the court that the accused committed the offence between March 13 and 14 at about 2:30pm at Ogere, Remo in Ogun State magistrate district. He said the accused, a member of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, made the comments on a party support group on WhatsApp. The prosecutor said the accused engaged in an act that threatens the peace of the state by insulting a federal lawmaker in the group tagged PDP March to Victory. According to him, the accused called Mr. Kashamu a drug baron and jail breaker, and also challenged the senator to go to United States of America and clear this name. The prosecutor said Mr. Babington-Asaye committed an offence contrary to and punishable under section 249 (d) of the Criminal Code Cap 29 Vol.11 laws of Ogun State of Nigeria, 2006. The accused however pleaded not guilty to the one-count charge of breaching public peace preferred against him. The defense counsel, Bola Oluwole, said the offence was bailable and asked the court to grant his client bail. The chief magistrate, Oriyomi Ogunfowora, therefore granted the accused bail in the sum of N250, 000 with two sureties in like sum. The court adjourned the matter till March 30. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has called on President Muhammadu Buhari to probe the crisis that characterised Saturdays legislative re-run elections in Rivers. The national chairman of the party, Ali Modu Sheriff, made the call at a news conference on Tuesday in Abuja. Mr. Sheriff said the probe was necessary to bring the perpetrators of the crisis, which led to the death of many, to justice. The PDP expresses great concern at the turn of events at the re-run National and State Assembly elections in Rivers. We join well-meaning Nigerians to condemn the cases of violence which reportedly characterised the process in some areas. We urge the president to immediately constitute a panel to carry out a dispassionate investigation of the circumstances with a view to unravelling the truth and bringing the culprits to book, he said. He added that the PDP had investigated the development and had its findings, but would want the Federal Government to conduct its own investigation. Mr. Sheriff also called on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to announce the remaining results of the elections already collated at various wards and polling units in the state. He said the PDP accepted defeat when it lost the presidential election in the country in 2015, but would not accept it if it was denied its right. It is not right for INEC to say it is not continuing with the announcement of the results in the middle of the elections. This is not healthy for our democracy. INEC should be seen as an independent electoral empire and should not be part of the process where the rights and mandate of Nigerians will be denied, he said. The chairman said that PDP had waited for more than 48 hours to assess what took place in Rivers and concluded that the process was not fair to the party. He condemned the alleged roles played by some officers and members of the armed forces in the elections. According to him, the officers are said to have in some cases, acted beyond their expected role of maintaining law and order. Mr. Sheriff alleged that the officers in some cases took over the responsibilities of INEC in the actual conduct of the re-run elections. According to him, the fact that the armed forces acted as they did in flagrant disobedience of an order of court to the contrary, is a matter that requires urgent investigation and appropriate sanction. He said security operatives especially the army, was more needed to provide security in areas threatened by insurgency and not in electoral process. (NAN) Workers in Ondo State have accused the state government of spending millions of naira to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the creation of the state when workers are not paid for three months. The week-long events, held between the February 22 and 28 amid pomp and pageantry, were to also mark the seven-year anniversary of Governor Olusegun Mimiko in office. Workers who spoke to PREMIUM TIMES on the condition of anonymity accused government of insensitivity to workers plight, saying the situation had placed them and their families in difficult situation. I have five children and it is not easy to feed not to talk about doing other necessary things in the home, a civil servant who preferred anonymity, for fear he might be victimised, said. It is saddening that government squandered millions of naira on parties, while it owes backlog of workers salaries. It has become so hard that paying school fees for the children is now a matter of indebtedness, some of the schools are allowing us to pay in bits whenever any of the salaries come. The civil servant said he applied to get a loan from his cooperative society, and until that materialises, he would have to continue to live on charity. Another worker, who simply identified himself as Gabriel, said his situation deteriorated after exhausting avenues for loan acquisition. I borrowed from the bank, and because salaries are no longer coming as usual, I do not know what to do, he said. I learnt of a finance house they call Sharp, Sharp. Some people are going there. I dont know whether that will be an opportunity to get money, but paying back has always been the problem. The workers said it was only recently that the government paid November 2015 salary, saying they were yet to collect December 2015, January and February 2016 salaries. The civil servants also accused labour union in the state of insensitivity, alleging that it failed to task the state government on meeting its obligation to workers. But in a swift reaction, the chairperson of the Nigeria Labour Congress in the state, Bosede Daramola, denied any compromise, stating the NLC was doing everything within its powers to ensure workers get their dues. She said the economic hardship was not peculiar to Ondo State, noting that as long as there were funds, the NLC would ensure the interests of workers are prioritised. The anniversary event, which was well attended by political and diplomatic bigwigs from within and outside the state, held at the newly built international conference centre, also referred to as the Dome. Foods were in abundance and exotic drinks were served. The events were televised live on TV, which cost the states several millions. A tour of some key projects across the state was conducted in which dignitaries, including former Secretary General of the Commonwealth, Emeka Anyaoku; former Information Minister, Labaran Maku; former Labour Party Chairman, Dan Iwuanyanwu, and two senators, Ben Muray-Bruce and Shehu Sani, participating. While defending the celebration, the Chairman of the Anniversary Planning Committee and Commissioner for Budget and Planning, Akin Adaramola, said the celebration was modest enough, in line with the economic realities of the state. The Speaker of Osun House of Assembly, Najeem Salaam, has said the assembly would soon review the states criminal law to provide for death penalty for kidnapping in the state. Mr. Salaam made this known when the new Commandant of Nigerian Security and Civil Defence Corps (NSCDC) in the state, Ayodele Olusola, visited him in his office in Osogbo on Tuesday. He expressed hope that the review would discourage kidnapping and other associated vices in the state. According to him, the assembly wants to be proactive in making laws that will protect lives and property in the state. On upcoming House of Assembly bye-election in Ife Central, Mr. Salaam urged the NSCDC commandant to provide adequate security for the electorate before, during and after the election. I want to urge you to ensure violence-free election. We dont want bloodshed before, during and after the election, and that is why I am pleading with you to mount surveillance around lfe, he said. The bye-election followed the death of Dejo Makinde, who was representing the constituency. Mr. Makinde, who died in December, 2015 was a member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and minority leader of the house. Earlier, Mr. Olusola said the NSCDC command in the state would do what is needed to protect lives and property before and during the election. He added that the command would continue to execute its mandate of protecting government facilities at all times. (NAN) Guwahati: The ruling Congress on Monday succeeded in retaining two of its Rajya Sabha seats with the Bodoland Peoples Front deciding to refrain from voting for its candidate Mahabir Jain whom it had proposed as candidate. Ex-minister Ripun Bora who was first candidate for the Congress got 38 votes whereas the second candidate of the party Ms Ranee Narah polled 47 votes. All the MLAs of All India United Democratic Front except one cast votes for the Congress candidate. As entire opposition refrained from voting, Mr Jain who was in fray as an Independent could not get even a single vote. Earlier, the BPF president Mr Hagrama Mahilary alleging that independent candidate Mahabir Jain had got into a secret pact with the Congress, decided not to allow their MLAs to vote for Mr Jain. BRUSSELS (AP) Bombs exploded Tuesday at the Brussels airport and in the city's subway, killing at least 31 people and wounding dozens, as a European capital was again locked down amid heightened security threats. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks. The two airport blasts, at least one of them blamed on a suicide bomber, left behind a chaotic scene of splattered blood in the departure lounge as windows were blown out, ceilings collapsed and travelers streamed out of the smoky building. About an hour later, another bomb exploded on a rush-hour subway train near the European Union headquarters. Terrified passengers had to evacuate through darkened tunnels to safety. "What we feared has happened," Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel told reporters. "In this time of tragedy, this black moment for our country, I appeal to everyone to remain calm but also to show solidarity." Belgium raised its terror alert to the highest level, diverting planes and trains and ordering people to stay where they were for most of the workday. Airports across Europe immediately tightened security. "We are at war," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said after a crisis meeting in Paris. "We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war." Added French President Francois Hollande: "Terrorists struck Brussels, but it was Europe that was targeted, and it is all the world which is concerned by this." European security officials have been bracing for a major attack for weeks, and warned that the Islamic State group was actively preparing to strike. The arrest Friday of Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in the November attacks in Paris, heightened those fears, as investigators said many more people were involved than originally thought and that some are still on the loose. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the Brussels attacks, saying in a posting on the group's Amaq news agency that its extremists opened fire in the airport and "several of them" detonated suicide belts. It said another suicide attacker struck in the subway. The posting claimed the attack was in response to Belgium's support of the international coalition arrayed against the group. Police found and neutralized a third bomb at the airport once the chaos after the two initial blasts had eased, said Florence Muls, a spokeswoman for the airport told The Associated Press. Bomb squads also detonated suspicious objects found in at least two locations elsewhere in the capital, but neither contained explosives, authorities said. Michel said there was no immediate evidence linking the attacks with Abdeslam. After his arrest, Abdeslam told authorities he had created a new network and was planning new attacks. U.S. President Barack Obama pledged to "do whatever is necessary" to help Belgian authorities seek justice. "We stand in solidarity with them in condemning these outrageous attacks against innocent people," Obama said in Havana, where he was closing a three-day visit. Western Europe has lived for decades under the threat of violence from homegrown nationalist and revolutionary movements. Muslim extremists from North Africa and the Middle East have attacked civilian targets without warning, ranging from France's 1960s war in Algeria through Libya's 1988 downing of an airline over Scotland to the 2004-05 attacks on the public transportation systems of London and Madrid. Certain neighborhoods in Brussels, like the Molenbeek quarter, have bred extremists and supplied foreign fighters. Plotters linked to the Paris attacks and others have either moved through or lived in parts of the city. Tuesday's explosions at the airport in the Brussels suburb of Zaventem came shortly after 8 a.m., one of its busiest periods. Belgian Health Minister Maggie de Block said 11 people were killed and 81 wounded. Eleven people had serious injuries, Marc Decramer of the Gasthuisberg hospital in Leuven told broadcaster VTM. The nails apparently came from one of the bombs. Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, told BFM television that the second, louder explosion brought down ceilings and ruptured pipes, mixing water with victims' blood. "It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed," he said. "There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere." "We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene," he said. Video taken moments after the explosions showed travelers huddled next to airport check-in counters and lying near luggage and trolleys as dust and the cries of the wounded filled the air. Dazed people stumbled from the scene, some with clothes and shoes blown off. Anthony Deloos, an airport worker for Swissport, which handles check-in and baggage services, said the first explosion took place near the Swissport counters where customers pay for overweight baggage. He and a colleague said the second blast hit near a Starbucks cafe. "I jumped into a luggage chute to be safe," Deloos said. The subway bombing came after 9 a.m., killing 20 people and wounding more than 100, Mayor Yvan Majeur said. "The metro was leaving Maelbeek station for Schuman when there was a really loud explosion," said Alexandre Brans, 32, wiping blood from his face. "It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the metro." Near the entrance to the station, rescue workers set up a makeshift medical treatment center in a pub. Dazed and shocked morning commuters streamed from the metro entrances as police tried to set up a security cordon. The airport was ordered closed for the rest of the day and CEO Arnaud Feist said the facility would be closed all of Wednesday and perhaps even longer. More than 200 flights to Brussels were diverted or canceled, according to flight tracking service Flightradar24. The metro also was ordered closed as the city was locked down. By the end of the workday, city officials said residents could begin moving around on the streets of the capital and train stations were reopening. But Peter Mertens of the Belgian crisis center said the threat of more attacks "is still real and serious." At least one and possibly two Kalashnikovs were found in the departure lounge at the airport, according to a European security official in contact with a Belgian police official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the ongoing investigation. It was not immediately clear whether the firearms were used in the attacks. Travelers fled the airport as quickly as they could. In video shown on France's i-Tele television, men, women and children dashed from the terminal in different directions. Security officers patrolled a hall with blown-out paneling and ceiling panels covering the floor. Marc Noel, 63, was about to board a Delta flight to Atlanta, to return to his home in Raleigh, North Carolina. A Belgian native, Noel said he was in an airport shop buying automotive magazines when the first blast struck about 50 yards away. "People were crying, shouting children. It was a horrible experience," he said, adding that his decision to shop might have saved his life. "I would probably have been in that place when the bomb went off." HAVANA (AP)- President Barack Obama on Tuesday urged Cubans to look to the future with hope, casting his historic visit to the communist nation as a moment to "bury the last remnants of the Cold War in the Americas." Obama's address opened a whirlwind final day on the island that includes a meeting with Cuban dissidents and attendance at a baseball game featuring the country's beloved national team events made possible by the normalization of U.S. and Cuban relations 15 months ago. "Havana is only 90 miles from Florida, but to get here we had to travel a great distance," Obama said during his address at Havana's Grand Theater. Despite the enthusiasm in both the U.S. and Cuba about the new relationship between the former foes, Obama acknowledged the deep differences that persist, including on human rights and democracy. With Cuban President Raul Castro looking on from a balcony, he called for citizens to be able to "speak their minds without fear" and pick their leaders in free and fair elections. The president was cheered enthusiastically when he reiterated his call for the U.S. Congress to lift the economic embargo on Cuba, calling it an "outdated burden on the Cuban people." The embargo is loathed on the island. During a joint appearance with Obama on Monday, Castro called it "the most important obstacle" to Cuba's economic growth." Obama's last day in Cuba was shadowed by the horrific attacks in Brussels, where scores of people were killed in explosions at the airport and a metro station. The president opened his remarks by vowing to do "whatever is necessary" to support Belgium. VRINDAVAN, India Aruna Samaddar threw fistfuls of colored powder into the air. Blue and red and green, the cheerful colors settled on her white sari and all over other women nearby. In most of India, widows like Samaddar have no place in this joyful celebration of Holi, the Hindu festival of colors. The countrys millions of observant Hindu widows are expected to live out their days in quiet worship, dressed only in white. They are typically barred from all religious festivities because their very presence is considered inauspicious. So for Samaddar, Mondays celebration was a joy long denied. I am so happy. I am playing Holi after 12 years. I am happy, very happy, said Samaddar, who appeared to be in her early 30s. The powder made her white sari and those of the widows around her shimmer in myriad colors. So deep is the ostracization of widows that theyre often shunned by their families and forced to seek shelter in temples. The holy city of Vrindavan, in Indias Uttar Pradesh state, is known as the City of Widows because it has given so many women shelter. And in recent years, widows have found a bit of color and joy here as well. Aid group Sulabh International has been organizing regular Holi celebrations in Vrindavan since 2013. Samaddar and more than 1,000 other widows gathered in the courtyard of one of the citys oldest temples devoted to Krishna, the most playful of the Hindu gods. The festival of Holi falls on Thursday this year, but in Vrindavan and many other parts of the country, the playing of colors begins a week ahead. Hindu priests chanted religious verses as hundreds of widows splashed colored powders and played with water pistols filled with colored water. Showers of flower petals filled the air. As loud music blasted, the younger women jostled with each other as they played with the colors. For dozens of older women, years of social conditioning proved hard to break. They applied only tiny dots of color to each others foreheads. Their participation in Holi symbolizes a break from tradition, which forbids a widow from wearing a colored sari, among many other things, said Bindeshwar Pathak, the head of Sulabh International. Sulabh was asked to oversee the lives of widows of the city by Indias Supreme Court following news reports of the widows being forced to beg for food and into prostitution. While there are tens of thousands of widows in Vrindavan, the group has been appointed caretaker for about 1,500. The organization looks after their basic needs and gives them a stipend of $30 to buy essentials. They are taught to make incense sticks and garlands to ensure that they can earn a small amount of money on their own. But for the most part, the women spend the day singing hymns to Krishna, for which they earn 15 cents. The women range in age from 22 to 100. Some were abandoned by their families decades ago. While some women were not comfortable joining in the celebration of colors, Samaddar was determined to have at least one day of cheer. We have got just one day to celebrate life, she said as she tossed the colors joyfully. Lets do it to the hilt. 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. Roja, the MLA from Nagari in Chittoor district, was suspended for a year during the winter session of the AP Assembly in December last year. Hyderabad: In a major setback for the YSR Congress, the Andhra Pradesh High Court division bench on Tuesday set aside the single judge order on quashing suspension of MLA Roja from the state Assembly for one year for allegedly using unparliamentary language in the House. The High Court had taken the matter for hearing after the Andhra Pradesh government represented by the secretary for legislative affairs had moved an appeal against the order of the single judge. The division bench comprising acting chief justice Dilip B Bhosale and justice B Naveen Rao while suspending the order of the single judge, relied on the ground that the judicial review is limited on a motion moved by the legislature to suspend a member to keep up the dignity of the house. Roja, the MLA from Nagari in Chittoor district, was suspended for a year during the winter session of the Andhra Pradesh Assembly in December last year for allegedly using unparliamentary and abusive language against certain members of the ruling Telugu Desam, including Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu. Read: Roja denied entry in House; YSRC MLAs don black in protest Earlier on Monday, a division Bench comprising acting Chief Justice Dilip B. Bhosale and Justice P. Naveen Rao heard the arguments of Supreme Court senior counsel P P Rao on behalf of the AP government and Supreme Court senior counsel Indira Jaising for Roja. Rao argued that courts could not have judicial review on an order passed by the legislature. When Justice Bhosale and Ms Jaising asked how the government could move an appeal when the suspension order was made by the legislature, Rao replied that the minister for legislative affairs had moved the motion for suspension of the respondent MLA in the House and the ministry, represented by its secretary, had the right to move the appeal. Admitting that quoting Rule 340 of the Andhra Pradesh Legislative Assembly while moving the motion in the House to suspend the respondent MLA was wrong, he said that under Article 194(3) of the Constitution the legislature had the power to rectify that wrong. He argued that the Rule, which was wrongly quoted, should not be taken into consideration and the court should see whether the House had the power to take such action or not. Read: YSRC playing up Roja issue, says Prattipati He added that if the member had apologised for abusing the leader of the House that day, this situation would not have been arose. When Justice Bhosale asked Jaising whether Roja was prepared to tender an apology to the House, she replied that at this stage the government was viewing the issue as a battle between the legislature and the judiciary. Brushing aside the objection of Jaising that the House had not given a chance to Roja of being heard before passing the motion, Rao said that the House may proceed at once as it was a case involving the dignity of the House and that of using abusive language, but not obstruction of proceedings. Jaising refuted the contentions of Rao and argued that a mistake committed by the House could not be rectified by the courts and said that the House had not complied with principles of natural justice while suspending the member. Though 66 MLAs of YSR Congress had gathered at the Speakers podium to protest on December 18, 2015, the House had suspended only Roja, which exhibited the vindictive nature and ego of the ruling party, she said. When the Bench pointed out that the single judge had not given any order directing the respondents to allow the member to participate in the Assembly sessions, Jaisingh replied that the single judge had observed that the member had the right to participate in the sessions. The Bench had made it clear it was not going into the details and merits of the appeal at this stage and would only confine to the interim prayer of the appellant. Hyderabad: Tension mounted at Hyderabad University on Tuesday morning as students broke into Vice-Chancellor Appa Rao Podiles official residence and vandalised the premises. Furious students staged a protest against his resumption of duty after having been on long leave. Podile, who is embroiled in a controversy over the suicide of research scholar Rohith Vemula, resumed office on Tuesday. Read: Rohith Vemula suicide: Hyderabad University VC Appa Rao resumes office Appa Rao, who went on indefinite leave in the last week of January, had called for a press conference, which was cancelled due to the protests. The agitating students raised slogans against the VC. They broke window panes, smashed doors and television among other items. "He is the main culprit in Rohith's death and everyone knows that. The case is still pending in court. Without informing anyone, he joined back and called an executive council meeting. Only deans and nominated people should be attending the meetings but some students are also present inside," a student said. Read: Hyderabad varsity VC Appa Rao says he took leave to facilitate talks A minor scuffle broke out between agitating students and a group of ABVP activists, injuring one student. Cyberabad police was rushed to the spot to provide protection to the VC. University of Hyderabad Joint Action Committee members alleged that many RSS and Bajrang Dal activists are guarding the VCs office and residence. Read: Full text of the suicide letter penned by Hyderabad scholar The office is guarded by RSS, Bajrang Dal activists from outside the university. They are not students. They are stopping us from meeting the VC. We want to talk to him, said D. Prashant, who was leading the protest. The agitating students demanded to talk to the VC but police advised against it. Read: HCU suicide: Prof had asked Rohith Vemula if Dalit got him grant Appa Rao went on leave on January 24 following protests over suicide of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula on the campus. 26-year-old Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula who hanged himself in Hyderabad Central University campus in January, was suspended from his hostel by the HCU administration in August last year for allegedly attacking an ABVP leader. Read: HCU suicide: Mystery over scratched paragraph in Rohiths last letter In August 2015, Bandaru Dattatreya had written to Smriti Irani alleging that Hyderabad University had become a den of casteist, extremist and anti-national politics. He cited the attack on ABVP leader and stated that the university administration had turned into a mute spectator to such events. Students of the university alleged that Dattatreya's letter sought action against research scholars including Vemula. Read: HCU VC seeks quashing of abetment of Rohith Vemulas suicide Dattatreya, Appa Rao and two others were booked for abetting the suicide of Dalit research scholar who was banned from the universitys hostel. Meanwhile, Appa Rao hit out at the group of students, who allegedly ransacked his official residence, and said they should have represented their issues in a democratic way. "This is gross violence. Students resorting to this kind of violence...without following some democratic processes...it's really unfortunate for the education system. Students must know the democratic way of representing their issues," Professor Podile said. "They should not disturb somebody performing their function. I have joined as Vice-Chancellor...resumed charge and I should be allowed to function. They should have held discussions. Without discussions, they have ransacked the VC's bungalow," he said. Podile said thousands of students and hundreds of faculty members are worried about this kind of situation on the campus, indicating that they want normalcy in the university. Read: HCU suicide: Union Minister Bandaru Dattatreya, V-C booked for abetment The VC said he does not know for what purpose a group of students is demanding his resignation. "Let them explain more clearly. What is the mistake that I have done. Let it be proved in court. Let somebody prove that. Without proving somebody guilty and you make demand with some 50-100 students in a 5,000 student university. How long can we run the university like this?" he said. He said police and several faculty members along with students protected him today, otherwise there would have been a security problem. The worldwide market for refinery, refinery, and biofuel catalysts products is $4.6 billion anticipated to reach $8.5 billion by 2022. Markets for the biofuel catalysts have the strongest growth throughout the forecast period, the environmental concerns worldwide will provide a thrust for these catalysts. The technology appears to be relatively mature. The feedstock is plentiful in some areas, and in these areas, refinement of biofuels makes economic sense. Markets for re-refining catalysts will continue to grow in response to the maturing of the technology and the value gained from reusing motor oil. Crude oil refinery catalysts do not grow as rapidly as these other two segments because of the relatively mature market. Vendors seeks to customize the catalysts to give clients improved value related to the particular use pattern in a given locality. The study is designed to give a comprehensive overview of the Refinery, Re-refinery, and Bio Fuel Catalysts market segment. Research represents a selection from the mountains of data available of the most relevant and cogent market materials, with selections made by the most senior analysts. Commentary on every aspect of the market from independent analysts creates an independent perspective in the evaluation of the market. In this manner the study presents a comprehensive overview of what is going on in this market, assisting managers with designing market strategies likely to succeed. Key Topics Covered: 1. Executive Summary 2. Crude Oil Refinery Catalysts 3. Re-Refining Of Used Motor Oil: 4. Re-refining processes have had serious difficulties 5. Biofuel and Biochemicals Companies Mentioned - Grace - Haldor Topsie For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/6l7wq3/refinery Source: Wintergreen Research, Inc 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 PEORIA, Illinois, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Caterpillar Inc. (NYSE: CAT/Euronext: CATR) informs its stockholders that, in accordance with Section 16(a) of the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, 2 Forms 4 (the report on Form 4 being a statement of beneficial ownership of its officers, directors and 10% owners) were filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"). Caterpillar files electronically with the SEC required reports on Form 8-K, Form 10-Q, Form 10-K and Form 11-K; proxy materials; ownership reports for insiders as required by Section 16(a) of the U.S. Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended; and registration statements on Forms S-3 and S-8, as necessary; and other forms or reports, as required. All of the forms and reports filed electronically with the SEC are available on the SEC Internet site (www.sec.gov). Caterpillar also maintains an Internet site (www.Caterpillar.com) and copies of its annual report on Form 10-K, quarterly reports on Form 10-Q, current reports on Form 8-K and any amendments to these reports filed or furnished with the SEC are available free of charge through Caterpillar's Internet site (www.Caterpillar.com/secfilings) as soon as reasonably practicable after the relevant document has been filed with the SEC. CONTACT: Rachel Potts, Corporate Public Affairs, +1-309-675-6892 This is a disclosure announcement from PR Newswire. SOURCE Caterpillar Inc. SHARJAH, UAE, March 21, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Mary Robinson, who served as President of Ireland and as United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, opened the second day of the fifth International Government Communication Forum (IGCF 2016). (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160321/346357 ) Robinson said: "A number of processes can be included in any good proactive government communication. The first important process is to have a periodic review. This report would be from each state, stakeholders and NGOs and is a good process as it allows contributions from citizens and not just governments." A panel discussion on communication during crises saw experts outlining the role of government communication in the face of natural and humanitarian disasters, and the importance of government response in shaping public opinion. The conversation highlighted the challenges government communication faces, steps taken in the aftermath of crises, and public impression about disaster preparedness. According to David Miliband, President of International Rescue Committee and Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs of the UK (2007-2010), government communication must build and reinforce a sense of confidence. He pointed out that governments cannot monopolise organisational response and must work in collaboration with the media and non-profit organisations. He said democratisation of information and greater international collaboration will make the world a better place. The second session of the day discussed "Government Communication and Protection of the Social Structure". Speaking about how government communication can effectively reach citizens, Shamma Al-Mazrouei, UAE Minister of State for Youth Affairs, said: "We will have to change the government communication units to become government engagement units. There must be more than one pathway of communication and government communication must be to the youth, from the youth." Ndaba Mandela, grandson of Nelson Mandela and Founder of Africa Rising Foundation, said: "It is very important for the government to speak not at people, but to people. It is also very important to make sure that the people affected by government programmes, be they the youth, the elderly or the disabled are part of that conversation." H.E Sheikha Bodour bint Sultan Al Qasimi, Chairperson of Sharjah Investment and Development Authority, added: "Obviously the role of government communications is very essential to promoting culture and identity among future generations. However, efforts are required at both the government and community levels and there needs to be interaction between the two." SOURCE IGCF 2016 (International Government Communication Forum 2016) New Delhi: After a series of protests over the alleged pro-Afzal Guru event at JNU campus on February 9, the JNUSU student president Kanhaiya Kumar met Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi at his residence in New Delhi on Tuesday. Kumar was accompanied by a delegation of students from various student unions like JNUSU and AISF (All India Students Federation). This was for the first time when Gandhi met Kanhaiya after a series of protest that followed immediately after the JNUSU president was put behind bars for his alleged involvement in the Afzal Guru event and anti-national remarks. Earlier, the Congress Vice President had come out in full support for Kanhaiya amid the unrest at JNU. Gandhi was severely criticised for throwing his weight behind the JNU students, especially when a section of the political circle ridiculed the varsity for its anti-national stand. Rahul, who had also joined the protest march demanding justice for Kanhaiya, attacked the Centre and Prime Minister Narendra Modi for crushing dissent across the country and pitched for a law to protect them from 'discrimination' and 'suppression'. Kanhaiya has garnered support from several politicians, the latest being Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, who came under fire for saying that the student leader had several similarities with freedom fighter Bhagat Singh. BALLERUP, Denmark, March 21, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- In light of new research, which shows that after five years outdoor workers are three times more likely to develop non-melanoma skin cancer (NMSC) and actinic keratosis (AK) than non-outdoor workers,[1] a leading group of skin experts is calling for official recognition of these diseases as occupational diseases. A consensus report, authored by the group, has just been published in the Journal of the European Academy of Dermatology and Venereology.[2] The consensus report, supported by an unrestricted educational grant by LEO Pharma, highlights evidence that a wide variety of people who work outdoors, such as farmers, construction workers, and even police officers, are at an increased risk of developing NMSC and AK[2]. The report calls for action to protect outdoor workers from ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun via both primary and secondary prevention measures, including education and screening.[2] Exposure to UV is classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), the specialised cancer agency of the World Health Organization (WHO), as a group one carcinogen - meaning it is the highest risk factor for developing skin cancer, both melanoma and non-melanoma types.[3],[4] This is a clear recognition for the WHO of the causality of UV exposure leading to an increased risk of developing skin cancer. Outdoor workers are exposed to 2-3 times more UV exposure than the average person,[3] yet there is currently no international recognition that sunlight is an occupational hazard for outdoor workers. Kim Domela Kjller, Executive Vice President for Global Research and Development at LEO Pharma says: "This report gives us new insights into the importance of preventing NMSC and AK for outdoor workers. We believe this is an important step to prevent, treat and manage the early precursors of skin cancer, which is critical to help us halt the disease in its tracks." Myrto Trakatelli, dermatologist at Aristotle University, Greece and St. Pierre Hospital, Brussels, Belgium, and one of the authors of the consensus report comments: "Rates of NMSC are currently increasing[3] which combined with the ageing population could cause a major issue across the EU. It's high time that UV sunlight is treated like any other work-place carcinogen. Employers need to take steps to protect their staff from overexposure to sunlight and offer regular skin checks through work-based initiatives." The report calls for the need for consistent, better reporting of NMSC and AK as occupational diseases. Other recommendations include: Education for outdoor workers on protecting their skin Screening programmes for high-risk workers Standardised measures of sun exposure during working hours Improved registration of AK and NMSC in national cancer registries The report can be accessed online: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/jdv.2016.30.issue-S3/issuetoc About LEO Pharma LEO Pharma helps people achieve healthy skin. By offering care solutions to patients in more than 100 countries globally, LEO Pharma supports people in managing their skin conditions. Founded in 1908 and owned by the LEO Foundation, the healthcare company has devoted decades of research and development to delivering products and solutions to people with skin conditions. LEO Pharma is headquartered in Denmark and employs around 5,000 people worldwide. For more information, visit http://www.leo-pharma.com References: de Vries E, Trakatelli M, group at E. World Congress of Dermatology. Vancouver, Canada , 2015. John SM, et al. J Eur Dermatol Venereol. 2016 (Suppl. 3), 38-45 IARC. Solar and ultraviolet radiation (Vol 55). Monographs on the evaluation of carcinogenic risks to humans. Lyon . International Agency for Research on Cancer, Press, 1992. Cogliano VJ, et al. J Natl Cancer Inst. 2011;103; 1827-1839 SOURCE LEO Pharma A/S Cost pressures associated with ageing populations and an increase in the numbers of people with chronic illness in the United States creates a need for more accountable and integrated forms of delivering health services. With the growing assurance of quality care at reduced prices, the number of ACO enrollees is growing tremendously in the US. The United States spends more on healthcare than the next-highest 10 countries combined. With the growing popularity of ACO programs, it is expected that number of lives covered by ACO would grow at a CAGR of around 20% during 2016-2020, and the number is projected to reach around 76 Million by the end of 2020. In their latest research study US ACO IT Spending Outlook 2020, the analysts have identified and interpreted the market's dynamics in important segments to clearly highlight the areas offering promising possibilities for companies to boost their growth. The report gives a detailed outlook of the US ACO market, providing a complete study of the current ACO scenario in the country. The report provides complete information about the major ACO population, principles and benefits of ACOs, eligibility and time constraints for creation of ACOs, and the critical success factors as well as key challenges faced by emerging & existing ACOs. The report covers a detailed analysis of the types of ACOs operating in the country. ACOs, although having the same principles and objectives, can be broken down into different categories based on the number and leadership structure of parties involved in the ACO, the services provided directly by the ACO, and the services provided through contracted entities. The types of ACOs have been segmented into three major categories viz. Medicare ACOs, Medicaid ACOs and Commercial ACOs. Further in this report, the current estimation of the US ACO IT spending has been provided, with forecast till 2020, to provide a comprehensive knowledge about ACOs' spending on hardware, software and services. In addition, a detailed cost analysis of IT infrastructure, including start-up and operating cost, is also incorporated in the report. Key Topics Covered: 1. Analyst View 2. Research Methodology 3. Healthcare Market Snapshot 4. Accountable Care Organization (ACO) - An Overview 5. Lives Covered under ACOs 6. ACO IT Spending Outlook to 2020 7. ACO Creation 8. ACO Payment Models 9. Regulatory Environment 10. Key Challenges 11. Future of ACOs 12. Profiles of Major ACOs - Atlantic ACO - Advocate Physician Partners - Allina Health - Banner Health Network - Heritage California ACO - OSF HealthCare System - Partners HealthCare - Physician Organization of Michigan ACO - UW Health ACO - UnityPoint Health For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/9hf3k2/us_aco_it 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 NEW YORK, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Annual rankings for O'Dwyer's, a leading public relations trade magazine, have been released, naming 5W Public Relations #3 in the U.S. for Beauty and Fashion PR. The firm was also ranked among the top twenty independent, privately owned public relations agencies in the United States and named the sixth largest independent New York PR firm. The firm, which has been ranked among the top 5 Beauty & Fashion PR firms in years past, is PR agency of record to a number of notable brands including jane iredale, DECLEOR Paris, Supersmile and nobis. "Our beauty and fashion teams have long been valuable partners to our clients. Our continued growth in these spaces has been driven not only by the great work we do on behalf of the brands we work with, but the ability of the teams to constantly innovate, applying fresh strategies that continue to drive results in a consumer landscape that is increasingly dominated by influencers and social media," said 5WPR CEO & Founder Ronn Torossian. "I am constantly impressed by the fresh thinking that all our teams bring to the table, and look forward to executing even more forward-thinking programs in 2016." About 5WPR 5W Public Relations, a full-service PR Agency helps some of the world's most admired brands, corporations and personalities achieve more. 5W's bold, resourceful and thoroughly modern approach has measurably increased the positive results of their clients' communication efforts. Founded in 2003, the agency's full-service public relations programs, novel approach and innovative people that deliver game-changing results has led to award-winning recognition, including PR Agency of the Year, PR Executive of the Year, Product Launch of the Year, Business to Business Program of the Year and Digital/Social Media Campaign of the Year, among others. The agency's diverse roster of client experience includes Welch's, Walgreens, Sparkling ICE, Medifast, L'Oreal, T-Fal, KRUPS, Zeta Interactive, Unilever, Avant, Camp Bow Wow, Jetsmarter, All-Clad and other publicly traded companies, brands and organizations. Press Contact: 5W Public Relations Autumn Thu | [email protected] 212.999.5585 SOURCE 5W Public Relations Related Links http://www.5wpr.com 10.1% Return for Balanced Fund Clients Driven by Solid Performance From All Segments $1.5 Billion Value-Add Represents AIMCo's Best Ever Performance for Clients NOTE: All Figures Net of Expenses EDMONTON, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo) is pleased to report a 10.1% rate of return on behalf of its balanced fund clients, for the year ending December 31, 2015. AIMCo's balanced fund clients, which account for $75.9 billion of its assets under management, are most representative of AIMCo's overall performance, as they utilize the full range of the organization's asset and style capabilities. AIMCo earned over $1.5 billion of active value-add return above benchmark, its strongest performance since inception, and overall investment income of $7.5 billion on total assets under management of $90.2 billion. Including the impact on returns of the $14.3 billion of government and specialty fund clients, a rate of return of 9.1% was earned on its total assets under management. Government and specialty fund clients largely rely on AIMCo for its expertise in managing short- and intermediate- duration fixed income assets and for liquidity management. AIMCo's strong results in 2015 were the outcome of contributions from across the organization. Investment teams in Public Equities, Infrastructure, Private Equity and Real Estate all significantly outperformed their market benchmarks, while Money Market & Fixed Income, Mortgages and Private Debt & Loan performed equally well, providing stable value-add through difficult market conditions. "I am very pleased with the terrific year of performance, especially against a backdrop of change and extreme volatility across the markets. AIMCo's investment teams remained disciplined and focused on the long term, taking well-measured active risk positions, in-line with our investment strategies and our clients' established needs. That steady hand approach, and the support of the entire organization, allowed us to identify, and act upon, value-generating opportunities across all major asset classes," states Kevin Uebelein, Chief Executive Officer. "This result is further evidence that the "Canadian Model" of public asset management is one that very well serves the needs of the public. During these times of intense challenge for Alberta, it is especially gratifying to be able to deliver more than $1.5 billion of over-performance against our benchmark returns, which represents a best-ever performance figure for AIMCo." Alberta Investment Management Corporation continues to deliver on the mandate envisaged at the time of its creation. AIMCo has generated a four year annualized net return of 11.8%, on behalf of its balanced fund clients. Since 2009, it has earned more than $4.0 billion in value added return above benchmark on total assets under management representing all 26 of AIMCo's pension, endowment, government, and specialty fund clients. Detailed performance information will be available in AIMCo's Annual Report to be released in June 2016. About Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo) AIMCo is one of Canada's largest and most diversified institutional investment managers with more than $90 billion of assets under management. AIMCo was established on January 1, 2008 with a mandate to provide superior long-term investment results for its clients. AIMCo operates at arms-length from the Government of Alberta and invests globally on behalf of 26 pension, endowment and government funds in the Province of Alberta. For more information please visit www.aimco.alberta.ca. SOURCE Alberta Investment Management Corp. Related Links www.aimco.alberta.ca DETROIT, March 21, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Ally Financial Inc. (NYSE: ALLY) today announced that it will appoint a new independent director to its board of directors. The new independent director will be identified in consultation with Lion Point Capital, as well as some of Ally's other largest shareholders. Ally expects to appoint the new director no later than June 30, 2016. The appointment will expand the board to 12 members. "Adding a highly qualified and independent director to our board demonstrates Ally's continued commitment to diverse perspectives and sustainable shareholder value creation," said Ally Chairman Franklin W. Hobbs. "Our inclusion of shareholder input in this process reflects our commitment to strong corporate governance." In addition, the Ally Board of Directors amended the company's bylaws to permit shareholders holding at least 25 percent of Ally common stock to call a special meeting, as well as to provide for majority voting in uncontested director elections. These changes were effective as of March 16, 2016. Ally's upcoming proxy will include updates to executive compensation policies, which will be directly connected to the company's financial and operational performance, to better align management's and shareholders' interests. The Ally Board's Compensation, Nominating and Governance Committee is also continuing to explore programs to further ensure the alignment of these interests. In connection with these important developments, Hobbs commented: "Ally has undergone tremendous transformations over the past several years, and today has the strongest auto finance franchise in the U.S., with a simple and clean balance sheet. Ally's portfolio contains high-quality secured loans generated via strict underwriting standards and has demonstrated effective risk management and consistent profitability. Our leading direct bank also continues to grow in importance with several important new products to be rolled-out through the course of 2016." "We are frustrated with the market perception reflected in the price of Ally's stock and the current discount to book does not reflect the inherent value of this company. Management expects to announce a number of new initiatives that will drive value creation over time and further position Ally for strong, long-term performance. Being a disciplined steward of capital remains at the forefront of our decisions, and there is much more potential to be realized in this company. We are all aligned in our commitment to maximize shareholder value both operationally and strategically." About Ally Financial Inc. Ally Financial Inc. (NYSE: ALLY) is a leading automotive financial services company powered by a top direct banking franchise. Ally's automotive services business offers a full spectrum of financial products and services, including new and used vehicle inventory and consumer financing, leasing, vehicle service contracts, commercial loans and vehicle remarketing services, as well as a variety of insurance offerings, including inventory insurance, insurance consultative services for dealers and other ancillary products. Ally Bank, the company's direct banking subsidiary and member FDIC, offers an array of deposit products, including certificates of deposit, savings accounts, money market accounts, IRA deposit products and interest checking. Ally's Corporate Finance unit provides financing to middle-market companies across a broad range of industries. With approximately $158.6 billion in assets as of Dec. 31, 2015, Ally operates as a financial holding company. For more information, visit the Ally media site at http://media.ally.com or follow Ally on Twitter: @Ally. Forward-Looking Statements In this press release and in any related comments by Ally Financial Inc. ("Ally") management, the use of the words "expect," "anticipate," "estimate," "forecast," "initiative," "objective," "plan," "goal," "project," "outlook," "priorities," "target," "explore," "positions," "intend," "evaluate," "pursue," "seek," "may," "would," "could," "should," "believe," "potential," "continue," or the negative of any of those words or similar expressions is intended to identify forward-looking statements. All statements herein and in any related management comments, other than statements of historical fact, including without limitation, statements about future events and financial performance, are forward-looking statements that involve certain risks and uncertainties. While these statements represent our current judgment on what the future may hold, and we believe these judgments are reasonable, these statements are not guarantees of any events or financial results, and Ally's actual results may differ materially due to numerous important factors that are described in the most recent reports on SEC Forms 10-K and 10-Q for Ally, each of which may be revised or supplemented in subsequent reports filed with the SEC. Such factors include, among others, the following: maintaining the mutually beneficial relationship between Ally and General Motors, and Ally and Chrysler, and our ability to further diversify our business; our ability to maintain relationships with automotive dealers; the significant regulation and restrictions that we are subject to as a bank holding company and financial holding company; the potential for deterioration in the residual value of off-lease vehicles; disruptions in the market in which we fund our operations, with resulting negative impact on our liquidity; changes in our accounting assumptions that may require or that result from changes in the accounting rules or their application, which could result in an impact on earnings; changes in our credit ratings; changes in economic conditions, currency exchange rates or political stability in the markets in which we operate; and changes in the existing or the adoption of new laws, regulations, policies or other activities of governments, agencies and similar organizations (including as a result of the Dodd-Frank Act and Basel III). Investors are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. Ally undertakes no obligation to update publicly or otherwise revise any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or other such factors that affect the subject of these statements, except where expressly required by law. Contact: Gina Proia 646-781-2692 [email protected] SOURCE Ally Financial TORONTO, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ - Apotex Inc. announced today that it has launched the first generic version of Merck's Nasonex nasal spray (mometasone furoate monohydrate) in the United States. Apotex's mometasone furoate nasal spray is a once-daily anti-allergen indicated for treatment of nasal congestion. According to IMS Health, Nasonex had approximately $955.5 million in sales in the 12 months ending January 2016. "We are very pleased to make a more affordable version of this important allergy medicine available to the US public. Apotex is dedicated to bringing high quality versions of complex generic products to market, and we are delighted that these efforts will generate substantial savings for the US health care system," said Apotex Chief Executive Officer and President, Dr. Jeremy B. Desai. "The amount of work required by all stakeholders to enable the launch of a first generic of this complexity cannot be overstated, and we appreciate the role of everyone involved, including the FDA who provided steady guidance throughout the development process," Desai added. FDA's approval of the company's generic version of Nasonex follows Apotex's successful Hatch-Waxman challenge of US Patent No. 6,127,353 (the '353 patent), which Merck claimed covered the active ingredient. In June 2012, the US District Court for the District of New Jersey found that Apotex's product did not infringe the '353 patent. The decision was upheld in June 2013 by the Federal Circuit. About Apotex Apotex is the 7th largest generic pharmaceutical company globally (according to IMS Health) with over 10,000 employees and estimated sales of approximately $2 billion. The company's US headquarters is based in Weston, Florida. With its worldwide manufacturing sites, Apotex can produce up to 24 billion dosages per year. It produces 300 medicines in 4,000 dosages and formats that are exported to 115 countries. It has 500 products under development and will spend $2 billion over the next 10 years on research and development Contact: Steve Giuli Director of Government Affairs & Industry Relations (954) 224-5142 SOURCE Apotex Inc. Related Links http://www.apotex.ca WASHINGTON, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- As the FBI signals it may try to avert a court showdown with Apple over whether the tech company should be required to help unlock the iPhone of a shooter who killed 14 people in the San Bernardino attack, a new survey indicates that Apple is winning the fierce public battle. According to a Vrge Analytics survey of 657 people, more Americans believe that Apple has made a more compelling case that it shouldn't be required to help unlock the phone to determine if the shooter was tied to extremist Islamic groups. According to the survey, 42 percent of Americans said Apple had made the more compelling case while only 30 percent said that the FBI had done so. 19 percent said they hadn't made up their mind while 9 percent were not sure. There was other troubling news for the FBI. The Vrge Analytics survey found that support for the FBI has eroded in the last month since the controversy sparked a fierce debate over what should take priority national security needs or the right to privacy: A month ago, Vrge found that 50 percent of Americans believed that Apple should be required to help unlock the iPhone. That support has now slipped to 41 percent. A month ago, by a 41 percent-33 percent margin, Americans said they would trust the FBI with their own personal information. But in the follow-up poll, which was in the field March 19-20 , more Americans (41 percent-37 percent) now report that they would not trust the FBI to handle their personal information in a responsible manner and not use it to harm them. , more Americans (41 percent-37 percent) now report that they would not trust the FBI to handle their personal information in a responsible manner and not use it to harm them. Americans also seemed to reverse their opinion on whether they would want Apple to help unlock their own iPhone if asked by the FBI. By a 44 percent-38 percent margin, Americans now say they would want Apple to refuse to do so. Just a month ago, Americans (by a 46 percent-40 percent margin) said that they would want Apple to do as the FBI asked. "Taken all together, this data may offer clues into why the FBI is suddenly trying to ratchet down the controversy and avert a court showdown with Apple," said Tom Galvin, partner at Vrge Strategies. "The debate over privacy versus national security is likely to persist for years, and the FBI cannot afford to lose the first round, either in the federal courts or in the court of public opinion." Tellingly, the vast majority of Americans are clinging to the notion that privacy is an important principle - even in a digital era often defined by data breaches and unease over how easy the government and large tech companies can peek into private lives. Two-thirds of Americans, 67 percent, said, "Of course we should still have an expectation of privacy, technology doesn't change that." That was the one polling statistic that was consistent from the February and March Vrge surveys. Full results of the survey, which has a margin of error of 3 percent, are available upon request. About Vrge Strategies Based in Washington, DC, San Francisco, CA and Seattle, WA, Vrge helps startups and established companies disruptors and the disrupted navigate this uncharted territory by positioning them, identifying the audiences that matter most, and creating advocacy campaigns to advance their goals whether they be legislative, regulatory, societal or business-to-business. For more information, go to www.vrge.us. SOURCE Vrge Strategies Related Links http://www.vrge.us WASHINGTON, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The ASPIRA Association, the nation's largest national Latino non-profit organization dedicated to education, today announced the release of its Youth Development Program (YDP) Mobile App, developed with the generous support of the Verizon Foundation. The App, available for both IOs (Apple App Store) and Android devices (Google Play), allows youth across the country to access ASPIRA's award winning, comprehensive Youth Development curriculum and extensive educational resources from anywhere, at any time, from any device. Over the past several years, with the support of the Verizon Foundation, ASPIRA has developed a host of programs to provide low-income Latino youth and families with access to the latest technologies, technology literacy, and technology tools to help increase student educational attainment. As Latino youth increasingly access the Internet through mobile devices, the development of the YDP Mobile App is a major step in broadening access by young people to ASPIRA's signature program. ASPIRA's YDP Mobile App includes educational materials and a curriculum with over 35 modules on topics ranging from leadership, decision-making, and effective communications, to study habits, career selection, selecting a college, and college admissions. It combines text, interactive content, and extensive use of video. Students are able to select the modules they are interested in and complete them at their own pace. "We are tremendously proud to have partnered with the Verizon Foundation for so many years to promote access and full use of technology and telecommunications in the Latino community, especially among low income inner-city Latino youth," said Ronald Blackburn Moreno, President and CEO of ASPIRA. "Our Aspirantes (ASPIRA youth) have benefitted enormously from the opportunities that technology provides to enhance their education and enrich their lives. Verizon's support of ASPIRA clearly demonstrates its strong commitment to the Latino community and to Latino youth. We are very grateful to the Verizon Foundation for enabling ASPIRA to continue being a leader in providing technology tools to our youth," added Blackburn-Moreno. About ASPIRA The ASPIRA Association, a non-profit organization, is a confederation of statewide ASPIRA organizations dedicated to education and leadership development of Puerto Rican and other Latino youth. Founded in 1961, it operates in Delaware, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, and Puerto Rico. SOURCE ASPIRA Association Related Links http://www.aspira.org "We are transforming our AVG channel program to increase channel partner value," said Fred Gerritse, GM, AVG Business. "Our partners need to effectively respond to their business customers' security needs, while continuing to grow their own operations. We are putting new initiatives in place that will address these needs and help enable partners to become more experienced in AVG business security solutions and to work more simply and efficiently with us in the process." New AVG CloudCare security features The company is integrating key AVG Antivirus 2016 features with its AVG CloudCare product, for advanced endpoint security protection. The new features include a faster scanning engine; cloud-based, real-time outbreak detection and proactive artificial intelligence detection capabilities; and access to advanced policy settings. AVG CloudCare enables partners to access a range of security services through one platform and centralized dashboard, with the ability to manage and monitor services automatically. New channel partners AVG has signed new channel partners this year and also strengthened its AVG Business distribution channels to increase flexibility and revenue opportunities for distributors and partners. CMS Distribution, the largest UK and Ireland independent, value-added distributor, has joined AVG's channel partner program as a new UK distributor. Serving 3,000 partners, including the top UK VARs, CMS Distribution brings the go-to-market track record to sell the full AVG Business portfolio, including AVG AntiVirus and Internet Security Business Edition, AVG CloudCare, and its remote monitoring and management (RMM) platform, AVG Managed Workplace. New partner certification program AVG Business partners and distributors will soon have access, through a new partner certification program, to business, marketing and technical training to elevate AVG product expertise and simplify end customer onboarding and implementation. To meet these goals, the program will deliver an efficient, systematic approach to product and technical training, including a phased certification program that rewards partners for developing knowledge and achieving specific revenue milestones. AVG's Partner Certification Program and AVG CloudCare enhancements will be available in April. For more information, visit http://www.avg.com/service-provider-solutions. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120306/SF65434LOGO ABOUT AVG TECHNOLOGIES N.V. (NYSE: AVG) AVG is the leading provider of software services to secure devices, data and people. AVG's award-winning consumer portfolio includes internet security, performance optimization, location services, data controls and insights, and privacy and identity protection, for mobile devices and desktops. The AVG Business portfolio, delivered through a global partner network, provides cloud security and remote monitoring and management (RMM) solutions that protect small and medium businesses around the world. For more information visit www.avg.com. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160321/346510 SOURCE AVG Technologies N.V. Related Links http://www.avg.com Kochi: Kerala High Court on Monday sought the states view on a petition seeking an order prohibiting use and manufacturing of flex and the use of eco-friendly materials for advertisements and election campaign. Justice Muhammed Mustaque issued the directive on a plea by Sugathan of Sathamcotta, Kollam district, who is an environmental activist. The petitioner is an environmental activist and the convenor of Kunnathoor Paristhithi Samrakshana Samithi. The grievance is against the excessive use of PVC based Flex boards. State is facing serious environmental problems by the use of PVC flex which contain Poly vinyl Chloride as its main constitient, PVC are plastics which do not degrade biologically and pollute water ans solid, The petitioner sought to prohibit the use of plastics. The petitioner also argued that since it is election time, all the political parties are using flex boards to promote their party and the candidates in the respective constituencies. Though the government took an initiative to ban flex boards the decision was later put on hold. It was after this that the high court had asked state to take a final decision on the issue and had asked to file a statement. Meanwhile, the state is yet to file a statement explaining their stand in banning flex boards. ISTANBUL, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Boeing (NYSE: BA) and Turkey's leading low-cost carrier Pegasus Airlines, have finalized an order for five Next-Generation 737-800 airplanes, valued at approximately $505 million based on expected list prices at delivery. Pegasus Airlines and its subsidiaries, Air Manas and Izair, operate a fleet of 58 737-800s and a total of 69 aircraft. The carrier is based out of Istanbul Sabiha Gokcen International Airport, operating an extensive network of domestic and regional services. "The performance of the 737-800 has proven reliability, fantastic operating economics and popularity with our customers," said Mehmet Nane, CEO Pegasus Airlines. "I am pleased that we will be continuing with this long-standing relationship that stretches back 20 years, adding more Boeing airplanes to our fleet." "The 737-800 continues to be the best selling version of the very successful Next-Generation 737 family, accumulating over 7,000 orders worldwide," said Monty Oliver, Vice President, European Sales, Boeing Commercial Airplanes. "We are proud that Pegasus has again selected Boeing to meet its fleet requirements." Pegasus Airlines is a privately owned airline and Turkey's leading low-cost carrier. It launched its first charter flights in 1990 and is owned by ESAS Holding, operating scheduled flights since 2005. Pegasus Airlines flies a scheduled service to 33 destinations in Turkey and 70 in the rest of the world, bringing its total network to 103 destinations in 41 countries. Contact: Keelan Morris International Communications Boeing Commercial Airplanes + 44(0)208 235 5664 [email protected] SOURCE Boeing Related Links http://www.boeing.com NEW YORK, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, a leading counselor to global financial institutions and corporations, is pleased to partner with Food Bank For New York City, the city's major hunger-relief organization working to end hunger throughout the five boroughs, to launch the "Justice Served" campaign. "Justice Served" is a six-week, citywide challenge to the legal community to help families in need throughout the year. This new annual initiative, which runs from March 21 through April 30, challenges law firms, legal departments and other members of the legal community to compete in donating funds and engaging in volunteer opportunities to help close the meal gap in New York City. The goal for the inaugural year of "Justice Served" is to fund 1.5 million meals. One hundred percent of the funds collected will benefit Food Bank For New York City which provides 64 million free meals annually to New Yorkers in need. Further, donors will have the option to donate to provide Kosher-for-Passover meals to help the more than 500,000 poor Jewish families to uphold their traditions with dignity. At the end of the "Justice Served" campaign, firms will receive awards based on levels of fundraising, volunteerism, and overall contribution. Winners will be announced in the New York Law Journal, the media sponsor for Justice Served. All participants will be invited to attend a closing reception at Cadwalader in May. "Lawyers are competitive by nature, and we hope to channel that spirit into this campaign," said Lary Stromfeld, a partner in Cadwalader's Financial Services practice and "Justice Served" Campaign Chair. "New York City has a meal gap of 241 million meals that is, New York City residents who experience hunger fall short of an adequate diet by 241 million meals in a single year. We are so grateful for the work of Food Bank For New York City and the role Cadwalader gets to play in reducing hunger." He continued, "A holiday like Passover, during which observant individuals and families must stock their kitchens entirely with Kosher food, can create an overwhelming expenditure for people quietly grappling with poverty. It is our hope that we can alleviate some of those expenses and bring more families to the table." Food Bank For New York City provides food and services for 1.5 million New Yorkers, including children, seniors, single mothers, and the working poor. As the only hunger-relief organization that takes a multi-pronged, integrated approach to ending food poverty Food Bank For New York City is there with a solution. They work through a citywide network of 1,000 soup kitchens, food pantries, senior centers, classrooms, after-school programs and more to serve New York City's most vulnerable populations. One in every five New Yorkers relies on Food Bank for food, resources, and nutrition education to help them lead and sustain healthy lifestyles. About Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, established in 1792, serves a diverse client base, including many of the world's leading financial institutions and corporations in more than 50 countries. With offices in New York, London, Charlotte, Washington, Houston, Beijing, Hong Kong and Brussels, Cadwalader offers legal expertise in antitrust, banking, corporate finance, corporate governance, energy, environmental, executive compensation, financial restructuring, health care, intellectual property, litigation, mergers and acquisitions, private equity, private wealth, real estate, regulation, securitization, structured finance, tax and white collar defense. For more information, visit www.cadwalader.com. Contacts: Kara Fitzsimmons +1 212 504 6708 [email protected] Kimberly Brooks +1 212 504 5652 [email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150709/234447LOGO SOURCE Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP Related Links http://www.cadwalader.com WASHINGTON, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation's largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, today decried GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz's call for law enforcement to "patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods" and the naming of notorious Islamophobe Walid Phares as one of leading GOP candidate Donald Trump's policy advisers CAIR called on Cruz to retract and apologize for his unconstitutional policy proposal and for Trump to drop Phares as an adviser. In a Facebook post, Cruz said: "We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized." SEE: Cruz Calls for Patrols of Muslim Neighborhoods http://tinyurl.com/grgdlnp SEE: Cruz Faces Backlash for Call to 'Patrol And Secure' Muslims http://tinyurl.com/h5phq6d CAIR: Ted Cruz Calls for Security Crackdown in 'Muslim neighborhoods' While Advocates Condemn Police State Mentality (Dallas Morning News) http://tinyurl.com/zf3za49 In a recent meeting with The Washington Post's editorial board, Trump named Phares as one of his foreign policy advisers. As the Post pointed out, "Phares was once a leading ideologue in an armed Christian faction during Lebanon's grim, bloody sectarian civil conflict of the 1980s." SEE: The Dark, Controversial Past of Trump's Counterterrorism Adviser Walid Phares http://tinyurl.com/glfbmtr A 2011 Mother Jones article noted: "During the 1980s, Phares, a Maronite Christian, trained Lebanese militants in ideological beliefs justifying the war against Lebanon's Muslim and Druze factions, according to former colleagues." SEE: Top Romney Adviser Tied to Militia That Massacred http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2011/10/walid-phares-mitt-romney-lebanese-forces Also in 2011, Rep. Peter King (R-NY) was forced to drop Phares as a witness at one of his controversial hearings on alleged Muslim "radicalization" once Phares' past associations and extremist views were made public. King: Phares Not Testifying http://www.politico.com/blogs/ben-smith/2011/02/king-phares-not-testifying-033668 In a statement, CAIR National Executive Director Nihad Awad said: "The actions and policy recommendations of the two leading GOP presidential candidates send an alarming message to American Muslims who increasingly fear for their future in this nation and to all Americans who value the Constitution and religious liberties. Mr. Cruz's call for law enforcement to 'patrol and secure' neighborhoods in which American Muslim families live is not only unconstitutional, it is unbefitting anyone seeking our nation's highest office and indicates that he lacks the temperament necessary for any president. "Mr. Trump's naming of a policy adviser who was once linked to a foreign anti-Muslim militia sends the message that American Muslims would be targeted in a Trump administration. "We urge Ted Cruz to retract his call for fascist-like treatment of American Muslims and to offer an apology to all Americans. "We ask Donald Trump to immediately drop Walid Phares from his team of advisers because of his extremist views and his past associations with a violent foreign militia." Last week, CAIR called on Cruz to drop designated hate group leader Frank Gaffney Jr., retired Lieutenant General William G. "Jerry" Boykin and other Islamophobes as foreign policy advisers. SEE: CAIR Asks Ted Cruz to Drop Hate Group Leader Gaffney, Discredited General, Other Islamophobes as National Security Advisers http://tinyurl.com/j6vl2yt Ted Cruz Stumbles as CNN's Blitzer Presses Him on Anti-Muslim Conspiracies of Foreign Policy Adviser Frank Gaffney http://mediamatters.org/video/2016/03/21/ted-cruz-stumbles-as-cnns-blitzer-presses-him-o/209437 CAIR is America's largest Muslim civil liberties and advocacy organization. Its mission is to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding. Become a Fan of CAIR on Facebook http://www.facebook.com/CAIRNational Subscribe to CAIR's Email List http://tinyurl.com/cairsubscribe Subscribe to CAIR's Twitter Feed http://twitter.com/cairnational Subscribe to CAIR's YouTube Channel http://www.youtube.com/cairtv To request legal assistance from CAIR's Civil Rights Department, fill out the intake form at: https://www.cair.com/civil-rights/report-an-incident/view/form.html CONTACT: CAIR National Communications Director Ibrahim Hooper, 202-744-7726, [email protected]; CAIR Communications Coordinator Nabeelah Naeem, 202-341-4171, [email protected] SOURCE Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Related Links http://www.cair.com BELLEVUE, Wash., March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms today launched the first phase of its "Petition to Reject" the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland to the U.S. Supreme Court by President Barack Obama. The "Petition to Reject" campaign kicked off with Internet ads urging people to sign an online petition and will be followed with direct mail, radio and TV as well as telephone outreach. "Judge Merrick Garland has a long record of being anti-gun that threatens Justice Antonin Scalia's most important decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, a case that affirmed the Second Amendment and a person's individual right to keep and bear arms," said CCRKBA Chairman Alan Gottlieb. "Obama is trying to change the makeup of the Supreme Court in an effort to undermine the cornerstone of our Bill of Rights." Even the Associated Press has acknowledged that confirming Garland to fill the seat left vacant by the death of conservative cornerstone Justice Scalia would shift the court to the left, Gottlieb noted. "Both the landmark Supreme Court victories in Heller and McDonald were won on 5-4 decisions," Gottlieb recalled. "Replacing Justice Scalia with a gun prohibitionist is a death blow to our gun rights. "A few days ago," he continued, "the New York Times editorialized that Garland fits the description of an 'ideal moderate' to fill Scalia's seat. Gun owners don't want an 'ideal moderate' to replace Scalia, they want a pro-Second Amendment jurist to fill that seat, to retain the current balance on the high court. CCRKBA's effort hopes to raise funds to help print and distribute millions of additional petitions, plus fund radio, television, newspaper and Internet impact activities. "Just as Second Amendment advocates have feared," Gottlieb observed, "President Obama is trying to change the court's makeup to destroy the individual right to keep and bear arms. This administration has done everything it can to erode the Second Amendment, and turn this important right into a government-regulated privilege. We can't allow that to happen." With more than 650,000 members and supporters nationwide, the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms (www.ccrkba.org) is one of the nation's premier gun rights organizations. As a non-profit organization, the Citizens Committee is dedicated to preserving firearms freedoms through active lobbying of elected officials and facilitating grass-roots organization of gun rights activists in local communities throughout the United States. SOURCE Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms Related Links http://www.ccrkba.org STAMFORD, Conn., March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Cenveo Publisher Services, a division of Cenveo, Inc. (NYSE: CVO) (Cenveo), and Golden Voice English (GVE) Online Education today announced the successful partnership in creating an ESL elearning program for students in China. In just 6 months, Cenveo helped GVE transform the method and delivery of English instruction for Chinese students in grades 1 through 9. Cenveo and GVE created comprehensive curricula synced directly to the Chinese ESL classroom curricula. Cenveo's writers and editors created original content based on GVE's detailed requirements. Simultaneously, Cenveo's digital learning division staffed with instructional designers and technology teams, prototyped animations and interactives bringing the content to life. "The Cenveo team really understands the needs of students and teachers involved with learning English as a second language," explains Kevin Wu, president and CEO of GVE Online Education. "They understand language pedagogy and successfully inserted it into the content they helped develop and produce." The scope of the entire project comprises more than 700 animations, hundreds of interactives, activities, writing exercises, and assessments. The pedagogical approach for online learning produced by GVE provides an interactive technologic application that enhances listening and speaking skills and is already receiving industry accolades and media attention after just a few months on the market. "The scope of this project highlights our dedication to the ESL publishing market," states Waseem Andrabi, senior director of global content services at Cenveo Publisher Services. "We brought together a global team of subject matter experts, experienced writers, instructional designers, creatives, and technologists to work with GVE in support of its groundbreaking and comprehensive ESL program in China." Cenveo Publisher Services provides the full spectrum of editorial and production services to publishers world-wide. Cenveo is best known for its industry-leading turnaround times, technology solutions, and subject matter expertise for print and digital products. Cenveo (NYSE: CVO), world headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, is a leading global provider of print and related resources, offering world-class solutions in the areas of custom labels, envelopes, commercial print, content management and publisher solutions. The company provides a one-stop offering through services ranging from design and content management to fulfillment and distribution. With a worldwide distribution platform, we pride ourselves on delivering quality solutions and service every day for our more than 100,000 customers. For more information please visit us at www.cenveo.com. Cenveo Publisher Services, a Cadmus Journal services company, provides solutions and services to journal, book, educational, media, and trade publishers. Serving the publishing industry for more than 125 years, we deliver a full-range of technology, content, and delivery solutions that increase revenue and streamline workflows while ensuring editorial integrity. Cenveo Publisher Services is an industry leader in XML-early workflow solutions, copyediting, digital outputs, automated transformations, author services, print and fulfillment services, and so much more. For more information, please visit www.cenveopublisherservices.com. Inquiries should be directed to Marianne Calilhanna at (267) 640-9158. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20070618/CENVEOLOGO SOURCE Cenveo, Inc. Related Links http://www.cenveo.com WASHINGTON, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- The Society of Chemical Manufacturers and Affiliates (SOCMA) is pleased to announce ChemStewards, its flagship environmental, health, safety and security (EHS&S) program, is hosting four Regional Roundtables this spring, focusing on the latest trends and methodologies used in the industry today to create a safe and secure manufacturing environment, as well as improving overall operational excellence at member facilities. "Regional Roundtables are held every other year in locations across the country where SOCMA members can attend meetings close to home to hear from industry experts and share best practices with their peers about how they can improve EHS&S processes and optimize performance in their facilities," said Dr. J. Holland Jordan, Managing Director of ChemStewards. "From handling audits to management of near-miss programs and instilling a safety first culture, these meetings provide our members with information and resources they can take back to their plants and use as they strive for EHS&S excellence," Jordan said. "This year, we have added a new caveat to our meetings that we hope will entice even more members to attend," Jordan said. "Achieving operational excellence throughout their facilities has always been a top priority for SOCMA members, and with this in mind, our afternoon session will focus solely on topics associated with this issue. We have reached out to our members for their input on what topics would best assist them in this effort." The Regional Roundtables, which start April 20 in Houston, TX, will feature speakers from AIChE's Center for Chemical Process Safety, who will share information about Vision 20/20 a program that "looks into the not-too-distant future to demonstrate what perfect process safety will look like when it is championed by industry." ChemStewards auditors and members will also share best practices through presentations, panel discussions, networking and Q&A discussions. Find more information about the ChemStewards Regional Roundtables and registration details here. About SOCMA Since 1921, SOCMA has represented a diverse membership of small, medium and large chemical companies located around the world. Collectively, SOCMA members are key drivers to a successful economy, contributing $24 billion annually to the U.S. GDP. www.socma.com ChemStewards, SOCMA's flagship environmental, health, safety and security (EHS&S) continuous performance improvement program, was created to meet the unique needs of the specialty chemical industry. www.chemstewards.com Contact: Jenny Gaines, [email protected] Director, Communications and Public Relations (202) 721-4123 SOURCE Society of Chemical Manufacturers and Affiliates Related Links http://www.socma.com INDIANAPOLIS, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- According to the World Economic Forum, the water crisis is the number one global risk based on impact to society, with 663 million people lacking access to safe water.1 In recognition of World Water Day on March 22, Delta Faucet Company, a 2015 WaterSense Sustained Excellence Award winner, aims to educate consumers on water and offer ways to increase water efficiency at home. "The lack of water on a global scale is a constant reminder of how precious this resource is and the importance of conservation," said Paul Patton, senior manager, research and development and regulatory for Delta Faucet Company. "As a proud WaterSense partner, Delta Faucet strives to provide smart solutions that help consumers address water efficiency in their homes." According to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), ten percent of homes leak 90 gallons of water or more per day.2 While leaks can go unnoticed, there are a few areas that can help address water-waste at home: Homeowners can reduce toilet water use by 20 to 60 percent nearly 13,000 gallons of water per year by replacing older, inefficient toilets with new WaterSense-labeled models. 2 Toilet installation is even easier with the SmartFit tank-to-bowl connection feature in all Delta toilets, which reduces potential leak points and prevents over-tightening. Toilet installation is even easier with the SmartFit tank-to-bowl connection feature in all Delta toilets, which reduces potential leak points and prevents over-tightening. One of the easiest water-efficiency upgrades to make in the home is in the shower. With more water-efficient options available than ever, there is no need to sacrifice the shower experience. The Delta In2ition two-in-one multi-setting showerhead with H 2 Okinetic Technology provides a warmer, more drenching shower experience that blankets the body while using 20 percent less water than standard showerheads. two-in-one multi-setting showerhead with H Okinetic Technology provides a warmer, more drenching shower experience that blankets the body while using 20 percent less water than standard showerheads. The Delta Linden pull-out kitchen faucet with the Multi-Flow feature delivers a stream and spray setting flow rate of 1.5 gallons per minute for water efficiency and a 2.0 gallon per minute stream setting for high performance both more efficient than the industry standard of 2.2 gallons per minute. The faucet also offers Touch 2 O Technology, allowing users to turn the water on and off with a simple tap anywhere on the spout or handle. Simple kitchen and bathroom upgrades can save water and potentially lower monthly bills. For additional information about water-efficient products and smart solutions, visit deltafaucet.com. About Delta Faucet Company Founded by Masco Corporation in 1954 with the introduction of the single-handle faucet, Delta Faucet Company is proud to be America's faucet innovation leader, featuring Delta, Brizo and Peerless products. A WaterSense partner of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Delta Faucet is a global organization offering kitchen and bath faucets, showerheads, tub and shower systems, toilets and related accessories, selling products in more than 53 countries. For more information, visit www.deltafaucetcompany.com. About Masco Headquartered in Taylor, Mich., Masco Corporation is a global leader in the design, manufacture and distribution of branded building products. Our portfolio of industry-leading brands includes Behr paint; Delta and Hansgrohe faucets, bath and shower fixtures; KraftMaid and Merillat cabinets; Milgard windows and doors; and HotSpring spas. We leverage our powerful brands across product categories, sales channels and geographies to create value for our customers and shareholders. For more information about Masco Corporation, visit masco.com. Links to additional resources Delta Faucet Online Press Room About Masco Corporation SOURCE Delta Faucet Related Links http://www.deltafaucetcompany.com LAS VEGAS, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- EF Johnson Technologies, Inc. will introduce the industry's first subscriber radio Perpetual Software License Program and expansion of its Viking P25 product line at the International Wireless Communications Exhibition (IWCE), March 23 - 24 at the Las Vegas Convention Center. Until today, each time you purchased a P25 land mobile radio, you paid for the hardware plus all the software options. In some cases the software options alone exceed 70% of the radio price. With EFJohnson's new subscriber radio Perpetual Software License Program, you only buy the software option once and you own the associated use license as an "asset" which is transferable forever. The next time you need to purchase a radio you can transfer your perpetual software license to the new radio, saving you the cost of repurchasing the same software option a second or third time. The program will initially offer perpetual licenses on ten commonly purchased public safety software options including P25 Phase 1 Trunking and P25 Digital Protocol Common-Air-Interface (CAI). EFJohnson P25 radios purchased with these perpetual software options before the start of the program are grandfathered in, which offers EFJohnson customers instant additional value. "The current buying model for land mobile radios is outdated - it's time for the LMR market to catch up to the rest of the consumer market," says John Suzuki, President and CEO. "EFJohnson is the first company to introduce perpetual software licenses, which we believe will ultimately save public safety agencies tens of millions and potentially hundreds of millions of dollars annually." EFJohnson is also expanding its recently rebranded KENWOOD Viking product line. The UHF (470 512 MHz) band is now available in the VP900 multi-band portable, and the Viking Control Head (VCH) with a large color display is a new option for mobile radios. A new Viking model for portables and mobiles will also be introduced. The VP/VM5000 series, available to ship in the second half of 2016, offers all the advanced P25 public safety features found in the current Viking radios in a smaller footprint. "The new Viking 5000 series is compatible with Armada, our programming and fleet management software for all Viking line products," says Christian Barker, Director of Product Management. "A city or county can mix and match their Viking radios according to specific department needs and have the ability to efficiently manage the entire fleet using the same software." EFJohnson will demonstrate its complete P25 product portfolio, including ATLAS P25 Phase 1 and 2 systems solutions, in a unified JVCKENWOOD Corporation exhibit (booth 1229) at IWCE. Visit info.efjohnson.com/iwce2016 for more information about EFJohnson's presence at IWCE. About EF Johnson Technologies, Inc. EF Johnson Technologies, Inc. is an independent subsidiary of JVCKENWOOD Corporation. Headquartered in Irving, Texas, EFJohnson focuses on innovating, developing and marketing the highest quality secure communications solutions to organizations whose mission is to protect and save lives. The Company's customers include first responders in public safety and public service, the federal government, and industrial organizations. The Company's products are marketed under the EFJohnson and KENWOOD brands. For more information, visit www.efjohnson.com. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20151023/279908LOGO SOURCE EF Johnson Technologies, Inc. Related Links http://www.efjohnsontechnologies.com OTTAWA, Ontario, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- CloudMask, a cloud data protection platform that assures data protection under breach, is pleased to welcome Lt. General Ronnie Hawkins (Ret) to its Board of Directors. As a former Director of the U.S. Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA), and Commander, Joint Forces Headquarters - Department of Defense Information Networks (DODIN), General Hawkins sees tremendous value in CloudMask's simple and clear value proposition of protecting sensitive data when all other defenses have been breached. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160321/346354 Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160321/346355 CloudMask protects valuable confidential information by encrypting data at source and keeping it encrypted until accessed by an authorized and accredited recipient. By encrypting data, CloudMask renders it useless to hackers, thereby ensuring that a breach of infrastructure does not mean a breach of data. "I am energized by having General Hawkins join the CloudMask team, coming on the heels of the product validation associated with our recent Common Criteria Certification," said Dr. Wael Aggan, CEO. "It is an honor for the company. General Hawkins' experiences in leading information security initiatives within the U.S. DoD will be a tremendous help with the growth of CloudMask, particularly when it comes to strategy and message. I speak on behalf of the entire staff in welcoming General Hawkins." "I am also excited to join CloudMask," said General Hawkins. "The firm has an intelligent and nimble solution for helping organizations of all sizes adopt and ensure the application of encryption policies in a way that protects their most sensitive data. What is particularly compelling about it is how it makes seamless the entire process of masking data, making it safe to use public cloud services. At the same time, it embodies a zero-trust architecture, meaning that data can be unmasked only at specifically authorized end-points. Finally, the firm has taken seriously the need to get independent validation of its security claims, as evidenced by its Common Criteria Certification. These factors position CloudMask for tremendous growth, and I look forward to working with the team to make this happen." General Hawkins recently completed an illustrious 38 year career with the United States Air Force, culminating as the Director, DISA and Commander Joint Force Headquarters, DoDIN. In his most recent role, Hawkins led a global organization of military and civilian personnel who planned, developed, delivered, and operated joint command and control capabilities and a global enterprise infrastructure in direct support of the President, Secretary of Defense, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Combatant Commanders, and Department of Defense components. Prior to his assignment with DISA, General Hawkins was the Deputy Director, Command, Control, Communications and Computer Systems (C4), Joint Staff. Among his many awards, General Hawkins has been awarded the Defense Superior Service Medal, the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star Medal, the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, and the Meritorious Service Medal. About CloudMask: CloudMask is a 'Software as a Service' (SaaS) security platform. CloudMask's platform provides data protection even under total breach. It enables everyone to create, exchange, and consume information on any device, connected to any network, using any application, with full confidence in the privacy of their information. CloudMask technology is certified under the Common Criteria approved by 26 Cyber Security agencies around the world. It is FIPS 140-2 validated. Using patent registered methods, CloudMask, running on user devices, transparently intercepts and analyzes data to identify and encrypt private information. The intercepted data may belong to applications such as Google Apps, SalesForce, Box, and MS Office 365, CloudMask will ensure it is protected. For more information, visit www.cloudmask.com or for CloudMask videos see www.vimeo.com/cloudmask For further information: Dr. Wael Aggan www.cloudmask.com Tel : +1 (613) 927-1006 SOURCE CloudMask Related Links http://www.cloudmask.com SALT LAKE CITY, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Green River Capital, LLC (GRC), a leading provider of REO asset management and real estate services for mortgage servicers, investment firms, and banking institutions, announced today that it has received a 'MOR RV2' residential vendor ranking for its single-family rental (SFR) property management and surveillance services from Morningstar Credit Ratings, LLC (Morningstar). GRC also announced that Morningstar affirmed its residential vendor ranking as a residential vendor in the asset-management market as 'MOR RV1' and its residential component servicer ranking in the short sales market as 'MOR RV1'. The forecast for all the rankings are Stable. According to Morningstar's bulletin: "The assigned rankings reflect Morningstar's assessment of GRC's operational infrastructure and client-driven performance results in its respective duties as a residential component servicer, asset manager for real-estate-owned properties, and single-family rental property management and surveillance. The stable forecast for all rankings reflects solid vendor performance for GRC's client base deriving from a tenured management team, highly flexible technology environment, comprehensive internal performance monitoring and measurement, a pervasive enterprise wide risk-management infrastructure, and a focus on client-driven performance results. GRC benefits from a comprehensive quality-control and performance-driven culture within the organization, arising from a solid training regimen, comprehensive policies and procedures, and proactive vendor-management protocols that includes effective vendor management oversight for selecting, qualifying, and assessing agent performance." Morningstar added: "In 2015, the company unveiled its Rental Asset Management and Performance (RAMP) platform. The RAMP platform is an extension of and complement to GRC's existing suite of services to the single-family rental securitization industry that includes collateral review and property management services. The platform aggregates and standardizes single-family rental transaction information and monthly rental property-level performance data for a variety of single-family rental residential stakeholders including property owners, investors, servicers, property managers, lenders, and securitizers." "Our continued investment in technology, data resources and, best in class processes, enables us to provide our clients with the service levels necessary to maintain our Morningstar rankings," said Tim Reilly, President of GRC. "Morningstar noted our new RAMP platform when adding a rating of 'MOR RV2' for our single-family property management and surveillance services as we continue to create products and services to meet the changing needs of our clients and the market." To view the full bulletin, visit Morningstar.com. About Green River Capital Green River Capital, LLC (GRC), headquartered in Salt Lake City, is wholly owned by Clayton Holdings LLC, a subsidiary of Radian Group Inc. (NYSE: RDN), and is a leading real estate company, providing REO asset management, loss mitigation, valuation, collateral review, property management and a full suite of component real estate services. GRC also offers surveillance programs and supports investors' single family rental strategies with pre- and post-acquisition services. GRC uses proprietary technology and a nationwide network of attorneys, brokers, appraisers, contractors and title professionals to deliver scalable, customized solutions. Additional information is available at www.greenrivercap.com. About Clayton Holdings LLC Clayton Holdings LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Radian Group Inc. (NYSE: RDN ), is a premier global provider of mortgage and real-estate market risk management solutions including risk-based analytics, residential loan due diligence, consulting, surveillance and staffing solutions. The company's subsidiaries include: Green River Capital, customized REO asset management and single-family rental services; Red Bell Real Estate, advanced AVMs, BPOs and technology to acquire, value and track performance of loan portfolios and NPLs; ValuAmerica, national title, appraisal management company and vendor management technology provider; and Clayton Euro Risk, global services. For more information, call 877.291.5301 or visit www.clayton.com . SOURCE Green River Capital, LLC Related Links http://www.greenrivercap.com Ahmedabad: A man, dressed as an advocate, on Tuesday set himself on fire and entered the court of Chief Justice R Subhash Reddy at the Gujarat High Court before the lawyers present there doused the flames. Assistant commissioner of police B J Pandya said he was identified as Kishore Agarwal, resident of Surat. With 10-12 per cent burn injuries on back and head, he was rushed to the Sola civil hospital for treatment, she said. The SRP constable posted outside the CJ's courtroom had tried to stop him from entering but failed, the ACP said. Agarwal runs an NGO, 'Noori', in Surat, and had approached the High Court with a petition to quash an FIR filed against him in connection with corruption in fund allocation. The court had last week dismissed his petition. "We could not find out if he is a lawyer although he claims to be one. Exact reason for his act is also not yet known. He had come in connection with a case heard in the court of Justice Sonia Gokani," Pandya said. "He managed to enter the Chief Justice's court despite an SRP constable trying to drag him away. We are checking CCTV footage to get more information," Pandya said. The incident halted the court proceedings for two-three hours. SAN MATEO, Calif., March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo drew more than 2.4 million visitors this year, which required a massive public safety effort to cover an event this size. However, for the first time, local public safety agencies were equipped with the latest mobile solutions that greatly improve response times and inter-department communications. Sonim Technologies, maker of the world's toughest mobile phones, provided a total of 75 Sonim XP7 Android smartphone devices to local public safety, fire and EMS first responders throughout the course of the 20-day event. The deployment is significant in that it is the largest pilot program Sonim has participated in to date. With participation in eight major deployments over the past year including the Papal visit in Philadelphia, the Rose Parade and the "Big Game," the XP7 has proven to be a preferred smartphone used on LTE Band Class 14, FirstNet's high-speed, wireless broadband network dedicated solely to first responders. The Band Class 14 network has been in the testing phase for several years and allows first responders to bypass the consumer mobile networks that tend to get congested at events of this size, which can greatly impact public safety response times. The Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo is one of many early deployments of an LTE Band Class 14 network. "While we've made a lot of progress with our network rollout, there's still a long way to go," said Jim McMillan, Engineering Manager, Harris County Public Safety Technology Services. "Through these larger scale operations, we are learning a great deal about device and accessory use cases, coverage expectations, and how to continually improve our network as we grow and expand the system." The XP7 smartphones are customized with software developed specifically for first responders and includes technology from ESChat and STING by Intrepid Networks. ESChat provided first responders a secure communication platform using the dedicated LTE bandwidth required for mission critical Push-to-Talk (PTT) operations. ESChat's integrated real-time location tracking & mapping was also used for enhanced situational awareness. Harris County also opted to interface the LTE based ESChat users to three LMR channels, providing seamless interoperability between first responders using LMR and the FirstNet Band 14 LTE network. STING, provided by the Intrepid Networks, is a Situational Awareness tool with functionality designed specifically for Public Safety use during dynamic events. STING provides First Responders essential information in an easy to use interface to provide visual information necessary for rapid decision-making. A sample of the types of shared data utilized within the system include real time GPS positions, satellite maps, floorplans, driver's license images, text notes and photographs. The system increases the ability of all First Responders to orient, observe, decide and act with greater confidence and thus improves quality of operations. "Each deployment is a learning experience and builds on our growing foundation of expertise," said Robert Escalle, Vice President Public Safety & Defense, Sonim Technologies. "We continue to find ways to improve and refine our entire product portfolio using these as metrics in improving and delivering the absolute best products for first responders and industrial workers worldwide." ABOUT SONIM TECHNOLOGIES: Sonim Technologies (http://www.sonimtech.com) is the provider of mission-critical solutions designed specifically for workers in extreme, hazardous and isolated environments. The Sonim solution includes ultra-rugged mobile phones, business-process applications and a suite of industrial-grade accessories, collectively designed to increase worker productivity, accountability and safety on the job site. Sonim's industry-leading, 3-year comprehensive warranty has redefined customer expectations of rugged technology. The company is headquartered in San Mateo, Calif., and offers its products with mobile operators around the world. ABOUT SLA: SLA's ESChat (http://www.eschat.com) is the leading solution for carrier independent Secure Push to Talk (PTT) over LTE communications. ESChat includes AES-256 encrypted PTT voice and multimedia (text and image) messaging. ESChat also provides live and historical (bread crumb) tracking and mapping. Currently used by the U.S. Military as well as Federal, State and Local law enforcement, ESChat is able to operate over FirstNet Band 14 LTE spectrum, commercial carriers and WiFi. ESChat supports interoperability with all LMR radio networks, including P25 via the native Inter RF Subsystem Interface (ISSI) protocol and DMR via the native Inter Application Interface Specification (AIS) protocol. ABOUT INTREPID NETWORKS: Intrepid Networks (www.intrepid-networks.com) is a provider of mission-critical mobile software solutions designed specifically to provide real-time Situational Awareness for the tactical, intelligence and Public Safety community. Their solutions provide several operational benefits to users to collectively improve First Responder safety, reduce liability risk and increase operational efficiency. STING, which is the company's core product line, currently serves several Federal, State, County and Municipal agencies in the United States, and the platform has received NTOA Member Tested and Recommended accreditation. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20141014/151907LOGO SOURCE Sonim Technologies Related Links http://www.sonimtech.com DOWNERS GROVE, Ill., March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Ensono today announced that marketing services company Harte Hanks has selected the hybrid IT services provider to manage and revamp its IT infrastructure. A crucial function of Harte Hanks business is to provide in-depth data analysis, analytics and creative services to its clients, and the company required a partner to efficiently provide IT solutions that support its business growth. Harte Hanks selected Ensono based on its proven infrastructure management expertise, transformational capabilities, and ability to deliver a wide array of solutions at a low total cost of ownership. Understanding Harte Hanks' need to streamline current IT operations, Ensono will initially manage the company's IT infrastructure, including mainframe and mission critical systems in its two data centers. After a thorough assessment, Ensono will optimize Harte Hanks' environment and migrate to private cloud-based platforms in Ensono data centers. This flexible approach will allow the Harte Hanks leadership team to focus on business growth, unique client solutions and improved productivity for a more cost effective infrastructure management model. "Reliable access to data is critical to our company's success; when it came time to evaluate our IT infrastructure, we determined there is a need for an IT services partner with expertise to manage our current infrastructure, and the ability to optimize solutions in a way that aligns with our company's business goals for the future," said Robert Neill, chief information officer, Harte Hanks. "Ensono delivers the range of services our company required from remote to hosted management and specializes in working with companies with similar infrastructures as ours. Knowing Ensono is there to manage internal applications, servers and the mainframe brings peace of mind to our team, and allows us to focus on growing our business." Harte Hanks recognized that enlisting an IT services partner would be an investment. After assessing the time and resources required to manage its data centers, IT staff and additional assets, it became clear that outsourcing IT services was more cost effective. Harte Hanks chose Ensono because of its industry expertise, particularly with mainframe and cloud services, as well as its commitment to work closely with its clients. "Ensono's ability to work collaboratively with customers such as Harte Hanks to execute more secure, cost effective and flexible infrastructure management services is a key differentiator for our business," said Marc Capri, executive vice president, Sales & Marketing, Ensono. "Customer needs and technology change rapidly and we understand providing a platform that allows for optimization over time is critical. Ensono's services model enables customers to utilize IT in direct alignment with their business." About Ensono Ensono, formerly Acxiom IT, collaborates with its clients to deliver progressive IT solutions to help them operate their infrastructure for today and optimize it for tomorrow. We specialize in supporting mission-critical workloads for the world's most successful companies. Ensono works across all platforms mainframe to cloud, and everything in between. We are ranked by Information Week 500 for our technology innovation and by the Uptime Institute for 100 percent availability. Ensono has 700 associates and is headquartered in greater Chicago, Ill. Visit us at www.ensono.com. About Harte Hanks Harte Hanks partners with clients to deliver relevant, connected and quality customer interactions. Our approach starts with discovery and learning, which leads to customer journey mapping, creative and content development, analytics and data management, and ends with execution and support in a variety of digital and traditional channels. We do something powerful: we produce engaging and memorable customer interactions to drive business results for our clients, which is why Harte Hanks is famous for developing better customer relationships, experiences and defining interaction-led marketing. For more information, visit the Harte Hanks website at www.hartehanks.com, call 844-233-9281, email [email protected] or follow us on Twitter @hartehanks or Facebook, www.facebook.com/HarteHanks. Media Contact Becki Gervin 408.369.7200 x 1070 [email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160321/346605LOGO SOURCE Ensono Related Links http://www.ensono.com HANGZHOU, China, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Hikvision, the world's leading supplier of video surveillance products and solutions, has announced the integration of its full range of network cameras and Network Video Recorders with Net2 access control system from Paxton, the UK market leader of electronic IP access control and door entry solutions. The integration will provide a user-friendly interface to manage building security more easily. This seamless integration allows for the easy configuration of Hikvision Network Video Recorder (NVR) and camera detection with Net2 access control system. Hikvision cameras can be associated to individual doors, enabling users to monitor video linked with access events. This provides a more comprehensive service for users, enabling them to take necessary actions both in real-time and post-events. Keen Yao, International Marketing Director at Hikvision, said: "The integration provides a value-added solution to Hikvision and Paxton customers. It will help identify and address suspicious activities, making security system management simple and more time-efficient." Gareth O'Hara, Paxton's Sales and Marketing Director, said: "At Paxton, we encourage original thought. We develop innovative solutions that represent the company's ethos of simplicity and quality, whilst answering the needs of the security market. It's a pleasure to be working with Hikvision, a company who place as much importance on product innovation and diversification. We hope the solution will be an attractive proposition for a wide range of installers." About Paxton Access Ltd Paxton provides industry-leading access control systems which meet the challenges and trends of the security market. With over 30 years' experience, the company offer engineering excellence, creating simple, yet intelligent and innovative products with simplicity designed in, ensuring they are straightforward to install, use and maintain. Net2 is the UK's most popular access control solution, with more than 150 additional buildings being fitted out with it every week. The security system offers centralised administration and control of sites ranging from one to hundreds of doors, and thousands of users. For more information, please visit Paxton website at www.paxton.co.uk. About Hikvision Hikvision is the world's leading supplier of video surveillance solutions. Featuring the industry's strongest R&D workforce, Hikvision uses its state-of-the-art manufacturing facilities to design and develop innovative CCTV and video surveillance products for any security need. For more information, please visit Hikvision's website at www.hikvision.com. SOURCE Hikvision Digital Technology Co., Ltd. Related Links http://www.hikvision.com Observed annually on March 28, National Something on a Stick Day celebrates foods on a stick that are fun and easy to eat. Hot Dog on a Stick's menu features craveable stick items such as original turkey dogs, beef dogs, veggie dogs, and popular Cheese on a Stick. Hot Dog on a Stick is encouraging Something on a Stick day revelers to complement their $.70 Hot Dog on a Stick with its signature hand-stomped lemonade. "We couldn't let Something on a Stick Day pass without a great offer for our customers, the holiday was practically made for us!" said Lisa Merrell, Vice President of Hot Dog on a Stick. "Hot Dog on a Stick is going all out to celebrate our big 70th anniversary this year and offering $.70 original turkey dogs on Tuesdays has been very popular. Come see us the last Monday and Tuesday of March and take advantage of the final days of our throwback pricing." An American Icon since 1946, Hot Dog on a Stick began as a small beachfront store in Santa Monica and has grown to close to 100 locations across the U.S. as well as locations in Korea. Hot Dog on a Stick is busy planning a big 70th anniversary lemonade Stomp-A-Thon for The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society at that exact beachfront store on April 21. More information will be released soon. Hot Dog on a Stick is operated by Global Franchise Group, LLC. To find a Hot Dog on a Stick near you, visit www.hotdogonastick.com, or engage with Hot Dog on a Stick on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. *Valid at participating Hot Dog on a Stick locations only. Offer is valid for one $.70 Original Turkey Hot Dog on a Stick per customer. NOTES TO EDITORS: Members of the media are encouraged to help spread the word about Hot Dog on a Stick's National Something on a Stick Day celebration. Media drops featuring Hot Dog on a Stick's signature hats and fresh stick items are available. To request visuals, or arrange an interview with Hot Dog on a Stick representatives, please contact Kathleen Shaffer at [email protected] or (470) 388-6170. About Hot Dog on a Stick - www.hotdogonastick.com Established in 1946 in Southern California, Hot Dog on a Stick is known for its fresh, made-to-order hot dog on a stick and cheese on a stick products, hand-stomped natural lemonade, smiling customer service and its iconic bright striped uniforms. Hot Dog on a Stick provides customers with a fun all-American quick service restaurant experience, catering services for events, party packs, and fundraisers. Hot Dog on a Stick has close to 100 locations in the U.S. and internationally including Korea. Connect with us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. For franchising opportunities, visit www.hotdogonastickfranchise.com . About Global Franchise Group, LLC - www.globalfranchise.com Global Franchise Group, LLC is a strategic brand management company with a mission of championing franchise brands and the people who build them. The company owns a portfolio of franchise brands that includes five primary quick service restaurant (QSR) franchise concepts: Great American Cookies, Hot Dog on a Stick, Marble Slab Creamery, MaggieMoo's Ice Cream & Treatery, and Pretzelmaker. The brands are managed by GFG Management, LLC, a subsidiary of Global Franchise Group, LLC. Global Franchise Group, LLC is a portfolio company of Levine Leichtman Capital Partners, an independent investment firm, with approximately $7 billion of capital under management and substantial franchise management experience. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160321/346529 SOURCE Hot Dog on a Stick Related Links http://www.hotdogonastick.com BLUE BELL, Pa., March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Unisys Corporation (NYSE: UIS) today announced that its subsidiary in the Netherlands has won a new five-year contract with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, a leading European airline carrier, to provide service desk and onsite services for the company's key locations at Schiphol airport and Amstelveen. The implementation is designed to reduce the airline's IT service-delivery costs while improving end-user satisfaction, raising productivity by anticipating and pre-empting operational disruption, and driving greater innovation across the airline's IT and service desk infrastructure. KLM Royal Dutch Airline flies to more than 135 international destinations across more than 60 countries. Unisys will support nearly 30,000 KLM Royal Dutch Airlines employees with a combination of 24/7 service desk support in Dutch and English; service request management; deskside support; special services for airline-specific IT equipment; installations; moves; adds and changes (IMAC); and logistics. Unisys' onsite services will also include the support of more than 20,000 devices comprising desktops, laptops, iPads, monitors and printers and installing and maintaining mission-critical software for them. More specifically, Unisys will provide support services tailored to suit KLM's exceptional service delivery offerings, including the mission-critical operational environments at the global KLM Operations and Control Center (OCC) and the KLM operational departments at Schiphol. Olivier Houri, vice president and global head of Travel and Transportation, Unisys, said, "Unisys is very pleased to add KLM Royal Dutch Airlines to its growing portfolio of airline and aviation customers. Our services solution will help KLM Royal Dutch Airlines achieve its aggressive goals in improved operational cost and timely, efficient service to employees and passengers. Plus, the suite of services we are providing can scale to support the company's long-term growth plans." Unisys has more than 45 years of experience providing advanced, mission-critical IT solutions to the aviation industry. More than 200 airlines rely on Unisys services and solutions and a quarter of the world's air passengers check in for their flights using Unisys systems. About Unisys Unisys is a global information technology company that works with many of the world's largest companies and government organizations to solve their most pressing IT and business challenges. Unisys specializes in providing integrated, leading-edge solutions to clients in government, financial services and commercial markets. With more than 20,000 employees serving clients around the world, Unisys offerings include cloud and infrastructure services, application services, security solutions, and high-end server technology. For more information, visit www.unisys.com. Follow Unisys on Twitter and LinkedIn. RELEASE NO.: 0322/9405 Unisys and other Unisys products and services mentioned herein, as well as their respective logos, are trademarks or registered trademarks of Unisys Corporation. Any other brand or product referenced herein is acknowledged to be a trademark or registered trademark of its respective holder. UIS-C SOURCE Unisys Corporation Related Links http://www.unisys.com "The grief of losing someone to suicide is incredibly difficult, and the way survivors experience grief can change over time. It is our hope that by convening this conference, we can facilitate sharing, further healing, and growth," said AFSP CEO Robert Gebbia . "The idea came from conversations with loss survivors, where we learned there is an unmet need for a program of those who are years out from their loss. It's our hope that this conference offers a place for them to go in their healing journey." Our Journey Continues conference is designed for people who have worked through the early experiences of suicide loss and have processed the earlier stages of grief, likely over a period of several years, and who are ready to engage in the next steps of sharing and healing together. Interactive in nature, the two-day conference will offer attendees a theme by which to engage, enrich and empower. The conference includes many of the nation's top experts in grieving after a suicide loss. Some topics to be discussed include: Healing into Action, Military Survivors, Sharing Your Loved One's Legacy, Spirituality's Role in Long-Term Healing, Learning to Trust Again and Working through Complicated Grief. For a full list of speakers and topic areas, please visit: http://bit.ly/1Ra1jDL. "It is an honor to partner with AFSP in facilitating this special conference. Time may modify, but never erase the impact of a loved one's suicide. The focus on long-term survivors extends our concerns to the lingering and changing issues of loss," said Andra S. Press, president, The Herbert Adelman Foundation. The conference is sponsored by The Herbert Adelman Foundation, along with supporting sponsors AFSP's Illinois Chapter, and the Ride to Fight Suicide, Illinois to Wisconsin. Register today, seats limited: http://bit.ly/1Ra1jDL. The American Foundation for Suicide Prevention is dedicated to saving lives and bringing hope to those affected by suicide. AFSP creates a culture that's smart about mental health through education and community programs, develops suicide prevention through research and advocacy, and provides support for those affected by suicide. Led by CEO Robert Gebbia and headquartered in New York, and with a public policy office in Washington, D.C., AFSP has local chapters in all 50 states with programs and events nationwide. Learn more about AFSP in its latest Annual Report, and join the conversation on suicide prevention by following AFSP on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160321/346329 SOURCE American Foundation for Suicide Prevention Related Links http://www.afsp.org MapQuest, a pioneer in the digital mapping category, continues to be one of the leading mapping brands, reaching more than 42 million multi-platform users*. The company works with both businesses and consumers to enable everyday explorers to find, learn about and locate their desired destinations. As a mapping technology pioneer, MapQuest has developed a bold, human and responsive approach that enables users to access features and tools that enhance their daily lives. MapQuest's mobile solutions are compatible with a variety of mobile devices, including iPhone and Android. MapQuest, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL Inc., is based in Denver, Colo. What: Spring Break 2016 Panama City More than 370,000 college students are beginning to embark on their spring break adventures to Panama City Beach. MapQuest will be onsite offering support to help ensure a safe week of fun and adventure, reminding students to make safe transportation choices and stay hydrated. Ambassadors will be at the largest resorts distributing vouchers from licensed taxis so students can reach their destinations without incident. Additionally, MapQuest will set up at popular nightclubs to hand out cab vouchers and bottled water to encourage hydration and a safe ride back to hotels. When: Through March 26, 2016 Where: Panama City Beach, Florida Share: #MapQuestIt to help #SpringBreak2016 travelers be #safe Learn more at http://bit.ly/1Rmg6eB *Aggregate average by month for 2015 according to comScore Media Metrix Multi-Platform Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160321/346387 SOURCE MapQuest Related Links http://mapquest.com SAN FRANCISCO, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Parents Education Network (PEN) and Understood.org announced today that bestselling author and dyslexia advocate Max Brooks will headline the eighth annual EdRev 2016: A Day to Think a Little Differently on Saturday, April 16, 2016, at AT&T Park. EdRev (Education Revolution) is a daylong conference that provides information, resources, celebration and community for students who learn differently and the families and professionals who support them. Brooks will deliver the keynote address, "Taking On World War D: Dyslexia," sharing his personal experience growing up with dyslexia. In 2014, Brooks gave a passionate speech before Congress urging them to take action to help children who have dyslexia. Giving firsthand accounts of his own struggles during school, Brooks said that "a little awareness and flexible teaching methods could unlock unlimited potential in these kids." EdRev will feature prominent experts including Drs. Brock and Fernette Eide of Dyslexic Advantage, Dr. Tony Simon of the UC Davis MIND Institute, and Lindsay Jones, Esq., of the National Center for Learning Disabilities. "We chose the theme 'A Day to Think a Little Differently' because we want to celebrate and honor the unique minds of our students with learning and attention issues, who think and learn best in nontraditional ways," said Laura Maloney, executive director of PEN. "Over 2,000 people attend EdRev each year, so whether you are a student, parent or educator, you will have an opportunity to connect with people who acknowledge and support the different paths students have to learning and leading meaningful lives." EdRev attendees, including more than 600 students, will hear from renowned speakers presenting their work from the cutting edge of learning science, and can explore a diverse range of resources presented by tech companies, service providers, schools, colleges and support organizations, in addition to enjoying artwork, music and outdoor activities. "EdRev was a game changer for our family," said Julia C. Martin, founder of SIKidSF.com , who attended EdRev 2015. "My son attended in 2012 when he was 9 years old and it was the first time he heard people stand up and speak out for kids with disabilities and their rights. From that moment on, he has taken an active role in educating his teachers, family members and others about special education and learning and attention issues." "It's important that families of the 1 in 5 children in the U.S. with learning and attention issues take time to celebrate their unique gifts, and our partnership with PEN at EdRev 2016 helps to elevate and empower them," said Kevin Hager, managing director at Understood.org. "Understood connects parents to free resources, tools and experts, and supporting events like EdRev ensures that we continue to bridge our local communities with our online community." "PEN launched EdRev in 2009 because there was no other event that allowed students to experience an atmosphere where their strengths are celebrated and the stigma of LD disappears," said Dewey Rosetti, cofounder and board member of PEN. "We look forward to yet another annual day of collaboration, inspiration and empowerment." EdRev 2016 is produced by PEN in partnership with Understood. Winner of the 2015 Webby Award for best family/parenting site, Understood.org is a comprehensive free resource that was created by 15 nonprofits to empower parents of the 1 in 5 children in the U.S. who have learning and attention issues. Available in English, Spanish and read-aloud mode, Understood offers personalized resources, interactive tools, daily access to experts, a supportive community of parents and more. Since Understood.org launched in October 2014, it has helped more than 11 million people. With clear explanations and practical tips, Understood is helping parents gain confidence and unlock strengths that can help their children thrive in school and in life. Registration for EdRev 2016 is now open. General registration is $60 per person. Member students and educators attend at no cost. Nonmember students are $20, nonmember educators are $40 and low-income scholarships are available. To stay informed about the latest news with EdRev, visit http://www.edrevsf.org. Follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/pensf or like us on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/pensf. To apply for media credentials, contact Laura Maloney ([email protected]). For information about exhibitor space and sponsorship opportunities, contact Rachel Blickman ([email protected]). 2016 Parents Education Network (PEN). PEN is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in San Francisco that provides education, support and empowerment to students, parents, and educators impacted by learning and attention differences. For more information about PEN please call (415) 751-2237, email [email protected] or visit http://parentseducationnetwork.org. MEDIA CONTACT: Laura Maloney [email protected] Danielle Ward [email protected] SOURCE Understood.org Related Links http://Understood.org KANDY, Sri Lanka, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Professor Robert Flome of California recently presented at the Astrobiology Research Conference, held at the University of Peradeniya, in Sri Lanka in August 2015. Professor Flome presented video evidence he captured at his home of what he believes is a space alien exploring earth while communicating with two pods. The evidence, he says, backs up the long-held theory that there is bacterial life in space. Professor Robert Flome Presents at Astrobiology Research Conference Possible Evidence of Alien Bacterial Life Exploring Earth Professor Robert Flome Presents at Astrobiology Research Conference Possible Evidence of Alien Bacterial Life Exploring Earth The video was taken by a security camera mounted on an outside balcony where there were no windows nor anything else that could have blocked or reflected the camera's lens. The camera that caught the image has infrared LEDs that make night vision clearer. Infrared lights are produced with wavelengths that range from 8330 to 959 nanometers, which is not visible to the human eye. Professor Flome said that the discovery of the hovering alien was made by his 10 year-old son, Benji. While the family was eating dinner, Benji was looking at the surveillance camera and noticed a strange looking white object hovering above the ground. Professor Flome stated that as he looked into the surveillance monitor, he knew that the moving object was not from this world. At the beginning of the video, viewers can see the alien coming down from the sky and then hovering above the ground. The video also shows two pods in the sky. Professor Flome believes the video captures the alien exploring the environment and then flying up into the sky towards the direction of the left pod. Suddenly, in midair Professor Flome notes, the alien changes direction and then flies to the right pod, and then flying upward into the sky. "In the video, you can see that the alien had goals, motivation, direction and systematic behaviors," says Professor Flome. "Its sensory capacity appears to be its anterior body part. It appears to have an endoplasm and ectoplasm and possibly gathers food and fluid through its cell membrane." Professor Flome notes his discovery is the possible missing link to the Panspermia Theory. In the 1970's, Sir Fred Hoyt and Professor Chandra Wickramasinghe proposed a hypothesis where microbial bacteria from space came to earth and started life. They believed live bacteria was brought to Earth by meteors, comets and asteroids. Dr. Wickramasinghe believed he proved his theory in the 1970's, and Flome notes that the video evidence he captured supports it. Professor Flome believes that these extraterrestrials are here now and most likely have been here before. Questions remain about what has become of other microbes in space that have been around for billions of years if microbial bacteria in space came to earth and evolved into humans. "It's quite possible for the microbial bacteria in space to have evolved into large macrobial bacteria. If bacteria here on earth evolved into human beings, then why can't microscopic bacteria in space evolve into large bacteria?" questions Professor Flome. Further research by astrobiologists will be needed to answer these questions. For more information about Professor Flome's finding and to watch the video, visit ProfessorRobertFlome.com. About Professor Robert Flome Professor Robert Flome captured video evidence at his home of what he believes is alien life visiting Earth. He presented his video at the Astrobiology Research Conference at the University of Peradeniya in Sri Lanka in August 2015. To see the video, visit ProfessorRobertFlome.com. Media Contact: Professor Robert Flome Phone: 760-680-0705 Email: [email protected] Web: professorrobertflome.com Video - http://youtu.be/0n4DZJCg1Wc Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160314/343887 This content was issued through the press release distribution service at Newswire.com. For more info visit: http://www.newswire.com SOURCE Professor Robert Flome Related Links http://www.professorrobertflome.com Opposition allege that the ACB was an attempt to protect the corrupt and destabilise the Lokayukta, set up in Karnataka in 1984. (Photo: PTI) Bengaluru: Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah on Tuesday rejected the Opposition's demand for withdrawing the newly formed Anti-Corruption Bureau, maintaining there was no "mala fide" intention to shield the corrupt or to weaken the Lokayukta. Replying after the BJP and JDS called off their dharna in the well of the House demanding withdrawal of ACB, Siddaramaiah said he was willing to discuss ways to strengthen the Lokayukta institution with the Opposition. Meanwhile, BJP leader Jagadish Shettar said the ACB should be withdrawn "at any cost" and his party would take the fight to outside the House and announced withdrawal of their protest to facilitate smooth functioning to discuss other "burning" issues like drought situation in the state. JDS member Y S V Dutta said government had claimed that ACB and Lokayukta were existing in parallel in 15 states and it should get the information about it and share it with the Opposition parties. His party too was calling off the protest to allow discussion on other important issues, he said. The withdrawal of protest was also preceded by Speaker Kagodu Thimappa's appeal to the Opposition parties. Countering the BJP attack, Siddaramaiah said the police wing in the Lokayukta would also continue and a similar system prevailed in 15 states. "There is no mala fide intention behind our decision. Nor are we trying to shield anyone. "There is no question of withdrawing the ACB," he said, firmly ruling out stepping back on the issue. Both BJP and JDS members were on dharna when the House was adjourned for the day yesterday. The two parties allege that the ACB was an attempt to protect the corrupt and "destabilise" the Lokayukta, set up in Karnataka in 1984 during Ramakrishna Hegde's Chief ministership which is considered an exemplary model. ANN ARBOR, Mich., March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- ProQuest is providing critical support to research projects across the US with data from its leading Dissertations and Theses (PQDT) Global database. Through a new program, ProQuest assists researchers on their projects by pulling content from the database that will add significant insights to the project. Among recent projects, ProQuest provided data to the UMETRICS project which was piloted by the Committee on Institutional Cooperation. The study was conducted by researchers at the University of Michigan, Ohio State University, Georgia State University, New York University and the US Census Bureau, and resulted in an article published in Science magazine. The study examined the employment and earning outcomes of Ph.Ds. Supported by funded research and combining data from the universities, ProQuest, and the U.S. Census Bureau, the authors then tracked and analysed across the field of study, showing the placement and earnings of the Ph.Ds. ProQuest databases are key resources for scholarly research. The ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global database is the world's largest curated repository of graduate scholarship, including 4 million graduate works from institutions across the globe, with 130,000 works added each year. Drawing from this vast repository, ProQuest can gather data that provides insights to many aspects of graduate study, research, and dissertations and theses. Austin McLean, Director Scholarly Communication and Dissertation Publishing at ProQuest said, "PQDT Global is the only comprehensive, curated, full text dissertations database able to provide a one-stop shop for critical research data. Being able to provide our customers with tailored information from our database, customized for these interdisciplinary research projects ensures researchers can maximize the potential of the information that we hold." Originally created in 1939, PQDT includes works from 3,000 institutions around the world, helping the global research community disseminate their scholarly works. The works make a valuable contribution to the scholarly record, raise the profiles of institutions and their authors, and are invaluable for researchers of all fields in all countries. About ProQuest (http://www.proquest.com) ProQuest connects people with vetted, reliable information. Key to serious research, the company's products are a gateway to the world's knowledge including dissertations, governmental and cultural archives, news, historical collections, and ebooks. ProQuest technologies serve users across the critical points in research, helping them discover, access, share, create, and manage information. The company's cloud-based technologies offer flexible solutions for librarians, students, and researchers through the ProQuest, Bowker, Coutts information services, Dialog, Ex Libris, ebrary, EBL, and SIPX businesses and notable research tools such as the Summon discovery service, the RefWorks citation and document management platform, MyiLibrary ebook platform, the Pivot research development tool, and the Intota library services platform. The company is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with offices around the world. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20120620/DE27948LOGO-a SOURCE ProQuest Related Links http://www.proquest.com "We're excited to have Rajat take on additional responsibilities as the CTO, with a role focused on our mobile search technical advancement," said Tomer Kagan, co-founder and CEO, Quixey. "We have an aggressive product roadmap for 2016 in app-based mobile search with several new upcoming releases planned and it is more important than ever to align our product vision with execution. Rajat's impressive background and extensive knowledge of Quixey's technology make him the perfect person to help lead this forward." Mukherjee held leadership positions at both startups and large companies within consumer and enterprise. Most notably is Mukherjee's extensive experience in search. As a group product manager at Google, he was the product lead for search ads automation and worked closely on custom search, enterprise search, alerts, related search and more. Following Google, he led product at Lexity building automated marketing tools for ecommerce. Lexity was acquired by Yahoo in 2013. He also held positions as senior director of software engineering at Verity working on enterprise search, and subsequently was senior director of product management at Yahoo working on web search. He started his career at IBM Research after earning his Ph.D. in computer engineering from Rice University. Mukherjee graduated with a Bachelor of Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and holds multiple software patents. "We are working on technology that no one else is working on," said Mukherjee. "We are rethinking the user experience on mobile to reduce the time from thought to action -- people can get things done faster. This is a win-win for consumers and developers." Quixey develops forward-looking technology that connects people to apps and apps to people. With unique and proprietary technology that sets Quixey apart from other mobile companies, Quixey continues to push the envelope on what consumers should expect from a mobile experience. The latest development, Deep View Cards announced last fall, uses a combination of content acquisition techniques and patent-pending native app mining technology to deliver mobile app content and functionality into ads and search results. Mukherjee's appointment comes as Quixey deepens its strategic partnerships with some of the world's largest technology companies and demand for its solutions continue to grow at a rapid pace. The company has nearly 300 employees across its four global offices and attracts the industry's top engineering and technical talent to build out its patented technology. About Quixey Quixey, the mobile search technology company, connects people to apps and apps to people. Through Deep View Cards, Quixey provides users with easy access and engagement with the content and functionalities within apps. The company was founded in 2009 and has offices in Mountain View, CA, Beijing, Bangalore, and Tel Aviv. For more information about Quixey, please visit quixey.com or follow the company on Twitter at @Quixey. Media Contacts: Scott Samson VP, Communications Quixey 415-781-9005 [email protected] Katie Halloran SHIFT Communications 415-591-8459 [email protected] Video - https://youtu.be/NieV0RbhZVs Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160321/346635 SOURCE Quixey Related Links https://www.quixey.com NEW YORK, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The Law Offices of Vincent Wong are investigating potential claims against the Board of Directors of PowerSecure International, Inc. (NYSE: POWR) ("PowerSecure International" or "the Company") in connection with the sale of the Company to Southern Company. Under the terms of the transaction, PowerSecure International shareholders will receive $18.75 in cash for each share of PowerSecure International they own. Click here to learn about the case: http://docs.wongesq.com/POWR-Info-Request-Form-291. There is no cost or obligation to you. The investigation concerns whether the Board of PowerSecure International breached their fiduciary duties to stockholders by failing to adequately shop the Company before agreeing to enter into this transaction, and whether Southern Company is underpaying for PowerSecure International shares. If you own common stock in PowerSecure International and wish to obtain additional information, please contact Vincent Wong, Esq. either via email [email protected], by telephone at 212.425.1140, or visit http://docs.wongesq.com/POWR-Info-Request-Form-291. Vincent Wong, Esq. is an experienced attorney that has represented investors in securities litigations involving financial fraud and violations of shareholder rights. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee similar outcomes. CONTACT: Vincent Wong, Esq. 39 East Broadway Suite 304 New York, NY 10002 Tel. 212.425.1140 Fax. 866.699.3880 E-Mail: [email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140904/143045 SOURCE The Law Offices of Vincent Wong Related Links http://www.wongesq.com Smart structures play a growing role in the aerospace industry in four different areas: monitoring of composites, suppression of structural vibration, noise suppression, and surface morphing. This report identifies where the commercial opportunities are for smart structures in civil and general aviation, military aircraft, helicopters, UAVs and spacecraft. It examines where the money will be made in smart structures for aircraft at all levels of the value chain; we examine the market potential for the smart structures themselves, the related smart materials and SHM/HUMS systems and smart aircraft skins, as well as the implications of the trend towards smart structures for the aircraft builders and airlines. The report profiles both the R&D and commercialization projects for smart structures in the aerospace industry, including those sponsored by governmental agencies such as the EU, DARPA and NASA and those run by the major aerospace companies. The report also discusses how smart structures are enabling the aerospace industry to move away from manual monitoring and repair procedures and the ways that firms in the smart structure space are overcoming the strong reluctance of aerospace industry to abandon manual processes for aircraft maintenance. In particular, the report examines how smart technologies can monitor the operation of the aircraft, improve its functioning, reducing its maintenance, and extend its life cycle. Key Topics Covered: Executive Summary Chapter One Introduction Chapter Two: Smart Structures: Technology Evolution and Value Chains Chapter Three: Smart Structures in Aerospace: Drivers and Acceptance Chapter Four: Ten-Year Forecasts for Smart Structures in the Aerospace Industry For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/8v5nqk/smart_structures Media Contact: Research and Markets Laura Wood, Senior Manager [email protected] 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 SOURCE Research and Markets Related Links http://www.researchandmarkets.com LONDON, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Pipeline analysis of spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) market report provides with comprehensive analysis of drugs in clinical trials for treatment for spinal muscular atrophy. The report provides insights to SMA prevalence, and current treatment pattern. The report also identifies key market drivers, restraints and opportunities in the global spinal muscular atrophy therapeutics market. Detailed market attractiveness analysis by geography provides future outlook to the spinal muscular atrophy landscape. Market attractiveness analysis considers various factors such as patient population, drug pricing policies, regulatory restrictions, current competition intensity, and current state of healthcare sector for assessing the potential of each geographical market. In the pipeline analysis of spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) market report, market analysis and forecast has been provided for late stage (phase 3) candidates, while also includes thorough qualitative information for other candidates in early stage (phase 1 and phase 2). ISIS-SMNRx by Isis Pharmaceuticals is presently the only late stage candidate in spinal muscular atrophy pipeline, while three drugs are currently in phase 2 and three others in phase 1. These include Olesoxime (TRO19622), LMI070, RO6885247, CK-2127107, scAAV9.CB.SMN and RG3039. The report also mentions some of the potential preclinical candidates in the spinal muscular atrophy pipeline. The pipeline analysis of spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) market report provides overview of the clinical trials, and its current status for each drug candidate for treatment of spinal muscular atrophy. Details on mergers, acquisitions, licensing agreements, and other collaborative agreements, updated on regulatory policies, and expected study completion are also mentioned in the report. Market estimation and forecast for phase 3 drugs for treatment of spinal muscular atrophy has been provided from the expected year of drug approval, till 2023 (in USD Million) for the United States. Pipeline analysis of late stage (phase 3) drugs for treatment of spinal muscular atrophy adopts patient based approach, in which actual patient population that can be targeted by the new drug is considered to arrive at probable sales of the drug in the launch year. Forecast model considers various macro- as well as micro-economic factors such as drug efficiency, side effects, prevalence and incidence rate, impact of regulatory policies, impact of competitor drugs and generic competition (if applicable) and pipeline status. The report collates information from various government as well as corporate sources such as Europe and the U.S. clinical trial registries, World Health Organization (WHO), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), CureSMA, Families of SMA, PubMed, company press releases, annual reports and investor presentations. The analysis also considers inputs from industry experts and key opinion leaders with expertise in rare disease drug discovery, and marketing and sales experts. Key players with potential candidates in clinical trials for treatment of spinal muscular atrophy have been profiled in the report. These include AveXis, Inc., Cytokinetics, Inc., F. Hoffmann-La Roche Ltd., Novartis AG, and Isis Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Each of the company profile provides details such as company overview, business overview, financial overview, product portfolio, business strategies, and recent developments. Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/3431566/ About Reportbuyer Reportbuyer is a leading industry intelligence solution that provides all market research reports from top publishers http://www.reportbuyer.com For more information: Sarah Smith Research Advisor at Reportbuyer.com Email: [email protected] Tel: +44 208 816 85 48 Website: www.reportbuyer.com SOURCE ReportBuyer Related Links http://www.reportbuyer.com SCOTTSDALE, Ariz., March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Amendola Communications, a nationally recognized, award-winning public relations, content creation and marketing firm specializing in healthcare and health information technology (HIT), is pleased to announce that Sunquest Information Systems has engaged Amendola for public relations and content creation services. "Sunquest needed an agency that understood our market and had the ability to produce quality results," said Connie Tso, vice president of marketing for Sunquest. "Having worked with Amendola in the past, I knew they could meet our needs. After our first month of engagement I'm further impressed by the firm's expanded pool of talent." Tucson-based Sunquest is a developer of software solutions to automate laboratory operations and diagnostic processes across the continuum of care. The company has more than 30 years of experience providing comprehensive solutions that make healthcare smarter and patients safer by bringing highly reliable, timely, and relevant diagnostic information to the point of care. "We are honored to partner with Sunquest at this particularly exciting time in their history," said Jodi Amendola, CEO of Amendola. "After building a solid reputation for delivering quality solutions over the last 30 years, Sunquest is now expanding its traditional focus and introducing several innovative new products that advance interoperability, integration and connectivity within the diagnostic community. We look forward to working with Sunquest as they launch these new solutions over the next several months, introduce their new headquarters and innovation center, and debut new branding that reflects their expanded market focus." Under the terms of their agreement, Amendola Communications will provide Sunquest with broad PR services, including media research and aggressive media relations, and secure top-tier awards and speaking opportunities. The agency will also be responsible for delivering a range of content demonstrating the thought leadership and expertise of Sunquest 's subject matter experts including bylined articles, blog posts, press releases, and other materials. About Sunquest Information Systems Sunquest Information Systems Inc. provides diagnostic and laboratory information systems to more than 1,700 laboratories. For the past 30 years, Sunquest has delivered solutions that optimize financial results, enhance efficiency and improve the quality of patient care. The company's pathology-focused mission, outreach awareness and point of care solutions establish Sunquest as a leader in the healthcare technology industry. Headquartered in Tucson, AZ, Sunquest also has offices in the United Kingdom and India. About Amendola Communications Amendola Communications is an award-winning national public relations, marketing communications, social media and content marketing firm. Named one of the best information technology (IT) PR firms in the nation four times by PRSourceCode, Amendola represents some of the best-known brands and groundbreaking startups in the healthcare and HIT industries. Amendola's seasoned team of PR and marketing pros delivers strategic guidance and effective solutions to help organizations boost their reputation and drive market share. For more information about the PR industry's "A Team," visit www.acmarketingpr.com, and follow Amendola on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. Media Contact: Amendola Communications Michelle Ronan Noteboom 512.426.2870 [email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140404/MM99055LOGO SOURCE Amendola Communications Related Links http://www.acmarketingpr.com WASHINGTON, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Almost one of five Americans over the age of 65 17 percent or nearly seven million seniors have "been taken advantage of financially in terms of an inappropriate investment, unreasonably high fees for financial services, or outright fraud," according to a major new survey conducted by Public Policy Polling (PPP) for the Investor Protection Trust (IPT), a nonprofit organization devoted to investor education and protection. That level is down slightly from the 20 percent of seniors who reported in a 2010 IPT survey that they had been victimized. Available online at http://bit.ly/EIFFEpoll and benchmarked to the earlier poll conducted in 2010, the new IPT survey of 3,672 American adults including 703 adult children with at least one parent aged 65 or older and 2257 adults who are aged 65 or older (up from 590 surveyed in 2010) finds several troubling signs of the extent of elder financial abuse and exploitation in the United States. However, there also are encouraging signs of improvement over the last six years: Efforts to involve doctors in spotting and reporting signs of financial exploitation of the elderly appear to be working. Of those who are in touch with their parent's health care providers, 21 percent of children with elderly parents report "the healthcare providers ever mention[ing] any concerns about your parents handling of money or relayed any concern from your parent about handling money". (This is up sharply from 5 percent in 2010.) However, of that same group, 27 percent report the health care provider has mentioned "concerns about your parents' mental comprehension." (This is up from the 2010 level of 19 percent.) More than three fifths (61 percent) of children are not in touch with their parents' health care providers. Of those who are in touch with their parent's health care providers, 21 percent of children with elderly parents report "the healthcare providers ever mention[ing] any concerns about your parents handling of money or relayed any concern from your parent about handling money". (This is up sharply from 5 percent in 2010.) However, of that same group, 27 percent report the health care provider has mentioned "concerns about your parents' mental comprehension." (This is up from the 2010 level of 19 percent.) More than three fifths (61 percent) of children are not in touch with their parents' health care providers. Concerted efforts to educate elderly investors about investment schemes may be gaining traction. In a major improvement from 2010 where 44 percent of those aged 65 or over got at least two out of four questions wrong about basic investment knowledge, over half (51 percent) got all the answers right and only 14 percent got two or more answers wrong. Why the focus on the role of doctors? The effort led by IPT to involve doctors in spotting and reporting the signs of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) that can result in older Americans being more vulnerable to money swindles started in 2010. The IPT Elder Investment Fraud and Financial Exploitation (EIFFE) Prevention Program was developed by the Huffington Center on Aging at Baylor College of Medicine and the Texas Consortium Geriatric Education Center. Since then, IPT has worked with 30 state securities offices to form a coalition to prevent elder investment fraud/financial exploitation. To date, a total of 90 continuing medical education (CME) events have been held in 30 states and jurisdictions (as well as events at national and regional conferences), providing EIFEE Prevention Program training to 8,600 medical professionals. Don Blandin, president and CEO, Investor Protection Trust, said: "While it is still alarming to see that nearly one out of five older Americans have been victims of financial swindles, it is encouraging that doctors and adult children are more tuned into this problem. Doctors and the nurses who work with seniors are playing an important 'first responder' role in spotting older Americans who have been or are being victimized by investment fraud and other financial exploitation. State securities regulators and others are working with thousands of doctors nationwide to make sure that they learn the symptoms of this problem and what to prescribe in terms of help from the experts who are standing by to provide it." Irving Faught, securities administrator, Oklahoma Securities Commission, said: "State securities agencies see every day the huge toll that financial swindles exact from unwary older investors. That is why the Oklahoma Securities Commission was a lead state in involving doctors in the detection and reporting of financial fraud cases. We have seen this work in our state and think it's an important part of the prescription needed to reduce elder investment fraud and financial exploitation." Robert Roush, EdD, MPH, professor of geriatrics & director, Texas Consortium Geriatrics Education Center, Baylor College of Medicine, Huffington Center on Aging, said: "That financial abuse of older Americans is rampant today is no commentary on seniors and their judgment; it is a simple fact of life that many older adults are highly vulnerable to being financially exploited. And knowing that there are medical conditions that increase the likelihood of success for investment swindles targeting older Americans makes enlisting their health care professionals to help spot their vulnerability to financial abuse the right thing to do. State securities agencies deserve credit for being able to think outside of the box and take an important new tack in reducing the scourge of elder investment scams. Working together, clinicians and investor educators are starting to make a real difference." Other key 2016 survey findings include the following: Nearly half (47 percent) of children of parents 65 or older are "very" or "somewhat" worried that their parents "have already become or will become less able to handle their personal finances over time." (This is up from 40 percent in 2010.) Only 25 percent say they are "not worried at all" about such a development. (This is down from 36 percent in 2010.) (Those over 65 have a somewhat different view: 30 percent are "very" or "somewhat" worried about being less able over time, compared to 36 who expressed such concerns in 2010.) 74 percent of children think that their parent aged 65 or older would tell them "immediately" if they were swindled, compared to 21 percent who think their parents would be ashamed and hide such a fact. However, nearly half (47 percent) of children say it is "not very likely" or "not likely at all" they would be able to figure out that their parent had been swindled if they did not disclose it. (That is up from 35 percent in 2010.) More than two out of five (43 percent compared to 50 percent in 2010) of older Americans exhibit one or more of the warning signs of current financial victimization: People are calling me or mailing me asking for money, lotteries, and other schemes 35 percent. (Interestingly, this is higher than the 29 percent reported by children of parents over age 65.) I don't feel confident making big financial decisions alone 5 percent versus 16 percent in 2010. I don't understand financial decisions that someone else is making for me 1 percent versus 4 percent in 2010. I give loans or gifts more than I can afford 1 percent versus 4 percent in 2010. I am being pressured to give away my money or change my will 2 percent versus 0 percent in 2010. I am having trouble paying bills because the bills are confusing to me 1 percent. Someone is accessing my accounts or money seems to be disappearing 1 percent. With no overall change since 2010, 31 percent of older Americans say they are vulnerable in one or more ways to potential financial victimization: You are financially responsible for an adult child or spouse -- 15 percent. You are isolated most the time from other people -- 7 percent. You are in bereavement 4 percent. You are depressed or have other mental problems -- 2 percent. You are dependent on someone else for your day-to-day care 2 percent. Of those children with at least one parent over the age 65, 80 percent of the parents already are retired. Of those children with at least one parent over 65, 28 percent already are retired themselves and 22 percent are within five years of retirement. 78 percent of those over 65 handle finances themselves, 17 percent rely on relatives for at least some help, and 1 percent rely on non-family members, according to their children. (These figures reflect shifts from 2010 levels of 71 percent, 24 percent, and 3 percent, respectively.) 90 percent of children are "very confident" or "somewhat confident" of their parent's current ability to handle personal finances. Only 9 percent of children are "not very confident" or "not confident at all." This is relatively close to the views of those age 65 or older: 97 percent say they are "very" or "somewhat" confident about their current ability to handle money and just 3 percent who are "not very confident" or "not confident at all" with handling personal finances. METHODOLOGY Public Policy Polling interviewed 3,672 Americans from March 10 March 13, including 2,257 seniors and 703 adults with senior parents. The margin of error for the overall sample is +/- 1.6%, the margin of error for senior sample is +/- 2.1% and the margin of error for the adults with senior parents sample is +/- 3.7%. The survey was conducted through automated telephone interviews with a random sample of American adults. For more information about the 2010 IPT survey, go to www.investorprotection.org/learn/research/?fa=eiffeSurvey on the Web. ABOUT THE INVESTOR PROTECTION TRUST The Investor Protection Trust is a nonprofit organization devoted to investor education. More than half of all Americans are now invested in the securities markets, making investor education and protection vitally important. Since 1993 the Investor Protection Trust has worked with the states and at the national level to provide the independent, objective investor education needed by all Americans to make informed investment decisions. For more information, go to http://www.investorprotection.org. Visit IPT on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/InvestorProtectionTrust and on Twitter at @IPT_Info. EDITOR'S NOTE: A streaming audio replay of this news event will be available online as of 5 p.m. EDT at http://bit.ly/EIFFEpoll. SOURCE Investor Protection Trust Related Links http://www.investorprotection.org John led The Goodman Group, based in Chaska, Minn., since 1976. Originally founded as Sage Company by his father Sidney A. Goodman, The Goodman Group today is a leader in developing and managing senior living communities, residential communities and commercial properties in 10 states. He also was the author of two books: The Road to Self: Reflections from a Soulful CEO , and Moments Matter: Everyday Inspiration from a Soulful CEO . "John's mission was to change how people experience aging and death by resetting the standard of senior care and living," said Craig Edinger, chief operating officer, The Goodman Group. "His philosophy put people at the heart of our company. His ever-advancing insight showed us what's possible in the quality of care for others. He touched us with the depth of his compassion and his relentless drive to always do more in the service of others." Edinger steps into the executive-in-charge role effective immediately. He and The Goodman Group's executive leadership team will work together to carry John's vision forward in all aspects of the company. No changes are anticipated in the company's day-to-day business activities. A formal succession plan will be announced at a later date. John and his team of 4,300 employees celebrated the company's 50th anniversary in 2015. The company was honored with the prestigious 2014 Performance Excellence Advancement Level Award, based on Malcolm Baldrige Criteria. The company in 2015 also was the first long-term care and residential property management company in Minnesota to be named a Yellow Ribbon Company for its support of military service members and their families. Former U.S. Senator Norm Coleman said, "There was a spiritual side of John that came from his heart and soul. He was the most loving human being I have ever met in my life. He brimmed with love. He loved the seniors and children he provided care for, the families, the caregivers, his employees, and was the most incredible friend I could have ever hoped to have. The world will not be the same without him." John's life-long commitment to business leadership, community service and philanthropy was remarkable. He served dozens of organizations in roles ranging from board member to benefactor. He also established several nonprofit organizations, including Intergenerational Living & Health Care, Inc., the Caregivers Support Network and the Johnny B. Good Foundation. National Ethnic Coalition of Organizations Board Chairman and NJK Holding Corporation Chairman and Founder Nasser J. Kazeminy said, "'I've never met a man more caring and more giving than John. He had a heart larger than life and always wanted the best for everyone. John had a golden heart and treated every single person he met, no matter their background, with precisely the same sense of dignity, compassion and concern. It was my privilege to have John as my dearest friend and business partner." Chairman and Founder of Schussler Creative, Inc. Steve Schussler said, "John Goodman's unconditional love for his family, friends, and team was always evident. He touched and enriched the lives of countless others. His larger than life presence and laughter lit up every room." John's obituary is available via the Star Tribune's website. John's headshot and press release available via Dropbox. John's biography available via The Goodman Group's website. John's memorial site available at: www.johnbgoodmanmemorial.com. About The Goodman Group The Goodman Group, a Chaska, Minn.-based international company, is a leader in developing and managing senior living communities, residential communities and commercial properties. The Goodman Group is a privately held company with 50 years of experience, overseeing communities with more than 13,800 residents and 4,300 team members in 10 states and the United Kingdom. Platinum Service is the centerpiece of The Goodman Group's promise to deliver an unparalleled service experience. We specialize in the development of proprietary programs and services to encourage residents' optimal wellbeing. Visit TheGoodmanGroup.com or call 952-361-8000. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160322/346821 Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150901/262891LOGO SOURCE The Goodman Group Related Links http://www.thegoodmangroup.com LONDON, March 21, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Overview: Hardware products in Internet of Things (IoT) typically include middleware such as microcontrollers, microprocessors, embedded systems, sensors, gateway devices and allied materials such as amplifiers, step down converters, batteries, fixtures, etc. OEM Hardware in "embedded things" will play an important role in the emerging IoT ecosystem and will be characterized by real-time computing, low power consumption, low maintenance, and high availability. IoT hardware and CPE manufacturers are one the first beneficiaries of developments in the IoT business. Internet enabled hardware, chips, edge devices and such other hardware used in IoT will constitute 30% market of total revenue generated in the year 2020. The revenue generated in 2015 of $336 billion will reach to $453 billion through 2020 with a CAGR of 6.2%. This research identifies opportunities for embedded hardware in IoT including Other Equipment Manufacturers (OEM) providers. Mind Commerce also evaluates the market opportunities and outlook for OEM channels and quantifies the markets and business for IoT hardware. The report includes detailed forecasts for 2015 to 2020. All purchases of Mind Commerce reports includes time with an expert analyst who will help you link key findings in the report to the business issues you're addressing. This needs to be used within three months of purchasing the report. Target Audience: OEM hardware developers IoT service and app developers Network operators and other CSPs Big Data and data management companies IoT hardware, platform, and infrastructure providers ISV, SI, and VAR channels for software implementation Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/3479177/ About Reportbuyer Reportbuyer is a leading industry intelligence solution that provides all market research reports from top publishers http://www.reportbuyer.com For more information: Sarah Smith Research Advisor at Reportbuyer.com Email: [email protected] Tel: +44 208 816 85 48 Website: www.reportbuyer.com SOURCE ReportBuyer Related Links http://www.reportbuyer.com NEW YORK, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Thomson Reuters (NYSE, TSX: TRI), the world's leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals, announced today that its first-quarter 2016 earnings will be issued via news release on Tuesday, April 26, 2016. James C. Smith, president and chief executive officer, and Stephane Bello, executive vice president and chief financial officer, will host a conference call and simultaneous webcast that morning at 8:30 a.m. EDT. Discussions may include forward-looking information. You can access the webcast by visiting the "Investor Relations" section of the Thomson Reuters website. Registration for the webcast is now open. Additionally, an archive of the webcast will be available following the presentation. Thomson Reuters Thomson Reuters is the world's leading source of news and information for professional markets. Our customers rely on us to deliver the intelligence, technology and expertise they need to find trusted answers. The business has operated in more than 100 countries for more than 100 years. Thomson Reuters shares are listed on the Toronto and New York Stock Exchanges (symbol: TRI). For more information, visit www.thomsonreuters.com. CONTACTS MEDIA INVESTORS Andrew Green Frank J. Golden Director, Corporate Affairs Senior Vice President, Investor Relations +1 646 223 4228 +1 646 223 5288 [email protected] [email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130208/MM57185LOGO SOURCE Thomson Reuters Related Links http://www.thomson.com It is stil unclear if members of the Pakistani Joint Investigation Team will be given access to the Pathankot Airbase. (Photo: PTI) Delhi: The Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Tuesday said that India has received the visa applications of five members of the Pakistani Joint Investigation Team (JIT) that is probing the Pathankot terror attack. The Pakistani JIT is expected to arrive in India on March 27 to carry forward its probe into the January 2016 attack on Air force base in Punjab. MEA Spokesperson Vikas Swarup said the modalities of the visit of the JIT will now be finalised as Pakistan has given the names of the delegation to Indian High Commission in Islamabad. "We have today received visa applications of five members of Pakistan's joint investigation team. The modalities of the visit will be discussed now as we have the composition of the team," he told reporters. Read: Pathankot attack: Ahead of Pak SIT's visit, NIA releases photos of terrorists Last week, Union Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju said that India would allow Pakistan's probe team to visit wherever necessary in connection with the investigation, when asked if they would be given access to the strategic airbase. "We have taken an in-principle decision to facilitate the visit of a Pakistani team to India for furtherance of our case," he had told reporters. However, Home Minister Rajnath Singh has said that the government was yet to take a final call on the matter and that a final decision would be taken only after the team arrived in the country. The National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Monday released the photographs of four terrorists killed during the counter offensive, which began on January 2 and lasted more than 80 hours. The NIA has sought information regarding the four terrorists. (Photo: Twitter) The NIA's handout featured the bodies of the four slain terrorists with description of their height. The anti-terror probe agency had said one of the terrorists did not have a toe in both the feet. The picture has been circulated and public asked to share information about them. The agency has already approached the Interpol for issuance of Black Notice for the four. The international notice is issued for identification of unidentified bodies found in a country. CHANGZHOU, China, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Trina Solar Limited (NYSE: TSL) ("Trina Solar" or the "Company"), a global leader in photovoltaic ("PV") modules, solutions, and services, today announced that the Company's 40MW of solar PV modules has been operational in the largest solar project in the Philippines (the "Project"), which has started to generate clean and safe solar electricity. The Project was developed by Helios Solar Energy Corporation, a joint venture between local solar project developer Gregorio Araneta Inc ("GAI") and Equis Pte Ltd. ("Equis"), Asia's largest independent renewable energy developer and investor. With renowned Bouygues Construction ("Bouygues") providing the engineering, procurement and construction management (EPC) services, the 132.5MW solar Project was built on a 170-hectare land area in Cadiz City of the Negros Occidental province. Cadiz City is located near the equator and the Project is situated approximately three kilometers from the coastline, where strong winds are common, high humidity and salty air prevail. The environmental conditions call for superior performance solar modules resistant to potential induced degradation (PID), salt spray corrosion and wind pressure, and Trina Solar's solar products are well equipped to meet the requirements. "We are proud to have worked with GAI, Equis and Bouygues on this landmark project and look forward to future collaborations," said Helena Li, Assistant Vice President, Regional Head of APEC & Middle East Region at Trina Solar. "This partnership is largely a result of our long-running commitment to emerging markets. The Philippine solar industry has tremendous room for development, and the region's supportive policies towards renewable energy make it an attractive market for us. Looking ahead, we will continue to further expand our market share in the Philippines and other emerging markets in the region." About Equis Pte Ltd. Founded and headquartered in Singapore, Equis is Asia's largest independent renewable energy developer and investor. Equis is also Asia's largest independent energy and infrastructure fund manager. With more than US$2.7 billion of funds under management, Equis and its invested platforms employ over 500 professionals across thirteen (13) Asian offices in Manila, Aomori, Bangalore, Bangkok, Beijing, Brisbane, Hong Kong, Jakarta, Kasama, New Delhi, Singapore, Taipei and Tokyo. About Bouygues Construction As a global player in construction and services, Bouygues Construction, through its subsidiary Bouygues Energies & Services, designs, builds and operates buildings and structures which improve the quality of people's living and working environment: public and private buildings, transport infrastructures and energy and communications networks. Bouygues Construction has been a major actor in the solar EPC league since 2013 and has established its own proven track record in the solar industry by providing engineering, procurement, construction (EPC) and operation & maintenance services for renowned developers worldwide. About Trina Solar Limited Trina Solar Limited (NYSE:TSL) is a global leader in photovoltaic modules, solutions and services. Founded in 1997 as a PV system integrator, Trina Solar today drives smart energy together with installers, distributors, utilities and developers worldwide. The company's industry-leading position is based on innovation excellence, superior product quality, vertically integrated capabilities and environmental stewardship. For more information, please visit www.trinasolar.com. Safe Harbor Statement This announcement contains forward-looking statements within the meaning of the safe harbor provisions of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. All statements other than statements of historical fact in this announcement are forward-looking statements, including but not limited to, the Company's ability to raise additional capital to finance its activities; the effectiveness, profitability and marketability of its products; the future trading of the securities of the Company; the Company's ability to operate as a public company; the period of time for which the Company's current liquidity will enable the Company to fund its operations; general economic and business conditions; demand in various markets for solar products; the volatility of the Company's operating results and financial condition; the Company's ability to attract or retain qualified senior management personnel and research and development staff; and other risks detailed in the Company's filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. These forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks and uncertainties and are based on current expectations, assumptions, estimates and projections about the Company and the industry in which the Company operates. The Company undertakes no obligation to update forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent occurring events or circumstances, or changes in its expectations, except as may be required by law. Although the Company believes that the expectations expressed in these forward looking statements are reasonable, it cannot assure you that such expectations will turn out to be correct, and the Company cautions investors that actual results may differ materially from the anticipated results. Trina Solar Limited ChristensenIR Teresa Tan, CFO (Changzhou) Linda Bergkamp Email: [email protected] Phone: +1 480 614 3014 (US) Email: [email protected] Yvonne Young Investor Relations Director Email: [email protected] SOURCE Trina Solar Limited Related Links http://www.trinasolar.com LONDON, March 21, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- US demand to reach $2.9 billion in 2019 Demand for wine packaging in the US is projected to reach $2.9 billion in 2019. Growth will benefit from continued favorable gains in domestic wine consumption and production and increases in disposable personal income. In the US, wine is becoming more prevalent as an accompaniment to meals at home rather than a beverage consumed at restaurants or special events. Opportunities for related packaging will benefit from the importance of packaging both as a marketing tool and for its ability to enhance the perception of wine quality. Dominant glass bottles to lose market share Glass bottles are by far the leading wine container type but glass will continue to lose market share to a growing array of alternative package formats. In addition to bag-in-box packaging, other containers that have established a presence include plastic bottles, plastic cups and goblets, aseptic cartons, pouches, and cans. These alternatives are growing in popularity due to performance features, product differentiation capability, and appeal to younger consumers, who are less attached to wine traditions than are older consumers. Bag-in-box packaging will register solid increases due to expanded 1.5- and 3-liter premium offerings. The recent adoption of bag-in-box by premium wine brands, particularly in 3-liter sizes, is helping to mitigate the stigma of "boxed wine" as inferior in quality to bottled wine. Bagin-box wines offer a variety of benefits for consumers, including lower cost per unit of volume, extended freshness, and easier dispensing and storage. An additional advantage of bag-in-box containers is their large surface area, which offers significantly more space for colorful graphics and text than do bottle labels. Cork demand will be sustained by the entrenched position of glass bottles in the wine industry, as well as their appeal to traditionalists and wine connoisseurs. Moreover, there is a general expectation of cork with premium wines as a symbol of prestige. Cork demand will also benefit from the stronger cultural preference for corks in the US than in many other countries, though growing competition from alternative packaging formats that do not utilize corks will limit advances. Technical corks, such as micro-agglomerated and twin disk types, account for the majority of cork demand and will record more rapid gains than full natural corks. Technical corks are priced competitively with synthetic corks, offer many of the advantages of natural cork, and have been instrumental in helping cork to recapture some of the share lost to synthetic corks during the past decade. Newer container sizes to grow most rapidly Wine containers are experiencing rapidly increasing diversity in terms of package formats and sizes. The fastest growth for containers will be outside the dominant 750 ml size, including both smaller- and larger-sized offerings. Single-serving wine packaging will post robust advances, fueled by their advantage of enabling wine to be taken to or sold in places that typically prohibit glass containers. Moreover, single-serving containers enable wine to be more competitive with beer in venues such as stadiums, theaters, concert halls, and theme parks. Single-serving containers for wine include plastic bottles, aseptic cartons, cans, and cups and goblets, with cups and goblets forecast to post the fastest gains, albeit from a small base. Study coverage This upcoming Freedonia industry study, Wine Packaging, is priced at $5300. It presents historical demand data (2004, 2009 and 2014) plus forecasts (2019 and 2024) by container, closure, accessory and bulk packaging. The study also considers market environment factors, details the industry structure, evaluates company market share and profiles 36 US industry competitors. Download the full report: https://www.reportbuyer.com/product/3237764/ About Reportbuyer Reportbuyer is a leading industry intelligence solution that provides all market research reports from top publishers http://www.reportbuyer.com For more information: Sarah Smith Research Advisor at Reportbuyer.com Email: [email protected] Tel: +44 208 816 85 48 Website: www.reportbuyer.com SOURCE ReportBuyer Related Links http://www.reportbuyer.com VENTURA, Calif., March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Students and graduates of Ventura County Community College District (VCCCD) collegesMoorpark College, Oxnard College, and Ventura Collegehave an unique pathway to law school thanks to a partnership announced by Dr. Bernard Luskin, Chancellor for VCCCD, and Dr. Matthew Nehmer, Executive Director of The Santa Barbara & Ventura Colleges of Law (COL). Through the articulation agreement, COL welcomes any student with an Associate of Arts (A.A.) or Associate of Science (A.S.) degree from a VCCCD college to apply for admission to its Juris Doctor (J.D.) program. Accepted students may begin law school after completing a minimum of 60 post-secondary academic units with an incoming G.P.A. of 3.0 or higher and with earning an Associate's degree. "Our collaboration with VCCCD is a win-win all around," said Dr. Nehmer. "We advance their mission by providing yet another pathway to student success, and the District advances ours by offering opportunity for an excellent legal education that is community focused, leadership oriented, and above all affordable." "The VCCCD has developed pathways with a number of law schools, and this one is unique to Ventura County," said VCCCD Trustee Steve Blum, Esq., Ventura Colleges of Law alumni, J.D. '06. "This local law school offers another special opportunity for access for our graduates." Colleges of Law is accepting applications now for the fall 2016 term. For more information on the partnership between the Ventura County Community College District and The Santa Barbara & Ventura Colleges of Law, including requirements for law school admission, please contact [email protected] or call 805-765-9719. About the Ventura County Community College District The Ventura County Community College District is a member of the 113-campus California Community College system, and serves more than 50,000 students annually. The District's three collegesMoorpark, Oxnard, and Venturaoffer programs in general education for degrees and certificates, transfer to four-year colleges and universities, career technical education, and provide opportunities to engage in co-curricular campus activities. For more information, please visit www.vcccd.edu. About The Santa Barbara & Ventura Colleges of Law Established in 1969, The Santa Barbara & Ventura Colleges of Law (COL) was founded to expand opportunities and broaden access to legal education. COL is dedicated to a student-centered approach that affords students of diverse backgrounds the opportunity to pursue careers in law or legal-related fields. The College's faculty advances a real-world perspective and practicality on the application of law and includes practicing attorneys, judges, public servants, and leaders in business and non-profit organizations. An accredited nonprofit institution, COL offers a Juris Doctor (J.D.) and a Master of Legal Studies (M.L.S.) program. COL is regionally accredited by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges Senior College and University Commission (WSCUC) and the Juris Doctor program is accredited by the Committee of Bar Examiners (CBE) of the State Bar of California. For more information, visit www.collegesoflaw.edu. The Santa Barbara & Ventura Colleges of Law is an affiliate of TCS Education System, a nonprofit service organization that supports institutions backed by a model of education that prepares socially responsible professionals in applied fields such as law, education, healthcare, and psychology. SOURCE The Santa Barbara & Ventura Colleges of Law Founded by Hewlett Packard, Code Wars draws high-school students to compete in a coding and problem-solving competition. Over 1200 students, teachers and executives and staff from Hewlett Packard and Hewlett Packard were in attendance. Simultaneous Code Wars events were held on Hewlett Packard Enterprise campuses in Palo Alto, Taiwan, Austin, Barcelona, Bangalore, Arkansas and in Newcastle, United Kingdom. O'Brien delivered four speeches, including the keynote address to a packed, three-story auditorium on Hewlett Packard's campus. Scott Harsany, Director of R&D at Hewlett-Packard Enterprise said of O'Brien's speeches: "Walter had everyone on the edge of their seats. He is an inspiration for the younger generations and has shown the generosity to share and give back to Houston." In the early 1990s, O'Brien led the Irish team in the Information Olympics and led in the Wisconsin International Problem Solving competition. Said Walter O'Brien of the event: "It's an honor for me to contribute to Houston's younger generations and show them that 'smart is cool.'" In December 2015, O'Brien was unanimously voted in as a board member of non-profit Houston Technology Center, named by Forbes as one of "Ten Technology Incubators Changing the World." After the Code Wars event, O'Brien was spotted at the Houston Livestock Show and Rodeo. ABOUT WALTER O'BRIEN Walter O'Brien is the CEO of Scorpion Computer Services, Inc., and CEO of Scorpion Studios. O'Brien regularly donates his time to helping charities and the community in general to encourage new generations to celebrate intelligence. He is a frequent media commentator, public speaker and radio show guest. O'Brien provided the seed funding for TaxiWatch Kilkenny, a suicide prevention program that has saved 75 lives since its inception in 2015. Also in 2015 O'Brien contributed to the next XPRIZE selection as part of XPRIZE Visioneering. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160321/346461 SOURCE Scorpion Computer Services Related Links http://www.scorpioncomputerservices.com Major General (Ret.) Tim Lowenberg will recognize both current and former military men and women who are receiving their degrees from WGU Washington. Lowenberg served as Adjutant General of the State of Washington from Sept. 1999 to Aug. 2012, during which time he commanded all Washington Army and Air National Guard forces. Additionally, Lowenberg has served as Homeland Security Advisor to the Governor of Washington and led creation of the Washington State Committee on Homeland Security in January 2000. He currently serves as Vice President of Gordon Thomas Honeywell Law, LLP, where he represents public and private sector clients in offices in Tacoma, Seattle and Washington D.C. "WGU Washington is an excellent option for current and former service members and their families," said Lowenberg. "The university offers students access to higher education wherever they are, whenever they need it, at a price they can afford." WGU Washington is the state-based affiliate of Western Governors University (WGU). WGU has been named to Military Advanced Education's Guide to Top Military-Friendly Colleges and Universities nine years in a row. The online university was also honored by the United States Distance Learning Association with two awards for excellence, including WGU's sixth 21st Century Award for Best Practices in Distance Learning, WGU Washington's fifth commencement ceremony will take place April 16 at Seattle's KeyArena. The state-endorsed, online university is awarding a record number of degrees more than 1,900. Since 2011, the university's enrollment has grown by nearly 1,000 percent a testament to the demand for WGU Washington's unique, competency-based model that provides Washingtonians access to flexible, affordable higher education. Graduates receiving a challenge coin this year: Amanda Howe - Bellingham - John Pass - Bellevue - Jason Clark - Blaine - Blaine Shawn Mendes - Bremerton - Jacob Zappey - Bremerton Derk Benisch - Duvall - Andrew McCool - Edmonds - Manuel Coronado - Federal Way - Robert Moorhead - Federal Way - Katie Zirkle - Houston - Paul Weidert - Kennewick - Angela Icenhower - Lacey - Lacey James Jackson - Marysville - Leroy Bryan - Oak Harbor - Casey Taylor - Port Orchard - Dawn Dugger - Renton - Teresa Nosack - Ridgefield - Stephen Gunter - Seattle - Crystal Battle - Snoqualmie - Jeremy Sims - Spanaway - Michael Brown - Spokane - Susan Conrad - Spokane Valley - Spokane Valley William Floyd - Tacoma - Mark Gorham - West Richland - Alicia Brown - Vancouver - Virginia Wilson - Yakima - Vicky Ashlock - Yakima About WGU Washington WGU Washington was established by the State Legislature in 2011 in partnership with nationally recognized and accredited Western Governors University to expand access to higher education for Washington residents. The state-endorsed, online university offers more than 50 bachelor's and master's degree programs in Business, Information Technology, Teacher Education and Health Professions, including Nursing. WGU Washington's competency-based learning model is designed to meet the needs of working adults by providing an affordable, flexible option for earning an accredited, respected college degree. It's non-profit and receives no money from the state. Degrees are granted under the accreditation of Western Governors University, which is regionally accredited through the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities (NWCCU). Teachers College programs are accredited by the National Council for Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) and Nursing programs are accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education (CCNE*). The university has earned the support of more than 20 leading corporations and foundations. They include institutions such as AT&T, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Lilly Endowment, HCA, Hewlett-Packard, Lumina Foundation, Microsoft, Oracle, SunGard Higher Education and Zions Bank. * One Dupont Circle, NW, Suite 5380, Washington DC 20036, 202-877-6791 Follow WGU Washington: https://www.facebook.com/WGUWashington http://www.linkedin.com/companies/western-governors-university http://twitter.com/wguwashington http://www.youtube.com/wguwashington Contact for media inquiries: Jake Riddell Public Relations Manager (206) 512-0025 [email protected] Contact for enrollment information: 877.214.7004 washington.wgu.edu Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160322/346897 SOURCE WGU Washington "The company has strong technical capabilities and a successful track record in multiple sensor applications that include radar, light detection and ranging (LIDAR), and camera systems, all of which give it an edge over competing system on chip (SoC) suppliers," said Frost & Sullivan Industry Analyst, Arunprasad Nandakumar. "Xilinx's Zynq UltraSCALE + multiprocessor SoC (MPSoC), scores high on scalability, modularity, reliability, and quality." Through its integrated hardened ARM processor cores, flexible high bandwidth field-programmable gate array (FPGA) fabric, improved power management system, and processing performance, the Zynq UltraSCALE+ MPSoC provides industry-leading price/watt and price/performance ratings. Xilinx adheres to self-defined standards that exceed industry requirements. Its FPGAs and PLDs are far ahead of the baseline defined by AEC-Q100, which is the standard stress test qualification requirement for electronic components used in automotive applications. In fact, Xilinx has introduced its own Beyond AEC-Q100 testing that characterizes its robust XA family of products. The company's unique functional safety architecture is also a key factor that makes Xilinx devices preferred for ADAS modules among global automotive original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). The Zynq UltraSCALE+ MPSoC has lock-step cores on the processor side, platform management unit (PMU), and a configuration security management unit (CSU). The PMU and CSU each have separate triple redundant processor cores and voter logic designed to ensure a functionally safe and secure silicon system. "With more than a 60% global market share in automotive PLD applications, Xilinx is currently ahead of its competitors," noted Nandakumar. "While its success is mainly backed by unit shipments to North American clients, and European and Japanese Tier I and OEM customers shipping into the North American market, the diverse product portfolio and superior functional safety offerings from Xilinx position it best to further improve market share in North America. Xilinx is also aggressively catering to widespread market requirements through its scalable, modular products that truly meet the requirements of premium and volume manufacturing clients." In recognition of its strong product portfolio, which is aligned perfectly with the vision of automated driving, Xilinx receives the 2016 North American Frost & Sullivan Product Leadership Award. Each year, this award is presented to the company that has developed a product with innovative features and functionality, gaining rapid acceptance in the market. The award recognizes the quality of the solution and the customer value enhancements it enables. Frost & Sullivan's Best Practices Awards recognize companies in a variety of regional and global markets for outstanding achievement in areas such as leadership, technological innovation, customer service, and product development. Industry analysts compare market participants and measure performance through in-depth interviews, analysis, and extensive secondary research. About Xilinx Xilinx is the leading provider of All Programmable FPGAs, SoCs, MPSoCs, and 3D ICs. Xilinx uniquely enables applications that are both software defined and hardware optimized powering industry advancements in Cloud Computing, SDN/NFV, Video/Vision, Industrial IoT, and 5G Wireless. For more information, visit www.xilinx.com. About Frost & Sullivan Frost & Sullivan, the Growth Partnership Company, works in collaboration with clients to leverage visionary innovation that addresses the global challenges and related growth opportunities that will make or break today's market participants. Our "Growth Partnership" supports clients by addressing these opportunities and incorporating two key elements driving visionary innovation: The Integrated Value Proposition and The Partnership Infrastructure. The Integrated Value Proposition provides support to our clients throughout all phases of their journey to visionary innovation including: research, analysis, strategy, vision, innovation and implementation. provides support to our clients throughout all phases of their journey to visionary innovation including: research, analysis, strategy, vision, innovation and implementation. The Partnership Infrastructure is entirely unique as it constructs the foundation upon which visionary innovation becomes possible. This includes our 360 degree research, comprehensive industry coverage, career best practices as well as our global footprint of more than 40 offices. For more than 50 years, we have been developing growth strategies for the global 1000, emerging businesses, the public sector and the investment community. Is your organization prepared for the next profound wave of industry convergence, disruptive technologies, increasing competitive intensity, Mega Trends, breakthrough best practices, changing customer dynamics and emerging economies? Contact Us: Start the discussion Join Us: Join our community Subscribe: Newsletter on "the next big thing" Register: Gain access to visionary innovation Contact: Mireya Espinoza P: 210. 247.3870 F: 210.348.1003 E: [email protected] Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160321/346224 SOURCE Frost & Sullivan Related Links http://www.frost.com Hyderabad: University of Hyderabad vice-chancellor Professor Appa Rao Podile, who is embroiled in a controversy over the suicide of research scholar Rohith Vemula, resumed office on Tuesday morning. According to University of Hyderabad registrar's office, Appa Rao, who went on indefinite leave in the last week of January, will address a press conference this afternoon. Furious students staged a protest against Appa Rao and vandalised his office. Students broke into Rao's office, vandalised and ransacked the area while maintaining their demand of his resignation. "He is the main culprit in Rohith's death and everyone knows that. The case is still pending in court. Without informing anyone, he joined back and called an executive council meeting. Only deans and nominated people should be attending the meetings but some students are also present inside," a student said. Read: Full text of the suicide letter penned by Hyderabad scholar Appa Rao went on leave on January 24 following protests over suicide of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula on the campus. 26-year-old Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula who hanged himself in Hyderabad Central University campus in January, was suspended from his hostel by the HCU administration in August last year for allegedly attacking an ABVP leader. Read: HCU suicide: Prof had asked Rohith Vemula if Dalit got him grant In August 2015, Bandaru Dattatreya had written to Smriti Irani alleging that Hyderabad University had become a den of casteist, extremist and anti-national politics. He cited the attack on ABVP leader and stated that the university administration had turned into a mute spectator to such events. Students of the university alleged that Dattatreya's letter sought action against research scholars including Vemula. Read: HCU suicide: Mystery over scratched paragraph in Rohiths last letter Earlier, Prof. Appa Rao had said that he is going on leave to facilitate talks with the protesting students. I cannot say at this moment how many days I will be on leave. I have decided to be on leave till normalcy is restored. I have been in touch with the faculty and likeminded organisations to enable talks, Prof. Appa Rao had said. Read: HCU VC seeks quashing of abetment of Rohith Vemulas suicide Dattatreya, Appa Rao and two others were booked for abetting the suicide of Dalit research scholar who was banned from the universitys hostel. Read: HCU suicide: Union Minister Bandaru Dattatreya, V-C booked for abetment Chandigarh: Even as Uttarakhand Police horse 'Shaktimaan' recuperates from a fractured leg, a batch of his 20 colleagues are undergoing a gruelling three-month training at the ITBP academy near here to learn special skills of keeping protesters at bay during law and order duties. A contingent of 20 horses and 30 handlers from Uttarakhand Police came from Dehradun in January this year to the National Equine Training School (NETS) at the forces' Bhanu camp for learning special skills and techniques of crowd control, mob dispersal and patrolling in mountainous terrain. The trainers of the border guarding force--Indo-Tibetan Border Police-- will be training the animals. Officials said police horses like Shaktimaan were sent to the academy here on a request by Uttarakhand government to Union Home Ministry last year. He said the horses--Akbar, Sultan, Altamas, Naaz, Nawab, Neelam, Angoori, Raka, Mandakini, Diana and Julie among others are around the same age group as 13-year-old 'Shaktiman' and are being given special training to render duties in the hill state for effective upkeep of law and order duties as part of the mounted police unit of the state. 'Shaktiman' was recently operated upon, after he broke his leg in an attack by a BJP MLA during a protest march in Dehradun on March 14. The horses, unlike 'Shaktimaan' who was without any body armour, are being trained by providing them partial body cover which is required to keep them safe while rendering duties during protests and other similar policing duties when mounted police is called in to deal with protests. "The recent incident involving Shaktiman is still at the back of the minds of the trainers but every time they train a police horse, the aim is to make him stronger and sturdier than what they are," the officials said. Film actor-turned-politician Khushboo has hit out at the Bharatiya Janata Party saying that no patriot could staunchly stand by the BJP, which believed that the country should be painted saffron. Khushboo made the remarks in an interview to Malayala Manorama newspaper. The remarks came in response to a question as to why she joined the Congress and not the BJP after quitting Karunanidhi-led Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK). If I had joined the BJP, I would have quit the very next day. One should show the spine to talk about the country outside the confines of caste and religion, she continued. On why she joined the Congress despite the infighting in the party having pushed it to the verge of extinction in Tamil Nadu, she said that she had grown up hearing about the Congress and that posters of Rajiv Gandhi adorned her room while she was still in school. I should have joined the Congress earlier but having lived in Tamil Nadu for 30 years I naturally chose a Dravidian party like DMK when I entered politics, she added. To why she was yet to reveal the reason behind her quitting the DMK, she said that she left the party in a dignified manner, adding that it was beneath her dignity to wash dirty linen in public after quitting. Saying that some things are best left unsaid, she asked rhetorically how she could denounce a patriot like the DMK patriarch M Karunanidhi. Khushboo waxed lyrical about Sonia Gandhi even as she replied in the negative to a question whether she joined the Congress out of respect for Sonia Gandhi. Sonia Gandhi was a woman who turned down the chance to become prime minister - even though it had been served on platter to her in favour of working for the party, Khushboo pointed out, asking how many people were immune to greed for power. You can disagree with her (Ms. Gandhis) politics but not many have shown courage as she has, she said. On the Congress partys chances of returning to power in Tamil Nadu anytime soon, she said that only those who joined the party out of greed for power need worry about it. On whether a time would come when homemakers and stay-at-home mothers would shine in politics as she was doing, she painted a rather bleak picture of their prospects, asking how a woman could join politics when she was expected to do household chores that the society considered to be her responsibility. Even if a woman entered politics, social media would engage in smear campaigns against her. They would cast doubts over how she achieved positions. If she suffers a slip of the tongue, they would pounce on it. They would allege that her marriage is on the rocks, she lamented. However, even as she said that women entering politics had these hurdles to overcome, she expressed the hope that a change would happen. Pouring effusive praise on Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, Khushboo expressed willingness to campaign for him in Kerala for the ensuing assembly polls in the State. It is a pleasure to speak for a Chief Minister who indefatigably stands by the people. When I was in Kerala for a Youth Congress function, he walked into a meeting asking for me. At a time when political leaders are increasingly growing distant from the masses, someone like Oommen Chandy, who maintains proximity to them, is my pride too, she said. Hyderabad, March 19 : Andhra Pradesh assembly was adjourned twice on Saturday as opposition YSR Congress Party stalled the proceedings, demanding that its legislator R.K. Roja be allowed to attend the session. The members of the lone opposition party, who were clad in black dresses as a mark of protest, wanted Speaker K. Sivaprasad Rao to respect the court order, which stayed Roja's suspension from the house for one year. Raising slogans against the TDP government, YSRCP members did not allow the speaker to conduct the business. Amid pandemonium, the speaker adjourned the house for 10 minutes. When the house re-assembled, YSRCP continued its protest, forcing the speaker to adjourn the house again. Roja sat on a silent protest since morning at the statue of Mahatma Gandhi in the assembly premises. Some other members of YSRCP were also seated with her to show solidarity. The High Court of Judicature at Hyderabad for the states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, had on Thursday stayed the operation of the speaker's order for Roja's suspension. The actress-turned-politician, however, was stopped from entering the assembly on Friday. The state government filed a petition in the High Court, challenging the single judge's interim order. A division bench will hear the appeal on Monday. The government's action in not allowing Roja to attend the current budget session triggered strong protest from the opposition party, which lodged a complaint with Governor E.S.L. Narasimhan. The actress-turned-politician, who represents Nagari constituency in Chittoor district, was suspended from the assembly during the winter session for one year for allegedly using "abusive" language against members of ruling Telugu Desam Party (TDP) including Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu. On a petition by Roja, challenging her suspension, Justice Ramalingeswara Rao passed interim orders on Thursday. However, the TDP government decided not to implement the order and challenge it before the division bench. The speaker on Friday announced that the house will debate the court order in Roja's case. He said the copies of the court order will be circulated to all members and suggested that they go through it. He said the discussion on the issue will be taken up on Monday. Mumbai, March 21 : The Maharashtra assembly was thrown into turmoil on Monday over state Advocate General Shrihari Aney's demand for a separate state of Marathwada, with the ruling BJP's ally Shiv Sena as well as the opposition seeking action against him. Amid the ruckus, slogan-shouting and noisy scenes created by legislators of all parties, the house was adjourned thrice on Monday afternoon. Many legislators demanded to know if the government would consider a 'sedition' charge against Aney. The issue was raised at the start of the day's proceedings by the members of the Shiv Sena, opposition Congress and Nationalist Congress Party who raised slogans and demanded Aney's removal from the post. While Sena legislator Pratap Sarnaik called Aney the 'Owaisi of Maharashtra', NCP's Dilip Walse-Patil demanded his sacking failing which, he added, it would be construed that the BJP-Sena government was supporting him. Sena leader and Environment Minister Ramdas Kadam later announced that his party legislators will neither participate in the assembly proceedings nor attend cabinet meetings until Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis took action against the state's top law official. Later, Revenue Minister Eknath Khadse assured of "time-bound action" in the legislative council. At a function in Jalna on Sunday, Aney allegedly said that Marathwada had borne more injustice than the Vidarbha region and should therefore be made an independent state. He urged the people of Marathwada to launch a movement for a separate state. State Congress spokesperson Sachin Sawant demanded to know whether "Aney was functioning as an agent for dividing the state", while legislator Nitesh Rane condemned the advocate general and legislator Sanjay Dutt demanded Aney's sacking. Dhananjay Munde, NCP's leader of the opposition in the legislative council who initially moved an adjournment motion, sought a clarification from Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Aney's removal. "First, he spoke of a separate state of Vidarbha; now he wants a separate Marathwada; tomorrow, he will demand Khandesh and then want Mumbai to be separated from the state," Munde remarked. When the opposition demanded Aney's resignation earlier, Fadnavis supported him and he got the courage to go a step further, Munde added. He demanded his removal and a clarification from the chief minister. Lok Bharati's Kapil Patil said Aney's statement was tantamount to treason and wanted to know if the government would invoke legal provisions against him. Last year, after Aney sought a referendum on Vidarbha, Fadnavis said there was no need for the AG's resignation as he had spoken at a private function. Moreover, the chief minister said, the creation of a separate state fell in the domain of the Centre and parliament. At that time, Fadnavis mollified the Shiv Sena by saying that Aney's statement did not amount to insulting the 105 martyrs of the Samyukta Maharashtra movement. Rome, March 22 : Italian police seized assets with estimated worth of 500 million euros ($563 million) from a leading clan of "the Ndrangheta mob in the southern Calabria region" on Monday, local media reported. The operation was ordered by prosecutors of the local Anti-Mafia District Directorate (DDA), and targeted at the Iannazzo crime family which is considered a powerful clan based in the region's third largest city of Lamezia Terme, Xinhua quoted Ansa news agency as saying. The seized assets included 53 plots of real estate and farmland, 24 commercial buildings, 27 vehicles and shares of at least 21 companies, the organised crime investigation group of Italy's finance police said in a statement. Many of the assets were directly linked to local businessman Franco Perri who is allegedly a close associate of the Iannazzo clan. The entrepreneur was thought to have developed "a solid and lucrative relationship with the Iannazzo family's current boss, up to the point of being considered as acting in collusion with the clan," the anti-mafia prosecutors told a press conference on Monday. Overall some 65 people and 44 companies were involved in the investigation that resulted in the raids, local media reported. Magistrates ordered no arrests, but decided to make a broad "preventive" seizure of the suspects' assets, which is a special procedure allowed by Italian anti-mafia legislation to target at the economic power of organised crime syndicates. Cape Town, March 22 : South Africans on Monday marked the International Human Rights Day, with President Jacob Zuma calling for the fight against rising racism, which has led to tension in the country. "There is still a long way to go before we can say we have successfully reversed the impact of institutionalised racism in our country or to remove prejudice amongst those who subscribe to the notion of white supremacy," Xinhua quoted Zuma as saying. He urged all South Africans, black and white, to "become part of this journey to a new society". "Earlier this year, our country experienced explosions of anger due to racist utterances and writings which reminded South Africans that the vestiges of white supremacy and racism still exist in some sections of society," Zuma said. He was referring to anti-black remarks that emerged on social networks with Penny Sparrow, an estate agent, labelling blacks as "monkeys". "It became clear that there are people who still yearn for the past, where black people were treated like second class citizens because of their skin colour," said Zuma. South Africans marked this year's Human Rights Day with the theme of "South Africans United Against Racism". "We know that the majority of South Africans abhor racism and racial discrimination. That is why our theme correctly says that we are united against racism," Zuma said. He reiterated the government's determination to end racial discrimination in all its forms and wherever it occurs. Washington, March 22 : Amid party establishment's 'Dump Trump' campaign, the billionaire continues to be the top choice of Republican voters for their party's nomination, while Hillary Clinton beats rival Bernie Sanders in the Democratic contest, according to new polls. A new CNN/ORC poll finds little appetite among Republicans for replacing the front-runner with another candidate at the party convention or through a third-party run, but most of those opposed to Trump's candidacy continue to pine for another option. With the field whittled to just three candidates, 47 percent of Republicans say they'd most like to see Trump win their party's nomination, about the same as the 49 percent who said they would be most likely to support him in February. Texas Senator Ted Cruz follows at 31 percent, with Ohio Governor John Kasich the preferred choice of 17 percent of Republican voters. Trump tops the enthusiasm race as well, with 40 percent saying they would be enthusiastic about a Trump candidacy compared with 28 percent who would be that excited about Cruz and 19 percent about Kasich. Democrats are more apt to see their own party as united, 38 percent say so, while 44 percent say it's divided now but will unite by November and just 15 percent feel the party won't be united come November, according to the poll. Clinton continues to top Sanders in the race for the Democratic nomination, with 51 percent saying they'd most like to see the former secretary of state atop the party's ticket in November compared with 44 percent who want to see Sanders lead the Democrats into November. That's narrower than the 55 percent Clinton to 38 percent Sanders margin in late-February, when voters were asked who they would be most likely to support. Both of the remaining Democratic nominees top Trump by a wide margin in hypothetical general election matchups, Sanders over Trump by 20 points and Clinton over Trump by 12 points. Sanders fares better than Clinton against each of the three remaining Republicans, topping Cruz by 13 points and Kasich by 6. Clinton runs even with Cruz and trails Kasich by 6 points. Meanwhile, a new New York Times/CBS News poll found that 60 percent of Republicans are embarrassed by their party's primary campaign, compared with just 13 percent of Democrats. Republicans were also much more likely to say they felt their party was divided, with 88 percent saying yes compared with 33 percent of Democrats. Members of the Republican Party were also less likely to say they had a favourable opinion of their party or its frontrunner candidate, and more likely to say the tone of their party's campaign has been more negative than in past years. Half of Democrats said they expected Hillary Clinton to be their nominee, and 46 percent of Republicans said the same of Donald Trump. Among all registered voters, asked how they would feel about each candidate if he or she became president, people were most likely to respond "excited" about Bernie Sanders and most likely to respond "scared" about Donald Trump. John Kasich received the highest percentage responses in both of the two middle categories of "optimistic" and "concerned." (Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in) New Delhi : The 85th death anniversary of Shaheed Bhagat Singh, the revolutionary icon of the freedom struggle, who attained martyrdom at the young age of 23, falls on March 23, 2016. Alongwith Sukhdev and Rajguru, Bhagat Singh was hanged to death less than a week before the commencement of the Karachi session of the Indian National Congress, on March 29, 1931, a landmark event of India's freedom struggle in which economic freedom was equated with political freedom. The year 1928 was marked by an anti-Simon Commision upsurge everywhere in India. On 30 October 1928, the Simon Commission faced a large hostile crowd led by Lala Lajpat Rai at Lahore Station. The Lala was severely beaten by the Police under J. A. Scot, British SP and he later succumbed to his head injury. The whole nation was stunned by this savagery. As news of the attack on Lajpat Rai spread, the country reacted with anger. Bhagat Singh was appalled. He could not believe that a white man could dare take a stick in hand and set upon Lajpat Rai. The HSRA (Hindustan Socialist Republic Army) decided to undertake retaliatory action. On 17 December, Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, Sukhdev and Chandra Shekhar Azad mistook the ASP, J.P.Scot for Saunders, as they pounced upon him and shot him dead. A few months later, on 8 April 1929, Bhagat Singh and Batukeswar Datta threw a bomb in the Central Legislative Assembly Hall in Delhi. It was hurled from the midst of a packed gallery, not aimed at anybody, but to draw the attention of the House, the Indian people and the British rulers in India. As Bhagat Singh and Batukeswar Dutt had planned not to escape after throwing the bomb, they were arrested. While Dutt was sentenced to transportation for life in the Assembly Bomb Case, Bhagat Singh, alongwith Rajguru and Sukhdev, was sentenced to death for the murder of Saunders in what became famous as the Lahore conspiracy case. While in jail, Bhagat Singh took up the cause of bettering jail conditions and commenced a hunger strike. The Jail Committee requested Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt to give up their hunger strike but they declined. As the fast continued indefinitely with no solution in sight, Jawaharlal Nehru visited Bhagat Singh and the other hunger strikers in jail. Nehru gives an account of his visit in his Autobiography: "I saw Bhagat Singh for the first time, and Jatindranath Das and a few others. They were all very weak and bed-ridden and it was hardly possible to talk to them much. Bhagat Singh had an attractive, intellectual face, remarkably calm and peaceful. There seemed to be no anger in it. He looked and talked with great gentleness." Finally, it was Bhagat Singh's father who had his way. He came armed with a resolution by the Congress urging them to give up the hunger strike. The revolutionaries respected the Congress party because they knew of its struggle for India'a freedom. They called Gandhi 'an impossible visionary' but they saluted him for the awakening he had brought about in the country. As days of execution of Bhagat Singh and his comrades drew near, appeals from all over India, from all sections of people poured in, usually addressed to the Viceroy asking him to stay the execution. Gandhi met Irwin on i9th March and pleaded for the reprieve of Bhagat Singh and his two colleagues from the death sentences to which they had been condemned. He reinforced this oral request with a powerful appeal to the charity of a "great Christian" in Young India. Bhagat Singh, Rajguru & Sukhdev were hanged to death on March 23, 1931. As the news of Bhagat Singh's execution spread the nation went into mourning. There were processions throughout the country. Many went without food. People wore black badges and shut down their businesses to express their grief. A pall of gloom hung over the Motilal Nehru pandal at the annual Congress session in Karachi. When the session was scheduled for 29 March, 1931 nobody had an inkling that Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru would be hanged six days ahead of schedule. A procession to be led by president-elect Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was abandoned in grief. Jawaharlal Nehru sponsored a resolution which was seconded by Madan Mohan Malviya. According to Kuldip Nayar in 'The Life and Trial of Bhagat Singh': "Gandhi chose Nehru to pilot the resolution because he was popular among the youth. Patel was heckled." A part of the resolution read: "This Congress while dissociating itself from and disapproving of political violence in any shape or form, places on record its admiration of the bravery and sacrifice of the late Sardar Bhagat Singh and his comrades, Sukhdev and Rajguru, and mourns with the bereaved families the loss of these lives. This Congress is of the opinion that this triple execution is an act of wanton vengeance and is a deliberate flouting of the unanimous demand of the nation for commutation." What soothed the emotions was a speech by Bhagat Singh's father, Kishen Singh. Delegates wept loudly and openly as Kishen Singh recalled Bhagat Singh's words: "Bhagat Singh told me not to worry. Let me be hanged. But he made a fervent appeal: 'You must support your general (Gandhi). You must support all Congress leaders. Only then will you be able to win independence for the country.'" Subhash Chandra Bose had told Gandhiji that they should, if necessary, break with the Viceroy on the question of Bhagat Singh and his two comrades: "Because the execution was against the spirit, if not the letter, of the Delhi pact." Still, Netaji added: "It must be admitted that he (Gandhi) did try his very best." Gandhi's secretary, Mahadev Desai also quoted the Mahatma as saying : "I was not here to defend myself and hence I have not placed the facts as to what I have done to save Bhagat Singh and his comrades. I have tried to persuade the Viceroy with all the methods of persuasion I had. After my last meeting with the relatives of Bhagat Singh, on the appointed date, that is , 23rd morning, I wrote a personal letter to the Viceroy, in which I had poured in my whole being-heart and soul-but it has all gone in vain... Pandit Malaviyaji and Dr Sapru also did their utmost." Lord Irwin took the public into confidence on his reasons for rejecting Gandhi's appeal. In his farewell speech on 26th March, 1931, Irwin said: "As I listened the other day to Mr. Gandhi putting the case for commutation formally before me, I reflected first on what significance it surely was that the apostle of non-violence should so earnestly be pleading the cause of devotees of a creed fundamentally opposed to his own, but I should regard it as wholly wrong to allow my judgment on these matters to be influenced or deflected by purely political considera-tions. I could imagine no case in which under the law the penalty had been more directly deserved." The jail diary of Bhagat Singh makes for an interesting historical reading. He wrote shortly before his death : "They (the youth) should aim at a Swaraj for the masses based on socialism. That was a revolutionary change which they could not bring about without revolutionary methods..." Bhagat Singh exhorted Punjab's youth to follow Nehru. He called Nehru and Bose as a "redeeming feature of the freedom struggle" during the 1920s. In his last letter to his youngest brother, Kultar, he quoted the popular Urdu couplet: Khush raho ahle watan hum to safar karte hain (Goodbye, dear countrymen, we proceed on our journey). (22.03.2016 - Capt. Praveen Davar is member of National Commission for Minorities. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at praveendavar@gmail.com) Latest updates on Gandhi Jayanti 2019 New Delhi, March 22 : Communications and Information Technology Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said on Tuesday that the government is taking BPOs to small towns to create job opportunities in rural areas of India. "We are taking BPOs (business process outsourcing) to small towns of India to provide employment to youth so that they don't have to migrate to cities for jobs," Ravi Shankar Prasad said at the Digital India Summit in the capital. The minister said that only 398 km of optical fiber cables were laid in Indian villages before the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government came into power. "Now more than 1 lakh km of OFC is laid, touching more than 50,000 village panchayats." He said the nation's future lay in its talent clubbed with the information technology, and pointed out that the country witnessed a huge jump in manufacturing of mobile phones that "has grown by 83 percent since last year". "Now almost every big mobile phone brand has a manufacturing here. Investments in electronic manufacturing prior to May 2014 was only Rs.11,000 crore. Now it has crossed Rs.128,000 crore." The minister said growth of internet was an important tool for development and described it as an "open, fair, democratic, neutral and plural media for empowerment of people". "It (Internet) must remain non-discriminatory," he added. The minister stated that "digitally empowered India is the ultimate aim of Digital India Mission." Brussels, March 22 : Two loud explosions were heard at the Zaventem airport in Belgium's capital, forcing authorities to hurriedly evacuate it, Sky News reported. There were reports of several casualties. The blasts centred on an American Airlines desk in a departure hall. Sky News correspondent Alex Rossi said from the scene: "I was at the duty free in Zaventem Airport and I heard two very, very loud explosions. "I could feel the building move. There was also dust and smoke as well... It is some kind of terrorist attack although that hasn't been verified by any of the authorities here," he said. "We are all being moved out of the airport towards the emergency exit." Belgian media reported that several people had been injured and that train services to the airport had been suspended. The Belgian capital is on high alert following the arrest of the November 2015 Paris terror attack suspect Salah Abdeslam in the city last week. Coimbatore: With the mercury hitting 100 degree Fahrenheit, the Coimbatore corporation has come up with a simple summer plan of spraying water on animals at the VOC zoo to help them brave summer heat. During the summer season, the corporation workers say they keep a close watch on the animal and prevent them from suffering from dehydration. The summer is hard for the zoo animals, which are prone to typhoid and heat strokes. Last year, corporation workers administrated anti-stress medicines such as vitamins to keep them healthy. When the heat level rises above 40 degree Celsius, the oral supplements like Vitamin C are recommended for the animals. A lot of care is being taken during the summer as the heat causes sudden heat stroke. So far, no animal has died due to the scorching heat. Steps have been taken to create cool surroundings across the premises. We have been replacing water daily in mini ponds to maintain hygiene. The animals can cool off by getting into these pond waters, said a senior officer in zoo maintenance. The VOC zoo is like a mini forest with more than 300 trees which reduces the temperature inside the zoo. So the temperature is low on zoo premises, when compare to the city. Most cages are covered by the greenery which enables the animal to beat the heat, he added. The heat wave leaves monkeys and deers badly affected. So extra care is being given to these animals. We have asked the corporation to install sprinklers in deer and monkey enclosures, the official said. Hornbills, pelicans and herons have shade nets over their cages. In the mornings, the animals are drenched in water to reduce heat effect. New York, March 22 : The jokes about "dumb blondes" are, well, just jokes! Researchers have found that the average IQ of blondes may actually be slightly higher than those with other hair colours. While jokes about blondes may seem harmless to some, they can have real-world implications, said study author Jay Zagorsky from The Ohio State University in the US. "Research shows that stereotypes often have an impact on hiring, promotions and other social experiences," Zagorsky said. "This study provides compelling evidence that there shouldn't be any discrimination against blondes based on their intelligence," Zagorsky pointed out. The study involved 10,878 US women. Data from the study came from the US National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79), a national survey of people who were between 14 and 21 years old when they were first interviewed in 1979. In 1980, participants in the NLSY79 took the Armed Forces Qualification Test, or AFQT, which is used by the Pentagon to determine the intelligence of all recruits. The overall AFQT score is based on word knowledge, paragraph comprehension, math knowledge and arithmetic reasoning. The resulting findings showed that blonde-haired White women had an average IQ of 103.2, compared to 102.7 for those with brown hair, 101.2 for those with red hair and 100.5 for those with black hair. Blonde women were slightly more likely to be in the highest IQ category than those with other hair colors, and slightly less likely to be in the lowest IQ category, the findings showed. The study, published in the journal Economics Bulletin, could not say whether there are any genetic relationships between hair colour and intelligence, but Zagorsky did find one fact that could at least partially explain why blondes showed slightly higher intelligence -- they grew up in homes with more reading material than did those with any other hair colour. "If blondes have any slight advantage, it may simply be that they were more likely to grow up in homes with more intellectual stimulation," he said. "I don't think you can say with certainty that blondes are smarter than others, but you can definitely say they are not any dumber," Zagorsky pointed out. Brussels, March 22 : Several people were killed on Tuesday when two explosions rocked the departures area of the Zaventem airport in the Belgian capital. The Belgian fire service told local media there were at least several dead and wounded, BBC reported. The cause of the explosions was not known. The airport is being evacuated and has been closed to flights, BBC said. The blasts come four days after the capture in Brussels of Salah Abdeslam, the main suspect in the Paris terror attacks in November. Images on social media showed smoke rising from one of the buildings amid reports of panic as people fled the airport. Brussels, March 22 : Several people were killed on Tuesday when two massive explosions devastated the departure area of the Zaventem airport in the Belgian capital, triggering panic. The Belgian fire service told local media there were at least several dead and wounded in the blasts which were centred at the American Airlines check-in desk, BBC reported. Belga news agency reported that shots were fired and shouts in Arabic were heard before the two blasts, BBC said. The airport was hurriedly evacuated and had been closed for flights, BBC said. Pictures showed the terminal windows blown out from the force of the explosion and smoke rising high into the sky. Video also showed terrified passengers running for their lives out of the terminal. Sky News Middle East correspondent Alex Rossi, who was at the airport on his way to Tel Aviv, said: "I could feel the buildings move." The incident came as the Belgian capital was on a state of high alert following the arrest of Paris terror attack suspect Salah Abdeslam in the city last week. Only on Monday, Belgium's Interior Minister Jan Jambon said the country was braced for a possible revenge attack following the capture of the 26-year-old Abdeslam. CNN quoted a tourist, Anthony Barrett, as saying he heard the explosions at about 8 a.m. from his hotel across the terminal building. "When I opened the curtains and looked out, I could see people feeling," he told CNN. He said he saw about 19 or 20 stretchers carrying people so far. Luggage trolleys were also being used to transport the wounded. "It is clearly a very serious incident," Barrett said. The Brussels airport said that there had been two explosions and the building was being evacuated. "Don't come to the airport area," it said. France is seeking Abdeslam's extradition so he can stand trial for his alleged role in the November 13 rampage of gunfire and suicide bombings that killed 130 people in Paris. Brussels, March 22 : At least 13 people were killed when two massive explosions shattered the Zaventem airport here on Tuesday, only days after the arrest of the Paris terror attack suspect in Brussels. Scores of people were also injured in the blasts which took place one after the other just after 8 a.m., triggering a panic run from the airport and bringing down the false ceiling in a part of the departure hall, media reports said. Even as Belgium immediately raised its terror alert to the maximum, a third explosion took place -- at the main Metro station near the European Union building. Both the airport and the station were shut down. BBC and most media outlets said several people were killed at the airport. Belgian broadcaster RTBF quoted hospital sources to say that 10 people had been killed and about 30 injured. Daily Mail of London put the death toll at 13. People, including passengers, were seen coming out of the airport building with blood on their faces. There were no reports of Indian casualties, the government said in New Delhi. Initial reports said the blasts were centred at the American Airlines check-in desk. But a later report said one explosion occurred on the runway and another at the departure area where public access was easy. Belga news agency reported that shots were fired and shouts in Arabic were heard before the two blasts, BBC said. Pictures showed the terminal windows blown out from the force of the explosion and plumes of smoke rising high into the sky. Video also showed terrified passengers running for their lives out of the terminal. Sky News Middle East correspondent Alex Rossi, who was at the airport on his way to Tel Aviv, said: "I could feel the buildings move." The incident came as the Belgian capital was on a state of high alert following the arrest of Paris terror attack suspect Salah Abdeslam in the city last week. Only on Monday, Belgium's Interior Minister Jan Jambon said the country was braced for a possible revenge attack following the capture of the 26-year-old Abdeslam. CNN quoted a tourist, Anthony Barrett, as saying he heard the explosions at about 8 a.m. from his hotel across the terminal building. "When I opened the curtains and looked out, I could see people fleeing," he told CNN. He said he saw about 19 or 20 stretchers carrying people so far. Luggage trolleys were also being used to transport the wounded. "It is clearly a very serious incident," Barrett said. Brussels airport said that there had been two explosions and the building was being evacuated. "Don't come to the airport area," it said in a tweet. France is seeking Abdeslam's extradition so he can stand trial for his alleged role in the November 13 rampage of gunfire and suicide bombings that killed 130 people in Paris. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said they were monitoring the situation minute-by-minute. A Jet flight from Mumbai landed in Brussels at 7.11 a.m. (local time) and another, from Delhi, landed minutes after the explosion, at 8:08, according to information on Flightradar24 website. The airline said it was trying to ascertain the status of crew and passengers. The aircraft are safe, Jet Airways said in a statement. External affairs ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup said he spoke to Indian ambassador Manjeev Singh Puri who said there were no reports of any Indian casualties. New Delhi, March 22 : Jet Airways has said that it was trying to ascertain the status of all its staff and passengers at the Brussels Zaventem airport, which was rocked by twin bomb blasts on Tuesday morning. "Jet Airways is making all efforts to confirm the status of all its staff and guests," the airline said in a statement. "As per first information, the Jet Airways aircraft in Brussels are safe." Two Jet Airways flights, one from New Delhi and the other from Mumbai, had landed at Brussels around the time of the blast. According to the data with the website, Jet Airways flight 9W 230 from New Delhi reached Brussels at 8:08 a.m., just minutes after the bomb blast at the Departure airport at 8.00 a.m. Flight 9W 228 from Mumbai had landed at Brussels at 7.11 a.m. local time. Several people were said to have been injured at the airport, with media putting the number of dead at 13. Currently, Jet Airways operates daily non-stop flights to its European gateway at Brussels airport from its domestic hub in Mumbai and New Delhi. All flights after the explosions at the departure terminal of the Zaventem airport been diverted to neighbouring airports. The airport has been shut. New Delhi, March 22 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday condemned the Brussels terror attacks which left 13 people killed and scores injured. "News from Brussels is disturbing. The attacks are condemnable. Condolences to families of the deceased. May those injured recover quickly," Modi tweeted. The two massive explosions shattered Belgium's Zaventem airport, only days after the arrest of the Paris terror attack suspect in Brussels. New Delhi, March 22 : Jet Airways has said that two of its staff members were injured in the twin bomb blasts that rocked Brussels Zaventem airport on Tuesday morning. According to the airline, the injured staff members have received medical care. "As per initial information, Jet Airways guests in Brussels have been re-located to a safe location by the Brussels Airport authorities," the airline said in a statement. "At this time passengers and staff have been cordoned off and are not allowed to access the airport terminals. Jet Airways staff and crew are safe." Earlier, the airline had informed that it has cancelled several flights to and from Brussels in the wake of the bomb blasts. Two Jet Airways flights, one from New Delhi and the other from Mumbai, had landed at Brussels around the time of the blast. According to the data with the website, Jet Airways flight 9W 230 from New Delhi reached Brussels at 8:08 a.m., just minutes after the bomb blast at the Departure airport at 8 a.m. Flight 9W 228 from Mumbai had landed at Brussels at 7.11 a.m. local time. Several people were said to have been injured at the airport, with media putting the number of dead at 13. Currently, Jet Airways operates daily non-stop flights to its European gateway at Brussels airport from its domestic hubs in Mumbai and New Delhi. All flights after the explosions at the departure terminal of Zaventem airport have been diverted to neighbouring airports. The airport has been shut. New Delhi, March 22 : India on Tuesday condemned in the "strongest possible terms" the terror attacks in Belgium's capital Brussels that left 28 people dead. "We condemn this attack in the strongest possible terms," external affairs ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup told the media. "We stand in solidarity with the people and government of Belgium. We offer our condolences to the families of the victims. "Terrorism is a global scourge and the attack in Belgium underscores the need to counter it unitedly." He said the Indian embassy in Brussels was closely monitoring the situation. "As of now we have no reports of any Indian casualties." The Indian mission has set up helpline numbers +32 26409140, +32 26451850 (PABXC) and +32 476748575 (Mobile) for Indians to get in touch. At least 28 people were killed as two deadly explosions rocked the Zaventem airport and another the main metro station in Brussels on Tuesday. Mumbai, March 22 : The twin blasts in Brussels on Tuesday have been condemned by Bollywood celebrities like Hema Malini, Madhur Bhandarkar and Farhan Akhtar, who have called the attacks "meaningless" and mourned the loss of lives. Around 28 people were killed as two deadly explosions rocked the Zaventem airport and another the main metro station, four days after the arrest of the Paris terror attack suspect in the Belgian capital. Since the news of the terror attacks came, many Bollywood celebrities took to Twitter to condemn the attacks. Here what these stars have tweeted: Hema Malini: Another horror attack! This time it is Brussels. When are these meaningless actions going to stop? My heart goes out to the injured and the dead. Farhan Akhtar: More violence. More innocent lives lost. More anguish. More anger. Only thing lessening is hope. Heart goes out to all affected. Brussels. Shekhar Kapur: Tragic loss of lives Brussels. Chaos and violence knows no boundaries now. There needs to be peace everywhere for us to have peace at home. Sajid Khan: Saddened by the horrible terror attacks killing innocent people. My heart's prayers go out to the families of the victims. Brussels. Madhur Bhandarkar: Doomsday in #Europe yet again. First Paris and now Brussels. Shocked at the violence. Brussels blasts. Milap Zaveri: The Brussels attacks are another example of cowardice and inhuman acts. Prayers with the victims and their families. Sophie Choudry: Absolutely horrific news about the attacks in Brussels. My heartfelt prayers for all those affected. We must all unite against terror! Vishal Malhotra: When will this rubbish end? Stop the insanity now! #Brussels. Ehsaan Noorani: Not Brussels now this is so depressing to hear, what is wrong with this world... Prayers for the safety of the victims of Brussels attack. Vishal Dadlani: Brussels may you find strength. For those who are there, may you and your loved ones be safe. Brussels, March 22 : An Indian trade body based here on Tuesday expressed deep shock over the "heinous and horrible" terror attacks in the Belgian capital that left at least 28 people dead. Europe India Chamber of Commerce secretary general Sunil Prasad said the "barbarity" was against humanity. "We condemn these attacks and the terrorists who carried out this heinous and horrible barbarity." Such a terrorist attack would have far-reaching geopolitical consequences for the entire Europe, he said. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Brussels to attend the EU-India Summit on March 30. "We hope the security situation in Brussels will significantly improve and the Belgian authorities will take all necessary security measures for a successful visit of Modi," Prasad added. Jet Airways flight attendant Nidhi Chaphekar (right) rests on a bench following the bomb blast at Brussels aiport (Photo: AP) New Delhi: Two Jet Airways crew members -- Nidhi Chauphekar and Amit Motwani from Mumbai -- were injured in the blasts at Brussels airport on Tuesday even as the authorities have relocated the airline's passengers in Brussels to a safe location. "Two of our staff have been injured and are receiving medical care," a senior airline official said. According to the airline, as per initial information, Jet Airways guests in Brussels have been re-located to a safe location by the Brussels Airport authorities. Read: Terror attacks in Brussels airport, metro station leave 26 dead Passengers and staff are not allowed to access the airport terminals, it said. Jet Airways is closely monitoring the situation, the airline added. Brussels airport serves as Jet Airways' European hub for international operations. The airline had, however, recently announced relocation of this gateway to Dutch capital Amsterdam from coming Sunday. A string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station today, reportedly killing at least 13 people. Read: Blood everywhere, says witness after twin blast at Brussels airport In view of the situation, the airline has decided to cancel its flights to and from Brussels till tomorrow. The flights which stand cancelled are from Brussels to Newark, Toronto, Mumbai and Delhi as well as services from Newark and Toronto to Brussels for today. Jet Airways has also announced cancellation of its flights from Mumbai and Delhi to Brussels scheduled for tomorrow. The airline said for further information passengers can contact Jet Airways contact centre in India 1800225522, 1-877-8359538 (The United States) and 08081011199 (The United Kingdom). New Delhi, March 22 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi will pay a two-day official visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, it was announced on Tuesday. Modi, invited by King Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, will be the first Indian prime minister visiting the kingdom after Manmohan Singh, who visited Riyadh in 2010. During April 2-3 visit, the prime minister will hold discussions with King Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud on bilateral, regional and multilateral issues of mutual interest, an official statement issued here said. "India and Saudi Arabia share friendly relations based on close people-to-people contacts. The 'Strategic Partnership' established through Riyadh Declaration in 2010 envisions a deeper engagement in political, economic, security and defence areas. In recent years, there has been significant progress in bilateral cooperation in such key areas of mutual interest," it said. Saudi Arabia is also India's largest crude oil supplier accounting for about one-fifth of India's total imports. Indians form the largest expatriate community in Saudi Arabia and their contribution in the progress and development of their host country is well recognised. There are over 2.96 million Indian nationals presently working in Saudi Arabia. New Delhi, March 22 : Prime Minister Narendra Modi will on March 30 embark on a three-nation tour during the course of which he will attend the 13th India-EU Summit in Brussels, Belgium, and the Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) in Washington. "The prime minister will pay his first official visit to Brussels on March 30, 2016, for the 13th India-EU Summit at the invitation of President of the European Council Donald Tusk and President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker," external affairs ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup said at a media briefing here. "The European Union (EU) is India's leading trade and investment partner and biggest export destination," Swarup said. "India and EU are also strategic partners since 2004. The 13th India-EU Summit aims to deepen the India-EU strategic partnership and advance collaboration in priority areas for India's growth and development." According to Swarup, Modi will also hold a bilateral summit meeting with Belgium at the invitation of Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel. Stating that India and Belgium enjoyed close and friendly ties, he said: "Belgium is India's second largest trade partner within the EU. The bilateral meeting between the two prime ministers will focus on further enhancing the economic partnership. The two prime ministers will also hold discussions on regional and global issues of mutual interest." From Brussels, Modi will proceed to Washington D.C., US, to participate in the Fourth Nuclear Security Summit on March 31 and April 1. The first NSS was held in Washington in April 2010 followed by the summits in Seoul in March 2012 and The Hague in March 2014. "Fifty-two countries and four international organisations are expected to attend the 2016 summit," Swarup said. "The Nuclear Security Summit process has been instrumental in galvanising leaders' level attention on the global threat posed by nuclear terrorism and urgent measures required to prevent terrorists and other non-state actors from gaining access to sensitive nuclear materials and technologies," he said. This year's summit is expected to take stock of the progress of the previous NSS communiquAs and work plan as also outline a future agenda. "As for past summits, a number of countries may project the respective steps taken by them to strengthen nuclear security since the last summit, including in the form of submissions of national progress reports," the spokesman said, adding that India would also be doing the same. He said that India has contributed constructively durting the NSS preparatory meetings from 2014 to 2016 at the level of sherpas. According to Swarup, Modi will make some specific announcements and proposals with regard to nuclear security during his interventions at the NSS. The prime minister is also scheduled to have bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the summit. "India is committed to the success of the NSS process. India's participation in all the NSSes from 2010 is a demonstration of our high-level commitment in this regard," Swarup said. From Washington, Modi will fly to Riyadh for a bilateral visit to Saudi Arabia on April 2 and 3. He will be visiting the Gulf kingdom at the invitation of King Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud. This is first prime ministerial visit from India to Saudi Arabia after the visit of then prime minister Manmohan Singh in 2010. During the visit, Modi will hold discussions with King Salman on bilateral, regional and multilateral issues of mutual interest. "India and Saudi Arabia share friendly relations based on close people-to-people contacts," Swarup said. "The 'strategic partnership' established through the Riyadh Declaration in 2010 envisions a deeper engagement in political, economic, security and defence areas. In recent years, there has been significant progress in bilateral cooperation in key sych areas of mutual interest," he said. Saudi Arabia is India's fourth largest partner with bilateral trade exceeding $39 billion in 2014-15. It is also India's largest crude oil supplier, accounting for about one-fifth of the country's oil imports. "Indians form the largest expatriate community in Saudi Arabia and their contribution in the progress and development of their host country is well recognized," the spokesman said. There are over 2.96 million expatriate Indians in Saudi Arabia, many of whom are blue collar workers. Mumbai, March 22 : Actress Jacqueline Fernandez, who is raising funds to help build houses for victims of flood-hit Chennai as part of a Tamil Nadu Flood Relief campaign 'Jacqueline Builds', is receiving tremendous support from schools for her social cause. Jacqueline will be involved in building houses for the victims on April 9. But before that, she will visit Panbai International School here on Wednesday to appreciate the commendable efforts of the students who have been helping her spread awareness about her campaign. "I am looking forward to interacting with these young minds. It's impressive to see that these students are contributing towards the community at such a young age and understand societal issues surrounding them," Jacqueline said in a statement. "The funds raised by the students and their families will make a huge difference in helping victims reclaim and restart their lives," she added. The floods hit Tamil Nadu in November and December last year and led to loss of lives, assets, households and livelihood of the people. Rome, March 22 : Renowned Italian fashion designer Giorgio Armani has pledged to go 100 percent fur-free across all his labels from the Autumn-Winter 2016 collection onwards. Armani's no-fur promise follows similar commitment by fashion brand Hugo Boss last year, and comes after the designer worked closely with Humane Society International (HSI) and The Fur Free Alliance, which was a coalition of 40 animal protection organisations in 28 countries working to end the fur trade. "Armani is the first word in luxury fashion, and so it is hugely significant for the global fashion industry that Armani has pledged to remove animal fur from all his new collections going forward," Claire Bass, executive director of HSI in Britain, said in a statement. "Those designers such as Prada, Fendi and Michael Kors who continue to put animal suffering on the catwalk are looking increasingly isolated, with this move by Armani probably the most powerful message yet that killing animals for their fur is never fashionable," Bass added. Pleased to announce the move, Armani says that the "Armani Group has made a firm commitment to abolish the use of animal fur in its collections". "Technological progress made over the years allows us to have valid alternatives at our disposition that render the use of cruel practices unnecessary as regards animals. Pursuing the positive process undertaken long ago, my company is now taking a major step ahead, reflecting our attention to the critical issues of protecting and caring for the environment and animals," Armani said. HSI recently exposed the suffering of rabbits, as well as foxes, raccoons, dogs which were confined in small, bare, wire cages on Chinese fur farms. The video made by the society also exposed the brutal methods used to kill foxes and raccoon dogs. Kolkata, March 22 : Camera-trapping data has quashed reports of presence of a second tiger in Nagaland's Medziphema village where a big cat was recently killed by locals, a Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) statement said on Tuesday. The state forest department, WCS and Nagaland Wildlife and Biodiversity Conservation Trust had set up camera-traps near the kill-site and around the village where the presence of a tiger was reported by the locals. "It is unlikely that there is a resident population of tigers in the area. There is habitat for tigers, but little prey," Varun Goswami, scientist at the WCS India Programme, who led the effort, said in a statement. A week of camera-trapping with 17 units allayed fears of any tiger's presence, he said. "Tigers, however, can disperse into Nagaland from multiple directions -- the forests of Karbi Anglong towards the northwest, or perhaps, Myanmar to the southeast," said Goswami. In fact, on closer interaction, residents of Medziphema revealed that tigers do occasionally pass through the area. A dispersing tiger, which landed in Medziphema, a small village near Dimapur, was shot dead by panic-stricken villagers on February 29. Tigers have not been officially recorded from the area in over a decade. Two days later, residents of the same village claimed another tiger in their area after three youth walking in a nearby forest reported catching a fleeting glimpse of a large, cat-like animal that they had surprised while it was feeding on a wild pig. Tigers can move large distances when they are dispersing, according to Ullas Karanth, renowned tiger expert from WCS. "Our long term research shows evidence of tigers travelling up to 300 km or more," he added. Rome, March 22 : Italian authorities boosted security at airports and train stations after Tuesday's terror attacks at Brussels airport and a metro station left 34 people dead. All flights to and from Brussels from Rome's Fiumicino and Ciampino airports were cancelled and passenger checks were tightened while security was also ratcheted up at airports in Milan. Security was also strengthened at the Belgium's embassies to Italy and the Vatican in Rome as well as at the ambassador's residence and at Belgian cultural institutes, Italian daily La Repubblica reported. Italian trade associations voiced concern that the Brussels attacks would negatively impact tourist bookings in Rome and other Italian cities ahead of Easter, usually one of the busiest times of the year. Brussels was in lockdown after Tuesday's attacks and its airport and the entire public transport system in Brussels were closed. New Delhi, March 22 : The government has seeded 9.39 crore Jan Dhan accounts with the Aadhaar unique identity number, Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha said on Tuesday. "Government is linking bank accounts with Aadhaar to accurately transfer benefits. 9.39 crore Jan Dhan accounts have been seeded with Aadhaar cards," Sinha said in a tweet. While Aadhaar is being used for transfer the cooking gas and some other benefits, the government is also to planning cash transfer of the fertiliser subsidy through Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) using it. Parliament last week passed the Aadhaar Bill, after rejecting the amendments to it suggested by the Rajya Sabha. New Delhi, March 22 : Jet Airways on Tuesday cancelled all its flights to and from Brussels until Wednesday after two of its staff members were injured in the bomb blasts that rocked the city's Zaventem airport on Tuesday morning. Two of the airline's flights from India had landed before and around the time of the attack, but all passengers and crew were safe. "Jet Airways has cancelled flights operating to/from and via Brussels until tomorrow Wednesday 23 March. The airline has also offered a waiver on cancellation, rebooking and rerouting of tickets for travel to/from/via Brussels until March 26," an airline spokesperson said. According to the airline, following the deadly explosions, the Brussels airport has been closed until 6.00 a.m. local time on March 23. The airline informed that two of its staff members sustained injuries in the explosion at Brussels airport. "Both of them are receiving medical care at hospitals," the spokesperson said. The airline elaborated, that as per the latest information received from Brussels, its guests have been accommodated at three locations by Jet Airways staff in co-ordination with the local authorities. "Arrangements for their food and comfort have been made till the situation normalises," the spokesperson added. "We are working very closely with the Indian Embassy and are in touch with the Indian Ambassador to plan the next steps for evacuation of our guests from Brussels once the airport becomes operational." Two Jet Airways flights, one from New Delhi and the other from Mumbai, had landed at Brussels around the time of the blast. According to the data from aviation website Flightradar24, Jet Airways flight 9W 230 from New Delhi reached Brussels at 8.08 a.m. local time, just minutes after the bomb blast at the departure terminal at 8 a.m. Flight 9W 228 from Mumbai had landed at Brussels at 7.11 a.m. local time. Several people were said to have been injured at the airport, with media putting the number of dead at 13, while blasts were also reported from elsewhere in the city including a subway station. Currently, Jet Airways operates daily non-stop flights to its European gateway at Brussels airport from its domestic hubs in Mumbai and New Delhi. The attacks coincidentally came a day after the private Indian airline announced it will shift its European base out of Brussels to Amsterdam. On Monday, the airline had announced that it will shift its European hub from Brussels to Amsterdam, and plans to launch daily non-stop flights from New Delhi and Mumbai to Amsterdam, starting from March 27. Imphal, March 22 : Rights activist Irom Sharmila, who has been on a fast unto death since November 4, 2000 demanding repeal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, on Tuesday rejected an offer for a personal recognizance bond for getting bail. After her refusal, she was sent to judicial custody. The law under which she is detained envisages keeping her for a year at one go, and she is released at the end of each year. Sharmila is being held on charges of trying to commit suicide, which she has been vehemently denying. On Tuesday, when the court of the chief judicial magistrate, Imphal West, offered her the bail, she rejected it saying she does not agree with the charge levelled against her. Last year, the district and sessions court in Imphal West had ruled that she was not guilty of attempting to commit suicide and ordered her release. However, within two days, she was rearrested since she continued her fast even after being released. Coming out of the court, Sharmila told reporters that though Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been saying that his government has taken up many developmental works, there were many drawbacks. After she rejected the bail offer, she was taken to the security ward of J.N. Institute of Medical Sciences in Imphal where she has been staying all these years. Sharmila is scheduled to appear before the Patiala House Court in Delhi later this month. Police had arrested her in Delhi in 2006 when she went there to sit on a fast at Jantar Mantar. She was also charged there with attempting to commit suicide. Sharmila recently said she was disappointed by the way people had stopped supporting her cause and asked for a public opinion on whether people want her to stop the campaign. New Delhi, March 22 : The RSS has expressed its displeasure at BJP leaders describing Prime Minister Narendra Modi as "god's gift to India" in the recent national executive meeting while also suggesting the party go ahead with the issue of "nationalism" but add development to it, informed sources said on Tuesday. After the recent meeting of its Pratinidhi Sabha at Rajasthan's Nagaur, the RSS leaders on Tuesday held discussions with the top Bharatiya Janata Party leaders at Deendayal Shodh Sansthan. The meeting was convened to convey the outcomes of the meet to the BJP, said informed sources. From the RSS, Suresh Bhaiyyaji Joshi, Krishna Gopal and Dattatreya Hosabale attended while the BJP was represented by president Amit Shah, general secretary (organisation) Ramlal and vice president Vinay Sahasrabuddhe. Sources said that the RSS leaders expressed displeasure over the remarks made by union minister M. Venkaiah Naidu describing Modi as god's gift to the nation, and suggested the BJP leadership not encourage "individual worship" as "organisation" is supreme in the RSS. Naidu, while presenting political resolution on the last day of the national executive meeting on Sunday, dubbed Modi "god's gift to India" and a "messiah of the poor" and said India is recognised and respected everywhere because of him. The RSS also supported BJP's move to go ahead with the issue of nationalism but also suggested the issue of development be incorporated to it, sources said, adding it was of the view that nationalism and development are complementary to each other and the party should go ahead focussing both issues in upcoming assembly polls in five states. The BJP and the RSS leaders also discussed issues related to the states of West Bengal, Kerala, Assam, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry where polls will begin next month. They also took up the issue of forming a new government in Jammu and Kashmir with coalition partner Peoples Democratic Party - which was hanging fire after its leader Mehbooba Mufti sought certain assurances but now seems more possible following her "positive" meeting with Modi here on Tuesday. According to sources, the issue of reservation also came up at the meet and BJP leaders requested the RSS leadership not to express its views publicly on reservation because it embarrasses them and the prime minister is required to clarify the party's position over the issue. The RSS had said that demands for reservation by the affluent sections of society only reflected deviation from the spirit of the constitution. Its views came in the wake of the recent pro-quota agitation by the Jat community in Haryana and the Patel community's agitation in Gujarat. In Haryana, the BJP has formed a committee under Naidu to look into the aspects of Jat reservation. The JNU row and the Rohit Vemula suicide case also figured in the meeting, the sources said. BBMP has also reached out to human rights activist Akkai Padmashali, who will be a part of the awareness drive. BENGALURU: The BBMP is struggling to reach their target of 100 per cent garbage segregation at source. Now it has turned to the Kannada film fraternity to help them drive home the message of garbage segregation. The BBMP has approached Kannada superstar Puneeth Rajkumar to spread the theme of garbage segregation and to make known the ill-effects of plastic. Not only has Mr Puneeth agreed to be a part of BBMPs advertisements and short films, a few other popular actors have also consented to be a part of the initiative and do their bit to spread awareness. Kannada comedian and theatre personality Rangayana Raghu and actor-producer Sihi Kahi Chandru will be part of the awareness drive that will focus on the roles and responsibilities of citizens. Although there is a certain amount of awareness among citizens, the difficulty lies in the implementation, said a top official. Meanwhile, the BBMP has also reached out to human rights activist Akkai Padmashali, who will be a part of the awareness drive. Commenting that the implementation would be more effective if a celeb was giving out the message, special commissioner (solid waste management) Subodh Yadav said a massive campaign would be launched in April. We thought having celebrities would help. However, due to some procedural issues, though publicity campaigns have started, they are not reaching citizens as expected. Earlier, we had planned to launch the campaign before the budget. Now, we are hoping to start from April, he said. Mr Yadav maintained that eventually the civic body would also reach out to school students and make them pledge to segregate garbage at source. We have identified various methods to bridge the gap between understanding garbage segregation and implementing it at the primary level, he said. Bengaluru, March 22 : Global private equity investment firm Abraaj Group on Tuesday led a $150 million fundraising drive by Indian E-commerce grocery startup BigBasket. "We are excited about the investment opportunities in India, a key geography for us, where we continue to identify and partner with market leading companies," Abraaj Group Asia head Omar Lodhi in a statement. "Abraaj will leverage its strong experience in the consumer sector to enable BigBasket to further enhance its strong domestic position," he added. In addition to the participation of existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Helion Advisors, Zodius Capital and Ascent Capital in the BigBasket's latest fundraising, new investors, World Bank subsidiary International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Sands Capital also marked their entry. "We intend to increase the reach of our just-launched one-hour express delivery service and also launch our marketplace for specialty stores in the coming months," said BigBasker co-founder V.S. Sudhakar about the utilisation of the raised funds. "The proceeds of this round of fundraising will be used to finance BigBasket's growth through further penetration into existing markets, expansion into Tier II cities across India, scaling-up of its recently launched express delivery and specialty store business that caters to top-up and emergency purchases, and increasing the product range offered to customers," he added. Founded in 2011, the online grocery startup currently operates in eight metro and 10 tier two cities retailing over 19,000 products from a range of 1,000 brands which include fruits, vegetables, meat, beverages and personalAcare products. For Abraaj Group, this is the third investment in E-commerce, after acquiring stakes in Turkish online retailer Hepsiburada and Dubai-based cab hailing app Careem. After entering India in 2006, this is its latest move is the here, following investment in Hyderabad based Care Hospitals and a gigawatt scale renewable energy platform partnership with Aditya Birla Group. Beirut, March 23 : Radical Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah on Tuesday deplored the deadly Brussels bombings and blamed hardline Sunni Islamists for exporting terrorism from Syria and the Middle East to Europe. "The fire that is blazing throughout the world, particularly in Europe is that same one that has been lit in Syria and other countries in the region," its political wing said in a statement. The statement blamed the Brussels attacks on "Takfiri" terrorists, a reference to ultra-extremist Sunni Muslims. It expressed "complete solidarity with innocent people in general, and Belgium and its people during their harsh plight". Hezbollah accused some nations of funding hardline jihadist groups and of "providing support and protection to countries that are harbouring terrorists" and called for "clear and transparent" regional and international cooperation to fight terrorism. "Remaining silent over this issue is a major sin and it will only lead to more death, killings, and destruction," it said. At least 34 people were killed and some 200 injured in coordinated bomb attacks on Brussels' main airport and the subway. One of the two airport blasts is believed to have been a suicide bombing. Paris, March 23 : French President Francois Hollande on Tuesday called for "a global response" to combat terrorism which was targeting at Europe in a series of "cowardly and heinous attacks" in Brussels. "We are facing a global threat, so we need a global response. The war against terrorism must be conducted in all Europe and with the necessary means," Xinhua quoted Hollande as saying. "We have to ensure that decisions are effectively implemented," he added in the wake of a series of deadly explosions which rocked Brussels earlier in the day. The French president warned that the battle to eradicate terrorist cells "will be long". "The war against terrorism must be conducted calmly, with clarity and determination. We have to deploy the necessary means," he said. Earlier on Tuesday, twin blasts hit Brussels airport, leaving at least 14 dead. Another explosion hit a metro station close to the European Union institutions, killing 20 people and making other 106 passengers injured, triggering high alert to neighbour countries where security was reinforced. "In these circumstances, the French government decided to further strengthen security measures, police units at borders, and in transport," Hollande's office said in a statement. Speaking after a security meeting, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said he had deployed a further 1,600 police to bolster security at its borders and on public transport. The Brussels attacks came a few days after Belgian police captured Salah Abdeslam, a suspect of the Paris attacks on November 13 last year in which 130 people were killed. On Monday, Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon warned the country was on high alert for a possible terror attack in the wake of Abdeslam's arrest. There is a renewed optimism in Frances residential property market which has led to a significant upturn in sales, according to a new analysis report. A new analysis points out that a more stable economic outlook in the country, which is still popular with overseas buyers, has filtered through into buyer sentiment. The latest data from international real estate firm Knight Frank shows that sales in France doubled between 2014 and 2015, whilst enquiries from prospective buyers increased 87% year on year. It also points out that the figures from the Notaires de France, backs this up, with the most up to date statistics showing sales across the country have increased by 12.5% year on year. The analysis also points out that with favourable mortgage rates of around 2.3%, prices stabilising in most prime markets and the euro weak against both the pound and the US dollar, buyer confidence has strengthened. But this confidence is price dependent. Sales volumes are strongest within the 1 million to 5 million price bracket but transactions above 5 million are slow. According to Mark Harvey, head of Knight Franks French department, two indicators underline the extent to which the market has shifted in the last two to three years. Firstly, the performance and convergence of Frances prime prices and secondly excess supply is being absorbed. Not only have prices reached their floor in the majority of Frances key second home markets, but all of our five regions saw prices shift within a range of only 5%five percentage points. For several years we saw a marked disparity between Frances strongest and weakest markets, this has now all but disappeared, he said. The excess supply that was evident for several years in areas such as Gascony and Provence has now largely been absorbed back into the market. Add to this the slow recovery in house building it is possible that when prices start to pick up they could do so relatively quickly due to limited stock levels, he explained. Another key factor for the recovery of Frances property market is that British buyers are back. The British own more second homes in France at 69,000 than in any other European country. Given the lifestyle on offer, Frances proximity and the currency advantage in recent years it is perhaps no surprise that the British are active once more and represent a key source of demand in all of our markets, said Harvey. He also pointed out that equipped with a strong dollar, American buyers are also increasing in number, particularly in Paris and parts of Gascony, whilst Evian continues to be in favour with high net worth buyers from the Middle East, drawn to its lakeside living and easy access to The Alps. Demand from domestic buyers has also strengthened. Faced with lower purchasing power abroad, a more positive political sentiment, cheap finance and good value, particularly in Paris, French buyers are seeking a slice of their capitals real estate, Harvey explained. Across France interest in income generating assets, be it a vineyard, boutique hotel or olive grove, is on the rise and a trend to watch over the next few years. Wealthy buyers are increasingly seeking a product that generates an income allowing them to cover their costs, whilst also funding a month with family and friends each year in their favourite part of the world, he concluded. Installation of Precast Dome Panels on Frost Planetarium The five-level building required 16 different geodesic shapes, combined in different configurations to create a random pattern to a point where almost no two panels were the same Gate Precast recently completed the multifaceted construction of dome segments for a full-sphere planetarium and architectural precast cladding panels for the five-level building for the new $305 million Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science in downtown Miamis Museum Park. Once operational in late 2016, the sustainable facility will be home to a planetarium, science galleries, and a living core aquarium that contains a microcosm of South Floridas animal, fish and native plant species. Gates ingenuity and resourcefulness at the Miami job earned it the top award during the 2015 PCI Sidney Freedman Craftsmanship Awards, which recognizes PCI certified plants for excellence in manufacturing and craftsmanship of architectural precast. Gate dominated the competition, also capturing Honorable Mention for its work on the South Tower of the Cook Childrens Medical Center in Fort Worth. The awards were announced in Concrete International magazine and presented at the PCI Membership Conference in Louisville, KY. Bruce Bartscher, plant manager at Gates Kissimmee plant, said engineering and creating the various precast shapes for the facility was challenging. The five-level building required 16 different geodesic shapes, combined in different configurations to create a random pattern to a point where almost no two panels were the same, Bartscher said. Gate created a master of each of the shapes, then made quantities of each shape in re-usable negative rubber plugs. Additionally, special frames had to be designed and constructed for transporting the oddly-shaped pieces. For the domed Frost Planetarium, Gate formed, cast and assembled 32 concave orange peel-like pieces, each weighing about 50,000 pounds. During assembly, a 50-foot-tall center shoring tower first set and welded the precast dome cap into place. The project team then installed the orange-peel perimeter segments opposite one another in a counter-clockwise rotation to avoid lateral load on the dome cap. A specialized 550-ton hydraulic crane with a super lift was used to maneuver the pieces. The installation required a 24-hour-a-day/seven-day-a-week schedule over two-and-a-half weeks. The concrete-clad planetarium is adorned in custom formliner concrete exterior wall panels and radius pieces. Gates Kissimmee plant is among eight Gate manufacturing facilities that design, manufacture and install architectural and structural precast systems. More About Gate: Gate Precast Company is a subsidiary of Gate Petroleum Company, a privately-held diversified corporation headquartered in Jacksonville, FL. Gate Precast has become one of the largest and most diversified precast concrete producers in the United States, with eight manufacturing facilities, and is known for its design-assist collaboration with design teams. Annually, the company is recognized as a top subcontractor by Engineering News-Record Magazine and wins Best-in-Class PCI Design Awards for a wide range of projects. For more information, please visit http://www.gateprecast.com. About the Patricia and Phillip Frost Museum of Science (Frost Science) Frost Science aims to make a difference in peoples lives by inspiring them to appreciate the impact that science and technology can have on every facet of our world. In 2016, the museum will continue to inspire visitors in a new state-of-the-art facility designed by Grimshaw Architects currently under construction at Museum Park, in the heart of downtown Miami. The museum will be structured around a lushly landscaped indoor and outdoor Living Core Aquarium of terrestrial and aquatic environments, featuring a Gulf Stream aquarium experience totaling over 500,000 gallons of salt water. The facility will also feature the state-of-the-art full dome Frost Planetarium, the Knight Learning Center, Innovation Labs and Cafe, Baptist Health South Florida People and Science Gallery, and an Exploration Center featuring permanent interactive exhibits: Feathers to the Stars and The River of Grass. Frost Science is sponsored in part by the State of Florida, Department of State, Division of Cultural Affairs, and the Florida Council on Arts and Culture. Support is provided by the Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners. This project is supported by the Building Better Communities Bond Program and the City of Miami. The museum is accredited by the American Alliance of Museums, is an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution and a member of the Association of Science and Technology Centers. Learn more at http://www.frostscience.org. India assumed chairmanship of Brics from Russia on February 15 and it will last till December 31. New Delhi: India will host the eighth annual summit of Brics from October 15-16 in Goa in its capacity as chair of the influential bloc comprising five countries with 42 per cent of the world population and combined GDP of over US$ 16 trillion. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj announced it on Tuesday during a function where she also unveiled a logo and a website of the Summit. India assumed chairmanship of Brics (Brazil-Russia-India- China-South Africa) from Russia on February 15 and it will last till December 31. CSM, a leading provider of clinical trial supply solutions, announces that its executives will host a panel session at the Association of Clinical Research Professionals (ACRP) 2016 Annual Meeting and Expo. The conference will take place from April 16 to April 19, 2016 at the Georgia World Congress Center in Atlanta, Georgia. In this panel session, experts will discuss how traditional supply chain methods are simply inefficient when it comes to the needs of patients in clinical research. Attendees will gather helpful insights on how to deploy the new process of shipping IDP (investigational drug product) directly to a patients home. Moderating the session is Gerald Finken, a thought-leader and visionary in the clinical trial sector as well as the founder and CEO of CSM and Center Point Clinical Services. Panel members will include Hailee Hunt-Hawkins, Study Coordinator at Vanderbilt Kennedy Research Center, Bob Albanese, Senior VP of Strategic Development at CSM, and Tina Schlecht, President at Center Point Clinical Services. Session Title: Patient-Centric Medication with Direct-to-Patient Shipping Panel Objectives: Describe innovations in patient-centric clinical research and precision medicine. Define the roles and responsibilities in providing direct-to-patient shipping. Identify lessons learned from previous direct-to-patient studies. Date: Sunday, April 17, 2016 Time: 8:30AM to 10:30AM Where: Georgia World Congress Center, A401, Level Four, Building A About CSM CSM provides packaging, storage, and distribution services with quality-driven processes to enhance biotechnology and pharmaceutical clinical trials worldwide. The company has continued to evolve with its blend of unique and traditional clinical trial services that improve efficiency and accuracy. CSM is the innovator of On-Demand Packaging and Labeling services, an industry breakthrough in which clinical supplies are made specifically for, and immediately prior to, each shipment. Some of CSMs other core services include: traditional packaging and labeling, cold chain logistics, controlled drug services, returns and reconciliation, clinical label printing, and global distribution. For more information, visit http://www.csmondemand.com. About ACRP The ACRP Meeting & Expo is uniquely focused on supporting the professional growth and development of individuals conducting clinical trials through education, exchange, and peer-to-peer engagement. Individuals who attend the ACRP Meeting & Expo learn new knowledge, skills, and best practices while obtaining advice from subject matter experts that help improve on-the-job performance. Their comprehensive program is designed to give attendees the full range of a clinical research education, from the basics that every clinical research professional needs to the innovative ideas that are changing how you work. For more information on the meeting, visit http://www.acrp2016.org. ### LibertyID for Small Business by AscenteServices.com is the most wide-ranging and affordable small business identity theft response program in the United States, helping businesses prepare for and respond to data breaches by addressing five key areas. While the data breaches at large multi-national companies make the news, it is a little known fact that 70% of all data breaches affect small companies. Ascente Services (AscenteServices.com), a leading provider of fully managed identity theft restoration and data breach products through its brand name LibertyID (LibertyID.com) has announced the launch of LibertyID for Small Business a comprehensive and proactive solution for small- and medium-sized companies. According to Travis D. Mills, Founder and CEO, LibertyID for Small Business is the most wide-ranging and affordable small business identity theft response program in the United States, helping businesses prepare for and respond to data breaches by addressing five key areas. Fully Managed Identity Theft Restoration Services for employees and their eligible family members. Business Credential Monitoring for up to 50 sensitive business credentials such as bank or credit card account information. Email and SMS text message alerts provided 24 hours a day, 365 days a year when potential compromises are discovered. Pre-Breach Planning Services Post-Breach Response Services Fully Managed Identity Theft Restoration Services for up to 5,000 affected consumers in the event the business experiences a data breach. The cornerstone of LibertyID's services is its hallmark identity restoration program. LibertyID's US based restoration agents have managed 60,000 successful victim restorations to date with a 100% success rate. We saw a gap in the resources of small companies to combat data breach and identity theft, Mills said. It was clear to us that we needed to help these companies prepare and respond to breaches by providing them with an affordable mitigation solution. A key component is providing employees and their families with a solution that deals with the devastation that results from their having their identity stolen. Most companies don't know that two out of three small- or medium-sized businesses that experience an attack go out of business within six months and that just one data breach could cost them their businesss survival. The threat is real. Direct inquiries to gayle(at)ascenteservices(dot)com, (651) 587-7975 ### We are lucky to count Dr. Vitiello among our team of experienced reproductive endocrinologists. The Fertility Centers of New England is proud to announce that our own Dr. Danielle Vitiello has been recognized by NH Magazine as one of the leading reproductive endocrinologists in the NH 2016 list of Top Docs. We are lucky to count Dr. Vitiello among our team of experienced reproductive endocrinologists, said Fertility Centers of New England President and CEO, Joseph A. Hill, M.D. Her expertise and compassionate, individualized care have helped set FCNE apart as one of the premier reproductive treatment centers in the country. Dr. Vitiello joined the Fertility Centers of New England in 2008 from Yale-New Haven Hospital, where she was on the faculty of Yale Universitys Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Dr. Vitiello graduated with honors in chemistry from Boston University. She received her medical degree from the University of Vermont where she also received a Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics. She completed her internship and residency at Yale-New Haven Hospital and continued at Yale to complete her fellowship in reproductive endocrinology and infertility. Dr. Vitiello is a member of the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Society and numerous other academic and medical societies, including the American Society for Reproductive Medicine. She is included in the Best Doctors in America 2014 database. Being named a Best Doctor is an honor recognizing only the top five percent of U.S. doctors. Dr. Vitiello continues to see patients in the Fertility Centers of New England New Hampshire offices in Bedford and Nashua, as well as, the Reading, MA office. About Fertility Centers of New England The Fertility Centers of New England is an international leader in the evaluation, diagnosis, and treatment of infertility. We combine advanced reproductive technologies with a comforting, supportive environment to give patients the personal care they deserve. The Fertility Centers of New England has ten convenient locations for treatment and cycle monitoring throughout New England. We accept all insurance plans and offer a range of options for self-pay patients, including donor oocyte cycles. Patients interested in obtaining additional information about the Fertility Centers of New England may call our center at 877-877-9901 or visit us at http://www.bostonfertilitycenter.com/. 10th Annual Duncan Automotive Swap Meet Celebrating ten years the annual Duncan Automotive Swap Meet on March 25-27th at the Stephens County Fair and Expo Center will have something for every car enthusiast. Conveniently located in Duncan, the heart of the Chisholm Trail, where a strong muscle car and antique car tradition exists, makes this a can't miss event for any gearhead. The Duncan Automotive Swap Meet will bring automobile enthusiasts of all ages to buy, sell and trade with over 500 automobile and vendor booths to the Stephens County Fair & Expo Center on March 24-27th, 2016. Being held at the Stephens County Fair and Expo Center, a wonderful facility that was expanded in 2014 and now has 140,000 plus square feet under roof and 42 acres of grounds. Sixty five RV hook ups are available on the grounds with a dump station. The swap meet will utilize all sections of the spacious fairgrounds. The Stephens County Fair & Expo Center has spaces available for both indoor and outdoor booths. Indoor swap meet spaces will be available with concrete flooring and dust-free environment. The Stephens County Fair Exhibit Building will be used for automotive related memorabilia booth spaces. This building is fully climate controlled and over 8200 square feet of space is available for vendors. For booth rental information please contact Kevin Hammack 580-467-2471 http://www.facebook.com/duncanokswapmeet. Set up day is March 24th, 2016. For general information for Duncan visit http://www.visitduncan.org or call 1-800-782-7167. RangeMe, the online platform that streamlines new product discovery between suppliers and retailers. The RangeMe platform offers an ideal, complementary way for us to expand the reach, product and services offerings of our Windy City and P3 Shows. RangeMe, the online platform that streamlines new product discovery between suppliers and retailers, and Urban Expositions, one of the fastest growing trade show management companies in the United States, announced a partnership this week bringing greater efficiency to innovation in retail. Through the partnership, two of Urban Expositions premier events, the P3|Progressive Pet Products Trade Show and the Windy City Gift Show, will leverage RangeMes technology to provide exhibiting suppliers and manufacturers greater reach to connect with retail buyers. Building relationships in-person is a valuable and essential part of the product discovery process, said Nicky Jackson, CEO and Founder of RangeMe. Were looking to enhance the trade show experience for both retail buyers and product suppliers. Urban Expositions P3 Pet Trade Show and Windy City Gift Show each serve key retail sectors in the Midwestern US marketplace. Making its debut August 24-25, 2016 at Chicago's Navy Pier, P3 will bring Midwest pet retailers a forward-looking, fun trade show experience held in one America's top destination cities. The annual event pairs the market's newest pet products with exceptional educational programming and networking events. Held August 12-14, 2016 at the Donald E. Stephens Convention Center in Rosemont, IL, the Windy City Gift Show offers a one-stop resource for the regions gift and home retailers to explore the latest introductions and innovations from leading manufacturers, sales agencies, artisans and local resources. We are always on the lookout for new innovations and strategic partnerships that make our shows even more valuable business growth resources for our buyers and exhibitors alike, said Dean Russo, Group Show Director, Urban Expositions. The RangeMe platform offers an ideal, complementary way for us to expand the reach, product and services offerings of our Windy City and P3 Shows. RangeMe enables retailers with an efficient way to discover innovative new products and manage the inbound product submission process. Additionally, the platform gives suppliers increased control over the marketing of their products and greater access to retail buyers. RangeMes online match-making platform broke US ground in September 2015 with retail giant Target as their official launch partner. After the marketplace thrived for over a year in Australia, founder Nicky Jackson realized the platform was ready for the US market. Suppliers and manufacturers are constantly looking for efficient ways to market their products, said Nicky. This partnership gives retail buyers a way to discover innovation both online and in-person. For more details around the partnership visit http://www.rangeme.com/urban-expositions About Urban Expositions Based in Kennesaw, GA, and founded in 1995, Urban Expositions produces and manages a portfolio of 35+ events serving nine industry sectors, including Gift, Souvenir, Apparel, Halloween, Art, Aviation, Foodservice, Pet and Gaming. Urban also produces Airport Revenue News, a publication focused on the airport concession industry. In addition to its Kennesaw headquarters, Urban also has offices in Shelton, CT and Boca Raton, FL, and is represented by employees in California, Colorado and Illinois. http://www.urban-expo.com. For information on P3|Progressive Pet Products, visit http://www.p3petshow.com. For information on the Windy City Gift Show, visit http://www.windycitygiftshow.com About RangeMe RangeMe is the leading online platform that streamlines new product discovery between suppliers and retailers. The platform empowers retail buyers with an efficient way to discover innovative new products and manage the inbound product submission process. For product suppliers and manufacturers, RangeMe gives increased control over the marketing of their products and greater access to retail buyers. For information about RangeMe visit: http://www.rangeme.com. Our legacy of serving clients is unparalleled in the industry, and Im very proud of this coveted recognition by respected business people. LECMPA, provider of wage loss protection for railroad and transportation workers, today announced it has been named a Bronze Winner for Customer Service Department of the Year by the The Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service . The Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, created in 2006, are recognized as the world's top honors for business development, contact center, customer service, and sales professionals. Programs are judged by more than 200 respected executives, entrepreneurs, innovators and business educators. LECMPA is a nonprofit, member-owned company founded in 1910 to provide job protection to union railroad workers. It has expanded to provide job insurance protection to workers in all union transportation crafts. Winning customer service awards is a testament to the dedication and professionalism of our team, stated LECMPA President Susan Tukel. Our legacy of serving clients is unparalleled in the industry, and Im very proud of this coveted recognition by respected business people. "Entries to the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service continue to grow every year, further validating the essential roles that business development, customer service, and sales play in business success," said Michael Gallagher, president and founder of the Stevie Awards. "The widespread support of this program made the 2016 competition that much more intense among finalists. The judges were deeply impressed by the winner's accomplishments and we congratulate all of the winners on their commitment to excellence and innovation." This year's competition included more than 2,100 nominations from organizations of all sizes and in virtually every industry, an increase of 11% over 2015. A list of the 2016 Steve Award winners can be found accessed here. About The Stevie Awards The Stevie Awards are conferred in six programs: The American Business Awards, the German Stevie Awards, The International Business Awards, the Stevie Awards for Women in Business, the Stevie Awards for Sales & Customer Service, and the Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards. A seventh program, the Stevie Awards for Great Employers, will debut in April 2016. Honoring organizations of all types and sizes and the people behind them, the Stevies recognize outstanding performances in the workplace worldwide. Learn more about the Stevie Awards at StevieAwards.com, and follow the Stevie Awards on Twitter @TheStevieAwards. About LECMPA LECMPA, founded in 1910 as a cooperative assessment insurer for railroad workers, provides wage loss protection to unionized transportation workers in all crafts and industries throughout the United States. LECMPA is a nonprofit, member-owned company with approximately 27,000 members nationwide. LECMPA is headquartered in Southfield, Michigan and has regional offices throughout the United States. More information is available at http://www.lecmpa.org. Baby Boy Personalized Subscription Gift from Baby Be Hip Baby Be Hip is my go-to gift when friends or family have a baby. The gifts are always well received. Thanks for consistently making a fabulous product. I love the feedback I receive from new mom's when they call gushing because they've loved it so much. Everyone knows that babies grow so fast that it's hard to keep up. To the new parents, every month is a milestone and a new reason for photographs and celebration. Imagine the excitement of getting a brand new baby gift every month, with each gift proudly displaying the babys name and appropriate for the growing bundle of joy. Grandparents that live across the country make their presence known when they send these gifts. For those looking to stay top of mind for that important client or colleague, this is a good way to celebrate the huge milestone of a new baby in their life. This unique gift subscription makes it easy to treat that special little baby with monthly presents designed to grow right along with him or her. Baby Be Hip offers everything from personalized burp cloths that allow the baby to "spit up in style" to cool personalized metal storage buckets of their very own that will be used for years from the nursery to the playroom. These gifts are sure to become household favorites. Subscribers get top-quality, unique personalized baby gifts that are sure to delight every month for three, six, nine or a full 12 months. Plus, every item comes with free gift wrap for an elegant presentation for each and every surprise. And for an added bonus, Baby Be Hip will email the gift-giver a picture of each personalized baby gift before it gets shipped out. This is not the typical baby gift subscription box. About Baby Be Hip: Baby Be Hip has been in business for fourteen years and was started by Colleen Mook, a mother of four children. She knows the importance of sending baby gifts that are not only beautiful but functional as well. Baby Be Hip sells its products through their e-commerce website and other third party online channels. Baby Be Hip products have been featured on the TODAY Show, Good Morning America as well as many national parenting magazines. Colleen is also a frequent speaker and blogger on many topics: small business, being a mom-preneur, parenting a special needs child, etc. She can be reached for interviews at colleen@babybehip.com or by cell. LinkedIn Baby Be Hip Facebook Twitter Colleen's Blog Eskenazi Health FHIR provides the opportunity for a new HIT standard which could hold the promise to speed application development and interoperability between platforms leading to a new app ecosystem. On April 23rd and 24th Indiana HIMSS, in collaboration with Eskenazi Health and Epic, will be hosting a connectathon aimed at building the next generation of integrated and interoperable health solutions. The event will challenge programmers, clinicians, and innovators of all kinds to utilize the Epic sandbox in order to build new applications utilizing Health Level Seven (HL7) Fast Healthcare Interoperability Standard (FHIR) application programing interface (API) standards. FHIR opens up exciting opportunities for developers to build across interoperable EHRs. Were excited to work with Eskenazi Health and Indiana HIMSS to encourage grassroots innovation by the broader developer community. Janet Campbell, Vice President of Patient Engagement at Epic The connectathon stems from the many challenges healthcare currently faces across the country, including: putting patient data in the hands of patients, identifying at-risk populations, monitoring patients at risk for falls, identifying inappropriate medication use, and care planning across the continuum. The event seeks to turn innovators loose to create unique applications that address these issues and many more. Indiana has long been a state known for interoperability and health information exchange innovation. We are honored to partner with Eskenazi Health and Epic to solve some of our most complex challenges in healthcare with the brightest innovators. Brian Norris, Vice President of Indiana HIMSS This event will take place at: Eskenazi Health Rapp Family Conference Center 720 Eskenazi Avenue Indianapolis, IN 46202 FHIR provides the opportunity for a new HIT standard which could hold the promise to speed application development and interoperability between platforms leading to a new app ecosystem. Indianapolis is well positioned to be a leader in this new reality". Parveen Chand, Chief Operating Officer of Eskenazi Health This event is made possible with additional support from sponsors hc1.com, Diagnotes, Intelligent Medical Objects Inc, Eleven Fifty Coding Academy and Hall Render Killian, Health and Lyman Come spend a weekend with us and build the future! To signup for this free event and view the agenda visit Indiana HIMSS website at http://indiana.himsschapter.org/Events/Event.aspx?ItemNumber=47375&navItemNumber=8 About Indiana HIMSS The Indiana Chapter of HIMSS is one of over fifty affiliated chapters of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, the largest health care information systems professional organization in the nation. Our purpose is to bring health care professionals together to promote the exchange of experiences and knowledge among colleagues, and to assist members in their professional growth. We accomplish this objective by presenting educational seminars/conferences, networking opportunities, and a forum for the exchange of ideas among those committed to the goal of improving patient care through the effective use of information technology. Chapter members come from diverse backgrounds, all involved in some aspect of health care information systems and management. Our members consist of professionals from hospitals and clinical organizations, third-party payors, administrators, information technology vendors, consultants, management engineers, telecommunications professionals, physicians, nurses and medical informatics professionals. About Eskenazi Health For 157 years, Eskenazi Health has provided high-quality, cost-effective, patient-centered health care to the residents of Marion County and Central Indiana. Accredited by The Joint Commission, nationally recognized programs include a Level I trauma center, regional burn center, comprehensive senior care program, womens and childrens services, teen and adolescent care programs, Eskenazi Health Midtown Community Mental Health, and a network of primary care sites located throughout the neighborhoods of Indianapolis known as Eskenazi Health Center. In partnership with the Regenstrief Institute, Eskenazi Health conducts groundbreaking work that informs health information technology around the globe. Eskenazi Health also serves as the sponsoring hospital for Indianapolis Emergency Medical Services. As the public hospital division of the Health and Hospital Corporation of Marion County (HHC), Eskenazi Health partners with the Indiana University School of Medicine whose physicians provide a comprehensive range of primary and specialty care services. In December 2013, Eskenazi Health moved to its new main campus and opened the brand new Sidney & Lois Eskenazi Hospital. The new modern and efficient facility is Central Indianas first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Gold health care campus and offers unique features like a one-of-a-kind sky farm and extensive art collection. The Eskenazi Health Foundation was the recipient of $40 million gift from Indianapolis couple Sidney and Lois Eskenazi to assist with building the brand new hospital facilities. HHC recognized this generous gift by naming the new hospital and health system in the Eskenazis honor. Energetic Women This conference [is] by far the most invigorating, empowering, and motivating conference I have attended. Those in leadership roles, or whom have a desire to improve leadership skills, will benefit from the empowering Energetic Women Conference, held in Houston, Texas June 14-16, 2016. A 2015 attendee says, This conference [is] by far the most invigorating, empowering, and motivating conference I have attended. You have a permanent attendee. Energetic Women is proud to continue its history of strong professional speakers and to introduce networking social circles at this years conference. Future leaders will have the opportunity to sharpen leadership skills by pushing through barriers, navigating change, dealing with difficult workplace discussions, and learning to be more productive. Here are just a few of this years exceptional sessions: Kirsty Spraggon speaks on identifying and understanding barriers and how to push through them in Aww-dacity. Jody Urquhart teaches the power of influence and the unique skills that women offer to leadership. Colleen Kettenhofen reveals tools, tips, and techniques for navigating change and coming out on top. Janel Anderson decodes the neuroscience behind difficult conversations and provides concrete steps for facilitating discussions. Lois Barth & Elizabeth Browning debunk the 4 myths of leadership using inspirational stories, acting exercises, discussion, and, humor. Juliet Funt examines the critical difference between activity and true productivity. The focus of this leadership conference is cutting edge education including: Top quality professional speakers to discuss and educate on leadership, networking, communications, and other essential skills. An offsite social reception that highlights relationship building with peers. New social circles that allow attendees to meet people in their fields from across the country. Informative and interactive tours that promote camaraderie among conference attendees. For information about the event go to http://www.energeticwomen.org or contact Stacey Bonine at (651) 289-9600 x114, or staceyb (at) midwestenergy (dot) org. This industry-wide effort is supported by many organizations including national and regional associations, utilities, contractors and vendors from the utility industry. Association support includes: American Gas Association (AGA) American Public Gas Association (APGA) Center for Energy Workforce Development (CEWD) IEEE Power & Engineering Society (PES) MEA Northeast Gas Association (NGA) Pink Petro Southern Gas Association (SGA) About Energetic Women: Energetic Womens mission is to prepare women within the energy industry for leadership roles in operations and engineering. They encourage leadership growth and development, through mentorship and supportive programs. Energetic Women is a service of MEA. About MEA: MEA serves the people that delivery electricity and natural gas to homes and businesses. MEA (Midwest ENERGY Association) was founded as a trade association over 100 years ago by distribution utilities, whose vision was to improve safety and efficiency. Today, utility companies around the globe benefit from MEA's industry learning seminars, operations summits, and other events. Members collaborated to develop EnergyU, the world's premier online training and testing system for gas and electric distribution utilities. Scenes of commotion filled the campus as students of University of Hyderabad raised slogans in front of security personnel mobilised to contain the violence. Hyderabad: The University of Hyderabad was rocked by violent protests on Tuesday when vice-chancellor Prof. Appa Rao Podile resumed charge after being on leave for nearly two months, since the suicide of Rohith Vemula in January. The students have been demanding his resignation since then. The police manhandled and lathi-charged students who then resorted to stone pelting. In the skirmish five policemen and scores of students were injured. Around 10.30 am, while Prof. Podile was conducting a meeting of the Executive Council at the vice-chancellors lodge, some students entered the lodge and started vandalising the building. Soon after, a group of students, in support of Prof. Podile and allegedly belonging to the ABVP, and some faculty members of the School of Life Sciences, entered the lodge to protect the V-C. They locked the room where the executive council meeting was being conducted from inside. University of Hyderabad sees day of chaos University of Hyderabad was virtually shut down after Tuesdays violence. During the ransacking of the Vice-Chancellors lodge on Tuesday morning, a few non-teaching staff members were manhandled by the students resulting in a strike by the University of Hyderabad Non-Teaching Employees Association (UHNTEA). As a result, all the eight messes in the university were shut indefinitely, leaving students with no option but to go to the canteens or outside the campus for food. Administration works also ceased. UHNTEA president R. Gangaraju said, When some students were vandalising the V-Cs lodge, a few of the non-teaching staff members present there advised them not to damage university property. However, they did not heed the advice and manhandled the staff members. Such violent protests were never witnessed in the university before. We have decided to go on strike till there is an inquiry and those who manhandled the staff members are brought to justice. Till then hostel messes will remain closed. There are around 1,000 non-teaching staff including around 200 officer cadre staff. All classes were also cancelled. A senior professor said most classes might not function on Wednesday too as the teachers were divided on the issue. Apart from staff members, a few media personnel were also manhandled by the students while they were clicking pictures and shooting videos at the V-Cs lodge. The media personnel, some of whom suffered minor injuries, also staged a protest outside the V-Cs lodge. Dynamic Corporate Fitness Program "its important for employees to be physically active in a fitness program. It helps with their productivity at work and also results in less sick days, lowering health insurance costs. Earlier this month, Dynamic Fitness launched corporate fitness memberships for local businesses in the Houston, Texas area. The fitness chain also implemented a Corporate Fitness Month, offering innovative, weekly blog posts on the topic and a special, limited-time-only deal on their new corporate program in the month of March. This is a brand new program offered by Dynamic Fitness and the goal is to partner with the community to advocate for wellness in the workplace. The fitness center is reaching out to any kind of business that embraces a wellness program, ranging from small neighborhood stores to large firms with over two hundred employees. Dynamic Fitness knows the benefits of its corporate memberships and wants to invite other businesses to engage in this valuable program. Were going to help out companies and HR departments by offering corporate memberships at a discounted rate, said Jared Williams, the CEO of Dynamic Fitness. This discount gives neighborhood businesses a higher incentive to sign up, while the program itself will keep employees coming back to the gym. In addition, this membership also includes four free personal training sessions, part of the fitness centers Dynamic Results program. Dynamic Fitness is offering these sessions to help employees of local businesses in the first 4 to 5 weeks of their fitness routine. This will guide them to get on the right track to continue visiting the facility and use the full extent of their corporate memberships. This kind of membership will guide employees to finally make the fitness decision theyve been thinking about. Williams went on to emphasize, We understand that getting started is the hardest part of fitness. For companies, its important for employees to be physically active in a fitness program. It helps with their productivity at work and also results in less sick days, lowering health insurance costs. With this program, Dynamic Fitness has opened the door to partner with nearby businesses and build professional relationships with them. Dynamic Fitness plans to expand the program to include corporate competitions and other corporate team building events later this year. About Dynamic Fitness: Dynamic Fitness aims to be the leading fitness provider in the communities it serves. Their amenities, spread out through 30,000 sq. feet facilities, include tanning, free weight areas, swimming pools, group training programs, and more, in addition to convenient open hours. To learn more about Dynamic Fitness and to view offerings by location, please visit http://www.thedynamicfitness.com Attendees during a question and answer period. "Extremely educational! This Workshop helped cement the concept of hydroponics as a viable technology." February CEA Hands-On Workshop Attendee Lewis Arnold. Growers Supply, the industry leader in greenhouses, high tunnels and hydroponic systems, will be hosting its next CEA Hands-On Workshop April 27-29 at the companys CEA Learning Center East in South Windsor, Connecticut. The April CEA Hands-on Workshop offers attendees an education-filled three day schedule in which Growers Supply experts and industry specialists educate attendees on the latest trends in new and innovative growing techniques, such as hydroponics, aquaponics and microgreen production. Growers Supplys April CEA Hands-on Workshop costs only $995 for the full three days. This cost includes a three day hotel stay, lunch each day and a complete course workbook. Upon completion of the workshop, each attendee will receive a $995 product credit that can be used towards the purchase of any controlled environment product, including GrowSpan greenhouses, HydroCycle hydroponic systems, heaters and more. Curriculum The workshops curriculum begins with the basics of controlled environment agriculture, and then advances to how attendees can integrate or improve CEA techniques in their operation. Over the three days, attendees receive valuable information and professional insight on topics such as sizing a greenhouse, temperature and humidity control within a controlled growing environment, integrated pest management techniques, the benefits of specific hydroponic systems and how they compare to others, tapping into two markets with aquaponics and much more. To sign up for the upcoming April CEA Hands-On Workshop contact Kelley Roche at 800.476.9715 ext. 1649. Click here for more information. ### Growers Supply is the leading manufacturer of CEA structures, system and supplies, offering design-build solutions for the horticulture industry. With a catalog of over 30,000 products, complete growing systems can be custom designed to fit the needs of any business. FarmTeks corporate headquarters are located in South Windsor, Conn., and supports a campus for manufacturing and distribution in Dyersville, Iowa. Bernard Edward Bharats new book, A Breath Of Fresh Air Poems Of Encouragement And Inspiration, ($21.99, paperback, 9781498451239; $9.99, e-book, 9781498451246) is a collection of his poems and prose each providing encouragement and inspiration and allowing the reader to see the good and beauty that exists in the world. This heartwarming book of poetry acts as reminder that whatever one accomplishes, he or she must always remember that God is in control. Over 15 years ago, author Bernard Edward Bharat, went on a journey with God when he became the victim of a Spinal Cord Injury. Through his pain and perseverance, he was inspired by the Lord to express his feelings in writing on a daily basis. When his wife Sheree Ann, looked at the beautiful poems he had written, she encouraged him to share his writing with others in this book. It is hoped that readers will understand that the way we live is always guided by God, states the author. Within a family environment, it is even more important that we recognize our interdependence and the worth of each other. Being a victim of spinal cord injury and having suffered memory loss, Bernard Edward Bharat began writing daily as a means of communication with his family. With no time for formal research or planning, his genuine and heartfelt writings were lovingly inspired by God. It is remarkable that someone with no formal literary training or experience could write such insightful, inspiring and interesting poems. The purchase of this book will help to support Bernard and his family in their quest to provide assistance for other persons living with Spinal Cord Injury in Trinidad and Tobago. Xulon Press, a division of Salem Media Group, is the worlds largest Christian self-publisher, with more than 15,000 titles published to date. Retailers may order A Breath Of Fresh Air Poems Of Encouragement And Inspiration through Ingram Book Company and/or Spring Arbor Book Distributors. The book is available online through xulonpress.com/bookstore, amazon.com, and barnesandnoble.com. Media Contact: Bernard Edward Bharat Email: shereeann_bharat(at)hotmail(dot)com Destin Charity Wine Auction Each year weve been able to increase the amount of money raised. We were thrilled with the results. Last years auction was the first time we exceeded $2 million in live revenue." - John Russell, President, Destin Charity Wine Auction Foundation Destin Charity Wine Auction Foundation (DCWAF) announces that their 10th Annual Auction in 2015 ranked among the nations top 10 highest-grossing charity auctions by Wine Spectator Magazine for the fourth consecutive year. Over the last 10 years, DCWAF has donated more than $10 million to support children in need in Northwest Florida. In 2015, DCWAF donated $2.3 million to 14 local charities serving children in need. We are pleased to maintain our ranking as one of the top 10 charity wine auctions in the country by Wine Spectator Magazine, said John Russell, president, Destin Charity Wine Auction Foundation. Each year weve been able to increase the amount of money raised. Last years auction was the first time we exceeded $2 million in live revenue with an increase of $296,567 in funds raised. We are honored to be among the top charity wine auctions in the United States. Russell continued, What is most important is that we continue to raise critical funds for children in need in Northwest Florida. We are extremely grateful to all of our patrons, sponsors, volunteers and leadership. Their hard work, loyalty, tenacity and generosity have helped us to achieve this milestone. Wine Spectator reported that the top five highest grossing wine auctions of 2015 were Naples Winter Wine Festival, Auction Napa Valley, Sonoma Harvest Wine Auction, Southwest Food & Wine Festival and V Foundation Wine Celebration with Destin Charity Wine Auction not far behind at number six. During the past several years, DCWAF has experienced exponential growth in name recognition, attendance, and revenue. As a result, the organization has been able to attract some of the most influential vintners in the world to participate in the event. In addition, the weekend draws celebrity chefs from across the country who are paired with premier vintners for the patron dinners. In 2016, Destin Charity Wine Auction will feature approximately 300 silent and live offerings, and will welcome hundreds of auction attendees who look forward to the ability to secure rare and highly sought after wines and wine-oriented trips. In 2016, DCWAF is proud to offer auction lots that include trips to New York City, London, Tokyo, as well as five wine trips to Italy, and three wine trips to France. New for 2016, the Auction will feature trips to Montana, Seattle, and the Canadian Rockies. The 2016 Auction will also feature rare wines, including Screaming Eagle, Harlan, Shafer and their signature lot Magnum Force that includes a record 50 magnums of wine. This year, the Destin Charity Wine Auction will be held on Saturday, April 30 at Grand Boulevard at Sandestin. The 2016 Honorary Vintner is Ric Forman of Forman Vineyard and the International Honorary Vintner is Cristina Mariani-May of Castello Banfi. The weekend kicks off with 14 intimate Patron Dinners held on Friday evening, April 29, allowing patrons to experience exclusive wine and food pairings and get a closer look at one of the 14 charities this mission-driven event benefits. For more information on DCWAF and the Auction, visit http://www.dcwaf.org. To view the 2015 financials and annual report, visit dcwaf.org/annualreport2015. ### About Destin Charity Wine Auction Foundation Destin Charity Wine Auction Foundations mission is to connect wine enthusiasts to raise money to benefit children in need in Northwest Florida. Founded in 2005, DCWAF has donated more than $10 million to Northwest Florida charities through hosting world class wine and culinary events. These funds have impacted the lives of over 60,000 youth, including those afflicted by health issues and abuse. The funds raised are distributed to 14 local non-profit organizations for specific projects and programs that benefit children. Charity partners for 2015 include Children in Crisis, Childrens Volunteer Health Network, Emerald Coast Autism Center, the Emerald Coast Childrens Advocacy Center, Food for Thought, Habitat for Humanity of Walton County, Arc of the Emerald Coast, Homelessness and Housing Alliance, Pathways for Change, Sacred Heart Hospital on the Emerald Coast, Shelter House of Northwest Florida, AMIKids Emerald Coast, Boys and Girls Clubs of the Emerald Coast, and Youth Village. Learn more at DCWAF.org or facebook.com/DCWAF. DCWAF Media Contact: Jordan Lacenski, 850-650-3732, jordan(at)dcwaf.org UCHealth UCHealth opened its newest freestanding emergency room in Longmont, Colorado today. To celebrate the grand opening, UCHealth Emergency Room-Longmont hosted a ribbon cutting and donated $5,000 to Longmont High School. On behalf of our entire team, we are pleased to join the Longmont community and look forward to providing residents with access to the high quality emergency medical care, said Dr. Jeffrey Baker, facility medical director of UCHealth Emergency Room- Longmont. Different from urgent care centers, all UCHealth Emergency Room facilities are open 24 hours a day, 7 days per week, and are staffed exclusively with board-certified emergency physicians and emergency trained registered nurses. The facilities are equipped with a full radiology suite, including CT scanner, Digital X-ray, Ultrasound, as well as on-site laboratories certified by the Clinical Laboratory Improvements Amendments (CLIA) and accredited by the Commission on Office Laboratories Accreditation (COLA). The new UCHealth Emergency Room- Longmont is located at 2101 Main Street, Longmont, CO 80501. For more information, visit http://www.uchealthemergencyroom.com/locations/denver/longmont/. About UCHealth UCHealth is a Front Range health system that delivers the highest quality patient care with the highest quality patient experience. UCHealth combines Memorial Hospital, Poudre Valley Hospital, Medical Center of the Rockies, Colorado Health Medical Group, and University of Colorado Hospital into an organization dedicated to health and providing unmatched patient care in the Rocky Mountain West. UCHealth partners with the University of Colorado School of Medicine and numerous community organizations to provide care. Separately, these institutions can continue providing superior care to patients and service to the communities they serve. Together, they push the boundaries of medicine, attracting more research funding, hosting more clinical trials and improving health through innovation. About Adeptus Health Inc. Adeptus Health Inc. (NYSE: ADPT) is a leading patient-centered healthcare organization expanding access to the highest quality emergency medical care through its network of freestanding emergency rooms and partnerships with premier healthcare providers. In Texas, Adeptus Health owns and operates First Choice Emergency Room, the nation's largest and oldest network of independent freestanding emergency rooms. In Colorado, in partnership with University of Colorado Health, Adeptus Health operates UCHealth Emergency Rooms. In Arizona, with Dignity Health, Adeptus Health operates Dignity Health Arizona General Hospital and freestanding emergency rooms. In Louisiana, Adeptus Health has a partnership with Ochsner Health System, the state's largest healthcare system, to improve access to emergency medical care. In Ohio, Adeptus Health has a partnership with Mount Carmel Health System to develop freestanding emergency rooms. All Adeptus Health freestanding facilities are fully equipped emergency rooms with a complete radiology suite of diagnostic technology (CT scanner, ultrasound, and digital X-ray), on-site laboratory, and staffed with board-certified physicians and emergency trained registered nurses. According to patient feedback collected by Press Ganey Associates Inc., Adeptus Health provides the highest quality emergency medical care and received the 2013, 2014 and 2015 Press Ganey Guardian of Excellence Award for exceeding the 95th percentile in patient satisfaction nationwide. For more information please visit us on the web at adhc.com. In all my years overseeing large-scale projects, I have never seen a project that delivered on the exact date chosen months before. WebLinc, the commerce platform provider for the fastest growing online retailers, today announced that Tahari Arthur S. Levine, the affordable luxury brand catering to the professional woman in all aspects of her life, has launched its first ecommerce site, http://www.tahariasl.com, on the WebLinc Commerce Platform. Headquartered in New York Citys fashion district, Arthur S. Levine has been at the helm of several of Americas most important fashion lines for more than forty years. In September 2001, Levine formed a partnership with Elie Tahari which was the next natural progression for both proven success stories. In all my years overseeing large-scale projects, I have never seen a project that delivered on the exact date chosen months before, said a Tahari ASL partner, Les Schreiber. WebLincs project managers kept us on track and were available any time we had questions. The daily communication and reprioritization of resources were instrumental in keeping our site on schedule. Applying WebLincs roots in retail and innovative technology, Tahari ASLs fully responsive site goes beyond the standard online shopping experience. Site visitors can see quick views of products within categories and use WebLincs exclusive hearting functionality to favorite items to purchase at a later time. To further ensure a positive customer experience, the site offers free shipping and returns as well as a live chat feature trust factors that encourage purchases and customer satisfaction. We needed a platform that would allow us to hit the ground running, said Judy Reiley, director of ecommerce at Tahari ASL. The inherent flexibility that WebLincs platform gives us is something no other ecommerce platform has right now. Between the instant chemistry our teams had and the well designed sites WebLinc presented, our decision to work with WebLinc was an easy one. We made a promise to Tahari ASL that wed meet their launch date and we did it without sacrificing quality, said Darren C. Hill, CEO and co-founder of WebLinc. All the technology their team needed to start selling online is included in our base product. The project relied on our teams experience, availability and efforts in keeping the site on track. Were very happy WebLinc could open another source of revenue for such a legacy brand like Tahari ASL. Since launching in early February, site traffic and sales have exceeded Tahari ASLs expectations and the brand is more than pleased with consumer reaction. About WebLinc WebLinc is the commerce platform for fast growing online retailers. Mid to large-size retailers consistently outpace their competition with the modern, agile technologies of the WebLinc Commerce Platform and the companys strategic expertise. Based in Philadelphia with satellite offices in New York, Los Angeles and Toronto, WebLinc powers commerce sites for dynamic, high-growth retailers including Sanrio/Hello Kitty, Urban Outfitters, Inc.s brands Terrain and BHLDN, U.S. Polo Assn., Stila Cosmetics, Jeffers Pet, and others. To learn more, visit http://www.weblinc.com or follow @WebLinc. We are honored to participate in the ARMA NYC luncheon...In addition to risk mitigation, security and other benefits, what many firms do not recognize is the opportunity to increase cost recovery potential in these areas when outsourcing." Legal support services consulting firm Mattern & Associates, LLC announces today that its Director of Client Technology and Strategy, Stephen Cole, will present 8 Ways Managed Services Benefit Law Firms at an ARMA NYC Luncheon to be held at global law firm Morgan Lewis & Bockius in Manhattan on Tuesday, March 29, 2016. Managed Services has garnered enormous buzz in the industry in the past couple of years. From national to regional providers, law firms are increasingly presented with options to off-load all (or components) of their document management needs including infrastructure, software, and people. This trend is extremely prevalent in the litigation support (eDiscovery) realm. When paired with a guaranteed length of contract and revenue commitment (going beyond the traditional transactional models), these Managed Services models provide multiple benefits to law firms. Other back and middle office functions such as Word Processing, Accounts Payable, and Administrative Assistance also continue to gain traction with outsourced models. In the new security threat landscape, firms have decided that using their own infrastructure is not worth the risk for hosting client data. Instead, they are looking to providers that have all the proper security protocols, certifications, uptime and bandwidth guarantees, and disaster recovery fallback that the firm cannot possibly justify the investment (nor want to offer to their clients as a business). As a result, firms have been able to shift a former sunk capital expenditure to more of an on-going operational expense that can be passed along to their clients. In a 2015 Managed eDiscovery and Litigation Support Survey, 28% of respondents indicated that their firm had entered into some form of Managed Services arrangement concerning their litigation support offering currently, with 46% of respondents indicated that their firm is considering the use of Managed Services for litigation support moving forward. Other data points from the Survey include: 28% utilize a Managed Services approach for eDiscovery 80% recover 3rd party expenses for eDiscovery Managed Services 78% currently manage litigation discovery in-house on Firm infrastructure 76% currently provide digital document services / litigation support on-site Coles ARMA NYC educational session will discuss why more firms are turning to managed service providers, including risk mitigation, security, technology obsolescence, flexibility, price as well as cost recovery opportunities. Stephen Cole comments, We are honored to participate in the ARMA NYC luncheon and look forward to leading a highly engaged discussion on this trending topic. In addition to risk mitigation, security and other benefits, what many firms do not recognize is the opportunity to increase cost recovery potential in these areas when outsourcing. I look forward to illustrating industry examples and discussing the multiple benefits with attendees. This session is open to ARMA non-members. Morgan Lewis & Bockius is located at 101 Park Ave. in New York City. To learn more about ARMA NYC, click here. Stephen Coles bio Stephen Cole is Director, Client Technology & Strategy at Mattern & Associates. Cole has a successful track record with over twenty years of expertise in consulting for large law firms, extending from Litigation Support, Records & Information Management, Word Processing, Imaging, Cost Recovery to BPO and end-to-end eDiscovery services. Cole gained his experience both on the service provider and law firm sides including as the Vice President over the legal business unit at Pitney Bowes Management Services, a technology specialist at an AmLaw 50 firm, and most recently, a Regional Vice President of Ipro Tech, an advanced eDiscovery solution. About Mattern & Associates Mattern & Associates assists law firms in developing an unbiased strategic direction for their business processes while improving both the cost-effectiveness and the recovery of expenses for these services. For more information on Mattern & Associates, visit http://www.matternassoc.com, check out their blog, http://www.matternoffact.com, or follow them on Twitter @MatternOfFact. The company is based in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. KOVAL, one of Americas premiere craft distilleries, will expand distribution to the United Kingdom with international luxury spirits importer and exporter Emporia Brands. Founded in 2008 as Chicagos first distillery since the mid-1800s, KOVALs innovative distilling technologies and cutting-edge design practices have led them to become an award-winning, internationally renowned craft spirits manufacturer. Founders Robert and Sonat Birnecker chose to leave their academic careers to bring the distilling traditions of Roberts Austrian family to America. In making this decision, they vowed to make spirits from scratch and to change the way people understand whiskey by creating a new, signature styleusing only the heart cut of the distillateaffording a brighter, cleaner take on whiskey. Were thrilled to be expanding our international distribution efforts to the United Kingdom and look forward to working with Emporias innovative team, said Robert Birnecker. Emporia Brands is taking on a range of KOVALs unique whiskeys, including KOVAL Bourbon, Rye, and Millet. Each a rare expression, KOVAL Bourbon is a naturally gluten-free spirit comprised of 51% corn and 49% millet bottled at 47% ABV, while KOVAL Rye (2013s Best International Whisky by InterWhisky) and Millet are single grain whiskeys distilled with 100% rye and 100% millet from the Midwest, bottled at 40% ABV. All whiskeys are certified kosher, single barrel expressions aged up to 4 years in new American Oak barrels. Emporia Brands will also take on KOVAL Dry Gin, one of 2015s most highly awarded gins in the categories of both spirit and package design. A Double Gold recipient from the 2015 San Francisco World Spirits Competition, KOVAL Dry Gin is a balanced, crisp gin with notes of citrus, pepper, and a round floral body. In the coming months, Emporia Brands plans to add KOVAL Four Grain whiskey to their portfolio as well. KOVAL CEO and Master Distiller Robert Birnecker will travel to the UK this April to launch a series of master classes in London, Manchester, and Edinburgh. As the co-founder of Kothe Distilling Technologies, Robert has become one of Americas top distilling experts and internationally renowned consultants, educating over 2,500 aspiring distillers in the last six years alone. Emporia Brands is delighted to announce our partnership with a true craft champion, KOVAL. Robert and Sonats huge passion is reflected in our team, and we look forward to hosting Roberts nationwide master classes throughout April, said Jack Rackham, Commercial Director of Emporia Brands. KOVAL will be available from retailers across the United Kingdom, including Harvey Nichols, Masters of Malt, The Whisky Exchange, Royal Mile Whiskies, and online at thedrinkshop.com. National Council for Prescription Drug Programs NCPDP announced today that ChainDrugStore.net Incorporated has joined NCPDPs Elite Partner Program. ChainDrugStore.net becomes the fifth and final organization to be accepted into the exclusive program. NCPDP Elite Partners commit to the highest level of sustained support for the valuable work of NCPDP in advancing patient safety and interoperability. We have enjoyed a long-standing business relationship with ChainDrugStore.net explained Lee Ann Stember, President of NCPDP. By joining our Elite Partner Program, ChainDrugStore.net is demonstrating continuing, strategic alignment and support for NCPDP. ChainDrugStore.net supports a network of pharmacy stakeholders through its industry web site, hub.pharmacyfocus.com, with the goal of positively impacting pharmacy purchasing, dispensing, reimbursement, and contracting. hub.pharmacyfocus.com provides the industry with a set of online tools designed to streamline communications, drive analytics and proprietary business intelligence, and manage the day to day data requirements of a pharmacy network. ChainDrugStore.net is excited to be a part of NCPDP's Elite Partner program, said its Chief Executive Officer, Todd Grover. NCPDP actively supports pharmacy stakeholders across the supply chain, working together for the benefit of the industry and the patients it serves. We are committed to supporting NCPDP's role as the facilitator of this important work. For more information on ChainDrugStore.net, visit hub.pharmacyfocus.com. Attendees of NCPDPs 2016 Annual Technology & Business Conference, which will be held May 2-4, 2016, can visit ChainDrugStore.net at the Solutions Marketplace, Booth #404. About NCPDP Founded in 1977, NCPDP is a not-for-profit, ANSI-accredited, Standards Development Organization with approximately 1,500 members representing virtually every sector of the pharmacy services industry. Our diverse membership provides leadership and healthcare business solutions through education and standards, created using the consensus building process. NCPDP has been named in federal legislation, including HIPAA, MMA, and HITECH. NCPDP members have created standards such as the Telecommunication Standard and Batch Standard, the SCRIPT Standard for ePrescribing, the Manufacturers Rebate Standard and more to improve communication within the pharmacy industry. Our data products include dataQ, a robust database of information on more than 76,000 pharmacies, and HCIdea, an innovative prescriber database that provides continually updated information on more than two million prescribers. NCPDP's RxReconn is a legislative tracking product for real-time monitoring of pharmacy-related state and national legislative and regulatory activity. For more information about NCPDP Standards, Data Services, Products, Educational Programs and Work Group meetings, go online at http://www.ncpdp.org or call (480) 477-1000. ### Anticipatory mourning is an important focus. Beyond the obvious benefits to the overall well-being of the caregiver, addressing the consequences of this unique grief reduces the possibility of subsequent abuse and neglect of the care recipient. HealthForumOnline (HFO), a nationally-approved (APA, ASWB, NBCC) provider of online continuing education (CE) for psychologists, social workers, counselors, and other allied healthcare professionals announces recent updates to our online CE course, Anticipatory Mourning in Alzheimers Family Caregivers. Over 5 million Americans currently have Alzheimers Disease (AD), making it the 6th leading cause of death overall, and the 5th leading cause of death in persons age 65 or older (1). While deaths resulting from heart disease, stroke and prostate cancer have decreased, AD-related deaths have increased by 71% (1). Someone in the U.S. develops AD every 67 seconds (1). That rate is estimated to double by 2050, with one new case expected to develop every 33 seconds, resulting in nearly 1 million new cases per year. Between 11-16 million Americans will have AD by mid-century. AD not only impacts the life of the patient, but also dramatically influences the lives of their caregivers. More than 15 million family members and other unpaid caregivers provide an estimated 17.9 billion hours of care to people with AD (1-2). Given the roles demands and chronicity, AD caregivers themselves are at high risk for psychological distress and poor health outcomes (e.g., 2-3). Moreover, these harmful sequellae occur earlier in the caregiver process than originally thought and often worsen rather than abate upon the institutionalization, or even death, of the care recipient (4). More than one year following the death of the AD patient 16.5% of bereaved caregivers displayed syndromal-level depression and roughly 30-34% displayed clinically significant depression (5-6). As many as 20% of AD caregivers develop complicated grief (7). Health professionals now understand that it is not uncommon for AD caregivers to experience anticipatory mourning (e.g., 4) -- the emotional process innate to watching a loved ones deteriorating condition and the recognition of their slow future decline. Anticipatory mourning is an important focus in this population; beyond the obvious benefits to the overall well-being of the caregiver, addressing the consequences of this unique kind of grief reduces the possibility of subsequent abuse and neglect of the AD patient. As the number of AD patients increases, thereby increasing the number of informal caregivers, this need will become even greater. This online CE course for mental health professionals discusses common informal/family caregiver categories and their unique needs. Course content defines anticipatory mourning in the Alzheimers context and indicates the temporal markers in this process. Factors that influence anticipatory mourning are discussed, along with the seven operations of healthy anticipatory mourning. Common emotional reactions in anticipatory mourning, the dangers to the Alzheimers patient, and associated interventions are presented to guide treatment planning. Health professionals can choose from HFOs over 20 categories of continuing education (CE) topics related to health psychology and behavioral medicine containing more than 100 online CE courses that are fast, convenient and cost-effective. 1. Alzheimers Association. (2015). 2015 Alzheimers disease facts and figures. Alzheimers Dementia, 11(3), 332-384. 2. Lianque et al. (2016). Concept Analysis: Alzheimers Caregiver Stress. Nursing Forum, 51(1), 21-31. 3. Mitchell et al. (2015). Informal caregivers of clients with neurological conditions: profiles, patterns and risk factors for distress from a home care prevalence study. BMC Health Services Research, 15, 350. 4. Garand et al. (2012). Anticipatory grief in new family caregivers of persons with mild cognitive impairment and dementia. Alzheimer Disease and Associated Disorders, 26(2),159-165. 5. Schulz et al. (2003). Resources for enhancing Alzheimers caregiver health investigator: End-of-life care and the effects of bereavement on family caregivers of persons with dementia. New England Journal of Medicine, 349, 1936-1942. 6. Zhang et al. (2008). Depressive symptom trajectories and associated risks among bereaved Alzheimer disease caregivers. American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, 16, 145155. 7. Supiano et al. (2015). Sudden-On-Chronic Death and Complicated Grief in Bereaved Dementia Caregivers: Two Case Studies of Complicated Grief Group Therapy. Journal of Social Work End of Life Palliative Care, 11(3-4), 267-282. Bengaluru: Some 2,19,000 students across the state had appeared for the Pre University Chemistry examination on Monday. And now, because of a handful of corrupt Education Department officials, all 2,19,000 have to sit for a re-examination on March 29, announced Primary and Secondary Education Minister Kimmane Ratnakar. The minister told the Legislative Council on Tuesday, said as many as 36 of the 37 questions were leaked. He also admitted that he did not have faith in an inquiry by his department and requested the home department to hold a parallel inquiry into the matter to make sure the culprits did not get away. Parents, students protest Hundreds of parents and students tried to lay siege to the PU Board office in Malleswaram and gherao Board Director Pallavi Akurathi over the chemistry question paper leak, on Tuesday. A few protesting parents asked the PU Board not to hold the re-exam and not to inconvenience genuine students, while a few others wanted a re-examination and immediate action against the culprits. As the protesters tried to enter the board office, tensed moments prevailed for some time. Malleswaram police rushed to the spot and dispersed the crowd. The parents and students shouted slogans against the PU Board and its director Ms Akurathi. She justified the PU Board decision to hold the re-exam, saying it will give justice to genuine students and those who are against it can approach the state government as decision was taken at the government level. A few students and parents opposed re-examination on March 29, saying the Kannada exam is scheduled on March 28. Officials told them that they would look into the issue. Maths: Decision on grace marks today Law Minister T.B. Jayachandra, along with Primary and Secondary Education Minister Kimmane Ratnakar and the department officials will decide if grace marks can be awarded to II PU mathematics paper, where more than 15 marks questions had appeared out of syllabus. The issue was raised in the Assembly on Tuesday by Tumkur MLA Dr Rafiq Ahamed. BJP member Suresh Kumar said that the government has decided to conduct re-examination for chemistry after the question paper was leaked. The government should either think of providing the students grace marks or conduct re-examination for mathematics along with chemistry, as it concerns the future of children, he said. Mr Jayachandra said that he will take a decision within a day. TaKaDu, a global leader in Integrated Event Management solutions for the water industry, announced today that it has formed a partnership with G&A Consultants S.A., an integrator that provides services to the IT, telecommunications, energy and water markets in Chile. The companies will work together to bring TaKaDus software solution to the Chilean water sector, enabling customers to expand their water saving initiatives and improve their network management strategies. TaKaDu empowers utilities to use their data to improve water network efficiency, analyzing the data to detect and manage the full life-cycle of network events, including leaks, bursts, water pressure and faulty assets, etc. Based on sophisticated algorithms, TaKaDus IoT solution helps water utilities to detect problems early, reduce water loss, shorten repair cycles and improve customer service. Bringing cutting-edge technologies to our customers in Chile is a priority for us and we look forward to introducing TaKaDus solution to the local water sector, said Roberto Gurovich, CEO of G&A Consultores. The Chilean water utility market is evolving quickly, and were excited to bring top-notch innovation that will help utilities save water, energy, time, and money, he added. Provided as a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS), TaKaDu's platform brings the benefits of cloud-computing to the water sector. With TaKaDu, G&A Consultores will leverage on its vast background in providing and implementing IT solutions accessible to the Chilean market. A leader in integrated solutions with extensive experience in software, SaaS, cloud computing, and data center management, G&A Consultores is uniquely positioned to help the local water sector. South America in general, and Chile, in particular, is a key territory for TaKaDu. G&A Consultores is an ideal partner because they understand the importance of harnessing technology and big data analytics to gain value and have proven experience. We are pleased that G&A Consultores will be TaKaDus partner for smart water networks in Chile, said Amir Peleg, Founder and CEO of TaKaDu. TaKaDus patented solution is deployed with leading water utilities worldwide, including in Australia, the UK and Brazil. The solution was first deployed in Chile in 2011 in the water utility, Aguas de Antofagasta. G&A will be hosting a one day seminar in Santiago on 14th April, 2016, to present TaKaDus Integrated Event Management Solution. To register for the event, please contact us today. END About G&A Consultores S. A. G&A Consultores (http://www.gya.cl/) is a provider of true end-to-end converged solutions across interlinked sectors including ICT, energy, and industry. G&A Consultores delivers systems, solutions, and integration across the entire value chain, offering a seamless link between areas that, in the past, have been separated by technology. With a wide array of products and services along with in-house engineering skills, the company acts as a product neutral, cross-industry systems integrator. As a Chilean-based managed and owned company, G&A Consultores has had extensive experience in Chile and other South American countries for the last 25 years, leveraging synergies through both organic and inorganic growth. The company is continuously diversifying its fields of action, including strategic planning, regulatory issues and tariff models, management and business planning, processes and efficiency improvements, environment and energy, and smart water management. About TaKaDu TaKaDu (http://www.takadu.com) optimizes operational efficiency and improves water management across-the-board. A proven IoT solution for the water industry, TaKaDu offers the most comprehensive integrated event management platform, based on big data analytics and sophisticated algorithms. TaKaDu provides multiple benefits, including reduced leakages and supply interruptions, automatic early warnings of anomalies, improved data integrity, and KPI measurements. Ensuring a faster response time, TaKaDu also helps to improve customer service. A cloud-based SaaS platform, TaKaDu brings together huge amounts of information in an easy-to-use, flexible and scalable solution. Its innovative approach has earned notable commendations, including the World Economic Forum Tech-Pioneer Award and a Harvard Business School case-study. Press Contacts: Paul Guiloff G&A Consultores S. A. paulguiloff(at)gya(dot)cl +56 2 2360 0856 Natalie Chouraqui TaKaDu natalie(dot)chouraqui(at)takadu(dot)com +972-54-4750-889 Spaceport Camden This is the single most attention given to a bill in my tenure in the Senate. In fact, more than 2,300 emails and letters have been sent in this past week alone. Spaceport Camden advocates came out to the Georgia Capitol in droves last week to demonstrate their support for the Georgia Spaceflight bill, HB 734. On the recent hearing, Senator Bruce Thompson, Chairman of the Georgia State Senate Science & Technology Committee said, this is the single most attention given to a bill in my tenure in the Senate. In fact, more than 2,300 emails and letters have been sent in this past week alone. Supporters of the bill who attended the hearing included students and professors from the Georgia Institute of Technology, which offers the largest aerospace engineering program in the country; K-12 educators who want to see a STEM pipeline created in the state; construction, tourism and supply chain workers who want the thousands of jobs Spaceport Camden will create and Georgia residents who want to see the $300 billion commercial space industry brought to the state. Advocates for Spaceport Camden are also showing their support on Facebook and through online petitions. The Georgia House of Representatives recently passed House Bill 734 by a vote of 164-8 and it now resides in the state Senate. I applaud the House and Senate for all the attention and consideration they are giving HB 734, said Steve Howard, Camden County administrator and project leader for Spaceport Camden. This bill signifies Georgias ability to compete on a global scale for a piece of the more than $300 billion commercial space marketplace. We are closer to bringing countless supply chain jobs and new high-paying jobs to the Coast and keeping Georgias top aerospace talent within our states borders. The bill defines procedures for spaceflight activity in Georgia and is modeled after the Texas law, Limited Liability for Space Flight Activities, and defines procedures for spaceflight activity, which is an industry standard that is used in all other space friendly states. The Senate Committee Chairman said the bill will go under review for more study before a vote is called. About Spaceport Camden Our Vision is to develop a successful world-class spaceport through a public-private partnership that establishes Camden County as the Space Center of the United States. Our Mission is to create the premier spaceport strategically positioned to provide economic diversity with a competitive advantage for the space sector, Camden County, the State of Georgia and the United States of America. For more information please view our website at http://www.SpaceportCamden.us. Selected Correspondence of Thomas Moore Johnson -- Volume One: The Esotericists It will be impossible in the future to discuss the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, the Theosophical Society in America, or occultism in America during the last decades of the nineteenth century without reference to this book -- John Patrick Deveney The Typhon Press announces the immediate availability of its newest title, Letters to the Sage: Selected Correspondence of Thomas Moore Johnson, edited by Patrick D. Bowen and K. Paul Johnson. Thomas Moore Johnson, the Sage of the Osage, was a small town lawyer in western Missouri whose international correspondence was largely a result of his work on The Platonist, a short-lived but influential journal published intermittently from 1881 until 1888. During this period, Johnson was instrumental in the development and expansion of two esoteric organizations: the Theosophical Society (TS) and the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor. Johnson served on the American Board of Control of the Theosophical Society, but he became more seriously involved with the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, a secret society with a focus on Western occult traditionals, rather than the occult traditions of the East. Letters to the Sage (Volume One: The Esotericists) provides readers with a view of the relationships, organizational struggles and intellectual and spiritual explorations of several dozen of the key figures working within the Theosophical Society and the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor during the early years of Americas occult revival. Including more than 200 letters, as well as perhaps the earliest known evidence of the organized study of the tarot, yoga and Sufism in the United States, Letters to the Sage (Volume One: The Esotericists) is an essential book for anyone interested in the history of esotericism in the United States. John Patrick Deveney, one of authors of The Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor: Initiatic and Historical Documents of an Order of Practical Occultism, said after a review of Letters to the Sage that: It will be impossible in the future to discuss the Hermetic Brotherhood of Luxor, the Theosophical Society in America, or occultism in America generally during the last decades of the nineteenth century without reference to this book. The authors have exhaustively researched Johnsons correspondents and their myriad common esoteric interests and woven them into a revealing tapestry of the times. The book is invaluable, instructive, erudite and exhaustively thorough, but it is also a fascinating review of a colorful era in our intellectual history. The text is available immediately from Amazon in the US and Europe, and directly from the Typhon Press web site. Full Contact Information: Marc Demarest The Typhon Press Fountain House, Suite 9000 2011 17th Avenue Forest Grove, Oregon 97116 Web URL: http://www.thetyphonpress.com/catalog.html Photo Link: http://www.thetyphonpress.com/johnson_cover_mockup.jpg TCD Consulting, Inc., an outsourced sales, marketing and consulting firm, announced that is has opened a second office in Birmingham as a continuation of expansion efforts for one of its Fortune 500 clients. Due to the increased revenue the client has seen since partnering with TCD Consulting in late 2014, the firm was asked to expand market coverage to include Alabama. The Birmingham team began work on March 6th for the same client, one of America's largest direct broadcast satellite service providers in the United States. "We are excited to expand into a new market for our client. Our mission is to become the number one outsourced sales and marketing firm domestically and internationally, and this domestic expansion shows the world that we are here to stay and that we will hit our goals, " said Steve Littlefield, President of TCD Consulting, Inc. The new office in Birmingham will be able to access accounts in Birmingham, Alabaster, Helena, Hoover, Mountain Brook, Pelham, Trussville, Vestavia Hills and other South Eastern markets nearby. This geographical scope will enable the team to reach a larger consumer market and expand their clients market share within the region. This expansion is not only a win for our client, but an opportunity for our team to grow professionally. We know our people are our most valuable asset, and we are excited to see them further their development as our organization continues to grow, Littlefield said. "We know we'll be hiring several ambitious, hard-working, and entrepreneurially-minded individuals to help our expansion team hit goals for the new market. It will be great for the client and great for the local economy." Connect with the TCD Consulting team on LinkedIn to learn about job opportunities (https://www.linkedin.com/company/tcd-consulting-inc-) and follow them on Instagram to see what they team has been up to. (https://www.instagram.com/tcd_consulting/) Interconnected stories like these make up the human enterprise, as well as creating a lot of unintentional comedy. In frenetic post-modern society, commercialism is around every corner, making it easy to be consumed by trivial matters, even while the world cries out for help. In her new book, The Life and Times of Halycon Sage, author Karima Vargas Bushnell's protagonist battles the hypnotic fog obscuring life and the human spirit, seeking solutions and connections in his own eccentric way. Halycon Sage is a world-famous novelist, revered by some and ridiculed by others for his unique writing style, expressed in novels no longer than a short paragraph. With the unfailing support and silent sardonic commentary of his horse, No-Name Stupid, Sage goes voluntarily missing on a soul-searching journey, encountering many friends and enemies: a petulant critic, a benign biker gang, a bouquet of spies, a Gypsy, and a shadowy figure of evil. "Join them as they sprint or stumble through their lives, each on their own different and particular quest, meeting and changing each other in unpredictable ways, says Karima. "Interconnected stories like these make up the human enterprise, as well as creating a lot of unintentional comedy. "The Life and Times of Halycon Sage" flows from the unexpected arguments between the odd characters in Karima's head, formed by her patchwork quilt of religious and cultural identities. The books deceptively simple form leads to a labyrinth of interconnecting plots, intriguing characters, humor, and human issues both timeless and contemporary. For more information, visit http://www.halyconsage1.com The Life and Times of Halycon Sage By: Karima Vargas Bushnell ISBN: 978-1312961913 Available in softcover, hardcover, e-book Available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Lulu About the author Born in Reno, Nevada, Karima Vargas Bushnell is Director of the Light Upon Light Sufi Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and a founding board member of Sustainable Nevada. She has worked as a college instructor, refugee job counselor, court reporter, old-time fiddler, and web moderator for the London Times Online. In the 1970s she hitchhiked up and down Nevada, California and Washington with a friend, an Australian shepherd named Ratlips, and a bright yellow bass violin. Karima has a husband, three children, three cats and a secret identity as a part Native American Muslim who plays with an Irish band. # # # For review copies or interview requests, contact: Megan Hardesty 317.602.7137 mhardesty(at)bohlsengroup(dot)com Contact: Laura Perillo pr(at)fioreinspires.com 908-406-3413 ________________________________________________________________________ Fifteen Einhorn Harris Attorneys Named to 2016 New Jersey Super Lawyers and Rising Stars List Denville law firm Einhorn Harris today announced that 15 attorneys from the firm were selected for inclusion in the 2016 New Jersey Super Lawyers and Rising Stars lists published by Thomson Reuters. Michael R. Ascher, Patricia M. Barbarito, Andrew S. Berns, Gary R. Botwinick, Bonnie C. Frost, Stephen P. Haller, Christopher L. Musmanno, Thomas J. Snyder and Mark Wechsler were selected to the New Jersey Super Lawyers list, and Matthew S. Coleman, Jhanice V. Domingo, Timothy J. Ford, Cimmerian A. Morgan, Matheu D. Nunn and Kristi L. Terranova were selected to the New Jersey Super Lawyers Rising Stars list. Additionally 2016 marks the 11th time both Barbarito and Frost were each named to the Top 50 Women New Jersey Super Lawyers list. Frost was also named to the Top 100 New Jersey Super Lawyers list. Einhorn Harris Partners, Ascher, Barbarito, Frost, Haller and Wechsler have been selected to the New Jersey Super Lawyers list every year since its inception in 2005. Super Lawyers selects attorneys using a multiphase process that includes peer nominations and evaluations as well as independent research. Each candidate is evaluated on 12 indicators of peer recognition and professional achievement. Selections are made on an annual, state-by-state basis. The objective is to create a credible, comprehensive and diverse listing of outstanding attorneys that can be used as a resource for attorneys and consumers searching for legal counsel. Each year, no more than five percent of lawyers in the state are named to Super Lawyers, and no more 2.5 percent are selected to the Rising Stars list. Attorneys selected for Rising Stars are 40 years or younger or in practice for 10 years or less. The Super Lawyers selection process involves three basic steps: creation of the candidate pool; evaluation of candidates by the research department; and peer evaluation by practice area. The Super Lawyers lists are published annually in state and regional editions of Super Lawyers magazines and inserts, and special advertising sections in leading city and regional magazines and newspapers. All attorneys selected for inclusion in Super Lawyers, regardless of year, can be found on superlawyers.com. ### ABOUT EINHORN HARRIS Established in 1961, Einhorn Harris, based in Denville, New Jersey, is a comprehensive, full-service law firm devoted to serving a broad range of legal needs. In its more than 50 years in business, Einhorn Harris and its attorneys have earned a reputation for dedication to the community. The firm specializes in many areas of practice including Family, Criminal and Tax Law; Accidents/Personal Injury; and Commercial Litigation. http://www.einhornharris.com ADCS Clinics (ADCS) announced it has completed the acquisition of Fair Oaks Skincare in Fair Oaks, Virginia; a dermatology practice owned by Brenda Dintiman M.D. and Reem Tadros M.D, both board certified dermatologists. Dr. Brenda Dintiman has been caring for dermatology patients since 1991 and has been practicing medicine since 1985. Her interest in medicine developed early, inspired by family members, many of whom work in the medical field. As a schoolgirl she had the opportunity to test her mettle, both in her aunts dental practice and spending hours with her uncle, a radiologist, talking about medicine. She grew to love the field of medicine, and whether reading x-rays or honing her bedside manner, her passion shone through. During the early years, she trained in Hawaii and New Mexico further developing her skills. Later, as a new physician in the Northern Virginia area, she founded the Fair Oaks Skin Care Center. Dr. Dintiman recognizes that dermatology requires understanding and commitment to both clinical medicine and cosmetic treatment to fully care for the patient. She has remained committed to her patients and to her medical art and has served as a strong advocate for medical and cosmetic advancements, which she integrates in to her own daily practice of medicine. She has volunteered as a physician and as a member on the board of Project Access of Northern Virginia (PANV), which provides pro-bono specialty care for underprivileged patients in the area. Elected president of the Medical Society of Northern Virginia (MSNVA) in 2012, she remains a dedicated member in the hopes of bettering the medical community for both physicians and patients and improving access for patients in underserved areas. Throughout her medical career as a dermatologist, Dr. Dintiman has understood that limited access to care is a significant issue that must be overcome in order to improve the medical community. With this in mind, she explored options that could minimize this problem in a specific area, Virginia. The results of her persistent research lead directly to the innovative and successful programs of tele-health and specifically tele-dermatology. She participated in telemedicine for the American Association Dermatology (AAD) and, in 2010 she was given the Presidential Award for Volunteerism in Telemedicine. As a member of the American Telemedicine Association (ATA) and other telehealth groups, Dr. Dintiman became a driving force in the establishment of the tele-dermatology program DermUtopia. In 2014, Dr. Dintiman testified at a House Hearing on Telemedicine in support of further advancing telemedicine and access of care: I have seen first-hand a number of patients that could have had the consultation done virtually and prevented an onerous trip to the office, to an urgent care or to the emergency room. For example, included are specific patients who could have a tele-dermatology consultation and receive treatment at their home or facility. An 89-year-old woman who lives alone at home, with no family in the area, and who would need to be brought to the doctor via wheelchair and transport vehicle, may be more easily evaluated via telemedicine. A nursing home patient with dementia, who requires a nursing aid and transportation and coordination costs from the nursing home to evaluate a leg ulcer or an early infection, could be effectively evaluated via tele-dermatology. Finally, a 2 year old with severe eczema and infections who cannot get in to see a dermatologist due to lack of access to a Medicaid dermatologist and inability for parents to transport her during their work hours across the city, two bus rides away, could be easily evaluated and/or monitored via tele-dermatology. Dr. Brenda Dintiman Awards: Dr. Dintiman has consistently won Top Doc awards. Washingtonian Magazine has awarded Dr. Dintiman this prestigious award each year since 1999 through 2015. In 2016 she also received the Top Doc Award from Northern Virginia Magazine. Volunteerism: The MSNVA Foundation awards volunteer physicians for their dedicated services and support of Project Access of Northern Virginia (PANV). Doctor Dintiman has received top awards for donating her time over the years. Special Interests: Skin cancer prevention and surgery, laser treatment for rosacea, cosmetic treatment of wrinkles with fillers and Botox, Fraxel laser for wrinkles, teenage acne, anti-aging treatments. Degrees, Training and Certificates: Medical College of Virginia; Internship at the University of Hawaii; Dermatology residency at the University of New Mexico; Selected in 1999, 2002 and 2005 as one of Washingtonians Top 100 Doctors. Professional Memberships: Chairman, Medical Society of Virginia Women Physicians Associate Director, Medical Society of Virginia Board Member, MATRC, Virginia Telemedicine Board Member, Project Access Diplomate, American Board of Dermatology Diplomate, American Society for Dermatologic Surgery American Academy of Dermatology and Dermatology Surgery ASDS Member Dr. Tadros studied her undergraduate education at the University of Virginia, where she was admitted to the Echols Scholarship program. Later, she studied medicine at the Medical college of Virginia and was awarded membership to the Alpha Omega Alpha Honor Medical Society. She then completed her dermatology residency at the Medical College of Virginia as well, where she became Chief Resident. She joined Dr. Dintiman in 1999 where she shared her vision in treating patients with compassion and with the state of the art of medical advances. Dr. Tadros compassion has made her develop a special outlook toward her patients. She is interested in listening to her patients and their needs. She will treat them with respect and will strive to make them feel better. She is committed to help patients have a pleasant experience from the beginning to the end of the visit. Although she has experience in all aspects of dermatology, she has a special interest in skin cancer prevention, acne, eczema and psoriasis. She also has a special interest, and has received training in cosmetic dermatology as she enjoys using Botox and fillers to help patients look more youthful and natural. She likes to incorporate the use of lasers to even out skin tone, redness and aging skin signs like brown spots and wrinkles. Dr. Tadros lived in many countries and is fluent in English, Arabic, French, and speaks some Spanish. Outside of work, she enjoys spending time with her family, her husband Dr. Amear Tadros, a dentist and her two children Grace and Antony. She enjoys reading, painting, traveling and cooking. She is an active member of her church and is part of the womens ministry. Awards: Northern Virginia Magazines Top Doctors for 2013 and 2012. Special Interests: Skin cancer prevention, acne, rosacea and cosmetic anti-aging treatments as well as laser surgery. Degrees, Training and Certificates: Bachelor of Arts-University of Virginia, Echols Scholar; Doctor of Medicine-Medical College of Virginia Alpha Omega Alpha; Dermatology Residency-Medical College of Virginia. Professional Memberships: Diplomate, American Board of Dermatology; American Academy of Dermatology, American Society of surgical dermatology; The American Womens Association; Washington DC Dermatology Society; Medical Society of Northern Virginia Dr. Matt Leavitt, Founder and CEO of ADCS, said, Its an honor to have Dr. Dintiman and Dr. Tadros and their team on board with us at ADCS. They are extremely talented providers who are dedicated and committed to the care of their patients. This acquisition expands our presence as we continue to grow the Mid-Atlantic market to better serve patients. said Dave Morell, President of ADCS. ADCS, founded in 1989 by Dr. Matt Leavitt, is a dermatology-focused practice with over 143 clinics in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Michigan, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Virginia and Wyoming providing clinical, cosmetic, surgical and pathology services. ADCS also provides billing and coding management services for almost 90 third-party dermatology practices across the nation under the Ameriderm trade name. Under the surface, [The IRS] is struggling to modernize its creaky tech, feeling the strain of a budget crunch that forces the agency to abandon new IT because of the costs of keeping its old technology running. With tax season looming, FCWs lead feature in the March 30th issue is The Taxmans Tech Troubles, which outlines the technology woes the IRS is facing both in the view of the general public and behind closed doors. FCW and The Taxmans Tech Troubles article author Zach Noble are available for further inquiries or interviews. Contact znoble(at)1105media(dot)com or (703)576-7081 for more information. A preview of The Taxmans Tech Troubles: The IRS spends $2.5 billion annually on information technology across more than 20 major systems, yet it still relies on a central data processing setup that went online in the 1960s to keep its revenue-collecting cogs turning. The IRS IT problems are manifold: not enough money, political pressure, technical constraints, a lack of skilled tech professionals and the tax code itself. IRS Commissioner John Koskinen has asked for more money, and hes hopeful he can push legislation to save the IT employees hell soon otherwise lose. But the code itself continues to knot up his plans. FCW staff writer Zach Noble notes that only a few of the IT woes at the IRS are visible to the general public (e.g. The Get Transcript tool hack). Under the surface, the agency is struggling to modernize its creaky tech, feeling the strain of a budget crunch that forces the agency to abandon new IT because of the costs of keeping its old technology running. About FCW FCWs editorial mission is to provide federal technology executives with the information, insights, and strategies necessary to successfully navigate the complex world of federal business. By providing federal technology executives with the who and what they need to know to get things done, FCW delivers access to a powerful, hard-to-reach audience that controls the technology purchasing in federal government. https://fcw.com About 1105 Public Sector Media Group 1105 Public Sector Media Group, a division of 1105 Media, Inc., provides information, insight and analysis to the Government IT and Education IT (FED/SLED) sectors. Our content platforms include print, digital, online, events and a broad spectrum of marketing services. http://1105publicsector.com ### Amazing Lash Studio Franchise Management Team: Mr. Ron DaVella, co-COO; Ms. Dawn Weiss, co-COO; Mr. Edward Le, co-Founder and CEO; and Ms. Jessica Le, co-Founde Amazing Lash has all the makings of a successful brand. Growth has already been astounding, and the customer demand is overwhelming. Im excited about guiding this brand to the next level and working with such a strong franchise network. - Dawn Weiss Amazing Lash Studio, the fastest growing franchisor of eyelash extension studios, announced today the new management team put in place to accelerate and grow the brand. Mr. Edward Le, Co-Founder of Amazing Lash Studio, will resume his role as CEO, and Mr. Ron DaVella and Ms. Dawn Weiss will serve as co-COOs. We are grateful to John Leonesio and his team for moving us forward these last two years. My wife Jessica and I, as the visionaries, have decided to take the helm once again of our first franchise concept, states Mr. Le. This is an exciting time to build such an amazing concept as we work hand in hand with our new team. Mr. DaVella comes on board as co-COO with an impressive resume as a senior executive in the auditing and accounting field both nationally and internationally. He has a strong background in senior client management, has served on multiple boards of directors and audit committees, and has assisted companies with their IPOs, secondary offerings, mergers and acquisitions. Having recently retired from a long and successful career as a partner with Deloitte, when this opportunity at Amazing Lash Studio Franchise was presented to him, he knew it was an opportunity he could not pass on. The success of this model is undeniable. Ive worked with Subway, Cold Stone and other franchise brands and believe Amazing Lash is well positioned to be an industry leader. We have an exceptional team in place to skyrocket this growth story, says Mr. DaVella. Ms. Weiss comes to the brand with an esteemed career in the franchising industry. As Brand Continuity Director of Massage Envy and Director of Marketing for The Jointthe chiropractic place, she assisted in building these two franchise concepts into highly profitable, household names. Her achievements earned the recognition of The Arizona Republics Top Female Executive for two consecutive years. In addition to her position as co-COO, she also serves as CMO of Amazing Group, parent company of Amazing Lash Studio Franchise. Amazing Lash has all the makings of a successful brand. Growth has already been astounding, and the customer demand is overwhelming. Im excited about guiding this brand to the next level and working with such a strong franchise network, states Ms. Weiss. We are excited to have Ron and Dawn on board, said Jessica. Their appointment cements our commitment to accelerating the growth of our business, both for current and future franchisees and Regional Developers. It demonstrates the companys strong belief in the continued growth and untapped potential of our unique, first-to-market franchise model. Franchising since 2012, Amazing Lash Studios has shown impressive growth with more than 597 licenses awarded in 27 states with 65 open studios. We are on pace to be one of the fastest growing concepts this decade, states Edward. Amazing Lash Studio is taking the beauty industry by storm by providing time and resource constrained women with beautiful, long-lasting, natural-looking eyelashes in approximately one hour. About Amazing Lash Studio Amazing Lash Studio was founded in 2010 by Edward and Jessica Le, with the vision to raise the bar on the eyelash extension industry. Amazing Lash Studios are retail salons that apply semi-permanent eyelash extensions with a proprietary, patented process to the clients own lashes, replicating the curve and size of natural lashes. The concept began franchising in 2012 and to date has 65 open studios in 12 states. The historic Sanborn Map building, a 75,000 square foot loft-style office building at 629 Fifth Avenue in Pelham, welcomed five new tenants in 2015 Our diverse mix of tenants, from artists and architects to financial advisors and law firms, find the atmosphere supports creativity and productivity. Many businesses have grown up here and have expanded significantly over time. Caspi Development, a leader in residential and commercial real estate ownership, management and development, is proud to announce the newest tenants to the historic Sanborn Map Building, a 75,000 square foot loft-style office building at 629 Fifth Avenue in Pelham. King & King LLP, a construction law practice, occupied approximately 1,350 square feet on the first floor in February 2016. Additional tenants which joined in the last year include Archie Comic Publications, Inc., which now occupies 10,300 square feet on the buildings first floor; Dolphin Equipment Corporation, an HVAC design firm, which leased 1,700 square feet of space on the second floor; Capital Projects Consulting, LLC, a construction management firm, which leased nearly 1,600 square feet on the second floor; and The JFM Group, a fundraising and event management firm, which leased approximately 1,450 square feet of space on the first floor. The new tenants were drawn to the architecturally distinct building for its SoHo feel with 14-foot ceilings, exposed brick walls, hardwood floors and an abundance of operable 10-foot windows. For Archie Comic Publications Inc., publisher of the Archie Comics line of comic books, relocating to Pelham was the first move the company has made in more than 40 years. We are pleased to welcome King & King, Archie Comics, Dolphin Equipment Corporation, Capital Projects Consulting, and The JFM Group to the Sanborn Map Building, said Steven Caspi, president of Caspi Development Company. Our diverse mix of tenants, from artists and architects to financial advisors and law firms, find the atmosphere supports creativity and productivity. Many businesses have grown up here and have expanded significantly over time. Situated on five park-like acres, the Sanborn Map Building is located in the heart of Westchester County in Pelhams upscale residential area with close proximity to downtown restaurants, shops and banks. The building is directly off the Hutchinson River Parkway with easy access to all major thoroughfares. The Metro North train station, located three blocks away, offers access to New York City in only 30 minutes. Completed in 1906 by the Sanborn Map Company, the buildings traditional facade, adorned with unique, century old relief sculptures of ancient mapmakers, serves as a visual reminder of its impressive history. One of the oldest and largest map companies in the United States, the Sanborn Map Company still occupies a major portion of the buildings first floor. The Sanborn Map Building currently has 11,000 square feet of available space. Professional tenants interested in relocating to the Sanborn Map Building can contact Caspi Development at (914) 694-8300. For more information visit http://www.sanbornmapbldg.com. About Caspi Development, LLC Caspi Development has been a leader in ownership, management and development of residential and commercial real estate for more than 40 years. Based in Purchase, NY, the company is known for its diversity and ability to respond to market conditions and capitalize on opportunities. Over the last few years, the company has acquired through joint venture approximately 1,600 apartments in New York City. Most recent Caspi Development projects include 135 Bowery on the Lower East Side, 456 Greenwich Street in Tribeca, a 100 room 5 star luxury hotel and 30,000 feet of restaurants and amenities, and 161 Bowery, a 25,000 foot office building built out for high end boutique tech tenants. Caspi owns and manages several million square feet of multifamily, office and hotel in and around the New York metropolitan area. Mountaineer Malli Masthan Babus sister Dorasanamma and and other members at the Tres Cruces Sur in Ande Mountains in Argentina where Babu breathed his last. Nellore: In January, Dr Malli Dorasanamma, sister of late mountaineer Malli Masthan Babu, scaled the Tres Cruces Sur in the Ande Mountains in Argentina where Babu had breathed his last. Babu had died exactly one year back, on March 23, 2015 in the Andes after getting caught in bad weather post a successful ascent of the Tres Cruces Sur summit. The urge to see and offer prayers at the place where Babu died and also to bring back the National Flag he left behind on the mountains, Dr Dorasanamma took the risk of climbing 5,900 metre of the 6,500 metre difficult range. My brother used to say that summiting was important and coming back alive was also very important. The mountaineering friends of Masthan Babu could not trace the National Flag while bringing back the bo-dy. I lost my brother and the National Flag too. It gave me motivation to go there and bring back the flag, Dr Dorasanamma told DC. Incidentally, a German team climbing the mountain had found the Indian flag and had handed it over to a museum at Fiambila in Argentina headed by Ms Lissable, a friend of Babu. She in turn gave it to Dr Dorasanamma during her visit in January. Dr Dorasanamma said, I was exited when I received the flag. I carried it along with another national flag that I took from here apart from a flag of the Sainik School to the spot where Malli breathed his last. I offered tributes for his adventures and the name he brought to the nation. Dr Dorasanamma, accompanied by mountaineers Mr Marcello Soria, Ms Marina and Mr Frank of Argentina, scaled the mountain on January 25 after two weeks of trekking. She said that they also faced bad weather but it lasted for only 30 minutes. A neurologist practising in Tirupati, Dr Dorasanamma is keen on completing the leftover work of Babu regarding a book on the Seven Summits apart from establishing a library where all mountaineering material will be available in one place. She also has plans of a museum housing the collections of her brother. She has been making elaborate arrangements for the first death anniversary of Masthan Babu at Gandhijana Sangam in Sangam mandal of SPSR Nellore district on Wednesday. Retailers are adopting very liberal returns policies, and often times offering free returns because they realize how these strategies can remove friction in the path to purchase" said Patrick Allard, SVP of Sales and Business Development, Newgistics. The growing influence of the customer and customer experience in todays retail returns policies will be a key focus at Multichannel Merchants 5th Annual Operations Summit on April 12-14 in Cincinnati, OH. Patrick Allard, SVP of Sales and Business Development at Newgistics, and Ellen Shannon, Chief Content Director and Publisher, Multichannel Merchant, will lead the panel, How an Exceptional Returns Experience Can Improve Your Profitability, on Wednesday, April 13th at 8:30 a.m. In the early days of eCommerce, people were hesitant to shop online until they knew they could return purchases simply and easily, and Newgistics played an important role in helping a lot of shoppers get over that hurdle, said Allard. Were seeing a renewed focus on returns across the eCommerce and multichannel space through a couple trends that became really apparent during the holiday season. Retailers are adopting very liberal returns policies, and often times offering free returns because they realize how these strategies can remove friction in the path to purchase, create a better overall experience and sometimes even pay for themselves. Were looking forward to attacking these topics at Operations Summit. Session panelists joining Allard and Shannon for this discussion include Catherine Farrell, Vice President of IT and Operations, Title Nine, Sonya Link, DC and Operations Manager, Title Nine and Rich Byrnes, Associate Vice President, Transportation and Logistics, Ascena Retail Group. In conjunction with Operations Summit, Newgistics will also be hosting a Facility Tour of its 500,000 square-foot SuperCenter, located in Hebron, KY on April 13th. For more information on the tour, visit http://www.operationssummit.com/tours/newgistics. The Operations Summit features six tracks and a series of plenary sessions delving into how omnichannel works, including the pain points and their solutions, to help executives implement omnichannel retailing. More than 800 attendees will attend to discuss the latest trends, strategies and best practices during the conference at the Duke Energy Convention Center in Cincinnati OH. About the Operations Summit Now in its fifth year, the Operations Summit helps merchants boost productivity, cut costs and increase customer satisfaction by providing a gathering place for operations leaders to exchange ideas, tour leading DTC distribution centers and get in-depth training. It is the only conference exclusively devoted to direct-to-customer operations and fulfillment. Operations Summit, along with the co-located Growing Global conference, covers omnichannel, logistics, customer care, warehousing, order management, global operations, cross-border selling, transportation, returns and fraud prevention. About Multichannel Merchant Multichannel Merchant, producer of the Operations Summit, reaches management, marketing and operations at companies that sell merchandise through multiple channelsincluding e-commerce and catalog. Multichannel Merchant delivers research, executive summaries, technology and supplier comparisons, tip sheets, news and resource information to help companies sell & deliver products direct-to-customer. BDSmktg, the agency that delivers sales through innovative retail marketing services, launched a brand new website supporting their recently simplified brand platform. The new website, http://www.BDSmktg.com, showcases a fully integrated, streamlined suite of core solutions that are designed to influence purchase decisions throughout the customer shopping journey. These solutions, Brand Advocacy, Retail Readiness and Retail Environments, each align with a unique set of services and feature specialized execution teams to meet clients goals. Not only does the new site support BDSmktg's expanding service portfolio, it also reinforces the agency's industry expertise. In an effort to better explain the core solution story to their online visitors, BDSmktg partnered with digital marketing agency, wowbrands, to develop a completely redesigned website. The new site will allow users to explore the three core solutions in an organized, yet customizable, experience. From the case studies, to the interactive retail activation plan, to the blog, the site provides visitors an enjoyable and memorable digital interaction with the BDSmktg brand. "Our website visitors will now experience a more unified view of BDS," says Ken Kress, President of BDSmktg. "The redesign of the BDS site creates a streamlined story, making virtual visits more exciting and informative than ever before." Melissa Burke, Director of Marketing Services at BDSmktg, saw an opportunity to create a better user experience for their online audience, while also telling a more engaging BDSmktg story. The previous website featured three separate brands, which had initially been an effective platform for communicating the agencys three specialized teams. Now that we have transitioned our agency under one brand, we knew we needed to position ourselves more clearly online to attract and engage the people who are actually looking for us, said Burke. BDSmktg is confident that their new brand positioning and website will encourage visitors to engage with the brand in a new way and begin the conversation with BDSmktg experts on how to maximize sales and create a memorable customer shopping journey. About BDSmktg BDSmktg is your trusted retail marketing partner. With over 30 years of experience guiding customers through the buying journey, we are experts at powering sales for the worlds top brands. BDSmktg offers our clients three fully integrated core solutions that drive brand demand and sell-through: Brand Advocacy, Retail Readiness, and Retail Environments. We craft custom solutions from our suite of 18 services, and our specialized teams ensure your brand is ready for each new selling season. Founded in 1984, BDS Marketing, Inc. is headquartered in Irvine, Calif. with a regional office in Heath, Ohio. For more information, visit http://www.BDSmktg.com. About wowbrands wowbrands is branding and technology solutions firm based in Columbus, Ohio, offering clients unlimited project scope and resources for developing custom solutions to business problems. The services available are entirely dependent on the clients unique needs and objectives. From custom CRM systems to entire digital product catalog builds, wowbrands supplies the branding and technology solutions that move brands to their next stage of growth. Grapefruit Watermelon Salad with Orange Blossom Florida Honey Bee Vinaigrette- one of the locally-inspired menu items at the Trump International Beach Resort. My Orange Blossom Florida Honey Bee Vinaigrette is a beautifully simple recipe that I want to share. It delivers a fresh splash of Florida to any dish...and it is so easy for anyone to re-create at home." says Jantz. Kurtis Jantz, the Executive Chef at The Trump International Beach Resort in Sunny Isles Beach, Florida is in search of treasured recipes from coast to coast during the resorts' first annual "Heirloom Recipes with a Citrus Twist" Mother's Day recipe contest. In preparation for the resorts' Mother's Day brunch, Jantz is also sharing a few of his own citrus-inspired recipes, delivering a taste of the home-grown flavors now available at Trump Miami. Why the citrus twist? Chef Jantz has received a tremendous response from guests who have complimented his use of Florida-grown flavors on the menus throughout the, family- friendly, four star resort. "It's important to incorporate local ingredients grown in our backyards. Florida citrus is so versatile and an ingredient woven throughout our menus. For example, my Orange Blossom Florida Honey Bee Vinaigrette is a beautifully simple recipe that I am sharing. It delivers a fresh splash of Florida to any dish...and it is so easy for anyone to re-create at home." says Jantz. Florida Honey Orange Vinaigrette Recipe (pictured with Trump Miami's Grapefruit Watermelon Salad) Created by Executive Chef Kurtis Jantz Yield approximately: 1 quart 1 oz shallots Tb. olive oil cup Florida organic honey (or favorite honey of choice) 2 cups orange juice 2 oz apple cider vinegar cups olive oil blend Dash cayenne pepper Kosher salt to taste In a small sauce pan, over medium heat, saute the shallots until tender in Tb. olive oil. Add orange juice and reduce by half. Remove from heat and let orange juice cool to room temperature In a small mixing bowl add reduced orange juice and whisk in honey. Slowly whisk in olive oil then vinegar. Season to taste with cayenne and kosher salt. Details about the recipe contest: Participants can submit one original, non-trademarked family recipe, add a unique citrus twist ingredient to it and then share a special tradition or fond memory about their family recipe. The only two rules are that the recipe must include a citrus fruit of some kind, and must be original content. With 3 meal categories to choose from and countless citrus fruits across the country, the opportunities are endless. The deadline for submission is April 15, 2016. A total of three recipes will be selected as finalists and will be featured at Trump Miami's Mothers Day brunch on Sunday May 8th, 2016. Brunch guests will sample and cast their vote on each recipe. The recipe with the most votes wins. The Grand Prize Winner will be announced on May 11th, 2016 and will receive: Complimentary three (3) night stay for 2 guests in a luxurious 2 bedroom oceanfront suite Daily breakfast for two (2) in Neomis Grill Two (2) fifty (50) minute spa treatments (one per person) Up to $600.00 travel credit The Winning recipe featured on Trumpmiami.com and Trump International Beach Resorts social media channels. All three finalists will receive: One (1) Omega J8006 nutrition center juicer One (1) embroidered Trump International Beach Resort culinary apron One (1) signature chef recipe from Executive Chef Kurtis Jantz Finalist recipes featured on Trumpmiami.com and Trump International Beach Resorts social media channels For official contest rules and to submit a recipe, please visit http://www.trumpmiami.com Function Point CEO Chris Wilson No one is really focused on that unique financial management piece, which helps us to stand out in the marketplace. Were taking a finance first approach to profitability of a job, a client, and the utilization of team members. Next month in CIO Review, Chris Wilson, CEO & President of Function Point Productivity Software, shares his knowledge on methods to mitigate business challenges in the project management solutions industry. Wilson explores how the companys two most pressing problemsstanding out in an intensely competitive sector, and securing staff in the fast-paced, high tech worldcan be addressed to ensure profitability. Function Point recently celebrated its 19th anniversary, and with almost two decades of experience at the helm, Wilson has developed a number of successful strategies to address these threats. First and foremost, he relies on the direction set by the Function Point core values of focus, respect, growth and balance, to provide a trustworthy and consistent lens through which to examine any issue. Wilson says, When we return to our guiding principles and tie them together with the Function Point product vision, our team can take on any obstacle, by staying focused on our customers, knowing that we need to grow, be respected, and have a balance in life. In the CIO Review article, Wilson expands on how Function Point is positioned to captivate a niche in the industry, by developing project management software specifically for creative agencies, design studios and internal marketing departments. Function Point helps the creative services sector to be more productive and profitable through its cloud-based system, which integrates project management, time tracking, CRM, financial and business reporting tools. The tactic of providing a unique and tailored offering is a competitive advantage when compared to project management software that is too general for the creative services market. There are a variety of competitors across the services that we offer, says Wilson. No one is really focused on that unique financial management piece, which helps us to stand out in the marketplace. Were taking a finance first approach to profitability of a job, a client, and the utilization of team members. To address the companys challenge of finding staff in the rapidly changing tech industryin particular, hiring software engineersWilson discusses how critical it is to protect the companys culture, in which a work-life balance is valued and employees are encouraged to grow. He believes that if personal growth is promoted, the company will grow too. Function Point supports this idea by granting every employee a $2000 education amount per year to contribute to further learning. He adds that to retain staff, its as equally important to hire those who are a good cultural fit. Were looking for people who are excited about coming to work, who are happy, hungry and humble, says Wilson. While market realities will inevitably influence strategic decision-making at Function Point, Wilson anticipates the company will continue to keep growing, through positioning itself in an industry niche, staying true to core values, and upholding a workplace culture that prioritizes a work-life balance and lifelong learning. About Function Point Productivity Software Inc. Function Point Productivity Software is the leading all-in-one project management solution specially designed for ad agencies, design studios and internal marketing departments who are looking to streamline their business. Our integrated software combines project management, time tracking, CRM, financial, and business reporting tools in one convenient cloud based system. Easy, effective and efficient do more with Function Point. For more information about the company and the services Function Point offers, please visit http://www.functionpoint.com YA, the industry market leader in delivering flawless omni-channel marketing promotions for the nations most respected brands, today announced six new staff appointments in account management and support services to best serve YAs growing client base. Our approach is to provide our clients with dedicated account managers whose main focus is on their clients strategic and tactical objectives, said YA President and CEO Chris Behrens. The hiring of these experienced, talented people, including support staff, will ensure the success of all of our clients campaigns. Caroline Dickman has joined YA as an Account Manager in the companys subscription services vertical. She brings ten years of experience in client management and digital marketing. Dickmans most recent position was with Nimble Lifecycle, the digital division of Mediaspace Solutions, where she was the Digital Marketing Program Director. In previous roles, she was the Creative Services Project Manager/Social Media Manager for Equus Holdings, Inc., supporting their base of six business units. In previous roles, she worked for Frontier Communications as their Digital Marketing Coordinator and the firm Brosseau Public Relations as a publicist. Dickman graduated from Concordia University with a Master of Arts degree in Strategic Communication Management, and from Minnesota State University, Mankato with a Bachelor of Science degree in Mass Communication and Marketing. Andreea Haymaker has joined YA as an Account Manager in the companys retail vertical. She brings with her nearly fifteen years of experience in client relations and account management. Haymakers most recent position was with Vista Outdoor (formerly ATK) in several roles, including Marketing Project Manager, Strategic Execution Manager and Marketing Planning Manager. In previous roles, Haymaker was the Marketing Coordinator for North American Membership Group, and was a Retail Graphics Project Manager at Best Buy. Haymaker started her career at Paradysz as an Account Coordinator and Marketing Operations Manager. Haymaker graduated from the University of Minnesota with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism with a concentration on Advertising and PR, with a minor in Business from the Carlson School of Management. Sarah Peterson has joined YA as an Account Manager in the companys subscription services vertical. She brings nearly ten years of marketing experience to the role. Petersons most recent position was with Deluxe Corporation. In that role, she was responsible for merchandising strategy and design for ShopDeluxe.com and BagsandBows.com. In previous roles, she worked for Best Buy supporting the mobile phone category and the Connected Home category. Peterson also spent time with Target driving the planning of the weekly print ad and in-store marketing, and was on the cross-functional team that planned the Cartwheel app. Peterson graduated from Bethel University with Bachelor of Arts Degree in Organizational Communications. Emily Sadnick has joined YA as an Account Manager, subscription services vertical. She brings with her nearly ten years of marketing and client account management experience. Sadnicks most recent position was with LAKANA (formally Internet Broadcasting) as a Client Services Manager. In that role, she was responsible for managing several leading publisher clients in the companys technical CMS operations as well as being their liaison for other departments within LAKANA. In a previous role, she was an Advertising Account Executive with JobDig, an employment posting job board. Sadnick graduated from Winona State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Mass Communications and Public Relations. Roxanne (Roxie) Kidder has joined YA in the roles of Executive Assistant as well as supporting the Leadership Team. Most recently, she worked for Nelson Holdings, providing support to the Chairman and CEO and acted as his chief of staff in coordinating work flow with the leadership team and their nationwide offices. In previous roles, Kidder was with Fairview Health as an Executive Assistant to the President and CEO and a 20-member Board of Directors, and at Target as an administrative assistant supporting several senior teams. Kidder attended Bethel University where she studied Organizational Leadership in addition to coursework in Business Writing, Time Management and Leadership Development. Valerie Newgard has joined YA as an office assistant. She brings more than five years of experience in managing the needs of a fast-paced office, customer service, vendor relations and general office management for C&D Automotive. In a previous role, Newgard was a teacher with Kinderberry Hill early childhood development schools. Newgard graduated from Bethel University with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Education. About YA For more than 40 years, YA has been a leader in the promotional marketing services space. We deliver flawless digital, social, mobile and traditional promotions such as rebates/rewards, enter to win and loyalty programs for the nations most respected brands. Our end-to-end management of 3,500+ promotions that reach tens of millions of consumers annually makes us experts at turning even first-time customers into loyal brand advocates. For more information visit: http://www.yaengage.com. Lukes Landscaping has been awarded the 2016 Best of Hollywood Award in the Landscape Contractors category by the Hollywood Award Program. Each year, the Hollywood Award Program identifies companies that have achieved exceptional marketing success in their local community and business category. These local companies enhance small businesses positive image through the provision of exceptional service to their customers and community, and help make the City of Hollywood a great place to live, work and play. Focusing on quality over quantity, various sources of information were gathered and analyzed to select winners in each category, including information gleaned for the Hollywood Award Program and third-party data. We are very proud to accept this award, said Mike Parker, President of Landscape Services. Lukes Landscaping is dedicated to providing the finest landscaping services to communities and municipalities statewide, and has been doing so for over four decades. About Hollywood Award Program The Hollywood Award Program is an annual awards program honoring the achievements and accomplishments of local businesses throughout the Hollywood area. Recognition is given to those companies that have shown the ability to use their best practices and implemented programs to generate competitive advantages and long-term value. The Hollywood Award Program was established to recognize the best of local businesses in our community. Our organization works exclusively with local business owners, trade groups, professional associations and other business advertising and marketing groups. Our mission is to recognize the small business communitys contributions to the local economy. About Lukes Landscaping Lukes Landscaping, a FirstService Residential company, is a South Florida-based, full-service landscaping company whose service area encompasses much of the state of Florida. As a single-source provider for the landscaping needs of community associations, townships, cities and commercial properties, Lukes Landscaping specializes in the design, installation, and maintenance of landscape settings that fit the individual needs of its clientele. For more information, visit http://www.lukes-sawgrass.com. We are continuing to focus on performance in 2016 by building and sustaining a healthy, high-performance culture that continues to deliver top-notch client service and secure strong client relationships. - Joseph A. Kask, CEO BlumShapiro, the largest New England-based regional accounting, tax and business consulting firm, today announced it has been selected as the #1 firm in the New England region for the second consecutive year by Accounting Today. Accounting Todays 2016 Top 100 Firms, the publications annual survey, is based on total revenues, total employees and management advisory services or consulting. BlumShapiro repeated its ranking as the Top Firm in New England with revenues of $72.7 million in 2015, an increase of more than 6 percent over the previous year. Overall, BlumShapiro was ranked as the 53rd largest accounting firm in the United States. In addition, BlumShapiro was ranked 4th nationally in Auditing & Accounting for those firms in the $40-$100 million in revenues category. BlumShapiro is consistently chosen by clients because we are a unique, integrated source for accounting, tax and business consulting services, which allows us to help our clients maximize opportunity and unlock their full potential, said Joseph A. Kask, chief executive officer of BlumShapiro. We are continuing to focus on performance in 2016 by building and sustaining a healthy, high-performance culture that continues to deliver top-notch client service and secure strong client relationships. Accounting Todays recognition reflects the integrity, quality, service and innovation that has defined the BlumShapiro culture for more than 30 years. The appointment of Kask as BlumShapiros Chief Executive Officer was noted in publications 2016 Firm Highlights section. Accounting Today's Top 100 Firms continues to be regarded as one of the most thorough, complete and accurate views of the 100 largest accounting firms in the country, ranked by net revenues. The full report includes information on which practice areas are seeing the most growth, as well as which issues are of greatest concern to the firm's executives. # # # BlumShapiro is the largest regional business advisory firm based in New England, with offices in Connecticut, Massachusetts and Rhode Island. The firm, with over 400 professionals and staff, offers a diversity of services which includes auditing, accounting, tax and business advisory services. In addition, BlumShapiro provides a variety of specialized consulting services such as succession and estate planning, business technology services, employee benefit plan audits and litigation support and valuation. The firm serves a wide range of privately held companies, government and non-profit organizations and provides non-audit services for publicly traded companies. Applied Predictive Technologies (APT) announced today that McDonalds USA, LLC (McDonalds) has signed an agreement to license APTs Test & Learn and Menu Analyzer software solutions. With this agreement, McDonalds will leverage APTs analytic capabilities to drive innovation and profitability by measuring in-market business experiments of new ideas. McDonalds and APT now work together in 11 countries on four continents. McDonalds has been using APTs Test & Learn software to analyze a variety of key strategic initiatives, including new food introductions, menu optimization, and other key business priorities. Kristy Cunningham, Senior Vice President of Strategy and Insights of McDonalds, commented, APTs software has given us a platform to measure the cause-and-effect impact of our initiatives more rapidly, accurately and efficiently. Their software solutions seamlessly integrate into our current decision-making process and enable us to more quickly measure dozens of in-market experiments across KPIs. For instance, APTs software helped us understand that All Day Breakfast generated incremental business by attracting new customers and leading to larger check sizes for existing customers. This initiative was a primary driver of growth in our most recent quarter. McDonalds has also licensed APTs Menu Analyzer software for priority initiatives like All Day Breakfast, which enables users to rapidly analyze check-level data to gain deeper insights and inform marketing and merchandising decisions. Scott Setrakian, APT Managing Director, commented, McDonalds and APT have been growing our relationship for many years. Its been a pleasure to work with such a smart, agile group, and were extremely excited that McDonalds has chosen to work with us to continue innovating and building their business. Sarah Hinkfuss Zampardo, Senior Vice President at APT, added, Were thrilled that McDonalds has chosen to license APTs software to strengthen its existing testing and analytic capabilities. We look forward to continuing our relationship to help McDonalds drive profitability across the organization. About McDonalds McDonald's USA, LLC, serves a variety of menu options made with quality ingredients to approximately 27 million customers every day. Nearly 90 percent of McDonald's 14,000 U.S. restaurants are independently owned and operated by businessmen and women. Customers can now log online for free at approximately 11,500 participating Wi-Fi enabled McDonald's U.S. restaurants. For more information, visit http://www.mcdonalds.com, or follow us on Twitter @McDonalds and Facebook http://www.facebook.com/mcdonalds. About APT APT, a MasterCard Company, is a leading cloud-based analytics software company that enables organizations to rapidly and precisely measure cause-and-effect relationships between business initiatives and outcomes to generate economic value. Our intuitive and proprietary Test & Learn software utilizes sophisticated algorithms to analyze large amounts of data, enabling business leaders to conduct experiments and allowing them to make optimal decisions and implement business initiatives at scale. APT also offers products that support decision-making for specific business needs including transaction analysis, space planning, promotion design, category management and location selection. APTs client portfolio features some of the worlds best known brands, including Walmart, Coca-Cola, Victorias Secret, American Family, Hilton Worldwide, TD Bank, T-Mobile, and others. APT has offices in Washington, D.C., Chicago, San Francisco, London, Bentonville, Taipei, Tokyo, and Sydney. Visit http://www.predictivetechnologies.com to learn more. McDonalds is the registered trademark of McDonalds Corporation and its affiliates, used with permission. Ken Adamo, a partner in the intellectual property (IP) group at Kirkland & Ellis LLP, will speak about recent changes in U.S. International Trade Commission law at The John Marshall Law School in Chicago on March 23, 2016. Adamo will focus his talk on how many new United States International Trade Commission (USITC) cases have altered the landscape for challenging certain conduct allegedly in violation of IP rights. These cases include those relating to induced infringement; electronic importation and USITC jurisdiction; and various procedural and substantive matters regarding the USITCs requirement for a domestic industry as a basis for jurisdiction. Adamo practices in Kirklands Chicago and New York offices. His practice focuses on all areas of IP law, including patent, copyright, unfair competition, trade secrets and related antitrust matters. Adamo has extensive trial experience as lead counsel in jury and nonjury cases before state and federal courts and before the USITC, as well as ex parte and inter partes experience in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Adamo is an alumnus of John Marshall, receiving his LL.M. in IP law in 1989. He also has a B.S. in chemical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a J.D. from Albany Law School of Union University. Adamos address is part of an ongoing series of discussions hosted at John Marshall focused on intellectual property. Upcoming presentations will include Nathan Kelley, acting chief judge of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, and Maria Pallante, Register of Copyrights in the U.S. Copyright Office. John Marshalls nationally ranked intellectual property program is one of 42 law schools in the country to participate in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) Law School Clinic Certification Program. It is the only law school in Illinois whose USPTO program focuses on both patent and trademark practice areas. With more than 50 specialized IP courses, John Marshalls program draws students from around the U.S. and across the globe. It has partnered with IP lawyers in the Peoples Republic of China for 20 years. It also conducts an ABA-approved summer program in China directed exclusively to IP issues. The decision to invest in Pure Storage for our private cloud environment was an easy one OFFSITE, an innovative cloud computing and data center hosting company, today announced the implementation of Pure Storage (NYSE: PTSG) FlashArray into its private cloud compute and hosted services offering. This significant infrastructure upgrade is one of many hardware and software enhancements OFFSITE has made to their private cloud hosting environment and is expected to boost the performance of customers virtual workloads hosted in the OFFSITE data center. The decision to invest in Pure Storage for our private cloud environment was an easy one, indicated Brendan Sullivan, OFFSITE Chief Executive Officer. Our mid market customers are demanding the power and performance of enterprise IT solutions and Pure Storage delivers this in our Cisco UCS, FlashStack hosted environment. IaaS will continue to be a compelling alternative for companies and organizations seeking the best performance in a manner that also lowers the CAPEX burden most companies have historically faced. We expect that the private cloud infrastructure upgrade with Pure Storage will allow us to continue to capture share in the private cloud space and assist us in achieving our growth objectives from these data center solutions. OFFSITE has been an innovator in the data center space since 2001, offering custom solutions and dedicated private suites for collocation, production and disaster recovery (DR) to mid market companies and organizations. Since 2011, OFFSITE has been enhancing their data center services offering to include enhanced carrier density, network operations center (NOC) services and private cloud computing solutions. When asked about the performance improvement of this infrastructure upgrade, OFFSITE Chief Technology Officer, Anthony Portee commented, Bottom line is its faster. Portee added, We have implemented customer environments into our private cloud using Pure Storage as well as leveraging it for our own internal workloads. It performs in a manner that feels like there are infinite IOPs for an application. Ultimately private cloud computing is about throughput. Private cloud compute can feature tasks that are complicated or inhibited all together. If the storage is under performing storage, this can be a death nail to workloads and Pure Storage helps eliminate these challenges for our customers. Pure Storage leverages flash storage solutions based on NAND memory, as the core technology in their systems. Its all-flash array (AFA) provides performance improvements for demanding workloads, improving virtual desktop (VDI) environments and driving up performance for legacy applications or under performing database workloads. Pure Storage technology is delivering the ability for companies to improve IT delivery and respond to the demands of the rise of cloud computing. About OFFSITE OFFSITE redefines the data center experience for mid-tier IT organizations with its high performing environment for managing data operations that includes safe and secure facilities, a powerful infrastructure, industry leading technology, strategic processes, comprehensive services and data solutions expertise. Operating since 2001, OFFSITE offers private cloud services, IaaS, custom, dedicated and shared colocation services, disaster recovery services, network operations center (NOC) services, and hosted and managed solutions. OFFSITEs spacious facilities and customized services enable mid-market businesses to solve their IT challenges and discover new managed services, hosting and private cloud computing solutions. OFFSITE is a privately held company headquartered at its own 50,000 square foot facilities in Southeastern WI with redundant data center operations in Chicago, Illinois. For additional information about OFFSITE, call 262-564-6400, email info(at)off-site(dot)com, or visit http://www.off-site.com MEDIA CONTACT: Candice Byers Marketing Coordinator OFFSITE Phone: +1-262-564-6400 candice(dot)byers(at)off-site(dot)com New Delhi: The deadlock over government formation in Jammu and Kashmir seems to have ended with PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday. Mufti described the meeting as very positive and good in addressing issues pertaining to the people of the state. Mehbooba drove to the Prime Minister's residence this morning barely three days after PDP and BJP had hit a road block with BJP's chief interlocutor Ram Madhav announcing that his party would not be accepting any fresh demands from its erstwhile ally PDP. Read: Mehbooba Mufti meets Modi to end impasse over J&K govt formation Emerging after a 30-minute-long meeting with the Prime Minister, Mehbooba said she had a very positive meeting and a good meeting with him. "We are seeing a stalemate for last two to three months over government formation in the state but today I am satisfied. I am very satisfied," she told reporters here. Read: Mehbooba Mufti says not afraid of criticism for going ahead with BJP To a question whether the stalemate has ended, she said, "When you meet the Prime Minister of the country, naturally the solution to the problems faced by the people of Jammu and Kashmir is more clear". She will be flying back to Srinagar where she will brief her party legislators on Thursday. "I had been authorised by the party MLAs to take a decision. I have convened a meeting on Thursday and after that we will announce the future course of action." On government formation in the state, she said, "As I said I will talk to my MLAs because that is the forum. This is not the place. There is a particular place to make such announcements. I will go back to Srinagar and take the next step." Read: Mehbooba Mufti has to make up her mind: Arun Jaitley on J&K stalemate Mehbooba came to Delhi on Monday after PDP made it clear to BJP that there was some miscommunication and no fresh demands had been raised by the party for stitching an alliance. This is her second visit to the national capital in five days after her talks with BJP President Amit Shah on Thursday failed to make any headway triggering speculation that the two parties could be making renewed efforts to reach out to each other in a bid to break the prolonged impasse. Mehbooba had a meeting this morning with her senior party colleagues, including former Finance Minister Haseeb Drabu, during which final touches were given for the meeting with the Prime Minister, sources said. The fresh efforts from PDP, which has 27 MLAs in the 87-member state Assembly, come in the backdrop of repeated assertions made by BJP that it was committed to implementation of Agenda of Alliance arrived at by late Mufti Mohammed Sayeed. The talks with BJP, which has 25 MLAs, had hit a roadblock last week when the party's interlocutor Ram Madhav made it clear that no fresh demands would be entertained from PDP and that they had to decide whether they want to form a government based on the Agenda of Alliance document. The toughening of stand came as a surprise for Mehbooba who boarded a plane on Friday last and returned to the state. PDP MP Muzzafar Hussain Baig, who has been playing a key role in the back channel talks, had clarified that PDP had made no fresh demands and that there was a miscommunication from both sides leading to derailing of talks. PDP and BJP had formed an alliance on March one, last year with Sayeed as the Chief Minister. Both the sides had formed an Agenda of Alliance, which sought to address internal and external dimension of the state. PDP had toughened its stance after Sayeed's demise by seeking concrete plans for the state's development, including handing over of power projects to the state and vacation of land by the army before the coalition could be revived. Governor's rule was imposed in J-K on January 8 after Mehbooba decided against taking over the reins after her father's death. Mr. Ingels says that "Floored provides architects with faster feedback and presents the clients and users with the ability to play around. Floored gives architects and end users better information to actually evaluate a design." Floored, the leading provider of 3D visualization and space planning software for the Real Estate industry, has named Bjarke Ingels as an advisor to the company. Mr. Ingels, the founder and creative partner of Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), is a world-renowned architectural visionary. His firm is in high demand for some of the most signature projects, notably 2 World Trade Center, Tishman Speyers The Spiral at Hudson Yards, and Googles new headquarters. In joining Floored, Mr. Ingels is putting his name and time behind Flooreds products like Protofit that better serve the architecture and commercial real estate industries. Protofit allows both architects and non-technical users to customize commercial office floorplans and view them instantly as interactive 3D models. Mr. Ingels says that Floored provides architects with faster feedback and presents the clients and users with the ability to play around. Floored gives architects and end users better information to actually evaluate a design, not just based on intuition, but on quantifiable feedback and visual information. Since launching Protofit in October 2015, Floored has signed up dozens of leading commercial real estate owners and brokers as Protofit subscribers. Firms such as Related, Empire state Realty Trust, Two Trees, RXR Realty, L&L Holding Company, CBRE Global Investors, Cushman & Wakefield, Sage Realty, Equity Office, Colliers International, Brookfield Property Brokers, TIAA-CREF, and several Fortune 500 Companies joined the companys platform in 2016. BIG currently relies on physical, analog models to communicate about spaces and buildings. Mr. Ingels supports a future with tools built to help designers iterate quickly and accurately and in a digital and interactive format. Protofit automates repetitive tasks like drawing office desk layouts, and allows the designers to focus on the concepts and vision for spaces. Floored continues to focus on developing technology that improves both the creation and consumption of visual information used to describe space. In a recently released promotional video for Floored, Mr. Ingels suggests support for a time when, The machines do all the repetitive work liberating the architects to do what they do best and create the best value. Always remember that technologies are tools, they provide the designer, the architect with a new kind of brush, or a new ruler, that in a way that provides more perspectives and allows one to evaluate designs in different and more accurate ways...The information you get from a 3D object is of course much better. About Floored: Floored is a New York City-based software company that creates interactive 3D computer graphics software for the hospitality and commercial, residential, industrial, and retail real estate industries. The company was founded in 2012 and is backed by leading venture capital firms such as RRE Ventures, Two Sigma Ventures and Greycroft Partners. Floored has hundreds of customers from around the world using its platform, with enterprise customers including Related Companies, Equity Office, CBRE, RXR Realty, Empire State Realty Trust and many more. Lonely Planet magazine's Spring 2016 issue This issue is packed full of fresh travel ideas, whether youre planning a family, couple or solo adventure. The Spring 2016 issue of Lonely Planet magazine the new print publication from international travel brand Lonely Planet hit newsstands today. Features include an interview with actor, director and award-winning travel writer Andrew McCarthy, 10 New Ways to Fall in Love with New York, Lonely Planets top picks for the best places to visit in the U.S. this year and What to Eat in Seattle. Also in the Spring 2016 issue is a collection of essential family travel gear, tech-savvy hotels and a handy how-to cruise infographic on how travelers can get the most from their on-shore time. Spotlighted destinations include Sicily, Argentina and Iceland. This issue is packed full of fresh travel ideas, whether youre planning a family, couple or solo adventure, said Editor Lauren Finney. Weve included exotic journeys as well as lets-book-them-now getaways. The latest venture from the worlds leading travel media company, Lonely Planet magazine aims to inspire todays traveler through immersive storytelling, rich photography, practical advice and accessible travel ideas. About Lonely Planet Magazine: Lonely Planet launched its first U.S. magazine in November 2015. The quarterly publication provides an engaging resource for todays traveler, and embraces the legacy of its namesake brand and co-founder Tony Wheelers trademark slogan: "Just go!" Newsstand copies can be found at retailers across the country, including Barnes & Noble, Hudson Booksellers and Whole Foods Market, at $5.99. The digital edition is available for iPad, Kindle and Nook. Visit us at http://www.lonelyplanet.com/usmagazine. About Lonely Planet: Lonely Planet is the worlds leading travel media company, inspiring and informing travelers since 1973. Over the past four decades, Lonely Planet has cultivated a dedicated traveler community and printed more than 130 million books in 13 different languages to almost every destination on the planet. The brand offers compelling travel content across various channels, including an award-winning website, guide- and trade books, magazines, mobile apps, video and more. Visit us at lonelyplanet.com, and join us on Facebook (facebook.com/lonelyplanet), Twitter (@lonelyplanet and #lp) and Instagram (instagram.com/lonelyplanet). Our goal is to facilitate conversations in which experienced leaders are able to share their wisdom and knowledge that will encourage resolutions to the ongoing challenges faced by the IT industry. IDR, Inc., a leading employment agency in the technology industry is presenting a Speaker Series titled Elevate 2016. The inaugural event in the series focuses on How to Win the Battle Hiring and the War on Retaining IT Talent. The event will be held Thursday, April 21 from 8:30 am 11:30 am at Roam Buckhead. The event is complete with four key speakers on a panel who will engage in conversation circulating the discussion of Hiring and Retaining IT talent. Panelists come from a range of backgrounds including academia, consulting and quality assurance. Eric French, Founder and President of IDR, is proud to introduce speakers Kelly Kierans, President and COO at Celtic Testing Experts, Mike Cleland, Staffing Industry Consultant at Charted Path, Nash Ogden, President at Innoppl Inc. and Dr. Benn Konsynski, Professor at Goizueta Business School Emory University. Hiring managers, CIOs, industry leaders and executives are among the guest list. Brooke Hohman, the Corporate Event Planner from IDR, briefly discussed her intent for the series, stating that, the event is an opportunity for individuals in the industry to connect to others. Our goal is to facilitate conversations in which experienced leaders are able to share their wisdom and knowledge that will encourage resolutions to the ongoing challenges faced by the IT industry." If you are interested in attending the Elevate 2016 Speaker Series, please visit http://www.idr-inc.com/elevate-2016/. About IDR, Inc. IDR, Inc. has been providing companies with high-quality IT talent since 1998. Founded and headquartered in Atlanta, GA, IDR has grown organically and now also serves the Nashville and Dallas markets. Supporting their clients, growing their candidates careers and providing their employees with a rewarding and fun work environment are all key objectives in reaching their ultimate goal: To be the BEST IT staffing company the world has ever seen. IDR is the proud winner of Inaveros Best of Staffing Client and Talent Awards for a third consecutive year, earned by less than two percent of all staffing agencies in the U.S. and Canada. To learn more about IDR, Inc. please visit http://www.idr-inc.com Check out new programs at the Mammoth Lakes Welcome Center More of a good thing is, well, a good thing. The last several years have seen the quality and diversity of food and drink options in Mammoth Lakes grow by leaps and bounds. That trend continues in summer 16 with a new wine bar, brewery and a number of new restaurants set to greet visitors. This summer will also see new ways to experience and understand the Eastern Sierra Mountains that surround Mammoth Lakes with the Welcome Center and Eastern Sierra Interpretive Association adding additional programming to provide visitors with a more immersive educational experience focusing on the regions unique natural and cultural history. Its all part of the continued evolution of one of North Americas most cherished outdoor playgrounds, and every part of it is worth experiencing, including new: FOOD AND DRINK Black Velvet Wine Bar: When coffee industry veterans Matt and Gracie Hammer opened Black Velvet Coffee Shop five years ago, they took it one cup at time. Every order served in a 12 ounce cup, brewed pour-over, and with attention paid to the smallest details. Theyve taken the same approach with their latest venture, a wine bar in Black Velvets tastefully appointed space on Main Street. With a focus on boutique wines and a selection that changes weekly, the wine bar is a great apres option and a frequent venue for unique tastings. Black Doubt Brewing: Home brewers Drew and Kerissa Wallace followed their passion when opening Black Doubt Brewing in December. All Black Doubt beers are brewed by hand, 100 gallons at a time, in the same tasting room where the beers are poured. Its a excellent addition to whats quickly becoming a burgeoning microbrewing scene in Mammoth Lakes. Delicious Kitchen: The name is as straightforward as the food. Theres nothing fancy about owners/ chefs Eracleo (Rocky) Rodriguez and Eugino Ramoss new eatery on Old Mammoth Road and thats part of the charm. Just hearty portions of honest, fresh American and Mexican classics. Nothing frozen, nothing canned, everything delicious. Food Cache Cafe: If you get out what you put in, than Food Cache Cafe is your spot for fueling up for (or recovering from) a day a fun in the outdoors. The menu features locally-sourced vegan, vegetarian, and healthy eats and drinks for breakfast and lunch, perfect for grabbing on the go or enjoying in the dining room. Owners Erick Codoner and Karl Dawson are long-time locals who have nearly a quarter century of combined restaurant and cooking experience. New chef at Jimmys Taverna: Since opening in 2013, Jimmys has delivered on its unique promise, serving up authentic Greek dishes in a charming setting that compliments the rotating seasonal menu of classically prepared Greek fair. New Chef Jeremy Graham has kept a good thing going while folding some of his own ideas into a kitchen that puts out some of Mammoth Lakes best food. Graham is a graduate of the Scottsdale Culinary Institute, and brings to Jimmys a cooking style that includes classical French techniques combined with an eclectic fusion of European and Asian cuisine to showcase the natural flavors and vibrant colors of food. Chef Jeremy believes in an all-natural approach, with simplicity being the key to bringing out the true beauty of food. ACTIVITIES/ INFRASTRUCTURE The Mammoth Lakes Welcome Center, a designated California Welcome Center, and the Eastern Sierra Interpretive Association: From full moon night hikes, to skins and skulls interpretive displays, plus tons of information about the Eastern Sierra, the Mammoth Lakes Welcome Center, with help from the Eastern Sierra Interpretive Association, is the hub for activity this summer. Spend a Saturday at the Welcome Centers plaza and enjoy live music and activities, or stop into the auditorium for a free nature video. Plus dont miss campfire programs at 7 pm at the amphitheater every Friday night beginning in July. For specific program times and a full schedule, stop into the Mammoth Lakes Welcome Center at 2510 Main Street, or visit their Facebook page. Tesla Electric Charging Stations: Mammoth Lakes is now home to a Tesla Supercharging Station with 8 superchargers capable of a full charge in minutes, not hours. Located at the park and ride lot in downtown Mammoth Lakes, the station, which was built and will be maintained by Tesla, comes in response to consumer demand from electric vehicle owners for a station in Mammoth Lakes. It also places Mammoth Lakes in a unique chain of planned stations between Reno and Las Vegas and complements several EV-charging stations already available in Mammoth Lakes at hotels for the use of guests. The Westin Monache, 80/50, the Villages Grand Sierra Lodge and Juniper Springs Lodge all sport both Tesla and standard chargers. And with Tesla Supercharging Stations also already in place along U.S. 395 in Lone Pine, Calif and InyoKern, Calif., Mammoth Lakes is now easily accessible to Southern California electric vehicle drivers. Check http://www.visitmammoth.com/ for more information and to get started booking a Mammoth Lakes vacation. ABC National Excellence in Construction Award The winning projects, selected from entries submitted from across the nation, were judged on complexity, attractiveness, unique challenges overcome, completion time, workmanship, innovation, safety and cost. Gilbane Building Company, a global leader in construction services, announced the Walt Disney World Resort Textile Services Laundry Facility project was honored with a National Excellence in Construction Pyramid Award by the Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) in the Industrial Category. Representatives from Gilbane were on hand to receive the award during the ABCs 26th annual Excellence in Construction Awards celebration in Fort Lauderdale, FL. Gilbane Building Company earned this Excellence in Construction Pyramid Award through their dedication to safety, quality craftsmanship and teamwork and Associated Builders and Contractors is pleased to honor them, said 2016 ABC National Chair David Chapin, president of Willmar Electric Service, Lincoln, Neb. From start to finish, Gilbane demonstrated a commitment to innovation and high quality construction in their work on the Textile Services Laundry Facility project, a commitment that is clearly evident in the finished product. The 130,000 SF state-of-the-art, fully-automated laundry facility is located on a 50+ acre green field site within the Walt Disney World Resort and features one-of-a-kind, cutting-edge equipment. We are proud of the team out in the field doing the hard work every day. Said Robert Hayes, Vice President Gilbane Building Company, This award solidifies that the collaboration we had with the entire team helped us be successful for our client. The Excellence in Construction Awards program is the industrys leading competition, developed to honor innovative and high-quality merit shop construction projects. The award honors all construction team members, including the contractor, owner, architect and engineer. The winning projects, selected from entries submitted from across the nation, were judged on complexity, attractiveness, unique challenges overcome, completion time, workmanship, innovation, safety and cost. Eagle awards were presented to the highest scoring projects in each category with pyramid awards presented to the next highest scoring projects. Gilbane was also presented with the 2015 National Safety Excellence Award for a second consecutive year. A panel of industry experts served as the competitions judges. This year's panel included representatives from the Design-Build Institute of America, Engineering News-Record, Construction Users Roundtable, and the National Association of Women in Construction, and representatives from higher education, among others. About Gilbane Building Company Gilbane provides a full slate of construction and facilities-related services from pre-construction planning and integrated consulting capabilities to comprehensive construction management, close-out and facility management services for clients across various markets. Founded in 1873 and still a privately held, family-owned company, Gilbane has more than 50 office locations around the world. For more information, visit http://www.gilbaneco.com. Gilbane is an industry leader in the state of Florida with a reputation for quality construction and client satisfaction. The company has been providing construction management services in Orlando since 1972, managing office buildings, institutional projects, commercial, public assembly/sports, healthcare, data centers, higher educational, medical office, industrial, government and multi-family developments. Gilbane has worked with some of the areas major organizations including the University of Central Florida, Orlando Health, Orange County Public Schools, AIG, Florida Department of Management Services, Greater Orlando Aviation Authority, Orange County Convention Center, Marriott, and School District of Osceola County. Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) is a national construction industry trade association representing nearly 21,000 chapter members. Founded on the merit shop philosophy, ABC and its 70 chapters help members develop people, win work and deliver that work safely, ethically, profitably and for the betterment of the communities in which ABC and its members work. Visit us at abc.org. ### GiveMeTaps project is life-changing and Endurance is proud to be a part of it. We encourage others to help the communities in Ghana and join us in sponsoring this important initiative. To celebrate World Water Day, Endurance is helping sponsor GiveMeTap's Clean Water Protect, which gives citizens access to clean drinking water in areas with underdeveloped water systems. This crucial effort from GiveMeTap, with help from supporters like Endurance, seeks to hydrate the world and give every living person on the planet access to safe drinking water. And with over 780 million people without access to a viable source of clean water, every single bottle counts. A simple process with a revolutionary outcome, by simply purchasing a GiveMeTap water bottle from the for-purpose company helps give another person in Africa access to clean drinking through the development of sustainable water projects. As an added bonus, every GiveMeTap water bottle holder receives complimentary water refills at over 500 participating cafes and shops. From every bottle purchase, GiveMeTap creates clean, safe drinking water in communities across Africa by building water boreholes and pumps that can supply entire villages with clarified drinking water. GiveMeTap has transformed thousands of lives through their clean water initiatives and look to spread their message even further to the countless people in areas where access to livable drinking water is nonexistent. Everyone participating in the project can forever change the lives of people living in a community in Ghana. I think GiveMeTaps project is life-changing and Endurance is proud to be a part of it, says Jordan Batt, President of Endurance. We encourage others to help the communities in Ghana and join us in sponsoring this important initiative. In addition to providing clean drinking water to those in need, Endurance used the sponsorship of GiveMeTap to encourage employees to utilize these refillable water bottles. By supplying each employee with these reusable bottles, Endurance overall can create less waste and plans to use the money saved to purchase more GiveMeTap bottles in the future. With the support of Endurance and other contributing individuals, GiveMeTap will be able to fully fund this clean water project for a community in the Upper West Region of Ghana, called Wa. The water pump will provide clean fresh water to around 800-people for the first time ever. About Endurance: Founded in 2006, Endurance Warranty Services LLC strives to be the most customer-driven company in the industry and believes that protecting consumers from exorbitant repair bills is the key to their success. Endurance, the exclusive extended coverage provider of Cars.com, is the only company industry-wide that is both A+ rated by the Better Business Bureau and Gold-Certified by the Vehicle Protection Association. By delivering world-class customer service to every customer, current or future, Endurance continues to reign as the premier provider of vehicle protection in the nation. Visit us online at http://www.EnduranceWarranty.com About GiveMeTap: GiveMeTap was started by Edwin-Broni-Mensah in 2010. The for-purpose company makes co-branded stainless steel water bottles, where every bottle sold gives one person in Africa 5 years of clean drinking water. With the ultimate goal to hydrate the world, GiveMeTap seeks to give everyone access to clean drinking water one bottle at a time. To learn more about the recent GiveMeTap projects go to http://www.givemetap.co.uk/ ADLINK's Modular Industrial Cloud Architecture The ADLINK NFV solution features Wind River Titanium Server, the industry's first fully integrated & feature-complete NFV infrastructure software platform, available on ADLINKs SETO-1000 extreme outdoor server and Modular Industrial Cloud Architecture. ADLINK Technology, a leading global provider of Application Ready Intelligent Platforms (ARiPs) and compute building blocks that enable the Internet of Things (IoT), today announced a pre-integrated network functions virtualization (NFV) platform designed to enable telecom equipment manufacturers (TEMS) and communications service providers (CSPs) to accelerate production of NFV deployments. The ADLINK NFV solution features Wind River Titanium Server, the industry's first fully integrated and feature-complete NFV infrastructure software platform, available on ADLINKs SETO-1000 extreme outdoor server and Modular Industrial Cloud Architecture platform. The complete NFV infrastructure offering is designed to deliver optimized media processing and communications for todays bandwidth-intensive applications. The ADLINK NFV solution offers optimized software stacks and a mesh topology for maximum throughput and redundancy. All carrier-grade hardware is offered as part of a modular delivery system with an open/closed NFV solution architecture that enables TEMs and CSPs to easily customize functionality based on application requirements without compromising security or increasing time-to-deployment. In addition, the NFV solution ensures system compatibility and future-proofing with APIs based on open source and de facto open standards. Target virtualization applications include: Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) Customer premises equipment (CPE) Radio access networks (RAN) Deep packet inspection (DPI) Broadband remote access server (BRAS) Content delivery networks (CDN) Media processing Policy management Security LTE Core As part of our Wind River Titanium Cloud ecosystem, ADLINK has worked closely with us to validate and offer their NFV solution pre-integrated with Wind River Titanium Server software, said Charlie Ashton, senior director of business development for networking solutions at Wind River. By integrating Titanium Server with ADLINKs rugged hardware platforms, NFV can be achieved at the network edge or in the data center, providing users with greater opportunities to maximize the performance and capacity of their NFV implementation and reduce operating expenses. With Titanium Server as a software foundation, the industry can accelerate their NFV goals while ensuring carrier grade uptime and strict reliability mandated by telecom networks. Our carrier grade COTS solution allows TEMs and CSPs to accelerate time-to-market on their virtualization applications, removing the need to integrate, test, and provide support for multiple technology components from different vendors and open source, said Yong Luo, general manager of ADLINKs Embedded Computing Product Segment. With a ready-to-use platform, customers can focus their development activities on revenue-generating applications instead of the building blocks required for complex networking and communications solutions. ADLINKs SETO-1000 is the first high-performance MEC platform specifically designed for extreme environments and outdoor telecom/networking applications. Based on the dual Intel Xeon E5-2400 v2 family of processors, the SETO-1000 MEC platform enables delivery of data center performance at the edge of the network. The SETO-1000 provides IT and cloud-computing capabilities within the Radio Access Network (RAN) in close proximity to mobile subscribers, offering a service environment characterized by proximity, ultra-low latency, and high-bandwidth that allows content, services, and applications to be accelerated, maintaining a customers high-level Quality of Experience (QoE). ADLINKs Modular Industrial Cloud Architecture is an Application Ready Intelligent Platform (ARiP) for industrial cloud computing that adopts an innovative modular design for upgraded scalability and flexibility. Customers can choose from different functional modules (compute, switch, storage, and IO modules) depending on their specific application requirements to build a highly tailored computing platform. The hybrid design allows customers to mix and match between 1/4 and 1/2-width slot compute nodes in order to scale the number of independent systems with different processing capacities in the platform, as needed. NFV solutions that are pre-validated with Wind River Titanium Server must feature Intel Xeon processors and at least 500 GB of storage and 15 GB of RAM, support network interface controllers (NICs) with 1, 10, and 40 GB DPDK-enabled ports, and are recommended to have two cores for OS and virtual switching. Titanium Server is a carrier grade NFV infrastructure software solution that is designed to meet the stringent "always on" requirements of the telecom industry. Based on open standards including carrier grade Wind River Linux, real-time Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM), OpenStack, and Data Plane Development Kit (DPDK), while incorporating optimizations for Intel architecture, Titanium Server delivers high performance and carrier-grade reliability. For more information on Titanium Server, please visit http://www.windriver.com/products/titanium-server/. ADLINK is also a member of the Wind River Titanium Cloud partner program, which provides an ecosystem of optimized, interoperable standard solutions based on Titanium Server to accelerate time-to-market for service providers and TEMs deploying NFV infrastructure. For more information on ADLINKs NFV solution, please visit http://www.adlinktech.com/ModularIndustrialCloudArchitecture/ and http://www.adlinktech.com/mobile_edge_computing/. About ADLINK ADLINK Technology is enabling the Internet of Things (IoT) with innovative embedded computing solutions for edge devices, intelligent gateways and cloud services. ADLINKs products are application-ready for industrial automation, communications, medical, defense, transportation, and infotainment industries. Our product range includes motherboards, blades, chassis, modules, and systems based on industry standard form factors, as well as an extensive line of test & measurement products and smart touch computers, displays and handhelds that support the global transition to always connected systems. Many products are Extreme Rugged, supporting extended temperature ranges, shock and vibration. ADLINK is a Premier Member of the Intel Internet of Things Solutions Alliance and is active in several standards organizations, including PCI Industrial Computer Manufacturers Group (PICMG), PXI Systems Alliance (PXISA), and Standardization Group for Embedded Technologies (SGeT). ADLINK is a global company with headquarters in Taiwan and manufacturing in Taiwan and China; R&D and integration in Taiwan, China, the US, and Germany; and an extensive network of worldwide sales and support offices. ADLINK is ISO-9001, ISO-14001, ISO-13485 and TL9000 certified and is publicly traded on the TAIEX Taiwan Stock Exchange (stock code: 6166). # # # Intel and Xeon are registered trademarks of Intel Corporation in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners. On March 21, 2016, Levy Konigsberg LLP defeated summary judgment motions filed by two defendants in an asbestos mesothelioma case pending in the United States District Court for the Northern District of New York. (Pearl Osterhout v. Crane Co et al., 5:14-CV-208). In a 47 page Order issued by Judge Mae A. DAgostino, the Court denied two summary judgment that were based on a legal defense known as the bare metal defense. According to the decision, the defendants Foster Wheeler and Crane Co. argued that they had no duty to warn the Plaintiff Robert Osterhout about the hazards of asbestos associated with the use of their products. Mr. Osterhout, who encountered defendants asbestos products on the U.S.S. Roan while serving in the United States Navy in the late 1940s and early 1950s, ultimately developed mesothelioma shortly before filing the lawsuit in 2014. After the case was filed and Mr. Osterhout testified in a sworn deposition, he died from the asbestos-related cancer. In its Order, the Court concluded that a reasonable jury could find that Foster Wheeler and Crane Co. had a duty to warn about the hazards of asbestos exposure resulting from work on their products. See Order at p. 27. One of the defendants, Foster-Wheeler also moved for dismissal based on a separate legal defense known as the government contractor defense. But the Court denied Foster-Wheelers motion on this ground as well, concluding that Foster Wheeler has failed to provide relevant evidence that the Navy prohibited it from providing warnings on its boilers or in the accompanying instruction manual. See Order at p. 18. Both companies also moved to strike the testimony of Dr. Steven Markowitz, a New York physician specializing in occupational and environmental medicine. Specifically, the defendants challenged Dr. Markowitzs opinion that Mr. Osterhouts cumulative exposure to asbestos caused his mesothelioma. The Court, however, concluded that Dr. Markowitzs cumulative exposure theory is sufficiently reliable to meet the admissibility standard of Rule 702 and Defendants arguments to the contrary are more appropriately reserved for cross examination. See Order at p. 45. Jerome H. Block, a partner with Levy Konigsberg LLP, and Keith Binder, an associate with the same firm, represent Mrs. Pearl Osterhout, who is continuing the lawsuit on behalf of herself and the estate of her husband. In 2008, Mr. Block previously won a $5 million jury verdict on behalf of another man, Douglas Pokorney, who also served aboard the same Navy ship, the U.S.S. Roan. (Douglas Pokorney v. Foster Wheeler, No. 2006-3087, N.Y. Sup. Ct., Onondaga County). Mr. Block also represents the family of another man, Arthur Hammell, who served on the U.S.S. Roan and died from mesothelioma. The case of Mr. Hammell is currently being considered by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit (Linda Hammell, Individually and as Executrix of the Estate of Arthur Hammell v. CBS Corp., et al., 15-2643). From Left: Marco named winner of two 2016 Perfect Image Awards by imageSource Magazine in the categories of Dealer of the Year and Outstanding Leadership in Customer Engagement. Steve Gau, VP of Sales Receiving the Perfect Image Award for Outstanding Leadership in Customer Engagement is especially gratifying, said Gau. We think it truly differentiates us and is definitely a value-add for our clients. Marco has been named the winner of two 2016 Perfect Image Awards by imageSource Magazine in the categories of Dealer of the Year and Outstanding Leadership in Customer Engagement. The prestigious awards program recognizes exceptional leadership and innovation in the office channel. Marco was one of just four organizations honored during a special reception at the annual ITEX National Conference and Expo hosted by Sand Sinclair, imageSource Editor-in-Chief, and David Ramos, Director, Channel Service, InfoTrends. Steve Gau, VP of Sales, and Trevor Akervik, Sr. Sales Director, accepted the awards for Marco at the ITEX Conference and Expo on March 8 in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. Receiving the Perfect Image Award for Outstanding Leadership in Customer Engagement is especially gratifying, said Gau. This award substantiates our ongoing focus in this area. We think it truly differentiates us and is definitely a value-add for our clients. Open to any dealer, reseller, or Managed Services Provider involved in any facet of office technology and workflow, the annual Perfect Image Awards program showcases the very best of the best in the office channel. Nominations are judged on a variety of criteria including strategic sales efforts, overcoming challenges and innovative approaches to evolving after sale programs, customer retention programs and other critical workflow processes in the face of a rapidly evolving industry. The office supply and imaging channel is changing rapidly. Dealers, resellers, and solution providers must adapt quickly to evolve their sales efforts and find new ways to attract and retain customers, said Sinclair. Marco is a shining example of how a commitment to adapting and overcoming new challenges can create success. A full list of the 2016 Perfect Image Award winners can be found on http://www.imageSourcemag.com. About Marco Marco was founded in 1973 and serves customers nationally with offices in Minnesota, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota and Wisconsin. Marco specializes in copiers/printers, business IT services, cloud services, managed services, telecom carrier services, phone systems, document management and audio/video systems. Learn more at marconet.com. About imageSource Magazine imageSource Magazine (http://www.imagesourcemag.com) is a property of InfoTrends, the leading worldwide market research and strategic consulting firm for the digital imaging and document solutions industry, headquartered in Weymouth, MA. In addition to imageSource Magazine, website and eNewsletters, InfoTrends also produces ITEX National Conference and Expo (http://www.itexshow.com), the Premier National Event for the Office Document Technology & Services Industry. About ITEX ITEX National Conference and Expo , taking place March 7-9 at the Broward County Convention Center in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, is the largest event in the office equipment and solutions channel, representing dealers, resellers, and solution providers across the globe. The event is produced and managed by InfoTrends, the leading worldwide market research and strategic consulting firm for the digital imaging and document solutions industry, headquartered in Weymouth, MA. ITEX is co-presented by imageSource, the definitive resource for the office channel. Grab your leashes for a day of FUNdraising for homeless animals! Spring has sprung and its time to step into gear and walk to help Brevards homeless pets at the SPCA of Brevards seventh annual Happy Tails Dog Stroll-A-Thon on Saturday, April 2 at Sand Point Park in Titusville. Participants can register online at http://www.spcabrevard.com and click on the events tab or stop by the SPCA Adoption Center at 6035 Sisson Road to pick up registration information. The Stroll-A-Thon, which still has openings for sponsors, will benefit the SPCAs continued commitment to protect and provide a voice to the homeless animals in Brevard. The SPCA found homes for nearly 2,300 animals last year; many of which were animals saved from other shelters and would not have made it out alive without the SPCAs intervention. Event registration is free; there will be premiums for individual participants based on levels achieved and pack (team) participation is encouraged with a competition for the Pack of the Year title. Registration and check-in starts at 9 am and the Stroll-A-Thon begins at 10 am. Vaccinated, socialized dogs on 6-foot or shorter leashes are welcome to this fun-for-the-family event! This years Stroll Grand Marshall will be Sheriff Wayne Ivey. The leisurely stroll around Sand Point Park includes optional points such as a show us your trick station where your canine companion can show off his coolest trick to receive a treat and water stations, too. After the Stroll, stop by the Vendor Village where you will find food, merchandise, rescues with adoptable pets and a Kissing Booth to receive a smooch from an adoptable pooch. This years event will also feature an adoptable dog fashion show and a dog trick/talent contest. The SPCA Clinic will also provide low-cost mobile vaccines at the event for the very first time! Back by popular demand...the Doggie Fun Zone, the amazing, thrilling and entertaining fun and run multi-dimensional lure-motivated obstacle course! For more information, contact Susan Naylor at 321-567-3615 extension 248 or visit http://www.spcabrevard.com and click on the events tab. Additional Resources Event website: https://secure.qgiv.com/event/826453/ ### About SPCA of Brevard The SPCA of Brevard is a private, non-profit organization with the mission of protecting and providing a voice to the homeless animals of Brevard County. It receives no funding from the government and relies on private donations to be able to serve the community. It operates thrift stores in Titusville and Merritt Island, which are stocked solely with donations for resale to help fund adoption center locations. Founded in 1979 in Titusville, Florida, the SPCA is the largest private no-kill animal rescue group in Brevard, will find homes for more than 2200 animals this year. It is the first adoption facility with free-roaming cat rooms in the County, allowing adopters to interact with the cats in a more home-like setting. Its new Adoption Center in Titusville is over 11,000 square feet and sits on nearly three acres. Additionally, it operates two satellite Cat Adoption Centers in the Melbourne and Merritt Square Malls, which have contributed to a 241% increase in adult cat adoptions. Additional adoption statistics can be found here. The SPCA of Brevard Clinic also provides reduced-price vaccines to the public and has performed more than 55,000 low-cost spay/neuter surgeries since 1999. For more information, visit http://www.spcabrevard.com. Srinagar: Fresh hope for the Peoples Democratic Party cementing its rapprochement with the BJP emerged as PDP president Mehbooba Mufti flew to New Delhi Monday. She met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday to resume talks to break the deadlock over government formation in Kashmir. Read: Mehbooba Mufti has to make up her mind: Arun Jaitley on J and K stalemate The talks between the alliance partners reached a dead end last week when Ms Muftis half-hour meeting with BJP president Amit Shah ended in a fiasco, as both sides failed to find a common ground on various issues. The PDP earlier demanded that J&K-specific confidence building measures be initiated by the Centre to create a congenial atmosphere for government formation. Mr Shah told the PDP chief a government cant be formed on the basis of conditions. After that, both sides admitted that efforts to revive the coalition had hit a roadblock. Read: Mehbooba Mufti says not afraid of criticism for going ahead with BJP PDP and BJP sources said that despite the bitterness over the failed meeting between Mr Shah and Ms Mufti, lines of communication remained open between the two sides. A series of meetings that PDP vice-president Muzaffar Hussain Baig had with BJP leaders in New Delhi in the past three days paved the way for a broader reconciliation meeting between Ms Mufti and Mr Shah, that is likely to take place in the next few days. If the proposed meeting makes headway, the PDP leader may be invited by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for a one-on-one meeting as an affirmation of mutual understanding, the sources said. Read: Ready to form govt if people are made stakeholders in peace process: Mufti The process of reconciliation was rejuvenated also by a statement by finance minister Arun Jaitley on Sunday that the BJP was fully committed to the Agenda of the Alliance in J&K. He told reporters in New Delhi: We stand fully committed as far as the agenda of governance is concerned. A senior PDP leader was, however, not very hopeful of a back to the future breakthrough. It all depends on what is offered. She would agree to shoulder responsibility only if her concerns are satisfactorily addressed, he said. Former chief minister Omar Abdullah said Monday that his National Conference was not in favour of mid-term polls in the state. We are ready to sit in Opposition if the PDP-BJP combine is ready to form the government, he told reporters after meeting governor N.N. Vohra at Raj Bhavan in Jammu. He said the people of the state had voted with faith for good governance in the November-December 2014 elections. Read: BJP reaches out to Mehbooba Mufti ahead of her meet with J and K governor But the NC working president also said: If the PDP-BJP are not ready for government formation, then instead of looking for fractured dispensation, only polls is the option left. Taking a jibe on Ms Mufti, he said if she cant take a decision on government, then how will she be able to do justice in future if she becomes chief minister. She cant hang on the entire state for her self-interest, Mr Abdullah said, adding that government formation should take place at the earliest in the best interests of the state. Earlier Mr Abdullah tweeted: God help J-K if Mehbooba as CM is going to be as indecisive as she has been as party president over the last 2 (and) 1/2 months. Mr Abdullah termed his meeting with the governor as a routine matter. But reports said that Mr Abdullah had met the governor also to urge him to discourage attempts if made by any party to subvert the states constitution and anti-defection law in the course of government formation. He told the governor the NC would prefer mid-term polls over horse trading. Asked about the fears of horse trading, Mr Abdullah said the NC believed in ethics in politics. We have never encouraged such unethical acts. In fact, our party has been backstabbed in 1984 by engineering horse trading that witnessed the unseating of a democratically elected government. he said. With these skills and devices, youth and their families can and will be able to participate in the rapidly changing technology-based economy and be able to realize the American Dream. EveryoneOn has been awarded a $150,000 grant from the Best Buy Foundation to help youth living in HUD-assisted housing in six communities. These youth will receive free computing devices along with training in digital literacy and computer coding. EveryoneOn is one of Best Buys 16 national nonprofit partners who provide educational resources to help bridge the technology gap among underserved youth to help them prepare for a tech-reliant future EveryoneOn will work with Best Buy and several private and public organizations to host the #ConnectHome Kids Can Code! program for families living in HUD-assisted housing. As part of program, EveryoneOn will work with Best Buy employee volunteers and Geek Squad Agents at several Best Buy Teen Tech Centers in ConnectHome communities across the country to teach teens how to build their own Kano computers, which they can then take home. These communities will include Atlanta, GA; Los Angeles, CA: Jersey City/Newark, NJ; New York City, NY; San Antonio, TX and Washington, D.C. Tentatively, EveryoneOn plans to distribute at least 600 Kano devices at these training events across these markets in 2016 and 2017. GitHub and Kano will develop customized instructional curriculum specifically for the devices and these training sessions. The goal of the #ConnectHome Kids Can Code! program is to help low-income youth build 21st century computer engineering skills by teaching them how to build a computer from scratch and introducing them to coding languages like JavaScript and Python through curriculum taught with the Kano device, said Chike Aguh, EveryoneOns chief executive officer. We believe that these skills not only prepare these youth for today, but also for the increasing digital only world of tomorrow. As our partners at GitHub have found, these coding programs translate into a life-long interest in coding, which result in approximately 11,000 new coders over the next decade. With these skills and devices, youth and their families can and will be able to participate in the rapidly changing technology-based economy and be able to realize the American Dream, he said. ### About EveryoneOn EveryoneOn is a national nonprofit that aims to eliminate the digital divide by making high-speed, low-cost Internet, computers, and free digital literacy training accessible to all unconnected U.S. residents. EveryoneOn has connected almost 200,000 low-income households. For more information about EveryoneOn, visit EveryoneOn.org. Having Richard Lubic as our senior management advisor brings to our company one of the most knowledgeable minds in this business to help guide us globally states Mr. Ostrowski ZOMONGO.TV CORP selects Dick Lubic to lead its senior management to develop its Worldwide Global expansion. J. O. Ostrowski, President and CEO of the USA & Canadian based ZOMONGO entities, announced the appointment of international multimedia expert Richard G. Lubic to advise the companys board and senior management team. Richard Lubic, a U.S. telecommunications expert and venture capitalist, will advise ZOMONGO on its global growth, networking, capital marketing activities, and oversee the companys expansion. An early pioneer and entrepreneur in major cable television and other telecommunications projects, Mr. Lubic developed early cable and pay television systems in the United States. Time-Life Broadcast (now Time-Warner) hired Lubic in the early sixties to help guide the then publishing giant into the development of what was known as cable television. Today, Mr. Lubic serves on the board of directors of several companies and is President and CEO of DL Communications, a multimedia consultancy to worldwide media groups. "Having Richard Lubic as our senior management advisor brings to our company one of the most knowledgeable minds in this business to help guide us globally states Mr. Ostrowski." Mr. Lubic was formerly President and CEO of Dick Clark International Cable Ventures, Ltd. and was a long time business partner and advisor to the late television icon Dick Clark. About ZOMONGO.TV: ZOMONGO.TV is a Digital Out of Home Network (DOOH) which uses digital display technology to communicate with a target audience in Convenience Stores, gas stations, liquor stores and other retail outlets throughout the United States and Canada. In addition to the on-location digital advertising, ZOMONGO has also developed the ZOMONGO.TV mobile app, which is GEO FENCED for specific local, regional, national and even global advertising of exclusive brand offers. The ZOMONGO.TV app changes ads as the mobile users geographical region changes. The app is available on iTunes & Google Play. ZOMONGO is enjoying major growth in revenue as it moves forward in its accelerated global development. Its mission is to become the leader in this Point of Sale Media for these industries by providing a fully managed and totally turnkey, digital signage and mobile couponing solution. http://www.zomongo.tv Mobile APP https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/zomongo.tv/id1022220378?mt=8 https://play.google.com/store/search?q=ZOMONGO%20TV&hl=en Blue Cross-Blue Shield of Louisiana announced today that East Jefferson General Hospital (EJGH) has been recognized as a Blue Distinction Center (BDC) - Plus for Cardiac Care, Knee and Hip Replacement and Maternity Care. The BDC program was developed with input from the medical community and evaluates hospitals ability to deliver high quality and safe specialty care based on criteria that directly impacts patient results. A ranking of BDC-Plus means that EJGH not only met the same quality criteria as BDC institutions, but also went a step further in providing high-quality patient care. EJGH also provided 20 percent more cost efficient care to patients than other non-designated hospitals. We are once again humbled and proud of our accomplishments, said Dr. Mark Peters, EJGH President and CEO. Our proficient care and being able to provide that top-tier clinical expertise to our patients at a cost-effective level are two of the most important things to us at EJGH. This acknowledges East Jeffersons clinical leadership in those areas. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of hospitalization in the United States and research shows that BDC-Plus centers demonstrate better quality and improved outcomes for patients with lower rates of complications following certain cardiac procedures and lower rates of healthcare associated infections compared with their peers. Blue Distinction Centers-Plus for Knee and Hip Replacement provide comprehensive inpatient knee and hip replacement services, including total knee replacement and total hip replacement surgeries. For Maternity Care, EJGH demonstrated expertise and a commitment to quality care during the delivery episode of care, which includes both vaginal and cesarean section delivery. About East Jefferson General Hospital East Jefferson General Hospital is a publicly-owned, not-for-profit community hospital. This service district hospital, formed in 1965, receives no tax support from Jefferson Parish. The 420-bed hospital is accredited by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations and is Louisiana's first Nurse Magnet hospital. For more information on East Jefferson General Hospital, visit online at http://www.ejgh.org Contact: Brandon Scardigli, EJGH Public Information Specialist bjscardigli(at)ejgh(dot)org Office: 504-503-7110 Cell: 504-339-4279 Dallas plastic surgeon, Dr. Rod J. Rohrich, served as the chairman of the 33rd international Dallas Rhinoplasty Symposium. The three day symposium was attended by over 300 plastic surgeons and otolaryngologists from 34 countries worldwide. The meeting, which focused on rhinoplasty and secondary rhinoplasty, provided surgeons with detailed information on innovative topics, emerging techniques, best outcomes, and modern advances in rhinoplasty surgery. The symposium covered an array of rhinoplasty topics such as measurement and analysis of the nasal tip, the use of grafts, osteotomies, considerations in ethnic rhinoplasty, and revision rhinoplasty (also known as secondary rhinoplasty), a particularly difficult surgery which is performed on rhinoplasty patients who have a primary rhinoplasty with poor results. Presentations include demonstrations, lectures, question and answer sessions, and panel discussions with highly experienced rhinoplasty surgeons from around the world. A unique feature of the Dallas Rhinoplasty Symposium is the symposium's anatomy lab, which allows surgeons to perform the intricate and advanced surgical techniques required by rhinoplasty surgery on cadavers under the guidance and direction of Dr. Rohrich and other renowned rhinoplasty experts. "The anatomy lab of the Dallas Rhinoplasty Symposium offers a unique advantage as it provides truly hands on experience and training in one of the most complex procedures in cosmetic surgery," says Dr. Rohrich, who currently serves as Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Department of Plastic Surgery at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas. "This symposium continues to be one of the most productive educational experiences for surgeons studying rhinoplasty, one of the most challenging procedures in all of cosmetic surgery." Dr. Rohrich, who also serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery journal, believes that specialized educational symposia are a key component of a surgeon's continuing medical education. "The Dallas Rhinoplasty Symposium is designed to provide access to information and advances that are truly on the forefront of surgical knowledge in this specialized area," explains Dr. Rohrich. "Rhinoplasty is the quintessential representation of plastic surgery as a whole. It remains one of the most difficult procedures in all of plastic surgery, one of great finesse which takes years to master." About Rod J. Rohrich, M.D., F.A.C.S. Dr. Rod Rohrich is a Distinguished Teaching Professor and Founding Chairman of the Department of Plastic Surgery at UT Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas, Texas. Dr. Rohrich graduated from Baylor College of Medicine with high honors, and completed residencies at the University of Michigan Medical Center and fellowships at Massachusetts General Hospital/Harvard (hand/microsurgery) and Oxford University (pediatric plastic surgery). He has served as president of the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, the largest organization of board certified plastic surgeons in the world. He repeatedly has been selected by his peers as one of America's best doctors, and twice has received one of his profession's highest honors, the Plastic Surgery Educational Foundation Distinguished Service Award, which recognizes his contributions to education in plastic surgery. Dr. Rohrich participates in and has led numerous associations and councils for the advancement of plastic and reconstructive surgery. Gold Shovel Standard is truly a first-of-its kind program which will make our employees, contractors, and the public much safer Today, Gold Shovel Standard, a non-profit association created for the purpose of expanding the Gold Shovel Standard program, announced that PG&E, Xcel Energy, Kinder Morgan and Dominion Virginia Power have joined together as foundational members to further develop and promote the use of Gold Shovel Standard throughout North America. Gold Shovel Standard is a first-of-its-kind, two-part excavation safety program. Gold Shovel Standard both certifies an excavators policies and procedures against the Gold Shovel Standard, and publishes a score or rating, known as an EICO score, which is an ongoing measure of an excavators excavation-safety-worthiness. It is a novel and ambitious program on a North American scale to dramatically reduce damages from excavation to buried asset networks. Sometimes referred to as Experience Modifier for Excavation Safety, the program is actively engaging insurance carriers to begin relying on the performance data when setting insurance rates of excavators. Similarly, EICO scores are a valuable tool available to municipalities and telecom companies in reducing the frequency of damage to their buried assets. Participation in Gold Shovel Standard requires a commitment by operators, line locators, excavators and others to work together to develop a meaningful certification and rating process, using input from the infrastructure owners, insurance companies and excavators. Member companies are committed to begin a journey towards exclusively using contractors (excavators and locators) certified in the Gold Shovel Standard. We are very pleased to join with Xcel Energy, Kinder Morgan and Dominion in forming the Gold Shovel Standard. This is an ambitious program, on a North American scale which relies on collaboration between owners of buried infrastructure to achieve our goal of dramatically reducing excavation related damages, shared John Higgins, Vice President, Gas Transmission and Distribution Operations for PG&E and Chairman of Board of Directors for Gold Shovel Standard. Higgins added, When PG&E pioneered the Gold Shovel Standard in 2014, we realized that collaboration among asset owners was critical to achieving the programs goals, and this is an important next step for Gold Shovel Standard. Gold Shovel Standard is truly a first-of-its kind program which will make our employees, contractors, and the public much safer, said Ed Baine, Senior Vice President of electric distribution operations at Dominion Virginia Power. Were looking forward to joining the leadership of the program, and will be working with our partners in the coming months to begin the adoption of Gold Shovel Standard. Joining Higgins on the Gold Shovel Standard Board of Directors are Luke Litteken, Area Vice President for Gas Operations for Xcel Energy and Michael Catt, Natural Gas Pipelines Operations Vice President for Kinder Morgan. PG&E currently requires all excavation contractors to be Gold Shovel Standard certified. As part of their membership in Gold Shovel Standard, Xcel Energy, Dominion and Kinder Morgan will begin a migration towards requiring all their excavation contractors to become Gold Shovel Standard certified. "The Common Ground Alliance stands 100 percent behind any effort that enhances safety and reduces dig-ins to underground utility lines," said Bob Kipp, president, The Common Ground Alliance, a member-driven association dedicated to ensuring public safety, environmental protection, and the integrity of services by promoting effective damage prevention practices. "We support the worthwhile efforts of the Gold Shovel Standard." About Gold Shovel Standard Gold Shovel Standard is a non-profit association created for the purpose of expanding the Gold Shovel Standard program, which was originally pioneered by PG&E, to create a North American scale program, driven by industry and underpinned by data technology, to unify excavation safety under a single broadly meaningful professional brand, that raises the bar for excavation safety. Through peer-to-peer collaboration, and by monitoring the performance of individual excavators across networks and geographies, Gold Shovel Standard will be the first program capable of targeting incentives directly at specific excavation companies on a North American scale. Gold Shovel Standard Media Relations Phone: 855-ORO-PALA (855-676-7252) http://www.goldshovelstandard.com PG&E Media Relations Phone: 415-973-5930 http://www.pge.com Xcel Energy Media Relations Phone: 612-215-5300 http://www.xcelenergy.com Kinder Morgan Media Relations Phone: 713-420-6828 http://www.kindermorgan.com Dominion Media Relations Phone: 804-771-6115 http://www.dom.com We have done our utmost for the renovation of residential, commercial and historic properties in New Orleans since 2005. This award is greatly appreciated, and we look forward to continuing in our work to restore this great city. MLM Incorporated of Metairie, LA has won Best of Customer Service on Houzz, the leading platform for home remodeling and design. The local renovation contractor was chosen by the more than 35 million unique monthly users that comprise the Houzz community from among more than one million active home building, remodeling and design industry professionals. The Best of Houzz is awarded annually in three categories: Design, Customer Service and Photography. The winners of the Design category have work that was the most popular among the more than 35 million monthly users. Customer Service honors are based on several factors, including the number and quality of client reviews a professional received in 2015. Architecture and interior design photographers whose images were most popular are recognized with the Photography award. A Best of Houzz 2016 badge will appear on winners profiles as a sign of their commitment to excellence. These badges help homeowners identify popular and top-rated home professionals in every metro area on Houzz. "We are honored to be recognized by this important award," said Machi Medrzycki of MLM Incorporated. "We have done our utmost for the renovation of residential, commercial and historic properties in New Orleans since 2005. This award is greatly appreciated, and we look forward to continuing in our work to restore this great city." Anyone building, remodeling or decorating looks to Houzz for the most talented and service-oriented professionals, said Liza Hausman, the vice president of industry marketing for Houzz. Were so pleased to recognize MLM Incorporated, voted one of our 'Best of Houzz' professionals by our enormous community of homeowners and design enthusiasts actively remodeling and decorating their homes. Follow MLM Incorporated on Houzz. About Houzz Houzz is the leading platform for home remodeling and design, providing people with everything they need to improve their homes from start to finishonline or from a mobile device. From decorating a small room to building a custom home and everything in between, Houzz connects millions of homeowners, home design enthusiasts and home improvement professionals across the country and around the world. With the largest residential design database in the world and a vibrant community empowered by technology, Houzz is the easiest way for people to find inspiration, get advice, buy products and hire the professionals they need to help turn their ideas into reality. Headquartered in Palo Alto, CA, Houzz also has international offices in London, Berlin, Sydney, Moscow and Tokyo. Houzz and the Houzz logo are registered trademarks of Houzz Inc. worldwide. For more information, visit http://houzz.com. For more information about MLM Incorporated, call (504) 322-7050 or visit http://www.mlm-inc.com. MLM's office is located at 3500 N Causeway Blvd. Ste. 160 in Metairie, LA 70002. MLM Incorporated is a commercial and residential contractor that has been featured in "Our Louisiana" magazine for bathroom and kitchen remodeling designs. With an A+ rating from the Better Business Bureau, MLM Incorporated is also a member of the Home Builder's Association of Metro New Orleans. Also equipped for new construction projects and the restoration of historic homes, MLM Incorporated serves the New Orleans metro area. GW Students for Recovery Recovery Day at GW is more than just another event to raise awareness amidst the worst public health crisis we, as a society, have faced in over a generation. Students For Recovery at the George Washington University announces their second annual Raise High For Recovery Day. The event will be held on April 16, 2016 in the City View Room inside the George Washington University at 5:30pm. Raise High for Recovery Day is an opportunity to recognize those that positively impact the recovery community at George Washington University and beyond. The event includes a talk show, an awards ceremony, and a keynote speaker. Alison Malmon of Active Minds will deliver the keynote speech. Talk show guests include Tom Coderre, Chief of Staff to the Administrator, SAMHSA, Peter Konwerski, Dean of Students at The George Washington University, Author Brian Cuban, and Justin Luke Riley, Chief Executive Officer of Young People in Recovery. Washington, D.C. is a beacon of hope, change, and innovation for our great nation, said Young People in Recoverys CEO, Justin Luke Riley. Synonymously, George Washington University's Raise High for Recovery Day is a beacon of hope, change, and innovation. It is Young People in Recovery's honor and privilege to be a part of this revolutionary work. If you are an individual that believes that youth are extraordinary, people in recovery are powerful, and communities can change culture then you must support this event. Please personally attend, invite others, share with your network, and financially support this event to your fullest extent. Former United States Representative, Patrick J. Kennedy, will receive the National Recovery Champion award and Brian Cuban will be honored with the Advocacy & Action award. Other award recipients include Alison Malmon, who will receive the Campus Transformer award and Greg Rheault will receive the Caring Colonial Award. A Recovery Rockstar winner will be announced at the end of the evening. "Recovery Day at GW is important not just for current students, but for the future generations of students in or seeking recovery, said Founder of Students for Recovery, Tim Rabolt. We hope that the evening of events will continue the momentum of collegiate recovery seen on campuses across the country. We have an opportunity to change the culture of higher education. When a batch of flowers planted in the ground doesn't blossom, we work to fix the environment, not the flowers. Similarly, we can all work in unity to make colleges such as GW better suited to support those in recovery. That's what Recovery Day at GW is all about." Invitees for Recovery Day include George Washington University staff and faculty, families and friends, community members and recovery supporters from across the country. The evening is being sponsored by Young People in Recovery, Life of Purpose Treatment, The Nikki Perlow Foundation, and Father Martins Ashley. "Recovery Day at GW is more than just another event to raise awareness amidst the worst public health crisis we, as a society, have faced in over a generation, said Andrew Burki, MSW, Chief Executive Officer at Life of Purpose Treatment. Recovery Day is an opportunity to celebrate the recovery movement's greatest successes as well as honor our recovery allies and the families of those that have done so much to push recovery advocacy into the realm of public awareness. When I look at the upcoming leaders in Students for Recovery I am forced, with over 14 years of sustained abstinence, to stand in awe and admit a simple truth. The institutional support these students have secured for themselves and future generations of GW students far surpasses anything that I was or would have been able to achieve at a comparable age or period of sustained recovery. As a direct result of this support, they are stronger in their recovery and more advanced in their pursuit of meaning and purpose in life. The goals of Raise High for Recovery Day are to raise awareness about collegiate recovery and to increase the support and attention given to students recovering from mental health disorders. For more information about Raise High for Recovery Day, please visit http://www.gwsfr.org/recoveryday. About GW Students for Recovery GW Students for Recovery (SFR) is an on-campus support group and student organization for all students pursuing recovery from any mental health issue. They do not promote any particular pathway to recovery nor do they discriminate against any age, race, sexual identity, religion, or gender. The group hosts several recovery meetings in their new campus space as well as sober community activities. SFR believes there are many roads to recovery, and as such, members may also participate in groups at the University Counseling Center, attend outside meetings, and engage with a variety of other mental health resources on and off-campus. Following a record-breaking year in 2015, Hand & Stone Massage and Facial Spa (Hand & Stone), the nations fastest growing massage and skin care franchise, celebrated the opening of the companys new corporate headquarters in Trevose, Pa. in the Northbrook Office Center. To celebrate the new move, Hand & Stone hosted an open house and ribbon cutting event on February 24, 2016. Hand & Stone started 2016 with 256 open spas in the U.S. and Canada, up from 194 at the start of 2015, and is already pacing ahead of 2015 for revenue growth. The brand has quickly branched out beyond its East Coast strongholds and tapped into new markets in 2015 including San Antonio, Indianapolis, Minneapolis, Salt Lake City, Nashville and Atlanta. Over the course of 2016, Hand & Stone expects to open another 69 locations, including additional new markets like Kansas City, Fresno, Manhattan and Colorado Springs. With the new company headquarters and continued growth of the brand, Hand & Stone also plans to hire 10 new corporate employees in 2016. At Hand & Stone, creating a class leading brand is our top priority, said Todd Leff, President and CEO of Hand & Stone. Our new corporate headquarters will give us the opportunity to show our franchisees, brand partners and employees how much we appreciate their professionalism and hard work while also positioning the company for further growth and productivity. Hand & Stones commitment to creating an environment that makes guests feel as comfortable as possible when they walk through the spa doors has carried over to the corporate office. The new 7,200 square foot space was designed by Mike Howley, Partner at XL Builders in Wayne, Pa. and includes a 935 square foot training facility outfitted as a spa, 15 offices, 27 workstations and two large conference rooms. The company opened its doors to franchisees, partners and the media during the open house and ribbon cutting event. I have a special affinity to Bensalem Township and the surrounding community, as I went to high school in the area, said Leff. As our brand continues to grow and transform, I look forward to expanding the team at our collaborative new office, increasing the support team for our franchisees and continuing the incredible growth weve seen at Hand & Stone. Hand & Stone surpassed $185 million in system wide sales for 2015, up from $125 million in 2014, fueled by strong comparable store sales and new unit growth. In 2015 the Hand & Stone system achieved another year of 20 percent plus comparable store growth, the fourth straight year of comparable sales growth in excess of 20 percent. The new headquarters will help the brand continue on its mission to expand throughout the U.S. during 2016, offering clients a chance to add regular massages and facials to their wellness routines at a price thats more affordable and with locations that are more convenient than traditional day spas. ABOUT HAND & STONE Hand & Stone is a 260 unit massage and facial spa chain with a mission to bring massage and facial services to the masses. Launched in 2004 by a passionate physical therapist, John Marco and now led by franchise veteran Todd Leff, Hand & Stone now has locations in 27 states and Canada. For more information on Hand & Stone, visit http://www.handandstone.com. ### Attorney Joe Stanley, founder of The Stanley Law Offices, LLP, co-authors, A Cup Of Coffee With 10 Leading Attorneys in the United States: Constitutional Champions Share their Stories, Experiences, and Insights, which was recently named the Amazon No. 1 Best Seller for Court Rules and the Amazon No. 1 Hot New Release for Court Rules. Its an extreme honor to receive these accolades and was a privilege to collaborate with my fellow authors and attorneys, said Stanley. A Cup of Coffee With 10 Leading Attorneys in the United States was written by an assortment of attorneys whose specialties are as varied as the backgrounds of the lawyers themselves. It is the key to what motivates the people who work to fill the only job in the country that our Founding Fathers thought important enough to mandate within the Constitution itself. The book includes helpful information on not only lesser-known legal niches, such as Elder Law, Estate Planning and Administration, but also Business Law and Criminal Defense. Readers of the book will come away with a better understanding of the law and a new appreciation for the people who practice law, said Stanley, a litigator who focuses on serious personal injury. In addition to its No. 1 status, the book launch of A Cup of Coffee With 10 Leading Attorneys in the United States provided an initial 21,780 meals to feed hungry children in America through the Will Play For Food Foundation. Furthermore, every book sale in the future will continue to feed more children. A Cup of Coffee With 10 Leading Attorneys in the United States is available on Amazon. About The Stanley Law Offices, LLP The Stanley Law Offices, LLP has five offices located in central New York and northern Pennsylvania, including Syracuse, Binghamton, Watertown and Rochester, NY, as well as Montrose, PA. The firm specializes in personal injury law, workers compensation and accident-related law. For more information, please call 1-800-608-3333 or visit http://www.stanleylawoffices.com. About the NALA The NALA offers small and medium-sized businesses effective ways to reach customers in the digital age, while providing a single-agency source that helps them flourish in their local community. The NALA offers its clients an array of marketing tools from press release campaigns and social media management to a cause marketing program. The NALAs mission is to make businesses relevant and newsworthy, both online and through traditional media, by providing increased exposure at reasonable costs. For media inquiries, please call 805.650.6121, ext. 361. After a thorough and careful evaluation of PeopleStrategy, we are confident in recommending PeopleStrategy and its eHCM Suite to our member banks. Past News Releases RSS PeopleStrategy Presents to... PeopleStrategy Introduces... PeopleStrategy Raises Over... The Kentucky Bankers Association (http://www.kybanks.com) and PeopleStrategy, Inc. (http://www.peoplestrategy.com) a leading Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider of end-to-end Human Capital Management (HCM) solutions, have entered a new strategic endorsement relationship to offer KBA member banks PeopleStrategys eHCM Suite. We are excited to be endorsed by the Kentucky Bankers Association and look forward to providing innovative products and services that will change the way KBA members think about human capital management, and help them to create new possibilities, said David Fiacco, PeopleStrategys president and COO. PeopleStrategy eHCM will enable KBA member banks to streamline a full range of HR, payroll, benefits and talent processes through self-service, configurable workflows and mobile access, improving productivity and efficiency while saving time and costs. As an end-to-end HCM solution, financial institutions will reap the benefits of having all employee data stored in a central location, which provides access to real-time people analytics to guide more strategic and aligned business decisions. One of our goals is to serve as a reliable and responsive source of information and education about areas of interest and value to our member banks, said Selina Parrish, KBAs director of vendor solutions. HR products and services, particularly HR technology, have become a key area of focus for our member banks. After a thorough and careful evaluation of PeopleStrategy, we are confident in recommending PeopleStrategy and its eHCM Suite to our member banks. About Kentucky Bankers Association The Kentucky Bankers Association provides effective advocacy for the financial services industry both in Kentucky and nationally. The KBA serves as a reliable and responsive source of information and education about areas of interest to the industry. The KBA provides a catalyst and forum for collective industry action and knowledge. For more information on the Kentucky Bankers Association visit http://www.kybanks.com or call 502.582.2453. About PeopleStrategy, Inc. PeopleStrategy provides enterprise-class HCM solutions for employers to help them more effectively manage Talent Acquisition, Human Resources, Payroll, Benefits, Workforce Management and Performance Management processes. PeopleStrategys Cloud-based eHCM Suite empowers the entire organization through self-service / mobile access, reducing administrative costs and providing more time to focus on people and strategy. PeopleStrategy: delivering innovation based on need and always committed to doing the right thing. The festival of colours, Holi, is an ancient festival and is celebrated at the end of winter, or on the 14th day of Phalguna. The literal meaning of Holi is burning (dahan). Originally Holi was known as Holika, indicating the relation of the festival to Holika-dahan. Though there are a number of legends associated with Holi, the most famous of all is the legend of Prahlad and Hiranya-kashyap. King Hiranyakashyap had instructed all the people of his kingdom to worship only him and none other. But his son Prahlad became a devotee of Lord Vishnu. Despite his best efforts to distract Prahlad from the path of devotion, Prahlad refused to worship Hiranyakashyap. Enraged by Prahlads devotion and his own failure, the king instructed his sister Holika to enter fire with Prahlad. Holika had a boon to endure the effects of fire without causing any harm to her. While Prahlad was saved by the grace of the Almighty, Holika, despite her boon, died because of her evil motives. Holi marks the victory of good over evil and it is customary to celebrate Holi with a bonfire. The festival, therefore, symbolises the dahan of hatred, anger, enmity, jealousy, greed and other ills of life. It is also the day to forgive others. Holi is the day when people throw colours, especially gulal, and water at each other. Gulal symbolises happiness and love. Legend of Krish-na and Radha is associated with playing with colours and the festival of gulal comes to its full form in Mathura and Vrindavan. In addition to this traditional Holi, Sikhs celebrate Hola Mohalla, which was given a new form, new significance and a new name by Guru Gobind Singh. The word Hola means halla (attack) and a military charge. Mohalla implies an organised procession in the form of an army column. The Guru, in true spirit of saint-soldier, made Hola Mohalla an occasion for Sikhs to demonstrate their martial skills and at the same time to be imbued with the spiritual word in the form of shabad. The event was reinvented to revive the spirit of brotherhood and martial ethics in the Sikh community. The sacred Guru Granth advises Sikhs to play a pure Holi by immersing themselves in Namsimran. I am imbued with the deep crimson colour of the Lords divine love; My mind and body have blossomed forth, in utter incomparable beauty, says the Guru. Sikhs celebrate Hola Mohalla at Anandpur Sahib in a celebration marked by shabad-kirtan, langar, processions and poetry-recitals. The main attraction of the event are the feats shown by Nihangs like gatka, horse-riding, standing on speeding horses, etc. The festival of Hola Mohalla showcases the true colours of bravery. KSO and area choruses perform Shostakovich April 9th Shostakovichs 1964 musical portrayal of the grisly poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko is unabashedly sardonic and visceral ... James Cassidy, KSO Music Director Joseph Stalin was the quintessential party-pooper, who squelched freedom and instilled mistrust and fear amongst all Russians. Only after the tyrants death, could Dimitri Shostakovich and other Soviet composers feel slightly more confident about writing music without being censored or denounced by the Communist state. The Kentucky Symphony Orchestra (KSO) continues its 24th season with an all-Shostakovich program dubbed Heads will Roll at Greaves Concert Hall on the campus of Northern Kentucky University. Before entering the lobby, patrons can celebrate the Cincinnati Reds opening week by testing their throwing arms at the KSOs Dunk the Dictator tank. A brave soul dressed as Stalin will sit precipitously above the frigid conditions to which the "Red Tsar" often subjected his countrymen and artists. The program opens with Dimitris Shostakovichs 10th Symphony, which scholars describe as a musical depiction of the oppressive Stalin years and even Stalin himself. The dictators demise in 1953 ended a 31-year reign of terror, which led to the deaths of millions of Russian citizens. The 10th Symphony allowed Shostakovich to write a symphony for the first time in 9 years, without the constant fear of censorship, exile or execution. In his Tenth Shostakovich musically reflects his optimism, pessimism and realism without contradiction. Following intermission baritone Kenneth Shaw along with 150 voices from the KSO Chorale, the Northern Kentucky Community Chorus (Stephanie Nash, director) and Voices of the Commonwealth (Tony Burdette, director) will join 70 KSO musicians on stage for the rarely heard Execution of Stenka Razin. This symphonic poem/cantata recounts of the execution of the 17th century Cossack pirate Stepan (Stenka) Razin in Moscows Red Square in 1671. The lore of Stenka Razin made him a Robin Hood of his time, leading Cossack and peasant armies in uprisings against the Shah of Persia and the nobility of Russia. Shostakovichs 1964 musical portrayal of the grisly poem by Yevgeny Yevtushenko is unabashedly sardonic and visceral in its bombastic brass writing and serene haunting moments just before the ax falls. One cant help but believe that the subject matter together with Shostakovichs in your face score echos his sentiments against the Soviet system and its bloody and oppressive history opined KSO Music Director, James Cassidy. The Kentucky Symphony Orchestra fills the stage for an evening of late Shostakovich 7:30 p.m., Saturday, April 9 at Greaves Concert Hall, NKU, Highland Heights, KY. Reserved seating tickets are $19, $27, $35 (children ages 6-18 are 50% off) and are available online kyso.org, by phone (859) 431-6216 or at the door. About the KSO: The Kentucky Symphony Orchestra takes the phony out of symphony through live thematic concerts that culturally enrich, educate and entertain the residents of Northern Kentucky and Greater Cincinnati. The KSO performs throughout Northern Kentucky performing three series of concerts. Lalafofofo.org Penpal Program Tips for the Lalafofofo-sponsored penpal program range from dealing with language barriersmembers of Maasai tribes speak English as a third language, while Maasai and Swahili are their native and secondary languagesto deciding what to write about. MENLO PARK, Calif., March 22, 2016Lalafofofo.org, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization established to raise funds for affordable, small-scale service projects in the Kilimanjaro region of Tanzania, has launched a penpal program for 5th 8th grade students in the U.S. to connect and correspond with Tanzanian students in a Maasai tribe living near Mount Kilimanjaro to learn about others whose lifestyles are different from their own. The Lalafofofo penpal project facilitates the penpal exchanges, and offers students tips and guidelines for sharing letters with students at the Mlima Shabaha Shule (school), Sanya Station Shule and Tindegani Shule, located in a remote area in East Africa. Most likely, students in both countries know little if anything about each others cultures and lifestyles. According to Laura Vaughan, founder and executive director of Lalafofofo, the penpal program is a great way for students to learn not only about their peers halfway around the world, but also about a culture and way of life that is different from their own. It can also help establish greater global awareness outside their own experiences. Tips for the Lalafofofo-sponsored penpal program range from dealing with language barriersmembers of Maasai tribes in Tanzania speak English as a third language, while Maasai and Swahili are their native and secondary languagesto deciding what to write about. For instance, U.S. students are reminded that most Maasai students have never ridden in a car, never seen a city and never been more than a days walk from their village. Their homes have no electricity, so they do not have a TV, WiFi or computers, and drinking water is pumped from a well or a river and hand carried to their homes. Students in Tanzania most likely know little to nothing about life in the U.S., but theyre interested in learning about American culture, just as U.S. students are interested in learning about Tanzanian culture. Lady Gaga, video games and Pizza Hut are as foreign to Tanzanian students as shukas, uji and boma are to American students, but addressing these differences can encourage children in both countries to learn more about each other, and possibly establish long term friendships. Lalafofofos penpal tips encourage U.S. students to write about their favorite holidays, a favorite book or story, or where their ancestors came from. They also encourage writing about ordinary things, such as the chores they do at home, a typical school day or the wildlife around their home. All letters are to be mailed by teachers to Lalafofofos U.S. base in California, and in turn they will be sent via Federal Express at the expense of Lalafofofo to Moshi, where they will be delivered to one of the participating schools. Once the first batch of letters arrive at a Moshi school, a penpal match for each will be made with a Moshi student. Innovative approaches to teaching children about the broader world, like Lalafofofos penpal program, are important for helping children gain exposure to international topics, cultures, history, the differences between places and people, accurate cultural knowledge, and help to improve their writing ability. Similar programs have been found to play a role in helping children overcome stereotypes while providing them with a broader world view. To learn more about participating in Lalafofofos penpal project, visit the lalafofofo.org website, email info(at)lalafofofo(dot)org, or call 650.218.3027. About Lalafofofo.org: Lalafofofo (a Swahili expression for sleeping peacefully) is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization created by Laura Vaughan of Atherton, Calif. Lalafofofo is set up to be a source of affordable, small-scale service projects in the Kilimanjaro Region of Tanzania, East Africa. Lalafofofo links individuals, youths, families and groups directly to much needed projects in Kilimanjaro, ranging in cost from $500-$2,500 for financial sponsorship. ### Pan Atlantic We knew how much of a big deal this was and it was a fantastic opportunity to celebrate the achievements of our growing industry. Pan Atlantic travelled from their Manhattan headquarters to Chicago last week to attend the highly anticipated Business Owners Summit. The event was held at The Ballroom at 12 East Erie, from 10th to 12th March, and it saw 150 sales and marketing professionals from all across the U.S. gather together with the intention of discussing growth in 2016. The itinerary for the day included multiple national and international guest speakers covering a variety of topics including: entrepreneur mentality, recruitment, training, growth strategy, development, expansion and how to make a comeback. About Pan Atlantic: http://panatlanticinc.com/about-us/ The event was an opportunity to recognize the great achievements of those working within the direct marketing industry as well as a chance for Pan Atlantic to strengthen business relationship with its fellow entrepreneurs. We were thrilled to be invited to the event. Having been to similar events in the past and listened to several guest speakers, we knew how much of a big deal this was and it was a fantastic opportunity to celebrate the achievements of our growing industry, said Pan Atlantic. Supporters of entrepreneurship, Pan Atlantic believes that it is important to attend industry events. Throughout our journey as budding entrepreneurs, and as business owners, meetings like the one in Chicago have proven to be hugely influential and assisted massively with the development of our company, highlighted Pan Atlantic. New-York based Pan Atlantic specializes in building their clients customer base. The firm achieves this through developing effective sales strategies. Their mission is to bridge the gap between client and consumer through face-to-face promotional marketing and sales campaigns. Their campaigns are targeted, personalized and highly cost-effective which makes them one of Manhattans most sought-after outsourcing solutions. From increasing sales and revenue to building brand loyalty, Pan Atlantic works with clients on a local and national scale. This means they have access to promote their clients brands in any market. The direct marketing firms overall goal is to provide seamless customer acquisition services through events-based strategies for their clients. The firm regularly travels across the country to attend business events, designed to assist with personal and professional development, and provide advice and information to budding entrepreneurs and business owners, helping them on their journey to success. Ronald McDonald House has changed millions of lives for the better all across our country, and this charity drive in their honor will help ensure that they can continue their mission Kramer Kirsh Insurance Group, a locally owned insurance firm that provides coverage to hundreds of businesses and families throughout the Philadelphia area, is teaming up with Ronald McDonald House in a new charity drive aimed at supporting nearby families with sick or injured children. Ronald McDonald House charities have been easing the burden on parents with hospitalized children for decades. Offering a comfortable and accommodating collection of private rooms and home cooked meals, Ronald McDonald House charity centers allow these parents to remain close to their hospitalized child to aid in the healing and recovery process. Ronald McDonald House has changed millions of lives for the better all across our country, and this charity drive in their honor will help ensure that they can continue their mission, says Greg Kramer, founder and manager of Kramer Kirsh Insurance Group. Utilizing a large network of business associates, clients, and personal friends, Kramer and his team are reaching out to families throughout the Philadelphia area over social media and email to help publicize the charity event. The firms monthly online magazine, Our Hometown, will also be dedicating a full page article to the charity effort: http://www.kramerkirshinsurance.com/Our-Hometown-Magazine_39. The Ronald McDonald House charity drive is only the first of many for Kramer Kirsh Insurance Group. As part of a permanent community involvement program called Agents of Change, Kramer and his team will be finding and supporting another new Philadelphia-area charity every sixty days. Readers who want to join the Kramer Kirsh Insurance Group in their charity drive to support Ronald McDonald House are invited to make a personal contribution to the cause here: http://www.kramerkirshinsurance.com/Helping-Families-in-Philadelphia_13_community_cause. Readers interested in following the growing list of charities supported by Kramer Kirsh Insurance are invited to bookmark the firms Community Cause page here: http://www.kramerkirshinsurance.com/community-cause. About Kramer Kirsh Insurance Group As a Personal Finance Representative in Philadelphia, agency director Greg Kramer knows many local families. His knowledge and understanding of the people in his community ensures that his customers receive an outstanding level of service. Greg and his team look forward to helping families protect the things that are important - family, home, car and more. They can also help clients prepare a strategy to achieve their financial goals. To contact an expert at Kramer Kirsh Insurance Group, visit http://www.kramerkirshinsurance.com/ or call (215) 579-0700. 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. For a civilisation, country and moreover a service steeped in age-old traditions and customs, the Indian defence forces have emerged as one of the most progressive bastions for women in uniform. Modern military history has seen women take part in various combat-support roles from medical, administrative to manning anti-aircraft guns. Even in the most gender-agnostic Israeli Defen-ce Forces (IDF), with its stated equality amendment to the military service in 2000, stating, The right of women to serve in any role in the IDF is equal to the right of men, ensuring up to 90 per cent of roles open for women, the fact is that less than 4 per cent of active combat roles have women in them. They essentially remain in combat-support domains. In India, both Lieutenant-General Punita Arora and Air Marshal Padmavathy Bandopadhyay personified the professional capability of women by rising to three-star ranks in the Army and Air Force respectively. Both these trailblazers were medical practitioners and administrators who ensured that the mental ceilings and perceptions were re-calibrated for other women in the armed forces. In 2010, in an unprecedented recognition till then, Divya Ajith Kumar became the first female cadet to bag the prestigious Sword of Honour at Officers Training Academy in recognition as the best cadet in a batch of 244 cadets, including 181 male cadets. She would later command an all-women contingent at the Republic Day parade in front of US President Barack Obama, signalling Indias march on an issue that equals the US defence forces. Considering that women were allowed to enter services as late as 1992 on Short Service Commissions (in medical officers cadre since 1943 and in the Military Nursing Services earlier, in 1927), they have come a long way in a very short time. Flight officer Gunjan Saxena was flying in the combat zone during Kargil operations (Shaurya Vir awardee) and later squadron leader Teji Uppal landed a twin-engine turboprop at Daulat Beg Oldi, few kilometres from the Line of Control in Leh. Lt. Col. Mitali Madhumita earned a Sena Medal for gallantry she saved at least 19 lives during the February 2010 terrorist attack on the Indian embassy in Kabul. Though, sadly, her battle to fight service restrictions and earn permanent commission is stuck in a morass of legalities, the significance of her battle is substantial and extremely commendable. All through the tribulations and scepticism, female officers have earned the trust and confidence of the organisation and soldiers under command, without alluding to a quota or tokenism, and therein lies the silent revolution of women in uniform. This June, flying cadets Mohana Singh, Avani Chaturvedi and Bhawana Kanth are on the threshold of breaking into new skies and enter the sanctum sanctorum of the Indian Air Force flying fighter planes. All three have undergone the mandatory flying on Stage 1 trainers and are now flying Kiran Mark IIs, after which they will graduate to advanced jet trainers for the ultimate fighter flying training. All the requisite physical, mental and psychological tests are applicable to them, including the holy grail of testing the 5G + manoeuvres (more than five times the gravitational pull) and they are reportedly up to the task. While female pilots have flown transport aircraft and helicopters since 1992 in the IAF, this historical trial without any serious concessions will pave the way for women to fly combat air patrols (CAPs), though they are still not cleared for flying over enemy territory as the risk to themselves and the nation is of a different dimension in the unforeseen eventuality of getting shot down over enemy territory. This is in keeping with international practices, though the erstwhile Union of Soviet Socialist Republics did boast of Lydia Litvyak and Katya Budanova, ace fighter pilots during the Second World War with 12 and 11 kills respectively. Indias step-at-a-time approach is more assured and calculated and, thus, enabling. Accelerating intake and opening all positions immediately is akin to the cavalier and slapdash approach adopted earlier that subsequently became counter-productive and left women officers dissatisfied with the service conditions. Quoting figures of higher composition of women in the US Army in Iraq and Afghanistan belies the fact that while female casualties have occurred owing to hostile activities like improvised explosive device blasts, suicide blasts and helicopter crashes, there hasnt been a single combat casualty as women have not been placed in direct confrontation with the enemy. They have been deployed in combat-support roles only. Also the socio-psycho composition of the bulk of Indian soldiers and their acceptance of taking combat orders from women needs to be weighed in blanket induction without aligning sensitivities will prove counter-productive and could hamper the fighting efficacy and preparedness of the defence forces. So while the overall outlook needs to be gender-agnostic and the most fit and committed personnel ought to earn the stripe, induction of women should not be done out of a misplaced sense of emancipation or ticking the box of equal opportunities as often misconstrued outside of the uniform fraternity. Even the Womens Reservation Bill, seeking 33 per cent of Lok Sabha and state Assemblies seat is more talk and less action with negligible progress. Defence forces have a certain ethos. They work in the most trying circumstances that are afforded by a nations requirements. Ironically, it is only here where we have pushed the envelope to allow women to rightfully enter on merit and blaze their way to true equality without any favour or leniency. According to a report, Xiaomi has delayed the launch of a Mi laptop. Rumors about the laptop have been making numerous reports for more than a year now. DigiTimes reported that the company will delay the launch of their first notebook to the second quarter of 2016. The report mentions that Xiaomi wants to now fine tune its strategy and make a single screen-sized (12.5-inch) model rather than having two. The Chinese tech giant has been manufacturing consumer electronics ranging from phones and tablets to household electronics such as water filters and air purifiers too. The first update about Xiaomi working on a laptop that looks similar to the Apple MacBook Air was out in December 2014 and a few images of the same were leaked out by GizmoChina. The silver shell features with a bright orange Mi logo on the rear and front. Along with the photos, the source also leaked out the specifications for the notebook. The Mi notebook was earlier said to be built using an Intel i7-4500u processor with 2 x 8GB dial-channel RAM. However, since Intel has newer processors in line, the specifications may change for the better. The notebook is also said to sport a 12.5-inch full HD display and will run Windows 10 as the operating system. Earlier reports mentioned Linux as the operating system. There is no present information about the internal storage or the battery as yet. But more information and leaks will soon bring the entire specifications to light. The notebook was earlier rumored to be crowned with a price tag of $481, which is approximately around Rs 29,000. If true, the Mi notebook will definitely be a worthy product to own. Click on Deccan Chronicle Technology and Science for the latest news and reviews. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter. After a 24-year career in publishing, Erika Berg began running visual storytelling workshops with refugeesmostly ethnic and religious minorities from Burma, people whose voices were rarely heard. It was this experience, that inspired Berg to self-publish Forced to Flee: Visual Stories by Refugee Youth from Burma. Publishers Weekly reviewed the book, saying, [the] power for an American audience derives from the artists' ability to express private struggles and grief with universally understandable images that transcend language and cultural barriers. The book as a whole articulates the human cost of systematic abuses in a profoundly approachable, moving way. When Berg announced the project, countless people donated their support to it, not only through the books Kickstarter campaign, but by sharing their publishing experience as well. According to Berg, the publishing process was surprisingly straightforward. Since her books publication, Berg has continued working with refugees and is using her book and its companion website as an advocacy tool for giving voice to refugees. Shes also in talks with potential visual storytelling workshop facilitators from Syria about the possibility of publishing a second book. We asked Berg for her advice for indie authors working on unique projects like her own: Keep Your Eyes Open When conceptualizing your book, keep your antennae up for possible win-win partnerships. I put a lot of effort into investing potential advocates into the books success; that is, cultivating a shared sense of purpose and ownership. I solicited content reviews from 42 ethnic community leaders in Burma and directors of refugee programs. In addition to offering suggestions, they contributed testimonials which lent credibility in hard-to-reach segments of the books market. I used LinkedIn to connect with journalists interested in writing about Burma and refugees. Finally, I started befriending advocates as soon as I facilitated my first visual storytelling workshop. Everyone who played a key role in the development of Forced to Flee has benefitted personally and professionally and academically. The benefits have been short term and long. Its Your Book Be fastidious about quality. If you arent wild about the type font, leading, color scheme, paper, trim size, binding, and of course content -- about every aspect of your book, why would anyone else be? The prouder you are of your book, the more determined you will be that it is successful. Off the Beaten Path When it comes to marketing, again, be alert to possible win-win partnerships. Forced to Flees most fruitful events havent been at bookstores; they have been hosted by school districts, universities, organizations, etc. that had even more to gain from a large turnout and media coverage than I did. Author Ally Condie is best-known for her Matched trilogy, a futuristic love triangle about a teenage girl whose Society chooses everyones mate for them, but who falls in love with someone else. After years of successfully writing dystopian YA, Condie has now tried her hand at middle grade with Summerlost, the story of a girl named Cedar who, after the deaths of her father and brother, must adjust to a new home in a small Utah town. Cedar meets quirky and resourceful Leo, who gets her a job at the Summerlost festival; soon the two are caught up in the mystery of a hometown actress who died decades before. PW spoke with Condie from her home in Utah about leaving Matched behind, tackling middle grade for the first time, and what fans can expect from her in the coming years. Did you always want to be a writer? What made you choose this career path? When I was little, I would dictate stories to my babysitter. And because my mom kept everything, we still have all those old stories. My parents were supportive of my artistic endeavors. In fact, my mom is a retired professor of art. But she would always tell me that if I was going to pursue a creative career, I also had to be practical as well. I decided I would teach high school English. In my mind, it was perfect; I would teach but write on the side. Ironically, when I was a teacher was the only time in my life that I was not creative. Dont get me wrong I loved teaching. But there is a lot of grading when you teach high school English and it prohibited my own creative time. Can you talk a bit about your writing process? How do you know when you have a book idea that is going to stick? Usually, when I get an idea, I dont know until I am 20 or 30 pages in whether or not it will stick. Sometimes, Ive had to abandon a story at that point, but fortunately not too often maybe only four or five times total. My book ideas almost always start with a character. I wont know the plot necessarily at that point. The setting comes next, and that part usually comes quickly. I dont actually outline the story until I start writing, and even then I dont outline in the traditional sense. I jump around a lot when I write sometimes I might skip ahead a few scenes and then come back. Keeping a running outline helps me keep the story details sorted out. Matched was an international bestseller with foreign rights sold in 35 countries. How did that kind of exposure affect you, both personally and professionally? There were some fun things that happened almost right away. Before Matched, I had been with a small publisher in Utah. Suddenly, I had a national audience and got to attend things like BEA. But the two biggest things that changed? First, I gained this amazing and supportive team. My agent, Jodi Reamer, and my editor, Julie Strauss-Gabel, are like my own two-woman team. I feel like I have the most perfect situation with these two ladies on my side. Add in my publicist, Shanta Newlin, and I am over the moon. The second thing that changed was the amount of traveling I did. I got to visit schools and be back in the classroom talking to my readers. However, I have four kids of my own, so it isnt always easy to configure all of that, but I enjoy the traveling for sure. After three books, I would imagine that you became pretty fond of the characters. In what ways was it hard to say goodbye to them? Leaving the Matched series was bittersweet. I felt like I had gotten those characters to where they needed to be. And I was kind of surprised where they ended up, Ill admit that, but they ended up where they were supposed to be. I would guess it feels a little like sending a kid off to college youve done your job as a parent and though you are sad to see that child leave, you also feel satisfaction to have brought them this far. I felt that way with the characters in Matched satisfied that I had done my job. Any plans to continue the series at some point? Not really. I left it all on the page. However, if there were a spark of an idea that could be explored, I would be open to revisiting it. Just right now, there is no opening to do that. It was reported that the film rights were sold to Disney in 2010. Any movie prospects in the near future? We got as far as writing the screenplay, but it pretty much died after that. Disney renewed its option a second time, but has since let it lapse. I do get a lot of emails from readers that say, Please turn this into a movie! But its hard to explain that I dont necessarily get to make that decision! Were there challenges in making the transition from dystopian YA to realistic middle grade with Summerlost? Actually, it was ridiculously easy. Im not trying to be glib, because writing middle grade is hard. But as much as I loved writing my previous books, there was just magic in writing Summerlost. In my other books, I had had to build the setting from the ground up. For this book, I had to do nothing but drop my characters into this place that I already knew so well. And though I usually get to know my characters better during my first draft, I already knew these characters Cedar, Leo, and Miles really well. Cedar, for example, is not truly based on me but I would say she has a little bit of me in her. And Leo is very much based on a childhood friend of mine, who I am still quite close to. There are a number of layers to the story told in Summerlost a grieving main character, a new home, a blossoming friendship, and the mystery surrounding the death of a hometown actress. Were all of these elements part of the story from its inception? All of the aspects of this story didnt come to me at one time, but they definitely came faster than in other books. So many parts of this story were things I was familiar with from my childhood. The Utah Shakespeare Festival, for example, is a real thing, but there was never an actress associated with it who died that I know of, anyway. That just sounded like it would be something fun to have the characters explore. I will say that Cedars grief was very easy for me to write about. When I started middle school, my grandfather had just died. My mom was expecting twins and she had just lost one of them. I was definitely in this difficult time, and then suddenly, amidst all that sorrow, I met that one friend who understood and made it okay. Like Leo in Summerlost, this friend popped into my life when I truly needed somebody, like a bit of unexpected magic. The setting of Summerlost Iron Creek, Utah plays a huge role in this story. Where is the real Iron Creek? Well, I grew up in a place called Cedar City, Utah. A small creek, Coal Creek, ran through the town, and there was a state park very close by. I kind of mixed all of that together to create Iron Creek. So I guess you could say its based heavily on a real place, but I still wanted the freedom to play around with the details a little. Despite Cedars grief over losing her father and brother, the story captures the unencumbered freedom and hope of childhood summers. What was summer like for you as a child and how did it compare to the summer we experienced with Cedar? I loved summers as a kid. There was a kind of magic to them that freedom to do whatever you wanted. I never had a job like Cedar did but I knew kids who worked the concessions at the festival like she did. My parents had to work through the summer. So at age 12, they crazily put me in charge of my younger brother. And I remember us watching Perry Mason and Days of Our Lives, kind of like Cedar and Miles did in the book. There was so much space to create during those summers. I remember one summer, my friend and I wrote newspapers and mailed them back and forth to each other. I dont know if kids do stuff like that anymore. Do you plan to write more middle grade? Yes, although I am not sure yet what will pan out. I am currently working on a YA but I like to have a fun backup project and right now, that one is middle grade. Who do you most admire? This book is actually dedicated to my grandmother. She passed away shortly before I started writing it, which is probably another reason that Cedars grief felt so real. I missed her so much. She always made everyone feel like her best friend. She was a first-grade teacher and when I was younger, I would go to her house after school. She would bake cookies and play games with me and was always fun and lively. Her life wasnt easy but she never lost her sense of fun and engagement. If readers could know and remember one thing about you or your stories, what would it be? I would hope that as they read my books, they find a character that they relate to. That at some point, they can read a story Ive written and feel like, Hey, thats me. Summerlost by Ally Condie. Dutton, $17.99 Mar. ISBN 978-0-399-18719-3 In 1923, the Brazier family of Silverton, Ore., set out on a road trip to visit relatives in Indiana. While there, their much-loved dog Bobbie was chased by a pack of snarling dogs and disappeared. Heartbroken, the family drove home without their two-year-old Scotch collie-mix. Six months later, Bobbie suddenly appeared on their doorstep, quite a bit worse for wear, having walked 2,800 miles home to Oregon. Bobbie became a hometown and national sensation for his feat, which is recounted in Bobbie the Wonder Dog: A True Story, written by Tricia Brown and illustrated by Cary Porter. WestWinds Press, an imprint of Portland, Ore.-based Graphic Arts Books, will release the picture book on April 12. Bobbies tale initially caught the attention of Graphic Arts marketing manager, Angie Zbornik, who saw a 2012 TV news story that spotlighted a heated controversy about the dogs final resting place. When he died in 1927, Bobbie, at his owners request, was buried at the Oregon Humane Society in Portland, where he was eulogized by the mayor (and Hollywood canine celebrity Rin Tin Tin visited his grave). But several years ago, a small group of Silverton residents launched an unsuccessful campaign to move Bobbies remains to his hometown. When I learned about Bobbie through this TV report, I wondered why there wasnt an illustrated childrens book on this amazing dog, Zbornik recalled. Her Graphics Arts colleagues agreed that Bobbie deserved his own book. Managing editor Kathy Howard recommended Tricia Brown as a writer who could tackle Bobbies story. Howard had worked with Brown when the author was acquisitions editor for Alaska Northwest (another Graphic Arts imprint) and WestWinds in the early 2000s, and the two subsequently worked together on several of Browns childrens books, including Groucho's Eyebrows and The Itchy Little Musk Ox, both published by Alaska Northwest. Since Tricia had also published Patsy Ann of Alaska: The True Story of a Dog with Sasquatch, she had done a successful childrens book based on the story of a real-life dog, said Howard, so I knew shed be perfect for Bobbie. And she was, Zbornik said, adding, Tricias attention to detail and gifted storytelling is what brought Bobbies story to life. Bobbie Becomes a Hero on the Page Brown eagerly dove into researching Bobbies story, which she had tangentially encountered while driving through Silverton, where a 70-foot mural highlights the dogs journey. The author searched Oregon census records to learn the ages of each Brazier family member, as well as where they had lived and when. And while searching for more information online, she was thrilled to come across a copy of a rare book from 1924 called Animal Pals, which collected stories submitted to a writing contest including one by Frank Brazier, Bobbies owner. It was such a find, Brown said. The book is inscribed by the president of the Pennsylvania SPCA: To Percival P. Baxter, true friend of man and beast. Baxter was then governor of Maine and had written a story for the book, too. I couldnt have asked for a better first-person account, published just one year after Bobbies long walk, and it even included photos. The authors research also led her to descendants of the Braziers, including two great-grandsons who are cousins, Dana and Ron Crockett. Brown reported that Ron showed her a shadow box displaying dozens of dried daisies, the remnants of a bouquet that a fan in Australia sent for Bobbies funeral. Brown noted that Ron also offered insight into his familys determination to perpetuating Bobbies legacy. He told me that his mother, Valena, on her deathbed, told her family, Please keep Bobbies story alive. Meeting the Crocketts, and talking with them about how this story has been handed down through the family, was very emotional. The books editor at WestWinds, Michelle McCann, lined up debut illustrator Porter to illustrate Bobbie. I had hired Cary to create some black-and-white line art for another project, and I knew that he would be just right for this book, she observed. His style is so precise, and I knew that he would get the palette right and that turned out to be true. Brown also praised Porters contribution to Bobbie, noting, Cary created beautifully layered art that has such depth and detail I immediately fell in love with his pictures. Bobbies story has been included in the annals of Ripleys Believe It or Not, and he played himself in a silent film entitled The Call of the West, a reel of which is housed in the archives of the Oregon Historical Society Research Library. Ongoing celebrations honoring Bobbie include Silvertons Kiwanis Club Pet Parade, which has been held each year since 1932, when Bobbies son Pal led the procession with the Braziers granddaughter, Vades. Through the years, locals have chosen a Bobbie look-alike to lead the parade. Brown, who will participate in this years celebration on May 21 and take part in various book signings around town, noted that she anticipates that, having written Bobbie, the event will be particularly special, and a lot of fun! Bobbie the Wonder Dog: A True Story by Tricia Brown, illus. by Cary Porter. WestWinds Press, $16.99 Apr. ISBN 978-1-943328-36-9 Christine Toomey, a two-time winner of the Amnesty International U.K. Magazine Story of the Year Award and a foreign correspondent for Britains Sunday Times, was all-too-familiar with the impact of violent conflict on women and girls, having covered such stories as the murders of Guatemalan women and the fates of the children of women raped in Bosnia. In 2011, while reporting in India on His Holiness the Dalai Lamas succession plans, she interviewed several young Tibetan nuns whose dedication to the Buddhist path led them to endure extreme hardship, including torture in a Chinese prison and a trek at age 11 across the Himalayas. Inspired by their courageous stories, Toomey began a two-year project to seek out ordained Buddhist women around the world. The result, In Search of Buddhas Daughters: A Modern Journey Down Ancient Roads (The Experiment, March), takes a close look at those who dedicate their lives to the tradition. I had no idea when I started this journey that it was going to take me 60,000 miles, Toomey told PW. Her research, which took her to Nepal, India, Burma, Japan, North America, Britain, and France, focused on the Tibetan and Himalayan, Theravada, and Zen traditions of Buddhism. Some of the women Toomey met had decided to become nuns at a very young age, while those who had led more worldly lives before ordaining included a former airline pilot, erotic novelist, Nepali princess, Bollywood actress, concert violist, banker, and many others. One common thread, she discovered, was of devastating personal loss, reported by nuns in both Asia and the West, while in the East, particularly with the younger women, some will feel a calling, that its their karma, she said. Despite the different paths these women took toward ordination, Toomey said, the Buddhist nuns were all extremely feisty, very dedicated, very determined to live the life that they live. Some had faced horrific suffering as a consequence of their decision: Tibetan Buddhist nuns have been imprisoned and tortured in Chinese jails, she said. And when one of the Burmese nuns, who was fully ordained, went back to Burma, she was imprisonedessentially accused of daring to impersonate a monk by becoming fully ordained. Many countries adhering to Tibetan and Theravada Buddhist traditions do not recognize the full ordination of nuns, Toomey explained. Obtaining full ordination (rather than remaining a novice, unlike monks) is important to nuns of these traditions not for reasons of ego or status, the way it might appear to some on the outside, said the veteran journalist. It was very much a question of being able to access higher teachings that perhaps they couldnt otherwise have done. These nuns also want to take their place of equal responsibility within Buddhist communities, what they see as [their] historical place in the sanghas, Toomey added. While these nuns lead lives most of her readers will find unusual, Toomey appreciated that they demonstrate a broader range of choices are possible for women. In the West, we live in a very materialistic society, she said. Theres an obsession with the body image and material possessions. She found it very comforting and very inspiring to come across women who have a very different karma perspective on life, who are asking different questions about life, and coming up with different answers. Toomey said that while she hasnt formally taken refuge in the Buddhist tradition, she attends Buddhist talks in London when possible, and meditates daily. Reflecting on the journeys overall impact, she said, After so long spent writing about conflict, I think I had a kind of sadness that settled into my bones as a result. This has been very uplifting and kind of restores my faith in the ability of the human spirit to transcend even the most difficult circumstances. I think it will always stay with me. In Search of Buddhas Daughters, which was originally published in the U.K. as The Saffron Road: A Journey with Buddhas Daughters in 2015 by Portobello Books, addresses what president and publisher at The Experiment Matthew Lore said is an underreported area of the place and role of women in Buddhism. Marketing efforts will include an advertising campaign in the New York Review of Books, Womens Review of Books, Tricyclewho also picked up first serial rightsand other publications, as well as a national radio tour. Paris: Belgium's neighbours France, Germany and the Netherlands tightened border security on Tuesday after the attacks on Brussels airport and metro system that left at least 26 dead. In France, where November terror attacks were intricately linked to jihadist networks in Belgium, an additional 1,600 police were being deployed to border crossings, airports, ports and train stations, said Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve. "Access to public transport areas will be restricted to people with tickets and/or ID cards," and they may be frisked, he said after a meeting with President Francois Hollande. Cazeneuve also called on Europe to "further boost coordination and the fight" against terrorism. "These events that strike at the heart of Europe... show the need to reinforce even more the fight against terrorism," he said. In France soldiers have already been patrolling rail stations and the airport under a state of emergency after last year's attacks, but armoured vehicles and elite police units joined them today at Paris' Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports. The Thalys high-speed trains targeted in a previous aborted attack linking France and Belgium were not operating on Tuesday, and the Eurostar train suspended its Brussels route. The minister said French authorities have already prevented 10,000 people from entering the country since the November attacks in Paris that claimed 130 lives. In Germany, controls at the border with Belgium as well as airports and stations were also boosted, a spokesman for the federal police said. The Netherlands also stepped up security at national airports and train stations and tightened controls on the southern border with Belgium. "Out of precaution we are taking a number of additional measures in the Netherlands," the Dutch coordinator for terrorism and security said on its website. "That means there will be extra police patrols at Schiphol, Rotterdam and Eindhoven and border controls on the southern border," the statement added. Justice Minister Ard Van der Steur also said the country would boost police at train stations, the Dutch news agency ANP reported. Norwegian YA Author Turns to Crime Fiction I Will Miss You Tomorrow by Heine Bakkeid is gaining international attention. The novel marks the YA author's first foray into crime fiction; it's the first title in a new series about a former internal affairs investigator named Thorkild Aske. After he is released from prison, where he was serving time for vehicular manslaughter, he is recruited by a mother to investigate the disappearance of her missing son. Swedens Salomonsson Agency controls all rights, and Julia Angelin is the primary agent. Rights to the book have been preempted by Rowohlt in Germany and sold to Premedia in Slovakia. French Series Gains Foreign Sales The final volume of The Savages by Sabri Louatah, a four-part fictional series about the rivalry between two brothers, was published over the winter by Flammarion in France, and was recently sold to publishers in Italy (Mondadori) and Germany (Core). Susanna Lea Associates controls all rights, and deals were previously made with houses in Spain, Turkey, and the Netherlands. The novels are being adapted into a TV series by the French production companies Canal Plus and Chic Films. Describing the brothers, the agency said that one is the "mastermind" behind an assassination attempt on the president, while the other is "the familys golden child,' a rising TV star and model of success well-loved by the French people." Bolivian Novel to Make a Splash in the U.S. Rodrigo Hasbun's Affections, which was originally published by Penguin Random House in Spain in summer 2015, has just sold in the U.S. Ira Silverberg at Simon & Schuster acquired from Grainne Fox, who brokered the deal on behalf of Pushkin Press, the U.K. press that controls world English rights to the title. The novel is set in Bolivia and follows the Ertl family through three decades--from the 1950s through the 1970s. It is is told from different perspectives and chronicles the familys breakdown. Silverberg said the novel "humanizes the bleakness in poor, warring nations. British firm Rogers, Coleridge & White was the originating agency and controls translation rights; aside from the just-closed U.S. acquisition, the book has been sold to 10 foreign publishers including Suhrkamp (Germany), Buchet Chastel (France), and Intrinseca (Brazil). Hasbun, who was born in Bolivia in 1981 and is of Palestinian descent, was named one of Grantas 20 best Spanish-language writers under 35 in 2010. New Swedish Series Draws Bidders Badlands by Swedish author Arne Dahl, which was originally published by Bonniers in Sweden on March 18, has now sold in deals to houses in seven other countries. Buyers include De Geus in the Netherlands, and Piper in Germany. The book is the first in a new series featuring detectives Sam Berger and Molly Blom. When a 15-year-old goes missing, Berger believes it might be the work of serial killer, but his colleagues refuse to listen because they believe that, without a body, there is no crime. The primary agent is Tor Jonasson of Salomonsson Agency. Correction: An earlier version of this story referred to Arne Dahl's new series as Norwegian; it is Swedish. The first name of Salomonsson agent Julia Angelin was also misspelled. Cause was found in Henry County Circuit Court on Monday to proceed with cannabis-related charges on a man from San Diego, Calif. Travis J. Georggin, 24, was charged Feb. 8 with Class X cannabis trafficking, Class X possession with intent to deliver and Class 1 possession of cannabis. Geneseo Police Officer Jamison Weisser testified at Monday's preliminary hearing to pulling over a small SUV with two occupants at 11 a.m. Feb. 6 for speeding. He said the the driver's hand was shaking as he offered the rental agreement and vehicle had flowers and a large box wrapped as a wedding present. Officer Weisser's K-9 alerted on the vehicle and a subsequent search yielded 7 grams of cannabis in a backpack, then 17 pounds in vacuum-sealed bags in the wedding present, he said. According to the officer, co-defendant Kyle R. Gunter, 22, also of San Diego, offered a statement in which he said they were taking the cannabis to Albany, N.Y., to be sold. Judge Peter Church made the finding to advance the case against Mr. Georggin. Mr. Georggin is free on $10,000 bond posted Feb. 9. A pretrial conference was set for May 19. Mr. Gunter is free on $4,000 bond posted March 7 and has a pretrial hearing Thursday. Interim Chicago Police Superintendent John Escalante said Tuesday morning that he has stepped up security presence at the city's airports, transportation sites and other high-profile locations. He says there's no specific threat to Chicago but the department wants to be prepared and ready to safeguard critical infrastructure. Similar precautions were taken in New York and Washington. Attackers on Tuesday in Brussels detonated bombs at the airport and on a metro train. They killed at least 31 and injured dozens. Chicago authorities say they're in contact with federal and state officials. Chicago officials are encouraging everyone to be aware of their surroundings and call 911 to report suspicious activity. While a police dispatcher and an officer were speaking on March 13, someone interrupted with profanity and a racial slur. Authorities say another racially offensive remark was broadcast Sunday. Police spokesman Frank Giancamelli in a statement Monday called the racial comments "abhorrent and absolutely unacceptable." He added there is no evidence the speaker is a city employee, however, the Office of Emergency Management and Communications and the police department continue to investigate. Authorities say racially offensive remarks were broadcast Sunday over Chicago police radio. Although police frequencies are legally restricted to official traffic, Chicago police and OEMC officials say they've had to deal with people, including security guards, making unauthorized transmissions. ROCK ISLAND -- Ald. Josh Schipp, 6th Ward, asked city staff at Monday's city council meeting if a way could be found to prosecute the purveyors of political mailers that spread messages that are "patently false." The local primary election campaign that culminated last Tuesday saw large sums of money spent by outside groups allied with both Republicans and Democrats on mailers that Ald. Schipp said were "absolute nonsense." He mentioned mailers against Ald. Kate Hotle, 5th Ward, that accused her of using her position on the city council to funnel public money to her employer that were widely condemned as untrue. Ald. Hotle ran unsuccessfully in the Democratic primary for state representative in District 72, an election that was won by attorney Mike Halpin. Democratic Majority, a fundraising committee chaired by Illinois House Speaker Mike Madigan, spent almost $59,000 on the mailers that attacked Ald. Hotle, who works for Mediacom. The company has some contracts with the city, but they were in place before she took office. Mr. Schipp, who supported Mr. Halpin in the primary, said the mailers were false and called them "a disgrace." He also took umbrage with a publication called Rock Island Today that was sent to households in Rock Island County and is paid for by Liberty Principles, a conservative super PAC closely aligned with Gov. Bruce Rauner. The group has spent $218,000 backing Republican Brandi McGuire, who beat Jordan Thoms in the Republican District 72 primary. The Rock Island Today mailers could be mistaken for a local newspaper, Mr. Schipp said. He added the publication has published information on the pensions of local firefighters that cast those benefits in a negative light and had upset some local retirees. "We have an outside group trying to turn this community against our own," he said. "If it's wrong and propaganda, I feel we should have some sort of policy to stop it." Ald. Schipp asked city staff to see if any other municipalities had found a way to go after outside groups that distribute false political mailers. But city attorney Dave Morrison said any attempt by the city to go after the groups paying for the mailers would likely run up against First Amendment protections of political speech. Ald. Hotle said she actively opposes "unfair and false" political messaging, but because the city council is nonpartisan, the council chambers was perhaps not the place to take action against it. Ald. Virgil Mayberry, 2nd Ward, said he had not seen the Rock Island Today mailer in question and asked Ald. Schipp for a copy. "I like to read trash," Ald. Mayberry added. MILAN -- Milan will have to do some expensive drainage ditch work in the next five years, village board members learned at Monday night's meeting. Administrator Steve Seiver said Sheldon Creek, on the west end of town north of Andalusia Road, will eventually need silt dredged from the pipes. The Corps of Engineers has given Milan five years to complete the project. Seiver says planning will begin this summer with work likely starting sometime next year. "Logistics on it will be tough," Mr. Seiver said, adding it's likely that only one truck at a time will be able to reach the area. "It's going to be massively expensive." "It's something we have to do at some point," Mayor Duane Dawson said. Mr. Seiver said he is hoping the work won't have to be as wide as planned, but only time will tell. The board also: -- Approved the semi-monthly and miscellaneous bills, which totaled about $83,000. -- Approved a proclamation for Junior Achievement Day on April 7, 2016. EAST MOLINE -- Council members heard some early fireworks Monday. East Molines Maintenance Services Department notified board members meeting as a committee of the whole about getting only one bid this year for the citys annual July 3 fireworks display. July 5 will serve as a rain-out-date. The city usually gets two bids, Mayor John Thodos said. Other vendors are booked already, or have retired, according to board packet information, leaving J&M Displays, of Yarmouth, Iowa, as the sole bidder. Its bid was $10,000. Triumph bank has committed to contributing $5,000 and has pledged to try to raise the rest. Another $1,500 has been collected by the citys fireworks committee. Board members agreed to set the item on its April 4 agenda for approval. Council members April 4 also will vote on a police and fire Public Safety Answering Point dispatch center consolidation plan. An Illinois law change requires centers to consolidate, agenda materials read. A plan must be in place by June 30, Mayor Thodos said. Monday nights unanimous recommendation gives city staff members the OK to engage in discussions with Moline and Milan city personnel about forming one center, and then bring the ultimate decision back to council. The law signed by Gov. Bruce Rauner in June requires the six emergency dispatching centers serving Rock Island County agencies be cut in half by June 30, 2017, according to earlier reports. Current centers include one at the Rock Island Arsenal, and others for Rock Island County, Rock Island, Moline/East Moline, Milan and Silvis. Other centers have to consider consolidation. Those decisions, according to Mayor Thodos, may bring another kind of fireworks from municipalities wanting to keep their own centers. ALEDO -- The pay package for newly hired Mercer County School District Superintendent Scott Petries totals $168,219 the first year, including $143,000 in salary, according to the employment contract released Monday In addition to the salary, the contract includes includes a $35,000 life insurance policy, a family health insurance plan costing $22,569;, $30 per month for a cell phone and up to $2,000 annually for professional fees. The board approved the four-year contract in February. Mr. Petrie will begin his duties on July 1. In other district news, interim superintendent William Rees donated $250 to cover the cost of the district's membership in Aledo Main Street. The board decided in February not to renew its membership with AMS. AMS executive director Dana Murphy appeared before the board March 16 to plead the value of the organization. Board member Barbara Chiles again expressed concern over spending tax money on non-school related memberships. Im going to donate the $250 for the membership, Mr. Rees then interjected. The board also approved a 2017 summer band trip to Chicago. The band will spend a weekend touring, performing and attending a lot of Chicago landmarks. Rusty Ruggles, band director, said the trip will involve around 46 students and six adults and is booked through an educational tour company. The trip costs around $511 per student, with students being given opportunities to defer some of their expenses by helping with fundraisers. The jazz band will perform at the entrance of Lincoln Park Zoo, he said. He made no request for money from the school district. The board approved the trip. Mr. Rees explained some of his philosophies about school budgets and calendars, saying he will be working this month to come up with a budget that is conservative and plans to condense the school year by eliminating many of the early out days next year. Last year we had 14 early out days, he said. In other business the board: Approved contract renewals for second, third year teachers and tenure to fourth year teachers for the 2016-2017 school year; Accepted the resignation of custodian Caleb VanderHeden, to be replaced by James (Dale) Mitchell; and of Jeni Ewing, junior high math teacher, effective March 14; Approved immediate employment of Sharon Chandler as a long term substitute teacher. - Approved the hiring of Megan Ullrick, intermediate social studies teacher;, Sam Whan, junior high band and New Boston Elementary music teacher; and Mariah Chapdelaine, junior/senior high choir teacher, all and for 2016-2017 school year Renewed membership with the IHSA. HILLSDALE -- A forensic audit looking into the financials of the village of Hillsdale has been completed, but neither village officials nor the Rock Island County Sheriff's Department is releasing details. Hillsdale village board member Mike Andrews, the village FOIA officer, denied a Freedom of Information Act request for the forensic audit performed by Sikich LLP, of Naperville. Ancel Glink attorney Paul Keller, of Chicago, has also paid for services related to the forensic audit. Hillsdale Mayor Michael Lambrecht said last month the audit was complete and the sheriff's department has a copy. The mayor said he also had a copy but would not release it until the investigation is completed. Sheriff Bustos said Monday the investigation is still ongoing. Mr. Andrews said in his response to a request for the audit that it "is part of an ongoing investigation and cannot be released at this time. "You may contact the Illinois Attorney General's Office with any complaints or questions." The audit was approved last August by the village board but has been the subject of controversy after some board members complained they were not aware that they were approving a forensic audit. Members of the public also have questioned the merits of the audit and some have asked why it has not been made public. The audit, although part of the sheriff's department investigation, is being paid for by the village. Hillsdale board member Janet Lease said the audit should be available to the public. "I can't believe this is still going on," Ms. Lease said. "The money has been spent, and it's taxpayer money, and I'm thinking taxpayers should have the right to know what the village is spending the money on." Ms. Lease estimates the village has or will spend between $20,000 and $25,000 on the auditing firm and attorney's fees related to the forensic audit. "It's easy to spend money when it's not yours," she said. The investigation centers on funds from the Hillsdale Sanitary District, which dissolved in 2010. On Aug. 2, village clerk Jane Lundquist was removed from her elected position and placed on administrative leave by Mayor Lambrecht and Police Chief Paul Garza. In October, Judge Ted Kutsunis ordered the village to restore Ms. Lundquist to her job. The order was a result of a lawsuit filed by Ms. Lundquist after she was placed on leave. According to minutes of the Aug. 17 village board meeting, Mayor Lambrecht said the county requested an outside auditor be brought in and the board approved a motion to hire an "independent" auditor. The village has been the subject of a number of issues in addition to the investigation of sanitary district funds. One is existing village finances. The current budget ends March 31. The board also has tried to cut costs by cutting Chief Garza's hourly wage. The US Department of Homeland Security said it was closely monitoring the unfolding events and "would not hesitate to adjust our security posture, as appropriate, to protect the American people." (Photo: AP) Havana: President Barack Obama, traveling in Cuba, was briefed Tuesday morning on the Brussels attacks that killed dozens of people. The White House said the US was in contact with Belgian officials about the explosions at the Brussels airport and subway system. Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement that the US was working "to determine the status of all American citizens in Brussels." The embassy there issued a statement telling Americans to stay where they are and "take the appropriate steps to bolster your personal security." At least one of the attacks was believed to be caused by a suicide bomber, and Belgium raised its terror alert to its highest level. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the ranking member of the House intelligence committee, said the attacks "bear all the hallmarks" of an Islamic State group coordinated or inspired attack. His staff said he received a preliminary briefing Tuesday from US officials. Schiff says it's unclear if encrypted communications played a role in the attacks but noted that the Brussels attacks occurred despite the city being under constant vigilance. The US Department of Homeland Security said it was closely monitoring the unfolding events and "would not hesitate to adjust our security posture, as appropriate, to protect the American people." DHS reiterated that members of the public should report any suspicious activity in their communities to law enforcement authorities. Attorney General Loretta Lynch was also briefed on the attacks, Justice Department officials in Washington said. They said the Justice Department and the FBI was coordinating with other US government agencies, as well as with Belgian counterparts. Last week US Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Homeland Security officials constantly monitor world events and evaluate whether there is a need to either publicly raise the nation's security posture or issue another bulletin via the government's National Terror Advisory System. Such a bulletin was issued in December advising the public that federal law enforcement was concerned about the possibility of homegrown violent extremists and terrorist-inspired individuals. Caldwell and Associated Press writer Tami Abdollah contributed reporting from Washington. Elizabeth Rathburn, 56, pleaded guilty to wire fraud in U.S. District Court, admitting that she took human remains infected with HIV and hepatitis B to an anesthesiology conference in Washington, D.C., in 2012, claiming that the body parts were disease free when she knew otherwise. Under the terms of her plea deal, she faces four to 10 months in prison and a possible restitution tab of $55,225. Elizabeth Rathburn also has agreed to cooperate in the case against her estranged husband, Arthur Rathburn, a former University of Michigan morgue attendant and central figure in yearslong investigation. He is accused of buying body parts from dealers in Arizona and Illinois, then selling them to unsuspecting researchers. Elizabeth Rathburn is already proving to be forthcoming with information about her husband, if her actions in court Monday are any indication. She notified authorities that her husband recently sent her a birthday package with a note attached to it, when hes under a court order not to have any contact with her. According to her lawyer, the birthday gesture caused her distress. Arthur Rathburn was taken aback. Oh Jesus, he mumbled under his breath in the courtroom, adding he had no idea he couldnt send his wife a birthday message. His lawyer stressed to him: No contact means no contact. Arthur Rathburn is moving forward with plans to take his case to trial, which will be full of grisly exhibits and allegations that he committed many crimes, like cutting up bodies with chainsaws, shipping blood-filled coolers of fresh heads on commercial airliners falsely claiming the blood was Listerine and storing more than 1,000 body parts on ice at his rundown warehouse in Detroit. The FBI raided his Detroit warehouse in 2013, seizing more than a thousand body parts heads, hands, legs, torsos that were then stored in a deep freezer at the Wayne County Morgue. Arthur Rathburn is free on bond, living in a Detroit halfway house pending the outcome of his case. Though Rathburns name first surfaced a decade ago in a book called Body Brokers, he did not show up on the FBIs radar until years later, when federal agents started tracking what appeared to be bizarre shipments arriving for Rathburn at Detroit Metro Airport, including a bucket full of human heads that arrived from Israel one year. Among the examples outlined in the indictment was a 2011 transaction in which the Rathburns rented a head and neck to researchers for $13,108 to be used in a course titled Advances in Periodontology at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Cambridge, Mass. The head and neck came from an individual who tested positive for hepatitis B, though the Rathburns hid that. Rathburn faces charges of wire fraud, aiding and abetting, and making false statements. If convicted, he could face up to 20 years in prison. Before getting into the body parts trade as a private dealer, Rathburn was the coordinator of the University of Michigans anatomical donation program from 1984-90, but he got fired after he was caught selling bodies. In 1989, he started his own business supplying body parts: Biological International, which he ran out of an industrial warehouse near the old Detroit City Airport. Eventually, he fell on the FBIs radar, and federal agents and border officials started tracking his shipments of body parts. And he made lots of money, authorities claim. A human body is worth from $10,000 to $100,000 if sold in parts, court records show. Brains can fetch $600; elbows and hands $850. While this trade is not, in and of itself, illegal crimes have been committed, an FBI agent wrote in an affidavit. DALLAS (AP) Texas police on Monday accused the estranged wife of internationally renowned pianist Vadym Kholodenko of killing the couple's two young daughters before stabbing herself. Sofya Tsygankova faces two counts of capital murder in the deaths of 5-year-old Nika Kholodenko and 1-year-old Michela Kholodenko. Police say Vadym Kholodenko arrived Thursday at his wife's home in Benbrook, a Fort Worth suburb, to pick up the girls and found them dead in their beds and Tsygankova in an "extreme state of distress." Benbrook police Cmdr. David Babcock said Monday that Tsygankova was served with arrest warrants in the Fort Worth hospital where she is undergoing a mental health evaluation. Authorities had said earlier that she suffered knife wounds. It's not clear how the girls died. The Tarrant County medical examiner's office said Monday that it had not completed autopsies. Police have said the children had no visible trauma. Babcock said Tsygankova's bond would be set at $2 million. An attorney for Tsygankova did not immediately return phone and email messages for comment Monday. Press release submitted by city of Riverdale Mississippi River Trail Phase II (MRT Phase II). The Ribbon Cutting Ceremony will be held on April 9, 2016 at 9:00 a.m. in front of the Riverdale Fire Station, 110 Manor Drive, Riverdale, Iowa. Rain date April 16, 2016 at 9:00 a.m. Mayor Sonya Paddock will be thanking the many who have worked together since 1980 laying groundwork for Phase II of Riverdales final 1.4 mile section of the MRT. This section links four other multi-use recreational trails in the area by connecting directly to : 1) the existing MRT to the south, 2) the Duck Creek Regional Trail to the southwest, 3) the Scott Community College campus trail system to the northwest, 4) and the future MRT towards LeClaire to the northeast. A Park N Ride lot was added at the corner of Bellingham and State Street. Girl Scout Troop 8643 installed a loaner library at the bump out located at the intersection of Manor Drive and Highway 67, also, at the bump out is a park bench and water fountain. Nationally the MRT travels through 10 states from Minnesota to the Gulf of Mexico. The MRT also intersects in Davenport with coast to coast National Discovery trail which is about 6 miles from Riverdale. It provides unique ways to experience the Mississippi Rivers Natural wonders, transportation system, recreational facilities and cultural heritage. Completion of the Riverdale portion of the MRT will move Riverdale, and the entire Quad Cities, one step closer to connecting the Quad Cities to the National Recreational Trail system through Scott County, Iowa. BRUSSELS (AP) Islamic extremists struck Tuesday in the heart of Europe, killing at least 31 people and wounding scores of others in back-to-back bombings of the Brussels airport and subway that again laid bare the continent's vulnerability to suicide squads. Bloodied and dazed travelers staggered from the airport after two explosions at least one blamed on a suicide attacker and another reportedly on a suitcase bomb tore through crowds checking in for morning flights. About 40 minutes later, another blast struck subway commuters in central Brussels near the Maelbeek station, which sits amid the European Commission headquarters. Authorities released a photo taken from closed-circuit TV footage of three men pushing luggage carts, saying two of them apparently were the suicide bombers and that the third dressed in a light-colored coat, black hat and glasses was at large. They urged the public to contact them if they recognized him. The two men believed to be the suicide attackers apparently were wearing dark gloves on their left hands. In police raids across Brussels, authorities later found a nail-filled bomb, chemical products and an Islamic State flag in a house in the Schaerbeek neighborhood, the state prosecutors' office said in a statement. In its claim of responsibility, the Islamic State group said its members detonated suicide vests both at the airport and in the subway, where many passengers fled to safety down dark tunnels filled with hazy smoke from the explosion in a train pulling away from the platform. European security officials have been bracing for a major attack for weeks and warned that IS was actively preparing to strike. The arrest Friday of Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, heightened those fears, as investigators said many more people were involved than originally thought and that some are still on the loose. "In this time of tragedy, this black moment for our country, I appeal to everyone to remain calm but also to show solidarity," said Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, who announced three days of mourning in his country's deadliest terror strike. "Last year it was Paris. Today it is Brussels. It's the same attacks," said French President Francois Hollande. Belgium raised its terror alert to the highest level, shut the airport through Wednesday and ordered a city-wide lockdown, deploying about 500 soldiers onto Brussels' largely empty streets to bolster police checkpoints. France and Belgium both reinforced border security. Medical officials treating the wounded said some victims lost limbs, while others suffered burns or deep gashes from shattered glass or suspected nails packed in with explosives. Among the most seriously wounded were several children. The bombings came barely four months after suicide attackers based in Brussels' Molenbeek district slaughtered 130 people at Paris nightspots, and intelligence agencies had warned for months a follow-up strike was inevitable. Those fears increased following Abdeslam's arrest in Molenbeek, along with police admissions that others suspected of links to the Paris attacks were at large. A high-level Belgian judicial official said a connection by Abdeslam to Tuesday's attacks is "a lead to pursue." The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing. Abdeslam has told investigators he was planning to "restart something" from Brussels, said Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders. He said Sunday that authorities took the claim seriously because "we found a lot of weapons, heavy weapons in the first investigations and we have seen a new network of people around him in Brussels." While they knew that some kind of extremist act was being prepared in Europe, they were surprised by the size of Tuesday's attacks, said Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon. "It was always possible that more attacks could happen, but we never could have imagined something of this scale," he said. Officials at the airport in the Brussels suburb of Zaventem said police had discovered a Kalashnikov assault rifle and an explosives-packed vest abandoned at the facility, offering one potential lead for forensic evidence. Bomb disposal experts safely dismantled that explosive device. Shockwaves from the attacks crossed the Atlantic, where city and airport officials at several U.S. cities increased security force deployments and raised security levels. A U.S. administration official said American intelligence officers were working with European counterparts to try to identify the apparently skilled bomb-maker or makers involved in the Brussels attacks and to identify any links to bombs used in Paris. The official, who wasn't authorized to speak publicly on the investigations and demanded anonymity, told The Associated Press that at least one of the bombs at the airport was suspected to have been packed into a suitcase left in the departures hall. Three intelligence officials in Iraq told the AP that they had warned European colleagues last month of IS plans to attack airports and trains, although Belgium wasn't specified as a likely target. The officials, who monitor activities in the IS stronghold of Raqqa, said Brussels may have become a target because of the arrest of Abdeslam. One of the officials all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about their knowledge of IS operations said Iraqi intelligence officials believe that three other IS activists remain at large in Brussels and are plotting other suicide-bomb attacks. European leaders already struggling to cope with a wave of migration from the war-torn Middle East said they must rely on better anti-terrorist intelligence work to identify an enemy that wears no uniform and seeks the softest of targets. They emphasized that Europe must remain tolerant to Muslims as they seek to identify the Islamic State needles in that ever-growing haystack. Leaders of the 28-nation bloc said in a joint statement that Tuesday's assault on Brussels "only strengthens our resolve to defend European values and tolerance from the attacks of the intolerant." The United Nations' lead official for Middle East refugees, Amin Awad, warned that Europe faced an increasing risk of racist retaliation against Muslim immigrant communities. "Any sort of hostilities because of the Brussels attack or Paris attack is misplaced," Awad said. Reflecting the trauma of the moment, Belgian officials offered uncertain casualty totals at both the airport and subway, where police conducted controlled explosions on suspicious abandoned packages that ultimately were found to contain no explosives. Belgium's health minister, Maggie de Block, said 11 people were killed and 81 injured at the airport, where thousands of passengers were waiting to check luggage and collect boarding cards. Video posted on social media showed people cowering on the ground in the wake of the blasts, the air acrid with smoke, windows of shops and the terminal entrance shattered, and fallen ceiling tiles littering the blood-streaked floor. Some witnesses described hearing two distinct blasts, with shouts apparently in Arabic from at least one attacker before the second, bigger explosion. Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the airport blasts, told BFM television that pipes ruptured, sending a cascade of water mixing with victims' blood. "It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed. There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere," he said. "We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene." Marc Noel was about to board a Delta flight to Atlanta. The Belgian native, who lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, said the first blast happened about 50 yards (meters) from him. "People were crying, shouting, children. ... It was a horrible experience," he said. A random decision to pause in a shop to buy a magazine may have saved his life. Otherwise, he said, "I would probably have been in that place when the bomb went off." Anthony Deloos, an airport worker for Swissport, which handles check-in and baggage services, said the first blast took place near the Swissport counters where customers pay for overweight bags. He and a colleague said the second blast struck near a Starbucks cafe. Deloos said a colleague shouted at him to run as the blast sent clouds of shredded paper billowing through the air, and "I jumped into a luggage chute to be safe." Brussels Mayor Yvan Mayeur said 20 people died and more than 100 were wounded in the subway blast. Rescue workers set up makeshift first aid centers in a nearby pub and hotel. Passengers on other trains said many commuters were reading about the airport attacks on their smartphones when they heard the subway blast. Hundreds fled from stopped trains down tunnel tracks to adjacent stations. Many told stories of having missed the bomb by minutes or seconds. "It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the metro," said commuter Alexandre Brans, wiping blood from his face. Political leaders and others around the world expressed their shock at the attacks. "We will do whatever is necessary to support our friend and ally Belgium in bringing to justice those who are responsible," U.S. President Barack Obama said. Belgium's king and queen said they were "devastated" by the violence, describing the attacks as "odious and cowardly." After nightfall, Europe's best-known monuments the Eiffel Tower, the Brandenburg Gate and the Trevi Fountain were illuminated with Belgium's national colors in a show of solidarity. The United States denounced the ruling as a show of "blatant disregard for the principles of justice." Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko quickly offered to exchange two Russians held in his country for the return of the pilot, 34-year old Nadezhda Savchenko. Moscow has refused to consider a swap until the legal proceedings were finished. The Kremlin was non-committal, saying that it will be up to President Vladimir Putin to make a decision. Upon hearing the guilty verdict, Savchenko burst into song and started to chant "Glory to Ukraine!" That was echoed by Ukrainian spectators in the courtroom in Donetsk, a Russian town near the border with Ukraine. The judge called for a break before returning to hand down the sentence, which also included a fine for crossing into Russia illegally. The Savchenko case has attracted strong criticism from the West and is an open wound for Ukraine, which says she was captured by Russia-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine and turned over to Russia, and therefore should be treated as a prisoner of war. U.S. State Department spokesman John Kirby said the conviction and sentencing of Savchenko "show a blatant disregard for the principles of justice and contravene Russia's commitments under the Minsk agreements," and called for her immediate release. Although she was an air force officer, Savchenko was fighting in a Ukrainian volunteer battalion against Russia-backed rebels when she was captured by the separatists in June 2014. She surfaced in Russia less than a month later. Moscow insists she escaped from the rebels and was captured after crossing the border by herself. Speculation persists that Moscow could agree to exchange her for the two Russians captured in eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian officials said they were active-duty soldiers despite Russia's persistent denial that it has sent troops or equipment to bolster the rebels. Poroshenko offered a swap in a video statement released after the verdict. He claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin had assured him last year that "he will return Nadiya Savchenko to Ukraine after the verdict." "In my turn, I'm ready to hand over to Russia two Russian servicemen who were captured on our territory for their part in an armed aggression against Ukraine," Poroshenko said. The Russian men are now on trial, and Poroshenko said he will be willing to hand them over after the verdict is in. Fighting between Russia-backed separatists and government troops in eastern Ukraine, which flared up after Moscow's annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula, has killed more than 9,100 people and left the rebel-held areas isolated from the rest of Ukraine. The judge dismissed all defense arguments and said he had no reason to doubt the testimony of the separatist rebels. The sentencing capped a two-day hearing in which Judge Leonid Stepanenko recounted the case in great detail and in a monotonous voice, sending some spectators to sleep. The lawyers passed the time looking into their phones or talking to Savchenko, who was confined in a cage. One lawyer read a magazine on the American Civil War. Savchenko smiled at her sister who was in the courtroom. After the judge pronounced sentence, Savchenko shouted that he should have made it 23 years as prosecutors had asked. And then she sang. With Brussels on lockdown and the French prime minister saying that Europe is "at war," European leaders held emergency security meetings and deployed more police, explosives experts, sniffer dogs and plainclothes officers, with some warning against travel to Belgium. The nervousness was felt far and wide. In New York City, authorities deployed additional counterterrorism units to crowded areas and transit locations. After a string of extremist attacks targeting the heart of Europe over the past year, some analysts say Europe will finally have to implement a much tougher level of security not only at airports, but also at "soft targets" like shopping malls the kind that Israelis have been living with for years. "The threat we are facing in Europe is about the same as what Israel faces," said Olivier Guitta, the managing director of GlobalStrat, an international security consultancy. "We have entered an era in which we are going to have to change our way of life and take security very seriously." Strong criticism of Belgian security came on Tuesday from Pini Schiff, a former security director at Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport, which is considered among the most secure in the world. After Palestinian attacks on Israeli planes and travelers in the 1970s, Israeli officials put in place several layers of security at that airport in Tel Aviv, meaning an attacker who escapes notice at one level of security would likely be captured by another. Schiff said the attacks at the Brussels airport mark "a colossal failure" of Belgian security and that "the chances are very low" such a bombing could have happened in Israel. There are some, however, who fear that little more can realistically be done. "The public needs to understand that if we are to continue enjoy living in a free society we have to respond in a proportional way," said Simon Bennett, director of the Civil Safety and Security Unit at the University of Leicester, England. "In my opinion, airport security is as tight as we can reasonably make it in a free society." Philip Baum, author of "Violence in the Skies: A History of Aircraft Hijacking and Bombing," said "putting people through more hoops," isn't the answer to the ever-evolving threat. He said security personnel need to start using behavioral analysis to focus on negative intent. He also said they need better training, more flexibility and should start using more animals. "It's all about making security less predictable," Baum said. In Moscow, Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov told Russian news agencies that authorities will "re-evaluate security" at Russian airports, although its measures are already among some of the toughest across Europe. There have been mandatory checks at the entrances to airports since a 2011 suicide bombing at Moscow's Domodedovo airport that killed 37. Security was high at all Paris airports and at Gatwick and Heathrow in London, among many others. At Rome's Fiumicino Airport, sniffer dogs were deployed in the check-in areas, while at Milan's Malpensa airport police in carts were patrolling the areas before security checks. In Germany, the state rail system, Deutsche Bahn, halted its high-speed rail service from Germany to Brussels, stopping them at the border city of Aachen. Meanwhile, the international high-speed train operator Thalys suspended all of its train traffic Thursday and urged travelers to postpone trips to Belgium. Last year, an attack on a Thalys between Brussels and Paris was foiled by three Americans and a Briton traveling on the train. Egypt also said it was increasing security, with top security officials asked to personally handle security checks inside airports and in outside areas like hotels and car parks. Egypt has been working to improve its security after a Russian jet was brought down last October by extremists after taking off from Sharm el-Sheikh International Airport, killing all 224 people on board. Moscow said it was brought down by an explosive device, and a local branch of the extremist Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for planting it. In Greece, police added additional security at airports, metro stations and embassies with uniformed and plain-clothed officers. But government spokeswoman Olga Gerovasili said there were no additional security measures being taken for refugees and migrants following the Brussels attacks. "We are not making any linkage between those two issues. That would be a defeat for Europe," she said. LONDON (AP) British Prime Minister David Cameron sought Monday to impose discipline on his warring Conservative Party, after a Cabinet resignation ostensibly about unpopular welfare reforms blew the top off simmering divisions over the European Union. Cameron, who has staked his political future on keeping Britain inside the EU, is due to face the House of Commons later in a session that's meant to be about last week's migration summit in Brussels. However, the resignation of Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith means the debate will likely be dominated by welfare cuts and especially Europe an issue that has divided the Conservatives since Britain joined the EU in the 1970s. Duncan Smith, who has pushed through big changes to the country's welfare system over the past six years, dramatically quit late Friday, accusing the government of targeting the poor for cuts while protecting pensions for the better-off. He said last week's budget, which included a 4 billion-pound ($5.8 billion) cut to disability benefits, was the last straw. "I am passionate about trying to improve the quality of life for those in difficult circumstances," Duncan Smith said Sunday. "Now, I want to do that and I want my party to do that. But I felt that I'm losing my ability to influence that." The resignation of Duncan Smith a former Conservative leader whose nickname when at the helm between 2001 and 2003 was "The Quiet Man" has set off a firestorm in his party for reasons that have little to do with welfare reform. Duncan Smith is among a group of senior Conservatives who want Britain to leave the European Union, and his resignation has heaped pressure on Cameron and Treasury chief George Osborne both of whom want the U.K. to stay in the EU. The country will decide in a June 23 referendum whether to remain in the 28-nation bloc. Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, said Duncan Smith's move would bolster the "out" campaign. "I think it reinforces the public view that David Cameron and George Osborne appear to be disconnected from public opinion," he said. Bale added that the Duncan Smith's accusations add to a perception that Cameron and Osborne are "taking from the poor and disabled and giving to the rich." Duncan Smith's resignation was followed by a series of strikingly barbed and partisan remarks as senior Tories blamed one another for the mess. Pensions Minister Ros Altmann, who worked under Duncan Smith, accused him of wanting "to do maximum damage to the party leadership in order to further his campaign to try to get Britain to leave the EU." But Employment Minister Priti Patel said Duncan Smith had resigned because he was "extremely passionate about the principle of social justice." "I fundamentally believe that this is not about Europe," she told the BBC. The row is a particular blow to Osborne, who has been Treasury chief since 2010 and aspires to succeed Cameron as Conservative leader. Osborne's primary economic policy has been to reduce Britain's deficit through a cocktail of spending cuts and tax increases, but Duncan Smith's resignation could blow a hole in his cost-cutting plans. Duncan Smith's replacement, Stephen Crabb, is expected to announce that the government is dropping the plan to cut 4 billion pounds from benefits for disabled people. The government has stressed that its austerity medicine has been shared fairly across all income brackets its mantra has been "we're all in this together." But Duncan Smith said pensions, which account for more than half of total welfare payments, have been untouched while billions had been cut from benefits paid to working-age people and the most vulnerable. He said it gave the impression that the government did not care about the working poor, "because they don't vote for us." The Conservative feuding drew comparisons to the party's fractious period under Prime Minister John Major, which ended when they were ousted by Tony Blair's Labour Party in 1997. The Conservatives remained out of office until 2010. But the Labour Party is weakened, with a left-wing leader, Jeremy Corbyn, who is mistrusted by many of his own lawmakers. Steven Fielding, director of the Center for British Politics at the University of Nottingham, said that for the Conservatives "it's a terrible crisis but they're not facing Tony Blair. They're not facing a united Labour Party." The row at the top of the government weighed on the British pound. In mid-afternoon trading in London, it was down 0.6 percent at $1.4388. Kit Juckes, foreign exchange strategist at Societe Generale, said the resignation of Duncan Smith adds "another layer of political risk" to the pound. "Politics is going to be more important than economics for the next three months," he said. Every election year, most of the labor unions vote to support the Democratic Party. When Democratic candidates come around to speak at your labor rallies, ask them one simple question: "Since the Democratic Party has pretty much ruled Illinois and Rock Island County for the last 30-40 years, what have they done for the average working man and union member?" You will not get a straight answer. They will give you a bunch of promises and hot air, but the record speaks for itself. Drive around the Illinois Quad-Cities. Look at all of the empty buildings and vacant lots.These were once the home of thousands of good-paying union jobs. Now they are gone forever. Think back to the 1980s. We had Farmall, I.H. E. Moline, Case, Servus Rubber and the Rock Island Line, and many other smaller companies. All gone. It is still going on. Bituminous Insurance just moved to Iowa. Deere & Co. and Caterpillar are laying off people, one reason because of high cost of doing business in Illinois. Now King Mike Madigan is sitting on a month's vacation while Illinois burns. He is also telling his puppets in the 71st and 72nd Districts whom to support in the coming election. Oh, there is one thing the Democratic Party has done for the average worker: It has raised your taxes. We are now the second-highest taxed state in the country. Madigan wants them even higher. We can't vote out Madigan, but we can vote out his puppets. Think before you vote this fall. Ron Kopko, Cordova As chairs of the boards of UnityPoint Health/Trinity and of the Robert Young Center for Community Mental Health, we have read with interest comments regarding the recent decision by the Iowa Health Facilities Council to deny authorization to a for-profit psychiatric hospital to be opened in Scott County. While focusing on Iowa, the coverage has tended to overlook what the Robert Young Center as part of Trinity has accomplished as a leader in behavioral health throughout our region. Founded in 1968, the Center was the first Community Mental Health Center (CMHC) in Illinois, as well as the first hospital based CMHC in either Illinois or Iowa. With its near 50-year history, Robert Young has seen mental health treatment evolve to where it now focuses on the right level of care in the least restrictive setting possible, to help patients maintain a sense of normalcy and serve as productive members of society. In-patient beds are therefore only used when someone is in need of medical treatment. Once a patient no longer meets medical necessity -- for example when they are treated with medications and no longer actively at risk to themselves or others -- they are discharged to a different level of care. Nearly a year ago, we opened the Crisis Stabilization Unit (CSU) at Trinity Rock Island. Since that time, the CSU has successfully helped almost 70 percent of Quad-Cities residents presenting to the Emergency Department avoid unnecessary hospital admissions for behavioral health, by reconnecting them with community resources to help them resume active lives. Because of this, those requiring hospitalization has steadily decreased. This has led to six more empty beds in the behavioral health area for those who need them. Success of the Rock Island CSU has been recognized as a way to treat those in Eastern Iowa as well. Recently, the Robert Young Center was awarded a contract by the Eastern Iowa Mental Health Disability Services Regent to develop, implement, and manage crisis behavioral health services in Scott, Clinton, Jackson, Muscatine, and Cedar Counties. Yet despite this progress, there is still a misconception that the crisis facing those in need of services arises from the lack of available hospital beds. Behavioral health beds already exist and more are being freed up every day thanks to the care model referred to earlier. In contrast, there is a shortage of psychiatrists and other behavioral health staff to do needed work. According to the American Medical Association, 55 percent of U.S. counties have no practicing psychiatrist, psychologist or social workers. These shortages affect our area as well. Without additional professionals, any additional beds will be meaningless. Having more providers compete for an already limited pool of available professionals will simply mean that staff will migrate from one facility to another, without improving the care available. Well simply be shifting shortages around. Likewise, it is important to recall that the Robert Young Center is a not-for-profit entity whose mission is to improve the health of people and communities we serve, regardless of ability to pay. In fact, 50.6 percent of adults and 58.6 percent of adolescent patients at Robert Young Center have Medicaid or no insurance. Hardly what one would consider a profitable patient base. Accordingly, the licensing of a for-profit hospital will likely undercut the outstanding services already provided by Robert Young to an expanding patient population. It will likewise reduce the availability and affordability of mental health care in our area. It isnt about beds, although that is what some want to talk about. It is about making sure all people -- especially the sickest and the poorest in our community -- have access to the care they need. Trinity and Robert Young have been leaders in mental health services for nearly 50 years. We look forward to continuing to be leaders in these services for many years to come. 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... Brussels: Shortly after the Brussels blast, US Presidential hopeful Donald Trump said he will step up anti-terror measures, including controversial torture methods. I would close up our borders to people until we figure out what is going on. Look at Brussels, look at Paris, look at so many cities that were great cities, Trump said a few hours after news of the attacks. He said Brussels authorities needed to do everything to get further information from Paris terror attack suspect Salah Abdeslam, who was captured by police in Brussels over the weekend. Waterboarding would be fine and if they could expand the laws, I would do a lot more than waterboarding. You have to get the information and you have to get it rapidly, he was quoted as saying. Trump also called Brussels a total disaster and then said terrorists could be sneaking into the US pretending to be immigrants. They could be ISIS; they could be ISIS-related. We just don't learn. We have to be smart in the United States when people come in. We're taking in people without real documentation, we dont know where they're coming from, we dont know who they are. These were some of the clear messages to emerge from the International Railway Summit staged by IRJ and Irits in Vienna in February. Mr Jean-Pierre Loubinoux, director general of the International Union of Railways (UIC), wants rail to become the backbone of the transport system, and highlighted the potential for rail up to 2030 where freight traffic could grow eight-fold and passenger 12-fold. Loubinoux pointed out that another 2 billion people in the world will become urbanised, which he described as "the biggest movement of people in human history." In addition, the world's population is forecast to grow by another 2 billion and there are 2 billion people on earth who have no access to any form of transport. Rail generally does well in cities with high market shares as it is able to play to its strengths and benefit from increasing investment. As Mr Alain Flausch, secretary general of the International Association of Public Transport (UITP), pointed out there were 160 metros in operation worldwide in 2015 and another 2700km of new lines are under construction. Flausch also highlighted the growing interest in light rail around the world. While 41 LRT systems opened between 1985 and 2000, 70 new systems opened between 2000 and 2015. Full automation of metros is steadily increasing with 674km covering 48 lines currently operating without drivers. However, while metros already have the ability to operate trains automatically we now need to extend this technology to main line railways where initiatives to reduce costs and increase competitiveness are sorely needed. It is salutary to note that rail currently only has 1% of the $US 600bn Asia - Europe freight market despite its considerable transit time advantage compared with sea - with rail's higher price being the main deterrent. As Ms Maria Leenen, CEO of the German market study specialist SCI Verkehr, observed, rail's market share of the European Union freight market has fallen by 1% since 2001 to 18% in 2014, and while tonne-km rallied after 2008-09 crash it is still below the 2007 peak, while the huge drop in the price of oil is starting to make road transport more attractive again. Several European railways are concerned about the rapid expansion of long-distance bus services. This may be so, but buses still only account for a tiny share of the market and rail needs to fight back by highlighting its ability to offer higher comfort, better reliability and shorter journey times. Replacing trains with buses is not a solution as it will only further undermine the viability of railways. Leenen believes that management of productivity and quality must become core activities within railways, and that there is the potential to improve railway productivity by 30%. This was backed up by Flausch: "We need to create a feeling of urgency within organisations to change - they feel they are there forever," he says. "We brought in marketing people in the 2000s, now we need good financial people." Dr Johann Pluy, general manager of railway systems with Austrian Federal Railways (OBB) Infrastructure, believes railways need to use their fixed-cost infrastructure more efficiently. "Our time to market is much too long," Pluy says. "We need to shift the balance from civil engineering to include train control and innovation - interlockings and train control are too expensive. We need more innovation - railways don't take advantage of the technical progress being made in other industries fast enough, and our use of mobile communications is not very intelligent. We need competitive infrastructure costs, and to learn how to cope with less subsidy - subsidies make us lazy and slow." Mr Andy Doherty, chairman of the European Rail Research Advisory Council (Errac), believes that the Shift2Rail research initiative will go a long way towards reducing costs by challenging current thinking in many areas. "We need to convince society that there is a benefit from investing in rail," Doherty told delegates. "We need to build on rail's advantages and eliminate the George Stephenson-era things which don't work well. We need to think about convoying of trains to increase capacity, and use mechatronics for bogies so that they react better to the track. Signalling is designed around the lowest performance of a train on a line, so we need to get away from this. I want people to open their eyes to new possibilities and to be more adventurous." This is the sort of thinking which railways need to embrace if they are to achieve a real step change in performance to make railways more competitive. The industry's survival depends upon it. Specifically, 60m will be used to develop plans for HS3 the objective of which is reduce the Manchester Leeds journey time from 49 to 40 minutes and increase capacity by 2022, and to 30 minutes under a second phase. An integrated plan covering both phases should be drawn up before the end of 2017. 80m will go towards planning for Crossrail 2 with the government set to ask Transport for London to match this funding. This underground line will run from New Southgate and Tottenham Hale via Euston, Tottenham Court Road, Victoria and Clapham Junction to Wimbledon and will connect with existing lines at Tottenham Hale and Wimbledon. The decision to back these two projects is based on recommendations by the new National Infrastructure Commission (NIC) chaired by a former Labour transport minister Lord Andrew Adonis. The chancellor has now asked NIC for its recommendations to develop infrastructure along the Oxford Milton Keynes Cambridge corridor. This is likely to encompass the planned reopening of the line between Bicester and Bletchley to create a new rail link from Oxford and Aylesbury to Milton Keynes and Bedford. The chancellor noted the publication of the Shaw report on the future structure of Network Rail (NR) which recommends greater devolution to NR's routes and the creation of new northern route. The government says it will respond to the report later this year. All you need to know about FRAs NPRM, Train Crew Staffing, can be found by clicking HERE. Or maybe by reading below. Your call. Executive Summary Purpose of the Regulatory Action and Legal Authority FRA is concerned that as railroads implement positive train control (PTC) and other technologies, they may expand use of less than two-person crews on operations without considering safety risks or implementing risk mitigating actions that FRA believes are necessary. Because there are currently few railroad operations that utilize a one-person crew and FRA has not been specifically tracking the safety of those operations through its recordkeeping and reporting requirements, FRA cannot provide reliable or conclusive statistical data to suggest whether one-person crew operations are generally safer or less safe than multiple-person crew operations. FRA does not currently collect sufficient data related to the size of a train crew nor do accident reports and investigations generally address the size of a crew in order for FRA or any entity to definitively compare one-person operations to multiple person operations. However, FRA has studies showing the benefits of a second crewmember and other information detailing the potential safety benefits of multiple-person crews. A recent catastrophic accident in Canada occurred in which a one-person crew did not properly secure an unattended train and another accident occurred in which a multiple-person crew was able to effectively respond to an accident and remove cars from danger. In addition, qualitative studies show that one-person train operations pose increased risks by potentially overloading the sole crewmember with tasks, and that PTC does not substitute for all the tasks performed by properly trained conductors. Task overload can lead to a loss of situational awareness, and potentially to accidents. Moreover, other nations require government approval of railroad decisions to use less than two-person crews. Further, even if FRA does not have data to prove a direct correlation between higher rates of safety and multiple person crews, it is true that railroads have achieved a continually improving safety record during a period in which the industry largely employed two-person train crews. Hmmm FRA is concerned that as railroads implement PTC, they may expand the use of single-person crews? And, at the same time, FRA has insufficient data to prove any correlation between numbers of crew members in the locomotive cab, because thats where theyd have to be if PTC is driver of the concern, and safe train operations? Right? Maybe, maybe not. Well then, conservatively speaking, Id say theres no need to hurry the formulating and enactment of the regulation. Right? Maybe, maybe not. SCRRA, a passenger rail operation, is in revenue service demonstration of its PTC system; Amtrak, another passenger rail operation, has completed ACSES installation and activation; SEPTA, yet another passenger rail operation, has petitioned for approval of its ACSES installation. All these railroads operate with only a single engineer assigned to the controlling locomotive. So data regarding the safety of those train operations utilizing PTC should start rolling in over the course of the next five years when all railroads have to be PTC equipped. Right? Maybe, maybe not. Then, FRA, like the good data-driven regulator it is, can make a rational determination regarding the scope and details of necessary additional regulation if additional regulation is necessary. Right? Maybe, maybe not. In the interim, only one Class I railroad that I know of attempted to negotiate an agreement with its labor organizations for the use of single-person crews in place of multi-person crews on specific categories of trains equipped and operating under PTC enforcement. That railroad, of course, was BNSF, and its rank and file rejected the agreement. The collective bargaining process worked, in this instance, to pre-empt the regulatory process, because the collective bargaining process, absent data establishing the need for regulation, is supposed to be the best place for the resolution, reconciliation of the material interests of the parties. Right? Apparently, weve run out of maybes and all thats left is the not. Of course, its a bit of grasping for FRA to worry about the impact of PTC on train staffing. Everyone knows, and FRA admits, that the precipitating event for the regulation of train crew staffing was the Lac-Megantic disaster of 2013, where the single crew member assigned to a Montreal, Maine & Atlantic unit train of Bakken crude oil failed to properly secure the train, properly test the holding power of the handbrakes he did bother to apply, and shut down a locomotive spewing oil out the stack. These failures led to the runaway and derailment of the tank cars, resulting in an explosive fire of the oil that spilled, killing 47 people and destroying downtown Lac-Megantic. FRA used that opportunity, that data, to properly ground its issuance of Emergency Order #28. Emergency Order #28 contained no requirements for crew staffing. It addressed the direct cause of the tragedy as indicated by the available evidence, exactly what the regulatory process is supposed to do. Emergency order #28 was followed by FRAs final rule on Securement of Unattended Equipment. The final rule (which can be downloaded from the link below) does not address crew staffing. In the discussion of the Lac-Megantic disaster in the NPRM, FRA goes to great lengths to cite the additional hazards to public safety presented by the increased shipments of fracked crude via rail. The additional hazard is of course only partly due to the increased shipments. The additional hazard of explosive ignition of the cargo has everything to do with the volatility of the crude. Neither the Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA) nor FRA elected to address that source of additional hazard and require producers and shippers to reduce the volatility of the fracked crude before shipment, as some states require for the shipment of fracked crude from the Permian Basin. North Dakota, to its everlasting credit, has addressed exactly that additional risk. FRAs discussion of the safety advantages of a multi-person crew devolves to: It is distinctly possible that a train crew with a minimum of two persons would have more options available to secure the train safely, thereby potentially posing less of a risk of a runaway train. According to FRA, locations for storing a train operated by single crew member might be limited by the difficulty for a single-person crew to cut the crossings (i.e. separating cars in the train a sufficient distance so as not to block grade crossings, and the proper operation of grade crossing protections). However, in the Lac-Megantic situation, the storage location was based on 1) hours of service requirements 2) the turnaround swap point for the crew(s) to exchange trains to operate to their home terminals, and 3) a complicating factor: the fact that a siding equipped with derails was already occupied by a cut of cars. FRAs crew staffing rule does not address these variables. FRA also cites the heroic actions of the grain train crew involved in the derailment, raking collision, subsequent derailment and ignition of tank cars from a BNSF CBR unit train. There is no questioning the heroism of these employees in pulling 70 tanks cars of crude a safe distance away from the derailment. However, according to FRAs own discussion: The 20-car threshold follows FRAs Emergency Order 28 and proposed securement regulation is based on AARs definition of key train in OT-55N. FRA is proposing a threshold of 20 cars instead of 5, 10, or 15 cars because FRA is willing to allow one-person operations when they pose less risk to the public, and by virture of fewer hazmat cars. Meaning, 49 CFR 171.8 (which can be downloaded from the link below) is the section of the PHMSA regulation containing the definitions for the terms used in regulating the packaging, classification, identification and movement of hazardous materials. Meaning, under FRAs new regulation, the grain train would not be required to have a two-person crew. FRA then cites research (which can be downloaded from the link below) into the results of cognitive task analysis (CA) that examined the cognitive demands that are likely to arise with the introduction of new train control technologies: Technology Implications of a Cognitive Task Analysis for Locomotive EngineersHuman Factors in Railroad Operations. FRA states: The results pointed to major cognitive challengers involved in operating a train, including the need for sustained monitoring and attention; maintaining an accurate situation model of the immediate environment ; anticipating and taking action in preparation for upcoming situations; and planning and decision making in response to unanticipated conditions. Sure thing. Nothing new there. Those are basic to anyone involved in train operations. But: Introduction of new train control technology reduces some cognitive demands while creating new ones. Bulls-eye again, Catnip. Were talking change here, and managing change is the second greatest challenge we face. Maintaining the railroad, performing all the upkeep necessary to keep track, equipment and personnel in good operating status is the greatest challenge. OK, so PTC means changing cognitive awareness and cognitive response, for the locomotive engineer in the controlling cab of the train. But FRA is not requiring that the second member of a train crew be stationed in the operating cab continuously, or, at any time during movement of the train as long as the crew member can communicate with the locomotive engineer. So the PTC argument is pointless, literally. In addition, the regulation exempts remote-control locomotive operation from its requirement, when the locomotive consist does not exceed 6,000 horsepower; the train length does not exceed 3,000 feet, 4,000 trailing tons and 50 conventional cars; the ruling grade is less than 1.0% extending for more than half a mile; the maximum speed is no more than 15 mph, etc. etc. So, while the FRAs proposed rule will not allow a qualified locomotive engineer directly operating the controls of a locomotive to singly operate a locomotive consist of 6,000 horsepower hauling 4,000 trailing tons and 3,000 trailing feet at 15 mph, the regulation will allow a qualified conductor, standing on the porch of that locomotive, using the controls from a belt-pack to operate the train. Make sense to you? Maybe, maybe not. And then theres this: 218.131 Special freight train crews exceptions to two-person crew requirement Except as provided in 218.125(c), the following specific freight train operations are exceptions from the two-person crew staffing and roles and responsibilities and requirements in 218.125. (a) a freight train is operated on a railroad and by an employee of a railroad with less than 400,000 total employee work hours annually and the train is being operated under the following conditions: (1) The maximum authorized speed of the train is limited to 25 miles per hour or less; and (2)(i) The average grade of any segment of the track operated over is less than 1% over 3 continuous miles or 2% over 2 miles; or (ii) A second train crew member, other than the locomotive engineer, is intermittently assisting the trains movements and has the ability to directly communicate with the crewmember in the cab of the controlling locomotive. Meaning, in the case of a small railroaddefined by employee hours, not revenues, where the speed is limited to 25 mph or less and the grades are not exceeding the specification, the regulation does not apply. If the concern is that a single-person crew will not fulfill the tasks essential to safe train operations, including securing the train when movement is completed or suspended, then there can be no operating safety reason for exempting railroads from the designated requirements based on the speed of operation, or the number of employee hours embodied in that operation. While the grades on the Sherbrooke subdivision of the MM&A were more severe than allowed in this regulation, the allowable speed was not. Trains on that subdivision were restricted to no more than 25 mph. To fully understand the true economic costs of corruption within the European Union, the European Parliament commissioned RAND Europe to conduct an econometric analysis to estimate the potential harm of corruption on the EU and its member states. Our analysis resulted in a new estimate of up to 990 billion in GDP terms being lost annually, demonstrating the significant economic impact of corruption on the EU and its member states. That's more than eight times existing estimates. Prior to our 'Cost of non-Europe Corruption' study, the best estimates on the cost of corruption within the EU was at least 120 billion, which was provided by the European Commission in 2014. At the time, the former EU Home Affairs Commissioner Cecilia Malmstrom described the scale of corruption as breathtaking and even stated that the true cost was probably much higher than 120 billion. Our study also found that there are measures that can be put in place to claw back the financial losses happening each year, including monitoring of more member states, establishing a new office to assist in investigations, and implementing an EU-wide procurement system. Together, these steps could retrieve up to 70 billion in losses annually. Corruption comes in many forms, from paying and receiving bribes, to exerting influence to provide privileged access to public services, goods or contracts. There are even examples of corruption during procurement, with contracts written to suit only one bidder or tenders not giving organisations enough time to respond. It is well known that corruption is associated with many societal disadvantages, from national governments having weaker rule of law to an increase in organised crime. Corruption across Europe appears to be a bigger problem than previously thought. Our new estimates considered both the indirect effects of corruption, such as disincentives of firms to invest due to corruption in EU member states, and the direct effects of corruption, such as money lost on tax revenues and public procurement. When looking at averages of three internationally recognised corruption indices, there were variations in levels of corruption across the 28 EU member states, with room for improvement everywhere, but especially in member states in Southern and Eastern Europe. A range of policy measures will be required to address this EU-wide corruption and help to retrieve some of the money lost each year. One of these measures is applying the updated Cooperation and Verification Mechanism (CVM), which was applied to Bulgaria and Romania before they joined the EU in 2007, to other EU member states. Under CVM, both countries are subject to regular progress monitoring according to agreed benchmarks across a number of policy areas, with a particular focus on the fight against corruption. Failing to act in these policy areas can lead to a loss of privileges associated with EU membership. By contrast, the mechanism was not applied to other new member states that had joined the EU previously, such as Croatia, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. These member states were all found to have higher than average corruption levels. Setting aside practical and political considerations about its feasibility, our study showed that by applying a similar regime to additional member states, the EU could reduce corruption costs by up to 70 billion annually. Another option to help reduce the potential costs of corruption is the establishment of the European Public Prosecutors' Office (EPPO). Its aim would be to help tackle corruption affecting the EU's financial interests, especially in areas where action by member states themselves may not be very effective. Our study showed that the establishment of the EPPO could help reduce corruption costs by 200 million annually. The final measure focuses specifically on corruption involving public procurement since it is estimated to cost the EU up to 5 billion a year. To address this issue, the EU has recently adopted a set of regulations setting new rules for public procurement in Europe. The implementation of a transparent EU-wide procurement system across all the member states could reduce corruption costs by nearly a fifth, up to 920 million annually. It would be fair to say that corruption across Europe appears to be a bigger problem than previously thought. Looking beyond the economics, tackling corruption also leads to many societal benefits: lower levels of organised crime, stronger rule of law and, as a result, more trust in public institutions. To have a properly functioning EU and member states that adhere to its values, the high levels of corruption urgently need to be addressed. Marco Hafner is a research leader and senior economist at RAND Europe. Jirka Taylor is an analyst at RAND Europe. This commentary originally appeared on E!Sharp on March 22, 2016. Commentary gives RAND researchers a platform to convey insights based on their professional expertise and often on their peer-reviewed research and analysis. An injured woman leaves the scene at Brussels airport, after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels, Belgium. (Photo: AP) Brussels: Panic gripped Brussels airport as two explosions ripped through the facility and a subway system, killing at least 13 people and leaving a trail of destruction. Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, told BFM television that the second, louder explosion brought down ceilings and ruptured pipes, mixing water with blood from victims. It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed, he said. There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere. We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene, he said. Read: Terror attacks in Brussels airport, metro station leave 23 dead All flights were cancelled, arriving planes were diverted and security was tightened at all Paris airports after the explosions that came just days after the prime suspect in the November Paris attacks was arrested in Brussels. Belgiums terror alert level was raised to maximum. Read: Gatwick airport steps up security after Brussels attacks Near the entrance to the Maelbeek subway station, not far from the headquarters of the European Union, rescue workers set up a makeshift treatment centre in a local pub. Dazed and shocked morning travellers streamed from the metro entrances as police tried to set up a security cordon. The metro was leaving Maelbeek station for metro when there was a really loud explosion, said Alexandre Brans, 32, wiping blood from his face. It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the metro. Read: Timeline of recent terror attacks in Western Europe First responders ran through the street outside with two people on stretchers, their clothes badly torn. The explosions at the airport hit at the middle of the busiest time there. Smoke was seen billowing out of the terminal. Amateur videos on Frances i-Tele television showed passengers, including a child with a backpack, dashing out of the terminal in different directions as they tugged luggage. Another image showed a security officer patrolling inside a hall with blown-out paneling and what appeared to be ceiling insulation covering the floor. I knew it was an explosion because Ive been around explosions before, said Denise Brandt, an American woman interviewed by Sky television. Read: World leaders condemn bombings in Brussels I felt the explosion, the way it feels through your body. And we just looked at each other and I said Lets go this way. It was over there. There was just this instinct to get away from it. Then we saw people running, crying, toward us. So I knew we were going in the right direction and away from it. With three runways in the shape of a Z, the airport connects Europes capital to 226 destinations around the world and handled nearly 23.5 million passengers in 2015. Passengers were led onto the tarmac and the crisis centre urged people not to come to the airport. The explosions took place only days after Salah Abdeslam, the prime suspect in the November 13 Paris attacks that killed 130 people, was arrested in Brussels. Read: Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam arrested in Brussels Shortly after its launch across Latin America, Televisa's over-the-top (OTT) platform blim has announced a major content deal with BBC Worldwide. Over 200 hours of BBC's video-on-demand (VOD) content, including dramas, natural history documentaries and factual programmes will be available for blim subscribers across the region.We're thrilled to join this new pan-regional platform and strengthen our commercial relationship with Televisa, an important partner of BBC in Latin America, said Anna Gordon, executive VP for LATAM and the US Hispanics, BBC Worldwide . The agreement will enable Latin American audiences to watch many of BBC renowned titles on-demand and across multiple platforms.blim is Televisa's new streaming platform, after its first trial, Veo, didn't find success in Mexico. Since blim launched a month ago, the company has already signed a content agreement for childrens programming with 9 Story and has announced it will remove all its content from Netflix, which is seen as blim's main competitor.Available for iOS and Android, the OTT platform will now have in its portfolio, BBC titles including Doctor Who, Top Gear, Misfits, Generation Earth and Wild South America.The BBC has great content which we're sure will please our subscribers. Titles such as Top Gear and Doctor Who add diversity to our offer, added Carlos Sandoval, general manager, blim . These kinds of agreements make blim stronger. Vostochny Cosmodrome contractor gets 11 years in prison for embezzlement MOSCOW, March 22 (RAPSI) A court in Russias Amur region has found CEO of the Vostochny Cosmodrome construction contractor Stroyindustriya-S, Sergei Terentyev, guilty of embezzlement and sentenced him to 11 years in penal colony, RIA Novosti reported on Tuesday. Terentyev was also found guilty of delaying salaries for his employees over two months. According to the court reports, he pleaded guilty to all charges. Terentyev was ordered to pay a 100,000 ruble ($1,400) fine. This is one of several criminal cases related to embezzlement at the Vostochny Cosmodrome. Stroyindustriya-S became the first construction company against which a criminal case was opened. Its CEO, Sergei Terentyev, was detained in April, 2015 over salary delays. Investigators claim that Terentyev was aware that the company had the necessary funds but intentionally did not pay the staff. The debt was estimated to have exceeded 14 million rubles ($260,000). Investigators found that Terentyev, the director of the contracting company that is building the Vostochny Cosmodrome, was aware that the company had the necessary funds but intentionally did not pay the staff for January, February and the first half of March 2015. Earlier reports indicate that on April 4, 26 construction workers at Russias new space rocket launch site (a large project that is behind schedule) went on a hunger strike. Soon after, Yury Volkodav, acting director of Dalspetsstroy, the company in charge of the Vostochny spaceport construction, promised that the arrears would be paid by April 10. According to investigators, ex-CEO of Dalspetsstroy, Yuriy Khrizman, his son Mikhail and Viktor Chudov, Chairman of the Khabarovsk Territory Duma, embezzled about 106 million rubles ($1.6 million) belonging to the company. However, one criminal episode was uncovered within the investigation into the case over alleged embezzlement at Vostochny Cosmodrome. Dalspetsstroy has repeatedly reported that the project was behind schedule at some sites but promised to catch up. Yuriy Khrisman was fired in 2013 after it was revealed that the government had not received complete information about the delays. The construction of the space center, due to become Russia's main launch site, began in 2012. The facility is planned to be completed in 2016. The first manned mission is scheduled for 2018. Russian university rector suspected of abuse of power put under house arrest Context Russian university rector arrested on suspicion of abuse of power MOSCOW, March 22 (RAPSI) Sergey Ivanets, rector of the Russian Far Eastern Federal University (FEFU) suspected of abuse of power that caused damage worth 20 million rubles ($290,700), has been placed under house arrest for two months upon a court order, RIA Novosti reported on Tuesday. According to investigators, in 2011, the university signed a contract with the company Modern University for technical and information system implementation valued at 647 million rubles ($9.4 million). The services had to be rendered in a few years; the final stage was planned to be completed in 2013. From August 20 till September 11, 2015, Ivanets ordered two pro-rectors, Aleksei Tskhe and Victor Atamanyuk, to provide processing and signing of the certificates of services rendered at the third stage. On September 15, he ordered a chief accountant to transfer under these certificates over 20 million rubles to the contractors account, Investigative Committee spokesman Vladimir Markin said earlier. Ivanets could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted. Previously, Ivanets served as Deputy Minister of Education and Science and supervised Russias Far Eastern Federal District. Russian court detains Uzbek citizen suspected of pushing for dismantlement of statehood ST. PETERSBURG, March 22 (RAPSI, Mikhail Telekhov) The Pushkinsky District Court in St. Petersburg has ordered the detention of a citizen of the Republic of Uzbekistan suspected of organizing a terrorist group and dismantlement of the Russian statehood, RAPSI learnt in the local prosecutors office. Khasan Sattarov was on the wanted list for infringement against the constitutional system of Uzbekistan and participation in religious, extremist, separatist, fundamentalist and other banned organizations, prosecutors said. Investigators believe that Sattarov along with other unnamed individuals organized in St. Petersburg a cell of the Islamic Party of Turkestan in 2012. During the meetings of the group he called for a coup and establishment of the Islamic State. The Islamic Party of Turkestan, also called the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan or IMU, has been declared a terrorist organization by the Russian Supreme Court. Its operation is prohibited in many countries in Europe and Central Asia, as well as in the United States. FSB Director Alexander Bortnikov believes that it is no less dangerous than al-Qaeda. In March 2013, the Russian Interior Ministry announced the detainment of the leader of the IMU's Moscow branch. He was to be extradited to Uzbekistan. Transaero appeals recovery of $40.7 mln in favor of Aeroflot MOSCOW, March 22 (RAPSI) Transaero has filed an appeal with the Moscow Commercial Court against a courts ruling granting Aeroflot airline 2.85 billion rubles ($40.7 mln) in debt recovery dispute between the airlines, RAPSI learned in the court on Tuesday. On January 25, the Moscow Commercial Court ruled in favor of Aeroflot in a lawsuit against Transaero, ordering the defendant to pay about 2.85 billion rubles ($35.6 mln) it owes to the competitor. The court dismissed a counterclaim by Transaero that asked to find the loan agreement between airlines invalid. Transaero representative told the court that on the moment of agreement, CEO of the airline, Dmitriy Saprikin, was a member of the Aeroflots Board of Directors and that this deal had to be approved by the Board. However, there was no such approval. Transaero has also told the court that Aeroflot was aware that the loan could not be repaid. The airline believes that decision to provide the money was made in order to increase the debt of Transaero in order for Aeroflot to get rid of competitor and get its air routes. Representative of Aeroflot denied such allegations and said that the loan was given to Transaero so the airline would be able to fulfill its obligations to passengers. On December 7, the Moscow Commercial Court granted the first lawsuit filed by Aeroflot against Transaero and ordered the latter to pay 5.3 billion rubles ($66.2 mln). Transaero found itself unable to pay its debts estimating 250 billion rubles ($3.5 billion). Government-approved plan of transferring 75% of companys shares to Aeroflot failed. Its problems resulted in a large number of flight cancels and delays. In October, Sberbank and Alfa Bank filed bankruptcy petitions against the troubled airline. The Commercial Court of St. Petersburg and Leningrad Region initiated a bankruptcy procedure against Transaero on December 16. Ukrainian ex-military navigator Savchenko sentenced to 22 years in prison Donetsk (Rostov region), March 23 (RAPSI) A six months trial of Ukrainian retired officer Nadezhda Savchenko, 34, ended today. She was found guilty of murder and illegal border crossing. The court of Donetsk, a town in southern Russia, has sentenced Savchenko to 22 years in prison. She was also fined 30,000 rubles ($428) for illegal border crossing. A day earlier the judge, Leonid Stepanenko, said Savchenko had deliberately inflicted death on two persons, acting according to a conspiracy and motivated by hatred and enmity. The court found out that Savchenko committed the crimes on grounds of hatred for the Russian-speaking people with her guilt confirmed during the trial by the testimony of several witnesses. As the court has established, she was responsible for conducting concealed observation and directing mortar fire in an attack against a roadblock held by militias of the self-proclaimed Lugansk Peoples Republic and a group of civilians there, including three Russian journalists, near the village of Metallist, the Lugansk Region, on June 17, 2014. The attack killed two Russian television journalists, Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin. Savchenko, who at that time was on active duty in the Ukrainian Armed Forces as a navigator and systems operator of a Mi-24 attack helicopter, enlisted and served on the ground with a volunteer paramilitary unit, the Aidar Battalion, while being on leave. On the same day, she was captured by members of the Donbass Peoples Militia; however, she managed to escape. Charges of firing at civilians in the city of Lugansk have been dropped against Savchenko because this issue is out of a Russian courts jurisdiction. Savchenko was arrested in Voronezh, a town in the Russian territory, in July of 2014. The prosecution insisted that Savchenko had been arrested after crossing the border disguised as a refugee in order to plot attacks, what made her a common criminal, not a prisoner of war. Savchenko claimed that she was abducted from Ukrainian territory and that her seizure had happened one hour before the deaths of the journalists. During her detention and trial, Savchenko has repeatedly gone on hunger strikes protesting against her arrest and trial. The ex-navigator pleaded not guilty stating that she had killed people, but only those she considered to be enemies and in self-defense, never with malicious intent. Savchenko refused to recognize the judgement. "Savchenko is not interested in this verdict, she considers it a kangaroo court. She has just told me that she does not recognize it, whatever it is, she will not appeal it," lawyer Nikolay Polozov told RAPSI. Savchenko has ridiculed the court from the defendants cage and flashed her middle finger at the judges earlier this month as her trial ended. The Savchenko case has become a matter of great controversy and attracted much international attention. It has been commented on by President Putin, President Obama, and President Poroshenko, alongside with other state officials and NGO leaders. An international campaign demanding to free Savchenko has been underway since the beginning of her detention. However, Russia insists that these demands are an attempt to influence its judiciary system. For instance, Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putins press secretary, has said citing the Russian president words that we are talking about a court process and any interference with the work of our courts is inadmissible, as the RT news agency reports. Nadezhda Savchenko, born in Kiev, on May 11, 1981, is a retired officer (senior lieutenant) of the Ukrainian armed forces, a member of the Verkhovna Rada (the Ukrainian parliament) and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe in absentia. Russian national accused of 1991 crimes in Lithuania pleads not guilty MOSCOW, March 22 (RAPSI) Russian national Gennady Ivanov, who stands charged with involvement in clashes in January 1991 after declaration of Lithuanias independence from the USSR, has pleaded not guilty in the Vilnius District Court, RIA Novosti reported on Tuesday. Lithuania's Prosecutor General's Office has declared 65 citizens of Russia, Belarus and Ukraine defendants in the criminal case opened in the aftermath of the clashes. They were charged with war crimes, crimes against humanity battery, murder, endangering other's wellbeing, as well as unlawful military actions against civilians. Ivanov, who was a head of the 107th motor rifle divisions missile and artillery supply in 1991, insists on his innocence. My work was connected only with combat equipment; I did not run military units. I did not take part in actions directed to violent overthrow of Lithuanias regime, he said in court. Lithuania declared independence from the Soviet Union on March 11, 1990. Moscow denounced the move as illegal and put an economic blockade on the country between April and late June 1990. In January 1991, a series of unauthorized protests swept across Lithuania after which Soviet military forces entered the republic. On the night of January 13, Soviet armored vehicles and tanks rolled into the center of Vilnius. Soviet troops clashed with civilians at a local TV tower, leaving 14 dead and over 600 injured. Security personnel later claimed that the clashes were a result of a provocation, and that the victims were killed by sharpshooters. On June 4, a court in Vilnius acquitted Boleslav Makutynovich and Vladimir Razvodov, former officers of riot police special unit, who were suspected of committing crimes during the clashes in 1991. The former riot police officers, who live in Russia, were tried in absentia. A pair of New York City Police Transit officers patrol in New York the subway station in Times Square. (Photo: AP) Moscow: Authorities in Europe and across the world tightened security at airports, railway stations, government buildings and other key sites after deadly attacks Tuesday on the Brussels airport and its subway system. With Brussels on lockdown and the French prime minister saying that Europe is "at war," European leaders held emergency security meetings and deployed more police, explosives experts, sniffer dogs and plainclothes officers, with some warning against travel to Belgium. Read: European stocks fall, gold and govt bonds rise after Brussels terror attack The nervousness was felt far and wide. In New York City, authorities deployed additional counter-terrorism units to crowded areas and transit locations. After a string of extremist attacks targeting the heart of Europe over the past year, some analysts say Europe will finally have to implement a much tougher level of security not only at airports, but also at "soft targets" like shopping malls - the kind that Israelis have been living with for years. Read: Timeline of recent terror attacks in Western Europe "The threat we are facing in Europe is about the same as what Israel faces," said Olivier Guitta, the managing director of GlobalStrat, an international security consultancy. "We have entered an era in which we are going to have to change our way of life and take security very seriously." Strong criticism of Belgian security came on Tuesday from Pini Schiff, a former security director at Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport, which is considered among the most secure in the world. After Palestinian attacks on Israeli planes and travelers in the 1970s, Israeli officials put in place several layers of security at that airport in Tel Aviv, meaning an attacker who escapes notice at one level of security would likely be captured by another. Read: Terror attacks in Brussels airport, metro station leave several dead Schiff said the attacks at the Brussels airport mark "a colossal failure" of Belgian security and that "the chances are very low" such a bombing could have happened in Israel. There are some, however, who fear that little more can realistically be done. Read: Security beefed up across world after Brussels attacks "The public needs to understand that if we are to continue enjoy living in a free society we have to respond in a proportional way," said Simon Bennett, director of the Civil Safety and Security Unit at the University of Leicester, England. "In my opinion, airport security is as tight as we can reasonably make it in a free society." In Moscow, Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov told Russian news agencies that authorities will "re-evaluate security" at Russian airports, although its measures are already among some of the toughest across Europe. There have been mandatory checks at the entrances to airports since a 2011 suicide bombing at Moscow's Domodedovo airport that killed 37. Read: Eiffel Tower to be lit with Belgium's colours after attacks Security was high at all Paris airports and at Gatwick and Heathrow in London, among many others. At Rome's Fiumicino Airport, sniffer dogs were deployed in the check-in areas, while at Milan's Malpensa airport police in carts were patrolling the areas before security checks. Read: Belgian authorities urge media blackout on blast probe In Germany, the state rail system, Deutsche Bahn, halted its high-speed rail service from Germany to Brussels, stopping them at the border city of Aachen. Meanwhile, the international high-speed train operator Thalys suspended all of its train traffic Thursday and urged travelers to postpone trips to Belgium. Last year, an attack on a Thalys between Brussels and Paris was foiled by three Americans and a Briton traveling on the train. Read: 'What we feared has happened,' says Belgian PM as world leaders condemn attacks Egypt also said it was increasing security, with top security officials asked to personally handle security checks inside airports and in outside areas like hotels and car parks. Egypt has been working to improve its security after a Russian jet was brought down last October by extremists after taking off from Sharm el-Sheikh International Airport, killing all 224 people on board. Moscow said it was brought down by an explosive device, and a local branch of the extremist Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for planting it. Read: Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam arrested in Brussels In Greece, police added additional security at airports, metro stations and embassies with uniformed and plain-clothed officers. But government spokeswoman Olga Gerovasili said there were no additional security measures being taken for refugees and migrants following the Brussels attacks. "We are not making any linkage between those two issues. That would be a defeat for Europe," she said. "Crossbow Coup" plotter suspected of making public calls for terrorism MOSCOW, March 22 (RAPSI, Diana Gutsul) - Retired Russian military intelligence colonel Vladimir Kvachkov, who was convicted for attempted instigation of an armed riot, has been questioned on suspicion of making public calls for terrorist activity, his lawyer Oksana Mikhalkina told RAPSI on Tuesday. According to the attorney, a criminal case was opened over public calls for terrorist activities or justifying terrorism. Under Article 205 of the Criminal Code, he could face up to 7 years in prison. Kvachkov, who was acquitted of charges in the attempted murder of former UES CEO Anatoly Chubais in 2005, was found guilty on February 8, 2013, of organizing an armed coup and was sentenced to 13 years in prison and one year of custodial restraint. Later, the Supreme Court mitigated the sentence to eight years in a high security prison. Kvachkov is thought to have masterminded plans to oust the government with a small group of followers. Kvachkov has denied all charges but during the trial defended the right of Russian citizens to hold an uprising." A career military officer, Kvachkov commanded a Special Forces unit in Afghanistan in 1983. In 1984, after sustaining a head injury, he was awarded the prestigious Order of the Red Star and later received the Order of Courage. 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. Two explosions hit Brussels Zaventem airport today, followed by another explosion at the Maelbeek metro station. The airport explosions took place at a check-in area around 8am local time, while the metro station was hit about an hour later. At least 34 people were killed. Early reports indicate that the airport blasts were the result of one suicide bombing and one bomb detonated from a distance. There are also reports that there was shouting in Arabic and gunshots were heard before the blasts. At least 14 people were killed in the airport attack. The Maelbeek station, where 20 people were killed, is in close proximity to European Union office buildings. Today's attacks differ from the Paris attacks on Nov. 13 in size, scope and level of organization. In Paris, the attacks involved the participation of several groups targeting a stadium, concert hall, restaurants and cafes and led to 130 deaths. The attacks in Brussels were coordinated, but may have involved as few as two or three individuals. Today's attacks thus required much less equipment and advanced planning than the Paris attacks. It may be that the attacks are revenge for the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, a suspect in the Paris attacks. Or it could be operatives connected to Abdeslam - fearing that the authorities are closing in - attempting to carry out one last attack before their organization is dismantled. Thus far, there have been no claims of responsibility for the attacks. There are reports in Russian and Kurdish press pointing a finger at the Islamic State, but no credible confirmation yet of the group's involvement. The nature of the attacks, however, suggests the operation of an independent cell. We will continue watching closely for any claims of responsibility. Cells that are related to or work as a part of radical groups, including the Islamic State, are known to operate in Brussels. The attacks come four days after the arrest of Abdeslam in the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek. The Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, which the Islamic State formally claimed responsibility for, were believed to have been planned largely in Brussels. Over the past few months, Belgian police conducted several raids in an effort to dislodge terror cells in Brussels. Molenbeek, an immigrant neighborhood in Brussels where unemployment stands at about 30 percent, is known as a jihadi hub. Not only were several suspects connected to the Paris bombings arrested in that neighborhood, but Molenbeek also reportedly boasts the highest concentration in Europe of militants going to fight in Syria and Iraq. Attacks like those in Brussels today, especially on soft targets like large, unprotected public transportation centers, are likely the new normal for Europe. The Islamic State is largely focused on its war in Syria and Iraq, but militants have shown a willingness to further some strategic goals through terror attacks farther afield. If today's attack was indeed orchestrated by the Islamic State, it is in the group's interest to strike visible Western targets because it benefits when the tide of popular opinion turns against migrants, and when Muslim minorities in Europe feel that the West does not accept them. Moreover, it is impossible for authorities to fully secure all soft targets. Even if some members of a cell are arrested or killed, groups tend to have middle managers who are responsible for coordinating multiple cells. Unless the middle management is eliminated, when some of the attackers die or get captured there are others who can be deployed and more attacks are likely. At the same time, local groups, lone wolves and militants returning from Syria and Iraq are also able to carry out attacks, albeit generally on a smaller scale. Lone wolves are particularly difficult to locate, even with strong security measures and intelligence capabilities. The refugee crisis, combined with the impact of the Paris attacks, has contributed to the fragmentation of Europe's Schengen free movement zone. The Schengen zone is still functioning, but many members have obtained opt-outs and selectively implement border controls. Today's attacks led to the closure of the border between France and Belgium. They are not a game-changer for Europe, but they highlight that terror attacks, border controls and tight security have become part of Europe's reality. My daily digest of reading this morning started on a troubling if relatively speculative note. As a naturalized Dutch citizen living in the United Kingdom, I take a personal as well as professional interest in Britain's June 23 vote on whether to remain in the European Union. This article in the Financial Times encapsulated the concerns of the 2.9 million EU citizens living here, as it described a rush on applications for British citizenship by long-time residents hoping to avoid their status being subject to "negotiations between the UK and Brussels" in the event of a so-called Brexit. I'll come back to that topic in proper context. No sooner was that article digested than Twitter feeds, smartphone alerts, and front pages across the web began to blaze with the news of just the latest vicious attack on Europe's open forums. The details are still coming in now, three-quarters of a workday later, with the latest updates being the inevitable claim of responsibility by the Islamic State group, and the disarming, reported by AP, of a third bomb at Zaventem Airport. Brexit suddenly mattered very little. What mattered, instead, was the safety of friends and colleagues in Brussels. Messages fly across WhatsApp, status updates on Facebook. The defiant face of the Je Suis social media emblem popularized when Paris was attacked last year turns to an acerbic grimace. This is the new normal, and it's sinking in. Projecting further down the line, we in Europe consider our daily commutes -- the trains connecting Utrecht to Amsterdam or Amsterdam to Brussels, or the Eurostar that flies the flag of white-collar European integration under the English Channel between Paris and London -- every journey, every day, is its own small risk. It is a secular reality that is not changing any time soon. Where security is no longer a given, the politics will only turn ever more sour. Brussels is a synecdoche. Anyone who has ever spent any time in the Belgian and European capital knows the hopes it physically embodies: With its smart, polyglot mix of workers from across the Continent populating the areas around Schuman Square where the European institutions have their home, it gives credence to the ideal of a Europe that works better when it builds together, if you'll excuse the sloganeering. In its own smaller, grittier way, it is as vibrant as London or New York, and every bit as intelligent. Yet its darker realities in their own parochial way epitomize everything that has gone wrong on a Continental scale within the European Union. The capital of a country divided among itself between Flemish and Walloon aspirations, Brussels has 19 municipal mayors - nineteen! -- creating what German publication Der Spiegel calls a "tangle of bureaucracy" that makes a muddle of basic policing, and helps perhaps explain why the capital of Europe has become the European capital of jihad. Take the view of former FBI and U.S. Army counter-terrorism official Clint Watts, quoted today by CNBC: "'It is hard to conceive that this would happen on such a large scale when it was so obvious that these guys were operating there,' Watts said of ISIS. After [Abdeslam's] arrest, you would have to assume everyone in the network was preparing to launch whatever they had.' "After the Paris attacks, it was a question of not being able to run all the leads down,' Watts said. After Tuesday, "It's no longer a capacity problem, it's a competency problem.'" So who does one blame, as the new normal sets in? Some will blame lax security measures, and cry for more enforcement. Some will blame the lack of earnest dialogue on immigration and integration, pointing the finger at failed policies decades old. Perhaps it's the fault of the refugee crisis, or of the inability to track the flow of fighters between Europe and the Middle East. Maybe the neglect and marginalization of immigrant groups will be part of the conversation. One thing is sure: A citizenry must feel safe before it can be idealistic. Europe as an integrated entity is an ideal, it's a notion. It feels good to take down borders when those borders are seen as hampering prosperity, and when the lack of an external threat keeps harder, more practical questions at bay. Those questions are now baying. It's hard to say what security measures could keep a handful of society's most motivated losers from acting out their delusions. It is simply too easy, in an open society, to kill lots of people. So today's new normal moves tomorrow's ever closer: If we aren't safe when we are open, we will close. Europe's mainstream politicians struggle to respond in the aftermath of attacks like this. France's centre-left President, Francois Hollande, put on a tough guise, reiterating bellicose rhetoric he had already used in the aftermath of attacks in Paris in November 2015, but each of these attacks strengthens his far-right opponent, Marine Le Pen. And it does the same for the Netherlands' Geert Wilders, who sounds perfectly sensible in calling for a closure of the borders. And it does the same in the United Kingdom for Nigel Farage, the original Brexiteer, who wasted no time. This is where the Old Continent starts to feel, well, old. The idealism that is the European Union is under pressure from every side, but beneath its idealism there has always been a practical intent, which is to bind the Continent in shared peace and prosperity. To paraphrase what a colleague recently told me, it is right now as though the Continent has lain under a blue pan-European veil for decades. As that veil is lifted, it turns out, the same nationalisms, the same mutual suspicions that lay dormant for so long, are still alive. Their voices are getting louder, and as Brussels becomes a symbol for failed ambition -- ambition to open borders without securing them, ambition to open up the economy without unifying it -- their chorus may overwhelm the rest. That is the crescendo that brings us to the Brexit vote on June 23 -- a key test for whether Europe as a whole can survive the moment. If it doesn't, yesterday's Je Suis Charlie Hebdo, or Je Suis Paris, may well turn into a new, unspoken reality: On est seul. Today, from Brussels to Bristol, that reality feels as close as ever. (AP photo) Two women wounded during the explosions at Brussels Airport in Brussels. (Photo: Georgian Public Broadcaster via AP) Brussels: "What we feared has happened", said Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, adding authorities are worried there will be more attacks after multiple explosions rocked Brussels airport and a metro station on Tuesday. Speaking at a news conference in Brussels, Michel said, "There are many dead, many injured from the attacks. We realize we face a tragic moment. We have to be calm and show solidarity." Belgium's Royal Family stated that they were devastated by the blasts. "The King and Queen are devastated by the attacks. The emotional thoughts of the King and Queen go first to the victims and their families and the rescue services which are doing everything possible to help the victims." Read: Terror attacks in Brussels airport, metro station leave 23 dead Meanwhile, world leaders expressed shock and anger over the multiple blasts. European leaders were rattled by the attacks that came just a few days after reports emerged that recently captured Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam was plotting to execute more acts of terror in the continent. Here's how leaders across the world reacted to the attacks: India: Prime Minister Narendra Modi condemned the attacks as he offered condolences to the family of the deceased. "News from Brussels is disturbing. The attacks are condemnable. Condolences to families of the deceased. May those injured recover quickly," the Prime Minister tweeted. News from Brussels is disturbing. The attacks are condemnable. Condolences to families of the deceased. May those injured recover quickly. Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) March 22, 2016 United States: President Barack Obama pledged to "do whatever is necessary" to help Belgian authorities seek justice for the more than two dozen people who were killed Tuesday in explosions at the Brussels airport and the subway system. "We can and we will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world," said US President Barack Obama. United Kingdom: I am shocked and concerned by the events in Brussels, British Prime Minister David Cameron posted on Twitter shortly after the news broke. We will do everything we can to help, he said and added that he will be holding a high-level meet to discuss the incidents. I am shocked and concerned by the events in Brussels. We will do everything we can to help. David Cameron (@David_Cameron) March 22, 2016 France: French President Francois Hollande held an emergency meeting to review the security situation in the country. "Terrorists struck Brussels but it was Europe that was targeted," said Hollande. Hollande met with Prime Minister Manuel Valls, Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian and Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve. France remains in a state of emergency after the November 13 attacks, which killed 130 people. Several attackers were also killed. Sweden: Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven described the blasts at Brussels airport and one of the city's metro stations as an attack against European democracy. "It is an attack against democratic Europe. We will never accept that terrorists attack our open societies," he said in a statement. Russia: Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov told Russian news agencies that authorities will re-evaluate security at Russian airports. "It's time for Europe to understand where the genuine threat is coming from and join efforts with Russia," said prominent Russian lawmaker Alexei Pushkov. The Netherlands: Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte said, "Belgium has again been hit by cowardly and murderous attacks. Our hearts go out to the victims and next of kin. The Netherlands stands ready to help and support our southern neighbors in any possible way." "Extra alertness is necessary, also in our country. We will take all necessary precautionary measures, said Rutte. He also called a meeting Tuesday of his government's Ministerial Crisis Committee to discuss the attacks. The Dutch anti-terror authority said the country's threat level was unchanged at 'substantial.' It said extra security measures would be in place at the country's airports and borders. Turkey: The attacks "have once again shown terrorism's global face," said Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. Germany: "Terrorists will never win," said Peter Altmaier, chief of staff for German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Vatican: Pope Francis has condemned the "blind violence" of the Brussels attacks and has offered prayers for the victims, their families and emergency responders. Francis' secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, sent a telegram of condolences Tuesday to the archbishop of Brussels, Mons. Jozef De Kesel. In it, Francis said he "condemns once again the blind violence that breeds so much suffering and implores the gift of peace from God" for all Belgians. By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 03/22/2016 ADVERTISEMENT Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade. pro Peta Murgatroyd has opened up about what it's like to train a deaf contestant, Nyle DiMarco Murgatroyd's traditional methods of teaching dance don't apply to DiMarco, 26, so he's certainly providing the pro dancer with a challenge."Nyle has absolutely made me a better teacher," Murgatroyd, 29, told People following Monday night's Dancing with the Stars premiere . "I have to be very careful to explain myself so well and make sure that the words I am using to describe things are very clear."DiMarco, the latest winner of America's Next Top Model, apparently digests direction easily despite his inability to hear Murgatroyd and the music."I mean, he is a smart guy. It's not like I have to dumb anything down," Murgatroyd said. "But if I want him to put his foot on the floor, I have to show him how to do it. I can't just tell him, 'Be strong with the leg.' I have to describe what I want."Murgatroyd and DiMarco's first dance was the cha cha and they tied for first place on the judges' leaderboard with two other couples thanks to their score of 23 out of 30 points."You could be 'America's Next Top Dancer.' Unbelievable," judge Bruno Tonioli said during last night's DWTS broadcast.Judge Carrie Ann Inaba also told DiMarco after he performed that he "brought the rhythm to life.""I think at first when I found out he was 100 percent deaf, I was really nervous, really scared and I kind of went home and thought about it a little bit and tried to wrap my brain around how I was going to work this," Murgatroyd told Us Weekly in a separate interview."But I'm loving it, I have to be a better teacher. [We're having] so much fun." By Elizabeth Kwiatkowski, 03/22/2016 ADVERTISEMENT Elizabeth Kwiatkowski is Associate Editor of Reality TV World and has been covering the reality TV genre for more than a decade. A former bachelorette has died in a tragic plane crash.: London Calling contestant Erin Storm was killed in a fiery plane crash Monday near Hawthorne Municipal Airport in Los Angeles shortly after takeoff, according to Us Weekly.Storm, a Pacific Blue Air pilot from Venice, CA, made it to the Top 12 on Season 12 of starring Matt Grant . She was billed as a 33-year-old hot dog vendor during her appearance on the show in 2008.Employees from Best Drilling and Pump, Inc., witnessed the crash of the ultralight aircraft that Storm was flying around noon when they were working on tanks only a few feet away from the site, Southern California's NBC4 News reported "All of a sudden, my partner started yelling, 'Watch out, there's a plane coming!' and it looked like the plane veered up, lost control and hit a couple feet away from the truck, a couple feet away from us," Byron Mayes told the NBC affiliate.Mayes and his co-workers ran to the wreckage and pulled the female pilot out of the plane while her legs were still on fire."Our first thought was getting her out, making sure she was okay," Mayes said of the moments before they used fire extinguishers.Firefighters dispatched at 12:02PM to West 120th Street, where they put out the flames and attended to the woman who was already in full cardiac arrest. According to NBC4, the pilot was transported to a nearby trauma center but did not survive the accident.Pieces of the plane were reportedly scattered along the street and a big cloud of smoke filled the air. The crash is currently being investigated by the FAA and the National Transportation Safety Board. , We're sorry, this article is not currently available Candidates running for the office in next year's BC election are counting on housing issues discussions to get votes. As reported by CBC News, Premier Christy Clark has promised to crack down what is called "shadow flipping" in the real estate industry, a "first step" towards addressing the uber hot housing market in Metro Vancouver. "The shady practice that we have seen around Vancouver we all know has been driven by greed. Pure naked greed. The way we end that shady practice, the greedy people, is to take the profit out. That is how we think we are going to be able to make a difference," Clark said via CBC News. The publication noted though there was no further details given on how the Liberals' plans of punishing realtors who engage in such activities will actually be carried out. NDP is also banking on the housing affordability issues and likewise promised to ban shadow flipping. NDP Leader John Horgan last week introduced two bills in the legislature - the Housing Affordability Fund and Speculator Fee Act. The bills, when passed into law, aim to impose 2 percent tax on the assessed property value and the proceeds will go the region's funds for affordability initiatives. Political analysts, on one hand, have warned candidates to be careful with their promises for the housing sector with the risks that they won't be able to deliver. But because housing affordability is a growing concern for the society, these politicians believe they have to show they are doing something. According to a report from Global News, there is a huge demand of affordable housing, but the supply is not sufficient. Sharad Kerur, executive Director of Ontario Non-Profit Housing Association, said there are also no enough programs that would encourage builders to develop affordable housing units. Safety is one of the top priorities that buyers consider every time they search for a new home in the real estate market. While crime can happen anywhere, which cities in the United States pose higher chances of living next to a sex offender? Housing data provider RealtyTrac recently analyzed data to find out which cities in the U.S. pose a higher risk of living next to a sex offender, Realtor.com reported. According to the publication, data was gathered from the state's criminal offender registry and analyzed the ZIP codes to determine the percentage of offenders within a certain area. Findings revealed that residents from Greenville and Columbia in South Carolina had higher chances of living right next to a registered criminal offender. These cities are followed by Boise, ID; Pensacola, FL; and Flint, MI. Those on the lower end of the spectrum, which had the lowest percentage of offenders in the area, are St. Paul, Minnesota; Portland, OR; Trenton, NJ; New York City; and Boston. The publication noted that this does not entirely mean you should immediately put a cross mark to the above-mentioned areas. The data gathered only showed that while Greenville, South Carolina had the highest percentage in the list, it only accounts for 0.21 percent of the population. It might be good, however, to consider taking these figures into consideration when looking at property values. According to the outlet, not only does it pose a safety concern among homeowners, but it may also affect their house values. As previously reported here on Realty Today, safety is one of the things that people take into account when looking for a house in the real estate market. Living in an area, wherein one can feel completely safe and secure, can definitely bring about more offers and increase the value of your property. While recent reports say that more millennials are moving from renting to owning a home, there are still those who are experiencing difficulties in finding a roof over their heads that they can afford. Fortunately for millennials who are in San Francisco, there is nonprofit organization that provides subsidized housing for low-income residents. According to NPR, Mercy's affordable housing includes 25 apartments reserved for 18- to 24-year-olds. This age bracket compose the fastest-growing homeless populations in the United States, with 1,600 young adults who are homeless in San Francisco. While Mercy has a limited slots, way below the number of families in need of housing, it is already of big help to some millennials who would otherwise find it hard to get in public housing. In fact, public housing application in San Francisco is currently close because the waiting list is just too long. Millennials fall on the low-priority spectrum in public housing and it is especially hard for students whose access are limited because of certain housing rules. Mercy is located in Ocean Avenue and across it is the San Francisco City College where residents can take up some classes without worrying that they will be kick out of their homes. While homelessness in the country has been declining since 2007 the Department of Housing and Urban Development's 2015 homelessness assessment, the west coast is experiencing the opposite. The Guardian reported that 21 percent of the homeless population in the U.S. is from California. In San Francisco, officials are already considering declaring a state of emergency over the city's homelessness. San Francisco supervisor David Campos has introduced a legislation to declare a "shelter emergency" after 300 homeless people living in tents and makeshift shelters under highway overpass were cleared out. Jane Kim, another San Francisco supervisor, has also urged Governor Jerry Brown to declare a California-wide shelter crisis. Posted by Jeremy on at 03:00 AM CST Park Avenue Foods is an Australian company whose primary activity is the development, sales, distribution and marketing of confectionery and food products under some of the world's most well-known and loved licensed brands and characters, includingFounded in 2000, they've been supplying Australian and New Zealand retailers for 12 years. You can check out their website for further information on the company and to have a look at their othersweets which, for the most, are re-released each year in the current packaging.From left to right: Darth Vader Hollow Egg*, Digital Counting Money Jar, Exploding Milk Chocolate Cream Balls, First Order Stormtrooper Easter Egg, Foil Cup - Front (Kylo Ren), Foil Cup - Rear (Stormtrooper), Kylo Ren Ceramic Mug, Carry Tin - Front (Kylo Ren), Carry Tin - Rear (Captain Phasma), First Order Stormtrooper Ceramic Mug and Melamine Breakfast Set* specialcollapsed Sith Lord effect entirely due to Queensland heat; final product may vary!So far these Coles/Target has had the largest selection (all of them - with the Darth Vader Hollow Egg being an exclusive), while Woolworths/Big W, K-Mart and Aldi have had a more limited selection.To see what our kin over on the other side of the Tasman Sea have been getting make the jump to Star Wars New Zealand to see their report. Posted by Jay on at 11:01 AM CST Marvel has sent out solicitations for their June 2016 titles, including 6comics and a trade paperback!(of 5)MARJORIE LIU (W) MARK BROOKS (A)Cover by LEE BERMEJOVARIANT COVER BY John CassadaySKETCH VARIANT COVER BY John CassadayVARIANT COVER BY TBAACTION FIGURE VARIANT COVER BY JOHN TYLER CHRISTOPHERBLANK VARIANT COVER ALSO AVAILABLEMOVIE VARIANT COVER IS ALSO AVAILABLEEveryones favorite scoundrel gets his very own series! Han is given a top-secret undercover mission for the Rebellion rescuing a number of informants and spies. His cover for the assignment? Only the biggest and most infamous starship race in the galaxy! You know the race Han has dreamt of winning his entire life. Will he keep his mind on the mission? And can he manage to pull it off while keeping the lead? Best-selling author Marjorie Liu (X-MEN) comes to the Galaxy Far, Far Away along with superstar cover artist Mark Brooks (ULTIMATE X-MEN) in his return to interior art! Face it, readers there arent enough scoundrels in your life!32 PGS./Rated T $3.99CHARLES SOULE (W) PHIL NOTO (A/C)VARIANT COVER BY TBA The First Order has caught up with Poes X-wing squadron! Agent Terrex has them boxed into a corner! Then...the egg starts to hatch.32 PGS./Rated T $3.99KIERON GILLEN (W) SALVADOR LARROCA (A/C)ACTION FIGURE VARIANT COVER BY JOHN TYLER CHRISTOPHER (IssueS #21 & 22) Vader takes on Cylo and his cybernetic operatives. The Executor moves closer to completion in time for its launch. Meanwhile the murderbots take on their master.32 PGS. (each)/Rated T $3.99 (each)JASON AARON (W) MIKE MAYHEW (A/C)ACTION FIGURE VARIANT COVER BY JOHN TYLER CHRISTOPHERSKETCH VARIANT COVER BY MIKE MAYHEW Another dive into the journal of Obi-Wan Kenobi! Jabba has hired bounty hunter Black Krrsantan to find out whos been thwarting his men! The old hermit of the dune wastes might know something about that.32 PGS./Rated T $3.99Chuck Wendig (W) Luke Ross (A)Cover by Esad RibicVARIANT COVER BY TBASKETCH VARIANT COVER BY ESAD RIBICBLANK VARIANT COVER ALSO AVAILABLEVARIANT COVER BY John CassadaySKETCH VARIANT COVER BY John CassadayVARIANT COVER BY JOE QUESADASKETCH VARIANT COVER BY JOE QUESADAMOVIE VARIANT COVER ALSO AVAILABLEIts trueall of it! The biggest movie of the year jumps from the big screen to the comic book page! Its been three decades since the Rebel Alliance destroyed the Death Star and toppled the Galactic Empire...but now, on the remote planet of Jakku...there is a stirring in the Force. A young scavenger named Rey...a deserting stormtrooper named Finn...an ace pilot name Poe...and a dark apprentice named Kylo Ren...Their lives are about to collide as the awakening begins. Written by Chuck Wendig (STAR WARS: AFTERMATH) and drawn by Luke Ross (HERCULES), take us on our first steps back into the Saga of a lifetime!KIERON GILLEN (W) SALVADOR LARROCA (A/C)ACTION FIGURE VARIANT COVER BY JOHN TYLER CHRISTOPHER (IssueS #21 & 22) Vader takes on Cylo and his cybernetic operatives. The Executor moves closer to completion in time for its launch. Meanwhile the murderbots take on their master.32 PGS. (each)/Rated T $3.99 (each)Written by CHARLES SOULEPenciled by MARCO CHECCHETTOCover by MARCO CHECCHETTOBefore their military heroism in the Clone Wars, before their tragic battle on Mustafar and many decades before their final confrontation on the Death Star, they were Master Obi-Wan Kenobi and his young Padawan, Anakin Skywalker. Now join them a few years into Anakins, chosen one training. Teacher and student have grown closer over time, but its been a difficult road. And things arent about to get any easier. In fact, when theyre called to a remote planet for assistance, the pair may be pushed to their breaking point. As they find themselves stranded on a strange world of primitive technology and deadly natives, will they be able to save themselves? When war breaks out around them, master and apprentice will find themselves on opposite sides! Collecting OBI-WAN AND ANAKIN #1-5.112 PGS./Rated T $16.99ISBN: 978-0-7851-9679-2 Brussels: French officials are condemning the Brussels attacks in the strongest terms. Prime Minister Manuel Valls, speaking after a crisis meeting called by the French president, said we are at war. We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war. President Francois Hollande said, terrorists struck Brussels but it was Europe that was targeted and all the world that is concerned. Hollande also warned that this war will be long so sang froid and lucidity are needed. Paris said it will light the Eiffel Tower in the colors of the Belgian flag. The citys mayor, Anne Hidalgo, described it in a tweet as a measure of solidarity with Brussels. German Chancellor Angela Merkels chief of staff has called for solidarity with Belgium following the Brussels attacks that left scores dead. Peter Altmaier tweeted Tuesday: Terrorists will never win. He added: Our European values much stronger than hate, violence, terror! Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova says the Wests politics of double standards have led to terrorist attacks and that frozen diplomatic relations between NATO and Russia have slowed the fight with terrorism. The Kremlin, meanwhile, has offered its condolences to Belgium and expressed solidarity after the attacks Tuesday that left scores dead. While Russia and the United States have brokered a fragile peace agreement in Syria, the two countries still disagree on how to tackle terrorist threats posed by the ISIS. Prominent Russian lawmaker Alexei Pushkov also had a jab at Europe and NATO following the Brussels attacks. Pushkov later offered his condolences, but said it's time for Europe to understand where the genuine threat is coming from and join efforts with Russia. Meanwhile, Facebook has activated its safety check system to help people check on friends and loved ones in the aftermath of the attacks in Brussels. The company says Tuesday the system was put in use within hours of the three explosions at the Brussels airport and a metro station. It says the system can provide an easy way for people to mark themselves as safe after a major disaster or crisis so that people searching for them will know they are unharmed. The system has been used recently to help people communicate after major floods and earthquakes as well as terrorist attacks. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, fighting back tears, has stopped short a news conference in Jordan after saying that today is a difficult day, in reference to the Brussels attacks. People have a right for this to pass if thats what they want. But from a social work perspective I dont think it is healthy for campus or would do anything to help campus diversity, -Sarah Traub, UGA masters of social work student Sarah Traub After the Georgia Senate passed House Bill 859 on March 11, a campus carry bill which would allow anyone with a permit 21 years or older to carry guns on college campuses in Georgia, power to sign this bill into law turned over to Gov. Nathan Deal. Bad release weeks happen. And sadly, this was a pretty poor week for new music. Bands like Killswitch Engage and 3 Doors Down are both past their respective primes especially the pitiful attempt by the latter to write a sex club song with the lead single In The Dark. Even some of the albums I was anticipating the most this week, namely Flatbush Zombies, still left a lot to be desired. There were still some very strong tracks this week, but I didnt have nearly the issues I had the last couple of weeks narrowing the pool down to only 10. SHARE VIENNA (AP) A sonorous burp after a doner kebab led to a fine for Vienna bartender Edin Mehic. But the belch also had its benefits an all-expenses paid trip to Istanbul, compliments of a chain famed for the Turkish specialty. A policeman ticketed and fined Mehic last month asserting the belch was too loud and too close for comfort. But many took his side, including an Istanbul-based company serving the sliced meat sandwich that saw Mehic's punishment as a downer for the doner. The chain on Monday confirmed that it picked up the tab for the flight, hotel and a sightseeing tour during Mehic's two-day visit last week. And there's more to what Mehic calls his "dream trip." The chain's CEO wrote him a check reimbursing his 70-euro ($77) fine. Prince Harry is on a five-day trip to Nepal where he already met the president, prime minister, attended an official function to mark 200 years of friendship between Nepal and Britain. (Photo: AFP) Kathmandu: Britain's Prince Harry stayed at the village home of a former Nepalese Gurkha soldier who had served in the British army on Monday as the prince continues his tour of the Himalayan nation. The prince flew to the Leurani village, northwest of the capital Kathmandu, Monday where he spend time with the villagers dancing and later feasting with the family of Mangali Tamang, 86-year-old widow of a former soldier. Villagers lined up the trail to the village offering flowers and cream-colored scarf which is offered to special guests. He stopped to visit two families who are building their homes after it was destroyed in last year's earthquake. Press Association said Tamang was overjoyed to have her guest and, following Nepalese custom, referred to the royal as "king": "I'm very happy. I cried 'when I die I can say I talked to the king of a foreign land'." "I could do nothing, put a garland of flowers around him and then I blessed him," Tamang was quoted as saying. "I blessed him so that he may live to be 100 years and all his wishes become fulfilled, and where he goes success will follow him." Nepal abolished centuries-old monarchy in 2008 and Harry is the first British royal to visit Nepal since then. Heavy rainfall with hailstorm did not dampen the celebration of the villagers. Harry has close relations with the Gurkhas, Nepalese men who have served and fought nearly every war for the British army for two-centuries. Harry even served with a Gurkha battalion in Afghanistan. Earlier on Monday, he flew to Bardia national park home to rhinos and tigers where he talked about conservation. He spent hours discussing the local conservation officials and villagers about the tigers and even rode on a boat. Harry is on a five-day trip to Nepal where he already met the president, prime minister, attended an official function to mark 200 years of friendship between Nepal and Britain. The highlight of his trip was visiting the earthquake damaged areas and highlighting reconstruction efforts. He visited with families living in tents at a camp in Nepal for people made homeless by last April's devastating earthquake, toured old palaces and temples that were damaged. The earthquake killed nearly 9,000 people and destroying about 1 million homes. There has been little to help the victims even a year after the earthquake. SHARE Coroner: Redding woman was crash victim The Shasta County Coroner's Office has identified the victim of Saturday night's fatal crash on Highway 273 as Jennifer Pruitt, 32, of Redding. The crash happened shortly before 11 p.m. just north of the South Bonnyview Road intersection. Pruitt was hit by a southbound truck while crossing the highway in a portion that had no crosswalk, coroner's officials said. In addition, officials said, it was very dark outside and Pruitt was wearing dark clothing. Her autopsy indicated she died from multiple traumatic injuries consistent with being hit by a vehicle, officials said. Redding police are still investigation the crash. Caltrans working on route around washout The California Department of Transportation is working to open Trinity Mountain Road as alternate route to Highway 3 in Trinity County after a section of the highway washed out last week. Highway 3 near Trinity Center near Trinity Lake will remain closed until later in May, Caltrans officials said. Until then, the agency is working to improve Trinity Mountain Road as an alternate route to and from Trinity Center. Trinity Mountain Road connects to Highway 299 near French Gulch and winds through the mountains before it meets up with Highway 3 north of Trinity Center as Eastside Road. Caltrans officials said the route is normally closed in the winter and is recommended only for four-wheel-drive vehicles. Transportation agency gets planning money The California Transportation Commission has awarded the Shasta Regional Transportation Agency $250,000 to use for transportation planning in Shasta County. The money is slated to help local cities and the county coordinate with each other and plan for future transportation projects, according to the California Department of Transportation. The money was among several other grants totaling $170 million issued by the commission. Photo courtesy of Central Valley Regional Water Quality Board This property near Millville was the subject of a $100,000 settlement agreement between the owner and state water officials for violations related to a marijuana grow. SHARE Photo courtesy of Department of Fish and Wildlife An aerial view of the property near Millville. By David Benda of the Redding Record Searchlight A Shasta County property owner who lives in Virginia has agreed to pay a $100,000 fine for the unauthorized discharge of waste water from a marijuana growing operation on his land near Millville, state officials said. The Central Valley Regional Water Quality Control Board announced the settlement with Brent Alan Vanderkam of Norfolk, Virginia, last week. "The failure of Mr. Vanderkam or his lessee to obtain the necessary permits prior to developing the property for marijuana cultivation resulted in significant impacts to water quality," said Clint Snyder, assistant executive officer for the Central Valley Water Board. The settlement comes nearly four months after state officials considered fining Vanderkam about $200,000 for allegedly allowing pollution to flow from his property into nearby streams. Vanderkam's property on Buggy Road east of Millville was graded without the proper permits and erosion from his land washed into a nearby creek to support a pot-growing operation, state officials wrote in the original complaint. The complaint alleged the unpermitted grading of about 2.25 acres resulted in the unauthorized discharge of more than 700,000 gallons of sediment-laden storm water. State officials also claimed that during grading on the 60-acre property, 68 linear yards of a stream on the property were disturbed and 427 cubic yards of earth were placed into the creek, which flows into Cow Creek. Vanderkam ultimately was responsible for the discharge from his property and should be responsible for the penalty and cleanup, state officials said. Vanderkam also is subject to a cleanup and abatement order that requires him to remediate ongoing problems within the property. The remediation will cost him about $95,000 to comply with the order, Vanderkam's consultant has told state officials. The consultant is SHN Consulting Engineers and Geologists Inc. in Redding, Snyder said. Concerned about the growing number of marijuana-cultivation operations in the state, the regional water board approved regulations in October ordering pot growers and landowners to obtain permits before doing work. The permits are designed to prevent sediment and fertilizers from running off into streams and lakes, the board said in a news release. Meanwhile, Vanderkam has until May 1 to submit plans to state water officials that show the necessary efforts to further minimize erosion and further discharge. By July 15, he has to provide a proposed restoration, mitigation and monitoring plan and start the plan by Aug. 1. All approved restoration and mitigation measures as described in the plan must be complete by Oct. 15. Vanderkam must submit an annual monitoring report by Oct. 1 of each year. He also has to report any change of ownership on the property. Vanderkam's lawyer, Tyler Maize Lalaguna of Redding, was out of the office Monday and couldn't be reached for comment. In November, Lalaguna told the Record Searchlight that his client had leased the property and he was not aware of the work done on the property until he was notified by Shasta County officials. Voter guide: Race previews, what to know before you vote South Side rapper-turned-actor Common is interviewed for the "Noisey" Chicago episode, scheduled to air Tuesday. Drill music is an expression of the way some rappers interpret their lifestyle on the South Side, rapper-turned-actor Common says in the Chicago episode of the music documentary series "Noisey." "It's the energy of that block, that neighborhood, this city," Common told "Noisey" host Zach Goldbaum. Advertisement Common, Vic Mensa, Lil Durk and Chief Keef are among the South Side natives Goldbaum interviewed to explore how Chicago gun violence and segregation shaped drill music. The "Noisey" episode is scheduled to premiere 9 p.m. Tuesday on the Viceland network. Goldbaum talks to local activists, including the Rev. Michael Pfleger of St. Sabina Catholic Church in the Auburn Gresham, about lack of opportunities for South Siders contributing to violence. Kids Off the Block founder Diane Latiker, who maintains a stone memorial for youth killed by guns in Chicago, weighs in on the struggles children face amid gang warfare. Advertisement But much of the episode is focused on the headlines-making rappers who hail from the South Side. Mensa, a Kanye West collaborator, is shown joining the downtown protests sparked by the release of the video of veteran Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke fatally shooting teenager Laquan McDonald in 2014. Common, meanwhile, is featured encouraging youth at an August job fair at McCormick Place. Most of the interviews appear to be conducted in Chicago but Goldbaum visited California to meet with Chief Keef, who told Goldbaum that he moved from the Chicago area because of the police. The rapper, who was born Keith Cozart, has outstanding warrants out for him in Illinois and has avoided performing in the state. "I'm like a god in Chicago," Chief Keef told Goldbaum, who toured the rapper's California home and played paintball with him. The episode is a follow-up to the eight-part "Noisey" documentary series "Chiraq" that aired in 2014. 'Most of those involved in these honour killings are people who belong to the class that feels left out.' 'The high development index in a way is perpetuating conditions that result in social tension.' 'The only solution to the problem is politicise inter-caste marriages.' Dr M Vijayabaskar, an associate professor at the Madras Institute of Development Studies, is also a guest faculty at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, IIT-Madras. A social scientist who specialises in the political economy of regional development and rural-urban interactions, he explains the reasons behind the so-called 'honour killings' that occur at an alarming rate in Tamil Nadu, of late. Dr Vijayabaskar, below, left, spoke to Shobha Warrier/Rediff.com Tamil Nadu tops the country in the fields of education, literacy, healthcare, industrial output, etc. In fact, it has topped the country in Sarva Shiksha Abhyan pushing Kerala to second place. At the same time, the state is witnessing honour killings in the name of caste which we associate with backwardness. Is there not a dichotomy in the situation? The economic condition is behind this kind of tension in society. First, those who belong to the castes that are classified as backward castes or the most backward castes do most of these killings. A process of economic differentiation is taking place within these backward castes or the non-Dalit castes, especially in the post-nineties period. This economic differentiation is a result of two reasons. One is due to the crisis in the agricultural sector because of the steady fragmentation of land holdings. If you look at the average land holding per household, it is one of the lowest in the country at less than two acres according to the 2011 data. Though poverty levels are one of the lowest in the country, if you look at the section where the decline has happened, it is more among the agricultural labourers than among the cultivators. Dalits constitute the agricultural labour class. So within the cultivators, there is some kind of a crisis. 60 per cent in the reduction in poverty in Tamil Nadu has been due to the functioning of the public distribution system. Earlier, landless labourers had to depend on land owners for food, but PDS has undermined the control the backward castes had over the Dalits. PDS has in a way undermined the agrarian social relationship, which sustained the agrarian economy for several decades. This is a crucial change. I would go to the extent of saying the high development index in a way is perpetuating conditions that result in social tension. Along with this, a majority of the backward caste people have invested in education in a big way, and that has made them highly mobile. A combination of the reservation policy and affirmative action in education has lead to this situation. The largest number of youth between the ages of 18 to 25 in higher education is in Tamil Nadu, even more than Kerala. Has this mobility not happened among the Dalits? Only on a very small scale, and definitely not on the same scale as the backward castes. So on one hand, there is a section in the backward castes that has become assertive, economically independent and upwardly mobile while there is a segment that feels they have been left out of the growth process. According to me, most of those involved in these killings are the people who belong to the class that feels left out. Another important point is these killings are not called 'honour killings' in Tamil. It is Aanava kolai aanavam, means arrogance or insolence. You mean there is no feeling of 'honour' involved in these killings? No, there is no feeling of honour involved in these killings. The community itself discarded the phrase gaurava kolai, which means honour killing. You have to remember caste always works through patriarchy. So there is a crisis of masculinity among the male members of this section who feel they are left out in the growth process. There is nothing like a proud farmer today unlike in the sixties and the seventies! But there are not enough employment opportunities for these educated backward caste youths, especially in the government sector. They somehow think Dalits are responsible for them not getting jobs though this is actually not true. For example, a Vanniyar youth living in a village does not realise that a Vanniyar boy in Chennai is more equipped to get a job than him. If you look at the killings, you see that though it is acceptable for a Dalit girl to marry a backward caste boy, it creates tension only when a backward caste girl marries a Dalit boy... That has to do with patriarchy based on which caste relations work. Let's face it, marriages in India are not about love, but about strengthening kinship ties and expanding your sense of economic security. Today, there is a strong sense among the backward caste people left out in the villages that their masculinity has been eroded. Perumal Murugan has written an interesting novel which talks about how a peasant who thinks he is successful, fails to find a girl to marry as no girl wants to marry a peasant. This is the true depiction of reality. These men feel they are losing their ability to control women in their families. So when a Dalit man marries a girl from their family, the volcano erupts. Is it because they could not accept Dalits rising above their previous position as landless labourers? Definitely, yes. Is not social mobility of the Dalits a reason for this? Yes, because of social mobility, they could assert themselves, which has not been acceptable to the other section. Along with that, there are disgruntled elements within the backward castes who are left behind. When these two work simultaneously, it creates this kind of crisis. One thing I found out when I spoke to the young people of a village after such a murder was that if the boy has a good job, the girl's parents have no objection in the marriage. Caste does not an issue then. Only when they elope as students that all the problems arise. So, economics undermines all other problems. Some reports say that inter caste marriages are going up, but girls and boys are killed for marrying from other castes which a state like Tamil Nadu had not witnessed 20 or 30 years ago. If you look at the history of Tamil Nadu, during the times of Periyar and Anna, there was a strong movement encouraging inter-caste marriages. Periyar used to attend only inter-caste marriages while Annadurai legalised self-respect marriages to encourage inter-caste marriages. What has happened later is the Dravidian parties lost their radical edge especially regarding caste and patriarchy to gain electoral gains. The Left parties never politicised inter-caste marriages. Today, no political party is talking about inter-caste marriages. If you notice, today, there is a total silence on this issue. In a way, support for same caste marriage and violence against inter-caste marriage are interlinked. Do you hold caste-based parties like the Pattali Makkal Katchi responsible for a situation like this? I am not saying the PMK is not responsible, but you have to look at why the PMK is politically successful in taking an anti-Dalit and pro-honour killing stand. How are they able to convince the Vanniyar youths against the Dalits? There is no point in saying that the PMK is responsible and the other Dravidian political parties are silent on this issue, etc. The only solution to the problem is politicise inter-caste marriages. Dr M Vijayabaskar's photograph: Sreeram Selvaraj Gunmen launched an attack on the European Union military mission's headquarters in the Malian capital, Bamako, the apparent latest in a string of attacks on Western interests in the region. Armed forces killed at least one man, who lay outside the hotel in jeans and a shirt, in a pool of blood next to a Kalashnikov rifle. His backpack lay beside him. It was not immediately known how many people had launched the assault on Sunday. Sgt Baba Dembele from the anti-terrorism unit in Bamako told a reporter at the scene that it was believed some attackers had entered the Hotel Nord-Sud, where the mission is headquartered. The EU mission later released a statement on Twitter saying no personnel had been wounded during the violence, and that forces were securing the area. EU soldiers, the Malian army, national police and other security forces stood outside the hotel. The assault comes about four months after jihadis attacked the Radisson Blu hotel in Mali's capital, killing 20 people. Al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb and al-Mourabitoun claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was their first joint attack since al-Mourabitoun joined al-Qaida's North Africa branch in 2015. In January, other extremists from the same militant groups attacked a cafe near a hotel popular with foreigners in Burkina Faso's capital, killing at least 30 people. And just last week al-Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb claimed responsibility for an assault on a beach in Ivory Coast that left at least 19 dead, identifying the three attackers as members of al-Mourabitoun and Sahara units. This week marks the fourth anniversary of the coup that unleashed widespread chaos in Mali. After the overthrow of the democratically elected president, extremists in the northern half of Mali took over the major towns and began implementing their strict interpretation of Islamic law. The amputations and public whippings only ended when a French-led military mission forced them from power in 2013. Over the past year, the jihadis have mounted a growing wave of violent attacks against UN peacekeepers who are trying to help stabilise the country. Image for representation only. Deadlock over government formation in Jammu and Kashmir seems to have ended with Peoples Democratic Party Chief Mehbooba Mufti on Tuesday calling on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a meeting which she described as "very positive" and "good" in addressing issues pertaining to the people of the state. Mehbooba drove to the prime minister's residence Monday morning barely three days after the PDP and the BJP had hit a road block with BJP's chief interlocutor Ram Madhav announcing that his party would not be accepting any fresh demands from its erstwhile ally PDP. Emerging after a 30-minute-long meeting with the prime minister, Mehbooba said that she had a "very positive meeting and a good meeting" with him. "We are seeing a stalemate for last two to three months over government formation in the state but today I am satisfied. I am very satisfied," she told reporters. To a question whether the stalemate has ended, she said, "When you meet the prime minister of the country, naturally the solution to the problems faced by the people of Jammu and Kashmir is more clear". She will be flying back to Srinagar where she will brief her party legislators on Thursday. "I had been authorised by the party MLAs to take a decision. I have convened a meeting on Thursday and after that we will announce the future course of action." On government formation in the state, she said, "As I said I will talk to my MLAs because that is the forum. This is not the place. There is a particular place to make such anouncements. I will go back to Srinagar and take the next step." Mehbooba came to Delhi on Monday after the PDP make it clear to the BJP that there was some miscommunication and no fresh demands had been raised by the party for stitching an alliance. This is her second visit to the national capital in five days after her talks with BJP President Amit Shah on Thursday failed to make any headway triggering speculation that the two parties could be making renewed efforts to reach out to each other in a bid to break the prolonged impasse. Mehbooba had a meeting Monday morning with her senior party colleagues, including former Finance Minister Haseeb Drabu, during which final touches were given for the meeting with the prime minister, sources said. The fresh efforts from the PDP, which has 27 MLAs in the 87-member state assembly, come in the backdrop of repeated assertions made by the BJP that it was committed to implementation of Agenda of Alliance arrived at by late Mufti Mohammed Sayeed. The talks with the BJP, which has 25 MLAs, had hit a roadblock last week when the party's interlocutor Ram Madhav made it clear that no fresh demands would be entertained from the PDP and that they had to decide whether they want to form a government based on the Agenda of Alliance document. The toughening of stand came as a surprise for Mehbooba who boarded a plane on Friday last and returned to the state. PDP MP Muzzafar Hussain Baig, who has been playing a key role in the backchannel talks, had clarified that the PDP had made no fresh demands and that there was a miscommunication from both sides leading to derailing of talks. The PDP and the BJP had formed an alliance on March one, last year with Sayeed as the chief minister. Both the sides had formed an Agenda of Alliance which sought to address internal and external dimension of the state. The PDP had toughened its stance after Sayeed's demise by seeking concrete plans for the state's development, including handing over of power projects to the state and vacation of land by the army before the coalition could be revived. Governor's rule was imposed in Jammu and Kashmir on January 8 after Mehbooba decided against taking over the reins after her father's death. Image: PDP Chief Mehbooba Mufti meets Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Photograph: PIB John Roberts Criticized Supreme Court Confirmation Process, Before There Was a Vacancy Last month, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. delivered some blunt remarks about the Supreme Court confirmation process. The Senate should ensure that nominees are qualified, he said, and leave politics out of it. The chief justice spoke 10 days before Justice Antonin Scalia died, and he could not have known how timely and telling his comments would turn out to be. They now amount to a stern, if abstract, rebuke to the Republican senators who refuse to hold hearings on President Obamas nominee, Judge Merrick B. Garland. Some people are hoping that the chief justice will speak out again, and more directly, addressing the actual nomination of an actual nominee . It was not long ago that qualified nominees coasted onto the court, Chief Justice Roberts said last month, in a speech at New England Law, a private law school in Boston. In 1986, Justice Scalia was confirmed by a vote of 98 to 0. In 1993, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was confirmed by a vote of 96 to 3. Two Jet Airways crew members were injured in the explosions that rocked Brussels Zaventem airport on Tuesday, which led the airline to cancel all its flights to and from the Belgian capital till Wednesday. Two Jet Airways staff have sustained injuries in the explosion at Brussels airport. Both of them are receiving medical care at hospitals, the airline said. While the airline did not share details on the injured crew, sources said that the two cabin staff -- Nidhi Chaphekar and Amit Motwanai, belonged to Mumbai. As per the latest information received from Brussels, Jet Airways passengers have been accommodated at three locations by the airline staff in co-ordination with the local authorities, it said. Arrangements for their food and comfort have been made till the situation normalises, Jet Airways said. We are working very closely with the Indian Embassy and are in touch with the Indian Ambassador to plan the next steps for evacuation of our guests from Brussels once the airport becomes operational, the airline said. A series of explosions ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train, killing around 35 people and injuring more than 200 in the latest attacks to rock Europe. Brussels airport serves as Jet Airways European hub for international operations. The airline had, however, recently announced relocation of this gateway to Dutch capital Amsterdam from coming Sunday. Meanwhile, Jet Airways has cancelled flights operating to/from and via Brussels until Wednesday. Jet Airways has also offered a waiver on cancellation, rebooking and rerouting of tickets for travel to/from/via Brussels until March 26, the airline said. The airline said for further information passengers can contact Jet Airways contact centre in India 1800225522, 1-877-8359538 (The United States) and 08081011199 (The United Kingdom). Jet Airways flyers in India too were panic stricken after the airways centre at Indira Gandhi international airport in New Delhi received threats about bombs in five of its aircraft. While three of the planes had already departed by the time the anonymous call about the bomb threats was received, the fourth aircraft, which was bound for Chennai, was diverted to Nagpur, sources said. Another plane, also bound for Chennai which was preparing for take off, was grounded, a senior police official said. Jet Airways has received a security alert for five flights from Delhi. All flights are on ground and are being checked by security agencies at the respective airports, the airline said in a tweet but did not share specific details. We regret the inconvenience caused to our guests. The safety and security of our guests and crew is always our main priority, Jet Airways said. Sources said the three planes, which received bomb threats, had already flown to their respective destinations -- Gorakhpur, Chandigarh and Dehradun. Prime Minister Narendra Modi described the attacks at the Brussels airport as "condemnable" and "disturbing". "News from Brussels is disturbing. The attacks are condemnable. Condolences to families of the deceased. May those injured recover quickly," Modi, who is scheduled to visit Brussels next week for India-EU Summit, tweeted. Image: Airport staff comfort passengers after they are evacuated from Zaventem Bruxelles International Airport after the terrorist attack. Photograph: Sylvain Lefevre/Getty Images Jawaharlal Nehru University students union president Kanhaiya Kumar, who is out on bail in a sedition case, met Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday. Kanhaiya, accompanied by a delegation of JNU students and members of All India Students Federation, met the Congress vice president at his residence in Tughlaq lane area. While Kanhaiya did not interact with the media after his an hour-long meeting, National Students Union of India Chief Roji M John described it as a courtesy call to thank Gandhi for his support during the ongoing row at the university. A JNU delegation headed by Kanhaiya met Rahul Gandhi, it was a courtesy call. They thanked him for his continuous support ever since the issue started. Gandhi not only supported the students at JNU but also Film and Television Institute of India and Indian Institute of Technology-Madras where students have been protesting against the way government is attacking institutions. We will continue this fight to protect autonomy of institutions, John told reporters. Gandhi in his tweet merely said, met a delegation of student leaders from AISF and JNUSU president. The Congress leader had visited the JNU campus on February 13, a day after Kanhaiya was arrested in a sedition case over an event at the varsity against hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru during which anti-national slogans were allegedly raised. In a hard-hitting attack on Modi government over JNU students arrest, Gandhi had virtually drawn parallel of it with the Nazi regime of Hitler, accusing the National Democratic Alliance of suppressing students voice and telling students dont let those bullies push you around. Image: Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi with JNU students, including Kanhaiya Kumar (second from right). Photograph: @officeofRG/Twitter Prime Minister Narendra Modi will embark on a three-nation tour beginning March 30 during which he will attend the crucial Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, India-EU Summit in Brussels and travel to Saudi Arabia, a key partner of India in the sensitive Gulf region. The government on Tuesday said Brussels will be Modis first stop even as the Belgian capital was rocked by a string of explosions in the which at least 34 people were killed and over 200 injured. Besides attending the EU-India summit in Brussels, Modi will hold wide-ranging talks with his Belgian counterpart Charles Michel on a variety of issues of mutual interest. From Brussels, Modi will leave for Washington to attend the 4th Nuclear Security Summit on March 31 and April 1 where he will be making some specific announcements and proposals with regard to nuclear security. At the summit, India will submit a national progress report on nuclear security, External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said, adding New Delhi has contributed constructively during NSS preparatory meetings from 2014-16. The PM is expected to hold a number of bilateral meetings during his stay in Washington. From Washington, Modi will travel to Saudi Arabian capital Riyadh on April 2 for a two-day visit at the invitation of King Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud. There are over 2.96 million Indian nationals presently working in Saudi Arabia, the largest expatriate community in the country. This is the highest-level visit from India to Saudi Arabia after the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh trip to the gulf nation in 2010. Modi will hold discussions with the King on bilateral, regional and multilateral issues of mutual interest. The Strategic Partnership established through Riyadh declaration in 2010 envisions a deeper engagement in political, economic, security and defence areas. About the Nuclear Security Summit, Swarup said it has been instrumental in drawing the attention of top leaders to the global threat posed by nuclear terrorism and urgent measures required to prevent terrorists and other non-state actors from gaining access to sensitive nuclear material and technologies. The upcoming summit is expected to take stock of the progress of the previous NSS Communiques and work plan as also outline a future agenda. About Modis Brussels visit, Swarup said the India-EU Summit is aimed at deepening the strategic partnership between the two sides and advance collaboration in priority areas for Indias growth and development. The last summit had taken place in 2012. India-EU ties witnessed some strain after the 28-member bloc had not responded to New Delhis proposal for a brief visit by Modi to Brussels, the EU headquarters, during his trip to France, Germany and Canada in April last year. This had prompted New Delhi to give a cold shoulder to the EUs efforts to finalise Modis visit last November when he travelled to the UK. Modi will meet President of the European Council Donald Tusk and the President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker. The PM will also hold a bilateral summit meeting with Belgium at the invitation of the Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, the MEA spokesperson said. He said the bilateral meeting between Modi and his Belgian counterpart will focus on further enhancing the economic partnership. In Brussels, Modi will also hold interaction with the Indian community. The sedition law, which has come under focus after the Jawaharlal Nehru University row, needs "reconsideration," newly-appointed Law Commission Chairman Justice Balbir Singh Chauhan said on Tuesday but asserted that the panel will not jump to any conclusion before hearing out stakeholders. "Actually it (sedition law) requires reconsideration. We do not know what is the problem, what are the difficulties. We will hear all the stakeholders, consult criminal lawyers," the former Supreme Court judge told PTI. He said the recently-reconstituted 21st law commission "cannot jump to any conclusion" before understanding the difficulties relating to section 124 A of the IPC dealing with sedition. "What are the difficulties, why it requires reconsideration, whether there is any need of change of definition. And only then we will make a report. We cannot jump to any conclusion...," he said. He said the priority for the commission would be come out with the report on comprehensive review of the criminal justice system which would include a relook at the Indian Penal Code, Code of Criminal Procedure and the Evidence Act. While the IPC and the CrPC are handled by the Union Home ministry, the Evidence Act comes under the domain of the law ministry. Justice Chauhan said the government has given the commission a list of issues for its consideration, including hate speech, live in relations, rights of victims and "comprehensive review" of the criminal justice system. "We will take up the issues one by one, otherwise it will be difficult to hand over reports," he said. The issue of sedition law, which was part of government's effort to review the criminal justice system was referred to the 20th law commission headed by Justice A P Shah in 2012. But the previous Commission could not submit a report on the issue. The arrest of the JNU students union president on charges of sedition triggered a debate on whether this law can be misused to crush freedom of expression. Against the backdrop of JNU row, the government had earlier this month acknowledged in the Rajya Sabha that the definition of sedition law is "very wide". Home Minister Rajnath Singh had agreed for an all-party meeting to discuss the issue after the Law Commission submits its report on sedition law. The government had rejected opposition charge that it was rampantly using the law, contending that except the one case of JNU, sedition cases have mostly been registered outside Delhi. "Anybody, who speaks against the government can be booked under sedition law. Amendments have been suggested because the definition is very wide...there are various cases. That is why concerns were have been raised. I would like the ask the law commission to consider a very comprehensive review," Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju had said replying to questions. Rijiju said the law commission, in its 42nd report submitted in June, 1971, had noted that the sedition law is "defective" but did not favour its deletion. Quoting figures from a report of National Crime Records Bureau, he said a total of 47 cases under the sedition law were reported across the country in 2014 of which the maximum 16 cases were registered in Bihar in which 28 arrests were made. The second highest is Jharkhand, he had said adding that Kerala and Odisha follow them in the descending order. IMAGE: A Dassault Rafale combat aircraft seen during the inauguration ceremony of the Aero India 2013 at the Yelahanka air force station on the outskirts of Bengaluru. Photograph: Reuters With the Rafale fighter deal stuck over price, can the prime minister step in and find a way out for both countries? Claude Arpi examines the issue. During last week's Indian Air Force drill ('Iron Fist Exercise 2016') in Pokhran, Rajasthan, attended by President Pranab Mukherjee and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Air Chief Marshal Arup Raha declared: 'This demonstration is the tip of an iceberg when compared to the overall capability of the air force.' Well, it is a melting iceberg, with the Indian air fleet rapidly reducing. 'The IAF has flagged concerns about the shortage of fighter jets,' the air chief admitted, 'and the process for the acquisition of 36 French Rafale fighter aircraft is still underway.' What does 'underway' mean? Let us do a flashback to January 25, 2016. As Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar and his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le Drian signed a MoU for the purchase of 36 Rafale aircraft, President Francois Hollande of France said to the national and international media at Hyderabad House, that the 'real' deal would be inked 'dans les jours prochains (in the coming days).' Later Dassault Aviation, the aircraft manufacturer, clarified that it would take about four weeks. The French officials, including Le Drian, accompanying the French president during his State visit were quite optimistic that this could be done. On February 18, during an interview with Karan Thapar on the India Today channel, Parrikar stated: 'Price is the only issue left now.. an agreement on 50 per cent offsets has been reached.' News appeared that Dassault would have quoted around $9 billion (around Rs 60,300 crore/Rs 603 billion) for the 36 jets while South Block was expecting a much cheaper price. The final deal would include two types of missiles and bombs, training of pilots and two base facilities for the planes. Incidentally, the latter creates a huge problem for the French Air Force, already overstretched with a growing number of overseas military interventions and a shrinking budget. The Rafale deal, if it comes through, like the previous ones signed with Egypt and Qatar, is not a boon for the FAF, which will be responsible for the training and setting up of the bases. It will be a huge success for the rather unpopular French president and France's economy. As talks were going on, a report in the Indian press pointed out to several loopholes, apparently earlier overlooked by the Modi government. The Union law ministry would object to some clauses in the January MoU; they could 'compromise' India's interests, it says. First let us recall that the initial Request for Information had been issued in 2001. Fifteen years ago! The Request for Proposal was only issued in 2007, as the then defence minister A K Antony wanted to add new clauses, such as the total life-cycle costs, in the Indian defence procurement policy. The 'complications' had started. Finally, in January 2012, the French firm Dassault Aviation was selected for supplying 126 planes to the IAF. In April 2015, realising the difficulty with the transfer of technology to Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd and to avoid going back to the starting blocks, Modi, during a visit to Paris, opted for 36 'off-the-shelf' planes only. The French had probably not realised that 'off-the-shelf' can be rather complicated in India. The main sticking points raised by the law ministry, touched upon the issues of liability, bank guarantees, arbitration and a higher-than-usual offset clause. A senior official involved with the matter (how a babu can freely speak to journalists is a mystery which should be inquired into) told The Indian Express: 'While many senior government functionaries, including those in the ministry of defence, have favoured out-of-box thinking to take the deal forward, when we examined the draft inter-governmental agreement and the draft supply protocols, we were left wondering as to how India could agree to all the stipulations suggested by the French side.' 'In our opinion, the two documents were not drafted with the interest of the Government of India in mind.' What is strange is that while the minister says that only the price needs to be discussed, the babus speaks of the conditions which 'are being heavily loaded in favour of the French nation.' The Indian Express source asserted that the French government has refused to give any bank guarantees; instead, it has offered to provide a 'comfort letter' from its prime minister. It is apparently what was accepted during Hollande's visit to Delhi in January. The babu&'s mindset is also manifest when it objects that while the deal had agreed on Geneva (Switzerland) for arbitration proceedings, the MoD should have pressed for having India as the seat of arbitration. All this just shows the bureaucrats' deep frustration: they had not been kept in the loop; as a matter of fact, it was precisely why the prime minister decided for an 'out-of-the box' solution for 36 instead of 126 jets. On March 10, Defense News, a usually well-informed Web site, reported that Dassault Aviation was negotiating with Delhi the possibility to build 90 more units with potential local partners. The Web site quoted the company's chairman Eric Trappier saying: 'Dassault seeks to set up "a real partnership" with Indian industry rather a conventional offset, which requires investing in unrelated sectors.' 'That partnership approach would see Safran, Thales and other French suppliers working with local partners on the Rafale if New Delhi agreed the order for 36 and followed up with a further 90 units.' 'That second order was needed as the former figure was too small to justify a local build.' In other words a 'Make in India' scheme. In the meantime, Dassault is talking to Canada, which may drop out from the F-35 programme with the US and also Switzerland trying to replace its F-5 and F-18, as well as Belgium, the United Arab Emirates and Malaysia. The problem for India, as well as for other potential buyers, is that the annual output of the assembly line of the Rafale workshop near Bordeaux is 11 units, or one a month, (in August, France does not work); the output could rise by three units, if India and other countries signed up for the fighter, explained Trappier; further Dassault needs to deliver six Rafales to the FAF in 2016 and one in 2017. A few days later, while confirming that the Rafale deal with Dassault was still on, Parrikar boasted to be a 'tough negotiator,' wanting the 'best price' for Rafale fighter jets. It is fine to be a tough negotiator, but Parrikar should not forget that Dassault too is a hard bargainer. Further, the position of the French consortium is not the same as two years ago: Their order book is full and first ordered, first served, remains the rule. Last week, defence analyst Ajai Shukla, commented in Business Standard: 'Paris is beginning to acknowledge the possibility that India might not buy the Rafale fighter because of sharp differences over the price, and New Delhi's insistence on enforceable guarantees regarding the fighter's delivery, performance and availability.' Quoting a senior French official, Shukla wrote: 'If some people in the MoD do not want to allow the Rafale deal to go through, so be it. We are currently building it for Egypt and Qatar, and we could have another customer in Malaysia.' It is clearly a poker game, with each party sending 'feelers' and vague threats though the media. But who would be the loser if the deal does not come through? Undoubtedly both France and India, particularity the IAF, with Air Chief Raha's melting iceberg melting further due to the change of the 'bilateral' climate. Quite worryingly, some news, which passed unnoticed in India, created waves in France: It is the awarding of the Legion d'Honneur, the country's highest honour, to Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef. It sparked a huge controversy in France. Why honour the kingdom? The Web site Intelligence Online had perhaps the answer. In January, it titled: 'Riyadh wants to lure Paris with a contract for the Rafale.' It quoted a source saying that Prince Mohammad bin Salman, Saudi Arabia's defence minister, appealed to Paris to submit a proposal for the supply of fighter aircraft Dassault Rafale 'in the coming weeks.' Are 72 jets not worth a small medal? And if the Prince decides, no bureaucrat in Riyadh will block the contract... and no problem of cash either. That would mean that the 'Indian deal'is further postponed for several years. Let us hope that once again the prime minister stepS in and find a way which will be a win-win solution for both countries. In Brazil, UN expert highlights deadly consequences of delaying land demarcation Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 21 March 2016 Cite as UN News Service, In Brazil, UN expert highlights deadly consequences of delaying land demarcation, 21 March 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56f14dcb40b.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. 21 March 2016 - Following a visit to Brazil, a United Nations independent human rights expert today expressed alarm about the extent of documented and reported attacks on indigenous peoples in the country's central-western state of Mato Grosso Do Sul. Speaking at the end of her 11-day visit to Brazil, Victoria Tauli-Corpuz, UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, noted that there were 92 killings in 2007, but the figure increased to 138 people killed in 2014. I decry these attacks and call on the Government to put an end to these human rights violations, investigate and bring their masterminds and perpetrators to justice, Ms. Tauli-Corpuz said in her end of mission statement, noting that State authorities have not yet gone into the areas where the attacks took place. The expert noted that attacks and killings frequently constitute reprisals in contexts where indigenous peoples reoccupy ancestral lands following long periods waiting for the completion of demarcation processes. The UN expert said that Brazil has a number of exemplary constitutional provisions pertaining to indigenous peoples' rights and in the past has been a world leader in the area of demarcation. In other words, the Brazilian Constitution recognizes the rights of indigenous peoples to lands that they have traditionally occupied. In the legal world, a formal, often lengthy and contested, process of demarcation is required for an indigenous territory to receive these rights. A constant refrain from all the indigenous peoples I visited and met was the urgent need for demarcation processes to be completed, as this is fundamental to all other rights of indigenous peoples, Ms. Tauli-Corpuz said. She added that the urgency to demarcate territories is exacerbated by the rate of deforestation, destruction of rivers, and depletion of soil quality due to intensive mono-cropping and mining activities, rendering the land and waters incapable of supporting indigenous people' food sustainability into the future. This forces indigenous peoples into a situation where the only option they feel is available to them to guarantee their long-term cultural and physical survival is to retake their lands before demarcation processes are concluded, she added. Complicating matters is a proposed constitutional amendment, known as PEC 215, which would shift the power to demarcate indigenous lands from the Justice Ministry and the president's office, to Congress, where many of the members are linked to agro-business and resource-energies. Ms. Tauli-Corpuz praised some of the measures adopted by the Brazilian authorities, such as the establishment of an internationally recognized legal and administrative framework for demarcation. The Special Rapporteur, who works in an unpaid and independent capacity, will present a comprehensive report containing her findings and recommendations to the Brazilian Government and the UN Human Rights Council in September 2016. Senior UN official condemns arson attack in occupied West Bank Publisher UN News Service Publication Date 21 March 2016 Cite as UN News Service, Senior UN official condemns arson attack in occupied West Bank, 21 March 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56f14efe40d.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. 21 March 2016 - A senior United Nations official has condemned an arson attack by suspected Jewish extremists on the home of a Palestinian family in the occupied West Bank village of Duma. Ibrahim Dawabsheh and his wife were at home during the attack and sustained light injuries as a result of smoke inhalation. "This violent act could easily have resulted in a more tragic outcome, as did the heinous terrorist attack last July on the home of Mr. Dawabsheh's relatives in the same village," said Robert Piper, the UN Coordinator for Humanitarian Assistance and Development Aid for the occupied Palestinian territory, in a press release. Mr. Dawabsheh was the sole witness to that deadly arson attack which resulted in the death of 18-month-old Ali and his parents, and injuries to his 5-year-old brother Ahmad. "I call upon Israel, as the occupying power, to investigate this incident promptly and fully, to bring the perpetrators to justice and to take all possible steps to ensure that vulnerable Palestinian communities in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, are protected," Mr. Piper stressed. "We must not permit such acts to foster hatred and escalate violence - this will only bring more personal tragedies and bury any prospect of peace," he warned, adding that today's attack highlights "the urgent need to work together to bring an immediate resolution of the conflict and an end to the occupation." Brussels attacks: At least 31 dead at Zaventem and Maelbeek At least 31 people have been killed and many seriously injured in attacks at Brussels international airport and a city metro station. Twin blasts hit Zaventem airport at 07:00 GMT, killing 11 and injuring 81, Belgium's health minister said. Another explosion struck Maelbeek metro station an hour later. Twenty people were killed, Brussels mayor Yvan Mayeur said. Belgium has now raised its terrorism threat to its highest level. The attacks come four days after Salah Abdeslam, the main fugitive in the Paris attacks, was seized in Brussels. The state-owned Belga news agency reports that shots were fired and shouts in Arabic were heard before the two explosions. Public broadcaster VRT said an assault rifle was found next to a dead attacker. Private broadcaster VTM added that an unexploded bomb belt had been found.... "...There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere. We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene." Vietnam: Drop Charges Against Prominent Bloggers Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 22 March 2016 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Vietnam: Drop Charges Against Prominent Bloggers, 22 March 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56f14fe74.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 Vietnamese government should release and drop all charges against two prominent bloggers, Human Rights Watch said today. The trial of Nguyen Huu Vinh and his colleague Nguyen Thi Minh Thuy is scheduled for March 23, 2016, before the People's Court of Hanoi. The two have been charged under article 258 of the penal code for "abusing the rights to freedom and democracy to infringe upon the interests of the state." They have been in custody since May 2014. Their trial was originally scheduled for January 19, but was postponed on the eve of the Vietnam Communist Party's Congress, held every five years. "The bloggers Nguyen Huu Vinh and Nguyen Thi Minh Thuy have been detained for almost two years simply for criticizing the Vietnam Communist Party and its leadership, even though the government has ratified international human rights law that unequivocally protects their actions," said Brad Adams, Asia director. "The authorities should immediately free the bloggers and compensate each for this unjust detention." Nguyen Huu Vinh (also known as Anh Ba Sam), a former police officer and party member, started the blog Ba Sam in 2007, aiming to educate Vietnamese readers by providing links to news from a variety of perspectives. Most links are from state media. The blog published articles and commentaries on Vietnamese political, social, economic, and cultural issues. It also published translations of English and French language articles and excerpts from books. During the six years it published, until the arrests of the two men, Ba Sam had attracted several million readers inside and outside Vietnam. According to the indictment, one blog on the site, Dan Quyen ("Rights of Citizens," founded in September 2013), "published 2014 pieces of writing, received 38,574 comments and got 3,243,330 access hits." It also said that another blog, Chep Su Viet ("Writing Vietnamese History," founded in January 2014), "published 383 pieces, received 3,401 comments and got 480,353 access hits." The indictment listed 12 articles published on Dan Quyen and 12 on Chep Su Viet that have "untruthful and baseless content; distort the lines and policies of the Party and the law of the State; vilify a number of individuals and affect the prestige of offices and organizations; present a one-side and pessimistic view, causing anxiety and worry, and affecting the people's confidence in the leadership of the Party, the Government, the National Assembly, and the State of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam." One of the 24 articles is "A Tale for 2000, a novel about human life under communist cruelty" ("Chuyen ke nam 2000: Cuon tieu thuyet ve than phan con nguoi trong cai ac cong san"), written by a former communist party member, Pham Dinh Trong. The article criticizes the communist government for its history of arbitrary and brutal imprisonment of dissenting voices from the 1960s to the present. It says that, "It [the communist party] cannot imprison the truth and righteousness. It cannot imprison one's soul, mind, and nerve." Another article singled out in the indictment is, "The trial of Truong Duy Nhat, where will the victims sneak to" ("Toa xu Truong Duy Nhat, cac bi hai se lui ve dau"), by an anonymous writer. The article predicts that during the trial of another prominent blogger, Truong Duy Nhat, in March 2014, none of the so-called victims of Truong Duy Nhat's blogging, including the communist party's general secretary Nguyen Phu Trong and Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, would be present. It maintains that, "Domestic and international observers have an opportunity to understand the internal affairs of the Vietnamese communist leadership and to measure its human rights promises after it had won a seat in the UN Human Rights Council and prior to the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership)." Another article singled out in the indictment is, "The little Emperor Hoang Kong Tu vs. Vietnamese BBC" ("'Ong troi con' Hoang Kong Tu vs. BBC Viet ngu"), by the prominent bloggers Pham Doan Trang, Trinh Huu Long, and Nguyen Anh Tuan. The article says that a police general, Hoang Kong Tu, was "behaving like a little Emperor" because he threatened to bring charges against an author on the BBC Vietnamese service who wrote about a big corruption case in Vietnam. State media reported that Public Security Ministry officials, including an unnamed vice minister, tried to persuade Nguyen Huu Vinh to stop posting articles that "oppose the Party and the State," but to no avail. Nguyen Huu Vinh's wife, Le Thi Minh Ha, says that his health has deteriorated significantly in detention. During a visit in October 2015, her husband told her that there were red spots all over his body. She made an urgent request to various government officials, including President Truong Tan Sang; the People's Supreme Court Chief Judge, Truong Hoa Binh; and the People's Supreme Procuracy Chief Prosecutor, Nguyen Hoa Binh, asking them to allow Nguyen Huu Vinh to have access to adequate medical treatment. Le Thi Minh Ha also filed multiple petitions to the authorities protesting the arbitrary arrest of her husband, but her petitions were ignored. Vietnam is a party to the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which protects peaceful expression, including expression critical of governments and leaders. But Nguyen Huu Vinh and Nguyen Thi Minh Thuy are not the only bloggers detained for expressing views disapproved by the authorities. "Vietnam's friends and donors should publicly challenge the ludicrous charges against Nguyen Huu Vinh and Nguyen Thi Minh," Adams said. "They should demand that the government free all political prisoners and drop all pending charges against dissenting voices." Copyright notice: Copyright, Human Rights Watch Russia: Ukrainian Pilot Convicted Publisher Human Rights Watch Publication Date 22 March 2016 Cite as Human Rights Watch, Russia: Ukrainian Pilot Convicted, 22 March 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56f152904.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. A Russian court's conviction of Nadezhda Savchenko, a Ukrainian military pilot, followed an unfair trial, Human Rights Watch said today. Savchenko was found guilty of abetting the murder of the Russian television journalists Anton Voloshin and Igor Kornelyuk on June 17, 2014, during the armed conflict in eastern Ukraine. She was sentenced to 22 years in prison and a 30,000 ruble (U.S. $450) fine. Savchenko was also convicted of the attempted murder of civilians and of illegally crossing the Ukrainian-Russian border. Her defense attorneys have told the media that although Savchenko maintains her innocence, she will not appeal the conviction. The court refused to admit crucial defense evidence and consistently rejected important defense motions, making it impossible for her legal team to effectively challenge the allegations against her as fair trial standards require, Human Rights Watch said. "Simply put, Nadezhda Savchenko did not get a fair trial, and so her conviction is unsound and should not stand," said Hugh Williamson, Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "There should be justice for the deaths of Kornelyuk and Voloshin, but justice won't be served by an unfair trial that was highly politicized from the start." In a statement to the Russian news agency Interfax, the chair of the Russian Presidential Human Rights Council, Mikhail Fedotov, expressed hope that once the sentence enters into force, Savchenko can be sent to Ukraine as part of a prisoner exchange under the Minsk agreements, a package of measures directed at resolving the ongoing conflict in the Donbass region of eastern Ukraine. Human Rights Watch is concerned that the trial took place against the backdrop of the ruinous state of relations between the Russian and Ukrainian governments and an extraordinary level of deliberate misinformation in Russia about the conflict in eastern Ukraine. It is also deeply concerned by the precedent set by the 2015 trial of a Ukrainian film director, Oleg Sentsov, which resulted in a 20-year prison sentence on patently unfounded terrorism charges. A shelling attack killed Kornelyuk and Voloshin near a checkpoint manned by Russia-backed rebel forces in the village of Metallist, in Lugansk region. The prosecution contended that Savchenko abetted the killing by serving as a spotter and calling in a strike on the area. Rebel forces captured Savchenko on June 17, 2014. The prosecution claimed that rebel forces released Savchenko the day she was captured, out of compassion because she is a woman, and that Savchenko sneaked across the Russian-Ukrainian border a week later, pretending she was a refugee. They said Russian authorities then arrested her on June 30. Savchenko testified that rebel forces captured her on June 17, held her in Lugansk for a week, and then forcibly and illegally took her across the Ukrainian-Russian border on June 23. She said that Russian authorities detained her clandestinely in a hotel, where they questioned her and denied her access to counsel, the Ukrainian consul, and the outside world. The Donetsk City Court that handed down the conviction, in Russia's Rostov region, ruled inadmissible without or with inadequate explanation, materials that could have served as key exculpatory evidence, Human Rights Watch said. Among them is expert testimony that could have established that rebel forces captured Savchenko between 10:15 and 10:45 a.m., about an hour before the attack, which would have ruled her out as the spotter. A rebel fighter shot a video describing Savchenko's capture, with Savchenko briefly visible. The video's time codes indicate that she was captured after the attack. However, an expert retained by the defense who examined the video concluded that the position of the sun and shadows indicated it was shot around 10:30 to 10:45 a.m. The prosecution expert was allowed to testify and did not challenge the assertion that the angle of the sun indicated a time frame of 10:30 to 10:45 a.m. for the shooting of the video, but said that the lens was damaged and that therefore the video was not reliable. Without their expert, the defense was prevented from effectively challenging this and denying them a right to equality of arms on challenging key evidence. The judge also rejected a defense request to order independent forensic analysis of the video, to determine the true time of day it was shot. The judge said that the time was not relevant. The court also refused to admit defense expert testimony that sought to establish the location of Savchenko's cell phones that were in her possession when she was captured, and therefore potentially crucial for her alibi. It also rejected a defense motion to summon for questioning the driver of the car Savchenko said she was in when she was taken across the border. There were also numerous instances in which the court overlooked considerable discrepancies in the state's evidence, Human Rights Watch said. For example, an investigator for the Investigative Committee, Russia's state investigation service, testified that Savchenko was summoned for questioning on June 23 in Voronezh. But in a written statement dated June 23, he stated that Savchenko was in custody. The investigator told the court he had merely made a mistake. Several rebel fighters testified that Savchenko was captured between 12 and 2 p.m. on June 17, and that she had told them, or that they had heard from others, that she was both "a pilot" and "a spotter" for Ukrainian forces. The defense repeatedly asked to have the witnesses' written testimony read, so that inconsistencies could be questioned and to have video materials that rebel fighters mentioned during their testimonies shown. The judge denied the overwhelming majority of these motions. "This is not the first time we've seen serious, credible allegations by Ukrainian nationals of being kidnapped across the Ukrainian-Russian border only to then resurface in Russian state custody," Williamson said. "Savchenko has a right to introduce evidence that supports her account, but the court effectively cut off her opportunity to do that." Russia is a party to the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) both of which guarantee the right to a fair trial, including the defendant's right "to examine or have examined witnesses against him and to obtain the attendance and examination of witnesses on his behalf under the same conditions as witnesses against him" (ECHR article 6(3)(d) and ICCPR article 14 (3)(e)). These underlying principles of equality of arms and that the defendant in a criminal trial should have an effective opportunity to challenge the evidence against them covers evidence provided by eyewitnesses and expert witnesses as well as forensic and documentary evidence. The European Court of Human Rights has spelled out in many cases, including several against Russia, that this requires, among other things, that states take positive steps to enable the accused to examine or have examined witnesses against them and have a duty to give reasons for refusal to hear a witness. While a defendant does not have an unlimited right to secure the appearance of witnesses in court, if a defense request to have evidence entered or to examine witnesses is not vexatious, is sufficiently reasoned and could arguably have strengthened the position of the defense or even led to an acquittal, the authorities must provide relevant reasons for dismissing such a request. Human Rights Watch believes that the accumulative effect of the court's rulings precluding the hearing of particular witnesses, refusals to call other witnesses, and limiting the capacity of the defense to cross examine and test the credibility of prosecution evidence constitutes a violation of this key fair trial standard, renders the conviction unsafe and should lead to the conviction being set aside. Copyright notice: Copyright, Human Rights Watch Pakistan Battles a Resurgent Hizb ut Tahrir Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Farhan Zahid Publication Date 18 March 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Terrorism Monitor Volume: 15 Issue: 6 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Pakistan Battles a Resurgent Hizb ut Tahrir, 18 March 2016, Terrorism Monitor Volume: 15 Issue: 6, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56f160464.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. Link to original story on Jamestown website A series of raids by Pakistani counterterrorism forces in recent months has resulted in the arrest of several members of Hizb ut Tahrir (HuT). The group remains an insidious threat to the country and one that should not be overlooked. While it has not yet perpetrated the systemic violence that Islamic State (IS) has become known for - despite its Central Asian chapter's bloody involvement in the Tajik Civil War between 1992 and 1997 - the organization in Pakistan continues to quietly recruit influential members to its cause. Recruiting to the Cause Unlike its allies in the West, Pakistan has always viewed HuT as a significant threat. The Pakistan chapter of the group has made clear that its ultimate aim is an Islamist coup that would make way for its establishment of an Islamic Caliphate, which would be hastened through control of Pakistan's nuclear arsenal. While it holds to a similar Salafist ideology as other radical groups (including Islamic State's), HuT's operational methodology is distinctive. The group focuses its energies on recruiting highly qualified, successful, and often influential Pakistanis. The preferred targets are often bureaucrats, doctors, or military officers. It favors the use of dars, or closed-door gatherings and study sessions, to win over prospective members, after first reaching out to them at their local mosques. HuT recruiters are typically highly educated, eloquent and articulate, and often fluent in English. The potential recruits are invited - and often pressured - into attending the dars, which ultimately results in their joining the organization. [1] HuT was founded in Jerusalem in 1953 by Taqiuddin Nabhani, a former jurist, cleric, and member of the Muslim Brotherhood. During the 1990s, the group, which is Salafist in outlook, gained a foothold in Central Asia, the Middle East, and Western Europe. The UK also became a notable hub of activity, and the organization there has successfully recruited a large number of young British nationals of Pakistani and Bangladeshi descent. HuT's Pakistan chapter was established in 1999 by British-born Pakistanis Imtiaz Malik and Maajid Nawaz alongside U.S.-educated Naveed Butt. The authorities outlawed the group in 2003 in the wake of its recruitment of military officers and use of anti-government propaganda campaigns. Military officers have frequently been the targets of HuT recruiters, with Butt, the HuT spokesperson for Pakistan, calling on military officers to "move now to uproot Pakistan's traitor rulers." [2] The organization successfully recruited 13 Pakistani Army commandos in 2003, all of whom were later arrested and court marshalled (Dawn, October 12, 2012). In 2009, a military officer, Colonel Shahid Bashir, was arrested on the same charges (Dawn, May 14, 2009) and in 2012, Brigadier Ali Khan and four army majors were similarly charged (Dawn, August 3, 2012). According to an investigation by the military police's Special Investigation Branch (SIB), Khan and the others were planning an aerial attack "to clear the way for establishing the Caliphate governance system in Pakistan" (Dawn, October, 12, 2012). Recent Developments Over the last six months, a series of raids by the Counter Terrorism Department (CDT) of the Sindh and Punjab police saw the arrest of HuT activists who held key positions at Pakistani universities, as well as in the private and public sectors. The raids were arguably triggered by the August 2015 appearance of posters and pamphlets in Islamabad Capital Territory. The pamphlets called on Pakistanis to join HuT and condemned military and government officials for allying with the US and arresting clerics who called for the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate in Pakistan. They complained about networks of "American spies" in the country, called for the overthrow of the democratic system, and criticized government policies supportive of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The pamphlets avoided naming the Afghan Taliban, but praised those calling for jihad in Afghanistan and against U.S. forces. Among those arrested by the CTD for distributing HuT propaganda was Owais Raheel, a lecturer of statistics at Szabist Institute from Karachi's affluent locality Clifton neighborhood. Raheel had been tasked by HuT's high command with recruiting young people from among the educated, upper classes of Pakistani society (Express Tribune, October 8, 2015). Raheel was an engineer who had graduated from the country's elite NED University of Engineering and Technology, according to CTD sources. He later studied business administration at the prestigious Institute of Business Administration (IBA), before joining HuT in 2007. He had been influenced by the speeches and sermons of Dr. Israr Ahmad, a former member of Jamaat-e-Islami and the founder of Tanzeem-e-Islami, which advocates the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate in Pakistan and the implementation of sharia law (Dawn, October 7, 2015). In November 2015, CDT forces in Sindh arrested Hisam Qamar, the emir of HuT's Karachi chapter. Qamar, who worked as the deputy general manager of the local power generation company called K-Electric, was found in possession of large amounts of HuT literature and was charged with recruiting for an outlawed organization, propagating anti-state material, and conspiring against the state (Dawn, November 28, 2015). Less than a month later, in two consecutive raids, CTD forces arrested three faculty members of the University of Punjab, including Ghalib Ata and Amir Saeed - both assistant professors - and lecturer Omer Nawab (Dawn, December 14, 2015). Conclusion The recent arrests indicate the creeping influence of HuT in Pakistan, with the group apparently drawing its most recent recruits from reputed educational institutions rather than from among the military officer class. The recent emergence of IS actors in Pakistan risks overshadowing the threat posed by HuT, which has long advocated the overthrow of the Pakistani government and the establishment of an Islamic Caliphate. No links between the two have yet been established, but the resurgence of the HuT threat alongside the growing presence of IS is a serious concern for the security services. Despite HuT's distinct operational methodology, both groups share the same ultimate goal. Notes: [1] Author's discussions with a former member of HuT in Islamabad. [2] See 'No Exit from Pakistan: America's Tortured Relationship with Islamabad' by Daniel S Markey, Cambridge University Press (2013), p.57. Copyright notice: 2010 The Jamestown Foundation Cote d'ivoire: Aqim Expands its Reach in West Africa Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Alexander Sehmer Publication Date 18 March 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Terrorism Monitor Volume: 15 Issue: 6 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Cote d'ivoire: Aqim Expands its Reach in West Africa, 18 March 2016, Terrorism Monitor Volume: 15 Issue: 6, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56f162354.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. Link to original story on Jamestown website Heavily armed gunmen opened fire on residents and visitors at the luxury L'Etoile du Sud Hotel in Grand Bassam, a coastal resort town in Cote d'Ivoire, on March 13. The gunmen killed at least 16 people - 14 civilians and two members of the security forces - according to officials, although at the time of writing the exact toll appears to remain disputed, with some putting the number at 18 (Jeune Afrique, March 13). Three attackers were also killed, though initial reports had said six. Early reports from AFP also said one attacker had been overheard shouting "Allahu Akbar" (AFP, March 13), while Reuters later reported the men had all consumed beer at a beachside bar before mounting their assault (Reuters, March 15). Amid this confused picture, al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) claimed credit for the attack, saying that three "heroes" had stormed the hotel. Efforts are now under way by the Ivorian authorities to identify the attackers (La Depeche d'Abijan, March 15). Grand Bassam, a UNESCO World Heritage Site and the one-time colonial capital of Cote d'Ivoire, is the location for several hotels popular with wealthy Ivorians and expatriates. The attack is reminiscent of those on the Radisson Blu in the Malian capital of Bamako in November last year, and in Burkina Faso in January. Both of those attacks were claimed by AQIM. Since the Bamako attack, security in cities across West Africa has been heightened. French intelligence agencies had reportedly warned that both Cote d'Ivoire and Senegal were possible targets (Bloomberg, January 19), though neither country has a history of Islamic extremism. In fact, the Grand Bassam attack is the first of its kind in Cote d'Ivoire, a worrying development as AQIM seeks to expand both the geographic reach and the profile of its operations in the region (See Terrorism Monitor for more discussion on this point). Senegal, which quickly condemned the Cote d'Ivoire attack (Dakar Matin, March 13), will now being closely examining its own domestic security setup. Like Cote d'Ivoire, it maintains strong links to France and contributes troops to the UN peacekeeping mission in Mali (MINUSMA), making it a potential target for an ambitious and resurgent AQIM. Copyright notice: 2010 The Jamestown Foundation Tanzania: Suspected Al-shabaab Militants Killed in Arusha Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Alexander Sehmer Publication Date 18 March 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Terrorism Monitor Volume: 15 Issue: 6 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Tanzania: Suspected Al-shabaab Militants Killed in Arusha, 18 March 2016, Terrorism Monitor Volume: 15 Issue: 6, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56f1627b4.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. Link to original story on Jamestown website Tanzanian police killed three suspected militants on February 28 in a shootout in the northern town of Arusha. Police in the Engosheraton area of Sinoni Ward appear to have been alerted to "suspicious persons" in the area by local residents, and a firefight broke out when they visited the house where the three were meeting (Tanzania Daily News, March 1). A woman, thought to be the wife of one of those killed, was arrested following the raid. Initial reports described the men only as criminals, but latter the authorities announced they had found flags emblazoned with Arabic inscriptions - possibly those of Somali group al-Shabaab - at the scene (Arusha Times, Issue 0896). Police also reportedly recovered an AK-47 rifle with 18 rounds of ammunition, a motorcycle, five army uniforms, face masks, a selection of mobile phones, and a karate outfit (Daily Nation, March 2). Compared to its East African neighbors, Tanzania has seen relatively little militant activity over the years. In April of 2015, police arrested 10 people in a raid on a mosque in Kilombelo District in Morogoro Region in the southwest, recovering explosives and an al-Shabaab flag (The Citizen, April 16, 2015). A spate of grenade attacks in 2014 that struck bars and restaurants in Arusha supposedly ended with an October 2014 police shooting dead the alleged "mastermind," Yahya Hassan Omari Hela (who was, incidentally, alleged to be a karate trainer) (The Citizen, October 21, 2014). Meanwhile the UN's Monitoring Group on Somalia and Eritrea has linked Tanzania's Ansar Muslim Youth Centre with al-Qaeda's East African affiliates (UN, S/2013/413) and suggested similar ties for the Boko Haram-linked Association for Islamic Mobilization and Propagation (Uamsho), led by Farid Hadi Ahmed, on the island of Zanzibar. There is discontent among the Muslim-majority island, but the current simmering unrest is largely connected to last October's annulled elections. The elections have been rescheduled for later this month despite the demands of the opposition Civic United Front (CUF), which claimed it was on the path to victory. Zanzibar has seen several attacks, notably small grenade attacks on the island of Unguja (ETN, February 26, 2014) and an acid attack in 2013 on two British teenagers working as volunteer teachers (BBC, August 8, 2013), for which Uamsho members were later arrested. These incidents indicate the potential for extremist activity, but the Tanzanian authorities maintain a relatively effective street-level intelligence network. The fact Tanzania has refrained from contributing troops to the African Union Mission in Somalia (AMISOM) has likely served to insulate it somewhat from al-Shabaab, although Kenyan authorities recently arrested two Tanzanian militants during an operation against the group in the Boni forest (Daily Nation, October 23). Copyright notice: 2010 The Jamestown Foundation Ukrainian Media Speculate That Akhmetov, Boyko May Head Rebel-Occupied Provinces Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Oleg Varfolomeyev Publication Date 21 March 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 55 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Ukrainian Media Speculate That Akhmetov, Boyko May Head Rebel-Occupied Provinces, 21 March 2016, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 55, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56f162ee4.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. Link to original story on Jamestown website Two years since Russia's annexation of Crimea and Moscow's initiation of the war in Donbas, the peace process in Ukraine is at a standstill. Moreover, there are fears that after a pullout from Syria, Moscow may mount a new offensive in Ukraine (Segodnya.ua, March 18). On the other hand, if Moscow decides to back away from all-out confrontation with the West, a detente in eastern Ukraine could plausibly follow a U-turn on Syria. If so, the replacement by Moscow of its puppets in Donetsk and Luhansk with somebody more acceptable to the West and Kyiv would be logical. It has been speculated that steel tycoon Rinat Akhmetov and the leader of the Opposition Bloc (OP) in Ukraine's parliament, Yury Boyko, might replace Moscow appointees Aleksandr Zakharchenko and Igor Plotnitsky in Donetsk and Luhansk, respectively. The weekly Zerkalo Nedeli has reported, citing an anonymous source, that Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko approved an idea of Viktor Medvedchuk, a mediator in the peace talks who is linked to Vladimir Putin, that Akhmetov and Boyko should become the new heads of Donetsk and Luhansk. Poroshenko discussed this with Akhmetov and Boyko, who gave their preliminary consent, according to the paper (Zerkalo Nedeli, March 11). Ukrainska Pravda later cited a source from Poroshenko's administration, who confirmed that talks with Akhmetov and Boyko took place. The source also said that Akhmetov, not Medvedchuk, was behind the idea of himself replacing Zakharchenko, and that US Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland backed it (Ukrainska Pravda, March 12). Akhmetov and Boyko have neither confirmed nor denied these reports. Akhmetov's press service issued an evasive statement saying, that it would not comment on rumors, while stressing that Akhmetov would do his utmost to stop the war. The government should be decentralized, and Donbas should remain part of Ukraine, said the statement (Interfax, March 12). Judging by official declarations, this vision is shared in Kyiv, Moscow, Washington and Brussels. Boyko has been no less evasive, dodging questions about the purported talks with Poroshenko even from his close allies, according to a people's deputy from the OP, Tetyana Bakhteyeva (Ostro.org, March 16). Akhmetov and Boyko used to be among the leaders of the kleptocratic elite that had ruled Ukraine until February 2014, when the then-president and head of the Party of Regions, Viktor Yanukovych, fled to Russia as the EuroMaidan revolution was heating up. After that, their party was transformed into the OP. Both men have played rather controversial roles throughout modern Ukrainian history. Akhmetov, Ukraine's richest businessman for many years, was rumored to have had links to the underworld in the 1990s. In 2014, when most Ukrainian oligarchs sided with Kyiv against Russian aggression, he took an ostensibly neutral position. Boyko, as energy minister and deputy prime minister under Yanukovych in 2006-2007 and 2010-2014, has for years had to fend off allegations that he bought drilling rigs for Ukraine to extract gas from the Black Sea from a fictitious firm based in Latvia at an inflated price (see EDM, January 28, 2013). Despite these controversies, the two men have been popular in Donetsk and Luhansk, where appointees from Kyiv have often been scorned and rejected. To start with, both are natives of the region. Akhmetov has for years been the main local employer: his steel mills and coal mines are the backbone of the regional economy. While there has been widespread perception locally that Kyiv abandoned the region, especially since Kyiv has mounted an economic blockade against the rebel-held areas, many needy locals have been surviving arguably thanks to humanitarian assistance linked to Akhmetov. Meanwhile, Boyko would perform relatively well in a presidential election, mainly thanks to his popularity in his native region, according to recent opinion polls. But his and Akhmetov's OP is even more popular. According to the most recent poll by KMIS, it has leapfrogged even the Poroshenko Bloc, becoming the most popular party after former prime minister Yulia Tymoshenko's Fatherland (Ukraine-elections.com.ua, accessed on March 18). Local elections last fall demonstrated that the OP has no rivals in the government-held areas in Donetsk and Luhansk, and this political party and Akhmetov's people won elections for both the mayor and local councils in Mariupol (Mariupil), the biggest city in the area not controlled by Moscow-sponsored rebels (Depo.ua, November 15; UNIAN, December 2). Naturally, the warlords in Donetsk and Luhansk do not want to go. Commenting on the rumor about Akhmetov and Boyko, Zakharchenko said he saw no future for oligarchs, while Plotnitsky bragged that he would arrest Boyko if he crosses the division line (Lugansk1.info, March 12; Regnum, March 15). However, Moscow is unlikely to ask Zakharchenko and Plotnisky's opinions if their replacement is on the agenda. After all, the two were installed in their positions by Moscow in August 2014, and have been backed with money and weapons ever since. It is a big question if Poroshenko would agree to the appointments of his bitter rivals Akhmetov and Boyko to top positions in the rebel areas. First, the political establishment, nationalists, and especially anti-corruption activists in the rest of Ukraine would be unlikely to accept that. Second, Poroshenko has already had enough problems with a regional oligarch roughly on a par with Akhmetov, Ihor Kolomoysky, who was entrusted his native Dnipropetrovsk province in March 2014 (see EDM, March 6, 2014). Poroshenko had to fire Kolomoysky last year for trying, as had been widely expected, to convert his political clout into economic dividends (see EDM, April 1, 2015). A sudden about-face by Poroshenko regarding Akhmetov and Boyko, regardless of whether or not Moscow cooperated or acquiesced, could thus create serious domestic backlash against the Ukrainian government. Copyright notice: 2010 The Jamestown Foundation Attack in Grozny on Member of Presidential Council Forces Kremlin Response Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Valery Dzutsati Publication Date 21 March 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 55 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Attack in Grozny on Member of Presidential Council Forces Kremlin Response, 21 March 2016, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 55, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56f164044.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. Link to original story on Jamestown website On March 16, a well-known human rights activist, Igor Kalyapin, who heads the Committee for the Prevention of Torture, was attacked in Grozny, Chechnya. Soon after Kalyapin's arrival in Grozny, the administration of the hotel where he was staying asked him to leave the premises. After the rights activist stepped out of the hotel, a mob attacked him, using eggs, flour and other substances. The assailants quickly retreated after the attack and the police reportedly did not go after them. The attack came only days after another high-profile incident, in which unidentified individuals beat up a group of journalists and rights activists near the Chechen-Ingush administrative border (Kavkazsky Uzel, March 16). Kalyapin has repeatedly criticized the governor of Chechnya, Ramzan Kadyrov, for human rights violations, so many observers assumed that Kadyrov was behind the attack. The Russian government has not been known to care much about human rights activists. Igor Kalyapin, however, is a member of the Council for Human Rights under the President of the Russian Federation, which meant Moscow had to react to the incident, at least in some way. Also, two successive attacks on rights activists in and around Chechnya have had a cumulative effect. On March 17, the Russian president's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, stated that the attack on Kalyapin was connected to the earlier assault on the rights activists in Ingushetia. Peskov diplomatically called the incident "a continuation of the criminal and quite dangerous attack, which occurred before, on the border with Ingushetia. This is a very dangerous trend, which is certainly a cause for concern." The head of the Russian presidential human rights council, Mikhail Fedotov, stated that he would insist on launching a criminal case against the perpetrators of the attack (Lenta.ru, March 17). Even the notorious human rights ombudsman of Chechnya, Nurdi Nukhazhiev, condemned the aggression, saying that "the attack on the head of the 'Committee for the Prevention of Torture' Igor Kalyapin is quite an unpleasant event. It does not bode well for the Chechen Republic and the Chechen people. I want to urge our young people never to do such a thing again. Whoever he is, for us a guest is an inviolable person" (Rbc.ru, March 18). A pro-Kremlin journalist well-known in the North Caucasus, Maksim Shevchenko, who has been quite supportive of Kadyrov and his policies in Chechnya, stated that the Chechen authorities must quickly investigate the incident and punish the perpetrators (Kavkazskaya Politika, March 18). The attack on Kalypin, particularly coupled with the violent harassment of journalists and rights activists in Ingushetia, does not come at a good time for Ramzan Kadyrov. The Chechen governor's term in office ends on April 5, and he is still waiting for Putin's approval to run for the post again. From the legal standpoint, the situation is quite awkward since Chechnya formally elects its governor along with other Russian regions through direct popular elections. Unlike the other republics of the North Caucasus, Chechnya did not opt out of direct gubernatorial elections. Yet, for some reason, Kadyrov is waiting for Putin's approval to run for office. Two weeks before his term as governor runs out, Kadyrov still does not seem to know whether he will be allowed to run for the governor's post or not. Reportedly, Moscow is still considering appointing Kadyrov to a position at the federal level. The idea is to "decouple" Kadyrov from Chechnya and replace a highly independent ruler of Chechnya who wields a large support base, including a small personal army, with a "safe" Russian bureaucrat without a support base who can easily be controlled by Moscow. One of the proposed compromises included giving Kadyrov the position of head of the North Caucasian Federal District. However, most of the North Caucasian governors would likely resent it if one of them was suddenly elevated and put in charge of overseeing their work. At the same time, Kadyrov would likely suspect that Moscow wants to detach him from Chechnya and cut him off from his support base in the republic. Also, if Moscow appoints Kadyrov as the head of the North Caucasian Federal District, its plans for further mergers and partitions of federal districts in southern Russia may be derailed. According to some sources, Moscow is considering merging the Southern and North Caucasus federal districts. Some suggest that Crimea may be amalgamated into the Southern Federal District (Onkavkaz.com, March 14). If Moscow decides to merge the Southern and North Caucasus federal districts, it is highly unlikely that it will appoint Kadyrov to head it. The only region in the North Caucasian Federal District with a predominantly ethnic-Russian population, Stavropol, has repeatedly revolted against being made part of a district that includes ethnically non-Russian republics. Ethnic Russians would be even more resentful if a Chechen were to govern a united federal district in southern Russia, which makes such a development quite unlikely. With Kadyrov's term as governor term quickly running out, the situation surrounding Chechnya's ruler remains quite tense. It appears that pressure is mounting on the Kremlin to make Kadyrov a less visible person, which would mean removing him from the post of governor. The Kremlin apparently has not yet decided what to do next in Chechnya. Political transitions following an authoritarian ruler are hard not only at the national level but also at the regional level, which is likely to prevent Moscow from making decisive moves in the republic anytime soon. Copyright notice: 2010 The Jamestown Foundation Putin's Not-Quite-Withdrawal Signifies a Strategic Retreat Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Pavel K. Baev Publication Date 21 March 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 55 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Putin's Not-Quite-Withdrawal Signifies a Strategic Retreat, 21 March 2016, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 55, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56f1649d4.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. Link to original story on Jamestown website A week after President Vladimir Putin's surprise announcement (on March 14) of the partial withdrawal of Russian forces from Syria, the parameters of this strategic maneuver are becoming clearer, but the motivations remain subject to second-guessing (see EDM, March 17). US Secretary of State John Kerry will be going to Moscow in a few days, and the Russian foreign ministry expressed hope that discussions on Syria would lead to a "normalization" of bilateral relations (Newsru.com, March 19). US President Barack Obama called Putin after midnight last Monday to confirm that the reduction of the six-month-long Russian intervention was for real. But even now, the White House remains cautious about commenting on the significance of this self-restraint (Rbc.ru, March 15). Meanwhile, the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond was far less circumspect, arguing, to the great chagrin of Russian officials, that Putin deserves no credit for stopping the bombing of Syrian schools and hospitals-especially since that halt has only been partial (Moskovsky Komsomolets, March 16). The Kremlin's decision to use the window of opportunity presented by the three-week-old ceasefire deal was perfectly sensible; yet, Putin did not appear to enjoy making this call. Even in the carefully doctored official video, he is visibly nervous and twitchy while listening to the "mission accomplished" report from Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu (Kremlin.ru, March 14). Besides being out of character for Putin, retreat involves particular risks. So while several squadrons of Russian jets arrived home safely, the remaining forces could be exposed to attacks by suddenly emboldened rebels (Rbc.ru, March 19). The Russian High Command has ordered to continue selective strikes, but the downing of a Syrian MiG-21 by a portable surface-to-air missile has demonstrated a new level of risk in the air campaign (Vedomosti, March 13). Moscow maintains that the Russian Air Force grouping at the Hmeymim airbase could be quickly reinforced if needed, but the element of surprise is now lost, and casualties could be higher than in the past months, while the public support for the continued operation is certain to be lower (Rosbalt, March 17). Cold risk assessments alone were unlikely to have compelled Putin to give the marching orders. And the timing of the announcement (while useful in terms of "outfoxing" Obama) is still rather odd from the point of view of influencing the course of the civil war in Syria (Forbes.ru, March 15). Bashar al-Assad's forces have gained in strength and morale, but not to such a degree that they can sustain their rather moderate gains without continued Russian air support (Slon.ru, March 16). The Russian withdrawal was announced right on the eve of the Geneva peace talks; and Moscow's aim was certainly not to give more confidence to the rebels of various persuasions, who are demanding al-Assad's departure with firm support from Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Ankara and Riyadh, in particular, were surprised with the demonstrated lack of Russia's staying power (Gazeta.ru, March 15). If a beginning of an end to the Syrian catastrophe is indeed negotiated in Geneva (a tall order, certainly), Russia's influence will shrink further because it has nothing to contribute to the, as yet, hypothetical peace-building process. One plausible explanation for Putin's deliberately inexplicable decision-making can be found in Russia's far-from-trust-based relationship with Iran. One of the key elements of Putin's grand plan for turning the course of the Syrian war was the combination of a Russian air campaign with a sizeable ground offensive by Iranian expeditionary corps. But with the latter in short supply, al-Assad's forces achieved only minor success in the battle for Aleppo, which Putin still had to present as a decisive victory (Politcom.ru, March 15). What signified an even greater "stab in the back" (in Putin's view) was Iran's flat-out refusal to join the dubious initiative to "freeze" global oil production. The Kremlin engaged in desperate talks with Saudi Arabia and other members of the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) in the hope that a joint commitment (even if just verbal) not to increase deliveries to the saturated international market would push the oil price up a few dollars. But Tehran has rebuffed such cartel intrigues (RIA Novosti, March 14). Indeed, the Iranian leadership is keen to juggle opening up to the West with new missile tests. Putin has nothing against the latter (the delivery of S-300 surface-to-air missiles has been again confirmed) but feels betrayed by the former (Vedomosti, March 11). Regional stakeholders in the Syrian disaster are not necessarily impressed with Putin's alleged tactical acumen, and they have good reasons to believe that the Russian intervention will be just a brief episode in the long transformation of the war zone that stretches from Lebanon to Iran (Novaya Gazeta, March 14). What matters most in this perspective are the fast-shrinking resources available to Moscow for possible further experiments with power projection-and the six quarters of economic contraction so far show no signs of plausible recovery (Nezavisimaya Gazeta, March 15). For now, nothing resembling a coherent anti-crisis plan has emerged from the president's brainstorming sessions with his economic advisors (Gazeta.ru, March 13). Rather, the reality of a protracted decline is apparently becoming internalized, as illustrated by the directive to cut defense expenditures by 5 percent-while not a huge cut, it nonetheless represents a major departure from the government's recent readiness to uphold the ambitious goals of rearmament at any cost (Vedomosti, February 19). In this context, Putin's acknowledgement that the Syrian intervention was indeed a costly endeavor and not combat training on the cheap amounts to a reluctant retreat from the position of imagined omnipotence (Rbc.ru, March 17). Putin has found it opportune recently to warn against a "dizziness from success"; but in fact, Russia is sinking into a depression from degradation (Slon.ru, March 15). Russians remain fearful of change-though are also suspicious that the change they fear is already upon them. The only recipe from this unhealthy angst has been distraction, and now the Kremlin has to invent a new one-preferably before Russia's remaining "footprint" in Syria brings home a second painful setback (the first one was the downing of a Russian bomber by a Turkish fighter last November). The problem is not only that the costs of producing effective distractions has become barely affordable but also that each of the previous distractions remains a burden and a liability. Putin has become a hostage to his own surprises and has no way of knowing how the next one may backfire. Copyright notice: 2010 The Jamestown Foundation Sufi-Salafist Tension Deepens After Attack on Salafist Cleric in Ingushetia Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Mairbek Vatchagaev Publication Date 18 March 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 54 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Sufi-Salafist Tension Deepens After Attack on Salafist Cleric in Ingushetia, 18 March 2016, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 54, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56f169c54.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. Link to original story on Jamestown website Enemies of the well-known Salafist preacher Khamzat Chumakov have been pursuing him for a while. In 2010, an improvised explosive device (IED) exploded under the Salafist cleric's car. Chumakov was badly wounded in the blast, losing his leg, but he remained alive and returned to preaching shortly thereafter (Interfax, March 11). Following that first attempt on Chumakov's life, some people in the republic speculated that the insurgents targeted him for his calls for peace (Interfax, March 11). However, it became increasingly clear that the insurgents probably did not target Chumakov, because he remained a staunch critic of the Sufis. The Ingush Salafist cleric gained widespread recognition in Ingushetia precisely because of his criticism of Sufism, especially with regard to certain rituals and religious views. The latest attack on Chumakov occurred on March 11, near the mosque where he was scheduled to give a sermon. The bomb was planted in a car that had been bought by an unknown individual in Dagestan, and it was detonated remotely (Mk.ru, March 13). The attack may have been a warning. A source in the local police said: "We did not have terrorist attacks for a while and now suddenly we get this big explosion. The attackers most likely tried to avoid casualties and send some message" (Zona.Media, March 11). The driver of a car passing by was injured, but Chumakov himself refused any medical treatment and left the scene immediately after the incident. Khajimurat Gatsalov, the mufti of the neighboring republic, North Ossetia-Alania, reacted to the attempt on Chumakov's life since he himself has been under pressure from the authorities for some time. Gatsalov called on the mosque parishioners to defend their imams: "The believers should guard and protect their imams. This is the reality in the Caucasus today, unfortunately" (see EDM, January 15). Unlike the North Ossetian mufti, Ismail Berdiev, the chairman of the Coordination Center of the Muslims of the North Caucasus, who is essentially the mufti of the Muslims of the North Caucasus, attempted to put the blame for the attack on the victim himself. Berdiev suggested that some of Chumakov's followers who had disagreements with him may have attacked him (Zona Media, March 11). The mufti of the North Caucasus thereby practically sided with the authorities. At the same time, in Chechnya, which also neighbors Ingushetia, regional officials pretended that nothing had happened, even though the Chechen authorities had recently threatened Chumakov for his "wrong" sermons and misleading the people with his Salafist views. It is impossible for anyone to preach a Salafist message in Chechnya, where just indicating Salafist sympathies can have serious repercussions with the authorities and the republic's official mufti (Kavkazsky Uzel, February 3). In Ingushetia, neither civil activists, nor officials, nor Chumakov's followers dared to even hint that Ramzan Kadyrov's people may have been involved in the assassination attempt. Chechnya is the only republic in the North Caucasus where not a single Salafist mosque officially exists (that, however, does not mean that there are no Salafists in the republic). According to Ingush civil rights activist Bagaudin Khautiev, various political forces in the republic may have been behind the attack on Chumakov. One possible reason for the attack could have been the conflict between the Salafist cleric and the mufti of Ingushetia, Isa Khamkhoev (Kavkazsky Uzel, February 3). Some figures in the administration of Ingushetia's governor may also have been angry with Chumakov for his criticism of corruption among republican officials (Galgayche.org, March 13). According to Khautiev, Moscow should intervene in the situation in the republic to prevent it from sliding into the kind of cycle of violence it experienced at the beginning of the 2000s. In reality, however, neither the conflict between Chumakov and Khamkhoev nor the officials' disgruntlement with Chumakov's criticism of their corrupt practices is the main source of the conflict. Authorities in the North Caucasus are trying desperately to prevent the spread of Salafist ideology in the region. Even such sworn enemies as Ingushetia's governor Yunus-Bek Yevkurov and Chechnya's governor Ramzan Kadyrov are prepared to put aside their differences to fight what they regard as their common adversary-Salafist teachings. Part of the North Caucasian population has switched from Sufism to Salafism. Step by step, Chumakov has built a large community of Muslims who reject Sufism. His influence spans Ingushetia, the North Caucasus and beyond: indeed, the sermons of the Ingush Salafist cleric are translated into Russian and circulated around the world. It can be said with certainty that Chumakov is currently one of the most influential Salafist preachers in the entire region. Chumakov has increasingly openly challenged Sufism, which means he is not only challenging the authorities of Ingushetia or Chechnya, but also any member of the Sufi majority in Ingushetia who was offended by Chumakov's preaching against Sufism. Therefore, there are a number of persons in government structures who might have staged or even supported such an attack on the cleric. This particular case of violence indicates that the tensions between the Sufi majority and Salafist minority in Ingushetia and across the North Caucasus will continue to increase as the Sufi-Salafist divide further deepens. Copyright notice: 2010 The Jamestown Foundation Is Georgian-Abkhaz and Georgian-Ossetian Reconciliation Possible? Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Vasili Rukhadze Publication Date 18 March 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 54 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Is Georgian-Abkhaz and Georgian-Ossetian Reconciliation Possible?, 18 March 2016, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 54, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56f16a204.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. Link to original story on Jamestown website On March 10, in a rare tripartite deal, Georgia released four Ossetian prisoners, three of which were serving life sentences on charges of terrorism against the Georgian state. In exchange, the authorities of South Ossetia (Tskhinvali region) and Abkhazia released 14 Georgians, held in these Russian-occupied separatist regions on various charges, ranging from "espionage" to "illegal crossing" of the administrative border (Netgazeti.ge, March 10). The prisoner release followed months of negotiations and caused a certain degree of euphoria, especially on the Georgian side. Georgia's State Minister for Reconciliation Paata Zakareishvili triumphantly declared that "if it [was] possible to work honestly over such a difficult issue [prisoner exchange], then the same will be possible over other issues as well." Moreover, the Abkhazian and Ossetian separatist regimes welcomed the deal as an example of "good will" and "pragmatic cooperation. The prisoner exchange was also praised by international organizations. As the European Union, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and United Nations envoys to Georgia remarked in a joint statement: "coming to a mutual understanding about the release of detainees opens good prospects for further engagement" (Civil Georgia, March 11). Notably, the talks about the swap were initiated by the Abkhazian side itself, even though no Abkhazian prisoners were ultimately released by the Georgian government. The prisoner exchange affair could have been interpreted as an isolated case of Georgian-Abkhazian and Georgian-Ossetian cooperation, if not for another similar event about a month earlier. Specifically, in February, Tbilisi reached a short-term agreement with Sukhumi, according to which Georgia will continue to supply Abkhazia with electricity from Russia (and pay for it), in order to avoid blackouts in the separatist region caused by low water levels at Enguri River dam-the main source of power for Abkhazia (Channel 1 TV, February 18). So what is really taking place between Tbilisi and its separatist regions? Is cooperation and reconciliation really picking up steam? A closer look shows that such hopes might be overly exaggerated. The prisoner swap is not new. The sides have released mutual prisoners on previous occasions as well (Civil Georgia, January 2, 2014); however, these agreements never resulted in any breakthrough in Georgian-Abkhazian or Georgian-Ossetian relations. Moreover, Georgia has been supplying and paying for separatist Abkhazia's electricity for years. The separatist regime welcomed this arrangement because it makes significant money for its elite, allegedly through the illegal sale of surplus electricity. Overall, as Paata Davitaia, an opposition Georgian politician and himself a refugee from Abkhazia, put it, the local separatist press mocks the Georgian side for its naivety in dealing with the regime in Sukhumi (Rezonansy, March 10). Things do not look any better on the Ossetian side. In fact, South Ossetia's breakaway regime is actively discussing the possibility of joining Russia. On February 18, the region's de facto leader, Leonid Tibilov, stated that he would push to hold a referendum this year in order to gain public support and constitutionally prepare for South Ossetia's accession to the Russian Federation (TASS, February 19). In another recent development, Russian occupation forces in South Ossetia once again moved the occupation line deeper into Georgia, this time around the village of Jariasheni (Accent.com.ge, March 15). Moreover, people-to-people contacts between Ossetians and Georgians are minimal at best. It is safe to say that occupied South Ossetia is completely isolated from the rest of Georgia, which makes it nearly impossible to lay the groundwork for any kind of public relations between the two ethnic communities. Against this background, is a reconciliation between Georgians and Abkhaz and Georgians and Ossetians possible at all? Theoretically, yes. But the situation is tremendously complicated by the ever-present Russian factor, which cannot be ignored. Moscow tightly controls every aspect of socioeconomic and political life in the separatist regions. For instance, in reaction to the recent clash between Moscow and Ankara over Turkey's downing of a Russian fighter jet that violated Turkish airspace, separatist Abkhazia was forced to join Russia's trade embargo against Turkey, even though the Abkhazians had no desire-and an economic disincentive-to do so (Observer.com.ge, January 20). Similarly, the Kremlin controls all other big or small aspects of Abkhazia's and South Ossetia's agendas. It, therefore, seems quite plausible that Moscow itself sanctioned separatist Sukhumi (and by extension Tskhinvali) to launch these recent talks with Tbilisi about a prisoner exchange. One possible reason for this could be Moscow's desire to create an illusion within Georgian society that the Georgian-Russian rapprochement is actually working. The ultimate goal is to make Georgians believe that Moscow has the power and willingness-presumably conditional-to push the Abkhaz and Ossetians to talk to the Georgians, mend ties, and possibly reintegrate with Georgia in the future. Time will tell whether this postulated approach by Russia will have the desired effect on the Georgian population. Regardless, at this stage, it is safe to conclude that a real Georgian-Abkhaz and Georgian-Ossetian reconciliation is not taking place. As the ongoing developments illustrate, Georgia's relations with its breakaway territories remains fundamentally stalled. They can only be genuinely revitalized when the key obstacles-Russia and the Russian occupation-are removed from the picture. And so far, no such prospect is visible on the South Caucasus' political horizon. Copyright notice: 2010 The Jamestown Foundation Trumps Hypnotic Gig at AIPAC Will Go Down in History - or Infamy Like a Pied Piper, the GOP front-runner's pro-Israel magic tricks swept his Jewish audience from initial suspicion to outright enthusiasm On Monday night, Donald Trump showed how and why he might be elected president of the United States. Invited to participate in a candidates forum at AIPACs annual conference, he came, he spoke, he conquered. In future history, the 2016 AIPAC Policy Conference might yet be viewed as a watershed event on way to the Trump Era. Trump entered the Verizon Center in Washington D.C. as a prime suspect but emerged clean as a whistle. In less than half an hour, he took a skeptical and apprehensive audience and turned them into gushing cheerleaders. He went into the arena as a racist demagogue but soon came out as an ostensibly serious contender. He faced a tough test of his mettle but passed it with flying colors and hardly any effort. He came away with a kosher K certificate, issued by one of the most powerful and influential organizations in America. If Trump is ultimately elected president, AIPAC leaders will be able to proudly point to their prescience: They will have scored valuable points with a man who could soon decide Israels future. If Trump doesnt make it, however, his appearance on Monday could live in AIPAC infamy as the day well-meaning Jews sold their consciences in exchange for banal pledges of support for Israel. This, in any case, is the way many liberal Jews will see it. Theyve been claiming for years that AIPAC has turned into a branch of both the Likud party and the GOP, though few of them knew it had gone this far. Trump delivered a speech that could easily have been written in the Prime Ministers Office in Jerusalem or AIPAC headquarters in Washington, and for all we know, possibly was.... ...Trump is usually an undisciplined speaker who lacks concentration and focus, allowing his stream of consciousness to narrate his thoughts and his powers of improvisation to phrase them. So it was that less than an hour before he came to AIPAC, which focuses on American aid to Israel, Trump raised the bizarre demand that Israel, like other rich American allies, repay the financial assistance it had received from America. Hey, it just popped into my head, Trump seemed to indicate, so it must be a good idea. In honor of AIPAC, however, he undertook an extreme makeover, reading a tightly formulated speech from the kind of teleprompter that he usually mocks.... Russian Media Leaks Sensitive Details of Armenia's Defense Posture Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Armen Grigoryan Publication Date 18 March 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 54 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Russian Media Leaks Sensitive Details of Armenia's Defense Posture, 18 March 2016, Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 54, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56f16b224.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. Link to original story on Jamestown website In February, Russian sources confirmed a $200 million loan to Armenia. The loan-extended by Moscow to allow Armenia to buy up-to-date Russian weapons-had been promised in June 2015 (see EDM, June 29, 2015). In a rather unusual manner, and contrary to the agreement's confidentiality clause, the Russian media published a list of weapons to be supplied, including Smerch multiple rocket launchers, portable anti-aircraft missiles, radars that may be used for coordinating surface-to-air systems, multiple thermobaric rocket launchers, wire-guided anti-tank missiles, anti-tank rocket-propelled grenades, trucks and other supplies (Interfax, February 18). The loan agreement came into force on February 10, and it stipulates that the procurement shall be carried out until the end of 2017 (Gazeta.ru, February 19). The leak about the planned weapons purchases was quickly followed up by a letter of protest sent to Russia by Azerbaijan. The letter included a demand to guarantee that the supplied weapons not be deployed either to the breakaway Azerbaijani territory of Karabakh or near the border between Armenia and Azerbaijan (RIA Novosti, February 24). A reply publicized by Russia's Ministry of Foreign Affairs expressed hope that Azerbaijan would show understanding, asserting that Russia carries out military and technical cooperation in the South Caucasus with an eye to maintaining a regional balance of power. As noted by Armenian news agencies, Russia's assurances about maintaining a balance of power in the region were rather hypocritical. But the Armenian government, unlike its Azerbaijani counterpart, has never demanded an explanation from Russia in equally strong terms, despite the narrative of Moscow and Yerevan enjoying a "strategic partnership" and the fact that Azerbaijan buys about 80 percent of its weapons from Russia, having contracts worth billions of dollars (1in.am, February 26). Some Armenian sources openly called Russia the main threat to regional security, noting that none of the other co-chairs of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe's (OSCE) Minsk Group sell arms to the conflicting sides (Lragir.am, February 26). At the same time, it was noted that the weapons included in the published list do not include the latest hardware comparable to the types of weapons that Russia routinely exports to Azerbaijan (Lragir.am, February 22). On March 9, the Russian weekly Voenno-Promyshlennyi Kurier (Military-Industrial Courier) published an article by the deputy director of the Institute for Political and Military Analysis, Alexander Khramchikhin, which included a detailed account of the structure of the Armenian armed forces, the location of its units and their arms and equipment, as well as similar information about the local forces in Karabakh. The article also included speculation about possible scenarios in case of an armed conflict between Russia and Turkey, as well as warnings against possible attempts to develop cooperation between Armenia and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) (Voenno-Promyshlennyi Kurier, March 9). At the same time, pro-Russian media and social network commentators started a seemingly well-coordinated campaign downplaying the significance of the article in Voenno-Promyshlennyi Kurier. But a Ministry of Defense spokesperson quickly admitted that some of the information in the article was confidential, and its publication by the Russian paper was unacceptable (Arminfo.am, March 10). As noted in a Yerevan-based Regional Studies Center briefing, Voenno-Promyshlennyi Kurier had previously published similar articles about the armies of the Baltic States, Georgia and Ukraine; however, publishing such sensitive data about an ally's army contradicts conventional practice. Besides, the confidential nature of the published information, which included data previously not available from open sources, suggests that Russia's Ministry of Defense or other state agencies must have willingly provided some information to the author (Regional-studies.org, March 10). It is not quite clear why the Russian side might be interested in such information leaks just at this moment. A week later, Voenno-Promyshlennyi Kurier also published a similar article about Azerbaijan's army. While the piece admitted that all offensive weapons supplied to Azerbaijan came from Russia, and that Azerbaijan's military equipment is more numerous and modern compared to Armenia's, it also speculated that Azerbaijan would nonetheless not have a decisive advantage in case of a new war over Karabakh (Voenno-Promyshlennyi Kurier, March 16). Armenian officials' reaction to the disclosure of sensitive information by Russian sources remained limited to the short statement by the defense ministry spokesperson. President Serzh Sargsyan did not publicly mention any controversial bilateral issues during his visit to Moscow on March 10. In a meeting with Vladimir Putin, he, in a habitual manner, supported Russia's policy in Syria and thanked Putin for Moscow's efforts at trying to resolve the Karabakh conflict (TASS, March 10). Sargsyan also avoided discussing economic issues that could potentially annoy the Russians. So despite previous suggestions about the possibility of some advantageous economic agreement, such as a gas price discount, no results were achieved. On the contrary, it was announced that the Armenian government would exempt Gazprom-Armenia's profits received in the first quarter of 2016 from taxation in order to compensate the company for the consequences of the devaluation of the Armenian dram-thus keeping Gazprom-Armenia's profits the same in dollar terms (Lragir.am, March 9). As illustrated by Yerevan's muted reaction to the Russian media leaks of classified details of Armenia's defense posture, the Armenian authorities remain cautious when it comes to Russia. They either avoid discussions on practically any issue that might cause disturbance in Moscow or explicitly support Russia's interests. Nonetheless, by taking such a stance, they create more doubts concerning their sincerity and capability to solve any internationally significant issue related to Armenia's interests. Thus, despite the European Union's consistent interest in developing cooperation with Yerevan, Iran's offers concerning the transit of natural gas, and other possibilities, little, if any, progress should be expected. Armenia's dependence on Russia will likely remain unchallenged even with the latter's mounting economic problems (see EDM, January 28); and any alternative opportunities will almost certainly be missed. Copyright notice: 2010 The Jamestown Foundation Retaking Palymyra: The Slow Campaign Against Islamic State in Syria Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Nicholas A. Heras Publication Date 18 March 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Terrorism Monitor Volume: 15 Issue: 6 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, Retaking Palymyra: The Slow Campaign Against Islamic State in Syria, 18 March 2016, Terrorism Monitor Volume: 15 Issue: 6, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56f16c144.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. Link to original story on Jamestown website Backed by Russian airstrikes, the Syrian Arab Army (SAA) has in recent months renewed a military campaign to recapture the strategic city of Palmyra from the Islamic State (IS) (Al-Bawaba [Palmyra], March 15; Al-Alam [Tehran], March 15), one that will continue in spite of Russia's announcement this month that it is pulling back the "main part" of its military forces in Syria. While IS has maintained territorial control throughout most of eastern Syria, it is losing territory on the borders of its declared Caliphate in Raqqa, al-Hasakah, and Homs governorates. Successfully re-capturing Palmyra and the areas around it - which are rich in natural gas - would be a powerful symbol of the resurgence of the SAA and its auxiliary forces. Although control over the natural gas resources is important for the Assad government - especially in order to provide fuel for the overworked, regime-controlled electricity grid in western Syria - victory there would deny IS what was arguably the Salafist militants' most high-profile victory last year, and land a significant blow against the group. Competing Interests IS captured Palmyra in May 2015. Since then the SAA has mounted a slow and steady campaign to retake the city and its surrounding area, including the key town of al-Sukhna, which lies approximately 70km northeast of the city (All4Syria [Palmyra], March 11; Sputnik News [Palmyra], March 7). Palmyra is the largest and most important city in the al-Hamad region of Syria's badia, the arid, semi-desert area that stretches from Syria's southeastern borders with Iraq and Jordan to the Euphrates River and on to the eastern areas of several of the country's western governorates. It also sits on the important east-west M20 highway that provides vital supply lines for SAA forces in southeastern Syria's Deir al-Zor governorate (Shaam Times [Damascus], July 4, 2015; Shaam Times [Damascus], October 31, 2014; Al-Safir [Beirut], July 23, 2014). [1] The al-Hamad region is an important staging point for a military campaign against IS in Deir al-Zor, although its remote and relatively desolate terrain makes its most highly populated areas in and around Palmyra and al-Sukhna particularly difficult to control. [2] Currently, IS, the Assad government, and the U.S.-led coalition are competing in the region for the loyalty of the local population. That region includes al-Hamad, and the more fertile Euphrates River valley region that runs from the northeastern areas of Aleppo governorate down through the IS 'capital' of Raqqa, and into the Syrian-Iraqi border region near the city of Deir al-Zor. The population in these areas is composed mostly of Sunni Arab tribes (Terrorism Monitor, December 19, 2014). The tribes are pragmatic, shifting their loyalties over the course of the civil war depending on the state of the conflict. Until it is displaced, IS remains the most powerful actor in this region of Syria and, as a consequence, the level of the local tribes' opposition to it is reduced (Terrorism Monitor, December 19, 2014). A fundamental component of the IS strategy throughout Syria is to crush internal armed opposition, including suspected Assad government sympathizers, and to promote and secure the peaceful allegiance of Sunni Arab tribes in each locality it seizes (Enab Baladi [Deir al-Zor], October 18, 2015; Terrorism Monitor, December 19, 2014). IS has ensured aggressive media coverage of the tribes that pledge allegiance to it, including the local, tribal population of al-Sukhna, which was subsequently renamed Um al-Qura by IS in July 2015 (Syrian Observatory for Human Rights [Deir al-Zor], January 21; Enab Baladi [Al-Sukhna], July 23, 2015). While IS currently holds sway over the local Sunni Arab population of the al-Hamad region and the Syrian-Iraqi border area around Deir al-Zor, the SAA is in a comparatively better position than the U.S.-led coalition to tackle the challenge; this is due largely in part to the SAA's developing campaign in the western suburbs of Palmyra and its military airbase in the city of Deir al-Zor (MLM Briefs, November 30, 2015; Terrorism Monitor, December 19, 2014). The SAA's forward operating base in Deir al-Zor is the center of gravity for the Assad government's efforts to establish a resistance force - a kind of Syrian sahwa movement - against IS (Baladi News [Deir al-Zor], March 10; MLM Briefs, November 30, 2015; Arabi 21 [Deir al-Zor], November 5, 2015). Those efforts are constrained, however, by the local population's resistance to the continued rule of the Assad government, and the SAA continues to struggle with reserve manpower, limiting its ability to project power in Deir al-Zor governorate (MLM Briefs, November 30, 2015; ARA News [Deir al-Zor], August 13, 2015; Enab Baladi [Deir al-Zor], August 6, 2015). Coalition Efforts The U.S.-led coalition has also been attempting to build an armed tribal resistance movement in the area over the past year, aided in particular by Jordan (MLM Briefs, December 31, 2015; Al-Arabi Al-Jadid, July 5, 2015; Al-Arab [Amman], June 15, 2015). The Hashemite kingdom is primarily concerned with Syria's badia in the context of stabilizing its northern border with Syria and preventing IS from staging attacks inside Jordan from this sparsely populate, desert region. [3] It is believed that the Jordanians are engaged in two distinct efforts to accomplish this counter-terrorism objective. The first is to organize an alternative counter-terrorism force within the structure of al-Jabhat al-Janoobiyya (SF-Southern Front), which is a U.S.- and Jordanian-backed moderate Syrian armed opposition coalition active in southwestern Syria since February 2014 (Militant Leadership Monitor, February 28, 2015; Terrorism Monitor, March 6, 2014 ). This force, called Jaysh Ahrar al-Asha'yer (Army of the Free Tribes), though affiliated with the SF, is believed to be a direct proxy of Jordanian intelligence established to prevent the expansion of IS into the Lajat area in northern Dara'a governorate, a front-line against the expansion of IS in southwestern Syria. It was formed in December 2015 from local, moderate armed opposition militias mobilized from among the Sunni Arab tribes, and could have as many as 3,000 fighters (Jordan Zad [Amman], December 3, 2015; YouTube, December 2, 2015). [4] Since its formation in December 2015, the Army of the Free Tribes has battled IS in Lajat. It has also fought the Salafist organization Harakat al-Muthanna al-Islamiyya (Islamic Movement of Muthanna), a rising armed social movement in Dara'a governorate and a long-term security concern of the Jordanians (El-Dorar Al-Shamiyya [Dara'a], March 11; Al-Khal [Dara'a], January 17). [5] However, at present, there is no indication that the Army of the Free Tribes is expected to be a compelling force against IS. That role is reserved for another, coalition-supported force, al-Jaysh Sooria al-Jadeed (New Syrian Army). The New Syrian Army was formed in November 2015 with support from the U.S. and Jordan. It was mobilized from the remnants of Free Syrian Army (FSA) affiliated groups from the Syrian-Iraqi border region of Deir al-Zor governorate (MLM Briefs, December 31, 2015). The number of New Syrian Army fighters is highly disputed, estimates range from 36 to 1,000 (The National [Abu Dhabi], March 13; Al-Arabiyya [Dubai], March 7; MLM Briefs, December 31, 2015). Most were affiliated with the Saudi-backed Jabhat Asala wal-Tanmiya (Authenticity and Development Front) umbrella organization, and share the experience of defeat at the hands of IS when the group established its rule in Deir al-Zor (MLM Briefs, December 31, 2015). At that time, many sought refuge in the eastern Qalamoun mountain range on the border of Rif Damascus and Homs governorates (MLM Briefs, December 31, 2015; Terrorism Monitor, August 21, 2015; Al-Akhbar [Beirut], October 16, 2014). It is from this group that the U.S.-led coalition is seeking to build the New Syrian Army into an ethnic Arab, tribally-networked vanguard force. They hope to exploit the group's preexisting lines of influence among the local tribes in the al-Hamad area, and the more heavily populated areas along the Euphrates River valley. The so-called provinces, newly formed by IS, of al-Khayr (Deir al-Zor and its suburbs) and al-Furat (Albu Kamal in Syria and Qa'im and its suburbs in Iraq) are particular targets for the New Syrian Army. It is hoped they will pressure the remaining IS supply lines from Iraq into Syria. [6] The staging point for this campaign is the al-Hamad area. A series of raids by the New Syrian Army and affiliated militias - including the former Authenticity and Development Front affiliate Jaysh Usuud al-Sharqiyya (Army of the Lions of the East) and the SF-affiliated Quwat al-Shahid Ahmad al-Abdo (The Martyr Ahmad al-Abdo Force) - saw raids on the important al-Tanaf border post on the Syrian side of the Syrian-Jordanian border in early March (Orient News [Deir al-Zor], March 9; All4Syria [Deir al-Zor], March 5). Although the New Syrian Army has the military support of the U.S.-led coalition, and has a secure base in Jordan for staging operations into al-Hamad, it faces significant recruiting challenges, preventing it from effectively targeting IS and the SAA's forward operating bases. A stark example of this is the group's apparent inability to join with the Army of the Lions of the East, a union that would provide 1,000-2,000 additional fighters from displaced members of the FSA and Asala wal-Tanmiya. [7] Until it can recruit additional manpower, the New Syrian Army is likely to continue to operate as a special operations force, conducting raids against fixed IS positions. [8] Coalition efforts are further constrained by the reality that, in southeastern Syria, the SAA's campaign to displace IS has potentially important geopolitical outcomes. If the slow moving, SAA offensive is successful against IS, the Assad government could force the coalition and other opposition supporters to acquiesce to its authority over eastern Syria. Conclusion Efforts to retake Palmyra are not necessarily a race between Syrian government forces and the U.S.-led coalition. There are reports that the U.S. and Russia could coordinate efforts against IS. That could see the U.S.-led coalition focusing on Raqqa and IS-held areas north of the Euphrates, while the Assad regime and its allies target the Palmyra-Deir al-Zor axis to the south and along the Euphrates to the Syrian-Iraqi border (Al-Arabiyya [Dubai], March 14). The challenge for the Assad government in the aftermath of displacing IS, however, would be how to hold the newly-seized areas. It is unclear whether enough of the local Sunni Arab tribal population would concede to a return of the regime's authority. Constrained by manpower shortages, the Assad government would likely be forced to allow the local population significant autonomy in exchange for their loyalty, and still have to devote precious military resources to combatting the return of groups such as the al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra and its ally, Harakat Ahrar al-Sham al-Islamiyya, in the area. Notes: [1] Author's interviews with Syrian activists from the cities of Deir al-Zor and Albu Kamal, interviews (December 7 and December 15, 2015). Author's interview with a leader in Jaysh Asuud al-Sharqiya, who is based in Turkey, (August 11, 2015). [2] Author interviews with retired Jordanian security officials (January 13, 2016). [3] Author's interviews with a Southern Front political official; Jordan-based, Syrian-run NGOs that operate in Dara'a and al-Quneitra governorates with close ties to the Southern Front; and a Jordanian journalist with close ties to field commanders in the Southern Front (January 9-14, 2016). Author's interview with a Jordanian journalist with close ties to field commanders in the Southern Front (February 13, 2016). Author's interview in Washington, DC with a defected high-level Syrian diplomat who is a senior adviser to the Syrian National Coalition's Higher Negotiations Committee and who maintains close ties to the political leadership of the Southern Front (March 9, 2016). [4] Author's interviews with a Southern Front political official, Jordan-based, Syrian-run NGOs that operate in Dara'a and al-Quneitra governorates with close ties to the Southern Front, and a Jordanian journalist with close ties to field commanders in the Southern Front (January 9-14, 2016). Author's interview with a Jordanian journalist with close ties to field commanders in the Southern Front (February 13, 2016). [5] Author's interview with coalition official (March 4, 2016); Syrian activists from the cities of Deir al-Zor and Albu Kamal, (December 7 and December 15, 2015). Author interview with a leader in Jaysh Asuud al-Sharqiya based in Turkey (August 11, 2015). [6] Ibid. [7] Author's interview with coalition official (March 4, 2016) Copyright notice: 2010 The Jamestown Foundation The Ben Guerdane Attack and Tunisia's Tackling of Terrorism Publisher Jamestown Foundation Author Stefano Maria Torelli Publication Date 18 March 2016 Citation / Document Symbol Terrorism Monitor Volume: 15 Issue: 6 Cite as Jamestown Foundation, The Ben Guerdane Attack and Tunisia's Tackling of Terrorism, 18 March 2016, Terrorism Monitor Volume: 15 Issue: 6, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56f16d324.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. Link to original story on Jamestown website As Tunisian jihadists with Islamic State (IS) in Libya come under increasing military pressure from local and international forces, they appear to be returning home with the intention of capturing territory. That manifested itself this month in the attack on the border town of Ben Guerdane, the first IS insurgency-style attack to hit Tunisia. The Ben Guerdane attack is a worrying development for the Tunisian authorities who, while experiencing some success utilizing the security forces against domestic terrorists, still lack a comprehensive strategy to tackle radicalization. Evolution of the Threat Until 2014, the major external threat to Tunisia came from Algeria through the infiltration of fighters linked to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). These formed the core of the "Uqba ibn Nafi" brigade, which is the largest jihadist group operating in Tunisia. The crisis in Libya, however, has had a significant impact on the evolution of the jihadist threat, with dozens of Tunisian fighters with IS-linked groups returning home, in part as a result of targeted operations on their strongholds in Tripolitania. As a result, the real threat to Tunisia now comes from Libya. Those behind last year's attacks on the Bardo Museum and the beach resort in Sousse had received training in Libya. Many returning jihadists are former members of Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia (AST) who, after the group was outlawed in in Tunisia in 2013, have found refuge in Libya and established new networks with jihadists operating there. On February 19, a drone attack conducted by U.S. forces in the Libyan city of Sabratha targeted an IS-linked group's training camp. At least 40 militants were killed, most of whom were Tunisian (Webdo.tn, February 20). Among them was Noureddine Chouchane, who allegedly masterminded the Sousse attack. A week later, the authorities announced they had killed 33 jihadists in a clash on February 25; 13 of the jihadists were revealed to be Tunisian (Realites, February 25). There have also been reports that Abu Iyadh, the AST leader, was killed in an airstrike in Libya, although his death has not been confirmed [1]. The partial dismantling of Tunisian cells linked to IS in Sabratha, 100 kilometers from the border with Tunisia, has raised concerns that IS-linked Tunisian fighters could soon return to Tunisia. On February 20, border authorities arrested five suspected militants entering Ben Guerdane from Sabratha (Tunisie Numerique, February 20). In the same area, between February 27 and 29, an additional 10 people were arrested, including three women from Gafsa who were attempting to travel to Libya (Nessma Tv, February 29). Then, on March 2, five militants were killed in a clash on the Libyan border (Jeune Afrique, March 3). The Tunisian town of Ben Guerdane, close to the border with Libya, has become the focus of several recent attacks by Libyan-trained Tunisian militants. On March 7, a group of at least 50 jihadists attacked the town, targeting an army barracks and the homes of military officers. Thirty-six militants were killed in the battle that followed, along with seven civilians and 12 members of the security forces. Just days before the attack a captured militant, Mohamed Ben Mohsen Ben Mohamed al-Gharbi, revealed Tunisian jihadists were developing a plan to use about 200 fighters in conjunction with car bombs to capture Ben Guerdane and proclaim a new province of the Islamic State in Tunisia (Webdo.tn, March 3). This is an important change in jihadist strategy in Libya and shows the direct involvement of IS-linked cells in Tunisia, which had until now only seen infiltration from al-Qaeda-linked groups. Following the attack the government sent reinforcements to the city, imposing a curfew and closed the border with Libya. Government Response The Tunisian authorities had stepped up counterterrorism operations ahead of the Ben Guerdane attack. On January 3, security forces killed a suspected jihadist in the area between Mount Serj and Mount Ballouta, in the governorate of Siliana (Tunisie Numerique, January 3). In the first few days of February, three militants were killed in a gun battle with security forces in the mountainous area of Tounine, in the Gabes region, and on February 14, security forces arrested 12 suspected militants in Menzel Bourguiba (Kapitalis, February 15). Security forces subsequently recovered weapons and ammunitions in the wake of the various ambushes (Le Figaro, February 2). On February 22, another suspected jihadist was shot and killed near Mghila (Mosaique FM, February 22), after which security services were able to yet again recover weapons and ammunition, as well as arrest an additional 16 suspects (Global Post, February 22). On March 1 in Ain Jaffe, which lies between Sidi Bouzid and Kasserine, security forces killed four jihadists. Among them was Mohamed Basdouri, a militant wanted in connection with the Bardo and Sousse attacks, as well as for the killing of six members of the National Guard in Sidi Ali Ben Aoun in October 2013 (Tunisia Live, March 1). Tunisia is also in the process of bolstering its border defenses. On February 6, construction was completed of a 200 km fence along the border with Libya, covering an area from the crossing point of Ras Jedir to Dhiba. Tunis is also stepping up strategic cooperation with its Western partners. Germany and the U.S. will assist Tunisia in installing electronic equipment on the border (Al-Jazeera, February 7). The UK has similarly sent 20 soldiers to train the local border forces (The Telegraph, March 7). Challenge of Radicalization Successful operations by the security forces, however, are not in themselves enough to counter the small but growing number of homegrown militants who travel to Libya and nearby nations for training. Since 2012, between 6,000 and 7,000 Tunisians traveled to Syria, Iraq or Libya to train and fight, according to data provided by the Rescue Association of Tunisians Trapped Abroad (RATTA). The authorities have arrested at least another 12,000 in the same period who were supposedly planning to make the journey. Since the 2013 banning of the AST, an indiscriminate crackdown on Salafists - including non-violent groups - has helped to bolster this number. In the more remote parts of the country, economic marginalization also contributes to radicalization, with young people aware that their hometowns are experiencing a level of economic development much lower than that experienced in coastal areas in the east. They are similarly aware that Tunisia's political elite continues to be drawn from among the ranks of the former regime, albeit under a new guise. The authorities' neglect of young people is fomenting the seeds for a potential new crop of jihadists. A network of contacts between IS-related jihadist cells in Libya and the local population in Tunisia would allow IS to further exploit local grievances against the central government. It is worth noting that during the Ben Guerdane attack, officers' private residences were targeted, which suggests local operatives are already in place. Conclusion Tunisia has yet to fully develop a multi-faceted counterterrorism strategy. It currently remains too singularly focused on security with little attention paid to de-radicalization or efforts to tackle the socioeconomic root causes of young Tunisians turning to radical Islam. The Ben Guerdane attack has highlighted Tunisia's vulnerability. If the situation in Libya continues to deteriorate, Tunisia will be the country most affected by spillover and thereby risks becoming a new outpost for IS-inspired jihadists. While the military has led the fight against terrorism with some success thus far, it requires greater support from international actors, especially the European Union and the U.S. Notes: [1] On July 2, 2015, several sources reported that Abu Iyadj had been killed in a US airstrike conducted on June 13 targeting former AQIM commander Mokhtar Belmokhtar in Ajdabiya, Western Libya, however, his death has never been officially confirmed. Other sources list Abu Iyadh as one of the victims of the drone attack conducted by US against a jihadist training camp in Sabratha, Eastern Libya, on February 19 (Mosaique FM, 20 February). Copyright notice: 2010 The Jamestown Foundation Uzbekistan: "Aren't you exaggerating by saying he was detained?" Publisher Forum 18 Author Mushfig Bayram Publication Date 21 March 2016 Cite as Forum 18, Uzbekistan: "Aren't you exaggerating by saying he was detained?", 21 March 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56f181c04.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. Tashkent Regional Customs Department held Kazakh citizen Boris Prokopenko for two days in mid-March after discovering religious materials on electronic devices as he entered Uzbekistan, fellow Baptists complained to Forum 18 News Service. Freed after an "expert analysis" found nothing "extremist", he still faces administrative prosecution. "Aren't you exaggerating by saying he was detained? He was only staying with us temporarily since we were waiting for the expert analysis from the Religious Affairs Committee," Chief Customs Inspector Tahir Nasirkhodjayev told Forum 18. He denied any violation of Prokopenko's rights, as "we only enforce the Law, which demands us to stop and clarify what kind of religious materials people carry with them". Six Muslims were fined after being stopped in December 2015 for carrying "illegal" religious materials on their mobile phones, customs officials told Forum 18. Such punishments are part of the rigid control of religious materials entering and being transported within the country on mobile phones, tablets, personal computers, memory sticks and other electronic devices and media. At least two Muslims are serving five-year prison terms for the Koran and sermons in their mobile phones. Russia: Enforced liquidation of communities accelerates Publisher Forum 18 Author Victoria Arnold Publication Date 22 March 2016 Cite as Forum 18, Russia: Enforced liquidation of communities accelerates, 22 March 2016, available at: https://www.refworld.org/docid/56f182944.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. Three Jehovah's Witness communities are trying to challenge lower court orders that they be liquidated as "extremist" and are awaiting Supreme Court decisions. The cases brought to six the number of their communities banned as "extremist". Court moves to liquidate a seventh were launched in May 2015. Since spring 2015 at least seven further Jehovah's Witness communities have received written "extremism" warnings from prosecutors, a frequent prelude to liquidation suits, Forum 18 News Service has found. A Jehovah's Witness community in Arkhangelsk applied to liquidate itself in October 2015, just weeks before Regional Governor Igor Orlov told the local Russian Orthodox Diocese website of "ongoing work to ensure the de-legalisation of Jehovah's Witnesses in Arkhangelsk Region". All these moves mark an intensification of law enforcement efforts to curtail Jehovah's Witness activity, Forum 18 notes. One Muslim community is known to have been similarly liquidated, with a second being issued a warning. coke said: Now is the time to really pull back on NATO. They have their own problem brought on partly by their own stupidity. Now let Europe deal with it for awhile without looking at the US to come over and do it. If the United States has to go to war with ISIS over Europe, then two things will happen. 1. US wins and it costs a lot of money. 2. European countries will skate out of the big cost, and then call the US barbaric for doing it. In short. **** Europe. Its their problem Click to expand... "The Europeans are still paying a bloody tribute for their lack of a normal foreign policy, for being forced to submit to 'Uncle Sam' and enforce policies that absolutely do not conform to their national, European government interests, as well as the interests of individual peoples." "While Stoltenberg, getting carried away, battles the imaginary 'Russian threat' and stations troops in Latvia, people are being blown up in Brussels right under his nose.... Gennady Zyuganov, the head of Russia's Communist Party, sorta agrees with you, at least in where things should wind up.Alexey Pushkov, a hawkish member of parliament who heads the Foreign Affairs Committee in Russia's State Duma said: Texas DPS fires first officer over Uvalde shooting response Sgt. Juan Maldonado becomes first member of the state police agency to lose his job in the fallout over the hesitant response to the May attack. A small, submersible drone developped at John Hopkins research institutes Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) can stay submerged for months, and instantly surface and launch on command without leaving a trace. Watch this video describing APLs Corrosion Resistant Aerial Covert Unmanned Naval System (CRACUNS). The drone is fabricated from composite materials and coatings that prevents salt water corrosion. 3D printing enables production of complex, low cost structures necessary to endure the pressure at depths of hundreds of feet, yet be light enough for flight. CRACUNS can carry various payloads to support different missions. As the story goes, when the Egyptian empire fell, rather than face imprisonment, disgrace and death at the hands of the Romans, Cleopatra committed suicide through the fatal bite of an Egyptian cobra. However, this account has been highly studied and contested, and now, experts have collaborated to determine how plausible this really is. Cleopatra is a bit of a mystery. No contemporary accounts of her life have survived. That doesn't mean she has not continued to be a source of intrigue and inspiration: five ballets, eight films, 45 operas and 77 plays are based on her life. What we do know comes from the Greco-Roman scholars such as Plutarch, a biographer who was born in 46 and died around 119, more than a century after Cleopatra. He stated that her beauty was not "the sort that would astound those who saw her." She nevertheless captured the attentions of Julius Caesar, with whom she had one child, and one of his successors Marc Antony, with whom she had three more. When the future Roman emperor Augustus Caesar and his army entered Alexandria, Egypt, in the summer of 30 B.C., Cleopatra fled the invading troops and barricaded herself in her mausoleum amid hordes of treasure. This is where the line between legend and history becomes blurred. Though most historians believe that Cleopatra committed suicide with poison at age 39, the legend of a poisonous snake bite is in many accounts of her death. Experts in Egyptology and snakes collaborated to determine if the story of the Egyptian cobra or asp could have killed Cleopatra and her two attendants. The first issue is that most cobras would have been too big to smuggle into a room in a basket which is part of the legend. Cobras are usually 5 to 6 feet in size but can grow to 8 feet. The second issue is whether the same snake could kill three people with consecutive bites. The snake experts claim it would be very unlikely that a cobra could be induced to bite two or three people in quick succession. Snakes are capable of biting defensively without injecting venom, and in fact most bites from a cobra are dry bites when no venom is injected so the snake can conserve it for hunting and protection. In addition, it appears that cobras can control the amount of venom delivered depending on the threat they face. However, cobras do not exhaust their store of venom, even after several strikes. Cobra bites can be fatal if not treated with anti-venom or an artificial respirator until the paralysis of the diaphragm muscle wears off. The venom includes a neurotoxin that causes problems with swallowing, vision, speaking, muscle weakness, difficulty breathing, respiratory failure, vomiting and abdominal pain. Other symptoms include necrosis of tissue in and around the bite site as well as anti-coagulation. It is a slow and very painful death if untreated, nothing like the quick and painless death the Egyptian queen would have preferred. It seems likely that William Shakespeare and Elizabeth Taylor have framed the snake, and that the real Cleopatra committed suicide by some other means, such as poison. Texas State Technical College took a step forward in its plans to build a brand new industrial training facility in Abilene when the Development Corporation of Abilene approved $4 million in funding for the new campus Monday. Pending City Council approval on Thursday, that money will be provided to the technical college system over 10 years, $400,000 per year, according to a news release. The DCOA also will provide 50 acres for the campus, included in the cost. The City Council will discuss the funding in closed session when it meets Thursday, starting at 8:30 a.m. TSTC requested aid last month from Abilene's private and public sectors to contribute $6 million to the project over a period of 10 years. Other community development organizations would provide an additional $2 million in funding. The Texas Legislature already authorized $12 million in "tuition revenue bonds for a new, state-of-the-art campus," according to the news release. The total estimated cost of the project is $18 million. If the Abilene City Council approves the expenditure, the new campus would serve high school students and older students to help meet worker shortages, the release states. "This new campus will be able to train approximately 600 new net positions each year from now through 2030 and 500 net new positions each year from 2030 through 2040," said Kent Sharp, DCOA CEO. "This will dramatically benefit those Abilene employers that have been asking for help to fill a long list of skilled positions." The campus also would benefit the economy by generating more than $19 million in economic output over the next 10 years through its operations, the news release states. Twitter: BrookeCrum_ARN The overall theme for this year's Holy Week Luncheon Series is "Double-Crossed," and the scriptural basis for Monday's talk provided a perfect example. The talk by Felicia Hopkins, senior pastor at St. Paul United Methodist Church, was based on John 8:1-12. It tells the story of the woman caught in adultery and the men who wanted to stone her to death. They piously ask Jesus, "What do you say?" The question was a trap. But when Jesus replied that any of the men without sin should be the first to throw a stone, they all walked away, one by one. It is a powerful lesson on many levels, Hopkins said. "Clearly, they are setting up a trap for him by using this defenseless woman," Hopkins said. But their plan backfired, providing a valuable lesson. "The trap we set for others," Hopkins said, "may be the trap we set for ourselves." Hopkins kicked off the annual luncheon series that will continue through Friday. Each day, the pastor of one of the five participating churches will speak at another's church. Lunch is served at 11:30 and the program begins about noon. On Tuesday, Jonathan Storment, preaching minister at Highland Church of Christ, will speak at First Christian Church, with Don Wilson, pastor of First Christian, serving as host. Monday's luncheon was held at First Baptist Church, with Phil Christopher, pastor, serving as host. In her talk Monday, Hopkins said the story of the woman caught in adultery is a lesson in grace the same grace that is available to all and the same grace that is sufficient to cover all transgressions. "Jesus gave her a second chance," Hopkins said. In the Scripture, the accusers drop the stones they are holding and walk away, one at a time. Then Jesus tells the woman that he does not condemn her and encourages her to leave her life of sin behind. On the way out of the luncheon, each guest was offered a small piece of stone to take as a reminder of the lesson. In her closing prayer, Hopkins gave a further reminder of what followers of Jesus should do when the temptation arises to throw a figurative stone at someone. "Let us go with our hands open and empty," she said, "with no stones to throw." HOLY WEEK LUNCHEON SERIES When: Tuesday, lunch 11:30 a.m.; program begins at noon Where: First Christian Church, 1420 N. Third St. Speaker: Jonathan Storment, preaching minister, Highland Church of Christ Sermon: "The Worst Thing You've Ever Done" Cost: Program is free; Lunch, $7 or bring your own Details: Childcare provided by each host church Jodey Arrington sat down with Reporter-News Monday, after the Texas Farm Bureau AGFUND endorsed Arrington at Frontier Texas! Facing former Lubbock Mayor Glen Robertson in a hotly-contested runoff May 24, Arrington is the organization's choice for the 19th Congressional District. "Texas farmers and ranchers are confident that Jodey Arrington will represent our interests in Washington," Jessica Richmond, state director for the Texas Farm Bureau (District 7), said. "He will champion the issues that are important to Texas agriculture." Arrington said the endorsement marked the fruit of his campaign's grass roots labor. "What we're experiencing right now in this district is a regional crisis, which is the viability of farmers and the farming industry but specifically the cotton processors," Arrington said. "If things don't change with our U.S. policy, we will lose half our cotton farmers next year," he said. "That will be disastrous for our economy. It is our identity as West Texans. It's more than just 24 million jobs. It's more than just the $100 billion of economic impact to the state of Texas; it is our way of life." A Plainview native, Arrington is looking to muster up all the backing he can. In the March 1 Republican primary, Robertson edged Arrington by less than a 1,000 votes, as they both beat Michael Bob Starr, former commander of Dyess Air Force Base. Robertson earned about 27 percent of votes, Arrington 26 percent and Starr 20 percent, in a field of eight candidates. Now, Arrington says he will look to gain the support of Starr, adding that he would be honored to have him on his side. "I don't think Abilene could have put forth a better candidate that reflected any more positively on this community," Arrington said. "And he ran a clean race to the end." But he did not mince his words when it came to advertisements ran by Robertson against both Arrington and Starr, saying that Robertson intentionally mislead voters with Washington-style politics. "I'm not for win at all cost political tactics," Arrington said. "I'd rather lose than to compromise my integrity. I'm not willing to say or do anything to win this election." Arrington, a former George W. Bush aide and Texas Tech University administrator, said his time in Washington makes him prepared to deal with the challenges that will come with taking over the seat soon-to-be vacated by the retiring Randy Neugebauer. The winner of the runoff will not face a Democratic opponent in November. "It was a privilege to serve my country and state with George W. Bush," Arrington said, adding he did not always see eye-to-eye with Bush. "For example, I did not support No Child Left Behind," he said. "Education issues are the authority and responsibility of the state and local school districts, not the federal government." Arrington said under Bush, as chief of staff at the FDIC, his team was able to reduced the agency by 25 percent and cut spending by millions of dollars. During the March 1 primary, Arrington's campaign spent about $350,000, about $25,000 of which he contributed personally. Arrington now hopes to raise half a million dollars to "finish strong." He said his runoff campaign has only raised about $75,000 to date. No matter how much funding he raises, Arrington maintains his focus is to serve the people of the 29-county 19th Congressional District. He said he hopes voters understand it will take working with others to get things done in Washington. "If you come from a rural district and you don't have the votes, like we don't, you cannot build a relationship and find a path to move forward," he said. "I'm interested in leading and doing. I'm not interested in being a guy who just votes conservatively. If that's all people expect, then I'm not the guy." The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee met last week to witness one of the most common of Washington exercises: buck-passing. Michigan Gov. Rick Snyder testified that "career bureaucrats" were responsible for the disastrous lead poisoning in Flint's tap water, and the Republican placed another heap of blame on the federal Environmental Protection Agency for failing to act sooner. EPA Administrator Gina McCarthy shot back that the state created the problem and dragged its feet when the EPA started to ask questions. In fact, government at every level bears some responsibility. The state is most to blame. As McCarthy pointed out, a state-appointed emergency manager sanctioned switching the city's water source to the corrosive Flint River, and state environmental regulators, who are the responsible, frontline officials under federal law, failed to ensure people did not get poisoned. A state investigation pointed squarely at the Michigan Department of Environmental Quality. Snyder himself deserves blame for apparently remaining oblivious to lead contamination months after Flint residents began complaining about disgusting water. Even McCarthy admitted, however, that the EPA could have acted more forcefully, particularly as the potential for an extremely serious public-health problem became clearer. "I wish we had yelled it from the treetops," she said. Susan Hedman, a top EPA official who resigned over the Flint situation, said in a hearing earlier last week, "I don't think anyone at the EPA did anything wrong, but I do believe we could have done more." In this horrifying case, that is a distinction without much of a difference. The EPA's Republican antagonists bear some blame, too not for poisoning Flint's water, but for galling hypocrisy afterward. They frequently complain that the EPA runs roughshod over state prerogatives, and they routinely attempt to undermine the agency. Yet now they focus their fire on the EPA for failing to act aggressively. In fact, what their questioning showed is that hamstringing federal environmental regulators, who tend to have more expertise, in favor of state officials can have disastrous consequences. It would be an outrageous irony if they used the Flint episode as pretext to undercut the EPA further. The most useful part of last week's Flint hearings did not concern the proper distribution of blame. Lawmakers also brought attention to the task ahead, which will require decades of effort. First there is the question of making the city's water safe again. Flint River water has corroded the city's plumbing, so even switching back to water from Lake Huron has not fixed the problem. Many pipes will have to be replaced. Yet fixing the infrastructure is easy compared with the public-health challenge. Some of the worst consequences including permanent developmental disabilities will be felt by the youngest. Snyder repeatedly assured lawmakers that the state has hundreds of millions of dollars set aside to deal with the consequences. But will state leaders feel as generous five, 10 or 30 years from now? The state must ensure that resources will be available for as long as Flint's residents, who were betrayed by their government, need them. The Washington Post Advertisement - Continue Reading Below This just in... July 7, 1937 March 19, 2016 Ann Olsen was born in Albany to Francis George and Ruby Rebecca (Parker) Olsen. Annie grew up on the family farm in North Albany and graduated from Albany Union High School in 1954. She developed a beautiful singing voice and performed at many events in her hometown. At Portland State University, she majored in math and took leading roles in many stage productions, including starring as Laurey in Oklahoma! and Cherie in Bus Stop. In 1959 she followed her drama professor to Northwestern University and attended graduate school there and also spent two summers with the Clark Lake (Michigan) Players Theater. She married Sgt. Thomas Bryson Baldwin on Sept. 1, 1961, in Manchester, Michigan. Their son, Mark Bryson Baldwin, to whom Ann remained close all her life, was born three years later. Another son, Michael Nelson Baldwin, was born in 1968 but died in infancy. Her husband, Tom, was a Green Beret in the U.S. Army, and the family followed him to his military postings. Ann was a popular and highly successful math teacher in Fayetteville, North Carolina, with a great talent for helping students understand math at a deep level. After teaching at a military school in Okinawa in the early 1970s she returned to Oregon, where she spent most of the rest of her life in Albany and Lincoln City. She ran an organic farm, Mark's Market, and The Top Shop from her home on North Albany Road, manufacturing canvas boat tops. As her grateful Fayetteville students wrote in her yearbooks, Ann was a person full of life and laughter, with a beaming, sparkling personality. Her dramatic, musical and artistic talents, as well as her ability to connect with young people, were hallmarks of her life. Ann had a terrific memory, and was a great storyteller of family history. Ann is survived by her son, Mark Bryson Baldwin of Albany and partner Kathy Harrington; granddaughter Amandine Kastler of London; and "adopted" son Mark Cox of Albany. She was also very close to her sister-in-law, Carolyn Olsen, four Olsen nephews, and countless relatives in the Parker and Olsen clans. A celebration of life will be determined. Memorial contributions may be made to World Wildlife Fund, Oregon Public Broadcasting or the American Civil Liberties Union. Prime Minister Hun Sen has urged local authorities to ignore a Cambodian Supreme Court ruling in a land-grab case that favored the claim of a local villager in the Banteay Meanchey province over a cadre of soldiers, RFAs Khmer Service has learned. The case pitted Tout Sopheak and her family against five soldiers and their families in a dispute over who gets the deed to four hectares of land, a portion of which fronts National Road 5 in the OChrov district. While the Supreme Court in 2011 ruled that the land belongs to the Tout Sopheak family, local authorities have refused to enforce the order against the soldiers who are occupying the land, she told RFAs Khmer Service. Hun Sen speaks Getting the courts order enforced may have become even more difficult after Prime Minister Hun Sen weighed in on the issue after he saw a video the soldiers and their families posted on Facebook that sought his intervention in the dispute. On Monday, Hun Sen called the ruling an injustice for the soldiers and ordered Banteay Meanchey Governor Koh Sum Saroeuth to cease enforcement of the Supreme Courts order saying the case is unusual and the verdict is a shame. The soldiers went to defend their country, but when they came back, even their own homes couldnt be defended, he said during an event organized by the Ministry of Finance. Even Minister of Defense Tea Banh has to feel for this. Tout Sopheak told RFA that it is the defense ministry that started the dispute in the first place. While the soldiers and their families have been living on the land since early 1990s, it was the military that forced her and her family off the land. Confiscated tractor The pregnant woman claimed that her family cultivated rice on the land of from 1989 to 1993, but stopped when the soldier commanding the unit stationed nearby confiscated their tractor and the soldiers started farming the land for themselves. The commander stopped my father from growing any rice on the land where he used to grow rice, she told RFA. While that commander died in 1997, the soldiers continue to treat the land as their own, she said. Khut Tol, commander of Small Battalion 511 and Tout Sopheaks brother-in-law, refuses to honor the Supreme Court verdict, Tout Sopheak said. For more than four years now, the problem has not been solved, she said. Even to the point that Khut Tol threatened to shoot my father in front of the land conflict committee. Khut Tol told RFA he wasnt a sore loser, but that the decision treats the soldiers families unfairly. When the Banteay Meanchey Courts Chief Prosecutor Phann Vanrath came and asked me to move my home out of the controversial lands, I asked: What is the reason for the move? he told RFA. Five families depend on that land. While the case is important to the families embroiled in the dispute, enforcing the verdict may be more important for Cambodia as a whole, said ADHOC Coordinator Mr. Sum Chan Kea. Interference with the court system will bias the results of the case, he said. In order to build trust with the people that the court is the institution independent from the executive, the final verdict of the Supreme Court should be enforced. The seizure of land for developmentoften without due process or fair compensation for displaced residentshas been a major cause of protest in Cambodia and other authoritarian Asian countries, including China and Myanmar. Reported by Hour Hum for RFA's Khmer Service. Translated by Pganawath Khun. Written in English by Brooks Boliek. Aung San Suu Kyi, chairwoman of the National League for Democracy (NLD), leaves parliament after meeting with lawmakers from her party in Naypyidaw, March 14, 2016. Myanmars president-elect Htin Kyaw on Tuesday nominated Aung San Suu Kyi for a top ministerial post in the incoming government in a bid to ensure that she holds a key post in the developing democracy. A provision in Myanmars constitution, drafted in 2008 by the countrys former ruling military junta, prohibits her from becoming president. The list of 18 candidates submitted by Htin Kyaw to parliament contains the names of technocrats, former senior government officials, six National League for Democracy (NLD) party loyalists, military officers, and two members of the outgoing Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), but does not specify who is being put forward for each portfolio, according to local media. Unconfirmed reports, however, indicate that Htin Kyaw, a close aide to Aung San Suu Kyi, has put her forward as minister of foreign affairs and possibly as the head of three other ministrieseducation, electric power and energy, and the Presidents Office. Members of parliament [MPs] can support or reject the list of names for 21 ministerial posts proposed by the president-elect during the parliamentary meeting on March 24, said Mahn Win Khaing Than, speaker of the upper house of parliament, who read out the names on the list to lawmakers. Anyone who wants to reject a name must submit his proposal to the speaker of parliament with documents proving that the nominee is unqualified according to the constitution, he said. News of the list contradicts reports on Monday by local media that Aung San Suu Kyi would continue as chairwoman of the NLD, but not hold any government positions. It now appears she will relinquish her party position and join the cabinet. Forfeiting her status Aung San Suu Kyi, whose party overwhelmingly won national elections in November, has said she would run Myanmar from a position above the president to circumvent the provision in the constitution, which bars her from the nations top office because her two sons are foreign nationals, as was her late husband. If lawmakers approve Aung San Suu Kyi for one or more posts when they make their selections on Thursday, she would have to forfeit her status as an MP and NLD chairwoman, said jurist Than Maung. According to the constitution and other laws, a minister or a vice minister shouldnt be an MP, he said. If Aung San Suu Kyi is accepted as a minister, she has to quit being a lawmaker. Than Maung also pointed out that the constitution says political party members who become government ministers cannot hold a position of responsibility in their party during their ministerial term. He noted that when outgoing President Thein Sein assumed his post five years ago, he transferred his power as chairman of the Union Solidarity and Development party (USDP) to Shwe Mann, former speaker of the lower house of parliament. NLD spokesman Nyan Win said the members of the partys Central Executive Committee have not yet discussed the issue, but would have to hold a meeting to select a new chairperson if lawmakers confirm Aung San Suu Kyis nomination for any ministerial post. Balance of power But Than Maung also said that as minister of foreign affairs, Aung San Suu Kyi could balance the power on the countrys 11-member National Defense and Security Council, a presidential advisory group dominated by the military. According to the constitution, the council must include the president, two vice presidents, two parliamentary speakers, military commander-in-chief, vice military commander-in-chief, and the ministers of foreign affairs, home affairs, defense, and border affairs. Myanmars powerful military, which by constitutional guarantee controls a quarter of the seats in parliament, also oversees three key security-related ministrieshome affairs, defense, and border affairs. Three of the these ministers have to be from the military, but if Aung San Suu Kyi takes the foreign affairs minister position, the balance of power with 11 positions on the council could change, he said. Lieutenants-General Sein Win, Kyaw Swe and Ye Aung are the officers on the list of ministerial nominees who will take up the three ministries controlled by the ministry. The three nominees from military are middle-liners and not strangers to Aung San Suu Kyi because they have met with her, said political commentator Yan Myo Thien. Aung San Suu Kyi has long been at odds with the military, which opposed changes she wanted to make to the constitution that would have reduced its power in parliament and allowed her to become president. The relationship between the military and civilians will become better under Aung San Suu Kyis leadership, but there will be even less possibility of amending the 2008 constitution, Yan Myo Thien said. Other nominees Pe Myint, an ethnic Arakan writer who is editor-in-chief of a weekly political affairs journal and vice chairman of the Myanmar Press Council, has been confirmed on the list of nominees as being tapped to serve as information minister. Kyaw Win, an NLD lawmaker who told RFA that he has been nominated to lead the Ministry of Planning and Finance, said that if selected, he would address corruption problems and not raise taxes. Naing Thet Lwin an ethnic minority from the Mon National Party, has been confirmed among the list of candidates to become head of the newly created Ethnic Affairs Ministry. As the nominee for the ethnic affairs ministry post, I will be assigned my duties by the president, he told RFA. I accepted the nomination for the appointment as ethnic affairs minister because I believe we can achieve peace if new government, ethnic groups and military collaborates with willingness, generosity and honesty. The NLD-led government will officially come into power on April 1. Reported by Win Naung Toe, Thinn Thiri, Khin Khin Ei, Zin Mar Tun, Myo Thant Khine, Win Ko Ko Latt and Khet Mar for RFAs Myanmar Service. Translated by Khet Mar. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin. Authorities in southwestern Chinas Sichuan province have released a Tibetan man from prison after he served a seven-year sentence for activities opposing Beijings rule in Tibetan areas, sources in the region said. Joleb Jigme, aged around 40, returned on March 21 to his home in Ngaba (in Chinese, Aba) county, where he was greeted warmly by friends and supporters, a Tibetan living in the area told RFAs Tibetan Service, communicating via social media. Among those welcoming Jigme on his return was the Tibetan writer Theurang, who had been detained six years before for leading a student protest and contacting writers and exile organizations outside the region, RFAs source said, speaking on condition of anonymity. Jigme was handed a seven-year prison term in 2009 by the Peoples Intermediate Court in Ngaba following his conviction on a charge of revealing state secrets, an accusation frequently leveled against Tibetans seeking to spread news of political protests to areas outside Chinese control. He was formerly a monk in Ngabas Kirti monastery, a scene of repeated self-immolations and other protests by monks, former monks, and nuns opposed to Chinese rule in Tibetan areas. In 1992, Jigme was jailed for a year by Chinese authorities on an earlier charge of having committed political offenses. Sporadic demonstrations challenging Chinese rule have continued in Tibetan-populated areas of China since widespread protests swept the region in 2008, with 144 Tibetans to date setting themselves ablaze in fiery self-immolations. Most of the burnings have featured demands for Tibetan freedom and the return of exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama, while a handful have been over local land or property disputes. Reported by Chakmo Tso for RFAs Tibetan Service. Translated by Dorjee Damdul. Written in English by Richard Finney. For nearly eight years, Chinas state-owned media has touted the story of a 76-year-old Uyghur woman in the countrys northwestern Xinjiang region for raising nine orphans from four different ethnic groups as part of its propaganda to convey that the restive area is a harmonious society, Uyghur sources said. The Chinese Communist Partys (CCP) The Peoples Daily newspaper, China Central Television (CCTV), and Sina Online have continuously reported the story of Hanipa Alimahun, who has raised Uyghur, Han Chinese, Hui, and Kazakh orphans in Chinggil (in Chinese, Qinghe) county of Altay (Aletai) prefecture. She has been widely described by the CCP as the best example of a local who has devoted herself to Chinas goal of ethnic unity, a major precept of socialist morals. As a result, Alimahun, who describes herself as an ordinary Uyghur woman, holds the honorific titles of Mother of China and Most Beautiful Mother in China. A movie based on her life story titled The True Love was released nationwide in 2014 to deliver the message of national unity among the countrys 55 ethnic minority groups. But Alimahun began grabbing headlines in China only after riots broke out in the regional capital Urumqi (Wulumuqi) on July 5, 2009. On that day, what began as a peaceful protest against Chinese authorities soon turned violent with police attacking Uyghurs, and Uyghurs attacking Han Chinese, leaving an indelible stain on the CCPs image of a harmonious society, which authorities frequently use to describe relations between the two ethnic groups in Xinjiang. All major Chinese media outlets have emphasized that Alimahuns actions are proof that Chinas 56 ethnic groups belong to the Unified Great Family of China, Uyghur sources said. Furthermore, the CCP, though its media mouthpieces, has implied that ethnic unity has been the main motive for her adoption of the orphans. Spreading propaganda in her name Rahile, a Uyghur who immigrated to Germany from Xinjiang in the 2000s and wanted to be identified only by her first name, said she is very skeptical about the CCPs purported motive of Alimahuns adoptions, contending that the Chinese government is spreading political propaganda in her name to gloss over the increasingly contentions relations between Han Chinese and local Uyghurs in the region. The Uyghurs and Han Chinese in East Turkestan dont trust each other anymore, particularly after the July 5th incident, Rahile said, referring to the name, strictly prohibited in China, that Uyghurs use to refer to Xinjiang. They are now enemies, she said, adding that the growing mutual ethnic hatred is one of the top issues in Xinjiang and the reason authorities may have come up with the idea of a mother who advocates ethnic unity in China. Abduweli Ayup, a Uyghur linguist who currently lives in Turkey after spending 18 months in prison in Xinjiang for operating a Uyghur-language kindergarten and school in Kashgar (Kashi) even though it complied with Chinese law, told RFA it is a tradition among Uyghurs to adopt orphans, regardless of their ethnic origin. We never let an orphan die, he said. For us, orphans never come with ethnic labels. Its very sad to hear that Hanipa has been politicized by the CCP on purpose, Ayub said, adding that ethnic unity should be established based on equal rights for every ethnic group, not just on political propaganda. No political motivation Alimahun told RFAs Uyghur Service on March 18 that she has adopted the orphans solely out of the kindness of her heart and without any social or political motivations. I like to cook for my children, who number more than 20, Alimahun said during the phone interview. As an orphan herself, Alimahun said she suffered greatly financially and emotionally during the chaotic 1960s when the CCP wrapped up its disastrous economic and social campaign known as the Great Leap Forward (1958-61) and embarked on the destructive Cultural Revolution (1966-76). During this time, she began adopting abandoned infants soon after she got married, without regard to their ethnicity or family background, she said. By the end of the 1970s, she and her husband had 19 children, including nine of their own. But she said she never wanted her story to be publicized to serve government propaganda purposes. At the end of 2009, however, Alimahun began to appear in the media as an advocator of ethnic unity among Uyghur locals, she said. I didnt hope to gain anything in return for protecting orphans, she said. Im just a woman, and Im a mother who loves kids. Alimahun, who is fluent in both Uyghur and Kazakh, said she had only been interviewed through a translator by Han Chinese reporters who did not speak her mother tongue. Because of her very limited Mandarin language skills, she has been unable to read and evaluate the accuracy of their reports. I couldnt figure out what they [the translators] said to the reporters, she said. It seems that sometimes they were not translating precisely. Alimahun also said she was taken by surprise when government authorities in Beijing , Urumqi and Altay prefecture offered her money two years ago to demolish her old house and build a larger, two-story residence for her large family. The second floor of the new house, which serves as an exhibition hall filled with photos of her and certificates awarded by the authorities, is frequently visited by various groups of people, including elementary schoolchildren, she said. Chinas constitution and its Regional Ethnic Autonomy law guarantee minority groups, including the Uyghurs, the right to use their own languages, though authorities have been phasing out Uyghur-language education in schools. Authorities have imposed other curbs on the culture and language of the Uyghur people, including videos and other material, restricted Islamic practices, and raided Uyghur households in recent years as part of a strike hard campaign to crack down on members of the Turkic-speaking, Muslim minority group, whom they view as potential terrorists. Reported by Kurban Niyaz for RFAs Uyghur Service. Translated by Kurban Niyaz. Written in English by Roseanne Gerin. For all the freedoms that have evaporated under Vladimir Putin's rule, one has remained untouched -- the right to travel abroad. But now even that may be in danger. Vladimir Makarov, a top Interior Ministry official, has called for barring Russians suspected of extremism from leaving the country. If this proposal ever gains traction, it will no doubt be presented as an effort to prevent potential terrorists from receiving training abroad. But given the Russian authorities' rather flexible definition of extremism, it could -- and let's be honest, probably would -- also result in any opponents of the Kremlin being deprived of their right to foreign travel. As veteran Kremlin-watcher Paul Goble wrote on his blog, numerous Russian opposition figures have concluded that they have no future in Putin's Russia and have already emigrated. And Makarov's announcement may encourage more Kremlin opponents, fearing that their right to travel may soon be revoked, to make the decision to leave as well. Which, let's face it, was probably the real reason for Makarov's statement in the first place. As a result of Putin's rule, the most vibrant centers of Russian culture in the world may soon be places like Tallinn, Riga, Vilnius, London, and New York -- but not Moscow and St. Petersburg. Keep telling me what you think in the comments section, on the Power Vertical's Twitter feed, and on our Facebook page. ALBANY POLICE Stolen trailer 2:27 a.m. Saturday, 1500 block North Ranch Drive N.W. A trailer worth $1,200 was reported stolen from a property. Burglary, officers assaulted 3:32 p.m. Sunday, 5000 block Pacific Boulevard. A caller reported a domestic disturbance at a residence, and a suspect ran out the backdoor. Less than an hour later, the suspect was back at the location, trying to break in the front door, a caller said. When police officers arrived, the suspect fought with the officers, one of whom suffered a concussion. Teddy Nelson Johnston, 28, of Lebanon, was arrested. He was charged in Linn County Circuit Court on Monday with two counts of assaulting a public safety officer, first-degree criminal mischief, first-degree burglary and resisting arrest. Johnston was given a conditional release by Judge Carol Bispham and scheduled to appear in court on April 14. Robbery 2:56 p.m. Sunday, McDonalds, 1820 Pacific Blvd. S.W. A caller reported being robbed at gunpoint 10 minutes earlier during a drug deal. The victim told police she was delivering two ounces of marijuana, but then refused to cooperate further with the investigation. LINN COUNTY SHERIFF DUII crash, officer assault 1:19 a.m. Saturday, 38900 block Highway 226, near Scio. A caller reported an intoxicated motorist. The driver apparently crashed into a ditch off Fish Hatchery Road and was trapped inside his vehicle until he punched out a window. The suspect was transported to Samaritan Lebanon Community Hospital for a hand injury and struggled with deputies both inside and outside the facility. He was treated only when law enforcement personnel held him down. Matthew Allen Westbrook, 29, of Lebanon, was arrested on charges of assaulting a public safety officer, driving under the influence of intoxicants, failure to perform the duties of a driver (property damage), resisting arrest, reckless driving and third-degree criminal mischief. He was released from jail and scheduled to appear in court on April 27. Burglary 3:39 p.m. Sunday, S & S Trading Post, 360 Broadway St., Mill City. Two chainsaws and other hand tools were stolen from the business. The loss value was more than $1,000. Belarusian Foreign Minister Uladzimer Makey says his country wants "to normalize ties" with the European Union. Makey said after talks in Minsk with his Polish counterpart, Witold Waszczykowski, on March 22 that Belarus plans "to diversify its foreign political and economic activities." Makey added that boosting ties with Poland and other EU countries would occur while preserving relations with Russia, which he called Minsk's "major partner." Last month, the EU ended five years of sanctions against Belarus and the country's longtime president, Alyaksandr Lukashenka, praising Belarusian authorities for their release of political prisoners in August and for Minsk's role in hosting international talks on curtailing the fighting in eastern Ukraine. Based on reporting by Belapan and Interfax The body of Ukrainian journalist Heorhiy Gongadze has been buried in Kyiv, nearly 16 years after his killing, but family and friends say their fight for justice is not over. Gongadze, a dogged investigative reporter who exposed high-level political corruption, was kidnapped in September 2000. His headless body was found that November in a forest outside the Ukrainian capital. After years in a morgue, his body was buried on March 22 on the grounds of a Kyiv church. His widow, Myroslava, the head of VOA's Ukrainian Service, and two daughters, Solomia and Nana, flew in from Washington to attend the ceremony. Gongadze's relatives "feel relieved that Heorhiy's body has been buried with the dignity every person deserves," according to a statement from the family that was read at the funeral by a friend of Gongadze's, journalist Yevhen Hlibovytskyy. "Whoever contracted his murder must sooner or later be convicted by law," the statement read. "The rule of law is the path to establish justice in society. Freedom of speech and democracy in Ukraine will be the best memory of Heorhiy." 'No Expiration Date' Friends of Gongadze emphasized in interviews with RFE/RL's Ukrainian Service that the investigation into his killing which is widely believed to have been a contract murder -- should continue until whoever was behind it is prosecuted and punished. Leonid Kuchma, who was president from July 1994 to January 2005, came under suspicion after the publication of a tape on which a voice that sounded like his spoke of the need to "deal with" Gongadze. Prosecutors charged Kuchma with involvement in the case in 2011, but a court dropped the charges later that year. In 2008, three former police officers were sentenced to lengthy prison terms after being convicted of involvement in the killing. In 2012, former top police official General Oleksiy Pukach received life in prison after being convicted of strangling Gongadze to death. WATCH: Heorhiy Gongadze's Funeral In Kyiv Yehor Checherynda, a journalist and former colleague of Gongadze's, said that Kuchma had been Gongadze's "enemy number one." Much of the slain journalist's investigative work dealt with Kuchma and his inner circle. "[Kuchma was] the enemy of the press, the enemy of all non-liberties in Ukraine. It's a shame, I think, that now this person represents Ukraine in some international organizations," Checherynda said. Many people present at the ceremony expressed hope that justice will prevail. Viktoria Syumar, head of the Committee on Freedom of Speech and Information Policy in Ukraine's parliament, said that Ukraine would not change unless the country finds out everything about his murder. Death And Dignity "I think it's a matter of honor for young politicians and those politicians who came to power on the wave of the Revolution of Dignity to conduct objective investigations...so society can finally see those who are guilty behind bars," she said. Many Ukrainians refer to the pro-Western protests that pushed Russia-friendly President Viktor Yanukovych from power in 2014 as the Revolution of Dignity. Rostyslav Pavlenko, deputy head of President Petro Poroshenko's administration, also said it is crucial to get to the bottom of Gongadze's killing. "A case like this has no expiration date, and society must know the answers," he said, adding that "the government will do everything it takes for it to happen." Gongadze's mother, Lesya Gongadze, fought for answers until her death in November 2013. She did not believe that the body in the morgue was her son's. MOSCOW -- The death toll was still mounting in the Brussels bombings when prominent Russian officials, lawmakers, and pro-Kremlin pundits began using the attack to criticize Europe. Russians brought flowers to the Belgian Embassy in Moscow, and officials from President Vladimir Putin on down offered condolences over the attack. At the same time, senior officials and lawmakers undermined those signals of solidarity with a far less sympathetic message to the West: It's your own fault. Prominent Putin allies in government, parliament, and punditry cast the attack as the result of what they claimed are the "double standards" in the Western governments' approach to Islamist militants. They accused the West of playing up a threat from Russia while ignoring what Putin says is the need to cooperate more closely with Moscow in combtting terrorism. "While [NATO Secretary General Jens] Stoltenberg...fights the imaginary 'Russian threat' and sends troops to Latvia, people are being blown up in Brussels right under his nose," Aleksei Pushkov, chairman of the international affairs committee in the State Duma, Russia's lower parliament house, wrote on Twitter. In a separate tweet, Pushkov also offered condolences but he added that "It's time for Europe to realize where the real threat comes from and join forces with Russia." 'Just Desserts' Several prominent figures suggested Western countries were getting what they deserved for in Russia's narrative supporting "terrorists" when it suits their geopolitical interests. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova offered condolences as well, while in the same breath suggesting Europe has nobody to blame but itself. "You can't support terrorists in one place and think that they won't come to you," Zakharova was quoted by Komsomolskaya Pravda as saying."You must not divide terrorists into good and bad, you must not support them in the Middle East and the North Caucasus and then think that they won't come to another part of the planet." Putin has frequently accused the United States and other Western countries of lending support in the past to militants in Russia's North Caucasus, though Washington and other governments deny these claims. More recently, Western countries have supported some Syrian opposition groups that Moscow and its ally, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, call terrorists. Live Blog: Brussels Attacks Igor Korotchenko, a pro-Kremlin military journalist who appears regularly on state television, was quoted by a Kremlin pool journalist as saying: "Europe is paying for the double standards of its politicians. They didn't draw conclusions from the terrorist attacks in Paris." Politicians who are cast as the "opposition" but often toe the Kremlin line also got into the act. The head of Russia's Communist Party, Gennady Zyuganov, said Europe is now paying "bloody tribute" after declining Putin's proposal to establish a "powerful international coalition in the struggle with terrorism." Zyuganov said Europe is acting in contravention of its own interests because of "its need to be subordinate to Uncle Sam," state-run news agency RIA reported. 'Deport All Migrants' Flamboyant ultranationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky, head of the Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), said Europe should let Russia send riot police to deal with its migrant and refugee crisis. "After the terrorist attack, Europeans need to shut their borders, isolate all migrants and gradually deport them from the Schengen zone," he wrote on Twitter. "If the Europeans can't manage themselves let them invite Russia's spetsnaz, our spets guys," he wrote, referring to elite Russian security forces. "We know how to fight this infection." In Ukraine, the head of the state Security Service (SBU) suggested that blame for the Brussels attacks might lie not with Europe at all but with Russia -- a remark swiftly denounced in Moscow as outrageous. "I wouldn't be surprised if this is an element of Russia's hybrid war," SBU head Vasyl Hrytsak was quoted as saying while speaking at a university. Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev called Hrytsak a "moron" in a Facebook post, while Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zakharova called him a "non-human." Russia's seizure of Crimea and support for separatists in a conflict that has killed more than 9,100 people in eastern Ukraine are seen by many analysts as part of a "hybrid war" against the West. Not all Russians, meanwhile, were on board with the rhetoric coming from on high. "Are you not ashamed to write this?" Twitter user Boris Livshits wrote in response to Pushkov's comment. "Could you just send people your condolences, eh?" At least two pro-Kremlin media outlets issued reports on March 22 claiming that three former residents of Belarus are suspected of involvement in the deadly attacks in Brussels. But one of the men named in the stories published by LifeNews and Sputnik said the reports are false -- saying, among other things, that he and the other men could not have been suicide bombers because they are still alive. The reports are the latest example of "yellow journalism and nonsensical efforts of miserable journalists" to "get their next little star," Ivan Doubash told RFE/RL. He said Belgian authorities have told the men they were unaware of any accusations against them. Doubash and his brother Alyaksey -- who go by the first names Suleiman and Khalid -- are named as suspects in the Brussels attack in a Sputnik story that cites an unidentified "high-level employee of the Belarusian law enforcement organs." Live Blog: Brussels Attacks Belarusian KGB spokesman Dzmitry Pabyarzhyn told RFE/RL that the security service is "aware of their existence," adding that their activities were being examined. The spokesman, however, refused to comment about whether they were suspects in the Brussels attacks. 'Third Man' The reports name a third man, Marat Yunusov, who they say was born in Daghestan, in Russia's North Caucasus region, but later became a citizen of Belarus. Belgian authorities have made no public mention of any possible Belarusian connection in the attacks. LifeNews claimed that Russian intelligence officials told Belgian authorities that the three men were members of the extremist group Islamic State and were planning an attack, but did not indicate when that was done. It cited an unnamed source as saying the men traveled to Belgium in February. Contacted by RFE/RL through a social-media account using the name Suleiman Doubash, Ivan Doubash said that he, his older brother, and Yunusov were all in Brussels. Doubash complained about a growing number of Russian media reports on the three since LifeNews described them as potential "suicide attackers" in a March 14 story. "The police didn't try to find us," he said. "Nobody even telephoned. Don't you find that strange? The information from the secret services was checked. It's not difficult for the police to ascertain whether we ever traveled to Syria or not." "We've contacted the [Belgian security services] for an explanation," he continued. "They told us they know nothing [about the accusations] and they have nothing against us." "What's most important," Doubash added, "is that if we are suicide attackers, why are we still alive? And if we're terrorists, why haven't we been arrested?" The Daily Vertical is a video primer for Russia-watchers that appears Monday through Friday. Viewers can suggest topics via Twitter @PowerVertical or on the Power Vertical Facebook page. A transcript of today's Daily Vertical can be found here. The new year got off to a rocky start in the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e Sharif when someone tore down towering images of a controversial former warlord and current government official. On the eve of Norouz, the Persian new year that was celebrated on March 20, many of the billboards featuring Vice President Abdul Rashid Dostum that lined city streets were defaced or ripped down altogether. In the aftermath, officials in the capital of Balkh Province had to scramble to avoid a confrontation by condemning the damage done to the billboards and ordering them to be replaced. Within hours after the billboards were damaged, Dostum rival Atta Mohammad Noor, himself a former warlord and the current acting Balkh governor, had posted a lengthy message on his Facebook account, blaming them on people who sought to create chaos in Balkh. In the message -- titled "urgent" -- the governor warned against possible riots and disruption. Security forces managed to block roads and prevent hundreds of men from entering Mazar-e Sharif on March 21 as Norouz celebrations were under way. But the next day hundreds of angry Dostum supporters took to the streets, accusing the local government of not taking measures to find and punish the culprits, while others believed to be supporters of Noor rallied in an effort to counter Dostum's supporters. The ethnic Uzbek Dostum enjoys huge influence in Afghanistan's northwest, where he has been leading a military offensive. But while he and Noor recently formed an unlikely alliance to combat the Taliban, Noor's Jamiat-e-Islami party and Dostum's Junbish-e Milliparty have a history of past hostilities. Dostum has not publicly commented on the vandalism or on those protesting on his behalf, but his party said they were peaceful protesters who were seeking an explanation for the removal of the portraits. Authorities, meanwhile, dismissed allegations of a "counter-rally," saying Noor supporters had in fact gathered to show solidarity with pro-Dostum rally. After several hours of marching and chanting, protesters left and officials said calm and Dostum's new portraits had returned to the city. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump said the United States should significantly cut spending on the NATO military alliance. "We certainly can't afford to do this anymore," the GOP frontrunner told The Washington Post on March 21. "NATO is costing us a fortune, and yes, we're protecting Europe with NATO, but we're spending a lot of money." The United States has long called on NATO allies to step up their spending on the alliance, which has been a lynchpin of U.S. foreign relations for nearly 70 years. U.S. military spending accounted for 72 percent of the NATO total last year. NATO countries have pledged to increase their spending to 2 percent of gross domestic product, but only five member states currently meet that target: Britain, Estonia, Greece, Poland, and the United States. "We are paying disproportionately. It's too much and frankly it's a different world than it was when we originally conceived of the idea," Trump told CNN. While pulling back from NATO, Trump has said he would work more closely with Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose military intervention in Ukraine has increased tensions with NATO. Based on reporting by dpa and Reuters Two people have been hospitalized following an explosion in the central Ukrainian city of Kirovohrad. The blast occurred on March 22 in the city's central Bohdan Khmelnitskiy Square. Two cars were damaged by the explosion. Law enforcement officials in the region of Kirovohrad said that an unknown explosive device has detonated in a metallic garbage bin. Investigations have been launched into the incident. Last year, a series of bomb blasts hit Ukraine's eastern city of Kharkiv and southern port city of Odesa. Authorities blamed the explosions on Russia and groups linked to pro-Russian separatists in the countrys east. Based on reporting by UNIAN and Interfax The URL has been copied to your clipboard The code has been copied to your clipboard. BRUSSELS -- Belgium is observing three days of mourning after three bomb blasts in Brussels killed at least 31 people and wounded 270. Twin explosions at Zaventem airport and another at a metro station on March 22 were claimed by the Islamic State extremist group. The federal prosecutor said on March 23 that two brothers -- Khalid and Brahim el-Bakraoui -- carried out the suicide bombings at the airport and on the subway. One of them left a will on a computer that was found. Prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said two other suspects captured on CCTV at the airport have yet to be identified. Hundreds of people gathered in a historic city square overnight, lighting candles and placing flowers in a vigil for the victims. A minute of silence will be held at midday. Belgian officials have increased security and launched searches around the country after the attacks, which were claimed by the extremist group Islamic State. Live Blog: Brussels Attacks Belgium raised its terror alert to its highest level and dispatched 225 extra troops to Brussels following what Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel called "violent, cowardly" terrorist attacks. More than 180 people were reported wounded in the attacks, with Health Minister Maggie de Block saying many were in serious condition. Belgian security forces conducted raids in the Schaerbeek area of the Belgian capital and reportedly found explosives and an Islamic State (IS) flag. An Islamic State website said its "soldiers of the caliphate" had carried out the attack. AMAQ, a news agency affiliated with Islamic State extremists, carried the claim of responsibility. "Islamic State fighters carried out a series of bombings with explosive belts and devices on Tuesday, targeting an airport and a central metro station in the center of the Belgian capital Brussels," it said. U.S. President Barack Obama condemned the "outrageous attacks against innocent people, and EU leaders expressed anger over what Sweden's prime minister called an "attack against democratic Europe." Public transport was shut down in Brussels, incoming planes and trains were diverted, and authorities urged residents to "stay where you are." EU personnel were instructed to remain indoors, and flags outside the European Commission flew at half-staff. EU President Donald Tusk said, "These attacks mark another low by the terrorists in the service of hatred and violence." Photos posted on the Internet showed gruesome scenes of damage and destruction at the airport. A security worker who helped carry the bodies of victims outside told Reuters that some of them had "their legs destroyed, as if the bomb came from a piece of luggage" on the floor. Belgium has been in the spotlight since militants living there helped carry out coordinated attacks that killed 130 people in Paris on November 13. The March 22 blasts came four days after Salah Abdeslam, the chief surviving suspect in the Paris attacks, was captured following after a shoot-out in Brussels. Belgian security forces had been on alert for any reprisal action. Brussels Mayor Yvan Mayeur reported that 14 people were killed and 81 wounded at the airport, while others put the death toll there at 11. One witness said the blasts sparked panic as parts of the building collapsed onto travelers. "When I reached the arrivals hall downstairs, an entire side with glass panes collapsed, downstairs where the taxis are," he told Belgian television channel RTBF. "It was complete chaos. Some women were falling to the ground and crying. It was hell." Another witness, Zach Mouzoun, told France's BFM television that the second explosion brought down ceilings and "there was blood everywhere." A doctor who treated 11 of the victims at the Gasthuisberg hospital in Leuven was quoted by Flemish-language broadcaster VTM as saying their wounds suggested at least one of the bombs contained nails. Police said a Kalashnikov rifle and an unused explosive were also found at the airport. The Belga news agency reported that the assailants fired shots and shouted words in Arabic before the explosions. Passengers were led onto the tarmac and the Belgian crisis center urged people not to approach the airport. #JeSuisBruxelles -- The Reaction To The Attacks On Social Media Photo Gallery: #JeSuisBruxelles -- Powerful Social Media Memes Express Support For Victims Of Terrorist Attacks In Belgian Capital In the wake of the horrific terrorist attacks in Brussels that killed dozens of people, social networks have been awash with powerful memes and images paying tribute to the victims and expressing support for the traumatized city. Often using the #JeSuisBruxelles hashtag to show solidarity with those who died in the Belgian capital, many of the most popular social media posts made reference to the lowland country's tricolor flag of black, yellow, and red. Many memes also referred to cultural icons such as Tintin, the cartoon character created by the Belgian cartoonist Herge, and the Brussels' landmark sculpture Manneken Pis. Here's a selection of some of the most poignant tributes. Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share on Email to a Friend Share on LinkedIn Another explosion then struck the Maalbeek subway station, close to EU institutions, during the morning rush hour. Brussels Mayor Yvan Mayeur said at least 20 people died in the blast and 106 others were wounded, including 17 people with critical injuries. A survivor fought tears as she told RTBF television about her ordeal. "There was a big flash of light and the whole carriage exploded. The windows came down on us," she said. "Everyone threw themselves on the ground." Brussels resident Joe Cook, who arrived at the station shortly after the blast, told RFE/RL that he saw commuters "in various states of shock." "Some were stumbling, some were lying down, some were being tended to by passersby and other folk," he said. EU Budget Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva, who also handles employee and security issues, wrote on Twitter that EU institutions were working together to ensure the security of their staff and urged all EU personnel to "stay home or inside buildings." Photo Gallery: Brussels Attacks The new attacks sparked outrage and an outpouring of solidarity from world leaders. French President Francois Hollande said "the whole of Europe has been hit," urging the continent to take "vital steps in the face of the seriousness of the threat. "We are at war," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said after a crisis meeting called by Hollande. "We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war." Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said the blasts were an "attack against democratic Europe." German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the "despicable attacks" should be met with "determination toward the terrorists." British Prime Minister David Cameron vowed: "We will never let these terrorists win." Obama, who was visiting Cuba, said the United States stood "in solidarity" with Belgium. He pledged that Washington will do "whatever is necessary" to help Belgium bring the perpetrators to justice, adding that the attacks were another reminder that "the world must unite" against the "scourge of terrorism." In Egypt, Sunni Islam's main seat of learning, Al-Azhar, said the attacks "violate the tolerant teachings of Islam." It also urged the world community to confront terrorism. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russian President Vladimir Putin "strongly condemned these barbaric crimes." However, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that what she claimed were the West's "double standards" toward terrorists had led to terrorist attacks in Europe. Russian Officials Fault The West Over Brussels Blasts EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, tearing up at a joint news conference with Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh in Amman, said it was a "very sad day" for Europe. She said it was clear the blasts were attacks that resulted from radicalization, and urged leaders in Europe and the Middle East to work together to tackle the problem. Airports across Europe have tightened security. France, which remains in a state of emergency after the November 13 attacks, has also reinforced security on its border with Belgium. Several landmarks around the world -- including Paris's Eiffel Tower, Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, and New York's World Trade Center -- were illuminated in the black, yellow, and red colors of the Belgian flag. Thousands of people also gathered in Brussels' historic city square, Place de la Bourse, to show support and mourn the victims in the attacks. People surrounded a large chalk message saying, "Brussels I Love You." With reporting by RFE/RL correspondent Rikard Jozwiak in Brussels, Ron Synovitz in Prague, Reuters, AFP, VRT, RTBF, Standard.be, and Hln.be Three journalists from RFE/RLs Kyrgyz service, known locally as Radio Azattyk, won the 2015 "Access to Justice" contest organized by Kyrgyzstans Public Union of Journalists and the United Nations Development Program. The competition highlights the theme of access to justice for individuals with disabilities, children, rural women, youth at risk, and ethnic minorities. Adilet Bektursunov won first place in the Best Stuff on TV category, Ulan Egizbaev won second place for Best Materials Published on the Internet, and Sabyr Abdymomunov received a promotional jury prize. Bektursunovs report, Luli -- The Fate of the Kyrgyz Roma, gives viewers an inside look into the lives of the Luli, the gypsies of southern Kyrgyzstan. Egizbaev was awarded for three investigative works investigating human rights: Are human rights defenders foreign agents? Shahida Spent Five Years in Prison, Lost Her Health, Then Was Acquitted, and Watch This Disabled Boys World Change in Two Minutes. Abdymomunov won the prize for his radio documentaries about ethnic Kyrgyz who were relocated from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to their historical homeland, but still rejected by local society. All these awards are well-deserved by our journalists who are very dedicated to their profession, who really cover unique and very important stories day by day. Their stories are very important, because they talk to neglected or ignored people, they find stories which are hidden from mainstream agenda, said Venera Djumataeva, director of the Kyrgyz Service. Adilet, Ulanbek and Sabyr travel to the most remote places in Kyrgyzstan if they see a unique story, and only if they feel that they can help those people through their stories, she said. Each of the three journalists was awarded a certificate and a monetary prize. More than 180 journalists applied to the competition and representatives of 42 media organizations attended. The awards were among several marking Radio Azattyks journalistic excellence in 2016. Radio Azattyk correspondent Jenish Aidarov was voted Best Journalist in the Region in January through a popular SMS vote organized by the local Kyrgyz channel Batken TV. Aidarov was also awarded the certificate "The city of Batken for 15 years" for coverage of events that contributed to the citys development. Aidarov has been a correspondent for Radio Azattyk since 2008. RFE/RLs Kyrgyz Service is a leading source of independent news and information for its audiences. It was recognized as the countrys most reliable information source on radio in a February 2015 Baltic Surveys poll. According to a November 2014 Gallup survey, it reaches more than 36 percent of the population every week via TV, radio, and digital platforms. -- Elissa Nunez Three journalists with RFE/RLs Moldova Service have been recognized for excellence in audio and video reporting on local community and human rights issues. Reporters Mihaela Gherasim and Eugenia Pogor took first and third place in the television program category of the Promoting Human Rights in Moldova competition, a contest sponsored by the United Nations in Moldova. Gherasim was awarded for several reports including, I Am HIV Positive, But I Live, which follows a Moldovan couple living with HIV who have devoted their lives work to supporting people in their community who are also HIV positive. Pogor's report Parents And Children investigates cultural attitudes toward the LGBTQ community. Forget About The Restitution For Churches Other Than The Orthodox follows the attempts of non-Orthodox Moldovan churches to reclaim property that was confiscated under communism. Pogor was also awarded for several reports, including From Hate To Murder, which tells the story of Belmvire Salifou, a hate crime victim whose case will be the first in Moldova to be investigated by the United Nations. The prizes were awarded by the Association for Independent Press in Moldova, with the financial support of Civil Rights Defenders, an independent Swedish human rights organization. The Promoting Human Rights in Moldova competition was established by the United Nations in 2004, and is awarded annually to journalists, activists or other individuals who have made a genuine contribution to the promotion and protection of human rights in Moldova. Kudos is also due to Diana Raileanu, a Chisinau-based correspondent who won the Diploma of Excellence in the category, Best Radio Story in the Romanian Language, in the 2015 Europe for Moldova communication campaign sponsored by the European Union Delegation to Moldova. Raileanus report, Tailoring EU Money in the Security Zone, followed the European Unions promotion of local businesses in target areas through the lens of Marina Andreev, a young tailor who works in the eastern village of Ustia Dubasari. The Moldova Service, known locally as Radio Europa Libera, was also presented with a national prize for ethics in professional journalism, and the Golden Apple award for best coverage of cultural issues by the Moldova Press Council in December, 2015. At a gala awards ceremony, Council chairwoman Ludmila Andronic commended the Service for being an example of journalistic ethics in Moldova for many years. Radio Europa Libera is the most popular international radio broadcaster in Moldova, playing a critical role in increasing listeners understanding of local, regional, and global events. The service's journalists have been recipients of presidential honors, and continually reaffirm their reputation for unflinching public service reporting. --Elissa Nunez OSH -- Some 3,000 police officers have been deployed in Kyrgyzstan's southern city of Osh days before local elections and a planned government protest. The Osh regional police department's spokesman, Jenish Ashyrbaev, told RFE/RL that, additionally, some 2,000 volunteers had joined the police officers in Osh's central square on March 22. According to Ashyrbaev, the police and volunteer deployment in the city center is "a planned event to exercise safety on the eve of local elections" scheduled for March 27. Opposition groups announced earlier that they plan a mass protest in the city on March 24. On March 22, some 700 supporters of the opposition gathered in another southern city, Kerben, where they criticized the government for its "inability" to solve the ongoing standoff along a disputed segment of the Kyrgyz-Uzbek border. BISHKEK -- Kyrgyz authorities say they are investigating two audio recordings apparently featuring the voices of opposition politicians discussing ways to overthrow the government. Interior Ministry spokesman Bakyt Seitov told RFE/RL on March 22 that the audio recordings' authenticity was being checked. The two audio recordings circulated on the Internet on March 21-22. They carried voices similar to those of several opposition politicians discussing ways to seize power in Kyrgyzstan. One of the politicians apparently involved, Bektur Asanov, confirmed to RFE/RL that such a discussion had taken place, but said the talks touched upon legal ways to hand over power to another government. Asanov called the audio recordings' appearance on the Internet as "an attempt to blackmail the opposition." The director-general of a building company working at a Russian space center under construction in the country's Far East has been sentenced to 11 months in prison. A court in the town of Svobodny found Sergei Terentyev guilty on March 22 of misusing state money and failing to pay salaries to his employees. Russia is building the Vostochny Cosmodrome in the Amur region to reduce its reliance on the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for manned launches. The project has been dogged by reports of corruption. In the spring of 2015, workers went on strike at the facility over unpaid wages. They were only paid after appealing directly to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Terentyev and directors of two other subcontracting firms were later arrested on corruption charges. Based on reporting by TASS and Interfax A court in southern Russia has convicted Ukrainian military pilot Nadia Savchenko on all charges and sentenced her to 22 years in prison and a fine of 30,000 rubles ($441). Judge Leonid Stepanenko on March 22 concluded reading the verdict in the controversial case in the southwestern Russian city of Donetsk, adding that Savchenko would receive credit for time served since she was arrested on June 30, 2014. The hearing was briefly suspended just before the judge pronounced sentence when Savchenko began singing a patriotic Ukrainian song from the defendant's holding area. The Russian Prosecutor-General's Office issued a statement saying it was satisfied with the court's ruling. Interfax quoted an unnamed "law enforcement source" as saying Savchenko could be handed over to Ukraine if Kyiv makes an official request, but only after the sentence takes official effect in 10 days. In Kyiv, Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin posted on Twitter that the results of the trial were "expected" and "it is the beginning of a new step in the struggle" to free Savchenko. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said he was prepared to exchange two Russians -- who were captured during fighting in eastern Ukraine and whom Kyiv believes are Russian servicemen -- for Savchenko. He also called for "individual sanctions" against judges and prosecutors involved in Savchenko's case and those who participated in other trials of Ukrainian citizens in Russia, including the trial of filmmaker Oleh Sentsov. Savchenko defense lawyer Mark Feigin said outside the court that he "guarantees" that Savchenko will not serve her term in a Russian penal colony. "She will be released," he said. Fellow defense lawyer Nikolai Polozov told journalists after the hearing that Savchenko plans to resume a dry hunger strike -- one in which she refuses even to drink water -- in the very near future. Specifically, Savchenko was sentenced to 18 years for complicity in the deaths of two Russian journalists during fighting in eastern Ukraine in June 2014. She was sentenced to 10 years for complicity in the attempted killings of other civilians in the same incident. The fine was for illegally crossing Russia's border. Russian officials say she directed mortar fire against a checkpoint manned by Russia-backed separatists in Ukraine that resulted in the deaths of the journalists. Prosecutors had asked the court to sentence her to 23 years in prison. Earlier, the judge dismissed all the defense testimony and arguments. He rejected the defense claim that Savchenko is covered by immunity based on her status as a deputy in the Ukrainian parliament and a delegate to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. At one point earlier in the day, the reading of the verdict was briefly suspended and the courtroom cleared. Participants were compelled to go through security checks a second time before the judge continued. Defiant Savchenko denies the charges and says she does not recognize the Russian court or its right to try her. During the hearing on March 22, she wore a T-shirt emblazoned with a Ukrainian patriotic symbol and frequently sat down while the rest of the court stood for the judge's ruling. At one point during the hearing, laughter was heard in the courtroom and the judge asked if anyone found the proceedings amusing. Savchenko yelled from her holding area, "I do." Proceedings in the high-profile case began in September 2015. Savchenko has gone on hunger strike several times to protest her detention and recently gave judges the middle finger. Amnesty International on March 21 slammed the proceedings as falling short of international standards and called for a retrial "that remains free of political interference." "It is abhorrent to send Nadia Savchenko to prison after such a flawed, deeply politicized trial," said Amnesty's director for Europe and Central Asia, John Dalhuisen. Germany's Foreign Ministry said the trial "breached the principles of the rule of law." A spokesman for Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said on March 21 that Kyiv was continuing to press Russia for Savchenko's release. "Savchenko's release is envisaged in the Minsk agreements," said spokesman Svyatoslav Tseholko, referring to the internationally mediated process to regulate the conflict in eastern Ukraine. "The fact that she has not been freed yet means Russia is violating them." RFE/RL's Russian Service reporter Anton Naumlyuk posted on Twitter that court officials have done "everything to prevent journalists from covering the Savechnko trial normally." With reporting by AP, Reuters, TASS, and Interfax Russian President Vladimir Putin said no one is happy with the decline in trade between Russia and Finland after a meeting with his Finnish counterpart Sauli Niinisto in Moscow on March 22. Putin said the decline in bilateral trade and economic relations has several causes, including the sanctions imposed by the EU and Russia against each other as well as an "overall decline in economic activity in the world and in Europe." The decline in trade in the past two years was so great that Russia is no longer Finland's top trading partner. Putin pointed out that despite the slump in trade, Russia still supplies "nearly 100 percent" of Finland's natural gas supplies and "80 percent of all oil consumed in Finland." Niinisto, who extended an invitation for Putin to visit Finland, added that greater cooperation was needed on migrant flows from Russia to Finland and said agreements were made to put new restrictions on citizens from third countries at two border checkpoints. The two leaders have met several times and the Kremlin said Putin and Niinisto regularly speak by phone. Based on reporting by TASS and Interfax A "controlling" and "jealous" husband faces at least 17 years in prison for killing his wife Natalia Strelchenko, a world-famous Russian concert pianist. John Martin, 48, was found guilty last week of beating and strangling Strelchenko, 38, on their two-year wedding anniversary at their home in Manchester, England. Justice Laura Cox castigated the defendant for his "brutal, sustained and unprovoked attack" in sentencing him on March 21. Martin, a double-bass player who served a prison term in Norway for previous assaults on Strelchenko, must serve a minimum term of 17 years and 164 days. The prosecution claimed Martin was jealous of his wife's career taking off while his did not, and said he felt like her "servant" because she made money while he did the household chores. When police arrived at their home on August 30 last year following Martin's frenzied attack on his wife, Martin repeatedly said, "kill me, kill me please, I have nothing to live for, I do not deserve to live," which was caught on an officer's bodycam. The pianist was found with 71 injuries, including 45 separate marks to her head and neck. Based on reporting by AP and The Telegraph Fighting raged around the ancient Syrian city of Palmyra as Syrian forces backed by Russian air strikes battled to recapture the city from Islamic State (IS) fighters. Fighting on March 21 took place just four kilometers from the city, which has been controlled by IS fighters since May. Syrian troops and militia forces under the cover of Russian and Syrian warplanes have been pushing toward Palmyra, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, since early this month. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR) said the Syrian government advance on the city has been "slow" despite hundreds of air strikes in the last few weeks. IS militants have fiercely fought against the Syrian advance, killing at least 26 pro-government fighters on March 21, the SOHR reported. The IS-linked website Aamaq claimed that a jihadist suicide bomber had killed 30 troops. Retaking Palmyra and its ancient architectural ruins would be a huge symbolic victory for Syrian forces but the area is also strategic city on the way toward the Iraqi border. The IS has already demolished the famed Temple of Bel and at least two other antique structures as part of its campaign to destroy pre-Islamic monuments. Based on reporting by AFP and Reuters ON MY MIND After Russia forcefully annexed Crimea, the slogan and hashtag # -- Crimea is Ours -- became a popular patriotic rallying cry. Two years later, Crimea has become a showcase for Russian rule: It is poorer, more corrupt, more authoritarian, less free, and more isolated from the world. And that's saying something since Crimea wasn't exactly a model of good governance under Ukrainian rule. Like Georgia's breakaway pro-Moscow regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia and Moldova's separatist Transdniester region, its people are less well-off and have fewer prospects for the future than those in the country it split from. This should be Exhibit A in any comparison of what Moscow and the West are offering in terms of models of governance. IN THE NEWS Russia has warned that it is prepared to unilaterally bomb groups that it believes are violating the cease-fire in Syria. Patriarch Kirill has denounced as "heresy" those human rights that contradict the Bible. A court in Russia's Rostov region continued reading the verdict in the case of Ukrainian military pilot Nadia Savchenko. Oligarch Oleg Deripaska will sit on the General Council of Right Cause, a Kremlin-controlled pro-business party. And in the "class act" department, Aleksei Pushkov, chairman of the State Duma's Foreign Affairs Committee, tweeted a snarky comment in reaction to the attacks in Brussels: While [NATO Secretary-General Jens] Stoltenberg is busy fighting the imaginary Russian threat and putting troops in Latvia, under his nose in Brussels people are blown up. Likewise, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in reaction to the Brussels attacks: "You cant support terrorists in one part of the globe and not expect them to appear in others." WHAT I'M READING Russian Forces In Syria In a piece in the War on the Rocks blog, Mark Galeotti takes a close look at Russia's special forces, or Spetsnaz, in Syria. Debate: How To Talk To Russia? Back in December, Kadri Liik of the European Council on Foreign Relations wrote a thoughtful and much-discussed piece, "How to Talk to Russia." Liik argued that Russia and the West "have fundamentally different understandings not only of what constitutes acceptable international behavior, but also of the goals and 'natural' drivers that underpin it. And we are unable to have a direct conversation about our differences." Last week, Andrei Kortunov, director of the Russian International Affairs Council, offered an equally thoughtful rebuttal. Kortunov, who is one of the more thoughtful Russian commentators, concluded that "For centuries, educated Russians looked to the West in search of modernization patterns, best social practices, and intellectual inspiration. Today many critics of EU in Russia argue that the European project is doomed, that Europe is losing its competitive edge, and that the future belongs to other regions and continents. I hope that Europeans can prove these critics wrong." More On The Information War Over the past couple years, the Ukrainian website Stop Fake has earned a reputation as one of the leading debunkers of Kremlin propaganda. But that's not all they do. In its "Context" section, Stop Fake also puts out original analytical pieces. One of their latest, "Kremlin Propaganda: Soviet Active Measures by Other Means," is worth a read. My old colleague, and good friend Marta Dyczok, a professor at the University of Western Ontario, has a new book out (free download here): "Ukraines Euromaidan: Broadcasting through Information Wars with Hromadske Radio." Ukraine's War At Home Is the glass half empty or half full in Ukraine? Is Kyiv doing the best it can under the circumstances as it tries to reform in the middle of a war? Or is corruption and oligarchic rule undermining Ukraine's best chance to join the West. Andre Hartel, a professor at Kyiv Mohyla University, and Andreas Umland, senior research fellow at the Institute for Euro-Atlantic Cooperation in Kyiv, provide a cautiously optimistic take in their latest paper, "Challenges and Implications of Ukraines Current Transformation." Crimea In Russia's Strategy It's always a pleasure to listen to the cool-headed analysis of Chatham House's James Sherr. In an 11-minute interview with Ukraine Today, Sherr outlines the place Crimea occupies in the Kremlin's strategic thinking two years after the annexation. Three Iranians have been charged with conspiring to evade U.S. sanctions against Iran, and one has been arrested, U.S. authorities announced on March 21. Iranian-born businessman Reza Zarrab, 33, was arrested at a Miami airport on March 19 on the conspiracy charges. Two other Iranian nationals, Zarrab's employee Kamelia Jamshidy, and Hossein Najafzadeh, a senior officer at a unit of Bank Mellat in Iran, were charged but remain fugitives. According to the U.S. indictment, Zarrab, a dual citizen of Turkey and Iran, owned and operated a network of companies in Turkey and in the United Arab Emirates, including Royal Holding A.S., which employed Jamshidy. Prosecutors said the suspects and unnamed co-conspirators conducted hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of transactions barred by U.S. and international economic sanctions on behalf of the Iranian government and Iranian businesses, including Bank Mellat, one of Iran's largest banks. They said the suspects used an international network of companies in Iran, Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and elsewhere to launder the proceeds of the illegal transactions and defraud several financial institutions, including U.S. banks, by concealing the true nature of the financial moves. Diego Rodriguez, head of the FBI's New York office, said the crimes were carried out from 2010 to 2015. He said the charges should send a message to others who try to hide their true business partners. A lawyer for Zarrab, who is married to Turkish pop star Ebru Gundes, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Zarrab previously attracted attention when he was detained without charges for two months in Turkey as part of a high-profile corruption probe in 2013. With reporting by AP and Reuters My car was towed from an area near a train station in San Francisco last month. I had parked in front of a small No Parking sign that I had not seen. I spent an hour looking for my car and calling an attendant who didnt answer the phone. When someone finally answered, she told me my car had been towed. It cost me $350. At least I could afford to pay to get my car back. California is filled with people who are one traffic ticket away from losing their means of independent transportation. They get a ticket for a busted taillight or a small-change moving violation. On paper, the fine is $100, but with surcharges, it adds up to a lot more. People who cannot pay often do not show up in court which drives up the cost. According to the Judicial Council of California, about 612,000 Californians have suspended drivers licenses because they didnt pay fines. In 2013, more people 510,811 had their licenses suspended for not paying fines than the 150,366 who had lost their licenses for drunken driving. For a lot of people, the car is the only asset they own in this whole damn world, noted Mike Herald of the Western Center on Law & Poverty. When you take their car, youre taking the thing that helps them make money. Herald is an author of a report about how traffic courts drive inequality that helped prompt Gov. Jerry Brown to institute an 18-month amnesty program to deliver Californians from a hellhole of desperation. Under the program, Californians can get their outstanding fines reduced by 50 percent or 80 percent if they make 125 percent of the federal poverty level or less. The amnesty program does not apply to parking tickets, reckless driving or drunken driving. This is one of those issues that unite activists on the left and the right. The Western Center on Law & Poverty sees how the system crushes the working poor. Conservatives also see excessive fines and penalties as backdoor tax increases that lawmakers employ because they dont need to sell them to voters. In December, Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform, joined U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch at the White House for an event that lauded the Brown amnesty program. Weve turned too many of the police into tax collectors and wonder why they dont have strong relations with the community, Norquist said, according to NBC News. When people cant pay fines in California, it means they have to forfeit their licenses. Its deceptive advertising; a $100 fine can front for an extra $390 in add-ons. The price tag can grow exponentially if unpaid and lead to losing ones license. The penalty is harsh and crushing on the poor, but these fees also are undeserved for the middle class. If Sacramento wants to levy a $490 fine for moving violations, let lawmakers put honest numbers on their legislation instead of pretending that the fine is $100. Alas, the Legislature has found that hidden fees are a handy way to finance the court system without voting to raise tax revenue. Its the easy road. And though judges might claim that they never asked for this system, they have been able to use the threat of drivers license suspension as leverage to make Californians pony up. The practice of throwing in extra sources of revenue is so ingrained in Sacramento that there is a $50 amnesty program fee. Thats right; if you want to pay off unpaid traffic fines that have ballooned because of hidden fees, first you have to pay another (albeit smaller) hidden fee. Theyre a little tone-deaf, Herald told me. Fellow activists explained that the $50 fee is a barrier, but to no avail. If a private corporation advertised a $100 payment for something that really costs $500, California Attorney General Kamala Harris probably would go after the corporation for false advertising. If a credit card company boosted its fees the way the courts do, activists would call the practice usury. If the police yanked peoples drivers licenses because they didnt pay a $100 fine, the public would regard such a harsh penalty as excessive force. Yet Sacramento has codified a system that commits all three sins and its perfectly legal. Really, is there anything more brutal than government on autopilot? The estranged wife of internationally renowned pianist Vadym Kholodenko has been charged by police in the U.S. state of Texas of killing her two young daughters before stabbing herself. Sofya Tsygankova was charged on March 21 with two counts of murder in the deaths of 5-year-old Nika Kholodenko and 1-year-old Michela Kholodenko. Police say the girls were found dead in their beds in a suburb of Fort Worth, Texas, on March 18 and that Tsygankova was found in an "extreme state of distress." Police aid Tsygankova -- who is a pianist from Russia -- is in a Fort Worth hospital where she is undergoing a mental health evaluation. The Ukranian-born Kholodenko won the prestigious Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth in 2013, beating about 30 finalists from 12 countries for the prize. Kholodenko and Tsygankova married in 2010 and filed for divorce in November. They had been living in the United States since 2014. Kholodenko was not living with Tsygankova and their daughters at the time of their death but had reportedly been picking the young girls up each morning. Based on reporting by AP and Reuters The United States recently opened a small Marine outpost in northern Iraq and it has already come under fire from the Islamic State (IS) extremist group. A U.S. Marine was killed two days ago in a rocket attack at the base, called Firebase Bell, the first U.S. base in Iraq since U.S. President Barack Obama pulled U.S. forces out of the country four years ago. Obama has pledged to avoid a large-scale U.S. ground deployment in Iraq and to focus on enabling local forces to fight IS. But the U.S. military has become increasingly involved on the ground, sending in special forces since last year and now stationing as many as 200 soldiers from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit at the base. The base's existence was meant to be kept secret until it was deemed operational, the U.S. military said, but IS quickly learned it was there. Also despite its quiet beginnings two weeks ago, the base caught the attention of Iranian-backed Shi'ite militia which are also fighting IS. They are hostile to the increased presence of Americans, and have vowed to treat U.S. Marines deployed there as "forces of occupation." The radical Sunni IS wasted no time targeting the base, launching an attack with Katyusha rockets on March 19 that killed Marine Staff Sergeant Louis Cardin and injured others in Cardin's company-sized detachment. Obama expressed condolences over Cardin's death at a news conference as he visited Cuba for the first time on March 21. "It's a reminder that even as we embark on this historic visit, there are U.S. armed service members who are sacrificing each and every day on behalf of our freedom and our safety, so I'm grateful to them," the president said. Colonel Steve Warren, spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Baghdad, said the base was attacked again on March 21, this time by a squad of IS fighters who got close enough to the base to stage a failed attack with small arms. He said no Marines were killed or wounded, but two IS fighters were killed in that attack. "We are continuing to improve our fighting position, so to speak, to ensure that we've got the best ability to protect ourselves," Warren told a Pentagon news briefing. He said the base should not be considered a combat outpost because it is located behind the front lines and is not initiating combat with the militants. "Their primary mission is to protect, obviously, Americans," Warren said, referring to the U.S. advisers at a nearby Iraqi base near Makhmour. U.S. military officials said there is currently no plan for the Marine artillery unit to be used in any offensive mission to retake Mosul, but they wouldn't rule it out. With reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP And here is our latest round-up from our news desk: Brussels residents struggled to regain a semblance of normal life, while Belgian authorities said two brothers had carried out suicide bombings in the attacks that killed at least 31 people at the citys main airport and the metro. Federal prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said that airport bomber Ibrahim El Bakraoui had left a will on a computer before the March 22 attacks, which stunned Europe and were claimed by the extremist group Islamic State. El Bakraouis bother Khalid blew himself up in a subway car at Maalbeek station in central Brussels, Van Leeuw told a news conference. He said two other men captured by surveillance cameras at the airport with Ibrahim had yet to be identified. "The [subway] suicide bomber was identified by his fingerprints. He is Khalid El Bakraoui, Ibrahim's brother, born in Brussels on January 12, 1989, a Belgian national," Van Leeuw said. The two dead terrorists had a heavy criminal record not linked to terrorism." The Brussels subway, the scene of carnage during the morning rush hour a day earlier, was partially running again on March 23. Security was tight, with soldiers checking passengers' bags at station entrances. The district hosting the European Union institutions reopened to vehicles but Zaventem airport is scheduled to remain shut at least until March 25. The terrorism alert level throughout Belgium remains at its maximum level following the attacks, which an Islamic State website said were conducted by its "soldiers of the caliphate." Van Leeuw said the attacks killed at least 31 people and wounded 270. Authorities said the death toll could rise because some of the victims of the subway bombing were blown to pieces. Photos and videos posted on the Internet showed gruesome scenes of destruction at both sites. Belgium is observing three days of mourning for victims of the worst extremist attack ever in Brussels, which hosts the EU and NATO headquarters. As they tried to resume their daily lives, shocked residents still grappled with the horror of the attacks. "This is going to make me rethink a lot of things," Michelle Sinn, a European Commission employee, told Reuters. She said the threat of terrorism "is clearly here" and it would now be difficult for Brussels residents to ignore it. Defiance Linda Van Den Bossche called the attacks a "horrible" experience but said she was determined to continue enjoying life in her home city. "Terrorism is coming close in a scary way," she said. "But still, Brussels is a beautiful city. We are not going to let our lives be dictated by the terrorists." Speaking late on March 22, Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon said he shared these emotions but called on Belgians not to give in to fear. "I think we have to give a place for these emotions," he said. "On the other hand, in our daily life we have to -- after some days of sadness -- we have to continue our life; because what [terrorists] want is to destabilize our society." The attacks have sparked an international outpouring of sympathy, with leaders across the world extending their solidarity with Belgium. U.S. President Barack Obama condemned the "outrageous attacks against innocent people, and EU leaders expressed anger over what Sweden's prime minister called an "attack against democratic Europe." The attacks also prompted calls for tougher counterterrorism measures. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls urged the EU parliament to authorize a passenger name record that would cover the whole of Europe. "There is an urgent need to strengthen the external borders of the European Union," he told French radio. He said Islamic State has "stolen a large number of passports in Syria" and that heightened vigilance was required to prevent people from crossing into Europe with false passports. Belgium has been in the spotlight since militants living there helped carry out coordinated attacks that killed 130 people in Paris on November 13. The Brussels blasts came four days after Salah Abdeslam, the chief surviving suspect in the Paris attacks, was captured following after a shoot-out in Brussels. Belgian security forces had been on alert for any reprisal action. Media reports said one of the brothers suspected of carrying out the bombings used a false name to rent a flat in a Brussels where police killed a gunman last week. During that operation, police found fingerprints of Abdeslam. He was arrested last week in Brussels and is awaiting trial. The first hearings have reportedly been postponed for a day to March 25 due to security concerns in the Belgian capital. A recruitment campaign that began more than four years ago and included a vigorous and unprecedented grassroots crusade culminated Tuesday in an announcement that Oregon-based Deschutes Brewery is Roanoke-bound. The craft brewer plans to build its East Coast production brewery on about 49 acres it will buy at the Roanoke Centre for Industry and Technology, a city business park off U.S. 460, Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Deschutes executives announced Tuesday afternoon in downtown Roanoke. The company will hire 108 workers for the Roanoke brewery, McAuliffe said. The project is estimated at $85 million, he said, including $3 million from the Commonwealths Opportunity Fund. Deschutes had previously confirmed that it was also considering locating the facility at sites that included Asheville, N.C., and Charleston, S.C. In recent years, the Roanoke region has been a finalist in campaigns to lure craft brewers Sierra Nevada Brewing and Stone Brewing. Stone chose Richmond and will operate a 220,000-square-foot facility in the Fulton neighborhood east of downtown, with a retail store and tasting room having already opened. Sierra Nevada went to the Asheville area. Beth Doughty, executive director of the Roanoke Regional Partnership, said that groups first direct contact with Deschutes occurred May 25, 2012 a contact that emerged, she said, from a broader campaign to appeal to craft brewers that launched in January of that year. Deschutes is based in Bend, Ore., a community that, by its own description, evolved from a sleepy lumber town to an international mecca for outdoor enthusiasts. Deschutes officials said they sought an East Coast site that also emphasized outdoor recreation, an amenity that Roanoke Valley economic development and tourism officials began touting several years ago. Doughty said having the culture match in terms of outdoor amenities and livability helped seal the deal for Roanoke. As of September, Deschutes had about 500 employees and shipped beer to 28 states, including Virginia, and to Washington, D.C., according to Jason Randles, a company spokesman. Based on 2014 sales volume, Deschutes ranked seventh among craft brewers, according to a Brewers Association analysis released a year ago. Bart Watson, the associations chief economist, said 2015 numbers should be published in about two weeks. Register for more free articles. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading. A railway bridge collapse in the southern province of Dong Nai on March 20 has cut off the flow of goods shuttling on the north-south route, causing difficulties for local transport enterprises. Every day, three to four trains usually carry approximately 2,000 tons of goods from the South to the North and Central regions, according to the Saigon Railway Station in Ho Chi Minh City. Do Dinh Duoc, deputy general director of JSC Saigon Passenger Transport, said cargo that was on its way to central and northern provinces had to be sent back to Song Than Station, one of the largest cargo terminals in the south, due to the accident. On the morning of March 21, about 40 tons of goods including clothes, shoes, cigarettes and electrical devices were unloaded at the station for their owners to collect. Goods are unloaded at Sai Gon Station. photo: Huu Cong Nguyen Ngoc Nam, a representative of Hoa Nam Transport Company, said that his firm had 18 containers stuck at Song Than Station after the incident, so they would had to hire trucks to transport them by road. "The cost of transporting goods by road is double that of rail. We will need to spend money to rent container trucks and then ask for some compensation from the railway sector." Nam estimated that his company will have to bear an additional cost of up to VND300 million ($13,500). Another representative from a transport company stated that they have made multiple plans to deal with their stranded goods in case the situation is not resolved quickly. We have many contracts with our clients and delivery dates to meet, but this is a force majeure so we sympathize with the railway company. To ensure our deadlines are met, we will transport our goods by sea, which costs about the same as railway transport. Leaders of the railway sector as well as Saigon Station have examined the status at major stations and are working on resolving the problem as soon as possible. It looks like nothing was found at this location. Maybe try a search? Search for: Search The operation of a council set up to oversee the armed forces remains unclear due to the absence of a law to guide its function. President Truong Tan Sang. Photo by Giang Huy. In a report delivered to the National Assembly on March 22, Sang said the National Defense and Security Council's role of overseeing the armed forces is being "hindered" because the duty and jurisdiction of the council are "stipulated in Vietnams constitution but not in the country's law". The National Defense and Security Council is constitutionally empowered to mobilize all forces and potentialities of the country in the cause of national defense. As chairman of the council, the president acts as commander-in-chief of the country's armed forces. Sang said that some of the duties of president were outlined in the constitution but did not have specific instructions on how to execute them, including directing the armed forces. As chairman of the National Defense and Security Council, Sang has contributed essential opinions amid tensions in Vietnam's East Sea at meetings of the Politburo, Central Military Commission and Central Party Police Commission. During his time as president, Sang promoted 194 military staff and 119 police officers to the position of general. Sang is scheduled to finish his presidency on early April. A Place for All Conservatives to Speak Their Mind. The Bank of Fincastle hosted eight Botetourt County high school students (three from James River and five from Lord Botetourt) for Bank Day on March 15. Students toured the Daleville branch to hear from all of the different departments within the bank. The students learned about the loan process, the importance of good credit, the profile of a qualified borrower, appropriate etiquette during a job interview, how The Bank of Fincastle is involved in the community, the Federal Reserve System, payments and more. The purpose of the day is to expose students to the banking industry and provide an opportunity for the students to learn about banking, financial services and the vital role The Bank of Fincastle plays in its community. Participating students will write an essay for the chance to win a scholarship. Six regional scholarships of $2,500 each will be awarded. From those six winners an overall statewide winner will be chosen. The statewide winner will receive an additional $5,000 scholarship and receive $7,500 in total. There will also be six honorable mention scholarships of $1,000 each. In all, twelve students will receive scholarships totaling $26,000. The students' topic this year is What did you learn on Bank Day that will help you manage your financial future, and what did you learn about how banks support their communities? Submitted by Mary Ann Miller Virginias Community Colleges will open a shared services center in Botetourt County in July. The center, located at 147 Daleville Drive, was selected from among eight possibilities considered during a competitive bid process. The shared services center is a central component of a longer-term VCCS effort to increase efficiency by removing administrative burdens from Virginias 23 community colleges and the Richmond-based system office. The decision was announced, and the lease formally signed, during the regular March meeting of the Virginia State Board for Community Colleges. A few dozen people are expected to work at the shared services center when operations begin this summer. That number is expected to increase as operations and services are phased into the center. The facility is capable of housing nearly 200 employees. This shared services center is an important part of our work in keeping faith with our students and taxpayers, said Glenn DuBois, chancellor of Virginias Community Colleges. Increasing our efficiencies with regard to backroom functions means that we can direct more resources to the tools and strategies that directly touch our students and contribute to their success. Were also excited to locate this facility in rural Virginia. Were convinced that that many benefits of the region, especially its workforce, will make this center a success. Botetourt County Board of Supervisors Chairman Jack Leffel said, The addition of the Virginia Community College System Service Center to our county is simply enormous. This is will not only provide for savings to the system but also provide jobs for the local community." Virginias Community Colleges are pursuing a shared services approach to its administrative processes after internal research indicated that moving some of those processes into a collaborative shared-services environment would increase the organizations efficiency. The VCCS shared services center will be phased into operations with the goal of providing service to every Virginia community college and the VCCS system office in Richmond. Submitted by Cody Sexton Charlotte Joanne Fore Poole, 73, passed away on Saturday, March 19, 2016 at the Winchester Virginia Medical Center. Charlotte was born October 21, l942 in Wheeling, W.Va. She lived at Lake Frederick, Va. and in The Villages, Fla. Prior to that, she was a long time resident of Leesburg, Va.Her parents moved to Charlton Heights, W.Va. In 1960 she graduated from Gauley Bridge High School, Gauley Bridge, W.Va. In 1965 her parents moved to Roanoke. Charlotte stayed in West Virginia and graduated from the West Virginia University Institute of Technology, Montgomery.. She always considered West Virginia home and loved to go back to visit. She said she felt safe nestled down between the mountains in the hollers.Charlotte is survived by her husband, Maston (Mickey) Eugene Poole Jr. They were married in 1969 in Roanoke. The same year they moved to Leesburg, Va. where Mickey accepted a job as Director of Finance for Loudoun County. They were blessed with two sons, Andrew Christopher and Nathan Alexander, his wife, Jennifer, along with his daughter, Alma. Mickey, her boys and her granddaughter were the center of her life. Her main goal in life was to provide a joyful nurturing home.Charlotte is also survived by one brother, John Wyatt Fore Jr. and his wife, Linda, residing in The Villages, Fla.; their four children, Melissa Fore Wheeler and her husband, Gary, and their son, Dalton residing in Nebraska, Whitney Fore living in Zuni, Va., Matt Fore living in Nashville, Tenn. and his twin brother Wyatt Fore residing in Washington, D.C.; sister-in-law, Sandra Poole Phipps and her husband, Roger, residing in Danville, Va.; their two children, Melanie Phipps Harrison and her husband, Glenn, and their children Alex and Amber residing in Fairfax, Va., Crystal Phipps Lewis and her daughter, Grace, living in Danville, Va.After college graduation in 1965 she accepted a teaching job at William Byrd High School in Vinton, Va. In 1969, Charlotte began teaching for Fairfax County Public Schools at London Towne Elementary School, Centreville, Va. She retired in 1995 after spending her career at London Towne.Charlotte had an apt for telling a joke and loved to share them with all she met, from her dearest friends to casual acquaintances.She enjoyed dancing, playing cards, but most of all she loved gospel music and the hymns she grew to love as a child. As part of the service, Charlotte requested that she be able to share many of the songs she loved. She wants you to sing along with joy and happiness in your heart. She wants you to feel free to clap your hands, raise your hands in praise or shout an "Amen". If you don't know the words, please listen closely to the words and find meaning in the story the song tells.The Loudoun Funeral Chapel, 158 Catoctin Circle, SE, Leesburg, Virginia 20175 is responsible for arrangements. The family will receive family and friends from 6 to 8 p.m. on Wednesday, March 23, 2016 at the Chapel. The funeral services will be at 11 a.m. held at the Chapel, followed by a reception at 106 Newhall Place, SW, Leesburg, Va. Thursday, March 24, 2016. Additional information is available by calling 703-777-6000 or visiting www.loudounfuneralchapel.com. Vietnam and Russia signed an agreement in Moscow on March 21 that will pave the way for Russian firms to produce automobiles in the Southeast Asian nation, Vietnams Ministry of Industry and Trade said in a statement on Tuesday. The pact is part of their efforts to realize the free trade agreement that Vietnam inked with the Moscow-led Eurasian Economic Union in May last year, according to the ministry. The EEU comprises Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan. Both the agreement and the Vietnam-EEU FTA will take effect in the middle of this year, the ministry said. Russian companies, including GAZ Group, KAMAZ and Sollers, will set up joint ventures with Vietnamese partners to build trucks, cars with more than 10 seats, off-road vehicles and some specialized vehicles, the ministry added. The joint ventures will also look to export their vehicles around Southeast Asia to take advantage of tax incentives for products from Vietnam, said the statement. 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 Vietnams government plans to significantly increase the contribution made by the solar energy sector and cut power generated from coal, according to adjustments to the National Power Development Plan for 2011-2020 with a vision to 2030 recently approved by Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung. The adjustments were made following the countrys pledge to reduce greenhouse gas emissions at the 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference, or COP21, in Paris last year. The countrys solar energy sector is expected to produce 850 MW of electricity, or 0.5 percent of the countrys total electricity output, by 2020. The plan outlines a target to increase that figure to 1.6 percent of total output by 2025 and 3.3 percent by 2030. Solar energys contribution to Vietnams energy mix is currently very limited, the government said. Vietnam did not set a specific target for the development of solar energy in the National Power Development Plan released in July 2011. In December last year, Vietnam committed to reducing greenhouse gas emissions by 8 percent in 2030 and possibly 25 percent if it receives effective support from the international community. A landmark climate change deal was approved by nearly 200 countries in Paris in December 2015 with a legally-binding pact seeking to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius and committing $100 billion a year from 2020 to help developing nations. Vietnam has set a new target of reducing the capacity of coal-fired power projects to 26,000 MW by 2020, falling sharply from the 36,000 MW set in 2011. A large number of locals living near the 1,244-MW coal-based power project, Vinh Tan II, in the central province of Binh Thuan gathered at the site in April last year to protest against the dust pollution caused by the plant. The latest plan cuts targets for wind energy development to 800 MW by 2020, lower than the 1,000 MW set in the 2011 plan. At present, wind farms nationwide generate about 140 MW, according to the government. The Vietnamese government has set an annual economic growth target of 6.5-7 percent during the 2016-2020 tenure, Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc told the National Assembly on Monday. Phuc was nominated for prime minister by the Party Central Committee in January. The NA is expected to approve the appointment on April 7, a day after Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung is scheduled to step down. As part of the key measures to achieve the target, Vietnam will develop its socialist-oriented market economy, stabilize the macro-economy and restructure the national economy, Phuc said. Vietnams GDP rose 6.68 percent in 2015 compared to 5.98 percent in 2014. Its GDP last year was valued at $193.4 billion, with GDP per capita at $2,109, he added. The countrys average GDP growth from 2011-2015 was 5.91 percent, lower than the target of 6.5-7 percent set by the outgoing government, according to Phuc. A Vietnamese man was jailed by Sha Tin Magistrates' Court on March 16 for unlawfully residing in Hong Kong. The 35-year-old was convicted of staying in Hong Kong illegally and using a forged identity card. He was sentenced to 15 months' imprisonment for each of the charges, to be served concurrently. After landing in Hong Kong unlawfully in August last year, the man obtained a forged Hong Kong identity card and started looking for work. At the time he was arrested, he was washing dishes in the kitchen of a restaurant. Hong Kong authorities said that those found living in the country illegally face a maximum fine of $50,000 and up to three years' imprisonment. A GRANT of almost 500,000 will be used to help more than 800 Rotherham women battle post-natal depression. The cash handed to Sheffield charity Home Start to expand its ongoing work into Rotherham is one of five windfalls set to benefit the borough from the Heritage Lottery Fund. Home Start said it would use the grant to help women with post-natal depression build secure and enduring attachments with their children so they can get the best start in life within strong families. Jack Scott, the charitys chief executive (pictured), said: This announcement is really excellent news for families in Sheffield and Rotherham. Our trained volunteers undertake vital work with parents who are struggling or just need a little bit of extra help by providing practical help, emotional support and parenting advice. This funding will allow us to improve the lives of over 800 families and 1,500 children in our community by making sure fewer parents are isolated or depressed and more children get a great start in life. We are extremely grateful to the Lottery for their support. Rotherham community group Tassibee has been handed 316,028 for its Advocacy Community Support Service, which aims to provide a structured programme of support for Asian people aged 50 and over with poor mental and physical health. Kiveton Park Meadows Junior School was allocated 10,000 for a bio-dome to help grow healthy foods on the school grounds, while a servicve at Treeton Community Centre will use the same sum to deliver support services on debt, welfare and housing advice. A 10,000 grant is also being provided to put on courses in English language, numeracy and dressmaking for members people from ethnic minority backgrounds with a view to build new skills and improve employment prospects. San Juan, Mar 22 (EFE).- Puerto Rico's education secretary has informed the U.S. Congress that his agency does not have the money needed to serve the basic needs of the island's public schools. In a letter to House Speaker Paul Ryan released Tuesday, Rafael Roman asked him to take measures toward finding a solution to Puerto Rico's $72 billion debt, which has spurred a "humanitarian crisis" among children on the island. The secretary said the Puerto Rican government must use the little money it has available to pay down the debt, which leaves nothing for basic allocations like the amount budgeted for the Education Department. There just isn't enough money to meet the needs of the 379,000 public school students in Puerto Rico. Washington must act quickly to avoid some very predictable and irreparable damage, Roman said in the letter. The official said that parents expect to find schools in top condition for educating their children, but due to his department's lack of liquidity, the youngsters are paying the consequences of a do-nothing Congress. Roman said the fiscal crisis and lack of liquidity endanger teachers' wages and the payment of basic services for students like school buses, janitors and lunches. He recalled that 58 percent of Puerto Rican children live below the poverty line, and that lunches served in public schools are often the only food that many students get to eat all day. This is something that I as education secretary and all of us as U.S. citizens cannot allow, the education secretary said. De Beers diamond reserves leaped 28 percent in 2015 thanks to an increase in resource estimate for Jwaneng and Orapa mines in Botswana. Jwaneng and Orapa mines are owned by Debwana, a joint venture between De Beers and the Botswana government. Rapaport reports that the reserves rose to 479.7 million carats as at December 31 from 375.4 million carats a year earlier. The increase is a result of revised resource estimates at Jwaneng and Orapa, informed by new drilling information, De Beers head of midstream communications David Johnson, was quoted as saying. The associated classification of new indicated resources resulted in a substantial increase in the diamond reserves at these operations. De Beers estimated reserves lag behind ALROSAs 1.11 billion carats. Meanwhile, De Beers reserves in Canada were almost flat at 59.9 million carats, while South Africa was also stable at 101.5 million carats. Its reserves in Namibia climbed 76 percent to 4.5 million carats although it remained a small fraction of the total, Rapaport reports. Mathew Nyaungwa, Editor in Chief of the African Bureau, Rough&Polished The motive for the crimes committed by the accused was hatred and hostility towards the inhabitants of the Lugansk region, and towards Russian-speaking people as a whole, the judge said. The main word guilty was still not pronounced on Monday, as the standard procedure requests. I do not care what sort of verdict it is. In 10 days, when the verdict takes effect, I will declare a dry hunger strike and keep it to the end, Savchenko said to the media. During the last six months, Savchenko had declared multiple hunger strikes, living days without drinking water. Both leaders of the European Union and U.S. President Barack Obama have called for the Kremlin to free Savchenko; but Russian officials dismissed all calls. The Ukrainian Foreign Ministry also called on all members of the international community to publicly condemn the verdict. Aux Philippines, le vendredi Saint ou Balack Friday est un jour qui porte malheur. Peu de transport en commun et taxi. Travel Tips During the Holy Week Holidays Very few businesses open on full hours starting Maundy Thursday. Government offices are closed until Good Friday, and almost all commercial establishments, including shopping malls, are closed for the entire day. Public transportation is scarce on Good Friday. Regular trips and regular business hours resume on Black Saturday. Accommodations during Holy Week are often booked months in advance, especially in prime beach destinations like Boracay and Palawan. Holy Week coincides with peak summer season so hotel rates are more expensive than usual. Holiday goers start preparations on Holy Wednesday, so by Wednesday afternoon or Thursday morning, major thoroughfares can be extremely clogged with slow-moving traffic. Beach destinations start to fill up on Maundy Thursday. Filipinos working in major urban centers often go home for Holy Week celebrations. This means that there is massive movement of people from Manila, Cebu, Davao and other major cities to the provinces. Air, land and sea transport are booked weeks in advance, but overbooking sometimes occurs in land and sea carriers. While every precaution is taken by local enforcement authorities to ensure that conveyances are not overloaded, less scrupulous transport operators could sometimes get away with overloading resulting to road mishaps or marine disasters. Hence, it is critical to exercise caution when boarding suspiciously overloaded vessels. This urban exodus is reversed on Black Saturday and Easter Sunday, when people from the provinces go back to their jobs in the cities. The same issues in transportation arise as millions of Filipinos beat the clock and each other to get to their destinations on time. Traditionally, major thoroughfares are blocked and transformed into the Way of the Cross. Increasingly, the colorful and sometimes lavish processions of Catholic statues from Maundy Thursday until Black Saturday have become tourist attractions in themselves, creating additional pressure on the condition of the traffic. Consider this scenario when going from one place to another during the holidays. In sum, the Semana Santa is one Philippine holiday you must experience to get a more well-rounded understanding of the countrys customs, values, beliefs and heritage. Filipinos are largely shaped by their faith, and no other holiday depicts them more colorfully (and realistically) than the Holy Week. Below are two Philippines Travel Guide Videos for Holy Week : Bertelsmann, a media, services and education company, reported that its 2015 Group profit improved significantly, rising by over 90 percent to 1.1 billion euros from 572 million euros, prior year. Excluding extraordinary results from the sale of investments, Group profit was at a record level. The Group increased its operating EBITDA from continuing operations by 4.7 percent to 2.49 billion euros, compared to 2.37 billion euros, last year. The company said its result reflects positive currency effects, a record performance by Mediengruppe RTL Deutschland, and a strong bestseller at Penguin Random House. Some of Arvato's service businesses, BMG, and the online education provider Relias Learning also contributed to the improved earnings. The EBITDA margin was 14.5 percent compared to 14.2 percent, prior year. Revenues from continuing operations grew by 2.8 percent to 17.1 billion euros from 16.7 billion euros, prior year. For 2016, the Group expects higher revenues and continued high operating profitability. In the year ahead, the Group is again aiming for net profit of over one billion euros. The Group's mid-term growth aim is to generate around 20 billion euros in revenues. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News Two deadly explosions at the Brussels Airport and separate blasts at metro stations in the Belgian capital Brussels during the Tuesday morning rush-hour killed at least 23 people and injured dozens. The Zaventem airport was locked down until further notice and flights were redirected to Antwerp. All metro stations were closed. Eurostar trains to Brussels were canceled and the French-Belgian border was closed after the attacks. The threat level in Belgium was raised to 'maximum', the official Belga News Agency reported. Travel security across Europe was stepped up as an immediate response to the terror act. Reports said twin blasts took place at the departure area of the Zaventem airport at around 7 GMT and the airport building was damaged badly. Initial reports suggest it was a suicide attack and there were unconfirmed reports that more explosives were discovered from the airport area. The second explosion was at the Maalbeek metro station after a gap of one hour. The station is close to the European Commission headquarters and all EU institutions were put on 'orange' alert level. Subsequently, all meetings on the EU Commission premises and outside were canceled and only staff with badges were given access. There were also reports of a controlled explosion in the Rue De la Loi, in which several government and EU buildings are located. The Belgian Crisis Center asked public to use text messages and social media for communication in order to reduce congestion on telephone services. British Prime Minister David Cameron has chaired a Cobra emergency meeting, in view of the developments in Brussels. Security measures have been intensified at German Airports. Observers suspect that the explosions has a link to last week's arrest of Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in the Paris Terror attacks in November last year. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News Crude oil futures leveled off Tuesday morning after surging to multi-month highs. Traders are stopping to assess the latest terrorist attacks in Europe. At least 21 people are dead in Brussels Airport and Metro bombings. WTI Crude oil for May was down 14 cents at $41.39 a barrel, having recently jumped to their highest since November. Close attention will be paid to US crude inventories data over the coming days. The American Petroleum is out with figures this afternoon, while the Energy Information Administration releases official numbers Wednesday morning. Analysts say there is a chance that inventories are finally beginning to decrease after building to record highs over the winter. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Market Analysis ArQule Inc. (ARQL) and Daiichi Sankyo announced that the independent data monitoring committee or DMC of the METIV-HCC study conducted the planned interim assessment and it was determined the trial will continue to its final analysis. METIV-HCC is a biomarker-selected, double-blind, placebo-controlled, pivotal phase 3 study evaluating tivantinib (2:1) versus best supportive care in previously systemically-treated patients with MET-high, inoperable HCC, with overall survival as the primary endpoint. The interim analysis was triggered when at least 60 percent of the target number of events occurred. The final analysis will take place when 100 percent of the target number of events occurs. The METIV-HCC trial completed patient accrual in December 2015 with more than 300 patients with MET-high HCC enrolled. Liver cancer is the sixth most common cancer globally with 782,000 new cases in 2012 and is the second most common cause of cancer-related death with 745,000 deaths in 2012. HCC accounts for about 90 percent of primary liver cancers. Cirrhosis, chronic hepatitis B and C and smoking are recognized worldwide as factors increasing the risk of HCC. In December 2008, ArQule and Daiichi Sankyo signed a licensing, co-development and co-commercialization agreement for tivantinib in the U.S., Europe, South America and the rest of the world, excluding Japan, China (including Hong Kong), South Korea and Taiwan. In November 2015, ArQule exercised its co-commercialization option for tivantinib in the U.S. A co-commercialization agreement is expected to be finalized in 2016. For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Business News While the four other presidential candidates sought to highlight their support for Israel in remarks at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference on Monday, a speech by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., had a somewhat different tone. Speaking at a school in Salt Lake City, Utah, Sanders described Israel as one of America's closest allies but said the U.S. also has to be a friend to the Palestinian people. "To my mind, as friends - long term friends with Israel - we are obligated to speak the truth as we see it," Sanders said. "That is what real friendship demands, especially in difficult times." "Our disagreements will come and go, and we must weather them constructively," he added. "But it is important among friends to be honest and truthful about differences that we may have." Sanders said peace will require unconditional recognition of Israel's right to exist as well as for organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah to renounce their efforts to undermine the security of Israel. However, the Vermont Senator said peace also means achieving self-determination, civil rights, and economic well-being for the Palestinian people. Sanders was critical of Israel's expanded settlement construction in the West Bank as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to withhold hundreds of millions of Shekels in tax revenue from the Palestinians. He also called for the end of the economic blockade of Gaza as well as the equitable distribution of water resources. "Peace will require strict adherence by both sides to the tenets of international humanitarian law," Sanders added. "This includes Israeli ending disproportionate responses to being attacked - even though any attack on Israel is unacceptable." Sanders also touched on other conflicts in the region, expressing his belief that the U.S. has an obligation to pursue diplomatic solutions before resorting to military intervention. (Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore) For comments and feedback contact: editorial@rttnews.com Political News (Facebook courtesy of Fast & Furious) The latest spoilers of "Fast 8" reveal that some big names in the industry will be part of the eighth installment of the "Fast & Furious" franchise. Among those who are rumored to be in the movie are Justin Bieber and Charlize Theron. A report in Yibada says that Bieber might appear as Lucas Black's racing buddy in the film. Earlier rumors say that the producers of the film were originally trying to bring in Bieber as a replacement to Paul Walker's character. However, there is also talk going around that Walker's brother will be taking over the role once again so Bieber will be playing another character instead. Charlize Theron, on the other hand, is rumored to be a villain in the movie. Meanwhile, Iceland Monitor has recently released some photos which show the cars that will be used for "Fast and Furious 8." The cars, which include several Impreza units all donated by Subaru for "Furious 7," were shipped earlier to get ready for the filming in Myvatn, Iceland. Aside from the Imprezas, some cars that might be used in the film are Lamborghini Murcielagos and Rally Fighters. They might also fly in some of Dominic Toretto's (Vin Diesel) preferred American muscle cars. According to reports, one of these cars will be plunged into an icy lake in Iceland. As for the cast, Jason Statham and Dwayne Johnson will reprise their roles as Deckard Shaw and Hobbs, respectively. Michelle Rodriguez also confirmed that she will come back to reprise her role as Letty Ortiz. Other actors who will be part of the film include Tyrese Gibson, Ludacris, Steve Coulter, Robert Pralgo, and Viktor Hernandez. The filming in Myvatn will take about eight weeks. The movie will be part of a trilogy which will end with "Fast and Furious 10." Aside from Iceland, a part of the film will also be shot in New York. "Fast and Furious 8" is scheduled to be released on April 14, 2017. Ural Airlines have become an air carrier providing regular flights to Thailand and China 22.03.2016 News MOSCOW The Russian administrative authorities have appointed Ural Airlines a regular air carrier for 5 scheduled routes to China and Thailand. With reference to the notes of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation, we are talking about the Ekaterinburg - Beijing Phuket flight that is scheduled for 3 times a week. The Ekaterinburg Phuket round trip will be performed by aircraft of Ural Airlines 5 times a week; flights from the Ural capital to Bangkok will be performed on a daily basis. It is planned that flights to the capital of Thailand will also be made from Irkutsk (up to 5 flights a week) and Khabarovsk (up to 3 flights a week). As RusBusinessNews has been informed by the airlines Press Service, the above routes are still under development and the dates when aircraft start flights have not been set yet. At present, Ural Airlines are performing flights along the following routes: Ekaterinburg - Beijing - Bangkok, Ekaterinburg - Harbin - Bangkok, Khabarovsk - Changchun - Bangkok. Back to news Saudi aggression kills 11 in Jawf br> JAWF, March 21 (Saba) - Four people were killed on Monday by Saudi bombings in Jawf province, a local official said. The two hostile raids targeted a truck loaded with food and another one loaded with home gas in Souk al-Ethnain (Souk of Monday), in Moton district, the official explained. Meanwhile, the Saudi war jets attacked al-Dahoq Institute for Teaching Religious Sciences in al-Mouton district, killing at least seven people. Five people were injured near the institute, , he said. In Sana'a province, the Saudi war jets launched two air raids on Arhab district targeting al-Sama'a Mount. In Dhamar province, the Saudi war jets waged a raid on al-Abaseyah area in al-Hadda district. The Saudi warplanes pounded Aqbat Qanda'a in Shabwa province with three raids, causing damage to pastures. In Mareb province, the aggression waged 12 sorties on Serwah district, targeting three trucks parking near a house. The war jets also targeted Hailan Mount, al-Mashga'a and Kawfal areas in the province. HA/AF Saba Facebook Facebook Twitter Twitter Whatsapp Whatsapp Telegram Telegram Email Email Print Print [21/March/2016] The United States is committed to promoting religious freedom around the world, including in South Asia. Ambassador-at-Large for Religious Freedom David Saperstein said that while there have been positive developments from both governments and civil society in South Asia, serious challenges remain. In Pakistan, the government has made significant efforts under its National Action Plan to combat sectarianism and violent extremism, however violence against religious minorities at the hands of extremists continues. In addition, blasphemy laws are still on the books and convictions still occur, with over 20 people currently sentenced to death or serving life sentences for blasphemy convictions. The United States opposes blasphemy laws, apostasy laws, and punishment of conversion laws everywhere. Such legislation is too frequently used to oppress those whose religious beliefs differ from the majority. In India, faith communities are mobilizing to challenge violent extremism. At the same time, India has seen its share of communal violence. One non-governmental organization reported that there was an attack on a Christian almost every day in 2015 in India. Sri Lanka is in the process of drafting a new constitution and is one of the few situations where "there has been notable change in a positive direction," said Ambassador Saperstein. January brought the arrest of the leader of Bodu Bala Sena, a violent group that victimized Sri Lanka's religious minorities. In Nepal, ethnic and religious tensions remain and the constitution includes a provision against conversions. In Bangladesh, extremists have targeted secular bloggers, brutally murdering them. The U.S. is also concerned about an increase in violence against religious minorities and their places of worship by militants claiming affiliation with ISIL. "No nation," U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry has said, "can fulfill its potential if its people are denied the right to practice, to hold, to modify, to openly profess their innermost beliefs." 50% of Indian mobile users wish to upgrade to new device in 5G era About 50 per cent of smartphone users in India plan to buy a new device within the first year as 5G ... 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 Trojans race to 46-7 win over Ellsworth in prep for postseason If Southeast of Saline wins in the first round, it will host the second round game as well. The Trojans fell to Andale last season in the playoffs. Manila holds the first-ever Sustainable Seafood Week Press Release February 15, 2016 MANILA Top hotels and restaurants in Manila joined hands with different environmental groups and fisheries NGOs to put their commitment onto the plates by organizing the first-ever Sustainable Seafood Week taking place from February 15 to 21. The Sustainable Seafood Week is a celebration of food and a venue for sharing the best practices in sustainable fisheries by various stakeholders. The event also seeks to raise awareness among seafood consumers on the problems plaguing Philippine seas, particularly on the issue of unsustainable fishing practices that not only harm the marine environment but also threaten the countrys fisheries industry. In the last 15 years, I realized that working with sustainable products was not only my responsibility as a person, but a bigger responsibility as a chef, said Chef Chele Gonzalez of Gallery Vask. Sustainability plays a huge role in our philosophy as we want to preserve the raw products of the Philippines and this includes the local seafood. We have to relay this message not just within the food and beverage industry but more importantly to the public and to our guests who eat our food. It is good for them to know that they are contributing to the seas sustainability and are creating an environment of change with every plate. Traceability is the core of our Artesmar Yellowfin Fishery Improvement Program for tuna. Fully traceable sourcing, production and delivery procedures ensure that consumers will have access to information around our tuna products from where our fish was caught to the status of the stock, including the name of fishers. This ensures that the marine environment will not be harmed so we can all enjoy fish, while equitably helping the municipal fishers with profitable livelihood, said Christian Schmidradner, General Manager of Meliomar Inc. and one of the organizers of the event. The event was also welcomed by fisherfolk groups as it solidified the commitment of top hotels and restaurants to sustainable fisheries and allows them to gain access to high end markets in Manila. This is a huge validation for fisherfolk communities who have been struggling to fight for our rights and our place in the sun, said Jeremie L Jumao-as, a local fisherfolk from Samahan ng mga Manggagawa sa Tunahan Sablayan in Occidental Mindoro. The continued patronage by these hotels and restaurants will allow us to inform and train our fellow fishers on the proper way to catch fish to continue supplying quality seafood to both local and foreign markets. LtGen. Eduardo M. Ano AFP, commanding general, Philippine Army tendered with full military honor hosted by MGen. Jet B. Velarmino AFP, commander 8th Infantry Division, Philippine Army during the visit of the former at Headquaters 8ID, PA on February 17, 2016. CGPA pays visit to 8ID Stormtroopers By DPAO, 8ID PA February 18, 2016 CAMP VICENTE LUKBAN, Catbalogan City The Philippine Armys most ranking officer paid his first visit to the home of the 8th Infantry Stormtroopers Division, Wednesday. Lt. Gen. Eduardo M. Ano, AFP Commanding General, Philippine Army was warmly welcomed by team Stormtroopers through full military honors upon his arrival as part of military tradition. The welcoming party was composed of Maj. Gen. Jet B. Velarmino, Commander, 8ID; Col. Cesar M. Idio, Assistant Division Commander; Col. Divino Rey C. Pabayo Jr., Chief of Staff and the rest of the Stormtroopers family. One of the highlights of his visit is the awarding of Gold Cross Medal to the gallant men of Bravo Company, 87th Infantry (Hinirang) Battalion for their successful encounter against the NPA which resulted to the seizure of enemy encampment at Barangay Antol, Calbiga, Samar last December 11, 2015. The heroic quest of Cpt. Nilfe D. Quioco, Cpl. Kith Richard R. Tan and Pvt. 1st Class Grengo O. Decena resulted to the recovery of numerous high powered firearms, ammunition, claymore mines, flat screen television, satellite cable, generator, chainsaw, first aid kit, foodstuff and subversive documents with high intelligence value. In his speech, Lt. Gen. Ano reiterated that he will continuously support the 8IDs efforts in creating a favorable atmosphere sustainable for peace and development in Eastern Visayas. He further commended the Stormtroopers for their enthusiasm in serving its people with highest standard, honor, dedication to duty and their professionalism to contain the insurgent groups while extending humanitarian assistance and disaster during calamities. The spiral machine used for panning in the gold exploration. Gandara officials deny pay-off over the Cobarrubias gold and silver exploratory work By GINA DEAN February 18, 2016 CALBAYOG CITY The Sangguniang Bayan of Gandara finally revoked and nullified the resolution granting Mrs. Cherry dela Cruz Cobarrubias to rehabilitate Gandara River by means of dredging. Said resolution was approved in 2014 under the administration of Mayor Eufemio Oliva and Vice Mayor Jonathan Isanan. However, the municipal government discovered that the dredging operations funded by the Cobarrubias, has turned out to be an exploration work of gold and silver mineral deposits at Brgy. Gerali. Local officials were lambasted by concerned citizens over the social media and accused of receiving pay-off from said permittee (or holder of exploration permit). In a public hearing held last February 10 at Gandara Cultural Center, Mayor Oliva denied the bribery issue imputed against them by the people. He clarified that the resolution was approved by the sanggunian in good faith without receiving any favour from Don Angelo C. Cobarrubias or his mother Cherry. The approval of the application for exploration is not under the municipal government but under the DENR-Mines and Geosciences Bureau Regional Office 8 after the applicant has completed all the necessary documents required by concerned government agency. MGB-8 OIC Regional Director Nonita Caguida explained that Don Angelo C. Cobarrubias application for Mineral Production Sharing Agreement (MPSA) was filed on April 2005 covering 808 hectares of land located at Gandara and San Jorge, Samar. In the process of application, a Notice of Posting was sent by MGB-8 to the provincial government of Samar which was automatically downloaded to the concerned municipalities for 30 days posting in conspicuous places. The purpose of posting was to inform the public and concerned stakeholders for possible protests. Receiving no complaint within the reglementary period prescribed by law, the application of Cobarrubias proceeded smoothly with a Certificate of Posting allegedly issued by each municipality. But while in the process of acquiring MPSA, Executive Order No. 79 or Institutionalizing and Implementing Reforms in the Philippine Mining Sector Providing Policies and Guidelines to Ensure Environmental Protection and Responsible in the Utilization of Mineral Resources was issued in June 2012. Pending the issuance of MPSA, the proponent amended their application into exploration and submitted it to MGB-8 for final validation and clearance. Caguida clarified that all the application documents of Cobarrubias were scrutinized; and in fact the 808 hectares was reduced into 501 after the Department of Environment and Natural Resources Office conducted study in the covered areas. For those who are under the No Gold Zone areas (tourist and agricultural areas), it could not be covered by the exploration work. Upon validation of application documents, the exploration permit covering 501 hectares situated in Gandara and San Jorge, Samar, was released by DENRs Mines and Geosciences Bureau Regional Office 8 on January 20, 2015 to Don Angelo C. Cobarrubias of 2711 B-Wack-Wack, Twin Towers, Wack-wack, Mandaluyong City. Under the Mining Act of 1995, the exploration allowed the permittee to conduct exploration work within a period of two years from its approval, and subject for renewal on the same period up to 8 years for metallic and 6 years for non-metallic. Based on research, gold is considered metallic mineral while silver is a combination of different small elements which are found in gold, lead, zinc and copper ores. People Cry, No to Mining! Out of 69 barangays of Gandara, 41 have attended the public hearing with 924 registered participants coming from the different organizations like the church, business sector, senior citizens, youth, academe, government retirees, concerned citizens, local PNP and municipal and barangay officials. Citizens of said municipality were shouting as a sign of protest to the exploration work being conducted by the Cobarrubias at Brgy. Gerali since 2015. The church under the Diocese of Calbayog cited the 50 year moratorium of mining operation issued by the government after the Bagacay Mines experience. Brgy. Gerali according to the Municipal Agrarian Reform Officer, Aida Gamba is an agrarian reform community along with other nearby villages. In the absence of a map, Samar PENRO Elpidio Simon believed that the 501 hectares which was claimed by Cherry dela Cruz Cobarrubiasas a mining zone area is under Samar Island Natural Park. He added that the DENR have implemented the National Greening Program (NGP) and Community-Based Forest Management Program (CBMP) at Brgy. Gerali and nearby villages. Who is Cherry dela Cruz Cobarrubias? She claimed herself as a true-blooded Gandareno who hailed from Brgy. Gerali. Established connections in the circle and sponsored the rehabilitation of Gandara River. Received an award from the municipal government as the Most Outstanding Gandareno in 2014. In a conversation with a reliable source, he disclosed that Cherry dela Cruz Cobarrubias mother was from Matuguinao and her father was from Catbalogan, Samar. Contrary to her claim that her family originated from Brgy. Gerali where exploratory work is being conducted, the source revealed that Cherrys father used to teach at said barangay. She had a colourful life in the film industry as she produced Bulaklak ng City Jail and many more. In the field of politics, she is still the president of Marcos Loyalists Movement. According to the source, Gerali mineral deposits was then a long time project of Cobarrubias. She was able to persuade millions of investment from an Australian couple but their partnership was terminated when the couple has detected suspicion from said operation. It was also learned that Samars former Vice Governor Jesus Redaja made an investment in a mining operation at Bagacay Mines, but the deal was cut short leaving the latters equipment abandoned at the mining site. To get Cherry Cobarrubias comments, the writer requested her geologist for an interview but no feedback was received. The National Law vs. People Power Despite the strong disapproval of the people of Gandara, Cherry Cobarrubias is confident that the exploratory work will pursue. MGB-8 OIC Regional Director NonitaCaguidasaid that the documents for the acquisition of exploratory permit have undergone a long scrutiny, and local ordinances or resolutions with the intention of revoking such permit cannot be allowed for it cannot supersede the national law as provided in RA 7942 or the Philippine Mining Act of 1995. Caguida was one of the witnesses in the Exploration Permit issued by MGB-8 to the Cobarrubias in January 20, 2015. Members of the Samoa Unity Christian Church (S.U.C.C) are gathering at Nuu Fou for their annual conference this week. S.U.C.C was established by Pastor Ropeti and his wife Bronwyn Mataafa in New Zealand in 1984. It was established in Samoa in 2007. The church started in 1984 and the name at that time was Samoa Christian Fellowship, said Pastor Ropeti. Then in 1990, it was changed into Samoa Unity Christian Church when I realised that many of the people dont really speak English. We started with one church in Auckland and five years later we had about four branches around New Zealand. In 1989. me and my wife moved to Australia to start up another church in Sydney and as we go on the organization was growing and now we have about seven branches in Australia and in New Zealand as well. Pastor Ropeti said one of the keys to the churchs growth is the teachings. Our teaching is simple, we dont believe in telling families to donate thousands of dollars for the church, he said. No we dont, I dont believe in enslaving and making people suffer. [But] we do believe in a tithing system and free will offering, so ten percent of the peoples earnings goes to the church. Those are the only ways we raise our finances. Even Pastors dont get special treatment, unlike most churches in Samoa. When it comes to church, we are the same as everybody else, he said. We dont address anybody in a special way, no we are all the same. He also spoke about the love of God in the church and His blessings upon the church. In 2007 we opened up a branch in Samoa. We first held it at one of the Ministers houses and then we decided to buy land and buy this place. In the building of this church we never owed any money to anybody or the bank. I dont believe in borrowing money from the bank because the church is a free will thing, they can come anytime and they can also leave whenever they like. We also started up new branches in American Samoa and we have a guy, he offered the church two acres free of lease to the American Samoa branch to be built. So we are growing and I believe that there is a revival coming and God is going to bless this organization. The church conference is for one week. WASHINGTON (AP) Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Monday confronted doubts about the depth of his knowledge of world affairs, delivering a sober speech to a pro-Israel crowd and outlining for the first time his team of foreign policy advisers. In a lengthy interview with the editorial board of The Washington Post, Trump outlined a distinctly non-interventionist approach for the United States in the world. "I do think it's a different world today, and I don't think we should be nation-building anymore," Trump told the newspaper. He stressed instead the need to invest in infrastructure at home. "At what point do you say, 'Hey, we have to take care of ourselves'?" he said. "So, I know the outer world exists and I'll be very cognizant of that. But at the same time, our country is disintegrating, large sections of it, especially the inner cities." Trump has largely avoided policy details during his campaign, focusing instead on boldly stated goals and saying last week in an interview with MSNBC that his "primary consultant is myself." During the interview, Trump stumbled when questioning the U.S. role in assisting Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. "They're not doing anything. And I say: 'Why is it that Germany's not dealing with NATO on Ukraine? Why is it that other countries that are in the vicinity of Ukraine, why aren't they dealing?" he said. In fact, since the Ukraine crisis erupted more than two years ago, the Obama administration has refused to provide the new, pro-Western government in Kiev offensive military equipment to use against Russian-backed separatists. And while a February 2015 ceasefire helped reduce the worst of the violence, Germany and France led that mediation effort. The United States wasn't directly involved. Trump has also drawn concerns from Jewish leaders for saying he would attempt to be "neutral" in the decades-long Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He worked to soothe those worries Monday in a major speech before the annual gathering of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. In a speech delivered from prepared remarks and a teleprompter, a rarity for Trump, he stressed that he is "a lifelong supporter and true friend of Israel." Trump's remarks largely focused on Iran, calling the deal reached last year with several world powers aimed at keeping it from acquiring nuclear weapons "catastrophic for America, for Israel and to the whole Middle East." He also said he would reject any attempt by the United Nations to impose conditions on either side during future peace talks in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying that "it will only further delegitimize Israel." He ended his speech by announcing that his daughter, who married a Jewish man and converted to Judaism, was about to give birth. "My daughter Ivanka is about to have a beautiful Jewish baby," he said. Anti-Trump protesters gathered outside the venue, but there was no mass walk-out of AIPAC attendees as some had planned. Trump was followed on stage by rival Ted Cruz, who opened his speech by pointedly noting Trump's use of the term "Palestine." Although the U.N. General Assembly overwhelmingly voted in 2012 to recognize Palestine as a "non-member observer state," the U.S. does not currently recognize the Palestinian territories as an independent state. "Perhaps to the surprise of the previous speaker, Palestine has not existed since 1948," the Texas senator said. Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton also addressed the conference, questioning Trump's readiness to guide the nation through international entanglements. "We need steady hands," Clinton said. "Not a president who says he's neutral on Monday, pro-Israel on Tuesday and who-knows-what on Wednesday because everything's negotiable." Israel's security, she proclaimed, "is non-negotiable." And so once again we have a highly paid high-flying government official disputing the existence of poverty in Samoa. This time he comes in the form of the Chief Executive Officer of the Ministry of Finance, Lavea Iulai Lavea, who made the point during a workshop about the Sustainable Development Goals (S.D.Gs) for Members of Parliament last week. The S.D.Gs by the way have been embraced by Samoa. Prime Minister Tuilaepa Sailele Malielegaoi flew all the way to New York last year to indicate Samoas support to the global agenda, whereby an integral part of it is a commitment to achieve the 17 S.D.Gs in the next 15 years. Ironically, Ending Poverty is the first goal of the S.D.Gs. Which means that by Tuilaepa endorsing it, it must be pretty important for Samoa and quite relevant where we live. But dont mention anything of the sort to those government officials. Take Lavea for example. Poverty is a strong word, he said. This is because there is no poverty in Samoa. I think we shouldnt use such a term, instead, we should use the term hardship. Like his boss Tuilaepa and his other equally highly paid fellow public servants driving around in flash cars paid for by those poor taxpayers, Lavea added that, poverty is when we have homeless people on the streets and on the side of the roads. This, he said, is not visible in Samoa. Is that so? What do you call street vendors then? What about the beggars on the streets at all hours of the day and night? What about the people we see sleeping on the verandah of some of the shops in town now and then? Are they blinded to child slavery we see everyday? The reality is that driving through town and some of the most populated areas in Samoa, especially in the Apia township, is a sad experience. To be honest, it is hard to ignore images of people living in near third-world country conditions flashing before your eyes. How could you? At about 12.30midday, Apias bright sun was probably at its hottest. Yet sitting with her legs crossed centimetres from the main road was a woman who was selling talo. The only thing she had to shade her from the suns harmful rays was a small umbrella, just enough to cover her head. She was exposed to all other elements. And you didnt need to be a rocket scientist to know she wouldve inhaled all the dust and the harmful fumes from the passing vehicles. Anyway, it was a slow day in terms of business. For this woman who was selling talo for $20 a bundle, she told this column she had been there since the morning and by midday, she hadnt sold anything. For all her effort, she didnt have much to show for it. The look on her face said it all. She wasnt alone. About 10 minutes drive to Vaitele, a young boy approached the writer begging for some money. He is among a growing number of young boys and girls hawking goods at all hours of the day. Over the past few years, the number has slowly but surely increased. On some nights, it breaks your heart when you are about to hop in your car to go home and yet these young children are still hawking around fagusea, koko Samoa and air fresheners. But these stories are becoming all too common in this country. As a matter of fact, such sad experiences have become the norm everyday on these shores. Why are the stories from these people important? Its simple really, if you want to know the truth about the state of a countrys economy; its best to assess it by the living standards of its ordinary citizens. And by that were talking about farmers and people like the woman who was selling talo at the market yesterday. Their struggles mirror that of many others in this country. That is the reality. Now getting back to Lavea and the debate about poverty and hardship in Samoa last week, a new M.P., Faumuina Wayne Fong, had apparently asked the U.N.D.P Resident Representative, Lizbeth Cullity, during the meeting to measure the state of poverty in Samoa from a scale of 1-3. 1- Means that there is no poverty, 2- There is little poverty in Samoa and 3- there is absolute poverty in Samoa. In response, Ms. Cullity gave a 2. I would say that when your P.M and other officials talk about poverty, I think they are interpreting the lavishness that you have here in Samoa, she explained. I think the idea is from the recognition of being born into the tropical island with a lot of breadfruit and avocado trees; where fish (tuna fish) are just extraordinary, a place where you can have access to food such as banana, taro etc, growing in your backyards. And I couldnt agree more to that. But I think you should also look at recognising that there are people who suffer in this country and are suffering. I think its important to recognise that there are people out there living with a lot less than what we have as a group of professional people who are fortunate to get positions that we have today. Well thank you, Ms. Cullity. Finally there is someone with some sense of responsibility and courage to stand up to these high-flying public servants who have been blinded by power and material wealth they simply refuse to accept the truth. Folks, no one is saying that Samoa is like sub Sahara Africa. But the reality is that the number of people suffering from hardship as the result of the poverty of jobs, money, opportunities and food is a growing menace that if nothing is done about it, we are heading for a future nobody wants. What do you think? Dear Editor, Re: Poverty comes in different forms Totally agree with E.M the only reason why theres no evidence of third world poverty is because of remittances from overseas. The only reason why we support our families in Samoa is because our families needed support. Remittances are worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the economy of Samoa every year, it creates business opportunities, it creates job opportunities and its earning tax revenue for the government every single time money is used in business activities. We are looking after our families, and we are also helping the economy of Samoa. There are more Samoans living in N.Z. and Australia than people in Samoa, that means the foreign aid money from these two countries is indirectly funded by Samoans living and working in those countries. Its amazing what Samoans from overseas can do for their dear country of Samoa. Our duty to our families in Samoa has a powerful and positive effect on the economy and its a beneficial partnership - a great service with a smile to our dear country and people. Le Mafa P Apollo Cinemas was flooded with members of the community who wanted to lend a helping hand to the Fijian community affected by Cyclone Winston on Monday night. Among them was the Head of State, His Highness Tui Atua Tupua Tamasese Efi and the Deputy Prime Minister, Fiame Naomi Mataafa. They were there for a special screening of the film Moana: Rising of the Sea. All proceeds will be given to Save the Children Fiji. Guests were treated to contemporary dances by the stars of the film from the Fiji Oceania Dance theatre before they made their way into the cinema for the premiere of the film. An auction also took place with prizes donated by different hotels in both Samoa and Fiji with the biggest prize being a return trip for 2 to Hawaii donated by Fiji Airways. Guests dug deep into their pockets while major sponsor Vailima Breweries made sure their cups never ran dry. Cecil Leger, the Samoa Manager for Fiji Airways, said the event was all about giving back to Fiji. The show Moana: Rising of the Sea was launched in Honolulu, Paris and Fiji and now were launching it in Samoa and we thought it would be a fitting way to raise funds for the children who have suffered from Cyclone Winston, he said. Basically the show is about climate change and so it was fitting that the different changes in climatic phenomenons and with climate change being the fuel which intensifies and increases frequency of cyclones it would be a good idea to have the launch and raise funds for victims. Companies in Samoa opened their hearts to lend support for the noble cause. We had companies come on board and donate cash, companies who came and donated the food and drinks, and even Apollo Cinemas donated the venue for free which is something that they normally dont do, Mr. Leger said. We have been very thankful that the companies and individuals have come and opened their hearts and dug deep to support the event. Aid has already gone to helping families in Fiji so the event organizers wanted to target children with the funds generated by the event. Thats why they have chosen Save the Children Fiji. Our focus has been the children because the government has already received millions of dollars in aid which has been channeled to various affected areas, Mr. Leger said. Wed rather focus on the children so this money can be spent for their needs, whether it be for counseling to get over the trauma, or just the basic necessities for their school and livelihood. The fundraising event was a huge success. We were thinking that if we got 10 people through the door then it would be a success because everything has been donated so we havent used any of our personal funds. We didnt expect this many people and it looks as if we needed a bigger space. We want to thank the business community and the people of Samoa for reaching out to the Fijian brothers and sisters in need. As of press time yesterday, it could not be confirmed how much money the event raised. Australian Survivor will be shot in Samoa over the next few months. According to the Daily Telegraph yesterday, the producers have chosen tropical Samoa over other possible locations because of its stunning landscape. The much-anticipated Channel Ten reality series will air on the network later this year. Channel Ten wouldnt comment on the location but it is understood the production will begin over the coming weeks. It was not possible to get a comment from the Samoa Tourism Authority (S.T.A) yesterday. The Samoa Observer, however, understands that the crew are expected to start arriving next week before the contestants are flown over and taken to the different locations around Samoa. The Samoa Observer also understands that a scouting team from Survivor Australia has been working with local agents including S.T.A to organise the logistics for the filming which is expected to take up to four months. According to the Daily Telegraph yesterday, it was initially reported in January that the series would be shot on the Malaysian island of Pulau Tiga, where the first ever American season was filmed in 2000. But it is believed Samoa has been selected for its dramatic and stunning volcanic island landscape. Samoa too has also featured on the U.S. version but not until 2009. It is the latest revamp of the format locally with Sevens 2006 season the last spin off and Nine having a go in 2002. The U.S. version has been running for 31 seasons. Ten is still casting for the series that will see a group of hopefuls living rough and taking part in various endurance challenges as they vie for the series title. The network is yet to announce a host for the series that will shoot for about three months and go to air later in the year. More than 15,000 eager hopefuls have sent in applications to take part in the show. Well end up collecting an island location, most likely a location that has had a series of Survivor shot there before, Tens Chief Programming Officer Beverley McGarvey has said in an interview. Bringing that expertise to the table is really critical. We think the purity of the concept is something that will really resonate with Australian audiences. The spirit of the Easter week was evident yesterday as Avele, St. Josephs and Don Bosco students put their differences aside and took turns to apologise to one another. The groveling apologies which saw students on their knees with tears of remorse follow a string of brawls and stone fights at Savalalo which landed students and teachers in the hospital last week. At least six students have been arrested and are awaiting their dates with Court. Yesterday, representative students and staff from St. Josephs and Don Bosco began the morning by visiting Avele to say sorry for their part in the fights. Avele College then made their way down to both St. Josephs and Don Bosco for their turn. In the end, the spirits were high as the different students laughed together, shook hands, hugged and danced in celebration of their new-found unity. Father Christopher J. Ford, Principal of Don Bosco, addressed the students of each school on the importance of peace. I apologize with all my heart to Avele and to you St. Josephs for the times the actions of Don Bosco have not brought happiness to others, he said. I am sorry for the times when our actions brought hurt, for the times our actions have pulled down rather than pulled up, for the times when our actions had not brought joy to our world, for the times when our actions has added more to the sufferings of Jesus rather than sharing his cross with him. Please forgive me, please forgive our boys and please forgive our school because we all know in our hearts that Saint Don Bosco sought to bring all people together in peace to the Lord. Father Christopher continued on with a lesson for all the students of the three schools. The second thing I would like to say and its connected to happiness; violence never brings happiness. I asked our boys on Friday who is happier today after the fight yesterday than they were before the fight? No one!! Everyone was sad; violence brings more bad than good, violence brings more troubles than it solves, violence and fighting makes people sad. Just as it has made the students of Avele sad, just as it has made St. Josephs sad and just as it makes Don Bosco sad. The principals, staff members and students who are not involved in the feuds have had enough of all the fighting. This is enough, it is time to stop. Stand up for peace, stand up for joy, stand up for goodness; remember that it is your responsibility and the responsibility of the students of Avele, Don Bosco and every other school in Samoa to do the right thing. Evil flourishes when good people dont act, when good people dont do the right thing. Staff members of all 3 schools agreed as Father Christopher told the students that it is time to do the right thing and its time for peace. Do the right thing; take action to bring peace, to bring reconciliation. Remember at this special time of the year that we are all united in Christ in a very profound way, he said. We are all his sons and daughters, sons and daughters of God and the brothers and sisters of Jesus. So let us love each other as brothers and sisters in the lord. Nicholas James (Jim) Stadelman, Jr. passed away peacefully on December 6, 2015 in Elko, Nevada at the Northeastern Nevada Regional Hospital at the age of 90. Born in Hays, Kansas on June 4, 1925, to his parents Nicholas James, Sr., and Catherine (Brungardt) Stadelman. On July 24, 1961, Jim married Virginia (Myers) in a double wedding, along with brother LeRoy who married Virginias sister, Shirley, at St. Josephs Catholic Church in Grand Junction, Colorado. Jim and Virginia were married 54 years. In 1931, the Stadelman family moved from Hays, Kansas to Ft. Collins, Colorado where they farmed and worked the beet fields, and Jim attended catholic school. In 1936, the family moved back to Salina, Kansas where they farmed. In 1937, Jim attended Sacred Heart Catholic School in Salina, Kansas. As a child Jim was known as Nickie and after he became an adult, the family called him Jim. He spoke only German until age 6 when he learned English in order to attend grammar school. By 1942, the family moved back to Ft. Collins, Colorado. Jim went on to attend Ft. Collins High School through the eleventh grade when he had to quit to help work the family farm. In the 1980s, he went back to school and obtained his GED. In 1952, the family purchased the Frasier Valley Ranch and moved from Ft. Collins to Frasier, Colorado. The family operated the Frasier Valley Ranch until 1956 when they sold it to the city of Denver. In 1956, the family purchased and moved to a ranch on the western slope of Colorado, known as the Stadelman Herford Ranch, on Kannah Creek near Whitewater and Grand Junction. They also owned and operated the Dot Cow Camp on the Uncompahgre Plateau. Their ranching operation utilized both private lands and public lands. In 1974, the brothers sold the ranch and quit the farm and ranching business. Jim and his family moved to Grand Junction. For a short time Jim became a janitor for Valley Federal Savings and Loan (new skyscraper building at the time) before obtaining a job as a sand blaster and overhead crane operator for Grand Junction Steel Fabricating until 1990 when he retired. In 1990, Jim decided to continue to work part-time and became a delivery driver for Kentucky Fried Chicken until they discontinued deliveries, then he became a delivery driver for Big Cheese Pizza until the business closed in 2003. In 2004, Jim and Virginia moved to Elko Nevada to live with their daughter. Jim lived with his wife and daughter until his death. Jim was a member of the Knights of Columbus (3rd and 4th degree) in Grand Junction Colorado. He began his dedication to the K of C when he joined the squires. In the early 1970s, Jim assisted the Sisters of the Whitewater Benedictine Community, formerly known as Whitewater Visitation Community, in getting established on Kannah Creek. Jim was also a member of the Cattlemans Association, Lions, Moose, Grand Junction Gem and Mineral Club, German Club, and Friendship Force. As a member of the Friendship Force, Jim and Virginia hosted families and individuals from Germany, Japan, Russia, and Columbia. In 1989, Jim and Virginia were able to travel to West Germany with the Friendship Force. In 2003, the city of Denver established the Stadelman Conservation Easement in the Frasier Valley on a portion of the ranch they once owned to preserve the ranching heritage of the area. Jim is preceded in death by his parents Nicholas James, Senior, and Catherine (Brungardt) Stadelman; brothers Victor Adolph and Orville Frances of Grand Junction, and Alvin Julius of Winterpark Colorado; and sisters Bernice (brother-in-law Paul Michaud) of Ft. Collins Colorado and Rose deLima of Hays, Kansas. Jim is survived by his wife Virginia and daughter Janice of Elko Nevada, son James of Pasco Washington, brother, Leroy (Shirley) of Grand Junction and sister-in-law Betty of Grand Junction, Colorado and several nieces and nephews. Funeral service will be held in Grand Junction Colorado. The inurnment will be at Immaculate Heart of Mary Catholic Church Columbarium. 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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 London, UK -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/22/2016 -- One of the UK's leading life insurance companies proudly offers life insurance policies to people throughout the UK, even for those with pre-existing medical conditions. Genesage, the London-based life insurance company, has aided thousands of people throughout the United Kingdom to find and purchase quality, affordable life insurance for several years. The company is highly rated by their clients as well as those throughout the industry for providing expert advice, quality rates, and individual plans that suit their clients' needs and budget. "We pride ourselves on being an independent specialist in the life insurance industry," said Peter Thomas, CEO of Genesage. "Our expert team of professionals have been in the industry for decades; they are familiar with the common and complex questions that the public have regarding finding and purchasing a life insurance policy. We have helped thousands of people, those with a clean bill of health, as well as those with pre-existing conditions such as heart attacks, diabetes, Crohn's Disease, and Multiple Sclerosis. We help them find affordable life insurance so that if something happens, their family will not need to stress over finances," he adds. Genesage specializes in helping people find, negotiate, and purchase affordable life insurance. In addition to helping people with pre-existing conditions buy affordable policies, the company is also a specialist in helping families protect their loved ones when work-related disasters happen. Genesage has offered life insurance policies to those in high-risk occupations such as firefighters, law enforcement, and people in the Armed Forces. "These occupations are incredibly important to our communities, and our country, but statistics have shown that many people who are working in high-risk jobs often find it difficult to find affordable life insurance. Insurance policies offered through their work, or purchased independently, are often too expensive for these people to afford. This results in people with high-risk jobs to forego on buying a life insurance policy. At Genesage, we believe that everyone should carry a life insurance policy especially those brave people who put their lives on the line every day for the sake of the community and country. We are dedicated to helping people find quality life insurance policies that will meet their budget," Peter said. About Genesage Based in London, Wandsworth, Genesage offers competitive life insurance quotes to people throughout the United Kingdom. The specialize in helping people with diabetes and other pre-existing conditions and high-risk occupations find quality life insurance for themselves and their loved ones. The company has been recognized as one of the leading life insurance companies in the industry throughout the UK for their passion, dedication and providing expert advice to their clients. For more information on life insurance quotes for those with pre-existing conditions, please visit http://www.genesage.com/pre-existing-conditions For more information on quotes for people with diabetes, please visit http://www.genesage.com/diabetes-life-insurance For more information on how Genesage can help people in high-risk occupations, please visit http://www.genesage.com/occupations Media Contact Peter Thomas Genesage Life Insurance Quotes Address: London, Wandsworth SW152PG, UK Phone: 0207 350 2160 Email: info@genesage.com Website: http://www.genesage.com The first train from Yiwu arrives in Madrid in December 2014. Julian Rojas Senior Chinese trade officials were in Madrid this week in a bid to revive the flagging fortunes of a 13,000-kilometer rail route linking the Spanish capital with the Chinese city of Yiwu, more than a year after it opened amid much fanfare. Since the first train arrived in the Spanish capital in December 2014 following a deal signed by Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, a further 39 convoys have unloaded Chinese imports, while just eight have returned bearing Spanish exports, the most recent of which began its journey through France, Germany, Poland, Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan to Yiwu, in Chinas central Zhejiang province, this week. Rail transport is faster than sea routes but is also significantly more expensive Rail transport is faster than sea routes taking 21 days as opposed to up to 40 by container vessel but is also significantly more expensive. A container aboard the Yiwu Express costs 2,000, while one stored on a ship costs 1,300. The difference in cost has clearly been a factor that has discouraged Spanish exporters, as have bureaucratic problems. Mao Wenjin, president of the Yiwu-Spain trade association, explains: A number of legal issues such as permits to export ham, and the movement of foodstuffs through Russia need to be sorted out. Santiago Vivanco, head of the Vivanco winery, says his firm has exported red wine three times using the Yiwu Express. He says it is worth the expense, as it avoids customs duties and delays at the port of Shanghai. I think the reason Spanish exporters arent using it is because there isnt much tradition of transporting goods by rail in Spain. Other wagons are filled up further along the route in northern European countries such as Germany, which makes the service viable, he explains. The train brings in a wide range of Chinese-made goods, from Christmas decorations to Tupperware. In return, Spanish manufacturers mainly export ham, wine, olive oil, and mineral water. Jaime Garcia-Legaz, Spains secretary of state for trade, believes the train route would be of particular interest to producers of fruit and vegetables, which keep well in cold storage. He believes the project is holding its own and that it is normal for the volume of trade to be greater coming in from China, given the size of its manufacturing sector compared to Spains. A number of legal issues such as permits to export ham and the movement of foodstuffs through Russia need to be sorted out Mao Wenjin, president of the Yiwu-Spain trade association Sheng Quiping, a senior Communist Party representative from Yiwu, said in Madrid this week that he believed that despite the economic slowdown in his country, there was still demand for Spanish goods. In the next five years we are going to promote imports. Spanish goods are very popular, he said. Yiwu is a huge distribution center for central China, filled with thousands of wholesalers. Mao said that if you spent eight hours a day visiting its stores, taking just three minutes in each, it would take more than a year to enter each one. The city has a GDP equivalent to 8% of Portugals, and it is visited by around 10 million buyers each year. Spain is aware of the need to raise awareness of the Yiwu Express, and the countrys ICEX foreign trade institute regularly organizes seminars for business leaders and exporters. We have supported the Yiwu-Madrid route from the outset and believe that Spanish exporters will start using it more, says ICEX CEO Francisco Javier Garzon. The Hermanos Rubio winery is among the 15 Spanish companies that have used the train, sending two shipments of red wine to China. The first was in winter, requiring the use of thermal blankets to protect the bottles from the Russian cold. But as spring approaches, such measures are no longer necessary. I saw it on the television, but it was our customer who asked us to use this means of transport, he said. His client was Mao, who owns a company that distributes Spanish goods in China. Its true that it is pricey, but this train is a priority for the Chinese government. If we use this train, the government gives us free advertising on state television. Deerfield Beach, FL -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/22/2016 -- Global and China Fire-fighting cylinder Market 2016-2021 Market Research Report Complete report With TOC available: http://www.mrsresearchgroup.com/market-analysis/global-and-chinese-fire-fighting-cylinder-market-2016.html The report on the Global and China Fire-fighting cylinder 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 Fire-fighting cylinder Market 2016 Industry. Get Sample: http://www.mrsresearchgroup.com/report/58462#request-sample The study analyzes the Global and China Fire-fighting cylinder 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 Fire-fighting cylinder Market 2016 is expected to adopt. All internal and external factors influencing the growth trajectory of the Global and China Fire-fighting cylinder 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 Fire-fighting cylinder Market 2016 Industry, the report is a valuable resource that supports competition mapping and strategy development. Besides the drivers and restraints that will be conspicuous by their presence over the next few years, the Global and China Fire-fighting cylinder Market 2016 Industry report also conducts a detailed analysis of the trends and opportunities that currently prevail. The report doesn't stop at listing the various opportunitiesit also picks out threats, growth pockets as well as white spaces that exist therein. Furthermore, the report takes into consideration all the major stakeholders in the Global and China Fire-fighting cylinder 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 Fire-fighting cylinder Market 2016 Industry. Inquiry For Buying: http://www.mrsresearchgroup.com/report/58462#inquiry-for-buying Contact Us Joel John 3422 SW 15 Street,Suit #8138 Deerfield Beach,Florida 33442 United States Toll : +1-855-465-4651 (USA-CANADA) Tel: +1-386-310-3803 Email: sales@mrsresearchgroup.com Website: http://www.mrsresearchgroup.com/ Browse more on Machinery Market report at: http://www.mrsresearchgroup.com/category/machinery-and-equipments.html New York, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/22/2016 -- Land military is one of the basic forms of border defense of a country. Military land vehicles have been growing at a rapid pace due to increasing purchases by the emerging economies with large population who need increased land-protection. However, the military land vehicles market is expected to grow at a sluggish rate in the short term due to austerity in several major markets. The economic slowdown in Europe is another factor for the low growth in the short term. The traditional markets for military land vehicles such are the U.S. are mostly up-grading and maintaining their existing military fleets rather than replacing them with the new ones. The expected cuts in the U.S. vehicle programs are expected to lead to a slowdown of military land vehicles market in the region in the short term. The major land military vehicles of the U.S. include Stryker program, MI I3 replacement, Abrams/Bradley/Paladin Capability enhancement, Ground Combat Vehicle JLTV and FMTV. The major land vehicles owned by other countries include FRES, OUVS, Warrior & Challenger (the U.K.), Boxer (Netherlands), Future AIFV (Spain), PUMA AIFV (Germany), Freccia (Italy), Strategic Military Program (Brazil), Altay MBT (Turkey), K21 AIFV and K2 MBT (South Korea), Abrams Tank up-gradation (Iraq), Future MBT and Abhay (India), Land 121 and Project Overlander (Australia), Project Vistula, Sepula, Hoefyster (South Africa), TSS MBT up-gradation (Peru) and Main battle tank (Columbia) . Interested in report: Please follow the below the links to meet your requirements; Request for the Report Brochure: http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/samples/3710 The asymmetric warfare and increasing operation pressures are compelling the governments to focus on new breed of military land vehicles with focus on mobility and transportation, propulsion, transportability, interoperability with other elements, logistics footprint and lifetime cost. The increasing need for agile and efficient vehicles is driving the market for lightweight and hybrid military land vehicles. The U.K. which played significant role in Iraq and Afghanistan operation faced a defense budget deficit of USD 60billion post operation which led to an aggressive Strategic Defense and Security Review (SDSR) to recover from this. The legacy vehicles in France including AMX-10 RC, VAB and ERC-90 are to be replaced by VBMR and EBRC vehicles. Request TOC (table of content), Figures and Tables of the Report: http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/toc/3710 The governments in the western countries are practicing lean military force and are therefore downsizing their armed forces. However, they are replacing their cold-war era equipments and investing in new technologies. The Department of Defense (DOD) in the U.S. is planning to downsize its soldier's strength by 80,000 and the marine corps by 20,000. Among regions, North America dominated global sales followed by Asia Pacific. With the economic recovery of Europe by the mid of the decade the military land vehicles market in the region is expected to grow at a fast pace. Military land vehicles market is consolidated with small number of players operating in the market. The key players in military land vehicles market are General Dynamics, BAE Systems, Oshkosh Corporation, Rheinmetall, ST Engineering and Navistar. The military land vehicle manufacturers are increasing their focus on Asia Pacific and Middle East markets. In the decade 2001-2010, the series of wars led to Urgent Operational Requirements (UORs) where the manufacturers of military land vehicles enjoyed great profits. The present decade mostly features cold war thus marring the scope for UORs. However, any eruption of war can give the military land vehicles industry a skyrocketing growth. For more Info: http://www.persistencemarketresearch.com/contact-us.asp Key points covered in the report 1) Report segments the market on the basis of types, application, products, technology, etc (as applicable) 2) The report covers geographic segmentation - North America - Europe - Asia - RoW 3) The report provides the market size and forecast for the different segments and geographies for the period of 2010 to 2020 4) The report provides company profiles of some of the leading companies operating in the market 5) The report also provides porters five forces analysis of the market.- About Persistence Market Research (PMR) Persistence Market Research (PMR) is a full-service market intelligence firm specializing in syndicated research, custom research, and consulting services. PMR boasts market research expertise across the Healthcare, Chemicals and Materials, Technology and Media, Energy and Mining, Food and Beverages, Semiconductor and Electronics, Consumer Goods, and Shipping and Transportation industries. The company draws from its multi-disciplinary capabilities and high-pedigree team of analysts to share data that precisely corresponds to clients' business needs. PMR stands committed to bringing more accuracy and speed to clients' business decisions. From ready-to-purchase market research reports to customized research solutions, PMR's engagement models are highly flexible without compromising on its deep-seated research values. Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/22/2016 -- Dramatic improvements in access to and quality of healthcare in the Asia Pacific region, concurrent with the introduction of next-generation biologic and composite meshes in developed countries and adoption of laparoscopic techniques worldwide, will drive hernia repair market growth in the US, Europe and Asia Pacific. Saturated with numerous players and a library of different products, the fiercely-competitive hernia mesh industry has experienced notable improvements recently in device quality and affordability, as companies strive for increased physician adoption in established markets and strategize entry into new regions. In light of new these developments, GlobalData has released its medical devices report, MediPoint: Hernia Repair Global Analysis and Market Forecasts, with in-depth analysis of hernia repair market dynamics and actionable-insight into the mesh medical device industry. The report provides a comprehensive evaluation of the global hernia market, including development and sales of inguinal, incisional and umbilical hernia repair products in the US, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK, France, Brazil, China, India and Japan. Included within is an analysis of the drivers, opportunities and barriers impacting growth in the mesh market worldwide, with in-depth breakdown by surgical technique to highlight the fast adoption of laparoscopic methods. The report identifies and evaluates key trends and unmet needs shaping the global market through 2019, emphasizing testimonials from top physicians around the world who are implanting the devices. The report provides future sales expectations and discussion of adoption patterns for the various hernia mesh types, including large pore meshes, small pore meshes, composite meshes, 3D meshes, and biological meshes. Furthermore, it provides detailed coverage and analysis of the other factors shaping the global market, including next-generation technologies entering the market, the fall of watchful waiting, adoption in developing countries, and the role of group purchasing organizations. The report offers insight into the competitive landscape, including marketed and pipeline products, and quantifies unmet needs worldwide, highlighting opportunities for current and future players. View Full Report at http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/analysis/180140 GlobalData built this report using data and information sourced from secondary sources, as well as primary research interviews with leading Herniologists and General Surgeons around the world, and in-house analysis conducted by GlobalDatas team of industry experts. Highlights Key Questions Answered One of the key market drivers for hernia repair is adoption of the laparoscopic surgical technique. How will this affect the type of meshes that are utilized? Which countries will experience the highest adoption of the technique? (Q).Which laparoscopic technique will be utilized the most over the forecast? Watchful waiting has been the subject of much controversy amongst general surgeons. What are the viewpoints of the major economies on watchful waiting and how will their opinions change over the forecast? Group Purchasing Organizations are becoming even more influential in the buying decisions for hospitals. (Q).How can medical device manufacturers best present their hernia mesh product line to achieve GPO selection? Improved access to healthcare and larger populations are allowing major emerging economies to occupy larger positions in the global hernia market. (Q).Which countries will experience the largest growth over the forecast and what underlying factors will contribute towards it? Download Sample Copy of this Report at http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/sample/sample/180140 Key Benefits What Do Physicians Think quotes provide a unique insight into how healthcare professionals are reacting to events within the industry, and what their responses could mean for industry strategists. This information is essential for all strategic decision makers in every organization allowing them to act on high quality information. Scope An overview of hernias (inguinal, incisional, and umbilical), which includes epidemiology, pathophysiology, symptoms, diagnosis, and treatment guidelines. Coverage of the ten markets, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Italy, Spain, Germany, France, Brazil, Japan, China and India Annualized hernia market revenue, annual cost of disease and device adoption patterns from 2010-2012, as well as a seven-year market forecast to 2019. Market valuations are provided for the following markets: Overall Hernia Market, Inguinal Hernia Market, Incisional Hernia Market and Umbilical Hernia Market Strategic competitor assessments complete with SWOT analysis and portfolio analysis to highlight the strengths of established and emerging players and identify weaknesses of other market participants. Identification of the most important unmet needs and opportunities that companies can capitalize upon to gain a competitive advantage. Discussion of the impact of reimbursement on the adoption of more expensive mesh types versus less costly flatsheet meshes. Pipeline analysis of the next generation of self-gripping meshes. Analysis of the current and future market competition in the global hernia mesh repair market. Insightful review of the key industry drivers that underly this markets growth. Isolation of the top impediments to mesh adoption and company entrance into the major geographies Direct quotes from Key Opinion Leaders (KOL) currently using the products Reasons to buy Develop business strategies around the trends shaping and driving the global hernia mesh market. Drive revenues by understanding the key patterns, innovative products and technologies, market segments, and companies expected to impact the global hernia mesh market in the future. Develop and design your in-licensing and out-licensing strategies through a review of pipeline products and technologies, and by identifying the companies with the most robust pipeline. Formulate effective sales and marketing strategies by understanding the competitive landscape and by analyzing the performance of various competitors. Identify emerging players with potentially strong product portfolios and create effective counter-strategies to gain a competitive advantage. Track device sales in the global hernia mesh repair market from 2010-2019. Organize your sales and marketing efforts by identifying the market categories and segments that present maximum opportunities for consolidations, investments and strategic partnerships. Better understand the scope of this technology for strategic planning to explore opportunities in this growing market About MarketResearchReports.biz MarketResearchReports.biz is the most comprehensive collection of market research reports. MarketResearchReports.Biz services are specially designed to save time and money for our clients. We are a one stop solution for all your research needs, our main offerings are syndicated research reports, custom research, subscription access and consulting services. We serve all sizes and types of companies spanning across various industries. Browse Latest Industry Press Release http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/pressreleases Contact Us State Tower 90 State Street, Suite 700 Albany, NY 12207 United States Tel: +1-518-621-2074 Website: http://www.marketresearchreports.biz/ E: sales@marketresearchreports.biz Oklahoma City, OK -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/22/2016 -- Oklahoma Heart Hospital currently has a number of different nursing positions open in multiple departments, including the emergency room, critical care unit, and PCCU. There is an ER nurse position with a 7AM to 7PM shift, requiring the knowledge and skills of professionals who are graduates of an accredited school nursing program. This particular position requires compliance with all nursing standards and department policies, including the Patient Rights and Responsibilities, Standards for Nursing Care and Patient Care, and the Nurse Practice Act. Those who are hired into this position must operate all equipment efficiently, including hemodynamic monitoring, blood analysis, intra-aortic balloon pump, defibrillator, and pacemaker. All applicants for the emergency room nursing position must be a registered nurse with current Oklahoma licensure, as well as current BLS certification required at the time of hire. The critical care unit nursing position that is currently open at Oklahoma Heart Hospital requires a professional caregiver who can assume responsibility and accountability for their group of patients. This position will also require the nurse to provide patients with various treatments, nursing interventions, and a therapeutic overall environment for healing. This position is for the critical care unit nurse is for the 7AM-7PM shift, and requires a registered nurse with current Oklahoma licensure. Those who are hired into this position will need to have currently BLS certification at the time of hire as well as ACLS certification within 18 months of being hired. A minimum of one year of continuous experience in a telemetry or related cardiac clinic setting is preferred. All CCU nurses must be able to provide direct patient care to patients in both the stable and acute care settings. There is a registered nurse position for the PCCU department. This position requires those who can provide care to patients through therapeutic use of self, the nursing process, the therapeutic environment, treatments, modalities, and interdisciplinary collaboration. The CCU nursing position that is currently open at this hospital is for the FT days from 7AM to 7PM. Oklahoma Heart Hospital is known for being one of the most prestigious hospitals in the state and a highly sought after place of employment for people in the healthcare industry. Those who are hired at this hospital immediately enjoy full benefits. There are many different nursing positions currently open for those who fit the requirement descriptions for each listing. About The Oklahoma Heart Hospital The Oklahoma Heart Hospital is a physician-owned hospital and was designed by cardiologists to bring exceptional care directly to those who need it the most. OHH is the first of its kind in Oklahoma and the first all-digital hospital in the United States. OHH has two locations in Oklahoma City, along with a network of more than 70 cardiovascular specialists at more than 60 clinic and hospital locations across the state of Oklahoma. Contact: Oklahoma Heart Hospital Address: 5200 Interstate 240 Service Rd, Oklahoma City, OK 73135 Phone: 405-608-3304 https://www.okheart.com/ Albany, NY -- (SBWIRE) -- 03/22/2016 -- According to a recent market research report published by Transparency Market Research, the global packer market is projected to expand robustly at a CAGR of 9.0% during the period between 2014 and 2020. The report, titled "Packer Market - Global Industry Analysis, Size, Share, Growth, Trends, and Forecast 2014 - 2020," projects the global packer market to be worth US$4.9 bn by 2020. The overall market stood at a valuation of US$2.7 bn in 2013. Browse Report with Full TOC at : http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/packer-market.html A packer is a downhole equipment that separates portions of a borehole. The rise in drilling activities across oil and gas reservoirs has boosted the demand from the global packer market. In the U.S., the popularity of shale gas has further fuelled the demand for packers. However, instances of packer seal failures during installation and operation are expected to negatively affect the growth of the market during the forecast period. The overall market has a huge opportunity to grow with the discovery of new oilfields. On the basis of product type, the report broadly categorizes the global packer market into retrievable packers and permanent packers. The permanent packer segment is expected to dominate the market during the forecast period. Available in a variety of pound-per-square-inch (PSI) ratings, permanent packers are used across high-temperature and high-pressure drilling setups. The superior functional capacity and low cost of permanent packers make them suitable for extreme drilling conditions. Retrievable packers can be removed from a drilling site once the drilling operations are over. Retrievable packers are ideal for applications that need consecutive recompletion. The growing demand for retrievable packers for recompletion activities is anticipated to augment the growth of the market in the coming years. The report studies the packer market across four key regions: Asia Pacific, North America, Europe, and Rest of the World. North America is expected to drive the demand from the market during the forecast period. The rapid growth of this regional market can be attributed to the rise in drilling activities across the U.S. and Canada. In Europe, declining oil reserves in major oil and gas repositories will lead to sluggish demand for packers. Russia, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan are expected to contribute massively towards the growth of the market during the forecast period. In the Rest of the World, countries in the Middle East, South America, and Africa have some of the largest oil and gas reserves in the world and are anticipated to fuel demand from the market due to sustained drilling activities. Get FREE Sample PDF file of : http://www.transparencymarketresearch.com/sample/sample.php?flag=S&rep_id=3557 Describing the competitive landscape, the report profiles some of the key players in the global packer market such as TIW Corporation, Team Oil Tools Inc., Map Oil Tools Inc., Watson Packer, Tryton Tool Services, Halliburton Company, Schlumberger Limited, Weatherford International Ltd., Baker Hughes Incorporated, Pinnacle Oil Tools Inc., Logan Completion Systems, Packer Plus Energy Services Inc., KazDuCo LLP, LLC SPF "Master Packer", Interwell Norway AS, and Sparta Oil Tools Pvt. Ltd. The report further provides information about the players including their business strategies and recent developments. The global packer market is segmented as: Global Packer Market by Product Permanent Retrievable Global Packer Market by Region North America Europe Asia Pacific Rest of the World (RoW) About Transparency Market Research (TMR) Transparency Market Research (TMR) is a global market intelligence company providing business information reports and services. The company's exclusive blend of quantitative forecasting and trend analysis provides forward-looking insight for thousands of decision makers. TMR's experienced team of analysts, researchers, and consultants use proprietary data sources and various tools and techniques to gather and analyze information. TMR's data repository is continuously updated and revised by a team of research experts so that it always reflects the latest trends and information. With extensive research and analysis capabilities, Transparency Market Research employs rigorous primary and secondary research techniques to develop distinctive data sets and research material for business reports. An international group of astronomers, led by Prof. Peter Garnavich from the University of Notre Dame, has caught two Type II supernovae at the moment of explosion. Prof. Garnavich and his colleagues analyzed light captured by NASAs Kepler Space Telescope every 30 minutes over a three-year period from 500 distant galaxies, searching some 50 trillion stars. They were hunting for signs of supernovae. Massive stars often puff up to supergiants before ending their lives as supernovae, the astronomers said. When these stars run out of fuel in their center, their core collapses down to a neutron star and a supersonic shockwave is sent out to blow up the entire star. When the shockwave reaches the surface of the star, a bright flash of light, called a shock breakout, is predicted. The flash from a breakout should last about an hour, so you have to be very lucky or continuously stare at millions of stars just to catch one flash, Prof. Garnavich added. In 2011, two of these massive stars, called red supergiants, exploded while in Keplers view. The first object, named KSN 2011a, is located approximately 700 million light-years away and is roughly 280 times the size of our Sun. The second, KSN 2011d, is about 480 times the size of our Sun and approximately 1.2 billion light years away. To put their size into perspective, Earths orbit about the Sun would fit comfortably within these colossal stars, Prof. Garnavich said. Supernovae like these Type II supernovae begin when the internal furnace of a star runs out of nuclear fuel, causing its core to collapse as gravity takes over. Understanding the physics of these explosions allows scientists to better understand how the seeds of chemical complexity and life itself have been scattered in space and time in the Milky Way Galaxy, the astronomers said. The two supernovae matched up well with mathematical models of Type II explosions, thus reinforcing some existing theories. But they also revealed an unexpected variety in these cataclysmic stellar events. While both events delivered a similar energetic punch, no shock breakout was seen in KSN 2011a. Scientists think this is likely due to the smaller star being surrounded by gas perhaps enough to mask the shock wave when it reached the stars surface. That is the puzzle of these results. You look at two supernovae and see two different things. Thats maximum diversity, said Prof. Garnavich, who is first author of a paper accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal (arXiv.org preprint). It is a thrill to be a part of theoretical predictions becoming an observed and tested phenomenon. We now have more than just theory to explain what happens when a supernova shock wave reaches the surface of a star as that star is totally torn apart, said team member Dr. Edward Shaya, from the University of Maryland. _____ P.M. Garnavich et al. 2016. Shock Breakout and Early Light Curves of Type II-P Supernovae Observed with Kepler. ApJ, accepted for publication; arXiv: 1603.05657 [MANILA] Despite coal use being rated a major public health hazard in the Philippines, the health costs of coal-fired power plants are not really being factored in its environmental impact assessment (EIA), an energy official admits. Already more than a third of the countrys energy used to generate electricity comes from burning coal. This is expected to go up as the Department of Energy (DOE) has approved 29 proposals to operate new coal-fired power plants by 2020. But for some time, health impacts have not been included in assessing the costs of operating coal-fired power plants, according to Jesus Tamang, director of the DOEs energy policy and planning bureau, at a workshop (7-9 March) conducted by the Health Care Without Harm coalition. Gerry Arances from the Philippine Movement for Climate Justice says the DOE admission is alarming in the wake of a recent Greenpeace report that exposure to toxic pollutants from coal plants has caused around 960 premature deaths in the Philippines each year a number that could go up to 2,410 with the operation of more plants. Dirty energy is not as cheap as we thought. We are literally paying with our health, says Arances. Linda Rudolph, director of climate change and health at the non-profit Public Health Institute, recommends that a health impact assessment (HIA) be undertaken and integrated into the EIA not only to ascertain the health impacts of energy sources like coal but to integrate health considerations into policymaking, project design and implementation. Health problems are not purely medical concerns, there are [also] social determinants of health, Rudolph notes, citing poor access to food, lack of facilities, poverty and environmental pollution. Suphakit Nuntavorakarn from the Healthy Public Policy Foundation in Thailand adds the HIA is first and foremost a social process, enriched by scientific inputs. Its goal is to influence better health in non-health sectors. The HIA can be conducted by the community itself, which can also seek help from civil society groups. A way must also be found to monetise the health impacts, says Jonathan Buonocore, head of the climate, energy and health programme of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. In the United States, the annual health costs of using coal power is huge: between US$175 billion and US$523 billion. Who's paying the costs? When you pay your electricity bill, you see the private financial costs, but it has public and social costs in terms of health, Buonocore says. This piece was produced by SciDev.Nets South-East Asia & Pacific desk. [NAIROBI] A project has been launched to help Kenyan universities incorporate environmental and sustainability features in their curriculums and operations at their campuses. The Kenya Green University Network (KGUN) project was launched in Nairobi last month (5 February). Achim Steiner, executive director, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which helped launch the project, tells SciDev.Net that KGUN will provide a platform for Kenyan higher education institutions to network and play a part in global environmental processes, including devising low-carbon strategies and mainstreaming environmental sustainability across their curriculums. Many universities have already recognised sustainability demands and have responded in ways that are worth sharing. They are investing in greener campuses, greener curriculums and engaging staff, students and communities. Achim Steiner, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Many universities have already recognised sustainability demands and have responded in ways that are worth sharing. They are investing in greener campuses, greener curriculums and engaging staff, students and communities, Steiner says. Kenyas Commission for University Education (CUE) and the National Environmental Management Agency (NEMA) are the other partners of the project. David Some, the secretary of CUE, says there is a great potential to promote sustainability both through education and practice, urging universities to come up with innovative ways to harness their students energy and local community resources. Once the network is implemented it will be a lifetime project running on daily basis, he says, adding Kenyan all universities are expected to join the network. While selected universities have put in place innovative sustainability projects, these have remained small and isolated islands that are not speaking to each other. Universities should think big and conceive projects that will transform the country, Some adds. According Some, Kenya-based Strathmore University, has installed solar panels with the capacity to produce 0.6 megawatts annually that is climate-friendly and proven economically viable, with the university selling 0.25 megawatts to Kenya Power at 12 US cents per kilowatt-hour. The Kenyan higher education institutions will serve as a hub for innovation and knowledge of best practices in Kenya, notes Some, adding that the hub will also have the capacity to assist universities meet and report on their sustainability targets. NEMA director-general Geoffrey Wahungu says the agency works with universities through various initiatives to harness synergy and mobilise resources for capacity building to enhance environmental sustainability. KGUN will promote enhanced student engagement and assist universities with performance contracting requirements reports, says Wahungu, noting that student engagement will enhance collaboration among universities locally and internationally on sustainability challenges and solutions and community outreach. NEMA has allocated US$30,000 to initiate and launch this network and a further US$ 30,000 to support the rollout of the project, explains Wahungu. During the launch of the project, participants became aware that the partners are yet to make their contributions to support the network , and are seeking funding Nickson Otieno, a lecturer at the Technical University of Kenya, says that the benefits of embracing environmental sustainability include a positive attitudinal change towards the environment, increased compliance to environment laws and standards, and cost reductions through efficient use of resources.Otieno, who has expertise in environmental sciences, and is president of Kenya-based World Student Community for Sustainable Development a multidisciplinary organisation of students and young professionals calls upon all Kenyan universities to review their policies , programmes and engage communities to help sustain the environment. This piece was produced by SciDev.Nets Sub-Saharan Africa English desk. Two women wounded in blasts at Zaventem Airport in Brussels, Belgium, on Tuesday. Ketevan Kardava, (AP) The Spanish government is for now maintaining the country's terror alert level at four, the second highest there is, in the wake of Tuesdays attacks in Brussels. Spains acting foreign minister, Jose Manuel Garcia-Margallo, said that Islamic State (ISIS) was likely responsible for the two explosions at Belgiums Zaventem airport, which were followed by another blast inside the Brussels subway system on Tuesday morning. Spanish authorities are following the investigation and remain on alert for a high possibility of a terrorist attack in Spain the current level four alert already entails controls at airports, stations and critical infrastructure. Spain is another center of Islamist activity on the continent This alert was issued after the jihadist attacks against French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo in January 2014, and maintained after the Paris massacre of November 13. The Tuesday blasts come three days after the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, a suspect in the Paris attacks, in the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek. Several other related arrests in the same area demonstrate how Belgium has become a hotbed of jihadism in the heart of Europe. Spain is another significant center of Islamist activity on the continent: 45% of the jihadists arrested in Spain since 2013 had Spanish nationality. A year ago, the Popular Party and the Socialist Party put aside their differences to sign an anti-terrorist pact aimed at fighting jihadism in Spain. Ever since the Islamist attacks against Madrid commuter trains on March 11, 2004, there have been 616 arrests in connection with jihadist activities in Spain. A further 139 combatants are thought to have traveled to fight in Syria or Iraq, of whom 25 have returned to Spain, posing a particular threat to national security due to their combat training. English version by Susana Urra. FLORENCE, S.C. Where Ken and Joy Meiser Mendis live in New Hampshire, less than 4 percent of the population is classified as people of color. During the coldest three months of the year, they live in Florence. The rest of the year theyre in Exeter, New Hampshire, to be close to their grandchildren. Up north, they see subtle forms of racism, and for a couple thats lived and worked abroad, it bothers them. Racial Unity Team is a group theyve helped form to educate young people about diversity, and one of the reasons they decided to attend the Building Bridges Diversity & Leadership Summit on Monday was to bring back with them new approaches to share with others. Held at the Floyd Conference Center on the Carolinas Hospital System campus, the daylong event was sponsored by the Greater Florence Chamber of Commerce. With panel discussions tackling subjects such as women in the workplace and faith and religion in the workplace, the summit also featured discussions about diversity in technology and leadership and the legacy of Jim Crow. When the Mendises lived in Switzerland he served for nine years as global director of quality assurance for Roche they saw Sri Lankans and other refugees essentially having to pre-pay in restaurants. Swiss women, Joy noted, couldnt vote until 1970. Its progressive, Ken Mendis said. But every country has bias. Joy Meiser Mendis, who wore many hats and worked mostly in real estate, serves as the historian for her church up north and would like to see churches get more involved in moving forward in an open discussion about race. They need to take a stand for racial harmony, she said. Now that her husband is retired, he wants to spend time working with businesses up north to help them understand the value of diversity and inclusion. Im passionate about educating young people, he said. Keynote speaker Nika White, the vice president of diversity and inclusion for the Greenville Chamber of Commerce, told the crowd of almost 100 people that economic inclusion should be girded with three principles: intentionality, investing and communicating the importance of economic inclusion. Minority- and female-owned businesses face many hurdles along the way, such as lack of access to capital, professional networks and institutional bias. Minority-owned businesses contribute $1 trillion in gross receipts each year and support 6 million jobs, she said. Her position at the chamber was created in 2012, following an extensive study of how nonprofits nationwide address diversity, and was funded by corporations and local government banding together to operate the chamber more effectively in a deep and rich minority landscape, she said. A minority business accelerator at her chamber is one of five in the United States, she said, and one of 80 recipients of grants from the U.S. Small Business Administration. The first year the program kicked off, the goal was to garner $1 million in contracts for the class of 12. She said $3.4 million in contracts were awarded as direct exposure to corporate decision makers acted as a catalyst. Using corporate talent to mentor these business owners also has reaped great rewards, she said, as the class size has increased to 29 in 2016 with a targeted goal of $4 million in contracts. She also talked about how each year auto manufacturer and Upstate stalwart BMW holds a sort of reverse trade show where its suppliers gather to share their experiences. Plant tours and workshops draw people from all over the country in hopes of building connectivity. Greenville Health System launched a 16-week program that provides a stipend while minority contractors take classes for eight hours per day and learn the specifics required to build to the standards needed in the health care industry, she said, in underscoring and explaining the importance of investing. We cant just be on the surface, White said. As demographics shift toward a minority majority, and a diversity explosion looms on the horizon, economic inclusion is something companies and corporations need to prepare for or find themselves at a tremendous disadvantage, she said. Les Echols, who directs the Greater Florence Chamber of Commerces minority and community enterprise, called the sessions informative, impactful and well received. Its about education and increasing awareness to the diversity and inclusion issues that we, as a community, face every day, said Mike Miller, chamber president. Our effort here today is meant to help bring people together in an open dialogue and to help share real-life experiences so we can all find a path to inclusion. FLORENCE,S.C. Over the past five years, the NESA (North Eastern Strategic Alliance) region of South Carolina has changed dramatically. Its not just the fact that weve added new industries, more jobs and more capital investment, though. Its the way our region has undertaken this growth. Since 2011, weve added 8,944 jobs along with $1.5 billion in new capital investments to our part of the state. From one year to another, were continually trending upward. Though our region is not unfamiliar with the grindstone, were also trying to apply our efforts in a more efficient manner. From refocusing on one of our regions most historically important industries agribusiness to extending our regions reach across the world through face-to-face meetings with international companies, were showing the fruits of a more comprehensive approach to economic development. With the resurgence of agribusiness throughout our state, our region has been at the forefront of some of the most important advancements pertaining to farming and agribusiness over the past five years. Five years ago, our region became the first to re-evaluate the importance of agribusiness and how we approach the industry with not only our marketing but how we generate sites and buildings to house industries dealing with agribusiness. Now, our region contains more than 12,600 agribusiness and food processing workers and claims annual sales of more than $4 billion, accounting for 21 percent of the states total agriculture revenue. A focus on food processing has led to a number of success stories in Florence County specifically. McCall Farms and Ruiz Foods, two family-owned companies, have both made a tremendous impact on Florence County with both expansions and new projects respectively. Our region possesses the only two certified shovel ready sites for the food-processing industry in Florence and Marion counties giving our region a leg up in providing adequate sites for potential agribusiness projects. Though weve embraced our historical standing as an agribusiness hub, were not forgoing our future. Over the past five years, weve increased our global standing by carrying our regions brand throughout the world to places such as Hanover, Hong Kong, Tokyo, Brussels, Farnborough and Nagoya. As foreign economies expand, they are able to take advantage of new markets to grow into, providing our region with a valuable opportunity to meet the needs of growing international companies. From Nan Ya Plastics, Honda Manufacturing, BauschLinnemann, Accent Stainless, Beneteau, Shaeffler-INA Bearing to DSM Nutritional Products, our region is home to numerous international companies that have found prosperity in our part of the state. While we continue to develop our international marketing efforts, we are also improving our existing industry focus, preserving relationships with companies and ensuring their success. In the past five years, weve seen our regions unemployment rate drop from 15.1 percent to 6.7 percent. In the future, the NESA region will explore need ideas and methods in order to stay on the cutting edge of economic development to the betterment of the entire northeastern region of South Carolina. Chef Jose Andres at his Las Vegas restaurant in 2011. Spanish-born celebrity chef Jose Andres, who has built his career in the United States, was part of the delegation that traveled to Cuba with President Barack Obama this week on a historic trip to illustrate the renewed ties between both nations. Andres, who owns restaurants across the US and does community outreach work through a food program in Los Angeles, wasted no time during his short stay in Havana. I think that the forces of good, of progress, are already out there and nobody can control them Chef Jose Andres In a little over 24 hours, he had already visited a dozen paladares privately owned retaurants and slipped into their kitchens to offer advice to their Cuban chefs. As a naturalized American, Andres was in Cuba to explore business opportunities as well as avenues of cooperation through his non-profit World Central Kitchen, which is already active in other Caribbean nations such as Haiti and Dominican Republic. But as a native of Mieres (Asturias), Andres cannot also help looking around him with Spanish eyes and what he sees is Spain losing ground in Cuba from a business perspective, after so many years of effort by Spanish entrepreneurs. At the political level, my honest opinion is that, regardless of whether the Socialist Party or the Popular Party [are in power], Spain has [in Cuba] allowed the strength that our common history gives us to slip away, he said in an interview with EL PAIS in Havana. Jose Andres with Democratic presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton. Reuters The mere fact that Cuban president Raul Castro visited Europe without stopping in Spain is a bit strange, he adds. Castro should have been in Spain because of that historical union of our language, economy, social issues... I think this plays against Spain, because Cuba is going to be a land of many opportunities, and for Spanish workers and businesses, it is a place where there is going to be growth. I would like for Spain to have a bigger presence every day, he says. We have to ensure that Spain does not fall behind. America is already making its move. The list of other members of the delegation that came with Andres to Cuba provides insights into where American interests lie: Airbnb founder Brian Chesky, PayPal chief Daniel Schulman and hotel executives such as Marriott president Arne Sorenson. As for himself, Im not here to give advice. I am here as a small businessman, as a youngster who came to America and who slowly built up his own small company. I am here to share my successes, my failures, my philosophy. Andres is hopeful that the new era in bilateral relations between Cuba and the US will be an irreversible process, even if a Republican is elected to the White House at the next presidential elections. I think that the forces of good, of progress, are already out there and nobody can control them, he says. What we need to do is for change to be progressive for the good of the Cuban people, for change to be gradual, organized and always forward-moving. And I think that Obamas presence will mean that 20 years from now, Cuba is going to be a very different country. English version by Susana Urra. Acting Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy at a recent meeting in Brussels. Horst Wagner (EFE) Spanish acting Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy on Tuesday called Socialist leader Pedro Sanchez to share information about the terrorist attacks in Brussels. Rajoy canceled a party rally in Ayamonte (Huelva) after other political leaders canceled their own events. Earlier, the Popular Party (PP) head had said that he would press on with the rally because it made no sense to change his agenda. In his statement, Rajoy asked for unity in the face of jihadism, which threatens all the countries that do not agree with their ideas. We are going to defend the democracy that it took us so long to achieve, and the way of life that 21st century Europe represents Ciudadanos leader Albert Rivera He also said that there were as yet no confirmed Spanish victims among the more than 30 people who died in the airport and subway explosions in Brussels on Tuesday morning. The Spanish embassy, consulate and foreign service are following the situation and a Spanish diplomat is in the subway area, added Rajoy. Socialist leader Sanchez, who was in Tenerife, canceled his scheduled event at a research center and was booked on the first flight back to the mainland, said party sources. Today, we are all Brussels, said Sanchez. Liberty, solidarity and fraternity with the people of Brussels. Sanchez also revealed that he and Rajoy have agreed to activate the antiterrorism pact they signed a year ago to fight jihadism. The signatories of this pact, which include smaller parties, are scheduled to meet later Tuesday afternoon. Podemos, which did not sign, will attend as an observer. The Interior Ministry has also called a crisis meeting. Ciudadanos leader Albert Rivera, speaking in Congress, said that we cannot look the other way. We are going to defend the democracy that it took us so long to achieve, and the way of life that 21st century Europe represents. There are those who dont like it that we Europeans can travel in a Europe without borders and enjoy our free lives, but we are going to defeat them. The chief attorney at Spains National High Court has offered Belgium assistance in investigating the attacks Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias, who attended the five minutes of silence called by the city of Madrid to honor the victims of the attacks, wrote on his Twitter account that he is at the governments disposal for whatever is necessary. All my support for the security forces and law enforcement. The Spanish royal family also expressed concern over the attacks in a Twitter message. Our solidarity and support for Belgium, its institutions and the Belgian people, they wrote. Meanwhile, Javier Zaragoza, the chief attorney at Spains National High Court, has been in touch with Belgian federal attorney Frederic Van Leeuw to offer assistance investigating the attacks. English version by Susana Urra. The vessel, which carried 10 crew and 25 armed security personnel of UK, Estonian, Indian and Ukranian origin, was intercepted approximately 15 nautical miles off Indias south coast, and is currently being held at the port of Tuticorin. Advanfort said the vessel had been seeking safe harbour from a typhoon. released a statement on 14 October to thank and commend the Indian Coastguard, port officials at Tuticorin and the Tamil Nadu police for allowing our vessel. to tender the port both to take on fuel and to escape the effects of Typhoon Phailin. In the statement, Advanfort president William Watson said I want to personally thank the Indian government for offering a safe harbour during this typhoon to the crew of our good vessel OHIO. We look forward to returning this vessel to its duties as quickly as formalities and resupply operations are concluded. Watson said rifles and ammunition onboard were properly licensed. "As these men routinely provide armed counter-piracy protection, they also had aboard their uniforms, protective equipment, medical kits, rifles and ammunition all of which is properly registered and licensed to AdvanFort." However, in a conflicting report from the Wall Street Journal, Indian coastguard Commandant Anand Kumar said that the vessel was detained and police brought in after neither crew nor guards were able to provide the relevant authorisation papers for the carrying of arms in Indian waters or provide an explanation for the vessels patrolling so close to the Indian Coast. M. Manohar, police superindentent of the Tamil Nadu state coastal security, said that "We gave them 24 hours, but they were unable to produce the necessary documentation for the weapons. We are conducting an enquiry." The financially-struggling Dubai-based shipowner said the Gulf Eyadah was arrested in Port Bahama by creditor banks DNB Bank and DVB Bank. Gulf Navigation said the arrest took place inspite of continuous negotiations with the banks. The arrest also followed a ruling by Rotterdam courts dismissing the claims of DNB and BNP Paribas in as summary proceeding on the arrest of the VLCC Gulf Sheba in the port of Rotterdam last month. Gulf Navigation said the judgement gave both parties time to discuss a possible consensual sale of the vessel. A week after the arrest of the Gulf Sheba, Gulf Navigation announced plans to exit the VLCC sector. The company has two VLCCs both of which are six years old. The Panama-registered cargo ship Bingo was also carrying 8,000 tonnes of iron ore when the accident happened on Saturday, local reports said. The 20 crew members were last sighted on a lifeboat at the east of Sagar Island in West Bengal on Saturday, and efforts have been made to search for the seafarers, according to RPS Kahlon, chairman of Kolkata Port Trust (KPT). Kahlon said an aircraft and hovercraft belonging to the coast guard were deployed to search for the lifeboat. The bulk cargo vessel left for China from Sagar anchorage on 11 October and the ship may have tried to sail back to the port following damaged sustained on the rough sea when the cyclone landed, he explained. I Jeyakumar, deputy chairman of KPT, was reported saying: It [vessel] has all chances sunk since it cannot be seen. The crew members had all safely sailed in a lifeboat but they are yet to be traced. The shipping arm of state-owned Cosco Group has told investors of an expected third quarter profit of RMB35.23m ($5.76m), a jump of 235.3% year-on-year. The stronger numbers are due largely to unspecified non-operating gains. Third quarter revenue for the Shanghai-listed company is projected at RMB2.02bn, up 2.4% over the corresponding period of 2012. From January to September 2013, however, Coscol revealed that it will stay in the red with a loss of RMB42.79m compared to a profit of RMB29.2m in the same period a year ago. Container shipping firm Evergreen Marine is part of the Taiwanese conglomerate Evergree Group, which has been embroiled in a succession battle among the sons of Yung-fa, who passed away in January. Kuo-weis seat on Evergreen Marines board of directors will be filled by Hsieh Huey-chuan, the company stated. Daniel Song, Kuo-weis attorney, told the China Post that his client was no longer seeking control of the conglomerate and instead hoped to start his own business. Song was reported saying that Kuo-wei was willing to dispose of his entire stake in the family enterprise to his elder brothers, with the intention of making a clean break. Since the death of Yung-fa and an Evergreen statement released publicly naming Kuo-wei as chairman and heir, Kuo-wei has been fighting a succession battle with his three half-brothers including Chang Kuo-hua. Kuo-hua and the two brothers used their combined voting power to dissolve the position of the new Evergreen Group chairman, and ousted Kuo-wei as chairman of Eva Airways. Kuo-wei is the only child from Yung-fas second wife, while the three elder sons are from the first wife. At a lavish ceremony, the 75-tonne bollard pull escort tugs, Borgoy and Bokn, were named on the same day that Norwegian owner Bukser og Berging celebrated its 100th anniversary. The two new azimuth stern drive vessels, powered by Rolls-Royce propulsion systems, will operate for Statoil at its Karst Terminal in Norway where gas is received and processed from some 30 offshore fields. The tugs are also equipped to provide emergency response and fire-fighting services. Rolls-Royce president merchant, Neil Gilliver, described the occasion as a significant milestone heralding a new era in tug boat design and propulsion. Speaking after the event, Gilliver revealed that Rolls-Royce has a string of enquiries for similar vessels from all around the world. The company is likely to announce a deal for two, plus two options, for LNG-powered tugs to be built in China for an Asian customer within the next few weeks, he said. John Nielsen, managing director of the tug company, indicated that more orders for LNG tugs were certainly in the pipeline although the company would first assess the performance of the two new vessels in operation over a six-month period. Although the vessels cost around 50% more than conventionally powered units of similar specification, their attractive environmental profile and daily operation on cheaper gas fuel give a payback period measured in just a few years. Harbour tugs are particularly well suited to operation on LNG because they are often deployed on long-term contracts at particular ports or terminals and therefore have ready access to gas bunkers. The contracts are anticipated to provide insights into domestic shipping rates as well as give China a louder voice in pricing and more experience in developing financial products for the shipping industry, analysts told the local media. The spot delivery contracts will be based on coal shipping rates from Qinhuangdao to Shanghai along the north-to-south shipping routes. The exchange will initially offer 12 contracts ranging from January 2014 to December 2014, with an initial trading margin of 10% of the contract value before rising to 30% in the delivery month. Given the current excess capacity in the shipping industry, carriers can use the derivatives trading platform as a new sales channel, Wu Di, deputy head of Shanghai Shipping Freight Exchange, was quoted saying. Meanwhile, London-based Baltic Exchange has recently established its first office in China in Shanghai, a strategic move to develop relationships between Chinese shipping and trading companies and the international maritime community. China's shipping industry accounts for 60% of the global total and Shanghai is the world's largest (container) port. We welcome competition from all over the world, Wu said. He added that the exchange will introduce derivatives for international dry bulk carrier rates and it will also improve current derivatives for container shipping rates. According to local media reports, the issue revolves around a height restriction on shipping in the approach channels to ports such Chiwan and Shekou in the western part of the Pearl River Delta. The South China Morning Post reported that it had seen documents in which Hong Kong's airport authorities propose to extend marine restrictions in place around the existing runways into Shenzhen waters to accommodate the third runway. This would prevent vessels with an air draft of more than 53m from using the Lunggu West Fairway, the most direct of the three routes into the western Shenzhen port terminals, included in the list of barred vessels would be the new mega-container ships, which would not be able to access western Shenzhen ports without a big detour through the less direct Tunggu Channel, or use Hong Kong's busy Ma Wan Channel. China Merchant Holdings (International), the largest shareholder of Chiwan and Shekou ports, was quoted as saying that such a restriction would have a "serious impact" on Lunggu West Channel's use. The report added that the Hong Kong and Shenzhen governments are understood to be in talks over a solution, but cited sources as saying the initial proposals from Hong Kong do not address long-term sea traffic demands and may compromise the competitiveness of port facilities in western Shenzhen. 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 The audit is the second by EMSA this year and if the Philippines fails the audit 60,000 to 70,000 Filipino seafarers could be banned from working on EU-flagged ships. EMSA first threatened to ban Filipino seafarers from EU-flagged ships in 2010 after a follow-up audit on a 2006 audit found recommendations on STCW compliance had not been implemented. The audit in April this year is understood to have not gone as well the industry had hoped. Maritime Industry Authority (Marina) head Nicasio Conti, who had been tasked by the Philippines President Benigo Aquino to bring the Philippines into STCW compliance, was replaced in May by Maximo Q. Mejia, previously with the World Maritime University in Malmo, Sweden. Local reports do not appear positive over the potential that the Philippines pass the STCW audit this week with Tinig Ng Marino, the newspaper of union United Filipino Seafarers (UFS) quoting sources as saying EMSA team reaction had been one of disappointment. It looks like were going to fail again. The fate of our seafarers is really worrisome, an unnamed official was quoted as saying. SCI owns a 50% stake in SCI Forbes, a chemical transportation company established in 2009 with four new chemical tankers each with a capacity of 13,000 dwt. Shapoorji Pallonji Group companies Forbes and Co and Sterling Investment Corp each own 25% in the chemical tanker joint venture. The board of SCI has allowed the company to exit the joint venture by selling its 50% stake to the other partners. The stake sale will be concluded by December, a member of SCI's board said. The joint venture has been making losses right from the time it started operations. SCI can't be infusing money into the joint venture any longer, the board member said. Chua Boon Chye, the former Aegean employee and bunker fuel trader, has been charged by Singapore's Corrupt Practices Investigation Bureau (CPIB) in April 2012 for stealing marine fuel oil back in 2007. The verdict for the case will be heard in Singapore on 13 November, according to a news report by Platts. Chua was charged for instigating one Thet Lwin to commit an offence of dishonestly receiving stolen property... by instructing... Thet Lwin to receive 105 metric tonnes of marine fuel oil valued at SGD96,106.70 ($76,800) belonging to... Chevron Singapore Pte Ltd, when... [Chua] had reason to believe the said marine fuel oil to be stolen property, court documents said. Defence lawyers for Chua said the accused was not on board the bunker tanker when the allegedly stolen bunker fuel was received by the bunker clerk, Thet Lwin. The defence lawyers added that the bunker clerk was the only person on board when the bunker fuel was received and the issue of receipt in this case was essential to the charge of receiving stolen property, Platts reported. The lawyers also argued that Chua sourced for the fuel but did not receive the physical fuel itself nor take commission for the bunkering operation transaction. In another case, a chief engineer was sentenced to two weeks jail in August this year over a bunker scam involving $18,000 worth of marine fuel oil. The Maritime and Port Authority of Singapore (MPA), the regulator for Singapore's bunkering industry, has expressed zero tolerance for corrupted practices during bunkering operations. SLNG believed that the provision of vessel cool-down services is an important first step for the LNG terminal in expanding its array of services to optimise the use of facilities, and for Singapore to eventually develop into a gas hub for the region. Singapore is a major ship repair and maintenance centre and there is a natural synergy between the shipyard and our vessel cool-down services LNG ships coming into Singapore for repairs will find it convenient and cost-effective to undergo vessel cool-down at our terminal; conversely, the availability of vessel cool-down services in Singapore enhances its attractiveness for LNG ships to undergo repairs here, said Neil McGregor, ceo of SLNG. The Singapore LNG terminal started operations on 7 May this year, and has since been providing throughput services to BG Singapore Gas Marketing and its customers. McGregor added that Singapore's providential geographical location, right in the middle of major LNG shipping routes and in close proximity to key shipbuilding centres such as South Korea, Japan and China, will further help to attract customers to the LNG terminal. Under new regulations, which became effective on 1 March, cargo owners must clear their containers from Tanjung Priok on the day of arrival. Failure to do so will see a 900% penalty being imposed on the IDR27,200 ($2.07) per teu per day base tariff for stacking service. But the new rule is being opposed by the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce (Kadin), as it may result in higher costs for businesses. "The Indonesian Chamber of Commerce and Industry [Kadin] complained about the new scheme. We will revise it," Tanjung Priok Port Authority head Bay Hasani said. Previously, container stacking for the first three days of arrival was free, with a progressive rate afterwards.Tanjung Priok Port Authority will consider Kadins representations and will revise the new regulation within this month. We see that there have been protests from Kadin. We have had a meeting at the Office of the Coordinating Economic Minister. We will fix the scheme, Bay said. The revision of the new container stacking regulation is still expected to streamline the flow of goods and reduce dwell time at Indonesia's main port of Tanjung Priok, which currently stands at between 3.6 days to 4.5 days. This week, a new scheme will be discussed with state port operator Pelindo II, and could start taking effect in the next two weeks. This scheme may charge container owners the IDR27,200 base tariff on the day of arrival, with a progressive rate on the following days, for example 500% of base tariff on the second day and 750% on the third day, and progressively more for longer periods of time. So this doesnt mean the progressive tariff is eradicated. We dont want the current dwelling time, which had done pretty well, to get worse again, Bay added. This would still be a significant change from the he previous system which gave three days of free storage, with an increase to 500% levy only from the fourth to 10th day, and 750% from the 11th day. The Office of the Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister dwelling time task force head Agung Kuswandono reiterated that the port was not a place to stack the containers and that Pelindo II business had never relied on that. The move to jump straight to the 900% penalty levy had caused an uproar from businesses as they maintain that the imposition of higher fees had no immediate correlation to reducing dwelling times and ran counter to the governments efforts to reduce logistics costs. Bay admitted that the policy might have caused a shock among business players. He added that Pelindo II and the port authority would also change the basis for calculating the start of the first day, which would be based on the number of hours, not calendar day, and begin from the time the containers were actually offloaded from the vessels. Pelindo II was also likely to hold the levy on Saturdays and Sundays. Kadin deputy chairman for logistics and supply chain management Rico Rustombi said that he appreciated the governments move to respond to the protest. But the new progressive tariff scheme should not be more expensive than the last regulation. We even hope it can be cheaper, he added. Rune Hoffmann, a spokesman for HSH Nordbank, told Bloomberg that potentially 30 to 40 of the 1,100 vessels in the restructuring unit might be affected. If a ship is no longer supported by its owners and we don't find a buyer, then an insolvency or scrapping of the vessel may become the last option, Hoffmann was quoted as saying. HSH Nordbank is seeking to reduce its non-performing loans on its balance sheet. The sluggish business atmosphere in the global shipping market has caused some of the bank's clients to struggle with paying back their debts. The bank's shipping loans totalled EUR25bn ($33.8bn), of which EUR9bn are part of the restructuring unit established in 2009, according to Wolfgang Topp, head of operations at the bank. About 15% or around 165 of 1,100 vessels in the unit are not salvageable, while the remaining 85% may be restructured, he revealed last month. In April this year, HSH Nordbank sold 10 ships comprising of five tankers and five boxships to Greek shipping firm Navios Group, allowing the bank to reduce its stock of bad loans. Navios paid $130m in cash and took a 10-year loan of $170m to acquire the 10 ships. Addressing the opening session of Maritime Cyprus today, Sekimizu expressed his deep shock at the incident and praise for the work of the Italian Coast Guard, who rescued 155 persons but also recovered 194 dead bodies with "hundreds still missing". IMO has made various efforts over the last 10 years to address the issue of seaborne migrants, "mainly on the rescue side", he said, and is still working to improve the system. However, following this latest "really tragic" incident, the time has come to "put more effort into the prevention effort" and for the international community to address the issue, he said. Branding the loading of 500 or more people onto a small boat as "unregulated, unlawful and criminal", Sekimiza said IMO would be checking with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) to see if there was anything in the legislation that could be enforced at flag state level to prevent such overcrowding. While acknowledging the right of the free movement of people, the IMO secretary-general said that the overcrowding conditions aboard the boat werestill "clearly illegal" and promised that IMO would be raising the matter "at the highest level" at its Assembly later this year. Second mate Edwin Acasio and the crew of Leon Diaz were transiting the Gulf of Guinea off the coast of Nigeria when they were boarded and held hostage by pirates. Acasio was shot and seriously injured during the attack, and sent to intensive care treatment at a hospital in Benin. The Mission to Seafarers, working in partnership with the Philippine Independent Church (IFI), provided help and advice to the crew members and their families. Stephen Miller, regional director for the Mission to Seafarers in East Asia, said: This partnership with the IFI in Manila is already proving to be crucial to ensure that the welfare needs of seafarers and their families are met all over the world. This is a tragic case and highlights the fact that there is a very real and present danger of piracy in the Gulf of Guinea, which the mission continues to monitor. Hot line for the RA citizens in Belgium A hot line operates for the RA citizens, who have been affected by the terrorist attacks in Brussels- +32.2.3484406, informs the RA Embassy in Belgium on its Facebook page. Call at the abovementioned phone number for receiving information about family members and friends, who are at the airport! All the flights from Brussels airport have been cancelled until the end of the day. The Embassy warns to avoid the territories near the airport. We have learnt from Facebook posts that our compatriots in Brussels have collected provisions for several days, as even the shops have been closed. To remind, in order to take part in the activities of the Fifth Ordinary Session of the Euronest PA, the RA NA delegation Head at the Euronest PA Artak Zakaryan, delegation members Mikael Melkumyan, Tevan Poghosyan, Hrant Bagratyan, Mher Shahgeldyan, Karine Achemyan and Vahe Enfiajyan have left for Brussels. The RA NA lawmaker Shushan Petrosyan is also in Brussels in order to take part in the activities of the Assemblys women forum within the frames of the Assemblys plenary session. As Tevan Poghosyan informs on his Facebook page, their activities proceed in a normal way. Press Release March 20, 2016 LP, PDP Laban bets in Cordova and Lapu-Lapu City, Cebu unite behind VP bid of Bongbong Marcos Local candidates of the ruling Liberal Party in Cordova and PDP-Laban bets in Lapu-Lapu City both in Cebu have bucked their respective party lines to rally behind the vice presidential candidacy of Senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" R. Marcos, Jr. On its third day of barnstorming in the vote-rich province of Cebu, the "Unity Caravan" of Marcos rolled into Cordova where he met with local officials led by Mayor Adelino "Addy" Sitoy, a long-time friend and ally of the Marcos family. Also present were all the chairmen of the 13 barangays of Cordova and other barangay officials. Mayor Sitoy said that while he and his fellow candidates ran under the banner of the LP, he asked permission to suspend his affiliation with the party because he is supporting Davao Mayor Rodrigo Duterte for President. "And also, I am not carrying (Leni) Robredo because my candidate for vice president was, and always be, Bongbong Marcos," he said. He recalled that during the 1986 snap elections, former President Ferdinand Marcos lost in many areas of opposition bailiwick Cebu province but won in Cordova. "And I am very proud of that," he added. Likewise, the entire slate of PDP-Laban candidates for Lapu-Lapu City led by mayoralty bet Rolando Patalinjug were present in the meeting and pledged their support for Marcos. "The whole team of the Team Lando Patalinjug will support Senator Bongbong Marcos," said Patalinjug. Mayor Sitoy said the Patalinjug clan was also long-time ally and supporter of the Marcos family. Mayor Sitoy's brother, Celedonio, who is running for the lone congressional district of Lapu-Lapu City also pledged his support for Marcos. "It is my pride and pleasure to inform everybody and Senator Bongbong that the entire slate of Partido Kusgano in Lapu-Lapu City is supporting him 100 percent. In fact that was already the decision before we decided to be part of PDP-Laban," Sitoy said. For his part, Sen. Marcos thanked the officials of Cordova and Lapu-Lapu for their whole-hearted support for his vice-presidential bid, especially Mayor Sitoy. "And I can say, both from my own experience and as has been told to me by my parents, especially by my mother, that I cannot think of a closer friend and a more reliable ally than what we have here in Cordova," Marcos said. He said Mayor Sitoy's accomplishment in 1986 is a sign of true leadership and of trust that people have in their leader. As in all his campaign sorties, Marcos stressed that apart from seeking the support of local officials and residents for his vice presidential bid, he is also seeking support for his call for national unity which is crucial in attaining the dream of a more progressive future for all Filipinos. POE: LOWER TAX RATES TO BOOST JOBS CREATION CEBU CITY--Aside from lowering the tax rates on personal income, leading presidential candidate Sen. Grace Poe is looking at cutting the corporate income tax rate as a strategy for stimulating economic growth and creating jobs. During the second leg of the 2016 presidential debate held in Cebu City, Poe said a lower corporate tax rate could result in increased investment in the Philippines and thus more jobs for Filipinos. At 30 percent, Poe said the country's corporate tax rate is uncompetitive as opposed to other member-countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). "Kasabay ng pagbaba ng income tax, kailangan din nating babaan ang corporate income tax. Bakit? Sapagkat dito sa Pilipinas nasa 30 percent ang corporate income tax," Poe pointed out. "Sa ibang bansa sa ASEAN, ang average ay 25 percent. Bakit sila mamumuhunan dito kung sa ibang bansa mas mura?" she asked. Poe had earlier said that reducing personal income taxes, review of tax rates and increasing efficiency in collection will be among the priorities of her administration, if she wins in the May 9 elections. With the current income tax brackets and tax rates, the Philippines effectively imposes the highest personal income tax in the ASEAN region. A Filipino taxpayer earning P500,000 annually is taxed at 32 percent. Poe, who is running under the banner "Gobyernong may Puso," said the government should show its compassion to millions of wage and salaried workers who lose up to a third of their hard-earned income to unreasonably high taxes. In the presidential debate, Poe said a lower income tax should be coupled with lower corporate tax to make the country attractive to foreign capital and create more jobs for Filipinos. "Dapat may permanenteng trabaho ang ating mga kababayan at wasto ang kita. At kahit na babaan natin ang kanilang mga buwis na importanteng gawin natin, kailangan din nating lumikha ng trabaho," Poe explained. Press Release March 21, 2016 LP officials in Consolacion, Cebu welcome unity call of Bongbong Marcos Notwithstanding their party affiliation, members of the ruling Liberal Party in the municipality of Consolacion in Cebu welcomed the call for unity of vice presidential candidate Senator Ferdinand "Bongbong" R. Marcos, Jr. The town of Consolacion was one of the places the "Unity Caravan" of Marcos visited on the last leg of the senator's four-day sortie in the vote-rich province of Cebu. Consolacion Mayor Teresa Alegado, a member of LP, and 20 out of 21 barangay captains in the town welcomed Marcos and hosted a meeting in the municipal hall. Alegado said she shares Marcos' campaign for unity saying she believes on its importance in national progress. "The importance of unity is something all of us here in Consolacion understand very well. Despite our affiliations, the bottom line is still unity as you have said and it is something that we all here share," said Alegado. She said they are willing to welcome any candidate in the town even if majority of its officials are affiliated with LP. Marcos, for his part, thanked them for agreeing to meet with him even on a weekend. "I am grateful that all of you were gracious enough to meet me on a Sunday--the Palm Sunday," he said. Marcos has been stressing the importance of national unity as a crucial factor in realizing his vision for a better future for all Filipinos. With the daunting problems facing our country, these can only be addressed by working together, according to Marcos. During their meeting, Marcos explained to them his campaign platform, especially on agriculture. Likewise, he told them his efforts in the Senate to give a bigger voice to the local government units in accordance with his vision for a stronger partnership between the LGUs and the national government. Specifically for the barangay chairmen, Marcos reported the passage in the Senate of his Barangay Retirement Benefits Bill which seeks to provide monetary benefits ranging from P100,000 to P50,000 to qualified barangay officials, including barangay tanods, health personnel and other volunteer workers. Aside from Consolacion the "Unity Caravan" of Marcos visited the towns of Liloan and Danao, where he had separate meetings with key politicians. He capped his four-day visit to Cebu with a courtesy call on Cebu Archbishop Emeritus Ricardo Cardinal Vidal in the latter's home in Sto. Nino Village, Barangay Banilad, Cebu City. Press Release March 21, 2016 POE: MY PARENTS' UNCONDITIONAL LOVE BROUGHT ME HERE Sen. Grace Poe, the first foundling to run for president of the Philippines, credited the unconditional love of her adoptive parents, movie icons Susan Roces and Fernando Poe Jr. (FPJ), for where she is today. Addressing graduating students in Lapu-Lapu City in Cebu, Poe paid tribute to her parents and thanked them for the education they gave her when she was a growing up. It spelled the difference in her life, she said. "I am a living example of how the unconditional love of parents can change the life of a child," said Poe, a foundling who was abandoned at the Jaro Church in Iloilo as an infant. She was found by the helper of a rich landlady who was a good friend of FPJ and Roces. "This lovely couple chose me with all my wounds and scabby skin as a baby and adopted me. They treated me as their own and sent me to the best schools for my education," Poe said in her speech at the 23rd Commencement Exercises of Indiana Aerospace University on March 19. "Looking back, it was the unconditional love of my parents and a good education that transformed the foundling or the 'pulot' to the senator who stands before you today," she said. Poe, the lone independent candidate, leads all presidential hopefuls in pre-election surveys showing her the top choice of Filipinos in most economic classes. In 2013, she made history as the national candidate with the highest number of votes, garnering over 20 million votes to top the senatorial race, also as an independent. "Armed with a good education, the love of your families and the grace of God, nothing is impossible. If this foundling from Iloilo was able to do it, so can you," she said. Poe advised the graduates to use their education for the betterment of others, and not to oppress those who are not as fortunate as they are. "This moment marks the start of progress for you and your family. You are very fortunate to be here today. You are now part of the elite 10 percent of our population with a college education," she said. "At this juncture, I urge you to remember the difference between a degree and an education... Huwag sana kayong matulad sa mga taong nakapagtapos pero wala namang pinag-aralan. You can advance yourself without oppressing others," the senator said. While a diploma could serve as a ticket to jobs and opportunities that are not available to 90 percent of the population, it was not the most important thing that defines a person's character, Poe told the graduating students. "It is how you treat other people, especially those who have less in life that will determine if your stint in college indeed educated you," she said. "Ganoon din ang kahit na sinong naninilbihan sa gobyerno. Dapat pinag-aaralan mabuti, kinakausap ang mga taong pinagsisilbihan, at dapat nakakaramdam." Poe is running under the banner of "Gobyernong may Puso" which is pushing for rapid, sustainable and genuine inclusive growth that will not leave behind poor Filipino families. She also vowed to lead a transparent government and move towards global competitiveness. Poe and running mate Sen. Francis Escudero, who also leads the vice-presidential race, are taking a break from their campaign in observance of the Holy Week. I met the photographer Bob Adelman for the first time many years ago in Barbados. Wed rented a house on the beach, on the quieter Caribbean side of the island where there was sand, not the high cliffs of the Atlantic side, and the waves were smaller. The we included the writer Ann Beattie; her husband, Lincoln Perry; and myself. And then Bob came down to stay for a few days. He was loud and funny and kind of a big loping galoot who would punctuate every statement with a kind of braying Whaaat? as if it were a question. We drove around the island in a tinny, topless contraption called a Mini-Moke, Lincoln at the wheel, the rest of us cowering as he swerved around blind corners winding through tall sugarcane on roads too narrow for one car, much less two. At one point, we wanted to get to the highest point on the island and drove and drove, and the land rose and then the road seemed to evaporate into a grassy field, but we kept driving as if it was still there. It occurred to me that we were headed for a cliff. I quietly advised Lincoln of that fact. Lincoln kept driving, the brittle grass brushing the sides of the vehicle. I advised again, a bit more forcefully. Lincoln kept driving. Finally I shouted, Lincoln, stop the car, within a few feet of a cliff. Adelman was howling with laughter. Each night we went to a bamboo beach bar and drank too many rum punches, which turned to sugar in our systems and kept us awake through the night. We were on the first floor of a two-story duplex, a bit down the beach from the posh, pink Sandy Lane resort. Every night, dinner consisted of flying fish prepared in endlessly different ways by a local woman named Josephine. There were British people upstairs who ignored us until the day they left and then expressed the hope that they would never set eyes on us again. On Easter morning, piled into the Mini-Moke, we happened upon the smallest church in the world, a building less than the size of a single room, but painted a wild array of colors. And standing in front was a small Bajan choir, joyfully singing the hymn He Didnt Have to Do It (But He Did). Bob bounced from the Mini-Moke and walked toward the tiny church, his camera snapping away, getting closer and closer until the lens was almost in the faces of the singers. Bob lost a whole bunch of weight at some point and recorded his shrinking progress in a series of self-photographed nudes, rather in the fashion of Eadweard Muybridge. Over a long career, Bobs subjects ranged from Edie Sedgwick to Andy Warhol, Jim Morrison, Samuel Beckett and the artist Roy Lichtenstein. But his greatest achievement as a photographer came during an important moment in American history, the civil rights movement of the 1960s. He was at the Lincoln Memorial only a few feet away from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. as he spoke of his dream of racial harmony; he was at the funeral of Malcolm X; he was at the lunch counters and sit-ins; and he was at Selma. Bob was motivated by art, but he was perhaps even more driven to bear witness to injustice through his photography. His work is exquisite, defined by light and passion, brilliant, vivid, as immediate as this moment, filled with yearning and tears and hope. Bob and I stayed in touch long after Barbados. Hed send me copies of books he had completed, including his books on King and the civil rights movement, and the book he created with the great John Loengard documenting the classic photography of Life magazine. One of Bobs most personal books, I believe, was Carver Country, created with Tess Gallagher and documenting the places in Washington state frequented by the late Raymond Carver. I have that one, too. It made such an impression on me that to this day, whenever I reread a Carver story, one of the images from Bobs book slips quietly into my consciousness. Bob died Saturday, March 19, in Miami at 85. Hed been living in Florida for many years, but we stayed in touch, mostly through exchanged notes and Christmas cards. In the early years, we talked about all of us meeting up again in Barbados, on the quiet side of the island. After a while, our correspondence became less geographically specific, as those kinds of exchanges will. Bob was a singular, almost Rabelaisian character. He owned every room he ever walked into. His loss as an artist, a photojournalist and as a man is incalculable. Fortunately, what he saw, what he captured through his camera, is always with us, as alive as if it were shot only yesterday. Of course, when we look at Bobs photographs of Selma, the sit-ins, the I Have a Dream speech, we see them in their original context. But the genius of Bobs work is how those extraordinary images speak to the present day across all the years and miles. Much of that is because great art is timeless. But much of it is also because their subject matter, for Bob, wasnt just of the moment, but of ongoing history. We cannot look at Bobs photographs and think, How far weve come. Instead, we look at them and read their message that injustice is not easily thwarted. Bob Adelmans art tells stories that travel well beyond the moment. David Wiegand is an assistant managing editor and the TV critic of The San Francisco Chronicle. Email: dwiegand@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @WaitWhat_TV. Follow me on Facebook. Preliminary investigation of criminal case initiated on psychics murder completed Preliminary investigation of the criminal case initiated on Ani Majnunyans murder was completed in the Investigative Division of Ajapnyak and Davtashen administrative districts of Yerevan Investigative Department of the RA Investigative Committee. In the result of investigatory actions conducted in the framework of the criminal case the motives of murder were found, the person having committed the apparent crime was identified. Body of Ani Majnunyan, who was popular with the wider society as a psychic, was found on August 5, 2015 in her flats bedroom lying on the floor with numerous cut-pierced injuries. A criminal case was initiated in the Investigative Division of Ajapnyak and Davtashen administrative districts of Yerevan Investigative Department of the RA Investigative Committee, an investigatory plan was worked out and investigatory and procedural actions of large volume were conducted to provide the comprehensive, objective and complete investigation of circumstances of the case. Through investigation sufficient data were obtained on the allegation that murder had been committed with banditry with the purpose of capturing somebodys property. According to preliminary investigation data, on August 4 at about 23:00 - the day before the body was found, Ani Majnunyan had been visited by her acquaintance M. Mkhitaryan. According to the obtained evidence, with the purpose of stealing money available in the flat the man attacked Ani Majnunyan in the bedroom and struck her on different parts of her body with a knife and blunt object. 59 cut-pierced and cut, penetrating and not penetrating wounds were found on the victims head, face, neck, chest, abdomen, both upper limbs and left lower limb which caused hemorrhagic shock causing A. Majnunyans death. According to investigation data, looking for A. Majnunyans money in the flat and not being able to find it M. Mkhitaryan stole some jewelry, victims mobile phones, closed the door and left. On the base of the obtained evidence charge was pressed against M. Mkhitaryan according to the Point 8 of the Part 2 of the Article 104 of RA Criminal Code. Detention was chosen as a pretrial measure against him. The criminal case with the bill of indictment was sent to the prosecutor supervising the legality of preliminary investigation. Note; Everyone charged with alleged crime offence shall be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law. Information and Public Relations Department of the RA Investigative Committee This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 Kat Wade/Special to the Chronicle Show More Show Less 2 of 3 Mike Kepka/The Chronicle Show More Show Less 3 of 3 A 59-year-old South Bay man was charged with illegally dumping fill material, construction debris and other pollutants into the waters of the Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge, officials said. James Philip Lucero of Carmel was charged with one count of unpermitted filling of wetlands and one count of the filling of other protected waters. He faces up to three years in prison and a $50,000 fine. Late last spring, amid the depths of Californias punishing drought, state officials made a historic determination that rivers and creeks were too low for many farms and cities to draw from. Not everyone agreed, however. And now nearly a year later, even as waterways have partially recovered, the fate of two delta water agencies accused of illegally pumping is expected to be decided at a hearing in Sacramento. More importantly, the case may have consequences for the states fundamental ability to crack down on longtime water-rights holders some of whom say their access to water predates regulation by the State Water Resources Control Board. The board on Monday in a hearing scheduled to last up to two weeks took up the matter of whether to reverse its decision to proceed with penalties against the two delta agencies. The states regulations are also the subject of several lawsuits. The issue under debate is what the boards authority is to curtail them, said Ellen Hanak, director of the Public Policy Institute of Californias Water Policy Center. This oversight is a piece we have to fix. In a modern water system, where we know that curtailments are something that were going to have to be ready for with future droughts and climate change, having a unified oversight system just makes a lot of sense. In a sign of the cases potential reach, an attorney for San Francisco participated in Mondays opening arguments. He said that the state water board has no authority to limit those with water rights before 1914, when regulation was introduced. San Francisco has several pre-1914 water rights in the Sierra, which allow it to send supplies to millions in the Bay Area, and city water officials have been adamant that they dont want to be curtailed. At issue this week specifically is whether the State Water Resources Control Board properly restricted pumping by the Byron-Bethany Irrigation District and the West Side Irrigation District, both agricultural suppliers in the Tracy area. The districts allegedly diverted water from the delta in June in spite of notice that their water rights were too junior to continue their draws. Byron-Bethany was hit with a tentative $1.4 million fine, while the West Side district was issued a cease-and-desist order and tentative $10,000-a-day fines. The fines will be finalized at the hearing. Representatives for the two agencies argued Monday that the state didnt properly calculate how much water was in the delta last year. Had that been done, they said, it would have been obvious there was enough water to avoid restrictions. Additionally, the districts maintained that the water they pumped after the restrictions were enacted came from supplies not tied to the disputed water rights. They came from such sources as irrigation runoff and wastewater, they said. In both cases, the districts have made clear that they believe they were targeted because the state wanted to signal its authority over water-rights holders. The farmers in this room are being punished because that district stood up for itself, said Daniel Kelly, attorney for Byron-Bethany, amid a standing-room-only crowd in the Sacramento boardroom. State officials countered that their decisions to penalize the districts were simply a matter of enforcing the rules. Water board attorney Andrew Tauriainen explained that the states best measuring tools showed that Californias drought-stricken rivers and creeks contained only enough water for those with the most senior water rights. The methodology is simple math, like what youd use to set a budget, he said. Neither the West Side district, which has water rights dating to just after 1914, nor Byron-Bethany, with rights dating before 1914, was senior enough to continue pumping, according to the states calculations. The restrictions enacted by the state last year were the most sweeping since the 1970s. Its one of few times it has cut off the disputed right of pre-1914 water-rights holders. Kurtis Alexander is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kalexander@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kurtisalexander This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A San Mateo County couple went on vacation in Africa this winter, bought what they thought was an innocent keepsake and promptly found themselves locked up in Tanzania on charges of poaching, facing up to 20 years in prison and a $150,000 fine. Jon and Linda Grant had to shell out $62,000 on fines and bribes and get the help of a U.S. congresswoman before they finally won their freedom and wound up back on United States soil in January. It was all, they said, a big misunderstanding over a giraffe bone. Basically, it was the scariest thing we ever went through, Linda Grant, 65, said. We certainly appreciate all the support from Jackie Speier and our friend Charlie. More for you Couple Back At Home After Being Accused Of Poaching In Tanzania Rep. Jackie Speier, D-Hillsborough, stepped in to help the couple when she learned of their plight from Charlie Bronitsky, vice mayor of Foster City, the Grants hometown. Its one of the most harrowing travel experiences Ive heard in a long time, said Speier, whose office wrote to a U.S. ambassador in Tanzania to help secure their release. Short of being kidnapped, they experienced every other trauma. It all started innocently enough. Jon Grant, 72, said he spotted a giraffe bone carved with pictures of elephants at a curio shop in South Africa in December during a two-week cruise with his wife. Grant, a retired dentist and seasoned traveler familiar with the continent, asked if the bone was legal before he purchased it for $900. The merchants assured him it was fine. And it apparently was in South Africa. The laws turned out to be grievously different when the Grants later traveled to Tanzania. After going on a safari in that country, they ended their Africa stay and headed to Kilimanjaro International Airport for their flight home. Authorities there promptly seized the souvenir, accused the couple of poaching, and sent them to an antipoaching office. They soon found themselves packed off to jail and spent three days behind bars until a friend with their safari company paid bribes to speed up their next court date. They managed to stay out on $8,000 bail, at a hotel and at their friends house, for nearly three weeks before a deal was struck with authorities to settle the case. Between the legal efforts of the Grants friend in Africa and the weight of Speiers letter, officials were persuaded to remove Lindas charges and lessen Jons charge to not having a permit to export a trophy which fetched a $30,000 fine. The couple got their passports back and finally made it home to America on Jan. 17. The Grants said the bone was clearly well aged, making the allegations of poaching ridiculous to begin with. The giraffe happens to be the national animal of Tanzania, an East African country that borders Kenya. An official in the Tanzanian Embassy in Washington, D.C., said she did not know about the Grants situation, but maintained the country has been taking a hard line on poaching lately, particularly when it comes to elephant hunting. For the last year, we had a crisis with the poaching, but the government has put in a lot of effort to ensure the problem is eliminated, said Imma Diyamett, a tourism officer for the embassy. But Speier suspects there may have been more to the poaching charge. I really believe that they were fingered as being Americans that have some money, she said. This is a 70-plus-year-old man and his 65-year-old wife. Theyre not poachers. By the time the couple were done shelling out money for bribes, fines, legal bills and other expenditures to unsnarl their troubles, they had spent the $62,000 and then some. Among the costs: Paying to fly someone from Tanzania to the South African curio store to get an original sales receipt because the receipt they had was deemed not good enough by authorities. The whole system is just as corrupt as can be, Jon Grant said. Every person gets paid. Although the Grants are now safely back in Foster City, Speier said she plans to meet with the Tanzanian ambassador to have a talk about international diplomacy. The last thing I want to say to people is dont buy anything in Africa, because their economies would crash, but theres got to be an understanding among countries, she said. People have to be given full disclosure on what is and isnt appropriate. As for the giraffe bone that triggered all the trouble? It stayed in Africa. A 64-year-old motorist was lucky to be alive after a boulder plummeted from a mountainside and smashed through his windshield in rural Sonoma County, causing him to swerve and crash into a tree, authorities said. The man, who was not identified, lost control of his car on Monday morning when the rock about two feet across plunged about 40 feet, shattered the windshield and landed beside him in the front passenger seat. The accident occurred on Cazadero Highway near Kidd Creek Road, according to a spokesman for the Monte Rio Fire Department. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Carrie Morris finally has the answer she never really wanted but had to have. Her 59-year-old husband, Steve Morris, died on a trail high in the Trinity Alps, she now knows right where she thought hed died nearly two years ago. It took an army of more than 200 volunteers equipped with search dogs, professional trackers and two helicopters to find that out, through 21 expeditions into the steep, craggy mountains and analysis by two different forensics labs of the remains they found. Sad ... also amazing Morris, 57, finally got a death certificate last month from the state based on her teams findings, but waited to release the news publicly while she and her inner circle processed the news. After living out loud to thousands of followers of her fundraising blog about her search for the past year and a half, the Windsor woman announced her husbands passing there on Tuesday. At this point in time, with perspective, its so sad, but its also amazing when you think about it, Morris, who runs a Christian-oriented family therapy practice, told The Chronicle. From my faith perspective, its a miracle. ... Its truly a miracle that he was found. Experience outdoors Steve Morris was last seen Aug. 2, 2014, on an annual backpacking retreat to the Trinity Alps north of Weaverville (Trinity County) with friends from the First Presbyterian Church in Santa Rosa, where the Morrises worship. He and three other men were taking a day hike up the 7,342-foot Billys Peak, and he separated from the others to scout for an alternative route on the way down. When he didnt show up at a rendezvous point, the others searched fruitlessly for him for several hours and by late night had become alarmed. Search teams led by the Trinity County Sheriffs Office scoured the treacherous terrain of peaks, cliffs and granite crevices for nearly five days, but abandoned the hunt when it became clear the chances of finding him alive were too small to continue. Thats when Carrie Morris mustered a volunteer army of searchers from her church, circle of friends and her husbands four siblings. She started a GoFundMe site that raised much of what she needed for the $2,000 daily cost for the team of trackers, dogs and pilots. They carried on whenever they could between blizzards and other forbidding weather. Findings of search The team determined Morris had fallen off a ridge, and was so badly injured in his fall that he could only limp or crawl until he collapsed more than 2 miles down the mountainside. There, he succumbed to hypothermia or wild animals. We found human remains in two spots, and a couple of other things like a temperature gauge he was probably carrying, Carrie Morris said. Testing by Bode Technologies and forensics specialist Dr. Arpad Vass, combined with the narrative of the search, persuaded the Sonoma County Superior Court to issue a finding of death in January. The formal death certificate was signed Feb. 9. The death declaration now allows Morris to collect life insurance and Social Security spousal benefits. But every bit as important to her is the closure that knowing brings to her and their 17-year-old daughter, Ellie Morris. I needed time to process this last year and a half before I told everyone the search was finally done, and that was hard, she said. It took me all this time to be able to fully exhale and to enjoy some time feeling human again. Inspiration to others Throughout her search, Morris has been blogging about her pain and hopes with unflinching honesty. In one Feb. 28 post, she agonized about lying on her husbands side of the bed, longing for him while knowing he will never come home. Such a cruel trick, when the very one who could bring you comfort is gone, carrying out a different role in absentia as the root of your pain, she wrote. Morris refusal to give up on finding out what happened to her husband amazed even her close friends. What a beautiful family, and what an incredible journey they had over the past year and a half, said longtime friend Carolyn Kemp of Berkeley. Who knew Carrie would learn all about tracking dogs, helicopter pilots and wilderness searches? Her grace under so much duress has been an inspiration to me. Kevin Fagan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kfagan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @KevinChron Top tweet just setting up my twttr That came on March 21, 2006, from co-founder Jack Dorsey as San Franciscos Twitter got its start. It had grown to about 320 million active users at the end of 2015, which sounds great unless you compare it with Menlo Parks Facebook, which has 1.5 billion users. Although popular with business leaders, journalists, public figures and trolls, Twitter is still struggling to convince people that even 140 characters are worth their time. Hot now As President Obama made his historic visit to Cuba on Monday, among the business leaders joining him were Brian Chesky and Nate Blecharczyk, two co-founders of Airbnb. The San Francisco company said Monday that its Cuban business has grown dramatically since it started serving the country in April, drawing more than 13,000 guests and listing nearly 4,000 homes. Calling it quits Tesla CEO Elon Musk and British actress Talulah Riley are divorcing again. The two wed in 2010, divorced in 2012 and remarried 18 months later. Musk filed for divorce in December 2014 but withdrew the petition seven months later, but Riley filed Monday in Los Angeles Superior Court. In a joint statement, they said they will remain friends. The Daily Briefing is compiled from San Francisco Chronicle staff and news services. See more items and links at www.sfgate.com. Twitter: @techbriefing This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Andy Grove, the former Intel Corp. chief executive who survived Nazi occupation and went on to build the worlds largest chip manufacturing company, died Monday. He was 79. Mr. Grove was diagnosed with Parkinsons disease in 2000 and waged a public and successful battle against prostate cancer in the mid-1990s. Intel officials did not release a cause of death. We are deeply saddened by the passing of former Intel Chairman and CEO Andy Grove, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said in a statement. Andy made the impossible happen, time and again, and inspired generations of technologists, entrepreneurs, and business leaders. Named Time Magazines Man of the Year in 1997, Mr. Grove led Intel as it became a $25 billion company and was considered the person most responsible for propelling the power of the microchip. Mr. Grove approached leadership in ways that continue to influence the world, Intel Chairman Andy Bryant said in a statement. He combined the analytic approach of a scientist with an ability to engage others in honest and deep conversation, which sustained Intels success over a period that saw the rise of the personal computer, the Internet and Silicon Valley. Born Andras Istvan Grof to a middle-class Jewish family in Budapest, Hungary, in 1936, Mr. Grove immigrated to the United States in the 1950s after having survived Nazi occupation and escaped Soviet repression. After graduating with a degree in chemical engineering from the City College of New York and earning his doctorate at UC Berkeley in 1963, he was hired by Gordon Moore at Fairchild Semiconductor as a researcher. When Moore and Robert Noyce founded Intel in 1968, Mr. Grove was their first hire. He served as Intels CEO from 1987 to 1998 and its president from 1979 to 1997. He stepped down as CEO in 1998 at age 61 but remained chairman of Intels board until 2004. He continued as a senior adviser at Intel and was a lecturer at Stanford University. Mr. Grove chronicled his battle with prostate cancer in a 1996 cover story in Fortune magazine, in which he detailed his treatment and addressed some of the confusion around the disease. He was known for living modestly, preferring a cubicle to an office and paying attention to details. Silicon Valley business leaders expressed sadness Monday and lauded Mr. Groves legacy upon learning of his death. Andy Grove was one of the giants of the technology world. He loved our country and epitomized America at its best. Rest in peace, Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a tweet. Futurist Paul Saffo tweeted of Mr. Groves legacy: Gordon Moore revealed the velocity of computing, and Andy Grove taught us how it utterly changed the velocity of business. Netscape co-founder Marc Andreessen tweeted: RIP Andy Grove. The best company builder Silicon Valley has ever seen, and likely will ever see. Mr. Grove wrote Output Management in 1983 and the best-selling Only the Paranoid Survive in 1999, the latter considered a vital guide to management in the age of the Internet. He also published a memoir in 2001, Swimming Across, which recounted his youth as a boy whose hearing was damaged by scarlet fever and his dash across the Austrian border to escape Hungarys Communist government. In his later years, Mr. Grove contributed to Parkinsons research. He gave $26 million to City College of New York to help establish the Grove School of Engineering. Mr. Grove is survived by his wife of 58 years, Eva Kastan Grove, a fellow refugee; two daughters; and eight grandchildren. Victoria Colliver is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: vcolliver@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @vcolliver The three Contra Costa County sheriffs deputies who fatally shot a 49-year-old man suspected of child molestation when he allegedly pointed a gun at them were identified Monday as veterans of the department. Sergeants Mark Johnson and Shawn Welch as well as Detective Anthony Rossi were the SWAT team deputies who discharged their firearms Friday, the sheriffs department said in a statement. Johnson has been on the force for 17 years, Welch for 12 years and Rossi for nine years. They have been placed on paid administrative leave. Welch had served as president of the Contra Costa County Deputy Sheriffs Association as recently as August. The union did not immediately return a call asking for clarification on his current position. The hours-long standoff that prefaced the shooting began Thursday night when police arrived at a residence in the East Bay town of Byron to serve an arrest warrant for the man, Michael Mallett, who was wanted on 12 counts of alleged abuse of a foster child. Mallett initially walked out of his home with a gun and refused to negotiate with deputies, then went back inside and barricaded himself in, officials said. Family members were then evacuated from the residence. During Malletts talks with negotiators, he allegedly said he would not surrender and refused to put down his gun, threatening to harm himself, officials said. About five hours later, the SWAT team arrived as negotiations continued. Another six hours later, deputies deployed a chemical irritant into the home to force Mallett to exit, and he came to a window allegedly armed with his handgun. The sheriffs department said he refused to drop his weapon and, when he raised the gun, the three deputies shot him multiple times. Medics pronounced him dead at the scene. The sheriffs department urged anyone with information about the case to call (925) 313-2600. Anonymous tips can be emailed to tips@so.cccounty.us or called in to (866) 846-3592. Kimberly Veklerov is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: kveklerov@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @kveklerov This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate How long is San Antonio and Texas for that matter going to take these Hollywood snubs sitting down? Every time I hear that a TV show or movie set in the Lone Star State is shooting elsewhere I cringe: New Mexico, Louisiana, Georgia and other places that offer better filming incentives i.e., tax breaks are having all the fun. Why should they get the jobs, the glamour, the glory, while San Antonio, the Hill Country and so many other Texas jewels remain hidden? A San Antonio filmmaker not only shares that concern but is working to rectify the situation. First, consider this string of neat projects that have been eluding our city and state: Midnight, Texas, the latest TV adaptation of a book series from Charlaine Harris, whose work previously inspired HBOs True Blood, is coming to NBC. But does it matter that the pilot is set in, as the Albuquerque Journal wrote, a town in Texas called Midnight, where the real world and the supernatural collide? Not really, as the show is being shot in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Then theres AMCs adaptation of comic book Preacher, which debuts May 22. It revolves around a conflicted preacher (Dominic Cooper) who deals with all kinds of supernatural craziness in a small town in Texas. So, why, I asked executive producer Seth Rogen, isnt it being shot in our state? Texas does not offer the financial incentives that New Mexico does, Rogen said at a recent press session. We filmed in East New Mexico, which is right next to West Texas, actually, and there were times when we were a 40-minute drive from the Texas border. So we were very close. Visually, it was all we could have asked for. I mean, it really looks like a Western. It has these vistas and these plains, and the skies are beautiful and amazing. It was really fun to shoot in Albuquerque. Closer to home, of course, is the case of NBCs medical drama The Night Shift, which rolls out its third season this summer. Although the shows emergency room doctors race around treating patients at a hospital called San Antonio Memorial, its the city of Albuquerque that people actually see. Why? Executive producer Gabe Sachs cited as usual New Mexicos more substantial filming incentives. The news that really put the bee in this Texas gals bonnet, however, hit just last week: From Dusk Till Dawn: The Series, from San Antonio native and Austin staple Robert Rodriguez, has been greenlit for a third season on El Rey Network. However, production on the thriller, which is set in Texas and Mexico, has moved from Austin to ouch Albuquerque. The Texas Film Commission wouldnt speak about that move specifically. However, director Heather Page did comment on the filming dearth of late. Our issue is the level of funding we received in the last legislative session, she said in a phone chat. She referred to the drastic cuts to Texas film incentive program budget for 2016-17; it was slashed to a third of its former allocation, from $95 million to $32 million. San Antonio recently lost a horror movie called Possessions, in fact, because of the current lack of incentives. All the state funding already had been allocated, so the movie went to Massachusetts, said prominent local filmmaker Kerry Valderrama, whos known for a motion picture chiller of his own, Sanitarium, with Malcolm McDowell and Lou Diamond Phillips. However and this is where the good news comes in there may finally be a light at the end of the tunnel. The San Antonio Film Society, a coalition of local industry professionals writers, producers, directors, cinematographers, editors and more recently put together a proposal that may just make a difference, Valderrama said, at least to the filming future of the Alamo City. Were working to create a San Antonio incentive thats competitive with Georgia, New Mexico and Louisiana, he said. Their suggestions have been delivered to San Antonio officials. The city does have the proposal, and it is currently under review, San Antonio Film Commissioer Galia Farber confirmed in an email. Meanwhile, Valderrama and fellow creative entities are building an impressive infrastructure that will add to San Antonios appeal as a film locale. Alamo City Studios, located at 1113 E. Houston St., is envisioned as a full-service production facility that will include offices, sound stages, editing bays, digital sound recording suites, green screens and classrooms. The building has a rich history, Valderrama said, pointing to its use during San Antonios filming heyday of the 80s and 90s. Thats when incentives werent an issue and too many movies and mininiseries to count All the Pretty Horses, Eight Seconds, Ace Venture: When Nature Calls, Selena, Showtimes Lolita gladly took advantage of our citys beauty, charm and plentiful locales. Jeanne Jakles column appears Wednesdays and Sundays in mySA, and she blogs at Jakles Jacuzzi on mySA.com. Email her at jjakle@express-news.net. Galust Sahakyan: To cause panic It is a civilized way (video) Galust Sahakyan, who was absent from the republic due to health problems, has missed the National Assembly: Both the journalists and MPs, he says. Yet during his absence in one of the sittings the Republican MPs cursed and offended the opposition lawmaker Nikol Pashinyan. All the parliaments in the world are like that, says the NA President. On that unlucky day Mr Sahakyans health condition deteriorated, but he is committed to the quality of his speech. Galust Sahakyan, who is familiar with the draft Electoral Code, which is actively discussed at the National Assembly during these days, knows the reason for the idea of limiting the number of journalists at the polling stations: There is no such a polling station in Armenia, where 30, 100 or 200 journalists can be placed, he says. But if journalists have proposals, the authorities will listen. Mr Sahakyan has an offer: If you draw something new, suppose, enter in turn or something like that, it will be accepted. By the way, Galust Sahakyan isnt afraid that the authorities stance, which doesnt imply any possibility of making concessions in the discussions over the draft Electoral Code, may force people to take to the streets: All the thoughts presented in the code will be in the laws. And gathering people in that way, causing panic etc., it is a civilized way. Regime isnt in panic, regime is bringing a code, which cannot be broken, says Galust Sahakyan. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate On your marks, jet-set, Spring Break. The rich kids of Instagram are running rampant through Spring Break 2016 on their private jets, luxury vehicles and yachts. While beach-bumming breakers fill their beer bongs with Natural Light, its Dom Perignon and champagne showers for these well-heeled youngsters. RELATED: San Antonio's posh New Year's Eve parties seen on Instagram You wont catch them tanning at exclusive Las Vegas pools wearing last years mix-and-match Target swimsuit, either. Their high-quality fashion sense travels with them wherever they go to South Beach, New York and exclusive posh parties. RELATED: The glamorous lifestyles of San Antonio's young elite, seen through the lens of Instagram They share their vacation escapades on Instagram to remind the world even their most lavish days still can't level up. Click through the gallery above to see Spring Break in style. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate BETHEL State Rep. Dan Carter has dropped his bid for re-election and is considering a run against incumbent U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal. The Republican lawmaker, serving his third consecutive term in Hartford, said he would have a formal announcement very soon. I am very serious about doing this, Carter said Tuesday morning, moments after he withdrew from the race for the state assembly. The Bethel resident represents Connecticuts 2nd District, which includes parts of his hometown along with Redding, Danbury and Newtown. If he decides to run for Senate, Carter would compete for the nomination with Stamford businessman and former Olympic athlete August Wolf, the only Republican committed to the race. CNBC commentator Larry Kudlow, who considered running, decided last month not to join the race. But even if Carter wins the nomination, he would have to beat long odds in the November election. Blumenthal not only has wide name recognition, but also has strong voter support. A recent poll by Quinnipiac University shows 62 percent of voters approve of Blumenthals performance in Washington. The October poll also shows that Blumenthal would beat Wolf by a margin of 61 to 26 percent. Carter said hes up to the challenge. I understand its a long shot, but long shots do win, Carter said. Richard Blumenthal is a household name, but everybody is beatable in the right circumstances. The Republican said its time for a serious senator and cited Blumenthals establishment politics and history of suing companies as reasons to unseat the Democrat. Hes one of the wealthiest guys in Congress, Carter said. Im a regular guy. I understand what its like to live in this state and be overburdened with taxes. Marla Romash, an adviser to the Blumenthal campaign, brushed aside Carters criticisms. "The people of Connecticut know Senator Blumenthal, and they know he is on their side, and always will be, standing up to big powerful interests to make a difference for working families and small businesses all across our state, Romash said. Carter, who was first elected in 2010, serves on the state legislatures General Law, Education, and Finance, Revenue and Bonding committees. I have enough experience that I understand the process, but Im not an insider, he said. Carter joined the U.S. Air Force as a member of the Reserve Officers Training Corps while in college and later served as a C-130 pilot during operation Desert Storm in Saudia Arabia and on two tours in Bosnia. Will Duff, chairman of the Bethel Republican Town Committee, said he fully supports a Carter candidacy, which he believes would pose a serious challenge to Blumenthals re-election. The nation is sick and tired of politicians like Blumenthal, Duff said. This is the year of the outsiders. (Carter) is not at all an insider. Hes like one of us. noliveira@newstimes.com, 203-731-3411, @olivnelson This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 3 1 of 3 J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press Show More Show Less 2 of 3 J. David Ake / Associated Press Show More Show Less 3 of 3 HARTFORD Governor Dannel P. Malloy on Tuesday afternoon ordered that state flags be lowered to half-staff in memory of the victims of the terrorist attacks in Brussels, Belgium. The order, in accordance with a proclamation from President Barack Obama, will run through sunset on Saturday. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A Fulton County-based medical marijuana manufacturer sees retaliation in Google's decision to reject two of its advertisements just hours after the New York company went public with complaints about the tech giant's policies. Google had previously rejected seven advertisements from Vireo Health of New York that contained the words "medical marijuana" or "medical cannabis," but had allowed the company to run two ads without those phrases. After Vireo released a statement Friday complaining that Google's decision prevented it from marketing its products, Google pulled the two ads it had previously allowed. "We are shocked and dismayed that Google chose to retaliate instead of engaging in a constructive dialogue," said Ari Hoffnung, CEO of Vireo Health of New York. Google did not respond Monday to an inquiry about its latest decision regarding Vireo's request to run paid ads. The California-based company said in an email Friday that its policies restrict a variety of medically related ads, including prescription drugs, medical devices and sexual enhancement products, in addition to marijuana. Hoffnung said Vireo has spent the last month or so trying to discuss the advertising issue with Google. According to Vireo, Google's stated policies prohibit the "promotion of substances that alter mental state for the purpose of recreation." He said Vireo's products are not meant for recreation, but sold in compliance with New York law to treat a restricted list of debilitating ailments. The Fulton County company's appeal to the public Friday was a "last resort," Hoffnung said. "We put this issue into the public domain hoping that some public pressure will help them do the right thing," Hoffnung said. Google is not the only big Internet name to block promotion of medical marijuana. Facebook last year ordered Warren County-based Etain to take down its page, which the company set up shortly after being selected by the state to produce medical cannabis. Etain saw the Facebook page as the quickest way to get the word out about its launch, said spokesman Steve Stallmer. But when activity on the page caught Facebook's attention, the social media company said it could not promote marijuana. "We weren't trying to advertise, 'this is black-market marijuana,'" Stallmer said. "Our argument was, we're educating the public about a product that's legal in the state of New York." Stallmer characterized the issue as part of a larger challenge of marketing its products in a digital world. But he emphasized that it's not the biggest problem the company faces. More important, Stallmer said, is that most of the state's doctors are signing up to participate in the medical marijuana program. Etain is hopeful that legislative proposals will pass allowing the cannabis producers to visit doctors directly to discuss the drug, the way sales representatives for big pharmaceutical companies do. chughes@timesunion.com 518-454-5417 @hughesclaire This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Next to the Hollywood Cemetery in Orange is a vodka distillery that took on about 2 feet of water in historic flooding that devastated counties near the Texas-Louisiana border. The owner did what he could to prepare for the flood, and now that the waters have finally receded, he is doing what he can to get back to business. Buck Stobart said he had workers boating around last week to witness the destruction. Before the waters rose, they sent finished products to distributors and took apart the facility's more expensive components. Stobart said they spent Monday disinfecting the building, taking out gypsum wallboard and getting an assessment on the electrical work. "It's tough because this is your bread and butter right here," Stobart said. "It's overwhelming, but we'll get (business) back up." Maurice Angelle is waiting on Federal Emergency Management Agency to help with his home in Orange, where 2 feet of flooding damaged furniture and left water marks around the doors and walls in each room. The leather couch cushions still contain water, and the particle board underneath is damaged and already mildewed. Angelle, who runs a lawn service, will find out this week if his riding mowers can be salvaged. He made it out last week with one push mower on the bed of his pickup truck. For now, he barely has a home or a job. "It put me in a tough spot this go-around," Angelle said. Beverly Freeman has lived on Rosewood Drive in Orange since 1984. She's been there for hurricanes Rita and Ike in the 2000s and for the Toledo Bend Reservoir flood that washed out Deweyville the last time, in 1989. This, however, is the first time water actually got into her house, which is near Little Cypress Bayou. Water made it 6 to 8 inches above the baseboards. "Just enough to mess everything up," said Freeman, who owns a transmission shop in downtown Orange that also flooded. Freeman and her sister Susan Mireles, of Beaumont, spent Monday cleaning and hoping the area would soon stop looking like an unattended aquarium. At the cemetery, funeral home workers and groundskeepers put two displaced caskets back into their vaults. Other gravesites were slightly altered by the flooding but the cemetery was back intact by Monday afternoon, said Wayne Sparrow of Sparrow Funeral Home. "Several families have come by concerned about their loved ones and we've assured them we're working to make sure everything is fine," Sparrow said. The flooding forced some schools into an extended, albeit unexpected, spring break. Students in the West Orange-Cove CISD return for classes today, the district announced Monday. Lamar State College-Orange resumes classes Wednesday. The Little Cypress-Mauriceville CISD opened Monday. BScott@BeaumontEnterprise.com Twitter.com/BrandonKScott This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate In a win for Google, smart TV maker Vizio introduced a home entertainment control system Tuesday that is built on the Internet search giants Chromecast streaming technology, rather than on competing systems from such companies as Apple. Vizio has worked behind the scenes with Google for nearly two years to develop its SmartCast system, which turns mobile phones and tablets into a combination television remote, secondary viewing screen and music player. Matt McRae, Vizio chief technology officer, said the Irvine company picked Googles Chromecast technology over its competitors because of its flexibility. We made the decision strategically to align with them because we believe the Google Cast protocol could serve as the basis for the next-generation living room experience, McRae said during an interview earlier this month. Google began selling Chromecast, a $35 dongle that plugs into a TV monitor to stream online video and audio, in 2013. That brought Google into direct competition with companies including Apple and Roku, which make streaming devices. Rokus technology is built into monitors from several TV manufacturers, and Apple has talked about redefining television with its Apple TV. After selling more than 20 million Chromecast devices, Google introduced a second-generation version of Chromecast in October for online videos, and the sound-only Chromecast Audio. Vizios latest line of ultra high-definition, flat-panel televisions, called the P-Series, integrates Chromecast directly into the television and sound bars, eliminating the need for a dongle. The remote control that comes with Vizios new televisions is an Android tablet with a 6-inch, 1080-pixel screen and stereo speakers. Viewers can use the remote to stream video from Netflix, Vudu or YouTube to the big-screen TV, then watch something else or play games on the tablet. Menu information, including the list of available shows, appears on the tablet rather than the television screen. The Vizio system can also work simultaneously with other iOS and Android phones and tablets. It turns every screen into a remote, McCrae said. The system does not, however, replace all other remote controls. To watch cable programs on the Vizio television, for example, viewers will still need to use their cable or satellite companys remote. Vizio is extending the system to work with its TV sound bars and an upcoming line of stand-alone wireless audio speakers. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Former Army Sgt. Santiago Jesus Erevia, a longtime resident of San Antonio who received the Medal of Honor from President Obama only two years ago, died Tuesday morning. He was 70. Bexar County Veterans Service Officer Queta Marquez announced Erevias death, calling him an American hero from our community and a hero to our country and adding, He epitomized selfless service and bravery. A radio operator born in Nordheim, a small town southeast of San Antonio, Erevia charged a series of enemy spider holes in a desperate battle near Tam Ky City, Vietnam, in 1969. His company was pinned down at the base of a hill when he picked up two M-16 rifles and rushed the first of the spider holes. Often facing close-quarter fire, he reloaded the weapons and pushed on until all of the enemy nests were cleared. Initially given the Distinguished Service Cross, the nations second-highest award for valor, Erevia and fellow San Antonian retired Sgt. 1st Class Jose Rodela received the Medal of Honor from President Obama in a White House ceremony on March 18, 2014. He was just a really nice gentleman, said Marquez, a veteran of Afghanistan. He was really humble. Obviously, he got a lot of attention after getting the Medal of Honor, but he was always very humble. Read more about Santiago Erevias life and heroics on ExpressNews.com and in Wednesdays Express-News. sigc@express-news.net Paul Qui, an award-winning Austin chef and restaurateur, has been arrested and charged with assaulting his girlfriend over the weekend, according to police. Qui, who owns the restaurants Qui and East Side King, was charged with assault causing bodily injury to a family member and unlawful restraint, both Class A misdemeanors, on Saturday. RELATED: Police: South Texas woman rammed her car into Mercedes-Benz containing her husband, 2 kids One of Qui's friends had called police to tell them that Qui and his girlfriend were fighting just before 8 a.m. to Qui's East Austin apartment, according to an arrest affidavit. Officers could hear "banging around" inside the apartment in addition to yelling and screaming, according to the affidavit. Qui had "blood all over his face, arms, legs and clothing" when he answered the door, police said in the affidavit. Officers found Qui's girlfriend crying inside of the apartment while holding a small child, according to the affidavit. Blood was smeared on the apartment's walls and floor and furniture and broken glass were found tossed around the inside of the home, the affidavit said. Qui's girlfriend told police that Qui woke her up and asked her to join his friends, who were using cocaine, Xanax and marijuana as well as drinking alcohol, according to the affidavit. Qui, 35, accused his girlfriend of flirting with his friends, claimed that she was "in agreement to having group sex," and told them to leave, Qui told police. RELATED: Lyft fires Austin driver accused of drunken driving with a customer in the car The restaurateur's girlfriend told police that Qui began overturning furniture and breaking glass, prompting her to gather some of her belongings and try to leave with her son. Qui blocked the door and "forcibly pushed her and her son away" from the exit, according to the affidavit. Police said the 35-year-old "Top Chef" winner then began throwing the woman around and telling her she couldn't leave. Qui is "very controlling and extremely jealous," the victim told police. The girlfriend told police that she was experiencing pain in her hip and knee. An officer also noted a fresh cut on her right forearm, bruising on her upper arms and swelling on the right side of her jaw. RELATED: Police: Texas teenage girl stabbed woman 21 times and called it 'absolutely fantastic' in her diary Qui was no longer in Travis County Jail as of Monday morning, according to online jail records. In 2012, Qui won the ninth season of "Top Chef," a competitive cooking reality series on Bravo. The Austin-based chef also won the James Beard Foundation Award for best Southwest Chef that year. News station KXAN first reported the story. jfechter@mySA.com Twitter: @JFreports This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 5 1 of 5 Dex Craig Show More Show Less 2 of 5 Dex Craig Show More Show Less 3 of 5 4 of 5 Dex Craig Show More Show Less 5 of 5 Hunter Keegans cell phone is on fire, and he knows what that means: His roommate, the seductive older father figure and perhaps overzealous arts patron Brenn, has lost his temper again. And just when Brenn says he wants to help the overprotected Hunter (a 13-year-old in a 37-year-olds body) prep for his first-ever job interview in the morning. Popular local actor Kevin Rolstons first solo show was a hit of the 2014 San Francisco Fringe Festival. Now hes brought it back, fleshed out and completed, for another look. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump overwhelmed their rivals in the Arizona primaries on Tuesday, according to the Associated Press, a show of might from two presidential front-runners who are hoping to avoid prolonging the nominating contest and begin training their fire on each other. But Sen. Bernie Sanders routed Clinton in the Utah Democratic caucuses, offsetting some of her delegate gains. In Arizona, Trump easily defeated Sen. Ted Cruz, taking all 58 of the states delegates and adding to his lead. But Cruz was vying to capture more than 50 percent of Utah Republicans in hopes of claiming all the states delegates and limiting Trumps gains. Clinton trounced Sanders in Arizona, capturing the biggest delegate prize on a night when Democrats were also voting in the Idaho caucuses. The victories recorded by Clinton and Trump showcased the strengths that have propelled them to huge advantages in their respective nomination fights. Clinton once again demonstrated her loyal following among older and nonwhite Democrats, both significant constituencies in Arizona. And Trump proved his appeal among immigration hard-liners, who make up a large bloc of Republicans in the border state. Clintons triumph in Arizona, with its 75 delegates, not only extended her lead over Sanders, but it also offered a psychological boost as she heads into a stretch of contests in states likely to favor Sanders, like Alaska and Washington, where losses could underscore her lingering vulnerabilities among Democrats. A hoarse Sanders, speaking to supporters in San Diego, claimed some credit for what he called record-breaking turnouts. Ignoring his lopsided loss in Arizona, he noted that he had won 10 contests so far and predicted he would win a couple more tonight. Turnout of voters in all three states was unusually high, with long lines at polling places and caucus sites. It was a sign that even as the front-runners move closer to clinching their nominations, enthusiasm for those still in the fight has not been dampened. The ballot counting in Arizona was delayed as officials extended voting to account for people who were waiting in line, for hours in some cases, when the polls closed at 7 p.m. In Utah, some Democratic caucus sites had to print additional ballots to accommodate the turnout. Tuesdays Western contests came as Trump and Clinton have both demonstrated strength in a string of recent primaries. Trump, who won four of the five contests on March 15, including Florida and Illinois, has built a substantial delegate advantage over Cruz, and he campaigned aggressively in Arizona in the hopes of capitalizing on his success and reinforcing the perception that his nomination is inevitable. He drew thousands of supporters last weekend to events near Phoenix and in Tucson, both of which drew impassioned protests. An important part of what has galvanized his admirers and opponents alike is Trumps tough talk on immigration. His harsh stance on the subject also drove some of Arizonas most prominent immigration hard-liners, including Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Maricopa County, the states largest, to Trumps side. The Democratic contenders sought to exploit the alliance between the sheriff and Trump, hoping to appeal to white liberals and to Hispanics, who make up around 30 percent of Arizonas population. Arizona was the most heavily contested of the three states voting on Tuesday in the Democratic race, which has seen Clinton open a nearly insurmountable lead after sweeping all five states that voted on March 15. Though Cruz campaigned and ran television ads in Arizona, both he and Gov. John Kasich of Ohio were far more focused on Utahs 40 delegates. Like Sanders, Cruz has enjoyed an advantage in states that hold caucuses, where his on-the-ground organizational efforts can be particularly effective with the doctrinaire conservatives and Republican activists who tend to dominate those party-building events. In Utah, Cruz won the support of Mitt Romney, the 2012 Republican nominee, an important assist in the countrys most heavily Mormon state. HAVANA President Obama made a full-throated plea Tuesday for Cubas autocratic government to change, calling on President Raul Castro to loosen his grip on the economy and political expression or risk squandering the fruits of a historic thaw. Likening the United States and Cuba to long-estranged brothers struggling to break free from a bitter past, Obama invoked the conflicted history of American imperialism, Cuban revolution and Cold War isolation that has long divided the two nations. I have come here to bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas, Obama said on the stage of the Grand Theater of Havana, the same building where Calvin Coolidge, the last sitting American president to visit Cuba, spoke 88 years ago. I have come here to extend the hand of friendship to the Cuban people. Speaking directly to Castro, who watched from a balcony in the ornate Spanish colonial-style hall, Obama said the United States had no intention of imposing its economic or political principles on Cuba. But he also called on the Cuban president to embrace the kinds of changes he has long resisted. I want you to know, I believe my visit here demonstrates that you do not need to fear a threat from the United States, Obama said. And given your commitment to Cubas sovereignty and self-determination, Im also confident that you need not fear the different voices of the Cuban people and their capacity to speak and assemble and vote for their leaders. The speech was a striking element of a presidential visit packed with extraordinary firsts: an American president speaking directly to Cubas people, in remarks that were broadcast live, as Cubas own president looked on. It came a day after the two leaders had another remarkable encounter, holding frank talks at the Palace of the Revolution and then spending 55 minutes answering questions from the news media. Obama prodded Castro, clearly uncomfortable being placed on the spot by journalists, to engage in a give-and-take that is a hallmark of U.S. democracy. Having removed the shadow of history from our relationship, I must speak honestly about the things that I believe, the things that we as Americans believe, Obama said in his speech on Tuesday, addressing the Cuban people. I cant force you to agree, but you should know what I think. Obama visited Cuba to cement a policy shift toward normalization that he hopes will outlast his presidency. He was accompanied by more than three dozen members of Congress who support the policy and several business leaders eager to take advantage of it through new commercial deals. But he made clear in the speech that the engagement could not be successful unless Cuba evolves, opening its economy and its political system. Its time to lift the embargo, but even if we lifted the embargo tomorrow, Cubans would not realize their potential without continued change here in Cuba, Obama said. TORONTO Rob Ford, the pugnacious, populist former mayor of Toronto whose career crashed in a drug-driven, obscenity-laced debacle, died Tuesday after fighting cancer, his family said. He was 46. Mr. Ford rode into office on a backlash against urban elites. He cast an image sharply at odds with Canadas reputation for sedate, unpretentious politics. His tenure as mayor of the countrys largest city was marred by revelations about his drinking problems and illegal drug use. He was repeatedly videotaped and photographed while intoxicated in public. Nevertheless, he was later elected by a landslide to a City Council seat, a job he held until his death. One after another, his statements and actions as mayor became nightly fodder for TV comedians and an embarrassment to many of the suburbanites he championed. Among the more notable: Knocking over a 63-year-old female city councilor while rushing to the defense of his brother, Councilor Doug Ford, who was insulting spectators in the council chamber. Threatening murder in a profane, incoherent rant captured by video. Swearing and slurring his words, calling the police chief a derogatory name and trying to imitate a Jamaican accent in a different video. But his popularity continued. Even after a scandal broke about Mr. Fords use of crack cocaine, hundreds of people lined up for bobblehead dolls of the mayor, signed by Mr. Ford himself. Mr. Ford spent countless hours taking pictures with residents eager to be photographed with an international celebrity. As he sought a second term as mayor in 2014, Mr. Ford was diagnosed with a rare cancer just two months before the election date. Malignant liposarcoma in his abdomen forced him to do what months of scandals could not drop his bid for re-election. He underwent a series of aggressive chemotherapy treatments. Current Toronto Mayor John Tory said Mr. Ford was a profoundly human guy and said the city is reeling with this news. The international spotlight fell on Mr. Ford in May 2013, when the Toronto Star and the U.S. website Gawker reported the existence of a video that appeared to show the mayor inhaling from a crack pipe. He denied the existence of the video but later backtracked when police said they had obtained it. Although he became the subject of a police investigation, Mr. Ford was never charged with a crime. Although his cancer forced him to drop his re-election bid, Mr. Ford opted to seek his old City Council seat, which he won in a landslide. Mr. Ford mayor met his wife, Renata, in high school, and they were married in 2000. One of Renata Fords few forays into the media spotlight came in 2008 after a widely reported domestic dispute with her husband. Mr. Ford was charged with assault and threatening death, but prosecutors withdrew the charges, citing inconsistencies in Renata Fords statements. Mr. Ford is survived by his wife and two children, Stephanie and Doug. KABUL The new commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan issued an unreserved apology Tuesday to the victims of the United States bombing of a hospital in the city of Kunduz last year that killed 42 people. The commander, Gen. John Nicholson Jr., and his wife, Norine MacDonald, a security analyst, traveled to Kunduz on Tuesday to meet with local officials and families of victims of the attack on the Doctors Without Borders hospital in October. The couples trip was clearly geared toward adding a personal component to the apology. Its tone was a sharp contrast to that of Nicholsons predecessor, Gen. John Campbell, who had sent confusing messages after the attack and had stopped short of apologizing. As commander, I wanted to come to Kunduz personally and stand before the families and the people of Kunduz to deeply apologize for the events which destroyed the hospital and caused the deaths of staff, patients and family members, said Nicholson, who took charge of the forces this month. I grieve with you for your loss and suffering, and humbly and respectfully ask for your forgiveness. But families of victims expressed anger at local Afghan officials who accepted the generals apology on their behalf. The statement was unlikely to change the position of Doctors Without Borders, which has been demanding an independent inquiry led by the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission and has called the air strikes a war crime. They hit us six months ago and are apologizing now? said Zabiullah Niazi, an operating room nurse at the hospital who lost an eye, a finger and the ability to use one hand. He also suffered other wounds. The head of provincial council and other officials who said we accept the apology, they wouldnt have said it if they had lost their own son and eaten ashes, as we did. Niazi said about 18 male family members of victims and two survivors were called to the governors office for a meeting with Nicholson. But the general himself did not show up, instead making a speech in a packed auditorium where family members and survivors did not get a chance to speak. MacDonald, however, stopped by for one minute to say hello and express sorrow, but she said she couldnt answer questions on behalf of her husband, Niazi said. MacDonald spent more time about five minutes, according to Niazi with female survivors and family members in a separate room. A family member of one of the hospital staff members killed in the U.S. strike, speaking on condition of anonymity to avoid reprisal by officials, expressed anger at the apology and flatly rejected it, saying it was inadequate to address the familys loss. New Zealand farmers need to step up their investment on science and innovation to combat the impact of methane and nitrates from agriculture on climate change, Prime Minister John Key said. Key told the Platinum Primary Producers annual conference in Wellington that the focus would return to climate change as the economy recovers from the global financial crisis and the pressure would come more and more on the agricultural industry, which is responsible for half of New Zealand's emissions. Methane gas emissions alone from ruminant livestock such as sheep and cattle account for a third of total emissions and government and industry are already spending around $7 million a year seeking scientific solutions to reduce them. "The world is going to heat up if its left unchecked," he said. "People who get up and say its Armageddon, its the end of the universe, its the worst thing thats ever happened in the world, we will all die as a result of it, are missing one fundamental point and that is science will deal with the issues as long as we keep investing. If we did absolutely nothing and just allowed temperatures to continue to rise then we would have a huge issue but the truth is that wont happen." He said the agricultural industry needed to focus on climate change, given the potential risk to their businesses. "On the basis that it happens and you get more catastrophic weather conditions, more hurricanes, more cyclones, hotter conditions, and more drought, the single biggest group that it is going to affect is farmers," he said. "If you say its not going to happen, you might be right but you are really playing 'Russian roulette' with your biggest asset, what you own, your livelihood, its just too risky I think because the science doesnt support the view that its not happening." Climate Change Minister Paula Bennett last week confirmed the government would be removing the current concessionary treatment of heavy domestic industry polluters from the country's emissions trading scheme, acknowledging that the price of carbon under the ETS had so far been too low to have an impact on emitters' behaviour. The price of New Zealand Units of carbon have risen to just above $11 per tonne in recent days, their highest since a price collapse in 2011. 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 BENGALURU: Samsung, one of the biggest players in the Smartphone market in the world has officially launched its new Smartphones Galaxy J1 and J1 mini. Presently, the device details are provided on Samsungs Philippines and Russia website with no details about availability and more importantly, their price. Galaxy J1 is launched in 2016, January, contains a 4.5-inch Super AMOLDED (Active-Matrix Organic Light-Emitting Diode) display which provides a resolution of 800480 pixels. The device contains a 1.3GHz quad processor and 1GB RAM card which guarantee better performance. Along with a rare camera of 5MP with autofocus function and an LED flash, Galaxy J1 is provided with a 2MP front camera. For a better user experience while using 3G or 4G, J1 suppliments 2050mAH battery adding extra hours in phones battery. Integrated with WLAN, GPS and a USB v.2.0, J1 has an accelerometer and proximity sensor. Galaxy J1 is available in five versions; J120H, J120M, J120T and J120F which is the globally available version. Along with Galaxy J1,Samsung also released Galaxy J1 minion , February 2016 which is provided with a 4-inch TFT LCD display with a resolution of 800480 pixels. J1 mini is powered with a 1.2GHz quad-core processor along with 768MB of RAM. The device contains only a 5MP rear camera along with a 0.3MP sensor. The phone supports 2G and 3G networks , Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and GPS. J1 has a 1500mAh battery which is removable, delivers a long time standby, supporting up to 8 hours of 3G talk time. Both the Galaxy J1 and J1 mini is offers internal memory of 8GB which can be expanded to 128GB with an external storage. Also, J1 and J1 mini runs on the latest version of android OS. J1 is provided with an accelerometer sensor and a proximity sensor, while J1 mini contains only an accelerometer sensor. Both the devices strikes the market in black, gold and white colors. Read Also: Top 10 Sony Smartphones to Buy in 2016 Top 5 Smartphones to Look Forward too BANGALORE: The vision of leadership is what is reflected among the followers and indented outcomes. In the tech scene, leadership is not confined to CEO or top level management alone. The existence of leaderless hacker group Anonymous is an ideal example where principles lead by example; for a leader is a person who snowballs an ideology, often creating profound, revolutionizing impacts. Take a look at a few such personalities who has, in pursuit to implement views and values as they perceived and prioritized, influenced the tech space as we know it. Free and Ad Free Wikipedia, Ever Grateful to Jimmy Whales Wikipedia is the 7th most visited website in the world and needs not introductions. Through it could harness millions of dollars by featuring ads on its pages whose traffic records more than 100 billion views, Jimmy Whales, insists that the service, which is supported by private donations remains ad-free. On the day of the 15th anniversary of Wikipedia, the internet was flooded by tweets of appraisals from across the world. Read Also: PM Modi's Groups of Secretariats Iron out to Uplift India The Floating Wonders To Visit In India FARRUKHABAD: An eminent Indian-American academic has said the Indo-US bilateral trade progressed a lot after Prime Minister Narendra Modi assumed office and claimed latter's humble origin impressed Americans. "Modi's journey from selling tea to becoming Prime Minister of one of the biggest democracy has impressed Americans," Chairperson of American Council on Education (ACE), the US' most influential higher education association, Renu Khator said yesterday. "After he became the PM, trade between two countries has progressed a lot," Khator, who has his roots in the district, told reporters. Noting that US presidential elections would be important for Indo-US relationship, Khator said, "Over 25 lakh NRIs are taking great interest in these elections and the presidential aspirants have been also trying to take voters of Indian origin into confidence". An eminent Indian-American academic has said the Indo-US bilateral trade progressed a lot after Prime Minister Narendra Modi assumed office and claimed latter's humble origin impressed Americans. Read Also: Judge Wants U.S. To Protect Trump Associate History Indian Professor Appointed 56th President of International Studies Association Source: PTI WASHINGTON: A US judge is asking the Obama administration to protect from public disclosure federal court records involving the once-secret criminal history of a former Donald Trump business partner. US District Judge Brian Cogan in New York says that unless the Justice Department acts before April 18, he'll decide whether to make public thousands of pages of the court files under the assumption that federal prosecutors don't care. The case involves Felix Sater (SAY-terr). He's a Trump business associate who had pleaded guilty in a major Mafia- linked stock fraud scheme in the 1990s and cooperated with government prosecutors. The Associated Press reported in December that, even after learning about Sater's background, Trump tapped Sater for a business development role in 2010 that included the title of senior adviser to Trump. Read Also: Indian Professor Appointed 56th President of International Studies Association US Has Now Become A Third World Country, Says Donald Trump Source: PTI WASHINGTON: Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump has said the US has now become a "third world country" as compared to infrastructures in Dubai and China, and promised that things would change once he is elected the American President. "We have become a third world country, folks!," Mr Trump, 69, told his supporters at an election rally at Sal Lake City in Utah, which goes to presidential primary elections on Tuesday. "If you go to places like Dubai, China, you look at the roads, at the rail roads, they have the bullet trains that go 100s of miles an hour. And if you go to New York, they're like 100 years ago," he said. Mr Trump said the US under him would knock out the ISIS and rebuild the country. "When it comes to trade, we are going to start being smart, because our country is poor. We are going to make American so great again. It is not great now. We need education to that," he said. Reiterating that Trans Pacific Partnership is a "disastrous" trade deal, Trump said the US under him would have deal that would favor America. "It is not a question of free trading. Free trading is wonderful. The problem of free trading is that we need smart people on our side also. If I am president, I guarantee you they (Mexico) would pay (for the wall) and they would be very very happy about it," he said. Mr Trump said his administration would negotiate great trade deal amid applause and cheer from the audience. "We are going to bring wealth back again because our country is a poor country. We have a deficit that you cannot believe. We're sitting on a bubble, very dangerous bubble. We are sitting on a big fat ugly bubble. At some point unless we act quickly and smartly, it is going to explode. You need the right people. We have the wrong people now," Mr Trump said. He promised his supporters that things would start changing fast if he is elected the president. Mr Trump's address in Salt Lake City was the first election rally after his impressive victories in three States of Florida, Illinois and North Carolina on Tuesday. On March 22, the presidential primary is scheduled to be held in American Samoa, Utah and Arizona which have more than 100 delegates in all. Mr Trump currently is leading the delegate count with 678. He is followed by Texas Senator Ted Cruz (423) and Ohio Governor John Kasich (143). To become the Republican nominee for the November 8 presidential elections, Mr Trump needs 1,237 delegates. Read Also: India Could Be A Global Change Agent For Renewable Energy: U.S. Clinton Gets Obama Backing? Dump Trump Move Grows Source: PTI STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- An ex-convict from Clifton, who admitted to trying to hit two cops with his car last year, won't be getting behind the wheel anytime soon. Leon Wilson, 28, was sentenced Monday to two to four years in prison stemming from the June 16, 2015 incident. According to police, Wilson, 28, was driving a 2015 Nissan Altima and ran a steady red light at the intersection of Osgood and Vanderbilt avenues on the border of Clifton and Stapleton. Two other occupants were inside the auto. Two cops approached the vehicle, their NYPD shields displayed around their necks. Wilson pulled into reverse, hitting one officer in the right knee and the other in the right hip, then slammed into the officers' unmarked police car and hit a cement wall in the driveway of 51 Coursen Place in Stapleton, police alleged. He fled. Wilson was busted on July 4, but not before he tried to elude cops by running across the Staten Island Expressway, according to statements recently made in court. Afterward, Wilson told police he was scared he was being robbed when the officers had approached his car on June 16, court papers said. Earlier this month, Wilson pleaded guilty in state Supreme Court, St. George, to two felony counts of attempted second-degree assault stemming from the June 16 incident. He also pleaded guilty to misdemeanor counts of reckless endangerment and resisting arrest with regard to the July 4 episode. When the defendant entered his pleas, Assistant District Attorney David Frey told the court the police officers were "on board" with the disposition. A spokesman for District Attorney Michael E. McMahon said then Staten Island streets "will literally be safer" with Wilson behind bars. Jonathan Goldin, who, along with Ronald Gregg represented the defendant, called the sentence "proportionate to the crimes perpetrated." Wilson, meanwhile, has a history of running from the police -- with tragic results. On May 22, 2007, Wilson, then 19, was high on Vicodin, and driving a Ford Taurus despite a revoked learner's permit, when an unmarked police car pulled up behind him at the corner of Osgood and Vanderbilt and he panicked, according to Advance archives. He took off, hitting 100 mph, and slammed into Juan-Han Guan, then 47, on Mosel Avenue in Grasmere, who was riding his bicycle home from work. Guan ended up pinned between Wilson's Taurus and a parked Jeep. His left leg needed to be amputated, and his right leg was badly mangled. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Helping to close out its inaugural exhibition, the CANVAS institute has invited one of Tokyo's best DJs to its Stapleton gallery. Japan's DJ Hokuto will perform at CANVAS, 150 Victory Blvd. from 6-11 p.m. Sunday, along with visual artist/musician Laolu Senbanjo. Admission is a $10 donation. Senbanjo, originally from Nigeria, was part of the gallery's opening exhibit. He was recently chosen by Nike to create art-inspired Air Max shoes as the company's "Master of Air." Both artists will perform at the new gallery space, opened by Island Voice Inc.'s Bobby Digi. He wanted it to be a place where many different cultures would come together for art and civic engagement. Digi invited Senbanjo to contribute to CANVAS' first exhibit with his unique style of art, which he coined Afromysterics. "It means the mystery of the African thought pattern," he told Digi. "As a pioneer and leader in the Afrofuturism movement I consider it my duty to keep creating and to continue to push boundaries. It transcends art mediums and is also the expression of these thoughts and mysteries into music, vocals and sounds." DJ Hokuto recently wrapped up a Eurpoean tour and Digi hopes local artists can collaborate with him. Here's a look at what his music adventures are like: Sunday's event, CoFuSion, marks the end of the first quarter of CANVAS' programming, which Digi hopes to rotate every quarter. Starting in May, CANVAS will also start offering monthly classes and an event calendar. "Each show will have a closing party and I'll invite an artist or performer from different countries throughout the year," Digi said, "fusing and fueling cultural exchange, cultural awareness and cultural tolerance." Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung receives Russian Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev (Photo: VNA) During a reception in Hanoi on March 21st, the Prime Minister said the traditional friendship and strategic partnership between Vietnam and Russia has made new and remarkable strides in various realms, while mutual trust and understanding has been increasingly reinforced. He added that Vietnam will always remember Russias valuable assistance in the cause of national liberation, reunification, reconstruction and development. The PM affirmed Vietnam will do its best to promote the bilateral strategic partnership and carry out effectively major bilateral projects in economics and investment and trade; energy, oil and gas; science and technology; education and training, and technical military. The Vietnamese Government supports cooperation activities between Vietnams Ministry of Public Security and Russias Ministry of Internal Affairs, especially in human resources training, experience exchanges as well as in preventing terrorism, crime, and ensuring cyber security and safety, he said. Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev told the host that the two ministries agreed on a number of cooperative activities during their earlier talks in Hanoi, including the signing of a joint action program for 2016-2018, focusing on personnel training and professional exchanges. Russia hopes to increase cooperation with its Vietnamese partner and will pay more attention to supporting and protecting Vietnamese citizens and businesses in Russia, he added./. --Update: This fire was brought under control at 6:09 p.m. No injuries were reported. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- More than 100 firefighters are battling a large brush fire near Costco Tuesday afternoon, according to an FDNY spokesman. The emergency call came in a 4:40 p.m. for a fire near Arthur Kill Road and Richmond Avenue, the spokesman said. It was elevated to a 2-alarm fire at 5:12 p.m. There are no reported injuries. Twenty-five units and 106 firefighters are working to contain the blaze. Thick, black smoke is billowing from the blaze and is visible at Costco, which is nearby, according to one motorist in the area. The smell of smoke is hanging in the air, the motorist said. Emergency vehicles are on scene and are blocking traffic on Richmond Avenue and Platinum Avenue. The National Weather Service issued a brush fire warning Tuesday due to the gusty winds. (Editor's note: This is part of a periodic series on the issue of immigration.) By NICOLE MALLIOTAKIS As we near the culmination of the presidential primary season and approach the general election where the American people will elect our 45th President, a major policy issue has emerged to the forefront. Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis at a budget hearing in Albany in January. (Staten Island Advance) The existence of 12 million people unlawfully residing in our country is a problem that is widely acknowledged, but a consensus solution has proven evasive. Since I last wrote on this matter, and for roughly 30 years, nothing has been done to address illegal immigration or modernize the immigration process. Sadly, the problem has metastasized as our leadership in Washington dithers. And, as a result, we are seeing state and city governments enacting measures to accommodate illegal residents, providing incentives for more people to ignore the rules of the immigration process and enter the country unlawfully. Most recently, we learned that some members of the New York City Council want to extend voting rights to illegal residents and, at the State Capitol, we face annual attempts by Assembly Democrats to pass the DREAM Act, legislation that would allow illegal immigrants to access the taxpayer-funded Tuition Assistance Program (TAP) while our citizens struggle with unsurmountable college debt. This past week, the same group of lawmakers proposed spending an additional $10 million to provide healthcare for those unlawfully residing in our state and nation. It gets worse. OBAMA'S ORDER MUST BE REVERSED President Obama's unilateral implementation of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), if not stopped by the U.S. Supreme Court, will cost New York's taxpayers tens of millions of dollars in additional Medicaid costs. Under the current Medicaid framework, the federal government and the State of New York split costs evenly. However, the federal government is prohibited from spending its funds on those non-citizens, so states will be forced to foot the bill in its entirety. The State has already set aside $38 million for this in last year's budget and anticipates an additional $80 million to be earmarked this year to fulfill the unfunded mandate. As if offering entitlements were not enough, government is going to great lengths to protect criminals from deportation. Locally, the New York City Council and Mayor Bill De Blasio enacted two misguided "sanctuary city" policies in 2014. These measures significantly impede cooperation between the New York City Department of Correction (DOC), New York Police Department (NYPD), and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), by prohibiting DOC and NYPD from honoring immigration detainers unless accompanied by a federal warrant and the person has either been convicted of a violent or serious crime, or is identified as a possible match on in the terrorist screening database. Alarmingly, the list of crimes identified as "violent or serious" does not include major transgressions including, but not limited to, grand larceny, criminal sale of prescription drugs, identity theft and even certain acts of sexual abuse. According to the NYPD's Summary of Statistics on ICE Detainers from October 1, 2014 to September 30, 2015, the Department received 504 civil immigration detainers. Only 30 detainers were honored and 474 were denied. Not one individual was transferred from the NYPD to ICE. CITY 'MAKES MATTERS WORSE' The City of New York honoring less than 6 percent of civil detainers is even more unconscionable knowing that ICE limits the issuance of civil detainers to situations where the individual is considered dangerous or has previously been convicted of breaking the law. To make matters worse, the city has actually banned federal immigration authorities from operating on Rikers Island. These dangerous policies are not just being implemented here in New York City, but in cities across the nation. We witnessed a tragedy this past summer in San Francisco, when Kate Steinle was killed by a stray bullet fired by the gun of an illegal resident who had already been deported five times and had seven felony convictions. Following the suspect's arrest for an outstanding drug warrant, the Sanctuary City of San Francisco refused to comply with a detainer request from ICE, instead releasing the culprit instead and allowing him to commit this heinous murder. Even when local authorities do comply, the federal government often turns a blind eye. Just this past week, ICE Director Sarah R. Saldana informed the Senate Judiciary Committee that 124 illegal immigrants have been charged with homicides after being released from ICE custody since 2010, and committed 2,560 new crimes in 2014 alone. As for removing illegal residents from the country, only 974 of the 30,558 criminal aliens freed by ICE were deported in 2014 - amounting to just 3 percent. It is no wonder that anger and frustration among our citizenry has exploded over the past year and the issue of immigration has dominated this year's presidential election. Government, at all levels, must be reminded to whom they are accountable, and cease incentivizing unlawful activity that hurts American families financially and, at worst, increases risk to our safety and security. Nicole Malliotakis (R-East Shore/Brooklyn) represents the 60th District in the New York State Assembly. AX091_69B4_9.JPG Students cheer as they leave PS 48 in Concord on the last day of school in June, 2015. (Staten Island Advance/Irving Silverstein) The DOE school calendar for the 2016-2017 has 33 days off for religious and civil holidays and seasonal breaks. STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Planning a family vacation sometime in the next 12 months? You might want to check out this preview of the Department of Education's 2016-2017 public school calendar. The academic calendar for 2016-2017 includes 33 days off -- more than a month's worth of time -- between the first day of school, Sept. 8, and the last day of class, June 28, 2017. The calendar allows time off for religious holidays, including two Muslim holy days of Eid al Adha and Eid al Ftr; the Jewish holy days, including Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Passover, and the Christian holy day Good Friday. (Christmas falls on a weekend this year, as well as the Asian Lunar New Year; both are otherwise school holidays.) It also includes time off for Columbus Day, Election Day, Veterans Day, Thanksgiving, Martin Luther King Day, and Memorial Day, as well as a week-long Winter Recess in February, and a week-long Spring Recess in April. A bill in the state Legislature that proposes making St.Patrick's Day, March 17, a school holiday, is a non-starter, according to the mayor and schools chancellor. Here are the dates you need to know: September 2016 Sept. 8 -- Classes begin for all students Sept. 12 -- Schools closed for Eid al Adha October, 2016 Oct. 3-4 -- Schools closed for Rosh Hashanah Oct. 10 -- Schools closed for Columbus Day Oct. 12 -- Schools closed for Yom Kippur November, 2016 Nov. 8 -- Schools closed for Election Day, students only Nov. 11 -- Schools closed for Veterans Day Nov. 24-25 -- Schools closed for Thanksgiving December, 2016 Dec. 26 -- Winter recess begins January, 2017 Jan. 2 --Classes resume after winter recess Jan. 16 -- Schools closed for Martin Luther King Day February, 2017 February 20-24 -- Schools closed for Mid-winter recess April, 2017 April 10-18 -- Schools closed for Spring recess May, 2017 May 29 -- Schools closed for Memorial Day June, 2017 Heastie.jpg Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie commissioned a working group last April, and late last week, they presented 42 recommendations, all of which Heastie accepted, to create more transparency and better organization in the Assembly. (AP Photo/Mike Groll) STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. - The state Assembly has passed a reform package to make its daily operations more open and fair, and to provide more transparency, giving the public more ways to see how the lawmaking body operates. The package comes almost one year after the Democratic majority established a workgroup to recommend how to improve the legislative process, its operations and public participation. That workgroup issued a report with 42 recommendations late last week and the Assembly voted on Monday to adopt those recommendations that required rules changes. For the recommendations that didn't require rules changes, Speaker Carl Heastie accepted them and plans to implement them. All but one of the changes can be done as a one-house vote, without Senate approval. But some Republicans, who were kept off the Democrats-only panel and criticized its closed-door meetings, are displeased with the overall package, casting it as unsubstantial, while praising some of the individual reforms. Assembly Minority Leader Brian Kolb said, "The reforms offered by the Assembly majority might help build a better website, but they don't do enough to rebuild the public's trust." ONLINE ACCESS TO INFORMATION The working group's report included recommendations that the Assembly create a free online portal to provide public access to documents related to legislation -- from its introduction, to its signing or veto, including documents submitted by lobbying groups, business interests and advocacy organizations. As per the reform package, the Assembly will post online its committee votes, as well as audio and video of all committee meetings, two proposals that came from Republican Assemblywoman Nicole Malliotakis. She and other Republicans presented the Assembly with a reform package of 17 bills in January, only to be shot down. At the time, Malliotakis criticized Assembly Democrats for saying they want reform but appearing unwilling to implement it. Democrats, Assemblyman Michael Cusick and Assemblyman Matthew Titone among them, pointed to the working group then, saying they would consider reform proposals after the group made its recommendations. The reform package that passed Monday includes many measures to make information easier to access, including making archived video recordings of past meetings available online and tying recordings and transcripts to specific bill numbers. One reform would ensure Wi-Fi access throughout Assembly spaces in Albany buildings and district offices, and make the Assembly website more useful and accessible to the public. COST ESTIMATES In the package is a reform to include cost estimates to local governments in every bill. While it needs Senate approval, one reform creates a two-year legislative process so bills that have been introduced in the first year of the session and don't make it to the floor for a vote don't have to be reintroduced at the start of second year. Also passing is a provision to allow every member to introduce up to five priority bills in committee for the first year of each session and an unlimited number in the second year. CHANGES TO UNMANAGEABLE RULES Other reforms address rules that were burdensome and unmanageable. One suggests that "whenever possible" to schedule committee meetings at specific times and not during the Assembly sessions, which is commonly done now, making lawmakers choose which to attend. Instead of starting sessions as early as 6 a.m. and going as late as midnight, the change would put starting time at 8 a.m. and ending at 10 p.m. One rules change would require that resolutions be disseminated to Assembly members and the public before a floor vote. Along the theme of transparency is a requirement that expenditure reporting from the lawmakers be posted online. Plans to "enhance and expand public affairs television programming" similar to C-SPAN will take shape and is one of the recommendations that Heastie accepted. LOCAL ELECTEDS REACT Cusick (D-Mid-Island) and Titone (D-North Shore) touted the reform package as "strengthening public trust in state government "and ensuring the "Assembly truly functions as the People's House." "As members of the Assembly, our primary job is to represent the views of the people of the 63rd and 61st Assembly Districts," Cusick said in a statement. "As such, it is imperative that our constituents have the ability to find out what we are working on in real time, as well as the knowledge that the entire Assembly is acting in the public interest. "Making legislative materials and actions public, allowing all members to have multiple bills heard annually, and extending the legislative process so we eliminate duplicative and lengthy floor debate will make the Assembly function more efficiently in the future." Titone said in a statement, "I am very proud to take part in this reform process, which will positively impact New York State Assembly procedure for generations to come. I applaud the commitment by the Assembly majority to see these reforms through, to help rebuild and earn back public trust in the legislature." While two bills from Malliotakis (R-East Shore/Brooklyn) were included, she is unhappy that more substantive ethics reforms weren't. "While we are certainly taking a step in the right direction to improve the dysfunctional culture perpetuated in Albany, the measures still do not address the root of corruption -- the unchecked power of the Assembly speaker and his ability to influence votes and actions by members," the assemblywoman said in a statement. "We continue to give the speaker complete control over matters such as staff allocations, committee appointments and the ability to unilaterally stop legislation. Additionally, the Assembly majority has ignored our calls for term limits for the speaker, minority leader and committee chairs. If we really want to restore fairness and accountability to our democratic process, then we need to address these points." Assemblyman Brian Kavanagh is one of the co-chairs to head up the working group and said in a phone interview Tuesday that the group's task was to address transparency and operations, not ethics, which needs input and approval from Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the Republican-led Senate and is part of a large ongoing discussion. The GOP and Democrats agreed on much of the operations changes, but on ethics, there's much to disagree over. "We do not have a consensus that we should be doing certain things that are basically anti-majoritarian, if you will," he said. The Democrats don't believe "that we should restrict the majority's ability to pick its own speaker." In-depth: the scientific challenge of extreme weather attribution Posted on 22 March 2016 by Guest Author This is a re-post from Carbon Brief by Roz Pidcock Working out whether human activity is supercharging extreme events, such as floods, storms, droughts and heatwaves, is one of the youngest branches of climate science. But its moving at breakneck pace. So much so, that the US National Academy of Sciences has fast-tracked a report, taking stock of the science and where its heading. Event attribution is the field of science that asks if extreme weather around the world would look any different if we could replay the last 200 years or so, without human-caused greenhouse gases. Todays report is an overview, rather than a showcase for new results. And at about 150 pages long, its not a light read. But its weightiness is apt for a topic that has come to underpin climate conversations everywhere from flooding in the UK to climate change adaptation. Carbon Brief has been speaking to key scientists in the world of attribution about how far the science has come, experimenting with communicating the nuances, and the thorny issue of making results public at lightning speed, often before peer review. One thing is for sure, Dr Heidi Cullen, chief scientist at Climate Central and a contributor to todays report, tells Carbon Brief: The days of saying no single weather event can be linked to climate change are over. For many extreme weather events, the link is now strong. A universal talking point Storms, droughts, heavy rain, heatwaves and other extreme weather events are of huge interest to society because of their often disastrous consequences for people and property. As Prof Ted Shepherd, professor of climate science at the University of Reading in the UK, explains in a recent commentary in the journal Current Climate Change Reports: Just as weather is a topic of daily conversation, extreme weather eventsprovide a universal talking point. Shepherd is one of the nine authors behind todays report. The authors are scientists who are knowledgeable about attribution, but arent involved in the research theyre assessing. When a flood, drought or heatwave hits, it has become normal to ask, what role did climate change play? And this is a question science is increasingly able to answer, through a branch of science known as attribution. The concept of attribution has been around for a while. The famous statement in the 1995 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report that the balance of evidence suggests that there is a discernible human influence on global climate, was based on the early crop of attribution studies published in the 1990s. A huge body of literature in the intervening years has seen that statement strengthen enormously. The latest IPCC report said it is extremely likely that human influence has been the dominant cause of the observed warming since the mid-20th century. But whats causing the new flurry of excitement in the attribution community is grounded much more on peoples everyday experiences of climate change. Its far more visceral, more immediate. Its the growing ability of scientists to work out how our own actions might be influencing the size, severity or frequency of extreme weather often while an event is still going on. Prof Myles Allen, head of the climate research programme at Oxford Universitys Environmental Change Institute, first proposed the idea of extreme weather attribution in a 2003 paper. His basic premise was that scientists could use climate models to work out what proportion, if any, of the risk of a given extreme weather event could be pinned on human activity. This is not the same as asking whether climate change caused an event to occur. Todays report calls this framing a poorly formed (or ill-posed) question that rarely has a scientifically satisfactory answer. And as Shepherd explains in his review paper: If a weather or climate event is truly extreme in the present climateit requires unusual meteorological conditions, which means that climate change is at most only a contributing factor. The point of extreme event attribution is to work out how big that contribution is and how it compares to other factors, such as natural fluctuations in the atmosphere and oceans. Number crunching So, how do scientists actually do attribution? Typically, scientists use climate models to create a fictional world in which the industrial revolution never happened. In this world, the climate is influenced solely by changes in the Suns activity and volcanic activity. Then, they compare the chances of a particular event occurring in the fictional model compared to the version that best represents the real world. Scientists tend to combine model studies with other methods, to improve their confidence in their findings. Statistical analysis of the historical record gives an idea of how unusual an event is, but this requires extremely good data going back a long way, which isnt always available. Just as the question of what role climate change played in an event can be asked in different ways, all equally valid, the results can be expressed differently, too. Climate change made the exceptional amount of rainfall unleashed on the UK by Storm Desmond in December 2015 40% more likely, according to analysis by Allens group at the University of Oxford, together with the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute and Climate Central in the US. A follow-up study showed climate change had increased the odds of such a wet December in the UK by 50-75%, while separate research found climate change had made heavy rainfall in the winter of 2013/4 another particularly wet period 43% more likely. The different percentages attached to these studies reflect the fact that attribution studies are done on a case-by-case basis, with no two events being identical. But sometimes youll see the results presented another way. The very first study to apply extreme weather attribution in 2004 expressed the effect of climate change as having at least doubled the risk of a heatwave as severe as the one Europe experienced in 2003. This could equally have been expressed as a 100% rise in the probability they amount to the same thing. A study published this week expressed its results slightly differently, again. The authors found that climate change had raised the odds of extremely high temperatures in each of the last 16 record-breaking warm years, leading them to conclude that without human-induced climate change, recent hot summers and years would be very unlikely to have occurred. Yet another way that attribution studies can express their findings is through a change in the frequency of a particular event occurring, rather than the magnitude it reaches. For example, a 2015 study which found that extremely warm years, such as 2014, are 13 times more likely to occur in the Central England Temperature (CET) record under climate change also concluded that such events could be expected about every five years in 2020 compared to every 120 years in 1914. Need for speed How authors of attribution studies choose to express their results comes down, at least in part, to a choice about whats most effective, says Dr Peter Stott, head of detection and attribution at the UKs Met Office and author of the 2004 study on the European heatwave. Attribution has grown out of a demand for answers to specific questions, he says, and expressing results in different ways is part of an evolving understanding of what people want to know. The attribution community recognises how effective attribution can be as a communication tool, to connect climate change with peoples everyday experiences. Stott adds: There is a power to be able to make statements while theyre still fresh in peoples minds. In the case of the heavy rain during Storm Desmond and the heatwave across Europe last summer, scientists were able to turn the handle on the attribution studies while they were still going on. Cullen, whose research group was part of the team behind both studies, tells Carbon Brief: Despite profound changes to our climate system, global warming and its associated impacts sea level rise, ocean acidification, species loss still feel distant in both time and space to many people. The most immediate and costly threatresults from the changing risks of extreme weather. Cullen has an Op-Ed in the New York Times today, in which she compares todays report linking climate change to a higher risk of some types of extreme weather to the surgeon generals 1964 report connecting smoking to lung cancer. She writes: Climate change can no longer be viewed as a distant threat that may disrupt the lives of our grandchildren, but one that may be singled out as a factor, possibly a critical factor, in the storm that flooded your house last week. One important forward-facing use for attribution research is in prediction. Todays report explains how it can be used to help vulnerable communities cope with climate impacts, present and future: In the wake of a devastating event, communities may need to make a decision about whether to rebuild or relocate. Such a decision could hinge on whether the occurrence of an event is expected to become more likely or severe in the futureand if so, by how much. Allen says scientists could use attribution predictions in the same way that meteorologists use weather forecasts. He told Carbon Brief recently: My personal view is that, in the long term, attribution should be a routine part of any package of climate services, so a quantitative assessment of how various external drivers may be making weather events more or less likely to occur should become just part of the job of the worlds meteorological services. For extreme event attribution to be useful in any of these contexts, time is of the essence. So, does the need for speed mean a compromise on quality? Quality control The methods that underpin extreme event attribution are thoroughly peer reviewed, such that the scientists are just turning the same handle each time. Allen says: Individual seasonal forecasts arent subject to peer-review before they are issued, but seasonal forecasting methods certainly areI think we should see attribution results in much the same way. Effective, rigorous, and scientifically defensible analysis of how climate change is implicated in extreme weather not only offers valuable information about future risks, but also satisfies the publics desire to know, says Rear Admiral Dr David Titley in his introduction. Titley is a professor at Penn State university and chair of the author committee for todays report. And as long as those boxes are ticked, its usually better to say something than nothing at all, says Dr Friederike Otto, a senior researcher at the Environmental Change Institute who has been behind a lot of important recent attribution research. She told Carbon Brief recently: As long as we make clear what we do, what our assumptions are, how we define the event, etc, it would probably not be bad for the public debate around the event if someone like us in the sense of the attribution community who can provide scientific evidence gives these answers, even if preliminary. Someone will step in to answer these questions and its better that its the scientists actually doing the work, says Allen: We currently get a lot of qualitative hand waving about how various drivers may have contributed, leaving the public pretty much in the dark (or worse, guided by which papers or websites they read rather than the evidence) about which drivers are most important. Quickfire peer review After an initial outing in the media or policy circles, attribution results will often go on to be published in peer reviewed journals. Studies are emerging at such high speed that for the past five years, the Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (BAMS) has published an annual special issue examining the human contribution to extreme weather events in the previous year. The fast turn-around between an event happening and a study being is another area where event attribution is, arguably, revolutionising climate science. Stott, one of the co-editors of the BAMS report, tells Carbon Brief: Weve shown that you can do it. You can do rigorous, peer-reviewed science to this pre-set, short timetable. But with so much at stake with extreme weather, the attribution community acknowledges it could up its game on joining the dots between different studies. Stott adds: It seems to me that what hasnt happened in the past is if you get an individual study that communicates its results in a particular way and another study about the same event communicates it in a different way, they can seem contradictoryWhats lacking there is a synthesis. Theres the potential to do a lot better. Model limits An important point todays report makes about attribution studies is that the results are only as reliable as the models that underpin them. If a model inadequately represents an aspect of climate system, or a process is not well understood, working out whether the probability of an event has changed over time wont be grounded in reality either. This means attribution studies tend to be, at least for the time being, reliable for some types of event, but not others. Heatwaves and, to some extent, extreme rainfall events, are well-understood because they relate directly to how much extra heat the atmosphere has accumulated. Things get more complicated for types of extreme weather that involve the chaotic and complex dynamics of the atmosphere or oceans. This includes hurricanes (also called cyclones or typhoons, depending on which part of the world youre in), floods and often droughts. The passage of a storm or the onset of a drought have a large element of chance, which can make it tricky to identify where climate change fits in. Hurricanes pose a particular challenge, says Prof Gabriel Vecchi, head of the climate variations and predictability group at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). There can be a palpable sense of frustration when scientists cant answer those questions straight after an event, he tells Carbon Brief: To really come up with a good answer, we do need to take our timeThese questions are difficultIt may take more than a news cycle to come up with a good answer. But its important that science pursues those hard-to-get answers, as vague statements arent enough. He says: Its true and will always be true that the world is now fundamentally different because of global warming, so everything we see is impacted by global warming[But that] has very limited utility in meaning. It doesnt help predict anythingWe need to be much more specific and much more quantitative. The good news is that the momentum behind event attribution research is heading in that direction, says Prof Gabi Hegerl, professor of climate system science at the University of Edinburgh and another of the authors of todays report. She tells Carbon Brief: We have fairly good capabilities on hot and cold events nowMoving forward, the more complex events are a more interesting and a more important frontier. Proceed with caution Scientists select events to study based on where the interesting questions are, not whether they think climate change is most likely to have had an effect. For example, some studies have found no discernible impact from climate change on the odds of a particular extreme event happening. Rising temperatures are also making some types of events, such as extreme cold snaps, less likely. But while the body of literature of extreme weather attribution is growing rapidly, there are still big gaps where data and resources just dont exist. Allen says: Clearly, we dont have equal capabilities everywhere, although we are working with partners in vulnerable regions of the world to improve that, so right now there is obviously a bias towards our own backyards: northwest Europe, Australia and New Zealand. This is partly why the back catalogue of attribution research shouldnt be used as a metric to gauge the impact of climate change on extreme weather per se. Hegerl tells Carbon Brief: Going to, for example, the BAMS report and counting how many hot and cold events are attributed to human influence, or how many wet or dry events, would give you a biased pictureThere is a bias in what we can do in terms of region and event type. Todays report issues a few other cautions for interpreting attribution studies, too. Determining how unusual an event is will depend a lot on how you define it over what period of time, or how large an area, for example. And if a study is based on observational data, the historical period you choose to represent a time before climate change will make a difference too. Direction of travel In terms of direction of travel, another hot topic is how attribution could play a role in assisting nations that have suffered or are suffering irreversible loss and damage from climate change. Dr Daithi Stone, a research scientist in attribution of extreme weather at Berkeley Lab in the US, tells Carbon Brief: While the agreement coming out of the meeting in Paris last December was very explicit that any assistance should not be considered compensation or reflect any liability, one might expect that nations that can demonstrate solid evidence of impacts may be able to submit a stronger claim for assistance. Bringing a similar theme down to a person rather than country level, there could be a role for extreme weather attribution in climate litigation thats to say, seeking damages from a company or government whose actions can be shown to be contributing to climate change-induced harm. Indeed, this is the picture Allens original 2003 paper paints, carrying the title: Liability for climate change: Will it ever be possible to sue anyone for damaging the climate? In terms of where todays report fits into all of these conversations, its essentially a stocktake of where we are in the fast-moving field of attributing extreme weather to climate change. Alongside the progress to date, the need for a strong evidence base, and the myriad ways attribution could be put to use, perhaps the point the report stresses most heavily is the need to be clear about the question being asked. As Shepherd tells Carbon Brief: Being clear about the question being asked, and asking a well-posed question, is absolutely crucial in extreme event attributionThe question should be What role did climate change play in the event?. But even that question can be asked in different ways. Or as Rear Admiral Titley says in his opening gambit to todays report: Like all areas of study, terminology matters. Minister of Public Security Tran Dai Quang and Russian Minister of Internal Affairs Vladimir Kolokoltsev sign the program on coordination between the two Ministries. (Source :VNA) Minister Tran Dai Quang said the Russian Internal Affairs Ministers visit is an important event that will help strengthen bilateral ties in crime control and protection of security and order, especially in the context of the rapid scientific-technological revolution and extensive globalisation and international integration. In particular, the Vietnamese Minister put stress on such priorities as ensuring security and safety for each others diplomatic missions, entrepreneurs, students and citizens, and cooperating in professional training for law enforcement officers. Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev appreciated the fruitful cooperation between his ministry and the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security, and wished the Russia-Vietnam comprehensive strategic partnership in general and the partnership between the two ministries in particular further development in the interest of both nations and for stability in the region and the world as a whole. On the occasion, the two Ministers signed a program on coordinating actions between the two ministries for 2016-2018./. Water level in the Mekong River in Tha Bo district of Nong Khai province rises sharply following Chinas dam discharge. (Source: bangkokpost.com) The countrys Ministry of Foreign Affairs earlier submitted a letter to the Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, saying that China started releasing water from the Jinghom Dam in Yunnan province to help ease the drought from March 15to April 10 Thailand dug 30 reservoirs near the rivers basin in 2015. Temporary pumps have been deployed to suck 15 cubic metres of water per second from the Mekong River to supply water for the Huai Luang area. According to the Thai Ministry of Irrigation, the pump system is expected to take 47 million cubic metres of water from the river in three months. A permanent pumping system with a capacity as high as the temporary ones will be installed. The countrys government plans to earmark USD1.8 billion to implement a project to divert water from the Mekong River into Thailands waterways. Drought and salinisation have seriously affected the lives of people in 10 out of Vietnams 13 Mekong Delta provinces, with nearly 160,000 hectares of rice destroyed by the phenomenon, from the end of last year till now. Vietnam proposed that China discharge more water from its hydropower station reservoir to help. In reply, the Chinese side agreed to release water from its dam to the lower reaches of the Mekong River from March 15th to April 10th./. 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 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 ultimatum may be as much a negotiating gambit with the United States as it is a warning that Russia is about to act on the ground in Syria. The Russian military has sought close cooperation with the Pentagon in Syria; the Pentagon, angered by Russia's actions in Ukraine and in Syria itself, has held back. Secretary of State John Kerry is due to meet Thursday with Russian leaders in Moscow to discuss efforts to achieve peace in Syria. 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. 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System error error: Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. context: ... 21: 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: 28: 29: ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25 /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:948 /var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17 /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149 Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 125 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 157 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612f022edb0)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 948 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f01ece98)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612f022edb0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1302 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 955 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f01ece98)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612f01ab4b0)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1300 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 433 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f01ece98)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f01ece98)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612ee50ac90)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f0210a80)') called at (eval 592) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f0210a80)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0 System error error: Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. context: ... 21: 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: 28:
29: ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25 /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:948 /var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17 /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149 Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 125 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 157 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612f01b4b98)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 948 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f023e6e8)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612f01b4b98)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1302 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 955 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f023e6e8)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612f01ba0e8)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1300 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 433 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f023e6e8)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f023e6e8)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612ee50bd00)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f02b4780)') called at (eval 592) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f02b4780)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0 System error error: Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. context: ... 21: 22: 23: % foreach my $c (@categories) { 24: <%perl> 25: my $category_id = $c->get_id(); 26: my @stories = Bric::Biz::Asset::Business::Story->list ( { element_type_id=>1148, category_id=>$category_id , Order=> 'cover_date', publish_status => 't' , OrderDirection=> 'DESC' , Limit=>10 } ); 27: 28:
29: ... code stack: /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html:25 /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm:948 /var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj:17 /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html:149 Can't call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25. Trace begun at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Exceptions.pm line 125 HTML::Mason::Exceptions::rethrow_exception('Can\'t call method "get_id" on an undefined value at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25.^J') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/dhandler.html line 25 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 157 HTML::Mason::Component::run_dynamic_sub('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612f01b7e68)', 'main') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 948 HTML::Mason::Request::call_dynamic('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f00ef568)', 'main') called at /var/cache/mason/obj/2011159162/main/smetimes/dhandler.html.obj line 17 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612f01b7e68)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1302 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 955 HTML::Mason::Request::call_next('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f00ef568)') called at /usr/local/bricolage/data/burn/stage/oc_1027/smetimes/autohandler_template.html line 149 HTML::Mason::Commands::__ANON__ at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Component.pm line 135 HTML::Mason::Component::run('HTML::Mason::Component::FileBased=HASH(0x5612f01a1d58)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1300 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 1292 HTML::Mason::Request::comp(undef, undef, undef) called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 481 eval {...} at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/Request.pm line 433 HTML::Mason::Request::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f00ef568)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 165 HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler::exec('HTML::Mason::Request::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612f00ef568)') called at /usr/share/perl5/HTML/Mason/ApacheHandler.pm line 831 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handle_request('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler=HASH(0x5612ee50ad68)', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f007ef40)') called at (eval 592) line 8 HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler::handler('HTML::Mason::ApacheHandler', 'Apache2::RequestRec=SCALAR(0x5612f007ef40)') called at -e line 0 eval {...} at -e line 0 NSW children risk being left behind as the state's preschools suffer from the lowest levels of hourly attendance in the country while parents pay more money for their child's early education than in any other state. New data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows that only 66 per cent of NSW children aged between four and five years are enrolled in preschool for the federal government's recommended time of 15 hours per week, 20 per cent below the national average of 86 per cent. The state's preschools are also the most expensive in the country. More than 32 per cent of early learning centres in NSW charge $5 or more per hour, or up to $40 a day. In Queensland, only 5 per cent of preschools charge the same amount of money. Educators have labelled the statistics "scary", warning the trend could put the future of NSW children at risk. A baby passed from the window of sinking car is the only survivor of tragedy which killed five members of same family. Ruth Daniels, 57, her 15-year-old daughter Jodie-Lee, Sean McGrotty, 46 - the partner of Ms Daniels' other daughter - and her two grandsons, 12-year-old Mark and Evan, eight, all died when their car "nosedived" into a harbour at Buncrana, in County Donegal, Ireland. A two-month old baby, Rioghnach, survived as she was passed out of the window of the Audi Q7 and handed to a witness who had waded in to help, shortly before the car sank. Eyewitnesses have reported that three people in the car broke the windows and attempted to swim to safety, but the freezing waters and the weight of their clothes meant they did not make it. Brussels: More than 80,000 Afghans will face being deported from Europe "in the near future" under a secret EU plan, amid warnings of a new influx as the country descends into chaos. The European Commission will threaten to reduce aid to Afghanistan that represents 40 per cent of the country's GDP unless the "difficult" Kabul government agrees to the mass repatriation of tens of thousands of failed asylum seekers. Afghans gather in a room to charge their mobile phones at a refugee camp in the western Athens suburb of Schisto last week. Credit:AP It admits that the financial threat, if delivered, would result in the collapse of the fragile state. In return for Kabul's co-operation, though, the Afghan elite would be rewarded with university places in Europe as part of an explicit EU strategy to use aid and trade as "incentives" for foreign governments to take back migrants. The ACT government is considering tightening legislation to crack down on the number of trees being poisoned around Canberra. In recent years, Territory and Municipal Services has found up to 50 poisoned trees annually on both public and private land. Sonya Janssen with her children, from left, Jayelin,10, Zavier,4 and Madilyn,8 at their home in Gungahlin with the large seemingly unhealthy tree in their backyard. Credit:Melissa Adams Urban Treescapes manager Michael Brice said he was frustrated that the hefty penalties of up to $44,000 for reckless damage to a protected tree the ACT were rarely enforced. The territory can also prosecute under the Nature Conservation Act for damage to native trees on unleased land with a maximum penalty of $44,000. Hazard reduction burns continue to cloud Canberra in smoke, as further burns take place in Charnwood and Mitchell on Thursday. Burns have been taking place around the city since Tuesday morning. Firefighters monitoring a hazard reduction burn in Gungahlin in 2012. More hazard reduction burns will take place in Canberra this week. Credit:Jeffrey Chan Piles of logs and pine debris are still being burnt off over 230 hectares at the Kowen Pine Forest, under the watchful gaze of four firefighting units and an officer. A 23-hectare burn at Black Mountain Nature Reserve concluded on Wednesday, as did a burn in Aranda. A man accused of a fatal stabbing at the Stuart Flats last month has pleaded not guilty to murder. Scott Jamie Cole, 40, allegedly stabbed the resident to death during a dispute at the Griffith public housing complex on February 29. Police at the Stuart Flats in Griffith after Jason Hollingshed was found dead. Credit:Melissa Adams Police were called to the scene about 4.30pm and found the body of 46-year-old Jason Hollingshed. Cole was arrested and charged with murder. Ten years ago today, a 29-year-old entrepreneur named Jack Dorsey typed five words - "just setting up my twttr" - into a website and pressed Send. It was a fairly mundane debut for Twitter, which would go on to become one of the world's hottest internet companies. But Dorsey was hardly to know that. His previous start-ups had included a service to dispatch taxis and ambulances over the internet and a way to connect medical devices. So twttr (as it would be known until the company's founders shrugged off their disdain for vowels six months later) was by no means a guaranteed success. The Twitter bird. Credit:Getty Images In the intervening years, the microblogging service has become an integral, some might say unavoidable, feature of millions of lives. It is the broadcast medium of choice for celebrities; it has built (and ruined) careers; and it is where news breaks before anywhere else: a recent study suggests emergency services can track storms and earthquakes faster using Twitter than traditional monitoring tools. For better or for worse, the service is closely associated with major events and cultural movements, including the 2011 London riots, the Arab Spring, the Black Lives Matter movement and Barack Obama's 2008 grassroots ascendance to the White House. And for nine of Twitter's 10 years, it was the darling of the technology world: everyone who mattered talked about it and used it. Fairfax's main competitor for real estate advertising is seeking a semi-permanent injunction to prevent Fairfax from ever using the phrase "number one real estate app". Fairfax's Domain Group should not use the phrase until it can satisfy the court it has become the dominant app in the market, according to lawyers for REA Group. The Domain real estate app on the Apple Watch. "If and when that happens, the respondent can come back to the court and ask to dissolve the injunction," barrister for REA, William Houghton, SC, said on Tuesday. Justice Bernard Murphy of the Federal Court in Melbourne finished hearing the case between the two real estate giants on Tuesday, and said he would try to return a verdict "speedily". The recent rally in copper prices may have thwarted deal flow in the sector by tempting distressed companies to hang on longer than expected. Big miners like BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto and Chinese entities like China Moly have wanted to buy more copper assets while prices are low, but, so far, there has been little action. A copper price rally may have stymied mergers and acquisitions in the sector. Credit:Bloomberg Copper prices dipped below $US2 per pound in January but were above $US2.30 per pound this week. UBS analyst Glyn Lawcock said the rally would likely mean fewer mines would come onto the market. Standing out among a pool of job applicants is no easy task, but here's one way to ensure you won't be forgotten: Use your brute strength to end a robbery in progress while your prospective bosses look on. Devin Washington, an 18-year-old job applicant, sprung into action when a man inside the restaurant grabbed money from a cash register Credit:AP That's exactly what one 18-year-old did during his job interview at a Popeyes Louisiana Kitchen franchise in New Orleans on Saturday, according to police. Devin Washington, an 18-year-old job applicant, was answering questions when a man inside the restaurant grabbed money from a cash register, police said. The register was open because an employee was about to hand the man his change. If stamp duty is an economist's monster, the silver bullet is a form of taxation that experts from across the ideological spectrum agree is the most useful and least disruptive: land tax. Land tax already exists in NSW, but not on primary residences. Applying it to land occupied by the family home would expand its base widely and pave the way to get rid of stamp duty. This would create myriad advantages. For a start, land tax is extremely fair. All landowners would pay the tax annually based on the value of their land, and not on what improvements they have made. This means renovations would not be punished. Land tax is also easy to understand and administer, while being nigh-on impossible to avoid. Land tax does not disincentivise home owners from moving freely, making it easier for workers to accept jobs where they crop up, providing a boost to the economy. Land tax would also encourage more infrastructure spending by making it possible for the government to tax some of the additional value it creates when it builds near homes. A rail line that boosts property prices in a given area, for example, could be partially funded by those whose homes had shot up in value as a result. Now this is the point where the hardheads nod sagely and say while all these advantages sound attractive the reality is that any attempt to introduce land tax would be susceptible to the mother of all scare campaigns. After all, if taxes on multinational mining companies, or large polluting companies, can be toppled what chance a new tax on the family home? Obviously this represents a challenge. But it is a challenge that can be overcome through a thoughtful model and patient public explanation. Two key concerns are rightly raised when considering the extension of land tax to abolish stamp duty: the impact on home buyers who have recently paid stamp duty and the impact on asset-rich, but cash-poor, homeowners. These concerns can be addressed through a considered model. Following the abolition of stamp duty, homeowners would not pay land tax until they move to a new home. This means buyers who recently paid stamp duty would not get stung twice. For homeowners who are cash poor typically retirees a rate-deferral scheme could be introduced to allow land-tax liabilities to be put off. A similar scheme exists in the ACT. Building public support around such a model might take time, but patient and honest explanation would make it possible. The only other issue with switching from stamp duty to land tax would be an initial dip in revenue for the state Government as the transition worked its way through the system. Yet this need not be a deal-breaker either. Modelling from the NSW Financial Audit of 2011 shows transitional debt would peak in the 10th year at $15.4 billion and be completely paid off by the 23rd year. Yet in the meantime funding options would remain open, as NSW would retain a AAA-credit rating due to the replacement revenue stream of a broad-based land tax. The point in all this is that the political orthodoxy around the certainty of death and stamp duty is incorrect. In a textbook illustration of the aphorism "too little, too late", Sean Christian Price was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder of 17-year-old Melbourne schoolgirl Masa Vukotic. Talk about shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted or, to use a more apt metaphor, locking the cage after the ravening hyena has already gone on a bloody rampage. The warning signs should have been obvious to all but the most ideologically hidebound and morally purblind. After all, Price was a serial rapist who, in 2004, was found guilty on 22 charges of sexual assault that included the violation of a mother while her children played in the next room. Yet, what sort of custodial sentence did County Court Judge John Barnett deem appropriate for such heinous crimes? Five years and six months in a mental health facility, at which point Price was set loose to prey again on the women of Victoria, despite having been classified as "noncompliant" by prison officials. Even worse was the fact that this cut-throat coward was actually free on bail and under a court supervision order when he snuffed out Vukotic's life. It's a story much like that of Adrian Bayley, the degenerate who raped and murdered Jill Meagher in 2013. Just like Price, Bayley had a prolific history of sexual violence. From age 19, he committed a string of rapes or attempted sexual assaults that earned him 11 years in prison. Experimental filmmaker and sound artist Aura Satz will speak in Melbourne while visiting Australia as part of the Biennale of Sydney. The artist who has shown her works at Tate Modern and the New York Film Festival among other places will give an artist talk at Monash University on Wednesday (at 1pm) and a screening event at Gertrude Contemporary on Thursday evening. Experimental filmmaker and sound artist Aura Satz will be in Australia for the Biennale of Sydney. Credit:Paul Winch-Furness Satz works as an archival detective, unearthing esoteric optical and acoustic technologies such as Chladni plates, Rubens' tubes and early techniques for printing optical film scores. She also casts a light on the work of some of the important female pioneers of sound and film. Not happy: Reno Rumble on Channel Nine has been crushed by MKR, Australian Story and All Star Family Feud. Strangely, Nine did not pitch The Block against MKR. Instead, it exhumed Australia's Got Talent and The Farmer Wants a Wife, neither of which were hits. (In fairness, finding suitable properties for The Block is genuinely difficult, and cost blow-outs are always a danger. You can't just snap your fingers and create a new season.) Still, Reno Rumble has many similarities to The Block. It's a renovation show, made by the same producers. It features The Block's Scott Cam, a former Gold Logie Winner, and Shelley Craft. And it did OK last year, launching with 873,000 metropolitan viewers. Except it had a solid hook then: setting former contestants from Seven's House Rules against former Block-heads. This year, the contestants are unknown, with an "East versus West" theme. "Changing the format was a mistake," says media analyst Steve Allen, managing director of Fusion Strategy. "It seems the public enjoyed the cheekiness of pitting one network against another. [The contestants] went into it with some exposure. "Scott Cam must be reeling, because they're destroying his career. Unfortunately, it's going to taint Scott and Shelley's reputation." Nine intended to screen Reno Rumble on Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesday in the crucial 7.30pm time slot. The network has been asked if it will axe the show or bump it to a secondary channel or different time slot but has not yet commented on its plans. Allen says Nine has excellent local dramas, including Love Child and House Husbands, but their success depends partly on a strong lead-in show. "If you don't anchor things at 7.30pm, then everything else falls away." There are some bright spots: the strong performance of Today, Nine's news in Sydney and Melbourne, and the success of Here Come the Habibs!. But Allen says that's not enough. One of CSIRO's main climate science units planned to slash four out of five researchers, all but eliminating its monitoring and climate modelling research, a new document reveals. The cuts are contained in an analysis for the Oceans & Atmosphere division, dated January 25, 2016. CSIRO handed over the document to the Senate committee investigating plans to slash 350 staff overall, and it has been made public on the Senate's website. Doubts over the rationale and planning of the cuts flared on Tuesday in another CSIRO section facing deep job losses, with many Land & Water staff walking out of a meeting with chief executive Larry Marshall. Hundreds of health professionals, including psychiatrists and paediatricians, have signed an open letter to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull supporting the Safe Schools Program, following the government's decision to limit its content under pressure from conservative backbench MPs to scrap it. Education Minister Simon Birmingham last week said he supported the voluntary program's aim of discouraging bullying against lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and questioning (LGBTIQ) students as he announced changes to it. This included removing lesson plans that the review had said were "potentially unsuitable for some students", restricting advice booklets like "OMG I'm Queer" to one-on-one discussions between students and staff and removing all third-party website links. The review found that the program's main lessons, which were delivered in classrooms, were age-appropriate and consistent with the Australian curriculum, but recommended more official guidance be given on how schools should use the advice booklets, which were created by young people, and material on third-party websites that were not designed for schools. "Cold exposure can be used for a number of very interesting effects," he has said. "I was looking at cold exposure primarily for its effect on glucose transporters, GLUT 4 and also on two other factors, one being brown adipose tissue, BAT, which is sometimes referred to as 'fat-burning fat' because it's similar to muscle fibre in its composition of mitochondria. Also, a hormone called adiponectin, which I think people are going to hear a lot more about soon. "I spoke with researchers who focus on adiponectin and also a former NASA researcher who focused exclusively on cold exposure, primarily for fat loss. What he realised was that someone like Michael Phelps doesn't burn through 10,000 calories a day because of his activity level alone; it's because of the thermal conductivity of water." Then there's the mental challenge and most people would agree that freezing your bits off first thing in the morning is a challenge. "The point is that starting your morning by tackling challenges head-on will help encourage similar behaviour throughout the day," writes author Carl Richards, in a new feature for The New York Times. "And, it turns out, there's a wealth of research to back up this idea as well. People who do hard things first tend to procrastinate less and get more done, according to Brian Tracy's book, Eat That Frog." It's a challenge that can also be an exercise in mindfulness. Cold water is, after all, simply a sensation and we can choose how we respond to it. That said, there's a difference between noticing sensation and suffering. Surgeons are begging general practitioners not to send them new patients because the hospital is too busy to treat them, creating a hidden waiting list of patients that are not measured in the official performance figures. Blacktown Hospital's only resident specialist surgeon David Dunn wrote to GPs last September requesting them not to refer patients to his outpatient clinic for the remainder of the year as it was already oversubscribed. Associate Professor Dunn said he may be able to see a small number of patients who had urgent needs, but the clinic had neither the staff nor resources to take further appointments. "It is regretted that patients may be inconvenienced but public outpatient general surgical services are not widely available and therefore referral through surgeons' private consulting rooms may, therefore, be necessary for a timely treatment to be offered," the letter said. The Australian Tax Commissioner has accused a union of trying to delay a vote on a revised pay deal and assured staff they will be given adequate time to engage in collective bargaining. On Monday, the Australian Services Union wrote to the commissioner, Chris Jordan, and accused representatives of breaching good faith by planning a vote during the school holiday period in late April, when much of the 20,000 strong workforce take leave. Australian Tax Commissioner Chris Jordan. Credit:Daniel Kalisz ASU tax branch secretary Jeff Lapidos said the union would lodge a complaint with the Fair Work Commission and told members the ATO was trying to deny staff the opportunity to participate in enterprise bargaining. In a letter to staff, Mr Jordan denied the claims and insisted no voting date had been set. He accused the union of trying to delay a vote on the revised agreement and described their statements as "frustrating and disappointing". A man has pleaded not guilty to a string of charges following an alleged street race in Belmore, in which two Bangladeshi students died. Ahshanul Fakhru, 27, from Roselands in Sydney's south-west, faced Burwood Local Court on Tuesday, charged with taking part in an illegal street race, dangerous driving and driving more than 45km/h over the speed limit. The Toyota Aurion "disintegrated" on impact when it crashed on Canterbury Road in Belmore, police said. Credit:Nine News A Toyota Aurion was travelling on Canterbury Road, near Victory Street, when it left the road and crashed into a power pole about 3.40am on February 24. Police allege Mr Fakhru was driving a Nissan Skyline in a street race with the Toyota Aurion in the moments before it crashed. Alleged gunman Matthew Russell has handed himself in to police after a three-day manhunt across Sydney's south-west. NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione said the 28-year-old was arrested after he attended Bankstown police station on Tuesday morning - the same day as victim Qusay Al Mhanawi's funeral in Liverpool. Mr Al Mhanawi, 46, was sitting in the driver's seat of his car outside his home at Heckenberg on Friday afternoon when he was shot in the head. The man holding the gun was allegedly Mr Russell, who is well known to police. Air travellers are bracing for delays at domestic and some international airports across the country as custom officials and staff go on strike as part of ongoing pay disputes. Unionised border force workers walked off the job at Cairns and Perth international airports and Townsville, Darwin and Adelaide domestic airports on Tuesday, ahead of further action by Brisbane and Melbourne workers on Wednesday. The strike action come ahead of Easter Thursday's major 24-hour stoppage at airports and cruise ship terminals nationwide. The Community and Public Sector Union says the campaign is the latest step towards resolving a two-year industrial dispute with the federal government over work conditions. A north Queensland woman who tested positive for the Zika virus after returning from overseas has been released from hospital. The woman, whose name hadn't been released, returned to Bowen earlier this month and tested positive for the disease, which has been linked to birth defects, on Friday. Aedes aegypti mosquitoes float in a mosquito cage at a laboratory in Cucuta, Colombia. Credit:AP She was taken to Townsville Hospital in a stable condition but released on Monday afternoon. Pest control spraying continued on Tuesday in and around homes and several pockets of the Aedes aegypti species, which was the only known species to transmit the virus. The Electoral Commission of Queensland's website, updated at 3.18pm about two hours before Mr Bartlett spoke to Fairfax Media, had the Greens only 253 votes ahead. Jonathan Sri is increasingly likely to represent The Gabba ward in the Brisbane City Council chamber. Credit:Glenn Hunt Greens campaign secretary Andrew Bartlett, who has been scrutineering the count, said The Gabba ward candidate Jonathan Sri was 294 votes ahead of Labor's Nicole Lessio at the end of counting on Tuesday. The Greens' bid for the party's first ever seat in the Brisbane City Council chamber looks closer to reality, with counting on Tuesday falling in their favour. The Liberal National Party's candidate, Sean Jacobs, had received 7252 votes as of Tuesday afternoon, but despite having more primary votes than his competitors, the preference flow between the left-leaning Greens and Labor candidates ensured he would be shut out. Mr Bartlett said he was increasingly confident the Greens would pick up The Gabba, which would give the Greens their first elected Brisbane seat at any level of government, other than the federal Senate. "We expect to pick up a few more preferences as the postal votes are counted," he said. "We can be more definitive tomorrow, but it's looking better for us today." Mr Bartlett said there would be about 500 postal votes counted on Wednesday, with another 500 or so still outstanding. Over 60,000 Zorba lovers are expected to flock to Musgrave Park this year to eat, drink and socialise, the three integral pillars of a Greek society according to Effie. Effie, aka Mary Coustas, was named the 2016 Paniyiri ambassador, or 'Princess' as she prefers, ahead of the two day Greek festival in May, which will surely mean enough hair, love and laughs for all. Effie, otherwise known as Mary Coustas, at the launch of the Paniyiri Greek Festival at The Greek Club in South Brisbane. Credit:Glenn Hunt The 2016 Paniyiri Greek Festival has launched its program and it looks set to be about as big as Greek goddess Effie Stephanidis' hair. Hellenic Dancers will take to the stage for Paniyiri to guide Greeks and non-Greeks alike in the Zorba. Credit:Glenn Hunt "We know that Greeks like to overeat, it's part of who we are, we know Greeks like to drink coffee, that too is part of who we are, Greeks are very devoted to our religion," she said. "All these things we are devoted to because it forces us to be social and that is what Greeks do better than everything. "We understand the role of community better than almost any other culture because we are so devoted to our community. "60,000 people will turn up, maybe a quarter of which will be Greek, all the other Greeks will be working here but the people coming through the gates will be every size, every shape every colour imaginable and they all come here so that we can all be together to dance and to eat and to have fun together." A former Brisbane Lions AFL player who allegedly bashed his girlfriend, causing her to lose a litre of blood, has been denied bail for a second time. Albert Bruce Daniel Proud, 27, faces a grievous bodily harm charge, among other offences, after he allegedly attacked the woman at a Sunnybank home, in Brisbane's south, last November. Albert Proud and his former girlfriend, Richelle Kadadi Credit:Nine News He played 29 games for the Lions in a stop-start career from 2007-10 and is also charged with wilful damage. Proud had offered to live at a religious organisation as part of his bail application, but Supreme Court Justice Jean Dalton on Tuesday noted he would not receive adequate professional support there. In the shallow waters off Cape York Peninsula's east coast, the Great Barrier Reef is in the midst of a severe bleaching event, the worst in 15 years. Meanwhile, Tasmania still reels from fires of unprecedented severity that reduced ancient forests to charcoal. Tragically, we knew both events were highly likely, yet we failed to act. In 2008, the Australian National University's Fenner School of Environment and Society prepared a preliminary assessment on the implications of climate change on Australia's World Heritage areas. Understandably, the natural values would be hardest hit, particularly those associated with habitats already in decline. A diver checking out the bleaching at Heron Island in February 2016. Credit:XL Catlin Seaview Survey That report warned that the increased frequency and intensity of fire, drought, cyclones, flooding and bleaching events will have significant impact across many of Australia's 19 World heritage listed properties. Today, several months of hot and still waters in the Coral Sea combined with a weak monsoon have resulted in some of the worst conditions for coral bleaching in decades. Queensland's attorney-general has been unsuccessful in an attempt to appeal the "inadequate" sentences of four men responsible for a horrific seven-hour torture session on the Gold Coast. Dean Russell Knox, Zane Ian Potts, Jayden Tyrone Peters and Christopher Samuel Goulding were sentenced to six years' jail for the 2014 attack. A man was hit with a hammer during a seven-hour torture session on the Gold Coast. Credit:Virginia Star Their victim was painted blue, made to drink urine, burned with cigarettes, had jumper leads attached to his nipples, a plastic bag placed over his head and was repeatedly struck with a hammer. The group also stretched his genitals by attaching a rope, stomped on his head, and punched and kicked him during the humiliating ordeal. Queensland will open its regions to eligible refugees, with the government announcing it will take part in the Commonwealth's 'Safe Haven Enterprise Visa' scheme. The scheme is open to asylum seekers determined to have arrived in Australia "illegally" but who qualify for protection and "have demonstrated an intention to work and or study in Australia". Multicultural Affairs Minister Grace Grace. Credit:Glenn Hunt The visa is a step towards permanent residency. While unable to give numbers on Tuesday afternoon, Multicultural Affairs Minister Grace Grace said it was a win for both the state's regions and eligible applicants. Queenslanders are the country's biggest drinkers and worst eaters, according to the latest statistics from the country's largest health insurer. Medibank's latest Better Health Index plots Queensland at the bottom of the pack in terms of nutrition and the top for alcohol consumption. Leading the nation isn't always good for Queenslanders. Credit:Jonathan Carroll JCA The results have been labelled concerning but not entirely surprising. Queenslanders were the second-least likely to opt for a low-fat diet and made the second most trips to fast food joints per month. The Premier's wife is urging principals to choose an equal mix of male and female authors from the VCE booklists. In an unusual move, Catherine Andrews wrote to Victorian principals on Tuesday and "strongly encouraged" them to revisit their choice of VCE texts to reflect gender diversity. Catherine Andrews reading to students at the Chelsea kindergarten during the 2014 state election campaign. Credit:Penny Stephens "I urge you to aim for 50 per cent representation of female writers across your school's English and Literature teaching and text selection," she said in the letter, which was leaked to Fairfax Media. Ms Andrews is an ambassador of the Stella Prize, an Australian literary award that celebrates Australian female authors. Infighting within the WA Liberals and a split with coalition partners the Nationals over privatising public assets has the state government looking divided. The Nationals have publicly resisted the government's plans to privatise Fremantle Port twice in recent days, saying they have concerns about whether it is in the interests of its constituency: farmers and rural voters generally. Voters put Labor ahead of premier Colin Barnett's government 56 to 44 per cent. Credit:Alex Ellinghausen It also emerged on Monday Treasurer Mike Nahan had refused agriculture minister and fellow Liberal Ken Baston's request to waive a recruitment freeze and allow a series of senior appointments including a new chief veterinary officer. The clashes come after a weekend ReachTEL poll of 1248 voters put Labor ahead of premier Colin Barnett's government 56 to 44 per cent on a two party preferred basis. A Perth boy charged with murder after a fight in the early hours after Australia Day broke down in court and cried shortly before his bail application was delayed for the third time on Tuesday. The boy, 11, who cannot be named for legal reasons, appeared at Perth's Children's Court via video link from Banksia Hill Detention Centre, where he has been held in custody for two months. He is the youngest of five males charged with the murder of Patrick 'Paddy' Slater in a post-Australia day brawl outside the Esplanade Train Station on January 27. It is believed he is one of the youngest people charged with murder in Australian history. Katie Erickson is facing the conundrum that confronts many travellers who fall in love with someone during their journey. The thought of leaving them behind is unbearable. But for Ms Erickson, her loved one is a kelpie. Katie Erickson has set up a funding page to bring her dog back to Canada. The 24-year-old Canadian native, who has called Fremantle home for the last two years, bought Hinto when she was travelling along the east coast two years ago. Ms Erickson said the pooch had travelled with her for more than eight thousand kilometres around Australia, and the pair had become inseparable. A WA man missing in the remote outback for two days is believed to have been found by air searchers on Tuesday afternoon after a pilot spotted a person waving from the rear tray of a vehicle. Police later established that two people were, in fact, with the vehicle. One man is believed to be tradesman Barry Fraser, who failed to return to Laverton on Sunday evening, while the other person is yet to be identified. Tjuntjuntjara, near the South Australian border, is one of Australia's most remote communities. Credit:Google Maps "There is no sign of distress and the people are believed to have sufficient water," a police spokeswoman said. "At this stage the plan is to recover the people at the earliest opportunity tomorrow." A man who previously spent time behind bars for breaking WA's racial vilification laws has avoided jail for threatening a stranger on social media by telling him a Middle Eastern kebab shop owner wanted ISIS to cut his head off. Brendon Lee O'Connell admitted he had sent 17 Facebook messages to Jason Hodgkinson over two days in November 2014 but denied he was threatening the man's safety. O'Connell, who in 2011 was sentenced to three years in prison for posting an anti-Semitic video on YouTube in which he verbally abused two Jewish men in Perth, told the jury he believed Mr Hodgkinson was among seven men who racially abused his friend, Northam kebab shop owner Mustafa Atieh. He said Mr Atieh, who was born in Kuwait but identified as a Palestinian, was highly distressed after the men told him in front of his children to "fuck off back to his country", and had complained that police had taken no action. O'Connell said three people told him Mr Hodgkinson was one of the men, so two months later, he took to Facebook to tell him to "confess" so he could "force the issue" with police. "I simply wanted to stir the pot so police would become involved and investigate the case," he told the court. Asked if he was trying to threaten Mr Hodgkinson with the message "an awful lot of Muslims want the head of the man that did this", O'Connell dismissed the comment as "a throwaway line" and "a figure of speech" that the recipient shouldn't have taken seriously. "You treated the sending of these messages quite casually," Judge Michael Bowden said on Tuesday. He noted O'Connell had even claimed he was multi-tasking when he wrote them, eating a pie and drinking cola while typing. Judge Bowden also noted Mr Hodgkinson had no involvement in the verbal attack on Mr Atieh, saying internet users should know conduct such as O'Connell's could lead to not just criminal but also civil defamation action. "The internet is not just ... open slather," he said. O'Connell, who has several past convictions, faced a maximum sentence of three years in jail but was given a two-year good behaviour bond, ordered not to use a carriage service to harass, menace or annoy and had to pay a surety of $1000. AAP That's when we started having panic attacks, thinking, 'These people have no idea what they're doing'. "No one is telling us anything," National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Services deputy chairman Priscilla Collins told a public hearing shortly after the rollout began. "I have four months left and I have staff contracts that run out at that time. If I have to let staff go, I will guarantee that we will be cutting our services and that is going to have a huge impact on the court system. "It was the most disappointing, frustrating process. I was ringing them and they were saying, 'Yes, from now on you apply for Stronger Futures,' and you had a conversation for half an hour and, at the end of it, the person would say, 'Can you explain to me what Stronger Futures is?' You would ask, 'Are you the Territory representative?' and they would say yes, and you would say, 'And you don't know about Stronger Futures?' That is when we started having panic attacks, thinking, 'These people have no idea what they're doing'." The inquiry showed the tendering process advantaged large, non-Aboriginal organisations, with the result being less than half of the funding pool ended up going to indigenous organisations, Ms Siewert said. "Considering we know that decisionmaking and self-determination is key to reducing Aboriginal disadvantage, this beggars belief," she said. Ms Siewert said the government did undertake consultation last year on the flawed process and would apparently be releasing new guidelines. A transgender prostitute accused of infecting a Perth man with HIV is seeking bail in order to get out of a male prison. Clayton James Palmer, 38, appeared in Perth Magistrates Court on Tuesday via video link from maximum security Casuarina Prison charged with grievous bodily harm after a client was diagnosed with HIV last year. Police escort Clayton James Palmer from Perth Airport. Credit:Nine News Palmer was supported by family and friends, including People For Sex Worker Rights in WA spokeswoman Rebecca Davies, who said she should not be held in a male prison. One of Palmer's male clients was allegedly diagnosed with HIV in September after having unprotected sex with her between January and August, and police prosecutors said the complainant had no other sexual partners during that time. In an interview with local broadcaster VTM, Ms De Block said 11 people were killed in explosions at Brussels Airport, which occurred just before 8am local time, and about 20 people had died in an attack on the Maalbeek metro station, which occurred about an hour later. Nam Laachraoui, left captured on CCTV, moments before the blast with two other bombers. Credit:AP Belgian authorities were still checking whether the attacks were linked to the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, according to Federal Prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw, although US officials said the level of organisation involved suggested they had previously been in preparation. The wanted notice issued for the man in white on Tuesday follows a similar call issued by the investigating judge on Monday for a man named Najim Laachraoui, 25, who had travelled to Hungary in September with Abdeslam. Two explosions were heard at Brussels airport. Credit:London Telegraph Laachraoui has since emerged as a key suspect in the Brussels attacks, and is now one of Europe's most wanted men. The poor quality of the images on the two wanted notices left it unclear whether the man in the white shirt at the airport could be Laachraoui, whose picture was on the front pages of Belgian newspapers on Tuesday morning. Brussels airport was rocked by at least two explosions, according to witnesses. The three suspects captured on CCTV travelled to the airport by taxi, according to local mayor Francis Vermeiren. "They came in a taxi with their suitcases, their bombs were in their bags," he told AFP. An injured person at Brussels airport. Credit:Twitter: Ketevan Kardava "They put their suitcases on trolleys, the first two bombs exploded. The third also put his on a trolley but he must have panicked, it didn't explode." He said bomb disposal experts later blew up the suitcase that didn't explode. Mr Vermeiren said the airport was "a war zone, atrocious to see, atrocious to live through. But strength and solidarity have won". Reuters reported three people have been arrested by German police in a car with Belgian licence plates near the border with Austria. The three suspects from Kosovo were arrested before the attacks that killed at least 30 people at a metro station and the international airport in Brussels, a police spokesman said. Police made the arrests on a motorway in the southern state of Bavaria after receiving an intelligence tip-off. "Investigations have been launched into the suspected planning of a serious criminal act against the state because there was notification of that," the spokesman said. He said there was no indication so far that the three suspects had any links to the attacks in the Belgian capital, adding that this could not be ruled out. Last week, explosives and an Islamic flag were found during a raid on a Brussels flat. Police also found a fresh fingerprint of Abdeslam's there, putting police on his trail.It was not clear if Abdeslam had been involved at that stage in the airport attack plan. A bomb and an Islamic State flag were also found later on Tuesday in a flat in Brussels. A witness said he heard shouts in Arabic and shots shortly before two blasts struck a packed airport departure lounge at Brussels Airport. US President Barack Obama led calls of support to Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel after Brussels went into a state of virtual lockdown. "We must be together regardless of nationality or race or faith in fighting against the scourge of terrorism," Obama told a news conference in Cuba. "We can and we will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world." Prime Minister Michel spoke at a Brussels news conference of a "black moment" for his country. "What we had feared has come to pass." Belgian police and combat troops on the streets had been on alert for reprisals after Abdeslam's arrest but the attacks took place in crowded areas where people and bags are not searched. Police operations were under way at several points in the city but a lockdown imposed immediately after the attacks was eased in the evening, and commuters and students headed home as public transport partially reopened. Islamic State issued a statement claiming responsibility: "We promise the crusader alliance against the Islamic State that they will have black days in return for their aggression against the Islamic State," the jihadist group said. Belgium, home to the European Union and the headquarters of the NATO military alliance, has sent warplanes to take part in operations against Islamic State in the Middle East. 'It was massive' Austrian Horst Pilger, who was awaiting a flight with his family when the attackers struck, said his children had thought fireworks were going off, but he instantly knew an assault was underway. "My wife and I both thought 'bomb'. We looked into each other's eyes," he told Reuters. "Five or 10 seconds later there was a major, major, major blast in close vicinity. It was massive." Pilger, who works at the European Commission, said the whole ceiling collapsed and smoke flooded the building. Security services found and destroyed a third bomb after two blasts at the airport. Video showed devastation in the hall with ceiling tiles and glass scattered across the floor. Some passengers emerged from the terminal with blood spattered over their clothes. Smoke rose from the building through shattered windows and passengers fled down a slipway, some still hauling their bags. Many of the dead and wounded at the airport were badly injured in the legs, one airport worker told Reuters, suggesting at least one bomb in a bag on the floor. The blast hit the train as it left Maalbeek station, close to European Union institutions, heading to the city centre. Brian Carroll, 31, a communications consultant from Washington, said he was on a subway car near Maalbeek en route to a conference in downtown Brussels when he heard a loud blast. "As we were pulling into the station there was suddenly a loud explosion," he said in a phone interview. "There was smoke everywhere. Everyone dropped to the ground. People were screaming and crying." Carroll said he had remained on the ground for one or two minutes, then got up, pried open a door of the subway car with his hands, and fled. "I thought to myself, 'I've got to get out of here,'" he said. "I headed toward an exit. There was smoke and soot everywhere. There was glass everywhere. It was like running through a cloud of dust. I saw the exit of the station was destroyed. I ran out of the station, I ran as far as I could." VRT carried a photograph of a metro carriage at a platform with doors and windows completely blown out, its structure deformed and interior mangled and charred. A local journalist tweeted a photograph of a person lying covered in blood among smoke outside the station, on the main Rue de la Loi avenue, which connects central Brussels with the EU institutions. Ambulances were ferrying the wounded away and sirens rang out across the area. Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands, all wary of spillover from conflict in Syria, were among states announcing extra security measures. Security was tightened at the Dutch border with Belgium. World leaders react "We are at war and we have been subjected to acts of war in Europe for the last few months," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull tweeted his support for the people of Belgium. He said he was deeply concerned by the attacks and that Australians' thoughts, prayers and solidarity were with the people of Belgium. The Minister for Foreign Affairs Julie Bishop said: "The Australian Government condemns what appears to be coordinated terror attacks on Belgium. Our thoughts and sympathies are with the people of Belgium." "DFAT is urgently seeking to determine if any Australians have been affected... I have spoken with our Ambassador Mark Higgie for an assessment of the situation and confirm that our diplomatic staff are safe. If you have any concerns for the welfare of family and friends in the region you should attempt to contact them directly." "If you are unable to contact them and still hold concerns for their welfare you should call the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade 24 hour Consular Emergency Centre on 1300 555 135 or +61 2 6261 3305 if calling from overseas". British Prime Minister David Cameron said he would chair a crisis response meeting following explosions in Brussels on Tuesday. Loading "I am shocked and concerned by the events in Brussels. We will do everything we can to help," Cameron said on Twitter, adding that he would chair a meeting of the COBRA response committee. Reuters, The New York Times and agencies Latest theories for why two men who set off suicide bombs at Brussels Airport were each wearing a single black glove include their possible use to hide hand-held detonators. At least 31 people were killed and 250 injured in coordinated attacks on the airport and a rush-hour metro train in the Belgian capital early on Tuesday local time Two of the suspected bombers captured on CCTV footage minutes before the fatal blasts at the airport were each wearing a black glove on their left hands. Belgian security agencies were assailed in the immediate aftermath of the bombings. But all of Europe invites attack because of its porous borders; national and branch rivalry and jealousy between the services; and a sense in the smaller countries that it's up to the bigger EU member countries to deal with the security challenges. The blown out facade of the airport terminal. Credit:AP So Belgium was a blessing for IS. It was a logistic and planning hub before, and a bolthole after, the Paris attacks in which 130 people died. And in a Europe already reeling under the weight of a migrant exodus from the conflicts in Syria and Iraq, Tuesday's attacks will prove to be a new challenge to EU cohesion if individual member states conclude that they cannot rely on their neighbours to protect them. An injured woman leaves the scene at Brussels airport, after explosions rocked the facility on Tuesday. Credit:David Crunelle On Friday, Belgian police were being congratulated for the live capture of Abdeslam, even if he had been hiding in plain sight. But just days later, the country was in convulsions and chaos as a string of suicide and other bomb attacks killed more than 30 and wounded scores more. Shiraz Maher, of the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation at King's College London, told reporters that per capita, Belgium had the highest number of foreign fighters in Syria of any European country "more than twice as many have gone from there as from France, and more than four times as many as from Britain". Nam Laachraoui, left captured on CCTV, moments before the blast with two other bombers. Credit:AP The Molenbeek quarter in Brussels is a hotbed of jihadist activity, running a not-so-underground shuttle of fighters to the war in Syria and, before that, to other conflict zones. But by various accounts, Belgian security forces are reluctant to enter Molenbeek. The local mayor reportedly received a list of as many as 80 suspected Islamist militants living in the quarter in November 2015 it included Salah Abdeslam and his brother Brahim, who blew himself up in the Paris attacks. If as seems likely, the cell behind Tuesday's attacks is a remnant of the cell that planned the Paris ones, why had Belgian forces not rooted them out? If it was a new group, how could it have outsmarted the authorities when all of Europe, and Belgium in particular, was on such a high alert? But in the wake of the capture of Abdeslam, why was Belgium not on its highest alert? How could the far more sophisticated November attacks in Paris have been planned and resourced from Molenbeek, without the Belgians having stumbled on a clue? Why did it take 125 days to find Abdeslam, when it was known he was lurking in Molenbeek? It must have taken dozens of associates to cover for him again, why no arrests? More particularly, on Sunday, Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said that Abdeslam had told investigators that he had been planning fresh attacks in Brussels so why no investigative follow-through? And how was it that the Paris attackers were able to survive a Belgian security dragnet that, early last year, was supposed to have cleared Molenbeek of its worst jihadist elements? Criticism of Belgian security goes deeper than front-line grunts. There are accounts of agencies not working together, of failing to make the best use of technology. The government as a whole is accused of dragging its heels in a country with an estimated 800-plus known suspected jihadists, there are only 1000 civilian and military intelligence officers attempting to counter and corral them. On a more structural social level, critics charge that Belgium can't get it together because it has never met the challenge of reconciling its national and cultural fractures tension between its French, Dutch and German-speaking communities which lead to political instability. And in the Muslim community there are complaints that Belgian authorities were happy to see hundreds of young men heading off to fight in Syria and Iraq, just to be rid of them. When CNN investigated life in Molenbeek in the period between the Paris and Brussels attacks, Geraldine Henneghien, whose son Anis died fighting in Syria, complained that there was no response from Belgian police when she reported her son's plans. Leading the finger-pointing at security failings in Brussels was the French newspaper Le Monde, which dubbed Belgium "a clearing house for jihadism" on its way to becoming "a nation without a state". In the past, Belgium has had waves of terrorism in the 1980s and 1990s. It has poor Muslim communities, like Molenbeek, in which recruiters prey on the jobless and the angry. Added to that, as the headquarters of the European Union, any strike in Belgium is a strike against world power structures. Donald Trump was quick to weigh in, claiming that "more than waterboarding" was the solution to terrorism. But the complexity of the terror challenge, as the Brussels attacks reveal, continues to defy governments in Europe and beyond and probably requires more thoughtful responses. There were many calls on Tuesday for a new ring of security around airport terminals and metro stations but this would simply create a new target, as crowds of travellers backed up, waiting to be processed. Aviation security expert Philip Baum told The Guardian: "It's ultimately down to looking for people with negative intent and we have to do that without creating new security hurdles that create new targets, such as checkpoints at the entrances to terminals. "If you look at the Germanwings crash, Metrojet bombing [in the Sinai] or today [in Brussels], people with criminal intent think outside the box and we need to too." The West needs to do exactly that, because it's how IS operates. Brussels residents turned to Twitter to offer people stranded in the Belgian capital rooms and transport after twin attacks on the airport and a rush-hour metro train killed at least 34 people on Tuesday. Offers of help included the hashtag #ikwillhelpen (I want to help) and others such as #PorteOuverte (open door) and #OpenHouse, first used to show solidarity with Paris after November's attacks in which 130 died. People also used the hashtags #JeSuisBelge (I am Belgian) and #JeSuisBruxelles (I am Brussels) to express solidarity. His lawyers, Chen Jiangang and Yan Xin, said police had confirmed only that Jia was taken away to "assist with an investigation", but provided no other details, including which detention centre he was being held in. Jia Jia told friends before he went missing last week that he had no involvement in an online petition calling for the resignation of President Xi Jinping. Credit:Shen Liang Jia Jia, a 35-year-old freelance writer, was preparing to board a flight from Beijing to Hong Kong on March 15 when he was taken away by airport police. He has had no contact with family or lawyers since. Beijing: A lawyer for a Chinese journalist who was detained last week after being linked with an online petition calling for the resignation of President Xi Jinping says his client's exact whereabouts remain unknown after police blocked his efforts to meet his client. "All I know is my client's name is Jia Jia, and that he has been detained by police," Mr Chen told Fairfax Media. "Other than that, we have been unable to get a single word of information [from police]." Freelance writer Jia Jia, 35, whose whereabouts are unknown since he was taken away by airport police as he prepared to board a flight from Beijing to Hong Kong on March 15. Credit:Twitter JiaJia's friends believe he is being investigated in connection to an incendiary open letter which criticised Mr Xi's handling of economic, domestic and foreign affairs and called on the Chinese president to resign "for the future of the country". The letter has sparked intense interest among watchers of elite Chinese politics, but is unlikely to have reached the broader masses with references to the letter blocked on social media platforms such as Weibo and Chinese search engines. The letter criticised Mr Xi's abandonment of the party's recent tradition of "collective leadership" in favour of his centralisation of power, and said his intervention in the economy had created instability in the sharemarket and property market, "allowing the wealth of hundreds of thousands of ordinary people to vanish". "Comrade Xi Jinping, we have no choice but to point out that, precisely due to your gathering of all power into your own hands and making decisions directly, we are now facing unprecedented problems and crises in all political, economic, ideological, and cultural spheres," the letter said. Bangkok: More than 10,000 Timorese besieged the Australian embassy in Dili on Tuesday to protest Australia's refusal to negotiate with East Timor on a permanent sea boundary in the oil- and gas-rich Timor Sea. East Timor's former president and prime minister, Xanana Gusmao, called on Timorese to rope in 10 other people to attend the protest, one of the largest in the waterfront capital since the country voted to break away from Indonesia in 1999. At least 10,000 people gathered outside the Australian embassy in Dili, the capital of East Timor, on Tuesday to protest against Australia's stance on the oil and gas meridian line in the Timor Sea. Credit:Wayne Lovell, Timor Photography In a speech on the eve of the protest Mr Xanana, a hero of East Timor's independence revolution, said Timorese must "stand firm and raise one voice" to demand that Canberra negotiates with East Timor. The selfie of a smiling beautician taken on the way to her holiday destination has become the haunting final image of the woman who died when flydubai flight FZ981 crashed in southern Russia on Saturday. Anna Sergeeva, 25, took the image on board before the flight left Dubai, where she had been working for four months, Gulf News reported. According to the news site, the Ukrainian booked a last-minute ticket to the city of Rostov-on-Don, where she had lived for five years before moving to the UAE. All 62 people on board died when the plane was destroyed on impact in bad weather during the early hours of Saturday morning. Jakarta: Police fired warning shots after taxi drivers were attacked in ugly scenes during a massive protest against online ride-sharing services Uber and GrabTaxi that brought Indonesia's traffic-snarled capital city to a halt. Protesters jumped on the roofs of taxis that did not participate in the protest and buses were smashed as growing tensions over the app-based transport services reached fever pitch. The Australian government updated its travel advisory for Indonesia, warning that demonstrations could turn violent with little notice. Senator Ted Cruz, of Texas, angered American Muslims on Tuesday with a call to "patrol and secure Muslim neighbourhoods" after the terrorist attacks in Brussels. Arguing that politicians had "tried to deny this enemy exists out of a combination of political correctness and fear", Senator Cruz said that Europeans were "seeing what comes of a toxic mix of migrants who have been infiltrated by terrorists and isolated, radical Muslim neighbourhoods". He continued, in a statement released by both his campaign and his Senate office, "We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighbourhoods before they become radicalised." PHILIPSBURG:--- Ministry of Public Housing, Environment, Spatial Development and Infrastructure (Ministry VROMI), announces that road closures will take place in Philipsburg from March 21 through March 31 due to various road works. These road works will be carried out from 8.00AM and 5.00PM in the following streets: Cornelius M. Vlaun Street, Korte Steeg and Back Street. Cornelius M. Vlaun Street will not be closed, as the others will be during the specified hours. The road works are related to the repairing and placing of splice pits, fiber pulling and blowing. Motorists and pedestrians should be alert of the works that are taking place in the aforementioned areas as heavy equipment will be in use, and refrain from using these streets during operation hours. Ministry VROMI apologizes for any inconveniences this may cause. PHILIPSBURG:--- The St. Maarten Tourist Bureau hosted Ms. Courtney Elko an associate editor from Family Vacation Critic, A TripAdvisor Company. Ms. Elko visited some hotel properties, restaurants, beaches and activities. She toured the Dutch side the first three days and the French side the remaining three days. Family Vacation Critic, A TripAdvisor Company caters to family vacations with the objective of stimulating families to select St. Maarten for their vacation. Their 750,000 UVs (Unique Visitors) per month turn to Family Vacation Critic, for articles and reviews around popular family destinations like St. Maarten, hotels, attractions and more. They are currently growing their destination content so that they can better suit their audience (mostly moms, ages 25-45) and selected St. Maarten to be a part of that growth. TripAdvisor offers advice from millions of travelers and a wide variety of travel choices and planning features with seamless links to booking tools that check hundreds of websites to find the best hotel prices. Considered the largest travel site globally, Trip Advisor has: 78 million Trip Advisor members and 340 million unique monthly visitors. Over 225 million reviews and opinions of hotels, restaurants, attractions and other travel-related businesses. 139 user contributions every minute to their site. Hosting her will complement the Government and private sectors save the summer initiatives on Trip Advisor. This campaign will showcase specials on St. Maarten and its participating hoteliers to drive business to the island during the summer months when it is most needed. PHILIPSBURG:---The Permanent Committee of Kingdom Affairs and Inter-Parliamentary Relations (CKAIR), will meet on March 23. The Minister of Finance will attend the permanent committee meeting. The CKAIR Committee meeting is scheduled for Wednesday at 1.00pm in the General Assembly Chamber of the House at Wilhelmina Straat #1 in Philipsburg. The agenda is as follows: approval decision lists CKAIR Parliamentary Year 2015-2016, no. 8; draft proposal Kingdom Law related to tax compliance and the FATCA (Trb. 2015, 171 and 182); and draft proposal Kingdom Law related to tax compliance and the FATCA (Trb. 2015, 11 and 144). Members of the public are invited to the House of Parliament to attend parliamentary deliberations. The House of Parliament is located across from the Court House in Philipsburg. The parliamentary session will be carried live on St. Maarten Cable TV Channel 120, via Pearl Radio FM 98.1, the audio via the Internet www.pearlfmradio.com and via www.sxmparliament.org. Impressive performance of Curacao at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress in Medellin Willemstad - Curacao achieved a great milestone last week in Medellin, Colombia, where the Curacao delegation took part at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress (GEC). Elgenia Pieternella, leader of the delegation, skillfully managed to negotiate and convert Curacao into the headquarters of the Caribbean Business Angel Network. The new network will be managed for GBAN and EBAN in Curacao. GBAN is the acronym for Global Business Angel Network and EBAN stands for European Business Angel Network. A Business Angel Network is comprised of investors who are willing to act as 'Business Angels' and in doing so invest their own funds in start-ups. Especially companies that have difficulty obtaining financial support from mainstream financial institutions are granted the opportunity to grow, because of the confidence their "angel" has showed in them. With the signing of this agreement between EBAN and the Curacao representation, for the first time starting March 16th, 2016, Curacao has established an Angel Business Network in the Caribbean. This agreement comprises all 33 islands in the Caribbean region. Consequently, Curacao has become the latest leader of large areas that already constitute the headquarters of these organizations. EBAN has headquarters in areas such as America, the Middle East and Europe. Soon the Caribbean Business Angel Network will provide more information pertaining to the content of the agreement and the way in which the private sector, the public sector, but most importantly local businesses and entrepreneurs can benefit from the role Curacao has taken on. It will also determine how the rest of the Caribbean will be guided based on the Curacao leadership. The delegation of Curacao was led by Miss Elgenia Pieternella, a professional in the field of entrepreneurial development. Elgenia is well-known as the founder and president of Fundashon Negoshi Pikina. The organization has been the engine behind the Global Entrepreneurship Week efforts in the Dutch Caribbean. The delegation that participated in the Global Entrepreneurship Congress consisted of 6 professionals. This year the congress of the Global Entrepreneurship Network was held on March 14th thru 17th. Moreover, the importance of this conference can be derived from those who support it and have had their name associated to it. The US government, through President Barack Obama, along with the Kauffman Foundation are a few of the main sponsors of this global initiative which promotes entrepreneurship and business support. Therefore, it is of paramount importance that Curacao was recognized as one of the countries that organized the Global Entrepreneurship Week for the first time in 2015, showing a determination to invest in more local entrepreneurship. Member countries A total of 162 member countries of the Global Entrepreneurship Week participated at the Global Entrepreneurship Congress in Medellin, where they showcased their accomplishments of the previous year. These 162 countries represent all regions and continents of the world. In addition to distant countries like Kenya, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Vietnam, Indonesia, Australia, Kosovo, The Netherlands, Ireland and Germany, there are other nations situated nearer such as Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Bolivia, Panama, Mexico, Jamaica and Venezuela. Curacao and Bonaire also participated with one delegation. Curacao stood out again after it was nominated as one of the new countries that have undertaken interesting and innovative activities in 2015. On the third day Curacao again excelled, as the representative of the Kauffman Foundation and co-founder of among others companies such as Booking.com launched a contest in a congress hall filled with more than 2,000 participants. Elgenia Pieternella from Curacao won the prize: two round trip tickets to one of the destinations of the "Viva Colombia" airline. The Colombian press picked up on this news. PHILIPSBURG:--- The Police Department, on Monday March 21st 2016, started with general controls on different locations on the island and controls will continue. The main focus for these controls is to give tickets to those the drivers, who had ample opportunity to have the vehicle road tax paid, but until now have not done so. Approximately 4000 license plates had until Monday March 21st not been paid for and picked up. Over 60 fines were given and over 40 cars were towed thus far. Many drivers were given fines for not having the license plate attached or screwed to the front and rear vehicle. Many of the license plates were simply placed on the dashboard of the vehicle which is also a violation of the Traffic Ordinance. The police have also noticed that many car rentals rented out their vehicles to persons visiting the island without having the 2015 license plate replaced by the one of 2016. When these vehicles are stopped it causes the visitors some inconvenience and temporary delays. The car rental companies on the Dutch side of the island are the ones responsible for making sure, that the old license plates on their vehicles are replaced by new ones. The police are sending a stern massage to all car rental companies, that they should make sure that all of their vehicles registered on the Dutch side carry a 2016 license plate. The search for the escape prisoner Kathron CUCHI Fortune is also ongoing as part of the controls. Police are busy handing out the WANTED flyers of this fugitive which is offering a reward of Nafls. 5000, - for information which leads to his capture. This WANTED flyer can also be seen on most electronic build boards situated at different locations on the island. The Justice Department continues to seek assistance from anyone in the community on either side of the island who have information concerning the where about of this fugitive to call the authorities immediately. Another suspect arrested. A second suspect with carrying the initials A.D.H. (17)and involved in the investigation concerning the school brawl in Reward and Sint Peters area, during which several students were stabbed, was arrested on Monday March 21st. This suspect also filed criminal charges and was held for questioning. The first suspect that was arrested was released by the Judge of Instruction. More arrests in this case are not to be excluded as the investigation continues. TIBCO and Pivotal Team Up to Expedite Development of Cloud Native Applications PALO ALTO, CA (Marketwired) 03/22/16 , a global leader in integration, analytics, and event processing, today announced it is collaborating with , the company accelerating digital transformation for enterprises, to offer businesses the ability to leverage a Cloud Native platform for digital business transformation. The collaboration empowers organizations to simplify the creation of Cloud Native applications via and run them on the platform, thereby expediting and simplifying the development and operation of Cloud Native applications. By offering businesses the ability to develop Cloud Native applications swiftly and effectively, companies will have the tools and agility needed to meet the demands facing enterprises as they pursue cloud adoption. Developing Cloud Native applications is key for a digital business to remain agile and respond to business needs, said Matt Quinn, executive vice president, products & technology, and chief technology officer, TIBCO. Through our collaboration with Pivotal, our customers will have access to a top-of-the-line solution that combines the integration capabilities of TIBCO BusinessWorks Container Edition with Pivotals Cloud Foundry platform to build, test, and deploy Cloud Native applications at startup speeds. TIBCO BusinessWorks Container Edition overcomes the complexity of integrating various microservices through automation, enabling developers to focus on building the business logic of applications. This is achieved by enterprise IT building an integration application that can be leveraged again and again as an organizations needs require. Cloud Native is about delivering software faster, consistently, and reliably at scale to your customers. TIBCO understands that todays enterprise IT departments are tasked with developing, testing, and deploying cloud applications. Pivotal Cloud Foundry provides the runtime Cloud Native platform complementing TIBCO BusinessWorks Container Edition, and together provides organizations with continuous delivery of cloud applications that spur digital business growth, said Joshua McKenty, senior director, Global Ecosystem, Pivotal. More information about TIBCO BusinessWorks Container Edition is available by downloading this data sheet: . To request a demo, visit , and to see a short video of how TIBCO BusinessWorks Container Edition operates, please visit . To hear more about strategies for moving to the cloud from industry experts at TIBCO, Pivotal, Cloud Foundry, and Forrester Research, listen to TIBCOs Destination: Digital online roundtable titled, Going to Cloud? Heres What Youll Change and Why now available . For additional information about TIBCO, please visit . Be part of the digital business transformation conversation and attend TIBCO NOW in May in Las Vegas; register for this years conference by visiting the event website: Pivotals Cloud Native platform drives software innovation for many of the worlds most admired brands. With millions of developers in communities around the world, Pivotal technology touches billions of users every day. After shaping the software development culture of Silicon Valleys most valuable companies for over a decade, today Pivotal leads a global technology movement transforming how the world builds software. TIBCO Software empowers executives, developers, and business users with Fast Data solutions that make the right data available in real time for faster answers, better decisions, and smarter action. Over the past 15 years, thousands of businesses across the globe have relied on TIBCO technology to integrate their applications and ecosystems, analyze their data, and create real-time solutions. Learn how TIBCO turns data big or small into differentiation at . TIBCO, TIBCO BusinessWorks, TIBCO NOW, and the TIBCO logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of TIBCO Software Inc. and/or its subsidiaries in the United States and/or other countries. Pivotal and Cloud Foundry are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Pivotal Software, Inc. in the United States and/or other countries. All other product and company names and marks mentioned in this document are the property of their respective owners and are mentioned for identification. Lindsey Ashjian TIBCO Software Inc. (650) 846-8862 Businesses at risk of alienating selfie-generation because of outdated communications practices March 22nd, 2016 London, UK Businesses are at risk of alienating their next generation of tech-savvy employees if they do not change their approach to new live technologies, according to new global research launched today. Although 85% of employees use video as part of their everyday lives today, only 28% say their employers are proactively encouraging them to use video at work to communicate. 72% feel that live video has the power to transform the way they communicate at work and 69% believe that increased use of video conversations would help employee retention at all levels within the organisation. The research, conducted amongst 4,000 employees across the UK, Germany, France and the US, also found that only one in seven (14%) employers is good at providing communications tools at work which mirror those employees use at home. Almost two thirds (63%) assert that their employers could make better use of live video, pointing to culture, collaboration and training as examples. Furthermore, 63% say that younger employees now expect to use live video as a communications tool when they enter the workplace. James Campanini VP & GM EMEA, BlueJeans Network commented Millennials communicate in real-time and use video and photographs in all aspects of their lives they are the selfie-generation who are comfortable on screen and sharing experiences with their friends and colleagues. Its clear from our research that some businesses are failing to recognise that the way their staff want to interact and collaborate is changing in line with this. The research from BlueJeans Network also found: Talent magnet: 51% said they would prefer to work for a company that embraces live video as a way to communicate and 73% believe hiring of new staff could be transformed with video, changing relationships between employers and candidates as well as between bosses and employees at a cultural level (75%) Lust for live: 72% of employees admit they have higher expectations of information being readily available than they did two years ago and 82% see live video playing a useful role within their organisation over the next two years whether in training, troubleshooting customer issues or product collaboration Transforming meetings and inboxes: Seeing people rather than just hearing them is seen as a key benefit of video communication (60%). Furthermore, 68% see live video saving time spent in unproductive, long face-to-face meetings in the next five years whilst over half (54%) see it significantly reducing the volume of email traffic Western business culture is changing to become more informal and personal, driven by new technologies. If the last business communications revolution was about the written word and email, the next one is about video and seeing people. Its not that hard for employees to imagine a working day where every meeting, phone call or email becomes a live video chat, concluded Campanini. As consumers weve adapted to running our lives in a real-time way using video as well as written words, now its the turn of businesses to embrace technology and cultures that let us do the same at work. The findings show that more employees in the UK are calling for more use of live video than their counterparts in Germany, France and the US. 59% of respondents in the UK agreed that they would prefer to work for a company that invested in high quality video collaboration. This is higher than the US (53%), France (48%) and Germany (46%). A higher percentage of UK employees also agree that collaboration with colleagues will become much more enjoyable through live video (65%), younger employees are expecting live video as a communications tool (66%) and that live video will save time spent in face-to-face meetings (73%). For more information on the power of live video, download the BlueJeans Love Live Video report here: https://bluejeans.com/lovelivevideo Ubimax Enterprise Wearables Suite becomes part of McKinseys Capability Centers Bremen, February 22th, 2016: Ubimax today announced its collaboration with global management consulting firm McKinsey & Company. A first step in the partnership between the two market leaders was the integration of the Ubimax Wearable Computing solutions xPick, xInspect, xMake and xAssist in McKinseys Model Warehouses and Model Factories, supporting intralogistics, inspection, manufacturing and remote assistance procedures. Jan Junker, CCO of Ubimax, is enthusiastic about the new partnership: We are very happy that we have been selected by McKinsey to provide our innovative Enterprise Wearables Suite to its Capability Centers around the world. Working together with McKinsey and its extensive client base obviously provides a tremendous value for us and will further accelerate the global adoption of our solutions. To consult enterprises and organizations on the improvement potential of lean warehouse processes, McKinsey developed the Model Warehouse, offering an experimental learning environment to its clients. From now on, the awarded Ubimax pick-by-vision solution xPick is part of the mobile Model Warehouse operated by McKinsey and the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). The xPick solution was configured to match the requirements of the Model Warehouses training sessions. Knut Alicke, Partner of McKinseys Supply Chain Management Practice, states: We are convinced of the crucial role of Wearable Computing within Industry 4.0. Both in Manufacturing and Warehousing it will significantly improve performance of operations and many of our clients are already applying the new technology. In its Model Factories in Darmstadt, Venice, and Atlanta, McKinsey strengthens the capabilities of its clients in lean manufacturing and lean management. xAssist, xInspect and xMake have all been successfully integrated into these Capability Centers. Using xAssist, the remote expert sees exactly what the worker on site is seeing and hence is able to provide detailed feedback and instructions directly onto Smart Glasses. All of this while the worker on-site has both hands available to conduct his work. With xInspect and xMake, intuitive step-by-step work instructions are displayed including documentation possibilities like recording videos or taking pictures. As a result, the speed and quality of maintenance and troubleshooting processes increases while machine downtimes as well as travel time and costs are significantly reduced. The cooperation between the two global market leaders Ubimax and McKinsey marks a milestone: business customers now benefit from joined experience and a unique international offer on Industry 4.0 solutions and best practices. Companies interested in exploring Ubimax Enterprise Wearables Suite in a realistic industrial set-up in one of McKinseys Capability Centers can reach out to McKinsey & Company or Ubimax. 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 Live scores and highlights: UNLV visits Notre Dame Saturday UNLV and Notre Dame meet Saturday in South Bend for the first time ever on the college football gridiron Marquette springs upset, Slinger survives in football playoffs The nine Milwaukee-area top-seeded football teams all won Friday night. The results across Level 1 set up some interesting games for the week ahead. 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 Dawn breaks in this new depiction of Spaceport America in New Mexico, the future home of Virgin Galactic's suborbital spaceliner fleet. Spaceport America is a launching facility for numerous private space companies. The facility is widely considered the first spaceport dedicated to commercial spaceflight. The spaceport broke ground in 2006 in New Mexico and was substantially complete around 2012. On Aug. 15, 2019, private space tourism company Virgin Galactic revealed their completed "Gateway to Space" building at the Spaceport complex. Virgin Galactic is considered the anchor tenant of Spaceport America; public money contributed at least $209 million to attract Virgin founder Richard Branson and others to establish facilities there. The company's Gateway to Space building is where spaceship passengers will prepare for flight into space and where mission control will manage spaceflight operations. Why New Mexico? The age of space tourism officially launched when SpaceShipOne financed jointly by Scaled Composites and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen successfully flew into space twice in 2004. By making the trip, SpaceShipOne secured the Ansari X-Prize and $10 million. Its technology impressed Branson, who announced in 2004 that Virgin would fund the development of a successor spacecraft called SpaceShipTwo. The X-Prize also spurred interest in Spaceport America. In 2004, New Mexico won a bid to host the X-Prize Cup, which was intended to be an exhibition to showcase the technologies available for space tourism. The first event occurred in October 2005, drawing 20,000 people to Las Cruces. Two months later, Branson and then-New Mexico governor Bill Richardson announced a deal to bring the Virgin headquarters to the state. The state would build a facility to host several companies, but Virgin would be the chief tenant. "We're going where no one has gone before. There's no model to follow, nothing to copy. That is what makes this so exciting," Branson said at the announcement that December. "We might even be able to allow those aliens who landed at Roswell 50 years ago in a UFO a chance to go home." At the time, officials estimated that construction would begin as early as 2007, with the facility opening in 2009 or 2010 for business. Virgin also planned to fly its first commercial spaceflight by the end of the decade. However, both sides experienced development delays that pushed back their estimates by several years. Reported issues affecting Spaceport America included environmental assessment findings and problems with the design of the headquarters interior. The Virgin Galactic suborbital vehicle SpaceShipTwo, called Enterprise, soars over New Mexico's Spaceport America terminal when it was still under construction under the belly of its huge mothership WhiteKnightTwo during the spaceports runway dedication ceremony on Oct. 22, 2010. (Image credit: Barbara David Full story Building the facility Spaceport America is fairly isolated from large population centers, with the largest nearby city being Las Cruces 55 miles away. Government officials spent several months negotiating with landowners for the space that the facility would require to run commercial spaceflights. On Dec. 11, 2006, an agreement was brokered allowing for 18,000 acres of state trust land. Participants in the pact included the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, the State Land Office, Sierra County and two ranch owners. Design concepts for the spaceport rolled out in 2007 as two counties agreed to contribute tax money for the construction. Then in 2008, Virgin signed a 20-year lease agreement with the state of New Mexico to put its headquarters and operations at Spaceport America. Although some flights were already running from launch pads, the official groundbreaking of the facility didn't take place until 2009. Virgin's "Eve" carrier spacecraft designed to hoist the first SpaceShipTwo above the ground for suborbital runs made a flypast during the ceremony. But officials emphasized that they were not relying on Virgin to make their money. Small satellites for military and research purposes were some of the other client types sought. "We can't have a spaceport that just has a one-sided mission. Because if that mission has a hiccup, then we and this investment are going to have a very bad day," said Steve Landeene, then-executive director of the New Mexico Spaceport Authority, in 2009. "The key is a diverse portfolio." Virgin Galactic's VMS Eve carrier aircraft at Spaceport America in New Mexico. (Image credit: Virgin Galactic 2019) Waiting for business In 2014, Virgin Galactic experienced a fatal test flight that killed one pilot and also pushed back its plans again for a commercial spaceflight. In December, the Wall Street Journal wrote that the spaceport still is "largely vacant, with little benefit to surrounding communities" -- and locals were worrying about the future given the crash. At the time, spaceport officials said they were looking for other tenants to complement Virgin (SpaceX is also a tenant.) In early 2015, a bill moved by New Mexico Senator George K. Munoz suggested selling Spaceport America, citing problems with waiting for operations to begin. The bill was stranded in finance committee in March 2015, with officials saying there wasn't a lot of widespread support for the idea. "There was a lot of hoopla before that if 'we build it they will come,' but it has been several years now and nobody's shown up yet," Munoz said in a debate cited on Space.com. "New Mexican taxpayers are continuing to foot the bill for a $250 million empty facility that is providing the Legislature shaky operational information at best." The spaceport also generates money through space work (such as an UP Aerospace launch in mid-2016) and tourism-related activities: "we also host special events, photo-shoots, filming and air-related activities," the facility says on its website. Anderson also emphasizes that the facility is a "long-term investment" that will require help from the state legislature, although Virgin remains committed to the facility. The road leading up to Spaceport America and Virgin Galactic's Gateway to Space in New Mexico. (Image credit: Virgin Galactic & The Spaceship Company) Virgin Galactic's Gateway to Space Virgin Galactic is well into the test-flight program with its current spaceflight system WhiteKnightTwo and SpaceShipTwo, which are known as VMS Eve and VSS Unity, respectively. Unity reached suborbital space for the first time in December 2018 and did it again in February 2019, earning five people pilots Mark "Forger" Stucky, CJ Sturckow, Dave Mackay and Mike "Sooch" Masucci, and chief astronaut instructor Beth Moses their commercial astronaut wings. Those landmark flights, and the others leading up to them, took off from Mojave Air and Space Port in southeastern California. But the final phases of the test campaign will be carried out at Spaceport America later this year. "Following the completion of [the testing] program, we will move to the start of commercial service and begin flying our future astronauts into space," Mackay, Virgin Galactic's chief pilot, wrote in a blog post on Aug. 15, 2019. Those commercial services will operate out of the new Gateway to Space building. Virgin Galactic showcased two of the building's three floors in August 2019 during a media event. The first floor, called Gaia, is the Gateway's social center; it features a coffee bar and other spaces where members of the spaceflight team can interact with passengers and their families. Gaia's color scheme is meant to complement and evoke the Chihuahuan Desert landscape that surrounds Spaceport America, Virgin Galactic representatives said. "The Earth-focused design will provide a fitting welcome to those newly graduated astronauts returning from space with a new appreciation and understanding of our home planet," they wrote in the same statement. The second floor, named Cirrus, is decorated in shades of gray and white, representing flight and the sky. Cirrus is the spaceflight-operations hub; it's home to mission control, the mission briefing room and the pilot corps, Virgin Galactic representatives said. The Gateway to Space also houses a hangar in its center, which VMS Eve just started calling home. This space is huge big enough to accommodate two WhiteKnightTwo vehicles (which have wingspans of 140 feet, or 43 meters) and five SpaceShipTwos, Virgin Galactic representatives said. Additional resources: Learn more at Virgin Galactic's official webpage. Interested in purchasing a ticket to space? Put your name on the waiting list. Watch: Richard Branson's update on SpaceShipTwo test flights. This article was updated on Aug. 15, 2019 by Space.com Senior Space Writer Mike Wall and Reference Editor Kimberly Hickok. In August 2011, NASA astronaut Ron Garan captured this photo of the Perseid meteor shower from space. The meteor investigation aims to analyze meteor showers' composition from the space station's unique vantage point. After two explosive setbacks, a meteor experiment designed to track "shooting stars" from space is again poised to launch to the International Space Station and scientists are hoping the third time's the charm. Michael Fortenberry, principal investigator on the mission, called Meteor Composition Determination (Meteor for short), and a researcher at Southwest Research Institute in San Antonio, is eager to finally turn the tool's high-resolution camera toward the many meteor showers that rain down on Earth's atmosphere after the camera is delivered to the space station this week. The experiment will launch tonight on Orbital ATK's Cygnus cargo ship, with liftoff set for 11:05 pm EDT (0305 GMT) from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. You can watch the Cygnus launch live on Space.com beginning at 10 p.m. EDT (0200 GMT), courtesy of NASA TV. "This is actually the third Meteor instrument that we've built," Fortenberry said at a news teleconference March 15. "The first Meteor instrument was destroyed with the Orb-3 Cygnus launch at the very end of October in 2014 we got the ground spare and got it ready for flight, and it was launched on SpaceX [CRS-]7 last June, which was destroyed." [Related: Sticky, Explosive Science Riding Cygnus Spacecraft to Space Station] "It's been in not quite development but just building one after the other for the last year or so," he added. This NASA image shows the location on the International Space Station where the new Meteor Composition Determination experiment will be mounted in the Destiny module's Window Observational Research Facility. (Image credit: NASA) Dust and debris left in the wake of comets regularly rain down on Earth's atmosphere as meteors, glowing from the friction of plowing through air particles. The objects usually vaporize during the process ones that make it all the way down to Earth earn the title "meteorites." Meteor showers happen when the Earth passes through a comet's path, which happens regularly throughout the year. The Meteor experiment will take advantage of the space station's unique vantage point to see far more than eager Earth-based skywatchers can. It was developed as a collaboration among the Southwest Research Institute, the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space, and Japan's Planetary Exploration Research Center at the Chiba Institute of Technology. "[The] Meteor [experiment] will be mounted in the U.S. National Lab on the station in the Window Observational Research Facility, or WORF like the Klingon security officer in 'Star Trek: The Next Generation,'" Fortenberry said. Peering from this unique vantage point, the camera will be able to film, and determine the composition of, meteor showers big and small when the station is in darkness and even search for meteor showers too tiny to be noticed from Earth's side of the atmosphere. (Plus, researchers will use the camera to survey Earth and watch spacecraft leaving the station re-enter the atmosphere.) The tool consists of an off-the-shelf high-definition camera with a special grating that can be added to the lens to split the light coming from the meteors into its different wavelengths, which will help determine what the particles are made of. Astronauts on board will stop by to change the diffraction grating for gathering different measurements or ordinary video. Back on Earth, the researchers will be able to download occasional videos from the device, but there is way too much data for it all to be sent down. Instead, the researchers are also sending up 35 hard drives to be filled with the camera's observations that can be brought down from space over time. Fortenberry said the researchers took the time to make a couple of tweaks for the experiment's third iteration: adding a lens with a wider field of view, and fitting the diffraction grating to the lens in a different way that will be easier for the astronauts to operate. This time, Meteor is heading to space aboard Orbital ATK's Cygnus spacecraft with a United Launch Alliance Atlas rocket, which will also bring supplies for the astronauts living on the space station as well as several new experiments to run on the giant orbiting lab. Email Sarah Lewin at slewin@space.com or follow her @SarahExplains. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com. A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket will launch an unmanned Orbital ATK Cygnus spacecraft from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on March 22, 2016 to deliver nearly 3.5 tons of supplies for astronauts on the International Space Station. An Orbital ATK Cygnus spacecraft is scheduled to launch toward the International Space Station tonight (March 22), and you can watch the liftoff live online. A United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket will launch an unmanned Orbital ATK Cygnus spacecraft from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on March 22, 2016 to deliver nearly 3.5 tons of supplies for astronauts on the International Space Station. (Image credit: NASA/Ben Smegelsky) The robotic cargo spacecraft is set to launch atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral's Launch Complex 41 at 11:05 p.m. EDT (0305 GMT on March 23). Currently, NASA's current weather forecast predicts a 90% chance of good weather for the launch. You can watch the launch live here on Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV. Launch coverage will begin at 10 p.m. EDT (0200 GMT). The launch may even be visible to observers along the U.S. East Coast, depending on weather conditions. Among other science experiments, the Cygnus spacecraft is carrying what is scheduled to be the largest piece of material ever set aflame in space. In total, the spacecraft will carry about 7,500 lbs. (3,400 kilograms) of research equipment, science experiments, crew supplies and vehicle hardware to the orbiting laboratory. This is the fifth attempted launch of a Cygnus spacecraft as part of Orbital ATK's Commercial Resupply contract with NASA. All but one of the previous four launches were successful; in October, 2014, the company's Antares rocket exploded just second after liftoff. This is the second "enhanced" Cygnus spacecraft to make a trip to the space station; the first enhanced version flew in December. The new version of the spacecraft has increased storage capacity compared to previous models. This particular Cygnus vehicle will carry more cargo to the station than any of the previous five Cygnus station re-supply missions. This image shows the projected path of the Cygnus spacecraft scheduled to launch on March 22, 2016. (Image credit: Orbital ATK) "At the end of the day, these re-supply missions are critical," Kenneth Todd, the International Space Station operations integration manager, said during a news briefing yesterday (March 21). "They kind of become our lifeblood on the space station. So as we get into this regular cadence of flights, it really does allow us to do more. It keeps our crews good and healthy, and at the same time, it allows us to do the critical research that we're all wanting to do, that we want to do with this program." Coverage of the launch will wrap shortly after liftoff, but will resume at about 12:45 a.m. EDT Wednesday (0445 GMT) for Cygnus' solar-array deployment. That will be followed by a post-launch briefing at about 1:00 a.m. EDT Wednesday (0500 GMT). If the launch is unable to proceed on Tuesday night, the next launch window will open on March 23 at 10:40 p.m. EDT (0240 GMT on March 24). The Cygnus spacecraft is scheduled to arrive at the orbiting laboratory on Saturday, March 26, at approximately 6:40 a.m EDT (1040 GMT). The crewmembers currently on board the ISS will grab the Cygnus spacecraft using the station's robotic arm. Coverage of the rendezvous will begin at 5:30 a.m. EDT (0930 GMT), and at 9:15 a.m., NASA TV will have coverage of the crew installing the spacecraft at the bottom of the station's Unity module. You can also watch coverage of the arrival and installation here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV. The Cygnus spacecraft will stay on the station for about two months, NASA said, during which time the crew will fill the cargo vehicle with several tons of trash. The spacecraft will then burn up during re-entry into Earth's atmosphere. A team of scientists and engineers tests the components of Saffire I and Saffire II, part of a NASA-led program to test the behavior of fire in microgravity conditions. A special experiment that will ignite the biggest-ever human-caused fire in space is about to blast off. The robotic Cygnus cargo spacecraft is scheduled to launch toward the International Space Station (ISS) tonight (March 22) atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station at 11:05 p.m. EDT (0305 GMT on March 23). Cygnus is packed with nearly 4 tons of supplies and scientific hardware, most of which will be offloaded by astronauts after the freighter arrives at the orbiting lab this weekend. But some of the science gear will remain aboard Cygnus and go with the cargo vessel when it departs from the ISS about two months from now including the NASA-led Spacecraft Fire Experiment (Saffire), which will set a large-scale fire inside the Cygnus. [Experiment Will Light Largest Fire in Space (Video)] "NASAs objective is to reduce the risk of long-duration exploration missions, and a spacecraft fire is one of the biggest concerns for NASA and the international space exploration community," Jason Crusan, NASAs Advanced Exploration System director, said in a statement. A team of scientists and engineers tests the components of Saffire I and Saffire II, part of a NASA-led program to test the behavior of fire in microgravity conditions. (Image credit: NASA) The Saffire experiment will take place inside a box that measures about 3 feet wide by 2 feet tall by 4 feet long (0.6 by 0.9 by 1.2 meters), NASA officials said. This box contains a computer and instrumentation, as well as a compartment holding the sample material that will be burned. The setup and conditions are designed to be similar to those aboard the ISS and the Orion capsule, which NASA is developing to help get astronauts to Mars and other faraway destinations. When Cygnus is a safe distance away from the ISS, NASA engineers working with mission team members from Virginia-based spaceflight company Orbital ATK (which built the Cygnus) will beam a signal from Earth that initiates the experiment, which could last up to 2.5 hours. Onboard sensors and cameras will record a variety of data about the fire and its spread. After this information is relayed down to Earth, Cygnus will be sent to burn up in Earth's atmosphere the freighter's usual fate. "Saffire will be the biggest man-made fire ever in space. Currently, we can only conduct small combustion experiments in the microgravity environment of the space station," Gary Ruff, NASAs Spacecraft Fire Safety Demonstration project manager, said in the same statement. This diagram shows NASA's Saffire Experiment Module (top cover removed) to see how it will ignite a fire in space for science. (Image credit: NASA) "Saffire will allow us to safely burn larger samples of material without added risk to the station or its crew," Ruff added. "Using the Cygnus cargo vehicle to host Saffire offers a unique opportunity to conduct beneficial spacecraft fire safety research using existing mission profiles." This experiment is just the first of three space fires that NASA plans to set as part of the Saffire program. Saffire-2 and Saffire-3 will launch later this year on two separate Cygnus missions to the ISS, NASA officials said. Tonight's liftoff will kick off Orbital ATK's fifth official ISS resupply mission for NASA. The company used its Antares rocket for the first three such launches, the last of which ended just seconds after liftoff in October 2014 when the Antares exploded. Orbital is using an Atlas V to get the Cygnus aloft until a revamped version of Antares is ready to go. Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com. An Atlas V rocket carrying an Orbital ATK Cygnus spacecraft stands poised to launch a cargo mission to the International Space Station for NASA from Florida's Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on March 22, 2016. The nighttime launch may be visible to observers along the east coast of North America. People in eastern North America have a chance to see a private cargo spacecraft launch toward the International Space Station tonight (March 22). Orbital ATK's robotic Cygnus spacecraft is scheduled to launch atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida tonight at 11:05 p.m. EDT (0305 GMT on Wednesday, March 23). You can watch the liftoff live here at Space.com, courtesy of NASA TV. The launch will take Cygnus on a path nearly parallel to the U.S. East Coast, and the glow created by the Atlas V's engines should therefore be visible in varying degrees along much of the Eastern Seaboard, weather permitting. [Cygnus Carrying Lots of Science to Space Station (Video)] The two-stage Atlas V's first stage is powered by an RD-180 engine, which will burn for 4 minutes and 15 seconds. Six seconds after the RD-180 shuts down, the rocket's first and second stages will separate. Then, 10 seconds later, the Atlas V's Centaur upper stage will fire up and burn for 13 minutes and 38 seconds. Two minutes and 49 seconds after the Centaur shuts down, the Cygnus freighter will separate and head into orbit. The first stage should create a fairly conspicuous light in the night sky, while the Centaur upper stage will likely be considerably dimmer. Air Force weather forecasters say there is an 80 percent chance of favorable launch conditions Tuesday night, with cumulus clouds posing the only concern. If unsettled weather or a technical problem scuttle Tuesday's attempt, backup opportunities are available Wednesday at 10:40 p.m. EDT (0240 GMT on Thursday, March 24) and Thursday at 10:17 p.m. EDT (0217 GMT on Friday, March 25). This Orbital ATK graphic shows the timeline for the March 22, 2016 launch of a Cygnus spacecraft and its Atlas V booster from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. (Image credit: Orbital ATK) What to expect The Atlas V booster should be readily visible to many viewers in the southeastern United States, thanks to the fiery output of the first stage's powerful RD-180 engine. The light emitted will be visible for the first 4 minutes and 15 seconds of the launch out to a radius of about 500 miles (840 kilometers) from Cape Canaveral, an area more than three times the size of Texas. Depending on where you are relative to Cape Canaveral, the Atlas V might become visible at any point from just a few seconds after launch to perhaps 4 minutes after liftoff. The upper-stage Centaur will be visible only by virtue of the light emanating from its single RL10C engine. How will this look? This description of the previous Cygnus-Atlas V launch, in December 2015, by Astronomical Society of Long Island member Tom Peninno provides a guide: "It was about 6 minutes into the flight that I went outside and viewed to the very clear southern sky, hopefully to get a glimpse of the Centaur engine, along with Cygnus, riding up and out along the East Coast. It took about 2 minutes, then all of a sudden, a bright light appeared in the SSE sky. I would estimate its magnitude to be about 0, and [it] appeared approx 25 degrees in altitude, moving smoothly and quite rapidly towards the east. The pass was observed for at least 2 minutes, eventually fading from view along the eastern horizon. I must tell you that it was a magnificent sight, one of the best and clearest viewings of rocket launches that I have ever observed." [The World's Tallest Rockets: How They Stack Up] You may want to scan the sky with binoculars to get the best view of the Centaur firing. Where to look For most viewers, depending upon your distance from the coastline, the rocket will be relatively low on the horizon (5 to 25 degrees your fist on an outstretched arm covers about 10 degrees of sky). So be sure there are no buildings or trees to obstruct your view. The exceptions are along the immediate Atlantic coast of Nova Scotia, where the Atlas V will be seen to climb rather high into the southeast sky, and the Avalon Peninsula of southeast Newfoundland, where the rocket will pass almost directly overhead. Also keep in mind that the rocket likely will appear to move very fast, much faster than an orbiting satellite due to its near-orbital velocity at low altitudes. The rocket will basically travel across 90 degrees of azimuth in less than a minute. Here's a brief viewing guide for different portions of the Eastern Seaboard: Southeast U.S. coastline: Anywhere north of Cape Canaveral, viewers should initially concentrate on the south-southwest horizon. If you are south of the cape, look low toward the north-northeast. If you're west of the cape, look low toward the east-northeast. Anywhere north of Cape Canaveral, viewers should initially concentrate on the south-southwest horizon. If you are south of the cape, look low toward the north-northeast. If you're west of the cape, look low toward the east-northeast. Mid-Atlantic region: Look toward the south about 3 to 6 minutes after launch. Look toward the south about 3 to 6 minutes after launch. Northeast: Concentrate your gaze low toward the south-southeast about 6 to 8 minutes after launch. Concentrate your gaze low toward the south-southeast about 6 to 8 minutes after launch. Nova Scotia and Newfoundland: Concentrate low toward the south-southwest about 8 to 10 minutes after launch. Canadian fireballs? Last December, a Canadian astrophotographer based in Nova Scotia caught sight of a pair of brilliant fireballs "traveling sort of parallel to each other," which were visible in the sky for only about 10 seconds before they vanished out of sight. The sighting was made about 15 minutes after the Atlas V and Cygnus launched from Cape Canaveral. Some speculate that these fireballs might have been re-entering components of the Atlas V rocket. If so, perhaps viewers based in Maine or Canada's Maritime Provinces will see a repeat performance about 12 to 16 minutes after Tuesday's launch. Editor's note: If you capture an amazing photo of Tuesday's rocket launch or any other night-sky sight that you'd like to share for a possible story or image gallery, send images and comments to Managing Editor Tariq Malik at spacephotos@space.com. Joe Rao serves as an instructor and guest lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium. He writes about astronomy for Natural History magazine, the Farmer's Almanac and other publications, and he is also an on-camera meteorologist for News 12 Westchester, N.Y. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on Space.com. The astronauts who flew NASA's first two space shuttle missions, Robert Crippen, Richard Truly, John Young and Joe Engle, as seen in 1981. Crippen, Truly and Engle will reunite in Houston on Sept. 17 for a celebration of their flights 35th anniversaries. Thirty-five years after they launched on board the "world's greatest all-electric flying machine," the astronauts who flew aboard NASA's first two space shuttle missions are set to land in Houston this September for an anniversary celebration. STS-1 pilot Robert Crippen, STS-2 commander Joe Engle and STS-2 pilot Richard Truly, who with Engle proved that the space shuttle was reusable, will be the honored guests at a dinner on Sept. 17 at Space Center Houston in Texas, the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation (ASF) announced. "It was an honor for me to fly [on] STS-1 with John Young," Crippen told collectSPACE.com, as he looked to the event this fall. "Everyone involved with the space shuttle program and there were tens of thousands put in a lot of blood, sweat and tears to make it a success. I was proud to be a part of proving their hard work had paid off." [STS-1: NASA's First Space Shuttle Flight in Pictures] Young and Crippen lifted off aboard the maiden flight of the space shuttle Columbia on April 12, 1981 (by coincidence, 20 years after the first human spaceflight in 1961). For two days and 36 orbits of the Earth, the two astronauts tested the winged vehicle on its first mission, opening and closing its payload bay, firing its orbital maneuvering and reaction control system thrusters, and putting the orbiter's avionics controls through its paces. On April 14, they safely re-entered the Earth's atmosphere and landed Columbia on the dry lake bed at Edwards Air Force Base in California, despite hundreds of the shuttle's thermal heat shield tiles being damaged. "Columbia on that first flightdemonstrated that she was everything we had hoped for and more," said Crippen. Unlike NASA's previous spacecraft, the shuttle, or Space Transportation System (STS), was developed to be largely reusable, with the external tankbeing the only component discarded on each mission. Columbia's second mission, STS-2, marked the first time in history that a piloted space vehicle launched again. "Over a six-month period in 1981, the space shuttle made its maiden flight, then turned around and demonstrated it could be re-used, flying again. It was a great privilege and a load of fun to be involved with the thousands who made these remarkable events happen," said Truly. Engle and Truly launched on board Columbia on Nov. 12, 1981. During the two-day mission (cut short by three days due to a failed fuel cell), they operated the space shuttle's Canadarm robotic arm for the first time and the orbiter was used for its first remote sensing observations of the Earth. In another first, Engle manually piloted Columbia through a part of its re-entry and through the approach and landing, touching down at Edwards in California on Nov. 14, 1981. "Tens of thousands of the finest administrators, managers, designers, fabricators, technicians and operators in the world committed their professional talents and reputations to produce the world's first and finest reusable spacecraft," Engle said. "They all did their jobs superbly." "John, Crip, Richard and I were selected as [the] pilots to demonstrate just how superb and professional a job they had done," added Engle. "It was an honor to represent this team... it was humbling." Crippen, Engle and Truly will further recount their historic flights at the ASF's dinner in Houston. Their success led to a fleet of five shuttle orbiters flying a total of 135 missions over the 30-year program. The final space shuttle mission, STS-135, landed five years ago this July. Space shuttle Columbia STS-1 and STS-2 mission insignia. (Image credit: NASA) Dan Brandenstein, who served as a CapCom (spacecraft communicator) in Mission Control during both STS-1 and STS-2 and who today is the chairman of the ASF's board of directors, will be emcee for the evening. Brandenstein is also a veteran astronaut, including commanding the orbiter Endeavour's maiden mission in 1992. When tickets go on sale April 1, guests will have the option to also tour NASA's Johnson Space Center and have their photo taken with the astronauts. Jacobs Engineering and Texas A&M University have partnered as sponsors for the event. The Astronaut Scholarship Foundation was founded by the Mercury astronauts in 1984 to award students excelling in undergraduate science and engineering degrees. Since its inception, the ASF has bestowed more than $4 million in scholarships to more than 400 of the nation's top scholars. In addition to presenting the STS-1 and STS-2 celebration in September, the ASF is also hosting the gala for the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame induction on May 13-14 at NASA's Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida. Tickets for that event are available now through the ASF website at astronautscholarship.org. collectSPACE.com is a proud media sponsor for the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation's STS-1 and STS-2 celebration. Follow collectSPACE.com on Facebook and on Twitter at @collectSPACE. Copyright 2016 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved. For the first time, scientists have seen the shock wave emanating from an exploding star in visible light. Using NASA's planet-hunting Kepler Space Telescope, researchers saw the shock wave coming from a massive star explosion (a supernova) that came into Kepler's view in 2011. The star that ended its life as a supernova is named KSN 2011d, which is nearly 500 times the diameter of the sun, and located about 1.2 billion light-years away. The shock breakout lasted only about 20 minutes, so Kepler's ability to catch a glimpse of this event is "an investigative milestone for astronomers," NASA said. At the time Kepler observed the explosion, the telescope was gazing continuously at a point in the Cygnus constellation, looking for extrasolar planets. The shock wave observation will give investigators more information into how these shock waves are formed from stellar explosions. [Video: Supernova's Super-Shockwave Seen For The First Time] "In order to see something that happens on timescales of minutes, like a shock breakout, you want to have a camera continuously monitoring the sky," lead author Peter Garnavich, an astrophysics professor at the University of Notre Dame, said in a statement. "You don't know when a supernova is going to go off, and Kepler's vigilance allowed us to be a witness as the explosion began." An animation of a dying star exploding into a supernova. NASA's Kepler Space Telescope, designed to find planets outside Earth's solar system, captured an image of a supernova shock wave in visible light for the first time. (Image credit: NASA Ames, STScI/G. Bacon) Kepler also observed the explosion of a second exploding star: KSN 2011a, which is about 300 times the diameter of the sun and located 1.2 billion light-years away. There's a mystery to the results, though, as only one of the stars the bigger one had an observable shock wave. Scientists suggest that perhaps the smaller star had a bunch of gas around it, which masked the shockwave. "That is the puzzle of these results," Garnavich said. "You look at two supernovae and see two different things. That's maximum diversity." Type II supernovae explode catastrophically after the core of a star runs out of nuclear fuel. Just as a building needs support beams to hold it up against gravity, the star is able to stay "inflated" due to a balance between gravity and the outward pressure of nuclear production. When the nuclear fuel runs out, the core collapses. The video above shows a star entering the later phase of its life, when it begins to swell, and becomes known as a red giant or red supergiant, before exploding. (The video features the song "Shockwave Supernova," by Joe Satriani). Although only one of the two supernovae had an observable shock wave, their explosions were both close to mathematical models of Type II explosions. "All heavy elements in the universe come from supernova explosions. For example, all the silver, nickel and copper in the earth and even in our bodies came from the explosive death throes of stars," Steve Howell, project scientist for NASA's Kepler and K2 missions at NASA's Ames Research Center in California, said in the same statement. "Life exists because of supernovae." Kepler's primary mission was changed in 2013, after a second of its reaction wheels (which keep the spacecraft steady) failed. The mission is still operating now as K2, using the pressure of the sun for steadiness and occasionally changing positions to avoid the sun frying the detector. Garnavich is part of the Kepler Extragalactic Survey, a team that is looking at the results from Kepler before 2013. The research has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. Follow Elizabeth Howell @howellspace. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com. Right now, spread out across the United States, there are some 18,300 people who share one thing in common: they all submitted applications to become the next U.S. astronauts. So many people applied almost three times as many as NASA's earlier record that Yuri's Night, the world space party that celebrates the past, present and future of human spaceflight, thinks that it merits a badge of honor, literally. On Tuesday (March 22), Yuri's Night began selling the new "#BeAnAstronaut patch,"commemorating the tremendous turnout for the 2017 NASA astronaut recruitment. [How to Become a NASA Astronaut] "It's a way to celebrate the record-breaking response to the next astronaut-selection process," explained Ryan Kobrick, Yuri's Night chairman and president. "Selections like these make us all better citizens... as we consider what more we can offer." "Plus, space patches are cool!" he added. The #BeAnAstronaut patch was designed for Yuri's Night by artist Tim Gagnon, whose portfolio includes some of the official crew emblems for NASA's space shuttle missions and for the International Space Station expeditions. Most recently, Gagnon helped to design the insignia for the first one-year missionon the space station completed by U.S. astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonaut Mikhail Kornienko. For this patch, Gagnon chose the shape of a capsule, as a nod to the spacecraft that the new astronauts will fly. Hands extending up from the bottom of the patch illustrate the number of people "reaching for the stars." Two hands, outstretched from the left, are shown grasping for a silver astronaut pin, the award given to all new NASA candidates who pass their basic training. From the right, a spacesuited arm bears a mirror reflecting the image of the International Space Station, as a symbol of the past. The future destinations of the moon and Mars are front and center on the insignia. Inscribed along the border are "Class of 2017," the roman numerals for 22 ("XXII") in reference to the 22nd astronaut selection, the statement "I Applied to #BeAnAstronaut," and the slogan "So You're Saying There's A Chance..." Available for sale through April 30 for $5 each, part of the proceeds from the patches will go to support Yuri's Night, a registered nonprofit organization. Patches can be ordered through the Yuris Night website at yurisnight.net. Yuris Night logo depicting cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. (Image credit: Yuris Night) "Even for those who did not apply to be a NASA astronaut, these patches show [their] support for the future of human spaceflight and the upcoming class of NASA astronauts," Yuri's Night wrote on its website. "For those that did apply, this patch is 'Critical Space Hardware' that applicants will want to have on their journeys to the cosmos." "Wouldn't it be wonderful if all 18,300 applicants had one?" remarked Gagnon. NASA officials have said the agency plans to select eight to 14 candidates out of the 18,300 applications received. The space agency plans to reveal the new class in June 2017. Yuri's Night parties are held annually on April 12, the date that Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin launched on the first human spaceflight in 1961 and that 20 years later, the first NASA space shuttle lifted off to orbit the Earth. Follow collectSPACE.com on Facebook and on Twitter at @collectSPACE. Copyright 2016 collectSPACE.com. All rights reserved. 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. The blueprint followed by the perpetrators suggest the hallmarks of an IS attack. The Belgian federal prosecutor has confirmed that two of the explosions were set off by suicide bombers, reminiscent of the attacks carried out by IS jihadists in Paris last November . Several of the perpetrators in that assault wore explosive belts. Security officials are also considering the possibility that the Brussels attacks may have been a retaliatory act in response to the arrest in Belgium on Friday of Salah Abdeslam, one of the suspected perpetrators of the Paris attacks. He was arrested in the city's gritty Molenbeek district, a hotbed of Islamist radicals. The neighborhood was also home to Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who led the IS group in Paris. 04/06/2016 (08:00PM - 09:00PM) (Wednesday) : ALEX CHAMPIONS AN EXPERIMENTAL CANCER TREATMENT WITH HIGH RISKS - STEELE STEBBINS, RUDY MARTINEZ, WILSON CRUZ, NATE MOONEY AND CHRIS GORHAM GUEST STAR - Alex (Melissa George) and Pierce (Dave Annable) disagree on whether an experimental treatment for those with advanced stage cancer is right for the hospital's patients. True to form, Alex takes matters into her own hands with a risky move to find volunteers. Meanwhile, Max (Joshua Leonard) looks to drastically change the family dynamic with Alex, and Ji-Sung (Maya Erskine) connects with Callahan (Jamie Kennedy). Don Hany, Shelley Conn, D.L. Hughley and JLouis Mills also star.04/08/2016 (09:00PM - 10:00PM) (Friday) : THE FAITHFUL ARE TARGETS AS A MINISTER USES HIS UNIQUE ABILITY TO INCREASE HIS FLOCK - WILLIAM MAPOTHER GUEST STARS - An evangelical preacher (guest star William Mapother) has a tent revival unlike any other when he uses his Wesen identity to gain more believers. Nick (David Giuntoli) and Hank (Russell Hornsby) are called to the scene as things escalate when a group of "true believers" are hell bent on saving the preacher and his flock by any means necessary. Meanwhile, Capt. Renard (Sasha Roiz) takes further steps to gain power in local government. Elsewhere, Eve (Bitsie Tulloch) uses Adalind's (Claire Coffee) ol' hat trick to gain more access to Black Claw. Silas Weir Mitchell, Reggie Lee and Bree Turner also star.04/11/2016 (10:01PM - 11:00PM) (Monday) : A CROSSWORD PUZZLE STARTS OFF A DEADLY CASE.After Patterson (Ashley Johnson) discovers a hidden message in the New York Times crossword, she embarks on a tattoo scavenger hunt that leads her into danger. Oscar (guest star Francois Arnaud) finally tells Jane (Jaimie Alexander) more about who she was, and Weller (Sullivan Stapleton) seeks his Dad's opinion about who kidnapped Taylor Shaw. Also starring Marianne Jean-Baptiste, Rob Brown, Audrey Esparza and Ukweli Roach. Guest starring Jay O. Sanders and Joe Finical.04/14/2016 (09:00PM - 10:00PM) (Thursday) : After a tragedy puts a member of the team in grave danger, the task force must rely on Red (James Spader) and his unconventional methods to survive. Meanwhile, Tom (Ryan Eggold) and Liz (Megan Boone) face an unexpected complication that could affect their baby's future.04/14/2016 (10:00PM - 11:00PM) (Thursday) : Jackson (David Lyons) agrees to help Gil (Michael Raymond-James) and Shawn (Larenz Tate) with their revenge plan, but keeps it a secret from his fiancee, Marina (Claire van der Boom). Little does he know, Gil and Shawn are the subject of a homicide investigation, and Jackson's former enemies are now on his trail. Bre Blair, Conor O'Farrell, Deidrie Henry and Demetrius Grosse also star.04/15/2016 (09:00PM - 10:00PM) (Friday) : AN ANCIENT CODE OF VENGENCE PUTS THE LIVE OF LOCAL YOUTHS IN DANGER - KEIKO AGENA AND CARY-HIROYUKI TAGAWA GUEST STAR - When the severed head of a young man is found under a bridge, Nick (David Giuntoli) and Hank (Russell Hornsby) find themselves on the case of Japanese Wesen acting on an ancient tradition of revenge. Elsewhere, Adalind (Claire Coffee) decides to go back to work at her old law firm and has her first face-to-face with Eve (Bitsie Tulloch). Silas Weir Mitchell, Sasha Roiz, Reggie Lee and Bree Turner also star.04/17/2016 (09:30PM - 10:00PM) (Sunday) : Stella (Mia Serafino) becomes a webcam girl, Shea (Miranda Cosgrove) gets a job at a fast-food restaurant and Ethan's (Clifford McGhee) crush on Shea increases when he works under her. Bob (Stacy Keach) and Alice (Carlease Burke) argue about end-of-life issues and who should pull the plug on whom. Patrick Warburton and Carrie Preston also star. Now that theres one confirmed case of mosquito-borne Zika virus in Connecticut, experts said its only a matter of time before more residents test positive for the illness. Its not unexpected at all, said Dr. Richard A. Martinello, medical director of infection prevention at Yale-New Haven Hospital. I think this is something were going to see with increasing frequency as Zika continues to spread. The virus, primarily spread by mosquitoes though there have been sexually transmitted cases has swept through Brazil and more than 30 other countries, most of them in Central and South America. There also have been more than 250 cases of Zika in 34 states and the District of Columbia. The majority were in people who traveled to Zika-afflicted countries, but at least six were sexually transmitted. Zika has been linked to birth defects and developmental issues in children born to mothers infected with the illness. A recent study also linked Zika to Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare disorder that can cause paralysis. Travel related More Information Zika stats Here are some key numbers on Zika virus in Connecticut and the United States as a whole, from the Connecticut Department of Public Health. To date, 258 cases of Zika have been reported in 34 states and the District of Columbia. Of those, 18 were in pregnant women and another six were sexually transmitted. In Connecticut, 198 samples have been received for testing. 67 results have been received. One person has tested positive for the illness. See More Collapse On Friday, the state Department of Public Health confirmed that the first case of Zika had been detected in Connecticut, in a person 60 to 69 years of age. That individual had traveled to a country in South America where Zika is prevalent and developed symptoms including a skin rash, fatigue, chills, headache and muscle aches after returning in early March. The patient is recovering but odds are good this will be far from the last Zika case in Connecticut. While we do not anticipate transmission of Zika from this patient, we are continuing to prepare for more cases as residents travel to affected areas, said health department spokesperson Maura Downes in an email on Monday. That is why the (health) commissioner continues to urge residents, particularly pregnant women or women planning to become pregnant, to avoid traveling to Zika-affected countries, and if travel to those areas is unavoidable, that residents take all precautions to protect against mosquitoes. Nearly 200 samples have been taken from residents to be tested for Zika virus, according to the state DPH, and only 67 results have been received. Local hospitals said they continue to send samples to the state for testing, and, like Downes and Martinello, expect at least some tests to yield positive results. I dont think its surprising, said Dr. Michael Parry, Stamford Hospital director of infectious diseases. Weve got a country where people travel. We see travel-related infections on a regular basis, from malaria to dengue to just plain flu. Its not surprising wed see a case of Zika, (or that wed continue to see more of it.) Many questions The good news is that the Connecticut patient didnt acquire Zika in the state. I think were a long way off from that being the case, said Diana Adams, a maternal fetal medicine specialist with Greenwich Hospital. Indeed, a new study in the journal PLOS Currents: Outbreaks spotlighted 50 U.S. cities where the Aedes aegypti, the species of mosquito associated with Zika, could spread during the summer months, and none were in Connecticut or even in New England. Nearby New York City, however, was one of the cities featured in the study. Locally, doctors said they wouldnt rule out the idea of Zika-causing mosquitoes making their way to the state, particularly once the weather warms up and mosquito season begins in earnest. Adams and other doctors said they continue to get a lot of questions about Zika, but, because the illness is relatively new to North America, they dont always have a lot of answers. Its not unlike the Ebola outbreak of a few years ago, when it was constantly unclear exactly how worried people should be, said Dr. Zane Saul, director of infectious diseases at Bridgeport Hospital. One young nurse asked me this morning, If I do travel to (a Zika-affected area), how long can I wait before trying to get pregnant? he said. Thats one of the things we dont know. STAMFORD Free swimming classes for kids, water-safety forums and pool inspections are coming to the city this summer thanks to a $131,000 federal grant. Stamford is one of five municipalities across the country receiving money from a new U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission program that targets swimming and pool safety. The CPSC is distributing the money to help towns and cities enforce the Virginia Graeme Baker Pool & Spa Act, passed in 2007. The law is designed to prevent deaths from entrapment in pool and spa drains after the 7-year-old granddaughter of former Secretary of State James Baker III died when she was caught in a hot-tub drain. Bridgeport, which won a $75,000 grant, is the only other city in Connecticut to receive funds from the total pool of $780,000. The District of Columbia and two Florida counties also received funds. The Stamford YMCA will use part of the grant to offer a free Safety Around Water Program to 1,000 children ages 3 to 17. This is going to teach kids how to be safe around the water, whether at the beach or pool, said Tim Dudics, vice president of operations at the YMCA. The goal is to reduce the risk of drowning and give children confidence around the water. Drowning is the No. 1 cause of unintentional death for children ages 1 to 4, according to the CPSC. Safety, especially childrens safety, is a top priority, Stamford Mayor David Martin said in a statement. Especially as we get into the warmer months, it is important for all of us to relearn safety around water, and this funding will help. The citys recreation department will offer free swimming classes to 64 children. The funds also will be used to train health and recreation staff in water safety, which they will pass on to the public in forums at summer camps and the government center. All public pools in the city will be inspected. Residential pool owners will have access to educational materials. For more information about the CPSC grant program and pool safety, visit PoolSafely.gov. jalterio@scni.com; 203-964-2263 Ten years ago today Jack Dorsey fired off the worlds first tweet. Scooping co-founder Biz Stone by a full minute, little did he know the automated five-word message would later set fire to a communication revolution, 140 characters at a time. Today, around 500 million tweets are dispatched into the Twitterverse every 24 hours from all over the globe. To mark its 10-year anniversary, the social media giant tweeted out a stirring highlight reel. The #lovetwitter-hashtagged trip down memory lane features some of the most memorable Twitter posts yet, sweet cosmic tweets from space and Mike Tysons epic hoverboard fail included. Starting in ?? on 3/21 and moving across the ?, we thank you for 10 incredible years. Love, Twitter#LoveTwitterhttps://t.co/pH4WWdgK6q Twitter (@twitter) March 20, 2016 To mark the popular microblogging platforms 10th birthday, here are 10 interesting facts about Twitter that you might not know: 4. Katy Perry boasts the most Twitter followers. The chart-topping pop songstress has almost 85 million followers. Thats more followers than people who live in Egypt. Fellow pop sensation Justin Bieber comes in second (77 million followers) and Taylor Swift third (73 million). The most followed brand on Twitter is not Twitter. Its YouTube (61 million followers). A valid reason they call it the club sandwich could be if you can fit your mouth round it you must be in some kinda club ? KATY PERRY (@katyperry) March 13, 2016 5. The idea for Twitter was hatched on a slide at a playground. Not all Silicon Valley tech startups are born in hipster bars and coffee shops. Case in point: Twitter. Dorsey says he first shared his idea for the social network on a playground slide like a geeked-out Moses on Mount Sinai. Related: Ellen's Oscar Selfie Rapidly Becomes the Most Retweeted Image of All Time 6. Ellen Degeneres sent the most retweeted tweet. If you guessed it was the comedians star-studded Oscar-selfie tweet, youd be right. Actor Bradley Cooper actually snapped the viral pic at the 2014 awards show. Its been retweeted nearly 3.4 million times since The Ellen Show first fired it off. Call us weird, but we like the Simpsons cool cartoon version of the pic better. If only Bradley's arm was longer. Best photo ever. #oscars pic.twitter.com/C9U5NOtGap Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) March 3, 2014 7. The 140-character limit is because of mobile phones. True story: those little glowing bricks we cant put down are to blame. Indeed theyre the reason tweets are short, 140-character blips. At first, Dorsey limited them to 160 characters because that used to be the max length for text messages on mobile phones. The restriction was later trimmed back to 140 characters, which he calls a beautiful constraint, one thats apparently here to stay. Maybe. Related: Looking Back at Twitter As It Celebrates Its 10th Birthday Today 8. Twitter co-founder Noah Glass got booted from the company. Twitter co-founder Noah Glass, who originally came up with the company's name, was famously fired from the startup. The San Francisco-based developers heart-breaking story of being "forgotten" and betrayed by his fellow founding team made headlines in 2011. Today, his Twitter bio simply reads: I started this. I wish the twitter team the best of luck and trust that they will be successful in continuing to develop this important communication tool. noah glass (@noah) September 14, 2013 9. Twitter has yet to turn a profit. Despite the social networks massive global user base -- notably down for the first time last quarter amidst an internal shakeup -- the company is not profitable. With its accumulated revenue losses approaching $2.1 billion, Twitter stocks are now trading at about a third less than the $26-per-share price put forth with the companys November 2013 IPO. So much for being the next Facebook. Related: Here's What the First Hires at Apple, Google and Other Top Tech Companies Are Doing Now 10. Being Twitterpated is a thing. The word "twitterpated" doesnt just mean to be infatuated. The Twitter-related version sounds like constipation for a reason. As Dorsey explains, it's when youre overwhelmed with information or youre just so excited that you forget to tweet or forget to share. We know the feeling. Related: Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved The San Francisco Bay area is a popular place to call home, with its thriving industry and reputation as one of the happiest and healthiest places to live in the country. Yet a new report reveals that residents are leaving the Silicon Valley for more affordable places. Many of these departing residents are American-born technology professionals, who take their knowledge and expertise to other markets. While San Francisco and the Valley have no shortage of talented newcomers, the increase in workers looking for jobs in other areas has left many wondering what the region needs to change to keep them. The fact is it's just too hard to live in the world's center of technological innovation, so thousands of professionals are getting out. Here are a few of the biggest reasons why. Not enough affordable housing. Much has been written about housing shortages in San Francisco and Silicon Valley, and it doesnt look like the situation will greatly improve soon. Despite a bit of a tech contraction, unemployment is miniscule and hundreds of jobs are added each month to a region with an already severely limited housing supply. As a result, home prices are at all-time highs and furnished apartment rentals average nearly $3,500 a month for a unit in a moderately-priced part of San Francisco. For a young professional trying to start a family while launching a career, the high cost of living can make Silicon Valley an impossibility. There are some signs that this is getting slightly better. Facebook recently offered employees $10,000 to live closer to its Menlo Park headquarters. Mountain View recently voted in several pro-growth candidates and gave its thumbs up to building more than 10,000 new units of high density housing. San Francisco now has a record 62,000 housing units in its pipeline (although many are luxury units). All of this sounds good but probably wont change the housing ecosystem all that much for several more years. Its a rough environment for young entrepreneurs who are often told they must be in the Valley to be near the money and talent needed to launch and scale companies. Professionals can instead choose to relocate to Austin, Seattle and similar cities that have thriving tech industries. A similarly-sized furnished apartment in Austin costs only $1,300 a month, rising to just over $1,900 a month if professionals want to live in more expensive parts of town. This is in addition to less expensive utilities, groceries, restaurant prices and transportation. Related: 6 Global Alternative Cities to Silicon Valley to Start Your Company Family life. San Francisco has an exciting nightlife, shopping and culture. All of these are things that appeal to young, single professionals as they begin their careers, as well as older single people who dont plan on having children. However, families more often choose to live outside of the city, as proven by a 2012 report that San Francisco had the lowest percentage of children of any major metropolitan area. Finding a home suitable to raising children is one challenge, as is the cost of those homes. According to the Mayors Office of Housing, the percentage of children in the highest and lowest income brackets has grown, while middle-class families appear to to be raising their families elsewhere. Oakland and other East Bay locations have often been the immediate recipient of this migration. Tech hubs further afield are reaping the benefit of this migration as well. When its time to raise a family, Durham, North Carolina, and Huntsville, Alabama are both considered among the top cities for technology jobs and both have significantly lower costs of living than Silicon Valley. As professionals research opportunities in other areas of the U.S., they factor in the quality of schools, cost of homes and proximity of those homes to the areas where theyll be working. Related: How to Launch a Thriving Startup Without the Silicon Valley Hassle Less competition for jobs. All of the cost-of-living and lifestyle factors aside, one of the biggest benefits of leaving Silicon Valley for other tech hubs relates to the big fish, small pond theory. So much competition exists in Silicon Valley, it is difficult to stand out. In a smaller city with newer businesses, however, a Silicon Valley native may rise to the top of a pile of resumes, especially for those who choose cities that are considered emerging tech hubs, such as Denver or Miami. Related: 7 Surprising Ways Atlanta Competes With Silicon Valley For professionals interested in launching a new startup, these markets are especially attractive. Instead of toiling alongside the hundreds of other innovative new businesses scattered around Silicon Valley, entrepreneurs can launch their ideas in an area where there are fewer startups. Resources may not be stretched as thin in these areas, making it potentially easier for them to quickly scale their new businesses. Silicon Valley is an exceptional place to build a career, but it presents difficult challenges for even the toughest worker. However, with so many up-and-coming tech hubs in the U.S. and across the globe, professionals are realizing they are not limited to one region to be successful. As American-born tech workers leave the Valley faster than they arrive, this net loss is turning into gain for dozens of other regions. Ultimately, this is a good sign for the health of technology in the U.S. as a whole. Related: 3 Reasons Tech Workers Are Fleeing Silicon Valley Intel Mastermind Andy Grove Dead at 79 Kuwaiti 'Treps Graduate From MTB Startup School In Silicon Valley Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved Undoubtedly, Connecticut is in a crisis. Real median household incomes have decreased 5 percent over the past five years while public sector salaries and benefits have risen to the highest in the country. However, March 10 may go down in history as the leadership moment Connecticut has been waiting for. That moment was not created by the governor or the legislature, but by a union. The University of Connecticut Professional Employees Associations (UCPEA) membership voted 78 percent in favor to withdraw their new contract which provided for automatic, annual 3-4.5 percent salary increases over five years, while increasing their work week from 35 to 40 hours. Thank you, UCPEA members, for this courageous act. Connecticut is in dire straits and we must all change course. You are leading by example. Fiscal irresponsibility converted Connecticut from a high-growth, low-tax economy into a low-growth, high-tax economy. For too many years, the state has been living beyond its means. We raised taxes again and again. We borrowed more and more money. We did not adequately fund our retirement plans. We allowed our infrastructure to deteriorate. As a result, companies and taxpayers are leaving. Incomes for hard-working people are declining for those who remain. All this makes balancing the $4 billion budget deficit over the next three years harder than catching a falling knife. The deepest sinkhole is the states $100 billion pension and health care obligations. This is like catching a falling nuclear bomb. This impacts you every day now. As state debt rises, services are cut. For example, Gov. Dannel P. Malloy just cut another $140 million from Connecticut hospitals. The unintended consequence is that the retirement benefits for 50,000 workers have put the fiscal stability of Connecticuts 3,500,000 citizens at risk. UCPEA showed us that when we approach these problems with transparency and honesty, people make good decisions. The reality is that on a per capita basis, next to Illinois, Connecticut has the highest unfunded liabilities along with the nations most generous benefits. Connecticut pays its state employees 42 percent more than similar private-sector workers receive, according to AEI. The State Employees Retirement System employees contribute only 2.2 percent of their salaries to their pensions compared to a 6 percent national average, according to the Center for Retirement Research at Boston College. Furthermore, the states generous low-premium, no co-pay health care plan defies reality for taxpayers in the private sector. I say all this as someone who has great respect for the role of unions. Both my father and grandfather were union members. Next steps First, we must all acknowledge the new economic reality, and stop waiting for a strong economy to bail us out. Second, we must address our huge unfunded retirement liabilities. For many years the state has assumed that strong and consistent investment returns of 8 percent or more would pay for most of the generous retirement benefits that were granted. However, from 2001 to 2014, the actual annual return was only 5.4 percent. This 2.6-percentage point gap means that every year we have fallen farther and farther behind the funding we need. Unless we can generate much better returns, which seems increasingly unlikely, there are only three other ways to solve the problem: taxpayers will have to pay even higher taxes; retirement benefits will have to be reduced to realistic, equitable levels that the state can afford; and/or employees will have to contribute more of their current income to pay for their benefits. By the way, our state legislators could show some leadership, as UCPEA has, by reducing their own overly generous health care benefits to reflect the new economic reality. The leadership moment These are rare, but not completely uncharted waters. We can look to recent history (think: Detroit) for a path through this fiscal maze. Professor Michael Useem of the Wharton School has given us a few examples in his book, The Leadership Moment. Most importantly in a crisis, leaders must not operate in isolation. Leaders must drive a shared vision, transparency and engagement. This allows great people to devise solutions to great problems. UCPEAs March 10th vote is a leadership moment for the state of Connecticut from which we all can learn. We better learn from it quickly. Steve Obsitnik of Westport is a business leader, entrepreneur, and educator. He is a former Republican candidate for the U.S. Congress. A biotech company backed by Neil Woodford, one of Britains best-known fund managers, has put plans to list in London on ice. San Diego-based Evofem, which specialises in womens healthcare, had published a prospectus and intended to list this week on the Alternative Investment Market. The company had planned to raise around $200 million (140 million) to help launch new drugs into the market, but the deal was put on hold last night, the Evening Standard understands. One potential shareholder said he would not be investing in shares because he was concerned about its timing. The flotation was to have proceeded about two months before the company knew whether it had approval from regulators in the US for one of its key products, a contraceptive gel worth $60 million a year to the company. Woodford has a near 20% stake in Evofem, worth some 65 million. He intended to increase this further if the flotation had gone ahead, sources said. Invesco, the firm where he used to work, has a near 50% stake. Woodford will not charge a fee for one of his funds, Patient Capital Trust, after it lost value amid market jitters, it emerged today. Evofems advisers JP Morgan and Cenkos declined to comment. A merican investment banks might be tempted to flee London in the event of Brexit, rating agency Moodys said, as it warned that the costs of a UK exit would outweigh the benefits. Although domestic UK banks would be largely unaffected by a vote to leave, big American banks with London-based operations would face disruption from a two-tier regulatory system between the UK and EU, potentially driving them to the Continent. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Citi have all lined up behind the campaign to remain in the EU and senior executives have privately warned that up to 100,000 bank jobs could flow overseas if the UK leaves. Banks could also move euro clearing and settlement divisions to the Continent, leading to pressure from regulators to move global banking top brass there as well. It said HSBCs decision to remain in London indicated that UK banks would probably stay put. In its warning, Moodys said Brexit would also prompt prolonged uncertainty for British industry and harm economic growth hitting the countrys credit standing. We expect that some companies would curb investments until there is greater clarity in these areas, Richard Morawetz of Moodys said. Another Brexit report out today from Oxford Economics also warned of sluggish growth in the event of a leave vote, but added that this would depend on how much of a rift occurred with EU policymakers. In an analysis of nine different Brexit scenarios, the consultancy said the British economy would shrink by 3.9% by 2030 in a worst case scenario, losing more than 20 billion of investment. The best case scenario was a 0.1% drop in the economy and a 2.4 billion investment boost. Law firm CMS also warned Brexit fears had slowed down the market in the European M&A market today. I t is a depressing fact of modern life that the markets reactions to Islamic fundamentalist terror spectaculars have become almost formulaic. Sell airlines, sell package tours, sell hotels; buy the Swiss franc, buy gold, buy Treasuries. Reduce holdings in anything related to tourism in the victim country. These big movements of global capital must bring such delight to the terrorists behind these attacks. For, make no mistake, terror is about more than wounding flesh and bone. From Bali to Brussels, its aim is to hurt its target countries economies, attacking the very model of free, creative, western capitalism that these extremists so despise. In the very short term, it works. Money flees to safe havens in the minutes, days and weeks after such an attack. People stay away from train stations and airports. Tourism - particularly in world cultural capitals like London and Paris - slumps for months, if not years. But we always bounce back. Many of the market moves we saw today will reverse within days. Tourists will eventually return to Brussels; business executives, bureaucrats and entrepreneurs wont even hesitate. Trade - that healthy symbol of peace, unity and confidence - will resume. Brussels terror attacks 1 /21 Brussels terror attacks Brussels attacks Belgian media said this picture shows the mangled train damaged by the large bomb Brussels attacks A CCTV image released by Belgian police of three suspected bombers at Brussels airport Brussels attacks Tiles fell from the ceiling near check-in desks after two explosions rocked Brussels airport PA Wire Brussels attacks Smoke is seen rising from terminal buildings Brussels attacks An injured woman sits on a chair at Brussels airport in the aftermath of a suicide attack Brussels attacks Broken windows seen at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters / Francois Lenoir Brussels attacks Passengers flee after an explosion on the Brussels Metro Brussels attacks Passengers are evacuated from a train in a tunnel near Maelbeek metro station in Brussels Twitter / @evanlamos Brussels attacks Armed police near Brussels Airport Anthony Barrett/PA Wire Brussels attacks Damage inside Brussels Airport Fethi Guloglu/PA Wire Brussels attacks Airport staff in the aftermath of the bombings Brussels attacks Airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building EPA Brussels attacks Shocked passngers and crew leave the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport Reuters/Francois Lenoir Brussels attacks The security perimeter near Maalbeek metro station following the deadly blast Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images Brussels attacks Scenes of carnage: Blown out windows at Brussels Airport following the explosions Jef Versele/PA Brussels attacks Passengers and airport staff stand outside the airport terminal building after it is evacuated EPA/LAURENT DUBRULE Londons economy fought back to its strongest position ever after 7/7 just as New York after 9/11. Paris is recovering and Brussels will, too. Terror will not win. A drop in the ocean Jayne-Anne Gadhia is an inspiring example to young women or indeed men of what they can achieve in the finance industry. From rebuilding Norwich Unions unit trust business in her twenties after Black Monday, to creating a serious challenger bank in Virgin Money, shes had a brilliant career. Exciting, too, as anyone can testify whos heard her talk about grafting 18 hours a day on her bid for Northern Rock while dashing home to see her five-year-old between deadlines. So, when she talks about how to get more women into executive posts in the City, we should listen. But I fear her proposals today to get City firms to align part of executives bonuses to gender-balance targets will have little impact. As the byzantine annual pay reports at these companies show, bonuses are based on such a complex matrix of factors that the gender tickbox will barely affect the final figure. Her idea to make banks report on the number of top women executives is a good start but lacks the requisite bite, as does the whole plan, because of its entirely voluntary status. Though well-intentioned, Gadhias proposals are only a pigeon step in the right direction. S hares in the London Stock Exchange are still trading at a premium of well over 10% to the value placed on them in the proposed takeover by Deutsche Borse. Thats something like a premium of 200p with LSE shares at 2760p. There are two straightforward but related reasons for this. The first is that LSE shareholders do not believe they are being offered enough to cede control of a business which has grown and flourished under chief executive Xavier Rolets brisk acquisitions policy. They feel the sum of the parts that Rolet has brought together is simply not reflected in the merger terms, which will give the Germans 54.4% of the combined exchanges. The second is that with Intercontinental Exchange in the wings and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in the stalls (one has declared a potential interest in bidding for LSE, the other is biding its time), we could still have a full-scale bid battle on our hands. And that will mean not just a higher offer but more likely one that involves at least some, if not all, cash rather than some TopCo new paper shares. Despite Deutsche Borse chief executive Carsten Kengeters reported comment to his staff that the merger is God-willed (my German is poor but he apparently he said Die Fusion ist gottgewollt), this is a matter which will be settled on earth not in heaven. Given that my links to the celestial are far from perfect, I have had to stick with my terrestrial contacts. Several of them are far from happy with the present deal. Its not that they are Little Englanders who fundamentally oppose anything with the word London in it being taken over by anything with the word German in it. Even my contacts have moved on from the Blitz. But some of them do tell me they feel a bit short-changed. However it is dressed up, this is a takeover and one where there is no premium being paid. Yes, I hear the arguments that the biggest shareholders in both businesses are Americans, but control of the company even if its is headquartered in London will eventually be in Germany. (Just check some of the stuff Kengeter has been saying to the press in Hesse, the state in which Deutsche Borse is regulated.) The 450 million (352 million) of identified savings do seem relatively meagre given the relative sizes and overlaps of the two businesses. Many people think that number could go far higher given time. In light of the LSE shares 250% rise over the past five years, some argue that its backers should not be over-greedy and should welcome Deutsche Borse at the third time of asking. But there is a sound case for saying investors who backed Rolet, not least in 2014s 938 million rights issue to buy Frank Russell, had faith in a future slightly more than two years out. The noises I am hearing so far are murmurings of disquiet, not the throaty roar of outright revolt. But noise there certainly is. ICE and CME still have the best part of 50 days to come up with better offers for the LSE. In the meantime, the current merger partners would do well not to suggest that they will try to rush their marriage through before the Brexit vote. F ormer Smoking Goat, Begging Bowl and Som Saa chef Seb Holmes will bring London another Thai pop-up next month. Following a run in Highbury and recently hosting a Burger Monday night, his restaurant concept Farang will take over The Lodge in Clapham on Monday nights throughout April. This time Holmes has partnered with Tomas Lenko from drinks brand Bold Spirits, who he has worked alongside at Brook Green Market where they both have stalls. Bold Spirit cocktails such as a smoked Thai iced tea and a toasted coconut Negroni will be served alongside Farang dishes including fish balls with sweet chilli and lime; fried sea bass with sour fruits and green nham yum; half chicken cooked in banana leaves; and fresh doughnuts with kaffir lime and apple jam, and coconut pandan custard. The pop-up will act as a predecessor for a fully-fledged Farang restaurant, due to launch later this spring as part of an exciting-sounding Street Feast style dining space at Flat Iron Square in Borough. It will run at The Lodge from 5.30-10pm each Monday from April 11. Tables can be reserved by emailing info@faranglondon.co.uk. Follow Ben Norum on Twitter @BenNorum Follow Going Out on Facebook and on Twitter @ESgoingout H e is one of the worlds most in-demand theatre directors, with new shows set to open in London and on Broadway and Ivo van Hove is not giving his big star names any special treatment. Van Hove is in New York with Ben Whishaw, Saoirse Ronan and Sophie Okonedo for previews of The Crucible, while simultaneously preparing to bring Kings Of War, a radical new Shakespeare production, to the Barbican next month. The Belgian director said that no matter who he is working with his cast are expected to turn up on the first day of rehearsals knowing all their lines: My approach is the same. Ben, Saoirse, Sophie these are all actors who dont need to do theatre. They want to be here. As actors theyre open. I have enjoyed working with them. After his award-winning Young Vic production of A View From The Bridge, starring Mark Strong, Van Hove, 57, has overseen the David Bowie musical Lazarus on Broadway and directed Juliette Binoche in Antigone. He says he feels at home in London and returns to the Barbican with his Toneelgroep Amsterdam company for a Dutch language production, of four and a half hours, condensing Richard III, Henry V and Henry VI into one play. The multi-media show, with English subtitles, asks questions about modern leaders: If youre making a production about leadership the first one you go to is Shakespeare. With these three kings you have the same question: should we go to war or not? Shakespeares kings knew even if they won there was a huge price to pay in the wounded and lives lost. They want to be here: Saoirse Ronan and Ben Whishaw in rehearsals for The Crucible Jan Versweyveld / Jan Versweyveld Donald Trump would have felt at home at Richard IIIs court and Henry V was an unlikely pro-European, he added. The Republican presidential debate is like a Shakespeare drama, the way they call each other a liar in public. Shakespeare shows how power for powers sake is useless. Kings of War runs from April 22 to May 1. Follow Going Out on Facebook and on Twitter @ESgoingout A banker who fled the City after the financial crisis to follow her romantic dream of learning to cook in Paris has scored a hit with her giant freakcakes. Reshmi Bennett, 32, discovered her love of cake-making while working in the French capital. She told the Standard she was drawn to pastry as it was cooler than working over a hot oven and there was no need to gut fish. Mrs Bennett, who used to work for Morgan Stanley and Bank of America, founded her cake business Anges de Sucre in 2011 and is now constantly rushed off her feet since dreaming up her bonkers designs. Following the craze for so-called freakshakes the milkshakes stuffed with nuts, pretzels, biscuits and even slices of pie that arrived in east London this year her creations include lashings of chocolate, salted caramel and Swiss meringue buttercream, with toppings ranging from macaroons to waffles. Her designs are sold in Selfridges and are the stores best-selling cake brand, with sales up 301 per cent in the past three months. Star baker: Reshmi Bennett The Standard was invited to help build one of the creations the Triple-Decker Nutella Ferrero Rocher Brownie cake. It costs 70 and is made up of brownie, cookie dough sponge and vanilla sponge with cookie dough chunks. It is iced with a Nutella-flavoured meringue buttercream and drizzled with chocolate ganache. Toppings include Oreos, brownies and Ferrero Rocher cones. Other best-sellers include the Deliciously Stella cake, named after the blogger who spoofs health food writers such as Ella Woodward, better known as Deliciously Ella. Starting at 55, it has 402 calories per 100g and is topped with Kit Kats, Kinder Buenos and Rolos. Best cake makers on Instagram - in pictures 1 /13 Best cake makers on Instagram - in pictures Crumbs and Doilies @crumbsanddoilies I Am Baker @iambaker Nadia & Co @nadiaandco Enjoy Cupcakes @enjoycupcakes Primrose Bakery @primrosebakery The Artful Caker @theartfulcaker Lael Cakes @laelcakes Lili Vanilli @lily_vanilli_cake Whipped Bakeshop @whippedbakeshop Erin Bakes @erin.bakes Mrs Bennett, 32, began making the freakcakes after her customers began asking for bespoke designs a bakery she owned in Kensington. She said: I dont think the boom in my cakes is a reaction to health foods being trendy, but I think we are a success as people always want something different and eye-catching for events. The firm also makes bespoke cakes to order and Selfridges offers them through its food concierge service. Mrs Bennett said she and her two employees, who work out of a kitchen in Acton, make about 80 cakes a week. When I say that I realise now why I am always rushed off my feet, she added. T here is one young face on Zac Goldsmiths mayoral campaign who is strikingly familiar. He is tall and handsome, very sweet but rather serious. While most 18-year-olds from his affluent background would jet off on a round-the-world gap year on leaving school he has opted instead to pace the streets of London, knocking on doors and stuffing leaflets through letter boxes. Sulaiman Isa Khan is Goldsmiths nephew, son of his sister Jemima and her ex-husband Pakistani politician Imran Khan. And before heading to university in September he is cutting his political teeth on the Tory mayoral candidates campaign to succeed Boris Johnson. Sulaiman has much in common with his beloved uncle. They are both charming and polite, intelligent and studious, and want to use politics to make a difference. Just as Zacs environmentalism was inspired by his fathers brother Teddy Goldsmith, founder of the Green Party, so Sulaiman looks up to his own MP uncle. And like Zac, whose younger brother Ben had a reputation as a bit of a wild child, he has a more gregarious younger sibling, leading to campaign insiders calling him the more studious Zac to his brothers livewire Ben. Sulaiman Isa Khan with his mother / Rex Sulaiman has become a leading light of the Tory mayoral campaigns youth wing but is just one member of the broader drive to get Zac elected, which also includes strategists who have advised Prime Ministers and Presidents. Labours Sadiq Khan also has an impressive inner team, combining seasoned Westminster operatives with experts from outside politics, including a millionaire business adviser and an Old Etonian spin doctor. As the Tory and Labour candidates enter the final weeks of the race for City Hall, their teams are digging in for the battle ahead. Team Zac Nick de Bois campaign chair The convivial former MP, who lost his Enfield North seat at the general election so found himself with the time to help out Zac full-time, has become something of a political father figure. He is said to delight in the fact he has been mistaken for the dashing Richmond Park MP while out on the campaign trail. As the architect of Enfields law, the two strikes and youre out rule for knife possession, de Bois is an experienced sounding board for crime policy. Mark Fullbrook campaign director The gregarious political strategist sits in the generals chair in Tory HQ, running a control room of around 30 staff and a web of hundreds of activists. His polling and focus groups have informed Zacs campaign every step of the way. The former head of Tory campaigns knows London politics inside out after helping run Boriss two successful mayoral bids. One of the brains behind the doughnut strategy, when the Tories won outer London. Insiders joke that his better-known colleague, Lynton Crosby, will only turn up in the final weeks if it looks like Zac is winning. Shares the Aussie election gurus bullish style. Tara Singh policy director The glossy Tory is the brains behind Zacs yet-to-be-released manifesto. She joined from No 10, where she advised the PM on energy and climate change. Previously a lobbyist at British Gas-owner Centrica. Singh and Zac discovered their mutual passion for the environment in 2005 while working on David Camerons Quality of Life group. One of his closest campaign confidants. Katy Eustice communications director The glamorous former journalist earned her political stripes working on Tory election campaigns including last years when she joined her Tory MP husband George to help turn the South- West blue. She works for Crosbys firm and has been with Zac since his selection, becoming his trusted gatekeeper and front of house. Katy Eustice (Image: Rex) / Rex Craig Elder digital director The social media expert who helped revolutionise Tory online campaigning at the last general election he and partner Tom Edmonds were praised as the Tories secret weapon heads Zacs online team. A whizz at using social media habits, spending and postcode data to read Londoners minds. The mayoral hopeful is already targeting voters with tailored messaging on Facebook and via Twitter. One insider describes him as more personable than your average geek. Jim Messina consultant Zac will have dug deep to bring American strategist Messina, who ran Barack Obamas 2012 campaign, on board the Tories paid him 369,000 at the 2015 election for advanced market research. He is working from over the Pond to focus on the voters they believe will decide the result. Messinas priority is to talk to the right people time and time again to persuade a more targeted portion of swing voters to back his man. As Zac is currently behind and will need second-preference votes to win, he will be hoping for every ounce of the US strategy gurus electoral wizardry. Alex Crowley political director Having cut his teeth on Boriss campaigns, he is now reprising his 2012 role. His grasp of research and policy and deftness with rapid response makes him a useful and dependable figure. After 2012, he wrote a book, Victory in London, which revealed Crosby considered some of the Mayors closest aides to be f***wits. Boris Johnson mentor The Mayor knows the best way to secure his legacy is for the Tory candidate to win. The Tories know Boris, who remains hugely popular in the capital, is their best weapon. Vote Sadiq, get Corbyn or Vote Zac, get Boris, is a key message. The blond bombshell name-checks Zac at every opportunity. Boris Johnson and Zac Goldsmith / Nigel Howard Ben Elliot confidant One of Londons best-connected, Elliot has pledged to do anything I can to help old chum Zacs campaign. The Duchess of Cornwalls nephew, known as the A-listers Mr Fixit, runs concierge service Quintessentially. He has previously flown teabags across the Atlantic for Madonna but Zacs demands are more low-key needing Elliot to act as a trusted sounding board at all hours. Alice Goldsmith wife Zac married the second Mrs G, banking heiress Alice Rothschild, in 2013 after they bonded over late-night poker sessions and they have two children. Zac Goldsmith mayoral policies explained Team Sadiq David Bellamy campaign manager The towering Yorkshireman is an old friend and former Tooting agent, so he knows where all the bodies are buried. He brings extensive private sector experience and a good head for figures from his career at data giant Experian. Sadiq is a fan of his dry wit. Patrick Hennessy communications director The highly respected spin doctor is a former journalist who jumped from the Sunday Telegraph to become Labours deputy director of communications under Ed Miliband. Eton and Oxford-educated, he surprised many when he came out as a supporter of the Labour Party. Sadiqs subsequent hiring of Hennessy was a masterstroke as he won the collective ear of the press in one fell swoop. Jack Stenner political director Team Khans chief strategist and resident wunderkind hes still in his twenties. Bright, energetic, urban, Stenner played a blinder when he masterminded Sadiqs surprise victory over Tessa Jowell to become Labours candidate. He manages the campaigns messaging the son of a bus driver line is all his fault and polling. Labour moless say he would take a bullet for Sadiq, such is his fierce loyalty. Sadiq Khan with wife Saadiya Khan Dr Nick Bowes policy director The brains behind Sadiqs Manifesto for Londoners which, although only published a couple of weeks ago, has been making its mark, with big ideas like the fares freeze and a living rent. iInsiders say the serious-minded aide could have a good crack at running London. Leah Kreitzman senior adviser An old friend and one of Sadiqs most trusted confidantes. The warm, bubbly LSE graduate was director of public affairs for Unicef UK. She also provides a useful link to Londons Jewish community at a time Labour needs to build bridges. Alison Picton senior adviser Sadiqs gatekeeper: every politician needs one. Ali, his long-serving some might say long-suffering diary and office manager combines protecting her boss with encouraging him to show his friendly side. Insiders say she is responsible for Sadiqs better jokes. Rajesh Agrawal business adviser The British Indian entrepreneur and philanthropist grew up in poverty in India before moving to the UK and making his 90 million fortune with foreign exchange company Rational FX. Among the first businessmen to defend Labour against anti-business accusations, he is helping Sadiq woo the City. Ellie Robinson stakeholder director Caught Sadiqs eye when she worked on Ed Milibands leadership campaign, which he ran. She is now in charge of getting him together with Londons huge range of interest groups. Credited with raising his profile as a tenacious campaigner. Saadiya Ahmed wife Sadiq met his childhood sweetheart at their Tooting comprehensive. She became Mrs Khan in 1994 the couple have two teenage daughters. Saadiya, a human rights lawyer, has supported his political career from the start they married the year he became a local councillor. Although she shies away from the limelight, she appears by his side for key events and behind the scenes she is his biggest cheerleader, and most trusted sounding board. A respected bookkeeper who stole nearly 239,000 from one of Britains most historic estates has been jailed for two years and 10 months. Carol Scott, 67, raided the accounts of the Englefield Estate Trust Corporation to buy presents for her family and boost her 38,000 a year income. She stole hundreds of pounds every week between 2007 and 2014 and cooked the books to hide the fraud, Blackfriars crown court heard. Even when the trusts financial director began to notice the missing money, Scott continued to steal and tried to shift the blame on to her colleagues. When she was caught, she claimed to have stolen less than 100,000 but the actual figure was nearly 239,000. Scott claimed she had taken up to 300 a week over eight years, but Judge Rajeev Rama Shetty said this would only account for half the money she had admitted taking. There has been no satisfactory explanation as to what the money has been spent on, he said. Scott worked as the bookkeeper for the De Beauvoir Town estate in Hackney for 39 years, and became employed by Englefield Estate Trust Corporation when it bought the estate in 2007. The jewel in the crown of the trusts 125 million property portfolio is Englefield House, which has been used for films such as The Kings Speech. Scott, who lives in Canonbury, Islington, admitted fraud by abuse of position last month. T his is the moment two men were arrested as Brussels was put on lockdown following a deadly terror strike. The photograph, posted on social media in the hours after the blasts, shows armed officers pinning two suspects to the ground in the square outside the Belgian capitals North Metro station. The stop is about two miles from the site of an explosion on the underground network in which 20 people were killed. A further 14 died in two blasts an hour earlier at Brussels Airport at about 8am local time (7am GMT). It is not known whether the arrests are linked to the terror strikes. Brussels terror attacks 1 /21 Brussels terror attacks Brussels attacks Belgian media said this picture shows the mangled train damaged by the large bomb Brussels attacks A CCTV image released by Belgian police of three suspected bombers at Brussels airport Brussels attacks Tiles fell from the ceiling near check-in desks after two explosions rocked Brussels airport PA Wire Brussels attacks Smoke is seen rising from terminal buildings Brussels attacks An injured woman sits on a chair at Brussels airport in the aftermath of a suicide attack Brussels attacks Broken windows seen at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters / Francois Lenoir Brussels attacks Passengers flee after an explosion on the Brussels Metro Brussels attacks Passengers are evacuated from a train in a tunnel near Maelbeek metro station in Brussels Twitter / @evanlamos Brussels attacks Armed police near Brussels Airport Anthony Barrett/PA Wire Brussels attacks Damage inside Brussels Airport Fethi Guloglu/PA Wire Brussels attacks Airport staff in the aftermath of the bombings Brussels attacks Airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building EPA Brussels attacks Shocked passngers and crew leave the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport Reuters/Francois Lenoir Brussels attacks The security perimeter near Maalbeek metro station following the deadly blast Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images Brussels attacks Scenes of carnage: Blown out windows at Brussels Airport following the explosions Jef Versele/PA Brussels attacks Passengers and airport staff stand outside the airport terminal building after it is evacuated EPA/LAURENT DUBRULE Brussels has been on high alert since the arrest of Paris terror attack suspect Salah Abdeslam last week. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said what we feared has happened" as people were warned not to venture outdoors unless they had to. The attack also sent shockwaves across Europe, with international train services being stopped at borders and other countries ramping up security. In the UK, police said extra officers were being mobilised to reassure the public, though force bosses stressed it was not in response to any specific threat. A carer was caught stealing cash from a 92-year-old woman in her home on a camera set up by the victims niece. Lorraine Cenci, 44, was recorded taking 40 from an envelope in which the widow kept money for expenses. The victim, who has survived cancer, suffers from illnesses including osteoporosis and cannot walk unaided. On March 5, Cenci, a mother of three, took her to the toilet and left her there before rifling through her handbag. But relatives of the victim who they have asked not to be named had grown suspicious after money went missing from her handbag in January. Niece Debi Riley, who looks after her aunts finances with husband Danny, wrote down the serial numbers of two 20 notes and put the cash in the envelope. Lorraine Cenci, 44 at court / Jeremy Selwyn They tucked it in the pensioners handbag and hid a camera on her bedside table at her home in Enfield which live-streamed the theft to their smartphones. We watched her on our phones literally taking money from her bag, said Mrs Riley, 52. She and her husband, who had been waiting nearby, called 999 and caught up with the carer, who was arrested. The serial numbers the family had written down matched those on the notes in her possession. Cenci, of Enfield, pleaded guilty to one count of theft by an employee at Highbury magistrates court. She had worked for the family, who paid the care agency 1,500 a month, for about two months. Her lawyer told the court she carried out the theft in a moment of madness and had needed cash to attend a Mothers Day meal organised for her own mother. She was given an eight-week suspended jail sentence and ordered to pay 40 compensation, an 80 victim surcharge and 85 prosecution costs. Sentencing her yesterday, Judge Julia Newton said: Its an abuse of trust on one of the most vulnerable members of society. You took advantage of the employment to go out for a meal. Mrs Riley said: We are relieved that there has been a jail sentence, even if suspended. There should be more scrutiny of carers. My heart bleeds for all those vulnerable people who do not have families to protect them. We are very angry and bitter that an old person could be preyed on in this way its horrific. She revealed her aunt had been burgled last year and was nervous, adding: We havent told her about the theft, she would be too upset. "Shes so vulnerable, its like looking after a child and the fact that somebody could have done this, Im just absolutely mortified. SureCare Enfield supplied Cenci to the family. It said: We suspended the care worker in question as soon as we became aware of the allegation and subsequently dismissed her for gross misconduct. "We carry out advanced Disclosure and Barring Service checks on all prospective care workers. As soon as the allegation was made, we reported it to the local authority and the Care Quality Commission and appropriate information was provided to the DBS. "We have remained in close contact with the family of the client throughout and will continue to do so. N early 60 firefighters were today called to tackle a blaze at a school in south-west London. London Fire Brigade sent eight fire engines and 58 firefighters to the private Oliver House School in Nightingale Lane, Clapham just after 6am. Crews spent two hours fighting the flames before the fire was brought under control. No one has been injured in the blaze, which damaged half of the first floor. The fire broke out on the second floor of a building separate from the main block and was discovered by a school caretaker. A school spokeswoman said: "His quick actions and the very prompt arrival of the London Fire Brigade meant the fire was contained and extinguished in a short space of time. "Thanks to the London Fire Brigades swift action the fire damage was limited to a small proportion of the building." The spokeswoman added the school was not closed following the blaze. London Fire Brigade said the cause was under investigation. Oliver House School is an independent school for boys and girls aged from three to 11 years-old. Ella Leonard, chairman of the board of governors, said: Speaking to parents in the playground this morning, I was struck by their positive attitude and support for the school which epitomises the spirit of the whole community. F lights between the UK and Brussels will be cancelled for a second day following the deadly bomb attacks in the Belgian capital. All flights at the city's main airport were suspended after two explosions in the departure hall. The airport has confirmed that it will remain closed on Wednesday. All Eurostar trains to and from Brussels were suspended for most of today, with services from London terminating in the French city of Lille. The cross-Channel operator said two trains from London to Brussels would run tonight "for those whose travel is a necessity" with a full service expected to resume tomorrow. British Airways said customers due to travel to Brussels up to and including March 29 can alter their bookings. Brussels Airlines, which serves a number of UK airports, also cancelled its services from Brussels for the next two days. Security has also been stepped up at transport hubs in the UK. A Heathrow Airport spokesman said: "In the light of events in Brussels Airport we are working with the police at Heathrow who are providing a high-visibility presence." Gatwick issued a statement, which read: "As a result of the terrible incidents in Brussels we have increased our security presence and patrols around the airport." The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) updated its travel advice for Britons in Brussels, urging them to "stay away from crowded places and avoid public transport at this time". Anyone who is concerned about family or friends in Brussels can contact the FCO's helpline on 020 7008 0000. A young man has been stabbed in a suspected gang-related attack in south London. The victim, aged in his 20s, was knifed in Banning Street, Greenwich, at around 5pm, police said. Officers were called to the scene by London Ambulance Service paramedics, who treated the man and took him to a south London hospital. Police said officers are investigating whether the stabbing was gang-related. A Metropolitan Police spokesman said: We were called to Banning Street in Greenwich at around 5pm by the London Ambulance Service. A male, aged in his 20s, was taken to hospital. His condition is not serious. No arrests have been made. Anyone with information is asked to call police on 101. T he owner of an east London pizza takeaway has been hit with an almost 8,000 bill after the kitchen was found infested with mice droppings. Flavas Pizza in Roman Road, Bow, was shut for two days following an inspection by Tower Hamlets Council officers. In December 2014, the councils environmental health team discovered a large amount of mouse droppings under, on and behind kitchen equipment. Evidence also showed rodents had gnawed through food packaging and entered the takeaway through access points. Emergency closure: The takeaway was shut for two days by Tower Hamlets Council / Tower Hamlets Council Droppings were found on a storage shelf and under fridges along with food debris, which officers said posed a health risk. The takeaway was shut by the council for two days using emergency closure powers but was allowed to reopen when conditions improved. However, a follow up visit last month showed the business had not taken advice given to them. On Thursday, February 11, two company directors of Next Level Trading pleaded guilty to nine offences at Thames Magistrates Court. The company was fined 4,000, ordered to pay 3,500 costs and a 120 victim surcharge, leaving a total bill of 7,620. The takeaway received a one out of five score on the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme. G eorge Osborne's Budget came under fire today from former Tory chancellor Kenneth Clarke for cutting tax while putting off spending cuts. The criticism came as the Chancellor was battling to save his career amid renewed gossip that he will be shifted to the post of Foreign Secretary in the next Cabinet reshuffle. Mr Clarke hailed Mr Osborne as brilliant but questioned the entire strategy of last weeks Budget, which triggered the resignation of Iain Duncan Smith as Minister for Work and Pensions. It was meant to be a popular Budget. It actually eases fiscal policy, which isnt what I would have done, said Mr Clarke. Its reduced taxes and put off spending cuts, which is very unusual for the first Budget after an election. He said Mr Osborne was right to target payments to disabled people but added: They should have worked out how they were going to explain it, how they were going to sell it. Mr Clarke also said the Government had ring-fenced rather too much, criticising the decision sanctioned by David Cameron yesterday to rule out further welfare cuts for the time being. In the Commons this afternoon, Mr Osborne will insist that he delivered a compassionate Budget despite his attempt to slash Personal Independence Payments. He is not expected to explain how he will fill the 4.4 billion black hole left by a decision to cancel reforms to PIPs. In words trailed ahead of his speech, he says sorry Mr Duncan Smith resigned but offers no apology for his attempt to cut welfare spending: As Conservatives, we know that those who suffer most when Britain loses control of its public finances and the economy crashes arent the best off but the poorest and the most vulnerable. However, one senior Tory MP told the Standard: Osbornes leadership hopes are dead now. Nobody thinks he can recover enough. Mr Duncan Smith today made it clear that he would not make a resignation statement in the Commons. Only 13 per cent of people think Mr Osborne will ever become prime minister, according to a poll by YouGov for the Times. Only eight per cent think he is up to the job, including two thirds of those who voted Conservative in the general election last year. G eorge Galloway caused controversy today by blaming the Brussels carnage on Western leaders. His attack from the hard-left came as right-wingers said the attacks should end free movement across Europes internal borders. Outspoken mayoral candidate Mr Galloway tweeted within minutes of the explosions that the monstrous extremism was a creation of western interventions in Afghanistan and the Middle East. The monster which has slain and maimed so many innocent people today was created by us as surely as Dr Frankenstein created his, alleged the former MP who is now standing for Mayor of London under the Respect banner. In a series of tweets he said: Those who rule us built this monstrous extremism, and continue to sustain it, in Syria and elsewhere. And their policies feed its blood-lust. Another tweet read: Seeds of this death cult sown by us in Afghanistan in 80s. They fructified mightily with the invasion of Iraq. They now grow wild in Syria. Debris at Brussels airport following two explosions Ukip said the terror attacks showed that the European Unions system of open borders was a threat to security. The partys defence spokesman Mike Hookem MEP said Europe believed 5,000 jihadists were at large in the EU having slipped in from Syria including 94 in Molenbeek, Brussels. This fact alone should alert people to the fact that open borders are putting the lives of European citizens at risk, he said. Under the Schengen agreement, which Britain did not sign, people can travel freely between most EU states without showing a passport. This horrific act of terrorism shows that Schengen free movement and lax border controls are a threat to our security, said Mr Hookem. Former Conservative shadow Home Secretary David Davis said the attacks would lead to questions over whether Europe dared extend visa-free travel to 75 million Turkish citizens. From America, presidential candidate Donald Trump commented on Twitter: Do you all remember how beautiful and safe a place Brussels was. Not anymore, it is from a different world! U.S. must be vigilant and smart! W inston Churchills grandson today launched an extraordinary attack on Tories campaigning to quit the European Union, saying they should be kicked really hard in the balls like a savage dog. Senior MP Sir Nicholas Soames said David Cameron was too soft on Brexiteers and he claimed London Mayor Boris Johnson did not really believe in leaving the EU. If you have an Alsatian sitting in front of you, and it growls at you and bares its teeth, there are two ways of dealing with it, he told the ConservativeHome website. You can pat it on the head, in which case itll bite you, or you can kick it really hard in the balls, in which case itll run away. Successive prime ministers, and its not the present Prime Minister alone, have never understood that they have to take these people on. On the Mayor of London, Sir Nicholas said: I deeply regret the fact that hes jumped ship. I know for a fact hes not an Outer, because he told me, and I think that he went through agony to come to this decision, and thats his look-out. Sir Nicholas said Iain Duncan Smith was gauche in the way he resigned but dismissed media coverage of the Conservative splits, saying: A minister has resigned in unusual circumstances. "He hasnt been found rogering a guardsman in Hyde Park or stealing stuff. Hes resigned on a point of principle. And that of course is beyond the press. Conservative MP Peter Bone, who founded the Grassroots Out campaign to demand a Brexit, hit back by accusing Sir Nicholas of risking deeper Tory divisions. We should have a grown up debate and argue the merits of the case, not make rude and derogatory remarks about colleagues, he said. A pple may avoid having to help the FBI unlock the phone of a terror suspect after US officials said they were testing a workaround supplied by an outside party. The US Department of Justice asked for a delay on a court hearing due to take place today in the latest development in the row over the San Bernardino shooters phone. Apple has so far refused to comply with the FBIs request to unlock the phone belonging to San Bernardino gunman Syed Farook. Calling the request a dangerous precedent, the tech giant has insisted it would not shrink from its responsibility of protecting its customers data. Chief Executive Tim Cook said: We need to decide as a nation how much power the government should have over our data. US prosecutors have now said "an outside party" came forward over the weekend and showed the FBI a possible method for unlocking the phone used by gunman Syed Farook in the December 2 terror attack in California. Fourteen people were killed by Farook and his wife before police shot and killed the attackers. The US authorities said they now needed time to determine "whether it is a viable method that will not compromise data" on the phone. If viable, "it should eliminate the need for the assistance from Apple" according to the filing. Facebook, Google and Microsoft are among the firms to back Apple's position on not helping the government break into the locked iPhone. A schoolgirl whose disappearance with her father sparked an international hunt has been found in Thailand, police said. Arisara "Zara" Miles, 12, was taken to Bangkok by her father Trevor Miles after becoming embroiled in family court proceedings. Earlier this month, a High Court judge allowed police to make a public appeal for Zara, who had left her home in Exeter, Devon, in November last year with her father. Devon and Cornwall Police said the schoolgirl had been found "safe and well" in Thailand. "Zara was found two weeks ago and discussions are ongoing with authorities in Thailand about her welfare," the force spokesman added. Police had launched an international investigation to find Zara after Mr Miles had failed to attend a meeting arranged by Devon County Council to address concerns about his daughter's welfare. T he judge heading the Governments inquiry into historical child sex abuse today issued a new appeal to victims to come forward before a milestone first hearing into paedophile targeting of childrens homes in Lambeth. Justice Lowell Goddard said that those who had suffered exploitation had been left with permanent scars but could now help uncover why so many crimes went unreported and undetected for years. She added that the inquiry also wanted to give victims the chance to share their experience with us and to establish the scale of the abuse. Justice Goddards comments came as she prepared to begin her inquiry into historical abuse in Lambeth with a preliminary hearing at the Royal Courts of Justice on Thursday. The hearing will determine the timetable for public sessions and decide which institutions and individuals should be core participants, as well as dealing with other issues around how the inquiry will be conducted. Announcing the hearing, Justice Goddard said that it would be the first step in the legal process for the substantial programme of investigations that she and her inquiry team would be conducting. She added: This is an important milestone for this inquiry and all those affected by it. In parallel to the preliminary hearings we are asking victims and survivors to come forward and share their experience with us as part of the inquirys Truth Project. Child sexual abuse over successive generations has left permanent scars on victims and survivors. Any victims and survivors of child sexual abuse, who have suffered because an institution failed in its duty to protect you, should get in touch with the Inquiry. As well as enabling victims and survivors of abuse to contribute to the work of the inquiry, it helps us to gain a better understanding of why so many crimes went unreported and undetected for so long. The investigation follows allegations that paedophiles targeted youths in care in Lambeth from the Sixties until at least 1990. It will be one of 12 separate probes conducted by Justice Goddards inquiry. Other investigations will focus on claims of child abuse in the Roman Catholic and Anglican churches, and alleged paedophile rings operated by MPs, civil servants and people of public prominence linked to Westminster. There will also be an inquiry into whether the Armed Forces, Foreign Office and British Council failed to prevent staff from exploiting children abroad. E ach day and night some 5,000 men and women pour into the docks at Rosyth to work on the two giant aircraft carriers that in the next three years will become the pride of the Navys fleet. HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales are the biggest warships ever built in this country, and will be the cutting edge of the Royal Navys capability, giving it the second biggest carrier force in the world. The carriers dont come cheap 6.3 billion for the ships alone and dont come without controversy, both political and military. Construction work is now at its height. The 5,000-strong workforce is three times the size of the sea crews of the two ships. Each vessel needs a core company of only 690 the equivalent US nuclear-driven carrier is barely a third bigger but needs nearly seven times the men and women to sail it. In the early-morning gloom across the Firth of Forth, the shapes of the 70,000-tonne, 280-metre-long vessels one is still on the slipway are familiar. They have the classic lines of the flat-top large grey hulls with a table as deck. Almost everything else about the design is revolutionary. The Queen Elizabeths hangar deck affords more room than the equivalent in the larger US carriers. Cables and tape festoon the work areas. Theres 3.3 million metres of electric cable, says Commander Steve Prest, 40, who is in charge of weapons engineering. We handle ammunition on roughly the same method as Amazon do their storage. Its completely automatic in the deep magazines. Its only checked by human hand above Deck 5. This includes small-arms ammunition and rockets and bombs for aircraft and ships defences, and requires 35 handlers the American ships need 400. This is the job Ive wanted for 12 years, says Commander Prest. Carrier power is what the Navys about, along with Trident. If you are in the Navy and dont want to work on the carriers, youre in the wrong job. With such huge space and so few crew, its easy to get lost: When the company join theyll have an app for their tablet or mobile to tell them where they are in the ship. In the galley, Chief Petty Officer Devon Knibbs, 41, points to six large and six small ovens from which his team will feed the crew in four canteens and dining spaces. Five bakers will turn out 600 loaves, 1,500 baguettes and 1,500 rolls each day. On the bridge, theres the same sense of economy and purpose. The desks are an array of plasma screens and digital displays. There is the odd old-fashioned chart, just in case, says Lieutenant Rachel Campbell, 27, todays officer of the watch. Its an amazing prospect, a leap forward for the Navy, she adds. Lt Campbell, who has just returned from chasing pirates and terrorists off Africa with the Italian navy, points out the almost absurdly small wheel roughly the size of the wheel on a Formula 1 car. On the decks, a team is laying thermal metal spray, a new material from the US for resisting the furnace blast of an F-35 fighter on landing and take-off. Rather less expensive was the use of cake tin grease to slide the Prince of Wales more on its stocks in the dock. Weve learned a lot from building the first ship [Queen Elizabeth], says David Shepherd, of building consortium the Aircraft Carrier Alliance. The Prince of Wales is 20 per cent cheaper and has taken just over half the time. The carriers are arriving on time and on budget. Around this time next year the Queen Elizabeth will sail down the Forth dipping her mast and aerials to get under three bridges for sea trials. These will eventually bring the ship to London, although she is too large to get up the Thames beyond Tilbury. There are tricky parts of the programme still ahead the arrival of the new F-35s, for example. The two ships are expected to serve for 50 years. What troubled world they will navigate then, who can guess? B russels was today rocked by a series of terrorist attacks which have killed scores of people. Blasts beside check-in desks at the Belgian capital's airport killed many passengers, with dozens of others left injured. Many more people died or were seriously hurt during a third explosion at Maalbeek Metro. Here is what we know so far: Two explosions, one believed to have been caused by a suicide bomber, rocked Brussels Zaventem Airport at around 7am UK time. Around one hour later, an explosion occurred at Maalbeek Metro station, near the EU quarter. The death toll from all three explosions is estimated to be 34, with 14 reportedly killed at the airport and a further 20 at the Metro, according to the citys mayor. About 170 people are believed to have been injured by the blasts. Downing Street confirmed one British national at the airport is among those to have been injured. Local media reported that shouts in Arabic were heard and shots were fired during the airport attack. Two Kalashnikov rifles and an unexploded bomb belt were found at the airport in the aftermath of the blasts, according to local media. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel condemned the blind, violent and cowardly attacks, which were greeted by condemnation around the world. Isis has claimed responsibility for the atrocities, which came days after Salah Abdeslam, the prime suspect in the Paris terror attacks, was arrested in the Belgian capital. How events unfolded today until 3pm: 15:00: A US official said security workers believe at least one suitcase bomb was detonated at Brussels Airport this morning. The official, who wasn't authorized to speak publicly on the early investigations, confirmed a statement by a Brussels official that there is also evidence of one suicide bombing at the airport. U.S. intelligence agencies had been on alert for possible attacks since Friday's arrest in Belgium of accused Paris attacks conspirator Salah Abdeslam. But the official said it was unclear if Tuesday's bombings were already planned and set in motion by his or another existing network, or if they were a direct response to Abdeslam's arrest. 14.18: Labour's candidate for Mayor of London Sadiq Khan has been speaking about the attacks. He said: The attack on Brussels today is sickening and my thoughts and prayers are with everyone affected. This is not just an attack on the people of Brussels it is an attack on our shared way of life. These hideous crimes were committed by evil people in the name of a grotesque and perverse ideology. Our first priority must be to ensure that we do everything necessary to keep Londoners safe. 14.13: A Belgian TV station is reporting that at least one of the bombs at the airport contained nails. Flemish language broadcaster VTM interviewed Marc Decramer of the Gasthuisberg hospital in Leuven, who says the hospital is treating 11 people with serious injuries, three of them in critical condition. Decramer said the wounded have fractures and deep cuts caused by flying glass and nails. 14.06: La Libre has also reported that hundreds of people are gathering to write messages of peace in a pedestrianised area in front of the city's stock exchange. Messages include "Together, long live peace" and "Brussels Forever". According to the paper, a message written in Arabic said: "Islam is innocent of terrorism." 14.02: La Libre newspaper is reporting that Brussels railway stations will reopen at 4pm local time, with an increased military presence. 13.56: The Muslim Council of Britain issued a statement condemning the attacks in Brussels. Dr Shuja Shafi, the organisation's Secretary General, said: We are shocked to hear about the terror attacks in Brussels, coming as they did only a few days after the horrific atrocities in Istanbul. I hope the killers are brought to justice and face the full force of the law. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims, families and communities affected. "As we come to terms with yet another attack on European soil, we must redouble our efforts to work together to defeat terrorism wherever it comes from. These mass murderers want to divide our society and pit people against each other. We must deny them this goal at every conceivable opportunity. 13.48: Marc Noel, 63, who was waiting for a flight to Atlanta when the explosions struck at the airport, said he was saved by the decision to go and buy some car magazines. "People were crying, shouting, children. It was a horrible experience. I don't want to think about it, but I would probably have been in that place when the bomb went off. "This feel likes war - fire engines, police everywhere". 13.43: The Mayor of Brussels Yvan Mayeur has said at least 20 people died in attack at Maalbeek Metro station, which is near the EU's headquarters. 13.38: Belgian taxi drivers are being urged to offer free rides to those in Brussels 13.34: Prime Minister David Cameron has tweeted his support to Belgium 13.30: The Mayor of Brussels has now said at least 20 people died in the Metro attack at Maelbeek near the EU's headquarters. A previous announcement by Metro operators had said at least 15 people were killed. 13.24: Belgium's Tihange nuclear power plant has now been evacuated according to broadcaster VTM. 13.22: Alphonse Lyoura, who was working at Brussels Airport when the attack happened, told BFM TV: "I heard a shot. "But after the shot, I heard someone speaking in an Arabic language and after he had finished speaking I heard the explosion. Everyone was panicked." Hooded Belgian police officers patrol outside the Gare du Midi train station in Brussels AP Photo/Michel Spingler / AP Photo/Michel Spingler 13.16: Broadcaster VTM said a bomb squad would detonate a belt reportedly found inside the airport. The broadcaster said the bomb squad was also checking a suspect package at the University of Brussels. 13.12: Police have discovered an unexploded bomb belt inside the airport, according to Belgian broadcaster VTM. 13.07: Armed police have arrested two men near Brussels North station, according to reports. Images shared on social media showed the men being pinned to the ground before kneeling with their hands behind their heads. 13.00: Police in the Netherlands say they have halted an international train from Brussels to Amsterdam at a station just one stop from the Dutch capital's busy Schiphol Airport as a precaution and are searching the train and its passengers. Local police said on Twitter that Hoofddorp station had been evacuated and will stay closed until the investigation is completed. Passengers were being put up in nearby hotels. There was no immediate word of any arrests and police did not say what prompted them to stop the train. The incident came just hours after deadly attacks on the Brussels airport and a city subway station. Photos spread on social media are showing armed police patrolling the Dutch train station. 12.57: Belgian officials say 26 people are dead and at least 136 wounded following the attacks. Earlier, Belgian health minister Maggie de Block said 11 people are dead and 81 have been injured in twin explosions at the Brussels airport. A Brussels subway spokesman said 15 people have been killed and 55 were injured in an explosion at the Maelbeek train station. No one has yet claimed responsibility for the attacks. 12.53: A spokeswoman for Number 10 has said one British national was injured in the explosions but there is no confirmation of any other casualties. A road is shut between Maelbeek station and Arts-Loi in Brussels Shigeo Sugimoto / Shigeo Sugimoto 12.49: Belgium and Manchester City football captain Vincent Kompany, who grew up in Molenbeek, tweeted: "Horrified and revolted. Innocent people paying the price again. My thoughts are with the families of the victims. "I wish for Brussels to act with dignity. We are all hurting, yet we must reject hate and its preachers. As hard as it may be." 12.46: Syria has said the attacks were the "inevitable result of wrong policies and a tolerance for terrorism", and called for an international effort to confront the phenomenon. A foreign ministry source, quoted by state news agency SANA, also said the attacks were the consequence of some countries "describing terrorist groups as moderate". The Syrian government says all armed groups fighting to topple President Bashar al-Assad are terrorists. Assad's Western opponents have designated Islamic State and the Nusra Front as terrorist groups, but say many Syrian rebels belong to moderate factions. "Syria, which has confronted takfiri terrorism for five years renews its call to combine all sincere international efforts to confront the danger of terrorism," SANA quoted the ministry source as saying. 12.42: Norwich City footballer Dieumerci Mbokani was at Zaventem Airport during the explosion. His club said the centre forward, who is on loan from Dynamo Kiev, was "unharmed but shaken" in the attack and has returned home to his family. 12.34: Prime Minister David Cameron said this afternoon there was, as yet, no "hard information" about British casualties in the Brussels attacks. Mr Cameron said the countries of Europe need to "stand together against these appalling terrorists and make sure they can never win." An injured man sits at Brussels Airport after the blast PA / PA 12.25: Belgian public broadcaster VRT is now reporting the the death toll has been raised to 34, with 20 people killed in the blast on a Metro train and 14 in explosions at the airport. 12.21: British police are appealing for any UK nationals or media who were in Brussels and may have images of footage of the incidents to come forward. Police have activated a website where images and videos can be uploaded. Anyone who may have information that could assist the investigation should call the Anti-Terrorist Hotline on 0800 789 321. Concerned British nationals can also call the Foreign and Commonwealth Office on 020 7008 0000. Advice is also available online. 12.16: Boris Johnson has told reporters: "It looks as though there may be one UK casualty, as I'm sure you are aware, though the details of that are very sketchy. "The most important thing to get across is we know of no reason to think that there is any read across from what's happened in Brussels to events here in this city. "We have no intelligence to suggest there is any immediate threat, but as a precaution and for the purposes of reassurance, there has been a stepping up of the presence of police at major airports." Attack: Passengers and staff are evacuated from the Brussels Airport terminal building following the blasts EPA / EPA 12.14: House searches are ongoing in the Brussels region after the attacks, according to public broadcaster RTBF. 12.11: Mayor of London Boris Johnson says there may be one British casualty in today's terror attack. 12.08: British Transport Police say they will be "highly visible" across the rail and Tube network today. Assistant Chief Constable Steve Thomas said: The safety of the travelling public and rail staff in England, Scotland and Wales remains our absolute priority. "British Transport Police will continue to have highly visible officers across the train and tube network and as a precaution following the events in Brussels, is deploying extra resources at key locations. This does not mean we have specific intelligence about those stations where the officers are posted, just that we are prepared for any eventuality. "The national threat level is currently unchanged and remains severe which means everyone has a responsibility to stay alert and report any activity or items which seem suspicious. We ask that you take particular care for keeping your personal belongings with you at all times. At a time when sensitivity is heightened, a misplaced bag or piece of forgotten luggage could present a serious cause for concern and is something which is easily avoidable. Tackling those who seek to disrupt our way of life is never going to be easy, but by the public and the authorities working we can manage the risks more easily." 12.04: The Belgian health minister said 11 people were killed in the airport bombing and 81 were wounded. Previous reports suggested 13 people were dead. It has also emerged that Belgium's royal palace in central Brussels was evacuated following the Metro bomb blast. 11.58: Belgian media are reporting that weapons have been found at the airport. According to reports, a Kalashnikov was found in the departure hall. 11.51: US Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump has weighed in on the Brussels attacks in typically blunt fashion. Mr Trump said the United States and Western countries should toughen up in their fight against Islamist militants. "I would close up our borders," Trump told Fox News in an interview. He added: "We are lax and we are foolish." 11.40: German Chancellor Angela Merkel's chief of staff has called for solidarity with Belgium. Peter Altmaier tweeted: "Terrorists will never win." He added: "Our European values much stronger than hate, violence, terror!" But Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova says the West's politics of "double standards" have led to terrorist attacks and that frozen diplomatic relations between NATO and Russia have slowed the fight with terrorism. The Kremlin, meanwhile, offered its condolences to Belgium and expressed solidarity after the attacks Tuesday that left scores dead. And the European Commission said countries would "stand together" against terrorism. 11.37: Mayor of Paris Anne Hildago tweeted the Eiffel Tower would be lit up in the colours of the Belgian flag this evening. 11.32: Facebook has activated its "safety check" system to help people check on friends and loved ones. The company said the system was put in use within hours of the three explosions. It said the system can provide an easy way for people to mark themselves as "safe" after a major disaster or crisis so that people searching for them will know they are unharmed. The system has been used recently to help people communicate after major floods and earthquakes as well as terrorist attacks. 11.25: All flights between the UK and the main airport in Brussels have been cancelled for the rest of today after the attacks. Brussels Airport announced that it will be closed until Wednesday following two explosions in the departure hall. Brussels Airlines cancelled 25 flights between UK airports - Heathrow, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol and Edinburgh - and Brussels. Eight flights between Heathrow and Brussels were cancelled by British Airways. All Eurostar trains to and from Brussels were suspended, with services from London terminating in the French city of Lille. Security has also been stepped up at transport hubs in the UK. 11.18: Brussels Metro operator STIB-MIVB has tweeted that at least 15 people are confirmed dead and another 50 were injured during theattack at Maelbeek station this morning. 11.06: Federal prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said one of the explosions at Brussels Airport this morning was likely to have been caused by a suicide bomber. He said: "This morning there were two explosions in the departure hall at Zaventem (Brussels Airport), one of them probably caused by a suicide bomber and about half an hour later an explosion at Maelbeek." 11.03: A Belgian federal prosecutor has said that all three explosions "were terrorist attacks" But Belgian prime minister Charles Michel says there is no information now on whether the attacks are related to last week's arrest of Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam. 10.57: Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel sayid "what we feared has happened" and authorities are worried there will be more attacks. Speaking a news conference in Brussels, he said: "There are many dead, many injured." Mr Michel said border controls have been reinforced. He said "We realise we face a tragic moment. We have to be calm and show solidarity." 10.50: The Metro explosion killed 15 and injured 55, 10 critically, transport operator STIB told Belgian broadcaster RTBF. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, quoted by broadcaster France Info, said: "We face a particularly elevated threat. We are at war. In Europe we have been subjected to acts of war for several months." 10.45: London Mayor Boris Johnson told Sky News: "I want to stress we have no intelligence that suggests there's any imminent plan against this city. We are stepping up a presence at transport hubs and major airports, but that is purely for the purpose of reassurance and does not reflect any intelligence we have about a threat to London." 10.40: Brussels police spokesman Christian De Coninck has confirmed there were deaths at the Maelbeek Metro station near the European Union headquarters. Earlier, there were reports 10 people had died in a blast there but Mr De Coninck was unable to confirm the number. He said: "There are victims, serious injury, people have died. I have no idea yet on the numbers of injured or dead." 10.27: Belgium has sent an extra 225 troops to Brussels following the attacks. French interior minister Bernard Cazeneuve said the country was deploying an extra 1,600 police at its borders. President Francois Hollande called an emergency meeting of senior government ministers on Tuesday after a series of explosions in Brussels. 10.24: Heathrow Airport says there will be an increased police presence there today. A spokesman said: "We take the safety and security of our passengers and colleagues very seriously. In the light of events in Brussels airport, we are working with the police at Heathrow who are providing a high visibility presence. "We expect flights to Brussels Airport to be affected and ask passengers travelling there to check their flight status with their airline." 10.22: The Met Police are ramping up their presence around London's transport network but say it is not related to any specific intelligence. Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, the national lead for Counter Terrorism Policing, said: Our thoughts are with the people of Brussels following this mornings horrific attacks. As a precaution forces across the UK have increased policing presence at key locations, including transport hubs, to protect the public and provide reassurance. This is not in relation to any specific information or intelligence. In London specifically, the Metropolitan Police Service has mobilised additional officers, who will carry out highly visible patrols at key locations around the Capital including the transport network.The number of officers deployed will be regularly assessed.These additional officers are deployed as part of reassurance measures. The police presence across London and the rest of the UK is constantly under review We are in close liaison with the Belgium authorities and will continue to monitor the situation. The threat to the UK from international terrorism remains at severe as it has been since August 2014, meaning an attack is highly likely. We urge the public and businesses to be alert but not alarmed and report anything suspicious to the confidential Anti-Terrorist Hotline on 0800 789 321. In an emergency always call 999. 10.19: Jordy van Overmeir was waiting in the baggage area after having just landed at the airport from Bangkok when the explosion took place. He told Sky News: "I got my luggage and then all of a sudden I heard a loud explosion - this boom. Initially I thought it was the sound of a suitcase falling down ... "At this point I saw all these policemen running around, shouting and saying 'there was an explosion'." Outside the baggage claim area and the arrival hall he could "smell smoke and see glass and I saw blood". He said: "Then I came outside of the airport on the parking lot and there I saw people with head wounds, people crying, more blood on the road and glass everywhere." He took a proper look at the airport building and said the "glass is out" on the upper floors where the departure hall is. He said: "There was a lot of panic, with people running around. Policemen, military everywhere. There were ambulances going around. People seemed really shocked ... Everyone seems very shocked and very sad." 10.15: Video has been published of people being led off a Metro train after this morning's explosion. A metro train is evacuated after explosion at station in Brussels 10.11: Brussels Airport issued a statement confirming that all flights have been cancelled for the rest of the day. Passengers are advised to contact their airline for further instructions. Meanwhile, American Airlines said all its staff were safe. 10.05: The Brussels attacks would have taken "quite a while" to plan as they involved explosives and targeting an airport, an international security expert has said. Shashank Joshi, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, urged caution in viewing the atrocities solely as revenge for the arrest of Paris plotter Salah Abdeslam. He said: "This would take quite a while to plan, particularly involving an explosive, involving an airport. We should be wary of seeing it purely as a retaliation for Salah Abdeslam's arrest." Terrorists risk the higher security at sites like airports in a bid to gain international attention, he said. "It is higher security than a metro stop or a concert venue. It's an international site. It's almost a trade-off between dealing with higher security and the number of headlines." 10.10: American Airlines says all its staff are safe. 10.03: Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte says Belgium has "again been hit by cowardly and murderous attacks. He said: "Our hearts go out to the victims and next of kin. The Netherlands stands ready to help and support our southern neighbors in any possible way." Rutte said that "extra alertness is necessary, also in our country. We will take all necessary precautionary measures." He called a meeting Tuesday of his government's Ministerial Crisis Committee to discuss the attacks. 10.02: Labour MEP Claude Moraes, the chairman of the European Parliament's civil liberties, justice and home affairs committee, said if the incidents on the metro and at Brussels' main international airport were terrorist attacks they would be a clear attempt to send a political message. He said Belgium had a high number of radicalised Islamic extremists and an attack was "inevitable". The London MEP said: "This was a tragedy waiting to happen for Brussels because of the number of so-called home-grown foreign fighters - the concentration is the highest in Europe." 10.00: Dramatic photos continue to emerge of the aftermath in Brussels this morning. Brussels terror attacks 1 /21 Brussels terror attacks Brussels attacks Belgian media said this picture shows the mangled train damaged by the large bomb Brussels attacks A CCTV image released by Belgian police of three suspected bombers at Brussels airport Brussels attacks Tiles fell from the ceiling near check-in desks after two explosions rocked Brussels airport PA Wire Brussels attacks Smoke is seen rising from terminal buildings Brussels attacks An injured woman sits on a chair at Brussels airport in the aftermath of a suicide attack Brussels attacks Broken windows seen at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters / Francois Lenoir Brussels attacks Passengers flee after an explosion on the Brussels Metro Brussels attacks Passengers are evacuated from a train in a tunnel near Maelbeek metro station in Brussels Twitter / @evanlamos Brussels attacks Armed police near Brussels Airport Anthony Barrett/PA Wire Brussels attacks Damage inside Brussels Airport Fethi Guloglu/PA Wire Brussels attacks Airport staff in the aftermath of the bombings Brussels attacks Airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building EPA Brussels attacks Shocked passngers and crew leave the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport Reuters/Francois Lenoir Brussels attacks The security perimeter near Maalbeek metro station following the deadly blast Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images Brussels attacks Scenes of carnage: Blown out windows at Brussels Airport following the explosions Jef Versele/PA Brussels attacks Passengers and airport staff stand outside the airport terminal building after it is evacuated EPA/LAURENT DUBRULE 9.58: The Belgian national team have suspended their training session. The Belgian FA said: "Football is not important today. Training is cancelled." 9.57: What we know so far: At least 13 people have been killed and around 35 injured in a series of explosions at Brussels Airport and on the city's subway system. Witnesses described the ceiling caving in and blood everywhere after two explosions in the departure hall at the airport. Francoise Ledune, a spokeswoman for the Brussels metro, said on BFM television that there appeared to have been just one explosion on the network, in a train that had stopped at Maelbeek. All flights have been cancelled, arriving planes and trains are diverted and Belgium's terror alert level has been raised to maximum. The blasts come just days after the main suspect in the November attacks in Paris was arrested in the Belgian capital. 9.53: Belgian broadcaster RTBF quoted a public prosecutor saying the airport explosion was a suicide attack. The country's prime minister Charles Michel tweeted: "For the moment, we are asking people to stay where they are." 9.50: The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has updated its travel advice for Brussels. It issued a statement which read: "You should stay away from crowded places and avoid public transport at this time." British officials in the city have been given the same instructions, the FCO said. 9.32: Authorities at Brussels Airport have tweeted a phone number for people concerned about family or friends. 9.31: Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, said the second, louder explosion brought down ceilings and ruptured pipes, mixing water with victims blood. It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed, he said. There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere. We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene, he said. Jeffrey Edison, who had been inside the airport heading towards his gate, added: There were several hundred people who suddenly started running away from the security control and we had no news. So we all slowly started moving in the same direction. 9.26: Londoner Anthony Barrett watched the airport chaos unfold from his hotel room opposite the airport. After hearing two loud explosions he told how police were evacuating the airport in the minutes after. From my hotel room I can see one person lying on the ground, he tweeted. Fire engines and more ambulances arriving. I can see someone being rushed away on a stretcher. He added: Multiple casualties. Some being taken to ambulances on luggage trolleys. I have now seen 22 stretchered casualties. Mr Barrett, who works for the Wales audit office at one point told how armed police and soldiers were aking cover behind parked cars. He wrote: May have a suspect cornered. Hotel being used as an evacuation and casualty centre. Currently using bomb dogs to sweep the hotel. 9.22: There are unconfirmed reports 10 people have died during attacks on the Metro, with at least 15 people seriously injured. 9.20: Belgian rail operators have said all of Brussels' main railway stations have been closed in the wake of the attacks. Dutch military have been drafted in to boost security at the country's airports and borders. 9.17: A video has been released showing people fleeing in terror as explosions rocked Brussels Airport. People flee in terror as explosions rip through Brussels airport 9.12: Evan Lamos, who was travelling on the subway at the time of the blast at the metro station, tweeted: On the Metro between Schuman and Maelbeek. We have just been stopped due to an incident on the line. Can hear soft thudding in distance. We felt a blast of air and my ears popped shortly after leaving Schuman station. The Metro stopped immediately. We are being evacuated from the back of the Metro, between Schuman and Maelbeek. Smoke in the tunnel as we evacuate. Just arrived at Schuman station after walking on the tracks. 9.10: David Cameron said he will chair a meeting of the Government's emergency Cobra committee in response to the explosions in Brussels. 9.08: A witness at Maelbeek station told Belgian broadcaster RTBF: "We left Maelbeek station towards the centre at around 9.07, 9.10, when we felt an explosion which appeared to come from the front of the train. "The lights went off, there was panic given what happened at Brussels airport. "The doors of the train were forced open to get off the train. There was a lot of smoke. We left via Maelbeek station. The glass doors were blown out. The explosion must have been violent." 9.04: Eurostar says its services are running but with delays. 9.01: Local media has now reported that 13 people have died and 35 been severely injured after explosions in the city. 8.58: An Associated Press reporter said he saw several people with facial injuries following an explosion in a metro station near European Union headquarters. At least two people were seen being moved on stretchers Alexandre Brans, 32, who was wiping blood from his face, said: "The metro was leaving Maelbeek station when there was a really loud explosion. It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the metro." 8.57: Reports Eurostar services have been suspended after this morning's attacks - more on this if we get confirmation. 8.52: Belgian media are now reporting the city's museums will remain closed for the day. 8.50: Belgian media are reporting the airport attack was a suicide bombing. 8.49: Bosses at Heathrow Airport say they are working with police who are providing a "high visibility presence" at the airport. Passengers flying to Brussels are being advised to check with their airline. 8.46: Prime Minister David Cameron has said he is "shocked and concerned by the events in Brussels". He added: "We will do everything we can to help." 8.45 Belgian public broadcaster RTBF is now reporting the explosions at the departure hall of Brussels Airport have killed up to 10 people and injured 30 others. The Belga agency said shots were fired and there were shouts in Arabic shortly before the blasts at the airport. Sky News journalist Alex Rossi, at the airport, said he heard two "very, very loud explosions". He said: "I could feel the building move. There was also dust and smoke as well...I went towards where the explosion came from and there were people coming out looking very dazed and shocked. "The thinking here is that it is some kind of terrorist attack - that hasn't been verified by any of the authorities here at the airport." Scenes of carnage: Blown out windows at Brussels Airport following the explosions / Jef Versele/PA 8.40: Jef Versele, 40, from Ghent, Belgium, was at the airport when he heard the two explosions. He said: "I was on my way to check in and two bombs went off - two explosions," he said. "I didn't see anything. Everything was coming down. Glassware. It was chaos it was unbelievable. It was the worst thing." "People were running away, there were lots of people on the ground. A lot of people are injured. "The bomb was coming from downstairs. It was going up through the roof. It was big. "About 15 windows were just blown out from the entrance hall". 8.39: This useful map gives an idea of where this morning's attacks have taken place: Loading.... 8.35: All Metro stations in the capital are now closing following the explosions. A video has been posted on Twitter which claims to show the aftermath of the Maalbeek Metro explosion. 8.33: Belgian broadcaster RTBF is reporting an explosion at Brussels Metro Station close to EU institutions. 8.29: Video footage has been posted on Facebook which appears to show the aftermath of the airport explosions. 8.27: Prime Minister Charles Michel said they were monitoring the situation "minute by minute" and top priority went to the victims. 8.23: Reports in Belgium that there has been a separate explosion at Maalbeek Metro station in the city. More on this to follow. 8.21: The Associated Press news agency reported that the Belgian interior minister Jan Jambon has announced the country's terror threat level has gone up to maximum after this morning's blasts 8.12: Belgian media reported that shots were fired before the explosions, and people were also said to have been heard shouting in Arabic. 8.08: Pictures have emerged of the walking wounded and people running from the airport 8.04: People have been urged not to come to the airport this morning. 7.55: There have been two explosions at Brussels Airport this morning, with local media reporting at least 11 people are feared dead. The explosions happened during the rush hour as hundreds of passengers were trying to check in. Airport spokeswoman Anke Fransen said: "There were two blasts in the departure hall. First aid team are in place for help." Passengers were led onto the tarmac and people were urged not to come to the airport. The explosions happened only days after Salah Abdeslam, the prime suspect in the Paris attacks, was arrested in Brussels. L andmarks across Europe were lit up in the colours of the Belgian flag this evening as a symbol of solidarity following the deadly bomb attacks in Brussels. The Eiffel Tower, the Brandenburg Gate and the Trevi Fountain were among the landmarks illuminated in the national colours of black, yellow and red in tribute to those killed by terrorists in the capital city. At least 34 people were killed and 170 injured in two airport blasts and another at a metro station. Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo shared a photo of the Eiffel Tower on Twitter after darkness fell on the city. "We are united," she said in the tweet announcing the special illuminations. The Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and the courthouse in Lyon, France, were also lit up in the colours of the Belgian national flag. The colours have also been beamed onto the historic Trevi Fountain in Rome and the Royal Palace in Amsterdam. Brussels attacks: Social media reaction In November, Brussels City Hall and other landmarks across Europe were lit up in red, white and blue the colours of the French national flag to honour the victims of the Paris terrorist attacks. Flags are being flown at half-mast on government buildings across London in solidarity with Brussels, including City Hall and the Belgian flag has being raised over Downing Street. A nail bomb and an Islamic State flag have been found during a counter-terror raid in Brussels. Police said they had found the nail-filled explosive as well as "chemical products at a house in the Brussels neighbourhood of Schaerbeek. Anti-terror squads are mounting raids across the city in the wake of the deadly blasts at the city's main airport and a metro station which killed at least 34 on Tuesday morning. A huge manhunt has been launched to find a suspect who was pictured at the airport shortly before the explosions, along with two other men believed to have blown themselves up. A CCTV image released by Belgian police, with the wanted man in light clothing on the right The man on the right, wearing light clothing and a hat, is believed to be on the run following the bombings. Belgian prosecutors said the search at the house in Schaerbeek led to the discovery of an explosive device containing among other things nails. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Brussels attacks, saying in a post on the group's Amaq news agency that its extremists opened fire in the airport and "several of them" detonated suicide belts. It said another suicide attacker struck on the metro. Authorities found and neutralised a third bomb at the airport once the chaos after the two initial blasts had eased. Belgian authorities said there was no immediate evidence linking the attacks with Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in the Paris attacks last Novermber who was arrested in Brussels on Friday. F rench newspaper Le Monde has shared a touching cartoon in solidarity with Belgium after deadly terror attacks left many people dead. The image shows a weeping figure in the colours of the French flag wrapping its arms around an animated Belgian flag, which is also crying. The caption makes reference to November 22, the day Islamist militants killed 130 in the Paris terror attacks, as well as todays date. Drawn by satirical cartoonist Plantu, it was posted on Instagram just hours after the blasts. At least 13 people died in Brussels on Tuesday morning in two blasts at the main airport in the suburb of Zaventem. Prosecutors have confirmed that at least one was caused by a suicide bomber. A further 15 were killed in a deadly blast on the citys Metro network. Belgian Prime Minister said in a press conference held while the country was still reeling: What we feared has happened. H arrowing footage has emerged after terrorists struck Brussels with a suicide bomb at the airport and another blast at a subway station near the EUs headquarters. At least 34 people died in the attacks today, with a news agency affiliated to Islamic State claiming the terror group was responsible. A third bomb was deactivated at the airport this afternoon, officials said. The chilling video shows people cowering for cover in thick smoke in the immediate aftermath of the airport explosion. People can be heard screaming and shouting in terror. One woman repeats "it's ok, it's ok" again and again. One man asks: "was it a terrorist?" The departure hall is filled with thick smoke. Eventually a female armed police officer asks the people to exit, leaving their bags behind. An injured woman sits on a chair at Brussels airport in the aftermath of a suicide attack The airport attackers fired shots and shouted in Arabic, according to reports, before two explosions tore through the departure hall shortly after 8am local time (7am UK time). Fourteen people died there and 81 were wounded. At least one Briton was believed to have been among the victims. Around an hour later, in horrific echoes of the London 7/7 bombings, an explosion rocked the Maalbeek underground station, with 15 fatalities. Of the 55 injured, 10 were critical, according to a transport official. Children could be heard screaming after the subway blast. The attacks came four days after Paris terror suspect Salah Abdeslam was captured in the Belgian capital, an Islamist terrorist hotbed, four months after the multiple terror strikes on the French capital which killed 130. Aftermath: Tiles fell from the ceiling near check-in desks / PA Wire Local media said the death toll from both attacks had risen to 34, with fears that it would climb higher. Twenty people were believed to have died in the station attack station and 14 at the airport, according to local reports. Passengers this morning told of their terror as Zaventem international airport came under attack. A Kalashnikov rifle and unexploded bomb vest were found in the departure hall, according to reports. TV footage showed the panic of travellers caught in the aftermath of the blast. Smoke was seen rising from the scene of the explosions at Brussels airport It was a war scene, said Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast. It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed. There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere. Jef Versele, 40, from Ghent, Belgium, added: I was on my way to check in and two bombs went off. Everything was coming down. It was chaos it was unbelievable. Londoner Anthony Barrett saw the chaos unfold from his hotel room opposite the airport. Multiple casualties. Some being taken to ambulances on luggage trolleys. I have now seen 22 stretchered casualties, he said. Loading.... Stefanie Libeer and Dimitri Kogout had returned from Thailand and were going to get a train to their home in Ghent when the explosions hit the airport. She said: Something stung my eye, then a flash and a big explosion. It was like the ceiling was coming down. We left our luggage and ran. Mr Kogout said: Someone said they heard them shouting in Arabic and they started shooting before the explosion. Ambulances raced to the scene as thousands were evacuated from the terminal, with unconfirmed reports that a third bomb was also found on a runway. One of the blasts reportedly happened near the American Airlines check in. A man shelters next to a luggage trolley after the 'suicide' blast at the airport It was not clear if the terrorists were trying to smuggle a bomb onto a plane and were intercepted or if they had planned to cause the bloodshed at the terminal. Belgian federal prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said: There were two explosions in the departure area, one probably caused by a suicide bomber. As the emergency services responded, a third explosion hit Maalbeek metro. The whole Brussels underground system was shut down and panicking commuters had to walk along the tracks to safety. Ken Livingstone, who was Mayor of London during the 7/7 attacks, said: We have been through this, we know what it is like. We will share the pain of the people of Brussels on their 7/7 as they stood in solidarity with us. As Belgium was put on maximum security alert, Brussels residents were told to stay at home, not to make phone calls to avoid paralysing the communications network, and school children were not allowed home at lunchtime. Prime Minister Charles Michel condemned the attackers as cowards, adding: This is a dark moment for our nation. We need calm and solidarity. There were also unconfirmed reports of an explosion, and fatalities, at a police station in central Brussels. The terror attacks sent shockwaves through Europe: David Cameron chaired a meeting of Whitehalls COBRA emergency committee to discuss the crisis. He said: I am shocked and concerned by the events in Brussels. We will do everything we can to help. Trauma: the aftermath of the blasts More armed patrols were deployed in London, including at transport hubs. Britains top counter-terrorism officer, Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, said: Our thoughts are with the people of Brussels. Britains borders were tightened including more sniffer dogs at St Pancras station where Eurostar trains from Brussels and Paris terminate. Eurostar suspended services to and from Brussels Midi station. The FTSE 100 dropped 0.5 per cent, while airline and travel company stocks were hit. More armed patrols were deployed at airports in Britain, including Heathrow and Gatwick, as well as in Paris. The Foreign Office was seeking to establish if any British nationals were among the victims. Initial reports suggested one was injured. One Whitehall official said: We have a lot of Brits on Brussels. We cant rule out casualties. Mayor of London Boris Johnson tweeted: Shocked and saddened by events in Brussels the thoughts of Londoners are with the victims this morning. People flee in terror as explosions rip through Brussels airport European Commission president Jean-Claude Juncker and top commissioners were due to hold meetings at the EU HQ with high ranking figures, including German ministers, the governor of the Bank of France and UN Under-Secretary generals. Security experts believe another Islamist terror cell may have been ordered to carry out the latest atrocities in revenge for Abdeslams arrest. Brussels terror attacks 1 /21 Brussels terror attacks Brussels attacks Belgian media said this picture shows the mangled train damaged by the large bomb Brussels attacks A CCTV image released by Belgian police of three suspected bombers at Brussels airport Brussels attacks Tiles fell from the ceiling near check-in desks after two explosions rocked Brussels airport PA Wire Brussels attacks Smoke is seen rising from terminal buildings Brussels attacks An injured woman sits on a chair at Brussels airport in the aftermath of a suicide attack Brussels attacks Broken windows seen at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters / Francois Lenoir Brussels attacks Passengers flee after an explosion on the Brussels Metro Brussels attacks Passengers are evacuated from a train in a tunnel near Maelbeek metro station in Brussels Twitter / @evanlamos Brussels attacks Armed police near Brussels Airport Anthony Barrett/PA Wire Brussels attacks Damage inside Brussels Airport Fethi Guloglu/PA Wire Brussels attacks Airport staff in the aftermath of the bombings Brussels attacks Airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building EPA Brussels attacks Shocked passngers and crew leave the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport Reuters/Francois Lenoir Brussels attacks The security perimeter near Maalbeek metro station following the deadly blast Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images Brussels attacks Scenes of carnage: Blown out windows at Brussels Airport following the explosions Jef Versele/PA Brussels attacks Passengers and airport staff stand outside the airport terminal building after it is evacuated EPA/LAURENT DUBRULE Inevitably, Belgian security forces will face questions over the latest attacks, with claims that thepolice and intelligence service failed to properly share information. As the city was in lockdown, passengers told of the explosion at Maalbeek station. Evan Lamos said: On the Metro between Schuman and Maalbeek. We have just been stopped due to an incident on the line. Can hear soft thudding in distance. We felt a blast of air and my ears popped shortly after leaving Schuman station. The Metro stopped immediately. He added: We are being evacuated from the back of the Metro, between Schuman and Maalbeek. Smoke in the tunnel as we evacuate. Just arrived at Schuman station after walking on the tracks. Another commuter told Belgian broadcaster RTBF: We left Maelbeek station towards the centre at around 9.07am, when we felt an explosion which appeared to come from the front of the train. The lights went off, there was panic given what happened at Brussels airport. The doors of the train were forced open to get off the train. There was a lot of smoke. We left via Maelbeek station. The glass doors were blown out. The explosion must have been violent. The attacks will cast fresh doubts over the EUs borderless Schengen system which has been blamed for making it easier for terrorists and crime gangs to smuggle weapons between countries. The Foreign Office hotline for people worried about relatives who may have been in Brussels is 0207 008 0000, and that set up by the Belgian Government 0032 2753 7300. W itnesses told how panic gripped Brussels as a series of explosions rocked the Belgian capital this morning. Up to 23 people were killed in three blasts at Brussels airport and Maalbeek Metro station. Two explosions hit the departure hall of Zaventem airport at about 7am GMT in a suspected suicide bombing thought to have left 13 people dead. Around an hour later, a further explosion hit Maalbeek Metro station, killing up to 10 people. Armed police near Brussels Airport after the blasts / Anthony Barrett/PA Wire It came four days after Paris attacks fugitive Salah Abdeslam was seized by police in Brussels. Witness told of chaotic scenes in the city after the blasts, which prompted Belgian authorities to raise the terror threat level to the maximum possible. Jef Versele, 40, from Ghent, Belgium, was at the airport when he heard the two explosions. I was on my way to check in and two bombs went off, two explosions, he said. Brussels terror attacks 1 /21 Brussels terror attacks Brussels attacks Belgian media said this picture shows the mangled train damaged by the large bomb Brussels attacks A CCTV image released by Belgian police of three suspected bombers at Brussels airport Brussels attacks Tiles fell from the ceiling near check-in desks after two explosions rocked Brussels airport PA Wire Brussels attacks Smoke is seen rising from terminal buildings Brussels attacks An injured woman sits on a chair at Brussels airport in the aftermath of a suicide attack Brussels attacks Broken windows seen at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters / Francois Lenoir Brussels attacks Passengers flee after an explosion on the Brussels Metro Brussels attacks Passengers are evacuated from a train in a tunnel near Maelbeek metro station in Brussels Twitter / @evanlamos Brussels attacks Armed police near Brussels Airport Anthony Barrett/PA Wire Brussels attacks Damage inside Brussels Airport Fethi Guloglu/PA Wire Brussels attacks Airport staff in the aftermath of the bombings Brussels attacks Airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building EPA Brussels attacks Shocked passngers and crew leave the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport Reuters/Francois Lenoir Brussels attacks The security perimeter near Maalbeek metro station following the deadly blast Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images Brussels attacks Scenes of carnage: Blown out windows at Brussels Airport following the explosions Jef Versele/PA Brussels attacks Passengers and airport staff stand outside the airport terminal building after it is evacuated EPA/LAURENT DUBRULE Everything was coming down. Glassware. It was chaos, it was unbelievable. It was the worst thing. He added: People were running away, there were lots of people on the ground. A lot of people are injured. Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, said the second, louder explosion brought down ceilings and ruptured pipes, mixing water with victims blood. It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed, he said. There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere. Two explosions heard at Brussels airport, several casualties We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene, he said. Londoner Anthony Barrett watched the chaos unfold from his hotel room opposite the airport. After hearing two loud explosions he told how police were evacuating the airport in the minutes after. From my hotel room I can see one person lying on the ground, he tweeted. Fire engines and more ambulances arriving. I can see someone being rushed away on a stretcher. He added: Multiple casualties. Some being taken to ambulances on luggage trolleys. I have now seen 22 stretchered casualties. Broken windows seen at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels / Reuters / Francois Lenoir Mr Barrett, who works for the Wales audit office told how armed police and soldiers were taking cover behind parked cars. He wrote: May have a suspect cornered. Hotel being used as an evacuation and casualty centre. Currently using bomb dogs to sweep the hotel. Denise Brandt, an American woman, said: I felt the explosion, the way it feels through your There was just this instinct to get away from it. Then we saw people running, crying, toward us. So I knew we were going in the right direction and away from it. An injured woman sits on a chair at Brussels airport in the aftermath of a suicide attack Belgian media reported that Arabic could be heard being shouted as shots were fired immediately before the explosions in the airport. Images posted online showed debris strewn across the airport building as people ran for safety as the drama unfolded. The attacks have prompted security to be stepped up at British transport hubs including Gatwick Airport. Prime Minister David Cameron was due to chair a Cobra emergency response meeting this morning. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office updated its travel advice for Brussels, issuing a statement which read: "You should stay away from crowded places and avoid public transport at this time." Follow the latest developments live here D onald Trump tried to win over Jewish Americans by hailing the unbreakable bond between Israel and the US in a major foreign policy speech in Washington last night. The leading contender for the Republican presidential nomination was given six standing ovations at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference defying expectations of a frosty reception after saying that he would dismantle the deal on Irans nuclear weapons. However, the speech was boycotted by dozens of rabbis and other delegates who said that they disapproved of his inflammatory rhetoric. Mr Trump who used a teleprompter rather than talking off the cuff as he normally does and, for the first time, uploaded the speech to his website had been criticised for saying he would be a neutral guy in the Middle East peace process but in his speech said he was a lifelong supporter of Israel. The billionaire tycoon told the audience that his number one priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran, and won loud applause when he said that if he became President the days of treating Israel like a second-class citizen will end on day one. He also attacked the incompetence and weakness of UN and was applauded again when he said that President Obama, who has overseen the nuclear deal with Iran, was in his final year. In his closing remarks he promised to send a clear signal that there is no daylight between America and our most reliable ally, the state of Israel. The Palestinians must come to the table knowing that the bond between the United States and Israel is absolutely, totally unbreakable. Mr Trump concluded by reminding the crowd that his daughter Ivanka, who converted to Judaism, was about to give birth to a beautiful Jewish baby. Donald Trump's most controversial comments Hundreds of the 19,000 people attending the conference at the Verizon Center in Washington had either walked out in protest or turned their back on Mr Trump. Protest organiser Aaron Black wrote on Facebook: There is no greater or more profound way to stand up to bigotry than to teach lessons of love, respect, and dignity. Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin organized at least 40 rabbis who refused to enter the arena when Mr Trump was speaking. He said: This is not about policies, this is not about parties, this is about one particular person, Donald Trump, who has encouraged and incited violence at his campaign rallies. Mr Trump also announced the first members of his foreign policy team, including academics and former military officers. One of them was criticised for having ties to a brutal militia which fought in Lebanons civil war. In her speech to AIPAC, Democrat frontrunner Hillary Clinton said that Mr Trump was a bully and not the steady hands that America needed. In an interview with CNN, the Republican responded by holding his hands in a fist and saying: Look at those hands, those are steady hands. Asked about the white supremacists who had supported his campaign, Mr Trump said: Im the least racist person youll ever meet. I dont want their support, I dont need their support. He had previously refused to disavow the Ku Klux Klan when asked if he wanted their support. T he London premiere of Batman V Superman: Dawn of Justice has had the red carpet cancelled in the wake of the Brussels attacks. Warner Bros. said the premiere would go ahead so as not to yield to terror but announced that the actors would not be stopping for interviews at the event in Londons Leicester Square in light of the heightened security concerns. In a statement the company said: "Our hearts go out to the victims of recent terrorist attacks, their families and the communities impacted around the world. Rather than yield to terror, weve decided to join the films fans and move forward with the London premiere of Batman v. Superman this evening." Henry Cavill (Superman), Ben Affleck (Batman) and Jesse Eisenberg (Lex Luthor) are all expected to attend. The eagerly anticiapted film had it's world premiere in New York on Sunday night. Directed by Zack Snyder the film pits the iconic superheroes against each other for the first time. Batman V Superman London premiere 1 /21 Batman V Superman London premiere Superman Henry Cavill attends the European Premiere of Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice Dave Benett Batman Ben Affleck gets ready to square up to Henry Cavill on the red carpet Dave Benett Family affair Henry Cavill is joined by his mother Marianne and girlfriend Tara King David Fisher/REX Villainous Lex Luthor actor Jesse Eisenberg poses for photographers Dave Benett All smiles Amy Adams can't stop grinning as she works the red carpet Tim Ireland/Invision/AP So excited Star Wars actor Mark Hamill can't contain his excitement David Fisher/REX Night out Mark Hamill is all smiles as he is joined by Marilou York and Chelsea Hamill Richard Young/REX Double act Director Zack Snyder and producer Deborah Snyder pose up a storm Dave Benett Composed Composer Hans Zimmer is all smiles on the red carpet Ian West/PA Got the blues Amy Adams who plays Superman's love interest Lois Lane stuns in a blue gown Tim Ireland/Invision/AP Fashionable flair Game of Thrones star Jason Momoa squares up to the cameras on the red carpet Ian West/PA Green with envy Sarah-Jane Crawford looks stunning in green Ian West/PA Showing support Olivia Inge shows her support as she turns up in a Batman outfit David Fisher/REX Revealing Ashley James steals the attention in a revealing black dress Dave Benett Senator Finch Holly Hunter who plays Senator Finch works the cameras in a flowing blue gown Dave Benett Date night Leigh Francis and his wife Jill Carter look loved up on the red carpet Dave Benett Follow @StandardShowbiz for more entertainment news. K atie Hopkins has sparked a backlash on Twitter after posting a series of controversial tweets in the wake of the Brussels terror attacks. The former Apprentice star, who is currently in hospital following brain surgery, blamed the left and the opening of borders to refugees for Tuesdays attacks. She wrote: Every one of you who said refugees are welcome, if you said 'let them in'. You are responsible for Brussels. And you still can't see. Look at you all. Gawping at pictures of death. Fascinated by the chaos you brought to our peaceful countries. You - the left - disgust me. She added: We're lighting up the Tower with the colours of the Belgian flag.Light it up black & white because they're winning. Her followers were quick to slam the star for her controversial claims, with one person writing: Katie Hopkins' top five most controversial comments 7/7, Paris attacks. Home grown terrorists. Not refugees. @KTHopkins doesn't know who was responsible for this sick attack. Another wrote: You do NOT get to speak for our city. Refugees are welcome, you are welcome to stay out #brussels. Hopkins has recently undergone brain surgery in a bid to cure her epilepsy and is currently recovering in hospital. Up to 34 people were killed when a series of explosions rocked the Belgian capital this morning. The city had been on high alert following the arrest of Paris atrocity suspect Salah Abdeslam last week. Follow the latest updates live here. Register for more free articles. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading. Catch the latest in Opinion Get opinion pieces, letters and editorials sent directly to your inbox weekly! Sign up! Already a Subscriber? Already a Subscriber? Sign in Terms of Service Privacy Policy 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. 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About an hour later, another bomb exploded on a rush-hour subway train near the European Union headquarters. Terrified passengers had to evacuate through darkened tunnels to safety. "What we feared has happened," Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel told reporters. "In this time of tragedy, this black moment for our country, I appeal to everyone to remain calm but also to show solidarity." Belgium raised its terror alert to the highest level, diverting planes and trains and ordering people to stay where they were. Airports across Europe immediately tightened security. "We are at war," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said after a crisis meeting called by the French president. "We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war." European security officials have been bracing for a major attack for weeks, and warned that the Islamic State group was actively preparing to strike. The arrest Friday of a key suspect in the November attacks in Paris heightened those fears, as investigators said many more people were involved than originally thought, and that some are still on the loose. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Tuesday's attacks, and Michel said there was no immediate evidence linking key Paris suspect Salah Abdeslam to them. After his arrest Friday, Abdeslam told authorities he had created a new network and was planning new attacks. At Brussels' Zaventem airport, the two explosions hit the departures area during the busy morning rush. Belgian Health Minister Maggie de Block told Belgian media that 11 people were killed and 81 injured. Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, told BFM television that the second, louder explosion brought down ceilings and ruptured pipes, mixing water with victims' blood. "It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed," he said. "There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere." "We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene," he said. Anthony Deloos, an airport worker for Swissport, which handles check-in and baggage services, said the first explosion took place near the Swissport counters where customers pay for overweight baggage. He and a colleague said the second blast hit near the Starbucks cafe. "We heard a big explosion. It's like when you're in a party and suddenly your hearing goes out, from like a big noise," Deloos said, adding that shredded paper floated through the air as a colleague told him to run. "I jumped into a luggage chute to be safe," he said. The bomb that went off an hour later on the subway train killed 20 people and injured more than 100, Brussels Mayor Yvan Majeur said. "The metro was leaving Maelbeek station for Schuman when there was a really loud explosion," said Alexandre Brans, 32, wiping blood from his face. "It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the metro." Near the entrance to the station, rescue workers set up a makeshift medical treatment center in a pub. Dazed and shocked morning commuters streamed from the metro entrances as police tried to set up a security cordon. The metro shut down after the attacks, as did the airport. More than 200 flights to Brussels were diverted or canceled, according to flight tracking service Flightradar24. At least one and possibly two Kalashnikovs were found in the departure lounge at the airport, according to a European security official in contact with Belgian police who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the ongoing investigation. It was not immediately clear whether the firearms were used in the attacks. Amateur video showed passengers fleeing as quickly as they could. In a video shown on France's i-Tele television, passengers, including a child running with a backpack, dashed out of the terminal in different directions as they tugged luggage. Another image showed a security officer patrolling inside a hall with blown-out paneling and what appeared to be ceiling insulation covering the floor. Marc Noel, 63, was about to board a Delta flight to Atlanta, to return to his home in Raleigh, North Carolina. A Belgian native, Noel says he was in an airport shop buying automobile magazines when the first explosion occurred 50 yards away. "People were crying, shouting, children. It was a horrible experience," he told AP. He said his decision to shop might have saved his life. "I would probably have been in that place when the bomb went off." Tuesday, 22 March 2016 22:54:39 (GMT+3) | Sao Paulo Argentinian crude steel production in February declined 10.1 percent, year-on-year, but rose 2.8 percent in the month-on-month analysis to 338,800 mt, according to data released on Tuesday by the nations steel chamber, CAA. According to CAA, Argentina s accumulated steel output from January to February reached 668,300 mt, 12.4 percent down, year-on-year. The local steel association said hot rolled finished steel output in the second month of the year diminished 31.2 percent, year-on-year, and 31.1 percent, month-on-month, totaling 232,900 mt. As for the two-month period, hot rolled finished steel output fell 19.6 percent, year-on-year, to 570,700 mt. Tuesday, 22 March 2016 22:53:15 (GMT+3) | Sao Paulo Activity in the Brazilian civil construction segment declined from 36.6 points in February 2015 to 35.2 points in February this year, in a scale from zero to 100, in which values above 50 show growth. According to information released this week by the nations confederation of industry, CNI, the level of activity in the segment rose in the month-on-month analysis from 33.6 points in January. The utilization of the industrys capacity in February totaled 56 points, same as in January, but well below the 60 points reached in February 2015. The indicator that measures the number of job positions in the segment increased from 33.8 points in January to 35.5 points in February, but declined when compared to the 36.4 points reported in February 2015. Tuesday, 22 March 2016 13:54:08 (GMT+3) | Shanghai China is concerned over the tougher stance adopted by the European Commission (EC) towards cheap imports of steel from China , an official at the countrys Ministry of Commerce (MOC) stated on Monday, March 21. The unnamed official said that overcapacity is a global industrial problem that needs to be dealt with through dialogue and cooperation, adding that trade protectionism will do little to resolve the issue. Monday, 21 March 2016 22:56:07 (GMT+3) | Sao Paulo According to media reports, CMES should transport 16 million mt of iron ore from Brazil to China over a period of up to 27 years. Shipments are expected to begin in H1 2018, and will include transportation of manganese, according to media reports. Monday, 21 March 2016 22:58:57 (GMT+3) | Sao Paulo Brazil exported 8,700 mt of wire rod to the US in February, against 4,000 mt in January, according to the countrys ministry of development, industry and foreign trade, MDIC. A market source had previously informed SteelOrbis that the low volume exported in January was a one-off situation, as the availability of the product was reduced at that time. The exports were almost entirely by ArcelorMittal and consisting of the drawing grade product, priced FOB at $493/mt in average, a price comparable to$500/mt in January. The source mentioned that the most recent negotiations for exports of the drawing grade product to the US were also closed around $500/mt FOB, a price stable in three months. The total Brazilian exports of wire rod reached 17,600 mt in February, of which 12,100 mt by ArcelorMittal at $485/mt, 5,200 mt by Gerdau at $377/mt and 300 mt by the Votorantim Group at $621/mt, all FOB conditions. 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 We were going to check in around 7:30 a.m., said one traveler, Ilaria Ruggiano. There were seven of us. We were a bit late. We heard a big noise and saw a big flash. My mother went to the floor she was hit. I just dropped my luggage and went to the floor. A kid came out, bleeding a lot. I tried to help him with a tissue, but it was not enough. There were two bombs. Another passenger, Jerome Delanois, said he was at an Internet cafe near the Delta Air Lines counter when he heard a thunderous noise. There were two explosions one big one and one little one, he said. The first one blew all the walls and everything. There were burning flames. The first one was bigger. It blew out all the windows. Belinda How, a traveler from Malaysia who was in Brussels for a vacation, said she had been lining up to check in for an Etihad Airways flight when she heard the blast. I was the last passenger queuing up, she said. I was very close to the first blast. Everybody was screaming. She added: I said to my son he is a Down syndrome special-needs child You have to run. He said, My leg hurts. I think he was panicked. I left my luggage, dragged him and ran. Before I ran out, there was another bomb. Alan Merbaum, who had flown in from Washington, said he had narrowly avoided the blast. I heard what sounded like a thud a minute or so before 8 a.m., he said. It sounded like it could have been something dropped off the back of a truck. Ten to 20 seconds later, I heard a loud explosion and I immediately knew what it was. I saw smoke coming out of the front entrance of the airport. Photographs posted online showed passengers covered in blood and soot, looking stunned but conscious. Some passengers were seen being taken away on luggage carts. Other images posted on social media showed smoke rising from a departure hall, where the windows had been blown out, and people running away from the building. Hundreds were herded outside. Around 9:10 a.m., another blast shook the Maelbeek subway station in downtown Brussels, not far from the area that houses most of the European Unions core institutions, according to the Belgian broadcaster RTBF. The Brussels transport authority said on Twitterthat all subway stations were closing. We felt a boom, we felt the building tremble, said Henk Stuten, 50, who works for the European Commission in an office above the station. We saw through the windows that people were rushing out of the metro exit. About 10 to 15 minutes later, the office was evacuated, Mr. Stuten said. Some people were very calm, others were very emotional, he added. He said most of the wounded were on Rue de la Loi, outside the station. There were colleagues who just five minutes before were in the metro, he said. You realize how close these things can come to you. Christian De Coninck, a spokesman for the Brussels police, told reporters near the Maelbeek subway station that several people had been killed, but he did not have a number. Mr. De Coninck was unable to say how many blasts had taken place at the station. He appealed to everyone in the area to stay indoors to avoid getting in the way of the emergency services. Earlier in the morning, police officers taped off the numerous streets leading to the subway station as emergency vehicles raced to the blast sites. Ambulances were clustered around the entrance, next to the normally busy Rue de la Loi, which runs through the heart of the so-called European quarter. A police helicopter patrolled above the station. For the moment, what we know is that there was at least one, possibly two explosions; we are still investigating, said Sandra Eyschen, a spokeswoman for the Belgian federal police. There are several injured, we dont have any exact numbers, and, unfortunately, it appears there are some dead, at least one person. Belgium quickly raised its threat status to the maximum level, The Associated Press reported, citing the interior minister, Jan Jambon. A number of flights destined for Brussels that were in the air at the time of the blasts were being diverted to other airports, said Kyla Evans, a spokeswoman for Eurocontrol, the agency that coordinates air traffic for the region. Belgium has emerged as a focus of counterterrorism investigators after the attacks in Paris in November that left 130 people dead. On Monday, the Belgian authorities asked for the publics help in finding Najim Laachraoui, 24, who they identified as an accomplice of Mr. Abdeslam. The authorities are also searching for Mohamed Abrini, 31, who was filmed with Mr. Abdeslam at a gas station on a highway to Paris two days before the Nov. 13 attacks. President Klaus Iohannis starts a state visit to Turkey on Tuesday. He will meet his Turkish counterpart Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Wednesday, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu and the local Romanian community. The Presidential Administration also announced meetings with Istanbul Province Governor Vasip Sahin, with Istanbul Mayor Kadir Topbas, and with Grand National Assembly [editor's note - the Turkish Parliament] Speaker Ismail Kahraman."The general goal of President Iohannis's visit is to consolidate the bilateral cooperation based on the Romania - Turkey Strategic Partnership signed in 2011," the Administration mentioned in a release.The document adds that official talks will approach several topics on the bilateral, regional, international and security agenda, such as the economic cooperation, the dialogue between the EU and Turkey, focusing on migration and on the collaboration within NATO and and in the military field. AGERPRES David Nicklaus David Nicklaus is a business columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Follow David Nicklaus 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 Vermont has already given us Bernie Sanders and Ben & Jerrys ice cream. Soon, it may be adding words to our cereal boxes and candy bar wrappers. Most of the food industry opposes the extra language, which will alert consumers to the presence of genetically modified ingredients, but Vermont law says they must appear starting July 1. And, because no large manufacturer wants to design a separate label for Vermonts 626,042 residents, the rest of the country will get the same disclosure. The industry lost a key vote last week in the U.S. Senate, which rejected a bill that would have overridden the Vermont requirement and set up a national system of voluntary labeling. Almost immediately, the dominoes started falling. General Mills said Friday that it would note genetically modified ingredients on its products nationwide. Mars, the candy giant, made the same commitment Monday. General Mills announcement was accompanied by a plea that we need a national solution. Groups such as the Grocery Manufacturers Association, which General Mills said it continuedto support, had lobbied heavily for the voluntary labeling bill that the Senate rejected last week. Monsanto also has been a vocal proponent of voluntary labeling. Monsanto strongly supports a national approach and the right of companies to voluntarily label their products as containing GMOs using a variety of methods, Chief Technology Officer Robb Fraley wrote Friday in a blog post. Time is running out on that strategy, however. Fraley also notes that if Vermonts law kicks in, the first patch in the quilt will be sewn for state-by-state labeling laws, which will have a harmful effect on consumers and the food chain. There may be room for compromise. Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., has proposed an alternative bill that would make labeling mandatory but would allow the disclosures to be made in small print as part of the ingredients list. Merkley has yet to win any support from mainstream food and agriculture groups, but his proposed disclosures sound like what Campbell Soup envisioned in January when it broke with the rest of the industry and endorsed a mandatory, nationwide labeling law. Campbell showed a proposed label for its SpaghettiOs with a small notation saying partially produced with genetic engineering. As we get closer to July 1, other food companies may decide that a small-print compromise is the best they can do. It would be better than dealing with the uncertainty of a state-by-state approach. How will consumers react to the new labels? Thats the big unknown. They may, as labeling proponents seem to hope, start shopping for organic products that can claim to be produced without genetic engineering. Or consumers may gain a new appreciation for the technologys benefits. As they see the same language on one trusted brand after another and they will, because roughly 90 percent of U.S.-grown corn and soybeans are genetically modified they may become comfortable with it. They may even accept what scientists have said all along, which is that genetically modified foods are safe and dont differ in any way from conventional ingredients. Monsanto and the food industry have always had the facts on their side in this debate. Theyve also spent plenty of money to fight proposed labeling laws in California, Oregon and other states. Whats no longer on their side is time. If Congress doesnt enact a national labeling law in the next three months, well see the effects of another famous export from the Green Mountain state. Election-year protectionism has trade supporters and some lawmakers eyeing the lame-duck session of Congress late this year as the last chance for the United States to approve the Trans-Pacific Partnership before a new administration waters down or scuttles a deal. Opposition to trade has emerged as a rare area of bipartisan agreement in the 2016 election campaign, with leading candidates opposing or criticizing a pact that would boost trade among nations making up 40 percent of the global economy. A tough battle for congressional seats in states where economic concerns loom large makes supporting deals such as TPP a political liability. In such a hostile environment, where anti-trade rhetoric resonates among voters in key manufacturing regions, congressional leaders point to the legislative session just after the Nov. 8 election as the earliest a deal could be considered. "I think we'll probably get it through, but it's shaky," Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch, a Utah Republican, said in an interview. "It will probably have to be after the elections. I think we have a better chance to passing it after, but we'll see" what Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell wants to do, he said. McConnell, a Republican from Kentucky, has indicated plans not to pursue it "certainly before the election," leaving the door open to a vote in the lame-duck session, according to trade analysts. A spokesman for McConnell said the senator has nothing to add to his previous comments on TPP, and has not announced a schedule for consideration yet. GOP leaders' support is critical to the deal's passage. President Barack Obama is counting on them to mobilize the same coalition of lawmakers that helped give the president fast-track authority in June to conclude the 12-nation deal. This time around, Republicans are less committal, having raised opposition to some of the provisions in the newly signed deal. Presidential politics complicates the picture. Hillary Clinton, the front-runner on the Democratic side, said she no longer supports it. Donald Trump, who leads the race to be the Republican nominee, has slammed the agreement and called for 45 percent tariffs on Chinese imports. Thomas Donohue, chief executive officer of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, said in an interview Friday on Bloomberg Television that such tariffs would backfire politically and ultimately hurt "the citizens that go to Wal-Mart and Target." The hyperbole against trade has helped fire up crowds and rack up primary victories, but it's heightening anxiety among multinational companies dependent on exports and global supply chains. So they're mounting a push on Capitol Hill to get it done as soon as possible. Business groups are "going to put a lot of pressure on McConnell to make sure this doesn't fall through, and they have influence," said Julian Zelizer, a presidential historian at Princeton University. After the 12 nations signed the trade deal in early February, five major American business groups joined the leadership of the U.S. Coalition for TPP whose members include Apple Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. to push for passage. "Our intention is certainly to push as far and fast as we can on the agreement now and work with Congress and administration to get a vote as soon as we possibly can to make sure we get this turned into law in 2016," Doug Oberhelman, CEO of Caterpillar, who serves as chairman of the Washington-based Business Roundtable, one of the co-leaders of the coalition, said on a conference call March 15. Obama said on Feb. 22 that the administration plans to present the TPP formally to Congress "at some point this year and my hope is that we can get votes." SENATE ELECTIONS Republicans have their own calculation to make as their try to retain control of both chambers in Congress. While the GOP has a firm hold on the majority in the House, it's defending 24 seats in the Senate this year. Democrats need a net gain of five seats to win outright control of the Senate. "They don't want to do anything that might jeopardize their majority in the Senate in the upcoming elections," said Joshua Meltzer, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington and a former Australian trade negotiator. Republicans need to work out what a TPP vote would be for them, and "that's the key political issue which will sort of determine ultimately whether they do move forward with this or not," he said. Lawmakers fearing a voter backlash may be more apt to stay quiet on the issue through Election Day and take controversial votes during the lame-duck session, which can last as long as a month after the election and before a new Congress convenes in January, according to Bloomberg Intelligence. But history shows mixed results. Congressional Research Service records show that only three trade-related bills have been voted on in a lame duck. The Trade Act of 1974 created fast-track authority for the president to negotiate trade agreements that Congress can approve and disapprove without amendments. The Uruguay Round of 1994, which led to the creation of the World Trade Organization, was approved by a Democratic Congress in the 1994 lame duck session, after Republicans won control of both the House and Senate in the November elections. During the 2006 lame-duck session, a Republican House defeated a measure backed by President George W. Bush to normalize trade relations with Vietnam. The bill was cleared a month later, however, and allowed Vietnam to join the WTO in 2007. For a TPP vote in the lame duck, "a lot of work would have to be done between now and then," Meltzer said. "But trade has been done in the lame duck it's definitely doable." Contributors include Erik Wasson, Steven T. Dennis and Angela Greiling Keane. Bunge North America plans to add jobs and move its headquarters from a Maryland Heights office park to a high-visibility site next to Highway 40 (Interstate 64) in Chesterfield. The company intends to keep its existing 557 jobs in the St. Louis area and add 160 jobs over the next decade, officials said Tuesday. Bunge North America is part of Bunge Ltd., an international agribusiness and food ingredient company based in White Plains, N.Y. Opus Development Co. plans to build Bunges new North American headquarters on 14 acres next to I-64 on Timberlake Manor Parkway. The site is known as the Kraus Farm property. Planned is a four-story building of about 150,000 square feet. The project includes a parking garage for about 700 vehicles. Todd Bastean, Bunge North Americas chief executive, said in a statement the company is proud to have been a part of the St. Louis community for more than 25 years. We are excited to remain in the region because this community is connected to so many links in the ag value chain, he said. Bunge decided to keep its corporate employees in the St. Louis area after conducting a multistate search for alternatives, the company said. The project in Chesterfield is in line for public assistance. The Missouri Department of Economic Development is offering up to $10.9 million in tax credits through its Missouri Works program if job creation and retention requirements are met. In addition, the St. Louis Economic Development Partnership is asking the St. Louis County Council to approve a 50-percent tax abatement for 10 years on the Bunge leased property and the equipment for its new headquarters. The partnership has not finished calculating the precise dollar value of this abatement. The council was scheduled to consider Bunge project incentives at its meeting Tuesday night. County Executive Steve Stenger said in a statement the county had worked with Bunge officials on the headquarters relocation project. It was a highly competitive search and these new high-paying jobs will have a substantial impact on our economy, he said. We look forward to Bunge continuing to thrive in St. Louis County and more agricultural companies moving here to be near the global center of agricultural technology. Stenger credited the St. Louis Economic Partnership for working with the county to convince Bunge executives that the quality of life in the St. Louis region made the area an ideal fit for the company's North American headquarters. Bunges current headquarters is at 11720 Borman Drive, in Maryland Heights. The companys planned move to Chesterfield follows its recent acquisition of a 35,000-square-foot office and manufacturing building at Missouri Research Park in St. Charles County. Officials said the building will house an innovation center which will include pilot plants for oil and milling products as well as a test kitchen. Missouri Department of Economic Development officials said Bunges headquarters and Missouri Research Park projects will add nearly 200 jobs to the St. Louis region. Todays announcement that Bunge North America will not only stay in St. Louis but also expand significantly is a big win for the region and the state of Missouri, Gov. Jay Nixon said in a statement. Steve Giegerich of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report. EDITOR'S NOTE: This story was updated Wednesday to clarify the type of incentive that the county is offering the Bunge project. An earlier story had an erroneous reference to bonds, which incorrectly suggested there was an additional incentive involved. FRANKFORT, KY. Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear sued Volkswagen on Tuesday, claiming the German automakers diesel emissions cheating scheme violated the states consumer protection law. The lawsuit, filed in a state court, seeks civil penalties potentially totaling millions of dollars, plus restitution for the owners of nearly 3,800 vehicles registered in Kentucky, Beshear said. We have a very strong law that is meant to prevent companies like this ... from making an outright lie that they then use to sell whats a pretty expensive product, Beshear said at a state Capitol news conference. Kentuckys suit continues the fallout against Volkswagen since its admission last year that nearly 600,000 cars were sold in the U.S. with software that regulators say was designed to cheat on required emissions tests. Beshear said Volkswagen must be held accountable for false promotion of its vehicles in Kentucky. They convinced Kentuckians that wanted to own a green vehicle that they were buying one, the Democratic attorney general said. All the while their cheat devices were convincing the public that these vehicles were clean when they in fact were not. A VW spokeswoman, Jeannine Ginivan, said Tuesday that the company typically doesnt comment on litigation. Volkswagen is working with federal environmental regulators and others to resolve the matter as quickly as possible, she said. Kentuckys suit was filed in Franklin County Circuit Court in Frankfort. Four other states Texas, New Mexico, New Jersey and West Virginia have filed separate lawsuits against the automaker, according to Beshears office. The company potentially faces more than $20 billion in fines from state and federal regulators, as well as hundreds of lawsuits filed on behalf of angry vehicle owners. Volkswagen in September admitted to U.S. regulators that it had used illegal software installed in its so-called Clean Diesel engines. The move allowed cars to pass laboratory emissions tests while spewing levels of harmful nitrogen oxide at up to 40 times the level allowed when operating on real roads. The automakers lone U.S. plant is in Tennessee. Hats off to Macy's The department store will feature local hat designer Dianne Isbell from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. at Chesterfield Mall Saturday (March 26). Stop by to shop her latest hat and fascinator styles. Bring your dress or outfit for Easter, the Kentucky Derby, or the Forest Park Forever Hat Luncheon -- or buy a new outfit there -- and match or put in an order for a custom-design. Visit hatsbydianne.com for a preview or to arrange an in-person consultation. Haute Hip-Hop exhibit EXTENDED If you missed the exuberant opening party including a showing by Ferguson artist Jermaine Clark, there's still time and don't miss the closing party from 5 to 8 p.m. March 25 at Projects+Gallery, 4733 McPherson Avenue. Much like the well-attended and fashionable opening, the closing will feature local hip-hop music artists, including Bates and fellow female emcees from St. Louis' own Femcee Nation Organization and DJ Agile One, will spin throughout the evening. The event coincides with the openings of neighboring shows at Duane Reed Gallery and Philip Slein Gallery. No RSVP required. Free to the public. NOTE: Projects+Gallery will be hosting a panel discussion on hip-hop and its influence on contemporary art, fashion, and culture from 3 to 4 p.m. March 26. Moderated by Adrienne Davis, longtime art collector, professor of law, and vice provost at Washington University, the discussion will include gallery owner Susan Barrett, founder and president of Barrett Barrera Projects and John Harrington, co-founder of Paint Louis, Slumfest and Beats 4 Eats. No RSVP required. Free to the public. Style and Fashion Extravaganza The Salvation Army Womens Auxiliary of St. Louis will hold its annual fundraiser at noon on April 1 at the Hilton St. Louis Frontenac. The Spring Fashion Show and Luncheon features five local designers and items from Dillards at St. Louis Galleria. Doors will open for silent auction and seating at 11 a.m. Auction items include tickets to The Muny, an overnight stay at the Hilton St. Louis Frontenac, a 32-inch flat screen TV, designer purses, and a variety of gift cards. Tickets are $55 and the amount over $30 is tax deductible. The fashion show helps raise money for The Salvation Armys service programs. For more information about the show visit stlsalvationarmy.org. For more information or to make a purchase by phone, call Kathy Poston at 314-646-3039. Dark Matter Artists Terrence Boyd and Amanda McCavour will present their work from April 1 to May 8 at Craft Alliance, 6640 Delmar Boulevard, with an opening reception from 6 to 8 p.m. April 1. McCavour states: In my work, I use a sewing machine to create thread drawings and installations by sewing into a fabric that dissolves in water. This fabric makes it possible for me to build up the thread by sewing repeatedly into my drawn images so that when the fabric is dissolved, the image can hold together without a base." For more on the exhibition visit craftalliance.org. Fashion Fund First Fridays The Vault by Women's Closet Exchange is hosting three in-store fundraisers for the St. Louis Fashion Fund to further its mission to support and expand the fashion industry in the city. The famous resale shop will donate all of the profits from April 1 and May 6. Buyers will be on staff from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. to purchase items that meet the shops selective criteria. Customers selling items can be paid immediately (no waiting period) or donate their check to the fund. The Vault is located at 2325 South Brentwood Boulevard, womensclosetexchange.net. Four Seasons of Fashion A benefit for the St. Louis Symphony featuring Cameron Silver, renowned fashion director, reality TV star and founder of Los Angeles premier vintage boutique, Decades. Silver will coordinate a runway presentation of classic couture from Versace, Christian Dior, YSL and more. And the procession will be beautifully interwoven with a chamber performance of Vivaldis The Four Seasons, led by Concertmaster David Halen with St. Louis Symphony musicians. Doors open for a silent auction and cocktails at 6:30 p.m. and the performance takes place from 7 to 8:30 p.m., April 4 at Powell Hall, 718 North Grand Boulevard. A fashion viewing and champagne reception will follow from 8:30 to 9 p.m. Tickets $125. Visit stlsymphony.org or call 314-534-1700 for details. Runway Lights Fashion Show This years fashionable fundraiser for Variety the Childrens Charity of St. Louis will features the red carpet designs of Carmen Marc Valvo. This American designer is well-known for his evening wear and high-end cocktail attire. Doors open at 10:30 a.m. and the show begins at noon on April 9 at Union Station, 1820 Market Street. Tickets $100 to $150 at varietystl.org or call 314-720-7700. Travel Seminar Passport Luggage is hosting a series of seminars to offer shoppers expert tips of the ideal carry-on bag, travel safety, comfort while traveling and maximizing packing while minimizing weight. The seminars are 2 p.m. April 23, May 21 and June 18 at Passport Luggage, 2404 Saint Louis Galleria. The April 23 seminar will feature Angel Castellanos, a blogger, packing expert and world traveler who has visited 45 countries on 4 continents. He is doing two seminars that day: one at the Plaza Frontenac location at 10 a.m. and the second at the Galleria store. For more information on times or to RSVP (though not required), 314-726-1313 or galleria@landmarkluggage.com. UPCOMING GALAS St. Louis Ballet is hosting it's 2016 Spring Gala known as the Swan Ball beginning at 6 p.m., March 5 at the Contemporary Art Museum. The event will honor Gen Horiuchi and his 15th anniversary season as executive and artistic director of the St. Louis Ballet. There will be a short performance excerpt at 7 p.m. followed by dinner and dancing. Black and white evening attire suggested (features optional). Tickets $250 at stlouisballet.org or 636-537-1988. Makers Ball will once again celebrate artisans, i.e. the makers, and the power of craft. The Craft Alliance Center of Art + Design celebration takes place April 30 at the Palladium St. Louis, 1400 Park Place. $250-$500. Purchase tickets at craftalliance.org. For more information, contact Megan Eyssell at 314-425-1177 x.333 or megan.eyssell@craftalliance.org. The Center for Women in Transition is an organization dedicated to supporting women in the criminal justice system in making a successful transition to their families and communities through practicing and promoting restorative justice. The group's annual gala and auction, Beautiful Transformations, takes place 6 to 10 p.m., Saturday, April 23 at the Grand Hall on Chouteau at the Sheet Metal Workers Union Hall, 2319 Chouteau Avenue. $125, early bird tickets available online until March 23 at cwitstl.org/beautifultransformations. For more information contact Carrie Coats at 314-771-5207 or carriecoats@cwitstl.org. Special Request is written by Town and Country resident Alanna Kellogg, author of the online recipe column KitchenParade.com and veggie evangelist at the food blog about vegetables, A Veggie Venture. Would you like to request a recipe from a restaurant that is still open in the St. Louis area? Send your request along with your full name to reciperequest@post-dispatch.com. ST. LOUIS An employee of a St. Charles company that helps keep track of criminal defendants was sentenced Tuesday in federal court here to 33 months in federal prison for bilking her employer out of more than $600,000. Joyce Roberts did not just enrich herself, however, but overpaid two relatives, court records show. Assistant U.S. Attorney Reginald Harris called the fraud a devastating event for both the company, Eastern Missouri Alternative Sentencing Services Inc., and its owner. EMASS operates a private probation service and an electronic monitoring system. It also runs a series of programs, including drug and alcohol education, driver improvement and domestic violence counseling, according to its website. Roberts started with EMASS in 1996, processing time sheets and the payroll. Beginning in 2009, she submitted fraudulent overtime pay for herself and one relative, Roberts plea says. Another relative joined the company in 2010, and Roberts inflated his pay also. Roberts reaped $325,951 in unauthorized overtime, and the relatives, who have not been charged, received $222,265, court records show. The company also lost more than $125,000 to matching contributions on the employee 401(k) accounts and processing fees, records show. Under federal sentencing guidelines, Roberts faced 33 to 41 months in prison after pleading guilty in U.S. District Court in St. Louis on Dec. 21 to five counts of wire fraud. Although Roberts asked for less, U.S. District Judge Catherine Perry said the 33-month term was appropriate, citing the seriousness of the crime as well as its duration and the large financial loss. Perry also ordered Roberts to repay $675,615.41, although some money already has been forfeited. U.S. Attorney Richard Callahan said that a criminal investigation into the relatives was still somewhat active. A decade before her disappearance ever became a mystery to police, it was a body decapitated, dismembered and dumped at a Wright City rest stop that flummoxed investigators. Deanna Denise Howland was a Belleville native whose troubles started early on. By her 30s, Howland was hanging out around the Metro East, prostituting herself, using drugs and detached from her relatives, police say. That may be why the 35-year-old Alton woman wasnt reported missing when she vanished sometime in 2004. On Tuesday, investigators announced that recent DNA tests had linked the two cases on opposite sides of the river. The headless, limbless torso found in 2004 at a rest stop along Interstate 70 belonged to Howland. This has been haunting me for the last 12 years, said former Warren County Coroner Roger Mauzy, now the countys presiding commissioner. Its the only body Ive never been able to identify and its cost me a lot of sleep. ...Theres nothing more frustrating than having someone under your care that you dont know who it is. Body found The womans torso was found at the rest stop on June 28, 2004. She was found down a small hill in a remote part of the rest stop, along a circle drive that was primarily used as a picnic area. Because the remains had not decomposed, police believe she had not been dead for long perhaps for only hours when she was discovered. Investigators believe she was killed somewhere else and dumped out of a vehicle. She was wearing only a black bra. Her identity remained a mystery. Among the only clues were scars from an appendectomy and a Caesaran section. Investigators checked missing person reports, but found no match. Howland hadnt been reported missing yet. Police at one point interviewed a suspected serial killer who was being held by authorities in Alabama. Later, they said they believed a spouse or boyfriend might be responsible for the death. Police found a knife in a storm sewer that they said might have been used to dismember the body. But without a name for the victim, the investigation apparently went nowhere. Eventually the case went cold. Estranged from family Howland was married more than once and went by different names, police said. Her maiden name was Deanna Barker. She also went by Deanna Kinnear and Deanna Froehlich. Court records say she was born in Belleville, married in 1991 and divorced four years later. She had at least two children. Family members of Howland couldnt be reached or didnt want to talk. Records show about two dozen criminal cases in Madison County beginning in 1996, including drug and paraphernalia possession, prostitution and solicitation. The last criminal charge listed in Madison County court records was a March 2004 charge of a pedestrian walking on the highway. Ferguson Capt. Dan DeCarli, commander of the Major Case Squad of Greater St. Louis, said Howland lived a very transient lifestyle and was estranged from her family. She was known to hang out in Granite City and East St. Louis in addition to the Alton area. She wasnt reported missing until last year, authorities said. Its not clear what triggered that report at that time. Information about her was posted in the National Missing and Unidentified Persons database, which said she was last seen in the Alton area on May 11, 2004. Case reopened Meanwhile, in 2014, Warren County Sheriffs Lt. Matt Schmutz had reopened the torso case. At some point, investigators in Madison County got information that caused them to contact Warren County about a possible link between Howlands missing person case and the unidentified torso. Its not clear what that information was, and authorities declined to discuss specifics. After sharing information, authorities compared DNA from the torso to samples from some of Howlands relatives, Warren County Sheriff Kevin Harrison said. His department received test results March 10 confirming the torso was Howland. The identification resulted from two investigators getting together, sharing what probably seemed like nothing, and it absolutely was the right information, Harrison said. Now, police hope they may finally be able to solve the mystery of how she died and who dumped her remains in Warren County. We want to focus on who she is and where she had been, Maj. Jeff OConnor of the Major Case Squad said Tuesday as the DNA results were announced. We are looking for anything. I am sure somebody out there has some information about this. Police are asking anyone with information about the case to call CrimeStoppers at 866-371-8477. PALMYRA, Ill. Twelve law enforcement agencies in Illinois including East St. Louis and Brooklyn have turned to the Internet to raise enough money to purchase body cameras for officers. As of Friday, departments in Palmyra, Benld, South Pekin, Braidwood, Creve Coeur, Lawrenceville, Metamora, Midlothian, Waverly and Williamsfield had signed up for free to be listed on the website BodyCameraDonations.com to receive donations for the devices. Five Missouri police forces have signed up, including Calverton Park and St. Louis Community College-Meramec. The website was created by Peter Austin Onruang, founder of Wolfcom, a company that designs, manufactures and sells body cameras to law enforcement, after receiving calls from people who wanted to buy body cameras for police officers. Its true that President (Barack) Obama is allocating $75 million for body cameras, but not every department is getting it. What we found out is that there were many departments that had no money, he said. It costs Wolfcom $350 to make a camera, but the company is offering them to law enforcement agencies through the website for $250 each, Onruang told the Springfield State Journal-Register. When a department reaches $250, it can choose to buy a camera or let its fund grow, he said. Individuals and businesses can make donations to a specific department, or they can contribute to a general fund to be dispersed among the various departments on the website.The Palmyra Police Department decided to use the website after learning that the two body cameras it purchased for about $450 each dont meet the criteria of a new state law that took effect in January. The city already bought body cameras for us, but they dont quite meet the specifications for the new law that came out Jan. 1, Police Chief Wayman Meredith said. I dont see them buying us a second set of cameras just a year later. The department would like to get three or four new body cameras, he said. CLAYTON The St. Louis County police board has voted to reinstate but demote to patrolman a lieutenant at the center of racial profiling allegations three years ago. Then-Chief Tim Fitch fired Lt. Patrick Rick Hayes in 2013 after an internal affairs investigation concluded that Hayes ordered officers to target blacks in and around shopping centers in south St. Louis County. In a closed session Monday, the board voted 4-0 to reinstate Hayes. Member Laurie Westfall then voted against demoting him to patrolman. The yes votes to do both came from the chairman, Roland Corvington, and members Lawrence Wooten and T.R. Carr. Corvington and Wooten are black, Carr and Westfall are white. The decision runs contrary to the recommendation of a hearing officer, Michael Flynn, who presided over an 11-day police board trial on Hayes appeal last year. Flynn said he should be reinstated as a lieutenant. The 84-page opinion describes a platoon run amok, with a secret hideout known as The Lake House for lengthy on-duty breaks, county attorneys pressuring officers to testify against Hayes and a potentially unethical dealing with a former police board member. Hayes has long claimed that he was targeted by malcontents after he was sent to the Affton Precinct to restore lost discipline. The board did not release Flynns document, but it became public Tuesday with the filing of a lawsuit against the county on Hayes behalf by his attorney, Neil Bruntrager. The report accuses the internal affairs division of doing incomplete work. It also discounts subordinates claims that Hayes made racially inappropriate comments, referring to the officers as a disorganized group of cub scouts led by the Pied Piper of sergeants. They followed their roles and played their parts reciting for the Bureau of Professional Standards, what had been scripted for them by Sgt. ONeil, the master playwright for this drama, Flynn wrote. The reference was to Sgt. Dan ONeil. The allegations surfaced in December 2013, with anonymous letters to top brass signed by The Lonewolf. The department determined it to be ONeil, who said in an interview with the Post-Dispatch that the department retaliated against him for being a whistleblower. ONeils attorney, Jerome Dobson, said Tuesday he was greatly perplexed by the boards vote but had not yet read Flynns recommendation. Its unclear how Flynns report affected a separate board vote Monday requesting that the Bureau of Professional Standards, now commanded by a lieutenant, be supervised by at least a captain. AN UNFORTUNATE SETBACK Hayes court appeal of the boards decision seeks three years of lost pay and benefits totaling more than $300,000. It also seeks to keep his suspension in effect, to protect his pension. Payments are based on the last three years of salary, so a demotion could reduce his benefits, We are also concerned that putting him back to work with these allegations would place him personally at risk, Bruntrager noted. Fitch, the former chief, said, Even though I feel Hayes actions warrant termination, I respect their decision. Police Chief Jon Belmar issued a statement later Tuesday, deploring racial profiling in general and pledging to review the information presented to the board to ensure such an environment does not exist today, as it is alleged to have existed in one instance in 2012. He said Deputy Chief Ken Cox will examine the case to address any new allegations and will leave no stone unturned in our review. The board members, through a department spokesman, said they had no comment. Corvington said only, People havent seen what weve seen, or heard what weve heard and they will draw their own conclusions, but its a personnel matter and therefore we cannot comment. Bruntrager objected at the time to the boards decision to hold a private trial, claiming his client was framed by officers upset that he was a disciplinarian, and that the public had a right to know details. In all, seven officers and two sergeants told internal affairs investigators that Hayes, who is white, used racial slurs and ordered them to profile blacks. The department said it determined that none of the officers followed those orders a finding challenged by the citys chapter of the NAACP but not by the countys chapter. Leaders of both did agree that Hayes reinstatement is a mistake. The Rev. B.T. Rice, first-vice president of the St. Louis County NAACP, called it an unfortunate setback. He added, This doesnt speak well for trying to make sure that racism is eradicated and erased. The citys NAACP chapter found that hundreds of African-Americans were stopped and arrested, said its president, Adolphus Pruitt. He said the department faces a dilemma: Did he do it? And if he did, then Im extremely confused as to why they think he should be an officer in any department. If he did not, then we have six or seven officers who swore that he did and they need to be removed. You cant have it both ways. FAVORS, PRESSURE, LAKE HOUSE Flynns report says Officer Russ Bono told a lieutenant that he was upset with all of the stuff that was getting way out of control and he felt Sgt. ONeil stabbed them in the back by dragging them into this mess and that it was all (expletive). Flynn also notes that at least two officers felt pressured, by county attorneys to testify against Hayes. In one case, former officer Gregory Van Mierlo testified that County Counselor Lorena Merklin Von Kaenel used meetings on an unrelated civil case against him to question and/or influence them with regard to the Hayes case. He believed that the defense of his civil case was being sacrificed for the benefit of their pursuit of the Hayes case, Flynn wrote, adding that a different county counselor ended up on Van Mierlos case. The report says that at least once, Officer Bradley Hollenback arrested Tony Gianino, a convicted felon who he believed violated probation with a harassment offense. When Hayes learned of it, he called Gianinos uncle, John Saracino, then on the police board, and the warrant was either taken out of this system or determined to be inactive. Hollenback said he was ordered to give Gianino a ride back to the probation and parole office. Bruntrager said that claim is completely unsupported by any evidence, other than his mere allegations. He said Hollenback had been disciplined for pressuring a black officer to pick a side in the Hayes case. That officer testified that Hayes orders were to target specific suspects and not racially derogatory. Flynns report summarizes the testimony of several officers who said they frequently gathered on duty at The Lake House abandoned military housing at Jefferson Barracks where they could avoid patrol work but remain available for calls. He also questions why, if Hayes comments were so troubling, the aggrieved officers waited about eight months to report them. He suggests that the lead investigator did not pursue a rigorous investigation because the complaining officers were friends. But he also notes that the investigator asked for additional interviews and polygraphs but was denied by Fitch. Flynn called Fitchs explanation befuddling. Flynn notes that Hayes spent personal time as a volunteer for Habitat for Humanity, St. Vincent de Paul and Catholic Charities. Flynn writes, One has to ask: Is this volunteer activity consistent with a person who is a racist? WASHINGTON Congress can't even take Easter recess without controversy. Case in point: Sen. Roy Blunt, facing a tough re-election challenge from Democratic Secretary of State Jason Kander, is on an agricultural tour of Missouri this week, and on Tuesday he is expected to receive a "spirit of enterprise" award from the Columbia Chamber of Commerce. But his office in Kansas City was also being picketed Monday by liberal activists critical of his decision to not even consider or meet with President Barack Obama's new nominee for the Supreme Court. The protests against Blunt were part of nationwide efforts by liberal activist groups to put pressure on Republican senators running for re-election either in Democrat-leaning states, like Wisconsin, or in swing states, like New Hampshire. A scattering were planned across the country this week, including in Kansas City. Blunt is on the fringe of that hemisphere, representing a state that has gone Republican in recent presidential election, but has elected statewide Democrats, including Kander and Gov. Jay Nixon. The Kander-Blunt race has gained increasing prominence on the national radar. According to a signup site sponsored by MoveOn.org, a liberal activist group, activists planned to to "invite the media" to their Kansas City protest, and they planned to drop off a copy of Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution and an offer for Blunt to take a civics class. Call it political theatre 101. That section of the Constitution reads, in part, that the president "shall nominate, and by and with the advice and consent of the Senate, shall appoint ambassadors, other public ministers and consuls, judges of the Supreme Court, and all other officers of the United States..." Not everyone agrees with Democrats that that part of the Constitution means the Senate has a "constitutional duty" to schedule hearings on the nomination of federal judge Merrick Garland to replace the late Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. Many Democratic senators, including Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., have made that argument on the Senate floor and elsewhere. But Republicans, led by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., want to hold off until after the next President is elected in November and allow whomever is elected to name his or her lifetime appointment to the vacancy. McConnell says it's not even necessary to hold hearings, a position held by Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, whose Iowa offices also were picketed this week. Some cracks have appeared in the Republican armor. Over the weekend, Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill., said on a Chicago radio show that the Senate should "man up and cast a vote" on Garland's nomination, even though he would almost certainly be defeated as too liberal for Republicans. But that is unlikely to happen. McConnell reiterated over the weekend there was no need to go through the exercise. An independent examination of the Democrats' claim that Senate Republicans' were shirking their constitutional duties by not considering the nomination was given a three Pinnochios out of a possible four rating by The Washington Post's Glenn Kessler. He concluded that politics have always played a role in the selection of Supreme Court justices and that Senate precedent going back two centuries favors the Republican position. Kessler cited Senate rejection of an amendment to require action on a lame-duck appointee during the Andrew Jackson presidency nearly two centuries ago as precedent for the Senate not considering having to consider a nominee as part of its "advise and consent" constitutional role. The question now is not constitutional as much as how long the Democrats will try to make the non-action a pressure point in Senate races, like Kander-Blunt, and what effect it will have at the ballot box in the fall. (Chuck Raasch) BY THE NUMBERS: 124 - Number of people who have served on the Supreme Court 148 - Number of votes on Supreme Court nominees by the Senate 12 - Number of presidential Supreme Court nominees who have not received votes, after their names were withdrawn or they took themselves out of contention. Numbers are from the Congressional Research Service. ON THE WEB: HE SAID IT: We should go through the process the Constitution has already laid out. The president has already laid out a nominee who is from Chicagoland and for me, Im open to see him, to talk to him, and ask him his views on the Constitution. Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill. on WLS-AMs "Big John Howell Show." JEFFERSON CITY Gov. Jay Nixons administration must identify the pharmacists who supply drugs used in Missouri executions, a Cole County judge has ruled. In a decision handed down by Circuit Judge John E. Beetem, the Missouri Department of Corrections violated open records laws by failing to turn over the suppliers of injection drugs used for executions, as well as the results of quality tests on those chemicals and any memos related to the use of those drugs in executions. By refusing to disclose these documents already in the public domain, the Missouri Department of Corrections purposely violated the Sunshine Law, Beetem wrote. The 9-page ruling is in response to a lawsuit filed in 2014 by the Post-Dispatch, The Associated Press, Guardian News and Media and other media companies seeking to shine more light on Missouris secretive capital punishment system. Missouri is among 31 states that have capital punishment. Officials have had to alter what drugs they use during executions after drugmakers began to stop providing chemicals linked to capital punishment. In refusing to release the information, corrections officials argued the pharmacy providing the drugs is a member of the execution team, whose identities are confidential under state law. The state also argued it would be more difficult to obtain execution drugs if the supplier was made public. Beetem disagreed with the agency, saying state law only protects the people who administer lethal chemicals and medical personnel who provide direct support for the administration of lethal gas or lethal chemicals. Under current state law, Beetem said public agencies that dont respond to requests for public records in three days under the state Sunshine Law give up their right to block the release of the records requested. In his ruling, Beetem also ordered the state to pay attorney fees of $73,335. I would hope the state would stop wasting taxpayer dollars defending their frivolous position, attorney Bernard Rhodes of Kansas City, who represented the media organizations in the lawsuit, said. Rhodes said the public is unable to exercise meaningful oversight of the executions carried out in its name when the state withholds information. One of the primary purposes of a free and independent press is to perform a watchdog function over government activities, and this lawsuit is a perfect example of that, he said in a statement. Since the lawsuit was filed, 13 individuals in the state have been executed by lethal drug injection. The Department of Corrections referred questions to Attorney General Chris Kosters office. A Koster spokeswoman said the ruling was under review. The court decision comes a month after state Sen. Paul Wieland, R-Imperial, was able to persuade his colleagues to hold a hearing on abolishing the death penalty. Although Wieland said he is not going to call the measure for a vote this year, the hearing marked a milestone in the debate over the use of capital punishment in Missouri. JEFFERSON CITY When state Rep. Gina Mitten comes to the Capitol every January for the Legislative session, she's in constant contact with her staff, other lawmakers and interns. The same can be said for lobbyists and legislative liaisons. And that's why she's calling for mandatory sexual harassment training for those individuals as well. Lobbyists and liaisons "are in contact with my staff and I and they're in contact with interns," said Mitten, D-St. Louis. "Why shouldn't they have the same training" as lawmakers, interns and staff? After two lawmakers resigned amid intern-related scandals last year, Republican legislative leaders vowed to clean up the culture at the Capitol by bolstering their sexual harassment and intern policies as well as pushing ethics reform. Among other things, the new policy requires all lawmakers, staff and interns to participate in yearly sexual harassment training. Under a measure sponsored by Mitten this year, lobbyists and liaisons would have to take similar training within 90 days of registering or being appointed. The Missouri Ethics Commission would develop the content of the training and offer it four times a year. A list of who completed the training would be posted online. Mitten anticipates a cost for her proposal, but an estimate has yet to be created. James Klahr, the commission's executive director, said he has seen the bill but that no lawmakers have contacted his office about it. "This gets into a different area for us that we don't currently do any training on," Klahr said. Mitten filed the measure in February, before the General Assembly requested and received a temporary restraining order last month against David Poger, a former lobbyist and Democratic operative, who allegedly sexually harassed three college interns. There is a hearing on the matter Monday. Her bill has not yet been heard by a committee, but she said the incident involving Poger is a perfect example of why her measure is needed. "What we saw happen with Poger being in the building and engaging in improper conduct indicates the need for training and the need for the General Assembly to make some changes and take this issue seriously," Mitten said. The General Assembly's action against Poger is the latest event in a string of ethical problems at the Missouri Capitol. Then this month, another lawmaker, former Republican Rep. Don Gosen, resigned and later admitted he had an extramarital affair with an adult who didnt work in the Capitol. Partially in response to last years scandals, the Missouri House fast-tracked a package of ethics measures this year, but they have struggled to get through the Senate. The bill is House Bill 2572. WASHINGTON Leroy Blunt, the father of Sen. Roy Blunt and grandfather of former Gov. Matt Blunt, has died. Sen. Blunt's office said Tuesday that Leroy Blunt died at age 94 from complications of a stroke he had suffered a year ago. He was a farmer and businessman, and served in the Missouri state House of Representatives for four terms, from 1979-1986. His first wife, Neva, died in 1993. He is also survived by his second wife, Dora, and his son and Sen. Blunt's brother, Ron. Memorial services will be at First Baptist Church in Marshfield, Mo. at 11 am Saturday. In lieu of flowers, the family requests that contributions be made to Marshfield Senior Center Building Fund. "We are a Webster County family, really, my family," Leroy Blunt said in a 2006 interview for the State Historical Society of Missouri at his farm near Marshfield. "There's six generations of us buried out here in the cemetery out west of town. That's home." Leroy Blunt told Gary Kremer, a friend of Roy Blunt and director of the historical society, that he went into local politics because "I just thought it was a good way to serve the people, really." But he also said he was glad he got out when he did. "We've got too many people that are self-centered, I think, in government and out of government," he said in that 2006 interview. "They don't seem to be as interested in what goes on beyond what they touch, to me." Leroy Blunt said Dwight Eisenhower was his favorite president because "everything was kind of an even keel at the time." His grandson, Matt, was governor of Missouri when the interview took place. He wasn't surprised that Matt Blunt went into politics. "He was a lot like his dad in growing up time," Leroy Blunt said of his grandson. At the end of the interview, Leroy Blunt told Kremer: "I don't very often do this. I don't like to blow my whistle." Updated at 6:31 a.m. MOSCOW Authorities in Europe have tightened security at airports, on subways, at the borders and on city streets after deadly attacks Tuesday on the Brussels airport and its subway system. With Brussels on lockdown and the French prime minister saying that Europe is "at war," European leaders held emergency security meetings and deployed more police, explosives experts, sniffer dogs and plainclothes officers at key points across the bloc. The Paris airport authority said security was tightened at all Paris airports soon after the Brussels explosions on Tuesday morning. Airports in London, Prague, Amsterdam, Vienna, and many others, also saw increased security. The attacks come just days after the main suspect in the Nov. 13 Paris attacks was arrested in Brussels on Friday. In Moscow, Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov told Russian news agencies that authorities will "re-evaluate security" at Russian airports, although its measures are already among some of the toughest across Europe. There have been mandatory checks at the entrances to airports since a 2011 suicide bombing at Moscow's Domodedovo airport that killed 37. Gatwick airport said that "as a result of the terrible incidents in Brussels we have increased our security presence and patrols around the airport." Heathrow said it was working with police to provide a "high-visibility" presence in light of the attacks. In Germany, the state rail system, Deutsche Bahn, has halted its high-speed rail service from Germany to Brussels. The company said its ICE trains are now stopping at the border city of Aachen. The British, Dutch and Polish governments convened emergency meetings as they beefed up security at airports. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Britain's David Cameron vowed to help Belgium. "Our thoughts are there, in Brussels, and we are praying for the victims," said Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo, who canceled a routine news conference to attend an emergency meeting with her government security council. Austrian Interior Ministry spokesman Karl-Heinz Grundboeck said more police are on the streets and at airports in Vienna and other major Austrian cities even though there appears to be no "Austria connection." Spain's Interior Ministry said officials would meet later Tuesday to discuss the situation but that for the moment Spain was maintaining its Security Alert Level 4 one step below the maximum that has been in place since 2015 extremist attacks in France, Kuwait and Tunisia. In Greece, police added additional security at airports, metro stations and embassies with uniformed and plain-clothed officers. But Greece's government spokeswoman Olga Gerovasili said there were no additional security measures being taken for refugees and migrants following the Brussels attacks. "We are not making any linkage between those two issues. That would be a defeat for Europe," Gerovasili said. Associated Press writers Jill Lawless and Danica Kirka in London, Frank Jordans in Berlin, Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow, Ciaran Giles in Madrid, Alison Mutler in Bucharest, Monika Scislowska in Warsaw, Karel Janicek in Prague, George Jahn in Vienna and Derek Gatopoulos in Athens contributed to this report. We will call her Jane Doe. We really have no choice, given that thats the only identification found in the court document. Jane is 57, a Jamaica-born permanent U.S. resident living in New York City. She is a licensed nurse and a mother. She is also a convicted felon. In 2000, Jane, trying to raise two young daughters on $15,000 a year and an $80 weekly child-support check, was recruited by her then-boyfriend for an insurance scam. They staged a car accident and tried to collect on a claim. It didnt work. Jane was convicted on fraud charges and sentenced to 15 months in prison. She was released in 2004. Thats when her ordeal began. Her debt to society paid, Jane set out looking for work. She was rehired by a former employer and worked there two years. Then the state Office of Professional Discipline suspended her license for two years for professional misconduct not because she had done anything wrong, but because of the old conviction. In the years since, Jane has found barricades on every avenue of gainful employment. Job interviews and even job offers mysteriously evaporate when employers learn about her record. She tried to get a business license to start her own company, only to be rejected twice because of it. Last year, Jane tried to have her record expunged. Judge John Gleeson denied the request a few days ago, explaining that Jane doesnt meet the legal standard. But Gleeson the same judge who sent her to prison then did something extraordinary. He appended to his 32-page opinion a federal certificate of rehabilitation. Understand: There is no such thing. The official-looking document carries no legal force. Its just something Gleeson had made for Jane so she can show prospective employers that a federal judge considers her rehabilitated. He says a woman who was convicted once, a long time ago, of a nonviolent crime from which she saw no profit and for which she has served her time, ought not be punished for it the rest of her life. I had no intention, wrote Gleeson, to sentence her to the unending hardship she has endured in the job market. If you consider this a heartwarming story, you miss the point. Yes, Gleeson did a good and generous thing. One hopes it has the desired effect. But it is unconscionable that Jane Does situation ever reached this extreme. The shift of American penal philosophy from rehabilitation to punishment has had many disastrous effects: prison overcrowding, mass disenfranchisement, fatherless homes. But the most self-defeating effect is embodied in denying ex-felons employment once theyve served their time. If you deny them the ability to do lawful work, what obvious option is left? Granted, there are sometimes good reasons to deny a given ex-felon a given job; no daycare should hire a newly released child molester, for example. But what Jane Doe is facing is rooted less in common sense caution than in a new American ethos where punishment never ends. That should be anathema to a nation of second chances. Lawmakers must enact reforms that curb the power of employers to discriminate against former felons or that incentivize their hiring. Questions about criminal records should not be allowed on job applications; a person should have the chance to make a good impression at the job interview without being automatically ruled out for doing some stupid thing a long time ago. Jane Doe was lucky to have Gleeson on her side, but she shouldnt have needed him. She did something stupid, yes, but she was duly punished for it. Except that in America these days, you can never be punished enough. Out of hundreds of stories I wrote as a foreign correspondent from 1980 to 2006, only a handful ever brought me to tears. Maria Victoria Garcias was one of them. At age 28, she and her 10-year-old son, Juan Mario, were among 68 passengers aboard a large, but aging, wooden boat commandeered in 1994 by Cubans desperate to flee to the United States. What followed that night, Garcia told me, was premeditated murder. It was a massacre. Several other survivors corroborated her story. The would-be asylum-seekers made it into open Atlantic waters off Havanas coast before being surrounded by three Cuban navy tugboats. The tugs pummeled the passengers with high-pressure streams from water cannons. Then they began ramming the boat from all sides until it was reduced to splinters, Garcia and other survivors said. Everyone plunged into the churning water, but tugboat crew members refused help. Mothers desperately clung to their infant children with one arm while trying to tread water with the other. One by one, exhausted, each confronted a nightmarish choice: Either I let go of my child, or both of us will drown together. Garcia lost her grip on Juan Mario, who was among seven children and 28 adults who died that night. When word of the massacre eventually circulated on Cubas streets, it prompted a mass exodus by an estimated 20,000 Cubans, who took to the water in makeshift rafts and boats in mid-1994. Garcia put herself in great personal danger to tell her story, which appeared on the front page of The Washington Post in September 1994. To get the story, I had to violate my own countrys travel restrictions by going to Cuba on a tourist visa. And I violated Cuban law by entering as a tourist instead of first obtaining permission to work as a journalist permission the Cuban government denied as it tried to halt coverage of the mass exodus. The episode illustrates how dramatically things have changed in two decades. Today, Cubans are able to come and go between our two countries without venturing out to sea on rickety boats or flimsy rafts. Limits are being relaxed on U.S. tourist travel. This week, U.S. journalists flooded into the country to cover the first visit to Cuban shores by an American president in more than 80 years the most momentous bilateral event on the island since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. But many things havent changed. The person who arranged my interviews with the survivors was Elizardo Sanchez, president of the Cuban Commission of Human Rights and National Reconciliation. One evening when I visited Sanchez at his home, he pointed out a military-style bootprint marking where his front door had been kicked in during one of many government searches. Sanchez, speaking in hushed tones, warned that we were probably being watched. As I was leaving that evening, he asked me for a favor: Would I mind escorting him the following night to a diplomatic reception hosted by several Western ambassadors? Without a journalist present, he would certainly be arrested en route, he explained. On Monday, the day of President Barack Obamas historic meeting with Cuban President Raul Castro, The New York Times reported on the status of human rights in Cuba. And quoted on the front page was none other than Elizardo Sanchez, who was among hundreds of dissidents reportedly detained just as Obama was arriving Sunday. There are some in Congress, such as Texas senator and GOP presidential candidate Ted Cruz, who criticize Obamas rapprochement with Cuba as empowering the dictatorship and kicking the legs out from under activists like Sanchez. But instead of siding with Cruz and shunning Obama on his visit, Sanchez joined other dissidents in a private meeting with the president on Tuesday. Sanchez, Garcia and thousands of other Cubans have paid exceedingly heavy prices for having the courage to defy the dictatorship and press forward with their human rights campaign. The world has heard precious few details about their struggle because Cubas isolation made it easy for the government to clamp down on information and outside interaction. All that is about to change for the better. Soon there will be little or nothing that the Cuban government can hide from the world about the way it mistreats its citizens. And the more that Cubans on the street interact with American tourists and business people, the greater will be Cubans taste for freedom. From the day I met Garcia until now, Ive maintained that the best way to bring down the Castro dictatorship was to end the U.S. embargo, open the floodgates, and inundate Cuba with dollars and information about the outside world. At long last, this theory will be tested. Oh, and that front-page Washington Post story? Shortly after publication, Cuban authorities placed me under house arrest, then deported me. I have never regretted what I had to do to tell Garcias story. Id do it again in a heartbeat. 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. 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. The updated truck mounted 122mm MLRS (Multiple Launch Rocket System) Russia introduced in 2012 has received its first combat experience in eastern Ukraine (Donbas). Called Grad-K, the truck mounted system apparently entered Ukraine at the end of 2015 and was seen in action several months later. The loaded forty tube launcher, the three man crew and 6x6 truck weigh about 15 tons. All 40 rockets can be fired in two seconds using a computerized fire control system that uses satellite navigation. The launcher can be reloaded in seven minutes and it takes less than three minutes for the truck to stop and be ready to launch on a target. Grad-K can use a wide variety of 122mm rockets built to the basic BM-21 specification. The older BM-21s weigh 68.2 kg (150 pounds), are 2.9 meters (9 feet) long, and have a 20.5 kg (45 pound) warhead. The BM-21 rockets have a maximum range of 20 kilometers. Again, because they are unguided, they are only effective if fired in salvos or at large targets (like cities, large military bases, or large groups of troops or vehicles on the battlefield). There are now variants that have smaller warheads and larger rocket motors, giving them a range of about 40 kilometers. BM-21 was introduced in 1962 and replaced the World War II era BM-13 132mm rocket. That weapon entered service in 1939 and each rocket weighed 23 kg (50 pounds), was 600mm (24 inches) long, had a 4.9 kg (15 pound) warhead and a max range of 11.8 kilometers. The BM-21 was a big improvement. Around the same time Grad-K entered service China introduced the new PR50, a much improved Russian BM-21 that began in 1989 as the Type 81 (a strait copy of the BM-21). The PR50 system uses a 122mm rocket that weighs 74 kg (163 pounds), is 2.9 meters (9 feet) long, and has a 21.5 kg (47.3 pound) warhead. Minimum range is 20 kilometers, while max range is 40 kilometers in a version that uses a lighter warhead. The PR50 is actually a complete system, including a truck mounted launcher that holds four 20 rocket launcher boxes. The truck has an automated aiming and reloading system. The PR50 rocket is interchangeable with the older BM-21 type rockets. The main difference between the PR50 and Grad-K is the Chinese system uses a longer 6x6 truck which carries 40 rockets ready to launch and two 20 rocket pods as reloads. The truck carries a crane that makes it easy to reload. As can be seen with the Chinese PR50 the original BM-21 design is hard to completely replace but improvements can be made. Military budgets arent all they appear to be. While the United States alone accounts for over a third of the annual defense spending worldwide, this is not as overwhelming as it appears to be. There are several very practical reasons for this misperception. First there is the purchasing power parity (or PPP, the relative cost of common goods in different countries) angle. If you take into account PPP, those nations with lower costs (like China and India), loom larger as defense spenders. They get more bang for their buck, at least on paper. Without PPP the top five in military spending is; United States, China, Russia, Britain and Japan. Adjust for PPP and India rises into the top five and Japan falls. Thats because things like local supplies and labor are much cheaper in India than Japan. Applying PPP also makes American defense spending much less effective compared to what China spends. Thus without PPP American defense spending is closer to 20 percent of global spending. Adjusting for PPP Chinese defense spending goes from a quarter of what America spends to over 70 percent. Yet American forces deploy many more high teach weapons than China. Thats because U.S. defense spending has been the highest in the world since the 1940s. Since major items of military equipment (ships, aircraft and armored vehicles) have useful lives of over 30 years the Americans have had plenty of time to accumulate a much larger arsenal of expensive equipment than China. But that will change in the future because Chinese annual defense spending has nearly tripled in the last decade. Thus if China keeps its defense spending high and relative costs low, it will match the U.S. in many areas within two or three decades. That probably will not happen because of other factors and trends that do not favor China (and many other nations). First there is the fact that not only has the Chinese economy been growing rapidly since the 1980s, but so have wages and the costs of much else besides. Thus over time the PPP advantage diminishes. China also has a greater problem with corruption in the military than the United States (and most Western nations). This greatly (by 20 percent of more) diminishes the effectiveness of their defense spending. Corruption in defense spending is found everywhere, but it has, for thousands of years, been particularly bad in China. The Chinese government has, since the late 1980s, been making strenuous efforts to reduce the corruption but has had limited success. There is another complication when comparing defense spending. This big one is the relative costs of defending your nation versus attacking someone somewhere else. Its much cheaper to defend. Going on the offensive, especially over long distances, is much more expensive. Depending on how far your forces have to travel, equipping an offensive force can be anywhere from a quarter more expensive (if you plan to attack a neighbor) to more than twice as expensive (if you are prepared to go anywhere in the world). Then there is your military leadership. If your generals and admirals know what they are doing and maintain high standards for subordinates and concentrate on training and readiness for combat the forces at their disposal will be much more effective than when (as is often the case) the military is treated like a jobs program to keep unemployment low and, if there is a lot of corruption, make politicians and senior officers rich. Thus nations that spend little cash, but have cheap local costs (food, housing, payroll), like Iran and Pakistan, all of a sudden have larger defense spending (Iran is now about six percent of U.S. spending, and Pakistan about four percent.) Purchasing Power Parity shows how poor nations can spend only a few billion dollars a year on defense, yet have hundreds of thousands of troops in service. If these soldiers have good leadership and train regularly, they can be a formidable foe even to a high tech force from the West. But most of the poor nations don't have high quality officers and NCOs, and their troops fade quickly when confronted with a well-equipped and well trained force. Unfortunately, the media is not very keen on examining the quality of training and leadership in anyone's armed forces. Yet, time and again, these two factors have proved to be the most critical ones. And that will remain the case in the future. Because of increased air operations against Islamic terrorists France has ordered more American BLU-117 bunker buster 909 kg (2,000 pound) bombs and BLU 126 LCDB (Low Collateral Damage Bomb) bombs. The bunker busters are well known, as they have a reinforced front end that enables it to penetrate many meters of earth or concrete before detonating (usually inside an underground facility). The LCDB is quite different and less well known as it is a 227 kg ( 500 pound) JDAM (GPS guided smart bomb) with 89 percent of the explosives removed, and replaced with non-explosive material (so the bombs flight characteristics remain the same.) The remaining 14 kg (30 pounds) of explosives give the bomb a much smaller bang, and much less chance of nearby civilians getting hurt. Thus the LCDB has a bang that is closer to that of a 155mm artillery shell. The concept of the LCDB is not new. During the 1990s, the U.S. Air Force replaced all the 189 kg (416 pounds) of explosives with concrete in 909 kg laser guided bombs used against Iraqi anti-aircraft guns and missiles. This was because Saddam ordered his anti-aircraft weapons placed inside densely packed residential areas, in the hope that any American or British aircraft responding to fire from his anti-aircraft weapons would also kill lots of civilians. That would make for a great photo op, as Saddam was trying to turn himself into a victim of American and British aggression. Dead civilians helped a lot. Concrete smart bombs took out the anti-aircraft weapons, but rarely hurt any nearby civilians. The LCDB is used against targets in buildings, or out in the open, who need at least a little bang, and bomb fragments, to take out the bad guys. Most of the additional bombs are being used by French warplanes stationed in Jordan to attack ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) targets in Syria. There ISIL is using a lot of underground facilities it captured from the Syrian military. A lot of these were built to obtain protection from Israeli air strikes. French pilots in Jordan are flying about 45 hours a month, which is three times what these pilots fly under peacetime conditions back in France. To keep the aircraft flying the French Air Force is also seeking to get 450 maintenance personnel back on active duty. NUCLEAR, BIOLOGICAL AND CHEMICAL WEAPONS March 22, 2016: Despite continued denials by the Syrian government most observers believe the continued use of chlorine as a chemical weapon in Syria is often the work of the Syrian government, not just Islamic terrorists trying to discredit the government. The UN cannot act because Russia is an ally of Syria and has a veto over UN efforts to punish the Syrian government for this. Like everything else in Syria, this is not a simple situation. First of all although the first chemical weapon attack in modern history, in 1915, used 168 tons of chlorine gas, the current Chemical Weapons Convention does not recognize chlorine as a chemical weapon. Then, as now, chlorine proved to be an inefficient chemical weapon and was quickly replaced by more effective ones by the end of 1915. Like other lethal industrial chemicals chlorine can be lethal to humans in large quantities. Thus during 2015 the 66 known uses of chlorine as weapon killed 24 people but injured over 600. In March 2015 agreed to abide by a new UN rule prohibiting the use of chlorine as a weapon. Nearly 90 percent of the known chlorine attacks in 2015 occurred after March. In September 2013 Syria agreed to destroy all its chemical weapons under UN supervision. This deal was not vetoed by Russia because Syria was obviously responsible for a chemical attack in August that used nerve gas and killed over 1,300 people, most of them pro-rebel civilians. Some of the chlorine attacks since then apparently have been the work of ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) but most appear to be the work of Syrian government forces using aircraft, artillery or mortars. The agreed upon destruction of Syrian chemical weapons was completed by June 2014. Syria appeared to have had 700 tons of nerve gas (sarin) and 300 tons of mustard gas and all these were destroyed by the UN. Nerve gas was first used in combat during the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88). The Assads knew that once they defeated the rebels they could rebuild the plants that manufacture the nerve and mustard gas and rebuild their pre-rebellion stocks in a few years. Political disputes appear to be the major obstacle to getting ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) out of Mosul by the end of 2016. The experience in taking the smaller city of Ramadi from ISIL in December 2015 made it clear what could be expected when Iraqi army troops go after ISIL fighters in an urban setting. This makes it possible to calculate how many troops, trained to what levels, will be needed in Mosul as well has what kind and quantity of support forces (supplies, medical, artillery air power). One thing is clear, the Iraqis can do it, especially if they have sufficient air and artillery support. Air power has become increasingly useful. Since mid-2014 the American led coalition aircraft have carried out over 10,000 air strikes against some 16,000 targets. The number of attacks are increasing as government and Kurdish troops receive more help in calling in attacks and the anti-ISIL informant network in ISIL held areas provides more information on suitable targets. Most of the air strikes are still carried out by American aircraft and helicopters. The main obstacles to retaking Mosul are political. The government needs all the forces it can get to take the city quickly and with the fewest casualties. That is turning out to be a political problem because two of the primary sources of troops are the Iran backed Shia militias and the Kurds from the north. The Shia militias want to take the lead in the battle for Mosul but are not prepared for such a task and the government is not willing to give Iran an opportunity to claim credit for liberating Mosul. The much more experienced and battle tested Kurds make no demands, except for a sensible battle plan. But the government is concerned about the Kurds demanding more autonomy in the north (and control of oil there) if Kurds prove key in retaking the city. American advisors point out that the government got away with telling the Shia militias to back off and follow orders outside Ramadi and that the United States will back the Iraqi government in dealing with Iranian pressure over the role of Shia militias in Mosul. The Iraqi government does not want that kind of confrontation because the Iranians have made it clear that the Iraqi Shia militias are willing to overthrow the elected Iraqi government when this is all over and the Americans have lost interest. Iran portrays the U.S. as an unreliable ally and one that is far away. The Americans counter by pointing out that Iran will be a threat no matter what happens, Americans will stay involved because of the oil and what Iran does in the future has more to do with internal Iranian politics that Iraq has little influence over. As for the Kurds, they will also make the same demands no matter what happens. In short, demand that the Kurds and Shia militias follow orders and proceed with the battle preparations. The Kurds will cooperate and some Shia militia leaders will protest but ultimately fall in line rather than be left out. Unfortunately elected Iraqi officials are not known for decisiveness. But in this case delay aids ISIL and that is in nobodys interest. It Is Not So Simple Taking Mosul is much more complicated than liberating Ramadi. ISIL has controlled Mosul since June 2014 and most (all but about 700,000) of the original three million inhabitants have fled. Not only is that still more than ten times what was in Ramadi before the final assault but the Ramadi population was almost all Sunni Arab. Mosul is a much more complex place with Sunni, Shia, Kurds, Turks and so on. Moreover Ramadi was on the Euphrates river in the relatively barren western Iraq while Mosul is on three times larger Tigris (by water volume) river in an area with more vegetation and hills. This benefits the defenders. Finally Mosul is a much wealthier place than Ramadi, largely because of the local oil fields. This makes Mosul a much more valuable asset for whoever holds it. Politics is more of an issue in Mosul than Ramadi. Mosul involves Sunni, Shia, Arab, Kurd and Turkish militias among the attackers and each of these groups have still more factions. In Ramadi it was mainly Sunni ISIL versus Shia Iraqis aided by some pro-government Sunni. ISIL had less than a thousand men in Ramadi for the final battle. Most of these defenders fought to the death. ISIL is apparently planning to have five to ten times as many fighters in Mosul for the final battle. Nearly all civilians still in Mosul are openly hostile to ISIL, which is suffering from increasingly frequent and accurate air attacks. This is apparently the result of a more effective informant network in the city. Government forces south of Mosul and Kurdish troops (and non-Moslem militias) north of the city and government forces and Shia militias south of the city are already preparing for the final attack on the densely built city center. This approach battle is meant to cut the city off from other ISIL forces in Anbar and Syria. The main road to Raqqa was cut in late February with the capture of the town of Shaddadi. That followed the continuing advance into western Anbar since the liberation of Ramadi in December 2015. Another important success has been government forces becoming as effective as the Kurds in regularly defeating ISIL counterattacks. You rarely hear of successful ISIL attacks on Iraqi security forces anymore. Reports from inside Mosul indicate growing panic and declining morale among ISIL personnel (at all levels). This has led to growing internal violence, like public executions of misbehaving ISIL members. Recently 21 ISIL men were publicly executed for refusing to fight. ISIL leaders are executed for corruption, incompetence or bad behavior (booze, drugs or saying the wrong things). Hundreds of civilians are being arrested each month for refusing to cooperate with ISIL in defending the city. That sort of thing should make it clear to ISIL that they have few allies among the remaining city residents and growing discontent within their own ranks. Mosul has become a fortress of fear and will remain so as long as there are enough ISIL men there willing and able to fight to the death. While ISIL capabilities inside Mosul are crumbling they do not appear in danger of sudden collapse. When Mosul falls it will be all over for ISIL in northern Iraq. ISIL rule in the north has been harsh and has created more enemies than followers. Ramadi was a different story. Ramadi, the largest city in of Anbar province (which is most of western Iraq) was as far to the east as ISIL got in Anbar. West of Anbar was lots of ISIL controlled territory and beyond that ISIL controlled eastern Syria. Thus the fighting in Anbar continues as ISIL is pushed back to the Syrian border. There were some other useful lessons from Ramadi. While the human cost from fighting ISIL for six months to retake the city was relatively low the property damage to Ramadi was enormous. The air and ground campaign left 5,700 buildings damaged and about a third of those were completely destroyed. Worse 64 bridges were destroyed. This is particularly troublesome because the city is built along the Euphrates River. Most of the electrical distribution system was destroyed along with many major government buildings and the main railroad station. Much of the damage was done by the thousands of bombs planted by ISIL both to simply destroy stuff and cause losses to the attackers. Iraqi, American and other allied aircraft caused a lot of damage, especially in areas where ISIL took a stand and the advancing troops called in air strikes. Despite that victory declaration Iraqi troops are still slowly moving through some areas of the city where ISIL planted lots of booby-traps and landmines. These explosive devices were meant to punish the disloyal (to ISIL) population of the city and cause maximum losses to advancing troops and Shia militia. The militias let the soldiers use their training and special equipment to find and clear the explosives. Meanwhile Iraqi troops have moved past Ramadi and are advancing deeper into territory controlled by ISIL for a year or more. So far ISIL counterattacks have slowed but not stopped this advance. It is estimated that it will take several billion dollars to repair the damage in Ramadi. For civilians in Mosul the situation is bad and getting worse. This was noted by the ISIL occupation force over a year ago. In early 2015 some ISIL men from Syria who had brought in their families were caught sending them back to Syria. By mid-2015 Mosul residents who had not fled the city regretted it. ISIL has become increasingly strict with the population and for that last year has not let anyone leave the city for any reason (unless they are ISIL or have ISIL permission). Smugglers are expensive and dont always succeed. ISIL has shut down cell phone service although residents have found that at night they can sometimes get a signal if they go up on the roof of tall buildings. So information about life in Mosul still gets out. By mid-2015 the Iraqi government stopped paying civil servants in Mosul. That brought in about $16 million a month and it was sorely missed. Food is trucked in from Syria and is expensive. The local economy is in bad shape and residents can see growing dissention between Syrian and Iraqi members of ISIL as well as declining morale and confidence among the Islamic terrorists. A growing number of familiar ISIL faces have disappeared from the city, indicating desertions and fleeing to Syria with or without permission. There is a lot to run away from, especially the growing number of air strikes by coalition (mainly American) and Iraqi aircraft. Remaining residents fear ISIL will eventually make regular use of involuntary human shields. While ISIL prefers to use captured government or Kurdish fighters for this, local civilians will do. Despite the growing losses from the air strikes (and the target information obviously supplied by locals) ISIL leaders know that heavy use of human shields would backfire as the remaining city residents became more desperate and violent about getting out. Meanwhile In Anbar Since the end of December 2015, when most resistance in Ramadi ceased and government forces were able to move past the city this advance has gone about 150 kilometers further west. The main objective now is the city of Hit, northwest of Ramadi and also on the Euphrates River. ISIL has held it since October 2014. Meanwhile the last ISIL holdouts in Ramadi were hunted down and killed or captured by the end of February. A growing problem for the government is taking care of all the refugees fleeing their homes to get out of the way. ISIL men tend to fight to the death and the government prefers to accommodate them with bombs and artillery shells, not costly (in soldiers lives) infantry attacks. All those explosives cause lots of property damage and are fatal to any civilians who stuck around. Managing all these additional refugees is complicated by the ISIL tactic of trying to slip Islamic terrorists pretending to be refugees into government controlled areas. ISIL boasts of using this tactic and that makes handling the refugees more costly in terms of security forces required. The Neighbors Jordan is joining a growing number of Middle Eastern nations (like Saudi Arabia and Kuwait) and following the example of Israel by building high-tech security fences along their borders to keep out Islamic terrorists, illegal migrants, criminals and smugglers. With the United States covering most of the half billion dollar cost Jordan will put up this barrier along its 442 kilometers of borders with Syria and Iraq. Saudi Arabia and Kuwait have already done this along their Iraqi borders. Jordan has been the most successful of the Arab countries at protecting itself from Islamic terrorism. But the civil war in Syria and the growing ISIL and Iranian presence in Iraq led Israel, in late 2015 to begin building a security fence on its last unfenced border, the 307 kilometer Jordanian frontier. This project will take several years and cost $1.6 billion, plus millions a year to maintain. Israel and Jordan have long cooperated closely on counter-terrorism issues so the Israeli fence also assists Jordan since any Islamic terrorists inside Jordan who are seeking to get into Israel are more likely to be detected and caught. The Chemical Threat Medical aid groups believe there were at least 69 chemical weapon attacks in Iraq and Syria during 2015 and some are still occurring in 2016. Most of these attacks used toxic industrial chemicals rather than stuff designed to be a weapon (like mustard or nerve gas). It is believed that the Syrian Army used mustard gas in July 2015. Most of the other attacks were apparently the work of ISIL, which appears to have used mustard gas during August. A recently captured (by American commandos) ISIL technical expert on chemical warfare confirmed this and provided useful information about where these weapons are made and stored. So far ISIL has only been able to develop crude and not-very-effective chemical weapons that are more useful to terrorize than kill. But they are working on more lethal stuff. March 19, 2016: In the north, about 70 kilometers southeast of Mosul an ISIL rocket killed an American marine and wounded several others. The marines were part of the effort to train, advise and otherwise assist Kurdish Iraqi forces. This incident took place within Kurdish controlled territory. Since the U.S. got involved in Iraq again after mid-2014 two American military personnel have died in Iraq. March 18, 2016: In far west, at the Syrian town of Tanf on the Iraqi border, FSA (Free Syrian Army) rebels continue to battle ISIL for control of the border crossing that connects western Anbar province with largely ISIL-held eastern Syria. The FSA forces here are based in Jordan, where they have the support of Jordan and the United States. This effort is, for all practical purposes, part of the preparations for liberating Mosul. March 14, 2016: Turkish F-16s bombed suspected PKK bases near the Turkish border in northern (Kurdish) Iraq. This was in retaliation for a suicide bombing in the Turkish capital the day before that left 37 dead. While ISIL also tries to make attack like this it was indeed PKK this time and the Turks are out for revenge. March 6, 2016: South of Baghdad an ISIL suicide truck bomb was stopped at an army checkpoint but was able to detonate, killing at least sixty and wounding over 80 people nearby. Most of the casualties were civilians. The casualties were so high because the truck used was a fuel tanker full of fuel in addition to the explosives. The truck was trying to get into a densely populated Shia neighborhood where it would have hurt a lot more people. It is rare for such a large ISIL vehicle bomb to get so deep into government controlled territory. North Korea is now facing an unexpected financial crises as China not only enforces the new sanctions but also the older ones it ignored and adds some new sanctions. Thus North Korea was shocked when on March 1 st Chinese border guards refused to let shipments of coal or ores enter. These mineral exports are a major source of foreign currency and were not covered by sanctions. China is believed to be making a point; that it is fed up with North Korea ignoring demands to halt its ballistic missile and nuclear weapons programs and turn its attention to the internal economic crises. So far North Korean leaders are ignoring this additional sanction and telling subordinates that it is only temporary. But the rumors in China are that the blocking of mineral exports will last for a long time, perhaps indefinitely until the North Korean leaderships shows more respect towards China and heeds the advice from its big brother. One option North Korea has is to increase illegal drug production. The government has long produced opium, heroin and methamphetamine (meth) for export to obtain foreign currency. This, like the counterfeiting of American $100 bills, cannot be used too much without offending the countries this stuff shows up in. The drugs can be exported via China as long as none of them show up in China. This is especially true with meth, which is becoming a growing problem in China because of illegal manufacturing in northern Burma and smugglers taking it across the border to China. North Korea can fall back on its busy fleet of cargo ships and transport aircraft but these are under increasing surveillance by foreign intelligence agencies and if the Chinese join in this informal North Korea Watch coalition North Korean smuggling efforts will be seriously hurt. There is still Russia, but the Russians demand big bribes and it takes longer to get drugs to global markets via Russia. Plus, if North Korean drugs start showing up a lot in Russia, that smuggling route will be shut down or severely restricted. These drugs are illegal in North Korea but some get into circulation anyway, especially meth. For a long time some meth was produced privately but after 2012 there was crackdown on this, especially the smuggling from China or Russia of the raw materials for drugs like methamphetamine. Breaking bad by making meth was always a dangerous way to get rich, as those caught doing this were frequently executed, often after torture (to ensure they have revealed all they know). Like every other recent crackdown this one eventually succumbed to bribes, which tend to rise until security officials are tempted to risk everything to become rich by ignoring meth labs. Meth use is now growing out-of-control, especially along the Chinese border. Thats where most of the outlaw North Korean meth producers are and most of their meth is smuggled into China and Russia but there is so much being turned out that some is distributed locally. The Chinese border area has become bandit country for other reasons despite the current secret police emphasis is on keeping people from leaving. Things, especially drugs and the larger bribes they deliver, tends to make the police on both sides of the border less effective. Because of the illegal North Korean meth producers there is now more and more Chinese border security and even bribes dont work as well as they used to (and are a lot more expensive). The Chatter of Doom To make matters even worse for North Korean leaders the secret police are reporting that public opinion (which is monitored even though it is generally ignored) is blaming the government, not China or the UN for the increased sanctions. This gets worse because the government is starting a new internal propaganda campaign to blame the rest of the world for the sanctions. These major propaganda efforts are widely unpopular inside North Korea because they involve forcing most of the population to attend hours of lectures on the subject by local officials. Attendance is mandatory and that is regularly checked and verified by the secret police. Secret police are constantly monitoring what is said on the street and in private (via an extensive network of informants) and most North Koreans believe the missile and nuclear weapons programs are a waste and are hurting North Korea even more when their government publicizes these weapons, threatens to use them and gets more sanctions applied. It is unclear if the secret police passes on details of the growing chatter (none of it complimentary) about how leader Kim Kong Un seems to get fatter as hunger in North Korea becomes more widespread. Kim appears regularly in propaganda photos and videos and no effort is made to doctor these images to hide the constant weight gain. The informant network is also reporting that the new entrepreneurial class (donju) sees the additional sanctions as a sign that export industries are a bad investment. Many valuable (to the government, for the foreign currency it brings in) export businesses are being financed or run by the donju and the government has found that they cannot order the donju around. What makes the donju useful is their sound economic decisions which are much more profitable than anything the government does. Some senior officials want to crack down on the donju but most of the leadership understands that the government and the economy are too dependent on the donju for that. Another disturbing cheater topic is about the long rumored Chinese plot to back a military overthrow of the Kim family, in return for the installation of a new ruler that is more pro-Chinese. This is an old theme in Korean history that is still relevant. Most Koreans and Chinese are not surprised by that. What Makes Slavery So Attractive The secret police also monitor and report on the chatter among the ruling class, which consists of the two or three percent of the population (including immediate family) who run the government and major institutions (universities, research centers and security forces). The small talk here is that the government does not really have much military power anymore. It is common knowledge that the troops have been going hungry for years and that the war reserves of food, fuel and other supplies have been depleted just to keep the military in existence. The upper crust also think that China has definitely renounced (as China said publicly) its long-time pledge to side with North Korea if there were another Korean War. The ruling families have lots of contacts in China and know that Chinese popular opinion has become hostile to North Korea. All this chatter is occurring as the government loudly denounces the new sanctions and threatens war, including the use of its nukes against the leaders of nations responsible for these unwarranted economic measures against North Korea. That enemies list does not include China but most North Koreans believe it does and so do most Chinese. North Koreans also believe that if there were another Korean War China would move troops into North Korea not to help but to end the war by taking over. Traditionally Koreans fear this kind of Chinese domination and are inclined to fight if invaded. That has kept Chinese armies (although not Chinese influence) out for centuries. But now many North Koreans, especially those going hungry in the dark and without sufficient fuel to cope with the cold weather, see a Chinese takeover, especially a temporary one, as a good thing. More North Koreans are taking that one step further and volunteering for the slave labor program where they go to work in China or Russia and the North Korean government keeps most of their pay. What is left for the worker is still more than most earn back in North Korea and the food is more abundant, the lights work and there is more heat during the six months of the year when it is pretty chilly in this part of the world. The Impossible Takes Longer North Korea has made a lot of media noise recently about Kim Jong Un ordering a test of a nuclear warhead and a ballistic missile together. This is another of those North Korean media stunts that is all smoke and no fire. Unless someone (like China or Russia) sold North Korea nuclear warhead tech, it is highly that North Korea has developed this complex and time-consuming warhead tech. Closing The Dual Use Loophole The UN uses teams of investigators to monitor violations of arms embargoes and regularly releases reports of violations found. In early 2016 one of these reports noted that North Korea was adapting Japanese civilian maritime radars for its warships. North Korea is still, as of 2015, using Chinese heavy trucks for transporting and launching rockets and missiles. One Of Our Subs Is Missing A North Korean submarine appears to have sunk off the east coast while training. North Korea will not admit this but the sub was being monitored by South Korea and the United States and the entire crew seems to have been lost as well. North Korea currently has 70 subs, but most (over 70 percent) of them are very small (and often elderly) coastal types. There are twenty larger (1,800 ton) Romeo type boats but these are also very old, noisy and easy for other subs to detect underwater. These would be the easiest for South Korea and the United States to track from a distance. March 21, 2016: On the east coast North Korea test fired six of its new guided (by a GPS type system) 300mm rockets from a launcher vehicles. This new MLRS (multiple launch rocket system) first appeared in a late 2015 parade. The North Korean 300mm rockets appeared to have a range of over 100 kilometers. The launcher vehicle was later identified as a Chinese ZZ2257M5857A 6x6 that is meant for civilian or military use. China has come under increasing criticism for allowing its manufacturers to export such dual use vehicles to North Korea when it is clear that North Korea wants them only for military purposes. More disturbing is the fact that the new North Korean guided rockets were using technology that could also have been Chinese, as the Chinese introduced such a large guided rocket system in 2010. March 17, 2016: North Korea launched a ballistic missile that landed 600 kilometers off its east coast. A second missile was also launched but blew up shortly after launch. The next day China warned that such violations of UN prohibitions could have serious consequences. The recent missile and rocket firings are seen as the usual response to joint South Korea-American military exercises, which are underway now. March 16, 2016: North Korea released a video on the Internet showing North Korean missiles hitting and destroying the office of the South Korean president. March 7, 2016: In another sign of Chinese anger the Chinese government revealed that its new five year economic plan had, for the first time, lacked a section on economic cooperation with North Korea. A less official (and unannounced) form of rebuke was the Chinese quietly removing the Internet censoring of derogatory chatter about Kim Jong Un (especially his putting on weight). This only applies to Chinese search engines (especially Baidu) but it sends a signal to Chinese Internet users that it is now open season on North Korea and its portly leader. Kim Jong Un is a big fan of tech and the Internet and this Chinese move will offend him big time. March 2, 2016: The UN approved a number of new sanctions on North Korea. What makes these sanctions different is that China and the United States agreed on them and they include some very harsh new measures. This agreement was the result of meetings and negotiations that began shortly after the January 6th North Korean nuclear test. In the past China has made a show of reluctantly going along with more sanctions on North Korea but this time China made it clear that it is behind the latest round of sanctions and responsible for suggesting some of them. The message to North Korea is that China will not look the other way on any of these new sanctions, or most of the existing ones either. Ennis, Inc., (NYSE: EBF), announced that one of its wholly owned subsidiaries has closed on an agreement to acquire the assets of Major Business Systems in Hillsborough, North Carolina. The Ennis subsidiary, operating under the Major Business Systems brand and name, will lease the current facility from the current owner for several years with options to renew. The current owner, Jeff Russell, will continue working with Major Business Systems. The employees will continue their employment with the newly acquired Major Business Systems and produce the same products with the same quality and attention to customer service as before. Ennis believes that the acquisition will be accretive to earnings in the current year. Keith Walters, Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President of Ennis, Inc., commented by stating, We are very pleased to add Major Business Systems (Major) to the Ennis family. Major provides some additional capabilities to our product line and their focus on value add products in the health care industry is consistent with our desire to expand this product line throughout the Ennis network. These products are sold through our normal sales channel of independent distributors, so this business complements our current business model. We think this will enhance our current product mix and allow us to pursue more expansive product lines in the integrated document market. A man checks a new model Ford EcoSport SUV (sport utility vehicle) car during its launch ceremony at automaker Ford Vietnam's factory in Vietnam's northern Hai Duong province, outside Hanoi June 27, 2014. REUTERS/Kham BUCHAREST (Reuters) - Ford Motor Co (NYSE: F) will invest up to 200 million euros ($224.28 million) to build its smaller sport utility vehicle EcoSport at its Romanian unit Automobile Craiova, Ford Europe Chief Executive Jim Farley said on Tuesday. Ford took over the struggling Romanian carmaker Automobile Craiova in 2008 and is producing its B-Max model there, although low demand has led to regular production stoppages. Ford will start producing the vehicle from autumn of 2017, Farley told reporters on a visit to the plant in southern Romania. "As of that date, Craiova will become the only production source for the EcoSport model sold in Europe (except Russia)," he said. He said that the U.S. company expects to keep its current staff levels in Romania. Farley added that he expected Ford sales to rise above 200,000 SUVs in Europe this year, a more than 30 percent rise on the year. (Reporting by Luiza Ilie, editing by Louise Heavens) Sun Communities (NYSE: SUI) announced that it has entered into an agreement to acquire all of the issued and outstanding shares of common stock of Carefree Communities Inc. ("Carefree Communities") from an affiliate of Centerbridge Capital Partners II, L.P. and its related entities. Carefree Communities directly or indirectly owns 103 manufactured housing and recreational vehicle ("RV") communities, comprising 27,544 total sites, comprised of 9,829 developed manufactured housing sites and 17,725 RV sites, and approximately 396 additional manufactured housing sites and approximately 2,586 additional RV sites suitable for development. These communities are concentrated in California and Florida. Subject to a net working capital adjustment at the closing, the aggregate purchase price is approximately $1.68 billion, including approximately $1.655 billion for the purchase of 102 communities, $9.0 million for the purchase of a community recently acquired by Carefree Communities and approximately $16.0 million for the purchase of manufactured homes and park models. At the Closing, the Company will (i) assume approximately $1.0 billion of debt, (ii) issue the seller $225.0 million in shares of its common stock at an issuance price of $67.57 per share, based on the trailing 30-day VWAP of the Company's stock as of the close on March 21, 2016 and (iii) pay the balance of the purchase price in cash. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions, and is expected to close no later than July 9, 2016. "The acquisition of Carefree Communities further solidifies our position as a best-in-class manufactured housing and RV community owner and operator and enables us to drive shareholder value going forward," said Gary A. Shiffman, Sun Communities Chairman and CEO. "Similar to our 2014 acquisition of the American Land Lease portfolio, this accretive transaction enhances our geographic diversity, deepens our presence in key coastal markets and boosts our age-restricted sites to 33% of our portfolio." Mr. Shiffman continued, "The Carefree acquisition adds highly desirable locations in California where we are increasing our holdings to 6% from under 1% and also broadens our market share throughout Florida where we continue to see high demand. Carefree is a unique high quality portfolio with excellent growth characteristics and we are excited about creating additional value as we integrate Carefree onto our platform." Colleen S. Edwards, Carefree Vice Chairman and Co-Founder and David A. Napp, Carefree CEO and Co-Founder said, "We are very proud of the company we have built over the last decade and are excited about the opportunity to join together with Sun Communities to become the premier company in the industry. We anticipate a smooth transition because Sun and Carefree share the same goals to take care of our guests, our associates and our shareholders." Citigroup acted as financial advisor to the Company and Jaffe, Raitt, Heuer & Weiss, Professional Corporation acted as legal advisor. Goldman, Sachs & Co. acted as financial advisor to Carefree Communities and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP acted as legal advisor. In addition during the month of March, the Company acquired two manufactured housing communities for a total consideration of $37.8 million. These assets are located in Texas and Michigan and were funded as part of the 1031 exchange from the portfolio sale completed in November 2015. A conference call to discuss the acquisition will be held today, Tuesday, March 22, 2016 at 5:00 P.M. (ET). To participate, call toll-free 888-516-2377. Callers outside the U.S. or Canada can access the call at 719-325-2405. A replay will be available following the call through March 29, 2016, and can be accessed toll-free by calling 877-870-5176 or by calling 858-384-5517. The Conference ID number for the call and the replay is 6846308. Bomgar will present a hack demonstration to show how cyber criminals gain footholds on company networks and infrastructure. A gold sponsor of the event, Bomgar will also be exhibiting at stand No. 10. MARLOW, England--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Bomgar, a leader in secure access solutions, will be presenting at the IDM Europe 2016 event, held in Amsterdam on 23 March 2016. Bomgar will present a session during seminar four that will feature a hack demonstration, showing the steps cyber criminals take to gain footholds into company networks and infrastructure and then move laterally to attack secure systems. The session will offer top tips for preventing cyberattacks and how organizations can improve security with privileged access management solutions. Bomgar is a gold sponsor of the event and will exhibit at stand No. 10. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160322005378/en/ Bomgar connects people and technology securely, providing leading remote support and privileged access management solutions that strengthen security while increasing productivity. Bomgar solutions help support and security professionals improve business performance by enabling secure, controlled access to nearly any device or system, anywhere in the world. More than 10,000 organizations across 65 countries use Bomgar to deliver superior support services and manage access to valuable data and systems. Bomgar is privately held with offices in Atlanta, Jackson, Washington D.C., Frankfurt, London, Paris, and Singapore. (Photo: Business Wire) Who: Joe Schorr (Director, Advanced Security Solutions); Chris Clarkson (Senior Solutions Engineer) Joe Schorr (Director, Advanced Security Solutions); Chris Clarkson (Senior Solutions Engineer) What: Control the Access, Control the Asset Control the Access, Control the Asset When: 23 March 2016, 12:20 13:05 23 March 2016, 12:20 13:05 Where: Movenpick Hotel, Amsterdam City Centre About Bomgar Bomgar connects people and technology securely, providing leading remote support and privileged access management solutions that strengthen security while increasing productivity. Bomgar solutions help support and security professionals improve business performance by enabling secure, controlled access to nearly any device or system, anywhere in the world. More than 10,000 organizations across 65 countries use Bomgar to deliver superior support services and manage access to valuable data and systems. Bomgar is privately held with offices in Atlanta, Jackson, Washington D.C., Frankfurt, London, Paris, and Singapore. Visit Bomgar at www.bomgar.com, or on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160322005378/en/ Bomgar Corporation Elizabeth Hulsey Public Relations Specialist 770-407-1812 [email protected] Source: Bomgar Corporation GoBank Wins in Best Check Innovation Category PASADENA, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Green Dot Corporation (NYSE: GDOT) today announced that its GoBank mobile checking account was honored at the 2016 PYMNTS Innovator Awards in the Best Check Innovation category. Announced at a live ceremony and awards dinner on March 17, 2016, GoBank was presented with the categorys bronze award for its introduction of pre-authorized check-writing technology that provides additional security for customers and merchants. The PYMNTS Innovator Awards are viewed as one of the most prestigious recognitions in the payments industry and the ceremony marked the conclusion of Innovation Project 2016, a two-day thought leadership event for payments executives. Steve Streit, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Green Dot, spoke at the summit on the topic of using innovative financial technology for financial inclusion, joining a prestigious faculty of speakers at the event. About Green Dot Corporation Green Dot Corporation, along with its wholly owned subsidiary bank, Green Dot Bank, is a pro-consumer financial technology innovator with a mission to reinvent personal banking for the masses. Green Dot invented the prepaid debit card industry and is the largest provider of reloadable prepaid debit cards and cash reload processing services in the United States. Green Dot is also a leader in mobile technology and mobile banking with its award-winning GoBank mobile checking account. Through its wholly owned subsidiary, TPG, Green Dot is additionally the largest processor of tax refund disbursements in the U.S. Green Dot's products and services are available to consumers through a large-scale "branchless bank" distribution network of more than 100,000 U.S. locations, including retailers, neighborhood financial service center locations, and tax preparation offices, as well as online, in the leading app stores and through leading online tax preparation providers. Green Dot Corporation is headquartered in Pasadena, Calif., with additional facilities throughout the United States and in Shanghai, China. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160322006347/en/ Media Relations: ICR for Green Dot Corporation Brian Ruby, 203-682-8268 [email protected] or Investor Relations: 626-765-2427 [email protected] Source: Green Dot Corporation PRINCETON, N.J. and STOCKHOLM, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- NDA Group, a leading strategic regulatory and HTA consultancy in Europe, and PharmApprove, a leading strategic regulatory and scientific communications consultancy in the US, announced their merger today. The newly combined company will allow clients to streamline the global development and commercialization process, accelerating patient access to important medical therapies. Through the merger, NDA and PharmApprove will offer clients an unparalleled breadth of global experience and expertise to drive efficient product development across the US and Europe. "NDA has supported over 45% of new medicinal products that were approved in Europe over the past three years, and more than half from the last year," said Johan Stromquist, CEO of NDA Group. "By working together, NDA and PharmApprove offer clients a single partner that can provide a clear development path considering both regulatory and market access requirements to offer streamlined, strategic drug development advice across the world's two largest markets." "With a high success rate of supporting clients preparing for FDA Advisory Committees and other regulatory milestones, PharmApprove has a long track record of great results," said Laurie Smaldone Alsup MD, President of PharmApprove. "We will continue to provide comprehensive advisory committee services and expand our global support. Our culture is a perfect complement to NDA Group; we both believe in engaging highly experienced and high-quality people who provide expert guidance to our clients." The combined companies offer more than 35 years of experience in the drug development space, and boast a network of over 1,000 experts across a range of technologies, disciplines and therapeutic areas. NDA and PharmApprove will each retain their current staff and leadership, including more than 150 consultants, while adding to their capabilities and transatlantic reach. "The deep knowledge of regulatory agencies and their requirements that I and my fellow NDA and PharmApprove consultants can provide is essential for any company looking to bring important new treatments to patients in need," said NDA Group's Strategic Advisor, and former head of the European Medicines Agency, Dr. Thomas Lonngren. "With our involvement in every step of the drug development process, we can prevent costly missteps and ultimately ensure that clients have the best chance to prove the safety and efficacy of their drugs worldwide." The merger comes after nearly a year of strategic alliance between the two top firms. "My experience working with NDA and PharmApprove clearly demonstrated that this is a case where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts," explained Dr. Ron Robison, Vice President, Global Regulatory Affairs, Pharmacovigilance and R&D QA for AbbVie. "Having seamless, simultaneous access to regulatory experts in multiple markets helped us to develop the strategies we need to support optimal labeling and market access opportunities." PharmApprove was created in 1999 by New Jersey-based Taft and Partners. Pete Taft, founder and CEO of PharmApprove, will no longer have an executive role, but will continue to serve as a consultant to the combined company. To learn more about the integrated global expertise this merger represents, visit www.ndareg.com/pharmapprove or contact [email protected] (EU) or [email protected] (US). About NDANDA Group is a leading global drug development consultancy providing small as well as large, multi-national pharmaceutical companies with strategic advice and operational support to get good medicines to market and keep them there. Based in Boston, London, Munich, New Jersey, Stockholm and Zurich, NDA offers a range of professional drug development consulting services that spans from early development phase to lifecycle management of a medicinal product. These services incorporate regulatory affairs, health technology assessment, pharmacovigilance and quality assurance. Clients are supported by a team of over 100 consultants and a unique Advisory Board comprising industry experts, many of whom are ex- European Agency and FDA staff. For more information, visit ndareg.com. About PharmApprove PharmApprove is the leading strategic, regulatory, and scientific communications consultancy to the pharmaceutical and biotech industries. The firm offers both strategic and tactical support to companies facing high-profile, high stakes events and engagements anywhere along the road to approval and commercialization including FDA Advisory Committee meetings. PharmApprove helps clients win health authority approvals, deliver compelling regulatory communications, and make persuasive pharmacoeconomic arguments to payers and HTAs. Learn more at pharmapprove.com and follow them socially at twitter.com/pharmapprove and facebook.com/pharmapprove. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nda-group-and-pharmapprove-announce-merger-300238525.html SOURCE NDA Group; PharmApprove SAN DIEGO, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- T S RESTAURANTS, a family-owned, privately held company with 14 restaurants in Hawaii and California, has recently promoted Jackie Reed from Vice President of CA Operations to Chief Executive Officer. She succeeds Bill Parsons, who retired as CEO/Chairman, culminating a 38-year career in service of the organization. Reed is no stranger to T S RESTAURANTS, as she has dedicated over 25 years to the company, climbing the ranks from hostess to CEO. "We are so excited for the future at T S RESTAURANTS," said Susie Saxten, Chairman of the Board. "Jackie has extensive experience and she excels at creating operational efficiencies and empowering the people she works with. Given her success as VP of CA Operations and her deep understanding of our T S culture, she was the natural choice as Chief Executive Officer." As CEO for T S RESTAURANTS, Jackie develops, implements and leads the company's high-level long and short-term strategies, is responsible for leading the executive team to set and accomplish operational and financial objectives, and also acts as the central point of communication between the board of directors and corporate operations. Jackie began her restaurant career in 1989 as a hostess at Leilani's on the Beach, a T S Restaurant on Kaanapali Beach on Maui. Though the hostess position was meant to be a part-time, transitionary job, Reed fell in love with the values, spirit, and opportunities that existed within T S and never left, spending her entire career thus far with the company. Reed worked in two other T S Restaurants before moving to the CA Home Office as Controller in 1998. She has been involved in five restaurant openings and was an integral part of developing T S accounting systems, human resource policies and adopting restaurant technology. After ten years as Controller, Reed was able to realize her passion for working in operations as Vice President of CA Operations, a position she held until becoming CEO on November 1, 2015. While working her way up in the company, Reed earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration and, in 2015, graduated from the Executive MBA program at San Diego State University, earning valedictorian honors. She works with the SDSU L. Robert Payne School of Hospitality and Tourism Management as a guest lecturer, assessor and is a current member of their Advisory Board. Reed is also involved in the Polynesian community, teaching dance and participating in cultural activities and education, as a way of staying in touch with her Samoan heritage. About T S RESTAURANTS of Hawaii and CaliforniaFounded in 1977 by Rob Thibaut and Sandy Saxten, T S RESTAURANTS owns and operates 14 restaurants on waterfront sites in Hawaii and California, including Duke's Waikiki and Hula Grill Waikiki on Oahu; Kimo's, Leilani's on the Beach, Hula Grill Kaanapali and Duke's Beach House on Maui; Duke's Kauai and Keoki's Paradise on Kauai; and Jake's Del Mar, Sunnyside Restaurant and Lodge, Sandy's in Huntington Beach, Duke's Huntington Beach, Duke's Malibu, and Duke's La Jolla in California. For more information about T S RESTAURANTS, visit www.tsrestaurants.com. MEDIA CONTACTS:Audrey Doherty orErin BrownChemistry Public Relations, Inc.(619) 236-8397 To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/t-s-restaurants-announces-jackie-reed-as-ceo-300239805.html SOURCE T S RESTAURANTS WASHINGTON, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Following is the daily "Profile America" feature from the U.S. Census Bureau: STATE BAN ON DISCRIMINATION Profile America Tuesday, March 22nd. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination based on sex as well as race in hiring, promoting, and firing. While this act is a famous landmark in the national effort to assure equality of treatment, its ban on sex discrimination was not in the forefront of the effort. On this date in 1872, the state of Illinois enacted the first such ban on discrimination. It came about through the lobbying of Alta Hulett, who had been kept from sitting for the Illinois bar exam. The new law cleared the way, and she became Illinois' first female attorney, and the world's youngest at age 19. Today, fully one-third of America's lawyers and judges are women, as opposed to the 4.9 percent figure of as recently as 1970. You can find more facts about America's people, places and economy from the American Community Survey at www.census.gov. Sources: Kane's Famous First Facts, 6828National prohibition on sex discrimination/accessed 1/14/2016: http://www.archives.gov/education/lessons/civil-rights-act/ State level action/accessed 1/14/2016: http://www.chicagobar.org/barnone/sect2.html Alta Hulett/accessed 1/14/2016: https://womenaslawyers.wordpress.com/a-timeline-of-womens- history-in-the-legal-profession/ Women in law: http://www.census.gov/newsroom/facts-for-features/2015/cb15-ff05.html Profile America is produced by the Center for New Media and Promotions of the U.S. Census Bureau. These daily features are available as produced segments, ready to air, on the Internet at http://www.census.gov (look for "Multimedia Gallery" by the "Newsroom" button). Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20110428/DC91889LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/us-census-bureau-daily-feature-for-march-22-state-ban-on-discrimination-300235430.html SOURCE U.S. Census Bureau By Matt Siegel SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian police said on Tuesday they had arrested two people, including a 16-year-old girl, on suspicion of raising funds to support operations of the Islamic State militant group. The arrests in a Sydney suburb on Monday of the schoolgirl and a man, aged 20, were part of counter-terrorism operations aimed at thwarting attacks by domestic radicals at home and disrupting the flow of funds to foreign fighters overseas. "We anticipate that both these people will be charged later today and attend court and the charge that we anticipate they will have is one of financing terrorism," New South Wales state police Deputy Commissioner Catherine Burn told reporters. "We will be alleging that they were involved in obtaining money to send offshore to assist the Islamic State in its activities," she said. Australia's anti-money laundering agency said in November reports of suspected militant financing had tripled in the past year, with more than A$50 million ($38 million) that could be used to support militants being investigated. The amounts being sent in this particular case were small and most likely used to help facilitate the travel of foreign fighters into Syria, an Australian Federal Police source told Reuters on condition of anonymity. "They are doing it usually by credit cards or ATM cards - pretty easy. It's not that much money. Some of it is a very small amount of money ... sometimes less than $1,000," he said. 'BASIS FOR CHARGES' Authorities believe dozens of Australians have traveled to Syria and Iraq to fight alongside Islamic State militants. Australia, a staunch U.S. ally, has been on heightened alert for attacks by home-grown radicals since 2014 and authorities say they have thwarted a number of potential attacks, while there have been several "lone wolf" assaults. Islamic State raises the majority of its funding from oil, kidnapping and other illicit activities in far greater amounts than what is sent by individuals, said Greg Barton, a terrorism expert at Deakin University. Arrests like those made this week were more valuable in identifying and arresting Australians who may be at risk of further radicalization than they in putting a dent in militant finances. "It's more this gives us the basis for figuring out the connection and it also gives us the basis for laying charges," he told Reuters. Australian Federal Police Deputy Commissioner Michael Phelan said the latest arrests were not connected to any threat of an imminent attack. In 2014, police shot dead a Melbourne teenager after he stabbed two counter-terrorism officers. Three months later, two hostages were killed when police stormed a Sydney cafe to end a siege by a lone gunman, who was also killed. A 15-year-old boy fired on an accountant at police headquarters in a Sydney suburb last October and was then killed in a gunfight with police. (Additional reporting by Swati Pandey in SYDNEY; Editing by Richard Pullin, Robert Birsel) European Neighbourhood Policy and Enlargement Negotiations Commissioner Johannes Hahn gestures as he addresses a news conference at the EU Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, September 17, 2015. REUTERS/Francois Lenoir SARAJEVO (Reuters) - Bosnia must press ahead quickly with reforms to keep alive its hopes of being named a candidate to join the European Union by the end of next year, EU enlargement chief Johannes Hahn said on Monday. Hahn said the ethnically divided Balkan country had made good progress on its EU path last year but must now make good on pledges made last month in Brussels when it handed in its application to join the 28-nation bloc. The next step in the EU's complex application process would be for member states to ask the bloc's executive Commission to prepare an opinion on Bosnia. The Commission would then send Bosnia a questionnaire asking for detailed economic, social and legal information. "If we get this (progress on reforms) by the end of April, beginning of May, it's very likely that we, the European Commission, can be tasked ... already before summer to submit the questionnaire to Bosnia," Hahn said after meeting Bosnian Prime Minister Denis Zvizidic in Sarajevo. "Then we can keep this ambitious timetable to have a final decision about the future status of the country by the end of 2017." Bosnia formally applied to the EU in February despite misgivings among some EU diplomats who thought the country - still plagued by post-war ethnic rivalries, organized crime and corruption - had made insufficient progress on reform. The existence of multi-layered governments created under the Dayton peace accords that ended Bosnia's 1992-95 war has obstructed decision-making and stifled development. Bosnia must continue social and economic reforms and publish the results of its 2013 census, Hahn said. Without the prospect of EU membership, Bosnia risks being left behind by neighbors who also emerged from the violent 1990s break-up of Yugoslavia and who either already belong to the bloc or are far further down the road to membership. (Reporting by Daria Sito-Sucic; Editing by Adrian Croft and Mark Heinrich) Ukraine's Zelenskiy: We can down most Russian missiles, will improve (Reuters) - Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said on Saturday that Russia had launched strikes on infrastructure on a "very wide" scale and pledged that his military would improve on an already good record of downing missiles with help from its partners. "The geography of this latest mass strike is very wide," Zelenskiy said in his nightly video address, citing regions in western, central and southern Ukraine. "Of course we don't... (continue reading...) BoE's Mann: bond purchases for stability were targeted and temporary LONDON (Reuters) - Bank of England policymaker Catherine Mann said on Saturday that bond purchases by the central bank in the days after the government's "mini-budget" fiscal plan last month to calm financial markets were "very targeted and temporary." "The financial stability approach, the requirements for financial stability was very targeted, and temporary," Mann said during an event organised by the Marshall Society at Cambridge University. ... ... (continue reading...) Chile's Entel to sell fiber optic assets for $358 million SANTIAGO (Reuters) - Chilean telecoms giant Entel said on Saturday it would sell the assets of its fiber optic business, which provides services to homes, to local company ON*NET Fibra in a deal worth $358 million. The sale, led by investment banks BNP Paribas, Santander and financial adviser Scotiabank, is subject to approval by Chile's economic regulator, expected in the first half of 2023. Entel and ON*NET Fibra signed an agreement as... (continue reading...) UK's Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak to meet, the Sunday Times reports LONDON (Reuters) - Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak, the two main potential candidates in the contest to become Britain's next prime minister, will meet, the Sunday Times reported. Johnson is a former prime minister, and Sunak a former finance minister who served under him. Neither has formally declared their candidacy. Sunday Times Chief Political Commentator Tim Shipman said the meeting had been delayed from earlier on Saturday and may now... (continue reading...) Israeli forces kill Palestinian in W.Bank, Palestinian officials say JERUSALEM (Reuters) - Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian in the occupied West Bank on Saturday, Palestinian health officials said, and a Palestinian stabbed an Israeli in Jerusalem, police said. The Israeli military said its troops were trying to detain a vehicle after its passengers had crossed illegally into Israel. It said the vehicle fled and hit a soldier, after which "the soldiers fired toward the vehicle". One of the... (continue reading...) More Reuters Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying speaks during his annual policy address in front of Legislative Council Chairman Jasper Tsang in Hong Kong, China January 13, 2016. REUTERS/Bobby Yip HONG KONG (Reuters) - Hong Kong leader Leung Chun-ying said on Tuesday that there are no plans to ease the city's property cooling measures despite a downturn. A series of government land sales have priced below expectations and Standard & Poor's is forecasting home prices to fall between 10 and 15 percent this year. Leung's comments come days after Hong Kong property magnate and billionaire Li Ka-shing said the city's economy was in its worst condition in 20 years. (Reporting by Donny Kwok and Clare Baldwin; Editing by Ed Davies) Soldiers stand guard on the beach following an attack by gunmen from al Qaeda's North African branch, in Grand Bassam, Ivory Coast, March 14, 2016. REUTERS/Luc Gnago ABIDJAN (Reuters) - Ivory Coast authorities arrested 15 people in connection with an attack claimed by al Qaeda that killed 19 people at a beach resort earlier this month, a state prosecutor said on Tuesday. They were still seeking the suspected ring-leader, who prosecutor Richard Adou named as Kounta Dallah. Gunmen shot swimmers and sunbathers before storming into several hotels when they burst onto the beach in the town of Grand Bassam, 40 km (25 miles) from the commercial capital Abidjan, on March 13. "Evidence found at the scene has allowed us to identify and trace certain individuals who participated in these acts," Adou told a news conference. He showed reporters a photo of Dallah that appeared to have been taken during an airport passport inspection. No other details about the suspect were available. Weapons, ammunition, balaclavas and vehicles believed to have been used by the attackers were being examined and a judge was preparing both domestic and international arrest warrants for other suspects, Adou added. (Reporting by Ange Aboa; Writing by Joe Bavier; editing by John Stonestreet) Peruvian presidential candidate Keiko Fujimori of the Fuerza Popular (Popular Force) party greets the press during a campaign rally in Lima, March 18, 2016. REUTERS/Janine Costa LIMA (Reuters) - The two leading candidates in Peru's presidential campaign face the possibility of being tossed from the race with three weeks to go until the election in a contest that has already seen two others disqualified. Peru's electoral board said on Monday that they had received a citizen's petition with allegations that Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, a 77-year-old former World Bank economist and favorite of investors, broke a new law against buying votes. The board is investigating a similar allegation made against longtime front-runner Keiko Fujimori, the daughter of imprisoned former President Alberto Fujimori. Last Thursday, Francisco Tavara, president of the National Jury of Elections, said at a press conference that Fujimori and other candidates might still be barred from the race as inquiries into wrongdoing were not yet completed. Disqualifying both or either Fujimori or Kuczynski, the established center-right candidates, would again turn the race on its head and likely boost two left-leaning candidates before the vote on April 10. Fujimori and Kuczynski together represent nearly 50 percent of voter intent, according to an Ipsos poll. The new law has already led to the ouster of one presidential hopeful, wealthy former governor Cesar Acuna, after he handed out cash to poor voters. Unlike Acuna, however, Kuczynski and Fujimori denied the allegations and are seen by Peruvians as having a better chance of staying in the race. Deliberations over the future of both candidates could drag on for more than a week. The election winner would replace President Ollanta Humala, whose five year term ends this year. Many have questioned the fairness of this year's race after Julio Guzman, a centrist technocrat who had surprisingly surged to second in polls, was disqualified because his party did not comply with minor electoral procedures. Protesters have accused the electoral board of favoring Fujimori. The electoral board has denied political bias. In a video that emerged on social media on Sunday, Kuczynski is seen on a stage waving his hand to a cheering crowd after a man beside him announced that Kuczynski had brought 15 crates of beer for each neighborhood in an Andean town. Kuczynski said he left shortly afterward and did not buy or distribute the beer. "I didn't give anything to anyone," he told reporters on Monday. Fujimori has denied any wrongdoing for presiding over an event where cash prizes were distributed to the winners of a breakdancing competition. (Reporting By Mitra Taj and Marco Aquino; editing by Grant McCool) The wreckage of a bus is lifted by a crane after a traffic crash in Freginals, Spain, March 20, 2016. REUTERS/Albert Gea FREGINALS, Spain (Reuters) - Students from six countries were among 13 people killed when a bus swerved off the road and crashed in the Spanish region of Catalonia on Sunday, regional authorities said on Monday. The fatalities were women between the ages of 19 and 25 and included seven from Italy, two Germans, and one each from France, Romania, Uzbekistan and Austria, Catalonia's regional interior minister Jordi Jane said. The bus overturned on a road that runs along Spain's eastern coast between the cities of Valencia and Barcelona. Twenty-four people remained in hospital, including the driver, with six in a serious condition and one critical. The cause of the accident was not immediately clear. (Reporting by Albert Gea and Blanca Rodriguez; Writing by Paul Day; Editing by Angus Berwick) The number of youths in court is at a 20-year low, but some fare better than others. Two 9-year-old burglars are among the youngest children to have a brush with the law in Wellington. The pair from the Kapiti-Mana district were the youngest of 50 aged 11 and under to come to police attention in the Wellington region in 2015. The figures released by police under the Official Information Act showed more than half were in trouble for burglary, theft and shoplifting. Another 16 had caused damage to property, including arson. One 10-year-old in the Wairarapa indecently assaulted a male older than 16, and another 10-year-old in Wellington behaved threateningly with a "stabbing weapon". READ MORE: * Tales of sorrow and hope at Maori Youth Courts * Drop in child crime reflects better collaboration in youth justice None of these children were old enough to figure in the national youth crime statistics for 2015, released by Justice Minister Amy Adams on Tuesday. By law, children aged between 10 and 11 cannot be prosecuted, except for murder or manslaughter. Children aged 10 to 16 are dealt with either by a warning, a referral to police youth aid or child welfare, in youth court, or in a family group conference. Those aged 17 and older are prosecuted as adults and can be jailed. Youth can also be dealt with in the marae-based rangitahi courts, a rehabilitative system open to all ethnicities that research has shown has promise for reducing youth crime. Almost 80 per cent of young people who faced criminal charges last year were male. Maori were disproportionately represented in court, with 1161 charged, compared with 435 Pakeha and 204 Pasifika young people. Lawyer Amanda Courtney, a Wellington youth advocate, said a common theme she had seen among young offenders was exposure to family violence. She viewed family group conferences as effective. "Having them look in the eye of someone like a victim is pretty powerful and the shaming in front of their family. It gives them understanding of the impact of what they have done." She said talks often ended with hugs and tears and a plea from the victim for the child to receive support. "Sometimes they don't understand the wider effect of their offending. For example, they could have burgled a person and never thought 'What if this person has a heart condition?' or that this person has a baby in the house." Overall, youths account for less than 3 per cent of people charged in court in 2015, which Adams said was a 20-year low. Young adults committed the most crime last year, with a third of all those convicted aged between 17 and 24. Katie Bruce, director of JustSpeak, which wants the adult court and imprisonment age to be lifted from 17 to 21, said teens "age out" of crime, but a small proportion would be locked into that pattern, and needed help early on. "It's been a very long road for them there's the possibility of neurological disorders like foetal alcohol syndrome disorder for these people, or other things that haven't really been picked up." A PERFECT STORM A small group of children are born into circumstances so heavily stacked against them that a brush with the law is almost predetermined. A Treasury report released earlier this year predicted a quarter of the country's 7842 most at-risk children, aged 14 and below, would wind up in the youth justice system. The children all shared four key risk factors: having been subjected to abuse or neglect; being supported by benefits since birth; having a parent who had served a prison or community sentence; and having a mother with no formal qualifications. That group was predicted to have a 29 per cent chance of ending up in jail by the time they were aged 25 to 34. However, the report stressed that criminality was also influenced by other factors, and that many children would overcome their disadvantaged starts to life. NZTA has admitted the resurfacing work on SH1 between Plimmerton and Pukerua Bay in late January and early February "didn't go well" and created more traffic choke points for commuters. One single stretch of roadworks that "didn't go well" probably triggered Wellington's entire summer of traffic hell, the NZ Transport Agency has admitted. Regional highways manager Neil Walker told a meeting of the region's mayors on Tuesday that, from Mana northwards, "we now have three pinch points on that network, where in the past we had one". READ MORE: * Police and NZTA probe drivers' licensing fraud * NZTA error unearthed through fatal crash * NZTA warns of Wellington road congestion for years to come KEVIN STENT/ FAIRFAX NZ Wellington's commuter congestion rate is worse than those of London, Los Angeles and Istanbul, according to TomTom figures. He said the agency was responsible for roadworks south of Pukerua Bay in late January and early February that "didn't go well" and ran into peak hours. "It was about that time people decided a quicker way home was to actually go over the Paekakariki hill. So now we actually have traffic on the hill, which has created another conflict point for us on State Highway 1." The other pinch points were Pukerua Bay and the Raumati Straights roadworks in Kapiti, where the agency "got it wrong" when it said it would cause only 70-second delays. That was probably true for off-peak, Walker said, but at peak hours "that's not the case". Rising congestion on SH2 might also have been caused by motorists using the Paekakariki Hill Road, he said. Kapiti Coast Mayor Ross Church said commuters were faced with a choice of the least-bad option between SH1 and the Paekakariki Hill Road. When doing roadworks, the agency often cut two lanes down to one to improve the flow of traffic, he said. "If you take that to its logical conclusion, you should shut one of the roads." He was not "suggesting for a moment" that was the solution, but ongoing congestion was a big problem. On Tuesday, figures released by navigation company TomTom showed that Wellington had a congestion rate worse than those of London, Los Angeles and Istanbul. Greater Wellington Regional Council has confirmed there were 40,000 more peak trips on the Kapiti line in February compared to the same time last year. Carriage congestion is becoming so bad that Greater Wellington, KiwiRail and the agency are meeting to come up with solutions. At the regional transport committee meeting, chairman Paul Swain said Greater Wellington had seen "quite phenomenal" passenger numbers on rail. If the figures were confirmed in March, the council would look at how it would respond. "For example, do we need to put some bigger trains on in some of the peak areas?" Prime Minister John Key said he empathised with people stuck in traffic jams more often, and that he'd been caught out himself but major traffic projects were to blame for some of the delays in Auckland and Wellington. Walker said the agency had improved the way it considered the impact of roadworks on the wider network, and had already cut the duration of the Raumati work from 20 months to nine, and was aiming for seven. The agency was mulling changes to the Paekakariki Hill Road intersection, which was last revamped in 2013. Kapiti's expressway was likely be finished ahead of schedule in December, he said, and Wellington's smart urban motorway, the first in New Zealand, would be finished in May. The agency was looking at new options to replace the rejected Basin Reserve flyover, and work is cranking up on Transmission Gully. Opening up the Taranaki Basin for further oil and gas exploration does not guarantee an economic boost for the region, Labour leader Andrew Little says. On Monday the Minister for Energy and Resources Simon Bridges announced, at the New Zealand Petroleum Conference, that 62,040 square kilometres - 60,978 off-shore and 1062 on-shore - was being made available in Taranaki for exploration in the 2016 Block Offer. The offer opens up a further 525,500 square kilometres for exploration nationally. Little said just opening up the Block Offer wasn't enough to entice companies to the region. READ MORE * Another 40,000 square kilometers of oil territory open for tender in Taranaki * Oil and gas exploration permits awarded for the Taranaki Basin "You have got to have the conditions that justify the exploration companies and the end users to want to make the investment to find it and tap into it and those economic conditions just don't exist," he said. "It might just end up being a damp squib." Little said Government needed to have a broader diversification strategy in place for the economy. "The reality is in the current world climate the economics don't stack up and so the need to look for other sources of earning our national income are greater than ever before and that's what we need to be focusing on." Little said the pressure would be on to locate new gas reserves in the future if the country wanted to maintain the current level of use. Venture Taranaki CEO Stuart Trundle said it would be an interesting barometer to see what level of interest there was from global companies to the offer. Trundle said the offer would not produce any immediate financial benefit to the region as there would need to be investigations carried out into what reserves the areas held. "It is often in excess of a decade from an offer before there is tangible economic benefits." It had been up to 50 years since the current producing fields were offered for exploration, he said. "Whether it is gas or oil there is this continual process to replace the fields that are getting towards the end of their productive lives," Trundle said. Whanganui MP Chester Borrows said he welcomed the announcement. "I think it is all good news for our region and New Zealand," Borrows said. "I'm just pleased that the oil and gas companies are prepared to continue at a time when they're only realising a third of their previous best prices per barrell." Climate Justice Taranaki spokesman Urs Signer said the announcement was total madness. "It is completely irresponsible for the government to open up more areas to oil and gas exploration," Signer said. "Onshore, most of the Taranaki region is now covered in permits and open to bidders. Offshore, everything is up for grabs, including 2,600km2 of the critically endangered Maui's Dolphin sanctuary." The 2016 Block Offer came just after it was revealed February 2016 was the hottest month on record, he said. "We have to leave fossil fuels in the ground and immediately transition to a low-carbon economy. "With a worldwide downturn in oil prices and little exploration currently taking place, it shows a desperation on the part of government and completely contradicts their stated goals to reduce emissions in line with global limits set late last year in Paris." Companies had until September 7 to tender bids for the block offer and the successful permits were expected to be announced in December. Some customers like Dahman Soraya and Rossano Antonini don't care too much for the logo on the back of their rental van, but like the price. They wanted to see New Zealand on a budget, but they have also received some cheap shots in response to the slogan on the back of their rental van. Dahman Soraya and Rossano Antonini admit they are not a big fan of the slogan - Virginity is curable- painted on the back of their Wicked Camper but say it was not like they had a choice. "We wanted to see New Zealand and this was the cheapest way for us to do that," Antonini said. "It's not like we had a choice of slogan you just turn up and you get given one. Some are rude and some are more profound." READ MORE: * Wicked Campers banned at Kaiteriteri campground * Wicked Campers removed from DOC website * Lonely Planet to remove Wicked Campers from New Zealand guidebook Wicked Campers has received a lot of flak lately the vans' offensive slogans printed on their rentals vans, with one campground in Kaiteriteri going as far as banning them. Tourism minister Paula Bennett is also calling on the public to join a campaign to have slogans on Wicked Campers' vans censored. Bennett, who regularly received complaints from members of the public about the vans, wanted the public to send her photos of all four sides of Wicked Campers vehicles by emailing paula.bennett@parliament.govt.nz. Antonini said they have found some people shout at them while passing the van. "Some will say 'I'll give you your cure' or something like that," he said. While some saw the funny side to the slogan, aAntonini understood why some people would take offence. "It's a bit aggressive," he said. "I can see if someone had a young daughter in the car it could offend." Soraya said she was embarrassed by the slogan, but she wasn't going to let it ruin her holiday. Wicked Camper's website says the slogans are "humorous / wise" and are "perfect for picking up babes" and the artwork is "perfect for offending the elderly". The Department of Conservation has removed Wicked Campers from a list of rental companies on its website where tourists can buy DOC campsite passes. They are also looking at whether they could stop Wicked Campers from issuing campsite passes. Taupo's Top 10 Holiday park confirmed they had received an email from their group chief executive officer David Ovendale concerning the vans and whether asking slogans to be covered up should be a new business practice. Founded in Brisbane by John Webb, Wicked Campers has a long history of hitting the headlines on both sides of the Tasman for all the wrong reasons. Most recently in January New Zealand's Advertising Standards Authority upheld a complaint about a Wicked Campers van slogan which said: "The best thing about oral sex is the five minutes of silence". Petrol 15 cents cheaper at Raglan than in Katikati is a clear indication of strong competition in the North Island fuel industry, says Mark Stockdale, the AAs petrol prices, senior policy analyst. However, the diversity of fuel prices is not necessarily pleasing the public. Ukrtelecom sees 3.5% rise in net profit in 2015, 9.4% increase in revenue Public joint-stock company Ukrtelecom saw UAH 445 million in net profit in 2015, and it is 3.5% up on 2014, Ukrtelecom Director General Yuriy Kurmaz said at a press conference in Kyiv on Tuesday, referring to the unaudited report. He said that net revenue over the period increased by 9.45, to UAH 6.773 billion. Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA) increased by 55.3%, to UAH 1.864 billion. Capital investment decreased by 35.4%, to UAH 234 million. Ukrtelecom is the largest fixed-line communications operator in Ukraine. The company promotes 3G mobile communications. Commercial catch limits for Coromandel scallops will be reduced by 50 tonnes to ensure the long-term sustainability of the species. Announced recently by Primary Industries Minister Nathan Guy, its one of four fishing limits changed under the annual fisheries sustainability review and will come into effect on April 1. Police investigating a pursuit/hostage situation which took place across large parts of Auckland last night are continuing to build a picture of the circumstances of the incident. Investigations are continuing but at this stage, this is the information available. At around 12.25am this morning, a Holden Ute was seen in the corner of Lake and Esmonde Roads, Takapuna, doing burnouts and donuts. A Police unit signalled for the vehicle to pull over, but the driver failed to stop and a pursuit was initiated. The driver continued to flee and initially headed to Devonport on Lake Road, but the driver was travelling at over 150 kilometres, and with concerns for public safety, Police abandoned the pursuit. Police contacted the registered owner of the Ute, who told Police that several men had just been to his property and had stolen his Ute and a BMW from him at gunpoint. The stolen Ute continued to drive south down the motorway, monitored by motorway cameras. In the meantime, numerous Police units mobilised and spikes were laid at Bombay. The stolen Ute drove over the spikes but continued to flee and drove to a nearby cul-de-sac, followed closely by Police. Officers cordoned the end of the street, but the man got out of his car and ran into a property, holding a firearm. A couple aged in their sixties live at the property and had been in bed asleep, when they were woken by noises. The gunman smashed a ranchslider and ordered the gentleman to get into his own Ford Falcon. The mans wife was left behind. Officers had meanwhile moved in to cordon and contain the property, however the gunman then appeared with the hostage, fleeing south on the motorway in the victims car. The gunman continued to flee and drove to the Hamilton Expressway. A truck and trailer unit had just rolled and was blocking the left south-bound lane. The car was approaching this area. Officers contained the scene and directed Fire crew (who were assisting with the crash) , to take cover behind their truck. Officers then threw out the spikes as the vehicle approached. The car drove over the spikes, damaging one of the tyres. The gunman continued to drive south. At Ngaruawahia he pulled over outside an associates house and honked his horn, he kept driving with the hostage still in the car, crashing a short time later. Waikato Armed Offenders Squad had been deployed and were on the scene moments after the car crashed. The gunman got out of the car and hid behind the vehicle. He was called upon to surrender and was taken into custody by AOS members a short time later. He then told Police hed swallowed 3g of methamphetamine and was taken to Middlemore Hospital. The 64 year-old hostage received a minor hand injury but was otherwise physically unharmed. The 27 year-old offender has since been released from hospital and is being interviewed at the North Shore Police Station. He is expected to face a series of serious charges. A number of scene examinations are now underway as Police look to establish the full set of circumstances. Police are appealing for sightings of the black BMW 540i sedan, which was taken earlier in the evening at gunpoint from the Glenfield address. The registration plate is ERP724. This was a dynamic and rapidly evolving incident, involving numerous Police officers across a large part of the North Island. The officers involved have done an outstanding job in challenging circumstances to end this without anyone being seriously hurt says Inspector Hayden Mander, Waitemata Police. Enquiries into the other persons responsible for the aggravated burglary in Glenfield are ongoing. Anyone with information is asked to contact the North Shore CIB on 09 477 5261. Information can also be given anonymously to the organisation Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111. Source: New Zealand Police. Energy Minister and Tauranga MP Simon Bridges has offered four offshore areas in the New Zealand Exclusive Economic Zone for oil and gas exploration. The 2016 Block Offer invites response from oil exploration companies to seek hydrocarbon deposits in the Reinga-Northland Basin, the Taranaki Basin, Pegasus and East Coast Basins, and Great South-Canterbury Basin. Single mum Sian Gulliford works hard to provide for her little boy Luca sometimes working 10-hour days at a local cafe in Mount Maunganui. She was recently surprised when she got a call from PORSE, the early childhood education centre where her son attends, saying she had won $4000 or a $5000 trip to the Gold Coast. Prime Minister John Key has condemned the attacks in Brussels and says New Zealanders are thinking about the people and the government of Belgium. We utterly condemn these appalling acts which have killed and wounded so many, Mr Key says. No innocent person should have to worry about such violence when going about their daily lives and New Zealand stands with Belgium in the fight against terrorism. Atrocities like this and the recent attacks in Turkey are a stark reminder of why the international community must stand together in the global fight against terrorism. Our thoughts are with Belgians in the aftermath of this shocking attack. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade are working to ascertain whether any New Zealanders have been caught up in the attacks and any who are in Brussels are urged to make contact with their families. At this stage there are no reports of any New Zealanders being affected. Source: Office of John Key. A five-year report on progress towards improving Waikato and Waipa Rivers environmental management has been welcomed by Environment Minister Dr Nick Smith, who says it strongly illustrates how the Government, iwi, councils and the community could achieve results by working together. The Waikato River is New Zealands longest at 442 kilometres and poses one of our greatest national challenges in improving freshwater quality. The progress that has been achieved in the first five years of the Waikato River Authority is impressive, although we have decades of ongoing work to achieve the required gains in freshwater and river quality, Dr Smith says. "The cap and trade nutrient scheme on Lake Taupo is world leading and three years ahead of schedule in reducing nitrate leaking by 170 tonnes per year from the headwaters of the Waikato. The Waikato River Authoritys achievements of 1.1 million native trees and shrubs planted, 85 kilometres of waterways fenced and $22.4 million spent of 137 projects is part of the long-term progress needed to better protect the rivers. The next key step will be notification of the Waikato Regional Councils Healthy Rivers Plan later this year in response to the Governments national policy requirements that will set limits on nutrients within the Waikato Rivers 11,000 square kilometre catchment. Dr Smith was in Hamilton for a hui and public meeting on the Governments Next Steps on Freshwater Management policy proposals and to receive the Waikato River Authoritys first five-yearly report. We have a huge national challenge in upping the way we manage freshwater that is going to require tighter regulation, significant investment and a change in culture in how we treat our rivers and lakes. The long hydrological cycle of catchments like the Waikato mean that we have nutrients from practices decades ago continuing to flow into the river. This should not detract us from the need for action today but we need to be in for the long haul to turn around the quality of water in the river. That is why the Government has committed $220 million over 30 years to this critical national project. I am encouraged by the achievements to date but also want to ensure we have the structure and plan to continue this progress. The Waikato River Authority, as part of the Crowns Treaty settlement with Waikato-Tainui is an important innovation, and as part of the settlement we will be reviewing the co-governance and co-management arrangements later this year. SOURCE: Office of Dr Nick Smith Positions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces in Donbas came under fire 27 times on Monday, the press center of the headquarters of Kyiv's army operation in eastern Ukraine reported on its Facebook account. "Twenty-seven strikes against positions of Ukraine's Armed Forces have been recorded in the past 24 hours, including 21 strikes in the Donetsk region and six near the city of Mariupol," the press center said. Ukrainian military positions in the vicinity of Luhanske and the Zenit checkpoint near Avdiyivka came under 82mm mortar fire, the press center said, adding that four mines were launched during that attack. Large-caliber submachine guns and grenade launchers were used against Ukrainian checkpoints near Zaitseve, Mayorsk and Avdiyivka, while small arms were fired at Ukrainian military positions in Maryinka. In a separate development, Ukrainian positions in the vicinity of Mayorsk and Luhanske came under sniper fire on Monday. "Strikes against positions of the Ukrainian Armed Forces were stopped at midnight," it said. Mark Feygin, the lawyer of Ukrainian citizen Nadia Savchenko who has been found guilty in Russia of murdering Russian journalists, has appealed to the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD) and the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders. "The refusal to file an appeal excludes the ECHR cassation option. Although I disagree with Nadia on this matter, I have taken some precautions and have launched a number of international procedures towards her release," he wrote on Facebook. The first procedure is underway at the UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention, he said. "I have brought the Savchenko case there, and I am expecting results in April," he said. In addition, the lawyer appealed to the UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights Defenders. Feygin said earlier that Savchenko had no intention of challenging the guilty verdict. "That's her decision; she believes that the refusal to file an appeal will boost the negotiations and her extradition to Ukraine," the lawyer said. 0115justice.JPG scales of justice ALBANY, N.Y. -- A former substitute direct care worker for the New York state Office for People with Developmental Disabilities pleaded guilty Tuesday to stealing nearly $40,000 by submitting fraudulent pay vouchers for nine months in which he never actually worked for the state. Timothy B. Green, 27, of South New Berlin, pleaded guilty in Chenango County Court to grand larceny, a felony, state Inspector General Catherine Leahy Scott announced. As part of the plea agreement, Green will serve six months in jail and five years under probation supervision. He will also have to pay $39,096.72 in restitution for hours he billed the state but never actually worked, Leahy Scott said. Green had been employed as a substitute direct care worker at the OPWDD Valley Ridge Center for Intensive Treatment in Norwich starting in November 2013. As a substitute, Green worked on an "as needed" basis to cover shifts left vacant by regular staff and would submit payment vouchers, which required a supervisor's signature verifying hours worked, according to the OPWDD payroll offices in Binghamton. The inspector general's investigation determined that Green worked no shifts subsequent to January 2015, but he continued to submit 36 fraudulent vouchers as if he had worked shifts through September 2015, Leahy Scott said. Those vouchers, with forged signatures from his supervisor, resulted in his being paid $39,096.72 for shifts never worked. After his submitted vouchers were called into question last fall, and the inspector general began to investigate, payments to Green were stopped. Nonetheless, Green repeatedly called OPWDD payroll offices to inquire into the status of payments he had not yet received, Leahy Scott said. "This defendant perpetuated this fraud for nearly a year and had the audacity to repeatedly call agency officials demanding payment for work he never performed," said Leahy Scott. 78397123 (Brand X Pictures) Cincinnati--A Syracuse mom will spend just seven more days in jail after pleading guilty to injecting her already ill child's feeding tube with Benadryl sickening him further. An Ohio Court sentenced Jessica Valik, 26, to 180 days in jail Tuesday. But she has already served 173 days in the Hamilton County jail and will be released next week, the Cincinnati Enquirer reported. Jessica Valik Valik pleaded guilty earlier this month to misdemeanor child endangering. Under Ohio law the maximum penalty is 180 days for a misdemeanor offense. Valik's son is being treated at Cincinnati Children's Hospital for epidermolysis bullosa a rare, congenital skin disorder that causes painful blistering, scarring and missing skin. Prosecutors said Valik was injecting Benadryl into his feeding tube. It caused the little boy to have severe diarrhea and to become dehydrated. According to court documents, the multiple diaper changes he needed increased the risks of infection, pain and life-threatening complications for the child, the Enquirer said. The hospital will not allow Valik back on its property. A judge warned her that she faces criminal trespassing charges if she goes there. A social worker said the boy's condition has since improved. Valik did not speak in court. Her lawyer Massimino Ionna, said EB causes itching and pain and that his client was giving her son Benedryl to help with his symptoms, the Enquirer said. She has set up a website with photos and a blog abut her son's illness. Officials said that Valik's father is pursuing guardianship of the boy. Sean M. Elmer.JPG Sean M. Elmer, of 111 Sagamore Drive South, Clay, was charged with third-degree criminal sexual act, first-degree criminal contempt and endangering the welfare of a child. (New York State Police) CLAY, N.Y. -- A 26-year-old man is accused of violating a protective order and then having sexual contact with the teen who was the subject of the order, the New York State Police said. Sean M. Elmer, of 111 Sagamore Drive South, Clay, was charged with third-degree criminal sexual act, first-degree criminal contempt and endangering the welfare of a child. State police said Elmer twice violated an order of protection for a 16-year-old boy. Investigator Bill Casey said the order of protection stemmed from a case several years ago involving Elmer and the teen. He said that because the case is sealed he did not have details about it. In early December 2015 Elmer had sexual contact with the 16-year-old at Elmer's home in Clay, Casey said. Elmer is accused of seeing the teen at his home again during winter break in February. There was no sexual contact the second time, he said. Casey declined to say what the relationship between Elmer and the 16-year-old was. The teen was the person who came forward to authorities, he said. Elmer was arrested Monday at his home. He was arraigned in Clay Town Court and ordered held at the Onondaga County jail in lieu of $100,000 bail or bail bond. He had not posted bail Tuesday afternoon. State police asked that anyone with information about the case contact the Bureau of Criminal Investigations in Lafayette at 315-677-9971. SYRACUSE, NY -- Parents of students at All Saints Elementary School were told late Monday that their students may have been victims of "criminal activity" allegedly committed by an employee recently charged in a child pornography case. The letter, which was obtained by Syracuse.com, said the FBI told staff Monday morning that "there may be additional victims of Miss (Emily) Oberst's criminal activity, including students at All Saints" and that some parents may be contacted by the FBI. Oberst was also fired "effective immediately," the letter said. Oberst was charged over the weekend for allegedly allowing a 40-year-old man to sexually exploit a 16-month-old child. It was later learned she worked at the elementary school and began volunteering there beginning at age 15. Her mother is also a teacher at the school, according to the school's website. School officials declined to comment despite repeated requests Monday, and the letter was the first contact parents had after news of Oberst's arrest became public on Saturday. The letter said officials could not confirm the identities or the number of students who may be involved. The full text of the letter is below. "Dear Parents: As you may have learned over the weekend, and as reported on Syracuse.com, a part-time All Saints Elementary aide, Emily Oberst, was arrested and charged with sexual exploitation of a sixteen-month-old child. Miss Oberst has been terminated from All Saints, effective immediately. We are cooperating with the authorities. Unfortunately, this morning in a meeting with the Federal Bureau of Investigation, we learned that there may be additional victims of Miss Oberst's criminal activity, including students at All Saints. At this time, we can neither confirm the identities nor the numbers of students who may be involved. In this regard, some of you may be contacted by the FBI in connection with its further investigation. We will keep you informed as we obtain additional relevant information. All Saints Elementary Board." Oberst of Syracuse is accused of helping Jason Kopp, 40, of Liverpool, to sexually exploit a baby girl, according to federal prosecutors. Oberst also allegedly sent explicit photos of the child to Kopp, including one labeled "4 John March 16." John was the pseudonym of an investigator who authorities say caught Oberst and Kopp. FBI Special Agent Alix Skelton detailed the investigation into Kopp and Oberst in court documents filed Saturday. Skelton, other agents and an officer with the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department-FBI Child Exploitation Task Force conducted the investigation. On March 4, an undercover federal officer began texting with a user called "daymein39" on Kik, a popular anonymous messaging app, Skelton wrote. During the conversations, the officer posed as a man named John. The user daymein39 displayed the initials "JK" with his messages, Skelton said. Investigators confirmed the user was Kopp, Skelton said. The Kik conversations took place over the course of two weeks -- ending on Friday. During that time, Kopp told the officer a female acquaintance had allowed him to have illicit contact with a baby girl, Skelton wrote. The FBI later identified Kopp's acquaintance as Oberst. Kopp sent the officer "lewd and lascivious" photographs of the girl and told the officer he had sexually abused the child, Skelton wrote. To prove to the officer that his actions were real, Kopp asked Oberst to take a photo of the baby with a sign that included the name John -- the name the officer was using, Skelton wrote. Oberst took an explicit photo of the girl on March 16 with a sign that read "4 John March 16," Skelton wrote. Oberst sent the photo to Kopp through Kik, and Kopp shared the photo with the officer, wrote the special agent. Oberst told investigators she took about 50 explicit photos of a baby and sent the photos through Kik to a man named "Jason," Skelton wrote. Oberst said she could not remember Jason's last name, but said he went by the name "Daymein" on Kik, according to court documents. The defendants waived their right to a detention hearing in federal court on Saturday, court documents show. They are being held at the Onondaga County jail with no bail. The school is an independent elementary school that opened in September 2006 in Tipperary Hill after the closing of nearby St. Patrick's School by the Catholic Diocese. SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- The 23-year-old woman who is accused of producing child pornography with an infant is an employee at a Syracuse elementary school. School officials have declined to answer any questions about her employment or background. Emily Oberst of Syracuse is accused of helping Jason Kopp, 40, of Liverpool, to sexually exploit a baby girl, according to federal prosecutors. Oberst also allegedly sent explicit photos of the child to Kopp, including one labeled "4 John March 16". John was the pseudonym of an investigator who authorities say caught Oberst and Kopp. Oberst lists her employment on Facebook as being with an after-school program at All Saints Elementary School, and her mother, Janet, describes having Emily volunteer at the school from the age of 15 to 19, according to biographies on the school's website. School officials did not respond to multiple requests for comment Monday and asked a Syracuse.com reporter to leave the premises. Principal Rosalie Pollman said through an aide that she was "with students" all day Monday and could not comment. Members of the school's board of directors could also not be reached, and neither could Janet Oberst. One parent contacted Syracuse.com over the weekend concerned that Emily Oberst worked at the school. Pollman was asked by email what the school was doing in response to the charges against Emily Oberst, but the principal did not respond. The victim is a 16-month-old girl, according to federal court papers. All Saints is a pre-kindergarten to sixth-grade independent school that opened in September 2006. It's located in rented space in the former St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic School, at 112 S. Wilbur Ave., near West Fayette Street. The school was established after the Catholic Diocese closed St. Patrick's School, and parents worked to establish the All Saints school. It offers a "Catholic curriculum" but cannot label itself a Catholic school without the blessing of a local bishop. FBI Special Agent Alix Skelton detailed the investigation into Kopp and Oberst in court documents filed Saturday. Skelton, other agents and an officer with the District of Columbia Metropolitan Police Department-FBI Child Exploitation Task Force conducted the investigation. Prosecutor Richard Southwick declined to comment on the case Monday. On March 4, an undercover federal officer began texting with a user called "daymein39" on Kik, a popular anonymous messaging app, Skelton wrote. During the conversations, the officer posed as a man named John. The user daymein39 displayed the initials "JK" with his messages, Skelton said. Investigators confirmed the user was Kopp, Skelton said. The Kik conversations took place over the course of two weeks -- ending on Friday. During that time, Kopp told the officer a female acquaintance had allowed him to have illicit contact with a baby girl, Skelton wrote. The FBI later identified Kopp's acquaintance as Oberst. Kopp sent the officer "lewd and lascivious" photographs of the girl and told the officer he had sexually abused the child, Skelton wrote. To prove to the officer that his actions were real, Kopp asked Oberst to take a photo of the baby with a sign that included the name John -- the name the officer was using, Skelton wrote. Oberst took an explicit photo of the girl on March 16 with a sign that read "4 John March 16," Skelton wrote. Oberst sent the photo to Kopp through Kik, and Kopp shared the photo with the officer, wrote the special agent. Oberst told investigators she took about 50 explicit photos of a baby and sent the photos through Kik to a man named "Jason," Skelton wrote. Oberst said she could not remember Jason's last name, but said he went by the name "Daymein" on Kik, according to court documents. The defendants waived their right to a detention hearing in federal court on Saturday, court documents show. They are being held at the Onondaga County jail with no bail. Vans Warped Tour 2015 Vans Warped Tour fans cheer on Man Overboard at Aaron's Amphitheatre on Thursday, July 2, 2015, in Atlanta. (Robb D. Cohen | Invision | AP) The biggest names in alternative rock and pop-punk music are officially coming to Syracuse's newest concert venue this summer. The Vans Warped Tour will hit the Lakeview Amphitheater on Thursday, July 7. Doors open for the all-day event starting at 11 a.m.; performances by dozens of bands are expected to wrap up around 9 p.m. Early bird tickets are now on sale at Ticketmaster starting at $29, plus fees. All tickets are general admission; no seats are available. According to the official Warped Tour website, the festival offers one free admission pass for a parent (legal guardian over age 28) to accompany a minor (under age 18) that has purchased a ticket. Those complimentary tickets can only be picked up at the yellow Vans Warped Tour Guest List tent located near the front entrance of the venue. The festival also offers a "Rally Bus" for traveling to the Lakeview Amphitheater from Baldwinsville, Utica, Fulton, Oswego, Rochester, Verona, Weedsport and other nearby cities. Warped Tour organizers previously only announced cities for its 2016 tour dates, naming Syracuse and "Buffalo" as its only two Upstate New York stops. On Tuesday morning, the venues in those two cities were confirmed as Lakeview Amphitheater and the Darien Lake Performing Arts Center (in Darien Center). Tickets for Warped Tour's Darien Lake concert are now on sale, also for $29 each, through Live Nation. Acts for the 2016 Warped Tour will not be officially announced until Tuesday night, but New Found Glory and Less Than Jake have both been confirmed as headliners. An allegedly leaked lineup also included bands like We the Kings, Falling in Reverse, Four Year Strong, Yellowcard, Reel Big Fish, Every Time I Die, Mayday Parade, Sleeping with Sirens, The Maine, The Summer Set and I See Stars. Lakeview Amphitheater 2016 concert schedule Next mobilization to call up from 5,000 to 10,000 conscripts Poroshenko The next regular mobilization will bolster Ukraine's Armed Forces by 5,000 to 10,000 servicemen, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said. "The urgent stage of building up the Ukrainian Armed Forces is over. I stress once again that I will sign a demobilization decree this week. Some 45,000 servicemen will be sent home, while the mobilization will be limited to 5,000 or 10,000 people," Poroshenko told journalists on Tuesday. 2016-01-28-mjg-CityAddress2.JPG Mayor Stephanie Miner delivers her State of the City Address. 2016 State of the City, Southwest Community Center, Thursday January 28, 2016. (Michael Greenlar | mgreenlar@syracuse.com) SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Mayor Stephanie Miner has refused Syracuse.com access to former Sgt. Thomas Connellan's overtime pay records. In January, Syracuse.com requested access to Connellan's overtime pay requests for a period of five years. Connellan has been charged with grand larceny for allegedly stealing "well over $3,000" from the state Department of Financial Services while being paid as a Syracuse police officer. After city hall lawyers denied the request, Syracuse.com filed an appeal with the mayor, per the New York State Freedom of Information Law. Miner upheld her attorneys' opinion that the records were not for public release. She referred a reporter to the District Attorney's office. "Public Officers Law 87(2)(e)(i) prohibits making available for public inspection and copying all records that would interfere with law enforcement investigations or judicial proceedings," read a March 3 denial letter from Miner's corporation counsel. "Any further requests for these records, please contact the District Attorney's Office." When asked if releasing the records would interfere with his office's investigation or judicial proceedings, District Attorney Bill Fitzpatrick replied, "not in the slightest." Fitzpatrick's copies of the records are not his to release, since they were obtained under a grand jury subpoena, he said. Robert Freeman, executive director of New York's committee on open government, said the records should be made available by City Hall. Freeman said the records should be public since they were not compiled for the purpose of an investigation. The records existed prior to the start of the investigation and were not created specifically for the investigation. In 2014, the City of Syracuse released a selection of the same records to Syracuse.com. Those records showed Connellan filed overlapping overtime requests three times in a matter of three months. At the time, Police Chief Frank Fowler said that should not have happened and the city would seek reimbursement. Connellan OT Denial Hulk Hogan, Terry Bollea In this Wednesday, March 9, 2016 file photo, Hulk Hogan, whose given name is Terry Bollea, waits in the courtroom during a break in his trial against Gawker Media in St. Petersburg, Fla. A jury has hit Gawker Media with $15 million in punitive damages and its owner with $10 million, adding to the $115 million it awarded last week for publishing a sex video of Hogan. The jury returned its decision Monday, March 21, 2016. (Steve Nesius / Pool via AP) Noah Feldman, a Bloomberg View columnist, is a professor of constitutional and international law at Harvard. By Noah Feldman | Bloomberg View Last week I had to defend Donald Trump's free-speech rights. Now that a Florida jury has awarded Hulk Hogan $115 million in his suit against Gawker, I have to defend the original snark-site's free-press right to have shown a sex tape of the retired wrestler and his erstwhile best friend's wife. This First Amendment stuff is sometimes a serious drag. In this area of law, unattractive speakers are par for the course. One famous precedent involved a parody of a Campari ad in Hustler in which Jerry Falwell discussed losing his virginity to his mother. (There's even a movie about it, "The People Vs. Larry Flynt.") It would be great if all First Amendment defendants were publishing "Ulysses." But in reality, free speech and free-press rights are especially vulnerable when the defendant's speech is nasty. So it's time to crank up the constitutional engine and explain why the verdict against Gawker not only should be struck down on appeal, but why the issue shouldn't have gone to a jury in the first place. The bottom line is simple: Hogan is a public figure who discusses his sexual prowess on Howard Stern's radio show and more or less pre-promoted the sex tape by talking about it on the gossip site TMZ. Gawker's constitutional right to publish content the public wants to consume outweighs what little privacy interests a public figure like Hogan may derive from state law. Even a film clip counts as content under the First Amendment. The legal analysis, however, is a bit more complicated -- and interesting. The Florida law under which Hogan sued, like laws in many other states, says that someone who publicizes embarrassing private facts about another person is liable for damages. In addition to compensation, a jury can award punitive damages of up to three times more, which would get the verdict here into the $500 million range. There's no Supreme Court precedent squarely addressing the constitutionality of such state laws. If the court were to consider the question today, it's likely that it would apply a high degree of scrutiny to the laws, since they target speech based on its content. It might say that the government has a compelling interest in protecting privacy. But then it would require a state to narrowly tailor privacy laws to serve that interest, and to show it had used the least restrictive means possible. But at a time of near-absolutism on free speech, the court might well go even farther and strike down such laws en masse. In the meantime, lower courts apply principles derived from the justices' opinions in related areas. One is that debate on public issues should be uninhibited. A second, closely linked, is that public figures sacrifice a good deal of their privacy when they when they enter the public sphere. Both can be traced back to New York Times v. Sullivan, the 1964 landmark case in which the court said public officials could only collect damages for libel if the statements against them were made with knowing or reckless disregard for their falsehood. Taken together, these principles clearly indicate that newsworthy speech about a public figure merits full First Amendment protection. And, unfortunate though it may be, Hulk Hogan is a public figure and his sex life is newsworthy. This is so not just because the public is hungry for celebrity sex tapes, but because Hogan himself has made his sex life a matter of public interest. In other words, this is isn't a close case of the kind that might arise if, say, there were a sex tape of a public figure known solely as a classical pianist, where the public hadn't been invited to speculate about the celebrity's sex life. Hogan offered the highly original argument to the jury that his public persona and his private one could be divorced, so that his public statements were irrelevant. But although this argument may possibly say something about the inner life of celebrities, it isn't one the First Amendment would allow. Public figures can't escape their special constitutional status by saying that deep down, they're really shy. The jury in this case may have been offering a nostalgic call for return to an era when the sex tape wasn't a recognized method of career-making or career rehabilitation. Or it may simply have liked Hogan and hated Gawker. But either way, the jury should never have had the chance to reach a verdict. The judge should've understood that, based on the facts brought out at trial and interpreted in the manner most favorable to Hogan, the First Amendment barred Hogan from recovering. She should've granted judgment to Gawker before the case went to the jury. The fact that she didn't has serious consequences. For Gawker, it means posting a huge bond or appealing the need for the bond. Doubt in the company's future will fade as the law becomes clear, but it's never good for a media outlet to seem vulnerable to being closed. The costs to the First Amendment are greater, and unlike the verdict, are irreversible. Across the country, media will think twice when they consider publishing sensitive stories about public figures who may sue them. The outsized verdict is an especially effective means of chilling speech -- as no doubt the jury intended. If you don't like sex tapes or Gawker, your reaction may be: "Good. Media should think twice about coarsening public discourse." But the truth is that sex has been part of our public affairs at least since the election of 1804, when opponents charged (accurately, it turns out) that Thomas Jefferson had fathered children with one of his slaves, Sally Hemings. We get the public discourse we deserve -- and the function of the First Amendment is to keep it robust, even if that means defending unpleasant speakers and the vile things they say. 2016-03-21-MartinBabinec.JPG Martin Babinec, 61, of Little Falls, has decided to run as the Independence Party candidate for the 22nd Congressional District seat in Upstate New York. The district covers all or part of eight counties, including Madison, Oneida and Cortland counties and the eastern half of Oswego County. (Provided photo) WASHINGTON, D.C. - An entrepreneur from Herkimer County launched a third-party campaign Monday for the 22nd Congressional District seat that Rep. Richard Hanna will leave when he retires at the end of the year. Martin Babinec, 61, of Little Falls, said he has received the endorsement of the Independence Party to run on its ballot line in the November election. Babinec joins an already crowded field of three Republicans and two Democrats who are seeking their party's designation for the open House seat. A seventh candidate, David Pasick of Herkimer County, has received the endorsement of the Libertarian Party. Babinec said he has helped create thousands of jobs in Upstate New York, most recently as the founder of Upstate Venture Connect, a nonprofit that connects startup companies with resources. The Little Falls native made his fortune as the founder of TriNet, a cloud-based human resource company that began in 1988 and continued to grow into a company with more than $2 billion in annual sales and more than 2,500 employees. He still serves on the board of directors of the company, which went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 2014. The graduate of Herkimer County Community College and Shippensburg University said he began his career as a human resource manager with Navy Exchanges, where he served as a civilian. Babinec moved his family back to Little Falls in 1999, where he and his wife, Krista, raised their three children. He formally launched his campaign Monday night at the Black Box Theater in Little Falls. Republicans and Democrats may not know their nominee in the 22nd District until the June 28 congressional primaries in New York. Republicans Steve Wells, of Cazenovia; Claudia Tenney, of New Hartford; and George Phillips, of Endwell; are likely to face off in the GOP congressional primary. On the Democratic side, Broome County Legislator Kim Myers, of Vestal, is opposed by David Gordon, of Utica, a former Oneida County legislator. The 22nd Congressional District covers all of Madison, Cortland, Chenango and Oneida counties and part of Oswego, Broome, Herkimer, and Tioga counties. Contact Mark Weiner anytime: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 571-970-3751 Note: This is part of the series The Cost of Poverty, a look at Syracuse's poverty crisis. Syracuse, N.Y. -- Syracuse is among the poorest cities in the nation and it ranks first for how concentrated its poverty is. But there are thousands of open jobs that could be filled by people who are unemployed or underemployed. This month, there are 5,913 job openings in the Central New York region. And there are roughly 17,000 people looking for work, according January unemployment numbers, the most recent available. So what keeps the jobs and the people who need jobs from making a match? What can companies and the community do to get more people into jobs with career paths? We asked employers, job training organizations and newly hired workers: Recruit outside the box: Traditional methods to find new employees don't reach people in many of Syracuse's poorest neighborhoods. Employers most often recruit using newspapers, the web and current employees. Using community organizations to recruit for positions helps increase the pool of potential candidates. Have a paper application available: Employers and job counselors have found that online applications often keep people who could be qualified candidates from even applying for jobs. Don't set the bar higher than you need: Employers often set requirements that don't match the skills they are seeking. Some examples are listing three to five years of experience or a GED when they are actually looking for specific skills or qualities. This keeps people from applying who might be good at the job. Transportation: Many people decide against taking employment, and even job training, because they simply can't get there. Many good jobs are now located outside the city, either not on bus routes or on routes with very limited service. Companies and community organizations have tried to get Centro to expand service to help workers get to jobs outside the city, but for the most part, there haven't been enough riders to make it financially worthwhile for Centro. Community groups are examining other ways to get people to work, including shuttles and car loan subsidies. Marnie Eisenstadt writes about life and culture in Central New York. Contact her anytime: email | twitter | 315-470-2246. 2016-03-04-mm-DeFrancisco.JPG New York state Sen. John DeFrancisco, R-Syracuse, talks at a news conference on Friday, March 4, 2016 in Syracuse, N.Y. (Mike McAndrew | mmcandrew@syracuse.com) SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- Murdering a child under the age of 12 would become a first-degree murder in New York, a crime punishable by death, at least in theory, under a bill introduced Monday by state Sen. John DeFrancisco. DeFrancisco said he plans to name the bill after baby Maddox Lawrence, a 21-month-old girl who was killed in February. Her father, Ryan Lawrence, 24, has been charged with second-degree murder. He's accused of killing his daughter at Labrador Hollow, partially burning her body, and then dumping it in Syracuse's Inner Harbor, where police recovered the toddler's body on Feb. 23. The state Senate passed a similar bill last year but it died in the Assembly without a vote. First-degree murder can result in a sentence of life in prison without parole. The death penalty is no longer legal in New York. In 1977, New York's highest court effectively struck down the death penalty for the murder of a police officer or a correctional officer, and a 1984 ruling struck down capital punishment for murders committed by inmates serving life sentences, effectively abolishing New York's death penalty. In 1995, then-Gov. George Pataki signed legislation reinstating the death penalty in New York, but that statute was declared unconstitutional by the New York Court of Appeals in 2004. Read DeFrancisco's bill First-degree murder, the most serious level of homicide in New York, is the charge now reserved for defendants accused of knowingly killing a police officer, corrections officer, judge, or firefighter. Contact Mike McAndrew anytime | email | Twitter | 315-470-3016 This April 4, 2012 file photo shows NBC News' Brian Williams at the premiere of the HBO original series "Girls," in New York. Brian Williams' latest gaffe has reignited social media mockery after last year's scandal where he admitted he "misremembered" a war story. Williams, now an MSNBC anchor, accidentally called award-winning journalist Eugene Robinson a "Pulitzer Prize-winning communist" for The Washington Post on Monday. He meant to say "columnist," but made the slip of the tongue while covering President Barack Obama's visit to Cuba. The former "NBC Nightly News" host immediately corrected his mistake on air. "Wow, I think that I had that on the mind," Williams remarked. "You are not, in fact, a communist." "Communist," Robinson repeated with a laugh. "Thanks, Brian." According to NJ.com, Robinson appeared on Williams' broadcast as a commentator on Obama's speech with Cuban president Raul Castro. Cuba's government has practiced communism for more than 50 years. Williams, 56, has drawn attention every time he's appeared on television since he moved to MSNBC after "conflating" memories of past coverage, including during the Iraq war and Hurricane Katrina. He was suspended and ultimately replaced on "NBC Nightly News" by Lester Holt, but has appeared on both MSNBC and NBC at times to co-anchor election coverage and other special reports. Belgium Attacks A man walks by solidarity messages written in chalk outside the stock exchange in Brussels on Tuesday, March 22, 2016. (Geert Vanden Wijngaert | The Associated Press) BRUSSELS (AP) -- Bombs exploded at the Brussels airport and one of the city's metro stations Tuesday, killing at least 31 people and wounding dozens, as a European capital was again locked down amid heightened security threats. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks. The two airport blasts, at least one of them blamed on a suicide bomber, left behind a chaotic scene of splattered blood in the departure lounge as windows were blown out, ceilings collapsed and travelers streamed out of the smoky building. About an hour later, another bomb exploded on a rush-hour subway train near the European Union headquarters. Terrified passengers had to evacuate through darkened tunnels to safety. "What we feared has happened," Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel told reporters. "In this time of tragedy, this black moment for our country, I appeal to everyone to remain calm but also to show solidarity." Belgium raised its terror alert to the highest level, diverting planes and trains and ordering people to stay where they were. Airports across Europe immediately tightened security. "We are at war," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said after a crisis meeting in Paris. "We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war." Added French President Francois Hollande: "Terrorists struck Brussels, but it was Europe that was targeted, and it is all the world which is concerned by this." European security officials have been bracing for a major attack for weeks, and warned that the Islamic State group was actively preparing to strike. The arrest Friday of Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in the November attacks in Paris, heightened those fears, as investigators said many more people were involved than originally thought and that some are still on the loose. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the Brussels attacks, saying in a posting on the group's Amaq news agency that its extremists opened fire in the airport and "several of them" detonated suicide belts. It said another suicide attacker struck in the subway. The posting claimed the attack was in response to Belgium's support of the international coalition arrayed against the group. Michel said there was no immediate evidence linking the attacks with Abdeslam. After his arrest, Abdeslam told authorities he had created a new network and was planning new attacks. U.S. President Barack Obama pledged to "do whatever is necessary" to help Belgian authorities seek justice. "We stand in solidarity with them in condemning these outrageous attacks against innocent people," Obama said in Havana, where he was closing a three-day visit. Western Europe has lived for decades under the threat of violence from homegrown nationalist and revolutionary movements. Muslim extremists from North Africa and the Middle East have attacked civilian targets without warning, ranging from France's 1960s war in Algeria through Libya's 1988 downing of an airline over Scotland to the 2004-05 attacks on the public transportation systems of London and Madrid. Certain neighborhoods in Brussels, like the Molenbeek quarter, have bred extremists and supplied foreign fighters. Plotters linked to the Paris attacks and others have either moved through or lived in parts of the city. Tuesday's explosions at the airport in the Brussels suburb of Zaventem came shortly after 8 a.m., one of its busiest periods. Belgian Health Minister Maggie de Block said 11 people were killed and 81 wounded. Eleven people had serious injuries, Marc Decramer of the Gasthuisberg hospital in Leuven told broadcaster VTM. The nails apparently came from one of the bombs. Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, told BFM television that the second, louder explosion brought down ceilings and ruptured pipes, mixing water with victims' blood. "It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed," he said. "There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere." "We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene," he said. Video taken moments after the explosions showed travelers huddled next to airport check-in counters and lying near luggage and trolleys as dust and the cries of the wounded filled the air. Dazed people stumbled from the scene, some with clothes and shoes blown off. Anthony Deloos, an airport worker for Swissport, which handles check-in and baggage services, said the first explosion took place near the Swissport counters where customers pay for overweight baggage. He and a colleague said the second blast hit near a Starbucks cafe. "I jumped into a luggage chute to be safe," Deloos said. The bomb on the subway train came after 9 a.m., killing 20 people and wounding more than 100, Mayor Yvan Majeur said. "The metro was leaving Maelbeek station for Schuman when there was a really loud explosion," said Alexandre Brans, 32, wiping blood from his face. "It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the metro." Near the entrance to the station, rescue workers set up a makeshift medical treatment center in a pub. Dazed and shocked morning commuters streamed from the metro entrances as police tried to set up a security cordon. The metro shut down after the attacks, as did the airport. More than 200 flights to Brussels were diverted or canceled, according to flight tracking service Flightradar24. By the end of the workday, city officials said residents could begin moving around on the streets of the capital and train stations were reopening. But Peter Mertens of the Belgian crisis center said the threat of more attacks "is still real and serious." At least one and possibly two Kalashnikovs were found in the departure lounge at the airport, according to a European security official in contact with a Belgian police official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the ongoing investigation. It was not immediately clear whether the firearms were used in the attacks. Travelers fled the airport as quickly as they could. In video shown on France's i-Tele television, men, women and children dashed from the terminal in different directions. Security officers patrolled a hall with blown-out paneling and ceiling panels covering the floor. Marc Noel, 63, was about to board a Delta flight to Atlanta, to return to his home in Raleigh, North Carolina. A Belgian native, Noel said he was in an airport shop buying automotive magazines when the first blast struck about 50 yards away. "People were crying, shouting -- children. It was a horrible experience," he said, adding that his decision to shop might have saved his life. "I would probably have been in that place when the bomb went off." Texas Meth.jpg Tasha Hatcher with her daughter. (screenshot from GoFundMe) A Texas mother has been jailed after she allegedly got high on methamphetamine and put her 2-year-old daughter in a hot oven. Tasha Hatcher, 35, showed up completely naked at her neighbor's house last week, carrying her daughter who had fresh burn marks all over her body, The New York Daily News reported. The neighbor called 911, and the girl was taken to Parkland Memorial Hospital where she is recovering from second- and third-degree burns covering 14 percent of her body, according to The Dallas Morning News. Court documents detail Hatcher's irregular behavior when authorities arrived on the scene. She reportedly made several sexual passes at the Somervell County deputy who arrived at her home, and was "singing to God and giving praise to him," the documents state. She also reportedly told police that she had shot a cat and put it in the oven before putting her daughter in it. She did not ask about her daughter's well-being. Court documents also show that she tested positive for marijuana and alcohol. When an official with the Department of Family Protective Services visited her in jail, she would not say if she remembered putting the girl in the oven, but told the official "ask me questions and I will lie to you." She then asked the official to pray with her, and said her daughter was "healed." Hatcher was charged with injury to a child with serious bodily injury. She reportedly has a history of trouble with children's protective services, including previously leaving her son at a 24-hour daycare for more than 31 hours, and showing up drunk to pick him up. She has a criminal record including convictions for possession of a controlled substance and marijuana and drunk driving charges. Hatcher's daughter will reportedly be turned over to a foster home after she recovers. A GoFundMe for the girl's medical expenses asks contributors to "help this little girl have a better life [than] she has had to date." Watch the video report below. Related: Texas toddler burned to death in oven while playing unsupervised Barack Obama In this March 21, 2016 file photo, President Barack Obama listens during a state dinner at the Palace of the Revolution in Havana, Cuba. (Rebecca Blackwell | The Associated Press) HAVANA (AP) -- President Barack Obama, traveling in Cuba, was briefed Tuesday morning on the Brussels attacks that killed dozens of people. The White House said U.S. officials were in contact with Belgian officials about the explosions at the Brussels airport and subway system. At least one of the attacks was believed to be caused by a suicide bomber, and Belgium raised its terror alert to its highest level. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security was closely monitoring the unfolding events in Brussels, officials said Tuesday. The department said it "would not hesitate to adjust our security posture, as appropriate, to protect the American people." It reiterated that members of the public should report any suspicious activity in their communities to law enforcement authorities. Attorney General Loretta Lynch was also briefed on the attacks, Justice Department officials in Washington said. They said the Justice Department and the FBI was coordinating with other U.S. government agencies, as well as with Belgian counterparts. In Brussels, the U.S. Embassy recommended sheltering in place and warned U.S. citizens there to monitor local developments and take "appropriate steps to bolster your personal security." Last week U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Homeland Security officials constantly monitor world events and evaluate whether there is a need to either publicly raise the nation's security posture or issue another bulletin via the government's National Terror Advisory System. Such a bulletin was issued in December advising the public that federal law enforcement was concerned about the possibility of homegrown violent extremists and terrorist-inspired individuals. Ukraine-produced missiles will be tested this week, President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko has said. "This week some types of domestic-produced missiles will be tested," he said during a meeting with military officers from the Armed Forces of Ukraine in Kyiv on Tuesday. According to the head of state, Ukraine managed to revive its military-industrial complex. "Ukraine's defense and industrial complex has changed. Labor production capacity grew sharply along with the volume of production," Poroshenko said. The president said the efforts and work of Ukraine's defense-industrial sector is primarily directed at re-equipping military units in eastern Ukraine's anti-terrorist operation area. As reported earlier, National Security and Defense Council (NSDC) Secretary Oleksandr Turchynov in early March said Ukraine plans to test missiles which were fully produced by Ukrainian enterprises. "Our scientists, designers and engineers have ensured the production of all the required components [for missiles] at our Ukrainian enterprises, whereas previously these components were manufactured in cooperation with Russia, giving us the opportunity not only to showcase our missiles at exhibitions, but also to use them in combat situations. Besides, in the nearest future we plan to conduct test launches of missiles, which were entirely domestically produced, as a result of the co-operation of solely Ukrainian enterprises," he said in an exclusive interview with Interfax-Ukraine. Turchynov said the recovery of the rocket industry was a priority for Ukraine's government. "On the one hand, we should develop, as a space state, producing high-tech spacecraft, but we also need to restore the necessary range of combat missiles to defend the country," Turchynov added. He said Ukraine invested a lot of effort in this matter. "I have recently held a meeting with leading designers and managers of defense enterprises, who have expertise in this area [combat missiles]. We have outlined preliminary results, compared plans and refined details. The work goes smoothly," Turchynov said. He also noted that it was difficult to bring back Ukraine's rocket industry, as the country closely cooperated with Russia until 2014. "Under the current circumstances, after the Crimean occupation, the aggression in eastern Ukraine, there is no room for cooperation in the military and technical sector with Russia. It is a matter of principle," the NSDC Secretary said. Turchynov didn't provide details on the type of missiles that were to be tested, saying only that "Ukraine was strengthening its defense in line with its international obligations." The Sebastian Inlet Marina, at 8685 U.S. 1 in Micco, looking northeast along U.S. 1 in southern Brevard County. (ERIC HASERT/TREASURE COAST NEWSPAPERS) By Melissa E. Holsman of TCPalm VERO BEACH More than a year before the former head of Kennedy Groves was arrested and charged with grand theft and money laundering, members of Kenneth Kennedy's family sued him in court seeking to get back about $1 million they say he misappropriated from a trust fund belonging to his ailing aunt, who died in 2013. Kennedy, 64, of Vero Beach, who was booked into the Indian River County Jail on March 14 by Florida Department of Law Enforcement agents, also faces a count of organized scheme to defraud and exploitation of the elderly. He's currently free on $400,000 bail, and records show he was ordered to relinquish his passport. Kennedy is scheduled to be arraigned on the first-degree felonies April 13 before Indian River Circuit Judge Cynthia Cox. If convicted, he could face a maximum prison term of 30 years for each offense, according to state law, and up to a $10,000 fine per conviction. The civil and criminal counts Kennedy faces reveal a complicated case that involves multiple bank accounts, accusations of pilfering family money to prop up a failing citrus company and boat trips into international waters to sign promissory notes all part of an elaborate paper trail authorities say Kennedy created to cover his tracks. When reached on Monday, Kennedy declined to comment. His criminal defense attorney Andrew Metcalf, of Vero Beach, said Tuesday he'll soon file pleas of not guilty on his client's behalf. Metcalf insisted, as he did after Kennedy's arrest, that the case doesn't belong in criminal court. "After reviewing everything, I wholeheartedly believe this is a civil court matter; that's where it started," he said. "I guess it (the lawsuit) didn't progress to the satisfaction of the plaintiffs, and here we are moving forward in criminal court." CLYDE HAMRICK KENNEDY TRUST The Kennedy family was involved in citrus farming, marketing and packing for more than a century, records show, beginning with a 40-acre tract bought in 1909. The family owned Kennedy Groves and United Indian River Packers, and Kenneth Kennedy was president of the businesses in their last years of ownership. In 2014, the family wanted to auction off their citrus holdings, according to a media release, but eventually sold a 1,944-acre parcel to Port St. Lucie for $10.7 million to build a surface-water treatment facility. That project though, hasn't begun construction. According to a November 2014 lawsuit filed by four Kennedy family members in Indian River Circuit Court, Kennedy's aunt, Clyde Hamrick Kennedy established a trust fund in 2006 that had a balance of $2.4 million in 2009. In July 2010, Clyde Kennedy designated her nephews Kenneth Kennedy and Fred Van Antwerp, to be co-trustees of the trust fund, which was supposed to be used for her health care before her death on Aug. 20, 2013, at age 93. The money also was supposed to go toward 14 named beneficiaries after her death. The 2014 lawsuit sued Kennedy and Van Antwerp, and asks a judge to remove the cousins as co-trustees and to order a full accounting of the funds. Fred Van Antwerp, of Sebastian, declined to comment when contacted Monday. Records show in October 2015, Van Antwerp sued Kenneth Kennedy and Kennedy Groves, seeking the return of $918,000 he claimed was improperly removed from the trust. An FDLE criminal complaint accuses Kennedy of funneling $900,000 from the fund into businesses he controlled, including Kennedy Groves, between August 2010 and July 2012. The complaint claims Kennedy diverted the money for business and personal uses without the knowledge or approval of co-trustee Van Antwerp, or any of the beneficiaries of the trust fund. Businesses that profited from the misappropriated funds included Sebastian Inlet Marina, and Sebastian Boat Works, both in Micco, co-owned by Kennedy and his son, Thomas Kennedy, according to FDLE. In 2008, the Kennedys opened the 38,000-square-foot facility and marina that store up to 240 boats and features 25 wet slips. PROMISSORY NOTES, OCEAN TRAVEL According to FDLE, Kennedy in 2010 arranged for a loan account to be established at Merrill Lynch using stocks and bonds belonging to his aunt as collateral. He told a Merrill Lynch financial adviser the funds were loans to Kennedy Groves. He is accused of telling Van Antwerp the money was earmarked to pay for their aunt's health care. Kennedy is accused of making two withdraws of $400,000 and a third of $100,000 from the loan between 2010 and 2012, which he deposited into a joint account, of which he and his aunt had control. He then transferred the money to accounts controlled by Kennedy Groves and paid tens of thousands of dollars to cover grove operations, pay vendor creditors, and to benefit himself. Kennedy is further accused of creating promissory notes in 2010 that indicated Kennedy Groves would repay a total of $900,000 by January 2012. According to the FDLE, Kennedy in January 2012 traveled from the Pelican Yacht Club in Fort Pierce aboard a 60-foot vessel called Xport into international waters to sign papers that renewed the promissory notes and extended the deadline to 2014. Paperwork related to the notes show the original promissory documents were signed in international waters in 2010. FDLE agents interviewed boat captain Taylor Hansen, who, according to the criminal complaint, recalled making only one trip with Kennedy, his son and a business associate in January 2012. Hansen's signature appears on three documents included in the lawsuit Van Antwerp filed in October. Reached Monday in the Dominican Republic, Hansen declined to comment. Asked why Kennedy would travel to international waters to sign promissory notes, Metcalf insisted it had nothing to do with illegal behavior. "There was nothing sinister about going out there," Metcalf said. "Businessmen do it all the time. You avoid certain fees and certain doc stamps by going out there and doing that. That's the only reason that ever happened." Meanwhile, Mike Bartus, resident agent in charge for FDLE in Fort Pierce, said despite Kennedy's arrest, the case is still being investigated. "If we develop probable cause that additional crimes were committed by co-conspirators," he said, "then I foresee charges forthcoming." A group of students and adults from Vero Beach High School were in Paris on Tuesday when terrorists struck in Brussels, Belgium. They likely saw the Eiffel Tower illuminated with the Belgium national colors black, yellow and red in honor of the victims of the terror attacks at the airport and the metro station in Brussels on Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, rocked the Brussels airport and its subway system Tuesday, prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus) By Andrew Atterbury of TCPalm A group of Vero Beach High School students and teachers on a spring-break trip through Europe were unaffected by Tuesdays terrorist attack in Brussels, according to one students mother. The group was safe in Paris during the attack, she said. Theyve had no problems. (The attack) hasnt affected them, said Lori Davis, whose son James, a senior at VBHS, is on the trip abroad. Davis woke up Tuesday to a text message from her son saying the group of 10 honor students and two teachers was fine and visiting Palace of Versailles, she said. She thought nothing of the message until she learned of the attacks in Brussels, which killed more than 30 people and wounded dozens more, Davis said. Davis then reached out to one of the teacher chaperones, who relayed that the students were well, she said. The groups plans have been unaltered by the attack, Davis said. They will travel to Nice, France, on Thursday, and spend two days in southern France before returning to Orlando on Saturday, she said. Students, parents and educators from Indian River Charter High School also are traveling through Europe, but were far from Brussels when terrorists struck Tuesday, said Principal Cynthia Aversa. The group 18 students, four teachers and five parents traveled to Berlin, Dresden and Prague before reaching Poland on Tuesday, according to Rebecca Everett, who is on the trip with her son, Bryce. Most of the group found out about the attack through social media, Everett said in an email to Treasure Coast Newspapers. The group did not feel panicked on Tuesday, Everett said. If an imminent threat is near the groups planned route, the company leading the trip will immediately change the itinerary, she said. Were all very excited about our trip and learning the history of the cities were visiting, Jacob Phelan, 17, said in an email. Weve looked forward to this trip for several months and had not considered canceling. School officials met with parents before the spring-break trip to discuss safety concerns in the wake of the November terrorist attack that killed 130 people in Paris, Aversa said. The concerns were taken very seriously, she said. The bottom line was if we canceled and stayed home, the terrorists win, Everett wrote. The school tries to coordinate a student trip each semester, and sends a group to China over the summer, Aversa said. Many people are staying close to home out of fear of terror attacks, but, Aversa said, she hopes the school will continue to send students abroad. For us to close our doors and our minds would be a crime, Aversa said. Likewise, Davis said the attacks have not made her second-guess allowing her son to travel overseas with the high school group. Students are resilient, and shouldnt give in to fear, she said. Theyve all got a great attitude, Davis said. It probably teaches them another lesson about life. Theyll come back with another cultural experience. Metro-North Railroad police officers patrol Grand Central Terminal on Tuesday in New York. Authorities are increasing security throughout New York City following explosions at the airport and subway system in the Belgian capital of Brussels. (ASSOCIATED PRESS) By Maureen Kenyon of TCPalm Early Tuesday morning, bombs exploded at the Brussels airport and one of the city's metro stations, killing at least 31 people and wounding dozens, as a European capital was again locked down amid heightened security threats. As a result of the attacks, major cities in Europe and in the United States have stepped up security at airports and in railway systems. MORE | Are you rethinking travel plans because of the attacks? Scroll to the bottom to participate in our poll. Officials at Miami International and Orlando International airports have increased security in response to deadly attacks. Officials said security has not yet been elevated at Palm Beach International Airport and the decision will be made the federal Transportation Security Administration. In Paris, airport authorities said security was tightened at all airports soon after the Brussels explosions, and in London, both major airports, Gatwick and Heathrow, stepped up security. Port St. Lucie resident Sheri Alexander told TCPalm on Facebook that she has "zero desire to travel outside the U.S." "It's due to the repeated terrorists attacks, combined with intense security measures, that make it a hassle. "We are very blessed to live in such a beautiful and varied country with a vast ocean on both sides of us. I plan to continue taking full advantage of it," Alexander added. Lisa Wesner, however, said she is not going to allow the terrorist attacks to sway her from traveling overseas. "My son and I are traveling to Rome in June," the Troy, Ohio, resident said. " We have no plans to change our plans." Wesner, who visits Vero Beach as much as possible, said terrorists have attacked on American soil as well, so she "is not living a life based on fear." It will be the mother and son's first time traveling overseas, Wesner said. "While we are there, I will be a little more 'on guard,' but I am usually this way any time I am in a large city," she said. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Memorial announced for teen who died in Stuart crash Emma Albritton was passionate about stopping domestic violence and caring for children in foster care. She played volleyball and basketball. Ukraine's Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin has discussed the benefits of the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement with a delegation of the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Dutch House of Representatives. The parties exchanged views on the benefits of the Association agreement for the Dutch and the EU citizens in the context of the European values and opportunities to expand economic cooperation, the press service of Ukraine's Foreign Ministry reported on Monday. During the meeting, Klimkin also touched upon the issue of the Russian aggression against Ukraine. He noted that it was grounded in Kremlin's strive to stop Ukraine's European integration at all cost. As reported, the Dutch parliament has completed the ratification of the Ukraine-EU Association Agreement in July last year. The Netherlands will hold the advisory referendum on the agreement on April 6. County Commissioner Wesley Davis criticized incumbent David Nolte for what Davis says is an unwillingness to study the impact All Aboard Florida trains would have on local real estate values.(ALEX SLITZ/TREASURE COAST NEWSPAPERS) SHARE By Staff Report INDIAN RIVER COUNTY County Commissioner Wesley Davis, a candidate for county property appraiser, is criticizing incumbent David Nolte for what Davis says is an unwillingness to study the impact All Aboard Florida trains would have on local real estate values. "All Aboard Florida has created an 'AAF Property Disaster Zone,' cutting a 2,000-foot-by-22-mile swath across Indian River County," Davis said in a statement, prepared for presentation at Tuesday's County Commission meeting. "I believe that the property appraiser is failing to react in a timely manner to address the issue. The property appraiser's lack of action is also creating a hidden shortfall in future tax revenues affecting county, School Board and cities." All Aboard Florida plans to begin its Brightline service through the Treasure Coast connecting Miami and Orlando by late next year. It plans eventually to run 16 round trips daily. "The negative impact of All Aboard Florida began the day the AAF plan was announced in 2012," Davis said in his statement. "Property values immediately declined, but not taxes. A study commissioned by the Martin County property appraiser revealed that residential property within 400 feet of the rail lost an average of 16 percent or $16,681. Homes within 1,000 feet lost $10,502." For his part, Nolte said no one ever has asked him to conduct such a study. "If they asked us to, we'd look into it," he said Monday in response to Davis' news release. "We don't know what the scope (of the study) is." The study would cost about $60,000, Nolte said. "There's no money in my budget to do it," he said. "It's not work that we do, and they've never offered to pay for it. If they want something done, they need to pay for it like they have done in other counties." "I don't think there are any dramatics about it," Nolte continued. "The whole deal sounds foolish. If you want something, then you ask for it, then you work it out." Fort Pierce City Hall By Keona Gardner of TCPalm FORT PIERCE A biodiesel manufacturing plant wants to expand to Fort Pierce. Indian River Bio Diesel is seeking city approval to operate a plant that would process 250,000 gallons of its product a month in the now-vacant Egan packinghouse, 1103 N. Second St. The plant is a subsidiary of Genuine Bio-Fuel Inc., which already operates a facility at 17250 S.W. Railroad Ave., in Indiantown. The City Commission is scheduled to consider the company's application for conditional use at Monday night's meeting. The city Planning Board approved the project on March 8. The 39,500-square-foot plant would process used vegetable oil into glycerin, which would be sold to companies that make soap, cosmetics, shampoo and methyl ester, the additive used to make biodiesel, said Richard Pratt, director of business development for Genuine Bio-Fuel. "We don't do any blending or mixing of diesel on site," Pratt said. The company would hire about 40 full-time employees and pay $16 to $20 and hour, Pratt said. The plant would use only vegetable oil. The plant is expected to add an additional 85 trips daily on U.S. 1 and Second Street, according to city records. But roadway traffic might be reduced if the company also ships to its customers in Virginia, Maryland, Georgia and the Carolinas by rail or by barge. Pratt said he has talked with Florida East Coast Railway about rehabilitating its nearby rail spur "The prospect of utilizing the available FEC Railway offers a potential reduction to the quantity of truck deliveries and decreases transportation costs," Pratt said. Shipping by barge "is something we are 100 percent interested in doing because it could increase our volume and further cut transportation costs." Indian River Bio Diesel's application comes almost a year after the Viesel Fuel plant in Stuart was rocked by an explosion and daylong fire that prompted evacuation of homes and businesses. For at least a week after the April 1 incident, crews worked on a costly cleanup of industrial waste that leaked into the county drainage system and in nearby swales. The state fire marshal ruled the blaze accidental. In the wake of the Viesel fire, the Martin County Commission imposed an 18-month moratorium on new biodiesel facilities and expansions. The moratorium would give the county time to create safety regulations for biodiesel businesses. The Viesel plant is unrelated to Indian River Bio Diesel. Republican presidential candidate Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., speaks during a Republican primary night celebration rally March 15 at Florida International University in Miami. Rubio ended his campaign for the Republican nomination for president after a humiliating loss in his home state of Florida. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya) SHARE By Sun Sentinel You've got to hand it to Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who suspended his quixotic bid for the presidency last week after becoming the first nominee to lose his home state. Rubio got further than anyone ever expected, one of just four Republican candidates left standing before the pivotal March 15 primaries in Florida and four other states. Heck, it's a wonder he even entered the race, given the early buzz about Jeb Bush's invincibility. But Rubio believed 2016 was his window, his moment in time to stand in line behind no one. With his youthful good looks, quick wit and compelling personal story, he was seen as a new-age Republican "The Republican savior," according to TIME magazine even though his positions largely aligned with old-school party platforms. Just a month ago, it appeared Rubio might be able to coalesce GOP voters and donors desperately searching for an alternative to Donald Trump, who appears unstoppable, no matter John Kasich's first win in his home state of Ohio. In the end, Rubio failed to secure the victories needed to build momentum. Instead, he was lapped by Donald Trump who, like him or not, is seen by many as a strong leader with a track record of accomplishment. Rubio, by contrast, has drawn comparisons to another first-term senator whose presidency is largely despised by Republicans. It didn't help that Rubio got down in the mud with Trump, leveling insults about his spray tan, bladder and hand size. His undoing seemed to start at that embarrassing debate where he said the same line about President Obama over and over again. And when Trump tagged him "Little Marco," the moniker seemed to stick, much like "low energy" haunted Bush. Now the question becomes, what's next for Rubio? Unlike Sen. Rand Paul, Rubio chose not to run for re-election to the U.S. Senate while running for president. Because as everyone now knows, Rubio didn't like the job. While anything is possible, it's hard to imagine Rubio making the front-runner's shortlist for vice president, given how he called Trump a "con man." It's also possible that Rubio, 44, could go to work in the private sector and make another presidential fun in four years. However, without the political platform of his Senate office, and following his home-field loss this year, Rubio would hardly start as a favorite. A better bet is that Rubio will run for governor in 2018 when Gov. Rick Scott will be term-limited out of office. Rubio would be a formidable gubernatorial candidate, given his name recognition, Rolodex of supporters and statewide launching pad from Miami-Dade County, the only county he won on Tuesday. However, Rubio would have to overcome a comparison to Charlie Crist, whom he defeated in his three-way race for the Senate. Like Crist, Rubio appears to enjoy campaigning. But governing? Not so much. The empty-chair ad Republicans aired against Crist would now describe Rubio's record in the Senate. Besides, other people have begun lining up to run for governor, most notably Agriculture Commissioner Adam Putnam, smart and a hard worker with strong party relationships statewide. Rubio, according to several recent reports, has burned bridges with several party leaders. Nevertheless, Republicans will want a winner, and Putnam, who hails from Bartow, lacks Rubio's name recognition and likely standing in the polls. So, where Rubio will land, nobody knows. But we've likely not seen the last of him. BEVERLY BEVIS JONES Panera Bread makes a difference for abused children at Hibiscus Children's Center. SHARE By Beverly Bevis Jones Join the friendly crew and members of the US SAILING Center Martin County as they host the annual "Ports of Call" fundraiser on Friday, April 1 at the Frances Langford Pavilion in Indian RiverSide Park. The US SAILING Center Martin County is located just north of the Pavilion, on the Indian River Lagoon. The fundraiser supports a broad range of community sailing programs that the Center enables including six high school sailing teams, summer sailing camps with scholarships, programs with children from Samaritan House for Boys, the ARC of Martin County, Operation 300, Building Bridges to Youth, Hibiscus Children's Center and many more. The portside party will begin at 6 p.m. with soft, island music by Robert Swinton and delicious cocktails, wine and beer and hors d'oeuvres. Captain Jim St. John has declared the attire to be nautical casual attire. Guests will enjoy a sumptuous seafood (and more) dinner catered by New England Seafood. KC Daniel of Associates Auction in Stuart will be orchestrating the live auction action as guests bid competitively for wonderful travel packages and more. A few of the highlights include a one-week trip to Ireland where the lucky winners will stay in the most westerly house in Europe, located on the beautiful Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry. If you prefer an island beach vacation, a trip to St. Croix is up for grabs. Or what could be better than a one-day plane trip to Key West or another Florida town with pilot Joe Gage and his lovely wife, Pat. A delicious dining around town package, international beer and wine baskets and party charter on the Schooner Lily are all guaranteed to provide hours of fun. Desta Hansen is chairing the event with co-chair Julie Gibson. The committee includes Holly Bornath, Bonnie Chemel, Linnea Desmond, Dot Gendron, Alan Jenkinson, Karen Jordan, Barbara Lansing, Mike Littell, Jackie Ottaviani, Ferne Rae, Rob Rattray, Heidi Rich, Jeanette Sands, Susan Schieren, and Denise Sealey. Tickets are $85 per person and reservations are required. RSVP by March 21 is requested. To purchase your ticket call the USSCMC at 772-334-8085 or email info@usscmc.org. A team of researchers atJohns Hopkins University has found a way to crack open files sent as encrypted instant messages in Apples iMessage app, according to news reports published Monday. Although it took months to do, the researchers, led by Professor Matthew Green, were able to brute force a 64-bit encryption key, allowing them to unscramble an image file stored in Apples iCloud. In order to intercept the transmission containing the key, they wrote software to mimic an Apple server. The transmission contained a link to a photo in Apples cloud and the encryption key. Once in possession of the key, the researchers would change a letter or number in it and submit it to the target phone. When they made a correct guess, the phone would acknowledge it. By repeating the task thousands of times, they eventually cracked the key, and the target image decrypted. Apple Responsiveness Although the researchers targeted an iPhone with an older version of the iOS operating system, Green told The Washington Post that a modified version of the attack would work on newer versions of the operating system. However, Apple patched the vulnerability in an update, iOS 9.3, released Monday. Apple responded to us very quickly and took the issue seriously, team member Ian Miers said. It took some time to patch because it affected more than just iMessage, he told TechNewsWorld. Tripwire has worked with Apple in the past and found it easy to work with, although delays between reporting a problem and fixing it are common, said Lamar Bailey, director of security research and development. Any large company that has very popular applications can take a long time to fix an app because theres a lot of testing they have to do, he told TechNewsWorld. Bad Security Design The flaw the researchers found was an implementation error, not a problem with Apples encryption algorithm, Bailey noted. Because it tells you when you get a digit right, it allows you to brute force the correct number, he said. It still takes forever and it has to be done for each and every item on the phone, but you can eventually get to them. Because of the effort it takes to exploit the flaw, its not considered a high-level risk. The risk is fairly low, as this does not appear to be something that is broadly useful, said Lysa Myers, a security researcher withEset. The risk of not using encryption at all is far greater than the risk of using encryption software in which a vulnerability is found and quickly patched, she told TechNewsWorld. The risk for most iPhone users is relatively low, noted Elad Yoran, executive chairman ofKoolSpan. This was a very sophisticated attack that requires meaningful resources and expertise to perform, he told TechNewsWorld. Other Flaws Possible Because the scope of an attack exploiting the flaw would be so narrow, its appeal would be limited. The only case that makes any sense is if someone were targeting a government official or a celebrity, Tripwires Bailey said. Even then, it would take months and a ton of equipment. However, the flaw could lead to more discoveries, noted Baileys colleague Tim Erlin, director of IT security and risk strategy. Often in cases where you find one vulnerability in an implementation, it causes security researchers to look for similar types of vulnerabilities in other implementations, he told TechNewsWorld. So we may see some follow-on consequences with some new vulnerabilities discovered. Myth of Encryption In recent weeks, the FBI has hailed encryption on Apples phones and computers as impenetrable. The Johns Hopkins researchers appear to have thrown some cold water on that idea. The main takeaway is that encryption is hard, even if you know what you are doing, Miers said. Apple has some of the best cryptographic engineers in the business, and yet they made a mistake. Imagine what would happen if they tried to do something more complex like adding a backdoor, he continued. The same people in the government who are saying backdoors can be done safely, Miers added, said iMessage was completely secure. The U.S.Department of Transportation last week announced a partnership with Alphabet subsidiarySidewalk Labs to help cities ease gridlock using Googles vast array of technology and traffic data. Sidewalk Labs will work with the seven finalists in the DoTs Smart City Challenge on a plan to help ease congestion and improve mobility to disadvantaged communities under a program called Flow, Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said. Flow offers unprecedented city-wide transportation analytics to help cities understand congestion and identify areas underserved by transit, using aggregated, anonymized data from billions of miles of trips, Foxx said. The program will use anonymized smartphone data from billions of miles of trips, starting with Googles Mobility Program, and sensor data from Link WiFi kiosks to create a real-time view of road and curb usage, according to Sidewalk Labs. Peak Predicament The company will analyze specific road segments to get information on congestion patterns, simulate the impact of new roads and transit routes, test new technologies using sensors, assess the impact of autonomous vehicles, adjust transit routes based on real-time ridership demand, route drivers to available parking and enable limited curb space for freight, car and bike sharing. Cities around the world have used a variety of approaches to ease traffic congestion, noted Praveen Chandrasekar, mobility research manager at Frost & Sullivan. London used congestion pricing to reduce traffic flow during peak hours, and Michael Bloomberg proposed a similar plan for New York when he was mayor. This has worked big time in congested cities like London, but there is the aspect of having a backbone public transit infrastructure as an alternative to residents, Chandrasekar told TechNewsWorld. Sao Paolo, Brazil, uses navigation apps like Waze, which is owned by Google, at a central traffic command center to crowdsource traffic flow data, he noted. Oregon is testing a system that would charge drivers based on the number of miles they drive, and some European cities are testing the concept of pay-how-you-drive insurance to create incentives to drive during off-peak times. A Leap Forward The program could be a huge leap forward for cities across the country, because traffic analysis historically has been ad hoc and provided limited amounts of data to accurately predict congestion patterns, said Paul Steely White, executive director atTransportation Alternatives. Were really flying blind in terms of analyzing the congestion problem, he told TechNewsWorld. Alphabet is using the partnership as a way to leverage all the traffic data it has accumulated through Waze and other applications it owns. It also is building a high-speed Google Fiber network in Austin, Texas, which is one of the finalist cities, said Paul Teich, principal analyst atTirias Research. Sidewalk Labs will install 100 WiFi kiosks in the winning city of the Smart City Challenge. The kiosks will help residents of disadvantaged neighborhoods get information about mobility. It will be nice to have access to traffic and transit information, but using the wireless Internet access as a byproduct of Sidewalk Labs will be a boon for low-income communities, technology analystCraig Settles told TechNewsWorld. For the Smart City Challenge, 78 midsize cities submitted ideas for creating a transportation network using data, technology and creativity. The finalists, announced earlier this month, are Austin; Columbus, Ohio; Denver; Kansas City, Missouri; Pittsburgh; Portland, Oregon; and San Francisco. Show Me the Money The finalists each have received $100,000 from DoT and have three months to come up with a proposal for easing congestion. DoT announced that Amazon Web Services would partner with those cities as well. It will award $1 million in credits for AWS Cloud Services and AWS Professional Services to the winner. At least four other technology companies are partners in the competition.Mobileye will provide Mobileye Shield collision-avoidance sensors on buses in the winning city,Autodesk will provide the InfraWorks 360 modeling platform for engineering,NXP Semiconductors will provide wireless communication models for cars, and Paul AllensVulcan will provide $10 million to the winning city, said DoT spokesperson Jon Romano. The winning city will receive $40 million from DoT, he told TechNewsWorld. The winner will be announced in June. Apple on Monday announced a pair of new products in old sizes the 4-inch iPhone SE and the 9.7-inch iPad Pro banking on user preferences for the familiar form factors to lessen their hesitancy to upgrade. Although Apples hour-long Loop You In event was short on surprises, it was slimmer on filler as well. Among the notable extras, Apple announced a price cut bringing the Apple Watch to US$300, along with a selection of new bands. It also announced support for Apple TV folders and the release of iOS 9.3. However, the major news was the unveiling of the iPhone SE and 9.7-inch iPad Pro. The iPhone SE Apple used the tag line, let us loop you in on its invitations to Mondays event, but considering just how accurate the pre-event rumors were about the new iPhone SE, few remained out of the loop. However, Apple added a few pieces to fill out the almost-complete puzzle that analysts and insiders had assembled. Apple last year sold more than 4 million 4-inch phones, reported Apple Vice President Greg Joswiak. Some people asked for the smaller size, while others pleaded for it, he said. Projected to cost between $400 and $500, it turns out that the two versions of the iPhone SE the 16-GB and the 64-GB are in fact $400 and $500 respectively. Apple also confirmed that the iPhone SE will pack a 64-bit A9 processor and an M9 motion coprocessor. It will provide improved battery life, as well as LTE speeds that are up to 50 percent faster than the iPhone 5s. On its back, the iPhone SE carries a 12-MP iSight camera that supports 4K video, presumably at 30 fps, and 1080p video at 60 fps. Its FaceTime camera will be supported by Retina Flash, a feature that triples the brightness of the phones display to illuminate selfie shots. The iPhone SE has Touch ID, enabling it to support Apple Pay. New microphones help it leverage always-on Hey Siri. As you can see, weve added an incredible array of advanced technologies into the iPhone SE and its really compact design, which makes it the most powerful 4-inch phone ever, Joswiak said. It really is an amazing device. Apple will begin taking preorders for the iPhone SE this Thursday, and it will go on sale on March 31. The 9.7-Inch iPad Pro Apple has sold more than 200 million 9.7-inch iPads, proclaimed Philip Schiller, senior vice president of worldwide marketing. People have loved this size and from the beginning, it has remained our most popular iPad size, he said. When customers learn about the features of iPad Pro, said Schiller, theyll all see that it is their ultimate upgrade. The 9.7-inch iPad Pro is much like its 12.9-inch stablemate. Its driven by an A9X processor and an M9 coprocessor. It features a 12-MP iSight camera, with support for 4K video, and a 5 MP FaceTime camera. Weighing in at just under a pound, the tablet will be offered with storage capacities of 32 GB, 128 GB and a first for iOS devices 256 GB. With the smaller iPad Pro, Schiller said, the company hopes to convince those who didnt spark to the 12.9-inch version to upgrade. Apple also hopes to make converts of Windows users, Schiller said, remarking that more than 600 million PCs in service today are more than five years old. This is really sad it really is, said Schiller. These people could really benefit from an iPad Pro. And when they see the features and performance and capabilities of a product like the iPad Pro, designed for a modern digital lifestyle, many of them will find that it is the ultimate PC replacement. While attempting to take a jab at Microsoft, Schiller inadvertently may have insulted hundreds of millions of PC users who either cant afford to exchange their venerable PC for an $800 tablet or simply dont want to. The iPad Pros price point seems a bit just too high for the average consumer, said Joe Silverman, owner of New York Computer Help. It is certainly a beautiful piece of art, but not everyone can afford Picasso, he said. While the price may be too high for many, the size finally may be right for others, he said of the smaller iPad Pro. That said, Apple may need to worry about oversaturation. The iPad line, to me, is getting completely watered down as our iPad users are perfectly content with sticking with the old iPad Air 1 and 2 generations, said Silverman. No need to upgrade for nominal spec upgrades especially if the iPad is still functional. The iPad Pro will be available for preorder this Thursday, and it will go on sale on March 31. The United States has lifted restrictions in cooperation with Ukraine's state-run concern Ukroboronprom, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said. "I've received a report from the United States. The restrictions ON Ukroboronprom were imposed in previous years because these structures (Ukroboron) were currupt," the president said at a meeting with commanders of brigades and battalions in Kyiv on Tuesday. The U.S. Department of Commerce in March 2016 lifted sanctions from state company Ukrspecexport imposed in March 2013 in connection with the supply of military equipment to Libya in violation of UN embargo introduced in 2011. Ukrspecexport has been excluded from the Export Administration Regulations (EAR) sanctions list, to which the Ukrainian special exporter was included on March 28, 2013 after it supplied military equipment supplies to a country sponsoring terrorism. The Washington Post in April 2013 reported, with reference to a report by the UN Security Council, that Ukraine, along with the United Arab Emirates, Armenia and Albania, illegally supplied weapons to Libya ruled by Muammar Gaddafi. The article said Ukraine provided heavy and light weapons - portable air defense systems, explosives, mines, small arms and ammunition. Sunil Khanna, president and managing director of Emerson Network Power (India), has been elected as chairman of the CII Maharashtra State Council. With his election, the CII State Council also unveiled the theme for 2016-17: Building Maharashtra: Innovation, Integration and Investments for the State. Manufacturing in Maharashtra is getting a greater focus than ever before, thanks to Prime Minister Modis Make in India initiative and the Chief Ministers announced goals this year to enhance ease of doing business in the state, said Sunil. As CII chairman, I will be working to transform Maharashtra into a global manufacturing hub with a special thrust on ease of doing business, innovation, integration and investments. Sunil previously served as the vice chairman of the CII Maharashtra State Council and was a member of the CII national executive between 2008-2009. He is also a founding member of the Automation Industry Association, where he served as its president from 2008-2010. Sunil has led Emerson Network Power India since September 2012, and prior to that worked at Emerson Process Management India for seven years, including five years as its managing director. Sunil has more than 30 years of experience in the industrial and IT sectors with various companies. He also has vast international work experience from his postings in Singapore, Indonesia, UK and USA. Sunil holds a Master of Technology degree in electrical engineering from IIT Kanpur and a bachelors degree in electronics engineering from IIT-BHU, Varanasi. He is also a graduate of the Emerson Leadership Program. Technuter.com News Service Kaspersky Lab India held a 2-day meet with its South Asia distributors covering the regions of India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Nepal, Bhutan and Maldives. The meet was held on March 18-19, 2016 at the Hyatt Regency, Mumbai, the conference had Kaspersky Lab South Asias leading distributors VR Infotech, Comguard, SEA Infonet, eCaps, OfficeXtracts & Avian in attendance. The meet began with a review of the year 2015. This was followed by setting a business roadmap for the 2016. Kaspersky Lab discussed their business vertical projections in detail in their one-on-one sessions with their distributors. Kaspersky Lab South Asia team discussed the past years performance, set target for the coming financial year and reviewed the technical and marketing support it needs to lend to the distributors. The dynamic industrys fast changing factors were deliberated upon in great detail. Kaspersky Lab encouraged its distributors to freely discuss the challenges they faced, based on which solutions were worked out. Kaspersky presented to its distributors all the new product offerings that are slated to be launched in the coming financial year, sharing vital information and key feature presentation with its distributors. Endpoint and Security Intelligence Services were at the centre of a wide dialogue. The distributors were apprised with every bit of information that they needed to know on sales, marketing, and technical. Altaf Halde, Managing Director South Asia, Kaspersky Lab said, Our distributors are a very important part of our eco system. The SA Distributor meet gave us a clarity on how we can work together to achieve the goals set for 2016. We also took this opportunity to present our non-endpoint solutions i.e Security for Virtualization, Security for Storage and Threat Intelligence Services. Now that we have our goals set and the path charted out, we all go back with renewed energy and focus! Ajay Joshi, Director Channel Sales South Asia, Kaspersky Lab said The SA Distributor meet gives us a strong platform to review the past & plan for the current year. This also gives our team an opportunity to meet with our distributors and share their feedback and plan the year. The meet concluded on March 19 with a day packed with detailed one-on-one meetings with all the distributors. Kaspersky Lab South Asia is optimistic that this annual dialogue has helped it to bring clarity and depth to their roadmap for the coming year. Technuter.com News Service WinMagic has announced its partnership with a Chennai-based company Raksha Technologies. The association between the two brands is envisioned to shape visibility and increase reselling of WinMagics products, SecureDoc and SecureDoc CloudSync in India. Raksha Technologies provides complete Information Security (IS) Solutions. They specialize in delivering Information Security solutions to the companies or business units of any size. They also cater to a large base of customers across several verticals like Banking, Health, E-Commerce, Manufacturing, Education and many more. This strategic partnership for WinMagic has been vital to form a better partner system and provide companies with services that can help them keep their vulnerable data safe and avert information breaches on the cloud. Since the majority of organizations today store delicate and elusive information in the cloud, it becomes all the more important to concentrate on approaches to keep the information safe. WinMagic concentrates on close teamwork and incorporation with partners and firmly implementing clear and continual distributor partnerships across India. Commenting on the partnership Rahul Kumar, Country Director & Manager, WinMagic India stated, Raksha Technologies is a focused security partner market and WinMagic, a focused security OEM and the relationship is very strategic for both parties. This relationship is aimed at helping WinMagic increase its reach across the southern Indian market as well as ensuring that customers get the best solution that they need to address their business pain points. Raksha Technologies has a very experienced sales and technical team in Bangalore and Hyderabad which would help us broad-base our presence quickly and effectively. With the new products in our offering for the cloud market, this is the right time for us to address the market together and we are very confident that this relationship will bring in a lot of synergies in the marketplace. On this V.Anand, Chief Executive Officer from Raksha Technologies said In our constant endeavour to provide the best solutions to our customers we tied up with WinMagic about a year back since it was able to fulfil most of the requirements of the Security Conscious Customers. It helped the customers in reducing their risks from Data thefts, protected their critical Data and is complaint with the regulatory System. WinMagics encryption solution called the SecureDoc encrypts data on various devices and prevents it from being misused. SecureDoc protects the data at the endpoint where it is created irrespective of the Device or Platform where it is being accessed from or saved. SecureDoc also helps in encrypting Removable Disks, CDs/DVDs and Files and Folders. Taking a step forward WinMagic will launch its new Solution SecureDoc Cloud VM later this year. With a strong Technical Team and efficient Sales Team WinMagic has been widely accepted by customers all over the World towards providing effective Security to their Critical Data. WinMagics solution SecureDoc protects data on the endpoint, where the data is created, regardless of the device or platform where its accessed or saved. And SecureDoc CloudSync is an application that enforces transparent file encryption on cloud folders through policy, to ensure data is protected before it leaves the endpoint. Technuter.com News Service Fortinet has announced that within the framework of the NATO Industry Cyber Partnership (NICP), the NATO Communications and Information (NCI) Agency signed an industry partnership agreement with Fortinet. Koen Gijsbers, NCI Agency General Manager, said, NATO is facing cybersecurity threats across the world that could drastically affect national economies and citizens. To avoid it, NCI Agency strongly believes in early information sharing on threats and vulnerabilities with leading companies worldwide, such as Fortinet. Michael Xie, Founder, President and Chief Technology Officer, Fortinet, said, Organizations, both public or private, and everyday people are constantly under cyber attack. The combination of the growth of threats, the ever-evolving attack surface, and the dramatic increase in the number of devices we use everyday means the job of protecting ourselves will continue to be more and more difficult. If more organizations proactively share actionable intelligence, together we can better combat advanced threats and counteract the latest risks to deliver security without compromise today and in the future. Two-way Information Sharing The agreement with Fortinet will boost two-way information sharing, in particular on cyber threat intelligence. This is often a high impact and efficient way to enhance cyber resilience and mitigate vulnerability to attack. Some of the expectations of this initiative are: Improve cyber defense in NATOs defense supply chain; Facilitate participation of industry organizations in multinational Smart Defense projects; Improve sharing of expertise, information and experience of operating under the constant threat of cyber attack, including information on threats and vulnerabilities, e.g. malware information sharing; Raise awareness and improve the understanding of cyber risks; Leverage private sector developments for capability development, and; Generate efficient and adequate support in case of cyber incidents. The agreement with Fortinet is the latest in a series of important partnerships with industry organizations in the framework of the NICP. The NCI Agency is responsible for operating and defending NATOs networks. Technuter.com News Service Dassault Systemes has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the National Institute of Industrial Engineering (NITIE) to collaborate and leverage technology including Dassault Systemes 3DEXPERIENCE Platform and Digital Manufacturing suite to achieve higher levels of academic excellence. The MoU will deepen the existing relationship between NITIE and Dassault Systemes. It will also make NITIE an Academic Certification Partner under the Dassault Systemes Academic Certification Partner Programme. The collaboration between NITIE and Dassault Systemes will create a new benchmark for technology enabled industrial engineering and management education in the areas of industrial engineering, industrial management including operations management, manufacturing management, project management, supply chain, advanced logistics, production scheduling, manufacturing execution, ergonomics and safety and customer experience through business experience platform. The association will also facilitate the following: Sessions for the faculty and research teams at NITIE, demonstrating functionalities of Dassault Systemes 3DEXPERIENCE platform Access to Dassault Systemes online and offline training material through Dassault Systemes online university (academy.3ds.com) and Dassault Systemes COMPANION learning material. Support for NITIE faculty and students in academic projects undertaken through close collaboration and awareness sessions on Dassault Systemes 3DEXPERIENCE platform and customer case study references. 3DEXPERIENCE for Academia is the most advanced software for product and learning innovation and it is now available on the cloud, to all educators and students who want to experience the engineering practices of industry leaders for increased employment opportunities in the new global economy. Talking about the partnership, Dr. Chandan Chowdhury, Managing Director-India, Dassault Systemes said, We are delighted to announce the partnership with NITIE for our academic solutions. This is just the first step towards transforming management education by leveraging technology. NITIE is one of the early adopters of cloud for management and higher education. I am confident that with this partnership we will be able to contribute to Indias skills development mission and create better job opportunities for the youth of the country both in India and overseas. Prof. (Ms.) Karuna Jain, Director, NITIE said, We are equally delighted about this partnership as this is going to take our endeavour to provide superior educational experience, which is industry relevant, to the next level. We understand the power of such tools and are certain that the state of the art solutions by Dassault Systemes would enrich the learning experience at NITIE. She added, This collaboration is harmonious with NITIEs vision of contributing to the manufacturing renaissance of India through its mission of Industry inspired research. By exposing its students to the future of Digital Manufacturing and Operations, NITIE ensures that the Industry has access to faculty, researchers and students who are future driven and exposed to best practices on manufacturing innovation. We believe our faculty and students through their research and application of these cutting edge platforms will enhance their contributions to achieve the Make in India initiatives. Technuter.com News Service Apple is in "advanced talks" to acquire UK-based chip maker Imagination Technologies, the company behind the PowerVR mobile GPU line which Apple has used in every A-series SoC since the A4, according to a report from Ars Technica. Shares of Imagination Technologies Group Plc have jumped 16 percent since news of the potential acquisition came to light. Apple already owns at least a 9.5 percent stake in the company, which had a market value of around $732.4 million before the share price increased. The cost shouldn't be a problem for Apple, which is said to have around $200 billion at its disposal. The biggest implication of this acquisition is that it could result in Apple designing its own mobile GPUs. Rumors have been circulating for years that the Cupertino company wants to bring its mobile GPU design in-house, and it now looks as if Apple's taking the first steps on the path to achieving this. It was the acquisition of chip company PA Semi back in 2008 that ultimately led to Apple designing its own CPU core - the Swift CPU core in the iPhone 5's A6 processor --- in 2012. If Apple does acquire Imagination, the same thing will likely happen with its GPUs. "It makes strategic sense for Apple to bring the GPU design in-house," said Neil Campling, an analyst at Aviate Global in London. "Controlling every aspect of its processors could let Apple further optimize the efficiency and power consumption of its devices." "The custom cores Apple designed for the CPU gave the company an 18-month head start over Qualcomm in 64-bit computing and a three-year lead in custom 64-bit cores," Campling said. Imagination recently announced that it was restructuring its business, which involved a 20 percent reduction in worldwide staff and a refocus on PowerVR. The company, which also counts Samsung among its clients, went on to announce that CEO Hossein Yassaie would be stepping down. According to a new study conducted by RIKEN Quantitative Biology Center or QBiC at the University of Tokyo, calcium is not only good for our bones but also a key to a longer and better sleep. The researchers revealed the new study of how sleep works and how slow-waves of sleep rely on calcium contained in the brain cells, published in the journal Cell. "Although sleep is a fundamental physiologic function, its mechanism is still a mystery," said Dr. Hiroki Ueda, group director and corresponding author from the University of Tokyo. The team conducted a multi-disciplinary research composed of scientific techniques, computational modeling and having knockout mice as the subject to see the concealed mechanism of sleep. He explains that since the study have shown a new theory regarding sleep; different methodologies are needed to support the claim. Ueda may be a medical doctor by profession and training, but as a researcher on sleep disorders, he delves to a deep and broad approach relying on other models such as in silico, in vivo and in vitro. Within silico, a computational neural model was made to predict neural activity in slow-wave sleep. Fumiya Tatsuki, an undergraduate and co-author of the study said that their model has four predictions, which provided them four starting points to look for the vital genes involved in sleep. The predictions were certified and proven in the experiment. The group then was able to identify the seven genes that functions in the same pathway related to calcium to control the length of sleep. CRISPR, a highly made and efficient in vitro system with a 100 percent success rate was used to create 21 knockout mice. Along with the group of researchers, Genshiro Sunagawa also made an automated sleep monitoring system which collects important behavioral data. Using the two computer equipment, the team found that the knockout mice have seven genes that are vital to the increase and decrease of sleep duration. These seven genes were found to be calcium-dependent in the changes taking place in the brain cells. According to the models, six down-regulating genes are responsible for the lack of sleep duration and the last gene is for the longer duration of sleep. The authors said that the findings of the study should be able to help and contribute to understanding psychiatric disorders including sleep disorder and neurological illnesses. Photo: Mark Sebastian | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. It will be a long time before peace returns to Ukraine Poroshenko following blasts in Brussels President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko has said that recent reports about blasts in Brussels show the world has dramatically changed. "Just now there appeared the reports on the terrorist attacks, some blasts in Brussels," the president said delivering a speech to the commanders of the Armed Forces of Ukraine of the middle military management in Kyiv on Tuesday. According to him, blasts occurred at airport and metro station of Brussels. "The world has dramatically changed. It will take quite some time before Ukraine and the world can return to a peaceful life," Poroshenko said. Poroshenko on March 22 expressed condolences for the victims of terrorist attacks in Brussels. On March 16, Kelsey Harmon Tweeted a photo of her grandfather who was sad after only one grandchild out of six showed up for a dinner of burgers with him. The Internet went crazy over it to the point that some people hunted down and berated the other grandkids for ignoring their grandfather - which was not the case. Now sad papaw is not sad anymore and his grandson, Brock Harmon, announced on March 18 that his papaw will be hosting a cookout and everyone is invited. The cookout will be held on March 26 from 11 AM to 4 PM at the 15835 State Hwy 39 Purcell Oklahoma 73080, which is where the flea market the family runs is stationed. Brock said that his papaw will be cooking burgers for $2 and is open to taking photos with the people who will attend. The family will also be selling shirts with an "I had a burger with Papaw" and a photo of papaw printed on it. JUST GOT DONE TALKING TO PAPAW AND HE WANTS TO INVITE EVERYONE OUT FOR A BURGER NEXT SATURDAY pic.twitter.com/HZppI3Rdws Brock Harmon (@BHarmon_10) March 19, 2016 Brock also clarified that all the proceeds of the cookout will be given to papaw and he will be the one to decide what to do with the money. "We can't believe something that small blew up like this. It's crazy how social media can take something so little and magnify it to be ridiculously crazy," Brock said. Just how ridiculously crazy did it get? There were reactions and papaw memes within 24 hours but what was scary was that some people decided to go to the extreme and not only reprimand Kelsey's cousins but sent them death threats as well. Now papaw would definitely not like it if his grandkids were harmed, wouldn't he? Please read this.. Our intentions were to never make this a big deal.. We hope that everyone can learn from this.. pic.twitter.com/m5pyJ0CMYa Brock Harmon (@BHarmon_10) March 18, 2016 This caused a little conflict between Kelsey and her cousins but, luckily, they actually think clearly and patched up soon after. The other five also made it a point to claim their portion of the burgers and probably gave a good explanation of why they were not able to make it. papaw is ok guys I promise & he loves all grandkids equally, plz stop sending my cousins death threats everything is ok !!!! kelsey (@kelssseyharmon) March 17, 2016 So for all those who felt bad for papaw, you can see for yourself that everything is really fine within the Harmon family if you swing by the cookout on the 26th. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Could this germ trap save you from the flu virus? A new technology developed by biochemists from the University of Manchester in the United Kingdom is touted to contain the flu. In partnership with biotech firm Virustatic, the researchers produced a fabric coating that isolates viruses responsible for seasonal and pandemic flu. The so-called germ trap which can be incorporated in filters of masks or air filtration systems is said to have a virus capture rate of more than 99 percent. Virustatic technical director and investor Paul Hope dubbed the technology a novel preventive approach to disease with transformative potential. Were now at the stage where were looking for strategic partners to take this technology forwards in terms of developing new products, Hope says. The technology is based on anchoring proteins first to carbon cloth and then to simpler, more affordable materials such as cotton. The carbohydrates attached to the protein surface are tweaked to mimic those on the surface of human esophagus and nasal passage cells. The stabilized protein can contain more than 99 percent of flu viruses coming into contact with it in a cheap, easily produced product, explained the researchers. The hope, added Dr. Ian Rowles from the university, is to tackle all forms of pathogens using the technology in the long run. Other targets include potentially fatal viruses such as the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome (MERS) and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). The germ trap also holds potential in producing blood filter membranes for the first time to remove the pathogens before they can strike and damage their host. In 2015, scientists from University of Melbourne in Australia and Fudan University in Shanghai, China, found out how the immunity cells of the body remember flu viruses. Studying people infected with a deadly bird flu virus in China back in 2013, the team chanced upon how the army of hitmen T-cells in the body memorize flu strains and annihilate them. The discovery leaned toward the creation of a vaccine that offers natural protection against all types of influenza. In the United States, an upswing in late-winter influenza cases in Illinois, Indiana, and North Carolina prompted stricter visitor regulations in hospitals. Meanwhile, health professionals continue to advise the public to wash their hands frequently, stay at home when ill, and consider the flu shot if they are still unvaccinated. Photo: Eneas De Troya | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Patients with mental disabilities, unable to take care of themselves, should ideally receive special care and attention. Unfortunately, in Indonesia, a large number of those with special needs are living in unacceptable environments and are tied and locked up instead of being properly cared for by their families or primary caregivers. Human Rights Watch (HRW) reports that about 57,000 patients in Indonesia with psychosocial disabilities had been shackled and locked up in small spaces at least once in their lives. In 1977, the Indonesian government banned the practice of "pasung" or putting patients with mental health problems in shackles, but many family members, healers, and institutional staff still bind and lock up these patients inhumanely. The organization's report notes that according to government data, about 18,800 patients with mental health problems are still shackled and locked up by their families and health care providers. "Shackling people with mental health conditions is illegal in Indonesia and yet it remains a widespread and brutal practice," says Kriti Sharma, a disability rights researcher at HRW and report author. "People spend years locked up in chains, wooden stocks, or goat sheds because families don't know what else to do and the government doesn't do a good job of offering humane alternatives," she adds. What Patients Go Through The HRW interviewed 72 people, both adult and children, all of whom have psychosocial disabilities. Interviews with caregivers, mental health professionals, family members, government officials, institutional heads and disability rights advocates were also conducted to give a holistic understanding of the present condition of the patients. In addition to the interviews, the HRW team also visited 16 institutions, including faith healing centers, social health care institutions and mental hospitals. During these visits in the five provinces of Java and Sumatra, the team documented 175 cases of patients who are locked up, shackled or recently freed. "I used to be tied up at home with a plastic rope. My heart broke when they chained me ... I was chained when I first came [to Galuh]. I get chained often - at least 10 times since I have come because I fought with the others. It can last for one day to a week," said Rafi, a 29-year-old patient at the Yayasan Galuh Rehabilitation Center in Bekasi. For a toilet, Rafi had to use the drain in the same room he was kept in. He also experienced physical abuse from the center's staff. "Tell the government, I want to go home," he said. In another interview, a father confided that he locked his daughter up after bringing her to a faith healer because she was destroying their neighbors' crops. He also said that they tied her up because she tried to dig her way out of the room. The patient endured 15 years of being shackled and locked up in the room where she slept, ate, urinated and defecated before she was finally released. Government Efforts In an attempt to curb the practice, the Indonesian government offered some campaigns like the anti-shackling campaign and a new mental health law that integrates mental health care along with primary health care. The government also formed teams of medical practitioners, government institution staff and government officials that are responsible for releasing shackled and locked-up patients. Unfortunately, the local implementation moves slowly due to a decentralized Indonesian government. Dr. Irmansyah, Indonesia's former director of mental health, spearheaded a campaign in 2010 that purports to eradicate the practice of shackling by 2014. The ambitious program's deadline is now pushed to 2019. In an interview with Fairfax Media, Irmansyah shared that in 2015, about 8,000 patients were relieved from shackles. He equally acknowledges that much needs to be done. "What is lacking is the unity of action. Ideally there should be standardized procedure in the treatment of mental health patients from when they are admitted to hospital to the day they return to their families," he says. Another problem that the former health minister wishes to address is the lack of consultation from the families of the patients. He believes that only 70 to 80 percent of people afflicted with schizophrenia are brought to hospitals for consultation due to social stigma. "They will go to traditional healers instead who will spit on the patient's face or ask them to bathe using flowers but in the end they remain mentally ill," says Irmansyah. The current head of disabilities issues, Nahar, states that shackling persists because of the uncertainty in the part of the family members. "The main problem is fear, fear of what could happen if a shackled person is released," he says. An In-Depth Look At Indonesia's Mental Health Situation This report sheds light on the current mental health situation of Indonesia. At present, Indonesia only has 600 to 800 psychiatrists to cater to the needs of 250 million Indonesians. This means that there is only one psychiatrist for every 300,000 to 400,000 persons. Additionally, significant data from the government show that in 2015, the health budget is only about 1.5 percent of the total. The HRW report also raises concern on the length of stay of patients in a mental institution. There was one documented patient who stayed in an institution for seven years, while another was locked up in a mental institution for 30 long years. Overcrowding and hygiene issues are also alarming as some rooms are infested with pests like lice. Some of the patients also have scabies that are left untreated. In a center in Java, 90 women are confined a room that is fit for only 30 persons. Living in murky and crowded rooms is just one of the problems of these patients as they can also become victims of physical and sexual advantages of their caretakers and other people. Some of the patients also undergo restraint, seclusion, electroshock therapy without anesthesia and forced contraception without consent. Recommendations The Human Rights Watch recommends that the Indonesian government strengthen the implementation of the ban on shackling and by making amendments to the 2014 Mental Health Act to allow patients with psychosocial disabilities to experience the rights that fellow Indonesian citizens enjoy. Furthermore, the report also encourages the government to undergo routine inspection of state and private mental health institutions. Sharma also recommends that the government and caregivers talk to those who are plagued with mental disabilities to know their stand on the treatment process. Sharma expresses concern on the future of these patients needing special care. "The thought that someone has been living in their own excrement and urine for 15 years in a locked room, isolated and not given any care whatsoever, is just horrifying. So many people told me, 'This like living in hell.' It really is," she says. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The Samsung Galaxy S7 has started to get in the hands of many customers and technophiles have started reviewing the new smartphone. Here is a review roundup of the latest Galaxy S7 handset. The U.S. version of the Galaxy S7 has a powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon 820 processor and 4 GB of RAM, which makes the phone fast - even while multi-tasking. "The new processor (Qualcomm in the U.S., which is what I tested; other markets will have a Samsung Exynos chip) is paired with 4 GB of RAM, and it has no trouble multitasking, gaming, playing video, or any other task I attempted with it. It's a fast and responsive phone that was ready for anything I needed it to do," says Dan Seifert of The Verge. The camera of the Galaxy S7 has been applauded by experts. The handset has a 12-megapixel rear-facing and a 5-megapixel front-facing camera. The mobile uses f/1.7 lenses on the front as well as on the rear camera. "I found camera performance to be very similar to the S6, which is to say it is excellent. The camera megapixel count has been reduced, but the pixels size increased to help improve low-light photography. You can confidently use the Samsung Galaxy S7 while out to dinner or at a party and trust you will capture some great shots," says ZDNet's Matthew Miller. Samsung has improved the design of the Galaxy S7, but it is still similar to the Galaxy S6. "At first glance, the Galaxy S7 certainly looks very similar to its predecessor, but Samsung has managed to sneak in a few improvements to the design. First, the camera bump has been noticeably reduced so it barely protrudes from the rear; with the Galaxy S6, there was always a concern over laying it flat on its back, but with the Galaxy S7, this is no longer really a problem." "Secondly, the Galaxy S7 is noticeably thicker and heavier than the Galaxy S6," says Nirave Gondhia of Android Authority. The Galaxy S7 has a standard audio jack and a front speaker, yet the audio quality has failed to impress some reviewers. "Sound from the speaker is expectedly tinny and weak, like all phones outside of the HTC One series, which have dual-front facing speakers. The full-volume sound from an iPhone 6S is still noticeably crisper than the S7, but neither device hits it out of the park," says Jeffrey Van Camp of Digital Trends. The Galaxy S7 has a 3,000 mAh battery, which offers long-lasting usage. "With high daily use the S7 tends to leave me with around 10-15 percent battery life at the end of the day. ... It has fantastic standby time, though, most likely down to the Doze feature built into Android Marshmallow, so leaving it unplugged overnight will only lose you 3-4 percent," says Max Parker of Trusted Reviews. Samsung's new flagship devices are waterproof and have a microSD card, which can be used for expanding the memory. "Samsung's return to the microSD card slot meant I could load the S7 with a movie to watch offline, and save all those photos and videos to a card instead of to the more limited phone memory," says CNet's Jessica Dolcourt. "I wouldn't normally worry about a regular phone corroding from rain, so London and Berlin's frequent downpours didn't prove a thing." 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Dutch actress Carice van Houten took to Instagram on March 18 to announce that the rumor that she is pregnant with her first child with Australian actor Guy Pearce is true. The "Game of Thrones" actress even exhibited her good humor by referencing her character Melisandre's memorable birthing in the second season of the HBO series. Just a month ago, Seth Meyers had Van Houten play as Melisandre in a sketch as his college buddy attending his baby shower for his show, "Late Night with Seth Meyers." Perhaps now is the time to update that sketch and make Seth attend Melisandre's own baby shower. Seth just needs to make sure to give an equally precious gift as the Valyrian steel dagger rattle that Melisandre got for their baby. Ok. I'm ready for your shadowbaby jokes. Carice van Houten (@caricevhouten) March 19, 2016 Van Houten's followers were quick to congratulate the couple, of course, but unlike what the actress expected, there were more jokes about her iconic line "The night is dark and full of terrors" than the shadow baby reference. It was Van Houten's partner, Guy Pearce, who seemed unsure at the prospect of a shadow baby. Nothing like the prospect of a shadowbaby to change your mind about becoming a Father !! https://t.co/JRjL6YISbl Guy Pearce (@TheGuyPearce) March 19, 2016 At least Melisandre has already received an official babysitting offer from Davos Seaworth, who was not too excited about watching the red woman give birth to the shadow demon baby she had with Stannis Baratheon. @caricevhouten I just might babysit this one! liam cunningham (@liamcunningham1) March 19, 2016 There were some who wondered who the next target will be. @caricevhouten Congrats!! I wonder if Guy has a brother? Seriously, best wishes! IrisDorbian (@IrisDorbian) March 20, 2016 A few who were already looking forward to a baby shower. .@caricevhouten will @LateNightSeth be throwing you a baby shower?? that is critical! r (@rocar86) March 20, 2016 @caricevhouten I'll get you a little valerian steel sword which rattles for the baby shower Stephen (@stevemag19) March 20, 2016 Some with a little more imagination about how the red lady will take care of her shadow baby. Van Houten also received some assurances about giving birth. @caricevhouten if you are lucky it will be born as easy as the shadowbaby.that took like 10 seconds :D Azrael (@AzraelGFG) March 20, 2016 @caricevhouten Don't worry about delivery, your last went well ! XD pic.twitter.com/YEkX6GJTXM Lumiane (@Lumiane3) March 20, 2016 But most people decided to stick with heartfelt congratulations to the couple and play with Melisandre's oft-repeated line throughout "Game of Thrones." @caricevhouten Congratulations and remember the night is dark and full of cravings Luis Morales (@LMpsychokiller) March 21, 2016 @caricevhouten Congratulations! Soon your nights will be dark and full of feedings! Greg and Sheryl (@Greg69Sheryl) March 19, 2016 Mellisandre is pregnant in real life. The night is dark and full of hormones. @caricevhouten Amit Nagpal (@nagu3) March 20, 2016 @caricevhouten for the womb is dark and full of baby SuPerGiu (@GiuliaBazzu) March 20, 2016 Congratulations to Carice van Houten and Guy Pearce on their first child together! 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. At least 50 percent of suicidal patients visiting the emergency departments (EDs) are not asked about their access to weapons like firearms, despite the existing federal guidelines, new university research says. In an article published in Depression and Anxiety on March 17, researchers from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus stressed that many ERs missed the opportunity to help patients who have committed or are thinking about committing suicide by failing to perform a lethal means assessment, which could have helped them determine access to weapons like firearms and initiate safety planning and suicide intervention. For their three-phase study funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, the researchers interviewed 1,358 adult patients and looked at their medical charts, those patients having attempted or thought of suicide and visited eight EDs in more than five states between 2010 and 2013. According to lead author Dr Emmy Betz, upon analysis, the researchers "found in about 50 percent of cases there is no documentation by the doctor that anyone asked the patients about firearms access." Around 25 percent admitted having at least one unlocked and loaded gun in their home. Of the 337 surveyed patients who were later discharged, 55 percent of them weren't interviewed by doctors about lethal access, even if 13 percent of them owned or could get hold of at least one firearm. Betz emphasized the huge role ED doctors play in suicide prevention, especially since "multiple ED visits appear to be a risk factor for suicide and many suicide victims are seen in the ED shortly before death." If only doctors would perform the assessment, they could prevent suicide deaths by as much as 20 percent annually by encouraging families to remove firearms from their homes or place them in an undisclosed location, as well as keep them unloaded and locked at all times. However, doctors are apprehensive to do the assessment since they are not sure if the guidelines work or how to ask the questions. Dr. Betz reminds them that it is legal to question a suicidal patient if it allows them to provide suicide intervention. According to a 2011 CDC report, 41,149 people committed suicide, but more than 20,000 did so with firearms. Photo: Helen Harrop | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The U.S. Navy will be funding research for the development of a new autism screening app in the hopes that it could later be tweaked to detect signs of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). How can an app distinguish signs of either autism or PTSD? The key is by detecting the person's facial expressions. The app, which is called Autism & Beyond, combines a smartphone camera and an algorithm that reads facial expressions among children. The emotional responses are then assessed. The Navy has been working with Guillermo Sapiro, the computer scientist who developed the algorithm for the new app, for the past two decades. The Navy supports Sapiro's research on image processing and data analysis, and has invested hundreds of thousands in the app. Application For PTSD Screening PTSD is a disorder that often goes undiagnosed. It can occur after a person has gone through a very traumatic experience in which he or she would feel afraid or feel that no control over what is happening. Studies show that most PTSD patients may not recognize the link between symptoms and a traumatic event, or are not willing to talk about it. Still, going through trauma does not automatically lead to PTSD, but members of the military are often not immune to it. In fact, research suggests that 10 to 18 percent of troops are likely to develop PTSD after they return. In the recent years, about 46 percent of the 1 million troops from Afghanistan or Iraq came to the Veterans' Administration for care. According to the Department of Veteran Affairs, 48 percent of them were diagnosed with mental health problems. An app to screen PTSD will indeed be helpful. Predrag Neskovic, project supervisor at the Office of Naval Research, believes the app could be expanded to PTSD to monitor people over time, especially if other aspects such as speech are taken into account. "It can find patterns, not just in facial expressions but in different kinds of data sets, such as brain signals and speech, and it can be used on a continuous basis," said Neskovic. "It's a completely new world." PTSD expert William Unger of Providence VA Medical Center said he sees potential for the app to be used to screen PTSD if it could be proven reliable for a large number of people over time. Although the PTSD screening app is still far from being finished and available for use, Unger said he is very excited. He said the research may very well provide additional technological developments that would be greatly beneficial. However, others are not as convinced. University of Memphis President M. David Rudd said he cannot see the app's extrapolation to PTSD. Rudd, who is a PTSD and suicide prevention expert for military personnel, said the research extending to cover PTSD is "a pretty big gap to leap." "It's the introduction of technology where technology is not particularly needed and not particularly useful," said Rudd. "As a society, this is what we do. It's kind of the medicalization of a problem that's emotional and interpersonal in nature. I just don't get it." More About The App The Autism & Beyond app shows funny videos that are designed to make children smile, laugh and express emotions. How their lips, eyes, head and nose move is recorded, encoded, and analyzed thru the camera and the algorithm. If the child is not responding to the stimuli, it is also recorded. Sapiro, who is an electrical engineering professor at Duke University, said the app performs behavior analysis automatically, unlike a tool like WebMD, which requires the user to identify symptoms and asks questions. But autism makes communication and the use of languages difficult, so the Autism & Beyond app is quite clever. Still, Sapiro emphasized that the app is not meant to replace specialists, but it is a pre-screening tool. Autism can be associated with learning disabilities, intellectual difficulties, as well as problems with motor coordination and attention. It affects more than 3 million people in America and tens of millions all over the world. A previous study even revealed that people with autism die decades earlier than the general population. Meanwhile, Sapiro and Neskovic envision developing a PTSD app within the next five years. They are also investigating whether it is possible to reveal signs of depression or mild traumatic brain injury. Photo: Stuart Heath | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A new leak on the press renders of the Samsung Galaxy J7 suggests that the 5.5-inch device will soon be announced in an official statement from the company. The Galaxy J7 recently earned certification from the United States' FCC and China's Tenaa, which revealed a number of notable details about the unannounced device from Samsung. The Galaxy J7 (2016) is purported to feature an HD Super AMOLED display with a pixel resolution of 1920 by 1080. Under the hood, the device will come equipped with the 1.6 GHz octa-core Exynos 7870 SoC, 3 GB of RAM, internal storage of 16 GB, ARM Mali-T830 GPU and a 3,300 mAh battery. Camera buffs can also take advantage of the Galaxy J7's 13 MP rear camera and 5 MP front camera, which comes with an Advanced Mode for enhanced imaging experience. Just like its other siblings from the Galaxy J Series, the J7 model boasts a powerful camera that captures impressive shots even in low-light situations. "You can choose from different image Modes to suit different occasions so that you get pictures that look more real," said Samsung. Samsung also equipped the Galaxy J7 with microSD support for users who are keen on saving large files and media content on their devices. The extra space should be enough to keep up to 128 GB of storage. Other highlights include 4G LTE network connectivity and Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow. "Browse seamlessly and save data while you stream videos, shop online or check out your favorite apps," said Samsung. "Ultra Data Saving compresses data and restricts background apps from consuming data. So that you get the most cost efficient 4G experience." The Galaxy J7 is said to tip the scale at 5.82 ounces (165 grams) and will be available in gold and white color options. The leaked press renders of the device show that the Galaxy J7 will initially be a China Mobile variant. Samsung has yet to officially announce the J7 and has yet to confirm if the model will be available in other territories. If last year's trend on the company's release of its J series is replicated, it is highly likely that the Galaxy J7 will also make it globally. The new Samsung Galaxy J7 (2016) is expected to retail at less than $300. Compared with last year's offering, which featured the device in a plastic build, the new Galaxy J7 is obviously a major upgrade now that it boasts a metal chassis. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Pope Francis can now be reached via another social media platform and this time it's Instagram. Under the user handle "@Franciscus", Pope Francis' Instagram has amassed over 1.5 million followers and counting since joining the filtered image sharing service on Saturday. As of this writing, Pope Francis has five posts, 1.5 million followers, and is currently following no one else back. Of those five posts on the Pope's Instagram, three are photos of himself. We wouldn't call them selfies, however. The other posts include a photo showing Pope Francis' holding onto palm leaves, his ring finger wearing a Papal ring; the remaining post is a slightly blurry video of Pope Francis sending a message of mercy to his followers. The Pope's entry into Instagram and his impressive following have set a new record for the social media platform. The Pope reached one million followers in just 12 hours, dethroning previous record holder David Beckham, whose account took 24 hours to reach one million followers. On his debut post, Pope Francis has since gained over 256,000 "Likes" and more than 30,000 comments in languages from all over the world. His other accounts over other social media services such as Twitter reveal the same story. On Twitter, Pope Francis has a mighty fan base of nearly nine million followers. Interestingly enough, the Pope also took to Twitter to announce his plans to join Instagram. I am beginning a new journey, on Instagram, to walk with you along the path of mercy and the tenderness of God. Pope Francis (@Pontifex) March 19, 2016 His Instagram account, however, will be officially handled by the Vatican's Secretariat for Communications. Nonetheless, it was none other than Instagram's founder and chief executive, Kevin System, who met with the Pope and posted a picture shaking hands with the man in white. The post was also shared by Instagram's official account and, on top of that, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook (which bought Instagram for $1 billion in 2012) also gave the Pope a warm welcome in a post over his own personal Facebook page. Combined, both Facebook's and Instagram's founders certainly helped the Pope reach a much wider audience on the image sharing social media platform. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Although doctors strongly agree on the diagnosis of invasive breast cancer, most doctors often disagree when diagnosing breast biopsy results for ductal carcinoma in situ (DCIS) and atypia, a new study revealed. Led by Dr. Joann Elmore of the University Of Washington School Of Medicine, the team of experts began examining diagnostic agreement among pathologists while interpreting breast biopsies in 2009. In the B-Path (Breast Pathology) study, researchers asked three different pathologists to give a second opinion on different biopsy slides - exactly one biopsy slide apiece from 240 women who were 50 to 59 years old. When the slides displayed invasive breast cancer or benign cells, they agreed with the initial diagnosis 97 percent of the time. However, when the original diagnosis was atypia, which are atypical cells that grow faster than normal, pathologists thought the diagnosis in more than half of the cases may have been originally overestimated. Pathologists also thought doctors overestimated the danger for women who were initially diagnosed with DCIS. Elmore said that pathologists' overall interpretation of B-Path results across the United States would be confirmed by an expert panel 92 out of 100 biopsies. Most of the original diagnosis is over-interpreted than under-interpreted, she said. What's more, the study found that among 100 breast biopsies that received an initial diagnosis of atypia, less than half would maintain the diagnosis after review by a panel of three experienced pathologists. More than half would be downgraded from atypia to a diagnosis of benign without atypia, Elmore said. Definitive Diagnosis Atypia and DCIS are gray areas on a spectrum of cancer severity. It generally swings from generally harmless or benign to rapid-growing invasive tumors, an expert said. Dr. Richard Bleicher, who wasn't involved in the study, said the difference between atypia and DCIS are similar to differentiating blue from teal from green. "There is a bit of subjectivity," said Bleicher, who is a breast clinical program leader at Fox Chase Cancer Center. Meanwhile, Elmore said it is easier for doctors to diagnose at the extremes of the spectrum. But between these extremes, the agreement starts to deviate. Elmore said that when women are confronted with a diagnosis of DCIS or atypia, they may want to consider getting a second opinion before pursuing treatment. "I encourage women who receive an initial diagnosis of either atypia or DCIS to realize that they do not need to act immediately on the results," said Elmore. "They have time to obtain a second opinion to verify the diagnosis." How Over-Diagnosis Or Under-Diagnosis Can Harm Patients The danger here is that women whose doctors disagree on diagnosis may also disagree on treatment, said Dr. Alexander Borowsky who wrote an accompanying editorial for the study. In fact, Bleicher also said that when doctors over-interpret the cancer risk, some women may suffer side effects from treatment that possibly did not reduce their odds of dying from breast cancer. For instance, women with DCIS or atypia may receive the drug tamoxifen to treat cancer, but it can also trigger early menopause. On the contrary, when doctors under-interpret diagnosis, women may miss a chance to get chemotherapy or radiation at an earlier stage of their illness when the treatment can be more effective, Bleicher said. Meanwhile, Elmore said further research must be done to find out whether diagnostic uncertainty could be objectively measured and integrated into breast disease management. "We have a critical need to validate the tools that diagnose disease, especially these categories in the gray area between normal and cancer," added Elmore. "Getting the diagnosis right is an important first step," she said. The findings of the study are featured in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine. Photo: Gerry Lauzon | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Three servicemen of the Ukrainian Armed Forces have suffered injuries in the army operation zone in southeastern Ukraine in the past 24 hours, Ukrainian Presidential Administration spokesman Oleksandr Motuzianyk has said. "No Ukrainian servicemen have been killed in the hostilities over the past day, and three have suffered injuries as a BMP-2 infantry combat vehicle hit a mine," he said at a press briefing in Kyiv on Tuesday. All was quiet in the Luhansk sector on Monday, Motuzianyk said. Ukrainian army positions twice came under mortar fire (in Luhanske and Avdiyivka) and were thrice attacked by snipers (in Mayorsk, Leninske and Nevelske) in the Donetsk sector. "On the whole, low-intensity hostilities have been observed along the entire frontline, mostly in the afternoon. Twenty-one hostile attacks have been conducted in the Donetsk area over the past day," he said. The enemy marred the truce in Maryinka and Shyrokyne. Six attacks and one clash have been observed in the Mariupol sector over the past day, the spokesman said. Some brands of pet food sold in supermarkets may cause severe illness or injury to adult cats, a new study has discovered. Scientists from the Sydney University found that these products may particularly cause lameness, obesity, diabetes and anemia. Analyzing Pet Food The goal of the study is to find out if the information found in labels of commercial cat food are accurate, follows the Australian Standard and supports the nutritional requirements needed by an adult cat. The team performed a chemical analysis of 10 wet and 10 dry cat food that all had a "nutritionally complete" label on its package. They compared the findings of the experiment with what was stated in the composition values, Australian Standard, cat nutritional needs, as well as those required by the Association of the American Feed Control Officials and the National Research Council. The results show that nine out 20 and eight out 20 pet food tested were not able to meet the Australian Standard and the standards for nutrient composition respectively. The authors also found that various excesses and deficiencies in crude fat and protein, amino acids and fatty acids in most of the commercial cat food. Despite the somewhat alarming results, the authors opt not to name which brands of cat food were tested. Pet Food Makers Want to Know More Pet food makers have called on the authors to release the names of cat food tested, as well as the brands that yielded negative effects on cats. "We do want to know more," says Duncan Hall from Pet Food Industry Association. He adds that the group has called on their members to make them aware of the new study results. Pet food makers wanted to know more about a study that reveals that the nutritional content of products were not as previously believed. Vets, Pet Owners Need To Know Sue Foster from the Murdoch University says if the methods used in the study were strong, then she does not see a reason why the authors would not release names of cat food products. Foster adds that veterinarians are concerned about researchers protecting company names even if it means risking the welfare of pets. Vets need to know what's safe and what's not. Sydney University's Richard Malik says the only probable reason he sees behind not naming names is that the authors want the the public to go wary about what to get at supermarkets and pet stores. Indeed, the news has caused an alarm to pet owners. Cat owner Matthew Geftakis says if the team found something wrong with a specific brand, they should name it to give the public the choice of what to buy. Results Are Only Preliminary Study author Anne Jackson says the results of the study are still preliminary and cannot be absolutely confirmed unless it had been tested in a study that has a larger sample size and scope. This is the reason why it would be wrong for the team to release the names of the companies involved in the testing. Aside from that, the university also said that the trial was a pilot study headed and completed by a master's student as part of her thesis. The study was published in the Australian Veterinary Journal. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. About 10 million years after the dinosaurs went extinct our planet experienced a surge in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere - a climate event called Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM). No one is certain what caused the PETM, but the event had turned temperatures to rise to 5 degrees Celsius (41 degrees Fahrenheit). The Earth continued to warm rapidly, and marine organisms went through die-offs because of ocean acidification. Examining The Past Today, scientists often look to the PETM as an analog for current rising temperatures. In fact, a new study suggests that humans are putting more carbon into the atmosphere at a faster rate than what happened during the PETM. Lead researcher Richard Zeebe, an oceanographer from the University of Hawaii, Manoa, said ecosystems need time to adjust. "We're doing it faster and most likely the consequences are going to be more severe," said Zeebe. Zeebe said that the only event they know at the moment that had a massive carbon release at a short period of time was the PETM. "We actually have to go back to relatively old periods, because in the more recent past, we don't see anything comparable to what humans are currently doing," he said, adding that the PETM is so crucial because it is a possible window on our own situation. A lot of carbon indeed injected themselves into the atmosphere during the PETM, and the warming event that followed it lasted more than 100,000 years. Precisely how rapid the emissions occurred is a different matter. Facing The Future Together with colleagues from the University of California-Riverside and the University of Bristol, researchers examined a deep ocean core of sediment from off the coast of New Jersey in order examined what happened during the PETM. The research team's goal was to figure out the ratios between different isotopes of carbon and oxygen 56 million years ago. It is important to examine the relationship between the two because it would allow researchers to determine how levels of CO 2 in the atmosphere influenced temperatures back then. Zeebe and his colleagues found that there is a gap between time that massive pulses of carbon went into the atmosphere and subsequent warming, because the oceans have larger thermal inertia. A large lag time would suggest greater carbon release, while the lack of lag time would mean that CO 2 came out slowly. About 2,000 to 4,500 billion tons of carbon possibly injected themselves into the atmosphere during the PETM, and that is equivalent to 1 billion tons of carbon emissions per year. Now, humans are releasing 10 million tons of carbon emissions annually, which are impacting the Earth more rapidly. What does this mean for our future? The PETM analogy to our own time is less than perfect, but it suggests that our own era is worse than what happened since the dinosaur extinction. "The two main conclusions is that ocean acidification will be more severe, ecosystems may be hit harder because of the [carbon emission] rate," said Zeebe. This also means that because the carbon emission rate is unprecedented, our planet has effectively entered an era of "no-analog" state, where there is no parallel for the rate of change. It represents a challenge that could constrain future climate projections. The findings of the study are featured in the journal Nature Geoscience. Photo: Anja Pietsch | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. There is an archetype or trope in fiction and mass media called Intelligence Equals Isolation - when a person or character is "very smart," but often suffers for it by being unable to relate to the worries and personalities of their friends, relatives or anybody. Now, a new real-world study may be able to back up this fictional archetype. Evolutionary psychologists from Singapore and London have found that intelligent people find it difficult to engage in social interaction even with their close friends. Measuring Happiness Satoshi Kanazawa of the London School of Economics and Political Science, and Norman Li of Singapore Management University originally dug into the question: what makes a life well-lived? Kanazawa and Li hypothesize that the lifestyle of our hunter-gatherer ancestors forms the foundation of what makes modern humans happy now. They applied a concept called "the savanna theory of happiness" to explain their findings from a large survey that involved 15,000 people, who were 18 to 28 years old. The pair found that people who reside in areas that are densely populated were more likely to report less satisfaction with their life. The greater the population density, the less happy the respondents said they were. Researchers also found that the more interaction the respondents had with their close friends, the greater their self-reported happiness was. There was, however, a huge exception: for intelligent people, the correlations were reversed or diminished. More Alone Time, Please The team measured intelligence through people's intelligent quotient. Although the exact IQ levels of the respondents were not disclosed, the baseline is considered 100, while genius level is at 140. Kanazawa and Li found that the effect of population density on life satisfaction was more than twice as large for individuals with low IQ than for individuals with high IQ. In fact, more intelligent individuals were less satisfied with their life if they socialized with their friends more frequently. In other words: intelligent people tended to need more alone time. If they spend too much time with friends, they would feel less satisfied with life. Carol Graham of Brookings Institution, an expert who studies the economics of happiness, has an explanation why. "The findings in here suggest - and it is no surprise - that those with more intelligence and the capacity to use it ... are less likely to spend so much time socializing because they are focused on some other longer term objective," Graham says. It could be that the person prefers to spend more time treating cancer as a doctor, writing his next book as a novelist, or working to protect vulnerable people in society as a human rights lawyer. Frequent social interaction may seem to detract them to pursue these goals, negatively affecting their life satisfaction. The Link To Our Prehistoric Ancestors However, Kanazawa and Li's savanna theory of happiness explains it differently. It begins with the premise that the human brain evolved to meet the demands of the ancestral environment on the African Savanna, where the population density was similar to rural Alaska, with less than one person per square kilometer. A brain like that in an environment like modern Manhattan would result to evolutionary friction. Still, our prehistoric ancestors who were hunter-gatherers lived in small bands of 150 individuals. "In such settings, having frequent contact with lifelong friends and allies was likely necessary for survival and reproduction for both sexes," researchers said. Kanazawa and Li found a twist: intelligent people may be better equipped to deal with evolutionary changes, so living in an area with high population may have a smaller effect on their overall disposition and well-being. Meanwhile, the study has a caveat: it defines happiness in terms of self-reported satisfaction and does not consider experienced well-being, such as the last time the person laughed or how many times the person has been angry in the past week. Still, Kanazawa and Li said the distinction does not matter for their savanna theory. "Even though our empirical analyses ... used a measure of global life satisfaction, the savanna theory of happiness is not committed to any particular definition and is compatible with any reasonable conception of happiness, subjective well-being, and life satisfaction," researchers said. The study is featured in the British Journal Of Psychology. Photo: Amy West | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The technology industry just lost one of its most influential people in 2016. Andrew S. Grove, the man who helped usher in advancements in computing technology with Intel, the company he co-founded, passed away on March 21 in his home in Los Altos. A spokesperson for the family came forward to reveal that the cause of Grove's death has yet to be determined. Grove was 79 years old at the time of his death. Grove was born in Budapest, Hungary in 1936 and immigrated to the United States sometime between 1956 and 1957. He graduated from the City College of New York with a degree on Chemical Engineering and continued his education until he finally received his Ph.D. in 1963 at the University of California Berkeley. He worked in Research and Development (R&D) in Fairchild Semiconductor where he met and worked under his fellow Intel co-founders. Andrew Grove, or Andy as he came to be known in his years of being active in the tech industry, was Intel's first-ever hired employee and he has been the director of engineering since his first day in the job in 1968. He eventually went on to assume presidency in the company in 1979 and the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) in 1987. Under his leadership, he steered the company from being a maker of memory chips to becoming the leader in semiconductor technology. "Andy made the impossible happen, time and again, and inspired generations of technologists, entrepreneurs, and business leaders," Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said. We stand on the shoulders of giants in our work--none bigger than Andy Grove (1936-2016). You'll be greatly missed. https://t.co/5cxDY92Ah5 Brian Krzanich (@bkrunner) March 22, 2016 Among those who looked up to his leadership and greatly appreciated Grove's innovative thinking is none other than Apple Co-Founder and CEO, Steve Jobs, who we all know also led his own company to greatness. Even Apple's current CEO, Tim Cook, expressed his sorrow for Grove's passing. Andy Grove was one of the giants of the technology world. He loved our country and epitomized America at its best. Rest in peace. Tim Cook (@tim_cook) March 22, 2016 It would come as no surprise that many of the tech industry's leaders today looked up to Grove and Twitter is proof of that on this sad day. RIP Andy Grove, took @intel & its microprocessors to the top, and kept them there: https://t.co/qLDddEDlhe Paul Allen (@PaulGAllen) March 22, 2016 Andy Grove was a pillar in the tech industry, and has left a lasting impression on us all. You will be missed. https://t.co/WXURiLvG9y Yuanqing Yang (@Yuanqing_Lenovo) March 22, 2016 Andy Grove, RIP. Thank you for inspiring all of us who are immigrant founders. Your plain talk will be missed. https://t.co/hfE4cLwxQu Om Malik (@om) March 22, 2016 Of course, it is not only the tech leaders who looked up to him but those who saw the value of his innovative work as well. It's not hyperbole to say there is no modern tech industry without Andy Grove. https://t.co/jjRbc36qcZ Shira Ovide (@ShiraOvide) March 22, 2016 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Findings of a new study suggest that rosacea is associated with increased risk for Parkinson's disease, a central nervous system disorder marked by tremors, impaired balance, slowed movements and thinking problems that can grow worse over time. In a new study published in JAMA Neurology on March 21, Alexander Egeberg from the University of Copenhagen and colleagues gathered more than 5.4 million individuals to look at the risk of Parkinson's disease in those who suffer from rosacea, a chronic skin condition marked by redness in the face. The researchers found that the incidence rate of Parkinson's disease per 10,000 person-years in patients with rosacea was 7.62, which is significantly greater than the 3.54 incidence rate in the general population. They also observed that Parkinson's is likely to occur 2.4 years earlier in those with rosacea. "Rosacea is a common facial skin disorder affecting up to 10 percent of light-skinned individuals, women in particular," Egeberg said. "It is possible that rosacea, or rosacea-associated features, such as facial flushing, may contribute to Parkinson's disease diagnosis at an early stage." The researchers likewise found that the link between the two conditions was associated with rosacea itself and not the medicines used for treatment. Egeberg and colleagues also observed that taking the common rosacea treatment tetracycline was linked with reduced Parkinson's risk among patients. The researchers think that rosacea boosts the level of an enzyme that breaks down protein and also plays a role in Parkinson's disease. Figuring out the connection between the two conditions, however, is difficult because researchers have yet to find out the real cause of both conditions. Experts, however, warned that this does not mean that having rosacea can set off Parkinson's disease. Neurologist Martin Niethammer from Northwell Health's Neuroscience Institute said that the research does not prove a causal relationship between rosacea and Parkinson's disease. It merely showed an association between the two conditions. Writing in a related editorial, Thomas Wingo from the Emory University said that further studies are needed to confirm the researchers' observations. "Although this link may very well be true, what is needed at this time is for another cohort to replicate the findings of Egeberg et al, as they suggest," Wingo wrote. "In addition, their intriguing finding that increased tetracycline use is associated with a small but appreciable reduction in the risk of PD should be further explored." Photo : Dierk Schaefer | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A team of researchers in Queen Mary University of London (QMUL) led by Mathieu Lihoreau conducted a study to learn more about the foraging behavior of bumblebees. The study found that more experienced bumblebees do not readily share foraging techniques. They, in fact, compete with the newbies in pollinating patches of flowers. Pollinating does not happen by accident. Bees need to carefully study complicated routing challenges as they collect pollen and nectar from flower to flower. This task involves knowing how to efficiently pollinate flowers with minimal travel time and distance. "Understanding how bees find and compete for flowers in the landscape is a critical first step to conserving these insects and the essential pollination services they provide to crops and wild plants," said Nigel Raine, an environmental sciences professor and study author. The researchers wanted to find out if bees imitate the experienced bees' sequence of visiting flowers in order to know the best route to take to improve their foraging technique. It was thought that allowing newcomer bees to imitate would save more pollinating time. The study, which was published in the journal PLOS ONE, was the first to look at the foraging routes and techniques of multiple bees in a given time. The researchers wanted to see the behavior of bumblebees when they interact with each other while in a flower. The proponents of the study set up a 20 x 40 meter outdoor flight cage and installed a variety of artificial flowers with controlled nectar flow rates. The artificial flowers have motion-sensitive video cameras to capture the activity. For a given flower, two bees - one newbie and one experienced were allowed to visit a flower. The flower visitation patterns were carefully mapped, interactions were quantified, and foraging successes were compared over one whole day. It was observed that when a newbie tries to copy the sequence of the experienced foragers, they are often attacked and evicted from the flowers. This was despite the availability of other patches of flowers inside the flight cage. This intense competition among foragers sheds light on the process of pollination and how these pollinators eventually learn, on their own, to visit a variety of flowers in a given landscape. "This work helps us understand how animals with relatively simple brains find workable solutions to complex route-finding problems," said Raine. These foraging habits of well-known pollinators are important for crops, as another study claims that the bumblebee population is facing extinction due to climate change. Photo: Ervins Strauhmanis | Flickr 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Scarlet fever is a disease known to be widespread during the Victorian era, and there has been a significant decrease in recorded cases over the years. However, this illness seems to be making a comeback as recent years show a rapid increase in recorded cases. Scarlet fever outbreaks have been tracked in Asia and Europe. There have been more than 100,000 cases in China over the past five years, and in the UK, there have been at least 12,000 cases since 2014. The numbers of cases are staggering. In the data published by Public Health England (PHE), there were 2,830 cases from September 2013 to March 2014 and 5,746 cases from September 2014 to March 2015. In 2015 alone, there were 17,586 cases recorded in England and Wales. The cause of this sudden increase in the number of cases is still unclear. Some experts believe that it could be due to a new strain. PHE expects that there would be a significant increase in the number of cases in the coming weeks as the illness is likely to occur in late March to mid-April. Medical practitioners are pushing toward educating primary caregivers and health professionals alike about how to detect early signs and symptoms so proper treatment can be initiated. What We Know About Scarlet Fever Scarlet fever affects children, about 80 percent of whom are less than 10 years old, but anyone can get the illness when highly exposed to an infected individual. Scarlet fever is highly contagious and is spread through airborne droplets when an infected person sneezes and coughs. It can also be spread when one is in contact with an infected skin infection or sharing baths, towels, clothes or bed sheets with an infected person. It is also important to note that it may also be transmitted via carriers, or asymptomatic patients who have the bacteria on their skin or on their throat. Schools and nurseries are often affected by outbreaks because the children are often in close contact with one another. Signs And Symptoms Of Scarlet Fever Patients with scarlet fever would initially complain of sore throat or a skin rash, particularly impetigo, caused by streptococcus bacteria. Patients would also complain of headache, swollen tongue (strawberry tongue), and high fever (38.3C/101F or higher). About two days into the illness, a characteristic pinkish rash on the chest and stomach becomes visible. It later spreads to the other areas, such as the neck and ears. Symptoms are commonly seen within two to five days after the onset of the infection. The incubation period (time of exposure to appearance of symptoms) is one to seven days. The skin rash is itchy and feels like sandpaper to the touch. The cheeks may also become noticeably flushed, with areas around the mouth appearing pale. Pastia's lines, or rashes that are brighter red compared to other rashes, are common in elbows, underarms and skin creases. As the rashes start to heal, peeling may occur and may last for a few weeks. Diagnosis, Treatment And Prognosis Group A streptococcus (GAS) infections can be easily diagnosed by a thorough history and physical exam. Laboratory tests, such as microbiological culture of the skin infection, may also be helpful. Some doctors may also request for serology. Public Health England recommends storing isolates from health care-associated infections for a minimum of six months. Scarlet fever lasts for a week and patients should be seen by a medical doctor for proper diagnosis and treatment. Doctors may prescribe caregivers to give liquid antibiotics, like amoxicillin. Recovery may be noted after four to five days of antibiotics but the recommended course of antibiotic treatment must be completed. Those with scarlet fever are still highly contagious 24 hours after the first antibiotic administration and they are advised against interacting with playmates, schoolmates or other young children at this time. Infected children will still be contagious for one to two weeks after the initial appearance of symptoms if they are not given the proper antibiotic treatment. Complications Of Scarlet Fever Once infected children are on antibiotics, complications are highly unlikely but one should note that there is still the risk of the spread of infection other body parts that may lead to infections. Some patients develop sinusitis, ear infection, or pneumonia. Other notable health problems associated with scarlet fever include post-streptococcal glomerulonephritis, arthritis, throat abscess and rheumatic fever. At present, no vaccine is available for scarlet fever. To avoid spreading the disease, infected school children should not attend school 24 hours after antibiotic treatment. Infected adults are also advised to call in sick a day after the initial antibiotic treatment. Proper hygiene should also be emphasized to school children. Covering the mouth and nose while coughing or sneezing and washing their hands thoroughly with soap and water can significantly curb the spread of the bacteria. Infected individuals are also advised to refrain from sharing utensils, cups, towels, bed sheets and clothes. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Carnival Cruises has been granted permission by Cuba to hold cruise ship trips from the U.S. to Cuba starting in May. Carnival has previously announced in July that it was given permission by the U.S. government to hold cruises to the Caribbean island nation, arguably one of the most popular geographic destinations for cruise trips, but this was not a done-deal yet since the final OK is still contingent on Cuba's approval. Following President Obama's recent historic trip to Cuba, the Cuban government has agreed to lessen the economic and travel restrictions which stem from Cuba's long-running U.S. trade embargo which is still currently in effect but has allowed "people-to-people" travel. "This is a historic opportunity, and we know there is pent-up demand amongst Americans who want to experience Cuba," says Carnival CEO Arnold Donald. Carnival is one of the several U.S. based companies lining up for the much-awaited Caribbean nation's opening to U.S. tourists. The Fathom line of the cruise giant, Carnival's Florida-based division which specializes in round-trip voyages from Miami to Cuba and the Dominican Republic, announced that it is "proud to be the first cruise ship company to be granted U.S. approval for round-trip travel between the U.S. and multiple destinations in Cuba" which include port cities of Havana, Cienfuegos, and Santiago de Cuba. These trips are authorized under current people-to-people travel guidelines as set forth by the American government. Fathom now accepts bookings for the upcoming cruises. According to Donald, other Carnival brands besides Fathom are also given permission to sail. However, it is going to take some time before the other brands can follow suit because Cuban ports have a limited number of berths and current port infrastructures might not adequately accommodate a large number of other ships. Fathom is set to have weekly trips to the Dominican Republic starting in April. Carnival plans to alternate cruise travels between the two countries. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. There's a twist in tale in the ongoing legal tussle between Apple and the FBI. The FBI says it does not need Apple's assistance to crack the iPhone used by the San Bernardino mass shooter because it has discovered a means of breaking into the device. The FBI filed a motion with the court to delay Tuesday's hearing in the San Bernardino iPhone case. The agency claimed that it could crack the iPhone used by Syed Farook by enlisting the help of an "outside party" sans Apple's aid. "On Sunday, March 20, 2016, an outside party demonstrated to the FBI a possible method for unlocking Farook's iPhone," wrote the government lawyers in the court filing on Monday afternoon. The unlocking procedure will be tested first to see if it is a feasible method that will not compromise the data on the iPhone. If it proves to be viable, then the FBI would no longer need Apple's assistance, as laid down in the All Writs Act Order. The motion to postpone the Tuesday hearing comes several weeks after the case became the center of a privacy debate with Apple, FBI and several stakeholders locking horns publicly. The court has agreed to the FBI's plea and suspended the encryption hearing. The hearing for Tuesday, March 22, at an L.A. court has now been "Vacated" and the government has been ordered to file a "status report" by April 5 by U.S. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym. The method the FBI will be deploying and who is helping it crack the iPhone are not clear. For those thinking the NSA could be the "outside party," the filing suggests that the FBI is getting aid from "outside the U.S. government." "As the FBI continued to conduct its own research, and as a result of the worldwide publicity and attention on this case, others outside the U.S. government have continued to contact the U.S. government offering avenues of possible research," states the filing. Whether this is a ploy on the FBI's part to coerce Apple into creating a back door that will help the agency bypass the encryption security measures is unclear. The FBI will be submitting a status report before the court by April 5, which will reveal if the mysterious iPhone hack by the government works or not. If the FBI's unlocking method is successful, then the motion aimed at compelling Apple to aid and develop a "GovtOS" system capable of breaking security will be dropped. The standoff between the Department of Justice and Apple - in such an event - would finally come to a close. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Apple recently rolled out its iPhone SE, a 4-inch smartphone packing vigorous technical specs, a sleek design and an affordable price. If you live in the United States, that is. Global markets saw unexpectedly high price tags for the latest iPhone, and we rounded up the details so you know what to expect. For example, Australian Apple fans can purchase the 16 GB variant of iPhone SE for about $679 AUD. This is surprising as the U.S. price for the device sits at $399 USD, which after conversion would amount to $525 AUD. With the VAT-less price building up to about $617, it looks like the OEM asks its Australian customers to shell out $62 more than they should. Canada presents a similar situation. The iPhone SE sells for $579 CAD. Should the exchange rate be applied, the final price should be no more than $522. Regardless of whether you want to buy a 16 GB and 64 GB iPhone SE, a $55 premium topping the U.S. pricing is in store. It also should be noted that Canada treats VAT differently from other countries, as the Canadian sales tax gets piled to the price at the time of purchase. In the UK, the premium varies between 20 to 25 after both VAT and exchange rate. It should be noted that as the forex market shows increased signs of volatility, the prices and differences might vary significantly. In Continental Europe we see the same trend in the iPhone SE's price. Countries such as Germany, France, Spain and Italy sell the device for a starting price of 489 (16 GB model) and 589 (64 GB model). In comparison, the U.S. prices of the handset are $399 for the 16 GB model (equivalent of 355) and $499 USD for the 64 GB model (equivalent of 444). Countries from Asia follow the same pattern. A look at the price tag of the smartphone in Hong Kong, China, Japan, Singapore and New Zealand will show a similar trend. "iPhone SE is an exciting new idea we started with a beloved, iconic design and reinvented it from the inside out," says Apple's senior VP of Worldwide Marketing, Philip Schiller. He went on to say that the device is the most powerful 4-inch phone ever released. You may want to check out its specs and features in our special coverage. Apple also talked about availability in its press release. Orders for the iPhone SE can be placed starting March 24, with availability debuting March 31 if you order in one of the following countries: the U.S., U.S. Virgin Islands, the UK, Singapore, Puerto Rico, New Zealand, Japan, Hong Kong, Germany, France, China, Canada and Australia. An additional long list of nations will receive the gadget in early April. These include the rest of the countries from the EU, as well as others such as Albania, Andorra, Bahrain, Guernsey, Jersey, India, Isle of Man, Kosovo, Kuwait, Liechtenstein, Macedonia, Maldives, Monaco, Norway, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Switzerland, Taiwan, Turkey and United Arab Emirates. The new iPhone SE made its debut during the same event as Apple's new 9.7-inch iPad Pro. You should know that the tablet also comes with higher prices in overseas markets, so you may want to buy it from the U.S. if you can. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The Donetsk City Court of the Rostov region sentenced Ukrainian pilot Nadia Savchenko, who is indicted in the assassination case of Russian journalists, to 22 years in a penal colony. The sentence by the collegium of judges holds this, an Interfax correspondent reports. Additionally, the term during which Savchenko has been kept under arrest since June 30, 2014, has been counted as penalty. Thus, Savchenko is due to serve a term of 20 years in a penal colony. FordPass is just days away from launching in April. With the digital mobility platform promising to arm users with a "smarter way to move," members of the impending FordPass will always be grooving while they commute, too. That's because, on Tuesday, Ford announced that its FordPass has struck a partnership with Spotify. "The FordPass platform is about understanding people's needs and developing great experiences and ways to help them move better," Elena Ford, the automaker's vice president of global dealer and consumer experience, said in the company's press release statement. "The combination of FordPass and Spotify will create a great music experience both inside and outside of the vehicle." This is all a part of Ford expanding from an automaker into a mobility company, with FordPass attempting to be the mobility experience platform to car owners what iTunes was for music fans in reshaping the entire experience. The partnership with Spotify more than makes sense, considering FordPass will be aiming to tap into the 900-plus hours that people spend on the move annually, with the streaming music service ensuring that users are at least entertained while doing so. "Our goal is to light up the FordPass experience with music," Jorge Espinel, Spotify's vice president for business development, said as part of Ford's press release Tuesday. "We want to be everywhere fans listen to music, and this partnership deepens our relationship with Ford and FordPass members." In addition to Spotify, Ford says its FordPass will also be partnering with providers of news, sports, audiobooks and children's programming to expand the entire experience. Overall, FordPass aims to make the entire experience of traveling that much more efficient, digitally offering up everything from one-on-one help with your vehicle to smart parking features and connectivity, while even giving users reward perks along the way. FordPass is just part of the company's Smart Mobility blueprint to extend the company from an established automaker, bringing it into the worlds of connectivity, mobility, autonomous vehicles and an enhanced customer experience with data and analytics. To the latter, Ford will also be introducing physical FordHubs as destinations aimed to "help shape the future at new mobility experience centers," with the first of such locations slated to open at Westfield World Trade Center in New York City later this year. 2022 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Tech firm warns that hackers can now hack web-connected sex toys easily If hacking computers and mobile phones was not enough, hackers are now threatening to hack your intimate moments too. As more and more devices become connected to the internet, security researchers have warned that quick-witted hackers can easily take control of sex toys connected to the internet. To demonstrate that everything thats connected to the Internet is susceptible to attacks, security firm Trend Micros spokesman Udo Schneider hacked into a large, neon-pink web-connected vibrator at the CeBIT technology fair in Germany this week. The sex toy was brought to life by typing out a few lines of code on his laptop. While the stunt triggered sheepish giggles, the message was sobering. As the number of smart, interactive devices connected to the internet blows up, concern is rising about insufficient protections and a lack of consumer and employee awareness. If I hack a vibrator its just fun, Raimund Genes, Chief Technology Officer at Tokyo-listed Trend Micro, told reporters at the CeBIT technology fair in Hanover. But if I can get to the back-end, I can blackmail the manufacturer, he added, referring to the programming system behind a devices interface. According to the governments latest IT Security Report, Germany, who is hosting CeBIT and is home to world champion manufacturers, offers rich pickings for hackers, with attacks on industrial production sites increasing. Germany in the recent past has also witnessed various German businesses, hospitals and even the government being targeted by hackers. In 2014, a German steel mill suffered massive damage, after cyber attackers got into the computer network. In recent weeks, numerous German hospitals have come under attack from Ransomware, a virus that encrypts data on infected machines and demands that users pay to get an electronic key to unlock it. The German government got its own wake-up call last year, when the lower house of parliament in Germany was attacked by hackers, who compelled it to shut down the system for a few days and compromising large amounts of data. Dirk Arendt, director of public affairs at Israeli cyber security firm Check Point Software Technologies, said, If someone decided to start shooting with a pistol from the roof of the Reichstag (parliament), security guards would be all over them. But when data are siphoned off for months, no one bats an eyelid. There is a lack of awareness. In July last year, Germany approved an IT security law to respond to the increasing growing threat. This law orders 2,000 providers of critical infrastructure to implement minimum security standards and report serious breaches or face penalties. According to IT lobby group Bitkom, 51% of companies in Germany have been victims of digital espionage, data theft or sabotage in the past two years. Two-thirds of the countrys SMEs have registered attacks and 84 per cent of managers expect the situation will get even worse with the growing connectivity. On the other hand, there are several sex toy manufacturers who have launched products that can connect to smartphones and computers via WiFi and Bluetooth, allowing users to control them and download software updates. According to experts, companies very often treat security as an afterthought when producing Internet-enabled devices. The problem here is that many Internet of Things devices [smart devices connected to the Internet] are horribly broken security-wise because it costs money to ensure a reasonable standard of protection on a product, Chris Boyd, an analyst at the security firm Malwarebytes, told Newsweek in a recent interview. Some modern sex toys even include webcams that can be used to communicate with partners remotely. This opens up the possibility of hackers intercepting devices and secretly spy on the user. However, manufacturers have been quick to stand behind the security of their products. There are three layers of security, Sex toy maker Lovense said in a statement. The server side, the way we transfer information from the users phone to our server and on the client side. We take our customers private data very seriously, which is why we dont serve any on our servers. While Germans are watchful about data protection because of their experience of state surveillance by the Stasi secret police in East Germany and the Gestapo under the Nazis, Arendt said more attention is required to be paid to data security. He added that employees need to be made aware of the dangers of opening suspicious-looking PDFs in the same way that motorists are warned by giant roadside signs not to speed. We only wake up when the damage is done, he said. There are enough examples of successful hacking cases. Now the next steps need to be taken to get back into a secure area. FBI says it may not need Apples help to unlock San Bernardino iPhone After all the hype and hoopla surrounding the U.S. government request to Apple for unlocking the San Bernardino shooters iPhone, the U.S. government may not need Apple to unlock the iPhone. The issue one which everyone was either with Apple or with the U.S. government could used by the San Bernardino shooter, the FBI told a judge Monday. A federal judge agreed to postpone a Tuesday court in the FBI vs. Apple case at the FBIs request, after the FBI told the judge that a third party had demonstrated an alternate method for unlocking the iPhone used by the accused terrorist. According to FBI filing, the agency needs more time to test the method revealed at the weekend, which would eliminate the need for Apple to cooperate with it in one of the most controversial case of recent times. Instead of Tuesdays hearing, United States Magistrate Judge Sherri Pym ordered the government to file a status update by April 5. Paris terrorists relied on prepaid phones, and not encryption, to evade detection According to a recent report by The New York Times, it claims that the Paris terrorists used prepaid burner phones and not encryption phones to carry out the terror attacks on Paris last November, which also helped them evade detection. The details of the attacks were compiled on a 55-page report by the French anti-terrorism police for Frances Interior Ministry, which was apparently handed by someone over to the NY Times as well. This report shows that encryption had a small to non-existent role in the Paris attacks. The terrorists used either new phones or phones that were taken from their victims in order to communicate with each other. And the terrorists discarded all of them, with one attacker activating a phone less than an hour before he carried out a suicide attack, according to the report. The newest details revealed by the NY Times also about how at least nine suspects planned and carried out the attacks. Investigators are still piecing together the events that immediately preceded the attacks and hope to collect details from the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, the suspected logistics chief of the attack who was apprehended in Brussels on Friday. The events have also helped inspire an international conversation over the use of mobile encryption, a widely adopted means of increased data security that protects the integrity of a message while in many cases making it impossible for authorities to access those communications before its too late. Everywhere they went, the attackers left behind their throwaway phones, including in Bobigny, at a villa rented in the name of Ibrahim Abdeslam, the Times reported. When the brigade charged with sweeping the location arrived, it found two unused cell phones still inside their boxes. However, what is interesting is that among all the burner phones, there wasnt a single e-mail or online chat message that was found. In other words, the attackers seemed to have known such communication venues would be under surveillance by the intelligence agencies, which likely lead them to depend on regular cellular network calls instead of encryption. The information has been picked up privacy advocates as further evidence that encryption was not the main mechanism that allowed the terrorists to avoid detection for the months leading up to the attack. In other words, it shows how effective the use of burner phones still is. The report as a result has the potential to undermine the argument that encryption creates an environment for terrorists to freely communicate with each other, the same argument currently used by the FBI and other agencies. One witness described as seeing one of the terrorists on a laptop using what looked like encryption software that ISIS claimed to have used during the Paris attacks. However, some have pointed out that they most likely witnessed a Verbose Boot instead, or a boot that allows the user to see the code output when your computer boots up. However, many were quick to criticize the connection. The witness probably wasnt looking at some encryption software in action, because such systems show the decrypted message, not the encrypted form. Julian Sanchez, a tech and privacy-focused senior fellow at the Cato Institute, tweeted that the incident is more suggestive of a verbose boot, which starts up a device in a single-user mode. Using encryption looks like reading a message because you decrypt it first, he added. Currently, it appears likely that encryption played little or no part in the Paris terrorist attacks until there are stronger evidences are obtained that prove otherwise. We've noticed you're adblocking. We rely on advertising to help fund our award-winning journalism. We urge you to turn off your ad blocker for The Telegraph website so that you can continue to access our quality content in the future. Thank you for your support. German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier hopes for a swift and humane resolution in the Savchenko case. "We are watching very closely the developments in this case, not least because we are concerned by Ms Savchenko's health condition. I hope all parties in this case will soon be able to agree upon a humane solution," he said in an exclusive interview with Interfax ahead of his visit to Moscow. The Donetsk city court on Tuesday in Rostov region sentenced Savchenko to 22 years of imprisonment after finding her guilty of complicity in the murder of two Russian journalists. The term takes into account the time Savchenko has spent in custody since June 30, 2014. This called for New Years Day to be celebrated on January 1 instead of the end of March. But some people apparently didn't get the memo and continued to celebrate New Years Day on April 1. These poor folk were made fun of and were sent on fools errands for a laugh. However, others think April Fool's Day stems from the age when people used to hold spring festivals marking the end of winter with 'mayhem and misrule', according to the Museum of Hoaxes. The Ancient Roman festival of Hilaria celebrated the resurrection of the god Attis and involved dressing in disguise. Many other cultures have held renewal festivals in Europe around April 1 and there are refereces to these dating back to the 1500s. What is clear though is that by the 1700s, the day of hilarity was well entrenched in Britain, and now April 1 is officially the most amusing day of the year. What easy pranks can I play? Finance Minister of Ukraine Natalie Jaresko has stated she is ready to form a technocratic government, whose ministers do not have political past, are not subordinate to any oligarch, or are the "friends" of politicians, and who have no future political ambitions. "I'm ready to gather such a team that right now is able to work in the interests of the whole country, all its citizens, but not in the interests of certain political or business groups," Jaresko wrote on her Facebook page. AFP is reporting more details about the 31 victims of Tuesday's attacks in Brussels. Sascha and Alexander Pinczowski, Dutch siblings who had been living in New York for years, were confirmed earlier as two of the three Dutch nationals to have died in the attacks. Local media have now named the third Dutch victim as Elita Weah, 41, who was travelling to her stepfather's funeral in the United States. Elita Weah was on her way to Providence for the funeral of her stepfather. Family speaks on @nbc10 @ 11. pic.twitter.com/ahso8SUZel Brian Crandall (@nbc10_brian) March 26, 2016 Another victim was 48-year-old Italian Patricia Rizzo, who had been working in Brussels for several months for the European Research Council Executive Agency (ERCEA) and was killed in the metro. Rome confirmed her death and her cousin Massimo Leone paid tribute to her on Facebook, posting photos and the message: "Patricia, I miss you, we all miss you." Bruxelles: Patricia Rizzo e morta nellattentato al metro. La comunicazione della Farnesina https://t.co/OmDPbm0pE3 pic.twitter.com/jEHp4xpMPo Firenze Post (@FirenzePost) March 25, 2016 In Paris, the government announced that a Frenchman had died and 12 other citizens were injured, three of them seriously. The Chinese embassy in Belgium also said a Chinese citizen had been killed, without giving details. Madrid confirmed the death of a Spanish woman with Italian and German nationality, who El Pais newspaper suggested could be the German victim. Jennifer Garcia Scintu, 29, had reportedly been on her way to New York with her German husband, who was injured. Jennifer Garcia Scintu, de 29 anos, es la espanola fallecida en los atentados de Bruselas https://t.co/PHkJmn3pAh pic.twitter.com/IM6Ubqbs6d Europa Press (@europapress) March 25, 2016 Reflecting the cosmopolitan nature of Brussels, the symbolic capital of Europe, victims came from as far afield as Morocco, Peru, China and the United States, as well as neighbouring France and the Netherlands. On Wednesday, March 23, at 11.00, the Interfax-Ukraine news agency's press center will host a press conference "Problematic Issues of Funding of Vocational Schools." The participants will include Head of Kyiv Regional Council Hanna Starykova, Chair of the Permanent Commission of Kyiv Regional Council for Budget and Financing Olha Babiy and Chair of the Permanent Commission of Kyiv Regional Council for Education, Science, Culture, Spirituality and Religion Anatoliy Danylenko (8/5A Reitarska Street). Accreditation of journalists by phones: (098) 177 5722, (044) 285 7677 (Iryna). South Korea's 1st Outbreak Of Zika Virus Brought Back From Brazil By 43-Year-Old Gwangyang Man A 43-year-old man from the city of Gwangyang in South Jeolla Province has brought South Korea's first case of the Zika virus back from a three-week trip to Brazil. The man is currently receiving treatment in the South Korean city of Gwangju, according to a BBC report on Tuesday. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) the Zika patient was in Brazil between Feb. 17 and March 9, returning to Gwangyang on March 11, after a brief layover in Germany. On March 16, he reportedly went to a local medical clinic after running a fever. Despite telling his doctors he had recently been in Brazil, they allowed the man to go home, according to the Korea JoongAng Daily. Advertisement Despite local medical procedure requiring that government health officials be notified immediately, it wasn't until the patient returned to the facility on Monday, this time with a rash and muscle cramps, that the clinic alerted the Gwangyang Public Health Center. Test results for Zika virus came back positive on Monday. "The patient was bitten by a mosquito during the business trip and did not have any suspicious symptoms when he returned," CDC Director Jung Ki Suk said Tuesday. "He is the first case of a Zika patient in Korea, and we are monitoring him clinically," Jang said. Transmitted by Aedes mosquitos, Zika symptoms include fever, skin rashes, muscle and joint pain, conjunctivitis, malaise or headaches. These symptoms normally last up to a week. The long-term effects have been linked to birth defects, as explained by a World Health Organization report from Friday. "During large outbreaks in French Polynesia and Brazil in 2013 and 2015 respectively, national health authorities reported potential neurological and auto-immune complications of Zika virus disease," the report read. "Recently in Brazil, local health authorities have observed an increase in Guillain-Barre syndrome, which coincided with Zika virus infections in the general public, as well as an increase in babies born with microcephaly in northeast Brazil." Advertisement Advertisement Like us and Follow us Follow @Koreaportal and 2022 Korea Portal, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The Conagua indicated that the atmospheric phenomenon registered maximum sustained winds of 140 kilometers per hour with gusts of up to 165 kilometers per hour. | Read More The world's largest aircraft has been unveiled for the first time since being fully assembled in the UK. The 302ft (92m) long Airlander 10 - part plane, part airship - was floated in a First World War hangar in Bedfordshire. Photographers struggled to capture the whole length of the aircraft, which is around 50ft (15m) longer than the biggest passenger jets, ahead of its inaugural flight later this year. The world's largest aircraft has been unveiled for the first time since being fully assembled in the UK. The 302ft (92m) long Airlander 10 - part plane, part airship - was floated in a First World War hangar in Bedfordshire. The craft's fully assembled motors and fins are pictured Photographers struggled to capture the whole length of the aircraft (pictured), which is around 50ft (15m) longer than the biggest passenger jets, ahead of its inaugural flight later this year The ship was first developed for the US government as a long-endurance surveillance aircraft but it fell foul of defence cutbacks. British firm Hybrid Air Vehicles (HAV) launched a campaign to return the Airlander 10 to the skies in May 2015 and it will now carry out ground testing before 200 hours of test flights begin later this year. The ship is being converted to provide business and leisure flights in a hangar in Cardington, Bedfordshire. The first giant fin was attached to the ship, officially called the 'Airlander 10', last month according to Hybrid Air Vehicles who is constructing the aircraft, and now the remaining fin and parts have been attached. U.S. federal prosecutors will not file new charges against Dr. Xi Xiaoxing, a Temple University professor who had been accused of scheming to provide classified U.S. technology to China. Xis seized property will also be returned, said Michael A. Schwartz, one of Xi's lawyers, on Monday. Last May, the U.S. Department of Justice arrested 57-year-old Xi, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in China, and accused him of "sharing sensitive American-made technology with China." He was charged with wire fraud, allegedly involving in the transfer of technology to entities in China while he worked with a U.S. company developing a thin-film superconducting device containing magnesium diboride in 2002. But a few months later, independent experts discovered something wrong with the evidence. The technology discussed in Dr. Xi's emails to scientists in China was not sensitive or restricted. Therefore, in September 2015, the U.S. Department of Justice dropped all charges against Dr. Xi. Xi's other lawyer, Peter Zeidenberg, said it appeared that the government never consulted with experts before taking the case to a grand jury. As a result, prosecutors misconstrued the evidence, according to the New York Times. Xi was chairman of the university's physics department until his arrest. He currently remains a faculty member. Mohan Lal Shocker To Janata Garage Makers Malayalam Superstar Mohanlal is making a comeback to Telugu film industry after a long with Young Tiger NTR's Janatha Garage. Now an interesting news about the actor's remuneration was doing rounds.The national award winning actor was reportedly offered Rs. 1.5 crores and the film's Malayalam rights as his remuneration by the filmmakers. Basing on the market of NTR's previous films in Kerala, the makers arrived at a conclusion that the rights will not be sold for big amount in Kerala and offered the deal. Mohanlal later shocked the producers by selling the Malayalam rights for close to 4.5 crores. This leaves the actor with a cool 5.5 crores in his pocket. Mohanlal is now laughing all the way to the bank with a grand total of Rs. 5.50 crores.NTR completed Janatha Garage shoot in Mumbai schedule and back to Hyderabad!Next schedule most likely start in a week from now. It's a story that unfolds within a family between two cousins. NTR and Unni will be seen as cousins at loggerheads. The film, which will be directed by Koratala Siva, stars Junior NTR and Samantha Ruth Prabhu in the lead.Produced by Mythri Movie Makers, the film will have music by Devi Sri Prasad. News Posted: 21 March, 2016 Deputy Speaker Left Teary Eyed In TS Assembly In a shocking incident, Deputy Speaker of Telangana Assembly Padma Devender Reddy burst into tears after Congress MLA DK Aruna made some alleged disparaging comments on her on Tuesday.During the debate on the annual budget, DK Aruna made some comments when the speaker tried to object her. Pained with the comments of Aruna the speaker left into tears. Minister Harish Rao demanded an apology from DK Aruna and even threatened to move a resolution to suspend her from the house. Leader of the Opposition Jana Reddy called for restraint from all both the sides and asked for the debate to continue. Aruna refused to issue apology for her comments. Deputy speaker said that she was leaving the matter to the wisdom of the MLA. Watch the video below http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvl4K4jE93o News Posted: 22 March, 2016 330 new agricultural godowns by July: Harish Rao Hyderabad, March 22 (INN): Irrigation & Marketing Minister T. Harish Rao on Tuesday informed the Telangana Legislative Assembly that the State Government was constructing 330 godowns across the State. Replying to a question raised by MLA Aroori Ramesh and others during Question Hour, the minister said that during the previous Congress regime the overall capacity of godowns was just 4.14 Lakh Metric Tonnes. However, the TRS Government, in just one year, increased the capacity by almost four times to 17.075 Lakh MTs. These 330 godowns are being constructed with assistance from NABARD. In the first phase, 128 godowns with a capacity of 6.85 Lakh MTs are being constructed while 202 godowns with a capacity of 10.225 lakh MTs will be taken up in second phase. Harish Rao said that the 1st phase godowns were at different stages, i.e., Lintel Level, Roof Level and Final Stages. These are expected to be completed in the month of April 2016. The 2nd phase godowns are at foundation and basement levels. These are expected to be completed in the month of July 2016. Of 330 godowns, 54 are in Mahabubnagar; 43 in Medak; 19 in Ranga Reddy; 31 in Nalgonda; 25 in Khammam; 32 in Nizamabad; 45 in Warangal; 36 in Karimnagar and 45 in Adilabad district. The minister informed that the amount spent for construction of godowns so far was Rs. 47.61 crore and there was no Central contribution. He said efforts were on to generate 50 MW Solar Polar exclusively for these godowns. He said various Central agencies have been consulted for this purpose. Once operational, these godowns would provide great relief to farmers as they would be able to store their produce for six month at free of cost. News Posted: 22 March, 2016 Kanhaiya Kumar to visit HCU Hyderabad, March 22 (INN): JNU Students Union President Kanhaiya Kumar will visit the University of Hyderabad on Wednesday. Kanhaiya Kumar will attend a programme, organised by Joint Action Committee for Justice for Rohith Vemula. First, he will meet the family members of Rohith and then he will go to the HCU to address the students' community. On March 24, Kanhaiya Kumar will go to Vijayawada and at the Press Club, he will address the students and members of civil society. News Posted: 22 March, 2016 The blasts scene at Brussels Zaventem Airport. [Photo: cnr.cn] European governments moved swiftly to beef up security in the wake of the attacks in Brussels which officials say killed many people and injured hundreds. In London Prime Minister David Cameron chaired a meeting of COBRA, the government committee which coordinates security in the UK. It groups senior cabinet ministers, intelligence chiefs, senior police officers and military officers, including those from the elite SAS regiment. Similar meetings were taking place in Paris, Berlin and other key European capitals, and officials said extra security was being put in place at airports and travel hubs throughout the continent. In France, President Francois Hollande ordered an extra 1,600 police and paramilitary officers onto the streets of Paris. Security and police checks were also established at borders throughout the Schengen area of mainland western Europe, normally open to free travel between countries, officials said. In Germany extra security was drafted in to cover key public areas as well as airports and railway stations, according to local media. The British Broadcasting Corporation put the death toll at 26, of which 11 were killed at Zaventem Airport and 15 dead at Maelbeek metro station, near the area where many EU offices are located. At least 90 were injured, the BBC said. Hollande told reporters "This is a war against terrorists. France has moved to consolidate our borders. It will be a long war, but we should be calm and determined. "Today we are with Belgium. It was Europe that was targeted, and we should be united," he added. London mayor Boris Johnson said "We are stepping up the security presence at major security hubs. This is partly for security and partly for reassurance purposes." Police in the British capital patrolled rail stations and airports armed with semi-automatic weapons, a rare sight in a country where the police are not routinely armed. Dogs trained in sniffing explosives were also deployed, security officials said. Long queues formed at London"s airports, in part because of increased security checks on passengers, and in part because of delayed and cancelled flights. Brussels airport, scene of two bomb blasts, was closed, and the flight situation in Europe was compounded by a strike involving French air traffic controllers, UK television channels reported. In Belgium armed soldiers patrolled the streets as the security threat was raised to the highest level. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel cancelled a planned trip to China because of the situation. Michel said he was sending up to 200 extra troops to the capital to join those already deployed, and added: "What we feared has happened. It is a black moment in our country. We should face up to this challenge by being united, and coming together." In the UK the threat level from international terror attacks was severe, which means an attack is considered likely. UK security officials who requested anonymity said intelligence monitoring was being shared with other security services in Europe, including so-called "chatter" on mobile devices and social media which often immediately precede an attack. Governments throughout Europe had been on alert since gun and bomb attacks in Paris on November 13 killed 130 people and wounded hundreds of others. The suspects, many of whom died in the attacks, were traced to the Molenbeek area of Brussels, home to many migrants. The main suspect, Salah Abdelslam, was arrested by Belgian police and special forces troops after a gun battle in Molenbeek four days ago. Government officials throughout Europe have said they feared an attack as a result of Abdelslam"s arrest, which was hailed as a breakthrough by intelligence chiefs. French media reports said officials were sifting through the debris from today"s Brussels attacks for evidence of suicide vests, which they hoped may offer DNA and other traces to link them with the abandoned vest found after the Paris attacks in November. >>>Related: At least 26 dead, 136 injured at Brussels explosions At least 26 people were killed and 136 injured in explosions on Tuesday at Brussels airport and on a city subway train, according to the latest figures published by Belgian media. Police raids under way in Brussels in connection with attacks Belgian police are raiding several places in Brussels following deadly blasts killing at least 26, public broadcaster RTBF reported on Tuesday. "Dark tragedy for our country": Belgian PM Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel has urged Belgians to "be calm and show solidarity" following Tuesday morning's explosions in Brussels. Urgent: Brussels airport explosion suicide bombing: official An explosion at Brussels airport on Tuesday morning was a suicide attack, officials confirmed. Terror threat level in Belgium raised to maximum after Brussels airport explosions The terror threat level in Belgium has been raised to the maximum, level 4, after two explosions in the departures hall at Brussels airport on Tuesday morning. Metro, tram, bus services shut down following explosions in Brussels All metro, tram and bus services have been shut down following explosions in the Brussels airport and the Maelbeek station close to the European Union institutions in the city center on Tuesday, the city's public transport operator STIB announced. Explosions heard at Brussels airport, metro station Two explosions were heard at Brussels Zaventem airport and another explosion was also reported at Maelbeek metro station which was around the European Union area, Belgian media reported. Cuba's President Raul Castro (R) and U.S. President Barack Obama(L) attend a press conference at the Revolution Palace in Havana, capital of Cuba, on March 21, 2016. Raul Castro and Barack Obama on Monday expressed the willingness to continue the process of the normalization of bilateral relations on the basis of respect and national sovereignty. (Xinhua/Joaquin HAVANA, March 21 -- In a press conference on Monday, Cuban leader Raul Castro and U.S. President Barack Obama reviewed the two countries' conflicts, focusing on the continuing economic embargo and the Guantanamo Naval Base. While the historic trip of Obama to Cuba is seen a major step in thawing relations, this conference was a stark reminder of the conflicts that still divide the two governments. The two men stated their readiness to work together on common challenges, but Castro did not deviate from the grievances standing in the way of the normalization of ties. "The blockade remains in force, it contains discouraging elements, intimidating effects and is guilty of extraterritorial outreach," said Castro. "Much more could be done if the blockade was lifted. We recognize the position of President Obama against the blockade and his repeated appeals to Congress to have it removed. However, the most reasonable measures by his administration are positive but insufficient," he added. Castro also demanded the return of "the territory illegally occupied by the Guantanamo Base." The U.S. first leased the Guantanamo Bay camp from Cuba in 1903, for which it pays a ludicrously low rent of 4,085 U.S. dollars a year. Havana has been demanding its return ever since the Cuban revolution in 1959. Castro also lambasted Washington for its continued intervention in Cuban affairs, saying that "nobody should demand that the Cuban people renounce their freedom and sovereignty." Castro acknowledged deep differences on "political systems, democracy, human rights, social justice, and world peace" between the two sides. He also chastised the U.S. for not ensuring people's right to "healthcare, education, social security, food, development and equal pay." Concerning the issue of human rights, on which the United Stateshas openly demanded changes in Cuba, Castro said that no country on the Earth fully meets all international human rights standards. He also said that he has planned to discuss the issue of Venezuela but that there has not been enough time to do so. However, Castro mentioned "the destabilization that (the U.S.) is seeking to foment in Venezuela ...which is counterproductive to the atmosphere on the continent." In response, Obama initially struck a conciliatory note. He acknowledged that the actions taken by Washington in the past half a century had not been good for the United States or for Cuba. He pledged that "the embargo is going to end. When, I cannot be entirely sure...and the path is going to continue beyond my administration" before reiterating the call for the Republican-held Congress to lift the blockade. Obama also said that "the future of Cuba will be decided by Cubans, and not by anybody else." The U.S. president went on to hail Cuba's "enormous achievements in education and healthcare," while also welcoming relevant Cuban criticism on the United States, saying that "we welcome that constructive dialogue as well. We can learn and make the lives of our people better." He added that it was his goal to help "bring Cuba online. In the 21st century, countries cannot be successful unless their citizens have access to the Internet." Castro also listed the agreements struck between both countries since December 2014, saying new accords were inked Monday concerning agriculture and the joint fight against cancer and the Zika virus. Castro ended the conference with a note of conciliation, stating that "destroying a bridge can be an easy and quick undertaking but its solid reconstruction can prove a long and difficult endeavor. I hope for a new type of relationship, one that has never existed before." Obama's visit to Cuba, which started on Sunday and ends on Tuesday, has been the first by a U.S. president since 1928. It marks the most important moment since Obama and Castro agreed in December 2014 to restore diplomatic ties and end half a century of hostility between the two countries. The visit is part of Obama's Latin America tour that will also take him to Argentina. Richmond president Peggy O'Neal says she remains disappointed the AFL forced the club's hand in issuing Dustin Martin with a suspended $5000 fine even though he had been cleared of any wrongdoing during last year's controversial restaurant incident. O'Neal said the AFL had leaned on the Tigers to punish Martin who had been accused of threatening a woman with a chopstick at a Japanese restaurant in Windsor in some form to make a point even though the player had been found not guilty of any serious offence during investigations by the club, the league and Victoria Police. "I didn't think it was necessary," said O'Neal. "If it was Trent Cotchin how would we have handled that? He would have been given a warning. After inking a surprise joint venture deal with the world's top iron ore producer, Fortescue Metals Group is setting its long-term sights beyond China, its biggest customer and the world's top customer. The tie-up of Australian billionaire Andrew Forrest's company with Vale SA amounts to the emergence of a new iron ore power bloc, according to Macquarie Group Ltd. FMG could push into new markets to the west of China, chief executive Nev Power says. Credit:Aaron Bunch The accord, which allows for the Brazilian company to buy a minority stake in Fortescue and invest in existing or future mines, may help the world's fourth-biggest producer eventually push into new markets to the west of China, according to chief executive Nev Power. Fortescue's latest deal is another unexpected twist in the company's roller coaster history since 2003 that's been marked by disputes with regulators, governments and rivals, multiple debt and investor dramas and share price gyrations. The $1 billion Nylex sign silo development has hit a hurdle, with the developer ordered to revise the first stage of its massive proposal for the site. Among the orders from the state planning tribunal is for the number of one-bedroom apartments in the project to be scaled back, and for more two and three-bed units to be included. Developer Caydon's plan for apartment towers that would replace Richmond's old silos and Nylex clock. And the developer was told that its proposed towers would have a visual impact on "prominence and landmark qualities of the Nylex sign and clock, and the 1960s silos that support this structure". Joe Russo runs the Caydon Property Group, which on Monday was ordered back to the drawing board on its Malt District project. One intelligence source suggested the attack was shifted to Brussels and brought forward after the arrest of Paris suspect Salah Abdeslam on Friday. Nam Laachraoui, left captured on CCTV, moments before the blast with two other bombers. Credit:AP Police conducted raids in Schaerbeek hours after the attacks and discovered a bomb containing nails, chemical products and an Islamic State flag at one address. There were also reports the local train station had been cordoned off but police activity focused on a block of flats on Rue Max Roos. A heavily-armoured police truck blocked off the residential street while a helicopter hovered over head. People comfort each other after being evacuated from Brussels airport, after the explosions. Credit:AP Iraqi intelligence sources suggested IS had been planning a terror attack on an airport and train station for three months but its focus was not Brussels originally. The source said that changed following Abdeslam's arrest on Friday amid fears he was co-operating with the authorities. Suspect Najim Laachraoui died in the Brussels airport bombing. Credit:AP A former Catholic schoolboy and electromechanics student, Laachraoui was stopped by police in September, just weeks before the Paris attacks, as he made his way across Europe from Syria. He was in a car with Salah Abdeslam, who later became a key fugitive from the Paris attacks, on their way from Budapest to Brussels when they were stopped. The man who used fake identity documents bearing the name Soutane Kayal was already being sought by the Belgian police as part of the investigation into the November 13 Paris attacks. Credit:AP But police waved them on after they convinced officers they were tourists on a trip to Vienna. Because they were travelling on false identities, police did not link Laachraoui to an international warrant issued for him in March 2014 under his real name. Laachraoui was only publicly identified as a Paris suspect on Monday and Brussels was targeted less than 24 hours later. He had left Belgium for Syria in February 2013 where he received terror training before returning to Europe posing as a refugee from the conflict. He was picked up in Budapest in September last year by Abdeslam and taken to Brussels where he is believed to have set up bomb-making factories and prepared for the Paris attacks. He was also given the fake identity of Soutane Kayal which he then used to move across Europe. It was during this journey from Budapest to Brussels that police stopped the car but were waved on. Travelling with him was Mohamed Belkaid, 35, who was killed in a police raid last Tuesday and led to the eventual capture of Abdeslam and another suspected terrorist. Under his fake identity, Laachraoui rented a house in Auvelais, near the central Belgian city of Namur, used by some of the Paris killers and at another suspected hideout in the Rue Henri Berge in Schaerbeek. In February 2015 he left for Syria, where his nom de guerre was Abou Idriss. Laachraoui's DNA was later found on two of the suicide vests used in the Paris attacks. It was also found in the addresses raided in Schaerbeek and Auvelais. He is believed to have been a key figure in the Paris plot and directed Abdeslam on how to assemble the bombs. Police suspect the Paris attackers were in phone contact with Laachraoui and Belkaid on the night of the massacre, sending Belkaid the text message "we're off, we're starting" seconds before launching the attack on the Bataclan concert hall. Their mobile phone signals were tracked to Schaerbeek. Laachraoui was already suspected of recruiting others to fight in Syria and was linked to Abdelhamid Abaaoud the Belgian mastermind behind the Paris attacks. He was recently tried in absentia for involvement in a network of Belgians who left for Syria in which the prosecutor called for a 15-year prison sentence for persuading several of his friends to join the ranks of IS. The verdict is due in May. "He is an old customer among foreign fighters," one investigator told La Libre Belgique. He went to school at the l'Institut de la Sainte-Famille d'Helmet in Schaerbeek. Staff at the school said: "He did all his secondary schooling here. He had a totally normal school l life, he never repeated a year and left the school in 2009. He was a boy who had no problems." According to La Libre Belgique, he then went on to complete his first year in higher studies in electromechanics, where he obtained "satisfactory" marks, suggesting he was technically minded. The Brussels bombers are thought to have used an explosive known as acetone peroxide and TATP and nicknamed "Mother of Satan" that was also used in the July 7 attacks in London in 2005, as well as Paris. It has been used in numerous terrorist bombs and suicide attacks. These dinosaurs are definitely much smaller than they appear in these photographs - but they have a huge following. They are the stars of an Instagram account called #dinodinaseries that sees them pop up in exotic - and sometimes not-so-exotic - locations around the world. The account now has 17,000 followers, with 530 images of their exploits posted so far. Photojournalist Jorge Saenz from Paraguay started taking photographs of his son's toy dinosaurs after an image featuring one of the reptiles went viral on Instagram. Pictured exploring the Iguacu Falls in Foz do Iguacu, Brazil Brontosauruses Dino and Brachy pose with two llamas while visiting Peru on one of their trips The creator of the account is photojournalist Jorge Saenz, from Paraguay. He began taking photographs of his son's toy dinosaurs - Brontosauruses Dino and Brachy, Spiny the spinosaurus and Dina the stegosaurus - in 2013 after an image featuring one of the reptiles went viral on Instagram. "The one [thing] that everyone knows Lifeline for is for suicide. "I've been doing it for 13 years, and every time the phone rings I still get that little flutter in the stomach 'cos you don't know what it's going to be," he says. For more than a decade, he has volunteered on the phones at Lifeline's Canberra office, absorbing the pain of thousands of Australians. "But it's a crisis support line. So for some people their crisis is that their child's just died, for some people their crisis is they've just been assaulted by their drug addict son. Some people have just been raped, some people are going through domestic violence." News from the bureau of statistics that suicide is the leading cause of death of Australians aged 15 to 44 together with a steep rise in suicide among the middle-aged rocked the country earlier this month. In the ACT, the number of deaths by suicide remained steady but at a level that had surged by more than 50 per cent just the year before. Lifeline has called the crisis a "national emergency". The organisation hit a record one million calls for help in 2015. And though there's no shortage of volunteers, in Canberra at least, about 15 per cent of calls nationwide go unanswered, the organisation says. Think you're covered? Choice is urging consumers to check again. Many are turning to cheap policies to avoid paying the Medicare Levy Surcharge. The surcharge is payable after income exceeds $90,000 for singles and $180,000 for couples. As demand grows, health funds are increasing policy limitations and exclusions, leaving patients with massive out-of-pocket expenses in their time of need. The Australian Medical Association has backed Choice's call for the government to reconsider the eligibility of junk insurance policies for the Private Health Insurance Rebate or exemption from the Medicare Levy Surcharge and the Lifetime Health Cover Surcharge. Choice has identified seven of the worst, but popular, junk health insurance policies. "It might be a cheap policy, it's great for the health funds because they sign people up and never have to pay anything out. But it's actually very bad for the people," said AMA president Dr Brian Owler, who wants an outright ban on junk policies. "People need to have private health insurance that does what we want it to, which is to take pressure off the public hospital system and allow people to be treated in private hospitals." Federal Health Minister Sussan Ley. Credit:Eddie Jim Federal Health Minister Sussan Ley, who has yet to announce what action she will take following a major survey, said consumers wanted a quality, minimum-standard of cover introduced into the market. "It's clear from my consultations the vast majority of Australians with private health insurance want to keep it, but they are fed up with tricky fine print that excludes them from certain services without their knowledge and sees them paying more," she told Fairfax Media. "Just because you are looking for a basic health insurance product, doesn't mean it shouldn't provide quality coverage. The balance is out and therefore we need to fix it." Ms Ley said both consumers and insurers had to question whether general coverage was still for a "rainy day" or whether its increased use to help pay for everyday health expenses required a rethink of its design. Dr Rachel David, chief executive of health funds lobby Private Healthcare Australia, rejected the need for extra regulation and said the priority was for consumers to know what they're covered for and transparency. She defended low premium policies, saying they were entry-level products for price-conscious, young adults. "The more young people joining, it mitigates against the risk of just having older people. We acknowledge consumers of all ages need to be aware of what they're covered for. We agree the system has become confusing," she said. "While comparison websites such as iSelect have helped, they also tend to divert people to products based on price." Dr David denied junk insurance policies were more profitable and therefore heavily marketed. Dr Owler, a neurosurgeon, said the PHA's reasoning about attracting young people was "rubbish", adding everyone needs decent coverage for unexpected illnesses and procedures. "It's almost a common occurrence working in the private sector having patients coming along with various policies thinking they're covered when they're not. I've had a patient with a brain tumour, another who needed spinal surgery, both thought they had coverage." A Medibank spokesman said the 'Young Hospital' and 'Accident Only' covers were designed for younger members - generally fit and healthy but want cover for private healthcare. "In order to keep premiums affordable, we exclude services our members are unlikely to need at a young age, such as colonoscopies, joint replacement or heart surgery, or services they don't currently need, such as obstetrics," he said. John Shakespeare colour cartoon / illo / illustration / toon / artwork eureka report, alan kohler with a ABC logo in his mouth cbd friday Alan Kohler.jpg Credit:John Shakespeare Rupert Murdoch's News Corp Australia has abandoned its bid to make money from the nation's $2 trillion superannuation pool after selling off the financial services business it set up in 2014 to offset its reliance on the newspaper business, CBD columnist Colin Kruger writes. News Corp this morning sold off the Eureka Report - which it acquired from ABC presenter Alan Kohler for $30 million in 2012 - and Eureka's financial services arm, brightday. It would not have been a hard decision for the News Corp Australia boss, Peter Tonagh, the acquisition was the brainchild of his controversial predecessor, Kim Williams, who was unceremoniously dumped in 2013. It is understood News Corp had already written off the acquisition, which delivered a windfall for Kohler, but failed to deliver for its new owners despite entering the financial services market via brightday in 2014. Both the Eureka Report and brightday have fallen into the arms of well known businessmen - for a modest sum. Celebrity Apprentice presenter, Mark Bouris, announced that his financial firm, Yellow Brick Road had acquired brightday. The ASX-listed company did not mention a price, and did not even say if the acquisition will have any impact on earnings. The Eureka Report itself has fallen into the arms of another financial analysts turned TV presenter in Paul Clitheroe. His ASX-listed financial services group, Australasian Wealth Investments announced the acquisition of the Eureka Report which will be "funded from cash reserves." The sale removes one headache for Kohler, as it might ease some of the protocols needed by the ABC to reduce the conflicts between the stock picking business he managed for News Corp and his role at the public broadcaster. A Melbourne family stands to make up to $80 million from the sale of a cattle farm in the city's northern growth corridor. The farm spanning three titles and 214 hectares along Mickleham Road between Mount Ridley and Donnybrook roads in Mickleham is expected to be keenly sought after by large greenfield developers. The land parcel, near Caroline Springs (train station project pictured), is the second largest on the market this year following huge demand for sites in 2015. Credit:Pat Scala Title documents show the land belongs to descendants of the local Cocking family and could potentially house up to 2000 dwellings. Melbourne's northern growth corridor has boomed over the previous decade with large players Villawood, Stockland, MAB, Evolve and Moremac taking stakes in the area which sits within the Merrifield West and Lindum Vale PSP. Cashed up Asian investors looking to develop a boutique hotel have set a new benchmark for land prices in West Melbourne. The influx of offshore capital into Australia's commercial property sector shows little sign of slowing, with a non-descript two-storey office on Melbourne's busy King Street selling for $14.6 million to a Chinese investor. In hot demand: 407 King Street sold for $14.6 million to a Chinese investor. The deal was finalised at a land rate of $15,135 per square metre, said Colliers International's Daniel Wolman, who negotiated the sale with colleagues Oliver Hay, Matthew Stagg and David Sia. Mr Wolman said three different Chinese groups had placed offers for the property that were 50 per cent above bids submitted by local investors. TOKYO, March 22 -- A ship carrying 331 kilograms of weapons-grade plutonium left a port in Ibaraki Prefecture, eastern Japan, on Tuesday en route to the United States. The transportation of the highly pure plutonium, which has been confirmed as enough to make as many as 50 nuclear bombs, follows a bilateral deal struck between Japan and the United States in 2014. Originally, the plutonium was provided to Japan by Britain, France and the United States in the 1970s and was purportedly to be used for research purposes and was being stored by the Japan Atomic Energy Agency in Tokaimura, in Ibaraki. Specifically, the United States provided 93 kg, Britain 236 kg and France 2kg. The total amount is enough to create between 40 to 50 atomic bombs, experts have maintained. Japan agreed to return the plutonium at the request of U.S. President Barack Obama following a nuclear summit held in 2014, at which Obama asserted the United States wanted to more strictly control nuclear materials and prevent the possibility of them falling into the hands of terrorists. Under maximum security and following an undisclosed route, a British transport ship, called the Pacific Egret, left the port in Tokaimura where the plutonium will be shipped to the Savannah River Site nuclear facility in South Carolina, which is a U.S. government-run plant, where it will be disposed of to prevent its illicit use. The shipment is the largest amount of plutonium to be moved by sea since 1993, when one ton of plutonium was shipped from France, again headed for Japan, to be used at a nuclear reactor here in Fukui Prefecture, located on Japan's Honshu island, which borders the Sea of Japan. According to Japan's public broadcaster NHK, Japan currently has 47 tons of plutonium, both in and outside the country, created, apparently, as a by-product of reprocessing spent fuel from nuclear plants. Japan has stated that it was planning to use its stockpile in a fast-breeder reactor that burns plutonium. However, the reactor is still in developmental stages and will not be online in the near future. Japan's stockpiles of plutonium have been criticized by the international community as being in violation of its own Three Non-Nuclear Principles in place since the end of WWII, which state that Japan will not possess, produce or introduce nuclear weapons. The stockpiles of plutonium, technically, contravene all three of its long-standing nuclear policy clauses. A local investor has snapped up two Victorian terraces at 202-204 Drummond Street for $4.015 million, setting a new benchmark in the tightly held suburb. The last sale of a similar property in May last year saw 23 Drummond Street, a single-fronted terrace, sell for $1.685 million. CBRE's Paul Tzamalis, David Minty and Ed Wright negotiated the deal for Optometry Australia. A local investor snapped up two Victorian terraces at 202-204 Drummond Street in Carlton for $4.015 million, setting a benchmark of more than $2 million for each terrace in the tightly held suburb. A corner property in one of St Kilda's most popular streets has sold for $1.66 million. St Kilda A corner property in one of St Kilda's most popular streets has sold for $1.66 million on a yield of 4.4 per cent on the passing income of $74,000 a year. Gross Waddell's Benjamin Klein and Jamie Stuart sold 167 Fitzroy Street in conjunction with Danaher Realty. The property has two shops on ground level and a first-floor apartment. Meanwhile, in Fitzroy a small shop with upstairs apartment at 159 Brunswick Street has sold for $1.22 million to an investor in front of a 30-strong crowd at auction. Alex Ham and Jonathon McCormack said the property, in the tightly held shopping strip, sold with vacant possession for the ground-floor retail and two levels of residential behind. On the city's edge in Sunbury, the firm's Andrew Thorburn sold 375 Riddell Road for $835,000, about $155,000 above the reserve. The 4.04 hectare land lot sold to a developer. Port Melbourne A unit in a modern purpose built self-storage facility at 214/310 Lorimer Street has been sold by Ray White Commercial Victoria's Nicholas Sullivan-Tailyour. The 20.5 square metre unit sold for $52,000 on behalf of a private owner. Dick Smith workers say they are stuck in employment purgatory, unable to move on with their careers until told exactly when the collapsed retailer's stores will close. The chain is about half way through an eight-week fire sale, with receiver Ferrier Hodgson suggesting all stores will close their doors around the end of April. But uncertainty has taken a toll on workers, who say they cannot find new jobs without knowing when Dick Smith will terminate them as they will potentially be giving up thousands of dollars in entitlements. Frustration boiled over at a store in Melbourne's east last week, with employees erecting signs telling customers they did not know when the store would close. Six Samsung top loader washing machine models are subject to a mandatory recall. "This can't be swept under the carpet any longer. My two children's lives were at risk. We'll also be asking the State Coroner to explore the failure of Fair Trading NSW to competently manage the recall." Samsung's latest figures show 74 per cent of the 144,451 machines with a major waterproofing fault have been remedied. Of those, more than half have been reworked with the plastic tape-and-bag fix, while the rest have either been replaced or refunded. An example of an incorrectly applied rework on a recalled machine. Credit:QEC Global A Samsung spokesperson declined to comment on the State Coroner matter. There have been 27 post-rework incidents, including two fires. Samsung Australia's vice president Phillip Newton said the company had made "mistakes" in the past 3.5 years and announced it would implement a new, multi-pronged strategy to prevent further fires and other incidents. Di Fisher and Tarnya Allen are affected Samsung customers. Next month, Samsung will begin reassessing 32,000 repaired machines to make sure the "fire-retardant, industry-standard polyethylene bag" has been securely fastened with tape. A team of 30 specially trained engineers will help carry out the program. Most other repaired units have already been checked. Samsung will proactively offer a refund or replacement, in accordance with the Australian Consumer Law. It will also establish a Sydney-based call centre to support customers through the inspection program. Customers previously spoke with staff in Manila. It will expand its "urgent detergent" direct mail campaign to an additional 22,000 homes to try to engage the 26 per cent of customers who have not responded to the recall. In January, Fairfax Media revealed a blaze at an Only About Children childcare centre in Coogee was caused by a recalled Samsung washing machine that had not been repaired. Twenty-two adults and 78 children were evacuated. "The biggest mistakes we made was the process to do the refund and the process to do the replacement, covering 99 per cent of our mistakes. We're a $200-billion odd company and there were strict processes causing delays," Mr Newton said. "We've now reduced the average customer resolution times from 35 to 13 days." He said the company was still 100 per cent confident in its Fair Trading-approved rework procedure when properly applied and dismissed the "deficient" conclusion in the crowd-funded expert report from QEC Global. Mr Newton rejected the push from consumer advocacy group Choice to launch a television campaign to raise awareness, saying TV was an underwhelming influence on the consumer. "With 'urgent detergent' we have specifically targeted a type of audience we want to address and know now it's very successful because 45 per cent of all machines found since November have all come from that. That's why we're rolling it out," he said. He said claims that replacement washing machines were also faulty because of reports some were melting and "spinning out of control" were unfounded. He said these problems were caused by a user overloading the machine. He also said to concerned American customers who have joined the Australian Facebook group that their machines were unrelated to the recall because affected machines were designed for the Australian market in accordance with local standards. He would not reveal what level of impact the country's biggest recall had on the company's profits and reputation. While Choice welcomed Samsung's new strategy, it was disappointed it refused to use television advertising, which would reach a large audience. "We get the very real sense that this company cares more about managing its reputation than it does about protecting consumers from its dodgy products," he said. "Last year, we dramatically crushed two Samsung washing machines to propel the potential hazard on to the nation's TV screens and launched a crowd funding campaign to create a television advertisement to warn consumer," he said. "Our decision to crowd fund a television advertisement came following research which found 47 per cent of consumers expect to see or hear about recalls through television advertising." Australian soft drink makers say a tax on sugary beverages will do little to combat obesity, while global giants including Coca-Cola are reportedly planning to sue the British government over such a proposal. Britain's Conservative government is planning to introduce a levy on soft drinks from 2018, and other nations including Australia are being urged to follow suit. Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver urged Australia to 'pull its finger out'. Credit:Harrison Saragossi Soft drink makers are reportedly planning to mount a legal challenge against the British government, according to the UK media outlets the Guardian and the Sunday Times. Coca-Cola is among those named in the reports as planning to sue through the European Courts. Industry bosses could claim the tax is discriminative because it doesn't include other high calorie drinks such as fruit juice and milkshakes. Massage parlours around the country are being accused of systemic wage fraud, sham contracting and in some cases contracts that dock workers' pay if they are late for work, "lack passion" or too noisy. In the latest development in the foreign student and 417 working holiday visa wage exploitation scandal, Fair Work raided 18 massage parlours in late February and found all were non-compliant with key workplace obligations. Problems relating to massage parlours ripping off their workers date back years. Compliance violations included failing to issue pay slips, lack of employment records and foreign workers on a visa paid a percentage of each massage usually 50 per cent rather than an hourly rate or the correct visa-nominated salary and with no remuneration for periods they spent at the business without clients. Unfortunately, flouting work place laws isn't new to massage parlours. Nor is it new to other parts of the economy. With 1.3 million workers on visas, which is equivalent to one in 10 workers, it is undermining the economic fabric of the country, as well as being a violation of human rights. Almost eight years ago, in May 2008, I hosted a special edition of Media Watch that examined the future of quality journalism. Already, it was all too obvious that "legacy" media in general, and newspapers in particular, were in deep trouble. The veteran British media commentator Roy Greenslade, a former editor of the red top Daily Mirror, told me bluntly: "The newspaper format ... is a dead duck." If the printed newspaper becomes a thing of the past, will "quality journalism" follow suit? Credit:Tamara Voninski It was, he pointed out, a simple question of revenue. The advertisers who had made newspapers so enormously profitable in their heyday were migrating to the web. In particular, classified advertising, which in those days still filled several dozen pages of the Saturday Age, was diminishing by the week. If you wanted to advertise a job, or a car, or a house, the online websites were cheaper and more effective tools and in a famous business misjudgment, Fairfax Media had failed to snap them up when they were still affordable. (REA Group, whose major asset is RealEstate.com.au, is now majority-owned by News Corp. With about one-fifth as many employees it generated $30 million more in profit after tax last year than Fairfax Media's entire operation.) They are real people, and they need help and they are vulnerable particularly because the odds are stacked against them. Community Legal Centres are often a vulnerable person's last resort. With no one to turn to for legal help or support their vicious spiral will continue to rotate perpetually downward. And the end to the story could be tragic. You may not think there are many of these 'vulnerable people' in the ACT. You may not see people sleeping rough outside shopfronts on your regular commute to work, or your evening suburban jog. Unfortunately, simply not seeing a problem does not mean it does not exist, as Canberra has a serious problem with homelessness. Overall, in the six years prior to 2014-15 there was a 65 per cent increase in the number of people seeking assistance from the homelessness sector. Canberra's homeless are hidden in cars, in temporary housing, in refuges. It is clear to us that at this point, many of our clients have lost hope. Lost hope in the legal system which they feel is stacked against them, lost hope in politicians who they believe have failed to fulfil their promises, and lost hope in society who they feel continues to turn a blind eye. These feelings are not entirely without merit nor are they misguided. They are based on a learned and lived experience. Take Serena (not her real name) for example, who fled her abusive spouse, with her children and little more than the clothes on their backs. Serena was referred to us by a women's refuge, as she faced myriad problems. She had been left to deal with debts and fines accrued by her ex-spouse. She was also having real difficulties finding permanent, safe and affordable housing. Due to the traumatic nature of her experiences, Serena was unable to explain her situation to the relevant parties she needed to communicate with to deal with these issues. Without proper assistance, women like Serena may fall deeper into debt, find themselves and their children without a home, or feel forced to return to their abusive relationship. For those who travel by train from Melbourne's city centre to the west, a passage across the Maribyrnong River is inevitable. Between South Kensington and Footscray stations, trains pass over a bend in the river. High on the bridge, the world appears to fall away from beneath the train. Land gives way to water on both sides of the carriage and the view expands to take in light. The effect is immediate; it feels like flying. Every time I cross the bridge, no matter what I'm reading, I look up and out. Some residents of Joseph Place will have a view of this Chinese goddess sculpture, Mazu, on the banks of the Maribyrnong River. Credit:Luis Enrique Ascui Flemington Racecourse lies to the north, its grandstands fixed above the flatlands like some strange, impassive mountain range. To the south, in the distance, shipping cranes dot the sky. Closer to the bridge, the river divides a cluster of industrial estates from a barren stretch of reclaimed land on which there rises the most improbable sight: a 16-metre statue of the Heavenly Queen. Made of stainless steel and painted gold, the statue was designed and constructed in Nanjing, China. In 2008, it was shipped to Melbourne and installed. NSW's harsh and unnecessary new anti-protest laws are the latest example of an alarming and unmistakeable trend. Governments across Australia are eroding some of the vital foundations of our democracy, from protest rights to press freedom, to entrench their own power and that of vested business interests. The NSW laws give police excessive new powers to stop, search and detain protesters and seize property as well as to shut down peaceful protests that obstruct traffic. They expand the offence of "interfering" with a mine, which carries a penalty of up to seven years' jail, to cover coal seam gas exploration and extraction sites. Protesters confront police outside Parliament House last week, demonstrating against the NSW government's anti-protest laws. Credit:Kate Geraghty They also create a tenfold increase in the penalty applying to unlawful entry to enclosed land (basically any public or private land surrounded by a fence) if the person "interferes" or "intends to interfere" with a business there. At the same time as ratcheting up this penalty for individuals who protest, recent changes made by the NSW government mean that resource companies that illegally mine can receive a $5000 penalty notice instead of a potential $1.1 million fine. Disturbingly, these laws aren't isolated. After leaving school at 16 (by choice), Marcia helped in Thelma's businesses and studied bookkeeping. She married Walter Mackie in 1950 but this ended in 1956 and, although Mackie paid child support for their daughter, Marcia knew she was would have to be the main provider. Marcia Elaine Nicholas was born in Townsville on January 16, 1925, the third child of William Nicholas, a travelling grocery salesman, and his wife, Thelma (nee Nicholls), one of the first women to work for the Commonwealth Bank during World War I. The family moved to Sydney in 1937 and William stayed in the wholesale grocery business but Thelma started, first, "Gwenda Nicholls" a company that made underwear, and trousseaux for rich women, then, as war time clothing rationing bit into profits, opened a city coffee lounge, Bijou, then Nicholls Restaurant in King Street and was very successful. Marcia Mackie was often asked by people exactly what it was that social workers did. So, in retirement, she settled down to write her life story and tell people about her work. This was to be her second book, not completed, her first was the story of her mother, An Interesting Life (self-published 2010). She couldn't remember when or how she heard of social work, but when she read the Social Studies Handbook, she knew she wanted to do it and, in 1956, she went to the University of Sydney to do a social studies diploma (the only course in NSW at that time). She graduated in 1958 and started work at the Bradford Cotton Mills as assistant personnel officer, and, in her second year, ran the canteen after the manageress was fired for taking commissions from suppliers. Her next job was at the Repatriation Commission, now the Department of Veterans Affairs, in the Psychiatric Section. As well as supporting close relatives of patients, she interviewed the wives of patients so the treating psychiatrist knew about their domestic situations. She always remembered the first visit she made, where she was shocked at the barrenness and sadness of the wife's life. After two years, she became a social worker with the Navy, but in the early 1970s, there was a marked increase in demands to investigate applications for compassionate leave and discharges from members serving overseas for, often, lengthy periods. Added to this was the introduction of a new pay schedule for serving members, which reversed the longstanding precedence of rank over trade qualifications. Some members were greatly upset, and they saw the solution as getting a compassionate discharge though the social workers. Far from supporting her staff, the Principal Social Worker was critical about the number of recommendations for members to be given their wishes. Mackie decided to change career direction. In 1972, Royal Prince Alfred hospital advertised the in-charge position of the Social Work Department. Mackie was a bit diffident about applying, because the position was much more senior to her previous one, but several senior members of the University of Sydney Social Work Department were on the interviewing panel and one of them knew the circumstances of her resignation from the navy. Mackie was persuaded to take the job and started in early 1973. It had been clear from the interview that the hospital and the university wanted the administrative role to be paramount, and the times turned out to be right for the concept. BEIJING, March 22 -- President Xi Jinping has called for supporting measures to implement China's new innovative, coordinated, green, open and shared development model, as outlined in the Five-Year Plan. It is imperative that coordination is improved to ensure the efficient implementation of the new model, as it plays an integral part in China's journey to achieving "a moderately prosperous society by 2020," Xi told a meeting of the Central Leading Group for Deepening Overall Reform on Tuesday. Pilot reforms should be systematic and well organized to ensure new mechanisms are tested thoroughly, according to a statement released after the meeting. The statement also noted that an overall evaluation of existing reforms was needed. The meeting approved a series of policy documents including those on lawyers, ecological compensation, poverty eradication, child health care and investment. Most Party and government agencies, civil associations and state-owned firms need to have legal advisers, public sector lawyers or corporate lawyers, who should be given a greater role in promoting the rule of law, the statement said. The ecological compensation mechanism must be improved, expanding its coverage and bringing up the compensation standard, it said. Medical personnel should be increased and their service quality should be enhanced to address the shortage in child health care resources. There were also calls for a unified system to deal with investors equally and reduced restrictions on private investment. Senior leaders Liu Yunshan and Zhang Gaoli, who are deputy heads of the group, attended the meeting. If the Safe Schools furore hadn't already peaked in recent weeks, it may have now reached fever pitch with nation-wide protests this week. Safe Schools has been caught up in what could only be described as a train wreck of events. Knee-jerk, hyperbolic criticism of the program came first. This snowballed and paved the way for a fast-tracked review of the program. The review has led to immediate changes to some of the content and a proposed funding end date of 2017. MP Cory Bernardi's office was defaced by protesters, angry over calls to close the Safe Schools program. Credit:Twitter These changes have now been met with intensified fury, more petitions have been raised on both sides, hundreds of scathing media statements released, protests mobilised across the country, and now protesters have trashed Cory Bernardi's office in revenge, intimidating his staff and family members. What could have been an opportunity for meaningful dialogue and ultimately the improvement of a valuable program has turned into an all-out culture war. I believe the adjective for a prime minister who threatens to chuck a constitutional hissy fit after spending months avoiding the tiresome business of governing while busily kowtowing to his party's most extreme elements is not "masterful" but "contemptuous". Peter Fyfe Erskineville How can society successfully deal with bullying when the leader of our country bullies his fellow parliamentarians: pass these bills or else you will be out of a job. Shouldn't the community have an expectation that they may look towards the leaders of our nation to model their behaviour? Paul Townsend Narara By daring to fight a double dissolution election in July 2016, Malcolm Turnbull has confirmed himself to be a political leader of strength and depth. He did not waste his energy suppressing internal party dissent. Neither did he unnecessarily respond to external accusations of political weakness and inaction. He has been lying low but now strikes out when he believes the time is right. Yew-Chaye Loo Figtree You expect a prime minister to get elected if he has done nothing wrong. But what should you expect if he has done nothing? Mustafa Erem Terrigal This government will lose all credibility if it doesn't also pursue misconduct in the banks and insurance industries. It is arguable that more people have been affected adversely by these financial industries than in the building and construction ones.An announcement to this effect needs to be made before the next election. This includes reforming self-regulation.Or is the government only interested in political one-upmanship by singling out blue-collar crime ? Jan Kent Farmborough Heights Malcolm Turnbull is finding it increasingly difficult these days to blind the Australian public with a smile and a verbose non-response to any incisive questioning about his policies. Boy, does he waffle.And then there is Tony Abbott, saying this election is all about his policies ("Malcolm Turnbull is running on my government's record: Tony Abbott", March 22). He continues to suffer relevance deprivation syndrome and remind everybody who not to vote for. This election is Bill Shorten's to win, and the weapons have been provided by the Liberal government's own actions and words over the last few years of their dysfunctional government. Wendy Atkins Cooks Hill If Tony Abbott is correct in his assertion that the Turnbull government will base its election campaign on the achievements of the Abbott government, Bill Shorten would be well advised to start practising his cartwheels. Dave Watts Clareville Will someone please ask Tony Abbott: if his party wanted to run on his record why did they take it off the turntable six months ago? Rob Maxwell Jones Wentworth Falls My wife and I are both disillusioned with Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull. Does that make it a double, double disillusion? Alan Marel North Curl Curl All this talk of a double-dissolution, double disillusion, etc, is enough to drive me to drink. And I think I might double de solution. Bob Doepel Bellingen Accountants get rich by helping millionaires to evade tax It seems pointless, quite likely a king-sized rort, that a select group of high-income earners are each paying on average $1.7 million a year for the cost of managing their tax affairs ("56 millionaires pay no income tax", March 22). I wonder how much of the reduced tax liability is the fee itself and do the accountants who receive that largesse then "manage" their own affairs, thereby handing themselves a million-dollar tax deduction? Given that you can't legislate morality, maybe it's time to cap the tax deductibility of accountancy fees? Phil Bradshaw Naremburn Progressive income tax was designed to be fair to the low-income earner. It seems to work very well for 56 millionaires who earn so little they pay no income tax. Don't these people have a moral compass saying that they should contribute to the society they live in? Perhaps they see their contribution as supporting the very profitable tax avoidance industry. Peter Mohacsi Bowral Rather than waiting for the supposed "trickle down" effect of company tax cuts, the government would do better in electors' eyes by collecting the income tax owed by the 56 millionaires and others from the big end of town who at present pay no tax at all. Jennie Morris Wollongong Lockout zone: day-time business thriving Ross Fitzgerald is right ("Sydneysiders should be grateful for the lockout", March 22). The real reason little has been heard from the beneficiaries of these life-saving lockout laws is because local residents in Kings Cross, for example, have been besieged, as Mike Baird has been, by the big-budget alcohol lobby's exaggerated claims about business closures and Sydney being reduced to a ghost town. Sometimes empty vessels make the most noise. Our simple message has been drowned out. In fact, there has been no hard evidence that any business has closed solely because of lockouts laws. Many have closed because of rent increases, increased drink prices, staff and supplier costs, council and compliance legal actions or have re-opened nearby. In Kings Cross, a heritage zone, the night-time economy has ceased butchering the day-time economy: new apartments, chemists, health food shops, a French creperie, a bike-hire hub, gyms and local offices have burgeoned, adding vibrancy to the area. Wall-to-wall booze barns open 24/7 can never enhance Sydney's desire to become a global city. Andrew Woodhouse Potts Point Extra funds at risk In many disadvantaged schools across the nation, the greatly-improved results that the Grattan Institute is calling for are already occurring. This is due mainly to the extra resources from Gonski funding, which will be significantly reduced, or even stopped, if the Coalition is returned, especially with a majority in both Houses. Education must be near or at the top of the issues in the coming election campaigns.Top-class education for all, regardless of the background of any student, will ensure that the many challenges facing our country can be successfully met. So far, there have been few words from the Prime Minister that show he fully understands this. Tony Re Georges Hall Planning vandalism Transport Minister Andrew Constance is to be congratulated for, at long last, changing the fare structure that enabled Opal Card users to "beat the system" and get free peak-time travel, the time of highest cost for the network ("Put the rollerblades away, the days of 'Opal running' are over", March 22). I hope he will also review an even worse decision made by his predecessor, Gladys Berejiklian: the decision to have different rolling stock on the proposed north-west network, which is planning vandalism on par with the decision by pre-federation states to adopt different rail gauges. Maurice Critchley Kenthurst Privatised prisons The privatisation of prisons should be a concern to all of us (Letters, March 22). The major priority for any company running a prison would be to expand the prison population, keep beds filled and reduce expense. Lobbyists would be crowding the corridors of politicians' offices trying to convince them that get-tough penal policies are the only way to reduce crime. Surely not everyone who has committed a crime deserves a long stretch in prison so as to boost a company's profit margin. Con Vaitsas Ashbury We'll certainly need those extra private prisons if we are going to use the recent legislation allowing the seven-year imprisonment of "knitting nannas". Jim Papworth Cessnock A mental health hell I was absolutely horrified to see the photos and read the accompanying article about the practice of shackling Indonesia's mentally ill ("'Living in hell', shackled and confined: Indonesia's mentally ill", smh.com.au, March 22). Contrast this with the article about the Kiwi's referendum to decide whether to retain a Union Jack or go with a silver fern on their new flag ("NZ flags the Silver Fern or Union Jack", smh.com.au, March 22). The triviality of some of our "first world" problems could not have been brought into starker relief. Viv Munter North Epping Risk of losing homes The McKell Institute's latest thought-bubble would have to be a property developer's dream come true ("Abolish stamp duty and replace with land tax", smh.com.au, March 22). With the introduction of a land tax at the rate proposed, thousands of pensioners and low-income families would be forced out of their homes because they can't afford an extra $5000 or so a year, meaning developers can swoop in and purchase their homes, free of stamp duty. What's more, those same people will then be forced to downsize to apartments in order to reduce their tax liability, representing a ready market for those same developers. Brilliant! Scott Pfaff Eastwood Scope for dishonesty There's a rise in complaints about "pecuniary interest and councillor misconduct" over the past five years ("Councillor misconduct in research frame", March 22.) Amalgamated local councils, with greatly increased budgets and other opportunities, offer way more scope for the activities of the dishonest and self-interested. What a grand idea. Liz Liddelow Avalon Beach Telephone therapy Given the crippling shut down of the Telstra mobile-phone system, and the issues with National Broadband Network installation, immediate counselling is highly recommended for any person who believes Telstra when it says, "We will ring you back" ("Why Telstra's network problems could cause long-term damage", smh.com.au, March 22). Richard Stewart Pearl Beach Australia Day let's go with Python's option I endorse Stewart Smith's notion that Wattle Day be our new Australia Day (Letters, March 22). We could all then recite at an appointed hour our new national day poem: "This here's the wattle, the emblem of our land. You can stick it in a bottle. You can hold it in your hand. Amen." (With due credit to Monty Python.) Russ Couch Woonona Nobody's yet shown me worthwhile reason Australia Day should not stay in its cosy niche. Stewart Smith suggests the date should be "benign and devoid of all political or European reference". Benign? Is our current Australia Day some hideous wart or unsightly lump? Rosemary O'Brien Georges Hall While Stewart Smith's suggestion has merit, I fail to see how being categorically dismissive of the heritage of Australians of European descent would make a "better unifying day". Greg Partington Quakers Hill I applaud Duncan Harman's suggestion of October 24 as Australia Day (Letters, March 22) as it's my birthday. It's also Malcolm Turnbull's, so he might enjoy the suggestion as well. Corruption is one of the greatest scourges of the developing world. Bribes, facilitation payments, sly deals struck on handshakes, favours and rorts that entrench power in the hands of a few are the bane of hundreds of millions of people whose leaders in politics and business do not pay so much as lip-service to ethics. Underhand deals are frauds on nations, on their economies and their people. Corruption fortifies power and ill-gotten wealth where it is least deserved while reinforcing poverty, inequity and injustice elsewhere. Underhand deals are frauds on nations, on their economies and their people. Credit:Andrew Quilty Australians were confronted with the pernicious nature and impact of corruption more than a decade ago, when revelations emerged about the kickbacks AWB paid to Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. Anti-corruption laws have since been tightened, and new ones have been introduced. The UK Bribery Act, for example, which came into effect in 2010, has profound extraterritorial reach; it can capture the activities of companies that have only so much as a business address in Britain. That is why any organisation, government agency or, indeed, any individual doing business overseas needs to be acutely aware of the risks. Actions that may seem routine or anodyne may be part of a trail of corrupt conduct. Ignorance is not an excuse, nor is it sufficient to plead that payments to agents or third parties is simply the way business is done in some countries. We note all this today because allegations about corruption have triggered the resignation of one of Australia's most highly rated executives. Elmer Funke Kupper has done the right and proper thing in resigning his position as chief executive of the Australian Securities Exchange as investigations proceed into a suspect transaction that occurred on his watch when he was head of Tabcorp. Mr Funke Kupper's position at ASX, the organisation responsible for the integrity of transactions on Australia's $1.7 trillion share market, was made untenable considering that he, personally, is the subject of an investigation focusing on possible bribery. As revealed by Fairfax Media, an investigation led by the Australian Federal Police is examining a $200,000 payment Tabcorp made in early 2010, when the gaming and wagering group was seeking a foothold in the online gaming market in Cambodia. Mr Funke Kupper was Tabcorp's CEO at the time. The Age has revealed that he was a member of a small management team that was explicitly and directly warned by fellow Tabcorp staff about the risks of making such a payment. Yet, the funds were paid to the US bank account of a Cambodian consultant, who transferred them to a company linked to a sister of Cambodia's Prime Minister, Hun Sen. Mr Funke Kupper says he has done nothing wrong. He said on Monday he had not been told that he was under investigation. He also says that he considers this was "unfair", "not right" and a "trial by media". Mr Funke Kupper may be feeling bruised and defensive, but his latter comments are nonsense. Our reporting is a prime example of the media doing what it should: shining a light on dubious and potentially illegal practices, holding institutions and people to account, asking the tough questions, probing and exposing. Unlike other areas of endeavour, politicians do a poor job of learning from success or failure. That's because winners think they are perfect, and losers usually try to blame someone else. With a Federal election looming, this is what the politicians probably won't learn from the Brisbane City Council elections. To begin, Labor's problems lay not in their messaging but the message itself. In making development an issue - and by that they meant high rise apartments - Labor made a big mistake. There are lots of reasons why this is so. One of them is that they effectively demonised the people living in apartments. That's a great way to get people to vote against you, but Labor candidates spoke about very little else. Labor strategists no doubt thought development was a green issue, but it is not. In the ward that I know best, the Green vote was highest in areas that have the most apartments. While I may not always agree with them, Green voters aren't stupid. They understood better than Rod Harding that we either have to go up or out to accommodate Mr Harding's extra million residents. The battles in the media and throughout the pages of The Age since the Moomba weekend's spate of youth brawling in the CBD are not just about race and "ethnic gangs'" Ultimately, what we are talking about is the future of policing in Victoria. When Ron Iddles, from the Victorian Police Association, claimed on these pages last week that stop-and-search receipting was "hampering" and "making police more reluctant" to engage with the public, he was defending a particular philosophy of policing. Five people have been arrested after a dramatic police intercept in Hoppers Crossing. Credit:Paul Rovere This philosophy suggests that police can do no wrong, that police can stop people when and where they like through hunches and intuition, and operate in some vague self-justified way that allows them to act outside the law when required. This set of beliefs about policing is often referred to as "old-school". It's not clearly articulated anywhere. It has no "guidelines" apart from those taught to new recruits by the older sergeants at stations around the state. It is defended ferociously by many police members and the public. "I don't want to buy into those sort of unpleasant metaphors," he admonished her. "We shouldn't be using violent metaphors." Of course, Malc's stomach's gotten a lot more sensitive on the matter since last year, when he merrily described Labor leader Bill Shorten as "the man that led Kevin Rudd over the cliff into an abyss, where he then stabbed him in the back." Which, to the untrained eye, looks weirdly like a metaphor of the violent-slash-unpleasant stripe. But all this political theatre does neatly distract from the big problem waiting for ol' Malc, which is this: if he wins the election, he's almost certainly doomed. How hollow is that victory looking? The tenor of much of the commentary at the moment appears to be making an assumption along the lines of "oh, Malcolm can't do all the good things that I assume he wants to do now, but once he wins an election in his own right then he'll have authority!" And while that optimism is inspiring, it's also wrong. See, none of the polls are predicting Turnbull to romp it in: Newspoll has the Coalition slightly ahead, Essential have the major parties still neck and neck, and Roy Morgan Research have declared it too close to call. Few would back Labor to win the election, but everyone seems to accept that it's looking like being a closer election than 2013. And that's a disaster for Turnbull. Why? Because if the Coalition win by anything less than a landslide of historic levels, the Coalition will be saying goodbye to a lot of the newbies in marginal seats who got over the line in 2013 thanks largely to national anti-Rudd/Gillard sentiment. Those, for the most part, are younger and more progressive small-l liberals. The fiercely conservative folks who have been busily working against Turnbull are MPs in lovely safe seats (Tony Abbott, for example) or senators secure at the top of the state ballot (Cory Bernardi in SA, Eric Abetz in Tasmania) who are definitely not going to lose their jobs. After the election, they'll still be there - and the younger, more progressive Libs that are Malcolm's support base will largely not be. And there's that other party And that's before you get to the deeply-conservative agreement that the deeply-conservative Nationals forced on Turnbull to guarantee their support for his leadership of the Coalition. It'll be up for renegotiation, theoretically; but since the parties are indivisible (thanks to all Liberals and Nationals being the same party - the LNP - in Queensland), it's a lot easier to change a leader than divorce the Coalition. Especially if there's a strongly-conservative alternative leader ready to go, beloved by the Nats and most of the Libs, and itching to get his revenge (or perhaps, a conservative-leaning treasurer who feels they've been hung out to dry). If Turnbull wants to prevent himself from being replaced by his party, he'll have to keep the conservatives happy. And as we've seen over the last six months, they're never, ever happy. That watchdog thing Then again, a double dissolution is only on the cards if the government doesn't pass its planned legislation to reintroduce the Australian Building and Construction Commission. According to the government, it's a vital tool to ensure productivity and fight corruption. According to actual evidence, as Bernard Keane lays out in forensic detail at Crikey, the ABCC did nothing for productivity (until 2011-2012, when the Gillard government removed most of its powers before dismantling it altogether and replacing it with the Fair Work Building Industry Inspectorate), but did a lot for causing preventable workplace deaths. Specifically, "Under the Howard-era ABCC, workplace fatalities in the construction sector rose from just over three per 100,000 workers to nearly five per 100,000 workers before falling again to around four. After the "neutering" of the ABCC, the fatality rate fell to just over two." But heck, no-one likes corruption - and there's a pretty solid alternative to the government's notion that the construction industry desperately needs a corruption watchdog. And this could yet be the hole that the government have dug themselves by making the ABCC legislation the trigger to go to the polls. See, here's the problem: if you're going to argue that there's epidemic levels of corruption sapping our nation's productivity and that this requires a body with extra-judicial powers, then you'd better hope like hell that no-one takes you at your word and suggests, say, a federal Independent Commission Against Corruption. Which is what senator Jacqui Lambie did on Monday's Q and A. And what her former PUP colleagues Glenn Lazarus and Zhenya "Dio" Wang are also agitating for. You can't spell "ipecac" without "ICAC" See, a federal ICAC would have all the powers to examine union corruption and activities within the construction industry. And also the mining industry, and the financial services industry, and the operation of the government, and you can start to see how this might not be to the liking of the major parties. After all, last time there was an Independent Commission Against Corruption it rather inconveniently exposed a slew of NSW politicians - several Labor, but mainly Liberal - and led to the forced resignation of Liberal premier Barry O'Farrell. Would Labor be gutsy enough to back such a move? It'd almost certainly blow up in their face - the question is, would it do more damage to them or the Coalition? In any case, if the notion of a federal ICAC is raised by the Senate, then the government is going to have to explain why a secretive body limited to one sector of the economy is preferable to a transparent anti-corruption organisation that can achieve everything the ABCC is supposedly intended to do, and so very much more. Let's see who's got the political gumption to make this happen. The body representing the nation's artists, actors, directors and writers via its member organisations has appealed to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull to personally intervene and reverse funding cutbacks and an efficiency drive which threaten to impoverish the sector. As the Turnbull government plays a game of brinkmanship with the Senate, ArtsPeak co-convenors Tamara Winikoff and Nicole Beyer have signed an open letter warning of the imminent loss of vital arts and cultural infrastructure. Artists protest outside Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's Edgecliff office, in Sydney last September. Credit:Janie Barrett Funding cutbacks and possible closures loom for more than 140 artistic companies in May when the Australia Council announces four-year operational grants for small to medium arts organisations, according to Beyer, director of Theatre Network Australia. This weekend sees the launch of the 20th Biennale of Sydney, the most high-profile event in the Australian art calendar. As usual I'll devote two columns to this mega-exhibition, but in the meantime there is one very different show that has waited a little too long for attention. Lloyd Rees: Painting with Pencil 1930-36, at the Museum of Sydney (MoS), celebrates a unique moment in local art history, and a crucial period in the oeuvre of one of Australia's best-loved artists. In a long sequence of landscape drawings, Lloyd Rees produced a vision of Sydney and surrounds that can be compared only with the works of the Old Masters. Trees by Lloyd Rees, 1932. Many will remember Rees (1895-1988) as the very image of an Old Master with sparse grey hair, failing eyesight and trademark beret. By the 1980s he not only looked the part, he even sounded like an elderly sage, full of worldly wisdom and good humour. As his body aged, Rees became Australian art's spiritual father figure. While his sight clouded, his paintings were flooded with light. These late pictures, so reminiscent of J. M. W.Turner's last paintings, are very moving, but they are only the final flourishes of a long and varied career. The MoS show looks at five to six years when Rees committed himself exclusively to drawing. It was a voyage of self-discovery that enabled him to find his way as a painter. When he had so thoroughly internalised the lessons of drawing that it seemed he was "painting with a pencil", he returned to his brushes with renewed confidence and energy. At first glance, it's a positive for Australia's multicultural broadcaster SBS: an opportunity to develop an international talent format in our corner of the world which capitalises on the established brand of the six decade Euro-pop competition to top them all. Having sent one Australian pop star to Europe to compete in the Eurovision Song Contest, and with a second buckling up as we speak, it seems inevitable that Eurovision would head down under. And it certainly makes more sense that putting Australia on the Eurovision leaderboard, wedged in between Armenia and Austria, and fielding inevitable and awkward questions about where on the European map we can actually be found. Anthony Callea is one of few talent show stars who have had commercially viable careers. Credit:Scott Barbour It's also a perfect fit for SBS, particularly in terms of its brief as a multicultural broadcaster. It's perhaps no more appropriate than Eurovision itself, though it would be a truly local production, but it's also a gentle reminder, as sections of the broadcaster's schedule now feature English-language programming, that it was born with a nobler purpose. And few purposes are as noble as kooky pop songs, batsh*t-crazy artists and a scoring system which makes the Brownlow Medal Count look like the cutting edge of theoretical mathematics. In the criminal justice system the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups. The first group are kind of boring. There are lots of cop shows, reality and scripted. But to my mind the second of these groups the lawyers produce much more interesting characters. What makes a good TV lawyer? It's hard to say. Some live as if every day is the bar exam, while others tend not to adopt a black-letter approach. With television legal eagles as popular as ever and getting busy in the much-hyped The People v O.J. Simpson on Channel Ten let's count down eight of TV's best advocates. Richard Roxburgh as Cleaver Greene in Rake. Credit:ABC Jack McCoy Law and Order Jack McCoy (Sam Waterston) was a man who never let procedure (or, you know, the law of evidence) get in the way of justice. Despite being found in contempt of court 80 times in his time, McCoy still managed to be elected as New York District Attorney at the start of the long-running show's 20th, and final, season. Lina Badir Crownies A quiet achiever, Palestinian-Australian Lina Badir was the justice-driven, practical young solicitor at the Department of Public Prosecutions in the ABC series Crownies. As she attempted to reconcile her role with the DPP with her brother's arrest for anti-Israeli activism, Badir (Andrea Demetriades) provided one of the most unique stories to appear on a legal drama. But her aversion to mistakes and intuition for right and wrong ultimately meant she was a lawyer you would want to prosecute your case. 50 million Objective: More than 50 million new jobs to be created in urban areas According to the 13th Five-Year Plan, the roadmap for the nation's development from 2016 to 2020, more than 50 million new jobs will be created in urban areasan increase of 5 million compared with the 12th Five-Year Plan. Tertiary industries will be the main recipients of those new jobs. Zheng Dongliang, Director of the Work Science Research Institute, a research branch of the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, said that the plan would accelerate healthy and efficient development of the service sector. According to Zheng, in five years, jobs in tertiary industries will account for more than half of all jobs. The plan also features a proactive employment policy, more positions, and incentives for entrepreneurship. The plan calls for improving training programs and assisting impoverished families, migrant workers, disabled people and other vulnerable groups. Zheng believes that, thanks to the plan, special groups will soon see more job opportunities. Whats more, better training will help to address the structural imbalance, he added. 55.75 million Objective: By the end of 2020, the last 55.75 million impoverished rural citizens will be lifted out of poverty. Lifting 55.75 million people out of poverty requires a sufficient supply of food, clothing, education, medical care and housing throughout rural areas. According to the 13th Five-Year Plan, 152,000 kilometers of paved roads will be installed in impoverished regions, more than 90 percent of impoverished villages will be covered with broadband network, and coverage of the rural power grid will reach 99.8 percent. These measures will remove the remaining roadblocks for development. China should no longer use the same poverty alleviation approach as before, said Wang Sangui, a scholar in the School of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development at Renmin University. Wang added that poverty alleviation measures must be based on the realities of impoverished regions and populations. Those measures may include relocation, productivity training, ecological compensation, social insurance policies and better education. 20 million Objective: 20 million houses in shanty towns to be renovated in the next five years In the past seven years, 26 million households have benefited from the renovation of shanty towns, and living conditions have been significantly improved. The 13th Five-Year Plan dictates that more monetary compensation will be offered in areas with large real estate stock, so the supply of affordable houses will be increased, market inventory will be reduced, and citizens can have more options. 30,000 Objective: China's high-speed railways will extend to 30,000 kilometers by 2020, covering more than 80 percent of urban areas. At the end of 2015, China had 19,000 kilometers of high-speed railway. According to the 13th Five-Year Plan, that number will increase by 60 percent to 30,000 kilometers by the end of 2020, covering more than 80 percent of major cities. The expanded high-speed railway network will link more cities, making domestic travel more convenient. 6.5% Objective: Chinas per capita disposable income will see an annual increase of at least 6.5 percent in the next five years. Income is one of the most important indexes in the 13th Five-Year Plan. Experts estimate that with an annual increase of 6.5 percent, Chinas per capita disposable income will come to 30,000 yuan ($4,600) by 2020, which means that the annual income of a three-member family of working adults will be around 90,000 yuan, catching up with upper-middle income countries. Pan Jiancheng, Deputy Director of the China Economic Monitoring and Analysis Center (CEMAC) of the National Bureau of Statistics, said that the target is based on economic development and the appeals of the public. With improvements in productivity and reform of income distribution, it is an attainable goal, he added. Over the same period, the income gap will be further narrowed. China will simultaneously raise labor remuneration and productivity so that incomes will increase and the gap will narrow. Pan added that income distribution will be more fair and efficient with the regulation of gray incomes, or illegal profits. Cracking down on abuse of power and administration monopolies will also help. 45% Objective: the urbanization rate of permanent residents will reach 60 percent by 2020, and that of registered residents will reach 45 percent. In the next five years, more migrant workers will be able to afford houses in urban areas and more children will be able to live with their migrant worker parents in cities. Those children will also be able to attend school in cities. Some will even be able to transfer their household registrations, and therefore enjoy the social welfare that their fellow citizens do. Ye Xingqing, head of the Agricultural Economy Department of the Development Research Center under the State Council, said that the plan will accelerate the transfer of rural populations, reform the household registration system, and grant equal public services to rural people. There will also be incentives in place to help them integrate into urban life. Ye added that the plan emphasizes people-oriented urbanization. For example, small and medium-sized cities are encouraged to provide migrant workers with more job opportunities. 85% Objective: Mobile broadband to cover 85 percent of the total population by 2020 A faster and more affordable Internet connection will become a reality in the next five years, according to the 13th Five-Year Plan. The plan will speed up construction of the 4G network, working toward the goal of full coverage in towns and administrative villages with dense populations. Free Wi-Fi will be available in public domains of cities and towns. Mobile broadband coverage will grow to 85 percent by 2020, up from 57 percent in 2015. Wu Jianping, a professor of computer science at Tsinghua University, said that a better network will also help to promote innovation and entrepreneurship. 80% Objective: 80 percent of days to feature "good air quality by 2020 According to the 13th Five-Year Plan, China will take measures to tackle urban smog and deliver good air quality readings in prefecture-level and above cities for 80 percent of the year. The plan demands strategies for smog control as well as strict implementation. Heavy pollution days in prefecture-level and above cities will be reduced by 25 percent. Heavy polluting enterprises in cities will be moved away or shut down. Moreover, water, soil, dangerous waste and industrial pollution have all been named key agendas for environmental protection. Li Zuojun, Vice-Director of the Research Institute for Resources and Environmental Policies under the Development Research Center of the State Council, said that pollution control, green construction, development of green industries and climate change were all taken into consideration as the plan was being drafted. With bluer skies and clearer water, a more beautiful China is on the way. "There's been a real breakdown in intelligence. If you can't control your borders, you don't know who's coming or going. Regrettably they allowed things to slip and that weakness in European security is not unrelated to the problems they've been having in recent times," he told ABC television. Extending "our most resolute solidarity" to the Belgian people, Mr Turnbull nonetheless said Europe had "allowed their security measures to slip" and that this was "a lesson for all of us". He was critical of the Schengen agreement that enables free movement within Europe, as well as the "very porous" external borders that encouraged entry to the continent. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has criticised Europe's border protection measures in the wake of the atrocities in Brussels, arguing Australia is more secure because of its strong borders and geographic isolation. "Europe has for all intents and purposes no internal borders, so people can travel within Europe as they wish, and their external borders have been very porous - as we've been seeing every night on the news. So Europe has a security challenge or a security problem that is different to Australia. We're assisted by our geography, of course, but we also have very strong border protection that our government has maintained." Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says security standards in Europe have 'slipped'. Credit:Martin Meissner The bomb blasts at Brussels' airport and a railway station come four months after a series of co-ordinated terror attacks in Paris, killing 130 people and setting in train a manhunt that has frequently led authorities into Belgium. Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in those attacks, is a Belgian-born French national who was arrested in Brussels last week. The Prime Minister said that while Australia's border protection measures helped identify and repel threats to national security, there was no guarantee we could avoid similar atrocities. "We have a much greater insight into people who we would regard as being threats or likely to pose a risk ... than the Europeans do," Mr Turnbull said. "We obviously cannot guarantee that there will not be terrorist incidents in Australia - that's why the threat level is 'probable' - nevertheless we have very strong measures in place." The Turnbull government is considering the controversial move of collecting student debts from the dead, as well as increasing university fees, as it seeks to find higher education savings in the May budget. Former education minister Christopher Pyne backed the idea of recovering HECS from deceased estates two years ago, but was quickly shut down by Tony Abbott to avoid a scare campaign on the sensitive issue. Labor slammed the idea as a "death tax" - even though most other loans, such as mortgages and credit card debt, must be repaid upon death. Ending the HECS write-off from deceased estates worth over $100,000 would save up to $800 million a year, according to leading higher education analyst Andrew Norton. Sources in the higher education sector said the proposal had been raised in recent discussions with Education Minister Simon Birmingham, who is under pressure to find substantial savings in his portfolio. Federal Opposition Leader Bill Shorten has recognised Queensland's importance in winning this year's election, beginning the "103-day campaign" in the Sunshine State. Labor holds only six of Queensland's 30 federal seats, and 12 of those 30 seats are held by a margin of less than 5 per cent. Malcolm Turnbull, left, should prioritise Queensland projects like cross-river rail,a ccorind to Bill Shorten, right. It seems the figures weren't lost on Mr Shorten, who was in Brisbane on Tuesday to continue his campaign against cuts to Medicare. "I am here on day one of Malcolm Turnbull's 103-day election campaign," Mr Shorten said, referencing the prime minister's threat of a July 2 double dissolution election. Fresh from firing the starters' gun on a gruelling 15-week pseudo campaign, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is manoeuvring toward an election platform that will necessarily project his plans for the future while defending his government's first term legacy. The former PM has been adamant that while there would be "no sniping" and "no undermining", he would defend his government's record if and when it came under attack. Beamed in to Sky News from London on Monday, he took things a step further, insisting: "Turnbull government is running on the Abbott government's record and it's a very strong record." Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull Credit:Andrew Meares The niggling presence of the Member for Warringah forces the PM to look both forward and back. And he's come up with a catch-all phrase to deflect any of that non-sniping and non-undermining - "continuity and change". "As you go from one Liberal prime minister to another, you have continuity and you have change and there has been a lot of change," Mr Turnbull told the ABC on Monday. "The bottom line is there is continuity and there is change," he repeated in the next day's radio interviews. Definitely not adapted from the campaign bus of Selina Meyer - Julia Louis-Dreyfus's fictional president in the comedy series Veep - "continuity and change" seeks to straddle the balancing beam between respecting the toils of the PM's predecessor, while reassuring voters that things will be different. But it does risk further criticism of Mr Turnbull as risk-averse and indecisive - the same barbs directed at Meyer, in fact. He might as well have said "same same but different" for all the sense it makes to the uninitiated voter. Comparing himself to Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull says "there is continuity and there is change". Like Julia Gillard before him, Turnbull is struggling to explain the oil and water propositions that his new leadership represents a continuation on the one hand, while being fundamentally different on the other. That Abbott was on the right track on nine tenths of his agenda, and yet had to go. But where Gillard failed to convince with her cryptic "a good government had lost its way" formulation, Turnbull continues to show that smart leaders can learn from their opponents' mistakes as well as their own. The Honourable Tony Abbott has issued an urgent press release to inform Australians everywhere that he has accepted a new title, bestowed by his own esteemed self, as Prime Minister at Large. Mr Abbott, a former journalist, said there was ample precedent for such a title. Former prime minister Tony Abbott is just doing his bit. Credit:Andrew Meares Former editors of newspapers who have returned from a toilet break only to discover their desk, telephone, secretary and computer terminal have unaccountably disappeared have on occasion been able to wrangle the marvellous title Editor at Large from their employers, he pointed out. Such a title had traditionally entitled them to write long and often anguished columns and to recount tales of the golden age at longer lunches at the company expense, sometimes for years. NSW Premier Mike Baird has defended the federal government's changes to Safe Schools by revealing his own concerns over the material within the controversial anti-bullying program. The program, which offers resources for same sex attracted, intersex and gender diverse students, was amended by the federal government last week after an independent review found that some of its material was not age appropriate amid mounting pressure from conservative federal MPs. On Tuesday, Mr Baird weighed into the debate for the first time. He said he found some of the material linked to the Safe Schools program to be inappropriate. "How on earth can our children be looking at this?," he told ABC radio. "I think that the changes that the federal government announced are sensible and reasonable." Vivien Foldes says she does not regret having her breasts removed five years ago after she was found to have an early-stage cancer. But there are things Foldes, a 58-year-old accountant from Woodmere, New York, wishes she had known when she chose a double mastectomy, like the fact that the process of reconstruction would drag on for five months and leave her forever unable to sleep on her stomach. Or that it would leave her with no sensation "from the front all the way to the back in the entire bra area," she said. "Nothing. Zero. Zip." Vivien Foldes, who had her breasts removed after she was found to have an early-stage cancer, says there are days that she asks herself, Should I have done it? Credit:Uli Seit/New York Times Foldes says there are days that she asks herself, "Should I have done it?" But, she said, her mother had two types of cancer, and she wanted to be proactive. Foldes is one of a growing number of women opting to have both breasts removed after a diagnosis of breast cancer, even though doctors say the operation does not improve the chances of survival. Now a new study, based on surveys of thousands of women, suggests women who have double mastectomies do not benefit from a big improvement in quality of life, either. The study was published online in The Journal of Clinical Oncology earlier this month. On Wednesday morning in the wake of the attacks in Brussels , Mr Turnbull "strongly encouraged" union members to rethink the industrial action and urged them "to pursue their complaints, their disagreements with the government through other means". Strike action planned at international airports on Thursday has been postponed after Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull called on the Community and Public Sector union to reconsider its plans. CPSU national secretary Nadine Flood said the union had agreed to postpone the strike and was "conscious of the understandable concern of travellers in the wake of the Brussels attack". Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says security standards in Europe have 'slipped'. Credit:Martin Meissner "We will consider whether to undertake further industrial next week and in coming weeks in light of the department and government's response in coming days," she said. Security at airports across Australia has remained unchanged after the attacks in Belgium with the Australian Federal Police advising Mr Turnbull existing arrangements were satisfactory. At least 31 people have been killed and hundreds injured by the coordinated attacks on Brussels Airport and a rush-hour metro train. The cancer treatment scandal at St Vincent's hospital extends beyond the hospital's public disclosures, as confidential internal emails revealing the head of cancer services questioned whether patients needed to be told they had received incorrect chemotherapy doses. Up to 82 patients were given a flat dose of the drug carboplatin since 2005, according to email exchanges between hospital staff, despite St Vincent's reporting only 70 patients had been underdosed over a period of three years. Dozens of previously unidentified patients underdosed by Dr John Grygiel face uncertainty. Credit:Joosep Martinson The emails, marked "confidential", also revealed Dr John Grygiel was not the only doctor who had administered the flat dose regimen. "Do patients need to be informed?" head of cancer services Dr Richard Gallagher asked CEO Associate Professor Anthony Schembri in an email dated February 10. Oil prices could fall further this year as the global oil market is oversupplied. The supply and demand of China's refined oil market, meanwhile, is growing steadily. China was the world's second largest oil refining country after the United States as of the end of 2015, according to a blue book report on the country's oil and gas industry. The report, titled 2016 China Oil and Gas Industry Development Analysis and Development, was issued by the China Petroleum Enterprise Association and China Oil and Gas Industry Development Research Center on March 21. As oil prices continue to slump, development and investment are also likely to drop, said Peng Yuanzheng, Vice-President of China Petroleum Enterprise Association. Global reserves of oil and gas remain stable. OPEC countries had around 1,216 billion barrels of crude oil reserve in 2014, accounting for 73 percent of the global supply. The report noted that global economic recovery remains uncertain in 2016. Factors like OPEC members keeping oil supply steady plus the U.S. shale gas revolution will contribute to the crude oil glut. For the Chinese market, consumption of crude oil came to 518 million tons in 2015,a year-on-year increase of 5.8 percent. The consumption of natural gas was 185.5 billion cubic meters, an increase of 2.9 percent from 2014. Meanwhile, China's crude oil and natural gas production has slowed. China's annual crude oil production was 213 million tons, up 1.8 percent from last year, and the country's natural gas production was about 135 billion cubic meters, a year-on-year increase of 5.6 percent. Police will be able to ban people from public places and events without a judge's approval as part of a raft of anti-organised crime legislation proposed by the state government. A bill unveiled by the state government on Tuesday aims to "cripple" organised crime groups by clamping down on their movements, associations and business dealings. NSW Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione has announced new laws targeting organised crime gangs. Credit:Dallas Kilponen But critics warn the laws could lead to an overreach of police powers. Under the legislation police will be able to apply to judges for "crime prevention orders" that would stop people involved in serious criminal activity from activities such as using a phone or a computer. A 16-year-old schoolgirl stands accused of facilitating the flow of thousands of dollars from the western Sydney suburbs to the Islamic State battlefront. The Year 11 student at Granville South Creative and Performing Arts High School was charged on Tuesday along with Milad Atai, 20, a previous target of the Operation Appleby counter-terrorism raids in September 2014. Milad Atai was arrested by counter-terrorism police in Sydney. Fairfax Media understands police will allege Mr Atai was the "procurer" and his female friend, who cannot be named, was the "facilitator" of a single sum of money sent to the terror group some time between February 3 and March 22. The pair had a sophisticated "facilitation path" they had used before and that involved others. The money, totalling less than $10,000, was sent directly to the organisation rather than through a foreign fighter or charity front, Fairfax Media has been told. Australian-raised Ricardo Bolvaran, deported to Chile last year, should soon be on his way home following after confirmation the Brisbane man's appeal against the revocation of his visa was successful. Mr Bolvaran, who had spent 41 of his 42 years in Australia, received a letter from the Department of Immigration and Border Protection on Monday (Chilean time) informing him of its decision. "You were invited to ask for revocation of the original decision and you made representations to the decision-maker about why the original decision should be revoked," a DIBP case officer says in the letter. "After consideration of your response, the decision-maker has decided to revoke the original decision to cancel your visa. Fresh from the Liberal National Party's record Brisbane City Council election victory, Lord Mayor Graham Quirk's attention has been turned firmly to getting his proposed Brisbane Metro off the ground. The $1.54 billion Brisbane Metro was the LNP's biggest election promise and, if built, would link Woolloongabba and Herston. Cr Quirk said the first step would be to prepare a business case for the Metro, which would take about a year, with construction likely to begin about a year after that. "We've cleared the air, in terms of the election, and the people have spoken very loud and clear in terms of their intent," he said on Monday, less than 48 hours after his re-election as lord mayor. The Catholic Church is bracing for possible arson attacks on Melbourne parishes linked to paedophile priests, 12 months after vandals torched three suburban churches. The Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne has told its parishes to be vigilant following an attempted arson attack on St Bede's Church in Balwyn North earlier this month. An intruder broke into the church and poured accelerant onto the altar, but is believed to have fled before lighting the fire because an alarm went off. Father Ronald Pickering [L] with choir. In an email to the 214 churches in the Melbourne Archdiocese, vicar-general Monsignor Greg Bennet warned of the risk of arson, saying the Balwyn church's alarm system was all that foiled "what would have been another catastrophic fire". It coincides with the one-year anniversary of three as-yet-unsolved fires at churches where paedophile priests worked. Bayside mayor James Long has raised the hackles of local ratepayers by using his mayoral car to attend a private meeting in Canberra - more than seven hours drive from his municipality. Councillor Long was in Canberra on March 10 for a mediation meeting which was part of a long-running legal stoush involving the Australian Bravery Association and allegations he transferred $240,000 to an affiliated organisation without authority. James Long tries a different mode of transport in 2004, before becoming mayor. Credit:Angela Wylie A Bayside Council spokeswoman confirmed that Cr Long had full private use of the mayoral vehicle - a dark blue 2014 Mazda wagon - as part of his entitlements. Cr Long insisted he had not breached any council guidelines by driving to the nation's capital for a mediation meeting. More than 40,000 nurses and midwives will vote for the right to go on strike and close hospital beds in a move to ramp up demands for better pay. It comes as the powerful Victorian nurses' union seeks substantial wage increases of between 3 and 20 per cent a year for its members in public hospitals and healthcare centres statewide. The Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation will hold a statewide meeting of 1000 workers on Wednesday. Credit:Luis Ascui A log of claims handed to the Andrews government and health employers calls for Victorian wages to rise to the same rates as nurses and midwives in New South Wales. The weekly pay for the median nurse grading in Victoria is $1235 about 15 per cent less than NSW, an analysis reveals. Nursing unit managers earning up to $1800 a week are 12 per cent worse off. A broken leg has prevented a former teacher at a well-known Melbourne private school appearing in court to answer to charges of historic sexual offences involving students. Former Preshil teacher John McMillan faces three charges over alleged incidents involving students between 1975 and 1992 while he was a teacher at the Kew school. John McMillan taught at Preshil until 1996. Credit:Joe Armao The offences are alleged to have occurred in Kew and Gippsland. Mr McMillan, 72, who taught at Preshil until 1996, was unable to appear in Melbourne Magistrates Court on Tuesday because of a broken right leg which prevented him from travelling from his home in country Queensland. "Without this, we can't get to school, to work, to essential medical appointments or visit family and friends. Currently, the service is unreliable with long waiting times during peak hours and we are concerned that this will only get worse as ride sharing continues to erode the taxi market," he said. The letter calls for a mandated commitment that at least five per cent of Uber vehicles be wheelchair-accessible, extending the government subsidy for wheelchair taxis to Uber, and the introduction of a levy on all ride-sharing trips to help pay for this. On this point, Uber agreed, arguing that extending the Multi Purpose Taxi Program subsidy to UberAssist would reduce costs for the government by about 20 per cent. "We are keen to work with the Victorian government on using ride sharing to improve accessibility for all communities, including looking at how existing subsidy programs could be opened up to incorporate ride-sharing services," Uber Victoria's general manager, Matt Denman, said. Victorian Transport Minister Jacinta Allan says the government is still considering options for ride sharing. Credit:Joe Armao Jacinta Allan said the state government was still working through the issues regarding potential legalisation of Uber, including its impact on people for whom taxis are the sole form of transport, and would be not rushed into a decision. "The impact ride-share services could have on transport for people with disabilities is critically important and something we are considering closely right now," Ms Allan said. Blind people left stranded A blind man has caught on film the moment an Uber driver refused him access to his car, because he was with his seeing-eye dog Valdez. The blind man, Daniel Svoboda, was left stranded on the side of the street near his Mitcham home, then charged a $10 cancellation fee. The Uber driver refused to take him to the Eastland shopping centre. The incident, which took place last week, has led Uber to agree to work with Guide Dogs Victoria to create extra training for its drivers about the needs of people with guide dogs. It is illegal for a taxi driver or an Uber driver to refuse a passenger because he has a guide dog. Karen Hayes, chief executive of Guide Dogs Victoria, said the organisation had worked with 13Cabs to improve driver understanding of the issue, and now would do the same with Uber. "We just need to extend knowledge of the impact refusal has on clients," Ms Hayes said. "It's humiliating, it can impact on confidence and make some hesitant about whether they should go out in future." A Guide Dogs Victoria survey last year found 46 per cent of guide dog handlers had been denied access or questioned when attempting to access a taxi. Uber said drivers who refused to transport a guide dog could lose access to the app that connects them with customers. Mr Svododa was later refunded his $10. Ms Allan said the incident was shocking and unacceptable. "Reports that Uber drivers are rejecting people with assistance animals is shocking and unacceptable," she said. "They, like all companies, have a responsibility to ensure people with disabilities are not discriminated against." The issue of poor service to blind customers is not confined to Uber. John Hardie and his seeing eye dog Heidi at their Narre Warren home. Credit:Penny Stephens John Hardie, a blind cancer patient from Narre Warren, said he had been left stranded numerous times in recent months, after Cabcharge bought out smaller taxi operator Dandenong Taxis in September. Mr Hardie relies on taxis as his only means of transport, and said he regularly spent 12 to 15 minutes on hold each time he booked one. Previously, he spent an average of one to three minutes on hold. He has missed important medical appointments because of the delays, he said. Cabcharge managing director Stuart Overell acknowledged Mr Hardie had suffered poor service. He said there had been "technology issues" when Dandenong Taxis' call centre switched to the 13Cabs call centre. "We did anticipate some transitional challenges but it's been a couple of months now so we're pretty confident most of those would have gone," Mr Overell said. The U.S. government plans to temporarily lift trade sanctions against Chinese multinational telecommunication giant ZTE Corp., the Wall Street Journal cited a senior Commerce Department official on Sunday. The act is considered a gesture to ease tensions between Washington and Beijing. The federal government placed an export ban on ZTE Corp. earlier this month, saying that it has violated a trade embargo on Iran-selling restricted goods including computers, software, and telecommunication equipment to Iran. The export ban prohibits the company from buying U.S. components and software. As part of the effort to resolve the matter, and based upon binding commitments that ZTE has made to the U.S. government, Commerce expects this week to be able to provide temporary relief from some licensing requirements, the senior Commerce official said. Although the talks with the company are active and constructive as it is, the lift of ban is still temporary in nature and would be maintained only if ZTE is abiding by its commitments to the U.S. government, added the official. The ZTE Corporation is a Chinese multinational telecommunications equipment and systems company headquartered in Shenzhen, south China. It is one of the five largest smartphone manufacturers in China and in the top ten worldwide. Two men charged with stealing two vintage Ferraris - including one that once belonged to Dodi Fayed, the boyfriend of Princess Diana - are also accused of stealing five other vehicles the same day. Matthew Ludwig, 31, and Bradley Abela, 29, both face a string of charges relating to a series of alleged thefts across Melbourne's south-eastern suburbs over a fortnight in November last year. The 1973 Ferrari Daytona, thought to be worth between $1.5 million and $2 million. Credit:www.classicdriver.com Police allege the two men stole seven cars in the early hours of November 6, including a 1973 Ferrari Daytona worth between $1.5 million and $2 million and a 1986 Ferrari 328 valued at $120,000. The more expensive Ferrari, which was once owned by Mr Fayed and also owned by Pink Floyd singer Roger Waters, was found burnt out the following day in Langwarrin. SkyBus fares between Melbourne Airport and the CBD will rise on Wednesday, extending the margin by which Melbourne has Australia's priciest city-to-airport public transport, even as major roadworks make the journey more time consuming. The one dollar fare rise will increase the cost of a one-way SkyBus trip to $19, or for $36 to $38 return. It is the service's first price increase since December 2013. Passengers have been warned of the impending, 5.5 per cent price rise at SkyBus departure points, but there has been no mention of it on the SkyBus website. As a sweetener, the cost of a family ticket will be reduced.. A woman has been discovered in the boot of her own car after allegedly being abducted and sexually assaulted by a group of men in Melbourne's south-east. Sexual crimes squad detectives have been told the woman was approached by a number of men and put into the boot while at a Bourke Road shopping centre car park in Clarinda about 1.30pm on Tuesday. The ordeal lasted more than two hours. Police found the woman, still in the boot, at the intersection of Vernal Road and Leham Avenue in Oakleigh South at 4pm. Early on Wednesday morning, police were not able to say if the woman knew the men, how many men were involved, or provide a description of the alleged offenders. Bangkok: Aung San Suu Kyi has ended weeks of speculation by taking a formal post in Myanmar's first democratically elected government in decades. The role will give the 70-year-old Nobel Laureate a profile internationally as she runs the government from a position above recently elected president Htin Kyaw, one of her closest allies and the first leader in half a century without ties to the military. Htin Kyaw, newly elected President of Myanmar, walks with National League for Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, in Naypyitaw earlier this month. Credit:AP Earlier spokesmen for Ms Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy had played down speculation she would assume an official role while still leading the government from behind the scenes. Brussels: A terrorist attack on the European Union's capital has prompted tightened security for travellers, an emergency cabinet meeting by British Prime Minister David Cameron and condemnation by leaders from Australia to Rome. Faced with two bombings at the city's Zaventem Airport and a subway blast near the EU's headquarters that killed at least 31 people, governments issued messages mixing sympathy for the victims with a determination to stand up to the terrorist threat. "These events affect us but do not scare us," European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, whose office is based in Brussels, said in a statement. "We continue our work to deal together with the terrorist threat and to provide European solutions." "It took them several months and this guy was not hiding on his own. That makes it a bit embarrassing for the intelligence community in Belgium. People walk away from Brussels airport after the blasts. Credit:Geert Vanden Wijngaert "The events of today increase both worries about the intelligence position of Belgian authorities as well as how many supporters there are. "They're not that amateuristic either. These support groups are a big worry and in some countries they run in the hundreds if not the thousands and that's too many for the authorities to monitor." People comfort one another outside Brussels airport. Credit:AP More concerning still, it was not just Belgian authorities but French agencies who were involved in hunting Abdeslam and trying to break up the extensive networks of which he was part. "You hope the Muslim communities will be their eyes and ears but apparently that didn't happen so there are a lot of worries," Professor Bakker said. Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon admitted after the Paris attacks that "we don't have a grip on the situation in Molenbeek". The district was home to the now-banned group Sharia4Belgium, seen as an incubator for Brussels' radical scene, and has been the source of several plots in addition to Paris. Professor Bakker meanwhile said that Belgian authorities had been slow to respond to the rising extremism problem. They had "neglected their intelligence capacity for a long time" and suffered political divisions across the French-Flemish political blocs, which hampered communication and a sense of common purpose, he said. Both Professor Bakker and Monash University terrorism expert Greg Barton said there was a strong chance that the Brussels attacks were carried out by extremists who were on the run after the Abdeslam arrest and decided they might as well launch the assault before they were caught. Professor Barton said it was "almost certain" the attack was linked to associates of Abdeslam's, perhaps those who'd fled before police launched the raid that captured the Paris attacker in the notorious Molenbeek district of Brussels. "Given they haven't arrested other people, it seems very likely those people decided they would attack before they were arrested, thinking it was better to attack and achieve something." He said a 55-page report released last week on the Paris attacks showed French authorities had been "surprised at how extensive this network was, and that it was more professional than they expected". Tuesday's attack "suggests there is still a fair part of this network in Brussels", he said. "This is a scale of threat that has gone beyond both Belgian and French authorities," he said. He said it was "wrong to paint the Belgian authorities as completely hopeless". "All of us have been caught by how quickly this has grown and how big it has become with the Islamic State." The "technocratic" nature of the organisation causing ructions in Syria and Iraq appeared to extend even to these remote attacks on the West, he said. Raffaello Pantucci, director of international security studies at the Royal United Services Institute, said Abdeslam's arrest may have accelerated existing plans for the attacks, with the plotters fearing that Abdeslam would reveal their plans in interrogation by security services. Lesbos: Greece has asked its European partners for help implementing a deal with Turkey meant to stem an influx of migrants into Europe, as hundreds more many unaware of the new rules streamed from their boats on to Greek islands. For months the epicentre of Europe's biggest migrant crisis since World War II, Greece is struggling to implement the logistics operation needed to process asylum applications from hundreds of migrants still arriving daily along its shoreline. A girl looks out of a bus window after arriving by ferry with hundreds of other migrants at the Greek port of Elefsina on Monday. Credit:AP Turkish officials arrived on the island of Lesbos on Monday to help put the deal into practice. Anyone who arrived after March 20 must be held until their papers are processed and those deemed ineligible are to be sent back to Turkey from April 4. In the wake of a series of fatal attacks in Brussels, Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said he would go beyond waterboarding when interrogating suspected terrorist leaders and repeated that the US should "close up our borders until we figure out what's going on". "Waterboarding would be fine and if they could expand the laws, I would do a lot more than waterboarding," Trump said told NBC's Today, adding authorities should "should be able to do whatever they have to do". Asked if he believed people, when tortured, yield useful rather than false information, he said he was "in that camp". "You have to get the information and you have to get it rapidly," he said. Washington: Donald Trump's stump spiel is all about knocking the world into shape in a series of "deals" that'll teach 'em who's the man. But subjected to forensic questioning on Monday, Trump revealed that what he really wants is to stay at home and build stuff. Nation-building is so yesterday; isolationism is smarter than intervening; and it's time the rest of the world paid its own way. On a day when Trump and Hillary Clinton snipped at each other at a mass gathering of Israel supporters, Trump was subjected to the most detailed questioning to date on foreign policy in a recorded meeting with the editorial board of The Washington Post. We learned today that the U.K. National Environment Research Council is naming a new Royal Research Ship via online poll. Names put forward so far include the RRS Henry Worsley and the RRS Pillar of Autumn. But the name that's pulling ahead is ready for it? RRS Boaty McBoatface. The Internet really loves the name and the NERC is getting lots of publicity, which got us thinking: Are there any Broadway shows that could benefit from the #BoatyMcBoatface treatment? Of course there are! Here are 9 of our suggestions. Use #BwayBoatyMcBoatface to submit your own recommendations. 1. Carrie: Bloody McBloodface Marin Mazzie and Molly Ranson in MCC Theater's revival of Carrie in 2012 at the Lucille Lortel Theatre. ( Joan Marcus) The musical Carrie is a cult favorite, and fans might have a hard time letting go of Stephen King's original moniker. But when you only last for five performances, sometimes you have to be open to constructive criticism. Who wouldn't buy a ticket toBloody McBloodface on Broadway? 2. Rebecca: Becky McFireface Ryan Silverman, Jill Paice, and Maree Johnson, lead performers from the ill-fated Broadway mounting of Rebecca. ( David Gordon) Scandal has been keeping this show down. It's hard to bounce back from the fake death of a fake producer who has been fake-funding your show. A fresh name might be just the boost Rebecca needs to finally get to Broadway. 3. The Last Ship: Boaty McBoatface Sting's 2014 Broadway musical The Last Ship. ( Matthew Murphy) Sting's nautical musical The Last Ship closed too soon on Broadway last season. Luckily the British populace has already come up with the perfect title to rebrand its future productions. If anybody would be "on board" it's the show's creator and Police frontman, Gordon Matthew Thomas Sumner. The 2013 Broadway cast of Hands on a Hardbody. ( Chad Batka) This musical taught us that "if you love something, keep your hands on it." We're trying to do just that by renaming it Trucky McTruckface. Since the original title might have been a little misleading, a more Internet-friendly title could have done wonders for this musical's marketing campaign. Benjamin Walker as Patrick Bateman in rehearsal for American Psycho, starting performances at the Schoenfeld Theatre March 24. ( Allison Stock) It's hard to open a new musical on Broadway, especially with all the other screen titles this show is up against. Duncan Sheik's new musical is being added to a Broadway roster that already includes School of Rock, Matilda, Kinky Boots, and more. It wouldn't hurt to have a killer new title to give the show a leg up. Keala Settle, Jessie Mueller, and Kimiko Glenn in rehearsal for Waitress, starting previews at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre March 25. ( David Gordon) Sara Bareilles' Waitress is another new screen-to-stage project coming to Broadway this season. And when you've got pie as a main theme of your show, why bury the lead? That's why we're serving up this confection of a click-baity new title. 7. She Loves Me: Deary McFriendface Zachary Levi and Laura Benanti in She Loves Me, now running at Studio 54. ( Joan Marcus) She Loves Me is one of the lesser known musicals by Joe Masteroff and Sheldon Harnick. Clearly it's a popular story, with You've Got Mail and Shop Around the Corner originating from the same source material. We're giving the musical version the catchy title it's been waiting for. 8. Les Miserables: Empty McChairface The 2014 Broadway cast of Les Miserables at the Imperial Theatre. ( Matthew Murphy) Sure Les Miserables is doing fine with the title it's already got. But there's no time like the present for a 21st-century facelift. Or should we way a Boaty McBoatface-lift? 9. Sunday in the Park With George: Georgey McPaintface A production photo from the 1985 production of Sunday in the Park With George. We all know Stephen Sondheim is a genius. But has he ever really had a smash hit? And that's understandable considering that the pointillist paintings of Georges Seurat are kind of a niche subject for a commercial Broadway production. A pedestrian title like Georgey McPaintface is just what this intellectual musical needs to appeal to the unwashed masses. Once upon a time, doctors used to bleed their patients in an effort to rectify an imbalance in the body's four basic substances (black bile, yellow bile, phlegm, and blood). Today, doctors regularly prescribe psychoactive pharmaceuticals to alter the body's production of chemicals like dopamine and serotonin. Surely, with all our scientific knowledge and medical advances, the latter is a much safer and more effective treatment, right? Lucy Prebble scrutinizes such hubris in The Effect, her searing new drama at the Barrow Street Theatre. Dr. Lorna James (Kati Brazda) is a psychiatrist conducting a clinical trial on a new anti-depressant. Under the supervision of her colleague, Dr. Toby Sealey (Steve Key), she administers the drug to Connie (Susannah Flood) and Tristan (Carter Hudson), test subjects who have agreed to be monitored around the clock for four weeks while living within a research facility. Naturally, the cabin fever gets the best of them and they embark on a passionate love affair, but neither of them can be sure it's not just the meds talking. Connie thinks that means their love doesn't really count, but Tristan cannot see why it matters: "I'm sure there's a rush of something chemical if you meet on vacation oron a bus with a bomb on it," he asserts, "doesn't mean Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock aren't really in love." Susannah Flood and Carter Hudson star in Lucy Prebble's The Effect, directed by David Cromer, at the Barrow Street Theatre. ( Matthew Murphy) Certainly the sweaty, earthy chemistry between Connie and Tristan feels authentic. Flood and Hudson look and feel like a real couple in the throes of infatuation: She is standoffish and more than a little tense, but he is irresistible with his scruffy smile and puppy-dog eyes. The charming and dangerous Hudson shakes with adrenaline as they fight and make love. Flood is equally invested in her character's dual impulses to repel him and give in. Their explosive moments are built on a solid foundation of furtive glances and flirtatious banter. This makes Brazda's committed portrayal of the habitually anxious Dr. James all the more credible. She sees the thousand ways her subjects are compromising her study, leading her to behave like a middle school vice principal that has just stumbled on an informal smoking den under the bleachers. When Dr. James accuses them of jeopardizing her research, Connie strikes back, reminding her that these are the side effects she expected. Prebble's script is full of memorable moments and characters that stab at the heart of western society's troubling relationship with prescription drugs. Although he's playing a doctor, Key could just as easily be playing the proprietor of a get-rich-quick scheme with his frighteningly charismatic performance. This brutal takedown of medicine in a capitalist context is as potent as we would expect from Prebble, the author of the spectacular energy-industry pageant Enron. David Cromer (who helmed the award-winning New York debut of Tribes at Barrow Street) directs The Effect with clinical precision yet somehow manages to avoid the sterility that tack often entails. An early scene depicting both Connie and Tristan giving blood (she covers her eyes; he can't look away) reveals just how different these two characters behave within this highly controlled world. Kati Brazda plays Dr. Lorna James and Steve Key plays Dr. Toby Sealey in The Effect. ( Matthew Murphy) The acting is satisfyingly unsafe, even when performed on the hospital green floors of Marsha Ginsberg's sleek yet surprisingly versatile set. With the aid of a moving wall and Tyler Micoleau's gutsy lighting design, new playing spaces emerge out of thin air. Micoleau boldly casts several scenes in near obscurity, allowing our eyes to adjust to the darkness. Blessedly, he allows us to reacclimatize to the light, unlike so many sadistic lighting designers who opt for jarringly quick, eye-scorching transitions. Costume designer Sarah Laux outfits Connie and Tristan in matching grey sweat suits, but even the way they wear them makes them look like very different garments, hinting at the absurdity of this whole situation. So much of this play is about human resistance to uniformity and the scientific method itself: How can one person truly serve as a control for another when the two subjects have radically different backgrounds, attitudes, and chemical predispositions? Brimming with challenging insight, The Effect is sure to cause some heated post-show discussions, especially in our hypermedicated age. Be prepared: Xanax and ibuprofen are not included with the price of admission. FARMINGTON HILLS, Mich., March 21, 2016 -- Global connected car leader Cohda Wireless will supply its equipment for a trial that lays the groundwork for the expected mandating of connected vehicle technology in the US within four years. South Carolina-based Clemson University has chosen Cohda to supply its MK5 onboard and roadside unit hardware and software for the project supported by US Ignite, a White House initiative that is run by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Clemson will use Cohda Wireless units for the South Carolina Connected Vehicle Testbed (SC-CVT), located along a 10-mile segment of Interstate I-85 near Clemson's International Center for Automotive Research (ICAR) campus in Greenville South Carolina. Cohda Wireless is a world leader in Connected Vehicle technology, also known as V2X (vehicle to everything), which enables connected cars to interact vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) or vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I). Cohda's hardware and software products are used in more than 60 per cent of all V2X field trials worldwide today. Clemson University School of Computing Associate Professor Jim Martin said Cohda's technology was chosen primarily for two reasons. "Firstly Cohda's MK5 onboard unit and roadside unit performed well in validation tests and, secondly, because the support provided by Cohda to help us get our equipment up and running was outstanding," he said. Cohda Wireless CEO Paul Gray said inclusion on this US Ignite-backed project provided valuable recognition of Cohda's role in the global industry. "This further extends Cohda's leading position as a provider of innovative Connected Vehicle technology," he said. When establishing the SC-CVT project, the NSF stated that by the end of the decade, the US Department of Transportation would likely require all new vehicles to be Connected Vehicles (CV), capable of communicating with other vehicles and roadside infrastructure through wireless communications in order to reduce the number of crashes and save lives. Crash avoidance applications supported by V2V and V2I connectivity exchange safety-critical information such as speed, location and direction of movement to assess the crash risk based on the proximity of vehicles. The National Science Foundation is an independent federal agency that supports fundamental research and education across all fields of science and engineering. About Cohda Wireless Cohda Wireless is the leading equipment vendor in the V2X market. The Australian company manufactures systems with acknowledged best-in-world performance. Cohda's hardware and software products are used in more than 60 per cent of all V2X field trials worldwide today. Customers include many carmakers, tier one suppliers, automotive chipmakers, road authorities and new market entrants. Cohda's products are already used in the USA, Europe, Australia, Japan, China, and Korea. For more information, visit www.cohdawireless.com. Meet The New 'Tool' In Big Oil's Efforts To Scuttle Ethanol +VIDEO An open letter to George "David" Banks By Marc J. Rauch Exec. Vice President/Co-Publisher THE AUTO CHANNEL Hi David - I just finished reading your article "Renewable Fuel Standard Continues To Devastate," published in February on the High Plains Leader & Times website. The first thing I did was to visit the American Council for Capital Formation (ACCF) website, the organization for which you are listed as Executive Vice President. I was curious to learn of your background and to try and determine where your information comes from. I noticed that Richard Rahn from Cato Institute is on your Board of Directors, so I presume you may have received some input from him. In fact, your article looks suspiciously like an article that Mr. Rahn published on NewsMax.com in 2012 called Biofuels Not Worth the Trouble or Cost. The other thing I looked at was your biography. It appears that you never actually worked in any industry in which you would have learned about business. I'm sure you took some "business" classes in school, but it doesn't look like you ever worked in a manufacturing company or sales company, and there is definitely no indication that you ever tried to start and run your own business that involved operating a cash register. In reading press releases from ACCF, I also noticed that you only recently joined this group, just a few weeks prior to your High Plains Leader article. So my first questions are: Were you given the assignment to write this story as part of your initiation into ACCF? Were you told that petroleum oil groups are major contributors to ACCF and you had to show what you can do? By the way, I'm not criticizing you or ACCF for taking money from the oil industry, after all you guys have families and need to provide for them. Certainly the oil industry has more money than they know what to do with, so what the heck. I only wish you would choose a way to support your families that isn't so harmful to our country. The point of my contacting you is to make sure you know, if you don't already know, that you have no idea of what you are writing about. Your comments about ethanol are as ignorant as those written by Richard Rahn almost four years ago. Incidentally, on July 24, 2012, I wrote to Mr. Rahn and explained how he was wrong. He never replied; I guess he was embarrassed at being caught stupid. However, from a Google search of Mr. Rahn's work after that date it appears that he greatly shied away from discussing ethanol again, so maybe my note to him had some beneficial effect. I hope you won't be so rude as to not respond to me. I'd at least like to see you give challenging the truth a try. So let's get to it, shall we: You start with the ridiculous "ethanol production causes food price increases" argument. This argument was specious nearly 10 years ago when The World Bank was first putting together the paper that would blame increased ethanol production for food price increases. However, two years later, The World Bank retracted that claim and placed the blame where it was rightfully deserved, on petroleum oil price increases and commodity speculators. Two years after that, The World Bank reiterated that petroleum oil prices and speculators were to blame, not corn ethanol production. I guess no one shared this information with you. And I guess no one told you that even if corn ethanol caused an increase in the price of corn that the increase would have virtually no affect. For example, in 2010 a $4 box of corn flakes had about a nickel's worth of corn. So if corn prices doubled, the corn content would only be 10 cents. The reason for a box of corn flakes to cost so much was because all of the distribution and marketing costs related to selling breakfast cereals. Moreover, since 2010 corn prices have generally been low, therefore for you to write a current story about high corn prices causing food price increases is just plain silly. This is 2016; if there have been food price increases since 2010, it wasn't because of corn prices. There was a rise in corn prices from 2011 to 2013, but this increase coincided with crude oil prices rising to near record highs (3 times more than today), and 3 times higher than they were in 2009 (after oil prices fell from the record setting 2008 oil prices). By the way, it was during the 2008 record setting oil prices that The World Bank issued the fallacious report that they later retracted. David, you need to do a lot of homework on this...a lot of homework. Then you say that America no longer depends on oil from foreign producers, however in all of 2015 and since January 1st of this year we have imported more crude per month from Canada than at any time since 2010. In case you don't know, Canada is a foreign country. SEE: Weekly U.S. Imports from Canada of Crude Oil Crude oil imports from Saudi Arabia for 2015, and to-date in 2016, were approximately the same as the two years prior (2013-14). In addition, we continue to import oil from Iraq, Kuwait, Nigeria, Venezuela, Mexico, Columbia, Ecuador, and Angola. So when you say that America "no longer depends on oil from foreign producers," you're wrong. Yes, imports levels are the lowest they've been in a long time, but your statement is still grossly incorrect. You write "There's no evidence that the use of ethanol actually lowers oil imports." This is one of those times when having some real business experience would have been helpful to you. You see, it's this simple: Say you had a grocery store and you normally sell 100 gallons of milk per day from distant Dairy A, but now because you are also selling milk from a local Dairy B you are only selling 60 gallons of Dairy A milk per day. Although you are still selling 100 gallons of milk every day, this means that by selling local Dairy B milk has you don't have to import as much milk from the distant Dairy A. In other words, by simple arithmetic, if you use one gallon of ethanol in place of one gallon of gasoline then it means that you need less petroleum oil. So regardless of how much oil importation has changed, ethanol has played a role in reducing the need for foreign oil because if we had enough domestic oil we wouldn't have to import so much or any. Additionally, you only attribute lower oil imports to "an explosion in shale exploration," but the truth is different. As the U.S. Energy Information Administration has pointed out: "There is no single explanation for the decline in U.S. oil import dependence since 2005. Rather, the trend results from a variety of factors. Chief among those is a significant contraction in consumption...and reflects factors such as changes in efficiency and consumer behavior as well as patterns of economic growth...Shifts in supply patterns, including increases in domestic biofuels production, NGL output and refinery gain, also played an important role in moderating import dependence. U.S. ethanol net inputs...helping to displace traditional hydrocarbon fuels and so reducing petroleum import needs." David, you then write that between 2008 and 2014 "Domestic production increased by more than 3.5 million barrels a day. Meanwhile, ethanol production increased by a negligible 328,500 barrels daily over that same period -- comparatively, a drop in the bucket." In writing this, you intimate that ethanol only increased by such a small number because of low demand and consumer interest. This is another gross misstatement of truth. Ethanol, because it's confined by government restriction to 10% in regular gasoline options, has had a strict limitation on its growth. If E15, E20, E30 and other ethanol-gasoline blends weren't restricted from sale at filling stations then ethanol production and use would have had equal "explosive" growth. But, what I find peculiar - almost funny - is that you fail to realize that if you take into account the decline in automobile fuel consumption due to driving habits as well as the increase in engine efficiency in late model vehicles, that there has still been an increase in ethanol production. Consequently, this means there has been considerable growth in ethanol acceptance. And while the increase may be small in proportion to the shift in where crude comes from, it is rather enormous compared to the drop in gasoline and diesel fuel used by passenger vehicles. In neglecting to understand and take all this into account you are proving yourself to be just a "tool" used by the oil industry, and by "tool" I mean the street definition of the term. You then write, "To meet the growing demand for ethanol, farmers have chosen to produce corn over pork, beef, poultry, and other agricultural products. That's costing families and businesses. In 2012 alone, the average family spent an extra $2,000 on groceries thanks to the RFS. And, the RFS has cost chain restaurants an additional $3.2 billion annually -- about $18,000 per restaurant." Wow, David, it sounds like you also know nothing about the farming, ranching, and restaurant industries. I guess you weren't aware that prior to the new ethanol market for corn many of these farmers struggled to survive, and that by growing corn they now have a profitable product that has a growing demand. I guess you don't understand that if crop farmers shifted to raising beef cattle and other agricultural products that there might be a glut on the market for those products, which would drive down prices and cause the farmers and ranchers to suffer. This in turn would put in jeopardy all farm crops and livestock meats. Having a vigorous external market that can absorb corn crops without destroying the meat and vegetable markets is a good thing, not a bad thing. You probably took some classes in school that covered supply and demand, but no one actually taught you what it means or how it works in the real world. And when you write the part about the RFS costing chain restaurants $3.2 billion annually, you of course didn't consider that most of the higher costs they have been subjected to relates to the cost of petroleum oil used in transportation, marketing, and packaging. You write that ethanol "also hurts drivers...ethanol is less efficient than regular gasoline." This is untrue. Ethanol is more efficient than gasoline. Determining "efficiency" is not just a matter of how many miles a gallon of fuel will provide, you must factor in the cost per gallon in order to arrive at a cost per mile. Generally speaking, over the last decade the lower cost per gallon of E85 made up for, or equalized, any reduction in MPG. If by using E85 a consumer got 8%-10% fewer miles per gallon, the 10%-20% lower cost per gallon gave the use of E85 a net gain. Likewise, the higher cost per gallon of ethanol-free gasoline (E0) more than eats up any increase in mileage compared to using E10. You didn't know this, did you? When you received the talking points memo from the oil industry they didn't cover any of this, did they? And now let me put the final nail in the efficiency/economy coffin for you: the reason that a gasoline engine will get fewer miles per gallon when it uses ethanol (or ethanol-gasoline blends) is because the engine is optimized to run on gasoline. A comparable engine optimized to run on ethanol will deliver the same or higher miles per gallon, and the ethanol fuel is less expensive. You basically close out your article by writing "Some argue these costs are worth it for ethanol's environmental advantages. But research shows there's hardly anything "green" about it...To get a full sense of environmental effects of ethanol production, it's necessary to take into account all emissions associated with growing corn for fuel. That includes those from farm equipment used to clear land, plant seeds, irrigate, and harvest crops. Don't forget the pollution emitted hauling ethanol from factories to refineries to gas stations...In short, ethanol isn't nearly as clean as its proponents suggest. Indeed, the greenhouse gases produced during a fuel cycle for ethanol are roughly the same as that produced by petroleum-based fuels... These emissions add up." This information is so ignorant and so naive that it's hard to believe you took the time to use it. To begin with, if you want to see the difference in emissions advantage of ethanol versus gasoline, just watch either or both of these short YouTube videos: David, you say that in order to get the full sense of environmental effects that you have to calculate in all the ancillary aspects of ethanol production. Did you not know and understand that gasoline and diesel fuel production also have ancillary aspects that affect the environment? Do you think that gasoline just comes straight out of the ground and goes right into the fuel pumps at filling stations all around America and the world? Didn't you know that crude oil, gasoline and diesel fuel also has to be hauled from point to point to point to point? And didn't you know that America has engaged in several wars to defend the oil industry around the world, and that these wars have cost us hundreds of thousands of lives in addition to untold environmental damage? Talk about emissions that really add up! You may feel I have been nasty in how I have communicated this information to you. However, all I did was to match your tone. In order for you to have gone out of your way to put together so many conspicuous lies and exaggerated statements is a terribly nasty deed. All things considered, I think I've actually been very kind to you. Please respond. Please offer additional nonsense that you know nothing about. And please do share this letter with Richard Rahn and all your contacts in the petroleum oil industry. I would challenge you and your friends to a public debate, but I know you don't have the guts to accept. Have a great week and Easter holiday. 500,000th Hyundai Elantra Sold in Canada TORONTO, March 22, 2016; Hot on the heels of the February launch of the all-new 2017 Elantra compact sedan, Hyundai Auto Canada Corp. announced it has reached a sales milestone with the Elantra nameplate, achieving 500,000 cumulative sales since June, 1991. The milestone sale, a 2017 Elantra GL, was delivered to a customer in Montreal, Quebec. With the arrival of the 2017 model, six generations of Elantra models have been proudly displayed in Hyundai dealership showrooms coast-to-coast. For company executives, the all-new Elantra has some big shoes to fill. "The fifth generation Elantra won both North American and Canadian Car of the Year awards in 2012 and has been Canada's second-best selling passenger car since 2013, so we have high expectations for this all-new vehicle," said Don Romano, President and CEO for Hyundai Auto Canada. "The Elantra, in all of its versions, is our most successful nameplate, by far. It's the first Hyundai vehicle to reach 500,000 sales and is an important player in the country's compact car market." The Elantra epitomizes Hyundai's approach to bringing the latest features and technology and making them accessible to buyers. The 2011 Elantra, for example, was the first compact car to offer heated rear seats. For the 2017 model, Hyundai elevated the benchmark, becoming the first to make heated front seats standard in the compact segment. The 2017 model also offers a host of advanced safety systems, including Autonomous Emergency Braking with Pedestrian Detection, Lane Keep Assist, and adaptive cruise control, among others. While features and equipment are sometimes the most obvious areas where Hyundai works to improve access to technology, the story behind the frame of the 2017 Elantra is perhaps less well-known. To wit: Hyundai is the only major global automaker that makes its own steel. With Hyundai Steel metallurgists and Hyundai vehicle engineers working side-by-side, the company developed its own Advanced High Strength Steel (AHSS) to achieve its vehicle performance objectives rather than adapt or compromise priorities to the existing steel available on the market. No less than 53% of the SuperStructure frame in the all-new 2017 Elantra is AHSS, which delivers a number of benefits over regular steel. Chief among those is rigidity without excess weight. A rigid frame contributes to a sporty, responsive ride, a refined, quiet cabin environment, and improved collision energy management for crash safety. About Hyundai Auto Canada Corp. Hyundai Auto Canada, established in 1983 and headquartered in Markham, Ontario, is a subsidiary of Hyundai Motor Company of Korea. Hyundai vehicles are distributed throughout Canada by Hyundai Auto Canada and are sold and serviced through more than 210 dealerships nationwide. Hyundai is also the first to offer its zero-emissions Tucson Fuel Cell Electric Vehicle to Canadian customers. More information about Hyundai and its vehicles can be found at www.HyundaiCanada.com. Investment advice firm breaks 100m barrier BARTLETT Wealth Management has reached 100m of assets under management, six years after launching its managed portfolio services. The Leeds-based company attracted 18m of funds in the 12 months to September 2015, up from 15m the year before. It expects a further 22m of new money to be added in the current year. David Bates, head of wealth management at Barletts, said a growing advisor team and the firms reputation had helped drive growth. He said: Weve had an increase in the number of advisors in the team, thats continuing to grow. Its also word of mouth; a lot of our business comes through referrals, and good reputation backed up by performance leads to more referrals. Clients are looking to Bartlett to provide reassurance and guidance as the UK faces economic challenges, Mr Bates said. Were still in an era of austerity, the Budget has highlighted the Chancellor is still trying to cut things to save money, he said. From an investment point of view, the news from China that its economy would grow at a slower pace and fears about what might happen if Britain leaves the EU are causing uncertainty. Looking ahead, Bartlett will continue to build and scale-up its services as well as grow its advisory team from seven to 12 within the next 12 months. The firm is also expanding into other areas such as auto-enrolment, Mr Bates added. A Christian academic accused of inciting violence against Muslims. A former Pentagon official who blocked investigations into Bush administration bigwigs. And an assortment of self-professed experts probably few in established foreign policy circles have ever heard of. These are the minds advising Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on foreign policy and national security. Trump, who has been pressed for months to name his council of advisers, revealed five in a meeting with The Washington Post editorial board on Tuesday: Keith Kellogg, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, Walid Phares, and Joseph E. Schmitz. Few of these names will register with most voters, or many experts in Washington. None of them are especially sought after for foreign policy views and national security expertise in the nations capitalwhich may be why theyre attractive to Trump. Trump revealed little about what specific advice theyd given so far, or how any of them may have shaped Trumps surprising new position that the U.S. should rethink whether it needs to remain in the seven-decades-old NATO alliance with Europe. Sounding more like a CFO than a commander-in-chief, Trump said of the alliance, We certainly cant afford to do this anymore, adding, NATO is costing us a fortune and yes, were protecting Europe with NATO, but were spending a lot of money. U.S. officials, including former Defense Secretary Robert Gates, have said that European allies have to shoulder a bigger burden of NATOs cost. But calling for the possible U.S. withdrawal from the treaty is a radical departure for a presidential candidateeven a candidate who has been endorsed by Russian President Vladimir Putin. Withdrawing from NATO would leave European allies without a forceful deterrent to the Russian military, which invaded and annexed portions of Ukraine in 2014. That would arguably be a win for Putin but leave U.S. allies vulnerable. It also wasnt clear how Trumps arguably anti-interventionist position on the alliance squared with his choice of advisers. The most well-known among them is Phares, a politically conservative academic who has accused President Obama of appeasement toward radical Muslim terrorists and called for more U.S. military intervention in the Middle East. To his detractors, Phares is a rare combination of lightning rod and dog whistle. His various claims about a creeping, underappreciated jihadi apocalypse against the West will find quarter with Trumps broad suspicion of Muslims and his call to ban foreign Muslims from entering the U.S. In a 2008 essay in the conservative Human Events, Phares warned that in the following four years, Jihadists may recruit one million suicide bombers and that by 2016, they would have 10 million and seize five regimes equipped with the final weapon, referring to nuclear weapons. This isnt Pharess first time as a presidential adviser. As The Daily Beast reported in 2011, Pharess work co-chairing the Middle East policy team for then-GOP candidate Mitt Romneywho has recently vowed to fight against Trumps nominationprompted the Council on American-Islamic Relations to call on the candidate to ditch Phares, whom it called an associate to war crimes and a conspiracy theorist, citing his ties to a violent anti-Muslim militia. Mother Jones reported that in the 1980s Phares, a Christian who was then active in Lebanese political groups, trained militants in ideological beliefs to justify a war on Muslim and Druze factions, prompting a former CIA official to question why a man with ties to foreign political organizations was advising a U.S. presidential candidate. Phares has his supporters, chiefly in neoconservative foreign policy circles and among conservative pundits and analysts. But those connections drew scrutiny in 2012 when the group Media Matters for America alleged that Pharess connections to the Romney campaign werent properly identified when Phares was working as a consultant for Fox News. Another Trump adviser, Schmitz, has served in government, as the Defense Department inspector general. Schmitz was brought in during the first term of President George W. Bush with a mandate to reform the watchdog office, but he eventually found himself the subject of scrutiny. Schmitz slowed or blocked investigations of senior Bush administration officials, spent taxpayer money on pet projects and accepted gifts that may have violated ethics guidelines, according to an investigation by the Los Angeles Times in 2005. Current and former colleagues described him as an intelligent but easily distracted leader who seemed to obsess over details, including the hiring of a speechwriter and designs for a bathroom. Schmitz also raised eyebrows for what the papers sources described as his unusual fascination with Baron Friedrich Von Steuben, a Revolutionary War hero whos regarded as the militarys first inspector general. Schmitz reportedly replaced the Defense Department IGs seal in its office across the country with a new one bearing the Von Steuben family motto, Sub Tutela Altissimi Semper, under the protection of the Almighty always. Another Trump adviser, retired Gen. Joseph Keith Kellogg, was among the first U.S. personnel sent in to try and govern Iraq after the fall of Saddam Hussein. Kellogg had been employed by U.S. government contractor Oracle Corp. in November 2003 when he went to Baghdad to serve as the Chief Operating Officer of the Coalition Provisional Authority, a position he held for five months.He played a key role in the effort to rebuild Iraq and bridge the link between security and critical infrastructure, according to a press release from CACI International Inc., another government contractor that hired Kellogg after his brief stint in Iraq.The so-called reconstruction of Iraq was a halting effort beset by controversial policy decisionssuch as the disbanding of the Iraqi army, a move that is widely seen as helping to fuel an insurgency that later threatened to plunge the country into a civil warand costly, poorly managed contracts that spawned audits and inspectors general investigations.The remaining Trump advisers, Page and Papadopoulos, are virtual unknowns in high-level circles of national security and foreign policy. Page is an energy industry executive with experience working in Russia. He is the founder and managing partner of Global Energy Capital and spent three years working in Moscow, where he was responsible for the opening of the Merrill [Lynch] office and was an advisor on key transactions for Gazprom, RAO UES and others, according to his public biography. It says Page was a graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy but provides no information on any military service.Page has criticized the Obama administrations policy toward Russia, going so far as to accuse Victoria Nuland, an assistant secretary of state, of misguided and provocative actions and fomenting the revolution that ousted Ukrainian president and Putin ally Viktor Yanukovych from power in 2014. The former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, has described such notions as paranoid fiction. Nevertheless, he has said, Putin himself believed that the U.S. somehow arranged for the ouster of the Ukrainian leader.Papadopulos was an adviser to Ben Carsons presidential campaign, according to Papadopuloss LinkedIn page. For the past two months, hes been a director at the London Centre of International Law Practice, which offers training courses on legal issues related to energy and natural resources development.Papadopoulos, who graduated from DePaul University in 2009, offered a lengthy description of his foreign policy achievements on his LinkedIn page, including being invited to participate in policy and oil and gas conferences overseas and high-level meetings I had with various heads of government. He worked for nearly five years as a researcher at the conservative Hudson Institute in Washington. One other Trump adviser had previously been reported. Retired Army Gen. Michael Flynn had told The Daily Beast that he met informally with Trump. Flynn was pushed out of his post as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency and has since spoken out publicly about the need for the U.S. to forge closer ties with Russia. Last December, Flynn sat next to Putin at a dinner celebrating the 10th anniversary of the Kremlin-linked television network RT. His travel to Russia raised concerns among current and former defense and intelligence officials because Flynn still receives classified briefings and is privy to sensitive information about U.S. foreign policy. Flynn has also tweeted incendiary comments about Muslims and has espoused the view that fear of Muslims is rational. From the moment Hillary Clinton entered the huge convention hall, it was obvious she was among friends. There were lots of hellos and head nods as she walked toward the stage to address the annual meeting of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington Monday morning, where the tough and substantive speech she delivered may be remembered as the beginning of her takedown of Donald Trump. Until now, Trump has succeeded in knocking out almost all his Republican opponents by deriding them as weak and ineffectual. But unlike that hapless bunch, Clinton is coming out swinging. As a pure performance, she hit all the right notes, her voice dropping when she recalled holding the hands of men and women in Israeli hospital wards whose lives were torn apart by terrorism, then rising with indignation that anyone could advocate neutrality. She didnt name Trump of course, but anyone with even a passing interest in the region took note of his comments earlier this month that he believes in being somewhat neutral in his approach towards the decades-old conflict in the Middle East. Israels security is not negotiable, and anybody who doesnt understand that has no business being our president, Clinton thundered. She conjured up the perils awaiting the next president, the unprecedented chaos and conflict in the Middle East, the ongoing terrorist attacks in Israel, the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe and elsewhere. We have to get this right, she said to robust and sustained applause. Outsourcing to dictators, a reference to Trumps praise for Russian involvement in Syria, or thinking America no longer has vital interests in the region now that energy independence is on the horizon is dangerously wrong, Clinton said. We need steady hands, not a President who says hes neutral on Monday, pro-Israel on Tuesday, and who-knows-what on Wednesday because everythings negotiable. Well my friends, Israels security is non-negotiable, she declared. If Clintons goal was to close off any opening for Trump to court the prominent donors and voters that support AIPAC, she largely succeeded by invoking his own words and raising uncertainty about what he might or might not do. She took virtually every position that AIPAC expects from its political allies with one exception: She did not call for the U.S. embassy to move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem as Trump and other Republicans have done. But she did take a step that in the current context of U.S. Israeli relations was unexpected when she pledged, One of the first things Ill do in office is invite the Israeli Prime Minister to visit the White House. The crowd erupted in the most thunderous applause of the morning. Clintons open invitation to Prime Minister Netanyahu signals her eagerness to separate herself from President Obamas fractious relationship with the Israeli leader, and the audiences reaction no doubt signaled AIPACs relief to once more be back in the good graces of the leading contender in the Democratic Party. The only time the audience was noticeably quiet was when Clinton talked about how she led the negotiations for the Iran nuclear deal, which Netanyahu and AIPAC opposed. It was only when she said the U.S. position is distrust and verify that she got a positive response. For those who have been following the machinations of peacemaking in the Middle East, the Holy Grail for some time has been the two-state solution. It was only toward the end of her speech that Clinton returned to what remains official U.S. policy. Despite many setbacks, she said, she remains convinced that a negotiated two-state agreement is the only way to achieve a democratic Jewish state and a homeland for the Palestinian people to govern themselves. Everyone has to do their part by avoiding damaging actions, including with respect to settlements, Clinton said, a gentle reference to a major irritant between successive U.S. administrations and Israeli governments. Clinton was not there to open old wounds but to fortify herself with old friends and allies against a likely general election campaign against Trump. In a democracy, differences are aired, she said. But what Americans are hearing on the campaign trail this year is something else entirely. Encouraging violence. Playing coy with white supremacists. Calling for 12 million immigrants to be rounded up and deported. Demanding we turn away refugees because of their religion and proposing a ban on all Muslims entering the United States. Now, weve had dark chapters in our history before, she continued, recalling nearly 1,000 Jews aboard the St. Louis who were turned away in 1939 and sent back to Europe. America should be better than this, she said. If you see bigotry, oppose it. If you see violence, condemn it. If you see a bully, stand up to him. In her otherwise sober remarks, Clinton allowed herself one light moment, recalling how some of us remember a woman, Golda Meir, who led the Israeli government decades ago and wonder whats taking us so long here in America, Clinton said with a smile. For anyone wondering whether women could be tough enough to lead a country, Golda Meir showed the way. Now its Clintons turn. My friends at the AIPAC conference are shocked, shocked that so many fellow attendees gave Donald Trump an ovation last night. Just like my Republican friends are shocked that so many fellow Republicans have voted for him. Why the surprise, though? Is it at all surprising that a rightward-tilting, nationalistic, often-anti-Muslim pep rally of 18,000 people (many paid to be there by a handful of billionaires) would applaud a rightward-tilting, nationalistic, often-anti-Muslim leader of pep rallies? The weirdest shock of all, though, came from AIPAC itself, whose leader apologized this morning for Trumps having insulted President Obama. Choking back tears, AIPACs new president, Lillian Pinkus, said that we deeply respect the office of the president of the United States and President Obama We are deeply disappointed that so many people applauded a sentiment that we neither agree with nor condone. What was that sentiment? Weak sauce, compared with Trumps other statements about Obama. All Trump said was, With President Obama in his final yearyay! He may be the worst thing to ever happen to Israel, believe me, believe me. And you know it and you know it better than anybody. Thats hardly the worst thing Trump has said about the president. Remember that whole thing about him not being an American citizen, for example? Was it even an ad hominem attack, as the AIPAC apology charged? Hardly. Nor was it an unusual charge; one reason so many people applauded it was that its heard all the time in pro-Israel circles. Except usually, the presidents called Barack Hussein Obama. Notably, AIPAC did not apologize for, or comment on, the characteristic raft of untruths in Trumps speech, including claims that Iran has violated the Iran Deal, and that Israel has been trying to sit down at the negotiating table without preconditions for years (actually, it has often set preconditions). They didnt apologize for Trumps characteristic demagoguery, such as the boast that he had studied the Iran Deal in great detail, I would say actually greater by far than anybody else; or the outrageous claim that it took courage to be the grand marshal of the Salute to Israel paradeit was a very dangerous time for Israel and frankly for anyone supporting Israel. Many people turned down this honor. I did not. I took the risk and Im glad I did. Nor, of course, did they apologize for Trumps past statements about Muslims, Mexicans, and others. So why the apology for some relatively anodyne statements about President Obama? Because of AIPACs own attempt at rebranding. Remember, its only six months since the devastating loss AIPAC suffered in opposing the Iran Dealan agreement enthusiastically supported by leading Israeli generals and spymasters, foreign policy analysts, and a majority of American Jews. That foolish errand was surely the nadir of AIPACs influence in Washington, and its most baldly partisan effort ever. It may have pleased the billionaire-sponsored hacks at the Jewish Republican Coalition, but it alienated the broad base of supporters AIPAC once enjoyed. Add that to Israeli Prime Ministers Benjamin Netanyahus unprecedented snub of President Obama and his speech to the Republican-controlled House of Representatives, at their diplomacy-shattering invitation. The show in Washington was meant to mend those fences. There were many Democrats in attendance, including many members of Congress whod backed the Iran deal. Joe Biden gave a keynote address. Onward and upwardand back to how things were before the Iran fiasco. Then came Trump. Even the invitation had been controversial: a handful of progressive rabbis and Jewish leaders walked out for the speech, while others stayed and listened in silence. Some conservatives, who have found Trump insufficiently pro-Israel, have also objected. As have many ordinary American Jews, noting Trumps popularity among racists and anti-Semites. But its not like AIPAC just invited Trumpthey hosted all the remaining presidential candidates save Bernie Sanders, whose offer to speak via satellite was rejected. What were they supposed to doignore the Republican frontrunner? So Trump gave his speech, and said exactly what everyone knew he would say. Out with the uninformed rhetoric of neutrality between Israel and Palestine, and out with the request that Israel repay some of its military aid. Up with bombast like I speak to you today as a lifelong supporter and true friend of Israel, and the usual empty promises (move the embassy to Jerusalem right). There was absolutely nothing unexpected in Trumps remarks. But then came all that applause. The absent/silent protesters were overwhelmed by raucous, ovation-giving crowds which cheered, laughed, and clapped at every money line. That was not supposed to be the message. This was supposed to be the new AIPAC, with its wide range of progressive supporters (look, a female rabbi!) and newly rediscovered non-partisanship. Just like 2016s Republican Party was supposed to be a new Republican Party, with less racism and xenophobia, and broader appeal to Latinos and blacks. Oops. In fact, like the GOP, the new AIPAC is the same AIPAC, dominated by hard-rightists who are paying for Israels settlement project, debating whether the Jewish state really needs to remain a democracy, and supporting Israeli Jewish nationalists wave of anti-democratic laws, such as cracking down on NGOs and requiring loyalty oaths. Really, when you think about it, Trump has a lot in common with these nationalistsBibi personally, but even more so Naftali Bennetts Jewish Home and other parties in his coalition. Both arent crazy about Muslims, and dont hesitate to race-bait if itll get them votes. Both encourage and/or tolerate racist thugs at their rallies (in Israels case, often at soccer matches). Both have openly contemplated the forced transfer of millions of people. And both like building walls. To be sure, not everyone at AIPAC shares these views. But many do, and they were the ones applauding last night. Theyre also the ones disproportionately writing the checks. To be shocked at their presence rings as hollow as Republicans shocked by Trumps supporters. What do you expect, when you goad, encourage, and depend upon a reactionary base, year after year after year? Of course they applauded what Trump had to say. Youve encouraged them to do so for decades. AMSTERDAM It was only a matter of time before acts of terror were committed on Belgian soil. Frances little neighbor has become a hotbed of terrorist conspiracies. Three explosions on Tuesday morning killed more than 20 people at the airport and a busy central Brussels metro station. The nationality of those attackers is unknown but of the eight terrorists who committed the attacks in Paris last November, three have strong links to Belgium. GALLERY: Scenes From Brussels Day of Terror (PHOTOS) Two of them were French citizens and brothers living (and born) in the Molenbeek suburb in northwest Brussels, a third was a Belgian who left for Syria a year ago. The first brother is called Brahim Abdeslam, who killed himself using an explosive belt in a cafe at the Rue Voltaire. A second brother, Mohamed Abdeslam, was arrested on suspicion of involvement in the plot but has since been released. The third was Salah Abdeslam, 26, who was arrested in Molenbeek after a dramatic shootout last week. There is a link to Molenbeek, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said soon after the Paris attacks. We are focused on prevention but we need to act repressively, too. The prime minister promised the Belgian people extra measures against jihadis returning to Belgium from the Syrian and Iraqi battlefields. Knowing the scale of the Belgian problem, implementing the right measures is paramount, not just for the Belgians themselves but also for their neighboring countries. One Belgian in Syria who has been linked to the attacks is Abdelhamid Abaaoud, 27, from Molenbeek. French officials have told the Associated Press and The New York Times that he is the suspected mastermind of the Paris attacks, although the Belgian public prosecutor has dismissed those links as rumors. For a while Abaaoud was assumed dead after pictures apparently showed his body. It is now believed that he had staged his death. According to Belgian national newspaper De Standaard, all of the arrested suspects in Molenbeek in the last few days have ties to Abaaoud. Last year, Abaaoud is believed to have taken his 13-year-old brother Younes to Syriamaking him Belgiums youngest known jihadi. Links are uncovered between jihadi operations and Belgian terrorist cells with increasing frequency, raising serious questions about the Belgian governments ability to deal with terrorists who use the country for recruiting and support networks. Belgium, wedged in between Germany, Luxembourg, The Netherlands, and France, has brought forth a disproportionate amount of jihadis. The maximum number of Belgians who at one point were active in Syria or Iraq has climbed to 516, Belgian Arabist and author Pieter van Ostaeyen said on his blog last month. Van Ostayen has been keeping a close eye on developments within Belgian minority groups vulnerable to radicalization. The number of jihadis, put into context, becomes quite alarming. This number means that out of Belgiums Muslim population of about 640,000 individuals, there is roughly one per 1,260 who has been involved in jihad in Syria and Iraq. At this point Belgium is, per capita, by far the European nation contributing the most to the foreign element in the Syrian war. Belgium is a small country with, sometimes, big problems. It even went without a cohesive government for a record 541 days in 2010 and 2011. Being a largely divided Flemish/French-speaking society to begin with, it had problems integrating its newcomers. Its second- and third-generation immigrants on average made little socio-economic progress, or had little chance to do so. Meanwhile, the security services in the city of Brussels have another significant issue: For a population of 1.3 million inhabitants, the local police force is divided up in six police corps spread over 19 boroughs. Sharing security information in that setting could only be complicated. When one puts into a timeline the number of attacks in Western Europe over the past two years and their relation to Belgium, it becomes apparent just how much of an outsized role the country is playing: On May 24, 2014: An attack on the Jewish museum in Brussels killed fouran Israeli couple, a French, and a Belgian employee of the museum were shot dead by French ex-Syria jihadi Mehdi Nemmouche. On Jan. 13, 2015: The weapons used in the Jan. 7 Charlie Hebdo attack were traced back to the Brussels train station Bruxelles Midi, where they had reportedly been bought from a local arms trader by Amedy Coulibaly, who had committed an attack on a Jewish supermarket days later, on Jan. 9. On the evening of Jan. 14: Belgian police searched several houses in the boroughs of Verviers, unrelated to the recent Paris attacks. They arrested a group that had planned terrorist attacks in Belgium, federal police spokesperson Eric van der Sypt said. During the search warrant in Verviers, certain suspects immediately opened fire with automatic weapons at the special police forces, they opened fire for several minutes before being neutralized. Two of the suspects were killed, a third one was arrested. The suspects were known jihadis who had returned from Syria in the previous month. The Belgian secret service believed they were about to carry out an attack on a police station and called in special forces. On Aug. 23: The man who tried to commit a terrorist attack on board the Thalys train says he found his Kalashnikov and the ammunition in a park near Brussels Midi. The Moroccan Ayoub El Kahzzani got on the train at the Brussels station and initiated the attack shortly afterward. On Friday, Nov. 13: At least two French terrorists living in Brussels traveled to Paris to cause carnage in the heart of the city. The killing spree took the lives of 130 and injured hundreds. Its difficult to pinpoint the exact reasons Belgium, and more specifically the borough of Molenbeek, is leading the charts when it comes to jihadism. After all, The Netherlands, along Belgiums northern border, has relatively large numbers of jihadis, too. But the fact that Molenbeek is a poor and socially isolated area certainly doesnt help. Some parliamentary members call Molenbeek mono-cultural, because it predominantly has inhabitants of Moroccan descent. But a contributing factor in monitoring different risk groups in Brussels could be its scattered police force. In international relations, especially with the French, it may call into question the sense of free and unguarded travel for Europeans cross border, as the repercussions could be fast and furious. Editors note: The original version of this story was published in November last year. On Nov. 13, 2015, when Kalashnikov-toting gunmen fired their first round on the capacity crowd at the Bataclan concert venue, 22-year-old Daniel, who was working as a customer liaison for the largest tour bus company in Europe, immediately turned to his girlfriend and told her that he loved her. If these were going to be his last words, he wanted them to matter. The steady rhythm of the drums was replaced by erratic, staccato clicking of machine gun fire, singing was replaced by desperate screams, and the vibrational hum of guitars was replaced by the whine of bullets ricocheting through the air. There was no way out. Daniel recounts: A girl had her feet on my head, so I could barely move it. Every now and then I tried to have a look around and see whats happening, but I never saw anyone. The worst things were the sounds of the guns and the cries of people who saw their partners die andhearing how people took their last breath. At some point one terrorist blew himself up on the stage. The noise was terrible. I could not hear anything for a few minutes after that. Not seeing AND hearing anything was awful. Then, the first shot hit me in the upper body. It took my breath away for a few seconds, but I was still awake. I covered the wound with my jacket. Strangely, it did not hurt THAT much, probably because of the shock, and I did not yet think about dying. I had to stay awake, so now my focus was on not falling asleep. That was when I lost my feeling for time. I honestly couldnt have told you if this whole thing lasted half an hour or 10 hours. Sometime after that, another shot hit my left arm. This time, I felt extreme pain. It instantly swelled up and soon there was that much blood that I could put my right hand under the surface of the blood that was on the floor. During the massacre, Daniel spent what seemed like an eternity on the floor fighting the urge to move: He instinctually knew that if he did, he would immediately be singled out and executed. Next to him were hundreds of concertgoers, who like him, had been unable to find an exit. When French Special Forces entered the room, Daniel realized that now his wounds prevented him from movingeven if he wanted to. His girlfriend had managed to escape the killing floor and hide behind equipment cases on the stage. She now returned, attempting to pull him out to safety. He emphatically told her to leave him and run, as he did not think the room was yet secure. Finally, Special Forces officers got to him, and carried him outside where he was shuffled between two different makeshift first-aid stations. It was increasingly difficult for him to breathe, and he thought he was going to die right there on the street while waiting for treatment. Finally all went black; he lost consciousness in the ambulance taking him to the hospital for emergency surgeries that stopped the abdominal bleeding and saved his life. In the days following, as Daniel was no longer listed in critical condition, he declined interviews, even when TV networks offered him generous sums of money for his first-hand account of what had happened. Daniel remains vehement that he does not wish to be another voice trying to profit fromand sensationalizethe senseless slaughter he experienced. Speaking out now, he does so unpaid, and for very specific reasons. Daniel watched the world around him reeling from the horrifying events. He felt the press coverage created a paralyzing and continuously escalating fear in the populace. It made him heartsick, as the publics emotions were whipped up through the repetitive nature of the reporting. Increasingly, he found himself in a faceless, detached state of being that kept him emotionally numb. He needed to give all his energy to his body in order for it to be fixedalmost like a machineby the teams of medical professionals performing countless surgeries, as he was moved between the hospital in Paris and later back to his homeland of Austria. Daniel felt he had to push his soul aside; he had too many conflicting emotions and could not make sense of any of them, as they would shift his focus away from the all-important job of simply surviving. By mid-December, Daniel was released from the hospital. By then, he knew he was going to livebut it was uncertain to what degree he would be able to recover. He missed being able to play his guitar, but he couldnt get his left hand to wrap around the neck of his beloved Stratocaster, given to him by his father when he graduated from high school. He missed being able to express himself in music, and if there ever was a time he needed itit was now. His guitar is named Walter after a cherished backstage encounter a few years earlier with one of his guitar heroes, Walter Trout, who, since their meeting, had been through a traumatic battle between life and death, culminating in a successful liver transplant in the twelfth hour. Trout had chronicled his story of facing near-certain death in his album Battle Scars, which was written and recorded as a musical catharsis for Trout after he recovered. Listening to this album, Daniel found that in the midst of uncertainty about how much of his own life he would be able to reclaim, there was a message in the music that brought him comfort: After Paris I felt numb inside. There was no sadness, no hate, no feeling lucky, nothing really. Battle Scars, with its lyrics about facing death; knowing that you might have to leave your beloved ones soongoing through enormous pain, but also sensing hope despite all these bad things that happenedmade me connect with my feelings again. Knowing that Walter made it through hard times encouraged me to stay positive and fight. Although we had no contact at the time and Walter probably wrote these lyrics as a way of dealing with his own emotional problems, it somehow felt as if he wanted to say Look, youre not alone in this. Youve got the power to do this. It was Walters messages of love that made me feel like having people you love around you is actually more important than getting your physical abilities back. The music somehow reminds me of the fact that despite all these horrible things that are happening, there is still love among people, even in dark times. For the first time since the Bataclan tragedy, Daniel felt some magic enter back into his life. Connectedness to others, love, and music were the antitheses of the cold, calculated cruelty that had robbed Daniel of his used-to-be. Yet as Daniel emerged back out into the world, he was confronted with how ratings-driven commercial media machines had amplified the effects of the terror for weeks through rapid-fire media cycles. The constant exposure had given the terrorists a continual, global reach with their appalling, yet in fact isolated, acts of cruelty that distorted the magnitude of the events out of proportion: the media machines had for several weeks efficiently delivered continuous anguish and fear into the living rooms of citizens worldwide. A fearful populace does not think clearly. And such unreasonable thinking produces hateful actions which soon were going to hit Daniel and his family as a second wave of terror. Daniels stepfather, Helmuth, works for the local social services in Austria, and he is particularly engaged with helping Syrian refugees. Heas well as Daniels biological father, Stefanhad dropped everything, left their homes in Austria, to go to Paris immediately, when they learned of the terror acts. They knew that Daniel was at the Bataclan that night. For a horrifying 24 hours, they searched every possible Parisian hospital, fearing the worst for their son. Daniel had no identification cards on him at the time, so the process of finding him in the chaotic aftermath was excruciating. At one point they even had to identify a corpsebut it wasnt Daniel. Finally, Daniel somehow, in a half-conscious state, managed to give a doctor his Dads mobile number, and the family was tearfully reunited, as Daniel regained consciousness after the surgery. Returning to Austria, Daniels stepfather was met with mixed support from the community. Few vocalized it directly, but some did: They insinuated that they felt that Helmuth could only blame himself for what had happened to his stepson. They hinted, not always indirectly, that Daniels family was themselves to blame for their misfortune: having helped refugees find a foothold in their country, they were now reaping what they had sowed. Reeling from personal anguish, and now also under fire for his professional mission, Helmuth felt the need to speak up. In a feature on Austrian TV news, TV crews followed him as he visited and interacted tenderly with some of the Syrian families he helps integrate into Austrian society. Asked whether what happened to Daniel had made him question his work, he stated: When I walked around Paris looking for my son, for me, it was only one day of my life. For the refugees, the fear and the uncertainty are constant companions. If anything, what happened to Daniel has made me more determined than ever to help Syrian refugees; because now I know, from experiencing this in my own family, what kind of cruelty it is that the refugees flee from. I have even more compassion for their situation, because now I understand why they are so willing to leave everything to just get away from ISIS terror. Daniel agrees wholeheartedly and adds: I think my stepdads work is absolutely fantastic and it is the only right thing to do. Unfortunately, it seems like the rest of Europe is going the opposite direction. We are building fences at the borders and we introduce limits for incoming refugees. I believe that we should tolerate anybody who does not hurt or suppress others. I do not think we should cooperate with extremists, but actually the Western countries (and in this case especially the US) are one of the main reasons behind the things that are going on in Syria, Iraq, and so on. We are not at all the good guys! How can Muslim society learn to live in peace if we treat them like subhuman beings? Terrorism only exists where people are poor, isolated, misunderstood, or suppressed. We need to share our wealth and try to understand each other. Daniel feels strongly that each of us can make a difference in our local communities. It is not only the sweeping actions of governments and NGOs that change our world, while the rest of us stand by and watch. He continues: Its the small things that make the world a better place. Children know how to do itthey dont care whether their friends are black, white or to which God they pray: They dont back away from people who seem different! If we show interest in other peoples culture, they will eventually want to understand ours. It is important that nobody feels left out because of where he or she was born, or how they look, or act. If you see a group of Muslim children, dont tell yours to stay away from them. Encourage them to say hi and have fun with them. I feel it is more important than ever to not be afraid to stand up if people are being treated badly by so-called natives. After all, we are all descendants of refugees. Daniel is living proof that ISISs attempts to destroy Western culture through fear, intimidation, and callous murder fails miserably when everyday people meet them with real human bravery. This bravery manifests itself in quiet ways: when people reach for healing connections rather than cower behind easy talking points, and when people display the willingness to understand those who think differently. This is the essence of what makes open, Western democracies so powerful. Role models like Daniel and his family demonstrate that it is possible to act with courage, no matter what happens: to stay true to these self-evident democratic truths and values that we hold so dear. It does not in any way mean that we should not effectively root out terrorism where it manifests. Of course we need to do that. It means, however, that we dont have to mistake diversity for danger, strangers for enemies, and reactionary mirages for safety. Daniel reached out to thank Trout for writing the album that gave him the courage to live again. And Trout, in his tearful response, told him that because Daniel was able to use his music to heal, he had given him the most meaningful review of his life. Trout is now encouraging Daniel to pick up his guitar yet again and discover a new technique to play. He has invited Daniel to a near-future jam sessionwith Daniel playing right-handed or using a slide, since Daniels left hand has permanent injuries. However Daniel reclaims his life, it will take lots of painstaking effort. But Daniel walks forward, determined to not be bitter. More than ever, he believes that democracy is strengthened when we refuse to let terrorists frighten us into forgetting who we are. U.S. counterterrorism officials are frustrated and angry at Belgiums inability to tackle ISIS terror cells that are successfully plotting murderous attacks on the West from inside the countrys tiny capital city. The twin terror attacks in Brussels that left at least 30 dead and 230 injured on Tuesday, despite repeated warnings from Washington, left U.S. officials fuming. A senior U.S. intelligence officer likened the Belgian security forces to children. Its really shitty tradecraft, the agent told The Daily Beast. Brussels has become a hotbed of terrorismconcentrated in the Molenbeek district near the city centerand yet the Belgians have made little progress in disrupting a network of violent extremists linked to last years Paris attacks that killed 130 people. Even before the arrest last week in Brussels of Salah Abdeslam, a suspected terrorist behind the Paris attack, there were worries among many U.S. counterterrorism officials of an attack in Belgium. The Belgian authorities had long struggled to resource a counterterrorism campaign. At the same time, it ostracized its burgeoning minority communities, creating isolated enclaves like Molenbeek where potential jihadists could easily hide. After Abdeslams arrest, many in Belgium feared a retaliatory attack. But while U.S. officials sought to help as part of a growing push for U.S. and European cooperation, there were limits, given Belgiums limited security resources and amid a growing migration community from places like Syria. News of Tuesdays attack was met in some parts of Washington with resigned frustration. There was only so much we could do to help, one official explained to The Daily Beast. Belgium has been stepping up the amount of people theyre devoting to intelligence and law enforcement but theyre playing catch-up and were seeing the terrible results of that today, Rep. Adam Schiff, the senior Democrat on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, said on MSNBC. Indeed, an official said there were warnings as recent as this weekend. A frustrated U.S. intelligence official bemoaned the state of the counterterrorism apparatus in Belgium and across Europe. Even with the EU in general, theres an infiltration of jihadists thats been happening for two decades. And now theyre just starting to work on this. When we have to contact these people or send our guys over to talk to them, were essentially talking with people who areIm just going to put it bluntlychildren. They are not pro-active, they dont know whats going on. Theyre in such denial. Its such a frightening thing to admit their country is being taken over. The end result is that Belgium has been targeted as a base camp for violent extremists. Jihadists think that Europe is the soft underbelly of the West and Belgium is the soft underbelly of Europe, said French terror expert Gilles Kepel. Many of the major recent attacks in Europe have clear links to Belgium. In May 2014, French ex-Syria jihadist Mehdi Nemmouche went to the Belgian capital to attack the Jewish museum in Brussels. There are Brussels links to the weapons used by Amedy Coulibaly in his attack on a Jewish supermarket on Jan. 9, 2015, shortly after the Jan. 7 attacks on Charlie Hebdo, and the Paris attack in November last year has clear ties to the Molenbeek neighborhood specifically. Many of its attackers either resided or grew up in the borough. Jean-Charles Brisard, the author of a biography of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of ISISs earlier incarnation al Qaeda in Iraq, said its more useful to think about the ISIS phenomenon in Western Europe as a Francophone network because the operatives in Brussels are a mix of French and Belgian nationals. Brisard calculates that 534 Belgians have gone to Syria and about 200 have returned; he believes the French-Belgian ISIS apparatus is much greater than European security officials initially thought. Tracking the individuals is a mammoth task. For now, the networks comprise basically 20 individuals around the 10 [Paris] terrorists, he said. So its least 30. Its still looking like four or five connected but there might be more that we dont know yet. For every terror suspect being surveilled it takes between 20 and 25 counterterrorism officials to track him. Coulibaly, for example, was using 20 different phones, according to Brisard, and each required a different officer to monitor the incoming and outgoing calls. The Belgians are unwilling or unable to commit that kind of manpower, one of the countrys counterterrorism officials told BuzzFeed a week before the attack. Frankly, we dont have the infrastructure to properly investigate or monitor hundreds of individuals suspected of terror links, he said. The problem is exacerbated in Brussels because the local police force is divided into six police corps spread over 19 boroughs (particularly odd since the population is only 1.3 million). Sharing intelligence is complicated by the silos. Robin Simcox, a British-born specialist on European terror networks who now works at the conservative Heritage Foundation, says the Paris and Brussels attacks prove that European intelligence agencies have been comforting themselvesand their constituencieswith a fallacy for a decade. What have they been saying since 7/7? Simcox asked, referring to the al Qaeda bombings in London in July 2005. Oh, those kinds of attacks are not possible anymore. Any time a network gets too big, we find out about it. Anyone tries to construct a suicide vest, well get it. The attacks will be knives and guns. Well, its the emperor has no clothes, isnt it? It happened in Paris, now Brussels; it nearly happened in Verviers back in January [2015]. All kinds of assumptions about the kind of threat we were going to be facing in coming years. And we were all too complacent about it. The Belgian field commander, if not quite the mastermind of the Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, had previously been linked to four separate terror plots in Europe. He got away each time. He was thought to have guided Nemmouche, the Frenchman who shot up the Jewish museum in Brussels. In the attack planned but later aborted in Verviers, Abaaoud had remotely instructed two Belgian nationals, Sofiane Amghar and Khalid Ben Larbi, who fought with ISISs elite Battar Brigade. Abaaoud had been in Greece at the time, and subsequently returned to Syria after Belgian commandos raided Amghar and Ben Larbis safe house in Verviers. (The operation constituted the largest firefight in Belgium since the end of World War II.) Abaaoud was also involved in the failed attack on a high-speed train from Paris to Amsterdam in August 2015. It failed only because three American tourists, two of them in the Oregon National Guard, wrestled the AK-47-wielding gunman to the ground before he could kill anyone. In a February 2015 issue of ISISs propaganda magazine Dabiq, Abaaoud boasts about being able to slip by a continent-wide dragnet for him, despite the fact that European security services all had a recent photograph of him, which had been published by a Western journalist. I suddenly saw my picture all over the media, but the kuffar were blinded by Allah. I was even stopped by an officer who contemplated me so as to compare me to the picture, but he let me go, as he did not see the resemblance! This was nothing but a gift from Allah! Abaaouds turn from first-generation Belgian into international terrorist follows an all-too-familiar script to those who monitor European jihadism. Although he was once enrolled in the Catholic college Saint-Pierre, an elite school in a tony suburb of Brussels, he dropped out and took to a life of gangsterism and petty crime. He met Salah Abdeslam and Abdeslams brother Brahim (another one of the Paris attackers) when all three were in their late teens or early twenties, hanging about Molenbeek. In 2010, Abaaoud and Salah Abdeslam were convicted of armed robbery after they tried to break into a garage in Ottingnes, a town southeast of Brussels. In 2012, Abaaoud went to jail again for hitting someone in the town of Dendermonde. Abaaoud apparently radicalized in prison and upon his release, he fell in with a crowd of Islamists, including a veteran of the Afghan jihad against the Soviets in the 1980s, a Moroccan called Khalid Zerkani. The man went by the sobriquet Papa Noel (Santa Claus), owing to his generosity with money: hed disburse as much as 4,500 euros for aspiring mujahidin seeking to travel to Syria. Many of those wandering mujahidin have now returned to Brussels; and there is little confidence that the Belgian authorities will be able to stop their murderous plots against the West. When the guilty verdict came down Tuesday, the prisoner of war burst into song. Nadezhda Savchenko looked defiant in her glass cage as she listened to her sentence. Her muscular arms were crossed over her chest and she wore a white T-shirt emblazoned with the national emblem of Ukraine. When the judge announced her punishment22 years in prison for directing a mortar attack that killed two Russian journalists in 2014Savchenko smiled sardonically and began singing a traditional Ukrainian song, and chanting, Glory to Ukraine! The 34-year-old politician and pilotthe first woman to graduate from Ukraines air force academyhad long denounced her trial as a farce. Russian prosecutors asked the court to punish Savchenko for the mortar attack, which she supposedly orchestrated as a member of the pro-Kiev Aidar battalion fighting in the Donbas region. They slammed her as aggressive and impulsive and claimed she hated the citizens of the breakaway republic. Savchenko was captured by rebels in 2014 and turned over to Russian authorities, while prosecutors claim that she escaped from rebels and crossed the border on her own, illegally. Only a few reporters, family members, and foreign observers were allowed into the courtroom. Most journalists did not get in, and watched the process in a special room on video. At any court process, the main words are the most important: first the judge says guilty or not, and then reads the verdict, sometimes for two to three days. On Monday, there was some confusion over the initial statements of the judge, Leonid Stepanenko, who stated that Nadia Viktorivna Savchenko committed the killing of [soldiers] Kornelyuk and Voloshin by a group of persons by previous concert for hatred and enmity motives. The judge also concluded that the pilot had illegally crossed the border into Russian territory. The motive for the crimes committed by the accused was hatred and hostility towards the inhabitants of the Lugansk region, and towards Russian-speaking people as a whole. It was a confusing moment for all news agencieswas the judge pronouncing the pilot guilty, or quoting prosecutors? The main word guilty was still not pronounced on Monday. One of Russias most respected newspapers, Novaya Gazeta, even held a special briefing on whether to break the news of a guilty verdict and decided against it. We were torn, as it is a standard procedurethe judges always mention the decision in the very beginning of the verdict and it did sound like the judge recognized her guilty, the newspapers court reporter, Vera Chelisheva, told The Daily Beast. Russian state media, including Interfax and Russia Today, went ahead and published the news: the court had convicted the Ukrainian pilot. On Tuesday, that news became official. In the courtroom, Savchenko seemed to be indifferent to the judges final word. Well, I do not care what sort of verdict it is. In 10 days, when the verdict takes effect, I will declare a dry hunger strike and keep it to the end, she told reporters before the judge entered the courtroom. I do not believe anybody in Russia any longer, she added. It was a long court process that started last September, the case of the year, as some Russian reports referred to it, though it did not take place in Moscow but in a small town in Donetsk. During the last six months, Savchenko had declared multiple hunger strikes, living days without drinking water and practically melting away. To her countrymen, Savchenkos exhausted, bony face next to national emblems on the shirts she wore symbolized Ukraines suffering from the conflict with Russia. On Monday she looked fit and unbroken. Almost two years ago, Savchenko was fighting in the Aidar battalion in eastern Ukraine against Russia-backed rebels. Her defense insists that she was captured by rebels and taken to Russia, while prosecutors claim that she escaped from rebels and crossed the border on her own, illegally. Outside the courtroom, a group of activists demonstrated in support of her guilty verdict. Savchenko was involved in the murdering of Russian journalists! one of the banners said. By 4:23 p.m. the judge allowed five young men into the courtroom; they unfolded printed photographs of the Russian journalists murdered in Ukraine, allegedly Savchenkos victims Vesti correspondent Igor Kornelyuk and a video engineer, Anton Voloshin. Not all reporters were allowed into the courtroom. Among the lucky ones was a British blogger, Graham Philips, known for his strong pro-Kremlin agenda. Several Russian cameramen were left behind the door, and some waited for hours for a permit to take pictures of Savchenko. This is not a court, it is a madhouse, one of the reporters, Vasily Maximov, wrote on Twitter. I have never seen such a bad attitude towards the press. On Monday afternoon, the judge decided to take a break and continue reading the verdict later. Theoretically, tomorrow the judge could introduce some extenuating circumstances we don't know yet the rest of the evidence she will cite and the sentence, the deputy director of the Europe and Central Asia Division of Human Rights Watch, Rachel Denber, told The Daily Beast on Monday. Its very hard to say what will happen politically, after the verdict, with Savchenko. Savchenkos supporters hope that, even with the conviction, Savchenko could be transferred to her home country as a prisoner of war. Both leaders of the European Union and U.S. President Barack Obama have called for the Kremlin to free Savchenko; but it is well known that President Vladimir Putin does not like to be pressured. Russian officials dismissed all calls from the West as attempts to interfere with Russias internal affairs. From the courtroom, Savchenkos defense lawyer hinted that only Washington could help his clients fate at this point and persuade Moscow to pass the pilot to her home country of Ukraine. On Monday the lawyer wrote in his Twitter: John Kerry is coming to Moscow on Wednesday. Welcome. You know what I mean... Elizabethkingia is killing people in Wisconsin. It could be spreading to Michigan. But no one knows where it came from. The unusual bacterianamed after the late American microbiologist Elizabeth O. Kingcan, in rare cases, lead to a life-threatening bloodborne illness marked by fever, shortness of breath, chills, or skin infection. Not only is it resistant to many antibiotics and potentially deadly for immunocompromised patients, health officials have yet to locate the origin of this latest outbreak. Between Nov. 1, 2015, and March 16, 2016, the Wisconsin Department of Health Services (DHS) has received 54 reports of Elizabethkingia infections, exclusively occurring in patients with an underlying serious illness, most of them over the age of 65. So far, it has been linked to 17 deaths in the stateearly estimates of 18 total deaths have since been lowered. The Wisconsin DHS told The Daily Beast that the median age of those who have died is 77 years old. On March 11, Michigan saw its first case, also in an older adult. Six days later, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services (MDHHS) announced the death of that patient. MDHHS told The Daily Beast that they are not disclosing any additional details about the individual due to privacy concerns.In conjunction with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), the Wisconsin DHS has been looking for the mysterious bacteria in water sources, health-care facilities, and environmental sources. To date, none of these have found to be a source of the bacteria, the department noted in a statement. The CDC is shocked by the size of the outbreak and by the total number of fatalities. In contrast to past Elizabethkingia outbreaks, it is large and dispersed across a wide area. Michael Bell, deputy director of the CDCs Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, told The Washington Post this month that the Wisconsin Elizabethkingia outbreak is one of the largest that Im aware of and certainly the largest one weve investigated. As the Post notes, all of the cases identified so far have the same genetic footprint, which suggests that the entire outbreak can be attributed to a single source. But the full range of potential origins means that public health officials are looking for a single bacterial needle in a haystack of possibilities. Water was ruled out relatively early on. Dr. Christopher Braden, deputy director of the CDCs National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases, told the Wisconsin State Journal in early March that the affected patients were using different water supplies and some were using wells. Unless the bacteria were somehow present in all of these sources, its unlikely that the outbreak is waterborne. The Wisconsin DHS told The Daily Beast that the agency is reasonably certain groundwater is not the source. Indeed, the geographical layout of the outbreak has investigators scratching their heads. The Wisconsin DHS has received reports of cases in 12 counties, concentrated in the southeastern region of the state. The first case in Michigan, which borders Wisconsin on the east, occurred in the western part of the state. If they were clustered in a single hospital insteadas is more often the case in Elizabethkingia-associated outbreaksthis mystery would be much easier to solve. These patients are in different places around southeastern Wisconsin, Dr. Braden told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. Theres no commonality for some particular environmental exposure that people had. In the absence of an obvious environmental source, Braden said that investigators are also looking hard at all sorts of different products that these people may have been exposed topersonal care products or medical products. But given the full range of things you put on your skin or you ingest in some way each day, he believes that locating a common product among the dozens of reported cases will take time. As the MDHHS notes, most bacterial disease outbreaks caused by Elizabethkingia are healthcare-associated. Because of the bacterias resistance to antibiotics, the agency warns that infections must be caught early on to prevent serious complications, especially among patients with underlying health conditions. With the illness now crossing state lines, the pressure is on to locate its point of originand fast. But as of March 21, the CDC had no new updates to share. A spokesperson told The Daily Beast that the agency has been testing all kinds of different things including healthcare products, water sources, [and] environmental samples but so far, no luck. Bespoke new bottle for Disznokos Dry Furmint This week, Christian Seely, MD of AXA Millesimes, and Laszlo Meszaros, director of Disznoko, unveil a new presentation for Disznoko Dry Furmint 2015 a wine that is growing in popularity around the world. After more than 20 years of experience in producing and marketing dry white wines, Disznoko has now chosen a more appropriate bottle for its Tokaj Dry Furmint 2015. As Laszlo Meszaros explains: There is no other white wine anywhere in the world that resembles a dry Tokaj Furmint. Our aim is to highlight the very singular character of our grapes and terroir among consumers. Inspired by the shape and proportions of the traditional 500ml Tokaji bottle, the new design - a recent project by designer Geza IPACS - has been adapted to the 750ml format. Its height and special dead leaf colour make it more easily identifiable by consumers as being a dry white wine, rather than a sweet wine. Meszaros continues: We were delighted with the results of this regional initiative to develop a new 750ml Tokaji bottle for todays modern market. Together with a revised label that is simple yet bold, and a revolutionary stopper, Disznoko Dry Furmint has a contemporary look that will appeal both on shelf, and at the table. In keeping with the new-look bottle, we have chosen the Vinolok glass stopper for the very best in aesthetics while providing the highest guarantee of an effective seal. The Vinolok stopper, made from natural raw materials, offers consistency of shape, and a precision seal to ensure that every single bottle maintains a perfectly uniform flavour. 2015, a great vintage So what is in the bottle? A fruity, fresh dry white wine from the classic Hungarian Furmint grape and in 2015 the healthy fruit, full of flavour, was magnificent. This very hot, dry vintage resulted in nicely-balanced acidity and fresh fruit flavours, along with the minerality so typical of Tokaj wines. Disznoko Dry Furmint 2015, rrp 13.99, is available from agents Gonzalez Byass UK (call Arthur Boulgaris on 07880 200106 for more information). 22 March 2016 - Felicity Murray The Drinks Report, editor Quintessential buys Dublin Whiskey Company International drinks group, Quintessential Brands today announced the acquisition of Dublin Whiskey Company as part of a 10 million investment that will see it build a new Dublin whiskey distillery and visitor experience for its established portfolio of Irish whiskey brands including The Dubliner and The Dublin Liberties. The development will support up to 55 jobs over the next 18 months. It also announced the appointment of renowned Irish whiskey distiller Darryl McNally as general manager and master distiller of its Irish whiskey operations. The acquisition includes the historic Old Mill Street building in the heart of the Liberties, which was traditionally the centre of whiskey distillation in Dublin. The site has full planning permission for a distillery and a unique natural spring water source to be used in the process. This latest investment follows Quintessential Brands Irelands acquisition of First Ireland Spirits in 2014 which included its extensive Irish creams and liqueurs brand portfolio and production facility in Abbeyleix, Co Laois, and is part of the Groups ongoing strategy to grow its brands and operations in Ireland. In 2015, Quintessential Brands Ireland invested 4 million in doubling the production capacity of First Ireland Spirits, including the introduction of a comprehensive whiskey bottling operation. It already employs a total of 40 people in Ireland. Commenting on the acquisition, Quintessential Brands CEO Warren Scott says: The addition of the Dublin Whiskey Company paves the way for us to create an Irish whiskey distillery and a home for our Irish whiskey brands in the famous Liberties area of Dublin which will allow us to further develop our Irish whiskey portfolio and become a leader in Irish spirits. The Dublin Whiskey Company distillery will produce single malt Irish whiskey and we will have the first spirit flowing from the stills at the end of summer 2017. The Dubliner Irish Whiskey and The Dublin Liberties Irish Whiskey are already sold in a number of markets including the USA, Ireland and the UK, which will extend to over 50 countries around the world. The companys existing portfolio of Irish whiskey brands includes The Dubliner and The Dublin Liberties which together with Feeneys Irish Cream and OMaras Irish Country Cream provide Quintessential Brands Ireland with a comprehensive portfolio of Irish spirits. The Irish cream brands are produced by First Ireland Spirits, one of Irelands leading spirits & liqueur producers, selling in excess of 1.3 million cases (16 million bottles) to international markets. 22 March 2016 - Felicity Murray The Drinks Report, editor On the weekend I debated climate change with someone who denies the Earth is warming and someone who denies CO 2 is a greenhouse gas. Today's flat Earthers. The debate was on prime time TV with over one million viewers - BBC1's The Big Questions. The topic - 'Has the time come to take climate change seriously?' - was chosen following NASA data showing February 2016 was the hottest month on record - and it is welcome for such important developments to be discussed on prime time television. The arguments of Piers Corbyn and Rupert Darwell were ridiculed - including by host Nicky Campbell - and anyone watching would have known they are marginal views beyond the scientific consensus. There is no shortage of scientific data to confound their arguments but the debate format did not allow for a serious exchange of evidence. Indeed when I proposed a climate scientist be invited I was told this is a programme about morality not science. The format of The Big Questions is four guests invited to debate each issue (guests are also encouraged to pitch in on other topics). In this case two guests invited to debate climate change were climate sceptics or deniers, and two represent the position evidenced by science. There's only one real climate change debate: what should we do about it? When I agreed to appear, sceptic Rupert Darwell had been invited but not climate denier Piers Corbyn. I pointed out that the BBC has previously been slammed for 'false balance' in their reporting of climate change and strongly argued that their fourth guest should not be a climate denier - and should be a climate scientist. Host Nicky Campbell raised an important point that a survey has suggested that 56% of Conservative MPs doubt climate change is caused by human activity - and that misconceptions need to be addressed. But these views will be changed by serious attention given to scientific evidence, and by halting the constant reinforcement of the perception that there is a meaningful debate to be had about whether climate change is happening - not by a Sunday morning dose of people confusing opinion with evidence. All this would matter less were we not in a time-critical period - global climate changing emissions must start to decline in a handful of years to prevent runaway temperature rises. Already some of the Earth's systems that we rely on are under extreme stress - the Amazon rainforest is drying, the frozen tundra that traps millions of years of the powerful greenhouse gas methane is thawing, and Arctic sea ice extent is at an historic low. Indigenous people exist in Honduras! The Agua Zarca dam would threaten access to water for the indigenous Lenca communities who live in the area - as well as the sacred river itself. The communities say they were not consulted about the project, in violation of international law - but the companies began to advance with it anyway. As Berta's quote above suggests, none of this was entirely new to her or to COPINH. From the beginning, the organization had organized successfully against various resource-extractive projects that posed a danger to the land and to traditional ways of life. DESA and the other companies were not the first to plan projects in Lenca communities like Rio Blanco without first consulting the people living there. This is why Berta wrote in 1999 of COPINH's struggle to show Honduras and the world that "indigenous people do exist" as they confronted "others who only see indigenous peoples as archeological remains." Writing at the time of the first encuentro of what would later become the Convergencia de Movimientos de los Pueblos de las Americas (Convergence of People's Movements of the Americas, COMPA) - when COPINH was just six years old - Berta referred repeatedly to the pressures COPINH had to exert on the government of Honduras to recognize the importance of women, of the environment, and of indigenous people and their autonomy. Pushing back against environmentally destructive development projects financed by international capital was challenging, considering the context. Honduras was a reliable ally of the US government, having served as "the base for the counterrevolution in Nicaragua", as Berta wrote. With the government of President Manuel Zelaya, beginning in 2006, social movements and popular organizations like COPINH were able to gain some ground. Zelaya worked to help restore land to campesinos who had been defrauded of it in previous decades, for example. Just like old times: the Obama-Hillary coup of 2009 But the Honduran elites weren't prepared to relinquish their traditional control over the national agenda. In June 2009, Zelaya was overthrown in a coup, forced onto a plane at gunpoint during the night, still in his pajamas, and flown to Costa Rica (after stopping at the US military base at Soto Cano, Honduras for refueling). This was a coup backed by the Obama administration, which helped it succeed, working to prevent the democratically elected Zelaya from returning to the presidency until new elections were held in November. The elections, Hillary Clinton wrote in her memoir of this time as secretary of state, "would render the question of Zelaya moot." Belen Fernandez, contributor to the forthcoming Verso book False Choices: The Faux Feminism of Hillary Clinton, has discovered that this passage has been removed from the paperback edition of Clinton's book. Naturally, Berta resisted the coup, promptly becoming one of the most well-known faces of the resistance movement. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights ordered protection for her the day after the coup. The coup regime, and the government that emerged from the November 2009 elections (which, contrary to Clinton's assertion in her book, were hardly "free and fair", while the OAS and EU refused to even send observers) rolled back many of the gains of the Zelaya years. Poverty, economic inequality and unemployment increased, while underemployment went way up, with an increase in the number of workers receiving less than the minimum wage. Under Zelaya and his director of the Honduran Institute of Anthropology and History, Dario Araque, efforts had been made to recognize the 'existence' of actual, living indigenous people - and not just the Maya people promoted as archeological mascots for a foreign tourism market. But this quickly began to be reversed under the coup regime. Murder as a instrument of government There has been political continuity since, with National Party governments elected in 2009 and 2013 (both times in elections that critics and observers cited as problematic). What Berta wrote in 1999 reads like it could have been written in 2016. The struggles she articulates, the lengths to be traversed in order to achieve equality for women, for autonomy and respect for Honduras' indigenous population, for concern and protection of the environment, seem almost as daunting now as they were back then. But Berta, COPINH and other groups and movements working for these goals have accomplished much, and this is why they have been targeted, with the complicity (at the very least) of the state. "We have expelled 36 big lumber companies from our area and most of them were foreign, even from the United States", Berta wrote of COPINH's accomplishments in 1999. She also noted: "We've been able to get the government to build several health centers and schools, with jobs for doctors and teachers; and to build highways and bridges." She cited "several agreements" signed by the Honduran president and international organizations "to recognize indigenous rights." Since the 2009 coup, the Honduran government has found this form of people power unacceptable, with human rights activists and opponents of the coup often targeted for attack. COPINH activists had been killed before: Berta's colleague Tomas Garcia was shot and killed by a Honduran soldier in 2013 as he peacefully demonstrated; 15-year-old Maycol Rodriguez disappeared and was later found dead, in 2014. But with Berta, this political repression may have reached a new level. She was the most prominent social movement activist to be cut down in Honduras since the coup. Now Berta's murder has itself become a means of repression Despite an international outcry and an unusual level of international media scrutiny, the Honduran authorities have so far treated the assassination of Caceres like so many other targeted killings of political activists. They are using it as an opportunity to further persecute Berta's colleagues, including of course members of COPINH, but also her long-time friend and close colleague Gustavo Castro Soto. Castro is based in Chiapas, Mexico, where he works with Otros Mundos (related to the US-based Other Worlds) and Friends of the Earth Mexico. The sole witness to Berta's murder, he himself was shot when the assassins entered Berta's home, and left for dead. The Honduran authorities have prevented Castro from leaving Honduras - despite the efforts of the Mexican ambassador to get him on a plane - and Castro has said his life is in "extreme danger." In response, Berta's family, COPINH, and scores of other organizations in Honduras as well as those allied in solidarity have called for independent participation in the investigation into the assassination - specifically through the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights. They demand Castro's immediate release and safe return to Mexico, and that the dam and other projects being foisted onto Lenca communities against their will be halted. Can we make the US government feel the heat? The US government has been relatively quiet about Berta's murder, considering her profile and the extent of attention it has received. The State Department signaled initially only that it would support the investigation by the Honduran authorities - still pretending that Honduras' justice system works and that corruption and impunity do not pervade institutions at all levels. Members of Congress are working to push the State Department in a better direction, with public letters echoing the demands of Berta's family, COPINH and the other NGOs - including, notably, Senator Patrick Leahy's call for the Agua Zarca dam project to be halted. International campaigns have been launched against the hydropower development's backers - including most recently, the US Agency for International Development, which has supported the project through partnerships. This would be the best way to honor Berta and to raise the cost of any future such assassinations of environmentalists and rights activists: ensure that the project that she ultimately gave her life fighting is stopped. Dan Beeton is International Communications Director at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. With Alex Main and Jake Johnston, he contributed two chapters to 'The WikiLeaks Files'. This article originally appeared on Verso Books site and subsequently on CounterPunch. On the face of it, Vorn's conviction stems from a project to construct facilities for visitors to the Areng valley. The project is a partnership between the valley's communities and the conservation NGO Mother Nature. However at the time of Vorn's first summons in March 2015, Mother Nature's founding director Alex Gonzalez-Davidson had just been deported for his role in the campaign to halt the Areng hydropower dam, raising questions that Vorn's conviction was part of a government effort to target Areng Valley environmental activists. The day after Gonzalez-Davidson was deported, on February 24th, 2015, Prime Minister Hun Sen announced that the dam had been halted until at least 2018. Vorn had played an instrumental role in galvanizing community opposition to the dam, and the provincial authorities had taken note. False accusations of timber theft Initially rangers from the New York-based international conservation group Wildlife Alliance raised the issue of cutting wood inside a protected area and required Vorn to thumbprint (the equivalent of signing) a document to verify that he had acquired the timber. Vorn did so on behalf of the communities involved, explaining that he had not cut the timber himself and that it had been purchased from a local supplier. The timber was used to build the visitors centre, intended for the growing number of students, researchers, sightseers, and foreign tourists visiting the Areng valley. Rights groups rallied behind Vorn. "A combination of the charges laid against Ven Vorn and his lengthy pre-trial detention suggests possible political motivations behind this case", concluded a report that the Cambodian Center for Human Rights released shortly before Vorn's trial. "The charges laid against environmental activist Ven Vorn are completely lacking in an evidential basis, leading to the conclusion that the law has been either entirely misinterpreted or willfully misapplied to Ven Vorn. These charges have no reasonable justification under Cambodian law, and violate Ven Vorn's rights under the Cambodian Constitution and international human rights law. Furthermore, whether Ven Vorn committed the alleged offences or not, an analysis of the facts of this case and all applicable laws leads to the conclusion that Ven Vorn's pretrial detention is both arbitrary and illegal, in violation of his right to liberty and his fair trial rights." In a joint statement on the day of Vorn's release seven civil society organisations set out their position: "Mr. Ven Vorn has been repeatedly subject to judicial harassment as a result of his continued activism to protect the lands of the indigenous peoples in the Areng Valley ... "Given the nature of the charge against him and the excessive length of his pre-trial detention, it is clear that the most recent case against him is another attempt to suppress critical voices. If Mr. Ven Vorn had received a fair and independent trial, he would have been cleared of all charges. "Convicting activists involved in high profile cases and then releasing them on suspended sentences has become an often-used tactic in Cambodia in order to criminalize legitimate activism and to keep activists under close judicial supervision." Activists under detention in Cambodia Vorn shared his overcrowded jail cell with three activists from Mother Nature: Try Sovikea, Sim Somnang, and San Mala. They have been in pre-trial detention since their arrest last August for campaigning to stop sand dredging in Koh Kong's mangrove-lined rivers and estuaries. Their fate remains uncertain as they await their trial date. Vorn's arrest and conviction is part of a wider crackdown on all forms of government opposition including the opposition political party the Cambodia National Rescue Party. Its leader, Sam Rainsy, remains in exile to avoid a growing number of charges levelled against him by the government. Meanwhile Gonzalez-Davidson was surprised in January to receive a charge, together with two monks who are nominally affiliated with Mother Nature, as an accessory to the same alleged crime related to the sand-dredging campaign as his three imprisoned colleagues. Gonzalez-Davidson remains barred from entering the country. "The fact that they are denying me a visa, so I can be present during the trial against me, is further evidence that the charges against us are totally baseless and have zero legal basis", said Gonzalez-Davidson. He maintains his right to defend himself in court and is campaigning to be able to return to stand trial. His arrest warrant states 'whereabouts are unknown' even though he said he has notified the court of his address. Gonzalez-Davidson explained that the addition of the two monks as accomplices is slowing down the legal process. "Most scandalous of all is the fact that the judges themselves are waiting for an order from vested interests regarding how to proceed with sentencing our case, highlighting yet again the non-independence of the judiciary in Cambodia", he alleged. Since December, the communities of the Areng valley have been receiving support from the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to exercise their rights under the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. The communities have begun the process to claim their rights as indigenous peoples and register their land with the government under collective land titles. "When I go back to the Areng valley I will continue my work, no longer being afraid", said Vorn. "The job to have our land recognized as indigenous people is done in collaboration with the government. We do this for the benefit of the communities, not following the policies of any political party." So far UN officials have visited the valley four times, and more trips are planned. The communities' claims are likely to receive a further boost when the UN Special Rapporteur on Cambodia, Rhona Smith, visits the country later this month. The focus of her visit will reportedly be indigenous peoples. Government talks tough on illegal logging Vorn's conviction for illegal timber harvesting comes at a time when the government has ramped up its rhetoric against illegal logging. According to the Phnom Penh Post, in January Prime Minister Hun Sen instituted a committee to combat illegal logging, singling out two logging tycoons for smuggling. "[T]hey smuggled all the wood to Vietnam without permission and no one could say anything. Sokha has full power to use firearms from the chopper to stop the smuggling activities", the paper quoted a government spokesman as saying in reference to National Military Police commander Sao Sokha, who heads the new committee. Talk of a crackdown on illegal logging has been common throughout Hun Sen's long premiership. However, observers maintain that government action tends to focus on indigenous groups and local communities rather than big-time timber barons. Fran Lambrick, a researcher with a UK-based environmental activist group called Not One More, said: "The fact that the government would claim that this crackdown is addressing the problem and that Ven Vorn's conviction is part of this crackdown, demonstrates how local people in Cambodia are treated as the perpetrators of forest crime. "In fact local people are often just utilizing resources in the best way that they can. The tycoons who make millions of dollars from illegal logging are not being targeted." Observers also note that the government's threats rarely translate into convictions or other actions unless there is a political advantage to be gained. Marcus Hardtke, the Cambodia-based Southeast Asian program director for the German conservation group ARA, said: "If Hun Sen wants to end the destruction of Cambodia's forest he should have a family and friends meeting. Unless the cronies get out of the timber business, these so-called crackdowns will remain public relations exercises." The Cambodian Government is breaking its own rules over timber clearance Despite observers' skepticism, the government recently completed a wave of illegal logging busts and is currently investigating several companies, although it remains to be seen whether any convictions will come of it. A 9th March article in the Khmer Times reported that the National Anti-Deforestation Committee, a government agency, filed complaints in provincial courts against five companies that had obtained economic land concessions (ELCs) from the government "after discovering irregularities in the companies' timber stocks." ELCs, areas explicitly earmarked for conversion to intensive agricultural production, are widely recognized as the main driver of Cambodia's deforestation. Lambrick said the government itself routinely violates its own laws because it is illegal to site an ELC in a forested or a protected area, yet in practice many of them are. ELCs do allow for timber extraction and clearance if no other restrictions are present, such as CITES protection of listed tree species. But Lambrick said these rules are ignored with impunity as ELC companies clear the concessions, often from healthy forest in protected areas. "ELCs can only be allocated in degraded forest according to the law", Lambrick said. "A lot of the ELCs are illegal, because they are not placed in degraded forest. Seventy percent of the ELCs allocated in 2012 were placed within protected areas, which have excellent timber, excellent resources. "Then the ELC comes in, grabs these resources, cuts down the forest, and destroys communities Rod Harbinson is a journalist, filmmaker and photographer who has reported on some of the biggest environmental issues confronting the developing world for over 20 years. He has particular experience of the Southeast Asian region where he has documented and supported the struggles of indigenous and local people to protect their lands in the face of development. Watch Rod's film 'Defenders of the Spirit Forest', a 25 minute documentary on Cambodia's Cardamom Mountain forests at: spiritforest.org. This article was first published on the Mongabay Reporting Network (CC BY-NC-ND) and is republished here by kind invitation of the author. Read the original article here. This version includes some additional reporting by the author and The Ecologist that has been approved by the author. But Mars is equivocal on whether it sees any need - other than the legal requirement - to label its GMO ingredients. "At Mars, we not only ensure the safety of all raw materials in our products, we're also committed to being transparent with our consumers so they can understand what's in the products they love", it states. But it then adds: "We firmly believe GM ingredients are safe. Food developed through biotechnology has been studied extensively and judged safe by a broad range of regulatory agencies, scientists, health professionals, and other experts around the world." General Mills: 'we need a national solution' General Mills statement continues: "With the Vermont labeling legislation upon us, and with the distinct possibility that other states will enact different labeling requirements, what we need is simple: We need a national solution." Of course the DARK Act would provide a national solution - just not one that gives consumers a clear right to know what is in their food. Moreover the US Senate has clearly signalled its disapproval of the proposed legislation. However there is an alternative, the 'Biotechnology Food Labeling Uniformity' bill, introduced early this month by four Democrat senators: Oregon's Senator Jeff Merkley; Vermont Senators Patrick Leahy and Jon Tester; and California's Dianne Feinstein. "This bill is an important step forward to give consumers a uniform national mandatory label, and it seeks to address the needs of food producers by giving them a suite of options to comply with a mandatory national label", said Leahy, a current member and former chairman of the Senate Agriculture Committee, as he introduced the legislation to the Senate. "I believe that until a national mandatory label like this is enacted, Congress should not preempt state laws, like Vermont's Act 120." The bill immediately won the support of progressive food companies and consumer advocates, including Amy's Kitchen, Ben and Jerry's, Campbell's Soup Company, Consumers Union, Just Label It, and Nature's Path. Jean Halloran, director of food policy initiatives for Consumers Union, said: "This is what real disclosure looks like. This bill finds a way to set a national standard and avoid a patchwork of state labeling laws while still giving consumers the information they want and deserve about what's in their food. "This compromise offers food companies different labeling options and ensures that all consumers - no matter where they are in the country or whether they own a smartphone - have the information they overwhelmingly say they want. We urge Senators to support this proposal as they move forward on GMO labeling legislation." Now, who's next? Campbell's Soup announced its own move to label GMO ingredients in January, stating: "Campbell has been actively involved in trying to resolve this issue since 2011. We've worked with GMA, legislators and regulators to forge a national voluntary solution. We've engaged a variety of stakeholders, from lawmakers to activists. I've personally made multiple trips to Capitol Hill to meet with elected officials. "Despite these efforts, Congress has not been able to resolve this issue. We now believe that proposing a mandatory national solution is necessary. Printing a clear and simple statement on the label is the best solution for consumers and for Campbell." And many more companies now appear certain to follow in coming days and weeks - or be forced to withdraw from the Vermont market. Kelloggs, which just announced it will be complying with the Vermont law, has yet to release a statement. ConAgra states: "ConAgra Foods will begin adding labels to products nationwide by July 2016 to meet Vermont's GMO labeling requirements. We stand behind the health and safety of all of our products, including those with genetically modified ingredients, and believe consumers should be informed as to what's in their food. "But addressing state-by-state labeling requirements adds significant complications and costs for food companies. With a multitude of other states currently considering different GMO labeling requirements, the need for a national, uniform approach in this area is as critical as ever. That's why we continue to urge Congress to pass a national solution as quickly as possible." The GMA set out its position in a statement in which it effectively concedes defeat - for now: "Today's announcement is the latest example of how Vermont's looming labeling mandate is a serious problem for businesses. Food companies are being forced to make decisions on how to comply and having to spend millions of dollars. One small state's law is setting labeling standards for consumers across the country. "GMA member companies such as General Mills are individually deciding how they will comply with the Vermont law, even as the company is working with other food manufacturers, retailers and agriculture groups to continue to push for passage of the federal bill that would protect consumers, farmers and small businesses from a costly patchwork of state labeling laws. "This announcement should give new urgency to the need for action on a national law when the Senate returns from its recess in April." Oliver Tickell edits The Ecologist. SHARE By Erin Schmitt of The Gleaner School lunch prices are going up at Henderson County Schools next school year. The school system has not increased lunch prices in four years, causing the district to lose money, Child Nutrition Director Charlotte Baumgartner told the Henderson County Board of Education at the board's meeting Monday night. At the current prices $1 for breakfast and $1.85 for lunch the district can't make a meal for cost, she said. Upon Baumgartner's recommendation, the school board voted to charge students $1.50 for breakfast, $2.25 for elementary and middle school lunches and $2.50 for high school lunches. Adult breakfasts will be raised to $2.25 and adult lunches to $3.50. These prices are in line with what surrounding school systems charge, Baumgartner said. All students at seven district schools A.B. Chandler, Bend Gate, Jefferson, Niagara, South Heights, Central Academy and the Thelma B. Johnson Early Learning Center eat breakfast and lunch free through the USDA's Community Eligibility Provision program. The school district will hear a report soon on whether other schools might qualify. Staton: Board Member Brad Staton spoke at the end of the meeting to address people's questions about him running for a seat on the Henderson City Commission. Staton was elected to the District 5 school board seat in November to fill out Jon Sight's unexpired term, which concludes at the end of 2016. Before filing for the city seat, he was assured by the board attorney that if he were elected to the city commission, he would still be able to fill out the remainder of his term on the school board. "The education and upbringing of children in our community has, is and will continue to be one of my greatest passions," Staton said. He added that even though he is leaving the board to pursue other interests, he pledged to continue to be a productive, informed and reliable school board member through the end of his term. Going off his written statement, Staton told school officials that they are "doing an awesome job. The direction of our schools could not be going any better." Spottsville project: The board approved the design development documents for the new Spottsville Elementary, which will be a two-story building that is roughly 77,000 square-feet. The board also approved the BG2 form, which an outline specification for the school and includes energy design criteria, as well as the BG3 forms, which itemized construction costs and fees. The latter is still subject to change, but was approved as a formality so it can be approved by the Kentucky Department of Education. Strategic plan: The school board approved a strategic plan following a presentation by the district's administrators, including the principals from every school. The strategic plan includes five board goals which are that Henderson County Schools will: prepare students to be postsecondary ready; create future-ready leaders defining Henderson County as a community with the highest level of integrity and innovation; ensure a strong financial structure that guarantees excellence through creativity and innovation; seamlessly partner with families and community organizations through targeted outreach and engagement; sustain an exemplary staff by creating a dynamic and compassionate culture. Board Attorney: The board approved a request for proposal form for a new board attorney that was requested. The board plans to advertise this spring. SHARE Jennie Bailey Whitledge Stacy Sorenson By Gleaner Staff Capitalizing on your high-deductible health care plan will be the focus of Kyndle's next Brown Bag Series lecture scheduled for Monday. The presentation will be made by Jennie Bailey-Whitledge and Stacy Sorensen with Heritage Federal Credit Union. Bailey-Whitledge has a bachelor's degree from the University of Southern Indiana and more than four years of experience in the financial services industry. She also has several years in the healthcare and insurance industries. Bailey-Whitledge resides with her family in Henderson County. Stacy Sorensen has been with Heritage Federal Credit Union for more than three years working as a Business Development Specialist and holds the designation of Certified Financial Counselor, specializing in consumer deposit and lending products and services, with an emphasis on Health Savings Accounts. Prior to joining the Credit Union Sorensen was employed in the advertising and insurance sales industries. Heritage Federal Credit Union serves Henderson County as well as Posey, Vanderburgh and Warrick counties in Indiana. The credit union has been educating the community including individuals and businesses regarding Health Savings Accounts over the last several years. As more and more employers are offering high deductible health care plans to their employees and the out of pocket costs of health care increases, health savings accounts are becoming popular. The seminar will focus on several topics including: learning more about your health care plan, how to get the most out of your HSA and how HSA's work with high deductible health care plans. It will start at noon in the training room at the Kyndle offices on the fifth floor of the Soaper Building at Second and Main streets. For reservations, contact Kyndle at Info@Kyndle.us or 270-826-7505. SHARE Gleaner staff County and city fire crews battled a blaze for several hours Monday which reportedly started in a field on Wathen Lane and then spread to a structure. Fire departments were dispatched to 8371 Wathen Lane around 3 p.m. for a field fire. Details were sketchy but officials said the fire spread to a house on the property causing damage mainly to the outside of the structure and the attic. According to Nick Risley with the Zion Volunteer Fire Department, the cause of the fire is still under investigation. The Kentucky State Police and the State Fire Marshal's Office are being called in to help with the investigation, Risley said. Baskett, Zion, Spottsville, Robards and Niagara volunteer fire departments, the Henderson City County Rescue Squad and the Henderson Fire Department assisted at the scene. The scene was cleared just before 8 p.m. Further information was unavailable. SHARE By Laura Acchiardo, laura.acchiardo@thegleaner.com Tina McCormick hopes to carry the torch her late husband Hugh McCormick left as Henderson County judge-executive. On Monday night at the Henderson County Democratic Party executive committee meeting, McCormick received the party's nomination for the judge-executive position. She will face Republican Brad Schneider on the general election ballot in November. "There was never a need to step forward and educate the community about me because it was about Hugh and what he offered," McCormick said told the executive committee Monday night. "Now I need to let the citizens of Henderson know what I have to offer. I am proud of my accomplishments and leadership abilities, but most proud that I always treat everyone equally, respectfully and fairly." McCormick graduated from Murray State University with a bachelor's degree in integrated studies and communications. In the past, she has served as part of the senior administrative finance department at the Marshall County Health Department, as the administrative services manager for the Green River District Health Department and the public health director for the Marshall County Health Department. Currently McCormick serves as executive director for the Kentucky Rural Health Association. "My experience has been primarily in leadership and always in public service positions," said McCormick. "I am familiar with the state and federal rules related to funding and have been responsible for multimillion dollar budget preparation and administration for over a decade." Also running for the nomination were Robert Pruitt and Terry Spainhoward. Pruitt is a former Henderson city commissioner and is seeking to return to the commission, while Spainhoward lost to Hugh McCormick in the 2014 Democratic judge-executive primary. Only McCormick and Pruitt received nominations for the final vote. After votes were counted McCormick was declared the winner. Schneider praised the late Hugh McCormick when he was sworn in as judge-executive earlier in the day. Tina McCormick said she wasn't concerned about running against him. "I think we're both professionals," she said. "I don't expect there to be any controversy between us." Herbie McKee was also selected as the Democratic nominee for circuit court clerk on Monday night. McKee has graduated from law school, received a masters in business from the University of Kentucky and has served as the assistant county attorney for Henderson. After the judges of the circuit court appointed Richard (Rick) Green III for the position, he believed he would not receive the Democratic nomination for the November election; therefore, he resigned from his position. Green addressed the committee Monday, telling them he felt intense pressure not to accept the job. He said the pain he felt was the same as the pain he felt as a third-grader, when he learned President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated. State politicians react to the terrorist attacks in Brussels. U.S. Congressman Jim Himes, D-4: This morning, terrorists once again struck at the heart of a peaceful city, aiming to use violence and fear to attack the core values of democracy. Our first thoughts are for those killed and wounded and their families. In the coming days, the United States will work closely with our European allies to track down those responsible, bring them to justice and disrupt their networks. The sad truth is that this type of attack will likely continue as long as violence, extremism and chaos run rampant throughout the Middle East. To truly defeat those who would attack us, we must use not only our military, security and intelligence systems to rout them out, but we must work with all nations who have a stake in a peaceful Middle East and a peaceful world to bring stability and order. It will be far easier to track down and destroy terrorists and training camps if we are working with nations that arent in complete disarray. Today, we begin the search for the murderers who took so many innocent lives in Brussels. Tomorrow we must work to address the root causes that are producing these terrorists to prevent further attacks like this. U.S. Congressman, John B. Larson, D-1: My thoughts and prayers are with the victims, first responders, and their families after this devastating attack. Violence that targets innocent civilians is the ultimate act of cowardice. The U.S. stands with our European allies and victims of terrorist attacks wherever they may be, and I echo the President and my colleagues in Congress when I say we stand ready to assist however we can. U.S. Senator Richard Blumenthal, D, via Twitter: My heart goes out to victims of todays terrorist attack in #Brussels. We must continue to work with our allies to combat terrorism. U.S. Senator Chris Murphy, D: Todays terror attack in Brussels is a horrifying reminder of the global threat posed by groups like ISIS and their ideology of death. My heart goes out to the victims, their families, and the people of Belgium. America stands with you in this dark hour. These vicious attacks underscore the importance of open channels of communication between Europe and the United States. Many of these European based terrorists are just a short plane ride away from launching attacks in the United States. Yet our information sharing with Europe is simply not as strong as it should be. As a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, I will continue to strongly press our allies to do more to collect and share information with the United States about terrorist threats. A threat to Europe is a threat to us, plain and simple. HARTFORD (AP) -- Connecticut lawmakers moved closer Monday toward allowing qualified patients under 18 to use medical marijuana, with many saying they were inspired by stories from young people seeking relief from debilitating illnesses. The General Assembly's Public Health Committee overwhelmingly forwarded the legislation to the House of Representatives for further action. The bill's approval came days after a funeral was held in Montville for 13-year-old Cyndiemae Meehan, whose family moved her from Connecticut to Maine to receive medical marijuana to treat a rare form of epilepsy. The girl recently appeared at the Legislative Office Building with her mother, who testified before the same committee to urge support of the bill, saying she felt like her family had become "medical refugees." Montville Rep. Kevin Ryan, D-Montville, who pushed for similar legislation last year on behalf of Cyndiemae, suggested the bill be unofficially named "Cyndiemae's Law" in honor of the girl, whose March 13 death was classified as "sudden unexpected death in epilepsy," according to her mother. Monday's bill received bipartisan support. Both Democrats and Republicans said they were moved emotionally by the public hearing testimony provided by minors and their families. They said this legislation gives the doctors treating those patients another option to abate their symptoms. Under the bill, a dispensary could not provide a marijuana product that can be inhaled to someone under 18 years old. The bill also requires consent from a parent or guardian before a qualified young patient can be prescribed the drug, which has been credited for alleviating symptoms ranging from seizures to chronic pain. Rep. Matthew Ritter, D-Hartford, the committee's co-chairman, acknowledged the "optics" of the legislature allowing young people to use marijuana might not sit well with some people. But he said there are people suffering in the state with conditions where medical marijuana has been proven to be helpful. "We are allowing people in serious pain and families in agony to have an option," Ritter said. Rep. Prasad Srinivasan, R-Glastonbury, a medical doctor, supported the bill. He said the legislation allows professionals to decide whether medical marijuana is right for a particular patient. "We're not mandating anything. We're not requiring anything at all. We're giving them an option," he said, adding how it was an emotional experience to hear about the suffering some young people are experiencing and how families are leaving Connecticut to find medical attention. Sen. Joe Markley, R-Southington, said he was also touched by the emotional testimony, but he voted against the bill after hearing concerns from people in his district who work with youth. He said they're worried approval of medical marijuana for children in Connecticut will further encourage young people to experiment with the illegal drug. Connecticut first legalized medical marijuana in 2012 for qualified adults. There are six dispensaries in the state serving more than 9,400 registered patients. Monday's bill also expands the number of specific debilitating medical conditions that can be treated in the state using medical marijuana. If ultimately approved, the list would now include uncontrolled intractable seizure disorder, cystic fibrosis, a certain form of irreversible spinal cord injury, cerebral palsy and terminal illnesses requiring end-of-life care. STAMFORD The death of a 25-year-old Stamford man who was allegedly shot and killed by police Monday night has been ruled a suicide, the Office of the Chief State Medical Examiner said Tuesday. A spokesperson for the office said the cause of Dylan Pape's death was determined to be a gunshot wound to the abdomen. State police are investigating the incident as a police-involved shooting. The discrepancy between the police's account and the medical examiner's ruling was not immediately clear. The incident is currently under investigation as a police-involved shooting, said Connecticut State Police spokesperson Trooper Kelly Grant. Police say they received a disturbance call at 7:41 p.m. saying that a resident of 119 Wedgemere Road, had a gun and was threatening harm. In response, Stamford police dispatched patrol officers to set up a perimeter and begin a dialogue with Pape. The departments Special Response Team (SRT), along with hostage negotiators and a K-9 unit, was later brought onto the scene. About an hour into the incident, Pape appeared to have wielded a gun towards police, which resulted in two SRT members discharging their duty-firearms and striking the male. Additional Stamford officers and emergency medical services arrived on scene after the shooting and provided medical care to the wounded suspect. EMS transported the male suspect to a local hospital for further evaluation of his injuries where he was later pronounced deceased. Today is a sad day in our community. Any loss of life, no matter the circumstance, is tragic for all involved. My thoughts and prayers go out to the family and our police officers, said Mayor David Martin. Connecticut State Police say that detectives from their Western District Major Crime are actively investigating the shooting. Both officers involved, who have yet to be named, have been placed on modified duty, per the Stamford Police department shooting policy, during the course of the investigation. State police also say that the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner has been notified and will assist in the investigation, in which they will conduct a post-mortem examination to determine the cause and manner of death. In light of the event, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Connecticut released the following statement calling for tightened oversight of the use of SWAT teams in Connecticut. We do not know what happened to Dylan Pape, and we have no assurances, under Connecticut law, that we ever will. This is sadly not the first time that a SWAT unit has killed someone in a Connecticut home. Connecticut residents need and deserve transparency about how, when and why police use SWAT units, said David McGuire, the legislative and policy director for the ACLU of Connecticut. In 2016, it is unconscionable that a highly militarized police unit can barge into someones home, use lethal force and face no requirement to explain itself. Yet this is precisely the situation in which we find ourselves today. Right now, there are no laws requiring SWAT team oversight or reporting in Connecticut. We call on the legislature to pass legislation to provide comprehensive, clear SWAT team reporting and oversight. 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. Warning! Only registered members are allowed to access this section. Please login below or register an account with iSONEWS. Login Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, March 22, 2016 National Police chief Gen. Badrodin Haiti inaugurated Insp.Gen. Moechgiyarto on Monday ordering the new chief to address the capital's ongoing woes such as crime and traffic congestion. Former West Java Police chief Moechgiyarto replaced Insp. Gen. Tito Karnavian, who led the capital's police force for nearly a year before being installed as head of the National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT). During the inauguration ceremony at the National Police headquarters, Badrodin asked Moechgiyarto to strongly deal with all forms of criminal behavior in Jakarta and also address Jakarta's worsening traffic congestion. Meanwhile, Moechgiyarto said he would continue the programs of Tito, who was his junior at the police academy. He praised Tito's programs and said he would look further into which ones could be improved. "We will look further into programs that should be optimized and improved to be more efficient, such as budgeting," Moechgiyarto told the journalists on Monday after the inauguration. Moechgiyarto ranked top of his grade when he graduated from the police academy in 1986 and received the Adhi Makayasa award for that achievement. Before leading the West Java Police, he served as the National Police's legal division chief and the West Nusa Tenggara Police chief. During his term, the West Java Police launched the Mobil Order driving license service (SIMOBO) in 2015, which enabled residents to extend their driver's licenses through an online service. During his tenure the West Java Police also launched the first national M-Lantas application to monitor traffic conditions online. Besides inaugurating the new Jakarta Police chief, Badrodin also inaugurated Insp. Gen. Jodie Rooseto as West Java Police chief and Brig. Gen Supriyatno as Riau Police chief. (rin)(+) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, March 22, 2016 Twenty-five Indonesian civil engineers have registered to take part in a fast-track program to obtain international certification from the British Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE), the oldest civil engineer association in the world. The fast-track program is a pilot project sponsored by the British government to help Indonesian civil engineers get international certification in just one year. "There is a shortage of civil engineers in terms of quantity and quality, while President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo is pushing for infrastructure development," British Embassy consultant Prof. Scott Younger said on Tuesday. The engineers need to have five to 25 years of experience to be included in the program. After obtaining the ICE certificates there is no obligation for them to work in Indonesia. "We would actually be happy if they worked abroad then came back to Indonesia with more experience," Younger said. The program started in 1993 when the British government was working with the Public Works Ministry and National Development Planning Board (Bappenas) to improve the quality of Indonesian civil engineers. It was later discontinued. "There was the 1997-1998 crisis, then the 2001 bombings. There were travel warning for five years. We could not continue the program," Younger told thejakartapost.com. Younger also noted that there were 200,000 civil engineers in 1991. In 2013, based on Public Works Ministry data, there were 600,000 engineers in Indonesia, but only 8,000 were certified and even fewer ICE certified. Younger said Indonesian engineering education was not of international standards and so Indonesia-graduated engineers were not internationally recognized. There was a British government program that joined up with prominent universities in Indonesia to fix the engineering curriculum in 1995, but it was halted due to political chaos in 1997 to 1998 and 2002 Bali bombings. "We have worked on this project again since 2015, with universities like UI [University of Indonesia], ITB [Bandung Institute of Technology] and ITS [Sepuluh November Institute of Technology in Surabaya] to improve their curriculum. But whether to adopt it or not, we will leave it up to them," Younger said. (bbn) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Ina Parlina (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, March 22, 2016 The law aims to provide certainty, but at the country's highest court, the road to justice is often dark and hazy. While being the last harbor of the judicial system, the Supreme Court has issued controversial verdicts overturning lower court decisions without offering clear reasons. The latest was the verdict on a child sex abuse case involving the Jakarta International School (JIS) that overturned the appeal court acquittals of two previously convicted teachers. The court overruled the acquittals of Canadian Neil Bantleman and Indonesian Ferdinant Tjiong and ordered longer terms for the men for sexually abusing three young children at the school. The court sentenced the two to 11 years in prison even though a lower court previously ordered them released and threw out the charges. The Supreme Court's public affairs chief, Ridwan Mansyur, said that there was clear reasoning behind the verdict, but admitted that there had been a lack of transparency in informing the public about the process. 'The Supreme Court is currently trying to provide people with more information in [any ongoing legal] process and case management, as well as to speed up our case handling as fairly as possible,' he said. Amid uneven skills and infrastructure between various courts across the country, the Supreme Court, which has only around 50 justices on average each year, receives more than 10,000 cases annually. Last year, the court received 11,109 cassation appeals in various cases, including both criminal and civil cases, and 2,755 case review requests, an increase from 9,750 cassation appeals and 2,617 case review requests in 2014. In 2013, there were 9,799 cassation and 2,426 case review requests submitted to the Supreme Court, while 2012 saw 10,753 cassation and 2,570 case review requests. Supreme Court justice Suhadi said that some judges still wrote their rulings by hand, making the administrative work even harder. Another example of a controversial decision that overturned a previous ruling was the libel case of housewife Prita Mulyasari against a private hospital. A 2009 lower court ruling that released Prita from all charges was not the end of her case as the Supreme Court declared her guilty in 2011. In late 2012 she could finally feel relieved after the Supreme Court approved her case review bid and declared her not guilty. In another case of malpractice involving three doctors, the Supreme Court granted a case review requested by the three who were jailed in February 2014, acquitting them after a previous cassation ruling found them guilty of causing the death of a patient through negligence. Fellow doctors had earlier staged rallies to protest the cassation ruling. Two contradicting Supreme Court rulings in 2009 and 2011 in an embezzlement case had put a former state-owned TV station TVRI executive, Sumita Tobing, into a state of uncertainty for years. Sumita was later arrested in 2014 as the Supreme Court maintained that an 'error' in its verdict numbering system had caused its website to provide false information in 2009 and the court insisted that the 2011 verdict was valid. The 2009 ruling found her not guilty while the 2011 ruling sentenced her to 18 months in prison. Reda Manthovani, a former official at the Attorney General's Office (AGO) who is now the head of West Jakarta Prosecutor's Office, said that there was no uniformity between justices in handling cases. 'Some Supreme Court justices often scrutinize facts, instead of focusing on weighing whether the charges have correctly been implemented by the lower courts,' Reda said. Two conflicting decisions of the Supreme Court and the Constitutional Court over the case review mechanism ' the last legal option to challenge a court ruling ' has brought extra confusion to the already established criminal justice procedures that initially recognized it as a one-time bid. The Constitutional Court decided in a final and binding 2014 ruling that a convict can now file a case review an unlimited number of times. However, five months later the Supreme Court issued a circular to all courts across the nation ordering them to grant only one chance for criminal convicts to file for case reviews. Erwin Natosmal, an antigraft activist at the Indonesian Legal Roundtable (ILR), said that 'without a clear time frame on when a case is presided and a ruling is made, particularly those cases at the Supreme Court, there will be no legal certainty'. The government is currently seeking to develop an online integrated database of legal cases after numerous surveys in the past couple of years have found that the rule of law remains elusive in Indonesia because of the lack of transparency of the judicial authorities, as well as of law enforcement institutions, including the AGO. Meanwhile, President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo has also ordered the Judicial Commission and the Supreme Court, which has long opposed an external oversight role for the commission, to maintain good communications to provide better synergy in monitoring judges. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, March 22, 2016 Converting conventional banks to sharia banks is more effective than merging several banks in order to build up the Islamic principle-compliant financial industry amid the Asean Economic Community's (AEC) introduction, a sharia banker has argued. Maybank Sharia Indonesia banker Habibullah said that bank conversions would take only one year, enough for Indonesia to catch up in creating large-scale local sharia banks in anticipation of foreign bank expansions. "It is not hard to implement conversions from conventional to sharia banks. Within one year the conversion can be done. To create a large-scale sharia bank, a merger is not the only option, as it can be done by converting large-sized conventional banks," he said in Jakarta on Monday. Large-scale local Islamic banks, he continued, are becoming more necessary ahead of the ASEAN Banking Integration Framework (ABIF), which would lead to banking integration for the region, starting 2020. Indonesia's sharia banks, in terms of assets, are modest when compared to other countries. The assets of Indonesia's biggest Islamic bank, Bank Syariah Mandiri, is only Rp 70.25 trillion (US$5.33 billion, as of January 2016), less than half of Malaysia's Bank Islam total assets, which stood at RM 46.35 billion or Rp 150.1 trillion (September 2015). According to Habibullah, more large-sized Islamic lenders were necessary not only to anticipate competition but also to trigger growth. Currently, the cost of financing in sharia banks is higher than that of conventional banks due to limited assets, which stood at four percent of the industry. "We are in the five percent trap, the growth of sharia banking is just 4.8 or 4.9 percent. With a bigger Islamic lender, there will be better collection and distribution to reduce the cost of funds," Islamic Development Bank Indonesia Country Director Ibrahim Shoukry told thejakartapost.com recently. There are 11 sharia banks and 23 sharia business units along with 163 rural sharia banks (BPR Syariah) running in Indonesia. In the capital market, Islamic-bond issuance reached Rp 300 trillion, with 336 Islamic-stocks and 65 Islamic mutual funds. (ags)(+) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Hans Nicholas Jong (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, March 22, 2016 Seven Javan rhino calves were born at Ujung Kulon park last year, the largest number of Javan rhinos born in a single year in the country, raising hopes for the future of the world's rarest rhino after years of population decline. Environment and Forestry Minister Siti Nurbaya Bakar said that the discovery of the calves was uplifting, given the country's efforts to increase the rhino population. 'Actually, we thought that the Javan rhino would become extinct but apparently there were [calves being born]. How can we not be happy? We will ask President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo to give names to the four calves while the other three will be named by the [local] regent,' she told a press conference on Monday. The Javan rhino, whose folds of loose skin give it the appearance of wearing armor plating, once numbered in the thousands and roamed across Southeast Asia. Poaching and human encroachment on its habitat have led to a dramatic population decline, as with other rhino species around the world, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) had said the Javan rhino is 'making its last stand'. Poaching in particular represents a severe threat, with rhino horns fetching high prices on the black market for use in traditional Asian medicine. The IUCN classifies the Javan rhino as 'critically endangered'. Ujung Kulon park chief Mohammad Haryono said that the discovery of the calves brought the Javan rhino population to 63, all of which live in Ujung Kulon. 'Never before have so many Javan rhino calves been born in a single year. In the past, it was always fewer than five calves,' he told The Jakarta Post. 'The newborn calves look healthy judging from their bodies, which are not skinny.' World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Ujung Kulon project leader Yuyun Kurniawan shared the sentiment, saying that the birth of the seven calves was significant. 'If you compare it with the existing population of Javan rhinos, then the seven calves are very significant. The government itself targeted a 10 percent increase in the population [of 25 endangered animals] by 2019, but in a short span of time, there could be a significant increase in Javan rhinos,' he told the Post. Yuyun said that the birth of the Javan rhino calves was also astounding, considering that the species are solitary animals and thus it was harder for a Javan rhino male and a female to mate. 'They're not as territorial as tigers but they are indeed solitary animals,' he said. Haryono attributed the increasing population of Javan rhinos to the establishment of the sanctuary within the park, encompassing 5,100 hectares of lush rainforest and freshwater streams. 'In the eastern part of Ujung Kulon peninsula, there's a sanctuary that wasn't inhabited by rhinos in the past. It was damaged but was rehabilitated. We got rid of encroachers and invasive plants there,' he said. The animals had previously been living mainly in one corner of the park, an area of stunning natural beauty, but the sanctuary expanded the area suitable for them and relocated farmers to reduce the chances of animal-human conflict, according to Haryono. As the sanctuary grew more habitable for the rhinos, their reproduction also intensified, he added. Besides Javan rhinos, the government is also trying to save Sumatran rhinos, which are also on the brink of extinction due to illegal hunting for their horns. Unlike the single-horned Javan rhinoceros, the Sumatran rhinoceros has two horns, with the bigger one able to grow to 79 centimeters and the smaller one can reach 10 cm. On March 12, a Sumatran rhino was captured by a pit trap in a production forest in West Kutai, East Kalimantan. It was first detected there in early 2013, the first confirmed report of the species's existence in Kalimantan in the previous 43 years. 'There used to be around 200 Sumatran rhinos in Sumatra but now there are only around 100. So the discovery of even one Sumatran rhino is very scientifically important,' WWF Indonesia CEO Efransjah said. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Anton Hermansyah (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, March 22, 2016 Publicly listed taxi company Blue Bird Group will give free rides to customers on Wednesday in an attempt to restore its image following violent protests involving some of its drivers on Tuesday. Free taxi rides will be offered in Jakarta, Depok, Tangerang and Bekasi. "This is our commitment to giving our best service to our customers because of the inconvenience caused by the demonstrations," Blue Bird vice president for business development Noni Purnomo said at a press conference on Tuesday. The company will also cover the costs of any collateral damage caused by Blue Bird drivers, she added. The free service will only apply to Blue Bird, while the high-end Silver Bird will charge regular fares. The company denied that it had mobilized its drivers in the protest on Tuesday, the aim of which was to protest ride-hailing applications. Blue Bird previously issued a letter urging its drivers not to join the protests, Noni said. Blue Bird drivers were among taxi drivers who protested in several locations in the capital on Tuesday. "We did not pay our drivers to protest. We even issued instructions to our field team to withdraw all the cars from [protest] locations," she said. The listed taxi company said it would take firm action against any of its drivers proven to have committed anarchic acts during the protests. "If any of our drivers are proven to have committed anarchy, we will fire them and report them to the police," Noni said. The company fired a driver who was allegedly photographed carrying a machete. The photo went viral on social media. Noni said the photo was an old photo and that Blue Bird had fired the driver, named Feri Yanto, in November last year. "If our drivers are proven guilty, we will sanction them, from firing them to reporting them to the police," Noni said. The violent protests may have back fired on the respected Blue Bird as regular customers may decide to shun the company as a result of Tuesday's violence. Ulma Nurriva Haryanto, 31, a regular Blue Bird customer, said she would not use Blue Bird anymore after seeing how its drivers conducted themselves during the protests. "I will definitely use Uber from now on. No doubt most customers will feel the same way," said the housewife, adding that she also felt sorry for drivers who were victims of unresponsive government policies. Another customer, Chrestella Whitfield, 25, who works at a Jakarta-based international organization, also criticized the protests, saying Blue Bird had lost its status as a respected taxi company. "Blue Bird should have anticipated this by improving the drivers' welfare or lowering fares so they can compete with online-based taxis. It is so sad to see that financial pressures can make people do anything," she told thejakartapost.com, adding that the protests had made her decide to move to application-based taxis. At least 10,000 drivers under the Association of Road Transportation Drivers (PPAD) protested in the capital to demand that the government shut down application-based transportation services due to a lack of licenses and unfair competition. Several Blue Bird drivers were caught on camera bullying colleagues, damaging their cabs and forcing their passengers to get out of the taxis. Some drivers were also involved in brawls with Gojek drivers, as seen in TV news reports. The drivers blame application-based transportation services for their declining incomes as customers have started to shift from conventional to modern transportation service such as Uber, Grab and Gojek. (rin) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Rendi A. Witular (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, March 22, 2016 Prior to the Jan. 14 terrorist attack that struck a busy, area of Central Jakarta, Aman Abdurrahman, whom the police have accused of masterminding the plot, was already notorious for the recruitment of individuals to wage violent jihad. Although his contemporaries have dubbed him a master recruiter and prime ideologue of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group in Indonesia, Aman, 44, appears to lack the charisma to inspire anyone at first sight. However, if the ability to attract the big names counts as an accomplishment, Aman would seem to need no lessons. His preaching is already so contagious that terrorist convict Abu Bakar Ba'asyir, 77, the charismatic elder statesman of the regional terrorism network, has succumbed to Aman's doctrine. Many have cited Aman's fluency in Arabic as the prime feature allowing him to absorb the message, and fall under the influence, of Middle East hardliners such as Abu Muhammad al-Maqdisi, Sayyid Qutb and Hussein bin Mahmoud. But a recently obtained report on interviews with prison authorities has shed some light on Aman's exposure to radical clerics, and his evolution from the son of a poor farmer in Sumedang, West Java, into Indonesia's most dangerous IS influencer. Aman's upbringing was profoundly influenced by intensive study of the Koran, Arabic and devotion to religion in an environment of moderate Islam. Born Oman Rochman on Jan. 5, 1972, in Sumedang, Aman was the fourth of eight children of Ade Sudarma and Yayah. Starting in fifth grade of state elementary school, Aman was exposed to the Arabic language taught by a private teacher. After graduating, he enrolled in a local madrassa for his junior and senior-high education in Sumedang and Ciamis, West Java. Aman graduated from the Islamic and Arabic College of Indonesia (LIPIA) in Jakarta in 1998, majoring in Islamic law after seven years of study. The college is a branch of the Al-Imam Muhammad Ibn Saud Islamic University in Riyadh. He graduated cum laude, top of his class, and was offered a full scholarship to Saudi Arabia. He turned down the offer, and worked for NGOs Rabithah Alam Islami and Hai'ah Ighatsah in Jakarta as preacher coordinator in 1999. It was in the late 1990s that Aman married his village sweetheart, Ratu Nina Rusliawati, and the couple now has two sons and one daughter. Between 1999 and May 2000, Aman worked in Tahfidz Al-Quran Al-Hikmah boarding school in Cirebon, West Java, before moving to become the imam of Al-Sofwa mosque in Lenteng Agung, South Jakarta, between 2000 and 2003. It was during his job at Al-Sofwa that his extreme views might have been developed. According to the document, Aman declared to himself to have become fully immersed in the Salafi movement in July 2000. Salafism is a Sunni branch that takes a fundamentalist approach to Islam, pronouncing other branches of Islam as heretical and propagating the strict adoption of sharia. It was between 2000 and 2003 that Aman translated many texts regarding salafism and the Tawhid wal-Jihad movement, which were then disseminated widely in Indonesia. The movement promotes takfiri ' the prime doctrine that was later adopted by IS, a terrorist organization that currently occupies territory in Syria and Iraq. The doctrine is an offshoot of Salafism, which accuses other Muslims of apostasy and therefore liable to be killed. According to the document, Aman's venture into violent jihad started in 2003 in an event at the At-Taqwa mosque in Tanah Abang, Central Jakarta, where he met a cleric by the name of Harun, a veteran of the bloody sectarian conflict in Poso, Central Sulawesi, between 1998 and 2001 that left thousands of Muslims and Christians dead. Harun taught Aman the I'dad principle that requires all Muslims to prepare themselves for war if they are not able yet to wage one. The cleric also taught Aman the principal of tawhid (the indivisible oneness concept of monotheism) and the importance of fighting God's enemies. Aman and several of his students, attended not only the prayer group but also paramilitary training organized by Harun in the woods near the University of Indonesia in Depok, West Java. The physical drills given by Harun to the participants were considered harsh. The participants were also taught to use firearms and make homemade bombs with ingredients that could easily be obtained locally. Fueled by militancy, Aman and his students experimented with making pipe bombs in a house in Cimanggis, Depok, in March 2004, but the devices detonated prematurely. Aman was sentenced to seven years in prison for the failed terror plot. During his time in prison, Aman's militancy grew as he met Ba'asyir, who spent time in prison for terrorism offenses between 2005 and 2006. In 2008, Aman was released after receiving remission for good behavior, but by then he had fallen further into Ba'asyir's sphere of influence. Soon after his release, Aman collaborated with Ba'asyir to set up a joint terrorism training camp in Aceh in 2010 that united different factions and terrorist groups. Following the discovery of the Aceh camp, Aman and Ba'asyir received nine and 15 years in prison, respectively, and are now detained on Nusakambangan, a prison island off the shores of Cilacap, Central Java. When IS came to the fore in 2013, Aman found ideological refuge in the group, utilizing his flair for preaching to lure others into joining IS from behind bars as followers came in droves to visit him in prison and spread his written sermons. While many factors may have been in play in the initial radicalization process of Aman, it is worth noting how rapidly a follower could slip into committing violence once exposed to extreme teachings. It took Aman less than three years to cross over from an ordinary cleric to an unrivaled promulgator of hate and violence, and therefore the burgeoning of preachers like Harun in several mosques in Jakarta should cause very real concern. Aman is set to be released from prison on Christmas Day of 2018, according to the prison document. As the authorities struggle to slap other charges on him so that he can remain in jail, efforts should immediately be ramped up to empower moderate Muslims to prevent mosques from falling into the hands of radical clerics. ______________________________ The author is a staff writer at The Jakarta Post. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Farida Susanty (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, March 22, 2016 Indonesian courier companies on Monday expressed their optimism over the future of their business amid the ASEAN single market, citing a number of barriers to entry that will temporarily stop overseas companies from entering the country's logistics industry. The Express Couriers Association of Indonesia (Asperindo) said the launch of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) late last year did not pose a major threat to local courier companies, as they were ready to cooperate with each other to improve services and expand operation networks across the archipelago. Citing the 2009 Post Service Law, Asperindo chairman M. Kadrial said foreign companies attempting to enter the Indonesian logistics market would first meet a legal barrier, as the law stipulates that a foreign business entity can only enter the industry if it forms a joint venture with a local company, with the latter holding majority ownership. Kadrial, whose organization represents 277 Indonesian express couriers companies, also warned that a lack of reliable transportation infrastructure would be a challenge for rookie players in the relatively high-cost domestic logistics industry. 'If the roads remain in the condition they're in now, that's a problem. We need foreign investment to build infrastructure,' said Kadrial, an executive with logistics firm RPX Group. Last year, the domestic logistics industry stood at an estimated Rp 2.15 quadrillion (US$163.4 billion), a double-digit increase from the estimated Rp 1.81 quadrillion in the previous year, based on a study conducted by Frost and Sullivan. Asperindo is expecting to see the industry grow by 14 percent this year, with significant support from the e-commerce boom. Indonesia's e-commerce sales reached a staggering $1.1 billion last year, with predicted annual growth to reach 38 percent from 2014 to 2017, based on data from research firm Euromonitor International. 'There's a growing middle class and more smartphone users. This is a sign that the e-commerce industry has a good potential,' noted courier service and logistics company PT Tiki Jalur Nugraha Ekakurir (JNE)'s president director, M. Feriadi, who is also a member of Asperindo. Indonesia's 250 million people constitute some 40 percent of the total population of Southeast Asia. Data from Standard Chartered show that the middle class, or those earning between $2 and $20 a day, rose from 131 million people in 2010 to 149 million in early 2015. Feriadi stated that JNE itself saw its average monthly shipping shoot from 8 million shipments per month in 2014 to 12 million per month as of last year, with annual revenue growth of around 30 percent. 'We expect business to keep growing,' he said. Kadrial meanwhile said that Asperindo members would focus on expanding their business on the country's most populated islands, such as Java and Sumatra, instead of trying to enter markets in neighboring countries. 'The AEC will be of greater benefit to our neighbors, as they currently have limited markets,' he said. --------------------- 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 Jakarta Tue, March 22, 2016 JAKARTA: Indonesia will host the first general assembly of the Asia Water Council (AWC) in Nusa Dua, Bali, this week to discuss issues and find solutions to water resource challenges in Asia. Indonesia will share its experiences, problems and solutions regarding water resources management with other countries during the three-day meeting, which will be officially opened on Thursday. 'Through this forum, Indonesia will share its experience of water resources management and learn from other countries as well,' Public Works and Public Housing Ministry water resources management director Agus Suprapto said on Monday. About 200 participants from the AWC Board of Council will attend the assembly, that will feature 50 delegations, comprising governments, international and civil organizations, academics, research agencies and multilateral development banks. Members of the council include France, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Laos, Nepal, Mongolia, Thailand, Singapore and Uzbekistan. One of the topics that Indonesia will bring to the meeting is water management systems in urban areas such as Jakarta, Agus said. The country also plans to discuss solutions to this problem through the adoption of the so-called Smart Water Management Initiative. Other issues that will be discussed during the AWC meeting are related to water cycles including the many aspects of water usage, natural environment protection and natural hazard mitigation. ' JP Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin The Jakarta Post Tue, March 22, 2016 The government met with representatives of the Chinese Embassy over an 'arrogant' incident involving Chinese coast guard vessels on Sunday, which a minister said had forcibly rescued a Chinese fishing boat that had been caught fishing illegally near Natuna Islands. Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti said the government would demand an explanation from China about the violation, adding that she had asked Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi to prepare a formal protest letter to Beijing. Her spokesman said the government would check the exact position of the ship to determine Indonesia's actions. Restraint on all sides would be the best initial reaction instead of the big temptation to be drawn into gung-ho moves against Big Brother China. Determining the precise location of where the Chinese vessel Kway Fey was caught for illegal fishing is the first correct step in avoiding unnecessary additional tension in the South China Sea. Minister Susi said Indonesia would ask China to return the ship, which was apprehended along with eight crew members on the grounds of using trawl nets. Indonesia and its neighbors are increasingly wary of China's presence in the South China Sea, as disputing claims affect islands, features and fishing areas in the waters around China's claim of its 'nine-dash line'. Indonesia has not formally declared itself among the claimants of disputed areas with China, while President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo is continuing his predecessors' efforts to woo Chinese investment. However, Indonesia can no longer claim to be an honest broker amid the conflicting interests. Its own interests are in the spotlight if China determines that the location of the Chinese vessel arrested on Sunday was outside Indonesia's exclusive economic zone (EEZ). Indonesia's naval base in Natuna maintains the Chinese vessel was found operating within an 83,515-square kilometer area at the intersection of Indonesia's EEZ, its continental shelf boundary and China's nine-dash line. China's Foreign Ministry told Reuters news agency that the trawler was operating in 'traditional Chinese fishing grounds'. It added that China demanded Indonesia immediately release its fishermen, saying its trawler was 'attacked and harassed by an armed Indonesian ship'. Given such opposing views, both sides must strive toward a peaceful settlement ' not only regarding the Kway Fey arrest. Indonesia and China also should admit to the thorny issue of the Natuna Islands, as it is no longer realistic to play the affable good guy with China. We support Minister Susi's efforts to end illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing to help ensure our fishermens' welfare. China's ambassador was among the foreign envoys who signed a Memorandum of understanding in 2014 with the minister to ensure sustainable fishing in the region's waters. A mutually beneficial settlement should be in sight, on the basis of the common interest to feed the people of both countries. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Syamsul Huda M. Suhari and Severianus Endi (The Jakarta Post) Gorontalo/Pontianak Tue, March 22, 2016 Many residents in regions located on the equator try to stay at home during the equinox due to rising temperatures, while others welcome the event as the sun shines directly onto the Earth. Head of the local station of the Meteorology, Climatology and Geophysics Agency (BMKG) ,Indar Adi Waluyo, said that being located near the equator, Gorontalo received maximum sunlight during the equinox. As such, it also experienced maximum temperatures of between 34 and 34.8 Celsius degrees, so people preferred to stay at home around noon and conduct activities in the morning and in the afternoon. 'The heat causes headaches. The sunlight is painful on the skin,' Salsabila of Dungingi, Gorontalo city, said. The phenomenon occurs twice a year: on March 21 and Sept. 23. In Pontianak, West Kalimantan, the National Atomic Energy Agency (Batan) examined the radiation of the sun during the equinox on Monday. Head of the radioecology division of the agency's technology, safety and radiation metrology center (PTKMR), Dadong Iskandar, said that the results so far had not indicated above-normal radiation levels. He further explained that the sun's radiation had no significant influence on human health at that time. 'We just want to measure the difference of the radiation level [during normal days and during the equinox],' Dadong told The Jakarta Post. During normal days, he said, the sun's radiation in Pontianak city ranged from 23 to 40 nano Sievert (nSv) per hour. This is lower than the national figure that ranges between 40 and 50 nSv. 'We have yet been able to conclude on the radiation during the sun's culmination but our initial measure shows figures of around 45 to 50 nSv, but this is not final yet,' he said. Separately, Pontianak Culture and Tourism Agency head Hilfira Hamid said that no special event was conducted for this year's March equinox as a better program had been planned for the September equinox. 'The sun's culmination during March is specially aimed at education, observation and student programs,' Hilfira said. In Pontianak, one of the popular locations for enjoying the phenomenon is the Equator Monument. During normal days some 6,000 to 7,000 domestic and 500 to 600 foreign tourists visit the monument every month. Head of the city technical managing unit (UPT) overseeing tourism landmark management, Sutami, said that during the equinox the number of tourists visiting usually increased by 200 percent. She said services offered to visitors included giving certificates that acknowledges recipients had visited the monument. 'We also present demonstrations on unique phenomena such as making eggs stand up straight without any support, which we can only do in the monument area,' Sutami said. Forecaster Mega Fitriawita of the BMKG's Supadio station, Pontianak, said that the culmination of the sun occurred on Sunday and Monday in the city. 'The maximum air temperature on Sunday in Pontianak was 32 Celsius degree. The temperature was even higher in the eastern part of West Kalimantan but it had nothing to do with the equinox,' Mega said. Temperatures that were considered extreme occurred in Sintang, with 36oC, and in Kapuas Hulu with 34oC, she added. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Penny Wang and Didi Tang (The Jakarta Post) Bangkok Tue, March 22, 2016 Dong Junming was detained several times in his Chinese homeland before he and his family fled to Bangkok in February 2015. A year later, he was preparing to make a more desperate journey to evade Chinese authorities who still felt dangerously close. In the months since he arrived in Thailand, dozens of Chinese asylum-seekers have been sent back home by Thai authorities. Other dissidents have simply disappeared from Thailand and Hong Kong before re-emerging in mainland Chinese custody. Beijing appears increasingly eager to snatch back countrymen who have attempted to escape its grasp. Dong is a practitioner of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which is banned in China and whose members are persecuted there. He, his wife and daughter have a long wait to obtain refugee status and get resettled in a third country ' they won't even interview with the UN refugee agency until at least 2017. In the meantime, he's unable to work legally and his family's travel documents have expired. So Dong decided to flee once more. This time it would be by boat, to New Zealand, some 6,000 miles away. He would leave with six other Chinese adults, including a couple taking their two sons, ages 1 and 7. They believed New Zealand offered them the best chance of gaining refugee status. Dong, as well as eight other Chinese dissidents living in Thailand who did not make the boat journey, described lives of anxiety and frustration bordering on outright despair in interviews with The Associated Press. Though free and under no immediate deportation threat, Dong said he feared what the future might bring. So when offered a berth on the yacht in January, he took it. "It's highly risky out there on the ocean, but we are so fearful here in Thailand that I thought I should take the risk," he said. Dong and fellow travelers boarded the yacht the night of Feb. 29. The captain was democracy activist Li Xiaolong, the father of both children aboard. He bought the secondhand vessel, which also carried his wife and two brothers. They had a month's supply of food and water. Their confidence was boosted by a fellow activist who succeeded in making a shorter sea voyage from Thailand to Australia. They believed their own journey would be smooth. They were wrong. ___ Fears over the growing reach of Chinese security services crystallized among many Chinese dissidents with the recent disappearances of people associated with a Hong Kong bookstore that sold gossipy titles on the lives of Chinese leaders. One of the missing was believed to have been abducted from Thailand, another from Hong Kong, though both have since said they voluntarily returned to mainland China. Asylum-seekers in Thailand were more alarmed that the Thai government sent back about 100 asylum-seekers from China's Turkic Muslim Uighur minority last summer, and repatriated two Chinese dissidents in November, saying they violated immigration rules. Critics viewed Thailand's military-led government as catering to China, its biggest trading partner. With President Xi Jinping at China's helm and brimming with confidence, the communist government is pursuing greater cooperation with police abroad. One aspect of the campaign popular within China is Beijing's Skynet operation, which seeks the return of corrupt Chinese officials and others accused of absconding overseas with ill-gotten gains. Since October 2014, China has seen the return of 124 corruption suspects who had fled to 34 countries, the country's chief justice told the national legislature this month. That campaign has had limited success in the US, which has no extradition treaty with China and requires evidence that the offences they are accused of by China would also constitute a crime in America. Beijing has raised the heat not only on corruption suspects but also on dissidents who fled China. Forced repatriations and alleged abductions have particularly rattled Chinese asylum-seekers who have congregated in Thailand, where the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has an office. "Beijing has become so ruthless that it grants us no way out at all," said Hu Junxiong, a democracy activist who fled to Thailand last year, after Chinese authorities detained him 35 days for helping other activists with computer and technology issues. "It won't let us flee, but stays on our tail to catch us and bring us back to China, where we surely will be met with harsh persecutions and end up in misery," Hu said in an interview from Bangkok. ___ The yacht set off from Pattaya, southeast of Bangkok. Dong's wife and daughter stayed in Thailand because the family's funds were limited and, since their visas had expired, they were at risk of being detained by Thai authorities. The next day, the vessel was battling waves up to 5 meters (16 feet) tall, Dong said. About 135 kilometers (84 miles) into the journey, a problem emerged with the yacht's steering. One of those aboard managed to fix it, but after another 100 kilometers (62 miles) the waves returned and the rudder went out again, Dong recalled. "The boat was spinning, and it was shaking violently," Dong said. "We were still 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the closest shore." They turned the boat toward shore and manually operated the rudder. Their distress calls went unanswered. "I was extremely fearful," Dong said. "We were in lifejackets, and I was so sick I could not get up." The baby and his brother were quiet, Dong recalled. "The little one had his eyes wide open and did not cry at all. The older one was simply lying there. I did not know if he was scared or was feeling numb. Their mother was vomiting and could not do anything." Deep into the night of March 1, the yacht ran aground in southern Thailand's Chumphon province. The boat was taking on water and listed on the shore. After waves gradually pushed it to an upright position, the adults waded to land, fetched the children and called for help, Dong said. "Our boat could have sunk out there," Dong said in an interview from Bangkok. "We are lucky to be alive." ___ Thailand is home to thousands of asylum-seekers from China and elsewhere, many of whom live under murky legal status. Even those who enter the country legally often overstay their visas. Thailand has no law managing asylum-seekers fleeing conflict and persecution. Activists say Thai authorities used to look the other way on Chinese asylum-seekers, but that changed after the May 2014 military coup. Thai government spokesman Sansern Kaewkamnerd said authorities follow the rules when sending illegal immigrants back to their countries of origin. "If we don't, Thailand might become a hub for smugglers to transport people to third countries and we wouldn't want that," he said. Vivian Tan, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Thailand, said asylum-seekers are often caught up in routine illegal-immigration crackdowns. Although the UN office has no control over how Thailand enforces immigration rules, it works with authorities to help asylum-seekers avoid being detained, Tan said. Some Chinese refugees fear Chinese agents as well as Thai authorities. Hu, who traveled to Thailand without identification last year, said someone claiming to be a Chinese diplomat called him and said the embassy monitored local activists' phone calls. He said the caller asked him to inform on fellow asylum-seekers. "I think it's part of (Beijing's) plan to turn us against each other," Hu said. The Chinese Embassy in Bangkok said it had no knowledge of Chinese authorities conducting surveillance on dissidents in Thailand. As they wait for years to be recognized as refugees, Chinese asylum-seekers say they survive by dipping into meager savings and practicing extreme frugality. They avoid police at all costs, even if they're victimized. On the night the ill-fated journey to New Zealand ended, however, hiding was not an option. ___ Of the seven adults who took part in the failed voyage, two ' including Li's wife, Gu Qiao ' were detained for not having valid documents; they remained in Thai custody this week. Li, the trip's organizer, was charged with aiding undocumented immigrants but later released on bail. The 1-year-old traveler is also in state custody. The 7-year-old was returned to Li's brothers, who also had been on the boat. Like Dong and one other passenger, the brothers were freed when their documents were found to be in order. "Now, I am back to live in fear again," Dong said. "I am back to wait for the UN interview, and I feel hopeless." His family lives as simply as they can. Once rent is paid, their monthly budget leaves them with just 500 baht ($14), his wife, Wang Shumei said. They pick through vegetables discarded from farmers' markets, and sometimes sellers give them food out of pity, she said. And they practice Falun Gong meditation exercises. "Should there be another opportunity, I would leave Thailand again," Dong said. "And many of us have the same thought." ___ Didi Tang reported from Beijing. AP writers Nattasuda Anusonadisai in Bangkok and Kelvin K. Chan in Hong Kong contributed to this report. (**) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, March 22, 2016 Hundreds of taxi drivers and drivers from local motorcycle taxi-hailing application Go-Jek engaged in a brawl during a protest on Monday on Jl. Sudirman, Central Jakarta, as the two groups went head to head on the streets. Taxi drivers passing through the Sudirman area near Sampoerna Strategic Square were heading to Senayan to join their fellow drivers in the protest. However, Go-Jek drivers moved to block their path, according to a televised report from Metro TV. The taxi drivers and Go-Jek drivers argued, which led to a brawl in which the two groups threw rocks at each other. The incident caused a standstill on Jl. Sudirman until police officers broke up the brawl and forced the groups to retreat. Meanwhile, on Jl. Gerbang Pemuda, taxi drivers and Go-Jek drivers also fought with one another. A Go-Jek driver named Siswanto, 47, was forced by taxi drivers to get off his motorcycle as he was passing through Senayan wearing his Go-Jek jacket and helmet. Several taxi drivers hit and punched him, causing facial bruises, before police officers broke up the fight. No details are available as yet on whether Siswanto intends to report the incident to police, as taxi drivers dispersed quickly after police officers arrived. Meanwhile, a driver of an Express Taxi was beaten up by Go-Jek drivers during a separate brawl, also in the Senayan area. At least 10,000 drivers from the Land Transportation Drivers Association (PPAD) hit the streets of Jakarta on Tuesday to protest ride-hailing applications such as Go-Jek, US-based Uber and Malaysia-based Grab over claims that the modern services were disadvantaging conventional transportation services. (rin) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Tassia Sipahutar (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, March 22, 2016 The government is set to crack down on tax evaders and money launderers, President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo having instructed the integration of forces in a bid to increase the country's low tax receipts. In a limited Cabinet meeting on Monday, Jokowi asked for the integration of the reporting and financial transaction analysis system and that of tax reporting and monitoring. 'I want you to prepare concrete measures to improve enforcement of laws on tax crimes and money laundering,' he told those in attendance, including taxation director general Ken Dwijugiasteadi, Financial Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre (PPATK) chairman Muhammad Yusuf and customs and excise director general Heru Pambudi. Finance Minister Bambang Brodjonegoro and Coordinating Economic Minister Darmin Nasution were also present. Integration of the two systems is expected to help push up the country's tax ratio to between 14 and 15 percent of GDP from the current 12.2 percent, widen the tax base and increase tax revenues. The Finance Ministry has already collected data from thousands of recalcitrant Indonesian citizens who refuse to comply with regulations and stash their funds abroad, Bambang said. 'The pattern is the same everywhere, which is to create an SPV [special purpose vehicle]. The most popular place for Indonesians to do so in the British Virgin Islands. The SPV retains all the funds in one country,' he said, declining to name the country. Six thousand Indonesian citizens and 2,000 SPVs are linked to such practices in the country in question, government data show. The government claims that it has identified the bank in which the funds are kept and the account holders. 'These are undeclared funds and they have not been reported in annual tax forms. We will go after them,' Bambang added. Almost 2,000 foreign investors in Indonesia have evaded tax in the past 10 years by claiming to have suffered losses; the government estimates its loss from such evasion at Rp 500 trillion (US$38 billion). A newly issued government regulation is expected to boost the PPATK's power and reach as well, regulating the submission of data and information by state and private agencies to prevent and eradicate money laundering. Under the regulation, the PPATK has the authority to request various data, including on clearing and settlement in the financial services industry, on taxation and on politically exposed persons, regardless of any secrecy clause. CReco Consulting economist Raden Pardede said that the integration might not produce major results for two or three years. Separately, Center for Indonesia Taxation Analysis (CITA) executive director Yustinus Prastowo said that law enforcers must make sure they had valid data before proceeding with any necessary action. 'Almost 2,000 PMAs avoided paying taxes for the past 10 years. Really? Where were the authorities back then?' he asked. Jokowi's administration is aiming to boost tax collection, with the revenues gained to be used for productive spending such as on infrastructure, but so far realization has been sluggish, with only around 80 percent of last year's target met. Meanwhile, recent Finance Ministry data reveal the scale of the challenge facing the government's efforts to increase tax receipts, even after the planned system integration. By February, tax revenues stood at Rp 124.2 trillion, representing just 9.1 percent of the full-year target of Rp 1.36 quadrillion. The figure is 5 percent lower than at the same point last year. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Marguerite Afra Sapiie (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, March 22, 2016 The Jakarta Organization of Land Transportation Owners (Organda) has expressed its regret over the lack of concern and commitment from the government to accommodate the aspirations of thousands of taxi drivers against the operation of ride-hailing applications, which drivers voiced during protests on Tuesday. Commenting on the anarchic protests initiated by a number of taxi drivers in Jakarta, Organda chairman Shafruhan Sinungan said the demonstrations occurred because the government did not seem to care about a protest staged last week and had failed to immediately accommodate and ease the drivers' insecurities. "I have said several times that if the government does not clear up the situation there will be a clash," Shafruhan told thejakartapost.com on Tuesday. Last week, Communications and Information Minister Rudiantara said that leading ride-hailing apps Uber and Grab had agreed to establish a cooperative as their legal entity in Indonesia to ensure compliance with transportation laws. The decision to set up a business entity was made following the escalation of protests from taxi drivers who claimed the ride-hailing apps had led to a drastic reduction of revenue for conventional taxi drivers because of unfair price competition. However, as the cooperative would take time to be established, Shafruhan said the government must take immediate measures to block the ride-hailing apps so that vehicles with black license plates would stop operating illegally. According to Shafruhan, the issue does not lie in the smartphone apps being a result of IT advancements, but in the unregulated operation of black-plated cars used as public transportation. The government was letting US-based Uber and Malaysian-based Grab make fun of Indonesia's law and Constitution, which regulate transportation permits, Shafruhan claimed. Transportation Minister Ignasius Jonan had decided to side with the law, Shafruhan said, adding that Organda urged other ministers such as Rudiantara to mediate the dispute, particularly because he had authority over IT in the country. Meanwhile, Shafruhan said Organda was not behind the demonstration and did not support it, instead saying it regretted the taxi drivers' display of anarchy. Following a March. 14 plan from the Land Transportation Drivers Association (PPAD) to protest against ride-hailing apps such as Uber and Grab, Organda briefed taxi drivers, warning them not to become violent against ride-hailing apps' drivers. However, some taxi drivers who blocked Jl. Gatot Subroto in Jakarta on Tuesday did not only stop app-based vehicles, but also their fellow conventional taxi drivers who chose to operate as usual rather than take part in the protest, Shafruhan said. "They should at least be sympathetic toward the people. If their intention is to protest against the government, they should not carry out anarchist actions as well." (bbn)(+) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta Tue, March 22, 2016 The Jakarta administration will ban traditional horse-drawn buggies at the National Monument complex, Central Jakarta, following an outbreak of skin disease among the horses. Jakarta Fisheries, Agriculture and Food Security Agency head Darjamuni said on Monday that the administration had examined the health of 31 horses drawing buggies, locally known as delman, at the complex. Of those, 28 tested positive for skin disease. 'Following the finding, Jakarta Governor Basuki 'Ahok' Tjahaja Purnama has called for the relocation of the horses and the delman, to Pasar Minggu and Ragunan under our supervision,' Darjamuni said, adding that the agency had provided the horses with medicine. Some of the horses, he added, were being taken care of in the veterinary hospital at Ragunan. He further said that relocating delman from Monas to Pasar Minggu and Ragunan would prevent the disease infecting people. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta Tue, March 22, 2016 The Gerindra Party has revealed several names, which they are considering supporting in next year's gubernatorial elections. After Bandung Mayor Ridwan Kamil dropped out of the possible candidacy, Gerindra has been searching for other options. Several names currently being considered by the party include former trade minister Gita Wirjawan, outspoken National Narcotics Agency (BNN) chief Budi Waseso, Jakarta's Military Command chief Maj. Gen. Teddy Lhaksmana, Paramadina University Rector Firmansyah, Crescent Star Party (PBB) chairman Yusril Ihza Mahendra, and Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P) Jakarta chairman Boy Sadikin, who is also son of the late former Jakarta governor Ali Sadikin. Gerindra deputy chairman Sufmi Dasco Ahmad explained that the names were chosen as they were popular but had a positive reputation. For example, he said, Budi was 'assertive, not arrogant, unbiased and clean'. Sufmi said the party had yet to make a final decision, and said that all names were still being considered. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Safrin La Batu, Stefany Ribka and Agnes Anya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, March 22, 2016 Newly appointed Jakarta Police chief Insp. Gen. Moechgiyarto said during his inauguration on Monday that he would not distance himself from the programs already made by his predecessor Insp. Gen. Tito Karnavian, adding that the latter had performed well during his tenure. Moechgiyarto replaced Tito, who has been appointed by President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo to lead the National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT). 'The programs have been created by Pak Tito. I will just continue what he has created and I will simply optimize the programs that are less efficient,' Moechgiyarto told reporters after the inauguration at the National Police headquarters. He did not elaborate further. Moechgiyarto is a former chief of the West Java Police, who, when inaugurated as the chief of that force in 2014, promised to protect minority groups in the province where communities such as Ahmadiyah and Shia followers have often suffered from intimidation when exercising their beliefs. The two-star general fulfilled his promise by, for example, providing security measures for Shiites during the celebration of Asyura Day in West Java's capital Bandung in October last year. The celebration was initially opposed by hundreds of people from an intolerant group, but it ran as planned thanks to the police's protection. Human rights organization Setara Institute expressed optimism that Moechgiyarto would be able to defend minority groups in the capital given his track record in West Java. 'He has a pretty good record in defending minority groups. Out of 10, I will score him 7,' Setara vice chairman Bonar Tigor Naipospos told The Jakarta Post. Bonar said his optimism with Moechgiyarto's leadership came from two facts: the latter's consistency in defending the rights of minority groups during his tenure in West Java and the fact that the capital is pretty cosmopolitan. 'Jakarta is a pretty diverse province, which makes intolerance occur less frequently than in other provinces like West Java,' he said. 'With that condition, he will surely not face many problems [with defending the rights of minority groups] in the capital.' Bonar, however, said that the capital did have some intolerant groups that continuously campaigned using hate speech in public, which may pose a direct challenge for the new chief's idealism. 'The new chief should not give any room to such a group,' he said. The capital has often seen discrimination toward minority groups during which the police have not taken action or, worse, appeared to help the intolerant groups. Last Month, for example, an event called the Belok Kiri (Turn Left) Festival conducted by a leftist group was dispersed by the police after some organizations opposed it. Since November last year, Jakarta has seen a total of six events being canceled or moved after the police refused to protect the organizers. Other individuals have also expressed optimism with the new Jakarta Police chief. Jakarta Governor Basuki 'Ahok' Tjahaja Purnama said Moechgiyarto, having a educational background in the law, was suited to the position in the city, which has complicated legal issues. 'I think he will suit the city as he has a long experience in the field of law. I hope we can work well with him, particularly in eradicating land mafias,' Ahok said Monday, adding that Jakarta had lost lots of assets in court because of shady speculators who have monopolized land, controlling the buying and selling of it. Police observer Erlangga Masdiana is optimistic about the appointment of Moechgiyarto as the head of the Jakarta Police. He said that Jakarta needed a strict police chief because of the metropolis' complex problems 'ranging from land disputes to the arrests of minorities ' in addition to having a knowledgeable leader such as Moechgiyarto, who was the best graduate of the Police Academy's class of 1986. 'Moechgiyarto suits the position in the metropolis as he is known for his clean record and takes side with minorities. During his tenure, he banned his personnel from closing down churches and helped locals in land disputes,' Erlangga told the Post. Moechgiyarto's good reputation has, however, been marred by his previous support of the idea of conducting virginity tests on female cadets of the National Police. He declared his support in 2014 when he led the law division of the National Police. The idea has been criticized by various organizations. __________________________________ Profile of new Jakarta Police chief Insp. Gen. Moechgiyarto Place/Date of birth: Padang, West Sumatra / May 25, 1962 Education: 1986: Police Academy Career: 2010: Sespuspamintel Div Propam Polri 2010: Kasespimma Sespim Lemdikpol 2012: East Java Police deputy chief 2013: West Nusa Tenggara Police chief 2014: National Police law division head 2015: West Java Police chief 2016: Chief of the Jakarta Police Sources: Various Source Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Nurul Fitri Ramadhani (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, March 22, 2016 Factions at the House of Representatives rejected on Monday a proposed sanction for political parties that fail to endorse candidates in local elections. In the draft revision of the 2015 Law on regional elections, the government has proposed article 40 paragraph 5 that stipulates a political party or a group of political parties that have gathered 20 to 25 percent of seats in a region's legislative council, but fail to nominate any pair of candidates, should be barred from the next election. Deputy chairman of the Indonesian Democratic Party of Struggle (PDI-P)'s faction in the House, Arief Wibowo, said that the article could reduce the opportunity for single tickets, but at the cost of political parties. 'The sanction is unacceptable. What's the point of forcing political parties to nominate candidates when it will be only wasting money?', said the member of House Commission II overseeing home affairs, which handles the deliberation of the amendment. Senior PDI-P politician and member of House Commission XI overseeing banking and finance Hendrawan Supratikno said that the government had, in good will, proposed the article that assures there would be more than one pair of candidates in a local election, but the sanction should be reconsidered. Deputy chairman of the NasDem Party's faction, Johnny G. Platte, said this sanction isn't needed because all political parties have their own consideration to seek and nominate capable candidates. 'The revision, in fact, should stipulate regulations that can reinforce political parties to create competent nominators,' Johnny said. Hanura Party politician Dadang Rusdiana argued that the implementation of the sanction did not make sense. 'It will harm the public because political parties may arbitrarily propose candidates without considering their competence,' Dadang said. The revision has yet to be deliberated as the House is currently having a two-week recess period and has not yet received presidential instruction to commence. Beside emphasizing the sanction system, the House has also decided to tighten the screening of the candidates' health record related to drug use, where the details of the mechanism will be stipulated in the General Election Commission's (KPU) regulations. Therefore, the KPU is set to cooperate with the Indonesian Doctors Association (IDI) and the National Narcotics Agency (BNN) in conducting medical test for candidates. Speaking after a meeting with the IDI and BNN, KPU chairman Husni Kamil Manik said that the decision to overhaul the medical test scheme would be added to the election law or stipulated in the KPU's regulations. 'All the concepts we have put together about the medical test mechanism cannot be implemented if they are not regulated by specific legal products. Hence, a new regulation is urgently needed,' Husni said, adding that the KPU could not allocate a budget for the new test scheme if it is not legally set in stone. IDI chairman Daeng Muhammad Faqih said that the current medical test mechanism was not enough to screen every candidates' health record because it does not include hair tests. 'The current mechanism only comprises a urine test and a blood test. These two tests can't comprehensively detect one's narcotics-use record. One could easily outsmart the screening by ceasing consumption five days prior to the test,' Daeng said. (mos) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Ruslan Sangadji, Haeril Halim and Stefani Ribka (The Jakarta Post) Palu/Jakarta Tue, March 22, 2016 Indonesian Military (TNI) commander Gen. Gatot Nurmantyo on Monday pledged to continue the hunt for the country's most-wanted suspected terrorist, Santoso, despite the deaths of 13 soldiers in a helicopter crash in Poso regency, Central Sulawesi. 'Operation Tinombala will go on. There are victims in every battle,' Gatot said in Palu, referring to the joint military and police operation set up to hunt Santoso alias Abu Wardah, the leader of the East Indonesia Mujahidin (MIT) terror group, and his followers. Among the victims of Sunday's crash was Palu Taduloko military commander and Operation Tinombala deputy chief Col. Saiful Anwar. Gatot denied that the TNI helicopter had been shot down by its quarry, instead blaming bad weather for the crash. 'If that's what people are saying, let them. Everyone has the right to speculate. But one thing is for sure, the helicopter crashed because of the weather,' he told journalists in Palu, adding that the TNI would wait for the investigation results before reaching a conclusion. All victims of the crash were taken to Jakarta on Monday to be buried at the Kalibata Heroes Cemetery in South Jakarta. In the wake of the crash, Gatot flew immediately to Palu to monitor the situation and, as a representative of President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo, offer condolences. In Jakarta, presidential spokesman Johan Budi said that Jokowi had received the results of a preliminary investigation carried out by the Office of the Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister, confirming that bad weather was behind the crash. 'The initial report found that the incident was caused by natural factors such as lightning,' Johan told reporters at the State Palace, adding that the investigation into the accident was still ongoing. Separately, Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu similarly dismissed allegations that the helicopter had been shot down by Santoso's men, insisting that the militant group did not have such capability. The minister said that the helicopter was relatively new, having been produced in 2012, adding that his ministry was looking into a serious of crashes of new aircraft, including this latest incident. Last month, a Brazilian-made Super Tucano used by the Air Force as a training aircraft crashed in a densely populated area of Malang, East Java, injuring three people. 'I am surprised that crashes keep happening. We will see whether the Poso crash had anything to do with engine problems or bad weather. It needs a thorough investigation,' Ryamizard said. National Police chief Comr. Gen. Badrodin Haiti said that the cause of the crash was still being investigated, but assured the public that there was no suspicion of foul play. 'The causes are still being investigated by the military. It may have been a result of bad weather or something similar,' Badrodin told reporters in Jakarta on Monday. At least 2,500 TNI and National Police officers have been on deployment since January, hunting for Santoso and around 34 of his followers, who are suspected of plotting guerrilla attacks against security officers while hiding in the forests of Poso. Newly installed National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT) chief Insp. Gen Tito Karnavian said Poso's mountainous and forested terrain complicated the hunt for Santoso, leading to Operation Tinombala being extended. He expressed confidence that the joint operation would succeed in bringing Santoso and the MIT to justice. 'I believe [the personnel] are capable. They have mapped the area, and now know it well,' Tito said, adding that Santoso's group had shrunk to around 30 people. ______________________________________ 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 Jakarta Tue, March 22, 2016 The International Labor Organization (ILO) has called on the business sector to offer employment opportunities and equal treatment to people with disabilities following the passing of a law that guarantees the rights of people with disabilities. Employing people with disabilities should not be merely lip service, ILO country director for Indonesia Francesco d'Ovidio said in a discussion on Tuesday. "It's not a matter of charity. It's a matter of choice, because employing people with disabilities makes good sense from the business point of view,' he said. Of Indonesia's 250 million population, 11 to 13 percent have disabilities, according to Central Statistics Agency data. The ILO said the disabled faced a social stigma, which hampered them in acquiring access to information and equal employment opportunities. The House of Representatives passed the Disabled People's Law on March 17, which was a revision of the 1997 law on the disabled. Golkar Party lawmaker Hetifah Sjaifudian said she was optimistic about the law, which would come into effect 30 days after it was endorsed. The law protects people with disabilities and enables them to play a bigger role in society. "We must protect and fulfill the rights of people with disabilities, especially their right to education and work," she said as quoted by tribunnews.com. The law also stipulates the establishment of the National Disabilities Commission, which will monitor the implementation of the law. Manpower Ministry official Sapto Purnomo said the ministry would facilitate companies in the recruitment of people with disabilities in accordance with the law. Social Affairs Minister Khofifah Indar Parawansa praised the law, saying it better protected disabled people. There are several important points in the law, Khofifah said, including the establishment of the commission, tax incentives for companies hiring disabled people and the obligation for regional administrations and provincial-owned companies (BUMD) to reserve 2 percent of their vacancies for the disabled and for private companies to reserve 1 percent of their vacancies. Under the law, those found to hamper the rights of disabled people could be subject to two to five years in prison and a fine of Rp 200 million ($15,163) to Rp 500 million, Khofifah said as reported by Antara news agency. (vps/rin)(+) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Arnaldo Purba (The Jakarta Post) Canberra Tue, March 22, 2016 This article's title may be shocking and antagonize Indonesia's staunch position of opposing tax evasion by way of tax havens. But, let's look deeper. While there is no standard definition of a tax haven, it is generally defined as a state, country or territory where tax rates are very low or even zero. Tax havens are usually associated with the tax-evading activities of corporations. However, tax expert Dhammika Dharmapala emphasizes the important role of tax havens in facilitating tax evasion by individuals, in line with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development's (OECD) initiative that focuses on the use of tax havens by individuals seeking to evade taxes. Indonesia's corporate income tax rate has changed a couple times in the last decade from 30 percent in 2007, to 28 percent in 2009 and where in 2010 it was 25 percent. Whereas the highest personal income tax rate lowered from 35 percent to 30 percent in 2009. The decreasing tax rate has followed global trends of a downward income tax rate, also known as the 'race to the bottom' phenomenon. With the existing income tax rates, Indonesia does not appear on the standard list of tax havens because its rates are not considered particularly low. The 25 percent corporate income tax rate and the 30 percent personal income tax rate are the tax rates set by the government, known as the statutory tax rates (STRs). But, are STRs or the actual tax rates burdened by taxpayers? They are not. The actual tax rates burdened by taxpayers are the effective tax rates (ETRs). For a corporation, ETRs are the ratio of total tax expenses to the firm's profits before taxes. For an individual taxpayer, it is the ratio of total tax expenses to their taxable income. The nonconformity of STRs-ETRs is not uncommon. In academic literature, the deviation is referred to as a 'book-tax income gap'. Economist Alfred Tran explains that the gap is mainly caused by deliberate government policies and different objectives of tax and financial reporting systems. Therefore, as economist Sinclair Davidson argues, the mere existence of a book-tax income gap does not necessarily mean widespread tax avoidance. However, he also emphasizes that just because we can explain the gap does not mean that some taxpayers are not avoiding tax either. In Indonesia, it is inevitable that a significant number of taxpayers do not pay the amount of tax they ought to pay. Recently, in its special report, the Economist quoted Finance Minister Bambang Brodjonegoro's estimation that only 27 million of Indonesia's 255 million people are registered taxpayers and in 2014 just 900,000 of them paid what they owed. Bambang also claims there are thousands of companies that have never paid income tax, since commencing their businesses in the country. This suggests that those burdened tax payers pay an actual tax rate that is much lower than the rates set by the government. Some may not even bear income tax altogether. This leads to a massive gap between the STRs and ETRs, and Bambang's claim above illustrates that the gap is likely caused by tax avoidance rather than by a book-tax income gap. Accordingly, Indonesia might not be included in the list of tax havens by STRs but the country would certainly appear on the top of the list if it were determined by ETRs. And, it's worth noting that despite that ETRs are often difficult to determine, according to tax experts Brian J. Arnold and Michael McIntyre, average ETRs of a country is a somewhat better indicator of its status as a tax haven. The fundamental question is: why are the taxpayers so bold to avoid or even evade income tax in Indonesia? The answer is likely because the taxpayers understand that the Directorate General of Taxes (DGT) is not a powerful nor efficient tax authority. Avoiding taxes is a human nature that occurs even in developed countries with the most efficient tax administration. But in Indonesia, tax avoidance/evasion seems to be legitimated by its weak tax administration. A shortage of employees, (currently around 36,000 tax officials compared to the population of 255 million) exacerbated by difficulties in executing its powers, granted by the tax law, contributes to the weakening of the DGT. Let's compare Indonesia to a strong and efficient tax authority. The Australian Tax Office (ATO), for example, possesses around 23,000 tax officers to monitor the tax-related activities of its approximate 23 million population. In addition, the ATO is granted executable wide-ranging powers, including the power to restrict taxpayers from leaving the country and to enter tax payers' premises even without a warrant. The government's plan to establish a new Indonesian tax authority that directly is responsible to the President is an imperative necessity for the country to having a strong and efficient tax authority. The new institution is expected to have broader powers and administrative flexibility to support its aim of achieving the government's targeted level of tax revenue. President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo's administration currently struggles to collect more tax revenue. At the same time, Indonesia has become a tax haven by inadvertently facilitating tax evasion for millions of individuals and companies for many years now. The Economist writes that Jokowi has much to do, and little time to get it done. I agree, and revamping the DGT to becoming a strong and efficient tax authority should be one of his top priorities. ______________________________________ The writer works for the Directorate General of Taxes of Indonesia. He is studying for his PhD at the College of Business and Economics at The Australian National University, Canberra, Australia. The views expressed are his own. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Liza Yosephine (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, March 22, 2016 Indonesia and Australia have taken steps to enhance their relationship ahead of the Bali Process meeting. Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop met on Monday with her Indonesian counterpart, Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi, in preparation for the meeting scheduled to be held in Bali on Tuesday and Wednesday. The meeting was considered evidence of a step forward in mending ties ahead of the countries' cochairmanship at the two-day event in Bali. "[Our bilateral discussions] took a very positive turn, very progressive compared with the three months when we met in Sydney. And we have a very strong commitment," Retno said during a press conference following her bilateral meeting with Bishop at the Foreign Ministry in Jakarta on Monday. The Bali Process is an international forum established in 2002 to facilitate the handling of issues related to people smuggling, human trafficking and related transnational crime. Retno said the two nations were set to begin final negotiations of the Indonesia Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (IA-CEPA), which they are currently forging, by May. Apart from trade and investment, she said, both ministers also took the opportunity to discuss ways to strengthen cooperation in the fields of education, counterterrorism and cybersecurity. "At government-to-government, business-to-business and people-to-people levels, this relationship will endure," Bishop said. Both foreign ministers are cochairing the sixth Bali Regional Ministerial Conference on People Smuggling, Trafficking in Persons, and Related Transnational Crime (BRMC), known as the Bali Process. Apart from the usual ministerial statement produced at the end of a Bali Process, this years meeting will see a new document released in the form of a declaration detailing an emergency response mechanism for people smuggling and human trafficking in the region. The move is deemed necessary due to the humanitarian crisis experienced in the region last year caused by the sudden influx of irregular migration from Myanmar and Bangladesh. The anticipated Bali Process conference failed to materialize in 2015, due to tensions between the two countries related to Indonesia's move to execute drug convicts, including two Australians, Myuran Sukumaran and Andrew Chan. In her visit to Indonesia, Bishop is scheduled to not only attend the Bali Process conference but also the inauguration of the new Australian Embassy in Jakarta and a newly opened Australian Consulate in Makassar. (ebf) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Ayomi Amindoni (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, March 22, 2016 Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi has said Indonesia wants to maintain good relations with China despite a recent fishing dispute. 'We have a good relationship with China. [Despite the fishing dispute] we will strive to maintain our good relations along with international laws," Retno said at the State Palace on Monday. Earlier, the Foreign Minister submitted a diplomatic note of protest to Chinese authorities in Jakarta in response to territorial violations allegedly committed by a China-flagged fishing vessel and a Chinese coast guard vessel. The fishing vessel MV Kwang Fey 10078 was reported to have been fishing illegally in Indonesian waters off Natuna, Riau Islands. The Chinese coast guard vessel forcibly rescued the trawler by pushing it back into Chinese waters when a sea patrol from the Indonesian Maritime and Fisheries Monitoring Task Force was escorting the boat after apprehending it. Retno said Indonesia conveyed three main concerns in the protest note. First, violations of Indonesia's sovereignty and jurisdiction on the Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) and the continental shelf; second, Chinese authorities' move to contravene law enforcement measures conducted by Indonesian authorities in the EEZ and continental shelf; and third, violations of Indonesia's sovereignty over its sea territory. 'We have submitted our protests to the temporary charge d'affaires [at the Chinese Embassy in Jakarta]. We said our relationship with China is very good and to maintain it, we should also respect existing international laws, including the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea [UNCLOS],' the minister said. Separately, an international law expert from the University of Indonesia, Hikmahanto Juwana, said the Indonesian government must take firm action against moves by the Chinese coast guard vessel to forcibly rescue the fishing boat. Hikmahanto said an excuse conveyed by the Chinese government, which reportedly claimed that the China-flagged vessel was operating in a 'traditional fishing ground', could not be justified. "This is because the UNCLOS, in which Indonesia and China are both participants, does not recognize the concept of traditional fishing ground," Hikmahanto said on Monday. He explained that the only related concept he knew about was the so-called 'traditional fishing right', which could take effect in a particular maritime area based on an agreement between two countries. Indonesia has such an agreement with Malaysia, but not with China, he went on. "Hence, the excuse given by the Chinese government is not reasonable," Hikmahanto said. He criticized the move by the Chinese government, which he said was a close friend of the Indonesian government, to protect the Chinese fishing vessel. The international law expert said the incident would certainly affect the good relations between the two countries. "It's not impossible that the Indonesian government will step back from its position as a mediator on territorial disputes in the South China Sea," he said. Furthermore, Hikmahanto said, it was possible that the Indonesian government would review economic partnerships between the two countries, including in the issues of infrastructure development and loans for infrastructure projects. The incident began on Saturday at 2 p.m. when an Indonesian sea patrol spotted the Kwang Fey 10078 weighing 200 gross tonnage (GT) in a position within Indonesia's EEZ in the South China Sea. At 3 p.m., the Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Ministry patrol vessel KP HIU 011 detained the vessel along with eight crew members for allegedly fishing illegally using trawl nets. It later escorted the vessel to Natuna waters for further investigation. At 2 a.m. on Sunday, on the way to Natuna, an armed Chinese coast guard ship collided with the towed ship in an apparent attempt to shut down its engine to prevent it being taken to Indonesian territorial waters. Soon after, another better-equipped Chinese coast guard ship arrived on the scene and ordered the Indonesian patrol vessel to release the ship within 30 minutes so it could be taken back to Chinese waters. (ebf) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin The Jakarta Post Medan Tue, March 22, 2016 The National Narcotics Agency (BNN) has arrested six people suspected of being members of a drug smuggling network operating in North Sumatra and Aceh and confiscated 11 kilograms of crystal methamphetamine and 4,000 ecstasy pills. BNN deputy eradication division chairman Insp. Gen. Arman said on Monday that the crystal meth was seized from suspects, identified as AD and AG, who were arrested on Saturday at a supermarket on Jl. Sisingamangaraja, Medan. Arman said that based on the testimonies of the suspects, the police then nabbed another suspect, IM, who allegedly ordered the drugs. After arresting the three suspects, he said police then developed the case and nabbed the other three suspects, DI, RA and AB, at a hotel the following day and confiscated the pills. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Safrin La Batu (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, March 22, 2016 The Australian Federal Police (AFP) have revealed the criminal record of Jessica Kumala Wongso, 27, the lone suspect in the murder of her friend of the same age, Wayan Mirna Salihin, to the Jakarta Police. An Australian newspaper, The Sydney Morning Herald, said Jessica had permanent resident status in Australia and lived there from 2007 to 2015. It reported she was believed to have committed the acts that were included on the criminal record during that period. Former Jakarta Police chief Insp. Gen. Tito Karnavian, who has just become the head of the National Counterterrorism Agency (BNPT), said Monday that there were around 14 items in total on her Australian criminal record, but he refused to go into details because he said that would violate a legal agreement between the two parties. 'The Jakarta Police team receive the [official] documents about the records on March 26,' he said at the National Police headquarters. Tito said the information from the AFP included Jessica's attempt to commit suicide and her medical records from a psychologist. The information will help police investigators finalize Jessica's dossier, which has not been completed even though she was named a suspect and subsequently arrested on Jan. 29. The time investigators are taking to assemble the dossier has led many to believe that the police are painstakingly building a case against Jessica, who has been charged with premeditated murder. Although the police have always denied that they lack evidence in the case, they have not released any information about a motive for the murder. The police submitted Jessica's dossier again on Monday after the Jakarta Prosecutor's office returned it to investigators to have them add more information. 'We have received tip-offs from the Australian Federal Police and they surely strengthen our existing evidence,' Jakarta Police spokesman Sr. Comr. Mohammad Iqbal said. Jessica's lawyer Yudi Wibowo Sukinto doubted the validity of the information from the AFP, saying that his client would have been prevented from leaving Australia if the criminal record did in fact exist. 'They [the items on the record] are not true. If the record is true there should be verdicts from courts,' Yudi said. Mirna died in early January after sipping a Vietnamese iced coffee ' which was allegedly ordered and paid for by Jessica ' at an upscale cafA in the Grand Indonesia Mall in Central Jakarta. The police autopsy found a high dose of highly poisonous cyanide in the liquid in Mirna's stomach as well as in the coffee residue. Jessica, who has been charged with violating article 340 of the Criminal Code, may face the death penalty. The police, however, have reportedly assured Australia that they would not seek the death penalty for Jessica after the AFP promised to help the Jakarta Police by digging up information about the girl from the time she studied in Australia. 'The Indonesian government has given an assurance to the Australian government that the death penalty will not be sought nor carried out in relation to the alleged offending,' a spokeswoman for Australian Justice Minister Michael Keenan was quoted by The Sydney Morning Herald as saying. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Ayomi Amindoni (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, March 22, 2016 President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo has called for order following a chaotic rally held by thousands of taxi drivers in the capital on Tuesday in protest of ride-hailing applications. Conventional taxi drivers are striking, aiming to push the government to shut down apps such as Uber and Grab. This is their second rally for the month, after two years of competition with popular app-based transportation has severely reduced their incomes. "Protesting through a rally is a right, but it must be conducted in an orderly manner. The technical solution to these matters will be delivered by the transportation minister," Jokowi said on Tuesday in Jakarta. Transportation Minister Ignasius Jonan called on law enforcers to take firm action against vandal protesters. "It's a crime to carry out anarchistic and vandalistic actions. I demand they prosecute those who take anarchic action," he said. He also urged the Jakarta Organization of Land Transportation Owners (Organda) to mediate the tension between conventional taxis and app-based taxis by summoning Grab and Uber for a discussion to find a consensus-based agreement. Previously, the Land Transportation Drivers Association (PPAD) announced that it would launch a huge rally on Tuesday, promising thousands of participants would converge at the House of Representatives, the Communication and Information Ministry, the Transportation Ministry and the State Palace. During the protest, long lines of taxis blocked main roads while men set tires alight and targeted other taxi drivers who had refused to take part in the protest. The US-based Uber and Malaysian-based GrabTaxi have been at the center of protests since last year. Drivers of traditional ojek (motorcycle taxis) have also protested the presence of ride-hailing apps introduced by homegrown company Go-Jek and Malaysia's GrabBike. (ags)(+) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Erika Anindita Dewi (The Jakarta Post) Tue, March 22, 2016 House of Representatives deputy speaker Fahri Hamzah has called on President Joko "Jokowi" Widodo to show firm leadership amid the fishing dispute between Indonesia and China. 'President Jokowi should not underestimate the complexity of the dispute and just leave the problem to Ibu Susi [Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti] because she is responsible only in the handling of technical matters related to maritime affairs,' he said at the House complex in Senayan, Central Jakarta, on Monday. The Indonesia-China fishing dispute might carry other troubles related to military and regional politics, the Prosperous Justice Party lawmaker further said. Fahri's remarks followed the issuance of a formal letter of protest by the Indonesian government against measures taken by a Chinese coast guard vessel when it forcibly reclaimed a Chinese fishing boat that had been apprehended while fishing illegally near the Natuna Islands on Saturday. Indonesian authorities had seized a China-flagged fishing vessel, the MV Kwang Fey 10078, and arrested its crew members for fishing illegally in Indonesian sea territories around Natuna, Riau Islands. On their way to Natuna Island, Indonesian authorities had an encounter with a Chinese coast guard patrol, who demanded that the Maritime and Fisheries Monitoring Task Force surrender the Chinese trawler, which was being towed. Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi summoned the official managing the affairs of the Chinese Embassy in Jakarta, Sun Weide, to convey the Indonesian government's protest over the incident. The minister said that Indonesia rejected China's claim that the fishermen were operating within 'a traditional Chinese fishing ground'. She said the Chinese coast guard vessel had violated Indonesian sovereignty and jurisdiction over its Exclusive Economic Zone and continental shelf areas. 'I underline that in good inter-State relations, international law principles, including the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea [UNCLOS] 1982, must be respected. Indonesia is not a claimant in the South China Sea,' she said on Monday Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti said the international community did not recognize the so-called 'traditional fishing ground' the Chinese government had referred to. 'It [the traditional fishing ground] is not recognized by the UNCLOS; the Chinese government statement is baseless,' Susi said, adding that the world only recognized so-called 'traditional fishing rights'. Malaysia was the only country Indonesia had signed a traditional fishing rights agreement with, she further emphasized. The incident occurred Saturday when Indonesian authorities found Kwang Fey 10078 engaged in illegal fishing on Natuna waters, firing a warning shot after the vessel attempted to flee to the South China Sea. The Indonesian sea patrol managed to catch the boat and detain its eight crew members. The poachers were also found to have used trawls, which are considered illegal in Indonesia. As the Chinese vessel was being towed to Natuna Island, an armed Chinese coast guard ship rammed the fishing boat, shut down its engine and pulled it into international waters. (sha/ebf) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta Tue, March 22, 2016 National Police chief Gen. Badrodin Haiti said on Monday that there were signs of ethical breaches conducted by his subordinates, which may have caused the recent death of terrorist suspect Siyono. He said police officials guarding Siyono had taken off his handcuffs, which triggered the suspect's attempt to escape. 'From early reports, [Siyono] was under the guards' watch but was not handcuffed. That breached standard procedure,' said Badrodin at the police headquarters. Siyono, an alleged leader of Neo Jamaah Islamiyah (Neo JI), was arrested in Yogyakarta, but died during the arrest. He was the group's information source and knew about weapons warehouses owned by Neo JI, including their location, which mainly contained weapons inherited from groups involved in the Bali bombing. A police autopsy on Siyono's body at Kramat Jati Hospital, Jakarta, showed that the suspect had not died from a gunshot, but from bleeding in the brain due to being hit by a blunt object, allegedly a metal object inside the car he was in with several police guards. The police are still investigating the affiliates of Neo JI. The most recent information suggests that the group is affiliated with global terrorist network al-Qaeda but has not yet revealed links with the Islamic State (IS) movement, the Santoso-led terrorist group East Indonesia Mujahidin (MIT) or the Jan. 14 attack in Jakarta. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Grace D. Amianti (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, March 22, 2016 The new chief of state-owned lender Bank Mandiri, the nation's largest bank by assets, expects that his leadership will lead the bank to intensify its presence in the regional market while providing a larger contribution to the domestic economy. Mandiri's annual general shareholders meeting on Monday appointed Kartika 'Tiko' Wirjoatmodjo as the bank's new president director, replacing Budi Gunadi Sadikin who had led the bank for the past three years. Prior to his appointment, Tiko was Mandiri's finance and strategy director. He used to lead the Deposit Insurance Corporation (LPS) and Indonesia Infrastructure Finance (IIF), a partly state-owned non-banking financial body, before joining Mandiri's board of directors in 2015. As the bank's new leader, Tiko said he was envisioning the mid-to-long term plan for making Mandiri the first Indonesian lender able to play a major role in the Southeast Asian region. 'The country's banking industry will continue to face a challenging situation for the next one to two years. However, if the situation improves and we have an adequate valuation in the next three to five years, perhaps it is time for us to be a major regional player,' he said at a press conference after the meeting. Tiko, who will lead Mandiri for the 2016-2021 period, said the bank was currently in discussions with the Financial Services Authority (OJK) regarding its efforts to open full-fledged branches in Malaysia and upgrade its office in Singapore ahead of the ASEAN Economic Community's (AEC) banking and financial services liberalization in 2020. He pointed out that future branches would represent Mandiri's 'substantial presence' in the region, while admitting that the bank and the OJK would still have to carry out long negotiations with the banking authorities of those two countries. Mandiri is currently the only Indonesian bank operating in Malaysia, however it has limited access and is still unable to operate as a full branch as it cannot meet the capital requirements of 300 million ringgit imposed by the Malaysian central bank, Bank Negara Malaysia (BNM), for a licensed bank ' including locally incorporated foreign banks. With the call for financial integration in ASEAN, the minimum capital requirement in Malaysia may be lower than 300 million ringgit if Bank Mandiri acquires the status of a Qualified ASEAN Bank (QAB), which will be applicable only to 'indigenous' ASEAN banks that are based in ASEAN countries under the ownership of ASEAN citizens. Tiko said the bank's target to become a major regional player was included in its long term corporate planning for the 2015-2020 period, while stressing that he would also continue the legacy left by Budi Gunadi Sadikin and stay with existing business plans. 'Over the past 17 years, we have become a universal bank and developed our core competency in various segments, from micro to corporate,' he said. Mandiri is targeting to increase its loan disbursement by between 12 and 14 percent this year, higher than the 12.4 percent year-on-year (yoy) increase to Rp 595.4 trillion (US$45.1 billion) booked last year. State-Owned Enterprise Ministry deputy for business services Gatot Trihargo Tiko's appointment was confirmed after the ministry conducted a thorough selection process to asses potential candidates from the bank's internal management. Monday's meeting also saw the bank approve the allocation of 30 percent of its net profit last year, which stood at Rp 20.3 trillion, to pay dividends, while the remaining Rp 11.9 trillion would be used as retained profits to increase its capital and Rp 2.25 trillion would be kept as special reserve. Mandiri's new board of directors President director : Kartika Wirjoatmodjo Vice president director : Sulaiman A. Arianto Directors : Ogi Prastomiyono, Pahala N. Mansury, Royke Tumilaar, Hery Gunardi, Tardi, Ahmad Siddik Badruddin, Kartini Sally, Rico Usthavia Frans Kartika Wirjoatmodjo (42 years old) Educational background 1996 Bachelor's degree in economics and accounting, University of Indonesia 2001 Master's degree in business administration, Erasmus University (Rotterdam) Professional experience 1995 RSM AAJ ' tax and accounting consultant 1996 Industrial Bank of Japan ' credit analyst 1998 PricewaterhouseCoopers ' senior consultant at PwC Financial Advisory Services 2000 Boston Consulting Group 2003 Bank Mandiri ' department head of strategy and financial analysis for Strategy and Performance Group and later group head 2008 Mandiri Sekuritas ' managing director 2011 Indonesia Infrastructure Finance ' CEO 2014 Deposit Insurance Corporation (LPS) ' executive director 2015 Bank Mandiri ' chief financial officer Source: Bank Mandiri ------------------ 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 Tama Salim (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, March 22, 2016 Australian Foreign Minister Julie Bishop inaugurated the nation's new embassy in Jakarta on Monday, now Australia's largest embassy worldwide, symbolizing 'the breadth and the depth' of the relationship between the two countries. Marking the start of her three-day visit to the archipelago, Bishop spent her first day in Jakarta at the opening ceremony of the embassy, a massive complex in Patra Kuningan area, not far from the embassy's previous location. The new state-of-the-art embassy has been 12 years in the making, with talks about the highly secure facility beginning after the terrorist bombing at the embassy in 2004. A traditional Aboriginal ceremony and a multi-faith prayer recital marked the launch of the massive new complex, which is set on a 50,000 square meter plot of land and cost US$315 million to build. 'This is our largest overseas diplomatic post and will be a symbol of the breadth and the depth and the importance of this relationship between Australia and Indonesia,' Bishop said on Monday. Australian media ABC wrote that the compound was able to withstand a one in 2,500-year earthquake and could move 600 millimeters in any direction. Beside the new embassy, Bishop is slated to open a new Australian Consulate General in Makassar, underscoring wider understanding of the need to develop economic ties in regions other than Jakarta. 'Makassar, the fifth-largest city in Indonesia, is a booming economic location and we want to ensure that Australia and Indonesia can partner in trade, investment and deepening the economic opportunities between our countries,' Bishop added. The new embassy underscored two countries commitment to reinvigorating multi-faceted bilateral cooperation. During bilateral talks between Bishop and Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi, the two ministers agreed that the Indonesia-Australia Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (CEPA) would recommence shortly. 'We warmly welcome and note the progress that we had in the past three months. First, is our commitment and our agreement to accept the negotiation in the context of Indonesia-Australia CEPA,' Retno said. The third round of negotiations will start in May, continuing the March 14'18 talks between ministers of the two countries. Australia is Indonesia's 12th largest trade partner and foreign investor in 2015. A two-way trade in 2015 reached US$8.49 billion. Bishop said CEPA would be yet another example of the strength and diversity of the relationship between the two countries. 'Our business links deepen to ' our trade [value] is somewhere around $15 billion but there is unlimited potential for us to increase that level of economic engagement for the benefit of both our economies and of course promotion of jobs,' Bishop added. The two also talked about enhancing education cooperation with the implementation of the New Colombo Plan, under which Indonesia is the most popular destination of 37 countries for Australian students. By the end of 2016, the program's third year, 2,000 Australian students would be studying in Indonesia as part of the New Colombo Plan, Bishop said. Retno added that Indonesia had 17,000 students studying in Australia, and that Indonesia offered some scholarships for Australian students. 'Those are the bilateral issues we discussed; a very positive tone and very progressive compared to three months [ago when] we met in Sydney, and we have a very strong commitment to move forward in an even better and stronger way,' Retno added. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta Tue, March 22, 2016 The Foreign Ministry says no Indonesian citizens have been reported killed in explosions at the Brussels airport and subway system that claimed 31 lives on Tuesday morning. Foreign Ministry director for Indonesian national protection and legal aid Lalu Muhammad Iqbal said the Indonesian Embassy in Brussels would give updates on the incidents. 'No Indonesian victims have been reported so far,' he said. At least 31 people were reported dead after the explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe. Flights to Zaventem Airport have been diverted to Antwerp. Based on Foreign Ministry data, 1,630 Indonesians live in Brussels and Luxemburg. (sha) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Khristian Ibarrola (The Jakarta Post) Tue, March 22, 2016 Pope Francis has further strengthened his bid to reach out to younger audiences through Instagram. The beloved pontiff, who joined the globally-renowned photo sharing website on Saturday, March 19, already has 1.6 million followers under the handle, @franciscus. According to reports from TIME.com, the Pope even met Instagram CEO Kevin Strysom at the Vatican to discuss the power of images. The head of the Catholic Church has been dubbed by TIME magazine as 'The Pope Millennials can love' for his willingness to embrace technology during his papacy. He earlier described social media platforms as a 'gift for God', while lauding its abilities to 'form communities'. The pope's popularity among digital users is also evident through his Twitter page @pontifex, which has over 30 million followers in different languages. His efforts to connect with global audiences has even been documented for the book, 'The Tweetable Pope' by American author Michael J. O'Loughlin. As of Tuesday morning, @franciscus posted a total of five photos and one video. His first Instagram photo, which showed him kneeling and praying, already garnered 282,000 likes and counting. (kes)(+) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Farida Susanty (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, March 22, 2016 Tanjung Priok Port Authority is to again revise a fee scheme for container stacking at the country's busiest port after criticism from business players over a new regulation that is aimed at streamlining flow of goods and reduce dwelling time. Under the new regulation, effective March 1, owners must clear their containers from Tanjung Priok on the day of arrival. Failure to do so will result in a 900 percent penalty of the Rp 27,200 (US$2.07) base tariff for stacking service for 20 feet container per day. But the new rule is being opposed by the Indonesian Chamber of Commerce (Kadin), as it may result in higher costs for businesses. Previously, container stacking for the first three days of arrival was free, with a progressive rate afterwards. Tanjung Priok Port Authority will consider Kadin's aspirations and will revise the new regulation within this month. 'We see that there have been protests from Kadin. We have had a meeting at the Office of the Coordinating Economic Minister. We will fix the scheme,' Tanjung Priok Port Authority head Bay M. Hasani said last weekend. The revision of the new container stacking regulation is still expected to streamline the flow of goods and reduce dwell time at Tanjung Priok, a hub for more than 50 percent of the goods shipped in and out of Indonesia, which currently stood at between 3.6 days to 4.5 days. This week, a new scheme will be discussed with state port operator PT Pelabuhan Indonesia II (Pelindo II), which will impose any charges in port, which had committed to comply with the plan. The new scheme then could start taking effect in the next two weeks. The scheme may charge container owners the Rp 27,200 base tariff on the day of arrival, with a progressive rate on the following days, for example 500 percent of base tariff on the second day and 750 percent on the third day, and so on. 'So this doesn't mean the progressive tariff is eradicated. We don't want the current dwelling time, which had done pretty well, to get worse again,' he added. President Joko 'Jokowi' Widodo has put reducing dwelling time among his top priorities to lower logistics costs and raise the competitiveness of Southeast Asia's largest economy, having targeted two to three days waiting time at the port, from up to a week before his administration. The Office of the Coordinating Maritime Affairs Minister dwelling time task force head Agung Kuswandono reiterated that the port was not a place to stack the containers and that Pelindo II business had never relied on that. The move to apply 900 percent penalty levy has incited backlash from the businessplayers, as they were of the view that the imposition of higher fees had no immediate correlation to reducing dwelling times and ran counter to the government's efforts to reduce logistics costs. Bay admitted that the policy might have caused a 'shock among business players'. He said that Pelindo and the authority would also change the way they counted the start of the day, which would be based on hours, not calendar day, as some ships arrived really late at night. It would also start counting the duration by the time the containers had been lifted from the ships. Pelindo will likely not to charge the levy in Saturday and Sunday. Kadin deputy chairman for logistics and supply chain management Rico Rustombi said that he appreciated the government's move to respond to the protest. 'But the new progressive tariff scheme should not be more expensive than the last regulation. We even hope it can be cheaper,' he added. --------------------- 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 Syamsul Huda M. Suhari (The Jakarta Post) Gorontalo Tue, March 22, 2016 Besides deforestation, the decreasing number of maleo, an endemic bird of Sulawesi that lives in the Panua Nature Reserve in Pohuwato regency, Gorontalo, is also being blamed on the use of their eggs for traditional rituals. Panua Nature Reserve head Tatang Abdullah said he was often approached by residents asking for permission to take or, if necessary, buy the eggs of the maleo. He stated that the eggs were considered by some to be vital for a series of traditional rituals in celebrating weddings, while other residents said the eggs were being used for traditional medicine. In response to residents who ask for the eggs, Tatang cites a number of rules governing the ban on their use, including a government regulation on the preservation of flora and fauna and the law on the conservation of biological resources and their ecosystems. Under the law, he said the punishment for any person found deliberately poaching maleo eggs could face a maximum sentence of five years' imprisonment and a maximum fine of Rp 100 million (US$7,600). 'To date, some people still ask for the eggs as many of them are still unaware of the regulations,' Tatang told The Jakarta Post on Monday. Insecurity levels in the reserve, which covers an area of 36,575 hectares, are fairly high. Besides being intersected by the Trans-Sulawesi highway, the area consisting of forests and coastline is surrounded by residential areas covering a radius of up to 100 kilometers. The conservation area is often appropriated by residents who clear forested areas for farmland. Some of them even settle there. There are 400 ha of farmland recorded within the Panua reserve area. Such forest conversion involves cutting down trees. According to Tatang, land appropriation has affected maleo breeding, as the birds are known to be solitary, are very sensitive to the presence of humans and require land cover and shady trees. The Panua Nature Reserve has acknowledged it is overwhelmed by the task of protecting the vast area, given its limited number of four personnel. The nature reserve often works together with local residents to carry out supervision, but poaching continues. The current population of maleo birds in the area is estimated at between 550 and 600 individuals. The nature reserve recorded an increase in the number of maleo chicks hatched in a breeding program from 95 in 2014 to 120 chicks in 2015. Separately, Gorontalo Customary Council secretary-general Alim S. Niode said there were no customary rules requiring the use of maleo eggs in processions or rituals. According to him, Gorontalo tradition, known as Adati Limo Lo Pohala'a and Payu Lo Hulondhalo, is rich with the concept of natural harmony. Various important rituals and processions, such as births, weddings and deaths, said Alim, could not be separated from the concept of harmony with nature, which not only involved protecting the environment, but also the social systems within it. 'The use of maleo eggs for customary purposes is just an excuse,' he said. According to him, chicken eggs are usually required in Gorontalo's rituals and processions. However, he acknowledged that senior community members previously used maleo eggs for various purposes, such as making cookies for weddings and celebrations. He said that was for practical reasons, as maleo eggs are larger and are considered more efficient than chicken eggs. Furthermore, in the past, there were no government rules or bans on consuming the protected animal's eggs. 'All poachers must be dealt with sternly,' he said. Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Tama Salim (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, March 22, 2016 Following a maritime skirmish involving Chinese coast guard vessels and Indonesian patrol boats on Saturday, officials in Jakarta have stepped up their calls for China to refrain from any further confrontation. Maritime Affairs and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti said on Monday that Indonesia felt its efforts to maintain peace in the South China Sea were being undermined and that it may take the latest incident with China to an international court. 'We feel our efforts are being sabotaged [...] We may take it to the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea [ITLOS],' Susi told a press briefing on Monday. Susi also rejected China's demand to release eight members of a Chinese fishing vessel's crew detained during Saturday's incident, insisting that the eight would be prosecuted in line with Indonesian law. Susi accused China of obstructing law enforcement when large Chinese coast guard vessels intercepted Indonesian patrol boats towing the 2,000-gross-ton Kway Fey 10078, a Chinese fishing boat caught operating illegally near the Natuna Islands. The Kway Fey, which was being towed to the nearest naval base by patrol vessel KP Hiu 011, was rammed by an armed Chinese coast guard boat at the border of Indonesian waters, sustaining operational damage. Susi said the collision had prevented the Chinese fishing boat from being towed away by the much smaller Indonesian patrol boat, which was forced to leave the fishing boat to the Chinese authorities, settling with detaining the eight-strong crew. Beijing, through its Charge d'affaires Sun Weide in Jakarta, called on Indonesia to release the eight, arguing they had been operating in 'traditional Chinese fishing grounds' and that the Chinese coast guard vessel had not entered Indonesian waters. Susi rebuffed China's demands, calling them 'baseless' and demanding it surrender the Kway Fey to the Indonesian authorities or risk legal recourse through ITLOS. 'In a number of statements, China has emphasized that it doesn't contest Indonesia's claims over Natuna. As such, China can't lay historical claim to that very same area,' Susi said on Monday. Indonesia has actively pursued dialogue to ease tensions and prevent open conflict in the contentious region, but objects to the 'Nine-Dash-Line' that sets out China's claim most of the South China Sea. Although the Natuna Islands are outside of the Nine-Dash-Line, the line does overlap with Indonesia's 322-kilometer exclusive economic zone (EEZ) . From Beijing, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying reiterated the stance. 'The sovereignty of the Natunas belongs to Indonesia. China has no objections to this,' Hua told a press briefing. Any maritime disputes should be resolved by talks, and China also opposes illegal fishing, Hua was reported by Reuters as saying. Earlier on Monday, Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi summoned Chinese Embassy's Charge d'affaires Sun to lodge a strong protest against China, saying that the Chinese coast guard had entered Indonesian territory and violated Indonesia's sovereignty during the altercation. 'The Chinese coast guard violated Indonesia's sovereign rights and jurisdiction in the EEZ and continental shelf,' Retno told reporters after her meeting with Sun, representing ambassador Xie Feng, who is currently in Beijing. Retno said the government had asked for clarification from its Chinese counterparts about the incident and emphasized that Indonesia remained a non-claimant state in the South China Sea. Separately, Coordinating Political, Legal and Security Affairs Minister Luhut Pandjaitan said that Jakarta would bolster its presence in Natuna by deploying better-equipped patrol boats and other defense systems. 'We will certainly look to strengthen the naval base in Natuna,' Luhut said. _________________________________ 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, Tama Salim and Anggi M. Lubis (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, March 22, 2016 Indonesia and Australia have agreed to strengthen security cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region to stop infiltration by members of militant groups through the influx of migrants from the Middle East. Speaking after a '2+2' ministerial meeting with his counterpart Marise Payne, Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu said that the deal was secured after both countries learned that terrorist groups could use the migrant crisis, which often throws Indonesia and Australia into a verbal war because of the latter's turn-back policy on boat people, as a new tool to expand their influence in the region. 'This kind of fear is a concern for each of us,' Ryamizard said. In order to step up security cooperation in the region, both Indonesia and Australia will invite the origin countries of undocumented migrants to participate in handling the crisis so that both countries can conduct thorough background checks on migrants to ensure that they are not members of terrorist groups being smuggled into the Asia-Pacific region. Ryamizard emphasized that both countries would ensure that each undocumented migrant would receive humane treatment, such as being provided with food, clothing and medicine, at detention centers both in Indonesia and Australia. Hundreds of thousands of undocumented migrants have risked their lives by crossing from Indonesia to reach the Australian territory of Christmas Island, where they hope to apply for asylum. Many of the migrants die during the journey, but many also die after their boats are turned back by Australia when they are about to reach Australian waters. The policy, initiated by then prime minister Tony Abbott, infuriated Jakarta on many occasions. 'The basic measure and the most important aspect that we agreed on concerning the migrant issue is how to ensure their safety in the first place. After that we build communications with their countries of origin,' Ryamizard said. Payne said that she had submitted a copy of Australia's newly issued 2016 Defence White Paper to Ryamizard and expected that Indonesia would soon submit its own, which is still being finalized, to Australia. She further said that Indonesia and Australia would discuss details about the solutions to the migrant problem during the upcoming 2016 Bali Process on people smuggling, human trafficking and other transnational crimes to be held on March 22 and 23 in Bali, which will be cochaired by Indonesia and Australia. Monday's deal also includes agreements to step up future military training, but no details were provided by the two sides on the matter. In a separate meeting, Foreign Minister Retno LP Marsudi met her Australian counterpart Julie Bishop for talks to enhance cooperation. The two ministers will cochair the Bali Process meeting, which is expected to yield a new declaration to ease humanitarian crises following the influxes of refugees to the region. The ministerial declaration will include a mechanism for responding to the unexpected mass arrival of irregular migrants. Transnational crime related to people smuggling and trafficking will also receive greater attention at this year's meeting, following the Benjina slavery case. Representatives from 44 countries have confirmed attendance at the Bali Process, including 13 ministers, eight deputy ministers and senior officials. The forum will also involve a number of related international organizations, including the UN High Commissioner on Refugees (UNHCR) and the International Organization on Migration (IOM). Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin Marguerite Afra Sapiie (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, March 22, 2016 The South Tangerang administration has urged the central government to formulate a bill to protect pious people from the threat of radicalism. South Tangerang is, according to the home minister, categorized as a "red zone" or an area vulnerable to Islamic Sate (IS) infiltration. A law to protect pious people was vital to allow the local government to adopt firm measures to prevent and curb the emergence of radical groups, South Tangerang Mayor Airin Rachmi Diany says. "The city administration realizes that Tangerang is one of the locations where radical groups grow. We actively build strategies to anticipate radical group movements, but we need a law as a legal basis," she stated at a seminar on radicalism and terrorism at Darma Persada University on Tuesday. According to Airin, the local government has prepared several strategies to prevent radical groups from emerging, by empowering the Inter-Religious Harmony Forum (FKUB) and facilitating periodical inter-faith dialogue on development, social, political and religious issues. The local government set up the Integrated Team in Overcoming Terrorism and Radicalism as well as mapped the potential of radicalism in seven subdistricts and villages in South Tangerang, she said. It involved Muslim organizations Nahdlatul Ulama (NU), Muhammadiyah and the Indonesian Ulema Council (MUI) as well as the Indonesian Hindu Religious Council (PHDI), the Council of Buddhist Communities (Walubi), the Indonesian Bishops Conference (KWI), the Indonesian Communion of Churches (PGI) and the Council of Confucianism in Indonesia (Matakin). They will be involved in raising awareness on tolerant, moderate and inclusive religious practices, Airin added. Similarly, terrorism and intelligence expert Wawan H. Purwanto praised the South Tangerang administration's effort to actively involve the government structure in campaigning against the spread of radicalism. "Terrorism cannot be tackled only through prosecution. The local government should also take preventive measures. Of course, the central government should support the effort by creating a legal basis," he said. According to Wawan, the religious people protection bill, when enacted into law, could support the local government's programs to restrain the spread of radicalism within the community and schools. (ags) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta Tue, March 22, 2016 Four state-owned lenders and toll-road operator PT Jasa Marga on Monday launched an integrated electronic toll-road payment system, allowing toll-road users to pay via prepaid cards issued by the four banks. The payment system will be available for four toll-roads operated by Jasa Marga, including Kebon Jeruk-TMII-Cilincing, Pondok Aren-Bintaro-Ulujami, Jakarta-Tangerang and Bogor Outer Ring Road. The system will also enable motorists using those toll-roads to pay using prepaid cards: e-money (Bank Mandiri), Brizzi (Bank Rakyat Indonesia), TapCash (Bank Negara Indonesia) and Blink (Bank Tabungan Negara). Previously, motorists could only use e-toll cards issued by Bank Mandiri for electronic toll-road payments, known as gerbang tol otomatis (GTO). 'At the moment, the prepaid cards can be used only in four toll-roads in Greater Jakarta,' Bank Rakyat Indonesia (BRI) president director Asmawi Syam said at the launch. After the four toll roads in Greater Jakarta, the system will gradually be available for 14 toll-roads operated by Jasa Marga this year. They are, among others, Jakarta-Cikampek, Purwakarta-Bandung-Cileunyi (Purbaleunyi), Cinere-Jagorawi, Cawang-Cibubur and Palimanan-Kanci in Cirebon, West Java. Meanwhile, Jasa Marga's president director Adityawarman said that in the long term the system was expected to be available at every toll-road operated by Jasa Marga nationwide. He added that the prepaid cards ' available for purchase and top-ups at the respective banks and ATMs ' would hopefully increase Jasa Marga's cashless toll-road users to 60 percent nationwide. 'The current percentage stands at around 20 percent of the monthly 110 million transactions. This card is expected to increase transactions by 60 percent.' State-Owned Enterprises Minister (SOE) Rini Soemarno meanwhile said the electronic payment system would be effective in reducing long queues at toll-road gates. 'Particularly in Greater Jakarta, long queues at toll-road gates are often caused by lengthy cash payments, which take an average of eight seconds. Electronic payments have been proven to cut down the time to an average of three seconds,' Rini said, adding that the system would support the toll-road's primary purpose as a freeway. Raja Muhamad Irfan, an employee at a private company and a Mandiri e-money customer shared Rini's view. 'During rush hours, I often see cars in very long queues going into the toll-road. I hope the integration can reduce queues as several times I have been stuck in them,' said Irfan, who regularly takes the Pondok Indah-TMII toll-road. Aside from cutting down times, the system would also be effective in supporting the 'cashless society' idea. 'This system saves customer's cash at the bank. It strengthens banks' liquidity, allowing them to operate more effectively, such as giving larger loans to the public,' said Asmawi of BRI. Asmawi cited countries in European Union as an example. 'Our cashless ratio currently stands at 35 percent, while in some European countries it reaches 80-90 percent. This helps improve a nation's economy.' The card-payment system is the third cooperative agreement between the four state lenders and Jasa Marga. In June last year, the payment system was implemented for Bali Mandara toll-road in Bali, followed by Kapuk toll-road in Jakarta. Asmawi said that the implementation of the payment system on Monday showed that the integration was 'ready to be carried out nationwide'. As of 2015, Jasa Marga operated 399 electronic toll-road gates or 40 percent of all toll-road gates nationwide. This year, the company aims to increase the number to 507 or 50 percent of all toll gates, which is expected to increase the number of electronic payments. (adt) ------------------ 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 Anton Hermansyah & Callistasia Anggun Wijaya (The Jakarta Post) Jakarta Tue, March 22, 2016 Thousands of drivers under the Land Transportation Drivers Association (PPAD) have said they will plan a wider-scale protest if the government does not comply with their demands to close down ride-hailing applications following a huge demonstration in the capital on Tuesday. At least 10,000 drivers, mainly from taxi companies, protested in several locations such as Senayan in South Jakarta and in front of the Communications and Information Ministry in Central Jakarta. "If the applications are not shut down, we will consolidate and hold a national strike tomorrow," PPAD spokesman Suharto told journalists on Tuesday at the communications ministry. He said more drivers would join the protest across Indonesia if the government continued to allow the app-based transportation services to operate. The drivers questioned Communications and Information Minister Rudiantara's decision not to close down the apps and instead facilitate them, in contrast to Transportation Minister Ignatius Jonan who has announced a plan to shut down the applications over a lack of legal permits. "There are a lot of victims in the protest. We never wanted to create anarchy but we could not control what happened in the field," Suharto said, referring to the violent protests on the streets of Jakarta. App-based transportation services, such as homegrown motorcycle taxi application Go-Jek, US-based Uber and Malaysia's Grab, have reportedly contributed to the decrease of conventional transportation drivers' income. Before the mushrooming number of apps, conventional taxi drivers could bring in Rp 150,000 (US$11) per day, which has reduced drastically to around Rp 30,000 per day, Suharto said. The drivers have denied that they are against technological developments. However, they have urged the government to impose firm regulations on illegal services. PPAD demanded that the government and the House of Representatives listen to the demands of drivers from various taxi companies in Jakarta, such as Express Taxi, Blue Bird, Pratama and Putra. "Long live Jonan! Step down, Rudiantara! They only defend foreign investors, not local companies," protesters screamed in front of the House complex. PPAD chairman Cecep Handoko said that the legalization of ride-hailing apps would allow the number of private vehicles utilized for public transportation to flourish. "Black [license] plate [private] vehicles' business has had negative impacts on yellow-plated vehicles' business," Cecep said. The drivers blamed their declining income on the growing use of app-based transportation systems, saying they no longer made a profit from their work. "If I could still eat well and give enough money to my wife and kid, I wouldn't join this protest. But because of the illegal vehicles, sometimes I only have one passenger a day," Blue Bird taxi driver Anang told thejakartapost.com on Tuesday. Another taxi driver said that recent economic conditions had put an extra burden on his financial situation, made even worse by the illegally operating vehicles. "To be honest, in the last five months, I could not feed my family. It is lucky that I have a grown-up child who can sustain our family," Express driver Rohadi said, adding that he sometimes borrowed money from relatives to make ends meet. The Jakarta Police and Jakarta Military Command deployed 6,000 personnel to secure the demonstration. The protest in front of the House was conducted peacefully. However, violence was reported in areas such as Jl. Jend. Gatot Subroto and Jl. Jend. Sudirman. Law enforcement unit chief at the Jakarta Police's Traffic Directorate, Adj. Sr. Comr. Budiyanto, said the police would curb any acts of violence regarding the protests. He also urged members of the public who witnessed violent acts to report to the police. "Please photograph and send the violent incidents to the Traffic Management Center as an evidence," Budiyanto said. (rin)(+) Share this article Whatsapp Facebook Twitter Linkedin The Jakarta Post Jakarta Tue, March 22, 2016 Police and military troops killed two alleged members of the Santoso-led East Indonesia Mujahidin (MIT) terrorist group in Poso, Central Sulawesi, on Tuesday, said Indonesian Military (TNI) Commander Gen. Gatot Nurmantyo. "There was a shoot-out at 10 a.m. and two unidentified people were killed," Gatot said without elaborating. Despite causalities on both sides during the operation, government troops will continue hunting Santoso and his group, Gatot said as reported by tempo.co. On March 15, troops also engaged MIT members on Mount Tabalosa in Lore, Poso, killing two suspected terrorists. National Police chief Gen. Badrodin Haiti said the shoot-out happened at Sector IV near Napu, Central Sulawesi -- an area where the terrorist group had been cornered at one stage. Badrodin said, however, the death of the two terrorists did not mean the troops were close to catching Santoso as it was believed he was hiding deep inside the forest, the boundaries of which were guarded by his followers. "They form small groups of six to seven people. The leader is probably not there but in another place," Badrodin said as quoted by kompas.com. Based on police intelligence, the number of MIT members in mid-March was reduced from 45 to 38 members. They are believed to be behind several attacks on police officers in Poso and other parts of Central Sulawesi in past years. Meanwhile, Central Sulawesi Police chief Brig. Gen. Rudy Sufahriadi said on Tuesday that a terrorist identified only as SH was arrested by the TNI in Napu, Poso regency, on Monday while visiting a local resident's house to ask for food. "SH is indeed one of the most-wanted Poso-based terrorist. He is from Indramayu [West Java]," Rudy said as quoted by Antara news agency. Santoso and his group are reportedly surrounded by troops and lack food and other supplies. Some MIT members have abandoned the group and surrendered to authorities. Recently, the Operation Tinombala team found a decomposed body, which was identified as that of a member of the MIT who allegedly had been executed by Santoso for attempting to abandon the radical group. An Army helicopter crashed in Poso Pesisir Selatan district on Sunday, killing 13 passengers and crew members. (afr/bbn) Lower East Side resident Kami Scott has more photos shot from above Essex Crossing sites 5 and 6 today. The development team puts out a weekly email detailing the activity on each of the four active construction sites. Heres this weeks version: Site 1 (242 Broome St.) This week Site 1 will placing the concrete mud slab. The concrete trucks and concrete pump will be located within the site. Drilling will begin for the sleeve for the elevator piston. The drill rig will also be located within the site gate. Flag persons will be positioned at the gate to direct pedestrian & vehicular traffic. Noise and dust control will be standard daily operations. No after-hours work in anticipated. Site 2 (115 Delancey St.) Site 2 will continue excavation and support of excavation at the cellar and sub-cellar level. Sub-cellar and cellar concrete pile cap installation will continue this week. Both of these activities will continue on Saturday, March 26th between the hours of 9am-5pm. Site 5 (145 Clinton St.) Foundation and superstructure work continues at Site 5. Underslab plumbing and electrical installations continue along with concrete pours. Concrete pours are anticipated to take place on Monday, March 21st and Thursday, March 24th in the early morning hours. Site 6 (175 Delancey St.) The coming weeks activity at Site 6 includes pouring concrete for the foundation on the north side (Delancey) and pouring concrete for the east half of the 1st floor slab. No after-hours work is scheduled. Job Opportunities Delancey Street Associates has partnered with workforce organizations the Lower East Side Employment Network (LESEN), a group of local agencies that assists Lower East Side and NYC residents to advance their careers and Workforce1, service provided by the NYC Department of Small Business Services that prepares and connects qualified candidates to job opportunities in New York City. To register for construction related jobs and job training programs in several growth industries, including trainings to more successfully pursue temporary and permanent opportunities at Essex Crossing, please visit this site. M/WBE Opportunities Delancey Street Associates encourages Minority and Women Owned Business Enterprise (M/WBE) contractors to participate in the development of Essex Crossing across multiple trades. For more information about upcoming bid opportunities, as well as information about future M/WBE trade fairs, networking events and workshops related to the project, please fill out an inquiry form on our website. For updated info on construction activity at Essex Crossing, click here. Why are South Koreans so much smarter than us? This sounds like its the build-up to a punchline but the answer is; Its because they go to school for 16 bloody hours a day. A common problem in the U.K is: Oh how do we get the bloody kids off the streets? Theres only so many piano lessons we can send him to, how can we entertain them in the evenings? Theres just not enough for kids to do these days! Where are the Milk Bars of old we wore our pedal pushers and hush puppies to? They were great. Such a sense of community. Thats where your Dad and I first started going steady. That was once a common question South Koreans asked themselves too - in a slightly differently worded way. But instead of just giving up and allowing kids to spend their formative years standing outside McDonalds, they decided to do something about it. They decided theyd make them go to school for 16 hours a day. This is why the literacy rate is so high; 99.9%. Which begs the question; Who the bloody hell are these morons in the .1% who go to school for 16 hours a day and cant even bloody read? They call South Korea the place where students, not babies, are born. Education in South Korea is an overwhelmingly serious matter. This is the place where teachers can become celebrities and suicide is the number one killer of the under 40s. So you know how when we went to school, it was from about 8am-3.30pm, right? Although now saying that, it seems like quite a lot after going to University for six hours a week. Anyway, its worse in South Korea. Students get to school at about 8, finish at 4, then go off to another school at 5, and stay there until about 11. That other school is cram school. Or a Hagwon. Which roughly translates to Bloody torture. Nah it just means extra school. Some even go on the weekends! Back when I was at school, you had to either really mess up, or be an idiot, to have to go to school on the weekends. Cram school ends up setting a family back on average about 1,000 a month per child and a couple of years ago, the (Korean) government had to pass a law that prohibited students from staying at them past midnight. A popular proverb amongst Korean students is You sleep four hours a night, you get into a good school, you sleep five, you fail. No word on if they know about Margaret Thatcher and how sleeping four hours a night worked out for her. A popular proverb amongst British students is What does proverb mean? They say that behind every dedicated student is a pushy mother. In Korea, they prefer those particular mothers being called educational agents. Theyre known for micro-managing every hour of their childs day to make sure they spend as much time studying as possible. That isnt where they stopped getting involved, either. Apparently 27% of Korean teachers have admitted accepting some sort of bribe to give certain students preferential treatment. And this is the only country in the world where teachers are paid more than doctors so those must be some bloody good bribes. A lot of this tends to happen on May 15th: National Teacher Appreciation Day. Apparently the gifts as of late have escalated from the traditional box of chocolates to stacks of cold, hard Korean quiche (cash). All of this pressure and bribery is building up to just one day: The day Korean students take their version of the SATs. The exam itself lasts for 10 hours (!) and is called the CSAT (Crazy Stupid Awful Time) or (College Scholastic Ability Test) and the point is, you have to get good enough results to get into a SKY university (Korean version of Ivy League). The country stops to make way for the day of this exam. Parents go to church especially to pray that their kids will get good results, businesses are instructed to open at different hours so the traffic isnt too bad, the U.S army (who apparently still feel the need to do a lot of this around South Korea) ceases all live-fire for the day and all motorists are advised to not honk their horns near schools. Also, builders are advised to drop the volume of their heckles from aggressive to conversational. Its not a huge shock that recently the BBC got a group of six Korean 15-16 year olds to take the Maths GCSE. They all finished it in half the expected time, four got 100% and the other two got one question wrong each. This is a country thats literacy rate was less than 50% two generations ago. So whats the solution? How can British children get a bit smarter? Its all well and good being an adult and being like Kids should go to school for 14 hours a day! But maybe a couple of extra hours wouldnt hurt. (U.S) President Barack Obama has praised the rigorous system, saying that the rest of the world are falling behind South Korea. He particularly went on about the length of the Western school day: We can no longer afford an academic calendar designed when America was a nation of farmers who needed their children at home plowing the land at the end of each day. Our children spend a whole month less in school per year. The reason Koreans value education so much more than us is, I think, a deeply-rooted thing. This is a country of near enough zero natural resources, so what they have to rely on is their human resources. Exporting Hyundais and Samsungs and Glenn from The Walking Dead - theyre world leaders in all of that. The state of the country and its future is completely entwined with educating the children. Maybe in the U.K, our government just arent as bothered. Maybe they think Its not like the country is going to fail if one in five of us are near enough illiterate. Everyone from the poorest farmer to the aristocracy value education above all other in South Korea. Half of our government met in the Bullingdon Club and everyone knows that. The future of our country is in the hands of a select few, but in South Korea, everyone has a hand in it. 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The main terminal at the airport already has scanners in place at all entry doorways, Ms Monrudee added. We have not been informed of changes to any flights departing Phuket. At this stage, all flights inbound and outbound are expected to continue as scheduled, she said. I do not believe there the incident in Brussels will directly affect Phuket. Regardless, if any persons see anything suspicious anywhere near the airport, please report it to the nearest airport staffer as soon as possible, Ms Monrudee said. The attacks in Belgium today saw explosions at Brussels Zaventem Airport and a city metro station killing at least 21 people in apparently coordinated attacks. Europe has since gone on high alert, with security at major airports across the continent ramped up in the hope of preventing further attacks. (See story here.) Armed gunmen business as usual for birds nest island off Phuket PHUKET: A report by a local sailor threatened by a man brandishing an automatic rifle to keep away from an island east of Phuket has prompted nothing more than a warning by police for tourists to stay clear of bird-nest operations in Phang Nga Bay. policemarinetourism By The Phuket News Tuesday 22 March 2016, 02:56PM The island where the incident happened is to the east of Koh Yao Yai. Image: Google Maps Koh Yao Police Chief Col Jirasak Siamsak confirmed to The Phuket News that he received a call from the Phuket Tourist Police, and in turn returned a call to a tourist on Saturday (Mar 19), who asked for police to investigate the armed man. We were anchored 100m from shore he brandished a gun. The chief of police from Koh Yao Yai said it was OK and did nothing. We are anchored now 1km from shore hopefully out of range, the sailor told The Phuket News. I told the tourist, Mr Tom, that the island was a government concession area for bird nests and that the men in the area were armed. I advised him, for his own safety, to stay far off or come back to moor at Koh Yao Yai, Col Jirasak said. He did not understand what I said so I phoned my friends who can speak better English to explain to him about the government concession area, he added. Col Jirasak said that such operations were well known among local Thai boatmen, and they knew to keep well clear of islands where bird-nest operations were underway. The island is prized for its bird nests and the owner has hired many men to look after their area, Col Jirasak explained. The collectors have an exclusive government concession to collect nests in the area. Bird-nest collecting is a lucrative business and tightly controlled by armed men. The guards have permits to carry firearms to protect area from poachers and they also protect the birds from other predators, such as snakes. Their only concern is to protect the area and keep birds undisturbed by outsiders, he said. The guards are very protective during collecting season, from February through May, Col Jirasak added. And when a concession expires, police will guard the area until the next company takes over. We never have issues with people trying to go there, he said. Col Jirasak added that if tourists attempt to land on islands where government-concession bird-nest operations are underway, they may face trespass charges. There are only two islands in Phang Nga province that have bird-nest concessions, and most fishermen and boat operators know the area well and never attempted to go near them, Col Jirasak said. He named the two islands as Koh Li Pe, which is halfway between Koh Yao Yai and Phuket, and Koh Kalard. However, GPS co-ordinates by chart plotter computer identified the island where the incident happened as Koh Ngang (0802.822'N, 09840.395'E). On being informed this, Col Jirasak did not elaborate on whether or not he would investigate. The tourist also reported that holding off-island was a barge emblazoned with Naturalnestthailand.com along the side. However, when called by The Phuket News the company said that although they have government concessions for 99 islands in Thailand, that particular island was not theirs. Benz crash triggers probes into similar cases BANGKOK: The high-speed car crash in Ayutthaya that killed two post-graduate students on the spot on March 13 has brought back the memories of two similar cases in recent years where children of wealthy families killed other people while driving and the revelation so far has confirmed everyones fears. accidentstransportpolice By Bangkok Post Tuesday 22 March 2016, 08:54AM n this Sep 3, 2012 photo, Vorayuth Yoovidhya, then 27, known as Boss, is brought to Thong Lor police station hours after the accident that killed Snr Sgt Maj Wichian Klanprasert, 48, of the same police station. (Bangkok Post file photo) Netizens have been criticising the police investigation and wondering if reckless drivers from rich families would ever serve jail terms. In one case, an unlicensed, 17-year-old driver, Orachorn Praewa Thephasadin na Ayudhya, killed nine people in a crash on Don Muang tollway on Dec 27, 2010. In 2014, the Appeals Court sentenced her to two years in jail, suspended for four years, and ordered her to perform community service for 48 hours each year for four years. She was also banned from driving until she is 25. But latest official records indicated she might not have performed the community service the right way. Probation Department chief Col Narat Sawetanant last Friday (Mar 18) accused her of breaching the court order. Orachorn, now 23, denied the allegation, saying she had already performed community service at Phramongkutklao Hospital. But Col Narat said Orachorn was required to first consult with officials on where she should perform the mandatory service. Instead, she chose the place by herself without telling responsible officials. Deputy hospital director Col Peerapol Pokpong yesterday (Mar 21) confirmed she had done 138 hours of community service at the facility from Jan 11 and Feb 12 this year. A probation officer from Nonthaburi, Chanchanok Jaimcharoen, met the woman at the hospital on Jan 27. He added Orachorn took care of patients injured from car accidents and soldiers wounded in the southern border provinces. Col Narat argued that the department did not send Ms Chanchanok to the hospital and a committee was being formed to investigate into the matter. In another case, the Office of the Attorney-General (OAG) has yet to indict the heir to the Red Bull energy-drink empire, citing slow police investigation and multiple petitions filed by the suspect. Vorayudh Boss Yoovidhya, a grandson of the late Red Bull founder Chaleo, allegedly rammed his Ferrari into Snr Sgt Maj Wichian Klanpraserts motorcycle on Sukhumvit Soi 47 in the early hours of Sept 3, 2012, killing him on spot. He is now facing charges of reckless driving causing death and failing to stop a vehicle to help a victim, but the indictments never came. Although the case has dragged on for almost four years, attorney-general Pongniwat Yuthapanboripan said yesterday the case is still being investigated because of the suspects requests for justice and fair treatment. There are some points that are not quite clear so we need to provide justice to all sides, Mr Pongniwat said, but did not elaborate further. The OAG blamed investigators at Thong Lor police station for the delay. Isara News Agency, quoting a highly placed source in the OAG, said the prosecutors had ordered indictments on the two charges but Mr Vorayudh had petitioned the attorney-general to review the investigation report for the sake of fairness. The OAG then ordered police investigators to find additional evidence on Sept 3, 2013. But it has been almost four years and the police have yet to submit the additional investigation report to the OAG. So the public prosecutors have not been able to indict him, the source said. The source said the prosecutors would write to Thong Lor police investigators to ask about the progress. The statute of limitations of the two charges are 15 years and five years respectively. An earlier speeding charge against Mr Vorayudh was dropped in 2013 because the one-year statute of limitations on it expired after the Red Bull heir postponed hearing the indictment six times, citing sicknesses and requesting more witnesses and experts be questioned. An OAG source told the Bangkok Post on Saturday that a new team of prosecutors was being formed after the prosecutor who handled the case died. Read original story here. Phuket police chief levels warning for drink-driving over Songkran PHUKET: The Chief of the Phuket Provincial Police, Col Teeraphol Thipjaroen, has warned motorists against drink-driving during the upcoming Thai New Year Songkran holidays. alcoholpoliceaccidentstourismtransport By The Phuket News Tuesday 22 March 2016, 04:05PM An officer from the Thung Thong Police in Kathu conducts a roadside breath test for alcohol. Photo: Tanyaluk Sakoot Phuket will continue with the campaign against drink-driving as ordered by the NCPO (National Council for Peace and Order) to enable people to travel safely over Songkran, he told The Phuket News today (Mar 22). Drunk drivers will be arrested and punished in accordance with the law he added. However, unlike as announced in the capital Bangkok (see here), police in Phuket will not be impounding cars for set periods under their own authority. We will carry out our normal procedure in case of drunk driving here, Col Teeraphol said. Drunk drivers will be arrested if their alcohol level is over the limit. Well temporarily seize their vehicles while they are taken to the station. But the court will decide how long their vehicles will be impounded and how long their driving licenses will be suspended, he added. Police have yet to announce the annual Seven Days of Danger road-safety campaign for this coming Songkran, which will be celebrated by Thais around the world from Wednesday, April 13 to Friday, April 15. Last year, Phuket was one of four provinces in the country to record zero road fatalities during the Songkran Seven Days campaign. (See story here.) How to watch and what to know about South Dakota State at North Dakota DETROITAfter more than a decade of staying under the radar, a Grosse Pointe, Mich., woman on Monday pleaded guilty to helping her husband run a shady cadaver business that involved selling infected body parts to unsuspecting medical researchers across the country for tens of thousands of dollars. Elizabeth Rathburn, 56, pleaded guilty to wire fraud in U.S. District Court, admitting that she took human remains infected with HIV and hepatitis B to an anesthesiology conference in Washington, D.C., in 2012, claiming that the body parts were disease free when she knew otherwise. Under the terms of her plea deal, she faces four to 10 months in prison and a possible restitution tab of $55,225 (U.S.). Elizabeth Rathburn also has agreed to cooperate in the case against her estranged husband, Arthur Rathburn, a former University of Michigan morgue attendant and central figure in years-long investigation. He is accused of buying body parts from dealers in Arizona and Illinois, then selling them to unsuspecting researchers. Elizabeth Rathburn is already proving to be forthcoming with information about her husband, if her actions in court Monday are any indication. She notified authorities that her husband recently sent her a birthday package with a note attached to it, when hes under a court order not to have any contact with her. According to her lawyer, the birthday gesture caused her distress. Arthur Rathburn was taken aback. Oh Jesus, he mumbled under his breath in the courtroom, adding he had no idea he couldnt send his wife a birthday message. His lawyer stressed to him: No contact means no contact. Arthur Rathburn is moving forward with plans to take his case to trial, which will be full of grisly exhibits and allegations that he committed many crimes, like cutting up bodies with chainsaws, shipping blood-filled coolers of fresh heads on commercial airliners falsely claiming the blood was Listerine and storing more than 1,000 body parts on ice at his rundown warehouse in Detroit. The FBI raided his Detroit warehouse in 2013, seizing more than a thousand body parts heads, hands, legs, torsos that were then stored in a deep freezer at the Wayne County Morgue. Arthur Rathburn is free on bond, living in a Detroit halfway house pending the outcome of his case. Though Rathburns name first surfaced a decade ago in a book called Body Brokers, he did not show up on the FBIs radar until years later, when federal agents started tracking what appeared to be bizarre shipments arriving for Rathburn at Detroit Metro Airport, including a bucket full of human heads that arrived from Israel one year. Among the examples outlined in the indictment was a 2011 transaction in which the Rathburns rented a head and neck to researchers for $13,108 to be used in a course titled Advances in Periodontology at the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Cambridge, Mass. The head and neck came from an individual who tested positive for hepatitis B, though the Rathburns hid that. Rathburn faces charges of wire fraud, aiding and abetting, and making false statements. If convicted, he could face up to 20 years in prison. Before getting into the body parts trade as a private dealer, Rathburn was the coordinator of the University of Michigans anatomical donation program from 1984-90, but he got fired after he was caught selling bodies. In 1989, he started his own business supplying body parts: Biological International, which he ran out of an industrial warehouse near the old Detroit City Airport. Eventually, he fell on the FBIs radar, and federal agents and border officials started tracking his shipments of body parts. And he made lots of money, authorities claim. A human body is worth from $10,000 to $100,000 if sold in parts, court records show. Brains can fetch $600; elbows and hands $850. All figures are U.S. dollars. While this trade is not, in and of itself, illegal . . . crimes have been committed, an FBI agent wrote in an affidavit. SHARE: Search Jim Cramer's "Mad Money" trading recommendations using our exclusive "Mad Money" Stock Screener. When the macro-economic smoke clears, individual stocks can be seen for what they're actually worth, Jim Cramer told his Mad Money viewers Monday. Right now, many stocks are worth a lot more than what they're currently selling for. That is certainly the case with Starwood Hotels (HOT) , which received an $11 billion takeover offer from Marriott (MAR) not to long ago but today saw that offer raised to $13.6 billion. Then there's paint maker Valspar (VAL) , which received a takeover bid from rival Sherwin-Williams (SHW) , news that sent Valspar shares soaring 23%. Cramer said these two deals beg the question: Why were these stocks valued so low in the first place? The low-value trend doesn't stop there. Caterpillar (CAT) pre-announced horrible numbers, only to see its share rise on the news. Media stocks Walt Disney (DIS) and Time Warner (TWC) were left for dead just a few weeks ago, and they've been marching steadily higher ever since. So, too, with Walmart (WMT) and McDonald's (MCD) , which are in the middle of remarkable turnarounds. Cramer said all of these stocks never should've been so cheap in the first place, but eventually the markets woke up and saw them for the their true values. J&J Shines While the rest of the pharmaceutical industry languishes, Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) has been shining, Cramer told viewers. While the drugs stocks have fallen 9% for the year, J&J has risen 4%. What is J&J's secret? Cramer said it's CEO Alex Gorsky, who took over at the company four years ago but is finally seeing the fruits of his labor. Investors may recall that ago, Johnson & Johnson's consumer products division was a mess. The company faced multiple recalls and was ultimately sanctioned and forced to recall 135 million bottles of Tylenol. But now, four years later, the scrutiny of the FDA is subsiding and Johnson & Johnson is once again restarting its New Jersey manufacturing facility. Beyond its consumer products, J&J now has over 11 drugs worth $1 billion or more. The company also has excellent financial discipline with a AAA-rated balance sheet that includes $18 billion in cash. Cramer said he's also a fan of the company's 2.8% dividend yield, its stock buyback program and its valuation of just 15.6 times earnings. March Madness Stock Winners Forget about sports analogies when picking stocks, Cramer told viewers. Invest in good companies and remember that, unlike sports, there can be multiple winners in the stock market. Case in point: Oracle (ORCL) , the enterprise software giants that been transitioning for years from an on-premise technology to new, cloud-based technologies. Everyone assumed when LinkedIn (LNKD) and Tableau Software (DATA) imploded last month, bad things must be happening at all of the cloud companies. That thinking immediately took down shares of Salesforce.com (CRM) , Adobe Systems (ADBE) , SAP (SAP) and countless others. But Cramer reminded viewers that stocks are not a zero-sum game like sports. All of these companies can be winners, and indeed this quarter, they were. All three, and now all four thanks to Oracle, posted strong results, making the problems at LinkedIn and Tableau the anomalies. Cramer's Homework In his "Homework" segment, Cramer followed up on a few stocks that stumped him during earlier shows. He said that Tyler Technologies (TYL) is an interesting business, but trading at 33 times earnings after recently disappointing on earnings makes it a no-go. Then there's Stag Industrial (STAG) , a retail estate investment trust that focuses on industrial properties. The stock sports a 7% yield. Cramer called it dicey because the company has exposure to only the industrial sector and is selling properties to buy others. He suggested Ventas (VTR) or Federal Realty Trust (FRT) as better alternatives. Finally, there was funeral services provider, StoneMor Partners (STON) , which sports a hefty 10.4% yield. Cramer said StoneMor now has a negative cash flow, making its dividend suspect. The company also continues to take on debt for acquisitions and now appears over-extended. StoneMor, he said, is a sell. Lightning Round In the Lightning Round, Cramer was bullish on Time Warner Cable (TWC) , Bristol-Myers Squibb (BMY) , Palo Alto Networks (PANW) , Fortinet (FTNT) , CyberArk Software (CYBR) , Goldman Sachs (GS) and Radius Health (RDUS) . Cramer was bearish on Symantec (SYMC) and McGraw Hill Financial (MHFI) . No Huddle Offense In his "No Huddle Offense" segment, Cramer opined on the huge premium Sherwin-Williams is willing to pay for rival Valspar. He said the combination makes perfect sense and is just the latest example of the market undervaluing individual stocks. It's also proof mergers and acquisitions are picking up, a sign of a healthy market overall. To watch replays of Cramer's video segments, visit the Mad Money page on CNBC. To sign up for Jim Cramer's free Booyah! newsletter with all of his latest articles and videos please click here. At the time of publication, Cramer's Action Alerts PLUS had no position in stocks mentioned. LONDON (The Deal) -- European markets fell on Tuesday after two explosions were recorded at Brussels airport and a third in a subway station in the EU district, putting the Belgian capital on heightened alert over possible terrorist attacks. In London, the FTSE 100 was down 0.46% at 6.155.84, while in Frankfurt the DAX was 0.54% lower at 9,984.61. In Paris, the CAC 40 slid 0.42% to 4,409.32. All major indices were down despite paring losses earlier in the morning just after the news broke of the blasts which are presumed to be terrorist attacks. Shortly after 8 a.m. Brussels time two explosions were reported in Zaventem Airport's departure hall, with anywhere from 11 to 20 people reported to have been killed. An hour later, a third blast occurred at a metro station close to the EU institutions, prompting Belgian authorities to raise the terror threat level to its highest level and impose a city-wide lockdown and shutdown of public transportation. Flights and trains to and from Brussels were cancelled. Travel stocks led the stock decline, with British Airways parent International Consolidated Airlines Group (ICAGY) , low-cost carrier Easyjet (ESYJY) and TUI (TUIFY) all down more than 3% in London. Elsewhere in Europe, Air France-KLM Group (AFLYY) was down 4.41% in Paris while Deutsche Lufthansa was down more than 2% in Frankfurt. Given the events in Brussels. investors paid little attention to positive economic news from Germany, where the Ifo institute's business climate index rose for the first time in four months. The March index rose to 106.7 points in March from 105.7 points in February. "On any ordinary day, today's German sentiment data would have been reason for moderate optimism," ING-DiBa chief economist Carsten Brzeski wrote on his blog. "However, this is definitely and sadly not an ordinary day anymore." Thomas Cook Group (TCKGY) was down more than 4% with other travel stocks. Earlier in the morning even before the news from Brussels, Thomas Cook said that summer bookings were below last year with so far 40% sold. It also reiterated its full-year guidance, but saying it would depend on seeing a sustained recovery in customer confidence through the summer season. Among other decliners, BT Group (BT) slipped 0.88% after the U.K.'s Ofcom telecommunications regulator set out tough new rules to improve BT's performance in installing high-speed lines for businesses and to slash wholesale prices charged for those lines. In Milan, Banco Popolare was down more than 3.3% after a Bloomberg News report. Citing people familiar with the matter, the agency said the lender plans to raise about 1 billion ($1.12 billion) through a combination of selling shares, bad loans and assets to meet European Central Bank approval for a merger with Banca Popolare di Milano Scarl. Some stocks bucked the negative trend. In Copenhagen, Bang & Olufsen gained 3.65% after China's Sparkle Roll Group said it was in talks to acquire the Danish maker of high-end televisions and stereo equipment. The news comes four months after B&O said it was in talks with a potential unnamed buyer. In Zurich, Partners Group Holding posted sales and earnings that beat estimates. Asian markets were mixed, with the Nikkei finishing 1.94% higher in Japan at 17,048.55, while the Hang Seng slipped 0.08% in Hong Kong to 20,665.75. Later Tuesday in the U.S., several batches of fresh data on the world's economy are due to be released. They include the latest Redbook consumer sales index, Markit's Manufacturing PMI Index flash and the Richmond Fed Manufacturing Index. The American Petroleum Institute on Tuesday will report on weekly crude oil stocks. In the weeks leading up to Tuesday's Arizona primary, the Libre Initiative, a group funded by the conservative billionaire Koch brothers, has been hosting a regular series of "citizenship workshops" where local attorneys in Phoenix, Tucson and other cities in Arizona assist eligible Latinos to apply for U.S. citizenship. The workshops dovetail with other similar, free events: English classes, driver education, health check-ups, back-to-school programs and food donations. Oftentimes, Libre sponsors political and social events with popular Spanish-language media, such as a 2014 candidate forum with Noticias Univision, the top-rated Spanish-language television network, featuring Republican candidates for governor. Those activities are sponsored by Libre's education-focused non-profit arm, registered for tax purposes as a 501(c)(3). At the same time, Libre's political action group, its 501(c)(4), produces high-quality television and newspaper advertisements, in English and Spanish, featuring Latinos condemning the Affordable Care Act, denouncing government spending, supporting "school choice," opposing efforts to raise the minimum wage, and publicizing the group itself. Its director, Daniel Garza, a former White House liaison under George W. Bush, insists that Libre, which means "free" in Spanish, doesn't "endorse candidates, we endorse ideas, so we drive an agenda of freedom-oriented, free-market policies." Nonetheless, it often targets candidates if they support issues or positions that, in Garza's words, would "lead to more taxes, more regulation, more government growth." One 2014 television advertisement was aimed at Democrat Ron Barber who ran for a Tucson congressional seat previously held by Gabby Giffords, who resigned from the office following an attempted assassination that left her critically wounded. The ad featured a young Hispanic man saying that "my generation" can't afford wasteful spending, while citing Barber's support of Obamacare. Barber lost that race by 161 votes to an anti-gun control advocate, Martha McSally who opposed immigration reform and in-state tuition to undocumented students, issues that Latinos support. Congressmen Pete Gallego of Texas and Joe Garcia of Florida were similarly targeted for supporting the Affordable Care Act. Libre's two sides work hand-in-hand, say Arizona Latino activists. One seemingly helping Latinos to attain essential services while the other pushes positions that run counter to decades of work by longtime community organizers. "It's a bait and switch," said Ian Danley, director of One Arizona, a coalition of Latino community groups, in an interview from Phoenix. "They have a partisan goal as their end-game not a community goal. They're not about building a voice that is authentic and represents the real needs of the people. It's really designed to confuse voters." No issue represents this confusion more than immigration, says Francisco Heredia, national field director for Mi Familia Vota, or My Family Votes, a voter registration group. And there is no issue quite as volatile in Arizona, which is home to self-appointed border militias such the Minutemen. Donald Trump, who is leading Republican polls in Arizona by double-digits, has fueled his campaign in no small part by referring to Mexicans as "thieves" and "rapists," while pledging to build a wall along wide stretches of the U.S.-Mexico border. In interviews, Garza says he supports "comprehensive immigration reform" but is quick to add that while Libre favors a "path to citizenship," the political reality is that Republicans are opposed to such legislation. Therefore, he says, Libre takes a "libertarian" position of supporting a "work-visa bill" and "guest-worker programs." Critics of this stance charge that it gives employers outsized control of workers. Garza has also criticized Obama's executive orders known as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, or DACA, as well as 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. And although Garza says he is offended by Trump's comments on immigration, Libre has supported candidates -- Republican Colorado Senator Cory Gardner and Texas Congressman Will Hurd, for example -- who opposed Obama's immigrant initiatives, or in some cases, voted against the 2013 Immigration Modernization Act, which passed the Senate but failed in the House of Representatives. "Immigration is a core issue in our community," Heredia said. "It's plain to see that Libre has another agenda, that it's not looking for ways to help Latinos here and now. It's a grass-top kind of approach, building something that works against Latinos' best interests." Garza bristles at accusations that Libre is building a database of potential supporters to be shared with Republican candidates, though Libre did hold a candidate forum forum in Las Vegas in October attended by Jeb Bush, Rand Paul and Marco Rubio. Nationally, he says, Libre has sent out "hundreds of thousands of mailers" on issues such as Obamacare, conducted phone banks, made home visits and paid for TV advertisements. Yet the organization's emphasis is on issues, not candidates. "There's this misconception that we're building this massive user base so that we can get people to vote Republican," he said. "What we want is to advance free-market policies, that's our goal, so we use an election as an opportunity to drive those issues. If that aligns with a Republican, than so be it." Libre is one of a network of Koch-funded groups that share a common message of cutting taxes, eliminating regulations on businesses and the privatization of most government services. It operates offices in more than 12 states including California, Florida, Colorado, Texas and Virginia, often holding events with other Koch-funded groups such as Generation Opportunity, which focuses on young adults, and Americans for Prosperity, the Koch's principal advocacy organization. Libre has received $15.8 million since it began in 2011 out of a Las Vegas office of Freedom Partners, a non-profit backed by the Kochs, The New York Times reported, citing tax records. Critics contend that these groups' efforts are aligned with those of the Koch brothers, one of the world's largest owners of oil, gas and chemical companies and prominent donors to Republican candidates and causes. Libre's call to support "free-market policies," says Jennifer Allen, national director for Chispa, an arm of League of Conservation Voters targeting Latinos, translates into boosting politicians who oppose federal limits on carbon pollution from power plants, and other measures aimed at curbing climate change. Americans for Prosperity, which also emphasizes its "fight for freedom," opposes Obama's Clean Power Plan, a proposal aimed at coal-fired power plants. The proposal is being reviewed by the Supreme Court. Koch-funded groups have also pushed legislation in state legislatures opposing federal efforts to combat air and water pollution. Latino communities, Allen says, are often in neighborhoods that are nearest to power plants and other factories. Yet Latinos, she says, aren't told that Libre's call for "economic freedom" means eliminating oversight and restrictions on some of the country's biggest polluters. "Libre is very good about establishing certain values, using a common language that is rooted in the values of small government while playing on the words of freedom and opportunity," Allen said in a phone interview from Phoenix. "Those are important and meaningful words in our community. It all sounds good until you realize what path they're trying to take the Latino community. And that's very concerning." Editors' pick: Originally published March 22. It is interesting to note, and seemingly counter-intuitive, that the second-largest Ponzi scheme of all time happened in a country with some of the strictest banking regulations in the world. Ezubao, formerly the largest peer lending marketplace in China, turned out to be a gigantic scam that defrauded more than 900,000 investors to the tune of $7.6 billion. Although the company shut down in December and police arrested a slew of top executives, the real culprit isn't the company but the lack of effective regulation in the growing field of "shadow banking." Shadow banking is a catch-all term for banking services that don't originate from a traditional bank. This includes money market accounts, various securitization vehicles and peer lending. Shadow banking has grown rapidly worldwide for many reasons but mostly because traditional banking is riddled with problems and the heavy regulation of banks stifle their ability to innovate. Banks have long proven to be frustratingly inefficient, borderline incompetent or even surprisingly reckless. Bank failures were common in the United States until the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. was created in 1933. The FDIC isn't necessary because banking in itself is risky but because bankers' greed sometimes pushes bank policies to recklessness. Deposit insurance was created to solve the issue of "trust" and give peace of mind to depositors. This peace of mind costs depositors about 1.5% per year, and as we saw during the world wide financial collapse of 2008, bankers still secretly gamble with depositor funds anyway. Many shadow banking instruments are designed to use market forces to cut the bloat from banking services. For example, money market accounts use short-term cash-equivalents to park cash efficiently. Mortgage securitization provides a sometimes easy, risk-averse way to invest in secured loans. Peer lending disintermediates traditional banks, allowing individuals to underwrite personal loans, and it passes the reduced overhead savings along in the form of lower rates for borrowers and higher returns for investors. These are all legitimate endeavors, using techniques that traditional banks just can't handle. China's banking reputation of inefficiency, political favors, corruption and recklessness are even more pronounced than their American counterparts, because the pressure cooker of regulation hasn't been able to cope with the economy's drive toward modernization. China only introduced deposit insurance last year. Interestingly, the reason wasn't to soothe depositor worries -- the banks are state-owned, after all, which until last year meant that every dollar was backed by the government -- but to introduce risk into the system while keeping it at bay. In the past decade, state politicians have allowed shadow banking to take off in China to solve some of the bank industry's issues. The few that Ezubao purported to solve were to provide good investment opportunities for people with money and access to capital for business borrowers without political connections. In the beginning, government officials praised Ezubao because they recognized the benefit of pumping capital into the economy while not leaving the state-run banks on the hook. The economic boom of the past three decades afforded many Chinese the ability to invest, while the Internet provided the means to find opportunities, but lack of oversight allowed Ezubao to steal money using a classic Ponzi scheme. As most people are aware, a Ponzi scheme consists of faking good investment returns by distributing the money collected from new investors to previous ones, in lieu of, well, actually investing. Although it stole less money, the Ezubao scandal defrauded a much wider audience than that of America's Bernard Madoff. Instead of a rich insider stealing from the wealthy top 1%, many Ezubao investors are from poor, rural areas. Some commentators have stated that the 900,000 investors should have known better, but it isn't as if the Ezubao investors were stupid. Part of the reason that Ezubao was successful in attracting investor dollars was that it made sense: Promised returns weren't out of this world, each loan was supposedly "secured" with "business equipment," and the idea to use Internet technology to eliminate overhead and service the loans sounded legitimate. Obviously this was a lie: It is estimated that upwards of 95% of the loans issued on Ezubao were fake. It may seem like those are the two alternatives: a bloated and highly regulated banking sector backed by the government that offers depositors little to no return or a libertarian market forces shadow banking system, which offers the possibility of either a high return or complete loss. But only two things are needed to prevent a fraud like Ezubao: third-party custody and loan servicing, with the first one providing by far the best protection. Investors' money shouldn't be kept by the marketplace but by an accredited company that ensures that the money is really there. Incidentally, this is the system used in America, and most U.S.-based peer lending marketplaces demonstrate that the cost of a qualified custodian doesn't prohibit offering excellent performance. In addition, China also has the opportunity to design a secure, transparent and automated verification system. Fraud can be made virtually impossible if transactions are completely transparent. The working example is Bitcoin. The genius of Bitcoin is that the history of all the transactions are publicly available and un-forgeable. If investors are able to see where funds are going and that they are, in fact, being distributed according to the stated transaction history, regulators have a detailed and live log of all transactions and third parties handle custody and servicing, it will be much less likely for an untrustworthy individual to steal investor money and get away with it. For a long time, banks have provided only frustrating returns for investors. Successful peer lending platforms such as Lending Club in the United States or Zopa in the United Kingdom have demonstrated that, if done right, financial innovation can benefit all, from borrowers to investors. These examples show that the solution isn't massive deregulation, nor in accumulating even more directives. The solution is in smarter, lighter rules that are intelligently adapted to our high-technology, ever-connected world, with a set of checks and balances to protect investors along the way. This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of publication, the author held no positions in the stocks of the company mentioned. Flights by all three global U.S. carriers landed safely at Brussels Airport Tuesday morning, although passengers on two of the flights disembarked in remote areas following explosions at the airport. American (AAL) , Delta (DAL) and United (UAL) said morning arrivals from Philadelphia, Atlanta, Newark and Washington arrived safely Tuesday morning. Passengers on the flights from Newark and Atlanta disembarked or were scheduled to disembark in remote areas. Additionally, Delta flight 42 from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport to Brussels diverted to Amsterdam. The sixth flight from the U.S. to Brussels, Brussels Airlines flight 502 from Kennedy Airport, landed in Brussels at 7:20 a.m. local time. Explosions resulting from terrorist bombs occurred around 8:15 a.m. local time in the departures area of the airport. American said it has canceled Flight 751 from Brussels to Philadelphia on Tuesday; the flight had been scheduled to depart at 9:40 a.m. American said its check-in area is at Row 8 of the departures hall in Brussels, some distance from the explosions. American said it will waive change fees for passengers traveling to and from Belgium on Tuesday and Wednesday; the waiver applies to flights on American and partner airlines British Airways and Iberia. Early Tuesday, Delta said its flight 80 from Atlanta to Brussels had landed safely and parked remotely "with the local team working on plans to safely deplane passengers to a secure holding area." United said Flight 950 from Washington Dulles arrived in Brussels at 7:01 a.m. and passengers deplaned normally at the gate. Flight 999 from Newark, scheduled to arrive at 7:50 a.m., landed in a remote location; passengers and crews have deplaned. Meanwhile, "flights in the air from mainland European destinations {to Belgium} turned back and returned to their departure points," online travel writer Joe Brancatelli wrote in an email. "Most other flights headed for Brussels scheduled for departure after 9am local time were cancelled." In the aftermath of the airport explosion, airports around the world were announcing enhanced security. In premarket trading Tuesday, shares of American were down $1.29 to $42.18. Delta shares were down $1.32 to $48.80. United shares were down $2.04 to $59.15. This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of publication, the author held no positions in the stocks mentioned. Morgan Stanley has upped its rating on Wynn shares, and TheStreet's Jim Cramer points out that the company will take a lot of market share with the upcoming opening of its Wynn Palace resort, TheStreet TV anchor Rhonda Schaffler reports in the above video. NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Wynn Resorts (WYNN) stock is advancing by 1.90% to $94.50 in early-afternoon trading on Tuesday, after a ratings upgrade to "overweight" from "equal weight" at Morgan Stanley this morning. The firm has a $120 price target on the stock, which implies a 30% upside. The casino operator has been discounted by investors as it has delayed the opening of its new Wynn Palace casino, which is now expected to open during the third quarter, Morgan Stanley explained, Barron's reports. However, when Wynn Palace does open, the company's Macau market share will likely grow to between 13% and 14% from 10%, the firm continued, noting that the estimate is on the conservative side. "Wynn is highly levered today (~6.5x) but will be a cash flow machine once Macau Palace and Boston open (>10% FCF yield in '19)," Morgan Stanley noted, according to Barron's. Morgan Stanley should have upgraded shares earlier, TheStreet's Jim Cramer said on CNBC's Squawk on the Street this morning, mentioning that Wynn will be able to take a lot of market share with the upcoming casino. "People have been slow to adopt how good [Wynn's stock] is," Cramer added. Separately, TheStreet Ratings team rates the stock as a "hold" with a ratings score of C-. Wynn Resorts' strengths such as its 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 feeble growth in the company's earnings per share. You can view the full analysis from the report here: WYNN 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. This article, originally published at 9:07 a.m., has been updated with information from the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. Multiple explosions have killed at least 31 people in Brussels: Two in the Belgian capital's airport and one in a central subway station blocks from the headquarters of the European Union. ISIS has claimed responsibility. The attacks come four days after the arrest of 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam, who is accused of helping plan last year's terror attack in Paris that left 130 dead. After a lengthy manhunt, Abdeslam was captured in Molenbeek, the Brussels neighborhood where he grew up. "We were fearing terrorist attacks, and that has now happened," Belgium's Prime Minister Charles Michel said in a news conference. His full statement can be read here. The European Union capital is now on high terror alert and residents have been told to limit movements as more attacks may be planned. All flights at Brussels Airport have been cancelled for the day and Belgium has reportedly closed its borders. London and Paris are both on alert as well. In France, 1,600 additional police officers have been deployed to patrol borders. An emergency meeting of U.K. ministers was called by Prime Minister David Cameron, and security has been increased at major airports and other transit hubs in both nations. In the U.S., the Transportation Security Administration deployed additional personnel in major airports and at rail and transit stations around the country as a precaution, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said in a statement. "At present, we have no specific, credible intelligence of any plot to conduct similar attacks here," he said. "We remain very focused on the threat posed by lone terrorist actors who may lack direct connection to a foreign terrorist organization." While visas aren't required for Belgian citizens to travel to the U.S. for either business or tourism, the government has procedures to block people it considers suspicious, he noted. All travelers arriving in the U.S. are vetted through the country's terrorist screening database. President Barack Obama, on the last day of an historic trip to Cuba, was briefed on the attacks and in contact with Belgian officials, according to the White House. The U.S. is seeking to secure the status of all Americans in Brussels, according to a statement from Secretary of State John Kerry. "The thoughts and prayers of the American people are with the people of Belgium," Obama said in a speech in Havana. "This is yet another reminder that the world must unite, must be together regardless of nationality, race or faith, in fighting against the scourge of terrorism." Donald Trump, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination, has called for strong U.S. borders and said it would be "fine" to use waterboarding, an interrogation tactic that simulates drowning and is widely viewed as torture, on suspects in the attack. Trump's rival, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, said "our hearts break for the men and women of Brussels this morning" and "Radical Islam is at war with us" in a statement on Facebook. Ohio Gov. John Kasich, currently third in the race for the GOP nod, released a statement on Twitter expressing "solidarity" with the people of Belgium and said the U.S. must "redouble our efforts" to fight terrorism. Democratic frontrunner and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has tweeted that her "thoughts and prayers" are with those suffering in Belgium and that those who perpetrated the attacks "will never succeed" in undermining our "democratic values." Her rival, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders said in a statement: "We offer our deepest condolences to the families who lost loved ones in this barbaric attack.... We stand with our European allies." Damage caused at Brussels Airport, also known as Zaventem, which hosted 23 million travelers in 2015. Travelers have been evacuated from the airport. All flights have been cancelled for the rest of the day. Authorities and bystanders tend to the wounded. Passengers climb out of a subway car in the Brussels metro. Service has been halted. Passengers walk down an empty subway tunnel. This article was written by a staff member of TheStreet. NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Priceline Group undefined are falling by 1.72% to $1,326.34 at the start of trading on Tuesday morning, as travel stocks decline in the wake of the terror attacks in Brussels this morning. Three explosions at the Belgian city's airport and Metro system have left at least 26 people dead and 136 injured, according to various reports. No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks, however the leading theory is that the explosions were retaliation for the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, a suspect in the November 2015 Paris attacks. Abdeslam was arrested in Brussels on Friday. Investors fled travel stocks, especially those in Europe after today's attacks. Airline stocks were also hit hard, with stocks in the sector across Europe down by 3.5% and 4% in early trading, CNN Money reports. Priceline Group is a provider of online travel and travel related reservation and search services based in Norwalk, CT. Separately, TheStreet Ratings has set a "buy" rating and a score of A- on Priceline Group stock. This is based on the convergence of positive investment measures, which should help this stock outperform the majority of stocks that TheStreet Ratings covers. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its revenue growth, largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures, notable return on equity, expanding profit margins and solid stock price performance. Although no company is perfect, currently TheStreet Ratings does not see any significant weaknesses which are likely to detract from the generally positive outlook. 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: PCLN NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Yamana Gold (AUY) are climbing by 3.36% to $3.23 on Tuesday morning on rising gold prices. Gold prices are advancing due to higher safe-haven demand following terror attacks in Brussels this morning, the Wall Street Journal reports. Explosions at the Belgium city's airport and a subway station have left at least 31 people dead and more than 180 injured, according to reports. No one has claimed responsibility for the attacks. "(The rise in) gold is mainly related to the attacks in Brussels," ABN Amro analyst Georgette Boele told Reuters, "Gold is being bought as a safe haven." For April delivery, gold is gaining by 0.88% to $1,255.10 per ounce on the COMEX this morning. Toronto-based Yamana is a gold and copper exploration company that operates seven mines and oversees several ongoing development projects in Brazil, Argentina and Chile. (Yamana is held in David Peltier's Stocks Under $10 portfolio. See all of his holdings with a free trial.) Separately, TheStreet Ratings Team has a "Sell" rating with a score of D on the stock. This is driven by a few notable 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 feeble growth in its earnings per share, deteriorating net income, disappointing return on equity and generally disappointing historical performance in the stock itself. Recently, TheStreet Ratings objectively rated this stock according to its "risk-adjusted" total return prospect over a 12-month investment horizon. Not based on the news in any given day, the rating may differ from Jim Cramer's view or that of this articles's author. You can view the full analysis from the report here: AUY NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Denbury Resources (DNR) are slipping 3.88% to $2.48 on Tuesday afternoon as oil prices trimmed earlier losses, but remained mixed. Crude oil (WTI) is decreasing 0.43% to $41.34 per barrel and Brent oil is up 0.53% to $41.76 per barrel this afternoon, according to the CNBC.com index. "Oil is very much distracted by macro events today, gauging the sentiment in broader markets and taking its lead from that," Matthew Smith, director of commodity research at Clipper Data, told Reuters. At least 30 people were killed in terrorist attacks on a Brussels airport and subway station earlier today. Additionally, oil prices got a lift from reports that Russia would attend a meeting with top OPEC and non-OPEC members to freeze output next month, the Wall Street Journal noted. However, Libya decided not to attend the meeting in Doha, Qatar on April 17, Reuters added. Denbury Resources is a Plano, TX-based oil and natural gas 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 deteriorating net income, generally high debt management risk, disappointing return on equity, weak operating cash flow and generally disappointing historical performance in the stock itself. Recently, TheStreet Ratings objectively rated this stock according to its "risk-adjusted" total return prospect over a 12-month investment horizon. Not based on the news in any given day, the rating may differ from Jim Cramer's view or that of this articles's author. You can view the full analysis from the report here: DNR NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- JetBlue Airways Corp. (JBLU) stock is up 0.53% to $20.28 in early afternoon trading on Tuesday, despite a decline among travel stocks after this morning's terrorist attacks in Brussels. The bombings, which targeted Brussels' airport and a subway station, have killed at least 30 people, the New York Times reports. Travel stocks such as Priceline (PCLN) and American Airlines (AAL) retreated on Tuesday morning after the attacks. The typical response to terrorist attacks is to sell travel stocks, TheStreet's Jim Cramer wrote in a new Real Money article and video today. Other than the decline in travel stocks, the market has been "bizarrely" business as usual, he said. "We know it is a long day ahead," Cramer added. "But the fact that we aren't down big is pretty incredible." Based in Long Island City, NY, JetBlue operates a low-cost airline. Separately, 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. TheStreet Ratings rates this stock as a "buy" with a ratings score of A-. The company's strengths can be seen in multiple areas, such as its revenue growth, impressive record of earnings per share growth, expanding profit margins, good cash flow from operations and largely solid financial position with reasonable debt levels by most measures. Although no company is perfect, currently we do not see any significant weaknesses which are likely to detract from the generally positive outlook. You can view the full analysis from the report here: JBLU BRUSSELS -- Belgium was on heightened alert Tuesday after three deadly explosions rocked Brussels, prompting authorities to raise the country's terror-alert level to its highest and beef up security throughout the Belgian and EU capital. Shortly after 8 a.m. local time two bombs went off in the main departure hall at Zaventem Airport northeast of the city, killing at least 11 people and leaving more than 80 injured during a peak check-in time for passengers. About an hour later and still during the peak morning rush hour an explosion occurred at Maelbeek metro station in the EU district a short walk from the European Commission's Berlaymont headquarters and the Justus Lipsius building where EU summits are held. Belgium's federal prosecutor said one of the airport explosions was a suicide bombing. By late afternoon, the Islamic State had claimed responsibility for the attacks, saying through its propaganda channels that Belgium was targeted as "a country participating in the international coalition against the Islamic state." The attacks happened four days after Belgian police arrested Salah Abdeslam in Brussels' Molenbeek neighborhood; he's believed to be the only surviving perpetrator of the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris that left 130 people dead. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel condemned the "hateful' attacks while appealing for calm and solidarity. "We stand united against terrorism," he said. Zaventem airport was immediately evacuated after the attacks, with all flights coming in and out of Brussels cancelled until further notice -- only a helicopter every now and then heard in the sky -- and residents were told to avoid blocking airport access roads and use email rather than cell-phone networks. At NATO headquarters literally just down the road from the airport, the state of alert was also raised as Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg pledged support for one of its founding members following the deadliest-ever terror attack on Belgian soil. "We all stand together with our ally Belgium on this dark day," Stoltenberg said in a videotaped message posted on NATO's Web site. "This is a cowardly attack on our values and on our open societies," Stoltenberg said, adding, "Terrorism will not defeat democracy and take away our freedoms ... We remain vigilant and continue to monitor the situation very closely." The U.S. Embassy in Brussels warned U.S. citizens to be aware of local events and "take the appropriate steps to bolster your security." EU institutions in Brussels were also on heightened alert. The European Commission was on restricted staffing, telling employees who hadn't yet reported to work to telecommute from home and those already there at the time of the attacks to remain at work. And while the blue and yellow EU flags outside were at half-staff, inside at midday the regular daily press briefing went on as always, with just a few words from chief EC spokesman Margaritas Schinas. "Now is not the time for statements, the commission's response will be calm and sober as the situation demands" he said, adding that "the European Union and the EU institutions must and will remain resolute. Here in the European Union's capital, we stand together, united against terror, in full solidarity with the people of Brussels." Schinas said that EC President Jean-Claude Juncker and Vice President Kristalina Georgieva -- responsible for the budget and human resources -- were both in the building and coordinating with security services, as well as Dimitris Avramopoulos, the EU commissioner in charge of migration, home affairs and citizenship. The commission and the European Parliament both raised their alert levels from yellow to orange and beefed up security. The parliament stayed open for business while closing its visitors' entrance as well as the Parliamentarium museum, and cancelled all missions, meetings and visits scheduled for Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday. Despite some return to normalcy in the city by late afternoon, Belgium remained on high alert after raising its threat level to the highest of '4,' indicating a "serious and imminent attack." As was the case with the November lock down just after the Paris attacks, public transportation was shut down most of the day, as was train traffic coming in and out of Brussels. As of 4:30 p.m. some subways and buses were to start running again, though with reinforced security by police and armed forces. Most city shopping malls and the main shopping street in the city center remained closed, as did museums and some schools. In the late afternoon, Belgium's interior ministry crisis center told parents that they could pick up their children at schools that had been told to stay open. Meanwhile in the neighborhoods, life continued as normal, with people going grocery shopping and to eateries and pubs during the day, the events of the day very much weighing on minds. And on social media, the Belgian sense of humor and resilience was in evidence, with several people tweeting images of a comic-strip hero Tintin in tears and Manneken Pis -- the beloved Brussels statue that's a magnet for tourist photos and giggles -- relieving himself over guns and sticks of dynamite. NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- Shares of Harmony Gold Mining Co. (HMY) are gaining by 3.39% to $3.96 on Tuesday afternoon as gold prices trade in the green. For April delivery, gold is up by 0.23% to $1,247.10 per ounce on the COMEX this afternoon. Safe-haven assets eased this afternoon following advances today after deadly terrorist attacks in Brussels. Gold's spike was "just a reaction on the back of heightened risk and uncertainty," Simona Gambarini, a commodities economist at Capital Economics, told the Journal, "Aside from what's happened today, it's quite weak." Harmony Gold is a Johannesburg-based gold mining and exploration company with operations in South Africa and Papua New Guinea. Separately, TheStreet Ratings Team has a "Sell" rating with a score of D on the stock. This is driven by several 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 and poor profit margins. 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: HMY Editors' pick: Originally published March 22. Prepare for a pricier latte. Caffeine junkies got some rather troubling news recently, as growers around the world face the one-two punch of drought and disease. Outlets around the world have begun reporting anticipated shortfalls in Vietnamese coffee production. Due to a long-running drought condition, with months of below-average rainfall, the country is expected to produce well below its annual yield this season. Approximately 343,500 acres of the winter-spring crop have been damaged, reports Agence France-Presse, with the land hurt by both the water shortage and resulting salinity from the Mekong Delta. Vietnam is the worlds largest producer of robusta coffee beans, along with Arabica, one of the two main varieties of coffee used in global production. While Arabica is generally used in high quality mixes, such as espresso, producers rely on the heartier robusta for products such as instant and inexpensive coffee. (Popular brand Folgers, for example, uses robusta or a robusta/Arabica blends in most of its coffee.) Swings in commodity prices have become a staple of the coffee market for years, as producers shift their blends based on relative expense. In particular, the fact that robusta and Arabica are most densely grown in different regions of the world have often helped the two varieties offset each others prices, insulating the market from annual shocks. Whereas robusta is most densely grown in Southeast Asia and Africa, Central and South American growers generally focus on Arabica beans. Yet as drought conditions settle in on the worlds foremost producer of robusta, Central American and Mexican farmers are struggling themselves. For the past four years theyve seen the rise of a deadly fungus known simply as coffee rust. According to University of Michigan professor Ivette Perfecto, it has been devastating. It has been a huge problem in Central America and the Caribbean, and northern South America, she said. This would be the equivalent of a drought in Vietnam. Noted by its namesake red discoloration of the plant leaves, coffee rust isnt a new disease but it is recently arrived as a plague to the Western Hemisphere. Its effects can lay waste to production. Over 200 years ago, when it struck Southeast Asian growers, it wiped out coffee production almost wholesale over entire regions. Thats why you have mostly tea production in that region, Perfecto said. When it was first introduced [in the Americas] people were freaking out," he added. "People thought this was going to be the end of coffee production in the Americas. And despite first reappearing over 30 years ago, the devastation didnt happen. For decades rust remained a nuisance, sometimes more, but never a regional threat. All that changed around 2012, when massive outbreaks of rust began to spread virulently across fields, particularly in Mexico. Now the blight is so common that many farmers say their yields are down to 60%, and others have given up altogether. No one knows what caused the outbreak. Perfecto theorizes that it has been caused by the specific combination of factors that farmers use to mass produce the Arabica beans. Fungicides, lack of biodiversity, even clear cutting all help to eliminate biological competition and ensure the widespread travel of the rusts airborne spores. The result, as many shoppers have noticed, has been a steady climb in the price of high quality Arabica beans over the past several years. This uncertainty, and the confluence of multiple simultaneous factors, also makes the rust notoriously difficult to deal with. Without an effective fungicide to combat the rust, farmers instead will likely have to rely on changing environmental conditions to make their fields more hostile to it (if researchers can figure for certain what is causing the spread). The trouble, however, is that it will take a long time and lot of effort before those results can see fruit. As the problem of the coffee rust gets people to abandon coffee [growing], she said, or to plant new, more resistant varieties, youre going to start seeing a decline. Now that the rust has spread, Perfecto explained, pushing it back will require conditions significantly more hostile to the invasive fungus than they were before. Simply going back to the growing conditions farmers used prior to the outbreaks wont be enough. In other words, getting rid of this blight will be a long, slow process, once farmers and researchers can even be certain how it spreads in the first place. For farmers who focus on growing robusta beans, again primarily in Asia and Africa, coffee rust is less of a problem. The robusta variety is considerably heartier in several respects, including resistance to disease. Which is why news of this drought, for anyone concerned about the price at the pot, is particularly grim. Vietnams weather conditions will hit the largest grower of robusta beans at the same time as a deadly fungus continues its march through the fields of Mexico and Central America. Two of the largest coffee growers in the world will see their production decline, one rapidly and the other as part of a years-old problem. The result will wipe out small farms around the world, the kind that operate on annual margins and cant afford to lose half their crop in a single year. It will also shake the commodities market worldwide. The price of coffee is about to go up and its only the tip of the iceberg. Early this morning, an absolute evil act was perpetrated upon the citizens of Brussels by some of the same people of the Paris attacks in November of 2015 (ISIS has claimed responsibility for both). My prayers go out to the souls who we lost today, while my heart goes out to their families and loved ones. But, from a market standpoint, it spoke quite loudly that it would not be affected by these heinous acts. And, similar to the aftermath of the attacks in Paris, the market rallied. There are those who believe world events cause changes in world sentiment. They may find it shocking that the market reacted in such a manner after such a horrific event. But it's just more proof that sentiment is not swayed by events. So, the market continued along its way, as it signaled that it has not yet completed its upside pattern. As long as the market maintains support, there are targets overhead that have still not yet been met. The iShares Russell 2000 ETF (IWM) has been stalwart in showing us the way. In following what is known in Elliott Wave theory as Fibonacci Pinball, a market in the heart of a 3rd wave often targets the 1.236 extension of waves 1 and 2, and then pulls back to the .764 extension before continuing higher. This is exactly the action we have seen of late in the iShares Russell 2000 ETF, as it topped last week just below the 1.236 extension and today pulled back to the .764 extension and then continued higher. Therefore, fully expect the market to continue to our next higher target regions as long as today's lows hold. The main point the market made today was that it continued higher despite bad news. When markets rally on bad news, it is a clear sign that they have higher levels to attain. But, as many have been attempting to short this market for the last 250 points up, we may finally be reaching a point at which a short may be advisable. Expect a pullback to at least the 2027 region in the S&P 500 once we top in this current wave, potentially this week. For now, resistance sits at 2060, but, if we are able to maintain the current bullish posture, a gap through it tomorrow points us to 2080. However, please take note that we are moving up into nosebleed territory, and the minimum downside target I have once we top up here is at least 30 points below the level we reside as I write this update. Ultimately, I finally believe we will be lower than we are today within the next few weeks, so maintaining an aggressive long side perspective right now is not advisable. See charts illustrating the wave counts on the S&P 500 and Russell 2000 (IWM) . This article is commentary by an independent contributor. At the time of publication, the author held no positions in the stocks mentioned. The Department of Education (ED) wants to extend the requirement for colleges to post irrevocable Letters of Credit--money that must be set aside when ED becomes concerned that schools will be unable to pay back money the Department provided for federal aid. As Chris Hicks put it in his February report Regulating Too-Big-To-Fail Education, "[a] Letter of Credit is collateral for a portion of the institution's federal financial aid, put up as assurance that if the institution closes, there will be funding to cover the costs" of a school's obligation to ED. Hicks led the Debt Free Future Campaign at Jobs for Justice. During the past five years, ED reported, officials have required Letters of Credit from colleges on more than 2,700 occasions, including institutions that got hit with the requirement multiple times. ED didn't identify the full list of colleges, but it wants to expand the grounds for posting Letters of Credit. "The Department is proposing to expand the set of reasons why a college might be required to post a Letter of Credit," said Mark Kantrowitz, publisher and vice president of strategy at Cappex, a Website that connects students with colleges and financial aid. "This will include situations where the college is at risk of losing accreditation or institutional eligibility for federal student aid funds, such as high cohort default rates, more than half the college's programs failing the gainful employment regulations, and the college being placed on probation by its accreditor. But the list of criteria does not seem to cover all of the scenarios that place taxpayer funds at risk." About two-thirds of the colleges that have been required to post Letters of Credit are for-profit colleges and one-third are non-profit colleges. The largest credit facility ED has drawn down, $1.7 million, was from Sojourner Douglass College, a private, non-profit majority African American college in Baltimore that closed last year because its accreditation was revoked. Colleges must be accredited for its students to get federal aid. Colleges are most often required to post Letters of Credit because they flunked ED's Financial Responsibility test. Non-profits especially have complained that this test is not an accurate measure of their fiscal well-being. "The U.S. Department of Education currently requires several hundred colleges to post Letters of Credit, mostly because of a failing score on the Department's Financial Responsibility test," said Kantrowitz. "On a scale of 1 to 3, colleges with a score of 1 or less are required to post a Letter of Credit and colleges falling under 1.5 may be required to post a Letter of Credit, depending on the circumstances. Colleges are also required to post Letters of Credit if they have failed to file annual reports in a timely fashion, undergone a change in control, or have demonstrated problems administering Title IV federal student aid. ED's Financial Responsibility test has been criticized throughout higher ed. Kantrowitz noted that prior to its bankruptcy filing last year, Corinthian Colleges was not required to post a Letter of Credit, a sign of flaws in ED's Financial Responsibility test. "Many of the colleges on Heightened Cash Monitoring (HCM) are not required to post Letters of Credit," said Kantrowitz. Heightened Cash Monitoring is imposed on schools deemed to be in dodgy shape. Schools on HCM must disburse student aid up front, then request reimbursement from ED, a demand that puts schools with cash flow problems in a bind. Normally, ED awards federal aid to schools in advance. "Some of the colleges that are required to file Letters of Credit are financially sound, said Kantrowitz. So there's a lack of precision in who is required to post a Letter of Credit and who is not." Kantrowitz said that an argument could be made that the Department of Education precipitated Corinthian College's demise because of a lack of awareness of the potential impact on the college's cash flow from Heightened Cash Monitoring. Others also believe that the 21-day freeze of federal payments when Corinthian was placed in Heightened Cashed Management caused its collapse. Regulating Too-Big-To-Fail Education noted that both Stanford University and Sofia University, a for-profit college with 250 students located near Stanford in Palo Alto, each got a 3.0 on ED's Financial Responsibility test, the highest possible score, even while Sofia University was on the verge of insolvency. Hicks noted that 15 for-profit colleges subject to Heightened Cash Monitoring for problems related to accreditation, programming review and Financial Responsibility, all scored a 3.0 on ED's Financial Responsibility tests in fiscal years 2012-13 and got over $39 million in ED money during the 2014-15 academic year. Hicks noted that "...for profit colleges have in some instances exploited loopholes in the Financial Responsibility score algorithm to inflate their scores, for instance by shifting expenses in discontinued operations by stating intentions to close or sell campuses." Budget 2016: Mr. Morneau, it did not have to be done this way [ COMMUNICATED CONTENT] Rochester, NY is an out of town community where Middos and Limud HaTorah are the focal point. Located in Western NY between Buffalo and Syracuse, being part of our close-knit kehilla means that you are not just another face in the crowd. Additionally, our community is only a 3 hour drive from Toronto and 4.5 hours from Monsey, making it easy to visit family and friends. The cost of housing along with the quality of the neighborhood is hard to believe. You can purchase a 3 bedroom home for around $150,000 and a 4-5 bedroom home for between $200,000 and $225,000. Here is an example of a home purchased by a frum couple in the summer of 2014. A 5 bedroom home for $205,000! CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT ROCHESTER, NY Our neighborhood is very clean, quiet and full of wonderful people. Career opportunities are available in a variety of fields, and we are happy to aid in job searches using our local connections and relationships with staffing agencies. Rochester has strong education and medical fields and is full of many opportunities for professionals. Rochesters Yeshiva Elementary school Derech HaTorah is anticipating openings for a half-time kindergarten Morah position and a half-time second grade Morah or Rebbe position for the 2016-2017 school year. There may be limudei chol positions available as well. If you are interested and qualified, please email your resume to [email protected] or call the school office at 585-266-2920. Whatever your stage in life, Rochester has something to offer. There are schools and Yeshivos to guide a person from preschool through Kollel, as well as many learning programs for adult men and women. Children receive personalized education from dedicated Morahs and Rabbeim who strive to help each student reach his or her potential through a variety of learning styles. Several Shuls and various Davening options for both weekdays and Shabbos, along with daily Shiurim round out the deal. Despite our size, Rochester is definitely a true Makom Torah. CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT ROCHESTER, NY If all that isnt enough to pique your interest, here is one more incentive for considering Rochester. Derech HaTorah of Rochester, our Yeshiva elementary school, is currently offering a fantastic tuition break for new students. New families pay a flat rate of $1,000 per year for ALL of their childrens tuition for their first two years in Rochester. Whether you will be sending one child or eight to DHR, your expense will still be $1,000 total. So, if you are looking to relocate your family to a community where you can make a difference, where your children will have wonderful, wholesome friends, and where Torah hashkafos guide your way of life, dont waste another day. We are waiting to welcome you. See our website www.TorahRochester.com for more details or contact t Ben at [email protected] or 631-336-1278 t to learn more or to schedule a visit. Click HERE or on the image below to visit Torah Rochesters Android app. [VIDEO IN EXTENDED ARTICLE] The suicide bombing attack shortly before 11:00AM Saturday morning 9 Adar-II took place on Istanbuls main pedestrian shopping street. Sky News reports outside a local government office on Istiklal Caddesi Street and Israeli sources explain that while intelligence community officials are not ruling out the possibility, it remains uncertain if the attack was targeting the Israeli group. The Israelis killed and wounded in the Shabbos morning attack were part of a culinary group visiting that country. It is the third suicide bombing attack in Turkey in less than a month, with the last being a week ago in Ankara which left 37 dead. It is permitted to release the identity of one Israeli victim HYD, Mrs. Simcha Dimri, 60, the mother of four from the southern city of Dimona. Her husband Avi is listed in moderate condition in a Turkish hospital. Israeli agencies are working to have all of the Israeli wounded taken to one hospital. Zaka and MDA teams are heading to Istanbul on motzei Shabbos along with physicians and other medical professional as well as equipment permitting the transport home of the seriously wounded. The IDF also has military transport planes standing by in the event they are required in assisting bringing the victims home. The Foreign Ministry situation room continues to remain in contact with Turkish government officials and agencies. Zaka is working to expedite the permits that will enable to bring home the dead for kvura in Eretz Yisrael. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) Vice President Joe Biden will make his most forceful call yet Thursday for the confirmation of Supreme Court nominee Merrick B. Garland in a speech set to be delivered to students and faculty at Georgetown University Law Center. The Constitution states it plainly and clearly, Biden writes in a Medium post published Monday morning and shared in advance with The Washington Post. All 100 senators have a duty to provide advice and consent on nominees, and help determine who sits on our nations highest court. . . . The full United States Senate must be able to work its will. Biden has become a prominent figure in the battle over filling the vacancy created by Justice Antonin Scalias death last month though not in the way he might prefer. Within days, Republican senators seized on a lengthy 1992 speech that Biden, then chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, had delivered on the Senate floor, arguing against the consideration of any Supreme Court nominee in that election year. GOP leaders have been quick to cite Bidens remarks ever since to rebut Democrats arguments that the Senate is obligated to take up President Barack Obamas nominee. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, for instance, mentioned the Biden rule in all four of the talk-show appearances he made Sunday. What we are using is the Biden rule, he said on NBCs Meet the Press. He made the point that a vacancy, had it occurred in 1992, would not be filled. In the Medium post, Biden gave a preview of his Thursday remarks, arguing that Senate Republicans are failing to fulfill their Constitutional obligation and noted that during his 36 years in the U.S. Senate including eight years as Judiciary chairman every single Supreme Court nominee got a hearing, a committee vote, and a floor vote. Period. [T]here is nothing in the Constitution or our history to support the view that no nominee should be voted on in the last year of a presidency, he writes, echoing points he made in a March 3 op-ed published in The New York Times. The 1992 speech came near the close of the years Supreme Court term, amid speculation that a justice might retire that year in hopes of having Republican President George H.W. Bush nominate his replacement. There was no retirement, and hence the Democratic Senate was never faced with the actual dilemma of what to do with an election-year nomination. But Biden at the time said Bush should not name a nominee until after the November election is completed, and if he did, the Senate Judiciary Committee should seriously consider not scheduling confirmation hearings on the nomination until after the political campaign season is over. Those words have proven to be a persistent thorn in the sides of Senate Democrats this year, who have been forced to rebut a respected former colleague in arguing for consideration of Obamas court nominee. During a Judiciary Committee meeting earlier this month, for instance, Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., argues that Biden talking about . . . somebody resigning to game the system in other words, a Republican-leaning justice voluntarily retiring so a Republican president would choose his successor. We are talking here about someone who is replacing a justice who has died, Franken said. No one dies to game the system. In the Medium post, Biden points to another part of the 1992 speech: If the president consults and cooperates with the Senate or moderates his selections absent consultation, then his nominees may enjoy my support as did Justices [Anthony Kennedy] and [David Souter]. But if he does not, as is the Presidents right, then I will oppose his future nominees as is my right. That remains my position today, Biden writes. Writing on a day when activists across the country are planning protests of the GOP blockade, Biden says the speech will go beyond the op-ed he has already published to touch on the real-life consequences of an eight-member court divided 4-4 along ideological lines: Its dangerous. And every single American needs to know what it would mean. Biden also writes that, in the speech Thursday, he will speak squarely to my colleagues in the Senate. Take a look at the argument youre making here. Consider, truly, whether its good for the American people and the country. Whether it does right by the Constitution. Whether it respects this sacred institution, he writes. Because the track youre on is a loss for the American people the people who elected you to act in their best interests no matter how you look at it. Do the right thing. (c) 2016, The Washington Post Mike DeBonis According to initial findings in the Duma fire investigation being conducted by the ISA (Israel Security Agency Shin Bet) and Israel Police, the latest fire in the PA (Palestinian Authority) village was not an act of terror or a hate crime for the evidence at the scene does not point to arson. Villagers told Israeli authorities that they heard a window smash and then an explosion, and they are confident that the attack was a second arson attack in the village. In the first case, which is viewed as a hate crime perpetrated by Jews, a number of members of the Darawshe family were killed in the fire. Despite the claims of a second attack by residents, forensics at the scene does not support the theory that the fire was arson, but rather an unintentional blaze. The investigation is ongoing and a gag order on the details of the case has been issued. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) There were many subscribers to Pelephone scratching their heads on Monday morning 11 Adar-II when their cellular service dropped. There were reports of service interruptions to subscribers in the Jerusalem and Central areas during the morning hours. The cause of the outages appears to have been a blaze that erupted in a Pelephone facility on Basel Street in Petach Tikvah. In a statement from Pelephone at 10:00AM it is explained a fire erupted in the facility at 7:15AM. There were no injuries from the blaze. Technicians continue working to transfer subscribers to working repeaters to restore service. The Ministry of Communications was informed along with other appropriate agencies and authorities. An announcement was made at about 11:30AM stating regular service has been restored to most subscribers impacted by the outage. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) Every year the Bnei Brak Chief Rabbi HaGaon Rav Yehuda Leib Landau Shlita has pashkavilim posted in the city calling on women to maintain their modesty during Purim. Mothers and teachers are instructed to warn the girls not to be on the streets on Purim night, citing and as such, they should celebrate indoors with family. The rav warns not to permit turning Purim into something it should not be but to maintain modesty as is done year round. Using Facebook to get her message out, MK (Machane Tzioni) Ksenia Svetlova accused the rav of discriminating against women, comparing his words RL to what one expects to Saudi Arabia and Afghanistan. She decries the fact that a civil service chief rabbi of a city dares to instruct women to remain indoors questioning how this is a womens place and why this is how women should celebrate Purim. She decries the fact that law is not applied to certain sectors of society and the appalling split in education, the exclusion of women, the separate education and xenophobia. The Bnei Brak Municipality should remove these plagues that degrade the culture and Jewish heritage and the great women in our history. Unfortunately, the Prophetess Devorah and Yael the wife of a friend and Ruth the Moabite could not receive even a minor position in the chareidi public today Svetlova continues. Another point to ponder: If this is how we would have acted in the megillah we would not heard about Esther and the Purim miracle and it probably would not have happened. She calls on supporters to back her post towards eliminating the shameful behavior towards permitting anyone and everyone to celebrate Purim amid the realization the miracle was brought about by a woman. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) On the Purim holiday it is traditional to dress up in a costume or mask to fulfill the spirit of the holiday in which God allegedly hid his face from the salvation of the Jewish people and instead brought about their salvation through natural means. In an ironic twist on the tradition the Ultra-Orthodox community in Israel is coming out in droves to purchase costumes and dress up as EMS paramedics from Israels national volunteer EMS organization United Hatzalah in order to honor true heroes who go out everyday to save peoples lives in Israel. The irony of dressing up as saviours is not lost on the community many of whom look up at these EMS technicians, paramedics, EMTs, doctors and first responder volunteers as true heroes and saviours of the nation. With United Hatzalah first responders, many of whom are Ultra-Orthodox themselves, responding to over 260,000 calls last year (over 700 per day), it is no mystery as to why they are viewed that way. Gavy Friedson, the Deputy Director of International Relations for United Hatzalah spoke about his experience with Haredi children emulating him and other United Hatzalah volunteers. It happens all the time. Every time I walk out of the office I get asked for a sticker or to take a picture with Haredi kids. These kids dont have TV at home and they see their brother or father or uncle going out and working for United Hatzalah or Zaka. They see their older family members zipping through traffic to go save someones life, so it is only natural that these people should become role models or heroes in their eyes. Fulfill a childs dream and let them be an EMT for a day so reads the ad put out by costume distributor Yossi Amar. We opened up sales in numerous locations around Israel and we couldnt believe how many we would sell. Weve sold over 1,500 costumes so far and that is still with a week and a half to go until Purim, said Yossi Amar. Amar is usually a medical and health supplies distributor for an organization known as Haderech LHatzil Haim (The way to save a life), but when it gets close to the Purim holiday he begins to supply costumes stores all over the country with the United Hatzalah costumes due to their high demand. Children are dreaming of becoming EMTs, Amar explains, parents call me continuously and want to dress their kids up like this. People are even purchasing real first aid kits to go with the costume and to keep for the house after the holiday so that they have one. Amar said that the demand is not limited to the Ultra-Orthodox areas but the demand is highest there. Many stores in Modiin Illit, Bnei Brak and Jerusalem which are all densely populated by Ultra-Orthodox communities have sold out of the costumes and have requested more from distributors such as Amar or from United Hatzalah themselves. In areas where kids are not allowed to dress up like soldiers or police officers due t community concerns, one of the prevalent alternatives that they have for costumes of positive role models that give back to the community is a United Hatzalah medic, Amar added. Amar illustrated how some families spare no expense in getting the United Hatzalah costume just right. Parents even dress up the bicycles of their children to make it look as if it is a United Hatzalah ambucycle. We supply stores with cardboard boxes that have sirens on them so that the kids can attach it to their bicycles, and they sell out. Amar said that currently the supplies have not met the demands and his company has been asked continually for more costumes and associated paraphernalia for these costumes. The kids look up at United Hatzalah medics as real life role models and superheroes. They are the real life Batman and Superman for these children, people who race to the scenes of emergencies to help save lives. Daniel Katzenstein a volunteer EMT with United Hatzalah has often been asked what the cost is that children of medics pay due to witnessing their father or mother heading into emergency situations, or sometimes even being dragged along with them on calls due to necessity. I dont know what the answer to that question is and Im not sure there is a way to tell. But I know that when I asked my kid what he wanted to dress up as for Purim and he said a United Hatzalah medic, I knew we were okay. (YWN World Headquarters NYC) A court in Poland has refused to drop the case against two British teenagers caught in June taking objects from the site of the Nazi Auschwitz death camp and has referred it to a lower court. Initially, the teenagers from Hertfordshire, in southern England, pleaded guilty to charges of stealing items from the historic site while on a school trip. But later their lawyers argued that the case should be tossed out, because the teenagers were not aware that the objects they took from the site of the former camps warehouses had special historic value. A court in the southern city of Krakow admitted the items were of no special historic value, but ordered a court in Oswiecim, where the former camp is located, to weigh charges of simple theft. (AP) When Ted Cruz headlined a recent fundraising luncheon in New York, the Baptist senator was presented with a gift: a menorah. It was very heartfelt, Mica Mosbacher, a Cruz supporter who was there, said of the feelings on both sides. He strikes a chord with the Jewish community. Cruz, the son of a pastor, has spent several years aggressively courting the support of Jewish voters, particularly those who are Orthodox. Touting his conservative views on Israel, his opposition to the Iran nuclear deal and his adherence to traditional values, Cruz has found a conservative niche in the Orthodox community in a Jewish faith that leans Democratic overall. On Monday, the Texas senator addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, which also hosted speeches by his rivals for the GOP presidential nomination, Donald Trump and Ohio Gov. John Kasich. Cruz said America must stand with Israel, compared the Iran nuclear deal to the 1938 Munich agreement with Nazi Germany, told the story of Purim and uttered a few words in Hebrew. We need a president who will be a champion for America and we need a president who will be a champion for Israel, he said. Last year, Cruz spoke at a dinner given by a Jewish organization in New York, attended a Passover gathering at a high-end California resort and met with Orthodox leaders in Brooklyn. He also has had numerous private meetings and fundraisers with Jewish voters in New York, South Florida and Los Angeles. Hes been reaching out to folks, I would say, pretty consistently, certainly once he entered the Senate, said Nathan Diament, executive director for public policy at the Orthodox Union. Senator Cruz has been very outspoken and aggressive and proactive in engaging on issues including Israeli security. Orthodox Jews make up about 10 percent of the U.S. Jewish population, according to a 2013 Pew Research Center survey. Fifty-seven percent of Orthodox Jews identified as Republicans or leaned toward the party and more closely resemble white evangelical Protestants than they resemble other U.S. Jews, the survey said. Diament said many Orthodox Jews are upset with President Obamas stance on Israel and the nuclear deal views that Cruz consistently lambastes on the campaign trail. Senator Cruz is certainly a contrast to that, Diament said. Cruz has vowed to rip to shreds the catastrophic Iranian deal, and he headlined a Capitol Hill rally against it co-sponsored by the Zionist Organization of America. He repeatedly says that Israel will have no greater ally than him, and he advocates moving the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Some folks have asked, Why has a Cuban Texan Southern Baptist become one of the leading defenders of Israel in the United States Senate? These issues for me are not abstract and academic theyre real and personal, Cruz said last year in New York at the Champions of Jewish Values International Awards Gala, which he attended with Republican mega-donor Sheldon Adelson. This is a room of Maccabees, Cruz said. This is a room of fighters. Cruz was invited to the New York event by Shmuley Boteach, a New Jersey rabbi and former congressional candidate who has arranged for Cruz to speak with a number of Jewish groups, including at a large Orthodox synagogue in Los Angeles. Many who attend the Los Angeles synagogue are of Iranian descent, Boteach said, and Cruz got a standing ovation for speaking out against the nuclear deal. Cruz also often tells Jewish audiences how his father was beaten and put in jail by agents of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista, he said. He speaks about how his father was imprisoned, and he can really identify with the plight of the Jewish people and the righteousness that surrounds it, Boteach said. At a Shabbat dinner at the Conservative Political Action Conference in 2012, Cruz was expected to stay for 45 minutes but stuck around for four hours talking about the Ten Commandments. Last year he visited Elie Wiesel in the Nobel Peace laureates New York apartment. Cruz said he was inspired by Wiesels life, telling the Holocaust survivor about his father. This is completely his comfort zone, said Jeff Ballabon, a Republican strategist who is Orthodox and attended the Shabbat dinner with Cruz. Cruz has been steeped in Judaism since he was a child, when he attended a Houston elementary school founded by Jewish doctors. Roughly half the school was Jewish, which led me to believe until I was ten that half the world was Jewish, Cruz wrote in his book, A Time for Truth. Every year wed play with dreidels, enjoy latkes, and celebrate Hanukkah and Christmas side by side, and think nothing of it. Cruz has held Hanukkah celebrations for his staff; his deputy chief of staff, Nick Muzin, is his primary liaison to the Orthodox community. In September, Muzin tweeted a photo of a rabbi blowing a shofar as Cruz watched. All were attending a fundraiser at the Bal Harbor, Fla., home of the Falic family, large donors to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Diament and others said many in the Orthodox community learned of Cruz after he was booed offstage while speaking in 2014 at a dinner for In Defense of Christians, which raises awareness about persecuted Christians in the Middle East. Cruz said at the dinner that Christians have no greater ally than Israel, and the crowd started to express its displeasure. If you will not stand with Israel, then I will not stand with you. Thank you, and God bless you, Cruz said as he walked offstage. That went pretty viral around the community in terms of his standing with Israel and the Jewish people, Diament said. Cruz traveled in 2014 to Israel, where he met with Netanyahu and other elected officials and, during a speech to the Knesset, blamed Palestinians for the breakdown of peace talks. In December he chaired a Senate hearing on Palestinian and Iranian terrorism that led the Palestine Liberation Organization to issue a rareand pointed statement criticizing Cruz for not including Palestinian viewpoints. On the campaign trail, Cruz tells crowds that Jewish voters are among those coalescing behind his campaign. Cruz and former candidate Marco Rubio both aggressively raised money among Orthodox donors, and many are expecting those who gave to Rubio to shift to Cruz now that the senator from Florida has left the race. Andrew Bronner, 18, a student who is Orthodox, went to see Cruz at a rally in Miami this month. Bronner said he likes that Cruz is not afraid to fight people in Washington and that he always supports Israel. Hes very pro-Israel, Bronner said. As a Jew, its my homeland. (c) 2016, The Washington Post Katie Zezima 09:55AM IL: [PHOTOS IN EXTENDED ARTICLE] Two explosions rocked the Brussels Airport a short time ago. According to reports from the airport there area at least 11 dead and 25 injured in what is believed to be a terror attack. More to follow. 10:30AM IL: MSNBC quoting federal police in Brussels reports it is yet to be confirmed that the explosions were a terror attack although this scenario appears likely. Witnesses state that heard two very loud explosions. 10:35AM IL: The blast occurred in the checkout area, a low security area servicing passengers who are departing. The blast according to foreign media reports was at Departure area 1, checkout 4. One of the airlines serviced there is American Airlines. MSNBC adds security in that airport is not too heavy, far less than one would see in the Middle East. Israeli media reports at present there is no reason whatsoever to believe this attack is tied to Israel. There are unconfirmed reports that two Israelis are counted among the wounded. 10:46: Sky News is reporting the airport explosions was a suicide bombing attack, quoting Brussels Public Broadcasting. That is to say the media is calling it a terror attack but authorities have yet to make this determination. There are eyewitness reports that Shouting in Arabic preceded the explosions in the airport. 10:52: TRAVEL ALERT: Israels Ports Authority advises all passengers to check with their airline regarding their flights. Israeli airlines in Europe are reporting that they are not being permitted to take off from Europe to Israel until midnight tonight. This impacts 24 flights that are scheduled to leave Europe today for Ben-Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv. As of 10:30AM flights continue on schedule at Ben-Gurion. There are no delays pertaining to flight departures at Ben-Gurion. Flights heading to Brussels have been diverted to another European airport. 10:55: Sky News reports the death toll has risen to 13 and 35 people have been severely injured in two explosions in the airport. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem/Photos: Media Resource Group) [VIDEOS IN EXTENDED ARTICLES] Two explosions rocked the Brussels airport and subway system Tuesday, prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe. At least 26 people were reported dead and dozens of others injured. One explosion occurred in Departure Hall 1, Checkout 4 in the Brussels Airport. According to survivors of the blasts, prior to the explosions they heard gunfire and then shouting in Arabic. The Israel Foreign Ministry situation room reports one Israeli has been wounded and is in light condition. The name (Yosef Chaim Yona ben Chaya Sarah Gitel) is circulating as among the wounded in the attack. It is not known if this is the Israeli or another Jew wounded in the attack and the condition of the person is not known. European Jewish Association (EJA) Director Rabbi Margolin told Israel Radio following the blast that he lives in Brussels and he is in the airport where the blast occurs twice weekly, attesting to minimal security. Many news commentators have stated the security in the airport is indeed minimal and one can enter and leave without being subjected to any type of inspection, as Rabbi Margolin reported is the case. An anti-terror expert interviewed by Sky News following the blast explained that security agencies were operating at Level 3 prior to the blast and have now moved to Level 4, the highest. He explained that the only difference between level 3 and 4 is the level of exchanging of information. At least one additional blast occurred in a metro station, apparently the Maalbeek station near EU buildings. In this presumed attack, an explosive device reportedly detonated in a crowded train car. There are an unspecified number of fatalities at that location. All metro stations in Brussels remain closed at this time. Europe to Israel are operating on schedule despite reports to the contrary earlier. In addition, takeoffs from Ben-Gurion Airport to Europe are operating. Two flights that were heading to Brussels have been diverted to another airport. Emergency cabinets are scheduled to convene in France and Britain as European nations are evaluating the attacks in Brussels today, Tuesday, 12 Adar-II 5776. Police in Brussels have instructed all persons to remain indoors. Among the wounded in Brussels is reportedly a Belzer chossid, avreich Chaim Weintrintz, who Bchasdei Hashem only sustained light injuries according to reports. Chaim, who lives in Yerushalayim, is in Antwerp for a family simcha. Family members were in the airport heading back to Eretz Yisrael when the attack occurred. He was injured lightly in a leg and being treated in a local hospital. What we feared has happened, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel told reporters. In this time of tragedy, this black moment for our country, I appeal to everyone to remain calm but also to show solidarity. Belgium raised its terror alert to the highest level, diverting planes and trains and ordering people to stay where they were. Airports across Europe immediately tightened security. European security officials have been bracing for a major attack for weeks, and warned that the Islamic State group was actively preparing to strike. The arrest Friday of a key suspect in the November attacks in Paris heightened those fears, as investigators said many more people were involved than originally thought, and that some are still on the loose. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Tuesdays attacks, and Michel said there was no immediate evidence linking key Paris suspect Salah Abdeslam to them. After his arrest Friday, Abdeslam told authorities he had created a new network and was planning new attacks. We are at war, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said after a crisis meeting called by the French president. We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war. (YWN Israel Desk, Jerusalem) The New York City Police Department is closely monitoring the situation in Belgium and is in close contact with our international partners and with the FBI. Until we learn more, the department has deployed additional counterterrorism resources across the city including: the Counterterrorism Response Command (CRC), the Strategic Response Group (SRG), and Hercules Teams. These teams have been deployed to crowded areas and transit locations around the city out of an abundance of caution to provide police presence and public reassurance as we closely follow the developing situation overseas. At this time, there is no known indication that the attack has any nexus to New York City. We will continue to follow the situation in Belgium closely with the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the FBI and adjust the departments deployments accordingly. These attacks come at a time when the federal government has proposed cutting terrorism funding to New York City by roughly 90 million dollars. Any cut in terrorism funding to New Yorkto what is widely recognized as the nations top terror targetwould be irresponsible. (YWN World Headquarters NYC) Deadly attacks Tuesday at the Brussels airport and a metro station in the city are the latest in a string of attacks in Europe in recent years. Here are some of the most recent major ones: Nov. 13, 2015: Islamic State-linked extremists attack the Bataclan concert hall and other sites across Paris, killing 130 people. A key suspect in the attack, 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam, is arrested in Brussels on March 18, 2016. Feb. 14, 2015: A gunman kills Danish filmmaker Finn Noergaard and wounds three police officers in Copenhagen. A day later the gunman, Omar El-Hussein, attacks a synagogue, killing a Jewish guard and wounding two police officers before being shot dead. Jan. 7, 2015: A gun assault on the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo kills 12 people. Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula claims responsibility for the attack, saying it was in revenge for Charlie Hebdos depictions of the Prophet Muhammad. May 24, 2014: Four people are killed at the Jewish Museum in Brussels by an intruder with a Kalashnikov. The accused is a former French fighter linked to the Islamic State group in Syria. May 22, 2013: Two al-Qaida-inspired extremists run down British soldier Lee Rigby in a London street, then stab and hack him to death. March 2012: A gunman claiming links to al-Qaida kills three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi and three paratroopers in Toulouse, southern France. July 22, 2011: Anti-Muslim extremist Anders Behring Breivik plants a bomb in Oslo then launches a shooting massacre on a youth camp on Norways Utoya island, killing 77 people, many of them teenagers. Nov. 2, 2011: The offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris are firebombed after the satirical magazine runs a cover featuring a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad. No one is injured. March 2, 2011: Islamic extremist Arid Uka shoots dead two U.S. airmen and injures two others at Frankfurt airport after apparently being inspired by a fake internet video purporting to show American atrocities in Afghanistan. July 7, 2005: 52 commuters are killed in London when four al Qaida-inspired suicide bombers blow themselves up on three subway trains and a bus. March 11, 2004: Bombs on four Madrid commuter trains in the morning rush hour kill 191 people in Europes worst Islamic extremist attack. (AP) President Barack Obama on Tuesday urged Cubans to look to the future with hope, casting his historic visit to the communist nation as a moment to bury the last remnants of the Cold War in the Americas. Obamas address opened a whirlwind final day on the island that includes a meeting with Cuban dissidents and attendance at a baseball game featuring the countrys beloved national team events made possible by the normalization of U.S. and Cuban relations 15 months ago. Havana is only 90 miles from Florida, but to get here we had to travel a great distance, Obama said during his address at Havanas Grand Theater. Despite the enthusiasm in both the U.S. and Cuba about the new relationship between the former foes, Obama acknowledged the deep differences that persist, including on human rights and democracy. With Cuban President Raul Castro looking on from a balcony, he called for citizens to be able to speak their minds without fear and pick their leaders in free and fair elections. The president was cheered enthusiastically when he reiterated his call for the U.S. Congress to lift the economic embargo on Cuba, calling it an outdated burden on the Cuban people. The embargo is loathed on the island. During a joint appearance with Obama on Monday, Castro called it the most important obstacle to Cubas economic growth. Obamas last day in Cuba was shadowed by the horrific attacks in Brussels, where scores of people were killed in explosions at the airport and a metro station. The president opened his remarks by vowing to do whatever is necessary to support Belgium. Throughout his presidency, Obama has sought to refocus U.S. foreign policy on regions like Latin America that have received less attention than the turmoil in the Middle East and the terrorism emanating from the region. The White House hopes that restoring ties with Cuba will benefit U.S. relations with other countries in Latin America, which have long bristled at Washingtons freeze with Havana. Critics of Obamas policy say hes given up too much with too little in return from Cuba, particularly on the issue of human rights. White House officials pointed to the presidents meeting with dissidents Tuesday as a sign of Obamas focus on Cuban repression, saying that allowing the gathering was a prerequisite for the visit. It was unclear exactly which Cuban dissidents would attend the meeting at the U.S. Embassy, a matter of much speculation and scrutiny here ahead of the presidents trip. Though Cuba has been criticized for briefly detaining demonstrators thousands of times a year, its practice of handing down long prison sentences has diminished dramatically in recent years. The issue of political prisoners is hugely important to Cuban-Americans in the U.S. and to the international community. Yet most people on the island are more concerned about the shortage of goods and their own struggles with local bureaucracy. (AP) Thousands of households that have bought electronics and furniture through a weekly payment scheme could be in line for compensation after a regulator crackdown. Dunraven Finance Ltd, which trades under the name Buy as You View, rents out items on hire purchase. This includes televisions that use a prepayment meter, which switch off if the customer misses a payment. Around 59,000 customers are due compensation payouts totalling 939,000 after the firm was found guilty of unfair practices. The regulator said the company did not set out its fees clearly to customers, it didn't treat customers who were in arrears fairly and the firm's assessments of customer's credit worthiness were not robust enough. The hire purchase company has agreed to pay compensation to customers by the end of 2016 The firm, based in Bridgend in South Wales, has agreed to pay the compensation by the end of 2016. A full rebate for failed direct debit charges will be paid out to 58,232 customers totalling 706,000 through a cheque or balance adjustment. The fees charged when customers took out a refinancing agreement will also be returned and 1,610 customers will receive a split of 74,000. These fees were usually between 30 and 45 for what was called a 'Fresh Start Refinance' plan and customers who paid these fees between November 2012 and March 2014, when they were removed, will receive redress. Customers who paid one fee for multiple items rather than separate charges for each, which typically would have been cheaper, may also be in line for a refund. A total of 3,877 customers had these plans, which were called 'modifying agreements'. Those who bought items in this way may not have been aware they were paying more. The firm says it will be getting in contact with these customers to see if these agreements, sold between 1 April 2014 and 1 August 2015, have caused them to suffer financial detriment and each customer will be treated on a case-by-case basis. The company says it has made a number of changes to the way it operates. The regulator says BAYV must compensate because it didn't treat them fairly or make fees clear BAYV said in a statement it had been collecting payments via a prepayment meter since 1972, in a similar way to energy companies. The meter is connected to the customer's TV and historically it was 'temporarily interrupted' when a 'suitable payment or arrangement' was made. BAYV will continue this practise, however It has confirmed it will now issue a default notice at least 14 days before cutting off a customer's TV access if payments are missed. From April 2014 the company stopped charging customers for refinancing arrangements and from 1 September 2015 it stopped applying fees when customers missed direct debit payments. In October 2015 an 'independent Skilled Person' was appointed to monitor how the firm planned to address these complaints. The hire purchase film used to cut customers off if they missed a payment on a TV agreement BAYV will start contacting those affected within the next two weeks so customers do not need to do anything and it has set up a page on its website giving further information to customers at www.bayv.co.uk/help/faq. Jonathan Davidson, Director of Supervision Retail and Authorisations at the FCA said: 'We are pleased that BAYV is working with us to address our concerns. 'It is important that firms meet our standards, including carrying out proper creditworthiness assessments and making sure that those in difficulty are treated fairly. We will continue, when necessary, to take action against inappropriate behaviour.' Graham Clarke, chief executive officer at BAYV, said: 'We have worked closely with the FCA in recent months to address these issues and I am sorry to any of our customers who may have experienced difficulties as a result of us not achieving the high standards we set ourselves. I am 24 and set to graduate from university this summer. I have no debt and 20,000 in savings, what should I do with it? R. J., by email Not your ordinary student: No debt and 20k in savings, what a fantastic way to finish your education It is fantastic that you are finishing education in such great financial shape. What you do with your savings largely depends on your plans in life. If you aspire to own a home soon then it may be a good idea to open a Help to Buy Isa. This is a type of tax-free savings account that the Government will top up if you use the cash to buy your first home. You can put in an initial deposit of 1,200 and then a further 200 a month. You can save up to 12,000 in this Isa and the Government will give you another 25 per cent 3,000 if you save the maximum. On top of that you will also earn interest from the provider with whom you take the account. Halifax has the top paying account at 4 per cent , and Virgin Money is next best at 3 per cent. If you think you may need your savings in the near future, perhaps to pay for further education or as a rental deposit, then you may prefer to keep it in an easy-access account so it is not tied up. The best easy-access Isas are currently from Coventry Building Society and the Post Office, both of which pay interest of 1.4 per cent. You could also earn interest by keeping your money in a current account. The Santander 123 account pays interest of 3 per cent on balances between 3,000 and 20,000. If you were to put your entire savings pot in this account, after the 5 monthly fee, you would have annual interest of 480. If you are willing to leave your money tied up for a minimum of five years, you might consider investing it in funds. As a young investor, you could opt for a riskier fund because you have time for your money to recover from any ups and downs. It is worth spreading your cash over at least a few funds and making sure they are not all risky choices, so you dont have all of your eggs in one basket. Sam Lees, head of research at Fund Expert, likes the Newton Asia Income fund for a risky choice. It invests in companies across Asia including Australian packaging firm Amcor, tech company Taiwan Semiconductors and resort operator Sands China. For a steadier choice, he likes the Old Mutual Global Equity fund, which invests in companies across the globe. Royal Bank of Scotland shareholders finally had something to cheer this morning, after the state-owned bank announced that it had regained control of its dividend payments. RBS, which is still 73 per cent owned by the UK taxpayer, confirmed it has paid the Treasury 1.2billion to end an arrangement giving the government priority over any dividends. The payment puts a stop to the Dividend Access Scheme, which came into being in 2009 after RBS was bailed out following the financial crisis. Payouts: The bank has not paid a dividend since 2008, the same year that it posted a mammoth 24.1bn loss However analysts cautioned that despite the announcement it was unlikely shareholders would receive a dividend from the bank any time soon. At the end of February RBS posted its eighth straight year of annual losses after being stung again by fines and misconduct charges. At the time of the results it did not expect to pay a dividend to shareholders in 2016, saying: 'We now consider it more likely that capital distributions will resume later than Q1 2017.' The bank has not paid a dividend since 2008, the same year that it posted a mammoth 24.1billion loss. Michael Hewson, at CMC Markets, said: 'I think it highly unlikely that RBS will be in any state to start paying a dividend in the near future. 'The share price is already 100p lower than when the government announced its sale of shares at 330p last summer. 'The bank needs to prove it has left its old legacy issues behind it and prove it has turned a corner with respect to its turnaround plan.' Modest: RBS - which has still yet to fully recover from the financial crisis - makes clear its modest payout ambitions on its website Ross McEwan, chief executive, said: 'On the back of progress we have made in strengthening the bank's balance sheet in recent years, I am pleased that we are today able to repay the UK Government 1.193billion to finally retire the Dividend Access Share.' He added: 'This is another important milestone in our plan to resume capital distributions to our shareholders, and represents one less hurdle in our path to build the number one bank for customer service, trust and advocacy.' The government has made clear it intends to sell most of its RBS stake in the next five years. It bought an 84 per cent stake to save the bank at the height of the financial crisis in 2008, but has since reduced its holding. Back in August last year, Chancellor George Osborne ordered the start of the process of offloading the government's stake in the troubled bank, raising 2.1billion. But the shares sold for a third less than the Labour government bought them in 2008 at the height of the financial crisis, sparking claims that Osborne had got the timing of the sale wrong. In lunchtime trading today, RBS shares on the FTSE 100 index were down 5.0p at 230.4p. Laith Khalaf, Senior Analyst, Hargreaves Lansdown said: 'Todays payment to the Treasury represents a step in the rehabilitation of RBS into a normal bank, but theres still an awfully long way to go. 'Dividends have been pushed back until the full extent of US conduct costs is out in the open, and the share price is still languishing well below what the government paid for the bank, which means its going to be some considerable time before the bank is weaned off taxpayer support. The future of scandal-weary credit card company CPP has been thrown into doubt by a bitter power struggle between its founder and the new leadership team. The firm, which was set up in 1980 by Hamish Ogston, was fined 10.5million in 2012 for misleading customers into buying worthless insurance for credit, debit or store cards even though they were already covered by their bank. Ogston, who made about 120million from CPPs flotation on the stock exchange in London in 2010, no longer works at the company but is still the biggest shareholder with a 42 per cent stake. He is now thought to be behind an attempt to get rid of the new management team that was appointed last year to transform the companys fortunes. In a statement to the stock exchange, CPP yesterday said it was surprised by demands for an overhaul of the board given that the companys overall performance has been strong. It said annual results published on Thursday will show a continuing improvement in performance reflecting a significant turnaround in performance under current leadership. CPP also noted that the share price has risen strongly over the past 12 months from around 3.5p to 10.5p having crashed from a peak of 329p in early 2011 following the mis-selling scandal. Shares rose another 18 per cent or 1.88p to 12.38p yesterday. Roger Canham took over as chairman of CPP in May last year and Stephen Callaghan, a turnaround specialist, joined as chief executive in July. But CPP yesterday revealed that Schroder Investment Management, which holds a 10pc stake, has demanded a shareholder meeting to remove four directors from the board, including Callaghan and Canham as well as two non-executives. Schroders wants to replace them with Cable and Wireless Communications (CWC) chairman Sir Richard Lapthorne and deputy chairman Mark Hamlin and former CWC executive Nick Cooper. CPP said it understands Schroders and Lapthorne are working together with Ogston, who was chairman until 2005 and a non-executive director until 2013. The 67-year-old was awarded a CBE for services to business and the community by Princess Anne in 2011 before the scandal broke. CPP said it was now in active discussions with the new City watchdog, the Financial Conduct Authority, over the lifting of restrictions to stop it selling products to new customers Sources close to the company said any signs that Ogston is pulling the strings at CPP again could stall progress made by the new leadership team with the City watchdog as it seeks to recover from the mis-selling scandal. After the company was fined by the now defunct Financial Services Authority, restrictions were put in place to stop it selling products to new customers, meaning that in the UK it can only renew existing business. CPP said it was now in active discussions with the new City watchdog, the Financial Conduct Authority, over the lifting of the restrictions. Inability to lift the current restrictions will have a material impact on the growth of the business and its longer term prospects, the company said. The CPP mis-selling scandal involved many of Britains biggest banks, building societies and credit card companies. About 23million useless policies were sold or renewed between January 2005 and March 2011 in what the City regulator described as widespread mis-selling. Airport development adding to economy, jobs in the region Pittsburgh may always be known as the Steel City, but a wave of new industries are popping up near its airport to redefine business in the region. TORIN HALSEY/TIMES RECORD NEWS District 69 State Representative James Frank was the keynote speak at the Wichita County Republican Women luncheon Monday at Luby's. Rep. Frank answered questions about the upcoming presidential election and other issues. SHARE By Christopher Collins of the Times Record News District 69 Texas Rep. James Frank, R-Wichita Falls, discussed Donald Trump, public school finance and the media, among other topics, during a talk Monday afternoon at a Wichita County Republican Women's luncheon. Frank told the audience of about 80 people that he didn't regret endorsing former presidential candidate Marco Rubio, who recently dropped out of the race for the GOP nomination. Frank said he's now on Team Ted Cruz. "I don't regret it," Frank said. "I regret that (Rubio) is no longer in the running. I liked that he's conservative and electable." Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump was invoked throughout the talk at times in conjunction with his ability or inability to lead the nation, and at other times for his apparent knack at tapping into a network of disgruntled U.S. citizens. "So many people view their candidate as 100 percent good and all the others as 100 percent evil," Frank said. "In my opinion (Trump) has some things which would make him a very good president, and some things which would make him a very bad president. There's a lot of frustration out there." Part of Trump's success this political season can be attributed to massive news coverage of his campaign, which "has truly been media-driven," Frank said. Add to that social media in which users are "trying to have policy debates in 140 characters or less." "I've been stressed out and losing sleep over the presidential election," he said. Audience members who asked Frank questions later in the talk appeared to be less interested in the national political theatre than they were in state affairs. One question-asker mentioned a recent Times Record News article which quoted a study showing the Wichita Falls Independent School District receives far less funding than most other Texas public school systems. "I would like to see a more equitable situation (regarding total school funding)," Frank said. "School finance is a big issue. (The school fund distribution system) is the most complex funding system ever created by man. I really believe the amount of funding in schools should be equal by the kid." As far as other state issues go, water is likely the most contentious one among state legislators, though Wichita Falls is flush for the moment, Frank said. "Our lakes are 100 percent full. The grass is green and God is good." The audience let out a peal of applause. Russian President Vladimir Putin, via a video link, addresses people marking the second anniversary of Russia's annexation of Crimea in Moscow's Red Square, as he visits the construction site of the Kerch Strait bridge on the Tuzla Island, Crimea, Friday, March 18, 2016. Russian President Vladimir Putin travelled to Crimea on Friday to mark the second anniversary of the peninsula's annexation and inspect construction of a bridge meant to link it to mainland Russia. (Mikhail Klimentyev/Sputnik, Kremlin Pool Photo via AP) SHARE "This is not a contest between me and Putin." President Barack Obama, Feb. 16, 2016, referring to the Syrian civil war. Think Russian President Vladimir Putin would agree with President Obama's assessment? We don't. Case in point: After flummoxing Obama by sending warplanes and troops into Syria last September, Putin caught his American counterpart flat-footed again last week when he sprang a surprise withdrawal of Russian troops. In essence he declared victory, and it's hard to challenge that notion. Putin restored Russia's mojo as a global power. He shored up his ally, Syrian President Bashar Assad, all but crippling the Syrian rebels. He helped sponsor a shaky truce that set the stage for renewed peace talks. Putin the Peacemaker? And that Syrian "quagmire" that Obama famously predicted would trap the Russians in an unwinnable war? Poof. Not that the five-year Syrian war is over, or that the cease-fire will hold, or that a Russia-and-Iran-backed Assad has defeated the rebels or Islamic State forces. But that misses the overarching geopolitical point: Putin dictates the terms. He takes the risks and reaps the rewards. He seeks to show that Moscow is a more reliable ally in the region than an ambivalent Obama's Washington is. In conflicts around the world, Obama and Putin spar for advantage. Putin has a big one: Time. Obama plays not to lose any more diplomatic or military ground to an aggressive adversary bent on reasserting a Soviet-style sphere of influence. Heading into the final months of his last term, a cautious Obama picks his battles and his adversaries carefully. He embellishes his legacy by bragging about backing down from that Syrian red line against chemical weapons he set in 2013. "I'm very proud of this moment," he told Jeffrey Goldberg in The Atlantic. "The fact that I was able to pull back from the immediate pressures and think through in my own mind what was in America's interest, not only with respect to Syria but also with respect to our democracy, was as tough a decision as I've made and I believe ultimately it was the right decision to make." Every leader likes to view history through the self-selected prism that vindicates him or her. But Obama's retreat from his own threat opened the door for Putin's successful advance into Syria. Did anyone else hear a hint of wishful thinking in Obama's "quagmire" predictions? Anyone else wearing a WWVDN lapel pin: What will Vlad do next? Putin delights in confounding conventional wisdom. He sent warplanes to turn the Syrian war. He annexed Crimea to the outraged squeaks of the international community. Remember Ukraine? There, a wobbly cease-fire holds while politicians squabble about how much autonomy to grant pro-Russian rebels in the eastern part of the country. Putin glowers in the background, the threat of another Russian military thrust focusing minds in Kiev. Obama who felt Putin's sharp elbows in his 2014 Crimea grab and his later Ukraine incursion plans a major buildup of arms to NATO countries in Central and Eastern Europe. Message: Don't get any more big ideas, Vlad. "This is not a response to something that happened last Tuesday," a senior administration official told The New York Times. "This is a longer-term response to a changed security environment in Europe. This reflects a new situation, where Russia has become a more difficult actor." Putin The Difficult, though, is placid. Those E.U. sanctions against Russia for its Crimea adventure, the ones that pinched hard? Some European leaders hint that they could be lifted by summer. Putin said recently that he is certain that relations between Russia and the E.U. "will be normalized." "It will happen sooner or later," he said, smiling inwardly, we imagine. Meanwhile, refugees continue to pour into Europe. The E.U. is still struggling to curb the flow and manage it better. Get ready for Chaos, The Sequel. That means more opportunities for Putin to exploit Europe's distraction: boatloads of refugees washing ashore. Putin's ambitions could be braked by crashing global oil prices and economic trouble at home. But don't count on it. Putin has 10 months to throw more elbows Obama's way, calculating that he probably won't get elbows thrown back. We hope he's wrong. Chicago Tribune In this March 17, 2016, photo, Judge Merrick Garland, President Barack Obama's choice to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, sits during a meeting with Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., on Capitol Hill in Washington. As Senate Republicans return home this week to tell voters why they are opposing President Barack Obama's Supreme Court nominee, seven have a bit more explaining to do. These GOP senators voted in 1997 to confirm nominee Merrick Garland to his current post on the appeals court. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) SHARE Roberta Faulkner Sund, Wichita Falls Nominee should be confirmed What a delight it was to turn on the TV and hear President Obama's eloquent speech nominating Judge Merrick Garland to be the new judge on the Supreme Court. It was an intelligent, well-reasoned explanation of why this man would be an excellent choice. This speech and the following reply by Judge Garland was such a contrast to the hateful rhetoric we have been hearing from some candidates on the campaign trail this year. Our senator, John Cornyn, has said he will stand with other Republicans to snub this nominee and not even consider him. The constitution is clear that the President SHALL nominate replacements for the Supreme Court as needed and that the Congress SHALL give their advise and consent. Senator Cornyn has said that he believes his constituents back his decision not to perform his constitutional duty. Well, this is one constituent who is horrified that Sen. Cornyn feels he is above the constitution. Sen. Cornyn was elected to follow the constitution and he should do so. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Albany Security was enhanced at airports, train stations and other transportation hubs, both in the Capital Region and downstate, in the wake of Tuesday morning's attacks in Brussels. The deadly events sent local colleges scrambling to account for students studying abroad in and near the capital city of Belgium this semester. Only two area institutions Siena College in Loudonville and Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs had students anywhere near the country, and all were located and deemed safe. Four Siena students were in the city Tuesday, including two who are studying there and two who were visiting during their study abroad time in Spain. Skidmore has 17 students currently studying in Paris and 25 in Madrid. Six of their students who are studying abroad through IES Abroad's European Union program were scheduled to visit Brussels this semester. A college spokeswoman said it is unknown whether that trip will proceed as planned. At Albany International Airport, deputies and bomb-detecting dogs were visible at curbside outside the terminals, Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple said, as officials reinforced the security perimeter. The heightened visibility also was intended to reassure travelers and to boost the public's awareness. "We do ask people to expect a little bit of a delay" at security checkpoints, Apple said. "They're going to be extremely thorough." The checkpoints were briefly shut down at one point, Apple added, after scanners detected something that first appeared suspicious but was quickly determined not to be. "Security at Albany International Airport is regularly adjusted to account for national and international incidents and intelligence," airport spokesman Doug Myers said. But both he and Apple weren't specific on additional steps being taken. "To disclose specific adjustments or procedures at Albany International Airport would be counter-productive to our security operations," Myers said. The Capital District Transportation Authority has moved to "high alert," spokeswoman Jaime Watson said. "There's been no specific threat to any of our buses or at the train station," she said, but encouraged rail travelers to allow extra time at the station. The Transportation Security Administration said it was adding security at rail and transit stations nationwide. The attacks were hardly surprising to Moech Amersi, a Belgium native who lives in Lake George and operates Surfside On The Lake Hotel & Suites. Belgian citizens have been on high alert ever since the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, she said. The country had feared its own attacks, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said Tuesday. "We've been on alert for a while," Amersi told the Times Union Tuesday. "I mean, in Europe, when there is a terrorist attack anywhere, it is not so far away. My friends and family back in Belgium, for example, are not in the capital but it only takes two hours to cross the country. It's a very small country." Amersi, who left Belgium in 1982 and arrived in the U.S. in 1984, said she worried Tuesday's attacks would only further anti-immigrant sentiments. "There are a lot of migrants in Belgium, and most of them are the good kind," she said. "This is giving them a bad name all over the world, which is not a good thing for anybody." Gov. Andrew Cuomo said State Police would assign troopers to both Penn and Grand Central rail stations, Queens Midtown Tunnel and George Washington Bridge. The New York National Guard is providing additional security at both Kennedy International and LaGuardia airports. And the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey was increasing police presence at its facilities and coordinating with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and state police on increased security at rail stations throughout the metropolitan area. eanderson@timesunion.com 518-454-5323 bbump@timesunion.com 518-454-5387 @bethanybump Albany New York's education policymakers on Monday took the most visible turn yet in the state's change of course away from the controversial Common Core learning standards and attendant "high-stakes" testing with the election of Betty Rosa to serve as chancellor of the Board of Regents. The former Bronx schools superintendent is the first Latina to lead the board, which is charged with overseeing all education activities in the state, in its 232-year history. Her election comes as New York begins the process of revising and in some cases, tossing out the most controversial aspects of reforms enacted by her predecessor, Merryl Tisch, a 20-year member of the board who served as chancellor during the state's rocky implementation of the learning standards. "As a board we must move from what was the so-called as people liked to label it reform," Rosa said moments before the board's vote. "I say, welcome the transformers. ... We are agents that are responsible for the well-being and health and the educational stances of all the wonderful children of the state. And we should, with our commissioner and the staff and the board, have a commitment to the issues of social justice and equity." Rosa's ascension is viewed as a major win for the parents and advocacy groups who helped fuel the nation's largest test refusal movement last spring, when 20 percent of New York's students opted not to sit for standardized tests. Opt-out groups endorsed Rosa for the top post in January, citing her "consistent rejection of the status quo" and stand against what they described as "shoddy policies" that hurt students and educators. In a news conference with reporters just after Monday's vote, Rosa toed a careful position on the chances for a repeat performance by the opt-out movement. While not actively encouraging parents to take action one way or another, she said, "If I was a parent and not on the Board of Regents, I would opt out at this time." "As a Board of Regents member, my recommendation is that parents should be informed and make their own personal decisions," she continued. "I really feel that there are many parents who have great arguments for why their kids should take the tests, and we need to respect that. I also respect the parents who make the choice to opt their children out." It's a position that differs slightly from the stances of state Education Commissioner MaryEllen Elia and newly elected Vice Chancellor T. Andrew Brown, a trial attorney from Rochester who joined the board in 2012 and won unanimous support from his peers Monday. Both Elia and Brown agreed that they respect a parents' choice to opt their children out, but said Monday they hope to see the number of opt-outs go down this spring. Pressed on whether she hopes to see opt-outs fizzle, Rosa skirted the question with a plea for New York to restore parents' trust by building state tests that appropriately assess a student's capabilities and growth. That's a key point for parents of children with special needs or for whom English is not a first language: The state's Common Core program has been slammed for treating students in a one-size-fits-all manner that disregards the academic growth of students in those demographics. Rosa has made a name for herself as a fierce advocate for children who face adversity whether due to poverty, language barriers or disabilities. Rosa spent the first decade of her life in Puerto Rico before moving to the Bronx, where she attended public elementary and junior high schools. She graduated from St. Helena's High School in the Bronx and went on to earn a bachelor's degree in psychology and a master's in education administration and supervision from the City College of New York, a master's in bilingual education from Lehman College, and a master of education and doctor of education in administration, planning and social policy from Harvard. Rosa has worked as a bilingual educator, an assistant principal and principal in special education, a professor and superintendent. As a superintendent in the Bronx, she oversaw a district of roughly 25,000 students and 30 schools. She joined the Board of Regents in 2008, representing Bronx County, and was re-elected in 2013. Regent Kathleen Cashin, who served as a superintendent in Brooklyn around the same time, recalled Rosa as a beloved but tough leader and someone who always did thorough research before making a decision. "We were appointed superintendents the very same night, and both of us were under duress immediately by our school boards," Cashin recalled. "I knew Betty was a winner. She turned that school board around by turning the schools around. District 8 had an affluent pocket but had a lot of poverty, and she turned that district around and was so well loved, even though she was regarded as a tough superintendent." New York's many education groups were largely relieved by Rosa's election, viewing it as another sign that the state's top leaders are finally listening to the concerns of students, teachers and parents. The New York State United Teachers and United University Professions unions, the Alliance for Quality Education, the state School Boards Association, and the state Council of School Superintendents were among the groups offerings congratulations to Rosa. But the pro-Common Core group High Achievement New York sounded a warning on Rosa's election and used the occasion to once again call on opt-out groups to back down. Taking the tests is the only way to know if the standards are working or to learn what needs improvement, they argued. "We are very concerned that Chancellor-elect Rosa was endorsed by a single-issue group whose sole aim is to take New York state back to a failed system where millions of children fell through the cracks," High Achievement said in a statement. "However, we are encouraged by her long tenure on the board and we're hopeful that she will work with us and recognize the voices of the majority of parents who want the highest standards and aligned assessments. We're confident that she recognizes that all children, no matter where they come from, deserve access to a quality education and the same expectations and hopes for their future." Both Rosa and Brown will begin their leadership roles on April 1. bbump@timesunion.com 518-454-5387 @bethanybump TROY An Albany man stole a quarter of a million dollars from the contracting company whose finances he handled, Rensselaer County prosecutors said. Jordan B. Henderer, 43, used his position as controller to make "fraudulent and unauthorized" bank transfers of $268,391 from HMA Contracting Corp. into his personal account, the District Attorney's Office said. CORINTH A dozen homes scattered through the town will share $330,000 in state funds to make them safer, according to Gov. Andrew Cuomo's office. The funds were awarded through the state Homes and Community Renewal program. Guilderland Following days of denunciation on social media and elsewhere in reaction to a Times Union story about how Hana Japanese Steak House and Sushi Bar refused to seat a blind woman because she had a guide dog with her, the restaurant issued an apology on Monday. It also said it "parted ways" with the manager responsible for the incident, who as recently as Friday continued to say the restaurant's policy, in violation of federal law, was to segregate patrons with service animals in a private room. The apology, posted on the Table Hopping blog, where the story originated, and on Hana's Facebook page, said in part, "The manager's actions were not in accordance with company policy and have caused great embarrassment to our establishment. ... Since Hana opened in 2009, the company's policy has prohibited discrimination based on race, color, religion, creed, sex, sexual orientation, gender identity, age, and disability." Mary Beth Metzger, the Latham woman featured in the story, said Monday afternoon she had not yet heard personally from a Hana representative. More Information Previous blog post: Hana restaurant: Patrons with service dogs should be segregated See More Collapse Metzger and a friend attempted to dine at Hana, the first visit for both, on Jan. 28. Because Metzger's guide dog, Foster, was with them, the manager refused to seat them, even after Metzger and three lawyers who happened to be behind her at the hostess stand explained that the Americans with Disabilities Act requires businesses to admit patrons with service animals and treat them as any other customer. After Metzger phoned police, the manager said he would allow her to dine in a private room, away from other customers. Metzger left. A disability-rights attorney working on Metzger's behalf was in contact with Hana repeatedly over the following weeks about accommodating Metzger's two requests: that a sign be hung near the entrance stating service animals are welcome, and that a training session be conducted for staff about customers with service animals and other aspects of ADA regulations. The apology mentioned discussions of such a training session. Metzger said Monday she is discussing dates for the class within the next month. It was unclear Monday if a sign had been posted; one was not visible during a visit on Friday. Since the story was published Friday night on Table Hopping and Saturday morning on the newspaper's Facebook page, thousands of comments, shares, tweets and other online reactions have been filed, almost all condemning Hana and many vowing not to patronize the business. The apology concludes with, "On behalf of Hana Japanese (Steak House), we offer our sincerest apologies and we will make an ongoing effort to maintain a welcoming environment for all guests. Thank you for your understanding in this matter." sbarnes@timesunion.com 518-454-5489 @Tablehopping http://facebook.com/SteveBarnesFoodCritic A Fulton County woman arrested in Cincinnati last fall for injecting Benadryl into her sick son's feeding tube was sentenced to 180 days in jail, with credit for time served. Jessica Valik, 25, whose son Jackson Baldwin has a rare skin condition, pleaded to misdemeanor child endangerment March 1 in exchange for prosecutors dropping felony charges. She was originally charged with two counts of felony child endangerment and one of felonious assault. Her child remains at Cincinnati Children's Hospital, a place Valik is no longer allowed after a judge ordered she stay off the property. Jackson is under the guardianship of his maternal grandfather, who the Hamilton County, Ohio, prosecutor's office said "either has or will be filing for custody in New York." Prosecutors said they had witness accounts and evidence of tampering to the child's feeding tube at Cincinnati Children's Hospital on Oct. 30. Hospital staff became suspicious after the child developed diarrhea for no reason. About three years ago, the story of Valik and her son struck a nerve in the Capital Region, leading to news stories and fundraisers. Since his birth, "Baby Jax" has suffered from epidermolysis bullosa, which causes his skin to blister at the slightest touch. Jackson underwent at least one bone marrow transplant out of state and countless other treatments to try to lessen his condition. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Schenectady A 15-year-old Schenectady boy endured the first surgery of a long recovery at SUNY Upstate Medical Center in Syracuse on Monday. Raymond Winchell III was badly burned in a fire in Washington County on Saturday, when a "freak accident" involving diesel set him aflame, family members said. Winchell, a 10th-grader at Schenectady High School, suffered second- and third-degree burns to his chest, hands, face, legs and throat. The surgery grafted skin from Winchell's thighs onto his hands and chest, where he received the worst damage, Mellissa Buskey, Winchell's aunt said. Doctors confirmed Monday that he had burns in his throat as he inhaled the flame, Buskey said. "The next step is to see how is body will take to the skin graft to determine how many more he'll need," Buskey said. Winchell had been camping with about half a dozen of his cousins on Saturday on a family gathering in Hampton. The cousins had split off, as they often did, to go into the woods. The cousins ranged in age from 15 to 26, with Winchell the youngest, Buskey said. "They were usually together, dirt-biking and four-wheeling," Buskey said. "A bunch of boys, that's what they like to do." At around 8:30 p.m., the cousins were gathered around a fire when someone poured diesel fuel onto it, according to State Police spokesman Trooper Mark Cepiel. The fire ran up the stream of the fuel can, which exploded, Cepiel said. The person holding the can flung it away, Alexis Winchell, Raymond's sister, said. The flaming can hit another cousin who deflected it with his arms in the direction of Winchell. A cousin threw a tarp on Winchell to get the flames out. Two of the cousins carried the badly burned boy down the trail to their uncle's home, where they waited for the ambulance. "They put him in a cold shower to try to rinse everything off of him," his sister said. Police said there was no criminal culpability and that no alcohol was involved. Two of the cousins had minor burns and were treated at Rutland Regional Medical Center, Buskey said. "It was just an accident, and unfortunately, my brother was caught in the crosshairs," Alexis Winchell said. A helicopter flew Winchell to SUNY Upstate Medical Center where doctors placed him in a medically induced coma as they hydrate his burned skin. An estimated 30 percent of his body is burned. The hospital lists his condition as critical. Although mostly sedated and in critical condition, he was becoming more and more responsive, Buskey and Alexis Winchell said. "At one point he tried to say 'mom,' but he couldn't," his sister said. Winchell's mother, father, step-father and two younger siblings now wait for him in Syracuse with help from the Ronald McDonald House. This leaves Alexis, who is 19 and eight months pregnant and the oldest of five children, to shoulder responsibilities at home with her 17-year-old sister. She said her mother could not go to her new job as a nurse, which she was supposed to start on Monday. "I'm taking on my parents' responsibilities," Alexis said. "I don't want my mom to have to stress herself out there about what's at home." Buskey said community members have helped out with food for the family. She set up a GoFundMe page, at https://www.gofundme.com/rev34p9k, which has raised $1,930 from 52 donors. Winchell's high school football team also plans to help out. Winchell was a lineman on the junior varsity team. Mark Cerrone, the Schenectady's head football coach, had an emergency meeting Monday with the team, and they decided to take up a collection and donate it to the GoFundMe account. "He's one of our own, we're going do this as a team," Cerrone said. Alexis started a Facebook group to build a support network for Winchell, https://www.facebook.com/SupportRaymond/ 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. 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. [March 22, 2016] Newegg Offers Support in Defense of LARPer Patent Abuse Victim Newegg - well known for its crusade against abusive patent asserters - today extended its support to another patent abuser victim, Jordan Gwyther. Gwyther is a youth pastor, father of two, founder of Larping.org, and an online reseller of foam-tipped arrows used for live-action role-playing (LARPing). Global Archery Products is suing Gwyther, alleging the foam-tipped arrows sold by Gwyther's company infringe on Global's patents. Gwyther argues the arrows he resells had been available many years prior to Global filing its patent applications. When Gwyther posted details of his plight online, Global and its lawyer attempted to silence him with a request for a gag order from the court. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160322005201/en/ Newegg is donating profits from the sale of its anti-patent troll t-shirts to support Jordan Gwyther's defense fund (Photo: Business Wire) Newegg has the hard-earned reputation of refusing to settle with patent abusers, often called 'patent trolls,' and for being willing to take cases to trial when other defendants settle. Newegg has invalidated a number of bad patents, such as the infamous Soverain Software patent, saving every online rtailer from having to pay the 'toll of the troll.' "After reviewing the facts and circumstances of Mr. Gwyther's case, Newegg believes Global's suit against him is an abusive overreach of intellectual property rights," said Lee Cheng, Newegg's Chief Legal Officer. "As a result, we intend to provide assistance to Mr. Gwyther, including the donation of profits from the sale of our anti-patent troll t-shirts to support his legal defense fund. We are also releasing three new t-shirt designs, including a limited edition design created in collaboration with Mr. Gwyther, to raise additional funds for his defense." Cheng added, "This case represents the same type of abuse of intellectual property rights Newegg has stood up to for years. Global Archery's patents would likely not withstand an invalidity challenge, but they are leveraging them to demand settlement terms that would effectively force this enthusiast and entrepreneur out of business." Lee Cheng is widely regarded as Newegg's 'Chief Troll Hunter.' His successful defense against numerous so-called 'patent trolls' caused a steady decline of patent cases brought against the company. In fact, one patent assertion entity that recently sued a Newegg subsidiary, Rosewill (Newegg's private-label brand), dropped its case upon discovering the company was wholly owned by Newegg. Cheng continued, "Newegg has faced similar demands from parties with aggressive counsel asserting patents and trademarks who offered to drop their lawsuits if we would acknowledge their questionable rights. If we had agreed, we would not have been able to offer whole lines of non-competing products to our customers. Unfortunately, non-practicing entities are not the only parties abusing IP rights - trolls and litigation abusers come in all shapes and sizes. We are proud to have an opportunity to help an entrepreneur with a passion for his business and community." To join in the fight, contribute to Jordan Gwyther's GoFundMe campaign here or purchase a Newegg anti-patent troll t-shirt here. About Newegg Inc. Newegg Inc. is the leading electronics-focused e-retailer in the United States. It owns and operates Newegg.com (www.newegg.com) which was founded in 2001 and regularly earns industry-leading customer service ratings. The award-winning website has more than 25 million registered users and offers customers a comprehensive selection of the latest consumer electronics products, detailed product descriptions and images, as well as how-to information and customer reviews. Using the site's online tech community, customers have the opportunity to interact with other computer, gaming and consumer electronics enthusiasts. Newegg Inc. is headquartered in City of Industry, California. The Newegg Hybrid Center is located at 18045 Rowland St., City of Industry, CA (News - Alert) 91748. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160322005201/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 22, 2016] SheKnows Media and the Ms. Foundation Announce Finalists for #TheFWord Short-Form Video Contest SheKnows Media, a leading women's media company with 91 million unique visitors per month* and 269 million social media fans and followers, today announced the top six finalists for #TheFWord short-form video contest designed to ignite conversation about feminism today. SheKnows Media kicked off #TheFWord video contest with the Ms. Foundation for Women in January to understand perspectives on feminism through the lens of intersectionality and powerful, personal storytelling. More than 100 two- to three-minute videos were submitted by people of all genders, ages and ethnicities. For the next phase of the competition, the public is invited to vote for their favorite video from among the following six finalists by going to: https://thefword.splashthat.com. Individuals can vote once per day until 11:59 p.m. Eastern on April 3, 2016. "Peighton" - The story of a young girl who has to make the decision to either confirm to society or stay true herself, created by Kevin Brooks. - The story of a young girl who has to make the decision to either confirm to society or stay true herself, created by Kevin Brooks. "Same Fight" - Anne Troup's video featuring a song about the global gender pay gap. - Anne Troup's video featuring a song about the global gender pay gap. "The F Word" - Mashuq Deen, a transgender man, explains why feminism is important for everyone - men included. - Mashuq Deen, a transgender man, explains why feminism is important for everyone - men included. "The Talk" - Created by Lauren Schacher and Nico Raineau, this video takes the format of a feminist comedy set In the near future in which two parents have "the talk" with their children. - Created by Lauren Schacher and Nico Raineau, this video takes the format of a feminist comedy set In the near future in which two parents have "the talk" with their children. "This Part of Me" - Alex Regalado produced this video with the theme, "Feminism: Together, we're more than the sum of our parts." - Alex Regalado produced this video with the theme, "Feminism: Together, we're more than the sum of our parts." "Twist Endings" - A dynamic, interactive video that pairs scenes stereotypical of men and women with unexpected endings, created by Zanzibar Moore. The winning video will be revealed during SheKnows Media's Digital Content NewFronts presentation on May 9, 2016 in New York City. Shiri Appleby, actress and star of "Unreal," "Girls" and "Roswell," said of her experience evaluating the video entries, "I was so thrilled to be asked to judge #TheFWord contest because I was curious about seeing the work that would be submitted by these young artists on the topic of feminism. Watching the semi-finalists' shorts was an eye opening experience. Each piece of work celebrated feminism in a different light and together, as a whole, created a point of view by our young generation of filmmakers that felt unique and specific. I am so looking forward to seeing these young artists bloom and continue to create for the benefit of us all." Matt McGorry, actor from "How to Get Away With Murder" and "Orange (News - Alert) Is The New Black," and a judge for #TheFWord, said, "Feminism is about equality. It's not a word that we should shy away from, and if anything we should boldly embrace it. I was honored to be a judge in #TheFWord contest, and it was great to see so many thoughtful and heartfelt films based around original interpretations of equality." Appleby and McGorry were joined by the following high-profile panel of judges who helped determine #TheFWord finalists: Shiri Appleby, actress and star of "Unreal," "Girls" and "Roswell" actress and star of "Unreal," "Girls" and "Roswell" Laura Benanti , Tony Award-winning Broadway and television actress ("Gypsy," "Nashville," and "Supergirl") , Tony Award-winning Broadway and television actress ("Gypsy," "Nashville," and "Supergirl") Connie Britton, Emmy-nominated actress, with stand-out roles on series such as "Nashville," "American Horror Story" and "Friday Night Lights" Emmy-nominated actress, with stand-out roles on series such as "Nashville," "American Horror Story" and "Friday Night Lights" Christina Escobar , Director of Communications, The Representation Project , Director of Communications, The Representation Project Tonya Lewis Lee , producer, entrepreneur and writer , producer, entrepreneur and writer Matt McGorry , actor from "How to Get Away With Murder" and "Orange Is The New Black" , actor from "How to Get Away With Murder" and "Orange Is The New Black" Alexandra Posen , artist and co-founder of Zac Posen , artist and co-founder of Zac Posen Franchesca Ramsey , writer, actress and video blogger best known for her Chescaleigh Comedy channel and host of "MTV Decoded" , writer, actress and video blogger best known for her Chescaleigh Comedy channel and host of "MTV Decoded" Michael Skolnik , civil rights activist and former President of Russell Simmons' GlobalGrind.com , civil rights activist and former President of Russell Simmons' GlobalGrind.com Salt N Pepa, Spinderella , musicians , musicians Jamia Wilson , Executive Director at Women, Action and the Media , Executive Director at Women, Action and the Media Teresa C. Younger, President and Chief Executive Officer, Ms. Foundation Teresa C. Younger, President and Chief Executive Officer, Ms. Foundation. "Equality for all cannot happen without making sure people of all genders, backgrounds and ethnicities are included, so to see a diverse cross section of people identify with the concept of feminism was truly encouraging." As part of SheKnows Media's exploration of the current state of feminism, the company recently unveiled new, proprietary, third-party validated research to gauge how women of all backgrounds view the concept of feminism, whether or not they self-identify as a feminist, and if they perceive feminism to have a tangible impact on their day-to-day lives, careers and relationships. More than 1,600 individuals responded to the online survey - the results of which were first published in The New York Times on March 11, 2016. Click here to view the survey results and to request the full set of findings. "While the focus on feminism is reinvigorated by what we're seeing in the press, from Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign to Emma Watson's United Nations speech to Gloria Steinem's television appearance, we realized there was still a wide gap in understanding how everyday women and men from all walks of life think about and identify with the movement," said Samantha Skey, SheKnows Media's President and Chief Revenue Officer. "As a media company that serves women and is dedicated to our mission of women inspiring women, we felt it was incumbent upon us to launch #TheFWord video contest and study - both of which have produced results that are incredibly insightful. Now, we are pleased to bring #TheFWord video contest to the public to vote for the video they think best represents their views on feminism." For more information about #TheFWord, email [email protected]. To learn more about SheKnows Media, visit corporate.sheknows.com. *comScore (News - Alert), Media Metrix, Multiplatform Key Measures Report, January 2016, U.S. About SheKnows Media SheKnows Media is the number-one women's lifestyle digital media company with 91 million unique visitors per month (comScore, Media Metrix, Multiplatform Key Measures Report, January 2016, U.S.) and 269 million social media fans and followers. The company operates a family of leading media properties that include SheKnows.com, BlogHer.com and StyleCaster.com. SheKnows Media also organizes the conference #BlogHer16: Experts Among Us, the largest annual celebration of women online content creators, social media influencers and brand executives, taking place in Los Angeles, August 4-6, 2016. With a mission of women inspiring women, SheKnows Media is revolutionizing the publishing industry by forging a new kind of model that seamlessly integrates users, editors and content creators onto a single platform designed to empower all women to discover, share and create. Whether it's parenting or pop culture, fashion or food, DIY or decor, our award-winning editorial team, Experts, bloggers and social media influencers produce authentic and on-trend content every day. We dig deep to learn what makes our audience tick, revealing unexpected insights on women and digital media. Our robust, end-to-end suite of premium branded content and influencer marketing solutions generate more than 2 billion ad impressions per month (sources: DFP), allowing brands to distribute authentic content and integrated advertising at scale. SheKnows Media is based in New York and Scottsdale, Ariz., with offices in Los Angeles, Chicago and Redwood City, Calif. We also operate internationally in Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom. About the Ms. Foundation for Women For over 40 years, the Ms. Foundation for Women has secured women's rights and freedoms with a special commitment to building the power of low-income, immigrant and women of color. The foundation invests funds, time, expertise and training in organizations nationwide. The Ms. Foundation, works to bring attention to the real challenges facing women, especially women of color and low-income women who are living in poverty, working paycheck to paycheck or both. We tirelessly advocate for national and statewide policy change that will address these challenges, and we support more than 100 organizations throughout the country that are working for change on a grassroots level. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160322006241/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 21, 2016] Immunodiagnostics Market in China to Grow at a CAGR of Close to 19% in 2020, According to Technavio According to the latest market study released by Technavio, the immunodiagnostics market in China is set to reach USD 2.9 billion by 2020, growing at remarkable CAGR of close to 19%. This research report titled 'Immunodiagnostics Market in China 2016-2020,' provides an in-depth analysis of the market in terms of revenue and emerging market trends. This market research report also includes up to date analysis and forecasts for various market segments and all geographical regions. Request sample report: http://goo.gl/joSIVM The immunodiagnostics market in China is segmented into three different mode of operation: Automated systems Semi-automated systems Manual systems Semi-automated systems Semi-automated systems are open systems where limited manual intervention is involved to process and analyze samples. They are used for plate washing, sample or reagent addition, and incubation. A majority of these systems are standalone immunoanalysis systems that are available as large-, medium-, and small-sized instruments, which cater to different clinical and laboratory applications. "Semi-automated systems have a share of more than 55% in the immunodiagnostics market in China. They are preferred by small- and medium-sized facilities," says Barath Palada, a lead analyst at Technavio for in-vitro diagnostics. However, the report indicates that increasing preference for automated systems will have an impact on the adoption of semi-automated systems in the future. The majority of local vendors in China offer these systems at affordable prices. Automated systems Automated systems account for a 37.15% share of the market in 2015, with both foreign and local vendors offering them. Automated analyzers are usually employed in laboratories for HTS. They also help limit the manual and sample processing errors to render he most accurate results. The sample processing and analysis is highly streamlined, with no manual intervention during the aliquot preparation. These analyzers are employed in large-, medium-, and small- sized clinical laboratories. "In China, automated systems are employed in almost all Class III hospitals and in a limited number of Class II hospitals, indicating that the market for automated analyzers is growing in the region," says Barath. Manual systems Manual screening methods are adopted in primary healthcare centers, especially in towns and villages, due to limited budgets. The manually used instruments segment holds 7.50% of the market. Government initiatives to increase healthcare budgets and upgrade hospitals to the standard norms of hospital classification is expected to boost the adoption of automated systems in these institutions, plummeting the growth and share of manual instruments in the market during the forecast period. Competitive vendor landscape The competition in the immunodiagnostics market in China is intense because of the growing demand for immunodiagnostics tests and their impact on medical decisions. The growing older population and urbanization have put forth huge opportunities for vendors to grow and expand their businesses. Further, the rise in the number of hospitals and increase in adoption of immunodiagnostic tests at grassroots levels have presented new opportunities for vendors. The introduction and effective implementation of healthcare reforms benefits large manufacturers as almost every citizen in the country undergoing diagnosis and treatment will be covered under reimbursements. Key news: July 2015 : DIAsource 25OH Vitamin D ELISA is cleared by the CFDA : DIAsource 25OH Vitamin D ELISA is cleared by the CFDA July 2015 : DiaSorin and Beckman Coulter sign a distribution partnership agreement to market their products for hepatitis and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) test in China. : DiaSorin and Beckman Coulter sign a distribution partnership agreement to market their products for hepatitis and human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) test in China. July 2015: Roche Diagnostics introduces two new tests to its serology assay portfolio, which will help detect the human T-lymphotropic virus-I/II infection in donated blood samples The top vendors highlighted by Technavio's research analysts in this report are: Abbott Diagnostics Beckman Coulter Trading (China) bioMerieux China DiaSorin Mindray Roche Diagnostics Siemens (News - Alert) Healthcare Diagnostics (Shanghai) Sysmex Medical Electronics (Shanghai) Browse Related Reports: Global Bone and Mineral Diagnostic Testing Market 2015-2019 USA In-Vitro Diagnostics Vitamin D Testing Market 2015-2019 Global Immunodiagnostics 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 [email protected] 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 [email protected]. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160321005551/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 22, 2016] JinkoSolar Attends the BOAO Forum For Asia (BFA) Annual Conference, 2016 BOAO, China, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- JinkoSolar Holding Co., Ltd. ("JinkoSolar" or the "Company") (NYSE: JKS), a global leader in the PV industry, today announced that it was invited to attend the Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) Annual Conference, 2016 to deliver a speech during the infrastructure session of the B20 Special Workshop. JinkoSolar will be discussing the role of solar PV power on the "Energy Internet," and strengthening regional connectivity and cooperation to improve the electricity infrastructure. The Company will also attend the Global Energy Outlook 2016, an open dialogue with BFA Board of Directors discussing opportunities for renewable energy during the "low oil price era". The Boao Forum for Asia (BFA) 2016, carrying the theme "Asia's New Future: New Dynamics and New Vision," and will focus on new challenges in Asian and emerging economies with the goal of injecting new vitality into the world's economy. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang will attend the opening ceremony. "We are greatly honored to be invited to The Business 20 (B20) Special Workshop during the annual meeting of the Boao Forum for Asia. As the only renewable energy company at the infrastructure session, we are committed to represent the industry expressing common opinions and recommendations to G20 members and multinational governors as to the importance of establishing a strong, sustainable and balanced growth in the global energy infrastructure development," said Xiande Li, Chairman of JinkoSolar, said prior to the four-day event. "The widespread use of solar PV energy ends the monopolization of the energy market which used to be dominated by a handful of large utility and fossil fuel companies. Distributed Generation (DG) is expected to be one of the biggest drivers of change in the utility business models. The hundreds and thousands of distributed solar power plants across the country creates an energy internet. The energy internet changes the way the electricity is produced, distributed, consumed and traded due to the increasingly favorable economics of solar installations," the Chairman concluded. "People always look for greater reliability reduced cost and lower pollution from energy systems. The vision to build an energy internet using decentralized solar PV energy as a mainstream power source will promote this vision across all continents. Through international cooperation, and with imagination, inspiration, investment and implementation, our global energy interconnection can be created in the foreseeable future to benefit all of mankind," said Xiande Li, Chairman of JinkoSolar. About JinkoSolar Holding Co., Ltd. JinkoSolar (NYSE: JKS) is a global leader in the solar industry. JinkoSolar distributes its solar products and sells its solutions and services to a diversified international utility, commercial and residential customer base in China, the United States, Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, Chile, South Africa, India, Mexico, Brazil, the United Arab Emirates, Italy, Spain, France, Belgium, and other countries and regions. JinkoSolar has built a vertically integrated solar product value chain, with an integrated annual capacity of 3 GW for silicon ingots and wafers, 2.5 GW for solar cells, and 4.3 GW for solar modules, as of December 31, 2015. JinkoSolar also sells electricity in China, and had connected approximately 1,006.6 MW of solar power projects to the grid, as of December 31, 2015. JinkoSolar has over 15,000 employees across its 5 productions facilities in Jiangxi and Zhejiang Provinces, China, Malaysia, Portugal and South Africa, 12 global sales offices in China, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Morocco, Ghana, Brazil, Costa Rica and Mexico and 11 oversea subsidiaries in Germany, Italy, Switzerland, the United States, Canada, Australia, Singapore, Japan, India, South Africa and Chile. To find out more, please see: www.jinkosolar.com Safe Harbor Statement This press release contains forward-looking statements. These statements constitute "forward-looking" statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended, and as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements can be identified by terminology such as "will," "expects," "anticipates," "future," "intends, "plans," "believes," "estimates" and similar statements. Among other things, the quotations from management in this press release and the Company`s operations and business outlook, contain forward-looking statements. Such statements involve certain risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements. Further information regarding these and other risks is included in JinkoSolar`s filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, including its annual report on Form 20-F. Except as required by law, the Company does not undertake any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. For investor and media inquiries, please contact: In China: Mr. Sebastian Liu JinkoSolar Holding Co., Ltd. Tel: +86 21 5183 3056 Email: [email protected] To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/jinkosolar-attends-the-boao-forum-for-asia-bfa-annual-conference-2016-300239396.html SOURCE JinkoSolar Holding Co., Ltd. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 22, 2016] TomTom Traffic Index: Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal rank as the most congested cities in Canada Congestion rates drop in nation's three biggest cities TORONTO, March 22, 2016 /CNW/ - TomTom (TOM2) today released the results of the TomTom Traffic Index 2016, an annual report detailing the cities around the world with the most traffic congestion. The report, released every year to help drivers, cities and transport planners understand traffic congestion, highlights trends and ways to improve congestion globally. The TomTom Traffic Index looks at the traffic congestion in 295 cities in 38 countries, and is based on 14 trillion data points that have been accumulated over eight years. The new report shows a change in the historical trend of increasing congestion in Canada with a drop noted in 11 of the 12 Canadian cities listed in the index. This means that the average amount of time drivers wasted sitting in traffic* declined over the last index. In Toronto, the average driver saved 11 hours not sitting in traffic congestion. For Vancouver, nearly four hours were saved, and in Montreal - almost half an hour. This traffic congestion decrease marks the first drop in Vancouver since 2010 and the first drop in Toronto and Montreal since 2012. TomTom experts attribute the improved congestion rates across the country to new government-led traffic management policies and investments in infrastructure. Despite the improved rates, commuters in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal can expect to spend nearly 30 per cent extra time traveling due to congestion, which amounts to an average of 126 hours* of extra travel time per year slightly more than five full days. The next most congested cities in Canada are Ottawa (26 per cent), Halifax (26 per cent) and Winnipeg (22 per cent). The TomTom Traffic Index now in its fifth year of public release breaks down not only the best and worst times to hit the road but also which days are the most traffic-clogged a great benefit for motorists looking to travel faster. "We really want everybody to think about how they can lower the amount of time they waste in traffic every day and to realize that we all need to play a part," said Ralf-Peter Schaefer, vice president of TomTom Traffic. "We can help businesses plan smarter working hours to help their employees avoid traveling during rush hour. And we give drivers the real-time traffic information and smart routing they need to avoid congested roads and get to where they want to be, faster," Schaefer said. TomTom, based in Amsterdam, has worked with travel planners worldwide, offering the traffic data to help enhance mobility plans, smart city strategies and public transit and infrastructure. The information, gathered in part from navigational devices, also can be used by motorists at peak traffic periods to consider different departure times to avoid hang ups or to use other means of travel. "Dare to follow a new route suggested by your navigation system," Schaefer said. "Consider other modes of travel maybe the fastest way to get to work is by bike, on public transport, or even by foot." Additional highlights of the 2016 TomTom Traffic Index for Canada: Average overall congestion in Canada for the major cities is 25 per cent, with a decrease in congestion from 27 per cent over the last index for the major cities is 25 per cent, with a decrease in congestion from 27 per cent over the last index Congestion rates in 11 of the 12 Canadian cities listed in the index have improved with an overall decrease in congestion. Vancouver's congestion rate has decreased by one per cent, Toronto's by three per cent, and Montreal's by one per cent. Most notably, Winnipeg , listed as the sixth most congested city in Canada has a decreased congestion rate of four per cent. Calgary's traffic congestion rate has dropped by three per cent. congestion rate has decreased by one per cent, by three per cent, and by one per cent. Most notably, , listed as the sixth most congested city in has a decreased congestion rate of four per cent. traffic congestion rate has dropped by three per cent. Based on populations of above 800,000, the most congested cities in Canada continue to be Vancouver and Toronto with the least congested city in Canada being Calgary continue to be and with the least congested city in being The average evening rush hour congestion rate in Canada is 47 per cent, down 10 per cent from the last index where a 57 per cent congestion rate was measured is 47 per cent, down 10 per cent from the last index where a 57 per cent congestion rate was measured Despite improved congestion rates, the average Canadian is reported to lose nearly 99 hours stuck in traffic Thursday evening is the most congested evening commute based on the 12 Canadian cities in the index. Exceptions to this are found in Edmonton , Quebec , Calgary and Hamilton . The TomTom Traffic Index, individual city rankings and the congestion levels can be accessed at http://www.TomTom.com/TrafficIndex The portal also provides helpful advice on beating traffic and, for the first time, a selection of "Profile Cities" that provides insight into what they are doing to improve mobility. Overall ranking of the 13 most congested cities in Canada in 2015 (Overall daily congestion level extra travel time): 1 Vancouver 34% 7 Edmonton 22% 2 Toronto 28% 8 Quebec 21% 3 Montreal 26% 9 Calgary 21% 4 Ottawa 26% 10 London 19% 5 Halifax 26% 11 Hamilton 18% 6 Winnipeg 16% 12 Kitchener-Waterloo 16% Ranking of the most congested cities globally in 2015 (Overall daily congestion level extra travel time population over 800,000): 1 Mexico City 59% 6 Bucharest 43% 2 Bangkok 57% 7 Salvador 43% 3 Istanbul 50% 8 Recife 43% 4 Rio De Janeiro 47% 9 Chengdu 41% 5 Moscow 44% 10 Los Angeles 41% Ranking of the most congested cities in North America in 2015 (Overall daily congestion level extra travel time population over 800,000): 1 Mexico City 59% 6 Seattle 31% 2 Los Angeles 41% 7 San Jose 30% 3 San Francisco 36% 8 Honolulu 29% 4 Vancouver 34% 9 Toronto 28% 5 New York 33% 10 Miami 28% Notes to editors What does TomTom do to beat congestion? Road authorities and local governments can use TomTom's traffic data to better manage traffic flow during the rush hour. We can help businesses plan smarter working hours to help their employees avoid travelling during rush hour. And we give drivers the real-time traffic information and smart routing they need to avoid congested roads and get to where they want to be, faster. How does TomTom calculate congestion level? Put simply, the Congestion Level percentage is the extra travel time a driver will experience when compared to an uncongested situation. To illustrate, an overall congestion level of 36% means that an average trip made takes 36% longer than it would under uncongested conditions. About TomTom At TomTom (TOM2) our mission is to make technology so easy to use, that everyone can benefit from it. We created easy to use navigation devices, helping millions of people to get where they want to be. Today, we continue to simplify the complex, making technology more accessible for everyone. We have four customer facing business units: Consumer, Telematics, Automotive and Licensing. We make easy to use navigation devices, sport watches and action cameras for consumers. We enable businesses with vehicles to more easily manage and improve fleet efficiency whilst increasing overall business performance with our Telematics solutions. We also offer a world leading real-time map platform that is powering innovative location based services and helping to make automated driving a reality for the automotive industry. Founded in 1991 and headquartered in Amsterdam, we have over 4,600 employees and sell our products worldwide. Notes to editors *Calculations of wasted time sitting in traffic are based on peak periods of traffic. Schaefer continues: "Road authorities and local governments can use TomTom's traffic data to better manage traffic flow during the rush hour. We can help businesses plan smarter working hours to help their employees avoid travelling during rush hour. And we give drivers the real-time traffic information and smart routing they need to avoid congested roads and get to where they want to be, faster." SOURCE TomTom [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 22, 2016] Netswitch Reimagines Threat Intelligence with SecurliXF SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif., March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Netswitch today unveiled SecurliXF, an innovative threat intelligence platform that revolutionizes the way businesses can use broadly correlated threat information to establish and monitor their cyber-resiliency and predict the likelihood of future attacks. "Over the past twelve months we have analyzed the threat data we've collected from the tools that are embedded in our Securli Threat Defense platform and determined that we had a rich starting point for aggregating specific network and web-related malware behavior, though the individual threat patterns differed greatly," said Steve King, Chief Operating and Security Officer for Netswitch. "We wanted to fold that data in with other indicators to develop a measure of predictive resilience in information systems networks." SecurliXF uses (big-data) predictive and sentiment analytics and third-generation machine learning to correlate actual threat parameters that are collected from the normal operation of the Securli Threat Defense Platform with data pulled from the dark web, crowd-sourced threat databases and social media crawls to assess where a client's network resides on what Netswitch calls the Threat Resistance Curve. The objective isto make an early determination as to whether a given network is on the desirable or undesirable side of the threat threshold or approaching a danger zone. Netswitch is able to develop a single parameter reflecting the amalgamation of a broad set of measures to determine an individual tipping point in each client's cyber-security defense system. What's unique and exciting about SecurliXF? SecurliXF predictive analytics combines raw data feeds from various sources, including crowd-sourced and open-source security repositories, social media and Internet chatter, along with dark web research and actual malware activity measured by a client's own threat defense platform to form a set of indicators used to predict future threat. SecurliXF uses statistical physics to crunch millions of correlated data points from multiple feeds that share a common association. That association is composed of the client's individual profile, industry sector, nationality, region, location, geo-politics, etc. All of this is processed through the core analytics engine to arrive at a tipping point indicator. SecurliXF produces actionable intelligence in usable form that does not require further security analysis or SIEM staff to decipher. SecurliXF relies upon patented technology and processes and is available to select beta customers beginning in the third quarter of this year. ABOUT NETSWITCH Netswitch is a global technology solutions provider, serving businesses of all sizes whose model for success relies upon secure, smoothly running, and fully integrated IT systems. Netswitch provides next generation Managed Security Services and IT Infrastructure Support in the US and Asia with offices in San Francisco, Chicago, Thailand, Beijing, Hong Kong and Shanghai. For more information, please visit us at http://www.netswitch.net/ To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/netswitch-reimagines-threat-intelligence-with-securlixf-300239282.html SOURCE Netswitch [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 22, 2016] Maclocks First to Announce New iPad Pro Kiosk AUSTIN, Texas, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The anticipation for Apple's newest devices came to a head yesterday at Apple's annual Spring Event. The highlight of the show was the reveal of a 9.7-inch iPad Pro, a return to form after the iPad mini 4 and iPad Pro December releases. With Apple's newest and most powerful tablet confirmed, Maclocks has announced that all of its current line of hardware security solutions for the "normal" size tablet, including the Cling 2.0 iPad Pro Stand, are compatible. The Cling 2.0 iPad Pro Stand might be the best way to display and secure the new iPad Pro. It allows you to rotate between portrait and landscape mode, and is available in four diferent mounting options; iPad Pro counter-stand, iPad Pro wall mount, iPad Pro pole mount, and iPad Pro rolling kiosk. The bracket design keeps all the ports, speakers and cameras accessible and open for full use of the new tablet. This iPad Pro has all the features of its larger counterpart with scaled down keyboard and pencil accessories to be available at launch. The Cling 2.0 is universal and designed to work with all iPads and a large variety of tablet models and sizes. Due to its smaller size, the new iPad Pro is compatible with all of Maclocks' previous iPad Air Lock solutions such as the Rokku iPad Pro Kiosk. A tamper proof frame with a reinforced bezel provides the new iPad Pro with a most secure display. Also recommended is the new Grip & Dock iPad Pro Stand that has become the standard in secured tablet mobility solutions. Any hotel, restaurant or retail establishment can grow their mobile workforce with the iPad Pro handgrip which allows employees to "grab and go" the device and safely dock it for a hands free work experience. While the New iPad Pro is only available for pre-order, Maclocks entire line of iPad Pro security solutions are available now. About Maclocks Maclocks is the premier designer and manufacturer for innovative security and display solutions for Apple devices. Contact Person Meira B. Levison Online Marketing and PR Manager +1-512-333-2006 SOURCE Maclocks [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 22, 2016] MapQuest Launches Safety-Focused Efforts in Spring Break Capital of the World, Panama City Beach, for Spring Break 2016 DENVER, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Who: MapQuest [mapquest.com] MapQuest, a pioneer in the digital mapping category, continues to be one of the leading mapping brands, reaching more than 42 million multi-platform users*. The company works with both businesses and consumers to enable everyday explorers to find, learn about and locate their desired destinations. As a mapping technology pioneer, MapQuest has developed a bold, human and responsive approach that enables users to access features and tools that enhance their daily lives. MapQuest's mobile solutions are compatible with a variety of mobile devices, including iPhone and Android. MapQuest, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of AOL Inc., is based in Denver, Colo. What: Spring Break 2016 Panama City More than 370,000 college students are beginning to embark on their spring break adventres to Panama City Beach. MapQuest will be onsite offering support to help ensure a safe week of fun and adventure, reminding students to make safe transportation choices and stay hydrated. Ambassadors will be at the largest resorts distributing vouchers from licensed taxis so students can reach their destinations without incident. Additionally, MapQuest will set up at popular nightclubs to hand out cab vouchers and bottled water to encourage hydration and a safe ride back to hotels. When: Through March 26, 2016 Where: Panama City Beach, Florida Share: #MapQuestIt to help #SpringBreak2016 travelers be #safe Learn more at http://bit.ly/1Rmg6eB *Aggregate average by month for 2015 according to comScore Media Metrix Multi-Platform Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160321/346387 To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/mapquest-launches-safety-focused-efforts-in-spring-break-capital-of-the-world-panama-city-beach-for-spring-break-2016-300239012.html SOURCE MapQuest [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 22, 2016] Confer Expands International Presence BOSTON, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Confer, a leader in endpoint detection and response (EDR), today announced the expansion of operations in Europe, growing its global footprint to address increased market demand for its Converged Endpoint Security platform. Confer will support this expanded international presence with a dedicated team based in the United Kingdom, addressing customer demand through a high-value global channel partner program aimed at delivering award-winning endpoint security to customers throughout Europe. Additionally, Confer has added Distology, a leading IT security value-added distributor as a channel partner in Europe. "Confer is already protecting endpoints in more than 60 countries and we have seen a marked increase in demand for our platform in Europe since last year," said Mark Quinlivan, CEO, Confer. "With an expanded presence in the region, we can accelerate our market strategy and provide local support to our customers and partners with advanced endpoint security technology, enabling them to deliver on the promise of secure business." Confer's Converged Endpoint Security platform makes it cost-effective for any size organization to prevent, detect and respond to both commodity and advanced threats quickly and effectively acrss endpoints, servers and cloud workloads. The solution integrates prevention, detection and incident response using a lightweight sensor, so businesses can secure millions of devices, regardless of where they are, while allowing busy security operations teams to focus on broader enterprise priorities. Growing International Channel Partnerships As part of the European expansion, Confer welcomes Distology into its growing community of global channel partners. Distology maintains an extensive network of IT Security resellers in the United Kingdom and Ireland with a strong reputation and focus on delivering new and innovative security solutions to the market. "We are very excited about this new partnership with Confer. With the modern threat landscape, traditional endpoint protection products are just no longer good enough," said Distology Managing Director Hayley Roberts. "Confer offers next-generation endpoint protection across most platforms and powerful incident response capabilities that we believe will reshape how we define true endpoint protection." Distology offers expertise within the full distribution lifecycle, from lead generation, training and enablement for its partner community, to fulfillment and front line support services. Director of Channels Heads Up Confer Global Partner Program Leading Confer's global channel program is Director of Channels Jeff Rogers. With more than 20 years of experience in channel sales, Jeff is responsible for the strategic direction, development and expansion of Confer's global partner community. Jeff joins Confer from Hewlett-Packard, where he led a National Partners Channel Sales Team focused on market-leading enterprise security offerings. A proven technology channel executive, Jeff has led a successful career in channel sales and management with prominent technology companies including U.S. Robotics, 3Com, Nokia, CheckPoint and TippingPoint. Confer is committed to building profitable, professional relationships with its expanding network of partners. Focused on immediate partner enablement, Confer offers simple and efficient on-boarding and convenient one-day training. Moreover, Confer's easy- to-use partner sign-on and deal registration program ensures that opportunities are responded to and advanced quickly. About Confer Confer offers a fundamentally different approach to endpoint security through a Converged Endpoint Security Platform, an adaptive defense that integrates prevention, detection and incident response for endpoints, servers and cloud workloads. The patented technology disrupts most attacks while collecting a rich history of endpoint behavior to support post-incident response and remediation. Confer automates this approach to secure millions of devices, regardless of where they are, allowing security teams to focus on more important activities. About Distology Distology is a leading IT Security software distributor delivering solutions along with pre- and post-sales assistance and technical support to markets in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Serving IT Security resellers with vendor quality expertise and alliances with the world's most respected software manufacturers, means that Distology is able to perceive and respond to the demands of the constantly changing market environment. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140115/NE46445LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/confer-expands-international-presence-300238854.html SOURCE Confer [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 22, 2016] See New Additive Manufacturing Development Methods and Altair's HyperWorks 14.0 at HMI TROY, Mich., March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Altair presents at this year's HANNOVER MESSE, April 25 - 29, the latest version of its simulation software suite HyperWorks 14.0, its concept design and optimization tools solidThinking Evolve and Inspire 2016, and new design processes for the development and manufacturing of innovative products. In addition, Altair will host: "ATCx AM - Design for Additive Manufacturing," a conference included in the overall program of the CAE Forum. The Altair program takes place on April 27 in Hall 6, starting at 1pm and offers an afternoon filled with presentations from partners such as Laser Zentrum Nord, Materialise, and voxeljet as well as customers such as EDAG and RUAG Space. The companies will present technologies and solutions for additive manufacturing, spanning from design to actual 3D printing. Altair showcases the entire development and manufacturing processes of a cast aluminum component jointly with its partners HBM nCode, presenting its solutions at the Altair booth, and voxeljet, exhibiting adjacent to Altair. The component was designed and optimized with Inspire, then nCode DesignLife was applied to conduct a fatigue analysis and finally solidThinking's Click2Cast software was used for a casting simulation. The created design resulted in a casting form, 3D-printed by voxeljet. This process ensured that the component benefited from all of the positive characteristics 3D printing and casting offer. Thanks to the optimized design inspired by nature, created with Inspire, and the application of a 3D-printed cast form with voxeljet solutions, manufacturers can now benefit from the design freedom 3D printing offers while taking advantages such as being fit for series production and a higher cost efficiency that casting provides. In addition, the component also had a better performance than traditionally manufactured parts. Depending on the load case, the new component was 3 to 5 times stiffer, without having to add weight. Altair also shows its solutions for laser additive manufacturing methods together with Laser Zentrum Nord. Throughout 2016, the companies will offer trainings in which engineers and designers can learn how to develop and design state of the art metal 3D-printed products. The companies also collaborate on projects for various customers from different industries, such as automotive and aerospace, and will present case studies resulting from this cooperation. "We are happy to welcome HBM nCode and Laser Zentrum Nord at our booth," said Mirko Bromberger, Director Marketing and Additive Manufacturing Strategies at Altair Engineering. "Both companies are important partners for development and production, especially with regards to new development and manufacturing processes. The visitors of Hannover Messe can expect a very broad and informative program, highlighting solutions for the different production and engineering disciplines." In the course of CAE Forum at HANNOVER MESSE 2016, Altair will organize and moderate the symposium: "Design for Additive Manufacturing " featuring these presentations: Structures Inspired by Nature for 3D Printing - Technology Symbiosis of Topology Optimization and Additive Manufacturing - Altair Key Aspects of Design for Additive Manufacturing - LZN Development of a Flexibly Manufactured A-pillar Inspired by Nature for the EDAG "Light Cocoon" Project - EDAG Development processes for the innovative manufacturing of mold components - Altair Realizing part optimization by 3D printing - voxeljet Design for Additive Manufacturing: Challenges and Opportunities for Space Structures - RUAG Space Design for Additive Manufacturing - Case Study: AM Pressure Valve - Materialise Visit Altair at HANNOVER MESSE 2016, hall 7/booth B32 and on Wednesday, April 27 starting at 1.00pm at the CAE-Forum in hall 6. About Altair Altair is focused on the development and broad application of simulation technology to synthesize and optimize designs, processes and decisions for improved business performance. Privately held with more than 2,000 employees, Altair is headquartered in Troy, Michigan, USA and operates more than 45 offices throughout 22 countries. Today, Altair serves more than 5,000 corporate clients across broad industry segments. To learn more, please visit www.altair.com. Media Contact: Company Contact Altair: Evelyn Gebhardt Mirko Bromberger Blue Gecko Marketing GmbH Altair Engineering GmbH Tel.: +49 6421 9684351 Tel.: +49 7031 62080 [email protected] [email protected] Altair Corporate Biba A. Bedi +1.757.224.0548 x 406 [email protected] To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/see-new-additive-manufacturing-development-methods-and-altairs-hyperworks-140-at-hmi-300238872.html SOURCE Altair [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 22, 2016] AppNexus Scales Video Marketplace with Leading Group of Video Demand Partners NEW YORK, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- AppNexus, the world's leading independent ad tech company, today announced partnerships with the industry's leading sources of video demand to complement demand from AppNexus' DSP, including Adform, engage:BDR, MediaMath, The Trade Desk, Tremor Video, and TubeMogul. These partnerships accelerate the company's roadmap to build the industry's largest, exchange-driven video marketplace and come on the heels of AppNexus' recent launches of its video SSP, outstream video market, and anti-latency technology. "In the same way AppNexus is considered a leader in the open Internet for display, we are committed to building the largest and most vibrant marketplace for video," said Eric Hoffert, SVP of Video Technology, AppNexus. "Our expansion into video comes at a particularly urgent time for the market. As Google closes open access to YouTube inventory and LiveRail exits the ad serving business, video buyers and sellers need an open market that provides broad choice and optionality." By incorporating leading video bidders along with existing sources of supply and demand on the platform, AppNexus increases price competition, liquidity, and opportunities for advertisers to find the right inventory for their campaigns; it also enables publishers to access key demand channels to monetize their content. As one unified platform, AppNexus enables advertisers to achieve greater audience reach at a fraction of the cost, while still maximizing yield for publishers with both instream and outstream solutions. "TubeMogul is always eager tointegrate with independent, transparent inventory sources to enable our clients to holistically plan and buy brand advertising across screens using our software," said Keith Eadie, Chief Marketing Officer, TubeMogul. "We applaud AppNexus for bringing more inventory to the market and taking an open approach." "Video continues to be a top demand for our clients as they expand their omni-channel approach. MediaMath and AppNexus recognize the importance of openness, allowing marketers to maximize the impact of their data. We analyze 200 billion impressions per day thanks in part to AppNexus and other leading supply sources, and we look forward to continuing to expand the open supply opportunities for our clients," said Eric Picard, Vice President of Omni-channel Media, MediaMath. "engage:BDR aims to bring our advertisers quality video inventory at scale. This partnership with AppNexus allows us to supplement our direct instream and outstream inventory with additional scale of trusted quality as our demand grows," said Ted Dhanik, Chief Executive Officer, engage:BDR. "In coordination with our demand partners, we're building the industry's most vibrant, open video ecosystem," said Andrew Q. Kraft, VP Demand Partnerships, AppNexus. "It's an ecosystem that benefits all participants through competition, choice and transparency. We share a common outlook: open beats closed." AppNexus will showcase its latest video technology at the San Francisco Publisher Summit it is hosting today. The AppNexus video SSP is currently in closed testing with clients in the U.S. and Europe, with general availability targeted for the second quarter. ABOUT APPNEXUS AppNexus is a technology company that provides trading solutions and powers marketplaces for Internet advertising. Its open, unified, and powerful programmatic platform empowers customers to more effectively buy and sell media, allowing them to innovate, differentiate, and transform their businesses. As the world's leading independent ad tech company, AppNexus is led by the pioneers of the web's original ad exchanges. Headquartered in New York City with 23 global offices, AppNexus employs more than 1000 of the brightest minds in advertising and technology who believe that advertising powers the Internet. For more information, follow us at @AppNexus or visit us at www.AppNexus.com To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/appnexus-scales-video-marketplace-with-leading-group-of-video-demand-partners-300239496.html SOURCE AppNexus [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] [March 22, 2016] goBalto Named Clinical Research and Excellence Awards Finalist SAN FRANCISCO, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- goBalto, Inc., the leading provider of cloud-based clinical study startup solutions, has been named a finalist in the 'Best Sponsor-Focused Technological Development' category for the 2016 Clinical Research & Excellence (CARE) Awards. Activate, a SaaS solution for accelerating site activation, a perpetual bottleneck in starting clinical trials, has been shortlisted for the inaugural awards, which take place in Boston on April 27, 2016. The CARE Awards provides the industry with an opportunity to acknowledge and applaud its highest achievers across all parts of the value chain, and to recognize both corporate and individual achievement. Study Startup (SSU) refers to a series of steps performed before a clinical trial begins. These typically include activities such as country selection, pre-study visits, site selection and initiation, regulatory document submission, contract and budget negotiations, and enrolling the first patint. Since each of these steps has multiple components, delays in study timelines are commonplace. "The CARE Awards' recognition of our software supports our continued efforts, and that of our customers and partners, to advance SSU and we are honored that our technology has been acknowledged among the best solutions in the industry," said Sujay Jadhav, goBalto's CEO. With recent multiple enterprise expansions goBalto now services more than three-quarters of the top global pharmas and CROs, having the largest industry-proven set of country specific regulatory business process workflows and associated in-depth activation metrics. "Our nomination is a reflection of our commitment to providing our customers with the functionality they need to accelerate the startup phases of clinical trials, leading to greater cost savings and faster market entry enabling valuable therapies to get to patients sooner," added Jadhav. About goBalto goBalto is the industry leader in cloud-based study startup software for the global life sciences industry. Committed to accelerating clinical trials through innovation, product excellence, and customer success, goBalto works with over half of top 20 Pharma and top 10 CROs. Our customers include: Novartis, Genentech Roche, ICON, INC Research and Covance. goBalto is headquartered in San Francisco, with offices in Pennsylvania and Singapore. For more information, visit www.gobalto.com. Press contact: Craig Morgan 415.671.4372 [email protected] Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20141118/159334LOGO To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/gobalto-named-clinical-research-and-excellence-awards-finalist-300238883.html SOURCE goBalto, Inc. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] What you need to know about Powerball and the $580 million jackpot Baku, Azerbaijan, March 22 Trend: Armenia is in self-isolation and deep political, economic and demographic crisis, Hikmat Hajiyev, the Azerbaijani foreign ministry's spokesman, told Trend March 22. Hajiyev was commenting on Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharyan's another remark against Azerbaijan. Hajiyev said that the policy being conducted by the Armenian military-political leadership is contrary to logic and far from civilized behavior and ethics. "These actions, based on the thought of a field commander and military dictatorship, pose a threat to the entire region," he said. "Today Armenia is in self-isolation and deep political, economic and demographic crisis due to the militaristic policy of Yerevan's military dictatorship." Hajiyev said that Armenia's intensive violation of the ceasefire along the line of contact and on the Azerbaijani-Armenian border and other provocative actions once again testify to the essence of Yerevan's regime. "In this regards, Armenian officials' statements on ceasefire, regional cooperation and conflict settlement cause laughter and disgust," Hajiyev 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 22 Trend: Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev congratulated President of Pakistan Mamnoon Hussain on the occasion of the Pakistan Day. "On my own behalf and on behalf of the people of Azerbaijan, I cordially congratulate you and the people of your country on the occasion of your public holiday - Pakistan Day," the president said. He added that Azerbaijan and Pakistan are bound by traditional friendship, cooperation and strategic partnership. "The expansion and deepening of relations between the two countries is based on strong political will, mutual trust and confidence," added the president. "I believe that we will continue joint efforts to strengthen friendly ties between our countries and peoples and successfully maintain our cooperation in bilateral and multilateral formats." "On this remarkable day, I extend my best wishes to you, and wish the friendly people of Pakistan peace and prosperity," said President Aliyev. Tom's Guide is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Heres why you can trust us. The best Android apps unlock your phone's true capabilities. Social media, productivity, health and fitness, you name it, there's an app on the Play Store to suit your needs. With countless apps available to you, the sky's the limit. With so many apps to sort through, finding which ones deserve a place on your Android phone can be a challenge. That's where we come in. We've gone through Google Play to find top Android apps across a wide variety of categories. Whether you want to fill up one of the best Android phones with apps or just try out something new like a productivity app, fitness tracker or web browser, check out the best Android apps you might have overlooked. (And if you're looking for top first-person shooters, puzzlers and arcade-style throwbacks, check out our picks for the best Android games.) Best Android productivity apps Check out these apps if you want to turn your Android phone into another device for getting things done. (For more picks, see our selection of the best productivity apps for mobile devices.) Niagara Launcher (Free) (Image credit: Peter Huber) With Niagara Launcher (opens in new tab), you get a lean Android launcher that delivers the customizability that Android users demand. We selected this as the best Android app in our Tom's Guide Awards 2021 because it offers a clean and minimal interface that puts your apps front and center in an alphabetical list. We also appreciate how Niagara puts notifications front and center, letting you read and respond from the home screen. Distractions are at a minimal with Niagara, which even keeps ads out of the free version of the app. If you like a clean look for your Android phone, get this on your device right away. 1Password ($3.99/month) (Image credit: AgileBits) The best strategy for keeping your data and identity safe is to use good, strong passwords. And there's no better tool than 1Password (opens in new tab)for keeping those good, strong passwords straight. The app can store many bits of information logins to apps and websites, credit cards, bank account info, passports, licenses and more which you protect with a single master password. End-to-end encryption along with encryption keys that never leave your Android device keep things secure. Try out the service for free for 30 days; after that, a $3.99 monthly subscription helps you stay on top of all those passwords you use every day. Automate (Free) (Image credit: Llama Lab) You'll find several Android apps that promise powerful automation options, but they're not always so user-friendly. For something a bit more approachable, consider Automate (opens in new tab), which uses a visual, flowchart-based interface for making your own custom-designed scripts. This top Android app boasts more than 320 different task building blocks that can include actions, event triggers, loops and more; you can arrange those blocks in a flowchart style to easily visualize your creations. Automate is free, with a $2.99 in-app purchase unlocking a Premium mode for creating scripts that require more than 30 blocks. Solid Explorer File Manager ($1.99) (Image credit: NeatBytes) Android has a glut of free file explorer apps that let you manage your device's external storage, ranging from excellent tools to freemium bloatware. If you're willing to spend a small amount to get an excellent ad-free and bloatware-free app, check out Solid Explorer (opens in new tab), a premium file manager that comes packed with features and a clean, hassle-free interface. Drag-and-drop controls, a multi-tab and multi-pane interface, and support for network and cloud storage and compressed archives cover your basics, while more advanced features like a root explorer, plugin support and batch operations are available for power users. (Image credit: Google) The iPhone has had Find My Friends (and, as of iOS 13, the Find app) for what seems like nearly forever. Google now offers its own alternative for those living in the Android universe. Googles Trusted Contacts (opens in new tab) works similarly to Apple's approach, letting you share your location or see where your contacts are. You can send out or request a real-time location, so you dont have to share your constant whereabouts. However, Trusted Contacts will automatically send out your location if youre not able to answer a request, which could be of help in an emergency. (See our guide on how to use Trusted Contacts for more on the app's features.) And yes, there's even an iOS version of Trusted Contacts (opens in new tab) for iPhone-toting friends and family. Flud (Free) (Image credit: Delphi Softwares) Torrenting apps are one thing you're not likely to see in iOS for a while. In the Android market, Flud (opens in new tab) is one of the best Android torrent apps out there. Expect a clean Material interface without speed limits for uploads or downloads. Flud sports staple features such as selective file downloading and prioritization, magnet link support, sequential downloading support and a Wi-Fi only mode. You can also dig deep into more advanced functions, in case fiddling with router port forwarding is your idea of fun. The free version is fully functional, while a paid version removes advertisements. Vurforia Chalk (Free) (Image credit: PTC) Not sure why there's all this fuss about augmented reality? Vuforia Chalk (opens in new tab) can show you the value of AR for mobile apps, as it adds a new dimension to tech support. Chalk sets up a video call between two devices, where the person getting advice points their rear camera at whatever they need explained to them, and the other person draws on their own screen as they provide instructions and advice. The person getting the help sees those doodles live, appearing on their screen, falling on the specific buttons, knobs and other parts of whatever they're looking at, in effect providing live, visual annotations that can help solve problems. Best Android travel and weather apps Whether you're heading to the office or a longer family trip, the right apps on your Android phone can help make the journey easier. And a good weather app can make sure you won't get drenched along the way. For more apps like this, check out our picks for the best travel apps and best weather apps for all mobile devices. Transit (Free) (Image credit: Transit App) Transit (opens in new tab) is a fantastic aid for commutes, helping plan out the fastest public transport routes to a destination. The app provides routes that combine numerous transportation methods such as trains, buses, and bike sharing while also factoring in short walks to each stop and wait times. Transit can provide real-time data on arrival times of your bus or train, compare routes, step-by-step navigation, and notifications for service line disruptions. You can even book an Uber or reserve a car2go from within the app if public transit has failed you. Mobile Passport (Free) (Image credit: Airside Mobile) If you're going to be spending time abroad, you can breeze through a few lines with the use of Mobile Passport (opens in new tab). It's a U.S. Customs and Border Protection-approved app that helps speed you through lengthy immigration lines by letting you submit your passport control and customs declarations from your phone (assuming you've got a U.S. or Canadian passport). By replacing paper forms and providing faster processing in a number of major US airports that support the Mobile Passport service, the app will save you a good amount of time in line. Just remember to bring along your paper passport, as this app isn't a replacement for that. Skiplagged (Free) (Image credit: Skiplagged) If you're traveling light and looking to save a few bucks, check out Skiplagged (opens in new tab), a neat app that can keep your travel costs down by taking advantage of "hidden city flights," where flyers get off at a layover, instead of at the flight's final destination. Users enter their origin and target destination, and Skiplagged will show you the cost of a direct flight, as well as any cheaper "hidden city" flights that have your intended destination as a layover. The caveat? Stick to carry-on luggage, as any checked-in bags will go all the way to the flight's final destination. Skiplagged also allows you to book hotels, including last-minute deals and special offers. Best Android health and fitness apps Need a good workout companion? Or are you more interested in tracking your health? Your Android phone can do either, provided you download the right app. And if you're particularly interested in staying fit, we've found even more of the best workout apps and best running apps for mobile devices. FitNotes (Free) (Image credit: James Gay) If you're looking for a workout log, FitNotes (opens in new tab) is the best there is. Whether you're into bodybuilding, powerlifting, or just weightlifting in general, this app ought to be your constant companion. It can track reps and weights (with exercises split by muscle group), which is its main goal. You can also add exercises, jot down your cardio stats, see a calendar view of what you've done for the month, and get progress reports. It's simply awesome what FitNotes can do for your gym life. Sure, the design is a bit ancient at this point, but it gets the job done. The app stays out of your way so that you can focus on your workout. Fabulous (Free) (Image credit: TheFabulous) While there are a lot of exercise trackers and personal fitness apps out there, few focus on holistic body and mind improvement. Enter Fabulous (opens in new tab), a self-improvement app aimed at upgrading mind and body to help make you feel... well... fabulous. Based on scientific principles and incubated in Duke's Behavioral Economics Lab, Fabulous starts you out with simple goals like trying to lose weight, get better sleep, or improve your concentration; the app helps with simple exercises, scheduled notifications and activities, and other coaching tools designed to build healthy habits for body and mind. Sleep as Android (Free) (Image credit: Urbandroid) If you want a better sense of how youre sleeping at night, Sleep As Android (opens in new tab) takes a science-based approach to sleep tracking. The app can work with the sensors on your Android device and even with other wearables to monitor the quality of your sleep, finding the optimal time to wake you up in the morning. Integrations with other apps let you control supported smart light bulbs or incorporate captchas or music from Spotify into your morning alarms. The app is free to download, but after a two-week trial, youll need to pay up for the full version. Woebot (Free) (Image credit: Woebot Labs) It's good to talk to somebody every now and again, even if that someone is a bot. Woebot (opens in new tab) aims to help you exercise some self-care using techniques that draw on cognitive behavioral therapy. While it's no substitute for a real-live therapist, Woebot offers tools and reassurance for those times when you're feeling anxious or down, helping you to develop the skills to take care of your mental health. The app shines with daily mood augmented by regular check-ins so it can spot patterns that might escape the attention of other people even you. And the app makers promise that whatever you share with Woebot stays with Woebot. Clue Period Tracker (Free) (Image credit: Clue Period Tracker by BioWink) Clue Period Tracker (opens in new tab) is a useful mobile addition to the tech-savvy woman's reproductive health toolkit. The app serves as an all-in-one period tracker, allowing you to record period dates, flow heaviness, and menstrual products used; you also can log other factors such as sexual activity, birth control use, cervical fluid, and more. With that info, the app provides in-depth info about the menstrual cycle, complete with references. Clue also includes a learning algorithm that can help predict your period cycles, PMS, and related fertility data. To make the most out of that feature, though, you'll need to subscribe to Clue's premium tier, starting at $0.99 per month. Best Android entertainment apps Find great shows to stream, podcasts to listen to and things to read with the help of these Android apps. Libby (Free) (Image credit: OverDrive) Your Android phone is a fine device for reading ebooks and listening to audiobooks, and if you know where to go, you don't even need to pay a cent to do so. Libby (opens in new tab) works with your local library to provide a digital media management platform for borrowing and returning ebooks and audiobooks. Just sign in and connect your library card. After that, you can browse your local library's digital offerings. Libby lets you use multiple library cards, sample books, download or stream content, tag titles, and sync data across devices. Pocket Casts (Free) (Image credit: Podcast Media) The Play Store contains a lot of podcast apps, but the best one by far is Pocket Casts (opens in new tab). A long-time player in this game, Pocket Casts has helped get people into podcasts over the course of its lifespan. It sports an attractive design, tons of ways to listen, several playback options, cloud syncing, auto-download, and much more. To get all of the features, however, including the use of desktop apps, you'll need to be a Pocket Casts Plus member, which costs $0.99/month or $9.99/year. If you're hooked on podcasts, this app is for you. Podcast Addict (Free) (Image credit: Xavier Guillemane) Android isn't exactly hurting for good podcast managers , but when it comes excellent free options, Xavier Guillemane's Podcast Addict (opens in new tab) is a great choice. It covers the basics with automatic episode updates and downloads, as well as automatic deletion features to save space, variable speed playback, silence skip, volume boosting, a sleep timer and other neat features. A podcast search tool allows you to quickly find individual episodes or search through a variety of databases for new podcasts and trending shows. In addition, the app also supports video podcasts, YouTube channels, audiobooks, streaming radio and other media sources. JustWatch (Free) (Image credit: JustWatch) Finding an online TV show or movie to stream used to be simple: go to Netflix for almost everything. But as streaming market becomes more competitive and producers and networks scramble for exclusives to make their own streaming service stand out, it can be a pain keeping track of where to go to watch a particular show or movie series. Enter JustWatch (opens in new tab), a service that keeps track of the latest offerings from 37 different streaming services, showing you where and when to watch a particular TV show, covering big names like Netflix, Hulu, HBO Go, and Amazon Prime Video. You can search for a particular series or browse through what's new. The app also offers latest movie trailers and showtimes, complete with one-click Fandango bookings for your local cineplex. Best Android music apps There's life beyond the now dead Google Play Music. Check out the top Android music apps to add a little melody to your Android phone. Poweramp ($3.99) (Image credit: Max MP) Turn to Poweramp (opens in new tab) if you need an Android music player that can support a wide variety of audio formats, while also offering premium features like a 10-band graphic equalizer and support lyrics. The app also includes a tag editor, fast library searching, home and lock screen widgets. You can try out Poweramp for free for 15 days, but it will take $3.99 to upgrade to the full version. It's well worth price for music lovers. IDAGIO ($9.99 per month) (Image credit: Idagio) IDAGIO (opens in new tab) taps into an overlooked market high-quality classical music streaming. IDAGIO subscriptions cost $9.99 per month, allowing users to stream lossless FLAC audio of new, exclusive and rare recordings of concerts and opera performances, all searchable by composer, soloist, ensemble or orchestra so that you can easily track down and compare recordings and performances. Users can check out curated playlists or create their own, and they can stream music through Chromecast or Sonos, as well as download music for offline play. Best Android photo and art apps A good Android camera app can give you more control over the pictures you take or add terrific effects to what you've already shot. And the art apps available at Google Play can unleash your creative side. Pixtica (Free) (Image credit: Perraco Labs) For a feature-packed alternative to the built-in camera app on your Android phone, try Pixtica (opens in new tab). You'll find many shooting features and camera controls in a single package. You can fine tune details like ISO, shutter speed and focus using Pixtica's manual camera controls, and you'll also be able to access extras such as live filters with real-time previews, panorama and hyperlapse modes. You can use the app for free if you don't mind ads, but signing up for a Pixtica subscription gets rid of those ads and unlocks all filters and photo resolutions, removes watermarks on live filters and GIFs and lets you record as much video as you want. Glitch Lab (Free) (Image credit: Ilixa) Plenty of apps in Google Play promise to add digital glitch effects to your photos. But few do it as thoroughly and simply as Glitch Lab (opens in new tab)\. You'll find more than 100 effects in the app organized into categories such as color, streaking and retro. The app support infinite undos and redos and you can even save images to reuse as masks. Unlock the pro version via a $6.49 in-app purchase and you get even more effects, plus valuable features including higher resolutions and lossless file saving. Canva (Free) (Image credit: Canva) Whether you're creating a holiday card or a stirring Instagram story, Canva (opens in new tab) can help you produce something memorable. The design and video editing app can create just about everything from social media posts to invitations, logos and photo collages. You can start building your creation from scratch or turn to one of Canva's many free templates, and the app has a library of photos and illustrations for your use, assuming you don't want to turn to your own images. When you're done editing images and adding text, you can share your finished work, either via email, WhatsApp or Instagram. Best Android social media apps You probably know about Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram, but there are other Android-compatible social apps that are well worth your time. Slowly (Free) (Image credit: Slowly Communications) The old-fashioned pen-pal gets a modern take with Slowly (opens in new tab), a social app that's intended for a slower, more deliberate messaging experience that might otherwise get lost in our modern age of instant gratification. Users set up a simple profile with an avatar, location and a list of interests; Slowly will then match you with users with similar interests. Unlike traditional messaging apps, Slowly adds a time delay element to your messages, encouraging longer-form writing at a more weighty, deliberate pace. In addition, the app has a stamp collection feature, with each message coming with stamps based on the sender's location, as well as special seasonal stamps or premium ones available as in-app purchases. You can also share a limited number of photos per day if your pen friend has agreed to receive them. Signal (Free) (Image credit: Signal Foundation) Open Whisper Systems' Signal (opens in new tab) is a fantastic messaging solution for security conscious mobile users. It is an all-in-one messaging and voice call solution that uses end-to-end military grade encryption. You can send text, voice, group messages, media and attachments. Ease of use and strong, open source, audited encryption makes it a favorite of the security conscious, with accolades from the likes of Edward Snowden and other privacy advocates. It's one of the many top encrypted messaging apps we've looked at for mobile devices. Unfold (Free) (Image credit: Unfold Creative) Unfold (opens in new tab) is a clean and easy to use creative tool that focuses on creating slick and polished Instagram Stories-ready presentations, with an arsenal of sleek and elegant templates that you can apply to your photos. It's a no-guff approach that focuses on the simple and stylish, eschewing the wacky for the elegant, with 25 free templates and 5 fonts, applicable on photo and video presentations, with more available as in-app purchases. Melbournes very own Oscar Galt and the Eventual Somethings are today gearing up to share the new video for their single All Hail The Worm a fresh track from the crew set to feature on the second of the bands twin EPs, Drift Away. Due for release this coming April via independent record label Bad Health, Drift Away is a follow on from their late 2015 release Play Things. Recorded and mixed by Shane OMara (Tim Rogers, Lisa Miller) with cover art designed by local graphic artist Tim Elico and redesigned by Olivia Grbac, both EPs each explore their own underlying themes of addiction and existentialism. Having fallen in love with the Melbourne based collective following the release of Play Things were really excited to see what they do with the second half of this double EP release. Check out the new clip below and if you like what youre hearing pop by Oscar Galt and the Eventual Somethings Facebook page for more info. The humble rave. An opportunity to let loose, meet new people or just get gacked in the middle of the bush with some of your favourite DJs. Bloc Festival founder and rave aficionado George Hull has penned an impassioned article in The Spectator, a UK paper, on the state of rave culture under the modern influence of the spineless uptight hipsters. Rave, like all youth movements, was meant to be about freedom, rebellion and pissing off your parents, says Hull, reminiscing about the birth of rave culture in the UK. He goes on to blame the pompous hipsters for the decline of his favourite scene, naming them a subculture so spineless that it had to borrow its name from its parents. They like dance music, but they lack the sense of abandon that made raving so much fun, he writes. Hull does touch on some reasonable ideas, like the birth of rave culture as youthful rebellion, rejecting now commercialised rock music festivals in favour of public parties running into the wee hours powered by early techno and ecstasy. He cites many other factors that have contributed to the decline of the rave, like regulatory pressure from governments for early nights, higher levels of expected service and a decline in binge drinking culture all play a role. However as his article draws to a close it more closely resembles the irate ramblings of an angry man who hasnt noticed that hes missing the point. Hull closes with a narrow-minded critique of the concept of safe space, suggesting that feeling unsafe in an apparent illusion of danger was the whole point of raving. Seemingly, he is fine with people feeling threatened, uncomfortable and unsafe at music festivals. Our man even lays into vegans for wanting alternative meal options, insisting that he wants no part of wimpy pseudo-hedonists at a carefully designed safe space. Now you have to respect his passion and insight into the matter, after all, hes been around since the beginning. This isnt a simple case of old man yells at cloud, but the result is more of a case of old jerk bullies kids for not being as irresponsible as he used to be. MEMBERS OF KANSAS CITY ANIMAL RIGHTS GROUPS ARE MERCILESSLY ATTACKING THIS WOMAN BASED ONLY ON CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE!!! ISN'T IT POSSIBLE THAT KANSAS CITY DOGGIE LOVERS ARE RUSHING TO FIND THIS BROKE-ASS WOMAN GUILTY OF ANIMAL ABUSE WITHOUT HEARING HER SIDE OF THE STORY?!?! Currently, a doggie lover group desperate for donations is helping to convict this woman in the court of public opinion. Fox4: KC Pet Project lauds charges against suspected animal abuser while dog continues recovery Does anybody else see the profit motive??? Kansas City doesn't have a lot of sympathy for broke-ass white people.Remember a horrific firefighter tragedy that waswhich sent the gang up the river based on a mostly circumstantial case.. . . This story of Kansas City doggie abuse blinding is reminiscent of the tragic WT frame-up episode in local history.Kimberly Anderson was initially charged with a misdemeanor but political advocacy of pet lovers pushed the charges up to a felony from Jackson County Prosecutor Mean Jean Peters Baker's office.Now . . .Just a hint about special prosecution here . . . People have their dogs hit and killed by cars every day and those dogs die gruesome deaths of very little consequence . . . Without question only media interest and animal rights group politics have led to the prosecution of this lady.The reality is that we don't know what the lady did to her doggie and neither to most people commenting on this story but here are the facts:- The poor doggie was blinded after being hit by a car according to its owner and the gruesome injuries are consistent with that story andfrom any abuse.- Fanatical animal rights activists in Kansas City and beyond have issued aon this woman and have made several death threats and verbally abusive attacks via social media. Apparently, more strident doggie advocates don't feel much sympathy for humans.- The woman in question has other pets that seemed fine but were confiscated anyhoo . . .- More than a few reporters note that this story is part of a residential dispute in a dumpy apartment complex located in a bad part of town.To wit . . .The danger here is that anybody who has their doggie hit by a car could face a felony charge if the right people complain.Moreover . . .This is clearly a case of Kansas City class warfare disparity wherein middle-class animal lovers have engaged in a vendetta based only on salacious tabloid style accusations from angry neighbors with longstanding beefs that don't really add up.Again, the rights of Kimberly Anderson have been trampled upon in the media so that middle-class animal lovers with disposable income can feel better about their mostly pointless advocacy.Kimberly Anderson is close to middle-aged, doesn't really have a violent history and has owned pets most of her life without any problems . . . That doesn't really seem like the profile of a person who could commit a horrific act of animal abuse that would take out her doggie's eyes.Meanwhile, Kansas City media watchers cry crocodile tears for a blind doggie that probably was hit by a car and should have been put down mercifully instead of serving as mascot and fundraising tool. Yet these same folks show no sympathy or respect for the rights of a diminutive broke-ass white lady living in a crappy apartment and under siege by hobbyist politicos who are quick to believe the story of gossipy neighbors without allowing this woman due process.Developing . . . Baku, Azerbaijan, March 22 Trend: Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev has extended condolences to the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Belgium Charles Michel over the explosions that occurred March 22 in Brussels. "We were deeply saddened by the news of heavy casualties and injuries as a result of explosions in the city of Brussels," said the president. "We are extremely outraged by this horrible tragedy, resolutely condemn all manifestations of terror and fully support the fight against terrorism." "On the occasion of this tragedy, on behalf of the people of Azerbaijan and on my own behalf, I extend my deep condolences to you, the bereaved families and the loved ones of those who died, and also wish the injured the swiftest possible recovery," added President Aliyev. The full court press against low taxes continues and now every hack is climbing aboard the bandwagon . . . Here's the 4th funniest show on late night TV desperately searching for relevance amid harsh times throughout flyover country despite partisan lines: Seth Meyers Takes a Closer Look at the Disastrous Kansas Tax Cuts Bottom Line Communications: NEWSPAPERS STARTING DEATH RATTLE "According to a former award-winning Kansas City Star reporter, the Star laid off five more veteran newsroom journalists today. The five included Alan Bavley, Greg Hack, Brian Burnes, Jim Fussell and Mary Schulte. All together they total at least 115 years of serviceand enough awards to fill a room. A few years ago the Star, a McClatchy-owned paper, boasted nearly 2,000 employees. Today, that number is closer to 400." LET'S SUGGEST THE NEXT KANSAS CITY NEWSIES WHO DESERVE TO GET THE AXE!!! Many Among The TKC Blog Community Say That Mary Sanchez Needs To Go . . . Yael Doesn't Have Any Kansas City Fans That We've Heard From . . . Overall, Kansas City Seems To Object To The Editorial Stance Of The Paper Overall Leading up to Tuesday night, it's the perfect time to consider the future of Kansas City journalism (don't laugh) and the fate of another beleaguered institution.Better than anyone else, former KC blogger, media expert and PR consultantoffers the most insightful commentary . . . Checkit:Money line . . .But the past is simply prologue . . .Tonight . . .Replacing the old school with some younger talent isn't always a bad thing . . .Don't look or believe any claim of Latino support since she's the worst kind of token with no real community connection . . .Too bad, brighter news watchers remember that he "made his bones" by giving then Mayor Cleaver a hard time but but now his 3/4ths of all his columns are about snoozy Kansas economic data and screeds against Kansas Gov. Brownback despite his win over a Democratic Party empty suit challenger.A newsie expert we talked to long ago reminded us that generally Kansas City skews conservative and the far left, diverse and educated cadre on the editorial board doesn't really have anything in common with consumers of news in this town . . . Most of them are simply satisfied with clickbait social media content from national firms looking to aggregate eyeballs with very little insight into local government.You decide . . . THE KANSAS CITY POLICE HORSE THAT WAS ALLEGEDLY SLAPPED BY A TRUMP PROTESTER HAS YET TO DISPLAY ANY PHYSICAL SIGNS OF AN ASSAULT OR ABUSE . . . IN FACT, EARLY REPORTS INDICATE THE VALIANT BEAST IS THANKFULLY DOING QUITE WELL!!! Still . . . It's encouraging to see that so many Trump supporters are also advocates of animal rights given that they obviously don't care much about Mexicans, women or all the people who keep getting beat up at their rallies. In our never-ending and relentless pursuit of the scoop we gallop toward morecontentand before Kansas City mainstream media organizations have the courage to report it.To wit . . .Don't take the word of TKC for it . . .and notice that there were no visible signs of harm or abuse on the animal.Of course . . . There's no telling what kind of mental and emotional stress the animal endured in the face of the alleged attack. Obviously, the horse will have to take the witness stand in order to testify as to the damage since no visible marks or scaring have been shown. The KCPD horses are well trained but there's not telling if they can signal one hoof clomp for 'yes' and two for 'no' while sitting on the witness stand and answering questions.And so . . . The question of damage in local animal abuse cases is important if only becauseRemember?Still, now that a Trump protester faces charges . . . The question of injury, intent and context become more important given the serious legal consequences of striking a police animal and the utterly absurd and stupid rage that equine slapping reflects on one-horse town Kansas City.Developing . . . Uber and Kansas City Community Groups Push to Recruit 4,000 More Drivers We wereto talk about this story in the metro and now it's news fact, again . . . Here's the aftermath that shows this tech company stepping up their game in Kansas City despite current City Hall regulations. Checkit:(KANSAS CITY) - Uber and local community groups today hosted a driver recruitment event to call for passage of legislation that would lead to the recruitment of 4,000 new drivers in St. Louis. Attending todays event were leaders from the Urban League of Greater Kansas City, United Inner City Services and the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Greater Kansas City.Just last week, legislators of both parties joined Uber at the Statehouse to announce that pending legislation would enable the ridesharing service to recruit 10,000 new drivers across Missouri over the next year and expand to four new markets. As part of this expansion, 40 percent of those drivers would be recruited in Kansas City and Uber would launch service in nearby St. Joseph.When more people are working, Kansas City thrives, said Uber Kansas City General Manager Andy Hung. This legislation allows us to double down on our commitment to Kansas City, while paving the way for thousands of new economic opportunities for people who want them.Since Uber launched in Kansas City in May 2014, more than 6,000 people have started driving with Uber to earn money on their own time. Kansas City driver-partners have completed over 1.5 million trips and brought home over $17 million in earnings. Demand grows in Kansas City every week, where there are more than 250,000 riders.Leaders from local organizations today spoke about the economic benefits ridesharing can create.Whether youre saving for a home, paying off a student loan, or supporting your childs education while he or she is at school - Uber can fit your schedule, said Gwendolyn Grant, President & CEO at Urban League of Greater Kansas City. You drive when you want, as much as you want, to earn as much as you need. More flexible economic opportunities like this will make Kansas City stronger. Uber provides a great opportunity for parents in Kansas City to work whenever they want, as much as they want, said Deidre Anderson, Executive Director of United Inner City Services. Flexible work options are crucial for our communities and we look forward to partnering with Uber. Leveraging this type of opportunity is a way for all parents to not only support their families, but to be more engaged and hands on in the lives of their children and their education.Ridesharing is a win/win for the community, empowering thousands of people to earn money to support their families, said Carlos Gomez, President of the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of Greater Kansas City. We urge the legislature to get the job done on this legislation that will allow Uber to put more people to work here in Kansas City.The legislation would result in a number of net benefits for the people of Missouri, including millions of dollars in additional earnings for drivers and service in Springfield, Jefferson City, St. Charles and nearby St. Joseph. It would also improve safety in Missouri communities by discouraging drunk driving and increasing transportation access in underserved areas. The proposed bills are similar to laws enacted in 28 states across America, including Illinois, Ohio, Kansas, Wisconsin and Indiana.Sponsored by Rep. Kirk Mathews and Senator Bob Onder, this legislation establishes a statewide standard for Transportation Network Companies (TNC) regulations, and streamlines the permitting process so that all TNC drivers must be approved by the Missouri Department of Revenue before operating in the state. In addition, the bills set high safety standards for all TNCs, protect riders with end-to-end insurance requirements and ensure transparency for fees and payments through electronic receipts containing ride details.Uber gives people the power to push a button and get a ride. By seamlessly connecting riders to drivers through our apps, we make cities more accessible, opening up more possibilities for riders and more business for drivers. From our founding in 2009 to our launches in over 300 cities today, Uber's rapidly expanding global presence continues to bring people and their cities closer. Follow us on Twitter:@Uber_Missouri and find us on Facebook: Uber.### On non-performing loans, Ms. Katselli noted that this is a priority for the Greek banking system and important initiatives are being taken towards that direction Hellenic Bank Association president and National Bank's chief Luca Katselli on Sunday in an interview with Kathimerini newspaper ruled out the possibility of a deposits haircut and a new banks recapitalization, newgreektv.com reports. "Greek systemic banks just came out from a successful rnewgreektv.comecapitalization process ... and offer a very strong capital base," she stressed. On non-performing loans, Ms. Katselli noted that this is a priority for the Greek banking system and important initiatives are being taken towards that direction. She claimed that capital controls can be lifted in 2016 provided that all conditions are met and added: "The restoration of confidence in the banking system takes time. The successful recapitalization is a first important step. Political and financial stability are also needed as well as a signal that the economy returns to normality and is financed like other European countries, through the usual ECB liquidity channels. These conditions can be met within the next few months." 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 Athens is among best values in Western Europe according to the eighth annual City Costs Barometer from UK's Post Office Travel Money which advises Britons to head east for the best value Athens is among best values in Western Europe according to the eighth annual City Costs Barometer from UK's Post Office Travel Money which advises Britons to head east for the best value. At a time when sterling has fallen in value against virtually every European currency, Eastern European cities fill eight of the top 10 places in the latest barometer of costs for 35 cities. Key findings include: Prices are cheapest in Warsaw, one of ten new cities surveyed for this years barometer. The Lithuanian capital Vilnius is a close runner up, while Budapest, Riga, Krakow and Dubrovnik are among the other great value Eastern European cities. Its not just Eastern Europe where prices are low. Lower prices make Lisbon cheapest in Western Europe and Athens makes the top 10 as well. Read more here. 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 A nine-person AJC leadership delegation concluded a two-day visit to Greeces capital, on March 19. The group, led by AJC President Stanley Bergman and CEO David Harris, was joined by leaders of the Central Board of Jewish Communities in Greece, a longstanding AJC partner organization, and Andrew Manatos, a prominent leader of the Greek-American community. The mission included a two-hour dinner conversation with Greek Foreign Minister Nikos Kotzias. The visit was also highlighted by discussions with Leader of the Opposition and President of New Democracy Kyriakos Mitsotakis; Israeli Ambassador to Greece Irit Ben-Abba; U.S. Deputy Chief of Mission in Athens and Charge dAffaires Suzanne Lawrence and five of her embassy colleagues; Mayor of Athens Giorgos Kaminis; and former Prime Minister Antonis Samaras, a long-time friend of AJC. Additionally, the group met with eight members of the Greece-Israel Parliamentary Friendship Group, which included parliamentarians from the Syriza, New Democacy, and Potami political parties. Principal topics Among the principal topics of discussion in the sessions were: (i) the deepening strategic triangle among Greece, Cyprus, and Israel; (ii) the migration crisis in Europe and its direct impact on Greece; (iii) Greeces ongoing and deeply-rooted economic challenges; and (iv) Greek-U.S. biltateral ties. AJC first began to engage with Greece well over 30 years ago, when attitudes toward Israel in Athens were decidedly chilly, said Harris. In our meetings on this visit, we heard warm appreciation for the deepening and widening links between Greece and Israel from across the political spectruman historic transformation that AJC welcomes. Indeed, both Greek and Cypriot officials have referred to AJCs role in conceptualizing and advocating for the links among Cyprus, Greece, and Israel as visionary. During the visit, the University of Piraeus and its Department of International and European Studies awarded Harris an honorary doctorate in a formal academic ceremony. The most recent recipient of the same honor was Minister of Foreign Affairs of Germany Frank Walter-Steinmeier, who received the distinction in October 2015. Difficult times Friendships are tested in difficult times, and today is indeed a difficult time for Greece, said Professor Aristotle Tziampiris, who presented the award and is the author of the first comprehensive book on Greek-Israeli relations, The Emergence of Israeli-Greek Cooperation. David Harris has proven to be a true friend of Greece. Furthermore, the mission featured a ceremony at which the Mayor of Athens joined AJCs Mayors United Against Anti-Semitism campaign. The initiative, which is the most far-reaching statement against anti-Semitism in history, has now garnered signatures from over 300 U.S. and 60 European mayors, representing more than 130 million people worldwide. I chose to sign because it is my conviction that the first value in civilized society is human dignity, said Kaminis at the signing ceremony. The question of joining those mayors who have signed in support of this initiative is, centrally, a question of the protection of human dignity. Read more here. 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 Omans Bank Nizwa has signed an agreement to arrange $150 million credit facility to South Sea Energy (SSE) for development and production project in Block 17 in Musandam, a report said. SSE is a key partner in the joint venture PetroTel Oman (PetroTel), operator of the 2,378-sq-km on-shore Block 17, reported Times of Oman. This agreement demonstrates our strength and capability in supporting the growth of key sectors in Oman, Dr Jamil El Jaroudi, chief executive officer of Bank Nizwa, was quoted as saying in the report. As the trusted partner for SSE, we will be exploring various financing avenues to raise the necessary funds for this mega-project in Block 17. Acting as intermediaries and consultants, we will also be sharing insights on the local industries, regulations and processes to ensure a seamless and rewarding project management and implementation, he added. Baku, Azerbaijan, March 22 Trend: The Azerbaijani foreign ministry in strongest terms condemns the heinous terror acts perpetrated in Brussels that caused many deaths and injuries. "We extend our heartfelt condolences to the families and relatives of those who lost their lives and wish for a speedy recovery to the wounded," the ministry told Trend March 22. The Republic of Azerbaijan, as a country suffering from terrorism, has always made its contributions to counter-terrorism efforts of the international community and jointly with the partners will continue to support the fight against all forms and manifestations of terrorism, the statement said. GFH Financial Group has signed a sale agreement with Integrated Capital (IC), the capital markets arm of Abu Dhabi Financial Group (ADFG), under which IC will acquire a 10 per cent stake in Bahrain's Falcon Cement Company (FCC) from GFH. The signing ceremony took place between Hisham Alrayes, CEO of GFH and vice chairman of FCC, and Jassim Alseddiqi, managing director and CEO of ADFG and chairman of Integrated Capital, at ADFGs headquarters in Abu Dhabi, UAE. IC has also expressed an interest in underwriting FCCs proposed initial public offering (IPO) planned on the Bahrain Bourse later in 2016 which is subject to the receipt of various internal and regulatory approvals. Alrayes said: We are delighted to welcome ADFG, via IC, as a shareholder in FCC. Going forward, GFH and its subsidiaries will look to build on this strategic partnership with ADFG, as both groups stand to benefit from each others expertise and strength. This agreement is part of our overall strategy to bring in new shareholders as we take FCC to the next phase of growth. We have a keen interest in GFH Groups business and are pleased to further our active involvement in the group through this landmark transaction, said Alseddiqi. With FCCs strong market position and potential for future growth, following the completion of a second production line later in 2016, the company represents an attractive investment opportunity for ADFG. As a leading investment management and financial services group, ADFG will continue to work with GFH and FCC to further enhance the business, its valuation and financial returns to investors and all stakeholders. Established in 2008, FCC is a highly recognized integrated cement plant in Bahrain, manufacturing Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) and Sulfate Resistant Cement (SRC). Currently, FCC has a production capacity of 350,000 tonnes per annum, which is expected to go up to 850,000 tonnes with the upcoming launch of a second production line by end of 2016. FCC is valued at $120 million. TradeArabia News Service Qatar-based Al Sawari Industries (ASI) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Uniform Italia, a leading Italian manufacturing company, to establish a joint venture that will manufacture uniforms for a wide variety of sectors. Uniform Italia is a company that has been involved in the military clothing sector since 1945, and specialises in the military clothing sector. As part of the agreement, the joint venture will sell and distribute clothing, uniform and accessories in the Middle East, North Africa (Mena), Europe and other regions, said a statement from the company. The statement of intent was signed recently by Sheikh Turki bin Faisal Al Thani, chairman of and Arnaldo Usai, CEO of Uniform Italia, it said. The joint venture company will set up a factory later this year at an estimated investment of $35 million. It will operate in the manufacturing, trade and servicing of clothing, uniform and accessories in Qatar, it added. It will also produce work uniforms including those used for the states security and military personnel, construction, manufacturing, airline crew, and similar industries. The joint venture company will further cater to the need for uniforms in public sector undertakings such as schools and healthcare, said the statement. The signing ceremony was attended by Sheikh Faisal Bin Qassim Al Thani, chairman of Al Faisal Holding; Sheikh Mohamed Bin Faisal Al Thani, president of the Italian Chamber of Commerce in Qatar; Abdulaziz bin Ahmed Al Maliki Al Jehani, Qatar's ambassador to Italy; Federica Guidi, Minister of Economic Development of the Italian Government; Guido De Sanctis, ambassador of Italy in Qatar; and Giancarlo Innocenzi Botti, xhairman of Invitalia SPA (the Italian Agency for Investments Development). Al Thani said: We have made significant progress in setting up the joint venture and together the companies are creating a world-class production facility in Qatar. Simultaneously, both sides are evaluating potential industrial sites and are screening the existing local supply chain, he added. TradeArabia News Service Omans CC Energy Development (CCED), an oil and gas major, plans to invest around $340 million in augmenting exploration and production facilities in its Block 3 and 4 acreage in the Sultanate, a report said. This is in addition to an estimated $1.3 billion already invested in the two adjoining concessions since CCED acquired operatorship of the blocks in 2009, David Wohlschlegel, deputy managing director, was quoted as saying in the Oman Observer report. The latest investment has been earmarked towards the drilling of up to 75 wells, as well as the establishing additional production facilities, he said. Production from the two blocks has ramped to over 40,000 barrels per day (bpd) in 2015 from zero in 2009, according to the report. As a result of these efforts, CCED has since unearthed in excess of 150 million barrels of reserves and continues to explore the two blocks, he added. Since we became operators of Blocks 3 and 4, CCED has acquired more than 45 sq km of 3D and 850 km of 2D seismic, Wohlschlegel said. Through the implementation of fast track developments of near discoveries, CCED managed to achieve a current output of 40,000 bpd over a short period of time. Gross production from the blocks has aggregated over 35 million barrels since 2009, he added. The holy city of Makkah is leading hotel development in Saudi Arabia with 24,133 rooms currently in the construction pipeline, according to a new report. Riyadh follows with 10,053 rooms and Jeddah with 6,980 rooms under development, with the majority of rooms forecast to open over the next five years, says the new report by Tophotelprojects commissioned by The Hotel Show Saudi Arabia 2016. Makkah is therefore the second top city in the Middle East and Africa (Mena) for the number of hotel rooms set to enter the market, behind only Dubai, which has 43,714 rooms currently in the pipeline. With the holy cities of Makkah and Madinah forecast to exceed 17 million visitors by 2025, the number of local and international hoteliers looking to invest continues to grow, said Christine Davidson, group event director of the dmg events hospitality portfolio, organiser of The Hotel Show Saudi Arabia 2016. The event runs from May 17 to 19 at the Jeddah Centre for Forums and Events. With the Abraj Kudai forecast to open in Makkah in 2019, adding 10,000 new rooms to the market, it is not surprising that Saudi Arabia leads the way in hotel construction, said Davidson. The new report identifies The Carlson Rezidor Hotel Group as one of the top 10 international brands with the most projects currently under development throughout Saudi Arabia. Its pipeline includes two new hotels in Makkah: Park Inn by Radisson Al Naseem Makkah (opening in 2016), and Park Inn by Radisson Aziziyah Makkah (2017). Basel Talal, district director, The Rezidor Hotel Group Saudi Arabia and general manager of the Radisson Blu Hotel in Riyadh, said: Both of these hotels offer privacy in highly accessible locations for pilgrims and Umrah travellers. The evolution of religious tourism has been a priority for Saudi Arabias government over the past years and has resulted in considerable investment and interest from developers and operators alike. In addition, Umrah is now available the whole year and the government has recently announced its intention to increase the number of visas over the coming 10 years." Grant Salter, head of travel, hospitality and leisure advisory at Deloitte, will discuss Market performance, trends and projects in Jeddah and Makkah at the second annual Vision Conference at The Hotel Show Saudi Arabia. He commented: The substantial rise in supply expected over the next few years in both Jeddah and Makkah will be interesting to observe as the supply and demand dynamics currently show a market in balance with occupancy and ADR (average daily rate) relatively unchanged over the last 12 months. Makkah should be able to cope with the rise in supply expected but Jeddah could face headwinds. - TradeArabia News Service All flights and train services to and from Brussels have been cancelled following twin attacks, which killed 34 people, at the city's main international airport and Maelbeek Metro station on Tuesday morning. According to public broadcaster VRT, a suicide bomber blew himself up at Brussels airport on Tuesday killing at least 14 people and a further blast tore through a rush-hour metro train in the capital shortly afterwards, claiming 20 lives. A witness said he heard shouts in Arabic shortly before two blasts struck the packed airport departure lounge. Pictures on social media showed smoke rising from the terminal building through shattered windows and passengers fleeing down a slipway, some still hauling their bags. Alphonse Youla, 40, who works at the airport, said he heard a man shouting out in Arabic before the first explosion. "Then the glass ceiling of the airport collapsed." "I helped carry out five people dead, their legs mangled," he said, his hands covered in blood. The blasts at the airport and metro station occurred four days after the arrest in Brussels of a suspected participant in November militant attacks in Paris that killed 130 people. Belgian police had been on alert for any reprisal action. Following the gruesome attacks, France has decided to deploy 1,600 additional police officers to bolster security at its borders and on public transport, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said. A total of 400 additional police officers will boost security in the greater Paris area, and military patrols will be refocused on public transport sites, the minister said after an emergency meeting with President Francois Hollande. Meanwhile, German authorities have stepped up security measures at airports, train stations and the borders with Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Luxembourg following explosions in Brussels, a spokesman for the federal police said on Tuesday. Security services have been on a high state of alert across western Europe for fear of militant attacks backed by Islamic State, which claimed responsibility for the Paris attack. While most European airports are known for stringent screening procedures of passengers and their baggage, that typically takes place only once passengers have checked in and are heading to the departure gates. Although there may be discreet surveillance, there is nothing to prevent member of the public walking in to the departure hall at Zaventem airport with heavy baggage. - Reuters Baku, Azerbaijan, March 22 Trend: The staff of Azerbaijan's embassy in Belgium and the country's diplomatic mission to NATO were not affected by the explosions in Brussels, the embassy told Trend March 22. Azerbaijan's diplomatic missions urged their employees and Azerbaijani nationals, living and staying temporarily in Belgium, not to go out and visit crowded places. Earlier, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry instructed the country's embassy in Belgium to find out if there are any Azerbaijani nationals among the victims of the Brussels airport explosions. Baku, Azerbaijan, March 22 Trend: An Azerbaijani citizen was at the Brussels international airport, where terrorist attacks occurred March 22, Hikmat Hajiyev, the Azerbaijani foreign ministry's spokesman, told Trend March 22. Hajiyev said that the Azerbaijani citizen was not injured, adding that the embassy is in contact with this citizen. "The Azerbaijani embassy in Belgium is working intensively," he said. "Azerbaijani citizens in need of consular assistance in connection with the recent events in Brussels may contact the embassy." Several explosions were heard in Brussels March 22. At least 13 people have reportedly been killed and dozens injured after two explosions at Brussels' Zaventem Airport. Another blast at a subway station occurred in the suburb of Maelbeek. The explosions at Brussels' Zaventem Airport have been recognized as a terror attack. Baku, Azerbaijan, March 22 Trend: The pilots of Azerbaijani and Turkish armed forces conducted a joint operation during the TURAZ Sahini - 2016 joint tactical-flight exercises in Konya, Turkey. The purpose of the operation was to destroy a supposed enemy's strategic facilities, as well as aircraft, the Azerbaijani defense ministry told Trend March 22. The plan of operation, weather conditions and other issues were discussed with pilots. The operation involving MiG-29, F-16 fighters and SU-25 bombers was conducted successfully and according to the plan. Thirteen Iranians are under detention on charges of terrorism in the Kingdom, Saudi Gazette quoted the security sources. The sources said nine Iranians were arrested during the past 10 days from a number of locations across the Kingdom. They were part of two groups: The first one consisting of seven suspected terrorists and the second comprised two. The sources said the Iranians did not resist the arrest nor did they make any attempt to escape. Four Iranians were already in prisons facing similar charges. One of them was caught with the cell of 32 spies for Iran between March and May, 2013. In addition to him, the cell included an Afghan national and 30 Saudis. The cell members are being tried before a criminal court in Riyadh which reconvened on Sunday after a three-day recess. The court recessed its first session on Feb. 23 after giving each of the defendants a paper containing the charges against him. The judge in the case asked them to prepare their replies to the second round of the sessions. He also asked them to assign lawyers or ask the court to do this for them. According to court sources, the attorney general asked for capital punishment for 25 of them. They were accused of high treason, liaising with Iranian intelligence elements, meeting with some of them in Iran and Lebanon, meeting with Iran's supreme leader Ali Khamenei and passing over to Iran classified military and civil data about the Kingdom. The spies were also accused of maintaining contacts with a number of Iranian officials and diplomats at the embassy in Riyadh, the consulate in Jeddah and the Iranian mission to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC). The court sources revealed that a Saudi defendant is a nuclear physicist, another an owner of a local Haj company, a third a soldier at the Haj military forces, the fourth an educationist with long years of experience while others are bankers, government officials and businessmen. Baku, Azerbaijan, March 22 By Emil Ilgar - Trend: Iran condemns terror attacks in Brussels and extends condolences and sympathy to the families of victims, Jaber Ansari, spokesman for the Iranian foreign ministry, said. The continuous terror attacks in the word's different countries testify to a common and united fight against terrorism and their political, financial and ideological supporters, IRNA quoted Ansari as saying on March 22. He added that the terrorism and extremism pose a threat to the entire world. Several explosions were heard in Brussels March 22. At least 28 people have reportedly been killed and dozens injured. Iranian President Hassan Rouhani has "firmly condemned" terrorist bomb explosions in the Belgian capital city of Brussels, Press TV reported. Posting a message on his Twitter account on Tuesday, the Iranian president offered his deepest condolences to the Belgian government and people, particularly those who lost their loved ones. Earlier in the day, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hossein Jaberi Ansari, also condemned the twin blasts in Brussels, stressing the importance of adopting all-embracing efforts to fight terrorism which is threatening the entire world. "Repetition of terrorist operations in different parts of the world is an indicator of the common threat [posed] by terrorism and extremism to the entire world," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hossein Jaberi Ansari, said on Tuesday. He added that such terrorist incidents highlight the necessity of "integrated and overarching" action against the ominous phenomenon of terrorism as well as centers of political, ideological and financial support for terrorism. A series of blasts hit Brussels' Zaventem airport and a city metro station, killing at least 34 people and injuring 230 others. The Belgian authorities are treating the explosions as part of a coordinated terrorist attack. The United States has allegedly charged three people over plotting to evade its sanctions imposed on Iran, Press TV reported. The three people include a Turkey-based businessman along with two other men, reports by AP and Reuters said, citing US prosecutors on Monday. The three are reportedly facing charges of being engaged in hundreds of millions of dollars of transactions for Iran and other entities. The charges were made in a federal indictment in Manhattan. The Federal prosecutors said that one of them was arrested in Florida and appeared in a court in Miami on Monday, but the other two are fugitives. The crimes allegedly occurred from 2010 to 2015 when the defendants laundered money through institutions worldwide. Iran had been under US and Europe sanctions over its nuclear program, which Tehran has always said is for peaceful purposes. After Iran and the P5+1 group started to implement the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) reached last year, all nuclear-related sanctions imposed on Iran by the European Union, the Security Council and the US were lifted. A total number of casualties in the terrorist attacks that hit the Belgian capital of Brussels earlier on Tuesday has reached 230, a spokeswoman at the Belgian Crisis Center told Sputnik. "The only thing we can say for the moment is that we have slightly more than 10 people that have died from the attacks at the Brussels airport and 100 that have been injured. For the subway we have about 20 persons that have died in the accident this morning and about 130 persons who are injured," the spokeswoman said. The spokeswoman added that the Belgian authorities did not have a definitive number of the attacks' victims, "because people are still in the hospital and have been evacuated so it's been very hard to confirm or to say something about this." "There are more soldiers in Brussels. We have 225 extra soldiers for the moment in Brussels," she said. She pointed out that the country's borders remain open but the security measures there had been reinforced. Meanwhile, the victims of a series of blasts in the Belgian capital have yet to be identified, Brussels City Mayor Yvan Mayeur said Tuesday. "The victims have not been identified yet. It will take considerable time," the mayor told reporters in Brussels. According to Mayeur, Brussels is now in the same situation as Paris was in November 2015. A series of blasts hit Brussels' Zaventem airport and a city metro station, killing at least 34 people and injuring almost 200 others. The Belgian authorities are treating the explosions as part of a coordinated terrorist attack. US Secretary of State John Kerry will discuss the Belgium attacks with Russian officials during his visit to Moscow on March 23-24, although the primary focus of the trip will be Syria, a State Department official told reporters. "The prime reason for [Kerry] going to Moscow is of course Syria. It's impossible to divorce that discussion from what happened in Brussels, particularly if it turns out that... [Daesh] claims of responsibility [for the attack] are true," the official stated on Tuesday, according to Sputnik. Earlier on Tuesday, a series of blasts hit Brussels' Zaventem airport and a city-center metro station, killing at least 34 people and injuring more that 230 others. The Belgian authorities are treating the explosions as part of a coordinated terrorist attack. The State Department representative also noted that Kerry's discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin and other senior officials in Moscow would primarily be focused on the Syrian political process, cessation of hostilities and delivery of humanitarian aid. On Wednesday, Kerry is slated to meet with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavro to discuss the ceasefire and aid situation in conflict-torn Syria, according to Russian Deputy Turkey warned its citizens not to travel to Belgium following Tuesday's terror attacks in Brussels, Anadolu Agency reported. "The Foreign Ministry has advised Turkish citizens against non-urgent travel to Belgium," the ministry said in a statement on its website. According to Belgian media, at least 34 were killed in explosions at the country's main airport and a metro station. The statement said the Turkish embassy in Brussels and the consulate general in Antwerp were only receiving emergency calls. Turkish border guards stopped a suspected Daesh-linked ("Islamic state") suicide bomber on the Syrian frontier on Tuesday, a security source said, Anadolu reported. The potential bomber, who was carrying explosives, was arrested alongside nine other suspected Daesh members in Gaziantep province, the source said on condition of anonymity due to restrictions on speaking publicly. According to a statement from the provincial governor's office, the group originally consisted of 13 suspects but three escaped. It said two were injured when they were arrested. The group had crossed from Syria, the security source added without providing further detail. The Turkish authorities regularly arrest suspected Daesh members in the provinces of Gaziantep and Kilis, which border a region of Syria under the group's control. Air Charter Broker Service (Cameojet.COM) UNITED KINGDOM - March 22nd, 2016 - Announcing Cameojet Air Charter Broker Service MAR. 22, 2016 For Release [09.00] a.m. [GMT [March 22], 2016 Cameojet Brings New-Service for Business Jet Travellers to the Air Charter Broker Market Cameojet now available for businesses travellers: charter broker solution offers unmatched service, privacy and overall value. LONDON, SURREY, UNITED KINGDOM MARCH 22, 2016 Air Charter Broker Provider, today announced that it is improving the next-generation Charter Broker Service, Cameojet.s most complete charter service to date, for busines travellers. Cameojet know exactly what they need and refer their customers to a quality operator. When booking charter flights, Cameojet make the client be given the name of the operators , including any DBA (Doing Business As) information, so that the client can make an informed decision about the operator. In addition, starting today Cameojet are Returnjet bonifide air charter broker , which mean Cameojet have access to search and filter to find the right aircraft, at the right time, for the right price Hubert Mckay CEO. We are seeing tremendous interest in demanding clientele that wants to know who they are flying with, who the operator is, and that the operator has operational control of the aircraft, clients have realized that Cameojet services can help them. Through the new charter broker service, Cameojet will be able to offer the always-up-to-date operators information clients want to know through our trusted, industry-leading CHARTER BROKER SERVICE. Services More information can be found at http://cameojet.com http://cameojet.co.uk To learn more about what Cameojet can do for your business, contact us today at bookings@cameojet.com bookings@cameojet.co.uk Mission To privide our client with the service they use regulary and ensure that those service are at the highest standard are guaranteed faverable price. About Cameojet Air Charter Broker is a British company and Returnjet bonifide air charter broker ,which mean Cameojet have access to their intelligent trip locator program and aircraft and crew scheduling systems, for domestic and international aviation, with a global network of charter operators , with access to search and filter to find the right aircraft, at the right time, for the right price. Service Cameojet organize single seats for business travelers United Nations agency have appointments or conferences in or London Biggin Hill , Bristol, Bournemouth, Duram,Exeter, Leeds, Blackpool ,Cambridge,(England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales) and Republic of Ireland, Birmingham, Glasgow, Liverpool, Edinburgh, Manchester, port and capital. Contact: Hubert Mckay, Cameojet, +44 (0) 20-8405-3638 + 44 (0) 79 1075 2080 bookings@cameojet.com bookings@cameojet.co.uk ### Hi-lighting the Food Therapy Concept at Eat Well Cafe and Western favorites with French Twist at The Twist Bar & Bistro (TRAVPR.COM) THAILAND - March 22nd, 2016 - Bringing a new concept to town, Well Hotel Bangkok Sukhumvit 20 introduces Eat Well Cafe and The Twist Bar & Bistro, two restaurants in one dining ground. The hotel comes with an out of the box idea to bring the two food concepts into one venue providing the convenience and pleasure to guests to choose the dining option they prefer. Guests can enjoy the menu from both Eat Well Cafe and The Twist Bar and Bistro together with their friends and family. Well Hotel Bangkok Sukhumvit 20s Dining Ground houses Eat Well Cafe and The Twist Bar & Bistro, the casual restaurant/bar where one can come with a special someone for an intimate dinner, or with friends just to hang out for a chat, delicious food and tasty drinks. The interior design concept is Classic Twist harmonizing the old and the new with a touch of Art Deco evoking the glamour and romance of the Prohibition-Era style of the twenties and early thirties. Besides the comfortable and cosy dining area inside, the restaurant also offers an outdoor terrace for those who would like to watch what goes around and the passer-by. Eat Well Cafe Food Therapy, Thai & Asian Fusion Dining well and healthy at Eat Well Cafe, the culinary team believes that providing an Eat Well experience is nothing beyond using the right and high quality produce, so the team plucks the freshest ingredients from the local sources, add the local spice and herbs to create simple yet authentic, healthy and delicious Thai and Asian fusion dishes aiming to delight the taste bud of the hotel guests and Bangkok foodies. The highlight of Eat Well Cafe is the Food Therapy. The team has crafted the food therapy menu to ease some of the most common symptoms found in the urban dwellers which are Computer Vision Syndrome, Migraine & Headache, Office Syndrome and Sore throat. Well team believes that food can ease the symptoms, reduces the illness and can make your health better. We carefully select all ingredients to create anti-inflammatory food choices for the diners. Recommended dishes include Quinoa Mango and Prawn Salad, Thai Pomelo Pomegranate and Chicken Salad, Salmon Red Curry with Grain Coconut Cream topped with Kaffir Lime Leaves, Clear Mushroom Soup with Chinese Herbs Ginkgo and Goji Berry and Blue Crab with Betel Yellow Curry served with Brown Rice Vermicelli. The Twist Bar & Bistro Western Delights with French Twist Led by French Chef Gregory Caplot who spent years honing his culinary skill, he creates a perfect bistro food with French twist coming with professional, yet unpretentious service at The Twist Bar & Bistro. The menu changes seasonally and daily specials with fresh ingredients are offered to surprise your tongue. Raised and grew up in Paris, Chef Gregory combines his love for the French home cooking style to the popular western classic dishes to entertain your appetite. As a result, the restaurant offers favorite western dishes with French flair from small plate comestibles, soup, salad, sandwiches, burgers, pasta, meat and seafood. Recommended dishes include Parisienne Witloof Salad, Wasabi Tuna Tartare, Prawn Bisque Soup with Crab Meat, Lamb Shank Provencal Stew, Pan-fried Snow Fish served with Red Capsicum Coulis and Potato Risotto. The bistro also offers delicious homemade burgers and sandwiches such as Farmer Angus Beef Burger with bacon and Emmental Cheese, Le Parisien Jambon Beurre Sandwich and Countryside Sandwich which is an open face whole-wheat sandwich topped with grilled onions, bacon, mushroom, potato and melted Emmental Cheese and poached egg. For those who love pasta with a twist, do not miss the Tom Yum Goong Pasta which combines the tasty tom yum flavours and the creamy Carbonara style sauce, the result is the perfect combination of the Western and Thai cuisine that is just divine. ### A recent post on downsizing, Nobody wants the family heirlooms anymore, raised a lot of questions, and commenters suggested many answers and much truth. Peggy noted in the comments: The generation of people who are now in their 80s and 90s were the ones who lived through the Great Depression and I truly believe that's why they later accumulated so much "stuff" as a reaction to that. There were so many suggestions: This is why you start telling the stories behind these possessions so that, when the time comes, people see it as more than just 'stuff'. It has history. It has meaning. Others get the meaning but really, We now have SO MUCH of her "stuff" and yes, some of it is "good", real antiques that she collected many years ago, but NO ONE WANTS THEM. Couples (like my wife and me) often disagree about it: I've been sick of the clutter for years, but my wife loves it. If there is an open spot on ANYTHING, she buys some garbage to fill it with. There is a rule followed by many writers on sites that still have comments. Print out in bold face, upper case 72 point: DONT READ THE COMMENTS! But I have to say that in 15 years of writing, I've never seen such an interesting, involved and intelligent stream of comments as I did on this post; it's clearly an issue that many people are thinking about. It's a topic that merits revisiting, to explore what resources are out there than can help solve this problem. But the more I read the comments, the more I realized how hopeless and out-of-touch my advice is. As I noted in the previous post, I'm an architect and a minimalist and perhaps a bit of a snob, so I don't have much stuff a few books, a few pieces of mid-century Herman Miller and thats it. I always quote William Morris: Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful. So how do you do downsize? In researching this post I discovered Marni Jamesons wonderful book "" published last year by AARP. She has learned how to dump everything, from husbands to houses to stuff. She starts off by quoting Morriss contemporary, Mark Twain, acknowledging the emotional tugs: Our house was not unsentient matter it had a heart and a soul, and eyes to see with.... We never came home from an absence that its face did not light up and speak out its eloquent welcome and we could not enter it unmoved. Mark Twains house spoke to him, and no doubt the stuff in it did too. Jameson gets how stuff speaks to families, and how hard it is to part with it: Simply and starkly put, sorting through a household makes us face our own mortality: the passage of time, life and death, where weve been, where we havent been, where we are in life, successes and regrets. When discussing the first cut of getting rid of stuff, Jameson channels Morris and writes: When sorting, ask these questions: Do I love it? Do I need it? Will I use it? If you dont answer yes to one of them, the item goes. This is a message that resonates with every generation. It's pretty much the advice that Marie Kondo gives in her best-selling minimalist bible, "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up": I came to the conclusion that the best way to choose what to keep and what to throw away is to take each item in ones hand and ask: Does this spark joy? If it does, keep it. If not, dispose of it. This is not only the simplest but also the most accurate yardstick by which to judge. Marie Kondo is speaking to young people trying to manage tiny apartments; Marni Jameson is speaking to older people trying to downsize; William Morris is speaking to 19th-century aesthetes. But they all have pretty much the same message: Lose the emotional baggage and keep what is beautiful, loved or that sparks joy. So how do you narrow it down, particularly when you're dealing with your parents' house of treasures? I particularly liked the advice Peter Walsh of TLCs "Clean Sweep" gave Jameson: Imagine that your parents have deliberately left you five treasures. Your job is to find the items that have the strongest, happiest memories for you. Go through not in sadness but in loving memory. So look with joy for the few, best items to keep. Let the rest go. Perhaps the best advice in Jamesons book is the discussion about when to downsize. Its a subject I have some experience with: I saw my late mother-in-law trapped in her suburban split-level without being able to drive, having to decide whether she wanted to be on the kitchen level or the bathroom level. I downsized by duplexing my house and keeping about a third for my wife and I. Jameson describes a family, the Switzes, who moved from a big house to an apartment: Attitude and timing makes a difference. Moves to downsize are much easier when people choose to move, as the Switzes did, rather than when the move chooses them, which happens when people become too frail, have an accident, lose a spouse who made independent living possible, or start having cognitive issues. The consensus from the book, from Richard Eisenbergs original post, from my personal experience and from the many comments on my last post is that we should get ahead of the problem. Get rid of the stuff while you can and dont leave it to your kids, because they really will not thank you for it or know what to do with it. For your kids, emptying your house will not spark joy. More resources Downsizing has become a significant industry, and with 8,000 Americans turning 65 every day, there's a significant market. There's even a professional association, the National Association of Senior Move Managers, who specialize in helping older adults and their families through the daunting process of transitioning to a new residence. They have a nice little PDF download with useful information. There are companies that will come into your home and organize your stuff, photograph it and get rid of it, using the latest social media resources. Check out Maxsold and Everything but the House. Jameson also writes a post on the AARP bulletin with 20 tips to declutter your home, reminding us to remember: "You're simplifying your life, not erasing your past." When you're tacking this kind of emotional task, that's good advice to remember. I have always wondered why a sandwich of polystyrene and concrete is considered green, and have taken significant abuse for my position on insulated concrete forms (ICF). Now an interim report from the impressive-sounding MIT Concrete Sustainability Hub attempts to "deliver a new level of clarity" to the issue, and "to demonstrate the potential energy savings due to the benefits of thermal mass, effective insulation, and reduced air infiltration" with an elaborate comparison of apples and oranges. The study, (PDF Here) funded by the absolutely impartial and disinterested Portland Cement Association and Redi-Mix Concrete Research Foundation, finds that yes indeed, ICF homes "deliver energy savings in heating, cooling, and ventilation." But compared to what? For residential buildings, insulated concrete form (ICF) construction can offer operational energy savings of 20% or more compared to code compliant wood-framed buildings in a cold climate such as Chicago. So they are comparing a premium product like an ICF that has an insulating value of R-40 or more to a conventional new code-compliant building built to ASHRAE 90.2-2007, "the minimum energy-efficiency requirements for the design and construction of new residential dwelling units", and quelle surprise, it uses less energy. That delivers lots of clarity. But what if they compared it to another premium product, like a structural insulated panel, or a passivhaus, or any other R-40 wall? they continue: Blower-door testing has demonstrated that ICF homes achieve tight construction with minimal air infiltration, which improves the energy performance of residential construction. Again, compared to what? A code compliant house with a 6 mil poly vapour barrier or another premium system where attention is paid to air infiltration? Then there is my bete noire, the embodied energy in the concrete and the CO2 released in its production, and the fossil fuels and flame retardants used to make the polystyrene forms. According to the comprehensive life cycle analysis: Because use-phase emissions are much larger than pre-use and end-of-life emissions, this same percentage is a reasonable estimate of life-time savings in carbon emissions associated with the use of ICFs. The energy savings can compensate for the initial carbon emissions of the concrete within a few years of operation. More than 90% of the life cycle carbon emissions are due to the operation phase, with construction and end-of-life disposal accounting for less than 10% of the total emissions. But they are talking about a 75 year life span. That is a lot of emissions, and 10% of that is a very big number, which they decline to state in the interim report. And are they going to compare it to another, say wood framed house insulated to R-40 with cellulose or icynene? The investigators have only released an interim report without data, but on the face of it, their conclusions are completely obvious and equally meaningless. In their 2004 study Insulating Concrete Forms Construction Cost Analysis (PDF here) The Portland Cement Association found that ICF walls cost double what a conventional 2x6 insulated wall cost. There are half a dozen greener ways to achieve the same results with that kind of money. Doing a study comparing ICFs to code-compliant walls isn't even comparing apples to oranges, it is more like comparing apples to bicycles, a completely pointless and tautological exercise. Since U.S. regulators imposed reparations on Takata after its airbag inflator propellant was found to be linked to 11 deaths, Joyson bought small airbag supplier Key Safety Systems in February. (Photo : Getty Images) Amid the global airbag crisis Takata Corp. is embroiled in, Chinese supplier Ningbo Joyson Electronic Corp. stepped up to take advantage of the situation, according to an article by China Daily. Founded by Wang Jiangfeng, the once little-known company has transformed into one of China's largest suppliers of automotive components. Joyson counts Volkswagen AG and General Motors Co. as some of its major customers. Advertisement Since United States regulators imposed reparations on Takata after its airbag inflator propellant was found to be linked to 11 deaths, Joyson bought a small airbag supplier called Key Safety Systems in February. The acquisition cost $920 million in cash through private-equity firms. To fill the huge gap Takata has left in the tough market, other companies have also ramped up production. Firms that have joined the party include ZF Friedrichshafen AG from Germany, Daicel Corp. from Japan, and Autoliv Inc. from Sweden. Takata, on the other hand, may shed billions of dollars in potential compensation to pay for recall costs. Third-party outsiders have been called in by the Japanese company to draft a restructuring plan. "It's very difficult for Takata to recover from this and the company may be facing a bankruptcy crisis," Tang Yuxin, Joyson's CEO, said in a phone interview with China Daily. "All of this has given us a heaven-sent opportunity to enter the industry. What was a market split among four is now shared among three players, so the opportunities naturally have increased a lot," Tang added. To make the most out of the opportunity, Joyson aims to minimize car-related injuries and breaks through Key Safety's drive-control systems. This technology will help detect possible collisions, providing ample safety by triggering brakes and deploying airbags automatically. Through its acquisition of Key Safety, Joyson might as well dethrone the triumvirate of auto-safety components suppliers in the world--Takata, ZF's TRW, and Autoliv. Joyson also bought the automotive division of TechniSat Digital GmbH to bolster research and development in car connectivity, navigation systems and infotainment. This year, Joyson is expected to gain sales of up to 20 billion yuan, and 30 billion yuan in the next three years, according to Tang. Nikhila Pant Dhawan Tribune News Service Bathinda, March 21 Acting on the demand of panchayats of Gehri Buttar, Jodhpur Romana, Gehri Bhagi, Mehta, Shergarh, Bhagwangarh, Gurusar Sainewala, Phullomitthi, Sangat Kalan, Jassi Bagh Wali, Kishanpura, Naruana, Jai Singh Wala, Baho Sivian and Meeya villages, the district administration today asked the Army to remove the net which it had cast in the Bathinda distributary of the Sirhind canal that passes through the Bathinda cantonment. The district administration issued the orders here today taking cognisance of the fact that the casting of the net was affecting the crop in the villages and might also affect sowing of the cotton crop which was to be done within the next 20 days. The Irrigation Department had also announced uninterrupted water supply to the field starting April 16 to aid cotton crop sowing. As per information, the Irrigation Department has even threatened police action against the Army for casting the net and disrupting water supply to the villages. Meanwhile, the Deputy Commissioner Basant Garg had called Army personnel for a meeting on March 22 as well. Following the Pathankot incident, the Army had cast a net into the Bathinda distributory following which the water supply to various villages was severely affected. Village residents had then brought the issue to the notice of the DC and the DC had assured swift action in the matter. Elaborating on the issue, sarpanch of Jai Singh Wala Hamir Singh said following the irections by the DC, the Army had removed the net from the distributary but cast it again after a few days. Farmers approached the DC again on March 18 and followed up the matter today as well. Phullomitthi farmer Ajaib Singh said not only the irrigation was affected but the water supply to the households in the village was also disrupted. District general secretary of the Jamhoori Kisan Sabha, Darsha Singh said if the district administration failed to take action in the matter, the union would assemble farmers from the affected villages and would start staging protests outside the Army Cantonment from March 31. Meanwhile, Upkaran Singh, XEN, Department of Irrigation, confirmed that the department had already issued a notice to the Army for the removal of the net and in case the Army fails to abide by the notice by March 31, the department would be left with no option but to resort to police action against the Army under the Canal Act. The 52-year-old business tycoon caught the attention of the media when he first bought 89 percent of the shares of House of Fraser, a British department store, back in 2014. (Photo : Getty Images) Yuan Yafei, founder and chairman of Sanpower Group, has no plans to slow down in this shopping spree. His target? Malls, precision medicine and healthcare, according to an article by China Daily. The 52-year-old business tycoon caught the attention of the media when he first bought 89 percent of the shares of House of Fraser, a British department store, back in 2014. Advertisement The purchase went down as the biggest Chinese foreign retail deal in history. Since then, Yuan snapped up other acquisitions, including Brookstone Inc, a U.S. fancy gadget retailer, and Natali Seculife Holding Ltd., a big private healthcare and homecare service provider based in Israel. In person, Yuan is an amiable individual who regularly breaks into English during interviews as a means to exercise his language skill--one he started to learn three years ago. Learning English was a convenient move; now, he doesn't need translators to help conduct business with Western partners. "When I talked to Western business partners, many interpreters could not exactly translate what I meant. So I decided to learn English myself," Yuan said in an interview with China Daily. However, Yuan learned English through an unconventional way. Instead of attending school himself, he asked 10 of his assistants to teach him English every day. "I asked questions if I didn't understand. I also asked them what the right English expression was whenever I thought of anything," Yuan said. "I'm not afraid of losing face. One can never be successful if he or she is worried about face." Prior to becoming a business tycoon, Yuan started out as an employee at the local government of Nanjing in Jiangsu Province. He graduated from college with a degree in accounting. His path changed for the better thanks to economic reforms led by Deng Xiaoping. In 1993, he quit his government job and entered the computer industry by the age of 30. During this time, he built do-it-yourself machines using components from Guangdong. Within two decades, Yuan became one of the richest people in China. Last year, he was ranked as the 37th wealthiest person in the country in the Hurun Chinese rich list. His assets are estimated to be around 37 billion yuan. When asked about why he chose to invest in overseas firms, the answer is clear. "Very simple. To serve the Chinese market," said Yuan. "The Chinese market is huge enough. But we don't have enough experience. With the help of money, I can buy Western brands and technologies, which are exactly what Chinese companies lack." Tribune News Service Chandigarh, March 21 A former Indian Air Force (IAF) official, Baibya Nath Jha of Sector 48, has been arrested by the Chandigarh Police for allegedly cheating a Mauritius resident of Rs 4 lakh on the pretext of opening a business venture. Jha was arrested from near Sector 31 and remanded in judicial custody for 14 days. Sources said the accused was booked following the complaint made by T Purmanan, who is a resident of Maurititus, through the foreign embassy in June, 2015. Police sources said Jha was absconding since an FIR was lodged against him. The accused used to change his locations frequently. Sources said Nath had met the complainant in Mauritius in 2013.The accused stayed at the complainants house for three days. The complainant claimed that Nath had introduced himself as the representative of a multinational company of the USA and expressed his desire to start a business. Police sources said the complainant had deposited Rs 4 lakh in Naths account in Chandigarh from Mauritius. Sources maintained Nath had lured the complainant on the pretext of making him a shareholder in the company. Sources said that the police have also requested the court to seize the passport of the accused. New Delhi, March 21 With the arrest of two African nationals, the Delhi Police claims to have busted a gang involved in a "black dollar fraud". The accused have been identified as Kamleau Nya Alain, alias Glory (43), who hails from Cameroon and Mwanza Nawej Yesh, alias Michael (42), who belongs to Congo. A man, Aditya Bondwal, reported to the police on Sunday that he is a manufacturer of construction equipment. During the Indo-Africa summit, he came in contact with one, Rozer, through an acquaintance, said the police. Rozer allegedly showed interest in Aditya's business and gave a proposal to invest one million dollars in it. However, for cleaning the money to get the original dollars, a costly ink and powder was required. Rozer in this manner had taken lakhs from Aditya. Finally, he called the accused near the Oberoi Hotel in Civil Lines to give more money said the police. The police then apprehended the accused. TNS Tribune News Service New Delhi, March 22 Five persons, including a woman, most of whom belonging to Punjab, have been arrested by the Delhi Police Special Cell for allegedly running an interstate drug cartel. The police said they have seized heroin worth Rs 20 crore from them. The accused have been identified as Balkar Singh (36), who belongs to Jalandhar; Gurcharan Singh (35), who belongs to Kapurthala; Manjeet Singh (40) hails from Jalandhar; Satnam Singh, alias Bunty (42) from Shahajahanpur, Uttar Pradesh; and Krishna Devi (55)from Nawansher. "Fine quality heroin, weighing 5.275 kilograms have been seized from them. The international value of the drug is more than Rs 20 crore," said Sanjeev Kumar Yadav, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Special Cell). "During interrogation, it was revealed that all the arrested persons are members of the interstate narcotic cartel. They have been supplying heroin for more than 15 years. Balkar Singh, Gurcharan Singh, Manjeet Singh and Krishna Devi are notorious traffickers. They have travelled to Bareilly, UP, Uttarakhand to receive heroin. The main supplier, Satnam Singh, has been supplying heroin for the last 20 years," said Yadav. The trail of heroin in this case starts from Manipur from where it is brought to Bareilly and Shahjahanpur, UP by the carriers of drug suppliers, said Yadav. Drugs suppliers of Punjab come to Bareilly, Shahjanpur to procure the supply for further distribution to small drug peddlers. The Special Cell said it had information about drug trafficking activities of members of this syndicate for the past three months. During surveillance of the group, the police learnt that two alleged drug peddlers, Balkar and Gurcharan, were recently released from Kapurthala Jail in Punjab. "They collected consignments from Delhi and Bareilly and supplied it to people in Punjab," said Yadav. At least 30 people are dead following a suicide attack at Zaventem airport and at a metro station in Brussels. Some experts are inclined to see the Tuesday morning blasts as Islamist terroristsretaliation for the arrest a few days ago of Salah Abdeslam, one of the masterminds of last years terror strikes in Paris. The terrorists have managed to disrupt totally a city that is headquarters and home to a vast European Union bureaucracy. Though anticipating accurately as and when a terror group would show its hand is a hazardous call, nonetheless the Brussels security establishment has once again been found to be underequipped to track down and neutralise terror networks that were linked to last years Paris outrage. The Tuesday carnage has, rightly, been condemned as a cowardly act. There is never a justification for any terror act. It must have come as a rude shock to the European political class that has refused to take note of its vast restive ethnic communities, emotionally locked into conflict zones of the troubled Middle-East. Globalisation of grievances, resentments, weapons and terror skills has created enclaves of potentially troublesome immigrants in every European country. After Paris and now Brussels, Europe will face a difficult test. For decades European diplomats and leaders have lectured the rest of the world on how ethnic minorities must be treated; now the same very European elites find themselves befuddled and bedeviled as they deal with Islamist groups. The security establishments throughout Europe will renew their case for partly dismantling the openness that defines the European Union. The terror-induced trauma would take its toll of European sense of equilibrium. Unhappily, right-wing sentiments and prejudices have already captured large slices of European imagination. Political parties and leaders who pander to xenophobia and aggressive nationalism have gained significant electoral space. These gains in Europe have emboldened the likes of Donald Trumps in America. Advocacy of muscular right-wing solutions, in turn, strengthens the hand of the extremist. Democratic voices in Europe must not lose their confidence and certitude. Sushil Manav and Parvesh Sharma Tribune News Service Chandigarh, March 23 Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar ordered judicial inquiry into February's Jat quota violence on Tuesday. The Haryana Assembly witnessed heated discussions on violence during the Jat agitation for reservation in jobs and education. Speaking on the adjournment motion moved by INLDs Abhay Singh Chautala, HJC leader Kuldeep Bishnoi claimed rioters in Jhajjar raped a mother-daughter duo during Februarys protests. The rape was committed with local officials around, but reporters were discouraged from reporting the case, Bishnoi said. INLD legislator Zakir Hussain claimed the rapes reported at Murthal, if proved true, would be shameful for the state. The government has given affidavit that nothing happened. But what action have they taken on eyewitnesses who spoke on camera that they saw this, he said. He also questioned the conduct of a woman DIG heading the SIT saying she went to the spot to inquire in civvies, which he claimed was against the Punjab Police Rules and reflected the commissions casual attitude towards the case. Minister OP Dhankar accused the Congress of instigating protesters and claimed former Chief Minister BS Hooda's Assembly constituency had been used as meeting ground. He claimed protests blocked roads in a well-planned manner at Sampla, Bohar and other areas Dhankar accused Bishnoi of trying to mislead people by making 'baseless' allegations and claimed he had visited all victims of violence in Jhajjar, Bishnoi however said he would willingly reveal the victims names if Dhankar announced he would resign. Chautala demanded that a committee should be set up to investigate Bishnois allegations. Jat protests brew storm Chautala demanded to know from Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar why the government promise reservation for Jats earlier. Had Government gave assurance earlier violence could have been prevented, he sid. He also wanted to know what action the state government hadtaken against those involved in the riots. He also wanted to know why no action was taken against MP Raj Kumar Saini despite being alerted of his provocative statements. The state government failed to prevent the riots, Chautala said said. INLDs Parminder Dhull claimed the police had attacked students of Neki Ram College in Rohtak on February 19 Who directed police to attack students and who led police team, he said, adding police went back the next day to assault students. He also claimed Jats were not involved in the riots. Jats are being defamed. It is sedition, he said. Cong boycotts session Congress legislators continued to boycott proceedings of Haryana Assembly on Tuesday to protest suspension of three legislators. Congress MLAs led by CLP leader Kiran Choudhry, who sat on dharna outside the assembly gate, said the ruling party was deliberately keeping the Opposition out of the House to avoid uncomfortable questions on the Sultley-Yamua Link Canal, Februarys violent caste protests for reservation by Jats and budget estimates. Former Speaker Kuldeep Sharma, who has been suspended by the House for six months, admitted to tearing a copy of the Governor's address on Tuesday but said it was a symbolic act. "Our right to speak for people has been trampled under the iron feet of the majority, " he said. Shillong, March 22 The NDA government wanted to make the Northeast a hub for trade with South East Asian countries, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said on Monday. Singh, who was addressing a 'Sainik Sammelan' to mark the 181st Raising Day of Assam Rifles, said connectivity must first be strengthened for the development of a place. "With increased connectivity, contacts will be enhanced and that will boost cross-border trade," he said. "We want to make the Northeastern region as the hub of our trade with South East Asian countries. But for that peace must be prevailed," he said. Singh said Assam Rifles must play an important role in ensuring peace in the Northeast. "Our priority is fast-pace development of the Northeast," he said. Singh said insurgency continued to plague the region. "Our army, paramilitary forces and police are taking on such challenges. You (Assam Rifles) will have to defeat all destructive forces operating in the Northeast," he said. Singh said insurgency was at its lowest now in the Northeast and there has been a 30 per cent decrease in violence. Level of violence was lowest last year in the Northeast in the last 18 years, he said. He congratulated the Assam Rifles for beginning to induct a batch of 127 women in its ranks, and said the focrce must aim to increase the number of women along the lines of other paramilitary forces of the country. Assam Rifles is the oldest paramilitary force in the country and it was set up in 1835 with Shillong as its headquarters. Singh, who is on a two-day tour of Meghalaya, said on Monday that the central government was willing to hold talks with insurgent groups in the Northeast if they were willing to lay down their arms. Two militant groups are particularly active in Meghalaya the HNLC in Khasi hills and the ANVC in Garo hills. The central government has been holding talks with several militant organisations, including NSCN-IM and ULFA (Pro-Talk), although there are several more who refuse to negotiate, including the NSCN-K, PLA in Manipur and an ULFA faction led by Paresh Baruah. PTI Simran Sodhi Tribune News Service New Delhi, March 22 A day after China and Nepal signed a transit treaty in Beijing, India today said its relations with Nepal could not be compared with another. Our relations with Nepal have natural logic and we are not in the comparison business, said the spokesperson for the Ministry of External Affairs today. He said the geography and close relations that India and Nepal have always shared to lay doubts to rest. However, the treaty that would see China building a railway link between the two countries going through Tibet is likely to cause India great worry. The railway link would help reduce Nepals total dependence on India. The treaty is also a clear indication from Nepal that it has chosen to move closer to China after the recent Madhesi agitation, which brought it close to a humanitarian crisis. The treaty was signed by Nepalese PM KP Sharma Oli, who is currently on a visit to China. Oli had also visited India recently in an attempt to mend the relations. But going by the 10 treaties signed between Nepal and China yesterday, it would seem India has lost a strategic partner and neighbour to China. The nearly six-month blockade, which Nepal more than once said was Indias doing, disrupted normal life in Nepal. Shortage of fuel and medicines at the border strained the relationship as the agitating Madhesis demanded more representation in the newly promulgated Constitution. India, officially and publicly, made clear its displeasure with the new Nepalese Constitution. It said it was not inclusive enough and failed to protect the rights of the minorities such as Madhesis of the Terai region. It did not help matters that Nepal thought it was a case of India interfering in its internal affairs since the Madhesis were regarded to be culturally and ethnically closer to India. Karachi, March 22 At least 24 Hindus, including six women, have died after consuming spurious liquor during Holi celebrations in Pakistans Sindh, two years after a similar tragedy struck the countrys southern province. The police said 35 persons were rushed to a hospital in Tando Mohammad Khan district late last night, where 24 of them died. Six were women. They were celebrating the festival of Holi this week and purchased the cheap liquor from a dealer in Tando Muhammad Khan, senior police official in Hyderabad, Haq Nawaz, said. The condition of the remaining persons is serious, he said. Following the tragedy, residents staged a protest against the police for failing to stop the illegal sale of hooch in their neighbourhood. Authorities have suspended the area Station House Officer. Two persons have been arrested for brewing the illegal drink. The latest incident is a reminder of a similar tragedy in Hyderabad and Karachi in 2014 during Eid-ul Azha celebrations when 29 persons had died after consuming hooch. Alcohol consumption is banned in Pakistan for Muslims but non-Muslims are allowed to ration alcohol from special liquor shops run by provincial excise departments. PTI BEIJING, March 22 Philippine fishermen threw firebombs at Chinese law enforcement vessels in the South China Sea, China's Foreign Ministry on Tuesday, after Philippine media said fishermen had been struck by bottles hurled from Chinese coast guard ships. China and the Philippines have long exchanged accusations about each other's behaviour in the disputed South China Sea. China claims most of the energy-rich waters through which about $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. Neighbours Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims. Philippine media said this week that a group of fishermen had been chased away from Scarborough Shoal by Chinese coast guards who hurled bottles at them. The fishermen then responded with rocks, the reports said. Asked about the incident, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Scarborough Shoal known by Beijing as Huangyan Island was Chinese territory that Philippine fishermen had been fishing around illegally. "Chinese official ships advised the illegally stationed Philippine trawlers to leave, in accordance with the law, but they refused to obey," she told a daily news briefing. "Certain people on the ships even waved around machetes and flung fire bombs, carrying out deliberate provocation, attacking the Chinese law enforcers and official boat, confronting China's law enforcement and seriously threatening the safety and order of the waters around Huangyan Island," Hua said. China had strengthened its "management" around the shoal, she added, without elaborating. A spokesman for the Philippines Foreign Ministry said: "We can't comment at this time as we are still awaiting the official report from our concerned agencies on the incident." Reuters Dhaka, March 22 A 65-year-old Christian convert was hacked to death in Bangladesh today by three motorbike-borne unidentified assailants, the latest in a series of attacks on minorities by Islamists in the Muslim majority country. Hossain Ali, a pastor at a church and a 1971 liberation war veteran, was killed by miscreants in the northern Bangladeshi town of Kurigram this morning, two months after another converted Christian was murdered in western Jhinaidah for which the Islamic State had claimed responsibility. A local source said Ali was a pastor at a church. PTI South China and Hong Kong police bust major human trafficking ring. (Photo : Getty Images) Law enforcers from Guangdong and Hong Kong took down a total of 30 smugglers who were caught rustling 121 illegal immigrants from South Asia to Hong Kong through southern China. A joint operation conducted by authorities from South China's Guangdong Province and Hong Kong conducted between March 17 and March 20 successfully nabbed members of a notorious human trafficking group as they try to bring the immigrants to Hong Kong, the Global Times reported Tuesday. Advertisement According to the outlet, the illegal immigrants were being transported to the Chinese territory through the province of Shenzhen. According to the South China Morning Post, the Hong Kong and Guangdong police acted based on the information they got in October last year. The arrested members of the syndicate include 12 core members involving a Bangladeshi, five Pakistanis, an Indian, four Chinese and an Indonesian. According to authorities, members of the human smuggling ring arrange for the transport of the illegal immigrants and bring them to Hong Kong in exchange for a significant amount of money. "This syndicate is suspected of recruiting human cargo from places like India, Pakistan and Bangladesh for Hong Kong," said Organised Crime and Triad Bureau Superintendent Kwan King-Pan. Apparently, the immigrants pay snakeheads in their respective areas in order to travel through legitimate channels like Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport in order to enter China. From there, they take the train to Shenzhen where they use boats or border fences to cross to Hong Kong. Authorities believe that the operation with code name "Highcrest" has finally put an end to the series of human smuggling to Hong Kong. "It's believed that this operation has successfully neutralized a major human smuggling syndicate active in both Hong Kong and mainland China," Kwan told reporters. Chinese lawmaker Zhu Lieyu believes that the law governing illegal immigration in the country provides inadequate punishment for arrested immigrants who enter the country unlawfully as it only stipulates a maximum of one year imprisonment for cases of illegal entry. Paris/London, March 22 Today's attacks in Brussels that killed at least 26 people struck at "the whole of Europe", French President Francois Hollande said. In London, British Prime Minister David Cameron today expressed "shock" and promised every possible help to Belgium "Through the attacks in Brussels, the whole of Europe has been hit," Hollande said in a statement, urging the continent to take "vital steps in the face of the seriousness of the threat. "France, which was itself attacked in January and November last year, is fully engaged in that. France will implacably continue the fight against terrorism both on the international level and at home." The November 13 attacks in Paris claimed 130 lives 10 months after attacks on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket left 17 dead. French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve earlier announced that Paris was deploying 1,600 additional police to border crossings and air, sea and rail infrastructure after the Brussels attacks. "I am shocked and concerned by the events in Brussels," Cameron posted on Twitter shortly after the news broke. "We will do everything we can to help." The prime minister added he will be chairing a COBRA meeting, held to discuss emergency situations and bring together cohesive government response, later in the day. "I will be chairing a COBRA meeting on the events in Brussels later this morning," Cameron said. Agencies tricountyleader.com expired on 09/23/2022 and is pending renewal or deletion. Backorder Domain Google is believed to be working on the successors of Nexus 5x and Nexus 6 P, dubbed the HTC Nexus M1 and S1. (Photo : YouTube/Google Nexus) Speculations that Google Nexus 2016 release date is coming soon as Nexus 5X received another set of new discounts from retailers. The 16GB Nexus 5X is available in Amazon for $299 inclusive of shipping, which is a big discount since the original price of the device is $349. Advertisement Newegg's eBay Store offers the Nexus 5X for $250 only. The white version is offered at this price point, but is currently out of stock. However, the charcoal black is still available but for a slightly higher price. This is not the first time that Nexus 5X received generous discounts. Nexus 5X were offered at a lesser price for quite some time. Discounts often hinted that a new device is coming. Most of the time, when retailers offer deals and discounts mean that they want to exhaust the remaining inventory of the smartphone as it will be less popular when a new handset appears in the market. Meanwhile, Whispers claimed that Google will tap on Taiwanese manufacturer HTC to be in-charged of Google Nexus 2016 release. New rumors are saying that HTC will make two Nexus smartphones this year. However, Google is probably making a mistake this year hiring HTC to take the helm. There are wild rumors that Google is seeking independence from its partners and will manufacture its own devices like Apple. This will eliminate costs from hiring another company. Google Nexus 2016 release is rumored to happen in May, the earliest, and October, the latest. Other rumors purported that Google will use its annual I/O Developers' Conference as its launching platform for the device. Rumors claim that Google Nexus 2016 will pack its same old 7-inch screen display. It will be powered by Huawei's homegrown processor Kirin 950 chipset or NVIDIA Tegra X1 processor paired with 2GB of RAM. The tablet will surely run with the upcoming Android N operating system. The dessert name of the OS is still unknown, but Nougat and Nutella are some of the candidates. There is still no official announcement from Google about the official release date and features of the rumored Google Nexus 2016. 6x2 drive axles are emerging in different configurations, including forward liftable axles. Photos: Jim Park In its purest form, a 6x2 chassis configuration is a three-axle tractor with power going to just one of the tandem rear axles. Put another way, only two of the six wheel positions are powered. Early versions of the configuration featured a dead axle that went along for the ride until it was needed for carrying capacity. Usually those dead axles were liftable. Some were fitted ahead of the driving axle (called pusher axles), while others were installed behind the driving axle (called tag axles). Most OEMs today offer what can comfortably be described as 6x2 configurations, but they are far from the 6x2s of old. The new generation of 6x2s began creeping into the market in about 2010. Already were seeing OEMs and component suppliers differentiating their designs through traction control features, automatic load transfer mechanisms to improve traction, and liftable non-driving axles to reduce rolling resistance and tire wear when lightly loaded. As with most major changes to truck designs, fleets remain wary about 6x2s. Many are reluctant to embrace the technology, despite the promise of lower vehicle weight thanks to the elimination of one heavy drive axle and improved fuel economy through reduced mechanical drag in the driveline. In fact, 6x2s represent about 4% of the 40,000-pound on-highway axle sales right now, according to Karl Mayer, director of product line management for rear axles at Meritor. Sales have plateaued. We saw very little growth in the market over the past year, probably because of lower fuel prices. Still, were up from about 2.3% market share back in 2013. Similarly, Kelly Gedert, marketing manager for Detroit-branded products at Daimler Trucks North America, says the take rate there for 6x2s on Freightliner Cascadia trucks delivered in 2014 is less than 5%. To help clarify whats on the market and how the various offerings work, heres a breakdown of the currently available 6x2 technology by type and approach to the problem. Advanced 6x2 with automatic traction control Bendix and Meritor Wabco both produce electronic control systems for 6x2 axle configurations designed to facilitate a load transfer to the driving axle during a wheel-slip event. If wheel speed sensors detect a variation between the two rear axles caused by a loss of traction on the driving axle, the systems respond by exhausting air from the suspension on the non-driving axle. This increases the load, and therefore the traction, on the driving axle. Bendixs system is called eTrac. Built on top of the existing mechanical air suspension control valve, its completely transparent to the driver and requires no driver intervention. Its automatic and it activates anytime theres a wheel-slip situation, says Mike Tober, product manager for vehicle dynamics at Bendix Commercial Vehicle Systems. The advantage is the driver doesnt have to flip a switch on the dash. It activates when its needed and only when its needed and deactivates shortly afterward above 25 mph or after 5 seconds. Tober says the front and rear suspensions can be isolated, and once air pressure is exhausted from the non-driving axle, the leveling valve increases air pressure in the driving axle to compensate but only up to the maximum load rating of the axle. We never overload the axle, he stresses. ETrac is available with an optional manual control thats integrated with the Mud and Snow switch in the traction control system. The driver can manually request system engagement if conditions warrant. If the driver forgets to disengage, that will happen automatically over a set speed or after a predetermined time. The Meritor Wabco system, called ECAS (Electronically Controlled Air Suspension), is designed to interpret a loss of drive wheel traction and initiate a load transfer to the drive axle to increase traction. Mark Melletat, director of field operations at Meritor Wabco, says the key is to make the transfer happen quickly. We use large, high-capacity valves to move the air quickly before the driver gets impatient, he says. It takes less than three seconds to fully load the drive axle up to its maximum capacity. Its important for the driver to recognize when the system is working and to give it a moment or two to reestablish traction before applying too much power. This is where driver training and awareness become important. ECAS also has a manual option, so a driver could engage the system when hooking up a trailer for example, or when pulling out of an inclined loading dock on a slippery surface. While they function in a similar way, each product offers its own feature set that helps differentiate it in the market. Both eTrac and ECAS are suspension system controllers only and not integral parts of the axle system. Each system is available through specific OEMs and they are often tied to specific axle manufacturers. Hard-packed snow can be nearly impossible to escape from if warm tires have melted their way down even an inch or so. The load transfer systems on todays 6x2 axles place more weight on the driving axle to improve traction. Tag axle 6x2 Tag axle systems, where the rear axle in the tandem grouping is the non-driving axle, are offered by Dana, Detroit Axle and Meritor. Dana calls its 6x2 package the Spicer EconoTrek, while Meritors offering goes by the name FuelLite. Detroit does not use a brand name beyond the Detroit 6x2. Danas EconoTrek pairs the proven Spicer S170 and S190 single-reduction single drive axles with the new, Spicer S20-045B tag axle. Dana says this axle combination lowers the weight of a comparable tandem drive axle by up to 400 pounds. Its available with an axle ratio as low as 2.53:1 for downsped driveline specs, and it will accommodate dual or wide-base tires and drum or disc brakes. Dana says the EconoTrek is optimized for use with the eTrac traction control from Bendix. The Model 6 Detroit Drive Axle in 6x2 configuration is said to be almost 400 pounds lighter than a tandem drive axle. An axle ratio as low as 2.28:1 can be specd for downsped applications. The Model 6 is available only with the Detroit Integrated Powertrain package featuring the Detroit DD15 engine and Detroit DT12 automated manual transmission. Daimler Trucks North America uses Meritor Wabcos ECAS traction control system on both its proprietary Detroit 6x2 axles and Meritors FuelLite 6x2. Meritors FuelLite 6x2 tag-axle system features a derivative of the RS23-160 drive axle. Meritor says its a more capable axle with a larger ring gear and thicker wall housings for use in a single-drive application. The tag axle is a square-tube axle with an integrated suspension bracket for easier installation. Meritors Mayer says the FuelLite 6x2 delivers nearly 400 pounds in weight savings over a standard 6x4 and provides an approximately 2% fuel efficiency increase. Its available with a drive ratio as low as 2.50:1, and the DualTrac housing allows the option of running wide-based tires or duals interchangeably. Mayer says Meritor will soon release an axle with a 2.31:1 ratio for even greater downspeeding potential. Currently, all OEMs except Mack and Volvo offer tag-axle 6x2 systems with electronic air-suspension traction control from Bendix or Meritor Wabco. Because of possible vehicle stability concerns arising from locating the fifth wheel behind the drive axle, none of the current crop of tag-axle 6x2 systems offers a lift option. Liftable forward axle 6x2 But that doesnt mean you cant have a 6x2 with a liftable forward axle. Mack and Volvo both offer a 6x2 system with the driving axle at the rear and a liftable non-driving axle in the forward position. Suspension and integrated-axle producer Hendrickson is also developing such a system under the OptiMaax name. Both systems will keep the liftable axle off the road when the vehicle is empty or only lightly loaded, lessening rolling resistance and improving fuel economy while reducing tire wear. But thats about where the similarities end. These two manufacturers are taking decidedly different approaches to managing traction. When it goes into service, OptiMaax will be offered by several OEMs as a factory-installed vendor suspension, with drive axle offerings from the OE data book. Hendrickson supplies the suspension, the liftable axle and the electronic controller that decides when to lift or deploy the axle. Traction control products from Bendix or Meritor Wabco will be installed as per OE agreements. Our long-term approach is to integrate the suspension with the OEM at the vehicle level so that its truly a component thats engineered into the system, says Hendricksons director of marketing, Gerry Remus. Right now we have several placed with fleets to prove the concept. Remus sees the liftable forward axle as the technology that will become the 6x2 of the future. A forward liftable axle can be kept up far longer than with a rear lift, Remus says. We want to have that axle up as much as possible. Thats where well get the real incremental savings in not only fuel consumption but tire and brake wear. Hendrickson has designed its own electronic control unit that takes the up or down decision away from the driver. It draws data from wheel speed sensors and suspension pressure transducers to determine when the axle should be deployed. Theres some logic in there that will keep the axle down when the axle weight nears a threshold. Remus says these settings are customizable by the OEM that installs the axle to suit its chassis configurations. There is also load sensing between the primary suspension and the liftable axle to ensure theres balance between the two axles, he says. And we will still rely on other industry products that are tied into our ECU to provide load transfer in a wheel slip event, along with the stability control functionality thats becoming popular. Rather than use a traction control system that reacts after the wheels have already broken traction, Volvo Trucks is using biased axle loading to keep a higher percentage of the load on the driving axle at all times. While empty or only lightly loaded the lift axle is retracted. Called Adaptive Loading, Volvo uses a 23,000-pound drive axle from Dana or Meritor and a 23,000-pound liftable axle with a 9-inch drop center designed and built by Link Manufacturing. According to Peter Blonde, Volvo Trucks aftermarket product manager, the system uses two separate air systems to supply the rear and front axles. Sensors on the drive axle maintain the correct ride height for the truck while sensors on both the front and rear suspensions determine the load distribution, he says. To illustrate the point, Blonde says when the axle group is fully loaded to 34,000 pounds, the weight distribution will be equal. But with a load of 28,000 pounds, the distribution might be something like 12,000 pounds on the front (dead) axle of the tandem and 16,000 pounds on the rear (drive) axle. The air system controller is a Volvo design based on one that first appeared on the European FH model in 1993. With a well specd truck we can load up to 18,000 pounds on the drive axle while loading the steer axle to 13,200 pounds in 4x2 mode [lift axle up] with a gross combination weight up to 53,000 or 54,000 pounds, says Blonde. One of the early adopter fleets is running such a set up and he is able to keep the axle up 50% of the time. Mack has a similar 6x2 system that can be tied to the Mack engine and mDrive transmission to optimize fuel economy for bulk haulers and similar applications. Three driver-selectable traction control modes are available via a dash-mounted switch. Spicer AdvanTek 40 Dual Range Disconnect This axle, announced by Dana at last years Mid-America Trucking Show but not yet in production, deserves a category of its own. Its both a 6x4 and a 6x2. At speeds under 52-54 mph or so, it operates as a 6x4, providing all the traction and torque drivers are accustomed to. Over that set speed, the interaxle drive shaft physically disconnects from the power divider in the forward axle as well as the ring gear in the rear axle, effectively turning it into a 6x2. As an added benefit, through the magic of planetary gearing and axles with different ratios, the final drive ratio changes from 3.10:1 in 6x4 mode to 2.26:1 in 6x2, giving it a downsped drivetrain with all the associated fuel economy benefits. Depending on your starting point, the DRD axle system can improve powertrain and driveline efficiency somewhere in the range of 2% to 5%, says Dana Director of Global Product Planning Steve Slesinski. Youll also get the downsped 6x2 efficiency at highway speed, and better low-speed performance for startability or when backing a trailer into a dock, for example. The Dual Range Disconnect employs a single gear mesh configuration from the engine to the wheels, minimizing efficiency losses associated with tandem drive axles. Despite the low take rate for 6x2s generally, there are a lot of configurations to choose from. Given the effort OEMs are putting into bringing 6x2s to market, theres clearly an expectation that they eventually will take off once fuel prices start to climb. Now is a good time to be researching them, while the need to embrace the technology isnt exactly pressing. We have a lot of customers asking about 6x2 now because they are interested in the fuel and weight savings, says Detroits Gedert. What makes the adjustment difficult most of the time is customers are coming out of a different spec when going into 6x2. Depending on their application and where they are running, some will see the fuel saving, others wont. Its very application-specific, and its not a technology that will work for everybody. NEW YORK Ben Affleck hopes Batman fans who were skeptical of him playing the caped crusader in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice realize how seriously he took the role. The most difficult thing about making this movie, honestly, was the physical aspect, Affleck told The Associated Press on Sunday on the red carpet for the films New York premiere at Radio City Music Hall. Affleck said he wanted to be in shape, so he worked out hard. Having to be in the gym every day, six in the morning ... I wasnt used to that kind of workout regimen, Affleck said. Fans have come to expect that if youre going to play a superhero, you got to look in the body like a superhero. I knew the camera was going to be looking at me and the guillotine was there so I knew I had to be ready. When Warner Bros. made the announcement nearly three years ago that Affleck would play Batman, some fans werent thrilled, and the backlash led to petitions asking the studio to remove him. Eventually, it blew over, and the two-time Oscar winner feels proud to be part of the Batman legacy. Im really honored to be part of a tradition that Christian Bale and Christopher Nolan, great talents, worked on. Michael Keaton, Val Kilmer, George Clooney, Tim Burton, great talents. So I just wanted to do my best. I think we did something different but something that is still very much Batman, Affleck said. Co-star Jesse Eisenberg shared a similar experience when he was cast as Supermans arch-nemesis, Lex Luthor. Eisenberg, famous for his role as Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, empathized with his critics. I can assure them as critical as they are of me, Im more critical. No one is more concerned or critical or worried about doing a good job than I am, Eisenberg said. Amy Adams, who plays Lois Lane in the film, praised Eisenberg and Affleck. I think the audience is going to have to decide for themselves. (I) got to see it, and I was blown away, Adams said. They both bring something weve never seen before in these characters but something that really pays homage to the canon, so I think they are going to be really happy. I think people are going to like it, Affleck said. All you can do is do your best. Members of the Tulsa County Budget Board on Monday grilled interim Sheriff Michelle Robinette for approving $28,000 a month in detention officer raises while the jail continues to operate at best on a break-even basis. Do you understand it is frustrating to us to hear that the first thing youve done is to start spending more money in the jail instead of looking at immediate cost-saving measures? asked County Commissioner John Smaligo. Robinette, who took charge of the office two months ago after another interim sheriff, Rick Weigel, quit following a Budget Board meeting at which pay in the Sheriffs Office was discussed, said the raises were part of a broader plan to reduce overall costs at the jail. She said increasing detention officer pay is necessary for retention because those jobs no longer lead directly to promotion to sheriffs deputy. Robinette said certified deputies, who earn more than detention officers, are being moved from the jail to other duties, which should lower jail payroll over time. This explanation did not satisfy Smaligo or Treasurer Dennis Semler, who was Robinettes chief questioner during the 40-minute meeting. The Budget Board has had to supplement the jail several times over the past few years and is eager for it to operate independently. Semler asked several questions of the Budget Boards legal counsel indicating he wanted to challenge the raises and then left the room to consult with Assistant District Attorneys Doug Wilson and Kim Hall, but in the end offered no motion. Semler said it has become the practice of the Sheriffs Office to sign off on employee raises and then come to the Budget Board for more money when the office cant make payroll. The Budget Board consists of the countys eight elected officials three county commissioners, sheriff, court clerk, clerk, treasurer and assessor. It distributes county tax revenue among those offices but does not determine individual department budgets. Robinette, who has spent more than 20 years with the Sheriffs Office, challenged Semler and Smaligo on the assertion that the jail owes the county $1 million transferred from the special projects fund to the jail this fiscal year. She said the Sheriffs Office has spent its own money, from accounts not designated for jail use, and should get credit for it. The Sheriffs Office has put in $9.35 shy of a million dollars, Robinette said, and then listed off other items she said were charged to the Sheriffs Office, or were revenue sources diverted elsewhere, and said, How much of that $1 million we owe is questionable. This did not sit well with some of the other county officials. We dont operate the jail, said Semler. Robinette, though, argued that the jail cannot be operated independently on current revenue streams, and that the Sheriffs Office is no more financially responsible for making up the difference than the rest of county government. Semler and Smaligo pointed out that the Sheriffs Office, including Robinette, lobbied hard to return jail operations to the TCSO after several years under a private contractor. In doing so, they said, the Sheriffs Office assumed financial responsibility. Robinette and Semler agreed the situation has been made more difficult by circumstances beyond the control of the Sheriffs Office, including disputes with the Oklahoma Department of Corrections and the city of Tulsa over the amounts they should pay to house their prisoners in the jail. During the past year, the Sheriffs Office was rocked by a series of events beginning with the fatal shooting of a suspect by a reserve deputy who was also a close friend of then-Sheriff Stanley Glanz. Glanz ultimately resigned and was replaced by Weigel, who was then replaced by Robinette. A new sheriff will be elected April 5. Wagoner-area residents are urged to take the Blood Donor Challenge with Oklahoma Blood Institute (OBI) at Wal-Mart of Wagoner on the Bloodmobile. The blood drive is on Friday, March 25th from 11am to 3pm, this gives those who have never saved lives through blood donation the chance to become a Blood Donor and help local patients. Healthy adults* can typically give and will receive Blood Donor Challenge T-shirt. Both Blood Donors and new Blood Donors are encouraged to donate with Oklahoma Blood Institute at this blood drive. Only 10 percent of those eligible to give actually donate blood at least annually, said John Armitage, M.D., president and CEO, Oklahoma Blood Institute. We challenge those who dont give regularly to overcome their excuses. Many who have taken the challenge say they cant believe how easy and gratifying it is to donate blood. All blood provided to patients in area hospitals is given by donors with Oklahoma Blood Institute. And, each donation can save as many as three patients lives. Some 154 hospitals across the state rely on OBI donors exclusively. Donors wishing to make an international impact as well as a local one can support Global Blood Fund (GBF). It is a charity aimed at ending severe blood shortages in countries where, each year, 200,000 die simply due to a lack of safe blood. By giving up their T-shirts, donors enable OBI to financially contribute to GBF to make training, supplies and technology available for their struggling blood centers. Call 877-340-8777 or visit obi.org for an appointment to donate. Walk-ins are welcome. OKLAHOMA CITY The Oklahoma House has given final legislative approval to tap about $78 million from the state's Rainy Day Fund to boost funding for public schools and the prison system for rest of the current fiscal year. The House voted Monday on two separate measures one to appropriate $51 million to the Department of Education and another to direct $27.5 million to the Department of Corrections. Some Democrats opposed the supplemental funding bill for the prisons, arguing that about $17 million is being earmarked for contract beds with private prisons. Prison officials have said they need the supplemental funding to pay for an estimated net increase of about 1,000 prisoners over the past year. A Tulsa County judge rescheduled a hearing Monday for a former Tulsa police officer pending an appeal related to his charge in connection with the fatal shooting of his daughters boyfriend in 2014. Shannon Kepler appeared before District Judge Sharon Holmes on Monday for a hearing that would have determined whether he was on track to stand trial in the Aug. 5, 2014, shooting death of 19-year-old Jeremey Lake, who had just begun dating Keplers daughter, Lisa Kepler. But his attorney, Richard OCarroll, filed motions with the Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals on Wednesday that continue to contest Holmes assignment to the case. Because the appeal is pending, Holmes ordered Kepler to return to court May 16. The Oklahoma Supreme Court ruled Feb. 29 that Presiding Judge Rebecca Nightingale was within her rights to assign District Judge Bill Musseman to hear a motion by OCarroll that argues Holmes should recuse herself from the proceedings because of OCarrolls belief that she has a bias against Kepler. However, the Supreme Court said Mussemans decision on that motion needed to be put in a journal entry so OCarroll can take an appeal of Mussemans ruling to the appeals court. Mussemans journal entry, which detailed his denial of OCarrolls recusal request, went into Keplers court record March 11. In OCarrolls motion before the appeals court, he argues that Musseman improperly changed his reasons for why he declined to hold a hearing over whether Holmes should recuse herself. He has also previously said Musseman, who received the assignment from Nightingale on Jan. 6, couldnt have had enough time to become knowledgeable about the case by the time he made his ruling against Kepler on Jan. 7. OCarroll said Holmes was a customer in 2003 at a Tulsa-area massage parlor that had been prosecuted for pandering and that he represented the business owner in that case. She was an assistant district attorney at that time, and OCarroll has implied that Holmes has treated Kepler unfairly based on her past dealings with OCarroll when working on the 2003 case. Holmes has denied multiple motions OCarroll has filed in Keplers case, including a request to hold a hearing on a motion to disqualify Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler based on OCarrolls claim that Kunzweiler told Lakes 13-year-old brother, a witness, what to say during Keplers preliminary hearing. Kunzweiler has denied that claim and emphasized that he simply told the teenager to tell the truth about what happened the night Lake died. Mr. Keplers attorney realized he should have immediately urged Judge Holmes recusal because of the pandering case, but was reluctant to do so, OCarroll wrote in the appeal. Holmes received the case in August after another judge recused herself. OCarroll and state prosecutors have also debated over the exchange of discovery, or evidence, materials necessary for Keplers trial. Kepler, a nearly 25-year veteran of the Tulsa Police Department, is accused of shooting Lake and firing at Lakes brother and Lisa Kepler after Lake introduced himself as his daughters boyfriend. He faces one count of first-degree murder and two counts of shooting with intent to kill and has been free on bond since Aug. 22, 2014. The appeal documents filed by OCarroll state that Kepler asserts that he shot Lake in self-defense. Kunzweiler has said he hopes trial proceedings will begin by this summer. About 10,000 students will benefit from summer take-home book packs that the Tulsa school board approved at Monday evenings meeting. This will be the third year the district provides take-home reading material for students, said Jamie Lomax, director of Title I for Tulsa Public Schools. The packs will come from Scholastic Inc., and the cost will not exceed $305,000. The money will come from Title I funds. Lomax said the books will be given to all kindergarten through third-grade students in the districts lowest-performing schools, or those designated priority schools by the Oklahoma State Department of Educations school-improvement designations. About 40 of the districts elementary schools are designated priority schools. Each pack will include eight books. Students will also receive a reading journal and activity sheets to engage them with each book, Lomax said. School sites will receive program guides and support materials for teachers and parents that will outline the importance of summer reading and how they can effectively engage children in learning through the summer. According to the rationale for the purchase, listed on the board meeting agenda, Providing access to engaging, age-appropriate reading materials is critical to closing the reading gap. Research shows unequal access to these opportunities creates an achievement gap between lower- and higher-income youth. Lomax shared statistics from several studies about the achievement gap and summer slide, which refers to students falling behind during summer break. According to one study, two-thirds of the achievement gap between lower- and higher-income youth can be explained by unequal access to summer learning opportunities. Another study shows that sending books home with students over the summer results in a great achievement gain and is less expensive than providing summer school or comprehensive school reform. Children who read as few as six books over the summer can maintain their reading levels, according to another study, therefore avoiding the summer slide. In about five minutes, a Jenks sophomore summed up problems with the federal deficit better than anyone on the campaign trail. And she did so with clay, Lego figures and costumes. On Monday, students and dignitaries filled the Performing Arts Center on the Jenks High School campus to watch the grand prize-winning short documentary made by Olivia Hurd, 15. She wasnt alone on the stage. Five other Jenks students were listed among winners in the national C-SPAN student documentary project, which asked the question: Road to the White House: What issue do you want candidates to discuss during the 2016 presidential campaign? A lot of celebrations and proclamations were made by the Jenks mayor and representatives from the offices of Congressman Jim Bridenstine, Gov. Mary Fallin and state Rep. Chuck Strohm. Still, Hurd wanted the focus on her work. I hope they just remember these decisions they make do have consequences that follow generations in the future, not just the current generation, she said. Money is an issue, and people need to vote. Their vote means something. People, especially young people, dont consider how their vote affects society as a whole in America. This is coming from a teenager who cant vote for another three years. Inspiring efforts: The C-SPAN student documentary contest has been around since 2006. Each entry is five to seven minutes long and includes multiple viewpoints. In what is a reassuring statistic, the competition received a record 2,887 submissions from more than 6,000 students in 45 states and Washington, D.C. Many young people clearly care about whats going on in government. Of the 150 winners, six were from Jenks, including Hurds grand-prize selection. The students received a combined $10,500 in prize money. Also, Mannford High School juniors Beecher Owens and Tyler Cauley took third prize for their piece, Operation: Job Creation. C-SPAN was in Oklahoma on Monday to visit the award-winners, hand out big checks Jenks student winners earned $1,625 for their schools digital video program and show clips of their documentaries. Jenks students completed their projects as part of the film and screenwriting class led by teacher Clifton Raphael. They worked at night and on weekends in the schools editing lab. Americas in good shape, said Doug Hemmig, a C-SPAN spokesman. When I see kids like this it is really encouraging, really inspiring. Thats why were here they are inspiring. Hurds focus on the federal debt sought to answer why the country is in debt, where the money is going, what ideas are out there to get a balanced budget and why people should care. Using a quirky mix of dressing up in costumes a la Food Networks Alton Brown claymation and Lego figures, she broke it down. She nabbed a quick interview with former Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio and worked in C-SPAN interviews with other hopefuls. I knew the country was in debt; I didnt realize we were $19 trillion in debt, Hurd said. I learned more about how government budgets work. Ive taken my social studies and history classes, but this taught me anew. Originally, it made me upset because this is something I have to do I have an income and cant spend more than that. I have to play by the rules, but the government doesnt. It makes me nervous for the future of our country. Pushing for conversation: The students are gracious in receiving accolades, but its clear thats not why they are in this. What gets them talking is their subject matter. These are tough, complicated topics: reproductive rights, health care, war, debt and jobs. Jenks junior Ethan Dennis took second prize with Before the Fall: A Season for Prevention in Mental Health Care. For an earlier piece, he attended a budget meeting of the Oklahoma Department for Mental Health and Substance Abuse and focused on the criminal case of Matthew Stick, who was found innocent by reason of insanity last year in Tulsa District Court for the 2012 murder of his mother. Dennis expanded the work to the federal government and presidential politics. He found silence. No one is talking about it on that level, he said. This is not coming up at all. The only time it does come up is after a shooting to say the person was mentally ill, like a dodge in the issue about guns. Its used as a talking point in the gun control debate and not with any solutions. Fellow student Taylor Millican took second prize with Talent on the Table, which focuses on the untapped talents of developmentally disabled adults in the workplace. You are not going to get presidential candidates talking about people with developmental disabilities in the workplace because they dont vote and dont have money for campaign contributions, Millican said. Something needs to be done when there are people relying on government money to survive because they have no income, when they could have income. Thats a problem no one is talking about. It's Divali time so at TV6 over the next few days, we bring you some of the interesting aspe An Egyptian judicial committee investigating NGOs accused of receiving illegal foreign funds imposed late Monday a gag order that bars all local media outlets from reporting on the case. The case dates back to 2011, when the Egyptian Ministry of Justice accused several NGOs of illegally receiving funds from foreign governments and institutions. It resurfaced when the judicial committee froze last week the assets of four Egyptian human rights activists, including lawyer Gamal Eid and journalist Hossam Bahgat. Search Keywords: Short link: Filming has begun in Sydney on the second season of Jane Campions Top of the Lake. BBC First and Foxtel have announced they are co-producing the second season with BBC Two, See-Saw Films and SundanceTV. As previously announced Elisabeth Moss is reprising her role as Det. Robin Griffin. Im so excited to be back in Australia working with Jane on exploring this wonderful character. I cant wait for audiences to see where we take Robins journey! she said. She will be joined by Gwendoline Christie (Game of Thrones, Star Wars: The Force Awakens). I am so delighted to be working on Top of the Lake Season Two. Jane Campion has been a major creative influence throughout my life and I could not feel more privileged to be working on the next installment of her unique and enthralling drama, alongside the brilliant Elisabeth Moss. Also joining the cast for season two are David Dencik (Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo), Alice Englert (Beautiful Creatures, Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell) and Ewen Leslie (The Daughter). In Top of the Lake: China Girl, written by Campion and Gerard Lee, the story picks up four years on from the ending of Season One. When the unidentified body of an Asian girl washes up on to Sydneys Bondi Beach, the case seems hopeless, until detective Robin Griffin discovers that China Girl didnt die alone. Producers Philippa Campbell and Libby Sharpe said, Jane and Gerard are great modern storytelling-adventurers. The daring way they crack open vivid layers of humanity in Season Two has attracted both new and seasoned collaborators to join this extraordinary team on and off screen. Its an honour to be producing this unique and ground-breaking show that brings to life the mysteries at the heart of a new wilderness. Tim Christlieb, Director of Channels, BBC Worldwide Australia and New Zealand, said: BBC First is delighted to be bringing Australian audiences Top of the Lake: China Girl as Elisabeth Moss reprises her role as Robin Griffin in this complex and enthralling story. Gwendoline Christie is an exciting addition to the line-up and the calibre of the cast is testament to the outstanding success of Top of the Lake and the talents of Jane and Gerard and the team at See-Saw Films who delivered one of the stand-out moments of television in 2013 with the first series. Top of the Lake Season Two: China Girl epitomises everything that we are passionate about in TV drama here at BBC First rich and surprising shows featuring the very best talent on both sides of the camera. Foxtel Executive Director of Television Brian Walsh said: Top of the Lake was a breakthrough drama series for Foxtel and has been widely recognised both internationally and locally for its craftsmanship and storytelling. It is an important franchise for Foxtel and we are delighted to collaborate with our colleagues at See-Saw Films, Jane Campion and the BBC to bring the landmark second series to our subscribers. Top of the Lake Season Two: China Girl reflects our commitment to premium Australian drama production and joins our rich slate of locally produced series made for Foxtel subscribers. The critically acclaimed mini-series will once again be directed by Oscar winner Jane Campion (Bright Star, The Piano), along with new co-director Ariel Kleiman (Partisan). Campion and Gerard Lee also return as co-writers of the second season. Top of the Lake is being produced by Philippa Campbell (Rain, Top of the Lake season one) and Libby Sharpe (Jewboy). Executive producers are Campion with See-Saws Emile Sherman, Iain Canning (The Kings Speech, Shame) and Jamie Laurenson, alongside Lucy Richer for the BBC. Janes vision and passion for this story is compelling, daring and honest. We believe Season Two will continue to thrill and enthral audiences worldwide. The fact that we have been able to bring back broadcast partners from different corners of the world is a testament to the quality of the show and Janes extraordinary talent. We are delighted that our previous partners on Series One did not hesitate to board the second series to help bring to the world this stand-out drama, said Jamie Laurenson and Hakan Kousetta from See-Saw Films. Lucy Richer, BBC Executive Producer said, Jane Campion is one of the worlds finest directors and we are incredibly proud to bring her unique voice and vision to BBC Two for the stand-alone second series of Top of the Lake. The astounding cast she has brought together will star in a dark and beguiling story that takes Detective Robin Griffin deep into the underworld of Sydney, and to the limits of her own heart. It will premiere on BBC First in 2017. A reminder that The Feeds forum on Lockout Laws airs tonight on SBS 2. Michael Christie, the father of Kings Cross coward punch victim Daniel Christie, has said that former NSW Premier Barry OFarrell never followed up on his promise to discuss Sydneys lockout laws with him prior to their implementation. When asked by The Feed host Marc Fennell how he feels about a law being enacted in Daniels name, Christie said: One, I have a lot of pride over it, but secondly I have a lot of disgust because I was told by the then Premier Barry OFarrell that I would be able to discuss with him and the relevant Ministers these changes. Well, Im still waiting for Barry OFarrell to ring back. So the point is, Ive had very little input but yet Im the one thats labeled with this thing about Daniels death. Christie also agreed that his sons has been politicised. However, Christie says he applauds the results of Sydneys lockout laws, but does support a review of their current iteration. Im absolutely applauding the results [the lockout laws] have had, Christie said. It doesnt mean theyre 100% perfect Could there be better ways to monitor these few people that come in and spoil it for the rest? I would assume there definitely is. Did we have to do something dramatically in the first place to get everyones attention to sort of make this top of mind discussion? I think that has worked. And of course we having these reviews now so I think that is a reasonably balanced situation. Christie was speaking as part of a special forum of episode of The Feed airing tonight on SBS 2. The episode asks whether Australias lockout laws are working, bringing together key players in this contentious issue, including doctors, protesters, local residents and politicians. Panel guests include: Michael Christie Father of king hit victim Daniel Christie Tyson Koh Rally organiser for the Keep Sydney Open movement Tony Grabs St Vincents General and Vascular Surgeon David Leyonhjelm State Senator Anthony Lynham Queensland Minister for State Development and maxillofacial surgeon Helen Crossing Convener Kings Cross Residents Association 7.30pm, Tuesday 22 March on SBS 2. Jenni Buckley is presented the E. Arthur Trabant Award for Women's Equity by Carol Henderson, vice provost for diversity. 1:08 p.m., March 22, 2016--As a minority student entering the College of Engineering at the University of Delaware five years ago, Manuela Restrepo knew that having someone believe in her abilities was critical. During her sophomore year, Restrepo found that someone in Jenni Buckley. For her positive influence on Restrepo and thousands of other girls and young women at UD and across the country, Buckley, an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, has received the 2016 E. Arthur Trabant Award for Womens Equity. National outreach In 2009, Buckley and orthopedic surgeon Lisa Lattanza co-founded the Perry Initiative, aimed at inspiring young women to be leaders in engineering and orthopedic surgery, when they offered the first Perry Outreach Program for high school students in San Francisco. We started Perry with just 15 girls, and I quickly realized what an impact you can have if you share what you do with people and show them how passionate you are about it, Buckley says. Today, the nonprofit runs some 30 day-long outreach programs nationwide, with participants performing mock orthopedic surgeries and conducting biomechanical engineering experiments. The Perry Initiatives programs have reached thousands of young women over the past six years while also offering UD students the opportunity to teach and mentor high school girls, says Amy Trauth-Nare, associate director at UDs Professional Development Center for Educators. In 2014, Buckley and Trauth-Nare co-advised an interdisciplinary team of senior design students, including Restrepo, in the development of Orthopaedics in Action (OIA)curriculum kits that teach science, mathematics, and engineering concepts through medical experiments. The kits are now sold nationally through Sawbones, a leading manufacturer of anatomical models. Local impact With Buckleys guidance and support, Restrepo gained not only a sense of belonging at UD but also valuable experience through Perry and OIA. When she graduated in 2015, she was offered a full-time job as a program specialist at Perry, where she is now responsible for the logistical aspects of the organizations programs. For Sarah Masters, who earned her bachelors degree in mechanical engineering in 2014, Buckley has grown from adviser to mentor to colleague and friend. Now serving with Buckley as co-adviser of the Society of Women Engineers at UD, Masters says that Buckley tirelessly supports her mentees while giving them the freedom to grow. She also credits the young professor with taking the time to get to know her students and understand their potential. Over the past three years, Dr. Buckley has given me mentoring and leadership opportunities that pushed me outside my comfort zone but allowed me to grow tremendously, Masters says. Her guidance and support have had a profound impact on my life. Engineering impact Buckleys approach to engineering education is to apply nationally what she learns locally for the greatest impact. If I visit a couple of middle school classrooms a year, I can affect maybe 60 girls, Buckley says. But through programs like The Perry Initiative, we can reach thousands. Perry has expanded beyond my wildest dreams, and its success made me realize that I wanted to be an educator full time. But as engineering educators, we have to be careful not to throw away our engineering hats we have to engineer our impact, she adds. Its easy to focus on one student success story and then move on to the next one, but we have to think more broadly if we want to increase the number of women enrolling in engineering programs. For Buckleys colleague Dustyn Roberts, also an assistant professor of mechanical engineering, the award came as no surprise. As an engineer, when Jenni sees something that needs fixing, she fixes it, Roberts says. The time, money, effort, and coordination are all details to her. When it comes to womens equity, her work with the Perry Initiative is the obvious example. What started as a weekend project has turned into a legitimate nonprofit that reaches thousands of girls a year, and she has never taken a salary from it. She is selfless and giving of her time, more so than anyone I have ever met, Roberts adds. Having Jenni as a colleague is a constant motivation to never accept things the way they are if they could be better. About the E. Arthur Trabant Award for Womens Equity This award was established in recognition of President Emeritus E. Arthur Trabants support for womens equity at the University of Delaware. The recipients and their families are honored at a luncheon in the spring semester. The E. Arthur Trabant Award for Womens Equity is given annually to any individual, department, administrative unit, or committee who has contributed to equity for women at the University. It defines contributions broadly to encourage as wide a range of nominations as possible, but examples might include developing exemplary programs or curricula, implementing innovative policies and procedures related to womens equity, and enhancing existing services to women. Nominations for the award are accepted from any member of the University community. Self-nominations must be accompanied by at least one supporting letter from outside the unit. Article by Diane Kukich Photos by Evan Krape, Lane McLaughlin, Kathy F. Atkinson and Ambre Alexander Payne Chris Mooney of the Washington Post will interview Walter Munk as part of the April 25 program. Renowned oceanographer Walter Munk, "the Einstein of the Oceans," will speak April 25 at UD. 2:05 p.m., March 22, 2016--Renowned oceanographer Walter Munk will discuss his more than 75 years of scientific discovery and research in ocean sciences, ocean sound transmission and climate change, during a special guest lecture on Monday, April 25. Hosted by University of Delawares College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment, the event will take place from 4:30-6 p.m. in Mitchell Hall. UD Acting President Nancy Targett will kick off the evening by welcoming Munk considered by many to be the Einstein of the Oceans to campus. Best-selling science author and journalist Chris Mooney will lead an on-stage interview with Munk following his talk, to explore topics in climate change, science communication and the role of higher education. The event is free and open to the public, however pre-registration is encouraged for planning purposes. To register, click here. Entry at the door will be permitted. About Walter Munk Walter Munk was born to a wealthy banking family in Vienna, Austria, in 1917. He came to the United States to attend school in upstate New York in 1932. Munk subsequently spent several years in banking while attending night classes at Colombia University, before relocating to California to study applied physics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Munk earned his bachelor's degree in physics at Caltech in 1939. That summer, he began working for Scripps Intuition of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego (UCSD), while continuing at Caltech for his master's degree in geophysics. He completed his master's at Caltech in 1940 and earned a doctoral degree in oceanography at Scripps in 1945. During his early career Munk and colleagues from Scripps developed amphibious warfare methods at the U.S. Navy Radio and Sound Laboratory, including wave prediction methods used during the D-Day invasion of Normandy. He has conducted pioneering research in ocean sound transmission, deep-sea tides and climate change, and his groundbreaking studies of ocean currents and wave propagation are said to have laid the foundation for the study of oceanography. Munk helped to establish the Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Institute of Geophysics and Planetary Physics (IGPP) at Scripps, a center that has produced leading researchers in groundbreaking areas spanning earthquakes to geomagnetism and other Earth processes. Additionally, his work on the Mid-Ocean Dynamics Experiments (MODE) in the 1960s and 70s significantly improved the accuracy of tide prediction. By 1975 Munk was experimenting with using sound waves to generate images of the ocean, known as acoustic tomography. Among his career achievements, Munk travelled to Heard Island in the southern Indian Ocean in 1991 to test long-range sound signals in the ocean. The experiment, which was designed to determine if sound generated by instruments there could be heard by receivers in other areas of the world, became known as the sound heard around the world when it was heard thousands of miles away in Bermuda. Throughout his career Munk has received many accolades, including the Alexander Agassiz Medal (1977), the National Medal of Science (1985), the William Bowie Medal (1989), the Vetlesen Prize (1993), the Kyoto Prize (1999) and the Crafoord Prize (2010). At UD, Munk helped found the Physical Ocean Science and Engineering (POSE) program, a multidisciplinary academic program designed to provide students a strong foundation in physical oceanography as well as opportunities to acquire state-of-the-art observing and modeling skills while working closely with POSE faculty. Today, at age 98, Munk resides in La Jolla, California, and continues to conduct research as an emeritus professor of geophysics and the Secretary of the Navy Chair in Oceanography at Scripps Institution of Oceanography. His current projects focus on wind and waves, among other things. About Chris Mooney Chris Mooney is an energy and environment reporter with the Washington Post. A highly regarded writer, public speaker and science communicator, Mooney is known for commenting on the intersection between science and politics. He is the author of four books about science and climate change. About the University of Delaware College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment UDs College of Earth, Ocean, and Environment (CEOE) strives to reach a deeper understanding of the planet and improve stewardship of environmental resources. CEOE faculty and students examine complex information from multiple disciplines with the knowledge that science and society are firmly linked and solutions to environmental challenges can be synonymous with positive economic impact. The college comprises the School of Marine Science and Policy, Department of Geography and Department of Geological Sciences. Arctic Month April 2016 is Arctic Month at the University of Delaware. Lectures, films, exhibits, and more will draw on the expertise of faculty conducting research in this region of the world, and will showcase University resources and collections. See more details about Arctic Month online. Article by Karen B. Roberts 10:11 a.m., March 22, 2016--The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has issued travel advisories related to travel to areas affected by the Zika virus, including much of the Caribbean, Mexico, Central America and South America. As new information is emerging daily, individuals planning international travel should visit the CDC's website for an up-to-date list of areas affected. With spring break scheduled next week, the following information is provided for members of the University community who may be traveling and for those who are pregnant or considering pregnancy while traveling. About Zika Zika virus is a mosquito-borne virus that causes illness (fever, rash, joint pain and red eyes) in about one in five people who are infected with it. Zika virus infection before or during pregnancy has been associated with severe birth defects (microcephaly) and poor pregnancy outcomes. Additionally, researchers are investigating possible associations between Zika virus and Guillain-Barre syndrome, an autoimmune disorder affecting nerves that can lead to paralysis. There is currently no vaccine or other preventative or curative medication for Zika virus. Traveling to affected areas Those traveling to affected areas should take precautions to prevent mosquito bites. Because there is no vaccine or cure, preventing exposure is the only way to avoid disease. Any traveler to affected or surrounding areas is strongly recommended to strictly follow CDC guidance for preventing mosquito bites. When traveling to countries where Zika virus or other viruses spread by mosquitoes are found, take the following steps: Wear long-sleeved shirts and long pants. Stay in places with air conditioning or that use window and door screens to keep mosquitoes outside. Sleep under a mosquito bed net if you are overseas or outside and are not able to protect yourself from mosquito bites. Use Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)-registered insect repellents. When used as directed, EPA-registered insect repellents are proven safe and effective, even for pregnant and breast-feeding women. Always follow the product label instructions: Reapply insect repellent as directed. Do not spray repellent on the skin under clothing. If you are also using sunscreen, apply sunscreen before applying insect repellent. Until more is understood about the mode of sexual transmission, individuals traveling in affected areas should consider abstaining from sexual intercourse. Condom use is always encouraged, but there is no information available regarding the effectiveness of condoms to prevent sexual transmission of Zika. Returning from affected areas If within the past month you have returned from an area affected by the Zika outbreak and you are requesting evaluation at Student Health Service for fever, rash, joint pains or conjunctivitis, please let Student Health Service know before or upon arrival. Call 302-831-2226, or let your health care provider know about any concerns you may have. Until more is understood about the mode of sexual transmission of Zika virus, individuals returning from affected areas should consider abstaining from sexual intercourse for at least two weeks after returning to the U.S. Condom use is also encouraged, but there is no information available regarding the effectiveness of condoms to prevent sexual transmission of Zika. For those who are pregnant or may become pregnant The U.S. Centers for Disease Control advises women who are pregnant or may become pregnant to postpone travel to the affected areas because of the link between Zika virus infection during pregnancy and microcephaly. More information about Zika risks during pregnancy is available at the CDC website. More about Zika Zika virus is a mosquito-borne virus in the same family as dengue and West Nile viruses. It causes illness in humans through mosquito bites from the Aedes genus, the same mosquitoes that are responsible for the spread of chikungunya and yellow fever. Recently, a strong association between Zika virus infection in or before pregnancy with infants born with microcephaly has been reported in Brazil and other countries. Additionally, there are emerging reports of a possible association between Zika virus infection and Guillaune Barre Syndrome, an autoimmune disorder affecting nerves that can lead to paralysis. For more information, see the CDC page on Zika virus. University official are following the Zika outbreak closely as new information emerges. Members of the UD community with any questions or concerns related to Zika virus or any symptoms should contact Student Health at 302-831-2226 or email studenthealth@udel.edu. Egypt's president extended the invitation on Monday to at least 30 journalists, writers, and intellectuals Egypts President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi is scheduled to meet with a number of the countrys journalists and intellectuals on Tuesday morning. The president extended the invitation on Monday to at least 30 people, whose specialisations range from politics to art, Some of the invited include political analyst Abdallah El-Sennawy, former head of the Journalists Syndicate Diaa Rashwan, arts critic Gaber Assfour, novelist Youssef El-Kaaed, and screenwriter Waheed Hamed. The meeting will present a platform for the group to discuss their grievances with the president, while El-Sisi will outline the state's recent development efforts. El-Sisi met twice before with a group of writers and intellectuals, once during his presidential campaign in May 2014 and again in December 2014. Search Keywords: Short link: Security measures have been heighted in Ukraine because of the conduct of anti-terrorist operation, and they have been additionally tightened at Boryspil Airport recently. Artem Shevchenko, an Interior Ministrys representative, told Ukrinform. In the country that is at war and is in the regime of anti-terrorist operation, security measures have been increased on the whole, and at Boryspil Airport they have been significantly toughened, he said. Shevchenko specified that the National Police, the National Guard, the State Service on Emergency Situations are operating in the regime of anti-terrorist operation and are doing everything possible to provide security everywhere, in particular at airports. When asked whether additional security measures would be introduced after terrorist attacks in Brussels, Shevchenko noted that as a rule, after such events we step up some measures in certain places. iy Ukrainians are laying flowers outside the Belgian Embassy in Kyiv to express condolences to the victims of terrorist attacks in Brussels. Flags of Belgium and the European Union are flying at half-mast near the Embassys building, an Ukrinform correspondent reports. Today at 6 p. m local time near the Belgian Embassy in Kyiv a ceremony of lighting candles to honour the victims of terror attacks in Brussels will be held. Soldiers of the Azov regiment put forward a relevant initiative. iy The flight from Kyiv Boryspil airport from Kyiv to Brussels flight number 145 PS (SN4016, TP8216) which had to depart at 10:55, and its return flight Brussels - Kyiv , flight number PS146 (SN4015, TP8217) scheduled at 17.55 have been canceled. Brussels Airport is closed. Spokeswoman for Boryspil International Airport Oksana Ozhihova told Ukrinform in her comments. "Brussels airport is currently closed. We have today in our daily flight plan only one flight there. It had to take off at 10.55. Ukraine International Airlines had canceled the flight," she said. President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko on Wednesday 23 March will visit Kharkiv city. The Kharkiv regional state administration told Ukrinform. "The visit is scheduled for Wednesday, 23 March. The program for the visit is being confirmed. Last night and this morning meetings were held," a local official noted. According to preliminary data by the city authorities, President is set to visit one of the enterprises in Kharkiv. According to a source in the defense ministry, the President will visit the Malyshev Plant where transfer ceremony of military equipment to the Armed Forces manufactured there will take place. | By Karen Robinson Collecting and analyzing real-world evidence could help ensure the safety and efficacy of implantable medical devices once they have hit the market. However, the infrastructure necessary to gather and process this post-market data collection does not currently exist. The University of Maryland School of Pharmacy and the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) have partnered to examine this issue in-depth. A daylong conference at the School of Pharmacy on Thursday, March 24 will gather experts to consider the problem and potential solutions. The conference and the partnership are part of the Maryland Center of Excellence in Regulatory Science and Innovation (M-CERSI), an FDA-funded collaboration between the University of Maryland, Baltimore and the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP). More and more people are living with implantable devices, and at increasingly younger ages, says conference organizer Fadia Tohme-Shaya, PhD, MPH, professor and vice chair for academic affairs of the Department of Pharmaceutical Health Services Research at the School of Pharmacy. We need to work toward a system that informs providers and patients in real time about what is the best device option for them at the time they need it, and provide enough data to weigh risk and benefit. These decisions are often irreversible. Unlike the arguable ease of switching medications, the decision to replace an implantable device is often very difficult if not impossible. The issue surrounds the safety of implantable medical devices such as heart stents, pacemakers, hip and other prosthetics. The collection of data after a medical device has met regulatory approval real-world evidence gathered once the device is in use in the marketplace could provide valuable information to improve device safety and effectiveness. But to collect and analyze that data, a new system is necessary. This infrastructure would require strong public-private partnering and innovations in informatics, epidemiology, biostatistics, and health care data systems integration. The FDAs Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) has laid a foundation for a new national evaluation system for medical devices, and last year two multi-stakeholder groups issued reports providing recommendations on moving the project forward. The conference, Building the National Evaluation System for Medical Devices: Using Real World Evidence to Improve Device Safety and Effectiveness, will bring together clinicians, researchers, and representatives from the medical device industry, professional societies, health care delivery systems, patient advocacy groups and the FDA. Presenters include Tohme-Shaya; the director of the FDAs CDRH Jeff Shuren, MD, JD; Greg Pappas, MD, PhD, associate director for national device evaluation at CDRH; representatives of the MDEpiNet, a public-private partnership devoted to ensuring the safety and efficacy of post-approval medical devices; and many more researchers from the FDA, the National Institutes of Health, PCORnet, the National Library of Medicine, and other schools and universities, including Weill Cornell Medical College, Duke University, the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and UMCP. Media are welcome to attend. For more information or to speak with the conference organizers, please contact Karen Robinson, 410-706-0023, karobinson@umaryland.edu. This past Sunday, the provisions agreed between the EU and Turkey to stem the large-scale arrival of refugees and migrants to Greece and beyond into Europe came into effect. Starting already on Saturday, the Greek authorities accelerated the transfer to the mainland of an estimated 8,000 refugees and migrants who had arrived on the islands before the 20th of March. This was to separate them from people arriving after that date and who will be subject to the new return policy. Arrivals on Lesvos have so far continued. As of this morning 934 people had arrived since Sunday. They are being held at a closed registration and temporary accommodation site in Moria on the east of the island. The remaining 880 people who arrived before Sunday are being hosted about a kilometre away at the Kara Tepe centre, which is run by the local municipality and remains an open facility. UNHCR has till now been supporting the authorities in the so-called "hotspots" on the Greek islands, where refugees and migrants were received, assisted, and registered. Under the new provisions, these sites have now become detention facilities. Accordingly, and in line with our policy on opposing mandatory detention, we have suspended some of our activities at all closed centres on the islands. This includes provision of transport to and from these sites. However, UNHCR will maintain a presence to carry out protection monitoring to ensure that refugee and human rights standards are upheld, and to provide information on the rights and procedures to seek asylum. UNHCR staff will also continue to be present at the shoreline and sea port to provide life-saving assistance (including transport to hospitals where needed). We are counselling new arrivals on asylum in Greece, including on family reunification and on access to services. And we are identifying people with specific needs. UNHCR is concerned that the EU-Turkey deal is being implemented before the required safeguards are in place in Greece. At present, Greece does not have sufficient capacity on the islands for assessing asylum claims, nor the proper conditions to accommodate people decently and safely pending an examination of their cases. UNHCR is not a party to the EU-Turkey deal, nor will we be involved in returns or detention. We will continue to assist the Greek authorities to develop an adequate reception capacity. Uncertainty is making the new arrivals nervous. Many still hope that the border will open. Many have run out of money. There is also an urgent need for information. The Greek police have been distributing leaflets in Arabic and Persian informing people that the border is closed and advising them to go to camps where better conditions are provided. But the capacity of nearby camps has been reached, and more camps need to be opened including for candidates for relocation. Under the EUs Emergency Relocation Mechanism, European countries agreed to relocate 160,000 asylum seekers, including 66,400 out of Greece and 39,600 out of Italy. As of 21 March 2016, 22 countries had made 7015 places available for asylum seekers to be relocated under the programme and a total of 953 asylum seekers had been relocated (384 out of Italy and 569 out of Greece). Meanwhile, on the Greek mainland in Idomeni, an estimated 10,000-12,000 people, including some 4,000 children, are camping in dire conditions at an informal site near the border, close to a railway track. The majority are families, many of them with young children. Hygiene is a major concern, negatively impacting people's health. People are burning plastic and rubbish to keep warm. The general environment is very challenging. UNHCR and partners have been working to improve capacity by providing family-sized and large tents for up to 2,400 people and collecting rubbish. Mobile latrines have been put in place, but they are not enough. Tents have been provided for vulnerable families and individuals, including 30 unaccompanied minors. UNHCR has been visiting detention centres where unaccompanied children are in protective custody. Food distribution has been arranged by several organisations (sandwich and a drink), three times a day, as well as the distribution of milk, baby food, and diapers. For more information on this topic, please contact: Geneva, 22 March, 2016 - UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, announced today the creation of a unique and powerful photo exhibit, REFUGEE, which illustrates the growing forced displacement crisis through the lens of some of the world's most renowned photographers. UNHCR provided logistical support and collaborated with the Annenberg Foundation in Los Angeles, United States, on the exhibit which will open at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles on April 23 and run until August 21, 2016. With newly commissioned work by internationally acclaimed photographers Lynsey Addario, Omar Victor Diop, Graciela Iturbide, Martin Schoeller and Tom Stoddart, REFUGEE will show the daily lives of refugees around the world in a new light. The compelling images will give visitors to the exhibition insights into the plight of refugees, including their efforts to survive, their needs, their dreams and their hopes for a better future. "This remarkable initiative is very timely, coming as violence and human rights abuses uproot people around the world at an unprecedented pace," said UN High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi. "The photographs in this exhibit portray their courage, resilience and strength. They show that this is not an anonymous movement; these are ordinary people, who have been forced to flee." Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Lynsey Addario highlights the situation of displaced people living in Bangladesh and Myanmar. Omar Victor Diop's work shows refugees from the Central African Republic in Cameroon while Graciela Iturbide will highlight Central American youth seeking protection in Mexico. Martin Schoeller, well-known for his close-up portraits of politicians and celebrities, has turned his lens on resettled refugees in the USA. Tom Stoddart focuses on men, women and children on the move in Greece, Croatia, Slovenia, Serbia and Germany. REFUGEE will also show the world from the perspective of some of those forced to flee. For this, displaced youth in Colombia took part in a photo camp organized by Vision Workshops. Through photography and writing, they documented their daily lives as displaced people within their own country. UNHCR, as part of its collaboration with the Annenberg Foundation, facilitated contacts with displaced communities and supported the photographers with background information. REFUGEE will also feature a documentary, produced by Tiger Nest Films and showing the photographers working on location for the exhibition. About UNHCR UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, works worldwide to protect, assist and find solutions for refugees, internally displaced people and stateless populations. It has some 9,700 staff across 126 countries, many of them working in humanitarian emergencies and in close proximity to regions of conflict. www.unhcr.org About the Annenberg Space for Photography The Annenberg Space for Photography's intimate environment features state-of-the-art, high-definition digital technology as well as traditional prints by both world-renowned and emerging photographers. The Photography Space conveys a range of human experiences and serves as an expression of the philanthropic work of the Annenberg Foundation and its directors. ThePhotoSpace.org/refugee About the Annenberg Foundation The Annenberg Foundation is a family foundation that provides funding and support to nonprofit organizations in the US and globally. Since 1989, it has funded programmes in education and youth development; arts, culture and humanities; civic and community life; health and human services; and animal services and the environment. In addition, the Foundation and its Directors are directly involved in the community with innovative projects, including the Annenberg Space for Photography, that further its mission of advancing a better tomorrow through visionary leadership today. Press photos (free to use if exhibition is announced) can be downloaded here: http://media.unhcr.org/Package/2CZ7A2QCSP4 Media contacts: UNHCR: Roland Schonbauer in Geneva: +43 699 1459 7006, [email protected] Annenberg Foundation: Camille Lowry in Los Angeles, +1 310 209 4568, [email protected] FITZ & CO: Jeff Murcko, [email protected] The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi, right, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, left, pose for a photo at Parliament Hill, Ottawa, on March 21. UNHCR/G.Capriotti OTTAWA, Canada, March 22 (UNHCR) - Marking his first visit to Canada, the United Nations refugee chief congratulated Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for his humanitarian leadership over the global refugee crisis and conveyed a strong message of support calling for this to continue. "I welcomed the Prime Minister's leadership not only in resettling over 25,000 Syrian refugees but also raising funding to UNHCR to record levels," United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees Filippo Grandi said after meeting the Prime Minister at the Canadian Parliament on Tuesday evening. Canada is expected to resettle around 45,000 refugees in 2016, its largest number ever, while this year's financial support so far of C$150 million for UNHCR's lifesaving humanitarian work worldwide is already a record and almost 66 per cent more than the country donated last year. "I called on Prime Minister Trudeau to continue to make Canada an example for other countries," said Grandi, adding that this had also been a message conveyed to him strongly in meetings with resettled refugees and Canadian civil society groups. The High Commissioner began his four day mission to Canada on Saturday by meeting resettled Syrian refugee families, who had arrived as part of the 25,000 and had been welcomed in 261 communities across Canada. "Right now, language is our main challenge. We can't understand everything that people say," said 33-year-old Malva Hasan Halo, who had arrived in Ottawa from Turkey just 12 days earlier with her husband Ferhan Halo and their four young children. "But we are safe here and the kids are safe," she said through an interpreter, adding that they are very grateful to Canada for the opportunity to start a new life and also happy that they made it together as a family. In a packed schedule, Grandi also met Canada's Governor General and five ministers - Foreign Affairs, Immigration, International Development, Public Safety, National Defence - as well as addressing audiences at Ottawa and Carleton Universities. Speaking during a press conference on Parliament Hill, the High Commissioner stressed that despite the challenge of a world where war, conflict and persecution have forced a record 60 million people worldwide to flee for their lives, this year will also see a number of global conferences aimed at garnering more international support for solutions. The World Humanitarian Summit will take place in Turkey in May, while in September there will be a UN summit on refugees and migrants, followed by a separate summit focused on refugees and hosted by President Obama. Additionally, Grandi noted that on March 30, UNHCR will be hosting a high-level international conference in Geneva, calling on governments for a major increase in resettlement places and other legal pathways for admission of Syrians. To date, some 170,000 such places have been pledged by governments around the world and UNHCR wants to increase that to roughly ten per cent of the registered refugee population, currently at 4.8 million people in the immediate surrounding region alone. Coming on the heels of the fifth anniversary of Syria's war, the March 30 meeting will be an opportunity for governments and communities to boost their concrete support for Syrians. By Brian Hansford and Gisele Nyembwe in Ottawa, Canada Egypt's President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi met on Tuesday with defence and interior ministers, the armed forces' chief of staff, and a number of top officials to discuss security developments in Egypt, specifically in the restive North Sinai governorate. "The meeting included a briefing on security developments as well as plans that the armed forces and police are implementing [in North Sinai] to counter terrorist elements that aim to harm the country's stability," presidency spokesman Alaa Youssef said. Youssef added that El-Sisi ordered during the meeting the continuation of full coordination in fieldwork between the armed forces and police, stressing the necessity of exercising a high degree of diligence. El-Sisi asked officials to continue "targeting terrorist and criminal elements," but stressed the importance of putting citizens security and safety first. The meeting comes three days after 15 policemen were killed in an armed attack on a police checkpoint in North Sinai's Al-Arish. A security source told Al-Ahram Arabic website late on Monday that a policeman and two conscripts from the checkpoint are still missing after the attack. According to an official statement by the interior ministry on Monday, the policemen were killed when a mortar shell blasted through a police checkpoint in Arishs El-Safa neighbourhood. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attack, saying in a statement published online that it had deployed a suicide bomber who blew up a car at the checkpoint before militants attacked the site, according to AFP. Egypt's army spokesperson Colonel Mohammed Samir told Ahram daily on Sunday that the military could instantly uproot a militant insurgency it is battling in North Sinai, but is refraining from doing so due to concerns for the lives of local residents. The military "is capable of instantaneously purging Sinai [of militancy] but it is keen to [protect]residents from dangers," Samir was quoted as saying, adding that the battle against the insurgency is "a matter of time." Search Keywords: Short link: The attack on an Arishs El-Safa checkpoint resulted in the death of 15 police personnel A policeman and two conscripts are still missing three days after their checkpoint in North Sinai was hit by a mortar attack launched by Islamist militants, according to Ahram Arabic news website. A security source told Ahram late on Monday that the whereabouts of the three "missing" policemen are still unknown. The interior ministry has not issued any statements about any personnel missing since the attack. Ahmed Abdel-Rahim, the brother of missing policeman Mohamed Abdel-Rahim, told TV host Ahmed Moussa that the trio may have been abducted. Ahmed said the security directorate in North Sinai confirmed to him that his brother was not among the dead or injured accounted for after Saturday's attack, police are searching for Mohamed. I call on the authorities to intensify the search, the brother stated, adding that his family wants to know his fate, dead or alive. Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis, an affiliate of the Islamic State group that has executed militant attacks in North Sinai and mainland Egypt, claimed responsibility for El-Safa checkpoint attack. North Sinai militants have primarily attempt to kill security personnel, but on a few occasions have kidnapped them. In one incident Ansar Beit Al-Maqdis kidnapped a police officer and forced him to denounce Egypts army and government on tape before executing him with a gunshot to the head. Search Keywords: Short link: JEBEL MARRA, Sudan, 22 March 2016 From between the branches of a tree at the entrance to the tiny town of Sortoni pokes the face of a young boy. He wants to know my name. More importantly, he wants me to know his name. He is El-Fateh, and he is 12 years old. El Fateh means victor, or conqueror a name that seems so unbefitting of this shy boy hiding behind a tree trunk. El Fateh is one of more than 13,000 children who are seeking safety in this valley that was until recently devoid of life, except on the UNAMID* site. Now, Sortoni is packed with people who have fled 64 villages in the Jebel Marra area for fear of the intensifying conflict in this part of Darfur. Shelter from attacks Sortoni has become an ad hoc camp of an estimated 20,00030,000 people like El-Fateh, people who have fled the fighting in their nearby villages. Darfur the home of the Fur people has seen intensifying ground and air attacks since mid-January. Nuzzled in between the mountains of the infamous Jebel Marra, the forsaken village of Sortoni is host to mainly children, women and elders. The residents have pitched makeshift shelters of twigs driven into the ground and covered in a mosaic of discarded plastic and torn fabric. The hastily constructed huts are no match to the cold, dusty breeze against which people huddle with their livestock. El-Fatehs story El-Fateh tells me about his journey to Sortoni. He never lets go of the hand of his best friend the only one he has in this strange new situation. We came here, me and my father, mother, grandfather and my older brothers, weeks ago, he says. We heard the bombings, and escaped before anything bad happened to us. I was sent back, to fetch the seven cows we had to leave behind. But they had been taken. El-Fateh gestures to show that he returned to Sortoni empty handed. Even with their livestock looted, El Fatehs family were lucky to have made it to safety without casualties. Other families in the camp have suffered losses, with dozens of children still missing and many more separated from their families. Given the volatile situation, we ask El-Fateh whether he was scared to go back to his village alone. Surrounded by his peers, he denies that he was afraid, but his story speaks to how it felt. On the way, I went to the well. I saw [men with guns] and ran away, he continues. I hid behind the mountains. Here in Sortoni, we are not so scared. Except when I hear the hissing sound of the bombs. Then, at night, I run and hide in between those rocks. Navigating Sortoni The site at Sortoni is a cramped shantytown in the making. UNICEF, as part of the first multi-agency humanitarian team to come to assess the situation, is navigating a maze of families, of children scraping for food, of donkeys, and, in the absence of any facilities, of open defecation fields. This valley is not prepared for an influx on this scale. It has no clinics, no schools, no areas for children to play in, no shelter, no prospects. The only token of safety is the 250-strong UNAMID team site. Those who fled their homes crowd the compound in hope of security, and of water, which the peacekeepers and police force bring in from their water point some 5 km away. The orderly queue of tarnished jerry cans adjacent to the empty distribution point indicates that needs are far greater than supply. All eyes are on us; the expectations to respond to the alarmingly intensifying humanitarian emergency are palpable. Learn more about the situation for children in the Sudan Protecting children first As the people of Jebel Marra try to overcome the challenges facing their community yet again, UNICEF and its humanitarian partners are trying to scale up their ability to protect the children of the Sudan through emergency relief programmes. Family tracing and reunification (FTR) systems, community-based child protection networks and child-friendly spaces are being set up to harness the communal efforts and resilience. What the future holds We are talking to El-Fateh in an open field, and a steady stream of young children leading donkeys that carry water on their backs are making their way back before the nightfall. A group of boys kick a bruised tin can around in a desultory manner. There is nothing to do; there is no school, says El-Fateh. Back home, I had many friends, but here only one. With him, we talk, sometimes we go collect grass for the donkeys, and we go to the well to bring water. We just stay here, and listen to the radio for news from my home. The boy sighs, fiddling with the key that hangs around his neck. Like so many of the children, he carries the key to their family home, in hope of return some day. But with no end to conflict in sight, El-Fateh knows he will be staying in Sortoni for quite some time. I want to go to school, to learn English, Arabic and mathematics. I want to be a teacher one day, he notes with determination, holding on to his friend like a lifeline. At the heart of the climate of hatred and instability are the children. As in so many conflicts, it is the most vulnerable who bear the greatest burden. For, what can be the future of a generation deprived of education, care, food and safety? The damages inflicted by this conflict, by the culture of violence, have long-term impact for the youth paving the way, through distress and deprivation, to recovery. They have the daunting task to mend the broken society, so that no child should ever again seek safety in the caves of Jebel Marra mountains. *African Union/United Nations Hybrid operation in Darfur. Learn more about UNAMID. United Nations/Kenya Conference on Space Technology and Applications for Wildlife Management and Protecting Biodiversity 27-30 June 2016, United Nations Office at Nairobi, Nairobi, Kenya Organized by the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs and the Government of the Republic of Kenya supported by the European Space Agency and hosted by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) Information Note 1. Introduction The United Nations Programme on Space Applications, implemented by the Office for Outer Space Affairs, was established in 1971 to assist Member States with building capacity in using space science, technology and their applications in support of sustainable economic, social and environmental development. Under the new thematic priority "monitoring and protecting biodiversity and ecosystems" of the Programme as endorsed by the United Nations Committee on Peaceful Uses of Outer Space and the General Assembly ( A/70/20, paragraph 71 and A/RES/70/82 paragraph 16 respectively), the Office for Outer Space Affairs is organizing the present Conference to address the use of space based solutions for wildlife management and protecting biodiversity. The Conference is co-organized by the Office for Outer Space Affairs and by the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources on behalf of the Government of Kenya and is supported by the European Space Agency and the United Nations Environment Programme, which will host the Conference at its Headquarters in Nairobi. The protection and conservation of biodiversity and ecosystems, cornerstones of sustainable environmental development, are addressed in the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development under Sustainable Development Goal 15 "Life on Land - to protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems, sustainably manage forests, combat desertification, and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss" (see also Biodiversity and Ecosystems). The focus of the present Conference is to review existing and planned space based technologies and applications for wildlife management and protecting biodiversity in support of meeting the relevant targets set out for Sustainable Development Goal 15. Pressures resulting from climate change, ecosystems loss and wildlife crime are threatening biodiversity and wildlife around the Globe. In response to this a wide range of applications, initiatives and projects have been developed that are using space-based technologies, such as Earth Observation satellites and their geospatial data, satellite-communications and global navigation satellite systems, to monitor, assess and manage biodiversity and ecosystems in support of sustainable environmental development. The present Conference aims to bring together stakeholders involved in biodiversity and wildlife management, including representatives of space industry, governmental and non-governmental organizations and expert communities, as well as the relevant space applications and geo-spatial experts and the users of such applications, including park rangers and wildlife managers, to share their user requirements and experience and present existing and planned space technologies and applications. 2. Conference Objectives The objectives of the Conference will be to: Present experiences with existing and planned state-of-the-art space technologies and applications that provide solutions for wildlife management (flora and fauna) and for protecting biodiversity, including for biodiversity assessments, ecosystem and wildlife habitat management, wildlife monitoring and tracking, as well as for addressing wildlife crime, by documenting and preventing poaching; Bring together and connect the stakeholders involved in relevant initiatives, including those with mandates responsibilities; Present capacity building opportunities to implement space-based solutions; Discuss opportunities for cooperation; Consider relevant legal and regulatory aspects; Develop observations and recommendations for the best way forward in using space based solutions for wildlife management and protecting biodiversity. The discussions will be linked to the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and to the relevant targets set out for Sustainable Development Goal 15, as well as other relevant SDGs. The observations and recommendations of the Conference will be published as a United Nations General Assembly document in all official languages of the United Nations and will be brought to the attention of relevant policy- and decision making bodies. The discussions at the Conference will also inform the preparations towards UNISPACE+50, which will be held in 2018 and marks also the fiftieth anniversary of the first United Nations Conference on the Exploration and Peaceful Uses of Outer Space held in 1968 (see the information button). 3. Conference Programme and Planned Sessions The Conference programme will be structured around a series of topical sessions. Presentations will be solicited through a Call for Papers. In addition, renowned experts in the field will be invited to deliver targeted keynote presentations. Appropriate time will be set aside for discussions and for short presentations by the participants on their own relevant activities. Topics will be considered in dedicated sessions. Based on applications and paper submissions received, these sessions will be further shaped and refined by the organizers. The following sessions are initially envisaged for the Conference: Opening Ceremony with high-level participation and keynote presentation(s) Technical sessions: Wildlife Management and Protecting Biodiversity: Issues and Space Technology Solutions Biodiversity Assessment Ecosystem and Wildlife Habitat Management The benefits of Space solutions for national reports to international and regional legal agreements Wildlife Monitoring and Tracking tools, including through collaborative platforms and social networks Addressing Wildlife Crime Legal and Regulatory Aspects Governance and Policy challenges facing spatial and non-spatial information sharing on Wildlife crime in Africa Capacity Building The benefits of Space solutions for awareness raising and outreach International Experiences and Cooperation Opportunities Observations and Recommendations and the Way Forward Closing Plenary Panel discussions will be organized to share experiences and lessons learned through capacity-building activities in relevant space technology and application activities as well as to deliberate opportunities for international and regional collaborations among the participants. The sessions may be supplemented by a poster session, technical and practical hands-on training exercises. The co-sponsors also aim to organize an attractive programme of side-events for all conference participants. 4. Participants The Conference participants shall be experts or decision-makers directly involved in the planning or implementation of projects related to wildlife management and biodiversity protection, including wildlife managers and park rangers, or in relevant space technology and application development activities in international or national space agencies, governmental or non-governmental organizations, research institutions, industry, universities or other academic institutions. Participants are expected to have obtained university degrees in relevant fields of study, should be enrolled in relevant studies or should have professional working experience in one of the fields related to the theme of the Conference. Due consideration will be given to geographic balance. Applications from interested and qualified female experts are particularly encouraged. Experts who have been identified to present and/or attend the Conference will receive a formal invitation letter with further information, including information on logistical and local arrangements. 5. Support to Qualified Applicants Within the limited financial resources available to the co-sponsors, a number of qualified applicants from developing countries , who have express ed the need for financial support will be selected on a competitive basis based on their qualifications, experience and expected contributions to the Conference and offered financial support to attend the Conference. This may include the provision of a round-trip economy class air ticket between Nairobi and the applicant's international airport of departure and/or room and board for the duration of the Conference. En-route and other expenses or any changes made to the air ticket provided by the co-sponsors must be the responsibility of the participants. Selected applicants will be notified in May 2016. Due to the limited availability of financial resources, it is usually not possible to provide assistance to all qualified applicants who express the need for financial support. Applicants and their nominating organizations are therefore strongly encouraged to identify sources of sponsorship to allow them to attend the Conference. 6. Dates and Location The Conference will be held from 27 to 30 June 2016 at the United Nations Offices at Nairobi, Kenya. Kindly note that the National Organizing Committee is planning a one-day excursion to the Nairobi National Park on 1 July 2016 and you may wish to arrange for your departure date accordingly. 7. Language of the Conference Applicants must have a good working knowledge of English, which will be the official working language of the Conference. 8. Life and Health Insurance Life and major health insurance is the responsibility of each selected participant or his/her nominating institution or government. The co-sponsors will not assume any responsibility for life and major health insurance, nor for any expenses related to medical treatment or accidents. 9. Deadline for Submission of Applications Complete applications and abstracts shall be submitted to the Office for Outer Space Affairs through this online registration page. Applications for participation must be received by the Office for Outer Space Affairs no later than 8 May 2016 from applicants seeking funding support and no later than 31 May 2016 from self-funded applicants. Only complete applications received by these deadlines will be considered. 10. Further Information and Contact Details For questions related to the Conference programme and participation opportunities, please contact: Mr. Lorant Czaran and Mr. Werner Balogh Office for Outer Space Affairs E-mail: lorant.czaran [at] unoosa.org, werner.balogh [at] unoosa.org Tel: +43 1 26060 4158, Tel: +43 1 26060 4952 For questions related to local arrangements of the Conference, the point of contact for Kenya is: Mr. Gideon Gathaara Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources of Kenya E-mail: spacetechsecretariat [at] environment.go.ke Tel: +254 7 206 55733 Conference Programme Logistics Information For logistical information (visa arrangements, health, security, hotels, transportation) please consult the: Airport Transfers United Nations Security Management is making the following recommendations: Patronise only licensed taxis (telephone numbers listed below). Always confirm the fare in advance if there is no meter. Never take an unmarked taxi vehicle. Pewin Cabs, Tel: 0727-776 761 Jatco Taxis, Tel: 0725-280 000 Jim Cab Services, Tel: 0735-555 559 Apollo Tours Ltd, Tel: 0723-794 249 Amicabre Travels Ltd, Tel: 0710-760 055 For airport transfers to/from your chosen hotel you may also wish to consider using your hotel's recommended taxi transfer options. For the Tribe Hotel ( www.tribe-hotel.com): Airport Transfers (USD) ONE WAY RATES 1-2 pax 3 pax 6 pax Mercedes Benz S- Class (max 3 pax) 95USD 130USD N/A Alphard (max 7 pax) 70USD 120USD 170USD Contracted Taxi (max 3 pax) 60USD 90USD N/A JKIA - Meet, Greet, Escort through customs control for both passport and luggage ( Per Person) 60USD If you would like to use this service, please make arrangements s directly with the hotel (e-mail address reservations@tribehotel-kenya.com, contact person Ms. Joyce Kariuki, Tel: +254-729146356). In addition, the Local Organizing Committee adices that taxi charges from the airport to the Hotels near the UNEP headquarters are approximately 40 U.S Dollars. The recommended taxi company is Kenatco although there are more companies at the Airport. Security Advice Please consult travel advice and security information in the Logistics Note. Accommodation All participants are responsible for making their own hotel booking arrangements. A wide range of accommodation options in Nairobi can be found in the above Logistics Note. We recommend participants to stay at http://www.tribe-hotel.com which is located close to the United Nations Office at Nairobi (UNON), where the Conference will be held. From here you can walk to the United Nations premises. The hotel will also offer a free shuttle between the hotel and UNON. A special room rate of USD 190/night (inclusive of tax) has been offered for those making their bookings directly with the hotel (e-mail address reservations@tribehotel-kenya.com, contact person Ms. Joyce Kariuki, Tel: +254-729146356); please mention the Conference title when making your reservation. An economic recommended accommodation option that offers a special UN rate of around USD 80/night is the Comfort Gardens, http://www.comfortgardens.com, at No. 34 UN Crescent - Gigiri, Nairobi, Kenya. Tel: +254 20 14014 or +254 722 873 741, e-mail info@comfortgardens.com. This hotel is also within walking distance to UNON. Lunches, Coffee/tea Breaks Kindly note that lunches will be provided to all Conference participants from 27 to 30 June. Field Visit For your information, the host Government is planning to organize a field visit on Friday, 1 July for the Conference participants, with further details to be provided. For participants receiving their air-ticket through the UN, please indicate in your confirmation e-mail to us that you wish to have your flight departing Nairobi booked no earlier than 1 July evening, if you wish to participate in the field visit. However, please note that the UN will not be able to provide funding support for the additional night and for all other expenses related to the participation in the field visit. Please check back here, as we will provide updated logistics information as soon as it becomes available. Media Advisory Selected Press Articles Follow-Up Activities Useful Documents and Links Conference Committees Honorary Committee (in alphabetical order): Simonetta Di Pippo - Director, Office for Outer Space Affairs, United Nations Erik Solheim - Executive Director, United Nations Environment Programme Judi Wakhungu - Cabinet Secretary, Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources, Kenya Johann-Dietrich Woerner - Director General, European Space Agency International Programme Committee (in alphabetical order): Werner Balogh - Office for Outer Space Affairs, United Nations Jean-Charles Bigot - European Space Agency Julian Blanc - The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora Remi Chandran - National Institute for Environmental Studies, Japan Lorant Czaran - Office for Outer Space Affairs, United Nations Bonaventure Ebayi - Lusaka Agreement Task Force Faith Karanja - University of Nairobi, Kenya Maxwell Gomera - United Nations Environment Programme Margaret Maimba - National Commission for Science, Technology & Innovation, Kenya Javier Montano - United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, Kenya Office Local Organizing Committee (in alphabetical order): The ministry says parents and teachers requested the removal of the biography and picture of the Nobel laureate under the previous education minister; writers blast ministry for falsifying Egyptian history Egypts education ministry confirmed Monday the removal of all references to one-time Egypt vice-president and Nobel Prize laureate Mohamed ElBaradei in a fifth grade book, saying the decision was made "at the request of parents and teachers." In a phone call to Studio 90 Minutes on Al-Mehwer TV channel on Monday night, ministry spokesperson Beshir Hassan said the removal of ElBaradei's bio took place during the tenure of former education minister Moheb El-Rafei. In a previous edition of the Arabic reading comprehension textbook, an exercise used pictures of three Egyptian Nobel laureates: former president Anwar El-Sadat, scientist Ahmed Zuwail, and ex-president of the International Atomic Energy Agency ElBaradei. The activity required students to connect the pictures with dates in which they received their Nobel prizes. The exercise in the current edition only includes Sadat and Zuwail. "More than one parent and a number of teachers called the committee tasked with developing the curricula to request that the picture and any writing about ElBaradei be removednot for political reasons or aims, but because [understanding ElBaradei] is beyond the cognitive abilities of a fifth grader," Hassan said. Media condemnation Several media commentators condemned the ministry's actions on Monday, charging they were politically motivated. Many social media users and a number of public figures also condemned the removal of any mention opf ElBaradei. "Whoever removes the name of ElBaradei, the Egyptian winner of the Nobel Prize, is a fabricator and misleader who wants to brainwash the children," said TV host Ibrahim Issa on Al-Qahera Wal-Nas TV channel on Monday. "They say it's because of his stance on 30 June [uprising against the Brotherhood], but that is ironic since ElBaradei was among the uprising's protestors against the Islamists and took part on the 3rd of July along then-defence minister El-Sisi in drawing the post-Morsi roadmap." "He then resigned after Rabaa's dispersal; he is free to do that and I expressed my disagreement with him a lot," said Issa. "But does it strip him of his national value or his contributions as an Egyptian who won not only the Nobel Prize but was also award the highest state award - the Nile Medal - by former president Mubarak?" Lilianne Dawoud, the ONTV anchor shared Issa's sentiment. "Removing a scientist's name from a copybook and papers does not detract from a scientist's status, but it does bring you shame and history [will] remember your ignorance," Dawoud tweeted. ElBaradei retweeted Liliane's comments on his personal Twitter account. Meanwhile Egyptian novelist Alaa El-Aswany, a supporter of the ousting of Islamist president Morsi in 2013, concurred. "We disagreed with ElBaradei a lot but we can never disagree about his honesty, his integrity and his love for his country; he is a respectable figure in the world. Removing his name from the curriculum is just cheap, miserable hypocrisy," Education ministry explains The ministry of education issued a statement Monday to set the record straight. "The current minister El-Helaly El-Sherbiny did not give any instructions to remove or add any information to those curricula after he was sworn in on 19 September 2015," the statement read. "As soon as he learned about it, [the minister] referred the matter to be studied, to determine the reasons and those responsibile," it added. "No one can rewrite history, spokesperson Hassan added. We can disagree with Dr. Mohamed ElBaradei politically, but no one can deny that Dr. Mohamed El-Baradei received the Nobel Prize." Hassan also pointed out that the curriculum was changed in many other ways. ElBaradei was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2005. In recognition of this achievement, he was awarded the Order of the Nile, Egypt's highest state honour, by Mubarak in 2006. The former vice-president played a leading role in the late 2000s infomenting opposition to former president Mubarak and participated in the 2011 18-day uprising which ousted the long-time autocrat. After much anticipation, ElBaradei declined to run for president in the 2012 elections. Following the violent crackdown on the pro-Morsi camps in Rabaa Al-Adawiya in August 2013, ElBaradei publicly resigned his post in protest at the government's decision. He has since lived in self-imposed exile in the West. Search Keywords: Short link: Dennis Culhane and John Fantuzzo: $1.9M for Evidencebased Policy and Integrated Data Systems Research Print Issue March 22, 2016, Volume 62, No. 27 Two recent grants, totaling nearly $2 million, have been awarded to University of Pennsylvania professors Dennis Culhane and John Fantuzzo, enabling the continued development and expanded use of Integrated Data Systems, or IDS, for evidence-based policymaking through the Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy, or AISP, initiative. IDS link existing administrative data across multiple agencies and community providers to improve programs and policies through evidence-based collaboration. IDS help leaders and researchers evaluate what works, what doesnt and how social problems can be effectively solved to meet the needs of families and individuals. The grants came this year from both the Laura and John Arnold Foundation$1.1 millionand the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation$800,000. The MacArthur Foundation has been a longtime supporter of AISP and has contributed more than $5 million to the initiative since 2008. This is the first time AISP has received funding from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. MacArthur continues to generously support our work in the development, use and innovation of IDS, said Dr. Fantuzzo, the Albert M. Greenfield Professor of Human Relations in Penns Graduate School of Education. Through this most recent grant, we will be able to implement a training and technical assistance system to benefit states and counties that are developing IDS, create and test a model of IDS use for randomized control trials and generate recommendations for continued innovations in the field by establishing the AISP Research Consortium. With additional funding from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation, a team led by Dr. Fantuzzo and Dr. Culhane, the Dana and Andrew Stone Chair in Social Policy in the School of Social Policy & Practice, will embark on AISP Innovation. The new initiative will enable AISP to refine and test a more efficient, secure and effective approach to IDS for state and local governments. Our intent is to generate uniform standards of best practices for the most challenging aspects of operating an IDS, Dr. Culhane said. Through a comprehensive 2013 study, Dr. Culhane and Dr. Fantuzzo identified the main barriers faced by states and counties with existing IDS. Challenges include agency concerns about data security as well as the time-consuming processes required to secure the legal agreements and the cumbersome contract procurements necessary to get the work done. Leadership also needs an effective data infrastructure with state-of-the-art technology tools that can link multiple data sources over time, store and update linkage keys and extract cohorts for research and analysis. To further improve data security but maintain access, a secure system is also needed for remote analysis of data. By addressing these needs, AISP Innovation aims to eliminate obstacles and help government more quickly determine what works, for whom and at what cost. As the concept continues to emerge, the benefits of IDS are expanding and can be pivotal in tracking and improving programs and policies, such as those for juvenile and adult justice, homelessness, health care, education, assisted housing, workforce development and child-welfare services. Thirteen jurisdictions, comprising 26 percent of the United States population, currently maintain an IDS. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation initially funded the AISP project through a series of grants to Dr. Culhane and Dr. Fantuzzo. More information about AISP is available at www.aisp.upenn.edu and more information about Understanding Actionable Intelligence for Social Policy animation is available at https://vimeo.com/159527963 UTSA and Texas Workforce Commission to host statewide science and engineering fair Share this Story (March 21, 2016) -- The University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) and the Texas Workforce Commission will host the Texas Science and Engineering Fair, the state science and engineering fair, on March 31 to April 2, 2016. More than 1200 middle school and high school students will display their very best science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) projects over three days in the Henry B. Gonzalez Convention Center in San Antonio, Texas. The students, who are able to present as individuals or teams, all advanced from regional science fairs in Texas. Theyll compete in 20 different categories in senior and junior divisions. In May, eight senior division projects will go on to compete at the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair in Phoenix. On the first two days of the event, students will arrive and set up their projects. Judging will begin at on Saturday morning, with winners announced that evening. Past winners include a new way to diagnose oral cancer, using 3-D X-rays to help prevent cancer and a method for detecting genetic diseases with artificial intelligence. Since 2008, three winners of the Texas Science and Engineering Fair have gone on to win at the international contest, including Karan Jerath of Friendswood, Texas. Recently named one of Forbes 30 Under 30, Jerath will return this year as a judge. ------------------------------- Learn more about the Texas Science and Engineering Fair. Learn more about the UTSA College of Sciences. Learn more about the Texas Workforce Commission. Connect with UTSA online at Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram and UTSA Today. Egypt's foreign ministry reiterated the country's position on terrorism saying in a statement that it knows no boundaries, religion or race Egypt's foreign ministry condemned in the "strongest terms" the deadly blasts that rocked Belgium's capital Brussels on Tuesday morning, leaving at least 26 dead and dozens injured dozens. "The time has come for the world to make a final stand to deal with the phenomenon of international terrorism that targets the security and stability of peoples around the world, and that seeks to undermine all human civilization," the foreign ministry's spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid said in a statement. Abu Zeid also reiterated Egypt's position that brutal terrorism does not differentiate between religion or race, and knows no boundaries. Abu Zeid said that fighting terrorism requires quick and effective measures on the international level to drain the financing for terrorists. He added that terrorism must be combatted also on the ideological levels to prevent the recruitment of more individuals by "criminal groups." Tuesday's blasts, which ripped through Brussels airport and a key metro station in the city, comes four days after the arrest in Brussels of the prime suspect in the November terror attacks in Paris that killed 130 people. Belgian police had been on alert for any reprisal since the arrest. Search Keywords: Short link: The president told a gathering of prominent Egyptian intellectuals that he is keen to find a balance between his country's stability and securing basic rights and freedoms Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi says he aims to find equilibrium between Egypts stability on one side and securing freedoms and rights on the other, according to state news agency MENA. "I am keen to [achieve] balance between the safety of 90 million and the state's stability [on one side] and securing rights and freedoms," the president said at a gathering of some of the country's top writers and intellectuals on Tuesday. The meeting is the first in a string of gatherings of social dialogue that El-Sisi aims to hold with figures from across the country's political, economic and arts spectrum, the presidency said in a statement. The meeting was aimed at addressing efforts by El-Sisi's administration to "improve public services and boost investments" as well as "looking at grievances harboured by the public." Participants in the meeting called for better participation in the country's political scene by political parties, non-governmental organisations and professional syndicates. They also urged the guaranteeing of unrestricted freedom of expression and demanded an overhaul of the country's media scene. Writer Farida El-Naqash, who was present at the meeting, told Ahram Arabic that some of the participants called for revoking the 2013 protest law, which bans all but police-sanctioned protests. Hundreds of Islamists and secular activists have been jailed under this law. El-Sisi also said that four batches of detainees have been released in recent months as part of campaigns sponsored by Egypt's semi-official National Council for Human Rights along with media figures. Some participants also demanded the release of TV presenter Islam El-Beheiry, who is imprisoned on blasphemy charges, as well as novelist Ahmed Nagy, who was sentenced to jail for the publishing of what authorities deem a sexually explicit text. Human rights activists have slammed both cases as a blow to freedom of expression. El-Sisi said that he has been frank about the country's economic woes since he came to office, urging "concerted efforts and patience." He called on attendees to sponsor efforts to set up "working groups" of think tankers to look at pressing issues and challenges and propose means of tackling them. El-Sisi said he would convene a similar gathering next month to look at recommendations proposed by the groups. El-Sisi added that no president can "remain in office beyond the prescribed period." El-Sisi came to office in June 2014, almost a year following the ouster of Islamist president Mohamed Morsi after massive protests against his turbulent one-year rule. Under the Egyptian constitution, a president can remain in office for a maximum of two terms, each of four years. Search Keywords: Short link: A Cairo court ordered Tuesday the release of a teenager who was arrested in 2014, allegedly for wearing a shirt denouncing torture, on EGP 1,000 bail (approximately $112) pending investigation, his lawyer said. The order came hours after Mahmoud Mohamed Hussein's case was reportedly brought up at a meeting between Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi and a group of prominent intellectuals who called on the Egyptian president to instigate his release. Hussein, who was 18 years old at the time, was arrested on 25 January 2014 as he was on his way home from a demonstration commemorating Egypt's 2011 revolution. He was detained at a checkpoint in northern Cairo while wearing a T-shirt that read "A nation without torture," presumably in reference to reported police abuses. Many critics, including his family and lawyer, believe he was arrested because of the slogan emblazoned on his T-shirt. Hussein, who has not been tried, is facing charges of illegal protesting, possessing Molotov cocktails and "belonging to a terrorist organisation." His detention has sparked widespread condemnation from political activists and human rights advocates, with Amnesty International launching a petition in late 2015 calling for his release. Egyptian law allows pre-trial detention to last up to two years. Correction: It was initially reported that Egyptian authorities had released the defendant. He is still behind bars as the order has not yet been executed. Search Keywords: Short link: Egyptian MPs said Tuesday that parliament's first session should be extended so as to make time for a busy agenda Egyptian MPs agree that parliament's first legislative session (2015-2016) should be extended until October rather than end in July, Bahaaeddin Abu Shoqa, an appointed MP and secretary-general of the liberal Wafd Party, told reporters on Tuesday. Abu Shoqa said that as Article 115 of the new constitution stipulates that the duration of each of parliament's five legislative sessions must be at least nine months (or from October to July), MPs agree that the first session should be extended. "As the new parliament's first session began in January 2016 [instead of October 2015], it must end in October 2016," said Abu Shoqa, adding that "the extension is necessary to meet a busy legislative agenda stipulated by the constitution." Abu Shoqa indicated that although parliament could adjourn the session in July to take a three-month holiday, "MPs say they do not want this holiday or can take just one month as a summer holiday so that they can have time to discuss a busy legislative agenda and exercise their supervisory roles." "In order to implement the new constitution, there should be a legislative revolution in this country," said Abu Shoqa, adding that" in order to meet this objective and live up to the aspirations of Egyptians in this respect, parliament must work day and night until next October." The number of days parliament has convened since January stands at only 21, with MPs receiving total financial compensation estimated at EGP 25 million over the last two months, according to newly released figures. Ahmed Abul-Ela, an MP affiliated with the liberal Free Egyptians Party, also agreed that "parliament has a very busy schedule ahead." "We have to discuss the government's programme over one month, after which we have to prepare ourselves for reviewing the new state budget," said Abul-Ela. "This will leave no time to discuss in parliament's first session laws stipulated by the new constitution as a priority, such as three laws regulating the media and the construction and restoration of churches, not to mention a new transitional justice law." Abul-Ela said the Free Egyptians Party is in favour of parliament taking only one month as summer holiday. "Parliament can adjourn sessions during the holy month of Ramadan and take it as a summer holiday, after which it can convene again to finish the legislative agenda," said Abul-Ela. Alaa Abdel-Moneim, the spokesperson of the Support Egypt parliamentary bloc, also told reporters that extending the first parliamentary session by two or three months has become a necessity to finish an ambitious legislative agenda. "We have to show all Egyptians that parliamentary membership is not a luxury, but rather a hard duty to secure their interests," said Abdel-Moneim. El-Sayed El-Sherif, the deputy parliament speaker, told reporters that he is also highly in favour of extending the first session to next October. "But this proposal must first gain the approval of parliament's internal bureau, and if everything goes well, it will be submitted for discussion in a plenary session," said El-Sherif. Nadia Henry, an MP with the Free Egyptians Party, also argued that "as the first two months after parliament's first meeting were devoted to reviewing 341 laws and drafting 338 new article bylaws, and as the government's budget and policy statement is expected to take another two months of discussion, the extension of the first legislative session has become a necessity." Search Keywords: Short link: Islamic State group claimed responsibility for two bomb attacks that killed at least 30 people in Brussels on Tuesday, a news agency affiliated with the group said. "Islamic State fighters carried out a series of bombings with explosive belts and devices on Tuesday, targeting an airport and a central metro station," the Amaq agency said. The attacks on Brussels airport and a rush-hour metro train in the Belgian capital came four days after Brussels police captured the prime suspect in attacks by the militant groups in Paris. "Islamic State fighters opened fire inside Zaventem Airport, before several of them detonated their explosive belts, as a martyrdom bomber detonated his explosive belt in the Maalbeek metro station," Amaq said. The attack triggered security alerts across Europe. Search Keywords: Short link: Zhou Xiaochuan, Governor of the People's Bank of China, has warned over rising debt levels since corporate lending as a ratio to gross domestic product (GDP) has become too high. He has also urged developing more robust capital markets while tackling the situation. China has been embattling with illegal fund raising due to insufficient financial services. The world's most populous country requires regulation guarding against excessive leverage in foreign currencies, reports Bloomberg quoting the central bank governor while addressing the China Development Forum in Beijing on Sunday. Debt levels in China have been witnessed to climb up rapidly during the recent years. China's total debt has soared to nearly three times of its gross domestic product by mid 2014. The debt level is simply higher than that of United States. The steep increase has largely been driven by corporate borrowing transforming China as one of the highest levels of corporate debt in the world, reports CNN Money citing a last year report by McKinsey Global Institute as the source. Cuba has been considered as one of the world's least digitally connected state. During Barack Obama's historic visit to the country, he announced that Google will provide the island nation with internet service where it will begin to set up more WiFi and broadband access. The U.S. president made it public about the company's plans during his ABC News exclusive interview which aired in Monday about Google's setting up of more WiFi and broadband access to Cuba's households and business majority that lacks internet access, according to Time. "One of the things that we'll be announcing here is that Google has a deal to start setting up more WiFi and broadband access on the island," Obama told ABC anchor David Muir. "Over time, if in fact, we start seeing access to the internet, which is necessary for Cuba to enter into the 21st century economically, invariably that gives the Cuban people more information and allows them to have more of a voice." ETECSA which is Cuba's state telecom company has just announced the launch of its first domestic broadband project in Cuba. The service is run by Huawei that pioneered the broadband to the city's old colonial center, Old Havana, and is expected to expand. Google's introduction will drive competition and embolden faster digital growth since the country needs it. Currently, the sole internet connection accessible to foreign companies' employees at expensive cost is $2 for a 1-hr public WiFi access, states Gizmodo. It was reported in June that a Google executive visited Cuba to deliver better internet to the island. In July, there were also reports that the plan of Internet expansion was presented to the Cuban government by the Google executive but officials were hesitant. At that time, a spokesperson from Google said that the tech company was "working to help the Cuban government think through their publicly stated goal of improving Internet access," and that no money was involved to developing Internet connectivity, as reported by Fortune. Cuba has now two internet providers, Huawei and Google. President Obama announced during his visit that Google will provide broader and faster WiFi and broadband access. A day after Bumble Bee Tuna recall, Tri-Union Seafoods LLC, the firm that manufactures Chicken of the Sea tuna confirmed that it is completely recalling 107,000 5oz. cans of chunk light tuna in oil and chunk light tuna in water. The Food and Drug Administration said that the tuna was sold between February 10 and March 16 nationwide and that the product might be undercooked because the equipment didn't work properly at the time of processing. Bumble Bee recalled 31,000 cases of canned tuna due to a possible risk of contamination. The said recall affects its canned Chunk Light Tuna's three significant UPC codes manufactured in February and were distributed across the state. These were co-packed in an outside establishment that found divergence in the sterilization process during a routine audit that could result to contamination from spoiled tuna. There might be no reported affected consumers at the moment but the company doesn't want to take chances and announced a voluntary recall, MSN reports. "The health and safety of our consumers is our number one priority," Shue Wing Chan, president of Tri-Union Seafoods LLC, said in the news release. "As soon as we discovered the issue, we took immediate steps to initiate this voluntary recall, alerting our retail customers that received the product and instructing them to remove it from store shelves," as reported by the Fox News Health. A company representative states that the recalled Chicken of the Sea cans were packaged at the same establishment in Lyons, Georgia which is accountable for the packaging of Bumble Bee tuna. Both products could result to life-threatening diseases because the tunas might have been uncooked due to equipment malfunction, as cited by the Consumerist. If the bought tuna has a can code that begins with a "T", is featuring any of the following UPC codes below and a date of February 2019 for "Best By", better check the Bumble Bee website if the product is affected. If it is one of the unlucky products, throw it away and call Bumble Bee's toll free number at 888-820-1947 for details about reimbursement. 5-Ounce Bumble Bee Chunk Light Tuna in Water, UPC code 8660000020 5-Ounce Bumble Bee Chunk Light Tuna in Oil, UPC code 8660000021 4 pack of 5-Ounce Bumble Bee Chunk Light Tuna in Water, 8660000736 Aramco, Saudi Arabia's state-owned oil major, has announced its plans to takeover Texas refinery. By taking control over Port Arthur Texas refinery, Saudi Arabia will not only refine its oil in the US, but also sell in the huge North American market. Texas refinery on sprawling Port Arthur is the largest refinery in the US. The Gulf coast facility has a processing capacity of 600,000 barrels of oil per day (bpd). Port Arthur Texas refinery played a major role in reducing America's oil dependency on imports. Aramco controls 261 billion barrels of reserves in Saudi Arabia accounting for 15 percent world's oil production. CNN Money reports that Saudi Arabia state-owned company Aramco considers Port Arthur Texas refinery a strategic value for it. By acquiring Texas refinery, Saudi Arabia can bring its oil into the US market for refining and selling in North American market. Aramco has already 50 percent stake in the refinery. Tom Kloza, global head of energy analysis at the Oil Price Information Service, said "Saudi Arabia would have an anchor tenant for much of their crude oil production. Port Arthur is the jewel the Saudis would like." CNBC further adds that Aramco is in process of acquiring more refining and chemical plants in the US as part of its global expansion plan. Once it parts ways with Royal Dutch Shell, Aramco will speed up its expansion plan. Motiva Enterprises' split will be a first initiative of Aramco before going public. Saudi Arabia in January announced that it would sell shares of Aramco. Motiva will be first asset to be spun off from Aramco. Worker unrest at Port Arthur in 2015 disrupted production activity to some extent. The US petroleum sector witnessed a nationwide strike over the safety concerns that affected Port Arthur Texas refinery as well. Port Arthur refinery had undergone an extensive five-year makeover plan, which has been completed in 2012. This has increased the refinery's capacity by 100 percent. Saudi's Aramco and Shell have decided to split assets including US refinery. As part of the latest announcement, Aramco will have total control of Port Arthur Texas refinery, according to US Energy Information Administration (EIA). The joint venture of Aramco and Shell with equal holding was formed in 1998. Aramco will retain Motiva name and total control of Port Arthur Texas refinery. However, both the companies didn't disclose financial details about split exercise, as reported by PennEnergy. Both the oil majors last week announced a letter of intent to split Motiva Enterprises. Kloza said "It's a very expensive divorce." Along with Royal Dutch Shell, Aramco has half of the stake in Port Arthur refinery. Aramco owns the stake through its joint venture Motiva Enterprises. Shell and Aramco have a contentious relationship for long time. Aramco wants to process oil shipped from Middle East at Port Arthur refinery, while Shell insists refining oil produced from deep waters of Gulf of Mexico. Indian software company Girnar Software has secured a new funding led by Google Capital. Girnar Software is the owner of market leading auto portals CarDekho.com and PriceDekho.com, among other portals. Girnar Software's portals target Indian car sellers and buyers with value-added services including insurance, accessories, and roadside assistance. The financial details of the transaction were not disclosed. The funding round was led by Google Capital, which focuses on late-stage growth funding. The funding also involved Girnar Software's existing investor Hillhouse Capital. The company's latest investment round raised more than $50 million led by Hillhouse Capital, with participation from Sequoia Capital and Tybourne Capital. Other high-profile investors including HDFC Bank and Tata Sons' Ratan Tata, as reported by Business Standard. According to Forbes India, a major part of the new funding will be used to further bolster CarDekho's technology, research and development, as well as expansion within and outside of India. As for now, the company has already launched a similar portal CarBay.com which offers its services in 25 countries in Asia, Africa, the Middle East, Europe, North America, and South America. With the new fund, Girnar Software plans to continue establishing its profile and services overseas. TechCrunch reported that one of the expansion plans is making acquisitions. A recent study revealed that India's auto market is expected to grow 15.6 percent this year, or nearly five times faster than the global growth rate, supported by larger salaries and pending tax changes which could make vehicle prices cheaper. Girnar Software co-founder and chief executive Amit Jain expressed their delight in having Google Capital as one of its investors. "Google Capital is one of most respected growth equity investors in the world, and brings to us the resources and expertise from the one of the most valuable technology companies on the planet," Jain said. Likewise, Google Capital partner David Lawee also stated Girnar Software's prominence and superiority in its sector. "We're very excited to be investing in Girnar Software, the parent company of India's leading auto portal, CarDekho.com. The team is led by savvy entrepreneurs with a strong product orientation, who have positioned the company perfectly in a rapidly growing market," Lawee said in a press statement. The new late-stage funding round led by Google Capital will help Girnar Software improve its services and technology, as well as expanding to more countries and areas. India's automotive market is predicted to grow rapidly, and so with platforms such like Girnar Software's, including CarDekho.com and CarBay.com. Marriott International Inc. has reached an agreement with Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. for a $13.6 billion merger. The deal emerged in the bidding war between Marriott and a group led by China's Anbang Insurance Group. Under the new proposal imposed by Marriot, shareholders will get $21 per share. The total bid also includes stock, at $79.53 as of Friday's close of trading, as reported by Reuters. In addition to the $21 cash per share, Starwood shareholders will also receive 0.8 shares of Marriott Class A common stock for each of Starwood common stock. The original cash portions agreed between the two companies in November was $2 a share, added with 0.92 shares of Marriott stock. That would result in $11.7 billion based on Friday's close. Anbang's last offer was $78 a share that would total in $13.2 billion, a counteroffer from Marriott's previous $65.33 a share. The new deal's total worth is $13.6 billion per Friday. Anbang's latest counteroffer has raised the bar in the bidding war to merge with Starwood. Starwood chairman Bruce Duncan told The Wall Street Journal how the company is pleased with the new offer by Marriott. "We are pleased that Marriott has recognized the value that Starwood brings to this merger and enhanced the consideration being paid to Starwood shareholders," Duncan stated. A research director for Bloomberg, Tim Craighead, noted the value of the merger between the two prominent companies. "A Marriott-Starwood combination would create a diversified, asset-light lodging behemoth focused on expanding its base of fees and managed and franchised hotels. A takeover by Anbang Insurance may cloud the long-term growth picture," he said. It's also noted that Marriott-Starwood combination would create the world's largest hotel company with about 30 brands and 5,500 hotels. The merger could create more leverage in partnership with travel agents, create a larger frequent-guest loyalty program, as well as save cost. In a statement, Marriott said that it expects to save about $250 million a year with a merger, more than the previous one made in November with the initial deal. Marriott has shown its confident in rising the offer to counter Anbang's latest offer. In Monday's afternoon trading, Starwood shares were up 4 percent at $83.79. However, Marriott was down 1.6 percent at $72.02. The new $13.6 billion merger deal offered by Marriott will likely be closed, creating the world's largest hotel chain along with Starwood. The deal ends a bidding war against a group led by China's Anbang. For now, the merger is waiting for approvals from the European Union and China officials. Sales of existing homes in February declined, reflecting poor demand in housing sector amid higher prices and weak inventory. Sales of pre-owned houses dropped 7.1% during February to a rate of 5.08 million from 5.47 million in the previous month. But, sales still remains 2.2% higher than the prior-year period. Lawrence Yun, a chief economist at National Association of Realtors, said that the break in bond signings during January along with stock market volatility might have contributed to the sales fall. But, Yun considers affordability and supply as the main problem for poor sales. In addition, selecting a suitable home at an affordable cost seems more challenging for many buyers, he added. Yun continued, "The overall demand for buying is still solid entering the busy spring season, but home prices and rents outpacing wages and anxiety about the health of the economy are holding back a segment of would-be buyers." The average price for existing homes was $210,800 in February 2016, an increase of 4.4% from $201,900 in the previous year period. Net housing inventory during February rose 3.3% to 1.8 million pre-owned houses available for sale. Cash sales accounted for 25% of transactions during February, a decrease of 26% in January. Nearly 18% of home sales in February came from individual investors, who are key contributors of cash sales. According to Yun, sales from individual investors increased over the recent period following a drop to as small as 12% of sales during August 2015. He added that there seems to be a change in trend, where investors purchased small budget homes and converted them into rentals. The share of new buyers dropped to 30% during February from 32% in January, up from 29% in the previous year period. THE WALL STREET JOURNAL quoted Joel Naroff, an economist at Naroff Economic Advisors, who said that a normal market will have nearly six month's output. According to Joel, without sufficient supply, it is difficult to sell homes and that supply is considered to be the key risk factor with regard to the housing sector. Last month, market experts had anticipated a decrease of 2.8% in the US existing homes sale. Housing sector across the nation experienced a steep fall, with a 17.1% fall in the US Northeast. This slowdown in the US housing sector impacted S&P 500 index, which dropped immensely following the release of the data. Robust growth in the labour market continues to propel housing sector amid poor foreign demand and strong US currency, as reported by Reuters. The housing sector is facing many challenges including weak demand and oversupply. Experts hope housing market will rebound in the near future. Bayer AG shares surged by 5% on Monday, after Monsanto was reported to have interest in acquiring its crop-science business. The increase was reported as the highest since August last year. Monsanto, the agrochemical and agricultural biotechnology giant has initiated a talk to acquire one of Bayer's business unit, the crop science. A source told Reuters that on Friday the two companies had held talks over Bayer's agricultural assets. Bayer crop science is the second-largest crop chemicals business by sales after Syngenta. Last year, Syngenta rejected the Monsanto approach to take over the Switzerland company. Monsanto which determined to expand its crop chemical business contacted Bayer afterward through BASF. BASF SE is a familiar partner for Monsanto. Since 2007, Monsanto has been in an agreement with BASF, the largest chemical producer in the world. The two companies signed a long term agreement in research, development, and marketing of new plant biotechnology products. Bloomberg also confirmed that Monsanto has approached BASF to consolidate its crop chemical business with Bayer, which was also long term partner of BASF. On Friday, the parties discussed the idea of purchase or joint ventures on two crop-science units from Bayer, including cotton crops. The talk also considered to purchase the entire Bayer's crop science business unit later on. Bayer, BASF and Monsanto declined to comment regarding the matter. Nevertheless, shares of Bayer and BASF jumped higher on Monday after the news breakout. Bayer was up 5.4% at 103.45 while BASF rose 1.1% to 67.20. Both companies are listed as part of Euro Stoxx 50 Index. UBS analyst Alexandra Hauber, as quoted by CNBC in her note said Bayer's business could be a better fit for Monsanto. "Bayer's crop science business is stronger than BASF in terms of market share, which should put Bayer in more favourable negotiation position vs BASF," she said. UBS values Bayer's crop science business at 40 billion ($45 billion), which was 15 times higher than its estimated 2017 earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA). Meanwhile the entire Bayer group, acccording to Thomson Reuters data, is trading at 9.1 times than its estimated EBITDA for the next 12 months Bayer Group has four business units: Bayer Pharmaceuticals, Bayer Consumer Health, Bayer Crop Science and Bayer Animal Health. Previously, the company spun off its chemical business unit into Lanxess in 2004, and material science unit to become Covestro last year. Lanxess is the maker of specialty polymers, while Covestro is known for making polyurethanes and special polycarbonates trademarked as Makrolon. Following Monsanto's interest in acquiring its crop science business, shares of Bayer surged by more than 5% on Monday. Monsanto is keen on expanding crop chemical business and Bayer is seen to be the better fit for Monsanto. SHARE Kim Gregory, communication specialist at CSU Channel Islands, will be the keynote speaker for the Public Relations Society of America's California Gold Coast Chapter meeting Wednesday. The meeting will begin at 8 a.m. with networking, followed by the program from 8:30-9:30 a.m., at the Ventura County Community Foundation, 4001 Mission Oaks Blvd. Gregory's talk will be titled "How to Prepare Your Clients or CEO to Face the Cameras and Microphones." Before her stint at CSUCI, she worked as a reporter and columnist at the Ventura County Star for 20 years. Reservations are required. Admission will be $20 for PRSA members and students, $30 for nonmembers. Morning refreshments will be included. Visit http://www.prsagoldcoast.org to register. Contact Nancy Gill at nancy.gill@csuci.edu or 437-8456 for more information. At a ministerial meeting for the neighbouring countries of Libya, the participating members confirmed the importance of border protection Libya's neighbouring countries affirmed their refusal to engage in any military action in Libya, a closing statement by the foreign ministers at the 8th Ministerial Meeting for the Neighbouring Countries of Libya said. The meeting, which included Libya, host country Tunisia, Egypt, Chad, Niger and Sudan, stressed that any military intervention aiming to combat terrorism in Libya should take place following a request from Libya's national unity government and in accordance with UN provisions. The participants expressed their deepest "concerns over the expansion of terrorist groups in some Libyan regions because it represents a real threat to the Libyan people, on the future of the political path and on the security and stability of neighboring countries and the region." The foreign ministers also emphasised the importance of cooperating with each other on border protection. They called on the Libyan parliament and state council to keep its responsibility of continuing the political process under the UN sponsorship. The foreign ministers also asked for the fast transfer of the presidential council of Libya's national unity government to move from Tunisia to Tripoli so that it can operate from the country's capital. "Maintaining the coherence of Libyan institutions, including the Libyan army, is a necessity that we have asserted since we begun the process of joint work. I call on the renewal of this commitment and to spare the armed forces and the national security apparatus the threats from any action that aims to divide and weaken them," Egypt's FM Sameh Shoukry said in a speech. Shoukry said that Egypt is continuing to urge the international community to provide all aspects of support to Libyan security institutions, including training and rehabilitation, as well as lifting a ban on importing arms to the Libyan army so that it can fight terrorism. Search Keywords: Short link: Engineering aide chief Donald Fallon runs the operations board in the Tactical Operations Center. The central nervous system of the battalion at Fort Hunter Liggett, the center has radios, computers and an array of maps. SHARE Construction in combat zones possible By Scott Hadly FORT HUNTER LIGGETT First, they started probing the lines. Then, they ambushed a convoy, posted a sniper along the route and planted a roadside bomb. Next, they sent in some "civilians" to scope out the guard posts while stirring up trouble with a massive cloud of tear gas as the Seabees, under the withering heat of the day, built their base in gas masks and full chemical protective gear. "We'll attack the convoy, might attack the line," said Lt. Eric Hass, a compact, career Navy officer with a shaved head and a distinct tan line low on his forehead from where his cap shielded skin. "We might go at the FOB (forward operating base)," Hass said. "We want to test everything." Hass has two weeks worked out on paper, scripted scenarios to test and train the Seabees of Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 4 based at Port Hueneme. He's got their time filled with around-the-clock harassment, tricks and mental challenges that simulate real-world battles. A battalion of about 600 men and women began field training exercises in late April on 165,000 acres of oak-covered hills and valleys at Fort Hunter Liggett near King City. In long convoys, the battalion "line-hauled" its trucks and much of its equipment up from Port Hueneme. A Logistical Support Activity base with guard towers, razor wire and a command center with a communications link was set up in less than two days. A company of about 150 Seabees was sent out to set up an observation base about five miles away. It's Hass' job to throw as much at the Seabees as he can, testing their ability to move and to take a hit while completing the kinds of construction jobs they'll be doing when deployed to Iraq and the Middle East at the end of the summer. While their motto is Construimus, Battuimus, or We Build, We Fight, the Seabees do much more of the former while getting ready for the latter. In the 66-year history of the Navy's construction and engineering force, there is a rich lore of heroics but a much bigger legacy for building things. The corps of so-called "sand sailors" supports ground forces from all military branches. In Iraq and Afghanistan as well as a long list of countries in Asia, Africa and Eastern Europe there are new schools, airfields, water plants, military bases and bridges constructed by Seabees. In an age of terrorism and asymmetrical warfare, the engineering and construction skills of the Naval Mobile Construction Battalions are an integral part of military strategy. Preparing for 'the worst' Dug into a slight slope near an open field, utilityman George Beal and construction apprentice Jennifer Silcox used big clumps of grass to hide a 5-foot-deep gun emplacement they've dug at the edge of a field. They've placed a wood pallet over the top, sprinkled with dirt and clumps of grass so it blends in to the surroundings. The two keep working at it throughout their six-hour shift, manning a .50-caliber machine gun mounted there. Beal has been deployed once before, to Guam. Silcox is new to the Seabees. She's confident she'll be ready when it comes time to deploy. "The people in charge of us basically know what they're doing," she said. The Seabees have been lucky, losing only one sailor in the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. Chief Petty Officer Eric Knott from Naval Mobile Construction Battalion 4 was killed at a base in Fallujah, Iraq, by random mortar fire in September 2004. When he was in Iraq, builder Jason Speck said, he was fortunate to never have to go on the attack apart from random shelling of the base. "Luckily, I never had that happen," said Speck, as he oversaw a crew of Seabees building a wood-framed Southwest Asia hut among a stand of oak trees on the base. The training for possible combat helps prepare the sailors for challenges they might face in Iraq. As a veteran of one deployment in a war zone, Speck gets peppered with questions. "They want to know what to bring, you know, like how many pairs of underwear and whether they'll be able to buy cigarettes when they get there," he said. "I tell 'em to prepare for the worst I'm bringing two cartons of cigarettes." Many new members of the battalion don't know what to expect. To do what they do, the Seabees also have to be ready to operate in harsh, hostile and dangerous places, said Lt. Cmdr. Kemit Spears, executive officer for the battalion. Spears, who only returned from Iraq a few months ago, and his battalion must react and defend against everything Hass throws at them. Getting into battle rhythm A lot of the seamen in the unit have never been deployed before, he said. Others who have gone to Guam, the Philippines or other foreign destinations have never been to a war zone, Spears said. "This is a chance to get them into their battle rhythm, test them and give them feedback," Spears said. Battle rhythm refers to a continuous work/rest schedule. While the Seabees have been spared intense combat during their deployments, Iraq is still a very dangerous place. "We have had folks who have taken fire or been on convoys that have been attacked, so we all take it pretty seriously," said Spears, as he walked through camp weighted down by about 60 pounds of battle gear, including a Kevlar vest, rucksack, camelback water container, gas mask, chemical protection gear and his weapon. "The threat is real." On a day that one of his daughters is turning 7 "I missed her last birthday because I was deployed" Spears makes sure his handgun is cleared by aiming it into a sand-filled barrel and pulling the trigger. He walks past two guards, who salute him, and into a large air-conditioned tent, the Tactical Operations Center. The TOC is the central nervous system of the battalion, with radios, computers and an array of maps. The place is crowded with three dozen men and women poring over the latest reports from the field. Lt. Denis La, an intelligence officer, goes through a list of incidents written in black wax pencil on a board. There's been probing of the lines, civilians coming to the gate to beg for food, police trying to sell information, and the kidnapping of a CNN crew. "We look for patterns, and if we see them, respond appropriately," said La, who wears thick military-issued glasses. After a rundown at the TOC, Spears heads back out, inspects the line, looks at gun emplacements and then meets with Cmdr. Dean Vanderlay, a tall, lean and upbeat battalion leader. The two walk into the mess tent. The war game, or FEX (field exercise), not only tests the sailors and their officers but also can provide immediate feedback. Hass and his team of evaluators periodically stop the exercise and run through what a squad has done right or wrong. Or they might hook up with the command staff and go through how well or poorly communications worked, Vanderlay said. "We get to see how they perform in stressed conditions, how we perform," he said. "Can we still complete the tasks we're assigned?" On the lighter side "Hoorah, cooks," Vanderlay tells a group of uniformed Seabees behind a table in the mess hall. "What are we having tonight, top sirloin?" "T-bones, skipper," one of them responds. They've been laying out A.1. Steak Sauce in preparation for the evening feast. The joke about the military's Meals Ready to Eat is that they go down OK, but it's hard to work out an exit strategy for them. Vanderlay said they aren't that bad, but after eating them over and over again it gets old. He suggests avoiding the vegetarian cheese omelets MREs. "Those are universally disliked." SHARE Rob Varela / Star staff Gene Haas leaves federal court in downtown Los Angeles on Monday after his sentencing. Oxnard businessman also paid fines By Stephanie Hoops Shoops@Venturacountystar.Com LOS ANGELES Surrounded by lawyers and his family, Gene Haas was sentenced Monday to 24 months in federal prison for conspiring to cheat the government out of millions of dollars in taxes owed by his company. The owner of Oxnard-based Haas Automation Inc. pleaded guilty in August, taking responsibility for one of 11 federal charges brought against him. Along with agreeing to a two-year prison sentence, Haas paid about $75 million in restitution and fines before arriving in court Monday, the judge noted, adding that Haas had to write one more check for $100 for a "special assessment" fee. Through his lawyers Monday, Haas, 54, of Camarillo requested treatment for alcohol dependency, and the court recommended he be considered for the Federal Bureau of Prison's 500-hour drug and alcohol program. His attorneys also requested and the judge recommended that Haas be placed at the Federal Correctional Institution in Lompoc, a low-security prison for male inmates near Vandenberg Air Force Base. Assistant U.S. Attorney Sandra R. Brown pointed out that while the judge may make recommendations pertaining to Haas' sentencing, the Bureau of Prisons will decide whether to allow Haas to undergo substance abuse treatment or be placed at the Lompoc facility. Haas left the hearing at the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles with his family and attorneys. He was ordered to return to the court and surrender himself Jan. 14. Haas remains free on $10 million bail. Known as generous philanthropist The conviction is a stunning blow for Haas, who has long been regarded as an extraordinary success. He founded and built his company into the country's largest machine tool builder. Haas Automation remains one of Ventura County's larger employers, with about 1,550 workers at a manufacturing complex at 2800 Sturgis Road. Haas also is known as one of Ventura County's most generous philanthropists. Haas' plea followed a six-year investigation that also caught four of his business associates who all have pleaded guilty in connection with the tax fraud scheme. Bob Cable, Chuck Todd, Denis A. Dupuis and Kenneth Greene are to be sentenced next year. Haas was charged in October 2005. According to his indictment, Haas enlisted the help of Dupuis, former general manager of Haas Automation, and John R. Phillips, the company's former chief financial officer, to create various tax fraud schemes to help him recoup more than $8.9 million he was ordered to pay to settle a patent infringement lawsuit filed by a rival firm. Prosecutors maintained that Haas blamed the financial loss on the federal judge who presided in the case. After leaving the company in 2001, Phillips became a whistleblower, providing inside company information to federal authorities. Investigation records show that Phillips' successor, Greene, continued the tax fraud scheme. Cable, owner of Enmark and Associates Inc. in Valencia, and Todd, owner of Supermill Inc. in Reno, Nev., used their companies to assist Haas and Dupuis by making bogus purchases of equipment. 98 percent kicked back to Haas Cable and Todd kept 2 percent of the proceeds from fake equipment purchases and kicked back 98 percent to Haas through one of several subsidiaries, according to court records. Prosecutors say the plan was to put $50 million in phony expenses on the company's books to avoid paying more than $20 million in federal income taxes payback to the government for Haas losing the patent lawsuit. According to company statements from Haas Automation, Haas has not been involved in the daily operations of the business for nearly a decade and operations have not been affected by the federal charges. Haas Automation reported that 2006 was the most productive year in its history, with more than 12,500 machines produced and more than $740 million generated, nearly 30 percent more revenue than the previous year. STAR FILE PHOTO Oxnard City Hall SHARE By Gretchen Wenner of the Ventura County Star Oxnard has won a legal victory in its case against seven high-ranking retirees who got a $300-a-month pension perk that was not approved by the City Council. Ventura County Superior Court Judge Henry Walsh ruled last month in favor of the city, which had argued it was entitled to recoup the funds $101,400 in all based on four legal theories. "There is a basis for the city to recover under each of these," Walsh wrote in the Feb. 24 ruling. While not a large sum was in play, the outcome marks a symbolic win. "This is an excellent result for the city," Stephen Fischer, Oxnard's interim city attorney, said in an email. The lawyer for the seven retirees, Brook Carroll, was said to be in mediation Monday and in court last week and could not be reached for comment. The actual amount the city recovers will likely be less than the $101,400 as some or all recipients paid income tax. Walsh ordered the parties to negotiate how much defendants will pay in damages. Councilman Bert Perello, who pushed to seek repayment of the funds, called the outcome "a win for the public." The city sued the seven retirees in March 2014 after trying unsuccessfully to have them voluntarily repay the money. The issue came to light around 2011 when city watchdogs, including Martin Jones and Phillip Molina, noticed recurring payments going to some retirees. The Star confirmed the existence of what was known as the "supplemental post-retirement benefit." The program, enacted around 2003, was documented only on a single-page document slipped into the administrative manual. City officials at the time said the plan was created by the former city manager, Ed Sotelo, who they claimed had authority to set pay and benefits for top managers. That claim was refuted by the Ventura County District Attorney Greg Totten's 2012 report on its nearly two-year investigation of the city and by an outside law firm hired by Oxnard. The council voted in May 2012 to kill the benefit. Walsh's February ruling also makes clear state law allows only the council to make final decisions on compensation. "The belief of some, as offered in their declarations, that the city manager had the authority to himself set this benefit does not trump the language of the statute," Walsh wrote. The payments went to Dale Belcher, former treasurer; Lino Corona, former human resources director; Granville Bowman, former public works director; Arthur Lopez, former police chief; Gary Gillig, the former city attorney who advised Sotelo on the legality of the perk; John Crombach, former police chief; and William "Joe" Milligan, former fire chief. Payments had also been made to the late Stan Kleinman, former finance director, but his widow was not named in the city's suit. SHARE The historic visit of a sitting U.S. president to Havana which should have come a half-century sooner will almost surely hasten the day when Cubans are free from the Castro government's suffocating repression. President Obama's whirlwind trip is the culmination of his common-sense revamping of U.S. policy toward Cuba. One outdated, counterproductive relic of the Cold War remains the economic embargo forbidding most business ties with the island nation and the Republican-controlled Congress won't even consider repealing it. But Obama, using his executive powers, has been able to re-establish full diplomatic relations, practically eliminate travel restrictions and substantially weaken the embargo's grip. All of which is long overdue. The United States first began to squeeze the Castro government, with the hope of forcing regime change, in 1960. It should be a rule of thumb that if a policy is an utter failure for more than 50 years, it's time to try something else. I say this as someone with no illusions about President Raul Castro, the spectral but still-powerful Fidel Castro or the authoritarian system they created and wish to perpetuate. Hours before Obama's arrival Sunday, police and security agents roughly arrested and hauled away members of the Ladies in White dissident group as they conducted their weekly protest march; this time, U.S. network news crews happened to be on hand to witness the ritualized crackdown. I wrote a book about Cuba, and each time I went to the island for research I gained more respect and admiration for the Cuban people and more contempt for the regime that so cynically and capriciously smothers their dreams. Those 10 trips convinced me, however, that the U.S. policy of prohibiting economic and social contact between Americans and Cubans was, to the Castro brothers, the gift that kept on giving. I saw how the "menace" of an aggressive, threatening neighbor to the north was used as a justification for repression. We'd love to have freedom of the press, freedom of association and freedom of assembly, the government would say, but how can we leave our beloved nation so open, and so vulnerable, when the greatest superpower on earth is trying to destroy our heroic revolution? Most of the Cubans I met were not fooled by such doublespeak. But they did have a nationalistic love for their country, and their nation was, indeed, under economic siege. There are those who argue that Obama could have won more concessions from the Castro regime in exchange for improved relations. But this view ignores the fact that our posture of unmitigated hostility toward Cuba did more harm to U.S. interests than good. Relaxing travel restrictions for U.S. citizens can only help flood the island with American ideas and values. Permitting such an influx could be the biggest risk the Castro brothers have taken since they led a ragtag band of guerrillas into the Sierra Maestra Mountains to make a revolution. Why would they now take this gamble? Because they have no choice. The Castro regime survived the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of huge annual subsidies from the Eastern Bloc but the Cuban economy sank into depression. Copious quantities of Venezuelan oil, provided by strongman Hugo Chavez (who was Fidel Castro's protege), provided a respite. But now Chavez is gone, Venezuela is an economic ruin and Cuba has no choice but to monetize the resource it has in greatest abundance: human capital. From the Castros' point of view, better relations with the United States must now seem unavoidable. It is possible that Raul Castro, who has promised to resign in 2018, will seek to move the country toward the Chinese model: a free-market economic system overseen by an authoritarian one-party government. Would this fully satisfy those who want to see a free Cuba? No. Would it be a tremendous improvement over the poverty and oppression Cubans suffer today? Absolutely. Fidel Castro will be 90 in August; Raul is just five years younger. At some point in the not too distant future, we will see whether Castroism can survive without a living Castro. Anyone who wants U.S. policymakers to have influence when that question arises should applaud Obama's initiatives. And speaking of applause, did you see the rapturous welcome the president and his family received in Havana? Cubans seem to have a much more clear-eyed and hopeful view than Obama's shortsighted critics. Eugene Robinson's email address is eugenerobinson@washpost.com. He writes for The Washington Post Writers Group. SHARE Waking up once again to the urgent news of yet another terrorist attack on innocents evoked the competing emotions of anger and sadness and fear. As with Paris, as with San Bernardino, we must continue to resolve to be strong in who we are, what we stand for and how we live our lives. We must also continue to strongly support the efforts to contain this madness and prevent, as best we can, the now inevitable attacks in the future. None of that will be easy as we see the images flash of the devastation from Tuesday morning at the Brussels airport and the Maelbeek subway station in the heart of that city. The initial reaction might be one of fear and one of blame. As these attacks mount, it becomes more likely that we choose not to visit a Paris or a Brussels that we worry about exposure to a terrorist attack and try to plan our lives around making ourselves as safe as possible. We must be vigilant and aware of our surroundings, but we should not allow this massacre to force us to not travel, to not explore the world and its different cultures. Regardless of the destination, we know the experience of travel and adventure whether spending a semester abroad as a college student, taking a Danube River cruise or enjoying a week in New York City enriches us and enriches those we meet. If we allow terrorists control over those aspects of our lives and culture, then we allow them to win. If you are planning a trip to Europe, we hope you will still take it. Be prepared for additional security checks, be patient with efforts to make you safe. But do not stay at home out of fear. At the same time, we should not fall into the easy blame game. This latest attack came in the middle of an extraordinary presidential campaign in this country. There has already been an effort by some candidates to politicize the attack, and to point fingers at what officials should have done to prevent this. In the short term, we need to appreciate and understand that the effort to ferret out and stop these vicious and mindless criminal terrorists has drawn the world's top law enforcement and security minds. Nation after nation has devoted resources to this effort. Clearly we must do more. Clearly we must provide additional resources financial as well as personnel to this fight. Clearly we must find ways toward better cooperation, setting aside parochial disputes in the face of this singular effort. There have been great successes, some reported and some not, in identifying and eliminating terrorist cells bent on destruction of Westerners. One raid, one capture will not end this era of terror, but it will get us closer. The broader issue, of course, is the economic and cultural chasms that have created global terrorism. For solutions to those problems, we must look to our next generation of leaders. To us, a policy of carpet bombing the enemy, for example, or banning all people of a particular faith, actually fans the flames rather than extinguishes the fire. We continue to look for ideas and leaders who are able and willing to lead a global effort away from the conflicts that have created and sustained this madness. Our job then is to support the efforts to fight today's terrorism, not allow fear to control our lives and vote for people who will lead us toward global solutions. SHARE Re: Jay Ambroses column March 19, How the left has helped Trump: Jay Ambrose argues that the left in general, and particularly President Obama, are to blame for Donald Trump's success in the GOP presidential nomination race. As a liberal and a Democrat, am I offended by Ambrose's finger-pointing? Not at all. In fact, I'm rather happy to read it. You see, as long as he and his fellow Republicans blame President Obama and "liberals" for crippling problems in their own party's makeup and outreach, those problems will remain unsolved and crippling. That's better for my candidates come election day. Rick Scott, Ventura SHARE Re: your editorial Feb. 28, Value of Girl Scouts: I like to read editorials. They usually expand my understanding on some subject I have not considered before. That wasnt the case when I read the above subject editorial. Theres ample evidence that the Catholic Archbishop of St. Louis was correct in the letter he sent to the St. Louis Archdiocese. The Girl Scout Organization does promote and contributes funds to Planned Parenthood. Really. Girl Scout USA CEO Anna Maria Chavez claims: "We do not now, nor have we ever, had a relationship with Planned Parenthood. But there is a long history of local Girl Scout councils working with Planned Parenthood. Former Girl Scout CEO Kathy Cloninger admitted on national TV that Girl Scouts USA partners with Planned Parenthood to bring sexual information to girls. I invite you to set the record straight with your readers, because you have misled them. Girl Scouts USA leaders are exposing their young charges to indoctrination via Planned Parenthood. Theres one controversial example titled Nobodys Fool: Dating, Love, Sex, and HIV? Theres another that teaches youth they can have "safer sex" using "sex toys," and that safe sex can include "cybersex" and "phone sex?" How can Girl Scouts USA justify Girl Scout councils partnering with Planned Parenthood when such partnerships can result in connecting Girl Scouts to explicit and dangerous sexual advice? Maybe not all Girl Scout councils allow their girls to be a part of such indoctrination, but how would a parent know otherwise? You told your readers it was not happening. David Tito Sanchez, Camarillo SHARE When Donald Trump began to campaign for president, he was laughed at as a ringmaster creating a circus of our countrys elections, a P.T. Barnum out to astonish the populace. Much of that comparison has proved true. A quick look at Wikipedia includes these items in Barnums biographical notes: He claimed himself a showman by profession. Bad investments led to economic setbacks that sent him out on the lecture circuit. After that, he turned to politics. Perhaps the comparison stops there, for while serving two terms in the Connecticut Legislature, Mr. Barnum spoke out against slavery, including these words, A human soul is not to be trifled with. It may tenant the body of a Chinaman, a Turk, an Arab or a Hottentot it is still a human soul. Alas, Mr. Trump and his blind-faith followers touch more closely upon the quote most often attributed to Mr. Barnum: Theres a sucker born every minute. Libby Treadwell, Ojai Ghoulish guests will enjoy spooky Halloween specials all day at Rockhouse, located at Grand Canal Shoppes at The Venetian | The Palazzo, in Las Vegas on Thursday, Oct. 31. The ultra-dive bar will partake in some hocus pocus with Pinnacle Vodka cocktails and Jack-o-lantern shots, a mix of Fireball Cinnamon Whisky and Jack Daniels Tennessee Whiskey, priced at $5 each. Partygoers who don disguises will have the chance to win up to $2,000 in cash and prizes during the Strip-side hot spots late night costume contest. Tropicana Las Vegas headliner Murray SawChuck will be filling in for Shawn Tempesta and co-hosting with Dao Vu on Monday at 9am, Dec. 23, on The Morning Blend, KTNV-13 (ABC). Murray stated, I am a night time performer so it will be fun getting up nice and early and putting on the glow, cant wait to work with Dao as shes such a pro! Turkish security forces on Tuesday arrested 10 suspected Islamic State members at the Syrian border, one of whom was wearing an explosives vest, three days after a suicide attack in Istanbul, local media reported. The suspects were arrested in southern Gaziantep province while trying to illegally cross into Turkey, Dogan agency cited the army as saying. One of the group was wearing an explosive device that was ready to be detonated, according to Dogan, which published pictures of the suspects on their knees with their hands behind their heads, along with what appeared to be an explosives belt. The arrests come as the police hunt three Turkish suspected members of an IS cell believed to be planning further attacks in public places after Saturday's attack in Istanbul, which killed four foreigners. Three Israelis and an Iranian were killed and 39 people injured when a man identified by authorities as Mehmet Ozturk from Gaziantep blew himself on Istiklal Caddesi, a famous shopping street in the heart of Turkey's biggest city. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack but Turkey's government said Ozturk had links to IS. IS has been blamed for four of six bombings that have rocked Turkey in the past eight months, including a massacre at a peace rally in the capital Ankara in October that left 103 people dead. A radical offshoot of the rebel Kurisdtan Workers Party (PKK), with which the state is at war in southeast Turkey, claimed the other two attacks. Search Keywords: Short link: Walker Furniture delivered all new furniture and accessories to Victoria Fertitta Middle School as part of its 16th annual Teacher Appreciation Day program (Pictured: Samantha Moon reads winning letter Photo credit: Walker Furniture). Each year, Walker Furniture in cooperation with the Clark County School District School-Community Partnership Program gives students in Southern Nevada an opportunity to win new furnishings for their schools teachers lounge by writing a letter describing their favorite teacher. More than 600 letters were received this year. Photo credit: Walker Furniture. This year, Victoria Fertitta Middle School was the winner, thanks to a letter written by 7th grade student, Samantha Moon, on behalf of her teacher, Dr. Audra Duvall. For her outstanding letter, Moon received $100 cash and Dr. Duvall a $150 Walker Furniture gift certificate. In her letter to Walker Furniture, Moon wrote about Dr. Duvall being a great example of what a teacher should be. While she challenges students, she also makes learning fun. Especially meaningful for Moon was that her teacher is one she can trust. Photo credit: Walker Furniture. The brand new furnishings included a sofa, loveseat, end tables, lamp, coffee table, bookcase, plants and picture. Moons class was also given a pizza party while Dr. Duvall and Moon were presented with certificates for their achievements. Walker Furniture will make be making a plaque with commemorative photos of the event for the school. This annual competition is rewarding and gratifying for everyone involved, said Linda Alterwitz, director of community projects for Walker Furniture and organizer of the Teacher Appreciation Day program. It provides students an opportunity to honor their teachers. We are reminded by their touching letters of the contributions and the sacrifices our teachers make and the impact their dedication has on the children in our community. When you think about gambling, where is the first place that comes to your mind? The first answer on many lips, as is expected, is Las Vegas the gambling Mecca located in the Nevada desert. It is home to a number of the worlds largest casinos and it is where gambling fans go to bet on virtually anything that their heart desires. In fact, people love Vegas so much that it has been used as the template for many of the most popular online gaming sites. When you step through their virtual game indoors, youll find that many of the sites have recreated an experience that brings an authentic-feeling Vegas casinos experience to your home. Online casinos have taken the best parts of Sin City and transferred them to a virtual setting that you can access no matter where you are and at any time you are available if you have an internet connection that is. Plus, because you are now privy to an online betting experience that is similar to the one found at places like Vegas, you will save not only your time but your money as well. But thats not all, online gaming sites provide plays with a little something extra that they would be hard pressed to find anywhere else, not even in Las Vegas. What is this a great innovation? Many online sites let players get their game on with Bitcoin. Bitcoin is a neat cyber currency that allows players to pay for goods and services in a more secure and affordable way. Benefits of Online Casinos One of the biggest benefits about betting on the Internet is that you can do it from anywhere that you have an internet connection. Having the ability to bet at your own pace and from the comfort of your own home means that you are less distracted. This distraction-free environment will help increase your concentration, which may help you win more money. Furthermore? Since you wont have to spend money on traveling to a bookmaker or casino, you will have more time to find the sites with the best bonuses so you can get more bang for your buck. Other benefits of online casinos include You can bet on whatever you want, 24 hours a day 7 days a week. This means that you have a better chance of finding the best sources to increase your chances of placing a winning bet, versus your friend who uses a bookie or a bar to place the last minutes bets. You can bet on anything that you want. The online betting world has a virtually unlimited number of stakes and opportunities for you to give a go. No matter if you like sports betting, poker, or casinos the best platforms and games, like the online slots available at Insta Casino , have a variety of options and a wide range of stakes. From high-roller rooms to intimate little lounges, online gamers can wager their money on anything from basketball and football to roulette, blackjack, and Texas Holdem. , have a variety of options and a wide range of stakes. From high-roller rooms to intimate little lounges, online gamers can wager their money on anything from basketball and football to roulette, blackjack, and Texas Holdem. You get more bang for your buck. Online casinos give you the chance to you can win very lucrative prizes. In fact, there are players who have become millionaires playing on these sites. Also, many offer great welcome bonuses for beginners as well as other promotions for their existing patrons. When you gain some insight into the Vegas online betting experience, its easy to see why so many gamers love this option. Whether its the latest sporting event or poker and casino games, the wealth of Vegas online betting options and lucrative prizes is almost unparalleled in the live casino industry. True Bud Halloween weekend is back and thirsty for more. This Halloween, Rockhouse Bar & Nightclub will celebrate with four nights of costume contests and satisfying drink specials for partygoers to sink their teeth in to. Beginning Thursday, October 28, through Sunday, October 31, patrons will be thirsting to suck your Bud with two-for-one Budweiser bottled beers all weekend long. To put partygoers in the spooky spirit, DJ Joey Da Juice will spin party-inducing mash-ups on the ones and twos while Rockhouse gears up for a weekend full of costume contests and Halloween havoc. Because no Halloween is ever complete without the sexy French maids and the racy pirates, Rockhouse will host its sexy costume contest, awarding a $500 cash prize to the sexiest Halloween costume, Thursday, October 28. And because all ladies in costume deserve a special Halloween treat, Rockhouse will serve complimentary cocktails for ladies from 10:30 p.m. to midnight. The costume revelry continues Friday, October 29 with another $500 cash awarded for the most creative getup and Saturday, October 30, with $1,000 cash awarded to the best costume of the night. True Bud will wrap-up on Halloween night, Sunday, October 31 with a final costume showdown awarding the best dressed costume $500 cash. Rockhouse is located on Las Vegas Blvd. in front of Imperial Palace, directly across from Caesars Palace in the middle of the Las Vegas Strip. The daiquiri and main bar open daily at 10 a.m. and the adjacent nightclub is open from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. nightly. For more information visit www.therockhousebar.com, and for bottle and table reservations call 702.731.9683 or email info@therockhousebar.com. Funny man Brad Garrett, of Everyone Loves Raymond, visited Sugar Factorys brand new store at MGM Grand Hotel & Casino yesterday, to cure his sweet tooth (Photo credit: Sugar Factory). The actor and comedian, who will soon be headlining at MGM Grand with his own live show, Brad Garretts Comedy Club, was incredibly friendly with the staff and customers as he joked around with everyone while picking up a black Sugar Factory cap, lollipop-printed pajama pants and nostalgic Zotz hard candies. Garrett also couldnt help but pose for a few pictures with Sugar Factorys famous Couture Pop before he headed out. Sugar Factory at MGM Grand will celebrate its official grand opening on Friday, March 2, at 2 p.m. with television siren and model, Audrina Patridge. The new store will offer every kind of delightful, whimsical and colorful confection, perfect for sweethearts of every age. From classic childhood novelties to Sugar Factorys signature celebrity Couture Pops, the 2,700-square-foot shop will carry it all. For candy lovers who need their fix quickly, the sweet shop will exclusively offer grab-and-go bags Sugar Factory signature goodie bags filled with assorted candy favorites for a quick shopping all in one stop. The Las Vegas Chapter of Speedway Childrens Charities will present the third annual Laps for Charity event at Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Sunday, Jan. 27 from 9 a.m. 4 p.m. NASCAR fans and auto enthusiasts will have the unique opportunity to drive their personal vehicle around the 1.5-mile superspeedway at speeds up to 75 miles per hour (behind a pace car), all in the name of charity. Think of it: On an off day, you simply cant show up and play softball at Yankee Stadium or shoot hoops in the new Barclays Center, but you can drive your personal car on the same track that Jimmie Johnson and Brad Keselowski will race on in the Kobalt Tools 400. Laps for Charity is open to all licensed drivers 18 years of age and older and the entry fee is $30 per vehicle for three laps (and you can buy three more laps for just $20). All occupants of the car must be at least 6 years of age or older. The vehicle must be street legal. Drivers must have valid license and proof of insurance. Car clubs and company fleets are welcome to participate. Drivers may have their picture taken in LVMSs victory lane for an additional donation of only $10. Food and beverages will be available for sale. The event is sponsored by Las Vegas Motor Speedway, The CW/MY LVTV, Lotus Broadcasting and the Las Vegas Review-Journal. All proceeds from Laps for Charity will benefit the Las Vegas Chapter of Speedway Childrens Charities. More than 800 cars were entered in last years event and $32,000 was raised for local childrens causes. Participants may register online at www.scclasvegas.org. For more information, please call Paulette Anderson at (702) 632-8242 or e-mail SCC LV at panderson@lvms.com. Syria's peace talks remained at an impasse Tuesday, even as deadly attacks in Brussels highlighted the urgency of ending the brutal conflict, seen as a trigger for extremist attacks around the world. UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura voiced "horror and outrage" at the attacks claimed by the Islamic State group that killed around 35 people in the Belgian capital Tuesday. "The tragedy in Brussels ... reminds us that ... we have no time to lose," UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura told reporters in Geneva. "We need to extinguish the fire of war in Syria," he said, insisting that "to fight terrorism, the best formula is to find a solution for political transition in Syria." The main opposition umbrella group, the High Negotiations Committee (HNC) also stressed the need to rapidly end the five-year conflict, which has killed more than 270,000 people and displaced millions. HNC spokeswoman Bassma Kodmani said the UN-brokered Syrian peace talks were "more vital than ever". "The Geneva process is today fundamental to reestablishing the global political order and avoiding the chaos that fanatics are threatening us with here in Europe and there in the Middle East," she said in a statement. But despite the calls to speed up the process, the Geneva talks, which are in their second week, remain indirect and continue to move at a snail's pace. Conceding that progress remains slow, de Mistura has stressed the importance of getting the opposing sides to reach a basic understanding on how to advance to a second round of talks, tentatively scheduled for next month. The envoy, who has been shuttling between the two sides, said Tuesday he is eager to make progress before the negotiations pause on Thursday, telling reporters: "We are all working hard on getting a common understanding." But the talks continue to stumble on the fate of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, with the regime's lead negotiator in Geneva, Bashar al-Jaafari on Monday reiterating that discussing the issue was "excluded." Hisham Marwa, who serves as a consultant in the HNC delegation, meanwhile told AFP Tuesday that any talk of leaving Assad in power is "absolutely unacceptable". Assad's fate has been a key obstacle in the latest talks aimed at ending Syria's devastating five-year war, which has killed more than 270,000 people and displaced millions. France-based Middle-East expert Agnes Levallois told AFP the regime was dragging its feet in the talks, "because when real negotiations begin, it will be the beginning of the end." She said its only hope was to stall until "de Mistura throws in the towel just like his predecessors," Kofi Annan in 2012 and Lakhdar Brahimi in 2014. But de Mistura appeared far from defeated, hailing a more positive atmosphere than during a previous aborted round, largely helped by a fragile ceasefire declared on February 27. On Tuesday, he said there was "some level of mutual respect", and stressed "we have not had walk-outs or slamming of doors." The partial ceasefire has raised hopes for an end to the violence, which were further fuelled when Russia -- a key backer of Assad -- announced last week it would withdraw most of its troops from Syria. De Mistura also voiced hope that a meeting between US Secretary of State John Kerry with his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov in Moscow on Wednesday could provide momentum to the peace drive. "They have been proving in the past, and I hope they will prove it in the future, that when they do have a common understanding it helps enormously the process," he said. The envoy said he had "a strong expectation that the talks in Moscow will be productive." Search Keywords: Short link: Vice Chairman of the provincial Peoples Committee Nguyen Tien Nhuong described the locality as one of the most dynamic economies in the country, with unique culture and traditional craft villages. The province attracted more than 800 foreign direct investment (FDI) projects worth US$11.8 billion, he said, adding that Japan ranks second among countries and territories with total investment of US$1.4 billion. He noted that Bac Ninh boasts rich tourism resources such as Quan ho (love duet singing), an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity; an age-old culture with numerous festivals; craft villages; and architecture. With the aim of building the provincial capital of Bac Ninh into a centrally run city in the 21 st century, Nhuong said local authorities hope economic, trade and investment ties with Japan will increase, especially in tourism infrastructure. The province welcomes Japanese investors and tourists, and will create the best conditions possible for the two sides business communities to forge connectivity, he added. Representatives from the provincial Department of Planning and Investment spoke to Japanese firms about local natural resources, the investment climate and preferential policies to develop tourism. They also highlighted some notable projects from Japan and investment orientations in the field. Chairman of Japan City Hotel Association Kimitaka Fujino mentioned the tourism development between Vietnam and Japan in recent years, as well as proposals from Japanese investors in the field. He also discussed measures to promote short- and long-term bilateral cooperation. During the workshop, participants also spoke about the Vietnamese Governments goals to develop trade, investment and tourism cooperation with Japan. Passengers are evacuated from Brussels airport in Zaventem after twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport. (Photo: AFP/John Thys) PARIS: Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said on Tuesday (Mar 22) that the "blind, violent and cowardly" attacks on Brussels airport and the metro system were a "black day" for the country and had left many dead. "This is a day of tragedy, a black day," Michel said on national television, with the death toll put at 21 so far and expected to rise further. "Two attacks took place this morning in Zaventam airport and Maalbeek metro station, blind, violent, cowardly attacks," Michel said. "There are many dead and many wounded, some of them seriously," he said. We feared a terror attack and it happened." 'VERY SAD DAY' EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said Tuesday's blasts marked a "very sad day" for Europe, saying on a visit to Jordan it was now suffering like the Middle East. "It is ... a very sad day for Europe as Europe and its capital is suffering the same pain that this region has known and knows every single day," she said tearfully at a joint press conference with Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh. She said it was already clear that the blasts at Brussels airport and a metro station near the EU headquarters were attacks that resulted from radicalisation, and called for European and Middle Eastern leaders to work together to tackle the scourge. "We are still waiting for more precise news on the dynamics of the attacks in Brussels but it is quite clear the roots of the pain we are suffering around our region are very much the same," she said. "We are united in not only suffering ... but also reacting to these acts and preventing radicalisation and violence together. Being here together is the most powerful message of strength and friendship among our people that we can pass to those who would like to divide us." At least 21 people were killed in the triple blasts in the Belgian capital, which came days after the dramatic arrest by Brussels police of Salah Abdeslam - the prime suspect in Paris attacks claimed by the Islamic State group which killed 130 people in November. Belgian police drive past passengers who are being evacuated from Zaventem Airport in Brussels, on Mar 22, 2016. (Photo: AFP/Jonas Roosens) 'WHOLE OF EUROPE HIT' "Through the attacks in Brussels, the whole of Europe has been hit," French President Francois Hollande said in a statement, urging the continent to take "vital steps in the face of the seriousness of the threat. "France which was itself attacked in January and November last year is fully engaged in that. France will implacably continue the fight against terrorism both on the international level and at home." Russia and Turkey - themselves targets of attacks in recent months - condemned the blasts, saying they bore out the need to fight terrorism. "Today is a black day for #Europe. The horrible events in #Brussels affect us all. We are steadfastly at the Belgians' side," German Justice Minister Heiko Maas said on Twitter. "Our Union's capital is under attack. We mourn the dead & pledge to conquer terror through democracy," the Greek foreign ministry said in a tweet. It added in French,"Nous sommes tous Bruxellois," - "We are all citizens of Brussels." Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven described the blasts as "an attack against democratic Europe. We will never accept that terrorists attack our open societies." Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said: "My heart and spirit in Brussels, Europe," while Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said "the Brussels attacks strike the heart of our Europe." Danish counterpart Lars Lokke Rasmussen denounced the blasts as a "despicable attack." In other reactions: - Russian President Vladimir Putin: The "barbarous crimes ... demonstrate once again that terrorism has no borders and threatens people around the world. Fighting this evil calls for the most active international cooperation." - Turkish Foreign Minister Volkan Bozkir: "Every effort must continue to fight terrorism without distinction and those who support terrorism." - Polish President Andrzej Duda: "The fight against terrorism is the duty of every one of us." - Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic: "The world is shocked by these terrorist attacks, which jeopardise all the values of civilisation that we strongly support." - The Syrian opposition, the High Negotiations Committee (HNC), said: "The people of Syria stand with the people of Belgium in solidarity ... The world must stand united to defeat terrorism." In Ho Chi Minh City, international brands are heating up the retail property sector Photo: Le Toan Neil MacGregor, managing director of Savills Vietnam said that the retail market in Ho Chi Minh City would reach a key turning point in 2016. Consumer spending is increasing at a rapid rate in comparison with other regional markets, resulting in a more sustainable model going forward, he said, adding that international retailers were excited to enter the local market following the announcement of the various free trade agreements, offering the prospect of reduced tariffs and simplified procedures. The young population and rapidly-growing middle class are the two major factors that are driving retail market growth. These customers are more aware of their spending power, and seeking modern and convenient retail environments. We are seeing a growing number of such shopping centres, particularly in new residential areas such as districts 2 and 7, and Go Vap district, to meet this blooming demand, MacGregor said. Both local and international retailers are seeking better quality shopping centres in prime locations, but the number of options remains limited. Joanne Gasgonia, general manager of Crescent Mall in Phu My Hung New Residential Area, said that the retail market in Vietnam was still at a very early stage of development, but efforts were being made to address the demand for high-quality options. As such, the Phu My Hung Development Corporation has provided pre-opening services including the design, tenancy mix, and marketing methods to attract customers. Meanwhile, according to a report made recently by Cushman & Wakefield Vietnam, high profile venues in Ho Chi Minh City around the Citys Post Office and Church are in high demand. This area has reported the highest rental fee of $150 per square metre, per month. At the end of January this year, McDonalds opened a new restaurant on Nguyen Van Binh street, several metres from the Post Office and looking on to the Church. Even though the retail fee is very high, the central areas of Ho Chi Minh City are being sought by many famous brand names. Retail properties with more than 200sq.m in these areas are charging from $6,000 to $10,000 per month. Private shops for rent in Nguyen Du and Dong Khoi streets are fetching rental fees of between $30 to $50 per sq.m, per month. Meanwhile the first floor of high-rise buildings are offering rates from $130 to $150 per sq.m, per month. Some of the outstanding brands which have a presence in the city are Dunkin Donuts, Cafe De La Poste, The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, NYDC, Highland Coffee, Windows Parkview 4 Cafe, Propaganda Saigon - Di Hai - Mon Viet, Creperie & Cafe, and Kem Haagen Dazs. Retail development has been feverish as foreign and local developers compete in this rapidly changing environment. In 2015, the year-on-year growth in retail sales stood at 9.5 per cent, which was one of the highest rates globally. There has been significant retail related mergers and acquisitions activity throughout 2015. In 2016, there will be more space added, with new retail formats to be tested such as the Takashimaya Department Store within the Saigon Centre in Ho Chi Minh City. An explosion went off in Van Phu Victoria Urban Area in Ha Dong District at around 3:00 pm, killing four and causing 11 others to be hospitalized. According to the latest data provided by Hanoi authorities, 36 nearby apartments were severely damaged, while 95 others located behind the explosion had their glasses shattered, walls cracked, and doors blasted open. The heart of the explosion was reportedly in front of a scrap procurement shop owned by 41-year-old Pham Van Cuong, who has rented the apartment since 2013 to trade scrap. Residents living nearby said it was Cuongs daily routine to bring scrap materials out on the sidewalk to classify and dismantle using a blowtorch to resell them for profit. Witnesses reported seeing Cuong asking a young neighbor to help move a cylinder-shaped rusted metal object out onto the sidewalk at around 8:30 am the same morning. The object was reportedly 50cm in diameter, 80cm in length, and weighed over 100kg. While Cuong was using a blowtorch to cut into the object at around 3:00 pm on the afternoon of March 19, the object went off, immediately killing Cuong and three other passers-by. Initial inspections of the scene carried out by Hanoi police and the Capital Military Command found metal fragments made of cast iron and steel, which were identified to be materials used in bomb crafting. According to preliminary assessments by the Department of Forensic Science under the Ministry of Public Security, the explosives that caused the blast were also the kind normally used in bombs. Investigations to determine the exact nature of the detonated object are still under way. The site of the explosion in Ha Dong District, Hanoi, March 19, 2016. Photo: Tuoi Tre Meanwhile, the fatal explosion has raised public concern over the danger of having household businesses that contain explosives within residential areas. There must be specific regulations on this issue, Hien, a 58-year-old neighbor whose house suffered VND100m (US$4,500) worth of damage from the blast, said. "We cannot continue mixing regular households with ones that do business with such explosive and inflammable materials. Relevant authorities must look closely into these businesses to prevent similar unfortunate incidents from happening in the future, Hien stressed. Answering Tuoi Tre (Youth) newspaper questions about the accountability of the management board of Van Phu Victoria Urban Area in allowing household businesses to carry out scrap trading within the residential zone, Nguyen Minh Tuan, director at Van Phu Invest, said the liability rests on household owners that conducted the business themselves, and that the board is only responsible for the environment and the upkeep of electricity and water systems. We have concluded the handling of the condominium since 2009, and most owners have attained their certificate of land use rights. Scrap trading is a conditional business, and household owners are answerable to and under the management of relevant bodies, so the investor of the urban area does not hold joint responsibility in these matters, Tuan said. The foreign participants will be from Japan, Thailand, Hong Kong and mainland China, as well as Ukraine, Malaysia and Russia. The competition was launched by Do Hong Hanh in 2012. Hanh won the first prize at the world competition entitled Belly Dancer of the Worlds Tribal Style, which was held in Duisburg, Germany, last year. A Vietnamese troupe led by Hanh also won the first, second and third prizes at the Malaysia World Oriental Dance Arts Competition 2015. This year, Hanh was invited to be a jury member at competitions held in Asia and Europe. The competition this year will focus on two main categories of oriental and tribal dances, Hanh said, adding that the contestants will be allowed to compete in different styles in the contest. The four-member jury comprises belly dancers Hanh, Nadia Nikishenko and Hilton Lijun, besides Vietnamese percussionist Tran Xuan Hoa. Nikishenko is a huge star in Russia. She won many prizes at Belly Dancer of the World 2010 contest in Germany; the Oasis Festival in St Petersburg in 2010 and several top prizes at festivals in her country. Malaysias Lijun was a fantastic tribal dancer with strong technique, difficult detail and amazing feeling in movements, Hanh said. She met the two belly dancers at international belly dance festivals in Germany and Taiwan. Both foreign judges will hold workshops on July 23. The Vietnam Unlimited Belly Dance Competition encourages belly dancers - both amateurs and professionals - of different ages to participate in group and solo competitions. The youngest contestant is four years old and the oldest is 65 years old. The competition will take place at Hanoi Cultural Palace on July 24. The award ceremony will showcase performances by judges and guest dancers. Troubled port operators CMIT and SP-PSA are seeking a new government lifeline amid huge losses Photo: Le Toan Robert Hambleton, general director of Cai Mep International Terminal (CMIT), said at last weeks meeting with Deputy Minister of Transport Nguyen Van Cong that We proposed that the Ministry of Transport (MoT) increase the channel depth to 15.5 metres, and license 18,000-TEU [20-foot equivalent units of container capacity] vessels to dock at the port to enable it to exploit its full capacity. We have served a volume of goods lower than the ports designed capacity due to the 14m channel depth and permission for just 14,000-TEU vessels to moor, he added. Hambleton also suggested some adjustments to customs policies to facilitate the operations of CMIT, a joint venture between Saigon Port, a subsidiary of Vietnam National Shipping Lines (Vinalines), and Danish company APMT. In relation to a similar situation, earlier this month the operator of SP-PSA International Port (a joint venture between Saigon Port and Singaporean PSA) and Singaporean Ambassador to Vietnam Ng Tech Hean, met with Deputy Minister of Transport Nguyen Hong Truong to express their concern over competition with Saigon Premier Container Terminal (SPCT) and Saigon New Port in attracting intra-Asia ships following the dredging of the Soai Rap passage. Previously, the service price at these ports was calculated at $57 per 20-foot container and $85 per 40-foot container. However, the market prices are now $32 and $50, respectively, which are lower than the Vinalines companies breakeven price, forcing the ports to incur losses and operate under their designed capacities. According to a 2014 financial report, Vinalines has accumulated an overall debt of VND20.847 trillion ($980 million), of which CMIT contributed VND2.112 trillion ($99 million) and SP-PSA VND1.691 trillion ($80 million). The situation did not improve in 2015, when the operators of the ports in the Cai Mep-Thi Vai port complex, including SP-PSA and CMIT continued to have trouble attracting cargo. During the year, the number of ships entering the area decreased from 16 to just seven a week. Meanwhile, those in the north from Quang Ninh to Ninh Binh provinces, in the southeastern region, and in Cat Lai of Ho Chi Minh City were overloaded. Vinalines forecast that port operations would be able to see bright prospects this year on the back of economic recovery and significant impacts of various free trade agreements which would stir up import-export growth. The total volume of goods via ports is expected to hit 470 million tonnes in 2016, up 10 per cent from 2015, with goods going through ports in the northern and southern regions to continue increasing significantly. Notably, Lotteria Vietnam at the seventh floor of Paragon Building in District 7 and three of its restaurant units at Thu Duc district and District 9 violated food safety regulations leading to poisoning, maintaining an unhygienic food processing section, as well as operating without a certification of safe food, and proper equipment for food preservation. On March 12, 60 workers of Sonion Vietnam Co., Ltd., a Danish company operating at the Saigon High-Tech Park, showed signs of food poisoning, such as nausea and vomiting and diarrhea after having a lunch consisting of beef, omelette, and vegetable soup, provided by Lotteria. A total of 60 workers had to be rushed to hospitals in District 9 and the neighbouring Thu Duc district. On December 23, 2014, the Hanoi unit of the Vietnam Food Administration (VFA) collected four samples of food and beverage at the Lotteria store in Nui Truc street in Ba Dinh district, following complaints from local customers that the place serves unhygienic food. Test results found that the lemon tea sample was tainted with coliform and the cacao milk had an excessive amount of enterobacteriaceae, causing diarrhoea. Thus, a fine of VND4 million ($179) was imposed on the store for selling substandard food. Lotteria, a subsidiary of multinational food and shopping corporation Lotte Co., Ltd., was founded in February 1972 by Korean entrepreneur Shin Jun Ho. The franchise is currently present in China, Myanmar, Taiwan, and Vietnam. Its menu includes typical fast-food items, such as burgers, fried chicken, chicken wings, and chicken fingers. Hamas staged major military exercises Tuesday to test its readiness in the event of another Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip, which has been ravaged by three assaults since 2008. The exercises involving 1,000 police and emergency services personnel were not meant to be seen as an "announcement of war", said a spokesman for the Islamist movement's interior ministry. For the duration of the exercises, however, a state of emergency was observed in Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya, bordering Israel in the north, and Jabalia farther to the south. The media was barred from approaching the area, but loud explosions could be heard from a distance, with hospitals and schools placed on alert. Israel launched three wars on the Gaza Strip since 2008, including a devastating 50-day offensive in 2014. The Palestinian enclave remains under an Israeli occupation blockade. The story was edited by Ahram Online. Search Keywords: Short link: A worker loads imported steel in Hai Phong Port. A new public notice requires that imported steel be inspected for quality, in order to be eligible for customs clearance. - VNA/VNS Photo Hoang Hung The circular, issued by the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MoIT) and the Ministry of Science and Technology (MoST), which officially took effect yesterday, was to tighten controls over steel imports and prevent low-quality products from entering Viet Nam. Specifically, before being imported into Viet Nam, steel would be subject to inspection of metal components and mechanical and physical quality. Inspection results would serve as a basis for customs clearance. Based on the applied standards, the authorities will assess whether the consignments are eligible for import to Viet Nam or not. Products with conformity announcements or certificates would be exempted from inspection. Steel under the HS code of 7224.10.00 and 7224.90.00 is required to have a declaration paper on imported steel certified by the MoIT. Meanwhile, domestic producers would be required to apply quality management systems to assure product quality. In addition to regular inspections, quality inspection would be carried out when there is a claim or information in the press about poor-quality products. For special kinds of steel, export-import companies must show a product list issued by the Department of Heavy Industry under the MoIT and a copy of an import certificate issued by the ministry. The Customs Department and the departments of Industry and Trade and the departments of Science and Technology in major cities and provinces are responsible for handling imported steel products which failed to meet the nation's quality standards. The departments must also keep an eye on imported steel and provide the number of products imported into the country. Meanwhile, steel importers will be held accountable for the quality which must meet the country's standards. The finance ministry has sent a document to the HCM City's Party Committee Secretary Dinh La Thang answering some issues relating to the one-shop customs mechanism and special check-ups on imported steel. The ministry said there was a tariff difference in imported steel. Instances of trade fraud have been noticed in imports as businesses importing rolled steel, containing 0.0008 per cent boron (Bo) element, were labelled as metal to enjoy a tax preferential of zero per cent. Upon the proposal from Viet Nam Steel Association in October, exporters took advantage of the tariff levels to avail tax arrears. Around 1 million tonnes of steel billets was imported as metal into Viet Nam. The association asked for stricter check-ups and control on the steel billets imported from China. The ministry affirmed that the tightening on imported steel has been a non-tariff solution to limit import of cheaper products. The MoIT has issued a temporary decision against imported steel billets and coated steel to protect domestic companies after domestic manufacturers sent their appeal to the ministry, demanding the implementation of measures to prevent imported coated steel sheets from being sold at cheap prices in Viet Nam, causing huge losses to local steel producers. Steel billets and coated steel will be imposed a tariff of 23.3 per cent and 14.2 per cent, respectively, within 200 days. Swine breeders generate large sums of money from the sale of pork, and a fine of VND15 million (US$670) seems modest to violators, who remain undeterred from feeding them the banned chemicals. Dong Nai, whose capital Bien Hoa is some 40km northeast of Ho Chi Minh City, is home to 20,000 small pig farms and more than 1,500 major breeding centers. A farm with fewer than 100 swine in its herd is considered small-scale. The province is regarded as the largest supplier of pork to Ho Chi Minh City and nearby locales in southern Vietnam. Last year authorities collected 386 samples of the animal feed and urine for a check, with 12.17 percent of them, or 47 samples, eventually testing positive for salbutamol, a lean-meat agent that helps pigs or shrimp gain weight in a short time but is detrimental to human health. Twenty-five major breeding centers were therefore subject to a VND15 million fine each, whereas a smaller center was fined VND7.5 million ($335) for the violations. However these fines clearly did not set an example to other swine breeders in Dong Nai. The latest inspection by local authorities on 40 pig farms in mid-March found four farms that were feeding the animals banned substances. Each of the violators was fined VND15 million. An animal health official takes urine samples from pigs at a farm in Dong Nai. Photo: Tuoi Tre Tran Van Quang, head of the Dong Nai animal health agency, admitted that using banned substances in pig breeding is a common practice in his province. The official said his agency would find at least 10 percent of samples positive for banned substances in any inspection on the bigger farms, whose herds are larger than 100. Quang added there was not enough personnel to inspect smaller farms. According to current regulations, a farm in breach of the regulations is subject to supervision by local authorities, and is only allowed to sell its pigs again if the animals test negative for the chemicals. But breeding centers can secretly sell their swine, and buy a new herd to replace them when officers come back to perform the tests, the provinces animal health agency admitted. The Dong Nai Husbandry Association has repeatedly encouraged its members not to use banned chemicals, but the efforts have so far been to no avail. Perhaps stricter punishments may help to stop the violations, the association's chairman Nguyen Tri Cong said. 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. Indonesia on Monday protested the Chinese coast guard's rescue of a ship it says was fishing illegally in Indonesian waters, and now top officials are threatening to file a suit in international court. An Indonesian fisheries ministry patrol ship intercepted the Chinese vessel Saturday within Indonesia's exclusive economic zone, which overlaps with the southernmost reaches of the South China Sea, according to Indonesia. Eight crewmen were detained. The fishing vessel Kway Fey was being towed when a Chinese coast guard vessel collided with it, allowing its escape. Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi told reporters after meeting with a senior Chinese diplomat that the government wants Beijing to explain its actions. Marsudi said China's coast guard "violated our sovereignty" and he called on China to respect international law. Hua Chunying, a spokesperson for China's Foreign Ministry, rejected Indonesia's territorial claims, saying the Chinese fishing vessel hadn't entered Indonesian waters. "The incident happened at the traditional Chinese fishing ground," said China's deputy ambassador to Indonesia, who told VOA he has called on Indonesia's Maritime and Fisheries Minister Susi Pudjiastuti to release all eight of the detained fishermen. Enforcement efforts intervened "Traditional fishing ground is not recognized by any international treaty, so there is no international treaty that recognizes or acknowledges the claim by the government of China as traditional fishing ground," Pudjiastuti told VOA. "The ministry and our task force [think] our efforts to enforce the law are being intervened," she said, adding that the detained fishermen will undergo due processing in accordance with Indonesian law. "The Chinese government should have the wisdom not to interfere with law enforcement in Indonesia." If the Chinese insist on their claims of maritime territoriality, she warned, Indonesia will take the issue to international court. China's expansive claims to most of the South China Sea have raised tensions with several Southeast Asian countries, especially as China reclaims land on reefs and builds infrastructure in disputed areas. While Indonesia has not been involved in many of the territorial disputes, officials are concerned an increasingly assertive China might enlarge its claims to include Indonesia's Natuna Islands, where Indonesia's military chief says he is strengthening forces. Local media reported a similar incident in 2013 when a Chinese patrol vessel snatched back a detained Chinese ship from Indonesian control. Drought in Southeast Asia is raising concerns in the Cambodian and Vietnamese countryside where salinity levels are rising in the Mekong River and people are skeptical about fresh promises from Laos that it will respect the rights of downstream countries in dam construction. The reassurances from Vientiane were delivered by Bounhang Vorachith, who was recently named secretary-general of the Laos Communist Party, sparking hopes he might show a more conciliatory approach to negotiations with countries who share use of the Mekong River. Laos will make an effort to ensure that there will be no impact, Bounhang recently told the Cambodia government in regards to Vientaines plans to build 11 dams along the Mekong River and their impact on neighboring countries. He also reminded Prime Minister Hun Sen that Laos had studied the potential impact of the dams and promised to limit the impact of the controversial Don Sahong hydropower dam, The Phnom Penh Post reported, to be built just north of the Cambodian border. But his promises rang hollow among those who depend most on the Mekong River where low water levels caused by a severe drought have been blamed on climate change, clearing of rain forests for industrial use and upstream dams, mainly in China. Up to 70 million people live a hand-to-mouth existence along the banks of the Mekong River, including indigenous tribes such as the Jarai, Kraol, Phnong, Ro Oung, Stieng, Su, Oey, Kreung and Tampuan. Samin Ngach, a spokesman for the Cambodia Indigenous Youth Association, said food and fresh water supplies were in tight demand following weak rice harvests caused by a lack of rain during the last wet season. The indigenous community, they could not plant rice. Finally they have no food to eat, Ngach said. The forest also needs water and also the animals as well they also need the water. It's difficult for people. He said the ability of regional authorities to cope with the drought is also a concern. This was highlighted by a decision in Thailand last month to divert the Mekong River into drought-stricken areas, causing concern in Vietnam and Cambodia. Hanoi pressed Bangkok to use the Mekong River Commission (MRC) for resolving such issues before they escalate in the future. The MRC, however, has suffered large funding cuts from international donors who are upset with the commission and allegations of mismanagement and corruption. That's the main source of fresh water fish for Cambodians, that's certainly significant. I think climate change could be felt now, said Ou Virak, head of the local think tank Future Forum. The heat comes very very early, there's hardly any real winter anymore there's no real cool season anymore. Climate change, he said, was also leaving its mark on regional diplomacy, with China commanding control of the water flowing into the Mekong River through an extensive dam network constructed over the last 20 years. It's a huge advantage at the negotiating table with the Mekong River countries: Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. But also you look at the dams upstream in China. I think that will definitely have an impact not just on fisheries but also on the water supply, Ou Virak added. Downstream countries, including Vietnam, Cambodia, will have to find ways to negotiate with China. Vietnamese farmers are facing major crop losses due to severe drought and salt water contamination of agricultural land in the Mekong Delta and its 12 Vietnamese provinces. Some reports say salt water contamination has reached the Cambodian border. Vietnam's Minister of Agriculture and Rural Development, Cao Duc Phat, is quoted in a state-run media outlet as saying 139,000 hectares of land within that country's borders have been contaminated by salt so far, and this will continue to rise at least until the start of the next rainy season, which is usually in June. He said 575,000 Vietnamese were suffering from fresh water shortages alongside business like hospitals, schools, hotels and industry. Tek Vannara, Executive Director of The NGO Forum, said a further 200,000 hectares of rice fields have been destroyed by the drought in Cambodia, and this was having a very bad impact on the lives of farmers, blaming most of the losses on increased salinity. The rice field, it is destroyed from the droughts, he said. The salt, it comes from the deforestation in the whole of the Mekong region, he said, adding the wholesale conversion of land that once sustained forests to agricultural and industrial use and made the problem much worse. In Cambodia, in Laos, in Vietnam or in Thailand, they already convert - to be agricultural development to be industrial. So this is another root cause, he said. Iraq's Shi'ite-dominated government and officials in the Shi'ite holy city of Karbala are building a wall to defend their city from nearby Sunni-dominated Anbar province. In recent months, Iraq's Sunni leaders have decried a similar government project to build a wall around the capital, Baghdad. Earthmovers dig trenches and pile rock onto makeshift barriers around the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, in a project Sunni political leaders describe as a wall to surround the city. Arab media report that a similar project has started around the Shi'ite shrine town of Karbala from Sunni-inhabited regions of Anbar province. The deputy governor of Karbala province, Jassem Fetlawi, told Saudi-owned al-Hayat newspaper that local authorities have begun digging a 40 kilometer trench along administrative boundaries with (nearby) Anbar province to prevent terrorists from entering (Karbala). Islamic State militants, which control Anbar province's second-largest city of Fallujah, were pushed back from the periphery of Karbala, late last year. Shi'ite volunteer militia fighters successfully defended Karbala, which is the site of a historic battle between rival Sunni and Shi'ite armies in 680 AD. Prominent Sunni leader Salah al-Mutlaq, who represents Anbar province in parliament, tells Iraqi media that building walls around Iraqi cities will not stop terrorism. He says the idea of building walls or barriers around cities is a mistake, because crime and terrorism know no boundaries. Terrorism he argues hides in many corners of society. But prominent Shi'ite leader and former defense ministry spokesman General Abdel Karim Khalaf insists the government plan is necessary. He says a failure to prevent Islamic State from entering Iraqi cities will give the group free rein to mount attacks inside those cities. The director of the Fares Center at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Nadim Shehadi, tells VOA that Arab cities have historically had walls. "Building walls is the wrong strategy, nowadays," he said. "It may have worked in medieval times, but now people have to work out ways of living together and not becoming a threat to each other. In the day of missiles and airplanes, walls will not protect you. A formula for coexistence will protect everybody. Iraqi officials say the project to build a wall around Karbala will cost $13 million. Security cameras and observation towers are to be built into the barrier. Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been nominated to become a member of President-elect Htin Kyaw's cabinet. The Nobel Peace laureate's name was on a list of proposed ministers announced Tuesday by parliament speaker Win Khaing Than. The list has Aung San Suu Kyi's name next to four posts -- minister of the president's office, foreign affairs, energy and education. If she takes the post of foreign minister, she would have to give up her seat in parliament and leadership of the National League for Democracy party, which she led to a massive landslide victory in last November's parliamentary elections, ending five decades of complete or partial military rule. She is barred from serving as president, based on a provision inserted in the constitution by Myanmar's former military rulers that bars anyone with a foreign spouse or children from the post. Aung San Suu Kyi's late husband, as well as her two sons, are British. Aung San Suu Kyi has declared she will retain ultimate power over Htin Kyaw, her handpicked president and lifelong friend and confidant. Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen on Monday made reference to the front-runner in the Republican Party's race to nominate a candidate for U.S. president, poking fun at what he called "problems." Addressing a financial reform conference in Phnom Penh, the country's longest-serving premier made numerous off-the-cuff remarks about Donald Trump, who has made global news headlines for campaign trail comments on foreign policy issues, including calls to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexican border and ban all Muslims from entering the country. Hun Sen also gently mocked the seemingly chaotic U.S. election, in which some protests primarily at Trump's rallies have turned violent. In the past, the Cambodian People's Party leader has hit back at comments from officials in Western countries, including the United States, that criticize his government's violent suppression of protest or question the validity of elections that delivered CPP victories. "The situation in the U.S. is different now. There are some problems with the campaign this time roadblocks and bad words," he said, adding with a note of sarcasm: "This is their new improvement." Worldwide concerns Like Hun Sen, Trump has been likened to a strongman. But the self-proclaimed billionaire businessman has won votes with his campaign slogan, "Make America Great Again," and is leading in the Republican primaries. He appears the likely challenger to the most likely Democratic candidate, Hillary Clinton. "If Mr. Trump wins the election in the U.S, [we] don't know what the situation would be," said Hun Sen, adding only that he's aware of ongoing efforts by the Republican establishment to block Trump's nomination. "Now parties, including the Republicans, [are trying to] prevent Trump from winning the election." Ou Virak, president of Phnom Penh-based think tank Future Forum, said Trump's popularity is raising concerns around the world among people of different political leanings. "What he has raised is his extremism, which could affect the world's interests, and, as I have said, it is a mutual worry since everyone loses. The person in power for a long time like Mr. Hun Sen is worried, and I, who adhere to democracy, am also worried," Virak said. "I welcome [Hun Sen's] comments. I think his interest in [U.S politics] reflects that he is following the election that could affect not only the situation in the U.S, and political climate in the U.S., but also the political situation in the world, especially in a hot area like Southeast Asia. Hence, Cambodia should pay attention to the process." The Islamic State group on Tuesday officially claimed responsibility for the attacks in Brussels that left some 35 people dead and threatened further violence Belgium launched a huge manhunt Tuesday after a series of bombings claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train, killing around 35 people in the latest attack to bring carnage to the heart of Europe. Two huge blasts, both possibly caused by a suicide bomber, hit the check-in hall at Zaventem Airport, strewing the scene with blood and mangled bodies and sending hundreds of terrified travellers fleeing in terror. Belgian authorities released pictures of two of the suspected suicide attackers pushing trollies through the terminal and said they were "actively searching" for a third whose bomb failed to go off. The fact that extremists were able to hit high-profile targets in Brussels, Europe's symbolic capital, just months after IS group militants killed 130 people in Paris, will raise fresh questions about the continent's ability to cope with the terror threat. It also underscores doubts about how Belgium has allowed extremism to develop unchecked, coming just four days after the dramatic arrest in Brussels of key Paris suspect Salah Abdeslam after four months on the run. "This is a day of tragedy, a black day," Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said and announced three days of national mourning after the "deadliest attacks we have ever seen in Belgium". Belgian King Philippe condemned the "cowardly and odious" assault. The Islamic State claimed the bombings, saying "soldiers of the caliphate" had carried out the attack against "the crusader state" of Belgium. Hundreds of flights and trains were cancelled Tuesday as security across Europe was tightened after the bombings, which Michel branded "blind, violent and cowardly". But he insisted Belgium would not be cowed. "People were just going to work, to school and they have been cut down by the most extreme barbarity," Michel told a news conference. "We will continue to protect liberty, our way of life." About an hour after the airport blasts at around 8:00 am (0700 GMT), a third explosion rocked Maalbeek metro station, in the heart of the city's EU quarter, just as commuters were making their way to work. The city is the headquarters of both NATO and the European Union. Belgian authorities published surveillance camera images showing three male suspects pushing trollies with suitcases past the check-in area. Two have dark hair and were both wearing a glove on only one hand, and a third, being hunted by Belgian police, is wearing a hat and a white coat. Several raids were also under way across Belgium, the federal prosecutor said, adding that a bomb, an Islamic State flag and chemicals had been found in one apartment. Belgian authorities had been on alert after Abdeslam, Europe's most wanted man, told investigators he had been planning an attack on Brussels. Pierre Meys, spokesman for the Brussels fire brigade, told AFP at least 14 people had been killed at the airport, while Brussels mayor Yvan Mayeur said "around 20" died in the metro blast. Witnesses described horrific scenes at the airport, with victims lying in pools of blood, their limbs blown off. There were chaotic scenes as passengers fled in panic, and plumes of dark smoke could be seen rising from holes punched through the roof of the building by the blasts. "A man shouted a few words in Arabic and then I heard a huge blast," airport baggage security officer Alphonse Lyoura told AFP, his hands bloodied. "A lot of people lost limbs. One man had lost both legs and there was a policeman with a totally mangled leg." An army team later blew up a third unexploded suspect package at the shuttered airport. At Maalbeek station, paramedics tended to commuters with bloodied faces as the city's normally peaceful streets filled with the wailing of sirens. Airports across Europe swiftly announced they were boosting security, while across the Atlantic, New York and Washington ordered security personnel to crowded areas and train stations. Leaders across Europe reacted with outrage, urging closer counter-terror cooperation on a continent that has been on high alert for months. The 28 EU leaders issued a rare joint statement saying they would combat terrorism "with all necessary means" after what they called "an attack on our open democratic society." "The whole of Europe has been hit," said French President Francois Hollande, whose country is still reeling from November's attacks. British Prime Minister David Cameron warned of the "very real" terrorist threat faced by countries across Europe, declaring: "We will never left these terrorists win." US President Barack Obama said Washington stood with Belgium in the face of the "outrageous" attacks while UN chief Ban Ki-moon said those responsible for the "despicable" bombings" should face justice. Russia and Turkey -- also targets of deadly attacks in the last eight months -- said the blasts highlighted the need to fight terrorism of every hue and across all borders. Security was beefed up at Belgium's nuclear plants and at EU buildings in the French city of Strasbourg, home to the European Parliament. Interior Minister Jan Jambon announced that Belgium's terror threat had been raised from three to a maximum of four. Messages of solidarity poured out on social media, with thousands of people sharing images of beloved Belgian cartoon character Tintin in tears. It has been a week of drama in Brussels. Last Tuesday saw a shootout in the city's south that saw a Kalashnikov-wielding man killed and four police officers wounded. Investigators believe Abdeslam slipped out of the apartment as the gunbattle erupted. He was arrested three days later in Brussels' gritty Molenbeek district -- just around the corner from his family home. Foreign Minister Reynders said at the weekend that Abdeslam -- believed to have played a key logistical role in the Paris carnage -- had told investigators he was planning some sort of new attack in Brussels. Shiraz Maher, a radicalisation expert at Kings College London, said it was "very likely that this attack will have been planned and prepared well in advance of last week's arrest of Salah Abdeslam" and pointed to a much larger network. Search Keywords: Short link: In a small, white room of the newly opened United States embassy in Havana, the simple exchange of a document summed up the significance of a meeting between President Barack Obama and 13 Cuban dissidents. Do you have a copy of the list? Elizardo Sanchez Santacruz says the president asked him. Sure, I have it here, Sanchez Santacruz reports he respectfully responded. Can you give me one? the president replied. And then I gave it to him, Sanchez Santacruz told VOA. The list Obama received from the dissident contained the names of 89 political prisoners. Sanchez Santacruz, the president of the Cuban Commission for Human Rights and National Reconciliation, gave the list to the U.S. leader when Sanchez Santacruz brought up the moment when Cuban President Raul Castro, almost agitated, responded to the inquiry of an American reporter at a rare press conference Monday about political prisoners on the island. Castro stated there are no political prisoners in Cuba. "Show me the list," Castro said. "What political prisoners? Give me a name!" This is not news. There have always been [political prisoners] and the government of Cuba has always said there are not, Sanchez Santacruz told VOA minutes after meeting with Obama in the embassy. Discussion among 'persons' Dissidents present in the hour-and-fifteen-minute meeting told VOA the discussion with Obama was frank, relaxed and open. [Obama] made clear that U.S. politics are committed to human rights, fundamental liberties and that the basic steps that are being taken are in the right direction to empower the Cuban people and to create a bigger number of spaces so people can express themselves, said Manuel Cuesta Morua, leader of the organization Progressive Spectrum in Cuba. At least two of the dissidents in the meeting were arrested as recently as Sunday. For years, they said, they have been abused by the Cuban regime. For them, the occasion was validation after years of struggle. The message it sends is that the other voices in Cuba, we, the ones that fight for democracy and freedom, are voices that have support and that we are legitimate voices in the political debate, said Cuesta Morua. Sanchez Santacruz added that Obama wanted to deliver a message of human acknowledgment and moral support. He said the message was in defiance of the Castro government that keeps on treating us as if we arent persons. Opposing rapprochement While some are very excited with the diplomatic reset, other dissidents think the new policy from the Obama administration will legitimize the communist government. Three out of the 13, according to interviews with dissidents in the meeting, expressed to Obama, face to face, that they are against the new detente. He answered that he disagreed. He said that one cant expect an immediate result, said Cuesta Morua. He used the example of Myanmar, where rapprochement led to the opening of the political system, he added. Miriam Leiva, an independent journalist and one of the 13 invitees, said [Obama] was very respectful. He listened to them and by the end of the meeting he explained his opinion but only to let them know that he was aware of the situation in Cuba. He thinks his policy is going to help the Cuban society and that changes dont come overnight, Leiva added. No positive change During the meeting, some dissidents also wanted to inform Obama that after his announcement on December, 2014, not much changed positively for Cubans on the island. Goods are harder to find, unemployment has increased and access to the Internet has not been expanded. I think many of us said that changes are not as fast as we could expect because the Cuban government is preventing his measures from getting to the people and have more impact, said Leiva. And while the dissidents agreed the meeting is historic and gives them validity and support in the face of what they call a repressive regime, the censorship wont stop. I dont think this will make the Cuban government change its posture of intolerance and its tendency to repression and intimidation to the dissident movement and against all society, sighed Sanchez Santacruz. Sadly, that wont change. Belgian police issued a wanted notice for a suspect in the Brussels airport bombing, one of three explosions claimed by Islamic State that rocked the capital Tuesday, killing at least 34 people. The released photograph taken from closed-circuit television shows a man wearing a black hat, a light-colored jacket jacket, and sunglasses pushing an airport luggage cart alongside two other men who are believed to have been the suicide bombers. Authorities say the wanted man fled the airport. Police also say they found a bomb, chemicals, and an Islamic State flag during a raid on a house in a Brussels neighborhood while searching for the suspect. The detonations, including an attack at a metro station, injured 130 others and prompted Belgium to raise its terror alert to its maximum level. IS claims responsibility IS said its attackers opened fire inside the airport, before detonating explosive belts, while a suicide bomber attacked the Maalbeek metro station, according to the militant group's Amaq Agency news site. "This is a black moment in our countryeveryone please be calm and show solidarity, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel told reporters. U.S. President Barack Obama, who was in Havana, said, "We will do whatever is necessary for our friend Belgium to bring those who are responsible to justice." He said the U.S. stands in solidarity with Belgium "for the outrageous attacks against innocent people." Later he spoke by phone with Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel to offer his condolences on behalf of the American people. The White House says he reaffirmed the United States' "steadfast support" for Belgium and offered assistance investigating the attacks and bringing the perpetrators to justice. At least nine Americans are among the wounded, including one Air Force service member. Obama ordered flags lowered to half-staff on U.S. government buildings. Hundreds of Belgians carried candles and flowers to a nighttime vigil Tuesday night at the Place de la Bourse in central Brussels. European landmarks including the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, Rome's Trevi Fountain and the Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates lit up with the colors of the Belgian flag. WATCH: President Obama's statement on Brussels attacks Airport attack Video footage showed people fleeing the Zaventem airport in Brussels, as a double explosion at about 8 am local time shattered the massive windows, leaving glass and tile scattered on the airport floor and smoke curling into the chilly morning air. Local media reported a third unexploded bomb had also been discovered. News reports at least 11 people were killed in the airport blasts. A European security official said one or possibly two Kalashnikov rifles had been found at the site of the attack. Metro attack The Brussels mayor said at least 20 people were killed and 55 injured in an explosion just moments later at the at the Maelbeek subway station near the main headquarters of the European Union. EU personnel have been told to either stay in their offices or at home. Local media described panic on the street and people emerging from the metro with burns and wounds. All flights in and out of the airport have been cancelled, and Brussels subway system has been shutdown as well. Authorities released surveillance images of three men who could be suspects. The U.S. State Department issued a travel warning to American citizens throughout Europe, warning them to use caution at sporting events, tourist sites, restaurants, and on transportation. It also advised taking particular care at large festivals and on religious holidays. Security boosted Authorities in Frankfurt, London, Paris, and the Netherlands have boosted security at their airports in response to the Brussels' bombing. There is so far no direct link to the November terrorist attacks in Paris also claimed by Islamic State. The White House said U.S. officials were in close contact with their Belgian counterparts. The explosions come just days after the arrest of key Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam in Brussels that have raised fears of revenge attacks to follow. Max Abrahms, a political science professor at Northeastern University who focuses on terrorism, said the blasts were likely part of operations that were planned prior to the arrest. "They were in the works and quite likely they were expedited in the immediate aftermath of the capture," he told VOA. Crackdowns on terror groups often motivate terrorist cells to action, said Abrahms. "Theres an incentive for these kinds of terrorist groups to strike back immediately after an apparent loss to the organization in order to communicate that the group isnt dead," he said. Link to Paris attacks? The attacks also bring to mind the November 13 bombings and shootings, claimed by Islamic State, that took place in several places around the French capital. A connection between the attacks and the arrest of Salah Abdeslam could be "extraordinarily significant," said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "Literally a watershed for terrorism and counter-terrorism in Europe. It represents the first time youve had a jihadist network carry out a major attack the Paris attack and then carry out a major follow-along attack," he told VOA. A European diplomatic official told VOA, "We have to get used to it. Weve been though this two times last year. The official also said recent data suggests there are possibly more than 3,000 people involved in terror networks in Europe and that follow-on attacks or copy-cat attacks are a continuing concern, though other officials say they have seen nothing to indicate anything is imminent. VOA's National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin and Richard Green contributed to this report PHOTO BLOG: Brussels terror attacks Photo Gallery: Brussels Rocked by Airport, Metro Explosions At least three explosions rocked Brussels Tuesday morning - two at the airport and one at a metro station in the heart of the capital, with local media reporting more than 20 dead and many others injured in the airport blasts. Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Email to a Friend Also see: VOA Storify on Belgium explosions Recent funding shortfalls have forced the U.N. World Food Program (WFP) to reduce rations and even suspend some food distribution at Malawi's Dzaleka Refugee Camp, home to 25,000 refugees from around the region. Officials say the food shortages are leading to sexual exploitation and violence. Its 8 oclock in the morning at Dzaleka refugee camp in central Malawi. Food rations Men and women wait to receive their monthly food ration from the U.N. World Food Program. Their situation is precarious, but they say one thing is certain the food will not last for a month. The refugees used to receive seven different types of food items. Now it is down to three: maize, beans and cooking oil. And the U.N. had to cut the total amount of rations per person in half in the past year due to funding shortfalls. The camp takes in refugees from around the region including Democratic Republic of Congo, Burundi, Rwanda and Somalia. One Congolese refugee said the lack of food pushed her husband to leave the camp. She said she is unable to do anything that can earn money. She relies on food donation for survival. Malawian law prohibits refugees from engaging in business activities outside the camp. Violence, exploitation due to lack of food A recent survey by U.N. agencies found that lack of food is driving gender-based violence and exploitation at Dzaleka. Camp administrator Owen Nyasulu said it is a problem. At least we get three complaints a day mostly from women to say that husbands have sold food, or husbands have beaten them because there is no food at home to cook Because the food is not enough so they [women] resort to the same things, risky behavior as well whereby young girls end up sleeping with older men. In some instances some young girls have ended up being pregnant, he stated. Some have been raped, others have turned to prostitution for food or money to buy food. A Burundian refugee said here at the camp she receives no money for buying clothes or soap and other day-to-day needs so she and others to bars and other drinking joints to look for money. And it can turn violent, said a 19-year-old Rwandan refugee who asked that VOA not use her name. She said there was a man who asked her to go his house where he would give her some food. But he ended up raping her, she said. "He even didnt give me the food." Additional funding needed Members of the camp's peace committee said this girls stories are all too common but that most of the women dont want to talk about their experiences publicly for fear of being laughed at or stigmatized.Full rations have resumed at Dzakela thanks to recent donations from the American and Japanese governments. But the WFP warns that a fresh influx of Mozambican refugees into Malawi since December is once again straining resources. The refugees, many of them children, are fleeing alleged abuses by government forces in pro-opposition areas. While in the past we were mainly looking at food security needs of 25,000 people at Dzaleka, we now have to look in addition to that [at] the food needs of 11,000 new people coming from Mozambique, said Coco Ushiyama, WFP Country Director. The WFP warned that without additional funding, acute food shortages and ration cuts at the Dzaleka camp are likely to return by August. Rob Ford, the controversial former mayor of Toronto, died Tuesday morning at the age of 46 following a battle with cancer. The former mayor of Canadas largest city was best known for his problems with illegal drugs and alcohol. In November 2013, Ford admitted to smoking crack cocaine after a video surfaced showing him lighting and then inhaling from a glass pipe. A few days after the admission, the Toronto City Council voted overwhelmingly to remove most aspects of Fords executive power and handed the power over to his deputy mayor, Norm Kelly. Ford served out the remainder of his mayoral term with limited powers. In addition to the crack cocaine video, Ford was recorded on several occasions while drunk in public and, at one point, admitted to driving while drunk. The mayor had a testy relationship with the media, sometimes trying to rush away from reporters as they asked him questions. In one incident, the mayor was looking down as he walked and smashed face first into a TV camera. Ford had been in palliative care at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City since Thursday. Fords brother, Doug, told the Toronto Star that family members were with Rob at the hospital for the length of his stay. I have been at the hospital for the last five days and nights by his side, he said. Ford had been undergoing treatment for pleomorphic liposarcoma, an aggressive type of cancer in his abdomen, for about 18 months before he succumbed to the disease on Tuesday. Ford registered to run for mayor again in 2014, but left the race suddenly two months before the election after he learned of the tumor in his abdomen. Instead, Ford ran for and won election as a city councilor in his old ward seat. German President Joachim Gauck met Monday evening with lawyers representing well-known journalist and dissident Gao Yu at the German Embassy in Beijing. The meeting was revealed by Su Yutong, a Chinese rights activist living in Germany, who posted a photo of the session on Twitter. Shang Baojun, one of Gao's two attorneys, said Beijing officials knew of the meeting. "The police warned us about coming here, but they didn't make any big problems," Shang told German International broadcaster Deutsche Welle, Gao's onetime employer. The German outlet confirmed that Gao's son was present at the meeting. We talked about Chinas legal system, its court system, the relationship between lawyers and judicial administration, churches and the government control of churches, Mo Shaoping, one of Gaos attorneys, told VOA. Because Gauck once lived in communist East Germany, Mo added, it is easy for him to understand Chinas recent clampdown on free speech. He thinks Chinas current situation has many similarities to that of East Germany, said Mo, adding that their discussion focused more on Chinas rule of law in general than individual cases, but that Gauck did mention Gaos case. Repeatedly imprisoned Gao, 71, has been imprisoned three times for her work as a journalist and human rights activist. She was most recently jailed in April 2015 after Beijing's high court convicted her of leaking state secrets and sentenced her to seven years in prison. In that conviction, authorities accused Gao of sending "Document Number Nine," an internal document circulated within the communist party, to a foreign news organization, although the document had already been posted online. After an appeal, her sentence was reduced to five years, and Chinese state media later announced she had been released on medical parole. Following her release, rights advocates lamented that her conviction for leaking state secrets had not been overturned, despite widespread criticism of her case. Gao has since been prevented from traveling to Germany, where she seeks medical treatment for high blood pressure, heart disease and Menieres disease, an inner ear disorder. In 1989, Gao was detained 14 months for writing articles in support of the student-led democratic movement. In 1994, she was sentenced to six years in prison for leaking state secrets to Hong Kong media. In 2014, Gao was arrested a few weeks ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square crackdown. Some analysts say the latest charges are retaliation for her outspoken comments about the Communist Party's campaign against free speech and activism on behalf of Tiananmen victims. Gaos trials have been scrutinized by free-speech advocates and foreign governments, including the United States. Gauck visit Gauck arrived in Beijing for a five-day visit March 20. His delegation includes Barbel Kofler, Germanys newly appointed high commissioner of human rights. As the first German president to visit China in nine years, Gauck told media outlets human rights would be a forefront topic throughout his meetings with Chinese officials. His visit comes amid an increasing crackdown on free speech under the rule of President Xi Jinping, whose administration has been steadily tightening controls on civil society, jailing and sentencing rights activists, government critics and lawyers. The death toll from an Indonesian military helicopter crash rose to 13 on Monday, the military said, with the discovery of the body of a missing soldier. The helicopter was on a mission Sunday to capture the country's most wanted militant when it crashed and burst into flames over a village in Central Poso. The Bell 412-EP helicopter, one of two deployed in a special mission to hunt down the Santoso terrorist group, was carrying 13 soldiers and crew when it went down about 35 minutes after taking off from Poso district's Watutau village, said Maj. Gen. Agus Surya Bakti, the regional military chief overseeing South and Central Sulawesi provinces. Twelve bodies were found Sunday, and military spokesman Maj. Gen. Tatang Sulaiman said the 13th victim, a first lieutenant, was found in the wreckage early Monday. "Because of the poor weather condition in Poso district, with dark clouds and wind on the way back to town, it was impossible for the helicopter to turn around," Poso Police Commissioner Ronny Suseno told VOA. "Maybe the plan was to land at Kasiguncu airport, but there were problems which caused the chopper to swerve and crash." Suseno also said the possibility that the chopper was overloaded is being investigated. Witness to crash A 60-year-old farmer told VOA he saw the chopper going in circles over his house before diving suddenly among coconut trees. "We saw the chopper, but we didn't hear it too clearly," said Hassan, describing the weather at the time of the crash as dark and cloudy. "We saw when it was circling over our house. A neighbor was wondering why the chopper was flying that low and then it nosedived we heard a loud explosion and it disappeared." One victim of the crash, Army Colonel Saiful Anwar, was a deputy commander of counterterror operations in Poso, where more than 2,500 security forces, including elite army troops, have intensified search efforts throughout the mountainous district, which is considered an extremist hotbed. Anwar's troops had been aggressively pursuing Abu Wardah Santoso, Indonesia's most wanted militant and leader of the East Indonesia Mujahidin (EIM) network, which has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group. "We want to get over this problem quickly, so that the people, especially those in Poso, can freely go out for farming, and go anywhere with no fear," Anwar told VOA on Friday, responding to complaints by locals who called run-ins with the terrorists a threat to their livelihood. At least five members of the EIM network were killed by security forces this past week. Members of the group are thought to be hiding in Poso, where more than 1,000 people died in 2001 and 2002 in violence between Christians and Muslims. Indonesia, a sprawling archipelago nation of about 250 million people, has been plagued by transportation accidents in recent years, including plane and train crashes and ferry sinkings. An impending battle to take back the Iraqi city of Mosul from Islamic State (IS) forces "will be a bloodbath," a top Kurdish counterterrorism official told VOA. For two years they (IS militants) have been digging tunnels, for two years they've been planting IEDs, booby-traps, everything, warned Polad Jangi. They have kept the population there, some people have fled, but I think 80 percent of the people are still probably there, and they are going to use these people as human shields. How are you going to bomb a building with an ISIS fighter there, but a family in there also? asked Jangi, using another acronym for the group. You're going to have to clean street by street, house by house, room by room. The casualties on both sides are going to be unbelievable, he added. Mosul is the second largest city in Iraq, and since 2014 has served as the Islamic States center of control for their operations around the country. In the past weeks, Iraq and the U.S.-led collation have been positioning forces within an hours drive of Mosul in anticipation of a fight to retake the city. US Marines on hand A U.S. Marine recently killed in an IS rocket attack on Makhmour exposed that the U.S. military had already set up an artillery base 15 kilometers from the IS frontline to support Iraqi forces in their combat operations. The United States is also conducting daily airstrikes against IS. But Jangi, who is in charge of counterterrorism operations south of Mosul in the Kirkuk-Suleymania area and works closely with U.S. forces, said President Barack Obama must commit more ground forces. Just by dropping bombs you cannot make that much of a difference. We need more troops on the ground, he said. He (Obama) knows, if you want to be successful here, he is going to eventually have to start letting people come back in, maybe not the presence that they had here before, but in Syria and Iraq they are going to have to start bringing people in. Ethnic divide Mosul is mainly Sunni, although there is also a Kurdish pocket. Peshmerga commanders have told VOA that while they will fight to protect what they consider Kurdish land and fellow Kurds, they are less eager to extend their stay in traditionally Sunni areas. You can't send Peshmerga forces into an Arab area to take the area and then stay there afterwards, said Jangi. They may be happy for you to come and help them take it back, but eventually you're going to have to give it back to those people. Officials say negotiations are underway with local Sunni tribes. Iraqs national security advisor, Faleh Fayadh, has said the final operation to take Mosul likely would involve Iraqi forces, the Peshmerga, the Popular Mobilization Forces (Iranian-backed militias) and local volunteers. But Fayadh agreed, We have to take in[to consideration] the sensitivities of the region. Kurdish officials say it is imperative that a political agreement between all the parties must be in place before the fight begins. Fifty to 60 percent of the liberation operation is political, said Hemin Hawrami, a member of the ruling Kurdish KDP party. There is also concern about the Iraqi forces ability to effectively hold Mosul after IS militants are routed if the sectarian conflicts that led to the growth of the extremists is not dealt with first. The people in the country must understand that something was wrong when Daesh (IS) was able to sweep through the country in almost no time and capture Mosul, said Jan Kubis, the U.N. special envoy to Iraq. These are issues that must be addressed, Kubis told a recent gathering of Iraqi and Kurdish government officials. Islamic State (IS) extremists are training Iraqi and Syrian children as young as eight years old to carry out suicide attacks and fight to kill, Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga commanders tell VOA. There are training centers, more than two or three, big training centers in Mosul, said General Sirwan Barzani, the Iraqi Kurdish Peshmerga commander fighting IS on the volatile Makhmour frontline. They are just starting the training at eight years old to 18 years old. There are teenagers, there are kids [being taught] how to kill the people, how to do suicide [attacks], the general said. The use of child soldiers could make the fight for Mosul, Iraqs second largest city that has been under IS control for two years, even more horrific than previous battles. The general said the Peshmerga had recently captured a 15-year-old IS conscript. The boy was handed over to the leadership in the Kurdish regional capital of Irbil. According to Quilliam, a London-based counter-extremism research group, children under IS control are systematically trained to fulfill roles ranging from spies, to front line soldiers, to suicide bombers. Kurdish Peshmerga counterterrorism official Polad Jangi said these were largely children of captured families and civilians living under IS influence. They are children from Syria, the Syrian IS [is] doing that to them, the IS in Iraq are doing the same in Mosul, recruiting 10 year olds, making them shoot people, making them behead people, Jangi told VOA. That kid, by the time he is 12, 13 years old, he is going to be a trained killer basically, he said. Child recruitment widespread According to Quilliams March 2016 report, many of the armed groups in the region, including IS, Jabhat al-Nusra and the Free Syrian Army [are] recruiting children and adolescents. Their training typically starts with religious indoctrination followed by physical training, at which point children are typically isolated from their families. Echoing observations by the Kurdish commander, the Quilliam report said the youth are trained as spies, preachers, fighters, executioners and suicide bombers. Quilliams report says children are captured or coerced, reportedly through beatings or torture, and co-opted into joining the group. In a report, the United Nations last year estimated that IS had abducted between 800 and 900 children between the ages of nine and 15 from the areas around Mosul and took them to IS camps south of the city. The younger ones were put into religious education camps. Those 10 to 15 years old were put into military training. A former member of the Yazidi religious sect, who was held as a sex slave, and a Yazidi activist working with Yazidis, including children, who were freed from IS, confirmed to VOA that captured Yazidi children were being forcibly indoctrinated in IS ideology. The U.N. report added that IS has used child soldiers to execute 15 of its fighters who had lost battles or retreated from battles. Indoctrinating children could also ensure that IS has a future generation of fighters, potentially prolonging the conflicts in both countries and further afield. These new generations that are coming up, they are only going to end up being the foot soldiers for these guys, to go and do suicide bombings, Jangi said. Helping children recuperate from the full spectrum of atrocities experienced under IS, Quilliam said, will require a comprehensive program of de-radicalization, re-education, reintegration and community outreach. Authorities in Ivory Coast say they have arrested 15 people suspected to have links with the deadly terrorist attack on a popular beach resort earlier this month. The national prosecutor also released a photo of a key suspect on the loose. Ivorian authorities say the suspect, whose name they believe to be Kounta Dallah, played a key role in organizing the attack that killed 19 people in Grand-Bassam. They are now calling for the population to help track him down. National prosecutor Richard Adou said the man is believed to have organized and executed everything that happened in Grand-Bassam, so we have already launched a warrant against him. No other information about him was released. The Ivorian authorities have also announced 15 people have been arrested in connection with the attack. Adou said they cannot release the nationalities of the suspects because the investigation is underway. On Monday, The Associated Press, citing unnamed police sources, reported that among those arrested were at least three Malians and one Ivorian. The national prosecutor said national and international warrants are also being prepared for other suspects. The authorities said they are working with other countries in the investigation, and a reconstruction is planned in the coming days to better understand the succession of events. Jihadist group al-Qaida of the Islamist Maghreb, or AQIM, claimed responsibility. Last May, a female black rhino named Naitamany was moved from Lewa Wildlife Conservancy to the Sera Community Rhino Sanctuary as part of a project to reintroduce black rhinos to the Samburu region of Kenya, once a rhino stronghold. She was about five months pregnant at the time. This month, the mama rhino gave birth to a healthy calf, making it the first black rhino in more than 25 years to be born on community land in northern Kenya. Conservationists are pleased with this glimmer of hope, given that a surge in poaching has resulted in black rhinos being listed as critically endangered, with only about 5,000 left in the world. "It shows the potential of Sera as a conservancy, to not only host black rhino of breeding population, but also their capability in managing such a population," said Antony Wandera, senior research and monitoring officer for the Northern Rangelands Trust, an umbrella organization for community conservancies across northern and coastal Kenya, including the Sera sanctuary. Wandera says that the tribes living around Samburu have a special affinity for their wildlife including rhinos, elephants and even wild dogs making them uniquely qualified to look after the creatures. "And nobody will want to harm these animals, he said, and when it comes now to putting the little resources that they have, they'll be happy and satisfied as members within those communities, seeing wildlife within their area, [rather] than letting somebody from a different area come and manage them." Cost, benefits But having the necessary resources is key. Protecting rhinos is an expensive operation these days, with donor money covering a majority of the costs of the Northern Rangelands Trust. Ol Pejeta, for example, is the largest black rhino sanctuary in east Africa and home to the world's last remaining three northern white rhinos. It estimates the cost of protecting a rhino to be between $10,000 and $15,000 per year. But the benefits have gone beyond wildlife. Wandera says that Sera used to see conflicts when the Samburu, Rendille and Borana communities brought their livestock there, as the area was known as a dry season refuge. But through talks, the groups have learned to work together. "This has really worked out very, very, very well, he said, because the three communities have not allowed any sort of poaching incidents to happen within that area for the whole of 2015." The first rhinos were moved to Sera in 2015. The baby rhino's birth brings the sanctuary's population to 11, and officials expect to bring 10 more to Sera this year from other locations in Kenya. Officials in South Sudan's Morobo County said unknown gunmen kidnapped three SPLA (Sudan Peoples Liberation Army) wildlife officers on duty in new Yei River State on Sunday. They said the gunmen also stole dozens of machine guns. Officials said this is the first kidnapping and robbery in Morobo County since fighting broke out in Juba in late 2013 and quickly spread across the country. Morobo County Commissioner Toti Jacob said the gunmen stole 40 guns, including AK-47s, and are still at large. If they are rebels, rebels have their leaders, they would have shown themselves that we are under a command of Mr. X, but we have not seen who is responsible for this group. We have not established exactly where they are staying. They are just moving among the people," he said. Jacob said SPLA forces and wildlife officers failed to pursue the attackers. The attack occurred nearly two weeks after a group of unidentified armed men held up vehicles traveling on the Yei-Morobo Road, leaving one woman injured. Yei Deputy Governor Brigadier General Abraham Wani believes the gunmen were rebels operating underground. He blames government forces for not responding more quickly to such attacks. He said the states poor infrastructure does not help matters. The government of Yei River state comes recently from Juba. The same situation, the insecurity that is happening in Yei started before our coming. We have poor roads, lack of transport; our forces here they could not catch up in time. If I think if they were to get these outlaws, definitely, they would confront them. Toti called on all residents to work with security agents in identifying individuals who cause insecurity in the area. I want to ask our public to cooperate with us because its too much for us and we cant bear it. You can imagine we are born during time of war, we grew up during time of war and we got children during time of war. Up to when are we going to stop such kind of behavior? Morobo County is located in the southern part of South Sudan, in the former Central Equatoria state, which borders Uganda and the Democratic Republic of Congo. U.S. lawmakers have watched President Barack Obamas trip to Cuba closely and have offered decidedly mixed reactions, with sharp disagreements about whether Washingtons opening with Havana will foster change on the island or further entrench a communist dictatorship. This normalization effort has been an abject failure for freedom and democracy on the island, Republican Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen of Florida, a prominent Cuban-American member of Congress, said on the House floor. The Castro regime has already stated that it will not change one bit after all of these [U.S.] concessions. The Cuban people deserve better, she added. Even trip supporters are troubled by crackdowns on Cuban dissidents, including on the day Obama arrived. Youre not where you are going to be where you need to be, if you dont allow contrary voices to be heard, Representative James Clyburn of South Carolina, the House assistant Democratic leader, told VOA. But Clyburn noted that if engagement with Cuba has not brought about sudden change, neither did decades of isolation. I very much support normalizing relations with Cuba, because what weve done for the last half-century has not worked, he said. California Democrat Janice Hahn said she hoped for long-term, positive change a little breathing room now for the Cuban people, and a little more hope that this new relationship with their friend, the United States, could really translate to a better economy, better lives, better jobs and hopefully less oppression. Economic embargo While Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro both called for ending the U.S. economic embargo of Cuba, Republicans, who control Congress, said no. The president supports plans to end the embargo, yet ignores the fact that increased trade will not reach the Cuban people, said South Carolina Representative Joe Wilson. It will benefit the Cuban military and intelligence agencies. Analysts note that Obama has loosened some aspects of the embargo. Obama has put all these cracks in it, by taking a lot of executive actions that really fill the embargo full of holes, said Elizabeth Newhouse of the Washington-based Center for International Policy. Hes allowing a lot of licensing of commercial products and allowing much more expanded travel, and financial regulations have been loosened. Long-term debate Americas opening with Cuba is likely to be debated for years to come. America, under the Obama administration, has forsaken those who suffer under Castros oppression," Ros-Lehtinen said. "Thats a sad fact. And this will be President Obamas legacy. The eyes of the world are even more now on President Castro and the Cuban people to really live up to the idea that we will have normal relations, said Hahn. Whether the opening endures may depend on who is elected in November to succeed Obama. The prime minister of the southern African kingdom of Lesotho, who fled what he called an attempted coup, is in South Africa to discuss recent unrest in his country. Thomas Thabane accused Lesotho's Deputy Prime Minster Mothetjoa Metsing, who is now in charge of the country, of orchestrating the unrest. Regional ministers of the Southern African Development Community were to meet Sunday with Thabane and Metsing to resolve the political stalemate that led to the alleged coup over the weekend, SADC executive secretary Stergomena Lawrence Tax said. Tax said calm appears to have returned to Lesotho after gunshots were heard when military police surrounded government buildings and Thabane's official resident during an alleged coup attempt Saturday in the capital, Maseru. We have intervened by encouraging the leaders to resolve their differences in a democratic manner. We are encouraging them to ensure that everything goes back to normal and that is happening. The situation has normalized now, Tax said. Alleged coup attempt Thabane, who fled with his family to neighboring South Africa after receiving intelligence that he was the target of a military assassination attempt, described the unrest as a coup attempt. However, military spokesman Major Ntlele Ntoi said the military was trying to secure the country before a mass anti-government demonstration scheduled for Monday. "What happened this morning was that the command of the Lesotho Defense Force was acting after receiving several intelligence reports that amongst the police service, there are some elements who are actually planning to arm some of the political, party political youth fanatics who were on the verge of wrecking havoc," Ntoi said. U.N. Secretary General Ban ki-Moon has called for respect for the constitutional order and democratic rule. In a statement Sunday, Ban welcomed efforts by the SADC, the Commonwealth and other partners in Lesotho to support the restoration of trust among members of the government. The United States called for a "peaceful dialogue" and respect for the democratic process in the kingdom. 'Want my neck' In a phone interview with VOA, Thabane said the situation involved "total indiscipline" in the army. He said soldiers were "running around the streets, threatening people" and "quite openly stating that they want my neck." Thabane accused a former top military commander of leading the unrest. He said he would return to his country as soon as he knew he "was not going to get killed." Military officials in Lesotho, a country of about 2 million people, have denied plotting a coup. Thabane told VOA the attempt to overthrow his administration stemmed from his fight to root out corruption in Lesotho. He urged the Southern African Development Community (SADC) to help restore order. A South African government spokesman, Clayson Monyela, said no one is claiming leadership in Lesotho. However, he said the military's actions have the markings of a putsch. "Although no one has claimed to have taken over government through the use of force, by all accounts the activities of the Lesotho defense force thus far bear the hallmarks of a coup d'etat," he said. A rocky recent history The mountainous kingdom, surrounded by South Africa, has repeatedly been beset by political instability since gaining independence in 1966. Until then it had been a British protectorate known as Basutoland. A peaceful election in 2012 produced a three-party coalition government that many observers hoped would bring lasting stability but the fragile government reportedly collapsed several months ago. In June, South Africa had issued a stern warning to Lesotho after the prime minister suspended parliament in what appeared to be an attempt to dodge a no-confidence vote. Instability is inherent in Lesothos political system, said Tom Wheeler, a former South African diplomat who is now an independent analyst. "Well, I suppose the problem is its a democracy," Wheeler said, noting that coalition partners and the opposition disagreed "with what the prime minister is doing, and therefore have pulled the plug on the coalition. And I think thats the cause of the instability. "This man whos the prime minister is a democratically elected person from a not-majority party, and that sort of instability is built into the system." Lesotho is a constitutional monarchy with a king whose powers are largely ceremonial. South Africas role Wheeler said South Africans should not be overly concerned about upheaval in the enclave, despite their history of armed intervention in Lesotho's previous political crises. "Its not going be a big issue," he said, recalling that in 1998, Mangosuthu Buthelezi a tribal leader whod held senior positions in the African National Congress was South Africas acting president while Nelson Mandela was abroad. He sent an SADC force to Lesotho to try to prevent a coup. The troops were repulsed by the Lesotho army. It was a great embarrassment to South Africa, Wheeler said. "So I think we would stand back and say, Get on with it, boys, its not our problem, and not be worried about it." Liberian officials ordered the border with neighboring Guinea closed Tuesday amid concerns of a new outbreak of the Ebola virus. Liberias information minister Lenn Eugene Nangbe told Reuters the closure is a precaution to prevent the spread of the disease, and said the border will remain closed until the situation in Guinea improves. We are not taking any chances at all, Nangbe said. Nangbe said Liberia has also sent medical personnel to crossing points along the entire Guinea border. The U.N. World Health Organization declared Guinea free of all Ebola transmission in December. New cases confirmed But on March 17 WHO confirmed two new cases of Ebola in the Guinean village of Koropara a mother and her five-year-old son. The country's Ebola coordination unit has since identified an estimated 816 people who recently may have come into contact with with the virus. The villagers are being quarantined in their homes for 21 days to make sure they are Ebola-free. On the same day the new infections were confirmed, the WHO announced an end to the latest flare-up of Ebola in Sierra Leone, which shares a border with Guinea. Guinea is believed to be the epicenter of the worst Ebola outbreak on record. Since it began in 2013, more than 28,600 people have been infected and 11,300 killed, with almost all the deaths occurring in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone. The epidemic now seems to have subsided, but all three countries have seen recent incidents involving the Ebola virus and, according to WHO, the disease can come back at any time. WHO continues to stress that Sierra Leone, as well as Liberia and Guinea, are still at risk of Ebola flare-ups, largely due to virus persistence in some survivors, and must remain on high alert and ready to respond, a WHO statement said. Partial results from Niger's presidential run-off show incumbent Mahamadou Issoufou heading for a landslide victory. According to Reuters, Niger's electoral commission says Issoufou has received 93 percent of the vote with about three-fourths of constituencies counted. The commission put voter turnout at 61 percent. The opposition, which had called for a boycott of Sunday's poll, said the results are not credible. A VOA reporter in Niger on Sunday reported low voter turnout across the country. COPA 2016 opposition coalition spokesman Ousseini Salatou said the numbers released are "shameful." "I am ashamed of my country because this is no longer a one-party state. We are a democracy. Our supporters did not go vote," he told VOA's French to Africa Service. Hama Amadou flown to Paris hospital Four days earlier, opposition candidate Hama Amadou was taken from his Niamey jail cell and flown to Paris hospital. Opposition officials say Amadou has been sick since he was imprisoned, but his illness is unclear. Amadou had been in jail since November on baby trafficking charges, allegations that he and his supporters say are politically motivated. Issoufou, 65, was elected president of Niger in 2011 after a military coup toppled president Mamadou Tandja. The opposition coalition says Issoufou has become increasingly authoritarian, and has also accused Niger's top court of conspiring with the government to ensure Issoufou's re-election. The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) owes the Nigerian government $25 billion in back payments on revenue generated from the sale of crude oil, according to the countrys fiscal watchdog agency. Ibrahim Mohammed, a spokesman for Nigerias Revenue Mobilization, Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), released a statement Monday saying the NNPC's unremitted liability was from the 2011-15 period. The Guardian obtained a copy of the statement. Nigerian President Muhammadu Buhari came into power a year ago after promising voters he would crack down on corruption at the NNPC and break up the massive organization into several smaller agencies. Shortly after assuming office, Buhari fired the NNPCs board and named himself the countrys petroleum minister. He has yet to appoint new members to the board. Nigeria is Africas largest oil producer. The latest figures from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries show oil exports from Nigeria worth about $77 billion per year. But about two-thirds of Nigerians live below the poverty line, leading many to believe corruption at the state oil company is to blame for the discrepancy, according to Reuters. The accusations levied by the RMAFC are just the latest in a string of charges against the state oil company. A joint report from Transparency International and Revenue Watch from 2011 found that the NNPC has a horrendous record of transparency issues. And in 2014, Nigerias central bank governor, Lamido Sanusi, accused the company of withholding $20 billion from the government between January 2012 and July 2013. Sanusi was subsequently suspended from his position within the central bank. Under Nigerias constitution, the NNPC must give all the money it makes to the government, which then pays the oil company back based on a rate set by the parliament. The law does, however, allow the NNPC to pay for operational costs before handing over the money. That rule may soon change, though, as parliament is expected to start debating amendments to the Petroleum Industry Bill next week. The plan will overhaul the industry and encompasses taxes, revenue sharing and environmental rules, among other things. The intent of the amendments is to bring more transparency to Nigerias petroleum industry, which accounts for around 70 percent of the countrys income. Economists say improving relations between Washington and Havana are already helping Cubas growth, and may bring significant investment to the island. But some experts and business executives say Cuba would grow faster if it improved its crumbling infrastructure, introduced independent courts, and made economic data more transparent. Cuba needs economic growth to create jobs for the 1 million people cut from government payrolls since 2009. That is a significant fraction of the islands population of around 11 million. Susan Segal of the Americas Society and Council of the Americas writes that entrepreneurship, which often includes very small companies, has been a key to creating jobs in many parts of Latin America, including Cuba. Improving the business climate is a step toward creating jobs. WATCH: US President Obama speaks to entrepreneurs in Havana Analysts say continued economic reforms in Cuba and improving relations with the United States support the economy and raise the likelihood that U.S. economic sanctions might be eased further. Moodys rating agency has raised its prediction of Cuban economic growth slightly, to 3 percent this year. That change is based partly on a surge in U.S. visitors to Cuba. Moodys has also improved its assessment of Cubas credit, but Moody's Vice President Jaime Reusche told VOA that the nations bonds are still very speculative and carry a lot of risk. But they could offer high returns. Moody's complains that some Cuban economic data is unavailable, making an accurate assessment difficult. Internet access Cuban President Raul Castro said the recent thaw in U.S.-Cuban relations has already produced concrete results, including direct commercial flights, postal exchanges and agreements to safeguard the environment and safety at sea. But Castro also made it clear that the U.S. trade embargo and the U.S. military base at Guantanamo are obstacles to further improvements in relations. U.S. President Barack Obama, who has been trying to get the U.S. Congress to end the half-century-old U.S. embargo against Cuba, said the two nations have some very serious differences, but can still pursue more commercial ties to create jobs and opportunity for Cubans and Americans alike. Obama urged Cuba to show it is ready to do more business by allowing more joint ventures and allowing foreign companies to hire Cubans directly. The president applauded Cubas plan to end a tax on converting dollars to Cuban Convertibles (CUCs), one of two Cuban currencies, as a step to boost trade. Obama added that President Castro has set a goal of providing Internet access to more Cubans. At a meeting with Cuban and U.S. entrepreneurs, Obama underlined the impact that the Internet has had on fast-growing American companies. He urged one U.S. CEO to explain how the Internet helped him turn an idea into a multibillion-dollar company in a few years. Improved Internet access is the goal of Google, which is now moving to set up Wi-Fi and broadband access on the island. Other impediments More U.S. businesses are opening operations in Cuba, as restrictions are eased, but not ended. Booking.com will make Cuban hotel rooms available to U.S. customers for the first time. Airbnb, a global online service that matches travelers with homes with rooms to rent, said Cuba is the fastest-growing market in its history. Starwood Hotels signed a deal to manage and market three hotels in Havana, and Carnival cruise lines has won approval to dock at Cuba. While many firms are announcing expansion into Cuba, veterans of the Cuban market say problems with phones, Internet, and other infrastructure can make it a frustrating place to work. Other businesses complain they have difficulty getting raw materials and parts. Another problem is the lack of the rule of law, according to University of Miami professor Jose Azel. Azel said courts are subservient to the Cuban government and act arbitrarily, something that he says worries businesses and discourages the major investment needed to bolster Cubas economy. Americans who want to end the embargo and bolster ties with Cuba argue that expanding economic and commercial ties will encourage change in democracy and governance on the island. But President Castro said, "No one should intend to have the Cuban people renounce the destiny chosen in freedom and sovereignty. U.S. President Barack Obama, on a historic three-day visit to Cuba, spoke to the Cuban people from the Gran Teatro in Havana Tuesday. Here is a full transcript: PRESIDENT OBAMA: Thank you. (Applause.) Muchas gracias. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. President Castro, the people of Cuba, thank you so much for the warm welcome that I have received, that my family have received, and that our delegation has received. It is an extraordinary honor to be here today. Before I begin, please indulge me. I want to comment on the terrorist attacks that have taken place in Brussels. The thoughts and the prayers of the American people are with the people of Belgium. We stand in solidarity with them in condemning these outrageous attacks against innocent people. We will do whatever is necessary to support our friend and ally, Belgium, in bringing to justice those who are responsible. And this is yet another reminder that the world must unite, we must be together, regardless of nationality, or race, or faith, in fighting against the scourge of terrorism. We can -- and will -- defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world. To the government and the people of Cuba, I want to thank you for the kindness that youve shown to me and Michelle, Malia, Sasha, my mother-in-law, Marian. Cultivo una rosa blanca. (Applause.) In his most famous poem, Jose Marti made this offering of friendship and peace to both his friend and his enemy. Today, as the President of the United States of America, I offer the Cuban people el saludo de paz. (Applause.) Havana is only 90 miles from Florida, but to get here we had to travel a great distance -- over barriers of history and ideology; barriers of pain and separation. The blue waters beneath Air Force One once carried American battleships to this island -- to liberate, but also to exert control over Cuba. Those waters also carried generations of Cuban revolutionaries to the United States, where they built support for their cause. And that short distance has been crossed by hundreds of thousands of Cuban exiles -- on planes and makeshift rafts -- who came to America in pursuit of freedom and opportunity, sometimes leaving behind everything they owned and every person that they loved. Like so many people in both of our countries, my lifetime has spanned a time of isolation between us. The Cuban Revolution took place the same year that my father came to the United States from Kenya. The Bay of Pigs took place the year that I was born. The next year, the entire world held its breath, watching our two countries, as humanity came as close as we ever have to the horror of nuclear war. As the decades rolled by, our governments settled into a seemingly endless confrontation, fighting battles through proxies. In a world that remade itself time and again, one constant was the conflict between the United States and Cuba. I have come here to bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas. (Applause.) I have come here to extend the hand of friendship to the Cuban people. (Applause.) I want to be clear: The differences between our governments over these many years are real and they are important. Im sure President Castro would say the same thing -- I know, because Ive heard him address those differences at length. But before I discuss those issues, we also need to recognize how much we share. Because in many ways, the United States and Cuba are like two brothers whove been estranged for many years, even as we share the same blood. We both live in a new world, colonized by Europeans. Cuba, like the United States, was built in part by slaves brought here from Africa. Like the United States, the Cuban people can trace their heritage to both slaves and slave-owners. Weve welcomed both immigrants who came a great distance to start new lives in the Americas. Over the years, our cultures have blended together. Dr. Carlos Finlays work in Cuba paved the way for generations of doctors, including Walter Reed, who drew on Dr. Finlays work to help combat Yellow Fever. Just as Marti wrote some of his most famous words in New York, Ernest Hemingway made a home in Cuba, and found inspiration in the waters of these shores. We share a national past-time -- La Pelota -- and later today our players will compete on the same Havana field that Jackie Robinson played on before he made his Major League debut. (Applause.) And it's said that our greatest boxer, Muhammad Ali, once paid tribute to a Cuban that he could never fight -- saying that he would only be able to reach a draw with the great Cuban, Teofilo Stevenson. (Applause.) So even as our governments became adversaries, our people continued to share these common passions, particularly as so many Cubans came to America. In Miami or Havana, you can find places to dance the Cha-Cha-Cha or the Salsa, and eat ropa vieja. People in both of our countries have sung along with Celia Cruz or Gloria Estefan, and now listen to reggaeton or Pitbull. (Laughter.) Millions of our people share a common religion -- a faith that I paid tribute to at the Shrine of our Lady of Charity in Miami, a peace that Cubans find in La Cachita. For all of our differences, the Cuban and American people share common values in their own lives. A sense of patriotism and a sense of pride -- a lot of pride. A profound love of family. A passion for our children, a commitment to their education. And that's why I believe our grandchildren will look back on this period of isolation as an aberration, as just one chapter in a longer story of family and of friendship. But we cannot, and should not, ignore the very real differences that we have -- about how we organize our governments, our economies, and our societies. Cuba has a one-party system; the United States is a multi-party democracy. Cuba has a socialist economic model; the United States is an open market. Cuba has emphasized the role and rights of the state; the United States is founded upon the rights of the individual. Despite these differences, on December 17th 2014, President Castro and I announced that the United States and Cuba would begin a process to normalize relations between our countries. (Applause.) Since then, we have established diplomatic relations and opened embassies. We've begun initiatives to cooperate on health and agriculture, education and law enforcement. We've reached agreements to restore direct flights and mail service. We've expanded commercial ties, and increased the capacity of Americans to travel and do business in Cuba. And these changes have been welcomed, even though there are still opponents to these policies. But still, many people on both sides of this debate have asked: Why now? Why now? There is one simple answer: What the United States was doing was not working. We have to have the courage to acknowledge that truth. A policy of isolation designed for the Cold War made little sense in the 21st century. The embargo was only hurting the Cuban people instead of helping them. And I've always believed in what Martin Luther King, Jr. called the fierce urgency of now -- we should not fear change, we should embrace it. (Applause.) That leads me to a bigger and more important reason for these changes: Creo en el pueblo Cubano. I believe in the Cuban people. (Applause.) This is not just a policy of normalizing relations with the Cuban government. The United States of America is normalizing relations with the Cuban people. (Applause.) And today, I want to share with you my vision of what our future can be. I want the Cuban people -- especially the young people -- to understand why I believe that you should look to the future with hope; not the false promise which insists that things are better than they really are, or the blind optimism that says all your problems can go away tomorrow. Hope that is rooted in the future that you can choose and that you can shape, and that you can build for your country. I'm hopeful because I believe that the Cuban people are as innovative as any people in the world. In a global economy, powered by ideas and information, a countrys greatest asset is its people. In the United States, we have a clear monument to what the Cuban people can build: its called Miami. Here in Havana, we see that same talent in cuentapropistas, cooperatives and old cars that still run. El Cubano inventa del aire. (Applause.) Cuba has an extraordinary resource -- a system of education which values every boy and every girl. (Applause.) And in recent years, the Cuban government has begun to open up to the world, and to open up more space for that talent to thrive. In just a few years, we've seen how cuentapropistas can succeed while sustaining a distinctly Cuban spirit. Being self-employed is not about becoming more like America, its about being yourself. Look at Sandra Lidice Aldama, who chose to start a small business. Cubans, she said, can innovate and adapt without losing our identityour secret is in not copying or imitating but simply being ourselves. Look at Papito Valladeres, a barber, whose success allowed him to improve conditions in his neighborhood. I realize Im not going to solve all of the worlds problems, he said. But if I can solve problems in the little piece of the world where I live, it can ripple across Havana. Thats where hope begins -- with the ability to earn your own living, and to build something you can be proud of. Thats why our policies focus on supporting Cubans, instead of hurting them. Thats why we got rid of limits on remittances -- so ordinary Cubans have more resources. Thats why were encouraging travel -- which will build bridges between our people, and bring more revenue to those Cuban small businesses. Thats why weve opened up space for commerce and exchanges -- so that Americans and Cubans can work together to find cures for diseases, and create jobs, and open the door to more opportunity for the Cuban people. As President of the United States, Ive called on our Congress to lift the embargo. (Applause.) It is an outdated burden on the Cuban people. It's a burden on the Americans who want to work and do business or invest here in Cuba. It's time to lift the embargo. But even if we lifted the embargo tomorrow, Cubans would not realize their potential without continued change here in Cuba. (Applause.) It should be easier to open a business here in Cuba. A worker should be able to get a job directly with companies who invest here in Cuba. Two currencies shouldnt separate the type of salaries that Cubans can earn. The Internet should be available across the island, so that Cubans can connect to the wider world -- (applause) -- and to one of the greatest engines of growth in human history. Theres no limitation from the United States on the ability of Cuba to take these steps. Its up to you. And I can tell you as a friend that sustainable prosperity in the 21st century depends upon education, health care, and environmental protection. But it also depends on the free and open exchange of ideas. If you cant access information online, if you cannot be exposed to different points of view, you will not reach your full potential. And over time, the youth will lose hope. I know these issues are sensitive, especially coming from an American President. Before 1959, some Americans saw Cuba as something to exploit, ignored poverty, enabled corruption. And since 1959, weve been shadow-boxers in this battle of geopolitics and personalities. I know the history, but I refuse to be trapped by it. (Applause.) Ive made it clear that the United States has neither the capacity, nor the intention to impose change on Cuba. What changes come will depend upon the Cuban people. We will not impose our political or economic system on you. We recognize that every country, every people, must chart its own course and shape its own model. But having removed the shadow of history from our relationship, I must speak honestly about the things that I believe -- the things that we, as Americans, believe. As Marti said, Liberty is the right of every man to be honest, to think and to speak without hypocrisy. So let me tell you what I believe. I can't force you to agree, but you should know what I think. I believe that every person should be equal under the law. (Applause.) Every child deserves the dignity that comes with education, and health care and food on the table and a roof over their heads. (Applause.) I believe citizens should be free to speak their mind without fear -- (applause) -- to organize, and to criticize their government, and to protest peacefully, and that the rule of law should not include arbitrary detentions of people who exercise those rights. (Applause.) I believe that every person should have the freedom to practice their faith peacefully and publicly. (Applause.) And, yes, I believe voters should be able to choose their governments in free and democratic elections. (Applause.) Not everybody agrees with me on this. Not everybody agrees with the American people on this. But I believe those human rights are universal. (Applause.) I believe they are the rights of the American people, the Cuban people, and people around the world. Now, theres no secret that our governments disagree on many of these issues. Ive had frank conversations with President Castro. For many years, he has pointed out the flaws in the American system -- economic inequality; the death penalty; racial discrimination; wars abroad. Thats just a sample. He has a much longer list. (Laughter.) But heres what the Cuban people need to understand: I welcome this open debate and dialogue. Its good. Its healthy. Im not afraid of it. We do have too much money in American politics. But, in America, it's still possible for somebody like me -- a child who was raised by a single mom, a child of mixed race who did not have a lot of money -- to pursue and achieve the highest office in the land. That's whats possible in America. (Applause.) We do have challenges with racial bias -- in our communities, in our criminal justice system, in our society -- the legacy of slavery and segregation. But the fact that we have open debates within Americas own democracy is what allows us to get better. In 1959, the year that my father moved to America, it was illegal for him to marry my mother, who was white, in many American states. When I first started school, we were still struggling to desegregate schools across the American South. But people organized; they protested; they debated these issues; they challenged government officials. And because of those protests, and because of those debates, and because of popular mobilization, Im able to stand here today as an African-American and as President of the United States. That was because of the freedoms that were afforded in the United States that we were able to bring about change. Im not saying this is easy. Theres still enormous problems in our society. But democracy is the way that we solve them. That's how we got health care for more of our people. That's how we made enormous gains in womens rights and gay rights. That's how we address the inequality that concentrates so much wealth at the top of our society. Because workers can organize and ordinary people have a voice, American democracy has given our people the opportunity to pursue their dreams and enjoy a high standard of living. (Applause.) Now, there are still some tough fights. It isnt always pretty, the process of democracy. It's often frustrating. You can see that in the election going on back home. But just stop and consider this fact about the American campaign that's taking place right now. You had two Cuban Americans in the Republican Party, running against the legacy of a black man who is President, while arguing that theyre the best person to beat the Democratic nominee who will either be a woman or a Democratic Socialist. (Laughter and applause.) Who would have believed that back in 1959? That's a measure of our progress as a democracy. (Applause.) So heres my message to the Cuban government and the Cuban people: The ideals that are the starting point for every revolution -- Americas revolution, Cubas revolution, the liberation movements around the world -- those ideals find their truest expression, I believe, in democracy. Not because American democracy is perfect, but precisely because were not. And we -- like every country -- need the space that democracy gives us to change. It gives individuals the capacity to be catalysts to think in new ways, and to reimagine how our society should be, and to make them better. Theres already an evolution taking place inside of Cuba, a generational change. Many suggested that I come here and ask the people of Cuba to tear something down -- but Im appealing to the young people of Cuba who will lift something up, build something new. (Applause.) El future de Cuba tiene que estar en las manos del pueblo Cubano. (Applause.) And to President Castro -- who I appreciate being here today -- I want you to know, I believe my visit here demonstrates you do not need to fear a threat from the United States. And given your commitment to Cubas sovereignty and self-determination, I am also confident that you need not fear the different voices of the Cuban people -- and their capacity to speak, and assemble, and vote for their leaders. In fact, Im hopeful for the future because I trust that the Cuban people will make the right decisions. And as you do, Im also confident that Cuba can continue to play an important role in the hemisphere and around the globe -- and my hope is, is that you can do so as a partner with the United States. Weve played very different roles in the world. But no one should deny the service that thousands of Cuban doctors have delivered for the poor and suffering. (Applause.) Last year, American health care workers -- and the U.S. military -- worked side-by-side with Cubans to save lives and stamp out Ebola in West Africa. I believe that we should continue that kind of cooperation in other countries. Weve been on the different side of so many conflicts in the Americas. But today, Americans and Cubans are sitting together at the negotiating table, and we are helping the Colombian people resolve a civil war thats dragged on for decades. (Applause.) That kind of cooperation is good for everybody. It gives everyone in this hemisphere hope. We took different journeys to our support for the people of South Africa in ending apartheid. But President Castro and I could both be there in Johannesburg to pay tribute to the legacy of the great Nelson Mandela. (Applause.) And in examining his life and his words, I'm sure we both realize we have more work to do to promote equality in our own countries -- to reduce discrimination based on race in our own countries. And in Cuba, we want our engagement to help lift up the Cubans who are of African descent -- (applause) -- whove proven that theres nothing they cannot achieve when given the chance. Weve been a part of different blocs of nations in the hemisphere, and we will continue to have profound differences about how to promote peace, security, opportunity, and human rights. But as we normalize our relations, I believe it can help foster a greater sense of unity in the Americas -- todos somos Americanos. (Applause.) From the beginning of my time in office, Ive urged the people of the Americas to leave behind the ideological battles of the past. We are in a new era. I know that many of the issues that Ive talked about lack the drama of the past. And I know that part of Cubas identity is its pride in being a small island nation that could stand up for its rights, and shake the world. But I also know that Cuba will always stand out because of the talent, hard work, and pride of the Cuban people. That's your strength. (Applause.) Cuba doesnt have to be defined by being against the United States, any more than the United States should be defined by being against Cuba. I'm hopeful for the future because of the reconciliation thats taking place among the Cuban people. I know that for some Cubans on the island, there may be a sense that those who left somehow supported the old order in Cuba. I'm sure theres a narrative that lingers here which suggests that Cuban exiles ignored the problems of pre-Revolutionary Cuba, and rejected the struggle to build a new future. But I can tell you today that so many Cuban exiles carry a memory of painful -- and sometimes violent -- separation. They love Cuba. A part of them still considers this their true home. Thats why their passion is so strong. That's why their heartache is so great. And for the Cuban American community that Ive come to know and respect, this is not just about politics. This is about family -- the memory of a home that was lost; the desire to rebuild a broken bond; the hope for a better future the hope for return and reconciliation. For all of the politics, people are people, and Cubans are Cubans. And Ive come here -- Ive traveled this distance -- on a bridge that was built by Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits. I first got to know the talent and passion of the Cuban people in America. And I know how they have suffered more than the pain of exile -- they also know what its like to be an outsider, and to struggle, and to work harder to make sure their children can reach higher in America. So the reconciliation of the Cuban people -- the children and grandchildren of revolution, and the children and grandchildren of exile -- that is fundamental to Cubas future. (Applause.) You see it in Gloria Gonzalez, who traveled here in 2013 for the first time after 61 years of separation, and was met by her sister, Llorca. You recognized me, but I didnt recognize you, Gloria said after she embraced her sibling. Imagine that, after 61 years. You see it in Melinda Lopez, who came to her familys old home. And as she was walking the streets, an elderly woman recognized her as her mothers daughter, and began to cry. She took her into her home and showed her a pile of photos that included Melindas baby picture, which her mother had sent 50 years ago. Melinda later said, So many of us are now getting so much back. You see it in Cristian Miguel Soler, a young man who became the first of his family to travel here after 50 years. And meeting relatives for the first time, he said, I realized that family is family no matter the distance between us. Sometimes the most important changes start in small places. The tides of history can leave people in conflict and exile and poverty. It takes time for those circumstances to change. But the recognition of a common humanity, the reconciliation of people bound by blood and a belief in one another -- thats where progress begins. Understanding, and listening, and forgiveness. And if the Cuban people face the future together, it will be more likely that the young people of today will be able to live with dignity and achieve their dreams right here in Cuba. The history of the United States and Cuba encompass revolution and conflict; struggle and sacrifice; retribution and, now, reconciliation. It is time, now, for us to leave the past behind. It is time for us to look forward to the future together -- un future de esperanza. And it wont be easy, and there will be setbacks. It will take time. But my time here in Cuba renews my hope and my confidence in what the Cuban people will do. We can make this journey as friends, and as neighbors, and as family -- together. Si Senate puede. Muchas gracias. (Applause.) President Barack Obama says the United States wants to help Cuban entrepreneurs, and that the best way to do this is for the U.S. Congress to lift the trade embargo against Cuba "once and for all." Obama told a gathering of several hundred Cuban entrepreneurs and U.S. business people in Havana Monday that "America wants to be your partner." Despite the fact that the U.S. Congress remains opposed to lifting the trade embargo against Cuba, the Obama administration has been pushing forward with new trade initiatives, and the president's visit to the communist-run country has triggered a wave of new commerce. "Around this visit, American companies are working ahead with new commercial deals. GE is going to sell more products from energy to aviation technology," Obama said. "Cleber will be the first U.S. company to build a factory here in more than 50 years; they are going to build tractors for Cuban farmers. Starwood is going to be the first U.S. hotel that operates here in more than 60 years. The first Carnival cruise is going to pull into Havana in May." Obama praised Cuba's government for opening its economy to private enterprise, saying nearly a half-million Cubans are now either small business owners or an employee of one. "The Cuban economy is beginning to change, and just look at the results. Groups like Cuba Aprende are training a new generation of entrepreneurs," he said. "Today, half a million Cubans, including some of you, are cuentapropistas, running your own restaurants, cafes, beauty supplies or working as artists, seamstresses or taxi drivers. Your businesses employ one-third of the Cuban workforce." Obama called on Cuba's government to do more to encourage an environment that fosters entrepreneurship, including making it easy for business people to get loans from banks and access markets to buy supplies. "Some economic models just don't work," Obama said. "If something is not working for 50 years, you should stop doing it. Try something new." Obama took questions from several entrepreneurs in the audience, facilitated by Cuban-American journalist Soledad O'Brien. Obama said he wanted to buy some T-shirts made by Cuban graphic designer Idania Del Rio, who said her shop has grown to 14 employees and now sells 25 products. Obama praised her effort to start a business that is not part of Cuba's traditional economy. "Young people who have ideas cannot be restricted to the traditional exports where you are not high up on the chain," he said. "If all you are doing is selling commodities, it is hard to spur economic growth." The White House says that while Cuba's government has increased private employment from 145,000 in 2009 to approximately 500,000 in 2015, it still restricts licenses to 201 service-oriented jobs like restaurant owner, hairdresser, sign painter and taxi driver. Brian Chesky, co-founder and CEO of Airbnb, said his business expanded to Cuba one year ago with the help of the U.S. government. He said 20 percent of all Americans visiting Cuba are now using Airbnb to stay with Cuban hosts instead of at traditional hotels. Obama said Internet access is the key to Airbnb's success and he urged Cuba's government to invest more to broaden the Internet's reach in Cuba. The White House says only 5 percent of Cubans have access to the Internet, one of the lowest Internet penetration rates in the world. With several recent high-level visits to Islamabad from global trading partners, including nearby Iran, Pakistani officials are indicating they want to increase business with Afghanistan. The officials say they have taken significant steps in recent years to facilitate landlocked Afghanistans trade, but insist the neighboring countrys opposition to regulation of cross-border flows of people and commercial goods continues to hamper expansion in bilateral trade and transport. Afghanistan has conducted its global trade through Pakistani sea port facilities under a 1965 bilateral treaty that was renegotiated in 2010 in a mutual bid to address tensions and reduce acrimony. Currently, there are only two border crossings open for trade, Torkham in the northwest and Chaman in southwestern Pakistan. Afghan authorities have long accused Pakistan of not allowing free movement of transit and trade and that Islamabad has not delivered on commitments to remove impediments. Pakistani officials say illegal trade in the guise of legitimate business is impacting the national economy. They say despite challenges, the steps they have taken to facilitate trade with Afghanistan have increased container shipments between the two countries from 40,000 in 2014 to 50,000 last year. Pakistani Commerce Minister Khurram Dastgir Khan says his government has reduced scanning of trucks transporting Afghan imports and exports through its territory. He says Afghan containers carrying perishable goods, mainly fruits and vegetables, are allowed full access to the Pakistani border with India and to the Karachi seaport to facilitate fast movement. The minister adds that on the way back, Afghan trucks are allowed to take Pakistani exports to Afghanistan so they can justify their trip economically. He adds Islamabad has also reduced the percentage of scanning of Afghan transit trade from 100 percent to 20 percent. "The difficult issue is that we feel that any effort by Pakistan to regulate the flow of goods and people across our border with Afghanistan is resisted by Afghanistan," said Khan. Pakistani officials estimate up to 50,000 people move across the border with Afghanistan every day. While official formal trade volume is around $2 billion, conservative estimates put the volume of informal trade at nearly $3 billion. Both countries have formal agreements on customs information sharing, but this is something that sooner or later we will have to do by mutual agreement that this flow of people, which is in the tens of thousands each day, we will have to regulate it. Similarly, the flow of goods, a part of which is formal, but a large part of it is also informal, will have to be regulated, Khan noted. The two countries share a 2,500-kilometer porous border that encourages militants to move back and forth without detection. Afghan authorities allege leaders of the Taliban are using Pakistan to direct insurgent activities on their side of the border, while Pakistani officials say anti-state militants sheltering in Afghanistan are behind terrorist attacks in their country. The border, called the Durand Line, was established more than century ago during British rule. Kabul does not recognize the boundary as an international frontier and insists strict border controls will further divide Pashtun tribes on both sides. Afghan Minster of Commerce Humayoon Rasaw said he believes that both countries need to deal with trade and security issues separately. Once we build the [mutual] trust and increase our trade I think it will affect the security section also. We are very keen to increase our bilateral trade with Pakistan. Pakistan is also one of the biggest partners for us and we are going to further increase that," the Afghan minister told VOA. "So once we solve the issues of transit and very small [other] issues that we have, then I think that will also contribute in the peace and stability in the region," he added. Afghanistan has also been demanding inclusion of India in the transit trade agreement with Pakistan to be able to directly export and import Indian products. Pakistani businesses and industries say that would give India the same advantage of short distance that Pakistan is enjoying and would reduce the competitiveness of Pakistani goods being exported to Afghanistan and on to Central Asian countries. Several of those involved, like former Pakistani Commerce Minister, Mohammad Zubair, say Afghanistan and Pakistan can improve trade if they follow best international practices to address problems. This approach will lower tensions, reduce acrimony and further trade in the interest of both countries. The gains in this are not just in the context of the bilateral trade, but will help the regional trade, Zubair noted. The volunteer-run "Better Days for Moria" camp has hosted thousands of migrants arriving on Greece's Lesbos island, but its days appear to be numbered. A new deal between Europe and Turkey means that all new arrivals will be detained in a secure facility next door. The last remaining residents are mainly Pakistanis who do not normally qualify for asylum. We hope, we wish that the Greece government gives us asylum, that we can stay legally, because we dont want to stay in an illegal way, said Pakistani migrant Tavakal Hussain, 36. So we hope that, we wish, we want the Greece government to feel mercy and sorry for us, because we put our lives in risk in the sea. We dont want to go back to Turkey. We love to stay in Greece. Such pleas for mercy are unlikely to be enough. One hundred fifty Pakistani and Bangladeshi migrants were taken by ferry from Lesbos to the Greek mainland under police escort Monday to have their applications processed. Among the migrants, there is much fear about what lies ahead. Michele Telaro, field director on Lesbos for the aid agency Doctors Without Borders, said the uncertainty is adding to a growing mental health problem. They are in distress. They are in a very difficult situation and its very difficult to help them to cope, to help them to continue to be healthy ... especially because here people are in transit, he told VOA Monday. Most of the remaining Pakistani migrants on Lesbos who are being transferred to the mainland will be detained until their asylum cases are processed. If that fails, they could be offered repatriation. But Pakistan has been refusing to readmit migrants who do not have the correct documentation. For some migrants, even returning home could be a long, difficult journey. The World Health Organization has convened seven meetings since early February with experts on various aspects of the Zika virus. While the body of scientific knowledge about the virus is building rapidly, WHO Director-General Margaret Chan says the more that is known, the worse things look. WHO reports there is growing evidence that Zika is linked with Guillain-Barre syndrome, microcephaly a brain disorder in children and other severe disorders of the central nervous system. "A pattern has emerged in which initial detection of virus circulation is followed within about three weeks by an unusual increase in cases of Guillain-Barre syndrome, Chan said. Detection of microcephaly and other fetal malformations comes later, as pregnancies of infected women come to term." WHO reports 6,480 cases of microcephaly are suspected, mostly from northeast Brazil. Investigations have been carried out on 2,212 cases, and 863 are confirmed to have brain abnormalities. Panama has reported one suspected case of microcephaly, and Colombia is investigating several cases of the abnormality in babies for a possible link with Zika. In other countries and territories, Chan says the virus has not been circulating long enough for pregnancies to come to term. A WHO team is in Cape Verde to investigate the country's first reported case of microcephaly. No time to waste Chan says a high-level meeting convened by WHO looked at the scientific evidence linking Zika infections with malformation and neurological disorders. "Though the association is not yet scientifically proven, the meeting concluded that there is now scientific consensus that Zika virus is implicated in these neurological disorders, she said. The kind of urgent action called for by this public health emergency should not wait for definitive proof." Currently, the Zika virus is circulating in 38 countries and territories. Chan says it is difficult to predict whether the virus will spread to other parts of the world. However, she warns, the world will face a severe public health crisis if the same pattern is confirmed beyond Latin America and the Caribbean. U.N. humanitarian agencies are expressing concern a recent European Union-Turkey agreement does not safeguard the rights of the thousands of Syrians, Iraqis and other people fleeing to Greece in search of a save haven from conflict and persecution. U.N. refugee agency UNHCR has been supporting the authorities in the so-called hotspots on the Greek islands, by receiving, assisting and registering newly arriving refugees and migrants. UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said the agency is suspending its activities in these centers, saying that because of the provisions of the EU-Turkey agreement, these sites have become detention facilities. Basically, we were providing humanitarian services in those centers, distribution of humanitarian assistance. We will no longer be doing that and we will not be transporting people to the centers, nor will we be taking part in the transportation or transfer of people to the ports where they eventually may be transferred back to Turkey, Fleming said. The UNHCR is not party to the EU-Turkey deal, but provided legal judgments and recommendations safeguarding the rights of refugees. Fleming told VOA these rights have to be in place for the agreement to be acceptable under international and human rights law. Whether or not it violates anything is still to be judged upon implementation. All we can say today is that those safeguards are not in place. 'Best interests' U.N. children's agency UNICEF spokeswoman Sarah Crowe said 19,000 children are stranded in Greece and 10 percent are unaccompanied and in need of protective care. No child should be detained simply for being a refugee or a migrant. Children are entitled to a full hearing and assessment of their best interests prior to any decision taken related to them, including on return, said Crowe. UNICEF said children who are stranded in Greece for long periods should be given emergency education, and refugee and migrant children should be vaccinated against measles, polio and pneumococcal infections. The agency warns the agreements measures could push children and families to take other, more dangerous routes to Europe. Russia has warned it could take unilateral action beginning Tuesday against those who violate the nearly month-old cessation of hostilities in Syria. The move comes after complaints that the U.S. has been slow to work with Russia on rules for jointly monitoring violations. The two countries were key in bringing the halt in fighting that applies to pro-government and rebel fighters, but not attacks against terror groups. U.N. envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura, who is leading a second week of peace talks with Syria's warring sides, said Monday he is concerned about any breakdown in U.S.-Russian cooperation. "The moment they don't talk substantively, we go back to the past and we cannot afford it, and they know it too," de Mistura said. He said the cease-fire and corresponding increase in humanitarian aid are largely holding, but that he is concerned they cannot be sustained if there is a lack of progress on a political transition for Syria. The U.N. has been working off a basic plan that includes a new constitution and elections. The future of President Bashar al-Assad has been a major point of contention between the Syrian government and its allies who say he does not have to leave power for the country to have peace, while the opposition and its backers say he must. "It is clear that the political transition is the 'mother of all issues,'" de Mistura said after meeting with the government delegation Monday in Geneva. The head of Syria's delegation at the peace talks, Bashar al-Jaafari, reiterated the government's stance, saying Assad's future has "nothing to do" with the negotiations. De Mistura is meeting with the opposition on Tuesday as part of his process of indirect negotiations. He plans to continue meeting with both sides on Wednesday and Thursday before adjourning this round of talks. He has said he plans to launch the next round in April, though no definite date has been set. South Korea is reporting its first official case of the mosquito-borne Zika virus. The country's Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday a 43-year-old man who recently traveled to Brazil tested positive for the virus. Yonhap news agency says the man has been quarantined and treated at a hospital in Gwnangju, located more than 300 kilometers south of Seoul. The Zika virus, which has been detected mainly in Latin America, is a generally mild, harmless infection. But it has been linked to over 4,000 of cases in Brazil of microcephaly in babies, a birth defect in which babies have unusually-small heads and brains. The World Health Organization has declared the outbreak of the Zika virus as a global health emergency. South Korea and Japan held talks Tuesday to resolve the stalled implementation of last year's agreement to settle their decades-long dispute over Tokyo's wartime sexual enslavement of Korean women. The foreign ministers from Japan and South Korea reached a breakthrough settlement in late December that included a written apology from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and a pledge by Tokyo to provide $8.9 million for a foundation to be established by Seoul to support the surviving victims, known as "comfort women." The settlement relieves Japan of any further responsibility and liability for all past wartime grievances. The agreement However the money has yet to be allocated and Tuesdays meeting is the first time since the agreement that the two foreign ministries have gathered to work out any remaining differences. We are steadily working on preparation for the establishment of a foundation by closely discussing with the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, which is the supporting institution for comfort women, said South Korean Foreign Ministry spokesman Cho June-hyuck. Statue controversy In the settlement, Tokyo also asked that a comfort woman statue located across from the Japanese Embassy in Seoul be removed. The controversial statue was placed at the site where comfort women supporters have held a weekly protest rally for years demanding an official Japanese apology and restitution. The funding delay has led to speculation that Tokyo is refusing to comply until Seoul removes the statue, even though both sides have denied it. In order to make us accept their denial, I think Japan should provide one billion yen to South Korea immediately so the foundation can be established, while still having the statue, said Hosaka Yuji, a political science professor at Sejong University in Seoul who focuses on relations between Japan and Korea. Comfort women opposition Another reason for the delay in payment is that some of the surviving comfort women have vehemently and very publicly opposed the deal. It is estimated that over 200,000 women throughout the Pacific region were forced into prostitution by the Japanese military during both WWII and Japans colonization of Asia. In South Korea, only 44 survivors remain of the 238 women who came forward, and their average age is 89. Some of them have been outspoken critics of both the Japanese prime minister and South Korean President Park Geun-hye for negotiating this deal on their behalf, but without their consent. After the deal was announced, Lee Yong-soo spoke at a protest rally across from the Japanese Embassy in Seoul and condemned the agreement, saying the South Korean government was again capitulating to Japan. Why is our government trying to kill us twice and three times with Japan? she said. Missing accountability Critics of the negotiated agreement say it lacks sincerity and official accountability. Abes apology offered remorse for immeasurable and painful experiences but did not acknowledge the extent of official Japanese military involvement in the forced prostitution program, nor detailed the specific atrocities committed by the Japanese military. And the agreement allows Japan to call the $8.9 million payment a contribution or donation, versus official compensation. That distinction, opponents say, reduces Japans legal responsibility for it past misconduct. Other comfort women have publicly chastised South Korean officials who tried to explain President Parks support for reaching the compromised settlement before the elderly victims pass away. Also leaders from a group representing the victims, the Korean Council for the Women Drafted for Military Sexual Slavery by Japan, recently met with the United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. Ban Ki-moon, who is Korean, expressed sympathy for the victims, but he praised the agreement between South Korea and Japan when it was announced in December of last year. The U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid Hussein, however, has criticized the agreement, saying of the comfort womens grievances that, ultimately, only they can judge whether they have received genuine redress. South Sudans government said at the end of this week it will stop paying the hotel bills of about 600 rebel advance team members who have been living in Juba since last December to work out the modalities for the implementation of last years August peace agreement. The advance team has also been preparing for the coming to Juba of rebel leader Riek Machar. South Sudan Foreign Minister Barnaba Marial Benjamin says the government began paying the bills after the troika (United States, United Kingdom, and Norway) and the Joint Monitoring and Evaluation Commission (JMEC) which had been paying stopped. The people responsible for their accommodation when they were coming in was the troika, and they were paying for them at the hotel. But troika suddenly stopped and said they were no long going to pay for them. So the government volunteered to pay for them for some time. The government has been paying for them for the last two months, he said. Benjamin said the government can no longer afford to pay. In addition, he said the Juba government expected rebel leader Machar to be in Juba by now so that both sides could begin the process of forming the national unity government called for under the peace agreement. Up till now we dont have definite date when Dr. Riek Machar, the designated first vice president to come and be sworn in so that the transitional government of national unity is formed. We are hearing that he is traveling across Africa instead of coming to Juba so that hes sworn in and the government is formed, said Benjamin. The development comes as 23 top rebel generals who were expected to arrive in Juba March 21 abruptly canceled their trip. Rebel military spokesman Colonel William Gatjiath Deng said The government put on a serious obstruction on the transportation of the 23 generals. The governor of Eastern Nile State, Chol Thon Balok stated that he will put to jail the 23 generals if they land at Malakal airport because he has never got notification from the central government. Deng said the 23 generals were passing through Malakal instead of strict through Juba in accordance with the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS) flights. The UNMISS flight comes from Juba to Malakal with helicopters. From Malakal, they come to Pagat. Then from Pagat back to Malakal for refueling. Then they go back to Juba. So, they dont move from Juba direct to Pagat, Deng said. He accused the Juba government of obstructing the implementation of the peace agreement. Thats why I said the government is not ready to implement all aspects of the peace agreement because why should the First Vice President come to Juba if they dont allow his first team? Deng said. But Foreign Minister Benjamin said the generals canceled their trip because they had problems arranging for their transportation and accommodation. Absolutely its not true. They had problem with the promise by JMEC and Troika to arrange for their transportation. Two, the generals said they were not clear who was going to pay for their stay here in Juba. They wanted at least Troika or JMEC to tell them clearly whos going to pay for their accommodation. Since they did not get that clear, those are some of the reasons why they did not come on Monday. It has nothing to do with the government whatsoever, Benjamin said. Less than a day before a high-profile hearing in the legal standoff between Apple and the FBI, attorneys for the Department of Justice late Monday persuaded a federal judge to cancel the hearing and issue a temporary stay in the case. At issue was an earlier order by U.S. District Judge Sheri Pym ordering engineers at Apple to create a software patch to assist FBI analysts in unlocking an iPhone allegedly used by Syed Farook, one of the two shooters in Decembers San Bernardino terror attack. From the beginning, the FBI argued it was unable to crack the phones security features and needed Apples help to search the phones contents. In filings to Judge Pym, though, U.S. Attorney Eileen Decker said that just last weekend an outside party demonstrated to the FBI a possible method for unlocking Farooks iPhone. Pym temporarily stayed her previous order, giving the government until April 5, when it must present a status report. The sudden move is raising questions not just about this case, but also about the FBIs technical capabilities, as well as larger government efforts to limit encryption on personal devices. Whats the status of the iPhone? The FBI is not saying who the third party is or what technique theyve proposed to bypass the iPhones auto-erase function, which permanently deletes all data on the phone after 10 incorrect guesses at the password. For its part, Apple has not made any public statements regarding the governments filing. Instead the firm is limiting its comments to this weeks introduction of new iPad and iPhone models. A number of digital forensics analysts have proposed a variety of possible methods over the last several weeks, including duplication of the flash memory or reverse engineering of the iPhones internal circuitry. None of these techniques have yet been proven effective. Computer anti-virus pioneer John McAfee has publicly called breaking into an iPhone a trivial matter and personally offered to help the FBI free of charge an offer the FBI declined. How does this new info change legal arguments on both sides? If the new technique is unsuccessful, FBI attorneys likely will say that bolsters their argument that only Apple engineers can help break into the phone without destroying data. And because the stay is only temporary, the Justice Department could ask Judge Pym to reinstate her order, putting the matter back to square one. Assuming that, the judge again will be asked to rule on Apples request to vacate her earlier order, as she had been scheduled to do Tuesday. Whatever her ruling, its all but guaranteed the case will be appealed, perhaps all the way to the Supreme Court. On the other hand, if the unnamed third party can successfully unlock the phone, this specific legal case would end. Apple attorneys likely would continue, however, to argue that the FBI never really needed Apples help to begin with, and shouldnt be required to provide assistance in the future. If successful, will the courts be finished with this issue? Most observers think thats unlikely. Apple, along with other tech companies, say they intend to offer even more robust encryption and security features to consumers in the future, while the FBI continues to expand its Going Dark initiative to slow the spread of unbreakable encryption. Because both the FBI and the tech industry are hoping to establish a legal precedent to guide future requests, its probable both sides will continue to look for the perfect test case that presents the strongest legal argument for their case. Are the courts the only way to settle this dispute? No. Here in the U.S., members of Congress may feel pressured to act if the legal challenge drags on too long. Already, two influential politicians have proposed a national commission to study the competing demands of privacy and security in order to promulgate legislation governing encryption. Privacy and encryption also are topics of concern for the European Court of Justice, the EUs highest court. In several cases, most recently in 2014, the court has ruled that all individuals have a fundamental right to privacy online. Any laws requiring companies like Apple to provide the FBI with some form of access to break into devices may well be challenged there; the resulting decisions could have major economic consequences for the mobile industry. Australian authorities have arrested a 16-year-old schoolgirl on suspicion of financing the so-called Islamic State militant group. A 20-year-old man was also detained by counterterrorism police in Sydney. The pair were charged Tuesday with sending an unspecified amount of money to Islamic State militants earlier this year. Australian police say the charges are serious and carry a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison, although the arrests were not connected to any threat of an imminent attack. The man, Milad Atai, previously had been arrested during the nations largest counterterrorism raids in September 2014. New South Wales Police Deputy Commissioner Catherine Burn said at a press conference that the schoolgirl had not been on the authorities radar. "The 16-year old girl is not somebody who is well known to us," said Burns, who did not name the suspect because she is a minor. "However, it is disturbing that we are continuing to see a trend of teenage children involved in activities that they really should not be involved in all. We will be alleging, of course, that her involvement in a terrorism offense is an extremely serious matter and that will now be up for the courts to determine what happens next." The New South Wales government said Tuesday that 14 organizations would receive a share of $6 million to counter the rise of violent extremism across Australias most populous state. Officials believe that early intervention will help to stop the radicalization of vulnerable young people. Last year, a police accountant was shot dead by a 15-year-old Australian Muslim boy outside a police station in Sydney. The teenage gunman died in a gunfight with police. Several people have been arrested as part Operation Appleby, which is investigating those suspected of plotting domestic acts of terrorism in Australia and funding extremist organizations. Security agencies believe about 100 Australian citizens have traveled to Syria and Iraq to fight alongside Islamic State militants. Belgiums capital will remain on virtual lockdown for days while the countrys hard-pressed security services try to determine who was behind Tuesdays bomb attacks - whether the perpetrators and planners were surviving members of the large network behind last Novembers terrorist strike in Paris or the work of a new group that authorities have failed to identify. Belgian security officials as well as independent analysts suspect that Tuesdays blasts at Brussels airport and a metro station near the headquarters of the European Union were likely not planned as revenge for the arrest last week of Salah Abdeslam, who oversaw the logistics for the terrorist incident in Paris, and was wounded and apprehended after a brief shoot-out. They argue the coordinated attacks on Brussels airport and on the Maelbeek metro station would have taken more than four days to plan. It was sophisticated and as with the Paris attacks, had many moving parts, a senior Belgian security official told VOA. This wasnt something that was pulled together over the weekend - something hastily arranged to send a terror message about Abdeslam, he said. The official, who asked not to be named, said the sophistication could be seen on several levels and cited the fact that even the two blasts at Brussels Zaventem airport played off each other. He confirmed that one of the blasts was triggered by a suicide bomber, while the second explosion was triggered remotely. WATCH: Video footage from scene of attacks Motive could be revenge A third unexploded bomb was later found at the airport. The security official acknowledged that Tuesdays attacks may have been brought forward as a result of Abdeslams arrest for fear he may have had knowledge of the plans, which he could have disclosed to interrogators. One urgent line of inquiry now is whether an accomplice of Abdeslam, Najim Laachraoui, a 24-year-old Belgian citizen who fought in Syria, may have been involved. If he was, then that would suggest the bombings were carried out by the remnants of the network responsible for the Paris attacks. Shashank Joshi, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, cautions against viewing the attacks solely as revenge for Abdeslam's arrest. This would take quite a while to plan, particularly involving an explosive, involving an airport. We should be wary of seeing it purely as a retaliation for Salah Abdeslams arrest, he told British media. Security threat levels raised Across Europe counterterrorism officials raised security threat levels. In Britain, Prime Minister David Cameron called a meeting of the governments emergency committee. Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, the national police counterterrorism chief, said in a statement, As a precaution, forces across the U.K. have increased policing presence at key locations, including transport hubs, to protect the public and provide reassurance. This is not in relation to any specific information or intelligence. Security at Gatwick and Heathrow Airports was being stepped up as well. Maj. Gen. Chip Chapman, the former head of counterterrorism at Britains Ministry of Defense, said he did not discount that the Brussels attack may have been brought forward as a result of Abdeslams arrest on Friday; but, he said it would have been planned weeks ago. This was a sophisticated attack with two locations involved and there would have been pre-planning and reconnaissance and the equipment needed would have had to be sourced. He faulted Belgian authorities for not raising the countrys security level from Friday onward. I am surprised they did not go to critical, he said. Intelligence challenges Tuesdays coordinated attacks underline the challenge facing Belgiums intelligence services, with some again questioning whether they are up to the daunting task. The intelligence services are not as large as those in neighboring countries. Belgian officials have admitted they have 800 Tier One suspected jihadists but just 1,000 civilian and military intelligence officers to counter any threat they might pose. And they are facing, in some circumstances, not only militants who have been hardened in battles in Syria, but foes who are becoming increasingly skilled in evading electronic surveillance, from using files they have encrypted themselves to communicating via video gaming platforms and prepaid cell phones. In the aftermath of the November Paris attacks, which were planned by jihadists in the working-class, Brussels district of Molenbeek, Belgian security services came under sharp criticism from their French counterparts for what was seen as Belgian failings. Politicians in Brussels, too, were scathing in reacting to how the Paris attacks were planned and plotted in Molenbeek without the knowledge of Belgium's security services. Abdeslam capture The capture Friday of the 26-year-old Abdeslam, a Belgian-born French national dubbed until his arrest as Europe's most-wanted fugitive, was greeted with relief in Brussels and within Belgian security services. "It is of the utmost importance that Abdeslam was captured alive, because we can now try to reconstruct the entire [Paris] scenario, Belgian State Security Chief Jaak Raes told Belgian network VTM on Sunday. WATCH: Video footage of Abdeslam's capture on March 18 While Belgian officials celebrated, questions were being raised as to why it took the countrys security services 125 days to find Abdeslam, despite the fact that, since December, they believed he was holed up in Molenbeek and had not fled the country as first thought in November. One of the men who had been helping him evade capture even felt confident enough to act as pall-bearer for the burial Thursday of Salahs brother and fellow Paris attacker. The brother, Brahim Abdeslam, had blown himself up at a cafe on Boulevard Voltaire during the Paris attacks, hours before Salah fled to Molenbeek after apparently losing his nerve and not going ahead with his final role in the attack. The end of the four-month-long manhunt did not dispel criticism that Belgium was too late in recognizing the jihadist threat in some poorer Brussels neighborhoods and still wasnt really on top of the challenge. Belgian authorities criticized Alain Marsaud, a lawmaker with Frances center-right Republican party, told Belgiums Le Soir newspaper Sunday that the naivety of the Belgians had cost us 130 lives, and criticized Belgian authorities for an inability to manage the problem of Islamic radicalism. Tuesdays bombings will do nothing to assuage the critics of Belgians security services, which appear to have had no inkling that a large attack was being planned. *Also see VOANews Storify on Brussels attacks London's Gatwick airport stepped up security on Tuesday after a string of explosions in Brussels as British Prime Minister David Cameron prepared to hold an emergency cabinet meeting on the attacks. "As a result of the terrible incidents in Brussels, we have increased our security presence and patrols around the airport," the airport said in a statement. Cameron earlier said on Twitter he was "shocked and concerned" by the events in Brussels. "I will be chairing a COBRA meeting on the events in Brussels later this morning," Cameron said. COBRA meetings are held to discuss how the government responds to emergency situations and bring together ministers, police and intelligence officers. A string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station on Tuesday, killing at least 21 people, according to firefighters, as Belgium raised its terror threat to the maximum level. Eurostar trains to Brussels from London's St Pancras station have been suspended. London's Heathrow, Europe's busiest airport, would not confirm it was stepping up security but said it was "working with the police at Heathrow who are providing a high visibility presence." Search Keywords: Short link: The new commander of the U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan has apologized to residents of Kunduz for a U.S. airstrike on a hospital that killed 42 people. U.S. Army General John Nicholson met in Kunduz with representatives of the medical charity Doctors Without Borders and family members of the victims to express his condolences over what he called a horrible tragedy. The deadly airstrike occurred on October 3 in which a U.S. Air Force AC-130 gunship attacked the hospital, killing doctors and patients among others. I grieve with you for your loss and suffering; and humbly and respectfully ask for your forgiveness, said General Nicholson. As commander, I wanted to come to Kunduz personally and stand before the families, and people of Kunduz, to deeply apologize for the events which destroyed the hospital and caused the deaths of the hospital staff, patients and family members," Nicholson said. Personnel disciplined The U.S. military has disciplined more than a dozen personnel for mistakes that led to the sustained bombing of the only medical facility in the city that was briefly overrun by the Taliban. Afghan officials insisted the insurgents were using the hospital as a base for attacks on Afghan security forces but offered no evidence to support the claims. Afghan Defense Minister Masoom Stanekzai, and Interior Minister Taj Mohammad Jahid accompanied Nicholson to Kunduz. General Nicolson also discussed with provincial officials his Resolute Support missions commitment to the Afghan security forces as they prepare for the upcoming spring offensive, a coalition statement said, referring to the traditional fighting season during warmer months in Afghanistan. You may have heard that the Taliban want to take Kunduz again, they will not, stated Nicholson, adding the coalition remained committed to the safety and security of the people of Afghanistan. The U.S. Justice Department has indicted three members of the so-called "Syrian Electronic Army," a group it says was dedicated to compromising the computer systems of the U.S. government, international groups and media organizations it regarded as being antagonistic towards the Syrian regime. The Justice Department says Ahmad Agha, 22, Firas Dardar, 27, and Peter Romar, 36, were charged with criminal conspiracy. None are in custody. Their alleged crimes include: engaging in a hoax regarding a terrorist attack; attempting to cause mutiny of the U.S. armed forces; illicit possession of authentication features; access device fraud; unauthorized access to, and damage of, computers; and unlawful access to stored communications. Dardar and Romar were separately charged with multiple counts of conspiracy for extortion, money laundering, wire fraud and violating Syrian regime sanctions. "The Syrian Electronic Army publicly claims that its hacking activities are conducted in support of the embattled regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad," said Assistant Attorney for National Security General John Carlin. "While some of the activity sought to harm the economic and national security of the United States in the name of Syria, these detailed allegations reveal that the members also used extortion to try to line their own pockets at the expense of law-abiding people all over the world." The DOJ says that starting in 2011, Agha and Dardar allegedly used stolen usernames and passwords to deface websites, redirect domains to sites under their control, and steal email and hijack social media accounts. Some of the most notorious of these hacks included the twitter accounts of The Associated Press, the BBC, al-Jazeera and the French News Agency's photo department. It says, however, that by 2013, Dardar and Romar began hacking online businesses in the United States for personal profit. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigations has added Agha and Dardar to its list of Cyber Most Wanted and offered $100,000 for information leading to their arrest. U.S. officials have renewed calls to defeat Islamic State and are taking immediate protective steps against new terrorist attacks, after Islamic State militants claimed responsibility for three deadly explosions in Brussels. U.S. Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said the U.S. and its allies will "do everything we can to protect our homelands" from terrorism. "No attack will affect our resolve to accelerate the defeat of ISIL," Carter said Tuesday on Capitol Hill, using an acronym for the Islamic State terror group. After explosions ripped through the airport and a subway station near the European Union headquarters, the U.S. embassy in Brussels has recommended Americans stay where they are and avoid public transportation in the Belgian capital. It said U.S. citizens there should monitor media reports, follow instructions from authorities and "take the appropriate steps to bolster your personal security." Homeland Security, Intelligence officials monitoring The U.S. Homeland Security agency said it is closely monitoring developments in the Brussels attacks and "will not hesitate to adjust our security posture, as appropriate, to protect the American people." It urged the public to immediately report any suspicious activity to local authorities wherever they are. One senior U.S. intelligence official said, "The intelligence community continues to assess the situation in Brussels and is staying in close contact with our Belgian and European partners." Speaking in a House Armed Services committee hearing Tuesday with Secretary Carter, General Joe Dunford, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for more intelligence sharing among international allies. "There's a lot of walls to break down in order for us to be effective," said Dunford, adding that more than 100 nations have foreign fighters who have joined up with Islamist extremists in Iraq and Syria. President Barack Obama, on the third day of a visit to Cuba, was briefed on the Brussels attacks. New York, Washington boost security New York, Washington and Chicago authorities boosted security patrols in the wake of the attacks. New York police officials said there was no indication the Brussels explosions were related to the biggest U.S. city, but noted officers had been dispatched to crowded areas and transit locations "out of an abundance of caution to provide police presence and public reassurance." The city's port authority also increased anti-terrorist patrols at the city's three airports, bridges, tunnels and bus terminal. In Washington, the regional subway system sent officers with bomb-sniffing dogs into train stations for security checks, although it too said the patrols were precautionary and that there were no known credible threats against the national capital. In the large Midwestern city of Chicago, extra police and canine units were dispatched to airports and transit stations. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said, "While an ocean may separate us, Chicago and Brussels are united by common values of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness." National Security correspondent Jeff Seldin contributed to this report *Also see: VOANews Storify on Brussels attacks Among the dozen 15-year-old girls in lavender leotards in Tatyana Galtseva's class at the Bolshoi Ballet Academy, one is different. And it's not just because of her long, swan-like neck. She is Harper Ortlieb, an American, who left her small town in Oregon to move to Moscow to follow her dream of becoming a prima ballerina. The prestigious academy has 84 foreigners among its 721 students, but few are accepted when they are as young as Harper and few are integrated into the regular Russian program. "She is a very gifted girl. She is all ballet, all inspiration,'' Galtseva said. "When children are talented, regardless of their nationality, they are alike in some way in how they approach what they do.'' The Bolshoi took notice of Harper during a summer program it held in Connecticut and offered her a place in the Moscow academy. She knew her teachers would be tough and that it would be a challenge to be so far away from home, but it has been even harder than she expected. "It's been very difficult, but with that comes strength and with that I improve,'' Harper said. "I feel like I came here to get better, to improve, not only technically but emotionally so when I dance people see something.'' One concern for her parents in the decision to send their daughter, then 14, to Moscow was the strain in U.S.-Russian relations and the strong anti-American sentiments in Russian society. Harper, though, says she feels accepted by her classmates. Her teacher concurs, noting that just that morning some of the other girls had brought her a skirt to wear over her leotard because they were expecting a visit to the class by foreign journalists. In her Moscow neighborhood, the women in her favorite grocery store have taken a shine to the delicate American teen, helping her pick out fresh fruit and keeping her favorite almond butter stocked. And in the local Starbucks they have learned to spell her unusual name on her cup. A total of 17 Americans study at the Bolshoi academy, outnumbered among the foreign students only by the 28 from Japan, with the rest coming from 22 other countries. Some of the foreign students took part in the spring concert on Thursday evening, and Harper was among the few girls from her class chosen for two of the dances. "Preparing for a performance, it's all you think about. It kind of overtakes your mind,'' she said. "Preparing for exams, I'm always very nervous. There's a lot of stress. But with that stress, you know, comes happiness and you feel overjoyed when you're dancing, you forget about everything, you forget about the sacrifices you make, you forget about the pain, or the tears. Dancing is what makes me happy, no matter how much you have to sacrifice.'' Her teacher believes Harper has what it takes to be a classical ballerina, possessing not just the necessary physical and aesthetic qualities but the will to learn. "She is extraordinarily attentive,'' Galtseva said. "She is always smiling. Such a sweet, wonderful girl.'' If Harper wants to be one of those rare foreigners who receive a diploma from the Bolshoi Ballet Academy, she has three more difficult years ahead. But now she has her mother back by her side. Harper's mother, Layne Baumann, made two trips to Moscow after she and her husband, Tim Ortlieb, dropped off their only child in September. In February, Baumann decided to move to Moscow at least for the rest of the school year, and she now rents an apartment two blocks from the academy, which has allowed Harper to move out of the dormitory. At the end of each day, Baumann talks to her daughter about what she learned in class and logs onto Skype so Harper's father can join the conversation from their home in Mount Hood, Oregon, 11 time zones away. In addition to her dance classes, Harper has Russian language lessons every day at the academy. For her other subjects, she does online classes in the evenings and on weekends. On Sundays, her only day off, she and her mother often explore their new city. They also have already seen more performances at the Bolshoi Theater than most Russians see in a lifetime. Harper started ballet at a local dance school when she was three years old. When she turned 11, she was accepted to the School of Oregon Ballet Theatre in Portland, a three-hour roundtrip journey that she and her mother made six days a week. "Being three in ballet class, it's fun and games,'' Harper said, smiling at the recollection. "My teacher was wonderful, it was so much fun. And then once I got more professional I realized how much you have to sacrifice, and how difficult it is.'' She talks about learning to deal with the pain of wearing pointe shoes and the constant feeling of doubt that she's not good enough. "And I'm not good enough. I mean, I'm not,'' Harper said. "We have to wait. I have to work harder.'' The U.S. Supreme Court has stepped into a highly charged legal battle between the smartphone giants Apple and Samsung. The top court on Monday agreed to consider Samsung's appeal that it shouldnt be forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars in damages to Apple for alleged patent infringement. Samsung last year agreed in federal court in California to pay Apple $548 million in the years-long patent battle, pending the outcome of its appeal. But Samsung argued that $399 million of the penalty was excessive because it was based on the premise that "Apple was 'entitled to' those entire profits no matter how little the patented design features contributed to the value of Samsung's phones," according to the appeal brief. The court will not reconsider Samsung's guilt, but will look at whether the penalty was excessive for copyright infringement of certain electronic components. Apple had urged the high court not to take the case, saying Samsung's illegal conduct was clear. Samsung consciously decided to copy the iPhone after its debut in 2007, Apple said, and soon after, its mobile devices "became iPhone clones." Vietnamese girl burned by napalm focuses on forgiveness in helping U.S. military Kim Phuc is known around the world for a photograph taken of her as a child, naked and crying as she ran down a road in South Vietnam, burned by napalm dropped by the U.S. air force, clouds of dark smoke rising behind her. Now 52, Phuc is working with a new charity called Restoring Heroes to help provide medical treatment to members and veterans of those same U.S. military forces. The twist of fate is far from lost on Phuc after decades of pain from burns suffered from napalm dropped on a pagoda where she and her family were hiding during the Vietnam War in 1972. Restoring Heroes is targeting first responders and members of the military who have suffered traumatic burns and scarring, such as wounds caused by improvised explosive devices. The importance of forgiveness is Phuc's contribution to healing them. "Everyone needs help," Phuc told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview when Restoring Heroes was launched this month. While the napalm left burns on 65 percent of Phuc's body, she said her recovery was emotional and spiritual as well as physical, as she learned how to forgive. "Living with hate and bitterness almost killed me many times," she said. "When I learned to forgive all those who caused my suffering, that was like heaven on earth for me." She found forgiveness when she found Christianity, she said. "Before, I would ask, 'Why me? Why did I have to suffer?'" she said. "I was a little child, innocent. I didn't do anything wrong." Helped by her faith Her religious faith has helped her to count her blessings and use her experience to help others, she said. Phuc moved to Cuba from Vietnam, and now lives near Toronto, Canada. She and her husband, a social worker, have two sons. She created her own charity, www.kimfoundation.com, to help children who are victims of war, and also served as a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador. "I can help people living with hatred and bitterness," she said. Phuc said there was a time when she could not bear to look at the famous picture a war photographer took of her at age 9, an image that became a poignant icon for the conflict's suffering and ravaged victims. Now, she said, looking at the picture makes her feel thankful. "I realized that picture is a powerful gift for me to work for peace, to help people," she said. "That picture makes awareness to everyone to stop the war, to stop fighting." Restoring Heroes is focusing on a form of laser therapy that Phuc has undergone to help with scarring, pain and range of motion on her shoulder where napalm clung to her skin and ignited. The laser treatment promotes elasticity of the skin and the growth of collagen that acts as a cushion when amputees are being fitted with prosthetics, said Carol Novak, founder of Restoring Heroes. Working for now in Miami, the charity aims to help 10,000 victims in the next three years, Novak said. Indonesian President Joko Widodo on Tuesday called for a full investigation of a deadly helicopter crash that occurred during counterterror operations along the northeastern coast of Central Sulawesi province. Military and civilian eyewitness accounts say the Bell 412-EP helicopter, one of two deployed in a special mission to hunt Santoso terrorists, went down in foul weather some 35 minutes after taking off from Watutau village, killing all 13 soldiers and crew. Indonesia's third deadly aviation catastrophe in as many months, Sunday's crash prompted numerous high-level officials to issue statements speculating about the cause. "Initial reports [indicate] the helicopter crashed because it was struck by lightning, not human error and not because of mechanical failure," presidential spokesman Johan Budi told VOA, contradicting claims by local police that the helicopter may have been overloaded. "When the helicopter was over the area, based on the agency weather monitoring system, we relayed information that cumulonimbus clouds were affecting weather, with the potential of heavy rain, high winds, tornado, lightning and hail," said meteorologist Kukuh Ribuduyanto. Indonesian Police Chief Badrodin Haiti confidently ruled out a terror attack, telling reporters the site of the crash "is not a vulnerable area, [but] a residential area near the airport." Budget blamed Parliamentarian Mahfud Sidiq, who chairs the security and foreign affairs commission, cited maintenance funding shortfalls as a possible culprit. "With our current budget we could only buy modern equipment, but we could not allocate a budget for their maintenance and service," he told VOA. "That's what caused some of the accidents in the weaponry systems." Minimal budgetary allocations for military weaponry systems were blamed as a cause of a prior military plane crash. The Bell-412 EP that crashed in Poso was built by an Indonesian company with a license from U.S.-based Bell Helicopter. Defense Minister Ryamizard Ryacudu urged all parties to refrain from further speculating on the cause of the crash, calling it "the responsibility of the defense department to investigate the case thoroughly." "We'll have to wait and see. Was it engine failure or the weather? Those questions have not been answered," Ryamizard said. "I'm astonished, why do they crash so often?" Witness to crash A 60-year-old farmer told VOA he saw the chopper going in circles over his house before diving suddenly among coconut trees. "We saw the chopper, but we didn't hear it too clearly," said Hassan, describing the weather at the time of the crash as dark and cloudy. "We saw when it was circling over our house. A neighbor was wondering why the chopper was flying that low and then it nosedived we heard a loud explosion and it disappeared." One victim of the crash, Army Colonel Sinful Anwar, was a deputy commander of counterterror operations in Poso, where more than 2,500 security forces including elite army troops have intensified search efforts throughout the mountainous district, which is considered an extremist hotbed. Anwar's troops had been aggressively pursuing Abu Wardah Santoso, Indonesia's most wanted militant and leader of the East Indonesia Mujahidin (EIM) network, which has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State group. At least five members of the EIM network were killed by security forces this past week. Members of the group are thought to be hiding in Poso, where more than 1,000 people died in 2001 and 2002 in violence between Christians and Muslims. Indonesia, a sprawling archipelago nation of about 250 million people, has been plagued by transportation accidents in recent years, including plane and train crashes and ferry sinkings. On Feb. 10, an Indonesia Air Force Super Tucano fighter plane crashed in a densely populated area in Malang, killing 4 people. In December 2015, a military T-50 fighter plane crashed during the Gebyar Jogja Airshow in Jogjakarta. The explosions Tuesday in Belgium's capital all happened within a few kilometers of the area that is home to the headquarters of NATO and the EU, the European continent's core institutions. "Through these attacks in Brussels, it was all of Europe that was hit," wrote French President Francois Hollande on Twitter. Hollande, like other European leaders Tuesday, offered support to Belgium's government. In televised remarks shortly after the attacks, the French leader said, "The war against terrorism has to be led by the whole of Europe." But news of the attacks sent the value of the British pound tumbling Tuesday, reflecting concerns across Europe, analysts say, that the terror strike claimed by Islamic State militants may raise the risk of Britain's departure from the European Union. Voters in Britain are scheduled to vote in June on whether their country, the EU's second-largest economy, should stay in the regional grouping, a decision that hinges largely on concerns over immigration and security. "Concerns about immigration are already one of the key drivers underlying support for Brexit [Britain's exit from the EU]," said Florian Otto, a security analyst at Verisk Maplecroft, a Britain-based risk analysis company. "The attacks offer another opportunity to reframe the issue as a security threat." Belgian vulnerability The attacks exposed Belgium's long-known vulnerability to terrorist attacks. Official estimates last year said nearly 500 young Muslim residents have traveled to Syria or Iraq to join extremist groups, making it the European country with the highest number of foreign fighters per capita. Belgium's small size has also meant that it has fewer anti-terrorism resources compared to larger nations like the United States, Britain or France. In addition to a lack of resources, observers say institutional fragmentation and poor intelligence sharing have hampered Belgium's ability to counter terrorism. "Brussels itself has 19 municipalities and six different police forces, which presents an obvious operational challenge," Benoit Gomis, a specialist on terrorism and European defense at Chatham House in London, told VOA. Tuesday's attacks could spark a new, unified push to help Belgium boost its security infrastructure. In a statement Tuesday, EU leaders said they "are determined to face this threat together with all necessary means." "Above all, it will be critical for the EU to substantively improve intelligence sharing among member states," Otto told VOA. The security analyst notes that measures were already agreed upon after last year's Paris attacks, which were largely organized in Belgium. Analysts say Tuesday's attacks could see the idea of a joint EU intelligence unit put back on the agenda. Other areas include counter-radicalization efforts and combined operations to combat arms trafficking. Such a coordinated approach could trigger opposition in some European governments that are already wary of EU overreach one of the issues driving the desire among some in Britain to break away from the grouping. Worldwide reaction Leaders across Europe on Tuesday announced measures to boost security at borders and transit points, while joining others worldwide to strongly condemn the attacks. In a televised statement from NATO headquarters in Brussels, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said NATO stands with its ally Belgium "on this dark day. He said this cowardly act with a heavy and tragic human toll is an attack on democratic values and open societies, adding that terrorism will not defeat democracy and take away our freedoms. European Union Council President Donald Tusk said he was appalled by the attacks and offered Europe's support. Tusk said that these attacks mark another low by the terrorists in the service of hatred and violence, adding that the EU will fulfill its role to help Brussels, Belgium and Europe as a whole counter the terror threat they are facing. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini cut short a news conference in Jordan Tuesday after saying that today is a difficult day. Terrorists will never win France is still recovering from a series of terrorist attacks that rocked Paris last November. The main suspect of those attacks was arrested last week in Maelbeek, Brussels. Following an emergency cabinet meeting in London, British Prime Minister David Cameron condemned the blasts and said that Europe should stand together against the terror threat. "We will never let these terrorists win," Cameron said at his Downing Street office. German Chancellor Angela Merkel's chief of staff, Peter Altmaier, called for solidarity with Belgium, writing on Twitter that terrorists will never win. He added that our European values [are] much stronger than hate, violence, terror! Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the West's politics of double standards have led to terrorist attacks and that frozen diplomatic relations between NATO and Russia have slowed the fight against terrorism. The Kremlin, however, offered its condolences and expressed solidarity with Belgium after the attacks Tuesday. A Zimbabwean living in Brussels, Belgium, which was attacked by suspected Islamic State terrorists on Tuesday, leaving at least 30 people dead and over 130 injured, says the situation is tense in the country. Grace Kwinjeh, who lives near the bombed airport, told VOA Studio 7 that state security agents appear to be on top of the situation with hundreds of police and armed soldiers patrolling the streets and other places that were also attacked by the suspected terrorists. I am 10 minutes from Brussels International Airport. The situation here is very sad to say the least. Its a very tense situation. The explosions came just days after the arrest of key Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam in Brussels. At least 131 people were killed in the French attacks. A senior Belgian official acknowledged that Tuesdays attacks may have been brought forward as a result of Abdeslams arrest for fear he may have had knowledge of the plans, which he could have disclosed to interrogators. One urgent line of inquiry now is whether an accomplice of Abdeslam, Najim Laachraoui, a 24-year-old Belgian citizen who fought in Syria, may have been involved. If he was, then that would suggest the bombings were carried out by the remnants of the network responsible for the Paris attacks. Kwinjeh noted that it seems a new (terrorist) network had already been put in place so inspite of the police finding large weapons and explosives it seems the new network is now in operation. Asked if she was safe, Kwinjeh said, There is tight security and the debate that is going on if you listen to what French president Francois Hollande said earlier on he said they now have to deal with a combination of making sure that citizens are safe but also respecting civil liberties. So, there are a lot of concerns that tightened security can also go a bit too far in infringing peoples human rights but at the end of the day we are better off safe than sorry and I think Belgium has done well and I think their response has been incredible. Kwinjeh further said she had not yet received reports of any Zimbabwean who could be among the casualties or injured in the explosions. Belgian police issued a wanted notice for a suspect in the Brussels airport bombing, one of three explosions claimed by Islamic State that rocked the capital. The detonations, including an attack at a metro station, prompted Belgium to raise its terror alert to its maximum level. Some members of the public as well as civic society activists say they are concerned about the sincerity of government in dealing with atrocities like Gukurahundi massacres committed by the North Korean trained Five Brigade and help bring reconciliation in Zimbabwe. The concerns came out at a recent meeting in Bulawayo, which discussed memorialization and reconciliation. Most of the participants said they were worried about the slow pace in the promulgation of a law that will enable the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission to start work. They said they doubted the sincerity of the Zanu PF governments efforts in bringing about national healing and reconciliation, particularly in regard to the Gukurahundi atrocities, which they said the government seems to be brushing aside. A participant, who did not want to identify himself in fear of being victimized, said he doubts that President Robert Mugabe and his colleagues would do anything that could possibly result in their own prosecution. If you look at history you will discover that no sitting governmnet has ever prosecuted itself. For as long as Robert Mugabe and Zanu PF are in power there is no justice that is going to be done for the people of Matabeleland who were killed. So in other words, this is just a toothless bulldog which is being done for cosmetic purposes to pretend that something is being done to solve this problem. An estimated 20,000 innocent civilians, mostly supporters of Zapu, then led by the late Joshua Nkomo, were killed in Matabeleland and Midlands provinces between 1983 and 1987. They were accused of supporting dissidents that took up arms against the Mugabe government following the brutalization of Zapu activists by the ruling Zanu PF party. COME CLEAN ON GUKURAHUNDI Participants at the meeting agreed that there is need for government to come clean on the Five Brigade or Gukurahundi atrocities so that those affected, as well as the nation at large, can find closure. Sari Eppel, a psychologist and one of the presenters at the meeting, said although it is always difficult to deal with a national violent past, the affected people must be allowed to remember publicly what happened to them or their relatives. Eppel said decrees of clemency by governments cannot erase gross abuses or violations done in the past, adding that government should not prescribe how the affected people should remember or memorialize victims of the atrocities. She noted that if society is denied the right to mourn its dead, it suffers what is known as ambiguous loss whereby survivors will always feel there is something that has to be done about their missing loved ones and there is no closure. She said, You will hear governments, not just our own, but others as well, you will hear them saying well its long ago and you must just move on, or dont reopen old wounds. But actually you cant tell emotions, you cant tell peoples psychology how to behave by decrees. And this is also universal -some families move on and others dont and thats just how its gonna be. If you look around the world, in Spain for example, the civil war there ended in 1939 but now you have the grandchildren of those who died in the civil war demanding to know the truth. NATIONAL TRANSITIONAL JUSTICE Former National Healing Co-minister Moses Mzila Ndlovu, who was also a presenter at the meeting, also queried government's sincerity and said ordinary Zimbabweans should not expect those in power to accord them all the expected rights. He said it is everyones responsibility to fight for such rights. Reverend Ray Motsi, a member of the National Transitional Justice Working Group, which convened the meeting, said he understood the concerns over governments lack of commitment to national healing and reconciliation. He, however, challenged participants to utilize every opportunity to raise such concerns and put pressure on government so that it deals with such issues. Weve got a door that is halfway, or maybe a quarter open, lets put our feet in it; lets not allow it to close. Lets walk in and salvage something out of it. The National Transitional Justice Working Group is a non-governmental organization that seeks to promote national healing and reconciliation by, among other issues, pushing for the telling of the truth about and acknowledgment of past atrocities. European countries are boosting security at airports and centres of public transport following deadly bombings at Brussels airport and metro Tuesday morning. - The Belgian government has already instructed everyone in the city to stay where they are. Brussels transport authority has closed all public transport in the city following the deadly bombings at the airport and metro. - London's Gatwick airport stepped up security after the string of explosions in Brussels as British Prime Minister David Cameron prepared to hold an emergency cabinet meeting on the attacks. "As a result of the terrible incidents in Brussels, we have increased our security presence and patrols around the airport," the airport said in a statement. "I will be chairing a COBRA meeting on the events in Brussels later this morning," Cameron said. COBRA meetings are held to discuss how the government responds to emergency situations and bring together ministers, police and intelligence officers. Dutch police also stepped up security patrols at airports and tightened checks at borders. - Travellers passing through Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport reported delays and a heavy police presence. Security agencies declined to give details of any further measures taken, but maintained the national threat level at "substantial", one notch below the highest. Flights were diverted from Brussels to Amsterdam following the attacks. Trains heading south to Belgium were subject to indefinite delays, Dutch state railways said. - Security measures were reinforced at airports and train stations in Paris and across France, police said. A full deployment of security officials was underway at all eight terminals of Charles de Gaulle airport and its two railway stations, with reinforced checks on trains arriving from Brussels, an airport source told AFP. Additional patrols were also dispatched at Orly airport in southern Paris and the southern city of Toulouse. Security was beefed up at train stations and on public transport in the capital, a police source added. French President Francois Hollande held a meeting with his prime minister and interior minister to discuss the attacks in Belgium. - The European Commission, the executive arm of the European Union, told staff in Brussels on Tuesday to remain indoors or stay at home after at least one blast rocked a station close to the citys EU quarter. "EU institutions (are) working together to ensure security of staff and premises. Please stay home or inside buildings," said Budget Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva, who also handles employee and security issues, on her official Twitter account. - The Local, an Italian English language news website, reports that security at Rome's Fiumicino airport has been tightened and flights to and from Brussels have been cancelled. Security at Milan airports has also been increased. - American Airlines said none of its employees were injured in the explosions at Brussels airport Unconfirmed reports on social media had said the blast took place near the American Airlines check-in counter at the airport in the Belgian capital. The company would not comment on the reports, but said in a statement the airline was "taking care of our customers, employees and contractors." It added that American Airlines Flight 751, due to have left Brussels Tuesday for Philadelphia, had been cancelled. - Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven released a statement saying the explosions in Brussels are "an attack against democratic Europe. We will never accept that terrorists attack our open societies," he told news agency TT in a statement, while his Danish counterpart Lars Lokke Rasmussen denounced the blasts on Twitter as a "despicable attack". -EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini stated that it is a "very sad day" for Europe, saying on a visit to Jordan it was now suffering like the Middle East. "It is...a very sad day for Europe as Europe and its capital is suffering the same pain that this region has known and knows every single day," she said tearfully at a joint press conference with Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh. Search Keywords: Short link: Belgian police issued a wanted notice for a suspect in the Brussels airport bombing, one of three explosions claimed by Islamic State that rocked the capital Tuesday, killing at least 30 people. The detonations, including an attack at a metro station, injured 130 others and prompted Belgium to raise its terror alert to its maximum level. IS claims responsibility IS said its attackers opened fire inside the airport, before detonating explosive belts, while a suicide bomber attacked the Maalbeek metro station, according to the militant group's Amaq Agency news site. "This is a black moment in our countryeveryone please be calm and show solidarity, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel told reporters. U.S. President Barack Obama reacted to the attacks in Havana, saying "We will do whatever is necessary for our friend Belgium to bring those who are responsible to justice." He said the U.S. stands in solidarity with Belgium "for the outrageous attacks against innocent people." WATCH: President Obama's statement on Brussels attacks Airport attack Video footage showed people fleeing the Zaventem airport in Brussels, as a double explosion at about 8 am local time shattered the massive windows, leaving glass and tile scattered on the airport floor and smoke curling into the chilly morning air. Local media reported a third unexploded bomb had also been discovered. News reports at least 11 people were killed in the airport blasts. A European security official said one or possibly two Kalashnikov rifles had been found at the site of the attack. Metro attack The Brussels mayor said at least 20 people were killed and 55 injured in an explosion just moments later at the at the Maelbeek subway station near the main headquarters of the European Union. EU personnel have been told to either stay in their offices or at home. Local media described panic on the street and people emerging from the metro with burns and wounds. All flights in and out of the airport have been cancelled, and Brussels subway system has been shutdown as well. Authorities released surveillance images of three men who could be suspects. Security boosted Authorities in Frankfurt, London, Paris and Netherlands have boosted security at their airports in response to the Brussels' bombings. The White House said U.S. officials were in close contact with their Belgian counterparts. The explosions come just days after the arrest of key Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam in Brussels that have raised fears of revenge attacks to follow. Max Abrahms, a political science professor at Northeastern University who focuses on terrorism, said the blasts were likely part of operations that were planned prior to the arrest. "They were in the works and quite likely they were expedited in the immediate aftermath of the capture," he told VOA. Crackdowns on terror groups often motivate terrorist cells to action, said Abrahms. "Theres an incentive for these kinds of terrorist groups to strike back immediately after an apparent loss to the organization in order to communicate that the group isnt dead," he said. Link to Paris attacks? The attacks also bring to mind the November 13 bombings and shootings, claimed by Islamic State, that took place in several places around the French capital. A connection between the attacks and the arrest of Salah Abdeslam could be "extraordinarily significant," said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "Literally a watershed for terrorism and counter-terrorism in Europe. It represents the first time youve had a jihadist network carry out a major attack the Paris attack and then carry out a major follow-along attack," he told VOA. A European diplomatic official told VOA, "We have to get used to it. Weve been though this two times last year. The official also said recent data suggests there are possibly more than 3,000 people involved in terror networks in Europe and that follow-on attacks or copy-cat attacks are a continuing concern, though other officials say they have seen nothing to indicate anything is imminent. VOA's National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin and Richard Green contributed to this report PHOTO BLOG: Brussels terror attacks Also see: VOA Storify on Belgium explosions Zimbabwe marks World Water Day today with millions around the world, as water levels continue to drop due to drought and lack of adequate infrastructure such as damns. Thomas Chiramba of the United Nations explains the situation. Suspected terror attacks in Brussels have hit close to home for Zimbabwes Grace Kwinje, a journalist and former executive member of the Movement for Democratic Change led by Morgan Tsvangirai. She describes the situation as terrifying. Some Zimbabwean black farmers say they support government's call to compensate former white farmers, saying it gives them a sense of entitlement to their land. Hear more from Director Paul Zacharia of the Zimbabwe Farmers Union. And in Bulawayo, a meeting stirs up painful discussion on the atrocities in the region, known commonly as Gukurahundi. Stay tuned for these stories and more coming up on Studio 7 at 7:30 pm on 9-0-9 Medium Wave and on the 4-9-3-0, 5-9-4-0 and 1-5-4-6-0 shortwave frequencies. We also broadcast on www.channelzim.net. Please check us out on Facebook, WhatsApp and Twitter. On Todays The Connection on Studio 7 Livetalk, hosts Ntungamili Nkomo and Tatenda Gumbo address efforts to engage youth to be more effective members of society through community participation. Participate by sending your messages on our WhatsApp number 001 202 465 0318. The number again 001 202 465 0318. Stay tuned!!!!!! Some war veterans say they want Vice President Phelekezela Mphoko, Zanu PF political commissar Saviour Kasukuwere and others associated with Generation 40 to be expelled from the ruling party. These war veterans have already indicated that a planned meeting with President Robert Mugabe early next month is expected to shape democratic processes in Zimbabwe. Addressing hundreds of former freedom fighters in Chinhoyi, Mashonaland West province on Saturday, former War Veterans Minister, Christopher Mutsvangwa, said their proposed meeting with President Mugabe will have a far-reaching impact on how Zimbabwe is expected to be governed by the ruling party. Mutsvangwa said the war veterans created the conditions for Zanu PF to flourish in the country and President Mugabe cannot afford to dump them. Mutsvangwa said his organization has made resolutions to force President Mugabe to expel people like Zanu PF political commissariat Saviour Kasukuwere, politburo members Jonathan Moyo, Patrick Zhuwao and Hurungwe West Member of Parliament Sarah Mahoka, who are backing a faction known as Generation 40 or G40, believed to be a front for First Lady Grace Mugabe. The group allegedly wants Mrs. Mugabe to succeed her husband. The other group calling itself Team Lacoste is said to be backing Vice President Emmerson Mnangagwa for the presidential post. The first lady and Mnangagwa have said they dont have any presidential ambitions. Mutsvangwa accused G40 members of trying to destroy the ruling party. Moyo, Mahoka, Kasukuwere and Zhuwao were not available for comment as their mobile phones were not reachable. Speaking at the same meeting, Midlands war veteran, Francis Zimuto, affectionately known as Black Jesus, said President Mugabe belongs to former freedom fighters and not G40. Zimuto said they will fight to regain President Mugabe on their side and endorsed Mutsvangwa as their leader until the next congress in 2018. The meeting, attended by war veterans from eight provinces, also resolved that no war veteran should be expelled from Zanu PF because they sacrificed their lives to liberate Zimbabwe from the yoke of colonialism. The war veterans also said that they dont want President Mugabe to step down. Mutsvangwa noted that the meeting will be attended by Defence Forces chief Constantine Chiwenga, former Five Brigade commander and current Airforce chief Vice Marshall Perence Shiri, army commander General Phillip Valerie Sibanda, Prisons boss Paradzai Zimondi, Police Commissioner General Augustine Chihuri and several others. Mutsvangwa was recently expelled from the ruling party and sacked by the president for allegedly insulting the first family and undermining the authority of the president after he criticized Zanu PF for allowing Mrs. Mugabe to brutalize party members. Mrs. Mugabe attacked Mnangagwa for allegedly hatching a plan to undemocratically unseat the president. The recent firing of Mutsvangwa has unsettled war veterans, who were on the receiving end recently when police with baton sticks and water cannons descended on them as they attempted to convene an indaba in Harare to discuss, among other issues, President Mugabe's succession. While they are still dusting themselves from that violent encounter, President Mugabe on Friday said he does not understand why some of the war veterans want him to step down as he was democratically elected in 2013. Mr. Mugabe said he will step down if ever that is necessary but has to serve his five-year term as stipulated in Zimbabwes constitution. The Zimbabwe Farmers Union (ZFU) has welcomed moves by the government to compensate evicted white commercial farmers. Paul Zakariya, ZFU director, said compensating the evicted white farmers will be the proper way of taking over the farms, but was quick to point out that the compensation will be expected to only cater for farm developments, not for the land. There were developments that were on these farms which should ordinarily have been paid for and, of course there is a clear understanding that compensation does not also refer to compensating the land itself, it is for development, said Zakariya. He added that as an organization they have to look at this issue from a very strategic point of view where worldwide they also need to be sending a proper message that they did not just pick these farms for free as others would want to believe. Early this month, Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa said the government had started evaluating farms, which were once owned by white commercial farmers with a view of paying compensation to the dispossessed farmers. At least 3,500 white commercial farmers lost their land when the government embarked on its controversial agrarian reforms in 2000. There were also proposals for new farm occupants to pay for the land in the form of taxes. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said Tuesday that the "blind, violent and cowardly" attacks on Brussels airport and the metro system were a "black day" for the country and had left many dead. "This is a day of tragedy, a black day," Michel said on national television, with the death toll put at 21 so far and expected to rise further. "Two attacks took place this morning in Zaventam airport and Maalbeek metro station, blind, violent, cowardly attacks," Michel said. "There are many dead and many wounded, some of them seriously," he said. Federal prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw, sitting alongside Michel, said that of the two blasts at the airport "one was probably caused by a suicide bomber." Officials had warned there could be reprisals by Islamic extremists after the arrest in central Brussels Friday of key Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam. Search Keywords: Short link: Technology and healthcare have always gone hand in hand, and with the health of the world in crisis at the moment through the Hawaii, here we dont come! Rebecca has skipped town but, despite what we have been DECEIVED into believing, shes actually flying back to New York to abandon her new life. Shes done! West Covina (i.e. Josh) has not delivered the love she so deeply craved, so Rebeccas cashing in her chips and taking a job at her old law firm. Sure, she hated that job, had zero friends in New York, and was so crushingly miserable that she packed up her life and moved across a continent to escape the stultifying loneliness, but ah um well, at least Josh doesnt live there? As you might recall, Rebecca just so happens to be seated next to her therapist, Dr. Akopian, on the plane. Finally, they have been forced together to resolve Rebeccas psychic wounds. Have a nice flight, ladies! Except Dr. Akopian isnt real. Well, shes real, but she just quietly, awkwardly sits there after Rebecca falls into a medicated slumber. The Dr. Akopian we see, the one who guides Rebecca through the episode, is a dream ghost. (I could spend 1,500 words discussing the logistics of dream ghosts. Dr. Akopian is still alive, so thats not her actual ghost. Is the dream ghost a spirit that assumed the form of Dr. Akopian? Do dream ghosts actually look like Slimer? They do, dont they?) Dr. Dream Ghost Akopian has been conjured by Rebeccas overactive unconscious mind to untangle her love issues, as explained in the fabulous Dreamgirls-esque number, Dream Ghost, which features guest stars Ricki Lake and Amber Riley of Glee. Its not clear if Im hallucinated or truly magic / Lets leave it vague. Its more interesting that way! the good doctor sings. Like a Spirit of Christmas Past with better hair and no dental insurance, Dr. Akopian escorts Rebecca through a journey of introspection. Why does Rebecca think her life is so loveless? And is that assertion true? (Short answer: Nah.) Starting with the most hideously painful, Dr. Akopian brings Rebecca back to the moment she was first disappointed by a man she loves: her dumb dad, Silas. After her parents divorce, tweenage Rebecca shows up at her fathers new home in Santa Fe for an impromptu visit. As she remembers it, her dad was caring and welcoming while her mother was a hard, flinty stone wedged between them. In reality, Rebeccas mom begged Silas not to send his daughter back to New York so soon. I just cant have anyone holding me back right now, he tells Rebeccas mom like an absolute dirtbag. Naomi Bunch might be a hard, critical woman, but as a mother she did care, and she did show up. God, imagine how much better therapy would be if modern science could only harness dream-ghost technology! A mothers love? Thats just the baseline, Rebecca snorts. Which, come on, girl! We all know that people DO love Rebecca. See: her mom, Darryl, Greg (in his way), Josh, Paula (times a million). She simply cannot recognize and accept their love. Rebecca cannot love anyone before she loves herself, but, you know, easier sad than done. Said! Easier said than done! Speaking of all the people Rebecca loves, Paula had just snuggled in for a staycation at Rebeccas place when Josh busts in. Realizing no one actually knows where shes headed, they start frantically hunting for her. Darryl shows up to help even grumpy ol Greg, too and they eventually discover that Rebecca is off the grid. We get flashlights and sweep the forest! Darryl suggests. Darryl, there is no forest, Paula replies. Meanwhile in Rebeccas sleeping brainscape, Dr. Akopian takes her back to sophomore year at Harvard, where she played the role of Fish No. 1 (formerly Fish No. 3) in a truly godawful musical version of Moby Dick. Crushed on by a kind swabber named Peter and seduced by Warren, the douchebag musicals auteur, Rebecca initially assumes that the problem was dude-related. Wrong again. Instead, Dr. Akopian informs Rebecca that the love she failed to see was her love for musical theater. Oh, did they just blow your mind? Love doesnt have to be a person, Dr. Akopian explains. Admits Rebecca, I imagine my life as a series of musical numbers. The moment is a funny, tender exploration of the nature of love, but is anyone else concerned that pointing out Rebecca has been too blind to see human love AND failed to pursue her passion might trigger a pull-the-airplane-door-open-on-the-runway-and-jump-down-the-slide meltdown? Just me? For my money, the best episodes of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend are the ones that explore Rebeccas damaged inner life. When the show commits to that, its much more novel and interesting. (Which is why we all signed up, right? Oh right, the musical numbers too.) Much like Rebeccas party-bus humiliation, her dream journey forces her to admit an inconvenient reality: Plenty of people do actually love her. Because of her dumb dad, self-loathing, and general lack of self-awareness, Rebecca cannot recognize love unless she is actively trying to prove she deserves it. Like her father, Rebeccas go-to plan is to move across America and abandon everyone she knows. What good is love if its not part of a quest a deeply romantic, almost magical struggle that ends only when Rebecca proves herself worthy? What if love is just standing around your living room in your bathrobe, or sheepishly inviting itself onto your party bus, or calling all the area morgues and hospitals to locate your corpse? How can Rebecca learn to accept love when its given freely, with no hurdles to leap or triumphant final numbers to nail? Returning to West Covina in the dream realm, Rebecca finally realizes she has a pack of doofuses who truly do love her, even if its not the love she has imagined for herself. Hes the dream, Rebecca sadly admits while staring at Josh. Dr. Akopian corrects her: Hes an illusion. Waking with a start and freaking the hell out of the actual Dr. Akopian, Rebecca excitedly flies back to California to embrace her weirdos. Spoiler alert: Theyre all happy shes not lying dead in the birch trees or in the trunk of her repossessed Hyundai. Between Paulas not-so-subtle hints and the GIGANTIC STACK OF PHYSICAL PHOTOS OF HIM Rebecca must have gone online to specifically order those, right? Do people print out photos like this anymore, other than for baby albums? Josh now has a question: Does Rebecca love him? Rebeccas jaw drops in shock. Shes speechless. Which is to say, next week Rebecca will finally decide to make an absurd declaration of love only to have Josh propose to Valencia the split-second before Rebecca can get the words out of her mouth. If I get a visit from a dream ghost who must walk me back through my personal history to teach me not to be so cocky with my CXG predictions, Ill let you know, but nah. Calling it now. Spectral Broadcasts From the Realm of Underpaid Dream Ghosts: Kesha. Photo: Raymond Hall/Getty Images Kesha has filed an appeal after losing an injunction against Dr. Luke last month that requested she be freed from her contract with his label. Her lawyers submitted paperwork to the New York appellate court on Monday requesting that Justice Shirley Kornreichs decision be overturned and that her contract be terminated. In her appeal, Kesha is arguing that the judge was mistaken in basing her decision on the idea that she can record without Lukes direct involvement. Her lawyers claim that keeping Kesha under contract with her alleged abuser is, in a sense, a form of slavery: Although it recognized that slavery was done away with a long time ago and that you cant force someone to work in a situation in which they dont want to work, the Courts ruling requiring Kesha to work for Gottwalds companies, purportedly without his involvement, does just that, the appeal reads. The appeal also challenges the judges explanation that irreparable harm had not been caused against Kesha, using statements from industry experts who say her fame will fade quickly if she cannot freely work in the music industry. Earlier this month, Sony was reported to be in talks to drop Dr. Luke from the label, which Luke has since denied, as he has all allegations against him. A hearing for the appeal has not been set yet. Margot Robbie. Photo: Neilson Barnard/2016 Getty Images A story about Tonya Hardings roller-coaster figure-skating career is hurtling toward the big screen, with Margot Robbie attached to star. Deadline reports the actress is pushing for the Steven Rogerspenned project, titled I, Tonya, by trying to find a director herself. As a skater, Harding soared to international stardom in the late-80s and early-90s as a face of the sport, a two-time Olympian, and the first American woman to land a Triple Axel in competition. Outside the rink, however, shes best known for her ties to the Nancy Kerrigan drama, which became a media spectacle and led to her permanent competitive ban in 1994. Rogers reportedly wrote the project based on extensive interviews he did with Harding and her ex-husband Jeff Gillooly (so its not related to this musical). Other details about the film are unclear at the moment, but Deadline notes the script has the potential to yield something a la To Die For. Let the Kerrigan casting speculation begin. Voters went to the polls Tuesday in Arizona to cast ballots in Republican and Democratic primaries, the latest White House nominating contest and one in which immigration figures prominently. Pre-elections polls showed frontrunner Donald Trump, with endorsements from tough-on-immigrants Sheriff Joe Arpaio and former governor Jan Brewer, favored to win over rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich, the remaining Republicans in a narrowing presidential race. Hillary Clinton, the Democratic frontrunner, also was expected to do well against Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders in a state with a large Hispanic community. Arizona is the first to vote in three state nominating contests Tuesday. Republicans and Democrats both vote in caucuses in Utah while Democrats also caucus in Idaho. For Democrats, 149 delegates are up for grabs in the three states. Republicans are vying for 98 delegates. Search Keywords: Short link: Testimony is set to begin Tuesday morning in the sex-trafficking trial of a Waco man charged with forcing a runaway 15-year-old girl to have sex with men for money. Andre Renor Evans, 51, is on trial in Wacos 19th State District Court on three counts of trafficking of persons and nine counts of sexual assault of a child. Evans, a five-time convicted felon, is charged as a habitual criminal, which enhances his punishment range if he is found guilty to a minimum of 25 years in prison and up to life. Prosecutors Gabrielle Massey and Hilary LaBorde and defense attorney Sam Martinez spent most of Monday selecting a jury to hear the case. On Monday, the prosecutors abandoned a 13th count in the indictment that charged Evans with delivery of a controlled substance to a minor. Evans is charged in a case that Waco police Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton described last year as being the worst-case scenario of trafficking of a minor that you can possibly have. Evans was arranging for men to have sex with this female in his residence in East Waco and would split the money with her, Swanton said. The indictment against Evans charges him with harboring a person younger than 18 and charging men to have sex with her. Eight of the counts in the indictment charge that Evans had improper sexual contact with the girl. According to court records, the girl has run away from multiple juvenile placement facilities across the state and engaged in prostitution from 2013-15 in Travis, McLennan, Dallas and other counties. A Waco mother was arrested Monday after allegedly injuring her son by beating him with a hot frying pan at a South Waco apartment late last week, according to Waco police. Lachrisha Patrice Farmer, 34, was arrested on an injury to a child charge after firefighters notified police about the injured child at an apartment in the 1800 block of Primrose Drive at about 9:45 a.m. Friday, Sgt. W. Patrick Swanton said. At the apartment, police found a 9-year-old boy with burns to his right arm and torso. When they asked him what happened, he said that his mother had burned him with a frying pan, Swanton said. The child said that they got into a little altercation inside the house, she got mad at him and started hitting him with a hot frying pan, causing these burns. Police interviewed Farmer, who could not explain what happened. During the investigation, Swanton said, Child Protective Services were called to the home before the child was taken to an area hospital for treatment. Our Crimes Against Children unit came out and took over the investigation and conducted a forensic interview with the child at some point, Swanton said. They were able to determine that they had enough probable cause to arrest the mother for injuries to a child. Swanton did not know Tuesday if Farmer has any other children. Farmer was taken into custody Monday and remained Tuesday in the McLennan County Jail on a $100,000 bond. It would be wrong for the Senate to hold hearings to confirm Merrick Garland. That is the long and short of it, but the reasoning is not so simple. To begin with, the president has the duty to forward a nominee for consideration as a justice for the U.S. Supreme Court. However, the Senate is not obligated there is no duty, contrary to President Obamas opinion to convene hearings to confirm such a nominee. Article II, Section 2 of the Constitution of the United States is unambiguous in this regard: and he (the president) shall nominate, and by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, shall appoint. . . judges of the Supreme Court. Clearly, the president is not the one in charge. It is up to the people, through our elected representatives, to tell him how the cow ate the cabbage. The president has expressed great urgency in filling the seat of the late and honorable Justice Antonin Scalia. It is hard to see such urgency. Judge Garlands own confirmation history is one of delay as he was nominated by President Clinton in late 1995 to a seat on the D.C. Circuit. The Senate Judiciary Committee held a hearing, but no confirmation was made mainly because of the election cycle. He was re-nominated after Clintons re-election and was confirmed by a 76-23 vote in the full Senate. President Obama has tried a shaming tactic by saying that the Senate confirmed Garland before and by default should do so again. Not so fast, Mr. President! Appointment to an inferior court is different from appointment to the Supreme Court. U.S. district courts, for example, are trial courts that preside over criminal cases and are subject to being overturned by the circuit courts of appeals, which hear certain appealable issues and can themselves be overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court on further appeal. In other words, each court has a different mission and each mission affects a different level of jurisdiction. While the U.S. District Court here in Waco has jurisdiction over Bell, Bosque, Coryell, Falls, Freestone, Hamilton, Hill, Leon, Limestone, McLennan, Milam, Robertson and Somervell counties, the Fifth Circuits jurisdiction is binding over all of Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi but only that region. However, rulings by the Supreme Court affect all judicial issues within the United States and its territories. Secondly, appointing Judge Garland to the Supreme Court will leave a vacancy in the D.C. Circuit, a posting that surely Obama would fill in a hurry with an even further left-leaning judge. Such an appointment will have a resoundingly liberal effect on the court in our nations capital and would surely affect the integrity of the entire judicial process and at a time when the war on terror is full-throttle and terror trials would be affected. One should consider too the possibility of an indictment and ensuing criminal trial for Hillary Clinton if charges are proffered. Any attempt to appear unbiased would be lost. Lastly, appointing Garland to the Supreme Court before the will of the people can be known would be an irreversible error on the part of the Senate and at a time when the Second Amendment is under assault daily. Garland opposed the D.C. Circuits holding in D.C. v. Heller. A three-judge panel held that the right to keep and bear arms is an individual right and that the ban on gun ownership in the District of Columbia was unconstitutional. Judge Garland wanted a reconsideration of this ruling. It is unambiguous to me that it would be wrong to entertain Obamas demand for a hearing before the general election is held in November. At that time we will be able to proceed with a clear view of our future as a nation. Pete Commander is a Navy veteran who lives in Bellmead. He holds a master of arts degree in international relations. When historians 50 years hence fully gauge our times, they will consider the nations first African-American president and how quickly he capitulated to fierce partisanship, despite his campaign promises to the contrary. And historians will consider the bone-headed defiance of Republican opposition, even when such defiance undermined our nation. Thus far, all this has meant gridlock in Congress, especially since Republicans took power, and a paltry legacy-in-the-making for President Obama. For the third branch of government, its meant constant review of lower court rulings over everything from Obamas questionable readiness to govern by executive order to the readiness of red states to overstep their boundaries into areas of federal province. Of the defiant refusal to consider Obamas nominee to succeed conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, there is no doubt. Republicans who supposedly cherish the Constitution now prove how hollow such claims are by opting to neglect their duty to advise and consent on that nominee through hearings and an up-or-down vote. Their idea that precedent allows the Senate to defer such nominations in a presidents final year is absolute hokum. I think you could plausibly read Article II as the Senate has the duty to advise and consent, University of California-Irvine law professor Erwin Chemerinsky said. The Constitution would make no sense if the Senate could just leave the vacancy indefinitely. But I think its something that isnt enforceable by the courts. No one could sue the Senate to force them to hold hearings, no one could sue the Senate to take a vote. I think the question would be: Will there be sufficient political pressure on the Senate to force them to hold hearings to take a vote? Chemerinsky also cites this Wednesdays controversial Supreme Court hearing on birth control, religious liberty and the Affordable Care Act, which lower federal courts have ruled on differently. An evenly divided high court could allow all these rulings to stand: The Supreme Court would say one of its most important functions is resolving disagreements among the lower courts. Federal law should have the same meaning everywhere in the country and yet what we have here is a federal statute with varying meanings in different circuits [or regions]. That in a sense is a constitutional crisis. Jeffrey Engel of the Southern Methodist University Center for Presidential History says the Republican argument for letting the American people resolve such vacancies in coming elections sets a perilous precedent: There is no guarantee Republicans or Democrats couldnt say even after the election that they think the American people should get four years to decide who should pick the next nominee its the same exact logic. Theyre playing with really dangerous things here. Only one government figure has the stature to change these dynamics: Supreme Court Chief Justice John G. Roberts, who has often decried those who politicize the courts. While he clearly comes from a conservative perspective, he has refused to let ideology interfere with deference to the law and the Constitution even though it enrages Republicans who expect him to march in lockstep with right-wing dogma. Shortly before Scalias death, Roberts spoke strongly on the need to scrutinize high court nominees qualifications but leave politics out of it something we saw last week in Baylor University President and former federal jurist Ken Starrs own endorsement of Obamas pick, Merrick Garland. Roberts must now stand tall again and remind the Senate of its duties or risk seeing his court hobbled in its ability to resolve the disputes of lower courts. He must attack efforts to politicize the court to defend its integrity or risk going down in history as complicit in a national disgrace. Arab countries including Jordan, Bahrain and Egypt condemned the series of seemingly coordinated bombings that ripped through Brussels Airport and a city metro station on Tuesday, killing at least 34 people and wounding dozens. Jordanian foreign minister Nasser Gouda strongly condemned the attacks and stressed that his government stands in solidarity with Belgium in its fight against terrorism, Jordanian news website Al-Ghad Al-Ordony reported on Tuesday. "Jordan's position has always been to denounce terrorism, and we stand in solidarity with our friends in Belgium during this difficult time," Gouda said at a press conference, adding that Muslims are also victims of terrorism, and that no one is safe from terrorists. Belgian authorities said later in the day that the attacks were carried out by suicide bombers. The Bahraini foreign ministry also expressed solidarity with Belgium in a press release published by the Bahrain News Agency BNA, saying that the country stands with Brussels in the face of all forms of violence, extremism and terrorism. The Bahraini ministry said that terrorism has become a serious threat to security and stability, calling on the international community to concentrate its efforts on fighting terrorism. Egypt's foreign ministry also condemned the attacks in the "strongest terms." "The time has come for the world to make a final stand to deal with the phenomenon of international terrorism that targets the security and stability of peoples around the world, and which seeks to undermine all human civilisation," the foreign ministry's spokesman Ahmed Abu Zeid said in a statement. Abu Zeid said that fighting terrorism requires quick and effective measures on the international level to drain the financing for terrorists. He added that terrorism must also be combated on the ideological level so as to prevent the recruitment of more individuals by "criminal groups." The attacks were also condemned by the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). Search Keywords: Short link: President Barack Obama condemned the "outrageous" attacks Tuesday in Brussels that killed about 35 people, saying the United States would do everything in its power to hunt down those responsible. "We must be together regardless of nationality or race or faith in fighting against the scourge of terrorism. We can and we will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world," he said, speaking in the Cuban capital Havana. A series of explosions ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train, also injuring more than 200 in the latest attacks to rock Europe. Obama, on a landmark trip to communist-run Cuba, spoke by telephone to Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel to express his condolences and America's full support, the White House said. "The thoughts and the prayers of the American people are with the people of Belgium and we stand in solidarity with them in condemning these outrageous attacks against innocent people," said Obama. "We will do whatever is necessary to support our friend and ally Belgium in bringing to justice those who are responsible, and this is yet another reminder that the world must unite." Security was tightened across Europe after the attacks and there were similar moves in New York and Washington, where US authorities deployed counterterrorism reinforcements and the National Guard to airports and stations. The New York Police Department said there was no indication that the attacks in Belgium were connected to New York, but ordered stepped up security as America's biggest city of 8.4 million began the morning commute. Search Keywords: Short link: The United States lacked specific intelligence warning of Tuesday's attacks in Belgium but strongly believed that such a strike was possible, particularly after Belgium's arrest last week of a key suspect in the Paris attacks, US officials said. Thirty-four people were killed in blasts at Brussels airport and in a rush-hour metro train in the Belgian capital, triggering security alerts across Europe and bringing some cross-border traffic to a halt. The attacks came just four days after the arrest of French citizen Salah Abdeslam - the prime surviving suspect in November's Paris attacks on a stadium, cafes and a concert hall - who was captured by Belgian police after a shootout on Friday. Three US government officials acknowledged that the United States believed an attack by Islamic State in Brussels was possible, if not likely. Still, they were not aware of any US intelligence about where or when the attack would occur. One of the main US lines of inquiry is that even though the attack may represent retaliation for the arrest of Abdeslam, it was likely already in the works before his arrest. Under that scenario, the attack date was already on the schedule before his arrest, and possibly advanced somewhat because of his arrest, two of the officials said. Search Keywords: Short link: Related Republicans point to Muslim immigration in Brussels attacks Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz said Tuesday that surveillance in Muslim neighborhoods in the US must be intensified following the deadly bombings on Brussels' airport and subway. Echoing his rival Donald Trump, Cruz said the US should stop the flow of refugees from countries where the Islamic State militant group has a significant presence. The Islamic State took credit for the Brussels attacks that killed dozens Tuesday and wounded many more. "We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized," the Texas senator said in a statement. The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation's largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, condemned Cruz's call for surveillance, saying it sends "an alarming message to American-Muslims who increasingly fear for their future in this nation and to all Americans who value the Constitution and religious liberties." Trump, who spoke to Fox News as developments in Brussels were unfolding, said he had warned about such attacks. "Brussels was a beautiful city, a beautiful place with zero crime, and now it's a disaster city. A total disaster," he said. In December, following attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, Trump called for a temporary and conditional ban on Muslims coming to the United States. He described Brussels as a "hellhole" because of its radical elements and their connection to the Paris attacks. Both Cruz and Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton criticized Trump for saying Monday that NATO "is costing us a fortune" and the US should diminish its role in the coming years. Cruz said the suggestion of withdrawing from NATO is a "pre-emptive surrender." Speaking to CNN, Clinton called NATO "the best international defense alliance, I think, ever." She reasserted her view that the US should embrace, rather than alienate, Muslim communities, saying "we want them to report it; we want them to be part of protecting the United States." Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders, campaigning in Arizona on Tuesday, said boosting national security and protecting civil rights must go hand-in-hand. He said he strongly disagrees with calls by some Republicans for heightened domestic surveillance of Muslims. "That would be unconstitutional it would be wrong," Sanders said. Asked about Cruz's comment, none of a half-dozen conservative House Republicans meeting with reporters Tuesday criticized him and most spoke of the need to keep the country safe. "Nearly every neighborhood is patrolled. That's what local law enforcement does," said Rep. Tim Huelskamp of Kansas, who has endorsed Cruz. He said he didn't know specifically what Cruz was referring to. "We need to do everything that makes good common sense, that's in the best interests of national security, but obviously it needs to be done in a way that's consistent with the Constitution," said Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio. Search Keywords: Short link: Malcolm Turnbull occupies an empty chair on Q&A these days, an empty chair draped with a leather jacket. It was there on Monday night, a ghostly reminder of appearances past now that its occupant is busy elsewhere being a flesh-and-blood, suit-and-tie prime minister. Where, oh where, has that Malcolm gone, the man-for-all-seasons, a leather-clad hero in the wings who would deliver us from the torpor of the times? All the news talk of the day was of a double dissolution, but what about the double disillusion, such as that felt by Victorian student Carter Smith, with his moving and heartfelt plea to the panel over a government assault on the Safe Schools program? Or the confusion expressed by first-time voter Elizabeth Chacko, who wondered where all that positive spirit had gone? It was Carter Smith who stopped the show in its tracks when debate shifted to Safe Schools and the fate of a program which, in his words, as a queer student, saves kids from self-harm and suicide. "Trust me," he told the panel. "I see it." A WA Dick Smith worker says it has "best job she has ever had" and she is happy to go down with the sinking ship when the electronic retail giant finally close its doors next month. The Dick Smith manager's comments contrast sharply with her east coast colleagues, who feel "disappointed, uncertain and frustrated" by being kept in the dark about the store closures and whether they will get their full entitlements. The administrator's report estimated $101.6 million at best could be recovered from the sale of Dick Smith stock and other assets. Credit:Jessica Hromas Earlier in the year, the electronics chain collapsed after being unable to secure funding to keep afloat and administrators were called in. Thousands of workers Australian-wide have been left in a lurch, because staff haven't been told the exact closure dates. Egypt's Suez Canal revenues fell for the second. consecutive month to record $401.4 million in February, official data from the canals authority showed. The revenues slowed from $411.8 million in January and $429 million in December last year amid claims that vessels are changing route to the Cape of Good Hope at the southern tip of Africa instead of the Suez Canal due to the drop in world oil prices. Chairman of the canal's authority Mohab Mamish responded to these claims in a statement sent on Tuesday saying that the Suez Canal is the main route for world trade, and no other alternative can take its place in the field of maritime transport. On an annual basis, the revenues saw an increase of 5.1 percent from February 2015 ($381.9 million), the statement added. Last month witnessed a notable increase in revenues, number of transiting vessels and total net tonnage, despite the drop in world oil prices that declined from $110 per barrel in mid 2014 to around $30 per barrel in the last quarter of 2015, Mamish said. The countrys vital waterway saw 1,300 vessels pass through last February, a year-on-year rise of 6.6 percent, said the authority. The canal is the fastest shipping route between Europe and Asia and is one of the country's main sources of foreign currency. Search Keywords: Short link: Los Angeles: A judge has cancelled a high-profile hearing between Apple and the US government after the FBI made the surprise announcement it might have found its own way to hack an iPhone at the centre of the legal dispute. In a motion filed late on Monday in federal court, government lawyers said an "outside party" had shown law enforcement a possible method for unlocking the iPhone 5c used by Syed Rizwan Farook, who with his wife killed 14 people in a terrorism attack on December 2 in San Bernardino, California. The government said it needed time to test the method and if it proved viable, "it should eliminate the need for the assistance from Apple" that had led it to a courtroom showdown. "We must first test this method to ensure it doesn't destroy the data on the phone, but we remain cautiously optimistic," US Department of Justice spokesperson Melanie Newman said in a statement to US media. Another Egyptian film, Who Killed the Armenians?, was awarded the Audience Award and The Vanya Exerjian: Empowering Women and Girls Award Two Egyptian films 'Before the Spring' and 'Who Killed the Armenians?' garnered top awards at the Socially Relevant Film Festival in New York. The festival runs from 15 to 22 March, with both films screened on 19 March at the Bow Tie Chelsea Cinemas. Before the Spring, directed by Ahmed Atef, won the festivals Grand Prize for Best Narrative Feature Award. The feature film which is based on true stories and stars Ahmed Tawfik, Hanan Metawe and Hana Shiha centres on a young blogger who lost both his eyes during Egypt's 2011 revolution, telling his story in flashbacks. Who Killed the Armenians? is a documentary prepared by Egyptian satellite TV anchor Myriam Zaki and director Mohamed Hanafi. The film, which is a documentary on the Armenian genocide, won the Audience Award and The Vanya Exerjian: Empowering Women and Girls Award, which went to Zaki. Through rare footage and documents from World War I, the film investigates the different aspects of the genocide and how it occurred, with filming taking place in Egypt, Armenia and Lebanon. Hanafy and Zaki were both present at the festival for a Q&A session after the screening. The Socially Relevant Film Festivals mission is "raising awareness towards social issues through the powerful medium of cinema," as stated on its website. Films selected for the festival centre on human interest stories, character driven situations and good storytelling without the need to rely on gratuitous violence, crime and violent forms of storytelling. 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: A National Workshop on Customs Valuation, organized jointly by the World Customs Organization (WCO) and the National Customs of El Salvador with the support of CCF Japan, was held in San Salvador, El Salvador, from 9 to 10 March 2016. The opening of the workshop was officiated by the Technical Division Chief, Mr. Jose Walter Melendez Ramirez, who emphasized the evolution of El Salvador Customs and the efforts needed to have better trained officers in global topics such as Customs Valuation and Trade Facilitation. During the Workshop a wide range of Valuation matters were addressed and the participants were thoroughly informed about the latest developments in the field. The work of the WCO Technical Committee on Customs Valuation was discussed and the latest instruments presented to the participants. Special attention was paid to the WCO Revenue Package. In his closing address, Mr. Melendez Ramirez thanked the WCO for its assistance in this successful capacity building mission. Tunisia reopened its border crossings with Libya on Tuesday after a two-week closure in response to a deadly militant attack on a town near the frontier, the interior ministry said. The move came as Tunisia hosted talks with other countries neighbouring Libya on the threat posed by the growing Islamic State (IS) group presence in the lawless North African nation. Both the Ras Jedir crossing on the Mediterranean coast and the Dehiba crossing in the mountainous desert interior reopened at 0600 GMT, ministry spokesman Yasser Mesbah said. An official of the main organisation that looks after the interests of Tunisians working abroad said traffic at Ras Jedir was still light in mid-morning and consisted mainly of goods lorries. Customs officers were carrying out "painstaking searches" of every vehicle, Ali Ouni told AFP from the crossing. Tunisia closed the two crossings on March 7 when dozens of heavily armed jihadists who had slipped across the border from Libya launched coordinated attacks on police and army posts in the town of Ben Guerdane, north of Ras Jedir. Seven civilians and 13 security personnel were killed in the immediate assault and there have been further casualties over the past two weeks as the police and army hunted down militants still at large. Security forces recovered the body of one wanted militant on Monday morning after a firefight through the night that wounded 10 security personnel and a civilian. It is the second time that Tunisia has closed its border with Libya in recent months. It shut the crossings for 15 days following a November 24 attack in the heart of Tunis that killed 12 presidential guards. Thousands of Tunisians are believed to have travelled abroad to join militant groups, many of them to Libya, and closing the border is an obvious security response. But cross-border trade, both legal and illegal, forms a mainstay of the economy of Tunisia's southern provinces, which are among the poorest in the country. Tunisia has failed to curb a rise in extremism since the 2011 revolution that ousted longtime dictator Zine El Abidine Ben Ali. Last year, IS group claimed responsibility for attacks on the Bardo museum in Tunis and a popular resort hotel that killed 59 tourists in total, as well as the suicide bombing that killed the presidential guards. Last month, Washington carried out an air strike on an IS training camp in Libya that killed dozens of militants, likely including the suspected Tunisian mastermind of two of the attacks. The European Union has been increasingly concerned about the IS group presence just across the Mediterranean in Libya. EU officials were due to join UN and African Union representatives at Tuesday's talks in Tunis among Libya's neighbours. Britain has also sent troops to train Tunisian forces guarding the Libyan border, which has been fortified along half of its length. Search Keywords: Short link: The WCO, with the support of the Japan Customs Co-operation Fund (CCF Japan), the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) held a joint seminar on the role of Customs in natural disaster relief at the UN Economic Commission in Africa building in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on 9-10 March 2016. This was the forth in a series of regional seminars planned by the three organizations to give effect to the June 2011 WCO Resolution on the Role of Customs in Natural Disaster Relief. The seminar was attended by over 80 participants, representing 19 WCO Members in the West and Central Africa and East and Southern Africa regions, as well as officials from United Nations agencies, the National Red Cross/Red Crescent (RCRC) societies, national disaster management authorities and non-governmental organizations, among others. Aimed at promoting the use of existing tools and instruments to help Customs administrations together with other relevant agencies respond efficiently to emergency situations, the Seminar also provided an ideal platform for Customs authorities and their key humanitarian aid partners to share experiences and perspectives in order to obtain feedback on Customs future needs and constraints. In accordance with the June 2011 WCO Resolution, it is expected to organize a similar seminar in the only remaining WCO North Africa and Middle East (MENA) region within a year. (Beijing) Shanghai has become the first city in the country to cut the amount of money that companies have to pay for their employees' pensions and health insurance funds, a move the city's government say will save businesses a total of 13.5 billion yuan a year. Shanghai's government said on its official social media accounts on March 21 that firms in the city need to pay an amount equal to 20 percent of an employee's gross salary into pension accounts, down from 21 percent. The amount for health insurance was cut from 11 percent to 10 percent, and contributions for unemployment insurance were cut from 1.5 percent to 1 percent of an employee's salary. The cuts were backdated to January 1, meaning employers will get refunds on the payments they have made over the first three months of the year. Shanghai's government did not link the changes to "supply-side reform," but the central government has said in recent months it wants to find ways to cut costs for businesses around the country to help spur economic growth. Employers in China are legally required to make contributions to pension funds and to help pay for government-backed medical, unemployment and injury insurance programs. The payments cost companies about 30 percent of an employee's gross salary. Workers contribute from 10 percent to 12 percent of their gross salary each month for the benefits. Shanghai is keeping the rates for employees unchanged. The costs of the benefits, which commentators have criticized as among the highest in the world, have been under intense scrutiny in recent years as businesses, particularly small private firms, feel the pinch of a slowing economy. Premier Li Keqiang said at a press conference at the end of a meeting of the legislature on March 16 that the costs are too high and the government will consider lowering them across the country. Shanghai's vice mayor, Shi Guanghui, told the Wenhui Daily newspaper on March 21 that the cuts will not hurt because the government had collected a surplus of 300 billion yuan over several years from companies and their workers. The surplus last year alone was 20 billion yuan. Shanghai and rich provinces on the coast can afford to make cuts to help struggling manufacturers, but poor regions in central and western parts of the country might need the help of the central government to make similar changes, analysts said. (Rewritten by Li Rongde) By West Kentucky Star Staff Mar. 22, 2016 | 05:57 AM | PADUCAH, KY The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet is seeking public input today on plans to reconfigure the I-24 interchange at Highway 60 in Paducah. The project, referred to as a double crossover diamond, is designed to relieve congestion around Exit 4, improve safety, and support continued traffic growth along the Kentucky Oaks Mall area. Engineers and consultants have scheduled a public meeting today from 5:00-7:00 pm at McCracken County High School's auxiliary gym. KYTC personnel will give a project overview presentation at 5:15, and again at 6:15 pm if necessary. Otherwise, the meeting will be an informal, open house format so the public can ask questions and make comments. The proposed interchange would eliminate traffic lights for drivers who need to turn left getting on I-24, or for anyone coming off the interstate. For now, the only double crossover diamond interchange in Kentucky is in Lexington, at the busy intersection of Harrodsburg Road and New Circle Road. Similar designs are in place in 24 states, and are being studied in 46 states. Handouts will be provided, and a video detailing the proposed improvements, drive-through tutorials for the interchange, and other displays will also be available at the meeting. Written comments will be accepted during the meeting and up to 15 days after the meeting at the KYTC District 1 Office in Paducah. (Beijing) The operator of the country's railroads has blamed an increase in problems with trains last year some of them fatal on quality standards falling at a major manufacturer. The management of China Railway Corp. (CRC) heard at a meeting in December that the railroad system experienced 1,710 cases of train malfunctions last year, including 210 instances in which people on board were killed or hurt, one of the people at the meeting told Caixin. The first figure was an increase of 42 percent from 2014, the source said, adding that the CRC's management blames the rise of problems on quality standards falling at China Railway Rolling Stock Corp. Ltd., the country's major train maker. The CRC's leadership has also said its local offices should take some responsibility because they overlooked quality issues when making purchases and did not tell headquarters even after they discovered safety risks, the person who attended the meeting said. He said that the CRC's management has ordered its local offices to establish a system for checking the quality of trains, and that it planned to seek compensation for "serious accidents" that are due to the poor quality of trains. However, Zuo Dajie, a professor at Xi'an Jiaotong University in the northwestern province of Shaanxi, said that only the National Railway Administration (NRA), which regulates the industry, has the power to determine whether trains have quality problems. "The CRC's argument is one-sided and its objectivity is questionable," Zuo said. "It's hard for the user and producer of the train to reach a consensus (over quality standards), and that's why a third party is needed." An employee of the NRA, which examines trains every quarter and during busy travel periods, said the CRC can report problems to the NRA but only the industry regulator can issue official reports regarding quality problems. A CRRC employee said the complaints by the CRC were part of a strategy aimed at controlling the railroad system. The CRRC and the CRC have been involved in a string of disputes since the Ministry of Railways was broken up in 2013. The CRC engaged in a spat with the manufacturer over who owned intellectual property rights to trains in early 2015. Talks on the issue stalled for months before the two sides reached an agreement in October to share IPR. The CRC stopped buying trains from the CRRC before that deal was struck. The CRC later started handling the upkeep of its trains on its own, a move that has cost the CRRC business. The value of its orders related to maintaining the country's standard trains fell from 3.04 billion yuan in 2013 to 873 million yuan last year, the CRRC's financial reports show. The CRC's financial reports show it handled repairs on around 400 bullet trains last year. (Rewritten by Chen Na) By West Kentucky Star Staff Mar. 22, 2016 | 12:17 PM | PADUCAH, KY Paducah police are seeking the publics help in locating a man wanted for assaulting two halfway house employees. Officers said 43-year-old Lovell Martin of Paducah assaulted the two employees at the state-run halfway house on Clarence Gaines Street on February 26 at around 6:00 pm, then fled on foot. Martin is charged with with third-degree assault and a parole violation. Paducah Police are asking anyone with information about his wherebouts to call them at 270-444-8550 or Crime Stoppers at 443-TELL. By West Kentucky Star Staff Mar. 22, 2016 | 09:22 AM | PADUCAH, KY A Paducah woman was injured Tuesday morning in a two-vehicle collision in McCracken County. According to the McCracken County Sheriff's Department, the crash happened just after 6 am along the 2400 block of Krebs Station Road. Deputies said that 50-year-old Trina Dawes of Paducah was apparently across the center line when she topped a hill and struck another vehicle head on driven by 66-year-old Robert Michel of Paducah. Both vehicles left the roadway after the impact. Dawes had to be extricated by mechanical means by the Hendron Lone Oak Fire Department. She was transported to Baptist Health Paducah for her injuries. Traffic on Krebs Station was interrupted for about an hour during the investigation and cleanup. 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. 21, 2016 | 09:45 PM | BENTON, KY A Marshall County man was arrested on marijuana and other charges Friday. According to the Marshall County Sheriff's Office, deputies went to a home on Capp Springs Road in reference to a man with active warrants. Upon arrival, deputies noticed a strong odor of marijuana near the side door of the home. Deputies made contact with a man in the back bedroom of the home who admitted to smoking marijuana prior to their arrival. He told deputies where the marijuana and drug paraphernalia were located. Deputies were given permission to search the home. During the search, deputies found sandwich bags, digital scales, cash, marijuana and other assorted drug paraphernalia. Thirty-five-year-old Joshua A. Neeble of Benton was arrested on three active warrants. He was also charged with trafficking marijuana less than eight ounces and possession of drug paraphernalia. Neeble was lodged in the Marshall County Detention Center. By The Associated Press Mar. 22, 2016 | 09:40 AM | BRUSSELS, BELGIUM A Belgian prosecutor says police raids are happening around the country after two men ``probably'' staged suicide bombings at the Brussels airport and a third fled. The prosecutor says the third suspect is actively being sought by police. At least 34 people were killed and nearly 190 wounded in the two airport bombings and another in the Brussels subway system. Prosecutors say a house search in the Brussels neighborhood of Schaerbeek has "led to the discovery of an explosive device containing among other things, nails." Investigators also found chemical products and an Islamic State flag. Their statement said the Islamic State group had claimed responsibility for today's deadly attacks at the Brussels airport and a subway station via a press agency but that this information still needs to be verified. Prosecutors say it's not possible at this stage to establish any links between the attacks and those in Paris on Nov. 13 that left 130 people dead. Prime Minister Charles Michel said the country will tighten security at its borders. He declared three days of national mourning after what he says were probably the most tragic attacks the country has seen in peacetime. A pair of bodies discovered in Kentucky Lake this week (Beijing) China's insurance regulator is set to reject two plans by Anbang Insurance Group, including one that could have seen it take over America's Starwood Hotels and Resorts Worldwide Inc., owner of the Sheraton and Westin brands. A person close to the China Insurance Regulatory Commission said the regulator had "clearly a disapproving attitude" toward both plans because completing the deals would break rules banning insurers from investing more than 15 percent of their assets abroad. The other investment would have seen Anbang bid for luxury hotel manager Strategic Hotels & Resorts Inc., which is owned by the investment firm Blackstone. Public records show the 11-year-old insurance and investment company has spent almost US$ 7 billion, or 43.8 billion yuan, on foreign acquisitions since 2014. It bought the Waldorf Astoria, a landmark hotel in New York, last year. The latest proposals would have cost the firm another 127.8 billion yuan. Anbang Group has not said how much it owns. Public data on its subsidiaries show its two main operating arms, units providing life and property insurance, had assets of 120 billion and 209 billion yuan, respectively, at the end of 2014. Anbang Group also owns 35 percent of Chengdu Rural and Commercial Bank, which at the end of 2014 had assets worth more than 620 billion yuan. The government's capital requirement was just one of the reasons the regulator gave for opposing Anbang's plans to acquire Starwood and Strategic Hotels, the source said. He did not say what the others were. A consortium led by Anbang offered to buy Starwood for US$ 12.8 billion on March 14, outbidding Marriott International Inc., which offered US$ 10.8 billion. It raised the offer to US$ 13.2 billion four days later, but was bested by Marriott, which said it would pay US$ 13.6 billion. Starwood said it accepted Marriott's offer, but since the deal was not completed, analysts said it could back out if Anbang made an offer high enough to cover any penalty costs. (Rewritten by Wang Yuqian) Rita Redmond was a true lady who felt that every pupil had something to gift to the world Loading... Paapa Essiedu cannot sit still. When we meet in a tiny attic space at the RSC's London rehearsal rooms, the actor is like a human-sized dynamo. He stretches out his legs, he sits sideways on a chair, he stands up and sits down, he hugs his knees to his chest. He moves constantly. And that's just in the first five minutes. There's a restless, roving exuberance to Essiedu. And it makes you wonder whether it's all going straight into his latest role: the troubled prince Hamlet. The answer to that is: perhaps. "Hamlet demands an enormous investment of your own personality," Essiedu says at one point during our interview. Which could mean his Hamlet is one of the most hyperactive we've seen. But other than that fairly vague statement, Essiedu won't be drawn on how he's going to approach the Dane. "If I told you," he says, smiling "you wouldn't come, would you?" But he does reveal that Simon Godwin's RSC production will be in modern dress: "It's going to be very now, obviously we're still in Denmark and Elsinore, but we've taken on loads of influences from the whole company. You won't have seen the play performed in the world we're performing it in." One thing that we can also safely say is that, unlike some Hamlets you may have seen recently, this production won't be a star vehicle. The main reason for that is that the 25-year-old Essiedu is a relatively little-known name. He's worked on London's fringe theatre scene, once at the Royal Court and he's been part of the RSC's company in the past. Hamlet will be Essiedu's most high profile role to date. "I hadn't learnt my lines and I thought: Oh my God this is going to be the end of my career" That's not to say he hasn't already turned heads. In fact, he's already managed to hit headlines. In 2014 he was the understudy for the role of Edmund in Sam Mendes' King Lear at the National Theatre. And half way through one performance he was called upon to do his acting duty. Luckily, prior experience meant he was fully prepared. "The last time I was at the RSC I was understudying someone it was a girl actually, we were doing a cross-gender play and there was this one night where no one knew where she was. And I hadn't learnt my lines," he says. "I thought: Oh my God this is going to be the end of my career and I've only just graduated from drama school!" The actress turned up with two minutes to go and Essiedu learnt his lesson: he vowed that never again would he put himself in that position. So when he had to step up a year later, Essiedu was ready. Eye witness accounts confirm that he was tremendous. From Walthamstow in east London, Essiedu was planning on being a doctor. He applied to do medicine at UCL, but quickly realised when faced with the prospect of six more years at school' that it probably wasn't for him. It was during a subsequent gap year that he began to act and joined the National Youth Theatre. "It was the first thing that I did because I enjoyed it," he says, simply. It's impossible not to like Essiedu. Throughout our interview he's a cheeky, laid back presence: he jokes, belly laughs and mocks. And he is keen to downplay the importance of this role on his career. "It means everything because it's a dream of many young actors to play a part like this in a place like this," he explains. "But absolutely not do I think about it as a seminal moment in my career because then that's the end of my career." I think it's fair to say he's also prone to exaggeration. When I ask who he'd like to work with, he reels off names such as Ivo van Hove and Benedict Andrews. And you can see he's genuinely stoked to be spending his time with Simon Godwin, who he says is great', and the rest of the company. Paapa Essiedu rehearsing Hamlet Manuel Harlan Essiedu seems to have taken this mega role one of the biggest challenges that an actor can face in his stride. Is he not even a little worried? "I think I'd be a fool if I wasn't nervous," he says, "But I feel in safe hands with the company. It's a company piece, so as much as the play is called Hamlet, the pressure is spread amongst all of us." That's a nice theory, but even Essiedu backtracks slightly after I look at him with an arched eyebrow: "I say that now but on the first night I'll probably be crying in the wings." In total he has seen five versions of Hamlet, including Benedict Cumberbatch's ("I thought he was brilliant"), which Essiedu watched knowing that he would soon take on the same role. But, he insists, this version will be a totally different experience. "Benedict is this enormous superstar and Cumbermania was everywhere," he says, "that just won't be the same with this production." I'm not so sure: give it time and the world might just get on board with Paapamania. Hamlet runs at the Royal Shakespeare Theatre from 23 March to 13 August. At a pre-drupa press conference hosted in its headquarters in Belgium, Agfa Graphics unveiled its plans for the upcoming drupa show in Dusseldorf. Agfa Graphics President Stefaan Vanhooren: Print and print technology continue to play a crucial role despite the digitization of our daily lives. Print volumes undoubtedly suffer in particular areas and applications (e.g. newspapers, magazines and some commercial jobs), yet they are still growing in packaging, wide-format and industrial applications, as well as in the emerging economies, generating plenty of business opportunities. And even in mature printing markets and regions, our innovative thinking and solutions enable our customers to always stay ahead. As a leading player with a truly global footprint in the print markets, we invite visitors to drupa with the slogan We Embody Print, underlining our commitment to both the offset printing and the wide-format printing industry, while also opening doors to new print markets and applications in need of innovative solutions. At drupa 2016, Agfa Graphics will present an overview of its product portfolio including following new products: Wide-format solutions All Jeti and Anapurna wide-format solutions are designed in accordance with Agfa Graphics matched components approach. The Anapurna roll-to-roll and hybrid solutions will be driven by the Asanti workflow at the booth. So will the versatile Jeti Mira with the unique dockable roll-to-roll option and the highly productive Jeti Tauro, now for the first time in a automation line-up including the new automatic board feeder and unloading unit. We continue developing the common Jeti platform with the quality and productivity demands of sign & display printing companies in mind, said Dominiek Arnout, Vice President Inkjet, Agfa Graphics. Users get the most out of our wide-format systems thanks to the tight integration with the Asanti workflow. Now, with the automation features added, the entire printing process is fully streamlined to deliver maximum productivity. The new Acorta 3120 HD, targeted at very thick or dense materials, completes the Acorta family of cutting plotters. {youtube}QU1Rx5-SIwI|600|500{/youtube} ECO3 In the field of offset printing, Agfa Graphics focuses on transforming technology into sustainable solutions that create value for its customers. The environmental impact of these solutions is an important factor, yet Agfa Graphics is taking this one step further by adding total cost of operations and convenience to the equation. ECO3 stands for Eco-friendly, Economic and Extremely Convenient. With the introduction of the Azura printing plate in 2004, we pioneered chemistry-free prepress solutions; we are still the industry leader, explained Joan Vermeersch, Vice President Technology, Marketing & Business Development Prepress. In the meantime, we also keep improving conventional systems to become more ECO3. Recent improvements for chemistry-free applications include the Attiro VHS clean-out unit with the N95-VCF (violet chemistry-free) printing plates for the newspaper industry, the new Azura TU VLF chemistry-free plates for very large-format offset applications in combination with the new Azura CX150 clean-out unit, and the Azura TE direct-on-press plates, that feature image contrast as well as daylight stability and fast roll-up, and thus offer a tremendous advantage when going on press. For drupa, Agfa Graphics also adds the Avalon N8-90 CtP to its family of thermal computer-to-plate systems, and the new Energy Elite Eco printing plate. With a best-in-class run length for no-bake positive thermal plates, the latter is both mechanically and chemically compatible with todays needs in sheetfed and heatset applications. Also new on the booth will be the pallet loader for the high-end, automated Advantage newspaper CtP systems, and the Advantage N Essentials CtP series, which takes computer-to-plate technology for newspaper printers back to its essence while providing equal user-friendliness and reliability. Software cloud solutions Cloud printing is one of the hottest trends in the industry, said Andy Grant, Global Head of Software, Agfa Graphics. As we can boast our own data centers and our dedicated managed services department, we have a unique position in offering cloud solutions with the highest possible data security. Customers benefit from cloud solutions in terms of working capital, energy consumption, space requirements, maintenance and service cost, while they are always up-to-date with the latest workflow version. Besides the new Apogee 10 and Arkitex Production 2.0, Agfa Graphics announced PrintSphere, offering print service providers a cloud-based solution for online data exchange. PrintSphere provides a standardized way to send and receive files including secure back-ups of production databases, all seamlessly integrated with the Apogee, Arkitex and Asanti workflow software. Innovative solutions for the packaging industry @Touchpoint Packaging One of the most outspoken trends in the printing industry is the growth of the packaging and label sector. Today, Agfa Graphics is active in packaging with its offset plates, and serves certain areas with flexo plates through distributors. At drupa 2016, Agfa Graphics will be present at the visionary Touchpoint Packaging in hall 12 with technology and software solutions for future packaging design, production, authentication and customization or personalization: Arziro Design, a state-of-the-art plugin for Adobe IllustratorO to create counterfeit-proof artwork, and Arziro Authenticate, a unique and powerful hybrid authentication and track & trace solution; A range of functional ink technologies for new smart packaging applications. Industrial Printing UV-ink technology, with its ability to print on a wide range of substrates, opens up opportunities for wide-format printing companies in the field of industrial applications. In addition, industry players recognize the technical possibilities of Agfa Graphics wide-format systems and start installing them in their own production halls. Now that industry integrators show interest, Agfa Graphics gives them access to printing technology such as ink and software, acting as a partner to integrate print in manufacturing by leveraging its know-how on fluids like inks, primers, white and varnish. The use of low-migration inks in the food packaging markets has already created attractive possibilities for packaging applications. Multiple opportunities present themselves with regard to flooring, decoration or bottling, as well as in the automotive industry, or when it comes to glass or metal printing. Mobile Publishing With its Eversify mobile content publishing software, Agfa Graphics addresses magazine and newspaper publishers that seek a solution to diversify their content to a wide range of devices (smartphones, tablets) at any moment of the day in an automated way. The SaaS solution can be integrated in any editorial, content management or InDesignO-based layout system. Eversify creates a world of possibilities for more interactive and engaging reader communication. Agfa Graphics www.agfagraphics.com.au Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 21/03/2016 (2406 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Its probably little consolation to anyone, but apparently its not just seniors and naive consumers who are susceptible to fraudulent pitches from high ranking Nigerian princes and their ilk. No less sophisticated an organization than Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries believes it was recently victimized. The provincial crown corporation paid out close to $500,000 to a bank account it thought belonged to a supplier before the corporation with $1.3 billion in annual revenue realized it was being swindled. CHRISTOPHER PIKE / BRANDON SUN FILES Manitoba Liquor & Lotteries paid out close to $500,000 to a bank account it thought belonged to a supplier before the corporation realized it was being swindled. Last month, MLL filed a statement of claim for $478,215.52. For whatever its worth, the defendant in the suit is listed as none other than John Doe, which is another way of saying the identity of the perpetrator is not yet known. According to the statement of claim, MLL made five payments totalling $478,215.52 between November 15, 2015 and January 16, 2016 to a Toronto-Dominion Bank account in Red Deer, Alta., under the assumption it was making payments to a supplier. The Red Deer bank account was different than the one theyd typically used, because on Nov. 10, it received an email from someone named Jeff Lambert, purporting to be the controller for the supplier, asking MLL to change the bank account where it sends its electronic fund transfers (EFT) on the account. It wasnt until Feb. 3, 2016 that MLL realized that was not the bank account of the supplier and that the supplier (whose identity has not been disclosed) had no one named Jeff Lambert working for them. According to the MLLs lawyer, Ross McFayden, a criminal investigation is underway. This John Doe did commit a fraud on Manitoba Liquor and Lotteries. We are pretty sure of that, McFayden said. The only real purpose of the lawsuit is to gain some protection that is available under the Bank Act to freeze the funds, McFayden said. The claim asks the court for an order restraining TD from making any payments from the account to the John Doe or any third party. McFayden said the understanding is that the funds are still in the bank account. Our understanding is that all the funds are frozen, said McFayden.It is fair to say that MLL is relatively optimistic it will be able to avoid any loss, The matter may serve as a reminder that even the most solid system of financial checks and balances are not always perfect. The TD Bank was included as a defendant in the suit, which also includes a statement that the MLL is not seeking damages from the Toronto-Dominion bank but reserves the right to do so. martin.cash@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 21/03/2016 (2406 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. The RCMP allege the main contractor at Winnipegs police headquarters padded construction invoices after the scandal over cost hikes had already erupted at city hall and an audit concluded the project was severely mismanaged. In court documents, the Mounties allege Caspian Construction inflated quotes or invoices from nine of its subcontractors between February 2011 and December 2014. As part of a fraud and forgery investigation, the RCMP allege Caspian received invoices from subcontractors, increased the amounts on those invoices and then submitted inflated invoices to the city. No charges have been laid as a result of the investigation and none of the allegations has been proven in court. As well, Caspian president Armik Babakhanians has denied the allegations. Some of these alleged alterations took place after September 2013, when the disclosure of $17 million worth of additional police-HQ construction precipitated a scandal at city hall, while a fraction took place after July 2014, when a KPMG audit concluded the construction project was severely mismanaged. The RCMP have been engaged in a criminal investigation of the police headquarters that began in December 2014 with the execution of a search warrant at Caspians McGillivray Boulevard offices. Over the course of three days, the Mounties seized thousands of financial documents contained in four filing cabinets and 46 bankers boxes. The RCMP also copied six terabytes of electronic data and 200,000 emails from Caspian computers. The materials seized during the execution of the initial search warrant and other information led the Mounties to execute a second search warrant at the police-headquarters complex itself in June 2015, according to statements made by RCMP Const. Julie Cote in an application for permission to conduct the second search. In this application, Cote stated she believed employees and/or owners at Caspian defrauded the city by submitting falsified documentation in order to benefit financially, stating the RCMP have uncovered numerous instances where employees of Caspian inflated quotes and/or invoices, which resulted in Caspian charging the city more than the cost of the work. Cote stated a review of a small fraction of 81 change orders and contract-change notifications related to the project resulted in the city spending $2.5 million more than necessary. Phil Hossack / Winnipeg Free Press files The cost of the Winnipeg Police headquarters has, once again, increased. For example, a $40,950 invoice from Calado Crane Rentals was submitted to the city as $93,450, a $21,034 Wes-Man Mechanical invoice was increased to $41,034 and the city was quoted $725,551 for work Caspian paid Western Industrial Services $242,526, Cote alleges in the request for the June search warrant. Cote states Ottawa-based structural engineering company Adjeleian Allen Rubelli, hired by the city in 2011 to complete the police-HQ projects design, recommended the costs to the city based on the submission of of Caspians inflated documents and in turn, forwarded them to the City of Winnipeg for payment. On this basis, the Mounties sought access in June 2015 to the firms police-HQ office, where they seized binders and spreadsheets. Cote also said the Mounties noted several times where Caspian displayed questionable business practices, such as requesting sub-trades to create fictitious invoices, billing the city more than once for the same work, or billing the City of Winnipeg for work done at unrelated jobs, in some cases apart from the change orders and contract-change notifications related to the police-HQ project. Peter Chang, the principal engineer at Adjeleian Allen Rubelli, said his firm is co-operating with the RCMP. Chang said while he cannot comment on the specifics of the allegations, he said they are not true. The City of Winnipeg, meanwhile, would not address the fact some of the alleged invoice and quote changes took place when the police-HQ project already faced considerable public scrutiny. Given the ongoing RCMP investigation into the Winnipeg Police Service headquarters project, we will not be commenting, city spokeswoman Alissa Clark said. Jonathan Hildebrand, a spokesman for the mayors office, reiterated Mayor Brian Bowmans support for a public inquiry if outstanding questions remain following the investigation. Hildebrand said all options are on the table with respect to legal recourse to recoup taxpayer money should it be determined taxpayer money was misappropriated and noted efforts taken by the current administration to beef up capital-project oversight and create an integrity commissioner. bartley.kives@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 21/03/2016 (2406 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. OTTAWA Manitoba Sen. Terry Stratton justified a Senate expense by saying he had been assigned to visit Calgary to cool the fires of ardour between a former Conservative staffer and a woman the government did not approve of. But his claim for travel expenses was rejected. Auditor General Michael Ferguson first rejected the unusual expense claim last June, and former Supreme Court Justice Ian Binnie agreed with him today. Binnie ruled the 2012 claim by Stratton, who has since retired as a senator, was not an acceptable use of Senate travel funds. MIKE DEAL / FREE PRESS FILES Terry Stratton In Binnies binding arbitration report reviewing the expenses of 14 of the 30 senators identified as having faulty expense claims by the auditor general last year, Stratton is one of just four who did not see any change to the amount they must repay the Senate. Manitoba Conservative Sen. Don Plett had his amount reduced from $1,120 to $404.45. Last June, Auditor General Michael Ferguson called out Stratton for claiming two trips to Calgary in June and November 2012, which Ferguson said were not for acceptable Senate business. Stratton claimed the first, about $3,288, as a farewell trip coming about 10 months before his required retirement from the Senate. The second trip, costing $2,178, he claimed as meetings. His wife accompanied him on both trips. In his response to the audit, Stratton did not explain the reason for the second trip, but said he should not have to repay the money because he retired two weeks early and saved the Senate two weeks of air fares and per diem expenses. Binnie dismissed that explanation, saying at best it was rough justice and that a potential savings from early retirement is not the same thing as a legitimate expense claim. Binnie said the first trip in June was primarily of a personal nature. In Fergusons report, Stratton explained the trip (he was in Calgary for three days and his wife was there for five days), by saying his leadership had asked him to deal with a sensitive issue that needed to be dealt with directly with the individual. It did not to my knowledge, involve the government; rather its aim was to limit embarrassment to two of the countrys institutions. In his meeting with Binnie, Stratton expanded and explained he was asked to go and convince this person to stop cavorting with a woman that lets just say the two of them out in public caused embarrassment both to the [University of Calgary] and to the Senate of Canada. Stratton told Binnie he took his wife to keep the trip under the radar. The individual is not named. The Free Press has not been able to reach Stratton for comment. Binnies review of the expense claims flagged by the auditor found further explanations provided by the 14 senators were good enough to conclude 45 per cent of the amounts owing was in fact legitimate. That includes some of the claims by Plett. Plett was flagged by Ferguson for making faulty claims in the amount of $4,095. Plett immediately repaid $2,975, saying two personal trips were claimed by mistake. Another trip from Calgary to Ottawa in July 2011, costing $714.53, was singled out by Ferguson because Plett had been in Calgary for personal reasons. However Plett says he was asked to return to Ottawa by then Manitoba regional minister Vic Toews to meet with the head of Corrections Canada. Ferguson said Plett should only have claimed what it would have cost to fly back from Winnipeg, rather than from Calgary but Binnie disagreed and said the expense was justified. However, two trips from Winnipeg to Montreal in December 2011 and February 2012 were not justified. Concerning the first trip, Plett says he cannot remember who he met with, a memory lapse which Binnie says disqualifies the claim. On the second trip, Plett met with Sen. Leo Housakis but also admits he attended a Winnipeg Jets game against the Montreal Canadiens, which was his main reason for going to Montreal. Plett now must repay the Senate another $404.45. Binnie said he didnt think any senators were trying to dupe the system but many didnt put enough thought into some of their claims. In my view, however, the problem for many of the Senators singled out by the Auditor General was not so much the clarity of the rules as it was a casual attitude towards the limits of their entitlement, he wrote. He said senators should treat expense claims the same as they would personal expenses and determine if the cost is worth the benefit of the trip. Stratton, Plett and the other 14 senators who turned to Binnie for binding arbitration now have 30 days to repay the money. Former Liberals Sharon Carstairs and Rod Zimmer, who are said to owe $7,528 and $176,014 respectively, did not opt for binding arbitration but now also have 30 days to repay the money. If Plett has not paid within the 30 days, his salary will be docked that amount. If Stratton, Carstairs and Zimmer have not repaid the money in time, the Senate will take legal action against them. mia.rabson@freepress.mb.ca Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 22/03/2016 (2405 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Manitoba students may be disappointed to unpack their suitcases, but for educators and parents, the decision to cancel school trips to Europe was a no-brainer. Deadly explosions Tuesday shut transportation networks after extremists opened fire in the Brussels airport and several of them detonated suicide belts. Dozens of people were killed and hundreds injured. For Louis Riel School Division superintendent Duane Brothers, it took only one minute to decide College Jeanne Sauve students werent flying to Paris Tuesday. JOE BRYKSA / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS FILES Louis Riel School Division superintendant Duane Brothers. I was up at 5:36 this morning, caught the news, and we took it from there. I contacted the school principal, I contacted the parents, Brothers said. Overwhelmingly, the parents were on the same wavelength as we were. They were travelling into the heart of it. The grades 11 and 12 students were to travel first to Paris, then Brussels, and then to Bruges, also in Belgium. It was educational. This is a French-immersion school. A lot of our schools go to different parts of Europe. They go to see museums, visit historic sites, become immersed in the language, Brothers said. I imagine the kids are disappointed. They were probably all packed and ready to go, but people concurred quite strongly with not going. The travel company had was contacted. There will be some reimbursement for the trip, but Brothers didnt know how much. Meanwhile, Pembina Trails School Division had students scheduled to travel to Brussels Tuesday afternoon, en route to France. Air Canada offered to reroute the students through Paris instead. The school division talked with parents and reached its decision just before noon. The students from Oak Park High School are staying home. Pembina Trails has Vincent Massey students in Europe but they are currently in Germany. They left March 18 and return after spring break next week. Other schools, such as West Kildonan Collegiate, have European trips booked for later this week. But with airports around the world on high alert, school administrators here are meeting to determine whether those plans should be scrapped. Meanwhile, a spokesperson with the Winnipeg School Division said none of its student trips has been directly affected. We have seven student trips planned either by parent groups or WSD departing over the next few days. None of them is travelling in or through Brussels. Were monitoring the situation and will observe any travel warnings issued by the (federal) government concerning travel in Europe, the spokesperson said. Meanwhile, the Brandon School Division says Tuesdays attacks in Brussels will not affect international trips planned by several local high schools over spring break. Students from Vincent Massey High School and Crocus Plains Regional Secondary School are heading out of province today for trips to Spain and Hawaii, respectively, while Ecole secondaire Neelin High School students travel to Spain Saturday. Our senior administration has reviewed Spains travel advisory status this morning and as their advisory alert has not changed, there is no reason at this time to alter our plans, BSDs communications officer Terri Curtis said. Both groups travelling to Europe will stop in Paris briefly on their way to Spain. There will be a layover in Paris where students will be kept in the secure side of the airport, Curtis said. Vincent Masseys nine-day trip was supposed to feature stops in France and Spain, but division administration altered the itinerary in February. Security concerns after the Nov. 13, Paris attacks were the driving force behind the decision. During Monday nights division board meeting, trustees approved upcoming overseas travel plans for two groups of Massey students. In May, 14 jazz students are set to fly to Havana, Cuba, and next November, 35 to 40 drama students will be on their way to London, England. Board chairman Mark Sefton says that while student safety is No. 1, its important to find a balance with travel opportunities. Once the approval in principle has been granted, then its up to the administration to continue to monitor situations in those destination countries to make sure that our students will be safe, Sefton said. with files from the Brandon Sun Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 22/03/2016 (2405 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Who but those who have experienced it can appreciate the soul-crushing anguish of mental illness? Afflictions of the mind can be paralyzing and fundamentally change the way we perceive ourselves (I am worthless), anticipate the future (my prospects are hopeless) and experience the world (life is unfair and unforgiving). The combination of self-loathing, hopelessness and despair can tragically lead to suicide. Parliaments joint committee on physician-assisted death, nevertheless, urged the federal government not to exclude individuals with psychiatric conditions from being considered eligible. Their reasoning comes down to this: mental suffering is no less profound than physical suffering, so denying individuals with mental illness access to physician-hastened death would be discriminatory and a violation of their Charter rights. People with mental illness are no strangers to discrimination. Two-thirds suffer in silence for fear of rejection and mistreatment. Only one in five children who need mental health services receive them, either because of concerns they will be stigmatized or supports are simply not available. Doors are constantly being closed on the mentally ill, denying them stable employment, social opportunities, secure food and housing, and sometimes fundamental protections under our criminal justice system. They are marginalized, victimized and vilified. Mental illness is one of the best predictors, more so than poverty, of inequitable access to health care in Canada. People with severe mental illness die about 25 years earlier than adults in the general population. Making a fairness argument for the availability of physician-hastened death for a group of people treated so unfairly seems a cruel irony. In Oregon, having a psychiatric condition does not preclude eligibility for physician-assisted suicide. However, that condition must not impair the patients capacity to give consent and must, as in every other eligible case, occur alongside a medical condition with a prognosis of less than six months. Experts I met who are involved in Oregons Death With Dignity Act, in place 17 years now, could not fathom the idea of providing assisted suicide purely on the basis of non-terminal psychiatric disorders. In the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, psychological suffering stemming from either a physical or emotional condition is considered a valid legal basis for physician-hastened death. They account for a small but growing minority of death-hastening cases. Last month, a critically important study was published in the journal JAMA Psychiatry by American psychiatrist Scott Kim. Kim and his team reviewed 66 case summaries, published online by the Dutch regional euthanasia review committee between 2011 and 2014, of people who had received either euthanasia or assisted suicide for psychiatric reasons. The majority were women, with issues including depression, psychosis, post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, substance abuse, various forms of cognitive impairment (intellectual disability, early dementia), eating disorders, prolonged grief and autism. Most had personality disorders and were described as socially isolated and lonely. In one quarter of instances, despite differences of opinion between physicians, death hastening proceeded. In about one third of cases initially refused, most were carried out by new physicians willing to comply. The parliamentary committees position seems premised on the recognition physical suffering and mental suffering can be equally devastating. That does not mean, however, they can be approached the same. The nature of mental illness often leads people to see themselves as worthless, to believe their situation is hopeless, and to perceive often reflected through societys judgmental gaze that their lives have little value. But this context should help us see a death-hastening response is fraught with hazard and runs counter to a recovery-oriented practice advocated by the Mental Health Commission of Canada. Like all Canadians, people with mental illness have rights that are protected under the Constitution. And like all Canadians, these rights need to be balanced against the interests of a free and just society, wherein vulnerable persons must be protected. The most effective protections health care providers offer patients are built on the foundation of a caring and committed therapeutic relationship. For patients whose illness tends toward self-destruction, and for patients whose suffering is rooted in social conditions such as loneliness, a physician-assisted death option will crack that relational foundation. Current evidence indicates vulnerable persons will fall through that crack. The committee, in its wisdom, expressed confidence physicians would be able to figure this out. Hopefully, as lawmakers draft legislation in the days ahead, deeper wisdom will prevail. Manitoba psychiatrist Dr. Harvey Max Chochinov was chairman of the federal governments external panel for options to Carter v. Canada and is an adviser to the Vulnerable Persons Standard (www.vps-npv.ca). Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 22/03/2016 (2405 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. If elected, a Progressive Conservative government would improve doctor retention rates by the end of its first term, PC leader Brian Pallister announced today. Outside of the Selkirk and District General Hospital, Pallister said the party would achieve this goal by establishing a better recruitment program and hiring experts to improve processes. Pallister said they would also review the levels of incentives currently being offered by the province, adding he wouldnt rule out increasing financial incentives. WAYNE GLOWACKI / WINNIPEG FREE PRESS Progressive Conservative leader Brian Pallister speaks Tuesday about how a PC government would improve the recruitment and retention of doctors in Manitoba. He believes doctors are being sent out of the province because of the high taxes and general attitude conveyed about Manitoba. The current doctor retention program, administered by Doctors Manitoba, offers provincially-funded incentives to both family physicians and specialists who practise here for five years. The NDP says it has added 732 more doctors since 1999. The NDP government has also provided $500,000 for physician resettlement and $600,000 for specialist recruitment. Indonesia on Monday protested the Chinese coast guard's rescue of a ship it says was fishing illegally in Indonesian waters. An Indonesian fisheries ministry patrol ship had intercepted the Chinese vessel on Saturday within Indonesia's exclusive economic zone which overlaps with the southernmost reaches of the South China Sea, according to Indonesia. Eight crewmen were detained. The fishing vessel Kway Fey was being towed when a Chinese coastguard vessel collided with it, allowing its escape. Indonesian Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi told reporters after meeting with a senior Chinese diplomat that the government wants Beijing to explain its actions. Marsudi said China's coast guard violated our sovereignty and called on China to respect international law. China's expansive claims to most of the South China Sea have raised tensions with several Southeast Asian countries, especially as China reclaims land on reefs and builds infrastructure in disputed areas. Indonesia is not involved in the territorial disputes and Marsudi said that had not changed. But authorities are concerned an increasingly assertive China might enlarge its claims to include Indonesia's Natuna Islands. Indonesia's military chief has said it was strengthening its forces there. Indonesia has destroyed dozens of foreign ships for illegally fishing in its waters, and maritime and fisheries minister Susi Pudjiastuti called on Beijing to stand against illegal and unregulated fishing. Local media reported a similar incident in 2013 when a Chinese patrol vessel snatched back a detained Chinese ship from Indonesian control. Lee William Mullica and Irene Konings Mullica became proud parents of Thomas Blaine Mullica on Aug. 19, 1948. He grew up in Waupun, Wis., attended Waupun High School and enlisted in the U.S. Army and served from approximately 1966 to 1969. Toms love was magic starting as a young boy. He began performing locally wherever he could. He went on to own the Tom Foolery shop in Atlanta, lived and performed in Paris and Malaysia before performing in Las Vegas, followed by almost two decades in Branson, Missouri, performing his Red Skelton Tribute. He and Stephen recently moved back to Las Vegas where he was returning again to his magic career. Tom was loved by many, a clown at heart, and loved to make people laugh. He will be truly missed. The Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin is offering 188 expert-led field trips around the state this year, a 25 percent increase from last years season and more than any previous year. The popular program offers unique opportunities for all ages and abilities to explore Wisconsins public lands, waters and wildlife by foot, bike, boat and train. Since 1994, nearly 40,500 individuals have attended Foundation field trips. The popularity of our field trip program is a true testament to Wisconsins commitment to the states precious natural resources, said Ruth Oppedahl, Foundation executive director. The field trip program is an opportunity for people to connect directly with wildlife and wild lands, inspiring them to become stewards of our most cherished places. We dont know of any other state that has a field trip program that is in such high demand. Professionals from the Department of Natural Resources and other experts lead the trips, sharing their love and knowledge of Wisconsins natural resources. The trips range from banding saw-whet owls to breakfasting with bats; catching mussels to fly fishing; kayaking Horicon Marsh; Birds and Blooms of Bass Hollow in Mauston; Whooping Crane Reintroduction in Necedah; to searching for carnivorous plants. Each trip, which appears in the Foundations online field trip guidebook, offers hands-on experiences that are often not available to the general public. Our field trips provide a breadth of educational experiences for curious people and families, said Christine Tanzer, Foundation field trip coordinator. Be it geology, ecology, wildlife habitat, or land management, there is always something fascinating to learn about Wisconsin. Thats why we have to grow this program every yearthere is just so much to learn about. Some of this years highlights include: Trips take place in 46 out of 72 Wisconsin counties. Thirty-five of the trips highlight endangered species. The trips take many forms hiking, kayaking, canoeing, biking, riding a pontoon, riding a train and even riding a wagon. Thirty-two trips revolve around citizen-based monitoring projects. More than 100 of the trips are on public lands, with 62 at state natural areas. Fifty-six of the trips help raise money for various conservation projects, including the Bird Protection Fund, the Wisconsin Bat Fund, turtle nest site restoration efforts and state natural area management. Registration is now open. To register for field trips, interested parties must first become a member of the Natural Resources Foundation of Wisconsin for $25 and will receive a pass code for registration in their membership confirmation email. The link to registration will be posted on the Foundations website (www.WisConservation.org). Initial registration is limited to four trips and registrants can include up to five other guests. Trip cost varies by excursion. Bernard H. Van Hoof, Honolulu, Hawaii Bernard (Bernie or Van) H. Van Hoof, 82, departed this life for an eternal life with the Lord our Father, on February 10, 2016 in Honolulu, Hawaii. He was surrounded by family, his caretakers, and his day nurse from Islands Hospice. Bernie was born in Pleasant Prairie, Wisconsin on June 2, 1933. He grew up in Wisconsin, Texas, and Missouri. The family settled on the family farm in Necedah, Wisconsin where Bernie experienced life with six brothers and sisters, and attended Necedah Public Schools. He enjoyed time spent learning from his dad, spending time with his siblings and friends, and growing up on the farm. Bernie joined the United States Air Force (USAF) in 1953. After boot camp at Lackland AFB, TX, he was sent to Korea. After Korea, he attended both Tech School and Flight School in Amarillo, TX. He was a natural leader and was chosen to attend the Senior NCO (Non-Commissioned Officer) Academy in 1956. Bernie was stationed at Davis Monthan AFB in Tucson, Arizona, Strategic Air Command (SAC) Headquarters Offutt AFB in Omaha, Nebraska, and Hickam AFB in Honolulu, Hawaii. He had a very fulfilling 30-year career in the USAF, and retired as a Chief MSGT. Bernie was part of the 358th Bombardment Squadron at Davis Monthan, and worked on a Reconnaissance, and an a Air Refueling Squadron at SAC. He was a Flight Crew Chief 4th Man. Bernie was also in the 619th MASS (Military Air Support Squadron) at Hickam, and served in at least two classified operations Operation Looking Glass (SAC), and Operation Blue Eagle (Hickam). He was sent to Davis Monthan to work on the B-47s, and he worked and flew the EC-135, KC-135, and a list of other planes at Offutt. After transferring to Hawaii in 1970, he was again sent to Thailand, and was stationed there for 1 year (TDY) to lead operations at the U Tapao Royal Thai Airfield, during the Vietnam War. Bernie traveled all over the world, and over the years, would be gone for three months at a time, on rotation. When grounded, he had to be ready to leave within 15 minutes of notice. At times, he managed up to 700-800 men and women. He guided his direct reports to reach their full potential and some were promoted to generals, who in later years always insisted he meet their planes at Hickam. After a long active duty career, Bernie was requested to continue his job at Hickam, as a civilian, and worked an additional 15 years in the Civil Service. Bernie loved his family, his work, and our country. And, he loved planes. He was a great storyteller, and told many stories of his travels, his childhood, and stories about his wife and children. Bernie met his wife, Katherine Kay McMillan, while poolside in Tucson, Arizona. They married in 1958 and had three children. Bernies transfer to Hawaii afforded his family the wonderful experience of living in a beautiful setting, with many outdoor and indoor activities to enjoy. Fortunately, the Van Hoof family was not the typical military family who moved every four years. His children were able to enjoy all that Hawaii had to offer while growing up, and became three successful adults. His wife, Kay, was a fabulous homemaker before she completed nursing school and worked her dream job as a nurse. In later years, she also earned her social work degree. She was the valedictorian of both her nursing class, and social work class. Bernie is preceded in death by his infant brother, Carl Van Hoof, his brother Robert Van Hoof, parents Fred Van Hoof and Mary Ann Van Hoof, and his ex-wife of 22 years, Katherine Kay A. McMillan. Surviving children are Gregory (Laura) Van Hoof, of Brookfield, Connecticut, Elizabeth (Gary) Lee, of Novato, California, and Deborah (Scott) Hansen, of Houston, Texas. He is also survived by three brothers, Fred Van Hoof, of Kenosha, Wisconsin, Richard (Christine) Van Hoof, of Necedah, Wisconsin, and Kenneth (Jane) Van Hoof, of Necedah, Wisconsin; and two sisters Joanne (Jim) Higgins, of Stevens Point, Wisconsin, and Donna Hirt, of Necedah, Wisconsin. He is also survived by four grandchildren, along with many nieces and nephews. A viewing was held for Bernard in Honolulu, on February 12, 2016. Bernies family, including his long-time companion, Rose Dongug, was present. Visitation will begin on Monday, March 28, 2016 from 9 a.m. 11 a.m. at St. Francis of Assisi Catholic Church in Necedah. A Funeral Mass will be held at 11 a.m. with Father Joseph Redfern officiating. Interment with Military Honors will be at Queen of the Holy Rosary Mediatrix of Peace Cemetery in Necedah immediately following the Funeral Mass. Full Military Honors will be provided by members of the Necedah, American Legion, Am-Vets, and VFW. In lieu of flowers, donations can be made to Operation Homefront at www.operationhomefront.net. 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. The Afghan military has raided a Taliban-held prison and freed 16 hostages, including civilian and security personnel, in the restive southern province of Helmand, officials said Monday. A Defense Ministry spokesman, Dawlat Waziri, told VOA the overnight raid in the district of Gerishk also killed 17 Taliban insurgents, including six suicide bombers who were guarding the prison. A Taliban spokesman confirmed the raid in the Shoraki area and alleged that "foreign invaders," a reference to the U.S.-led military coalition in Afghanistan, also took part. He said eight civilian prisoners were taken away while another seven were killed in the military action and five were wounded. Local Afghan security officials have also confirmed involvement of foreign troops but the NATO-led Resolute Support mission has not yet commented. Nash infuses Lemon Project audience with agapic energy W&M President Taylor Reveley and non-violence pioneer Diane Nash at the sixth annual Lemon Project Spring Symposium. Photo by Jim Ducibella Announcing a new Lemon Project fellowship Andrew Ojeda '12 has started the Gaither Johnson Summer Research Fellowship in honor of his maternal grandparents "who toiled during the Jim Crow era." The fellowship is supposed to start this summer, with applications opening soon. Photo by Jim Ducibella Photo - of - Hide Caption Diane Nash informed her audience at the sixth annual Lemon Project spring symposium on Saturday that there are six steps to effecting social change employing agapic energy love for ones fellow man. Nash would know. Taught the philosophy of non-violence by James Lawson, who learned it studying Mohandas Gandhi while serving as a missionary in India, Nash coined the phrase agapic energy and employed it in the 1960s to spearhead several of the most successful civil-rights campaigns in American history. Speaking at William & Marys School of Education, Nash recounted her efforts in the first successful strategy to integrate lunch counters in Nashville, Tennessee; her alliance with the Freedom Riders, who desegregated interstate travel; her co-founding of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and her co-coordination of the Selma Voting Rights Amendment, a precursor to the Voting Rights Act of 1965. She has changed the course of history; she continues to change the course of history, Shana Haines, a Ph.D. student in history at W&M, said in introducing Nash. Before Nash spoke, W&M President Taylor Reveley presented the audience with a brief overview of the Lemon Project, named for a slave the university owned in the 18th century. In the spring of 2009, the campus community decided it was time for William & Mary to come to grips with its racial past in a more serious way than ever before, Reveley said. To that end, he referenced the universitys Task Force on Race and Race Relations an important element in W&Ms focus on race on campus today which has met monthly for the last year and is preparing a report that examines events closely related to race on campus and throughout the nation. Nash was just 22 when she took charge of the Nashville lunch counter sit-ins. At the time, African Americans could order lunch from certain establishments on a take-out basis only. Nash and her friends and followers targeted six restaurants and employed the following method of desegregating them: investigation, education, negotiation, demonstration, resistance, and prevention of reoccurrence. During the investigation phase, Nash and her colleagues agreed on a specific objective and wrote it down. You gather any information to you to have to accomplish the objective, and you identify exactly how the oppressed are participating in their oppression, she said. Next came the education of the causes followers on what was learned during the investigation, followed by negotiation. You make your opponent understand your objective, Nash said. You let them know that you respect them, but will not tolerate their behavior. In Nashville, one restaurant owner said he didnt serve blacks at his counter because he was afraid he would lose his white business. So Nash arranged with local churches that, for three weeks, sophisticated white ladies would sit next to blacks at the mans lunch counter. She knew, she said, that after three weeks, the media would report that peaceful desegregation was taking place. Following the negotiation phase was demonstration, with the aim to show the public the purpose of your objective, Nash said. The next step, resistance, was where the oppressed withdrew their participation in the oppression, said Nash, adding that it could take many forms work stoppages and refusal to pay taxes, among them. The final step was to prevent the problem from reoccurring. Often, young people are more vulnerable to a rollback of their civil rights, Nash said. Among the methods of minimizing that possibility are the creation of museums, educational foundations and documentary films that examine the problem and how it was solved. Using agapic energy is not easy, Nash cautioned. Freedom is not something you do once and then youve got it. Its a struggle, and every generation faces its own challenges," she said. The Freedom Riders, for example, made many sacrifices, whether it was violence or time in jail. Nash herself was jailed numerous times, once for 30 days despite the fact that she was four months pregnant. Nash described the current climate in the country as frightening, and decried that often people read and talk about what should be done, but never actually do anything. Relying on government officials to improve matters doesnt work because one of Americas problems is government officials who will not govern, said Nash. The movement of the 1960s can be used in 2016, she said. We now know that it works. We have an opportunity to move a step higher, to evolve to a higher stage. But American citizens have to take the country into their own hands. 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. UK regulators chart progress of reactor designs 22 March 2016 Share The UK's Office for Nuclear Regulation, the Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales have provided an update on their assessment of the two designs currently going through the Generic Design Assessment (GDA) process - Hitachi-GE's UK Advanced Boiling Water Reactor (UK ABWR), and the Westinghouse AP1000 reactor design. The update is provided in the regulators' quarterly report - covering November 2015 to January 2016 - which was issued yesterday. According to the report, the period marked the start of "significant assessment work" on the UK ABWR GDA project with the start of the ONR's Step 4. "Overall, the regulators consider that the project is stable and progressing as we would expect at this stage," it said. "There is a great deal to do but we remain encouraged by Hitachi-GE's commitment and responsiveness." Horizon Nuclear Power, a 100% subsidiary of Hitachi Ltd, plans to deploy the UK ABWR at two sites - Wylfa Newydd, which is on the Isle of Anglesey, and Oldbury-on-Severn, in South Gloucestershire. For the AP1000 project, there has been an "increase in management attention" from the regulators and Westinghouse during this period. "There has been closure program slippage and a lack of technical convergence in some areas. This means that we have still to agree with Westinghouse the full extent of the work required to close out all of the GDA issues," the report said. "This lack of progress and agreement on the way forward in specific areas is disappointing so far into the closure phase." NuGeneration Limited (NuGen) - a 60%/40% joint venture between Toshiba and GDF Suez - in 2014 confirmed plans to build three Westinghouse AP1000 pressurized water reactors at Moorside by the end of 2026 with a total capacity of 3.4 GWe. The first unit is expected to begin operating by the end of 2024. A final investment decision is expected to be taken by the end of 2018. Since the reporting period of the quarterly report, Westinghouse has issued a revised closure program for GDA in response to the regulators' request. This schedule shows a projected GDA completion date of March 2017. The report said: "The regulators acknowledge the program extension and will maintain a close focus on Westinghouse's delivery and quality of submissions in the coming months. We will continue to provide our view of its progress in our future quarterly reports." Westinghouse yesterday issued a statement from senior vice president for new plants and major projects, Jeff Benjamin, in response to the report. "The regulators have offered a careful perspective on the UK AP1000 plant project, providing constructive feedback throughout the process. Westinghouse has delivered revisions or validations of all GDA resolution plans to the regulators to address their concerns. Westinghouse has confidence in the safety of the AP1000 plant design and that it will achieve the Design Acceptance Confirmation (DAC) from the ONR and the Statement of Design Acceptability (SoDA) from the Environment Agency. Westinghouse looks forward to continuing to work with the regulators on GDA closure to support NuGen in advancing the project to deliver safe, clean, reliable energy to West Cumbria." Cumulative charges for the regulators' assessment of the UK ABWR to date are 14,898,302 ($21,195,293) for the ONR and 2,642,308 for the Environment Agency. The respective figures for the AP1000 are 27,447,360 and 2,559,593. UK EPR and SMR progress The report also noted that, following the announcement made by the UK and Chinese governments in October 2015, as reported in the last quarterly update, the regulators had attended a three-day workshop in China with EDF and China General Nuclear (CGN). The French and Chinese companies agreed last October to the development, construction and operation of three new nuclear power plants in the UK, starting with Hinkley Point C in Somerset. The Hinkley Point C plant - the first new nuclear power station built in the UK in almost 20 years - will comprise two Areva EPR units, with first operation scheduled for 2025. "This inaugural workshop provided an opportunity for us to present at a high level, the UK regulatory framework and the GDA process and requirements. Similarly, CGN presented an overview of the HPR1000 technology and its developing project structure and governance arrangements," the report said. "We consider that the proposed Requesting Party is in a good position to begin GDA; its preparations to date, knowledge of the regulatory framework and appreciation of expectations and requirements was notable. We are ready to commence the GDA when requested by government. In meantime we will continue to provide regulatory advice to EDF and CGN to further aid their preparations for entry," it added. On 25 November, as part of the Spending Review/Autumn Statement 2015, British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne announced "a major commitment to small modular nuclear reactors". In their quarterly report, the regulators said that this may involve them "in earlier work than expected". The Department of Energy and Climate Change has undertaken a techno-economic assessment (TEA) for SMR technology deployment in the UK. This concluded earlier this month and was followed by an announcement of the competition phase to identify the technology(ies) to be taken forward. The regulators said in their quarterly report: "To date ONR has hosted a SMR workshop as part of the TEA, to identify regulatory areas of interest and to explore regulatory strategies for design assessment and nuclear site licensing. Additionally, the Environment Agency has met with DECC to discuss design assessment and permitting of SMRs. The regulators will also provide regulatory input into the competition phase." Researched and written by World Nuclear News Related topics Scientists warn of dire consequences if emission rates continue. According to a new study just released, the rate of carbon emissions in the world today is higher that at any other time in the past 66 million years, beginning when dinosaurs roamed the planet, according to Reuters. That is the finding of a study, published in the journal Nature Geoscience, which says the pace of emissions today even surpasses the beginning of the biggest known naturally-occurring surge of emissions. That event, recorded about 56 million years ago, is believed to have been caused by the release of frozen greenhouse gasses underneath the ocean floor. Many climate scientists compare that event to what is predicted to be seen if the current rate of emissions is not reduced. It is estimated the release of the frozen packets of gasses at that time cause a spike in world temperatures of approximately 9 degrees, and caused major damage to marine life by raising the acidity of the oceans. The fast-warming event 56 million years ago added about 1.1 billion tons of carbon emissions to the atmosphere over a period of 4,000 years. Current carbon emissions are running at a rate of about 10 billion tons per year, according to the article, mostly from burning fossil fuels. To gauge the extent of the warming event, named the Paleoeocene-Eocene thermal Maximum (PETM), the researchers examined the chemical makeup of marine organism fossils from seabeds in off the coast of New Jersey. Richard Zeebe, lead author on the study, from the University of Hawaii, said, Our results suggest that future ocean acidification and possible effects on marine calcifying organisms will be more severe than during the PETM. Future ecosystem disruptions are likely to exceed the relatively limited extinctions observed at the PETM, he continued. Zeebe adds the marine life around at the time of the PETM may have been able to take advantage of the more slowly occurring event to adapt to the warming of the water by evolving. Todays marine life may not have that option available to them. United Nations studies seem to back up the findings from this new study, in that they are projecting a 4.8 degree C temperature rise by the end of eh 21st century, if the rate of emissions remains at the same level or increases. Apple CEO defends phone encryption policy. In the furor over Apples refusal to cooperate with the FBI in removing the encryption on the iPhone of the San Bernardino terrorist Syed Rizwan Farook, much has been said about the invasion of privacy that could result if the company provides a way to retrieve encrypted information from the phone. A recent article in Time magazine says many of the major players in the technology sector are supporting Apple, including Amazon, Twitter, and eBay, and the company has received support from the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Zeid Raad al-Hussein, former head of the NSA and the CIA Michael Hayden, and even Senator Lindsey Graham. The issue is the FBI has requested Apple to provide an update to its iPhone operating system that would allow the agency to by-pass the 10-guess limit on the phone, in a effort to unlock the phone belonging to Farook, thus enabling the FBI to possibly extract information from the device that could lead to information to stop another such attack on American soil. No one is certain any such information exists on Farooks phone. Apples refusal to develop such an update, dubbed by the company as GovtOS, stems from the belief that, should such a system be developed, it would eventually be released into the wild, unintentionally of course, but most of these type things are eventually exposed, either by hacking or by some one with access to the system being careless. Should that happen, every iPhone in existence would be susceptible to being taken over by hackers, and all the personal information stored on that device would be available to them. This would include not only your selfies, but banking and financial data, purchasing records, and names and contact information for all your friends and relatives. Apple CEO, Tim Cook, said, To invent what they want me to invent puts millions of people at risk. What is interesting is the logic Cook presented in the article, about removing or banning the total encryption of the devices. According to the story, FBI Director James Comey has framed the argument as a choice between privacy and security, but Cool disagrees. Cook offered the example, what if Congress banned encryption entirely? Then, he feels, the bad guys will simply use encryption from non-American companies, because, in Cooks words, theyre pretty smart and Apple doesnt own encryption. In other words, the bad guys would just get their phones hack-proofed elsewhere, and the only ones with unprotected privacy would be the millions of ordinary users. The result would be the FBI still could not access an encrypted terrorist phone, but the ordinary users in the US would be at a greater risk of having their data stolen. The same system that protects the data of everyday users also protects the information of terrorists, and Cook said, We get that. But you dont take away the good for that sliver of bad. He adds, Its at the core of who we are as a country. That seems to be sound logic, but when you apply the same to the gun control issue, it becomes less cut and dried for many. If you make guns illegal and take away guns from ordinary users, the bad guys will just get their guns elsewhere, as they will their encryption, and the only ones who suffer will be the ordinary users. The intent of the government in both situations is to save lives and protect its citizens. But, will either of these intents actually work to prevent Americans from being killed, either by terrorists or mentally-deranged gunmen? Daniel Stewart By: Mahesh Sarin A criminal defense attorney was arrested on a charge of conspiracy to commit rape after allegedly trying to pay the father of a boy in exchange for having sex with the child, police in Arkansas said. Faulkner County police said that they have arrested 47-year-old Daniel Stewart, after being accused of trying to arrange a sexual encounter with a 13-year-old boy. Stewart was charged with one count of conspiracy to commit rape. He was booked into the Faulkner County Sheriffas Office Detention Center, and his bail was set at $250,000. According to the police investigation, Stewart placed an ad seeking contact with a young boy or child. An undercover officer responded to the ad via email, and eventually began communicating through the messaging application Kik. They made plans to meet at a hotel in Fort Smith. Stewart believed that he was speaking with an adult man and his 13-year-old son. As soon as Stewart arrived at the hotel, he was arrested and his vehicle was impounded. Pop-up Science Exhibition to Bring Large Hadron Collider to Wrexham Town Centre This article is old - Published: Tuesday, Mar 22nd, 2016 This Easter will see the start of something new in Wrexham with a pop-up science exhibition playing host to a very special attraction. For two weeks over the Easter holiday Techniquest Glyndwr, North Wales leading science Discovery Centre will be opening a special free family attraction in Priory Street, Wrexham, in the form of a pop-up science exhibition. Launching on Good Friday, as a unique special attraction, a section of the worlds biggest scientific experiment (the Large Hadron Collider (LHC)) will be installed at the temporary town centre venue. The Large Hadron Collider Roadshow is a large and exciting touring exhibition on loan from the Science Technology Facilities Council. It celebrates the UKs involvement in the ground-breaking research which is under way at the CERN particle physics laboratory near Geneva, Switzerland. Techniquest Glyndwr will also be installing a number of the interactive exhibits normally housed at the Science Centres base on the Glyndwr University Plas Coch Campus. Together with a small shop with scientific toys and curiosities the whole venue will become a unique pop-up science discovery centre close to the Island Green shopping centre in Wrexham during the Easter holidays. The special two week happening is intended to raise awareness about the science centre and encourage a whole set of new visitors to the main science centre at Plas Coch where there are more than 70 interactive exhibits and a changing programme of live science shows on offer all the year round. Speaking about the exhibition, Scot Owen, Education Manager at Techniquest Glyndwr said: We have been fortunate in being able to have temporary use of a large, vacant shop unit in Wrexham to set up a mini Science Discovery Centre right in the middle of town. With the space available we have been able to accommodate not only an exciting array of interactive exhibits from our base in Plas Coch, but also the acclaimed Large Hadron Collider Exhibition which will be on loan from the Science and Technology Facilities Council. This is sure to be an engaging place to go to during the Easter Holidays period for anyone curious about science and technology. He added: As well as the general public we are confident that over the two weeks in our temporary venue we will also be attracting significant numbers of science and technology students from across North Wales and nearby English Universities who want to find out more about the particle research through the Large Hadron Collider Roadshow as well as being able to find out more about a variety of local science and engineering based companies. We hope to reach a range of people who otherwise may not be aware that Wrexham has a leading Science Discovery Centre tucked away on the Plas Coch Campus of Glyndwr University. Scot concluded by saying: We have worked very hard to create our new, but temporary fun venue for families to drop in to see what we have to offer. We are certain that our pop up facility will provide an engaging morning or afternoon of activities and we hope local families will take advantage of this unique opportunity. The Mayor of Wrexham, Cllr Barbara Roxburgh will be opening the temporary venue on Good Friday 25th March at 10.30 am and will be welcoming members of the public to the special attraction. The temporary centre will have free admission and will be open every day, except Sundays for two weeks until Saturday 9th April. Wrexham Warehouse Project Scoop up Prize at Awards Ceremony This article is old - Published: Monday, Mar 21st, 2016 A group of volunteers from a Wrexham organisation are celebrating winning a special accolade at a recent awards ceremony. On Friday 4th March, six representatives from the Wrexham Warehouse Project and PSCO Catherine Hughes attended the High Sheriff Community Awards 2016. Now in its fourth year the High Sheriff of Clwyd Community Awards 2016 aims to recognise the work of volunteers in the counties of Conwy, Denbighshire, Flintshire and Wrexham. This years ceremony was hosted by the Blind Veterans UK at the Llandudno Centre. Established in 2011 the Wrexham Warehouse Project began with a group of young people who took on the task of converting a derelict building into a functional and enjoyable space. In 2014 the project became a charity, offering training and employment facilities and opportunities for young people with the addition of establishing a Young Person Committee. Over the past few months a team of volunteers from the project and PCSO Hughes have worked together to create a programme about tacking anti-social behaviour and offering support to young people in Gwersyllt. To acknowledge the groups hard work and dedication, the group were nominated for the High Sheriffs Crime beat Award which they later won. Speaking about the award, Kim Powell from the Wrexham Warehouse Project said: The trustees and staff at the Wrexham Warehouse Project would like to thank all the volunteers, Lisa Clutton, Zoe Davies, Jamie Harrison and Andrew Jones for all their hard work. We would also like to thank the High Sheriff, Janet Evans for her recognition and support. You can find out more about the Wrexham Warehouse Project here. Wrexhams Mayor Offers Terror Attack Condolences This article is old - Published: Tuesday, Mar 22nd, 2016 Wrexhams Mayor has this afternoon offered her sympathies to those affected by the terror attacks in Belgium earlier today. The Mayor of Wrexham, Cllr Barbara Roxburgh said: I was deeply saddened and shocked by the dreadful news that has unfolded throughout the day. My thoughts and condolences are with all those affected by these dreadful terrorist attacks. I have arranged for the Council Flag to be flown over the Guildhall as a mark of respect tomorrow. The First Minister of Wales Carwyn Jones also said today: I am appalled at todays attacks in Brussels. I would like to express my sympathy and solidarity with the Belgian people and the international community which works in the city. The scourge of terrorism must be opposed everywhere and we must resist the threat to our way of life. We have received confirmation that all Welsh Government staff, and other occupants of Wales House in Brussels, are safely accounted for. We are working closely with the UK Government and receiving regular advice on the situation in Brussels. Four of the five candidates for the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations sought to outdo one another in pledging unqualified support for Israel and issuing threats against Iran and its allies in appearances Monday before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the most powerful pro-Israel lobby in the US. All three Republican candidates spoke at the Washington DC event, as well as the Democratic front-runner, Hillary Clinton. Her Democratic opponent, Bernie Sanders, skipped the event to campaign in western states holding primary contests on Tuesday. Clinton delivered a bellicose speech pledging to step up US support for Israel and threatening war against Iran. She went out of her way to satisfy the most diehard defenders of the Israeli state and its brutally repressive policies against the Palestinian people, with the possible exception of those openly fascistic elements who call for the expulsion of the Arabs from a Greater Israel. She used her appearance before AIPAC to attack Republican front-runner Donald Trump for having suggested that he would serve as a neutral broker in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. We need steady hands, she declared, not a president who says hes neutral on Monday, pro-Israel on Tuesday, and who knows what on Wednesday, because everythings negotiable. Well, my friends, Israels security is non-negotiable. Clinton also implicitly distanced herself from the Obama White House, whose relations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been tense, reaching a near-breaking point over the nuclear accord with Iran promoted by the US president. We will never allow Israels adversaries to think a wedge can be driven between us, she told the cheering audience. Promising, if elected in November, to take the US alliance with Israel to a new level, Clinton called for increased military aid and closer economic links with the Zionist state. She denounced Palestinian terror attacks on Israelis while making no mention of the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have been killed and wounded in the Israeli wars, bombings, targeted assassinations and deadly acts of repression, including the 2014 invasion of Gaza that killed over 2,300 Palestinians, the vast majority of them civilians. She equated criticism of Israeli war crimes with anti-Semitism and implicitly backed efforts by Zionist and pro-Israel organizations to ban anti-Israel protests on US college campuses. Clinton cited three evolving threats to Israeli security: Irans continued aggression, a rising tide of extremism across a wide arc of instability, and the growing effort to delegitimize Israel on the world stage. To combat these dangers, she declared, The United States and Israel must be closer than ever, stronger than ever, and more determined than ever to prevail against our common adversaries While giving Israeli leaders political amnesty for their murderous attacks on Palestinians and Arabs in neighboring countries, Clinton accused the leadership of the Palestinian Authority of complicity in the recent rash of stabbings and other individual attacks on Israelis. These attacks must end immediately, she said. And Palestinian leaders need to stop inciting violence, stop celebrating terrorists as martyrs and stop paying rewards to their families. This is the same person, it should be recalled, who as First Lady met with the wife of then-Palestinian Authority President Yasir Arafat in November of 1999 and kissed her on the cheek. At that time, Washington was heavily promoting the so-called peace process, the main purpose of which was to align the Palestine Liberation Organization with US imperialist interests in the Middle East and integrate its security forces with the Israeli military and intelligence apparatus. Even then, after an outcry from Israeli officials and US Zionists, Clinton turned around within hours and denounced Suha Arafat for making inflammatory statements about Israels use of poison gas against Palestinians. On the military/security front, Clinton called Monday for a quick conclusion to negotiations on a new ten-year US-Israel defense memorandum of understanding, adding that as president she would make a firm commitment to ensure Israel maintains its qualitative military edge. She urged the US to provide Israel with the most sophisticated defense technology, including new missile defense systems such as the Arrow Three and Davids Sling. In regard to anti-Zionist protests on US campuses, Clinton lined up squarely behind the Israel lobby and its near-universal support within the US political establishment. She denounced the campaign for a boycott of Israeli academics from the right, branding it as anti-Semitic. Particularly at a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise across the world, especially in Europe, she declared, we must repudiate all efforts to malign, isolate and undermine Israel and the Jewish people. She went on to accuse supporters of the boycott campaign of attempting to silence and bully pro-Israel students. Clinton reserved her most belligerent remarks for Iran. While defending her support for the nuclear accord sponsored by the Obama administration, Clinton pledged to respond to even the smallest Iranian violation of its terms, including through the reimposition of all the sanctions and with force if necessary. She went on to call for additional sanctions in response to Irans recent missile launchings and demanded that the European Union brand the Iran-allied Hezbollah movement in Lebanon a terrorist organization. After promising to expand the war against ISIS, Clinton somewhat apologetically declared her support for a resumption of negotiations for a so-called two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She signaled that any such agreement would have to be on Israels terms, saying she would vigorously oppose any attempt by outside parties to impose a solution, including the UN Security Council. Trump devoted almost his entire speech to denouncing the nuclear accord with Iran and pledging to dismantle it and stand up to Irans aggressive push to destabilize and dominate the region. He went on to denounce the United Nations and the Obama administration for treating Israel like a second-class citizen, promised to veto any Middle East agreement drawn up by the UN, and concluded that as president he would move the US embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem. The speeches of all of the presidential candidates make clear that what is being prepared after the November elections is an escalation of war in the Middle East and beyond. Attacks on public transportation in the Boston area are continuing, with a series of decisions in recent weeks by the unelected Fiscal and Management Control Board (FMCB) created by Governor Charlie Baker after the February 2015 systemic breakdown in the face of record snowfall. While that board has voted to increase Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) fares more than allowed by current state law and subsequently voted to end late-night service, attacks on MBTA workers pensions are being prepared behind the scenes. Fare Increases Despite loud protests in the chamber, the FMCB voted unanimously March 7 to adopt a fare hike scheme containing only slight changes from the more draconian of two proposals it had presented before a series of pro-forma public meetings. The meetings, required by state law, were seen by the FMCB not as an exercise in public participation but rather as a valve for letting off steam. Of nearly 3,000 comments recorded at the meetings and online, 75 percent were described by the MBTA as expressing negative opinions of the proposals. Only 4 percent were positive. Of the two proposals originally advanced, one would have increased fares system-wide by an average of 6.7 percent and the other by 9.77 percent. The average increase in the adopted plan will be 9.3 percent. In one example, student passes will be increased from $26 to $30 instead of $32 and there will be a bulk discount for schools buying more than 1,000 per month. Given the austerity also being imposed on the Boston Public Schools, this hike will add insult to injury. The fare increases are in violation of a 2013 state law that limited hikes to 5 percent every two years. During the public meetings, legislators, including Senator Thomas McGee and Representative Brendan Crighton, confirmed this fact and Senator Sonia Chang-Diaz had already done so. However, the FMCB and Secretary of Transportation Stephanie Pollack devised a series of excuses for ignoring the law. The fare hikes are part of a strategy by local elites to pit riders against transit workers. In a craven response, the Executive Board of Carmens Union Local 589 represent MBTA workers attended the March 7 meeting but remained neutral, according to a subsequent report by its vice president. Late-night service On February 29, the FMCB voted to end a late-night weekend service pilot program that had been in effect for only two years. The service ended this past weekend. It was already inadequate for a major American city: late-night meant that the last subway trains left at 2 a.m. instead of the standard 12:30 a.m., while similar service was provided on only 10 bus routes. Even so, it had an average of 13,000 passengers per night in December 2015 and a substantial percentage of them were low-income workers commuting home from work who must now find alternative, higher-priced transport. The $14 million per year cost of the service paled in comparison to the more than $400 million paid by the MBTA for debt service every year. The decision was reported in the Boston Globeon February 15 after MBTA workers revealed that the schedules they were being offered for bidding contained no late-night routes after March 19. MBTA management and the FMCB claimed falsely at the timetwo weeks before the latters formal votethat they had made no decision. On March 3, an administrator at the Federal Transit Administrations (FTA) Office of Civil Rights wrote a toothless letter to the MBTAs General Counsel complaining that a service equity analysis had not been conducted. The MBTA then released such an analysis, but the late-night ridership data was from 2008-2009 and from a previous late-night pilot called Night Owl. It has given no explanation of why more recent data is not available. In the data given, 64.4 percent of late-night bus customers were low income as were 59.2 percent of late-night subway riders. Piling one lie on top of another, the MBTA also claimed that an equity analysis was not needed because the elimination of the late-night program was not a major service change. However, its own policy on such changes requires an analysis even if one route is to be eliminated or service cut by more than one hour. The equity analysis hurriedly released after the FTA letter pretends to solicit public input on mitigation strategies which will be decided at an FMCB meeting on Wednesday. However, WBUR has reported that the likely mitigation will be a privatization consisting of MBTA contracts with Bridj, which sets fares and schedules using demand from smartphone apps and has already responded to an FMCB Request for Information. Bridj has set up a web page gloating that were beginning to outline the much-rumored plan for Bridj to take over late night T. Ride-sharing services Uber and Lyft are rushing to make a quick profit by offering discounts for the next few weeks. Attacks on pensions planned On June 26, 2015 Harry Markopolos, a forensic accountant who was instrumental in exposing Bernie Madoffs fraud, met with FBI agents and staff from the federal Securities and Exchange Commission, the Massachusetts Inspector Generals Office, and US Attorney Carmen Ortiz to accuse the Board of the MBTA Retirement Fund (MBTARF) of falsifying investment returns and other calculations related to the MBTAs defined-benefit pension plan. Starting in December 2013, Markopolos and Boston University finance Professor Mark T. Williams had done an analysis resulting in a 103-page report. However, they shared only a PowerPoint summary with the Globe and have refused to share the full report either publicly or with the MBTARF Board. Specifically, they accused the fund of using outdated mortality tables (used by actuaries to estimate pension liabilities based on life expectancy), increasing the estimated rate of return on its investments from 7.5 percent to 8 percent for no other reason than to decrease the unfunded liability, and using three different methods of smoothing investment performance when they should have been consistent. The Retirement Board responded by hiring FTI Consulting to tie out the funds accounting to reports from State Street Bank, its custodian, and Buck Consultants, its actuary. FTI Consulting returned a report stating that the Markopolos presentation does not include any calculations or analyses that support its accusations. While advising that the MBTARF needs an actuarial audit and should include lump-sum sick-time payouts in its calculations, FTI found no other serious problems. The MBTARF is incorporated as a private entity and uses that status to keep secrets. While it is difficult to get at the truth in this controversy, what is clear is that a large-scale attack on workers pensions is being prepared. Most of the union contracts that commit workers to the MBTARF are up for renewal in 2018, and the Globe is reporting that MBTA management has already talked with union leaders. Former State Treasurer Steve Grossman, a Democrat who chaired the larger Massachusetts employees pension fund for four years, is being brought in to help coordinate the attack. Some 5,800 active and 6,300 retired MBTA workers are covered by the pension fund. Public contributions, from state revenues and rider fares, over the past 18 years have averaged slightly less than $35 million per year, reaching $58 million in 2013 after an August 2012 increase in the contribution rate. Workers contribute slightly more than 5.5 percent of their wages to the fund pretax, with a match from management of about three times that amount. Total contributions in 2013 from employees and the MBTA were only a little more than $79 million. In comparison, Boston along with the Massachusetts and federal governments recently gave General Electric almost $150 million to relocate 800 jobs from Connecticut. Retirees and beneficiaries were paid $177.3 million in benefits in 2013. The Retirement Fund covers all of the systems workers except the MBTA Police and some executives. Underfunding of pension liabilities in defined benefit pension plans is a common practice in the United States. Because funding depends partly on investment incomethe MBTARF had slightly more than $1.6 billion in net assets at the end of 2013the economic crash slashed the pensions funded ratio from 80.77 percent in 2008 to 63.01 percent in 2012. If this ratio is used as an excuse to cut workers pensions, they will be victims of the same Wall Street gambling that sucks more than $400 million per year out of the MBTA system for debt service. This author also recommends: Boston Public Schools students walk out over proposed budget cuts [9 March 2016] Boston: MBTA seeks to pit transit riders against workers as infrastructure crumbles [1 March 2016] Massachusetts: MBTA proposes steep public transit fare hikes [19 January 2016] The resignation of Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith has plunged Britains ruling Conservatives into a state of civil war. Duncan Smith resigned over cuts to disability benefits in last weeks budget, but his doing so is a manifestation of deep divisions in the Tory Partyparticularly over Junes referendum on the UKs membership of the European Union (EU). This could lead to a leadership contest following the June 23 referendum, or even a possible split in the party. Around 100 MPs (of 330) and the majority of party members are in favour of leaving the EU and a growing number of MPs favour a leadership election regardless of the result of the referendum. Duncan Smith therefore left the cabinet over an issue he knows will do maximum political damage to both Prime Minister David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne, the favourite to replace Cameron as party leader on the pro-EU wing of the party. Commenting on the crisis, the Sunday Times said the leadership credentials of Osborne were shredded after Duncan Smith unleashed a bloodbath of mutual recriminations at the top of the Tory party, while an unnamed MP told the BBC there will be genocide of the Cameroons and Osbornites. When Duncan Smith stood down as Tory leader in 2003 he set up the Centre for Social Justice think-tank to devise reforms aimed at slashing state spending on welfare benefits. This included the universal credit system currently being implemented by the government and rolling out welfare to work programmes under which millions are to be forced into low-paid jobs. In charge of the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) since the election of the Tory/Liberal Democrat coalition in 2010, he was the minister most closely associated with brutal attacks on the welfare state including the hated Bedroom Tax. He has overseen 28.3 billion taken from the disabled over the past five years. Nevertheless, the manner of Duncan Smiths resignation cannot be simply dismissed with charges of hypocrisy. Under conditions of escalating economic crisis, the rifts in the Tory party are an expression of political realignments underway within bourgeois politics internationally. A section of the Tory party that is supportive of a Brexit and which utilises certain populist rhetoric, is now openly campaigning alongside UK Independence Party (UKIP) and a small section of the Labour Party. Duncan Smith is seeking to make an appeal for equality of national sacrifice that provides an essential political justification for the right wing forces gathered under the Brexit umbrella. Indeed Peter Bone, a leader of the Grassroots Out organisation, alongside UKIP leader Nigel Farage, said his resignation illustrates why it is so important for the UK to quit the EU and stop sending our massive membership fee to Brussels, which amounts to over 15 billion a year. Instead of making unnecessary and painful cuts to disability payments we would have more money to spend on our own priorities. Duncan Smith quit just two days after Osbornes March 23 budget, which confirmed further spending cuts even as the richest 10 percent in society and the corporations were handed billions in tax breaks and other giveaways. The Chancellor said that disability benefits would be further cut, saving the government 4.4 billion by 2020-21. The cuts reduce access to Personal Independence Payments (PIP), which will replace Disability Living Allowance in January 2017, and is expected to save 1.3 billion, with many PIP recipients slated to lose up to 150 a week. PIP is relied on by hundreds of thousands of people who need help with basic tasks such as going to the toilet and dressing. These cuts were not defensible, Duncan Smith said, especially in the way they were placed within a Budget that benefits higher earning taxpayers. Elaborating on his resignation on the BBCs Andrew Marr Show Sunday, he said the budget was deeply unfair and perceived to be unfair, with the Tories now widely seen as a party representing only the rich. The government was in danger of drifting in a direction that divides society rather than unites it. Instead, the government had to widen the scope of where we look to get that deficit down and not just narrow it down on working age benefits... Because otherwise it just looks like we see this as a pot of moneythat it doesnt matter because they [the poorest] dont vote for us. To continue with the attacks outlined would make a mockery of Camerons stated claim to representing one nation and that in relation to austerity, were all in this together. This is a devastating attack on the prime minister, designed to end his premiership. Beneath the rhetoric, Duncan Smiths call for widening the scope of deficit reduction does not mean any let up in attacks on the working class. Rather, his main counter proposal is that some cuts should instead be directed at pensions, previously ring-fenced and where far greater savings could be made. Pension cuts would in fact see an escalation in the austerity agenda by an order of magnitude, given that the state pension and pension tax credits make up almost 100 billion of the entire 213 billion welfare spending annual budget, compared with spending on disability benefits totalling 36.7 billion. In addition, among the Centre for Social Justices proposals to address Economic dependency and worklessness is a clampdown on out-of-work benefits, including the welfare cap Duncan Smith now claims to oppose. It declares that the UKs worklessness crisis is not primarily a product of the recession and urges a transformation of who is now expected to look for work and what looking for work should actually entailincluding driving people incapacity benefits and encouraging those in council housing to move home in search of work if unemployed for more than a year. On Saturday, Duncan Smith was replaced by Stephen Crabb, with Downing Street announcing that the proposed changes to PIP were being abandoned in their current form. Even so, by Sunday evening the Tory-supporting Telegraph was speculating about the possibility of Cameron being removed as Tory leader, noting that as many as 30 Tory MPs were ready to support a leadership challenge... The crisis escalated Monday when the Tories were forced to accept an urgent question from the Labour Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell who called on Osborne to withdraw his budget due to the 10 billion hole left by the retreat on welfare cuts. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn had earlier called for Osbornes resignation. Such is the depth of the political crisis and the tensions within governing circles that Osborne did not attend parliament to answer, leaving it to Treasury Minister David Gauke to speak for the government in a fractious parliamentary session. Afterwards Cameron was forced to defend his record, telling MPs he represented a modern, compassionate Conservative government. He did so after reporting on the deal between the European Union and Turkey to seal borders and expel refugees, framed as an answer to pro-Brexit Tory MPs, and stressing that his government would step up its clampdown on immigration. We wont be giving visa free access to Turks coming to the UK and wont be taking more refugees as a result part of this deal, he said. In response, Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn merely asked Osbornes whereabouts. He made no reference to Duncan Smiths resignation, asking only if Cameron could guarantee there would be no further cuts in the DWPs budget. The immediate future of the Tory government depends on the ability of Cameron to stem the attacks on his premiership from within his own ranks. But its underlying weakness and the conflicts tearing it apart are becoming ever clearer. The deal struck last Friday between the European Unions 28 heads of government and Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu to facilitate the mass deportation of refugees arriving in Greece came into force on Sunday. The agreement, negotiated at a special two-day summit with the authoritarian Turkish regime, aims to seal off Europes borders to the millions of desperate people fleeing war and social misery produced by a series of wars and military interventions led by the imperialist powers. It represents a flagrant violation of international law by effectively abolishing the right to asylum, leaving the refugees at the mercy of the Turkish government. During the first day of the new regulations, an additional 1,500 refugees arrived on the Greek islands of Lesbos and Chios, bringing the total stranded in the country to more than 50,000. These new arrivals, and all those who subsequently reach Greece across the Aegean Sea, are to be returned to Turkey following a farcical asylum procedure which is intended to be completed within 48 hours. In exchange, the European Union (EU) pledged to accept Syrian refugees already in Turkey on the basis of a one in, one out principle, up to a maximum of 72,000. Greek officials and volunteers assisting the refugees on the islands have described chaotic conditions at camps and warned that the agreement may not be enforceable. Giorgos Kyritsis, coordinator for immigration policy in Athens, told the press that Syriza Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras presented a plan at a cabinet meeting on Saturday afternoon which demanded the immediate implementation of the EU-Turkey deal. But in practice, structures are needed, personnel must be prepared and that takes a bit longer than 24 hours, the official said. Military and security forces will play a prominent role in enforcing the deal. EU members are to send up to 1,500 officers with the EUs border protection service Frontex, whose task will be to carry out the repatriation of refugees to Turkey. The Greek army was deployed to Lesbos on Saturday to move refugees to camps on the mainland. NATOs operation in the Aegean Sea aimed at intercepting refugee boats and turning them back to Turkey is to be expanded to cover a longer stretch of coastline. The same European powers which have routinely invoked human rights concerns to justify one military intervention after another in the Middle East and North Africa are denying refugees the right to seek protection from the persecution and war which these very policies have produced. This is being justified on the spurious grounds that Turkey, a country engaged in a low-level civil war against the Kurdish population and ruthless repression of political opponents, should be designated a safe third country. Even if the new regulations are fully implemented, the minuscule figure of 72,000 refugees will be reached in a matter of weeks, at which point the EU has vowed to suspend the resettlement programme. Moreover, it remains entirely unclear which EU members will accept the initial 72,000 refugees, since no commitments were included in the deal. Those refugees deported to Turkey will virtually have no hope of ever reaching Europe, since the deal contains a provision to put asylum applications from people who have previously entered Europe illegally to the bottom of the pile. Turkey will receive up to 6 billion in financial assistance from the EU over the coming two years for its role in accepting refugees deported from Greece, even though Davutoglu has made clear his governments intention to repatriate them to their home countries. In addition, Turkey is also being offered the prospect of visa free travel within the EU for its 75 million citizens if it meets a series of conditions, and the opening of a new chapter in Turkish negotiations to join the EU. The deal with the EU has strengthened Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan in his brutal crackdown against political opponents and journalists. On the eve of last weeks summit in Brussels, Erdogan declared bluntly in a March 16 speech that criticism of Turkey on issues like democracy, freedom and rule of law were groundless. For us, these phrases have absolutely no value any longer, Erdogan continued. Seizing on the March 13 bombing in Ankara claimed by a splinter group of the Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) which left 37 dead, Erdogan announced his intention last week to expand the definition of terrorism to include MPs, journalists and activists. Those who stand on our side in the fight against terrorism are our friend. Those on the opposite side, are our enemy, he chillingly warned in his March 16 address. German Chancellor Angela Merkel and the other heads of government who hailed the refugee deal know full well that Erdogans statements amounted to an open declaration that Ankara intends to deploy the full force of the state against refugees and anyone else who dares to oppose government policy. The EU will be directly complicit in such repression by expelling refugees to a police state regime which has not even fully implemented the UN Refugee Convention. Erdogan followed up his explicit defence of the authoritarian methods employed by his government with comments yesterday that sought to place the blame for the refugee crisis on the European powers failure to intervene militarily in neighbouring Syria. All those who have not accepted a no-fly zone and a zone cleared of terror in Syria, and everyone who complains about the refugees are two-faced and hypocritical, he said. Turkeys push for a no-fly-zone in northern Syria is aimed above all at countering efforts by the Kurdish fighters combatting Islamic State militants from establishing a contiguous territory on the Turkish border, which Ankara fears would become the basis for a separate Kurdish state. The adoption of such a policy, under conditions where Russian aircraft have intervened on the side of the Assad regime, would be the deployment of NATO air power and other forces along the lines of the 2011 regime-change operation in Libya. Notwithstanding recent moves by Moscow to draw down its forces deployed in Syria, a direct NATO intervention in the Syrian civil war of this character poses the real threat of a military clash between US-led NATO and Russian forces. The unanimity among EU heads of government on Fridays deal could not disguise the fact that deep divisions persist in the bloc. The closure of the Balkan route to refugees without travel documents and the agreement to send all refugees arriving in Greece back to Turkey have resulted in alternative routes being considered, including passage through Albania before crossing the Adriatic Sea to Italy. The Austrian government vowed last month to impose border controls on the Brenner motorway on its border with Italy, one of the busiest routes between southern and northern Europe. Financial Times columnist Wolfgang Munchau warned that the EU-Turkey agreement amounted to a further step in the disintegration of the free movement of people within the Schengen zone and ultimately of the EU itself. Noting that Italy could once again become the main entry point for refugees, he wrote, France, Switzerland and Slovenia can be counted on to reintroduce controls at that point. Italy would then be cut off from the Schengen passport-free travel area, of which it is a member, and Schengen would become a small club of north European countriespossibly a model for a future eurozone. This would be the first step in the fragmentation of the EU. Munchau condemned the agreement because he claimed that the EU had lost its moral high ground and had sold its soul to strike a deal with Turkey. [T]he EU is paying Turkey 6bn and opening up a new chapter in EU accession negotiationsthis with a country whose leadership has just abrogated democracy. The EU is further set to allow visa-free travel to 75m inhabitants of Turkey. The EU not only sold its soul that day, it actually negotiated a pretty lousy deal. In truth, the EU was not compelled to sell out its principles in order to entrust the authoritarian regime in Ankara with the carrying out of its dirty work. The readiness of all of the member states to sign off on a plan to expel refugees to Turkey starkly exposes the reactionary nature of the EU, an institution through which Europes imperialist powers organise attacks on workers and the most vulnerable sections of society, and carry out their aggressive foreign policy objectives. This is precisely why Munchau, like a number of other commentators in the bourgeois press, is wringing his hands in frustration over the deal with Turkey. For decades, the European powers have exploited their moral high ground to justify one imperialist war after another, from the bombardment of Yugoslavia in 1999 to the ongoing efforts to topple the Assad regime. The further erosion of the European powers humanitarian pretensions will only intensify the challenge of selling new wars, such as the well-advanced plans for military operations in Libya, amid growing polar opposition to war and social inequality. Last week it was announced that the New York City Council and Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio have agreed on modifications to the mayors two major affordable housing proposals currently under consideration. These are the Mandatory Inclusionary Housing and the Zoning for Quality and Affordability programs. These would provide substantial incentives to private developers of residential projects provided that they include a portion of their new housing units at supposedly affordable rates. In addition to the mayor the majority of those sitting on the City Council are Democrats. De Blasio presents these programs as part of the fulfillment of the promise he made early in his administration to build or preserve 200,000 affordable housing units over ten years in order to address the citys critical shortage of affordable apartments. A final vote by the City Council is expected shortly, effectively providing no time for additional public comment. The mayors proposals, as originally formulated, had been extensively criticized by affordable housing advocates and widely rejected by the citys 59 neighborhood community boards and five borough boards for setting the definition of what was affordable far too high for large numbers of city residents. After some minor adjustments, including the creation of a new lower income tier, many of these critics have fallen into line. The revised Mandatory Inclusionary Housing plan, which would loosen certain zoning restrictions and provide other benefits to developers, now includes four options for builders who designate 20 to 30 percent of new apartment rents at levels below-market rates. The quota can be reached by including a mix from a total of four income tiers. The new lowest or fourth tier is reportedly designated for families of three earning approximately $31,000 per year, or 40 percent of the area median income (AMI), which is currently $77,700. The second and third tiers target families making 80 and 60 percent of the AMI, respectively, and the top affordable tier is pegged at 115 percent of the AMI. The AMI is based on data from the city as a whole. There are wide income variations between boroughs and neighborhoods. The areas designated for implementation of the proposed plan are among the citys poorest. Consequently, incomes tend to be significantly below those of the city as a whole. For example, in the East New York neighborhood in Brooklyn, the first area to be targeted by the new plan, the 2014 median income was $32,362. A large segment of the population of this impoverished area will, therefore, be excluded from even the lowest affordable housing tier. The compromise was apparently achieved after the application of considerable political pressure against key opponents of the original proposals. In one example, Real Affordability For All (RAFA), an umbrella group including nearly 50 housing advocacy organizations, was subjected to severe criticism for releasing a report that was highly critical of the mayors housing proposals. RAFAs report, entitled "Profiting from a Corrupt System: How the Affordable Housing Industry Robs New York City," concluded that developers of below-market-rate housing steal construction worker wages and operate without proper oversight, while failing to provide truly affordable housing. This hit too close to the bone for liberal groups allied with the mayor. Pressure was reportedly exerted by state agencies and private developers. As a result, more than three quarters of the constituent groups withdrew their support for RAFA. All of the proposals, regardless of the final details, are clear expressions of the fact that the mayors over-riding concern is to cater to the interests of the real estate industry. According to the New York Times, The business world is unexpectedly happy with the mayor, and as phrased by Crains New York Business, The de Blasio administration is looking to satisfy demands for more affordability without scaring away developers. De Blasio administration representatives have openly stated that unless real estate developers receive sufficiently lucrative incentives (i.e. make enough profit to attract them), no affordable housing will be built. The need of the working class for decent and truly affordable housing is entirely secondary and subordinate. Even if de Blasios 200,000-affordable-unit-goal were achieved, it is woefully inadequate to meet current needs, which have been estimated at more than three times that total, let alone sufficient to meet the demand due to future population growth. Business groups have already expressed reservations about the revised inclusionary housing plan. The failure to renew the 421-a tax abatement program, which was highly lucrative for developers, has resulted in a substantial reduction in applications for new residential housing construction permits. According to a story in the New York Times, the Mandatory Inclusionary Housing (MIH) program was designed under the assumption that 421-a would continue. The loss of 421-a, according to the Times, will severely impact the effectiveness of MIH. As a sweetener for the real estate industry, the proposed Zoning for Quality and Affordability program includes loosening of height restrictions in portions of Manhattan, where builders of already grotesquely tall luxury buildings would then be able to make even greater profits. If developers are not satisfied with the profit potential under MIH, they will simply shift their activities to the construction of market rate units. A proposal has already been floated in the state legislature to replace 421-a with outright payments, effectively bribes, to developers who build affordable housing. There are even more reasons to doubt that the proposed new programs will substantially ameliorate the affordable housing crisis in New York. The lax enforcement of existing regulations makes it doubtful that things will change when developers and landlords are given new opportunities to cheat the system and gouge tenants. According to a recent study by ProPublica, the city has done an abysmal job of policing the tax breaks already given to developers who included a small proportion of affordable units in newly constructed buildings under the 421-a program. This now expired give away to developers resulted in windfall profits while making virtually no appreciable improvement in the deficit in affordable housing. ProPublicas research concludes that, as many as 50,000 apartments benefitting from the 421-a and similar tax breaks are missing from the rent registration rolls. Owners of these buildings are receiving more than $100 million a year in property tax reductions. In another example of the citys lenient attitude toward the real estate industry, while the Mayor has made much ado about this years rent freeze on apartments falling under city regulations, there is a significant discrepancy between the number cited by de Blasio1 millionand the actual total registered with the city - 840,000, as of 2014. The difference represents 160,000 housing units which have not been reported by landlords, who can therefore raise rents at will. Tenants are reluctant to complain for fear of being kicked out and not being able to find another place to live under conditions of extremely limited affordable apartments. From the period of the Great Depression until the 1960s, New York had undertaken large scale construction of affordable housing under the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA). Since then, however, under both Democratic and Republican administrations, the city has not only abandoned the construction of new public housing, but allowed the existing facilities to fall into disrepair, leaving roughly four hundred thousand tenants living in squalid conditions. In the city described in a recent book as having had Public Housing That Worked, the ruling elite has openly reverted to the prime directive of capitalismprivate profit above all else. The development of public housing in New York was not undertaken due to the beneficence of the citys ruling strata, but as an effort to forestall workers struggles. In recent decades, with globalization and the financialization of the economy, union bureaucrats and liberal politicians, who once saw advantages to promoting public housing, have moved increasingly to the right, and workers struggles for housing and other social needs have been suppressed. The very idea that the city should take responsibility to ensure decent and truly affordable housing for its citizens has become anathema. Instead, the naked domination of the private real estate industry over city policies has been re-established with full force. The author also recommends: Behind the struggle for affordable housing in New York City [4 December 2015] Overcrowding in New York City Housing Authority fueled by lack of jobs and affordable apartments [16 March 2016] The iconic pictures of life on American college campuses notwithstanding, hunger is a prevalent and growing problem among US students. This year the Houston Food Bank will be offering 250 Food Scholarships, providing 50-60 pounds of food to San Jacinto College students who qualify. The problem of hunger on campuses is little reported but widely felt. Financially hard-pressed students around the countrywell aware that without a degree their chances of employment are drastically lowerare routinely missing meals in order to stay in school. Since the 2008 economic crash, states have accelerated the de-funding of public education. Forty-seven out of 50 states have cut aid to colleges, with state spending on higher education nationwide down an average of 20 percent. These cuts have resulted in skyrocketing tuition. The average cost of tuition and fees at US colleges and universities more than doubled between 1970 and 2013but public university tuition has almost quadrupled. Pell Grants, the federal program for low-income students, covered 67 percent of the average cost of attendance in 1975. As of 2012, it covered only 27 percent, and is lower yet today. The net effect of these state and federal budget cuts has been to transfer the burden of higher education from government onto the backs of students and their families. This cost-shift has meant the ballooning of student loan debt, now amounting to over $1.35 trillion, and large numbers of students scrimping to cover daily necessities. Nate Smith-Tyge, co-founder of the national College and University Food Bank Alliance (CUFBA), emphasized that rising tuition has meant students and their families are foregoing food. Ive seen a family of four or five trying to live on $1,000 a month, he told the Toledo Blade. He pointed to the growth of food pantries on campuses and stated that they have grown from 35 in 2010 to over 267 today. In 2012 the National Survey of Student Engagement in 2012 reported 60 percent of students were worried about affording regular expenses, with just under one-third unable to buy necessary academic materials due to the cost. Three years later, the 2015 survey states that the financial stress for students has not diminished, but worsened. Smith-Tyge is also the current food bank director of one of the first on-campus food pantries (opening in 1993) at Michigan State University. He stated that more than 4,000 students and family members are provided with food at his campus during the academic year. Students in Michigan can receive food assistance from on campus food pantries at Eastern Michigan University, University of Michigan (campuses in Ann Arbor, Dearborn, and Flint), Saginaw Valley State University, Western Michigan University, Wayne State University, Grand Valley State University, Finlandia University, and Delta College. Michigan has more on-campus food pantries than most states, which Smith-Tyge says is a direct result of the states economy: The economic pressure we experienced acutely in the state led to a lot of the programs. The hardship was compounded by cuts in 2011 that limited access to food assistance programs to those college students who worked a minimum of 20 hours per week. Thirty thousand students in the state were stripped of their food stamps under the changes. Additionally, student dormitories and campus food services have been almost entirely outsourced to for-profit vendors driving up costs substantially. Smith-Tyge notes that for commuting students meal plans are incredibly expensive. For example, at Eastern Michigan University, the cheapest add-on meal plan option, just eight meals a week, is $2,275 per semester. That money is due up front, which is hard to swing on a college student budget. Its not really accessible for a lot of people, points out Smith-Tyge. Clare Cady, director and co-founder of CUFBA, described the growing trend of food insecurity as a serious challenge across the US. A lot of them [food insecure college students] are working full time and still struggling, she told the Indiana Public Medias Chad Bouchard. And some of them are supporting families and a lot of them dont have parental support financially. Food insecurity is commonly defined as the limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate and safe foods, or the ability to acquire such foods in socially acceptable ways (as opposed to dumpster diving, etc.). Our food pantry is absolutely something that our students need, said Virginia Speight, the associate vice president of student affairs and director of residence life at University of Toledo told the Blade. According to Hungry to Learn, a December 2015 report by Wisconsins HOPE Lab, half of all community college students are struggling with food and/or housing insecurity. Forty-three percent said they couldnt afford to eat balanced meals, which clearly affects cognitive abilities. Fully 20 percent were classified as hungry, the authors found after surveying over 4,000 students nationally. A 2014 survey at the University of California showed that more that one-quarter of the student population had skipped meals somewhat often or very often to save money. Two in five (40 percent) of 274,000 students at the City University of New York have reported experiencing food insecurity within the last year. Students find that after paying their tuition, they have no resources left to live on. Goldrick-Rab, the University of Wisconsin professor of education policy and poverty associated with HOPE Lab, noted in Hungry to Learn that federal student aid guidelines assume zero living expenses when a student is living at home. This scenario is especially far from reality for low-income families. Kayla Neff, a 19-year-old Spanish and computer science student at Central Michigan University who qualified for food assistance before Michigan cut the program, said she and her father shared about $150 a month in grocery money from the program. Students should be focusing on their education, not whether or not theyll be able to eat dinner or whether they can manage to find a job and balance it on top of their studies, said Neff in an email interview with MLive. According to a 2014 report, Feeding America found that nearly half of its client households with an adult college student (49.3 percent) had been forced to choose between expenses for educational purposes or food, and that 21 percent had faced this predicament every month for the preceding 12 months. Even students at Ivy League universities are struggling to afford food, revealed a Rolling Stone expose last December. A smartphone app called Swipes, created by two Columbia University sophomores, allows students to give meals from their meal plan to other students. Swipes has been downloaded over 900 times since its September launch, co-founder Helson Taveras told RollingStone, Some students actually use it, essentially, for almost every meal, so theres a core group of students who really are dependent on this working. The overall growth of poverty and prevalence of low-wage jobs combined with skyrocketing education costs are forcing many students to abandon their education in the middle of their curriculum. A 2009 report by Public Agenda, a nonprofit and nonpartisan organization, stated that more than half of college students who dropped out of school did so because they needed to work in order to make money. The report also found that more than a third said that re-enrolling would not be possible even if they received a grant that would cover the cost of their tuition and textbooks. Not only is food insecurity a serious issue confronting students throughout the country, but so is homelessness. In other words, students are not just worrying about their next meal, but also finding a place to sleep. We have students receiving full aid, but then sleeping in somebodys car because they could not afford to pay rent, said UC Davis Chancellor Linda Katehi in a report to the Wall Street Journal . The HOPE Lab report showed 13 percent of community college students facing homelessness. Results from the City University of New York indicate that 42 percent of students (100,000 people) are housing insecure, including 29 percent of students who stated they do not have enough money to pay rent. In 2014, more than 56,000 college students on the FAFSA (Free Application for Federal Student Aid) application form identified themselves as homeless. But these numbers only account for those who provide proof of homelessness to federal authorities. Student hunger is just one component of the growing face of hunger across America. According to the nonprofit network of food banks Feeding America, one in six Americans face hunger, and more than 46 million depend on the food pantries to meet basic nutritional needs. Compounding this dire crisis is the fact that more than one million people are expected to lose food stamp benefits in the US during the course of 2016 as a result of bipartisan agreements to reimpose three-month limits on some recipients. A recent survey published on the journal EducationWeek noted that three out of four public school teachers said their students regularly come to school hungry and 93 percent of responding teachers said they worry about the long-term effects of hunger on childrens education. Nearly 500 participants attended two meetings held by Mehring Verlag last Friday at the Leipzig Book Fair. Two books were presented at the meetings that address issues closely linked to the current political situation in Germany. In the afternoon, David North presented the German-language edition of his book The Frankfurt School, Postmodernism and the Politics of the Pseudo-Left: A Marxist Critique in the Non-fiction Book Forum. In the evening, the book Wissenschaft oder Kriegspropaganda (Scholarship or War Propaganda?) was discussed at a meeting at Leipzig University. The Frankfurt School, Postmodernism and the Politics of the Pseudo-Left Peter Schwarz, at the first meeting in the forum, placed Norths new book in the context of the Marxist tradition of theoretical and political polemics. The content of these polemics was always more important than the particular individuals they addressed, said Schwarz. Few people remember Eugen Duhring. But Engels Anti-Duhring, answering the now unknown academics attacks on Marxism, played an immense role in the education of the socialist movement. The Frankfurt School, Postmodernism and the Politics of the Pseudo-Left, Schwarz said, deals with the pessimistic, deeply subjective and irrational conceptions that have dominated the radical, petty-bourgeois left in the post-war periodand which have often been falsely presented as Marxism. The book shows how the various pseudo-left organisationssuch as the Left Party in Germany, Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spaindisorient and betray the working class. In his own remarks, North spoke first about the rise of Donald Trump as the leading candidate for the Republican Party in the US elections. Trump represents everything that is backward in America, North said, pointing to the parallels with the growth of the Alternative for Germany (AfD). North said that the ability of Trump and other right-wing forces to exploit social anger had exposed the political and intellectual bankruptcy of the pseudo-left parties and organisations of the affluent middle class. The great Marxists had always been concerned with questions of perspective, North said. They analyzed objective social developments from the standpoint of the working class struggle for power. This has nothing to do with what passes as left today, said North. There were both political but also theoretical reasons for this. The origins of many pseudo-left tendencies can be traced back to the period of the protests against the Vietnam War. The protest movements that emerged in the 1960s were dominated by radicalised sections of the petty bourgeoisie, not the working class. They were influenced, North explained, by Herbert Marcuse, Wilhelm Reich, Theodor Adorno, and Max Horkheimer, to cite the best known representatives of the Frankfurt School. Following Hitlers victory in 1933, Horkheimer and Marcuse had drawn deeply pessimistic conclusions. They were influenced by the philosophy of German irrationalism. Marcuse attempted to fuse Heideggers existentialist phenomenology onto Marxism. The resulting distortion of Marxist philosophy provided a theoretical foundation for the politics of sections of the middle class. North ended with a direct appeal to the audience: We are entering into very serious times in world history. These are times where masses of people are again going to be confronted with life and death questions. I do not have to tell an audience in Germany what it would mean if a fascist became president of the United States. I think serious times bring forward serious thinkers. He added, There are democratic issues relating to the many different forms of discrimination in capitalist society. But these issues can only be resolved in the framework of the struggle of the working class for socialism. The great task today is the rebuilding of a genuine revolutionary movement of the working class. North said he hoped that his book will encourage the younger generation that will be politically activated by life and death questions to concern themselves with historical materialism, with the great philosophical foundations of Marxism and to break intellectually with the many different forms of petty-bourgeois radical theory. He continued: The issues which we confront in the United States are world issues. We are witnessing the revival of very dangerous forms of nationalism. In opposition to all the different forms of nationalist politics, we advance the conception of the international unity of the working class, of the great mass of humanityregardless of race, regardless of nationality, regardless of ethnic identity. Scholarship or War Propaganda? Some 400 participants attended the book presentation at Leipzig University. As well as the book Scholarship or War Propaganda?, the meeting also discussed The Frankfurt School, Postmodernism and the Politics of the Pseudo-Left, about which the author himself spoke. Opening the meeting, Schwarz, the editor of Scholarship or War Propaganda?, spoke about the political background to the book. Seventy years after World War II, Schwarz said, no one could deny the danger of a Third World War, which would likely mean the destruction of humanity. The growing danger of war was a direct result of the crisis of capitalism, especially since the financial crash of 2008. The ruling elite and its representatives in the establishment parties, the media and the universities are reacting to the crisis of capitalism, to which they have no rational answers, as they did in the 1930s, with a sharp turn to the right, said Schwarz. They are reacting by arming the state, with authoritarian forms of rule and with war. As in the 1920s and 1930s, the universities play a central role in this development, Schwarz stressed. War was being prepared ideologically at the university. The fight against war was therefore not just a political but also a theoretical question. Scholarship or War Propaganda? documents the struggle mounted by the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) at Berlins Humboldt University against the return of German militarism. Political scientist Herfried Munkler downplays German responsibility for the First World War and demands that Germany once again become Europes hegemon and taskmaster. His historical revisionism coincided with the governments announcement in January 2014 that German military restraint was ending. In Ukraine, the new foreign policy was put into practice, said Schwarz. The head of the school for Eastern European History, Jorg Baberowski, relativises the crimes of the Nazis. In January 2014, Baberowski told the newsweekly Der Spiegel, Hitler was no psychopath, and he wasnt vicious. He didnt want people to talk about the extermination of the Jews at his table. Unlike the 1980s, when similar positions advanced by historian Ernst Nolte were subjected to intense criticism by academics, there has been no opposition to Baberowskis statements apart from that of the IYSSE. The significance of this book goes far beyond Humboldt University, Schwarz summarised. It shows the intellectual pathology of this experience. Germany not only stands in a political crisis but also an intellectual one. In his contribution, Christoph Vandreier went into Baberowskis work and his irrationalist theories of history. He showed how the Humboldt professor falsified the history of the Russian Revolution and relativises the crimes of the Nazis. His statements in Der Spiegel were no faux pas, but followed an extremely reactionary logic that runs throughout Baberowskis works, said Vandreier. For example, Baberowski falsified the October Revolution as an outburst of barbaric violence that inevitably led to Stalinism. In this way, he suggests that Germanys war against the Soviet Union had a preventative character. Baberowski presents the Nazis war of annihilation as being the result of the violence on the Eastern Front, which was created by the Soviet Union. Stalin and his generals forced the Wehrmacht [German Army] into a new type of war, which no longer protected the civilian population, Vandreier cited Baberowski. Such a falsification of history is only possible on the basis of an irrationalist theory of knowledge, said Vandreier. In order to relativise the crimes of German imperialism, Baberowski has to deny any historical causality, any objective truth in history. To this end, he utilises the postmodernist theories of Michel Foucault and the irrationalist philosophy of Martin Heidegger, pushing their views to the limit. On this basis, Baberowski has developed a reactionary worldview that defends social inequality and justifies violence against the exploited and oppressed. His latest diatribe against refugees is part of this reactionary line. Baberowski is not an isolated case. Right-wing intellectuals like Rudiger Safranski, Peter Sloterdijk or the Leipzig jurist Thomas Rauscher have also expressed extreme right-wing positions. Like Baberowski, their positions are bound up with an ultra-conservative world outlook that holds that the world, or humanity, are neither comprehensible nor mutable. They are linked directly with the arch-conservative and anti-democratic authors of the Weimar Republic who opened the way ideologically for the Nazis, said Vandreier. This right-wing intellectual offensive can only be understood in relation to the fundamental tendency toward militarism and war. Amidst deepening inequality and the eruption of imperialist violence, former left-wing or liberal academics have moved to the right. It was worth noting that in its struggle against Baberowski, Vandreier said, the IYSSE found enormous support from students and workers, but not a single professor had opposed their right-wing colleague. In particular, members of the Left Party had supported Baberowski. At the universities, figures such as Baberowski can only extend their influence because so-called left-wing academics have abandoned anything to do with social questions or historical truth, Vandreier summarised. They are laying the foundations for the right with relativist and irrationalist theories. Baberowski is the best example of this. Audience members responded enthusiastically to the contributions from the platform. There were many questions about the political situation in the US, the rise of Trump and the candidacy of Bernie Sanders. Many questioners also drew a parallel between Trump and the electoral success of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). North stressed that Trumps rise must be understood by workers as a preventive measure by the ruling class against the social resistance of the working class. Trump is an expression of the will to power of the oligarchy, he said. In his introduction, Schwarz had spoken about the rise of the AfD in Germany and had drawn parallels to the Trump phenomenon. The AfD is not, as is continually claimed, the result of a rightward movement among broad social layers, but is an initiative from above, he said. Some audience members attempted to defend the Left Party and said that the psyche of workers, or a social unconsciousness, is responsible for the rise of the right wing. Vandreier responded by saying that the IYSSE campaign at Humboldt University and at Leipzig University, and the large audience at the meeting itself, showed that there was a strong opposition to war and social reaction. Theories such as those of the Frankfurt School that make the working class responsible for right-wing sentiments distract from the political questions that must be clarified in the development of an independent movement of the working class. In Germany today, this meant above all understanding the role of the Left Party. Dozens of workers and students left their contact details and participated in discussions that continued long after the event. On March 8, historian Stanley Payne gave a lecture at the Spanish Centre for National Defence Studies (Centro de Estudios para la Defensa NacionalCESEDEN) legitimising the coup of General Francisco Franco in 1936 that sparked the Spanish Civil War and brought to power a 40-year fascist dictatorship. Apart from senior Spanish officers, the audience included Pio Moa, a revisionist pseudo-historian who has justified the repression by the military during the Civil War and the dictatorship. Other attendants were Ignacio Cosido, general director of police, Agustin Conde Bajon, a former parliamentarian of the right-wing Popular Party (PP), Fernando de Paz, an adamant defender of Franco and member of the ultra-right party VOX, and Hermann Tertsch, a right-wing journalist. During the lecture Towards the 18th of July, Payne blamed the Popular Front government formed by social-democratic, Stalinist, anarchist, and centrist POUM forces in 1936 for the destruction of democracy. He claimed that the Republican government under Manuel Azana wanted a military uprising and that the February 1936 elections that gave a majority in parliament to the Popular Front forces were a democratic fraud. They aimed, Payne asserted, to create the conditions for imposing a monopoly of the left. Payne then praised General Franco as a very prudent and professional soldier, who rejected the coup until he understood there was no alternative. He claimed the coup was a response to the climate generated by the Republican government, stating that Those who do not want a counterrevolution, should not start a revolution. The CESEDEN, evidently fearing that an event airing the fascist sympathies of sections of the officer corps would provoke anger and concern across Spain, sought to block reporting of the event. One journalist from La Marea described how the soldiers asked him, Are you a journalist? You cant come in. The Ministry of Defence has not authorised journalists to come in. When the paper contacted the Communication Department of the Ministry of Defence, they stated that the conference is public, but that they would not allow anyone to record the session. In the end, the journalist was able to enter on the condition that he left behind his mobile and any other recording equipment. Eldiario.org explained its journalist was forbidden to take any photographs, and during the conference, a soldier confiscated the laptop until the end of the conference. This is not the place to review all of the historical lies involved in Paynes presentation of the leader of a fascist coup as prudent, or of the Popular Front as carrying out a revolutionary policy. The WSWS has written extensively on the historical issues involved, in The Spanish Civil War and the Popular Front. Suffice it to say that the armys attempt to block reporting of the event testifies to its own awareness that Paynes pro-fascist arguments could not withstand a public historical debate. The Payne lecture was not a scholarly but a propagandistic event. Payne spoke in the fourth month in which Spain has not had a government, since the December 20 elections produced a hung parliament. This political crisis is the outcome of years of escalating economic collapse and social misery, as unemployment affects 23 percent of the population (53 percent among youth), and more than a quarter of the population lives in poverty. The glorification of a fascist coup, coming amid the rise of neo-fascistic tendencies across Europe, is a warning: layers within the army brass have begun contemplating, and seeking to fashion justifications for, a military intervention into Spanish political life, should they deem it necessary. Ominously, given his remarks supporting a fascist coup against the Popular Front, Payne recently spoke about todays conditions, comparing the Popular Front of the 1930s to the possible pact between the PSOE [Socialist Party] and Podemos, the two big parties of the left today. Podemos and the PSOE, which are political descendants of the Stalinist and social-democratic parties of the Popular Front, are far to the right of the parties of the Popular Front in the 1930s, which had a mass base in the working class. The Popular Front was the instrument through which the Stalinist bureaucracy and bourgeois parties in Spain tied a revolutionary upsurge of the working class to the bourgeois Spanish Republic and then suppressed the revolution. This led to the defeat of the Republic by Francos forces in the Civil War. The PSOE and Podemoslike Podemoss Greek ally, the Syriza governmentare bourgeois parties aiming to form a pro-austerity, pro-war government to continue imposing austerity on the workers. The record of the Syriza government underscores that such parties will impose draconian austerity and implement the dictates of the banks and of NATO by themselves, without the need for the army to threaten or mount a coup to obtain the policies desired by finance capital. They have deep ties to the officer corps and have sought to stifle popular opposition to fascist sentiment in the ruling class. Shortly after the launching of Podemos in 2014, its leader, Pablo Iglesias, declared his willingness to talk with all factions of the ruling establishment. He boasted that Podemos was ready to talk to the PSOE and to the PP, because responsibility to the state moves us. We are not sectarian. On programmatic issues, we will not have problems with anyone. Nonetheless, under conditions where discontent in the working class with the entire political establishment is taking on explosive dimensions in Spain and across Europe, Paynes pro-fascist remarks to the officer corps are a warning. Faced with an unprecedented crisis and unsure of what will occur, the army is preparing itself to use bloody and ruthless methods to defend the capitalist order. Paynes lecture is a qualitative development of a long series of previous attempts to rehabilitate Francoism. Payne, born in the US in 1934, is a member of the Royal Spanish Academy of History and a regular contributor to the right-wing daily ABC and El Mundo. He has written more than 20 books on Spanish history. His positions have shifted ever more to the right since the 1939-1978 Franco dictatorship, and particularly in recent years, when he publicly supported Pio Moa. Such efforts have gone hand in hand with an offensive by PP-led governments to rewrite history. The PP has given a diploma of honour to representatives of the Brotherhood of Combatants of the Blue Division (Hermandad de Combatientes de la Division Azul), which fought alongside the Nazi army on the Eastern Front during World War II, and the Ministry of Defence has actively been involved in the repatriation of the remains of these soldiers from Russian soil. At the same time, it has scrapped the budget to uncover the remains of victims of the fascists during the civil war and refused UN recommendations to uncover the remains in mass graves. It also provided hundreds of thousands of euros to fund the Spanish Biographical Dictionary, a collection written by prominent revisionist historians who drafted many chapters rewriting the history of the Spanish Civil War and the Franco dictatorship. The Payne lecture also has exposed the bankruptcy of the PSOE, Podemos, and their various political satellites. The effect of decades of domination of what passed for left politics by the PSOE and groups like Podemos has been to eliminate public opposition to pro-fascist sentiments within official politics. Five days before Paynes lecture, the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory (Asociacion para la Recuperacion de la Memoria HistoricaARMH) published an open letter demanding the Ministry of Defence ensure that the lecture not take place. The ARMH warnings went unheeded. Not one party raised a protest. El Pais, typically considered to be Spains newspaper of record, did not publish anything; the right-wing newspapers El Mundo, ABC, La Razon, and El Espanol remained silent, continuing their support for the Franco regime. This silence exposes the role of Podemos in flirting with the armed forces and stifling anti-war sentiment in broad layers of the population. Since its foundation, Podemos has created branches within the army, entered into talks with military associations to hear their demands, and defended Spains membership in NATO. It even ran General Julio Rodriguez, who led the Spanish army in the US-led war in Libya in 2011, as a candidate in Zaragoza province. Podemos has yet to comment on Paynes remarks, leaving it to its regional Catalan branch, En Comu Podem, to put forward a few tepid criticisms of the lecture. En Comu posed two written questions to the caretaker PP government: first, whether the lecture violated the mandate of parliaments Constitutional Commission of 2002, which unanimously adopted a resolution rejecting the violent seizure of power or its justification; and second, why the computer of the eldiario journalist was confiscated. The government ignored En Comu, however, declining to answer its questions. Manifestly, these questions were designed not to provoke opposition to pro-fascist sentiment in the army, but to provide political cover for En Comu, so it could say that it had raised criticisms of Paynes lecture. Amidst the ongoing collapse in global commodity prices, St. Louis-based Peabody Energy warned last week it may need to voluntarily seek protection under Chapter 11 of the US Bankruptcy Code. The energy giant is the worlds largest privately owned coal company with a more than 130-year corporate history. A Peabody bankruptcy would be only the latest in a string of high-profile coal company failuresamong the wreckage of dozens of smaller operationsin the US, including Arch Coal (January 2016), Alpha Natural Resources (August 2015), Walter Energy (July 2015), Patriot Coal (May 2015 and July 2012) and James River Coal (April 2014). Bankruptcies at beleaguered coal producers Foresight Energy and Cloud Peak Energy are also expected soon. In each case, the bankruptcy courts are being employed to attack the wages, pensions, health care and working conditions of minersgains realized through decades of strugglesand shift the entire burden of the crisis enveloping the global coal industry onto their backs. Peabody will use any forthcoming restructuring to do the same to its approximately 7,600 employees in the US. The United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) has issued no public statements on the threatened bankruptcy and further jobs massacre. For decades, the UMWA has had the closest corporatist relations with the giant coal company. It has not called a strike against Peabody since a walkout by 7,000 miners in 1993, which the UMWA betrayed paving the way for the company to slash the jobs, wages and benefits for thousands of active and retired miners. In 2007, Peabody spun off its unionized operations to a new corporate entity, Patriot Coal, in order to divest itself from its higher-costing operations in the Appalachian Basin while offloading substantial liabilities associated with pensions, health care and environmental obligations to the new company. Loaded up with debt, Patriot would declare the first of two bankruptcies in 2012. In January, the UMWA reached a court agreement with Peabody that allowed the company to escape its final $70 million payment owed to a health fund covering 12,000 Patriot Coal miners, including many who worked for Peabody. On March 15, Peabody announced it would utilize a 30-day grace period in relation to a $71.1 million interest payments owed on its debt in order to have conversations with our lenders about our alternatives, while maintaining options around our interest payments. By the time trading opened the next morning, the companys shares had lost around half their value and were trading at about $2.00 per share. It represented a dramatic decline from highs of $123.45 a share in the first quarter of 2015 and $299.00 as recent as the first quarter of 2014. In its 2015 annual report to the US Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) released March 16, Peabody claimed it was $6.3 billion in debt and had maxed out one of its lines of credit in February. The company lost nearly $2 billion last year on top of a $787 million loss in 2014, losses it said it expects to continue. We incurred a substantial loss from operations and had negative cash flows from operating activities for the year ended December 31, 2015. Our current operating plan indicates that we will continue to incur losses from operations and generate negative cash flows from operating activities, the statement explained. As a result of these factors, as well as the continued uncertainty around global coal fundamentals, the stagnated economic growth of certain major coal-importing nations, and the potential for significant additional regulatory requirements imposed on coal producers, among others, there exists substantial doubt whether we will be able to continue as a going concern, the statement warned. While it attempts to negotiate with its creditors, Peabodywhich has already cut its global workforce by 20 percent since 2012is seeking to improve its financial position by selling assets, cutting costs and increasing productivity. The company is set to conclude a sale of its El Segundo and Lee Ranch coal mines in New Mexico, as well as its Twentymile Mine in Colorado, to Bowies Natural Resources. Peabody also boasts in its SEC filing of having cut operational and administrative costs by some $760 million. Without giving specifics, Peabody told the Gillette News Record earlier this month that it had implemented a small number of job reductions at its Caballo and Rawhide mines in Wyomings Powder River Basin. These come on top of 75 layoffs in the companys Arclar Mine Complex in Illinois earlier this year and the announcement last June that it would eliminate approximately 25 percent of its corporate and regional support positions, about 250 jobs, in order to create a leaner organization and lower costs. However, there can be no assurance that our plan to improve our operating performance and financial position will be successful or that we will be able to obtain additional financing on commercially reasonable terms at all, the company warned in its SEC filing. If we are not able to timely, successfully or efficiently implement the strategies that we are pursuing to improve our operating performance and financial position, obtain alternative sources of capital or otherwise meet our liquidity needs, we may need to voluntarily seek protection under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. A Peabody bankruptcy would signify not only a deepening of the crisis of the US coal industry and American capitalism, but of global capitalism as well. The company controls some 6.3 billion tons of thermal and metallurgical coal reserves in the US and Australia, selling nearly 230 million tons last year. The company operates internationally through offices in the US, Australia, United Kingdom, Germany, China and India. According to the US Energy Information Administration (EIA), US coal production in 2015 reached its lowest level since 1986. Bound up with this was a 21 percent drop in exports as compared to 2014. China, which imported some 8.3 million tons of US coal in 2013, took fewer than 0.5 million tons in 2015 as its economy slowed to its lowest rate in 25 years. Amid these declines is a staggering collapse of the US coal industrys market value. According to analysts at the Rhodium Group, The four largest US miners by output, Peabody Energy, Arch Coal, Cloud Peak Energy and Alpha Natural Resources, which account for nearly half of US production were worth a combined $34 billion at their peak in 2011. Today they are worth $150 million. Coal producers are suffering through a historic rout, reported Bloomberg Business in January. Over the past five years, the industry has lost 94 percent of its market value, from $68.6 billion to $4.02 billion. Particularly hard hit is the Central Appalachian Basinsouthern West Virginia and eastern Kentuckywhere extensively mined seams have led to high production costs. However, the mine closures and layoffs, which have devastated the Appalachian region over the past few years, are now spreading to other coal basins in the American Midwest and West. In fact, Peabodys troubles highlight this trend because it no longer operates any mines in Appalachia, since spinning these operations off to Patriot Coal in 2007. At its US operations, Peabody mines thermal coal in Illinois, Indiana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona primarily for domestic electricity production. At its massive North Antelope Rochelle surface mine in the Powder River Basin, the company produced approximately 110 million tons of coal in 2015more than the entire state of West Virginia. However, thermal coals share of the domestic energy market has steadily eroded in the face of cheap, abundant natural gas. In its Short-Term Energy Outlook released last week, EIA forecasts that 2016 will be the first year that natural gas-fired generation exceeds coal generation in the United States on an annual basis. Peabody also controls substantial thermal and metallurgical reserves in Queensland and New South Wales in Australia. In 2015, Peabodys Australian operations produced nearly 35 million tons, about 77 percent of which was exported on the global market. In 2011, Peabody bet on the continued rise of China and its strong demand for metallurgical coal used in steelmaking by acquiring Macarthur Coal Limited. However, metallurgical coal prices have plummeted since then with the slowdown of the Chinese economy. After reaching $330 per metric in 2011, noted Bloomberg in January, prices have since tanked to a quarter of that level. Goldman Sachs Group Inc. forecasts benchmark metallurgical coal prices to fall to $75 this year. Coal miners in China are also facing the brutal consequences of the global economic crisis. According to the China National Coal Association, China has about 10,760 mines, about 5,600 of which will closed over the next three to five years in an effort to cut surplus production by as much as 500 million tons. In 2016 alone, the government aims to cut production by 60 million tons by closing more than 1,000 coal mines. Announcements by the Chinese government last month that it intends to eliminate 1.3 million jobs in the coal industry and another 500,000 steelworker jobs have led to angry protests and demonstrations by thousands of workers. Once the United States is in Cuba, who will drive it out?"Jose Marti, 1895. The single most iconic image of Barack Obamas three-day trip to Cuba was that of the US president laying a wreath at the foot of a memorial in La Plaza de la Revolucion to Cuban independence hero and poet Jose Marti, while a military band played The Star-Spangled Banner. The supporters of Castroism have tried to turn Marti into a semi-Marxist and its opponents have remade him into a rabid anti-communist. In fact, Marti was a man of his epoch, a bourgeois nationalist and romantic, a fervent admirer of Abraham Lincoln, who drew incisive conclusions about the evolution of capitalist society in the US based on his 15 years in exile there. What is becoming apparent, he wrote in 1889, is that the nature of the North American government is gradually changing its fundamental reality. Under the traditional labels of Republican and Democrat, with no innovation other than the contingent circumstances of place and character, the republic is becoming plutocratic and imperialistic. One hundred and twenty-seven years later, President Obama comes to Cuba as the representative of a government in which the processes indicated by Marti have not only ripened, they have become thoroughly rotten. The corporate media all over the world use the word historic to describe Obamas visit to Cubathe first by an American president since Calvin Coolidge 88 years before. Very few, however, care to invest this adjective with any concrete meaning as to what in the historical development of US and world capitalism, as well as the regime brought to power by the 1959 Cuban Revolution, has brought the American president to Havana. In his appearance on Monday with Cuban President Raul Castro, Obama postured as the champion of democracy and freedom, declaring that they are not just American values, but are universal values. He cast his bid to normalize relations with Cuba as an exercise in reconciliation based on the profound insight that, in the end, people are people. No one would suspect that this great humanitarian is the same president responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands in US-orchestrated wars for regime-change in Libya and Syriaa man who has personally directed a drone assassination program that has murdered thousands of innocent civilians, who directs a covert spying operation against the people of the planet, and who pursues US interests by supporting bloodstained clients and allies ranging from the semi-feudal monarchy in Saudi Arabia to the death-squad regime in Honduras. Obamas human rights masquerade is aided and abetted not only by the slavish US media, but also by the Castro government itself, which published an obsequious biography describing the American president as someone who embodies the values of the heartland of America and is driven by the conviction that a life so blessed should be lived to serve others. What drives Obama and the virtual army of CEOs and business lobbyists who accompanied him to Cuba is the ferocious struggle for markets and profits that underlies the worldwide eruption of American militarism. Unlike most of the mass media, the financial press was fairly blunt about what brought Obama to Cuba. As the Obama administration works to expand economic relations with Cuba, it is competing for influence with a familiar rival: China, the Wall Street Journal stated. While Chinas trade with the island nation grew by 57 percent in just the first three quarters of 2015, Washington is betting that it can use cultural attachment and proximity to defeat Beijing not only in economic influence, but also in the battle for the countrys political future, the newspaper wrote. The Journal noted that same motive is also behind the second leg of Obamas Latin American tour, which will take him to Argentina for a meeting with recently inaugurated President Mauricio Macri, arguably the most right-wing head of state on the South American continent. While China is the largest market for Argentine agricultural commodities and the countrys third biggest foreign investor, Macri has signaled his intention to shift the country more directly into the orbit of US imperialism, an agenda that seemed to be violently underscored by last weeks sinking of a Chinese fishing vessel at the hands of an Argentine gunboat. The Pentagon has increasingly made the argument that Obamas pivot to Asia must include an economic, political and military drive to resist Beijings growing influence in Latin America. Obamas trip appears to be based on the same perspective. Ironically, the Cuban government appears to desire nothing so much as to emulate China in terms of its state forms, its economic setup and its relations with imperialism. It has already created a special economic zone for foreign capitalist investors at the new port facility of Mariel, offering itself as a labor contractor guaranteeing a cheap and state-disciplined workforce. The inevitable outcome will be the enrichment of a thin layer of bureaucrats and entrepreneurs, together with soaring social inequality and an explosive growth of class struggle. For pseudo-left forces throughout Latin America, the US-Cuba rapprochement represents one more blow to a bankrupt political perspective already severely undermined by the ebbingin tandem with the collapse of the commodity and emerging market boomsof the so-called turn to the left by elements ranging from the ousted Peronists in Argentina to the crisis-ridden administrations of Maduro in Venezuela, Rousseff in Brazil and Morales in Bolivia. The illusions that the pseudo-left attempted to promote in these governments echoed their attempt in the 1960s and 1970s to cast the Cuban Revolution, Castroism and petty-bourgeois guerrillaism as a new road to socialism, one that no longer depended upon either the building of revolutionary Marxist parties or the conscious and independent revolutionary intervention of the working class. The working class of Latin America paid a terrible price for the influence exerted by this theory, which was fostered by the Pabloite revisionist tendency that emerged within the Fourth International. The diversion of radicalized youth and young workers into suicidal guerrilla struggles claimed thousands of lives, disoriented the workers movement, and paved the way to fascist-military dictatorships. The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) fought implacably against this perspective, insisting that Castroism represented not a new road to socialism, but rather one of the most radical variants of the bourgeois nationalist movements swept to power throughout much of the former colonial world during the same period. The ICFI insisted, in line with Trotskys Theory of Permanent Revolution, that the task of liberating Cuba and other colonial and semi-colonial countries from imperialist oppression could be achieved only under the leadership of the working class, mobilizing behind it the peasantry and fighting to take state power into its own hands and extend the revolution internationally. The protracted evolution of the Castro government, now culminating in the rapprochement with US imperialism symbolized by Obamas presence in Havana, has thoroughly vindicated this perspective. What is now emerging on the historical agenda throughout Latin America and internationally is an eruption of class struggle that poses with immense urgency the building of new revolutionary parties of the working class as sections of the world Trotskyist movement, the ICFI. The Socialist Equality Party (SEP) and the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) in Sri Lanka held a well-attended public meeting on March 15 to launch the Sinhala edition of David Norths The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished Twentieth Century. The event was held at the Colombo Public Library Auditorium and attended by SEP members, workers, students and youth from various parts of the island. It opened with greetings delivered live from Germany by David North, chairman of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site and the SEP in the US. The audience listened intently as North praised the intellectual effort, technical work and financial costs involved in the Sinhalese translation of his book and paid tribute to the Sri Lankan SEP and its predecessor, the Revolutionary Communist League, for the decades of courageous struggle for revolutionary Marxism. Norths remarks were welcomed with enthusiastic applause. SEP political committee and WSWS International Editorial Board member K. Ratnayake chaired the meeting with SEP general secretary Wije Dias delivering the main report. Ratnayake explained Norths leading role in the theoretical and political struggle of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) and pointed out that The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished Twentieth Century was the latest of the authors invaluable contributions to Marxism and Trotskyism. The articles and lectures in the book, Ratnayake said, defended Marxist and Trotskyist principles against the historical falsifications of the Stalinists, Pabloites, post-modernists and pseudo-lefts. The new publication presents an objective picture of the 20th century, Ratnayake said. For revolutionary Marxists, studying history is not an academic exercise but an inseparable part of the revolutionary struggle against capitalism. This will immensely contribute to developing perspectives for the international working class against imperialist war and social counter-revolution. Delivering the main report, SEP general secretary Dias paid tribute to Mehring Books for the original compilation and publication of Norths work. The speaker quoted a section from the original foreword, which insisted that the exposure of the key historical falsifications in the 20th century was a weapon in the revolutionary struggles of the future. Dias told the meeting that the penetrating theoretical and political expositions in Norths book were derived from the systematic study of the strategic experiences of the interventions made by the Marxist movement, including the ICFI, in the international class struggle over one and three quarter centuries. Social revolutionary theory is developed by critically analysing the social practice of mankind, which, in turn guides the social practice to a higher level at the next stage. It is in this sense that this book serves as a weapon in the revolutionary struggles of the future. Opportunists reject this dialectical relationship between social practice and theory, Dias said. Like all other opportunist tendencies throughout the world, the Frontline Socialist Party in Sri Lanka claims in one of its publications Akshaya (The Axis), that the challenge faced by the lefts today, is to make the tasks of activists and theoreticians coincide. Society is split into two distinct categories, with activity and theory like two rails running parallel and separate from each other but brought to coincide by the pseudo-lefts. This theory, which is divorced from the material basis of the class struggle, is a recipe to opportunistically bring together different class forces and politically derail the mass movement, Dias said. The speaker drew attention to the current world situation, the dangers of a Third World War and the historic significance of the ICFIs campaign to build a global socialist anti-war movement. Norths book, he said, contained invaluable historical and theoretical material to clarify workers, rural poor and youth about the struggle to construct a mass movement to prevent war through the socialist overturn of the imperialist world order. Dias said that The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished Twentieth Century explained the fundamental theoretical premises on which Bolshevism was founded by Lenin to build an independent political party of the working class in Russia, without which the overthrow of the bourgeois rule was impossible. The debates waged by Trotsky against all those attempts to belittle the leading role of the working class in the Russian Revolution and the resolution of democratic tasks, prepared the ground for the uncompromising struggle against those like the Socialist Revolutionaries in Russia who cultivated illusions about nationalist petty-bourgeois social forces. Norths book, the speaker continued, is permeated with proletarian internationalism. The Russian Revolution, its victory, as well as its degeneration and tragic demise under the Stalinist bureaucracy, has shown that internationalism is pivotal for the working class for all time. This is particularly so under conditions of heightening war tensions where national chauvinist hysteria is whipped up by the ruling classes and their left agencies. Dias told the meeting the ICFIs struggle to build the world party of socialist revolution had been enormously strengthened by The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished Twentieth Century. Referring to Trotskys comment that one of the psychological causes of opportunism is the fear of great tasks which means the mistrust of revolutionary possibilities, Dias concluded his speech by declaring: We see and trust the revolutionary possibilities that are developing around the world and therefore we unhesitatingly undertake the task of establishing world socialism. Those in attendance contributed generously to the SEPs Special Fund and bought more than two dozen copies of The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished Twentieth Century Sinhala edition. Important political discussions were held with some of those who came to the event. Supun, a Moratuwa University engineering student, said The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished Twentieth Century was very timely. When the pseudo-left parties and the post-modernists are consciously trying to blur the borders of the working class and imply that there is no working class, this book stands in a direct challenge to them, strongly declaring: No, the working class is there and the revolution is on the way. Comrade Wije Dias pointed out that while the Frontline Socialist Party calls for a front of all left parties, the SEP rigidly rejects getting together with these pseudo-left parties. The actual need is to build a party for the working class based on socialism, not to create different movements in different places, each standing for isolated problems and expect these temporary plasters [Band-Aids] to cover-up wounds. Indunil, a Colombo University law student, was met during the campaign for the meeting. He said that the SEP had made clear that imperialist interventions and geo-political tensions throughout the world, mean that the danger of a third world war is imminent. He initially told WSWS reporters, however, that countries should co-operate with each other and attempt to solve their problems within their own boundaries. In the discussion, it was pointed out that cooperation between countries was impossible under capitalism, and especially under conditions of an escalating globalised economic breakdown. Indunil concluded: I understand that socialism is the answer to world war. To prevent war then we need to mobilise working people all around the world and a party like yours to lead these masses. 6 years, 7 months ago by Scott Hardy Barnard to not pursue further legal action An Illinois appellate court has denied a request by Adams County State's Attorney Jon Barnard to re-instate late voting, in the aftermath of last Tuesday's ballot shortage. The ruling by the Fourth District Appellate Court was handed down Tuesday afternoon. In his motion, Barnard had asked the court to over-turn a late-Friday ruling that halted a plan to offer voters unable to cast their ballot a way to do so. The late-voting halt was asked for by the Illinois Attorney General's office, who said that the original injunction was unconstitutional. Barnard says he won't pursue the case any further, saying to do so would take the process past the March 29th certification date for ballots required by the state of Illinois. 6 years, 7 months ago QPD Paul R Edwards 870 N 550thh for Failure to Stop-Stop Arm for School Bus at 14th & Maine NTA Reshay L Wright (34) 720 N 3rd for FTA Theft at 7th & Spring Lodged Alex M Carrillo (19) 7517 White Oak Rd for Operating Uninsured Vehicle at 4th & Spruce NTA Kourtney L Price (25) 1010 S 22nd for Expired Registration and Operating Uninsured Vehicle at 5th & Oak NTA Christian M Duesterhaus (19) 801 S 14th for Possession of Cannabis at 19th & State NTA Haley D Fewkes (24) 1709 Maple for Expired Registration at 25th & Broadway NTA Jacob R Shoemaker (31) 2321 Aldo Blvd for Expired Registration at 46th & Harrison PTC Tanner T Eyler (19) 1521 Penthouse Dr for FTA Unlicensed and FTA Trespassing at 13th & Spring Lodged Richard S Tournear 221 S 16th reported his garage entered and electronics stolen on 3/15/16 Marlaina E Curley 840 State reported the tires on her vehicle slashed on 31/13/16 Jerrica A. Jones, 27, 715 State for FTA failure to reduce speed. Cash Bond Patricia A. Creely, 57, 1032 N. 18th for Failure to Yield - Left Turn in the 400 block of Broadway on 03-17-16. PTC Anthony A. Gallaher (37) 918 Cherry and Joshua P. Nelson (23) 305 Cedar were both arrested for Resisting / Obstructing an Officer at 305 Cedar on 3/21/15. Gallaher was also arrested for a Tazewell County FTA warrant for DWLS. Both were lodged. Teresa A. Snyder 209 Chestnut reported her unlocked 2005 Chevy Trailblazer was entered by an unknown suspect while parked at her residence sometime between 0001 and 0930 hours on 03-10-16. Loose change was stolen from her vehicle. Kristi K. Routh 6901 Baseline Rd. reported her locked 2009 GMC Yukon was forcibly entered while it was parked near 5th & Payson Ave. between 1815-2100 hrs. The unknown suspect shattered the front passenger window and stole her purse. Jared J. Szarka 1720 N. 12th reported his 16 foot Woodworth brand black trailer was stolen by an unknown suspect sometime between 1300-1400 hours on 03-14-16. The trailer was entered into LEADS/NCIC as stolen. Tyler D Brooks (20) O'Fallon, IL for registration suspended for mandatory insurance violation & operating uninsured vehicle at 25th & Broadway on 3-20-16. DL/cash bond Michael R Young (69) 1013 Klondike for improper driving at 1702 Washington St. on 3-20-16. PTC James D Johnson (25) 701 Maple St. for operating uninsured vehicle & open liquor in vehicle at 5th and Cedar on 3-20-16. NTA Kordell N Tucker (19) 318 Maiden Lane Apt. 316 for possession of alcohol by a minor at 5th and Cedar on 3-20-16. NTA Tyquan D. Campbell (19) 621 Washington St. for possession of alcohol by a minor at 5th and Cedar on 3-20-16. NTA Tanya L Rodie (28) 613 Church Hannibal, MO for a City of Quincy warrant for FTA- possession of drug paraphernalia at 10th and State on 3-21-16. Lodged 6 years, 7 months ago by Scott Hardy City Council votes tonight, County Tuesday night An apparent agreement has been reached in negotiations between the City of Quincy and Adams County over the Quincy Police Department leasing space in a new Adams County Jail. The Quincy City Council is set to vote tonight on a resolution to approve an inter-governmental agreement that would have the QPD lease an estimated 12 thousand square feet in the new County Jail. It's been estimated that repairs to the current QPD Headquarters in the basement of City Hall would cost up to $5 million, while a new HQ could cost up to $12 million. No terms on the amount or length of the lease are yet available. It's been speculated that the lease agreement will help the County build a new jail downtown, next to the current Courthouse. The current plan favored by the County Jail's sub-committee would build to the east of the courthouse, across Sixth Street and along the east side of Sixth Street. That's estimated to cost some $28 million. The County's Jail sub-committee is scheduled to meet tomorrow night, and the County Board has called a special meeting after that, to vote on the lease agreement. 6 years, 7 months ago by Scott Hardy County Board votes on downtown site Tuesday night It's one vote down, and one to go for a new Adams County Jail to be built downtown. Scott Hardy has more from Monday night's Quincy City Council meeting. The Quincy City Council Monday night approved an Inter-governmental agreement that will see the city lease 12 thousand square feet of space in a new downtown Jail for the Quincy Police Department's new headquarters. The lease would last 20 years, with the city paying one dollar a year in rent. The lease does call for the city to provide: $4.2 million by next March to help build the new QPD headquarters. $250 thousand to remove water & sewer lines on a section of Sixth Street from Vermont to the alley. $570 thousand to re-build Parking Lot D along Vermont. That's a total of just over $5 million ($5,020,000) Quincy Mayor Kyle Moore said afterwards it's a win for everyone. (Kyle Moore cut :27) Moore says the next step for the city is how to pay for the agreement, which will be up to the Finance Committee. Moore says there won't be a tax increase by the city. (Kyle Moore cut :15) The Adams County Board will hold a special meeting tonight to also vote on the agreement. TALLAHASSEE, FL- The Young Actors Theatre is bringing a Tony Award winning musical to the Capital City. The production "Into the Woods" opens next week. Robert Stuart and Whitney Snow with the Young Actors Theatre paid a visit to WTXL Sunrise. They shared the details with Sunrise Anchor Christine Souders. Into the Woods is a collection of everyone's favorite storybook characters in the classic adaption of by the Brother Grimm. Young Actors Theatre Alum Whitney Snow plays the role of the Witch who casts a curse on a Baker and his wife. The curse keeps them from conceiving a child and so the two set off on a journey to break the curse. Snow, a 2004 Graduate of the Young Actors Theatre and MaClay School received a BFA in Musical Theatre from Boston Conservatory and is currently completing a Masters in Applied Theatre from CUNY School of Professional Studies in New York City. The rest of the cast include local high students and one 8th grader. The cast includes may fairytale favorites, including Cinderella, Jack and the Beanstalk, Rapunzel, Little Red Riding Hood and even a cow. "When I saw it back in the 80's I knew we wanted to do it. It's a 'bear' to tackle. but we think it's a good choice for our 40th Anniversary," said Robert Stuart, with Young Actors Theatre. Into The Woods runs April 1-16. Young Actors Theatre locate at 609 Glenview Drive. It's $16 -$20. Visit YoungActorsTheatre.com or call 850-386-6602. MADISON, FL (WTXL) -- Deputies have released the name of the 21-year-old found shot to death Friday morning. According to Madison County Sheriff Ben Stewart, 21-year-old Travis Lavonte Solomon was pronounced dead at the scene. He was found on the in the area of 185 Apopka Trail, said deputies. Not much has been released about the case have been released. Investigators say they have received little cooperation from those present during the shooting. Sheriff Stewart is encouraging those with information relating to the shooting to contact the Sheriffs Office or the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. Sheriffs Office: 850-973-4151 FDLE (Live Oak Filed Office): 386-330-2840 Tallahassee, Fla. (WTXL)--More fallout at Florida A&M University. This time, the University student body president-elect is now accusing President Elmira Mangum and other administrators of violating his rights and meddling in the student election. Justin Bruno called an emergency press conference on the steps of Lee Hall Auditorium this morning. He won the election fair and square back in February. But his opponents went to the University and accused their campaign of violating election standards. The SGA Student Supreme Court approved a request for a re-election. However Bruno still denies those fraud allegations and says the votes speak for themselves. He also says he was never notified of any violations and never got the chance to appeal. Bruno says at this point, it's not even about winning the office, he's fighting for student rights. Bruno filed an injunction to have that new election stopped. Our cameras were rolling as we walked that paperwork up to President Elmira Mangum's office. Mangum wasn't able to speak with Bruno this morning, however the University released a statement saying quote "The SGA elections process is a student-led initiative. The University abides by Florida Board of Governors Regulation 6.014, which states that the qualifications, elections, returns, the appointments, and the suspension, removal, and discipline of officers of the student government shall be determined by the student government as prescribed by its internal procedures. The SGA Student Supreme Court ruled that a new election should take place, and it is up to the SGA Electoral Commission and the student body, in general, to govern themselves according to their student constitution. Additionally, due to the possibility of pending litigation, the University cannot comment further on the matter. The University supports the students participation in civic engagement." TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - Florida Gov. Rick Scott has announced the appointment of Kim McDougal as chief of staff. McDougal, 53, will move into one of the most powerful positons in the administration. She previously served as Scott's deputy chief of staff, legislative affairs director and education policy coordinator. She was also Scott's policy director during his re-election campaign in 2014. Before working for Scott, McDougal held numerous leadership roles at the Department of Education, including governmental relations director and senior policy adviser. Scott lauded McDougal's "successful track record along with her extensive experience and knowledge." McDougal will take over for Melissa Sellers on April 2. Sellers has been Scott's chief of staff since November 2014 and announced her resignation last week. Sellers is expected to open her own political consulting and communications firm. ATLANTA (AP) The Georgia Supreme Court has ruled that a convicted killer was too young to be sentenced to life without parole. Media outlets report Georgia Supreme Court justices upheld 23-year-old Robert Veal's murder conviction on Monday, but tossed his sentence. Month before Veal was sentenced in 2012, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in Miller v. Alabama that mandatory sentences without the possibility of parole for minors who commit murder were unconstitutional. Veal was 17 when a judge sentenced him to life without parole plus six additional life terms, plus 40 years. He was a minor when he and two other gang members, known as the "Jack Boys," set out on a crime spree in the Atlanta area that included robbing and shooting people. Veal's case will return to court for re-sentencing. TALLAHASSEE, FL (WTXL) - Two teens entered a plea deal after a 2015 car crash that killed Chiles High School student Ansley Rayborn. According to lawyers, 16-year-old Hunter Goodwin and 17-year-old Cody Elkins took a plea deal on Tuesday, lessening their charges. Goodwin's lawyer, John Leace, said his client had most of the charges dropped. Goodwin did plead no contest to one count of driving without a valid license in a crash that resulted in death, Leace said. "I think that the reasons the charges were reduced is commensurate with Hunter's role in the incident. I think that it was a situation where the state took a look at the actions that both of these young men took and charged them with the charges that ultimately they thought were appropriate." Both boys will be placed on juvenile probation, which includes 100 hours of community service and restricted driving privileges, Leace said. They will then reportedly be moved to a juvenile facility for an unknown amount of time, possibly up until their 21st birthdays, he said. This comes after the February 7, 2015 death of Ansley Rayborn. The Chiles High School student was killed after being ejected from a car on Old Chemonie Road, deputies said. Since Rayborn's death, her family has started 'The Ansley Rayborn Scholarship' in her memory to support a local high school graduate. QUINCY, FL- Tip-A-Cop benefits Special Olympics and is being held at different locations and dates in our area. Here's how it works: Gadsden Law Enforcement Officers will be waiting tables in an effort to raise funds to benefit Special Olympic Athletes in order to compete in the summer games, held in Kissimee, Florida. Gadsden County Law Enforcment is hosting the events Deputy Marcus Dixon with Gadsden County Sheriff's Office and Lt. Richard Crutcher with Gretna Female Prision joined WTXL's Christine Souders on Midday to talk about the event taking place at two dates and locations. Tip-A-Cop Events are being held from 6 p.m to 9 p.m. March 25:West End Grille & Havana Hobbit, 1820 W. Jefferson St. Quincy, Fl. April 7: 7771 FLORIDA-GEORGIA Hwy. Havana, Florida. For more details: (850) 528-9224 or marcusdixon@tds.net Police identify suspects in Brussels terror attacks that left at least 31 dead; Islamic State takes credit for explosions at Brussels airport, subway; Third bomb found and disarmed at airport It happens every once in awhile. Usually after another series of terror attacks, a wave of terrorism, or in its actual name - an intifada. After former prime minister Ariel Sharon's Gaza disengagement plan, former minister Haim Ramon is now proposing a plan that before even being put on paper, it has already provoked criticism from all directions: a unilateral Israeli move to remove Arab neighborhoods and villages from Jerusalem - some 200,000 people. The goal: to change the demographic balance and "save Jerusalem." Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter Behind the Save Jewish Jerusalem Movement, along with Ramon, are retired senior police officers such as Arieh Amit, David Tzur and Alik Ron. Together they seek to present the citizens of Israel, and those living in Jerusalem in particular, a new vision of the capital: Palestinian neighborhoods and villages whose residents have Israeli IDs, along with all of the benefits of being Israeli citizens, but they are considered Palestinians. (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg) The proposed plan: Most of the Palestinian Arab villages that were "annexed to Jerusalem in an erroneous and harmful decision in 1967" will be removed from the capital's territory and instead be given the same status as the other villages surrounding Jerusalem that are considered part of the West Bank; a security fence will be immediately erected between those Arab villages and the Jewish Jerusalem; the situation in East Jerusalem, the Old City and the Holy Basin, and the Jewish neighborhoods built after the Six-Day War will remain unchanged; thus, some 200,000 Palestinians will be out of the Jerusalem municipality's area, strengthening the Jewish nature of the city. Jews will then constitute 80 percent of the city's residents, while the Palestinians will be less than 20 percent. Currently, nearly 40 percent of Jerusalem's residents are Palestinians. In addition, the residency status of the 200,000 Palestinians in the surrounding neighborhoods and villages will expire, saving Israel NIS 2-3 billion annually. (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg) The end result: 532,000 Jews will be living within Jerusalem's new borders, making up 81 percent of its population, while only 123,000 Palestinians will remain in the city proper. Ramon and the members of the movement claim that the solution they're offering is not political in nature, since it is also in line with the right wings interests - to disengage from the Palestinians and establish a clear Jewish majority in Jerusalem. (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg) This week we joined them for a ride to understand what is behind their initiative, and what the city's residents think about it. Just don't call it a division of Jerusalem. Bipartisan resistance In light of the attacks committed by Palestinians from East Jerusalem, we chose to explore those places that the members of the Save Jewish Jerusalem Movement want to remove from Jerusalem's city limits - like Shuafat, At-Tur and Jabel Mukaber. Our tour guide is one of the experts on the issue of Jerusalem, who supports the movement's agenda: Col. (res.) Shaul Arieli. The day before our tour, a terrorist from East Jerusalem committed a terror attack in the city. "A terrorist with an Israel ID from Kafr 'Aqab, who naturally belongs to the West Bank, but was annexed to Jerusalem," says Arieli. Sixty percent of the attacks in Jerusalem are committed by residents of these villages." (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg) Ramon argues that Prime Minister Netanyahu decided to stop building the separation fence in Jerusalem because it is in practice dividing the city. "In 2009, Netanyahu stopped building the fence, and this failure derives of ideological reasons," he says. "At the moment, there is no continuous barrier between Jerusalem and the Palestinian villages that were annexed to Jerusalem, and were never part of Jerusalem. Netanyahu is sacrificing the lives of Israeli citizens to create the impression that there is a de facto annexation of all of the West Bank." (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg) Are the Jerusalemites, and the citizens of Israel in general, in favor of the removal of approximately 200,000 Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem from the city limits? Ramon and his colleagues are confident that this is not an issue that divides people to right wing and left wing. And, at least according to the reactions to the proposal, that is an accurate assessment. There are opponents to this plan both on the left and the right. The right wing's main argument is that it serves as a statement on the practical division of the city. The movement will say that in practice, Jerusalem has been divided for a long time, and that this is really just a necessary step that aligns with reality. On the left, most of the arguments so far touched upon two main factors: the first - there is no advantage to a unilateral move, as the past has already shown. The second - the plan is completely impractical. A significant portion of those 200,000 people live and work in Jerusalem. Taking away their livelihood and hope for the future, all in one day, will probably not turn them into partners for peace. (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg) We are joined on our tour of At-Tur by several Border Policemen. As we were surveying the neighborhoods, one of them asks about the movement's activities. "I'm from Jerusalem, a Beitar fan and a right-winger," he says. "But after a few months of settlement security I think it is right to break away from most of the Palestinian residents. Sure, why not? A Democratic threat Retired police officer Arieh Amit, the former commander of the Jerusalem District Police, argues that the myth of a "united Jerusalem" is one of the biggest lies Israel's leaders have been telling us for years. "The leadership in Israel doesnt usually look to the future because of a narrow-minded and self-serving mindset, so we have no choice and we need to deal with this issue of Jerusalem," he says. "Let it be clear: the villages that should be removed from the city limits are villages that were never part of Jerusalem until 1967, when a cocky, arrogant committee was established that was blinded by the historic victory and found explanations to why we should expand Jerusalem and add these villages to the city. These villages are incubators for hatred, terror attacks and generations of people who keep this hatred alive, and only those who visit these places realize how dangerous they are to our future." (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg) You'll be accused of dividing Jerusalem. "This is of course complete and utter nonsense. One of the biggest problems of those who support a united Jerusalem is that they speak in slogans without understanding the reality in this city. If you drop one of them off at the Shuafat refugee camp and tell them to return home on their own, they wont know where they are or how to get out of there. Show me one person who knows where Jabel Mukaber's central mosque is. These villages are not a part of Jerusalem at all. There's no division of Jerusalem, since these places were never part of Jerusalem. These places breed suicide bombers and hatred, and there is no reason we shouldn't put wall between us." (Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg) Amit says he is afraid that one day, the Palestinians in East Jerusalem will rise up and decide to put down the knife and take democratic action against the State of Israel. "In a few years, the Palestinian leadership could tell East Jerusalem residents that instead of going out with knives to stab Jews, they should go with a ballot to the polls and vote for the mayor of Jerusalem. And before we know it, we will have a Palestinian mayor in the best case scenario, or a Hamas mayor in the worst case scenario," he says. "And anyone who doesn't understand this is denying reality. Not many years from now, Jerusalem will no longer be Jewish." Is this a political movement? "Absolutely not. This movement is free of any political agenda. If I thought it was connected, even indirectly, to any party or political agenda - I wouldn't be there. Our goal is to save the future of Jerusalem." Washington - A U.S. base in northern Iraq came under attack from Islamic State again, and even drew a threat from an Iran-backed Shi'ite militia, on Monday The attack comes two days after a U.S. Marine there was killed in a rocket attack. Firebase Bell is the first independent U.S. base of its kind in Iraq since the return of US forces to the country, and is the latest sign of deepening U.S. military involvement in the conflict. Bell's existence was meant to be kept secret until it was deemed operational, but Islamic State learned of the U.S. presence before the American public did. The Sunni militant group launched an attack with Katyusha rockets, killing Marine Staff Sergeant Louis Cardin and injuring others in Cardin's company-sized detachment of less than 200 troops on March 19. A year and a half after the hasty departure of UN troops from the Syrian Golan Heights, the UN force supervising the separation of forces is prepared to disperse its forces on the Syrian side of the border. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter In recent weeks, officers and soldiers from the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) made several visits to facilities and vantage points they manned from September 2014 in the Syrian Golan Heights. The United Nations intends to return the observation force, which is composed of soldiers from five countries, to the sites it occupied from 1974 to 2014. Israel's security establishment has a great interest in returning UNDOF personnel to the Syrian border, as part of efforts to create a haven from the chaos that reigns on he Syrian side. Israel does not expect UN troops to actively intervene in the event that the fighting in Syria spreads in its direction, but the mere presence of the United Nations in the field creates, for Israel, certain international guarantees. UNDOF forces at the Syrian border (Photo: AFP) The working assumption is that if international forces are in place, the Security Council cannot ignore hostile activities against those forces and against Israel. In addition, since Syria's military withdrawal from the Golan Heights, Israel does not actually have a border with Syria, since that country has disintegrated. The return of UN forces sets up the prospect of new arrangements along the border in the Golan Heights. It's worth noting that at their meeting last week, President Reuven Rivlin delivered a message to Russian President Vladimir Putin that Israel is interested in the return of UN inspectors to the northern border as part of a cease-fire in Syria. Rivlin asked for the support of Russia, and said that Putin demonstrated a positive attitude on the subject. UNDOFs departure from Syria began in the middle of 2013, when the Austrian government removed 380 soldiers (out of approximately 900 UNDOF soldiers) frm the Golan Heights out of fear for their lives. Former UNDOF commander Iqbal Singh with IDF commanders (Photo: Yoav Zitun) In 2014, there were three incidents of kidnapping and assault of UNDOF troops in the Golan. In September of the same year, UNDOF withdrew all UNDOF forces from the Syrian Golan Heights into camps and outposts inside Israel. A few months later, UNDOF also cleared its main headquarters in Damascus. Since then, UNDOF personnel have been on the Israeli side of the Golan Heights and report to the Security Council on the movements of IDF forces and Israeli planes along the border with Syria. The Filipino UNDOF soldiers who were captured by rebels in Syria (Photo: AFP) Thus, while UN troops reported violations of the separation agreements from the Israeli side, rebel forces took control of most of the area, and they are not committed to the agreements signed by Israel and Syria, including fundamentalist groups like Jabhat al-Nusra and ISIS. Throughout the period, Israel has pressed the United Nations to deploy forces to the Syrian Golan Heights. In 2013, Russia was willing to send troops in order to replace the Austrian forces that left, but Israel and especially the UN Security Council did not like the idea of Russian troops entering Syria through the back door. In February 2015, Israeli Ambassador to the UN Ron Proso met with the UNDOF commander, Colonel Purna Chandra Thapa, and requested a return to positions on the Syrian side instead of sitting on the fence on the Israeli side. The request was not granted. Now the UN's decision to renew its deployment in the Syrian Golan Heights joins the ceasefire arrangements announced in Syria, as part of the political processes that are crystallizing in Geneva. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday he hoped the United States would continue to reject any move towards a UN Security Council resolution backing Palestinian statehood. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter "A Security Council Resolution to pressure Israel would further harden Palestinian positions and thereby could actually kill the chances of peace for many, many years," he told a meeting of the powerful American-Israel Public Affairs Committee lobbying group. Netanyahu speaks to AIPAC via satellite Netanyahu's speech returned the conference focus to policy after a turn to partisan politics on Monday when Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump took to the stage and denounced President Barack Obama, a Democrat. AIPAC's leaders distanced the group from his remarks before Netanyahu's speech on Tuesday. Via satellite from Israel, Netanyahu also said he was ready to begin talks "immediately, without preconditions" for a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but insisted Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas did not back the idea. "Peace won't come through UN Security Council resolutions but through direct negotiations between the parties. The best formula for achieving peace remains two states for two peoples in which a demilitarized Palestinian state finally recognizes the Jewish state," Netanyahu said. France failed last year to get Washington on board to push for a Security Council resolution to set parameters for Israeli-Palestinian talks and set a final deadline for a deal. Most of the remaining 2016 US presidential candidates addressed AIPAC's 18,000-strong convention this week. The group's leaders took the stage shortly before Netanyahu's address to denounce the partisan comments by the Republican front-runner Trump. Trump said Obama "may be the worst thing that ever happened to Israel," to some applause from the AIPAC crowd. Netanyahu, who has close ties to U.S. Republicans, has had a strained relationship with Obama. "We say, unequivocally, that we do not countenance ad hominem attacks and we take great offense against those that are levied against the president of the United States of America from our stage," AIPAC President Lillian Pinkus said. Thousands of AIPAC members are visiting Congress on Tuesday to speak to Republicans and Obama's fellow Democrats, arguing for the continuation of billions of dollars in military aid for Israel and renewed sanctions against Iran. In his speech to AIPAC on Sunday, US Vice President Joe Biden took a somewhat tougher line than many US politicians. He called on Netanyahu's government to demonstrate its commitment to a two-state solution and said settlement expansion weakened prospects for peace. The United States lacked specific intelligence warning of Tuesday's attacks in Belgium but strongly believed that such a strike was possible, particularly after Belgium's arrest last week of a key suspect in the Paris attacks, US officials said. Three US government officials acknowledged that the United States believed an attack by Islamic State in Brussels was possible, if not likely. Still, they were not aware of any US intelligence about where or when the attack would occur. One of the main US lines of inquiry is that even though the attack may represent retaliation for the arrest of Abdeslam, it was likely already in the works before his arrest. Under that scenario, the attack date was already on the schedule before his arrest, and possibly advanced somewhat because of his arrest, two of the officials said. Hezbollah Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah has spoken in public frequently of late. Follow Ynetnews on Facebook and Twitter He has delivered a number of speeches and yesterday granted a live interview to the Lebanese TV station Al-Mayadeen. Our many years covering Nasrallah have taught us that he leaves his hiding place to speak for two reasons: He either feels that he owes an explanation to his supporters and the Lebanese people, or he has a fear and wants to dissuade his enemies from realizing that fear. Currently, Nasrallah owes many explanations to the Lebanese people, especially concerning Hezbollah casualties in the Syrian Civil War, the Arab League's branding of Hezbollah as a terrorist group, and the suspension of Saudi Arabia's $4 billion of aid to Lebanon. Nuclear reactor in Dimona (Photo: Getty Images) More than 1,300 Hezbollah casualties have angered not only Shi'ite families and Hezbollah supporters, but also the broader Lebanese public. Nasrallah has emphasized that he is the protector of Lebanon, but his critics blame him and his organization for bringing the Syrian Civil War into Lebanese territory. Therefore, in his interview yesterday, Nasrallah stressed that his organization has the ability to launch precision-guided missiles at major targets in Israel. This threat against Israel defeated not only his critics in Lebanon, but also in the Sunni Arab world. Yesterday he told his critics in the Arab world: I do not belong to a terror group that kills Arabs; I am leading the battle to protect Lebanon and fighting the Zionist entity. Nasrallah also tried to calm the Lebanese people. He said Israel will not wage a war, and told the Lebanese not to worry. He then added that in the Second Lebanon War, Israel entered the war because of an error that he made and assured that it will not repeated. Hassan Nasrallah speaks with Al-Mayadeen (Photo: AFP/Al-Manar) Making a secret weapon a boomerang Nasrallah's message to Israel was more complex. The Hezbollah leader consumes Israeli media compulsively and his speeches and interviews clearly demonstrate that he reads every word we publish. Sometimes he even expresses his own conclusions that are not included in the original text. He decided to give yesterday's interview as a result of Israeli reports and security officials' statements about the need to deliver a preemptive strike on Lebanon before Hezbollah fires its more than 100,000 rocket and missile arsenal on us. Nasrallah reads and sees the Israeli reports about the IDF building an obstacle on the Lebanese border. The IDF has said publicly that the obstacle is meant to make it more difficult for Hezbollah to send its special forces across the border into Israel in the next war. Nasrallah sees the quick erection of the obstacle as reinforcing what he reads in the Israeli press. He fears that Israel will hit his military infrastructure in Lebanon and so has threatened to hit "nuclear and biological sites" in Israel. Basically, Nasrallah said yesterday: With my precision-guided missiles, I can turn your secret weapon into a boomerang that will hit you. Even if you inflict a preemptive blow or destroy Lebanon and take it back 50 years, says Nasrallah, you cannot stop me from turning your strategic facilities into a double-edged sword that will be turned against you. Nasrallah is very concerned and he is trying to use the Israeli public to pressure the government not to embark on a preemptive war or inflict a disproportionate blow on Lebanon should there be a war. In short, Nasrallah is attempting to deter us and is eve saying so openly. Another reason for the threatening speech is that Nasrallah was very encouraged by the ratings he got for his ammonia speech from a few weeks ago. It was Nasrallah who invented the term cobwebs to describe anxiety he observes among Israelis in the face of casualties and destruction in the civilian sector. Nasrallah has since seen that Israeli society is not exactly a cobweb, but he believes, apparently pretty correctly, that Israeli society is highly sensitive to casualties, and so continues to harp on this. The alarmed reaction among the Israeli public and media towards his previous speech, in which he threatened to kill half a million Israelis by bombing the ammonium plant in Haifa Bay, made him think he was on to something. Yesterday he sought to repeat his success, but it looks like this time he was a bit disappointed. A gimmick that is used too many times loses its effectiveness, although one must admit Nasrallah is an artist in the war of the mind, and he conducts it like a chess master playing several opponents simultaneously on separate boards. To his home audience, he makes excuses for the war in Lebanon and the condemnation by the Sunni Arab camp. To Israel, he sends messages whose purpose is to deter the IDF and scare us, the citizens, along the way. One day, the statements will likely be put to the test, and its possible that Nasrallah will no longer be present at the end of that day to give any speeches. Nasrallah cannot follow through on a large portion of his threats. He has no capability to precisely target most Israeli strategic sites, and the sites he threatens are so fortified that even a direct hit would cause no damage. So the threat is mostly empty, but it must not be underestimated. Republican presidential hopeful Sen. Ted Cruz says it is time for law enforcement to "patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized." The conservative Texas lawmaker made the comment in a statement his campaign released following Tuesday's bombings in Brussels, Belgium, that killed at least 31 people and wounded dozens more. The statement was titled, "We Can No Longer Surrender to the Enemy Through Political Correctness." Islamic State extremist group claimed credit for the Brussels attacks. Cruz's statement provided no details about how law enforcement would secure Muslim neighborhoods. A few months ago I was able to meet a fellow Nebraska farm girl in Omaha at a meeting of interested parties regarding the Trans-Pacific Partnership. Darci Vetter, Chief Agricultural Negotiator with the rank of Ambassador at the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative was there to present. We spent about an hour with Vetter as she gave an overview of an extremely complex proposed trade deal that supposedly will be a win-win for all involved. A win-win that felt eerily familiar to the talks around the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). As a group, we were strongly encouraged to get TPP passed and to urge fellow constituents to jump on board. There was a lot of back slapping and affirming glows of praise for the presentation but few, if any, tough questions. A Nebraska farm-raised girl myself, I left with more questions than answers and decided to take some time to dig into TPP rather than jump on the bandwagon of support as large, commodity association representatives at the meeting seemed to do. There seems to be a rush to push a lot through before Obama leaves office as we bite our nails in anticipation of which one of the cast of characters will be elected next. So whats the rush to push through items that arent fully understood and that may lead to more corporate and governmental overreach than what already exists in our ag trade scenario? When any politician, not just Vetter, tells me everything is going to be okay, my internal red flag goes up. TPP needs to be fully understood by American citizens before it all goes through. The Coalition for a Prosperous America agrees. In a February 26, 2016 news release, the coalition published ten concerns they have regarding the American Farm Bureau Federations (AFBF) positive analysis of TPP in a recent advocacy document released by AFBF that claims that U.S. farm income will increase by a meager $4.4 billion by some future date if the TPP is adopted. The coalition reports that AFBF did not disclose the economic model used in their analysis; the authors of the study were also undisclosed and they did not disclose the data sets relied upon for the advocacy document. The coalition goes on to say that, Past AFBF projects were wrong: Farm Bureau has been overly optimistic when projecting trade deal results for U.S. agriculture. For the Korea-U.S. trade agreement, AFBF claimed that U.S. agriculture would be a net gainer in agricultural commodity trade with that country. However, the opposite resulted. The U.S. net export performance substantially worsened between 2011 (the year before the implementation of the Korea-U.S. pact) and 2015. In addition, The (AFBF) report assumes, without proof that future TPP country population growth will translate into increase demand for U.S. beef and pork rather than domestic sources. TPP country Vietnam, for example, consumes fish protein and is a major exporter of fish sold in the U.S. Non-TPP country China has a food self-sufficiency objective. Also, The AFBF document assumes increased U.S. pork market share in Japan. It fails to consider that Japans pork tariff cuts will, combined with its subsidy program, continue to keep foreign pork penetration from its domestic market. Japans controversial program has been highlighted in a recent, high-profile letter from 28 pro-Fast Track House members at the request of multinational pork packers. The report (also) assumes that the U.S. will benefit from any increased TPP country demand, without properly considering products from competing major agricultural countries like Canada, Australia, Mexico or non-TPP countries that could fill that demand. I think we need to slow down and figure out the motives behind these types of overly-hyped plans. At home in Nebraska it seems the rush is everywhere to reward corporate interests and not individual family farmers and consumers. For example, in other news, Nebraska Farm Bureau also recently supported LB176, lifting the packer ban and siding primarily with pork processors and Smithfield Foods Inc. owned by the Chinese government. While LB 176 is not a TPP issue, we need to start connecting the dots. I am not naive to the complexities of globalization and politics. However, I have to hold true to my core beliefs. I am against trading away home grown agricultural opportunities that truly strengthen this nation. Come on Nebraska be courageous enough to reward community-building rural endeavors here instead of trade agreements that are designed to agree more with corporate interests and not the needs of real citizens. Thats what this Nebraska farm girl thinks anyway. As a homeowner, you probably already know that you should be working to maintain your home. But, chances are, you Read More Our directory features more than 18 million business listings from across the entire US. However, if we're missing your business, add your business by clicking on Add Your Business. Plantatia de mure altoite si retete cu mure Sunt negre, ochioase, placute si la privit, si la gustat. Dar nu doar la gustat, la mancat pe saturate sunt placute. Vorbim despre mure. Intr-un sat mic de la marginea judetului Prahova, se intinde o insemnata plantatie de muri altoiti. Este detinuta de Vasile Ion, zis si Muraru. Nu stiu daca numele i-a fost [citeste mai departe] Asian group pushes for leniency for Liang 2016-03-22 11:53 Don Sun (right), president of the Silicon Valley branch of the Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs (APAPA), and Jerry Chen (left), vice-president of the Silicon Valley APAPA chapter, hold the open letter to Judge Danny Chun that will be printed in the March 26 national edition of the New York Times. LIA ZHU / CHINA DAILY As the April 14 sentencing of former NYPD Officer Peter Liang draws near, an Asian-Pacific American group has been working to help Liang gain leniency from the judge. Their recent efforts include placing a full-page ad in major print media. In an open letter to Judge Danny Chun, the Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs (APAPA) asks him to consider all the prior fatalities involving NYPD officers as well as the "mitigating factors" and the "lack of aggravating factors" and impose a "no jail, probation" sentence. The open letter will be carried on a full page ad in the March 26 national edition of New York Times. The mitigating factors listed in the letter include Liang's lack of experience and training, his lack of a prior criminal record and that he poses no danger to the community, as well as the nature of the case it being an accident. "We think the trial was fair and we respect the criminal justice system and the verdict of the jury. But there's a good chance for the judge to hand down a lenient sentence considering these factors," said Don Sun, president of the Silicon Valley chapter of APAPA, who initiated and coordinated the effort with the other 15 APAPA chapters in the country. "When drafting the letter, we consulted with district attorneys and police experts, as well as Harvard law school professors. They all think it is mild, empathetic and legally sound," he added. "We are not trying to challenge the judicial system but want to implore the judge and the public to be empathetic, as he is not a vicious criminal," said Jerry Chen, vice-president of the Silicon Valley chapter of APAPA. In their letter, the group also expressed sympathy to the African-American community over the recent deaths of Akai Gurley, the victim in Liang's case, and others from police officers' use of force. "Any accidental loss of life is a tragedy to the victim, the accused and the society," says the letter. "More importantly, the response of the criminal justice system can potentially create more collateral damage, particularly where the larger context is framed by complex racial tensions." Sun said his group had been discussing ways to help Gurley's family and would resume efforts to collect donations after the sentence is made. Liang was convicted on Feb 11 of second-degree manslaughter and official misconduct in the 2014 shooting of Gurley in a Brooklyn housing project. The manslaughter charge carries up to 15 years in prison. Tens of thousands of members of Chinese communities held rallies in more than 40 cities on Feb 20 to show support for Liang. "Liang's case is a rare opportunity to unite so many Chinese in their history of striving for rights (in the US)," said Sun. "But after the rallies, it seems they don't know where to go. As a grassroots organization, APAPA should lead community efforts to a new level, which is to shift the focus from street protest to affecting decision-making, and the first step is to make our voice heard and eventually accepted by mainstream society." For the New York Times advertisement, Sun said his group had raised most of the cost but there's still short of around $3,000. "We hope the community would chip in whatever little they have to get involved in the drive," he said. He said it was important to educate the Chinese community about the judicial system. His group has recently signed a year-long contract with a local farmer's market to set up a booth there promoting voter registration and citizen's duties. "If everyone set aside two hours a month for civil rights efforts, it would be a huge force," said Sun. liazhu@chinadailyusa.com New Delhi: The Budget session of Delhi Assembly began today with Lt Governor Najeeb Jung enunciating achievements of the AAP government in education, health and transport sectors and anti-corruption initiatives in its first year. In his address to the legislators, Jung listed the steps taken in the field of education, including the proposal to build 25 school buildings and nearly 8,000 classrooms and reforms brought about by amending the Delhi School Education Amendment Bill. Mohalla clinics figured in the list of steps taken to bring about improvement in the health sector while the proposal to induct 1,000 new low-floor buses was mentioned by Jung with regard to measures being taken to augment public transport. Jung said that the Delhi government is committed to making the city corruption free and a move towards this was the passage of the Lokpal Bill which has now been sent to the Centre for approval. Later, Transport Minister Gopal Rai moved a motion thanking Jung. In his speech, Rai emphasised that the AAP government's mantra is "honesty", the prime factor behind its "unprecedented success" and the upcoming Budget will "only take this forward". Talking to reporters, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia said the government was "sad" about the fact that the Centre was "sitting" on the Bills passed by the Assembly including the Lokpal Bill and the proposed legislation recommending hike in salaries of legislators. Sisodia will present the Budget on March 28. The five-day session, that will not see any new Bill being introduced, will conclude on March 31. The House also condoled the death of army jawans in an avalanche in Siachen Glacier last month and observed silence in the memory of Mehtab Chand Jain, former member of Delhi Metropolitan Council and former MLA Krishan Tyagi. New Delhi: A court here has summoned Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal on July 30 on a criminal complaint filed against him for allegedly giving "misleading information" in his poll affidavit ahead of the 2013. Metropolitan Magistrate Snigdha Sarvaria summoned summons on a complaint filed by an NGO alleging that Kejriwal had "willfully misled" the Election Commission of India (ECI) by concealing his correct address and suppressing the market value of his property. The court held that furnishing an improper address so that the proper/correct address remained untraceable and also giving an improper valuation of the property "prima facie amounts to willful concealment and suppression and also furnishing of false information and thus, there is sufficient ground for proceeding against the accused Arvind Kejriwal" under section 125 A (penalty for filing false affidavit) of the Representation of the People Act and section 177 (furnishing false information) of the Indian Penal Code". "There is sufficient material on record to summon accused Arvind Kejriwal for offences punishable under section 125 A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951...and section 177 of the Indian Penal Code committed by him before holding the post of chief minister of Delhi. Thus, let the summons be issued to the accused Arvind Kejriwal," the court said. The court order came on a complaint filed by NGO Maulik Bharat Trust, through its office bearers, alleging that Kejriwal "suppressed the actual figures of property owned by him" and and deliberately furnished a wrong address of his property in Indirapuram, Ghaziabad. The plea contended that "willful concealment and suppression of correct address and value of the aforesaid property amounts to commission of a criminal offence under section 125A of the Representation of the People Act, 1951 punishable with six months of imprisonment and/or fine or both." All candidates filing nomination papers are required to furnish an affidavit to the ECI with details of the actual cost of property and any investments that they have made. New Delhi: A Delhi court on Monday issued the warrant for the release of former Delhi University lecturer SAR Gilani, who was granted bail by a court here in a sedition case in connection with a Press Club event here. Gilani was granted relief by a court here on Saturday last on furnishing of a personal bond of Rs 50,000 with one surety of the like amount. However, his release from Tihar Central jail was delayed as his permanent address of Jammu and Kashmir, given in his bail bond, could not be verified. In its bail order, the judge had also said that Gilani "shall not leave the jurisdiction of Delhi without permission of court" and asked him to surrender his passport. Earlier on February 19, a magisterial court had dismissed the bail plea of Gilani, who was arrested on February 16 after the police had alleged that "hatred" was being generated against the government. According to police, an event was held on February 10 in which banners were placed showing Parliament attack case convict Afzal Guru and Maqbool Bhat as martyrs. It had also said the hall in the Press Club was booked by Gilani, through his associate Ali Javed by using his credit card and another man Mudassar was also involved. At the event, a group had allegedly shouted slogans hailing Afzal Guru, following which the police had lodged a case under sections 124A (sedition), 120B(criminal conspiracy) and 149 (unlawful assembly) of the IPC against Gilani and other unnamed persons. The police had registered the FIR taking suo motu cognizance of media clips of the incident. Following registration of the FIR, the police questioned DU professor Ali Javed, a Press Club member who had booked the hall, for two days. Gilani was arrested in connection with the 2001 Parliament attack case but was acquitted for "need of evidence" by Delhi High Court in October 2003, a decision upheld by the Supreme Court in August 2005. Chinese vice premier lauds housing renovation work 2016-03-22 13:27 BEIJING, March 21, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Vice PremierZhang Gaoli(C) addresses a teleconference on the national work of shanty-town renovation projects in Beijing, capital of China, March 21, 2016. (Xinhua/Rao Aimin) BEIJING, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli on Monday stressed efforts to improve substandard housing during a teleconference on such work. China had already exceeded the annual target set at the beginning of 2015 in this regard, he said. Housing renovation is closely linked to people's livelihoods, and improves the living standards of the disadvantaged, reduces the housing inventory, and supports the property market. All of which work toward achieving stable economic growth, he noted. A total of 6 million substandard homes will be involved this year and this is a tough task, demanding innovative work, he said. Supportive policies must be implemented fully and the quality of the projects must be guaranteed, he added. 1 2 >> 1 2 >> New Delhi: There is no Indian among the casualties following two massive explosions at Brussels airport in Belgium on Tuesday, the External Affairs Ministry has confirmed. Have spoken to our Ambassador (Manjeev Singh Puri}, Axternal Affairs Ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup said. No reports of any Indian casualties, he added. There is also likely to be no change in Prime Minister Narendra Modi's scheduled visit to Belgium on March 30 for the India-EU Summit. From Belgium, PM Modi is scheduled to travel to Washington for Nuclear Security Summit from March 31. Several people were killed when the two explosions devastated the departure area of the Zaventem airport in the Belgian capital on Tuesday morning, triggering panic. The Belgian fire service told local media there were several dead and wounded in the blasts which were centred at the American Airlines check-in desk, BBC reported. Belga news agency reported that shots were fired and shouts in Arabic were heard before the two blasts, BBC said. The airport was hurriedly evacuated and has been closed for flights, BBC said. Washington: Even though Indian atomic facilities do not face terrorist threats as serious as those in Pakistan, a US report on preventing nuclear terrorism has expressed concern over "insider threats" against India's nuclear assets. "There are concerns about insider threats within Indian nuclear facilities," said report titled 'Preventing Nuclear Terrorism: Continuous Improvement or Dangerous Decline?' released by the prestigious Harvard Kennedy School ahead of the Nuclear Security Summit here this month. India faces significant insider corruption though it is thought to be less severe than in Pakistan or Russia, it said. In 2014, Vijay Singh, a CISF head constable at the Kalpakkam Atomic Power Station, shot and killed three people with his service rifle. Although the CISF had a personnel reliability programme in place, it was not able to detect Singh's deteriorating mental health, despite multiple red flags including him saying that he was about to "explode like a firecracker", the report said. "Given the limited information available about India's nuclear security measures, it is difficult to judge whether India's nuclear security is capable of protecting against the threats it faces," the report said. "Although India has taken significant measures to protect its nuclear sites, recent reports suggest that its nuclear security measures may be weaker than those of Pakistan, though likely adversary threats in India are less extreme. Overall, the risk appears to be moderate, and there is no clear trend, either upward or downward," it said. Noting that India has a relatively small stockpile of nuclear weapons and weapons-usable nuclear material at a limited number of sites, which are believed to be heavily guarded, the report said unlike Pakistan, India has a civilian plutonium reprocessing program. According to the report, US officials have reportedly ranked Indian nuclear security measures as weaker than those of Pakistan and Russia, and US experts visiting the sensitive Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in 2008 described the security arrangements there as "extraordinarily low key". The threats to India's nuclear security systems have to confront appear to be significant? though not as great as the threats that exist in Pakistan, it said. India faces threats both domestically and from attacks by terrorist groups based in Pakistan. The report cited the January 2 Pathankot airbase attack by heavily-armed militants of the Jaish-e-Mohammed that killed seven security personnel. The attackers were able to infiltrate the base by climbing over a tree that had grown along the side of a security fence in an area where floodlights were not operating, it said. New Delhi: JNU students union (JNUSU) president Kanhaiya Kumar met Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday. Kanhiaya, accompanied by other student leaders reached Rahul's residence in Lutyen's Delhi at around 11 am and spent close to an hour with him. Later, NSUI president Roji M John said that Kanhaiya Kumar met Rahul Gandhi to thank him for supporting JNU students. John said that it's not just about JNU, Rahul Gandhi had in the past supported students of Hyderbad University and FTII. John added they will together fight attempts by the RSS to 'attack' institutions of prominence in the country. The BJP was quick to slam the meeting between Rahul and Kanhaiya. Party leader Shahnawaz Hussain said that the country was watching how Rahul Gandhi and the Congress are courting people like Kanhaiya Kumar, who allowed people to raise anti-national slogans in JNU. His party colleague Sudhanshu Trivedi said that the meeting between Rahul and Kanhaiya has exposed the unholy nexus between the Congress and the Left. New Delhi: Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) president Mehbooba Mufti met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the capital on Tuesday and hinted after the talks that a government in Jammu and Kashmir may be formed soon. Speaking to reporters after meeting the PM at his official 7, Race Course Road residence here, Mehbooba said the talks with Mr Modi were positive. Saying that she was satisfied with the talks, the PDP chief said she has called a Legislature Party meet of her party's MLAs on Thursday where she will discuss the next step on government formation. When asked further, Mehbooba said, Naturally, when you meet the PM and have positive talks, the way is cleared for the resolution of problems being faced by the people of Jammu and Kashmir. The state has been without a government for over two months now following the demise of then PDP president and chief minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed. President's Rule was imposed in the state following deadlock in talks between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the PDP over government formation. This was Mehbooba's second visit to the national capital in five days - she had held talks with BJP president Amit Shah on Thursday. But, that meeting failed to resolve the deadlock and in the days ahead some tough statements were issued. The BJP had made it clear that it was not ready to accept any new conditions for the formation of a coalition government in J&K. However, on Monday, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley extended an olive branch and said, "we stand fully committed as far as agenda of governance is concerned" in J&K. While the PDP has 27 MLAs in the 87-member state Assembly, the BJP has 25. The two had formed the government in the state based on an 'Agenda of Alliance' document. Hyderabad: The police acted tough and evicted the protesting students of University of Hyderabad from outside the officials residence of Vice Chancellor Appa Rao Podile, who rejoined work after nearly two months on leave today. However, the scene turned ugly, when some protesters pelted stones at the cops on duty. A policeman was injured. Police bundled out many students out of the campus, triggering strong protest by teaching and non-teaching staff members. Police also arrested few students and faculty members. The police action came after the students, who have been protesting ever since Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula committed suicide inside the varsity campus, today barged into the office of the vice chancellor and ransacked the furniture. Meanwhile, the VC said he was ready to meet and talk with the agitating students. However, at the same time, he categorically said that a section of students cannot tell him that he should go on leave. "If any group of students can dictate who should be the Vice Chancellor, this is going to be a national problem not just in University of Hyderabad. Tomorrow, any hundred or fifty students can say this particular Vice Chancellor should be there," Podile said. "The students did not resort to a dialogue. They should have given me a representation. Without telling anything ransacking the office to this magnitude is uncalled for and not expected from students of University of Hyderabad. All the teachers feel that this is unbecoming of the students," he added. Appa Rao had gone on leave on January 24 amid massive protests on the campus over the suicide of Rohith Vemula. The Joint Action Committee for Social Justice, an umbrella grouping of various students' bodies, has blamed Appa Rao, central ministers Smriti Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya and a leader of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) for the suspension of five Dalit students, one of whom Rohith committed suicide on January 17. Rohith, 26, committed suicide by hanging himself in the Hyderabad Central University campus in January. He was earlier suspended from the university hostel in August last year by the administration for allegedly attacking an ABVP leader. The university had allegedly stopped giving scholarship to Rohith after the incident which led to financial hardship and culminated in his suicide. Jawaharlal Nehru University students leader Kanhaiya Kumar will visit University of Hyderabad on Wednesday. New Delhi: Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Subramanian Swamy on Tuesday dubbed Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi a fool, saying the latter has lost public respect. "Rahul Gandhi is a `buddhu` (fool), he can do anything foolish; he has lost the respect of the public. Even the Congress inmates tell me in private that please get him convicted so that we can have new leadership in the party. The Congress Party is not growing because of people like Rahul Gandhi," Swamy, who was commenting on the meeting between JNU students union president Kanhaiya Kumar and the Congress vice-president, told ANI here. "Kanhaiya wants to break India, he was a certain participant when anti-national slogans were raised in the JNU," he added. Kanhaiya earlier met the Congress vice-president at the latter`s residence here and thanked him for supporting the varsity students following the controversy over the February 9 event. Accompanied by delegations from the JNU and the All India Students` Federation (AISF), Kanhaiya met Gandhi at around 11:30 a.m. The Congress vice-president had earlier attended a solidarity meeting at the JNU to demand Kanhaiya`s release. Gandhi, who had also joined the protest march demanding justice for Kanhaiya, attacked the Centre and Prime Minister Narendra Modi accusing them of crushing voices of the students across the country and pitched for a law to protect them from discrimination and suppression. New Delhi: It's been over two months and the state of Jammu and Kashmir has been under President's Rule due to deadlock in talks between the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) over government formation. However, on Tuesday, there is hope that stalemate may end soon. PDP president Mehbooba Mufti is meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi at his 7, Race Course Road in New Delhi right now. Mufti arrived at the PM's oficial residence a shortwhile ago. This is Mehbooba's second visit to the national capital in five days - she had held talks with BJP president Amit Shah on Thursday. But, that meeting failed to resolve the deadlock and in the days ahead some tough statements were issued. The BJP made it clear that it was not ready to accept any new conditions for the formation of a coalition government in J&K. However, on Monday, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley extended an olive branch and said, "we stand fully committed as far as agenda of governance is concerned" in J&K. Sources said Mehbooba, who is staying at the Jammu and Kashmir House in Chanakyapuri, held talks with senior party colleagues including former finance minister Haseeb Drabu and reportedly gave final touches to agenda for the meeting with the PM. The fresh efforts from PDP, which has 27 MLAs in the 87-member state Assembly, come in the backdrop of repeated assertions made by the BJP that it was committed to implementation of Agenda of Alliance arrived at by her father late Mufti Mohammed Sayeed. The talks with BJP, which has 25 MLAs, had hit a roadblock last week when party's interlocutor on the state Ram Madhav made it clear that no fresh demands would be entertained from its former alliance partner PDP and that they decide whether they want to form a government based on the Agenda of Alliance document. PDP leaders later clarified that PDP had made no fresh demands and that there was a miscommunication from both sides leading to derailing of talks. While there was no official confirmation from PDP side, it was believed that Mehbooba has conveyed her willingness to take over reins of the government and discuss other issues later. PDP is also understood to have called for a Legislative Party meeting on Thursday where she may be elected as its leader. PDP and BJP had formed an alliance on March 1 last year with Sayeed as the chief minister. Both the sides had formed an "Agenda of Alliance" which sought to address internal and external dimension of the state. The PDP had toughened its stance after Sayeed's demise by seeking concrete plans for the state's development including handing over of power projects to the state and vacation of land by Army before the coalition could be revived. President's Rule was imposed in the state on January 8 after Mehbooba decided against taking over the reins after her father's death. (With agency inputs) Thiruvananthapuram: Veteran Malayalam actress KPAC Lalitha on Monday said she is not keen to contest the upcoming Assembly polls in Kerala on a CPI-M ticket, the remark coming on the heels of protests over her candidature. "I am not keen to contest the elections due to health reasons and cinema commitments," she told reporters at Wadakancherry, the constituency from she was expected to contest the May 16 polls. She insisted, however, that she was not withdrawing due to the protests by some party workers. She added that she has already informed the party about her decision. On Sunday, Democratic Youth Federation of India (DYFI) activists had taken out a protest march in Wadakancherry against the CPI-M's proposed move to field the 69-year-old actress. Earlier, posters appeared in various parts of the constituency against her candidature. Meanwhile, CPI-M politburo member Pinarayi Vijayan told reporters at Kozhikode on Monday that the party was considering fielding her from Wadakancherry if she was prepared to contest. "We will only be too happy to put her up as our candidate. Candidates like Lalitha will help improve the party's image," he said. Mumbai: Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Tuesday said drought in various parts of the state was not hydrological but agricultural, based on criterion laid down by the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF). "The criterion for declaring drought was prepared in 1970 and amended twice. The criterion have been prepared as per NDRF norms," Fadnavis said, during a debate in the Legislative Assembly. "When we declare drought, there are two conditions: agricultural drought and hydrological drought. This means the 'anewari (crop yield) and rainfall should be less. This is NDRF norm. "Sadly, as per this norm, we saw agricultural drought to some extent but it was not a hydrological drought," he added. Leader of Opposition Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil had moved an adjournment motion and sought resignation of Minister for Rehabilitation Eknath Khadse for failing in his duties to provide relief to farmers from Amravati division despite the report by the Divisional Commissioner. After the motion was rejected by the Chair, entire Opposition staged a walk out from the House. The Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court had passed strictures on Friday by saying that government needs to come out of from deep slumber on drought situation faced by Amravati division farmers. It had also passed strictures on Mantralaya (state secretariat) 'babus' for not understanding the plight of the farmers by sitting in air-conditioned rooms in Mantralaya. The state government acted even before the High Court strictures by reaching out to drought hit farmers from Amravati division and east Vidarbha, Fadnavis said. Both Vikhe-Patil and NCP group leader Jayant Patil criticised Government on the same and sought Khadse's resignation. Fadnavis said it was not state Government but NDRF which prepared the parameters for declaring drought in any state. Mumbai: Maharashtra Advocate General Shreehari Aney, Tuesday, submitted his resignation to Governor C Vidyasagar Rao after facing flak over his statement in favour of a separate Marathwada state. The Shiv Sena had taken the lead in protesting against Aney and had threatened to not allow the state assembly to function till Any quit his post. However, after Aney submitted his resignation, the Shiv Sena said that they will continue to protest against him until he apologises to the people of Maharashtra. The Sena also demanded that the Fadnavis-led government should register a case against him. The Congress and NCP had also reacted strongly to Aney's comments favouring a division of the state. The assembly had, yesterday, witnessed noisy scenes with many MLAs shouting slogans against Aney. Calling Aney "Owaisi in Maharashtra", Shiv Sena MLA Pratap Sarnaik said, "What Aney is saying tantamounts to insult of martyrs who laid down their lives in the struggle for united Maharashtra." Speaking outside the Assembly, State Congress spokesperson Sachin Sawant said "Is Aney an agent for dividing the state?" Aney, at an event in Jalna Sunday where he disbursed relief to families of farmers who committed suicide, said Marathwada bore more injustice than Vidarbha and should therefore be independent. He also called people of Marathwada to start a movement for formation of a separate state. Any had last year triggered a similar row after he support the demand for a separate Vidarbha. Xi calls for China-Nepal community of common destiny 2016-03-22 13:27 BEIJING, March 21, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) meets with Nepali Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, on March 21, 2016. (Xinhua/Xie Huanchi) BEIJING, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Chinese President Xi Jinping met with visiting Nepali Prime Minister K. P. Sharma Oli on Monday, calling on both governments to carry forward the traditional friendship and expand practical cooperation to make the two nations a "community of common destiny." Xi said China and Nepal are close neighbors that enjoy permanent friendship and comprehensive cooperation, stressing the significance of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence they uphold. The principles are mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, mutual non-interference in each other's internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful co-existence. "As developing countries, China and Nepal are facing the historic missions of reform and development," Xi said, hoping the two sides will join China's Belt and Road initiative and 13th five-year plan with Nepal's reconstruction and development plan. Xi called for more efforts to speed up the establishment of a China-Nepal free trade area, and boost cooperation on connectivity, energy, post-earthquake reconstruction and industrial capacity. The two sides should elevate tourism, educational and cultural cooperation, and increase youth and media exchanges to further cement the friendship between the two nations, Xi said. The president called on the two sides to use such new platforms as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to expand cooperation. As to the trilateral China-Nepal-India relationship, Xi said he hopes Nepal will benefit from development in China and India, adding that it is in the common interests of the two big neighbors that Nepal enjoys stability and development. "Nepal can be a bridge between China and India," Xi said. Calling China a great friend and friendly neighbor of Nepal, Oli lauded China's adherence to the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence and the neighborhood diplomacy featuring amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness. He expressed gratitude for China's support to Nepal's post-earthquake reconstruction. Nepal firmly sticks to the one-China policy and will not allow any force to conduct activities that will impair China's interests, Oli said. Nepal will actively participate in the Belt and Road construction and looks forward to closer cooperation with China on trade, finance, connectivity, infrastructure and tourism as well as in international affairs, said the Nepali prime minister. Related: China, Nepal pledge closer cooperation for common development BEIJING, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang held talks with his Nepali counterpart K. P. Sharma Oli on Monday and they agreed to expand reciprocal cooperation between the two countries in pursuit of common development. Hailing the traditional friendship and cooperation, Li said China firmly supports Nepal's efforts to safeguard sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity as well as the Nepali people's choice of development path, and will not interfere in Nepal's internal affairs.Full Story China, Nepal agree on wider cooperation BEIJING, Dec. 25 (Xinhua) -- China and Nepal on Friday agreed to speed up post-earthquake reconstruction projects, and enhance cooperation in trade, connectivity, gas and energy. The consensus was reached between Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi and visiting Nepalese Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Kamal Thapa during their talks in Beijing. Full Story Chandigarh: A 22-year-old Afghan student was allegedly stabbed to death by a fellow countryman with whom he was studying at the Post Graduate Government College here under an exchange programme, police said Tuesday. The victim, Sanaullah, was allegedly stabbed in the abdomen by Ehsanullah (24) yesterday, over an old enmity as other students looked on in shock, Sec 32 SHO Baljit Singh said. "The students intervened and rushed Sanaullah to the Government Medical College and Hospital in Sector 32 for treatment, but he succumbed to injuries," he said. He said that the Afghanistan embassy officials in New Delhi have been informed about the incident. "They have reached here and are involved in completing the formalities," Singh said. A murder case has been registered against the accused, he said. The college principal, however, told reporters that she was not aware of the incident as she was out of station. Chandigarh: As the debate over nationalism continues to rock the nation, Shiromani Akali Dal(Amritsar) leader Simranjit Singh Mann on Monday said that Sikhs dont worship women in any form thus they cant chant 'Bharat Mata ki Jai', a report said on Tuesday. According to a report published in the 'Hindustan Times', Mann, who is president of Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar), said Sikhs can't say 'Vande Mataram'. Taking pot shots at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Shiromani Akali Dal (Amritsar) leader said the religious preachings of holy book Geeta shouldn't be enforced onto people from other religions as it has been done in Haryana. Last week, All India Majlis-e-Ittehad-ul Muslimeen legislator Waris Pathan was suspended from Maharashtra Assembly after he refused to say 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai'. Few days back, AIMIM chief Asaduddin Owaisi had said that he would not say 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' even if a knife is put to his throat. "I don't chant that slogan. What are you going to do, Bhagwat sahab," the Lok Sabha MP from Hyderabad had said, referring to RSS chief Mohan Bhagwat's remark that the new generation needed to be taught to hail "Mother India". A local court in Hyderabad has directed Neredmet police to register a case against Owaisi. Islamabad: India`s increased investment to improve its naval capacity will be seen as a threat by Pakistan, a Pakistani daily said on Tuesday. In an editorial "Expanding Horizons", The Nation said that "India`s recent increased investment to improve its naval capacity will be seen as a threat by Pakistan, but not much can be done about this unless the country starts investing heavily in improving its sea power". "In military matters, the armed forces` naval department lies virtually ignored compared to other arms of defence. However, even though experts on this side might be getting perturbed by India`s increasing naval capacity, for once, trumping Pakistan has really not crossed the minds of the top Indian naval brass," it said. The daily said that the Indian Navy far surpassed Pakistan`s seafaring capacities long ago, and an increased investment in this sector has nothing to do with us. "China`s investment into Gwadar, Hambantota port in Sri Lanka and Sanodia deepwater port in Bangladesh is a means of opening up routes along the Indian Ocean and to counter Western pressure to keep expansionism to a minimum in the South China Sea. The rationale behind this is sound on the Chinese side; if Chinese influence is expanding along to fronts, it will be harder for any rivals to keep it in check." It added "in steps India, as the only viable candidate to oppose this growing influence". "It is obvious that India`s improving ties with the US are predicated on the former`s potential ability to counter China`s sea power in the east...India is seen as the perfect counter-balance to this in this region, considering the US can only commit so much of its naval power so far away from home." "The joint naval exercise planned for later this year will have Japan, India and the US as participants. The inclusion of India in particular is a clear indication of it looking to set itself against China." Karachi: A 43-year-old doctor in Pakistan's remote Baluchistan province, who has already fathered 35 children, is unfazed by the troubles of providing for his big family and is aiming to have 100 children. Jan Muhammad, who lives with his three wives, 21 daughters and 14 sons in a poor locality of province's capital city - Quetta, said he has never faced problems providing for his large family. "Last week, my second and third wives gave birth to two daughters and I am now proud to be the father of 35 kids. If possible I would want to marry a fourth time and have 100 children," he said. Jan Muhammad said he requires around 100,000 rupees a month to manage the expenses of his wives and children. "I manage, as I am a qualified doctor and also run a small business," he added. Jan Muhammad is also keen to provide quality education to his children. "There is no life without education nowadays and I want top education for my daughters and sons," he said. The extended family shot to fame after it was first seen on the Dawn News channel. The video was watched by over 3.3 million people on Facebook, who shared it over 175,000 times and commented on it over 4,000 times. Colombo: The UN has said it remains committed to ensuring a credible investigation into alleged human rights abuses in Sri Lanka during the final phase of the civil war that ended seven years ago. Deputy spokesman for UN Secretary General, Farhan Haq was responding to a question yesterday in New York at a press briefing. The question related to recent comments made by Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena that he was not in agreement in having international judges for the local probe process for war crimes and human rights accountability. The UN Human Rights Council resolution of 2014 which blamed both sides - the government and the LTTE - for war crimes, had prescribed an international investigation. The UNHRC chief in his last report to the council had also insisted on foreign judges, questioning the credibility of the Sri Lankan judiciary to deliver justice. "UN Human Rights Council can evaluate how it is going, but we want to make sure there is a credible investigation into this," Haq said adding that the UN had made it clear to Sri Lanka what their guidelines were for a credible investigation. New Delhi: For the first time, NASA has managed to capture the shockwave of an exploding star on camera. The brilliant flash of an exploding stars shockwave - what astronomers call the shock breakout - lasting only about 20 minutes has been captured for the first time in visible light by the Kepler space telescope. The team led by Peter Garnavich, an astrophysics professor at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, analyzed light captured by Kepler every 30 minutes over a three-year period from 500 distant galaxies, searching some 50 trillion stars. They were hunting for signs of massive stellar death explosions known as supernovae. In order to see something that happens on timescales of minutes, like a shock breakout, you want to have a camera continuously monitoring the sky, said Garnavich. You dont know when a supernova is going to go off, and Kepler's vigilance allowed us to be a witness as the explosion began. In 2011, researchers discovered two supernovae, called red supergiants, in the act of exploding, which were captured by the planet hunter Kepler. The first behemoth, KSN 2011a, is nearly 300 times the size of our sun and a mere 700 million light years from Earth. The second, KSN 2011d, is roughly 500 times the size of our sun and around 1.2 billion light years away. While both explosions delivered a similar energetic punch, no shock breakout was seen in KSN 2011d, the smaller of the supergiants. Scientists think that this is likely due to the smaller star being surrounded by gas, perhaps enough to mask the shockwave when it reached the star's surface. That is the puzzle of these results, said Garnavich. You look at two supernovae and see two different things. Thats maximum diversity. NASA's original Kepler mission ended in 2013, but scientists managed to reboot the telescope as K2 later that year, which it is aimed at exploring and diversity of planetary systems. The findings will be published in the Astrophysical Journal. (Source: NASA) Hyderabad: Ugly scenes were witnessed at the University of Hyderabad on a day when Vice Chancellor Appa Rao Podile rejoined work after nearly two months on leave. Students, who have been protesting ever since Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula committed suicide inside the varsity campus, vandalised the VC's residence where he was due to address the press in a shortwhile. TV visuals showed broken furniture, television set etc as students angry over the VC rejoining work went on a rampage. The development came amid news that Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union (JNUSU) president Kanhaiya Kumar, who has been booked under sedition over raising of anti-national slogans inside the university, will be visiting Hyderabad Central University on Wednesday. Professor Appa Rao had in the last week of January proceeded on an indefinite leave in the wake of Rohith's suicide. Rohith's suicide on the university campus in January had led to protests not just inside the varsity but by students community across the country. Amid intense pressure, Appa Rao had proceeded on leave on January 24. Rohith, 26, committed suicide by hanging himself in the Hyderabad Central University campus in January. He was earlier suspended from the university hostel in August last year by the administration for allegedly attacking an ABVP leader. The university had allegedly stopped giving scholarship to Rohith after the incident which led to financial hardship and culminated in his suicide. Also in August 2015, Union minister Bandaru Dattatreya, in a letter to HRD Minister Smriti Irani, had alleged that the Hyderabad Central University had become a den of casteist, extremist and anti-national politics. It was alleged that Dattatreya had sought action against research scholars including Rohith. Appa Rao was slammed for not doing anything to help Rohith. The police had booked Dattatreya, Appa Rao and two others for abetting the suicide of Rohith. Sydney: A 16-year-old schoolgirl was set to be charged Tuesday with raising money to support the Islamic State group, Australian police said, warning of a "trend of teenage children" involved in such activities. The girl and a 20-year-old man were arrested in the western Sydney suburb of Guildford in the morning, New South Wales state police Deputy Commissioner Catherine Burn said. "We will be alleging that they were involved in obtaining money to send offshore to assist the Islamic State in its activities," Burn told reporters in Sydney. "The 16-year-old girl is not somebody who is well-known to us, however it is disturbing that we are continuing to see a trend of teenage children involved in activities that they should really not be involved in at all." The 20-year-old, named by local media as Milad Atai, faced court on one charge of financing terrorism on Tuesday, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported. He remains in custody and was due to appear in another Sydney court on Wednesday, the ABC added. The charge of getting funds to, from or for a terrorist organisation, which the Australian Federal Police said the teenage girl was also expected to face, carries a maximum penalty on conviction of 25 years in prison. Burn would not say how much they allegedly collected, but added that a "number of people in this country" were raising money to finance terrorism and then send it offshore. Federal Police Deputy Commissioner for national security, Michael Phelan, said the alleged fundraising was not linked to any plot of an attack in Australia and there was no immediate threat to the community. Canberra has been increasingly concerned about home-grown extremism and raised the terror threat alert level to high in September 2014. Authorities have conducted a series of counter-terrorism raids in several cities, while the government has passed new national security laws. Since September 2014, 14 people have been charged under Appleby, a rolling operation investigating people suspected of being involved in domestic acts of terrorism, Australians fighting in Syria and Iraq and the funding of terrorist organisations, Phelan said. Burn said police were working to identify "all those things that might have been involved in her getting to this position". In December, five people including a 15-year-old boy were charged in Sydney over a terror plot targeting a government building. And in October a civilian police employee was shot dead by a boy, also 15, outside police headquarters in western Sydney. The teenager was killed in an exchange of gunfire. Brussels: The Belgian authorities on Tuesday released pictures of two suspected suicide bombers believed to be behind the deadly explosions at the Zaventem airport and the main metro station here this morning, which left at leasr 28 people dead and over dozens injured. As per the Brussels Police, the two have been identified as Najim Laachraoui and Mohamed Abrini. The two men in question are also believed to be involved in Paris terror attacks. At least 28 people were killed as two deadly explosions rocked the Zaventem airport and another the main metro station here on Tuesday, four days after the arrest of the Paris terror attack suspect in the Belgian capital. In what looked like a coordinated terror strike, a suicide bomber was apparently involved in the airport carnage where two quick explosions just after 8 a.m. left a part of the departure hall looking like a war zone. At least 13 people were killed and over 30 injured, Belgian media said initially. Even as Belgium raised its terror alert to the maximum, a third equally powerful blast occurred - at the Maalbeek Metro station near the European Union building killing at least 10 people. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel appealed to people to "avoid any movement". The airport was hurriedly evacuated and both the airport and Metro station were shut down. Belga news agency reported that shots were fired and shouts in Arabic were heard before the two blasts, BBC said. People were seen coming out of the airport building with blood on their faces. Condemning the attack, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, "News from Brussels is disturbing. The attacks are condemnable. Condolences to the families of the deceased. May those injured recover quickly." The incident came as the Belgian capital was on a state of high alert following the arrest of Paris terror attack suspect Salah Abdeslam in the city last week. On Monday, Belgium's Interior Minister Jan Jambon said the country was braced for a possible revenge attack following the capture of the 26-year-old Abdeslam. France is seeking Abdeslam's extradition so he can stand trial for his alleged role in the November 13 rampage of gunfire and suicide bombings which killed 130 people in Paris. Brussels: The Belgian capital was hit by deadly bomb attacks on Tuesday, barely a week after a police raid on an apartment that led to the dramatic capture of the last fugitive from the Paris massacre. Salah Abdeslam, Europe`s most wanted man, was arrested Friday in a shootout with police in the gritty Molenbeek district of Brussels where the Paris attacks were hatched. The 26-year-old Frenchman -- who had been on the run for four months -- had told investigators he was planning another strike in Brussels, the home of the European Union and NATO. The city in the crosshairs of the French attacks probe has witnessed several lockdowns since the Paris carnage claimed by the Islamic State group, and is currently at its second highest level of terror alert. Here is a look at the developments over the past week: On Tuesday, March 15, Belgian and French police stumble across jihadists during a "cold" apartment search linked to the November 13 attacks in Paris. A shootout ensues in the Forest district of southern Brussels, during which Algerian Mohamed Belkaid, 35, is shot dead and four police officers, one a French woman, are wounded. Along with his Kalashnikov rifle, Belkaid had the Islamic State group`s black flag by his side, police say. Investigators found Abdeslam`s fingerprints at the flat and say he probably fled as the gunbattle broke out. Media reports say the 26-year-old Belgian-born fugitive erred by using an old cellphone to call up a friend to find another place to hole up.Three days later, on Friday, March 18, Abdeslam and four other people are arrested in a police raid in the largely immigrant Molenbeek district, barely a kilometre (half a mile) from his family`s home. Belgian media said police were alerted by an unusually high number of pizzas ordered at the house. Abdeslam -- the last survivor of the suspected 10-member jihadist gang directly involved in the Paris attacks -- was shot in the leg during his arrest, and transferred to a maximum-security prison unit in the scenic city of Bruges. His lawyer has launched a legal fight to prevent his extradition to France. Abdeslam told investigators he had planned to blow himself up at the Stade de France Stadium outside Paris but backed out at the last minute. He then managed to get through three police checks on his way out of France on the night of the attacks. The one-time petty criminal also told interrogators he had been preparing a strike in Brussels, a claim prosecutors said appeared to be backed up by their discovery of large amounts of weapons and a new network around him. Police said they had found the DNA of a newly identified suspect -- Najim Laachraoui -- on explosives used in the Paris attacks. On Tuesday, March 22, around 35 people are killed and 200 wounded when two explosions rip through the check-in hall at the main Brussels airport and a third hits a train at Maalbeek metro station, near the European Union`s headquarters. Witnesses say there were shots and shouts in Arabic at the airport before the attacks. An airport security officer describes mangled bodies and "total panic everywhere". Belgium, which had already raised its terror threat to the maximum level of four, shuts down the entire transport system. The assaults are claimed by the IS group, saying it was targeting the "crusader state" for "fighting Islam and its people". Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said there were fears more suspects could still be at large in Brussels. Belgian authorities published surveillance camera images showing three male suspects pushing trollies with suitcases past the check-in area. China, Nepal pledge closer cooperation for common development 2016-03-22 13:27 BEIJING, March 21, 2016 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (1st L) holds a welcoming ceremony for Nepalese Prime Minister K. P. Oli (2nd L) in Beijing, capital of China, March 21, 2016. (Xinhua/Xie Huanchi) BEIJING, March 21 (Xinhua) -- Chinese Premier Li Keqiang held talks with his Nepali counterpart K. P. Sharma Oli on Monday and they agreed to expand reciprocal cooperation between the two countries in pursuit of common development. Hailing the traditional friendship and cooperation, Li said China firmly supports Nepal's efforts to safeguard sovereignty, independence and territorial integrity as well as the Nepali people's choice of development path, and will not interfere in Nepal's internal affairs. "China looks forward to seeing a peaceful and prosperous Nepal," Li said, adding that China stands ready to enhance political trust, expand cooperation and increase coordination in international and regional affairs with Nepal. The premier pledged that China will boost practical cooperation in "key" areas with Nepal, including connectivity, industrial capacity, oil and gas, trade, tourism and law enforcement. Li hoped the two sides will start feasibility studies on a bilateral free-trade agreement (FTA) so as to launch FTA negotiations at an early date. The Chinese government will encourage Chinese banks to set up branches in Nepal, Li added. Oli, on his first official visit to China as Nepali Prime Minister, said the traditional Nepal-China friendship will not be affected by any external factor, which has set an example for relationship between countries of different sizes and different political systems. Nepal adheres to the one-China policy and will not allow any activity on the Nepali territory that will impair China's interests, said the prime minister. Hailing China's support for Nepal's independence and development as well as the neighborhood diplomacy featuring amity, sincerity, mutual benefit and inclusiveness, Oli said his country looks forward to benefiting from China's peaceful development and will actively participate in China's "Belt and Road" initiative. Nepal hopes to expand cooperation with China on infrastructure, energy, agriculture, finance, trans-border trade, tourism and education to advance the bilateral relationship in a sustained way, said the prime minister. After their talks, Li and Oli witnessed the signing of a string of cooperation documents, involving areas such as transport, trade, energy and finance. Prior to the talks, Li held a red-carpet ceremony to welcome the visiting prime minister. Later this week, Oli will attend the annual conference of Boao Forum for Asia in China's southern province of Hainan. During Oli's visit, China and Nepal will issue a joint statement later. Related: Nepal politicians hope PM Oli's China trip can boost bilateral economic cooperation KATHMANDU, March 20 (Xinhua) -- Nepali Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli Sunday left for a week-long visit to China; Nepali politicians have expressed the hope that the visit will further enhance bilateral economic ties. Chairman of the Communist Party of Nepal (Revolutionary Maoist) Mohan Baidhya stressed the need for enhancing connectivity between Nepal and China. Full story 1 2 3 4 >> 1 2 3 4 >> Washington: Being degraded several times a day with the tag line "liar Ted" by Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump, his runner-up Senator Ted Cruz has alleged that the entire campaign of the billionaire real estate magnate is built on a lie. "Donald's campaign, his entire campaign is built on a lie," Cruz told the CNN. "Every time Donald gets scared, he begins lashing out. He begins attacking. He begins insulting. He begins yelling. Often, he begins cursing. I'm impressed Donald managed not to curse in that particular riff. But give him a minute, that will change," the 45-year-old Cruz said. Cruz was responding to a question about the 69-year-old Trump's stump speech in which he is described as "liar Ted". "Lying Ted. Lying Ted. He didn't know. Lying Ted. Lying Ted. One of the biggest liars I've ever seen in my life. I really mean it," Trump said in his speech over the weekend. Cruz said he understands the people who are supporting Trump. "They are frustrated with Washington, with politicians in both parties that have been lying to us, that make promises and they go to Washington and they do the exact opposite of what they said," he said. "But if you are fed up with Washington, with the corruption of Washington, then it doesn't make any sense to support Donald Trump who has been enmeshed in the corruption of Washington," he added. "The lie behind Donald's campaign is that he will stand up to Washington. He is the system. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are flip sides of the same coin. Donald Trump has made billions buying influence in Washington. Hillary Clinton has made millions selling influence in Washington," he alleged. "Trump has supported liberal Democratic politicians for 40 years from Jimmy Carter to John Kerry to Joe Biden to Chuck Schumer to Harry Reid to Hillary Clinton as a presidential campaign. Trump has enriched himself using government power. "And in every instance, Donald believes government is the solution, whether it was supporting the Wall Street bailout, which he did, he supported Obama's bailout, supporting the Obama stimulus plan, or using eminent domain to take the homes of little old ladies, or to try to do so, in order to build a parking lot for his casinos," he said. Cruz alleged Trump as the Republican presidential nominee would be a disaster. "Hillary wins. Donald may be the only candidate on the face of the planet that Hillary Clinton can beat in a general election. The stakes are too high. If you are fed up with illegal immigration, Donald Trump funded the "gang of eight" that pushed the massive amnesty plan. I led the opposition to it," he said. Brussels: Four days after Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam was arrested in Belgium, two explosions were reported from Brussels Zaventem airport on Tuesday. Reports say that soon after Salah Abdeslam's arrest, the intelligence officials had warned that he had planned something big in Brussels. Soon after Abdeslam's arrest, Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said the Paris atatcks suspect had been planning to "restart something in Brussels". Two explosions ripped through Brussels airport today during the morning rush hour as hundreds of passengers were trying to check in with authorities saying the blasts caused several injuries. The Belgium officials are yet to confirm the death toll. Abdeslam was arrested in the gritty Molenbeek neighbourhood. Former small-time criminal Abdeslam is believed to be the last surviving member of the 10-man jihadist team that carried out the attacks on the Bataclan concert venue, restaurants, bars and the Stade de France stadium. Abdeslam, one of the most wanted men in Europe, is suspected of involvement in attacks in Paris as a logistician. These attacks killed 130 people in Paris on November 13, 2015. Belgian federal prosecutor's office said he was charged with "terrorist murders and participation in the activities of a terrorist group." Brussels: Islamic State claimed responsibility for suicide bomb attacks on Brussels airport and a rush-hour metro train in the Belgian capital on Tuesday which killed at least 30 people, with police hunting a suspect who fled the air terminal. Police issued a wanted notice for a young man in a hat who was caught on CCTV pushing a laden luggage trolley at Zaventem airport alongside two others who, investigators said, had later blown themselves up in the terminal, killing at least 10 people. Officials said 20 died on the metro train close to European Union institutions. It was unclear still what caused the blast but a news agency linked to Islamic State said that too was a suicide attack. The coordinated assault triggered security alerts across Europe and drew global expressions of support, four days after Brussels police had captured the prime surviving suspect in Islamic State`s attacks on Paris last November. Belgian authorities were still checking whether the attacks were linked to the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, according to Federal Prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw, although U.S. officials said the level of organisation involved suggested they had previously been in preparation. Explosives and an Islamic flag were found after a flat was raided a week ago where a fresh fingerprint of Abdeslam`s had put police on his trail. It was not clear if Abdeslam had been involved at that stage in the airport attack plan. A bomb and an Islamic State flag were also found later on Tuesday in a flat in Brussels. "A photograph of three male suspects was taken at Zaventem. Two of them seem to have committed suicide attacks. The third, wearing a light-coloured jacket and a hat, is actively being sought," Van Leeuw told a news conference. A government official said the third suspect had been seen running away from the airport building. Local media said police had found an undetonated suicide vest in the area. Police issued a wanted notice on Monday, after questioning of Abdeslam, identifying 25-year-old Najim Laachraoui as linked to the Paris attacks. The poor quality of the images left open whether he might be the person caught on the airport cameras. A witness said he heard shouts in Arabic and shots shortly before two blasts struck in a packed airport departure lounge at the airport. Belgian media published the security camera picture of three young men pushing laden luggage trolleys. Police later issued the same photograph, showing only one of the three. "If you recognise this individual or if you have information on this attack, please contact the investigators," the notice read. "Discretion assured." Police operations were under way at several points in the city but a lockdown imposed immediately after the attacks was eased and commuters and students headed home as public transport partially reopened. Islamic State issued a statement claiming responsibility: "We promise the crusader alliance against the Islamic State that they will have black days in return for their aggression against the Islamic State," the jihadist group said. Belgium, home to the European Union and the headquarters of the NATO military alliance, has sent warplanes to take part in operations against Islamic State in the Middle East. Austrian Horst Pilger, who was awaiting a flight with his family when the attackers struck, said his children had thought fireworks were going off, but he instantly knew an assault was underway. "My wife and I both thought `bomb`. We looked into each other`s eyes," he told Reuters. "Five or 10 seconds later there was a major, major, major blast in close vicinity. It was massive." Pilger, who works at the European Commission, said the whole ceiling collapsed and smoke flooded the building. Security services found and destroyed a third bomb after two blasts at the airport killed at least 10 people and injured around 100, the provincial governor of Brabant Flanders said. Belgian media gave death tolls as high as 14 at the airport. The metro station blast killed a further 20 people and injured roughly 130, according to a provisional toll from the national crisis response centre. U.S. President Barack Obama led calls of support to Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel after Brussels had gone into a state of virtual lock-down. "We must be together regardless of nationality or race or faith in fighting against the scourge of terrorism," Obama told a news conference in Cuba. "We can and we will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world." Michel spoke at a Brussels news conference of a "black moment" for his country. "What we had feared has come to pass." The blasts occurred after the arrest in Brussels of a suspected participant the Paris attacks that killed 130 people. Belgian police and combat troops on the streets had been on alert for reprisal but the attacks took place in crowded areas where people and bags are not searched. All public transport in Brussels was initially shut down, as it was in London during 2005 Islamist militant attacks there that killed 52. Authorities appealed to citizens not to use overloaded telephone networks, extra troops were sent into the city and the Belgian Crisis Centre, clearly wary of a further incident, appealed to the population: "Stay where you are". Brussels airport will remain closed on Wednesday, its chief executive Arnaud Feist told reporters. Public broadcaster VRT said police had found a Kalashnikov assault rifle next to the body of an attacker at the airport. Such weapons have become a trademark of Islamic State-inspired attacks in Europe, notably in Belgium and France, including on Nov. 13 in Paris. Alphonse Youla, 40, who works at the airport, told Reuters he heard a man shouting out in Arabic before the first explosion. "Then the glass ceiling of the airport collapsed." "I helped carry out five people dead, their legs destroyed," he said, his hands covered in blood. Others said they also heard shooting before the blasts. A witness said the blasts occurred at a check-in desk. Video showed devastation in the hall with ceiling tiles and glass scattered across the floor. Bloodied bodies lay around. Some passengers emerged from the terminal with blood spattered over their clothes. Smoke rose from the building through shattered windows and passengers fled down a slipway, some still hauling their bags. Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands, all wary of spillover from conflict in Syria, were among states announcing extra security measures. Security was tightened at the Dutch border with Belgium. The blast hit the train as it left Maelbeek station, close to EU institutions, heading to the city centre. VRT carried a photograph of a metro carriage at a platform with doors and windows completely blown out, its structure deformed and interior mangled and charred. A local journalist tweeted a photograph of a person lying covered in blood among smoke outside the station. Ambulances were ferrying the wounded away and sirens rang out across the area. We are at war and we have been subjected to acts of war in Europe for the last few months," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said. Train services on the cross-channel tunnel from London to Brussels were suspended. Britain advised its citizens to avoid all but essential travel to Brussels. Security services have been on a high state of alert across western Europe for fear of militant attacks backed by Islamic State, which claimed responsibility for the Paris attack. While most European airports are known for stringent screening procedures of passengers and their baggage, that typically takes place only once passengers have checked in and are heading to the departure gates. Abdeslam, the prime surviving suspect for the Paris attacks on a stadium, cafes and a concert hall, was captured by Belgian police after a shootout on Friday. Interior Minister, Jan Jambon, said on Monday the country was on high alert for a revenge attack. Brussels: Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said Brussels was hit early Tuesday by two "blind, violent and cowardly" attacks on its airport and metro system which left many dead and wounded. "Two attacks took place this morning in Zaventam airport and Maalbeek metro station, blind, violent, cowardly attacks," Michel announced on national television. "There are many dead and many wounded, some of them seriously," he said, with the death toll so far put at 28. ''This is a dark moment for our nation. We need calm and solidarity,'' Belgian Prime Minister said adding, ''what we feared has happened.'' At least 28 people were killed as two deadly explosions rocked the Zaventem airport and another the main metro station, four days after the arrest of the Paris terror attack suspect in the Belgian capital. In what looked like a coordinated terror strike, a suicide bomber was apparently involved in the airport carnage where two quick explosions just after 8 am left a part of the departure hall looking like a war zone. At least 13 people were killed and over 30 injured, Belgian media said. Even as Belgium raised its terror alert to the maximum, a third equally powerful blast occurred - at the Maalbeek Metro station near the European Union building killing at least 10 people. With Agency inputs Moscow: Authorities in Europe have tightened security at airports, on subways, at the borders and on city streets after deadly attacks today on the Brussels airport and its subway system. The Paris airport authority said security was tightened at all Paris airports soon after the Brussels explosions on Tuesday morning. Airports in London, Prague, Amsterdam, Vienna, and many others, also saw increased security. The attacks come just days after the main suspect in the November 13 Paris attacks was arrested in Brussels on Friday. In Moscow, Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov told Russian news agencies that authorities will "re-evaluate security" at Russian airports, although its measures are already among some of the toughest across Europe. There have been mandatory checks at the entrances to airports since a 2011 suicide bombing at Moscow's Domodedovo airport that killed 37. Gatwick airport said that "as a result of the terrible incidents in Brussels we have increased our security presence and patrols around the airport." Heathrow said it was working with police to provide a "high-visibility" presence in light of the attacks. In Germany, the state rail system, Deutsche Bahn, has halted its high-speed rail service from Germany to Brussels. The company said its ICE trains are now stopping at the border city of Aachen. The British, Dutch and Polish governments convened emergency meetings as they beefed up security at airports. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Britain's David Cameron vowed to help Belgium. "Our thoughts are there, in Brussels and we are praying for the victims," said Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo, who cancellated a routine news conference to attend an emergency meeting with her government security council. Austrian Interior Ministry spokesman Karl-Heinz Grundboeck said more police are on the streets and at airports in Vienna and other major Austrian cities even though there appears to be no "Austria connection." Spain's Interior Ministry said officials were meeting to discuss the situation following the blasts in Brussels but that for the moment Spain was maintaining its Security Alert Level 4 one step below the maximum that has been in place since the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris in January 2015. Tokyo: Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe`s on Tuesday decided that the new national security laws will come into effect from March 29 which will allow the nation to exercise the right to collective self-defence. The ruling coalition passed the controversial bills through the parliament last year and enacted the legislation in September 2015 amid strong opposition from the public and academics due to its unconstitutionality, Xinhua news agency reported. The legislation allow the Japanese Self-Defence Forces (SDF) to engage in armed conflicts overseas and exercise the right to collective self-defense. However, the Japanese war-renouncing constitution banned the SDF from exercising the right to collective defense. Over 90 percent of the country`s constitutional experts see the new legislation violating the supreme law and the enactment of the legislation triggered large scale of protests across the nation. Analysts here said the prime minister would delay the framework for the SDF to carry out the enlarged tasks, with worries that the move would impact on the ruling bloc`s campaign over the coming upper house election, which is key to Abe to launch a motion to amend the constitution. On March 19, over 5,000 protesters rallied in downtown Tokyo opposing the security legislation. Kuala Lumpur: Malaysia today said it will send a team to retrieve a new piece of plane debris found along the southern coast of South Africa this morning to check if it belongs to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which vanished mysteriously two years ago. Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said the?debris which was found near the town of Mosselbay could possibly originate from an inlet cowling of an aircraft engine," but further examination and analysis are needed to verify whether it belongs to Flight 370. He said that the Ministry of Transport and the Department of Civil Aviation Malaysia were in close contact with the South African Civil Aviation Authority on this matter. Further examination will be required to verify if the debris belongs to the missing MAS jetliner MH370. Liow said a team will be dispatched to retrieve the debris. The Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, carrying 239 passengers, including five Indians, enroute from here to Beijing, had disappeared on March 8, 2014. The plane Boeing 777 is believed to have ended its journey in the southern Indian Ocean. Earlier this month, Mozambican civil aviation authorities had handed over suspected debris from missing flight MH370 to Malaysian experts after the piece was found by an American amateur investigator. Currently these parts are being examined by experts in Australia. Investigators have said the search will end by June unless fresh clues are found. The second anniversary of the plane's disappearance was marked on March 8th. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak had expressed confidence that the wreckage of the missing Flight MH370 would be found. Niamey: Niger`s President Mahamadou Issoufou secured 92 percent of the vote in a controversial run-off ballot boycotted by the opposition, according to official results released Tuesday. Sunday`s election in the impoverished but uranium-rich country was marred by low turnout and the opposition boycott. Issoufou`s sole challenger Hama Amadou, imprisoned since November on shadowy baby trafficking charges, was flown to France for medical treatment days before the second round. The electoral commission said Amadou won seven percent of the ballots cast. President Issoufou responded to the announcement of his victory, saying: "During this mandate, I will devote all of my energy to respond to the aspirations of the Nigerien people." Speaking from the presidential palace, he said that security, strengthening democracy and guaranteeing food supplies would be priorities, adding that he needed "the support of all Nigeriens". "Let us come together, not waste our energy on vain quarrels," said the president, following the results of the divisive poll. The poll pitted 64-year-old Issoufou, a former mining engineer nicknamed "the Lion", against Amadou, 66, a former premier and parliament speaker known as "the Phoenix" for his ability to make political comebacks. Issoufou won 48.4 percent in the first round on February 21. Amadou scored just 17.7 percent in the initial vote. Voter participation was a crucial issue following the opposition`s boycott call. The COPA 2016 opposition coalition said voter turnout was a mere 11 percent nationwide, despite an initial official estimate of 56 percent. Amadou was forced to campaign from behind bars after being detained on November 14 on baby-trafficking charges he says were concocted to keep him out of the race. Issoufou, who took office in 2011, campaigned on pledges to bring prosperity to the country and vowed to prevent further attacks from jihadists in its vast remote north, and from Nigeria`s Boko Haram Islamists to the south. However, just three days before the second round contest, Niger suffered two jihadist attacks -- one in the west claimed by Al-Qaeda`s north African affiliate which killed three gendarmes and another by Boko Haram in which a senior army officer died. Religious experts have warned that the ultra-conservative Wahhabist strain of Islam is taking hold in urban areas although Niger`s government says it is "closely monitoring" the issue. The run-up to the first-round presidential vote was marred by violence between supporters of the rival camps, the arrest of several leading political personalities and a government announcement that it had foiled a coup bid. However, aside from the jihadist attacks, the run-up to the second round passed off largely without incident. Addressing reporters on Sunday, Issoufou said: "We should avoid pointless quarrels. The winner, whoever he is, must think about bringing Nigeriens together beyond his own camp, because we face significant challenges." The West African state, where three-quarters of the population live on less than $2 a day, has only had a multi-party democracy since 1990. Uranium is the country`s main export, with Niger ranked fourth globally after Kazakhstan, Canada and Australia. After a tussle over the future of uranium mining, Niger and French nuclear energy group Areva agreed a deal on two uranium mines in May 2014. In late 2011, Niger officially became an oil-exporting country, following the inauguration of a refinery in Olelewa, central-eastern Niger, that is run by the state with help from a Chinese company. Brussels: Police have found the DNA of a newly identified suspect on explosives used in last year`s Paris attacks, a French source revealed Monday, but Belgium`s prosecutor admitted they are "far from solving the puzzle" of the killings. Belgian and French prosecutors met in Brussels to discuss the probe into the carnage in the French capital, following Friday`s dramatic arrest of prime suspect Salah Abdeslam in Brussels after four months on the run. Belgian investigators named a suspected accomplice in the November 13 attacks as Najim Laachraoui, who was previously known by the false name of Soufiane Kayal. Laachraoui used the alias to travel to Hungary in September with Abdeslam -- the last known survivor of 10 people who carried out the wave of shootings and suicide bombings that left 130 people dead. Laachraoui is also believed to have travelled to Syria in February 2013. Traces of DNA from the 24-year-old, who is still at large, were found on the explosives used in the gun and suicide attacks in Paris, a source close to the French investigation said. Prosecutors meanwhile told Belga news agency that two detonators, along with a large cache of weapons, were found in the apartment from which Abdeslam is thought to have fled during a raid last week. "We have not a bad amount of pieces of the puzzle and in the last few days several pieces have found their place," Frederic Van Leeuw told a news conference in Brussels, flanked by Paris prosecutor Francois Molins. "But... we are still, far from solving the puzzle." Van Leeuw also admitted they "don`t have the full timeline" for what Abdeslam did between November 14, when he evaded three French police checks and escaped to Brussels, and his arrest.Investigators hope Abdeslam`s arrest during a raid on Friday, in which he was wounded in the leg, will generate new leads in the probe of the attacks that were claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group. Belgian authorities have been embarrassed by the revelation Abdeslam was found just around the corner from his family home in the gritty Brussels neighbourhood of Molenbeek, and may have been aided by friends and family. Molins, the French prosecutor, said France expected Abdeslam to be extradited to face trial over the attacks, despite his lawyer saying that he would fight the proceedings. "There is a strong expectation from the French justice authorities and particularly from the families of the victims that Salah Abdeslam comes to explain himself," Molins said. French President Francois Hollande, who has said he wants Abdeslam extradited as quickly as possible, held his first formal meeting with relatives of the Paris victims on Monday. The president was quizzed by five victim support groups at the long-delayed meeting on issues ranging from the process of identifying the bodies to emotional and financial support. "We felt we were heard, even if there was no concrete progress," said Emmanuel Domenach, who survived an attack at the Bataclan concert hall in which 90 people were killed.Molins said at the weekend that Abdeslam played a "central role" in the attacks and originally planned to "blow himself up" at the Stade de France stadium, but changed his mind. Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said Sunday that Abdeslam -- who has been charged with "terrorist murder" and belonging to a terrorist group -- had told investigators he was planning some sort of new attack in Brussels. Abdeslam`s lawyer Sven Mary said his client was speaking to authorities. Mary has vowed to take legal action against Molins for allegedly breaching the confidentiality of the investigation by revealing details of Abdeslam`s statements. He also blasted what he called political meddling by the Belgian foreign minister. The lawyer told Belgian Flemish-speaking daily De Standaard that France "has nothing to teach us" and should not criticise the Belgian justice system. Laachraoui is one of two suspects still wanted over the Paris attacks, along with Mohamed Abrini, who became friends with Abdeslam when they were teenagers. Prosecutors said Laachraoui`s DNA had been found at an apartment used by the attackers in Auvelais, near the central Belgian city of Namur, which he had rented under a false name. Traces were also found at another suspected hideout in Schaarbeek, a district of Brussels. He used the same false name at the border between Austria and Hungary on September 9 when he was travelling with Abdeslam and Mohamed Belkaid. Belkaid, a 35-year-old Algerian, was shot dead on Tuesday during another police raid in the Forest district of Brussels. Donetsk: A Russian court on Tuesday sentenced Ukrainian military pilot Nadiya Savchenko to 22 years in prison over the killing of two journalists, in a ruling set to exacerbate Moscow`s feud with Kiev and the West. Judge Leonid Stepanenko found the 34-year-old guilty of involvement in the fatal 2014 shelling of the Russian state television reporters in east Ukraine, a widely-expected verdict slammed by Washington. Ukraine`s pro-Western President Petro Poroshenko immediately pledged to "never recognise either this show trial or the so-called sentence", and offered to swap Savchenko for two suspected Russian soldiers currently on trial in Kiev. Crop-haired Savchenko -- who has become a national hero in her homeland and elected to parliament in absentia -- reacted as the judge read out the sentence at the end of the two-day ruling by shouting in Ukrainian and singing the Ukrainian national anthem. Her defence team said she did not plan to appeal the "illegal" verdict. The helicopter pilot -- who was fighting in a pro-Kiev militia group against rebels in east Ukraine -- insists she was kidnapped by separatist fighters before the journalists were killed in June 2014 and then illegally smuggled to Russia. Kiev and its Western allies see Savchenko as the latest pawn in Moscow`s broader aggression against Ukraine, that has seen Moscow seize the Crimean peninsula and fuel the separatist uprising. US State Department spokesman John Kirby blasted Moscow`s "blatant disregard for the principles of justice" after the verdict and reiterated Washington`s calls for "Russia to immediately release Nadiya Savchenko". The guilty verdict over the deaths of journalists Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin had long been considered a foregone conclusion and Kiev has been pushing for a prisoner swap to free Savchenko. "Putin has said that after the so-called sentence, he will return Nadiya Savchenko to Ukraine," Poroshenko said in a statement. "The time to keep promises has come. I, in turn, am ready to hand over to Russia two Russian servicemen detained on our territory for their involvement in the armed aggression against Ukraine," he said. Kiev says the two men -- Captain Yevgeny Yerofeyev and Sergeant Aleksander Aleksandrov -- were members of an elite Russian military intelligence unit helping rebels in east Ukraine. Russia insists the two servicemen were "volunteers" who were not on active duty and the Kremlin played coy in response to Poroshenko`s offer. "Only the president can take that decision. What that is -- I cannot yet say," Putin`s spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian news agencies.Savchenko`s lawyer Nikolai Polozov told journalists after the sentencing that she would "not appeal this illegal verdict" in which the pilot was also found guilty of illegally crossing the border into Russia and the attempted murder of civilians. "She is an iron person -- she has an iron will," Polozov said. Savchenko has threatened to start refusing all fluids 10 days after the sentencing as she bids to force her release in the latest of a series of hunger strikes she has staged since her arrest. Throughout her detention, she has struck a defiant pose and was sent to a psychiatric hospital near Moscow before being transferred to the Russian town of Donetsk near the Ukraine border for her trial. She has ridiculed the court from the defendant`s glass cage and flashed her middle finger at judges earlier this month as her trial ended. Rights groups have also slammed the case. "Savchenko did not get a fair trial, and so her conviction is unsound and should not stand," said Hugh Williamson, the Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "There should be justice for the deaths of Kornelyuk and Voloshin, but justice won`t be served by an unfair trial that was highly politicised from the start." The verdict looks likely to refocus some Western attention on Ukraine after Moscow broke out of international isolation over its role in the conflict there with its military intervention in Syria. US Secretary of State John Kerry and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier are to fly in to Moscow on Wednesday and, while the focus for Kerry at least is likely to be the Syrian conflict, Savchenko`s fate looks set to be raised. More than 9,200 people have been killed since the Moscow-backed insurgency erupted in eastern Ukraine in April 2014, a month after Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula. Ring that may be Joan of Arc's now in France From:chinadaily.com.cn | 2016-03-22 10:25 A 15th century ring believed to have been owned by the French heroine Joan of Arc is shown at a theme park in France.[Photo/ Agencies] A ring thought to belong to France's most famous historical martyr, Joan of Arc, was unveiled on Sunday at a theme park, even as historians remained skeptical about its authenticity. The Puy du Fou historical theme park in the western Vendee region paid $425,000 for the ring, which is thought to have been in Britain for almost six centuries, at a controversial auction in February in London. Some 5,000 spectators showed up for the unveiling on Sunday, with the ring carried on a cushion in a wooden ark, with its own honor guard and a military procession. "It's a little bit of France that has returned. The ring has come back to France and will stay here," said Philippe de Villiers, founder of Puy de Fou, before a rendition of French anthem La Marseillaise. The gold-plated silver ring was dated to the 15th century by an Oxford laboratory, but the trove of historical documents that came with it have yet to prove it belonged to the French martyr. "They are only at the start of the exploration. It's a lot of work but a beautiful adventure," says expert Vanessa Soupault, who saw the ring recently. The bulky piece of jewelry features three engraved crosses and an inscription that signifies "Jesus-Maria". That fits a description recorded at Joan of Arc's trial in 1431, where she told the court the ring had been given by her parents. Puy du Fou says the ring was probably enlarged and modified at some point in the last 200 years. Joan of Arc, who fought against the English occupation of France during the Hundred Years War, was burned alive at the stake but became a symbol of French resistance and was later made a saint by the Catholic Church. The difficulty of tracing the ring's path through the centuries has left many historians skeptical. It was thought to have been confiscated by her Burgundian captors shortly before they handed her over to the English, and may have ended up in the hands of the archbishop of Winchester, Henry Beaufort, who was present at her trial. It stayed in Britain ever since. But it is not the first time the ring has supposedly returned to France, says Olivier Bouzy, head of the Joan of Arc archives in the north-central French town of Orleans. In the 1950s, a French-English doctor called James Hasson said he had bought the ring and presented it around France. Experts at the time cast doubt on its authenticity, says Bouzy. Part of the problem is the number of copies in circulation. There was even a tombola in the early 20th century in which prizes included versions of the ring. "Around Joan of Arc, we already have several cases of false objects," says Bouzy. One of the more famous was when a fragment of an Egyptian mummy was mistaken for one of Joan of Arc's ribs, recovered from the stake. The Museum to Joan of Arc in Rouen chose not to participate in last month's auction, fearing another fake. But medieval historian Philippe Contamine, while not yet convinced, says he had not given up all hope. "It's unlikely - there are too many unknowns," he says. "But unlikely can still turn out to be real." Geneva: Syria`s peace talks hit a fresh impasse over President Bashar al-Assad Monday, as the head of Lebanon`s Hezbollah vowed his Shiite movement would keep fighting alongside the regime until Islamic State jihadists are defeated. The UN`s Syria envoy, Staffan de Mistura, said he had pressured Damacus to outline its approach to the crucial issue of a political transition, as negotiations in Geneva entered their second week. De Mistura said the regime`s lead negotiator Bashar al-Jaafari told him "it was... premature to talk about it. My message was (that) premature (for him) means imminent as far as we are concerned". Assad`s fate has been a key obstacle in the latest talks aimed at ending Syria`s devastating five-year war, which has killed more than 270,000 people and displaced millions. A partial ceasefire brought in last month had raised hopes for an end to the violence, which were further fuelled when Russia -- a key backer of Assad -- announced last week it would withdraw most of its troops from Syria. But tensions have flared since, with Moscow accusing the US of "unacceptable" delays in agreeing how to punish those who break the ceasefire and warning it could resort to force against violators. There have also been concerns about whether any peace deal could be enforced on Syria`s complex battlefields, and Hezbollah vowed to stay in Syria until the Islamic State group (IS) and Al-Qaeda`s Syria branch are beaten. "All that has been said about our withdrawal from Syria is false," Hezbollah`s leader Hassan Nasrallah told Lebanese channel Al-Mayadeen on Monday. "We went to Syria to help keep the country from falling into the hands of Daesh (IS) and Al-Nusra Front... So long as we have a responsibility to be there, we will be there." Hezbollah first announced it was fighting alongside Assad`s troops in 2013 and has since sent thousands of fighters to battle Syria`s rebels, who are backed by its arch rival Saudi Arabia and a US-led coalition. Its support has been crucial for keeping the regime in power, but the opposition has insisted the president`s departure must be part of any peace deal agreed at the talks. Member of the High Negotiations Committee (HNC) opposition umbrella group, Yahya Kodmani, on Sunday accused the regime of being "obstinate". "We hope that Russia will use its powers to pressure the Assad regime in order to move into serious negotiations," he said. But Jaafari rejected any suggestion that Assad would step down from any new government, saying his future and the political transition were "two separate issues". "President Assad has nothing to do with the... talks," he said, insisting that the subject of the president "is something that is already excluded from the scene". He also insisted Damascus was committed to the peace process, and that his delegation had "clear instructions from our leadership to engage seriously in these talks". Conceding that progress remained slow, de Mistura stressed it was vital that opposing sides reach a basic understanding on how to move to a second round of talks, tentatively scheduled for next month.He highlighted the positive impact of the negotiations, which he said have helped to maintain a fragile ceasefire declared on February 27. But tensions flared between Russia and the US over the truce, with Russian Lieutenant General Sergei Rudskoy accusing Washington of showing "no readiness" to agree how to enforce it and warning Russia would resort to force itself if necessary. "The delay in the entry into force of the rules agreed upon for responding to violations of the ceasefire in Syria is unacceptable," he said in a statement. Moscow would only use force "after receiving credible evidence of armed groups` systematic violations" of the truce, he added. The truce has broadly held since being declared last month and allowed life-saving aid to reach tens of thousands of Syrians stranded in besieged areas. It does not include the Islamic State group (IS) and Al-Qaeda linked Al-Nusra Front, however, who continue to be targeted in Russian air strikes and government offensives. At least 26 pro-government fighters were killed battling Islamic State near Palmyra on Monday as Damascus stepped up a bid to recapture the ancient city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. Brussels: At least 28 people were killed as two deadly explosions rocked the Zaventem airport and another the main metro station in Belgium's capital Brussels on Tuesday. - French President Francois Hollande said, 'The whole of Europe has been hit'. - Top Mulsim body Al-Azhar said Brussels attacks 'violate' Islamic teachings. - Belgian Prime Minister said Brussels was hit by two "blind, violent and cowardly" attacks. - No report of any Indian casualty in Brussels explosions, MEA said. - Brussels airport attack caused by suicide bomber, Prosecutor said. - At least 15 dead in Brussels metro blast, 55 wounded. - At least 13 dead, 35 injured in Brussels airport blasts. - Prime Minister Narendra Modi termed the attacks at Brussels airport that left many dead and wounded as "condemnable", saying the news is "disturbing". - Explosion reported at Brussels' Maalbeek metro station close to EU institutions. - All metro stations have been closed, reports said. - Eleven people reported to be killed in twin explosions at Zaventem airport in Belgium's capital Brussels. The explosions were reportedly carried out by a suicide bomber. - Britain Prime Minister David Cameron expressed shock saying, he was concerned by the events in Brussels. "We will do everything we can to help," he tweeted. - Belgian Interior Minister says terror level has been raised to maximum level in wake of airport explosions. - Shots, shouts in Arabic at the Brussels airport before blasts, Belga news agency reported. - Brussels Airport has cancelled flights and asked people to stay away from airport. - All airport operations have been suspended until further notice. - The terror attacks come as the Belgian capital was on a state of high alert following the arrest of Paris terror attack suspect Salah Abdeslam in the city last week. New York: Major US cities deployed police in large numbers, some with heavy weapons patrolling transit hubs, after at least 30 people were killed in attacks on a Brussels airport and subway, though officials said there was no evidence of specific threats to the United States. New York, Los Angeles and Chicago stepped up their security and major airlines scrambled resources to cope with closings at the airport in Belgium`s capital. Islamic State, a militant group that has gained control of large areas of Iraq and Syria and has sympathizers and supporters around the world, claimed responsibility for the attacks. New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said that although there was no specific threat against the city, he had beefed up police presence and deployed a 500-officer special anti-terrorism unit. He urged New Yorkers to go about their business as normal. "What the terrorists want is for us to change our ways," he told a news conference. "We refuse to change who we are. We are going to respond to their efforts to create chaos by showing them order, by showing them our society functioning, our city functioning." In addition to the increased police presence, New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo activated National Guard troops to provide extra security at New York City`s two airports and at major railroad stations. Officials in cities from Miami to Boston to Portland, Oregon, also said they had stepped up security although they were aware of no specific threats. Many of the wounded at the Brussels airport had severe leg injuries, according to officials, a pattern that suggests an explosion emanating from ground-level, such as from a bag. "We have to keep an eye out for bags," one National Guardsman dressed in military fatigues and carrying a rifle said to a colleague as they passed through a security checkpoint at New York`s John F. Kennedy International Airport. Three U.S. Mormon missionaries were injured in the airport blasts, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints said. Islamic State was blamed for killing 130 people in Paris last November. In December, a married couple inspired by Islamic State shot dead 14 people in San Bernardino, California. A witness to Tuesday`s attack at the Brussels airport said he heard shouts in Arabic shortly before two explosions ripped through a departure lounge. European and U.S. airports have extensive security in place to prevent weapons from being smuggled onto aircraft, but the attack took place in a waiting lounge before screening. Some travelers on Tuesday said they hoped airports would further tighten security following the Brussels attack. "Perhaps it should take place sooner, before you get through security. I find it reassuring," said Mary Ray, 71, a retired government trainer flying home to Manchester, England, from New York after a Caribbean cruise with her husband Malcolm. Ray, who walks with a cane, said she is happy to remove her shoes or have her hands swabbed as she passes through airport security: "I think it`s a deterrent." `SCOURGE OF TERRORISM` U.S. President Barack Obama addressed the attacks briefly in a speech in Havana on his historic first visit to Cuba, vowing to support Belgium as it seeks out those responsible. "This is yet another reminder that the world must unite. We must be together regardless of nationality or race or faith in fighting against the scourge of terrorism," Obama said. "We can and we will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world." The attacks drew immediate response from the leading candidates in the race for the White House, with Republican front-runner Donald Trump repeating his call for tighter U.S. border security. Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, vowed the attack would strengthen her drive to "defeat terrorism and radical jihadism." One Muslim traveler waiting for a flight at Kennedy airport said he worried he would face even more hostility as a result of the attacks. "Fingers are going to be pointed. There will be more checkpoints, more searches, more background scans," said Shahied D., 48, a Muslim from South Africa who asked that his last name be withheld for fear of harassment on the Internet. "Now I will hear, `Your people, your people.` The Koran says you should love irrespective of religion: Hebrew, Christian." Delta Air Lines Inc, United Continental Holdings Inc and American Airlines Group Inc reported that they had canceled or rerouted flights as a result of the attack. Havana: The White House has all but ruled out a meeting between Barack Obama and veteran Cuban leader Fidel Castro during the US president's trip to Cuba. Senior Obama foreign policy aide Ben Rhodes said that neither the administration nor the Cuba authorities had asked for a meeting between Obama and the 89-year-old. "On this trip, we are not planning to meet with Fidel Castro," he said. "We have not requested such a meeting. The Cubans have not requested such a meeting of us." Castro is rarely seen in public these days and when photographed in state-run media he has appeared in a wheel chair. Castro met Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro who visited the island late last week. Obama earlier suggested in a television interview with ABC that he may be open to a meeting. "If his health was good enough that I could meet with him, I'd be happy to meet with him. Just as a symbol of the end of, or the closing of this Cold War chapter in our mutual histories. It's not clear to me what the state of his health is. London: British Prime Minister David Cameron today expressed "shock" and promised every possible help to Belgium after a string of explosions ripped through Brussels airport and a city metro station, killing at least 21 people and prompting a high-security alert across European nations. "I am shocked and concerned by the events in Brussels," Cameron posted on Twitter shortly after the news broke. "We will do everything we can to help." The prime minister added he will be chairing a COBRA meeting, held to discuss emergency situations and bring together cohesive government response, later in the day. "I will be chairing a COBRA meeting on the events in Brussels later this morning," Cameron said. Meanwhile, security was beefed up across major airports in Europe including London's Gatwick airport as fear of another imminent terror attack remains very strong. "As a result of the terrible incidents in Brussels, we have increased our security presence and patrols around the airport," the Gatwick airport said in a statement. Earlier in the day, a string of explosions rocked Brussels Zaventem international airport and a city metro station, killing at least 21 people, according to local media reports. Police said the attacks were caused by suicide bombers. The blast at the Maalbek metro station occurred in the close vicinity of the European Union institutions and killed 10 people and wounded 55 others. Brussels has both NATO as well as European Union (EU) headquarters. The terror strike is widely seen as a revenge attack for the arrest of Paris terror attacks prime suspect, Salah Abdeslam, who was arrested in the Belgian capital last Friday, four months after France's deadliest terror attack in November, claimed by the Islamic State, that killed 130 people. Cameron himself has spent much time in Brussels recently, in and out of EU summits to renegotiate Britain's membership of the bloc. By Andrea Hopkins TORONTO (Reuters) - The attention paid by Americans to the visit of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to Washington this week sparked cynicism and delight back home, as Canadians more accustomed to being ignored weren't entirely sure what to make of the fanfare. With photos of the visit between Trudeau and U.S. President Barack Obama gracing Friday's front pages of the New York Times and Washington Post, Canadians lined up to dismiss and embrace the high-profile of the visit in equal measure. "The American media noticed us!" a headline in Canada's National Post newspaper noted in mock delight, as it devoted the entire front page to a photo of Obama and Trudeau hugging, eyes closed, and the next four pages to details of the visit, noting the "budding bromance" between Obama and Trudeau. But columnist Rex Murphy noted the parallels between the media attention of Trudeau and that devoted to the newly elected Obama years earlier, and the risk of being judged on style before substance is proven: "... while it's always nice for Canada, or her representatives, to be in America's and the world's eye, too much should not be made of it." The election of the photogenic Trudeau, 44, in October has vaulted Canada from obscurity to celebrity abroad, with foreign news outlets and fashion magazines alike praising the Liberal prime minister for his progressive take on feminism, the environment and refugees, as well as his good looks. That global audiences are joining the homegrown "Trudeaumania," a phenomenon first seen a generation ago amid the popularity of Trudeau's father, former prime minister Pierre Trudeau, leaves Canadians a bit bemused. "You would think that this was tantamount to the moon landing!" one commenter wrote in response to a Canadian Broadcasting Corp solicitation for comments on what Canadians thought of the Washington visit. "Enough with the glitter and love-ins," another chimed in, trying to counter a wave of positive comment about the success of Trudeau on the world stage. But while the Toronto Star, the nation's largest newspaper, acknowledged the high-profile visit would be hard for cynical Canadians to take, it cautioned against scorning the fanfare. "Dismiss showmanship at your peril because without it, we are nothing more than squabbles over soft-wood lumber and country-of-origin labeling. It may not last. But right now it is a win for Canada," columnist Tim Harper wrote. (Reporting by Andrea Hopkins; Editing by James Dalgleish) BAKU (Reuters) - Azerbaijan pardoned 148 prisoners including journalists, rights activists and political opponents on Thursday, state media said, in an apparent move to deflect Western criticism of the ex-Soviet republic's human rights record. Analysts say President Ilham Aliyev has included some political prisoners in amnesties in recent years to deflect complaints over crackdowns on free speech in Azerbaijan, a major oil and natural gas exporter. Among those pardoned were rights advocates Taleh Khasmamadov, Hilal Mammadov and Rasul Jafarov, opposition National Statehood Party chief Nemat Panahli, six members of an opposition party and a civic youth movement, ex-election watchdog chief Anar Mammadli and journalist Parviz Hasimov. All were jailed after convictions on charges including tax evasion, illegal business activity and drug trafficking. Prominent journalist Rauf Mirkadyrov, convicted in 2014 of espionage and high treason which he denied, was also freed after the Baku court of appeals cut his six-year prison term to a five-year probation period. He was not in the amnesty list. Mirkadyrov and the other freed prisoners denied the charges against them, calling them politically motivated and fabricated. Mirkadyrov was a political correspondent at the independent Azeri Russian-language newspaper Zerkalo (Mirror) in Turkey, from where he was deported to Azerbaijan two years ago. European Union foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini welcomed the amnesty following talks she had in Baku two weeks ago, saying she hoped they would lead to releases of remaining imprisoned rights activists. About 10 are still jailed. The government says Azerbaijan, a Caspian Sea republic of about 9 million people sandwiched between Russia, Iran and Turkey, enjoys full freedom of speech and a free press. (Reporting by Nailia Bagirova and Margarita Antidze; Writing by Margarita Antidze; Editing by Mark Heinrich) (Reuters) - A 6-year-old California girl was removed from her long time foster family on Monday and will be sent to live with extended family in Utah who share her Native American heritage, according to court documents. An appeals court said last week the girl was subject to removal from her foster family's home in Santa Clarita, north of Los Angeles, under the Indian Child Welfare Act, a federal law that seeks to keep American Indian children with American Indian families. The child cried as Los Angeles County social workers carried her from the home on Monday, while dozens of supporters of the family lined the block to protest against the court's decision, the Los Angeles Daily News reported. The child is 1.56 percent Choctaw Native American, NBC News and the Los Angeles Daily News reported. She has lived with her foster family for the past four years. Her foster parents, Rusty and Summer Page, intend to file a petition with the California Supreme Court to try and keep the girl in the state, the Los Angeles Daily News reported. The National Indian Child Welfare Association said in a statement the girl's relocation to Utah was in her best interest and her family was aware that, as a Native American child, her case was subject to the requirements of the Indian Child Welfare Act (ICWA). "The only surprising turn of events is the lengths the foster family has gone to, under the advice of an attorney with a long history of trying to overturn ICWA, to drag out litigation as long as possible, creating instability for the child in question," the group said. The Los Angeles Times reports the girl has visited the relatives she will be living with in Utah, and they also care for one of her sisters. (Reporting by Victoria Cavaliere in New York; Editing by Paul Tait) By David Ljunggren OTTAWA (Reuters) - Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday said he would neither fight Donald Trump, nor support him, but understood the Republican's appeal for people fed up with politics, who he said had also voted for controversial Toronto mayor Rob Ford. Trudeau - who will visit Washington this week for talks with President Barack Obama - took office last November and will be in power when the next occupant of the White House takes over in January 2017. Trudeau also suggested Trump might not be serious about policy platforms such as tearing up the North American Free Trade Agreement, which could badly damage Canada's economy. "I'm not going to pick a fight with Donald Trump right now. I'm not going to support him either, obviously," Trudeau told a live forum hosted by the Huffington Post when pressed to condemn the Republican. Trudeau said he was watching the United States closely "to see how it deals with what is obviously a very real set of issues around frustration toward the body politic" which had been seen around the world. He cited the case of Ford, the former populist mayor of Toronto who gained global notoriety for admitting to smoking crack while in office. "We had a mayor called Rob Ford here for a while and there's a lot of people who didn't get it. But he tapped into a very real and legitimate sense that people had around who politicians were," said Trudeau. The prime minister seemed less concerned when asked about Trump's proposals to temporarily bar Muslims from the United States and deport millions of illegal immigrants. "Let's see if the things that he needed to say in order to secure the Republican nomination are the same things he chooses to say in order to win the Presidency, if that's what happens," he said. (Reporting by David Ljunggren; Editing by Andrew Hay) PRAIA (Reuters) - Cape Verde held parliamentary elections on Sunday in which the main opposition Movement for Democracy (MpD) party stood a strong chance of taking back the island's legislature after 15 years in the minority. A cluster of 10 volcanic islands 570 km (350 miles) off Senegal, Cape Verde stands out as a pocket of relative stability in the region, having avoided the kinds of coups and civil wars that have plagued its neighbors on the mainland. But in the run-up to the election, the ruling African Party for the Independence of Cape Verde (PAICV) has come under attack for running up the public debt on expensive infrastructure projects while failing to tackle rampant youth unemployment. Six parties were vying for seats in the 72 member parliament. However the main race pitted the two main parties - the MpD against the PAICV - against one another. While current President Jorge Carlos Fonseca won the presidency in 2011 with MpD backing, the PAICV has controlled parliament for the past decade and a half, allowing it to name the nation's prime minister and government. The MpD has in recent years mounted strong opposition to the PAICV, which suffered a poor showing in municipal elections in 2012. MpD party leader Ulysses Correia e Silva said on Sunday he was confident in victory and appealed "to all Cape Verdeans to vote and exercise the right and obligation to improve democracy in Cape Verde." A presidential election is due to be held later this year though the date has not yet been fixed. The former Portuguese colony, which has experienced a tourism boom in recent years, recorded per capita GDP of $3,450 in 2014, among the highest levels in Africa. Its population of just over half a million has one of the continent's lowest poverty rates. However, it lies along one of the main cocaine trafficking routes linking South America to Europe and has seen a recent surge in drug-related violence. (Reporting by Julio Rodrigues; Writing by Joe Bavier; Editing by Raissa Kasolowsky) By Andy Sullivan and Alana Wise WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican Mitt Romney said on Friday he would vote for U.S. Senator Ted Cruz in Utah's presidential nominating contest, but the party's 2012 election standard-bearer stopped short of an official endorsement as he urged voters to deny the nomination to front-runner Donald Trump. In a Facebook post, Romney said a vote for Cruz in Utah's caucus on Tuesday was the best way to prevent Trump from locking down the nomination, which would give opponents a chance to select another candidate at the party's July convention. "The only way we can reach an open convention is for Senator Cruz to be successful in as many of the remaining nominating elections as possible," Romney wrote. Romney did not offer any praise for Cruz, who emerged as a favorite of the party's most ardent conservatives after clashing with party leaders in Washington. Romney did not say whether or not he would campaign with Cruz, a first-term senator from Texas. Trump responded quickly. "Mitt Romney is a mixed up man who doesn't have a clue. No wonder he lost!" he wrote on Twitter. Cruz, acknowledging the tepid nature of Romney's support, said the pledged vote enforces the idea that his campaign is the only one that can beat Trump, likening a vote for Ohio Governor John Kasich, the third remaining Republican contender, to tacit support for Trump. "In my book, when someone says Im voting for you, and I encourage everyone else to vote for you, thats pretty darn good," Cruz, a self-styled Washington outsider, told reporters in Arizona. "And Ill take that and take that happily." Arizona also holds its nominating contest on Tuesday. "As Mitt Romney observed today, if you want to beat Donald Trump, Cruz is the only campaign that can do it. Thats why hes voting for me in Utah," Cruz said. Romney has emerged as one of the most prominent critics of Trump, the billionaire businessman and reality-TV star who has become the surprise front-runner in the battle to secure the Republican nomination for the Nov. 8 election. Romney, who lost to Democratic President Barack Obama in 2012, called Trump a "fraud" and a dangerous demagogue who would lose to Hillary Clinton, the Democratic Party front-runner, in November. "Today, there is a contest between Trumpism and Republicanism," Romney wrote, adding that Trump has encouraged racism, misogyny and violence. "I am repulsed by each and every one of these," he wrote. Kasich's campaign called Romney's turn to Cruz the result of "bad political advice." "This is just the old establishment trying again to game the political system, but John Kasich's defeated the Republican establishment his entire career," the campaign said. Romney's support for Cruz comes a day after U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham threw his support behind the Texas senator, saying in similar fashion that Cruz has the best chance of stopping Trump, even though he thinks Kasich would have a better chance of winning in November's general election. Trump has continued to notch victories in the state-by-state nominating process as Republicans have failed to unite behind Cruz or Kasich. At this point, those who oppose Trump say their best bet is to prevent him from securing the 1,237 delegates he needs to lock up the nomination before the convention in Cleveland. So far, Trump has won 678 delegates. Cruz would need to win 81 percent of the remaining delegates to reach a majority, according to the Cook Political Report. It is impossible for Kasich to reach 1,237 delegates, according to the nonpartisan election tracker. Romney said Kasich has a "solid record" as a governor and he would have voted for him in Ohio last Tuesday. (Additional reporting by Richard Cowan; Editing by Grant McCool and Leslie Adler) By Serajul Quadir DHAKA (Reuters) - Bangladesh police met an official of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in Dhaka on Sunday to try to track down culprits in an attempted $951 million cyber heist from the country's central bank. Initial investigations aim to identify the origin of a transfer order for $81 million that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York paid from Bangladesh Bank's account there to casinos in the Philippines, a senior police official told reporters. The transfer, one of the largest cyber heists in history, was among 35 requests that unknown hackers made for payments from the bank's New York Fed account in early February. Other requested transfers from that account, which Dhaka uses for international settlements, were apparently blocked. Former finance secretary Fazle Kabir took over on Sunday as head of the central bank after the former governor Atiur Rehman resigned amid complaints from the government that it had only learned of the heist a month later from the media. Also on Sunday, the wife of a cyber crime expert reported he had disappeared after being abducted from a motor rickshaw in the early hours of last Thursday. He had met police on Tuesday and told the media he knew three user IDs used for the heist. Senior police official Mirza Abdullahel Baqui said after meeting the FBI official that criminals in six countries were apparently involved in the heist. "This is the biggest transnational organised crime ever seen in Bangladesh and so we sought both technical and human assistance (from the FBI)," he said. The officials also discussed how to proceed with their investigation, he added. A government investigative committee led by former central bank governor Mohammad Farash Uddin began its probe into the heist on Sunday. "This is a wake-up call," he said of the unprecedented breach in the bank's computer security. A Philippines Senate hearing last week was told that $30 million of the $81 million haul was delivered in cash to an ethnic Chinese casino junket operator in Manila. The rest was transferred to two casinos in the Philippines. According to his wife, cyber crime expert Tanveer Hassan Zoha was blindfolded by unknown people in plainclothes early on Thursday before being taken away in a vehicle. He had gone on Tuesday with a special police force to the central bank where they spent several hours. Afterwards, he told reporters he knew three of the user IDs involved in the heist. Kamrun Nahar Chowdhury, Zoha's wife, said police had refused to investigate her husband's disappearance and she had appealed to the government for help to free him. Police were unavailable for comment. "We don't know why he was picked up," she told Reuters. (Reporting by Serajul Quadir; Editing by Tom Heneghan) A security officer patrols near travelers inside New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, March 22, 2016. REUTERS/Mike Segar (Reuters) (Reuters) - U.S. airlines including Delta, United and American canceled flights on Tuesday after two deadly blasts in a packed departure area of the Brussels Airport at Zaventem. A suicide bomber blew himself up in one of the Tuesday morning airport explosions, which public broadcaster VRT said killed 14 people. Another 20 were killed when a blast tore through a rush-hour metro train in the European capital shortly afterward, VRT said. Video at the airport, which was shut down, showed devastation, with ceiling tiles and glass scattered across the floor. Some passengers emerged from the terminal with blood spattered over their clothes. While there were no credible threats to U.S. airports or transportation hubs, police presence was beefed up as a precaution in the nation's major cities, including New York, Washington and Los Angeles. Delta Air Lines Inc said its flight DL42 from New York to Brussels was diverted to Amsterdam. Another flight, DL80 from Atlanta, had landed safely at the Zaventem airport and was parked remotely while the airline's local staff helped passengers exit safely. News of the multiple blasts, which have Brussels on lockdown and have snarled some cross-border traffic, sent shares of U.S. airlines and travel-related companies lower. Delta was down 2.1 percent at $49.04 in morning New York Stock Exchange trading, while United Continental Holdings Inc fell 1.4 percent to $69.34. United Airlines, which had two flights due in Brussels on Tuesday morning, said both landed there safely. The company said it was suspending all remaining flights to and from Brussels. American Airlines Group Inc said it had canceled flight 751 from Brussels to Philadelphia and would accommodate its passengers when the airport reopens. The explosions did not occur where American's check-in operates, the company said, so all of its airport employees are safe and accounted for. Starwood Hotels & Resorts Inc said all of its hotels in Brussels were on lockdown, along with the rest of the city. Facebook Inc said it had activated its "safety check" feature, which allows its users to check on friends who were in the area of the blasts. (Reporting by Sayantani Ghosh in Bengaluru; Editing by Ted Kerr and Lisa Von Ahn) The Government is warning against all but essential travel to Brussels following the terror attacks on the city, Downing Street says. It (Other OTC: ITGL - news) comes as transport services have been facing disruption across Europe as security and border controls are stepped up in response to the terror attacks in Brussels. All public transport has been closed in the Belgian capital following blasts at the city's Zaventem airport and at a Metro (Other OTC: MTRAF - news) station . The airport said no flights would run at all on Tuesday and it was "impossible ..to say when operations will be resumed". Eurostar suspended services to and from Brussels until mid-afternoon - with early trains from the UK to the city terminating at Lille. But a spokesman later said services to Brussels were resumed from 3pm. He said passengers should allow extra time for their journeys due to added security checks. But the train operator's website advised passengers not to travel today unless essential. :: Live Updates: Brussels Airport And Metro Blasts The apparent suicide attacks also prompted a growing number of European nations to announce reviews of their security procedures - with neighbouring Germany, France and the Dutch government all confirming heightened border checks - with the Netherlands involving military personnel. Norway said officers on the streets of Oslo would be armed for a temporary period. The suicide attack on the airport took place in a pre-security check-in area. Heathrow, Gatwick and Manchester airports were among those in the UK confirming additional measures to help provide reassurance for passengers - with police forces nationwide bolstering wider transport security. It was a similar picture across the EU. Germany's Lufthansa was among the airlines worst affected by the shutdown in Brussels, with 25 services cancelled. :: Special Programme: Brussels Attacks on Sky News at 7pm tonight Travellers reported delays and a heavy police presence at Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport while the Thalys train service - which travels between France, Belgium and the Netherlands - has been suspended. Story continues Deutsche Bahn halted its high-speed rail service from Germany to Brussels with trains stopping at the border city of Aachen. France said 1,600 additional police officers would be placed on border protection and transport network duties while the Dutch government advised its citizens to avoid Belgium completely. The attacks happened as air services were getting back to normal following two days of disruption across the EU, caused by French air traffic controller strikes . While flights in and out of Brussels are suspended - with incoming planes in the air being mostly diverted to Paris and Amsterdam - other major airports across Europe reported little disruption to wider departure and arrival times, despite tighter security. By Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - Morocco has asked the United Nations to close a military liaison office in the disputed territory of Western Sahara as a spat between Rabat and the U.N. chief over his recent remarks escalates, a U.N. spokesman said on Monday. Dozens of U.N. international staffers pulled out of the Western Sahara mission, known as MINURSO, on Sunday after Morocco demanded they leave because U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon used the term "occupation" during a recent visit to the region. "MINURSO has ... received a request to close its military liaison office in Dakhla in the coming days, which would be the first request directly targeting the military component," U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters. "There is no reason, none, for this escalation," he said. MINURSO's mandate comes from the Security Council. "We cannot allow the principle to be upheld that member states can arbitrarily go against their status of mission agreements and their commitments under the U.N. charter ... to abide by Security Council resolutions," Haq said. Without a properly functioning peacekeeping mission, Haq said, there was a risk of a resumption of conflict. Ban planned to raise Western Sahara with Security Council members on Monday, Haq said. U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric chided the council on Friday for not taking a strong stand in the dispute. The controversy over Ban's comments is Morocco's worst dispute with the U.N. since 1991, when the U.N. brokered a ceasefire to end a war over the Western Sahara and established the mission. Morocco had demanded last week that 81 U.N. international civilian staff and three African Union staff leave the mission. Haq said 73 of the U.N. personnel were temporarily reassigned. He noted that 11 individuals that MINURSO ordered out of the mission no longer worked there. Morocco had initially given the mission three days to withdraw the specified personnel but later extended that to "within the coming days." Rabat accused Ban earlier this month of no longer being neutral in the Western Sahara dispute when he used the word "occupation" to describe its annexation of the region in 1975, when Morocco took over from colonial power Spain. Ban had visited refugee camps in southern Algeria for the Sahrawi people, who say Western Sahara belongs to them. They fought a war against Morocco until the 1991 ceasefire. The Polisario Front wants a referendum on independence, but Morocco says it will only grant autonomy. Before the reductions, the mission had nearly 500 military and civilian personnel. (Reporting by Louis Charbonneau; Editing by G Crosse and Steve Orlofsky) By Patrick Markey ALGIERS (Reuters) - Morocco is putting a ceasefire over disputed Western Sahara at risk by expelling United Nations staffers there and trying to scuttle a long-delayed referendum over the future of the territory, an independence movement official said on Tuesday. Dozens of U.N. staffers pulled out of the Western Sahara mission, known as MINURSO, on Sunday after Morocco demanded they leave because U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon used the term "occupation" during a visit to the region. It is Rabat's worst dispute with the U.N. since 1991, when it brokered a ceasefire. Morocco took over most of Western Sahara in 1975 from colonial Spain, starting a guerilla war with the Sahrawi people's Polisario Front who say the desert territory on Africa's northwest belongs to them. "Morocco wants to clear the table, erase it all and have nothing to do with the mission. They want to show the question of the referendum is done and doesn't exist," Mohamed Said Ould Salek, foreign minister to the movement's Sahrawi Arab Democratic Republic, told Reuters. "When Morocco expels civilian staff it puts the ceasefire at risk, because the ceasefire and the referendum are two inseparable twins. You kill one and you kill the other." Morocco complained Ban lost his neutrality when he used the word occupation to describe Morocco's annexation during his visit to Sahrawi refugee camps in southern Algeria earlier this month. Rabat called it an insult to the Moroccan people. U.N. spokesman dismissed suggestions the UN was partial in the dispute, saying Ban referred to occupation related to the Sahrawi refugees being unable to return home under satisfactory governance conditions. MINURSO established the mission for peacekeeping and organizing the referendum including on the question of independence, but negotiations between Rabat and Polisario over how to hold the vote have been deadlocked. On Monday, Morocco took a step further, asking the United Nations to close a military liaison office in Dakla. Ban had planned to raise the decision with the U.N. Security Council, and U.N. spokesman warned it risked a return to conflict. Salek said Polisario has called on the U.N. Security Council to guarantee the U.N. mission is returned and get Morocco to respect its mandate rather than returning to the same situation that started the confrontation. "Morocco has to assume its responsibility for the risk. If the U.N. does not force Morocco to accept MINURSO in its proper composition and mandate, there is no other option but war," the minister said. "We are waiting to see the reaction of the Security Council." Rabat accused Ban earlier this month of no longer being neutral in the Western Sahara dispute after the terms he used to describe its annexation of the region in 1975. Ban had also visited refugee camps in southern Algeria for the Sahrawi people calling for a restart to negotiations for them to return to the Western Sahara. Morocco's King Mohammed has offered a plan for autonomy for the region and invested heavily in the territory as a way to ease tensions and defuse independence claims. Polisario says the referendum must be held on self-determination for the Sahrawis. (Reporting by Patrick Markey; Editing by Richard Balmforth) By Matt Siegel SYDNEY (Reuters) - Debris found earlier this month off the southeast African coast which some believe could be from a missing Malaysia Airlines flight has arrived in Australia for testing, officials said on Monday, two years after the plane disappeared. A white, meter-long chunk of metal was found off the coast of Mozambique this month by a U.S. adventurer who has been carrying out an independent search for flight MH370. "These are items of interest but, because of the rigorous analysis to be performed, it is not possible to speculate on how long it might take to reach any conclusions," Australian Infrastructure Minister Darren Chester said in a statement. Two pieces of debris will be examined by investigators from Australia and Malaysia, as well as specialists from Boeing, Geoscience Australia and the Australian National University in Canberra, Chester said. Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai has said there is a "high possibility" the metal chunk belongs to a 777 jet, the same type of aircraft as MH370. The plane disappeared on March 8, 2014, with 239 passengers and crew on board shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing. It is believed to have crashed in the Indian Ocean and an initial search of a 60,000 sq km (23,000 sq miles) area of sea floor has been extended to another 60,000. A piece of the plane's wing washed up on the French Indian Ocean island of Reunion, on the other side of Madagascar, in July 2015. So far only that piece, known as a flaperon, has been confirmed to belong to the missing plane. (Reporting by Matt Siegel; Editing by Nick Macfie) By Gleb Stolyarov MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian investigators said on Monday they had been able to retrieve data from a damaged cockpit voice recorder recovered from the scene of a plane crash at the weekend in southern Russia that killed all 62 people on board. Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev ordered officials to examine whether Russia's flight safety rules needed to be tightened up after the crash, which happened as the Boeing 737-800 tried to land at a regional airport in strong, gusting wind. Questions have been raised about why the aircraft went ahead with its attempts to land when another jet heading for the same airport a short while earlier had diverted elsewhere because of the bad weather. The crashed jet, operated by Dubai-based budget carrier Flydubai, came down in the early hours of Saturday at Rostov-on-Don airport in southern Russia on its second attempt to land after flying from Dubai. The Dubai government said on Twitter that Flydubai would resume flights from Rostov-on-Don on Tuesday. Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov said other flights to and from the city had resumed. The airport was closed for a time after the crash. The plane's flight data recorder survived largely intact, but the cockpit voice recorder - which should shed light on the pilots' final conversations - was badly damaged, leading officials to say initially it could take weeks to restore it. "Memory has already been retrieved from the black boxes, it's being worked on," a spokesman of the Interstate Aviation Committee (IAC), which is investigating the crash, told Reuters. "The decoding of the two black boxes may take between several weeks and several months," he said. There is so far no suggestion of an attack on the aircraft. Russian media say the two main theories under consideration by investigators are possible pilot error or a technical failure. Flydubai's CEO Ghaith al-Ghaith said on Saturday it was too early to determine why the plane, which was just over five years old, crashed. (Writing by Andrew Osborn and Dmitry Solovyov; additional reporting by Rama Venkat Raman in Bengaluru; Editing by Christian Lowe and Alison Williams) Highlights lithographs by artists influenced by the California art scene from the 1970s to the present. Albuquerque, NM Tamarind invites the local community to come do a little California Dreaming. Tamarinds annual guest-curated exhibition, California Dreaming opens on Friday, March 11 with a public reception from 5 7 p.m. The exhibition will be in the gallery through April 29, open to the public, Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. 5 p.m., or during special hours, 5 p.m. 7 p.m. on Friday, April 1. California Dreaming, guest-curated by Christina Rosenberger, highlights lithographs by artists influenced by the California art scene from the 1970s to the present. Christina Rosenberger received her PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, where she studied the materials and techniques of modern and contemporary artists. Her work bridges the disciplines of art history, conservation and conservation science. Rosenberger served as Research Coordinator for the Center for the Technical Study of Modern Art at the Harvard Art Museums and taught modern art at the University of New Mexico. Her book, Drawing the Line: The Early Work of Agnes Martin, is forthcoming from the University of California Press in spring 2016. Tamarind Institute is an internationally recognized fine art lithography workshop affiliated with the College of Fine Arts of the University of New Mexico. Tamarind is dedicated to the preservation and promotion of lithography through education, research, exhibitions, and artist residencies, and is credited with expanding the accessibility to and popularity of printmaking among contemporary artists around the world. Tamarind frequently sponsors programs with diverse populations, locally and internationally, benefitting University, Albuquerque, and New Mexico constituencies. For more information, call 505-277-3901, or email tamarind@unm.edu. By Gennady Novik and Alexander Reshetnikov DONETSK, Russia (Reuters) - A Russian court sentenced Ukrainian pilot Nadezhda Savchenko to 22 years in jail on Tuesday after finding her guilty of involvement in the killing of two Russian journalists during the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said his country would never recognize the verdict of what he called a "kangaroo court" and called on Russian President Vladimir Putin to send Savchenko back home to Ukraine. Fighting in eastern Ukraine has subsided since a fragile ceasefire was agreed, but Savchenko's trial showed the depth of bitterness that remains. Savchenko, 34, is a national hero in Ukraine but many in Russia see her as a Ukrainian nationalist with the blood of civilians on her hands. The sentence is likely to prompt protests from the European Union, which has called for Savchenko's release. Savchenko, who was elected a member of the Ukrainian parliament while awaiting trial, was defiant as the verdict was read out. She climbed onto a bench and sang the Ukrainian national anthem at the top of her voice. Savchenko, who wore a T-shirt bearing the Ukrainian trident, a state symbol, has denied having anything to do with the deaths of the journalists. Poroshenko said after the verdict: "Ukraine will never - I repeat, never - recognize either the kangaroo court of Nadezhda Savchenko, nor its so-called sentencing." He said Putin had promised him some months ago that he would return Savchenko to Ukraine once the trial was over. "The time has come to fulfill that promise," Poroshenko said in a statement. "In turn, I am prepared to hand over to Russia the two Russian servicemen captured on our territory for taking part in armed aggression against Ukraine." Russian officials have previously signaled they would be willing to consider a prisoner exchange. Only Putin can decide whether Russia will trade Savchenko with Kiev, the Interfax news agency quoted Dmitry Peskov, a Kremlin spokesman, as saying on Tuesday. SINGING PROTEST At the hearing in southern Russian, judge Leonid Stepanenko, between shouted interruptions by Savchenko, dismissed her lawyers' arguments that she could not have been involved in killing the journalists. "The evidence provided by the prosecution side is trustworthy and completely disproves the theory of the defense about Savchenko's innocence," the judge said. He said the court had decided "to select as the final punishment for Savchenko 22 years of confinement of liberty with a fine of 30,000 rubles ($442)." The sentence was one year less than the term prosecutors had sought. Asked by the judge if she understood the sentence, Savchenko stood on a bench in the cage where she was being kept and began singing the Ukrainian national anthem. Her supporters in the courtroom joined the singing and tried to unfurl a blue-and-yellow Ukrainian flag, before security staff bundled them out. Savchenko, who had taken leave from her job as a military pilot to volunteer with Ukraine's ground forces fighting against the separatists in eastern Ukraine, was captured by pro-Moscow rebels there in June 2014. She was handed over to Russia where she was charged with directing mortar fire which killed the two Russian journalists who were covering the conflict. She has repeatedly gone on hunger strike, and says she is the victim of a show trial aimed at humiliating Ukraine. During the trial, angry Ukrainians have pelted the Russian embassy in Kiev with eggs over her plight, while Russians have picketed the Ukrainian embassy in Moscow demanding justice for the dead journalists. (Additional reporting by Dmitry Solovyov in Moscow and Natalia Zinets and Pavel Polityuk in Kiev, Writing by Christian Lowe, Editing by Timothy Heritage) A recent spree of gun violence in Surrey, B.C. is causing concern among residents in the area, but police say recent shootings differ from last year's gang-related violence. The latest shooting took place early Sunday morning near 132nd Street and 110th Avenue. There have been about a dozen incidents of gun-related violence so far this year. "It's really frustrating to the residents of Surrey that this continues to go on and on," said Darlene Bowyer, a coordinator with the Surrey Association of Sustainable Communities. Last year, a drug turf war broke out in Surrey, leading to dozens of shootings over the span of a few months. But police say none of the shootings in 2016 is linked, and there doesn't appear to be a connection to last year's feud between two rival drug gangs. For that reason, the RCMP says it won't comment on the spike in gun violence. Still, residents are worried. "We can walk across Scott Road and into Delta and they don't have the problem that we have in Surrey. Why is that?" said Bower. More police officers coming Mayor Linda Hepner and her party, Surrey First, campaigned on hiring 100 new police officers. So far, 90 are currently working and 10 more are on the way. But Surrey is one of the fastest-growing communities in the province, and that's why council plans to hire more officers in the future. "We have identified an additional 16 [officers] per year over the next few years," said acting mayor Vera LeFranc. "We think that is going to meet the need. We do want to keep an eye on it though." Late last year, the city also hired Terry Waterhouse as the city's director of public safety strategies to put together new policies. The rollout of his vision is expected later this year. "We know that we can't accomplish all of crime reduction and prevention through policing alone," said LeFranc. "It takes a full community. It takes more than just policing, so we need to have a fully integrated strategy." Last year's drug wars died down after several arrests were made, and the streets were calm once again. Residents say they hope they'll go back to being that way soon. By John Whitesides WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said on Tuesday the United States should use waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques when questioning terror suspects, and renewed his call for tougher U.S. border security after the attacks in Brussels. The billionaire businessman said authorities "should be able to do whatever they have to do" to gain information in an effort to thwart future attacks. "Waterboarding would be fine. If they can expand the laws, I would do a lot more than waterboarding," Trump said on NBC's "Today" program, adding he believed torture could produce useful leads. "You have to get the information from these people." Waterboarding, the practice of pouring water over someones face to simulate drowning as an interrogation tactic, was banned by President Barack Obama days after he took office in 2009. Critics call it torture. Trump's main Republican rival, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, suggested heightened police scrutiny of neighborhoods with large Muslim populations. "We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized," he said in a statement. Trump also called for increased law enforcement surveillance of mosques in the United States. "You need surveillance. You have to deal with the mosques, whether we like it or not," Trump told Fox Business Network. "These attacks ... they're not done by Swedish people, that I can tell you." Islamic State claimed responsibility for Tuesday's suicide bomb attacks on Brussels airport and a rush-hour metro train in the Belgian capital which killed at least 30 people. Trump, who has called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country, urged tougher measures to stop the flow of illegal immigrants, particularly Syrian refugees, into America. "As president ... I would be very, very tough on the borders, and I would be not allowing certain people to come into this country without absolute perfect documentation," said Trump, campaigning to become the Republican nominee for the Nov. 8 election that will decide on Obama's successor. The Brussels attacks brought national security back to the top of the presidential election agenda, possibly sharpening the division between Trumps isolationist approach to foreign policy and his Republican rivals more traditional interventionist outlook. On Monday, Trump expressed skepticism about the U.S. role in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and said the United States should significantly cut spending on the defense alliance. 'THEY NEED MORE HELP' Cruz criticized Trump's NATO proposal. "The way to respond to terrorist attacks is not weakness. Its not unilateral and preemptive surrender. Abandoning Europe, withdrawing from NATO, as Trump suggests, is preemptive surrender," Cruz told reporters in Washington. Earlier attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, have pushed security issues to the forefront of the White House campaign debate. When 130 people were killed in Paris in November, the threat of terrorism jumped from fifth to first on a Reuters/Ipsos poll list of the country's most important problems and remained there until the economy moved back to the top of the list in mid-January. Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton said U.S. military leaders have found techniques like waterboarding are not effective. "We've got to work this through consistent with our values," she said on NBC, adding officials "do not need to resort to torture, but they are going to need more help." Clinton's Democratic rival, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, backed stronger intelligence-sharing and monitoring of social media in the fight against Islamist militants, but opposed bolstered surveillance of Muslim communities. "That would be unconstitutional, and it would be wrong. We are fighting a terrorist organization, a barbaric organization that is killing innocent people. We are not fighting a religion," Sanders told reporters. Walid Phares, named by Trump this week as one of his foreign policy experts, told Reuters the Brussels attacks would force Europe and the United States to "reassess" counter-terrorism strategies in "identifying the radicalized elements and also the type of protection soft targets need." Trump looks to take another step toward winning the Republican presidential nomination in contests in Arizona and Utah on Tuesday, aiming to deal another setback to the party establishment's flagging stop-Trump movement. He has a big lead in convention delegates who will pick the Republican nominee, defying weeks of attacks from members of the party establishment worried he will lead the Republicans to defeat in November. In Arizona, one of the U.S. states that borders Mexico, Trump's hardline immigration message is popular and he leads in polls, while in Utah Trump lags in polls behind Cruz. In addition to the temporary ban on Muslims entering the country, Trump has called for the building of a wall on the U.S.-Mexican border to halt illegal immigration. (Additional reporting by Alana Wise, Susan Heavey and Mark Hosenball in Washington and Chris Kahn in New York; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe and Alistair Bell) By Ercan Gurses and Orhan Coskun ANKARA (Reuters) - Changes to Turkey's constitution envisaged by the ruling AK Party could hand President Tayyip Erdogan new powers to draft legislation directly and pick ministers, senior officials said, moves opponents fear could entrench authoritarian rule. A cross-party commission charged with drafting a new constitution collapsed last month after the main opposition pulled out over attempts by the AKP, founded by Erdogan more than a decade ago, to change Turkey from a parliamentary to a presidential system. Erdogan won Turkey's first popular presidential election in August 2014 and has made no secret of his ambition to imbue the largely ceremonial post with more powers. Previous heads of state had been elected by parliament. The debate over the constitution has profound implications for Turkey, a NATO member state of 79 million people with aspirations to join the European Union. The outcome could change the way Turkey is ruled and redefine issues ranging from Turkish citizenship to the protection of religious freedoms. Erdogan's supporters say an executive presidency is vital if Turkey is to have the powerful leadership it needs to take a bigger role on the world stage. They reject suggestions it is about the personal ambition of one man. His opponents say it will consolidate too much power in the hands of a leader, whose grip over the media, the judiciary and police has tightened in recent years. They fear Erdogan's roots in conservative Islamist politics will take Turkey ever further from Western standards on free speech. Erdogan has urged parliament to take the issue to a referendum, saying he believes Turks will accept a new charter and stronger powers for the head of state. Amid opposition dissent, the AKP is readying its own draft proposals. "If it emerges that the constitutional commission cannot work, the AKP will begin work on a constitution including the presidential system and will rapidly complete it," said Mustafa Sen, a chief adviser to Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. "A decision (on the AKP draft) could be reached before the summer ... We are not writing a 10-volume novel. It must not be a text of more than 60-70 articles," he told Reuters. Several other senior AKP officials said the party's proposals, which would need the support of 14 opposition members of parliament to be put to a national vote, were already under discussion. The plans would allow the president to dissolve parliament, officials familiar with the discussions said. Such a move would also end the president's term and trigger parliamentary and presidential elections to ensure checks and balances, they added. Two senior AKP officials involved in the deliberations said the president would be able to issue decrees to enact legislation without consulting parliament. "The president in our proposal would be more powerful than under the U.S. system," one of the officials said, declining to be identified because the plans have not yet been finalised. The head of state would also appoint the cabinet as well as senior figures including ambassadors and some members of the judiciary. "SECRETARIES, NOT MINISTERS" The AKP has broad cross-party support for overhauling the constitution, which dates back to an era of military coups and has been repeatedly revised. But there are wide divergences over what a new charter should look like. Opposition parties want it to focus primarily on protecting minority rights and democratic freedoms. "The current system is already pretty much like a semi-presidential system ... Even if there are shortcomings, a 200-year-old parliamentary system must not be sacrificed to the ambitions of one person," said Omer Suha Aldan, a deputy from the main opposition CHP. "The president would designate and unseat (cabinet members). They wouldn't be ministers, they'd be secretaries," he said. Erdogan, who was prime minister for more than a decade, hoped after his election as head of state for swift constitutional reform to bolster his powers. But those plans have been impeded in part because of opposition fears of creeping authoritarianism. More than 1,800 court cases have been filed against people accused of insulting Erdogan since he became president, from students and a former Miss Turkey to journalists and academics, fuelling those fears. The looming trial of two prominent editors on terrorism charges, after their opposition newspaper Cumhuriyet published video of what it said were intelligence officials trucking arms to Syria, has also raised international concern. ANOTHER ELECTION? Erdogan himself has insisted the plans are not about personal ambition but about replacing a system he says is out of date and unsustainable, with both the prime minister and president popularly elected. "A powerful prime minister and a president elected directly by the people could pave the way for a crisis. The presidential system aims to fix that anomaly," the presidency source said. There was no crisis already only because Erdogan and Davutoglu share the same political vision, which may not be the case for future presidents and prime ministers, he said. Several AKP officials said they believed the party could quickly agree a draft proposal to put to parliament and they were confident of winning enough support for a referendum in the autumn, or early next year. Some Turkish newspapers have speculated that a fresh parliamentary election could be called to allow the AKP to try to boost its parliamentary majority in order to ease the proposal's passage. Another election could be destabilizing for Turkey after four votes in the past two years, a cycle which polarized the electorate and slowed progress on reforms. (Additional reporting by Humeyra Pamuk and Daren Butler in Istanbul and Nick Tattersall in Ankara; Writing by Nick Tattersall; editing by Janet McBride) A Cannabis plant is pictured at the "Weed the People" event as enthusiasts gather to celebrate the legalization of the recreational use of marijuana in Portland, Oregon July 3, 2015. REUTERS/Steve Dipaola (Reuters) By Lawrence Hurley WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court on Monday threw out a lawsuit filed by the states of Nebraska and Oklahoma against their neighbor Colorado over a law approved as a ballot initiative by Colorado voters in 2012 that allows the recreational use of marijuana. The court declined to hear the case filed by Nebraska and Oklahoma, which said that marijuana is being smuggled across their borders and noted that federal law still prohibits the drug. Two conservative justices, Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, said they would have heard the case. Nebraska and Oklahoma contended that drugs such as marijuana threaten the health and safety of children and argued that Colorado had created "a dangerous gap" in the federal drug control system. Colorado stands by its law. It noted that the Obama administration has indicated the federal government lacks the resources and inclination to enforce fully the federal marijuana ban. "The fact remains - Colorado marijuana continues to flow into Oklahoma in direct violation of federal and state law," Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt said after the court's action. Colorado should stop refusing to take reasonable steps to prevent the flow of marijuana outside of its borders and the Obama administration should enforce federal law against marijuana, Pruitt added. Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson expressed disappointment with the Supreme Court's action, but said it does not bar new challenges to Colorado's law in federal court. Colorado has said that the Supreme Court was not the proper place to resolve the case. The lawsuit by Oklahoma and Nebraska was filed under the courts rarely used "original jurisdiction," which covers instances in which the justices hear disputes between states that are not first reviewed by lower courts. Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman said the legal questions surrounding her state's law "still require stronger leadership from Washington." Story continues Washington state also voted in 2012 to legalize recreational marijuana use by adults, while Oregon, Alaska and the District of Columbia followed in 2014. "This was a meritless lawsuit, and the court made the right decision," Mason Tvert of the pro-legalization Marijuana Policy Project said. "States have every right to regulate the cultivation and sale of marijuana, just as Nebraska and Oklahoma have the right to maintain their failed prohibition policies." Tom Angell, chairman of the Marijuana Majority advocacy group, said legalizing marijuana would allow the Oklahoma and Nebraska criminal justice systems "to focus on real crime, and it will generate revenue that can be used to pay for healthcare, education and public safety programs." (Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Additional reporting by Heide Brandes in Oklahoma City; Editing by Will Dunham) By Mohammed Ghobari CAIRO (Reuters) - Talks aimed at ending Yemen's war are expected in Kuwait next month along with a temporary ceasefire, a senior Yemeni government official said, raising the prospect of an end to violence that has killed thousands. There have already been several failed attempts to defuse the conflict in Yemen, which has drawn in regional foes Saudi Arabia and Iran and triggered a humanitarian crisis in the Arab world's poorest country. On Tuesday Saudi-led airstrikes targeting al Qaeda-linked militants in eastern Yemen killed and wounded dozens of people, a provincial governor and medics said. "The talks will be on April 17 in Kuwait, accompanied by a temporary ceasefire," the Yemeni official said, declining to be named. There were two inconclusive rounds of peace talks in Switzerland last year. A Saudi-led coalition began a military campaign in Yemen a year ago with the aim of preventing Iran-allied Houthi rebels and forces loyal to Yemen's ex-president Ali Abdullah Saleh from taking control of the country. There was no immediate response from the Houthi militia regarding the prospect of talks. A prisoner swap and pause in combat on the border with Saudi Arabia earlier this month had raised hopes of a push to end the war. Tuesday's Saudi-led airstrikes hit an area west of Mukalla, a port city and capital of the Hadramout province. Residents said at least 30 militants were killed and many more wounded. A spokesman for the Saudi-led alliance was not immediately available for comment. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), an affiliate of the global Sunni Muslim militant organisation, has expanded its foothold in the country as the government focuses on its battle with the Houthi rebels. The United Nations says more than 6,000 people have been killed since the start of the Saudi-led military intervention whose ultimate aim is to restore President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi following his ousting by Houthi and pro-Saleh forces. "It has been a terrible year with air strikes, shelling and localized violence. An already very impoverished country has been put at a very sharp end," Jamie McGoldrick, U.N. Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator in Yemen, told reporters in Geneva. One in ten Yemenis is displaced, he said, adding that half of those killed and injured were civilians. He said U.N. special envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed had been in the capital Sanaa over the past few days for discussions with parties involved and also was in Riyadh. "What they are hoping for is to put in place a ceasefire of some kind or a cessation of hostilities for a week or so prior to the talks and build confidence," he said. The spokesman for the Saudi-led coalition and Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir have said that any peace talks can take place only between Hadi and the Houthis, and through the U.N. special envoy. (Additional reporting by Mohamed Mukashaf in Aden and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Writing by Sylvia Westall; Editing by Mark Heinrich and Richard Balmforth) KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, March 21, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Jeffrey Scott Yablon has received an Industry Recognition Award from Clinical Research Malaysia for his outstanding efforts in promoting Malaysia as a preferred destination for Industry Sponsored Research (ISR). A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/528a88b7-a898-4d3f-840e-ec343f0b0002 Im honored to have been recognized by Clinical Research Malaysia with this award, said Yablon. Expanding business in Malaysia has opened up multiple opportunities for many. Malaysia offers unique benefits to the clinical research industry, and Im truly honored to have been recognized for my efforts on behalf of the region. At CRM Industry Dialogue held on March 16, 2016, Yablon was recognized for his dual efforts in promoting clinical research in Malaysia and developing the clinical research ecosystem in the country. Yablon, who heads the Asia/Pacific operations for InClinica a global clinical CRO has more than 20 years of experience in life science management. A long-time advocate of expanding business opportunities in Asia, Yablon has also been responsible for developing a clinical research training and certificate program for InClinica. Yablon has a B.A. degree from Stockton University, an M.S. in Clinical Pharmacology from Stony Brook University and an EMBA in International Business Management from Fairleigh Dickinson University. CHICAGO, March 22, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Mr. Gideon is a distinguished military veteran with over eight years of experience building and leading teams. Prior to joining RealManage, Joe served as a Team Leader in the 75th Ranger Regiment deploying five times in support of Operation Iraqi and Enduring Freedom. Based on his leadership potential, Joe was selected for increased responsibility and commissioned as an infantry officer in 2011. Joe served in the 101st Airborne Division from 2012 to 2016 deploying twice in support of Operation Enduring Freedom. Joe had the honor of leading a 33-person team on combat missions and also served as a logistics officer directing logistics training, accountability of supplies, and allocation of resources. Mr Gideon has been awarded the Bronze Star with Valor for his bravery and leadership during combat operations. Mr. Gideon is a graduate of DePaul University and prior to joining the RealManage family he was stationed at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. "Joe is a proven leader and extremely intelligent. He will undoubtedly lead RealManage Illinois with integrity and passion to achieve first class results," states Chris Ayoub, President. About RealManage: RealManage is a property management company that specializes in HOA management and condominium management and manages hundreds of community associations in California, Colorado, Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Nevada, North Carolina, Texas and Washington, including homeowner associations (HOAs), condominium associations, cooperatives, municipal utility districts, luxury high-rises and large master-planned communities. For more information or to request a quote for HOA management or condominium management, visit www.realmanage.com. Stay Connected: http://www.Facebook.com/realmanage http://www.twitter.com/realmanage/ http://www.LinkedIn.com/company/realmanage Delaware, March 22, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) market size is estimated to be valued at USD 366.95 Billion by 2022, as per a new research report by Global Market Insights, Inc. growing consciousness about advantages of adopting of this system will be critical for industry growth over the coming seven years. Effective application also aids in increasing organizational productivity and this is expected to propel industry growth. In addition, it also helps in minimizing operating as well as capital expenditure. U.S. BYOD market size was valued close to USD 30 Billion in 2014 and is anticipated to grow at a CAGR of over 15% from 2015 to 2022. Asia Pacific is predicted to be the most attractive region and it is projected to grow at a CAGR of 20.8% over the coming seven years. Declining hardware prices, increasing mobile user workforce and high smartphone penetration are the factors responsible for increasing BYOD market share across the region. Increasing personal technology along with IT consumerization is also expected to boost the industry. Request for sample of this Research Report: https://www.gminsights.com/request-sample/detail/114 Increasing employee preference towards using a single device for professional as well as personal use may positively impact the industry demand over the several coming years. In addition, use of single device helps in avoiding hassles such as theft, loss, and inconvenience caused by carrying separate devices. In addition, as employees use their personal devices, they feel more comfortable while working; this in turn might improve job satisfaction level. It also aids in increasing productivity at work. Factors such as economical handset prices, low calling rates, in addition with development and implementation of new technologies and high investment by mobile operators in building infrastructure is anticipated to boost BYOD market size. Surging use of smartphones and high speed internet services such as 4G LTE is expected to positively impact the industry over the forecast period. Increasing application of BYOD is expected to pose various security threats such as potential theft of device, data location and management, challenges in measuring risk exposure and tracking data, employees with BYOD devices leaving the organization and unregulated third-party access to sensitive information. Choose Your Own Device (CYOD) is likely to offer employees an advantage to select one among several enterprise-approved systems and this is predicted to eliminate standardization and security challenges of BYOD system. Key insights from the report include: Device as well as hardware cost can be avoided as employees bring their own personal devices to the workplace. A large number of employees are also likely to bear data costs incurred on their devices and thus help in lowering the overall cost incurred by the organization. As users find it suitable to use their own devices, the enterprise is needed to ensure support for the multitude along with type of operating system used by employee. Mobile application and content management are also offered by MDM vendors, in order to ensure secure mobile applications and content delivery. Tablets are predicted to experience the highest growth rate owing to increasing adoption. Small businesses are predicted to be most attractive BYOD end-use segment and are likely to grow at a CAGR of 19.7% from 2015 to 2022. Mid to large sized businesses are forecast to maintain their dominance over the forecast period. Major industry players accumulating key BYOD market share include IBM Corporation, Good Technology, Alcatel-Lucent, MobileIron, and Cisco. Related Reports: About Global Market Insights: Global Market Insights, Inc., headquartered in Delaware, U.S., is a global market research and consulting service provider; offering syndicated and custom research reports along with growth consulting services. Our business intelligence and industry research reports offer clients with penetrative insights and actionable market data specially designed and presented to aid strategic decision making. These exhaustive reports are designed via a proprietary research methodology and are available for key industries such as chemicals, advanced materials, technology, renewable energy and biotechnology. JACKSON, Miss., March 22, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Baker Donelson is moving into The District at Eastover and will be the anchor tenant in One Eastover Center, the signature 125,000-square-foot Class A office building anchoring the leading-edge mixed-use development taking shape in the heart of Metro Jackson. More than 150 employees including nearly 80 attorneys will begin work March 28 in the firms new 70,000-square-foot office, which occupies three floors in the building, located at Interstate 55 and Eastover Drive centrally positioned between the citys major medical corridor, the Fondren Arts District and the high-end residential homes of the Lefleur East District. Previously, Baker Donelsons office was located in the Meadowbrook Office Park, near The District. Our team is excited about being the newest neighbors in The District, said Scott W. Pedigo, managing shareholder of the firms Jackson, Miss. office. It fosters the best in business, retail, restaurants, entertaining, living and working, and is quickly becoming a center of innovation, creativity and entrepreneurship. The District is a great place to do business for our clients and our firm, and we are proud to call it home. Baker Donelsons new space features: Three floors with a full-service kitchenette on each floor 124 private offices and 38 open workstations expandable to 44 14 conference rooms with audio/visual capabilities in each and multiple rooms equipped with secure video conferencing capabilities on each floor A spacious, 3,500-square-foot multipurpose area on the fifth floor for entertaining, complete with a cafe and large balcony with sweeping views of The Districts attractions All workstations are equipped with sit-stand desks Multiple work rooms and shared common areas on each floor Work on One Eastover Center was completed at the end of 2015, and is also home to Cosmich Simmons & Brown, another lead tenant that moved into the building last month. In addition to these firms moving in, The District has announced several other updates to the $125 million 21-acre development: BankPlus Building BankPlus, one of the leading community banks in Mississippi, recently announced construction of a multifaceted financial center complex that will house commercial lending, commercial real estate, cash management, private banking, wealth management, wealthplus and business development, and will also serve as the headquarters of the Jackson banking center. The BankPlus complex will boast 67,000 square feet of space as an anchor financial institution in The District. Restaurants The District at Eastover is planning to establish six restaurants of varying categories across a broad spectrum, and are targeting: Modern Mexican restaurant Upscale sushi concept Modern twist on Mediterranean Neighborhood Italian with fresh pizzas, salads and wine Several fast, casual concepts The District at Eastover will be a culinary destination for Mississippi, and we want to celebrate that not only through the restaurants but also at events held on the property, including pop-up events, wine tastings and farmers markets, said Breck Hines, principle of The District at Eastover. Furthermore, we want to expand on the current interest in health and wellness and marry that with the social aspect of good, locally-sourced food and drink. For residents of Jackson, dining out with friends and family is more than just eating good food it is a large part of our social fabric and how we entertain ourselves. Retailers While the slate of exciting and trend-setting retailers has not been announced, the development is pursuing a variety of unique experiences ranging from salon and spa to health and fitness, womens fashion to gifts, interior decor, furniture and more, and will have further announcements in the near future. District Lofts Construction on The District Lofts, which will feature 250 upscale residential units with resort-caliber common areas and amenities, began in the fall of 2015 and is slated for completion in the spring of 2017, with associated ground floor local and national retailers coming online later this year and in early 2017. Marriott Residence Inn The Marriott Residence Inn rising along Eastover Drive is expected to open for business early this summer. The four-story hotel featuring 95 spacious suites with separate sleeping and living areas will be the first new hotel in this area of Jackson in more than a decade. It is perfect for business travelers or families who prefer added comfort in an amenity-rich urban environment. Each suite will feature a sitting area, business desk with ergonomic chair, and complimentary Wi-Fi with high-speed Internet. Other amenities helping guests maintain a healthy lifestyle include a hot breakfast buffet, complimentary evening socials, swimming pool, exercise facility, outdoor patio fireplace and fellowship area, meeting rooms, business center and on-site laundry. High-End Theater A high-end theater, planned for mid-2017, will boast eight screens, all with chair back reclining seats. The theater will include an elegant cocktail lounge where patrons can enjoy wine, beer and cocktails along with tapas-style dining while watching movies or attending other special events. The convenience of The District at Eastover is inspired by both location and the intimacy of the development. All areas are easily accessible via walking and will have nearly 1,400 parking spaces, half of which will be covered parking in garages. Green space is incorporated throughout the development including a central District Plaza evoking a true neighborhood environment complete with wide sidewalks and inviting awnings, welcoming people to explore no matter the weather. Teams of District ambassadors will keep the development clean, green and secure. Origin Bank Origin Bank has broken ground on their new bank branch located on the Frontage Road in front of One Eastover Center, with completion expected in late summer 2016. Origin Bank has a wide range of traditional banking services and 41 banking centers in Mississippi and across the Southeast. About The District at Eastover The District at Eastover represents the best of mixed-use urban revitalization in the heart of Mississippis capital city. Conveniently located between Jacksons historic Eastover and Fondren neighborhoods and adjacent to the I-55 corridor and the University of Mississippi Medical Center, The District offers a transformative destination characterized by boutique shopping, acclaimed restaurants, thoughtfully planned office space and luxury residential living opportunities. Learn more about The District at www.thedistrictateastover.com About Baker Donelson Baker Donelson gives clients access to a team of more than 650 attorneys and public policy advisors representing more than 30 practice areas to serve a wide range of legal needs. Clients receive knowledgeable guidance from experienced, multi-disciplined industry and client service teams, all seamlessly connected across 20 offices in Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee, Texas and Washington, D.C. Ranked as the 64th largest law firm in the U.S., Baker Donelson is recognized by FORTUNE magazine as one of the "100 Best Companies to Work For." 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 For the first time an Indian rocket is ferrying a payload of about six tonnes. Brussels (AFP) - Police have found the DNA of a newly identified suspect on explosives used in last year's Paris attacks, a French source has revealed, but Belgium's prosecutor admitted they are "far from solving the puzzle" of the killings. Belgian and French prosecutors met in Brussels to discuss the probe into the carnage in the French capital, following Friday's dramatic arrest of prime suspect Salah Abdeslam in Brussels after four months on the run. Belgian investigators named a suspected accomplice in the November 13 attacks as Najim Laachraoui, who was previously known by the false name of Soufiane Kayal. Laachraoui used the alias to travel to Hungary in September with Abdeslam -- the last known survivor of 10 people who carried out the wave of shootings and suicide bombings that left 130 people dead. Laachraoui is also believed to have travelled to Syria in February 2013. Traces of DNA from the 24-year-old, who is still at large, were found on the explosives used in the gun and suicide attacks in Paris, a source close to the French investigation said. Prosecutors meanwhile told Belga news agency that two detonators, along with a large cache of weapons, were found in the apartment from which Abdeslam is thought to have fled during a raid last week. "We have not a bad amount of pieces of the puzzle and in the last few days several pieces have found their place," Frederic Van Leeuw told a news conference in Brussels, flanked by Paris prosecutor Francois Molins. "But... we are still, far from solving the puzzle." Van Leeuw also admitted they "don't have the full timeline" for what Abdeslam did between November 14, when he evaded three French police checks and escaped to Brussels, and his arrest. - Extradition call - Investigators hope Abdeslam's arrest during a raid on Friday, in which he was wounded in the leg, will generate new leads in the probe of the attacks that were claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group. Story continues Belgian authorities have been embarrassed by the revelation Abdeslam was found just around the corner from his family home in the gritty Brussels neighbourhood of Molenbeek, and may have been aided by friends and family. Molins, the French prosecutor, said France expected Abdeslam to be extradited to face trial over the attacks, despite his lawyer saying that he would fight the proceedings. "There is a strong expectation from the French justice authorities and particularly from the families of the victims that Salah Abdeslam comes to explain himself," Molins said. French President Francois Hollande, who has said he wants Abdeslam extradited as quickly as possible, held his first formal meeting with relatives of the Paris victims on Monday. The president was quizzed by five victim support groups at the long-delayed meeting on issues ranging from the process of identifying the bodies to emotional and financial support. "We felt we were heard, even if there was no concrete progress," said Emmanuel Domenach, who survived an attack at the Bataclan concert hall in which 90 people were killed. - 'Worth gold' - Molins said at the weekend that Abdeslam played a "central role" in the attacks and originally planned to "blow himself up" at the Stade de France stadium, but changed his mind. Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said Sunday that Abdeslam -- who has been charged with "terrorist murder" and belonging to a terrorist group -- had told investigators he was planning some sort of new attack in Brussels. Abdeslam's lawyer Sven Mary said his client was speaking to authorities. Mary has vowed to take legal action against Molins for allegedly breaching the confidentiality of the investigation by revealing details of Abdeslam's statements. He also blasted what he called political meddling by the Belgian foreign minister. The lawyer told Belgian Flemish-speaking daily De Standaard that France "has nothing to teach us" and should not criticise the Belgian justice system. Laachraoui is one of two suspects still wanted over the Paris attacks, along with Mohamed Abrini, who became friends with Abdeslam when they were teenagers. Prosecutors said Laachraoui's DNA had been found at an apartment used by the attackers in Auvelais, near the central Belgian city of Namur, which he had rented under a false name. Traces were also found at another suspected hideout in Schaarbeek, a district of Brussels. He used the same false name at the border between Austria and Hungary on September 9 when he was travelling with Abdeslam and Mohamed Belkaid. Belkaid, a 35-year-old Algerian, was shot dead on Tuesday during another police raid in the Forest district of Brussels. By Stephanie Nebehay and Karolina Tagaris GENEVA/LESBOS (Reuters) - The United Nations refugee agency dealt a blow to EU efforts to stem the biggest humanitarian crisis in generations on Tuesday, saying it would no longer assist in the transfer of migrants and refugees arriving in Greece to "detention centers". The European Union reached a deal with Turkey just four days ago aimed at halting the flow of migrants across the sea to Greece, but the UNHCR said the deal was being prematurely implemented without the required safeguards in place. It said migrants were being held against their will at reception facilities in Greece, and it would not transport people there from the beaches. It will continue to provide other services including counseling to refugees, it said. The accord crafted by EU leaders and Turkey specifically mentions the UNHCR's involvement, although UN officials in Geneva said they were not consulted on that. The deal, which took effect on Sunday, is aimed at putting new arrivals in Greece who seek asylum on a fast-track for processing. But it also means those migrants and refugees are kept in detention until their claims are assessed. "Under the new provisions, these so-called hotspots have now become detention centers," said the UNHCR's Melissa Fleming. "Accordingly, and in line with UNHCR policy of opposing mandatory detention, we have suspended some of our activities at all closed centers on the island." Those considered ineligible for asylum are to be sent back to Turkey from April 4. For every Syrian returned, another still in Turkey will be resettled directly in Europe, effectively penalizing those who have in many cases spent their life savings trying to flee conflict. At least two EU officials said they hoped this shock therapy might work in ebbing the flow of migrants and refugees into Europe. One EU official said "ugly images" of forced detentions and deportations were something the EU would have to accept if it was to regain control of its own borders. "Ethically we might have doubts. But legally we have no doubts," another EU official said. Both made the remarks before the UNHCR said it was partially withdrawing its support. DETENTION CENTERS Until Sunday, arrivals to Lesbos had been free to leave the Moria migrant camp and head for ferries to the Greek mainland from where they would mostly head north via the Balkans in a bid to reach western Europe, particularly Germany. Now, they are meant to be held in Moria or one of four other centers set up on the Aegean islands of Samos, Chios, Leros and Kos, pending the outcome of their asylum applications. As of Sunday, just two buses were available to transport the arrivals to Moria, one belonging to the coast guard and one to the police, a senior port police official said. Early on Tuesday, 129 refugees and migrants who had been rescued at sea by a coast guard patrol boat and taken to the port waited for some 40 minutes for the buses to arrive. They sat on the dock shivering, men dressed in thin trousers and jackets and women wrapped up with scarves. Many were barefoot and soaked to their knees. One, a young man named Zalmai, said he had left Afghanistan with his five-member family. "(There are) a lot of problems in our country. We're coming for a better life," he said, putting on a jumper given to him by volunteers and wrapping a thick grey blanket around his waist. Using his finger to imitate a knife across his throat, he said: "I'm not going back to Turkey, to Afghanistan. Please, I'll stay here." CHILDREN NEED PROTECTION, UN SAYS More than 147,000 people, many fleeing conflict in the Middle East and Asia, have arrived in Greece by sea this year, 59 percent of them women and children, according to UNHCR. On Monday, Turkish monitors arrived on Lesbos to help put the deal into practice. On Tuesday, the Czech Republic offered 10 asylum experts and 30 police officers plus humanitarian aid to Greece, its state secretary for EU affairs said. Under a timetable agreed with the EU last week, a task force of 4,000 people from asylum case workers and experts to arbitrators, interpreters and security staff should be in place by March 28. Of those, 2,300 should be deployed by other EU states. A spokeswoman for the U.N. children's fund UNICEF told a briefing in Geneva on Tuesday the fund was concerned about this new agreement and the implications for children. "We see no mention of children despite the fact that children make up 40 percent of those currently stranded in Greece," she said, adding 19,000 children are stranded in Greece and about 10 percent are unaccompanied. (Additional reporting by Jan Lopatka in Prague and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Hugh Lawson) REGISTER Below to view the FREE ONDemand Version This webinar occurred on: May 3, 2016 According to OSHA, "implementing GHS will enhance worker comprehension, resulting in appropriate handling and use of chemicals." OSHA further states that "the primary benefit of the GHS is to increase the quality and consistency of information provided to workers, employers and chemical users by adopting a standardized approach to hazard classification, labels and safety data." The June 2016 deadline requires suppliers to provide end users with the new Safety Data Sheets (SDS) for each of their products. While most of you are concentrating on training your employees to read and interpret the new SDS, labels, and pictograms, you may be overlooking the fact that many suppliers will not meet this deadline, causing confusion for your workers. In addition, the new SDS will continue to be written by technical professionals, most will increase in size, and the much-touted pictograms are likely to initially add more confusion than clarity to your safety program. This FREE GHS webinar will provide you with an update on the current status of the new SDS and other GHS changes or additions, and we will also explore some ideas that can be implemented in your workplace to ensure your employees can work more safely with hazardous materials. - President, CHEM-RTU, a company that focuses on providing solutions and impartial advice to help companies navigate the complexity associated with conforming to the OSHA Globally Harmonized System of Classification and Labelling of Chemicals (GHS).Numerous articles that he has written have been featured in Occupational Health and Safety (OH&S) and environmental health and safety trade publications. They focus on providing a common sense approach to implementing GHS in the workplace. 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He invented and patented a portable, self-contained decontamination system that is used by numerous hospitals across America and was featured by the FBI at the U.S. Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, earning him an honorary gold medal from the Director of the FBI, John Mueller. Tom has over 40 years experience in sales and marketing with the emphasis on environmental and employee health and safety issues. He received his hazardous material training from the University of Cincinnati, and he is a leading expert in OSHA/GHS employee right-to know compliance regulations recently adopted by OSHA. Avery Products Corporation is one of the world's leading manufacturers of printable labels, including GHS & workplace safety labels. www.avery.com/GHS SafeTec gives Environmental, Health & Safety professionals the support, technology, and know-how to make informed decisions about the chemicals in their organization. We help unlock the data within safety data sheets and deliver structured information via automation so you can manage thousands of chemicals safely and sustainably. www.SafeTec.net Brady Corporation helps customers increase safety, security, productivity and performance with high-performance labels, signs, safety devices, printing systems and software. When it comes to HazCom/GHS compliance, Brady offers expertise and solutions from training and guidebooks, to pre-printed labels, GHS label printers and more! Learn more at BradyID.com/GHS Compliance Solutions is the proven leader in Environmental and Safety training. Offering over 70 of the highest quality and most comprehensive online EH&S online courses and offers HAZWOPER and DOT live Instructor-led seminar classes in over 60 cities. We have the most detailed and interactive GHS online course available. Register now by clicking this link: ONLINE GHS COURSE Go with the name you can trust! Duration: 1 Hour The New Savvy is a financial platform that aims to empower women through meaningful content that are relevant and practical. We want to make money interesting to women and transform womens relationship with money. Should you or should you not leap into the Singapore housing market today? If you were holding off on investing in one of the most expensive housing markets in Asia, Singapore property prices have hit a new low. Prices declined 4 percent last year and could decline another 4.5 percent this year. Fortunately, there has been a boom in property websites to make your search for property investments easier. These sites provide lots of tools to help you make that buying decision. With mortgages rates rising, you will want to make use of the rate comparison and affordability calculators. To make smart buying decisions, also take advantage of their free expert advice through news, guides and videos. Property Website #1: PropertyGuru PropertyGuru is a good place to start your housing search. You can peruse a thorough listing of residential and commercial properties, as well as overseas properties. If you want to check out new condo launches, they are listed too. Property investors may also compare rates for new mortgages and refinancings. Use the Affordability calculator, which takes into account all buying costs, to determine the down payment and monthly payments you can afford. This website is valued for the quality of its education and information resources on the Singapore real estate market. The PropertyGuru provides expert commentary via video on current issues of importance to real estate shoppers. Updates on the property outlook and prices can help you time purchases and sales. Tips on how to broaden your portfolio into, for example, mixed use development or other Asian markets are provided. Find out how new developments such as the expanded city will affect the property scene. Property news, investor blogs and market valuation and pricing guides can help you make smarter buying decisions. Story continues Property Website #2: 99.co 99.co has developed a niche providing both sale and rental listings in the residential housing and condo market. Agents pay to list properties. The map-based search is easy to use and the company promises relevant and high quality listings. If you like the simple, modular visual presentation of AirBNB with lots of high quality photos and easy navigation, you will like 99.co. Search by housing type, neighbourhood, or nearby station. A unique feature is its free photo service. Type in your address and availability, and 99.co will send out a photographer. Read: Singapore Housing Cycle and Property Measures Where Are We? Property Website #3: iProperty iProperty is a popular search portal across Asia and billed as Asias No. 1 Property Website. A standard search interface is provided for residential and commercial real estate. Its main educational offering is iProperty.tv. The website also provides a blog and guides. Guide topics include different types of investments (e.g., shoebox apartments), districts, renting, and property outlooks. While some of the content such as iProperty.tv is Malaysian-focused, a growing pool of resources targets the Singapore property investor. You can also shop for mortgagee deals on iProperty and use the Rate Comparison and Affordability calculators. Property Website #4: TheEdgeProperty TheEdgeProperty is the new kid on the block, launched in May 2015 by The Edge Media Group. Here you will find a one-stop shop for property and rental searches, news, data and analytics. The website leverages the journalism resources of the business publications of its parent company to provide real-time real estate news. Narrow down your property search with its strong analytical tools. Find out where the hot locations are in property sales. Historical data lets you compare how similar properties were selling, such as before the price decline. A useful tool is a desktop valuation tool that calculates the fair value of a property, using the same method as a licensed assessor in Singapore. Property Website #5: The Singapore Real Estate Exchange The Singapore Real Estate Exchange is using technology to make the real estate market more engaging. A 360 virtual tour shows you around a home before you visit. The mobile Property Tracker app will provide you with your homes value by SMS once a month. With the Heat Map, you can view housing price trends by neighbourhood at a glance. News, podcasts and videos are also offered. With these search and information tools and falling prices, finding good buys in the Singapore residential property market has never been easier. The question is when to buy. Property investors blogging on PropertyGurus Property Experts Guide are not expecting the market to recover anytime soon. If the government halts its property cooling measures, however, investors will want to get in the market before prices rise. This decline, now in its eighth quarter, has surpassed the length of the decline in 2002. Each of these property website has its own unique value-added services. All provide mobile apps. Infographic: Buying Private Property In Singapore This article is by The New Savvy. Malaysian tribal activists who have fought for years against a planned hydroelectric dam declared victory on Tuesday, saying the state government has scrapped a project that would have flooded rainforests and displaced 20,000 tribespeople. Since 2013 activists and local tribes in Malaysia's Sarawak state on Borneo island have blockaded jungle roads leading to the proposed dam site on the Baram river. They say decades of government-orchestrated logging and dam-building have led to social and environmental disaster. With elections in Sarawak expected within weeks, activists said the state government had sent them a letter stating that plans to forcibly acquire necessary land had been revoked. "That means the dam project has been called off," said Peter Kallang, chairman of the NGO Save Sarawak's Rivers. "The struggle to resist the proposed Baram dam has finally paid off, because now the dam is scrapped." That could not be immediately verified, however. Sarawak Chief Minister Adenan Satem was quoted by Malaysian media a year ago as saying the dam would go ahead. No government statement was immediately seen. The dam would have flooded an area half the size of Singapore and was part of a controversial state government drive to use hydroelectric development to spur economic growth in one of the country's poorest regions. Much of Sarawak is a jungle wilderness slashed by untamed rivers. Authorities had previously declared plans for around a dozen dams, saying Sarawak must tap its massive hydroelectric potential to provide power for hoped-for investment in a nascent industrial sector. Three dams have already been completed, at Batang Ai, Murum and Bakun, and have become lightning rods for criticism. Activists say they will provide far more power than the state needs, and have destroyed fragile ecosystems and uprooted tribes that had made their homes in the rainforest for thousands of years. The dam-building spree was launched by Sarawak's former chief minister Abdul Taib Mahmud, who stepped aside under a cloud in 2014 after 33 years in power. Story continues Critics accused Taib of running Sarawak like a family business, doling out government contracts and timber concessions to relatives and friends, and disrespecting tribal rights. He has denied the allegations. Adenan, however, has softened the pro-dam rhetoric amid the activist campaigns and dwindling national support for Malaysia's ruling coalition, of which his Sarawak party is an important member. The Swiss-based Bruno Manser Fund, an activist group focused on Sarawak, said it hoped "that the cancellation of the Baram dam plans will trigger a review of all mega-dam projects in Sarawak". (Bloomberg) -- Two maintenance staff from SMRT Corp. died in an accident after being sent to investigate conditions near a commuter rail station, the company said in a statement posted on Facebook. The company had sent teams to investigate after a signaling condition monitoring device near Pasir Ris Station in the east of the city state was triggered at about 11 a.m. Tuesday, SMRT President and Group CEO Desmond Kuek said. The teams moved in a single file along the walkway beside the track to the investigation location. Unfortunately, during the process, the accident occurred. The company is assisting the police in their investigations into the accident, Kuek said in the statement. The deaths were reported hours earlier by local media including the Straits Times newspaper, which cited Patrick Nathan, the Singapore train operators vice president for corporate information and communications. The accident comes after SMRT faced public criticism for service disruptions in the past few years even as it expanded its network. Singapore Transport Minister Khaw Boon Wan appointed an engineering specialist in October to advise on rail transformation and said the government was discussing changes in the industry structure. The train operator earlier tweeted that train services between Tanah Merah and Pasir Ris stations had been affected. Service has resumed, according to the latest tweets. To contact the reporter on this story: Kyunghee Park in Singapore at kpark3@bloomberg.net To contact the editors responsible for this story: Stephanie Phang at sphang@bloomberg.net; Anand Krishnamoorthy at anandk@bloomberg.net Andrea Tan AFP News Pro-Russian authorities on Saturday urged residents in the southern Kherson region, which Moscow claims to have annexed, to leave the main city "immediately" in the face of Kyiv's advancing counter-offensive. It comes as President Volodymyr Zelensky said Russia had launched 36 rockets overnight in a "massive attack" on Ukraine, following reported strikes on energy infrastructure that resulted in power outages across the country. And Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida became the latest world leader to reproach Moscow for its talk of using nuclear weapons. Kyiv's forces have been advancing along the west bank of the Dnipro river, towards the Kherson region's eponymous main city. Kherson was the first major city to fall to Moscow's troops, and retaking it would be a major prize in Ukraine's counter-offensive. In recent days, Russia has been moving residents in the region -- which Moscow claims to have annexed in September -- east to Russia, in efforts Kyiv has denounced as "deportations". "Due to the tense situation on the front, the increased danger of mass shelling of the city and the threat of terrorist attacks, all civilians must immediately leave the city and cross to the left bank" of the Dnipro river, the region's pro-Russian authorities announced on social media. A Moscow-installed official in Kherson, Kirill Stremousov, told Russian news agency Interfax on Saturday that around 25,000 people had made the crossing. Sergiy Khlan, the Ukrainian deputy head of the Kherson region, said Russians were removing property and documents from banks and the passport office as they withdrew. Ukraine's general staff said Moscow's forces had abandoned two more settlements in Kherson and were evacuating medical personnel from a third, accusing them of looting local civilians. - A 'serious threat' - Earlier Saturday, Japan's Kishida denounced Moscow's comments regarding the possible use of nuclear weapons in the Ukraine conflict. "Russia's act of threatening the use of nuclear weapons is a serious threat to the peace and security of the international community and absolutely unacceptable," he said. The 77-year period of no nuclear weapons use "must not be ended", said Kishida, speaking in Australia. Since Russia invaded Ukraine in February, Putin has made several thinly veiled threats about his willingness to deploy tactical nuclear weapons. Earlier this month, the European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell warned that the Russian army would be "annihilated" if Russia launched such an attack. Washington has also warned Moscow of "catastrophic" consequences should they use such weapons. Japan is the only country ever to have been hit with nuclear weapons: the US atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, which killed 140,000 people, and the second US bomb on Nagasaki, three days later, which killed 74,000 people. - 'Afraid for our lives' - At a train station in the town of Dzhankoy in the north of Crimea, a peninsula that Moscow annexed from Ukraine in 2014, Kherson residents were boarding a train for southern Russia, an AFP reporter saw Friday. "We are leaving Kherson because heavy shelling started there, we are afraid for our lives," said Valentina Yelkina, a pensioner travelling with her daughter. More than a million households in Ukraine have been left without electricity following Russian strikes on energy facilities across the country, the deputy head of the Ukrainian presidency Kyrylo Tymoshenko said on Saturday. Fresh Russian strikes targeted energy infrastructure in Ukraine's west, the national operator said earlier, with officials in several regions of the war-scarred country reporting power outages as winter approaches. Russians "carried out another missile attack on energy facilities of the main networks of Ukraine's western regions", Ukraine's energy operator Ukrenergo said on social media. "These are vile strikes on critical objects," said Zelensky. "The world can and must stop this terror." Power outages were reported in other parts of the country and local officials repeated calls to reduce energy use. Some parts of Ukraine have already cut their electricity use by up to 20 percent, according to Ukrenergo. "Saturday in Ukraine starts with a barrage of Russian missiles aimed at critical civilian infrastructure," Ukraine's Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on Twitter. He once again urged Kyiv's allies to hasten the delivery of air defence systems. In the Russian Belgorod region bordering Ukraine, at least two civilians were killed in strikes on Saturday, according to the local governor Vyacheslav Gladkov. Nearly 15,000 people were left without electricity, he added. Russia last week reported a "considerable increase" in Ukrainian fire into its territory, saying attacks had largely concentrated on Belgorod region and neighbouring regions of Bryansk and Kursk. bur-imm/jj/ah By Michelle Nichols, Louis Charbonneau and James Pearson UNITED NATIONS/SEOUL (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council agreed on Monday to a Chinese request to remove sanctions on four ships the United Nations had blacklisted for ties to Pyongyang's arms trade. The agreement came after China secured assurances the vessels would not use North Korean crews, a U.S. official said. China asked the United States on March 16 for help removing the ships from the U.N. blacklist, according to a diplomatic cable sent the same day from the U.S. permanent mission at the United Nations to a group of other U.S. embassies. The cable, reviewed by Reuters, showed wrangling between top diplomats from the United States and China over the tough new North Korea sanctions, weeks after Washington had presented a united front with Beijing, Pyongyang's main ally and trade partner. The U.S. mission at the United Nations declined to comment on the cable or make its ambassador, Samantha Power, available for an interview about the cable. The U.S. Treasury Department, which administers U.S. economic and financial sanctions, also declined to comment. The removal of the four ships was confirmed in a press release, which was seen by Reuters and will soon be issued by the Security Council, according to U.N. diplomats. While Washington has been the driving force behind the toughening international sanctions regime, China conducts 90 percent of the trade with North Korea and is the key to enforcing them. FOURTH NUCLEAR TEST The ships were among 31 vessels sanctioned by the 15-member council on March 2 because they were linked to Ocean Maritime Management (OMM), a North Korean shipping firm known to transport arms and other illicit goods for the secretive state. [nL2N16A112] "We discovered that they are not OMM ships," Chinese U.N. Ambassador Liu Jieyi told Reuters on Monday. "The basis for the listing of the ships is basically that they belong to OMM, so if you make a mistake, then you correct the mistake." U.S. and other Western officials have said all the original listings were carefully vetted before the ships were added to the blacklist. That list was appended to the sweeping Security Council resolutions implemented on March 2, following North Korea's fourth nuclear test in January. The U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Security Council committee on North Korea sanctions agreed to the request after China secured written commitments the four ships would no longer use North Korean crews. The four ships include the Jin Teng, a cargo ship detained by the Philippines days after the sanctions took effect. "We're pleased with the outcome," said the U.S. official. "It achieved an impact, a real world outcome." He added it was a sign of a "productive working relationship with China" on North Korea and that it was "gratifying to see such instant real-world effects" of the U.N. sanctions regime. U.S. FRUSTRATION Liu had raised the issue of the four sanctioned vessels last week in a meeting with Power, his U.S. counterpart, according to the cable reviewed by Reuters. Power approved the unclassified cable, which went from the U.S. mission at the U.N. to American embassies in Manila, Tokyo and Seoul. The cable pointed to American frustration with what U.S. officials characterized as China's attempts to hold up the routine renewal of a U.N. panel of experts in return for de-listing the ships. The panel is made up of a team of international experts who monitor and research potential breaches of resolutions against North Korea and recommend entities that could be sanctioned. Liu had asked Power's help in removing the ships from the list in an "easy, smooth and quick way," to get the panel renewed, according to the document's characterisation of Liu's request. The easiest way, Liu said, "would be to work quickly to get all these issues settled," according to the cable. Power told Liu China's linking of the issues and attempts to hold up the renewal of the panel was "not going over well in Washington," according to the cable, and asked China to let the renewal go forward. "You don't need to blackmail us, Power said, as we are indeed interested in operating in good faith," the cable says of Power's conversation with Liu. Liu told Reuters on Monday he expected the experts panel would be "renewed according to the normal procedure in the Security Council". (Additional reporting by Ju-min Park in SEOUL; Editing by Tony Munroe and Bill Tarrant.) By Serajul Quadir DHAKA (Reuters) - A spelling mistake in an online bank transfer instruction helped prevent a nearly $1 billion heist last month involving the Bangladesh central bank and the New York Federal Reserve, banking officials said. Unknown hackers still managed to get away with about $80 million, one of the largest known bank thefts in history. The hackers breached Bangladesh Bank's systems and stole its credentials for payment transfers, two senior officials at the bank said. They then bombarded the Federal Reserve Bank of New York with nearly three dozen requests to move money from the Bangladesh Bank's account there to entities in the Philippines and Sri Lanka, the officials said. Four requests to transfer a total of about $81 million to the Philippines went through, but a fifth, for $20 million, to a Sri Lankan non-profit organization was held up because the hackers misspelled the name of the NGO, Shalika Foundation. Hackers misspelled "foundation" in the NGO's name as "fandation", prompting a routing bank, Deutsche Bank, to seek clarification from the Bangladesh central bank, which stopped the transaction, one of the officials said. There is no NGO under the name of Shalika Foundation in the list of registered Sri Lankan non-profits. Reuters could not immediately find contact information for the organization. Deutsche Bank declined to comment. At the same time, the unusually large number of payment instructions and the transfer requests to private entities - as opposed to other banks - raised suspicions at the Fed, which also alerted the Bangladeshis, the officials said. The details of how the hacking came to light and was stopped before it did more damage have not been previously reported. Bangladesh Bank has billions of dollars in a current account with the Fed, which it uses for international settlements. The transactions that were stopped totaled $850-$870 million, one of the officials said. Last year, Russian computer security company Kaspersky Lab said a multinational gang of cyber criminals had stolen as much as $1 billion from as many as 100 financial institutions around the world in about two years. Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's son Qusay took $1 billion from Iraq's central bank on the orders of his father on the day before coalition forces began bombing the country in 2003, American and Iraqi officials have said. In 2007, guards at the Dar Es Salaam bank in Baghdad made off with $282 million. MONEY RECOVERED Bangladesh Bank has said it has recovered some of the money that was stolen, and is working with anti-money laundering authorities in the Philippines to try to recover the rest. A bank spokesman could not be reached for comment late on Thursday. The recovered funds refer to the Sri Lanka transfer, which was stopped, one of the officials said. Initially, the Sri Lankan transaction reached Pan Asia Banking Corp , which went back to Deutsche Bank for more verification because of the unusually large size of the payment, a Pan Asia official said. "The transaction was too large for a country like us," the official said. "Then (Deutsche) came back and said it was a suspect transaction." A Pan Asia spokesman could not immediately be reached for comment. The dizzying, global reach of the heist underscores the growing threat of cyber crime and how hackers can find weak links in even the most secure computer networks. More than a month after the attack, Bangladeshi officials are scrambling to trace the money, shore up security and identify weaknesses in their systems. They said there is little hope of ever catching the hackers, and it could take months before the money is recovered, if at all. FireEye Inc's Mandiant forensics division is helping investigate the heist, people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday. The sources said Silicon Valley-based FireEye, which has investigated some of the biggest cyber thefts on record, was brought in by World Informatix, a smaller firm that is advising Bangladesh Bank on the investigation. Security experts said the perpetrators had deep knowledge of the Bangladeshi institution's internal workings, likely gained by spying on bank workers. The Bangladesh government, meanwhile, is blaming the Fed for not stopping the transactions earlier. Finance Minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith told reporters on Tuesday that the country may resort to suing the Fed to recover the money. "The Fed must take responsibility," he said. The New York Fed has said its systems were not breached, and it has been working with the Bangladesh central bank since the incident occurred. The hacking of Bangladesh Bank happened sometime between Feb. 4-5, over the Bangladeshi weekend, which falls on a Friday, the officials said. The bank's offices were shut. Initially, the central bank was not sure if its system had been breached, but cyber security experts brought in to investigate found hacker "footprints" that suggested the system had been compromised, the officials said. These experts could also tell that the attack originated from outside Bangladesh, they said, adding the bank is looking into how they got into the system and an internal investigation is ongoing. The bank suspects money sent to the Philippines was further diverted to casinos there, the officials said. The Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp, which oversees the gaming industry, said it has launched an investigation. The country's anti-money laundering authority is also working on the case. (Additional reporting by Jim Finkle in BOSTON, Jonathan Spicer in NEW YORK, Farah Master in HONG KONG and Shihar Aneez in COLOMBO; Editing by Paritosh Bansal and Raju Gopalakrishnan) By Abdoulaye Massalaki NIAMEY (Reuters) - Voting ended in Niger on Sunday in a presidential run-off which President Mahamadou Issoufou looks more than likely to win after the opposition called a boycott and its jailed leader was flown out of the country for medical reasons last week. Issoufou, an ally of the West in its fight against Islamist insurgents in West Africa, won the first round comfortably last month with 48 percent of votes but failed to clinch the outright majority required to avoid a second round. "I am against any boycott. I've just voted," said Sadou Ide, who cast his vote soon after polling stations opened at the Nogare school in Niamey. Southern Niger, which borders Nigeria, has been the target of frequent deadly raids by Islamist Boko Haram militants. It also shares borders with Burkina Faso and Mali to the west, where al Qaeda-linked groups are active. Libya, home to Islamic State affiliates, lies on its northern border. Speaking after casting his vote on Sunday, Issoufou appealed to Nigeriens to stay the course amid the growing menace from regional militants. "A single term in office is not enough to overcome all the challenges, in particular I am thinking of the security challenges," he said. "We need a sacred union ... We must remained united." Late on Saturday, the regional governor of Niamey, Hamidou Garda issued a ban on gathering outside polling stations, citing security reasons. "All gathering is forbidden. Voters come, vote and then leave," he said on state-owned television. Security forces were posted at polling stations. They also patrolled the streets of Niamey and monitored the city's main intersections. Issoufou's main opponent Hama Amadou, who came in second with 18 percent of the vote in the first round, was jailed in November in connection with a baby-trafficking scandal. Amadou, who has not been convicted, says he is innocent and claims the charges are politically motivated. He was flown to Paris just days before the second-round vote for treatment of a chronic health issue, a government spokesman said. The Coalition for an Alternative (COPA), which unites about 20 political parties including Amadou's MODEN, called for a boycott of the polls on Friday, claiming the process had been tainted by fraud. Issoufou's supporters called the boycott "absurd" and urged all Nigeriens to go out and vote. As polling stations closed in the early evening and elections workers began counting ballots, observers said no major incidents had been reported though turnout had been low. "There weren't crowds like we saw during the Feb. 21 first rouond, and that's down to the respect for the boycott order," said Moustache Kak, an elections observer with the West African Network for Peacebuilding. Provisional results are due in the next few days. Having taken office in April 2011, a year after a popular coup overthrew his predecessor Mamadou Tandja, Issoufou is seeking a second five-year term. (Writing by Joe Bavier; Editing by Louise Ireland) By Matt Spetalnick and Frank Jack Daniel HAVANA (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama pushed Cuba to improve human rights during his historic visit to the Communist-led island on Monday, publicly sparring with President Raul Castro who showed flashes of anger and hit back at U.S. "double standards". In a joint news conference that was tense at times, Obama praised Castro for openly discussing their differences but he said a "full flowering" of the relationship can happen only with progress on the issue of rights. "In the absence of that, I think it will continue to be a very powerful irritant ... America believes in democracy. We believe that freedom of speech and freedom of assembly and freedom of religion are not just American values but are universal values," Obama said after talks with Castro, in remarks broadcast live on Cuban state television. The Cuban leader countered that no country meets all international rights but appeared uncomfortable as he made the rare step of taking questions from journalists in a country where the media is state controlled. Obama, the first U.S. president to visit Cuba in 88 years, agreed in 2014 to improve relations with the former Cold War foe but he is under pressure at home to push Castro's government to allow political dissent and to further open its Soviet-style economy. Opponents say he has given away too much as he improves ties, with too little from Castro in return. Castro, an army general who became president when his ailing older brother Fidel retired in 2008, had never before taken questions from foreign reporters on live Cuban television and was clearly irritated when asked about political prisoners in Cuba, demanding the reporter produce a list of those in jail. "Tell me now. What political prisoners? Give me a name, or the names," Castro said. "And if there are these political prisoners they will be free before nightfall." Cuba says it has no political prisoners and that the dozens listed by dissident groups are instead common criminals. Castro said Cuba has a strong record on rights such as health, access to education and women's equality. His government criticizes the United States on racism, police violence and the use of torture at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba. In another awkward moment at the news conference, Castro lifted Obama's arm in the air as if to form a victory salute. Obama resisted, letting his hand hang limp rather than form a fist. TENSION PALPABLE Fumbling with a headset providing translation, the 84-year-old leader scolded reporters when he was asked again about rights, saying he agreed to only take one question. Obama playfully encouraged him to address a second but Castro seemed reluctant as he obliged. "How many countries comply with all 61 human rights? Do you know? I do. None. None," Castro said. As part of the diplomatic breakthrough in 2014, Cuba released 53 prisoners that the U.S. government considered political prisoners. But the dissident Cuban Commission of Human Rights and National Reconciliation says 79 are still behind bars, among them more than 40 held for peaceful political protest. "This list is here if they want to see it," commission leader Elizardo Sanchez said on Monday. His commission's list also includes armed anti-government militants, convicted hijackers, army deserters and spies, but Sanchez said they are considered political because they were denied due process. Obama's ease with reporters' questions contrasted with Castro's manner. With American flags hanging in Revolution Palace, the tension was palpable as Castro declined to call on a slew of Cuban journalists who yearned for the rare chance to ask him questions. Castro offered Cuba's recipe for better relations, saying the United States needs to lift its 54-year-old trade embargo on the island and hand back the Guantanamo Bay base to Cuba. Obama did not respond to the demand on Guantanamo Bay but said he was optimistic about the elimination of economic sanctions against Cuba. "The embargos going to end. When, I cant be entirely sure," Obama said. Obama has urged Congress to rescind the economic embargo but has been rejected by the Republican leadership. Thwarted so far, Obama has instead used his executive authority to take a series of steps loosening restrictions on trade and travel. For decades, Obama's trip would have been unthinkable. It became possible after secret talks led to the 2014 agreement to normalize relations. A series of business deals timed to coincide with the visit appeared to show the strategy was bearing some commercial fruit. Ahead of the meeting with Castro, Obama announced a deal that Google would provide more Wi-Fi and broadband access on the island. Western Union announced it was set to expand in Cuba and online hotel bookings company Priceline Group made Cuban rooms available to U.S. customers. Starwood Hotels on Saturday became the first U.S. company to sign a hotel deal in Cuba since 1959 revolution. Google said later its efforts were in the "early stages." Obama hopes that commercial deals between U.S. companies and Cuba will help protect his policy shift on Cuba even if a Republican wins the U.S. presidential election in November. (Additional reporting by Jeff Mason, Daniel Trotta and Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Kieran Murray and Alistair Bell) By Lidia Kelly and William Maclean MOSCOW/DUBAI (Reuters) - All 62 people aboard a passenger jet flying from Dubai to southern Russia were killed when their plane crashed on its second attempt to land at Rostov-on-Don airport on Saturday, Russian officials said. Russia's emergencies ministry said the aircraft, a Boeing 737-800 operated by Dubai-based budget carrier Flydubai, crashed at 0340 (0040 GMT). Most of those on board were Russian. "The aircraft hit the ground and broke into pieces," the Investigative Committee of Russia said in a statement on its website. "There were 55 passengers aboard and seven crew members. They all died." Both of the plane's flight recorders have been recovered undamaged, the committee said in a statement. According to the independent U.S.-based Flight Safety Foundation, there was strong wind at the airport with a speed of 43 kilometres per hour, with gusts up to 69 kilometres, but visibility was reasonable. "Different versions of what happened are being looked into, including crew error, a technical failure and bad weather conditions," the committee said. It said the plane was in a mid-air holding pattern for more than two hours. The crash occurred more than two hours after the plane, flight number FZ981, was scheduled to land. Russia's Interfax news agency cited a source in the emergency services as saying the pilot changed his mind about landing on the approach to the airport. "For an unknown reason, several minutes before the landing, the pilot reconsidered and decided to make another circuit, but wasn't able to," Interfax quoted the source as saying. Flydubai's CEO Ghaith al-Ghaith told a news conference in the Gulf Arab emirate that it was "too early" to determine the cause of the crash. "We will have information about the circumstances of the incident and the black box in the future, and an investigation is being conducted in cooperation with the Russian authorities and we are waiting to see the results," Ghaith said. ALERT Security officials in the Middle East are on heightened alert for militant threats to aviation following the Islamic State claim of responsibility for downing a Russian passenger plane over Egypt's Sinai Peninsula in late October, in which all 224 people on board died. Sergei Melnichenko, head of Aviation Safety consultancy in Moscow, said so far little pointed to an act of terrorism. "Nothing points to that," Melnichenko said. "But nothing can be fully ruled out until a complete decryption of the flight recorders is done." According to the flight tracker Flightradar24, an Aeroflot flight SU1166 from Moscow made three landing attempts in Rostov before being diverted. It landed at 2315 GMT in Russia's Krasnodar. A source familiar with the investigation told Reuters that there was no weather-related ban on landing at the airport. "We consider all possible causes, but no one is even talking now about the possibility of a terrorist attack," the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said. Dubai's civil aviation authority said it was sending an investigative team to Russia, president Ismail al Hosani told reporters. Under international aviation rules, the investigation will be led by Russia's air crash safety investigation agency with representatives from the United States, where the jet was made and the United Arab Emirates where the airline is based. Boeing will be appointed as technical advisers to the U.S. investigation team. INTERNATIONAL CREW, MOSTLY RUSSIAN PASSENGERS The Flydubai airline had a clean safety record before the accident. It started flying in June 2009, with a fleet of new Boeing 737s, one of the world's most widely flown planes. It suffered an incident when one of its planes was shot at while landing at Baghdad airport on Jan. 27, 2015. The aircraft that crashed was just over five years old. The Flydubai plane came down inside the airport's perimeter, about 250 metres (yards) short of the start of the runway. The plane's wing hit the ground on its second attempt to land and burst into flames, the Rostov region's emergency ministry said in a statement. But Russian news agencies cited a source in the emergency services saying that the plane fell vertically and hit the ground on its nose. Grainy pictures from a security camera pointing towards the airport, which were broadcast on Russian television, showed a large explosion at ground level, with flames and sparks leaping high into the air. Ghaith of Flydubai said that he had no information to indicate that the pilot had issued a distress call. Both the pilot and co-pilot had over 5,000 hours of flight experience each, he said. There was one Russian among the seven-person crew, the Russian emergency ministry said in a statement. The pilot was Cypriot, the co-pilot and another crew member Spanish and the other three were from Seychelles, Colombia and Kyrgyzstan. Flydubai said in a statement that there were 44 Russians among the 55 passengers, eight Ukrainians, two Indians and one Uzbek. Four children were among the dead. Russian agencies cited Rostov's government representative as saying that the remains of those killed had been taken to a local morgue and families would able to identify them on Sunday. Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered assistance to be given to the relatives of those killed. "The head of state said that now the main thing is to work with the families and the loved ones of those who had died," the Kremlin said in a statement on its website. (Additional reporting by Noah Browning, Christian Lowe, Tim Hepher, Sam Wilkin, Ali Abdelaty, Jason Bush and Gleb Stolyarov; Writing by Lidia Kelly and Noah Browning; Editing by Tom Heneghan and Ros Russell) Mobile Computing New York District Goes 1:1 with Chromebooks Batavia City School District in New York will provide every student in the high school with a Chromebook beginning in fall 2016. Middle school students will get Chromebooks in the winter, and elementary school students will receive touchscreen devices in the following school year. The district has conducted pilot programs at every grade level, according to a report in the Daily News. The district also surveyed parents, students and staff, and all three groups rated technology as "important" or "very important" to education. In preparation for the rollout, the district will upgrade the Internet connectivity in each building and purchase interactive whiteboards for classrooms. The Chromebooks will connect to the whiteboards for collaborative work. The district will also invest in professional development for teachers to ensure they have the knowledge and skills to use the devices effectively in the classroom. Each Chromebook will be assigned to an individual student for use at school and at home, and students will be responsible for bringing their device with them every day, fully charged. The district will even encourage students to personalize their devices with stickers or other accessories, Jeff McKinney, assistant principal of Batavia High School told the Daily News. By feeling a sense of ownership of their Chromebook, the thinking goes, students will exercise more responsibility in their use and care of the devices. However, students will not have full control of the devices, which will be subject to content filtering. Funding for the Chromebooks will come out of "existing technology allotments in the school's general budget," stated a report in the Daily News, and the district expects to replace them every two to three years. The district also plans to purchase covers to protect the devices and is still investigating insurance options. - Kenyans have been told be cautious of any suspicious people or objects after KDF launched an assault in Somalia against the al-Shabaab terror group - The group is said to have fled Somalia and running towards Kenya and could pose a threat to the country Kenyans have been warned of a possible attack by Somalia based terror group al-Shabaab. The warning comes after the Kenya Defence Forces with the support of the Somali national army killed 34 militants in two separate attacks on Saturday 19 and Sunday 20, March. READ ALSO: Al-Shabaab warlord arrested in Kenya National police service spokesman George Kinoti said the militants have been running away from Somalia towards Kenya after the KDF assault and now pose a great security threat to the country. The police service has asked Kenyans to be vigilant and report any suspicious persons, activities or objects. They asked security guards to thoroughly screen people and vehicles getting into premises. Matatu and hotel operators, and other service providers were also urged to be cautious of any suspicious people or objects. READ ALSO: 2 KDF soldiers, 21 al-Shabaab militants perish in fierce Somalia gun battle On Saturday, March 19, a gunfight between members of the al-Shabaab militant group and KDF forces led to the deaths of at least two Kenyan soldiers. Five more Kenyan soldiers were injured during the incident. Kenyan forces killed at least 21 members of the militant group during the firefight that took place in the Lower Juba region of southern Somalia. On Sunday,March 20 , Kenyan troops killed a further 13 fighters just north of Ras Kamboni, also in southern Somalia. READ ALSO: Why the govt. has just deployed a host of security agents in all of Lamu Photo: Horseed Media Source: TUKO.co.ke By Marja Novak LJUBLJANA (Reuters) - The European Union should send a team of soldiers and civilians to help police Greece's frontiers because the bloc's border agency Frontex is "too slow", Austria's defense minister said on Monday. A spokesman later said the minister, Hans Peter Doskozil, was proposing a "bridging mission" that would register migrants in Greece or repatriate them until Frontex was fully up to strength and able to implement as planned a new deal between the EU and Turkey that aims to stem the flow of migrants to Europe. "In the past Frontex was responsible for securing the (EU's external) borders but Frontex is too slow because of the way it operates," Austrian Defense Minister Hans Peter Doskozil told a news conference during a two-day visit to neighboring Slovenia. "Therefore we suggest ... finding joint solutions in cooperation with ministries of foreign affairs and internal affairs," he said, without elaborating. The EU has proposed a task force of some 4,000 staff under Frontex auspices that will include judges, interpreters and border guards to help Greece sift through thousands of asylum applications. Greece is sheltering around 43,000 refugees and migrants and more continued to arrive on Monday despite the deal reached between the EU and Turkey at a special summit last Friday aimed at halting illegal migration flows into Europe. Under that pact, Ankara will take back all migrants and refugees, including Syrians, who cross to Greece illegally by sea. In return, the EU will take in thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey and make financial and political concessions to Ankara. STOPGAP MEASURE Clarifying Doskozil's comments on a separate force, the Austrian spokesman for Doskozil said: "It would be ... an EU military mission to implement the decisions of the (European) Council quickly." "Frontex must hire 4,000 staff. One can imagine it will take a while before Frontex has that many staff," he said. "The minister is therefore saying Why dont we deploy the military to bridge the gap until Frontex is operational? If Frontex needs months before it is fully operational, that will help no one." Doskozil said the proposal would be discussed at a meeting of central European defense ministers in Vienna next week. Last month Austria took the lead in coordinating a slew of border restrictions spanning the Balkans that have caused a worsening logjam of migrants stuck in Greece. Vienna believes migrants will find new paths into central Europe following the closure of the Balkan route and therefore plans to strengthen controls on the Brenner border crossing between Austria and Italy, Doskozil said. (Additional reporting by Francois Murphy in Vienna; Editing by Adrian Croft and Gareth Jones) By John Chalmers and Karen Lema MANILA (Reuters) - In February 2013, the Philippines was up against a deadline to amend its Anti-Money Laundering Act and get itself off the 'grey list' of a global watchdog, and lawmakers were bickering over whether to include casinos under the legislation. With one day to go, a Congressional committee heard repeated pleas not to hamstring an industry that could rival other Asian gambling meccas by obliging casinos to report suspicious transactions. Finally, the senator chairing the meeting agreed "with a heavy heart" to exclude them, a transcript of the proceedings shows. That same senator now heads a panel trying to fathom how $81 million hacked last month from the New York Federal Reserve account of Bangladesh's central bank wound up with two casinos and a junket operator in the Philippines - and then disappeared. It is one of the biggest cyber heists in history, and since the money trail has gone cold in the Philippines, the perpetrators may never be identified. The senator, Teofisto Guingona, told Reuters after a public hearing on the case last week that fierce lobbying by the gaming industry over the law had left the Philippines one of the world's softest targets for money launderers, putting the financial system at serious risk. "It can wreak havoc on the economy," he said. "Any money coming in and out of the country will come under scrutiny. People might just say 'to hell with it, it's not worth doing business with the Philippines'." The Philippines depends heavily on remittances from workers abroad, which account for about 10 percent of its GDP. The country's central bank chief said last week financial markets had shown no signs of distress over the scandal, but added: "We have to recognise there is a risk that is associated with this." Unknown hackers breached the computer systems of Bangladesh Bank in early February and attempted to steal $951 million from its account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which it uses for international settlements. Some attempted transfers were blocked, but $81 million wound up in the Philippines. Security researchers blamed malware and a faulty printer but said Bangladesh central bank officials were also responsible because of weak security procedures. The bank's governor and two deputy governors quit their jobs over the scandal last week. Bangladesh said on Saturday it had formally sought the assistance of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation. BANK SECRECY LAW Public hearings on the heist in the Philippines' Senate last week focused on the manager of a Manila branch of Rizal Commercial Banking Corp (RCBC). Her bank received the stolen money on Feb. 4 and transferred it to a foreign exchange broker who passed it on in tranches, including $30 million in banknotes that officials say would have weighed 1,500 kg. A colleague of the manager testified he saw her drive off in her car with 20 million pesos ($431,000) in cash from one of several fictitious accounts to which the money was wired. The branch manager declined to give evidence in public. According to an Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) document seen by Reuters, on Feb. 8 Bangladesh Bank sent RCBC several messages via the SWIFT interbank communications network requesting transactions be stopped and the funds returned. However, five withdrawals were made from the accounts in 73 minutes the next morning. When RCBC responded to the SWIFT message later that day, all that remained of the $81 million was $68,305. RCBC President Lorenzo Tan told the Senate he could not discuss what happened because of the country's bank deposit secrecy law, one of the world's strictest and a legacy of the martial-law era of President Ferdinand Marcos in the 1970s. "Prevention of ... money laundering is being hampered by the very strict bank deposit secrecy law," central bank Governor Amando Tetangco told reporters. "Once the funds go into a bank deposit account, that's it. The trail turns cold." Sergio Osmena, another senator probing the bank heist, has pressed for years to amend the bank laws. He made no headway, he said, because secrecy suits businesses that want to evade taxes and can bribe lawmakers to resist legislative change. "I am quite happy that a scandal like this has happened," Osmena told Reuters, explaining he believes the Bangladesh case is the tip of an iceberg alerting people to hundreds of money laundering crimes going unreported every year. CASINOS A 'WEAK LINK' In a March 2 report, the U.S. State Department said only 49 anti-money laundering cases have been filed since the AMLC began operating in 2001. The number of prosecutions and convictions has been virtually nil. Recent efforts to include casinos in the law have been held up because of forthcoming elections and extensive lobbying from the gaming industry, which the report said was "a weak link" in the Philippines' anti-money laundering regime. "Money laundering is a serious concern due to the Philippines' international narcotics trade, high degree of corruption among government officials, trafficking in persons, and the high volume of remittances from Filipinos living abroad," the U.S. report said. With ambitions to become one of Asia's gaming hubs alongside Macau and Singapore, the government opened a tract of reclaimed land near Manila airport for casinos. Two world-class resorts now operate there, counting Chinese high rollers among nearly half of their VIP clients, and two more are under construction. The Senate hearing was told $29 million of Bangladesh's money was transferred to one of these casinos, Solaire, owned and operated by Bloomberry Resorts Corp. "We did not know it was dirty money," Silverio Benny Tan, corporate secretary of Bloomberry Resorts, told reporters. The Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corporation, which regulates the industry, says that to prevent laundering, money transferred to casinos for players must be exchanged for 'dead chips' that can only be cashed in from winnings. But, for Senator Guingona, the disappearance of such large sums into casinos underlines the weakness of Manila's anti-laundering regime and could push the country back into the 'grey list' of the Financial Action Task Force (FATF). A spokeswoman for FATF, a Paris-based inter-governmental organisation that combats laundering and terrorist financing, said an Asia-Pacific body was responsible for reviewing Manila. "We cannot comment on the current case being reported in the media," said Alexandra Wijmenga-Daniel. "However, ongoing deficiencies in the anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist finance regime of the Philippines would be of concern." (Additional reporting by Neil Jerome Morales in Manila and Leigh Thomas in Paris.) NIAMEY (Reuters) - Niger's President Mahamadou Issoufou won a second term with 92.5 percent of the vote in a run-off election that the opposition coalition chose to boycott, the electoral commission said on Tuesday. Issoufou, an ally of the West in its fight against Islamist insurgents in West Africa, won the first round comfortably last month with 48 percent of votes but failed to clinch the outright majority required to avoid a second round. The candidate who came second, opposition leader Hama Amadou, has been in jail since November on charges relating to a baby-trafficking scandal, but was flown to France for medical treatment last week. Amadou says he is innocent and claims the charges against him are politically motivated. But the size of Issoufou's victory is unlikely to draw significant international criticism, in part because of the boycott, but also because the incumbent has been in power only since 2011. "The Nigerien people have spoken clearly and unequivocally," said Issoufou in a statement in which he laid out his plans for a second term, including increasing security and improving the country's infrastructure. "I hail their political maturity and strong mobilization." The Coalition for an Alternative (COPA), which unites about 20 political parties including Amadou's MODEN, called for a boycott of the polls claiming the process had been tainted by fraud. It described the election as a "sham" and said in a statement on Tuesday that it would refuse to recognise the results. "President Issoufou's mandate expires on April 1, 2016 at midnight. From April 2, our country will have no legitimate president," it said. The turnout of the election was 60 percent, the commission said. The vote is subject to confirmation from the constitutional court. Southern Niger, which borders Nigeria, has been the target of frequent deadly raids by Islamist Boko Haram militants. It also shares borders with Burkina Faso and Mali to the west, where al Qaeda-linked groups are active. Libya, home to Islamic State affiliates, lies on its northern border. (Reporting by Abdoulaye Massalaki; Writing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Edward McAllister; Editing by Richard Balmforth) By Jibran Ahmad and Mehreen Zahra-Malik ISLAMABAD (Reuters) - The leader of a breakaway faction of the Taliban is leading his fighters in Afghanistan, his deputy said on Tuesday, contradicting three senior members of the Islamist group and denying a newspaper report that he had been detained. Three senior Taliban told Reuters that Mullah Mohammad Rasoul, who leads a faction that has rejected the authority of the Islamist movement's leader, Mullah Mohammad Mansour, had been detained two weeks ago in Baluchistan province on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pakistan's Express Tribune newspaper said that Rasoul was being held by Pakistani authorities. Quoting two unnamed Taliban leaders, the newspaper said Rasoul was held in Pakistan after fleeing Afghanistan following heavy fighting in recent months with militants loyal to Mansour. Rasoul's deputy, Mullah Abdul Manan Niazi, dismissed the report as "propaganda of our enemies" and two Pakistani security officials also denied the report. "Mullah Rasoul is in Afghanistan and leading his fighters," Niazi said. But he added that his group's survival did not depend on one leader. "Our resistance will not stop with the arrest or killing of Mullah Rasoul or any other leader," Niazi said. The mixed reports add a further twist to the opaque nature of the leadership of the Taliban, who control or threaten more Afghan territory than at any time since their hard-line government was toppled in 2001. Rasoul is the biggest rival to Mansour, who claimed the leadership of the Taliban last year after news emerged of founder Mullah Omar's death and who has been shoring up support against rival factions. His faction has firmly opposed joining peace talks with the Afghan government and accuses Mansour of covering up Mullah Omar's death and being under the control of Pakistan. One senior member of the faction loyal to Mullah Mansour said that Rasoul had been in hiding in the western Afghan city of Herat but had recently decided to move to Pakistan, where many Taliban leaders are believed to be living. Two senior Pakistani security officials denied Rasoul was in Pakistani custody. "Our last information is that he fled infighting in Afghanistan," one of the officials said, requesting anonymity. Alongside its recent battlefield successes, the movement has been in turmoil since last year when it was forced to admit that Mullah Omar had died two years earlier. Mansour was reported to have been shot and wounded in a leadership dispute last year and dozens of Taliban fighters were killed in clashes between the two factions in the southern Afghan province of Zabul. Taliban officials denied reports last year of Mansour's injuries. (Writing by James Mackenzie; Editing by Nick Macfie) BEIJING (Reuters) - China agreed on Monday to consider building a railway into Nepal and to start a feasibility study for a free trade agreement with the impoverished, landlocked country, which has been trying to lessen its dependence on its big neighbour to the south, India. The Himalayan nation, that serves as a natural buffer between China and India, adopted its first post-monarchy constitution in September hoping this would usher in peace and stability after years of conflict. But protesters blocked trucks coming in from India, leading to acute shortages of fuel and medicine. Nepal blamed New Delhi for siding with the protesters, a charge India denied. The border blockade ended last month but supply of oil and cooking gas is far from normal. Meeting in Beijing's Great Hall of the People, Nepali Prime Minister K.P. Oli told Chinese Premier Li Keqiang he had "come to China with a special mission" when it came to strengthening relations. He did not elaborate in front of reporters. Hou Yanqi, deputy head of the Chinese Foreign Ministry's Asia Division, said Oli raised the possibility of two rail lines, one connecting three of Nepal's most important cities and two other crossing the border from China into Nepal. Hou said the government would encourage Chinese firms to look at the internal rail plan, and that China was already planning to extend the railway from the Tibetan city of Shigatse to Gyirong on the Nepal border. "Of course, a further extension from Gyirong is an even longer-term plan. It's up to geographic and technical conditions, financing ability. We believe that far in the future the two will countries be connected by rail," she said. The two countries signed a total of 10 agreements, including on the feasibility plan for a free trade agreement, as well a concessional loan for a new airport in Nepal's Pokhara and a feasibility study for oil and gas survey projects. No details were given. Kathmandu says it wants to import 33 percent of the annual demand of 1.8 million tonnes of petroleum products from Beijing but trade officials say absence of connectivity - logistics, cost and transportation through difficult Himalayan terrain - poses a challenge to any fuel trade between the two countries. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Additional reporting by Gopal Sharma in KATHMANDU) By Serajul Quadir DHAKA (Reuters) - Bangladesh police met an official of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in Dhaka on Sunday to try to track down culprits in an attempted $951 million cyber heist from the country's central bank. Initial investigations aim to identify the origin of a transfer order for $81 million that the Federal Reserve Bank of New York paid from Bangladesh Bank's account there to casinos in the Philippines, a senior police official told reporters. The transfer, one of the largest cyber heists in history, was among 35 requests that unknown hackers made for payments from the bank's New York Fed account in early February. Other requested transfers from that account, which Dhaka uses for international settlements, were apparently blocked. Former finance secretary Fazle Kabir took over on Sunday as head of the central bank after the former governor Atiur Rehman resigned amid complaints from the government that it had only learned of the heist a month later from the media. Also on Sunday, the wife of a cyber crime expert reported he had disappeared after being abducted from a motor rickshaw in the early hours of last Thursday. He had met police on Tuesday and told the media he knew three user IDs used for the heist. Senior police official Mirza Abdullahel Baqui said after meeting the FBI official that criminals in six countries were apparently involved in the heist. "This is the biggest transnational organized crime ever seen in Bangladesh and so we sought both technical and human assistance (from the FBI)," he said. The officials also discussed how to proceed with their investigation, he added. A government investigative committee led by former central bank governor Mohammad Farash Uddin began its probe into the heist on Sunday. "This is a wake-up call," he said of the unprecedented breach in the bank's computer security. A Philippines Senate hearing last week was told that $30 million of the $81 million haul was delivered in cash to an ethnic Chinese casino junket operator in Manila. The rest was transferred to two casinos in the Philippines. According to his wife, cyber crime expert Tanveer Hassan Zoha was blindfolded by unknown people in plainclothes early on Thursday before being taken away in a vehicle. He had gone on Tuesday with a special police force to the central bank where they spent several hours. Afterwards, he told reporters he knew three of the user IDs involved in the heist. Kamrun Nahar Chowdhury, Zoha's wife, said police had refused to investigate her husband's disappearance and she had appealed to the government for help to free him. Police were unavailable for comment. "We don't know why he was picked up," she told Reuters. (Reporting by Serajul Quadir; Editing by Tom Heneghan) COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Police in Denmark, Sweden and Finland have stepped up security at airports and public places following the explosions in Brussels on Tuesday. Danish police said they had increased patrols at Copenhagen airport and other key points in the city following the deadly explosions at Brussels airport and a metro station in the city. "We are aware of what has happened in Brussels. Therefore you will see more police in the airport and at key points in Copenhagen," Danish police said on its official Twitter page. Danish authorities have been on high alert since two people were killed in shooting attacks on a free speech event and a synagogue in Copenhagen in February last year. In Norway, police officers in Oslo will carry weapons again for a temporary period, a police spokeswoman said. Officers were armed between November 2014 and February of this year due to a risk of attacks by Islamist militants. More police would also patrol the streets of the capital. Police in Sweden said they had reinforced their presence at airports and taken increased security measures at other public places. Finnish Interior Minister Petteri Orpo said on Twitter "Finnish security officials have increased monitoring at Helsinki-Vantaa airport". (Reporting by Teis Jensen, Tuomas Forsell, Johan Ahlander, Stine Jacobsen and Simon Johnson, editing by Alistair Scrutton) By Michelle Nichols, Louis Charbonneau and James Pearson UNITED NATIONS/SEOUL (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council agreed on Monday to a Chinese request to remove sanctions on four ships the United Nations had blacklisted for ties to Pyongyang's arms trade. The agreement came after China secured assurances the vessels would not use North Korean crews, a U.S. official said. China asked the United States on March 16 for help removing the ships from the U.N. blacklist, according to a diplomatic cable sent the same day from the U.S. permanent mission at the United Nations to a group of other U.S. embassies. The cable, reviewed by Reuters, showed wrangling between top diplomats from the United States and China over the tough new North Korea sanctions, weeks after Washington had presented a united front with Beijing, Pyongyang's main ally and trade partner. The U.S. mission at the United Nations declined to comment on the cable or make its ambassador, Samantha Power, available for an interview about the cable. The U.S. Treasury Department, which administers U.S. economic and financial sanctions, also declined to comment. The removal of the four ships was confirmed in a press release, which was seen by Reuters and will soon be issued by the Security Council, according to U.N. diplomats. While Washington has been the driving force behind the toughening international sanctions regime, China conducts 90 percent of the trade with North Korea and is the key to enforcing them. FOURTH NUCLEAR TEST The ships were among 31 vessels sanctioned by the 15-member council on March 2 because they were linked to Ocean Maritime Management (OMM), a North Korean shipping firm known to transport arms and other illicit goods for the secretive state. "We discovered that they are not OMM ships," Chinese U.N. Ambassador Liu Jieyi told Reuters on Monday. "The basis for the listing of the ships is basically that they belong to OMM, so if you make a mistake, then you correct the mistake." U.S. and other Western officials have said all the original listings were carefully vetted before the ships were added to the blacklist. That list was appended to the sweeping Security Council resolutions implemented on March 2, following North Korea's fourth nuclear test in January. The U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Security Council committee on North Korea sanctions agreed to the request after China secured written commitments the four ships would no longer use North Korean crews. The four ships include the Jin Teng, a cargo ship detained by the Philippines days after the sanctions took effect. "We're pleased with the outcome," said the U.S. official. "It achieved an impact, a real world outcome." He added it was a sign of a "productive working relationship with China" on North Korea and that it was "gratifying to see such instant real-world effects" of the U.N. sanctions regime. U.S. FRUSTRATION Liu had raised the issue of the four sanctioned vessels last week in a meeting with Power, his U.S. counterpart, according to the cable reviewed by Reuters. Power approved the unclassified cable, which went from the U.S. mission at the U.N. to American embassies in Manila, Tokyo and Seoul. The cable pointed to American frustration with what U.S. officials characterized as China's attempts to hold up the routine renewal of a U.N. panel of experts in return for de-listing the ships. The panel is made up of a team of international experts who monitor and research potential breaches of resolutions against North Korea and recommend entities that could be sanctioned. Liu had asked Power's help in removing the ships from the list in an "easy, smooth and quick way," to get the panel renewed, according to the document's characterisation of Liu's request. The easiest way, Liu said, "would be to work quickly to get all these issues settled," according to the cable. Power told Liu China's linking of the issues and attempts to hold up the renewal of the panel was "not going over well in Washington," according to the cable, and asked China to let the renewal go forward. "You don't need to blackmail us, Power said, as we are indeed interested in operating in good faith," the cable says of Power's conversation with Liu. Liu told Reuters on Monday he expected the experts panel would be "renewed according to the normal procedure in the Security Council". (Story refiled to correct Power's name in second to last paragraph) (Additional reporting by Ju-min Park in SEOUL; Editing by Tony Munroe and Bill Tarrant.) BUDAPEST (Reuters) - Hungary is considering reforms to its public education system, a senior official said on Tuesday, following three major protests in two months against the centre-right government's centralised control over schools. Bence Retvari, a state secretary at the Human Resources Ministry, told ATV television that lawmakers would draft an overhaul of school financing to replace the current centralised system from September. Over 10,000 Hungarians protested last week against what they call the heavy-handed central control of the school system under Prime Minister Viktor Orban. It was the third such rally since early February. The Orban government, in power since 2010, took supervision of schools away from local authorities three years ago. Budapest now regulates all aspects of education, down to procuring chalk for rural elementary schools. Critics say textbooks introduced since then contain factual errors and promote the government's conservative views on issues such as homosexuality. In another interview, Retvari told the pro-government daily Magyar Idok that the new reforms would change the curriculum by the end of 2017 and lower the workload on students from the start of the next school year. Public support for Orban's ruling Fidesz party dipped in February, a poll by the Median institute said, after months of growing or stable backing boosted by the hard line handling of the migrant crisis. (Reporting by Gergely Szakacs; Editing by Tom Heneghan) By Fergus Jensen and Bernadette Christina Munthe JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesia "feels sabotaged" in its efforts to maintain peace in the disputed South China Sea and may bring its latest maritime altercation with China to an international court, a minister said on Monday. Indonesia is not embroiled in rival claims with China over the South China Sea and has instead seen itself as an "honest broker" in disputes between China and the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei. But an incident on the weekend involving an Indonesian patrol boat, and a Chinese coastguard vessel and fishing boat in what Indonesia said was its waters has angered it and led to its questioning of its work to promote peace. "We feel interrupted and sabotaged in our efforts," fisheries minister Susi Pudjiastuti told reporters in Jakarta after meeting Chinese embassy officials to discuss the incident in the Natuna Sea, an area between Peninsular Malaysia and the Malaysian province of Sarawak on Borneo island. "We may take it to the international tribunal of the law of the sea," Pudjiastuti said. Pudjiastuti said the Indonesia patrol boat had fired warning shots in the air when it approached the Chinese trawler. Indonesia's Deputy navy chief, Arie Henrycus Sembiring, told the news conference the navy would send bigger vessels to back up its patrol boats in the region. Indonesia says one of its patrol boats on Saturday attempted to detain a Chinese boat fishing illegally in its waters. Eight Chinese crew members were detained but the Chinese coastguard prevented Indonesia from confiscating the fishing boat. On Monday, China's foreign ministry repeated that the fishing boat was operating in "traditional Chinese fishing grounds", again demanded the fishermen be released and added the Chinese coastguard vessel did not enter Indonesian waters. 'NO OBJECTIONS' China and Indonesia do not contest the sovereignty of the Natuna islands and the seas around them: both agree they are part of Indonesia. Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying reiterated that on Monday. "The sovereignty of the Natunas belongs to Indonesia. China has no objections to this," Hua told a regular briefing. Any maritime disputes should be resolved by talks and China also opposes illegal fishing, Hua said. Earlier on Monday, Indonesia protested to China against what it described as an infringement of its waters by the Chinese coastguard vessel. "We conveyed our strong protest (over) ... the breach by the Chinese coastguard of Indonesia's sovereign rights," Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi told reporters after she met Chinese embassy representatives in Jakarta. Pudjiastuti said the eight detained Chinese fishermen would be processed in accordance with Indonesian law. China claims almost the entire South China Sea, a strategic shipping corridor, also rich in fish and natural gas, where several Southeast Asian countries also have overlapping claims. While Indonesia and China are not disputing the South China Sea, tension between them does flare every now and then, usually over Chinese fishing boats. In March 2013, armed Chinese vessels confronted an Indonesian fisheries patrol boat and demanded the release of Chinese fishermen who had been apprehended in Natuna waters. Similarly, in 2010, a Chinese maritime enforcement vessel compelled an Indonesian patrol boat to release another illegal Chinese trawler. (Additional reporting by Kanupriya Kapoor, Ben Blanchard in BEIJING; Editing by Robert Birsel) HAVANA (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry was encouraged by progress in the Colombian peace process after meeting on Monday in Havana with representatives of Colombia's Marxist FARC guerrilla group and the Bogota government, a State Department spokesman said. Kerry, in Cuba as part of U.S. President Barack Obama's historic visit to the Communist-run island, met the two sides separately and called for them to redouble their efforts to resolve the remaining issues in the talks, spokesman Mark Toner said in a statement. Kerry told both sides he was "encouraged that the 'end of conflict' issues are now front and center in the negotiations, including a formal bilateral ceasefire monitored by the U.N. Security Council, a timetable for disarmament, and security guarantees post-conflict for all lawful political actors," according to the statement. His involvement at the request of Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos marked the first time a U.S. secretary of state had met with negotiators from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia since peace talks started in Havana more than three years ago. The meeting between the Colombian government delegation and Kerry was "very productive," lead government negotiator Humberto de la Calle told journalists. "There were extraordinarily concrete elements," de la Calle said. "For example, the announcement of help from the United States relating to the security of people who lay down arms, which is a critical subject at the talks." The FARC thanked the U.S. for its support of the peace talks and said they hope to reach a final peace agreement in the coming months. "On a not-distant date we will give good news to the country and the world - that Colombia has reached peace," the rebel group said in a statement on its website. Last year, the two sides agreed a March 23 deadline for a final accord, but negotiators have said a deal by that date now looks unlikely. Washington designated the FARC a foreign terrorist organization in 1997, and many of its leaders have been indicted in the United States on charges of cocaine trafficking. The United States sees the Colombian peace talks hosted by Cuba as an example of how restoring normal relations with Havana can help it achieve its wider goals in Latin America. The Colombian war is the region's longest-running conflict, with some 220,000 people killed and millions of others displaced since 1964. (Reporting by Nelson Acosta in Havana, Eric Beech in Washington and Julia Symmes Cobb in Bogota; Writing by Eric Walsh; Editing by Peter Cooney and Alistair Bell) North Korea has tested a number of short-range missiles - the latest in a series of launches condemned by other nations. The five projectiles fired on Monday flew for 120 miles (200km) and landed in waters east of North Korea, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said in a statement. South Korean news agency Yonhap, citing an unidentified government source, said the South Korean military was trying to find what types of missile and projectile were fired from south of the city of Hamhung. The test is the fourth reported in North Korea since the beginning of March, as the secretive state steps up its defiance of US and UN sanctions imposed in response to recent launches. It came three days after the South said the North fired a medium-range missile into the sea for the first time since early 2014. North Korea has condemned ongoing annual South Korean-US military drills that it sees as a rehearsal for an invasion. The secretive state has threatened to launch pre-emptive strikes against Seoul and the US in recent weeks - warning its nuclear missiles could burn Manhattan "to ashes". Leader Kim Jong-Un said last week that the country would soon test a nuclear warhead and ballistic missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads in what would be a direct violation of UN resolutions that have the backing of Pyongyang's chief ally, China. "North Korea should refrain from all provocative actions, including missile launches, which are in clear violation of UN resolutions," Sung Kim, the US special envoy for North Korea, told reporters in Seoul. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said China was "deeply concerned" about the situation on the Korean peninsula. "We hope North Korea does not do anything to contravene UN Security Council resolutions. We also hope all sides can remain calm and exercise restraint and avoid doing anything to exacerbate confrontation or tensions," she said By David Ljunggren and Timothy Gardner WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama and new Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Thursday ended a frosty period in bilateral ties by agreeing to tackle climate change and strive to settle a long-lasting trade dispute over Canadian softwood lumber exports. The neighboring countries are traditionally close but relations had soured under former prime minister Stephen Harper, who hectored the White House in a failed bid to push through U.S. approval for the Keystone XL oil pipeline. Obama and Trudeau, whose Liberals came to power last November promising better cooperation with Washington, pledged joint steps to fight global warming, including cutting methane emissions from oil and gas operations. The countries committed to cutting emissions of methane by 40 to 45 percent below 2012 levels by 2025, to take steps to fight climate change in the Arctic, and to speed development of green technologies. They also told officials to look for solutions to a lengthy dispute over exports of Canadian softwood lumber, as well as promising to make it easier for goods and people to cross the long shared border. "I am grateful that I have him as a partner ... When it comes to the central challenges that we face, our two nations are more closely aligned than ever," Obama told a news conference after talks with Trudeau. "The President and I agree on many things including, of paramount importance, the direction we want to take our countries in to ensure a clean and prosperous future," said Trudeau. In another sign of friendlier bilateral ties, Trudeau invited Obama to address the Canadian Parliament this year. Americans have been captivated by the photogenic Trudeau, 44, whose father, Pierre Trudeau, was prime minister from 1968 through 1979, and again from 1980 to 1984. His visit will be capped by a state dinner on Thursday but that could be overshadowed by the race to succeed Obama in November's presidential election. Candidates for the Republican nomination will hold a debate on Thursday night. Trudeau declined to say what he would do in case the next president was Donald Trump, who has mused about tearing up the North American Free Trade Agreement. "The friendship between our two countries goes far beyond any two individuals or any ideologies," he said. "I have tremendous confidence in the American people, and look forward to working with whomever they choose to send to this White House later this year." (Additional reporting by Roberta Rampton in Washington; Editing by James Dalgleish) By Tatiana Jancarikova BRATISLAVA (Reuters) - Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico moved closer on Monday to breaking an election stalemate after agreeing a draft of priorities for a new governing program in coalition talks with rival parties. Eight parties won seats in a March 5 election in which Fico's leftist Smer party garnered the most votes but lost its parliamentary majority, leaving the two-time prime minister with a tough task in forming a coalition among opposition factions. Fico's odds improved over the weekend when centrist party Siet (Net) and another opposition party, Most-Hid (Bridge), agreed to negotiate with him, reversing their earlier opposition. The change of heart came after the Slovak National Party (SNS) said it would not join talks on forming a broad right-wing coalition because of fears of instability. Taking a break in talks that lasted nearly nine hours, Fico said he believed he could agree on the priorities of a new governing program by Tuesday. "The result of today's long and difficult negotiations is a draft of program priorities ... that would serve as basis for cooperation of the four parties in forming a government," Fico told journalists on Monday. "We focused on program overlaps because there are four parties with different views and values. Despite long and difficult negotiations we did not find issues or questions that divide us." Fico did not give more details. The 51-year-old leader campaigned against allowing in any large numbers of migrants from the Middle East and beyond, and has sued the European Union over a decision to relocate hundreds of asylum-seekers to Slovakia. Slovakia, a euro zone country, will hold the EU's rotating presidency in the second half of the year, giving it a larger voice in formulating the bloc's agenda, including on migration. Fico's Smer party lost 34 of its current 83 seats in the election as voters responded to opposition campaigning against corruption and shortcomings in healthcare and education, while taking the same tough line on immigration. The four-party grouping would have 85 votes in the 150-seat parliament. However, three lawmakers from Siet already said they would leave the party in protest over teaming up with rival Smer, weakening Fico's coalition even before it is officially formed. Analysts say the budding coalition may clash in some areas but is likely to prove more stable than the alternative of a large center-right coalition that would have to pull in a few novice parties. "It's a crisis coalition but it would be much more stable during Slovakia's EU presidency than a coalition of six center-right parties," said Samuel Abraham, an analyst from the Bratislava International School of Liberal Arts. (Writing by Jason Hovet; Editing by Tom Brown) By TJ Strydom JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) on Tuesday denied reports that President Jacob Zuma had offered to resign after mounting claims of improper political interference by the leader's wealthy business friends. In an affair that has caused wild swings in the rand since erupting last week, Zuma is facing calls to quit since a number senior officials went public with allegations that the Gupta business clan exert an undue sway on the government. The Guptas, whose businesses stretch from media to mining, have denied offering government jobs and say they are pawns in a plot to oust Zuma. South Africa's Mail & Guardian and Sowetan newspapers reported that Zuma had offered to stand down at a meeting of the ANC's national executive committee this weekend, citing party sources who attended the summit. "This is not true. It didn't happen," ANC spokesman Zizi Kodwa told Reuters. The ANC said in a statement on Sunday it had full confidence in Zuma and would investigate allegations by politicians that they were offered positions by the Guptas. Zuma has acknowledged the Guptas are his friends but denies that the relationship is in anyway improper. Zuma's son, Duduzane, is a director - along with Gupta family members - of at least six companies, documents show. Splits within the ANC threaten to weaken its position ahead of local elections later in the year that are expected to provide a stern test for a party that has been in power since the end of white-minority rule in 1994. Political uncertainty has also contributed to a slide in the rand this year and could unnerve ratings agencies as they consider whether to downgrade South Africa to "junk" status, a move which would significantly raise the cost of borrowing. South Africa's anti-corruption watchdog said on Tuesday it may seek state funding to investigate the links between Zuma and the Guptas, an inquiry the family said it would welcome because it would end a "trial by innuendo and slander". Zuma sacked finance minister Nhlanhla Nene in December and appointed a junior politician with no record of national financial management to the post, before backtracking and summoning past finance minister Pravin Gordhan a few days later. Last week, Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas said that in December, the Gupta family offered him his boss's job. (Writing by Joe Brock; Editing by Mark Heinrich) By Tom Miles and Suleiman Al-Khalidi GENEVA (Reuters) - Syrian government negotiators at Geneva peace talks are coming under unaccustomed pressure to discuss something far outside their comfort zone: the fate of President Bashar al-Assad. And they are doing their best to avoid it. U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura describes Syria's political transition as "the mother of all issues" and, emboldened by the Russian and U.S. muscle that brought the participants to the negotiating table, he refuses to drop the subject. After a week of talks in Geneva, he praised the opposition for the depth of their ideas, but criticised the veteran diplomats on the government side for getting bogged down. "The government is currently focussing very much on principles, which are necessary in any type of common ground on the transition," he said. "But I hope next week, and I have been saying so to them, that we will get their opinion, their details on how they see the political transition taking place." Arguments over Assad's fate were a major cause of the failure of previous U.N. peace efforts in 2012 and 2014 to end a civil war that has now lasted five years, killed more than 250,000 people and caused a refugee crisis. The main opposition, along with the United States and other Western nations, has long insisted any peace deal must include his departure from power, while the Syrian government and Russia have said there is no such clause in the international agreements that underwrite the peace process. The Syrian president looked more secure than ever at the start of the latest round of talks, riding high after a Russian-backed military campaign. But Russia's surprise withdrawal of most of its forces during the week signalled that Moscow expected its Syrian allies to take the Geneva talks seriously. And de Mistura appointed a Russian expert to sit in the negotiations with him and to advise on political issues. Unlike previous rounds, the talks have run for a week without any hint of collapse, forcing the government delegation led by Syria's U.N. Ambassador Bashar Ja'afari to acknowledge de Mistura's demands. Ja'afari began by giving de Mistura a document entitled "Basic elements for a political solution". "Approving these principles will open a serious dialogue under Syrian leadership without foreign intervention and without preconditions," Ja'afari said on Friday, in a brief statement after the longest session of the talks so far. But officials and diplomats involved in the talks variously described the document as "very thin", "bland" and "off the point". It listed familiar goals such as maintaining a secular state and Syria's territorial integrity and the importance of fighting terrorism, according to sources who have read it. But it said nothing about a political transition. FILIBUSTER In sessions with de Mistura, Ja'afari has approached the negotiations as slowly as possible, reopening U.N. resolutions and going through them "by the letter", said a source with knowledge of the process. "Mr Ja'afari is still in a kind of delusion of trying to filibuster his way out of town, or to filibuster the opposition out of town," said a western diplomat. "He will spend every minute questioning the nature of the opposition, quibbling about the font in the agenda." By Friday, de Mistura said Ja'afari's team needed to go faster and couldn't avoid the substantive question forever. "The fact that the government delegation would like to set different rules or play with the terms of this agreement is I think a non-starter," said opposition delegate Basma Kodmani. A diplomat involved in the peace process said Assad was not used to having to compromise, and that made Ja'afari's negotiating position rigid. "He has to have control. If he gives up 1 percent, he loses 100 percent. He's designed like that," the diplomat said. In three meetings with each side during the week, de Mistura quizzed the negotiators about their ideas, and they were also able to put questions to their rivals through him, one participant said. The U.N. mediation team spends the sessions "stripping the papers apart and delving deep into the subject and forcing them to do more homework and forcing them to give answers", said a source with knowledge of the process. The negotiators do not meet each other, but face de Mistura in a functional, windowless room with desks arranged in a square. There is space for eight or nine people around each side, but the conditions are slightly cramped, and afford no luxury beyond a plastic bottle of mineral water on each desk. "De Mistura is dragging the regime in with his queries on their position paper, rather than allowing them to talk about what they want," said the diplomat involved in the peace process. "The regime had in the past a bit of space to play and to manoeuvre," he said. "The regime knows it has to come and stay but is not prepared for the idea that it has to engage the opposition." (Writing by Tom Miles; Editing by Pravin Char) The Independent Tories must not return to soap opera of Partygate under Boris Johnson, warns Dominic RaabBoris Johnsons former deputy Dominic Raab has warned Conservative MPs that bringing the ex-PM back into No 10 would risk another episode of Partygate which he likened to Groundhog Day and a soap opera.Claiming to believe that Mr Johnson can eventually make a return to frontline politics, Mr Raab said: I just cant see in practice how a new prime minister ... could give the country the attention, the focus, that it needs while also giving testimony to the Commons privileges committee inquiry over Partygate.Mr Raab continued: Whether youre an arch-Boris fan, or an arch-Boris critic, I dont see how you can reconcile returning to frontline politics with that committee looming and hanging over him and oral testimony being heard.He told BBC Radio 4s Today programme: We cannot go backwards. We cant have another episode of the Groundhog Day, of the soap opera, of Partygate. We must get the country and the government moving forward.BBC Radio 4 By Louis Charbonneau UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The United Nations has closed its military liaison office in the disputed territory of Western Sahara as demanded by Morocco amid an escalating dispute over remarks by the U.N. chief, a U.N. spokesman said on Tuesday. Dozens of U.N. international staffers pulled out of the Western Sahara mission, known as MINURSO, after Morocco demanded they leave because Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon used the term "occupation" during a recent visit. U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq said Morocco demanded the closure of the U.N. Dakhla military liaison office. It was Rabat's latest retaliatory step. "This was completed yesterday," Haq said. "The three military observers based there were relocated to the Asward team site, on the western part of the territory, controlled by Morocco. Morocco's request to close the liaison office in Dakhla is the first request directly targeting the military component." He said the liaison office was the U.N.'s "face-to-face counterpart to the Royal Moroccan Army" and handled all discussions on the ceasefire. Haq said the relocation made direct dialogue with the army "more difficult." U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric chided the Security Council on Friday for not issuing a strong statement of support for him and MINURSO in the dispute, something council diplomats blamed on Morocco's traditional ally France, along with Spain, Egypt and Senegal. Ban and the 15-nation council had their monthly lunch meeting on Monday. Several diplomats told Reuters that Ban left with the impression that a statement of support for him was imminent. But no such statement was issued. Haq repeated Ban's desire for a statement of support from the council. "In enough time, a lack of a statement can indeed be interpreted as a statement of its very own," he said. The controversy over Ban's comments is Morocco's worst dispute with the U.N. since 1991, when the U.N. brokered a ceasefire to end a war over the Western Sahara and established the mission. Rabat accused Ban earlier this month of no longer being neutral in the Western Sahara dispute when he used the word "occupation" to describe its 1975 annexation of the region, when Morocco took over from colonial power Spain. Ban had visited refugee camps in southern Algeria for the Sahrawi people, who say Western Sahara belongs to them. They fought a war against Morocco until the 1991 ceasefire. The Polisario Front wants a referendum on independence, but Morocco says it will only grant autonomy. Polisario says Rabat's moves against the U.N. jeopardize the ceasefire. (Reporting by Louis Charbonneau; Editing by Dan Grebler) KKR has agreed to buy into seeds provider Advanta Enterprises in a deal which values the business at about $2.25bn. Miami-based MBF Healthcare Partners is reportedly looking to raise up to $500m for its second private equity fund. The h Silicon Valley-based Sequoia Capital is reportedly looking to raise up to $1.45bn for its or its latest China venture an Thoma Bravo will receive a first ever commitment from the New Hampshire Retirement System, which will invest $50m in th Private equity activity is set to remain high in the Czech Republic and Slovakia this year, following on from the rise i Its not enough to know what your members and prospective members want. Today, its just as important to know how they want it. For credit unions in pursuit of a relationship with the highly influential and growing Hispanic consumer segment, that how is most likely digital. When designing a digital strategy targeting Hispanic Millennials, its important to consider both language and culture. While most are likely to speak Spanish in the home, Hispanic Millennials are proficient in English and comfortable switching back and forth between the two languages sometimes within the same conversation. In terms of culture, Hispanic Millennials 40 percent of whom were born outside the U.S. feel strong connections to both their Hispanic and American cultures. AT&Ts #BetweenTwoWorlds strategy offers an excellent example of marketers who understand this dichotomy. The telco companys advertising and social media marketing campaign was designed to connect with bicultural Hispanic Millennials. Through a variety of marketing and communications tools, AT&T addresses the way in which bicultural Hispanic Millennials adeptly fuse their two identities. One of the first mobile providers to attempt this emotional bond between its brand and consumers, AT&T relies on authenticity to stand out from its competitors. As such, it is somewhat of a groundbreaker in Hispanic consumer marketing. Millennial consumers of all cultures are nearly 2.5 times more likely than baby boomers to use their mobile phones for things like online shopping and in-store payments. When we look at the Hispanic culture specifically, we see an even greater desire to use mobile means to accomplish everyday tasks. In fact, 13 percent of Hispanics depend exclusively on their smartphones for Internet access because they often lack broadband connections at home. For a great number, mobile access is less about devices, and more about community, as Glenn Llopis, CEO Center for Hispanic Leadership explains: What started out as a convenient way to pick out a movie or a place to eat is evolving into something much more. Hispanics want to engage in a mobile experience that empowers them and gives meaning to their authentic voice. This is especially true of young Hispanics who want to change the conversation and influence the brands that they build relationships with and mobile technology is their medium of choice. Of course, mobility and digital access involve more than a smartphone. Omnichannel strategies will be important when targeting Hispanic Millennials. Kenia Calderon, a 21-year-old El Salvador native who has been in the U.S. for 10 years, says being able to bank from each of her connected devices is important. If Im in class, for instance, and cant use my phone, Ill quickly open a browser on my laptop and make my loan payment. Calderon is among the 53 percent of Hispanics who say they are regular users of mobile banking services. She also reports excitement for mobile payments like Android Pay and more advanced banking apps that promise to make her life that much easier. However, Calderon insists credit unions should aim to strike a balance between real-world and digital channels. Thats because face-to-face interaction, especially with staff who understand them, is critically important to young people like her. Many young Hispanics are not only managing finances for themselves; they are also leading the way for their siblings and even parents. This can create the kind of challenges that require more hands-on guidance, financial education and in-person attention. U.S. Hispanics are one of the most financially underserved segment on the radar of credit union marketers. This is precisely why so many have designed specific growth strategies around Hispanic membership. Those strategies are working, but they will have to evolve if credit unions are to nurture the relationships theyve worked so hard to build. Digital products, services and marketing will help move that critical evolution forward. Ive been catching up on my reading and ran across two articles in the August 2015 issue of Scientific American that touched on the concept of cooperation. Of course, cooperation is at the heart of the credit union movement people joining together to help each other. Cooperation extends far beyond the individual credit union credit unions join together in many different ways to help each other advance. This has enabled credit unions to compete and prosper in an intensely competitive marketplace that many predicted would see the end of credit unions. The first article I read was The Most Invasive Species of All. It asked the question of how homo sapiens was able to expand out of Africa to all regions of the worlds. Was it bigger brains? Better weapons? Sheer luck? The answer of anthropologist Chris W. Marean is a genetically encoded penchant for cooperation with unrelated individuals. The joining of this unique proclivity to our ancestors advanced cognitive abilities enabled them to uniquely adapt to new environments, Marean writes. It also fostered innovation, giving rise to a game-changing technology: advanced projectile weapons. Thus equipped, our ancestors set forth out of Africa, ready to bend the whole world to their will. The second article in the same issue that caught my attention was Planet Hard Drive, a discussion of information theory as it applies to people. The author, Cesar A. Hidalgo, sees each of us as an organic, information-generating computer, transforming ideas into useful products or activities. The problem, Hidalgo says, is that each of us is limited. To transcend our own limitations, we need to form social and professional networks. This generates ever richer stores of information that lead to economic and social progress. He envisions ever faster progress ahead as technology and trade break down barriers of language, culture, and nationality and bring people of the world into closer collaboration. Talking Points: Crude oil prices are at 3-month highs with the DOHA meeting due on April 17th OPECs Secretary General remarks that he hopes that oil prices have bottomed Oil-freeze meeting could halt production levels at all-time highs Losing money trading Forex? This might be why. WTI Crude Oil Futures are near highs last seen on December 4th 2015 which makes for a fresh 3-month high. Since the February 11th 2016 low of $26 per barrel, prices have rallied more than 60 percent rising to over $40 per barrel. The rebound in oil futures comes at a time when demand for the commodity has fallen but overall output remains on an upward trajectory. Meanwhile, the worlds largest conglomerate of oil producing nations - known as the Organizational of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) - is due for an important meeting that will be held in Doha, Qatar on April 17th 2016. OPECs Secretary General Abdalla El-Badri gave a few comments late into Mondays trading session regarding the meeting and his views on oil prices. Here are the main points: All OPEC members will be invited to Doha, Qatar. So far, sees approximately 15 to 16 countries will attend the meeting. Has stated hope that oil price have bottomed and will continue to rise Expects moderate, not high oil prices. It is up to Iran whether it participates in any agreed upon oil freeze. Iran has conditions about its production but may join future group efforts. Oil stockpiles about 300M barrels above 5-year average. In addition to the commentary, there has been some developing news from large exporters of the commodity. Chinese February import/export figures were released today. The worlds second largest economy and consumer of petroleum saw oil imports fall 35 percent year-over-year (YoY) and exports declining 16 percent over the same period. Despite the decline: imports from Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Russia gained. Last week, the Saskatchewan province in Canada saw an overall decline in oil production to 14.6 million barrels in January 2016 from 16.2 million in December 2015. In Mexico, the finance ministry was told to help Pemex, the countrys largest oil company, with modernization. Last week, Pemex production increased to 2,223 barrels per day in early March from 2,214 in February. Looking ahead, the Doha will present a rumor-heavy and heavily speculated upon debate over oil production halts. Coordination between member countries has grown contentious, but belief that this large aggregate producer can cap global supplies remains persistent. Last week, Saudi Arabia, the largest oil producing OPEC member, said they are willing to freeze oil production even if Iran does not. OPECs Badri also mentioned that Iran may join the production freezing efforts in the future. However, even if members can agree to freeze oil production, output levels will remain at all-time highs as can be seen on the chart below. This can continue to adversely affect the global oversupply of crude oil, but it could also be a step closer to more aggressive and cohesive efforts to work down the imbalance. Data extracted from Bloomberg COLUMBUS Cooler weather returned for the weekend, but did not seem to slow anyone down at the Ohio Beef Expo, held March 18-20. The Expo, now in its 29th year, drew shoulder-to-shoulder crowds to the Ohio state fairgrounds for the trade show and breed auctions and more beef cattle than some of the barns were set up to hold. Nearly 600 youth participated in the quality assurance program March 19, which trains them on a variety of animal care practices, and more than 700 cattle were shown in the junior show, March 20. The cooler temperature made for good cattle weather, according to one exhibitor, because it helped keep them calm. However, the snow and blowing drizzle made for some chilly moments in the make-up area, and when the cattle were being washed. Supporters recognized The Expo Planning Committee presented Friends of the Expo awards to Lou Ellen Harr, a Hereford producer and cattle fitter from Jeromesville; M.H. Eby, a long-time Expo vendor of livestock trailers; and Bill Sexton, of Washington Court House, who manages a cow-calf operation and is currently the regional vice president for the National Cattlemens Beef Association. Harr has attended the Expo since 1989, and has spent her life working with beef cattle, first in Missouri and more recently in Ashland County. She and her husband, Jeff, have their own Hereford operation, J & L Cattle Services, and also do custom fitting at the Expo. Lou Ellen said the growth at the Expo has been phenomenal, and that its become a great place to unite the industry. This is probably the best audience that a smaller purebred breeder can have in the state of Ohio, she said. There are more people coming through this barn across all breeds than well ever see in this state, so we think its an awesome event for purebred, and crossbred, and just the beef cattle in general. Kirk Swensen, regional sales manager for Eby, said his company appreciates being named a friend of the Expo. Every year when I come, its always fun just to drive through the parking lot and see how many Eby trailers are here, Swensen said. Thats a real testament to our customers. M.H. Eby is a third-generation, family-owned business that started in 1938. The company has sponsored past Expo events, and interacts with livestock owners at the Expo through its trade show. Sexton, in addition to his own beef operation, has helped with the Expo for more than 16 years, including serving as vice chairman form 2011-2015. He said the Expo is successful because of the volunteers, and their effort to make it one of the biggest and best. Elizabeth Harsh, executive director of the Ohio Cattlemens Association and Ohio Beef Council, said volunteers have to get good at taking the compliments with the complaints and making sure ends meet. We appreciate everything they do to make the Ohio Beef Expo the success that it is, she said. Youth experience Each year, the Ohio Cattlemens Association also chooses student interns to help with operations, which helps give younger cattlemen leadership experience. This years spring interns, Abby Mayer and Jenna Phelps, were busy answering questions, making sure people and exhibits were in the right place, and helping promote the event. Mayer, the OCA public relations intern and a student at Capital University, helped make updates to the Expo website, monitor the social media and take pictures. Phelps, a student at Ohio State University, served as industry relations intern, and worked with trade show exhibitors, helping to finalize their contracts and find their place in the trade show building. Quality assurance On March 19, some 575 youth participated in Beef Quality Assurance training, which covered the various aspects of beef cattle care and stewardship for all ages of junior beef exhibitors. The quality assurance class is a requirement for participating in the OCA BEST program, and also county shows. Jeff Fisher, OSU Extension ag educator in Pike County, talked about the importance of good environmental stewardship, which means considering the beef animals impact on water, air and land and making sure facilities and wash areas comply with good water management, and are environmentally sound. He said youth exhibitors also need to be good neighbors in their industry not only to their next-door neighbors, but to those who may not understand beef cattle production. Fisher challenged exhibitors to be able to discuss with intelligence about beef cattle production why is it you do what you do. Rally for Justice for ALL Victims of Racist Police Brutality Date: Friday, April 01, 2016 Time: 6:30 PM - 7:30 PM Event Type: Protest Organizer/Author: ANSWER Coalition Location Details: 24th and Mission Sts. From Akai Gurley to Mario Woods Rally for Justice for ALL Victims of Racist Police Brutality Fire SFPD Chief Suhr! Stop Police Terror! As racist presidential candidate Donald Trump emboldens white supremacist groups to openly organize and lash out against the most oppressed sectors of society, the police in the United States continue to terrorize and murder Black, Brown, Native, immigrant, and poor and working people who are targeted by the same racist hate groups with impunity. These acts of racist police terror continue largely unchallenged by the so-called justice system. The rebellions in Ferguson and Baltimore along with the mass mobilizations in Chicago have forced concessions from those in power to remove police chiefs and prosecutors and make department-wide reforms, proving the struggle to be the determining factor in the outcome of these cases. In New York, the struggle for justice for Akai Gurley who was murdered by NYPD has reached a critical point where killer cop Peter Liang is facing potential jail time. While some reactionaries have mobilized to prevent this conviction, we demand that all killer cops must be held accountable for their crimes. With the recent sham civil trial surrounding the murder of Alex Nieto in San Francisco that reinforced the right of officers to kill with impunity, its time to stand up and fight back against the militarized gangs of police that criminalize and terrorize people like Akai Gurley, Alex Nieto, Mario Woods, Amilcar Perez-Lopez and every other person stolen from our communities. Join the ANSWER Coalition on Friday, April 1 for a rally to demand From Akai Gurley to Mario Woods, justice for all victims of racist police brutality! 13 years ago, March 19, 2003, Republican Bush illegally invaded and occupied Iraq to steal their oil and to the date, now Democrat Obama is doing the same for the same reason. Yet, there is no protest by any Democrat. Sheepdog Democrat Sanders, a proud supporter of the war machine, offered to speak to AIPAC by video as others have done, but was turned down. His very friendly letter to AIPAC may be found at https://berniesanders.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/AIPAC_letter.pdf Quoting in pertinent part Sanders' 3/18/16 letter to Robert Cohen, President of the American Israeli Public Affairs Committee:"Dear Bob, I enjoyed the opportunity to chat with you this morning. As I mentioned, I would very much have enjoyed speak at the AIPAC conference." He ends his letter with "Hope the conference goes well."Democratic Party Sheepdog Sanders, whose campaign is solely to make sure you never vote Red or Green in November, is a longtime Zionist darling of AIPAC and always votes for Israel, as he did during the July 2014 Israeli bombing of Gaza. For more on Sanders' warmongering record, see:1. Cindy Sheehan, a Peace & Freedom Party candidate in the past, has compiled the reactionary voting record of Sanders on 2/17/16, "Confessions of a Real Socialist" with lots of links at:2. Barry Bush has his own listing of reactionary Sanders votes at:The protests of Trump rallies must be equaled to the protests of Clinton and Sanders rallies. Trump, of course, will most likely not come to San Francisco since the Republican vote here is about 15%. Republican strongholds in California are, by County, San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino, Orange, Kern, Kings, Ventura, San Luis Obispo, Merced, Fresno, San Joaquin, and most of the entire Central Valley, Sierra Nevada and northern border counties. Trump rallies will probably occur in the more heavily populated of those counties.Clinton and Sanders will certainly come to San Francisco to raise money. Are you going to protest their support of Israel and the war machine just as you protest Trumps bad language? Trump also supports Israel and the war machine. They all proudly support the police state at home, especially in the big cities, all Democratic Party strongholds, like San Francisco.The era of voting for the evil of 2 lessers is over. The Green Party is now on the ballot in at least 45 states plus D.C. and usually is on the ballot in all 50 states in the November presidential election. Many states, including California with Peace & Freedom Party, also have a socialist party. The twin parties of war and fascism, both staunchly pro-Israel too, are the Democrat-Republicans. They put guns before butter and have no intention of abolishing the police state and the war machine, housing the homeless, feeding the hungry, promoting socialized medicine and free education for all, as they only care about maximizing the profits of the munitions makers and oil companies, where the greatest profits are, the goal of the capitalist class which they represent. If you want peace, the abolition of the military and the police, a secular peaceful Palestine, housing, food, socialized medicine and free education for all you have to vote Peace & Freedom or Green.You can register online at:For more information, see http://www.votepsl.org/ (Gloria LaRiva for President) (Be sure to read her serious socialist program.)and http://www.jill2016.com/ (Jill Stein for President) Boycott Sakuma North Coast is thrilled to welcome independent farmworker union Familias Unidas por la Justicia on their historic West Coast Boycott Tour.4-6 pmJoin Sakuma/Driscolls boycott picket line at the Costco at 1006 West Wabash Ave, Eureka, CA6:30-8 pmMeet and eat at the Eureka Labor Temple. Hear from the farm workers themselves about this historic boycott in the tradition of Cesar Chavez. 840 E St, Eureka, CAWe say NO to Bad Berries.Neighbors! Please ban Driscolls Berries and Haagen Dazs berry ice cream from your fridge until their supplier farms sign a union contract with farmworkers from Familias Unidas por la Justicia in Washington and La Alianza of San Quintin, Mexico.Farmworkers deserve a union contract that will ensure fair wages, breaks, and protection from wage theft, poison, and abuse in the fields. It's not too much to ask. Until then: BOYCOTT DRISCOLLS BERRIES UNTIL UNION CONTRACTS___________________________________________________The Story:Familias Unidas por la Justicia (Families United for Justice) is an independent farmworker union based in Burlington, Washington. They plant, nurture, and harvest millions of the berries eaten in this country.Its members -- more than 250 farmworker families -- finally got fed up over two years ago with wage theft, denial of lunch and rest breaks, racist harassment from supervisors, poverty wages, exposure to pesticides, and inhumane housing conditions. They formed Washingtons first independant farmworker union and called for a boycott of Sakuma Bros and their international corporate distributer Driscolls.Familias Unidas por la Justicia asks you to boycott Driscolls berries until the company negotiates a union contract. In March of 2015 80,000 farmworkers in San Quintin Mexico launched a general strike, formed an independent union, La Alianza, and endorsed a consumer boycott of Driscolls.Now *both unions are united* in calling for an international boycott of Driscolls berries. New boycott committees are forming all over the country! Familias Unidas is working to build upon this momentum and organize a major boycott offensive by touring the West Coast for a full month, sharing the story of their struggle with communities along the way, and asking people to take up the Driscolls boycott until farmworkers in Washington and Mexico can win historic union contracts this year.Join California's North Coast at the Eureka Labor Temple on Tuesday, March 22nd at 6:30 pm to hear from the farmworkers yourself and learn how you can support this historic movement to transform the food system!Also join us just beforehand at 4 pm on 3/22 for our picket line at Costco on Wabash Ave in Eureka to demand action from one of our region's biggest buyer of Driscoll's.If you want more information or are interested in forming a boycott committee please reach out to the boycott coordination team at: BoycottCoordination [at] gmail.com To learn more about the campaign, visit boycottsakumaberries.com.To make this tour possible please consider donating to the tour fund at: http://www.gofundme.com/farmworkerjustice The US Supreme Court hears arguments on whether Puerto Rico's courts can restructure about $20 billion of the US territory's $72 billion debt. Puerto Rico's legislature passed the 2014 "Recovery Act" which empowers the island's courts to restructure debt belonging to Puerto Rico's public companies. The First Circuit Court of Appeals previously ruled in 2015 that only Congress can determine how to restructure Puerto Rico's debt under US bankruptcy law."If the Supreme Court rules in favor of Puerto Rico, we'll have some additional tools to address some of the debt in an orderly way," said Eric LeCompte, a United Nations sovereign debt expert and Executive Director of the religious development group Jubilee USA. "While this could be positive. it still doesn't offer a comprehensive solution."Only seven US Supreme Court justices are expected to hear the case because of Justice Antonin Scalia's death and because Justice Samuel Alito may recuse himself from hearing the case. Alito recused himself when the high court decided to take the case in December."I hope the Supreme Court will allow Puerto Rico's bankruptcy courts to arbitrate the debt," stated LeCompte, who testified to Congress in February on possible legislative solutions to the debt crisis. "Puerto Rico is in a downward spiral and it can't cut or tax its way out of this crisis."Jubilee USA Network is an alliance of more than 75 US organizations and 550 faith communities working with 50 Jubilee global partners. Jubilee USA builds an economy that serves, protects and promotes the participation of the most vulnerable. Jubilee USA has won critical global financial reforms and more than $130 billion in debt relief to benefit the world's poorest people. http://www.jubileeusa.org Irvine, CA Its been a long time coming, but after 15 months of litigation, an overtime pay laws class action has been given the green light by a federal judge in Santa Ana. The Its been a long time coming, but after 15 months of litigation, an overtime pay laws class action has been given the green light by a federal judge in Santa Ana. The overtime pay lawsuit seeks damages from Zillow, the online real estate entity founded a decade ago, for alleged violations with regard to working hours, missed meal breaks and rest periods, and unpaid overtime. The overtime pay lawsuit was brought in 2014 by plaintiff Ian Freeman, a former employee of Zillow at its facility in Irvine. According to the(2/27/16), Freeman alleges that Zillow made a habit of pressuring its employees into arriving at work before their scheduled start time. It is also alleged that Zillow further pressed employees to work through their breaks and also pressured employees into working beyond the scheduled end time of their shifts, without overtime pay.Zillow has been variously described as an aggressive, new-age real estate entity that regularly requires its employees to undertake nonstop sales calls during periods of intense activity dubbed as a wave or a blitz. Freemans lawsuit accuses Zillow of pressuring its employees to work through their meal breaks and rest periods while such callout blitzes were taking place.The unpaid overtime lawsuit also alleges that employee hours were recorded automatically, without regard to the number of hours an employee may have actually worked.Zillow, in thereport, denied the accusations and pushed back against the lawsuit, noting that in its view 26 employees were given overtime pay in 2015. However, the minutes of a meeting on February 26 at which Judge Josephine L. Staton granted the application for a class action, stated that there was no evidence that any overtime pay had been provided prior to the initiation of the overtime pay laws class action by the plaintiff. Freeman further maintains that employee hours were routinely recorded prior to him launching his lawsuit.The report notes that Zillow has been targeted by a collection of recent lawsuits that have alleged a frat house atmosphere. There have also been allegations of sexual, racial and age discrimination. The report notes that one former employee claimed that his hearing had been damaged by the loud music and other sources of noise allegedly permeating the workspace.The unpaid overtime lawsuit isCase No. 8:14-cv-01843 in California Central District Court before Judge Josephine L. Staton. Legit.ng is #1 online trusted source of the latest news in Nigeria. We are covering Nigeria news, Niger delta, world updates, and Nigerian newspaper reviews. We guide our readers to the world of politics, business, energy, sports, entertainment, fashion, lifestyle and human interest stories. - Agbomhere says he hopes to probe all corrupt officials if elected Edo governor - The APC candidate says its better to be patriotic than to be comrade - He says he hopes to better the lot of the youths An aspirant for the September 10 governorship in Edo state on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Blessing Agbomhere, has vowed to probe Governor Adams Oshiomole and send him to jail, if elected governor of the state. Agbomhere, a kinsman of Oshiomole , from Fugar, Etsake Central local government area of the state, made the vow on Tuesday in Benin, while addressing on why he decided to contest in the election. "I am running, not because I am from Afemi, not because I am from Esan, not because I am from Benin, but because I am from Edo state. I am running because I am from the camp of those that have been deprived of leadership for too long, the youth." READ ALSO: APC in Edo accused of planning to impose candidate "My government will abolish corruption in Edo state. That is why the programme we have is to ensure that all our past leaders are probed. Whether they like it or not, we will ensure that whatever they have taken from Edo state, whatever they have wasted from Edo state, they will bring back. And I will start from Comrade Adams Oshiomole , the present governor of Edo state. "We will visit all the projects he has done to ascertain how much he has spent on the projects and if we see that Edo state has been sub charged, we will ensure that such monies will be refunded to the account of Edo state. "We will also visit the Airport road project. We have been getting petitions from different groups and organisations on that projects, how [the first contractor] abandoned the project and left some money unrefunded to the state. We will go into that issue to ensure that we get into the truth of it and if it is true that he did that, we will ensure that he refund with immediate effect, the money into the account of our state. We will no longer allow our state to be killed by those who put their interest ahead of the state. Commenting on genuine patriotism to the state, Agbomhere said, "I tell people I am not a comrade, I am a patriot. I don't know the meaning of comrade. In the Nigerian law, we don't know anything like comrade. What we have in Nigerian law is patriotism. So we young Nigerians should focus our intellectualism, our capacity and our capability in being patriotic to our state, not in being comrade." The governorship aspirant also berated Governor Oshiomole for "abandoning the state-owned Nigerian Observer newspapers limited but spent millions of naira elsewhere to printing government letterhead papers and other documents when he needed less than N200 million to refurbish Observer printing press." READ ALSO: Oshiomhole to divert World Bank loan for election - PDP When asked how he hope to get the nomination of his party to fly its flag at the election even while threatening to probe the incumbent government sponsored by the party, Agbomhere said the APC constitution is against corruption, and so he will probe the present government the same way President Muhammadu Buhari is currently probing the immediate past government. "We are probing because there are so many allegations of corruption against the present government and the allegations are hampering the chances of the party in the state," he said. Besides, he said he has consulted widely with delegates of the party, adding that more than 2,600 delegates are already behind him. "We believe this is our time to take over the leadership of the Edo. We have consulted with Edo people in diaspora. These young people have resolved that it is their time to take over leadership. We have what it takes to build Edo and take it to the next level. This is the time for the change Edo people have been waiting for. I am the new face of that change." The governorship aspirant promised to invest heavily in the mineral resources that abound in the state "for the development and engagement of the people of Edo state." Source: Legit.ng Javascript Error Javascript is deactivated in your browser. To use all functions on this portal, for example the login, Javascript must be activated. Please activate Javascript in your browser settings. Queensberry Real Estate and Bywater Properties Kingsway Investments (Newport) Ltd (KIN) has announced two new names for The Kingsway Centre in Newport. Eurochange and The Fragrance Shop will soon be opening their doors at The Kingsway Centre. The Kingsway Centre is anchored by Wilkinsons, B&M and... [] WEST LAFAYETTE, Ind. John Schnatter, founder and CEO of Papa John's Pizza, and former secretary of state and labor George Shultz will be featured in the Spring 2016 Presidential Lecture Series. The Presidential Lecture Series is a diverse series of lectures on policy, leadership, culture and society. The series will feature prominent experts and practitioners from various fields of interest for both the academics and the community at large. Connected with each public presentation, speakers will be integrated into relevant curricular activities on the West Lafayette campus during their visits. "From pizza to politics, these Presidential Lecture Series events will bring two well-known and highly respected leaders of business and government to campus," said Purdue President Mitch Daniels. "I'm very excited that our community will have the opportunity to hear the array of expertise and experiences that these top visionaries will share." Daniels will lead both hourlong discussions, which include an audience question-and-answer session. Both events will be free and open to the public. Purdue Convocations assists the Office of the President with the series. John Schnatter Download Photo John Schnatter, March 28, 6:30 p.m. Fowler Hall Schnatter has strong ties to Indiana. He was born in Jeffersonville and earned a bachelor's degree in business from Ball State University, delivering pizzas on campus while a student. After returning home to Jeffersonville in 1983, he started his own pizza company, knocking down a broom closet in his father's tavern, installing an oven and delivering pizzas out of the back of the bar. He believed by using fresh dough and quality ingredients, he could make the same great-tasting pizza that locally owned shops offered but didn't deliver. Papa John's is now the third-largest pizza chain in the world, with more than 4,700 restaurants in 50 states and 38 countries and territories, and a market capitalization of $2.2 billion. Schnatter was inducted into the Louisville Achievement Business Hall of Fame in 2000 and the Junior Achievement U.S. Business Hall of Fame. George Shultz Download Photo George Shultz, April 19, 6:30 p.m. Loeb Playhouse Shultz, an economist, served in President Richard M. Nixon's administration as secretary of labor from 1969-70, director of the Office of Management and Budget from 1970-72 and as treasury secretary from 1972-74. He also served in President Ronald Reagan's administration as secretary of state from 1982-89. He is one of only two individuals to serve in four U.S. Cabinet positions. The other is Elliot Richardson. Before entering government service, he was professor of economics at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Chicago, serving from 1962-69 as dean of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business. Between 1974 and 1982, he was an executive at Bechtel, becoming the firm's first president. He is the Thomas W. and Susan B. Ford Distinguished Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University. Writer: Greg McClure, 765-496-9711, gmcclure@purdue.edu Conact: Abby Eddy, Purdue Convocations director of marketing, 765-494-9712, aeeddy@purdue.edu Introduction First launched back in 2013, the Honda Amaze has been tasked with a rather Herculean effort of bringing the entry-level sedan buyers under Honda Cars Indias umbrella. The first-gen Amaze is basically a Brio with a bigger boot and a diesel engine option. Over its lifetime, it has done pretty well on the sales charts and has been successful in establishing itself as a well-sorted compact sedan that plays the perfect second-fiddle to the highly popular City C2-segmenter. Now, however, Honda is about to launch the second-generation Amaze, which has been developed from the scratch and is no more a sedan that started life as a hatchback. The second-gen Amaze looks modern, has more equipment, and even offers an automatic transmission on both petrol and diesel engines. We recently drove the car to find out all that the new compact sedan has on offer. Heres our New Honda Amaze test drive review Exterior Design The new Honda Amaze looks nothing like the model it is about to replace. The cars design is based on the companys latest design language, which means the aesthetics are somewhat similar to the ones on the latest City and the Civic. The front-end is characterized by a sleek pair of headlamps, a chrome-plated grille, a chunky bumper, and overall a rather boxy appearance. The side profile is all about some crisp lines and neat surfaces. The car is a lot more proportionate than the outgoing version, which is mostly a result of the boot not being an afterthought. The top-end variants get very stylish 15-inch alloys, which make the car look even more premium. The rear-end compliments the front-end in terms of design. Here, again, the bumper is rather chunky and gives a sporty touch to the cars posterior. And in a way, the car does look like the new Civic, or rather a mini Civic. The new Amaze is dimensionally bigger than the outgoing version. At 3,995 mm, its 5 mm longer than the car its about to replace. Also, with an overall width of 1695 mm, the car is also 15 mm wider than its predecessor. The wheelbase, at 2,470 mm, is 65 mm longer than before. However, the height has reduced by 5mm to 1500mm. Interior Design and Features Much like the exterior, even the interior of the new Amaze is all-new and looks nothing like what the first-gen Amaze offers. You get a two-tone cabin that looks very upmarket. The steering wheel is new and gets a sporty three-spoke design. The dashboard looks like it belongs to some pricier car. The larger dimensions have resulted in a more spacious interior. You get 25 mm of additional legroom at the rear. Even the shoulder room for the rear seat occupants has improved by 45 mm, while the headroom has improved by 10 mm. The boot space, at 420-litres, is 20-litres more than what the last-gen car offers. The new Honda Amaze will go on sale in four trims E, S, V and VX. The top-end trim gets many upmarket features like a 7-inch Digipad 2.0 touchscreen infotainment system. This is basically a more sophisticated version of the Digipad infotainment unit found on the WR-V, City, and BR-V. The top end VX variant will also offer Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connectivity, which will be a first for any Honda car in India. The car will also offer WiFi connectivity through its infotainment unit. The steering wheel gets audio control and you also get cruise control on the top-end trim. Other than this, you get features like an automatic climate control, rear parking sensors with camera, and keyless entry with touch sensors. Engine Specs and Performance Powering the new-gen Honda Amaze is the same set of engines that power the first-gen model. However, the new Amaze gets a CVT automatic transmission for all its variants. The petrol variants are powered by a 1.2-litre, four-cylinder, naturally-aspired iVTEC petrol engine that produces 90 PS and 110 Nm. The 1.5-litre, four-cylinder, turbocharged iDTEC diesel continues to output 100 PS and 200 Nm for the manual transmission variant. Interestingly, the motor has been de-tuned to produce only 80 PS and 160 Nm for the CVT automatic-equipped variant. The new Amaze is built on a lighter chassis, which has helped Honda shave off 17 kgs from the petrol variant and 23 kgs from the diesel version. The lower weight also plays a role in enhancing the fuel mileage. The petrol manual and CVT automatic variants offer 19.5 kmpl and 19 kmpl respectively. The diesel motor-equipped Amaze offers 27.8 kmpl and 23.8 kmpl for the manual and automatic variants respectively. The last-gen Amaze has received a lot of flak for the high NVH on the diesel variant. This time around, the company has worked extensively on reducing the diesel engine clatter by updating the design of the pistons, cylinder blocks, oil pumps and chain systems. Also, theres more sound insulation to make the cabin better insulated from the diesel clatter and vibrations. Ride and Handling Thanks to new chassis, longer wheelbase and retuned engine, driving dynamics of the new Amaze have completely changed. Both engine options are much more responsive than before. CVT option is good enough for daily driving in the city, while it also offers relaxed cruising experience on the highway. CVT option comes with Sport mode as well. CVT does the job well, and is a much needed option in this segment. Diesel CVT variant, though it offers 20 PS and 40 Nm lesser than the manual variant, it is still good enough and feels a lot powerful than many cars in the segment. Manual diesel is the variant you should opt if you are a fan of enthusiastic driving. It accelerates well, shifts easily and is good at handling. The diesel engine can cruise in the range of 90-100 kmph with the rpm mark just around 2000. Petrol engine is a rev happy machine, and is best in the mid and top range. Steering feedback could have been better. New Amaze gets front disc brakes and rear drum brakes. Though the car lacks initial bite, it does offer a good stopping power once you press the brakes hard. Suspension setup is just brilliant. No matter where you are seated in the car, you would be comfortable even while you are going through bad roads. Safety and Maintenance The new Honda Amaze is also much safer than the car it is about to replace. The new model features front dual airbags and ABS with EBD as standard across all its trims. The top-end variant gets a rear parking camera. Lower variants get rear sensors. Another very important factor that is likely to help Amaze further consolidate its position in the entry-level sedan segment is the lower cost of maintenance. The new Amaze will come with a 3-year, unlimited kilometres warranty that can be extended to the fourth or fifth year by paying extra. Also, Honda will offer annual maintenance packages for Rs 3,500 per year for the petrol variant and Rs 4,900 per year for the diesel variant. Also, even the new-gen Amaze will have a service interval of 1 year or 10,000km. All this will surely make the Amaze pretty easy to maintain. Verdict Not only the 2018 Honda Amaze is an improvement over its older version, but is a serious contender for the title of best in segment. The new generation Amaze comes with improved exteriors, spacious interiors, more features on the inside, better safety, fuel efficient engines, CVT gearbox, impressive ride quality and good driving dynamics. Honda is hoping that the new Amaze will help them chart new sales records. We are not sure what is going to stop them from achieving that. Honda Amaze Video Review Many factors go into making good wine: grape variety, harvesting practices, a vineyard's slope and aspect, soil, climate and so on--that unique combination that adds up to a wine's terroir. Year-to-year weather also matters greatly. In much of France and Switzerland, the best years are traditionally those with abundant spring rains followed by an exceptionally hot summer and late-season drought. This drives vines to put forth robust, fast-maturing fruit, and brings an early harvest. Now, a study out this week in the journal Nature Climate Change shows that warming climate has largely removed the drought factor from the centuries-old early-harvest equation. It is only the latest symptom that global warming is affecting biological systems and agriculture. Temperature is the main driver of grape-harvest timing, and in the last 30 years, progressive warming has pushed harvest dates dramatically forward across the globe, from California to Australia, South America and Europe. In France, where records go back centuries, since 1980 harvest dates have advanced two weeks over the 400-year mean. These earlier harvests have meant some very good years. But existing studies suggest that regions here and elsewhere will eventually become too hot for traditionally grown grapes. Vineyards may then have to switch to hotter-climate varieties, change long-established methods, move or go out of business. The earth is shifting, and terroirs with it. In the new study, scientists analyzed 20th and 21st-century weather data, premodern reconstructions of temperature, precipitation and soil moisture, and vineyard records and going back to 1600. They showed that in the relatively cool winemaking areas of France and Switzerland, early harvests have always required both above-average air temperatures and late-season drought. The reason, they say: in the past, droughts helped heighten temperature just enough to pass the early-harvest threshold. Basic physics is at work: normally, daily evaporation of moisture from soil cools earth's surface. If drought makes soils dryer, there will be less evaporation--and thus the surface will get hotter. The authors say that up to the 1980s, the climate was such that without the extra kick of heat added by droughts, vineyards could not get quite hot enough for an early harvest. That has now changed; the study found that since then, overall warming alone has pushed summer temperatures over the threshold without the aid of drought. On the whole, France warmed about 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 Fahrenheit) during the 20th century, and the upward climb has continued. "Now, it's become so warm thanks to climate change, grape growers don't need drought to get these very warm temperatures," said lead author Benjamin Cook, a climate scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. "After 1980, the drought signal effectively disappears. That means there's been a fundamental shift in the large-scale climate under which other, local factors operate." The regions affected include familiar names: among them, Alsace, Champagne, Burgundy, Languedoc. These areas grow Pinot Noirs, Chardonnays and other fairly cool-weather varieties that thrive within specific climate niches, and turn out exceptionally after an early harvest. Study coauthor Elizabeth Wolkovich, an ecologist at Harvard University, said that the switch has not hurt the wine industry yet. "So far, a good year is a hot year," she said. However, she pointed out that the earliest French harvest ever recorded--2003, when a deadly heat wave hit Europe and grapes were picked a full month ahead of the once-usual time -- did not produce particularly exceptional wines. "That may be a good indicator of where we're headed," she said. "If we keep pushing the heat up, vineyards can't maintain that forever." Across the world, scientists have found that each degree Centigrade (1.8 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming pushes grape harvests forward roughly six or seven days. With this effect projected to continue, a 2011 study by Lamont-Doherty climate scientist Yves Tourre suggests that a combination of natural climate variability and human-induced warming could force finicky Pinot Noir grapes completely out of many parts of Burgundy. Other reports say Bordeaux could lose its Cabernets and Merlots. A widely cited though controversial 2013 study projects that by 2050, some two-thirds of today's wine regions may no longer have climates suitable for the grapes they now grow. But other regions might beckon. Grapes no longer viable in California's Napa Valley may find suitable homes in Washington or British Columbia. Southern England may become the new Champagne; the hills of central China the new Chile. Southern Australia's big wineries may have to land further south, in Tasmania. "If people are willing to drink Italian varieties grown in France and Pinot Noir from Germany, maybe we can adapt," said Wolkovich. However, this begs the question of whether vineyards, or for that matter anything can just be picked up and moved. The earth is increasingly crowded with agriculture and infrastructure, and land may or may not be available for wine grapes. If it is, the soils, slopes and other exact conditions of old vineyards would be difficult or impossible duplicate. And, grape harvests are only one of many biological cycles already being affected by warming climate, with uncertain results. Many insects, plants, and marine creatures are rapidly shifting their ranges poleward. No one yet knows whether many species or entire ecosystems can survive such rapid changes, and the same almost certainly goes for wine grapes. Liz Thach, a professor of management and wine business at Sonoma State University, said the study is telling growers what they already know. "Some people may still be skeptical about global warming, but not anyone in the wine industry," she said. "Everyone believes it, because everyone sees it year by year--it's here, it's real, it's not going away." Large-scale changes to agricultural practices will be required to meet the goal of reducing levels of algae-promoting phosphorus in Lake Erie by 40 percent, a new University of Michigan-led, multi-institution computer modeling study concludes. Last month, the U.S. and Canadian governments called for a 40-percent reduction, from 2008 levels, in phosphorus runoff from farms and other sources into Lake Erie. The nutrient feeds an oxygen-depleted "dead zone" in the lake and toxin-producing algal blooms, including a 2014 event that contaminated the drinking water of more than 400,000 people near Toledo for two days. The main driver of the harmful algal blooms is elevated phosphorus from watersheds draining to Lake Erie's western basin, particularly from the heavily agricultural Maumee River watershed. About 85 percent of the phosphorus entering Lake Erie from the Maumee River comes from farm fertilizers and manure. The new study, which integrates results from six modeling teams, was released today by the U-M Water Center. It concludes that meeting the 40-percent reduction target will require widespread use of strong fertilizer-management practices, significant conversion of cropland to grassland and more targeted conservation efforts. "Our results suggest that for most of the scenarios we tested, it will not be possible to achieve the new target nutrient loads without very significant, large-scale implementation of these agricultural practices," said U-M aquatic ecologist Don Scavia, lead author of the new study and director of the Graham Sustainability Institute, which oversees the Water Center. "It appears that traditional voluntary, incentive-based conservation programs would have to be implemented at an unprecedented scale or are simply not sufficient to reach these environmental goals, and that new complementary policies and programs are needed." The researchers developed a list of potentially effective cropland management practices after consulting with agricultural and environmental experts. They examined various options for fertilizer application, tillage operations, crop rotations and land conversion. advertisement Various management options were combined to create 12 scenarios that were each tested using six computer models. The watershed models tested the ability of each scenario to achieve the proposed 40 percent phosphorus-reduction target. The scenarios examine both the total amount of phosphorus, known as TP, and the amount of dissolved reactive phosphorus (DRP), the form of the nutrient that is most stimulating to algae. "The most promising scenarios included widespread use of nutrient management practices -- especially subsurface application of phosphorus-based fertilizers -- along with substantial conversion of cropland to grassland and extensive use of buffer strips," said study co-author Jay Martin of Ohio State University. Even so, the researchers determined that seven of the 12 cropland-management scenarios would not meet the goal of a 40-percent reduction in total phosphorus entering western Lake Erie from the Maumee River watershed. One of the five scenarios capable of reaching the TP target (Scenario 6) requires taking nearly 30,000 acres of cropland out of production and putting more than 1.5 million acres under stringent conservation practices. Because the average size of a farm in the Maumee River watershed is 235 acres, this is equivalent to impacting more than 6,300 farms. One of the scenarios (Scenario 2) that reach the target for dissolved reactive phosphorus requires enhanced nutrient management on all 3.1 million acres of row-crop fields in the watershed, which equates to impacting roughly 13,000 farms. advertisement "While there may be a temptation to select one model based on 'superior performance,' there is no one way to evaluate model performance. Instead, we chose to use multiple models because together they represent the range of reasonable representations of the real world," said study co-author Margaret Kalcic, one of the U-M Water Center's lead modelers. "Research like this is valuable to help inform on-the-ground conservation efforts, such as the 4R Nutrient Stewardship Program currently underway in Ohio. We will only solve this problem with the right mix of land and water management practices, deployed in the right place and amount," said study co-author Scott Sowa of The Nature Conservancy. Meeting phosphorus-reduction targets has proved difficult elsewhere in the United States. Specific goals for reducing the size of the Gulf of Mexico's oxygen-starved "dead zone" have existed for 15 years, but almost no progress has been made. And water-quality improvement goals for the Chesapeake Bay were in place for decades before some limited progress was made. The new Lake Erie report is titled "Informing Lake Erie agriculture nutrient management via scenario evaluation," and can be found at: http://graham.umich.edu/water/project/erie-western-basin It's not every day a hulking timber wolf asks for - well, demands, really - a belly rub. Unless, of course, you happen to work at the Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center, where a certain glutton for belly rubs wouldn't have it any other way. This browser does not support the video tag. Facebook/Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center While staff members were cleaning the pens earlier this month, Na'vi, a 6-year-old timber wolf, made his customary demands - nice and hard around the sides of the belly and don't bother with the chest. Seriously, please don't bother with the chest. In fact, every time Casey Hampf, a staffer at the sanctuary, allowed her hands to wander to the wolf's upper body, she received a firm correction from Na'vi's paw. Dodo Shows Odd Couples Dog And Wild Dolphin Play Whenever They See Each Other This browser does not support the video tag. Facebook/Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center Just the belly please. "We try to encourage all our staff members to interact with our wolves, especially during cleaning time," Hampf tells The Dodo. "The wolves really love human interaction. They love that kind of connection." "Especially Na'vi. He loves belly rubs," she says. "He will do it standing up on his den. Or he'll get on his back and flip over." Just nothing fancy. "He'll tell you what he wants," Hampf adds. "If he wants a belly rub, he'll be like 'Nope, you can't pet me anywhere else but my belly.'" Seriously. This browser does not support the video tag. Facebook/Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center The Colorado Wolf and Wildlife Center was founded by Darlene Kobobel in 1993 after she adopted a wolf-dog hybrid named Chinook, who was on the verge of being euthanized. Since then, the sanctuary has become a vital refuge for scores of timber wolves, also known as gray wolves. Once found across the country, gray wolves are fast fading from the American landscape, thanks to widespread hunting and habitat encroachment. What was once a population totaling nearly half a million is at around 5,000 today. Peter Albrink, left, Hannah Yelland, Caroline Bootle Pendergast and Emily Landham in Moment at Studio Theatre. (Igor Dmitry) The acting in Deirdre Kinahans Moment at Studio Theatre is so sharp its like seeing a play in a live equivalent of high-def. The drama revolves around a criminal incident that blew a family apart years ago; Moment captures a brief encounter as they fleetingly reunite in their mothers suburban kitchen. The secret that the audience slowly learns is well-known to all of the characters, and it involves Nial, the prodigal brother whos now an acclaimed painter and is just passing through. Nials reemergence practically knocks his sister Niamh sideways, although it takes her a while to say exactly why. Withholding the family history from the audience is only moderately successful at generating suspense; its no spoiler to say that Nial did something dreadful and Niamh hasnt forgiven him. Kinahans strength here isnt originality of plot, nor is it a plays striking insight about how a traumatized family communicates (or fails to, despite the episodes of lashing out and the calmer moments of quiet advice). Yet Kinahan writes with such exactitude about her characters that Moment is an effectively watchable, playable play. Director Ethan McSweeny, better known in Washington for his bigger shows with the Shakespeare Theatre Company, handles Moment with a delicate touch in Studios coziest venue, the Milton Theatre. The result is acting that never hits a wrong note and is as absorbingly detailed as designer Debra Booths humble and functional-looking kitchen set. The evenings heat comes from Emily Landhams resentment as Niamh, who works in a local publishing house and enters with a hopeful beau named Fin trailing her (a wonky and solicitous Avery Clark). Landham never overplays the characters tension, even when Niamh rebuffs not only Peter Albrinks brooding Nial, but also his unexpected new English wife, Ruth. As Ruth, Hannah Yelland is superb as the outsider trying to charm her way in, and she and Albrink who creates a nuanced portrait of a damaged man trying to move on have a lovely fragile rapport. Caroline Bootle Pendergast and Ciaran Byrne supply spirited turns as the good-time couple Ciara (sister of Niamh and Nial) and her husband, the simple-spirited Dave. The bustle and banter around the family table couldnt have a more everyday texture as Kinahans dialogue begins to overlap, as tea and wine are poured, and as frictions finally catch fire. Peter Albrink (Nial), Hannah Yelland (Ruth), Avery Clark (Fin), Caroline Bootle Pendergast (Ciara), Dearbhla Molloy (Teresa) and Ciaran Byrne (Dave) in Deirdre Kinahans Moment. (Igor Dmitry) The most profound instance of vanishing inside a character is Dearbhla Molloys utterly natural performance as Teresa, the addled matriarch of the clan. Molloys credentials are impressive Tony nomination for Dancing at Lughnasa, associate artist at Dublins famed Abbey Theatre, a member of the excellent Druid ensemble that brought Martin McDonaghs The Cripple of Inishmaan to the Kennedy Center a few years ago. There is nothing flashy about Teresa, yet Molloy is subtly, authoritatively gripping. The believability is absolute as this long-suffering mother waves away attention yet fusses to keep her almost disintegrated family together just for an afternoon. Intriguingly in this season of womens playwriting voices, Kinahan is the first female Irish dramatist that Studio has produced, and next month, Kinahans new Wild Sky will be staged by Solas Nua in private residences downtown. Kinahan seems to be a keen observer, and the actors certainly make the most of Moments slow, steady fuse. Moment by Deirdre Kinahan. Directed by Ethan McSweeny. Set design, Debra Booth; costumes, Philip Witcomb; lights, Scott Bolman; sound design, Palmer Hefferan. With Mira Cohen. About two hours. Tickets: $54-$91. Call 202-332-3300 or visit studiotheatre.org. Dear Readers: Today is World Water Day. Its celebrated every year on March 22, regardless of what day of the week. Organized by the United Nations, it is a day to celebrate water. A simple statement, but without fresh, clean water, people cannot live. How are crops watered? What about food preparation? There are millions and millions of people around the world who do not have access (or easy access) to clean water. They may walk miles and have to carry a bucket just to get water to consume. You turn on a tap; they walk miles! You flush the toilet; they dont have one! You brush your teeth; they dont have a sink! Every year is themed, and this years theme is Water and Jobs. If you are interested in donating your time or money, go to Unwater.org for more information. Use #WorldWaterDay to join the conversation on social media! P.S.: Dont let this be just for today please study, learn and help out. Dear Heloise: One of our TV cables kept going out. After figuring out which one and purchasing a new one, it was time to disconnect the old cord and reconnect the new. My husband was so smart; I thought I would share his hint. He took the old cable and disconnected it at one end, plugged in the new cable, took a twist-tie and tied the two cables together (old and new). He then had me pull the old cord, still plugged in on my end, toward me, bringing the opposite end of the new cord with it. I disconnected the old cord and placed the new cord in the proper plug. Quick and easy! Melissa W., via email Dear Heloise: We order takeout food at work. The cardboard lid on my takeout container had completely fallen in and could not be used again. I used a paper plate, turned it upside down, and it fit the round container perfectly. I had a way to safely bring my food home. Lydia W., via email Dear Heloise: I found the perfect way to keep nail polish from sticking to the bottle: After you remove the nail polish and paint your nails, wipe the top of the bottle off with a nail-polish remover cotton ball. Carol F., West Jefferson, Ohio Carol F.: Nailed it! I forget to do this sometimes (yes, I do my own manicures), and over time the cap gets stuck! Dear Heloise: I am an avid reader. To remember what books I have read and what they are about, I keep a composition book and write a short synopsis. When I look at that, the whole story comes back to mind. I make a copy of the books by authors I particularly like and highlight the ones I have read. I take it to the library with me. Judy B. in West Virginia Heloises column appears six days a week at washingtonpost.com/advice. Send a hint to Heloise , P.O. Box 795000, San Antonio, Tex. 78279-5000, or email it to Heloise@Heloise.com. Rob Scott lashed out at an unknown man he heard make an unkind comment about his sons Down syndrome, and the resulting video went viral. (ABCNews.com/via YouTube) When Megan Harris decided to vent her frustration on Facebook, she had no idea where it would go. She just knew she was bothered by a saleswoman who she felt had insulted her teen daughter. You entered and told my daughter she needed to wear SPANX if she wanted to wear this dress, Harris wrote in her post, addressing the nameless sales associate from a Dillards department store in Kansas. I wish I had told you how many girls suffer from poor self image and telling them they need something to make them perfect can be very damaging. Can you guess what happened next? The post was shared by dozens of her friends, then hundreds of other people and ultimately nearly 100,000 Facebook users. In a matter of days, Harris and her daughter, Lexi, went viral and so did that anonymous Dillards saleswoman. For as long as its been around, the Internet has given us a forum to rage at whoever is offending us: Osama bin Laden, Anne Hathaway, Martin Shkreli, Donald Trump, Jonathan Franzen, Nickelback, that dentist who shot a lion, that publicist who made a bad joke about AIDS on Twitter. And although the targets of our ire have been getting smaller and less famous like the Indiana pizza shop owners whose vow to never cater a gay wedding triggered crank calls and boycott threats from across the country todays most viral villains are often virtual nobodies. Thanks to social media, we can publicly scold the commuter who cut us off in traffic, enlighten the ignorant customer who sniped at us in the checkout line, pillory the neighbor who made a cruel remark. These are the latest targets of those impassioned open letters filling up Facebook. Frequently, they decry acts that are perhaps less criminal than simply unkind. But they spring to life as everyday parables dramatic enough to be compelling but ordinary enough to be relatable and they come with a share button, so: click. Megan Harris posted an open letter to a Dillard's saleswoman whom she felt had insulted her daughter. The reaction went viral on Facebook. (Facebook/Courtesy of Megan Naramore Harris) There was the anonymous man who made an ignorant remark about a child with Down syndrome; his father, Rob Scott, of Nova Scotia, posted a tearful video in response that went viral. There was the unknown truck driver who heckled British jogger Lindsey Swift about her weight; her biting open letter (Engage your brain before opening your mouth) was shared on Facebook thousands of times and landed her on the cover of a running magazine. There was the unidentified neighbor who reportedly told a transgender Girl Scout that nobody wants to buy cookies from a boy in a dress. After the scouts foster mother wrote about the encounter, the story took off across social media and ended up raising thousands of dollars in cookie sales. We may never know the name of Megan Harriss mouthy saleswoman, but at least in this case, she was identified by her employer an upscale department store chain concentrated in the heartland. It didnt take long for Dillards to feel the sting. An executive from the chain called Harris to apologize and said the sales associate was understandably mortified. The Harrises, meanwhile, were swamped with thousands of encouraging messages from strangers and interviewed on TV; Lexi was even invited to be a model in a photo shoot for a prom dress vendor. Other stories are vaguer, though all those anonymous everyday villains and some have been called into question. Maybe you remember the waitress from a Red Lobster in Tennessee who posted on Facebook a receipt from a customer who seemingly left a racist message and no tip? It went viral, but then the customer stepped forward with a handwriting analyst to attest that it was not his penmanship and promptly sued the seafood chain and the server. Or you might recall the Long Island mother who supposedly declined her kids invitation to a birthday party hosted by two gay dads via a particularly nasty note: I do not believe in what you do and will not subject my innocent son to your lifestyle. Outraged social-media users shared a photo of the note far and wide but it turned out there was no birthday party, no mean mom, just an entire story fabricated by two radio DJs, who were promptly suspended. Even with non-hoaxes, theres typically no way to discern the full set of facts or get the other side of the story. Consider the nameless man who snarled the evening rush hour by pulling the emergency lever to exit a Metro train. He briefly held Public Enemy No. 1 status in D.C. Twitter circles until fellow commuters revealed he had good reason to panic: Not because he had missed his stop but because his young child had been accidentally left behind on the platform. Still, a clear lack of certainty about these stories doesnt stop people from eagerly jumping on the bandwagon. Why? Studies have shown that as social media bombards us with emotional stimuli, we are drawn in particular to messages or posts that convey anger more so than those expressing sadness, fear, joy or disgust. A message like Harriss appeals because people want to offer support but also because of its personal resonance, researchers say. Maybe sharing it makes you feel better about the times you were hurt and didnt do anything, says Ryan Martin, an anger researcher and psychology professor at the University of Wisconsin at Green Bay. Of the thousands and thousands of messages Harris received after she posted her letter, many were deeply personal: One woman shared that her own mother had called her fat and she wished someone had told her it was okay to be a size 12. Girls wrote to say that they used to cut themselves because theyd hated their teenage bodies. One mother wrote about her son, who committed suicide after a painful struggle with body dysmorphia. We were shocked, Harris says. This was a huge thing for so many people. It probably helped that Harriss post featured a nameless perpetrator, Martin says giving cover to Facebook followers whod feel uncomfortable heaping criticism on an identifiable person. And then theres the opportunity to showcase your praiseworthy morality. Its a display to ones Facebook friends to show your altruistic tendencies, what a kind person you are because you noted this, says Charlotte Blease, a cognitive scientist at the University of Leeds. Even in the digital realm, our behavior is still governed by the same primal instincts that guided our ancient forebears, Blease says. Members of ancestral tribes were hard-wired to focus on the most attractive, the strongest, the most powerful among them because mimicking their behavior aided survival. In modern Internet culture, she says, this mostly means that we spend too much time retweeting Kim Kardashian. But Blease argues that some viral morality tales have actual value. Whats interesting in [Harriss] case is shes using the power of the Internet to stigmatize the stigmatizer, Blease says. Imagine if we lived in a really introspective society where people were constantly reflecting on their behavior? Martin adds. It could be a real teaching moment. Thats all Harris wanted from her post, she says. She never wanted the sales associate to lose her job or be punished. It was intended to empower my child, she says, and to make people, not just that particular lady, think about how we speak, especially to our children. Robert Simon sits with his bronze likeness at Lake Anne in Reston, the Virginia town he founded. Simon died in September 2015. (By Melina Mara/The Washington Post) Theres nothing new in Reston, Robert E. Simon used to say, which is a bit of a surprise, given that it was Simon who conjured the pioneering planned community out of his imagination and 7,000 acres of Fairfax County, Va., countryside and named it after himself. But Rebekah Wingert-Jabi says thats how Simon felt. Shes the director of a new documentary, Another Way of Living: The Story of Reston, VA, screening Thursday at the D.C. Environmental Film Festival. It drove him crazy to hear the term New Urbanism, Rebekah, 42, told me as we sat in a coffee shop in Reston Town Center. [Hed say:] Theres nothing new about it. Weve had these great downtowns throughout America. Simons family owned Carnegie Hall. After selling the New York City landmark, he chose to invest in a suburban community that wouldnt look like a cookie-cutter Levittown. He was inspired by the Italian hill towns hed visited in the 1930s after graduating from Harvard. Key elements were what today wed call mixed use residences, businesses and cultural amenities close together and the belief that a true community was more than a mere collection of houses. Reston was to have a communal mind-set that emphasized racial and financial inclusiveness. It was also to be a place where people could grow old. Rebekah Wingert-Jabi is the director of the documentary Another Way of Living: The Story of Reston, VA. She spent her early childhood in Reston. (By John Kelly, The Washington Post) [From 1984: Time Hedges Billion-Dollar Bet at Reston] Rebekah was in a good position to make the film. Her family moved to Reston in 1973 when she was 3 days old. My parents were very active in the civil rights movement, she said. They were part of a group in Philadelphia working and thinking about liberation theology. The whole group wanted to move to Reston to make a film about how Americans would react if Jesus came to the United States in the late 20th century. That movie never panned out, but Rebekahs family embraced the new town. Her mother was a social worker and then became active in the Reston Association. Her father worked for the Federal Emergency Management Agency. Rebekahs documentary does a good job of underscoring how weird many Virginians thought Reston would be. They anticipated rightly that the community would draw liberals into a relatively conservative area. Dont forget that when Reston was founded, in 1964, interracial marriage was still against the law in Virginia. The [Reston] sales people talked about how other salespeople in the area would basically sell against Reston, because of its identity as an open community, Rebekah said. A common sales pitch for developments around Reston, she said, would be: You dont know who your neighbor is in Reston. Here, you know exactly who your neighbor is. Restonians were called communists, Rebekah said. Such attitudes tended to bring Restonians together. I think there was a sense that, Yeah, were in an island in a way, but also there was a pride in that, she said. Of course, Kumbaya can take you only so far. Despite its utopian visions, marriages still ended in Reston, crime still accrued, teenagers still suffered from depression. There is reality here, Rebekah said. Even though it is suburbia, even though it is a planned community, it doesnt eliminate human reality. That was almost reassuring to me, to consciously confront that. I am organic still. I may feel like Tupperware sometimes, but Im actually organic. Robert Simon is the films central character. He was eventually pushed out of the project by investor Gulf Oil, but the developments new owners kept pretty close to his master plan. And when Simon moved into a Reston high-rise in 1993, he was welcomed back as a visionary. Todays Washingtonians cant talk to the man who designed the capital city, Pierre LEnfant, but until his death in September at 101, Restonians could chat with Simon during his daily ambles around Lake Anne. When Rebekah was a teenager, her family moved to Oakton, Va., for what sounds like a very un-Restonian reason: so she could have a horse. (I found it very depressing there, she said. ) As an adult, she lived and worked on the West Bank, and her earlier films include one about unlikely allies in an East Jerusalem neighborhood. Now shes back in Reston with her family, including 4-year-old daughter Hannah. Shes starting to live the Reston experience, Rebekah said. That includes visiting Lake Anne, taking art classes and playing in the Town Center fountain. What I hope to tell her when shes growing up is that we live in a place that has a history. I think that for me and my life, thats been really important. Twitter: @johnkelly Another Way of Living: The Story of Reston, VA, screens at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at the National Building Museum as part of the D.C. Environmental Film Festival. The show is sold-out but there is walk in-registration based on availability. Tickets are $12. For information, visit dceff.org. For previous columns, visit washingtonpost.com/johnkelly. Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump met with GOP leaders and surveyed the progress made on his new luxury hotel under construction in downtown Washington on Tuesday. (WUSA9) Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump met with GOP leaders and surveyed the progress made on his new luxury hotel under construction in downtown Washington on Tuesday. (WUSA9) If Donald Trump ever leads a tour of the White House, Jackie Kennedy-style, it might go something like this: Its going to be fantastic, the billionaire said Monday, standing amid piles of lumber and squinting up at the facade of the Old Post Office Pavilion in downtown Washington. That window is from 1880. Hard to believe, right? For the most part, we were able to use the same glass, because its special glass. It has a kind of patina. In a surreal break from a jam-packed day of political events, the GOP presidential front-runner paused his campaign a few blocks from the White House he hopes to occupy in order to show off the patch of Pennsylvania Avenue he is remaking: his $200 million conversion of this aged federal icon into a luxury Trump hotel. Sorry, not just luxury. Super luxury, and its going to be amazing, Trump said to a group of reporters crowded into the buildings freezing atrium, still draped in plywood and plastic sheeting. Thats a brand new floor; in about a week it gets covered with marble, beautiful marble from different parts of the world. Squeezed among a morning meeting with Republican lawmakers, an hour-long interview with The Washington Posts editorial board and an evening speech to a pro-Israel conference, Candidate Trump briefly reverted to Salesman Trump and spent more than an hour pointing out details of the Romanesque Revival edifice that will soon be the Trump International Hotel. [Trump to turn Old Post Office into luxury hotel] The exterior of the building is granite, some of it four- or five-feet thick, Trump said, as reporters chaffed to ask about Israel and immigration. He promised close to 300 super luxury rooms in one of the truly great hotels in the world, where rates for the most basic rooms will start at $795 a night. He seemed to equate his hotel with a national monument. As people who love this country, I think youre going to be very proud of this, said Trump, who was flanked by a construction worker in a hard hat, a chef in kitchen whites and assorted suited executives. Outside, a crowd of about 50 had gathered under a billboard-size sign that has marked the construction site for months. It reads: Coming 2016 TRUMP. Some cheered as his motorcade drove to a side entrance and they caught a glimpse of the mogul waving from behind a tinted window. One vendor sold Trump buttons. About a dozen protesters, most from the activist group Code Pink, called out Trump has got to go and Stop the violence, stop the hate. D.C. police officers pushed them back onto the sidewalk after they stepped into the street. No arrests were made. About a dozen protesters, most from the activist group Code Pink, demonstrate outside the Old Post Office Pavilion in downtown Washington, where Donald Trump spoke Monday about his renovation of the building into a hotel and shopping complex. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post) He is playing people for real suckers just like Hitler did scapegoating minorities, said 68-year-old protester David Barrows before donning a suit of cash and an oversize caricature Trump head. If Trump wins the presidency, he would arguably be the first builder to occupy the White House since architect Thomas Jefferson brought his Palladian vision to the Federal City. But, judging by the high points of the Post Office walk-through, Trumps vision is less neoclassical than neo-classy. We are going to have the largest suites in Washington, he said, as he led the scrambling scrum of reporters out a side door, through a crowded alley where a construction lift was parked and through the skeleton of bare 2-by-4s that will soon be one of the biggest ballrooms in Washington . . . and by far the most luxurious. Trumps Secret Service detail hustled, unsuccessfully, to keep a perimeter around the candidate as he dragged journalists through the cluttered construction site. Cameramen elbowed and women in high heels struggled with plywood and potholes. God . . . there goes my coat, said one after catching her garment on the edge of an aluminum 2-by-4. Asked during a pause in the parade what kind of changes a President Trump might make to the White House, he would only say: Id leave it the way it is. District leaders were euphoric in 2013 when Trump signed a 60-year lease on the hulking 19th-century edifice that had deteriorated into a grimy food court that sporadically hosted middle-school tour groups. His promise to convert the building into a world-class hotel and shopping complex was seen as key to rejuvenating the Pennsylvania Avenue corridor. But Trumps explosive, divisive presidential campaign has tempered that enthusiasm in a city that is largely African American, internationally diverse and overwhelmingly Democratic. Council member Charles Allen (D-Ward 6) asked city officials to remove the outsize Trump sign from the site as inappropriate political advertising. [Take down the Trump sign, Allen says] Last summer, Washington celebrity chef Jose Andres pulled out of the project, saying he couldnt open a restaurant in the hotel after Trump disparaged Mexican immigrants as criminals, drug dealers and rapists. [Jose Andres backs out of Trump hotel deal] Trump hit Andress company, ThinkFoodGroup, with a $10 million lawsuit for breach of contract. The chef responded with an $8 million countersuit, asserting that it was Trumps anti-Hispanic blasts that ruined the business prospects for a Spanish restaurant. When asked during the tour what impact Andress departure would have on the project, Trump shook his head dismissively. We have a phenomenal replacement, he said. In September, Trumps company announced that BLT Prime, a sister company to BLT Steaks, would operate a signature restaurant in the hotel. [BLT Prime signs onto the new Trump Hotel] But some local leaders remain delighted with Trumps ability to saw through the bureaucratic logjam that had stalled renovation of the Old Post Office for years. The General Services Administration, National Park Service and various historic preservation boards have jurisdiction over the property. [How the Trumps won the Old Post Office] Although his contract calls for the hotel to open by 2018, Trump said Monday he expects to swing the doors wide in September, two months before the election. I would say the GSA and the Park Service move at a glacial pace, but that would suggest some movement at all, said D.C. Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2). They move at no pace. If he indeed delivers this on time and under budget, thats quite an achievement. Evans, a supporter of Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, said there could be some advantages to physical Washington should Trump take over the government. The sale of the Federal Bureau of Investigation headquarters on Pennsylvania Avenue and its relocation is another of many federal real estate projects that could use a jolt, he said. I sit in some of these meetings and just want to scream, Evans said. Maybe he would actually have the wherewithal to get some of these things done. Fenit Nirappil contributed to this report. Authorities said theyve found another dead eagle in Delaware, bringing the number of dead birds found there to five. The fifth dead eagle was found Sunday about a mile away from where four others were found the day before near Dagsboro, Del. Several eagles were also found alive but disoriented in a farm field in Sussex County, Del. Some of the eagles were being cared for by a rescue group in that area, but a few flew away before they could be captured. [Four bald eagle deaths reported over the weekend in southern Delaware] It is not immediately known what killed the eagles or may have affected the others. Delaware Natural Resources police along with the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service are investigating. Catherine Hibbard, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, said in a statement Tuesday that a law enforcement officer was on the scene in Delaware to collect evidence. That evidence, she said, would be sent for testing to a federal forensics lab in Oregon. Officials hoped to have preliminary results in the next few days as to the cause of death. The deaths come after 13 bald eagles were found dead last month near a farm on Marylands Eastern Shore. That case is also under investigation by the federal wildlife service and under review at its Oregon lab. It is believed those eagles found in Federalsburg, Md., may have been poisoned. A $30,000 reward is being offered for information leading to a conviction. [Federal officials focus on human causes in death of 13 bald eagles in Md.] Dagsboro, Del., is roughly 30 miles southeast of Federalsburg. Federal wildlife officials have said they do not believe the two cases of bald eagles are related at this point, but they noted that it could change based on the investigation, Hibbard said. Martin Weil contributed to this report. A black bear, similar to this one, and a cub were spotted in Vienna over the weekend. (Courtesy of Fairfax County Police) Authorities in Fairfax County said a black bear and cub were spotted Sunday in the Vienna area and the pair hung around for about an hour. The bears were seen around 7 p.m. by an area resident in the 1500 block of Windstone Drive. The area where the bears were seen is near Difficult Run Stream Valley Park and Wolftrap Stream Valley Park. Police said that the bears posed no problems or issues. It isnt the first time black bears have been spotted in the area. [Two black bear sightings in McLean area] Given that it is spring, officials said, this is often the time when bears come out from their winter dens with cubs in tow. There usually are more sightings between mid-March and early May in Virginia. Usually, bears are out looking for food in residential areas and wont bother humans. But remember, officials said, mother bears are protective over their cubs. If a bear huffs or woofs, clacks its teeth, growls, or slaps the ground look out, officials said in a statement. Thats a warning from the bear to move away because you are too close. They warned area residents that if encountered, bears and their cubs should not be approached. If a mama bear senses danger, she will usually send her cubs up a tree and leave the area, according to authorities. Then when it is dark and no one is around shell come back to get her cubs. Officials gave several tips on how to deal with black bears by basically avoiding meeting one, including keeping trash bins in a garage or shed. And most important, if you see one give it space. Dont go near it. Demonstrators protest outside of the Verizon Center in Washington, Monday, March 21, 2016, where Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump is scheduled to speak at 2016 the AIPAC Policy Conference. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana) (Jose Luis Magana/AP) The protests greeting Donald Trump as he toured across Washington on Monday were low-key compared with the raucus and disruptive interruptions at other recent rallies held by the GOP presidential front-runner. A little more than a dozen protesters showed up at the Old Post Office Pavillion on Pennsylvania Avenue NW, where Trump gave reporters a tour of his future luxury hotel in the afternoon. They were outnumbered by supporters and tourists who hoped to catch a glimpse of the Manhattan billionaire. By early evening, about 200 people crowded around Verizon Center as Trump addressed a gathering of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, where a large-scale walk-out did not materialize as some activists predicted. Neither event was open to the public, leaving protesters to voice their frustrations from the streets. [Whirlwind day for Trump showcases his shifting and unorthodox views] He is playing people for real suckers, said 68-year-old protester David Barrows, who appeared at both locations and was donning a Trump caricature costume that featured an oversize head and suit made of fake cash. One protester, Ariel Gold, was arrested for crossing a police line at 7th and F streets NW that barred the entrance to Verizon Center, said a D.C. police spokesman, Officer Hugh Carew. Medea Benjamin, an organizer for the activist group Code Pink, says Gold was part of a group holding a peaceful sit-in by the barricade. Also outside Verizon Center, Lori Bernstein held up a sign saying Jews Against Trump Because Weve Seen This Before. The 57-year-old scientist says she doesnt take Holocaust comparisons lightly because her grandparents home was ransacked during Kristallnacht, the Nazi pogrom throughout Germany and Austria in 1938. Bernstein said Trumps comments about Mexicans, combined with the fact that he appears to accept and condone violence against protesters, is reminiscent of the situation in Germany generations ago. Its too early to say for sure, said Bernstein, a Montgomery Village resident. But this is the lens I see the world through. Whats unfolding is a progression thats very worrisome for me. Police blocked off a portion of 7th Street, keeping protesters concentrated across the entrance of the Gallery Place Metro station. Three elementary-school-age children were among those shouting Never Trump. [Inside the media petting zoo for Trumps visit to Washington] Confrontations between Trump supporters and critics were minimal, although some passersby called protesters idiots under their breath. Greg Ratta, 63, said the Trump protest was the first demonstration he has attended since the 1960s. I couldnt keep silent any longer because the tone of this election cycle is embarrassing, said the Fairfax County engineer, who held a sign saying, Tolerance makes America great. Rebecca Helgerson, a 34-year-old teacher who brought along her toddler daughter to the protest, expressed disappointment that more Washington-area Democrats didnt take Trumps rise seriously enough to protest. People seem to still think hes a joke and dont believe he could come back to Washington as the president, Helgerson said. First-year teacher Erin McManamon listens to instructor Casandra Pedroza during a Teach for America classroom management training session in Philadelphia. Teach for America preps its teachers in a five-week summer boot camp before sending them to some of the toughest schools in the country. (Ricky Carioti/The Washington Post) Teach for America, the nonprofit known for placing idealistic and inexperienced teachers in some of the nations neediest schools, is cutting 15 percent of its national staff in what the organization described as an effort to give more independence to its more than 50 regional offices around the country. The organization will cut 250 jobs and add 100 new ones, making for a net loss of 150 jobs. Our regions will have more autonomy to adapt and innovate on our program in ways that meet the unique and varied contexts in which we work, Teach for America CEO Elisa Villanueva Beard wrote in a letter to TFA corps members and alumni. Our center will become leaner and more nimble, oriented toward learning from the real progress we see in classrooms, schools, and communities in order to accelerate change across our entire network. The cuts were first reported by Diane Ravitch, a frequent critic of Teach for America, on her blog, and were confirmed by Teach for America. Among the positions cut is the organizations chief diversity officer, a move that came as something of a surprise. TFA created the role just over a year ago and the organization has a stated commitment to and has had success with increasing diversity among its corps members. Villanueva Beard said that a diversity officers work should be the work of every employee. The role that race, class and privilege plays in our work, this is not the responsibility of one central team, she said in an interview Monday. Villanueva Beard announced the broad strokes of the reorganization just weeks after TFA celebrated its 25th anniversary with a summit in Washington that drew more than 15,000 current corps members and alumni. An evening gala at the summit featured a congratulatory video message recorded by President Obama, in which he listed the many ways in which TFAs 50,000 alumni exercise influence, from continuing in the classroom as teachers to starting their own schools to running for political office. But TFA has also become a lightning rod for critics who say that the organization contributes to teacher turnover and instability in high-poverty schools. This year, Teach for America failed to hit recruiting targets for the third consecutive year; its leaders have attributed the recruitment troubles to the same dynamics that are driving teacher shortages in communities nationwide. Villanueva Beard said she has never been more optimistic about the organizations future. The retooling means that the national staff will be less focused on managing growth and more focused on helping regional offices learn from one anothers successes and missteps. We went through a massive growth phase that has given us the strength of the size and scale and diversity of our community, she said. Its us asking, how do we leverage that? Were in a different phase of our organizational life. Since Villanueva Beards initial announcement, some positions have been eliminated and other staff members have chosen to leave, according to one TFA staff member who asked for anonymity in order to speak candidly about the organizations internal workings. Many are planning to depart on April 15. The downsizing comes after a previous round of reductions in which TFAs national staff shrank by more than 200 positions. The two shake-ups will leave Teach for America with approximately 930 national staff members in fiscal year 2017, 410 fewer than it employed in fiscal year 2015, according to the organization. Its a staffing level that the organization expects will be sustainable even if there are fluctuations in the number of new corps members it is able to recruit. THE DISTRICT Woman dies after stabbing in Southeast A young woman who was stabbed Tuesday morning at a bus stop in the Southeast Washington neighborhood of Benning Terrace died in the afternoon, according to D.C. police. The womans name was not immediately made public because her relatives needed to be notified. Police said they have a juvenile female in custody, although charges had not been filed as of Tuesday afternoon. The stabbing occurred about 9:30 a.m. on Benning Road between F and G streets SE. Police said they are asking any witnesses to come forward to help detectives. Man sentenced over false threats to Metro A federal judge on Tuesday sentenced a serial hoaxster to 21 months in prison and mental health treatment after his release for making false terrorist and other threats against the Metro transit system. Jerez Nehemiah Stone-Coleman, 21, a.k.a. Kidd Cole, pleaded guilty Dec. 18 to one count of making threats involving explosive materials in a plea deal after admitting to making 13 terrorist-related threats among what prosecutors said were more than 300 calls to 911 over a six-month period before his May 27 arrest. Prosecutors with the U.S. Attorneys Office of the District sought a 24-month sentence from U.S. District Judge Amit P. Mehta. Stone-Colemans defense requested a sentence of time served since his arrest, or about 10 months, with mental health treatment. The judge expressed sympathy, asking to be notified once Stone-Coleman completes his sentence, saying, I want to do my best to ensure you transition successfully to the community and overall. Report of rape at Howard investigated D.C. and Howard University police are investigating a report that a female student was raped by a classmate last month in a campus residence hall, according to law enforcement authorities. Police said the woman told detectives that the attack occurred Feb. 8 in College Hall South. Police said the woman reported the incident Feb. 29. No arrest has been made, and D.C. police said the investigation remains active. Howard University students on Tuesday protested on the universitys Northwest Washington campus after the woman publicized the incident on the Internet. Student protesters said the investigation has not been taken seriously and has moved too slowly. Howard University issued a statement saying that administrators took immediate action as soon as we learned of this matter. A spokesman declined to comment further, citing the investigation. VIRGINIA Fairfax inspector is accused of taking cash An inspector with the Fairfax County Department of Code Compliance was charged with accepting cash for a transaction while operating in his capacity as an inspector, police said Tuesday. Rakesh K. Kapoor, 54, of Manassas was arrested on a charge of felony obtaining money by false pretense Tuesday, Fairfax County police said. Authorities did not specify Kapoors position with the department or the nature of the transaction. THE DISTRICT Man is charged in February slaying A 24-year-old man has been arrested and charged in the fatal shooting of a young man in Southeast. The incident happened Feb. 29 in the 2700 block of Langston Place SE. When police arrived, they found a man, later identified as Adam E. Barker, 21, of Southwest Washington, had been shot. He was taken to a hospital and died March 1. On Friday, D.C. police said, they arrested and charged Paul Swann, of no fixed address, with second-degree murder while armed. A witness told police that he saw three men approach the victim and open fire eight to 10 times, according to court documents. Court documents do not describe a motive. Dana Hedgpeth MARYLAND Boy is rescued after falling into an old well Authorities rescued an 11-year-old boy Sunday evening after he fell at least 35 feet into a well outside a McDonalds restaurant in Baltimore County. The incident occurred about 6:40 p.m. in the 6300 block of Kenwood Avenue in the Rosedale area. Firefighters with Baltimore County said two 11-year-old boys were playing outside the McDonalds when one fell into a 36-inch-wide opening that was covered with landscaping and mulch. The other boy told authorities that he also started to fall into the hole but was able to pull himself out. He called for help, firefighters said. The boy who fell was stuck about 35 to 45 feet below the surface. Firefighters lowered a rescuer into the hole using a rope system and were able to reach the boy. He was lifted to safety about 7:15 p.m. The boys were taken to a hospital for injuries that were not considered life-threatening, officials said. A spokeswoman said their parents were at home at the time of the incident. Crews with the Baltimore County Public Works Department have covered the hole with a steel plate, firefighters said. Dana Hedgpeth VIRGINIA Manassas man may be tied to fatal shooting Prince William County police are searching for a man after a suspected robbery attempt turned into a fatal shooting in Manassas, a spokesman said. Police said Alexander Esau Flores-Aguilar, 21, of Manassas is suspected of involvement in a weekend shootout that led to the countys fourth killing of the year. Javiel Rosado Santiago, 21, died of gunshot wounds, said Officer Nathaniel Probus, a police spokesman. Probus did not say how Flores-Aguilar was identified as a suspect. Around 10 p.m. Friday, officers arrived in the 7900 block of Blue Gray Circle and found a 16-year-old boy, of Dumfries, who had been shot. Detectives searching the area found Santiago, who was later was pronounced dead, police said. Investigators said they think Santiago had arranged to meet for a drug transaction and was targeted for a robbery by two men and the 16-year-old. At some point, police said, a man fired toward Santiago and the bullet struck the 16-year-old in the hand. Santiago tried to run away and was shot, Probus said. Police have arrested one man identified as Carlos Fernando Lazo-Rivera, 19 and the juvenile, both of whom were charged with murder, the use of a firearm in commission of a felony and attempted robbery. Victoria St. Martin Retired Army Lt. Col. Warren Christopher is a relative newcomer to Maryland politics who has spent more than a year traveling the state to meet voters. His first attempt to win a congressional seat in 2014 against incumbent Donna F. Edwards (D-Md.) failed badly. [Read our candidate sketch of Warren Christopher] But the seat is now open, and Christopher is making his play, along with five other Democrats. Here are some facts about the decorated military veteran that voters may not know: Big Brother: Christopher has been a volunteer for Big Brothers and Sisters of America for at least three years. He currently mentors a boy from Montgomery County. Single father: After his divorce, Christopher says, he and his wife decided he would take custody of their two daughters. He raised them alone. Family reunion: Christopher, who was born out-of-wedlock and raised by his grandmother, met his father for the first time when he was 30 years old, on the Ricki Lake show. Military life: South Korea, Oklahoma, Texas and Hawaii are among the places Christopher was stationed during his military career. Famous coincidence: The candidate shares a name with the former U.S. secretary of state under President Bill Clinton. Coincidently, both Warren Christophers in different capacities, of course were embroiled in military operations in Kosovo in the early 1990s. Matthew Fogg speaking at a 4th Congressional District candidates forum. (Mark Gail/For The Washington Post) This is the third in a series of profiles of the six candidates seeking the Democratic nomination to represent Marylands 4th Congressional District. Matthew Fogg took on the federal government nearly 20 years ago and won. As a deputy U.S. marshal, Fogg alleged that he and other black officers had endured harassment, been passed over for promotions and received less desirable assignments tied to their duties of tracking and apprehending fugitives. All of it amounted to racial discrimination, a federal jury in Washington found in 1998. What followed were years of appeals, complaints and, for Fogg, a run on the cable news and speaking circuit denouncing structural racism and pushing criminal-justice reform. Now, the retired law enforcement officer turned community activist is determined to take his experience to Capitol Hill. He is one of six Democrats vying for the party nomination to replace outgoing Rep. Donna F. Edwards (D) in Marylands 4th Congressional District. Im a candidate who has challenged the government, said Fogg, 64, who lives in Clinton and also has a home in Suitland. I could be a strong voice in making certain that things are done in an equal and just manner. [Five things to know about Matthew Fogg] For years, Fogg has been testifying at colleges, conferences and in Annapolis on criminal-justice issues, working with organizations such as Amnesty International and the NAACP to draw attention to the racial dynamics of U.S. drug enforcement policies. This is Foggs third run for elected office in Maryland. In 2014, he ran for state delegate in the 25th Legislative District in Prince Georges County, finishing last in the primary. Fogg then became a write-in candidate for the state Senate in the general election, where he garnered 524 votes. Fogg knows his chances in the April 26 primary are remote, given a Democratic field that includes a former Maryland lieutenant governor, Prince Georges former top prosecutor and a sitting state delegate. (Several Republicans also are running in the overwhelmingly Democratic district, which is based in Prince Georges and stretches into Anne Arundel County.) But as a longtime Prince Georges resident, he is frustrated by his countys seeming inability to emerge from what he calls the ills list. Prince Georges has the highest crime rate, the lowest-performing schools and the poorest health outcomes of any suburban community in the region. Those social indicators point to a low quality of life, Fogg said, and spur him to action. We keep electing people into office, and our community is still going down a slippery slope, he said. Fogg, who obtained his bachelors degree from Marshall University in West Virginia, provided few specifics on how he would try to make an impact in Congress. At public events he often speaks in generalities, sometimes echoing the policy positions of other candidates. But he comes alive when the conversation turns to law enforcement practices. He recently testified in Annapolis about policing reforms that would equip officers with body cameras and provide more legal protections to whistleblowers. Fogg has not reported any campaign contributions, according to the most recent federal election filings. He only just launched a campaign website. But he says he presents an alternative for voters who may be tired of seasoned politicians. Its never too late, he said. Next: Former states attorney Glenn Ivey. Andy Grove, the refugee from Hungary who became one of the pillars of Silicon Valley and, as both scientist and executive, was a principal figure in the rise of the Intel Corp. and a symbol of the world-wide computer revolution, died Monday. He was 79. The death was announced on the companys website. It did not give a cause or a location. He had been diagnosed with prostate cancer and Parkinsons disease. In a statement, Intel chief executive Brian Krzanich said that Mr. Grove made the impossible happen, time and again, and inspired generations of technologists, entrepreneurs, and business leaders. Mr. Grove was recognized as a leader in one of the worlds great periods of technical and social transformation.It saw the rise of the personal computer and the development and expansion of the Internet, and indeed, the creation of Silicon Valley with all that it came to embody in reality and in the imagination. In 1979, he became president of Intel, one of the companies most prominently identified with the widespread adoption of computers throughout the world. Former Intel Chairman Andrew Grove and Intel design team members in 1993. (George Nikitin/George Nikitin/AP) He became the companys chief executive in 1987 and was chairman of the board from 1997 to 2005. A man renowned for accomplishments in science, technology and management, Mr. Grove had a bachelors degree in chemical engineering from the City College of New York and a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. Although his academic training and early career were skewed toward the technical, he was credited with qualities of personality that made him adept at the role of manager as well. He combined the analytic approach of a scientist with an ability to engage others in honest and deep conversation, Intel Chairman Andy Bryant said. By themselves, the titles of the books he published over the years made evident the breadth of his talents and interests. An early work, published in 1967 and intended as a college text, was called Physics and Technology of Semiconductor Devices. As his role expanded and evolved, the titles of his books reflected it: He dealt with business leadership in High Output Management (1983) and Only the Paranoid Survive (1999). Known for keeping his company not only afloat but thriving and explosively growing amid the fast pace, fierce competition and constant change of the computer revolution, Mr. Grove became identified with the link between paranoia and survival. 1 of 66 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad Notable deaths of 2016 View Photos Remembering those who have died this year. Caption Prince, David Bowie, Debbie Reynolds, Harper Lee and others: Remembering those who have died this year. Debbie Reynolds Actress Debbie Reynolds starred in the 1952 classic movie Singin in the Rain with Gene Kelly, shown above. Reynolds died one day after the death of her daughter, actress-writer Carrie Fisher. Reynolds was 84. Shes now with Carrie and were all heartbroken, her son Todd Fisher said. Read the Debbie Reynolds obituary AFP/Getty Images Wait 1 second to continue. It was expressed succinctly in this quotation attributed to him: Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive. At one time known for its memory chips, Intel evolved into one of the foremost producers of microprocessors, components that propelled the widespread adoption of computers and their ever skyrocketing power. Now virtually a household name, Intel consisted only of its two founders, Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce, when Mr. Grove became their first employee. The three had been at Fairchild Semiconductor. In various bits and pieces, Mr. Grove was quoted as saying, we have steered Intel from a start-up to one of the central companies of the information economy. Its first-year revenue was said to be less than $3,000. While he was chief executive of Intel, the company became one of the major American industrial success stories, and its shares became avidly sought by investors. It enjoyed wild popularity even though most of its revenue was channeled into research and development rather than its shareholders pockets. The overriding aim was to turn out microprocessors that were continually faster and better than any competitors. As the company turned out such products as the celebrated Pentium chip, which has been a mainstay of the personal computer, revenue grew, according to the company, from just under $2 billion to more than $26 billion. Difficulties, even crises, were not unknown during Mr. Groves tenure. At times disaster seemed to loom. Even Pentium had its problems, with what has been described as a flaw that proved far more significant than the company was at first willing to acknowledge. But the hard-driving Mr. Grove appeared to deploy a willingness to learn,change and take risks, that successfully steered his company past the pitfalls. . Investors seemed to respond well to Mr. Groves vision. Intels market capitalization during his tenure was reported to have reached almost $200 billion, almost a fiftyfold increase. It was described as the seventh-largest company in the world, by some criteria, and employed 64,000. As Intels chief, Mr. Grove was known as an unpretentious leader with a 72-square-foot office and a sternly, even harshly demanding one. Described as a restless man, focused on the new, he seemed determined not to rest on his rags-to-riches accomplishments or to permit his company to become complacent about its achievements. If he seemed compelled to look upon the future as a time beset by uncertainty, he could look back at a past that had more than its share. Andrew S. Grove was born into a middle-class Jewish family on Sept. 2 1936, in Budapest, a little more than two years before World War II threw Europe into turmoil. His friends knew him as Andris Grof. The name was changed in America. When the Nazis occupied Hungary, he and his mother assumed false identities and were taken in by friends to keep them from the labor camps. After the war, Hungary was ruled by repressive Communist regimes, and during an uprising against one of them, he escaped to the West in 1956. Settling in New York, he set about learning English and embarking on the path that would lead to fame. The climb was steep. An early job was as a busboy. His wife, Eva, also a refugee, was a waitress when they met. They married in 1958 and had two daughters. Eventually, Mr. Grove was able to bring his parents to the United States. After leaving Intel, Mr. Grove became involved with philanthropy. In retirement, he advocated for medical research, among other causes. He provided millions of dollars to help found the Grove School of Engineering at New Yorks City College, where he got his intellectual start. (Montgomery County Police/Sugarloaf Mountain Market on the night of March 22, 1992, after the stores owner, James Essel, was killed.) Twenty-four years ago today, an assailant walked into a country store, 25 miles north of Washington. What happened next, at least in broad outlines, detectives have long known. James Kweku Essel, the friendly 57-year-old store owner who had traded in his banking career for the peace and quiet of running the Sugarloaf Mountain Market, rang up a small sale. The person standing before him demanded money. At some point either before Essel handed over money or after the assailant attacked, Essel tried to fight back. He was stabbed more than 20 times and died near his front counter. What police have never known is who did it. On Tuesday, officials are expected to announce that they have reopened the case and appeal to the public for help. They say that detectives have DNA evidence, believed to have come from the killer, who was injured during the murder. (Montgomery County Police/James Essel, the likable owner of the market, had left a banking job closer to the city because he wanted a quieter life. Detectives believe killer drove a black Pontiac Fiero the style pictured here.) Somebody out there knows who did this, said Montgomery County Det. Mark Janney, who works on cold cases. Among the new clues released: Janney said he believes the killer, likely a man, smoked Marlboro or Marlboro Lights. The suspect pulled up in a black Pontiac Fiero that he backedinto a space on the left side of the store in the community of Comus, about three miles west of Interstate-270. Janney thinks the man entered the store after 5:30 p.m. it was a Sunday, March 22, 1992 and based on cash-register records, bought items from Essel at 5:39 p.m. Detectives never found the murder weapon but believe it was a medium, smooth-bladed knife, Janney said. A wine bottle Essel sold wine and beer also was used. When Essel fought back, the attacker received a cut, likely on his hand. He left blood on a cash-register drawer and on the floor. A customer who came into the store around 6 p.m. found Essels body. Essel immigrated to the United States from Ghana and had seven children. He was popular among regular shoppers, who would stop by for groceries and conversation. Janney said he thinks the killer knew the area and Essels closing time. Clearly, it was somebody whod done some casing of the store, he said. (Montgomery County Police/Detectives collected samples of the assailants blood on the cash register and the floor. They have obtained a DNA profile from the blood.) The night Essel was killed, word spread among his family members. One called his oldest daughter, Evangeline Raphael, and told her that her father had been stabbed. What hospital is he at? she remembers asking. No, you dont understand, her brother said. Hes gone. Raphael, in an interview Monday, said her parents came to the United States around 1959, and they opened an African restaurant called Warababa on Kennedy Street NW in the District. Essel also held branch-manager positions at banks in Washington. After he retired from banking, Essel wanted theserenity hed had as a child growing up near the ocean in Ghana. He purchased the store in the small community. Raphael said she often worked there, too. Her father sometimes extended credit to his customers. Friends called him James, Jim or Kweku. He loved people, she said. He loved talking to people. Essels gentle spirit is evident from news coverage 24 years ago, including comments from customers after the murder. He was a kind man, the nicest man, Anne Hurwitz told The Washington Post at the time. Cards were left at the store. You werent just a friend, you were family, someone wrote. We loved you. [At Sugarloaf Market, gathering to grieve] On March 22, 1992, Raphael was supposed to work at the store. But she didnt feel well, it was snowing, and she called her father to say she wasnt coming in. So many people depended on my dad, she said. I wish I was there. I was very close to my dad. She said her 24 years of grief have been intensified by the case remaining unsolved. Her father had instructed her when she was working the store alone toturn over money if there were a robbery. Its not worth your life, he had said. Janney, the detective, said investigators submitted the DNA profile to national databases of convicted felons but didnt get a match. He thinks the killer is still out there and said that all detectives need is a name, even if it comes through an anonymous tip. The nature of the crime suggests that the killer may have had a drug problem and wanted cash fast, Janney said. And afterward, showed up somewhere with a fresh cut, likely on a hand. This is a case where the DNA would speak for itself, Janney said. Police are asking anyone with information about this case to contact Det. Mark Janney, of the Cold Case Unit, at 240-773-5091, or email mark.janney@montgomerycountymd.gov. Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein will argue the governments case at the 4th Circuit that law enforcement should be able to obtain cellphone location data without a warrant. (Michel du Cille/The Washington Post) When high-powered rifle shots shattered a Florida judges living-room window and glass door, federal agents narrowed the list of suspects by pulling their cellphone records. After two California college students were fatally shot in a car parked close to campus, cellphone data put the suspects near the crime scene at the time of the shooting. Investigators in Maryland pulled seven months of phone records to track the movements of two men later convicted in armed robberies around Baltimore. Law enforcement officials have long relied on location details gleaned from cellphone towers as a powerful tool for tracing steps of suspects, particularly in the early stages of investigations. But civil liberties groups and privacy advocates are increasingly challenging the practice. They are concerned that police and federal agents can too easily tap vast caches of information about peoples movements through devices most Americans carry in their pockets trackings that could show how often someone goes to a doctors office, to a casino or to church. Legislators on Capitol Hill have proposed updates to federal statutes, but no standardized rules exist for scooping up location data. Instead, local and federal investigators rely on a patchwork of state laws and inconsistent court rulings. A federal appeals court on Wednesday will be the latest front in the legal debate, in the case that involves the Baltimore robberies. The issue before a full panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit, which has jurisdiction over Maryland and Virginia, is whether investigators need a search warrant before they can track suspects long-term movements through their cellphones. A three-judge panel of that court, based in Richmond, ruled in August that accessing the location information without a warrant for an extended period is unconstitutional because it allows law enforcement to trace a persons comings and goings across public and private spaces. But two other federal appellate courts in Florida and New Orleans concluded that warrants are not necessary. If the full 4th Circuit upholds its panels 2-to-1 decision, there would be a clear split with the other federal appeals courts. That type of divide often attracts the attention of the Supreme Court, which has already expressed concern about the effect of long-term surveillance by law enforcement on individual privacy. There is a sense that judges and others have that electronic evidence [collection] presents a risk to privacy that other forms of evidence dont. That anxiety is a thread through these court decisions, said former federal prosecutor Jason M. Weinstein, who oversaw cybercrime and organized-crime enforcement in the Justice Departments criminal division. Texting, calling, and checking email or the weather from a cellphone generally involves connecting with the closest communications tower. Wireless providers log and retain records showing which tower a phone used at the beginning and end of every call, and increasingly, for texts and data connections. In the Baltimore case being heard Wednesday by as many as 16 judges on the court, police obtained 221 days of data from the wireless provider of robbery suspect Aaron Graham. The 30,000 location points generated for his phone enabled authorities to map his whereabouts before and after two of six robberies and to corroborate evidence during a 2012 trial. Graham and co-conspirator Eric Jordan were sentenced to decades in prison. The American Civil Liberties Union, which has signed on in support of the pairs appeal, took the records analysis even further and showed that authorities also could have connected the dots to place Graham at the office of his pregnant wifes obstetrician. The more of this data you have, the more you are able to peer into the patterns of somebodys life, said Nathan Wessler, an ACLU lawyer who wrote a brief in support of the defendants that was joined by other groups, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Center for Democracy and Technology. Were talking private locations and private information. We want the police to have to jump through a few hoops, Wessler said. Thats what protects us. The debate in court this week is over how high to set the hurdle. Until recently, law enforcement officials had little trouble obtaining the cell-tower records with a court order, which requires them to provide less rigorous information than they would need to get a search warrant. The distinction is a vital one to law enforcement. A court order clears the way to the cell-tower records that early in an investigation are the building blocks needed to reach the gold standard of probable cause required for more-intrusive searches. Without that early access through court orders, former prosecutors say, it will be more difficult to zero in on suspects and rule out others. Theres no question there will be crimes that are not solved, said Weinstein, who also prosecuted violent crimes in Baltimore. This is a stand the government has to make. In a series of recent Supreme Court decisions, the court signaled that digital devices are different when it comes to Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable search and seizure because of the vast amounts of personal information stored on phones and tablets. As a result, Justice Department policy now requires a warrant in most cases before agents install GPS-tracking devices on vehicles. Investigators generally must also obtain a warrant to operate cellphone-data collectors, called cell-site simulators or Stingrays, that are facing legal challenges, including in the nations capital. The department generally distinguishes between real-time, pinpoint surveillance and the type of historical business records obtained in the Maryland armed-robberies case. The more precise the information and intrusive the search, the stronger the privacy interests and the higher the legal standard, according to Richard W. Downing, acting deputy assistant attorney general, who testified this month before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. Law enforcement officials say the cellphone records in the Baltimore case are no different from landline telephone records or banking transactions that authorities have long been able to obtain without a warrant because the documents are business or third party records. When the government obtains historical cell-site records, it is not monitoring ongoing events; instead it is obtaining information concerning past events that was previously collected by a third party, according to Maryland prosecutors whose argument won support from the dissenting judge on the initial panel. In a sign of the importance of the data to investigators, the governments case will be argued by Maryland U.S. Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein. No matter which side prevails in the 4th Circuit, the final ruling could still be bad news for Graham and Jordan, the men in the Baltimore robbery case. Even the initial panel of judges that sided with the defendants on the cell-tracking issue ultimately upheld their convictions, saying police had acted in good faith under the current rules. The panels finding that warrants were needed applied to law enforcement requests going forward for the cell-tower data. Authorities said the death of a 50-year-old man in a Fairfax County jail has been classified as accidental after a medical examiners report showed he fell during a medical emergency and hit his head on the floor. The case of Monty Roy Saito of Santa Clara, Calif., dates to November 2015 when he was extradited to Fairfax on several drug-related charges. Saito arrived at the Fairfax jail Nov. 10 and faced six felony drug charges related to offenses in 2014, according to police and court records. He was put in a minimum-security wing with his own cell, officials said. [California man dies after collapsing in Fairfax County jail] But six days later, a deputy heard a noise and found Saito lying on the floor outside his cell. The deputy thought Saito was having a seizure, and he was taken to an area hospital where he was treated and later released. He was then placed in the jail infirmary. Saito was later found on the floor of his cell in the infirmary, unresponsive but breathing, officials said. He was taken back to an area hospital, where he was put on life support. He died a few days later. Police in Fairfax County said an autopsy report from the Office of the Medical Examiner found that Saitos cause of death was blunt head trauma, resulting from striking his head on the floor when he collapsed during the initial medical emergency. [Death of woman shocked by stun gun in Fairfax jail is ruled an accident] Detectives were working to finish the investigation into Saitos death and turn over the case to local prosecutors for a review, according to a police statement. At the time of his death in 2015, several inmates had died at the Fairfax jail. In February 2015, Natasha McKenna died after struggling with deputies and receiving four jolts from a Taser. A medical examiner attributed her death to excited delirium and ruled her death an accident. Then in October 2015, a 68-year-old man collapsed and died in the countys jail. It was later ruled that the man, Paul Guida, died from natural causes. He had heart disease and diabetes. Anger at Howard University spilled out in protests across campus after allegations surfaced of rape reports in a Howard University residence hall. (WUSA9) Anger at Howard University spilled out in protests across campus after allegations surfaced of rape reports in a Howard University residence hall. (WUSA9) D.C. and Howard University police are investigating a report that a female student was raped by a classmate last month in a campus residence hall, according to the law enforcement authorities. Police said the woman told detectives the attack occurred Feb. 8 in College Hall South. Police said the woman reported the incident Feb. 29. No arrest has been made and D.C. police said the investigation remains active. Howard University students on Tuesday protested on the Universitys Northwest Washington campus, and briefly shut down 4th Street Northwest, after the woman publicized the incident on the Internet. Student protesters said the investigation has not been taken seriously and has moved too slowly. Students marched shouting, No means no. Howard University issued a statement saying that administrators took immediate action as soon as we learned of this matter. A spokesman declined to comment further citing the ongoing investigation. A Prince Georges County police officer and a former county homicide captain were indicted Tuesday for allegedly falsifying timecards to net more than $200,000 in pay. Jennifer Simms and Harold J. Simms III were charged with two counts of theft and conspiracy, with each charge carrying a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison, prosecutors announced Tuesday. Prosecutors allege Jennifer Simms inflated information on time sheets she submitted to be paid for work she did not do for both the county and College Park between March 2012 and November 2014. Jennifer Simms also falsely claimed to have worked overtime or earned comp-time hours, according to officials with the Prince Georges County States Attorneys Office. Harold Simms, who was married to Jennifer Simms when the alleged fraud occurred, was charged as an accomplice, prosecutors said, because he knew about his wifes activity and benefited from the scheme. We have conducted a thorough investigation over the last several months and we believe that these charges are appropriate based on the evidence, Prince Georges States Attorney Angela Alsobrooks said in a statement. Online court records do not list attorneys for Jennifer and Harold Simms. When reached by phone Tuesday afternoon, Harold Simms declined to comment. Jennifer Simms could not be reached. Prince Georges County police said they learned of the allegations in Dec. 2014 and spent about 3,000 hours investigating the case. In a statement, Police Chief Henry P. Stawinski III said that if the allegations are true, the Simmses not only betrayed our community, but they also betrayed this badge. We have checks and balances in place to ensure that officers are properly compensated for their work, Stawinskis statement continued. This appears to be an aggressive, isolated act of greed. Jennifer Simms, a 13-year veteran of the department who was assigned to the regional investigations division as a crime analyst, will be suspended without pay, police said. Her police powers were suspended in May, according to the department. Harold Simms, who worked for the department for 18 years, retired from the department in June 2015 amid the investigation, according to police. Harold Simms did not supervise Jennifer Simms during the time they worked in the department together, police said. When asked why Harold Simms was allowed to retire while the investigation was ongoing and whether his retirement benefits would be affected by the felony charges, the police department responded with the following statement: Just as a private industry employer cant prevent someone from quitting his or her job, a police department cant tell an officer he or she cant retire when they so choose. Felony charges do not affect retirement benefits. An 18-year-old woman was fatally stabbed Tuesday at a bus stop in the Benning Terrace neighborhood of Southeast Washington, according to the D.C. police. They identified her as Amanjane La-Shell Whitley, of Southeast. A juvenile female, who also lived in Southeast, was arrested and charged with second degree murder while armed, the police said. Police said an officer from the Sixth District was on patrol about 9:30 p.m. when he spotted what they described as a physical altercation between two people, both female. The officer intervened, halting the confrontation, and found that the 18-year-old had apparently been stabbed. She was taken to a hospital where she died. It was not clear what prompted the altercation. Just before 1 p.m., in what police said appeared to be an unrelated incident, a man was shot in the arm two blocks away on E Street SE. He apparently walked to the stabbing scene, where police were still investigating, and told a television news photographer from WJLA Channel 7 that he had been injured. A station reporter, Kevin Lewis, posted on Twitter: BREAKING: gunshot victim just walked up to @ABC7News news truck in SE DC. Photographer called 911. Suspect at large. Lewis then tweeted: Victim also requested water. @ABC7News photographer helped victim sit down on curb. Police arrived within minutes. The photographer was identified as Mike Vaughn. The wounded man was taken to a hospital for treatment, police said. Nadia Murad, 22, is a Yazidi woman from Iraq whose mother and five brothers were slain by Islamic State militants. Murad, who was held captive by the militants, is speaking out about the cruelty and violence faced by Yazidis in Iraq. (Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post) On Aug. 15, 2014, Islamic State fighters who had surrounded her small Iraqi town for days ordered Nadia Murad and other Yazidis to walk to the local school, where men were to head upstairs, women downstairs. A sight along the way terrified the 20-year-old even more: backhoes at work. Shed seen videos of Islamic State fighters filling mass graves. One of her eight brothers said no, that couldnt happen. The militant extremists werent about to kill a whole village of people. Later that sweltering day, the militants shot dead five of her brothers and her mother, along with hundreds of other Yazidis. Murad and other young women were soon sent to religious courts to be registered by a photo and number as property of fighters who could then do with the women as they wished. On Monday, Murads eyes were downcast, her voice soft, her memory fractured as she spoke in Washington, one of the many cities around the globe where she has traveled as part of a desperate Yazidi campaign for help. Murad is so traumatized she cannot remember how long she was held captive before escaping. Four days after Secretary of State John F. Kerry declared Islamic State crimes against religious minorities to be acts of genocide, the push is on for justice. Murads D.C. tour which included stops at offices of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the State Department was part of an effort to shed light on the meaning of the word genocide. If the Obama administration agrees that the ancient Kurdish minority and other groups including Shiite Muslims and Christians are victims of genocide, what will be done? Advocates such as Murad are seeking a broad variety of actions: the documentation of war crimes evidence such as mass graves, the rescue of young Yazidi men and women still held by the Islamic State as fighters and sex slaves, and the granting of refugee status in the United States to persecuted religious minorities. The State Department on Monday said it is already helping to provide security around mass graves and is training security forces. But Murad and experts at the Holocaust Museums Center for the Prevention of Genocide say much more must be done. Murads presence was a dark reminder that Yazidis and other religious minorities in Iraq had been begging for help for years, to no avail including before and during the 2014 massacres in Sinjar. No one even tried, Murad said Monday through a translator, describing to a group of a few dozen genocide experts and journalists how the disabled, elderly and men were killed. If theyd tried and failed, fine, but no one even tried. Naomi Kikoler of the Holocaust Museums genocide prevention center, which hosted the talk, said international and Iraqi leaders knew for a decade that atrocities against religious minorities could occur. This is a moment when we should feel deeply ashamed, she said. Late last year, Congress ordered the State Department to outline a plan regarding attacks in the Middle East against religious and ethnic groups. In a report filed Thursday, the department said it supports a number of initiatives focused on the documentation of atrocities, which aim to lay the groundwork for future accountability for atrocities committed in Syria. It mentioned funding the Syria Justice and Accountability Center, an organization that investigates and documents abuses, the report said. In Iraq, however, despite $3 million in funding, efforts are hampered by funding and security problems and by the lack of an invitation by the central government in Baghdad, the report said. Murad comes from the northern Iraqi town of Kocho. Multiple communities of religious minorities who lived in that region, including Shabak, Turkmen and Christians, began coming under increasing pressure from Sunni extremists in recent years. The 1,700 people who lived in the town in 2014, she said, were all Yazidis, mostly farmers. On Aug. 3, 2014, when the Sunni extremist Islamic State invaded the region, We werent given choices it was convert or die, she said. Yazidis are a Kurdish religious minority whose faith has roots in Zoroastrianism, Islam and other faiths. A report by the Holocaust Museum last year found that Yazidis were singled out by the Islamic State for extinction. Staring at the floor of the conference room Monday as she spoke in a soft voice, Murad described how the stifling August heat prevented many from escaping into the mountains. Her voice remained flat as she described a disabled woman being burned alive, one of many hundreds of people from her town who were killed. All that time we were in touch with the United States, the United Kingdom, others, to try and rescue us, but no one did anything. Even until the last minute we had hoped someone would come, but nobody did, she said through an interpreter. The interpreter, Abid Shamdeen, who is also Yazidi, had worked for the U.S. Army in Iraq and in 2014 was living in Nebraska while his family remained in Iraq. He described how Yazidis saw the Iraqi forces who were supposed to protect them flee when the Islamic State fighters arrived. The young man began to choke on tears as he spoke. They didnt even leave their weapons for us behind they left people behind, Shamdeen said, Murad to his right and Kikoler to his left at a table at the front of a sterile conference room. I wish this world was a little more fair. Some Western Christian groups have been speaking out over the past decade about violence and persecution Christians in the Middle East are experiencing a movement that gained significant volume with the rise of the Islamic State. Shamdeen, whose Yazidi community in Nebraska is the countrys largest, told The Washington Post he was very disappointed that Christians only recently seemed to take up the causes of other religious minorities. We were barely mentioned, even though we were the main ones. Correction: This article has been updated to correct the last sentence, a quote from interpreter Abid Shamdeen. Members of Service Employees International Union cheer during a rally for better wages at Reagan National Airport last year. A 24-hour strike is to begin Tuesday at National in Arlington, Va. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) Workers at Reagan National Airport will join those at some of the countrys busiest hubs for a 24-hour strike beginning Tuesday night over what they say are low wages and retaliation for union organizing, labor leaders said Monday. More than 2,000 workers, including cleaners, security officers and baggage handlers plan to strike at National, Chicagos OHare, New Jerseys Newark Liberty, and New Yorks Kennedy and LaGuardia airports, among others, the Service Employees International Union said. Airport officials across the country said they dont expect the strike to have significant effect on travelers or daily airport operations, even though the walkout coincides with busy spring break and Easter holiday travel. They said airlines often have backup plans to avert disruptions. But organizers and workers promise to be out in force, picketing and rallying for an hourly minimum wage of $15 for the lowest-paid airport workers, who they said are forced to work two or three jobs to support their families. Until we achieve our goal, we have to fight, said Legesse Woldearegay, 70, who makes $8 an hour as a customer service agent for Eulen America, a Miami-based Delta and American airlines contractor. Woldearegay said he works a second shift as a security officer at National to make ends meet. The goal is to get the $15 pay and the respect we deserve, said Woldearegay, who lives in Woodbridge, Va. Well never give up. The employees, who hold critical service jobs keeping terminals and plane cabins clean, moving bags and transporting people with disabilities work for contractors that serve all the major airlines. Some are earning the minimum wage and others, considered tip employees, have hourly wages as low as $6.75, union leaders said. This will be the first time Washington workers have struck, although in the past six months they have joined in protests and rallies as part of the national effort for better wages. The campaign mirrors that of fast-food restaurant workers, who have been organizing in cities across the United States in the Fight for $15. SEIU leaders said the workers goal is not to disrupt the travel of the thousands of air passengers on Wednesday, but to draw attention to their working conditions. In addition to better pay, the workers also want paid sick leave and vacation. And in some markets, including Chicago, they are drawing attention to what they said is a lack of adequate training for security officers. The workers also want the right to unionize without fear of retaliation. The SEIU has filed complaints with the National Labor Relations Board alleging its members have faced intimidation and retaliation including surveillance from their employers, over their organizing activities. Previous demonstrations at major airports have had minimal effect on travelers. The airlines generally know when these things are going to happen, so they basically have all hands on deck and get some of the managers to go out and do the front lines and do some of the things that they have to do, whether it is pushing wheelchairs or working the ticket counters, said Gregory Meyer, a spokesman a Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. Its not like the planes stop flying or the luggage quits moving. The airlines are able to continue to operate and the concessionaires are able to continue to operate business as usual. Even if those passing through the airports dont see reduced services, the workers said they expect travelers to see them rallying. They also think their actions will inspire those who arent participating to join in. It always surprises me when the aviation industry says, Oh, this hasnt had any effect, said Valarie Long, executive vice president of SEIU International, noting that the campaign has expanded from just a handful of airports four years ago to about 20. When workers see their co-workers take action, by protesting and rallying, it emboldens them to also stand up and fight. There have been some victories, she said. In Seattle, a state court ruled in August that a $15-an-hour minimum wage law applies to airport workers. In South Florida, Broward County officials voted in October to extend a living-wage ordinance to contract airline workers, upping salaries by more than $3 an hour for some. Members of the clergy, high-profile politicians, including presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and such celebrities as actor Danny Glover and author Alice Walker have pledged support. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka last month called on the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey to approve the $15 minimum wage for its contract workers. On Wednesday, passengers are likely to see workers and their supporters picketing, passing out flyers and holding signs that read, Poverty wages dont fly. In Los Angeles, workers will join in a major rally in support, although the airport is not participating in the strike. Airports across the United States are said to be in dialogue with airlines about the workers concerns, but some officials have said they cant do much for workers who are not airport employees. In the Washington region, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority has a living-wage policy that applies to airport contracts, but it doesnt apply to companies that contract with individual airlines. [Washington-area airport workers join fight for $15-an-hour minimum wage] There are more than 2,000 workers at National who dont benefit from that living-wage policy, and as many as 4,200 at Dulles International Airport. Although Dulles Airport workers have been organizing in recent months, they are not participating in the strike. As many as 200 workers could participate in the strike at National, starting Tuesday at 10 p.m. Several demonstrations are planned for Wednesday. Just six months after they kicked off their campaigns with a pray-in during Pope Franciss visit in September, the number of workers engaged has grown from about two dozen to more than 300, organizers said. But organizing has had its challenges, some workers said. In a labor complaint filed this month against Eulen America, SEIU Local 32BJ alleged a worker was disciplined for participating in union activities and the company threatened to retaliate against workers who participate in protected Section 7 activities. (The section of the National Labor Relations Act that guarantees employees the right to form, join or assist labor organizations.) Still, workers said they have seen some benefits in recent months, including training they had been demanding and a health-care insurance option. Kimberly Gibbs, a spokeswoman for MWAA, said the authority does not expect any disruptions to travel at National, where about 850 flights take place on a given day. We are not expecting any impact on our operations, she said. But we will work with our airlines and their partners to maintain normal operations. TEXAS Sandra Bland trooper pleads not guilty A fired Texas trooper pleaded not guilty Tuesday to a charge of misdemeanor perjury stemming from his arrest last summer of Sandra Bland, a black woman who was later found dead in a county jail. Brian Encinia entered his plea during a brief appearance before a Waller County judge as protesters gathered outside the courthouse in Hempstead, about 50 miles northwest of Houston. Blands arrest, captured on a police dash-camera video, provoked national outrage and drew the attention of the Black Lives Matter movement. Encinias attorney, Larkin Eakin Jr., said after Tuesdays arraignment that Encinia acted properly during the July 2015 traffic stop and subsequent arrest of Bland. A county grand jury indicted Encinia in January on the perjury charge for saying in an affidavit that he removed a combative Bland from her car after stopping her near Houston for a minor traffic violation so he could conduct a safer traffic investigation. Associated Press KANSAS College faith groups can restrict who joins Kansass conservative Republican governor signed legislation Tuesday allowing faith-based groups on college campuses to restrict membership to like-minded people, putting the state on a likely collision course with civil liberties groups. The Republican-dominated legislature approved the legislation earlier this month, even though the U.S. Supreme Court ruled nearly six years ago that universities can require that membership in such groups be open to all. Supporters have said the bill was a victory for the freedom to exercise religious belief, but opponents called it a veiled attempt to legalize discrimination. Kansas already has a religious-objections law that prevents state or local governments from limiting peoples freedom to express their religion, though that law doesnt touch on organizations at universities. With Gov. Sam Brownbacks signature, Kansas becomes the second state after Oklahoma to have a college-specific law on the issue. Associated Press Bill on transgender students fails in Tennessee: A bill that would require transgender students to use bathrooms that match their sex at birth failed in Tennessee on Tuesday. The bill died in a House committee meeting packed with transgender youths who opposed the measure, some of whom testified before the committee. It feels great to know that my voice is counting, Henry Seaton, 18, a student at Beech Senior High School in Hendersonville, said after the vote. Seaton, who was born female but identifies as male, testified last week before a subcommittee. Woman faces charge after son, 4, shoots her in the back: The mother of a 4-year-old Palatka, Fla., boy who shot her as they were riding in a pickup truck should face a misdemeanor charge, authorities said Tuesday. Jamie Gilt, 31, put a loaded .45-caliber handgun beneath the trucks front seat on March 8, and the weapon slid into the back seat where her son, Lane, was riding in a booster seat, said Capt. Gator Deloach of the Putnam County Sheriffs Office. The boy got out of his seat, picked up the gun and fired through the front seat, hitting his mother in the back. From news services Gift Article Share Take a virtual walk around a T. rex and other dinosaurs destined for the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History. (Lee Powell/The Washington Post) TRENTON, Ontario Inside a warehouse-sized workshop on the shore of the Bay of Quinte, the Tyrannosaurus rex has visitors. Wp Get the full experience. Choose your plan ArrowRight Humans are here from the Smithsonian to give the specimen a close look. Its fossilized bones are arrayed on a towering metal mount, its teeth starting in on the neck frill of a Triceratops. The 66-million-year-old creature, dubbed the "Nation's T. rex," is still the centerpiece of a revamped fossil hall, coming to the National Museum of Natural History in 2019. But the shape of the exhibit is starting to fill out, with the addition of two herbivores Edmontosaurus and Thescelosaurus alongside the famous T. rex. These Smithsonian dinosaurs are busting out of walls, getting a new life as full-bodied floor models. (Video: Lee Powell/The Washington Post) These are two of the most important scientifically important dinosaur specimens we have, says Matthew Carrano, the museums curator of dinosauria. Theyre the type specimens, the original fossils on which the species were named. Advertisement The skeletons are posed in the mounting room of Research Casting International, or RCI. This set-up is how millions of visitors will find them in Washington, D.C., at one of the most visited museums on Earth. Take a lingering look: This is the last time you will see these dinosaurs in one piece until their Washington debut. Sometime soon, these mounts will be disassembled to make room for another batch of dinosaurs needing the touch of RCI craftsmen. The Smithsonians bones have all converged in this small Canadian town, shipped from Washington, D.C. The T. rex is one of the most complete found. Its journey started in Montana when rancher Kathy Wankel saw a bone sticking out of the dirt. For now, some imagination is needed. The mounting room is a sort of temporary exhibit hall: Tape on the floor marks the spot of a future railing, separating dinosaurs from people. Rolls of paper stretched between stands display text visitors will read. In the background, the larger duck-billed Edmontosaurus looks over the dainty Thescelosaurus. Reviving these two fossils started with chiseling, followed by grinding and scraping not unlike what you'd expect to find in a dental office. Advertisement Prodding by paleontologists is part of any long-dead dinosaur's life. Bones are studied, the most minute fractures scrutinized. On this day, part of the Nations T. rex is going to Belleville General Hospital in Belleville, Ontario. It needs its head examined. A close-up look at the so-called brain case of the T. rex will help in building a 3-D model of the beast. Eventually, people may download it and 3-D print their own dinosaur from home. The Smithsonian uses surface scanners to get a look at objects. But this T. rex skull is complicated, with all its nooks and crannies, says Vincent Rossi, whose specialty is 3-D imaging at the Smithsonian. Seeing all those hidden spaces means taking a CT scan. Unfortunately, the brain case of the T. rex is big and the circular opening of the CT scanner small. It's sized for humans, not prehistoric animals. Advertisement Did it fit? Yes, with about half an inch of clearance: Part of an almost-complete T. rex rolls into a hospital in Canada. What happened next makes for good pictures. (Video: Lee Powell/The Washington Post) At least the dino skull doesn't have to be reminded to hold its breath. Lee Powell is a video reporter at The Washington Post. Read More: GiftOutline Gift Article AFGHANISTAN U.S. general apologizes for hospital bombing The new commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan apologized Tuesday to the people of Kunduz for an attack last year on a hospital in the northern city that killed 42 people. Army Gen. John Nicholson traveled to the city to meet local leaders and relatives of those who died in the Oct. 3 attack. A U.S. Air Force AC-130 gunship opened fire on the hospital, run by the medical charity Doctors Without Borders, in what Nicholson called a horrible tragedy. More than a dozen U.S. military personnel have been disciplined for mistakes that led to the sustained attack. A U.S military report on the hospital attack is expected to be released within days. A separate U.S. report obtained last fall said the aircraft fired 211 shells at the hospital compound over 29 minutes before commanders realized their error and ordered a halt. Afghan officials had insisted that Taliban fighters, who had overrun the city on Sept. 28, were using the hospital as a base from which to attack Afghan forces. No evidence has been found to support those claims. Doctors Without Borders ceased operations in Kunduz after the attack and has yet to return. The hospital was the only trauma facility in the region. Associated Press MALAYSIA Possible MH370 debris found in South Africa Malaysias transport minister said Tuesday that a piece of debris containing part of an aircraft engine manufacturers logo was found on the southern coast of South Africa and will be examined to determine whether it is from the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370. Based on early reports, there is a possibility of the piece originating from an inlet cowling of an aircraft engine, but further examination and analysis are needed, Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said. Flight 370 disappeared on March 8, 2014, with 239 people aboard while en route from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, to Beijing. Neels Kruger, a South African archaeologist, was walking along a lagoon on Monday afternoon near the town of Mossel Bay when he spotted the debris and alerted the South African Civil Aviation Authority. An Australian-led search in the southern Indian Ocean, where the plane is thought to have crashed, has found no trace of the jet. A piece from one of the planes wings was found washed ashore on Frances Reunion Island in July. Two more possible pieces of debris, discovered recently in Mozambique, are being examined by an international investigation team in Australia. Associated Press Liberia closes part of border with Guinea over Ebola fears: Authorities closed a portion of Liberias northern border with Guinea and plan to expand the cordon amid a resurgence of Ebola. Guinea had been on track to be free of Ebola transmission this month, but two new cases emerged. The new outbreak has prompted fear in Liberia, which has lost more than 4,000 people to the deadly virus and has been declared Ebola-free twice only to find more cases. French court says Sarkozy phone taps are legal: Frances highest court ruled that wiretaps of phone conversations between Nicolas Sarkozy and his main attorney are legal, paving the way for an eventual corruption trial against the former French president that could hamper his bid for reelection. Sarkozy is expected to seek the conservative nomination to run for president next year. He is under preliminary charges of corruption and influence-peddling based on information gleaned from phone taps in 2013 and 2014. Tunisia again extends state of emergency: Tunisia has extended for three months the state of emergency declared after a November suicide bombing in the countrys capital that killed 12 members of the presidents security detail. It was the third time the state of emergency has been prolonged since the attack, which has been linked to the Islamic State militant group. The North African country is also fighting extremists on its borders with Libya and Algeria. Incumbent reelected in Republic of Congo: Officials in the Republic of Congo said provisional results show that President Denis Sassou-Nguesso, who has ruled for more than 30 years, has won reelection. Officials with knowledge of the results said Sassou-Nguesso received more than 60 percent of the vote. Sundays election came five months after a constitutional referendum removed term and age limits that would have barred the 72-year-old from running. Ivory Coast arrests 15 in beach attack: Ivory Coast authorities have arrested 15 people in connection with an attack claimed by al-Qaeda that killed 19 people at a beach resort this month, a state prosecutor said. They were still seeking the suspected ringleader, whom prosecutor Richard Adou named as Kounta Dallah. Gunmen shot swimmers and sunbathers before storming into several hotels in the town of Grand Bassam on March 13. Eleven Ivorians, including three soldiers, died in the shooting rampage. The rest were foreign nationals, including four French citizens. From news services A BILL that would ban guns on public university and college campuses in Maryland, and impose prison time on violators, is making its way through the Democratic-controlled General Assembly. On one level, the bill is symbolic: Most of the states campuses already prohibit firearms on campus, so the legislation, assuming it is enacted, codifies the status quo. But the legislation does serve more than a symbolic purpose, and not only because college campuses have been the scenes of some of the United States most horrific mass shootings. Firearms also are a particular problem for college-age youths, among whom suicide is the third-leading cause of death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Not all suicide attempts are made with firearms, of course, but among those that are, the success rate is significantly higher than by other means, such as poisoning or pills. Accidents with firearms are also a serious concern. At least 21 states prohibit carrying firearms on public campuses. In other states, it is left to individual colleges and universities to set their own policies. At Virginia Tech, scene of the mass shooting that left 32 dead in 2007, guns are generally banned on campus. The gun lobby and its Republican allies take the preposterous position that making guns prevalent on campus would enhance security, since armed good guys can stop a bad guy. That presupposes that, in the midst of the panic of an on-campus shooting spree, good guys and bad guys would be clearly labeled, enabling the good guys to avoid subjecting each other to friendly fire. In fact, even highly trained security and police officers can make mistakes in such situations. Thats what may have happened recently in Prince Georges County, where a police officer was shot to death, apparently by friendly fire, in the midst of crossfire with a mentally ill assailant who attacked a police station. The risk of such mishaps has been lost on Republican lawmakers, including those in Georgia who recently passed a measure that would make the state the 10th to allow concealed firearms on all the states public campuses. Many prominent university presidents in Georgia opposed the bill, as did police, but legislators were in no mood to listen. The bill even allows concealed firearms to be carried in day-care centers on campus and by high school students taking college courses. In Maryland, Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr., the Democratic Senate president, is pushing the campus ban. Mr. Miller is a gun owner who has long kept his distance from gun control legislation, but in this instance he is applying a common-sense standard. I want our college campuses to be a sanctuary, he said. No guns. I was in London on Sept. 11, 2001, when it was impossible to call home because the lines were down; in that pre-smartphone era, it was also impossible to know what was going on, unless there was a television screen nearby. Cut off though I was, I felt surrounded by friends. Upon hearing my accent, shop assistants and taxi drivers asked after my parents: Had I spoken to them yet? Could they help? That night, the Tory party called off its leadership election; the German chancellor spoke of a war against the entire civilized world. The NATO ambassadors, meeting in Brussels, unanimously invoked the NATO treaty: An attack on one member state is an attack on all. On March 22, 2016, I was in London once again, watching another generation of Islamist terrorists carry out another series of coordinated attacks, in Brussels, the capital of Belgium and the European Union, as well as the headquarters of NATO. This time it was impossible not to follow the news, and not to see photographs of everything that happened, almost in real time. It was also impossible not to notice the reactions, which came a lot faster than they used to. Some were reminiscent of 2001. A Belgian flag was raised over 10 Downing Street, the residence of the British prime minister; the presidents of the United States and France spoke almost immediately in support of the Belgian government, too. But among those first responses there was also a new tone, one that was definitely missing in 2001, and one that wasnt even noticeable after the Paris attacks a few months ago. Instead of calling for solidarity against a common threat, a spokesman for the anti-European UK Independence Party declared that the open borders of Europe are a threat to our security, even though Britain is not part of Europes Schengen border treaty. A columnist for the Daily Telegraph declared Brussels the jihadist capital of Europe and mocked those who call for staying in the E.U. on the grounds of safety. Meanwhile, U.S. news organizations fell over themselves to get instant reactions from Donald Trump, who had just told The Post that he didnt see the point of NATO, which is costing us a fortune. He didnt disappoint, declaring that we have to be very careful and very vigilant as to who we allow in this country. On both sides of the Atlantic, isolationism is now a fact of political life. Although it gets expressed differently in different places, the illogical idea that my country will be safer if it pulls out of its international alliances is growing. Never mind that Britain constantly shares intelligence and information on terrorism with the rest of Europe via E.U. institutions. Never mind that the United States works with NATO allies to track terrorist operations and deter attacks, or that we gain enormous security as well as economic benefits for doing so. Never mind that, nowadays, few security threats can be stopped by border guards anyway. Every terrorist attack on British soil in recent memory was carried out by British (or Irish) citizens and not foreigners; nuclear deterrence requires allies and coordinated responses; barbed wire cannot stop a cyberattack. The small-minded, shortsighted isolationists ignore reason and logic, instead substituting panic and fear. Listen to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump discuss some of his foreign policy positions with The Washington Post editorial board. "NATO is costing us a fortune," Trump said. "We're not reimbursed fairly for what we do." (The Washington Post) Of course there are reasons for this change: German Chancellor Angela Merkels controversial decision to apparently invite Syrian immigrants into Europe last summer has left many Europeans feeling queasy and out of control. Photographs from the war in Syria and the refugee camps in Greece have upset even people living in countries, the United States included, that have not accepted large numbers of refugees. But those are explanations, not an excuse for the stupidity of isolationism. We dont have a choice: The only way to fight jihadism is through our existing military, economic and political alliances. And the only way to ensure that we have international support in the future, when a tragedy takes place on our soil and it will is to offer our support for a tragedy unfolding on allied soil right now. Read more from Anne Applebaums archive, follow her on Twitter or subscribe to her updates on Facebook. IT IS not statehood. It is not even voting rights. But a judges decision affirming the right of D.C. government officials to control the citys own tax dollars is nonetheless an important step forward in the Districts ongoing struggle to gain the fundamental rights enjoyed by other U.S. citizens. The ruling will allow for better management of the citys budget. Equally important is how the victory came about as the result of a creative legal strategy by advocates and officials who wouldnt give up in their quest to win greater autonomy. D.C. Superior Court Judge Brian Holeman on Friday issued a ruling upholding the Budget Autonomy Act, which gives the citys lawmakers the power to spend locally raised funds without getting explicit, prior approval of Congress. D.C. voters overwhelmingly approved the measure amending the Home Rule Charter in a 2013 referendum, but it got tied up in court. Former mayor Vincent C. Gray (D) and D.C. Chief Financial Officer Jeffrey S. Dewitt refused to implement it because of concerns about its legality and were sued by the D.C. Council. When Mayor Muriel E. Bowser (D) took office, she withdrew support for the challenge of the suit and joined with the council, which had the advantage of able pro bono counsel, Karen Dunn and Brian Netter. The ruling by Judge Holeman means that for the first time, the District wont have to await a budget appropriation by Congress before adopting a budget and expending local funds. (The small portion of federal funds will still be subject to federal appropriation.) Not only will this allow for faster enactment of the budget with less lag in the revenue estimates that go into planning, but it also removes any threat of the District getting caught up in potential federal shutdowns. Like all laws passed by the D.C. Council, the budget will be subject to a mandatory congressional review period, but overturning it would require resolutions from both chambers and agreement from the president. That has not happened since 1991, so clearly the new streamlined budget process is in the best interests of the District and its residents. Mr. Dewitt recognized that when he said he would not pursue an appeal of Judge Holemans decision. Attorney General Karl A. Racine, who a spokesman said is still reviewing the decision, should follow suit. And hopefully Congress, which failed to overturn the act when it had opportunities, will not try to block the District from exercising a basic right now upheld by a court to self-government. Back dropped by a monument depicting Cuba's revolutionary hero Ernesto "Che" Guevara, President Barack Obama listens to the U.S. national anthem during a ceremony at the Jose Marti Monument in Havana on March 21, 2016. (Dennis Rivera/AP) The historic visit of a sitting U.S. president to Havana which should have come a half-century sooner will almost surely hasten the day when Cubans are free from the Castro governments suffocating repression. President Obamas whirlwind trip is the culmination of his common-sense revamping of U.S. policy toward Cuba. One outdated, counterproductive relic of the Cold War remains the economic embargo forbidding most business ties with the island nation and the Republican-controlled Congress wont even consider repealing it. But Obama, using his executive powers, has been able to reestablish full diplomatic relations, practically eliminate travel restrictions and substantially weaken the embargos grip. All of which is long overdue. The United States first began to squeeze the Castro government, with the hope of forcing regime change, in 1960. It should be a rule of thumb that if a policy is an utter failure for more than 50 years, its time to try something else. I say this as someone with no illusions about President Raul Castro, the spectral but still-powerful Fidel Castro or the authoritarian system they created and wish to perpetuate. Hours before Obamas arrival Sunday, police and security agents roughly arrested and hauled away members of the Ladies in White dissident group as they conducted their weekly protest march; this time, U.S. network news crews happened to be on hand to witness the ritualized crackdown. I wrote a book about Cuba, and each time I went to the island for research I gained more respect and admiration for the Cuban people and more contempt for the regime that so cynically and capriciously smothers their dreams. Those 10 trips convinced me, however, that the U.S. policy of prohibiting economic and social contact between Americans and Cubans was, to the Castro brothers, the gift that kept on giving. I saw how the menace of an aggressive, threatening neighbor to the north was used as a justification for repression. Wed love to have freedom of the press, freedom of association and freedom of assembly, the government would say, but how can we leave our beloved nation so open, and so vulnerable, when the greatest superpower on earth is trying to destroy our heroic revolution? Most of the Cubans I met were not fooled by such doublespeak. But they did have a nationalistic love for their country, and their nation was, indeed, under economic siege. There are those who argue that Obama could have won more concessions from the Castro regime in exchange for improved relations. But this view ignores the fact that our posture of unmitigated hostility toward Cuba did more harm to U.S. interests than good. Relaxing travel restrictions for U.S. citizens can only help flood the island with American ideas and values. Permitting such an influx could be the biggest risk the Castro brothers have taken since they led a ragtag band of guerrillas into the Sierra Maestra Mountains to make a revolution. Why would they now take this gamble? Because they have no choice. The Castro regime survived the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of huge annual subsidies from the Eastern Bloc but the Cuban economy sank into depression. Copious quantities of Venezuelan oil, provided by strongman Hugo Chavez (who was Fidel Castros protege), provided a respite. But now Chavez is gone, Venezuela is an economic ruin and Cuba has no choice but to monetize the resource it has in greatest abundance, human capital. From the Castros point of view, better relations with the United States must now seem unavoidable. It is possible that Raul Castro, who has promised to resign in 2018, will seek to move the country toward the Chinese model: a free-market economic system overseen by an authoritarian one-party government. Would this fully satisfy those who want to see a free Cuba? No. Would it be a tremendous improvement over the poverty and oppression Cubans suffer today? Absolutely. Fidel Castro will be 90 in August; Raul is just five years younger. At some point in the not-too-distant future, we will see whether Castroism can survive without a living Castro. Anyone who wants U.S. policymakers to have influence when that question arises should applaud Obamas initiatives. And speaking of applause, did you see the rapturous welcome the president and his family received in Havana? Cubans seem to have a much more clear-eyed and hopeful view than Obamas shortsighted critics. Read more from Eugene Robinsons archive, follow him on Twitter or subscribe to his updates on Facebook. You can also join him Tuesdays at 1 p.m. for a live Q&A. One of the oddest documents in a very odd political year is the transcript of an interview conducted by NPR last week with Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson (R). He had previously endorsed Mike Huckabee for the Republican presidential nomination and later Marco Rubio, and now he was without a candidate and, it seems, without much in the way of political integrity, either. He did not rule out endorsing Donald Trump. Hutchinson set out his priorities. Whos the best person to win in November? This is apparently different from who would make the best president and, as you can see, more important. Next came Who can bring our party together? Again, never mind the sort of person Trump is, the candidate hes been and the kind of commander in chief he would make. Hutchinson even noted that Trump had picked up a lot of momentum after his recent wins. He did not note, however, that he had picked up any wisdom or, while were talking miracles, humility. To be fair, Hutchinson has his qualms about Trump. He had previously noted Trumps failings disagreement over trade policy and, in the words of NPRs Robert Siegel, you spoke of temperament, circus atmosphere in the primary, salesmanship in place of serious discussions. Have your concerns about Mr. Trump diminished? Have they grown larger? Have they stayed the same? There I was, all ears, as I waited for Hutchinson to summon his inner gag reflex, to say that things had gotten worse, that now there was the threat of violence and the disturbing admission by Trump that when it comes to foreign policy he talks to himself, presumably pacing Mar-a-Lago staring at his own portrait (to be or not to be . . . president). But instead Hutchinson noted how well Trump was doing. It was clear that he did not like Trump. But winning in November, Republican Party unity these things mattered most of all. Putting an ignorant demagogue in the White House well, that would somehow take care of itself. An unambiguous statement of revulsion and repudiation and a full-throated denunciation of bigotry were not uttered that evening. Like Trump, I started talking to myself. Hutchinson is the canary in the Republican mine. Of course he cannot abide Trump, but then he cannot abide getting on the wrong side of the possible nominee, either. Already, you see others inching ever so much closer to Trump, not necessarily endorsing but certainly not condemning. In fact, only one Republican member of the Senate, Ben Sasse (Neb.), has said he will not vote for Trump. I will follow him into battle. The rest of the Senate is mute, frozen in terror, their spines turning to Jell-O as Trump approaches the number of delegates needed for the nomination. Across Washington and elsewhere, job-famished Republicans deprived of key positions for the eight years of the Obama presidency are starting to see some virtue in Trump. Of course, many in the foreign policy arena have in fact denounced him, but Trump has no idea who they are anyway. As we now know, these things can be negotiated. Some Republicans have already endorsed Trump. Chris Christie, every once in a while the governor of New Jersey, led the parade. Hes either angling for a job in the Trump administration it is hard to type those two words maybe attorney general or something to do with bridge closures, or maybe he wanted to get back at Marco Rubio, vengeance and self-regard being Christies true passions. Either way, he was rewarded by having to stand behind Trump for what seemed like hours as Trump droned on and Christie looked like a sadly deflating parade balloon of himself. Govs. Rick Scott of Florida and Paul LePage of Maine have also looked at Trump and have seen a president. So have a former governor (Jan Brewer of Arizona) and a former senator (Scott Brown of Massachusetts) and what looks like the touring cast of One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest: Sarah Palin, Ann Coulter and Phyllis Schlafly. The Hutchinson text is the document of our times. It lacks moral or even political indignation and has so many implied or stated equivocations that it might have been drafted at the United Nations. Say what you will about Trump; hes separating the men from the boys. On the radio the other day, you could just hear Hutchinson shrink. Read more from Richard Cohens archive. Young women hold each other at a makeshift memorial in front of the stock exchange at the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 22, 2016, following triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. (Kenzo Tribouillard/AFP/Getty Images) THE TERRORIST assault on Brussels Tuesday, just four days after the arrest of an architect of last years attacks in Paris, underlined the resilience and continued menace of the Islamic State to Europe, to the United States and to vital Western interests. It also revealed a crucial divide among U.S. presidential candidates about what this country must do to protect itself. One one side are those who support the internationalist response of President Obama, who said the United States will do whatever is necessary to support our friend and ally Belgium, and who asserted that we must be together, regardless of nationality or race or faith, in fighting against the scourge of terrorism. That view was broadly shared by Democrats Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders and Republican John Kasich. Against them is the radical isolationism of Donald Trump, from whom the Brussels bloodshed prompted another call to close up our borders, and who on Monday questioned the value of U.S. support for NATO allies such as Belgium. Though GOP rival Ted Cruz rejected Mr. Trumps position on NATO, his answer to Brussels was similar: He, too, stressed secur[ing] the southern border and curtailing refugee flows, along with patrols of Muslim neighborhoods. More than at any time since 1940, Americas commitment to its European allies is at issue in a presidential campaign. The tragic events of Brussels illuminate the folly of Mr. Trumps position. The Islamic State has targeted all Western democracies, along with Israel and the Sunni states of the Middle East; it regards Belgians and Americans equally as enemies. Destroying the group as Mr. Trump says is necessary cannot be done without fighting its tendrils wherever they appear in Europe as well as the Middle East, in Africa and in cyberspace. However much they are reinforced, borders will provide no protection to Americans if the jihadists are not defeated elsewhere. Mr. Trump protests that NATO is costing us a fortune and that the United States is no longer a rich country. Never mind that the nation is far richer than it was when the alliance was set up in 1949, or that the national debt as well as spending on defense are lower as a portion of the economy. To defeat the Islamic State without NATOs help would impose huge costs on Americans. Britain, France and Germany, among others, contribute materially to the war against the terrorist entity in Iraq and Syria, not to mention NATO member Turkey. Listen to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump discuss some of his foreign policy positions with The Washington Post editorial board. "NATO is costing us a fortune," Trump said. "We're not reimbursed fairly for what we do." (The Washington Post) Intelligence sharing among the allies is critical to disrupting plots in the United States as well as elsewhere. Mr. Trump told us he saw no advantage to U.S. foreign bases; yet without those provided by Turkey, the air campaign in Iraq and Syria would be far less effective. Mr. Trump is not the only one to complain about the way the defense burden is divided among NATOs members. President Obama has also griped about free riders. The next U.S. president must keep pressing allies to spend more on defense and to commit to operations against Islamic State bases in places such as Libya. But she or he must also accept that the alliance wont function without U.S. leadership which inevitably means a larger role militarily and financially as well as politically. Why are we always the one thats leading? complained Mr. Trump. The simple answer is that, in the absence of that American commitment, chaos like that seen in Brussels will soon cross even our most fortified borders. Barney Frank, in his March 18 op-ed, Too big to fail is an empty phrase, faulted Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Neel Kashkari, president of the Minneapolis branch of the Federal Reserve, for not stating what is too big for banks they advocate breaking up. He attributed their concerns to a distrust of banks. He recounted steps his Dodd-Frank bill made toward greater stability in our economic system. He warned of enormous disruption the system would suffer and the serious disadvantage it would mean for American businesses if banks were reduced in size too much. Might these be alternative empty phrases intended to defend large banks? What disruptions would result from somewhat smaller banks that would be more dangerous than the calamitous disruption super-banks have already caused? Could not large borrowers assemble loans from a group of smaller banks? It is strange to hear the eponymous campaigner against unrestrained financial capital defend mega-banks. A dialogue has opened about the rigged economy. Does the former campaigner now want to align with the brand-name moderate running for president and be gentle with the colossal financial giants? Are the big banks for him now just about the right size of big? Richard Margolies, Washington Listen to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump discuss some of his foreign policy positions with The Washington Post editorial board. "NATO is costing us a fortune," Trump said. "We're not reimbursed fairly for what we do." (The Washington Post) Listen to Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump discuss some of his foreign policy positions with The Washington Post editorial board. "NATO is costing us a fortune," Trump said. "We're not reimbursed fairly for what we do." (The Washington Post) Donald Trump endorsed an unabashedly noninterventionist approach to world affairs Monday during a day-long tour of Washington, casting doubt on the need for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and expressing skepticism about a muscular U.S. military presence in Asia. The foreign policy positions outlined in a meeting with the editorial board of The Washington Post came on a day when Trump set aside the guerrilla tactics and showman bravado that have powered his campaign to appear as a would-be presidential nominee, explaining his policies, accepting counsel and building bridges to Republican elites. On Monday night, Trump delivered a scripted address in front of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, prompting ovations with pledges to stand by Israel and take a hard line on peace talks with the Palestinians. Trumps whirlwind day of appearances around the nations capital was intended in part to head off an establishment push to deny him the Republican Partys nomination. But in the Post meeting, the billionaire mogul also made clear that he would not be beholden to the GOPs long-held orthodoxies. During the hour-long discussion, during which he revealed five of his foreign policy advisers, Trump advocated a light footprint in the world. In spite of unrest in the Middle East and elsewhere, he said, the United States must look inward and steer its resources toward rebuilding the nations crumbling infrastructure. 1 of 11 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad Donald Trump tours official Washington View Photos On a whirlwind day of appearances across the nations capital that culminated with a high-profile address on U.S.-Israel relations, the Republican presidential front-runner was noticeably measured. Caption On a whirlwind day of appearances across the nations capital that culminated with a high-profile address on U.S.-Israel relations, the Republican presidential front-runner was noticeably measured. March 21, 2016 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at a news conference at the former Old Post Office Pavilion, soon to be a Trump International Hotel. Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post Wait 1 second to continue. At what point do you say, Hey, we have to take care of ourselves? Trump said in the editorial board meeting. I know the outer world exists, and Ill be very cognizant of that. But at the same time, our country is disintegrating, large sections of it, especially the inner cities. Trump said U.S. involvement in NATO may need to be significantly diminished in the coming years, breaking with nearly seven decades of consensus in Washington. We certainly cant afford to do this anymore, he said, adding later, NATO is costing us a fortune, and yes, were protecting Europe with NATO, but were spending a lot of money. [A transcript of Donald Trumps meeting with The Washington Post editorial board] Be more presidential Throughout his unlikely campaign, Trumps unpredictable, incendiary persona has been his rocket fuel. But with the nomination now within his reach, he is trying at times to round out his sharp edges to convince his partys leaders not to mention general-election voters that he has the temperament and knowledge to be president. This was one of Trumps goals as he addressed AIPACs annual conference in Washington. For perhaps the first time in his campaign, Trump read from a prepared text on teleprompters a device he has colorfully mocked other politicians for using. On Israel, Trump mostly hewed to the party line, giving a full-throated defense of the nation and its interests and arguing that no candidate is a more forceful champion of the Jewish state. His eyes pinging back and forth between the teleprompter screens, Trump embellished his prepared text only to deliver a few criticisms of President Obama and his first-term secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential front-runner. When I become president, the days of treating Israel like a second-class citizen will end on Day One, Trump vowed. He received enthusiastic applause from the crowd of thousands, and the much-rumored walkouts during his speech were either called off or went unnoticed in the cavernous Verizon Center arena. GOP presidential hopefuls John Kasich, Donald Trump and Ted Cruz spoke on March 21 at the AIPAC conference in Washington, D.C. (Peter Stevenson/Reuters) Earlier Monday, Trump sought to cultivate ties with his partys establishment at a private luncheon he hosted on Capitol Hill. It was attended by about two dozen Republicans, including influential conservatives in Congress and prominent figures from GOP policy and lobbying circles. Those with whom he met directly urged Trump to be more presidential, according to one attendee. This person, who like others spoke on the condition of anonymity to relate details of the closed session, described it as a very serious conversation, adding: This was the Donald Trump who talks with bankers, not the Donald Trump who is on the stage. Trump also sought to showcase his business acumen and dealmaking prowess. He staged an afternoon news conference at the historic Old Post Office Pavilion, which his real estate company is turning into a Trump International Hotel, a few blocks from the White House on Pennsylvania Avenue. The candidate, flanked by employees wearing hard hats, led journalists on a tour of the construction zone. Trumps visit to Washington comes amid an intensified effort by some in the Republican establishment, including 2012 presidential nominee Mitt Romney, to deny him the nomination by forcing a contested convention at which the party could rally around an alternative. At his luncheon meeting, Trump warned party leaders against using parliamentary maneuvers to block his nomination. He later told reporters that he had a productive conversation recently with House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) and that he has many millions of people behind me. Now, they can play games, and they can play cute, Trump said of Ryan and other GOP leaders. I can only take [Ryan] at face value. I understand duplicity. I understand a lot of things. But he called me last week, he could not have been nicer. I spoke with Mitch McConnell, he could not have been nicer. If people want to be smart, they should embrace this movement. Neither Ryan nor McConnell (R-Ky.), the Senate majority leader, attended Mondays meeting with Trump. It was held at Jones Day, the law firm of Donald F. McGahn, a Trump campaign attorney, and was convened in part by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), a key Trump ally. Attendees included Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint, a former senator from South Carolina and a conservative movement leader, as well as Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), former House speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.) and former House Appropriations Committee chairman Bob Livingston (R-La.). A group of House members who have endorsed Trump also attended. We met with Senator Sessions and some of the great people in Washington, Trump said. We had a really good meeting. . . . They cant believe how far weve come because, you know, I think a lot of people maybe wouldnt have predicted that. We are a poor country now Trump began the day at The Post, where his on-the-record meeting with the editorial board covered media libel laws, violence at his rallies and climate change, as well as foreign policy. For the first time, Trump listed members of a team chaired by Sessions that is counseling him on foreign affairs and helping to shape his policies: Keith Kellogg, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, Walid Phares and Joseph E. Schmitz. All are relatively little known in foreign policy circles, and several have ties to the George W. Bush administration. [Meet the men shaping Donald Trumps foreign policy views] Trump praised George P. Shultz, who served as President Ronald Reagans secretary of state, as a model diplomat and, on the subject of Russias aggression in Ukraine, said Americas allies are not doing anything. Ukraine is a country that affects us far less than it affects other countries in NATO, and yet were doing all of the lifting, Trump said. Theyre not doing anything. And I say: Why is it that Germanys not dealing with NATO on Ukraine? . . . Why are we always the one thats leading, potentially, the third world war with Russia? While the Obama administration has faced pressure from congressional critics who have advocated for a more active U.S. role in supporting Ukraine, the U.S. military has limited its assistance to nonlethal equipment such as vehicles and night-vision gear. European nations have taken the lead in crafting a fragile cease-fire designed to decrease hostility between Ukrainian forces and Russian-backed separatists. Trump sounded a similar note in discussing the U.S. presence in the Pacific. He questioned the value of massive military investments in Asia and wondered aloud whether the United States still is capable of being an effective peacekeeping force there. South Korea is very rich, great industrial country, and yet were not reimbursed fairly for what we do, Trump said. Were constantly sending our ships, sending our planes, doing our war games were reimbursed a fraction of what this is all costing. Such talk is likely to trigger anxiety in South Korea, where a U.S. force of 28,000 has provided a strong deterrent to North Korean threats for decades. Asked whether the United States benefits from its involvement in Asia, Trump replied, Personally, I dont think so. He added: I think we were a very powerful, very wealthy country. And were a poor country now. Were a debtor nation. Jenna Johnson, Paul Kane, Missy Ryan and David Weigel contributed to this report. The terrorist attacks in Brussels on Tuesday pose the worst kind of foreign policy dilemma for President Obama, pitting his instincts that hes doing all he can to defeat the Islamic State against intense political pressure for him to do more. Obama has been making the case for months that his strategy to defeat the Islamic State and protect Americans at home is slowly working. White House aides speak repeatedly of the 40 percent of the Islamic States territory taken back from the group in Iraq and the 20 percent wrested away in Syria. They cite the impact of more than 11,000 U.S. military airstrikes, which they say have killed more than 10,000 front-line fighters. [Belgian authorities: Brothers carried out Islamic State suicide attacks] More quietly, they strike cautionary notes. This may be the most complicated conflict of our generation, said a senior administration official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to comment frankly. The reality as Obama learned in the aftermath of the attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif. is that impressive battlefield statistics and reasoned calls for restraint mean little in the climate of fear generated by terrorist strikes. Belgium was left reeling after three attacks left at least 31 people dead and more than 200 injured March 22. The terror began unfolding during peak rush hour, and ended with at least one suspect still at large. (Deirdra O'Regan/The Washington Post) Obama, speaking in Cuba on Tuesday, struck a familiar tone in the immediate aftermath of the Brussels attacks. He projected resolve, insisting that we can and will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world. But the brevity of his remarks and his eagerness to pivot quickly back to his prepared speech also made clear that he was determined to keep the threat posed by the terrorist group in perspective. [Obama addresses the Cuban nation] The fundamental problem for Obama is that he is convinced, on the basis of his experience in Iraq and Afghanistan, that intensifying the fight against the Islamic State with more American troops, more airstrikes and raids would be counterproductive. The White House and Pentagon have studied options that would accelerate the timeline for major attacks designed to clear the Islamic State from its main strongholds of Raqqa in Syria and Mosul in Iraq. Such plans could include increasing the number of U.S. combat advisers, pushing them closer to the front lines and loosening combat rules designed to minimize civilian casualties. But Obama has rejected those options, arguing that if there are no Iraqi or Syrian forces to hold the seized territory and provide humanitarian assistance, the gains will be short-lived, said senior administration officials. Instead of big military offensives, the president has opted for lower-profile measures such as helping allies of the United States improve intelligence collection and sharing, as the United States did after the 9/11 attacks. Secretary of State John F. Kerry has logged hundreds of hours working with Russians and Iranians to negotiate a fragile and imperfect cessation of hostilities between the Syrian government and U.S.-backed opposition groups. 1 of 28 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad Photos: Scenes from Brussels after deadly blasts at airport and metro station View Photos More than a dozen people were killed, and several others were injured, after explosions at an airport and metro station in the Belgian capital. Caption More than a dozen people were killed, and several others were injured, after explosions at an airport and metro station in the Belgian capital. March 22, 2016 An image from a security camera shows three suspects of the attacks at Brussels Airport, in Zaventem, pushing trollies with suitcases. The Belgian federal prosecutor confirmed, April 9, that Mohamed Abrini, right, who was arrested in connection to the attacks in Paris on Nov. 13, 2015, was the man in the hat captured in surveillance footage at the airport on March 22. Belgian Federal Police/AP Wait 1 second to continue. The temporary halt to the fighting should allow all the groups in the messy, multi-sided war to focus on fighting the Islamic State instead of one another, said administration officials. [Presidential candidates issue contrasting responses to Brussels attacks] At home, Obama has sought to project determination and restraint, rejecting calls from Republican presidential candidates to lift all limits on the air campaign or bar all Syrian refugees from entering the United States. After the bloodshed in Brussels, the presidents approach once again came under GOP attack. President Obama looks and sounds so ridiculous making his speech in Cuba, especially in the shadows of Brussels, Republican front-runner Donald Trump tweeted. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.) said that the country did not need another lecture on Islamophobia. We need a commander in chief who does everything necessary to defeat the enemy, he said. Privately, Obama has worried that a large-scale terrorist attack in Europe or on U.S. soil could force him to plunge American forces into another large and costly war in the Middle East something he has vowed to avoid. In the near term, this nightmare scenario could lead Obama to deploy more U.S. Special Operations forces to track and destroy the Islamic State cells involved in planning terrorist attacks in Europe and North America. If that is not enough, Obama could choose to speed up plans to drive the Islamic State from its major havens. Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter said in January that the Pentagon was looking to step up the tempo in Iraq and Syria and hoped to push the Islamic State out of Raqqa and Mosul before the end of the year. A major offensive in either of those cities in the near term would require a significant shift in the administrations strategy, which relies heavily on local partners, and could potentially put some American forces in greater danger. There are some signs that this already may be happening. Before he took questions in Cuba on Monday, Obama paused to express condolences in the death of a U.S. Marine killed by an Islamic State rocket strike at an American fire-support base about 70 miles southwest of Mosul. The deployment of Marines to the base had not been previously announced by the Pentagon. [A U.S. Marine is killed in Iraq, the second combat casualty of the ISIS war] Do you take the risk to accelerate the Mosul campaign? asked Michele Flournoy, a former senior Pentagon official in the Obama administration and an adviser to Hillary Clintons presidential campaign. Thats a legitimate question. Until now, Obamas instincts have told him to avoid such moves, which he has cast as unnecessary and the beginning of a slide toward a much larger American commitment of forces. Id be deeply surprised if the president in his final months in office tore up his template in Iraq and Syria, said Brian Katulis, a Middle East expert at the left-leaning Center for American Progress. If Obama does not undertake a dramatic change in course, the biggest challenge for him will be finding the right tone to reassure the American people something he struggled to do after the Paris and San Bernardino attacks. Every president has strengths and weaknesses, Obama said in a recent interview with the Atlantic. And there is no doubt that there are times where I have not been attentive enough to feelings and emotions and politics in communicating what were doing and how were doing it. The test for Obama is whether he can simultaneously communicate resolve and the need for restraint in Iraq and Syria amid new terrorist attacks and one of the most bitter and divisive political campaigns in recent U.S. history. Read more: Has terrorism become the new normal in Europe? Explosives called The Mother of Satan were likely used in the attacks Five stories you should read to understand the Brussels attacks Today's coverage from Post correspondents around the world The Supreme Court on Monday overturned a ruling by Massachusettss highest court that upheld a state law prohibiting the possession of stun guns. The justices, in an unsigned and bare-bones opinion, said the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court misread their ruling in the landmark case District of Columbia v. Heller. That 2008 decision said the Second Amendment provided an individual right to gun ownership and provided guidance on what kinds of weapons were covered. [Supreme Court finds individual right to handgun ownership] The Supreme Court has been considering a petition to accept the Massachusetts case for months, and its disposition Monday raised questions about whether it was decided differently because of the death of Justice Antonin Scalia. The courts 1 1 / 2 -page per curium decision said the Massachusetts justices erred in several ways in ruling that stun guns, which produce a non-lethal electrical charge, were not covered by the Heller decision. The justices sent the case back for additional work but did not specifically overturn the Massachusetts law. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. filed a 10-page concurrence that criticized the grudging opinion written by his colleagues and said the court should have struck down the law. This raised the prospect that Alitos concurrence might once have been the courts opinion but that it no longer had five votes on the now eight-member court. The case involves Jaime Caetano, who bought a stun gun as a means of self-defense against her abusive former boyfriend. Although she never used it, she threatened him with it when he approached her one night as she left work. Stun guns are allowed in the vast majority of states but banned in Massachusetts and a few others. Caetano was arrested and tried, and the Massachusetts court upheld the conviction. That decision does a grave disservice to vulnerable individuals like Caetano who must defend themselves because the state will not, Alito wrote. Alito said each step of the Massachusetts courts reasoning was wrong. The state court repeatedly framed the question before it as whether a particular weapon was in common use at the time of enactment of the Second Amendment, Alito wrote. In Heller, we emphatically rejected such a formulation. We found the argument that only those arms in existence in the 18th century are protected by the Second Amendment not merely wrong, but bordering on the frivolous. Alito added: Electronic stun guns are no more exempt from the Second Amendments protections, simply because they were unknown to the First Congress, than electronic communications are exempt from the First Amendment, or electronic imaging devices are exempt from the Fourth Amendment. He said the weapons must be both dangerous and unusual to be questionable. While less popular than handguns, stun guns are widely owned and accepted as a legitimate means of self-defense across the country, Alito said. Massachusetts categorical ban of such weapons therefore violates the Second Amendment. Alito said there was no need for his colleagues to return the case to the Massachusetts court. If the fundamental right of self-defense does not protect Caetano, then the safety of all Americans is left to the mercy of state authorities who may be more concerned about disarming the people than about keeping them safe, Alito wrote. Alitos concurrence was joined by Justice Clarence Thomas. Thomas and Scalia in the past criticized their colleagues for not accepting challenges to gun restrictions that gun rights proponents have said violate Heller. [Court declines to review assault-weapons prohibitions ] Since Scalias death Feb. 13, Thomas and Alito have been more outspoken in disagreeing with their colleagues about whether to accept certain cases. While only Thomas signed on to Alitos concurrence Monday, that is not an indication that other justices did not at one time agree with it. The case is Caetano v. Massachusetts. John Sturgeon, at the center of a case involving a hovercraft and moose hunting in Alaska, shown Jan. 17 in Washington, D.C. (Bill O'Leary/The Washington Post) The Supreme Court delivered a unanimous victory to an Alaskan moose hunter Tuesday, but did not settle whether he will be able to use a hovercraft to travel through federal lands to his favorite hunting grounds. The court overturned a decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit that had gone against Anchorage businessman John Sturgeon. The panels ruling was plausible in the abstract, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the court, but ultimately inconsistent with both the text and context of the law. Because the court had gone down the wrong road in its analysis, it did not consider the most important questions, he said. The justices sent back the case so that lower courts could decide vital issues of state sovereignty, on the one hand, and federal authority, on the other. [A moose hunter and his hovercraft tell Supreme Court Alaska is different] In other words, Sturgeon is back to where he was in 2007, when federal officers approached him as he was working on his hovercraft on a gravel bar of the Nation River, within the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve. Sturgeon for years had used his hovercraft to traverse the shallow rivers to his favorite hunting spot near the Canadian border. But on this day, the officers told him that hovercraft were not allowed in the preserve they are banned in all federal parks and that hed have to find another way home. He did, and then he sued. Sturgeon has become something of a Last Frontier hero for the lawsuit, with groups and individuals holding fundraisers to help pay his legal bills. Sturgeon contended that park rules that apply in the Lower 48 are suspect in Alaska, where the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) sets more specific policies for the 104 million acres it covers. Sturgeon pointed to a provision in the law that he contends means the Nation River is state-owned, and thus not subject to federal rules even though it passes through the federal preserve. The Supreme Court agreed with Sturgeon and his supporters on a general concept: Alaska is different. ANILCA requires certain accommodations commercial fishing, the use of snow-machines and airplanes, for instance not allowed in other federal conservation areas. All those Alaska-specific provisions reflect the simple truth that Alaska is often the exception, not the rule, Roberts wrote. Jim Adams, Alaska regional director for the National Parks Conservation Association, said, We are confident the lower court will again affirm the services ability to manage rivers inside national parks . . . . Sturgeon said he was still absorbing the decision, but thats a positive thing. Its a bit disappointing but not that surprising that the case moves back to lower court. He counts it as at least a partial victory, unlike in 2007 when, as Roberts noted, Sturgeon returned home without a moose. The case is Sturgeon v. Frost. The Supreme Court on Tuesday continued to disappoint big businesss efforts to curb class-action lawsuits and upheld a nearly $6 million award to workers at a Tyson Foods pork-processing plant in Iowa. In a 6-to-2 ruling, the court rejected Tysons contention that the more than 3,300 workers at the plant should not have been able to use statistical averages to prove that they were not paid what they were due. The court did not rule on a second argument offered by Tyson, that some workers who had not been underpaid might benefit from the award. Workers in the Storm Lake, Iowa, plant had alleged that they were not properly compensated for the time they spent putting on required protective gear and walking to their workstations. A jury agreed. [Supreme Court seems receptive to Iowa workers in class-action suit] Writing for the majority, Justice Anthony M. Kennedy rejected industrys call for what he said would be a broad rule banning what is called representational evidence in class-action suits. The admissibility of statistical samples as evidence, he said, turns not on the form a proceeding takes be it class or individual action but on the degree to which the evidence is reliable in proving or disproving the elements of the relevant cause of action. The Tyson case was one of several this term that asked the court to cut back on class actions. But in January, the court ruled in Campbell-Ewald Co. v. Gomez that a company may not ask a court to throw out a potential class-action lawsuit simply by offering the lead plaintiff all that the plaintiff has sought. Had the ruling gone the other way, mounting such lawsuits would have become harder, because a defendant could moot a proceeding by removing the plaintiffs one at a time. [Supreme Court rules for plaintiffs in class-action case] In the Tyson case, the company claimed that the thousands of current and former plant workers who brought the suit did not have enough similarities in their duties to be able to use statistical averages. The workers sought to prove that they had not been compensated for overtime accumulated donning and doffing protective gear and doing other tasks necessary for their work. The company asked the court to extend its reasoning in Wal-Mart Stores v. Dukes, in which the court ruled for the corporate giant in a class-action suit filed on behalf of 1.5 million female employees who had alleged discrimination. Kennedy said the Wal-Mart decision remained good law. He said that that suit had failed because the workers job descriptions were not close; that was not the case for the Tyson workers, he said. The court also relied on a nearly 70-year-old precedent that says that when the company has kept poor records of the time required for the tasks required of workers and Tyson acknowledged that was the case here the workers are allowed to use statistics to calculate the lost time. The court did not rule on Tysons argument that some workers who were not undercompensated will be allowed to benefit from the award. Kennedy said the issue was premature, because the damages award has not yet been disbursed, nor does the record indicate how it will be disbursed. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. joined Kennedy and the courts liberals in the ruling. But he wrote a separate opinion to express my concern that the district court may not be able to fashion a method for awarding damages only to those class members who suffered an actual injury. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. dissented. They concluded, in part, that the workers were not similarly situated. Our precedents generally prohibit plaintiffs from maintaining a class action when an important element of liability depends on facts that vary among individual class members, Thomas wrote. The case is Tyson Foods v. Bouaphakeo. Appeals Court Judge Merrick Garland speaks in the Rose Garden of the White House after being nominated by President Barack Obama to the U.S. Supreme Court in Washington on March 16. (Kevin Lamarque/Reuters) A misconduct complaint against chief U.S. District Judge Richard W. Roberts of the District has been dismissed as moot given his retirement last week, according to an order and memorandum released late Monday night by a federal appeals court. The ruling by acting chief judge Karen L. Henderson of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit does not name the judge or describe the allegations but stated that the judge who is the subject of the complaint retired March 16. Roberts stepped down unexpectedly March 16, citing health reasons. That day, a lawsuit also was filed by a Utah woman who accuses Roberts of sexually assaulting her decades ago when she was a 16-year-old witness in a murder trial Roberts was prosecuting. Robertss attorneys have called the womans assertions categorically false but said the judge did have an intimate relationship with the woman that was entirely consensual and occurred after the trial. [Chief judge of Districts federal court retires after accusation of sexual assault] U.S. District Judge Richard W. Roberts before the start of a ceremony at the federal courthouse in Washington in 2008. (Charles Dharapak/AP) The office of Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes (R), which investigated the womans allegations, has previously released a formal ethics complaint dated March 7 that it lodged against Roberts with the appeals court. Separately, the court issued a statement Tuesday that appeals court Chief Judge Merrick Garland, whom President Obama nominated to the U.S. Supreme Court on March 16, had recused himself from reviewing the complaint against Roberts because of his longstanding professional relationship with Judge Roberts. Garland recused himself on March 11, the day the court received the complaint involving Roberts. As chief judge of the appeals court, Garland, by statute and judiciary branch ethics rules, is responsible for initially reviewing complaints against district judges under him. [President Obama nominates Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court] After Garlands recusal, Henderson dismissed the complaint in an order and memorandum dated Friday, citing a provision that allows for events such as a judges retirement rendering action on a complaint moot because of the intervening events. Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who has resisted entreaties by liberals to run for president and who has largely stayed on the sidelines in the race, stepped into the fray Monday with a series of social-media posts attacking Republican front-runner Donald Trump as a loser. In taking on Trump, Warren employed the same tactic that he has often used to great effect: name-calling on social media. Many of historys worst authoritarians started out as losers and Trump is a serious threat, Warren added in a Facebook post that within three hours had been shared nearly 51,000 times and had received more than 154,000 likes. She also fired eight tweets in rapid succession. They listed his business failures, and one read: @RealDonaldTrump knows hes a loser. His insecurities are on parade: petty bullying, attacks on women, cheap racism, flagrant narcissism. The barrage represented a sharp escalation by Warren, who is one of the most influential figures on the Democratic left. At the same time, she seems in no hurry to abandon her neutral stance in her partys presidential primary, which is notable given that every one of the 13 other female senators is backing former secretary of state Hillary Clinton. Sen. Elizabeth Warren takes a photo with wellwishers following a news conference with Senate Democrats. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images) Warrens postings came a day after the New York Times published a column by Maureen Dowd in which the billionaire real estate mogul mocked Warren with references to a controversy about her claims to Native American ancestry that had dogged her during her 2012 Senate campaign. I think its wonderful because the Indians can now partake in the future of the country, Trump told Dowd. Shes got about as much Indian blood as I have. Her whole life was based on a fraud. She got into Harvard and all that because she said she was a minority. Asked at a Washington news conference Monday about Warrens attack, Trump responded: Who is that, the Indian? You mean the Indian? Although Clinton is widening her lead over Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Warren has indicated that she is in no hurry to see the Democratic contest come to an end. The way I think of it, Ive been cheering them on, because Im really proud to be a Democrat, and this primary has made me even prouder, Warren said last week on MSNBC. I gotta tell you, it makes clear the difference between Democrats and, boy, that show thats going on over on the Republican side, Warren added. So right now, I tell you what my timeline is, I like what were doing on the Democratic side, and I think its what we ought to be doing. [Elizabeth Warren keeps pressure on Hillary Clinton and Democrats ahead of 2016] There is little upside for Warren to wade into the Democratic race, given that Clinton holds a commanding position, while many of Warrens supporters align with Sanders on most issues. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump walks out after speaking Monday at a news conference in downtown Washington at the Old Post Office Pavilion, soon to be a Trump International Hotel. (Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post) At the same time, she has close ties to several of Clintons top advisers. Political consultant Mandy Grunwald, who been a leading strategist for all of Clintons campaigns, played a similar role in Warrens 2012 Senate race. Warren has also been an ally of Gary Gensler, the former Commodity Futures Trading Commission head who is the Clinton campaigns chief financial officer. Brady Williamson, an adviser to Clintons campaign, worked with Warren in the 1990s on an effort to overhaul the bankruptcy laws. Sanderss presence in the race has also put pressure on Clinton to move toward his and Warrens views on a number of issues. One of them is trade. In October, Clinton came out against President Obama in his efforts to push through the 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership deal, which she had praised when she was secretary of state. Clinton has also sounded a tougher note on Wall Street, which is a regular target of Warren and Sanders. Warren has often decried what she says was an overly close relationship between the banking industry and the administrations of Obama and former president Bill Clinton. She has noted, for example, that three of the last four Treasury secretaries appointed by Democratic presidents had close ties to Citigroup. In August, under pressure from liberal groups, Clinton announced her support for legislation, authored by Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-Wis.), that aims to slow what Warren has described as a revolving door between Wall Street and Washington. The measure would prevent financial industry executives from receiving accelerated payouts of restricted stock options and other forms of lump-sum payment if they leave those jobs to take posts in the federal government. However, the legislation has little chance of passing before the next president takes office, and Clinton has not said whether she would impose a similar restriction on those she would recruit for high posts in her administration, if she is elected. Hillary Clinton strongly supports Senator Baldwins legislation, and is willing to explore other steps that might help end the revolving door between government and financial institutions, Clinton spokesman Brian Fallon said Monday. Donald Trump is greeted by Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi as she introduces him at a campaign event in Tampa on March 14. (Gerald Herbert/AP) Aides to Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said this week that his charitable foundation made a mistake when it donated $25,000 to a political committee backing Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, a potential violation of federal rules prohibiting charities from aiding political candidates. The Donald J. Trump Foundation compounded the error by not listing its 2013 gift to the pro-Bondi group, And Justice for All, in its filings with the IRS that year, the aides said. The charity listed a $25,000 donation to an unrelated group with a similar name, Justice for All. But that group, a Wichita-based nonprofit, said it never received any money from the foundation. Such an admission of error from the campaign is itself relatively unusual, because Trump has built his presidential bid on a distaste for apologies. Trumps campaign spokeswoman and the treasurer of his foundation said they were unaware of the charitys mistakes until Monday, when they were notified that a left-leaning watchdog group, Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, had filed a complaint with the IRS. Both said there was no intent to deceive the IRS, and they blamed the problems on a series of clerical errors. All these years, we had no idea anything happened, said Allen Weisselberg, chief financial officer of the Trump Organization and the longtime treasurer of Trumps foundation. Weisselberg said Trumps accountants would contact the IRS on Tuesday to straighten it out. The donation to Bondis group by Trumps foundation, a charity that the billionaire businessman created in the 1980s, was controversial because it came as Bondi was reviewing whether to investigate fraud allegations against Trump University, a real-estate-seminar business affiliated with the front-runner. Bondi, a Republican who was preparing for her 2014 reelection campaign, never took action against Trump University. When questions arose at the time, the group and Trump defended the donation. The treasurer of the pro-Bondi And Justice for All, Nancy Watkins, told the Tampa Bay Times at the time that the group was comfortable with the propriety of the contribution from the Trump Foundation. Trump told the paper then that Bondi is a fabulous representative of the people Florida is lucky to have her. The foundations gift to Bondi gained renewed attention in recent days when Bondi endorsed Trump before this years Florida GOP primary, on March 15. Hope Hicks, a spokeswoman for Trumps campaign, said it had been unaware that Trumps foundation made the erroneous political gift. The campaign wasnt in existence when the 2013 donation was made, Hicks said. The campaign had no knowledge of this. IRS rules say that nonprofit foundations, like Trumps, are absolutely prohibited from directly or indirectly participating in, or intervening in, any political campaign. If an organization is found to have violated that rule, it could lose its nonprofit status. The penalty for sending false information to the IRS can be more severe. CREW, the watchdog group, was the first to note publicly that Trumps foundation had reported a donation to the Kansas-based Justice for All and not to the pro-Bondi group with a similar name. A spokeswoman for the Kansas group, which trains antiabortion activists, confirmed to The Washington Post that it had not received the money. Jordan Libowitz, a CREW spokeswoman, said that the IRS needs to investigate and determine where the truth lies. It appears they gave an illegal political donation, told the IRS they didnt give a political donation, claimed it was made to a similarly named permissible group instead and now theyre saying its an error? Libowitz said. An IRS spokesman declined to comment, citing federal privacy laws that prohibit the disclosure of information about any individual taxpayer. The explanation from Trump aides Monday underscored the extent to which Trumps foundation is managed largely by the same people who help run his business empire and make decisions about his personal funds. Weisselberg, the foundations treasurer, said the mistakes began with an accounts-payable clerk at the Trump Organization. The clerk received a request for payment, Weisselberg said, in the name of Bondis group, And Justice for All. Then, the clerk had to decide whether the check would come from Trumps charity or his personal funds. The clerk had a standing order to consult a reference book, Weisselberg said. In that book, it lists all the bona fide charities, so we went to that book and in that book, sure enough, is And Justice for All, Weisselberg said. That was a mistake, he said, but the clerk didnt know it. The listing she found for And Justice for All was actually for a nonprofit with the same name, located in Utah. So the clerk, Weisselberg said, wrote a check for that name, drawn from the charitable foundations funds. If the clerk had known that the check was meant for a political group, Weisselberg said, we would have taken it out of [Trumps] own personal account. We had 99.9999 percent of them perfect, and this is the one, he added. The clerk wrote the check, but it didnt go to the Utah group. The And Justice for All organization in Utah, which helps poor people and those with disabilities navigate the legal system, told The Washington Post that the group received no funds from Trump. Weisselberg could not explain how the money got to Bondis group. The check got cut, and after that, I dont know exactly where it ended up, he said. It must have gone, I guess, to Pam Bondi, Weisselberg said. We spoke to our accountants, our tax attorneys in Washington, and they say these things happen all the time. The next mistake, Weisselberg said, was made by Trumps accounting firm. When compiling the foundations donations for 2013, it did not list a donation to either of the groups called And Justice for All. Instead, it listed a $25,000 donation to Justice for All, in Kansas. From what Im told, they had a typographical mistake on the return. . . . Somehow, someone who typed up the return for that year put Justice for All, Weisselberg said. A message left for Trumps paid tax preparer was not returned. An image from a security camera shows three suspects of the attacks at Brussels Airport, in Zaventem, pushing trollies with suitcases. The Belgian federal prosecutor confirmed, April 9, that Mohamed Abrini, right, who was arrested in connection to the attacks in Paris on Nov. 13, 2015, was the man in the hat captured in surveillance footage at the airport on March 22. March 22, 2016 An image from a security camera shows three suspects of the attacks at Brussels Airport, in Zaventem, pushing trollies with suitcases. The Belgian federal prosecutor confirmed, April 9, that Mohamed Abrini, right, who was arrested in connection to the attacks in Paris on Nov. 13, 2015, was the man in the hat captured in surveillance footage at the airport on March 22. Belgian Federal Police/AP More than a dozen people were killed, and several others were injured, after explosions at an airport and metro station in the Belgian capital. More than two dozen people were killed, and scores were injured, after explosions at an airport and metro station in the Belgian capital. More than two dozen people were killed, and scores were injured, after explosions at an airport and metro station in the Belgian capital. Islamic State suicide bombers brought terror, chaos and bloodshed to the city at the heart of European unity on Tuesday, detonating their nail-spewing bombs at an airport departures hall and on a subway train in attacks that left at least 31 people dead and prompted authorities to launch an intensive manhunt for at least one suspected accomplice. The wanted man accompanied two of the bombers to the airport, along with luggage heaving with explosives. Authorities were also hunting for a suspected Belgian bombmaker who trained in Syria with the Islamic State and later sneaked back into Europe. On Wednesday, Belgian state broadcaster RTBF identified two of the attackers who targeted Brussels as brothers Khalid and Brahim Bakraoui. Tuesdays mass killings add this city to an ignominious but growing list of European capitals that have been struck in the past year by deadly attacks either perpetrated or inspired by the Islamic State, including Paris and Copenhagen. Authorities had been bracing for an attack in Belgium for months as the country has struggled to stem a tide of homegrown extremism and as the Islamic State has repeatedly threatened to hit Europe in its core. But when the attacks finally came, the magnitude was stunning. The days violence represented the worst on Belgian soil since World War II. What we had feared has happened, said Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel. This is a black moment for our country. [People who died werent whole anymore. They were in pieces.] The apparently coordinated explosions created a renewed sense of threat that spilled far beyond Brussels, as authorities boosted police patrols in cities such as Paris, London and Washington. The targets appeared to have been chosen for their symbolic value and for their ease of access. The attackers first struck with twin bombings at the international airport, where early- morning travelers were preparing to board flights linking Brussels to cities across the continent and around the world. An hour later, a subway car transiting beneath the modernist glass-and-steel high-rises that house the European Union burst with smoke and flame. In addition to the dead, about 250 people were injured, Belgian officials said. Many of the injured lost limbs as shrapnel from the blasts radiated through packed crowds. Cellphone video recorded in the minutes after the airport blasts showed children cowering on a bloody floor amid the maimed and the dead. Footage from a subway station revealed desperate scenes as people dressed for a days work stumbled from the mangled wreckage into a smoke-drenched tunnel. Belgium was left reeling after three attacks left at least 31 people dead and more than 200 injured March 22. The terror began unfolding during the morning rush hour and ended with at least one suspect still at large. (Deirdra O'Regan/The Washington Post) Authorities acknowledged that they had been readying for an attack. But nothing like this, they said. We never could have imagined something of this scale, Interior Minister Jan Jambon told Belgian television station RTL. And even as the country tried to recover from the trauma of Tuesdays strikes, there was evidence that more could be on the way. [How the Brussels attacks could force Obama to betray his policy instincts] The man being sought by police accompanied two of the bombers to the airport, according to a senior Belgian official who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive details of the case. The taxi driver who transported them said they were hauling particularly heavy luggage that investigators believe was packed with explosives. At an apartment in the Schaerbeek area of Brussels, investigators later found explosive devices loaded with nails and chemicals, along with an Islamic State flag, the Belgian federal prosecutors office said in a statement. It was exactly the same type of bomb as at the airport, the senior official said. Belgian police released surveillance images of three men pushing luggage carts at Brussels Airport. The prosecutors office said two of them dressed in black with black gloves on their left hands, probably to conceal detonators had blown themselves up. But the third, dressed in white, was on the loose. His identity was unknown, and despite a nationwide hunt with heavily armed officers combing the streets and checkpoints at Belgian borders snarling traffic for miles the suspect remained at large Tuesday night. Across the continent, authorities were also hunting 24-year-old Najim Laachraoui, a suspected Islamic State bombmaker, according to two European security officials. Laachraoui, a Belgian who was born in Morocco and raised in the Schaerbeek neighborhood, is believed to have trained in Syria and then returned to Europe. His DNA was found on one of the explosives belts from Novembers Paris attacks, and he is thought to have traveled at one point with Salah Abdeslam, the only surviving suspect believed to have played a direct role in the Paris massacre. Tuesdays attacks came only four days after Belgian counterterrorism authorities cheered the arrest of Abdeslam, 26, who was the most wanted man in Europe for the past four months. Abdeslam was discovered hiding in a Brussels apartment building in the Molenbeek neighborhood, near the center of the city. After the raid, officials said they had uncovered a web of suspects much broader than they previously imagined. Within hours of Tuesdays assault, the Islamic State asserted responsibility for the attacks, according to a statement posted on the Amaq Agency, a website believed to be close to the extremist group. The message said Belgium was targeted because of its participation in an international coalition battling the group in Syria and Iraq. U.S. and European security officials said they believed the claim to be credible. The latest bloodshed made clear that European capitals remain perilously vulnerable despite attempts to dismantle the militant network that perpetrated the worst terrorist attack in Paris in generations last November. In Washington, State Department spokesman John Kirby said U.S. citizens were among the injured, but he would not say how many. No Americans are known to have died in the attacks, although that information may change, he said. The State Department also issued an alert on traveling in Europe, urging Americans to avoid crowded places and to exercise caution during religious holidays and at large festivals or events. Europe has struggled mightily with spillover from the churning conflict in Syria. Thousands of European citizens have traveled there to fight in a war that has become a focal point for jihadists around the world. Many have returned to Europe radicalized. Europe has vowed to confront them. [Why is Brussels under attack?] We are at war, said French Prime Minister Manuel Valls. We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war. In Havana, at the end of a landmark trip, President Obama urged the world to unite to fight terrorism, and he pledged to do whatever is necessary to aid the investigation in Belgium. The assaults brought Brussels to a virtual standstill. The subway and the airport were closed the latter will remain so on Wednesday and Belgian leaders warned residents to stay indoors. Foreign governments, including Britain, issued advisories warning against travel to the Belgian capital. In France where 130 people died Nov. 13 in attacks on a stadium, a music club and restaurants Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said that an additional 1,600 police officers were deployed and that security was boosted at border posts and major transportation hubs. On social media, an image soon appeared: a figure draped in the colors of the French flag embracing another tearful figure in the black, yellow and red of Belgiums banner. At a news conference in Jordan, the E.U.s foreign policy chief, Federica Mogherini, choked back tears after learning of the Brussels attacks. Belgium, a nation riven by ethnic rivalries among French, Dutch and German speakers, has struggled to address radicalization in its cities. A complex patchwork of security and police agencies is responsible for keeping an eye on potential threats. Many of them view one another as rivals rather than as colleagues. Still, security analysts said attacks on unsecured, high-traffic targets such as subway stations are extremely hard to defend against even when authorities are focused on foiling such plots. This is a kind of scenario every capital in Europe feared since the November attacks last year. A mixture of foreign fighters coming back with experience, local sympathizers on the other hand, said Rik Coolsaet, a terrorism expert at Ghent University who has advised the Belgian government on how to fight radicalization. You have such a large number of soft targets, and you cannot secure all of them. Birnbaum reported from Moscow. James McAuley and Anthony Faiola in Brussels, Daniela Deane and Karla Adam in London, and Brian Murphy, Carol Morello and Matt Zapotosky in Washington contributed to this report. Read more: Live updates on the death toll, attack scenes and reactions around the world Why is Brussels under attack? At NATO headquarters, alert status raised just miles from attacks Todays coverage from Post correspondents around the world A Russian court on Tuesday sentenced a Ukrainian helicopter navigator to 22 years in prison in a contentious murder trial that has drawn sharp condemnation from the West. A judge convicted Lt. Nadiya Savchenko, 34, of directing mortar fire that killed two Russian journalists during pitched fighting in eastern Ukraine in 2014. Savchenko said that she was innocent and that pro-Russian separatists abducted her in Ukraine before crossing the border and delivering her to Russian police. Shortly after the verdict was delivered, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said he would not recognize the decision in the proceeding, which he called a shameful show trial. He also said he would demand Savchenkos return to Ukraine, offering a trade in exchange for her freedom. I am ready to hand over two Russian servicemen detained in our territory for their participation in the armed aggression against Ukraine, he said in a statement, referring to two alleged Russian servicemen arrested for fighting alongside separatists in Ukraine last May. They are being tried on terrorism charges. Savchenkos trial was a cause celebre in Ukraine, where she was elected a member of parliament while in Russian custody and awarded the title Hero of Ukraine. She was equally demonized in the Russian news media as a member of a far-right paramilitary battalion who was driven by hatred for ethnic Russian speakers. As the judge delivered the verdict, Savchenko began singing the Ukrainian national anthem, forcing a recess. Few expected leniency when the sentencing resumed. For us it isnt really important what figures are in the verdict, whether it was 25 or 30 or 22 years, said Oleksiy Ryabchyn, a member of Ukraines parliament who joined fellow lawmakers in traveling to the border town of Donetsk, Russia, for the verdict. It was just the end of the judicial stage for releasing Savchenko. Now the political stage begins. The office of Russias chief prosecutor said it was satisfied with the decision given the gravity of the acts committed by her. Prosecutors in the case had asked for 23 years in prison. Savchenko was also fined 30,000 rubles, or about $440, for illegally crossing the border from Ukraine into Russia. The conviction and sentencing of Nadiya Savchenko to 22 years imprisonment show a blatant disregard for the principles of justice, State Department spokesman John Kirby said in Washington. We reiterate our call on Russia to immediately release Nadiya Savchenko and other unlawfully detained persons. U.S. officials urged Russia to release Savchenko under the Minsk accord, which was signed by Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany and provides a road map to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine. The accord stipulates the release of all hostages by all parties to the conflict. Russia says the pact does not apply to Savchenko because of the charges she faced. Russian officials had repeatedly said there could be no discussion over Savchenkos release until the court delivered a verdict. Ukraine has demanded sanctions against Russian law enforcement and judicial officials responsible for Savchenkos detainment. Read more: Reports: Russian court poised to convict Ukraines Joan of Arc in deaths of journalists Clinton quietly expresses support for Ukrainian pilot jailed by Russia Watch: Ukrainian pilot guilty of murder Counterterrorism expert Bruce Hoffman, author of "Anonymous Soldiers" and director of the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University, explains how terrorism networks have formed in Europe and whether an attack like the one in Brussels could happen in the United States. (Whitney Shefte/The Washington Post) Counterterrorism expert Bruce Hoffman, author of "Anonymous Soldiers" and director of the Center for Security Studies at Georgetown University, explains how terrorism networks have formed in Europe and whether an attack like the one in Brussels could happen in the United States. (Whitney Shefte/The Washington Post) The apparently coordinated bombings that killed more than 30 people in Belgium are unlikely to be duplicated in the United States, which is separated by an ocean from Islamist extremists fighting in Syria and Iraq and has seen far fewer of its people traveling there, former intelligence and counterterrorism officials said. The United States is not immune from terrorist attacks, as Decembers Islamic State-inspired mass shooting in San Bernardino, Calif., demonstrated. And its transit systems, particularly city subways, are vulnerable. But the United States is not grappling with the same volume of Islamic State recruits as its European peers, and sophisticated plots are far more likely to be ferreted out by law enforcement or neighbors, the officials said. In the U.S., for the most part, communities dont radicalize; individuals do, said Seamus Hughes, the deputy director at the program on extremism at George Washington Universitys Center for Cyber & Homeland Security and a former National Counterterrorism Center staffer. [Live updates: Attacks in Brussels] The Islamic State, also known as ISIS, claimed responsibility for the Brussels attacks a series of bombings at the airport and a metro station. The incident sparked security fears across the globe, with police in Paris, London, Washington and elsewhere boosting patrols. The bombing followed earlier Islamic State assaults in France, Turkey and Tunisia, among other places. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said in a statement that there was no specific, credible intelligence of any plot to conduct similar attacks here in the United States. Still, Johnson said that the Transportation Security Administration wary of threats from lone actors and returning foreign fighters was deploying additional security at U.S. airports and rail stations and that authorities were taking other precautions not suitable for public disclosure. According to a report from the Soufan Group, a research and intelligence service, 470 people from Belgium had traveled to Syria as of October with plans to join militant groups fighting in the region. That figure, officials said, represents the highest per-capita number of foreign fighters for any country. The United States has had about 250 citizens who have tried to travel to join the fighting, and that includes those who never made it. Charles Kurzman, a sociology professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who tracks Muslim American terrorism suspects, said that he has found only 42 who successfully traveled to join militants in Syria, Iraq or Libya, and that of those, only 16 remain in military territory. Six were arrested or otherwise taken into custody, and 20 died. Dozens have been prosecuted in the United States. I think its fair to say that Belgium authorities are overwhelmed with the numbers theyre dealing with, Hughes said. They have twice the number of foreign fighters than we have people who have attempted to travel. Republican presidential candidates struck a more alarmist tone. Ohio Gov. John Kasich called on President Obama to return from his visit to Cuba and suggested the United States send teams of people immediately to Europe to begin to dig, in terms of what we need to do to address the vulnerabilities we have. Sen. Ted Cruz (Tex.) said the United States should empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized. And Donald Trump predicted flatly, This is going to happen in the United States. Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton said the United States should intensify and broaden our strategy in fighting the Islamic State. Her opponent, Sen. Bernie Sanders (Vt.), called the attack a brutal reminder that the international community must come together to destroy ISIS. View Graphic What we know about the connections between the Brussels and Paris attacks The United States is not without vulnerabilities. This month, Mohamad Khweis, an Alexandria, Va., man who was not previously on the FBI radar, was picked up by Kurdish forces in Iraq after he apparently fled the Islamic State. A recently retired FBI counterterrorism official, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss recent bureau operations, said aspiring jihadists are getting smarter and are no longer flying directly to Turkey before making their way to the Islamic State in Syria. Now they are using different countries, the official said. Khweis said he traveled to London, Amsterdam and Turkey before sneaking into Syria. Encryption, the official said, can also thwart the FBIs efforts to track suspects. Known targets have gone dark, the official said. Thats a huge blind spot for us. [Islamic State claims responsibility for Brussels attacks] The FBI is still trying to decrypt the many communications that took place between an Arizona man named Elton Simpson and a senior Islamic State operative. The two were trading messages just prior to the mans attack last year on a Draw Muhammad cartoon contest in Texas. Simpson and another man were killed by police outside the venue in Garland. A third person involved in the plot, Abdul Malik Abdul Kareem, was convicted this month of providing material support to the Islamic State. People who are plotting to harm America and Americans are no longer a world away, Justin Tolomeo, the FBIs acting special agent in charge in Phoenix, said in a statement after a jury convicted Kareem. U.S. law enforcement appears to have a robust network of informants in places where terrorist plots might be incubated, and American Muslims, unlike some communities in Europe, are well integrated and in many cases tip off the authorities, former counterterrorism officials said. The main threat facing law enforcement is the individual who falls under the sway of Islamic State propaganda and then decides to carry out an attack without any direction from Syria, officials said. That has happened repeatedly since the rise of the Islamic State in 2014. The most recent occurred in San Bernardino, where a husband and wife pledged their allegiance to the Islamic State on Facebook and then gunned down 14 people and wounded 22. The couple were killed in a shootout with police. Most recently, the FBI said that a University of California at Merced student who stabbed four people in November was self-radicalized but did not have any ties to a terrorism a group. A campus police officer killed the 18-year-old student. Belgium, by contrast, has just begun coming to grips with its terrorism problem, and police and intelligence agencies there are dealing with an overwhelming number of matters to look into, said Matthew Levitt, a former U.S. intelligence and counterterrorism official who now directs the Washington Institutes Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence. Levitt, who was in Brussels last week meeting with top counterterrorism and intelligence officials, said the countrys open borders, lack of intelligence in isolated Muslim communities and subpar intelligence-sharing with European neighbors create a dangerous brew. He said that the arrest this week of Paris attack suspect Salah Abdeslam, who eluded capture for months, demonstrates clearly there was a larger support network than Belgian authorities anticipated. and that their counter-radicalization efforts seem to be insufficient to address the depth of the problem . The Belgians, over the past year, have been caught by surprise a bit that they are a target, Levitt said. Thats not a surprise anymore. I think the realization now is that the pace of the response has to be picked up significantly, and that has to be both raiding safe houses and getting into these neighborhoods and addressing the things that make people feel so disconnected. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday said the United Nations has been unrelentingly hostile toward Israel and urged the United States to veto resolutions that aim to pressure Israel into a settlement with the Palestinians. In a video address from Jerusalem beamed into the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee meeting in Washington, Netanyahu said Tuesdays terrorist attack in Brussels was part of a worldwide assault by radical Islamists, including a wave of knife attacks by Palestinians against Israelis. Such an effort in the U.N. would only convince the Palestinians that they could stab their way to a state, said Netanyahu. Mind you, not a state next to Israel but a state instead of Israel. Multiple efforts have been made over the years for the U.N. to recognize the establishment of a Palestinian state, but the United States has repeatedly blocked those attempts in the Security Council. But some former diplomats have said the Obama administration should consider before leaving office a way to lay out a pathway to a future settlement, possibly through a U.N. resolution. Netanyahu said a history of anti-Israel resolutions in the U.N. makes it an inappropriate venue. In the U.N., Israel, the Middle Easts only true democracy, is slandered like no other country on Earth, said Netanyahu, saying Israel has been hounded by U.N. agencies seeking to delegitimize its existence. A Security Council resolution to pressure Israel would further harden Palestinian positions and thereby could actually kill the chances of peace for many, many years, he said. That is why I hope the United States will maintain its long-standing position to reject such a U.N. resolution. Netanyahu said peace is achievable only through direct negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians, and he laid out the basic parameters: The best formula for achieving peace remains two states for two peoples, in which a demilitarized Palestinian state finally recognizes the Jewish state. Allowing that some are skeptical of his commitment to a two-state solution, he said he would begin negotiations any time, anywhere with no preconditions. But President Abbas is not ready to do so, he said, referring to the head of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. Theres political will here in Jerusalem. Theres no political will in Ramallah. Netanyahu accused Abbas of inculcating Palestinian children with a murderous hatred of Jews. He showed a video of a young girl saying My toys are the rock and the rifle and another of what appeared to be a preschool-aged girl saying Stab. Stab. Stab. Stab. Stab, after which she pulled out a knife and brandished it with a smile for the camera. If the international community really wants to advance peace, it must demand that the Palestinians stop poisoning the minds of their children, Netanyahu said. If the international community wants to advance peace, it must address the true core of the conflict the persistent Palestinian refusal to accept a Jewish state in any borders. Netanyahu also addressed the Iran nuclear agreement, which he vigorously opposed, most dramatically in an appearance before Congress last year. He urged both opponents and supporters of the deal to work together to hold Iran accountable for a series of missile tests it has held in apparent defiance of a U.N. resolution that calls on Iran not to conduct ballistic-missile tests for at least eight years. Iran claims its tests, conducted by the Revolutionary Guard Corps that runs its aerospace program, do not violate the nuclear accord because the missiles are not designed to carry nuclear warheads. Netanyahu noted that one missile, aired on state television in Iran, bore the words Israel must be wiped out. He ended his speech by introducing a short video showing the launch of a defensive Arrow anti-ballistic missile jointly developed by the United States and Israel. Iran should remember that today, its not only the enemies of the Jewish people who have arrows, he said. Today, the Jewish state can defend itself with powerful arrows of our own. Just before Netanyahu spoke, four of AIPACs leaders took the stage to denounce remarks made at the conference Monday night, when Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump criticized President Obama. Trump said Obama may be the worst thing to ever happen to Israel, believe me, believe me. AIPAC President Lillian Pinkus read a statement disavowing the attacks on Obama, saying they caused deep offense. While we may have policy differences, we deeply respect the office of the president of the United States and our president, Barack Obama, she said, her voice at times quivering with emotion. Pinkus also criticized those in the audience who applauded some of Trumps remarks. There are people in our AIPAC family who were deeply hurt last night, and for that, we are deeply sorry, Pinkus said. We are disappointed that so many people applauded a sentiment that we neither agree with or condone. Juan Hernandez and his niece Diana Sanchez watch President Obamas speech on state television in their apartment in Old Havana, a few blocks from theater where the U.S. president spoke. (Nick Miroff/The Washington Post) In her apartment a few blocks from the theater where President Obama addressed the Cuban people Tuesday, Marta Limas and her family gathered around the television, opposite a faded shrine to Saint Lazarus, the healer. The baby was crying. They turned up the volume. What a handsome man, said Limas, 56, as Obama began, and quickly settled into a rhythm. No one had spoken to the Cuban people with this kind of cadence in years. Limas and her family followed his words, rapt, as if listening to a sermon. Obama called for change. Yes, change! the family repeated. Obama talked the future. The future! they said. Of all the U.S. presidents activities during his groundbreaking visit to Cuba, the speech was his best chance to speak directly to Cubans, both here on the island and abroad. It wasnt delivered in public, but it was broadcast in its entirety on Cuban state television, into the homes of many Cubans who, like Limas, talked about this visit as a turning point in their lives. [Obamas visit comes as American businesses are rushing back to Cuba] The family hushed and seemed to hold their breath when Obamas words directly challenged their leaders, especially as the U.S. president called for democratic elections and urged President Raul Castro not to fear the different voices of the Cuban people. They admired his willingness to acknowledge the shortcomings and imperfections of the U.S. political system, and to have confidence in it anyway. I wish Fidel was there to hear this, said Limas, of Cubas 89-year-old ailing former leader, who wasnt in the audience at the theater with his 84-year-old brother, the president. Limass husband, Juan Hernandez, 52, disagreed. No, with Fidel everything would have stayed the same, he said. President Obama stopped at the Jose Marti Memorial in Havana as part of a wreath-laying ceremony. Obama also received a tour of the monument, which honors Marti, the Cuban poet and journalist. (Marcbassets and El Pais/Twitter) Hernandez, a self-employed taxi driver, noted that he and Obama are nearly the same age. I grew up indoctrinated in all this Cold War stuff, he said. Im sick of it. [Cubas Art Factory aims for industrial-scale hipness] Watching the familys response to the U.S. president was somewhat like watching starry-eyed young Obama supporters at a speech during his 2008 campaign, before Americans grew accustomed to hearing him. Limas and her family were not. That the U.S. president is African American also made an impression on the Afro-Cuban family. Hes a beautiful black man, said Limas, when her husband stepped out of the room. The family choked up with emotion at Obamas words about the pain of family divisions and sense of loss among Cuban exiles. Limass first husband, the father of her two children, left for Miami in the 1980 Mariel boat lift and never looked back. May 4, 1980, at 6 a.m., Limas said. That man walked right out this door. Duley Young, her daughter, 36, and the mother of the baby, grew up without him or his financial support. She earns a meager salary working for the citys sanitation department. But she said she was sure that better days were ahead for Cuba after Obamas visit. Hes turning everything around, she said. He said he isnt trying to impose himself on the Cuban people. [The other migrant crisis: Cubans are streaming north in large numbers] As the U.S. president finished, he was soon replaced on state television by pro-government commentators pointing out that voter turnout in U.S. presidential elections is barely 50 percent. They started picking apart other elements of Obamas speech. Hernandez wouldnt have it. Turn that off, he said, waving at the television. The room went quiet again, and the family lingered for a few minutes, talking about the speech. Obamas appeal to young Cubans made a powerful impression on Limas, she said. Maybe it would persuade some of them to stay and not leave. I wish this had happened earlier, she said. Maybe there wouldnt be so many deaths at sea. U.S. presidential candidates were quick to react to the deadly attacks in Brussels on Tuesday. And Donald Trumps reaction was the most extreme. I would close up our borders, Trump said on Fox News. We are taking in people without real documentation. We dont know where theyre from or who they are. We have to be very, very vigilant with who we let into this country, he continued. Brussels is a great example. Brussels was an absolutely crime-free city, one of the most beautiful cities in the world. And now you look at it and its just a disaster. Yahoo News live coverage: Attacks in Brussels The Republican frontrunner, who had called for a temporary ban on all Muslims entering the United States last year following the terror attacks in Paris, reiterated his vow that if elected president, the United States would bring back waterboarding to interrogate suspected terrorists. I would use waterboarding, Trump said on ABCs Good Morning America. And I would try to expand the laws to go beyond waterboarding. Do you all remember how beautiful and safe a place Brussels was. Not anymore, it is from a different world! U.S. must be vigilant and smart! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 22, 2016 Texas Sen. Ted Cruz called for the United States to label its enemies. That ends on January 20, 2017, when I am sworn in as president: https://t.co/FRA5WTKjgP Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) March 22, 2016 Cruz elaborated in a lengthy Facebook post: For the terrorists, the identities of the victims were irrelevant. They we are all part of an intolerable culture that they have vowed to destroy. For years, the west has tried to deny this enemy exists out of a combination of political correctness and fear. We can no longer afford either. Our European allies are now seeing what comes of a toxic mix of migrants who have been infiltrated by terrorists and isolated, radical Muslim neighborhoods. We will do what we can to help them fight this scourge, and redouble our efforts to make sure it does not happen here. We need to immediately halt the flow of refugees from countries with a significant al Qaida or ISIS presence. We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized. We need to secure the southern border to prevent terrorist infiltration. And we need to execute a coherent campaign to utterly destroy ISIS. The days of the United States voluntarily surrendering to the enemy to show how progressive and enlightened we can be are at an end. Our country is at stake. Story continues Ohio Gov. John Kasich said the United States must redouble its efforts to identify, root out and destroy the perpetrators of such acts of evil. We must strengthen our alliances to root out evil. Not dismantle them. #Brussels pic.twitter.com/fscW7zzD64 John Kasich (@JohnKasich) March 22, 2016 I think we have to intensify and broaden our strategy, Hillary Clinton said on ABC. This is a coordinated act of terrorism. There has to be some honest reckoning for what works and what doesnt, the former secretary of state said. Clinton said Trumps call for the military to bring back waterboarding is dangerous. Tortures not effective, she said. Thats like an open recruitment poster for terrorists. Slideshow: Deadly attacks in Brussels, Belgium >>> Clinton also dismissed Trumps call for the United States to close its borders. That shows a lack of understanding for how our system does work, she said. Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders called the Tuesday attacks barbaric and another cowardly attempt to terrorize innocent civilians. We stand with our European allies to offer any necessary assistance in these difficult times, Sanders said in a statement. Todays attack is a brutal reminder that the international community must come together to destroy ISIS. This type of barbarism cannot be allowed to continue. Speaking in Havana, President Obama briefly addressed Tuesdays attacks in Brussels. The thoughts and prayers of the American people are with the people of Belgium, Obama said. We stand in solidarity with them in condemning these outrageous attacks against innocent people. We will do whatever is necessary to support our friend and ally Belgium in bringing to justice those who are responsible. This is yet another reminder that the world must unite, the president continued. We must be together regardless of nationality or race or faith in fighting the scourge of terrorism. We can and we will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world. Donald Trump prostrated himself before the largest pro-Israeli advocacy group in America Monday evening, and they loved him for it. I didnt come here tonight to pander to you about Israel. Thats what politicians do: all talk, no action, Trump said. Yet pander is exactly what Trump did before an audience of several thousand members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee who were gathered to hear presidential candidates speaking Monday inside the Verizon Center in downtown Washington, D.C. Trump, reading from teleprompters for the first time as a presidential candidate, lambasted President Obama and promised that if he is elected president the days of treating Israel like a second-class citizen will end on day one. Trump promised to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu immediately. He vowed to move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. He said that any peace-agreement negotiations must start with the Palestinians knowing that the bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable. I love the people in this room. I love Israel, Trump said. Ive received some of my greatest honors from Israel. My daughter Ivanka is about to have a beautiful Jewish baby. More than half of the audience did not clap at all when Trump entered the enormous hall. But by the end of his 25-minute speech, many were standing, applauding and cheering. He received several standing ovations. Donald Trump addresses the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington, D.C., Mar. 21, 2016. (Photo: Joshua Robers/Reuters) Trumps performance marked a new phase in his campaign. A candidate whose stump speech consists of an hour of unconstrained rambling read a prepared speech, his campaign sent out the text of his remarks while he was speaking, and he recited a laundry list of promises custom-designed for the interest-group audience before him. At moments, Trump sounded like a student giving a book report, reciting statistics about Iran having test-fired ballistic missiles with a range of 1,250 miles, and name-dropping Prime Minister Barak and Prime Minister Olmert in his retelling of the last two decades of peace talks. Story continues It was one of the few times as a presidential candidate so far that Trump has followed the conventions of what traditional politicians do. But it could become more common for Trump as he seeks to broaden his appeal to clinch the Republican nomination and become a general-election candidate. There was no mistaking Trumps ability to hold the crowd, even one that greeted him skeptically like this one. But he also stumbled at times. In one instance, Trump lamented that in Palestinian society terrorists are treated as martyrs, but then he went off script, and promised that he would change Palestinian minds. It is a horrible, horrible way to think, he said. That will end, and it will end soon, believe me. He did not share details about how he would accomplish this. Sen. Ted Cruz, who appeared moments after Trump, began his speech with a shot at the GOP frontrunner. Trump referred three times to Palestine in his speech, but the U.S. government does not recognize the Palestinian Authority government as that of a sovereign and independent state. Cruz noted that it might come as a surprise to the previous speaker [that] Palestine has not existed since 1948. Republican presidential candidate, U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz acknowledges the crowd after his address to the annual policy conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) in Washington, DC. (Photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images) Trumps solicitous speech to AIPAC came just hours after he had told reporters at a D.C. press conference that Israel is one of many countries that should pay the U.S. back for its foreign aid. I want them to pay us some money, Trump said. I think Israel will do that also, yeah. There are many countries that can pay. But moments later, Trump also told reporters of Israel: They help us greatly. Cruz also hit Trump for his comment earlier this year that he would be neutral between Israel and the Palestinians. Let me be very clear. As president I will not be neutral. America will stand unapologetically with the nation of Israel, Cruz said. Speaking just before Trump, House Speaker Paul Ryan noted that within two months of his taking the job of speaker, the House voted to fund every penny of our security assistance commitment to Israel. Israel does not fund terror in other countries, but it does help the New York police department fight terrorism in our country, Ryan said. Ryan, who has diplomatically but firmly denounced Trump at times over the past months, also noted that Americans are going to make a big choice in 2016, but he did not follow that with praise for any presidential candidates, or even a denunciation of any Democrats. Instead, he noted that in the House, he and others are going to try to help crystallize that choice and to set the agenda for the next president. (Cover tile photo: Alex Wong/Getty Images) Western intelligence officials believe there are more than a handful of Islamic State terrorists connected to the Brussels attacks who are still at large and plotting more attacks, a U.S. official told Yahoo News. The comments from a U.S. official came as the Islamic States Web forum took official responsibility for Tuesdays attack and threatened more strikes. The group promised the alliance of crusaders that it would see dark days in response to their aggression against the Islamic State, according to a statement in Arabic and French that was monitored by MEMRI, a group that tracks jihadist propaganda. The statement continued: What awaits you will be grievous and bitter, with Allahs permission. A U.S. official told Yahoo News there is no reason to doubt the Islamic States claims to be behind the Brussels attacks. The perpetrators that carried out the attacks on the Brussels airport and subway were part of a larger network believed to be in the dozens as many as 30 to 40 that also carried out last Novembers attacks in Paris. Some of them have yet to be captured or killed. Yahoo News live blog coverage of the Brussels attacks >>> Its a safe presumption that there continue to be people at large who have intentions and plans, the official said. This was the reason for todays warning by the U.S. Embassy that another attack could be imminent and advising Americans in the European capital to be sheltering in place. The official noted, however, that the new statement from the Islamic State threatening more attacks could also just be standard rhetoric. Another reason for concern, U.S. officials and counterterrorism experts say, is that Islamic State attacks tend to occur in waves with multiple strikes happening in different cities within a few days of each other. Slideshow: Deadly attacks in Brussels, Belgium >>> Steve Stalinsky, executive director of MEMRI, noted that the Brussels attack while probably linked to the arrest Friday of the alleged ringleader of the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam could also be part of a coordinated wave that included the bombing in Istanbul over the weekend and the attack that killed a U.S. Marine in northern Iraq. Story continues U.S. officials also told Yahoo News that another theory is that Tuesdays attackers chose to strike now possibly moving up a long-planned attack because of comments by Belgium authorities stating that Abdeslam was cooperating with authorities and identifying others in his terrorist network. There may have been a sense of urgency [for the attacks] because of a fear that they were going to be rounded up, said one U.S. official. Western intelligence services, including the CIA, have been warning ever since the Nov. 13 Paris attacks about the threat of follow-up attacks by the Islamic State or from terrorists in Europe aligned with or directed by the group. Slideshow: The world reacts to Brussels attacks >>> A soldier stands near broken windows after explosions hit the Zaventem airport near Brussels on March 22. (Photo: Francois Lenoir/Reuters) Brussels, where the Paris attacks were believed to have been planned, is a particular hotbed of terrorist activity. About 470 jihadis from Belgium are believed to have gone to fight in the Syria-Iraq conflicts in recent years, with some 118 reported to have returned to Belgium, according to a report last December by the Soufan Group, an international consulting firm. U.S. officials, however, acknowledge that they had no specific warning about the Tuesday attack, raising continuing questions about how members of the Belgium terrorist network have been able to communicate without detection by Western intelligence services. National Security Agency Director Adm. Mike Rogers recently told Yahoo News in an interview that the agency believes the Paris attackers used encrypted apps a conclusion that has been confirmed by French authorities, according a report Sunday in the New York Times. A U.S. source told Yahoo News on Tuesday that intelligence officials believe the Paris-Brussels networks have communicated through a combination of encrypted communications and highly disciplined face-to-face communications. As further evidence that U.S. officials had no inkling about an imminent attack in Belgium, Nicholas Rasmussen, director of the National Counterterrorism Center, had just been in Brussels on Sunday, speaking at the German Marshall Fund security forum. They didnt have a clue about this, one U.S. counterterrorism source told Yahoo News. By Bernadette Christina Munthe and Agustinus Beo Da Costa JAKARTA (Reuters) - Indonesian cabbies clashed with motorbike drivers working for online apps on Tuesday, pulling them off their bikes and assaulting them as thousands of drivers took to the streets of Jakarta calling for a ban on ride-hailing apps like Grab and Uber. Police were overwhelmed as convoys of blue and white taxis operated by PT Blue Bird and PT Express Transindo Utama blocked thoroughfares. Police said 83 people were detained after skirmishes that saw drivers smash taxi windshields, attack other drivers and burn tyres in parts of the city. The proliferation of cheap taxis using ride-hailing apps Go-jek, Grab and Uber in gridlocked Jakarta has made the traditional pick-up and drop-off taxi services unprofitable, threatening the business models of the country's top taxi firms. The online apps currently offer heavily subsidized rates for their rides in an attempt to gain market share. "Right now there are legal taxis and illegal taxis," said Mat Ali, 54, an Express taxi driver who marched in front of parliament as others burned tyres. "We are not allergic to competition with Uber and Grab ... but we just want them to meet the government's requirements." Transportation Minister Ignasius Jonan said companies like Uber were illegal unless they were registered as public transport providers and subject to the same rules as regular taxi operators. "The point is, it has to be fair," Jonan told reporters. Government ministers called for calm and said the tech firms should be subject to the same legal and tax requirements as conventional public transportation companies. "Give us time to find the best solution, it can't be done overnight," chief security minister Luhut Pandjaitan told a news conference. A Bluebird official said the company would offer free taxi rides for 24 hours to make up for the disruption in services. "We don't agree with or support the anarchic demonstration," Bluebird commissioner Noni Purnomo told reporters. But some Jakarta residents rejected the offer on social media using the hashtag #NoThanksBluebird. David Santoso, a director of Express, also said in a statement the company had urged its drivers not to join the protest. Indonesia's president has welcomed the competition provided by the new companies, but the status of their operations in the country was unclear. Companies like Grab and Go-jek were running as usual on Tuesday despite the protests. "We've advised our drivers and passengers to be careful in the areas where the demonstrations are happening," said Ekhel Chandra Wijaya, of Grab Indonesia. One Go-jek driver said he wasn't afraid of the protesters. "We in the online business are looking for money, we're not looking for trouble," said Abdul Rohman, who wore the company's easily recognizable green jacket. (Additional reporting by Hidayat Setiyaji, Kanupriya Kapoor and Gayatri Suroyo; Writing by Kanupriya Kapoor; Editing by Nick Macfie) HELSINKI (Reuters) - Finland's Defense Ministry said on Tuesday its website had come under a cyber attack that forced it divert web traffic to a temporary site. It said its website suffered a denial-of-service attack at 1030 GMT which continued well into the afternoon hours. Denial-of-service attacks aim to bring down networks and websites by flooding them with user traffic. "We had a similar attack on our site two weeks ago. Other ministries' websites were also targeted in February," ministry official Kristian Vakkuri told Reuters. Finnish officials did not say who might have been behind the cyber-attacks on Tuesday and last month. The latest incident coincided with talks in Moscow between Finnish President Sauli Niinisto and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin on cross-border cooperation and international issues including Ukraine and Syria, and with attacks in Brussels that killed 34 people. (Reporting by Tuomas Forsell; Editing by Mark Heinrich) #coronavirus-additional cases New COVID-19 cases under 30,000 for 4th consecutive day South Korea's new coronavirus cases stayed below 30,000 for a fourth straight day Saturday with the daily death toll down to its 14-week low for a Saturday. The country reporte... #BLACKPINK BLACKPINK to headline BST Hyde Park festival next year K-pop sensation BLACKPINK will headline British Summer Time (BST) Hyde Park in London next year, the group's agency and the festival announced Saturday. The four-member act will... Scottish rock trio Biffy Clyro will release their seventh studio album 'Ellipsis' this summer. Simon Neil and co. will follow up 2013's double album 'Opposites' with the album, which is out on July 8th. They've announced several UK festival headline dates as well as a huge Glasgow gig in August, so keep your eyes peeled for an Irish date. You can hear a preview of the album's first track, 'Wolves of Winter', below. According to Neil, it's about "us being wolves on a patch and if you come onto that patch, well tear you limb-from-limb." Hear the preview now: At least 34 people are dead and many seriously injured in a series of terrorist attacks that targeted Brussels Zaventem International Airport at 08:00 today (22 March) and Maelbeek metro station in downtown Brussels an hour later. As many as 14 killed and 81 injured have so far been confirmed in the airport attacks, while 20 people were left dead and scores injured in the metro blasts, Belgian authorities have reported. The country has raised its terrorism threat to its highest level and three days of national mourning have been declared. The airport and the entire public transport system in Brussels are closed, although some train stations are expected to reopen later today. The attacks come only four days after Salah Abdeslam, the main fugitive in the Paris attacks, was detained in Brussels. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel called the latest attacks blind, violent and cowardly while European Council President Donald Tusk commented that These attacks mark another low by the terrorists in the service of hatred and violence. But apart from these official statements condemning the terrorist attacks, European Union officials throughout today evaded questions from the media on whether EU institutions were their likely targets in downtown Brussels. Especially the explosion at Maelbeek metro station located in the heart of the so-called European District raises the question whether the EU institutions, and their commuting employees, were a main target. The bomb went off in one of the metro trains approaching Maelbeek just after 9am during the morning rush hour, which is only 350 meters away from the main Commission headquarters and the Council building that often hosts summits with EU Heads of State. Maelbeek metro station is also located on the same street as the Commissions DG Agriculture and Rural Development building and it also serves as the main destination for many officials and politicians coming to work at the European Parliament. EU officials interviewed by EUBULLETIN earlier today have described the attacks as being of unprecedented scale in Belgium in that they hit the main symbols of Brussels. Scotland to team up with SinoFortone on infrastructure projects Updated: 2016-03-22 02:32 (chinadaily.com.cn) Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon addresses a meeting in Edinburgh [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn] Scotland will work with Chinese partners to bring about infrastructure projects with a potential value of 10 billion pounds following the signing of an agreement by Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon. The Scottish First Minister on Monday signed the memorandum of understanding with Chinese investment group SinoFortone and China Railway No. 3 Engineering Group, the largest construction company in the world. The agreement will pave the way for significant investment in areas such as clean energy, transport and affordable housing. The First Minister was joined at Bute House by Peter Zhang, the Managing Director for SinoFortone Group, Sir Richard Heygate, senior advisor for China Railway No.3 Engineering Group, and Consul General Pan Xinchun. "We have been co-operating and engaging with China since 2007 and I further progressed Scotland's business credentials during my trip last year, and this Memorandum of Understanding will strengthen our economic links with China in a number of areas," Sturgeon said. "We have high hopes for Scotland's economy and it is in a strong position, but if we can drive further growth by looking beyond our shores and building relationships with firms across the world then we will seek to make that happen." Zhang, Managing Director of SinoFortone and Heygate, senior advisor for China Railway No.3 Engineering Group, commented:"We are delighted to act as a bridge between Chinese infrastructure expertise and finance with Scotland, to provide a real example of the benefits of the 'One Belt One Road' strategy in action." Consul General Pan Xinchun congratulated all sides on this agreement and said this project will benefit not only Chinese enterprises but also the Scottish people. Sir Brian Souter from Souter Investments said SinoFortone's investment will be good for our economy, create jobs and enable growth. "We look forward to hearing more about the specific projects and infrastructure that they are aiming to invest in," Souter said. Europe ramps up security in wake of Brussels attacks Updated: 2016-03-22 20:18 By Chris Peterson in London(chinadaily.com.cn) A police woman gestures in front of ambulances at the scene of a blast outside a metro station in Brussels, in this still image taken from video on March 22, 2016. [Photo/Agencies] More photos European governments moved swiftly to beef up security in the wake of the attacks in Brussels which officials say killed many people and over one hundred people.In London Prime Minister David Cameron chaired a meeting of COBRA, the government committee which coordinates security in the UK. It groups senior cabinet ministers, intelligence chiefs, senior police officers and military officers, including those from the elite SAS regiment. Similar meetings were taking place in Paris, Berlin and other key European capitals, and officials said extra security was being put in place at airports and travel hubs throughout the continent. In France, President Francois Hollande ordered an extra 1,600 police and paramilitary officers onto the streets of Paris. Security and police checks were also established at borders throughout the Schengen area of mainland western Europe, normally open to free travel between countries, officials said. In Germany extra security was drafted in to cover key public areas as well as airports and railway stations, according to local media. The British Broadcasting Corporation put the death toll at 31, of which 11 were killed at Zaventem Airport and 20 dead at Maelbeek metro station, near the area where many EU offices are located. At least 90 were injured, the BBC said. Hollande told reporters "This is a war against terrorists. France has moved to consolidate our borders. It will be a long war, but we should be calm and determined. "Today we are with Belgium. It was Europe that was targeted, and we should be united," he added. London mayor Boris Johnson said "We are stepping up the security presence at major security hubs. This is partly for security and partly for reassurance purposes." Police in the British capital patrolled rail stations and airports armed with semi-automatic weapons, a rare sight in a country where the police are not routinely armed. Dogs trained in sniffing explosives were also deployed, security officials said. Long queues formed at London"s airports, in part because of increased security checks on passengers, and in part because of delayed and cancelled flights. Brussels airport, scene of two bomb blasts, was closed, and the flight situation in Europe was compounded by a strike involving French air traffic controllers, UK television channels reported. In Belgium armed soldiers patrolled the streets as the security threat was raised to the highest level. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel cancelled a planned trip to China because of the situation. Michel said he was sending up to 200 extra troops to the capital to join those already deployed, and added: "What we feared has happened. It is a black moment in our country. We should face up to this challenge by being united, and coming together." In the UK the threat level from international terror attacks was severe, which means an attack is considered likely. UK security officials who requested anonymity said intelligence monitoring was being shared with other security services in Europe, including so-called "chatter" on mobile devices and social media which often immediately precede an attack. Governments throughout Europe had been on alert since gun and bomb attacks in Paris on November 13 killed 130 people and wounded hundreds of others. The suspects, many of whom died in the attacks, were traced to the Molenbeek area of Brussels, home to many migrants. The main suspect, Salah Abdelslam, was arrested by Belgian police and special forces troops after a gun battle in Molenbeek four days ago. Government officials throughout Europe have said they feared an attack as a result of Abdelslam"s arrest, which was hailed as a breakthrough by intelligence chiefs. French media reports said officials were sifting through the debris from today"s Brussels attacks for evidence of suicide vests, which they hoped may offer DNA and other traces to link them with the abandoned vest found after the Paris attacks in November. To contact the reporter: chris@mail.chinadailyuk.com 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. 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Relief too that finally the manhunt is over because you must understand the family has been under constant pressure for the past four months," Gallant said. Salah Abdeslam, 26, was taken from a Brussels hospital early Saturday to appear before an examining magistrate in connection with his role in the November 13 attacks claimed by the Islamic State group and which left 130 dead in Paris. French President Francois Hollande said Friday he would press for Abdeslam to be transferred as quickly as possible to Paris. Abdeslam was arrested Friday in Brussels' gritty Molenbeek neighbourhood, home to a large, mostly North African community and where the family has lived for many years. One of his brothers, Brahim, blew himself up in the Paris attacks and was buried Thursday in a Brussels cemetery where another brother, Mohamed, led the funeral cortege. Mohamed told reporters at the ceremony: "You can watch and write your stories but please, out of respect, no photographs." Gallant also acts for Abid Aberkan, who was arrested Friday for sheltering Salah Abdeslam in Molenbeek and charged with "participating in a terrorist group" and hiding a fugitive. A United Airlines plane with the Continental Airlines logo on its tail, sits at a gate at O'Hare International airport in Chicago October 1, 2010. REUTERS/Frank Polich By Jeffrey Dastin (Reuters) - The two hedge funds that have launched a boardroom fight with United Continental Holdings Inc (UAL.N) on Tuesday called on the airline to immediately appoint one of its two new board members as chairman, according to a regulatory filing. The funds asked that either James Whitehurst, former chief operating officer of Delta Air Lines Inc (DAL.N), or Robert Milton, former CEO of Air Canada (AC.TO), be appointed chairman before shareholders vote on a slate of six other directors that the funds proposed two weeks ago, the filing said. United has yet to announce the date of its annual meeting when new board members can be elected. The funds, PAR Capital Management Inc and Altimeter Capital Management LP, had called United's board "underqualified" because it lacked what they considered experienced airline executives until the No.3 U.S. carrier appointed Whitehurst and Milton on March 7. The funds collectively own 7.1 percent of Uniteds stock. "We are engaged in discussions with our shareholders," said United, which has suffered from flight delays and satisfaction scores lower than its peers in recent years. "We continue to focus on improving our operational and financial performance, as well as elevating the experience of our employees and customers." Weeks of talks between United and the funds broke down in early March after the airline refused to agree to the funds' demand to appoint former Continental Airlines chief Gordon Bethune as its chairman, people familiar with the matter have said. PAR and Altimeter oppose plans for United's current CEO Oscar Munoz - a former president at railroad operator CSX Corp (CSX.O) - to become chairman in 2017. They also questioned the board's decision last year to give Munoz a $12 million signing bonus, not tied to performance goals, while he was on medical leave following an October heart attack. "We believe that anyone considering the best interests of the Company and its stockholders would conclude that Mr. Bethune is a far better Chairman choice than either the current Chairman (a former commercial banker with zero airline operating experience) or the sitting United CEO," the funds said in a letter to United's board, included in the regulatory filing. "Our campaign is not a campaign against Mr. Munoz. To the contrary, our campaign is aimed at maximizing Mr. Munozs probability of achieving success," the letter said. (Reporting by Jeffrey Dastin in Washington; Editing by Bernard Orr) By Matt Siegel SYDNEY, March 22 (Reuters) - Australia's Department of Immigration and Border Protection on Tuesday joined other public sector workers in a growing strike that threatens to paralyse air travel at the nation's biggest international airports ahead of a holiday weekend. Any significant disruptions could play into the hands of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull as he heads into an early election announced yesterday that will be fought largely on industrial relations and reigning in powerful unions. Their workers will strike for several hours at five regional airports on Tuesday, a spokesman for the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) said, before expanding to state capitals such as Sydney and Melbourne on Thursday. The strike could severely inconvenience international and domestic travellers as the nation heads into a four-day weekend for the Easter holiday, one of the busiest times of year for air travel. "Our goal is to put pressure on the agency and on the government to actually talk with us. That's entirely the reason why this is being held, and the timing is because that's the timing that will apply the most pressure," a CPSU spokesman told Reuters. Strikes at major airports, which are aimed at ending a two-year contract dispute between public sector workers and the federal government, will continue after the holiday weekend. "There's rolling strikes planned from Tuesday next week for several weeks so it's not just about a one week thing in the lead-up to the long weekend, it's actually a longer term strategy," the spokesman added. On Monday staff at a wide range of government offices including welfare agency Centrelink, the Tax Office, Bureau of Meteorology, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and the Australian Bureau of Statistics, walked off the job. Government employees represented by the CPSU say that the government has refused to negotiate with them in good faith. A spokeswoman for Employment Minister Senator Michaela Cash called the union's actions "disappointing" and said that they were placing the needs of their workers over those of disadvantaged citizens who rely on government services. "It is disappointing that the CPSU has resorted to industrial action, particularly in circumstances where regional DHS offices are most impacted," she said, referring to the Department of Human Services. "It is also greatly concerning that the CPSU's conduct will mean that some of the most vulnerable in society may (have) their services impacted over Easter." (Reporting by Matt Siegel) Bank of America: A Value Buy? (Continued from Prior Part) Bank of America announces share buybacks On March 18, 2016, Bank of America (BAC) reported that its board of directors has authorized the repurchase of shares worth $800 million. This is in addition to the existing $4 billion share repurchase plan announced in March of last year. Furthermore, it is likely to be topped with additional buybacks in June after the CCAR (comprehensive capital analysis and review) results for 2016 are published. Shares of the company gained 3% following the announcement. What it means to Bank of Americas shareholders Existing shareholders might consider this great news, but the catch is that this move might not be just to return value to shareholders. The real motive behind the buyback is to offset the effect of dilution resulting from the equity-based compensation recently awarded to bank employees. The bank announced last month that its CEO Brian Moynihan would receive $2.9 million worth of the companys shares as part of his compensation for 2015. Although this share buyback plan will not affect the value of shares for current investors, it could signal that Bank of America has sufficient cash to raise dividends or expand it share repurchase program once the CCAR process is complete. Meanwhile, rival bank JPMorgan Chase (JPM) also announced plans to buy back $1.9 billion of shares on Friday. Peers (KBE) that have expanded their share buyback programs in the last few months are: Capital One (COF) Added $300 million to its existing share repurchase plan in February Wells Fargo (WFC) Expanded its buyback plan by $17 billion in January Wall Street (SPY) analysts consider BAC to be a compelling buy at current valuations. Read on to know more about its current valuations and analysts ratings. Continue to Next Part Browse this series on Market Realist: donald trump GOP presidential frontrunner Donald Trump mocked President Barack Obama's speech from Cuba on Tuesday. In Havana, Obama addressed relations between the two nations as well as the terror attacks in Brussels that killed at least 34 earlier in the day. But Trump was not a fan. "President Obama looks and sounds so ridiculous making his speech in Cuba, especially in the shadows of Brussels. He is being treated badly!" he tweeted. That tweet followed up another from Sunday in which Trump criticized Cuban President Raul Castro for not meeting Obama when he landed.. "Wow, President Obama just landed in Cuba, a big deal, and Raul Castro wasn't even there to greet him. He greeted Pope and others. No respect," Trump tweeted. In his Tuesday speech, Obama called for "the world to unite" after the early morning attacks at a Brussels airport and metro station that left more than 100 injured in addition to those killed. "This is another reminder that the world must unite, we must be together, regardless of nationality, or race, or faith, in fighting against the scourge of terrorism," the president said. "We can and we will will defeat those that threaten the safety and security of people all around the world." President Obama looks and sounds so ridiculous making his speech in Cuba, especially in the shadows of Brussels. He is being treated badly! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 22, 2016 Wow, President Obama just landed in Cuba, a big deal, and Raul Castro wasn't even there to greet him. He greeted Pope and others. No respect Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 20, 2016 NOW WATCH: Trump celebrated victory with a batch of 'Trump Steaks' that some are saying were actually from another company More From Business Insider Brussels Belgium More than two dozen people were reported killed and even more wounded after explosions ripped through Brussels airport and metro stations across the city Tuesday morning, in attacks for which the terror group ISIS has claimed responsibility. The attacks came days after Salah Abdeslam, a suspect in last year's terror attacks on Paris, was arrested in Brussels, the capital of Belgium and heart of the European Union. An expert who met with Belgian counterterrorism officials last week told Business Insider that the country is overwhelmed by the number of radicalized people who pose threats to the country. Matthew Levitt, the director of The Washington Institute's Stein Program on Counterterrorism and Intelligence, said Belgian police have only begun to understand the depth of the country's terrorism problem in the past year. "Belgians have a really big problem because they have the largest number per capita of western foreign fighters from any country," Levitt told Business Insider. "The numbers are simply overwhelming." The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation found last year that Belgians contributed 40 foreign fighters to Sunni militant groups in the Middle East per 1 million people, the highest per-capita rate of any Western European country. Belgians have contributed more than 400 fighters to extremist groups in Syria and Iraq, according to a 2015 report from strategic security firm The Soufan Group. Of those, more than 100 are thought to have returned to Belgium. And it's not just returning foreign fighters whom Belgium has to worry about. People are also becoming radicalized in Belgium, in some cases without ever traveling to the Middle East. "Only in the last year have they really come to grips with the fact that this presents not just a problem of [radicalized] people who are returning from other countries but also those who never leave in the first place and can carry out attacks at home," Levitt said. Story continues Brussels Belgium map Levitt said that while Belgian counterterrorism police are "quite capable," there are roadblocks to preventing terrorist attacks inside the country. Part of the problem stems from communication within the government. "It is a deeply divided government regionally, ethnically, linguistically," Levitt said. "There are multiple parliaments. So it's long been an issue in terms of the level of communication across jurisdictions." Another issue is that, until recently, Belgium intelligence agencies focused mostly on EU spying. "From an intelligence perspective, they've long been focused on counterintelligence, people trying to spy on each other within the EU," Levitt said. Belgium is also limited in what it is allowed to do to spy on its citizens. "They have very strict limitations on when certain types of tools, like telephone intercepts, can be used," Levitt said. brussels A Belgian counterterrorism official made a similar assessment to BuzzFeed News last week. "We just don't have the people to watch anything else and, frankly, we don't have the infrastructure to properly investigate or monitor hundreds of individuals suspected of terror links, as well as pursue the hundreds of open files and investigations we have," the unnamed official said. "It's literally an impossible situation and, honestly, it's very grave." Authorities did make changes after the November terrorist attacks in Paris, which ISIS (also known as the Islamic State, ISIL, or Daesh) claimed responsibility for, but they're still behind. Belgian police have been coordinating with French counterterrorism authorities in raids, and the country now has "a much more organized list of people they are most worried about and broken down by categories in why they're worried about them," Levitt said. But the problem has been festering for a while, making it more difficult to reign in. "They have a problem both in terms of getting on top of the immediate threat that has developed over time and then also moving the needle early in the process and putting in place a 20-year plan in places like Molenbeek to prevent radicalization," Levitt said, referring to a Belgian suburb notorious for Islamic extremism. Europe border controls map Terrorists exploiting refugee crisis ISIS is thought to have an extensive network of terrorists in Europe, some of whom have trained in the Middle East. "Ever since the ISIS spokesman called for attacks against the West in 2014, we've see this pick up pace," Levitt said. Levitt referred to the attacks last January on French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, claimed by Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists. "We're not surprised by what we're seeing in Belgium because right after the attacks on [satirical magazine] Charlie Hebdo [in January 2015], immediately there were raids in Belgium," he said. "We saw not just the 'lone offender' or 'lone wolf,' home-grown, radicalized types of plots. We also started seeing these foreign-directed plots." The Paris attacks were directed by foreign actors. Some of the attackers had trained in Syria before returning to France and Belgium to plot and carry out the simultaneous shootings, bombings, and hostage-takings that killed 130 people and injured hundreds more. The Paris terrorists were able to exploit the ease of travel around Europe, which has seen a massive flow of migrants fleeing conflicts in places like Syria and Iraq. Europe still hasn't tightened border security enough to prevent foreign fighters from returning and traveling around Europe, Levitt said. "Travel within the EU is still quite wide open, and that presents challenges for security officials," Levitt said. "We saw how easily the Paris attackers were able to move to and from Brussels and Paris before and even after the attacks." European authorities started cracking down on border security after the Paris attacks, but it hasn't been enough. The Turkish border in particular is quite porous once a fighter crosses the border from Syria or Iraq into Turkey, it's easy to travel to other parts of Europe, according to Levitt. "The security efforts in terms of border crossing are really just now beginning to get the kind of attention they need," Levitt said. NOW WATCH: Watch Obamas remarks on the Brussels attacks More From Business Insider BIRMINGHAM, UNITED KINGDOM--(Marketwired - March 22, 2016) - Today at the Health & Safety Event 2016, Blackline Safety Corp. ("Blackline") (TSX VENTURE: BLN), announces the launch of a new generation of lone worker safety monitoring devices-the Loner M6 Series. Hosted at the NEC in Birmingham, the Health & Safety Event brings together over 14,000 professionals from multiple industries who will have the opportunity to see these new products first-hand. A live safety monitoring demonstration can be viewed at stand C32. "A workplace safety incident is a stressful time for any employee. Our new Loner M6 work-alone devices make it easier-bringing comfort and confidence to the worker while the monitoring team manages a live emergency response," says Sean Stinson, VP Sales & Product Management at Blackline Safety. "Loner M6 delivers valuable new features including LiveResponse-a blue light that tells the employee 'help is on the way' and a new two-way speakerphone that allows the lone worker to speak hands-free with the monitoring team. Loner M6 does more than any product before to reduce the stress of the situation and get the right help to the right location as fast as possible." Blackline's Loner M6 series offers two devices to choose from. The Loner M6 model is available for all general work areas while Loner M6i is ATEX-certified intrinsically safe for use within hazardous environments where an explosive atmosphere may exist. "Our new Loner M6 surpasses the requirements of the lone worker BS 8484 monitoring guideline that requires two-way voice communication with our Alarm Receiving Centre," says Gavin Boorman, Managing Director at Blackline Safety Europe Ltd. "Speaking with the live monitoring team is completely automatic. When a safety alert is triggered, the worker can speak directly with monitoring personnel-all without pressing a button." The Loner M6 Series incorporates an industry-leading speakerphone system that projects the monitoring agent's voice loudly and clearly while capturing the employee's voice through a sensitive microphone. For loud environments, the Loner M6 device can be toggled from speakerphone to hand-set mode with a momentary press of the check-in button. The Blackline Safety Network records all voice calls with monitoring personnel and are available for playback within the employer's cloud-hosted Loner Portal safety monitoring account. Story continues Blackline's lone worker monitoring solutions bring value to a diverse base of industries including utilities, research labs, manufacturing, oil and gas, industrial, transportation and service companies. Loner M6 devices incorporate 3G wireless communications, assisted GPS positioning and a combination of automatic and manually-triggered alerts. Both device models are compatible with Blackline's Loner Beacon indoor location technology that displays employee locations on an interactive Google map, complete with custom floor plans. Blackline's broad safety monitoring portfolio empowers organizations in all industries and geographic locations with real-time safety incident awareness, delivering help within minutes instead of hours or potentially days later. To learn more about Blackline's work-alone safety monitoring solutions, visit www.BlacklineSafety.com and follow Blackline on Twitter @blacklinesafety. About Blackline: Blackline Safety Corp. (TSX VENTURE: BLN) is a wireless location leader that develops, manufactures, and markets products and services for lone worker safety monitoring. Targeting every industry, employee role and location, our Loner solutions are promoted through offices in Calgary and the United Kingdom and sold through a growing network of international distributors. Loner products alert monitoring personnel of a safety incident, locate the employee and empower the most efficient emergency response-Alert. Locate. Respond. Our vision is to become the leading supplier of wirelessly connected lone worker safety monitoring products in the world. For more information, visit www.BlacklineSafety.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. (Adds Lula meeting Senate leader, attorney general comments) By Anthony Boadle BRASILIA, March 22 (Reuters) - President Dilma Rousseff said on Tuesday she will not resign in Brazil's worst political crisis in two decades, calling an opposition move to impeach her a "coup d'etat" against democratic rule because she had committed no crime. Rousseff urged Brazil's Supreme Court to remain impartial in the crisis that has threatened to topple her government as opponents seek her impeachment in Congress amid a widespread corruption scandal that has reached her inner circle. "I will never resign under any circumstances," the embattled president said in a speech to legal experts. "I have committed no crime that would warrant shortening my term." The head of the Brazilian Senate echoed Rousseff's position on impeachment after a meeting with her predecessor and political mentor, former President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva, as the pair work hand in hand to shore up a crumbling coalition. Opposition parties have launched impeachment proceedings against Rousseff for allegedly manipulating government accounts to allow her government to spend more in the run-up to her 2014 re-election. The president could be suspended as soon as May if her supporters do not block impeachment in the lower house. Recent corruption allegations and huge anti-government street protests have raised the odds of Rousseff being impeached, ending 13 years of leftist Workers' Party rule. With her popularity at rock bottom due to a snowballing graft scandal and the worst recession in a generation, the political survival of Brazil's first female president depends largely on her main coalition partner, the centrist Brazilian Democratic Movement Party (PMDB). Growing numbers of lawmakers in the fractious PMDB want the party to break with her government, a decision that could be taken at a March 29 executive committee meeting. The party may hold the deciding votes on impeachment, which would put Vice President Michel Temer, leader of the PMDB, in the presidential seat. Story continues Party officials have denied Brazilian media reports that Temer is already preparing a post-Rousseff government and has begun talks with opposition leaders to secure their backing. The head of the Senate, PMDB Senator Renan Calheiros, who appeared to be wavering in his support of the government, warned the party on Tuesday not to deepen Brazil's crisis by breaking with Rousseff. After meeting with Lula, who is back in Brasilia leading efforts by his Workers' Party to avert Rousseff's impeachment, Renan told reporters Congress should only oust her for an impeachable offense. "For the sake democracy, we must warn that you need to have a crime of responsibility for impeachment of the president," Calheiros said, echoing Rousseff's stance. LULA AND THE COURTS Rousseff also criticized a crusading anti-corruption judge for overstepping his jurisdiction by releasing a wiretap of a conversation between her and Lula, who is being investigated in a political bribery scheme that has engulfed state-run oil company Petrobras. Without mentioning the federal judge, Sergio Moro, by name, Rousseff said the judiciary cannot abandon impartiality and take sides politically by becoming a "party militant." The recording of a conversation between Rousseff and Lula contributed to suspicions that she had appointed her mentor and predecessor as cabinet chief to shield him from prosecution by Moro. Only the Supreme Court has jurisdiction in cases against elected politicians and government ministers. Earlier on Tuesday, a supreme court justice upheld a decision by another judge on the court barring Lula from taking the ministry post. Last week, Supreme Court Justice Gilmar Mendes blocked Lula from taking office and ordered that the corruption case against him be handled by Moro, exposing Lula to the risk of arrest. A plenary vote of the full Supreme Court on March 30 can still overrule Mendes' decision. Brazil's Attorney General Jose Eduardo Cardozo said the courts had no justification for barring the former president, adding in a news conference with foreign reporters: "Lula is currently a minister. He just can't exercise his position." Cardozo said the government will resort to the Supreme Court to fight impeachment if necessary. "If there are irregularities or violations of the Constitution, we will take legal action." Brazil is going through its worst political turmoil since Fernando Collor de Mello resigned as president in 1992 ahead of imminent impeachment in a corruption scandal. (Reporting by Anthony Boadle, Caroline Stauffer and Maria Carolina Marcello; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe, Bernard Orr) ray dalio Bridgewater Associates the world's largest hedge fund, with $169 billion in assets under management has recently undergone a notable shakeup. Founder, chairman, and co-CIO Ray Dalio announced earlier this March that tech industry veteran Jon Rubinstein was signing on as one of Bridgewater's two co-CEOs, alongside Eileen Murray. Rubinstein would take the place of Greg Jensen, who would give up his role of co-CEO, but remain co-CIO alongside Dalio. It's a major step in the 10-year succession process that began in 2011, in which Dalio is handing off management responsibilities to focus solely on investing strategy. Dalio explained to Business Insider why Rubinstein was an ideal fit for the job: There are two things I look for when assessing people. First, do we share similar values of producing greatness through thoughtful disagreement? Jon worked next to Steve Jobs for 16 years doing that, and he clearly wants to do that with us. Then I look at the skills we need. Jon has a world-class track record as both a leader of people and a shaper of technology, both of which we need. At Bridgewater, the company's roughly 1,500 employees abide by "radical transparency," in which nearly all meetings are filmed and archived for anyone to view, employees rate each other's performance in proprietary iPad apps, and criticizing colleagues behind their backs is a fireable offense. Dalio explained that, "because it can make people uncomfortable to have their mistakes and weaknesses so transparently shown," Bridgewater's "idea meritocracy" is not for everyone. steve jobs jon rubinstein He was assured that Rubinstein could thrive in this culture because Rubinstein spent the 1990s and early 2000s as one of late Apple CEO Steve Jobs' top executives, and Jobs is remembered for his brutally honest management style. Story continues And Rubinstein's long tech career, which includes a key role in developing the iMac and iPod, is a perfect fit for Bridgewater's reliance on increasingly sophisticated automated trading software. When Dalio announced the recruitment of Rubinstein and Jensen's giving up of the role of co-CEO, he argued, without directly referencing it, that a Wall Street Journal report from February mischaracterized a dispute between him and Jensen, and that the hiring of Rubinstein was already in the works when they were settling a particular disagreement. "In a nutshell, we concluded that it made the most sense to have Greg spend less time on management and more time on investments and that we needed to bring in an exceptional co-CEO with a strong tech focus to supplement the existing leadership," Dalio wrote. "The way we're constantly evolving and refining what we're doing can be very confusing to outsiders, especially when they read the typical business press, which attaches a lot of sensational drama to these kinds of things," Dalio told Business Insider. "But to us, this is just the natural way a group of close partners figures out how to be most effective together." NOW WATCH: Paul Krugman gave us his top 3 investment tips More From Business Insider The attacks in the Belgian capital on Tuesday are unlikely to have a long-term impact on markets, but they could result in new roadblocks to cross-border commerce and lend momentum to Euro sceptics, analysts told CNBC. European stocks were under pressure but had come off their lows following deadly attacks at Brussels main airport and on the city's metro system. U.S. equities were mixed by late morning. The attacks came four days after the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in the November Paris terror attacks. European Union member states should close their borders until the continent gets the security situation under control, retired U.S. Army Col. Jack Jacobs said Tuesday. "Once you are in Europe, the first place you land in Europe, you're wherever you want to go in Europe," he told CNBC's "Squawk Box." "It's been astonishing for decades, how the Europeans could be as complacent as they have been about security when the borders are completely and totally open." More than 400 million EU citizens, as well as non-EU nationals, business travelers, and tourists, are able to travel throughout 26 European countries known as the Schengen area without having their passport or visa checked. Maintaining security and holding the European Union together is a huge challenge with significant implications for U.S. multinationals, said Joseph Quinlan, chief market strategist for U.S. Trust of America Private Wealth Management. "The European Union, the economy is $18 trillion. If it does become more difficult to move goods, people, and so forth, that's a big issue for the markets," he told "Squawk Box." Michael Tyler, chief investment officer at Eastern Bank Wealth Management, said the attacks may feed fears in Britain about the perceived failure of European countries to integrate immigrants. At the time he spoke, no suspect had been identified. Britain will hold a referendum on whether to stay in the European Union on June 23. "I think it gives the exiters a little bit more momentum and a little bit more focus today," Tyler told "Squawk Box." Story continues The market reaction will likely come only after there is a political response to the attacks, said Jason Trennert, Strategas Research chief investment strategist. "I think globally there is clearly a re-evaluation of immigration policies," he told "Squawk Box." "This is a global phenomenon." "There's no question that nationalistic tendencies and populist tendencies are going to get stronger," he said, adding that such a climate would make trade more difficult. Boris Schlossberg, managing director at BKForex, said he, too, thought the fallout from the Brussels attacks may be more political than economic, though the long-term ramifications could ultimately rock Europe's economy. If terrorist events yield nativist sentiment in Europe, it could feed the fervor to break up the EU, he said. A British exit would endanger the entire EU unification process, he added. More From CNBC Bleaching occurs when abnormal environmental conditions, such as warmer sea temperatures, cause corals to expel tiny photosynthetic algae, draining them of their colour (AFP Photo/-) Environmental groups Monday urged greater action on climate change after the government sounded the alarm over severe coral bleaching in the pristine northern reaches of Australia's Great Barrier Reef. The government said Sunday that corals had turned white and grey in parts of the World Heritage-listed marine park, with the bleaching "severe" in northern areas. Environmental group WWF said large sections of coral near Lizard Island were drained of all colour and fighting for survival. "The reef can recover but we must speed up the shift to clean, renewable energy and we must build reef resilience by reducing runoff pollution from farms and land clearing," said WWF spokesperson Richard Leck. Bleaching occurs when abnormal environmental conditions, such as warmer sea temperatures, cause corals to expel tiny photosynthetic algae, draining them of their colour. Corals can recover if the water temperature drops and the algae are able to recolonise them. The Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority said recent underwater surveys had detected "substantial levels of coral mortality" in the remote far north areas, blaming prolonged higher than average sea surface temperatures. As a result, it has raised its response to level three -- the highest level in its response plan and indicating "severe regional bleaching". "The pictures we're seeing coming out of the northern Great Barrier Reef are devastating," said Greenpeace Australia Pacific's Shani Tager. "The Queensland and federal governments must see this as a red alert and act accordingly." She called on the government to reconsider coal mining, saying the burning of the fuel was "driving climate change, warming our waters and bleaching the life and colour out of our reef". Scientists had feared that the current El Nino weather phenomenon -- when the trade winds over the tropical Pacific start to weaken and sea surface temperatures rise -- would impact the reef. Story continues One of the worst mass bleaching episodes on record, which affected reefs in 60 tropical countries, took place in 1998 when the El Nino phenomenon was exceptionally strong. But the independent crowd-funded Climate Council said while El Nino events had been experienced before, such severe bleaching would not occur without the influence of climate change. - Wake up call - Environment Minister Greg Hunt, who inspected the area by air on Sunday, agreed that despite periodic El Ninos, overlaying such events with climate change "does exacerbate them". "I don't think there's any debate in the scientific community on that front. That's the advice of all of the marine scientists and climatologists with whom I've worked," he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation on Monday. "And that's why the Paris outcome... is fundamental," he said, referring to the historic global deal agreed by 195 nations last year aimed at curbing carbon emissions and limiting warming. Hunt said there were some positives, with experts saying the bleaching was nowhere near as bad as in 1998 or 2002, and with three-quarters of the reef experiencing "minor to moderate bleaching". Russell Reichelt, chairman of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority, said the arrival of the wet season had also appeared to have spared most of the vast 344,400 square kilometre (132,974 square mile) marine park. But Jodie Rummer, a senior research fellow at James Cook University, said the situation was "not good at all" at Lizard Island in the north. She said while the northern parts of the reef were among its most beautiful and pristine, they had also been hard hit by cyclones in recent years which had caused structural damage to the coral. "It's quite sobering as well to think that this is the wake up call that we're getting to take better care of our environment," she told AFP. Rummer said it would be weeks before the full extent of the bleaching was known. (Reuters) - Cruise operator Carnival Corp (CCL.N) said on Monday it received approval from Cuban authorities to begin operations to the country, starting May 1. The approval comes a day after U.S. President Barack Obama's historic visit to Cuba. Carnival said this was the first time in over 50 years that a cruise ship was approved to sail from the United States to Cuba. The company will use the 704-passenger vessel, the MV Adonia, for its Cuba cruises, on the small side for the company, whose ships typically carry 2,000 to 3,000 people. Carnival had received U.S. approval last July to operate cruises to Cuba under its Fathom brand, set up to run cruises with humanitarian and cultural themes to the Dominican Republic. Carnival is the first major U.S.-based cruise ship company to venture into Cuban waters. Two other Miami-based companies, Royal Caribbean Cruises Ltd (RCL.N) and Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd (NCLH.O), have expressed interest but say the U.S. embargo remains an obstacle. (Reporting by Ramkumar Iyer in Bengaluru; Editing by Anil D'Silva) Carnival has permission from both governments to run cruise ships between Florida and Cuba, and said the first ship will leave Miami on May 1 (AFP Photo/Karen Bleier) (AFP/File) Miami (AFP) - Carnival got official approval to send its first cruise ship to Cuba from the United States in half a century, the leisure travel giant said Monday, as President Barack Obama made a landmark visit to Havana. The cruise line will send its 704-passenger MV Adonia to Cuba through its new brand Fathom starting May 1. Carnival, in hailing its "historic inaugural sailing," said it will be the first cruise line to sail that itinerary. Cuban authorities have now followed Washington in giving the green light to run the service, sailing from Miami, to Cuba, where it will have three approved stops: Havana, Cienfuegos and Santiago de Cuba. "We are excited about Cuban approval and are ready to take travelers there through an extraordinary guest experience on the beautiful MV Adonia," said Carnival CEO Arnold Donald. "This is a historic opportunity, and we know there is pent-up demand amongst Americans who want to experience Cuba." Since US sanctions regulations currently only allow Americans to visit Cuba on educational or social outreach grounds, not as normal tourists, the vessel offers Cuban-themed enrichment programming. Seven-day itineraries, available at fathom.org, cost at least $1,800. A majority of Americans back restoring diplomatic ties with communist-run Cuba, a poll found, just as Obama met his counterpart Raul Castro in Havana. Six in 10 Americans say restoring diplomacy with Cuba is mostly good for the US and 52 percent approve of Obama's handling of relations with the island, said a CBS News/New York Times poll. However, there are more doubts over what impact it will have on Cuba politically, with half the respondents saying it will make no difference. But it will still be hampered by the RMB. The Singapore dollar's strong rally over recent weeks means that it is likely to outperform the greenback in total return terms, according to a report by BMI Research. "The Singapore dollar has staged a strong rally over recent weeks, and together with our global financial markets team's expectations for continued emerging market FX outperformance over the coming quarters, we have deemed fit to upgrade our end-year forecast on the currency to SGD1.4000/USD, versus SGD1.5000/USD previously," BMI Research said. "In this environment, we believe that EM currencies should outperform the US dollar in total return terms, which suggests that expectations for aggressive Singapore dollar weakness are no longer warranted," the report added. However, the SGD will continue to be hampered by weakness in the Chinese yuan, which did not experience the wide-scale emerging markets FX sell-off over the past two years and continues to face downside pressures. For this reason, we have opted to shift to a neutral stance on the SGD rather than an outright bullish one. Given that we maintain our expectations for a wide range of macroeconomic and financial market factors to weigh on the Chinese yuan, it is unlikely that we will see sustained strength in the Singapore dollar over the course of this year, said the report. More From Singapore Business Review The logo of EDF is seen on a security helmet of an employee in the Electricite de France (EDF) nuclear power station at Civaux, France, March 17, 2016. REUTERS/Stephane Mahe By Geert De Clercq PARIS (Reuters) - French utility EDF (EDF.PA) should not delay the investment decision on plans to build two nuclear reactors in Britain as it could risk losing the contract, French Economy Minister Emmanuel Macron said on Tuesday. Macron said he could understand calls to delay the 18 billion pound project until problems with two nuclear projects in Flamanville, France and Olkiluoto, Finland are sorted out, but the British government would see this as a renunciation of the project. "We need to understand that a delay would create a strong risk that we would lose the contract," Macron told parliament in a briefing about EDF, which is 85 percent state owned. The project was first announced in October 2013, but a final investment decision has been delayed as EDF struggled to find partners and financing. Chinese utility CGN signed up for a one-third stake in Oct. 2015, leaving EDF to fund the rest. Macron said Chinese nuclear firms - which already have a strong presence in Britain - would be ready to take over the contract, which he said has an excellent return on equity. He added that losing the contract would have grave consequences for investment and employment in the French nuclear industry and for its credibility. Macron said EDF should make the Hinkley Point investment decision in early May, not at the next board meeting on March 30. He hoped that by early April there would be an agreement about conflicts relating to Olkiluoto, which is the subject of an arbitration suit in which reactor builder Areva (AREVA.PA) and its Finnish customer TVO claim billions from one another. The conflict is one of the elements delaying the planned takeover of Areva's nuclear reactor division by EDF. Macron reiterated the French state is willing to recapitalise EDF and possibly renounce a cash dividend, but this should not be seen as an easy solution for EDF and that the firm would have to sell assets and cut costs first. Macron also said France is considering supporting EDF with a mechanism modelled on the Contract for Difference (CfD) scheme the UK has put in place for Hinkley Point. Story continues "The British have managed to negotiate long-term guarantees for nuclear newbuild with the European Commission, at a high price level, which opens perspectives," Macron said. He said a CfD-style legal framework could facilitate investment in new nuclear reactors in France. EDF CEO Jean-Bernard Levy has repeatedly said that at current low power market prices it is not possible to invest in new power generation assets. (Reporting by Geert De Clercq; editing by Susan Thomas) Weekly Update: How Phosphate Stocks Performed Last Week (Continued from Prior Part) DAP prices DAP (diammonium phosphate) prices mostly moved sideways for the week ended March 18, 2016. Ammonium phosphate fertilizers are the most widely used phosphate fertilizers globally. According to Mosaic (MOS), DAP is the phosphate fertilizer thats used the most. Average DAP prices The average price of DAP in the Corn Belt remained unchanged at $354 per metric ton ($390 per short ton) compared to the previous week. The average DAP prices in China also remained unchanged at 2,700 yuan per metric ton, or $415.90 per metric ton, last week. However, the yuan fell another 0.05% against the US dollar during the week. Average realized prices for DAP at Tampa also remained unchanged at $360 per metric ton compared to the previous week. On the other hand, the average DAP price at US Gulf NOLA (New Orleans) for the week ended March 18 declined to $322 per metric ton ($302 per short ton) compared to $309 per metric ton ($341 per short ton) in the previous week. Producer profiles Mosaic (MOS) has been converting its DAP facilities to its Microessentials products, which, according to the company, commands a higher premium. According to Mosaics management, Microessentials generates $40 more in revenue per unit compared to DAP. About 20% of Mosaics revenue comes from its potash fertilizer segment. The outlook for potash fertilizer is bleak for 2016. This impacts companies such as PotashCorp (POT), Intrepid Potash (IPI), and Agrium (AGU). Investors who want to diversify risk might look into a broader portfolio such as the SPDR S&P North American Natural Resources ETF (NANR), which invests about 1.6% of its portfolio in Mosaic. In the next part of this series, well turn our attention to the second most important phosphate fertilizer, MAP (monoammonium phosphate). Continue to Next Part Browse this series on Market Realist: Dark Days for Oilfield Services: SpotLight on 4 Key OFS Mid-Caps (Continued from Prior Part) Comparing revenue growth All four of the mid-cap OFS (oilfield service) companies that were analyzing in this seriesWeatherford International (WFT), Core Laboratories (CLB), FMC Technologies (FTI), and RPC (RES)recorded declines in fiscal 2015 compared to fiscal 2014. FMC Technologies was the holdout FMC Technologies registered the lowest revenue decline among peers, with a 20% fall in fiscal 2015 revenue compared to one year previously. FTIs fiscal 2015 revenue was ~$6.4 billion versus ~$7.9 billion in 2014. Specifically, FTIs Subsea Technologies segment recorded a revenue rise of 5.7% while its Surface Technologies segment saw a revenue decline of 30% over fiscal 2014 in 2015. FTI represents 0.91% of the Energy Select Sector SPDR ETF (XLE). The biggest laggards Core Laboratories fiscal 2015 revenue fell by ~27% to $798 million from almost $1.1 billion one year previously. CLBs revenues from services declined by 22% compared to a 39% fall in product sales. This was because demand for CLBs analytical, diagnostic, and completion services was less impacted by lower drilling activities. By comparison, Weatherford International recorded a 36.7% revenue declines in fiscal 2015 compared to the prior year. Its fiscal 2015 revenue was $9.4 billion versus ~$14.9 billion in fiscal 2014. During the same period, WFTs North America geography revenue declined by 43%, whereas its International segment revenues decreased by 23%, and its revenues from Land Drilling Rigs declined by 48%. This fall was due primarily to lower drilling activity and customer pricing pressure in North America, and lower drilling activity in WFTs Europe, Russia, Middle East, Africa, and Asia-Pacific. RPC felt it most RPC recorded a 46% fiscal 2015 revenue decline compared to 2014. Its 2015 revenue was ~$1.3 billion versus ~$2.3 billion one year previously because RPCs revenues are closely linked to directional and horizontal wells. In 2015, the US rig count declined 60% compared to one year previously, causing significant revenue decline for RPC. Story continues Continue to the next part for our analysis of the earnings growth figures of these four companies. Continue to Next Part Browse this series on Market Realist: nypd belgium brussels attacks police time square new york Naveed Jamali is a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Research Institute and the author of "How To Catch A Russian Spy." He can be followed on Twitter at @CatchaRUSSpy. Evan Siegfried, a Republican strategist and commentator, is President of Somm Consulting. He can be followed on Twitter at @evansiegfried. Tuesday's attacks in Brussels were a stark reminder that terrorism is a major issue confronting the US and the global community. The terror group ISIS is bringing their fight to the heart of the Western world. As a result of this attack, as well as last year's attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump has proposed an anti-terror plan (to the extent that it can be called a plan) that not only would endanger America, but betray our core values. The Trump terror plan is literally as follows: Bar all Muslims from entering the US, bomb the families of ISIS members, use increased torture methods to interrogate detainees, take the oil from ISIS (and give it to the veterans), and "bomb the shit out of them." And this only came months after Trump said that ISIS wasn't a real threat and that we should outsource the fight to Russia. This "plan" shows how woefully unprepared Trump is to handle the threat of terrorism and ISIS. Further evidence of Trump's inadequacy and lack of understanding of the very real issue of terrorism is his meeting with The Washington Post's editorial board yesterday. In response to a detailed question about how he would handle ISIS, Trump said, "I'll tell you one thing, this is a very good looking group of people here. Could I just go around so I know who the hell I am talking to?" It was part of a familiar pattern with Trump: when asked for substance and detail, Trump pivots to superficial ramblings. So far, our safeguards have stopped several wannabe ISIS members from doing harm in the US. However, the reason they were successful is due to international cooperation between the US and its allies. Take for example the case of Tairod Pugh, an American citizen and former member of the US Air Force who attempted to join ISIS. Pugh was stopped because Egyptian and Turkish authorities informed the US that he was attempting to cross into Syria. To implement a plan that would ban all Muslims from entering the US would drive a wedge between the US and many of its Muslim allies, including Turkey and Egypt. Cooperation would most likely be stifled and lead to further resentment toward the US. Story continues Trump's "plan" does nothing to address the very real threat of American citizens being radicalized. One of the San Bernardino shooters, Syed Farook, was a US citizen. A Muslim travel ban would not have prevented him from carrying out his act of terror. Nor would it have prevented Tairod Pugh from returning to the US had he not been flagged for US authorities by our allies. Make no mistake, ISIS is seeking to radicalize Americans and unleash them across the US. They won't be stopped by a Muslim travel ban, building a wall along the Mexican border, bombing ISIS or taking their oil. What will stop these sleeper cells is careful and deliberate intelligence work and cooperation among the US and our allies. Donald Trump. Further, banning Muslims from entering the US is unachievable. What would determine that a person is Muslim? Would American officials issue people seeking to enter the country some sort of test? Would somebody who is not Muslim, but has a Muslim sounding name be automatically banned from entering the country? The entire process is impossible to implement. No "deals" can make this unconstitutional proposal a reality. Trump has already received criticism for saying that he would target women and children in this fight. Doing so is counterproductive, as it makes the US and its citizens into the monster that ISIS wants its potential recruits to view us as. Of course, it should come as no surprise that immediately after the Brussels attack, Trump's legions of lickspittles began to push the false narrative that Trump had accurately predicted this attack back in January. They saw it as further reinforcement of Donald Trump as some sort of sage prophet who knows exactly how to handle ISIS. It was aided by Trump's calling into as many shows as possible to reiterate his previously stated policies on ISIS. This gave credibility to Trump on the issue of terrorism where no credibility should have been given. Trump's idea of how to combat terrorism and ISIS is not based in reality. It unconstitutionally targets an entire religion, while pushing policies that actually make America less safe. We can ill afford to engage in policies that make our allies less likely to work with us and prevent future terror attacks. Nor can we fight terrorism with an approach that creates more terrorists and resentment of the US. What should be frightening is how Trump's record and "plan" reveal his utter lack of comprehension of the important issues, especially national security. We cannot place the safety of the US in the hands of someone who cannot comprehend or understand the threat and how to deal with it. NOW WATCH: 'Marco Rubio is trying to steal my girlfriend': Watch the bizarre moment a prankster interrupted a Rubio rally More From Business Insider The United States will no longer provide mid-air refuelling support to Saudi-led coalition warplanes carrying out sorties over Yemen, like these Emirati aircraft seen at a Saudi base in 2015 (AFP Photo/HO) Aden (AFP) - Saudi-led air strikes on an Al-Qaeda training camp in Yemen on Tuesday killed or wounded dozens, officials and tribal sources said, as the Arab coalition expands its campaign against jihadists. The raids came almost one year since the Saudi-led coalition launched its bombing campaign against Iran-backed Shiite rebels who challenged the authority of the Yemeni government and seized much of the country. Government officials said the raids hit a training camp in Hajr, west of Hadramawt's provincial capital Mukalla which has been held by jihadists since April. They said dozens or people were killed or wounded but did not give a breakdown or say if there were any civilians among the casualties. Tribal sources said wounded militants were taken to a hospital in Mukalla, while witnesses spoke of around nine vehicles rushing casualties out of the area. Dozens of Al-Qaeda militants were meanwhile seen rushing to the hospital to donate blood, according to residents. The World Health Organization says fighting in Yemen since March 2015 has claimed the lives of almost 6,300 people, while the UN human rights chief last week said half of all those killed were civilians with the vast majority of those deaths caused by coalition strikes. On Tuesday rights watchdogs Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch urged the United States, Britain and France to halt arm deliveries to Saudi Arabia that could be used in the Yemen conflict. Riyadh launched the intervention in Yemen last year after Shiite Huthi rebels seized control of large parts of the country, including the capital Sanaa, and forced the government into exile. - Peace talks - Loyalist forces backed by coalition strikes and ground troops have since retaken much of the south but have failed to dislodge the rebels from other areas including Sanaa. They have recaptured second city Aden and the southern port has been declared the permanent seat of the government of President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi. Story continues But in the past few weeks, jihadists from Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) and the Islamic State group have bolstered their presence in southern and eastern Yemen. The Sunni extremists were also reinforcing their grip on parts of Aden in defiance of the authorities and the Saudi-led coalition as the latter were busy pounding the Huthi rebels. Last week Saudi-led coalition warplanes struck the jihadists in Aden, for the first time since the pro-government air campaign was launched on March 26 last year. AQAP, which is well entrenched in Yemen where it has been active for years, is classified by the United States as Al-Qaeda's deadliest franchise and had claimed attacks on the West in the past. It ruled the southern province of Abyan for a year before being driven out in June 2012. But last April it seized Hadramawt's provincial capital Mukalla and nearby oil installations. From Mukalla, AQAP has expanded to regain its foothold in southern provinces including Abyan last year and nearby Lahj and Shabwa. Saudi Arabia launched the intervention in Yemen last year after Shiite Huthi rebels seized Sanaa and pushed southwards, forcing the government into exile. Several rounds of UN-brokered peace talks have failed to nail a solution for Yemen. But Yemeni Foreign Minister Abdulmalek al-Mikhlafi said on Tuesday he was "99 percent" sure a new round of talks would take place in Kuwait later this month. A Yemeni government official said on Monday the peace negotiations would be accompanied by a ceasefire. Also on Tuesday the union of journalists accused rebels of killing cameraman Mohammed al-Yemeni in third city Taez while he was covering clashes. SAN DIEGO, CA--(Marketwired - March 22, 2016) - Envision Solar International, Inc., (EVSI) ("Envision Solar," or the "Company"), the leading renewable energy, media and branding and EV charging product company, announced today that the Company has successfully deployed the first patented EV ARC solar powered charging station to the US Virgin Islands in the Caribbean. The deployed EV ARC Transformer model was delivered in a fully assembled collapsed state in a standard shipping container. Upon arrival, using the Company's patent pending transformation technology, the EV ARC was returned to its upright position and ready to charge EVs within minutes. The EV ARC Transformer has the additional benefit of being able to be collapsed before and during severe weather events, such as hurricanes. The unit will continue to generate electricity in a collapsed state, but with a greatly reduced wind profile. Additionally, it will provide a highly robust and reliable source of energy during extreme conditions when the traditional grid may not be available. The EV ARC product was purchased by the Government of the US Virgin Islands and is the first autonomous solar powered EV charging station in the region. "The EV ARC will be used initially to support the electric vehicles in the Government's fleet and is part of the Government's plan to reduce emissions and fuel cost to the tax payers in the Territory of United States Virgin Islands," said Randolph Bennett, Commissioner of Property and Procurement of the US Virgin Islands Government. "We have crossed another boundary with this successful deployment," said Desmond Wheatley, CEO of Envision Solar. "EV ARC Transformer demonstrates that we can ship and deploy our products anywhere and this is a continuation of our strategy to expand geographically. The markets we target are global and we will continue to push to take advantage of the growth potential in the US and the rest of the world." Invented and manufactured in California, the EV ARC product fits inside a standard parking space and does not reduce available parking. It generates enough clean, solar electricity to power up to 120 miles of EV driving each day. The system's solar electrical generation is enhanced by the patented EnvisionTrak system, which causes the array to follow the sun, generating 18 to 25% more electricity than a fixed array. The energy is stored in the EV ARC product's energy storage for charging day or night. Because the EV ARC product requires no trenching, foundations or installation work of any kind, it is deployed in minutes and can be moved to a new location with ease. EV ARC products are manufactured in the Company's San Diego facility by combat veterans, the disabled, minorities and other highly talented, mission-driven team members. About Envision Solar International, Inc. Envision Solar, www.envisionsolar.com, designs, manufactures and deploys unique, renewably energized, EV charging and Media and Branding systems. The company's products include the patented EV ARC and Solar Tree product lines. All of the Company's products can be enhanced with EnvisionTrak patented solar tracking, ARC Technology energy storage, SunCharge Electric Vehicle Charging Stations and digital advertising packages. Based in San Diego the company integrates the highest quality components into its Made in America products. Envision Solar is listed on the OTC Bulletin Board under the symbol [EVSI]. For more information, visit www.envisionsolar.com or call 866-746-0514. Forward-Looking Statements This Press Release may contain forward-looking statements regarding future events or our expected future results that are subject to inherent risks and uncertainties. All statements in this Report other than statements of historical facts are forward looking statements. Forward looking statements are generally accompanied by terms or phrases such as "estimate," "project," "predict," "believe," "expect," "anticipate," "target," "plan," "intend," "seek," "goal," "will," "should," "may," or other words and similar expressions that convey the uncertainty of future events or results. Statements contemplating or making assumptions regarding actual or potential sales, market size and demand, prospective business contracts, customer orders, trends or operating results also constitute forward looking statements. Our actual results may differ substantially from those indicated in forward looking statements because our business is subject to significant economic, competitive, regulatory, business and industry risks which are difficult to predict and many of which are beyond our control. Our operating results, financial condition and business performance may be adversely affected by a general decline in the economy, unavailability of capital or financing for our prospective customers to purchase products and services from us, competition, changes in regulations, a decline in the demand for solar energy, a lack of profitability, a decline in our stock price, and other risks. We may not have adequate capital, financing or cash flow to sustain our business or implement our business plans. Current results and trends are not necessarily indicative of future results that we may achieve. (Adds detail, background) March 18 (Reuters) - The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) is probing the cyber theft of tens of millions of dollars from the Bangladesh central bank's U.S. account, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday, citing people familiar with the matter. FBI agents are looking for evidence in the United States and beyond to determine who was behind the theft, which transferred money from the Bangladesh central bank account in New York to the Philippines, the Journal reported. (http://on.wsj.com/1PguXWw) The heist netted $81 million and took place between Feb 4 and Feb 5, when unknown hackers breached the computer systems of Bangladesh Bank and attempted to steal $951 million from its account at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which it uses for international settlements. A spokeswoman for the FBI in New York declined comment. Bangladesh Bank had earlier asked the FBI for help. The theft prompted the head of Bangladesh Bank to resign and has triggered concerns over the safety of the financial system in the Philippines after the funds were transferred to Manila. A public hearing in the Philippines' Senate was told this week that the money stolen from the U.S. Federal Reserve account was wired to a Manila branch of Rizal Commercial Banking Corp (RCBC). The money was passed on to a foreign exchange broker, which transferred some $30 million in cash to an ethnic Chinese man who is believed to be a casino junket operator and the rest into accounts at two casino companies, officials told the Senate's anti-corruption committee. Bangladesh Bank has said there is little hope of apprehending the perpetrators and that recovering the money would be difficult and could take months. FireEye Inc's Mandiant forensics division is helping investigate the cyber heist. The bank has also been in touch with the Fed and other U.S. authorities, including the FBI and the Department of Justice. (Reporting by Abhirup Roy in Bengaluru; additional reporting by Nate Raymond in New York; Editing by Shounak Dasgupta and Cynthia Osterman) SAINT PETERSBURG, FL--(Marketwired - March 22, 2016) - FutureWorld (OTC PINK: FWDG) HempTech Corp, a technology company catering to the cultivators of legal industrial hemp and cannabis market, is excited to announce that growers, dispensaries and license holders of the medical marijuana in legal States can now reserve "grow.droid I," a fully "Plug 'n Play" automated grow system, for just $5,000. The company will start taking limited reservations for its first mass-market, lower-priced "Plug 'n Play" fully automated grow system on March 31. The basic versions of the "grow.droid I" are expected to start at around $35,000 with first deliveries in second quarter 2016. Customer is expected to make 50% deposit on the total purchase price with the completion of the purchase order and the remaining 50% paid on delivery. Those on the West Coast of North America, Colorado and Nevada will receive the first deliveries, and the company will move east from there. Subsequently, HempTech will begin ramping up deliveries all across the United States in latter part of 2016. grow.droid I, and planned Model II, will be available globally in 2017. For reservations, please email us at growdroidreserve@hemptechcorp.com. "As we continue to ramp up production, post beta testing, of the grow.droid I, we will begin deliveries in West Coast of North America, Colorado and Nevada," said the company. "It is not possible to ship to all regions simultaneously because of the differentials in medical cannabis regulations in each legal State." Current distributors and customers of HempTech will get priority in each region. Company anticipates a large number of reservations for limited roll outs of its "grow.droid I." As was mentioned in our previous announcement, grow.droid is a self-contained, fully automated and affordable grow platform. The system is designed with industrial grade components to provide reliability and robustness that's normally seen in large commercial grows. The cloud-based computerized system can be monitored and managed by a smart device or a tablet. Story continues FutureLand Corp (OTC PINK: FUTL) has been instrumental in developing policies and procedures based on legal differentials in medical marijuana States allowing HempTech to develop concise sales and marketing plans. FutureLand will help HempTech and its customers navigate the complexities of property zoning and State marijuana licensing. What is grow.droid and what does it do? HempTech's premiere product grow.droid is an all-inclusive, fully automated "plug 'n play" grow platform designed with premium commercial agriculture components. The system is engineered to provide maximum yields while minimizing the cost of production. This platform is designed specifically to grow cannabis although it can be used for other agricultural purposes. The grow.droid self-contained platform includes the following features: Premium 10X10 foot Gorilla grow tent Industrial grade DWC hydroponics system with required water and air pumps Top-off reservoir and level sensors Integrated process control computer loaded with custom management profiles Intelligent industrial grade data network to control lights, motors, pumps, etc. Industrial grade environmental, pH, EC, air and water temperature controllers and sensors Integrated intelligent LED lighting Computer controlled dosing of pH and nutrients System water chiller CO2 injection system Exhaust and recirculating fans with carbon filter and ducting HD video camera Display tablet preprogrammed with customized dashboard for remote grow monitoring Sophisticated fault detection technology with active alarm system Unique profiling to manage grow based on imbedded strain matrix The grow.droid can also be engineered into a 10X24 and 10x40 foot self-contained grow pod which can be used in standalone Controlled Environment Agriculture applications and installed outside. The system is fully customizable and includes initial consultation and full product support. About HempTech Corp HempTech, a subsidiary of FutureWorld, is a technology company catering to the cultivators of industrial hemp market and legal medical marijuana. HempTech provides modernized technology resources that allow cultivators to securely collect and analyze every aspect of a horticultural operation. Products include the SPIDer (Secure Perimeter Intrusion Detection), SmartSense, SmartEnergy, and analytics dashboard CaNNaLyTiX through which HempTech Corp. provides growers unparalleled data analysis capabilities for their plants. CaNNaLyTiX's sophistication will show the master growers exactly how a harvest came into being. Virtually every component of the plants vegetative growth matrix and ultimate flower harvest is tracked, documented and available in visible format both in real-time and historically to ensure that the baselines set by the master grower are adhered to by the cultivation staff. CaNNaLyTiX, providing essential tools to Know Your Grow! HempTech - America's Future Taking Root Today. To request further information about HempTech, please email us at info@hemptechcorp.com, log onto our website at http://www.hemptechcorp.com or visit us at our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/hemptechcorp or on Twitter @hemptechcorp. About FutureWorld Corp FutureWorld (FWDG) is a leading provider of advanced technologies and solutions to the global cannabis industry. FutureWorld, together with its subsidiaries, focuses on the identification, acquisition, development, and commercialization of cannabis related products and services, including industrial Hemp. FutureWorld, through its subsidiaries, provides personal and professional THC and CBD test kits, pharmaceutical grade CBD oil solutions, SafeVape vaporizers, industrial cultivation technology including surveillance security and smart sensors, communication network, data analysis for smart cultivation and consultation for the industrial hemp and legal medicinal cannabis. Our networks offer precision to the agriculture, irrigation systems, and greenhouses for the global cannabis and hemp industry. FutureWorld and its subsidiaries do not grow, distribute or sell marijuana. As a Cannabis Technology Accelerator, FutureWorld will incubate and fund leading technologies, products, and services for Cannabis industry (including Industrial Hemp) combining resources to strengthen the company and the industry. To request further information about FutureWorld, please email us at info@futureworldcorp.com, log onto our website at http://www.futureworldcorp.com or visit us at our Facebook page facebook.com/futureworldcorp or on Twitter @futureworldinc. Forward-Looking Statements This press release may contain forward-looking statements covered within the meaning of the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. These forward-looking statements relate to, among other things, plans and timing for the introduction or enhancement of our services and products, statements about future market conditions, supply and demand conditions, and other expectations, intentions and plans contained in this press release that are not historical fact and involve risks and uncertainties. Our expectations regarding future revenues depend upon our ability to develop and supply products and services that we may not produce today and that meet defined specifications. When used in this press release, the words "plan," "expect," "believe," and similar expressions generally identify forward-looking statements. These statements reflect our current expectations. They are subject to a number of risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, changes in technology and changes in pervasive markets. This release includes forward-looking statements within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933 and Section 27E of the Securities Act of 1934. Statements contained in this release that are not historical facts may be deemed to be forward-looking statements. Investors are cautioned that forward-looking statements are inherently uncertain. Actual performance and results may differ materially from that projected or suggested herein due to certain risks and uncertainties including, without limitation, ability to obtain financing and regulatory and shareholder approval for anticipated actions. BERLIN (Reuters) - Germany plans to boost spending by more than 30 billion euros (23.6 billion) up until 2020 without straying from its balanced budget, according to a draft Finance Ministry document seen by Reuters on Tuesday. An influx of more than 1.1 million migrants to Germany last year has put a question mark over whether Germany will have to abandon its cherished "schwarze null" or balanced budget to pay for the costs of accommodating and integrating the new arrivals. The finance ministry document shows the government plans to increase spending by 30.9 billion euros to 347.8 billion euros by 2020. But since tax revenues are expected to keep rising it does not foresee the need for net new borrowing. For 2017, the government expects to hike spending by 8.6 billion to 325.5 billion euros this year, of which about 33.7 billion will be spent on investment. The German cabinet is expected to approve the draft 2017 budget and financing plan up to 2020 on July 6. (Reporting by Matthias Sobolewski; Writing by Caroline Copley; Editing by Paul Carrel and Angus MacSwan) HES, APA, DVN, and MRO: How Do Top Upstream Players Stack Up? (Continued from Prior Part) Capex changes in 4Q15 In this part, we will talk about the capex changes in our four upstream companies: Hess (HES), Apache (APA), Devon Energy (DVN), and Marathon Oil (MRO). Apache recorded the highest capex decline in 4Q15 of ~72% compared to the same quarter in 2014. In 4Q15, APA had spent $674 million in capex compared to ~$2.4 billion in 4Q14. MRO also recorded a significant capex decline of ~67% in 4Q15 versus 4Q14. In 4Q15, MRO had spent $561 million in capex compared to ~$1.7 billion in 4Q14. DVN recorded a capex decline of ~45% in 4Q15 compared to 4Q14. In 4Q15, DVN had spent $1 billion in capex compared to ~$1.9 billion in 4Q14. The lowest capex decline was recorded by Hess, whose capex declined by 40% in 4Q15 versus 4Q14. It had spent $943 million in capex in 4Q15 compared to ~$1.6 billion in 4Q14. Capex guidance for 2016 APAs 2016 capex budget is 60% less than the 2015 capex budget while Hesss 2016 capex budget is 40% lower than its 2015 capex of $4 billion. DVNs exploration and production (or E&P) capex in 2016 is estimated to be 75% lower than the 2015 E&P capex. MROs 2016 capital program is more than 50% lower than its 2015 capex. The capex cuts come amid low oil prices and reduced drilling activities in a bid to protect cash flows. Other upstream companies that have been reducing their 2016 capex in response to lower energy prices include ConocoPhillips (COP) and Anadarko Petroleum (APC), which lowered their 2016 capex by 37% and 50%, respectively, versus 2015. Concho Resourcess (CXO) 2016 capex is expected to be 35% less than its 2015 capex. All these companies make up ~5.8% of the SPDR S&P Oil & Gas Exploration & Production ETF (XOP). Continue to Next Part Browse this series on Market Realist: By Nidhi Verma NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan will push for state-run firms to win development rights for the vast Farzad B gas field in Iran during a visit to that country next month. India, the world's third-biggest oil importer and fourth-biggest consumer, wants to increase dealings with Gulf countries that supply the bulk of its oil needs. Pradhan said he is "hopeful" a deal on Farzad B could be concluded during his visit to Tehran on April 9-10. "In Iran our primary interest is in E&P (exploration and production). We have old engagements with Iran and we continued to buy oil from Iran in difficult times," Pradhan told reporters. A consortium headed by ONGC Videsh, the overseas exploration unit of Oil and Natural Gas Corp, discovered the Farzad B gas field in the Farsi offshore block in 2008, but was unable to get permission to develop it due to Western sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme. ONGC Videsh last year submitted a $3 billion field development plan to Iranian authorities to develop Farzad B, which is estimated to hold initial in-place reserves of 12.5 trillion cubic feet, with a lifetime of 30 years. India was one of a few countries that never halted oil imports from Iran during sanctions that were partly lifted in January. India is Iran's second-biggest oil client after China. Pradhan said he will also discuss India's interest in developing Chabahar port in Tehran and building industrial complexes there. Modi wants local companies to increase foreign energy deals, taking advantage of low global oil prices and a slowdown in overseas acquisitions by China. (Reporting by Nidhi Verma; editing by Susan Thomas) * ECB makes liquidity checks, orders capital raising * Banks blame ECB for delaying bank mergers * Italy PM says reforms must happen this year * Bank stocks down 26.5 pct this year By Silvia Aloisi and Valentina Za MILAN, March 22 (Reuters) - The European Central Bank is trying to strongarm Italian banks into cleaning up their balance sheets, a year and a half after they fared the worst of all euro zone lenders in its first stress tests as overarching supervisor. The banks have made scant progress on requested reforms, threatening to undermine a fragile recovery in the bloc's third largest economy. They argue the ECB's demands are unrealistic and delay the very consolidation the sector needs. The standoff poses one of the biggest challenges to Europe's central bank since it became the euro zone single banking regulator in November 2014. After Greek banks, Italian ones are now taking up most of its time. Banks like Carige and Monte dei Paschi di Siena have their liquidity monitored daily and the ECB, working in teams with Italy's central bank, is firing off missives telling lenders to raise capital, find a buyer and sell off bad loans. "They phone, they e-mail and they come down to see us," said a source at one Italian bank, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the issue. "They are a constant presence. For one reason or the other there is always an inspection - I'd say they are here two months out of three." Letters to Veneto Banca and Banca Popolare di Vicenza, which must raise a combined 2.75 billion euros in cash and list on the market to meet ECB demands, threaten all the measures allowed by the EU banking resolution directive -- including the last resort of the ECB removing top executives and taking over management. A crucial test of the strategy is a much-anticipated merger between Banca Popolare di Milano and Banco Popolare that would be Italy's first tie-up since the ECB took on supervision. RENZI WEIGHS IN The boards of BPM and Banco Popolare are meeting this week and sources close to the matter say Banco Popolare is considering a cash call of up to 1 billion euros as part of measures sought by the ECB to clear the merger. Story continues Any deal would still need the blessing of both banks' shareholders, including powerful unions who fear a tie-up will lead to job cuts. Bankers close to the talks say the ECB's conditions for approving the combination have been so stringent that after months of negotiations, the two banks considered abandoning the deal, which would create Italy's third biggest bank. "If this merger falls through, the ECB will have to take responsibility for this," said a frustrated adviser for one of the banks. "It's like the doctor killing the patient." Danielle Nouy, the ECB's bank supervisory chief, said on Tuesday the merged bank had to be strong from the start. "We are working very hard with our Italian colleagues to make sure that we put the adequate requirements, no more than is needed but no less, either," she told the European parliament. The ECB is demanding a leaner structure and a business plan for the new group within a month: the original deal outline included a 19-member board, two headquarters, no cash call and Popolare di Milano keeping its autonomy and a separate board for six years. Prime Minister Matteo Renzi -- who last year rammed through a decree intended to encourage banking mergers -- weighed in on Friday to put pressure on the lenders to reach an agreement. A sell-off in Italian banking stocks - some have lost more than half their value so far this year - and a flight of deposits from banks seen as more vulnerable, means the government feels time is running out. "2016 is the year when Italy must sort out its banking problems once and for all," Renzi said. ECB'S CREDIBILITY DRIVE Analysts say the ECB, which is headed by former Bank of Italy chief Mario Draghi, wants to establish itself as a credible institution, ensuring Europe's banking industry is on a sound footing and taking laggards to task. "The regulator is being extra cautious and particularly severe and active when it comes to Italy but the situation warrants it," said Andrea Resti, an adviser to the European Parliament on banking supervision. After a three-year recession, Italy's banks are saddled with 360 billion euros ($405 billion) of bad loans - one third of the European total and equivalent to one fifth of Italy's output. Banks are reluctant to sell soured debts quickly, fearing that would blow a hole in their accounts and force them to raise cash in rough markets. One reason for the sector's fragility is the fragmented financial industry with 650 banks, most of which are tiny lenders with patronage ties to local communities. "It's not that banks in other countries don't have problems, but in Italy it's more widespread, because you have lots of small banks that do not have the shock absorption capacity you find in bigger banks," said Nicolas Veron, a financial services expert at think-tank Bruegel in Brussels. "A third of the banks that failed the ECB tests were Italian, but since then not much has happened." BAD MEMORIES The unresolved problems of Italy's banking sector also serve as a reminder of the scars left by the euro zone debt crisis. The banks' large holdings of government bonds plummeted in value as the cost of servicing Italy's debt, the world's fourth largest, soared at the height of the crisis. Rome said then it did not need a Spanish-style, EU-funded bailout for its banks, but only the ECB's pledge to save the euro and its cheap long-term loans halted the vicious circle of sovereign risks sinking the country's lenders. Now the government's hands are tied, because under tougher European rules that came into force this year any rescue of weaker banks would wipe out shareholders and impose losses on creditors and perhaps even large depositors. Italians got a bitter foretaste of the new regime when the government salvaged four tiny banks in November and 12,000 retail bond holders lost their savings. Bankers under the microscope say ECB supervisors have uneasy relations with the Bank of Italy, which also declined to comment for this article. "There is an atmosphere of mistrust and they think Italian banks have been let off the hook for too long by the national regulator," said a senior investment banker involved in the merger negotiations between the two cooperative banks. "The ECB is really giving us a hard time." ($1 = 0.8895 euros) (additional reporting by Paola Arosio in Milan, Stefano Bernabei in Rome and Francesco Canepa in Frankfurt; editing by Philippa Fletcher) barack obama che cuba Amid the fanfare surrounding President Barack Obamas landmark visit to Cuba on Monday, a different US diplomatic achievement took place. As Obama toured Havana, Secretary of State John Kerry sat down for a meeting with members of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a left-wing rebel group that has fought Colombian forces and paramilitaries for more than 50 years. The meeting was the first one between a US secretary of state and the FARC since the rebels were designated a terrorist group by the US in 1997. Even now, as peace talks move forward, US government considers the FARC a terrorist organization, but that may soon change. John Kerry FARC meeting Cuba The FARCs struggle with the Colombian state has dragged on since the early 1960s, and the rebel group, which formed in part as a self-defense group for rural Colombians, has since moved into other, more nefarious enterprises including kidnapping and drug trafficking. The Colombian government of Juan Manuel Santos and FARC representatives began peace talks in 2012 in Havana. Since then, the negotiators have reached at least partial accords on five of the six points on their agenda, with the end of conflict point how to disarm and reintegrate FARC fighters needing the most work, according to the Americas Society. The issue of FARCs inclusion on the US State Departments Foreign Terrorist Organizations list has become particularly salient as the conflict nears what appears to be an end. John Kerry Colombia FARC meeting Cuba Story continues Colombian President Santos said earlier this year that once a deal was signed the US should remove the group from the list. If they sign its because we have a timetable for their disarmament and they have committed themselves to lay down their arms and make this transition to legal life, Santos told the AP. So I would say yes, I hope that they would be eliminated from the terror list. The US has said such a change would require more evidence of the FARCs commitment to peace. Colombia FARC attack soldiers We take the [Colombian] presidents request very seriously, but the same laws that apply to other groups apply to the FARC they have to disarm, end their criminal activities and stop forming a risk for US interests, US special envoy Bernard Aronson said earlier this year. When this happens, a revision process will begin to determine if the conditions [that justify a groups designation as terrorist] no longer exist and they can be removed, Aronson added. Even if Colombian and FARC negotiators conclude a peace deal, removal from the terror list could take some time. The United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia, a right-wing paramilitary group with extensive ties to Colombian politicians and responsible for many rights abuses, weren't removed from the list until 2014 eight years after they officially demobilized. Other issues remain before a deal is finished. In March, the Colombian congress gave the government power to set up demobilization zones, where government officials wont be able arrest FARC members. Critics worry this step will permit an incident similar to one that happened in the early 2000s, when FARC rebels used such a zone to remobilize and entrench their drug-trafficking operations. (Santos has suggested some leniency for FARC's drug traffickers as part of the deal, but stressed than any violators of the deal would face extradition to the US.) Cuba's President Raul Castro (C) stands as Colombia's President Juan Manuel Santos (L) and FARC rebel leader Rodrigo Londono, better known by the nom de guerre Timochenko, shake hands in Havana, September 23, 2015. REUTERS/Alexandre Meneghini FARC members are also worried as they attempt to reenter civilian political life, they could face violent retaliation, as happened in the 1980s and 1990s and continues to happen to members of Colombia's political left. (Reintegration of the millions of displaced persons in Colombia is also a point of concern.) To that end, Kerry affirmed US willingness to support the security of those who lay down their arms as part of the peace process. Kerrys meeting with FARC leadership, as well as the USs role in Colombia-FARC negotiations more broadly, have escaped notice amid Obamas historic rapprochement with Cuba. But rather then competing initiatives, US officials framed the two events as part of a united diplomatic effort. This Cuba policy is also our Latin American policy, national security adviser Ben Rhodes told press at a Monday-evening briefing. Its why we are at the peace table with the Colombians here in Havana. NOW WATCH: This is why US aircraft carriers are a force to be reckoned with More From Business Insider By David Shepardson March 22 (Reuters) - The U.S. state of Kentucky filed suit against Volkswagen AG and its luxury units Tuesday over the German automaker's excess diesel emissions scandal. Kentucky Attorney General Andy Beshear said VW willfully violated Kentucky's Consumer Protection Act by fraudulently promoting diesels. "Volkswagen must be held accountable for its false and misleading promotion and sales of its vehicles in the Commonwealth," Beshear said in a statement. Beshear's suit filed in Franklin Circuit Court also names VW's Porsche and Audi units and seeks civil penalties for violations of the state's Consumer Protection Act and an injunction barring similar future practices by the company. VW did not immediately respond to a request seeking comment on Kentucky's suit. The automaker has admitted installing diesel emissions software to allow 580,000 U.S. diesel vehicles sold since 2009 to emit up to 40 times legally allowable emissions. It faces a continuing U.S. ban on selling 2016 diesel models. Kentucky is at least the fifth U.S. state to sue VW, along with New Jersey, Texas, New Mexico and West Virginia. Harris County, Texas, is also suing Volkswagen. On Jan. 4, the U.S. Justice Department filed its own lawsuit accusing VW of violating clean air laws and seeking up to $46 billion. VW faces a Thursday deadline to disclose to U.S. District Judge Charles Breyer in San Francisco the status of talks over a settlement plan with the Justice Department; California, which issued a separate ban; and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. A potential settlement could include buybacks and an agreement to repair at least some of the vehicles. VW faces more than 500 civil lawsuits that have been consolidated before Breyer, who has retained a former FBI director as a settlement adviser. The automaker also faces investigations by 48 U.S. state attorneys. The U.S. Justice Department and German prosecutors are also investigating the automaker, which has said up to 11 million vehicles worldwide were equipped with the software. (Reporting by David Shepardson; Editing by David Gregorio) DETROIT, March 21 (Reuters) - Michigan's government on Monday released goals to help the city of Flint recover from a health crisis caused by the lead contamination of its drinking water. The plan, involving several state agencies, is meant to address water infrastructure shortcomings and the health of children who have tested for high lead levels in their blood, expand support in Flint schools and boost economic development for the city, Governor Rick Snyder said. The crisis has attracted national attention and led to calls for Snyder to resign due to the state's handling of the situation. Last week, several Democratic lawmakers criticized Snyder during testimony he provided at a hearing about the situation at Flint, a mostly black city of 100,000 northwest of Detroit. Key parts of Michigan's plan include professional support from state health officials for children under 6 with high levels of lead in their blood, opening three additional child health centers in the city, and replacing drinking water faucets and fixtures in public facilities, including schools, daycare centers and elder care homes, Snyder's office said. It also includes continued replacement of lead service lines in the city's water system; increased resources for the schools, including the addition of nine school nurses; expansion of a free breakfast program; screening for children's behavioral needs; development of home mortgage financing options for undervalued homes; and training for at least 500 residents to achieve long-term employment by the end of 2017. Under the direction of a state-appointed emergency manager, Flint switched water supplies to the Flint River from Detroit's system in 2014, to save money. The corrosive river water leached lead, a toxic substance that can damage the nervous system, from the city's water pipes. The city switched back to the Detroit system last October. The crisis has led to several lawsuits in state and federal courts, and federal and state investigations. Story continues On Monday, Snyder said the state was committed to addressing both short- and long-term needs of the city's residents. "Many departments have been involved in addressing the immediate crisis in whatever way they could," he said in a statement. "At the same time, they have been working on longer-term plans." State officials said the plan can be modified as new needs arise. (Reporting by Ben Klayman; Editing by Lisa Von Ahn) (Adds comment from Senate) By Fiona Ortiz March 22 (Reuters) - The Michigan Senate on Tuesday approved a long-term $715 million bailout package for Detroit's cash-strapped public schools but did not take up separate short-term emergency funding for the district, which faces a possible shutdown in April. The package includes $200 million in operating expenses, including improvements to decaying schools and $515 million to pay down debt. It also includes academic reforms and would return governance of the schools to a local board, but with state oversight. They are currently run by a state emergency manager. House Speaker Kevin Cotter said the bailout plan could not be taken up by the lower house before the legislature goes on break on March 25. He urged senators to vote quickly on a separate $48.7 million emergency spending measure passed by representatives earlier this month. The long-term bailout would take effect in the next school year, while the emergency spending would be immediate and allow the Detroit Public Schools district, known as DPS, to remain open this school year. "Because of the five-day rule written into the state Constitution, the House cannot take up the Senate's long-term DPS plan this week. The Senate can, however, still address the House plan for short-term funding and oversight that we passed last week. That issue has not yet been solved," House Speaker Kevin Cotter, a Republican, said in a statement. Peter Wills, chief of staff for Senator Goeff Hansen, who sponsored the bailout package, said the Senate could take up the emergency funds later this week, before the recess, or could extend the session to next week if needed. Steven Rhodes, a former federal bankruptcy judge appointed by Governor Rick Snyder to run the district, has warned that DPS will not have money after April 8 to pay teachers and staff, which would force him to close schools. Michigan's largest public school system, which operates 97 schools for about 47,000 students, is sinking under $3.4 billion of debt and other obligations. Academic performance is among the worst in the United States. Snyder, a Republican, praised the Senate package, saying it put the district on a path to a sustainable future. He had sought many of the elements of the plan, proposing it be funded using money from Michigan's share of a nationwide settlement with U.S. tobacco companies. (Reporting by Fiona Ortiz in Chicago; Editing by Leslie Adler, Tom Brown and Dan Grebler) GRAND RAPIDS, MI--(Marketwired - Mar 22, 2016) - The Michigan Small Business Development Center (SBDC) continues to enhance its efforts to assist Michigan small businesses in evaluating risk of cyber threats with its free risk assessment tool by offering the site in Spanish. The initiative, which centers on the "Small Business, Big Threat" website and assessment tool, evaluates cyber security risk and provides access to downloadable resources, online and in person cyber security training. In the first four months since its launch, the Small Business, Big Threat website has engaged over 3,000 individuals, and in-person cyber security trainings have been held in Grand Rapids, Bay City and Lansing. Four more training events are scheduled through May, contributing to the program goal of increasing the cyber security awareness of 10,000 people. In an effort to expand the initiative to a broader, growing audience, the website is now offered in Spanish. "The Michigan SBDC launched www.pequenonegociogranamenaza.com in an effort to raise cyber security awareness with a broader audience of small business owners and employees," said Zara Smith, SBDC Program Manager. "Approximately 5% of Michigan's population currently identifies as Hispanic, and that figure is projected to grow. The site www.pequenonegociogranamenaza.com is aligned with the program's wide outreach goal." The initiative was launched December 4, 2015 with a cyber security panel discussion and training held in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The initiative was developed and is operated by the MI-SBDC with funding support from the U.S. Small Business Administration. Grand Rapids-based technology firm Trivalent Group serves as the lead content production partner and cyber security experts. The foundation of the initiative is a website, www.smallbusinessbigthreat.com, which allows individuals to take the free online assessment. At the conclusion of the assessment, the individuals receive a risk assessment report. From there, participants can choose from a variety of resources to engage with, including in-depth trainings, webinars, best practices, or industry articles on small business cyber security. Story continues The information on the website is targeted to small business owners and employees who are non-technical. The assessment takes between 25 and 35 minutes to complete. The site has been live for a few weeks and already has received positive feedback. "We piloted the program for a few weeks before launching publicly and saw notable results from participants," said Michigan SBDC Associate State Director Jennifer Deamud at the December news conference. "We are confident that Michigan small businesses will benefit from this tool and be more prepared to fight cyber threats." "The ultimate goal is to arm small businesses with information, an assessment of their awareness, and an action plan," Brophy adds. "The assessment tool is the starting point, but we're hopeful that our webinars, in-person training and action plans will help protect Michigan small businesses against cyber-attacks." david chang Running a restaurant is a complicated and costly endeavor. One way around it: a delivery-only food service. That's the latest big idea from Momofuku founder David Chang, one of the most influential chefs working today. News of the concept called "Ando" was reported Wednesday in Fast Company. Ando is a partnership with Expa, a startup lab developed by Uber co-founder Garrett Camp, Foursquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai, and Ando partner Hooman Radfar, among others. All meals will be ordered on a mobile app, and couriered straight to hungry eaters via the UberRush service. With a planned launch in Manhattan this spring, Ando will reportedly serve up some of Chang's greatest hits (like Southern-style fried chicken) as well as brand-new recipes, including a chicken "cheesesteak" with house-made American cheese sauce, according to Fast Company. For dessert, Christina Tosi will be creating a selection of just-for-Ando Milk Bar cookies in flavors like salt and pepper. And to keep it kitsch and on-brand, all the dishes will come in Chinese-style takeout boxes. This isn't Chang's first venture into the delivery space; he's a backer of the healthy delivery service Maple, which launched last spring and has received top reviews for its reasonable, fixed-price meals and health-conscious options. It's been a big year for Chang. Besides the involvement with Maple, he opened Momofuku Nishi this winter, a full-service restaurant serving a creative take on Italian cuisine, but made with Korean ingredients. Most critics have raved, although Eater's critic Ryan Sutton noted that the restaurant experience left much to be desired with which Chang himself agreed, Sutton said. "Nishi is hobbled by its physical space, its prices, and its incomplete presentation of high-end dining," Sutton wrote. Ando may not have opened yet, but one thing's already for sure: the delivery-only approach means it certainly won't be facing any complaints about acoustics or table service. Now we just have to taste-test that cheesy chicken. Story continues NOW WATCH: People can't stop Instagramming the perfect poached eggs at the Momofuku restaurant empire More From Business Insider SAS CEO Rickard Gustafson Scandinavian Airlines is undergoing a transformation. The 70-year-old company serves as the national airline of Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. SAS flies more than 28 million passengers a year on routes to nearly 120 destinations from its hubs in Copenhagen, Oslo, and Stockholm. Although SAS is firmly entrenched in its position as one of Europe's leading legacy carriers, the airline has come under immense pressure in recent years from low-cost carriers such as Ryanair, EasyJet, and Oslo-based Norwegian Air Shuttle. At the controls of this multinational international airline is the company's president and CEO Rickard Gustafson. Gustafson spoke with Business Insider recently around the time of the launch of the airline's new route from Stockholm, Sweden to Los Angeles. He said airline customers care about cost more than anything else. "This business has become a low-margin business," Gustafson said. "If you want to jump into this game, you have to have a proposition that's above all else really competitive on cost." Gustafson whose resume includes a long career at GE Capital and a stint as CEO of Codan Insurance took over the top job at SAS in February 2011. "If you aren't cost competitive, don't even bother." On low-cost carriers "Today, the European market is actually defined by the low-cost model," Gustafson said. "If you want to make money, you have to compete against low-cost carriers." In 1993, Norwegian Air Shuttle and its low-cost business model opened up shop in Oslo. In the 23 years since, the airline has grown to become a major competitor for SAS in its own backyard. In 2015, Norwegian served more than 26 million passengers. Airbus A330 300 SAS Scandinavian airlines But SAS isn't standing idle. "We have made significant transformative changes to stay competitive and to survive," Gustafson added. "We have cut overhead costs, adjusted pensions, and union contracts." Story continues According to the SAS CEO, his company has to keep adapting to its environment to survive. "We are not done changing yet because the low-cost competition is growing every day." According to SAS, low-cost competition (including Norwegian Air Shuttle) in Scandinavia has grown to cover roughly 35% of the market. As a result of the efforts of SAS and other legacy carriers, LCC's market share has stabilized at that 35% figure. On Scandinavia's role in future of European aviation Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and London Heathrow have all become major transit hubs by capitalizing on business from passengers using the airport as a gateway to Europe and Asia. SAS operates out of three main hubs in Oslo, Stockholm, and Copenhagen. However, Gustafson does not believe Scandinavia and his airline will head in that direction. norwegian air "I don't really see using Scandinavia as a transfer hub," Gustafson said. "Our geographic location is not really ideal for a transit-based business. To make it work, you would have to find a way to generate a lot of traffic from central Europe to Scandinavia and then you would also have to compete with the Middle East and other European hubs. "Trying to turn Scandinavia into a transit hub would be expensive and dangerous for us to undertake." As a result, SAS is more focused on developing routes that would serve destination travelers. "When we look for new destinations, we look for a good mix of business and leisure travel. We look for routes with enough demand for travel directly between that destination and Scandinavia." On the future of the airline's fleet SAS operates a fleet of roughly 150 regional, narrow-body mainline, and wide-body long-haul airliners from Bombardier, Boeing, and Airbus. One of the airline's wide-body workhorses is the Airbus A340-300. The model was launched in the early 1990s for long-range intercontinental routes. However, because of its less than ideal fuel economy, the A340 fell out of favor with many of its operators over the past few years. Airlines have elected to retire the four-engine jet in favor of more fuel-efficient, twin-engine jets such as the Boeing 777 and Airbus A330. Airbus A340 300 SAS But SAS will be sticking with its A340-300 fleet. "We are keeping them around," Gustafson said. "Our next round of expansion will be using our A340s." A few years ago, the airline placed orders for new Airbus A320neo single-aisle jets as well as A330-300E and A350-900 long-haul wide-bodies. As a result of the cheaper fuel, ordering new aircraft has become more difficult to justify, and the older A340 is now an attractive proposition. "When we ordered our new [more fuel-efficient jets] the decision was made with the price of fuel at $1,000 per ton. Today it's half that amount," the CEO said. "To buy a new wide-body jet requires hundreds of millions of dollars in costs. We can operate our A340s for a tenth of that." Scandinavian Airlines Business Class SAS NOW WATCH: Here's everything that happens in the cabin 15 minutes before you board your plane More From Business Insider Reza | Getty Images. Oil has rallied from $26 to just over $40, helping boost stocks. A major factor in the recent stock rally has been the rise in oil. Increasingly, there is hope that the data is moving in the right direction. Oil prices collapsed last year on: 1) slower global growth, 2) excess global production, particularly from U.S. shale, and 3) the lifting of sanctions on Iranian oil. Look what we have now. Oil (New York Mercantile Exchange: @CL.1) has rallied to just over $40 from $26 a barrel, thanks to: 1) Talk of a production freeze among major producers. This will not reduce supply, but the Russians and the Saudis finally seem to be heeding the call of the Venezuelans and others that they can at least avoid actively making things worse by standing pat on supply. A major motivation for the Saudis may be the fall in their foreign reserves, which dropped to $616 billion from $732 billion in 2015, according to the IMF. If implemented, this would be a major change in policy: a few months ago, "market share at any price" was the main priority. Just on Tuesday, Saudi Arabia said it would participate in freeze talks even if Iran does not participate. 2) A drop in supply, particularly in the U.S., which is another reason Saudi Arabia may be more amenable to a production freeze. Many have claimed that any rise in oil will immediately be met with a ramp-up in shale production, but it's not clear how rapidly that would occur. Hess' CEO, John Hess, recently noted that there is typically a one-year to two-year lag from the first investment decision to the production of oil, longer than many anticipated. He also said that he was more concerned with managing his balance sheet than growing in a low-price environment. 3) Continuing strong demand for oil and particularly gasoline, at least in the U.S. 4) A notable decline in short positions in oil futures. Many have claimed that the rise in oil is nothing more than a short covering rally; while this is certainly an important factor, long positions have also increased, suggesting at least some are betting that some kind of bottom has been put in. Story continues 5) Iran supply has come on the market but perhaps more modestly than government projections. Certainly, there are still tremendous issues. U.S. commercial crude stocks, for example, still stand at 523 million barrels, historically high for this time of year. And oil is certainly being helped by the weak dollar, which could reverse at any moment. But looking at the overall trend slightly higher demand and lower supply, and you cannot help but think we are at least moving in the right direction. More From CNBC By Mimi Dwyer NEW YORK (Reuters) - Priceline Group has agreed with Cuba to make Cuban hotel rooms available to U.S. customers via subsidiary Booking.com, becoming the first U.S. online travel agency to strike a deal with the island's government, a Booking.com executive said. The deal comes on the first full day of U.S. President Barack Obama's visit to Cuba and on the heels of U.S. hotel firm Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide's agreement with the Cuban government to manage and market three Havana hotel properties. Booking.com would allow Americans traveling to Cuba to reserve and pay for rooms at a number of Cuban and foreign hotels, starting in several weeks, Booking.com Americas Managing Director Todd Dunlap told Reuters in an interview on Saturday. Americans previously had to reserve Cuban hotels principally through travel agencies or tour groups. Booking.com would operate initially in Havana, Dunlap said. It planned to work with foreign companies already in Cuba, including France's Accor and Spanish chains Melia Hotels International SA and NH Hotel Group SA. It was also working on deals with state-run Cuban chains. The only major American lodging booking service currently available to Americans in Cuba is online home-rental marketplace Airbnb. Priceline Group began working on bringing its services to Cuba shortly after President Obama's Dec. 17, 2014 announcement of a thaw in relations with Cuba. The two countries restored diplomatic relations last year. Priceline said it would route payments through a European partner but declined to specify which. The improvement in U.S.-Cuba relations has fueled a price surge for the island's 63,000 hotel rooms, many booked solid months in advance. Cuba received a record 3.52 million visitors last year, up 17.4 percent from 2014. American visits rose 77 percent to 161,000, not counting hundreds of thousands of Cuban-Americans. General tourism by Americans to Cuba is still barred under the U.S. trade embargo. But U.S. travelers may visit the island under "general licenses" that permit travel for religion, family visits, cultural exchange, sports, and other purposes approved by the Treasury's Office of Foreign Asset Control Story continues On March 17 OFAC said it would allow people to travel individually, rather than in organized groups, so long as their trips fell under the authorized categories. Booking.com would ask travelers to certify that they fit one of the Treasury's approved travel categories, but would not verify their status, Dunlap said. The company would keep travelers' information on file for five years should officials choose to check. (Additional reporting by Mike Stone in New York, editing by Peter Henderson, Stephen Coates and W Simon) * Qatargas, Petronas eye expanded import deal into Dragon * Falling Asian demand makes Europe valuable fallback option * Value of import slots in NW Europe increasing By Oleg Vukmanovic and Sarah McFarlane MILAN/LONDON, March 22 (Reuters) - Qatargas is looking to Britain and the Netherlands in an effort to weather a looming global glut of gas supplies by expanding import deals into Europe's most liquid markets, industry sources said. The world's biggest exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG) must lock in buyers for its unsold supply just as new Australian and U.S. producers muscle into its prized Asian markets. Slowing demand globally is only adding to producer woes, thrusting Europe's gas markets and dozens of under-used import terminals into the spotlight. Qatargas has held talks with Petronas UK Ltd to gain greater access to the Dragon import terminal in Wales, as well as with Uniper, formerly known as E.ON Global Commodities, for the Gate terminal in Rotterdam, two sources said. Uniper declined to comment, while Qatargas and Petronas did not respond to requests for comment. Stefaan Adriaens, commercial manager at Gate, said he could not comment on whether Qatargas was interested in increasing capacity at the terminal either via Uniper or directly. "They see competition in Asia, so if they are looking for capacity, then I presume it's to have an alternative to Asia," he said. Dong Energy (IPO-DONG.CO), EconGas, Uniper, Shell and Eneco hold Gate capacity but around 0.9 billion cubic metres remains available. Unlike the last four years, import capacity at Gate and other northwest European terminals is becoming more valuable in response to the start of U.S. LNG exports. "As more people are looking to Europe the capacity value has increased, whereas in other areas it's quite the contrary. Everybody was hoping for Asia demand but there demand was slower so I think capacity value has decreased there," he said. TALKS In 2013, Qatargas signed a five-year deal to supply 1.14 million tonnes a year (mtpa) to Petronas' half-share of the Dragon terminal at Milford Haven. Story continues Qatargas 4, a joint venture between Qatargas and Royal Dutch Shell, signed the deal with Petronas, followed by a five-year agreement with E.ON Global Commodities to ship 1.5 mtpa to the Gate terminal. Both deals are flexible, according to the original announcements, meaning Qatar is not obliged to ship any LNG to Britain or the Netherlands and can divert cargoes at will. At the time, companies with import rights at Dragon and Gate were eager to drum up business and effectively gave Qatar free options to make use of their capacity. While Qatari deliveries to Dragon/Gate have been rare up to now, weak Asian demand coupled with surging supply makes Europe an increasingly attractive destination for cargoes. Talks between Petronas and Qatargas over expanding the existing deal at Dragon initially sought to double volumes and extend the duration of the deal by up to 10 years, one of the sources said. A proposal was also made to commit Qatargas to delivering a third of the overall volume, he said. At Gate, the choices boil down to exacting supply guarantees from Qatargas or making it pay for optional import slots, sources said. (Editing by Dale Hudson) * Yamal LNG seen raising external funds in 2 to 3 months * Yamal and main shareholder Novatek under sanctions * Over 15,000 workers on site, seen at 20,000 in summer (Writes through) By Vladimir Soldatkin and Denis Pinchuk MOSCOW, March 22 (Reuters) - International sanctions have undermined the ability of Russia's Yamal LNG project to raise necessary funds but it will be launched as scheduled, Leonid Mikhelson, head of the plant's main shareholder, said in a televised interview on Tuesday. The company, co-owned by Gennady Timchenko, an ally of President Vladimir Putin, was placed under U.S. sanctions in 2014, soon after the final investment decision had been taken on the Yamal project in late 2013. The punitive measure makes it harder for the company, Novatek, to raise external debt. "Of course, technical difficulties due to sectoral sanctions against Novatek and automatically against Yamal LNG ... there are difficulties with attracting credit financing," Mikhelson told the state-run Rossiya-24 TV channel. Yamal LNG's total investments are seen at $27 billion. Russia's Novatek holds 50.1 percent in Yamal LNG; France's Total and China's CNPC control 20 percent each; and China's Silk Road Fund bought a 9.9 percent stake for 1.09 billion euros ($1.2 billion) this month. Shareholders have invested $13 billion, while around $2.4 billion was secured from Russia's state National Wealth Fund, Mikhelson said. The project has sought to raise external financing from Chinese banks and export credit agencies in Europe, but so far has failed to reach an agreement. Banks have been cautious in evaluating the project due to the sanctions and weak oil prices. Mikhelson reiterated that he expected to sign deals with banks in the next two to three months, while the first tanker with liquefied natural gas would be shipped next year as planned. Russia's state development bank VEB has also pledged $3 billion in banking guarantees, while the country's Sberbank and Gazprombank preliminarily agreed to provide $3 billion and $1 billion in loans, respectively. Story continues FEASIBILITY Yevgeny Kot, head of Yamal LNG operations, said last week that 47 wells out of 58 essential for the first stage had been drilled. Yamal LNG is to consist of three lines, with combined annual capacity of 16.5 million tonnes of LNG. "Around 15,500 workers are on the site - we expect them to reach up to 20,000 people from this summer," Kot said at a conference. Mikhelson, Russia's richest man with wealth estimated by U.S. magazine Forbes at $14.4 billion, said the project would be active until 2045, while loans have a maturity of 15 years. "Even by the most pessimistic valuations, the project is feasible," he said. Tatiana Mitrova at Moscow's Energy Research Institute said it was hard to estimate possible costs for LNG transportation from the project, located beyond the Arctic circle. According to her estimates, the Yamal LNG price for Europe may be around $5.2 per million British thermal units (mmBtu) and $7.9 per mmBtu in Asia, compared to May delivery in Asia at $4.50 per mmBtu currently. ($1 = 0.8930 euros) (Writing by Vladimir Soldatkin; Additional reporting by Katya Golubkova; Editing by Dale Hudson) sarah palin The border between politics and reality TV is about to get even blurrier. Sarah Palin, former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate, has been tapped to preside over her own reality court show, according to People. The magazine reports that she signed a deal with Montana-based production company Warm Springs. The plan is to create a pilot that would then be shopped to networks. The show would be a "Judge Judy"-style reality show inside a courtroom, and the production team includes a TV executive who found Judge Judy, according to People's sources. If it comes to fruition, the nationwide syndicated daytime show would debut in the fall of 2017. Palin, who was on John McCain's presidential ticket in 2008, is no stranger to reality TV. She had her own reality travel show on TLC called "Sarah Palin's Alaska" that ran for one season in 2010-2011. NOW WATCH: A law professor tricked his students into lying, which shows why you should never talk to police More From Business Insider Shang Fulin, chairman of the China Banking Regulatory Commission (CBRC), answers a question at a news conference on the sidelines of the National People's Congress (NPC), China's parliament, in Beijing, China, March 12, 2016. REUTERS/Jason Lee - SHANGHAI (Reuters) - Seven listed Chinese banks may have received permission to lower their loan loss provision coverage ratios, the online financial magazine Caixin reported on Tuesday, citing multiple unidentified sources. According to current regulations, banking loan loss provisioning ratios should not be less than 150 percent in China. The China Banking Regulatory Commission had no immediate response to a faxed request for comment, and could not be reached by phone. Loan loss provision ratios measure banks' ability to withstand future losses from bad loans, and are calculated using the cash set aside for future losses and the total volume of non-performing loans. Total bad loans at the end of 2015 were 1.27 trillion yuan (136 billion pounds), or 1.67 percent of total outstanding loans, China's banking regulator said in February, the highest since the global financial crisis. (Reporting by the Shanghai Newsroom; Editing by Kim Coghill) Why Shell Plans to Divest $30 Billion Worth of Assets (Continued from Prior Part) Shells Motiva breakup Earlier, we discussed Royal Dutch Shells (RDS.A) intention to divest its assets as part of its restructuring exercise. In this part, well discuss Shells latest announcement on the separation of its Motiva assets. On March 16, 2016, Shell announced that it had decided to part ways with Saudi Aramco in its refining and marketing joint venture Motiva Enterprise. Motivas assets will be divided between Saudi Aramco and Shell. What will Shell get? Shell is expected to assume ownership of two refineries: Louisianas Convent and Norco, which have a combined capacity of 456,000 barrels per day. With the Motiva joint venture breaking up, Shells refining capacity in the Americas is likely to fall marginally to 1,158 Mbpd (thousand barrels per day) from its existing 1,219 Mbpd. However, an important point to consider is that both refineries retained by Shell have chemical units. In fact, Norco is an integrated refinery and chemical complex. Shell will also have the right to its branded markets in Florida, Louisiana, and the Northeastern region, plus ownership of nine distribution terminals. As per Shell, the Motiva breakup is expected to provide simpler and more highly integrated businesses which deliver increased cash and returns. What will Saudi Aramco get? Saudi Armco will retain the Motiva name and will assume sole ownership of the Port Arthur refinery (with a capacity of 578,000 barrels per day) in Texas. Saudi Aramco will also get the exclusive license for use of the Shell brand name for gasoline and diesel sales in Texas, the majority of Mississippi, the Southeast, and the Mid-Atlantic areas, plus ownership of 26 distribution terminals. Like Shell, other integrated players ExxonMobil (XOM), Chevron (CVX), and BP (BP) are realigning their assets to optimize their supply chains. The PowerShares Dynamic Large Cap Value ETF (PWV) has ~11% exposure to energy sector stocks, including CVX. Story continues Lets move on to see how Shells stock has performed recently. Continue to Next Part Browse this series on Market Realist: Russian President Vladimir Putin gives a speech during a state awards ceremony at the Kremlin in Moscow, on March 10, 2016 (AFP Photo/Pavel Golovkin) (Pool/AFP/File) Ljubljana (AFP) - Slovenia said on Monday it has invited Russian President Vladimir Putin to attend a World War I commemoration event in spite of Western sanctions imposed on Moscow over the Ukraine crisis. "Our positions differ concerning some important issues but that only strengthens the need for a dialogue," President Borut Pahor said in a letter to Putin, as quoted by the Slovenian leader's office. On July 31, Slovenia will commemorate the 100th anniversary of a World War I accident, in which dozens of Russian prisoners of war were killed in an avalanche in the northern Vrsic region. Last year, Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev attended the ceremony. The invitation came just hours after EU foreign ministers in Brussels called for the bloc to stand up to Russia and defend core political and security interests, even while trying to find a common stance on issues such as the Syrian conflict. The EU imposed economic sanctions against Russia for its March 2014 annexation of Crimea and suspected further intervention in eastern Ukraine, sending ties into a deep freeze reminiscent of the Cold War. Following an initial drop, stocks pull higher today as Wall Street reacts to the attacks in Brussels. Yahoo Finance's Nicole Sinclair breaks down today's market action. The Final Round begins at 4pm. And despite a nice recovery in the markets over the past few weeks, our guest, Mark Heppenstall, CIO of Penn Mutual Asset Management, says there may be a "counterbalance effect," which could lead to more volatility. He tell us how he is advising his clients in this market. Winners and losers Stocks dropping in today's trading include apparel-maker G-3 on weak earnings and guidance, Priceline and other travel stocks due to the attacks in Brussels, and Mattress Firm. The Sealy and Serta mattress-maker was crushed after reporting an earnings miss, soft guidance for the current quarter, and news that it's replacing its CEO with the company's current president. Stocks on the move higher today include Abercrombie & Fitch after Jeffries added the stock to the Franchise Pick List, Zillow on an upgrade from RBC Capital, and Lumber Liquidators. The flooring maker's stock surging in intraday trading after announcing a settlement with California's clean air agency, where it will pay $2.5 million in fines. The oil bull and bear case Libya is reportedly backing out of a meeting with major oil producers next month, putting a damper on hopes of a production freeze. So what will it take to drive prices higher? Yahoo Finance's Justine Underhill has a closer look at the charts. Looking ahead Mikhail Japaridze | TASS | Getty Images. CNBC takes a look at the threat posed by Islamist jihadist groups to countries and regions around the world. Brussels was hit by a series of explosions on Tuesday, with multiple people reported dead or injured following a suicide attack on its main airport and a bomb on its metro system. The so-called Islamic State, also known as ISIS, has claimed responsibility, according to the blog of Amaq Agency, which is affiliated to the terrorist group. The attack follows last week's arrest of Salah Abdeslam in the Belgian capital. Abdeslam is a major suspect in November's Paris attacks that killed 130 people and is known to have links to the so-called Islamic State terrorism group, also called ISIS. CNBC takes a look at the threat posed by Islamist jihadist groups to countries and regions around the world. Outside of Belgium, France is considered at high risk of attacks, due to ongoing threats by Islamist groups and recent French military intervention against ISIS in Syria. A state of emergency was declared following the Paris attacks and remains in place ISIS has said that France will remain a key target, according to media reports. Comparatively high numbers of radicalized Muslims have left both Belgium and France to fight for insurgent groups in Iraq and Syria approximately 37.9 Belgian citizens per million, according to estimates from data provider IHS Jane's. In the U.K., the threat from terrorism is rated "severe" by its government, meaning an attack is judged highly likely. There are five levels of threat, with "severe" the second-most serious. Recent attacks: ISIS militants killed 26 regime commandos in Palmyra in Syria on Monday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Despite recent territorial losses, ISIS still control swathes of eastern Syria. There are continued attacks across Syria, as fighting continues between government forces and insurgent groups that include ISIS. At least 470,000 Syrians have been killed since the war began in 2011, according to the Syrian Center for Policy Research. On Monday, ISIS killed 26 Syrian government commandos as they battled to retake the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Palmyra, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Story continues ISIS and other insurgent groups also control parts of Iraq, particularly in the regions bordering Syria. The threat from terrorism remains high in Turkey, which neighbors Syria to the north. Further attacks by groups including ISIS and Kurdish extremists are viewed as likely by the U.K. Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). The U.S. Homeland Security Committee says that an ISIS-linked Syrian individual was planning an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul in December. Recent attacks: Three militants opened fire on a beach resort in Cote d'Ivoire this month, killing 18 people. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) claimed responsibility for the attack, according to media reports. Three police officers and five-alleged Boko Haram suicide bombers were killed during clashes in Niger on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has gained a foothold in northern Mali, as well as Mauritania, Niger and Algeria to the north. The jihadist group aligns itself with the main Al Qaeda organization and is dedicated to destabilizing governments in the region and implementing shariah (Islamic) law. In March, AQIM claimed responsibility, according to media reports, for an attack on a beach resort in Cote d'Ivoire that killed 18 people, including several foreigners. "There is unquestionably a need to improve border security and intelligence-sharing across West Africa, but ultimately, even the most sophisticated defense apparatus will not be able to prevent such attacks 100 percent of the time," Sean Smith, Africa analyst at risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft, said in a note after the attack. Further south, Nigeria and surrounding countries continue to struggle with Boko Haram, an ISIS-aligned jihadist group. It has attempted to establish a "caliphate" or Islamic state in northern Nigeria, exploiting the government's weak control of the large area. Last Wednesday, Reuters reported that three police officers and five alleged-Boko Haram suicide bombers were killed in Niger during armed clashes. Recent attacks: At least 50 people were killed by an ISIS truck bomb in western Libya in January. The In Salah gas plant in central Algeria was attacked on Friday by explosive munitions. Several countries in North Africa are at high risk of terrorist attacks, hitting tourism and investment. In 2015, Aon Risk Solutions said Libya was at "severe" risk from terrorism and political violence, with the risk "high" in Algeria and Egypt. The U.K. FCO has advised against all travel to Libya, due to the ongoing fighting and threat of terrorist attacks and kidnapping of foreigners. It has also advised that visitors to Algeria avoid the area that borders Libya, as well as the border with Mali, Niger, Tunisia and Mauritania. On Friday, militants attacked the In Salah gas plant in Algeria. Al Qaeda's North Africa branch claimed responsibility for the attack, which caused no casualties or damage. BP and Statoil, which jointly operate the plant alongside state-owned Sonatrach, said subsequently that they would withdraw staff from two gas plants in Algeria. Follow CNBC International on Twitter and Facebook. More From CNBC Donald Trump said Tuesday that authorities interrogating Paris terror suspect Salah Abdeslam should "do whatever they have to do" to get information in light of the deadly terrorist attacks in Belgium. Trump said on NBC's "TODAY" if he were elected president he would make sure the United States has "strong borders," and said people looking to come into the country would need "absolute perfect documentation." He and other presidential candidates reacted to the deadly explosions that rocked the main Brussels airport and the metro system near European Union buildings. Brussels was on lockdown, with Tuesday's blasts coming four days after the arrest of Abdeslam. Abdeslam should be subjected to harsh interrogation techniques, Trump told NBC. Belgian authorities should be able to "do whatever they have to do" to get information from the suspect, he continued, adding waterboarding "would be fine." "If they could expand the laws, I would do a lot more than waterboarding," he continued. "You have to get the information from these people. And we have to be smart. And we have to be tough. We can't be soft and weak." Dismissing critics who say harsh interrogations don't yield reliable information, Trump said: "I am in the camp where you have to get the information, and you have to get it rapidly." Trump made his first remarks on the Brussels terror attacks on Twitter. GOP rival Ohio Gov. John Kasich tweeted a statement on the Brussels attacks. "We must ... redouble our efforts with our allies to identify, root out and destroy the perpetrators of such acts of evil," the Kasich statement read, in part. "We must strengthen our alliances as our way of life and the international system that has been built on our common values since the end of the Second World War comes under challenge." Story continues Texas Sen. Ted Cruz released a statement on his Facebook page. It read, in part: "Make no mistake these terror attacks are no isolated incidents. They are just the latest in a string of coordinated attacks by radical Islamic terrorists perpetrated by those who are waging war against all who do not accept their extreme strain of Islam." "When I am sworn in as president," the Cruz statement continued, "we will name our enemy radical Islamic terrorism. And we will defeat it." Cruz later criticized Trump for saying to The Washington Post that he favors a light footprint in the world. "Donald Trump is wrong that America should withdraw from the world and abandon our allies," Cruz told reporters Tuesday. The Texas senator also called for a halt to the entrance of Syrian refugees into U.S. until a screening review can be conducted. Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton said in a statement Tuesday: "Terrorists have once again struck at the heart of Europe, but their campaign of hate and fear will not succeed." The statement also read, in part: "Today's attacks will only strengthen our resolve to stand together as allies and defeat terrorism and radical jihadism around the world." She also tweeted: In an interview with MSNBC on Tuesday, Clinton outlined her strategy for stopping the spread of terrorism. "I think we do have to have a clear objective of defeating ISIS, of defeating the tactics and activities of terrorists. That's something I've been talking about for some time," said Clinton. "I think the way to do that is to deprive them of territory in Syria and Iraq, to stop the flow of foreign fighters, arms, weapons, and to take them on the Internet, which they use in quite a sophisticated way. That means we have to work with other countries. We have to work with our European friends and allies." Democratic candidate Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders tweeted his reaction to the attacks. The Sanders statement also read, in part: "Today's attack is a brutal reminder that the international community must come together to destroy ISIS." The Brussels attacks occurred ahead of Republican presidential nominating contests in Arizona, which is a winner-take-all, 58 delegate primary, and a 40-delegate caucus in Utah. Democrats also hold an 85-delegate primary in Arizona and a 37-delegate caucus in Utah, in addition to a 27-delegate caucus in Idaho. CNBC's Krysia Lenzo contributed to this report. More From CNBC donald trump Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump on Tuesday weighed in on the Brussels terrorist attacks, commenting on Twitter how "safe" and "beautiful" the Belgian city used to be. "Do you all remember how beautiful and safe a place Brussels [was]," he tweeted. "Not anymore, it is from a different world! U.S. must be vigilant and smart!" Two explosions rocked Zaventem Airport and another ripped through the Maelbeek metro station in Brussels on Tuesday morning. The prosecutor's office told the Belgian newspaper Le Soir that at least 13 people died and 35 were injured at the airport. The RTBF reports that 15 people died and that 55 people were injured, 10 of them in serious condition, in the explosion in the metro station, according to the Brussels transport operator STIB. Belgium's federal prosecutor said the airport explosions were a suicide attack, RTBF reports, though the attackers were not immediately identified. "I've been talking about this for a long time," Trump said during a Tuesday-morning appearance on "Fox & Friends." He added: "Brussels was a beautiful city, a beautiful place, with zero crime. And now it's a disaster city." Trump continued: We have to be smart in the United States when people come in. We're taking in people without real documentation, we don't know where they're coming from, we don't know ... who they are. You look at them from any standpoint, they could be ISIS, they could be ISIS-related. And we just don't learn. We don't learn. Trump has previously discussed Brussels on the campaign trail, suggesting that Muslim migration and possibly other factors had led the Belgian capital into a decline. "I was in Brussels a long time ago, 20 years ago, so beautiful, everything is so beautiful," he said in a January interview. "It's like living in a hellhole right now." Story continues After the Paris and San Bernardino, California, attacks last year, Trump called for the US to stop allowing Muslim tourists and immigrants into the country. The Paris attacks, which killed 130 people and wounded hundreds more, were thought to have been planned in Belgium, where the police have since conducted raids and made arrests. Salah Abdeslam, the last living suspect thought to be directly involved in the Paris attacks, was arrested in Brussels last week. Barbara Tasch contributed to this report. NOW WATCH: Watch Obamas remarks on the Brussels attacks More From Business Insider Commuters pass by the front of the Bangladesh central bank building in Dhaka March 8, 2016. REUTERS/Ashikur Rahman (Reuters) - U.S. Congresswoman Carolyn Maloney, a New York Democrat, said on Tuesday that she wants a probe of last month's cyber heist from a Bangladesh Central Bank account at the New York Fed. "We need a thorough investigation to determine how these criminals were able to manipulate the system so that banks and financial institutions can institute standards that will prevent hackers and cyber criminals from siphoning money out of accounts like those held at the New York Fed again," she said in a press statement. She said in a letter to New York Fed President William Dudley that she would like a private briefing with bank staff to ask questions including whether it is appropriate to rely only on authentication from the private SWIFT bank messaging network for outgoing payments from the accounts of foreign central banks. A New York Fed spokeswoman said the bank would work with Maloney's office to arrange a time to talk. A representative for SWIFT could not immediately be reached for comment. The $81 million heist has prompted the resignation of Bangladesh's central bank governor, Atiur Rahman. (Reporting by Jim Finkle in Boston; Additional reporting by Jonathan Spicer; Editing by Sandra Maler) By Andrea Shalal WASHINGTON, March 22 (Reuters) - The United States hopes to talk with China and address its concerns about the possible deployment of the THAAD missile defense system that Washington is discussing with Seoul, a senior State Department official said Tuesday. Rose Gottemoeller, undersecretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, stressed that the United States and South Korea had just begun discussions, and no decision had been made to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system. Gottemoeller also emphasized that the system was defensive in nature and aimed at North Korea, not China. "THAAD is truly only capable of defending the territory on which it's deployed. It is not capable of the kind of reach that the Chinese seem to be afraid that it has," she told reporters at a breakfast meeting. "We will be very glad and hope we'll have the opportunity to sit down and talk with China about those very technical limitations and facts about the system," she said. Gottemoeller gave no timetable for a possible meeting. The United States and South Korea agreed to begin the talks last month after North Korea launched a long-range rocket on Feb. 7 carrying what it called a satellite. Wang Yi, the foreign minister of China, North Korea's neighbor and main ally, last month underscored China's concerns about a possible THAAD deployment but seemed to open the door to a diplomatic solution. Wang said China understood the desire of the United States and South Korea to ensure the defense of their own countries, but Beijing had legitimate concerns that should be addressed. U.S. military officials have long said the THAAD system is needed in South Korea, but until North Korea's recent satellite launch, Seoul had been reluctant to openly discuss its deployment given the risk of damaging ties with China. Army Lieutenant General David Mann, commander, U.S. Army Space & Missile Command, told reporters that the THAAD system would result in a "huge increase" in missile defense capabilities on the Korean peninsula. But he said Washington understood the sensitivity of the discussions given the concerns raised by China, one of South Korea's key trading partners. Story continues "It's very, very important that we clarify that that radar, that system is not looking at China," he said. "If the decision is made to deploy it, that system would be oriented on North Korea and threats posed by the North Korean military." The system was designed to intercept and destroy ballistic missiles inside or just outside the atmosphere during their final phase of flight. Mann said the Army would complete training for its fifth THAAD system by the end of the year. He said Japan was also interested in the system, as were U.S. military commanders in Europe and the Middle East. Once a site was approved and prepared, the THAAD system could be deployed "in a matter of weeks," Mann said. (Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Cynthia Osterman) ATLANTA, GA--(Marketwired - March 22, 2016) - Vacation Express offers convenient instant-booking and extensive hotel options across the beautiful country of Cuba to travelers eligible for travel by the US government through their website CUBA.VACATIONEXPRESS.com. With nearly 50 hotels to choose from in six cities throughout the island, it's no wonder that Vacation Express' selection is among the most robust for hotel-only bookings! Vacation Express has been booking hotel-only options in Cuba since December 2015, and there is such a high-demand for this option that this year has seen more companies open inventory at Cuban hotels. "Since the US government began opening up options for US travelers, demand has greatly increased and we are proud to have been one of the first US companies to offer a hotel-only booking option," said Kevin Hernandez, vice president of Vacation Express. Hotel properties are available for booking now in Varadero, Santiago de Cuba, Cayo Coco, Holguin, Cayo Santa Maria and the much sought after capital of Cuba, Havana. Today, daily charter flights already serve several airports in Cuba. Commercial flights are scheduled to begin flying new routes to Cuba in the near future, and the timing couldn't be more perfect. Havana: As capital of Cuba, Havana is a much sought after destination and Vacation Express is proud to offer five hotels in the bustling historic city. Havana is serviced by Jose Marti International Airport. Varadero: Choose from a selection of 19 hotels in the city which has one of the island's most popular coastlines and features a wide array of artist markets. Varadero will be serviced by the Juan Gualberto Gomez International Airport. Santiago de Cuba: In the home of two UNESCO World Heritage Sites and where the Cuban Revolution first began, Vacation Express offers accommodations at the Melia Santiago de Cuba. Visitors to the city will be serviced by the Antonio Maceo International Airport. Cayo Coco: Five hotels are available for those looking to experience the beauty of this environmentally protected island, serviced by Jardines del Rey International Airport. Holguin: Book from a choice of five hotels in this seaside town boasting galleries, parks and historic monuments serviced by Frank Pais International Airport. Cayo Santa Maria: Six hotels are available for booking this stunning city on the northern coast of Cuba. Cayo Santa Maria is serviced by Abel Santamaria International Airport. Hotels offered include properties managed by a company affiliated with Vacation Express such as Royalton, Memories and Starfish. Other popular brands in Cuba, well recognized by seasoned travelers, include Melia, Paradisus and Iberostar. Not sure if you qualify to travel legally to Cuba? Visit CUBA.VACATIONEXPRESS.com to learn more about the 12 general licenses which allow Americans to travel legally to Cuba, read more about the destinations and find answers to the most frequently asked questions about this intriguing island. Booking your stay in Cuba through Vacation Express is a breeze! Due to the purchasing power of Sunwing Travel Group, of which Vacation Express is a part, we are able to offer one of the most extensive hotel lineups in a country with such limited space. To guarantee your spot, book now at CUBA.VACATIONEXPRESS.com or call one of our Cuba specialists at 1-866-790-1788. About Vacation Express: Based in Atlanta, Vacation Express, part of Sunwing Travel Group, is a tour operator specializing in quality, affordable vacation packages to over 30 destinations in the Caribbean, Mexico and Costa Rica and most recently, Cuba! Now in business for over 26 years, Vacation Express is one of the country's largest and most trusted tour operators. Travelers looking for the most affordable, all-inclusive vacations may book Vacation Express' exclusive, non-stop packages through their travel agent, directly by phone seven days a week at 1-866-790-1788 or online at VACATIONEXPRESS.com. COMPLIANCE WITH U.S. LAW: U.S. law prohibits U.S. travelers from traveling to Cuba for tourism. U.S. travelers can only go to Cuba for one of 12 authorized reasons, including family visits and people-to-people educational activities. The 12 categories are listed in the Cuban Assets Control Regulations (CACR) at Section 515.560 (a)(1)-(12) and described in more details in those identified sections of the CACR, HERE. It is the U.S. traveler's sole responsibly to understand and comply with existing restrictions under U.S. law. Each U.S. traveler is required under U.S. law to retain records of their travel to Cuba for five years. The U.S. government could ask you to produce those records. CUBA TRAVEL CERTIFICATION: Each U.S. traveler must complete a written certification, available HERE, identifying the travel category that authorizes his or her travel to Cuba in order to allow Vacation Express to book that travel. Vacation Express must obtain this Certification, and retain it for five years, as required under Section 515.572(b) of the CACR. Should you have any questions about the requirements of U.S. law relating to your travel to Cuba, please consult a lawyer. facebook.com/vacationexpress @VacationExpress twitter.com/vacationexpress Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2016/3/22/11G088736/Images/Hotel_Only_2016-c9491e92cc9da4c79f817a165f2ddccf.jpg * Thousands of taxi drivers protest ride-hailing apps * Violence erupts in parts of the city, dozens arrested * Ministers call for calm (Adds detentions) By Bernadette Christina Munthe and Agustinus Beo Da Costa JAKARTA, March 22 (Reuters) - Indonesian cabbies clashed with motorbike drivers working for online apps on Tuesday, pulling them off their bikes and assaulting them as thousands of drivers took to the streets of Jakarta calling for a ban on ride-hailing apps like Grab and Uber. Police were overwhelmed as convoys of blue and white taxis operated by PT Blue Bird and PT Express Transindo Utama blocked thoroughfares. Police said 83 people were detained after skirmishes that saw drivers smash taxi windshields, attack other drivers and burn tyres in parts of the city. The proliferation of cheap taxis using ride-hailing apps Go-jek, Grab and Uber in gridlocked Jakarta has made the traditional pick-up and drop-off taxi services unprofitable, threatening the business models of the country's top taxi firms. The online apps currently offer heavily subsidised rates for their rides in an attempt to gain market share. "Right now there are legal taxis and illegal taxis," said Mat Ali, 54, an Express taxi driver who marched in front of parliament as others burned tyres. "We are not allergic to competition with Uber and Grab ... but we just want them to meet the government's requirements." Transportation Minister Ignasius Jonan said companies like Uber were illegal unless they were registered as public transport providers and subject to the same rules as regular taxi operators. "The point is, it has to be fair," Jonan told reporters. Government ministers called for calm and said the tech firms should be subject to the same legal and tax requirements as conventional public transportation companies. "Give us time to find the best solution, it can't be done overnight," chief security minister Luhut Pandjaitan told a news conference. A Bluebird official said the company would offer free taxi rides for 24 hours to make up for the disruption in services. Story continues "We don't agree with or support the anarchic demonstration," Bluebird commissioner Noni Purnomo told reporters. But some Jakarta residents rejected the offer on social media using the hashtag #NoThanksBluebird. David Santoso, a director of Express, also said in a statement the company had urged its drivers not to join the protest. Indonesia's president has welcomed the competition provided by the new companies, but the status of their operations in the country was unclear. Companies like Grab and Go-jek were running as usual on Tuesday despite the protests. "We've advised our drivers and passengers to be careful in the areas where the demonstrations are happening," said Ekhel Chandra Wijaya, of Grab Indonesia. One Go-jek driver said he wasn't afraid of the protesters. "We in the online business are looking for money, we're not looking for trouble," said Abdul Rohman, who wore the company's easily recognisable green jacket. (Additional reporting by Hidayat Setiyaji, Kanupriya Kapoor and Gayatri Suroyo; Writing by Kanupriya Kapoor; Editing by Nick Macfie) March 22, 2016 -- Hon. Edward Zammit Lewis, Minister of Tourism and Aviation, Malta and Thomas Flohr, Founder and Chairman of VistaJet tour VistaJet's Operations Control Centre in Malta.Click here for high-resolution version VALLETTA, MALTA--(Marketwired - March 22, 2016) - Certain Headquarter functions to be centralized in Malta Targeted structure to help drive continued growth Takes receipt of 50th Maltese registered aircraft VistaJet, the global leader in business aviation, today is excited to announce that it intends to move its corporate HQ to Malta, as it prepares for the next phase of its growth. The move follows the milestone delivery of the company's 50th Maltese registered aircraft. The company has taken the decision to move headquarters after careful consideration. It will bring together its operations, finance and European customer services teams to promote the highest levels of efficiency and interaction. Employees and clients from all over the world will visit the center each year, with training and development exercises held at its state of the art offices located conveniently at Malta International Airport. The strategic decision recognizes Malta's thriving economy, and the company's commitment to building on the country's track record for attracting and developing world class service companies. VistaJet has registered $1.8 Billion worth of brand new business jet aircraft on the Maltese registry and is the biggest aircraft operator in the country. As part of its ongoing partnership with the Maltese Government, VistaJet is also committed to celebrating and promoting Malta as the place to do business globally. Since relocating operations to Malta in 2013, VistaJet has consistently recorded double digit growth in passengers and flight traffic. Its fleet has grown from 32 to 60 Bombardier Challenger and Global aircraft, and has gone from serving 1,090 destinations to more than 1,474 worldwide. In recent years, the company successfully entered the US and China markets, and last year grew its global flight traffic by 21 per cent, making 2015 a record year for VistaJet. VistaJet has a Global office network across 4 continents. At the same time, the company is committed to further expand its Global presence in the US, Asia, Middle East and Africa. Story continues VistaJet will also build on its proven record for supporting and developing local talent in Malta. The decision to move its headquarters and centralize operations will create additional jobs, taking the overall number of people the company employs in Malta to 270. VistaJet will also work with the local aviation college MCAST, taking on some of its finest aviation students every year over the summer, with the aim of building an industry leading cohort of aviation professionals. Founder and chairman Thomas Flohr said: "Today is an important strategic milestone for VistaJet. Centralizing our European business functions and moving our Global Group Headquarters to Malta will enable the Company to thrive and deliver even more efficiency for our global customer base. "Malta is a fantastic place to do business. Its aviation industry is flourishing, as part of the EU it has access to the European common market, and it has a Government that not only supports business, but works with and encourages companies like ours to grow and develop. On top of that, English is the predominant language here in Malta, and it is also the language of aviation. "We are committed to working with the Government, to continue to attract the very best professionals to Malta and to develop the strong aviation industry in the country. "As we enter the next exciting phase of VistaJet's growth trajectory, our Maltese HQ in combination with strong presence and management on each continent is the winning formula for our truly unique global offering." Malta's Minister for Tourism Dr. Edward Zammit Lewis said: "We are delighted to see VistaJet, one of the most significant businesses in the country, reaffirm its commitment to Malta. We recognise and value the continued role the company plays in our aviation sector, and look forward to continuing to build our relationship in the future. "Today's announcement once again highlights the Government's commitment to creating a business-friendly economy and to building a stable, open environment in which international companies like VistaJet can invest and grow with confidence." About VistaJet Founded in 2004 by Thomas Flohr, VistaJet has established itself as the global leader in premium long-range private jet travel by consistently providing excellent service and unrivalled quality to its fast growing clientele, connecting them to every corner of the world with point-to-point coverage. VistaJet operates a young fleet -- total fleet average age is under two years -- of 60 Bombardier* Global* and Challenger* business aircraft and offers the industry's largest service area, covering all major markets. The Company's unique and successful business model provides all the benefits of owning a personal jet without the responsibilities or asset risk of personal ownership. VistaJet aircraft have to date visited over 181 countries, landed at 1,474 airports worldwide, logged over 83,500 flights and carried over 199,700 passengers. News and information are available at www.vistajet.com. Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2016/3/22/11G088583/Images/G088583_PIC_3-29f7f568f659bb0fba12476fae31f04d.jpg Barack Obama US President Barack Obama said "the world must unite" after Tuesday's terrorist attacks in Brussels killed at least 30 people. Obama, speaking from Havana, said he condemned "these outrageous attacks" and added that the US would do "whatever is necessary" to bring the attackers to justice. "This is another reminder that the world must unite, we must be together, regardless of nationality, or race, or faith, in fighting against the scourge of terrorism," he said. "We can and we will defeat those that threaten the safety and security of people all around the world," Obama continued. Obama spoke with Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel by phone earlier Tuesday, according to a White House release. In addition to the more than 30 people who died in the attacks, which consisted of multiple explosions at a Brussels airport and metro station, more than 100 were reported injured. Belgium's federal prosecutor said the explosions at the airport were the result of a suicide bombing. "What we feared has happened, we were hit by blind attacks," Michel said at a news conference. "We know there are many dead, many injured." The French government called the attacks "acts of war" in Europe. A November terrorist attack in Paris killed more than 100 people. Brussels Belgium "We are at war, and have endured for many months now, acts of war in Europe," France's Prime Minister Manuel Valls said, according to Le Figaro. The explosions at the airport occurred near an American Airlines check-in desk at about 8 a.m. local time, according to Sky News. Roughly one hour later, an explosion was reported in the Maelbeek metro station in Brussels. The station is located near the European Council and European Parliament buildings in Belgium's government district. "Terrorists struck Brussels but it was Europe that was targeted, French President Francois Hollande said per the Associated Press. Story continues The attacks happened just four days after police in Brussels captured Salah Abdeslam, the main remaining suspect from the Paris attacks in November that killed more than 100. Barbara Tasch contributed reporting. NOW WATCH: Watch Obamas remarks on the Brussels attacks More From Business Insider woman girl shopping zara retail Most retailers are faced with the challenge of keeping up with Zara. The retailer has a famously tight supply chain and rolls out runway-inspired styles rapidly. Parent company Inditex is routinely praised as having "the best business model in apparel." "We believe that Inditex has the best business model in apparel and expect Inditex to deliver double-digit earnings growth per year over the next five years," Bernstein analysts wrote, according to The Wall Street Journal. This seemingly unflappable success is no fluke. Zara has some secrets up its trendy sleeves that help it avoid fashion misfires. Refinery 29 recently spoke to Jesus Echevarria, CCO of Zara's parent company, Inditex, who told the website that it has a "data-processing center" that's open every hour of the day. According to Refinery 29, this center allows every single one of the stores to track sales data. Another team zeroes in on customer feedback. Many of traditional retailers like Banana Republic and J. Crew have suffered sales blows over the past year, when they have alienated their target customers. But Zara appears to have that problem solved before it even starts. This seems to be par for the course for the retailer, which famously doesn't stock very much of one style, as Suzy Hansen of The New York Times noted in 2012, thereby allowing it to not have to worry about racing to clear inventory. At the time, Hansen noted that the company would pay heed to how customers reacted to the different styles. Now it seems the company has that system down pat. Read Refinery 29's full interview here. NOW WATCH: The one reason Zara is dominating the fashion industry right now More From Business Insider 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. The Ontario government is giving $15 million to a Waterloo company that intends to give that much to its own shareholders by the middle of next year.The money is the latest squirt of cash dispensed by Premier Kathleen Wynnes jobs and prosperity fund, which is supposed to subsidize good jobs in growing industries. In this case, its going to Sandvine Inc., which sells systems to companies that run computer networks to help them monitor and control data traffic. This is big for Internet providers; Sandvines many customers include Comcast and Virgin Mobile.Sandvine is a true Ontario success story, and our government is pleased to support the next phase of its growth, which will help create high-quality jobs, Wynne said, in personally making the announcement of the $15-million deal. By partnering with companies like Sandvine, we are helping to boost Ontarios dynamic ICT (information and communications technology) sector and positioning the province for growth now and for years to come.mo The perpetrators of this disaster are such cowards. The only kind of life they know is violence and hatred. You almost have to feel sorry for them - almost. They pretend to be honoring their allah but instead, they cheapen their faith and show how really stupid and evil they are. They can't even stand up in the light of day to identify themselves and speak directly to the world about their foolishness - they hide behind women and children, cameras and social media and yell about how great their allah is when, in fact, they are all perverted cowards through and through. It is now incumbent upon all politicians and governments the world over to start taking this BS more seriously. We need to ensure we reiterate each and every day how corrupted and evil these terrorists are and how twisted their thinking is and not take the Trudeau philosophy that we need to "understand" where they're coming from because we already know. We must ensure that the men, women and children who have immigrated to our country abide by our laws and not Sharia - which should be strictly forbidden. We must ensure that wormen have the freedom to wear what they want without fear; but that faces remain uncovered. We need to ensure that any abuse of the rights of these individuals is treated harshly. I'm tired of the PC crowd saying that because I hold these beliefs that I'm a bigot or racist or whatever. I'm NONE OF THOSE. I believe those types of accusations is like- "calling the kettle black". Just sayin.... JMHO WASHINGTON The nations highest military appeals court has upheld the court-martial conviction of a Missouri man whose racist-sounding diatribe against President Barack Obama raised tough free-speech questions.The former soldier, who at one point claimed to have connections to Missouris Ku Klux Klan, forced a closely divided U.S. Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces to clarify the law governing speech by members of the military. Soldiers, in sum, face more restrictions than civilians do.The right of free speech in the armed services is not unlimited and must be brought into balance with the paramount consideration of providing an effective fighting force for the defense of our country, Judge Kevin A. Ohlson noted. In its 3-2 decision released Friday, the military appeals court rejected defense arguments that the First Amendment protected Eric L. Rapert, of Sikeston, in southeastern Missouri, when he railed against Obama on the night of the 2012 election.mo Russell Berman is a senior associate editor at The Atlantic , where he covers political news. He was previously a congressional reporter for The Hill and a Washington correspondent for The New York Sun . Email Russell Berman is a senior associate editor at , where he covers political news. He was previously a congressional reporter for and a Washington correspondent for . It is hard to believe that someone actually believes in this fiscal nonsense any more given that it has failed so completely everywhere it has been attempted. But here we have Kansas attempting to implement Trickle Down Economics with the usual abysmal result.Governor Sam Brownback confronted a fiscal crisis of his own making, and nobodys happy with the outcome.Nicholas Clayton / APLast Tuesday in Topeka, Governor Sam Brownback of Kansas signed a $15 billion state budget that squeaked through the Republican-dominated Legislature after an unprecedented, 113-day sessionmore than three weeks longer than the 90 days called for under state law. The governor simultaneously signed a pair of bills that raised $384 million in revenue by hiking the states sales tax and a host of other levies, including on cigarettes.I dont know that anybodys happy about it, Brownback said Talk about an understatement. According to various reports from the state capital , several lawmakers cast their votes in tears, one Republican accused the governors administration of blackmail, and exactly no one thought the plan actually solved the states longterm budget woes. Next year will be my 40th year in the Legislature, and I have never seen a session like this one, Anthony Hensley, who leads the Senates small contingent of Democrats, told me by phone on Friday. It was completely chaotic and dysfunctional.All that new revenue, along with about $50 million in spending cuts, was needed to close a deep deficit that had embarrassed its conservative governor and thrown its legislature into a months-long gridlock that resembled, well, Congress. As we wrote in April , the deficit resulted in large part from Brownbacks own real live experiment in supply-side economicssharp cuts in income tax rates and a huge exemption for owners of small businesses.Ask any fiscal expert, and Kansass budget crisis demanded a reckoningeither with its tax code or its longterm spending structure. But its government wasnt up to it. Aligned with conservatives in the Senate, Brownback steadfastly refused to consider a direct reversal of the original tax plan, insisting that the state continue on its path toward replacing the income tax entirely with consumption taxes. The most he would do was freeze the rates, and the result was a plan that will place an even heavier tax burden on the poor, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy . Hensley said that when state and local sales taxes are combined, Kansas will have the highest tax on food in the nation in some areas of the state. Brownback, who had hired the economist Arthur Laffer to help craft his original tax plan, had been touting the states economic recovery to argue that his fiscal vision was starting to work. But a report released Friday found that Kansas had lost nearly 4,000 jobs in May, trailing both the national trend and neighboring Missouri, which added 6,600 jobs.The governor needs to learn, and I think a lot of the people in the legislature needs to learn, when you cut taxes in the manner that they have, you need to also cut spending.Lori McMillan, a tax expert and law professor at Washburn University, told me during the middle of the impasse that Kansas lawmakers seemed paralyzed by the crisis and the many unpalatable choices they faced. By the time it was finally over, Brownback appearedat least to his many criticsto be in denial. As described by the Wichita Eagle , the governor refused to acknowledge that he had signed a tax increase. Look at the totality of the picture, he said, referring to the far deeper tax cuts he had signed in previous years. When you look at that, it is a tax cut.Nobody else saw it that way. Not only is this a tax increase, it is the largest tax increase in state history, Hensley responded in a statement. When I called up Will Upton, the state-affairs manager for Grover Norquists Americans for Tax Reform, he described the budget that Brownback signed in almost exactly the same words. Norquist serves as something of an arbiter of tax increases among conservatives, and hes famously said his goal is to shrink government to a size where you can drown it in a bathtub. The problem in Kansas, Upton said, is that while Brownback had succeeded in shrinking the tax burden, he did little to shrink spending.When the tax cuts were first enacted, Upton said, Democrats and moderate Republicans succeeded in removing provisions that would have softened the fiscal blow. And when Republicans tried to close the budget gap this year, Brownback blamed Medicaid, education, and the states pension system as the drivers of the deficit, but there was little effort made to address them. No ones really looked at long-term reform yet. They throw up their hands and say, We tried. No, they didnt really try, Upton said. The governor needs to learn, and I think a lot of the people in the legislature needs to learn, when you cut taxes in the manner that they have, you need to also cut spending.That, of course, is easier said than done. As politically unpopular as any kind of tax increase is, cutting money from healthcare, schools, or retirement funds would spark an even bigger backlash. In that respect, the outcome in Kansas recalls the complaints of conservatives during the George W. Bush administration, when taxes went down but the governmentand the deficitgrew. Modest tax increases, spending restraint, and economic growth have helped cut down the gap, but it is far from closed. Kansas may be facing a similar future. Brownback has sold the Legislature a bill of goods, Hensley lamented. Consequently, he added, we are going to have a budget shortfall for years to come. Global travel tech company, ButlerTech, today announces the launch of new travel app, CityButler. CityButler offers a unique guide for travellers looking to get the best possible experience from their city exploration by featuring only handpicked, top quality businesses, retailers and attractions. From a cruise tour of Ayutthaya in Bangkok to a chocolate ecstasy tour in London, all content is carefully selected city by city. For launch, CityButler features eight cities; London, Manchester, Bangkok, Melbourne, Pattaya, Phuket, Singapore and Sydney. Further destinations in Asia, Europe and the USA are to be added in the coming months including Hong Kong, Manila, Kuala Lumpur, Milan, Rome and Chiang Mai. ButlerTech aims to populate the app with 100 worldwide destinations within its first year of inception. The app is designed with the traveler in mind, allowing users to easily navigate and book activities or services in the chosen city. On selecting a category, the user can view ratings of each business as well as reviews of their services. From local SIM cards to transport and excursions, the app also allows users to seamlessly order or book anything they might need during their city stay in clear and simple steps. Every business, attraction, tour operator, retailer or service provider that features on the CityButler app has been handpicked by our local experts to ensure each traveler can plan and enjoy the best possible city experience, said Mike Mazza, CEO and Founder of ButlerTech Group. Should any user need help or additional advice during their city stay, there is also a support chat section to message one of our assistants. Travelers can now rely on one single app for everything they might need during their city visit. Utilising geo-location, the CityButler app enables users to locate nearby businesses. Users can also tailor the app to their interests by selecting a calendar of relevant events or by browsing the top picks in the city, such as best restaurants or night spots, to bookmark interests and create a Favourites list. Following launch, CityButler will enhance the app by offering additional services including online bill payments, insurance purchases and daily deals for consumers. A Casa Branca divulgou a integra do discurso que o presidente dos Estados Unidos Barack Obama fez nesta terca-feira (22) em Cuba. Leia, abaixo, o texto em ingles. E assista ao discurso com traducao simultanea no video acima. "Thank you. (Applause.) Muchas gracias. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. President Castro, the people of Cuba, thank you so much for the warm welcome that I have received, that my family have received, and that our delegation has received. It is an extraordinary honor to be here today. Before I begin, please indulge me. I want to comment on the terrorist attacks that have taken place in Brussels. The thoughts and the prayers of the American people are with the people of Belgium. We stand in solidarity with them in condemning these outrageous attacks against innocent people. We will do whatever is necessary to support our friend and ally, Belgium, in bringing to justice those who are responsible. And this is yet another reminder that the world must unite, we must be together, regardless of nationality, or race, or faith, in fighting against the scourge of terrorism. We can -- and will -- defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world. To the government and the people of Cuba, I want to thank you for the kindness that youve shown to me and Michelle, Malia, Sasha, my mother-in-law, Marian. Cultivo una rosa blanca. (Applause.) In his most famous poem, Jose Marti made this offering of friendship and peace to both his friend and his enemy. Today, as the President of the United States of America, I offer the Cuban people el saludo de paz. (Applause.) Havana is only 90 miles from Florida, but to get here we had to travel a great distance -- over barriers of history and ideology; barriers of pain and separation. The blue waters beneath Air Force One once carried American battleships to this island -- to liberate, but also to exert control over Cuba. Those waters also carried generations of Cuban revolutionaries to the United States, where they built support for their cause. And that short distance has been crossed by hundreds of thousands of Cuban exiles -- on planes and makeshift rafts -- who came to America in pursuit of freedom and opportunity, sometimes leaving behind everything they owned and every person that they loved. Like so many people in both of our countries, my lifetime has spanned a time of isolation between us. The Cuban Revolution took place the same year that my father came to the United States from Kenya. The Bay of Pigs took place the year that I was born. The next year, the entire world held its breath, watching our two countries, as humanity came as close as we ever have to the horror of nuclear war. As the decades rolled by, our governments settled into a seemingly endless confrontation, fighting battles through proxies. In a world that remade itself time and again, one constant was the conflict between the United States and Cuba. I have come here to bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas. (Applause.) I have come here to extend the hand of friendship to the Cuban people. (Applause.) I want to be clear: The differences between our governments over these many years are real and they are important. Im sure President Castro would say the same thing -- I know, because Ive heard him address those differences at length. But before I discuss those issues, we also need to recognize how much we share. Because in many ways, the United States and Cuba are like two brothers whove been estranged for many years, even as we share the same blood. We both live in a new world, colonized by Europeans. Cuba, like the United States, was built in part by slaves brought here from Africa. Like the United States, the Cuban people can trace their heritage to both slaves and slave-owners. Weve welcomed both immigrants who came a great distance to start new lives in the Americas. Over the years, our cultures have blended together. Dr. Carlos Finlays work in Cuba paved the way for generations of doctors, including Walter Reed, who drew on Dr. Finlays work to help combat Yellow Fever. Just as Marti wrote some of his most famous words in New York, Ernest Hemingway made a home in Cuba, and found inspiration in the waters of these shores. We share a national past-time -- La Pelota -- and later today our players will compete on the same Havana field that Jackie Robinson played on before he made his Major League debut. (Applause.) And it's said that our greatest boxer, Muhammad Ali, once paid tribute to a Cuban that he could never fight -- saying that he would only be able to reach a draw with the great Cuban, Teofilo Stevenson. (Applause.) So even as our governments became adversaries, our people continued to share these common passions, particularly as so many Cubans came to America. In Miami or Havana, you can find places to dance the Cha-Cha-Cha or the Salsa, and eat ropa vieja. People in both of our countries have sung along with Celia Cruz or Gloria Estefan, and now listen to reggaeton or Pitbull. (Laughter.) Millions of our people share a common religion -- a faith that I paid tribute to at the Shrine of our Lady of Charity in Miami, a peace that Cubans find in La Cachita. For all of our differences, the Cuban and American people share common values in their own lives. A sense of patriotism and a sense of pride -- a lot of pride. A profound love of family. A passion for our children, a commitment to their education. And that's why I believe our grandchildren will look back on this period of isolation as an aberration, as just one chapter in a longer story of family and of friendship. But we cannot, and should not, ignore the very real differences that we have -- about how we organize our governments, our economies, and our societies. Cuba has a one-party system; the United States is a multi-party democracy. Cuba has a socialist economic model; the United States is an open market. Cuba has emphasized the role and rights of the state; the United States is founded upon the rights of the individual. Despite these differences, on December 17th 2014, President Castro and I announced that the United States and Cuba would begin a process to normalize relations between our countries. (Applause.) Since then, we have established diplomatic relations and opened embassies. We've begun initiatives to cooperate on health and agriculture, education and law enforcement. We've reached agreements to restore direct flights and mail service. We've expanded commercial ties, and increased the capacity of Americans to travel and do business in Cuba. And these changes have been welcomed, even though there are still opponents to these policies. But still, many people on both sides of this debate have asked: Why now? Why now? There is one simple answer: What the United States was doing was not working. We have to have the courage to acknowledge that truth. A policy of isolation designed for the Cold War made little sense in the 21st century. The embargo was only hurting the Cuban people instead of helping them. And I've always believed in what Martin Luther King, Jr. called the fierce urgency of now -- we should not fear change, we should embrace it. (Applause.) That leads me to a bigger and more important reason for these changes: Creo en el pueblo Cubano. I believe in the Cuban people. (Applause.) This is not just a policy of normalizing relations with the Cuban government. The United States of America is normalizing relations with the Cuban people. (Applause.) And today, I want to share with you my vision of what our future can be. I want the Cuban people -- especially the young people -- to understand why I believe that you should look to the future with hope; not the false promise which insists that things are better than they really are, or the blind optimism that says all your problems can go away tomorrow. Hope that is rooted in the future that you can choose and that you can shape, and that you can build for your country. I'm hopeful because I believe that the Cuban people are as innovative as any people in the world. In a global economy, powered by ideas and information, a countrys greatest asset is its people. In the United States, we have a clear monument to what the Cuban people can build: its called Miami. Here in Havana, we see that same talent in cuentapropistas, cooperatives and old cars that still run. El Cubano inventa del aire. (Applause.) Cuba has an extraordinary resource -- a system of education which values every boy and every girl. (Applause.) And in recent years, the Cuban government has begun to open up to the world, and to open up more space for that talent to thrive. In just a few years, we've seen how cuentapropistas can succeed while sustaining a distinctly Cuban spirit. Being self-employed is not about becoming more like America, its about being yourself. Look at Sandra Lidice Aldama, who chose to start a small business. Cubans, she said, can innovate and adapt without losing our identityour secret is in not copying or imitating but simply being ourselves. Look at Papito Valladeres, a barber, whose success allowed him to improve conditions in his neighborhood. I realize Im not going to solve all of the worlds problems, he said. But if I can solve problems in the little piece of the world where I live, it can ripple across Havana. Thats where hope begins -- with the ability to earn your own living, and to build something you can be proud of. Thats why our policies focus on supporting Cubans, instead of hurting them. Thats why we got rid of limits on remittances -- so ordinary Cubans have more resources. Thats why were encouraging travel -- which will build bridges between our people, and bring more revenue to those Cuban small businesses. Thats why weve opened up space for commerce and exchanges -- so that Americans and Cubans can work together to find cures for diseases, and create jobs, and open the door to more opportunity for the Cuban people. As President of the United States, Ive called on our Congress to lift the embargo. (Applause.) It is an outdated burden on the Cuban people. It's a burden on the Americans who want to work and do business or invest here in Cuba. It's time to lift the embargo. But even if we lifted the embargo tomorrow, Cubans would not realize their potential without continued change here in Cuba. (Applause.) It should be easier to open a business here in Cuba. A worker should be able to get a job directly with companies who invest here in Cuba. Two currencies shouldnt separate the type of salaries that Cubans can earn. The Internet should be available across the island, so that Cubans can connect to the wider world -- (applause) -- and to one of the greatest engines of growth in human history. Theres no limitation from the United States on the ability of Cuba to take these steps. Its up to you. And I can tell you as a friend that sustainable prosperity in the 21st century depends upon education, health care, and environmental protection. But it also depends on the free and open exchange of ideas. If you cant access information online, if you cannot be exposed to different points of view, you will not reach your full potential. And over time, the youth will lose hope. I know these issues are sensitive, especially coming from an American President. Before 1959, some Americans saw Cuba as something to exploit, ignored poverty, enabled corruption. And since 1959, weve been shadow-boxers in this battle of geopolitics and personalities. I know the history, but I refuse to be trapped by it. (Applause.) Ive made it clear that the United States has neither the capacity, nor the intention to impose change on Cuba. What changes come will depend upon the Cuban people. We will not impose our political or economic system on you. We recognize that every country, every people, must chart its own course and shape its own model. But having removed the shadow of history from our relationship, I must speak honestly about the things that I believe -- the things that we, as Americans, believe. As Marti said, Liberty is the right of every man to be honest, to think and to speak without hypocrisy. So let me tell you what I believe. I can't force you to agree, but you should know what I think. I believe that every person should be equal under the law. (Applause.) Every child deserves the dignity that comes with education, and health care and food on the table and a roof over their heads. (Applause.) I believe citizens should be free to speak their mind without fear -- (applause) -- to organize, and to criticize their government, and to protest peacefully, and that the rule of law should not include arbitrary detentions of people who exercise those rights. (Applause.) I believe that every person should have the freedom to practice their faith peacefully and publicly. (Applause.) And, yes, I believe voters should be able to choose their governments in free and democratic elections. (Applause.) Not everybody agrees with me on this. Not everybody agrees with the American people on this. But I believe those human rights are universal. (Applause.) I believe they are the rights of the American people, the Cuban people, and people around the world. Now, theres no secret that our governments disagree on many of these issues. Ive had frank conversations with President Castro. For many years, he has pointed out the flaws in the American system -- economic inequality; the death penalty; racial discrimination; wars abroad. Thats just a sample. He has a much longer list. (Laughter.) But heres what the Cuban people need to understand: I welcome this open debate and dialogue. Its good. Its healthy. Im not afraid of it. We do have too much money in American politics. But, in America, it's still possible for somebody like me -- a child who was raised by a single mom, a child of mixed race who did not have a lot of money -- to pursue and achieve the highest office in the land. That's whats possible in America. (Applause.) We do have challenges with racial bias -- in our communities, in our criminal justice system, in our society -- the legacy of slavery and segregation. But the fact that we have open debates within Americas own democracy is what allows us to get better. In 1959, the year that my father moved to America, it was illegal for him to marry my mother, who was white, in many American states. When I first started school, we were still struggling to desegregate schools across the American South. But people organized; they protested; they debated these issues; they challenged government officials. And because of those protests, and because of those debates, and because of popular mobilization, Im able to stand here today as an African-American and as President of the United States. That was because of the freedoms that were afforded in the United States that we were able to bring about change. Im not saying this is easy. Theres still enormous problems in our society. But democracy is the way that we solve them. That's how we got health care for more of our people. That's how we made enormous gains in womens rights and gay rights. That's how we address the inequality that concentrates so much wealth at the top of our society. Because workers can organize and ordinary people have a voice, American democracy has given our people the opportunity to pursue their dreams and enjoy a high standard of living. (Applause.) Now, there are still some tough fights. It isnt always pretty, the process of democracy. It's often frustrating. You can see that in the election going on back home. But just stop and consider this fact about the American campaign that's taking place right now. You had two Cuban Americans in the Republican Party, running against the legacy of a black man who is President, while arguing that theyre the best person to beat the Democratic nominee who will either be a woman or a Democratic Socialist. (Laughter and applause.) Who would have believed that back in 1959? That's a measure of our progress as a democracy. (Applause.) So heres my message to the Cuban government and the Cuban people: The ideals that are the starting point for every revolution -- Americas revolution, Cubas revolution, the liberation movements around the world -- those ideals find their truest expression, I believe, in democracy. Not because American democracy is perfect, but precisely because were not. And we -- like every country -- need the space that democracy gives us to change. It gives individuals the capacity to be catalysts to think in new ways, and to reimagine how our society should be, and to make them better. Theres already an evolution taking place inside of Cuba, a generational change. Many suggested that I come here and ask the people of Cuba to tear something down -- but Im appealing to the young people of Cuba who will lift something up, build something new. (Applause.) El futuro de Cuba tiene que estar en las manos del pueblo Cubano. (Applause.) And to President Castro -- who I appreciate being here today -- I want you to know, I believe my visit here demonstrates you do not need to fear a threat from the United States. And given your commitment to Cubas sovereignty and self-determination, I am also confident that you need not fear the different voices of the Cuban people -- and their capacity to speak, and assemble, and vote for their leaders. In fact, Im hopeful for the future because I trust that the Cuban people will make the right decisions. And as you do, Im also confident that Cuba can continue to play an important role in the hemisphere and around the globe -- and my hope is, is that you can do so as a partner with the United States. Weve played very different roles in the world. But no one should deny the service that thousands of Cuban doctors have delivered for the poor and suffering. (Applause.) Last year, American health care workers -- and the U.S. military -- worked side-by-side with Cubans to save lives and stamp out Ebola in West Africa. I believe that we should continue that kind of cooperation in other countries. Weve been on the different side of so many conflicts in the Americas. But today, Americans and Cubans are sitting together at the negotiating table, and we are helping the Colombian people resolve a civil war thats dragged on for decades. (Applause.) That kind of cooperation is good for everybody. It gives everyone in this hemisphere hope. We took different journeys to our support for the people of South Africa in ending apartheid. But President Castro and I could both be there in Johannesburg to pay tribute to the legacy of the great Nelson Mandela. (Applause.) And in examining his life and his words, I'm sure we both realize we have more work to do to promote equality in our own countries -- to reduce discrimination based on race in our own countries. And in Cuba, we want our engagement to help lift up the Cubans who are of African descent -- (applause) -- whove proven that theres nothing they cannot achieve when given the chance. Weve been a part of different blocs of nations in the hemisphere, and we will continue to have profound differences about how to promote peace, security, opportunity, and human rights. But as we normalize our relations, I believe it can help foster a greater sense of unity in the Americas -- todos somos Americanos. (Applause.) From the beginning of my time in office, Ive urged the people of the Americas to leave behind the ideological battles of the past. We are in a new era. I know that many of the issues that Ive talked about lack the drama of the past. And I know that part of Cubas identity is its pride in being a small island nation that could stand up for its rights, and shake the world. But I also know that Cuba will always stand out because of the talent, hard work, and pride of the Cuban people. That's your strength. (Applause.) Cuba doesnt have to be defined by being against the United States, any more than the United States should be defined by being against Cuba. I'm hopeful for the future because of the reconciliation thats taking place among the Cuban people. I know that for some Cubans on the island, there may be a sense that those who left somehow supported the old order in Cuba. I'm sure theres a narrative that lingers here which suggests that Cuban exiles ignored the problems of pre-Revolutionary Cuba, and rejected the struggle to build a new future. But I can tell you today that so many Cuban exiles carry a memory of painful -- and sometimes violent -- separation. They love Cuba. A part of them still considers this their true home. Thats why their passion is so strong. That's why their heartache is so great. And for the Cuban American community that Ive come to know and respect, this is not just about politics. This is about family -- the memory of a home that was lost; the desire to rebuild a broken bond; the hope for a better future the hope for return and reconciliation. For all of the politics, people are people, and Cubans are Cubans. And Ive come here -- Ive traveled this distance -- on a bridge that was built by Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits. I first got to know the talent and passion of the Cuban people in America. And I know how they have suffered more than the pain of exile -- they also know what its like to be an outsider, and to struggle, and to work harder to make sure their children can reach higher in America. So the reconciliation of the Cuban people -- the children and grandchildren of revolution, and the children and grandchildren of exile -- that is fundamental to Cubas future. (Applause.) You see it in Gloria Gonzalez, who traveled here in 2013 for the first time after 61 years of separation, and was met by her sister, Llorca. You recognized me, but I didnt recognize you, Gloria said after she embraced her sibling. Imagine that, after 61 years. You see it in Melinda Lopez, who came to her familys old home. And as she was walking the streets, an elderly woman recognized her as her mothers daughter, and began to cry. She took her into her home and showed her a pile of photos that included Melindas baby picture, which her mother had sent 50 years ago. Melinda later said, So many of us are now getting so much back. You see it in Cristian Miguel Soler, a young man who became the first of his family to travel here after 50 years. And meeting relatives for the first time, he said, I realized that family is family no matter the distance between us. Sometimes the most important changes start in small places. The tides of history can leave people in conflict and exile and poverty. It takes time for those circumstances to change. But the recognition of a common humanity, the reconciliation of people bound by blood and a belief in one another -- thats where progress begins. Understanding, and listening, and forgiveness. And if the Cuban people face the future together, it will be more likely that the young people of today will be able to live with dignity and achieve their dreams right here in Cuba. The history of the United States and Cuba encompass revolution and conflict; struggle and sacrifice; retribution and, now, reconciliation. It is time, now, for us to leave the past behind. It is time for us to look forward to the future together -- un future de esperanza. And it wont be easy, and there will be setbacks. It will take time. But my time here in Cuba renews my hope and my confidence in what the Cuban people will do. We can make this journey as friends, and as neighbors, and as family -- together. Si se puede. Muchas gracias. (Applause.) WASHINGTON, March 21, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- The renewable energy industry came together this week to discuss energy, tax and climate policies at the annual National Renewable Energy Policy Forum, hosted by the American Council On Renewable Energy (ACORE). In the wake of a historic tax policy update in 2015, speakers and participants at the Forum predicted a bright future of economic growth, job creation and dramatically increasing renewable power generation. "It was a hugely productive meeting that included comments from many of our most important champions. Throughout the history of this country, energy policy has always played a critical role in keeping America competitive and driving economic growth and today is no different," said Gregory Wetstone, President and CEO of ACORE. "The transition to a low carbon economy will be accompanied by new jobs and tremendous economic opportunity. Senator Ron Wyden (D-OR) opened the Policy Forum with a keynote speech that acknowledged the recent policy advancements supporting renewables, and also gave the gathered crowd an inspired vision of what's to come. "Setting the right path for increasing low carbon, renewable energy and maximizing efficiency is a worthy policy goal," said Sen. Wyden. "The work done last December extending policy support for renewable technologies was critical in supporting this growing sector, but we can do even more by overhauling our tax code, leveling the playing field, and making permanent the business certainty needed for companies committed to investing in a new energy industry." Senator Chuck Grassley (R-IA), the original architect of the Production Tax Credit for renewables, also gave a keynote address at this year's Forum. The Senator said, "In Iowa, a state that just became the first in the nation to generate over 30 percent of its power from wind energy, we've seen the economic success story behind renewables up close and personal. There are more than 6,000 good wind jobs in Iowa, and the clean energy opportunity is available to every state in the country." Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), gave an afternoon keynote and encouraged the assembled industry to push on with their progress. "Around Congress, the bullying menace of the fossil fuel industry is a constant. If the good actors cede the field to them, the result is predictable: members of Congress frozen in place, often against their better judgment. It doesn't have to be this way," said Senator Whitehouse. "Groups like ACORE, with its broad membership representing billions in revenue and employees in every corner of the country and its deep expertise in energy and finance, can set the pace for corporate engagement on national climate policy." With December's tax and budget deal done, wind and solar have unlocked an estimated $70 billion in investment for renewable energy. This year's National Policy Forum highlighted the impact that policy certainty would have on the market, and also explored a number of new policy priorities that the industry is now able to turn its attention toward more fully. Net metering policies, state renewable portfolio standards, Clean Power Plan implementation, achievement of the COP 21 goals, new financial vehicles like master limited partnerships, and policies related to grid investment and integration were all topics of major discussion this year. The rise of Fortune 500 corporations as key renewable energy players also took center stage. Marsden Hanna, policy lead for energy at Google, spoke at the Forum this year and commented on corporate procurement specifically. "At Google, we are seeking to power 100% of our operations from renewable energy because we believe this makes good business sense," he said. "In a number of regions of the country, the cost of renewable energy has dropped to match or beat market prices on the grid. This allows us to power our data centers and operations with cost-effective clean energy, through long-term fixed-price contracts that help us smooth our financial planning, while insulating ourselves from fuel price volatility." The ACORE National Renewable Energy Policy Forum is an annual event that brings together high-level speakers from government, business, and non-profits to discuss the critical energy policy issues surrounding renewable energy, energy efficiency, sustainable development, finance, and national security. The final product of the Forum, the policy roadmap for renewable energy industry, will be shared with the President, Congress, and numerous governors, legislators, and regulators in the states. About ACORE: ACORE is a national non-profit organization dedicated to providing value to the renewable energy industry through market development, policy changes, and finance. With hundreds of member companies from across the spectrum of renewable energy technologies, consumers, and investors, ACORE is uniquely positioned to promote the policies and financial structures essential to growth in the renewable energy sector. The organization's annual conferences in Washington, New York and San Francisco set the industry standard in providing important venues for key leaders to meet; discuss recent developments; and hear the latest from senior government officials and seasoned experts. Additional information is available at: www.acore.org LISLE, Ill., March 21, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Nathans Famous is on a mission to surprise unsuspecting fans with a unique experience as part of its 100th anniversary celebration and today, Louis Gallo of San Antonio, was recognized as one of Nathans Famous Ultimate Fans. A photo accompanying this announcement is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/NewsRoom/AttachmentNg/f4c69975-c909-4565-8331-899e82cfbdb4 Gallo, a U.S Air Force veteran, has been active on the Nathans Famous Facebook page over the course of the last year, sharing his passion and affinity for the brand he loves. The simple act of posting his story led the world famous hot dog company to show Gallo just how much they appreciate his loyalty. Nathans Famous decided to invite Gallo to be an official counter for contestants in the Nathans Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest qualifying event held earlier this afternoon as part of the H-E-B Big League Weekend. Little did Gallo know that after the contest ended, hed be surprised with a $1,000 H-E-B gift card, Nathans Famous t-shirts and hats, two front-row seats for todays Kansas City Royals vs. Texas Rangers exhibition game and VIP access to the H-E-B Big League Weekend post-game concert. Finally, Gallo was surprised with one more special gift, free Nathans Famous hot dogs for one year, courtesy of Nathans Famous. We knew that Louis was a big fan of Nathans Famous because of the photos and stories he posted on our Facebook page, said Wayne Norbitz, executive board member and 26-year president of Nathans Famous. We learned that he travels quite a bit for his sales job and always seeks out a Nathans hot dog stand, specifically when traveling through the Atlanta airport. His favorite meal is our world-famous hot dog with our crinkle-cut fries, and now thanks to our friends at H-E-B, Louis can enjoy the flavors of Coney Island for the next year. Todays event was part of Nathans Famous national Ultimate Fan Nation campaign. Over the course of the next nine months, Nathans Famous will reflect on its history while engaging fans with new opportunities to enjoy the flavor they have come to love. Special offers will be available for fans via NathansFamous.com, and the companys Facebook and Twitter pages. Nathans Famous will also feature members of its Ultimate Fan Nation on its social media channels. Highlights of the Nathans Famous 100th anniversary celebration include a special promotion over the upcoming Memorial Day Weekend, the annual Nathans Famous International Fourth of July Hot Dog Eating Contest in Coney Island, and a special-event based in New York City in early September. Beginning in May, fans will also have the opportunity to have their Ticket to Fun punched as part of an online, summer-rewards program featuring games, prizes and exclusive branded merchandise. Smithfield Foods is the licensee of Nathans Famous pre-packaged hot dogs. To learn more about Nathans Famous and its products, please visit www.nathansfamous.com. About Nathan's Famous Nathan's currently distributes its products in 50 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, the Cayman Islands and nine foreign countries through its restaurant system, foodservice sales programs and product licensing activities. Nathan's was ranked #55 on the Forbes list of the Best Small Companies in America and was listed as the Best Small Company in New York State in October 2013. Last year, over 500 million Nathan's Famous hot dogs were sold. For additional information about Nathan's please visit our website at www.nathansfamous.com. About Smithfield Foods Smithfield Foods is a $15 billion global food company and the world's largest pork processor and hog producer. In the United States, the company is also the leader in numerous packaged meats categories with popular brands including Smithfield, Eckrich, Farmland, Armour, Cook's, John Morrell, Gwaltney, Nathan's Famous, Kretschmar, Margherita, Curly's, Carando and Healthy Ones. Smithfield Foods is committed to providing good food in a responsible way and maintains robust animal care, community involvement, employee safety, environmental and food safety and quality programs. For more information, visit www.smithfieldfoods.com. VANCOUVER, British Columbia, March 21, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Panoro Minerals Ltd. (TSX-V:PML) (Lima:PML) (Frankfurt:PZM) and its wholly-owned subsidiary, Panoro Trading (Cayman) Ltd. (Panoro or the Company) are pleased to announce that they have entered into a definitive Early Deposit Precious Metals Purchase Agreement (the Cotabambas Early Deposit Agreement) with Silver Wheaton (Caymans) Ltd., a wholly owned subsidiary of Silver Wheaton Corp. ("Silver Wheaton") (TSX:SLW) (NYSE:SLW) in respect of the Cotabambas project located in Peru. The principal terms of the Cotabambas Early Deposit Agreement are as per the Companys press release on January 27, 2016 whereby Silver Wheaton will pay Panoro upfront cash payments totalling US$140 million for 25% of the payable gold production and 100% of the payable silver production from the Companys Cotabambas Project in Peru. In addition, Silver Wheaton will make production payments to Panoro of the lesser of the market price and US$450 per payable ounce of gold and US$5.90 per payable ounce of silver delivered to Silver Wheaton over the life of the Cotabambas Project. Panoro is entitled to receive US$14 million spread over up to 9 years as an early deposit with payments to be used to fund corporate expenses related to the Cotabambas Project. The financing includes provisions to accelerate these payments through Silver Wheatons matching, up to certain limits, any third party financing by Panoro targeted for exploration at the Cotabambas Project. The acceleration could result in total early deposit payments of up to US$7 million being made to Panoro in the first two years of the agreement. The balance of the US$140 million is payable in instalments during construction of the Cotabambas Project. Panoros President & CEO, Luquman Shaheen, states We are pleased that the completion and closing of the Cotabambas Early Deposit Agreement has moved smoothly from the signing of the term sheet in January 2016. The closing of this important agreement allows Panoro to complete its plans for targeted investments into the Cotabambas Project. The targeted investments will be aimed at adding a low cost heap leach & SX/EW component to the project plan and drilling the Maria Jose target to delineate additional higher grade near surface mineralization. These two additions together with more metallurgical testing, aimed at confirming potential higher recoveries, have the potential to further enhance the project economics. We look forward to continuing to add important new components to the Cotabambas Project and further cementing Cotabambas as the next key copper project in the key copper development region in the world. Transaction Highlights Financing ensures viability of Cotabambas Project for duration of streaming agreement without diluting equity holders Enhances Panoros ability to advance exploration at Cotabambas with Silver Wheaton matching any third party funding for Cotabambas up to a total of US$3.5 million in the first two years Technical, social and economic validation of the Cotabambas Project by Silver Wheaton which already has a strong presence in Peru via precious metals streaming agreements on the Constancia Mine (HudBay Minerals) and the Antamina Mine (BHP Billiton, Glencore, Teck Resources, Mitsubishi) Precious metals stream represents only 8% of total revenue of the Cotabambas Project based on the assumptions utilized in Panoros Preliminary Economic Assessment. In addition, following a change of control, there is a one-time option to repurchase 50% of the precious metals stream. Transaction Overview Upfront Payment Silver Wheaton will make an upfront cash payment of US$140 million plus a Production Payment for an amount of silver equal to 100% of silver production and an amount of gold equal to 25% of gold production Production Payment Silver Wheaton will make an ongoing payment equal to the lesser of: (i) US$450 in the case of delivered gold ounces and US$5.90 in the case of delivered silver ounces; and (ii) the applicable prevailing market price. Early Deposit US$14 million will be paid by Silver Wheaton as an early deposit. US$2 million will be paid in the first year following closing with US$1.5 million paid annually thereafter. Cotabambas Exploration Matching Provision Silver Wheaton to match equity proceeds of up to a total of US$3.5 million raised in the first two years following signing of PMPA to fund exploration at the Cotabambas Project. Silver Wheaton Option Silver Wheaton will have the option to terminate the PMPA either 90 days following delivery of a Feasibility Study or at any time upon giving Panoro three months notice. Silver Wheaton can elect to receive a portion of the early deposit either as cash or shares upon termination, with Panoro having rights to defer cash payments over an up to two year period. BuyBack Option Following a change of control, subject to certain conditions, Panoro has a one-time option to repurchase 50% of the precious metals stream with a payout based on the greater of: (i) a minimum fixed return (ii) a return based on appreciation of precious metals prices over the term of the PMPA; and (iii) a return based on appreciation of the Panoro share price over the term of the PMPA. About Panoro Panoro Minerals is a uniquely positioned copper exploration company focused on Peru. Panoro is advancing its significant portfolio of copper and gold projects in the key Andahuaylas-Yauri belt in south central Peru, including its advanced stage Cotabambas Copper-Gold-Silver-Molybdenum and Antilla Copper-Molybdenum Projects. Since 2007, the company has completed over 70,000 m of exploration drilling at these two key projects leading to the delineation of mineral resources in late 2013 of: Cotabambas: Indicated Resource 117.1 Mt @ 0.42% Cu, 0.23g/t Au, 2.74 g/t Ag & 0.001%Mo (@0.2% CuEq cutoff) Inferred Resource 603.5 Mt @ 0.31% Cu, 0.17g/t Au, 2.33 g/t Ag and 0.002 %Mo (@0.2% CuEq cutoff) (Tetra Tech, with an effective date of October 2013) Antilla: Indicated Resource 188.5 Mt @ 0.40% Cu and 0.009% Mo (@0.2% CuEq cutoff) Inferred Resource 145.9 Mt @ 0.28% Cu and 0.009%Mo (@0.2% CuEq cutoff) (Tetra Tech, with an effective date of December 2013) The results from the updated PEA of the Cotabambas Project were announced on September 22, 2015 demonstrating a base case, after tax NPV of $US 683.9M, an IRR of 16.7% and a payback of 3.6 years. The updated PEA included mining of 483M tonnes of mill feed from two open pits, feeding an 80,000 tonne per day mill and concentrating plant producing a single copper concentrate grading 27% Cu, 11 g/t Au and 134 g/t Ag with no penalty attracting deleterious elements. The updated PEA was prepared by Amec Foster Wheeler Americas Ltd. and Moose Mountain Technical Services Ltd. in accordance with the definitions in Canadian National Instrument 43-101. The PEA is considered preliminary in nature. It includes Inferred Mineral Resources that are considered too speculative to have the economic considerations applied that would enable classification as Mineral Reserves. There is no certainty that the conclusions within the updated PEA will be realized. Mineral Resources are not Mineral Reserves and do not have demonstrated economic viability. Luis Vela, a Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101, has reviewed and approved the scientific and technical information in this press release. On behalf of the Board of Panoro Minerals Ltd. Luquman A. Shaheen, M.B.A., P.Eng., P.E. President & CEO CAUTION REGARDING FORWARD LOOKING STATEMENTS: Information and statements contained in this news release that are not historical facts are forward-looking information within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation and involve risks and uncertainties. Examples of forward-looking information and statements contained in this news release include information and statements with respect to: acceleration of payments by Silver Wheaton to match third party financing by Panoro targeted for exploration at the Cotabambas Project payment by Silver Wheaton of US$140 million in installments Panoro weathering the current depressed equity and commodity markets, minimizing dilution to existing shareholders and making targeted investments into exploration at the Cotabambas Project mineral resource estimates and assumptions the PEA, including, but not limited to, base case parameters and assumptions, forecasts of net present value, internal rate of return and payback; copper concentrate grade from the Cotabambas Project; Various assumptions or factors are typically applied in drawing conclusions or making the forecasts or projections set out in forward-looking information. In some instances, material assumptions and factors are presented or discussed in this news release in connection with the statements or disclosure containing the forward-looking information and statements. You are cautioned that the following list of material factors and assumptions is not exhaustive. The factors and assumptions include, but are not limited to, assumptions concerning: metal prices and by-product credits; cut-off grades; short and long term power prices; processing recovery rates; mine plans and production scheduling; process and infrastructure design and implementation; accuracy of the estimation of operating and capital costs; applicable tax and royalty rates; open-pit design; accuracy of mineral reserve and resource estimates and reserve and resource modeling; reliability of sampling and assay data; representativeness of mineralization; accuracy of metallurgical test work; and amenability of upgrading and blending mineralization. Forward-looking statements are subject to a variety of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which could cause actual events or results to differ materially from those expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements, including, without limitation: risks relating to metal price fluctuations; risks relating to estimates of mineral resources, production, capital and operating costs, decommissioning or reclamation expenses, proving to be inaccurate; the inherent operational risks associated with mining and mineral exploration, development, mine construction and operating activities, many of which are beyond Panoros control; risks relating to Panoros ability to enforce Panoros legal rights under permits or licenses or risk that Panoros will become subject to litigation or arbitration that has an adverse outcome; risks relating to Panoros projects being in Peru, including political, economic and regulatory instability; risks relating to the uncertainty of applications to obtain, extend or renew licenses and permits; risks relating to potential challenges to Panoros right to explore and/or develop its projects; risks relating to mineral resource estimates being based on interpretations and assumptions which may result in less mineral production under actual circumstances; risks relating to Panoros operations being subject to environmental and remediation requirements, which may increase the cost of doing business and restrict Panoros operations; risks relating to being adversely affected by environmental, safety and regulatory risks, including increased regulatory burdens or delays and changes of law; risks relating to inadequate insurance or inability to obtain insurance; risks relating to the fact that Panoros properties are not yet in commercial production; risks relating to fluctuations in foreign currency exchange rates, interest rates and tax rates; and risks relating to Panoros ability to raise funding to continue its exploration, development and mining activities. This list is not exhaustive of the factors that may affect the forward-looking information and statements contained in this news release. Should one or more of these risks and uncertainties materialize, or should underlying assumptions prove incorrect, actual results may vary materially from those described in the forwardlooking information. The forwardlooking information contained in this news release is based on beliefs, expectations and opinions as of the date of this news release. For the reasons set forth above, readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information. Panoro does not undertake to update any forward-looking information and statements included herein, except in accordance with applicable securities laws. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. Los Angeles , March 22, 2016 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- 360 Orthodontics Dr. Mahtab Partovi, a leading orthodontist in Beverly Hills, California, is leveraging the industrys first FDA-cleared medical device proven to speed up orthodontic treatment by up to 50 percent and dramatically reduce associated soreness. As part of the Partovi Method, AcceleDent is used in combination with either traditional or specialized braces to maximize comfort and cut total treatment time by as much as half. Most patients considering braces are either concerned with discomfort or the overall time commitment. AcceleDent solves both of these issues, says Dr. Partovi. When used as part of the Partovi Method, patients can expect to be in and out of their braces in as little as six months, rather than the typical two year commitment most orthodontists are still quoting. Additionally, I am able to minimize any pressure or soreness that is normally associated with orthodontics. While there are similar devices on the market, AcceleDent is the first device of its kind to be FDA-cleared. It works by emitting light vibrations throughout the mouth, which are both clinically proven to ease soreness and accelerate the movement of teeth. As a key component of the Partovi Method, the doctor recommends her patients use AcceleDent 20 minutes each day for optimal results. As a medical professional, I believe it is my responsibility to ensure my patients have access to the best, most trusted, and effective treatment options available today, says Dr. Partovi. And while Im surprised it hasnt happened yet, my hope is that the device will eventually become a standard in orthodontic care for all practices, as it is in mine. In addition to recommending AcceleDent, Dr. Partovi is further optimizing patients results with handpicked custom braces, specialized techniques, and meticulously executed teeth and gum shaping, plus whiteningall part of her Partovi Method for achieving a classic Hollywood smile, without the need for veneers or prosthetics. For more information or to schedule a free consultation with Dr. Partovi, please visit: http://www.360orthodontics.com. ### About Dr. Partovi Dr. Partovi is a leading Beverly Hills orthodontist taking an authentic approach in delivering patients of all ages a Hollywood smile that is truly their own. Using a wide range of cutting-edge orthodontic treatments, she has delivered thousands of patients a natural alternative to cosmetic dentistry. In addition to providing the most advanced and most effective orthodontic solutions available, Dr. Partovi is also known for her transparency in offering traditional braces at more than half the cost of other orthodontistssimply because she can. Her honest approach extends throughout her entire Los Angeles practice, 360 Orthodontics, which was carefully designed as a state-of-the-art, eco-friendly haven where patients may receive sustainable and highly personalized care. Dr. Partovi regularly donates her time and services to a number of important charitable organizations, including Covenant House, Hearts of Los Angeles, Special Olympics Special Smiles, and more. Press release from Ship Finance International Limited, March 22, 2016 Ship Finance International Limited (NYSE: SFL) ("Ship Finance" or the "Company"), today announced that 279,000 options were awarded to employees and board members as part as of the management incentive program. The options have been issued pursuant to the Company's Share Option Scheme and will have a five-year term with a three-year vesting period. The initial strike price is $14.38 and the first options will be exercisable from March 2017. The Board of Directors Ship Finance International Limited Hamilton, Bermuda Questions can be directed to Ship Finance Management AS: Harald Gurvin, Chief Financial Officer: +47 23114009 Andre Reppen, Senior Vice President: +47 23114055 About Ship Finance Ship Finance International Limited (NYSE: SFL) has an unprecedented track record in the maritime and offshore industry, being consistently profitable and paying dividends every quarter since 2004. The Company's diversified fleet of more than 70 vessels is split between tankers, bulkers, container vessels and offshore assets, and Ship Finance's long term distribution capacity is supported by a portfolio of long term charters and significant growth in the asset base over time. More information can be found on the Company's website: www.shipfinance.bm Cautionary Statement Regarding Forward Looking Statements This press release may contain forward looking statements. These statements are based upon various assumptions, many of which are based, in turn, upon further assumptions, including Ship Finance management's examination of historical operating trends. Although Ship Finance believes that these assumptions were reasonable when made, because assumptions are inherently subject to significant uncertainties and contingencies which are difficult or impossible to predict and are beyond its control, Ship Finance cannot give assurance that it will achieve or accomplish these expectations, beliefs or intentions. Important factors that, in the Company's view, could cause actual results to differ materially from those discussed in this presentation include the strength of world economies and currencies, general market conditions including fluctuations in charter hire rates and vessel values, changes in demand in the tanker market as a result of changes in OPEC's petroleum production levels and worldwide oil consumption and storage, changes in the Company's operating expenses including bunker prices, dry-docking and insurance costs, changes in governmental rules and regulations or actions taken by regulatory authorities, potential liability from pending or future litigation, general domestic and international political conditions, potential disruption of shipping routes due to accidents or political events, and other important factors described from time to time in the reports filed by the Company with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission. Re: 670-high verbal, very low quant- should I cancel my score? [ #permalink Thank you very much for your feedback, it keeps me motivated, as I felt quite disappointed when I saw that quant score. I was wondering if simply cancelling this score and thus pretending it never existed would be better for my overall application (Im aiming at INSEAD)? True, keeping this score means keeping a great verbal score, but it also shows the adcom that Im able to score poorly in quant... If I cancel, they will never see I scored poorly in quant. I am wondering what are the advantages / value add of keeping this core vs cancelling it. I still have 48hrs to cancel my score and I clearly have no idea what to do If on my second official GMAT test, I score lets say 71% in quant and 80% in verbal, well verbal will still be good, quant better but not amazing. So they might think, given I passed the exam twice, shes good at verbal, but average in quant.. Wouldnt it be better to cancel my first score and start fresh with a clean plate? Many thanks again for you strong support and feedback !! Prajat wrote: Archeologists have discovered ancient coins in near Antioch, Syria from a variety of neighboring countries dating to the time of the Roman Empire. They have inferred that the Roman Empire established the Antioch as a center of trade, or at least a hub through which trade routes of many countries passed. Which of the following would, if true, most significantly weaken the refutation of the archeologists' inference? (a) Situated at the crossing of both north-south and east-west trade routes, Antioch was perfectly positioned to be a commercial center. (b) A historian's journal reveals that, when Alexander the Great visited Antioch, he made a dedication speech at a temple in which he referred to Antioch as "the commercial jewel of the Empire, Syrian-born." (c) During the Empire, the Romans saw fit to build great temples, a forum, a theater, baths, aqueducts, and other public buildings in Antioch. (d) There were virtually no coins from neighboring countries found in Antioch that dated to the time prior to the advent of the Roman Empire in the city. (e) Archeologists also found a record of a gold wire-fashioner's guild, dated from the same time as the coins, which had detailed notations of the shipments coming and going from Antioch to a number of nearby countries. OFFICIAL EXPLANATION: Therefore, the correct answer is (D). Reading the question: we find an extremely brief argument. We can compare with Taxes and Growth: both questions present arguments, and both arguments are brief. The argument in Taxes and Growth has a structure more like a syllogism, so this question may not be quite so perfect for term matching as Taxes and Growth, but we can still try term matching. Term matching is viable on some level whenever you have an argument with evidence and a conclusion.Creating a filter: the key terms in this argument are "coins," in the evidence, and "trade center," in the conclusion. The argument's purpose is to establish a connection between these two concepts, so the answer choice that most strengthens our connection between "coins" and "trade center" will be the correct answer. With that criterion as our filter, we can head to the answer choices.Applying our filter, we can examine each choice in turn first for whether it has to do with the linkage of 1) coins and 2) trade center. Which answer choices mention both the coins and the trade center? None of them! Taking a step back and looking at basic relevance, we can see that choices (D) and (E) are most relevant. If we can logically prove one, we'll have our answer.Logical proof: If we accept the negation of (D) as fact, then there were coins predating the Roman Empire in the area. This fact would destroy the argument, because in that case coins would not be proof that Romans established the center of trade. Since accepting the negation of (D) destroys the argument, accepting (D) itself strengthens the argument: it patches a critical weakness in the argument. How about (E)? Choice (E) is tricky, because it gives strength to the conclusion of the argument. It introduces a new piece of evidence supporting that conclusion, and that does strengthen the conclusion. But it is less material to the argument given, which involves the connection between coins and the conclusion drawn from the coins found. Choice (D) "passes" the negation test and (E) does not._________________ The City Council will vote this afternoon on two major pillars of Mayor de Blasio's $41 billion affordable housing plan that aims to create and preserve 200,000 units of affordable housing over the next decade. And while the controversial plan has gained vital support in the last weekthe Council endorsed it with some changes after a prominent group of advocates and unions issued their own formal endorsementresidents of rezoning-targeted neighborhoods from East New York to East Harlem rallied outside City Hall this morning to reiterate their opposition. "Do not believe what you read," shouted Estevan Nembnhard of Northern Manhattan is Not For Sale. "The support is not unanimous. There is an alternative. It's called community planning, not city planning." More than 40 nonprofit organizations representing the rights of tenants, workers and homeless New Yorkers formally denounced the Mayor's plan on Monday, among them several nonprofit groups and developers also affiliated with Real Affordability For All, the coalition that endorsed the plan last week on the promise of a future study for deeper affordability. The first prong of the plan up for vote today, known as mandatory inclusionary housing (MIH), would require developers to include a portion of below-market-rate units in their new residential projects. The Mayor's original plan included three options for developerstwo primary and one alternate. In each of the 15 neighborhoods up for rezoning, the City would choose one or both of two primary options. The first calls for 25% of units in new developments to be set aside for New Yorkers making 60% of the Area Median Income [AMI], or $46,620 for a family of three. The second mandates 30% of units be affordable for those making 80% of the AMI, or $62,150 for a family of three. A third option, to be applied as an alternative in some neighborhoods at the City's discretionand on a project by project basiscalls for 30% affordability at 115% of the AMI, without government subsidies. The City Council added a fourth option to the plan this week20% of units affordable for New Yorkers who make 40% of the AMI, or roughly $31,000 a year. (via Mayor's Office) Advocates today voiced concern that the new option, which calls for deeper affordability than the primary two, will be underutilized. "I don't think the City was clear that the new 20% set-aside for New Yorkers making 40% of the AMI is an alternate, and not a stand-alone option," said an attendee who preferred anonymity because of professional constraints. "For it to be the day of the vote and have this amount of lack of clarity is pretty messed up." Mayoral spokesman Austin Finan confirmed that any private zoning application from a developer will require City Council approval. Even 40% of the AMI excludes many New Yorkers in the neighborhoods targeted for rezoning, protesters argued on Monday. For example, 53% of current East New York residents who make less than $35,000 a year. City-wide, more than a quarter of New York City households make less than $25,000 a year. The Mayor's zoning for quality and affordability (ZQA) planwhich originally called for the elimination of parking requirements at new developments within a half mile of a subway stophas also been altered to appease residents in the outer boroughs. Alternatives to the Mayor's plan presented on Monday included the Bronx Coalition for a Community Vision's plan, which calls for strong anti-harassment protections for tenants, and another from the Coalition for Community Advancement Plan in East New York, which calls for 50% permanent affordability in new developments. "You know what we call MIH? Missing in Harlem," said Marina Ortiz of East Harlem Preservation. "The word 'affordability' has been coopted by the government. 40% AMI means nothing to us, and I'm disappointed that some of our allies in East Harlem, good, hardworking, nonprofits, fell for the sham and supported the plan with compromisesconditions that never will be fulfilled." Speaking at an unrelated press conference on Tuesday morning, Mayor de Blasio referred to his plan, as he has often in recent weeks, as the "most progressive affordable housing plan of any major city in the country." He added that, "Every time a rezoning is done... if a developer does not want to provide affordable housing, they will not be able to build. This is the first plan to benefit the people, and not just the real estate developers." We will update with the results of the final vote. We rely on your support to make local news available to all Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2022. Donate today When you're packing for the long flight from Los Angeles to NYC, remember the essentials: a neck pillow; the latest edition of SkyMall; and a nice, 69 lb. stash of cocaine. Police are looking for a flight attendant who fled LAX on foot last Friday just as she was about to be searched by the TSA ahead of her flight to NYC. NBC reports that what was supposed to be a random screening (flight attendants are normally not subjected to searches) took a panicked turn when the woman abandoned her luggage, her Gucci designer shoes, and ran (other would-be smugglers haven't been quite so capable of just dropping their stash and making tracks, though). A subsequent search of her carry-on luggage revealed nearly 70 lbs of cocaine stashed in green bags, according to the Washington Post. The womanwho is still at largefaces felony drug charges. "With her bringing this amount of narcotics in the airport, chances are this wasn't her first time through," said McClain, head of the Los Angeles Airport Peace Officers Association, told the AP. "We're hoping this is a wake-up call to airport management as well as federal legislators." According to the NYPD, the incident occurred last Tuesday, March 15th, at 2 a.m.: "[W]hile aboard a South bound N train that was entering the 36 Street station, the suspect placed his hand on the 24 year-old female victim's leg and then he began to rub his crotch with his other hand. After a verbal dispute the suspect fled the train at the 59 Street station." The police released images of the suspect, who is described as 20-25 years old, 5'2" and 120 pounds. He was last seen wearing a grey hooded sweater, light colored pants and dark colored shoes. Anyone with information in regards to this incident is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477) or for Spanish, 1-888-57-PISTA (74782). The public can also submit their tips by logging onto the Crime stoppers website at WWW.NYPDCRIMESTOPPERS.COM or by texting their tips to 274637 (CRIMES) then enter TIP577. All calls are strictly confidential. If you see or experience sexual misconduct in the subway (this includes seeing a masturbator, being groped, being grinded on, etc.), you can report it to the MTA and police on this website. There's also a place for you to upload photos and/or video. Don't let the perverts win. At least 34 people were killed, and about 200 injured, during terrorist attacks early this morning in Brussels' airport and subway system. Thousands of miles away, the NYPD has responded by beefing up security across the city, deploying counterterrorism teams to crowded areas and the mass transit system. Speaking with reporters this morning, Mayor de Blasio emphasized that there's currently no known connection between the attacks and New York City, and no credible or specific threat against the city, but that the city will remain in a state of heightened awareness and security for days to come. "We in New York City stand ready to fight against terror in any way," de Blasio said, adding that New Yorkers should "expect to see extraordinary NYPD presence out over the coming days as a sign of our readiness to protect people at all times." When reports came in from Belgium at about about 3:30 a.m. this morning, the NYPD put its counterterrorism teams into action, doubling the number of counterterrorism officers across the city during the morning rush hour. That included Hercules counterterrorism teams, special weapons teams, and K9 units, according to Deputy Commissioner of Intelligence and Counterterrorism John Miller. Coincidentally, today also marks the deployment of 50 additional officers to the Times Square subway station. On top of that, Penn Station and Grand Central saw an influx of state troopers today, and the Port Authority heightened its police presence at all of its airports, bridges, and tunnels, as well as the World Trade Center and the PATH and Port Authority Bus Terminal. Subway and rail stations in NYC, Westchester, and Long Island will also have extra security, and the National Guard has increased its officer presence at JFK and LaGuardia airports. Belgium-affiliated locations throughout the city, such as the Consulate General in Midtown, are also receiving additional security in the days to come. Officials at this morning's press conference seized the latest terrorist attack as an opportunity to denounce proposed cuts to federal funds that go toward the city's anti-terror efforts: under the current proposal, federal anti-terror funds going to New York City would be cut in half, by $90 million. Commissioner Bratton cited a number of NYPD initiatives, such as the Domain Awareness System, radiation detection, license plate scanners, and camera systemsnot to mention high-paid counterterrorism analyststhat would not be possible without the current level of federal funds. "I don't think it's fully understood just how dependent we are on the partnership with the federal government and the funding they've provided since 9/11, and the concern this year of the cuts...is that it goes to the heart and soul of how we function," Bratton said. "We'll remain optimistic, particularly in light of what's going on in the world today, that those cuts will be restored...those cuts could be very devastating if they were to occur." Bratton said that whenever another horrific attack like this occurs, it does give the department an opportunity to adjust its counterterrorism strategy. For example, these attacks in Brussels, like those in Paris in November and last January, comprised multiple events occurring in quick succession. As such, the NYPD is focusing its strategy on preventing and responding to instances of multiple attacks. For example, if there were a terrorist attack on one subway line or in a certain station, he said, police would shut down the subway system entirely, as they would be concerned about another transit-related attack. "Better to err on the larger shutdown and then reduce it, rather than start small and, God forbid, you miss something," Bratton said. One of this morning's attacks in Beligum took place in Brussels's Maelbeek metro station, where an explosion killed at least 20 people. At the capital's airport, there were two explosions in the departure hall, one of which is believed to have been a suicide bombing. Those explosions killed at least 14 people. ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attacks, and Brussels has suspended all flights in and out of the airport, and shut down its subway system, with the prime minister encouraging residents to "avoid all movement." The European Union Complex is also on lockdown. The past 10 days have also seen terrorist attacks in Cote dIvoire, Yemen, Nigeria, and Turkey. Diego Rodriguez, the assistant director of the FBI's New York field office, was adamant that there is no reason to panic over a potential attack in NYC right now. "The FBI's New York field office is unaware of any specific credible threat to our area at this time," he said. "We remind the public not to let fear become disabling." Ryan Jacobs has lived in East New York for 22 years. Jacobs drives a cab and lives in a one bedroom apartment with his wife and three children. Ive been trying to look for a different apartment, but its already too expensive in East New York, Jacobs says. In 2013, he voted for Mayor Bill de Blasio, inspired by his rhetoric against the citys increasing inequality. Yet today, Jacobs is opposed to the mayors signature affordable housing plan. When I first moved here in 94, telling people you lived in East New York was like telling people you lived in Baghdad. When you slept in your house, you would position your family to be away from the window because of shooting, Jacobs told us. And just when its turned a corner, here comes de Blasio with a plan thats not going to include the people who lived and survived in East New York. Thats what we have a problem with. A large part of de Blasios plan hinges on the rezoning of New Yorks low-income, gentrifying Black and Latino neighborhoods, including the South Bronx, East Harlem, and East New York. The mayor says the rezoning is necessary to expand his affordable housing plan, which set an unprecedented goal to build or preserve 200,000 units of below-market-rate housing by 2025. Some of the mayors most vocal affordable housing critics recently changed course to endorse his vision, and the City Council has agreed to approve a version of the zoning initiative; a full vote is expected later today. Yet Jacobs is worried that most of this affordable housing will only be affordable for middle income residents and will serve to accelerate gentrification. Based on what the real estate industry is saying about his neighborhood behind closed doors, Jacobs has good cause for concern. I was talking to a gentleman yesterday who was very bullish on East New York, developer Andrew Miller of Novel Property Ventures told a room of his peers in November. There are definitely people that are very, very excited to pioneer these neighborhoods. Miller was speaking on a panel at the annual Brooklyn Real Estate Summit, a gathering of the top retail, condo, multifamily and office players in the Brooklyn market that was held at the Brooklyn Museum. Tickets cost $549, and former Governor Eliot Spitzer was one of the events keynote speakers. The summit also attracted protesters, one of whom characterized it as vultures descending on the city. One attendee who studies real estate provided Gothamist with audio of the event and requested anonymity out of fear of losing their job. The attendee said they were concerned about the potential consequences of de Blasios housing plan. At a panel entitled Take Hints From the Subway Map, Jim Stein of Lincoln Property Company described East New York in the context of previously gentrified neighborhoods. Look, as far as East New York goes, you know 40 years ago people werent going down to SoHo, 30 years ago people werent going down to the Lower East Side, and 20 years ago they certainly werent going down to Williamsburg or Bushwick or any of these types of neighborhoods, Stein said. It does suffer for some problems that are typical for progress, but its supply and demand, and its price. At a panel called There Goes the Neighborhood, Jordan Sachs, co-founder and CEO of Bold New York, talked about how gentrification has changed his client base. Our renter is no longer the down and dirty Brooklynite, Sachs told the audience. It's Cindy from Long Island. Her mom says, You have to live in a doorman building. Well hey Mom, here's a website for the walk up. All of a sudden, a lot of barriers to entry are eliminatedvirtual doorman, we can check off so many boxes now at very little cost to the owner. Throughout the day, developers framed these new projects in minority and low-income neighborhoods as the inevitable path of city developmentan expectation that many progressive groups hoped would be countered by the 2013 election of Mayor de Blasio. I think the most interesting neighborhood for me is Gowanus, said Brendan Aguayo, a director at Halstead Property Development Marketing, speaking of one of Brooklyns most rapidly gentrifying neighborhoods. "But I think that the most exciting neighborhood is Greenpoint. I think if you look at that waterfront, it's essentially a blank slate. Everything from Toby Moskovits' project, which is commercial, all the way up to our project, Greenpoint Landing, which, basically the entire waterfront is going to fill in all the way up to Long Island City." Richard Mack of the Mack Real Estate Group, shared his trick for spotting grittier neighborhoods that are ripe for development. "We're looking for places where there are bike lanes, but more importantly where people are riding fixed-gear bikes, Mack tells the laughing crowd. "Now I know that sounds funny, but go to downtown Seattle, go to downtown Los Angeles, go to the grittier neighborhoods of San Francisco, and you're going to see a disproportionate amount of fixed gear bikes. You may laugh but commutation patterns by bicycle are changing the way cities are developed. And if you go to the Navy Yards in the summer, look at how many people are riding bicycles compared to a few years ago. These blunt assessments from real estate developers shouldnt come as a surprisethe mayor has been very clear that for-profit developers would be integral to his vision. The goal is to harness the private market, Vicki Been, the head of NYCs Department of Housing Preservation and Development, told reporters in February. A City Limits analysis concluded that de Blasios affordable housing plan is designed to offer developers who set aside 30% of units for families making 60 percent AMI ($46,620 for a family of three) a generous financial yield of 8.7 percent. At a recent City Council hearing, Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen argued that if the percentages of lower-cost apartments were set too high, developers would not have an incentive to build. 30 percent of zero is zero, declared Glen. There is no requirement in law that the city must guarantee the profit margins of developers thats a matter of policy but the logic of the citys housing policy has the city trapped, argues Tom Angotti, a Professor of Urban Policy and Planning at Hunter College. Once you accept the false premise that the only way to get affordable housing is to let developers build market-rate housing and make so much money that they can allow some affordable housing, youre in the developers laps." Over the last two years, only 16% of the affordable units thus far built have gone to New Yorkers, earning less than $25,150 a year, according to a study done by the Real Affordability For All coalition. Last week, the City Council amended the mayors plan to set aside one fifth of new apartments to tenants making 40% of the Area Median Income (AMI), or $31,075 for a family of three. How does that qualify as "affordable housing in neighborhoods like Flatbush where the average median income is only $39,000 a year? says Imani Henry, a Brooklyn resident involved in Equality for Flatbush and the Brooklyn Anti-Gentrification Network. This is why we ask, affordable for who? It has to be affordable for us. The vast majority of the people in New York City will not be able to live here if the mayor's plan is allowed to go forward. Many community activists across the city reject the housing plan altogether, pointing out that any influx of luxury housing into their neighborhoods, even when mixed with affordable, is bound to amp up gentrification. The plan was rejected by 50 of 59 impacted community boards, and four of the five borough presidents. We dont care about the percentages, the crumbs de Blasio is offering us, says Henry. We are not for luxury housing period. This is a whole new wave. In Flatbush, real estate agents have told me they arent even allowed to rent to Black people anymore. Landlords want to flip everything here and kick us out to New Jersey." Mayor de Blasio with Vicki Been (left), the commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (Ed Reed / Mayoral Photography Office) In 2013, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio won on an anti-gentrification platform. I see people suffering and feeling like they're losing their grip on the place, and my job is to help New Yorkers live in New York. It's not to clear the place out and see it fully gentrified, he told voters. From the beginning of his career as a city politician, however, de Blasio enjoyed a far cozier relationship with the real estate community than many expected, particularly with developers working on projects in the citys gentrifying outer boroughs. As a city council member, Mr. de Blasio helped purge community boards in his Brooklyn district opposed to a massive luxury condo, earning him favor with the prominent developer, Forest City Ratner (whose executive vice president for development spoke at the real estate summit), and a reputation as a pragmatic progressive. By the time, de Blasio was gearing up to run for mayor, many developers affiliated with the New York State Association For Affordable Housing (NYSAFAH), a trade group, were sending personal contributions to de Blasio, who few expected to win, polling fourth for nearly a year. According to a Gothamist analysis, in the months before de Blasio became a frontrunner, some real estate players affiliated with NYSAFAH gave big to then Public Advocate Bill de Blasio. Some, like Gilbert Winn of WinnCompanies, maxed out at New York Citys personal contribution limit of $4,950. But these individual contributions were only a fraction of the sums de Blasio received from real estate bundlers, the intermediaries who solicit contributions from friends on behalf of a candidate. Here too, some of de Blasios biggest early contributors in these early months, were NYSAFAH developers such as Forest City Ratner and L+M development, which gave de Blasio $13,600 and $13,850 respectively. As it became clear that de Blasio was surging past his fellow Democrats into the general election, more traditional Manhattan-based developers began switching their giving to de Blasio. After de Blasio's primary triumph, affordable housing developers from NYSAFAH knew the moment was theirs. NYSAFAH board chair Lisa Gomez of L+M Development Partners and Donald Cappocia, another de Blasio donor, had announced their plans to create a $150 million fund for affordable housing projectsmonths before the general election. And after the election, real estate money continued to roll in. According to Politico New York, between December 2013 and September 2015, the mayors non-profit political arm raised $3.87 million with half of the donations coming from real estate companies. Taking office, de Blasio did not disappointhe picked Alicia Glen, a former director at Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group, which has an employee on the NYSAFAH board, to run his housing policy as Deputy Mayor for Housing and Economic Development, and re-appointed Goldman alum Kyle Kimball to head the citys Economic Development Corporation, one of the few holdovers from the Bloomberg era. Prior to becoming Deputy Mayor, Glen and her colleague Vicki Been, de Blasios head the Department of Housing Preservation and Development, also sat on the board of the Moelis Institute, a real estate think tank full of NYSAFAH members and de Blasio donors. As a result of these picks, the de Blasio housing team has fostered close relationships with NYSAFAH developers on their neighborhood revitalization projects, and intends to make them a big part of his housing plan. As Mayor De Blasio declared at a 2014 speech to NYSAFAH, outlining his housing vision, ... I have a real personal sense of connection and appreciation, and a sense of how central your work is to this city, and I guarantee you, it's about to become a lot more central. Indeed, for NYSAFAH developers like Dunn Development, business has boomed since de Blasio took office. With help from the city, the developer has expanded into neighborhoods like Washington Heights, Claremont in the Bronx, and East New York. Mayor de Blasio with Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen (center), breaking ground on Livionia Commons, a Dunn Development project, in 2014 (Mayor's Office) Last year, Dunn Development completed a $90 million mixed-income development in East New York with prominent de Blasio donor L+M and millions in capital financing from two city housing agencies, according the Mayors Office. Over half of the units will be set aside for families earning less than 40% and 50% of the area median incomeroughly $34,000 and $43,000 for families of four. But in East New York, where the median income is only $32,362 a year, many of these units will be out of reach for locals. Residents fear the affordable housing plan will bring in more of these city-supported deals, gentrifying their neighborhoods in the process. During his election campaign de Blasio made a lot of promises, says Jacobs, the East New York resident. He said he was going to end the tale of two cities, but we didnt realize that would mean he would forget about the one side of the tale. Asked to speak on the developers' comments, the mayor's connections to developers, and concerns about gentrification, a spokesman for the Mayor's Office, Austin Finan, sent this statement: Our housing program is the most progressive in the country because it actually mandates that developers create the affordable housing our city so badly needs, not simply build more luxury condos. And the benefits are already being witnessedin just two years, Housing New York has already created more affordable homes for extremely-low, very-low and low-income New Yorkers than under the last five years of the Bloomberg plan. In a statement, Jolie Milstein, president & CEO of NYSAFAH, says that NYSAFAH members have been producing affordable housing for many decades and through many mayoralties. Our commitment to solving New York's affordable housing crisis will not change, regardless of who is in office. The affordable housing crisis is a result of years of federal inaction and diminished funding: it is not a problem that any single mayor can immediately fix. Mayor de Blasio's rezoning plan will help increase the production of affordable and senior housing and we will continue working with his administration to do that. The mayors housing plan now seems inevitable, and its tepid affordability requirements have left many of the citys progressive and labor forces in the awkward position of either taking on a mayor who they thought was on their side, or joining him as the Real Affordability for All Coalition recently did. Outer borough developers, on the other hand, have celebrated the plan and may finally be seeing their considerable influence in de Blasios housing team come to fruition. Theres this new class of people that want to be first adopters, and I think theres a demand for being the first group out there, Jordan Sachs of Bold New York told attendees of the Brooklyn Real Estate Summit of potential of the Bronx. When another panelist pointed out that over a million people already do live in the Bronx, Sachs clarified: I should have phrased it differently, you know, theres a different type of consumer that wants to be a pioneer there. For Jacobs, this kind of language proves that the only path forward is resistance to the mayors plan. Mayor de Blasio was using the poor to be elected, but he was never living their reality. We have to resist this. This is our dwelling. If you take away our home, we have nothing else left. George Joseph is a New York based reporter, writing about schools, police, surveillance, and cities. His work has appeared in The Guardian, The Intercept, and The Nation. Culture Shooting for Double XL was a liberating experience for Huma Though Huma has mentioned multiple times, in jest, that this was the best prep she ever had to do for a role since she got to eat everything she wante... According to Armenias Ministry of the Economy, up to 30,000 Iranians have visited Armenia in certain years to celebrate Nowruz, the Iranian New Year. The holiday starts with the vernal equinox (marking the beginning of spring in the Northern Hemisphere on March 21 or the previous/following day, depending on where it is observed) and lasts for 13 days. Lately, on a yearly basis, the number of Iranians visiting Armenia has reached 130,000. Armenias National Statistical Service reports the following figures for Iranian tourist numbers to Armenia during the 1st quarter for the years 2011 2015. 2011 - 19,700 2012 15,000 2013 10,000 2014 26,000 2015 44,000 But there are no credible figures as to how much each of these Iranian tourists spend while in Armenia during the Nowruz holiday. Some estimates place the amount somewhere between US$800 and $1,000. Trade data between Armenia and Iran is more precise. In 2015, Armenia exported $78 million in goods to Iran and imported $198 million from Iran. During the past few years, Armenia has been importing more from Iran than exporting to it. 2014: Imports $206 million, Exports - $85 million 2013: Imports $198 million, Exports - $95 million 2012: Imports $219 million, Exports - $108.5 million 2011: Imports $217 million, Exports - $106 million Armenia mostly exports electricity to Iran, with lesser amounts of aluminum and sheep/goat meat. Armenian mostly buys gas, oil and oil products from Iran, as well as fruit and vegetables, glass and tiles. Quisqueya La Bella: A Celebration of the Music of the Dominican Republic Manhattan School of Music celebrates the music of the Dominican Republic on Monday, March 28 (7:30 & 9:30 pm) at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and on Monday, April 4 (7:30 pm) at Manhattan School of Music's Borden Auditorium, with two special performances by the critically-acclaimed and multiple Latin Grammy nominees MSM Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra, under the direction of multi-Grammy nominee Bobby Sanabria. QUISQUEYA LA BELLA ("the beautiful Dominican Republic") features the many flavors of the D.R., from the intense gallop of the popular merengue and pambiche to the romantic bachata and the Afro-centric carnival celebrations of gaga, palo, and more. NEW YORK PREMIERE AT DIZZY'S CLUB COCA-COLA, MARCH 28 The March 28th concert at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola features the New York premiere of CANDOMBE JUNO by composer Nacho Gonzalez - exploring the Afro-Uruguayan rhythm of Candombe in a modern structure using complex meters, elements of funk, and Afro-Cuban music. The orchestra will also celebrate the upcoming 95th birthday on April 22 of Maestro Candido Camero, NEA Jazz Master and father of modern conga drumming; in a special appearance, Camero will join the orchestra on stage in performance. NEW YORK PREMIERE AT MANHATTAN SCHOOL OF MUSIC, APRIL 4 On April 4, at Manhattan School of Music's Borden Auditorium, the orchestra will feature the New York premiere of Dr. Socrates Garcia's DOMINICAN SUITE for JAZZ ORCHESTRA and VANTAGE POINT. The suite is a tour de force multi-movement composition that explores Dominican rhythms such as merengue, pambiche, bachata, and palo, all under the rubric of the modern jazz big band, highlighted by forward-thinking modern harmonies and jazz arrangements. A highlight of the piece features an exceptional solo adapted by the legendary Dominican alto saxophonist, Tavito Vazquez, arranged by Garcia for the entire sax section. PROGRAM HIGHLIGHTS An additional NYC premiere: Dr. Socrates Garcia's VANTAGE POINT exploring the rhythmic relationship and cultural bond between Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Dizzy Gillespie's groundbreaking 1946 composition THINGS TO COME gets the "Sanabria treatment, " cast as a blistering merengue dedicated to another legendary Dominican musician, tenor saxophonist Mario Rivera, a mainstay of New York City's salsa and jazz scenes from the 1960s to his death in 2007. The concert is dedicated to Rivera along with Dominican saxophonist Tavito Vazquez both of whom raised their instrument to new heights. Gerson Borero's tone poem EL SENTIMIENTO DEL LATINO EN NUEVA YORK is dedicated to New York City's Latino community and is arranged by MSM alumnus Dr. Jeremy Fletcher. A stirring arrangement of the most famous merengue ever composed, Luis Alberti's COMPADRE PEDRO JUAN, by MSM Master's Degree graduate Takao Heisho (BM '12, MM '14), gives the piece a modern interpretation. QUISQUEYA LA BELLA: The Music of The Dominican Republic will be performed at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola, Jazz at Lincoln Center on Monday, March 28 (7:30 & 9:30 pm sets); cover $35 ($20 for students), and in MSM's Borden Auditorium on Monday, April 4 (7:30 pm), admission free, no tickets required. Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola, Jazz at Lincoln Center, tickets: jazz.org/dizzys or (212) 258-9595. For press seats and further information, please contact Caryn Freitag, Manhattan School of Music's Communications and Public Relations Associate, at cfreitag@msmnyc.edu or (917) 493-4429. ABOUT BOBBY SANABRIA Bandleader and seven-time Grammy nominee, drummer, percussionist, composer, arranger, educator, documentary film producer, multicultural warrior, and activist, Bobby Sanabria is a native Nuyorican born and raised in New York's South Bronx. His unique perspective comes from having performed and/or recorded with every major figure in the development of what today is known as Latin jazz. From the genre's acknowledged creator, maestro Mario Bauza, for whom Bobby recorded three Grammy-nominated CDs and worked as the drummer in his Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra for ten years, to Mongo Santamaria, with whom he started his career, to Tito Puente, Chico O'Farrill, Ray Barretto, Larry Harlow, Candido, Dizzy Gillespie, Marco Rizo, and many more. Mr. Sanabria's versatility and scope of musical influence as both a drummer and percussionist has extended to other forms of music. He has worked with such genre-bending artists as composers David Amram, Henry Threadgill, and poet Sekou Sundiata, as well as being named last year as the newest member of Max Roach's legendary percussion ensemble, M'BOOM. A noted educator, clinician, and educator, he is on the faculty of Manhattan School of Music and of the Jazz & Contemporary Music Program at the New School and directs both schools' Afro-Cuban jazz orchestras. He received Grammy nominations for the recordings Kenya Revisited Live!!! (2009), a masterful tribute and re-working of the Machito Afro-Cubans' legendary Kenya album, and Tito Puente: Masterworks Live!!! (2011) as the director of the MSM Afro-Cuban Jazz Orchestra. He has worked as a producer, advisor, and on-air personality on the award-winning documentaries, The Palladium Where Mambo Was King (Bravo, 2003), From Mambo To Hip Hop (PBS, 2007), Latin Music U.S.A. (PBS, 2009), and the soon to be released I Like it Like That: The Story of Latin Boogaloo (2015). He is the Co-Artistic Director/Curator of the Bronx Music Heritage Center and the Artistic Director/Artist in Residence of the Roberto Ocasio Memorial Latin Jazz Camp for High School Students in Cleveland, Ohio. Mr. Sanabria is a graduate of the Berklee College of Music, where he received his Bachelor of Music degree in 1979. He proudly endorses TAMA Drums, Latin Percussion Inc., Vic Firth Sticks, Sabian Cymbals, and Remo Drumheads. His latest recording is the double Grammy nominated Multiverse (2012) on the Jazzheads label, featuring his 19-piece big band. ABOUT DR. SOCRATES GARCIA Socrates Garcia is a composer, arranger, producer, recording engineer, guitarist, and educator from the Dominican Republic. He is the Director of Music Technology at UNC, where he teaches courses in music technology such as Introduction to Music Technology, Digital Composition, and Recording Techniques. He also oversees the recording studio, keyboard lab, and computer music lab. Dr. Garcia's credits include the album Yo Por Ti by Puerto Rican artist Olga Tanon, Grammy Award winner of Merengue Album of the Year 2001; musical director/keyboardist for Los Ilegales in their 1997-1998 Latin American tour; keyboardist for multi-Grammy winner Juan Luis Guerra; and guest performer with the Dominican Republic's National Symphony Orchestra, among others. As a guitarist or keyboardist, he has performed in many Latin-American countries, including Mexico, Colombia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Aruba, and throughout the Dominican Republic. As an arranger/producer and recording engineer his work is found numerous albums and a myriad of side projects. His first solo CD, Suenos, was released in 2005. Dr. Garcia studied composition with Dick Grove, Jamey Simmons, H. David Caffey, Fred Sturm, and Paul Elwood. He served as Adjunct Professor of Music at Middle Tennessee State University and taught Jazz Harmony and Theory at the Santo Domingo Conservatory of Music between 1999 and 2004. His jazz orchestra compositions are published through UNC Jazz Press. He has won composition awards from the Jazz Education Network and Casa de Teatro, and is a voting member of NARAS (National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences) and LARAS (Latin Academy of Recording Arts and Science). Dr. Garcia completed an undergraduate degree in Theory and Composition at Luther College, a Master of Arts degree in Jazz Studies (Composition) at Middle Tennessee State University, and a Doctor of Arts degree in Jazz Studies (Composition) at UNC. ABOUT NACHO GONZALEZ Nacho Gonzalez Nappa is a Uruguayan musician and social entrepreneur. Born in Montevideo (1985), Nacho is passionate about Afro Uruguayan music, Jazz and Tango. He studied and performed with the best musicians in Uruguay and 2013 he began studying Jazz Composition at Berklee College Music. Besides music, Nacho spent 8 years working in the social sector, and is the co-founder of techo.org in the U.S. and socialab.com, two of the largest and most effective poverty reduction efforts in Latin America. He is also a journalist, and worked for many years as a literature reviewer at El Observador newspaper. ABOUT CANDIDO CAMERO So well known and respected, his first name alone -- Candido -- is all that is necessary for jazz aficionados to know who he is. Credited with being the first percussionist to bring conga drumming to jazz, Candido Camero is also known for his contributions to the development of mambo and Afro-Cuban jazz. Born in Havana, Cuba, in 1921, Camero first began making music as a young child, beating rhythms on empty condensed milk cans in place of bongos. He worked for six years with the CMQ Radio Orchestra and at the famed Cabaret Tropicana. He came to the United States in 1946 with the dance team Carmen and Rolando, and very soon after was playing with Billy Taylor, who wrote in 1954, "I have not heard anyone who even approaches the wonderful balance between jazz and Cuban elements that Candido demonstrates." By the early 1950s, Camero was a featured soloist with the Stan Kenton Orchestra, with whom he toured the U.S. playing three congas (at a time when other congueros were playing only one) in addition to a cowbell and guiro (a fluted gourd played with strokes from a stick). He created another unique playing style by tuning his congas to specific pitches so that he could play melodies like a pianist. He becam write your comments about the article :: 2016 Jazz News :: home page You have permission to edit this article. Edit Close Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton respond to audience members at the Democratic presidential primary debate March 9 in Miami. Cyprus PIO: Turkish Cypriot and Turkish Media Review, 16-03-22 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 TURKISH CYPRIOT AND TURKISH MEDIA REVIEW No. 54/16 22.03.2016 [A] TURKISH CYPRIOT / TURKISH PRESS [01] Turkey and the occupation regime will reportedly sign a protocol for the transferring of electricity to the occupation regime via underwater cables [02] Erdogan accused the EU of not keeping its promises [03] CTP's Foreign Relations Secretary criticizes Akinci's statements on the Cyprus problem; it is not correct to give a timetable [04] Sennaroglu resigned from CTP [05] Self-styled deputies participated in PACE meeting in Tbilisi [06] Data on employment in the occupied area of Cyprus [07] Eleven TIR of Turkish Cypriot potatoes have been turned back from Mersin Port [08] A tomb of 2.500 years was found in occupied Potamos tou Kampou village [09] Limassol's Cultural Vakif Foundation announced the restoration of the Limassol cemetery [10] Turkish tourism sector expects $12 bln loss in revenue [A] TURKISH CYPRIOT / TURKISH PRESS [01] Turkey and the occupation regime will reportedly sign a protocol for the transferring of electricity to the occupation regime via underwater cables Under the title: "Electricity to be transferred from Turkey to the TRNC", Turkish daily Milliyet (22.03.16) reports that as it was made known, after the transferring of the water from Turkey, steps will be taken for the transferring of electricity from Turkey to the occupation regime. According to the "official website" of the "foreign ministry", in the aspect: "Ties with Turkey", it is said that "cables are planned to be laid in the sea from Anamour [Mersin] to Keryneia], within the framework of the implementation of a project called "electricity transferring project". The paper writes the following: "In the framework of the electricity project which envisages the transferring of electricity from Turkey to the TRNC, Turkey and the TRNC will sign a protocol. The Cyprus Electricity Authority (KIB-TEK) on behalf of the TRNC and Turkish Electricity Transmission Company (TEIAS) will undertake the task to carry out the project. Within the framework of the project, cables will be laid in the sea from Mersin/Anamour to Keryneia, TEIAS will open international tenders for the underwater cables construction works and companies from Turkey, Italy, the UK and France could participate in the tender. The electrical energy to be produced will be transferred to the TRNC". (AK) [02] Erdogan accused the EU of not keeping its promises According to illegal Bayrak television (online, 21.03.16), Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in statements regarding Turkey's EU membership process, visa free travel and the Cyprus issue, said that Turkey had made in the past a proposal to then UN Secretary General Kofi Annan while in Davos in order to solve the Cyprus issue but added that Annan had replied that he had made three attempts but had failed and did not want any further part. "When I responded to Mr Annan that next time the Turks will be one step ahead of the Greeks he agreed to this and therefore we took steps", the Turkish President argued. Claiming that during their workings the Greek and the Greek Cypriots weren't sincere and therefore when the time had come to put their signatures on the agreement they had refrained from doing this, Erdogan said that Annan did not accept this outcome therefore the Greek-Greek Cypriot duo had signed the agreement and took it to a referenda. "65% of Turkish Cypriots in the TRNC (editor's note: the breakaway regime in the occupied area of the Republic of Cyprus) voted yes while 75% of Greek Cypriots in the South of Cyprus (editor's note: the government controlled area of the Republic of Cyprus) voted no", said Erdogan. "What happened? None of the promises made were kept and despite this the Greek Cypriot side entered the EU unilaterally. They made South Cyprus a part of the EU but not North Cyprus. I always say this, they are not sincere. We are sincere but they are not", Erdogan said. He added that the payments that needed to be made by the EU were also not made. "The EU themselves failed to comply with the EU acquis communautaire and since that day we are continuing on our own path. When we look at the past we see that they have never kept their promises and they never will we are aware of this fact", the Turkish President argued. [03] CTP's Foreign Relations Secretary criticizes Akinci's statements on the Cyprus problem; it is not correct to give a timetable Turkish Cypriot daily Kibris Postasi newspaper (22.03.16) reports that Muhittin Tolga Ozsaglam, foreign relations' secretary of the Republican Turkish Party (CTP), has criticized Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci's statements on the Cyprus problem and pointed out to his statement by which he described as positive the agreement reached between Turkey and the EU. In statements to a television station yesterday, he said: "Mustafa Akinci is a great disappointment. I am watching him with a great disappointment. In the past Mustafa Akinci had statements which could be considered conservative. Now it is as if he is heading towards this. Reference has always been made to Confidence Building Measures. Mustafa Akinci failed in this as well. He is not seeing positively the opening of new gates as well as the issue of fenced off Varosha. I wonder, what did he do regarding the fenced off Varosha area? While he was saying this during the election period, why should we delay it, if this will happen with the solution? I am not saying let Varosha open. A feasibility study could be conducted. Today the area of Mesarya is not connected with the south. If you are going towards a solution, the people should have social, trade relations. What could be the fear for this? The opening of new gates will deepen the status quo. This is correct. There is a drawback. However, these people have needs". Ozsaglam said that it is not correct to give a timetable for the solution of the Cyprus problem. Noting that there is no agreed text or constitution in the current situation, he argued: "The paperwork for this will not be finished. If everything goes positively, I see [it in] June 2017". Replying to a question regarding the guarantees, Ozsaglam said that according to a survey, the percentage of those who insist on Turkey's guarantees has been decreased to 48% comparing to last year. He added: "The guarantees should be discussed in the very end. Surveys show that a big change has happened. There is a survey conducted by Mr. Ahmet Sozen. The percentage of those insisting on Turkey's guarantees decreased to 48%. I relate this to the insecure situation in Turkey. A multi-sided, a five-party conference should be convened regarding the Treaty of Guarantees and the issue should be discussed [?]" (I/Ts.) [04] Sennaroglu resigned from CTP According to illegal Bayrak television (online, 21.03.16), the self-styled deputy with the Republican Turkish Party - United Forces (CTP-UG) Onder Sennaroglu resigned from his party. Speaking to the "BRT" about his resignation, Sennaroglu said that his relationship with his party had been hampered for some time now and therefore he has decided to resign from the party. An official memorandum regarding Sennaroglu, self-styled deputy Hasan Tacoy and self-styled deputy Mentes Gunduz's resignations were read during the plenary session at "parliament" on Monday informing other "deputies" regarding the resignations. With the latest resignations, the Democrat Party-National Forces (DP-UG) has 5 "MP's" at "parliament" and the CTP-BG has 20 "MP's. The UBP has "18 MP's", the TDP has 3 and there are currently 4 "independent MP's. [05] Self-styled deputies participated in PACE meeting in Tbilisi According to illegal Bayrak television (online, 21.03.16), a delegation from the so-called assembly of the breakaway regime in the occupied area of the Republic of Cyprus is representing the "TRNC" at the committee meeting of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on Migration, Refugees and the Displaced Persons in the Georgian capital, Tbilisi. Mehmet Caglar, "deputy" of the Republican Turkish Party (CTP) and Ozdemir Berova, "deputy" with the Democrat Party National Forces (DP-UG), are representing the "TRNC" at the meetings to be held on 21-22 of March. They will return to the occupied area of Cyprus on Wednesday after completing their contacts in Tbilisi. [06] Data on employment in the occupied area of Cyprus Turkish Cypriot daily Halkin Sesi (22.03.16) reports that the highest employment rate generally in "north Cyprus" is the service sector with 78.6%. According to a report by the "state planning bureau" ("DPO") regarding the employment in 2015, the number of people, who are employed in "north Cyprus" is 103,149 (44.6%), and from these, 593 people (0.6%) work in "south Cyprus". The paper publishes the following table, which shows the distribution of employment per sectors and in occupied town or villages, as well as the registered and non-employees: Total Social Insurance Department Pension Fund Not registered Others Total [01] Total 103,149 83,056 12,973 6,845 275 a) Agriculture 4,017 2,259 117 1,640 0 b) Industry 9,981 8,764 449 768 0 c) Construction 8,096 7,152 57 859 28 d) Services 81,055 64,880 12,350 3,578 247 Centre [01] Total 56,812 46,749 6,283 3,568 211 a) Agriculture 1,276 582 0 695 0 b) Industry 5,107 4,581 135 391 0 c) Construction 4,578 4,206 27 345 0 d) Services 45,851 37,381 6,121 2,137 211 District/Villages [01] Total 46,337 36,307 6,690 3,277 64 a) Agriculture 2,741 1,678 117 946 0 b) Industry 4,874 4,183 314 377 0 c) Construction 3,518 2,946 30 514 28 d) Services 35,204 27,499 6,228 1,440 36 (DPs) [07] Eleven TIR of Turkish Cypriot potatoes have been turned back from Mersin Port Under the title "11 TIR of potatoes came back", Turkish Cypriot daily Kibris newspaper (22.03.16) reports that potato producers from occupied Elia village told the paper that during the past few days their products were turned back from Mersin port in Turkey. The producers noted that 11 TIR of potatoes and that were turned back from Turkey during this period. The producers argued this year their product is of very high quality, but the price is very low and complained that exports cannot happen because the "state" is not interested enough. A producer named Kemal Karadayi said that the self-styled minister of agriculture had stated that Mersin is open for the Turkish Cypriots, but this is not so. He noted that during the past couple of days eleven tons of Turkish Cypriot potatoes were returned from Mersin with the pretext that these suffered from a disease named "Lida". (I/Ts.) [08] A tomb of 2.500 years was found in occupied Potamos tou Kampou village Turkish Cypriot daily Kibris newspaper (22.03.16) reports that a 2.500 year old tomb has been found at a site area in occupied Potamos tou Kampou village as a result of the ground giving in due to rain. The tomb, which has seven chambers, was unearthed when the "antiquities department" attempted to interfere to prevent the collapse. It is estimated that the tomb, which is located at the hills opposite the "Swan of Soli Fish Restaurant", belonged to a noble family and is the biggest tomb found until now in the occupied area of Lefka. (I/Ts.) [09] Limassol's Cultural Vakif Foundation announced the restoration of the Limassol cemetery Turkish Cypriot daily Gunes newspaper (22.03.16) reports that the Cultural Vakif Foundation of Limassol has announced that after contacts they held with the Limassol Municipality, it has been decided that the Limassol cemetery where the "martyrs of 1974, 1963" are laid, will be fully restored. According to a written statement issued by the chairman of the board of trustees of the Limassol Cultural Vakif Foundation, Yucem Rasimoglu, the works for the restoration of the Limassol cemetery are already launched. The restoration works are supported by the Cyprus Vakif Foundation and the Limassol Municipality. (AK) [10] Turkish tourism sector expects $12 bln loss in revenue According to Turkish daily Hurriyet Daily News (online, 21.03.16), tourism representatives have said that 2016 has been "much worse" than the predicted "worst case scenario," noting the revenue loss in the sector would likely surge to $12 billion over the year. The current problems, which have risen amid escalating security concerns and a significant decrease in the number of Russian tourists, will likely impact other sectors, including the agriculture sector, and push up the unemployment rate across the country, according to sector representatives. The head of the Antalya Chamber of Trade and Industry (ATSO), Davut Cetin, said that the number of Russian tourists has almost zeroed over this year and they expected a significant drop in the number of arrivals from Europe, mainly from Germany, after a series of terror attacks which recently hit Turkey. He noted that the organization submitted various scenarios to the government after the Russian crisis erupted, but only optimistic scenarios were shared with the public. "We are at a point which is much worse than what we had earlier predicted in our worst case scenario," he noted at a meeting late March 18. The vice president of the organization and the head of the Mediterranean Touristic Hoteliers' Association (AKTOB), Yusuf Hacisuleyman, said that they predicted a loss of $8 billion in revenue in their previous scenario upon the predicted loss of around 4 million tourists following the jet crisis with Russia, by presuming the spending per capita at $1,000 plus the multiplier effect at 1.87. "With the addition of the expected losses from the European market, we have now revised our potential revenue losses to $12 billion," he said one day before another terror attack in Istanbul, which killed at least four foreign nationals in central Istanbul on March 19. Hacisuleyman said that the rising number of security warnings for Turkey by Western countries has spurred further losses in the sector, noting that the German Travel Association (DRV) cancelled a four-day meeting scheduled in April in the Aegean resort of Kusadasi. "When travel agencies cancelled their meetings over security concerns, we cannot wait for arrivals from Germany to Turkey," he added. He noted that the number of European tourists may decline by almost half over this year, adding that the number of Iranian tourists is expected to decrease to 30,000 over this year from around 45,000 last year. Spain will lure much more tourists than it did earlier this year, and may reach around 80 million tourists, according to sector representatives. Another popular destination will be Greece, they added. Cetin noted many hoteliers would not open their hotels this year, and around 80,000-100,000 job losses are expected in Antalya alone. He said that the problems in the tourism sector have already started to spill over to other sectors, mainly the agricultural sector, and the losses will become more visible by May and the following months. TURKISH AFFAIRS SECTION http://www.moi.gov.cy/pio (DPs/AM) Cyprus Press and Information Office: Turkish Cypriot Press Review Directory - Previous Article - Next Article Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-03-22 From: The Athens News Agency at CONTENTS [01] PM Tsipras expresses solidarity with the Belgian people [01] PM Tsipras expresses solidarity with the Belgian people "Brussels, our Union's capital is under attack. We mourn the dead and pledge to conquer terror through democracy. Nous sommes tous Bruxellois," the Greek Foreign Minister posted on Twitter. Aegean flight, which departed from Athens International airport at 8:30 with final destination Brussels Airport, landed at Dusseldorf airport on Tuesday. Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-03-22 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at CONTENTS [01] EU heads of state, institutions say Brussels terror was 'attack against open society' [02] UNHCR, aid NGOs pull out of hotspots and refugee camps as protests intensify [01] EU heads of state, institutions say Brussels terror was 'attack against open society' BRUSSELS (ANA-MPA/M. Aroni) a The EU heads of state or government and the leaders of EU institutions issued a joint statement on Tuesday condemning the terror attacks in Brussels and noting that it was an attack against its open democratic society. "The European Union mourns the victims of today's terrorist attacks in Brussels. It was an attack on our open democratic society. Our common European institutions are hosted in Brussels, thanks to the generosity of the government of Belgium and the Belgian people. The European Union and its member-states stand firm with Belgium in solidarity and are determined to face this threat together with all necessary means," the statement reads. "This latest attack only strengthens our resolve to defend the European values and tolerance from the attacks of the intolerant. We will be united and firm in the fight against hatred, violent extremism and terrorism," it concluded. [02] UNHCR, aid NGOs pull out of hotspots and refugee camps as protests intensify The UN Refugee Agency announced on Tuesday it is suspending some of its activities in Greece as it opposes mandatory detention, UNHCR spokesperson Melissa Fleming during a press conference in Geneva, adding that open hot spots are being turned into closed detention centers. "UNHCR has till now been supporting the authorities in the so-called 'hotspots' on the Greek islands, where refugees and migrants were received, assisted, and registered. Under the new provisions, these sites have now become detention facilities," Fleming said. The UNHCR said it will maintain a presence to carry out protection monitoring and ensure that refugee and human rights standards are upheld, as well as provide information on the rights and procedures to seek asylum. Meanwhile, non-governmental aid organisations working in northern Greece, at the refugee and migrant camp in Idomeni on the border with the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM), said they were pulling their staff out due to rising tensions as protests against the closing of the borders continued for a second day. The news of Tuesday's terror strikes in Belgium arrived late but spread gloom and despair among the refugees and migrants camped near the border with FYROM. "Now they aren't going to want us in Europe at all," said Ahmed, a Syrian refugee from Aleppo, as he prepared to join a second day of protests on the railway tracks in the Greece-FYROM no-man's land to demand that the borders open. The refugees and migrants continued a sit-in protest throughout the day, never ceasing to shout slogans. Earlier, two men had set fire to themselves and had to be taken to hospital, sparking an outbreak of anger that almost provoked protestors into moving against the fence before calmer heads prevailed. Later, a number of aid organisations said they were pulling staff out of the camp, where tensions were running high, but would monitor the situation and leave behind equipment so they could return if necessary. The UNHCR spokesperson also said that the organization's staff will continue to be present at the shoreline and sea port to provide life-saving assistance - including transport to hospitals where needed. "We are counseling new arrivals on asylum in Greece, including on family reunification and on access to services. And we are identifying people with specific needs," she noted. UNHCR is additionally concerned that the EU-Turkey deal is being implemented before the required safeguards are in place in Greece, the spokesperson noted. "At present, Greece does not have sufficient capacity on the islands for assessing asylum claims, nor the proper conditions to accommodate people decently and safely pending an examination of their cases," she said. UNICEF also raised concerns on Tuesday that the deal would put many refugee minors at risk. Fleming also clarified that the UNHCR is not a party to the EU-Turkey deal, nor will it be involved in returns or detention. "We will continue to assist the Greek authorities to develop an adequate reception capacity," she added. Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article There are many answers, but to find them, we must travel back in time a bit, and consider the history of that little island, and of the world, in days long gone by. Watching footage of Barack H. Obamas trip to Cuba, which the sycophant press never fails to call historic, one cannot help but ask some questions. The Bloodiest Century in Human History The brothers Fidel and Raul Castro were born, respectively, in 1926 and 1931 so they missed the carnage of World War I, the international influenza epidemic of 1918, the terrors of the Russian Revolution in the 1920s. They were children during Stalins dekulakization program in the 1930s, teenagers during the days of Hitlers gas chambers during World War II. And they spent those years on the tropical Caribbean island of Cuba, far from the action, far from the slaughter. But the brothers Castro made up for everything they missed. In the era known as the Bloodiest Century, they appear to have set a goal of bringing the bloodshed of the first half of the century into the second, as soon as they came of age in the early 1950s. They joined, and soon took over, a Marxist revolutionary group called The Movement (never listen to the fools who claim that they only became Marxist later in life; they were Stalinist from the day they began), and their revolution was a bloody one. Yes, of course, most revolutions are bloody, but theirs was unusual in that it was headed by people who clearly took great delight in the butchering their fellow human beings. While the American Revolution is famous for how unified our Founders were in keeping violence limited to the battlefields, the Castro brothers, along with their comrade Che Guevara, enjoyed murder most when people werent shooting back, usually in forests, or behind buildings, or against the backdrop of a ditch or hill, chained and bound, unable to escape the aim of the firing squad or the executioner. On January 7, 1959, the day that the United States inexplicably recognized the new government under Fidel Castro, that government executed ten officials of the former (Batista) government. A few days later, on January 11, Castro allies all over the island held kangaroo courts to try, convict, and murder countless people whom they claimed were associated with the old government. Then on January 12, they gathered another 75 or so in a pit, and executed them all in a seven-hour span, burying them together in a mass grave, the sheer numbers making this one of the most horrific of their many atrocities. By March 19, it was reported that 483 former government officials had been executed in the ten weeks since the takeover, and even fellow communists were calling for an end to the murders. But thats just in the well publicized moments at and after the government was overthrown. The prior years are full of such incidents, with Raul Castro usually claiming the honors for himself. As minister of the armed forces before the revolution was won, brother Raul did the killings as Fidel did the speechmaking. Conservative estimates of the Cubans who died directly at the hands of a Castro, or directly on their orders, from the start of The Movement to the present, number about 30,000. But even that is a fraction of the deaths of which the Castros can boast. Once their power was consolidated, they began to work closely with the Soviet Union. As Leonid Brezhnev plotted the spread of Soviet communism across the third world, the Castros served as the source of agitators, military advisors, terrorists and even invasion forces for that creeping menace. This Soviet-Cuban relationship began in the 1950s, and as soon as Cuba was firmly in the Castros hands, 1500 Cubans were sent to Russia for careful tutelage, in preparation for the years to come. The Castros troops supported the Stalinist uprising in Congo in 1964, the Ethiopian Stalinist dictator Mengistu Haile Miriam in 1978, the Marxist MPLA and its successors in Angola throughout the 1960s and 70s and many more besides. They undermined government after government, sometimes by joining and strengthening existing indigenous rebel movements, often by starting the trouble themselves and only pretending to be homegrown. Of all the continents, only Antarctica has been free of the Cuban effort to foment rebellion. The Castros forces were ubiquitous in the spread of world communism of the Cold War. And then, when that Cold War ended at last the USSR in fragments, Marxist theory in tatters Cuba resisted the trend. The tens of thousands of innocents killed by Cubas soldiers and advisors all over the world, are remembered only by family members left behind, and by mass graves, marked and unmarked, a quiet, haunting reminder of those evil days when the Castro brothers thought they might rule the world. The American Effort And where was the United States all this time, besides being, geographically, just ninety miles away? The United States spent the Cold War conflicted. Weary from two world wars, and too beaten down by two painful efforts in Asia, the United States wavered between actively opposing the global spread of the cancer of communism, and pleading non-interventionism as it continued unabated. Only finally in the 1980s, under the presidency of Ronald Reagan, was Detente replaced with Rollback as official US policy. The US government often sent its own advisors to the same places the Cubans did, to support the resistance to that Marxist mockery of culture, that philosophy of slavery and death, but too often, it was too little, too late. Only under Reagan did the US government finally respond with an ideological weapon to confront the alluring claims of the communists. Radio Marti was launched in 1983, when the Soviet-Cuban partnership was at its height, when they had spread their corrupt philosophy across the world almost without opposition for twenty years. Radio Marti succeeded in hitting back, first on radio and then on television, exposing the lies of Marxism for what they are. The USA had a policy, unbroken for fifty years, that we would not allow commerce with Cuba as long as the Castros continued to rule. Nothing against the Cuban people; this policy is in solidarity with them against their vicious rulers. By some counts, a million people have fled Cuba since the revolution, many in full knowledge that they wouldnt survive the trip, because even death at sea is preferable to a life in thrall to the masters of the secret police and the death squads. The USA should have overthrown them long ago, but at least our stand on principle to never do business with Cuba while the Castros remain in power was consistent and honorable. The Castros killed hundreds of Americans, and confiscated billions of dollars of US-owned land and assets, when they nationalized everything in sight in the heat of their greed. Such crimes cannot be forgiven. The Cuban Problem Today The Castros are now old, the last remaining representatives on earth of the Stalinist era. Russia and its Warsaw Pact satellites all overthrew their shackles 25 years ago; Mao and Pol Pot have long since gone to their well-deserved torment in the beyond but still the Castros hang on, now well into their 80s. They cannot possibly be long for this world; prudence would require patience on our part. We can start from scratch when these criminals are off the scene; we cannot start from scratch (hitting a reset button) while the same villains remain in power. Russia killed millions of its own citizens and others in the 20th century; so did China, so did Germany but the leaders who gave those orders are long since dead. New leaders are in charge of those countries, leaders without the blood of millions dripping from their hands. An American president or an American Secretary of State can meet with them without picking up the contagion of having legitimized a serial killers regime. Not so with Cuba. Cuba remains the home of death squads, of secret police on every corner, of summary executions and shallow graves. And the very same people are in charge today as fifty years ago. We cannot build euphemisms around a relationship with Cuba theyre different people now, its a different government, times have changed because we know all too well that such euphemisms are untrue . In fact, they ARE the same people; its still Fidel and Raul Castro, the aging serial killers themselves, never replaced, never overthrown by their own people like Honecker and Jaruzelski were, or tried and executed like Nicolae and Elena Ceaucescu. America cannot shake hands with the Castros and retain our moral high ground. These are the very men who stole our land and businesses in Cuba, who sent terrorists to fight against our men on a dozen battlefields across the globe. These are the two villains who pulled the trigger in hundreds of summary executions that we know of; and the logical mind knows they must be guilty of many more as well. At first glance, Raul Castro looks like a sweet old man, a kindly old gent from an American nursing home, but that is only because of our own cultural bias. We assume decency and goodness in the aged, because it is what we know; it is what we see all around us here at home. But when we study our history and to discuss politics, we must study our history, or we are doomed to repeat the errors of the past then we must acknowledge reality: that when we shake hands with Raul Castro, we are forgiving and forgetting countless crimes, countless mortal sins, massive destruction on a global scale, over fifty years of bloodthirsty acts from a man who has not even requested forgiveness. And this means that our handshake constitutes our endorsement of those crimes. No. Not in our name. Barack Obama is an individual, a man with a hand to shake and a head to bow if he chooses, but he does not make this trip to Cuba in our name. When he shakes hands with Raul Castro, thats just little Barry, son of hippie communists, private citizen, lowering himself to their level. It is not America. America is the nation that spent fifty years training pilots, soldiers, sailors, and marines, flying countless missions of bombers and fighters all over the world, building a powerful combined nuclear and conventional arsenal, to defend the free world from aggressive, invasive communism. And this nation does not shake hands with Castro brothers. Barack Obama may travel on Air Force One and claim the title once worn by giants like Washington, Coolidge, and Reagan, but his actions this week are not the actions of an American president, and they do not mean that America has lost its sense of right and wrong. Obama could easily have waited until the Castros died; America has no pressing need to build a trading partnership with this tiny poverty-stricken island. There was no reason not to wait, except for Obamas personal reason: Knowing that it would be wrong to do so, knowing that it would be anti-American to do so, Obama could not resist; he had to do it before he was out of office, and while the Castros still live. Barack Obama could not miss this last opportunity to shame America. Obama acts on his own while real America, back here at home, remembers and mourns sixty years of the Castros tragic victims. We can only pray that the poor, tyrannized subjects of the Castros rule understand that, whatever Barack Obama may say or do to seemingly endorse their slavemasters, he does not represent us. Copyright 2016 John F. Di Leo John F. Di Leo is a Chicago-based writer and international trade expert. He was a very minor activist during the Cold War, one-time honored with the presidency of the Ethnic American Council, a freedom fighter support group, and he will never forget the valiant leaders of the Captive Nations movements and the heroic freedom fighters he met during those days from Nicaragua, Angola, Mozambique, Poland and, yes, Cuba, each of whom had to fight against the Castros Cuban advisors as they tried to free their countries from the infection of the Soviet-Cuban axis. Permission is hereby granted to forward freely, provided it is uncut and the IR URL and byline are included. Follow John F. Di Leo on Facebook or LinkedIn, or on Twitter at @johnfdileo. Imperial Valley News Center The United States Welcomes Release of Djiboutian Prisoners of War Washington, DC - The United States welcomes the release by Eritrea of four Djiboutian prisoners, taken captive after the 2008 conflict over the shared border between the two countries. We remain concerned for the remaining prisoners of war who have not been reunited with their families. We thank the Government of Qatar for their mediation efforts to bring about their release and this contribution to regional peace and security. We reaffirm our strong support for Qatars ongoing efforts to mediate and the work of the Governments of Djibouti and Eritrea to resolve outstanding issues. From the Himalayas in the north of India, the Great India Drive follows the mountain range as it emerges in the north-east after traversing the length of Nepal, which we avoided due to the unrest. Karan Mathur and Kshitij Sharma narrate the experience. By Karan Mathur: After the harsh and unforgiving terrain of Ladakh, the Creta Great India Drive sets course due east and heads towards the last surviving monarchy of Asia, Bhutan. (Photo: Pawan Dagia) After being caught for days in snowstorms in the unforgiving Himalayas in the north of India, the crew for our Creta 'Great India Drive' finally entered Delhi battered and tired but with spirits still high. Enroute darjeeling, the road traNsformed from muti-lane highways to snaking uphill climbs in the blink of an eye. (Photo: Pawan Dagia) advertisement Although our plan of tracing the majestic Himalayan mountain range was interrupted due to the unrest in Nepal, we planned to catch up with the mountain range as it re-entered India in the north-east. Plans were made and a route chalked out, with the starting point of leg 2 of the drive being set as Bagdogra in West Bengal. The only problem was that between us and Bagdogra lay 1450km. The Hyundai Creta was an eager performer through every uphill section of the roads weaving their way to Sikkim and beyond. (Photo: Pawan Dagia) We started in Uttar Pradesh, crossing the entire length of the vast state, before entering Bihar and finally getting into West Bengal. The way didn't prove to be much of a challenge for the Creta as the roads in Bihar turned out to be good and more importantly, traffic free. The journey was taken care of with just an overnight stop on the way. ALSO READ: Great India Drive in a Hyundai Creta- Part 1 Time seemed to pass us by, we were too busy straining our necks and bodies trying to get that last glance of the previous valley or rock face. (Photo: Pawan Dagia) From Bagdogra we were headed to Sikkim but decided to take in the sights of Darjeeling on the way. The roads transformed from multi-lane highways to snaking uphill climbs in the blink of an eye, specially because we decided to take the scenic route through the tea gardens at Pankhabari. The road to Yuksom tested our vehicles mettle in every way possible, be it crowded streets or broken tarmac. (Photo: Pawan Dagia) The road to Yuksom tested our vehicles mettle in every way possible, be it crowded streets or broken tarmac. (Photo: Pawan Dagia) Since this is not the main route to Darjeeling, we seldom came across other vehicles and it gave us a good opportunity to re-acquaint ourselves with the hill-climbing abilities of the Creta. The next morning, before setting off into the heart of Sikkim, our priority was meeting up with the famous narrow gauge Darjeeling Himalayan Railway, more popularly known as the toy train. The road to enter the state of Sikkim was clogged for three hours, waiting for a broken bridge to be mended. (Photo: Pawan Dagia) The road to enter the state of Sikkim was clogged for three hours, waiting for a broken bridge to be mended. (Photo: Pawan Dagia) The aforementioned bridge was finally opened after the maintenance workers toiled away fixing the damage. (Photo: Pawan Dagia) advertisement Everyone had a mix of fascination and admiration for the experience and the locomotives, which were built between 1879 and 1881. It was a surreal experience sharing the road with a train which weaved in and out of traffic as we raced the toy train from Ghoom to the main Darjeeling railway station at the high speeds bordering 20kmph. The Hyundai Creta finally gets on the just repaired bridge towards Sikkim. (Photo: Pawan Dagia) Unfortunately, the drive is not as romantic as they seem to make it in the movies. This probably because of heavy traffic and a lot of urbanisation on the way as well. Seldom did we get to see the lush green tea gardens on this stretch of the drive. The gates at the Sikkim-WB border had carvings harking back to their heritage. (Photo: Pawan Dagia) But most of our excitement and high spirits were washed away at the Sikkim border, which is marked by a river. The suspension bridge over the river was missing a few steel panels, with traffic piled up on either side. Fortunately workers mended the panels and dragged them back to fill the gaping holes quite quickly but we'd still remained stationary for more than three hours. The ESP always kept the car in line and the suspension set up seemed to be tailor made for the terrain. (Photo: Pawan Dagia) advertisement One huge steel panel was flattened into shape and then dragged and put over the gaping hole in the bridge and we were finally able to cross over into Sikkim and headed straight towards the quaint town of Yuksom. The sheer beauty of the entire region was so breathtaking that the episode at the bridge seemed like a distant memory. The sheer sights of the entire region were truly breathtaking and our chariot always soldiered on without any fuss or drama. (Photo: Pawan Dagia) To make up for lost time we would have to buckle up early before heading out for Gangtok, our target destination for the day, with a stops to catch a glimpse of the Kanchenjunga peak, of which there are good views to be had from Pelling town. En route, the majestic Kanchenjunga Falls is too good a sight to miss. On our way down, we even visited the tranquil confines of the Pemayangtse Monastery before heading off to Ravangla. The Creta was taking in all that Sikkim had to throw at it in its stride. The 1.6 diesel mill sang along merrily and the 6-speed auto transmission joining in for the chorus, it had its delays on the get-go but brings in the power strongly after that point. It is also the home to a 103-foot statue of Buddha completed in 2013. (Photo: Pawan Dagia) advertisement The main attraction at Ravangla is the Buddha Park and Gonjang Monastery. We finished filming duties but followed up with a moment of silence, everyone praying for a successful and safe journey ahead. The park itself is immaculately kept, neat and clean, an oasis in the dust and dirt that abounds in these busy north east towns. Ravangla had a peaceful aura and spinning the prayer wheels was on the crews to-do list from the start. (Photo: Pawan Dagia) We got into Gangtok at rush hour traffic time in the evening but snaking roads proved to be no challenge for the Creta. With a light steering, comfortable seats, good brakes and an automatic gearbox, it proved to be a good mountain city car. A grand entrance into the beautiful city of Thimpu. (Photo: Pawan Dagia) The next morning saw us having an earlier start than usual, the reason being the numerous places we wanted to visit in and around Gangtok including the Rumtek Monastery and then staring the mad-dash back to Sevoke to make our way to the entry point to Bhutan. Prayer flags hang proud in Pelling. (Photo: Pawan Dagia) The destination for the day was Jaigaon, on mostly unlit but smooth tarmac. The distance seemed to fly past in and post an overnight halt in Jaigaon, the team rolled into the open Bhutanese border at Phuentsholing. With permits and formalities done in under an hour, we headed straight towards the Bhutanese capital, Thimphu. Snow covered cypress trees at the Dochula pass. (Photo: Pawan Dagia) The roads of Bhutan are like a never ending roller coaster ride, narrow but as smooth as a baby's bottom, for the most part. The traffic too is orderly, everyone gives you the right of way and the only time you have to honk is on blind turns. The Himalayas towered over us with the road snaking through the heart of the range, and one could see the entire path up the mountains from the base and most of the way till Thimphu. The Dochula Pass was home to 108 chortens. (Photo: Pawan Dagia) To call the drive to Thimphu beautiful would be an understatement. The road broadened about 30km from Thimphu and the compact SUV showed its true colours. The ESP always kept the car in line and the suspension setup seemed to be tailor made for the terrain, the crossover simply flowed from one corner to the next, eating them up like a hungry Rottweiler attacking his lunch until we parked up in the Bhutanese capital. Thimphu turned out to be a quaint city cradled in the arms of the mighty mountain range. The people were warm and welcoming but the temperature simply wasn't, with average temperatures nudging -2 degrees. Memorial Chorten is a must see for everyone. (Photo: Pawan Dagia) Of the three days we spent in Bhutan, every morning we would find the Creta covered in frost yet the Hyundai never faltered to start even once. Even in these frigid conditions at the onset of winters, the Creta always came to life without being called twice. You dont have to travel too far for a great view. (Photo: Pawan Dagia) Unlike most days we had a rather relaxed start and we decided to go around Thimphu for a day as the permits for our next destination, Punakha, would take a day. When in the capital, a visit to the Shakyamuni Dordenma Buddha statue is imperative. Thimpu cradled in a valley. (Photo: Pawan Dagia) Though the statue has been recently completed, it is said that renowned yogi Sonam Zangpo prophesised that a Padmasambhava statue of Buddha will be erected in the 20th century and cast its blessings. The statue stands at 169ft tall and is built with bronze and gilded gold. To go beyond Thimphu you need permits for everywhere barring Paro and upon learning that the road to Punakha was particularly bad we decided that that's where we would go. As we ignored the warnings, we discovered the entire 70km stretch was covered in mud, littered with nasty undulations and blind turns suddenly ending in landslides. The Creta performed great here too. Help was never too far away. (Photo: Pawan Dagia) The suspension soaked most of the bumps and even the ones that caught us off guard were dealt with without much fuss. The gearbox was in a constant battle with elevation but the ride quality kept frowns at bay. After just 30km we pulled up at the Dochula Pass. It is at a height of 10,200 meters and home to 108 memorial Chortens or stupas nestled amidst the frost laden cypress trees. On reaching Bhutan's old capital, we were welcomed by the sight of the beautiful Punakha Dzong. A Dzong is a fortress or a castle. Built in the early 17th century and on the banks of the Mo Chuu and Po Chhu rivers, it was the first Dzong built in unified Bhutan and is second both in terms of size and age. Help was never too far away. (Photo: Pawan Dagia) Next and final stop on our list was Paro but before that we decided to head to Chelela, the pass through which has the highest motorable road in Bhutan. The road was narrow with snow and ice covering the last 30km ascent to the top. But even here the Creta performed flawlessly, the engine never ran out of torque, the hill start assist was practically god sent for the changes in elevation were severe and the ESP seemed to be working overtime to get us to the top safe and sound. Paro town was bustling yet quaint. (Photo: Pawan Dagia) If you're in Paro, visiting the Paro Taktsang or the Tiger's nest as it is better known is a must. It is the oldest monastery of Bhutan. It was built in 1692 and stands 900m vertically off the ground. It is the most sacred pilgrim destination for all Bhutanese people. Legend says Guru Rinpoche arrived here on a tigress' back hence the name. The three hour trek to the monastery is not for the lazy and faint hearted. And Paro airport is another wonder, harking back to the early days of aviation it seems. The main road runs parallel to the run way and whenever there is an aircraft landing or taking off, the traffic is stopped to allow the aircraft to make an unhindered landing or take-off. It is just like the railway crossings where traffic is stopped for the train to pass. Monastery enroute Drukgyel Dzong. (Photo: Pawan Dagia) At the end of the day the team seemed happy and everyone would've loved to stay longer but the next day the team bid goodbye to the beautiful city of Paro. Now all that was left was the drive back, all the way to Delhi. --- ENDS --- Since its launch in 2014, Honda has managed to sell around 3500 units of the MPV Mobilio. Honda Mobilio competes against the likes of Maruti Ertiga and Toyota Innova in the Indian market. By India Today Web Desk: According to reports, Honda India is considering to discontinue the production of the MPV Mobilio due to its gradual decline in sales. However, the company has plans to launch the new BR-V in the same segment as Mobilio. ALSO READ: Honda received more than 900 bookings for the NAVI Since its launch in 2014, Honda has managed to sell around 3500 units of the MPV Mobilio. However, in January and February alone, Honda has sold only around 600 units. advertisement Honda Mobilio competes against the likes of Maruti Ertiga and Toyota Innova in the Indian market. Moreover, with the Mobilio out of the line-up in the next few months, Honda will be readying for the launch of the upcoming BR-V, after it was unveiled at the Auto Expo 2016. The Honda BR-V is slated for a May launch, reports say. ALSO READ: Honda updates the Amaze, compact sedan priced at Rs 5.3 lakh Honda BR-V will rival Hyundai Creta, Renault Duster and Maruti Suzuki Vitara Brezza in the market. --- ENDS --- Here's a list of some facts about Ustad Bismillah Khan, who single-handedly elevated the shehnai from an instrument which was only played during weddings to a concert stage. By India Today Web Desk: The very thought of shehnai brings Ustad Bismillah Khan to our minds. Addressed as the Shehnai Maestro, he was one of the finest Indian classical musicians that India ever produced. Having played the shehnai for more than eight decades, he received national and international acclaim for his performances. The legend was born on March 21, 1916. advertisement On his birth anniversary, here's a list of some facts about Ustadji, who single-handedly elevated the shehnai from an instrument which was only played during weddings to a concert stage: 1) Bismillah Khan was born as Qamaruddin Khan on March 21, 1913 in Dumraon, Bihar. He was given this name because it was similar to his elder brother's name Shamsuddin. 2) He started attending musical concerts from an early age, but his religious faith became an obstacle in his path. Being a Shia Muslim by birth, where music is forbidden or considered 'haram', then started worshipping Goddess Saraswati just to adapt 'the seven swaras as his namaaz'. 3) He received one of the rarest and most celebrated opportunities in 1947, when the first Indian Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru invited him to come, perform and live at the Red Fort in Delhi. 4) Not limiting himself just to the Indian audience, Khan even performed for the global audience in the Cannes Art Festival, Osaka Trade Fair and World Exposition in Montreal. 5) His foray into films began with him playing beautiful symphonies for 'Goonj Uthi Shehnai' in 1959, followed by the very popular 'Swades' soundtrack in 2004. 6) He was a proud recipient of the Bharat Ratna award in 2001, Padma Vibhushan in 1980, Padma Bhushan in 1968 and the Padma Shri in 1961. Photo of Bismillah Khan 1964, by Robert Garfias; Anthropology, UCI 7) Ustadji had a large family with his five daughters, three sons and many grandchildren. He also had an adopted daughter Dr Soma Ghosh, who is a famous Hindustani shastriya sangeet artist 8) He never accepted students to teach under him as he thought the kind of knowledge that he provides would not be enough. However, he made an exception by teaching his sons: Nazim Hussain and Nayyar Hussain. 9) He was a man of simple taste who used to eat simple food like 'daal chawal' and travel only on a cycle rickshaw than to opt for a luxurious lifestyle. 10) He lovingly addressed his shehnai as his 'begum', and it was also buried along with him at Fatemain burial ground, Varanasi. advertisement 11) The Indian Army gave him a 21 gun salute at his burial ceremony. Interested in General Knowledge and Current Affairs? Click here to stay informed and know what is happening around the world with our G.K. and Current Affairs section. --- ENDS --- The creator of these dolls, Takagi, has been under constant media scrutiny since the time he claimed that these dolls are tools to "repress desires associated with pedophilia". By Mini Dixit: Shin Takagi is a self-proclaimed pedophile. He also happens to be the designer and head of Trottla--a Japanese company that creates life-sized rubber sex dolls of little girls. Sounds dreadful, doesn't it? Well, it is. And while the production and import of these dolls continues to flourish, Mellissa Evans from Queensland has decided to file a petition to erase the very existence of the ideology behind the inception of these life-sized dolls. advertisement In a petition filed on Change.org, Evans writes, "I am a mother and a grandmother. It is our role as parents, as adults, to protect our children and their futures." Also Read: Decoding Devoteeism: Getting sexually aroused by people with disabilities Evans continues, "The dolls are made to be lifelike, therefore the idea normalises pedophile behaviour. This raises serious concerns. I do not believe in any way that this is an appropriate deterrent against children being sexually abused." The creator of these dolls, Takagi, has been under constant media scrutiny since the time he claimed that the dolls are a tool to "repress desires associated with pedophilia". In an interview to The Atlantic earlier this year, Takagi said, "We should accept that there is no way to change someone's fetishes. I am helping people express their desires, legally and ethically. It's not worth living if you have to live with repressed desire." Takagi's argument for the creation of these dolls is that they aren't exactly sex-dolls, but are "the only dolls in the world that will substitute a human girl." Also Read: 8 Japanese dishes Indians must try other than famous Sushi He has been manufacturing these life-sized dolls for more than ten years and says the reception to them has been more-than overwhelming, where clients have also written to him and said, " 'Thanks to your dolls, I can keep from committing a crime,' " Takagi said in an interview to Vice magazine. What may seem like a twisted analogy to us, is actually pretty normal in Takagi's world, according to whom, the dolls have more often than not saved children from pedophiles, who choose to channelise their instincts on the dolls instead of real people. As Takagi refuses to budge from his stand, the support on Evans' petition seems to increase by the minute, and now has over 20,500 supporters, last we checked. --- ENDS --- Branding his state 'Sunrise Andhra Pradesh', chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu is capitalising on a slew of opportunities. "Every state is blessed with resources and manpower. But it can progress only if the government is progressive, visionary and investor-friendly," he says. Starting virtually from scratch-most industrial investments in the erstwhile Andhra Pradesh were around Hyderabad-on June 2, 2014, following the hiving off of Telangana, Naidu is pushing quick and hard for rapid growth through a mix of public and private investments. Not a week passes without him interacting with potential investors across the country. He has travelled abroad and even attended the 2015 and 2016 World Economic Forum sessions hard-selling the state. On March 11 and 12, he was in London, to woo investors in the United Kingdom. advertisement "There will be no hassles and you'll be given all help. Clearances will be given in 21 days-you'll never regret investing in the state," is his sales pitch. "I aim to transform AP into a manufacturing and export hub, foster information technology hardware and software facilities," says Naidu, emphasising the need to resuscitate manufacturing and enable job creation to reverse the prolonged economic slump. He is keen to tap the potential of port-led development, rich minerals, water and land availability, 24x7 power supply and a 974-km-long coastline, the longest for any state. Industry has responded overwhelmingly to the bonhomie between AP and the Centre. Post the split, Naidu emphasises, AP has attracted Rs 4,67,577 crore worth of investments through the 331 MoUs signed so far with Indian and foreign investors, including those from the US, China and several Asian countries. The investments, if realised, may result in 9.58 lakh jobs. Most MoUs and announcements were made during the CII Partnership Summit the state hosted mid-January in Visakhapatnam. To ensure that these fructify, Naidu plans to get action-taken reports on the status and progress of the investment proposals. This is vital for a state which has little to boast about, except for the industries in and around Visakhapatnam, the smaller port town of Kakinada and Sri City, the 7,500-acre multi-product vibrant Special Economic Zone near the state's border with Tamil Nadu. Hamstrung by the loss of Hyderabad to Telangana, the CM is pulling out all stops to welcome investments to the residuary AP. To this end, the state has announced a first-ever retail policy that includes goods and grocery business retail enterprises under the Essential Services Maintenance Act, to leverage on costs, particularly of labour, compared with China. He is also expecting additional incentives from the central government to draw more international investors. "If there is no industry, there will be no income," he says. "So, we have asked for export manufacturing incentives for countries who want to invest in India." The results are beginning to show. With no significant urban area or industrial hub, AP registered a growth rate of 8.39 per cent in 2014-15-a remarkable achievement for a truncated state. This despite the state's grim financial situation. Revenue deficit shot up to Rs 7,919 crore by mid-February as against the Rs 7,299 crore projected in the budget estimates for 2015-16. The fiscal deficit stood at Rs 19,092 crore against the estimated Rs 17,584 crore for the year. Revenue receipts so far are only Rs 83,826 crore against the projected Rs 1,12,852 crore. "Andhra Pradesh started off with a revenue deficit of about Rs 16,000 crore following bifurcation. This posed an enormous challenge for us, but still we notched a growth rate of 8.39 per cent, increased it to 10.5 per cent so far in 2015-16 and are targeting 15 per cent growth in the GSDP for next year," says finance minister Yanamala Ramakrishnudu. "In India, the future happens in Andhra Pradesh first. The government is pro-poor and pro-market and the state is showing the way for the transformation to become the economic engine of India," says minister of state for finance, Jayant Sinha. advertisement The CM draws inspiration from the fact that the World Bank, on September 14, 2015, ranked the state second, with a score of 70.12 per cent in ease of doing business, just below Gujarat which topped with a score of 71.14 per cent. Simultaneously, Naidu has drawn up broad-based priorities for industrial development taking into account the inherent strength of each district with respect to various sectors. Sensing that the most visible impact of reforms is made relatively easily in the retail sector, AP's retail policy allows enterprises to be open seven days a week from 6 am to 11 pm, employ people on an hourly basis but limit the number of workers to 25 per cent of the firm's total employees. The government is also allotting land to retailers to set up distribution centres and warehouses under the commercial category to be valid for 33 years. The retail policy has enthused the big players-Walmart India, Future Group, Spencer's and Arvind Lifestyle-to set up large format stores involving investments of at least Rs 1,500 crore that will create 25,000 new jobs. "AP's retail trade policy is a new beginning and a good start," says Future Group CEO Kishore Biyani, who plans to set up new stores in seven cities before the year-end. Walmart India CEO Krish Iyer says they are looking at opening 15 new stores apart from a facility to source farm produce from small and marginal growers across AP. The state constitutes about eight per cent of India's total retail market of 13 million stores and the sector contributes about 33 per cent to AP's GSDP. advertisement Naidu is also ensuring that infrastructure keeps pace with desired development. Having Visakhapatnam port and Dugarajapatnam, which has been identified for promotion as Asia's major port by the central government, and a host of 14 other minor ports shortlisted for rejuvenation, state officials are also aiming to attract investments in infrastructure. "When Singapore port can contribute seven per cent of maritime trade to its GDP, AP has the potential to outshine it with 14 ports," claims Naidu. advertisement Besides this, Visakhapatnam, Tirupati and the proposed capital of Amaravati are to be developed as mega cities and a tri-city corridor is to connect the three to boost the economy. Driven by the ease of doing business and the promise of high-speed internet connectivity by July 2016, AP is already stealing Tamil Nadu's thunder. A number of big-ticket projects bound for TN have already come into the swanky new business district, Sri City, 55 km from Chennai. It is well connected by rail and road networks with access to four ports and four airports. Chinese handset brand Gionee has taken a big step to full-fledged local manufacturing by starting production of one of its models at the Taiwan manufacturing giant Foxconn's Sri City plant. Chinese solar cell maker Xi'an Longi Silicon Materials Corporation, is setting up a Rs 1,500 crore solar module and cell manufacturing plant in Sri City. Apart from the ease of setting up business, Naidu is also helping with costs by doling out tax incentives. Hero MotoCorp, for example, has been given cent per cent exemption on value-added tax on bikes produced in the state. It is to set up a Rs 2,200 crore manufacturing facility in Chittoor district on 600 acres given by the Andhra Pradesh Industrial Infrastructure Corporation at Rs 1 lakh an acre. The state is also offering power subsidy of one rupee a unit and giving land at throwaway prices. The state sits pretty on 7.64 lakh acres (see graphic). Among the earliest decisions Naidu took post-division was to direct revenue authorities in all 13 districts to identify unencumbered parcels of government land for a land bank. In his quest to maximise investments and create jobs, Naidu is providing every village with 1,000 mbps broadband connectivity and ensuring there is at least one e-literate person in every home. He wants to quickly close the skills gaps with contiguous Tamil Nadu which, because of its large pool of engineers, already has the second-largest concentration of IT firms after Karnataka in south India. "To top all this, creating an economic development board, like in Singapore and Turkey, is a step in the right direction," says GMR Group chairman G. Mallikarjuna Rao, who is also AP State Skill Development Corporation chairman. Naidu has fostered widespread wider optimism. "He is clear about the need for more investments and industry, grasps issues quickly and makes it easy without compromising the interests of the state," says Suresh Chitturi, chairman, CII, AP. "Andhra Pradesh is poised to take over from Gujarat as the No. 1 state," says Amitabh Kant, CEO, Niti Aayog, impressed by the detailed planning and long-term vision. Naidu is pragmatic and realises it is only possible to take one step at a time. He wants to AP to be among the top three states by 2022, become a top economy with the highest happiness index by 2029 and the best state by 2050. Follow the writer on Twitter @AmarnathKMenon --- ENDS --- By India Today Web Desk: Amsterdam is a place where most Indians dream to visit at least once. The aesthetic finesse, the artistic heritage and the picturesque canal system in the Dutch capital are too beautiful for a traveller to miss in his lifetime. Well, travelling to this place from India is about to become easier as Jet Airways has announced the launch of daily flights to Amsterdam from Delhi and Mumbai. advertisement Also read: Travel hacks: 7 ways to survive a long-haul flight Starting from March 27, these flights will make things more convenient, especially for Mumbai-based travellers as India's commercial capital had no direct flights to Amsterdam until now. In addition to this, Jet Airways' strategic codeshare partnerships with international carriers KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and Delta Air Lines will enable the Mumbai-based airline to operate flights across 30 destinations in Europe and 11 in the North American region. According to media reports, the European destinations that will be covered by this partnership-based flight network include major tourist favourites like Brussels, Copenhagen, Berlin, Geneva, Dusseldorf, Vienna, Zurich, Edinburgh, Helsinki, Madrid, Manchester and Prague among others. On the other hand, the 11 places covered from the North American belt include popular cities from USA and Canada, including Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Montreal and Vancouver. --- ENDS --- Congress MP Shashi Tharoor, while addressing JNU students, had said Bhagat Singh was the Kanhaiya Kumar (left) of his time. By Amit Agnihotri: Congress lawmaker Shashi Tharoor found himself in a spot on Monday as his party distanced itself from the Thiruvananthapuram MP's comment, in which he equated JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar to freedom fighter Bhagat Singh. Kanhaiya was booked for sedition after he allegedly raised antinational slogans at an event held to commemorate the death of Parliament attack case convict Afzal Guru. He is currently out on bail. The BJP has gone all out in targeting the JNUSU president and his supporters for their alleged role in the February 9 event. advertisement Political parties - the BJP, the Congress and the Left - which have turned the controversy into a nationalism versus anti-nationalism debate, were quick to attack Tharoor. The Congress MP, while addressing JNU students on Sunday, had said Bhagat Singh was the Kanhaiya Kumar of his time as the freedom fighter was also charged with sedition during the British rule. "The biggest victims of sedition law under the British rule were Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Annie Besant," Tharoor had said. When a girl mentioned Bhagat Singh's name, Tharoor quickly responded by saying Bhagat Singh was the Kanhaiya Kumar of his time. Congress managers realised the damage the controversy could cause to the party's electoral prospects ahead of the 2017 Assembly polls in Punjab, the home state of Bhagat Singh, who was hanged by the then British rulers. The party promptly distanced itself from the controversy even as some party leaders tried to play it down saying the remark was Tharoor's personal opinion. The concerned Opposition fielded Manish Tewari, who also hails from Punjab, to face the media. "There has been only one Bhagat Singh. There is only one Bhagat Singh," Tewari said, clearly indicating the AICC's disapproval of Tharoor's remark. "Bhagat Singh cannot be compared with anyone. He certainly cannot be compared to a youth of today," said Congress veteran Ghulam Nabi Azad. The BJP dubbed Tharoor's comment as an insult to the great freedom fighter and all patriots of the country. "Bhagat Singh went to the gallows chanting 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' while fighting for the country's Independence. Comparing Kanhaiya Kumar with Bhagat Singh is an insult to the freedom fighter and all patriots. Shashi Tharoor should clarify, if Kanhaiya is Bhagat Singh, then what are Rahul and Sonia Gandhi," BJP spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain said. "The way the Congress is raising antinational slogans, even Gandhi and Nehru would have been upset," he added. As Tharoor's comment went viral on social media, he went on damage control mode and clarified that he did not intend to equate Kanhaiya with Bhagat Singh. "You are finding one marginal thing which was said in response to a comment from the audience. Bhagat Singh was fighting colonial rule and foreign oppression and Kanhaiya is fighting for his beliefs in a very different democracy. So the situations are different. The comparison was - young, Marxist, idealist, passionately committed to their motherland, in their 20s...that's all," said the Congress MP from Kerala. advertisement Tharoor had told the JNU students even though he did not support some of the slogans that were raised on campus, they cannot be equated with sedition. "Some slogans, supposedly raised that night, did bother me and many good people in this country. But India is not so weak that a few irresponsible slogans by misguided students can destroy it," he had said. ALSO READAnupam Kher at JNU: Those out on bail are not Olympic heroes --- ENDS --- By Chef Ashish Massey: In her landmark essay on literature and gender, A Room of One's Own, Virginia Woolf believed the accomplished mind drew on both masculine and feminine qualities. In describing the androgynous mind, she wrote it was 'resonant and porous; that it transmits emotion without impediment; that it is naturally creative, incandescent and undivided'. Woolf was bounding way ahead of the curve when it came to disregarding gender norms. If today she skulked at a bar in New York she might chance upon His Hotness, Jaden Smith, mega butch and real easy in a skirt (and on the eye), Designer Thom Browne correcting an errant lipstick mark off his martini glass. I suspect, also, she'd approved of fellow Brit Vivenne Westwood, whose gothic, puckish collections have long taken on what Author Michael Cunningham called the 'sorry masquerade known as gender'. advertisement Also read: Calvin Klein takes the gender debate a step forward with its new genderless fragrance CK2 Picture courtesy: Tarun Khiwal/Harper's Bazaar Except, when you don't subscribe to any particular role, it's not sorry-it's celebratory. Like most things about civilised life-marriages, family life, a career-gender is a construct. You make it up, or it was made up for you. You are a boy: Cut your hair, make some abs, don't drop salt water on your cheeks. You're a girl: Do femme, grab a gown, put your hair through the rollers. Luckily, the failure of traditional male roles-the provider, the supporter-and the ability of women (urban, privileged) to transcend compartments they were historically slotted in has resulted in a breakdown of conventional gender. Concurrently, the diversity of sexual expression has come to highlight that gender is no longer a binary but a spectrum (rather like sexuality, no one is really any one thing). Picture courtesy: Tarun Khiwal/Harper's Bazaar The belief that gender can also be fluid is key: We might be born of a biological sex, but we are not obliged to its societal and cultural constraints. I'm pretty sure this is no big wow in India, where the lungi has always rubbed shoulders with the sari, and men use kohl as defiantly as women do beautifully. I also happen to live in Goa, where I watch races mix effortlessly on the beach, love affairs of all qualifications flourish, and folks slip through the fine, often indefinable mesh of gender with the elusive air of minnows. Sarongs on men. Suits on women. Then, we mix it up some more. Picture courtesy: Tarun Khiwal/Harper's Bazaar The photographs in the accompanying visual essay reflect this sense of playful freedom and invention; they bristle with mischief and disdain and enigma. Charged with implosive wondering, some appear uncertain, the subject seems almost nervous-am I doing the right thing? Is this too much? Will I be found out? I look batsh*t crazy! Maybe this is too much? Oh, sunshine, sit down, let me tell you your dress is the business, you are hot boots and totally snatched, a shape in a drape, I'm totally stanning you. But the trick in this sport is to do it like breathing: Naturally. The instance it's purposefully borrowed, or appropriated for effect (remember how off the cob Brad Pitt looked in a silver shift on the cover of Rolling Stone in 1999?) it becomes a caricature of itself. When we do it like breathing for our soul, and because we can and want to, it goes down a storm: This is 'cause we're having a party, and coming home and throwing off our shoes in a fine little room', the one poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge called 'the androgynous mind'. advertisement The article first appeared in the March issue of Harper's Bazaar India. --- ENDS --- NCPUL, which comes under the union HRD ministry-led by Smriti Irani, said that the declaration form to be filled by authors under its bulk purchase scheme was only to ensure that the content should only create harmony and goodwill among various sections of the society and not otherwise. By India Today Web Desk: The National Council for Promotion of Urdu Language (NCPUL) recently introduced a form, requiring authors of the books that it acquires annually, to declare that the content will not be against the government or the country. NCPUL, which comes under the union HRD ministry-led by Smriti Irani, said that the declaration form to be filled by authors under its bulk purchase scheme was only to ensure that the content should only create harmony and goodwill among various sections of the society and not otherwise. advertisement Karan Thapar on his show 'To The Point' today asked whether this decision by NCPUL is a terrible mistake or is this move justified. His panel included writer and lyricst Javed Akhtar, editor of Nai Duniya, Shahid Siddiqui, BJP leader Suddhanshu Mittal and columnist Aakar Patel. "This diktat on Urdu writers by NCPUL must be withdrawn," said writer and lyricst Javed Akhtar. Slamming the move by NCPUL, Akhtar also emphasised that all major Urdu writers are progressive. "Urdu is the most secular language of the world, but is treated like RDX," added Akhtar. However, NCPUL said the form, to be filled by authors, is not something new and this has been the practice for the last many years for the books sponsored by NCPUL. "It is not for the academy or the govt to decide who is anti-national or not. If a mistake is made, it is the job of the publisher to correct it," said editor of Nai Duniya, Shahid Siddiqui. "NCPUL is an autonomous organisation but appointees are political," added Siddiqui. BJP leader Suddhanshu Mittal said, "In a democracy, anybody can criticise anyone within the framework of constitution." "A writer's job is to look at the reality and then criticise," said columnist Aakar Patel. This move has once again triggered controversy over nationalism putting government at the centre of the debate. --- ENDS --- Akshay Kumar will play a double role in the film, one of a thug and other of a post-graduate, in the Hindi remake of Tamil blockbuster Kaththi, Ikka. Akshay and Murugadoss have previously worked together in Holiday A Soldier Is Never Off Duty, which was the remake of Tamil film Thupakki. By India Today Web Desk: Akshay Kumar, who has his kitty full with projects like Robot 2, Housefull 3, Namastey England and Rustom, will also be seen in AR Murugadoss' next production Ikka. The Khiladi actor will play the lead role in the Hindi remake of Tamil blockbuster Kaththi. ALSO SEE: Don't miss these pics from the sets of Rajinikanth, Akshay Kumar's film advertisement ALSO SEE: Too hot to handle, Akshay Kumar shares 'selfie of a lifetime' with Salma Hayek According to a report in Mumbai Mirror, Akshay will begin shooting for Ikka after Rustam hit the screens on August 12 this year. The Airlift actor will play a double role in the film, one of a thug and other of a post-graduate. A souce told the leading daily, "Murugadoss is presently re-scripting the film to fit a more North Indian set-up but Akshay will be seen in a double role." Ikka will go on floors in August and the film has a start-to-finish two-month schedule. "The story will travel through Kolkata, Chennai, Mumbai and Bangkok, but will be filmed entirely in Chennai," added the source. Ikka also marks the directorial debut of Jagan Shakti, associate director of AR Murugadoss. Akshay and Murugadoss have previously worked together in Holiday A Soldier Is Never Off Duty, which was the remake of Tamil film Thupakki. --- ENDS --- Abdul Sattar Makandar, a truck driver, working in Saudi Arabia from the past 23 months has been arrested on the charges of 'spreading misinformation' on social media. By India Today Web Desk: A video of an Indian migrant worker crying his eyes out due to bad working conditions in Saudi Arabia went viral on social media a month ago. The worker has been jailed, according to activists. Abdul Sattar Makandar, a truck driver, has been working in the Arab country from the past 23 months. He had applied for leave to come home over five months ago. advertisement In the video, Abdul explains how his employer does not pay him or give him any money to even feed himself. Abdul breaks down while expressing his plight. The video was posted by an Indian human rights activist Kundan Srivastava but was soon taken down after the legal representatives of Al Suroor United Group approached him. "I urge the Government, Minister of External Affairs Sushma Swaraj, PMO India Narendra Modi to help Abdul Sattar Makandar to come back to India," said Srivastava, reports The Independent. Abdul was arrested on charges of 'spreading misinformation' on social media. The Al Suroor United Group has denied the claims made by Abdul and said all workers were entitled leave after two years of service and he is six weeks away from it. Sushma Swaraj, External Affairs Minister, tweeted about this issue and this is what the Ministry is doing- Abdul Sattar Makandar - Indian Embassy in Saudi Arabia has sent me a report with a comprehensive reply from the Company. /1 Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) March 22, 2016 Please let us handle this matter at the diplomatic level. /2 Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) March 22, 2016 This is not the first time that a case has surfaced regarding mistreatment of migrant workers in Saudi Arabia. The working conditions have been widely criticised by rights groups. --- ENDS --- "The ISIS ideology is Kufr (disbelief in Islam). It is anti-Islam; against the teachings of the prophet of Islam and those of Quran," said Qadri. By Mail Today: The ideology of the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIS) is that of disbelief in Islam. It is anti-Islam and against the teachings of the prophet of Islam and those of Quran, said Canadian-Pakistani cleric Tahirul-Qadri in an exclusive interview with India Today Group Editorial Director (Publishing) Raj Chengappa on Monday. Qadri was in India to participate in the recently concluded World Sufi Forum organised by All India Ulema and Mashaikh Board (AIUMB), an apex body of Sunni Muslims in India. advertisement "The ISIS ideology is Kufr (disbelief in Islam). It is anti-Islam; against the teachings of the prophet of Islam and those of Quran," said Qadri, asserting that the ISIS was conducting a 'fasad' (spreading mischief) and there was no concept of jihad in their "character, performance, behaviour or ideology". "I say it is the most heinous crime to declare themselves (ISIS) an Islamic state as they have nothing to do with Islam. It is a terrorist state, an anti-human state, an anti-religion and anti-faith state," the Sufi cleric told India Today. Contending the belief proffered by the ISIS that its fighters go to heaven by sacrificing their lives for the organisation, Qadri said loot, plunder and murder were not part of Islam. "I want to send the message that whatever they are doing is not jihad, but 'fasad'. The people dying there in the ISIS are not going to heaven; they are going to hell because they are killing mankind, they are killing the innocent, the civilians. Capturing land, killing people and looting money is not Islamic ideology or any other religious ideology," Qadri said. Qadri also took on Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind president Maulana Arshad Madani who had criticised PM Modi, who attended the World Sufi Forum, for dividing Muslims along sects and causing consternation in the community. Madani had claimed that Sufism was not part of Islam as it did not find any place in the Quran or the Hadith. "The Narendra Modi government is trying to divide the Muslims and create animosity within. We are not opposed to them (Sufis), but they are part of the community. This regime is raining fire on Muslims as a whole. While the government is trying to play one section against the other, they failed as they could gather just a few thousand in the event," Madani had lashed out. "I don't agree with this comment. Maulana Madani Sahab's elders were also Sufis. So it would be a very strange thing to say that it has nothing to do with the Holy Prophet and Islam," Qadri contended. Qadri went on to list past clerics of the Deoband school who were ardent "claimants of Sufism". "Maulana Ahsraf Ali Thanvi was a practicing Sufi and he followed the Chishtiya order. He was the student of Haji Mudadullah Mohajir Madani. Maulana Kasim Nanowtwi, Maulana Rashid Ahmad Gangohi or Maulana Husain Ahmad Madani were all claimants of Sufism. All other great Ulama of Deoband were followers of the path of Sufism and they belonged to the silsila chishtiya. Even today they practice Sufism, making "murids" or students. advertisement Deoband's official narrative was never anti-Sufism. There were and are differences of interpretation of certain things, aspects or ideas, but there was never a negation of Sufism from the official narrative of Deoband. "This is a new thing that I am hearing for the first time," he said. Responding to Tahir-ul-Qadri's comments, Madani clarified his position. "We are all Sufis, but what is this Sufiism. Being a Sufi is not a bad thing. Those who are Muslims are also Sufis. We the people of Deoband are Sufis, but in Islam there is nothing that is apart from and different from Prophet Muhammad. Sufism is also the same: following his path is Sufism. Removed from the Prophet, Sufism is nothing. Islam is not the name of Sufism, Islam is the way to follow the path told by Prophet Muhammad. Sufism does not find a place in Hadith or Quran. What is Sufism; we do not accept anything apart from the Prophet neither will the world accept." advertisement In his speech at the event, Prime Minister Modi had stressed how Sufism engaged with India's spiritual tradition and evolved its own ethos. (The full interview will be carried in the next issue of India Today) ALSO READ None of the 99 names of Allah stand for force, violence: PM Modi Modi govt trying to divide Muslims, says Maulana Syed Arshad Madani --- ENDS --- PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti arrived in Delhi with sources claiming she might meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a day or two. By Naseer Ganai, Mail Today: In a move which is seen as a last-ditch effort to form the government in Jammu and Kashmir, Peoples Democratic Party chief Mehbooba Mufti arrived in Delhi on Monday with sources claiming she might meet the Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a day or two. Her decision to visit Delhi comes after Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said at the BJP's national executive meeting that the party is "fully committed to the agenda for alliance" signed with the PDP, when the two parties joined hands last year to govern Jammu and Kashmir. advertisement Last week, Mufti's meeting with BJP chief Amit Shah failed and she had returned to Jammu and Kashmir. Sources said BJP refused to buckle under pressure of her demands and she also wanted to meet the PM. However, she could not get any time and had to return. However, sources said a section in the PDP wanted her to move forward on government formation. A PDP leader said Mehbooba might meet the prime minister in a day or two and it would lead to government formation in the state. Former Finance Minister Haseeb Drabu, who has been a key negotiator from the PDP's side, is also in New Delhi. The PDP has been maintaining that it has not set any new conditions for the alliance. However, the party says it seeks time-bound implementation different issues spelled out by both the parties in the "Agenda of Alliance". Jammu and Kashmir has been under Governor's Rule since January 7, the day sitting Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed died. Former chief minister Omar Abdullah, meanwhile, held a meet with Jammu and Kashmir Governor NN Vohra in Jammu. The meeting assumes significance as uncertainty over government formation deepens. Also read: Jammu and Kashmir: Engineer Rashid meets Mehbooba Mufti --- ENDS --- Saritha Nair, prime accused in Kerala's solar scam, on Monday filed a petition in the High Court seeking a CBI probe into chief minister Oommen Chandy's alleged role in the solar scam. High Court will hear her plea today. By India Today Web Desk: Saritha Nair, prime accused in Kerala's solar scam, on Monday filed a petition in the High Court seeking a CBI probe into chief minister Oommen Chandy's alleged role in the solar scam. High Court will hear her plea today. In her petition Saritha said that a fair probe needs to be conducted. "A re-investigation in the case needs to be done as the police have not conducted a fair probe. Even after Mallelil Sreedharan's (entrepreneur and complainant in the solar scam) statement which indicted Oommen Chandy no further action was taken. advertisement Saritha, who was one of the directors of the controversial Private Limited Company-"Team Solar Renewable Energy Solutions"-and an accused in the case, sought to link the Chief Minister's Office with the company. According to her petition, Sreedharan Nair had met Oommen Chandy for assurance before investing in the solar project. "Amounts were paid to office of Chief Minister," she said in her petition. Saritha is facing cheating cases in the scam in which scores of people were allegedly duped of crores of rupees after being promised solar panel solutions. Also Read Kerala solar scam: Accused Saritha Nair moves court against judicial commission probe --- ENDS --- 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. This meeting is being seen as extremely crucial in the context of the stalled talks between the PDP and the BJP to form a government after the demise of Mufti Mohammad Saeed in January. By Rahul Kanwal: Days after the BJP took a hardline stance against the PDP for imposing conditions for government formation in Jammu and Kashmir, top sources in the BJP have told India Today that Prime Minister Narendra Modi is meeting PDP president Mehbooba Mufti today. This meeting is seen as extremely crucial in the context of the stalled talks between the PDP and the BJP to form a government after the demise of Mufti Mohammad Saeed in January. advertisement BJP President Amit Shah had taken a strong position after his meeting with Mehbooba Mufti on Thursday. Shah had told the PM that the BJP cannot accept new conditions being laid down by the PDP. The BJP is trying to downplay expectations ahead of the Modi-Mehbooba meeting. Party sources told India Today that the outcome of the meet depends on the attitude of the PDP chief. The BJP said that they have spoken to all the ministers whose departments are likely to be impacted by the demands made by Mehbooba. The party further said that all ministers have promised to go out of their way to help in the formation of the J-K government. However, the BJP is not willing to make any new promises to Mehbooba prior to the government formation. The party wants Mehbooba to take charge and deal with these issues in due course. Meanwhile, the PDP president feels that the BJP hasn't done enough to fulfil the agenda of governance. Mehbooba has been demanding that excess army land be given back to the state and that centrally run power plants be transferred to the state government. The BJP is ready to give her a new power generating capacity as well as coal fields, but is averse to the idea of handing over power plants being run by PSUs to the state government. The BJP believes that Mehbooba is undergoing pressure from almost two dozen MLAs, reportedly indicating to Mehbooba, that they would like to continue the alliance with the BJP. Also, one of the other possibilities that may arise is for Mehbooba to depute someone from her party to run the government in the state in case she does not feel comfortable doing it herself. Also read | Jammu and Kashmir: Engineer Rashid meets Mehbooba Mufti --- ENDS --- The Mehbooba-Modi meeting came days after the BJP took a hard stance against the PDP for imposing conditions for government formation in Jammu and Kashmir. By India Today Web Desk: PDP president Mehbooba Mufti met Prime Minister Narendra Modi today, a meeting she called "satisfying" and said she will next meet the lawmakers from her party in order to break the deadlock over the formation of the PDP-BJP government in Jammu and Kashmir. "It was a very positive meeting. I am satisfied with the deliberations. I will now meet the leaders from my party on Thursday and decide what is to be done," Mufti told reporters outside PM's residence. advertisement The Mehbooba-Modi meeting came days after the BJP took a hard stance against the PDP for imposing conditions for government formation in Jammu and Kashmir. The meeting was crucial in the context of the stalled talks between the PDP and the BJP after the demise of Mufti Mohammad Saeed in January. BJP president Amit Shah had taken a strong position after his meeting with Mufti last week. Shah had reportedly told Modi that the BJP cannot accept new conditions laid down by the PDP. The BJP has spoken to all the ministers whose departments are likely to be impacted by the demands made by Mufti. The party further said that all the ministers have promised to go out of their way to help in the formation of the government. However, the BJP is not willing to make any new promises to Mufti prior to the government formation. The party wants her to take charge of the state first and then deal with the issues in due course. Meanwhile, the PDP president feels the BJP hasn't done enough to fulfil the agenda of governance. She has been demanding that excess army land be given back to the state and that centrally-run power plants be transferred to the state government. The BJP is ready to give her a new power generating capacity as well as coal fields, but is averse to the idea of handing over power plants being run by PSUs. The BJP believes that Mehbooba is undergoing pressure from almost two dozen MLAs, reportedly indicating to Mehbooba, that they would like to continue the alliance with the BJP. Also, one of the other possibilities that may arise is for Mehbooba to depute someone from her party to run the government in the state in case she does not feel comfortable doing it herself. Also read | Jammu and Kashmir: Engineer Rashid meets Mehbooba Mufti --- ENDS --- A few students and policemen were injured in the clashes outside the bungalow of Vice Chancellor P. Appa Rao, where the students had been protesting since morning as he resumed duties after nearly a two-month-long leave. By Indo-Asian News Service: Clashes broke out between protesting students and police on University of Hyderabad campus on Tuesday evening. A few students and policemen were injured in the clashes outside the bungalow of Vice Chancellor P. Appa Rao, where the students had been protesting since morning as he resumed duties after nearly a two-month-long leave. Violence broke out as police used force to disperse the students. Television visuals show policemen and women dragging the students, some by their hair, thrashing them and beating them up with batons. advertisement One policeman was also injured when students pelted stones. 20 Hyderabad University students have been detained by the police for vandalism. Police bundled out many students out of the campus, triggering strong protest by teaching and non-teaching staff members. Police also arrested few students and faculty members. Additional forces including personnel of paramilitary Rapid Action Force (RAF) rushed to the campus. Security was further tightened amid reports that Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student leader Kanahiya Kumar will be visiting the campus to pay tributes to Rohith Vemula, the Dalit research scholar who committed suicide in January this year. A section of students alleged that Appa Rao was sent back to prevent Kanahiya Kumar's visit to the university. Also read: Rohith Vemula's suicide: Protest as Hyderabad Central University V-C resumes office --- ENDS --- John Abraham speaks about his love for action films, why the war-torn Syria is a place he'd really want to shoot in, his camaraderie with his Rocky Handsome director Nishikant Kamat and more in this conversation with IndiaToday.in. By Ananya Bhattacharya: Shooting a film in war-torn Syria is not exactly a risk your average Bollywood actor would want to take. But for action-lover John Abraham, it 'would be beautiful'. In between trying to put such ideas in his Rocky Handsome director Nishikant Kamat's head and prepping up for the release of the film, Abraham has not had a 15-minute break in the last one week. But for the ripped, sinewy John, that's hardly a deterrent. advertisement ALSO READ: Action is definitely my favourite genre, says John Abraham ALSO READ: John Abraham and the Force 2 team was not allowed to shoot in China. This is why Ahead of the release of Rocky Handsome, we catch up with the 'handsome' actor and his director-friend Nishikant Kamat. Excerpts from the conversation: Why the name Rocky Handsome? John: I think I give credit to Nishi (Nishikant) for that. During the shoot, he saw me in the black suit, and he kept saying, 'You're looking really handsome in this black suit.' And he slept over it, and after two days, he said, 'Let's call the film Johnny Handsome.' But then we realised that Johnny Handsome is a patented name. Plus John, Johnny... it's too close. So he said, 'Let's call it Rocky Handsome.' We tested the name and people lapped it up. John Abraham at the Delhi promotions of Rocky Handsome John Abraham at the Delhi promotions of Rocky Handsome 'Handsome' because you realise the little girl keeps calling him handsome. And then this chain of events happens in the course of the film where you realise his code name is Rocky. But his real name is Kabir Ahlawat. For me, Kabir is a very lucky name... Jism, Dhoom, even Dishoom. It's not intentional. But we just felt Kabir was a very agnostic kind of a name. Which is why I also like it. Your last film was a comedy, and before that, you'd been missing from the silver screen for about two years. And now you're back to action. There's, of course, Force 2 and Dishoom in the pipeline. So what ahead? John: I go by content. For me, content is most important. Even Rocky Handsome now... becoming a producer was a very logical progression for me. For me, the two most important things are content and the director. With Rocky Handsome, the content was in place. The second important prerequisite was the director. Getting Nishi was like... you know, he's a friend, and also when you've been a fan of his, when you've seen Dombivali Fast, Mumbai Meri Jaan and Force and Drishyam... you get impacted by the kind of work he does. And because Rocky Handsome is a very emotionally charged film, you realise that Nishi's just the man for the job. I was fortunate. advertisement It's about the content, really. Any kind of action, when not backed by emotion, will fail. What was the genesis of this film? Nishikant: The story was always there. It's an adaptation of the South Korean film The Man From Nowhere. When I saw that film, I felt the spine of the story was really good. Taking that film and adapting it to Indian sensibilities and making it from this region of the world... I think it fell into place during the process of writing it. Secondly, emotional content-wise, now we're there. We have to up the ante, when it comes to the action. We then decided that we had to take the action higher than where we'd left it off, at Force. If we'd set some standards with that film, this is definitely five notches higher. It was very graceful of John. He went to Thailand for a month, to train. He came back battered and bruised. By the time we started shooting it, he looked like an effortless martial artist. And I can vouch for this much that in India, you haven't seen such action before. John Abraham (L) and Nishikant Kamat at the Delhi promotions of Rocky Handsome advertisement You've seen Nishikant behind the camera. And now you're fighting him on screen. Who do you choose - Nishikant the actor or Nishikant the director? John: I love the director Nishikant. I always want him to direct me (laughs). Outside of that, Nishi is a theatre actor. If you see the way he's performed in this; he's done a fantastic job. We benchmark ourselves against Force since we'd done it together. The antagonist just had to be more powerful here than in that film. Here, it's someone who uses his brain. It's like Stephen Hawking. I always bring up Hawking because they asked him what was on his bucket list. And he said, 'I want to be the bad guy in a Bond film.' Here, Nishi, who uses his brains to decimate and destroy... there's nothing more dangerous than that. Everything has just fallen in place. Even the music in Rocky Handsome; we've really hit the trump card. advertisement You're singing too in this film... John: Yes, I'm singing this song, Tu Mere Alfazon Ki Tarah, which they didn't put in the album (laughs)! Why, was it that bad!? John: (bursts laughing) The album was done, and after that Ankit (Tiwari) told me, 'John, why don't you sing with Shreya (Ghoshal) and me?' It was actually a beautiful experience. Singing is addictive. After more than a decade in the film industry, are you more selective about your scripts and choice of work now? John: Very. In fact, Welcome Back was in the making for two years. Had it been made on time, it'd have released before Madras Cafe. Then your question would have been, 'Why such a long gap between Madras Cafe and Rocky Handsome', and my answer would be, 'Content.' Till you don't find the right content, you don't make the right film. I think Nishi also believes in that. Till he doesn't find the right story, he'll not make a film. That's where you feel the credibility and the weight of a director. Rocky Handsome is primarily shot in Goa. Drishyam, again, was Goa. Why do you keep going back to Goa? Nishikant: As luck would be... earlier, none of my films were shot in Goa. I'm eight-films-old, but the last two were Goa. I think it's because Goa is a very generic feel to it. It's got people from everywhere, it's beautiful, plus it's got an international vibe to it. What kind of films are you more interested in backing as a producer? John: On a macro scale, I like to marry commerce and content. Can I produce a Welcome Back? No, I enjoyed acting in it, but I cannot produce a Welcome Back. That's not my philosophy, that's not my space. I have done films like No Smoking. I'd have loved to produce it. It's Kafka-esque, it's crazy in its own space. As a producer, I always want to do something different. Welcome Back had Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Dishoom has Abu Dhabi. Why do you keep going back to the Middle East? John: I told Nishi let's take our film to Abu Dhabi... I like the Middle East. I like the template of the Middle East. I like the deserts, I like the browns... Especially Dubai and Abu Dhabi, I like the infrastructure, and the support that the Film Commission gives us. Very honestly, India doesn't give that kind of support. It's very difficult to shoot here. For me, if a film takes me outdoors, then I like to go to the Middle East. But a place I'd really like to shoot a film in - Nishi, you should think about it - is Syria. Just the feeling of that... it'll be beautiful. I'm trying to put ideas in his head! You're seen in this soya milk ad where you're heard saying, "After signing 300 autographs..." We see more people choosing selfies over the old-school, pen-paper autographs these days. How are you adapting to this change? John: For me, selfies work. I do prefer the age-old autograph, though. It's like the age-old stamp; it's like a notebook. It's fantastic. But people may argue that I'm old school, but that's the way I like it. There are reports of Bipasha Basu and Karan Singh Grover tying the knot sometime soon. Anything you'd want to say about that? John: I don't even want to get into it...! (Photos: Yogen Shah) --- ENDS --- The young, suave Sachin prepares to take over the Congress mantle from Ashok Gehlot in Rajasthan and sets himself up to take on the powerful Vasundhara Raje. There is a new political star intently rising over Rajasthan's almost-too-often cloudless horizon. Sachin Pilot, 38, has clearly arrived. For a man who was visibly reluctant and seemed itching to leave when Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi dispatched him as state party chief following the veritable drubbing the party suffered in January 2014, slowly but very surely, the air force officer-turned-politician's son is emerging as the man who will rescue the Congress out of perdition. The Rajasthan Congress headquarters in Jaipur was rightly agog on March 3, when former chief minister Ashok Gehlot virtually backed off from backing Pilot's leadership. Perhaps the understandably sinking realisation that he was in the irretrievable process of being toppled by the younger and clearly more charismatic Pilot, along with the denial of a party ticket to his own son Vaibhav, Gehlot, who has had an unquestioned domination over the Pradesh Congress Committee for over two decades, was evidently unnerved. And it showed. advertisement Dour-faced, he looked positively in a panic when senior vice-president Vishvendra Singh, scion of the erstwhile Jat state of Bharatpur and inducted into the 200-member state Congress executive under Pilot's watch in February, called for a unified party fully backing the PCC chief. "Do you all accept the leadership of Sachin Pilot?" Singh's question to those present was more of a proclamation. A declaration of intent, if you will. There was a minuscule minority which refrained from joining the enthusiastic flurry waving their support for Pilot. Lal Chand Kataria held back. A confidant of former Union minister and AICC general secretary C.P. Joshi, Kataria had been a contender for the state Congress presidentship that swung Pilot's way in 2014. Pushing on in the certain knowledge that every bit of the meeting would be reported back to Rahul Gandhi in Delhi, Vishvendra Singh cleverly turned his query to the galaxy of party veterans on the stage. Gurudas Kamat, AICC general secretary in charge of Rajasthan, was the first to raise his arm, nudging the others to follow suit. And it worked: Girija Vyas, Chandra Bhan and B.D. Kalla, all former PCC chiefs sidelined and edged out by Gehlot, joined the growing chorus of support for Pilot. Clearly left with no option and with his back to the wall, Gehlot too capitulated, albeit rather dismissively, gesticulating with his left hand. Four days later, on March 7, he made his feelings very clear: "Vishvendra keeps doing such hand-raising ceremonies. PCC president and leader of Opposition do lead in elections but the chief minister is selected either by the high command or the elected MLAs," the former chief minister said, clearly still hoping to make a third comeback. But that could now well be a pipedream given how openly critical his own partymen are of him. Many see his evident reluctance to accept Pilot's leadership as sheer "jealousy". Vishvendra Singh, who enjoys an independent stature given his blue-blooded credentials, says Gehlot is being petty. "I feel hurt. Gehlot undid our effort to project a united (Congress) face. He (Gehlot) has had his innings. The time has come for him to bless Sachin Pilot," he says. With Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi at an Indian Youth Congress Convention in Delhi in November 2015. Photo: Getty images With Congress Vice-President Rahul Gandhi at an Indian Youth Congress Convention in Delhi in November 2015. Photo: Getty images Pilot's ascendancy is undoubtedly piggybacking on Gehlot's rapidly diminishing support within the Rajasthan Congress. Sushil Asopa, a former public health engineer who took voluntary retirement to join the Congress in 2014, slammed the former chief minister on Facebook, advising him to embrace "sanyaas". Asopa says that through two chief ministerial tenures, presidentship of the PCC for eight years and multiple terms as Union minister, Gehlot only managed to sink the Congress boat in his home state of Rajasthan, whenever he became the chief minister. advertisement Even independent voices like Pratap Singh Khachariyawas, a former MLA and nephew of the late Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, is disappointed by Gehlot. "A seasoned politician like him (Gehlot) should never have gone public with his criticism of Pilot," he declares, with evident angst. But what is making a seasoned man like Ashok Gehlot so afraid of a relative rookie like Sachin Pilot? For one, and perhaps most significantly, Gehlot, who has always enjoyed the blessings of the Gandhi family, sees in Pilot a sturdy, younger and perhaps more politically savvy rival with an independent line to the new de facto boss-Rahul Gandhi. The fact that the party suffered its worst ever drubbing (21 out of 200 seats) in the 2013 assembly polls under his watch only makes things worse for him. It is true that Pilot, a Gurjar, doesn't command any significant caste vote bank in Rajasthan, but he has managed to win the trust of the electorally influential Meenas who view him as a future leader with potential, like they did his late father, Rajesh Pilot. Even the Jats, who turned against Gehlot after he trumped Parasram Maderna (a Jat politician) to become chief minister in 1998 and later resisted including them in the OBC quota, see Pilot as "fair". His decision to induct three senior vice-presidents-a Scheduled Caste, a Rajput and a Jat-has given the younger Pilot traction across Rajasthan's caste boundaries. advertisement A media-savvy politician quite like his father, Pilot is widely viewed as a leader with a modern vision for Rajasthan, perhaps even better equipped than the incumbent chief minister Vasundhara Raje. "His earnest but firm boyish charm and his inspiring personality could become a problem for us," says a senior BJP politician who has, with some trepidation, watched Pilot grow in stature. But Sachin Pilot has no illusions. Bearing up against the crushing Modi Wave in 2014, he had candidly admitted that it would be tough to win even one of the 25 Lok Sabha seats in the state. The Congress failed to win even one. Despite this, he chose to contest from Ajmer so that he wasn't accused of running away from a fight. advertisement "It takes a lot of hard work to revive a near-dead party," Pilot said from Barmer on March 14, and despite the drubbing and his own loss in Ajmer, he bounced back to pose the ruling BJP a serious challenge in the four assembly byelection seats which were vacated when BJP MLAs got elected as MPs in September 2014. "I kept my confidence afloat and that revived the mood in the party," he says. Working via traditional Congress institutions-Youth Congress, Mahila Congress, Seva Dal and the NSUI-he galvanised the state unit to spring a major upset, winning three of the four byelections. There is more that has Raje and her party in a sweat. Under Pilot's watch, the NSUI consecutively swept the Rajasthan University student elections in 2014 and 2015. Analysts attribute much of Pilot's success to his enduring connect with Rajasthan's youth. "He patronises no one and shrugs factionalism," says Khachariyawas, a grassroots leader who says he was surprised when Rahul Gandhi made him in charge of the Jaipur Congress unit on Pilot's recommendation. Pilot is also upending the notion that the Opposition needs to "sit it out" in the five years it is out of power. As PCC chief, he has relentlessly toured each of Rajasthan's 33 districts twice in two years, meeting party workers, engaging with youth workers and looking up veterans. "He (Pilot) is without doubt the most accessible party president ever," says a young Congress worker. And even though Rajasthan will go to its next assembly polls in 2018, Pilot is already in election mode. "I know I have to build the party brick by brick," he says, ever so ready to put the Raje government on the mat whenever he can. Relentlessly focusing public attention on the mining scam, he even petitioned the CAG, forcing an inquiry into wrongdoings in allotting 600 mines on first come first serve basis in violation of a Government of India circular. Raje was forced to cancel the allotments in October 2015 . He has been equally single-minded in his questioning of Raje over her failure to stem the rapidly rising incidents of rape in Rajasthan, or slamming her government for repealing MNREGA to replace it with a dubious state government scheme. The positions Pilot takes on social issues have won him the support and admiration of Rajasthan's influential NGO sector. Yet, there is a long way ahead for Pilot before he can take on a formidable Raje in the 2018 elections. Little known to masses, Pilot has yet to present his altenative vision to bring them back into the party fold. More than Gehlot, it is Raje's image of a CM who can deliver for the better that should worry Pilot. Follow the writer on Twitter @rohitO --- ENDS --- It's going to be a treat for nature-loving travellers as a new eco-tourism destination is coming up in the state of Odisha. By India Today Web Desk: That time is not far when travellers would consider the state of Odisha as a major eco-tourism hub. According to a report by The Times of India, Manchabandha has been identified to be the latest destination where a new eco-tourism hub will be developed. Located four kilometres from the Baripada town in the Mayurbhanj district of Odisha, Manchabandha is a rich virgin sal forest spread across an area of 110 hectares, that attracts around 2,000 tourists in a month just for sightseeing. This has led the forest officials to believe that redeveloping this place into an eco-tourism spot will further push up the tourist footfalls to 5,000. Besides, they have also felt the need to provide accommodation to tourists who get drawn to this place due to its untouched natural beauty. advertisement Also read: Looking to travel offbeat? Try this new eco-tourism site in Odisha This announcement has come just a few months after the Odisha government announced the development of as many as 40 eco-tourism spots across the state. This would certainly lift the spirits of the tourism sector in the state as there's a clear indication of quick deliverance of the promised projects. Also read: 40 new eco-tourism spots to be developed in Odisha The report reveals that only a small patch of this forest will be open for the tourists. The eco-tourism initiatives undertaken in this place will include the development of a well-defined area within the forest where tourists would be able to go on treks. This will prove to be a treat for nature-loving travellers, birders and animal lovers. There's also natural water body in the vicinity that will be readied for tourist boating facilities. Apart from adding a feather to Odisha's amazing tourist destinations, the new eco-tourism spot in Manchabandha will also help in reducing the biotic pressure on the Similipal Tiger Reserve (STR), which is located adjacent to it. --- ENDS --- Vice-Chancellor of Hyderabad Central University Professor Appa Rao Podile went on leave on January 24 this year, a week after Vemula's sucide. In the First Information Report filed in the case, he was named as one of the persons responsible for the death. Appa Rao Podile had been named as one of the persons responsible for the death Rohith Vemula. By India Today Web Desk: A large number of students protested as Vice-Chancellor of Hyderabad Central University Professor Appa Rao Podile resumed his office today, two months after he was forced to go on leave following the suicide by Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula. About 200 students ransacked the office of the Vice-Chancellor as Podile reached the campus, which has been on the boil since Vemula hanged himself on January 17. advertisement Podile went on leave on January 24, a week after Vemula's sucide. In the First Information Report (FIR) filed in the case, he was named as one of the persons responsible for the death. Vemula, 26, hanged himself after he and four other Dalit students were suspended from their hostels by the HCU administration in August last year for allegedly attacking an ABVP leader. The suicide triggered widespread protests demanding action against central ministers Smriti Irani, Bandaru Dattatreya and others, blaming them for the suicide. In August last year, Dattatreya had written to Irani alleging that the HCU had become "a den of casteist, extremist and anti-national politics". Citing the attack on the ABVP, he said the university administration had turned into "a mute spectator to such events". HCU students have alleged that Dattatreya's letter seeking action against Vemula and others led to the Dalit scholar's suicide. Meanwhile, the university released Vemula's fellowship arrears of Rs 1.77 lakh, the amount that was also mentioned in his suicide note. The cheque has been to Vemula's mother, HCU authorities said. Also Read: My icon is Rohith Vemula, not Afzal Guru, says Kanhaiya Kumar Smriti Irani gets party backing after her remarks on Rohith Vemula --- ENDS --- The Bengaluru police arrested three people for running a brothel in a high-end saloon in the upmarket locality of Ulsoor in the city. By Mail Today: The Bengaluru police arrested three people for running a brothel in a high-end saloon in the upmarket locality of Ulsoor in the city. Prasanna, Moorthy and Abhijit Pal Chaudhury operated the Trendy Traditional Unisex Saloon and Spa where they supplied call girls to clients. On the basis of credible information, the City Crime Branch (CCB) team raided the saloon on Saturday and arrested the three people. The police seized 4 mobile phones, Rs 3,000 cash and cars from the accused. They also found condom packets and contraceptives in the saloon. advertisement The police said that the trio had forced three girls from Karnataka and one from Kerala into prostitution. They were recruited by luring them with attractive pay packages. The rescued women have been sent to a foster care home. The police have booked a case under several sections of the IPC. --- ENDS --- By Priya Pathak: Akilah Johnson, a 15-year-old high school student, has won the Doodle 4 Google competition in the US with a doodle that showed the rich African American heritage. Her doodle, titled Afrocentric Life, was featured on the Google home page on Monday. Akilah, a student at Eastern Senior High School in Northeast Washington, topped the Google's eighth annual competition, beating 53 states and territory champions. She was in tears while receiving the prize in the ceremony at Google headquarters. "I was so excited, I started crying. I didn't even look at anybody -- I was just looking at the framed copy they gave me," Akilah told Washington Post. advertisement Also read: Meet the man who gives life to Google Doodles The competition theme was "what makes me? me." Akilah, who is an African American, chose to draw signs and symbols of black heritage. "Of all the things I chose to include, the six most special to me are the Symbol of Life, the African continent, where everything began for me and my ancestors, the Eye of Horus, the word 'power' drawn in black, the woman's fist based on one of my favourite artist's works, and the DC flag -- because I'm a Washingtonian at heart and I love my city with everything in me," Akilah told Google . Besides her artwork previewed on Google home page, Akilah also received a college scholarship worth $30,000. Also, Google will present a $50,000 Google for Education grant to her school. Akilah has also been given the opportunity to meet the professional artists at the Google's headquarters. Also read: Pune girl wins Google contest with doodle on Assam According to Google, of 100,000 participants from 50 US states, Puerto Rico, Guam and Washington DC, five national finalists were invited to spend the day at the Google headquarters in California for the award ceremony. Akilah is the competition's first ever winner from Washington DC. Earlier, the district was not part of the competition. Doodle 4 Google is an annual competition organised by Google in various countries. Children are encouraged to create a logo or doodle. The winning artwork is featured on the local Google homepage. The company also holds a similar competition in India every year with the winning entry getting a display on Google's India homepage on every November 14, which is marked as Children's Day in the country. --- ENDS --- President of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko will reportedly this week sign a decree on the demobilization of military servicemen conscripted to the Armed Forces of Ukraine during mobilization. "This week I'll sign a decree on demobilization of the servicemen," Poroshenko said during the meeting with the commanders of the Armed Forces of Ukraine of middle military management in Kyiv on Tuesday. The head of state also said that there are plans to cut the number of new troops to be mobilized. "Once again I stress that our task is to shift the lion's share of soldier recruitment to a contract basis," the president said. He added that authorities do their best to improve the attractiveness of Ukraine's volunteer military service. As reported, the sixth wave of mobilization took place in June-August 2015. A decision on Ukrainian pilot Nadia Savchenko's handover from Russia to Ukraine may be made only after Kyiv makes an official request for that and after the sentence handed down on her on Tuesday takes legal effect, a Russian law enforcement source told Interfax. "Savchenko's handover or exchange has been discussed this or that way at various levels. However, a decision on this may be made only if Kyiv forwards an official request for that to Moscow and after the sentence takes legal effect, that is, ten days after its pronouncement," the source said. "In addition, Ukraine's recognition of her conviction is among the preconditions for her handover," the source said. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko has said individual sanctions need to be imposed against those, who are involved in the criminal prosecution against Nadia Savchenko. "Individual sanctions, both Ukrainian and international, need to be imposed against all people, who are involved in the prosecution against Nadia Savchenko, Oleh Sentsov and other Ukrainian citizens, Ukrainian patriots taken hostage, who are being illegally tortured on the Russian territory," the head of state said in an address. Savchenko's lawyers see no proof of her guilt in sentence The defense team for Ukrainian military pilot Nadia Savchenko believes her guilt has not been substantiated by any evidence. "She did not commit anything she has been punished for. She didn't kill the journalists Kornelyuk and Voloshin, and she didn't attempt on the life of cameraman Denisov," Savchenko's defense lawyer Mark Feygin told journalists on Tuesday. "The court's sentence doesn't contain any proof," he said. Another lawyer from Savchenko's defense team, Nikolai Polozov, said his client was determined to continue her political activities. "I am sure today's sentence is not the finish but only the beginning of her great political career," Polozov said. Savchenko will be held at a detention facility in the Rostov region within the next weeks, and she plans to go on hunger and thirst strike ten days from now, Polozov said. "Her dry hunger strike will begin on the tenth working day. We tried to persuade her to change her mind today, but she is firm in her intentions," he said. India considers Ukraine as an important partner in Central Europe and is ready to develop new fields of a mutually fruitful cooperation, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of India to Ukraine Manoj Kumar Bharti has said at a press conference at Interfax-Ukraine. "India considers Ukraine as an important partner in Central Europe. Ukraine has a lot to offer to India. India already has a substantial cooperation in the defense sector of Ukraine. India is the largest export destination for sunflower oil from Ukraine. However, there are a few new potential areas of expanded cooperation between our two countries," he said. The ambassador, in particular, noted the prospects for a mutually beneficial cooperation in the field of construction, development of infrastructure projects, agriculture, automotive industry, medicine, in-bound tourism and education in Ukraine. In addition, Bharti stressed the importance of cooperation in the field of pharmaceuticals. "Almost any important and lifesaving drug that Ukraine buys, it can save huge amount of money by importing from India. I understand that if Ukraine imports $100 worth of such drugs from India, it is saving at least $200 because these drugs will cost minimum $300 if imported from European or other sources. Indian pharmaceutical products are known worldwide for their high quality and reasonable price," the official stressed. "Before these products get registration in Ukraine, your GMP inspection visit the manufacturing units in India. The products are tested by Ukrainian laboratories," he added According to Bharti, currently Ukrainian companies can participate in the development of projects, in particular, those carried out within the framework of the Make in India state program or a project to develop 100 smart cities by 2030. "If Ukrainian companies are involved in housing project in South America, they should also consider the immense potential that exists in India. I was at Electrontrans in Lviv a week ago and I encouraged them to take part in the 100 smart city project," the ambassador said. Bharti also noted there is a significant demand for leguminous crops in India. "There are new products which have great potential of export from Ukraine to India. India imports huge amount of beans. Last year 500,000 tonnes of one kind of bean was imported from Canada. There are at least 13 kinds of beans that Indians use extensively. Farmers in Ukraine should look at the possibility of exporting beans to India," he stated. The ambassador also said that nearly 6,100 Indian students are currently studying in Ukraine. "If the current system of admission through agents and recruiting agencies is changed so that Indian students can apply on-line and get admission smoothly without going through the agents and middlemen, I believe more than 20,000 Indian students may like to study in the excellent education and research facilities in Ukraine," he said. On one hand, the Iranian year 1395 began about eight months after the conclusion of an historic nuclear agreement and just over two months after the January implementation of that agreement. This has naturally contributed to expectations about broader negotiations between the two countries, as well as the utilization of the newfound economic freedoms that come with the lifting of nuclear-related sanctions on the Islamic Republic. On the other hand, there has been a great deal of pressure against such reconciliation and cooperation, from critics on both sides of the nuclear deal. Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who is the ultimate authority in virtually all matters of Iranian policy, was quick to caution his subordinates against negotiation with the West in areas other than the nuclear agreement. And yet, now that that agreement has been implemented and Irans economic recovery has reportedly been slower than anticipated, Khamenei has used his Nowruz speeches to criticize the US for standing in the way of broader economic cooperation. The International Business Times quoted the supreme leader as reiterating some of what has already been observed by global financial analysts: that international banking institutions are fearful of reestablishing their relations with the Islamic Republic, in light of the persistent danger of punitive measures by the US government. A number of sanctions remain in place on Iran as a result of its human rights violations and support for international sanctions. These can still be violated if companies are not careful about whom they do business with and under what circumstances. Furthermore, there have been persistent concerns about Irans willingness to cooperate with the international community, especially in light of its provocative tests of three nuclear-capable ballistic missiles earlier this month. Such incidents factor into global businesses concern that suspended sanctions could come back into effect, or that other global enforcement measures could replace them. This wariness stands to affect the Islamic Republic alongside those businesses themselves. After all, International Business Times reports that Iran needs upwards of 500 billion dollars in largely foreign investment in order to modernize its infrastructure and make up for the damage wrought by economic sanctions. But instead of changing Iranian policy in a way that facilitates a more cooperative and less risky business environment, Khamenei used his Nowruz speeches to suggest that the US alone is at fault for unilateral and unprovoked hostility. Specifically, the Wall Street Journal quotes Khamenei as accusing the US of having implemented the July 14 nuclear agreement in paper only, while standing against the overall spirit of that agreement by failing to lift the lingering barriers to foreign investment. Meanwhile, critics of the Iranian regime have blamed it for repeatedly violating the overall spirit of the agreement in the sense of its international cooperation over and constraints on Irans potential progress toward nuclear weapons. Further buttressing this argument, Khameneis Nowruz remarks served to reiterate the justifications that have been offered by a number of Iranian officials for this months ballistic missile tests. Such tests are not technically banned by the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, but there is a parallel UN Security Council resolution that calls upon the Islamic Republic to avoid those tests and other moves toward the development or use of weapons that are capable of carrying a nuclear weapon. But Khamenei described the tests as an aspect of Irans legitimate national defense and said that the US has no business attempting to enforce constraints on that. Reuters quoted him as saying, America is thousands of kilometres away from the Persian Gulf and conducts exercises there with regional countries but if we have exercises in our own security realm they protest loudly. Reuters also quoted Khamenei as saying that American presidential candidates compete to vilify the Islamic Republic. He has similarly indicted the sitting president, although in doing so he has arguably ignored the tendency of some of that presidents domestic critics to regard his policies as weak and tending toward appeasement. The White House, by contrast, tends to characterize its own policies as opening the door to the very reconciliation that Khamenei claims the US has been resisting. Indeed, this appeared to be a major point in President Obamas own Nowruz message to the Iranian people. The fiercest critics of the Iranian regime tend to characterize this shift as a mistake, based on the false premise that a more moderate Iranian president could lead the way toward broad-based reconciliation. Even so, the persistence of that delicate tone arguably undermines Khameneis claims about persistent aggression. However, Khameneis own aggression may have prompted a slight backward shift in the tone of President Obamas Nowruz message. That is to say, IranWire characterizes the overall address as continuing to hold the door open for increased trade and international cooperation, but also expressing a sense of disappointment over the fact that Irans behavior had not changed in the ways that would have made this cooperation more politically attainable. And although Khameneis remarks are intent upon blaming the US for ongoing discord, those same remarks raise pertinent questions about whether a mutually beneficial outcome is attainable at all. Indeed, by declaring that his preferred name for the new year is the Year of the Resistance Economy, Khamenei seems to have already committed his government to ongoing confrontation with the West. Resistance Economy is the name that the supreme leader gave to a set of policies aimed at reducing the impact of economic sanctions, as opposed to complying with the international demands that brought them about. The Fiscal Times raises additional interesting questions regarding the Iranian regimes likely preferences for the identity of the new American president who will be taking office during this Iranian calendar year. The article suggests that there is reason for Iran to desire a reversal of the Obama administrations policies, in that the more antagonistic foreign policy of the Republican Party better serves the us-versus-them narrative that was expressed in Khameneis Nowruz message. On the other hand, the continuation of policies similar to President Obamas could have benefits to Irans economy and political influence, despite what Khamenei would have his listeners believe. The Fiscal Times acknowledges that thanks to the nuclear agreement and a set of permissive Western policies, Irans influence over the broader Middle East is larger today than it was several years ago. And this trend could conceivably continue over the long term, provided that Irans ongoing provocations do not go so far as to compel the US to impose new sanctions or take other punitive measures. But Khameneis recent speeches, complete with defense of the ballistic missile launches, certainly keep open the possibility of a further breakdown in the White Houses cooperative tone. And the statements of other hardline Iranian officials make this possibility seem all the more likely. For instance, the Jerusalem Post reported on Monday that Iranian Revolutionary Guard General Saeed Qasemi had strongly contributed to the global concerns over Irans expansionism when he publicly called for the annexation of Bahrain, a small island nation where Iran has been vying for influence with its main rival Saudi Arabia. Bahrain is also the headquarters of the US Navys Fifth Fleet, the source of the exercises that Khamenei cited the US as conducting with regional countries. [March 22, 2016] Green Dot Honored at the 2016 PYMNTS Innovator Awards Green Dot Corporation (NYSE:GDOT) today announced that its GoBank mobile checking account was honored at the 2016 PYMNTS Innovator Awards in the Best Check Innovation category. Announced at a live ceremony and awards dinner on March 17, 2016, GoBank was presented with the category's bronze award for its introduction of pre-authorized check-writing technology that provides additional security for customers and merchants. The PYMNTS Innovator Awards ar viewed as one of the most prestigious recognitions in the payments industry and the ceremony marked the conclusion of Innovation Project 2016, a two-day thought leadership event for payments executives. Steve Streit, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Green Dot, spoke at the summit on the topic of using innovative financial technology for financial inclusion, joining a prestigious faculty of speakers at the event. About Green Dot Corporation Green Dot Corporation, along with its wholly owned subsidiary bank, Green Dot Bank, is a pro-consumer financial technology innovator with a mission to reinvent personal banking for the masses. Green Dot invented the prepaid debit card industry and is the largest provider of reloadable prepaid debit cards and cash reload processing services in the United States. Green Dot is also a leader in mobile technology and mobile banking with its award-winning GoBank mobile checking account. Through its wholly owned subsidiary, TPG, Green Dot is additionally the largest processor of tax refund disbursements in the U.S. Green Dot's products and services are available to consumers through a large-scale "branchless bank" distribution network of more than 100,000 U.S. locations, including retailers, neighborhood financial service center locations, and tax preparation offices, as well as online, in the leading app stores and through leading online tax preparation providers. Green Dot Corporation is headquartered in Pasadena, Calif., with additional facilities throughout the United States and in Shanghai, China. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160322006347/en/ [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ] What Is Obama's Supreme Court Nominee Merrick Garland's Record On Guns? By Outdoor Hub Social. March 16th, 2016 Merrick Garland is currently the Chief Judge of the Washington, D.C. Court of Appeals. According to some organizations like the Judicial Crisis Network, Garland is considered "left-leaning on gun control." This opinion comes from two cases which he presided over involving the Second Amendment. One of these cases happened in 2007 when he voted to review a restrictive gun law in the District of Columbia that had previously been shot down. The law, which was eventually found unconstitutional by in the Supreme Court in the District of Columbia v. Heller decision, required guns to be kept unloaded and disassembled, unless they were being used for legal recreational activities. Previously a U.S. District Court ruled against the ban in favor of Heller and the D.C. Circuit upheld that ruling. Garland then voted on behalf of the court for the D.C. Circuit to reconsider their own previous ruling. Ultimately Garland's decision was not a ruling against gun rights, but it still raises some eyebrows. One clear sign that Garland may be anti-gun came from his NRA v. Reno ruling. ....... Despite most GOP resistance to such an appointment, we hear that even so, amazingly, three GOP members actually want it to go ahead. The dangers of a premature choice are considerable, in particular with respect to future SCOTUS decisions on the Second Amendment which is already potentially very vulnerable. The entire Bill of Rights itself is under ever more threat, all the time. "You don't have to be Jewish to fight by our side." 2016 JPFO All rights reserved. jpfo@jpfo.org 1-800-869-1884 Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership 12500 NE 10th Pl. Bellevue, WA 98005 USA Americas most aggressive civil rights organization We make the NRA look like moderates Join JPFO Back to Top An Ex-Con's Push To Get Guns In The Hands Of Non-Violent Felons By James King. March 21st, 2016 Barry Michaels was convicted of securities fraud in 1997 after investors in an airline he started lost money. "I represented myself," he told Vocativ. "I lost on a technicality." The conviction made him a felon, which stripped him of his right to vote, hold certain professional licenses and own a firearm. After serving 15 months in prison--and three years on probation--most of his rights were returned; Michaels currently is running for Congress as a Democrat in Nevada, and he's also allowed to vote. His right to own a firearm, like that of nearly all convicted felons, was not. Michaels is now suing both U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch and Thomas Brandon, the deputy director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, in a class-action lawsuit to have the right to own a gun restored to felons convicted of non-violent crimes. The retired Nevada businessman, who never owned a gun before or after his conviction, said it's a civil rights issue, not a gun control issue, and that after a felon does his or her time, they should be able to re-join society with the same rights as anyone else. ....... It is long past time that not only should minor misdemeanors sometimes not preclude gun ownership, but, more importantly a non-violent felon who has paid his dues should also be able to regain Second Amendment rights. The distinction between violent and non-violent crime must be addressed. "You don't have to be Jewish to fight by our side." 2016 JPFO All rights reserved. jpfo@jpfo.org 1-800-869-1884 Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership 12500 NE 10th Pl. Bellevue, WA 98005 USA Americas most aggressive civil rights organization We make the NRA look like moderates Join JPFO Back to Top Yes, you can transfer your domain to any registrar or hosting company once you have purchased it. Since domain transfers are a manual process, it can take up to 5 days to transfer the domain. Domains purchased with payment plans are not eligible to transfer until all payments have been made. Please remember that our 30-day money back guarantee is void once a domain has been transferred. For transfer instructions to GoDaddy, please click here. Allo-based products selling well in Rolpa Market prospects for allo-based products have expanded in Rolpa as there is a growing trend of giving products made of this hemp fibre as gifts. An open air exhibition at bungamati Bungmati locals witnessed the first ever open air photo/video exhibition organised in their community at Machhindra Bahal in Lalitpur on Sunday. Harry visits Lamjung, Bardiya British Prince Harry hiked for an hour to reach Leurani village after arriving in Lamjung district on a Nepal Army helicopter on Monday afternoon. India says Nepal is free to explore new transit routes A day after Nepal and China signed several agreements, including a transit and transportation agreement, India has said that Nepal is free to explore new transit routes. Nepal becomes SCO dialogue partner Nepal has signed an agreement paper becoming the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) dialogue partner. Nepal can be natural choice for Chinese investors: PM Oli The PM stressed that the Bank as well the Belt and Road Initiative could serve as cannels of finance for infrastructure development, improve connectivity and facilitate trade and investment across Asia and beyond. Nepal has failed to attract bigger FDI from India: Rae Indian Ambassador to Nepal Ranjit Rae has said Nepal has failed to attract bigger foreign direct investment (FDI) from the southern neighbour. Nepal signs deal to gain access to Chinese ports In a bid to shift away from heavy dependence on India, Nepal on Monday signed an agreement with China to use transit facilities for third country trade by using the ports of the northern neighbour. Prince Harry with students of Gaunda Secondary School Visiting British Prince Henry Charles Albert David Harry has arrived in Okhare village from Deurali after his one and a half hours trekking this morning at Gaunda VDC in the eastern part of Lamjung district. Proposal to develop SIA tabled at Cabinet Tourism Minister Aananda Prasad Pokhrel has said a proposal to develop Second International Airport (SIA) in Nijgadh, Bara, using domestic resources has been tabled at the Cabinet for its approval. No Yes, a light case Yes, two or more light cases One serious case Two or more serious bouts Vote View Results There was time for warning. A Mississippi River flood builds. Not in hours, but in days and weeks. The fear was that this time, though, no length of warning would be enough. Government officials at all levels had given heed to National Weather Service river forecaster Joseph Strubs March 19 caution that, if substantial rain fell in the Mississippi River watershed on top of the near-record snowpack on the ground, there was the potential for record-setting floods on the Mississippi and its major tributaries. The county Sheriff's Office says deputies were dispatched a little before 9 p.m. Monday to investigate a report about gunshots at a West Union apartment complex. The deputies say they found the body of a woman on the ground outside the complex. She'd been shot. Isabel Gonzalez (1881-1971) Isabel Gonzalez fought for 15 years to earn full U.S. citizenship rights for all Puerto Ricans. The United States acquired Puerto Rico from Spain in 1898 and promised respect to its people. Gonzalez left Puerto Rico in 1902, intending to meet family in New York and get married. While she was on her way, the U.S. tightened immigration rules on Puerto Ricans and her ship was sent to Ellis Island where passengers were labeled aliens. Even though her family vouched for her and proved they had the means to support her, she was not allowed to leave detention. After a court battle she lost, the case went to the U.S. Supreme Court which ruled Puerto Ricans should not be treated as aliens, but only gave them partial citizenship. Isabel wrote multiple letters to The New York Times and the issue was only resolved in 1917 when President Wilson granted all Puerto Ricans American citizenship. La Crosse cabbie charged with hitting pedestrian Criminal charges filed March 16 accuse a La Crosse cab driver of assaulting his passengers before striking one of them with his taxi. Two women in a Bee Cab driven by Ryan Trumm said he cranked his music and sped recklessly through downtown La Crosse when they asked him to turn down his music, according to the complaint filed in La Crosse County Circuit Court. He slammed on his brakes, drove onto a curb and tried to pull a passenger from his taxi, the complaint stated. A woman tried to pull the passenger back into the vehicle before Trumm hit her arm against the side of the cab, leaving a four-inch scrape. The passengers exited the taxi before Trumm pushed one of them, drove off and returned, striking a pedestrian on Jackson Street, according to the complaint. The pedestrian rolled onto the hood and fell to the ground before Trumm fled. The pedestrian was not hospitalized. Authorities stopped the cab on Mormon Coulee Road, where Trumm said one of his passengers strangled him while he was driving and that the group was trying to gang up on him, according to the complaint. He said the pedestrian, who had been a passenger, jumped in front of his cab. Prosecutors charged Trumm with second-degree recklessly endangering safety, hit-and-run causing injury, reckless driving causing injury and disorderly conduct. He returned to court Friday with an attorney. - La Crosse Tribune Five injured when truck hits buggy full of kids in Crawford County Five children were injured March 18 when their buggy was struck by a truck in Crawford County, Wis. The children, all from Mount Zion, were on their way to school just after 9:30 a.m. when the buggy was hit from behind by a GMC truck heading north on Hwy. 61, according to the Crawford County Sheriff Dale McCullick. The passengers ranged from age 6 to 11. Three were thrown onto the roadway by the crash, which badly damaged the buggy. Four were taken to Gundersen Boscobel Area Hospital, and a fifth was airlifted to a hospital in La Crosse. Their conditions were not reported. The buggys 11-year-old driver was uninjured, according to the sheriffs department. The driver of the truck, 86-year-old James Gobin, told deputies he didnt see the buggy, which the sheriff said was equipped with a slow-moving vehicle sign as well as hazard and turn lights. The horse pulling the buggy was injured but is expected to recover after being treated by a local veterinarian, McCullick said. McCullick said Gobin would likely be cited with inattentive driving. Traffic was diverted for more than three hours, according to the Wisconsin State Patrol. - La Crosse Tribune Person crashes car into Winona house, flees One minute youre watching the news; the next moment, you are the news. Winonas Oak Street was quiet Saturday night, at least until the 10 p.m. news came on the television. In a home on the 350 block, residents were going about their business until a crash shook the building, deputy chief Tom Williams said. Rushing outside, they spotted a green Oldsmobile Intrigue lodged in the corner of the house, wheels spinning in reverse as the lone occupant ignoring the homeowners shouted order to Stop! attempted to get clear of the scene. The attempt was successful, Williams said, leaving the homeowner to call police and contemplate the damage to his siding and the caved in foundation blocks. Police located the vehicle parked at the Maplewood Townhomes, but the driver remains wanted, but unidentified, Williams said. - Winona Daily News Saint Marys student missing from Winona campus; public asked to help with search A Saint Marys University student went missing from the Winona campus early Monday, prompting university officials and area law enforcement to ask for help in locating him. Luke Ringhand went missing during the early-morning hours and has not been heard from since. Ringhand is a senior philosophy major from Ironton and a valuable member of the Saint Marys community, the university said Monday in a statement. He was seen on video leaving campus at 4:30 a.m. in a charcoal gray Cadillac with Minnesota license plate 749-MBD. Authorities are concerned for his safety and whereabouts. His family, as well as law enforcement, have been contacted. Anyone with more information about his whereabouts is asked to call the Winona Law Enforcement Center at 507-457-6302. - Winona Daily News Saint Marys University officials and area law enforcement continued to look Tuesday for an SMU student reported missing a day earlier. Luke Ringhand went missing from the SMU campus during the early-morning hours Monday and has not been heard from since, prompting a call to ask for help in locating him. Winona police said Tuesday the search was focused on the Chicago area. Deputy chief Tom Williams said they had been contacted by a person who said they had seen Ringhand in a Lincoln Park Starbucks about 11:30 a.m. Monday. The witness said they had seen Ringhands picture on Facebook and then remembered seeing a person they believed to be him at the coffee shop, Williams said. The caller was not previously acquainted with Ringhand and there is no security video from the coffee shop. Chicago police have been contacted, but have not yet provided additional information. Williams said police are working with Ringhands family and students and other contacts in the Chicago area, but no one has heard from him. The search for Ringhand was prompted by a note found taped to his door about 6 a.m. Monday, Williams said. The note told friends not to worry and not to come looking for him, which caused concern since it was uncharacteristic of the SMU senior. Since the note was found there has been no contact with Ringhand by phone, text or email, and there has been no activity on his Facebook account. Williams said that family and friends do not believe Ringhand has access to a credit card, adding, He doesnt have a lot of money. He cant go far without a lot of money. Hopefully, well get some good news today. Anyone with more information about Ringhands whereabouts is asked to call the Winona Law Enforcement Center at 507-457-6302. He was seen on video leaving campus at 4:30 a.m. Monday in a charcoal grey Cadillac with Minnesota license plate 749-MBD. Democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been nominated to become a member of the cabinet Myanmars president-elect, Htin Kyaw. The Nobel Peace Prize-winners name was on a list of proposed ministers announced Tuesday by the speaker of parliament. The list has Aung San Suu Kyi's name next to four posts -- minister of the president's office, foreign affairs, energy and education. If she takes the post of foreign minister, she would have to give up her seat in parliament and leadership of the National League for Democracy party, or NLD. She led the party to a landslide victory in last November's parliamentary elections. The election ended fifty years of complete or partial military rule. Aung San Suu Kyi is barred from serving as president because of a provision in the constitution placed there by Myanmar's former military rulers. The constitution bars anyone with a foreign spouse or children from being president. Aung San Suu Kyi's late husband and her two sons are British citizens. Aung San Suu Kyi has declared she will keep power over president Htin Kyaw. He is her handpicked president and a lifelong friend and confidant. It is unclear if Aung San Suu Kyi will accept a position in the Cabinet. Maung Zarni is an activist and a researcher at the London School for Economics. He told VOA that he welcomes the announcement. However, he said the military remains a strong force in the government. He added that it is not in the militarys interest to permit the NLD to carry out many reforms to the political system. Im Mario Ritter. Richard Green and Victor Beattie reported this story for VOA. Mario Ritter adapted it for VOA Learning English. _____________________________________________________________ Words in This Story landslide victory adj.+ n. a very large, one-sided victory provision n. a condition put in an agreement or document for a special purpose confidant n. someone who is trusted, someone to be confided in The Islamic State terrorist group claimed responsibility for the attacks at the Brussels airport and metro that killed at least 30 people and injured 130 others. Two bombs exploded at Zaventem airport about 8 in the morning near the Swissport airline passenger area and a Starbucks coffee shop. At least 11 people were killed in the two airport bombings. About an hour later, another bomb exploded at the Maelbeek metro station during rush hour. A spokesman for the Brussels Metro system said the explosion on a train killed as many as 20 people and injured 55. The metro station is also near the European Union headquarters. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel told reporters This is a black moment in our country. Everyone please be calm and show solidarity. What we feared has come to pass. Our country has been struck by attacks which are blind, violent and cowardly. In a statement, French President Francois Hollande said, Through the attacks in Brussels, the whole of Europe has been hit. The French prime minister added, We are at war. We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war. In Havana, Cuba, President Barack Obama said, We will do whatever is necessary to support our friend and ally Belgium in bringing to justice those who are responsible. And this is yet another reminder that the world must unite regardless of nationality or race or faith in fighting against the scourge of terrorism. After the explosions, officials in Belgium closed the airport, metro system, other train stations, schools, shopping areas and museums. They told people who had not already departed for work to stay home. And they told those already at their offices to remain there. Belgian officials also released a photo taken from closed circuit TV of three men with luggage carts. They said two of them were the suicide bombers and that the third dressed in a light-colored coat, black hat and glasses was at large. Police later found a nail-filled bomb, chemical products and an Islamic State flag while searching a house in the Schaerbeek neighborhood. The attacks happened just days after the arrest of Salah Abdeslam in Brussels. He is accused of being one of the leaders of the deadly Paris terrorist attacks in November. Some experts feared that his supporters would answer his arrest with attacks in Brussels. Im Jonathan Evans. Lisa Bryant reported this story from Paris. Christopher Jones-Cruise adapted the story for VOA Learning English with additional materials from the AP and Reuters. Hai Do 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 metro n. the name often given to a citys underground train system, also called a subway scourge n. someone or something that causes a great amount of trouble or suffering closed-circuit adj. used to describe a television system that sends its signal through wires to a limited number of televisions Proposed education changes are causing debates in Hong Kong about its own future. Rita Fan is a member of the National People's Congress Standing Committee in Beijing. She told the state-run Xinhua news agency that Hong Kong's youth do not know enough about China's history or the central government's successes. Fan, a former head of the citys Legislative Council, added that Hong Kong schools teach a biased view of China and asked for a more positive view. Her comment brought criticism from Emily Lau, a legislative council member in Hong Kong. Lau said, Well, they [representatives] should have a more accurate grasp of whats happening here, so when they go to Beijing they can give a more accurate picture and representation to the central government." The comment is one in a series of proposed changes that drew criticism in Hong Kong. Simplified characters or traditional characters? Many people in Hong Kong write with traditional characters. In mainland China, people commonly use simplified characters, characters written in a simpler style. Recently, Hong Kong's Education Bureau released a document that called for students to recognize and read simplified Chinese, in order to expand students reading range and strengthen communication with mainland and foreign students. The debate over Chinese characters came in the same month that a riot took place in Hong Kong. Demonstrators said they were protesting against the loss of Hong Kong's traditional culture. Hong Kong's Education Bureau has since said that it will not replace traditional characters with simplified characters. Proposed reforms and protests In 2012, a booklet called "The China Model" gave suggestions for how to change Hong Kong's curriculum. The booklet criticized multi-party systems. It included pictures of Chinese leaders, and said the Communist Party was "progressive, selfless and united." The booklet caused protests in Hong Kong. Tens of thousands of people, including students, demonstrated against the booklet and its ideas. Joseph Cheng, a democracy activist, said that was the beginning of an effort to change Hong Kong's curriculum. I do believe that the education sector, the primary and secondary schools, are now a very important focus of the pro-Beijing united front. They certainly have been demanding stronger patriotic programs, Cheng said. Sally Tang Mei-Ching is a member of Socialist Action. She said Hong Kongs youth strongly oppose Chinas growing political and cultural influence on the city. They teach students how to appreciate the Communist Party, but in a very biased way. So this is why a lot of young people really hate China, not China as a whole, but the Chinese regime, because we want democratic rights, she said. Whats next? Joshua Wong is a pro-democracy activist who founded Scholarism. The group played a major role in the 2012 protests against education reform in Hong Kong. This week, Wong said he plans to form a new political party. The party will call for Hong Kong to declare independence in 2047. That is when the 1997 handover agreement between China and Britain will expire. I'm John Russell. Shannon Van Sant reported on this story for VOANews.com. John Russell adapted this story for Learning English. Hai Do was the editor. We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section or on our Facebook page. _______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story call n. a public request or statement that asks or tells people to do something positive adj. thinking about the good qualities of someone or something biased adj. having or showing an unfair tendency to believe that some people, ideas, etc., are better than others curriculum n. the courses that are taught by a school, college, etc. characters n. a symbol (such as a letter or number) that is used in writing or printing Many cars in advertisements, exhibits and at car dealerships in the United States are red, blue or green -- but almost 75 percent of new cars sold in the United States are black, white, silver or gray. Les Jackson is a reporter who writes about cars. He says the car colors Americans choose do not show dirt as much as the colors of other cars. He says that means the owners wash their cars less, saving money. And he notes some areas that are suffering from water shortages do not permit people to wash their cars often, if at all. Dan Benton works for a company called Axalta, which makes supplies for international carmakers. He says when white cars are sold by their owners, they often sell for higher amounts than cars of other colors. And he notes that white cars absorb less energy than cars of other colors. This means temperatures inside them are lower in warmer areas. Benton also says research at Monash University in Australia suggests that there is a lower risk of crashes during the day for white cars compared with darker ones. Car buyers in other countries also like white. Jane Harrington works for PPG Industries, a company that makes paint for cars. She said in China, buyers say white makes a small car look bigger. Axalta says about 11 percent of cars sold in North America are red and 8 percent are blue. In South America, 10 percent of new cars sold are red. Green has become less popular. Benton notes that in the mid 1990s, green was the most popular color in North America. Today, green is hard to find. Sometime in the future, people may not have to choose the color of their car -- technology may let owners change their cars paint color anytime. Im Christopher Jones-Cruise. Carol Guensburg reported this story from Washington. Christopher Jones-Cruise adapted the story for VOA Learning English. Hai Do 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 dealership - n. a business that sells a specific product absorb - v. to draw in (heat, light, energy, etc.) A well-known Vietnamese blogger will go on trial this week for posting stories that the government says cause people to lose faith in the government. Nguyen Huu Vinh and his assistant, Nguyen Thi Minh Thuy, have been in jail since 2014. Their lawyer says the trial will begin on Wednesday. Fifty-nine year-old Vinh is a former police officer and son of a late government minister. He started his Ba Sam blog in 2007 and later began two other blogs on citizen rights and Vietnamese history. The blogs provide links to news stories about politics, social, economic and cultural issues. The Associated Press said the blogs use stories from both state media and political activists. Vietnamese State Media reported the two bloggers are charged with posting more than twenty stories with untruthful and groundless content. The government says the stories present a one-sided and pessimistic view, causing anxiety and worry, and affecting the peoples confidence in Vietnams Communist Party and government. Vinh is known in Vietnam as Anh Ba Sam. He was a police officer in the Ministry of Public Security in Hanoi. He quit in 1999 to set up a private investigation company. His father was a government minister who served as Vietnams ambassador to the former Soviet Union. Ha Huy Son is Vinhs lawyer. He said Vinh and Thuy deny the charges against them. The two have said they have no relations to the postings on their blogs, the lawyer told the Associated Press. Amnesty International criticized Vietnam Tuesday for continuing to keep the two bloggers in prison and putting them on trial. It called for their immediate release. Amnesty International said the government is trying to remove legitimate criticism and making people afraid to ask questions of their leaders. Amnesty International said it has health concerns about Vinh. The human rights group said Vinh has had a skin condition for the past six months and was not given needed treatment. Im Mario Ritter. Bruce Alpert reported on this story for VOA Learning English based on reporting by the Associated Press and other information. Mario Ritter was the editor. We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments Section or share your views on our Facebook Page. _______________________________________________________________ Words in This Story blogger n. a person who post stories, opinions, on the internet faith n. strong belief or trust in someone or something content n. articles, photos and other material pessimistic adj. having or showing a lack of hope for the future anxiety n. worries and concerns confidence n. a feeling or belief that someone or something is good or has the ability to succeed at something When the Stuhr Museum's Grandma B teaches the rules of dining etiquette at the turn of the 20th century, she's a stickler for details. Grandma B, whose real name is Saundra Bottger, presided over a meal for 29 travel writers Tuesday at the museum. She told the diners to carefully follow the lead of the man at the head of the table, Ryan Walsingham. Bottger also advised them that when they're done with a piece of silverware, they should place it on their salad plate pointing toward 4 o'clock. Bottger also told the diners there would be no talking at the table once they were seated. "Ever?" asked Ron Paquet. "Sir, are you going to be a problem?" Bottger asked Paquet, who lives in Montreal, Quebec. The entree for the lunch was scalloped chicken with braised carrots, but the bird that impressed most of the travel writers was the crane. Debbie Geiger, whose company organizes the tour of Central Nebraska, says the writers are amazed by the wildlife views. "Most people don't associate Nebraska with astounding wildlife views. Yet all this is here," said Geiger, who lives in Tallahassee, Fla. She is president of Geiger and Associates, a public relations agency that works with the Nebraska Tourism Commission. This is the fourth year that Geiger and Associates has brought a group of travel writers to Central Nebraska. Twenty of the 29 people dining Tuesday at the Stuhr Museum were travel writers. Geiger and four other members of the group represented Geiger and Associates. The writers are spending two nights in Grand Island. Monday's schedule included a visit to Rowe Sanctuary, where the group saw a lot of sandhill cranes, said Jenn Gjerde of the Nebraska Tourism Commission. The writers were also entertained by another type of bird. The tour began Saturday in McCook, where the group enjoyed seeing prairie chickens. The visit to Nebraska's Central Platte River Region also included stops in Gothenburg, Minden and Harlan Reservoir. Tuesday morning, the writers visited Crane Trust Nature and Visitor Center. After their lunch, they had tours of the museum and Railroad Town. "I loved the whole philosophy behind the Crane Trust, which is to conserve habitat," said Rachel Dickinson, who lives in Freeville, N.Y. She likes the way the Crane Trust plants vegetation that was common in the 19th century. "I think that's very noble," said Dickinson, who has written most recently for Men's Journal. When she returns home from Nebraska, she will pitch ideas to Smithsonian and Audubon magazines. Dickinson recently sold a book about the world's first train robbers, who committed the crime in Seymour, Ind., in 1866. Elizabeth Granger, who lives in Fischers, Ind., is a big fan of sandhill cranes. "Everybody needs to have a sense of awe in their life" on a regular basis, she said. That holds true no matter how old your are, said Granger, who is a two-time president of the Midwest Travel Writers Association. "Lots of things I do get picked up in AAA magazines," said Granger, who made the trip with her husband, Fred. Granger also enjoyed Pioneer Village in Minden and the classic car collection at Cabela's in Kearney. Also making the trip is Stephen Kirchner of Louisville, Ky., editor and publisher of Byways Magazine. That publication, which has become digital only, is read by many people who organize group tours. In Grand Island, the group is hosted by the Grand Island Convention and Visitors Bureau. In addition to helping the writers make local arrangements, Tricia Beem of the CVB is showing them hospitality. Tuesday night, they dined at the Chocolate Bar. Wednesday, they planned to enjoy a farm-to-table meal at Raising Nebraska. One member of the group, Mirei Sato, lives in the U.S., but writes for a biweekly Japanese publication called U.S. Frontline Magazine. The group also included Ray Brown, host of an interactive radio show called "Ray Brown's Talkin' Birds," and Jennifer Bain, travel editor of the Toronto Star. Paquet, a photographer and writer, will do a story about the trip for Canadian World Traveller. Another writer is Barbara Wysocki, a freelance travel journalist from Hartford, Conn. On Wednesday, some members of the group will branch off to Hastings and Red Cloud. "This is just a great return on investment for us," Gjerde said. The journalists write stories that many times are sold to big publications "that people from all over the world are reading, that hopefully then inspire a trip to Central Nebraska." Los Angeles: Homeland star Claire Danes says television is "fun" because of the uncertainty factor that it brings in. "Television is fun too because were riding this train on tracks that are being laid and, you know, nobody really knows where its going to go, even the writers are not entirely certain," Danes said. "And so, its terrifying and really thrilling and Im as hungry for the next script as, you know, an audience is going to be for the next instalment, you know, the next episode. Were all kind of biting our nails," she added. Danes, who stars as Carrie Mathison, a Central Intelligence Agency officer with bipolar disorder in the American political thriller television series, says she admires the "insane super-human intelligence" of her character in the show, but she is not like her in real life. "I admire her like insane super-human intelligence, her Spidey sense, like, shes so extraordinary and Im so glad that I get to pretend to be because Im not, in that way, and shes so. She means so well; shes really earnest, brazen and kind of sexless. I mean, shes not defined by her gender," Danes said. However, Danes said that she doesn't recommend that anyone date her character! "She doesnt have inhibitions that most women are supposed to have and I enjoy and appreciate her brazenness and her chutzpah and her courage and yeah, I think shes actually a pretty good person given how terribly she can behave. She works really, hard and youve got to give her credit for that. But, you know, I dont recommend dating her; not a good idea," she said. IANS Mumbai: Actress Swara Bhaskar, playing the lead in the upcoming movie Nil Battey Sannata, said she was initially reluctant to play the role of mother of a teenage girl fearing that it would affect her career. In the film, directed by Ashwini Iyer Tiwari, the 27-year-old actress is playing the mother of a 15-year-old girl. "When the casting director Mukesh Chhabra came with this idea of a mother-daughter film, I thought I had to play the role of a daughter. I was shocked and told him that my career will go down as it's a mother's role," Swara told reporters here at the launch of the trailer of 'Nil Battey Sannata'. The film, backed by filmmaker Aanand Rai, and also featuring Ratna Pathak, Pankaj Tripathi and Ria, will release in theatres on April 22. "I had played Salman Khan's sister (in Prem Ratan Dhan Payo) and then I get to play a mother (in Nil...) soon I might even get offer for the role of a grandmother," she said in a lighter vein. Swara said that actresses typically play roles suitable to their age or roles of younger people. "There were people who told me it's not a good idea to do this role. I was scared about my image," the actress said, adding that when she read the story of the film she fell in love with the idea. Swara said she had initially thought of refusing to play the role. "I thought I will just read the script as the casting director is a friend and say that I did not like the story. But rather I loved it (story)," she said. Swara said she was told by the director to gain weight for the role. "I was asked to gain 10 kg. So I kept eating and eating. But midway through the shoot, she (Ashwini Iyer Tiwari) told me to lose some weight as I was looking a bit too healthy. It is difficult to lose weight," she said. Explaining the title of the film, Swara revealed that in real life she is Nil Battey Sannata ('being an absolute zero or incompetent') when it comes to glamour. Swara considers walking the red carpet is like appearing for examination. "To be a heroine is an occupational hazard. Earlier, I used to not pay attention to it (glamour side). Now I do my homework as we have a team (stylist)," she said. Considering that she has worked with fashionista Sonam Kapoor in Ranjhaana and Prem Ratan Dhan Payo, Swara said she talked girly stuff with her. Swara, however, said that actors are remembered for the work they do. "It was great experience of working with her (Ratna Pathak Shah). She is brilliant and an outstanding actress," she said. PTI New Delhi: Edelweiss Asset Management today announced the acquisition of global giant JP Morgan's mutual fund business in India that has assets worth over Rs 7,000 crore, marking yet another exit of a foreign fund house from the over Rs 13 lakh-crore industry. Under the deal, Edelweiss will acquire all onshore fund schemes managed by JP Morgan Asset Management India including its country-based onshore mutual fund business and the international fund of funds, subject to regulatory approvals, Edelweiss said in a statement. Post acquisition, the AUMs of the combined entity would be Rs 8,757 crore. Along with the schemes, Edelweiss said it is committed to absorbing majority of employees of JP Morgan ensuring business continuity as well as a platform for enhanced growth. The deal size could not be ascertained immediately. In the past few years, a number of global players have exited the Indian mutual fund business. Reliance Capital Asset Management (RCAM) last year announced takeover of global giant Goldman Sachs' mutual fund business in India for Rs 243 crore in an all-cash deal. Standard Chartered sold its mutual fund business in India to IDFC in 2008, Fidelity sold its mutual fund to L&T Finance in 2012, while last year HDFC MF acquired Morgan Stanley's fund business here. Besides, Birla Sunlife had acquired ING Mutual Fund, Kotak MF has bought PineBridge Mutual Fund and Pramerica has taken over Deutsche Bank's MF business in India. PTI New Delhi: Payments bank of Department of Posts is likely to become operational by March 2017, Communications and IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said today. "Very soon by March next year we are going to bring in payments bank of the Postal department. And how things are changing, we have just got in-principle approval and we are going to the Cabinet soon," Prasad said. The minister added that 60 international consortiums are keen to partner India Post for third partner delivery for insurance and banking, among others. Speaking at the Digital India Summit organised by Times Network here, Prasad said India Post has the largest network of core banking solution branches in India. "When I became minister (2014), just 230 India Post branches had core banking solutions and as of yesterday 20,494 post offices have come under core banking solutions out of 25,000 and we can complete it by April," he said. "Today I am very proud to announce that core banking linkage of post offices is bigger than State Bank of India. SBI has 16,333 core banking solution branches," he added. On ATMs, he said the number has risen from four to 850 and by mid-April it will go to 1,000. India Posts received in-principle approval from Reserve Bank of India on September 7, for setting up of payments bank within 18 months. The department has also received clearance for funds from the Public Investment Board (PIB) for the payment banks. India Post Payments Bank (IPPB) is likely to facilitate payments of the central and state governments as well as municipal dues and fees of various universities and educational bodies. The list of other probable service includes "person to person remittances both domestic and cross border." The bank may also distribute third party financial products such as insurance, mutual funds and pension products, give access to formal credit products by acting as banking correspondents of banks and facilitate utility bill payments for electricity, water, telephone, gas etc. PTI New Delhi - Customers won't be able to conduct bank transactions at branches for four days in a row this week as all banks will be closed from Thursday, although the lenders assure that they will fully load ATMs for meeting people's cash needs. Thursday will be a holiday for celebrating the Holi festival, followed by Good Friday and the weekend. Banks are closed on second and fourth Saturdays every month. Hence, 4 continuous offs for the bank employees. Banks are trying to ensure that ATMs remain operational during these days so that people don't have any cash problem, a senior public sector bank official said. They are trying to put higher denomination notes in ATM machines to ensure meeting the cash demand, the official added. IDBI Bank may be closed for an extra day if the strike call given by a section of officers and employees of the bank on March 28 (Monday) materialises. The staffers, belonging to the All India Bank Employees Association (AIBEA) and All India Bank Officers Association (AIBOA), have given the strike call to protest against the government move to privatise IDBI Bank. The government owns around 80 per cent stake in the bank. In Budget 2016-17, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said the government was open to bringing down its stake in IDBI Bank to below 50 per cent. PTI Bhubaneswar: Enforcement Directorate on Tuesday filed a chargesheet in the multi-crore Rose Valley chit fund scam wherein thousands of people were cheated in West Bengal and Odisha. The agency said it has filed a prosecution complaint (equivalent of chargesheet) pertaining to cases in Odisha under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) before the Khurda sessions court cum special PMLA court here against the Chairman of the Rose Valley group of companies Gautam Kundu and others. In the chargesheet, the agency has also requested the court to allow it to confiscate properties worth Rs 332 crore which it has already seized in the case. "Kundu was primarily involved in illegal collection of deposits of Rs 475 crore from the public of Odisha with the false promise of high returns and subsequently laundered these funds by transferring the same to other shell companies founded by him," the agency said. Kundu was last year arrested by the agency under anti-money laundering laws in Kolkata and he is currently in judicial custody. A chargesheet had earlier been filed by the ED before a a special court in Kolkata pertaining to the groups' alleged ponzi operations in West Bengal. The agency added it had scanned over 3000 bank accounts and succeeded in tracing and attaching Rs 332 crore cash lying in different bank accounts of M/s Rose Valley group of companies. "This has been the biggest ever attachment of liquid cash by any government agency in the country," it said. The sources said the agency's probe has detected that Kundu was the alleged "beneficial owner" of these tainted funds generated as proceeds of the chit fund scam. It had, hence, registered a criminal FIR against the firm and its owners in 2014 under PMLA. The ED, under criminal provisions of the PMLA, had earlier attached 2,631 bank accounts of the Rose Valley group containing Rs 295 crore. The group had allegedly floated a total of 27 companies for running the alleged chit fund operations out of which only half-a-dozen were active. It is alleged that the firm had floated the scheme by promising inflated returns on investments between 8 and 27 percent to gullible investors in various states. The company had allegedly promised astronomical returns to depositors on land properties and assets and bookings done in the real estate sector. It is alleged that the company had made "cross investments" in its various sister firms to suppress its liabilities towards investors. SEBI had probed the company before ED and CBI registered cases against the group. The ED has pegged the total volume of the alleged irregularities at Rs 15,000 crore. PTI Shillong: Home Minister Rajnath Singh has ruled out the withdrawal of Assam Rifles from the Indo-Myanmar border and its replacement with another paramilitary force, saying no such decision has been taken yet. "We have not taken any decision yet. Whenever we take any such decision, we will let you know," he told reporters here, on the sidelines of a 'Sainik Sammelan' organised on the occasion of the 181st Raising Day of Assam Rifles. There have been reports that the central government may entrust the task of guarding this border to another border guarding force, the Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP). Border Security Force (BSF) was earlier being considered for the task and it had also prepared an assessment report in this regard. India and Myanmar share an unfenced border of 1,643 km adjoining Arunachal Pradesh (520 km), Nagaland (215 km), Manipur (398 km) and Mizoram (510 km) and permit a "free movement" regime up to 16 km across the border. Assam Rifles, raised in 1835, functions under the operational command of the Union Home Ministry. The Home Minister is on a two-day tour of Meghalaya. PTI New Delhi: Congress on Monday demanded action against six Maharashtra ministers accusing them of "shamelessly pursuing" business interests even after assuming office, insisting this is a "blatant conflict of interest". "Maharashtra government should take immediate action against them and launch a thorough probe to find out how they have used their official positions to benefit their private concerns," it said. It claimed the ministers who are linked to private firms are Health Minister Deepak Sawant: chairman of Anideep Eye Hospital; MoS for Housing Ravindra Waikar: Board of director of a construction firm; PWD Minister Chandrakant Patil: Director of Telematic Interactive Pvt Ltd; Women & Child Development Minister Pankaja Munde: on the boards of at least five companies; MoS for Industries and Mining Pravin Pote Patil: Director on the board of Pravin Builders and Developers (India) Pvt Ltd.; and MoS for Finance and Rural Development Deepak Kesarkar: on the board of Sindhudurg-based Innovators Resorts Pvt Ltd. In a commentary titled "Maha corrupt Maharashtra Govt Ministers are running private companies", it said according to the Constitution, no MLA can hold an office of profit while serving in the Assembly. In the commentary posted on its website, the party noted that the average salary of an MLA in Maharashtra is Rs 75,000, with ministers earning even more. This of course does not include the many perks that are given to ministers, it said. "The BJP in Maharashtra has been grossly violating the norms of Indian democracy," it alleged, saying after the nexus between Education Minister Vinod Tawde and various companies was exposed, it has now come to light that many ministers in the Devendra Fadnavis' government are directors of private firms. The AICC was also critical of two of these ministers for defending their action. It recalled that after getting all these privileges, Sawant said, "How will ministers eat?" Chandrakant Patil said if ministers didn't hold on to these positions they would have to resort to corruption. The party also took to Twitter to target the six ministers under the tag #corruptFadanavisgovernment. "Maha' conflict of Interest in @Dev_Fadnavis' Government. Shouldn't these Ministers step down?", it asked. PTI New Delhi: The Delhi Police was on Tuesday directed by a court here to file an action taken report (ATR) on a criminal complaint seeking registration of FIR against AIMIM President Asaduddin Owaisi for alleged offences of sedition and causing enmity between different groups. Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Munish Markan asked the SHO of Karawal Nagar police station through the DCP (North-East Delhi) to file the report detailing the action taken on the plea on 7 May. The complaint filed by Swaraj Janata Party's national president Brijesh Chand Shukla, alleged that on 13 March, Owaisi had voluntarily said that "even if somebody puts a knife at me, I will not say 'Bharat Mata ki jai'" and his expression showed "disaffection and includes disloyalty and all feeling of enmity". During the arguments, advocate Rajesh Kumar, appearing for the complainant, said the matter comes under the definition of section 124A (sedition) of IPC as the statement made by Owaisi showed his disloyalty and disaffection towards the nation. The complaint sought a direction to the police to lodge an FIR against Owaisi for the alleged offences under sections 124A (sedition) and 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race etc) of IPC. The plea alleged that the act of Hyderabad MP showed he was not loyal to India and was trying to harm the country's reputation and his statement comes under the definition of sedition charge. "...It is correct that our Constitution does not permit to say 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' but the Constitution also does not allow to say 'koi meri gardan par churi rakh de tab bhi mai Bharat Mata ki jai nahi bolunga' (even if somebody puts a knife at my neck, I will not say Bharat Mata ki jai)," it alleged. The complainant said he had filed the complaint in this regard with the Delhi Police but no action was taken and thereafter, he approached the court. A public interest litigation (PIL) has also been filed in the Bombay High Court by a Pune-based social activist urging it to take legal action against both Owaisi and AIMIM MLA Warris Pathan for refusing to chant 'Bharat Mata ki jai'. The PIL urged the court to order an inquiry into the speeches made by the duo in the recent past in which they had allegedly showed dishonour to the motherland by such remarks. PTI New Delhi: A five-year-old boy was allegedly abducted from outside his school by three persons who lived in the victim's residence as tenants in south Delhi's Vasant Kunj area, police said on Monday. The incident took place on Wednesday, following which police registered a case and rescued the child in 24 hours from southwest Delhi's Kapasheda area. The boy's father Dharmender had approached the police, saying he had dropped his nine-year-old daughter and son to school but the boy, Rithik, did not return home. Police registered a case and launched a search operation. With the help of local intelligence, police soon zeroed in on Dharmender's tenants Sabir Ali, his wife Rinku Sarkar and their relative Dolly Mondol, all residents of West Bengal, who were also missing, police said. Sabir was arrested first, who led the police team to a hideout in Kapasheda area, from where the boy was rescued and the other two accused were arrested. During interrogation, the accused said they had to repay heavy debts for which they allegedly abducted the boy from outside Vasant Public School and they had plans to sell him, police said. They were produced before a court, which sent them to 14 days judicial custody, they added. PTI New Delhi: The Delhi High Court on Tuesday issued notice to a woman who had accused Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Kumar Vishwas of molesting her, while hearing his plea against lodging an FIR in the matter. Justice Sunita Gupta also issued notice to Delhi Police and asked them to file status report on the issue by 21 July. Filing the plea in the Delhi High Court, Vishwas challenged a trial court's order to lodge a first information report (FIR) against him on a complaint of a party volunteer that he molested her. The trial court on 16 March said the complaint accusing Vishwas of making "sexually coloured" remarks and "advances" towards her required an investigtion. During the hearing, police told the court that no offence is made out against Vishwas from the complaint. "The complainant made the complaint, but there is no proof," said police. IANS By Abhishek Waghmare, IndiaSpend Water levels at 91 major reservoirs nationwide are the lowest in a decadeno more than 29 per cent, according to the latest weekly bulletin of the Central Water Commission (CWC). As World Water Day is marked today, water levels at Indian reservoirs are 71 per cent of last year, or 74 per cent of average storage over the last decade, the CWC data reveal. The 91 major reservoirs contain 157.8 billion cubic metre (BCM) of water; the capacity of these reservoirs is 250 BCM. Another 400 BCM water is available for irrigation in India through groundwater, according to this answer given by the government in the Lok Sabha (the lower house of Parliament) in July 2015. With more than three months for the monsoon, which breaks in the first week of July, 2016 is on course to witness the worst water scarcity in a decade. Reports of widespread scarcity are already evident, as is conflict over water use for agriculture, domestic use and manufacturing. Thousands of villages in Maharashtras Marathwadafacing record-breaking droughtdepend solely on water from state-supplied tankers, with the city of Latur supplying water to its people once in three weeks. Last week, the Latur district administration, fearing violence over water, imposed restrictions on assembly. Fodder camps in parched rural Maharashtra shelter not just cattle but hundreds of families. The government is now recommending that towns and cities stop water supply to swimming pools. Madhya Pradesh (MP) is bracing for drought and the government is preparing to send tankers to villagers. In Bundelkhandspread across MP and Uttar Pradeshthere hasnt been water to sow the winter crop, agricultural productivity has halved and people find it hard to buy salt. In Odisha, farmers have broken embankments of public lakes to save crops. Farmers demanding water recently blockaded Bangalore. And the water crisis in Karnataka is witnessing a fallout in Andhra Pradesh (AP) and Tamil Nadu. AP, Uttarakhand, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu likely to be Indias most water-scarce states this summer. South India is the worst off, reservoir levels at 20 per cent Reservoirs in Indias eastern and central regions have the most water, with levels at 44 per cent and 36 per cent, respectively, of capacity; while levels in the south, west and north are 20 per cent, 26 per cent and 27 per cent, respectively, according to the CWC data. The 10-year average for water levels is 38.5 per cent. The Krishna river basin in peninsular India is particularly short of water, affecting Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. The Indus, Tapi, Mahi, Cauvery and Godavari basins are also deficient basins, todays data reveal, forecasting scarcity situations in the coming months in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Jayakwadi in Aurangabad districtin Marathwada, parts of which are enduring the worst drought in a century, as IndiaSpend reported in Januaryof Maharashtra has only 1 per cent water left of its 2.17-BCM capacity. The reservoirs of Bhima Ujjani in Maharashtra with a capacity of 1.5 BCM and NagarjunaSagar in Andhra Pradesh with 6.8 BCM storage capacity are empty. No lessons learned, no preparations evident Availability of water has been taken for granted till recently. It is so no more. The rapid growth in population, coupled with increasing economic activities, has put a tremendous pressure on the available water resources, said this report tiled Reassessment of Water Resources Potential of India 1993, Central Water Commission. Warnings about Indias water crisis are not new and rarely make news, as the CWC report did not in 1993, when Indias population was 880 milliona third less than that today. IndiaSpend has reported on the worlds worst groundwater crisis and how half the groundwater in Indiawhich uses 37 per cent more fresh water than Chinais contaminated. Water for drinking and sanitation was given the highest priority in the National Water Policy 2012, preceding agriculture and economic purposes, such as industry and power generation. Rural India lives in about 1.7 million habitations (including villages), three-quarters of which1.3 million gets 40 litres of water per person per day for all uses, including drinking and other usage like bathing, Washing clothes , utensils and sanitation. There are 66,093 rural habitations in India where the drinking-water source is contaminated with either one or more chemicals, such as like arsenic, fluoride, nitrate, iron and salinity; although this is down from 84,292 over two years, as IndiaSpend reported on World Water Day 2015. Water-guzzling crops and power outages Of 650 BCM water available for irrigation, 15 per cent, or 100 BCM of water, is used by sugarcane (the crop uses water from reservoirs as well as groundwater), which is planted on no more than 2.5 per cent of Indias farmland. Sugarcane uses a disproportionate amount of water, this Current Science study explained. Agriculture and industry compete for the same water, and overuse, as with sugarcane, affects Indians in other ways, such as electricity generation. For instance, low water-levels in West Bengal forced a shut down of the National Thermal Power Corporations Farraka coal-fired plant, causing outages in Jharkhand, Bihar, Odisha and West Bengal Electricity generation at Parli in Maharashtra, Raichur and Sharavathi in Karnataka are facing similar shutdowns. Maharashtra and Karnataka are generating half the power they are capable of because of the unfolding water crisis. (IndiaSpend.com is a data-driven, public-interest journalism non-profit) New Delhi: The defence ministry on day red flagged the "on-going contestations" over island territories in the Asia Pacific as a threat to security in the region even as it said there has been an "increase in assertiveness" during routine patrolling by the Chinese army along the LAC. In its annual report released in New Delhi, the ministry also said that radicalisation and fresh recruitment in South Kashmir are a "cause of concern". "External factors, including the changing situation in Pakistan and Afghanistan, may also impact the internal situation in Jammu and Kashmir," the report said. Noting that India's security environment encompasses a complex matrix of regional and global issues and challenges, it emphasised on the need to enhance preparedness to address consequences of instability and volatility in parts of the immediate and extended neighbourhood, saying, it remains a key priority. "At the same time, there are renewed and successful efforts to build strong defence partnerships with a wide range of friendly foreign countries to enhance international peace and stability," the report said. Without naming China or the US, the ministry said, shift in global balance of power, as reflected in recent developments in the Asia Pacific region, have introduced new dimensions in military and diplomatic interactions among the major powers and regional states. "This has been manifested in renewed maritime disputes, changes in military posture and great power rivalry, all of which has added to complexities of the security situation in the region. "In particular, the ongoing contestations over island territories in the Asia Pacific have fuelled regional tensions that could seriously strain the cooperative structures that have enabled a rapid growth of the Asia Pacific region as an engine of global growth," the report said. On the situation at LAC (Line of Actual Control), the report said India-China border continues to be peaceful. There are a few areas along the border wherein India and China have differing perception of the LAC, it said. "Both sides patrol up to their respective perception of LAC and due to this transgressions occur...However there has been increase in assertiveness during routine patrolling by the PLA (People's Liberation Army)," the report said. The annual report of the defence ministry also said Indian Ocean Region is central to India's growth and security. The ministry said India is committed to building security cooperation with all partners in the neighbourhood on the basis of equality, mutual benefit and mutual respect. It identified terrorism and the activities of terrorist organisations as perhaps the "most serious" threat to peace and security. The use of terrorism as an instrument of policy by a few states has exacerbated intra and inter-state rivalries, it said. "Peace and stability in various regions of the world are marred by the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. In particular, the threat of nuclear terrorism continues to be a major international security concern, notwithstanding international efforts to strengthen nuclear security and to prevent non-state actors from acquiring nuclear materials," it said. The report also said that India is keen to expand its energy basket by deeper engagement in this sector with Central Asian countries that are major energy producers," adding, changes in Iran open up new avenues for establishing regional connectivity between Central Asia and India. PTI Pune: Alok Singh, head of ABVP wing in Jawaharlal Nehru University, on Monday said the student members of the organisation have been subjected to a "smear" campaign after the Afzal Guru event on 9 February where anti-national slogans were allegedly raised. "Post February 9 event, ABVP members have been targeted and a smear campaign has been launched against us. Doors of our hostel rooms are painted with derogatory graffiti messages and we have been tortured for raising voice against whatever happened," Singh alleged while addressing a gathering on 'Freedom of Expression and JNU'. The ABVP leader claimed they have "all proof to show that anti-India slogans were raised at the event and that JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar, booked for sedition charges and currently on bail, led the procession on February 9". "On the particular day, Kumar led the procession from Sabarmati Dhaba to Ganga Dhaba and the students organisations congratulated each other for carrying out the procession despite permission being rejected to hold such event by JNU administration. "All these students unions were there, but nobody took objection and it was only ABVP who raised the voice and lodged a complaint and now we are fighting not only these students, but over 200 teachers and teachers' associations who have been trying to politicise the incident and covering up for those who are involved," Singh said. Singh, a PhD student of Life Science at JNU, accused Kumar of adopting "double standards" over the incident whereas the latter was fined for "misbehaving" with a woman on campus. He alleged that Kanhaiya, who delivers speech on International Women's Day, had in personal life abused a girl and misbehaved with her, when she had raised objections about him urinating in public. PTI New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi will travel to Brussels on 30 March for the long-pending India-EU summit, notwithstanding the string of explosions in the Belgian capital on Tuesday killing at least 34 people and injuring over 200. India announced Modi's visit to Brussels which is part of a three-nation tour including to the US and Saudi Arabia as it strongly condemned the attack on the city's airport and metro system in which two Indians were injured. "We condemned the attack with strongest possible terms. We stand in solidarity with people and government of Belgium. We offfer our condolences to families of the victims. Terrorism is a global scourge and the attack in Belgium underscores once again the need to counter it unitedly," External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said. The Prime Minister is visiting Brussels to attend the 13th India-EU which had last taken place in 2012. The India-EU ties witnessed some strain after the 28-member bloc had not responded to New Delhi's proposal for a brief visit by Modi to Brussels, the EU headquarters during his trip to France, Germany and Canada in April last year. Brussels will be Modi's first stop from where he will travel to Washington to attend the Nuclear Security Summit and then pay a bilateral trip to Saudi Arabia, a key partner of India in the strategically important Gulf region. The EU has been India's largest trading partner and two-way commerce stood at $101.5 billion in 2013-14. The FDI equity inflows from EU to India from April 2012 to May 2015 was $24,913 million. In 2014-15, the amount was $8,207 million while in 2013-14, it was 9,069 million. India and EU are also strategic partners since 2004 and the two sides have been eyeing to seal a free trade agreement talks for which was launched in June 2007. The India-EU Summit aims to deepen the India-EU Strategic Partnership and advance collaboration in priority areas for India's growth and development, Swarup said. Modi will also hold a bilateral Summit meeting with his Belgian counterpart Charles Michel. Belgium is India's second largest trade partner within the EU. "The bilateral meeting between the two Prime Ministers will focus on further enhancing the economic partnership," said Swarup. From Brussels, Modi will leave for Washington to attend the 4th Nuclear Security Summit on March 31 and April 1. PTI Students ransacked the office of Hyderabad University vice-chancellor Appa Rao on Tuesday, hours after he returned to work from two-month-long leave following the suicide of Rohith Vemula. Vemula killed himself on 17 January after days of alleged caste discrimination and ostracism on campus. Rao is accused of abetting Vemulas suicide by suspending him and four other students from the university hostel for allegedly beating up an ABVP leader, reports Hindustan Times. The protests began in the morning when a section of students while raising slogans against the Vice Chancellor, barged into his residence (VC's lodge), broke window panes, smashed doors and television among other items, protesting against his resumption of duty. Hyderabad University students protesting at VC's lodge vandalise the venue where VC Appa Rao was present. pic.twitter.com/ilx7Iszm0M ANI (@ANI_news) March 22, 2016 Hyderabad University students protesting at VC's lodge vandalise the venue where VC Appa Rao was present. pic.twitter.com/UEopsdOQ0q ANI (@ANI_news) March 22, 2016 Police soon brought the situation under control. Police reach Hyderabad University after students vandalised VC's office in protest #RohithVemula pic.twitter.com/zQ8UecBrAd ANI (@ANI_news) March 22, 2016 Professor Podile was in a meeting with some deans and members of the executive committee in the lodge when the students struck. Later, a group of students continued their protest by squatting outside Podile's residence. "Police had to resort to caning after repeated requests to the agitating students failed to get positive response. Students also indulged in stone-pelting, injuring four police personnel," a police official said. According to him, police were requesting the students since afternoon but they were "adamant" and did not pay heed to disperse from the place. Podile termed the vandalisation incident as the "black day" for University of Hyderabad. "I was having a meeting with some deans and members of the executive committee on how to handle things in University. Meanwhile, a group of students came, (they) banged the doors, ransacked the office and resorted to violence of the magnitude which we have never seen in university. This is the black day for the University of Hyderabad," he said. Meanwhile, the agitating students claimed that vandalisation was carried out by the members of the ABVP to tarnish the image of students on protest and to divert the entire issue. Some members belonging to ABVP later gathered at VC's lodge to prevent the protesters from entering the house. When asked about the proposed visit of JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar to HCU tomorrow, the VC said, "I have not given any permission for the meeting. There was no letter (requesting permission for meeting) from anyone on this. I will have to discuss with police and my colleagues then only I can comment." A large number of police personnel were deployed near the VC's lodge as tension prevailed on the campus. One student suffered injuries to his arm as the students broke the glass panes of V-C's lodge on the university campus, minutes before he was to brief press persons about resuming the office, reports The Hindu. Angry students targeted journalists and they raised slogans against Rao. Meanwhile, a senior police official said that pickets will be set up on the campus near hostels to prevent any untoward incidents. "We will also provide security to the VC as he sought protection. Prohibitory orders are in place and it will in force until normalcy returns," said DCP (crime) B Navin Kumar. Another police official said that ten protesters who allegedly indulged in stone pelting were taken into custody and inquiry in underway to identify those indulged in vandalism. D Prashant, one of the five students suspended by the varsity earlier, said, "At the behest of (Union minister) Venkaiah Naidu, he (VC) came to UoH (University of Hyderabad, also called as HCU). At the behest of Central Government he occupied VC's seat despite the fact that the whole university resisted," Prashant said. Students have also called for a boycott of classes to protest Rao's return, reports Catch News. Another student said that they wanted the VC to not come to campus. "We lost Rohith Vemula. He (Prof. Appa Rao Podile) is one of the culprits. It's almost over two months since the incident occurred but no action has been initiated," he said. However, the VC struck an aggressive note, saying the handful of students cannot dictate who should be the Vice Chancellor. "This is going to be a national problem not just in University of Hyderabad. Tomorrow, any hundred or fifty students can say this particular Vice Chancellor should be there," he added. After Vemula's suicide, Cyberabad police had registered a case against Union minister Bandaru Dattatreya, Podile and three others. "The matter is in the court. Judicial Commission is there (probing Vemula suicide incident). Let the report come. Why are they ransacking the office? This we cannot tolerate. We are going to seek the help of local police," Podile told reporters. The VC also asked the media to desist from sensationalising the issue. JUNSU president Kanhaiya Kumar is also scheduled to visit the university on Wednesday. With inputs from PTI New Delhi: The sedition law, which has come under focus after the JNU row, needs reconsideration newly-appointed Law Commission Chairman Justice Balbir Singh Chauhan said on Tuesday while asserting that the panel will not jump to any conclusion before hearing out stakeholders. "Actually it (sedition law) requires reconsideration. We do not know what is the problem, what are the difficulties. We will hear all the stakeholders, consult criminal lawyers," the former Supreme Court judge told PTI. He said the recently-reconstituted 21st Law Commission "cannot jump to any conclusion" before understanding the difficulties relating to section 124 A of the IPC dealing with sedition. "What are the difficulties, why it requires reconsideration, whether there is any need of change of definition. And only then we will make a report. We cannot jump to any conclusion...," he said. He said the priority for the Commission would be come out with the report on comprehensive review of the criminal justice system which would include a relook at the Indian Penal Code (IPC), Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPc) and the Evidence Act. While IPC and CrPC are handled by the Union Home Ministry, the Evidence Act comes under the domain of the Law Ministry. Justice Chauhan said the government has given the Commission a list of issues for its consideration, including hate speech, live in relations, rights of victims and "comprehensive review" of the criminal justice system. "We will take up the issues one by one, otherwise it will be difficult to hand over reports," he said. The issue of sedition law, which was part of government's effort to review the criminal justice system was referred to the 20th Law Commission headed by Justice A P Shah in 2012. But the previous Commission could not submit a report on the issue. Arrest of JNU students union president on charges of sedition triggered a debate on whether this law can be misused to crush freedom of expression. Against the backdrop of JNU row, the government had earlier this month acknowledged in the Rajya Sabha that the definition of sedition law is "very wide". Home Minister Rajnath Singh had agreed for an all-party meeting to discuss the issue after the Law Commission submits its report on sedition law. The government had rejected Opposition charge that it was rampantly using the law, contending that except the one case of JNU, sedition cases have mostly been registered outside Delhi. "Anybody, who speaks against the government can be booked under sedition law. Amendments have been suggested because the definition is very wide...there are various cases. That is why concerns were have been raised. I would like the ask the Law Commission to consider a very comprehensive review," Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju had said replying to questions. Rijiju said the Law Commission, in its 42nd report submitted in June, 1971, had noted that the sedition law is "defective" but did not favour its deletion. Quoting figures from a report of National Crime Records Bureau, he said a total of 47 cases under the sedition law were reported across the country in 2014 of which the maximum 16 cases were registered in Bihar in which 28 arrests were made. The second highest is Jharkhand, he had said adding that Kerala and Odisha follow them in the descending order. PTI New Delhi: The BJP on Tuesday sought an apology from the Congress after former union minister Shashi Tharoor compared JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar with freedom fighter Bhagat Singh. The BJP also announced it will observe Aakrosh Diwas on 25 March against the remark. "The remarks are an insult to martyrs. How can anyone make comparisons between them as Bhagat Singh had fought against British rule while Kanhaiya Kumar is an accused in a sedition case for raising anti-national slogans?" union minister Prakash Javadekar said at a press conference. He also said that it was not the first time that Congress had shown disrespect to martyrs. During the then UPA government, Bhagat Singh was described as a terrorist in an open learning book. Taking a dig at Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, the BJP leader said that under his leadership, the opposition party's identity has been of insulting martyrs. "They opposed (Prime Minister Narendra) Modi ji in Gujarat for 12 years. Since the last two years, they are opposing development... they supported anti-national slogans by going there (JNU)... and now they are insulting the martyrs... this has been the identity of the Congress under the leadership of Rahul Gandhi," Javadekar said. "We will observe Shahidi Diwas on 23 March. We will sing the favourite song of Bhagat Singh Rang de basanti chola on 24 March on the occasion of Holi and will observe Aakrosh Diwas on March 25 to protest against the mentality to insult the martyrs," he said. IANS Mumbais municipal commissioner, Ajoy Mehta, is right. He does not want municipal solid waste (MSW) landfills in this city any more. He wants to introduce waste management and disposal instead. Such a decision was long overdue. All one had to do was to look at what Sweden has been doing since the turn of this century. Hopefully the ban imposed by the High Court on any further real estate construction in Mumbai will prod the citys corporators into looking at such solutions. The court decreed just last fortnight that till Mumbais administrators found a solution to MSW dumping in landfills, no new real-estate construction would be allowed except for slum redevelopment and affordable housing. Since much of Mumbais sleaze money is related to real-estate development, it is possible that the court judgement will compel the States legislators to finally find a solution to proper management of waste. Not that the decision involves any rocket science. In fact, Sweden banned landfills at the turn of this century. Today, almost all its waste is converted into energy (see chart). Mumbai could do much better, since this city alone produces much more waste than Sweden does. Of the 127,486 tonnes of waste generated daily in India in 2011-12, Mumbai accounted for 6.11 %. It is possible that Mumbais MSW is understated. This is because, normally, each city resident produces about 600-650 grammes of waste daily. Mumbais waste figures are only half this number. Today, Sweden, with good management, proper civic-sense, education and planned management has converted waste-management-and-disposal into a very profitable business. Almost all waste generates either heat or methane which is used for cooking (PNG or LPG) and for transportation (CNG). Look at what Tekniska Verken group in Sweden does. By handling almost one-third the quantum of Mumbais MSW, Tekniska Verken generates a profit of 56 million Euros annually. Mumbai could generate a lot more. So successful has Tekniska Verken (and other companies like it) been at its job that, today, Sweden even imports waste from countries like Norway and the UK to feed its waste management plants. Mumbai could do this for other nearby cities and states. In fact, waste management the Swedish way could leave Mumbai healthier, more beautiful and even more profitable. So why hasnt Mumbai done this already? This is because there are three lobbies at work to sabotage such proposals. Each of these is akin to a mafia. First comes the group that controls the large number of dumpers and garbage movement vehicles. They skim money from the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) each day. Then come the caretakers of the dumping grounds, who carefully monitor the waste rag pickers take away from the garbage piled there. They collect a share of the pickings on a daily basis. But the third is even more rapacious and extremely well-connected with some of the most powerful decision-makers in the city. This is the land mafia. It persuades the MCGM to reserve huge tracts as dumping grounds. The land is thus owned by this mafia for decades, after which it is sold off, discreetly, to a real estate developer. The MCGM then allows the land for development (at a price of course) and a new structure comes up atop this accumulated garbage (this is what happened to the landfills in one of the suburbs of West Mumbai). The hapless occupants of such lands often complain of nausea, headaches, and other ailments, often forgetting that the fumes from the garbage under the land could be the primary cause for their ailments. These three lobbies do not want modern systems for evacuation of garbage to be put into place. For instance, a Swedish company called Envac has become one of the largest waste-movement players in the world. It minimises the use of trucks, and uses well-designed systems to move garbage from houses to a common dumping area, which in turn is sent through chutes and pipes to even larger dumping areas till it reaches the waste management centre. There it is either converted into energy, or churned out as organic manure, or incinerated (yet capturing the heat for residential or industrial purposes). Mumbai could earn additional sums of money if in addition to MSW, it also takes toilet sewage to a common pit where it is first desulfonated (to remove the stench) and then converted into methane. The residual sludge can be treated for contaminants, then dried and pelletised and sold as organic manure. And Sweden is not the only solution. Some years ago, a Japanese consortium had made a similar proposal to the municipal corporation of Bengaluru offering to handle the entire waste of that city at zero cost to the municipality. All it wanted was land for the waste management plant, and a 30-year concession for this work. It would bring in the trucks, the waste disposal solutions and the technology. The proposal was shelved because of the three lobbies (described above). Vested interests began asking the courts to intervene and stopped any such proposal from being examined or implemented. Hopefully, with both the MCGM municipal commissioner and the Bombay High Court seeking a similar solution, there is hope. There is a good chance that this city will be able to introduce waste management systems sooner than Bengaluru could. 2010 Sweden Waste Management This piece originally appeared in the Free Press Journal. Reproduced with the author's permission. Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi is now perhaps ruing his earlier brash comment when, in an apparent mood of disdain and haughtiness, he had asked "Who is Badruddin Ajmal?" The target was the president of the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF). Now, on the eve of the assembly elections on 4 and 11 April, not only Gogoi and the Congress but the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) too is wary about the likely impressive performance of the AIUDF. Badruddin and his brother Sirajuddin, the two leading lights of the AIUDF, are sure that no one can form the next government in Assam without their support. Badruddin thinks that his party may bag 30-35 seats in the 126-member assembly. Two factors are now working towards polarising the votes of the Bengali-speaking Muslims in favour of the AIUDF. The first is the all-out effort that the BJP and the RSS are putting forth for winning the elections. The second is the Congress' refusal to agree to the AIUDF's call for a Bihar-like grand alliance for defeating the BJP. That the Ajmal brothers have ultimately decided to contest a larger number of seats from the initially contemplated 60 to 76 is a direct fallout of the Congress' decision to contest alone. The Congress is, no doubt, in the midst of a dilemma. It does not want to lose Hindu votes by striking an alliance with the AIUDF as the Hindus still constitute a little more than 65 percent of Assam's population. But the party's voter base overwhelmingly consists of Bangladeshi immigrants and Muslims. The recent trend among the Bengali-speaking Muslims of the state for tilting towards the AIUDF may cost the Congress dearly. Gogoi is, no doubt, trying hard to offset this trend. Even at this advanced age he'll be 80 on 1 Apil he is tirelessly touring the Muslim-dominated areas particularly the 'char' lands. However, as per latest information, Badruddin's charismatic personality is still holding sway among the minority population. This is quite natural because to a large number of people of Assam, Badruddin is not just a political leader but also a 'holy man' who can work miracles. He has earned the equivalent of a masters in Arabic language and theology from the Darul Uloom Deoband Islamic School. His family owns almost the whole of the Hojai town in Nowgaon district. He has the largest agar plantation in India and runs a Rs 2,000 crore perfume business. He runs the Haji Abdul Majid Memorial Hospital, Asia's largest rural charitable hospital and also owns what is arguably Asia's richest NGO - Markaaj-ul-Maaris. That such a man can easily match the financial powers of mainstream political parties is beyond doubt. But he has also been helped by the changing demographic character of Assam. While Muslims constituted 30.9 percent of the population in 2001, their share jumped to 34.2 percent in 2011. In 2001, only six districts had a Muslim majority. In 2011, Muslims constituted the majority in nine districts. Badruddin, however, leaves no stone unturned to prove that his party has its base among all sections of the people. The claim is not without reason. The working president of his party is Aditya Langthsa, a Dimasa tribal. Moreover, in the 2014 parliamentary elections a prominent Hindu named Radheshyam Biswas had won from the Karimgunj constituency on the AIUDF ticket. In the last Bodo Tribal Council (BTC) elections the AIUDF had won four seats although critics say that this became possible due to an increase in the number of Muslim population in the BTC area. There is however no doubt that the AIUDF has spread its tentacles far and wide in Assam. In the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, its only success was in the Dhubri constituency but in 2014 it bagged three Lok Sabha seats Dhubri, Barpeta and Karimgunj. In the 2006 assembly elections, the AIUDF won 10 seats but in the assembly poll of 2011 the figure jumped to 18. Similarly, in the 2011 assembly polls, the AIUDF's vote share was 12.6 percent, increasing to 15 percent in 2014. In the 2014 parliamentary elections, the AIUDF had established comfortable leads in 24 assembly constituencies. If this trend continues, then Badruddin's prediction of 30-35 seats in 2016 may come true. There are, however, some impediments before him. His influence is mainly confined to lower Assam and the Barak Valley. In upper Assam, which has the largest concentration of seats, Badruddin faces opposition from the Assamese speaking Muslims. This has perhaps tempered his ambitions to some extent. But, after the elections, Badruddin may come out as a balancing factor - a kingmaker for some or a spoiler for sundry others' ambitions. IANS New Delhi: With the issue of nationalism dominating the political discourse, BJP on Tuesday announced a 3-day programme to comemmorate Bhagat Singh's martyrdom and attacked Congress over its MP Shashi Tharoor's remarks comparing JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar with the freedom fighter. Seeking an apology from Congress and Tharoor, Union Minister Prakash Javadekar said the opposition party may have distanced itself from its MP's comments but it was not adequate as he had not withdrawn it or expressed regret. "What is Congress doing? For 12 years, it opposed Modi, for two years, it opposed development (under Modi), then it gave respectability to anti-India slogans raised in JNU and now insulting martyrs has become the identity of Congress under Rahul Gandhi," he told the media at a party briefing. He alleged that Congress chose to insult martyrs two days before their martyrdom day, a reference to hanging of Rajguru and Sukhdev besides Singh on 23 March, 1931, by the British. Tharoor said so with an eye on Kerala assembly polls, Javadekar alleged. BJP leaders across the country will pay tribute to the three martyrs on Wednesday, sing Singh's favourite song 'Rang de basanti chola' on Holi the day after and, on the last day, burn effigies of the "mindset that insults martyr", Javadekar said. There is "anger" among people across the country over the episode and BJP will express it through the exercise, he said. Referring to reports that Kanhaiya's posters have been used by some Congress leaders in Assam polls, he said it showed that the opposition party had no role model left and was depending on "borrowed pictures". "Their role models have failed. It is political bankruptcy of Congress." There could be no comparison between the JNU leader and Singh as the former is accused of glorifying Afzal Guru, who was convicted of helping foreign terrorists in attacking Parliament, while the latter chose gallows in his fight against foreign invaders, he said. PTI New Delhi: Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal was on Tuesday summoned as an accused for allegedly giving false information in an affidavit filed in run up to 2013 assembly polls by a court here which said he had prima facie "willfully concealed" and "suppressed" the details. Metropolitan Magistrate Snigdha Sarvaria directed the AAP leader to appear before the court on 30 July, saying that there was "sufficient ground" to proceed against him on the allegations that he had concealed his correct address and suppressed the market value of his property in his affidavit given before the Election Commission. "There is sufficient material on record to summon accused Arvind Kejriwal for offences punishable under section 125-A of the Representation of People Act, 1951, section 31 of the Representation of People Act, 1950 and section 177 of Indian Penal Code committed by him before holding the office of Chief Minister of Delhi. "Thus let summons be issued to accused Arvind Kejriwal... returnable on July 30," the court said. It said that the allegation against Kejriwal that he falsely gave the address of Delhi so as to qualify for contesting the polls in the Capital while he was living at Ghaziabad in Uttar Pradesh, "prima facie amounts to wilful concealment and suppression and also furnishing of false information and thus there is sufficient ground for proceeding against the accused Arvind Kejriwal under section 31 of RP Act." "The factum of concealment of proper address by giving improper address so that the proper/correct address remains untraceable and also giving improper valuation of the said same property prima facie amounts to wilful concealment and suppression and also furnishing of false information and thus there is sufficient ground for proceeding against accused Arvind Kejriwal under section 125-A of the RP Act and section 177 (furnishing false information) of IPC," the court said. The court passed its order on the criminal complaint filed by Neeraj Saxena on behalf of the NGO, Maulik Bharat Trust, through advocate Rahul Raj Malik. The offence under section 125-A of the RP Act entails a punishment of six months' imprisonment and/or fine or both. Earlier, the NGO had approached Delhi High Court with a plea seeking quashing of Kejriwal's nomination papers on the grounds of "illegalities" in his affidavit. High court had refused to entertain the plea and directed the petitioners to approach a magisterial court for remedy. The NGO in its petition before high court had alleged that Kejriwal violated provisions of the RP Act by submitting an affidavit which had incorrect details of his assets and income at the time of the filing of nomination. PTI Mumbai: Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis on Tuesday said the government would ask the Governor to accept the resignation of Advocate General Shreehari Aney, who put in his papers in the backdrop of the controversy generated over his espousal of separate Marathwada state. "Shreehari Aney has made some statements which are not in accordance with the state government's stand. He has given his clarification to the government. Also, Aney has submitted his resignation to the Governor and as per procedure, he is taking cognisance of the same," Fadnavis said while making a joint statement in both Houses of the state Legislature. Leader of Opposition in the Legislative Assembly, Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil then asked if Aney's resignation has been accepted as the AG had made statements that were "intended at breaking the state." "What he said is wrong. He should apologise to the House for making such statements," he said. Responding to Vikhe Patil, Fadnavis asked the Opposition to remain serious on the issue. "According to Constitutional provisions, he has been appointed by the Governor. Opposition should remain serious on the issue. According to protocol, the Governor will ask for an opinion from the government. We will take the decision in the Cabinet and convey to the Governor that his resignation be accepted," the CM said. Meanwhile, Shiv Sena legislators staged a dharna at the main entrance of Vidhan Bhavan shouting slogans demanding Aney be tried under the "sedition" charge. Following the Chief Minister's statement, the Sena members and ministers, who had earlier announced they would not take part in House proceedings and attend Cabinet meetings, later joined the proceedings during Question Hour. PTI Shrihari Aney, Advocate General of Maharashtra was caught in a controversy over his remarks at a public event in Jalna on Sunday demanding separate statehood for Marathwada. In the past, Aney had made similar comments about creating a separate Vidarbha. Congress MLA Nitish Rane had asked for his head, while the state government and Shiv Sena expressed extreme displeasure at Aney's remarks. There was agitation in the both the Houses Legislative Assembly and Council and members demanded his resignation on Monday. Shrihari Aney resigned on Tuesday. Firstpost has reproduced his letter: I have resigned my office as Advocate General of Maharashtra this morning at 10 am. Let me make it clear that neither His Excellency the Governor nor the Honourable Chief Minister asked me for my resignation. There are two reasons for my resignation. The first has to do with conflict of duty. The second concerns institutional stability. As to the first reason, I firmly believe that the Advocate General is the first lawyer of the people of the State. The Advocate General is not a Government Pleader. Based on this belief, as Advocate General, I considered it my Constitutional duty to place the interest of the people above the interest of the governmental machinery. This was most visible in my arguments in matters concerning lack of development of Vidarbha, the insistence on the right of people of Marathwada to drinking water, and the need for stronger governmental measures to tackle the issue of farmers suicides and the States agrarian crisis. My submissions leading to withdrawal of the States resolution regarding sedition, and the right of women to enter places of religious worship are further illustrations of placing the interest of the people uppermost. Such arguments might have caused discomfort to the State, but they did result in orders of the High Court which directly benefitted the neediest and most deprived sections of the public. In that, I find a complete vindication of the office of the Advocate General. The second reason is of institutional stability. In spite of the fact that my stand on Vidarbhas statehood is well known, it became the reason for disruption of the States Legislature for two weeks in the winter session. I first declared my support to Marathwadas statehood cause over a month ago at a public function at Ahmadnagar. I reiterated it three days ago at Jalna. I have written more elaborately about the Jalna speech in a separate post on facebook. Once again a section of the honourable legislators have chosen to make this as an issue to stall the present budget session. As a lawyer I am aware that the failure of the budget session has the result of fall of the ruling government. It would perhaps have been better if the legislators had deliberated over the problems that occasion the demand for statehood and made some attempt to solve them. Shooting the messenger does not solve the problem. In the present disruption of the Legislature, I see a clear pattern. Since I shall not stop from voicing my demand for Vidarbhas statehood, and the legislators will not stop from using it as a ready excuse to stall the working of the Legislature, one of us has to step back. In keeping with my belief that the Advocate Generals prime function is to protect the interest of the people, and that the Legislature must function if the interest of the people is to be protected, my final act as Advocate General which would be most in the interest of the people of the state was to resign the post. New Delhi: JNU students union president Kanhaiya Kumar who is out on bail in a sedition case, will be visiting Hyderabad Central University on Wednesday where he is expected to join the protest against Rohith Vemulas suicide. Kumar will also meet Vemulas mother. Vemula, a Dalit PhD scholar, was found hanging at the Hyderabad varsitys hostel room on January 17. Kanhaiya is leaving for Hyderabad tomorrow along with a delegation of JNU students and members of All India Students Federation (AISF). He is expected to address the protest gathering over Vemulas suicide and also meet his mother, an AISF member said, adding that he will be back in Delhi on March 25. The Hyderabad University witnessed protests after Vice Chancellor Appa Rao Podile resumed office on Tuesday after going on leave amid the storm following the suicide of Vemula. The students, who have been protesting ever since Vemula committed suicide, vandalised the VCs residence where he was due to address the press in a short while. JNU students who are caught in a row over an event on campus against hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru during which anti-national slogans were allegedly raised, have been protesting in the national capital demanding resignation of HRD minister Smriti Irani over Vemula suicide issue. Earlier in the day, Kanhaiya had met Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi at his Tughlaq lane residence to thank him for his support during the ongoing controversy. PTI New Delhi: Deadlock over government formation in Jammu and Kashmir seems to have ended with PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti on Tuesday calling on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a meeting which she described as "very positive" and "good" in addressing issues pertaining to the people of the state. Mehbooba drove to the Prime Minister's residence barely three days after PDP and BJP had hit a road block with BJP's chief interlocutor Ram Madhav announcing that his party would not be accepting any fresh demands from its erstwhile ally PDP. Emerging after a 30-minute-long meeting with the Prime Minister, Mehbooba said she had a "very positive meeting and a good meeting" with him. "We are seeing a stalemate for last two to three months over government formation in the state but today I am satisfied. I am very satisfied," she told reporters in Delhi. To a question whether the stalemate has ended, she said, "When you meet the Prime Minister of the country, naturally the solution to the problems faced by the people of Jammu and Kashmir is more clear". She will be flying back to Srinagar where she will brief her party legislators on Thursday. "I had been authorised by the party MLAs to take a decision. I have convened a meeting on Thursday and after that we will announce the future course of action." On government formation in the state, she said, "As I said I will talk to my MLAs because that is the forum. This is not the place. There is a particular place to make such announcements. I will go back to Srinagar and take the next step." Mehbooba came to Delhi on Monday after PDP make it clear to BJP that there was some miscommunication and no fresh demands had been raised by the party for stiching an alliance. This is her second visit to the national capital in five days after her talks with BJP President Amit Shah on Thursday failed to make any headway triggering speculation that the two parties could be making renewed efforts to reach out to each other in a bid to break the prolonged impasse. Mehbooba had a meeting with her senior party colleagues, including former Finance Minister Haseeb Drabu, during which final touches were given for the meeting with the Prime Minister, sources said. The fresh efforts from PDP, which has 27 MLAs in the 87-member state Assembly, comes in the backdrop of repeated assertions made by BJP that it was committed to implementation of Agenda of Alliance arrived at by late Mufti Mohammed Sayeed. The talks with BJP, which has 25 MLAs, had hit a roadblock last week when the party's interlocutor Ram Madhav made it clear that no fresh demands would be entertained from PDP and that they had to decide whether they want to form a government based on the Agenda of Alliance document. The toughening of stand came as a surprise for Mehbooba who boarded a plane on last Friday and returned to the state. PDP MP Muzzafar Hussain Baig, who has been playing a key role in the backchannel talks, had clarified that PDP had made no fresh demands and that there was a miscommunication from both sides leading to derailing of talks. PDP and BJP had formed an alliance on 1 March, last year with Sayeed as the Chief Minister. Both the sides had formed an Agenda of Alliance which sought to address internal and external dimension of the state. PDP had toughened its stance after Sayeed's demise by seeking concrete plans for the state's development, including handing over of power projects to the state and vacation of land by the army before the coalition could be revived. Governor's rule was imposed in J-K on 8 January after Mehbooba decided against taking over the reins after her father's death. PTI Chennai: Amid uncertainty over his party's alliance prospects in Tamil Nadu, especially with DMDK, BJP President Amit Shah will "review the political situation" of the state during his brief visit here tomorrow. Shah is scheduled to attend a function involving Kanchi seer Jayendra Saraswathi and is also likely to meet senior office-bearers of the state unit, a party leader said. "Since the state is going to polls, he will review the political situation, but as of now there is no word on him meeting DMDK founder Vijayakant," the senior leader told PTI responding to a possible Shah Vijayakanth meeting. According to official sources, Shah is expected to arrive in the evening on Wednesday and proceed to the venue. He was later slated to leave for Kerala, they said. BJP's alliance prospects with DMDK, which was part of the NDA for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, are in a limbo with the actor-politician not only giving confusing signals on a tie-up but also announcing the party's decision to go solo in the 16 May Assembly polls. Although BJP's Tamil Nadu in-charge and Union Minister Prakash Javadekar had called Vijayakanth earlier, DMDK had described the meeting as a 'courtesy call.' Shah, credited with scripting the party's success in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and some of the subsequent state Assembly elections such as Haryana and Maharashtra, faces an uphill task in ensuring a good show in Tamil Nadu as the voters have traditionally favoured the two Dravidian parties, DMK and AIADMK since 1967. DMK had wrested power from Congress in 1967 in the state and thereafter the fight has been confined between it and arch rival AIADMK, founded by actor-politician M G Ramachandran. PTI By Marya Shakil Early morning on 25 August 2015 when the Battle for America was still being conceived, one of the key contenders Donald Trump ranted in a sexist tweet 'The bimbo is back in town. I hope not for long' against Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly. Trump's tweet wasn't without thinking. It was retweeted over a 1,000 times in a matter of a few minutes but had unravelled a disturbing trend, giving a sneak peak into the deep rooted sexist American society. Trump didn't stop at that, he continued to post nasty tweets against the popular presenter indulging in name calling on several occasions in the last few months. This display of aggression and desire for feuds with mass media may have already become modus operandi to grab eye balls for anti-establishment politicians, but Trump mastered the art as he reached out to his Twitter constituency of 6.7 million followers. He is the most popular Republican candidate on Twitter with his adversaries Senator Marco Rubio at 1.2 million and Senator Ted Cruz at 728.6k still playing catch up in the virtual world. More than the number of followers of his opponents within his own party, it's Hillary Clinton's lack of relative Twitter popularity at 5.6 million that makes him feel like a victor already. In this spectacle of hatred towards journalists, Trump has conscientiously made this an 'us vs them' battle. While the media bats for an inclusive American society, backing human rights and criticising racism, Trumps messages of new found nationalism reek of fascism and invokes fear of the 'outsider'. Trump in a recent tweet after a debate had tweeted: .@meetthepress and @chucktodd did a 1 hour hit job on me today totally biased and mostly false. Dishonest media! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 6, 2016 It was a green signal to his Twitter army. Troll the mass media, crush the messenger. He criticised Fox News presenters with the most uncharitable words: I am watching two clown announcers on @FoxNews as they try to build up failed presidential candidate #LittleMarco. Fox News is in the bag! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 5, 2016 His rebuke and disdain went several steps further with another tweet: David Brooks, of the New York Times, is closing in on being the dumbest of them all. He doesnt have a clue. Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 6, 2016 His supporters on Twitter questioned the editorial bias of Fox News, many egging on to "sue the channel as the debate was a coordinated set up". Some called Brooks an "idiot, who is biased, has no facts". It's however, intriguing that most of his followers may like the tweets, but don't really come out vociferously backing his line of argument. However, there is a pattern to this criticism and questioning of mass media by populist, anti-establishment politicians world over. A phenomenon being observed in the democracies where mass media is far more independent. With 18.1 million followers Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi is the second most popular politician on Twitter after Barack Obama. His party believes he became India's 15th Prime Minister 'despite' a hostile mass media. Social media helped him communicate directly with citizens bypassing the traditional mediums of TV and print. Twitter is the mode of communication in his government, which uses it as a medium to generate an illusion of engagement. Like Trump, Modi's ministers too rebuke and take pot shots at mass media on Twitter. The dissenters, mostly journalists celebrating freedom of speech and expression, are trolled with insinuations, with threats of rape and murder, forcing many to register complaints with Twitter. Several have also filed FIRs. HRD Minister Smriti Irani often takes on journalists on Twitter. Any criticism of the governments policies and Modi's politics are converted into binaries of nationalist vs anti-nationalist. When Michael Warner talked about counterpublics, he had foreseen Twitter emerging as a broadcast medium. He had emphasised how the essence of a platform is in complex ideas, diverse and plural voices who are taking back and opinions expressed freely in an uncensored manner. But when one medium becomes a tool in the hands of a few to crush the messenger of the other medium, it's the message that's lost. Trump may be positioning himself as the saviour by using a hashtag #MakeAmericaGreatAgain as his bio on Twitter, he knows well that it's a battle of survival between him and the medium. Dhaka: A 68-year-old Christian convert was hacked to death in Bangladesh on Tuesday by three motorbike- borne unidentified assailants, the latest in a slew of attacks on minorities by Islamists in the Muslim majority country. Hossain Ali, a freedom fighter and former inspector of family planning, was killed by unidentified miscreants in the northern Bangladeshi town of Kurigram Tuesday morning. Ali's body was recovered with his throat slit, police said. He was attacked by three unknown miscreants. The miscreants riding a motorbike attacked Ali at about 7:00 AM, the Superintendent of Police in Kurigram said. The attackers fled the spot after exploding two Molotov Cocktails, the official said. Ali converted to Christianity ten years ago, the SP was quoted as saying by the local newspaper. There have been systematic assaults in Bangladesh over the past six months specially targeting minorities, secular bloggers and foreigners that have killed at least nine persons including two foreigners and wounded more than 100. Last week a top Shia preacher and homoeopathic doctor was stabbed to death in southwestern Bangladesh in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group. A Hindu head priest was hacked to death on 21 February by gun-and-cleaver wielding Islamists at a temple in northern Panchagarh district's Debiganj Upazila. In September last year, Italian aid worker Cesare Tavella was murdered by unidentified assailants in Dhaka, and within five days of that incident Japanese farmer Kunio Hoshi was killed. Both attacks were claimed by IS-affiliated militants. Also, moderate Sufi saint Khizir Khan, progressive book publisher Faisal Arefin Dipon, and a Sufi shrine worker were murdered while two Christian pastors, one an Italian doctor, narrowly escaped attacks. The IS has claimed a series of attacks against religious minorities in the Sunni-majority Bangladesh, which was declared officially secular after a deadly liberation struggle against Pakistan in 1971. PTI Washington: Donald Trump faces a tough challenge in Utah's caucuses on Tuesday, but the Republican front-runner could still gain some delegates if sharp party divisions prevent anyone from winning a majority in the conservative state that prizes civility and religiosity. For the Democrats, Hillary Clinton was likely to extend her overwhelming delegate lead over rival Bernie Sanders in contests in Arizona, Utah and Idaho, moving closer to becoming the first woman presidential nominee from a major political party. The former secretary of state and first lady now has 1,163 delegates to Sanders' 844, based on primaries and caucuses. It takes 2,383 delegates to win the nomination. Trump's remaining rivals, Texas senator Ted Cruz and Ohio governor John Kasich, were also fighting in Arizona on Tuesday to stop the New York billionaire from building an insurmountable delegate lead. Both Cruz and Kasich want to keep Trump from gaining the required 1,237 delegates to win the Republican nomination, ultimately forcing a contested convention to take place in July. Cruz was likely to do well in Utah. He has been helped by the support of Mitt Romney, the Republicans' most recent presidential nominee, who holds clout among the state's predominantly Mormon voters. The Texas senator also picked up the endorsement of Utah governor Gary Herbert on Monday. But Kasich was fighting back in Utah, hoping his more pragmatic approach and longtime governing experience will net him delegates there. According to Utah state regulations, if no candidate wins more than half of the caucus votes, each of the three candidates will be awarded delegates proportionally. The candidate who can win Utah by more than 50 percent will walk away with all 40 delegates. Trump could significantly benefit from those rules if Cruz doesn't win the majority. The former reality television star goes into Tuesday's contests with 680 delegates in hand. Cruz has 424 and Kasich has 143. On Monday, Utah Republicans received a pre-recorded call from Romney urging them to back Cruz, not Kasich. "At this point," Romney said on the call, "a vote for John Kasich is a vote for Donald Trump." Cruz, a fiery conservative, often lashes out against Republican establishment figures, many of whom traditionally thrive in Utah. But leaders like Romney and Herbert have consolidated around Cruz because he is seen as the only one who can catch up to Trump's delegate lead. Trump appears to be in a stronger position in Arizona, which will award all of its 58 delegates to whichever candidate wins the most votes. There is a widening divide among Republicans nationwide. A total of all the votes cast thus far shows that a majority of Republicans have chosen someone other than Trump, but he has managed to amass a majority of delegates. AP BAMAKO Gunmen on Monday attacked a hotel in Mali's capital, Bamako, that had been converted into the headquarters of a European Union military training operation, but there no casualties among the mission's personnel. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, which began at around 6:30 p.m. local time (1830 GMT), but Mali and neighbouring West African countries have increasingly been the target of Islamist militants, some of them affiliated with al Qaeda. One of the assailants was killed and two suspects were arrested and were being interrogated, the country's internal security minister said. A witness said the attack targeted Bamako's Nord-Sud Hotel, headquarters for the mission of nearly 600 EU personnel deployed to Mali to train its security forces. "The attackers tried to force through the entry and the guards posted in front of the entrance opened fire. One attacker was killed," he said. Sekou Tamboura was also near the hotel when the shooting erupted. "We were next to the Hamdallaye Cemetery when the first shot rang out, then there was a second and a third. There were a few seconds of pause, then it kicked off and did not stop. It was every man for himself," Tamboura said. The mission confirmed the attack on its official Twitter feed. "EUTM-MALI HQ has been attacked. No EUTM-Mali personnel has been hurt ... during the attack," it said. Azalai Hotels, which runs the Nord-Sud Hotel, later posted on Twitter that the assailants had been repelled and the building had been secured. "One of the assailants was killed. We are examining the sack he was carrying, which could contain explosives," Interior Security Minister Colonel Salif Traore said on state television. "Two suspects were arrested and are being interrogated." He added that security forces were carrying out operations around the EU headquarters and seeking to secure another building nearby. A photo taken of the dead gunman seen by Reuters showed a man who appeared to be in his 20s, possibly from northern Mali, dressed stylishly in jeans, a brown shirt and Nike trainers, lying on his back in a pool of blood beside a Kalashnikov assault rifle. A Reuters reporter at the scene of the attack said security forces, including Malian army special forces, had cordoned off the area while a cleanup operation was carried out. Vehicles from Mali's United Nations peacekeeping mission were also visible. The EU mission was deployed as part of efforts to stabilise Mali, which saw Islamist militants, some of them linked to al Qaeda, seize its desert north in 2012. France led an intervention a year later to drive back the Islamists, fearing that the lawless zone could be used as a base for attacks against targets in Europe. However, violence is again on the rise. Dozens of people were killed in a November raid on Bamako's Radisson Blu hotel claimed by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), the group's North African branch. A similar assault on a hotel in Burkina Faso's capital, Ouagadougou, followed in January. AQIM also claimed responsibility for another attack that killed 19 people a beach resort town in Ivory Coast earlier this month. (Writing by Joe Bavier; editing by Mark Heinrich and G Crosse) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Auto refresh feeds TV news reports are now saying that a third explosion was heard near the Brussels metro station. Shocked and concerned by the events in Brussels: David Cameron Belgian broadcaster VRT said that 35 others have also been severely injured. Security tightened at Delhi Airport, all flights from Mumbai to Brussels cancelled According to CNN, Belgian media is now saying that the total death toll has climbed to 23. "This is a dark moment for our nation. We need calm and solidarity," he said. The Belgian PM Charles Michel said that although they could not point out the number of victims killed and injured in the attack, the attack at the airport was a suicide attack. This is a dark moment for our nation: Belgian PM #Belgium prosecutors confirm the three blasts at airport and metro in #Brussels were terrorist attacks #BrusselsAttack Do you all remember how beautiful and safe a place Brussels wss. Not anymore, it is from a different world! U.S. must be vigilant and smart! Donald Trump tweeted after the bomb blasts that occurred today in Brussels, killing at least 23 people that Brussels used to be a "safe" place and that it was not anymore. He warned that the US should be more "vigilant" and "smart". French President, Francois Hollande said, "The whole of Europe has been hit" in the wake of the bomb blasts that occurred in Belgium today. #Brussels metro operator confirms 15 people were killed and 55 injured in the blast at Maelbeek station https://t.co/jblCD9Ghvi The metro operator in Brussels confirmed that 15 people were killed and 55 were injured at the Maelbeek station. The system has been used recently to help people communicate after major floods and earthquakes as well as terrorist attacks. It says the system can provide an easy way for people to mark themselves as "safe" after a major disaster or crisis so that people searching for them will know they are unharmed. The company says Tuesday the system was put in use within hours of the three explosions at the Brussels airport and a metro station. Facebook has activated its "safety check" system to help people check on friends and loved ones in the aftermath of the attacks in Brussels. Facebook activates 'safety check' system in the wake of the attacks in Brussels: I wish to be with you and to also express myself on this topic. Security is an attractive factor of any country. I am expressing myself on behalf of France. We are all aware of the fact, we are concerned. During this ordeal we must show cohesion and solidarity. . @WhiteHouse says @POTUS has been briefed on #Brussels attacks & the U.S. is in close contact with Belgian officials. More on @ActionNewsJax US President Barack Obama has been briefed about the attacked in Belgium. Multiple explosions took place on Tuesday at the Brussels airport in Belgium. The cause of the explosions is not yet known. Airport spokeswoman Anke Fransen said, "There were two blasts in the departure hall. First aid team are in place for help." Images on the website of public broadcaster RTBF showed smoke rising from the terminal building, where the windows had been shattered, reported AFP. The broadcaster said the blasts hit shortly after 7.00 am (GMT) and that regional authorities had gone into emergency mode, with all flights in and out of the airport halted. There was no immediate confirmation of the cause of the blasts or of any injuries, but RTBF cited a witness who said they had seen several wounded people. Belgian news agency Belga said shots were fired and there were shouts in Arabic shortly before the explosions, reported Reuters. Interior Minister Jan Jambon announced that Belgium's terror threat had been raised to its highest level. Images also showed people fleeing from the terminal building. Reports said that one of the explosions took place near the American Airlines check-in desk. Several people have been injured after the blasts, although the number of people injured is still unknown. Train services to the Brussels airport have also been suspended and there is a complete lockdown at the airport. The entire area has been cordoned off, all flights from the airport have been grounded and the airport is being evacuated. Passengers were led onto the tarmac and the crisis centre urged people not to come to the airport. Belgium closed metro, train, tram and bus services in Brussels following bomb blasts in the airport and metro, the authorities said. "Bus, tram and metro shut down," the Brussels public transport operator STIB said in a message on Twitter. Major railway stations are also closed, the Brussels public prosecutor said separately. Meanwhile, the Twitter handle of Brussels Airport tweeted out the following message: "There have been 2 explosions at the airport. Building is being evacuated. Don't come to the airport area. Airport is being evacuated. Avoid the airport area. Flights have been cancelled. All airport operations have been suspended until further notice. Follow the information on our website. Passengers that are still located in other area's in the airport are asked to remain calm and wait for further information." A passenger of Indian origin told Times Now, "We were at the airport after the flight from Mumbai to Brussels landed at the airport. We heard huge explosions. We didn't realise what had happened. Everyone is in shock. So we don't know what is happening." The explosions in Brussels are "an attack against democratic Europe," Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said. "It is an attack against democratic Europe. We will never accept that terrorists attack our open societies," he told news agency TT in a statement, while his Danish counterpart Lars Lokke Rasmussen denounced the blasts on Twitter as a "despicable attack". Europe's main stock markets retreated as the news broke, with London's benchmark FTSE 100 index dropping 0.6 percent compared with Monday's close and Frankfurt's DAX 30 shedding 1.1 percent. Mike van Dulken, head of research at Accendo Markets, said that the "explosion at Brussels airport... has knocked sentiment". The explosions happened only days after the prime suspect in the Paris attacks Salah Abdeslam was arrested in Brussels. (With agency inputs) Havana: Nudging Cuba toward democracy, President Barack Obama will cast a spotlight on political repression and economic misery in Havana on Tuesday when he meets with dissidents and speaks to the Cuban people at the close of a trailblazing trip. Obama's rationale for coming to Havana is grounded in the notion that direct interaction with Cubans would do more to empower them and bring about change than decades of isolation ever did. So Obama's speech at the Grand Theater of Havana promises the president his best chance to make his case for the US and Cuba putting the vestiges of the Cold War behind them. He'll meet later on Tuesday with Cuban dissidents critical of President Raul Castro's government. The White House says the meeting was a prerequisite for the trip. Associated Press Tokyo: An armed British ship believed to be carrying enough plutonium to make about 40 atomic bombs has left a port in eastern Japan to transport the shipment to the US for storage. Kyodo News agency said the British-flagged nuclear fuel transport ship Pacific Egret left the port in Tokai village, northeast of Tokyo today, a day after arriving with another armed ship that had waited off-shore. Tokai is home to Japan Atomic Energy Agency, a research complex where the plutonium had been used for research. The ship, operated by Pacific Nuclear Transport Limited, was to take the 331 kilograms of plutonium to a US government facility in South Carolina under Japan's 2014 pledge. AP The appointment of a UN special rapporteur (SR) for the occupied Palestinian territory (oPt) has again run into troubled waters as an NGO has questioned the credibility of the top candidates for the job. UN Watch, a pro-Israel non-governmental organisation, published a report earlier this month that discredits the top two candidates Penelope Green (UK) and Michael Lynk (Canada) chosen from a list of 10 candidates by the UN Human Rights Councils (HRC) consultative group (CG) in charge of appointing special rapporteurs. In its report, UN Watch said that Penny Green accuses Israel of criminal state practices, ethnic cleansing and apartheid. Green also promotes the work of extreme anti-Western ideologues like Noam Chomsky and Grietje Baars, and heads an institute that opposes Western counter-terrorism and anti-extremism, the report added. Like Penny Green, Lynk also promotes an extreme anti-Western political agenda, the report further states. HRC President Choi Kyonglim is currently consulting stakeholders on the issue, including the possibility of postponing the appointment of a special rapporteur for the oPt. This possibility has spurred much debate among HRC member states. The special rapporteurs are part of the Special Procedures largest body of independent experts who constitute independent fact-finding and monitoring missions that address either specific country situations or thematic issues in all parts of the world of the HRC. These mandate holders are recommended by a consultative group. This year, the CG comprises ambassadors to the UN in Geneva from Thailand, France, Egypt, Brazil and Albania. The present UN special rapporteur for the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967, Makarim Wibisono, resigned in less than two years citing non-cooperation from the Israelis. In his last report to the HRC that he presented on 21 March, Wibisono said that he sought access to the oPt four times in writing and also during his meetings with the Israeli government. However, his requests went unheeded. The Permanent Observer Mission of Palestine to the UN in Geneva, with the support of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) group of countries, has shot off a letter to the HRC president to not delay the appointment of the UN rights expert on Palestine. It has also requested the support of other UN groups of countries like the Asia-Pacific group, Non-Aligned Movement (NAM) group and the Africa group. India is a part of both the Asia-Pacific group as well as the NAM group. The letter accessed by Firstpost, states that UN Watch whose pro-Israel political agenda is well known has problems with all candidates shortlisted for the job, except American human rights lawyer Christina Cerna. It is shocking, the letter states, that the Presidency would consider UN Watch as a credible source of information. The names of new UN mandate holders, to replace those whose terms have expired, are scheduled to be announced on 24 March. There is no need for a postponement of the appointment, the letter opines, since there are still four days during which both Green and Lynk can be asked about the allegations. Any postponement of the appointment would call into question the objectivity and impartiality of the Presidency, it further adds. Both the candidates have rejected the allegations directed against them by UN Watch. The OIC in a statement to the HRC on 21 March said that the postponement of appointment is unacceptable to them. The president of the HRC has a couple of options available for resolving the issue: he can follow the CGs recommendations disregarding the allegations of UN Watch, he can request Wibisono to continue to avoid a protection gap till a new SR is appointed or he can choose a candidate from the longer list of shortlisted candidates. The longer list of candidates contains the following names: Saer Ammar (Syria), Phyllis Bennis (US), Christina Cerna (US), Vinodh Jaichand (South Africa), Anohar John (India), Hussein Kalout (Brazil), Magali Lafourcade (France) and Michael Mansfield, apart from Lynk and Green. The appointment of human rights experts on Palestine, whether as a special envoy or as part of UN fact-finding missions, has consistently been a rather contentious matter at the HRC. The Council has a permanent agendaitem number 7that examines the human rights situation in Palestine and other occupied Arab territories. Israel has called the Council biased and has refused to participate in debates under agenda item 7. The appointment of the UN special envoy to Palestine was similarly embroiled in controversy in 2014 when Wibisono was subsequently selected. The CG of the time had recommended Christina Cernathe preferred candidate for UN Watch whose name appears in the shortlisted candidates this year as wellas the top candidate for the post of UN special envoy to the oPt. However, her candidature was frowned upon by the OIC because of which the name of British lawyer Christine Mary Chinkinthe second in list of the recommended candidatescropped up. But that was objected to by other member-states resulting in the selection of Wibisono who was in the long list of candidates shortlisted by the CG. Proceeding on that basis, the CG chose human rights lawyer Christina Cerna, and rejected biased candidates such as William Schabas and Christine Chinkin, UN Watch states in the report. Wibisonos predecessor, Richard Falkprofessor emeritus of international law at Princeton Universityhas also faced his share of controversy. He was deported from the Ben Gurion airport by the government of Israel. After his appointment as UN mandate holder for examining human rights violations in the oPt, Israel in 2007 had said that it would not allow his entry because Falk prior to his appointment had stated that the Jewish nations blockade of Gaza was a Holocaust in the making. UN Watch, in its report, calls Falk a Hamas supporter. Similarly, William Schabas, Canadian human rights lawyer, had resigned in March last year as chair of the UN commission of inquiry into the 2014 Gaza war. Israel had called this a diplomatic victory. UN Watch, after Scahbas resignation, stated in their website: Schabas decision to resign follows a massive and sustained campaign by UN Watch over five months. The organisation considers not only the mandate holders as biased, barring a few of their choice, but also the very mandate of the special envoys as discriminatory in nature. The mandate presumes Israels violations, they state. The UN Watch report recommends that the EU and the US should take the lead in rectifying the discriminatory nature of the mandate and the bias of the mandate holders themselves. Wibisono in his last statement to the Council as the UN special envoy for Palestinian territories urged the international community to redouble its efforts to insist that Israel cooperates with the mandate, including by providing unfettered access to Occupied Palestinian Territory. He also called out to the Israeli authorities "to immediately halt settlement expansion and to refrain from carrying out demolitions of Palestinian property, forced evictions, and other acts causing the forced displacement of Palestinians in the West Bank, including East Jerusalem". The writer is a journalist at the United Nations Moscow: A Russian court on Tuesday sentenced a Ukrainian pilot to 22 years in prison after convicting her for complicity to murder in the 2014 deaths of two Russian journalists in eastern Ukraine, opening a door to a possible prisoner swap between the two countries. Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko quickly offered to exchange two Russians held in his country for the return of the pilot, 34-year old Nadezhda Savchenko. Moscow has refused to consider a swap until the legal proceedings were finished. Upon hearing the guilty verdict, Savchenko burst into song and started to chant "Glory to Ukraine!" That was echoed by Ukrainian spectators in the court room in Donetsk, a Russian town near the border with Ukraine. The judge called for a break before returning to hand down the sentence, which also included a fine for crossing into Russia illegally. The Savchenko case has attracted strong criticism from the West and is an open wound for Ukraine, which says she was captured by Russia-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine and turned over to Russia, and therefore should be treated as a prisoner of war. Although a military pilot, Savchenko was fighting in a Ukrainian volunteer battalion against Russia-backed rebels when she was captured by the separatists in June 2014. She surfaced in Russia less than a month later. Moscow insists she escaped from the rebels and was captured after crossing the border by herself. Speculation persists that Moscow could agree to exchange her for the two Russians captured in eastern Ukraine. They are alleged to be active-duty soldiers despite Russia's persistent denial that it has sent troops or equipment to bolster the rebels. Poroshenko offered a swap in a video statement released after the verdict. He claimed that Russian President Vladimir Putin had assured him last year that "he will return Nadiya Savchenko to Ukraine after the verdict." "In my turn, I'm ready to hand over to Russia two Russian servicemen who were captured on our territory for their part in an armed aggression against Ukraine," Poroshenko said. The Russian men are now on trial, and Poroshenko said he will be willing to hand them over after the verdict is in. Fighting between Russia-backed separatists and government troops in eastern Ukraine has killed more than 9,100 people and left the rebel-held areas isolated from the rest of Ukraine. The judge dismissed all defense arguments and said he had no reason to doubt the testimony of the separatist rebels. The sentencing capped a two-day hearing in which Judge Leonid Stepanenko recounted the case in great detail and in a monotonous voice, sending one or two spectators to sleep. The lawyers passed the time looking into their phones or talking to Savchenko, who was confined in a cage. One lawyer read a magazine on the American Civil War. Savchenko smiled at her sister who was in the courtroom. After the judge pronounced sentence, Savchenko shouted that he should have made it 23 years as prosecutors had asked. And then she sang. AP Sydney: Two people were arrested on Tuesday in Australia's New South Wales state for allegedly financing the Islamic State (IS) terror group. They were accused of being involved "in obtaining money to send offshore to assist the IS in its activities," said New South Wales state Police deputy commissioner Catherine Burns. One of the two detainees, Milad Atai, 20, was under investigation for months as part of "Operation Appleby" which police began in September 2014 after discovering the alleged planning of a terrorist attack in the country. Burns said that the case of the second detainee, a 16-year-old girl, is a serious matter and that police have begun analysing the factors contributing to the radicalisation of the minor. "It is disturbing that we are continuing to see a trend of teenage children involved in activities that they should really not be involved in at all," Burns added. IANS The man who unleashed the creative genius of Boaty McBoatface on the world has issued an apology - of sorts - to the British boffins who are searching for a name for their new cutting-edge polar research vessel. What started as a silly suggestion by former BBC local radio presenter James Hand has now turned into an "utterly bonkers" saga, he said, after the name he proposed in an online poll scuttled the competition to emerge a clear favourite among voters. "I'm terribly sorry about all of this," Mr Hand tweeted to the National Environment Research Council, the respected British scientific body that is running the poll. The Health Bureau instructed Chinese medicine pharmacies to recall a product named E Jiao, which is produced by five different companies. All five companies were recently inspected during a routine operation for trace elements of Cow gelatin. E Jiao is made in Shandong province under five brands: Jin Zhung Ji pin Dong E Jiao, Fu Lu Shou Shan Dong A Fu E Jiao (TA 1422000), Zhan Qiao Pai Shan Dong E Jiao, Xiang Long Pai Shan Dong Zi E Jiao, and Yong Zheng Tang Zhan Qiao E Jiao. E Jiao is used as an ingredient in traditional Chinese medicine. Macau, Guangdong promote multi-destination travel in Thailand Macao Government Tourism Office (MGTO), Tourism Administration of Guangdong Province, Tourism Administration of Guangzhou Municipality, and Qingyuan Municipal Tourism Bureau held a Joint Sales Mission of Guangdong and Macao Bangkok, Thailand in Bangkok this week to increase connections with the tourism sector in Thailand to promote multi-destination travel to Guangdong and Macau. The authorities jointly rolled out the mission to expand their international visitor markets and foster regional tourism development. The joint sales mission includes destination product presentations by Guangdong and Macau representatives to introduce their tourism resources and products to the Thai travel trade. The program will also comprise a networking luncheon and media interviews. Victor Chan says spokespersons office effective with media The Government spokesperson and Director of the Government Information Bureau (GCS), Victor Chan, said yesterday that the press spokesperson system has become one of the important channels for the SAR government to effectively communicate with the media and the public. It depends on the medias support and participation, to ensure news on the administration is successfully conveyed to the public. The Office of the Government Spokesperson and the GCS jointly organized a gathering yesterday which was attended by some 80 participants, including heads and representatives of local media organizations and associations, overseas correspondents, and press coordinators of government secretariat offices. During the event, Chan outlined the governments efforts to provide news releases and the outlook concerning new challenges in addition to listening to opinions and suggestions from the industry. The latest project from Chinas Ministry of Education (MOE), which aims to preserve the diversity of languages and dialects existing among Chinas ethnic minorities, includes one fieldwork site in Macau, Xinhua reported. In order for the project to be in place in all 34 provinces of China (Taiwan included), a total of 935 fieldwork sites have been planned, 319 of which are due to have their work completed this year. Macau and Hong Kong will each have one site, both of which are meant to document the use of the corresponding local dialect, the state agency reported. However, these two sites are not scheduled to start operations this year, with no further details disclosed as to the launch date. Likewise, the three sites planned by the MOE to open in Taiwan wont be operational until yet another undisclosed date. Guangdong, a neighboring province to Macau and Hong Kong, will see a total of 70 fieldwork sites spread across its territory due to its densely populated area. The province that has been assigned the most operations, however, is Hunan, where work at 80 fieldwork sites will be finished before the beginning of 2019. The MOE launched the project in May 2015, an initiative that saw its inception in places where local dialects and ethnic minority languages are in dire need of conservation. Moreover, the ministry is urging local communities to build their own regional museums of language and culture. Staff reporter The ninth annual Macao International Environmental Co-operation Forum and Exhibition (MIECF) is set to be hosted at The Venetian, from March 31 to April 2. Waste Management will be the focus of this years MIECF activities. Themed Green Economy Opportunities for Waste Management, the fair aims to serve as a multilateral platform to enhance cooperation on eco-friendly commerce and technology in the Pearl River Delta, as well as in international markets. It will feature various activities such as an industry networking session, seminars and presentations, and technical visits to promote the growth of the green industry. Raymond Tam, director of the Environmental Protection Bureau said yesterday at MIECFs press conference that the city will continually organize green events to put forward a green economy. The three-day fair, hosted by the local government, and coordinated by the Environmental Protection Bureau and the Macao Trade and Investment Promotion Institute (IPIM), has attracted over 450 exhibitors from around 20 countries and regions to participate and showcase their products and services, with 92 exhibitors coming from the Pearl River Delta and 21 prime exhibitors from leading environmental protection enterprises. Over 50 environmental experts, mostly from Portuguese-speaking countries, will hold talks in a series of sessions; namely, Zero Waste and High Efficiency, Turning Green into Gold, From Waste to Resources and Rewards, Building with Less, Green Chemical Forum Treatment of Chemical Solid Waste and Hazardous Waste, and Pan Pearl River Delta Region (PPRD) Session Solid Waste Management and Policies and Technology in the Pan Pearl River Delta Region in the venue which spans an area of 16,900 square meters. Irene Lau, executive director of IPIM, said that the fairs focus is on recovering waste and creating more opportunities. We are in the Pearl River Delta and were dealing with a lot of waste [] from food, buildings, construction. How to kind of rescue them, how to put them together [] and create more opportunities, that is our focus, expressed Lau. Moreover, she claimed the budget for the event has stood at around MOP25 million since the fifth edition of MIECF, although services have been improved a lot. We hope to keep it up but Im confident we can maintain the same by not [increasing] expenses, she emphasized. Last year, the MIECF Green Showcase attracted more than 9,600 visitors over three days, while more than 3,600 people from nine countries attended the forum. Staff reporter Cubans were glued to their televisions yesterday [Macau time], many watching in a state of shock as President Raul Castro faced tough questions from American journalists who challenged him to defend Cubas record on human rights and political prisoners. In a country where publicly questioning the authority of Castro and his brother and predecessor Fidel is unthinkable for most, and where the docile state-run media almost always toe the party line, the live broadcast was must-see TV. Some also marveled at tough questioning of President Barack Obama, simply unaccustomed to seeing any leader challenged in such a way. This is pure history and I never thought Id see something like this, said Marlene Pino, a 47-year-old engineer. Its difficult to quickly assimilate whats happening here. For me its extraordinary to see this. Its like a movie, but based on real life, said Ricardo Herrera a 45-year-old street food vendor. In one eye-catching moment, Castros response suggested that perhaps Havana is not always perfect on human rights. He argued that no country is, said it is incumbent on all to try to do better and defended his governments support of what it considers important human rights issues: providing universal, free education and health care. At an outdoor cafe in the Vedado neighborhood, about a dozen Cubans and tourists watched in awed silence as both Castro and Obama spoke. One stunned woman held a hand to her mouth. Its very significant to hear this from our president, for him to recognize that not all human rights are respected in Cuba, said Raul Rios, a 47-year-old driver who also expressed agreement with the presidents more nuanced explanation about rights and his argument that that no country is perfect. We are living in historic times, the United States and Cuba, Rios added. Nobody could have imagined this in the past. I think this marks a before and after. Its extremely rare for Castro to hold a news conference, though he sometimes takes questions from reporters spontaneously when the mood strikes. Hes known as a much more cautious and reluctant public speaker than his loquacious older brother Fidel, who was given to talking for hours at a time and often directly with journalists. The Cuban government and the Communist Party control nearly all media in Cuba, including TV and radio channels and print newspapers. There are a handful of independent online outlets, though more critical ones like dissident blogger Yoani Sanchezs 14ymedio are blocked on the island and certainly never get access to the president or other top officials. The news conference also included an exchange between Castro and CNN reporter Jim Acosta, a second-generation Cuban-American, who asked about political prisoners in Cuba. Castro testily addressed Acosta directly, saying After this meeting is over, you can give me a list of political prisoners, and if we have those political prisoners, they will be released before tonight ends. Nudging Cuba toward democracy, President Barack Obama will cast a spotlight on political repression and economic misery here today when he meets with dissidents and speaks to the Cuban people at the close of a trailblazing trip. MDT/AP The Institute for Tourism Studies (IFT) kicked off its Irish Food and Whiskey Week yesterday at its educational restaurant, in collaboration with the Consulate General of Ireland, to celebrate the Irish Festival and promote Irish culture in Macau. A chef invited from Ireland, James Fox, prepared a variety of Irish cuisines, while Martin Moran, an Irish master of wine, was the guest speaker at an Irish whiskey seminar yesterday, which was attended by over 40 participants. The seminar aimed to allow participants to learn more about whiskey distillation and production, as well as different styles of Irish whiskey. The Irish Food and Whiskey Week will run until March 24. During the week, guests can experience an Irish set lunch and buffet dinner, featuring a variety of Irish cuisine and wine. IFT believes that by bringing new culinary elements and experiences to Macau, the culinary knowledge and horizon of local residents and professionals will be enhanced. Staff reporter North Korea fired five short-range projectiles into the sea yesterday, Seoul officials said, in a continuation of weapon launches it has carried out in an apparent response to ongoing South Korea-U.S. military drills it sees as a provocation. The projectiles launched from a site near the northeastern city of Hamhung flew about 200 kilometers (125 miles) before landing in waters off North Koreas east coast, South Koreas Joint Chiefs of Staff said. The South Korean military was attempting to determine whether the projectiles were missiles, artillery or rockets. The firings came three days after Seoul said North Korea launched its first medium-range ballistic missile into the sea since early 2014, ignoring U.N. resolutions against such tests. The firings appear to be North Koreas response to annual springtime U.S.-South Korean military exercises that it says are a rehearsal for an invasion. In the past two weeks North Korea has fired several short-range missiles and artillery shells into the sea and threatened pre-emptive nuclear strikes against Washington and Seoul. This years drills are the largest ever, and come after North Korea conducted a nuclear test and a long-range rocket launch earlier this year, leading the U.N. Security Council to impose its toughest sanctions on the country in two decades. The U.S. special representative for North Korean policy, Sung Kim, who is visiting Seoul, said yesterday that North Korea should refrain from all provocative actions, including missile tests, which are clearly in violation of Security Council resolutions. On Sunday, North Korean state TV broadcast photos showing leader Kim Jong Un supervising landing and defensive drills. The photos showed artillery blazing, navy ships landing as shells fell nearby, and soldiers running with the national flag. North Korea has a history of photo manipulation and there was no way to verify the authenticity of the photos. Last week, state media said Kim ordered tests of a nuclear warhead and ballistic missiles capable of carrying such warheads. He issued the orders while overseeing what state media called a successful simulated test of a re-entry vehicle aimed at returning a nuclear warhead to the atmosphere from space so it could hit its intended target. The re-entry vehicle is considered one of the last major technologies North Korea must master to develop long-range missiles equipped with nuclear weapons capable of reaching the U.S. mainland. Analysts in South Korea said the medium-range missile launch last Friday may have been a test of the re-entry technology. North Korean state media have not commented on the reported launch. South Korean defense officials say North Korea doesnt yet have functioning intercontinental ballistic missiles. Hyung-Jin Kim, Seoul, AP A large group of employment applicants queued up at The Parisians job fair at the Dunhuang Ballroom at Sands Cotai Central yesterday, offering vacancies in over 150 positions. Approximately 40 departments were represented from finance to front office, and from housekeeping to food and beverage spanning both gaming and non-gaming areas of operations. The fair, open to Macau residents, has been decorated in a French style, providing a unique experience for applicants. It features a complete recruitment process for most positions, from onsite interviews to contract signings. Paulo Cheong, HR executive director of Venetian Macau Ltd, told the Times that the number of applicants exceeded their expectations. This job fair, we expected that we could attract 700 applicants per day so 1400 over two days. Maybe because we promoted a lot on different channels, [] so we had more applicants than expected. As of 2 p.m., Cheong claimed that they had received around 1,000 applications, in addition to 200 preregistered aspirants. He also said that they have already offered employment contracts to 100 of those applicants. When asked if they plan on any further hiring of non-local employees, the Sands executive claimed that locals are currently the target of the current and future job fairs. It depends because we still have a lot of job fairs in the upcoming few months [] so it really depends on our resources. Maybe after one or two months, we will have a clearer idea of what the will plan be, but we definitely want to hire as many locals as we can in the first few months, said Paulo Cheong. Moreover, he also mentioned the recently launched career development program of Sands, My Way, for its team members. The new program allows current gaming team members to work in non-gaming departments and positions at The Parisian Macao for a set period of time, to provide opportunities for team members. Meanwhile, applicants such as Ken are looking forward to working in the newly established resort. I think it will be refreshing to work in a place that has just opened, as opposed to going to some place that has been running for years and years, says Ken. I think it would be really great to maybe make a difference. A lot of companies, they kind of get into ruts, they have habits, and I think that having an opportunity to work in a new place especially in places that are as big as this, you know there are more opportunities to make your mark, he added. Another applicant waiting in line, who didnt want to be identified, appreciated Sands efforts in first targeting locals rather than recruiting workers from abroad. Its a great opportunity, especially for local residents because usually they hire abroad instead of actually recruiting people from here who have lots of talents and skills, commented the candidate. The recruitment fair, offering more than 95 percent of the vacancies for non-gaming positions, will conclude today. Staff reporter Figures released this week by the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) revealed severe declines in tourism revenues last year in both Macau and Hong Kong. The declines were of 32 percent and 8.4 percent respectively. Analysts believe that the slump in tourism revenues in the two SARs has been primarily seen in visitors from the mainland, a demographic which makes up a significant portion of external visitors to Macau and Hong Kong. While Hong Kong recently reported a fall in visitors that is being widely accredited to the recent Mong Kok riot, the beating of a mainland Chinese tourist last year and growing anti-mainland rhetoric, Macaus Chinese New Year visitor volume recorded a growth of 5.2 percent in comparison to 2015. However, the notable growth in visitors was not paralleled in visitor spending. Casino operators and Macau-based businesses registered drastic drops in commerce, as reported by the Times. A growth in the number of visitors, but a decline in visitor spending suggests either that Chinese tourists who have a historic tendency to engage in significant shopping sprees, are on average spending less in the MSAR, or that the growth in numbers is due to less affluent visitors. According to gaming analyst Richard Huang of Nomura Holdings, the latter holds true for the gaming sector where the average daily revenue in February was 20 percent lower than it was in 2015. As the Times reported last month, Huang said that the number of tourists and high hotel occupancy rate do not necessarily translate into increased spending, if the visitation growth is mainly driven by tourists with weaker spending power. In addition to the enduring effect of Xi Jinpings anti-corruption campaign on visitor spending in Macau, David Scowsill, the president and CEO of the WTTC, told The Financial Times that the slowdown has been exacerbated by Beijings move to stem capital outflows from the Mainland. Scowsill added that holders of the popular Unionpay bank card in China are now restricted to withdrawing a maximum of RMB100,000 per year and RMB10,000 per day at overseas ATMs, which may have further restricted visitor spending. However external Chinese tourism is not slowing down, as the WTTC figures make clear. The organization claims that Chinese consumers fuelled a travel and tourism boom last year despite the economic difficulties of the country in the second half of 2015. According to the figures released this week, Chinese tourists spent USD215 billion outside of mainland China in 2015, representing a 53 percent rise from the USD140 billion spent in the previous year. [Chinese] outbound tourism is growing like crazy, Scowsill told The Financial Times. There were some significant shocks last year, in the stock market and the currency, but it didnt slow the growth of travel and tourism. Once people have started to travel, they are reluctant to give that up. Taiwan and South Korea fared similarly to the two SARs last year, reporting declines in tourist spending of 1.5 percent and 10.2 percent respectively. Japan despite expectations to the contrary, appeared to benefit from Chinese tourism recording a 47 percent surge in arrivals and a 37 percent growth in visitor spending. Europe has also performed well in attracting Chinese visitors, who are increasingly looking at travel destinations further abroad than East Asia. Popular destinations, according to WTTC, include the UK, Germany and Iceland. Meanwhile the number of external tourists visiting China last year edged up to 56.9 million, a rise of just 2.2 percent over the last two years, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organization. Provisional figures from the UN body, as cited by the Financial Times, registered a rise of just 1.1 percent over that recorded in 2014. Tourism revenues received from foreign visitors also saw marginal growth, reaching USD61 billion last year, according to calculations made by the WTTC. However the figure accounts for just 2.6 percent of Chinas total export revenue, far below the global average of 6.1 percent for economic contributions of external tourism. Daniel Beitler MGM China has announced that over MOP8 million has been signed in deals under the auspices of MGMs SME (Small and Medium-sized Enterprises) Business Matching Sessions so far, after being launched in October last year. In a statement released yesterday, MGM stated that 430 local SMEs have participated in the business matching sessions, of which 358 were new partnerships with the company. A total of 542 deals, amounting to more than MOP8 million, have been signed between MGM and over 100 vendors, the company revealed, adding that the majority met our [MGMs] target criteria for focusing on specific subgroups of local SMEs. Of the 100 vendors that successfully signed deals with MGM, 67 belonged to a category entitled Micro SMEs, 16 were from the Made in Macau segment and 28 from Young Entrepreneurs. As an integrated resort with a strong presence in Macau, we are proud to drive business with local SMEs, which will ultimately help Macau diversify and grow in a sustainable manner, said Grant Bowie, Chief Executive Officer of MGM China. The positive results from our SME initiatives indicate that we are going in the right direction, and we will continue to nurture relationships with existing local vendors and with the many more newcomers to the field, Bowie added. To date, MGM has hosted two quarterly MGM SME Business Matching Sessions, one on November 30, 2015 and the other on March 18 this year. The company added that they will continue to host quarterly sessions throughout the remainder of this year, focusing on specific groupings of products that are regularly sourced by MGM. DB The Legislative Assembly (AL) approved in the first reading the draft legislation that aims to comply with a United Nations Security Council (UNSC) resolution on combating terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. In a plenary meeting held yesterday, with 29 votes in favor, lawmakers unanimously approved the draft, which the government requested to be considered by the AL as a matter of urgency. There was not much of a debate over the draft legislation presented to the plenary by the Secretary for Administration and Justice, Sonia Chan. It took only a few minutes of discussion before voting began. The only lawmaker who raised any concerns was Pereira Coutinho, who expressed his disappointment over the Secretarys intervention, and requested further details about what the government had done since 2007, when the problem was first detected. According to the 2007 report there were several areas targeted for action and where the government should have taken action. Can you tell us what the status of this is? Pereira Coutinho asked, giving several examples cited in the joint evaluation report (MER) from the Asia Pacific Group on Money Laundering (APGML) and from the Group of International Finance Centre Supervisors (GIFCS) that in 2007 detected flaws in Macaus legal system and suggested corrections in the fight against money laundering and terrorist financing. On the government side, the answer came from the representative of the Financial Intelligence Office (GIF) who said, the government took good note of the suggestions and has established an interdepartmental task force that works in accordance with those requirements, adding that cash declarations and inspections of such are one of the tasks that they have been performing. The representative of GIF also said that there is currently an established level of monetary transaction that will raise alerts to follow up on the case. The official did not want to reveal the amount, stating that it was not convenient for the work in progress, and adding that through our database we are also investigating allegations of money laundering at customs points. Recently green channels were created as a first approach to address these needs. She concluded by saying that there is a need for the revision of the law regarding cash declarations. The draft legislation, presented by Secretary Chan yesterday, proposes several mechanisms to fight money laundering and terrorist financing. These mechanisms include the freezing of assets, protection of third parties, provision of information to various government entities as well as guarantees of fair treatment and defense mechanisms that allow the people or legal entities in question to make proper appeals. The UNSC resolution documents issued between 1998 and 2006 set requirements for governments to pay close attention to their prevention of money laundering and the control over the flow of assets (including cash and precious items) that can be used to finance terrorism on several levels, as well as over imports and exports. Since Macau does not have any specific regulations to prevent these problems there was an urgent need to draft legislation to comply with these instructions. On the sidelines of the plenary meeting, lawmaker Pereira Coutinho said, I expected much more from the government. This is mere candy that the government is trying to give to the UNSC to comply with the need to compile a report on this matter within the year. If the government was working seriously on these issues as theyve said, cases like Dore would not have happened, he said while exiting the plenary room. The Legislative Assembly (AL) Follow-up Committee for Public Administration advised that the Office of the Secretary for Social Affairs and Culture engage in conversations with the police force regarding cooperation on law enforcement over illegal accommodation, Macao Daily News reported. Two years ago, the AL Follow- up Committee for Public Administration reported to the government the difficulties it encountered when dealing with illegal accommodation. However, nothing effective eventuated, despite the governments promises to review the law enforcement process. Chan Meng Kam, president of the AL Follow-up Committee for Public Administration, said the department intended to transfer the law enforcement operations to the police, due to the complexity surrounding these illegal hotels. The hotels serve as a stage for gang-related disputes, for imprisonments, for prostitution, for drug use, as well as for overstaying visas, over which the Macau Government Tourism Office (MGTO) has no rights whatsoever to conduct investigations. Last year, the MGTO inspected 1,118 residential units that were under suspicion of operating as illegal accommodation, out of which 53 were required to be closed for a period of six months. The unlicensed guesthouses are located mainly in the vicinity of gaming areas, including the ZAPE, and the Macau Ferry Terminal. In order to comply with legal requirements, all operations were conducted by the MGTO subsequent to complaints addressed to the police regarding the existence of such accommodation facilities. Although over the past two years, 90 percent of the issued penalties were applied by the MGTO, the ratio of successfully executed penalties is low. The underlying cause [of the problem] needs to be addressed, especially the smugglers, said Chan. Staff reporter A prominent Vietnamese blogger who is a former police officer and the son of a late government minister will be put on trial this week for alleged anti-state postings, his lawyer said yesterday. Nguyen Huu Vinh and his assistant, Nguyen Thi Minh Thuy, are accused of abusing democratic freedoms to infringe on the interests of the state, an offense punishable by up to seven years in prison, said the lawyer, Ha Huy Son. Vinh, 59, and Thuy, 35, will stand trial today in Hanoi, Vietnams capital. They have been in jail since they were arrested in May 2014. Vinh, better known as Anh Ba Sam, was a police officer with the Ministry of Public Security in Hanoi. He quit in 1999 and set up a private investigation firm. His father was a government minister and Vietnams ambassador to the former Soviet Union. In 2007, Vinh set up the Ba Sam blog. He later launched two others Dan Quyen, or Citizens Rights, in 2013, and Chep Su Viet, or Writing Vietnamese History, in early 2014. The blogs provided links to news on political, social, economic and cultural issues from state media as well as activists. According to state media, the indictment says two dozen articles posted on Dan Quyen and Chep Su Viet had untruthful and groundless content and distort the lines and policies of the ruling Communist Party. It also says the articles present a one-sided and pessimistic view, causing anxiety and worry, and affecting the peoples confidence in the party and government. The two defendants have denied the charges, saying they have no relations with the postings, according to Son. The trial was originally scheduled for Jan. 19, but was postponed on the eve of the Communist Partys congress, which elected Vietnams new leaders and charted the countrys course for the next five years. International human rights groups and some Western governments, including the United States, have often criticized Vietnam for jailing dissidents for peacefully expressing their views. Hanoi denies the charges, saying only those who break the law are put behind bars. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have called for the release of both defendants. The trial and continuing detention of a blogger and his assistant who have already spent almost two years in jail is farcical and a blight on the countrys human rights record, Amnesty said in a statement yesterday. AP CHINA Citizens of China have reacted with anger and alarm at news of a massive illegal vaccine operation uncovered in Shandong province. The vaccine ring involved hundreds of people and affected 24 provinces and cities. CHINAs state-controlled media has weighed in on U.S. President Obamas historic visit to Cuba, warning the island nation of American motives, arrogance and interventionism in Latin America. MYANMAR The new parliament voted to reduce the number of government ministries, with President-elect Htin Kyaw assuring lawmakers that no civil servants will lose their jobs and that the nation will save USD4 million. AUSTRALIA Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull warns that he will dissolve both houses of parliament and call early elections if the Senate fails to pass two labor reform bills, which he insists are critical but opponents say are unfair. IRAN Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has accused the U.S. of reneging on the Wests nuclear deal with the country, signed last year, by seeking to undermine Iranian banks. U.S. A lawyer for a Temple University professor who had been accused of scheming to provide secret U.S. technology to China says federal prosecutors wont refile charges after they dropped the case against him last year. TURKEY-GREECE Officials from Turkey and Greece are set to begin discussions on how to implement last weeks deal on migrant repatriation. Under the EU-Turkey agreement, migrants arriving in Greece are to be sent back to Turkey if they do not apply for asylum or if their claim is rejected. BELGIUM National prosecutors say that DNA has identified an accomplice, Najim Laachraoui, of captured Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam. A statement said that he had been using false ID and that his DNA had been found in houses used by the suspected jihadist network. BOSNIAN Serb officials in Bosnia have named a student dormitory after Radovan Karadzic, the former president who is now accused of involvement in genocide and war crimes during the 1990s Bosnian civil war. TAIWANs government will take international media on a tour of its largest island holding in the South China Sea in a bid to reinforce its territorial claims. A government official says that the visit aims to counter the Philippines claims that the island is merely a rock and is not entitled to territorial waters. INDONESIA Thousands of taxi drivers caused traffic chaos in the Indonesian capital yesterday in a violent protest against what they consider to be unfair competition from ride-hailing apps such as Uber. SINGAPORE Two maintenance staff working on elevated tracks in Singapores mass transit system were hit and killed by a train yesterday, an official said, marking another incident in a string of disruptions in recent years. SOUTH KOREA reported yesterday the countrys first case of the Zika virus in a 43-year-old man who recently returned from Brazil, according to a statement from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. PAKISTAN A police officer in Pakistan says at least 17 Hindus have died after consuming illegally-made alcohol during religious celebrations in the south of the country. TAJIKISTANs president, Emomali Rahmon, has suggested three new public holidays on consecutive days to honor wrestlers, horse riders and the planting of flowers. According to Asia-Plus, a national wrestling tournament was held in the countrys capital yesterday. EU A UK exit from the European Union would cause a serious economic shock, potentially costing the country 100 billion pounds and nearly one million jobs, according to a report commissioned by the Confederation of British Industry. AGHANISTAN The new commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan apologized yesterday to the people of Kunduz for the deadly attack on a hospital in the city last year that killed 42 people. CONGO Former Congolese rebel leader Jean-Pierre Bemba has been found guilty of war crimes in a landmark trial at the International Criminal Court. The once vice-president of the Democratic Republic of Congo will remains in custody until sentencing. Saudi Arabia will be providing financial assistance to Egypt part of its $8 billion investment pledge that was made by Saudi King Salman Bin Abdulaziz at the end of last year to help save the North African countrys struggling economy. The first phase of the pledge consists in $1.5 billion investment on projects in the Sinai Peninsula, a region that has proven to be the most volatile part of the country. The agreement was signed at the end of the fifth meeting of the Saudi-Egyptian Cooperation Council by Saudi finance minister Ibrahim Al-Assaf and Egypts International Cooperation Minister, Sahar Nasr. The amount will be used to build 26 residential complexes including hospitals, schools and other facilities as well as to boost the agricultural sector. The remaining $6.5 million of the pledge will be received by Cairo over the five coming years. Saudi Arabia also agreed to finance Egypts petrol needs for the next five years. The Gulf Cooperation Council members, with the exception of Qatar, have been supportive of the Sisi administration since its arrival to power, providing it with considerable financial and material assistance. One of the recent investment projects from the Gulf States is a Saudi-UAE alliance of companies that have requested to obtain 5million square feet of land in the industrial city near the Suez Canal for a $3 billion worth of investments. 120 manufacturing factories will be established under the project with warehouses and a business city. Reports claim the request is currently being reviewed by the Economic Commission of the Suez Canal. Positive developments could be made in the Yemeni war after UN special envoy for Yemen Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed announced a meeting of the warring parties will be held in Kuwait by the end of the month. He said the parties have agreed on the principle of holding a new round of talks. The announcement came at a moment the Saudi-led coalition declared that major combat phase was nearing its end. The UN Special envoy broke the news on Facebook in a post acknowledging the positive and constructive talks with the Houhtis leading to the talks. Yet, doubts still loom over the outcome of the upcoming talks because the government has been insisting that the rebels must first abide by the UN Security Council resolution 2216 which calls for their disarmament and withdrawal from occupied areas before peace talks can be tabled. The talks will be preceded by a week-long truce that could be renewed if respected amid the intensified clashes in and around Taiz that pro-government forces backed by militia groups and the coalition forces are trying to takeover. The city is considered as the last major stronghold of the rebels that lies between the coalition forces and Sanaa. Previous UN-sponsored negotiations between rebels and government officials failed to reach a breakthrough, and the most recent round ended in acrimony in December. The UN Special envoy is hopeful that the new round will be positive. US Secretary of State John Kerry said Washington is deeply concerned by the deterioration of the respect for human rights in Egypt and the investigation on NGOs activities but his statement received stiff rejection from Egyptian Foreign Minister Sameh Shoukry and Deputy Speaker of the parliament Soliman Wahdan. Minister Shoukry stated that human rights issues are the responsibility of the Egyptian government, which is very keen to implement and put into action the constitution, which stipulates respect for and commitment to human rights. Deputy Speaker Wahdan on his part said the statement released by the US State Department marks another American intervention in Egypts internal affairs. It has become a tradition for American officials to seize some separate cases, like the current NGOs investigation, as an excuse to issue judgments and meddle in domestic affairs, Wahdan said. An Egyptian judicial committee ordered the freezing of assets of four Egyptian human rights activists and their families on Thursday for allegedly receiving illegal funding from foreign sources following investigations that began in 2011. A day after, the US criticized the decision to reopen investigations on several human rights NGOs and urged Cairo to ease restrictions on freedom of association and expression and allow NGOs to operate freely. The European Parliament also voted a non-binding resolution last week criticizing the human rights situation in Egypt but Wahdan said European lawmakers should exercise patience and not jump to hasty conclusions while stressing that the death of the Italian student, Giulio Regeni, should not be exploited and it would not affect the deep-rooted relations between Rome and Cairo. A parliamentary delegation will be visiting the European parliament to respond to the resolution. Four militants of al-Qaeda have been killed and three others wounded by the Algerian military in the desert region of Ain Saleh, believed to be part of those who attempted an attack on Friday on the Krechba gas facility jointly operated by Sonatrach, British Petroleum (BP) and Norwegian Statoil in central Algeria. The attack caused neither casualty nor damage to the facility and is said to have been launched from a distance. Since the In Amenas gas plant attack in 2012 that killed 40 oil workers, Algeria stationed military guards at its oil and gas facilities to deter future attacks. The attack on Friday claimed by al-Qaeda in the Maghreb (AQMI) is said to have been preceded by warnings according to Mauritanian based Al Akhbar; a media known for receiving statements from the group. It reported that warning missiles were fired after workers were told to withdraw from the site. The Algerian military has not confirmed the killing of the four militants and their ties to AQMI but the defense ministry did state that the fired rockets were homemade and crashed near a guard post close to the facility. The ministry added that the rapid reaction of the army detachment tasked with protecting the site foiled this attempted terrorist attack. AQMI said the attack is in retaliation to Algiers complicity with France in the war against the Muslims in north Mali and the groups war on the interest of the Crusaders in every place. Sonatrach is a state-owned Algerian company while BP and Statoil hail from Britain and Norway respectively. The Krechba site produces 2 billion cubic meters of gas a year, and fields in the region of Ain Saleh produce around 9 billion cubic meters. Five African countries, namely Benin, Cape Verde, Congo, Niger, and Senegal witnessed crucial presidential or parliamentary elections on Sunday, and a referendum on presidential term limits. In Benin, voters cast ballots on Sunday in a run-off election to choose the successor of incumbent President Thomas Boni Yayi. Prime Minister Lionel Zinsou, a former economist and investment banker backed by Boni Yayi, faces Patrice Talon, a businessman and once a powerful figure in the West African nations cornerstone cotton sector. According to preliminary results, Patrice Talon is the winner. In Niger, opposition has called for a boycott of the run-off alleging fraud but some people went to the polls even though the opposition candidate Hama Amadou is hospitalized in France. Outgoing President Muhamadou Issoufou is expected to win a second term in the vote against former prime minister and parliamentary speaker Hama Amadou. The Senegalese voted in an historic referendum on Sunday on Constitutional reforms proposed by President Macky Sall, including an amendment to reduce the presidential term in office from 7 to 5 years. Macky Salls own term is not concerned by the amendment. The amendments gleaned a majority of votes, although the turnout was rather low. In central Africa, Voters in the Republic of Congo went to the polls on Sunday to elect a president under a new constitution and the opposition is already denouncing the lack of transparency in the electoral process. President Denis Sassou Nguesso is seeking to renew his mandate after ruling the country for over three decades. Elections were also held in the West-African Island of Cape Verde and Zanzibar (Tanzania), after last Octobers polls were cancelled. The presidential poll was originally held on October 25 at the same time as national elections. The president of the local Electoral Commission (ZEC), however, decided to invalidate the results because of massive fraud The European Investment Bank (EIB) will invest about 117.7 million to improve electricity supply to three large cities in Ivory Coast, the banks vice president Ambroise Fayolle announced last week. Ivory Coast, the worlds biggest cocoa producer and the West African biggest economy, like many countries in the region, is struggling to meet skyrocketing electricity demand to power its expanding post-war economy. The Francophone West Africas economic powerhouse, is a regional power exporter, supplying Ghana, Burkina Faso, Togo and Mali. The government plans also to supply Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea, but it lacks investment to boost the energy capacity and end power cuts that have held back business growth. The EIBs 117.7 million funded-project, called ENERGOS, will boost power distribution in Abidjan, the second city Bouake and the countrys second port, San Pedro. It will involve construction of a distribution center in the capital Yammoussoukro, the bank said. Last month, CIPREL, the countrys electricity generating company, and a subsidiary of Emerging Capital Partners, completed a project to increase its total capacity by 234 megawatts (MW) to a total of 556 MW in a bid to meet fast-growing domestic and regional demand. The West-African nations electricity capacity is now 1,975 MW and the government aims to push it to 4,000 MW by 2020 Zambia has begun talks with the International Monetary Fund over an aid program to revamp the countrys ailing economy, officials said on Friday. The international lender has agreed with local officials that the countrys budget deficit was not sustainable. We are both of the view the current levels of the budget deficit are unsustainable, as it leads to increased future requirements for debt repayment, Treasury secretary Fredson Yamba said at the end of an IMF mission to Zambia. Zambias budget has come under strain as prices for the copper the country depends on for more than 70 percent of exports languish near six-year lows and a power crisis cuts output. The government has run consecutive budget deficits that it has financed both locally and externally, leading to higher borrowing costs. President Edgar Lungu announced spending cuts in November as Zambia tries to rein in the deficit. The International Monetary Fund cautioned Africas second-largest copper producer in November to cut spending amid falling revenues and rising debt costs. SOCAR discloses Russian gas procurement volumes The State Oil Company of the Republic of Azerbaijan (SOCAR) is negotiating with the Russian Gazprom company and Iran to purchase three billion cubic meters of gas annually, Rovnag Abdullayev, SOCAR president, told reporters March 14."There is still interest in purchasing Russian gas, he said. We conveyed our suggestion to Gazprom. We need gas for injecting into the reservoirs at the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli block of fields to maintain stable oil production.Secondly, we plan to inject additional volumes of gas into Azerbaijani underground gas storage facilities to fully make use of them, he said. The capacity of gas storage facilities hits around five billion cubic meters. As a pilot project, we want to test the maximum capacity."Currently, Gazprom has a contract on purchasing Azerbaijani gas. The document was signed Oct.14, 2009 with the possibility of extension. The contract between SOCAR and Russias Gazprom allows the suspension and resumption of gas supplies at any time.He also said that SOCAR is negotiating with Iran about the swap of seasonal supplies."Iran has much unused gas during summer, he said. The talks are being held about pumping Iranian gas into Azerbaijani gas storage facilities and providing the northern provinces of Iran with gas in winter. At present, experts are discussing technical issues."The need for gas imports is due to the fact that today, almost a quarter of all the gas produced at the Azeri-Chirag-Guneshli block of fields is pumped back into the reservoir to maintain pressure.However, gas consumption greatly increased in Azerbaijan over the past two years.The gas extracted at the Shah Deniz, is contracted for its supply to Georgia and Turkey.In this regard, a gas swap with Gazprom will allow Azerbaijan to further ensure gas supply to southern regions of Russia, to test out its gas storage facilities, as well as, in case of a consistently high level of injection into them, to reduce the volume of extraction of associated gas at the ACG, and to pump it to the maximum extent to reservoirs to increase oil output at the block.Abdullayev also touched upon the issue of using gas at power plants.The energy system of Azerbaijan is so diversified that it can use both gas and black oil as fuel, the head of SOCAR said. However, due to the fact that black oil prices fell on the global oil market, it has become more profitable to use it more than gas. We carry out our economic operations in a way to maintain maximum profitability at low prices.The generation capacity of Azerbaijan's power supply system has increased over the last five years. Currently, its capacity is 7,129 megawatt. This allows it to generate around 24 billion kilowatt hours of electricity and export 2.1 billion kilowatt hours of electricity annually. Special day for children with Down syndrome By Messenger Staff Georgias Minister of Environment Gigla Agulashvili and the head of the United Nations (UN) in Georgia, Niels Scott, have hosted Georgian children with Down syndrome in the Prometheus Caves, one of the most impressive touristic sites in west Georgia.The Georgian and foreign officials participated in the occasion with their own children and came away with high impressions of the children with Down syndrome.The children could not hide their enjoyment when viewing the site.Down syndrome, also known as trisomy 21, is a genetic disorder caused by the presence of all or part of a third copy of chromosome 21. It is typically associated with physical growth delays, characteristic facial features, and mild to moderate intellectual disability. The average IQ of a young adult with Down syndrome is 50, equivalent to the mental age of an 8- or 9-year-old child, but this can vary widely.It is welcome that such events are becoming more and more frequent in Georgia, as Georgians still need to be made aware of challenges people with special needs face.Such events also help people with Down syndrome to feel included with society.In previous years, it was even hard for the parents of such children to freely walk in the street without abuse.More support and raising public awareness of such issues is the best precondition of an integral, democratic society. The News in Brief IPN news agency showed high standards Defense Minister In this country, where there is a total lack of responsibility, the IPN news agency has shown high standards, said Minister of Defense of Georgia Tina Khidasheli. According to her, the agency has not insisted that it did not make any mistake. In her Facebook post, she says IPN is a company where professionals work, therefore they cause more anger in case of making any mistake. In my view, the IPN news agency has shown high standard, as it has not insisted on being right, she said. According to Khidasheli, despite the unsavoury and scandalous nature of the recently-released footage, people should still manage to be reasonable. However, several days ago, the Defence Minister said that the Defence Ministry and its subordinate agencies have ceased cooperation with the IPN news agency. (IPN) Tbilisi, Tskhinvali, Sokhumi Swap Prisoners Georgian authorities have released four South Ossetian prisoners in exchange for the Abkhaz and South Ossetian sides releasing twelve prisoners of their own as part of a rare deal hailed by all sides as an important humanitarian act and a result of pragmatic cooperation. The prisoner swap took place on the Abkhaz administrative border late on Thursday afternoon in the presence of the Georgian State Minister for Reconciliation, Paata Zakareishvili, as well as the foreign ministers from the breakaway territories of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, Viacheslav Chirikba and Kazbulat Tskhovrebov, respectively. Three out of the four men released by Tbilisi were arrested in 2005 in connection to an explosion outside a police station in the town of Gori on February 1 2005, which killed three Georgian policemen and injured more than two dozen of people; they were serving life sentences. In exchange, the South Ossetian side released four men who were serving lengthy prison terms in the breakaway region, and handed them over to the Georgian side at the administrative border of South Ossetia. Also on March 10, the South Ossetian side released the fifth man, who was arrested last autumn for the illegal crossing of the border. In parallel, as part of the deal the Abkhaz side handed over to the Georgian side eight persons, including one woman, who were serving lengthy prison terms in Abkhazia on various charges, espionage among them. This exchange of prisoners, also involving four Ossetians, took place at the Abkhaz administrative border. Both the Georgian and South Ossetian senior officials, present at the prisoner swap, praised the Abkhaz sides role in making the deal possible. (Civil.ge) Shishani clinically dead: Syrian monitor According to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), Islamic States field commander Tarkhan Batirashvili, mostly known under his nom de guerre Abu Omar Shishani, has been clinically dead for several days, Agence France Presse (AFP) reported. Shishani is not able to breathe on his own and is using machines. He has been clinically dead for several days, SOHRs director Rami Abdurrahman said. On March 9, major Western news outlets reported that Mr Batirashvili was likely killed in an American airstrike in the town of ash-Shaddadi in north-eastern Syria on 4 March. On 10 March, SOHR denied the reports of his death and informed that he was alive and being treated in a hospital in the Raqqa province in territory controlled by the Islamic State. The father of Tarkhan Batirashvili, who lives in the village of Birkiani in Pankisi valley, has so far not publicly commented on the loss of his son. (DF watch) From the News Service of Florida: The Florida Supreme Court will hear arguments June 8 in a challenge to a state law that bars people from openly carrying firearms. Justices issued an order Monday scheduling the arguments in the challenge filed by Dale Norman, who was arrested in 2012 in Fort Pierce while openly carrying a gun in a holster. After a jury found Norman guilty of a misdemeanor charge, the 4th District Court of Appeal upheld the state law, ruling it does not violate constitutional rights to bear arms. Norman then appealed to the Supreme Court, which said in October that it would take up the case. During the legislative session that ended this month, lawmakers considered proposals that would have allowed people with concealed-weapons licenses to openly carry guns. But the measures did not pass. Cuba President Raul Castro criticized the United States human rights record and defended his own in a joint press conference with President Barack Obama in Havana. At the first official meeting between leaders of the two countries in 50 years, Castro dinged the United States on the lack of universal access to health care, free education and equal pay before he fended off a CNN reporters question about political prisoners on the island. "President Castro, my father is Cuban. He left for the United States when he was young. Do you see a new and democratic direction for your country? And why (do) you have Cuban political prisoners? And why dont you release them?" asked CNNs Jim Acosta. (He then asked if Castro prefers Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump.) "Give me a list of the political prisoners and I will release them immediately," Castrosaid, according to the White House translation of his remarks. "Just mention a list. What political prisoners? Give me a name or names. After this meeting is over, you can give me a list of political prisoners. And if we have those political prisoners, they will be released before tonight ends." A Miami Herald translation put his response in slightly different words, though Castros message is not in dispute: "Give me the list now of political prisoners to release. If there are political prisoners, theyll be free before nightfall." PolitiFact Global News Service thought wed oblige -- keep reading here to see what fact-checker Linda Qiu found. Heard a lot about the war on coal? How about the Partnerships for Opportunity and Workforce and Economic Revitalization (POWER) Initiative? President Obama proposed it in recognition of the fact that public policy is not the only factor driving waning coal use. Booming natural gas production, declining costs of renewable energy, increases in energy efficiency, flattening electricity demand, updated clean air standards, and Chinese cutbacks on metallurgical coal imports also change the way electricity is generated and coal is used worldwide. These trends produce cleaner air, healthier communities and spur new jobs. Unfortunately, they also impact communities relying on the coal industry for their economic prosperity. To assist impacted communities in adapting to this change, the POWER Initiative helps move workers to new jobs, addresses legacy costs in coal country and drives coal technology development. Help is also available to assist communities requiring pre-planning assistance to effectively apply for either planning or implementation grants. See www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/10/15/fact-sheet-administration-announces-new-workforce-and-economic. We urge affected communities to apply for POWER grants. The POWER Initiative awards grants to help communities develop comprehensive strategic plans to restore the economic future of affected workers and businesses. They execute economic and workforce development based on their plans. They can seek to: 1. diversify economies; 2. create jobs in new or existing industries; 3. attract new sources of job-creating investment; 4. and provide a range of workforce services and skills training, including work-based learning opportunities, resulting in industry-recognized credentials for high-quality, in-demand jobs. See https://www.eda.gov/power/#FY15Highlights. The Presidents fiscal year 2016 budget includes $55 million for economic and workforce development which would be used to continue the POWER initiative. The Department of Commerces Economic Development Administration and Department of Labors Employment and Training Administration will award planning grants to communities that have been or will be impacted by coal mining and coal power plant employment loss (or layoffs in the manufacturing or transportation logistics supply chains of either) and that do not have robust, recent comprehensive and integrated economic development strategies in place. Grants also go to State Workforce Agencies for in-depth labor market analysis, workforce development and dislocated worker planning. POWER encourages partnership participation from government, economic development organizations, workforce development boards, community and technical colleges, businesses, labor unions and community groups. Implementation grants to communities that have already done strategic planning are available through a POWER Federal Funding Opportunity announcement. Other federal agencies also participate in the POWER initiative. See www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2015/03/27/fact-sheet-partnerships-opportunity-and-workforce-and-economic-revitaliz. EDA will coordinate the joint FFO announcement and overall competitive solicitation, provide a single staff point of federal contact (with staffing from other agencies when needed) for the selected partnerships, and coordinate regional-level, cross-agency activities. A second proposed initiative is Montanas Initiative 180 to require more electricity from the wind and sun. It also will, if enacted, provide up to two years of retraining for displaced fossil fuel workers, increase their lengthened unemployment benefits by 20 percent during retraining, and make good on pension promises evaded by bankrupt coal companies. Learn more at www.MTCARES.org. To sign a paper petition to get I-180 on the ballot, email LemireDahlman@rangeweb.net (if youre from Rosebud County). Otherwise email gather@mtcares.org. HELENA Environmental groups and the U.S. government reached a tentative agreement to end a dispute over greenhouse gas emissions from federal oil and gas leases in Montana. Attorneys for the Department of Justice and the environmentalists filed notice in federal court Friday that they have a settlement in principle over a lawsuit that pushes the government to examine the effects on climate change when leasing public lands for energy drilling. They hope to finalize the deal within the month. The groups say the government should require companies to use technology that would reduce climate-changing methane emissions as a condition of their leases. Better oversight and technology use could cut 40 percent of the methane now lost due to leaking pipes, venting excess gas and exhaust from drilling, processing and transporting the oil and gas, according to the Montana Environmental Information Center, WildEarth Guardians and Earthworks' Oil and Gas Accountability Project. Justice Department attorneys argued that the lawsuit should be dismissed because the groups had not shown evidence that greenhouse gas emissions from federal lease sales caused them harm. The environmental groups entered into settlement negotiations with government attorneys after the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year reversed a ruling that dismissed the case. U.S. District Judge Sam Haddon had ruled that future drilling emissions would be too small to make a significant contribution to global greenhouse gas levels. The 9th Circuit panel of judges brought the case back, saying Haddon should not have focused only on the effects to climate change in his ruling but on harm to the surface where the drilling would happen. The sides have been in settlement talks since January. Montana Environmental Information Center attorney Shiloh Hernandez declined to release any details of the agreement until it is finished. "We're working out the details now," Hernandez said. "We hope to have it finalized in the next month." Officials with the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the lead defendant in the case, did not have immediate comment. The Montana center first sued the government after a 2008 sale of 61 oil and gas leases. The sides settled that case, with the government agreeing to suspend the leases while officials conducted further environmental review. The environmental groups sued again when 45 of those leases and new leases were issued in a 2010 sale. What a gnarled knot of warring impulses I feel about Lowlife. One minute, I want to stand on Stanton Street holding the door open while I give tips to diners on their way in: order the guinea-hen sausage, dont miss the lamb tartare, above all eat the yakitori chicken. The next, I want to form a one-man human chain across the entrance and warn hungry people to go somewhere else. When I think about the best parts of this restaurant opened in November by Alex Leonard, the very talented chef, and Hugh Crickmore, the owner, I want to shake their hands. When I remember how much money Ive spent there and how bizarrely pretentious the service can be, not just for the Lower East Side but for any neighborhood, I want to shake them by the shoulders until they come to their senses. Like many relationships that end in conflict, mine with Lowlife started in a happy rush of discovery. There was the smell of raw pine walls as soon as I walked in: invigorating. The wood gives the dining room the look of a sauna where people dont sweat and keep their clothes on. I loved the sense of open space, too. Mr. Crickmore fought the urge to cover every inch of floor with seats. I could have stretched out my arms as I walked past a table of big men in black cowboy hats (how did they get here?) and along a long brown row of soft leather banquettes, beyond a bar and a framed cluster of birch trunks, to my seat at a kitchen counter. Just beyond was another cluster of tables, also spacious, also flanked by leather benches. The design is semi-Scandinavian, in the way of so many New York dining rooms lately, but it is not all frigid slanting-winter-light pallor. Theres some warmth. Washington A week after the attacks early last year in Paris against the magazine Charlie Hebdo and a kosher grocery, Belgian police officers were fired on as they executed a search warrant in the town of Verviers. Officials learned that the assailants were members of a terrorist cell that had been planning a significant attack on Belgian police officers or civilians. The incident changed the way counterterrorism officials perceived the Islamic State threat in Europe and made clear that Belgium itself had a greater problem on its hands than it realized. Before the plot was disrupted, the United States Department of Homeland Security would later explain, nearly all of about a dozen Islamic State plots and attacks in the West had involved lone assailants or small groups. But, the report presciently warned, the involvement of a large number of operatives and group leaders based in multiple countries in future ISIL-linked plotting could create significant obstacles in the detection and disruption of new plots. Indeed, that is now the case, and as the investigation of the even more brutal November attacks in Paris showed, Belgium is a major source of the threat. The attacks on Tuesday in Brussels raised the most serious questions about how prepared the nation was for that threat. Copyright 2022 HT Digital Streams Ltd All Right Reserved Locals disagree over whether the Environmental Protection Agency's plan to eliminate the Montana director position will help or hurt EPA cleanup efforts in Butte. Deb Thomas, who was named the acting Montana director last fall, will continue to lead the state's office from her Denver post until the change is made. Lisa McClain-Vanderpool, spokesperson for the Denver office, said the restructuring will likely take six months to get approval internally. Montana has had a state director in its Helena office since 1979, McClain-Vanderpool said via email. Dave Williams, Butte, president of Citizens Technical Environmental Committee, said that group would like to see EPA maintain a state director. "The person who's the state lead for EPA is pretty critical in terms of what sort of message gets sent down through the ranks. Everyone longs for the days when Wardell was there," Williams said. John Wardell was EPAs Montana director, working out of the Helena office, for 25 years. He died due to a hiking accident near Libby in 2009. Julie DalSoglio replaced Wardell and held the position for five years and also worked out of the Helena office. She accepted a new position within EPA in August 2015. Joe Griffin, Butte, retired Department of Environmental Quality project manager for the Butte Hill, said he sees the restructuring as a positive step. Griffin gave a presentation to the Butte-Silver Bow council of commissioners on March 9 during which he said Martin Hestmark, assistant regional administrator at Region 8 headquarters, should have more administrative oversight of the Montana office. Griffin hopes the structural change could lead to that. "Its a good thing but they (the Denver office) need to lend more technical support as well as administrative support," Griffin said. The decision to eliminate the position was made in January. McClain-Vanderpool said the new structure will directly align the Montana office with how other states in Region 8 operate. Senior management administrators in the Denver office directly lead environmental work in the five other states in Region 8. Region 8 oversees Montana, both the Dakotas, Colorado, Utah and Wyoming. McClain-Vanderpool said there are 16 Superfund sites in Montana with additional three proposed sites. The state does not have the most Superfund sites within Region 8. Colorado has had 23 -- which includes three that have been closed. Utah has had up to 25 Superfund sites, which also includes five completed sites. However, due to the size of the Butte Hill and Silver Bow Creek Superfund sites, along with Anacondas Superfund site, Montana has one of the largest Superfund sites in the country. Thomas is the deputy regional administrator for Region 8. She has also served as deputy for the Office of Partnerships and Regulatory Assistance, the Water Program director, the Permits Unit chief and as associate pretreatment coordinator, all for Region 8. She received a bachelors degree in environmental resources engineering from Humboldt State University in California and a masters of engineering degree from the University of Florida-Gainesville. Three area ranchers are among those honored by Gov. Steve Bullock Tuesday with the 2016 Good Neighbor Award. They are Doug Salsbury, Whitehall, and Randy and Emily Smith, Glen. Nominees for the award are sought each fall and judged by representatives of The Nature Conservancy of Montana, Artemis Common Ground, the Montana Association of Land Trusts, the Montana Council of Trout Unlimited, the Montana Governors Office, Montana Fish, Wildlife and Parks and Chris King who is a representative from the ranching community. Doug Salsbury operates a cattle ranch near Whitehall with a dedication to land stewardship and community involvement. He participates in block management and leases a portion of his property to the Jefferson Valley Sportsman Association for $1 annually for its use as a community gun range. Salsbury is active in a variety of community organizations, including the Jefferson County Natural Resource Committee and with local water user associations. Randy and Emily Smith have worked diligently to manage grazing on their ranch near Glen to benefit wildlife on the Mount Fleecer Wildlife Management Area and adjacent Forest Service allotments. The Smiths have also continued their family tradition of allowing hunting with permission on their land and participate in FWPs block management program. The family also worked with local sportsmens groups and the Bureau of Land Management to build a public road across their ranch to allow access to large tracts of BLM and Forest Service land. The other winners are: Neil and Dixie Meyer, Swan Lake Joe and Debby Perry, Brady Gerald Buddy and Sheila Walsh, Dodson Tim Crawford, Kathy Hansen, Belgrade HELENA Montana Democrats are crying foul that Republican candidate for governor Greg Gianforte is violating his own no-PAC money pledge. The Montana Democratic Party is sending Gianforte a letter Tuesday similar to the pledge he hand-delivered to Bullock's office at the end of January. Gianforte, along with U.S. Sen. Steve Daines, attended a Washington, D.C., fundraiser to benefit the Montana Republican Party last week. "Today the Montana Democratic Party is calling on you to honor your pledge and demand the MTGOP return all PAC money received during this event and throughout the election cycle," the letter says. Gianforte's pledge says he will "refuse to accept any campaign contributions from special-interest PACs, state and federal. I will tear up and/or return any special-interest PAC donations previously sent to my campaign. Montana voters deserve a clean campaign focused on the issues. So far Bullock has received $72,684 from such committees. His campaign has pointed out Gianforte has a large amount of personal funds he can tap. Based on tax records, Gianforte reported income of $220.5 million between 2005 and 2014. In 2001, he sold his Bozeman tech firm RightNow Technologies to Oracle for $1.8 billion. A spokesman for Gianforte told the Associated Press last week the campaign has not taken money from the state GOP and would not do so. In order to avoid that issue, we are not taking money from the state party, from Republican central committees. ... Were not planning to take any money from the Republican Party, Ron Catlett, a spokesman for the Gianforte campaign, told the Associated Press. The Democrats' letter says the state Republican Party is sending press releases and building a field campaign to support Gianforte. The Department of Interior recently announced a comprehensive review of federal coal leasing and a pause in most new leases. This has been done twice before during the Nixon and Reagan Administrations. Then, like now, those reviews and moratoria arose from concerns the public was being denied a fair return on the coal it owns. Seems like every time the system is fixed, it turns up broken again, leaving taxpayers on the short end of full and fair payment from the coal companies profiting from the peoples resources. How could that keep happening? History is a good teacher. Over much of Montanas history, hard-rock mining companies removed the mineral wealth of the state, but paid little or no taxes to the state and its people - similar to the federal coal issue. Historian K. Ross Toole documented how, back in 1888, Northern Pacific Railroad, the Montana Improvement Company (big timber cutters), and mining barons Marcus Daly and W.A. Clark, avoided federal indictment for illegally stripping huge areas of federal timberlands in western Montana to feed their lumber needs, while underpaying the federal government for all the timber. The way the incident played out in Montana helped set off the War of the Copper Kings between Clark and Daly. But in Washington D.C., the result was a political quashing of the potential federal prosecution -- a notorious early example of getting away with plundering natural resources of the federal government here in Montana without paying fairly for them. A year later, when Montana became a state, mining interests led by the same W.A. Clark, who was Convention President, controlled the Constitutional Convention. Not surprisingly, Montanas 1889 Constitution was tilted to the advantage of mining and other extractive industries. Little or no taxes were the rule of the day. Mining companies were protected in the Constitution by limiting taxes on them to net proceeds, which allowed manipulation of the tax to pay little or nothing. After 30 years under the net proceeds law the truth finally and publicly came out -- but at a high price for the truth-teller. A 1919 newspaper headline tells the tale: Copper Trust Expels College Teacher: Dr. Louis Levine Removed from Position in Montana University for Book Which Exposed Unequal Taxation of Mines and Farm Property. Levine had exposed the manipulations of the giant Anaconda Company (ACM) in paying little in taxes on huge amounts of copper and other minerals. This expose cost Levine his job and, although it was later restored, he quickly left to another state where his academic freedom was protected. In 1920 Joseph Dixon was elected Governor of Montana against Burton K. Wheeler in a lesser-of-two-evils choice for ACM. But, once in office, Dixon proposed a metal mines tax to secure something out of the minerals leaving the state. According to historians Michael Malone and Richard Roeder, Dixon boldly pointed out the glaring fact that under Montanas net proceeds laws, Montana metal mines produced over twenty million dollars in 1922 but paid only $13,559 in state taxes -- an effective tax rate of seven one-hundredth of one percent of the value of the mining --- virtually nothing. ACM beat Dixons bill in the Legislature and then defeated Dixon in his re-election bid. With the Copper Collar of Constitutional net proceeds taxation tightly in place, Montana remained short-changed until Montanas 1972 Constitution removed the restriction. Then in 1977 the legislature passed a gross proceeds tax, making it more difficult for ACM and others to cheat on hard rock mining taxes. But over the years, in Montana and other western states, coal companies made lease and royalty payments to the federal government that were far below-market-value. Estimates are that American taxpayers have been shortchanged tens of billions of dollars in these sales. Since a portion of every dollar of under-payment would have gone to the states, Montana lost millions upon millions. So, with an eye towards history, keep a watch on this Department of Interior process. Actively participate so that we dont again end up with a system that cheats the public. And dont accept a new fox guarding the henhouse approach or the fox will surely end up fat and the henhouse will be empty. -- Evan Barrett, of Butte, has spent the last 46 years at the top level of Montana economic development, government, politics and education. He is the Director of Business & Community Outreach and an instructor at Highlands College of Montana Tech. These are his personal views. Last month, about 80 people gathered for two days to discuss ways to make Beaverhead County healthier with a focus to reduce the stigma of mental illness and our high suicide rate. The Montana Healthcare Foundation funded the event. Attendees represented a cross-section from law enforcement to healthcare providers to schools to interested citizens. The collective synergy and concern to create resilient children and families was powerful. Despite deficits such as distance to providers and scant resources, participants identified strong, positive community strengths such as a spirit of independence and ingenuity, which we want to harness to make a healthier, happier population. After the summit, an implementation committee selected four areas to develop: 1) integrate a community-based ACE (adverse childhood experiences) program in Beaverhead County to reduce trauma, build resiliency and improve whole-person health. ACE studies indicate that children who experience traumatic events can suffer life-long consequences that negatively affect them as individuals and also their communities. 2) Address the need for adult and child behavioral health crisis management and aftercare. Many times residents in crisis go without services or are removed from their local support system, often creating a financial burden to the county. 3) Integrate behavioral health programs within the Beaverhead County criminal justice system. Oftentimes our jail houses people with mental health issues, which again, is not only harmful for the individual suffering from an untreated mental illness, but costly to the county. 4) Integrate community-wide behavioral health screening in Beaverhead County. The consensus at the summit was that we must do a better job recognizing when our fellow citizens are not doing well. For example, screen for depression and help people access resources earlier. Contact Sue Hansen (683-3179) if interested in participating in a task force. -- Jeanette Prodgers, Dillon The motives of the lead investigator behind a state-backed probe into alleged mistreatment of patients at the Montana Developmental Center are being questioned amid calls for the Legislature to reconsider its decision to close the facility. Dana Toole a Montana Department of Justice investigator and the top sleuth charged with vetting reports of abuse, neglect and mistreatment at the soon-to-be shuttered center is married to Jeff Folsom, chief operating officer at Aware Inc., an Anaconda-based company that provides services for the mentally ill and developmentally disabled. That company is expected to see a bump in business as a direct result of the Boulder-based centers closure, a controversial move that won legislative approval two months after the release of a January 2015 report that featured 15 accounts of physical, verbal and sexual abuse substantiated by Toole. A year later, the decision to mothball the center which is expected to spell the loss of 250 jobs remains divisive. Six of the 15 appointees to a committee tasked with overseeing the centers phase-out signed a March letter to the Independent Record that called reports of abuse at the center drastically overblown and urged the Legislature to repeal the law mandating its closure. One of those committee members, Jefferson County Commissioner Bob Mullen, said Tooles connections to Aware were well known to Montana lawmakers during the 2015 legislative session. Mullen, who represents the centers home county, said the response from lawmakers was underwhelming. We were aware of it during the (Legislative) session and we tried to bring it up, Mullen said. I have no idea why it didnt work. I probably wouldnt have put her in charge of the investigation. In the end, Aware did benefit from it. Fellow committee appointee Carol Dailey, a parent to one of the center's patients, was a little more pointed, calling Toole's involvement "a huge conflict of interest." "I really question the way the allegations were presented," Dailey said. "For me, the statistics gathered from DOJ were used to accomplish (the center's) closure." Toole said Monday she wasnt sure if lawmakers were aware of her marriage to Folsom when she was enlisted to investigate complaints at the center. She said she did not consider that relationship to be a conflict of interest, but declined to comment on whether Aware stood to financially benefit from the centers closure. Toole said Folsom resigned from Aware on Friday. Neither he, an assistant or Aware CEO Larry Noonan returned phone calls seeking to confirm the departure. Toole said she couldn't remember who picked her to head up the states inquiry into the center, a task first assigned to the Montana Department of Justice in 2013. A department spokesman did not immediately return requests for comment on the matter. A May 2008 copy of Aware Ink the companys in-house newsletter names Toole herself as the director of Lewis and Clark County Childrens Advocacy Center of AWARE," though she denied ever working for the nonprofit. Ethics questions surrounding her investigation aren't the first to be raised in the wake of the centers planned closure. This time last year, state Sen. Mary Caferro, D-Helena, caught some heat for her sponsorship of the still-controversial bill to shutter the center. The Independent Record reported then that Caferro worked for an organization financially supported by Aware. A business disclosure statement filed with political regulators 14 months earlier listed the company as Caferros sole source of salary and retirement benefits. She told the newspaper her sponsorship of the bill did not qualify as a conflict of interest, a stance she stood by on Monday. The six-term legislator also backed Toole, who she said was just doing her job. The abuse is there and shes ethical, Caferro said. She doesnt stand to benefit one way or another if Aware does or doesnt do well. What people should be saying is thank God for Aware and other providers who are taking people away from MDC so that they dont have to live in that situation," she added. Even so, state Rep. Kirk Wagoner, another member of the committee urging the Legislature to reconsider the decision to close the MDC, said lawmakers should have been given the whole picture regarding possible conflicts of interest before they were asked to vote on the MDC bill. "The failure to disclose possible conflicts erodes public trust in the process," the Montana City Republican said. "There is undoubtedly a huge perception of conflict involved here. Since a majority of the people involved with this bill all work for the same company that is evidently going to financially gain, the public and Legislature should have been made aware of the possible conflict." Les emplois a Rennes sont abondants et varies. Il y a quelque chose pour tout le monde. Que vous soyez a la recherche dun emploi [] 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 [] Former Kenyatta University Vice-Chancellor Olive Mugenda has declined the extravagant retirement package proposed by the university council. Prof Mugenda, in a letter sent to the council last Friday, refused to take the generous package. In a press statement sent to newsrooms, the universitys Director of Communication Machua Koinange confirmed that Ms Mugenda had declined to accept the package, saying that she had received enough commendations especially on social media and she was just doing her job, and therefore did not warrant any special treatment. The statement added that when Prof Mugenda took over as the VC, she was discharging her public duties and did not accept the position with a retirement package in mind. The package, which has caused an uproar on social media, amounts to Sh32.5 million without including the insurance. It included a 10 day holiday to a country of her choice, with spouse or friend valued at sh 2.5 million, a vehicle of her choice valued at Sh10 million, and a retirement home in a suitable residential area valued at Sh20 million. Mugenda is however grateful for the gesture and the support the university council has given her during her tenure, read the statement. Prof Mugenda wishes the staff, students and management of KU a prosperous future and believes KU will only grow bigger and better with the foundation she has laid down for it, added the statement. Mugendas tenure at the University came to an end last week following a successful decade as Vice Chancellor, in which she initiated several development projects. Ugandas top female comedian Anne Kansiime has come out to address a section of fans who asked her to apologise for supporting President Museveni during February 18 general election. Recently, Ugandas biggest opposition party FDC reportedly urged fans affiliated to it to boycott activities of artists who supported Yoweri Museveni in the general elections. As a result, some fans of the comedienne asked her to pull down a photo she had taken with the Ugandan leader. This is despite Kansiimes remarks over a week ago that she does not support any political party. Kansiime responded to the calls during a Saturday interview on Bukedde Television, in which she vowed to never apologise for the photo. This Mukiga girl came to Kampala on Posta bus, I had never seen a jam in my life and when I came the only thing I would never have dreamt of is shaking the Presidents hand. Imagine getting an invitation to have dinner with the President a chance for me and him to breathe the same air. And then you deny me such a chance, shyaa! What could change my mind? The handshake and photo opportunity, I hadnt anticipated it! In fact, I am very happy, I made the president laugh and cry at the same time, Nze ani? (Who am I?) What you should know, I am Kansiime, I am Ugandan and I wont apologise for a picture with my President, said Kansiime. She added, Everyone has a right to do things the way they want. But let me put it straight; I am not and will never apologise for that photo. Here us the photo Its almost comical when people who have never entered a university lecture hall, went to questionable 3rd floor colleges, or were privileged to study outside the country keep talking of how Prof. Olive Mugenda tenure was a failure. Some Kenyans have a peculiar habit of playing down other peoples success when it does not benefit them personally. Others blatantly fight to bring you down when the only mistake you did was succeed. Prof Mugenda retired last week as Kenyatta University Vice Chancellor, and a lot of people are questioning her achievements. Lawyer Donald Kipkorir wrote on Twitter, We bid bye to Prof. Olive Mugendi as KU VC. She truly didnt understand her mandate: University is place of research, not construction co! Lawyer Ahmednassir Abdullahi agreed with him. When he says construction co, hes obviously referring to the many new buildings constructed at KUs main campus in the last decade. But for a person who says to be learned, that way of thinking is disappointing. Without even thinking hard, where exactly does research take place? In open dusty fields? Because most of KU was exactly that when Mugenda took over. Just to answer those who keep mentioning research, Mugenda built two multi-storey science laboratories. She built the largest Library of any University in Kenya, and stocked it with books and computers. She built several computer labs, the largest having 800 computers connected to the internet. She built the KU funeral home, closed to the public on some days for use by medical students. She built the KU referral hospital and KU childrens hospital, to provide actual field work for medical students. She built a new school of engineering and two engineering labs, with some electronic equipment costing tens of millions. So what exactly does research mean to those taking this opportunity to humiliate her? Arent those the very places research takes place? Many will cite the Unicity Mall and petrol station opened the other day, but fail to tell you that those two latest additions to KU were not financed with University money. KU merely provided the land and will reap economic benefits for many years. Again, when Kipkorir and co. mention research, they are also probably talking about publications and research papers. The funny thing is that they can not mention a single research paper from any other institution. As with human nature, a research paper will make far less headlines than a new building. However, what they dont know is that the number of professors at KU has increased, and so is the number of academic papers and actual research. KU is now admitting the most university students in Kenya and this includes Masters and PhD students. For someone to say that research publications have gone down, they need to understand that it is a mandatory element from Masters upwards. How then it has gone down when the student number has gone up is beyond logic. People fail to point out that just a few years ago, KU was merely a teachers training centre, with education being the largest course by far. Actually, most teachers in Kenyan high schools with over a decade experience went to KU. In recent years, new courses have been introduced; the likes of law, medicine and engineering. Despite being an infant in some of these fields, KU now has better engineering labs than JKUAT, better medical training infrastructure than UoN, an arguably better equipped law school than UoN, a world class hotel to train tourism and hospitality students better than any other college or university and recently a functional TV station to give media students real-life experience while still in campus. Another issue often cited is the lecturer to students ratio. Some classes have upwards of 200 sometimes 300 students. This is the case in highly populated courses like Education and Economics, and rarely in Engineering and Medicine. While improvements can be made in this area, KU is no different from every public university in Kenya in this regard. And to be fair, this is a nationwide crisis right from primary schools where in some schools teachers handle hundreds of pupils. Those who have never stepped into an worthwhile university do not know this, but student welfare is very important in maintaining the peace and tranquility. Mugenda did quite a lot in this sector: Several new hostels, a student business centre with banking halls and restaurants, several food points scattered across the university, WiFi now covering most areas, a new modern medical clinic, student shuttle buses, an alcohol centre etc. The formerly frequent strikes by KU students are a thing of the past. Buying lab equipment, building lecture halls, hostels, etc. is an expensive affair, and balancing between putting all your revenue in recurrent wage bills like hiring more lecturers, or building infrastructure is a tricky affair. Because of Mugendas work, public university slots have increased greatly and people who would otherwise be at home or in lower level colleges now have a chance to get University education. Mugendas decade in charge should be analyzed side by side with achievements of other Vice Chancellors of public universities. To be fair, there is little difference between the JKUAT of 10 years ago and the JKUAT of now; and the University of Nairobi of 10 years ago and University of Nairobi of now. Mgala muue, lakini haki mpe. And finally as much as everyone will not mention it, Mugenda moved Kenyatta University from the ignoring stage, to the hating stage (this is where Kipkorir, Ahmednassir and Robert Alai come in). The next stage is accepting the new Universities hierarchy and moving on. Have your say. Do you think Mugendas tenure was a failure? A patient at the Napa State Hospital was arrested on Friday for an alleged assault that happened the previous day. During the suspected incident on Thursday, the patient allegedly assaulted a fellow patient causing minor injuries, said Ken Paglia, with the Office of Communications for the Department of State Hospitals. Rashod Bain, 35, was arrested and booked at the Napa County jail on Friday on suspicion of assault by means that could cause great bodily harm, according to the Napa County jail. Due to privacy laws, Paglia said he could not confirm that the patient involved in the alleged assault was Bain. Iranian MP: Iran will conduct military exercises wherever it deems necessary Finnish delegation to visit Ankara to discuss NATO membership Jurgen Klopp: The performance I can explain, the result not Social media giants are likely to oppose Turkey's new law Pastor steals $900,000 to buy stocks and car in U.S. Lithuanian President Nauseda is named most popular politician in country Charles III will embark on longest tour of world in history of royal family Deputy Director of Institute of Oriental Studies of RAS: Baku's goal is that Karabakh has no Armenian population Hurricane Roslyn in Pacific Ocean intensifies to third category Study: We need to eat according to circadian rhythms Italy's new prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, begins forming government U.S. Treasury Department records budget deficit of over $429 billion in September Why does Baku need aggravation on border with Armenia? Skakov assesses likelihood of new aggression Iranian Foreign Minister: I had important meeting with Pashinyan in Armenia Johnson spotted in economy class on flight from Dominican Republic to Britain Armenian PM and European Parliament Resident Rapporteur for Armenia discuss Karabakh situation Authorities in Kherson urge residents to immediately leave city Russian expert: Baku's attempts to open corridor by force will cause negative response not only from IRI or Russian Telegraph: Britain to send about 60 old tanks to NATO base in Germany for exercises Blood tests can help treat childhood cancer Artak Beglaryan: You will see me in new position Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds pick name for their fourth child already? Netanyahu: Iran nuclear deal could bring Russia 'hundreds of billions' Russia and Turkey begin to develop gas hub project PM Pashinyan discusses agenda of bilateral relations with Iranian FM Sensational defeat for Liverpool (video) Anna Hakobyan meets Armenians in Paris Sargsyan: Recognition of Artsakh people's right for self-determination must be reflected in legal documents Italy's first female prime minister, Giorgia Meloni, sworn in 'A Walk to Remember' star Mandy Moore becomes mother for second time Private jet goes missing off coast of Costa Rica Benzema will not help Real Madrid in match against Sevilla Times of India: India tests nuclear-capable Agni Prime missile Spiegel: German Foreign Minister and Defense Minister ask to allocate 2.2 billion for military aid to Kiev Gas stoves can be hazardous to health World Championship U-23: Impressive start by Arsen Harutyunyan, Arman Avagyan will fight for bronze Deputy PM of Armenia and Head of Sharjah Heritage Institute discuss strengthening of Armenian-Emirati relations Biden allows participation in U.S. presidential election in 2024 Angelina Jolie will play in biopic about opera singer Maria Callas Secretary of Security Council of Armenia and representatives of AIISA discuss security issues Kakhovka reservoir increases water discharges in case of possible destruction of HPP Pashinian's spouse: Yesterday at Elysee Palace I was received by dear Brigitte Macron At least 15 people killed in bus-truck collision in India Explosion at Uzbek Defense Ministry depot injures 16 people Keto diet and interval fasting: What are their benefits or harms? Armenian NA Speaker receives Iranian FM: Tehran opposes obstacles on border with friendly Armenia President Harutyunyan receives group of members of Union of Artsakh Reserve Officers NGO Newspaper: Armenia restores diplomatic ties with Hungary? WTA: All participants of final championship of the year Life on Mars: Could it still be there today? Or will there be in the future? China hit by 5.5 magnitude earthquake Armenian Defense Ministry denies Azerbaijani report on shelling, calling it disinformation Blinken: Moscow is not interested in stopping aggression against Ukraine Netflix to film series based on novel 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' PSG win thanks to goals by Messi and Mbappe (video) Big win for Juventus (video) Japan and U.S. will hold joint military exercises France withdraws from Energy Charter Treaty Levon Aronian becomes father Data scientist: the profession of the 21st century Manchester United to fine Ronaldo 720,000 CNN: White House is in talks with Elon Musk to create satellite Internet service Starlink in Iran Radioactive gel for spot therapy of tumors is created 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 Pyunik beat Shirak 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 TV series 'Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story' surpasses 'House of the Dragon' in terms of views Erdogan denies using chemical weapons against Kurds and threatens those who dare to talk about it Hepatitis B vaccine shown to be effective for HIV patients Ararat-Armenia are stronger than Ararat Saudi Arabia and China will strengthen their ties in energy sector Governor of Gegharkunik province receives representatives of OSCE fact-finding mission Scientists find exoplanet with density of marshmallow: ow does it survive next to red dwarf? 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 Taylor Swift releases new album 'Midnights' European Championship U-20: Suren Grigoryan wins gold medal Armenian Defense Minister's working visit to India is over Hungary will not agree to limit prices for imported gas Silent Hill 2 Remake: Beautiful graphics and scary system requirements 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 What foods can be consumed with alcohol, so as not to get fat Franck Ribery retires 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 YEREVAN. - In contrast to Azerbaijan, Armenia sees the process of Karabakh conflict settlement only through exclusively peaceful ways, on the basis of the peoples right to self-determination. Vice President of the Armenian National Assembly (NA) Eduard Sharmazanov made the aforementioned statement at the meeting with the delegation headed by Minister of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs of Kuwait, Minister of Justice Yaqoub Abd-Almohsen Al-Sanea. The meeting was also attended by the Armenian Ambassador to Kuwait Fadey Charchoghlyan and Kuwait Ambassador to Armenia Bassam Muhammad al-Kabandi. Welcoming the guests, Sharmazanov highly praised the traditional warm relations between the two friendly countries. He also noted that despite the existing strong partnership relations, there are areas which have a potential and opportunities for development. The Vice President thanked Kuwait for the humanitarian step of gifting a second homeland to the Armenian refugees who survived the Genocide. He expressed conviction that the Kuwait ministers visit to Armenia will serve as another stimulus for developing the already formed ties and implementing new and mutually beneficial programs. In this context, the interlocutors attached importance to the activation of reciprocal visits and cooperation between the parliamentary friendship groups. At the meeting, Sharmazanov also touched on terrorist acts and extremism, which have become wide-spread in the entire world, as well as the settlement of the Karabakh conflict. According to him, the terrorism has neither a nationality nor a faith. The Vice President condemned the terror attacks which took place in Brussels several hours ago, resulting in the deaths and injuries of innocent people. In Sharmazanovs words, its necessary to unite the efforts in fighting against these acts of xenophobia. Touching on the Karabakh conflict, Sharmazanov noted that in contrast to Azerbaijan, Armenia sees the process of Karabakh conflict settlement only through exclusively peaceful ways, in the OSCE Minsk Group format. In this context, he informed the guests that Turkey has been keeping Armenia in blockade for already 23 years, which is merely inacceptable in the 21st century. The Vice President also stressed that Armenia is for the peaceful co-existence with its neighbors and relations without preconditions, while the same cannot be said about Turkey. Moreover, he noted that Armenia and Kuwait strive for peaceful co-existence and neighborhood in their respective regions. For his part, Minister of Awqaf and Islamic Affairs of Kuwait, Minister of Justice Yaqoub Abd-Almohsen Al-Sanea also underscored the importance of enhancing ties and activating the parliamentary cooperation and reciprocal visits. Besides, he noted that both Armenia and Kuwait run peaceful policy in their respective regions. According to the Minister, its necessary to unite the efforts in the fight against terrorist acts and extremism. By the end of the meeting, Mr Al-Sanea invited Vice Preisdent Eduard Sharmazanov to visit Kuwait. COCOA BEACH, Florida The City of Cocoa Beach issued an advisory asking residents to not remove dead fish that are floating in residential canals and waterways. Thousands of dead or dying horseshoe crabs, whiting, sheepshead, catfish, puffer fish, black drum, flounder, red fish, mullet and spotted trout can be seen floating throughout the Banana River , around the Thousand Islands, and in residential canals. (adsbygoogle = window.adsbygoogle || []).push({}); The City reached out to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Commission to receive advice on handling the dead fish along the waterfront in Cocoa Beach, the City of Cocoa Beach stated in a release. They advised citizens NOT to remove fish allow nature to run its course. The fish will sink to the bottom within a few days. Aureoumbra lagunensis. The algae depletes the dissolved oxygen in the water to such a low level that fish suffocate and die. A Brown Tide algae bloom that erupted during the last two months is the suspected cause of the massive fish kill . Brown tides are caused by the pelagophyte. The algae depletes the dissolved oxygen in the water to such a low level that fish suffocate and die. Showcasing the top news from around the university, the Emory News Center is produced by Communications and Marketing. The News Center serves as an informative and comprehensive resource for news and events highlighting the university's mission to "to create, preserve, teach, and apply knowledge in the service of humanity." It also provides information for journalists looking for media contact information, press releases and Emory experts. Emory Report and Dooley Repor t Emory Report is the official university-wide electronic newsletter for all faculty and staff, distributed weekdays during the academic year and twice weekly (Tuesdays and Thursdays) during the summer. Dooley Report is the official university-wide electronic newsletter for all students, distributed once each week. Both publications feature an engaging mix of news, events, cultural and educational enrichment opportunities, profiles and photo galleries. Their mission is to serve as the primary source of official university news for their respective audiences, keeping readers well-informed, building community and instilling a sense of pride in the achievements of our institution. Emory Report Dooley Report Contact Us 1762 Clifton Road, Plaza 1000 Atlanta, GA 30322 404-727-6216 main 404-727-0646 fax news@emory.edu For general inquiries about the Emory News Center, contact Laura Douglas-Brown, interim assistant vice president of enterprise communications, or Leigh DeLozier, editor in chief. University Media Relations Laura Diamond, assistant vice president of university communications For Health Sciences Communications, contact information, visit whsc.emory.edu. Emory Report and Dooley Report Laura Douglas-Brown, interim assistant vice president of enterprise communications Leigh DeLozier, editor in chief Additonal Communications Contacts To learn more about Communications and Marketing, including how to contact division leadership and other staff, please visit the Communications and Marketing website. New insights into human tears could lead to more comfortable contact lenses, Stanford researchers say Chemical engineers at Stanford have discovered mechanical properties of the tear film on the eye's surface that can be used to manufacture contact lenses that more closely mimic the eye. Africa Studio / Shutterstock Stanford researchers are developing a machine for designing better contact lenses. When contact lenses work really well, you forget they are on your eyes. You might not feel the same at the end of a long day staring at a computer screen. After too many hours of wear, the lenses and your eyes dry out, causing irritation that might outweigh the convenience of contacts. Stanford researchers hope to alleviate this pain by both advancing the understanding of how natural tears keep our eyes comfortable, and developing a machine for designing better contact lenses. The work was inspired in part by a graduate student's dry eyes. "As a student, I had to stop wearing lenses due to the increased discomfort," said Saad Bhamla, a Stanford postdoctoral scholar in bioengineering who conducted the work as a graduate student in Gerald Fuller's chemical engineering laboratory at Stanford. "Focusing my PhD thesis to understand this problem was both a personal and professional goal." Bhamla isn't alone. More than 30 million Americans currently wear contacts, but roughly half of them switch back to glasses because of contact lens-induced symptoms such as dry eye. Bhamla and Fuller suspected that most of the discomfort arises from the break up of the tear film, a wet coating on the surface of the eye, during a process called dewetting. They found that the lipid layer, an oily coating on the surface of the tear film, protects the eye's surface in two important ways through strength and liquid retention. By mimicking the lipid layer in contact construction, millions of people could avoid ocular discomfort. In their most recent study, Bhamla and his co-authors outline two functions of the lipid layer. One is to provide mechanical strength to the tear film. Lipids in this layer have viscoelastic properties that allow them to stretch and support the watery layer beneath them. Bhamla likens this protective lipid layer to a swimming pool cover. You can't run on the open water, but even a thin tarp can provide mechanical strength to support a person's weight. Courtesy Saad Bhamla Using the i-DDrOP device, researchers can observe how a tear dissolves. "You will sometimes see the guards at the Stanford Avery pool run over the surface of the covered pool," Bhamla said. "The mechanical structure is very thin, but it protects the whole bulk of the liquid. If the swimming pool is shrunk to 1/100th the width of a hair, it is a good representation of the tear film with a lipid layer replacing the tarp." The lipid layer also prevents the tear film from evaporating away. Eyes are roughly 95 degrees Fahrenheit (35 degrees Celsius), which is usually warmer than the ambient air. Like any liquid on a hot surface, the eye is constantly heating its liquid coating and losing moisture to the air. "We recognized early-on that the fluid mechanical responses of the lipid layer were just as important as the conventional view that its role was to control evaporative loss," Fuller said. "And it's been gratifying to realize that the combined role of these two forces is now accepted." The key to producing comfortable contact lenses, then, involves designing lenses that don't destabilize the tear film. Manufacturers recognize the importance of protecting the eye's natural tear film on a contact lens surface to minimize painful symptoms such as dry eye, but it is not an easy thing to measure. "Some people are studying contact lenses by holding them up to a light, dipping them in water, and looking at them to see if the tear film breaks up," Bhamla said. "We felt we could definitely do better than that." To solve this, Bhamla and Fuller built a device that mimics the surface of the eye. The machine, called the Interfacial Dewetting and Drainage Optical Platform or i-DDrOP, reproduces a tear film on the surface of a contact lens. It allows both scientists and manufacturers to systematically handle the unique array of variables that affect the tear film, including temperature, a variety of substances, humidity and the way gravity acts along a curved surface. With the ability to accurately recreate a tear film on the contact lens surface and test how quickly it breaks up, manufacturers are now armed with the tools to make a more comfortable lens that protects users from the painful side effects of wearing contacts. Even Bhamla may trade in his glasses for a new pair of lipid-protected eyewear. This study was co-authored by Chew Chai, Noelle Rabiah and John Frostad from Chemical Engineering at Stanford. Media Contact Saad Bhamla, Bioengineering: bhamla@stanford.edu Bjorn Carey, Stanford News Service: (650) 725-1944, bccarey@stanford.edu As Obama makes historic visit, is Cuba ready for change? President Barack Obama became the first sitting U.S. president to visit Cuba in nearly 90 years as he set off on a three-day trip to the island nation on Sunday, the latest step in a thaw in relations that began in December 2014. Ahead of the trip, the administration issued its fifth set of measures relaxing regulations that restrict U.S. banking, financial, travel, business and economic dealings with Cuba. Despite the significant attention surrounding Obamas decision to pursue warmer relations, the United States in fact already does a considerable amount of business with Cuba far more than most Americans likely realize. For example, the Trade Sanctions Reform and Export Enhancement Act, passed in 2000, allows U.S. firms to sell food and medicine to Cuba. From 2000 to 2015, the United States exported US$5.3 billion worth to Cuba, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics. The latest measures are quickly building on that foundation, particularly in terms of travel. Last year the number of Americans who visited Cuba on people-to-people trips required to be more educational than typical tourism almost doubled from the year earlier and continues to grow rapidly as airlines prepare to begin scheduled flights for the first time in more than half a century. So in light of the presidents visit, it is natural to ask what the future might bring for the country besides a flood of U.S. visitors. Is Cuba ready for this influx? As U.S. regulations change to allow foreign investment, how eager will American businesses be to invest in an economy in desperate need of stimulus? And is there a chance the candidate who will replace President Obama will want to deviate from his path? As analysts of Latin-American business, finance and Cuban agriculture, were following these fast-evolving issues closely. Heres our read of the situation thus far. Ongoing reforms Relaxation of some of the U.S. restrictions on travel and doing business in Cuba comes at a time when the Cuban government is implementing a series of reforms intended to allow market forces to play a larger role in the Cuban economy. The reforms, which began in 2008, include allowing individuals and cooperatives to cultivate unutilized plots of land, permitting self-employment in a wider range of activities, relaxing restrictions on operating private restaurants and room rentals, more autonomy for state enterprises and allowing Cuban citizens to buy and sell homes. Further progress in implementing market-oriented reforms is likely to be uneven, however, and in recent months the Cuban government has, once again, taken an expanded role in the distribution of food. The Cuban government has been careful to emphasize that changes in policy by the United States will not alter Cubas revolutionary philosophy. And despite the resumption of diplomatic relations and other overtures from the U.S. over the past 15 months, Cubas food and agricultural purchases from U.S. businesses are plummeting down 22 percent since 2008 a victim of the U.S. requirement that purchases be made in cash. Other countries, meanwhile, are offering expanded lines of credit and extended terms for trade. The U.S. Treasurys Office of Foreign Assets Control is required by statute to maintain the requirement that agricultural commodities and items be paid for with cash in advance or by third-country financing. Americans flock to Cuba Meanwhile, Cubas tourism infrastructure is being pushed to, and perhaps beyond, its limits as foreign tourists and Americans flock to Cuba. And thats just the beginning. At least eight U.S. airlines have applied for approval to offer commercial (rather than charter) flights to Cuba, opening the door for possibly more than 100 flights per day between the United States and Cuba later this year. The explosion in tourist traffic to Cuba has placed increased pressure on the countrys already strained food system. The increased demand for food at tourist hotels and in Cubas rapidly expanding network of private restaurants is driving up domestic prices, making it increasingly difficult for Cubans to find affordable food to feed their families. Cubas heavy reliance on food imports makes this a potentially expensive problem for the government. The agricultural sector is in desperate need of capital to expand output, but domestic sources of capital are extremely limited, highlighting the critical need for foreign investment. Foreign dollars needed In fact, all sectors of Cubas economy deeply need foreign investment. At Cubas International Trade Fair last fall, Cubas minister of foreign trade, Rodrigo Malmierca, announced the countrys new list of potential business opportunities for foreign investors 326 projects that require a combined $8.2 billion in investment. This is above and beyond the 40 projects that had been on the list issued the previous year all of which have been removed because they were reportedly in the advanced stages of negotiation with potential foreign investor partners. Indeed, Malmierca has acknowledged that Cuba needs to bring in $2 billion in foreign investment per year to reach its goal of 5 percent annual GDP growth (up from 2.7 percent in 2013). While Cubas foreign investment regulations are gradually evolving, they have not yet reached what most would consider to be international standards. Attorney Jim Whisenand, who has been involved in legal issues with respect to Cuba since the 1990s, has described Cuba as a frontier market": and by definition, youre on the frontier If you want the same safeguards and regulations of investing in New York or Miami, then you should be investing in New York or Miami. On the other hand, Cuban-American attorney Pedro Freyre, a partner at the Akerman law firm and chairman of their international practice group, sees that changing: Clients now have a change in perspective on Cuba. Before they worried about doing something that was not allowed. Now they are worried about being left behind. Claims and counterclaims Talk of attorneys raises another consideration: the issue of claims for expropriated properties. Space here will not allow for a careful discussion of this thorny issue. Its important to note, however, that the U.S. Justice Department has certified more than 5,900 claims for expropriated properties worth more than $1.9 billion (1960s dollars). Provisions in the 1996 Helms-Burton Act allow Cubans who lost property to expropriation and who have since become U.S. citizens to sue in American courts for their properties (though its legality is contested). Perhaps it should come as no surprise that some attorneys refer to the Helms-Burton Act as the full employment for lawyers act. Conversely, Cuba has indicated that the United States owes it over $1 trillion from damages caused by the embargo. Suffice it to say that there would appear to be a long and messy legal road ahead even if the U.S. embargo were to be lifted a development that would require approval of the Congress and the president, since the Helms-Burton legislation codified the embargo into law. Where the candidates stand Relations with Cuba have not, so far, been a big issue in the U.S. presidential race. Now that Marco Rubio has dropped out of the race, fellow Cuban-American Ted Cruz, citing human rights concerns, is the candidate most opposed to any relaxation of sanctions. He has described the normalization of diplomatic relations with as a tragic mistake. John Kasich has not articulated a position on Cuba, but voted against measures that would have eased restrictions when he was a member of Congress. Parting with the other Republican candidates, Donald Trump supports diplomacy with Cuba. In September, he said the concept of opening with Cuba is fine, but we should have had a better deal. Bernie Sanders supports normalization of relations with Cuba, as does Hillary Clinton, who has called for lifting the embargo. She has said that if elected president, she would use executive authority to further relax trade and travel restrictions if Congress does not lift the embargo. Laying the groundwork for growth As a result of its market-oriented reforms, the relaxation of U.S. restrictions and trade with other countries, Cuba today is well positioned for a strong economic expansion. The question is whether the government of Cuba, with its concerns about maintaining political control, will restrict or support the policies needed to capitalize on this opportunity. Indications are that the Cuban government remains strongly committed to move slowly in how its economy and its relations with the United States evolve. The deciding factor in how change evolves in Cuba will be driven as much by the pace at which the Cuban government decides to move as the rate at which U.S. policies adjust. This article originally was published in The Conversation on March 21, 2016. Does the First Amendment protect people who film the police? This October, former police officer Michael Slager will stand trial for murder in the shooting death of Walter Scott following a daytime traffic stop last year in North Charleston, South Carolina. The critical evidence in the case is a smartphone video captured by a then 23-year-old barber named Feidin Santana as he was walking to work. The video shows Slager shooting the unarmed Scott several times in the back. Santana took the video despite another officer telling him to stop. Santana's video is just one example of a citizen using a smartphone to capture alleged police misconduct. Ramsey Orta took the infamous I cant breathe video of Eric Garner being placed in a chokehold by a New York City police officer shortly before Garners death. The twin incidents conjure up memories of the 1991 video captured by George Holliday of Los Angeles police officers beating Rodney King. And in a different but dangerous twist, an April 2015 citizen video shows a burly U.S. marshal in South Gate, California violently smash to the ground the smartphone of another citizen who was simply recording the marshals while standing on a public sidewalk. The power of smartphones to expose abuses of power by law enforcement officials raises an important question that, as a free speech scholar and director of the Marion B. Brechner First Amendment Project, Ive studied: do citizens have a First Amendment right to record police doing their jobs in public places, such as streets, sidewalks and parks? The U.S. Supreme Court has never answered this question. It has been left to lower courts nationwide to sort out for themselves if such a right to film police exists. Rejection in Pennsylvania Last month, a federal court in Philadelphia took up the question. District Judge Mark Kearney determined the answer is no there is no right to film cops, absent any criticism or challenge to police conduct. Writing the opinion in Fields v. City of Philadelphia, Kearney reasoned that Pennsylvania does not recognize a First Amendment right to observe and record without some form of expressive conduct and that photographing police is not, as a matter of law, expressive activity. In other words, Kearney is arguing that the act of pushing a record button and then holding a phone up are merely conduct, not speech. This renders the First Amendment irrelevant. To constitute speech, according to Kearney, the person recording must do so with the specific intent of criticizing or challenging the police conduct being recorded. That was not the case in Fields. Kearney determined that one of the citizens involved only wanted to observe a public protest against hydraulic fracturing, not to criticize or challenge to the police monitoring it. The judge also found that the other citizen, a Temple University student who took a picture of about 20 police officers standing outside a home hosting a party, did so simply because it was an interesting and cool scene. In other words, why someone records cops is critical, in Kearneys view, in determining if the First Amendment is involved. Other courts see it differently The decision in Fields, however, is somewhat of an outlier. A 2015 nationwide study indicates that more courts but certainly not all, as Fields indicates are recognizing a limited First Amendment right to record police doing their jobs in public venues, regardless of the intent of the person recording. For example, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, which includes the states of Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Rhode Island, concluded in 2014 in Gericke v. Begin that people have a First Amendment right to record officers conducting traffic stops, subject to reasonable restrictions. The problem, of course, is determining what constitutes a reasonable restriction. Reasonableness is a slippery concept. The First Circuit suggested that safety concerns might justify restricting the right to record. The court also was clear that a right to record is not a right to interfere. In a key passage, it explained: The circumstances of some traffic stops, particularly when the detained individual is armed, might justify a safety measure for example, a command that bystanders disperse that would incidentally impact an individuals exercise of the First Amendment right to film . However, a police order that is specifically directed at the First Amendment right to film police performing their duties in public may be constitutionally imposed only if the officer can reasonably conclude that the filming itself is interfering, or is about to interfere, with his duties. The First Circuit is not alone in recognizing such a qualified or limited First Amendment right to record images of police in public. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit, which sweeps up Florida, Georgia and Alabama, also found that: the First Amendment protects the right to gather information about what public officials do on public property, and specifically, a right to record matters of public interest. Like the First Circuit, the Eleventh Circuit also considers this right to be subject to reasonable time, manner and place restrictions. Additionally, the Ninth Circuit the nations largest, encompassing nine western states recognized in Fordyce v. City of Seattle a First Amendment right to film matters of public interest, including police. A federal district court in New York City in 2015 acknowledged a right to film police subject to reasonable restrictions, yet the Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes New York, Connecticut and Vermont, has not endorsed this right. Viewed collectively, this growing spate of authority confirms that Judge Kearneys decision in Fields v. City of Philadelphia is an outlier and, in my view, incorrect. Police officers are government officials and public employees. They work for the very people who want to record their actions. And when citizens record police in public places locations where cops have no reasonable expectation of privacy, like streets and parks those citizens are acting as watchdogs on possible government abuses of power. Feidin Santana's video of officer Slager shooting Walter Scott in the back is all the proof needed of the importance of the watchdog role. A simple intent to monitor and observe, not to challenge or criticize, is all that should matter in determining if First Amendment rights are at stake. Ultimately, the Supreme Court must hear a right-to-record case to make it clear that in every jurisdiction there is a First Amendment right to film police performing duties in public. In doing so, it also should articulate the precise factors that make a restriction on this right reasonable. The ACLU of Pennsylvania has vowed to appeal Fields before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit. The case thus has a long way to go before it might ever reach the nations high court, which hears only about 70 cases a year, but it could well provide an ideal scenario to resolve the issue. This article originally was published in The Conversation on March 18, 2016. Brexit would be more costly than remaining in the European Union (EU), according to a survey released Monday by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI). The CBI representing businesses employing one third of the British workforce, commissioned professional services firm PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to model two scenarios for Brexit after the referendum on June 23 on whether to stay in the EU or leave the bloc, Xinhua reported. PwC said in its report there was more uncertainty outside the EU "particularly in terms of future trading relationships," and that the two contrasting scenarios were intended to "capture this uncertainty." The optimistic scenario rested on Britain's achieving a free trade agreement with the EU within five years, while the pessimistic scenario modelled the trade conducted under current World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules. Under the optimistic scenario, Britain's GDP would be three percent lower in 2020 than what it would be if there was no Brexit, a reduction of 55 billion pounds ($79 billion) at 2015 prices, while under the pessimistic scenario, the economy would be 5.5 percent smaller, a reduction of 100 billion pounds at 2015 prices. In the longer term, the disruptive effects of an exit would lessen, with GDP forecast to be between 1.2 percent and 3.5 percent smaller under the optimistic and pessimistic scenarios respectively, a cost of between 25 billion pounds and 65 billion pounds. Carolyn Fairbairn, director general of the CBI, said at the unveiling of the report at the London Business School, that savings from reduced EU budget contributions and regulation would be "greatly outweighed by the negative impact on trade and investment." She added: "Without a free trade deal, 90 percent of British exports to the EU, by value, could face tariffs. Some sectors could be hit particularly hard. Under WTO rules, British textile exports to the EU could face tariffs of nearly 10 percent. Transport equipment could face tariffs of about seven percent." --Indo-Asian News Service sku/ ( 334 Words) 2016-03-22-03:17:31 (IANS) Cyberabad city Central Crime Station (CCS) police have arrested six burglars in three separate incidents and seized 5.7 kgs of Gold and Diamond ornaments worth Rs 2.56 crore from their possession. Talking to media Cyberabad Police Commissioner C V Anand said that in the first incident, Madhapur CCS police arrested Jalam Mahesh Reddy alias Chitti babu (24), a car driver of Kondapur and native of East Godavari district and recovered 4.5 kgs of Gold, Diamond and Platinum ornaments worth Rs 2.24 cores. He was hailing from East Godavari district as an illiterate and shifted to Hyderabad for lively hood by working as a driver. He worked as driver in Villa number 47 of Cyber Meadows Society, Maseed Banda, Kondapur and worked there for about one year in the year 2013-14. During his stint in Cyber meadows he got friends with one Srinivas Reddy, driver of Villa No- 70 and both of them resided in the same room for four months. During that period they causally discussed about the financial status of their owner. One day the accused met Srinivas Reddy who told him causally that his owner was away and left for abroad and he would not come back for one month. Coming to know about the absence of inmates of Villa No-70 he plotted a plan of burglary. The third week of April 2014 he gained entry into the Villa No 70 and committed offence. After committing the offence he kept the booty in his single roomed house at Kondapur and continued normal life as a driver. On credible information police arrested Mahesh Reddy and recovered the booty, Mr Anand said. He said in the second incident, L B Nagar CCS Police arrested Abdul Jaffer (43) of Chandrayan Gutta and Malligotla Israel (34) of Shamshabad . The duo had committed 13 burglaries in Chaithanyapuri and Petbasheerabad Police Station limits and recovered 102 Tolas of gold from them. In the third incident, the Balanagar CCS police Chepyala Gopal (26) of Kutbullapur,Golla Krishna (29)of Kutbullapur, Golla Shankar (24) of Kompally. The trio had involved cases of burglaries in Petbasheerabad police station limits and recoved 38 thulas of gold from them, the Commissioner added.UNI VV CJ 2235 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0400-648395.Xml Mufti, who reached New Delhi yesterday for talks with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership, has called for a legislature party meeting on March 24. The state is under Governor's rule since the death of chief minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed three months back. Mehbooba was in Delhi last week during which she held talks with BJP president Amit Shah. However, as per reports, her meeting with the Prime Minister failed to take place and she returned to Srinagar. PDP-BJP negotiations had hit a roadblock last week when Mehbooba returned to Srinagar on Saturday morning as her expected meeting with Prime Minister Modi to seal a deal did not happen. The PDP had asked for assurances for time-bound implementation of the Agenda of Alliance -- the common minimum programme between PDP and BJP. Former chief minister Omar Abdullah, in the meantime, held a meet with Jammu and Kashmir Governor N.N. Vohra in Jammu, which assumes significance as uncertainty over the government formation is deepening. Interacting with reporters, Omar said, "Mehbooba Mufti is rushing to Delhi is her last ditch effort to safe her party, because she has realised that if PDP doesn't form a government on terms and condition set by the BJP, her party will split. If her party splits, she would be in much weaker position than she is today. Clearly she is trying to safe her party." (ANI) Aney met Maharashtra Governor C.V. Rao at Raj Bhavan and handed over his resignation letter, official sources said. Aney last October succeded Sunil Manohar, who had served for seven months. Earlier, Aney had been embroiled in a similar controversy after he suggested a referendum in Vidarbha as a prelude to creating a separate state. --Indo-Asian News Service qn/kb/vm ( 100 Words) 2016-03-22-11:09:33 (IANS) Congress has accused Prime Minister Narendra Modi of 'overseeing the murder of democracy' by allowing toppling or destabilising the rival parties-led states governments and asserted that what the BJP was doing in Uttarakhand is a brutal attack on democracy."For all his show of commitment to the Constitution and his new found love for Dr Ambedkar, he is unleashing his party colleagues to wreck havoc on elected governments across the country......First it was Arunachal Pradesh, then BJP tried to destabilise the Manipur government and now they have turned their attention to Uttarakhand", the principal opposition party at the Centre taunted in a note here last evening. In Arunachal Pradesh, the office of the Governor was used to overthrow an elected state government, which came to power with a three-fourth majority......even the Guwahati High Court had observed that the office of the Governor had acted politically....In Uttarakhand, the BJP is engaging in horse trading and using the financial muscle of the Union Government to overthrow an elected state government, the party said. "After humiliating defeats in Delhi, and then Bihar, the Modi Government knows that people have seen its real face..,..PM Modi realises he cannot silence the voices of students and that his economic agendais already in ruins..,..Instead of helping farmers..,..he is telling them that they should look at alternate avenues of income", it said in the note.Reacting to the political development party, vice-president Rahul Gandhi said in the note, "Toppling elected Governments by indulging in horse trading and blatant misuse of money and muscle, seems to be BJP's new model, after failure in Bihar..,..this attack on our democracy and the constitution..,..first in Arunachal and now Uttarakhand, is the true face of Modiji's BJP". The note also quoted Uttarakhand Chief Minister Harish Rawat as saying "Harish Rawat is not important,CMs come and go..,..but if 'dhan-shakti' will be used to bring change in Government then every year a CM will be removed this way which will lead to political instability in the states".The Prime Minister's attack is not solely against the Congress party, but against the citizens of India and the Congress will fight his demagoguery with democracy, the party asserted. "The Preamble of the Constitution says, "We, the people of India, having solemnly resolvedto constitute India into a Sovereign, Socialist, Secular, Democratic, Republic and to secure all its citizens...", the note cited from the Constitution and hit at the Prime Minister and the ruling party asserting "Shri Modi and his party have already attacked the Socialist and Secular traditions of India, and now they coming after democracy itself..,..But, he should be warned that the Congress party and the people of India will not sit idly by and watch this massacre of democratic values..,..We will fight back".UNI SS SB 1046 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0089-648585.Xml The administration of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff, facing the threat of impeachment, presented plans on Monday to limit government spending and stave off a debt crisis among states and cities hit by the worst recession in decades.Under the first proposal, which Finance Minister Nelson Barbosa announced at a news conference in Brasilia, the federal government would limit increases in recurring expenses and slow constitutionally mandated spending during times of hardship. The plan has to be sent to Congress for approval.Barbosa also announced a program to help debt-laden states and municipalities that could cost taxpayers about 45.5 billion reais ($12.6 billion) for the next three years. The plan includes refinancing with state development bank BNDES and extending debt maturities for regional governments by 20 years.A third plan would create a new mechanism for the central bank to mop up or inject more money into the economy without the use of repurchase agreements. Under the plan, Barbosa said, commercial banks would be allowed to make interest-bearing deposits at the central bank, in practice eliminating the need to use government bonds to administer liquidity."We are in urgent need of some flexibility to pull the economy out of this recession, create jobs," Barbosa said. The government's ability to pull Brazil from recession has been severely hampered by years of erratic policy decisions and a corruption probe into Rousseff's administration.Some economists cast doubts on the feasibility of the plans, especially as Rousseff risks being ousted for allegedly using the budget to bolster her re-election chances in 2014. Congress is focused on impeachment proceedings, which the lower house opened last week, and may refrain from voting on any piece of economic legislation until Rousseff's fate is decided.For years, Rousseff, who was the country's top cabinet minister from 2005 to 2010, opposed the budget spending growth limits, which she saw as an attempt by the opposition to curtail plans by her ruling Workers' Party for massive social and infrastructure plans. As former President Luiz Incio Lula da Silva's chief of staff, she vetoed an attempt to implement the limit over 10 years ago."The spending limit bill must have been drafted and voted years ago, not now ... It's too late," said Alexandre Schwartsman, a former central bank board member who now runs his own economic consultancy firm in So Paulo. "It's hard to tell whether any of these proposals will be voted (on) at this point."The country's budget deficit has mushroomed since Rousseff took office as president in 2011. The overall deficit rose to 10.3 percent of GDP in 2015, nearly five times the shortfall in her first months in office.($1 = 3.6150 Brazilian reais) REUTERS JW AN0405 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0364-648495.Xml Members of various civil societyorganisations, NGOs and Community Based Organisations (CBOs) today appealed to all political parties to provide opportunities for sexual and gender minorities, including LGBTQ groups, to contest the May 16 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections. At a joint media interaction organised by the Indian Community Welfare Organisation (ICWO) here, they also appealed to the Election Commission to reserve seats for the members of these communities. ICWO Founder Secretary A J Hariharan said Tamil Nadu has been a pioneer in protecting and promoting the rights of minority groups, including groups marginalized because of religion, language, sexuality and gender. ''In the recent past there has been a strong demand for representation of sexual and gender minorities in the political sphere. In the ensuing elections several people from the Sexual and Gender minority groups have applied for nominations to different political parties seeking tickets to contest the elections'', he added. He said transwomen like Ragasiya, (DMK), Radhika (DMDK) and Sudha (AIADMK) have already applied with the respective parties expressing their desire tocontest the polls.MORE UNI GV VS RSS 1115 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0415-648654.Xml Senior DMK Leader and Party Treasurer M K Stalin today said no talks on alliance were held with the Principal Opposition DMDK led by actor Vijayakanth for alliance in the May 16 Assembly elections. ''No talks were held earlier or now...no fresh invite has been extended to DMDK'', he added. Talking to reporters here, he said ''the earlier invite extended by Party Chief M Karunanidhi to Vijayakanth (for an alliance) still stands''. ''Based on this only, Mr Karunanidhi, after the District Secretariesmeeting yesterday said he had not lost his confidence on alliance with the DMDK'', he added. Stating it was media which had misquoted it and had published as if a fresh invite was extended to that party and talks on alliance were on, Mr Stalin said ''it's true that the DMK had earlier invited the DMDK for an alliance''. ''They have the (DMDK) right to decide on whether to accept it or not. We (DMK) cannot interefere in it'', the senior DMK leader said. ''But no talks were held either earlier or now with the DMDK'', he added. Meanwhile, Muslim outfit Manithaneya Makkal Katchi (MMK) leader M H Jawahirullah, who had pledged his support to the DMK-Congress Front in the ensuing polls, called on Mr Karunanidhi at his Gopalapuram residence. Later, he told reporters that the MMK joined the DMK front to strengthen the secular forces. The seat sharing talks with the DMK would be held in the next couple of days, he added.UNI GV VS RSS 1320 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0415-648827.Xml A 13-member media team, mostly editors from Manipur left Imphal today for Bangkok in Thailand to conduct survey and research on trade and commerce. The team will return on March 29. Chief Secretary, O Nabakishor and DGP L M Khaute flagged off the team here this morning from the office of Directorate of Information and Public Relations. The South East Asian countries, China, South Korea marched ahead after the end of World War II and the time has come to do a serious study to improve the overall conditions of Manipur, the chief Secretary said. He further said South Korea and China sent series of delegations of experts to conduct researches on trade and commerce and tourism related activities which has paid off now. He appealed to the media to conduct a serious study tour. DGP, Khaute said the media team should also highlight Manipur to the people of Thailand by interacting with the media fraternity at Thailand. Meanwhile, a ten-member team of entrepreneurs left for Myanmar by road here today from Kangla which was also flagged off by the chief secretary. The team will visit all the important border towns of Myanmar, China and Thailand to see the trade activities. UNI NS AD SB VN1326 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0108-648772.Xml A six-month-old baby was killed and around 30 people were injured, seven of them critically, when a Digha bound bus from Kolkata collided with a parked water tanker on NH 6 in West Bengal's Howrah district, police said today. The seven critically injured have been shifted to the Uluberia Mohokuma hospital from Bagnan primary health Centre. The accident happened on NH 6 at Chandrapur under Bagnan in Howrah district when the Digha bound state bus from Kolkata hit a parked water tanker and another private luxury SUV hit the bus from rear. All the victims were passengers of the bus and SUV. The accident disrupted traffic on busy NH 6 for few hours.UNI PC AD SB VN1356 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0108-648788.Xml Chairmen of both the factions of the Hurriyat Conference (HC) Syed Ali Shah Geelani and Mirwaiz Moulvi Omar Farooq are among the separatist leaders from Jammu and Kashmir to attend the "Pakistan-Day", at Pakistan Embassy, New Delhi tomorrow. However, the Jammu and Kashmir Liberation Front (JKLF) will take a final decision about attending the function later today. A number of mediapersons and others have also been invited for the function. A spokesman for the hardline HC Aiyaz Akbar told UNI that besides ailing Mr Geelani, who is in New Delhi, about 50 other leaders of the amalgam have been invited by the Pak High Commissioner Abdul Basit for the Pak Day. ''Mr Geelani and a number of other leaders, including me, are going to attend the function tomorrow,'' Mr Akber said adding that senior leader Nayeem Ahmad Khan has also reached New Delhi.'' We have handed over the invitation from Mr Basit to all individual leaders of the amalgam who are free to take decision about their participation in the celebrations, he said. However, he said amalgam general secretary Shabir Ahmad Shah could not attend the function because of his arrest. Mr Shah, also invited by Mr Basit, was arrested on February 25 night and lodged in police station Raj Bagh, Akber said. He said a number other leaders of the amalgam, invited by Pak High Commissoner, including Masrat Aalam, are also in jail under Public Safety Act (PSA). However, Alam's detention was quashed by courts a number of times but each time, he was re-arrested in fabricated cases, Mr Akber alleged. Immediately after the PDP-BJP coalition government took over in the state, Alam was released after two- year-long detention. However, Alam, who headed the 2010 mass agitation in the Kashmir valley during which more than 120 people, mostly youths, were killed in alleged firing by security forces and state police persronnel, was arrested in April last year under PSA following pressure from Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), partner in the then coalition government headed by Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed and other opposition parties. The Pakistan High Commissioner has also invited Dukhtarne-e-Milat (DeM) chief Aasiya Andrabi and her husband, serving life imprisonment, Ashiq Hussain Faktoo. A spokesperson for the moderate HC said Mirwaiz Omar and other five senior leaders of the amalgam will attend the Pak Day celebration. The Mirwaiz will leave for Delhi tomorrow while others have left by road today, he said.UNI BAS ASM SV VP1315 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0153-648735.Xml Mr Fadnavis said that the state government will recommend for the acceptance of resignation of Shreehari Aney. On the statement of Mr Aney, ruckus was witnessed in both the houses of Maharashtra legislature yesterday, resulting in adjournment of both the houses for the day. Mr Aney had made a statement in Jalna recently that Marathwada region was neglected by the government, so, Marathwada should get statehood. Earlier, he had advocated for the Vidarbha for seperate state. On his continuous statement on division of state, the opposition parties had demanded his resignation. UNI ST NV SB VN1358 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0171-648801.Xml Madhya Pradesh police's Anti-terrorism Squad (ATS) has detained two people in connection with a bag containing explosives being found from a private hotel room in ancient temple town Ujjain. The seizure of explosives on Sunday came a month ahead of the Simhastha Mahakumb Mela scheduled to be held in Ujjain next month. "Sushil Mishra, who works in a private security agency, placed the bag in the hostel. Earlier, Sushil used to work in a mine in Ashoknagar from where he procured explosives. He was adept in handling explosives," Inspector General of Police (ATS) Sanjeev Shami told media at the police headquarters here today. "Ashish Chandel, who is posted as constable with Indore Lokayukta Police, masterminded the plot with the intention of fixing some of his colleagues. Both have been detained," he said. Mr Shami said that 2.77 kg explosives, 25 detonators and 60 meter-long wire were also seized. Besides, a fake Adhar card made in the name of Sajish Khan was also seized. The Adhar card was made with the name to match with the name of SIM card used by the culprits. In response to a query, the IG said the incident was not related to Simhastha and has no terror angle involved. On the transportation of explosives despite tight security arrangements in the temple town, he said the accused were involved in quarrying. Therefore, it was not difficult for them.UNI PS SB VN1427 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0044-648881.Xml Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)National president Amit Shah will be on a brief visit to the city tomorrow to attend a spiritual function. Confirming this, BJP Tamil Nadu unit President Ms Tamizhisai Soundararajan said the visit was apolitical and personal. Dismissing speculations that the BJP strongman will be in the city to finalise alliance talks and that he might call on leaders of former NDA allies, the DMDK and the PMK, she said Mr Amit Shah would be on a personal visit to Chennai tomorrow to attend a spiritual meeting. ''There is nothing political in his visit'', she added. Mr Amit Shah was expected to return to New Delhi immediately after the function. UNI GV KSR RSS 1455 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0415-648998.Xml Mortal remains of a soldier, who was buried alive under a snow avalanche in Kargil sector on March 17 was flour to Tamil Nadu after wreath laying ceremony held at Leh and New Delhi today. Defence Ministry spokesman Colonel N N Joshi said here this afternoon that Sepoy Vijay Kumar K, who was martyred during an avalanche in the Biamah area of Kargil sector on March 17, 2016, was accorded full military honours in a solemn wreath laying ceremony held in Leh early this morning. Army paid its homage to the brave soul, he said, adding after the wreath laying ceremony. Col Joshi said after the wreath laying ceremony at New Delhi, the mortal remains of the soldier were flown to his native place, village Vallaramapuram of Thirunelvelli district of Tamil Nadu, where the funeral ceremony will be conducted with full military honours. Two soldiers Sepoy Vijay and Sepoy Sujit were buried under snow after their post was washed away by snow avalanche. However, Sujit was rescued and was stable in hospital while the body of seopy Vijay was recovered on March 20.UNI BAS AE AS1518 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0153-648908.Xml Union Minister for Communication, Information and Technology Ravi Shankar Prasad today said that the core banking business of India Post Offices has become bigger than the leading public sector lender State Bank of India (SBI)."Today Post Office's core banking has become bigger than SBI. In June 2014 it was only 230 and now it is more than 20,000. The parcel revenue which was -2 per cent in 2013-14 has increased by more than 100 per cent in 2015-16", Ravi Shankar Prasad, Minister for Communication and IT said at Digital India Summit.Mr Prasad added that the number of ATMs in post offices has increased from four when he took over as the minister to 850 today and by April the number will rise to 1000. "By March next year we will bring in the payment bank of the postal department," Mr Prasad said.The minister also said that the government is focused on to create employment in rural and small town areas."We are taking BPOs to small towns of India to provide employment to youth of small towns so that they don't have to migrate to cities for job", Mr Prasad said.On IT exports, Mr Prasad said it has crossed the business of one billion dollars."Today India's IT export has crossed one billion dollars," he added. UNI ASH AE 1607 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0388-648906.Xml A class XI girl, who had gone to appear in an examination, has gone missing at Ukawad village in Madhya Pradesh's Guna district, police said. The girl had reached along with her father at the examination centre at Madhusudhangarh yesterday. However, she was not there when her father went to receive her. Town Inspector Abhay Pratap Singh said guest lecturer, who teaches in Ukawad High School, has also gone missing. In his complaint, the girl's father has expressed suspicion that the teacher could be behind the girl going missing. UNI XC-PS AE VN1616 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0044-649101.Xml Outlaws shot dead two Dalits, including a CPI leader, due to land dispute near Maksudpur village under Balia police station area in the district. Police said here that the desperadoes opened fire on CPI leader Mukesh Ramand his friend Ram Pravesh Ram when they were returning to Maksudpurfrom Balia late last night. A manhunt has been launched to nab culprits. CPI leader and district party secretary Diwakar Kumar said that the party would call a bandh in Begusarai on March 25 if the killers were not arrested by then. They also demanded action against Deputy Police Superintendent concerned and officer-in-charge of Baliaholding them responsible for the rising crime graph in the region.UNI XC DH PL AE VN1628 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0211-648916.Xml Condemning the attack on Brussels airport as "terrible", the Ministry of External Affairs today said the visit of Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the Belgian capital to attend EU-India summit will go ahead as scheduled on March 30."It was a terrible attack. We condemn it and stand by the people of Belgium. We believe the terrorism need to be fought unitedly. Our embassy there is monitoring the situation," MEA spokesman Vikas Swarup said during a media briefing here.The spokesman said no Indian is reported be dead or injured in the blast except two members of Jet Airways crew which include a lady who got injured in the eye. The injuries are said to be not serious.Mr Swarup said that after addressing the 13th EU-India Summit, the Prime Minister is slated to have a bilateral meeting with Belgian PM Charles Michel during his visit and will also be attending a diaspora event later in the day.The next day, the Prime Minister will arrive in Washington to submit a progress report at the Nuclear Security Summit on steps taken by India on nuclear safety. From there, he will go to Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, on April 2, on a two-day visit before flying back home.The spokesman also informed that five applications for visa has been received by the MEA for the members of Pakistan's Special Investigation Team constituted to probe the January 2 terror attack on Pathankot airbase. He said the requests will be granted after consultations between the Indian and Pakistani officials. The modalities are also being worked on the itinerary of the team.On Nepal entering into a transit agreement with China, the spokesman played down the concerns saying the nation was free to deal with its neighbour as it liked. "But no country can replicate the special relation India has with Nepal," he remarked.UNI PRA SW RP1842 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0384-649569.Xml The Opposition Congress in Goa today accused the state government of overlooking interests of minority community in the state. Addressing a news conference at the party office, Urfan Mulla, chairman of Minority Department at Goa Pradesh Committee, alleged that there was nothing for the minority community in the budget presented by Chief Minister Laxmikant Parsekar, who also holds Finance portfolio, recently in the state Assembly. ''When Digambar Kamat was Chief Minister of the state, he had made provision of Rs five crore in the Finance Development Corporation for Minorities but till today nothing has been done. Though it has not been scrapped, it has become powerless. Besides there is no Minority Commission in the state,'' he said. Citing an example of arrest of a person recently, Mr Mulla alleged that people belonging to minority communities were being harassed and there was no proper forum where people could lodge complaints.UNI AKM SS AE NS1845 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0171-649490.Xml The Maharashtra Legislative Council was todayadjourned twice following uproar by the Opposition leaders demandingdebate on the strictures passed against government by the Nagpurbench of Bombay high court on the drought situation. Leader of the Opposition Dhananjay Munde moved a motion underrule 289 of Legislature demanding a debate on the strictures passedby Nagpur bench of the High Court against state government ontackling drought situation in the state, as the suicides by thefarmers are increasing and government failed to take any concretedecision to tackle the drought problem in the state. Chairman Ramraje Naik-Nimbalkar rejected the motion andpermitted Mr Munde to speak on the motion for two minutes. But, he continued to his speech for ten minutes. On which parliamentaryaffair minister Girish Bapat took objection, which resulted inuproar in the House as the Opposition members stormed into thewell, shouting slogans, demanding justice from the Chairman. The Chairman adjourned the house first for 10 minutes, whenhouse was reassembled for further proceeding, the Opposition memberscontinued with shouting of slogans. Deputy Chairman Vasant Dawkhare then adjourned the house for 42minutes. Thereafter, the proceedings of the House continued for therest of the day as per agenda on the board.UNI ST SS AE 1816 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0171-649491.Xml Mr Das has directed the officials that the compensation amount should be paid to the families of the victims on the same date itself. He has also directed them to ensure that events like these should not take place in future. The Chief Minister has also invited the family members to meet him in the state capital on March 25.UNI AK BM CJ AE NS1950 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0214-649570.Xml The residents were very much concerned about the smog spreading in adjacent area of the Deonar dumping ground, as people were facing the breathing problem. Students were not sent to schools for last two days due to emission of toxic gases. Hundreds of residents today turned up at the Azad Maidan to press for their demand to find a permanent solution to the issue. Though the fire was brought under control, smoke is still coming out from the dumping ground. The protesters expressed anger and shock over the 'failure' of civic administration in handling the situation and demanded to shut down the dumping ground. "The entire vicinity has been turned into a smog chamber and our lives have become miserable," a protestor said. This is second major fire that broke out at the Deonar dumping ground during the last one month.UNI ST SS CJ AE RAI2001 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0171-649611.Xml The area commander has been identified as Walnang T Sangma alias Balti. He was in-charge of the outfit in North Garo hills. A police release issue said the Meghalaya police stormed the GNLA hideout around 1530 hours, in which Walnang was killed and other cadres managed to escape into the nearby jungles. One 9 mm carbine, AK-47 magazine, ammunition and other incriminating documents were seized from the incident spot. Walnang is one of the accused in gruesome murder of 34-year-old Josbina Sangma, a mother of four children, who was killed by the outfit in June 2014 at Chokpot in South Garo Hills. Josbina was killed in front of her minor children and husband. The main accused in the murder of Josbina is GNLA cadre Tengton, who is still at large.UNI RRK CJ SHS NS2024 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0212-649762.Xml Arunachal Pradesh Governor JP Rajkhowa stressed on expediting the work of the twin rail-cum-road, Bogibeel Bridge over river brahmaputra as early as possible and taking all necessary and possible measures to meet the dateline at all cost. The Governor had visited the under construction Bogibeel Bridge, near Dibrugrah in Assam yesterday accompanied by railway officials, he made on the spot visit of the lifeline bridge over River Brahmaputra, official sources informed here today. Interacting with the railway officials, the Governor reiterated that it must be completed within the revised timeline of mid 2017, if not earlier and should not be shifted further. The Governor, who met the Union Minister for Railways, Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu, in New Delhi on March 16, said the project is not only vital to the people of Assam but to the people of Arunachal Pradesh also. He opined that it will have huge impact in the overall connectivity and in the socio-economic development of the region, particularly to Eastern half of Arunachal Pradesh. In addition to on the spot briefing, the Deputy Chief Engineer of Bogibeel Railway Project S Kaimai presented a Power Point presentation to the Governor on the progress of the project. UNI PB BM SHS GC2004 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0214-649747.Xml Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI) State President K M Asharaf today urged the people to protest against fascist tendencies perpetuated by Sangh Parivar unitedly for the brutal murder of two cattle traders in Jharkhand on last week. Mr Asharaf said the body of the two deceased were found hanging from a tree in Latehar district on March 18, when they were going to cattle market with two buffalo's. This incident is shame to the nation. He called the democratic thinking to join together to protest against the religious fascism. He said the BJP national leadership is silent on the brutal murder and this type of action would encourage the Sangh parivar activists to indulge in more violence. He said, in the politically-conscious state, known for its credentials on secularism, the BJP in the State are trying to divide the people in the name of religion. The SDPI should resist this attempt with the support of people and should resort to agitation across the State during the course of time by exposing the nefarious designs of Sangh Parivar. a SDPI statement said .UNI AK KVV AK 2057 -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0324-649822.Xml : Temperatures have been on the rise for the past one week hit new heights in the North Coastal Andhra Pradesh, recording an increase of around 3-6 degree Celsius above normal in the Port and Steel City and Visakhapatnam ,Vizianagaram and Srikakulam recorded the maximum temperature of 38 degree Celsius. Heat-wave like conditions prevailed across the City. Cyclone Warning Centre (CWC) officials today said hot Conditions are likely to prevail for at least another two to three days. The CWC officials termed the hot climate as a normal phenomenon during March. However, Andhra University(AU) professors in the Meteorological department felt that similar heat wave like conditions are likely to prevail throughout the summer and the temperatures might soar further, particularly in April and May. People have been advised to take necessary health precautions to overcome the heat-related problems in the ensuing days. The heat was soaring much to the inconvenience of the people who ventured out of their homes.As many were chose to stay indoors , it had no major impact on the normal life. However, the condition turned worse when the people started avoiding venturing out in the sun from yesterday. Similar conditions prevailed in major parts of the North Andhra . Considering the hot climatic conditions, the medical and health department in the districts had released advisory today, suggesting necessity of precautionary measures.UNI BSR KVV AK 2037. -- (UNI) -- C-1-1-DL0414-649124.Xml A 55-year-old woman patient in the Mahatma Gandhi Mission (MGM) Hospital here today gave a new lease of life to five needy patients through the cadaver donation of organs. Addressing a joint news conference at MGM Hospital here, Dr Pravin Surywanshi, Chief executive of Hospital, along with Dr Ajit Sharoff, dean, and Zonal Transplant Coordination Center (ZTCC) Aurangabad chairman Dr Sudhir Kulkarni informed that the woman patient, resident of Dongargaon village in Phulmabri taluka of district, was admitted on March 18 to casualty department of hospital with serious head injury after being hit by a motorcycle during the morning walk. Despite all the medical treatment, her condition continuously deteriorated and she was declared brain dead yesterday by a team of expert doctors, he said. Then the doctors sought their consent for donation of her organs, to which her family members agreed. After getting permission from her family, the MGM doctors sought the consent of the Zonal Transplant Coordination Center (ZTCC) at Mumbai for the cadaver donation and following all the legal formalities last night, the procedure of conducting organ harvesting started late last night after conducting two tests of patients at 0130 hours and it was completed early this morning at around 0600 hours with successful harvesting of five organs. Among the five organs were two kidneys, two corneas and liver, which were retrieved by various teams of doctors, he informed. Liver was sent to Global Hospital at Mumbai through air green corridor. One kidney was transplanted here in MGM Hospital while other kidney and two corneas were sent to the Kamlnayan Bajaj Hospital, Dr Surywanshi said. However, a team of doctors here could not harvest her heart due to her old age as well as blockage of her heart's vessels by about 70 per cent, he said. Dr Kulkarni of ZTCC-Aurangabad appealed to media persons not to publish the names of the donor and recipients in media as per the norms of ZTCC. This shows that women are also not lagging behind in organ donation in Marathwada. This was the fifth case of organ donation. Earlier, four men donated the organs in last two months, benefiting 18 patients.UNI VKB SS SHS NS2101 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0171-649879.Xml Chief Minister Mukul Sangma today said there would not be any relieve in the ongoing operation against the Garo National Liberation Army despite the outfit appealing for peace talks. The GNLA's appeal to hold talks could be due to the mounting pressure put by the security agencies on them in the ongoing counter-insurgency operations, he told the Assembly in his reply to calling attention motion moved by opposition United Democratic Party legislator Jemino Mawthoh. Dr Sangma said the government would "not hurry and tread very cautiously" before holding talks with the GNLA as the government learnt lessons the hard way while holding such peace talks with militant outfits in the past. The chief minister also informed about his recent audiences with the Home Minister Rajnath Singh and added the State Government's stand on holding talks with the militants is in sync with that of the Central Government's. "There are instances which called for the utmost due diligence which are required to be engage upon by the government while we embark upon this peace dialogue. The Government has been consistent in its approach that these insurgent groups should shun violence, withdraw from all anti-national and criminal activities, demonstrate their commitment and sincerity," he said. Citing the example of the Achik National Volunteers' Council peace talks, the Chief Minister said the outfit "cheated the government" by not disclosing about arms and presence of its cadres in the jungle while negotiations were being held and operations against the outfit were suspended. "We know the intention of the leaders of insurgent groups. Therefore we are trading very cautiously and we have made abundantly clear to demonstrate commitment, demonstrate sincerity and let the terrorist organisation have no intent to actually take the Government and people of the state for a ride by taking advantage of this offer of the government for peace dialogue," he said. UNI RRK BM SHS NS2116 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0214-649909.Xml Preparations are on in full swing for the Monolith Festival to be held at the Khasi Heritage Village Mawphlang from March 31 to April 2. To take stock of the ongoing preparations Khasi Hills Autonomous District Council (KHADC) Chief Executive Member PN Syiem, KHADC EM, Neil Antonio War, Member-Secretary KHCF secretary Alan West Kharkongor, Mawlai MDC P T Sawkmie among others visited the Khasi Heritage Village today where they also had a brief interaction with a section of the media. During the course of the visit, the KHADC CEM revealed that a hanging bridge which is currently under construction at the Khasi Heritage Village will be an added attraction in the Monolith Fest. The flexible bridge, which is a common feature in most villages of the Khasi Hills, will connect the Khasi Heritage Village to the area where traditional cuisines and delicacies will be on display during the fest. Meanwhile, elaborate arrangements are being made to ensure that the Monolith Fest is smooth sail as far as traffic, parking and food arrangements are concerned. As many as 121 food stalls will be erected outside the Khasi Heritage Village to cater to the thousands who are expected to turn up for the Festival. Elaborate arrangements are also being made to ensure that there is no short supply of food during the Fest, the organisers informed. Pre-booking of food will also be a feature in the Fest. As was informed earlier, the Monolith Festival, which aims to serve as a melting pot of all the cultural features of the different Himas (traditional states) and Raids within the jurisdiction of the Khasi Hills in one common arena, will also be of educational interest where students will get an opportunity to attend workshops on various indigenous skills like pottery, clay modelling, poetry, storytelling and live demonstrations on the various indigenous skills like locksmiths, weaving and basketry. Mr War informed that as many as 26 schools from the city have confirmed their participation in the event and buses equipped with guides would be used to ferry the students to the venue. "The guides will brief the students about the Festival on their way to the venue," Mr War informed. While the Khasi Heritage Village will be a hub of cultural activities and will house stalls of handloom and handicrafts, during the Fest, food items would be available in a well planned traditional arena set up just outside the village. The organisers are also coordinating with local residents to find more space for parking of vehicles during the Fest. Mr Syiem, meanwhile, lauded the efforts of the members of the KHCF for preparing the event in a short span of a month and creating the required infrastructure for the grand event. This will be the second edition of the Monolith Festival and entry to the event will be free of cost. UNI RRK BM SHS RAI2142 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0214-650018.Xml Special NDPS Act Judge Ramswaroop sentenced two accused to 14 years rigorous imprisonment each after they were found guilty of smuggling ganja and other psychotropic substances. The court also slapped fine of Rs 1.5 lakh each on both the convicts, failing which they would have to undergo additional imprisonment of three years each. According to the prosecution, Inamul Hussain and Anup Sansua, both native of Assam, were arrested under Bypass police station area in Patna district on June 11, 2011 while they were smuggling 3.67 quintals of ganja.UNI XC KKS BM SHS NS2215 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0214-650029.Xml "I was deeply shocked to hear of the terrorist attacks in Brussels this morning. India condemns these barbaric acts of violence and conveys its deepest sympathies to the families of the innocent victims and the entire people of Belgium. We pray for the speedy recovery of the injured. The global community must unite to overcome the scourge of terrorism," President Mukherjee said. At least 34 people have been killed while 55 others were seriously injured in terrorist attacks at the Brussels international airport and a city metro station. Twin blasts hit the Zaventem Airport at about 07:00 GMT, leaving the passengers terrified. Another explosion struck the Maelbeek metro station an hour later, reported Guardian. Shots were fired and words in Arabic shouted before the blasts were heard near the American Airlines check-in desk in the departure hall, a Belgian news agency reported. Following the terrorist attacks, Belgium has called for three days of national mourning. All flights have been cancelled and the rail traffic towards the Belgian airport suspended post the attack. (ANI) Odisha Assembly today adopted a motion authorising the House Committee on Railways to urge Union Railway Minister to reconsider its decision on the shifting of rail wagon maintenance factory at Narla in Kalahandi district. Odisha Assembly witnessed uproarious scenes and the house was adjourned for major part of the day for the last two days over the shifting of the proposed project from Narla in Kalahandi district to Visakhapatnaim in Andhra Pradesh. Participating in a two hour debate on the motion moved by government Chief whip Ananta Das, members cutting across party lines, today expressed their concern over the shifting of the Wagon factory demanded that the House Committee on Railway to submit a memorandum to the Railway Minister to set up the factory at Narla. Odisha Commerce and Transport Minister Ramesh Majhi said in the 2013-14 Railway budget the Railway Minister had announced to set up the Wagon maintenance factory at Narla in Kalahandi district. But no budgetary provision was made for the proposed factory in the budget. He said replying to a querry of the state government on December 23,2013,the state government had agreed to waive the water cess on the daily requirement of 2 lakh gallons of water for the factory. The Minister said the government had identified 114.72 acres of land near the Narla Railway station for the proposed wagon repair factory. But without consulting the Odisha government the Railway Ministry in 2015-16 had given approval to set up a new Railway wagon maintenance factory at Vishakhapatnam, he remarked. Particpating in the debate Leader of Opposition Narasingha Mishra said by shifting the rail wagon factory from Odisha to Andhra Pradesh the Union government was supporting the regional imbalance. Mr Mishra said non availability of water as cited by the railway authorities for shifting of the wagon factory to Andhra Pradesh was actually not the reason as there was enough water in the area. The Congress leader said while the Railway Board said the factory was shifted on administrative ground, the East Coast Railway sources said the factory was shifted for non availability of water. He suggested that the house committee to discuss the issue with the Railway Minister by April next Mr K V Singhdeo (BJP) said though since October 2014, the Railway Board had told the East Coast Railway that Narla is not a suitable place for the Wagon maintenance factory, the ECoR had never told this to the house committee on railways. He said token money for the Narla project was not made in the budget and Nabarangpur MP Balabhadra Majhi who is a member of the Railway Standing Committee, has never opposed this decision. The BJD and the Congress members alleged that the centre has done injustice and neglected the state by shifting the factory from Odisha to Andhra Pradesh and demanded the Centre to reconsider its decision.UNI BD DP BM SHS NS2255 -- (UNI) -- C-1-DL0214-649818.Xml "There is still a long way to go before we can say we have successfully reversed the impact of institutionalised racism in our country or to remove prejudice amongst those who subscribe to the notion of white supremacy," Xinhua quoted Zuma as saying. He urged all South Africans, black and white, to "become part of this journey to a new society". "Earlier this year, our country experienced explosions of anger due to racist utterances and writings which reminded South Africans that the vestiges of white supremacy and racism still exist in some sections of society," Zuma said. He was referring to anti-black remarks that emerged on social networks with Penny Sparrow, an estate agent, labelling blacks as "monkeys". "It became clear that there are people who still yearn for the past, where black people were treated like second class citizens because of their skin colour," said Zuma. South Africans marked this year's Human Rights Day with the theme of "South Africans United Against Racism". "We know that the majority of South Africans abhor racism and racial discrimination. That is why our theme correctly says that we are united against racism," Zuma said. He reiterated the government's determination to end racial discrimination in all its forms and wherever it occurs. --Indo-Asian News Service sku/ ( 253 Words) 2016-03-22-06:57:31 (IANS) A Turkish businessman has been arrested on US charges that he and others engaged in hundreds of millions of dollars of transactions for the Iranian government or other entities as part of a scheme to evade sanctions against the country.Reza Zarrab, 33, was arrested in Miami on Saturday on charges contained in a federal indictment in Manhattan against him and two Iranian citizens, Kamelia Jamshidy and Hossein Najafzadeh, US prosecutors said yesterday.REUTERS JW AN0424 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0364-648497.Xml Hezbollah accused Saudi Arabia and Turkey of obstructing talks between the Syrian government and opposition aimed at ending five years of conflict."What is disrupting any progress towards a political solution is firstly Saudi Arabia, and secondly Turkey," Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah yesterday told Al Mayadeen television in an interview.Hezbollah has sent fighters to Syria to support President Bashar al-Assad. Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which insist Assad must leave power, have been supporting rebels fighting to overthrow him.Hezbollah is backed by Iran, Saudi Arabia's bitter rival for power in the region. Worsening relations between Riyadh and Tehran have been mirrored by growing hostility between the Lebanese Shi'ite Muslim group and the Sunni Muslim kingdom.Saudi Arabia said last week it would punish anyone who belongs to Hezbollah, sympathises with it, supports it financially or harbours any of its members."Saudi Arabia doesn't want any progress in the negotiations in Geneva," Nasrallah said, adding Riyadh might be holding out until after the US presidential election in November to see whether a new administration might pursue a different policy on Syria. "So I don't expect progress in the political process or a political solution," he said.The head of the Syrian government delegation to Geneva said on Monday Assad's fate will play no part in the talks, leading the UN peace envoy to warn that lack of progress on the issue could threaten a fragile cessation of hostilities. REUTERS JW AN0428 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0364-648498.Xml The UN Security Council agreed to a Chinese request to remove sanctions on four ships the United Nations had blacklisted for ties to Pyongyang's arms trade. The agreement came after China secured assurances the vessels would not use North Korean crews, a US official said.China asked the United States on March 16 for help removing the ships from the UN blacklist, according to a diplomatic cable sent the same day from the US permanent mission at the United Nations to a group of other US embassies.The cable, reviewed by Reuters, showed wrangling between top diplomats from the United States and China over the tough new North Korea sanctions, weeks after Washington had presented a united front with Beijing, Pyongyang's main ally and trade partner.The U.S. mission at the United Nations declined to comment on the cable or make its ambassador, Samantha Power, available for an interview about the cable. The USTreasury Department, which administers US economic and financial sanctions, also declined to comment.The removal of the four ships was confirmed in a press release, which was seen by Reuters and will soon be issued by the Security Council, according to U.N. diplomats.While Washington has been the driving force behind the toughening international sanctions regime, China conducts 90 percent of the trade with North Korea and is the key to enforcing them.FOURTH NUCLEAR TESTThe ships were among 31 vessels sanctioned by the 15-member council on March 2 because they were linked to Ocean Maritime Management (OMM), a North Korean shipping firm known to transport arms and other illicit goods for the secretive state."We discovered that they are not OMM ships," Chinese U.N. Ambassador Liu Jieyi told Reuters on Monday. "The basis for the listing of the ships is basically that they belong to OMM, so if you make a mistake, then you correct the mistake."US and other Western officials have said all the original listings were carefully vetted before the ships were added to the blacklist. That list was appended to the sweeping Security Council resolutions implemented on March 2, following North Korea's fourth nuclear test in January.The US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Security Council committee on North Korea sanctions agreed to the request after China secured written commitments the four ships would no longer use North Korean crews.The four ships include the Jin Teng, a cargo ship detained by the Philippines days after the sanctions took effect."We're pleased with the outcome," said the U.S. official. "It achieved an impact, a real world outcome."He added it was a sign of a "productive working relationship with China" on North Korea and that it was "gratifying to see such instant real-world effects" of the U.N. sanctions regime.US FRUSTRATIONLiu had raised the issue of the four sanctioned vessels last week in a meeting with Power, his US counterpart, according to the cable reviewed by Reuters.Power approved the unclassified cable, which went to the U.S. mission at the U.N. and to American embassies in Manila, Tokyo and Seoul. The cable pointed to American frustration with what U.S. officials characterized as China's attempts to hold up the routine renewal of a UN panel of experts in return for de-listing the ships.The panel is made up of a team of international experts who monitor and research potential breaches of resolutions against North Korea and recommend entities that could be sanctioned.Liu had asked Power's help in removing the ships from the list in an "easy, smooth and quick way," to get the panel renewed, according to the document's characterisation of Liu's request. The easiest way, Liu said, "would be to work quickly to get all these issues settled," according to the cable.Power told Liu China's linking of the issues and attempts to hold up the renewal of the panel was "not going over well in Washington," according to the cable, and asked China to let the renewal go forward."You don't need to blackmail us, Powers said, as we are indeed interested in operating in good faith," the cable says of Power's conversation with Liu.Liu told Reuters on Monday he expected the experts panel would be "renewed according to the normal procedure in the Security Council". REUTERS SV PM1115 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0103-648608.Xml On January 21, US Secretary of State John Kerry met with Iraq's prime minister in Davos, Switzerland, and handed him a personal note from President Barack Obama pleading for urgent action.Obama's confidential message to Haider al-Abadi, which was confirmed to Reuters by two US officials and has not been previously reported, was not about Islamic State or Iraq's sectarian divide. It was about a potential catastrophe posed by the dire state of the country's largest dam, whose collapse could unleash a flood killing tens of thousands of people and trigger an environmental disaster.The president's personal intervention indicates how the fragile Mosul Dam has moved to the forefront of US concerns over Iraq, reflecting fears its failure would also undermine US efforts to stabilize Abadi's government and complicate the war against Islamic State.It also reflected growing frustration. The US government felt Baghdad was failing to take the threat seriously enough, according to interviews with officials at the State Department, Pentagon, US Agency for International Development (USAID) and other agencies."They dragged their feet on this," said a US official, who like the other sources declined to be identified.The Iraqi government declined official comment on those assertions and on the Obama letter.A US government briefing paper released in late February says that the 500,000 to 1.47 million Iraqis living in the highest-risk areas along the Tigris River "probably would not survive" the flood's impact unless they evacuated. Swept hundreds of miles along in the waters would be unexploded ordnance, chemicals, bodies and buildings."Governance and rule of law (would be) disrupted by widespread human, material, economic, and environmental losses," says the paper.US officials would not disclose the precise contents of Obama's letter.Its impact on Iraq's government could not be confirmed. But 11 days after it was delivered, Iraqi Minister of Water Resources Muhsin al-Shammari's own political party removed him from responsibility over the dam, according to public statements. The water minister has publicly downplayed the threat posed by the dam.US relations with al-Shammari, an ally of anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, had become so bad that when U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Stuart Jones came to meetings, the minister would walk out, said an Iraqi government source briefed on Mosul Dam planning.A US embassy official in Baghdad confirmed that al-Shammari would not attend meetings with Jones. In one instance, U.S. officials were told that al-Shammari sat in an adjoining room and listened to a meeting via an audio feed. But cooperation with Abadi has been smooth, the official said.Al-Shammari has not commented publicly on those meetings. He has suggested that predictions about the dam are an excuse to send more foreign troops to the country.On March 2, Iraq signed a $296 million contract with Italy's Trevi Group to reinforce the dam in northern Iraq, which has needed that work since it was built in the early 1980s on veins of water-soluble gypsum. Italy has said it will send 450 troops to help protect the dam.ALARMING STUDYObama's decision to send the note was prompted in part by alarming US intelligence reports and a new US Army Corps of Engineers study that found that the dam is even more unstable than believed, US officials said.Paul Salem, vice president of the Middle East Institute, a Washington think tank, said that if the dam fails, the ensuing chaos and damage could trigger the collapse of US ally Abadi's government and tarnish Obama's international legacy.Efforts to repair the dam -- which lies about 48 km northwest of the city of Mosul -- have been handicapped by Iraq's chaotic security situation; political divisions in Baghdad; years of previous warnings that did not come true; and a cultural divide, US and Iraqi officials and analysts said.US officials said Abadi, who is also grappling with the war against Islamic State, political infighting and budget shortfalls caused by low oil prices, is now focused on the dam and overseeing efforts to repair it."We've gotten to a point where there's no question (the Iraqis) are on board," said a senior USAID official.However, Trevi says it will take four months to prepare the work site. And the 3.5 km-long hydroelectric dam faces its highest risk between April and June from rising water levels due to melting snow.Grout to reinforce the dam must be trucked in from Turkey, officials said, because the previous factory is in Mosul, now controlled by Islamic State militants."SWISS CHEESE"Some Iraqi officials said Washington is sounding loud alarms over the dam to absolve itself of responsibility. The United States, which invaded Iraq in 2003, could have sought a more permanent solution before its 2011 pullout of combat troops but merely kept the dam operating at minimum cost, they contend.There is no sign that a breach of Mosul Dam is imminent.But the structure was built on what the senior USAID official called "the geologic equivalent of Swiss cheese."The 45-foot (14-meter) high wall of water that would swamp Mosul city within four hours of a dam breach would be "roughly what hit Japan during the height of the tsunami" in 2011, he said.Maintenance was suspended after Islamic State seized the dam for two weeks in August 2014, scattering workers and destroying equipment. Work has resumed in recent months but officials have said international expertise is needed to prevent collapse.While the full U.S. Army Corps of Engineers report hasn't been released, slides summarizing its conclusions and dated Jan. 30, were posted on the Iraqi parliament's website last month."All information gathered in the last year indicates Mosul Dam is at a significantly higher risk of failure than originally understood and is at a higher risk of failure today than it was a year ago," says one slide.A senior Iraqi official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said this US assessment helped drive the decision to finalize the contract with Trevi group after months of talks.Richard Coffman, a University of Arkansas assistant professor of civil engineering, studied satellite radar imagery and found the dam was sinking by eight millimeters a year.Resuming grout-pumping operations is only a temporary solution, he said. "There is a need for a long-term fix."REUTERS SV PM1211 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0103-648703.Xml The two Taliban leaders, who claimed his detention, did not mention when Rasool was taken into custody. They, however, confirmed that he fled recent infighting in southern Afghanistan. "I can confirm that Mullah Rasool has been arrested by authorities in Pakistan after he crossed the border," express tribune quoted one of the Taliban leaders as saying. Another Taliban leader in Rasool's camp also confirmed his detention. Last November, Rasool was chosen by several Taliban cadres to head them after they opposed Mullah Akhtar Mansoor's ascendency to head the splinter group. Dozens of Taliban insurgents, including the breakaway faction's deputy chief Mullah Mansoor Dadullah and his brother, were killed when Mullah Mansoor's loyalists launched a major offensive against dissidents in Zabul province. The loyalist of Mullah Mansoor captured the areas in Khak-e-Afghan district of Zabul after clashes in mid-November. While Mullah Rasool and his second deputy Abdul Manan Niazi managed to escape. The rival factions of Taliban have recently been engaged in clashes in Herat province. Rasool was the part of a Taliban delegation that had arrived in Islamabad in July last year for peace talks but he has not yet come up with a policy about negotiations under the Quadrilateral Coordination Group. Meanwhile, a Taliban leader informed that a top-level delegation of Afghan Taliban military leaders had recently visited Iran in an effort to increase cooperation in view of the emerging threats from the Islamic State, also known by its Arabic acronym Dai'sh, in Afghanistan. However, Taliban spokeman said the he was unaware about the visit. (ANI) Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has expressed his desire to strengthen relations with Iran during a meeting with Iranian envoy Mehdi Honardoost yesterday. "The visit will be a great opportunity for us to review the whole range of bilateral relations and further strengthen our brotherly ties," an official statement quoted Sharif as saying, reports the Express Tribune. Congratulating the ambassador on his new assignment, the Prime Minister hoped that the former would make valuable contributions in strengthening bilateral relations between both countries. He added that Islamabad greatly values its fraternal ties with Iran and considers Tehran to be a close friend and neighbour. "We are pleased to note that international economic sanctions on Iran have been lifted, paving the way for expeditious resumption of commercial and economic ties between our countries. I am looking forward to welcoming President Rouhani later this week," said Sharif. Prime Minister Sharif had on his visit to Iran this January invited the Iranian President to visit Pakistan. Rouhani will be accompanied by a high-ranking political team and a large trade and economic contingent. This would be the first visit by an Iranian President to Pakistan in four years. The two countries are likely to push for the Iran-Pakistan (IP) gas pipeline project during the Iranian President's visit. This project was commissioned in December 2014 but was stalled after sanctions were placed on Tehran. Pakistan views this visit as great opportunity to improve bilateral relations with Iran. (ANI) Two explosions occurred in the departure hall of Brussels airport this morning and several people were injured, Belgian media said.The blasts occurred four days after the arrest in Brussels of a suspected participant in November militant attacks in Paris that killed 130 people. Belgian police had been on alert for any reprisal action.Social media showed pictures of smoke rising from the departure hall where all windows had been shattered by the blast. Passengers were seen running away down a slipway from the departure lounge.Sky News television's Alex Rossi, at the scene, said he heard two "very, very loud explosions"."I could feel the building move. There was also dust and smoke as well...I went towards where the explosion came from and there were people coming out looking very dazed and shocked.""The thinking here is that it is some kind of terrorist attack - that hasn't been verified by any of the authorities here at the airport."Belgian media said rail traffic to the airport was suspended.There was no immediate official comment on the cause of the attack. REUTERS SV SB 1313 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0103-648792.Xml Explosions tore through the departure hall of Brussels airport this morning killing one person and injuring several others, the Belgian news agency Belga said.The agency said shots were fired and there were shouts in Arabic shortly before the explosions.The blasts occurred four days after the arrest in Brussels of a suspected participant in November militant attacks in Paris that killed 130 people. Belgian police had been on alert for any reprisal action.Social media showed pictures of smoke rising from the departure hall where windows had been shattered by the blasts. Passengers were seen running away down a slipway.Sky News television's Alex Rossi, at the scene, said he heard two "very, very loud explosions"."I could feel the building move. There was also dust and smoke as well...I went towards where the explosion came from and there were people coming out looking very dazed and shocked.""The thinking here is that it is some kind of terrorist attack - that hasn't been verified by any of the authorities here at the airport."Video showed devastation inside the departure hall with items scattered across the floor.Belgian media said rail traffic to the airport was suspended.Brussels airport said it had cancelled all flights and the complex had been evacuated.Salah Abdeslam, the prime surviving suspect for November's Paris attacks on a stadium, cafes and a concert hall, was captured by Belgian police after a shootout on Friday.Belgium's Interior Minister, Jan Jambon, said on Monday the country was on high alert for a possible revenge attack following the capture of 26-year-old Abdeslam."We know that stopping one cell can ... push others into action. We are aware of it in this case," he told public radio.French investigator Francois Molins told a news conference in Paris on Saturday that Abdeslam, a French citizen born and raised in Brussels, admitted to investigators he had wanted to blow himself up along with others at the Stade de France on the night of the attack claimed by Islamic State; but he later backed out.REUTERS SV VN1330 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0103-648846.Xml Prince Harry, who is on a five-day-long official visit to Nepal, was warmly greeted with traditional rituals by the local residents of Gurung and Tamang communities. Upon his arrival here, Prince Harry also played volleyball with the students of Gaunda Secondary School, one of the quake-ravaged academic institutions in Lamjung. Gyanmani Nepal, Chief District Officer of Lamjung, welcomed the British Prince. Prince Harry observed the school building that was damaged from the devastating earthquake last April. The Gurkha Welfare Scheme (GWS) is taking a lead for the reconstruction of the quake-hit schools in the region. Yesterday, the British Prince visited Bardiya National Park where he enjoyed a boat ride and jungle safari. He also toured a Tharu settlement and met the locals there. Prince Harry arrived in Kathmandu on March 19 on the occasion of bicentenary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Nepal and the United Kingdom. (ANI) Dutch police stepped up security patrols at airports and tightened checks at borders after Tuesday's attacks in neighbouring Belgium, the security agency said.Travellers passing through Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport reported delays and a heavy police presence. Security agencies declined to give details of any further measures taken, but maintained the national threat level at "substantial", one notch below the highest.Flights were diverted from Brussels to Amsterdam following attacks at the Belgian capital's airport earlier on Tuesday in which at least 13 people are believed killed. Trains heading south to Belgium were subject to indefinite delays, Dutch state railways said.Reuters SW VP1521 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0101-649026.Xml Philippine fishermen threw fire bombs at Chinese law enforcement vessels in the South China Sea, China's Foreign Ministry today, after Philippine media said fishermen had been struck by bottles hurled from Chinese coast guard ships.China and the Philippines have long exchanged accusations about each other's behaviour in the disputed South China Sea.China claims most of the energy-rich waters through which about 5 trillion dollars in ship-borne trade passes every year. Neighbours Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims.Philippine media said this week that a group of fishermen had been chased away from Scarborough Shoal by Chinese coast guards who hurled bottles at them. The fishermen then responded with rocks, the reports said.Asked about the incident, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Scarborough Shoal - known by Beijing as Huangyan Island - was Chinese territory which Philippine fishermen had been fishing around illegally."Chinese official ships advised the illegally stationed Philippine trawlers to leave, in accordance with the law, but they refused to obey," she told a daily news briefing."Certain people on the ships even waved around machetes and flung fire bombs, carrying out deliberate provocation, attacking the Chinese law enforcers and official boat, confronting China's law enforcement and seriously threatening the safety and order of the waters around Huangyan Island," Hua said.China had strengthened its "management" around the shoal, she added, without elaborating.A spokesman for the Philippines Foreign Ministry said: "We can't comment at this time as we are still awaiting the official report from our concerned agencies on the incident." Reuters SW VP1536 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0101-649057.Xml The arrest of an Iranian-born Turkish businessman in the United States on charges of conspiring to evade sanctions on Iran has no link with a 2013 investigation in Turkey into him and others close to President Tayyip Erdogan, his lawyer said today.Reza Zarrab, 33, was arrested in Florida on charges that he and two Iranians conspired to conduct hundreds of millions of dollars in financial transactions for the Iranian government or other entities to evade U.S. sanctions.Under a Turkish investigation which emerged in 2013, Zarrab was accused with other high-ranking Turkish officials, including three then-government ministers, of involvement in facilitating Iranian money transfers via gold smuggling, leaked documents at the time showed. Erdogan, who was prime minister at the time, cast the case as a coup attempt orchestrated by his political enemies to undermine him. Several prosecutors were removed from the Turkish case and it was later dropped."There is absolutely no link," Zarrab's lawyer, Seyda Yildirim, told Reuters by telephone, when asked if the US case was connected to the 2013 Turkish investigation. She said his detention had come as a surprise to Zarrab, and that he was in Miami on vacation with his wife and daughter.Yildirim said she and Zarrab's team of lawyers in the United States would submit a request for his release on bail, once the court identified an amount for bail.Reuters SW VP1535 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0101-649075.Xml China said today it had lodged a formal protest with Japan over new Japanese school text books which it said distorted the history of Japanese atrocities in China and reasserted a Japanese claim to a group of disputed islands.China, the world's second-largest economy, and Japan, the third-largest, have a difficult history, with relations strained by the legacy of Japan's aggression before and during World War Two and conflicting claims over a group of uninhabited East China Sea islets.Japanese media say some of the textbooks approved for use from April 2017 describe the disputed islands as being inherently part of Japan. The books also revise some references to the 1937 Nanjing Massacre.Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying, asked about the text books at a daily news briefing, said China was extremely concerned and had lodged "stern representations" with Japan."No matter what steps Japan may take to promote and market their mistaken position it cannot change the basic reality that the Diaoyu islands belong to China," she said, referring to what Japan calls the Senkakus."The Nanjing massacre was an atrocity carried out by the Japanese militarists when they invaded China. The evidence is cast iron and a conclusion was reached long ago about it. This whitewashing and censoring by Japan in these text books again shows that Japan is unwilling to face up to historical mistakes."China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 massacre in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in its then capital.A postwar Allied tribunal put the death toll at 142,000, but some conservative Japanese politicians and scholars deny a massacre took place at all.Chinese school text books also have their own political slant, following the ruling Communist Party's line on issues like Tibet and Taiwan, and not mentioning highly sensitive events such as the bloody 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators around Tiananmen Square. REUTERS SW VN1508 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0103-648993.Xml Brazilian federal police were seeking to arrest 15 people today as part of the corruption investigation centered on state-run oil producer Petroleo Brasileiro SA, police said.Tuesday's operation, codenamed "Xepa", uncovered a bribe-payment scheme led by engineering conglomerate Odebrecht SA, police said in a statement. It did not give the names of the targets.It is the 26th raid in the two-year-old corruption probe that has put top executives and political leaders in jail and has raised chances of the impeachment of President Dilma Rousseff. Reuters SW VP1621 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0101-649204.Xml The Netherlands' Prime Minister Mark Rutte today advised Dutch citizens not to travel to Belgium following the bomb attacks in Brussels.Rutte told a news conference that increased police and miltary checks are taking place at airports and train stations around the country.However the threat level of an attack in the Netherlands has not been increased from the current "substantial" level, and the country has no concrete evidence of any immediate threat. Reuters SW VP1630 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0101-649221.Xml Prime Minister Narendra Modi will on March 30 embark on a three-nation tour during the course of which he will attend the 13th India-EU Summit in Brussels, Belgium, and the Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) in Washington. The prime minister will pay his first official visit to Brussels on March 30, 2016, for the 13th India-EU Summit at the invitation of President of the European Council Donald Tusk and President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker, external affairs ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup said at a media briefing here. The European Union (EU) is Indias leading trade and investment partner and biggest export destination, Swarup said. India and EU are also strategic partners since 2004. The 13th India-EU Summit aims to deepen the India-EU strategic partnership and advance collaboration in priority areas for Indias growth and development. According to Swarup, Modi will also hold a bilateral summit meeting with Belgium at the invitation of Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel. Stating that India and Belgium enjoyed close and friendly ties, he said: Belgium is Indias second largest trade partner within the EU. The bilateral meeting between the two prime ministers will focus on further enhancing the economic partnership. The two prime ministers will also hold discussions on regional and global issues of mutual interest. From Brussels, Modi will proceed to Washington D.C., US, to participate in the Fourth Nuclear Security Summit on March 31 and April 1. The first NSS was held in Washington in April 2010 followed by the summits in Seoul in March 2012 and The Hague in March 2014. Fifty-two countries and four international organisations are expected to attend the 2016 summit, Swarup said. The Nuclear Security Summit process has been instrumental in galvanising leaders level attention on the global threat posed by nuclear terrorism and urgent measures required to prevent terrorists and other non-state actors from gaining access to sensitive nuclear materials and technologies, he said. This year's summit is expected to take stock of the progress of the previous NSS communiqus and work plan as also outline a future agenda. As for past summits, a number of countries may project the respective steps taken by them to strengthen nuclear security since the last summit, including in the form of submissions of national progress reports, the spokesman said, adding that India would also be doing the same. He said that India has contributed constructively durting the NSS preparatory meetings from 2014 to 2016 at the level of sherpas. According to Swarup, Modi will make some specific announcements and proposals with regard to nuclear security during his interventions at the NSS. The prime minister is also scheduled to have bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the summit. India is committed to the success of the NSS process. India's participation in all the NSSes from 2010 is a demonstration of our high-level commitment in this regard, Swarup said. From Washington, Modi will fly to Riyadh for a bilateral visit to Saudi Arabia on April 2 and 3. He will be visiting the Gulf kingdom at the invitation of King Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud. This is first prime ministerial visit from India to Saudi Arabia after the visit of then prime minister Manmohan Singh in 2010. During the visit, Modi will hold discussions with King Salman on bilateral, regional and multilateral issues of mutual interest. India and Saudi Arabia share friendly relations based on close people-to-people contacts, Swarup said. The 'strategic partnership' established through the Riyadh Declaration in 2010 envisions a deeper engagement in political, economic, security and defence areas. In recent years, there has been significant progress in bilateral cooperation in key sych areas of mutual interest, he said. Saudi Arabia is India's fourth largest partner with bilateral trade exceeding $39 billion in 2014-15. It is also Indias largest crude oil supplier, accounting for about one-fifth of the country's oil imports. Indians form the largest expatriate community in Saudi Arabia and their contribution in the progress and development of their host country is well recognized, the spokesman said. There are over 2.96 million expatriate Indians in Saudi Arabia, many of whom are blue collar workers. --Indo-Asian News Service ab/vt ( 702 Words) 2016-03-22-18:53:31 (IANS) Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan condemned the attacks in Brussels that killed at least 26 people today and said there was no difference between terror organisations, whether they were Kurdish militants targeting Ankara or the attackers in the Belgian capital."The heinous attacks in Brussels have reiterated that terror cannot be a method of struggle for freedom, and once again underlined the need for common struggle against all types of terror," Erdogan said in a written statement.At least 26 people were killed in twin attacks on Brussels airport and a rush-hour metro train, triggering security alerts across western Europe and bringing some cross-border transport to a halt. REUTERS CJ RAI1905 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0400-649721.Xml US airlines including Delta, United and American canceled flights today after two deadly blasts in a packed departure area of the Brussels Airport at Zaventem.A suicide bomber blew himself up today morning airport explosions, which public broadcaster VRT said killed 14 people. Another 20 were killed when a blast tore through a rush-hour metro train in the European capital shortly afterward, VRT said.Video at the airport, which was shut down, showed devastation, with ceiling tiles and glass scattered across the floor. Some passengers emerged from the terminal with blood spattered over their clothes.While there were no credible threats to US. airports or transportation hubs, police presence was beefed up as a precaution in the nation's major cities, including New York, Washington and Los Angeles.Delta Air Lines Inc said its flight DL42 from New York to Brussels was diverted to Amsterdam. Another flight, DL80 from Atlanta, had landed safely at the Zaventem airport and was parked remotely while the airline's local staff helped passengers exit safely.News of the multiple blasts, which have Brussels on lockdown and have snarled some cross-border traffic, sent shares of U.S. airlines and travel-related companies lower. Delta was down 2.1 percent at $49.04 in morning New York Stock Exchange trading, while United Continental Holdings Inc fell 1.4 percent to $69.34.United Airlines, which had two flights due in Brussels on Tuesday morning, said both landed there safely.The company said it was suspending all remaining flights to and from Brussels.American Airlines Group Inc said it had canceled flight 751 from Brussels to Philadelphia and would accommodate its passengers when the airport reopens.The explosions did not occur where American's check-in operates, the company said, so all of its airport employees are safe and accounted for.Starwood Hotels & Resorts Inc said all of its hotels in Brussels were on lockdown, along with the rest of the city.Facebook Inc said it had activated its "safety check" feature, which allows its users to check on friends who were in the area of the blasts. REUTERS CJ NS2115 -- (Reuters) -- C-1-1-DL0400-650045.Xml The spread of false information is a by-product of the social media age where news and images are so easy to share. Given the availability of Photoshop, it often feels as if half (or more) of what you see on Facebook has been made up. While there are any number of widely-circulated false memes, most are rightly ignored by the media. But these examples werent 1. Hoax: George W Bush has a very low IQ (and so do his supporters) The 43rd president of the United States became so notorious for his malapropisms, peculiar pronunciations and grammatical errors, that the term Bushisms entered popular parlance. Its easy, then, to understand how a story about Dubya having the lowest IQ of any US president was widely believed. A very warm welcome to George Walker Bush, with news from his homeland that he is now officially the dimmest president in 50 years, ran a diary piece in the Guardian. But they werent the only ones, Associated Press (who were also the first to run the correction), Bild (Germany) and Pravda (Russia) also ran it. The research had actually first appeared in an email, and was apparently conducted by Lovenstein Institute (which doesnt exist). A similar hoax (in the form of a widely shared chart), which argued that voters of George W Bush had markedly lower IQs than voters of his Democratic rivals, was also picked up by the media (including The Times and the Economist) before being debunked. Jasmine Tridevil, 21 (Facebook) 2. Hoax: woman with three breasts The story of a woman who claimed to have had a third breast surgically implanted became one of the big viral stories of 2015. In fairness, most people and publications treated the news with the skepticism it deserved. However, many didnt: Meet the amazing TRIPLE-BREASTED woman who spent 12,000 on getting third boob, ran the Mirror. "My whole dream is to get this show on MTV, said Jasmine Tridevil, 21. Im dumping every penny I have into this. If this doesnt work, Im through. Story continues The Daily Mail, who had covered the story the week earlier, ran an exclusive that relied on the evidence of a thermal camera to prove there was no blood in her third breast. Jasmine had said: I know my breasts are real and I do not care what anybody thinks. 3. Hoax: German man cuts all belongings in half in divorce battle A YouTube video of a man cutting his belongings in half including his car to split with his wife, Laura, who he was going through a divorce with, quickly went viral in June 2015, clocking up millions of hits. It was picked up by several media outlets, among them Fox News and Time magazine, before being revealed to be false. It was, in fact, a publicity stunt by Deutsche Anwaltauskunft, an online legal magazine operated by the German Bar Association, who said: Sometimes you have to do things by halves to raise awareness for an important issue. 4. Hoax: disfigured three-year-old was kicked out of KFC The world was outraged to hear that a family was asked to leave a KFC restaurant in Mississippi because their daughter, who had been heavily scarred in an attack by a pitbull, was scaring the other customers. The scars were real and so the story seemed all too believable. CNN, The Daily Mail and more ran it, but a KFC investigation quickly threw doubt on its veracity, when it could find neither evidence on CCTV or of the order that Victoria Wilchers family said they made. However, the story had a happy ending for Victoria at least. A group of doctors agreed to remove her scars for free, while KFC, which had promised to donate $30,000 to assist with the girls medical bills, in the wake of the story, stayed true to its word. 5. Hoax: man stuck in airport after son doodles on passport In June 2014, a story went viral about a man stuck in a South Korea airport after his son drew all over his passport. It was a great story, complete with hilarious illustrations, and was picked up by the worlds media including The Daily Mail, Fox News and The Telegraph. The picture, above, was reported to have been originally posted on social networking site Weibo by the man himself. The Wall Street Journal did the sensible thing and confirmed it was a hoax after speaking to an official from the Chinese embassy in Seoul. On closer inspection, you can see that the childs doodling goes beyond the passport itself (on the right of the picture), suggesting it was created on a computer. Even the doodling itself looks a little advanced for a four-year-old. 6. Hoax: Olympian hides from a wolf During the Winter Olympics in Sochi luger Kate Hansen tweeted a video that, she said, showed a wolf wandering through her dorm. The footage certainly looked real enough and everyone was fooled including Sky, the Mirror and Daily Mail but the story turned out to be a prank. Given TV host Jimmy Kimmel (who orchestrated the infamous twerking fail viral video) has form in this sphere, it was little surprise when the comedian quipped on Twitter: I always say, if youre going to cry wolf get an actual wolf to cry with, confirming his involvement. Kim Jong-un (Credit: Xinhua News Agency/REX/Shutterstock) 7. Hoax: Kim Jong-uns uncle was fed to dogs North Korea isnt an easy country to report on. Given the governments grip over the countrys media, its difficult for news organisations to get any sort of confirmation no matter what the story. However, alarm bells should have been ringing when this, albeit believable, story about Kim Jong-un feeding his own uncle, Jang Song-thaek, to dogs first appeared. The story was first reported by a Hong Kong tabloid and then picked up by NBC, USA Today and more, but apparently originated in a satirical post in China. Of course, the reason the story was so believable is that the countrys official news agent called Song-thaek despicable human scum" when he was purged. Its likely he was executed although by firing squad instead. 8. Hoax: the sun rises on wide-screen TVs in the east Many viral hoaxes work because people are willing them to. This can be down to prejudices or, simply, that the story is funny or the visuals arresting. An incredible picture of a smog-hit Beijing with a glowing red sun displayed on a public wide-screen seemed to make a lot of sense. The Daily Mail, and others, reported that: The smog has become so thick in Beijing that the citys natural light-starved masses have begun flocking to huge digital commercial television screens across the city to observe virtual sunrises. The truth? The picture was taken in the (admittedly incredibly smoggy) Beijing just in the exact moment an advert, being displayed on a big screen, happened to feature a sunrise. You can even see the logo if you look carefully. The birdman (Floris Kaayk/YouTube) 9. Hoax: birdman can fly Some hoaxes work by chance, others are down to the incredible time and effort put into them. Floris Kaayk, a Dutch filmmaker and animator, spent months creating a birdman that fooled the world. His first video appeared in 2012 showing a man flying using Wii controllers, a phone and custom-built wings. The mans name was supposed to be Jarno Smeets, a Dutch engineer, and was who achieved birdlike flight, according to respected publications such as Wired. The truth, sadly, is that this was a hoax that Kaayk had spent eight months working the videos (it perhaps would have been quicker to build the actual birdman suit). 10. Hoax: We still coming wedding crashers When a bride accidentally invited a stranger to her wedding then tried to uninvite him, she received a reply with the immortal line we still coming. The pictures of the gatecrashers lording it up went viral as did their response, which took on a life of its own. Many news outlets ran the story based on the screengrabs of the text exchange, but it turned out that the story was a hoax. Bizarrely, the true story was actually a better one: the wedding party had, in fact, gatecrashed the set of a nearby rap music video, and the images were real. The story about the invite, for whatever reason, was made up and spread quickly. As a young professional working at the International Finance Corporation, an arm of the World Bank, Bruno de Faria had a solid career but worried his business acumen was weak. "I was a political science major in college. I had a little bit of an international relations background, but my work was becoming more and more related to business -- finance, accounting, marketing," the 36-year-old says. "I wanted to develop, personally, those skills." He decided an MBA would give him the knowledge he lacked, but a business school degree often comes at a cost. Many schools charge students $50,000 or more in tuition and fees per year, and full-time MBA programs usually require a two-year commitment. See [photos of the Best Business Schools.] Business school experts recommend applicants weigh their return on investment before enrolling and how long it will take to recoup the money lost. The investment includes the time in school, the salary a full-time student gives up while in school and the total cost of attendance. For de Faria, measuring his income before and after graduation was important. "I looked at my salary going away, our incremental expenses and then what would be the expected salary that I'd get after graduation. So, that would be the return," says de Faria, whose wife worked while he was an MBA candidate at the University of Chicago's Booth School of Business. "Then I looked at in how many years, more or less, what would be my payback period?" Graduates from two-year, full-time MBA programs usually recoup their investment in three and a half years, according to a February report from the Graduate Management Admission Council. Their median cumulative base salary three years after graduation is $348,000. Prospective business school students should consider four factors in determining when they'll see a return on investing in an MBA program. Discover how to [calculate if an MBA makes financial sense.] Story continues 1. Projected salary: Most schools publish employment reports that detail how much their graduates make and which industries they enter. Applicants should view these reports to get an idea of their future salaries, experts say. Reports that go back a few years are valuable, says Bill Glick, dean of the Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University and chair of the board of directors for the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business International. "Getting three years out or five years out is much better than getting at graduation," he says. Reports that look at where grads land right after graduation could be influenced by the strength of the employment network for that school, he says, and may not reflect how alumni are using what they learned in business school to advance in the long run. "Three and five years out means you got a good job, and you did something. You earned a pay raise, you earned a promotion, which to me says that you've learned something while you were in the MBA program that is making a difference," Glick says. 2. Time in school: Business school programs can be as short as one year or longer than three, although the two-year, full-time option is traditional. How much time students spend in school can affect when they're able to recoup what they've invested. Graduates of one-year MBA programs can see the money they've lost in about 2.5 years, on average, according to the Graduate Management Admission Council. In some instances, says Glick, attending an executive or professional MBA program may be a better fit for students. A 27-year-old making $100,000, for example, may not want to let go of that salary for school, he says. Learn [when it's best not to get an MBA.] "It's hard to give that up for two years for a full-time MBA program. You may be better off going for a professional MBA program, and that'll accelerate your career without losing the income." Professional and executive MBA programs usually require students to attend classes on the weekends, leaving them free to work during the week. 3. Cost of living: While some industries pay higher than others, a job's location can determine how far a salary goes. "Our average salary is typically about $60,000 upon graduation," says Dana Hart, director for the Flores MBA program at Louisiana State University--Baton Rouge's Ourso College of Business. "Depending on where students go, I mean that could be mostly a Louisiana base salary. If they go to Texas that could be a little bit higher. If they go work for Deloitte in New York, it's gonna be higher than that." The school, he says, attracts many regional students and a lot of alumni work in the region. "Given our geographic footprint here in the Gulf Coast and our strategic partnerships with oil and gas companies, energy is a big partner to us," Hart says. "We have students who work for Exxon, Chevron, Shell, BP. But then we also have students that work in a variety of different functions that support the energy industry." 4. Scholarship funding: As applicants weigh their options for business school, it's important to think about scholarships, says Glick from the Jones Graduate School of Business. Prospective students should research the average scholarship award for schools they're considering and what percentage of students receive a scholarship. "In some schools it's 70, 80 percent of the class getting a scholarship," he says. "Those scholarships could be very substantial. Anywhere from a full ride to something a little bit more nominal." De Faria received several scholarships that helped with his business school expenses. He graduated from Booth in 2010 and now works as a vice president for M&T Bank and is the treasurer for a Booth alumni club in the Washington, D.C., region. Even if MBA graduates aren't able to get back their investment in 3.5 years, as the GMAC report says they often do, de Faria says they shouldn't be discouraged. "You're still going to get there," he says. "In the long term, I think it's definitely worth it." Searching for a business school? Get our complete rankings of Best Business Schools. Delece Smith-Barrow is an education reporter at U.S. News, covering graduate schools. You can follow her on Twitter or email her at dsmithbarrow@usnews.com. BEIRUT (Reuters) - A total of 530 people were killed in the first 23 days of a truce in Syria in areas covered by the cessation of hostilities agreement, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Tuesday. In areas not covered by the ceasefire, which came into force on Feb. 27, 1,279 people were killed, the British-based Observatory said. The partial truce -- which excludes Islamic State and the al-Qaeda-linked Nusra Front -- has been in place for just over three weeks to allow peace talks to take place in Geneva between the government and opposition groups. But U.N. peace envoy Staffan de Mistura has said that the lack of progress on the issue of President Bashar al-Assad's future could threaten the current reduction in violence. (Reporting by Lisa Barrington; Editing by Angus MacSwan) Trying to wrap your head around finances in the U.S. is something not even many Americans find easy. From taxes to paying for university, international students have an even more challenging time when it comes to figuring out the answers. Fortunately, your university is there to help you with some of the big financial questions you might have. Here are just some of the questions worth asking. [Know the questions to ask the international students office at a U.S. college.] -- How do I get a Social Security number? Social Security numbers are assigned by the U.S. government and are often used for identification, landing a job and paying taxes. If you're planning on spending a significant amount of your time in the States working, then getting one of these is essential depending on what kind of visa you have for your studies. The University of Washington has a good guide on the subject. It's not a difficult process to get this number, but it is a little tedious and involves visiting the nearest Social Security Administration office with all the required paperwork. -- Where can I work? Working while enrolled in a university is a great idea if you can manage your time wisely. You'll not only earn some money, but it's also an interesting cultural experience. Universities have a variety of jobs available, whether it's working in the dining hall or helping fellow students via tech support. Depending on your visa, you're generally only allowed to work 20 hours per week so that your school work doesn't suffer. But even 20 hours of work could be too much to juggle your studies, especially if you're involved in extracurricular activities as well. If you find yourself pulling all-nighters or failing to maintain a healthy schedule for all your responsibilities, maybe working shouldn't be a priority. If you're uncertain on what you're allowed to do under the terms of your visa, your university will be able to help. Story continues [Find out about ways to work on campus as an international student.] -- How do I file my taxes? Filing taxes in the U.S. is a byzantine process that confuses residents and nonresidents alike. Just see how many pages there are on the IRS' page about international students. If you're working, you'll see money deducted from your paycheck to pay federal and state taxes. In spite of that, you'll still likely need to file taxes for the previous year by the mid-April deadline. Even if you're not technically working, some scholarships and fellowships aren't tax-free and need to be included when you file your taxes. There will be some resources on campus to help you through this complicated process. If you make less than $62,000, you can use the IRS' tax software for free to do your taxes. -- What scholarships are available? Many universities have dozens of scholarship options. Beyond that, there are scholarships that you can apply for regardless of what school you go to. Scholarships are often based on country of origin, ethnic background, area of study and other factors, so you might find something you qualify for. Universities typically publish all of their scholarships online, and that's a good place to start looking. For more options, check sites like IEFA and CollegeScholarships.org. It takes effort, but the rewards are worth it. -- How do I open a bank account? Opening a bank account is, fortunately, one of the easier things to do when you're an international student. Even if you're only studying for a semester or two, a bank account can save you a lot of money, since you won't be hit with expensive withdrawal fees from your bank back home. Bring your passport, student ID, Form I-20 and -- if you have one -- your U.S. driver's license to open an account. Ask around to see what bank is best for you, as some have less expensive international transfer fees or are more accustomed to foreign students. [Learn more about handling finances as an international student.] -- How do I pay my university? Every school has its own way of doing things, but expect to pay at the beginning of each semester for tuition, on-campus housing and other school fees. If you have a U.S. bank account, you can usually pay by check. Some schools accept credit cards, but there's often a fee placed on top of whatever you're already paying. If the money is coming from abroad, many schools accept international wire transfers. All of this varies from school to school, so be sure to check with your university's financial office to see what works best. When you come to the U.S. for your studies, you'll have a full plate with classes and a new culture. That's why it's best to get these financial issues solved as quickly as possible in order to focus on what's most important. Anum Yoon, from Hong Kong, graduated from Pennsylvania State University--University Park with a dual major in public relations and advertising. She runs a personal finance blog for international students at Current On Currency. JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's rand shed as much as 1 percent against the dollar on Tuesday with riskier emerging markets on the backfoot as investors sought safe haven assets in the wake of terror attacks in Belgium. Stocks also fell after a strong rally last week, with technical factors at play and a rebalancing seen after a futures close out and a market holiday on Monday. "The markets have had quite a strong move up so one would expect some rebalancing from these levels," said Ferdi Heyneke, portfolio manager at Afrifocus Securities. "There was also a futures close out last Thursday and there is often volatility after these close outs," he said. Johannesburg stocks hit a 3-1/2 month high on Friday but charts showed the main indices have strayed into overbought territory, which often signals a correction in the offing. The benchmark Top-40 index fell 1.03 percent to 47,319.37. The wider All-share index fell 0.8 percent to 53,392.86. Decliners included Johannesburg shares of luxury goods maker Richemont, which fell 4.5 percent to 97.91 rand. Travel sector stocks such as airlines were down after the attacks and upscale retail sales are often linked to travel. Local sentiment remained largely rand-negative due to uncertainty triggered by allegations that a wealthy family with close ties to President Jacob Zuma was behind the firing of the finance minister last December. On the global front, risk aversion also came to the fore in the wake of the Belgian bomb attacks. The rand stumbled to a session low of 15.3800 to the greenback, before clawing back some ground to 15.2300 by 1514 GMT, down 0.1 percent from Tuesday's New York close. "The rand will still remain fragile as the political developments continue to unfold," said analysts at Nedbank. "Local markets have another short week ahead and we could expect liquidity to remain thin." South Africa's ruling African National Congress (ANC) on Tuesday denied reports that Zuma had offered to resign following mounting claims of political interference by his wealthy business friends. Investors fear further political uncertainty could hasten a credit ratings downgrade, potentially into "junk" territory. In fixed income, government bonds closed little changed from previous levels. The yield for the benchmark instrument due in 2026 ZAR186= edged up just 2 basis points to 9.305 percent. (Reporting by Ed Stoddard and Stella Mapenzauswa; Editing by Tom Heneghan) JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South Africa's anti-corruption watchdog may seek state funding to speed up its investigation into a growing scandal over President Jacob Zuma's relationship with a wealthy family of businessmen, its spokesman said on Tuesday. In an affair that has caused wild swings in the rand since erupting last week, Zuma is facing calls to resign since a number senior officials went public with allegations that the Guptas wielded an undue influence on the government. The Guptas, whose businesses stretch from media to mining, have denied offering government jobs and say they are pawns in a plot to oust Zuma. Zuma also denies the allegations. Oupa Segalwe, spokesman for the Public Protector, said the watchdog was "considering this approach" when asked about comments his boss Thuli Madonsela made in the Beeld newspaper on Tuesday. "We want to ask the Treasury for a special fund for our special investigations. Then we can appoint a team of external forensic investigators and conclude the investigation quicker," Madonsela was quoted as saying in the paper. The opposition Democratic Alliance party is asking Madonsela to investigate whether Zuma used his influence to benefit the Gupta family. The ruling party, affirming its support for Zuma after a three-day summit this weekend, said it would lodge its own investigation into the matter. The family said on Tuesday it welcomed the ANC's probe. "We welcome this process which should ultimately allow the truth to be recognised and end this current trial by innuendo and slander," the family said in a statement. Zuma sacked finance minister Nhlanhla Nene in December and appointed a junior politician with no record of national financial management to the post, before backtracking and summoning past finance minister Pravin Gordhan a few days later. Last week, Deputy Finance Minister Mcebisi Jonas said that in December, the Gupta family offered him his boss's job. The allegations come as Africa's most industrialised economy faces the possibility of ratings downgrades which would raise the costs of borrowing. They also come ahead of local elections due around the middle of the year which analysts say could show eroding support for the ANC, which has been in power since white rule ended in 1994. (Reporting by TJ Strydom; Editing by Ed Stoddard and Raissa Kasolowsky) Andras Hamoris H2O Motion Pictures is developing a pair of miniseries based on Allison Patakis novels about Empress Elisabeth of Austria, Variety has learned exclusively. The company has optioned The Accidental Empress and Sisi: Empress on Her Own. Pataki is the daughter of former New York governor George Pataki. The Accidental Empress revolves around the tumultuous love affair between Elisabeth (Sisi), the daughter of a Bavarian duke, and the young emperor of the Austro-Hungarian empire, Franz Joseph Habsburg. Sisi was originally sent to chaperone her older sister on her first visit with the emperor. Empress on Her Own follows her struggle to assert her right to the throne beside her husband, to win the love of her people and the world, and to save an empire. She had married Franz Joseph in 1854 at the age of 16 and was killed by an anarchist in 1898. The Sisi character that Alison Pataki has written is a vibrant character that is still relevant today, Hamori said. Hamori will produce, Julia Rosenberg will co-produce and Anonymous Contents Doreen Wilcox is an executive producer on the project planned as two four-hour miniseries. Pataki also authored The Traitors Wife: The Woman Behind Benedict Arnold and the Plan to Betray America. Variety reported in February that H20 Pictures was developing Dan Mazers rock-star comedy Stiff, the thriller American Solo and the biopic Herzl, based on the life of political activist Theodore Herzl one of the key players in the creation of the state of Israel. By Diane Bartz and Clarece Polke WASHINGTON (Reuters) - An executive with Amazon.com Inc's unit that sells office supplies to businesses gave testimony on Tuesday that appeared to bolster a U.S. regulator's wariness over a potential merger of Staples Inc and Office Depot Inc . The U.S. Federal Trade Commission filed a lawsuit last year to block the proposed $6.3 billion acquisition of Office Depot by Staples, arguing that it would hurt competition and lead to higher prices for consumers. A federal judge is considering whether to issue a preliminary injunction to block the deal. The decision will depend in part on whether Amazon is perceived as a potential big player in the office supply business. The Amazon executive will be cross-examined by lawyers for Staples on Wednesday. During the second day of a hearing on Tuesday, Prentis Wilson, vice president of the relatively new Amazon Business unit, testified that his business had no big corporate customers, did not stock shelves and often did not bid for a customer's business. Wilson's comments appeared to support the FTC's argument that the online retailer could not provide the same level of services as Staples and Office Depot. Wilson testified that Amazon Business, which began in early 2015 as a successor to Amazon Supply, is starting to respond to some demands by corporate customers. It allows companies to approve purchases by their employees. It has also started permitting companies to pay an invoice instead of paying for purchases up front. But Wilson said that Amazon Business responded to requests for proposals, which are essentially bids, only in a "limited way." He said the unit does not create customized catalogs for companies and does not stock shelves for companies. "At this point, Amazon Business does not negotiate contracts with large business customers," he said. Asked if Amazon was the primary supplier to any company with revenue over $250 million, Wilson said, "Not to my knowledge, no." In opening arguments on Monday, Staples' lawyer, Diane Sullivan, argued that her client feared Amazon, which said in 2015 that it planned to enter the office supplies market in a serious way. The hearing is expected to last for up to two weeks. (Editing by Matthew Lewis) Amy Schumer paid generous tribute to the "ten-dollar founding father" when she saw Hamilton. While grabbing drinks at the bar during Saturday's performance, the actress surprised the theater's bartenders with a $1,000 tip, The Hollywood Reporter confirmed. "I was very touched it was just something so generous and so kind that you dont see every day," Madeleine DeJohn, a bartender and aspiring actor, told New York Daily News. So why did Schumer do it? According to DeJohn, who thanked the Trainwreck star for her generosity, Schumer a former bartender herself said, "I've been there. I get it." Read More: Lin-Manuel Miranda Freestyles About Feminism With Help From Emma Watson After the show, Schumer went backstage to meet the cast as did the evening's other buzzy attendee, Wendell Pierce. See the photos below. And then @amyschumer comes into your work and does something amazing #hamilton #amyschumer A photo posted by Madeleine DeJohn (@madeleinedejohn) on Mar 19, 2016 at 8:19pm PDT Our name is Alexander Hamilton A photo posted by @amyschumer on Mar 19, 2016 at 8:32pm PDT Abhhhhhh #hamilton #bunk A photo posted by @amyschumer on Mar 19, 2016 at 8:32pm PDT What's Coming for Crude: Oil Producers' Meeting, Low US Production (Continued from Prior Part) API crude oil inventories On March 22, 2016, the API (American Petroleum Institute) is scheduled to release its weekly crude oil inventory report. API reported that the US crude oil inventory rose by 1.5 MMbbls (million barrels) for the week ending March 11, 2016, and this estimate shows that US crude oil stocks rose for the fifth time in the past six weeks. EIA crude oil inventories Traders closely watch the API crude oil inventory data. API crude oil inventory data releases every Tuesday, which is followed by the EIAs (US Energy Information Administration) weekly petroleum status report on Wednesday. The EIA will release the weekly crude oil inventory report on March 23, 2016, and the government agency has already reported that US crude oil inventories rose by 1.3 MMbbls to 523.2 MMbbls for the week ending March 11. The rise in US crude oil inventories influences storage costs. (For more on this, check out Crude Oil Storage Costs Rose 9 Times, US Crude Tests New Limits and Record US Crude Oil Inventory Led to a New Storage Space.) Crude oil inventories estimates and their impact Crude oil inventories have already exceeded the five-year average by 100 MMbbls. They are also at the highest levels during this period of the year in the last eight decades. Reuters poll suggest that US crude oil inventories had risen by 3 MMbbls for the week ending March 18. Record nationwide crude inventories and a consensus of rising US crude oil inventories could limit the upside for crude oil prices. Low crude oil prices negatively affect oil and gas exploration and production companies like Bonanza Creek Energy (BCEI), Northern Oil & Gas (NOG), and Triangle Petroleum (TPLM). However, the record US and global crude oil inventories and the contango market benefit crude oil tanker companies like Teekay Tankers (TNK) and DHT Holdings (DHT). The ups and down in crude oil prices affects the ProShares Ultra Bloomberg Crude Oil ETF (UCO), the ProShares UltraShort Bloomberg Crude Oil ETF (SCO), and Fidelity MSCI Energy (FENY). Story continues In the next part, well take a closer look at the slowdown in US crude oil production. Read on for the inside story and analysis. Continue to Next Part Browse this series on Market Realist: Washington (AFP) - The US government's decision to delay its effort to force Apple to help unlock an attacker's iPhone may only postpone the inevitable drawn-out battle over encryption and data protection. "It's only a matter of time before another case comes up on this," said Joseph Hall of the Center for Democracy & Technology, a digital rights group, after the government said it may have found a way to crack the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino attackers without Apple's help. The decision by federal prosecutors to cancel a hearing set for Tuesday "shows the FBI was expecting to get its clock cleaned" in legal arguments to force Apple to provide technical assistance to hack into an encrypted handset, he added. Tech giants and civil rights advocates have warned that the case goes beyond just one phone and that if the court had sided with the FBI, it would have harmed human rights and digital security. The case has drawn interest from groups as diverse as Amnesty International and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. A last-minute filing by the Justice Department on Monday said the FBI appeared to have found a way into the iPhone in question with the help of an unidentified "outside party." James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies specializing in cybersecurity, said the latest developments underscore the limits of encryption. - Remember the Titanic - "Whenever anyone tells me something is unhackable, I remember the line that the Titanic was unsinkable," Lewis told AFP. "If you give people enough resources, they can break in. This is a race between people who write (software) products and people who break them." Hall agreed, saying encryption "is a practice" that must continually evolve. "There may be something we consider secure or well encrypted, and you may find a flaw in the future," he said. Story continues "You can see how Apple has managed this," he added, "but that cat-and-mouse game will continue." Federal prosecutors and Apple spent weeks trading a volley of legal briefs related to the FBI's demand that the tech company help investigators unlock the phone used by Syed Farook, who died in a shootout after the deadly December attacks in San Bernardino, California. The FBI says the device may contain critical information for its probe into the December 2 shooting, which left 14 people dead. However, Apple has balked at a court order to help investigators, citing customer privacy and security concerns. Hall said the FBI apparently hoped to set a legal precedent. "It's hard to think of another case that would be more sympathetic to their cause," he said. The two sides were waging both legal and public relations battles. Different polls showed the US public split -- some surveys showed support for law enforcement while others indicated more backing for Apple. A survey released Tuesday by Vrge Analytics found that support for the FBI has eroded in the last month, however. A month ago, the group found that 50 percent of Americans believed that Apple should be required to help unlock the iPhone, but that support had slipped to 41 percent. - Paris, Brussels and encryption - Darren Hayes, a Pace University professor specializing in computer forensics, said the issues will be seen as more urgent in the wake of attacks last year in Paris and on Tuesday in Brussels. "If we hear more about iPhones used in terrorist attacks, people may side with the government a little more," he said. The question of access to encrypted devices will probably be dealt with in the legislative arena in the United States and elsewhere, Hayes added. "This is not just a struggle in the US," he said. "It's a toss-up on whether the US or EU implements legislation first." By Jim Finkle (Reuters) - Most Americans trust Apple Inc to protect their personal information from hackers, according to a national Reuters/Ipsos poll, but not any better than rivals Google, Amazon and Microsoft. The results of the poll were released late on Monday, in the middle of a legal battle between Apple and the U.S. Justice Department over a judge's order that Apple write new software to disable passcode protection on the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino, California shooters. The two sides were set to face off in court on Tuesday, but late on Monday a federal judge in Riverside, California, agreed to the government's request to postpone the hearing after U.S. prosecutors said that a "third party" had presented a possible method for opening an encrypted iPhone. The development could bring an abrupt end to the high-stakes legal showdown which has become a lightning rod for a broader debate on data privacy in the United States, which was inflamed by revelations in 2013 from former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden about the U.S. government's massive surveillance programs. When asked if they trust Apple to protect data from hackers, 60 percent of respondents said they strongly agreed or somewhat agreed, according to the poll, conducted March 11 to 16. That is in line with responses to the same questions about Alphabet Inc's Google, Amazon.com Inc and Microsoft Corp. The poll found only one in 10 people consider security options such as encryption and passcode protection to be the most important considerations when shopping for a new phone. Performance and price were far ahead, each ranked as the most important factor by about a third of those polled. "Security is one of these things that gets people in trouble when it lapses, but its not something consumers are going to be shopping for," said Ipsos pollster Chris Jackson. The results suggest that Apple's refusal to comply with a U.S. government demand that it unlock an iPhone has not given it extra credit with consumers, Jackson said. "This (poll) was about getting a feel to see whether Apple is seen as some kind of exemplary company," Jackson said. "It's not." Apple certainly sees itself as a guardian of customers' privacy. The company "will not shrink from that responsibility," declared Chief Executive Tim Cook on stage at the launch of a new iPhone on Monday. "Apple has the same halo as many tech companies: A majority of people, but not a huge majority, agree that they trust them to protect their information," Jackson said. Consumers were, however, less trusting of two of the six companies covered in the poll: online social media service Facebook Inc and internet company Yahoo Inc. Asked if they trust Facebook to protect personal information from hackers, 39 percent said they agreed. For Yahoo, 44 percent agreed. Jackson said people may feel differently about Facebook's security because it exposes more user data than the other firms surveyed. The online survey of roughly 1,703 adults has a credibility interval of plus or minus 2.7 percentage points. Representatives for Apple, Alphabet, Amazon.com, Microsoft and Yahoo did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A statement from Facebook said, in part, that "Protecting your personal information is more important than ever, and that's why security is built into every Facebook product and design." (Reporting by Jim Finkle in Boston; Additional reporting by Yasmeen Abutaleb in San Francisco; Editing by Bill Rigby) In an unpredictable job market, it is often hard to tell which industries will do well by graduation. Choosing the right major could be the difference between gainful employment and being woefully unemployed. But keeping an eye on in-demand industries -- and where they're hot -- could make the path to happy employment a little less bumpy for students in the Arab region. The two top fields in demand across the Middle East are health care, and information technology and telecommunications, according to the March 2016 Monster Employment Index. The United Arab Emirates is the top-performing Gulf Cooperation Council market overall, with job demand strongest in the health care, education, and IT and telecom industries. Online job ads for the health care industry have "increased 76% year to date, while demand for healthcare professionals in the UAE has also exhibited impressive growth of 66% year to date," said Sanjay Modi, a managing director of jobs website Monster, covering Asia and the Middle East, in a statement. Modi attributed this strong demand to the UAE's promotion as a medical tourism hub, where visitors can receive lower-cost access to health care. Across the Middle East, the health care industry has experienced consistent job growth. In Saudi Arabia, the report notes considerable growth in demand in health care jobs from a year ago, which is good news for students, as the health care field is broad. [Explore how Arab region universities are evolving.] "At the time being the health care sector is considered to be one of the most stable sectors," says Palestinian Zaid Dallal, who is a recent management sciences graduate from German Jordanian University. Management sciences majors learn the skills needed to help businesses operate and solve complex problems. Dallal, who has Saudi citizenship, works as a business administration team leader for Saudi Arabia at Siemens Healthcare in the country. "To me management sciences was a safe choice." Story continues [Learn how public health degrees can open doors for Arab region students.] While according to online Middle East recruitment portal GulfTalent "healthcare and retail remain buoyant," the site notes that oil and gas and construction have seen a slowdown in recruitment. The oil and gas industry has shown the steepest decline, according to Monster. "It used to be oil and gas and construction," says Aouni Kawas, managing partner of Kawas Consulting in Lebanon. "Nowadays, the MENA region, with the drastic oil prices falling, is witnessing a major economic, political and demographic turnaround. The shift is more into FMCG, nonprofit and retail," he says, referring to fast-moving consumer goods such as soft drinks, food and other frequently bought items sold at grocery stores. Syrian national Khalil Bassam Al Handawi recently graduated from the Petroleum Institute Abu Dhabi with a master's, and before that a bachelor's, both in mechanical engineering. His scholarship from the Abu Dhabi National Oil Co. requires he work with the company for as long as he spent completing the degrees. "In light of the current economic climate, there is always a slight chance that ADNOC may not be able to hire everyone who graduates from the Petroleum Institute," says Al Handawi. "In that case I will definitely pursue a Ph.D. degree and look for job opportunities either in the automotive industry in an R&D position or work as a research associate at one of the local or international universities upon completing my Ph.D." [See how Arab universities are training students for careers.] Location matters when it comes to industry demand, but so does salary. The average pay raises across the Gulf are expected to be lower in 2016 than at any time over the past 10 years, despite the rising cost of living, according to GulfTalent. The highest pay raises in the region are in Saudi Arabia at 5.9 percent, followed by the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and lastly Bahrain. "The most promising careers are in computing, energy, data science and analytics, accounting as well as consulting for students in various fields such as engineering, computing, etc.," said Eleni Papailia, director of outreach and cooperative education at Rochester Institute of Technology in Dubai, via email. The school's grads work for airlines, banks and consulting companies, among others. The United Arab Emirates and Kuwait are the only Gulf markets not witnessing a decline in overall job demand, according to Monster. But while jobs may be available, preparation is still key. Papailia says as RIT is a "career-focused university," its students must complete a cooperative education program involving practical, paid work experience and a formal career preparation course before graduation, "so our students have real experience before graduation." Suhail Masri, vice president of employer solutions at Middle East job site Bayt.com, says professionals should anticipate that the nature of jobs in the future will vary. For example, he says "new upcoming projects like smart cities are creating skills gaps because the skills required are new skills" not taught at most universities. He says they advise new grads to take online courses, such as a team-building course his company offers; constantly test their skills; and network with relevant industry professionals. Masri says overall, employers have a strong demand for candidates with soft skills and says "good communication skills in Arabic and English is the most desired skill by 65 percent of companies in the MENA region." Other top skills include being a team player, having good leadership qualities, ability to work under pressure and being effective and productive. See the complete rankings of the Best Arab Region Universities. Anayat Durrani is a Los Angeles-based freelance education reporter for U.S. News, covering Arab region universities. Washington (AFP) - The race for the White House shifted westward as voters in Arizona, Utah and Idaho make their picks in a narrowing presidential contest dominated by Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton. The voting gives the candidates another opportunity to pile up delegates on the way to the party nominating conventions, but is not expected to alter the basic outlines of the race. The deadly attacks in Brussels changed the tone of voting day from the start, with Trump and his main rival Ted Cruz seizing the moment to bash President Barack Obama's foreign policy -- and tout their own tough stances on immigration. Anyone who tries to attack the United States will "suffer greatly," Trump said, in typically blunt tones that have shaped his populist run for the White House, propelling him from outsider to firm favorite for the Republican ticket. "Belgium is a horror show right now. Terrible things are happening," he said. "We have to be very careful in the United States. We have to be very, very vigilant as to who we allow into this country." At stake Tuesday are 98 delegates in the Republican contests in Arizona and Utah, and 131 for Democrats who, unlike the Republicans, also caucus in Idaho. At this point in the Republican race, Trump's main objective is to amass the 1,237 delegates needed to win his party's nomination outright, and thwart a bid by the party establishment to stop him. Going into Tuesday's contests, the billionaire real estate mogul had 683 delegates to 421 for his nearest rival, Senator Cruz of Texas, according to a CNN tally. Ohio Governor John Kasich has 145. Pre-election polls show Trump heavily favored to prevail in winner-take-all Arizona, the biggest prize with 58 delegates. - Arizona: immigration hot spot - The southwestern border state has long been roiled by passions over immigration, an issue Trump has seized on since launching his campaign with inflammatory accusations that Mexico was sending rapists and criminals across the border and his promise to build a border wall. Story continues Trump touts endorsements from Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, himself a magnet of controversy for policing practices that target immigrants, and ex-governor Jan Brewer, who championed a state crackdown on undocumented migrants. Anti-Trump protesters blocked a major road near Phoenix on Saturday and Trump supporters at a Tucson rally kicked and punched a protester. Trump defended his campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, who appeared to have collared a protester in the middle of the Tucson melee. "I give him credit for having spirit," he said on ABC's "This Week." The dynamics are different in neighboring Utah, a predominantly Mormon state where pre-caucus polls show the ultra-conservative Cruz positioned to win. Cruz has been given a boost by Mitt Romney, the losing 2012 Republican nominee who has led the charge to stop Trump. Utah is home turf for Romney, a Mormon from a prominent family who has encouraged Utah residents to vote for Cruz. Analysts note that Mormons have voted consistently against Trump elsewhere. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, breaking with the view of many Republicans, has supported immigration reform. Utah's 40 Republican delegates are all up for grabs by any candidate who wins a majority in the state caucuses. Cruz's biggest Utah obstacle may not be Trump but Kasich, who has refused entreaties from Romney and others to stay out of the race to give Cruz a clearer shot at taking all the delegates. "I'm going to compete across the country and tell people who I am and let the chips fall where they may," Kasich told NBC Sunday. "And let me also tell you, no one, no one is going to that convention with enough delegates." - Clinton favored - On the Democratic side, Clinton is dogged by an unyielding opponent in Bernie Sanders, whose well-funded grassroots campaign is going strong despite a string of losses and the former secretary of state's growing pile of delegates -- 1656 to his 877, including super-delegates, according to CNN. To win the Democratic nomination, 2,383 delegates are needed. Pre-election polls show Clinton with a double-digit lead in Arizona, boosted by Hispanic support and a closed primary system that may not favor Sanders and his independent supporters. Sanders has pointed to a recent national CNN poll that shows him topping all three Republican candidates in head-to-head matchups. Clinton leads Trump, runs even with Cruz and trails Kasich according to respondents. "There is no question that you are looking at the strongest Democratic candidate," Sanders tweeted. He is expected to do better in Utah and Idaho, states with predominantly white populations. But there has been little polling in either state, making the outcome uncertain. After years of disagreements with animal rights activists, the Armani Group has announced that it will go fur-free this year, beginning with its fall 2016 collections. According to Women's Wear Daily, the Italian fashion group made the agreement with The Humane Society of the United States and the Fur Free Alliance. "I am pleased to announce that the Armani Group has made a firm commitment to abolish the use of animal fur in its collections," Giorgio Armani said in a statement released by the Human Society. The fashion house has gone head to head with animal rights groups in the past for its use of rabbit fur. In 2009, PETA demonstrators put mannequins in coffin-esque containers outside an Armani store in Taipei with the words "Armani: Fur is Dead." The Humane Society has said that it hopes the Armani decision will spur other fashion groups to take similar fur-free actions. The 4th annual Art Basel Hong Kong art show begins on March 24, bringing together 239 galleries from 35 countries. It will feature artworks from the early 20th century to contemporary pieces, some specially created for the event. Over 50% of the exhibitors are from Asia and the Asia Pacific region. Galleries The "Galleries" section hosts leading Modern and Contemporary art galleries from around the world. Highlights in this section include works by Marc Chagall and Paul Klee presented by Munich's Galerie Thomas. Also featured will be pieces by Joan Miro and Francis Bacon from New York's Galerie Lelong. Hauser & Wirth (Zurich, London, Somerset, New York, Los Angeles) will spotlight four major artist estates: Louise Bourgeois (1911-2010, France), Alexander Calder (1898-1976, U.S.), Philip Guston (1913-1980, Canada) and David Smith (1906-1965), in a display themed on spiders. Insights "Insights" is comprised of artworks that have been developed especially for the Hong Kong show. These galleries must all be based in the Asia-Pacific region as well as the works on display. Among the must-sees here are eight large photographic works by Australian Michael Cook. Presented by This Is No Fantasy and Dianne Tanzer gallery (Melbourne), these form a panoramic narrative reflecting on colonial histories and draw from the artist's Aboriginal heritage. Also on display here are sculptures by Chinese artists Guan Xiao and Yu Honglei, both represented by Antenna Space in Shanghai. Ink Gallery in Beijing will be presenting experimental ink work by Chinese artist Li Huasheng. Finally, Pi Artworks in Istanbul and London will display new sculptures by Bangladeshi artist Tayeba Begum Lipi, which look back to her childhood and are accompanied by video and audio work. Discoveries 'Discoveries' provides a global platform to emerging contemporary artists from around the world with a focus on new work created for the show. Ink drawings by Pakistani artist Waqas Khan are presented by Sabrina Amrani of Madrid; Sydney's Darren Knight Gallery will be showing an installation piece of 13 works on paper and 1 video work by Jess Johnson of New Zealand; while Workplace Gallery in London has a sculptural installation by American Joel Kyack exploring conflicts and parallels between intense consumerism, cultural conditions and the historical conditions of Hong Kong. Encounters Curated by Executive Director of Artspace in Sydney, Alexie Glass-Kantor, "Encounters" features 16 artworks by artists from 12 countries. Visitors can interact and participate with many of the works on display. This year's edition will feature five site-specific installations and six artworks that will be premiered at the event. These include works by Brook Andrew, Isa Genzken, Arik Levy, Richard Maloy and Zhang Ding. Art Basel in Hong Kong will be open to the public from March 24 to March 26, 2016, and will take place at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre (HKCEC). For more information on Art Basel in Hong Kong or to purchase tickets visit: https://www.artbasel.com/hong-kong HAVANA Give me the list! Cuban President Raul Castros eruption filled the grim auditorium where he and President Obama faced the news media on Monday after a historic meeting in Havana. After lengthy opening statements, including polite disagreements over human rights, largely couched in agree-to-disagree diplomatic blah-blah, CNNs Jim Acosta asked Cubas infrequently questioned leader in rusty but respectful Spanish why his socialist government here jails dissidents, and whether he would free them. Dame la lista! Castro thundered at Acosta, a second-generation Cuban-American. Give me the list of political prisoners, right now! What political prisoners? Give me a name or names, and after this meeting is over, you can give me a list of political prisoners, and if we have those political prisoners, they will be released before tonight ends, Castro said, according to a translation of his remarks. The CNN reporter did not have a list, but many human rights groups have documented Cubas pattern of trying to smother any spark of dissent. Even as Obama flew here aboard Air Force One, security forces detained one high-profile democracy activist, Elizardo Sanchez, and squelched a peaceful protest by the Ladies In White. The groups weekly demonstrations regularly end with arrests, its members and human rights groups say. Slideshow: Obamas historic visit to Cuba >>> Acostas question clearly got under Castros skin. He came back to it at the end of the press conference, declaring it not correct improper and asking again: Please give me a name. Even before Castros outburst, the press conference had veered into uncharted territory. While Obama answered a different question from Acosta, Castro summoned an aide to the stage and began an animated conversation. Excuse me, a bemused Obama said, trying to get Castros attention. I was asking if he was if his question was directed to me or to President Obama, the Cuban leader explained. Story continues President Obama speaks as Raul Dominguez Castro, grandson and bodyguard of Cuban President Raul Castro, talks to his grandfather during a joint press conference in Havana on Monday. (Photo: Sven Creutzmann/Mambo Photo/Getty Images) It was not the first time Castro seemed unaccustomed to the theatrics of a press conference. Throughout the session, he loudly cleared his throat a sound magnified by the headsets transmitting real-time translations of the remarks. He tapped his pen in front of his microphone. Obamas second question came from NBCs Andrea Mitchell, who seized the opportunity to press Castro for his view of the schism over human rights. The U.S. president revealed that the leaders had arranged for two questions for Obama and one for Castro, then urged his host to answer Mitchells query. Castro rubbed his hands against each other, as though spoiling for a fight. Then, spotting the outstretched hands of reporters on the Cuban side of the room, he seemed to think better of it. There is a program here to be fulfilled, he said. I know that if I stay here, youll make 500 questions. I said that I was going to answer one. Well, Ill answer one and a half. Castro charged that no country complies with all human rights standards. I think human rights issues should not be politicized, he said, reprising a standard Cuban rejection of criticism from Washington. The socialist leader sidestepped a question about whether he preferred Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential race. I cannot vote in the United States, he said. JERSEY CITY, N.J. (Reuters) - Atlantic City Mayor Don Guardian said on Monday that the city's financial crisis will force a partial government shutdown for three weeks, with city hall closed for the period and public employees working without pay. Police and firefighters in the New Jersey seashore city, which is dominated by its gaming industry, have agreed to work without pay for the three-week period, which will begin April 8, said Guardian, who spoke in Jersey City where he was attending a panel on casino expansion in the state. The city should begin receiving second-quarter 2016 tax payments on May 2, when it expects to be able to reopen City Hall. The city is "making every effort to find solutions prior to the April 8th deadline," Guardian said in a statement. The gambling hub's tax base has been decimated by casino competition in neighboring states. Four of Atlantic City's 12 casinos shut in 2014 and remain closed, putting thousands of people out of work. Bills are making their way through the state legislature to take over city operations and to end devastating casino property tax appeals, but neither would come in time to help Atlantic City with its April deadline. Guardian on Monday told reporters that Atlantic City would owe its workers back pay. The city will make its April debt service payment of about $600,000, he said. Schools will remain open during the three-week period. (Reporting by Hilary Russ; Editing by Leslie Adler) By Matt Siegel SYDNEY (Reuters) - Australian police said on Tuesday they had arrested two people, including a 16-year-old girl, on suspicion of raising funds to support operations of the Islamic State militant group. The arrests in a Sydney suburb on Monday of the schoolgirl and a man, aged 20, were part of counter-terrorism operations aimed at thwarting attacks by domestic radicals at home and disrupting the flow of funds to foreign fighters overseas. "We anticipate that both these people will be charged later today and attend court and the charge that we anticipate they will have is one of financing terrorism," New South Wales state police Deputy Commissioner Catherine Burn told reporters. "We will be alleging that they were involved in obtaining money to send offshore to assist the Islamic State in its activities," she said. Australia's anti-money laundering agency said in November reports of suspected militant financing had tripled in the past year, with more than A$50 million ($38 million) that could be used to support militants being investigated. The amounts being sent in this particular case were small and most likely used to help facilitate the travel of foreign fighters into Syria, an Australian Federal Police source told Reuters on condition of anonymity. "They are doing it usually by credit cards or ATM cards - pretty easy. It's not that much money. Some of it is a very small amount of money ... sometimes less than $1,000," he said. 'BASIS FOR CHARGES' Authorities believe dozens of Australians have traveled to Syria and Iraq to fight alongside Islamic State militants. Australia, a staunch U.S. ally, has been on heightened alert for attacks by home-grown radicals since 2014 and authorities say they have thwarted a number of potential attacks, while there have been several "lone wolf" assaults. Islamic State raises the majority of its funding from oil, kidnapping and other illicit activities in far greater amounts than what is sent by individuals, said Greg Barton, a terrorism expert at Deakin University. Arrests like those made this week were more valuable in identifying and arresting Australians who may be at risk of further radicalization than they in putting a dent in militant finances. "It's more this gives us the basis for figuring out the connection and it also gives us the basis for laying charges," he told Reuters. Australian Federal Police Deputy Commissioner Michael Phelan said the latest arrests were not connected to any threat of an imminent attack. In 2014, police shot dead a Melbourne teenager after he stabbed two counter-terrorism officers. Three months later, two hostages were killed when police stormed a Sydney cafe to end a siege by a lone gunman, who was also killed. A 15-year-old boy fired on an accountant at police headquarters in a Sydney suburb last October and was then killed in a gunfight with police. (Additional reporting by Swati Pandey in SYDNEY; Editing by Richard Pullin, Robert Birsel) Pennsylvania is set to consider a ban on drones in the skies above all 1.5 million acres of state game lands following several incidents of harassment of wildlife by the unmanned aerial vehicles. During its next meeting on April 4, the state Board of Game Commissioners is expected to take up a proposal on the ban, said commission spokesperson Travis Lau. This is the first year weve really dealt with it, Lau said. People are now using drones to get photos that they couldnt [otherwise] get. In recent weeks, a number of drone operators have maneuvered their devices into the breeding areas of the Middle Creek Wildlife Management Area, on the Lancaster-Lebanon county line, said Cheryl Trewella, a supervisor for the commission's Southeast Region. That area is off limits to the public to provide an undisturbed resting spot for migrating waterfowl, such as snow geese and tundra swans, as well as resident birds that nest there. We have lots of people who visit there because of the migrating geese, Trewella said. Some have seen people with drones and called us so our officers could check on it. We were able to locate some of those individuals and citations are going to be filed. Violators face fines up to $1,500 RELATED: Bad News for Bears: Drones Stress Them Out The breeding area is demarcated by a wire, with posted signs declaring it off limits. If somebody is flying a drone in there, they have violated that law, Trewella said. And its already illegal to harass or disturb wildlife. The commission posted new signs last week specifically prohibiting drone use, she said. In a separate incident at Codorus State Park in York County, an observer reported a possible drone passing close to an eagles nest monitored by the commission's live-streaming nest-cam. Somebody who was viewing the eagle-cam reported something that sounded like a drone, Lau said. We didnt find anything when we went out there, but Im not sure what the lag time was. Story continues Encroaching on eagle nests, can result in the loss of an egg or a nestling, and individuals can be cited for an unlawful take, Lau said. Federal penalties are in the thousands of dollars. Lau said that geese and swans stop at Middle Creek on their long migration to Arctic breeding grounds. These stopovers are important resting sites, Lau said. Some stop up to two weeks to make the next leg of the trip. We dont want people pushing the envelope by disturbing resting waterfowl. Migratory birds are not the only concern. Many other species nest in the breeding area. Any encroachment could mean the difference between a nest failing or succeeding, Lau said. If adults are flushed out of their nest while eggs are being incubated, especially on colder days, theres a risk of losing [the chicks]. Once nestlings hatch, they are also at risk of being flushed from the nest by noisy drones. If it happens before they are ready to leave the nest, they wind up on the ground and may never be able to take that first flight, Lau said. Other wildlife are also affected by drones. A study published last July in the journal Current Biology found that black bears in Minnesota outfitted with cardiac monitors had increased heartbeats when drones were present. One bear had a 400 percent increase from about 41 beats-per-minute to more than 160. The non-scientific use of drones are banned at national parks and within wildlife refuges managed by the United States Fish and Wildlife Service. In April 2014, volunteers at Zion National Park saw a drone disturbing a herd of bighorn sheep, reportedly separating adults from their young. In 2014, two bills regarding drones were introduced in the Pennsylvania legislature. One would ban hunters from using the devices and the other would prohibit animal-rights activists from using drones to harass hunters and anglers. Neither bill passed, although Alabama and Illinois approved similar measures. Several lawmakers complained that People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) was selling a drone on its online catalogue for activists to document illegal hunting and fishing. PETA spokesperson Lindsay Rajt said the group stopped selling the drones after the Minnesota bear study was published. We would support the ban in Pennsylvania out of concern how drones might impact other animals that havent been studied yet, but may have the same stress response, Rajt said. But we would suggest going a step further and banning hunting as well, she said. Whats more stressful than having someone go after you with an intent to kill? Sign the Petition: Tell the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to Protect Endangered Species Related stories on TakePart: The Drone War That Is Helping Save the Worlds Wildlife Drones Are Tracking Malaria-Carrying Monkeys Radio-Tagged Wildlife Is Hard to TrackUnless Youve Got a Drone Original article from TakePart DHAKA (Reuters) - Bangladesh confirmed on Tuesday its first case of the Zika virus in an old sample of blood from a 67-year old man who had not been overseas, health ministry officials said. The man lives in southeastern port city of Chittagong and was well, junior health minister Zahid Maleque told a news conference. None of his relatives had tested positive, he said. Mahmudur Rahman, director of the ministry's Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control and Research, said the man had never traveled outside Bangladesh. "The virus was found in the man as we tested old blood samples of nearly 1,000 people afflicted with fever in 2014 and 2015," Rahman told Reuters. The Zika outbreak is affecting large parts of Latin America and the Caribbean, with Brazil the hardest hit. It is likely to spread to all countries in the Americas except for Canada and Chile, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said. The WHO estimates Zika could eventually affect as many as 4 million people in the region. Some cases have been found in Asia, officials in the region have said. Zika is carried by mosquitoes that transmit the virus to humans and it has been linked to a spike in microcephaly, a rare birth defect, in Brazil. The WHO declared the Zika outbreak an international health emergency on Feb. 1, citing a "strongly suspected" relationship between Zika infection in pregnancy and microcephaly, which can result in developmental problems. However, much remains unknown about Zika, including whether the virus actually causes microcephaly in babies. Brazil said it has confirmed more than 860 cases of microcephaly, and considers most of them to be related to Zika infections in the mothers. Brazil is investigating more than 4,200 additional suspected cases of microcephaly. (Reporting by Ruma Paul; Editing by Robert Birsel) By Philip Blenkinsop and Francesco Guarascio BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Islamic State claimed responsibility for suicide bomb attacks on Brussels airport and a rush-hour metro train in the Belgian capital on Tuesday which killed at least 30 people, with police hunting a suspect who fled the air terminal. Police issued a wanted notice for a young man in a hat who was caught on CCTV pushing a laden luggage trolley at Zaventem airport alongside two others who, investigators said, later blew themselves up in the terminal, killing at least 10 people. Officials said about 20 died on the train close to European Union institutions. Islamic State said that too was a suicide attack. The tolls were vague because of the carnage at both sites. The coordinated assault triggered security alerts across Europe and drew global expressions of support, four days after Brussels police had captured the prime surviving suspect in Islamic State's attacks on Paris last November in which 130 people were killed. Belgian authorities were still checking whether the attacks were linked to the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, said Federal Prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw, although Belgian security experts said the level of organization involved suggested they had been in preparation for more than just a few days. As the city began to emerge from a day of lockdown, a major police search operation was still under way after dark in the northern borough of Schaerbeek. Investigators said they had found a nail bomb and an Islamic State flag in an apartment. Private broadcaster VTM said police went to the area after a taxi driver reported driving three people to the airport and became suspicious when they did not let him touch their baggage. Last week, explosives and an Islamic flag were found during a raid on an apartment in the south of Brussels. Police also found a fresh fingerprint of Abdeslam's there, putting them on to his trail. It was not clear if Abdeslam had been involved at that stage in planning the airport attack. 'CALIPHATE SOLDIERS' In a statement, Islamic State said "caliphate soldiers, strapped with suicide vests and carrying explosive devices and machineguns" had targeted the airport and metro station, adding that they had set off their vests amidst the crowds. It was not clear, however, that the attackers used vests. The suspects were photographed pushing bags on trolleys and witnesses said many of the airport dead and wounded were hit mostly in the legs, possibly indicating blasts at floor level. "A photograph of three male suspects was taken at Zaventem. Two of them seem to have committed suicide attacks. The third, wearing a light-colored jacket and a hat, is actively being sought," prosecutor Leeuw told a news conference. A government official said the third suspect had been seen running away from the airport building. Police later found and detonated a third explosive device at the airport. Security commentators noted that the two men in dark clothes who officials said had died were both wearing gloves on their left hands only. One expert speculated they might have concealed detonators. The man in the hat was not wearing any gloves. "If you recognize this individual or if you have information on this attack, please contact the investigators," a police wanted notice for the third man read. "Discretion assured." Belgian police appealed to travelers who had been at the airport and metro station to send in any photographs taken before the attacks in their efforts to identify the bombers. After questioning Abdeslam, police issued a wanted notice on Monday, identifying 25-year-old Najim Laachraoui as linked to the Paris attacks. The poor quality of Tuesday's CCTV images and of the Laachraoui wanted poster left open whether he might be the person caught on the airport cameras. Citizens of the United States, Spain and Sweden were among the injured, their governments reported. SHOUTS IN ARABIC A witness said he heard shouts in Arabic and shots shortly before two blasts struck in a crowded airport departure lounge at the airport. Belgian media said police found a Kalashnikov assault rifle next to the body of an attacker. A lockdown imposed after the attacks was eased and commuters and students headed home as public transport partially reopened. Islamic State, which controls parts of Iraq and Syria and has supporters and sympathizers around the world, said: "We promise the crusader alliance against the Islamic State that they will have black days in return for their aggression against the Islamic State." Belgium, home to the EU and the headquarters of the NATO military alliance, has sent warplanes to take part in operations against Islamic State in the Middle East. Austrian Horst Pilger, waiting on a flight with his family when the attackers struck, said his children had thought fireworks were going off, but he instantly knew an assault was under way. "My wife and I both thought 'bomb'. We looked into each other's eyes," he told Reuters. "Five or 10 seconds later there was a major, major, major blast in close vicinity. It was massive." Pilger, who works at the European Commission, said the whole ceiling collapsed and smoke flooded the building. 'BLACK MOMENT' U.S. President Barack Obama led calls of support to Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel. "We must be together regardless of nationality or race or faith in fighting against the scourge of terrorism," Obama told a news conference in Cuba. "We can and we will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world." Michel spoke at a Brussels news conference of a "black moment" for his country. "What we had feared has come to pass." In Paris, the Eiffel Tower was lit up with the colors of the Belgian flag on Tuesday evening in a show of solidarity with Brussels. The Twitter hashtag #JeSuisBruxelles was trending as were cartoons riffing on the theme of the city's irreverent emblem, Manneken Pis, a small fountain statue of a boy urinating. In the images, he is cheekily relieving himself on a Kalashnikov. Brussels airport will remain closed on Wednesday but the metro, trains and other transport will open, at least in part. Alphonse Youla, 40, who works at the airport, told Reuters he heard a man shouting out in Arabic before the first explosion. "Then the glass ceiling of the airport collapsed." "I helped carry out five people dead, their legs destroyed," he said, his hands covered in the victims' blood. Video showed devastation in the hall with ceiling tiles and glass scattered across the floor. Bloodied bodies lay around. Britain, Germany, France and the Netherlands, all wary of spillover from conflict in Syria, were among states announcing extra security measures. Security was tightened at the Dutch and French borders with Belgium. The blast hit the train as it left the platform at Maelbeek station, close to EU institutions, heading to the city center. VRT carried a photograph of a metro carriage at a platform with doors and windows completely blown out, its structure deformed and interior mangled and charred. We are at war and we have been subjected to acts of war in Europe for the last few months," said French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, who is due in Brussels on Wednesday for a previously arranged visit. Train services on the cross-channel tunnel from London to Brussels were suspended. Britain advised its citizens to avoid all but essential travel to Brussels. While most European airports are known for stringent screening procedures of passengers and their baggage, that typically takes place only once passengers have checked in and are heading to the departure gates. Abdeslam, the prime surviving suspect for the Paris attacks on a stadium, cafes and a concert hall, was captured by Belgian police after a shootout on Friday. Interior Minister, Jan Jambon, said on Monday the country was on high alert for a revenge attack. (Additional reporting by Andrew Heavens in London, Ali Abdelaty and Eric Knecht in Cairo, Barbara Lewis, Robert-Jan Bartunek, Clement Rossignol, Julia Fioretti, Meredith McGrath, Foo Yun Chee, Robin Emmott, Jan Strupczewski, Bate Felix and Alastair Macdonald in Brussels and Jochen Elegeert in Amsterdam; Editing by Ralph Boulton, David Stamp and Grant McCool) Brussels (AFP) - Belgian police issued a wanted notice for a suspect in the bomb attack on Brussels airport on Tuesday in which at least 14 people were killed. A CCTV picture of the suspect shows a bespectacled man with a goatee beard, wearing a white jacket and black hat, and pushing a trolley with a large black bag. Authorities earlier released a grainy picture of the same man alongside two men with dark hair who were also pushing trollies with similar bags. Both of those men wore black gloves on their left hands. Belgian officials said there were two bomb blasts in the main airport hall on Tuesday morning, at least one of which was a suicide bombing. A third bomb that failed to explode was found later, a regional governor said. "Three bombs were brought into the building, of which one failed to explode," Lodewijk De Witte, the governor of Flemish Brabant province, told a press conference at the airport. He said it was later destroyed in a controlled explosion. Brussels (AFP) - It is too early to make any link between Tuesday's attacks on Brussels and those in Paris in November, the federal prosecutor said, just days after a key Paris suspect was arrested in the Belgian capital. "It is too early to establish a link with the Paris attacks," federal prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw told a news conference with Prime Minister Charles Michel. Belgian police arrested Salah Abdeslam Friday after a series of raids in Brussels in connection with the Paris attacks which left 130 people dead and were claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group. Brussels (AFP) - Belgium security forces tightened security at nuclear plants across the country after deadly attacks in the capital city of Brussels, the Belga news agency said. "Surveillance is stepped up with added security measures at nuclear plants," the agency reported. "Vehicles are being checked with police and army on site," the agency added. In February, investigators probing the Paris attacks found video footage of a senior Belgian nuclear official at the property of a key suspect. By Piya Sinha-Roy LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Superheroes are not the only ones seeking redemption in the new "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" film. Actor Ben Affleck also wanted a do-over playing a superhero after being panned in Marvel's 2003 film "Daredevil." "In the last superhero movie that I played, I was not happy with (it)," Affleck, 43, told Reuters. "I just thought it was not up to what it should have been." In "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice," which will be out in theaters on Friday, Affleck becomes the latest A-list star to don Batman's black mask and cowl, this time to take on Superman in the sequel to 2013's "Man of Steel." The two superheroes come to blows over responsibility for the controversial mass deaths of civilians in "Man of Steel" as the public wrestles with what kind of superheroes it really wants. Affleck's Batman and alter-ego, reclusive billionaire Bruce Wayne, is older than the previous on-screen iterations and also wearier, still scarred by the death of his parents and from fighting thugs in Gotham. Numerous actors have donned the iconic batsuit, including Michael Keaton, George Clooney and most recently, Christian Bale in Christopher Nolan's "Dark Knight" franchise from 2005 to 2012, which grossed more than $2 billion worldwide. Affleck said he wanted to do a superhero movie "that really worked as a real, substantial, thoughtful movie," and will continue the Batman role in three Warner Bros' films - "Suicide Squad" later this year, superhero ensemble "The Justice League Part One" in 2017 and "The Justice League Part Two" in 2019. The casting of Affleck was dubbed "Batffleck" and initially received mixed reactions as fans debated whether he would live up to Bale's critically acclaimed portrayal. Affleck acknowledged he was "following in very big footsteps" and said his Batman is "a little bit more of a brawler, he's more physical." He said Batman also would be "contemplative" going forward. "He's sort of looking for something," he said. Henry Cavill, who plays Superman, said Affleck's Bruce Wayne harnessed "this jadedness, this world-weariness. It's almost like there's a core of justice there but surrounded by scar tissue." As Affleck is putting his own imprint on Batman, Cavill indicated he is not done putting his own twist on Superman. "We're seeing the guy making mistakes, we're seeing the guy having emotional reactions to stuff," Cavill said. "When we get into those final development stages of Superman, then you'll start to see my stamp on the character." (Reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy; Editing by Jill Serjeant and Bill Trott) Bernie Sanders' presidential hopes look all but dashed heading into the "Western Tuesday" primary elections. His opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, holds a near-insurmountable 760-delegate lead over the Vermont senator, and looks to widen the gap with wins in Arizona, Utah and Idaho, on Tuesday. But as the remaining candidates ride west this week, it's worth noting their respective plans to address the challenges facing Native Americans a segment of the population with strong representation in all three states. Turns out, there's not much to see: The only candidate with an articulated plan for America's indigenous peoples is Sanders. "Native Americans are the first Americans, yet they have for far too long been treated as third class citizens," Sanders' campaign page reads. "The United States must not just honor Native American treaty rights and tribal sovereignty, it must also move away from a relationship of paternalism and control and toward one of deference and support." Bernie Sanders greets supporters in Flagstaff, Arizona. Here are excerpts from some of the plans he outlines: Supporting Tribal Sovereignty and Tribal Jurisdiction: Tribes must have the ability to prosecute non-Native people who commit crimes on tribal land, and have greater jurisdiction over prosecuting all crimes, including family disputes. Bernie will fight to provide Tribes with the resources for effective law enforcement and tribal courts ... Protecting Sacred Places and Native American Cultures: Native Americans must be empowered to maintain and pass on traditional religious beliefs, languages and social practices without fear of discrimination or suppression ... Fighting Climate Change and Promoting Environmental Protection: ... In the first 100 days as president, Bernie will convene a climate summit with the world's best engineers, climate scientists, policy experts, activists and indigenous communities to chart the best strategy against climate change. Bernie's climate plan calls for an end to fracking for natural gas and mountaintop removal coal mining. Story continues Five candidates remain in the race for president today: Texas Sen. Ted Cruz, Ohio Gov. John Kasich, businessman Donald Trump, Clinton and Sanders. Of those five, only two Clinton and Sanders have anything resembling a plan to address racial inequality in the U.S. But while Clinton's plan deals mostly with issues foregrounded by the movement for black lives, including securing voting rights and ending the era of mass incarceration, she only mentions Native Americans in the context of these broader racial justice concerns. Sanders, meanwhile, has an entire section on his "Issues" page dedicated to "Empowering Tribal Nations." Sanders greets supporters in Flagstaff, Arizona. From a numerical standpoint: Indigenous people are not a huge portion of America's voting public. Native Americans and Alaska Natives make up just 1.2% of the population, the smallest portion of any group counted by the U.S. Census, barring Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders. But the long and brutal history of anti-Native violence in the U.S. along with that they are, in fact, the original Americans makes whatever happens to them a de facto referendum on the state of the union. And right now, they face a staggering number of disparities, especially pertaining to health. Aside from facing poverty, gendered violence and police violence victimization rates much higher than the general population, Native people are also among the most at-risk for diabetes, alcoholism, infant mortality and suicide, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of Minority Health. Sanders speaks to supporters in Flagstaff, Arizona. But despite Native Americans' small population size, Sanders has dedicated a deliberate chunk of his time speaking to tribal concerns. He has visited Navajo Territories in Arizona, spent time with tribal leaders in Kansas and even co-sponsored a bill the Save Oak Flat Act designed to stop the transfer of sacred Native lands in Arizona's Tonto National Forest to foreign corporations, who plan to turn it into a copper mine. As Sanders' presidential aspirations grow further and further out of reach, it remains remarkable that he's the only candidate to have specifically addressed Native concerns. That ignoring indigenous issues is a viable route for any presidential candidate speaks to how marginalized Native communities really are, and how far the U.S. has to go toward a truly equitable future. h/t Indian Country Today Media Network Brussels (AFP) - The Belgian capital was hit by deadly bomb attacks on Tuesday, barely a week after a police raid on an apartment that led to the dramatic capture of the last fugitive from the Paris massacre. Salah Abdeslam, Europe's most wanted man, was arrested Friday in a shootout with police in the gritty Molenbeek district of Brussels where the Paris attacks were hatched. The 26-year-old Frenchman -- who had been on the run for four months -- had told investigators he was planning another strike in Brussels, the home of the European Union and NATO. The city in the crosshairs of the French attacks probe has witnessed several lockdowns since the Paris carnage claimed by the Islamic State group, and is currently at its second highest level of terror alert. Here is a look at the developments over the past week: - Stumbling on jihadists - On Tuesday, March 15, Belgian and French police stumble across jihadists during a "cold" apartment search linked to the November 13 attacks in Paris. A shootout ensues in the Forest district of southern Brussels, during which Algerian Mohamed Belkaid, 35, is shot dead and four police officers, one a French woman, are wounded. Along with his Kalashnikov rifle, Belkaid had the Islamic State group's black flag by his side, police say. Investigators found Abdeslam's fingerprints at the flat and say he probably fled as the gunbattle broke out. Media reports say the 26-year-old Belgian-born fugitive erred by using an old cellphone to call up a friend to find another place to hole up. - Abdeslam caught - Three days later, on Friday, March 18, Abdeslam and four other people are arrested in a police raid in the largely immigrant Molenbeek district, barely a kilometre (half a mile) from his family's home. Belgian media said police were alerted by an unusually high number of pizzas ordered at the house. Abdeslam -- the last survivor of the suspected 10-member jihadist gang directly involved in the Paris attacks -- was shot in the leg during his arrest, and transferred to a maximum-security prison unit in the scenic city of Bruges. Story continues His lawyer has launched a legal fight to prevent his extradition to France. Abdeslam told investigators he had planned to blow himself up at the Stade de France Stadium outside Paris but backed out at the last minute. He then managed to get through three police checks on his way out of France on the night of the attacks. The one-time petty criminal also told interrogators he had been preparing a strike in Brussels, a claim prosecutors said appeared to be backed up by their discovery of large amounts of weapons and a new network around him. Police said they had found the DNA of a newly identified suspect -- Najim Laachraoui -- on explosives used in the Paris attacks. - Jihadists strike back - On Tuesday, March 22, around 35 people are killed and 200 wounded when two explosions rip through the check-in hall at the main Brussels airport and a third hits a train at Maalbeek metro station, near the European Union's headquarters. Witnesses say there were shots and shouts in Arabic at the airport before the attacks. An airport security officer describes mangled bodies and "total panic everywhere". Belgium, which had already raised its terror threat to the maximum level of four, shuts down the entire transport system. The assaults are claimed by the IS group, saying it was targeting the "crusader state" for "fighting Islam and its people". Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said there were fears more suspects could still be at large in Brussels. Belgian authorities published surveillance camera images showing three male suspects pushing trollies with suitcases past the check-in area. By Reese Ewing GUAXUPE, Brazil (Reuters) - Whichever of the many forecasts for Brazil's maturing arabica coffee crop end up on the mark, there is no doubt the harvest will be large and have more big screen beans. It will also likely to be of excellent quality as La Nina kicks in. On a recent trip by Reuters through the heart of Brazil's main arabica belt along the border between Sao Paulo and Minas Gerais, the country's two leading growing states, agronomists said farms were fully recovered from two years of drought. Trees were laden with large, dense and ripening fruit with low incidence of disease and pests. "The volume of the crop is no longer at risk. It's big and the weather is not going to change the size much," Carlos Fidelis, an economist at Brazil's biggest coffee cooperative Cooxupe, said while touring farms in the region. Factbox of coffee forecasts: Fidelis said trees in Guaxupe, a hilly region in southern Minas Gerais, a state that produces 75 percent of Brazil's arabica, were holding a normal distribution of large beans, typically classified by screen sizes of 17 or greater and preferred by roasters in Italy and Germany. Over the past two harvests, damage from drought and hot weather caused the crop to produce smaller beans. "This will be the first year in the past three where larger beans will be over 30 percent of the harvest," said Ezelino Tessarini, an engineer at the Coopinhal cooperative. Yields on the 10,000 hectares around the co-op will improve by 23 percent from last year to 28-to-30 bags a hectare, Tessarini said from a receiving warehouse in Espirito Santo do Pinhal, in Sao Paulo. Meteorologists forecast the coffee belt to shift to the dry season ahead of harvest, which is still a month away as beans finish filling out and maturing. Warming Pacific waters along the equator, known as El Nino conditions, contributed to the rainy weather in southeast Brazil in recent months. But meteorologist Marco Antonio dos Santos at forecaster Somar, said the Pacific was cooling quickly, which would lead to drier La Nina weather as soon as April. If sunny skies during harvest are confirmed, it bodes well for the eventual taste of beans. Moist weather when beans are cured taints them with an undesirable bitter taste. "When the Pacific was warming, we saw lots of rain, but not this year," Santos said, forecasting rains this week over the coffee belt but then increasingly drier weather ahead. (Reporting by Reese Ewing; Editing by Tom Brown) By Caroline Stauffer SAO PAULO (Reuters) - Brazilian prosecutors said on Tuesday they uncovered systematic corruption at engineering conglomerate Odebrecht, with an office that paid bribes on work for World Cup soccer stadiums and Olympics legacy projects. Police had arrest orders for 15 people in the latest phase of a massive two-year investigation of a kickback scheme at state-run oil firm Petrobras, including Odebrecht executives and money launderers, said Police Chief Igor Romario. Several top executives and politicians have already been imprisoned in the case, which threatens to play a role in toppling President Dilma Rousseff, who is facing impeachment proceedings for an unrelated matter involving alleged illegal mismanagement of the budget. Rousseff's political mentor and predecessor, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has been charged with money laundering and fraud. A top senator has also said Rousseff, a former chairwoman of the Petrobras' board when much of the alleged graft took place, knew about the scheme. Both Lula and Rousseff deny any wrongdoing. The political crisis comes as Brazil grapples with a deep economic recession and an epidemic of the mosquito-borne Zika virus, all of which is tarnishing the nation as Rio de Janeiro prepares to host the Olympic Games in August. Carlos Fernando dos Santos Lima, one of the lead prosecutors on the case, said he had evidence of bribes paid on soccer stadiums built to host the 2014 World Cup, and in particular Sao Paulo's Arena Corinthians. "There is a system - it's even automated - to control these payments in the oil and gas sector, infrastructure, football stadiums ..." Lima said. Odebrecht was involved in building or refurbishing at least four of Brazil's 12 World Cup stadiums, including Corinthians, a new 1 billion reais ($278 million) stadium that hosted the opening match - and will also host Olympic soccer games. Police also said they are looking into bribes at the Porto Maravilha, or Marvelous Port, a regeneration of Rio de Janeiro's downtown port area that has been heralded by authorities as one of the great legacies of the Olympics. Tuesday's police operation, code-named "Xepa," uncovered a parallel bribe-payment scheme to siphon money from Petroleo Brasileiro SA, or Petrobras . Prosecutors said their probe proved that Marcelo Odebrecht, the former CEO and scion of a billionaire family controlling Latin America's largest construction firm, was in charge of the bribery operation, which continued after his arrest in June of last year. He was sentenced to 19 years in prison after being convicted of corruption and money laundering. Odebrecht and other major engineering and construction companies are accused of colluding to overcharge Petrobras for work and using the excess as bribes in "Operation Car Wash," as the graft investigation has dubbed it. ARENA CORINTHIANS Police said their latest operation turned up evidence that 14 Odebrecht executives sent requests for "parallel payments," opening a whole new line of investigation. One of those was Antonio Roberto Gavioli, responsible for Odebrecht's Arena Corinthians contract. Police said he solicited 500,000 reais ($140,000) for someone code-named "Timao" - the Portuguese nickname for the Corinthians soccer club. Andre Luiz de Oliveira, vice president of Corinthians, was detained for questioning in the case and was arrested after police found illegal weapons in his home. Corinthians said in a statement allegations of irregularities would be investigated. Before the World Cup, detractors questioned why Sao Paulo built an entire new stadium when the city already had an arena with adequate seating on the western side of town. One answer was Lula, who openly lobbied for his favorite team to get a stadium it could use after the World Cup. But the estimated cost of Arena Corinthians nearly doubled and it was barely ready in time. Odebrecht confirmed the arrests of people tied to its group and said some of its offices had been raided. It added that the company has cooperated with the investigation. Attorneys for those arrested could not immediately be reached for comment. In just one of the accounts Odebrecht used to pay bribes, prosecutors found 66 million reais ($18.5 million). They have identified some 30 recipients of the bribes, but refused to name them. Aside from executives and money launderers, around 50 politicians are under investigation in Brasilia for benefiting from the scheme. The Petrobras scandal and its offshoots have spurred calls for Rousseff's ouster. Impeachment proceedings against Rousseff have begun, though they are tied to an unrelated issue over alleged mismanagement of public accounts. Former Workers' Party ally, Senator Delcidio do Amaral, said in plea bargain testimony that Lula and Rousseff knew about the Petrobras scandal. Both deny any wrongdoing. The investigation of Petrobras contracts has led prosecutors to find fraud in other government contracts and to bribes in countries like Argentina and Angola, said Lima, the prosecutor. "Clearly, 'Car Wash' has a focus in Petrobras, but we are combating corruption, if we have evidence of corruption in any company, in any party and in any government, we are going to pursue the investigation," he said. ($1 = 3.6 reais) (Reporting by Caroline Stauffer; Additional reporting by Silvio Cascione and Anthony Boadle in Brasilia; Editing by W Simon, Paul Simao and Dan Grebler) [This article contains spoilers for the Monday's episode of Better Call Saul, "Bali Ha'i"] Michael Slovis' cinematography work on Breaking Bad earned five Emmy nominations and helped establish the template for one of the most visually distinctive shows in television history. Taking occasional breaks from shooting the AMC series, Slovis became one of the show's standout directors as well, helming episodes including "Cornered," "Live Free or Die" and "Confessions." Slovis has continued to build a reputation as a top-shelf drama director, working on shows like The Walking Dead, The Affair and Game of Thrones, though that busy schedule kept him out of the rotation for the first season of Better Call Saul. Monday's episode marked Slovis' Saul debut, an hour filled with memorable moments including a hilariously relatable insomnia opening, a tense two-minute uninterrupted shot of Mike searching a dark house for intruders and another classic Mike/Hector parlay. Read More: 'Breaking Bad' Favorite Talks 'Better Call Saul' Return: "I Hope They Keep Me Going for a While" The Hollywood Reporter spoke with Slovis about the differences between Saul and Breaking Bad, this episode's challenges and his upcoming gig as producer-director on AMC's Preacher. I hadn't known you were directing an episode this season, but within five minutes, I'd written down in my notes, "Is this a Slovis episode?" You're kidding! (Laughs) Everybody always says that it's harder to do that on TV, but do you see yourself as having directorial fingerprints with this material? People tell me they see it. I don't see it myself very clearly, because I'm all about the most efficient and non-intrusive way of telling the story. If it's true, I'm gonna start looking at my stuff more critically moving forward, because I want the shots to be pretty, I want the graphic language to be pretty, but I also don't want it to be what's noticed. I want it to be integrated into the story. I really try, when I go to different places, to make myself fit in and not impose anything. So when I did Thrones or I did Man in the High Castle, I looked at what was done before then and I tried to adapt or learn the language that was written and work within that genre or established language, but put my own little spin on it. Story continues Most episodic directors tend to be guests, but given your relationship with Breaking Bad, is it like a homecoming for you? The first thing they did when they picked me up at the airport was, the Teamster captain said, "Bring him to us." I didn't even go to the office. They took me to the back of the studio where all the trucks were parked and all the Teamsters and drivers had to say hello. So yes, it was very much a very warm homecoming, because it was 90 percent of the crew that I had built for Breaking Bad, and it was lovely and it was fun.... It was one of the highlights of my year, for sure. Read More: 'Better Call Saul' Star on Jimmy and Kim's "Authentic" Bond and Big "Sacrifice" Having shot and directed so much in this general world, what is the dynamic that you have with Better Call Saul DP Arthur Albert? Is it different from when you guest direct elsewhere? You have to understand that Arthur and I have a 35-year relationship. One of the first jobs I had in the industry was working as a gaffer for Arthur when he was shooting after-school specials in New York City. So we've known each other for many, many, many years, and then it was me who hired Arthur on Breaking Bad to come in when I directed, and then he finished up on the last season when I had to move on because we ran a little bit over. Not because of me! So Arthur knows me and I know Arthur extremely well, so because of that I would say we have a shorthand with each other. We communicate very, very clearly, and it's just short little snippets of conversation that get us to where we have to be, and it really helps make the day move along quite efficiently. Breaking Bad was such a unique-looking show, and you're part of the group responsible for setting so much of that template. Can you quantify how Saul is aesthetically different from Breaking Bad? Absolutely! If you look at the formal frames of Saul, you look at the fact that the camera is on the dolly 90 percent of the time, you look at how we're using zoom lenses to do slow zooms in -- we're not afraid of those on Saul. Hand-held, which was what I called the "white noise" of Breaking Bad, is used only for effect on Saul, and even more than on Breaking Bad, Vince [Gilligan] and Peter [Gould] have really embraced the idea of "less is more" when it comes to cutting. So you saw my episode, so you saw the one-r where Jonathan [Banks] walks into the house and we go through the entire house and I made a point of seeing almost every wall of that house, so that you would never guess what was going to happen in that house happens. Or the walk with Howard and Kim through the law office, which goes on for a minute and a half or whatever. Vince and Peter were very clear at the beginning that if you want to do things like that, they're behind you 100 percent. I'm somebody who believes that cutting should serve the purpose of relaying new information to the audience, because a cut is disruptive and the old school way of telling stories when television was in its infancy or developing in the '60s or '70s, of turning in five different-sized shots for every scene, and then the producer goes and cuts it into a scene later on -- it just doesn't work anymore. So the whole cinematic approach that we were part of developing and contributing to on Breaking Bad has now developed an audience that is very sophisticated in terms of what they watch. And they get it. Whether they are aware of it, consciously or not, they can feel and see the difference between shows that are really well choreographed and well blocked with the camera and shows that aren't. I loved the lighting in that shot, because it's such a conspicuously poorly lit house and I kept thinking of how dangerous almost every step must've been to make sure you had enough light for viewers to process the necessary information. How tough was it find that balance? One of the things that we do, from a lighting point of view, is that for night, we got very heavily into either silhouettes or backlights, for somebody who's cinematically aware, and it's impossible to do that in every direction, because once the camera moves 180 degrees around someone, now you're into a front-lit situation. Only somebody as skilled as Arthur really could have made something like that happen with a knuckle-headed director like myself who comes in and says, "I want to go into the kitchen in this direction and then turn 180 degrees and go back out." I talked it over with Arthur, and I said, "I would like to do this in one, because I want that cut to mean something," and he said, "Yeah, we can do that." It took a little time, but it was worth it, because other than that, you're doing what? Two or three set-ups and each set-up is half an hour, so the sum total is that you get a more emotional, more appropriate way of telling the story, and yet maybe you take the same amount or less time. Even though it may seem like it's a greater allocation of time than should be appropriated to an episodic television shoot, but in the end, if you're committing to that and you're not going to cover it from other angles, then ultimately you're probably saving some time. And what is Jonathan's reaction when you ask him to do it this way? You spoke before about relationships, Jonathan and I, for many years now and ever since we met on Breaking Bad, have always connected with each other. I live on the East Coast and he lives on the West Coast, so we don't see each other that often, but whenever we do get back together, it's as if we never parted. So Jonathan's line to me is constantly, "Whatever you want, Mikey. Whatever you want." He's game for anything. He's such a fine actor. There are certain actors who you can work with in terms of technical stuff and say, "I like to do this," and they respond as if it's a challenge. Bryan [Cranston] is that way. Rhea [Seehorn] is that way. Certainly Jonathan is that way, and Bob [Odenkirk] is that way. And then there are other kinds of people that you work with and if they have to think too much about the mechanics of it, you kind of lose something. So you adjust. Everybody is different. Everybody brings a little something different to the table. Read More: 'Better Call Saul' Co-Star Michael Mando: Nacho Is a "Peasant Who Wants to Be King" Sticking with lighting a bit, the episode's other great bit of darkness is the ice cream shop meeting between Hector and Mike. Is that something where it's just a gift from the location scout or you see the location and have to figure out how to make that place work? One of the great advantages of having shot and DP-ed as much as I have is that I go into places and I just see things. I knew what the scene was going to be about, and I knew that the scene couldn't be lit the way that an ice cream shop would normally be lit, in terms of all the fluorescents being on and just brightly lit. It just wouldn't have had the impact that a scene with those characters, the reassembling of those characters from another period of our lives, would have had. I fell in love with the location, and I went to Vince and Peter and I said, "I'd like to do this, but I'd like to modify it a little bit, create something of an expressionistic representation of what's going on in there." It's really funny, because Steve Litecky, the gaffer, he had to put in a florescent light in the one place where there wasn't a light in that room. So much of this episode is like that, with the darkness/light exploration. Talk a bit about the opening scene, the insomnia short film. How much of that was scripted and how much was just you guys having fun? A lot of it was us having fun. What Vince and Peter did was they gave us examples of what they'd like to do, and they said, "Here, tell the story of a guy who can't fall asleep. We're not telling you what to do, but here are some suggestions." So it was like jazz, it was call and response. Genny and I and the folks down here on the set, we all threw out ideas, and then we picked the ones that we all liked the best and the ones that we thought we could do. Some of them I made up, like looking down on him laying on his back and throwing that woven ball up from the ceiling, and the other one looking up on him trying to drop them into the basket, with him all tiny up there. We actually sat with everybody and said, "What are games with balls?" and then we took ones that we felt we could put together with household items. That's how that evolved. I know you've been working on Preacher. So far, I've only seen the pilot, but that pilot was pretty crazy. What has it been like just getting to play around in that sandbox? Because I am the producer/director, I'm actually involved in the construction of the sandbox, so I am able to bring the experience of shooting and directing to the table and to, early on I think, help everyone determine what's important and how we should allocate our resources. Because I've shot for so many years and directed around and met so many other directors, it was very easy for me to go through and look at who we were going to hire -- same thing with directors of photography, whose names I was going to put on the list and whose names we were going to interview. Then, obviously, it becomes a collective decision with everybody and final approvals with Sam Catlin and Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg and Sony and AMC, but we were able to, in a pretty efficient way, move through that decision-making process. Was there an early conversation you had with Evan, Seth and Sam where you realized that you were all simpatico on what the show wanted and needed to be? Scott Winant directed one of the early episodes here and he turned to me and he said, "I've done a lot of fantasy or comic book-based episodic shows in my life, and none have been as deeply layered as this. It's extraordinary." And he's right, because it crosses over from a full-on comic or graphic novel world, but it has feet and roots in our world and in what's universal about everybody. It's a very interesting hybrid. We're very lucky in that Sam has really thought this out and has very, very clear ideas of what it is that he would like. What you will see moving forward is very much the result of Sam and Seth and Evan putting their marks on almost everything exactly the way that Vince did on Breaking Bad. One of the things that was terrific about Breaking Bad is that even though Vince put his finger on stuff, and Vince and Peter did the same on Better Call Saul, when you're that well informed as a guest director, it's not limiting. It's empowering, because you're very clear about what these people want. The more defined the canvas that they give you to work on, the broader your brushstrokes can be when you tell the story. Better Call Saul airs Mondays at 10 p.m. on AMC. London (AFP) - Some supporters of the campaign for Britain to leave the European Union claimed the Brussels attacks Tuesday bolstered the case for a UK exit. Mike Hookem, defence spokesman for the anti-EU, anti-mass immigration UK Independence Party, pointed the finger at the EU's passport-free Schengen zone, which 22 of the 28 EU countries are part of. "The fact that terrorists can strike at the heart of the EU with apparent ease shows that they are perfectly placed to exploit the lax security situation created by the Schengen agreement and the EU's open-door policies," he said. Speaking from the European Parliament in Brussels, he claimed thousands of jihadists trained by the Islamic State group were roaming free on the continent. "How many more times will innocent people have to suffer at the hands of these animals before the EU realise their policies and their responses to incidents such as this are not working?" he said. British Prime Minister David Cameron was asked about the comments. "It's not appropriate at this time to make any of those sorts of remarks," he said. "What we should be doing today is expressing our sympathies and condolences with the people in Belgium." The bloodshed came four days after the arrest in Brussels of Salah Abdeslam -- a key suspect in the Paris terror attacks claimed by the Islamic State group. In a statement posted online, IS claimed responsibility for Tuesday's deadly attacks in the EU's capital. Britain's three main Leave campaign groups -- Grassroots Out, Leave.EU and Vote Leave -- did not issue statements about the attacks. Katie Hopkins, a newspaper columnist who regularly sparks outrage on Twitter with blunt remarks, blamed German Chancellor Angela Merkel for inviting in a million refugees, and the "liberal left" that backed the move. "Next time you hear someone say we are safer in the EU -- remember Brussels. Seen as the heart of Europe, it is now jihadi central. #brexit," she wrote on Twitter. Story continues Allison Pearson, a columnist for The Daily Telegraph newspaper, tweeted: "Brussels, de facto capital of the EU, is also the jihadist capital of Europe. And the Remainers dare to say we're safer in the EU! #Brexit". The comments triggered a backlash on Twitter from people with opposing views. Britain votes in a referendum on June 23 on whether it should leave the EU or remain a member. London (AFP) - The United Kingdom warned its citizens against travel to Brussels and said two British nationals were injured in the deadly attacks on the Belgian capital Tuesday. "The Belgian authorities are currently advising against travel to Brussels. You are advised to follow the instructions of the Belgian security authorities," the Foreign Office said, updating its official travel advice. The ministry told British nationals in Belgium: "You should remain alert and vigilant, and stay away from crowded places." In a separate statement, the Foreign Office said it was assisting two Britons who were wounded in the attacks on the main Brussels airport and a central metro station. "We are in close contact with local authorities in Brussels following the shocking attacks that have taken place, and we stand together with the Belgian people at this time," the ministry said. "Embassy staff are providing consular assistance to two injured Britons and are ready to support any further British nationals that have been affected." Up to 1.8 million British nationals visit Belgium every year, according to Foreign Office figures. Eurostar train services between London and Brussels were suspended after the morning attacks but a limited service resumed later Tuesday. However, "we advise customers not to travel today unless essential," Eurostar said. Meanwhile Prime Minister David Cameron's spokeswoman said specialist police officers were being sent to Brussels to help with the investigation. "They will be gathering together as much material as possible that can help them with the investigation," she said. "It is working on the investigation, trying to work out what happened, who is responsible." Britain has already announced increased security at international transport hubs. LONDON (Reuters) - Prime Minister David Cameron said he would chair a crisis response meeting following explosions in Brussels on Tuesday. "I am shocked and concerned by the events in Brussels. We will do everything we can to help," Cameron said on Twitter, adding that he would chair a meeting of the COBRA response committee. "I will be chairing a COBRA meeting on the events in Brussels later this morning," Cameron added. (Writing by Guy Faulconbridge; editing by Michael Holden; editing by Michael Holden) By Philip Blenkinsop BRUSSELS (Reuters) - Horst Pilger said his children thought fireworks were going off when the first explosion struck on Tuesday, but he instantly knew that Brussels Airport was under attack. "My wife and I both thought 'bomb'. We looked into each other's eyes," he told Reuters. "Five or 10 seconds later there was a major, major, major blast in close vicinity. It was massive." Pilger, an Austrian who works for the European Union, was planning a short family trip to Rome and, two hours before departure, was sitting at a coffee shop in the main departure hall. "We were just halfway through the coffee and there was a boom. It was a bit distant, but fairly loud," Pilger said by telephone from a hotel opposite the terminal building where travelers have been take by airport staff. "Later on, the kids told me they'd thought it was fireworks," he said. But the second blast left no doubt. Pilger, who works at the European Commission, said the whole ceiling collapsed and smoke flooded the building. "We were very scared," he said. Confined to the hotel for hours after the attacks, with a later bomb exploding at a Brussels metro station, Pilger said he was also present when there was a subsequent blast, probably a controlled explosion by security services. "Around 2 o'clock, we were told to go to the back of the building now. So obviously they knew there was some sort of explosion going to happen... That explosion really destroyed the terminal building more than the previous one had." (Editing by Alastair Macdonald) ROME (Reuters) - Deadly attacks in Brussels have underlined the need for the European Union to develop a common defense and security strategy, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi said on Tuesday. Speaking after at least 30 people were killed in coordinated bombings in the Belgian capital, Renzi said Europe's enemies were sometimes homegrown, often protected by a code of honor and silence within their own communities. "We need therefore a security program that knows no boundaries, without any let-up or rest. But we also need a cultural, political and social program," he said in a speech. "The European Union needs to invest in a single defense and security structure. Europe has been discussing and arguing since 1954 about a common defense policy," he said. He offered no specifics, but said the continent's secret services would achieve better results by working together. Italy has in the past pushed for a more integrated European defense policy outside the context of the U.S.-led NATO military alliance. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the bomb attacks on Brussels airport and at a metro station, a news agency affiliated with the group said. Renzi said Europe would ultimately defeat its foes, but warned that it would take time. "Those who today are promising miraculous solutions don't realize how long this will go on for, and how difficult it will be. They don't realize how superficial they are being. Those who today are shouting 'let's shut the borders' don't understand that our enemies are often inside our cities." (Reporting by Crispian Balmer; Editing by Mark Heinrich) Images of famous Belgian cartoon Tintin have been widely shared Tuesday following the Brussels terror attacks. The line-drawn boy is depicted next to his dog, Snowy, with a single tear running down his face. In some images, his shirt is emblazoned with the Belgian flag. Sharing of the image follows two separate suicide bombing attacks that rocked the Belgian capital this morning, the first in the departure hall of the airport just before 8 a.m. local time, and the second inside a subway train station. As of this afternoon at least 34 people have died and hundreds are injured. The sharing of the images is similar to the global outpouring of support on social media that followed the dual attacks in Paris last January and last November. The first attack there at the offices of satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo, in which several prominent political cartoonists were killed, the slogan Je Suis Charlie (I am Charlie) became the rallying cry around the world. Following the November attacks, a simple Eiffel Tower peace sign created by artist Jean Jullien became the dominant image. Tintin was first created by Belgian artist Herge in the 1920s, and has appeared in various forms in comics and books as well as on radio and television and in film over the decades. The character has become a symbol of Belgium, appearing on postage stamps and coins. He also was the basis for Steven Spielberg's Oscar-winning 2011 animated film The Adventures of Tintin, starring Jamie Bell, Daniel Craig and Simon Pegg. #jesuisbruxelles #Tintin pic.twitter.com/u2NpViQJc0 Sabine Gillessen (@SabineGillessen) March 22, 2016 WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The attacks in Brussels on Tuesday that killed at least 34 people will not undermine the will of the United States and its allies to ramp up the campaign against Islamic State, U.S. Defense Secretary Ash Carter told Congress. "No attack will affect our resolve to accelerate the defeat of ISIL," Carter told a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee, using an acronym for Islamic State. He did not attribute blame for the attacks on any specific group. The United States was monitoring the situation in Brussels, including ensuring that U.S. personnel and citizens were accounted for, he said. "We also stand ready to provide assistance to our friends and allies in Europe as necessary," he said. (Reporting by Phil Stewart; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama) Stockholm (AFP) - Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven described the blasts at Brussels airport and one of the city's metro stations on Tuesday as an attack against European democracy. "It is an attack against democratic Europe. We will never accept that terrorists attack our open societies," he said in a statement. His Danish counterpart Lars Lokke Rasmussen also denounced the blasts in Brussels -- the headquarters of the European Union and NATO -- as a "despicable attack". "My thoughts are with the victims and their families. We stand with Belgium," Rasmussen said on Twitter. At least 13 people were killed in the explosions at the airport, Belgian media reported, while at least 15 were injured in the metro blast. The broadcast networks were scrambling to cover the Brussels terrorist attacks on Tuesday morning, with the morning shows focused almost entirely on the explosions. ABC News kicked off its live coverage at 4 a.m. ET, with chief anchor George Stephanopoulos in the chair at 5 a.m. ET. On the network's Good Morning America, the incident remained the sole topic of conversation throughout the morning show, co-anchored by Robin Roberts, which provided comprehensive coverage from overseas correspondents, with "Brussels Under Attack" and "Breaking News" graphics. NBC broke in with live breaking news coverage at 5 a.m. ET and stuck with coverage of the explosions in a special edition of Today starting at 7 a.m. ET, with NBC calling its coverage "Terror in Brussels." NBC's Savannah Guthrie and Matt Lauer anchored coverage of the Brussels explosions on NBC. On CBS, the network aired a live special report at 3:59 a.m., before CBS This Morning was scheduled to begin. Anchor Anne-Marie Green kicked off coverage with a phone interview with CBS News correspondent Charlie DAgata from Brussels, where hes been stationed since Friday. CBS This Morning's Norah ODonnell, Gayle King and Anthony Mason began extended coverage at 6 a.m. and continued to anchor an extended broadcast of the show. Read More: Brussels Airport, Subway Station Hit by Fatal Explosions The networks continued with coverage of the attacks into the morning, with ABC, CBS and NBC pre-empting regularly scheduled programming. ABC switched to The View at 11 a.m. ET with the hosts continuing to discuss the attacks during the show. And all three evening newscasts will expand to one hour on Tuesday. New York City, with its extensive maze of subway lines, was on high alerts on Tuesday. And at about 11:12 a.m. ET, ABC and CBS cut to a press conference by NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio and NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton, who delivered an update to residents about the city's counterterrorism efforts including K9 units and explosive detection units at subways, airports and other public spaces. Story continues Many news divisions had deployed their top anchors to Cuba, where President Obama on Monday met with Cuban President Raul Castro. NBCs Lester Holt and ABCs David Muir anchored their respective evening newscasts from Havana on Monday night. At this point, its unclear which of the evening news anchors will be deployed to Brussels. NBC and MSNBC had several correspondents en route to Brussels Tuesday morning including Kelly Cobiella, Bill Neely, Thomas Roberts, Chris Jansing, Kelly ODonnell, Gabe Gutierrez, Ayman Mohyeldin, Chris Hayes and Cal Perry. Read More: Donald Trump Calls Brussels Attacks "Retaliation" for Paris Terror Suspect Capture Meanwhile, ABC News had correspondent Alexander Marquardt and chief foreign correspondent Terry Moran in Brussels on Tuesday morning and is planning a special edition of World News Tonight With David Muir. For CBS, Allen Pizzey was en route to Brussels and Holly Williams was en route to Paris on Tuesday morning. CBSN, CBS News' 24/7 digital streaming news network, also is providing wall-to-wall coverage all day. Bombs struck the Brussels airport and one of the city's metro stations Tuesday, killing at least 31 people and wounding more than 200, as a European capital was again locked down amid heightened security threats. The two airport blasts, at least one of which was blamed on a suicide bomber, left behind a chaotic scene of splattered blood in the departure lounge as windows were blown out, ceilings collapsed and travelers streamed out of the smoky building. About an hour later, another bomb exploded on a rush-hour subway train near the European Union headquarters. Terrified passengers had to evacuate through darkened tunnels to safety. European news networks went wall-to-wall with their coverage, some reporting that cellphone lines were jammed in Brussels as people tried to make calls amid the chaos. News networks in the U.K. went into full-out coverage of the news. Emergency services were reportedly clearing and evacuating the airport, which was closed to flights. The Associated Press contributed to this report. SDP chief Chee Soon Juan speaking to reporters outside Bukit Batok MRT station. Photo: Nicholas Yong Singapore Democratic Party chief Chee Soon Juan dismissed talk of race playing a factor in the Bukit Batok by-election, claiming that the issue is merely a ploy for the government to perpetuate its rule. Speaking for the first time since lawyer K. Muralidharan Pillai was unveiled as the Peoples Action Party candidate for the by-election, Chee noted on Tuesday (22 March) that the Workers Partys JB Jeyaratnam had triumphed in the Anson by-election in 1981. You mean the majority of people in Anson in 1981 were Indians? he told reporters during a walkabout in Bukit Batok. Its an excuse that the PAP had to come up with in order to justify GRCs, so that they can put in all these first-time candidates, field them together with the heavyweights, and then bring up the numbers in Parliament. Murali is only the first minority candidate fielded by the PAP in a Single-Member Constituency, after Michael Palmer triumphed in Punggol East in the 2011 General Election. He contested last years General Election as part of the PAPs team in Aljunied Group Representation Constituency, narrowly losing to the Workers Party. Deputy Prime Minister and anchor Minister for Jurong GRC, Tharman Shanmugaratnam, introduced Murali at a press conference on Monday (21 March). When asked whether race would be a factor in the by-election, Tharman said, Race is never absent in politics. Responding to a question about the same issue, Chee said, Lets get away from this talk. The more the PAP talks about race, the more sensitised Singaporeans are to this whole thing, this racial divide. I dont see Mr Murali as any less formidable an opponent as any Chinese candidate. He added, My contest with him will not be based on the fact that hes Indian and Im Chinese. I will contest him as a PAP candidate and a Singaporean who means well for our country, just as we do. By MacDonald Dzirutwe HARARE (Reuters) - Zimbabwe's plan to win back international funding by paying compensation to white farmers forced off their land faces a major snag: the black farmers expected to stump up the cash say they don't have it. The new occupants working the land, many of who had few farming skills when they were resettled, say they can barely make ends meet, let alone pay an extra levy. Their agricultural output is a fraction of the level seen before 2000, when President Robert Mugabe - saying he sought to correct colonial injustices - introduced land reforms which led to thousands of experienced white farmers being evicted. They are also being hammered by Zimbabwe's worst drought in a quarter of a century and toiling under a stagnating economy that has seen banks reluctant to lend and cheaper food imports from the likes of South Africa undermining their businesses. "Are farmers able to pay? I will say no. Is the land being productive? I will say no again," said Victor Matemadanda, secretary general of a group representing war veterans who led the land seizure drive in 2000 and are now farmers. He told Reuters that many farmers could not even meet water and electricity bills and that it was the government's obligation - not theirs - to pay the compensation. Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union President Abdul Nyathi also said his members would not be able to pay compensation. "Most of the farmers face viability issues, the government will have to look at other ways of raising money," he added. Mugabe's land reforms have led to about 5,000 white farmers being evicted from their land by his supporters and war veterans over the past 16 years, often violently. More than a dozen farmers have been killed. The land seizures, along with allegations of vote-rigging and rights abuses - all denied by Mugabe - led to Zimbabwe being targeted by sanctions from Western donors. This compounded the economic plight of the country, which saw financing from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and African Development Bank frozen in 1999 after it defaulted on debts. The IMF's head of mission to Zimbabwe, Domenico Fanizza, said this month that improving fiscal discipline and re-engaging the international community should be priorities for Harare. He said this would "reduce the perceived country risk premium and unlock affordable financing for the government and private sector". DIVIDED OPINION In an attempt to woo back international donors and lenders, Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa announced a package of major reforms on March 9, including the farm measure and a big reduction in public-sector wages. He said it had the full backing of Mugabe. The farm plan involves 300,000 families resettled on seized land paying an annual rent - based on the size of their farms - towards a compensation fund for those evicted. If they are unable to pay, however, it could be a major setback for the government's plans to shore up an economy that is stagnating after a deep recession in the decade to 2008, which slashed its output by nearly half, drove hundreds of thousands abroad in search of better paying jobs and has left the jobless rate at around 85 percent. The finance ministry did not respond to repeated requests for comment about the ability of farmers to pay the levy. Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor John Mangudya told Reuters that the farmers' situation should improve once the government grants them 99-year leases on their land, which he said would make it easier for them to secure financing from banks and to pay rent towards the compensation fund. All agricultural land in Zimbabwe is owned by the government and, at present, farmers have no legal claim on their farms - which they say has made banks reluctant to extend loans to buy fertilisers, seed and chemicals so they can raise output. But the government says it will imminently grant the leases. "We are saying that the land should produce, but we also know what the constraints are to increase production," said Mangudya. "That is why we need to finalize on the 99-year land lease agreements to make them bankable so that farmers have security of tenure. With that there is no reason why farmers should not be able to pay (rent)." Mugabe's land reform program is a highly emotive issue, which has divided public opinion. Supporters say it has empowered blacks while opponents see it as a partisan process that left Zimbabwe struggling to feed itself. "The land revolution was a necessity and if the economy was running very well farmers would be able to pay the rent," said Matemadanda of the war veterans' group. "The prevailing economic conditions do not allow." The land seizures have led to a steep fall in commercial agriculture output; yields for the staple maize have fallen to an average 0.5 tonnes percent per hectare from 8 tonnes in 2000 when white farmers worked the land. Mugabe acknowledged the skills of evicted white farmers last week, saying they had helped neighboring Zambia to produce excess maize, which Zimbabwe was now importing. ELECTIONS A treasury ministry circular said that compensation would be paid out of rent from black farmers who benefited from the seizures. Chinamasa has not said when farmers would be expected to start paying the rents, or at what level they would be set. When announcing the measures, he said production on black-owned farms was "scandalously low" and that the economy was under siege from the drought. The white Zimbabweans who accounted for the majority of those evicted will be compensated only for the improvements they made to the farms, while the foreign owners forced out will be paid full compensation for land and improvements, under the plan. Chinamasa said Harare broke bilateral investment agreements with other countries when it seized farms owned by foreigners. Tony Hawkins, professor of business studies at the University of Zimbabwe, said the government was "going through the motions to keep the IMF happy". "They probably want the international community to see that they are doing something," he said. "I doubt they will press with this ahead of the elections," he added, referring to the 2018 general election. Farmers are an important voting block for Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party. Hundreds of evicted white Zimbabwean farmers are now farming in Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi and Nigeria, while others migrated to Europe, New Zealand and Australia. Hendrik Olivier, director at the formerly white-dominated Commercial Farmers Union (CFU), said the government had not yet approached evicted farmers to discuss compensation, and also cast doubt on the plan's viability. The CFU, which once boasted 4,500 farmers who produced 90 percent of Zimbabwe's export crops, including tobacco and horticulture produce until 2000, now only has 300 members. "It's a huge step forward, lets acknowledge that. In the past the government has said that it won't pay compensation," Olivier told Reuters. "But if you are talking about new farmers paying a levy, that's not gonna work, that's not gonna pay our compensation." (Editing by James Macharia and Pravin Char) Paris (AFP) - Chadian teenager Zouhoura, whose gang-rape by young men from well-to-do families sparked unprecedented mass protests in her country, says she wants justice for herself and for "all women" who have long suffered in silence. On February 8, the fragile-looking 16-year-old was assaulted in a brutal attack that shocked many in the poor central African nation, triggering weeks of of demonstrations by thousands of young people in the streets. Zouhoura was on her way to school in the capital N'Djamena with a friend when a car with tinted windows pulled up alongside them. Five boys were in the vehicle, whom Zouhoura later learned were rich sons of the ruling class. "They grabbed me by the neck and threw me into the car," Zouhoura told AFP, stammering with emotion, her voice still almost child-like. "They took me outside the city by force... You know the rest." Zouhoura has since returned to France, where she already lived with relatives from 2009 to 2015. She decided to speak out publicly in Paris to fight impunity for sex criminals in her homeland. "There has never been justice before over the rape of a Chadian woman," said Zouhoura, her gaze firm from beneath a grey headscarf. - 'I'm not sole victim' - "I'm not the only victim. There are other women and girls who have been raped - I know them - and they have remained anonymous, they have said nothing," she added in an interview Friday. Encouraged by her father, who lives in the eastern French town of Nancy and is an opponent of the hardline regime of President Idriss Deby Itno, Zouhoura agreed to address a meeting and give an interview. "I expected him to say 'Wait, we need to settle this in the family,' but no, he didn't hesitate. He told me to 'go and file a lawsuit'," the youngster said of her father. "To start with, I said nothing, but later, when I saw that everybody was supporting me, I told myself, why not speak out, (and) fight this?" Story continues When Zouhoura turned to the police in Chad, "at first they didn't react." Detectives considered that a rape claim against the sons of senior officials in the regime was taboo. "I talked, I talked. They threatened me." Furious to discover that Zouhoura was seeking action against them, the alleged rapists posted images of the assault on social networks. But their action backfired: photos of the naked girl in tears sent a shockwave of disgust across Chad. Despite the regime's tight security, which leaves opponents little room for manoeuvre, hundreds of schoolchildren demonstrated in the capital on February 15. They were dispersed by riot police and one youth, 17-year-old Abbachou Hassan Ousmane, was shot dead. The protest movement spread to other Chadian towns in the days that followed. More young demonstrators were wounded and at least 17 were arrested, but the wave of solidarity spread abroad. - 'No justice in Chad' - To see Chadians from the diaspora joining the protest as far afield as London and Washington, "that encouraged me," Zouhoura said. When Chadian authorities "saw that the people were demonstrating and that my picture was circulating everywhere on social networks, they were quick to arrest the criminals," she added. The five alleged rapists, who include the sons of three generals, were taken into custody together with four suspected accomplices, including a son of Foreign Minister Moussa Faki Mahamat. But Zouhoura doubts that they will ever be brought to trial. "In Chad, there is no justice... I am not even sure that they are in prison." Although she is sceptical, she is determined to at least try to have them held to account. "I want justice to be done, so that this doesn't happen again," she said. Zouhoura's voice sometimes chokes and a tear rolls down her cheek. It is tough to speak out to journalists about rape. But "it had to be done, it was necessary," she insisted. The teenager plans to "continue this fight", then later, perhaps, resume studies that were so brutally interrupted. Paris (AFP) - Chadian teenager Zouhoura, whose gang-rape by young men from well-to-do families sparked unprecedented mass protests in her country, says she wants justice for herself and for "all women" who have long suffered in silence. On February 8, the fragile-looking 16-year-old was assaulted in a brutal attack that shocked many in the poor central African nation, triggering weeks of demonstrations by thousands of young people in the streets. Zouhoura was on her way to school in the capital N'Djamena with a friend when a car with tinted windows pulled up alongside them. Five boys were in the vehicle, whom Zouhoura later learned were rich sons of the ruling class. "They grabbed me by the neck and threw me into the car," Zouhoura told AFP, stammering with emotion, her voice still almost child-like. "They took me outside the city by force... You know the rest." Zouhoura has since returned to France, where she already lived with relatives from 2009 to 2015. She decided to speak out publicly in Paris to fight impunity for sex criminals in her homeland. "There has never been justice before over the rape of a Chadian woman," said Zouhoura, her gaze firm from beneath a grey headscarf. - 'I'm not sole victim' - "I'm not the only victim. There are other women and girls who have been raped - I know them - and they have remained anonymous, they have said nothing," she added in an interview Friday. Encouraged by her father, who lives in the eastern French town of Nancy and is an opponent of the hardline regime of President Idriss Deby Itno, Zouhoura agreed to address a meeting and give an interview. "I expected him to say 'Wait, we need to settle this in the family,' but no, he didn't hesitate. He told me to 'go and file a lawsuit'," the youngster said of her father. "To start with, I said nothing, but later, when I saw that everybody was supporting me, I told myself, why not speak out, (and) fight this?" Story continues When Zouhoura turned to the police in Chad, "at first they didn't react." Detectives considered that a rape claim against the sons of senior officials in the regime was taboo. "I talked, I talked. They threatened me." Furious to discover that Zouhoura was seeking action against them, the alleged rapists posted images of the assault on social networks. But their action backfired: photos of the naked girl in tears sent a shockwave of disgust across Chad. Despite the regime's tight security, which leaves opponents little room for manoeuvre, hundreds of schoolchildren demonstrated in the capital on February 15. They were dispersed by riot police and one youth, 17-year-old Abbachou Hassan Ousmane, was shot dead. The protest movement spread to other Chadian towns in the days that followed. More young demonstrators were wounded and at least 17 were arrested, but the wave of solidarity spread abroad. An activist was arrested on Monday for distributing leaflets calling for peaceful demonstrations against Itno, a police source said on Tuesday. - 'No justice in Chad' - To see Chadians from the diaspora joining the protest as far afield as London and Washington, "that encouraged me," Zouhoura said. When Chadian authorities "saw that the people were demonstrating and that my picture was circulating everywhere on social networks, they were quick to arrest the criminals," she added. The five alleged rapists, who include the sons of three generals, were taken into custody together with four suspected accomplices, including a son of Foreign Minister Moussa Faki Mahamat. But Zouhoura doubts that they will ever be brought to trial. "In Chad, there is no justice... I am not even sure that they are in prison." Although she is sceptical, she is determined to at least try to have them held to account. "I want justice to be done, so that this doesn't happen again," she said. Zouhoura's voice sometimes chokes and a tear rolls down her cheek. It is tough to speak out to journalists about rape. But "it had to be done, it was necessary," she insisted. The teenager plans to "continue this fight", then later, perhaps, resume studies that were so brutally interrupted. A watchdog body on Tuesday sought criminal charges against two suspects allegedly behind an $81 million money-laundering scandal that has shaken the Philippines. The Anti-Money Laundering Council asked Justice Department prosecutors to file charges against businessman Kim Wong and Chinese casino junket operator Weikang Xu for their alleged role in laundering the sum stolen from Bangladesh's foreign reserves through the Philippines. The hackers managed to transfer the $81 million from the account of the Bangladesh Bank (central bank) with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. They moved the sum electronically to RCBC bank in the Philippines and it eventually ended up in casinos in Manila -- where most of it has disappeared. The hackers apparently took advantage of Philippine laws granting strict secrecy to bank depositors as well as exempting casinos from money-laundering oversight. The complaint, citing testimony of a Senate probe of the scandal last week, showed that the accounts of both suspects had received the money. "Wong knew or should have known that the funds that were remitted/transferred... were part of the stolen funds from Bangladesh Bank, and are therefore proceeds of an unlawful activity," the complaint read. The justice department has also summoned Maia Deguito, branch manager of the RCBC bank, to answer questions ahead of possible charges against her as well. RCBC bank, one of the country's largest, said it had sacked Deguito as well as assistant branch manager Angela Torres over the scandal. The two were fired for "violating bank policies and procedures and falsification of commercial documents," and for facilitating the alleged money-laundering of the $81 million, an RCBC statement said. "Appropriate charges in court will be filed by the bank against Deguito and Torres by next week," RCBC said. Other bank officials will likely face "various sanctions," in the coming days, it added. Story continues Deguito had previously denied any wrongdoing but also said she was living in fear. "I did not do anything wrong. If this is a nightmare, I want to wake up now," she previously told a Manila TV station. The incident has raised fears that the Philippines will be seen as a haven for money-laundering despite previous efforts to tighten controls. Julia Abad, executive director of the Anti-Money Laundering Council, conceded that money-laundering laws needed improvement. She said that when the $81 million came into the country's banking system, it failed to raise eyebrows because similar huge amounts were already coming in. "On its face, there is nothing irregular about that transaction of $81 million," she told reporters on Tuesday. But she also said her council only had about nine analysts overseeing hundreds of transactions each day. Abad said the council's powers should be increased to cover the growing casino industry, adding that the Philippines was one of only two countries that exempted casinos from money-laundering rules. BEIJING (Reuters) - China will seek to root out geographic names that are foreign and "bizarre", especially for residential compounds, state media quoted the civil affairs minister as saying on Tuesday. Minister Li Liguo said China will "stem irregularities in naming the country's roads, bridges, buildings, and residential compounds, targeting arbitrary uses of foreign and bizarre names", Xinhua news agency said. "Certain types of names will be targeted, including names that damage sovereignty and national dignity, names that violate the socialist core values and conventional morality and names that induce the most public complaints," it paraphrased Li as saying. As China has modernized and opened further to the outside world, such foreign names have become popular, especially for upscale residential compounds, as a way of showing the people who live there are international and sophisticated. Capital city Beijing, for example, is home to apartment and villas compounds named Palm Springs, Park Avenue, Beijing Riviera and Beijing Yosemite. Xinhua said such names were the result of "chaotic name changing practices". (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Editing by Nick Macfie) BEIJING (Reuters) - China said on Tuesday it had lodged a formal protest with Japan over new Japanese school text books which it said distorted the history of Japanese atrocities in China and reasserted a Japanese claim to a group of disputed islands. China, the world's second-largest economy, and Japan, the third-largest, have a difficult history, with relations strained by the legacy of Japan's aggression before and during World War Two and conflicting claims over a group of uninhabited East China Sea islets. Japanese media say some of the textbooks approved for use from April 2017 describe the disputed islands as being inherently part of Japan. The books also revise some references to the 1937 Nanjing Massacre. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying, asked about the text books at a daily news briefing, said China was extremely concerned and had lodged "stern representations" with Japan. "No matter what steps Japan may take to promote and market their mistaken position it cannot change the basic reality that the Diaoyu islands belong to China," she said, referring to what Japan calls the Senkakus. "The Nanjing massacre was an atrocity carried out by the Japanese militarists when they invaded China. The evidence is cast iron and a conclusion was reached long ago about it. This whitewashing and censoring by Japan in these text books again shows that Japan is unwilling to face up to historical mistakes." China consistently reminds its people of the 1937 massacre in which it says Japanese troops killed 300,000 people in its then capital. A postwar Allied tribunal put the death toll at 142,000, but some conservative Japanese politicians and scholars deny a massacre took place at all. Chinese school text books also have their own political slant, following the ruling Communist Party's line on issues like Tibet and Taiwan, and not mentioning highly sensitive events such as the bloody 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy demonstrators around Tiananmen Square. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Additional reporting by Linda Sieg in TOKYO; Editing by Robert Birsel) BEIJING (Reuters) - Philippines fishermen threw fire bombs at Chinese law enforcement vessels in the South China Sea, China's Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday, after Philippines media reported that fishermen had been struck by bottles hurled from China's coast guard ships. The reports said that a clash occurred at Scarborough Shoal, an area China seized control of after a three-month stand-off with the Philippine coast guard in 2012. The reports said Chinese coast guardsmen hurled bottles at the Philippines fishermen, who responded with rocks. China's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Scarborough Shoal - known by Beijing as Huangyan Island - was Chinese territory which Philippine fishermen had been fishing around illegally. "Chinese official ships advised the illegally stationed Philippine trawlers to leave, in accordance with the law, but they refused to obey," she told a daily news briefing. "Certain people on the ships even waved around machetes and flung fire bombs, carrying out deliberate provocation, attacking the Chinese law enforcers and official boat, confronting China's law enforcement and seriously threatening the safety and order of the waters around Huangyan Island," Hua said. China had strengthened its "management" around the shoal, she added, without elaborating. A spokesman for the Philippines Foreign Ministry declined to comment, pending an official report "from our concerned agencies". China and the Philippines have long exchanged accusations about each other's behavior in the disputed South China Sea. China claims most of the energy-rich waters through which about $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. Neighbors Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims. A spokesman for the U.S. Defense Department, Commander Bill Urban, said Chinese Coastguard vessels had sought since 2012 to block fishing access to the area, "restricting the long-standing commercial practices of others". "We are concerned that such actions exacerbate tensions in the region and are counterproductive," Urban said. He said that the United States, which is a treaty ally of the Philippines, wanted to see claims resolved peacefully in accordance with international law or arbitration. Last week, the U.S. Navy said it had seen activity around Scarborough Shoal that could be a precursor to more Chinese land reclamation, which China has conducted on a large scale elsewhere in the South China Sea to back its territorial claims. Navy chief Admiral John Richardson also told Reuters that a ruling expected in late May or early June in a case the Philippines has brought against China over its claims in the International Court of Arbitration in the Hague, could prompt Beijing to declare a South China Sea exclusion zone. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Additional reporting by Neil Jerome Morales and Karen Lema in MANILA and Andrea Shalal and David Brunnstrom in Washington; Editing by Nick Macfie and Grant McCool) Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE said Tuesday it expects the United States to lift restrictions on its business, amid talks with Washington over allegations it violated trade sanctions against Iran. Washington earlier this month slapped restrictions on ZTE and three linked companies for illicitly re-exporting controlled items from the US to sanctioned countries including Iran. The curbs require ZTE to have specific licences before shipping US-made items to the parent company or the other three named firms. The move threatens the Chinese firm's ability to buy technology hardware and software in the US "ZTE has committed to, and fully expects to, fulfil all of the commitments in order to be removed permanently from the entity list," ZTE said in a statement, referring to the restrictions. In the meantime, it said, it had obtained a "temporary general licence". "This interim relief will enable ZTE to continue serving its major stakeholders as it works with the US authorities to reach a permanent resolution." The Chinese government condemned the measures when they were imposed, with a commerce ministry official expressing "strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition". Tuesday's ZTE statement did not give the terms of the licence or say what requirements were met to obtain it. "ZTE is fully committed to complying with the laws and regulations in the jurisdictions in which it operates, and will be continuing to make further contributions to (the) global telecoms industry," it said. The case dates back to 2012 when the US Department of Commerce first began investigating the transfer of US technology to Iran, according to media reports. Washington in January eased several restrictions on doing business with Iran following an international agreement over its nuclear programme. But sanctions linked to accusations that Tehran supports terrorism remain in force, still largely blocking US companies from business with Iran. ZTE is China's second-biggest telecoms equipment maker with customers in more than 160 countries. Unidentified attackers hacked a Christian convert to death in northern Bangladesh Tuesday, amid growing attacks on religious minorities by suspected Islamist militants in the Muslim-majority country. Police said at least two attackers stopped Hossain Ali while the 68-year-old was taking his regular morning walk in the town of Kurigram and then lunged at his neck with sharp weapons. "He died on the spot. The attackers exploded a molotov cocktail to create panic and left the scene on a motorcycle," Kurigram district police chief Tobarak Ullah told AFP. Ullah said Ali had converted to Christianity from Islam in 1999 but he was not sure whether the deadly attack was carried out by Islamists or if there was another motive. "He was not a pastor or reputed Christian. Also there were some disputes over his family properties," Ullah said. Nobody has claimed responsibility for the killing. But in recent months militants claiming to be soldiers of the Islamic State group have claimed responsibility for a series of attacks on converts and minorities including Shiite, Sufi and Ahmadi Muslims, Christians and Hindus. Last week the IS said it killed a Shiite convert from Sunni Islam in the southwestern town of Kaliganj. In January an alleged Christian convert was also murdered by the same group. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government denies that Islamic State has a presence in Bangladesh. It blames the banned homegrown militant group Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh for the upsurge in deadly violence. Bangladesh has been plagued by unrest in the last three years. Experts say a long-running political crisis has radicalised opponents of the government. GLEN ELLYN, IL--(Marketwired - March 22, 2016) - COD will host a free presentation by NASA Ames Research Center Astrophysicist Dr. Kimberly Ennico-Smith at 3 p.m. on Sunday, April 10, at the Belushi Performance Hall in the McAninch Arts Center, on the College's main campus, 425 Fawell Blvd., in Glen Ellyn. Click here for directions to College of DuPage. This event is free and open to the public. On July 14, 2015, after a nearly ten-year trek across the solar system, NASA's New Horizons spacecraft successfully flew by Pluto and its system of moons, taking imagery, spectra and on-site particle data. Dr. Ennico-Smith's presentation, "Pluto Revealed: First Results from the Historic First Fly-By of the Pluto System," will summarize NASA's New Horizons mission and its early scientific results, including 3D imagery, as well as touching on the future of further exploration to the outer third zone of the solar system. Dr. Ennico-Smith's presentation will be followed by a brief question and answer session and a reception. Dr. Ennico-Smith is a research astrophysicist at NASA's Ames Research Center, and a Co-Investigator and Deputy Project Scientist on NASA's New Horizons Pluto Fly-by Mission, leading the calibration activities and doing compositional mapping of Pluto and Charon with color imagery and spectroscopy. Dr. Ennico-Smith is also an Instrument Scientist for the Near-Infrared Volatile Spectrometer System instrument in the Regolith & Environment Science and Oxygen & Lunar Volatile Extraction lunar payload suite and an Instrument Scientist for the Mid-Infrared Spectroscopy Mode for the Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy FORCAST Instrument. She is also a Principal Investigator developing innovative telescope designs using small satellites. Her prior space mission experience includes being Instrument Scientist on the Spitzer Space Telescope Far-Infrared camera MIPS, specialist in detector radiation testing for the James Webb Space Telescope, and Payload Scientist and Integration & Test Lead for the Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite, where she successfully demonstrated a cost-effective Class D test program of modified COTS hardware. For more information on this event, contact Assistant Professor of Astronomy Joe DalSanto at dalsantoj228@COD.EDU or (630) 942-2163. The Astronomy program at College of DuPage offers a number of courses to meet students' interests and curriculum needs and features instructors dedicated to student success, as well as an enthusiastic Astronomy Club. Click here for more information about the Astronomy program at College of DuPage. College of DuPage will also host its inaugural STEM-CON, a free, fun and interactive event celebrating science, technology, engineering and math, from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday, April 30. Click here for more information on STEM-CON. College of DuPage is an accredited community college that serves more than 29,000 students each term. The College, which grants nine associate degrees and more than 170 certificates in 100 areas of study, is the second largest provider of public undergraduate education in Illinois. The following files are available for download: Democrats have always thought of Paul Ryan as a friendly foil. Long before he became speaker of the House, Ryan was the face of conservative policy in Congress, and he had earned the respect of President Obama and leading Democrats on Capitol Hill for, if nothing else, putting forward serious ideas and having the political courage to stand by them. Respect, yes. But not fear. Ryan may have been young, smart, and telegenic, yet Democrats never felt he posed a real threat for the simple reason that his policies were toxic to a majority of American voters. Partially privatizing Medicare. Block-granting Medicaid. More tax cuts for the wealthy. Steep reductions in discretionary spending. Every year, Ryan would release his annual budget proposal with fanfare, and every year Democrats relished the opportunity to eviscerate it in television ads (which only worked to a limited degree). Now as speaker, however, Ryan is mounting a new policy push on an issue Democrats have owned for decades: poverty. The Wisconsin Republican has been developing his own anti-poverty agenda for years, believing that the maze of federal programsand trillions in associated spendingthat date back to Lyndon Johnsons Great Society have, on the whole, failed to significantly reduce the ranks of the nations poor. As the Republican budget chief in 2014, he released a 200-page audit of federal anti-poverty programs. (Spoiler: It was not glowing.) And since his elevation to the top job last year, Ryan has made combating poverty and increasing upward mobility one of the six pillars of House Republican policy in 2016. He has even tried to focus the partys presidential hopefuls on the issue, though as Michelle Cottle wrote last month, it didnt really take. So far, Democrats dont seem all that worried about Ryan encroaching on their policy turf. Officially, they are welcoming Republicans to a fight theyve been waging for decades, but to call them skeptical would be an understatement. After Republican leaders launched a task force on poverty in February, Democratic leaders held a press conference to denounce the panel as partisan and to criticize Ryan for joining the fight against poverty while supporting deep cuts to the very programs that help the poor. Story continues Recommended: Donald Trump Claims He 'Had No Choice' But to Talk About His Anatomy Thats the kind of response that might be expected when politicians try to debate policy in an election year. And truthfully, neither party has high expectations for what the task forcecomprised of five chairmen of existing committeeswill actually produce in the next several months. Ryan wants the panel to report back to House Republicans by June, but its unlikely the party will draft specific legislation this year, much less vote on it. Paul Ryan, I think, is very able at articulating vision, said Representative Steny Hoyer, the minority whip and second-ranking House Democrat. What hes not so good at it is proposing policies that pass and will accomplish the vision. At worst, this partisan task force could prove to be a front for a different motive: to dismantle the safety net. Still, Democrats appear uncertain about just how seriously they should take Ryans effort. Is it aimed at producing legislation that (at least some) members of both parties can support? Or is this a bid to slash federal spending, kick people off the welfare rolls, repackage conservative proposals, and call it an anti-poverty agenda? At best, this task force could at least expose where Republicans will go when it comes to the safety net, Representative Xavier Becerra, the chairman of the House Democratic caucus, told me. At worst, this partisan task force could prove to be a front for a different motive: to dismantle the safety net. Recommended: The Obama Doctrine Ryan has framed the broader policy push as an attempt to fashion a Republican platform that the partys presidential nominee can embrace this fall and enact once elected next year. But as Donald Trump draws closer to the nomination, the chances that Ryan will have a true conservative partner in the White House are growing ever more remote. While supportive on tax policy, Trump has campaigned against the kind of changes to entitlement programs on which Ryan has made his name. For Democrats, one test of the task forces credibility will be whether or not it calls for expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit to younger workers and childless adults, a policy that represents perhaps the core area of bipartisan agreement on fighting poverty. Ryan and some Republicans have backed an EITC expansion because the tax credit adheres to the conservative principle of encouraging and rewarding work. Expanding the Earned Income Tax Credit is something that I think most Republicans and Democrats can definitely come together around, said Representative Susan Brooks, an Indiana Republican who has participated in task force meetings. Yet other Republicans consider expanding the EITC costly and unnecessary, or they oppose expansion on the grounds that there are already fraud problems in the program. Nonetheless, Scott Winship, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute who has advised Republicans on poverty, predicts an EITC expansion would be a priority. Recommended: How Donald Trump Could End the Republican Lock on the Mormon Vote Republicans and Democrats have also generated some agreement on the need to improve workforce-training programs and bolster prisoner-reentry initiatives as ways to help people climb the income ladder. Yet the biggest focus for the GOP panel is likely to be one of the thorniest areas of federal anti-poverty policy: welfare programs. Specifically, Republicans want to extend the kind of work requirements that Congress enactedand President Bill Clinton signedfor the cash-welfare payment system 20 years ago. I think the 96 legislation has been really successful, Winship said, and it will kind of be the starting point for discussions about how to set up work requirements in these other programs. Republicans have been targeting the food-stamp program, now known as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, with the goal of incentivizing work so that recipients arent faced with the possibility of losing federal aid if they take a job that pays less than their benefits. Nobody has a real good solution yet for how to address this cliff, said Representative Mike Conaway, a Republican who as chairman of the House Agriculture Committee has been leading a separate, bipartisan effort to review SNAP for more than a year. As Conaway sees it, Republicans have gotten into trouble by lumping together welfare recipients from two distinct groupsthose who because of a physical or mental incapacity will always need help from the government and those are able to work but need temporary assistance in difficult times. Democrats focus on the truly needy, he said, while Republicans too often find themselves talking only about our 27-year-old surfer from California that doesnt really like to work, but he loves to surf, and hes on food stamps. A program thats reaching 45 million Americans cannot be encapsulated in a 30-second sound bite that is fair to either one of the groups, Conaway told me. The goal of the GOPs efforts, he said, is to find a policy that can reform welfare programs for able-bodied adults without shredding the safety net for those who are legitimately and permanently dependent on government aid. In theory, thats a goal Democrats would support, too. The differences are relatively small rhetorically, said Hoyer. Yet, he said, Republicans have rarely been able to develop policies that deliver on their rhetoric. Part of the problem has been divisions within the GOP itself; Hoyer noted that when the Agriculture Committee approved a bipartisan, $940 billion farm bill in 2013, it failed on the House floor after conservatives added an amendment that included a broad work requirement and an additional $20 billion in cuts to food stamps, causing Democrats to defect. The Republicans have historically oversimplified and overclassified and painted with a very broad brush, Hoyer said. Youve got to deal with that in a surgical way, not a blunt-instrument way. Adding to the challenge is that while most Democrats opposed welfare reform in the 1990s, the party has moved further to the left in recent years, and the issue has become a complicated one for Hillary Clinton, the likely Democratic nominee whose husband signed the law in 1996. Even back then, it wasnt really all that bipartisan, Winship said, noting that President Clinton signed the bill only after vetoing it twice. I think it is going to be tough for Republicans to get significant Democratic votes for the sort of legislation theyll be shooting for. I think it is going to be tough for Republicans to get significant Democratic votes for the sort of legislation theyll be shooting for. A more controversial priority for Republicans is to consolidate many of the federal anti-poverty programs and send them back to the states through a block grant. The idea is that states need more flexibility to experiment and that funding decisions should be made on a pay-for-performance model, based on how many people advance out of anti-poverty programs rather than simply by how many people they serve. How can we do a better job rewarding them for their success? Brooks asked. Yet these proposals face near total opposition from Democrats, who see them as veiled attempts to slash spending and reduce the size of the federal government. If all these words theyre using are simply code for cutting, its hard to see how this effort theyre undertaking is going to be any different from other partisan efforts theyve launched, Becerra said. And that highlights what may be the irreconcilable difference between Republicans and Democrats on poverty, as it is on many issues: money. Republicans point to the trillions of dollars spent to eradicate poverty and the stubbornly high number of people in need as an argument for why reform is necessary. Democrats, on the other hand, see the GOPs budget-cutting obsession as a chief obstacle to lowering the poverty rate. Even as they pursue an anti-poverty agenda, Republicans are not promising to protect any domestic federal programs from cuts, and many conservatives are demanding steeper reductions. All programs across the board, all discretionary programs are going to sustain some cuts, Brooks said. But I think that this agenda is a great opportunity to try to impress upon the appropriators and impress upon our members that these are our priority areas and how do we make sure that the budget reflects that. For Ryan and the Republican task force, that dynamic might be the trickiest to navigate. Can they convince voters they can reduce poverty and cut the budget at the same time? Ryan rarely shies away from a policy fight on political grounds. But as they prepare to campaign once again against a favorite conservative foil, Democrats are eager to see him try. Read more from The Atlantic: This article was originally published on The Atlantic. Lyle Denniston, the National Constitution Centers constitutional literacy adviser, looks at a ruling by the Supreme Court vacating a decision about stun guns in Massachusetts. THE STATEMENT AT ISSUE: If the fundamental right of self-defense does not protect [the threatened woman in this case], then the safety of all Americans is left to the mercy of state authorities who may be more concerned about disarming the people than about keeping them safe.[The woman in this case] didnt need physical strength to protect herself. She stood her ground, displayed the stun gun, and announced: Im not gonna take this anymore.The gambit worked. The ex-boyfriend got scared and he left her alone. Excerpt from a separate opinion on Monday by Justice Samuel A. Alito, Jr., joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, as the Supreme Court in a brief, unsigned opinion unanimously vacated a decision by Massachusetts highest state court upholding the states flat ban on possessing stun guns for personal self-defense. The case was Caetano v. Massachusetts. WE CHECKED THE CONSTITUTION, AND The right to keep and bear arms has been in the Constitution since 1791, as the Second Amendment. But it has only been taking shape as protecting a personal right to have a gun, for self-defense, since 2008, when the Supreme Court declared that such protection is what keep and bear arms means now. Until Monday, though, the Justices had never made any attempt to spell out further just what that right covers. The decision in 2008 (in the case of District of Columbia v. Heller) was the courts last opinion discussing the dimensions of the right. Its only other decision following up that one was McDonald v. Chicago, in 2010, simply extending the personal right to keep and bear arms so that it protected gun rights in every state, through the Fourteenth Amendment. And, until Monday, the court had repeatedly turned aside every test case filed with it seeking further clarification of the scope of the Second Amendment right. Did the right exist only for self-defense in the home (the situation in the Heller case)? What about a right to carry a gun in public? What kinds of regulation of gun ownership and use could be made, without violating the Second Amendment? What other kinds of weapons would qualify as arms within the meaning of that phrase in the Second Amendment? Story continues Somewhat peculiarly, the court chose a case about a womans use of a stun gun for its first foray back into the meaning of the Second Amendment. Massachusetts had flatly banned possession or use by all except police officers and the military, so ordinary folks could not legally obtain or use them, even for self-defense. A Boston woman, Jaime Caetano, had obtained a stun gun after her ex-boyfriend had repeatedly assaulted her. She had it with her when she encountered him in a public parking lot; when he threatened her there, she told him she had the stun gun, and would use it. The police found the gun, and she was prosecuted and found guilty of violating the state ban on that kind of weapon. Under the procedure used in her case, she received no jail sentence or fine. Much of what has gone on behind the scenes at the Supreme Court while this case moved through the process remains undisclosed, especially since the Justices had never previously accepted the case for review, had not called for written legal briefs, and had held no hearing. The deliberation over the case started last September, and continued right up through last Fridays private conference of the Justices. During that span, Justice Antonin Scalia the author of the Heller opinion and its fervent defender was on the bench for most of the time, but died last month before the Justices finished their work on the case. The decision that emerged was only a page and a half long (compared to the ten pages of the separate opinion by Justice Alito, joined by Justice Thomas), and it did not fully explain where the case might go from here. Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court decision upholding the ban on stun guns was vacated, and that court was told to take another look. Jaime Caetanos conviction remains for the time being, but her lawyer has now said he will attempt to get that set aside. Brief and unrevealing as the courts unsigned opinion was, the reality is that some possible meanings can be drawn from it nevertheless. Here are some ways to interpret it: First, the court is paying attention, closer than might have seemed with all of the denials of review of cases in recent years, to what the states and the lower courts are doing. It is, at least to a degree, standing ready to step in when it finds a lower court ruling that it senses went too far. Second (and this is of potential significance in the wake of gun rights advocates complaints that only one more Justice needed to be named to the court potentially to lead to overruling the Heller decision and with it the personal right to a gun under the Second Amendment), no sign has yet emerged that any of the current Justices is pushing to reconsider or cast aside that ruling. (It is possible, of course, that this particular case, about a stun gun, did not rank as important enough to even raise that question, but the fact that there were no dissents on Monday was suggestive, if not conclusive, that gun rights under the Constitution may not be in the kind of jeopardy that some gun rights advocates fear.) Third, this is the first time the court has recognized at least some right, under the Heller decision, to have a weapon for self-defense in a public setting, outside the home. Whether that fact in this case is enough to encourage lower courts to start ruling more often in favor of public carry or public use of guns remains to be seen. Fourth, there are at least five votes given the right case for the court to rule in favor of a somewhat enlarged scope for the right to keep and bear arms. It is possible, of course, to read too much into the Caetano decision, since it did not get the full treatment that a major gun rights case might have been given. Finally, it seems quite plain that the court will remain at least occasionally interested in the ongoing, and sometimes anxious debate in America, about public safety and the role that gun ownership and use plays in it. For now, the Justices have opted not to remain on the sidelines. Recent Stories on Constitution Daily Supreme Court denies big challenge to Colorados legal pot law The GOP nomination math: Confusing and complicated Can students sue grossly ineffective teachers? After Donald Trump declined to lend his marquee value to a planned Fox News GOP debate that was subsequently canceled, CNN cannily took advantage of the vacuum. They hastily scheduled their own event, billed as The Final Five (it's not too long ago that it could have been The Hateful Eight), featuring in-depth interviews with those still standing. To which it can only be said: Thank God the candidates are finally getting some media attention! The evening was the political television equivalent of an all-you-can-eat presidential candidate buffet, sparing lazy viewers the difficult task of toggling among the Sunday morning talk shows. The sessions were held the day before "Western Tuesday" (who comes up with these names?), with voting taking place in Utah, Idaho and Arizona. All of the candidates except for Bernie Sanders were in Washington, D.C., to be interviewed in person, and for a very simple reason. They were there for the AIPAC convention of pro-Israel lobbyists, and had spent the day pandering so much to them that it's a wonder they weren't all wearing yarmulkes, even Hillary. Bernie did his interview from Utah, presumably figuring, "Hey, I've already got the Jewish vote" (not so fast, Bernie). Naturally, the evening lacked the fireworks of the debates, although questioners Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer repeatedly tried to heat things up by asking questions about Trump, often to the point of neglecting policy issues. All of the candidates happily took the bait save for John Kasich, whose refusal to launch personal attacks has become his unique form of passive aggression. Read More: Donald Trump Says He Should Get a Portion of Megyn Kelly's Salary for Making Her More Popular Kasich was interviewed first, which was essentially CNN's way of telling the viewers that they have to eat their vegetables before they can have dessert. Nonetheless, the Ohio governor has become fascinating in his sheer willfulness, refusing to exit the race despite only winning one state, his own, and staking all his chances on somehow emerging victorious in an increasingly likely brokered convention. He's like the kid who doesn't get chosen for any team but still refuses to leave the field. Even when confronted with a recording of a humiliating Mitt Romney robocall urging Utah voters to support Ted Cruz, he managed to retain his dignity. And you have to admire a Republican candidate who actually answers a question with these heretical words: "I'd have to think about exactly what I would do." Story continues He was emphatic about one thing. He said there was "zero chance" of his being vice president for either Cruz or Trump. Cruz echoed the declaration by saying that he had "zero interest" in being Trump's VP. Trump, meanwhile, wouldn't rule the latter prospect out. Asked if he could imagine the man he repeatedly refers to as "Lyin' Ted" as his running mate, the Donald shrugged and replied, "Crazier things have happened in politics." And if anyone would know, he would. One question that came up repeatedly was whether the candidates would recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and move the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv. Cruz naturally said that he would do it on his very first day in office. (Between that, ripping up the Iran deal and everything else he's promised to do that day, this could be the shortest presidency ever). Read More: Marla Maples on Finally Saying "Yes" to 'Dancing' and the Donald Trump "Distraction" Blitzer, presumably handed the assignments of interviewing Cruz and Trump because of the fearsomeness of his name, pressed Cruz hard on numerous issues including the controversial statements of one of his foreign policy advisors, Frank Gaffney, who among other things has said that Barack Obama was "America's first Muslim president" and that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 1995 bombing of the Federal building in Oklahoma City. Cruz huffed that he wasn't going to "play the media gotcha game" before going on to deride Obama for "sipping mojitos" in Cuba. He did have nice things to say about Lindsey Graham (one of several Republican leaders now showing a remarkable ability to hold their noses), admitting that it was a "miracle" that the South Carolina senator had held a fundraiser for him. Then it was time for a bowl of popcorn, and Donald Trump. He displayed his usual nuanced subtlety, responding to a clip of Hillary Clinton obviously referring to him while declaring that "steady hands" are needed in the White House. "I have the steadiest hands," Trump responded. He proceeded to hold them up, urging, "Look at those hands" as if he were flashing back to his infamous debate encounter with Marco Rubio. Dialing back on his previously stated neutrality regarding the Palestinians, he said, "They have to stop with the terror." Asked about the support he's receiving from white supremacists, he assured Blitzer that he was "the least racist person you'll ever meet." Queried on his derogatory comments about women, he said, "Nobody respects women more than I do" (Are you sensing a pattern?). Clearly hoping to repeat his effective strategy against Jeb Bush, he said that Hillary Clinton didn't have the "stamina" to be president. And he made news by declaring that we should reduce our financial investment in NATO, or, in his words, "change the spread." Asked about Cuba, he seemed excited about the prospect of opening a Trump hotel in Havana, although he took great umbrage over Raul Castro not having personally greeted Obama at the airport. You got the feeling that if the slight had been directed at him, he would have simply gotten back in his private jet and flown away. Read More: Fox News Fires Back at Trump, Calls His "Obsession" With Megyn Kelly "Sick" He was at his most disingenuous when asked about his encouraging his supporters to violence. Putting on his best "What, Me Worry?" Alfred E. Neuman face, he described his rallies as "lovefests," sounding like an abusive husband, before adding, "I don't have control over these people." Talking with Anderson Cooper, a confident-seeming Hillary expressed her unwavering support for Israel even while admitting that she and Benjamin Netanyahu haven't always seen eye to eye. "We engage in vigorous discussions," she said about the hawkish prime minister. She refused to take Cooper's bait about proposing that Obama withdraw his nomination of Merrick Garland for the Supreme Court should she be elected, pointing out that "we have one president at a time." As has become standard, she was asked about her electability despite, as she pointed out, having gotten more votes so far than any other candidate of either party. "I'm pretty well vetted," she mentioned, adding, rather plaintively, "Any time I actually have a job, I get really, really high ratings." She punted when asked about why she hasn't gotten more support from white males, saying, "I haven't analyzed the data." (Not to offer unwanted advice, Hillary, but now might be a good time to start). Bernie, hedging his bets by neatly positioning himself between American and Utah state flags, did the politically unthinkable, especially on this particular day. He criticized Israeli policies and actually advocated on behalf of the Palestinians. Whether the political boldness was a result of his being Jewish or simply his ultra-left wing leanings, it was something akin to Nixon announcing that he was going to China. Like Kasich, he too is insisting on staying in the race despite seemingly insurmountable odds. And although not intentional, he seemed to echo Trump both in his language he referred to such U.S. interventions as the Bay of Pigs invasion and the overthrow of Chilean president Salvador Allende as "disasters" and in his utter refusal to conform to mainstream political ideas. He even argued that Iran and Saudi Arabia should contribute more to the fight against ISIS, a position with which the Donald would certainly agree. It was almost enough to make one think that a Trump/Sanders ticket would be an unbeatable combination. Having shot to fame as galactic heroine Rey in "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," Daisy Ridley is now expressing her interest in playing archeological adventurer Lara Croft. Should she be offered the role, she'd be joining five other actresses to have held the part on screens big and small. Virtually unknown until her selection for the cast of "Star Wars: Episode VII," Ridley had come up through a number of smaller roles in short films and on British TV. Looking to the future, and talking to The Hollywood Reporter at the Empire Awards on March 20, Ridley confirmed that there "have been conversations" about the Croft role, appearing enthusiastic over the prospect. "I'm waiting for someone to say 'I want you, let's do it," she elaborated, though noting that there was not yet a script for the film, an indicator that the project would be in its early stages. She'd be taking over from Angelina Jolie, who played Croft in 2001 feature film "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" and then again in 2003's "Lara Croft Tomb Raider: The Cradle of Life." If Ridley does end up involved in a new raft of "Tomb Raider" films -- the current video game reboot has two entries under its belt -- she'll be joining not only Jolie but other actresses in portraying Lara Croft. For, when Visa looked to capitalize on "Tomb Raider" interest with a 2003 advert, they turned to Sofia Vergara, a star in Latin America but nowhere near internationally renowned as the "Modern Family" actress is now. After that, and with the franchise rejuvenated, British actress Keeley Hawes (now well praised for "Life on Mars" TV sequel "Ashes to Ashes") voiced Lara over a five-game run that spanned 2006's "Tomb Raider: Legend" up to 2014 spin-off "Lara Croft and the Temple of Osiris," a departure from the first era of games which had instead relied upon specialist voiceover artists. Story continues Ten years after her appearances in "Good Will Hunting," "Grosse Pointe Blank" and the English dub of Ghibli's "Princess Mononoke," Minnie Driver voiced Lara in 2007's multi-genre animated series "Revisioned: Tomb Raider." Unusually experimental, each new episode was rendered in a different cartoon style -- director Peter Chung had also been involved in "The Matrix" companion "The Animatrix." And though Ridley is now being linked with Lara Croft's next theatrical outing, it was a different British actress, Camilla Luddington, who was asked to help bring the latest round of games to life. Best known for "Grey's Anatomy," "True Blood" and "Californication," Luddington became a new version of Croft for 2013 video game reboot "Tomb Raider," again providing voiceover and motion capture for 2015 sequel "Rise of the Tomb Raider," and, presumably, for a third, should it emerge before this potential Ridley headliner gets underway. by Debbie Reyes-Coloma, portraits by Nick Tan The journey for patients dealing with mental illness is a difficult one, as they and their family members struggle to understand and deal with the diagnosis and treatment of their condition. But it is made easier by the compassionate, caring and committed nurses who walk the treatment journey with them. Age catches up with you faster than you think. This reality hit Kuganesh (Kugan) s/o Suppiah just over a decade ago when he decided to take up nursing after a friend broached the idea. The thought of going back to school was daunting, as Kugan never liked books very much and was worried he would be exposing himself to jeers from friends. But he was pushing 30 then, and realized he wanted a more stable and secure future. I was doing a lot of odd jobs when I was younger. I was also quite temperamental, impatient and not gentle and I thought that nursing was only for females and what would my friends think? Kugan smiles as he recounts the decision he had to make at lifes crossroad. That was 11 years ago, and Kugan now a Senior Staff Nurse (SSN) at the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) in Singapore says pursuing a career in nursing was one decision he has not regretted, because it changed his life. Making the most of Bangkoks vibrant street food and nightlife with colleagues. Nursing provided me with structure and goals, and IMH is my second home. I am happy where I am now, he says. The road less travelled The eldest of two sons, Kugan was simply coasting along for most of his youth. After completing National Service, he took on various jobs: rubbish collector, cleaner, magazine delivery man and dishwasher, later becoming a pest control officer and then working for a logistics firm. I had a lot of dream careers (in mind). I wanted to be an army officer. I wanted to be a flight steward, says the 39-year-old registered psychiatric nurse. But those dreams did not quite pan out the way he imagined. Story continues Kugan was 28 when he was sponsored by IMH to take a two-year course in nursing at ITE East College to be an enrolled nurse. After graduating, he joined IMH as an assistant nurse and was posted to a ward to care for long-stay patients. I started enjoying the job towards the end of my ITE (programme). I learned a lot. When I saw patients whom I needed to nurse I realized they were no different from my family members, like my late grandparents, he says. I slowly adapted and saw the need for nurses to care for such patients. A couple of years later, IMH provided him the opportunity to pursue a Diploma in Nursing at Parkway School of Health. It was challenging but he persevered. The experience Kugan gained during his clinical attachments in various hospitals while he was a student was invaluable. He was determined to improve himself, and after receiving his Diploma in Nursing in 2011, IMH posted Kugan to its acute psychiatric ward, which became a pilot for the 40-bed Mood Disorders Unit (MDU) a year later. In the MDU, Kugan interacts with patients suffering from a range of conditions including mood disorders and co-morbid anxiety disorders, depression, obsessive-compulsive disorders, bipolar disorders, adjustment disorders and stress response syndrome. Even though caring for such patients can often be challenging and unpredictable. Kugan feels gratified at the end of the day. As time went by, I started to understand that these patients were sick and needed help that is why they were here. And when they got well, they come by for a visit, sometimes treat us to some snacks and they thank us for taking care of them, he says. I feel very good when that happens. Kugan (front row, far left) out with friends and enjoying a day at the zoo. In 2013, Kugan was sponsored for an Advanced Diploma in the Mental Health Nursing Programme at Nanyang Polytechnic and was posted back to the MDU after graduation. Last year, he completed the BCLS (Basic Cardiac Life Support) instructor course. For someone who professes not to like studying, Kugan has accomplished much by attaining three qualifications in less than 10 years. And he is not done yet he is currently pursuing a part-time Bachelor of Science (Nursing) degree with Queen Margaret University, and hopes to graduate this year. The numerous professional upgrading courses have equipped Kugan with the necessary knowledge and skills to manage his challenging job of helping patients at IMH. It is natural, he says. Patients who are mentally ill are fragile and carry the stigma of being different. Kugan also has to manage family members who feel helpless when they see their loved ones suffering. Thats the most rewarding part of being a nurse. Kugan encourages young Singaporeans to consider nursing as a career: If you have the patience, the drive and think you can or want to help people, nursing is a good job for you. Kugan points out that other medical professionals, including doctors, respect nurses opinions. Doctors are willing to accept our ideas and suggestions because we are the ones looking after a patients day-to-day health and welfare, he says. In terms of professional development, there are opportunities available, like going for further studies and participating in outreach programmes, all of which will help make you a better nurse. Personally, nursing has moulded Kugans character. Although his family teases him for still being short tempered occasionally, he feels he has more control over it now. That character is gone. I have not erupted in a very long time. My work has changed me, and I have learnt a lot from my patients, Kugan says. Some are very hot-tempered and aggressive, but I realize they have bigger problems than me and I learn how to cope, too, from them. With his wife of four years, Jocelyn. Nursing brought them together in 2008. Outside the hospital wards, Kugan de-stresses by taking long walks, swimming, and exploring places like parks where he can have some peace. Im more of a nature kind of guy, and I love to travel with my wife, who is also a nurse. Whenever we have a chance to do a short trip together, we take it, mostly to nearby countries, he says. We do about six or seven short trips a year. Kugan met his wife Jocelyn while they were both doing their diploma studies in 2008. They have been married for four years. In Kugans story, we learn about the impact that nursing has made on him after he made the choice to turn his life around: It has been 10 years since I started working here at IMH and I am still enjoying it. Another nurses story Not all dreams come true. But even if they do not, the ending could still be just as happy. Siti Suhana Abd Rahman once dreamed of becoming a teacher. Instead, she studied to be a nurse and she has never looked back. Siti has her persuasive mother to thank, for nudging her towards this path. The obedient daughter, who counts several healthcare professionals among her relatives, now considers her career choice the correct one for her. My mother believed that nursing was a noble job, and she wanted to see one of her children in a healthcare profession. I was reluctant at first but I followed her wishes (and) enrolled in the School of Nursing at Outram, which used to be located near Singapore General Hospital, when I was 17, recalls Siti. Siti Suhana, at right, unwinding with colleagues during her break. She grew to love nursing so much that she furthered her studies by taking advanced nursing diploma programmes. As a nurse, Im helping other people. I become an adviser, advocate, caregiver and a teacher to my patients so I am able to do what Ive always dreamed of, says Siti, who is a Senior Staff Nurse at the acute female ward of the Institute of Mental Health (IMH) in Singapore, where she looks after women both young and old. Graduates were assigned postings based on their residential location at that time, and Siti was assigned to IMH when she graduated in 2001. I never thought I would be working at IMH for long. But seeing the patients here, some without family care or support, it made me think, If we nurses dont stay, who will take care of them? So I stayed, and mental healthcare became my interest, Siti says. Now, the 34-year-old finds so much fulfilment in her work, especially when patients and their family members lean on her for counsel and support. It is a pleasant feeling when I see patients walking out of the ward mentally stable. I feel satisfied when patients are able to recognize me even after their discharge, she smiles. Some family members also appreciate the extra mile that I tried to go for them. People often forget that the patients had a normal life before they were diagnosed with a mental disorder that they had a home, attended school and engaged in social activities, and that they have parents, spouses, children, and some even pets. To help her understand her patients better, Siti looks at each of them as a person first. Her approach makes it easier to break down walls, and it works; patients open up and let her in. Its when I talk to patients that I learn more about them, like the things they did or their interests. I have seen some patients who were brought and just left here by their parents or by their children. They did not return to visit the patient, she says. Even when social workers try to reach the families, they couldnt. Strong friendships are just one of the perks of the job. Since she joined the acute female ward in 2014, Sitis work has revolved around preventing, evaluating, diagnosing and treating mental and emotional disorders. Some of these conditions include schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, psychosis, personality disorders and self-harm (suicidal tendencies), among others. Some patients will forget their activities of daily living and will be referred to the rehabilitation ward, which provides a comprehensive programme to assist persons with severe and persistent mental illness. These persons have deficits in social functions due to their cognitive impairment. The recovery process focuses on their ability to use alternative strategies to cope with their illnesses, to maintain social relationships and to be gainfully employed, says Siti, whose particular unit has about 43 patients. Sitis hope is for her patients to recover and be discharged so they can return to their families and communities, or at least to a less restrictive environment like a home for the aged. Outside work, Siti spends her free time with her three children, husband and mother. Once a year, Siti and her husband make time to go on a honeymoon trip to celebrate their wedding anniversary. Despite my shift work, I always manage to be with my family, she says. When her children fall ill, her nursing skills come in handy. I know how to manage them. There is no need for me to be anxious since I can monitor them and will know when it is time to seek treatment. If ice-cream makes you feel good, does that mean its good for mental health? Siti applies the same tender loving care to her 61-year-old mother, who was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease last year. A few years ago, noticing that her mom had become lethargic and was losing weight, Siti brought her to see a few doctors. Initially, none of them could diagnose what was wrong. Undeterred, Siti kept a dedicated watch on her mother for over a year. Her mother developed hyperpigmentation on her face and body and was eventually discovered to have autoimmune disease. (Autoimmune diseases are difficult to diagnose. They cause the immune system to attack healthy cells in the body by mistake and can affect almost any part of the body.) It was thanks to Sitis close monitoring of her mothers condition that she received medical attention early. The experience is one of the many reasons Siti feels that it was a wise choice to go into nursing. My husband and my mother are my best friends, she says. And my indulgences are my kids. Looking back, Siti does not regret following her mothers wishes. I feel blessed to have a mother like her, who encouraged me to be a nurse, says Siti, her voice trailing off as she tries to hold back the happy tears. While she has fulfilled her mothers desire for her to be a nurse, Sitis passion in her work has also made her a shining beacon for others. Bangalore (India) (AFP) - Veteran fast bowler Ashish Nehra says India cannot afford any slip-ups against Bangladesh on Wednesday if they are to avoid a humiliating early exit from the World Twenty20 on home soil. The hosts are precariously placed in fourth spot in Group Two after one defeat and one win and desperately need an emphatic victory against Bangladesh to boost their run rate as they bid for a semi-finals berth. India's six-wicket win over arch-rivals Pakistan on Saturday will have boosted their confidence after a shock 47-run defeat to New Zealand in their opening group match. But Nehra, part of the Indian side that won the 50-over World Cup in 2011, said Bangladesh could not be "taken lightly". "Only two teams will qualify. Till the time (you do), you need to approach every game as a knockout game. There's not too much room for error," the 36-year-old said in a pre-match press conference Tuesday. "Everyone in the dressing room, we are not taking Bangladesh lightly." Skipper Mahendra Singh Dhoni has urged his big-hitters to improve their run rate dramatically against Bangladesh and then Australia in the following match if they are to make sure of qualification. While Bangladesh have a poor track record in T20s, they beat India in a one-day series last year. Dhoni said India, firm favourites at the start of the tournament to lift a second World T20 title, need to improve to qualify from a tough group. "I still feel there is still scope for improvement and in the coming two games that will be our priority," he said after Saturday's win over Pakistan. New Zealand top the group on four points after two wins while Pakistan, Australia and India all have two points. However, India's run rate, which could determine who qualifies, is considerably worse than their rivals. "In the first game our run rate went down. So it's not only about winning but you have to take care of the run-rate at some point," added Dhoni. Story continues The hosts are seeking to become the first country to win the World T20 title twice, after clinching the crown in 2007, and also the first to win at home. - Slopping fielding - A depleted Bangladesh, by comparison, will be desperate for a win after two straight losses, the latest to Australia by three wickets on Monday. Sitting at the bottom of Group Two after also losing to Pakistan, the Tigers have almost no chance of advancing to the semi-finals, but skipper Mashrafe Mortaza vowed to battle on. "We will keep fighting. We still have two matches to fight hard," he said. Shakib Al Hasan, widely considered Bangladesh's best player, said his side needed to stamp out sloppy fielding including dropped catches that marred their efforts against Australia. "We need to be very disciplined with our bowling and fielding to restrict them (India)," he said. The Tigers were left reeling after the ICC's decision at the weekend to suspend their top bowlers Arafat Sunny and Taskin Ahmed for illegal actions, forcing them to rush in replacements from Bangladesh. There are also questions over star batsman Tamim Iqbal who is unwell and did not play against Australia. Teams India (from): Mahendra Singh Dhoni (capt and wicketkeeper), Ravichandran Ashwin, Jasprit Bumrah, Shikhar Dhawan, Harbhajan Singh, Ravindra Jadeja, Virat Kohli, Mohammed Shami, Pawan Negi, Ashish Nehra, Hardik Pandya, Ajinkya Rahane, Suresh Raina, Rohit Sharma, Yuvraj Singh. Bangladesh (from): Mashrafe Mortaza (capt), Shakib Al Hasan, Abu Hider, Al-Amin Hossain, Mahmudullah, Mohammad Mithun, Mushfiqur Rahim, Mustafizur Rahman, Nasir Hossain, Nurul Hasan (wicketkeeper), Sabbir Rahman, Soumya Sarkar, Tamim Iqbal, Shuvagata Hom, Saqlain Sajib One Friday morning in July 2008, Washington, D.C., security guard Dick Heller headed to police headquarters on an errand that he had been planning for the better part of 15 years. Three weeks earlier, the U.S. Supreme Court had made its historic Second Amendment decision in District of Columbia v. Heller. Now Heller set out to do what no one in D.C. had been allowed to do before he won the case: register a handgun for self-protection. More From Our Partners When he later emerged from the police station to address an entourage of supporters and TV cameras , he was empty handed. Despite his court victory, he had been unable to acquire a gun permit. In the weeks since the Heller decision, the city had hastily enacted a new and lengthy set of regulations. Heller had come to the station with his revolverthe type Matt Dillon used to use on Gunsmoke, he told reportersbut hadnt brought the many documents that the district had decided were required to register a handgun. He could take his revolver back home, police said, but he would have to keep it trigger-locked and unloaded. Afterward, Heller tried gamely to put a positive spin on what had just transpired, but there was no hiding his frustration. Were still working out the procedure of how much the government needs to regulate the citizens rights, he noted ruefully. Recommended: Donald Trump Claims He 'Had No Choice' But to Talk About His Anatomy A reporter asked, Its been a long time coming for you, sir. Are you encouraged? Heller forced a smile. Its been a long battle, he stated flatly. For scholars of constitutional law, there is no questioning the momentous change Heller wrought. We live in a world where, in part because of Heller, every single American has the right to own a gun in their own home for self defense, says Adam Winkler, the UCLA constitutional law professor whose book, Gunfight, chronicled the Heller case. His lawsuit paved the way for literally hundreds of other lawsuits. So I think his influence has really been quite huge. Story continues For the gun lobby and its Republican allies, preserving the victory they were handed via Heller has become a rallying point in every Supreme Court nomination fight that has taken place since. Now that President Barack Obama has picked federal judge Merrick Garland to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, author of the Heller decision, the National Rifle Association has used the centrist jurists ambiguous views on gun rights to declare him unacceptable for confirmationa reminder of how far it will go to protect the gains delivered by his case. Heller embodies a dominant belief in gun-rights circles that his case didnt go nearly far enough to abolish gun regulations once and for all. But dont try venerating Heller to Dick Heller himself. As his failed mission at the D.C. police station vividly illustrated, the ruling was not quite the sweeping gun-freedom victory he and many others had first thought. Instead, the win was just a single turning point in an all-out war with the precedent that had governed the regulation of guns in America for centuries. He has spent the last seven years sparring in court with the District of Columbia over an evolving list of gun regulations authorities enacted that were designed to minimally comply with the ruling that bears his name. Over that time, he has grown increasingly disillusioned over the intransigence of courts and legislators, a frustration that has brought his anti-government views bubbling to the surface. Asked to serve as the Rosa Parks of the gun-rights movement, hes come to embody something else: a belief, now dominant in gun-rights circles, that Heller didnt go nearly far enough to abolish gun regulations once and for all. Recommended: The Obama Doctrine Dick Hellers telling of how he made constitutional history begins with what almost sounds like the setup to a sitcom: Two guys livin in a basement apartment in Washington. But it quickly becomes clear that this story and its narrator had a serious mission. Its other characterthe second guy in the apartmentwas Hellers tenant-roomate, Dane vonBreichenruchardt. Together, as Heller later recalled, they would spend at least a decade plotting to overthrow D.C.s gun laws before the lawsuit got filed in 2003. (Heller did not respond to requests for comment.) Supported by Hellers pay as a security guard, vonBreichenruchardt served as Hellers constitutional muse and a handler of sorts, according to Reasonmagazines Brian Dohertys history of the case, Gun Control on Trial. Living across the street from a public housing projects open-air drug peddling and gunplay, the two in 1996 started the U.S. Bill of Rights Foundation, which vonBreichenruchardt ran as a vehicle to advance his wide-ranging libertarian views on small government, the gold standard, and guns. Heller carried a gun at work, butbecause of D.C.s then 20-year-old gun banhad to leave it there when he returned home each day. In 2002, vonBreichenruchardt devised a plan that would lay the groundwork for a lawsuit: Heller would go through the futile gesture of applying for a gun permit as a way to document the practical impossibility of keeping a gun for home protection in the district. Recommended: How Donald Trump Could End the Republican Lock on the Mormon Vote Around the same time, the Cato Institutes Robert Levy was preparing a legal attack on the D.C. law, a case he would personally finance and run with a band of fellow libertarian lawyers. They needed plaintiffs. Instead of the usual litigants that challenged gun restrictions on Second Amendment groundspeople charged with gun crimesLevy and his co-counsel sought media-friendly, law-abiding D.C. residents to serve as the public face of their case. On the surface, Heller seemed the perfect plaintiff to carry the legal challenge. But the lawyers worried about his zealous anti-government views and his penchant for riffing on the supposed similarities between the D.C. government and Russia. Levy was concerned that, in Dohertys words, Heller seemed like a cliched vision of the sort of person obsessed with his gun rights. And so, Dicks role as the named plaintiff was not what was intended, as Levy recalled in a recent interview. The lawyers chose another D.C. resident, Shelly Parker, as the lead plaintiff. They saw the African-American woman as ideal because she had bravely stood up to drug dealers and had had her life threatened. Heller was essentially demoted, and told to stifle his potentially problematic political statements. I was supposed to be invisible and vanilla, Heller told Doherty. Four years into the litigation, Parker and four other original plaintiffs were dropped from the case because they lacked legal standing, meaning they hadnt suffered enough of an injury, in technical terms, to file suit. Heller, meanwhile, still held the trump card that vonBreichenrucharft had engineered: the denied gun permit. That was enough to sue. Parker v. D.C. was renamed Heller v. D.C., with Dick Heller as the sole plaintiff. The case still faced other hurdles. Early on, lawyers for the NRAfearing pro-gun forces lacked enough votes to convince a Supreme Court majority that the Second Amendment protects an individuals right to bear armstried to talk Levy out of pursuing the case. They then attempted to dissuade him from using as his lead lawyer an untested sole practitioner, Alan Gura. Doubting Hellers prospects, the NRA filed a competing suit, Seegars v. Ashcroft, helmed by a leading Second Amendment advocate, Stephen Halbrook. The NRAs concerns were strategic, but Levy says now that something else was going on. I think the real concern was that three lawyers from outside the NRA started stepping on some toes, and the NRA wasnt appreciative, he says. During the Supreme Court oral arguments in Heller, Gura claimed the court could secure gun rights for individuals while still allowing for certain restrictions, such as a machine gun ban. Guras concessionfollowed by language in Scalias majority opinion that nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding regulations such as restrictions on felons or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of armsrealigned the spectrum of gun-rights advocates. Gura had spent the previous five years racing past the NRA, fueled by a belief that they could upend centuries of law. But even that brash position paled in comparison with the radicalism of absolutists, and now Gura and his associates found themselves to the left of hard-line advocates. The recriminations started immediately after Guras oral argument. Was it a failure of nerve under pressure, or did someone get to this guy? libertarian writer Vin Suprynowicz asked. Gura did not respond to requests for comment. But in Winklers book, hes quoted as dismissing the crazy extremists who wanted him to do more to avoid the kind of compromises that now serve as justification for preserving gun regulations under Heller. That would have probably made me very popular in some cabin somewhere out there in the woods, he said, but he would have lost the case. The Heller attorneys, Gura and associates, were not that eager to pursue just a pedal-to-the-metal constitutional case, says Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America, a group that prides itself on its absolutist stance on gun rights. Heller, Pratt adds, is someone who really gets the Second Amendment. In the end if we dont defend the fundamental principle, as Heller himself seems to prefer to do, we end up settling for less than what we want. Heller at first had no intention of settling for less. Much in demand as a speaker at gun shows and other events, he vowed to make the most of his newfound ability to speak his mind, promising a campaign to expand gun rights and other freedoms. Soon after the decision, in 2008, he created the Heller Foundationpaired with vonBreichenruchardts U.S. Bill of Rights Foundationto promote a world where arms and self defense rights are considered as essential to human life as food and water. Neither nonprofit makes its financial records available, so its difficult to discern the extent of their activities. According to an infrequently updated Heller Foundation website which is oddly adorned with cheesecake photos of young, gun-toting womenHellers only litigation outside of the D.C. case is in a Dallas lawsuit challenging federal machine-gun regulations. In that case, he signed on to an amicus brief filed by Pratts GOA that called machine guns the lineal descendants of founding-era firearms fulfilling the ultimate purpose of the Second Amendment, to allow the people to take up effective arms against a tyrant. A district judges dismissal of that suit now awaits a ruling by the 5th Circuit. Meanwhile, his post-Heller outspokenness has only confirmed Gura and Cos rationale for muzzling him while the suit played out. He has equated Second Amendment advocacy with opposing socialist Obamacare . He has made a joint endorsement with vonBreichenruchardt of a minimal-government utopia of liberty-loving people in New Hampshire. And one element of his foundations vision is to rail against the enemies of humanity who believe in a centralized synarchy, a favored conspiracy-theorist term for government by a secret elite. The gun-rights community has shifted from pragmatic to absolutist in the years since the Heller case. But not all of his crusades have been so quixotic. He filed a lawsuit against Washington, D.C. in July 2008, shortly after his disappointing encounter with the handgun-registration bureaucrats. The so-called Heller II suit challenges the regulations D.C. lawmakers put in place following the ruling in Heller I. The case has been far more time-consuming than Heller expected. After parting ways with Gura and Levy, Heller enlisted as his lawyer Stephen Halbrook, the same Second Amendment expert whom the NRA hired to try to block the initial Heller. After a seven-year slog, punctuated by the D.C. governments multiple changes to its gun regulations, Halbrook last September managed to win a D.C. Circuit panels ruling invalidating four of the 10 restrictions Heller challenged, a ruling that stood with last months decision by the full appeals court not to rehear the case. Halbrook and Heller have not signaled if they will seek Supreme Court review. The provisions Heller II successfully invalidated include a requirement to renew gun permits every three years, a limit of one handgun registration per month, and requirements for permit holders to pass a test on D.C. gun laws and show up at police headquarters with the gun to be registered. Left intact, however, were the Districts registration requirement for long guns, a required safety class and registration fees for permit holders, and other obstacles to the sort of frictionless, gun-friendly city Heller wants D.C. to be. Heller voiced a glass-half-empty take on the outcome in an interview published last October in the NRA magazine Americas 1st Freedom: We still have to be registered and fingerprinted, so the worst part is we will still be treated like criminals, but the criminals wont be standing in line to get in. Heller added that it shouldnt have taken so much effort just to get this far. He blamed D.C. city government communists intent on padding their crime-fighting budgets by restricting gun rights, which he claimed only encourages more crime. Never in my wildest dreams did I expect to be sacrificing my life just to win the rights in D.C. that he thought he had won long ago, the now-74-year-old Heller said. What did he really expect? responds Gunfight author Winkler. Winning four of 10 challenges to gun regulations is an outstanding victory. I dont think of that as a mixed bag. I mean, youre challenging laws that are designed for public safety. Youre challenging laws which have been upheld in court after court after court across the nation. As the gun-rights community has shifted right in the years since Heller, from strategic and pragmatic to absolutist and idealistic, the greatest casualty has been reasonable expectations. Everybody understoodor at least any reasonable person understoodthat we cant have 11-year-olds with machine guns in front of the White House when the president is delivering a speech, says Levy, the attorney who brought the initial lawsuit. So, some weapons can be regulated, some people can be regulated, like minors and felons and mentally incompetent people, and some circumstances can be regulated. Battles over defining those circumstances, Levy says, will be going on for a long time. This article appears courtesy of The Trace. Read more from The Atlantic: This article was originally published on The Atlantic. LONDON (Reuters) - Britain's chief budget forecaster said Chancellor George Osborne's plan to turn a budget deficit into a surplus by the end of the decade would be affected only marginally by the government's decision to scrap planned cuts to disability benefits. Robert Chote, head of the Office for Budget Responsibility, told members of Britain's parliament that he still gave the surplus target a roughly 55 percent chance of success. "To the nearest 5 percentage points it remains 55 (percent), but it is lower, clearly, if you have got less money there, the probability will be somewhat lower but not necessarily materially so at that time horizon," he said. Osborne included plans to save 4.4 billion pounds from disability benefits between now and the 2019/2020 financial year as part of an annual budget statement last week. Britain's work and pensions minister resigned in protest on Friday and the government said on Monday it would no longer press ahead with the benefit cuts. (Reporting by Ana Nicolaci da Costa and Kylie MacLellan; writing by William Schomberg) While no one immediately claimed responsibility for the fatal explosions that rocked Brussels on Tuesday morning and there's no evidence linking the Paris terror attacks suspect arrested Friday to the incident, Donald Trump is certain that what happened in Brussels is "retaliation" for Salah Abdeslam's arrest. "These attacks were based on him," Trump later said. "He probably knew these attacks were going to occur." Calling in to ABC News, the GOP presidential frontrunner said he would use "maximum interrogation techniques," including waterboarding, if Abdeslam were in U.S. custody. He went on to say he would "change the laws to go beyond waterboarding." When anchor George Stephanopoulos pointed out that waterboarding is not within the U.S. law right now, Trump said, "Well they say it probably isn't because Obama has wielded it out." He continued, "From what everybody tells me, waterboarding is not allowed to be used right now. I would expand it. I would have waterboarding and I'd go a step further." Trump also pointed out that terrorists "don't play by the rules," but the U.S. does, suggesting that America might have to change that approach to defeat terrorist forces and prevent incidents like those in Belgium from happening in the U.S. Read More: Brussels Terrorist Attacks: TV Networks Break In With Wall-to-Wall Coverage "If we had techniques that were strong and that we should have, I mean we play by the rules, they don't play by the rules," Trump said. "If they're not going to play by the rules and we're going to play by the rules, we're not going to have too many victories. We could have probably cut this off if we had the right technique and they used the right technique on him." Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton also called into ABC News and said she disagreed with Trump's waterboarding solution. Story continues "I do believe we have to give law enforcement and our intelligence professionals all the tools they need to do the job to keep Americans safe, but I don't think they need to resort to torture," she said. "That's like an open recruitment poster for more terrorists." Trump also called into Fox & Friends, and while he did not specifically mention Muslims he'd called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the U.S. following previous terrorist attacks Trump said America had to be even more aware about who enters the country. "Its a total disaster and we have to be very careful in the United States," he said. "We have to be very, very vigilant as to who we allow into this country. He added, I would close up our borders to people until we figure out what is going on. Read More: Critic's Notebook: Trump Hits Clinton on "Stamina," Sanders Criticizes Israel in CNN 'Final Five' Special Trump also tweeted early Tuesday morning that the "U.S. must be vigilant and smart!" When asked what that would mean specifically if he were in the White House, he told Stephanopoulos, "it would mean specifically that we would strengthen up our borders and would be very careful who we allow into our country." Do you all remember how beautiful and safe a place Brussels was. Not anymore, it is from a different world! U.S. must be vigilant and smart! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 22, 2016 Clinton again disagreed with his outlook and said the vetting process for those entering the country must be more stringent, but closing the borders was not the answer. Read More: Donald Trump Says He Should Get a Portion of Megyn Kelly's Salary for Making Her More Popular "Our country's got a lot of problems. We have a lot of people in our country now that probably and definitely have the same feelings and the same feeling of hate as the people in Brussels," Trump continued. "George, I was in Brussels many times over the years and it used to be a safe and beautiful city and then it really changednow it's like an armed campbefore this morning's attack. Brussels is different and Paris is different and the police don't have control over it anymore, and it's a very sad thing that's happening." ABC Breaking News | Latest News Videos Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton called in to ABC shortly after 9:30 a.m. ET. ABC Breaking News | Latest News Videos AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - The Netherlands' Prime Minister Mark Rutte on Tuesday advised Dutch citizens not to travel to Belgium following the bomb attacks in Brussels. Rutte told a news conference that increased police and military checks are taking place at airports and train stations around the country. However the threat level of an attack in the Netherlands has not been increased from the current "substantial" level, and the country has no concrete evidence of any immediate threat. (Reporting by Toby Sterling, Editing by Angus MacSwan) AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A police officer fired a warning shot during the arrests of three men near Amsterdam's central station on Tuesday evening, Dutch police said in a statement. The incident, which appeared to be drug-related, took place as police at airports and train stations around the Netherlands were on a high alert following bomb attacks in Brussels earlier in the day. Police cars had hemmed in the suspects' speeding vehicle on a major thoroughfare near the station after a pursuit and one suspect was immediately arrested. Two others initially ran off but they were arrested after police closed in on them and fired the warning shot. (Reporting By Anthony Deutsch; Editing by Richard Balmforth) PARIS (Reuters) - Egypt is preparing to buy French warships and a military satellite in deals worth more than 1 billion euros ($1.12 billion), La Tribune newspaper reported on Tuesday. The four naval vessels to be built by French naval shipyard DCNS include two Gowind corvettes, the newspaper reported, without citing sources. The military satellite would be supplied jointly by Airbus Space Systems, part of Airbus Group, and Thales Alenia Space, owned by French arms firm Thales and Italy's Finmeccanica, recently renamed Leonardo. Thales also owns 35 percent of the DCNS shipyard. None of the companies agreed to comment. The deals are expected to be signed during a visit to Egypt by French President Francois Hollande on April 18. Egypt had originally been reported to be in talks to buy two French military satellites. (Reporting by Cyril Altmeyer, Writing by Tim Hepher) Amman (AFP) - EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini broke down in tears Tuesday after talking about the deadly attacks in Brussels, cutting short a news conference in Jordan. The bombings marked "a very sad day for Europe as Europe and its capital is suffering the same pain that this region has known and knows every single day," she said, speaking alongside Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh. Mogherini said it was already clear that the blasts at Brussels airport and a metro station near the EU headquarters were attacks that resulted from radicalisation, and called for European and Middle Eastern leaders to work together to tackle the scourge. "We are still waiting for more precise news on the dynamics of the attacks in Brussels but it is quite clear the roots of the pain we are suffering around our region are very much the same," she said. "We are united in not only suffering... but also reacting to these acts and preventing radicalisation and violence together. "Being here together is the most powerful message of strength and friendship among our people that we can pass to those who would like to divide us," she said. "I will stop here. You will understand this. Today is a difficult day," Mogherini added after speaking for several minutes, her voice wavering. The former Italian foreign minister then became visibly overcome with emotion, prompting Judeh to cut short his own remarks and comfort Mogherini before escorting her from the room. At least 21 people were killed in the triple blasts in the Belgian capital, which came days after the dramatic arrest by Brussels police of Salah Abdeslam -- the prime suspect in Paris attacks claimed by the Islamic State group which killed 130 people in November. By Michelle Nichols, Louis Charbonneau and James Pearson UNITED NATIONS/SEOUL (Reuters) - The U.N. Security Council agreed on Monday to a Chinese request to remove sanctions on four ships the United Nations had blacklisted for ties to Pyongyang's arms trade. The agreement came after China secured assurances the vessels would not use North Korean crews, a U.S. official said. China asked the United States on March 16 for help removing the ships from the U.N. blacklist, according to a diplomatic cable sent the same day from the U.S. permanent mission at the United Nations to a group of other U.S. embassies. The cable, reviewed by Reuters, showed wrangling between top diplomats from the United States and China over the tough new North Korea sanctions, weeks after Washington had presented a united front with Beijing, Pyongyang's main ally and trade partner. The U.S. mission at the United Nations declined to comment on the cable or make its ambassador, Samantha Power, available for an interview about the cable. The U.S. Treasury Department, which administers U.S. economic and financial sanctions, also declined to comment. The removal of the four ships was confirmed in a press release, which was seen by Reuters and will soon be issued by the Security Council, according to U.N. diplomats. While Washington has been the driving force behind the toughening international sanctions regime, China conducts 90 percent of the trade with North Korea and is the key to enforcing them. FOURTH NUCLEAR TEST The ships were among 31 vessels sanctioned by the 15-member council on March 2 because they were linked to Ocean Maritime Management (OMM), a North Korean shipping firm known to transport arms and other illicit goods for the secretive state. "We discovered that they are not OMM ships," Chinese U.N. Ambassador Liu Jieyi told Reuters on Monday. "The basis for the listing of the ships is basically that they belong to OMM, so if you make a mistake, then you correct the mistake." U.S. and other Western officials have said all the original listings were carefully vetted before the ships were added to the blacklist. That list was appended to the sweeping Security Council resolutions implemented on March 2, following North Korea's fourth nuclear test in January. The U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Security Council committee on North Korea sanctions agreed to the request after China secured written commitments the four ships would no longer use North Korean crews. The four ships include the Jin Teng, a cargo ship detained by the Philippines days after the sanctions took effect. "We're pleased with the outcome," said the U.S. official. "It achieved an impact, a real world outcome." He added it was a sign of a "productive working relationship with China" on North Korea and that it was "gratifying to see such instant real-world effects" of the U.N. sanctions regime. U.S. FRUSTRATION Liu had raised the issue of the four sanctioned vessels last week in a meeting with Power, his U.S. counterpart, according to the cable reviewed by Reuters. Power approved the unclassified cable, which went from the U.S. mission at the U.N. to American embassies in Manila, Tokyo and Seoul. The cable pointed to American frustration with what U.S. officials characterized as China's attempts to hold up the routine renewal of a U.N. panel of experts in return for de-listing the ships. The panel is made up of a team of international experts who monitor and research potential breaches of resolutions against North Korea and recommend entities that could be sanctioned. Liu had asked Power's help in removing the ships from the list in an "easy, smooth and quick way," to get the panel renewed, according to the document's characterization of Liu's request. The easiest way, Liu said, "would be to work quickly to get all these issues settled," according to the cable. Power told Liu China's linking of the issues and attempts to hold up the renewal of the panel was "not going over well in Washington," according to the cable, and asked China to let the renewal go forward. "You don't need to blackmail us, Power said, as we are indeed interested in operating in good faith," the cable says of Power's conversation with Liu. Liu told Reuters on Monday he expected the experts panel would be "renewed according to the normal procedure in the Security Council". (Story refiles to fix Power's name in 2nd to last paragraph.) (Additional reporting by Ju-min Park in SEOUL; Editing by Tony Munroe and Bill Tarrant.) (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 863 cases of microcephaly, and considers most of them to be related to Zika infections in the mothers. Brazil is investigating an additional 4,268 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 38 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 (32): Aruba, Barbados, Bolivia, Bonaire, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, 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 (5): American Samoa, Marshall Islands, New Caledonia, 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? The World Health Organization (WHO) said sexual transmission is "relatively common" and has advised pregnant women not to travel to areas with ongoing outbreaks of Zika virus. The U.S. CDC is investigating about a dozen cases of possible sexual transmission. 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) New York (AFP) - The FBI and New York police are sending detectives to investigate the Brussels attacks because US citizens are among the casualties, a senior police officer announced Tuesday. John Miller, New York deputy police commissioner for intelligence and counterterrorism, made the remarks as the US government, state and city authorities stepped up security at major US airports and transit hubs. Three American missionaries were seriously wounded while accompanying a French colleague to Zaventem airport on her way to Ohio, the Mormon church announced earlier Tuesday. "Because there are Americans among the casualties and US persons in the attack in Belgium, there will be an FBI investigation coming out of the New York City Joint Terrorism Task Force," Miller told reporters. "We expect agents and New York City detectives, or Task Force officers, to be gearing up to leave for that investigation overseas as early as tonight or tomorrow." New York police detectives and FBI agents from the task force have been involved in numerous international terrorism investigations, including the US embassy bombings in East Africa in 1998 and the attack on the USS Cole in 2000. Belgium launched a huge manhunt after bombings claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train, killing around 35 people. By Letitia Stein TAMPA, Fla. (Reuters) - A Florida mother who was accidentally shot and wounded earlier this month by her 4-year-old son while she was driving should be charged with a misdemeanor related to unsafe storage of a firearm, a local sheriff's office said on Tuesday. The shooting involving 31-year-old Jamie Gilt drew wide attention after local media reported she was a staunch advocate for the right to carry guns, citing her apparent comments on social media. Gilt was shot in the back and later released from a hospital. Her child was unharmed. Prosecutors will decide whether to move forward with the charge recommended by the Putnam County Sheriff's Office, said Captain Joseph Wells, a sheriff's spokesman. Gilt was not arrested, he said. On the afternoon of March 8, she flagged down an officer for help while stopped on a road in Putnam County, about 70 miles south of Jacksonville. She said she had been shot by her son who was in the backseat, according to the sheriff's office report. An officer found a small, automatic handgun on the floor behind the driver's seat. Gilt later told officers she had placed the firearm under the edge of the driver's seat, rather than carry it in a holster, in anticipation of a long drive, the report said. She thought her son, riding behind her in a booster seat, may have unbuckled himself to pick up a toy and located the handgun, the report said. Wells said relatives were caring for the child, and the state's child welfare agency had been investigating. Gilt legally owned the firearm, sheriff's officials have said. Reuters could not immediately reach her for comment. (Reporting by Letitia Stein; Editing by Peter Cooney) Montreal (AFP) - Former Toronto mayor Rob Ford, who made international headlines when he was caught using crack cocaine while in office in Canada's largest city, died Tuesday at age 46 after a battle with cancer. The colorful and controversial Ford -- elected in 2010 -- earned worldwide notoriety in 2013 when he refused to resign after acknowledging that he had smoked crack during his chaotic tenure and admitted to struggling with a drinking problem. Ford's family called him a "dedicated man of the people." "With heavy hearts and profound sadness, the Ford family announces the passing of their beloved son, brother, husband, and father, Councillor Rob Ford, earlier at the age of 46," said a statement from the family, requesting privacy to mourn. Ford, an anti-tax populist, put Canada's usually staid politics on the global map when an alleged drug dealer tried to sell a video of the mayor apparently smoking crack. At first, the rotund Ford denied using the drug, but he later acknowledged smoking crack cocaine in a "drunken stupor," while saying he was not an addict. Ford entered rehab soon after the sensational emergence of the video, saying he had struggled to get a grip on his personal demons, while his behavior became increasingly erratic. Despite hanging on in office, Toronto's city council had stripped Ford of most of his mayoral powers over his misconduct, while calls for his resignation dogged him. Nevertheless, his public support remained relatively high. He defiantly vowed to stand for re-election in 2014, but in the end he opted not to run so he could undergo chemotherapy and focus on his failing health. John Tory, a moderate conservative, was elected in October that year to succeed Ford, bringing an end to a turbulent 18 months at Toronto city hall. Tory defeated Rob Ford's brother Doug at the polls. "On behalf of the people of the city of Toronto, I offer my sincere condolences to his loved ones at this time," said his successor Tory, adding that Toronto had been left "reeling" from the sudden news of Ford's death. Story continues Ford was "a profoundly human guy whose presence in our city will be missed," Tory added in a statement. - 'Courage and determination' - Ford was first hospitalized in September 2014 after suffering abdominal pain for three months. A battery of tests showed Ford had malignant liposarcoma, a rare and aggressive type of cancer which arises in soft tissues including fat, blood vessels, nerves and muscles. In May the following year, doctors removed a tumor from his abdomen and at the time doctors saw no other signs of tumors, but in October last year, Ford revealed the illness had returned and he would need further cancer treatment. "I was feeling better than I ever have in my life, and now I'm straight back to square one," the former mayor said at the time. "I think this one is a little harder than the first one because we saw the light at the end of the tunnel." The deeply polarizing Ford was on the receiving end of numerous death threats while in power, and Canadian media reported that he had been verbally abusive and scuffled with fellow addicts during his two months in rehab for alcohol and drug use in 2014. Despite that, his supporters viewed him as a canny and committed politician, and tributes poured in as news of his death spread. "Rob Ford fought cancer with courage and determination. My condolences and best wishes to the Ford family today," Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted. Information on memorial services would be announced at a later date, Ford's family said, adding that the former mayor "spent his life serving the citizens of Toronto." Paris (AFP) - French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve Tuesday said Paris was deploying 1,600 additional police to border crossings and air, sea and rail infrastructure after the Brussels attacks which killed at least 21 people. "Access to public transport will be restricted to people with tickets and/or ID cards," and they may be frisked, he said after a meeting with President Francois Hollande. Cazeneuve also called on Europe to "further boost coordination and the fight" against terrorism. "These events that strike at the heart of Europe... show the need to reinforce even more the fight against terrorism," he said. The minister said French authorities have already prevented 10,000 people from entering the country since the November attacks in Paris that claimed 130 lives. PARIS (Reuters) - France has found a suspected case of bovine spongiform encephalopathy (ESB), also called mad cow disease, in the northeastern region of Ardennes, the agriculture ministry said on Tuesday. Samples of the five-year old cow were sent to a reference laboratory in Britain for confirmation and results of the test were expected within eight to 10 days, a ministry official said. If confirmed this new case would likely raise France's official risk level for mad cow disease, granted by the World Organisation by Animal Health, a key status for international trade. To have the safest "negligible risk" status a country must demonstrate that the last infected native animal was born more than 11 years ago. (Reporting by Sybille de La Hamaide, editing by Gus Trompiz) PARIS (Reuters) - France has stopped 10,000 people from entering the country since last November's attacks in Paris, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said as he announced extra security measures in the wake of deadly blasts in Brussels on Tuesday. France's borders are officially open under the Schengen agreement that waives controls between some European countries, but it has put checks in place since the Nov. 13 militant assaults on cafes bars, a soccer stadium and a music hall, in which 130 people died. Cazeneuve said those extra controls involving 5,000 police had been particularly focused on its northern border with Belgium. "In total, 220 points of entry are checked, 42 of them systematically and permanently. As a result over four months, 6 million people have been checked, and 10,000 individuals have already been prevented from entering," he told reporters. Those who struck in Paris are believed to have planned their assault in Brussels. The prime surviving suspect from the assault in the French capital was arrested there last week. Belgium's federal prosecutor said one of the explosions at Brussels Airport was likely to have been caused by a suicide bomber. There were two blast at the airport and another on a metro train. Cazeneuve said that as of Tuesday he had deployed a further 1,600 police to bolster security at its borders and on public transport. He was speaking after an emergency government meeting called by President Francois Hollande. France has been on its highest alert status since Nov. 13 amid worries about another attack on its soil. After the arrest of Paris attack suspect Salah Abdeslam last week, police have been on alert for any reprisal action in both capitals, which lie about 315 km (200 miles) apart. (Reporting by Jean-Baptiste Vey and James Regan; Writing by Andrew Callus; Editing by Leigh Thomas and Alison Williams) Orleans (France) (AFP) - A French appeals court has overturned a landmark decision to recognise a third gender for a person born with both male and female genitalia, court documents showed Tuesday. A lower court ruled in August last year that a hermaphrodite plaintiff who was designated male at birth, could use the term "neutral gender" on personal official documents. However, magistrates at the Orleans appeals court southwest of Paris ruled that to accept the plaintiff's request "would require recognising, in the guise of a simple rectification of his personal records, the existence of another sexual category." Mila Petkova, a lawyer for the plaintiff, said her client was "very disappointed" with the court's decision. "This is an additional violence inflicted on my client," she said, adding she would take the case to France's court of last resort and if necessary to the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. According to his doctor the plaintiff, 64, was born with a "rudimentary vagina" and a "micropenis" but no testicles. He approached the courts as he did not want such an "unequivocal" designation as male or female. The prosecutor who appealed the initial decision said he did so not because he fiercely opposed it but because he felt a higher ruling was necessary in a case that has "collided with current laws". The appeals court said it was necessary to find "a fair balance between the protection of the state of persons, which is a public issue, and respect for the private lives of people with a variation of sexual development." "This fair balance would allow either for personal records which mention no sexual category, or the modification of the gender which has been assigned to them when it is not in line with their physical appearance and social behaviour." The magistrates said that as the plaintiff was married and he and his wife had adopted a child, a request to change his civil status "contradicted his physical appearance and social behaviour." Story continues In an interview with the daily newspaper 20 Minutes last year, the plaintiff said he felt he was "neither a man nor a woman." Several countries including Germany, Australia, New Zealand and Nepal officially recognise a third gender on official forms. India, Pakistan and Bangladesh also have an official third gender designation for so-called hijra citizens who do not identify as male or female. The three remaining GOP presidential candidates took to social media to express their concerns after Tuesday mornings terror attack in Brussels, while Democratic candidates were initially silent on social media. Hillary Clinton issued a statement well after the Republican candidates but did address the attacks the old-fashion way early this morning on ABCs Good Morning America. Donald Trump, Ted Cruz and John Kasich will compete today in Arizona and Utah but the nations attention has turned from the presidential race to the tragedy in Belgiums capital city. Also Read: Donald Trump Doubles Down on Muslim Ban After Attacks in 'Disaster City' Brussels (Video) Do you all remember how beautiful and safe a place Brussels was. Not anymore, it is from a different world! U.S. must be vigilant and smart! Trump tweeted. Bernie Sanders did not post his own statement about the attacks until about 11:40 a.m. ET, more than eight hours after the first deadly explosion. Kasich posted a statement on Facebook, expressing solidarity with the people of Belgium. Kasich says his thoughts and prayers are with the victims and we must utterly reject the use of deadly acts of terror. Ted Cruz also posted a message on Facebook, claiming these terror attacks are no isolated incidents. Also Read: Donald Trump Protestor Detained by Immigrations Officials In Arizona They are just the latest in a string of coordinated attacks by radical Islamic terrorists perpetrated by those who are waging war against all who do not accept their extreme strain of Islam, Cruz wrote. Radical Islam is at war with us. Do you all remember how beautiful and safe a place Brussels was. Not anymore, it is from a different world! U.S. must be vigilant and smart! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 22, 2016 Related stories from TheWrap: Brussels Rocked by Deadly Explosions at Airport, Subway Station (Updated) Donald Trump: 'Nobody Respects Women More Than I Do' 5 Most Kosher Moments From Donald Trump's Speech to Pro-Israel Group By Phoebe Fronista EVROPOS, Greece (Reuters) - A Greek family opened its home to two Syrian migrant families last week, moved by the plight of thousands who have fled a five-year war for the security of Europe and are stranded. As soon as Dimitris Spiridis arrived with a huge bag of croissants to hand out to migrants living in a sprawling border camp at Idomeni, he decided that he needed to do more to help. "There was rain and fog. The only thing you could hear at eight in the morning was tears and coughing," he said. "I lost it. All the tents were soaked, all their clothes were soaked. Mud, humidity and tears, nothing else. Are we or aren't we Christians?" Spiridis told Reuters Television. The 50-year-old used to work as a cook in Switzerland and has been back in Greece for five years, where, like so many in the recession-hit country, he has been unable to find a job and helps out in the family bakery. He and his wife Maria live about half an hour's drive from Idomeni, in the small village of Evropos. Now they have one Syrian family in a small attic apartment and another family with three children are staying in their bedroom. The couple now sleep on the couch in their living room. Spiridis said he would house the families as long as necessary. "So, we are all living downstairs together. One big family, 22 people in total. It's fine," he said. More than 50,000 refugees and migrants are living in Greece and more are arriving despite a deal agreed by the EU and Turkey on Friday intended to halt illegal migration flows to Europe. Under the pact, Ankara would take back all migrants and refugees, including Syrians, who cross to Greece from March 20 and whose asylum applications are rejected. In return, the EU would take in thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey and make financial and political concessions to Ankara. "I want Europe if it can, and I know it can, to accept these families from Syria, a place that has been destroyed, and for these families to be reconnected with their relatives," Spiridis said. (Editing by Louise Ireland) ABC has set its star-studded cast for Dustin Lance Black's LGBT-themed limited series When We Rise. When We Rise chronicles the personal and political struggles, setbacks and triumphs of a diverse family of LGBT men and women who helped pioneer one of the last legs of the U.S. civil rights movement, from its turbulent infancy in the 20th century to the once-unfathomable successes of today. Guy Pearce (Memento, L.A. Confidential) will star as LGBT activist Cleve Jones. Mary-Louise Parker (Weeds, Angels in America) is set as women's rights leader Roma Guy and Rachel Griffiths (Brothers and Sisters, Six Feet Under) will portray her wife, social justice activist Diane. Also joining the cast are Austin McKenzie (Spring Awakening) who will take on the younger version of Cleve Jones; Emily Skeggs (Fun Home) as the younger Roma Guy, newcomer Jonathan Majors as the younger Ken Jones and Fiona Dourif (The Master) as the younger Diane. Still to be cast are African-American community organizer Ken Jones and transgender activist Cecelia Cheung. The drama is written and created by Black, who won an Oscar for penning the screenplay for the Harvey Milk biopic Milk. The ABC Studios entry will be exec produced by Laurence Mark and Bruce Cohen, the latter of whom produced Milk. Gus Van Sant, who earned an Oscar nomination for directing Milk, will helm the two-hour series premiere of the seven-episode limited series and also serve as an exec producer on the mini, which was first announced in July 2013. Read More: Dustin Lance Black, Gus Van Sant's Gay Rights Mini a Go at ABC "Its been the honor of my life to research and craft these stories of family, diversity and equality over the past three years, Black said. To have collaborators of this caliber sign on to help bring these stories to life is a tremendous vote of confidence, and I hope a testament to the relevancy and necessity of our continued march toward justice for all. Story continues Cleve Jones joined the gay liberation movement in 1972 and was befriended by gay rights leader Harvey Milk. He founded the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt and led the National March for Equality in 2009. Ken Jones, an African-American Vietnam vet, joined the movement only to discover and confront racism within the gay men's community. He organized services for homeless youth as he faced the devastation of the AIDS epidemic. Roma Guy co-founded the San Francisco Women's Building. Currently a criminal justice activist, she worked to bring healthcare access to everyone in San Francisco. Diane co-founded the Women's Building and has worked as an HIV/AIDS nurse at San Francisco General Hospital and a social justice activist for 33 years. Pearce is repped by CAA, Shanahan Management and Sloane Offer; Parker is with WME; and Griffiths is with WME, Signpost, Shanahan Management and Jackoway Tyerman. A premiere date for When We Rise has not yet been determined. NEW YORK - Hollywood stars Jake Gyllenhaal and Naomi Watts team up to tell an intimate story of grief mixed with humor in director Jean-Marc Vallee's latest film "Demolition". Vallee, known for "Wild" and "Dallas Buyers Club", has called the movie his most "rock and roll" film to date, both for its pulsing soundtrack in a film otherwise punctuated by silence and its often provocative and offbeat portrayal of grief. Gyllenhaal plays a New York investment banker coming to grips with his wife's sudden death. An unexpected connection with a vending machine company's customer service employee, played by Watts, eventually helps him express his grief. "... There are tons of times throughout the movie where you're laughing, Gyllenhaal said at the films New York premiere on Monday night. It's just an awkward journey through a pretty seemingly ordinary situation." Watts said her character's quirky traits blend well within the complexities of the story. "She's going through something very different than he is, but yet she also needs a jolt," she said. "Demolition" hits cinemas in April. Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - Hamas staged major military exercises Tuesday to test its readiness in the event of another Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip, which has been ravaged by three wars since 2008. The exercises involving 1,000 police and emergency services personnel were not meant to be seen as an "announcement of war", said a spokesman for the Islamist movement's interior ministry. For the duration of the exercises, however, a state of emergency was observed in Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya, bordering Israel in the north, and Jabalia farther to the south. The media was barred from approaching the area, but loud explosions could be heard from a distance, with hospitals and schools placed on alert. Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip have fought three wars since 2008, including a devastating 50-day conflict in 2014. The Palestinian enclave remains under an Israeli blockade. Harrison Ford stopped by Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Monday to promote the Blu-Ray release of Star Wars: The Force Awakens, but also talked about his plans to film another installment of Indiana Jones. Ford had previously been resistant to filming another sequel. Kimmel asked, Did they finally come up with an idea that you loved? Ford responded, Yeah, then added, I havent read the script. Im talking about the contract. He then laughed the laugh of a man that has been offered an absurd amount of money. The actor went on to explain that money was not the only reason he signed on to reprise the role of Indiana Jones. Its great fun to play this character. Its great fun to work with Steven [Spielberg]. Im looking forward to it. Kimmel pressed Ford for information about the plot, but he was as tight-lipped about that as he was about the plot of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Jimmy Kimmel Live! airs weeknights at 11:35 p.m. on ABC. Watch Gal Gadots painful Wonder Woman costume-fitting story. Tell us what you think! Hit us up on Twitter, Facebook, or Instagram, or leave your comments below. And check out our host, Cynthia LuCiette, on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Vanished Without a Trace: Our take on some of historys enduring mysteries. He boarded a 727 Northwest Orient Airlines flight from Portland, Oregon, to Seattle on Nov. 24, 1971. But instead of getting off with the other passengers, he leapt from the plane and into history, with $200,000 in $20 bills strapped to his body. D. B. Cooper both never existed and still walks among us today, depending on whom you ask. The man of mystery never really went by D. B. Instead, he checked in under a presumed alias: Dan Cooper (the alias was later misreported in media outlets). Even Walter Cronkite would later misstate his name on air as D. A., and his segment offers some of the only footage of the crew involved in the hijacking. I think a lot of us wish we could do something this ballsy. Matt Love, author By all accounts, Cooper was a gentleman hijacker. After passing a ransom note to flight attendant Tina Mucklow, Cooper continued to sip on bourbon and smoke. Allegedly, he even offered Mucklow some of the ransom money. He seemed rather nice, the 22-year-old told authorities. That kind of suave demeanor and his decidedly 1950s attire dark suit and matching tie with a mother-of-pearl pin, loafers and horn-rimmed sunglasses flew in the face of early 70s culture. His look had a blogger speculating in 2010 that Mad Mens Don Draper would turn out to be the skyjacker in the series finale. Theres something to that theory. In 2010, I wrote an award-nominated screenplay, The Lives of D. B. Cooper, which described the character as bearing a strong resemblance to Jon Hamm, the actor who played Draper. It was far from the first time Cooper made his way into pop culture. Hes been the subject of folk songs and a cheesy 1981 cop comedy starring Robert Duvall; Robert Stack tried unraveling the case in one of the better episodes of his iconic Unsolved Mysteries. In more recent years, both National Geographic and Decoded host Brad Meltzer have taken entertaining but fruitless stabs. Story continues So, why the lives of D. B. Cooper? NORJAK, as the FBI officially labeled the incident, is the only unsolved case of skyjacking in American history. And because of that, Coopers tale has generated 40 years of conspiracy theories, fan fiction and FBI investigations that keep running dry. Theyve investigated nearly a dozen suspects, ranging from a Mormon Sunday school teachercumcopycat hijacker to an elderly con man who made a deathbed confession. In November 2015, yet another theory made headlines when a Michigan man theorized that former grocery store manager Robert Richard Lepsy was Cooper. Lepsy allegedly wore the same mother-of-pearl tiepin and had a fondness for the same style of loafers. He disappeared two years before the hijacking and hasnt been seen since. Whether this latest so-called suspect has any real connection to the case, its easy to understand why so many people want to believe someone they knew was Cooper. Without hurting anyone, Cooper jumped out of an airplane at 200 miles an hour and into the woods with $200,000 hed extorted from the government, says Matt Love, an author who has written about leads in the Cooper case. I think a lot of us wish we could do something this ballsy. While the FBI hasnt closed the case, the agency says Cooper probably died after jumping on that stormy night. In fact, in 1980, an 8-year-old named Brian Ingram found a bundle of deteriorated cash along the banks of the Columbia River while camping with his dad. The serial numbers on the bills matched those of the ones that the FBI had given Cooper. But, as skeptics pointed out, and the FBI acknowledged, money left out in the open and exposed to the elements would surely have deteriorated into sludge. Every year, the proprietors of the Ariel Store in Woodland, Washington, throw an anniversary party for the criminal. Revelers show up in D. B. Cooper costumes, and a rock band cranks out tunes. The late Donna Elliott, owner of the Ariel Store, speculated that the hijacker had attended the gathering: Im positive hes shown up himself, she said. Those who idolize Cooper might be more reserved in their praise if they knew that hes one of the primary reasons the FAA made airports beef up security. In 1971 you didnt even have to show an ID to board a plane, and the only ones disrobing were those trying to make it into the even more mythical mile-high club. Yet Coopers legend remains larger than life, with seemingly everyone trying their hand at cracking a mystery that refuses to be solved. Related Articles Paris (AFP) - French President Francois Hollande held his first formal meeting with victims of the November 13 attacks in Paris on Monday, three days after Belgian police captured key suspect Salah Abdeslam. "We felt we were heard, even if there was no concrete progress," said Emmanuel Domenach, who escaped a massacre at the Bataclan concert hall where 90 people were killed in one of several attacks claimed by the Islamic State group. Georges Salines, the head of one victims' group, 13 Novembre: Fraternite et Verite (November 13: Fraternity and Truth), ran through a list of "serious problems" experienced by victims and their families, ranging from the process of identifying the bodies to emotional and financial support. Before the meeting he said he would quiz Hollande on his strategy to prevent future attacks. "What are France's international goals, what is being done to eliminate IS?" asked Salines, whose daughter Lola was among those killed at the Bataclan concert hall. He said Hollande had promised to meet victims' associations again before the summer, which begins in June, to take stock of the victims' situation. Hollande's office on Saturday announced the long-delayed meeting with five victims' associations formed after the attacks that claimed 130 lives and injured hundreds. It said the president and Prime Minister Manuel Valls have been in regular contact with victims and their families -- and Hollande has met with them previously at ceremonies -- but this is the first formal sit-down. The Elysee said there were plans to create a permanent office to help and liaise with victims. The meeting came on the same day as La Belle Equipe became the last of the restaurants struck in the attack to re-open, surprising residents. Twenty people were killed at the spot in eastern Paris. - Abdeslam capture 'a relief' - The dramatic capture of Abdeslam, one of the organisers of the attacks, in a Brussels raid on Friday "made the meeting all the more timely," said an aide to the president. Story continues Abdeslam, a Belgian-born French citizen, is the last surviving member of the 10-man jihadist team at the core of the Paris attacks. They are believed to have been supported by a much wider network, many of whom are under arrest or are still being sought by police. Victims' groups said they were relieved he was captured alive to face justice. "For some it is a relief. But it is by no means a cure-all," said Carole Damiani, a psychologist and head of Paris Aide aux Victimes (Paris Victims Assistance), another group which met the president. Sven Mary, a lawyer for Abdeslam, launched a legal fight on Sunday to block his extradition to France. Mary also said his client would lodge a legal complaint against a French prosecutor who divulged the details of the first interrogation with the suspect to journalists on Saturday. "I don't understand why a prosecutor in Paris has to communicate at this stage on an investigation in Belgium," Mary told the newspaper Le Soir on Sunday. Abdeslam "is worth gold. He is collaborating, he's communicating, he is not using his right to remain silent," Mary said. Paris prosector Francois Molins on Saturday told reporters Abdeslam had played a "central role" in planning the attacks at the Bataclan concert hall, national stadium and several bars and restaurants. Molins said Abdeslam had told interrogators he had wanted to blow himself up at the Stade de France before changing his mind. An explosives-filled vest was later found in southern Paris in an area where he had been, according to mobile phone signals. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan said on Tuesday that he does not agree with critics of Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump who have labeled Trump authoritarian or fascist. "I don't see it that way," Ryan told reporters in the Capitol. He was responding to a question about whether he agreed with critics such as Senator Elizabeth Warren, who has called Trump authoritarian, and Mexico's President Enrique Pena Nieto, who has likened Trump's "strident tone" to the ascent of 1930s fascist leaders Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Ryan also said he was not worried that the Republican-majority House of Representatives might switch to Democratic control as a result of the November elections. "I'm not concerned about the House flipping because we are in control of our own actions." (Reporting by Susan Cornwell; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama) By Katy Migiro NAIROBI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - One in four internally displaced persons (IDP) surveyed in Kenya has been a victim or witness of human trafficking, the majority lured to the Middle East but then forced to do menial work or sexually exploited, an anti-trafficking charity said on Tuesday. People who were displaced during Kenya's 2007/8 post-election violence were most at risk, the charity's researchers found, particularly those who live close to a major highway or local trading centre. "As traffickers tend to look for people who are desperate and with an uncertain future, they often target IDP communities," HAART, a Kenyan charity that gives trafficking victims psychological and economic support, said in a study. "They give false promises such as non-existent opportunities for jobs or education." Traffickers posed as job agents in 88 percent of cases, researchers found, and two-thirds of their victims were women. "We have a group of people who were taken to Saudi Arabia under the false pretext that they were going to be employed," one respondent told the researchers. "Some were being sexually harassed; for others, the jobs that they were made to do were not what they expected." Sexual exploitation was the second most common result of the trafficking, affecting 25 percent of those trafficked. HAART surveyed 309 IDPs in 13 places across Kenya. VIOLENCE Researchers found that half those displaced by the post-election violence had experienced or witnessed trafficking, in striking contrast with people displaced for environmental reasons, such as evicted forest squatters - none of whom had been approached by traffickers. The displacement crisis that hit Kenya in 2007/08, the worst it has known, came when violence erupted after a disputed presidential poll and more than 600,000 people fled their homes. Many lost their homes, possessions and family members and fled to places where they faced hostility from locals. "You have nowhere to go," said Radoslaw Malinowski, HAART's chief executive, at the report launch. "If someone gives you a golden opportunity, you are happy to take it." In February the government handed out 1 billion Kenyan shillings ($9.9 million) to resettle more than 5,000 IDP families still living in camps eight years after the violence. The United Nations estimates there are still 250,000 IDPs in Kenya. There is no official Kenyan figure. Kenya passed a counter-trafficking law in 2010 but it has proved difficult to secure convictions because of the need to prove all three elements - the act of recruitment, the deceptive means and the exploitative purpose. The charity called for more vulnerable Kenyans to be educated about trafficking. ($1 = 101.4500 Kenyan shillings) (Reporting by Katy Migiro, editing by Tim Pearce.; Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, womens rights, trafficking, property rights and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org to see more stories.) The Hague (AFP) - Rights activists Tuesday hailed a landmark war crimes verdict that found former Congolese vice president Jean-Pierre Bemba guilty for rampant sexual abuses by his troops, saying the ruling could help stop rape as a weapon of war. While many activists were critical that it has taken so long for gender-based and sexual violence to be the main focus of a trial in an international courtroom, they welcomed the verdict delivered at the International Criminal Court on Monday. The judges found Bemba guilty of five war crimes and crimes against humanity -- including two counts of rape -- by his troops in the Central African Republic between 2002 and 2003. "It is shocking that this conviction is the first of its kind," said American actress Angelina Jolie, who has spearheaded a high-profile campaign against sexual violence in conflict zones and helped organise the London summit. "It is a reminder of how long it has taken us to reach this point, and how many victims have never seen justice." A declaration circulated after a 2014 global summit in London warned that sexual violence in armed conflicts is "one of the greatest, most persistent and most neglected injustices." And campaigners say in many conflicts around the world now, it is more dangerous to be a woman than a soldier. According to Amnesty International, during the 2006-2007 civil war in the Democratic Republic of Congo more than 400,000 girls and women between the ages of 15 and 49 were raped -- "in other words, every five minutes in the DRC, four women and girls were raped." Jolie urged the international community "to build on the important legal precedent" set in the Bemba case at the ICC so that "we can collectively shatter impunity for the use of rape as a weapon of war and terrorism." For the prosecutors and lawyers working to build case law it was an important victory, especially as the ICC has faced prolonged attack from some African nations for its focus on the continent. Story continues ICC chief prosecutor Fatou Bensouda hailed a "historic" verdict -- the first case at the ICC to focus on sexual violence as well as to find a military commander to blame for the excesses of his troops. "It's a good day... because it's justice done for the victims of the crimes," she told AFP, adding it was "a very strong message for military commanders, that they will be held accountable" for crimes committed by their troops. - Possible reparations - Bemba had sent 1,500 troops from his Congolese Liberation Movement (MLC) into neighbouring Central African Republic to prop up the then president Ange-Felix Patasse. They carried out a chilling rampage of rapes, murders and pillages which targeted young and old of both sexes in part as a compensation "for inadequate payment and rations from the MLC, and/or to destabilise, humiliate, or punish suspected rebels," the court found. Despite knowing about what was happening, Bemba "failed to take all necessary and reasonable measures to prevent or repress the commission of crimes by his subordinates." UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon said the judgement showed "that impunity will not be tolerated". The United States, though not a signatory to the Rome statute that created the ICC, hailed the verdict for showing that "those who are responsible for such heinous acts must be held accountable" and bringing "an important measure of justice to the victims," said State Department spokesman John Kirby in a statement. More than 5,200 victims were allowed to take part in the Bemba proceedings, and the guilty verdict now opens the door to possible reparations from a special trust fund. Bemba is to be sentenced at a later date, and the judges also said they would address the issue of reparations later. "The court may award reparations on an individual or collective basis," ICC spokesman Fadi El-Abdallah told AFP. "An advantage of collective reparations is that they provide relief to an entire community and help its members to rebuild their lives." Supporters of the Islamic State militant group (ISIS) celebrated the attacks on Brussels airport and Maalbeek metro station on Tuesday. The attacks, two explosions at Zaventem airport and one at the metro station left at least 26 people dead during rush hour in the Belgian capital. Belgium has raised its security threat level to maximum, cancelled all flights into the airport and closed all metro stations. No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attacks but they came just four days after the arrest of the only surviving Paris attacker, Salah Abdeslam, who played a role in the ISIS-claimed shooting and suicide attacks in November. A witness told Reuters that he heard shouts of Arabic before the bomb blasts. We are not just clapping, but we are happy again. We are smiling, we are laughing and we are joyful like its a day of celebration, tweeted one ISIS sympathizer. Another wrote: #Brussels, if you continue your war against the religion of Allah then this is our response. The same user also condemned other Muslims for showing respect for the victims of the attacks, writing: Dog Arabs condemning the killing of the Crusaders in Belgium but did not cry for half a million Syrians and a million Iraqis and tens of thousands in Burma and Mali. Your turn is coming miscreants. Some other users used the hashtag #Belgium_is_on_fire_from_explosives on Twitter as a sign of celebration at the deadly attacks. While ISIS has not officially claimed the attack, two of Abdeslams accomplices from a jihadi network in Belgium remain at large, increasing suspicion that the network had a role to play in Tuesdays attacks. A series of raids by Belgian authorities in the past week revealed that the jihadi circles in the Belgian capital were more numerous than previously believed, French President Francois Hollande said on Friday. Related Articles Beirut (AFP) - The Islamic State group on Tuesday officially claimed responsibility for the attacks in Brussels that left some 35 people dead and threatened further violence. In a statement posted online, the group said "soldiers of the caliphate" had carried out the attack against "the crusader state" of Belgium. The Brussels attackers, who also wounded more than 200, wore suicide vests and carried explosive devices and machineguns, the statement said, adding that they "detonated their vests" amid their victims at the Brussels airport and on the metro. The statement vowed "dark days ahead" for states fighting the jihadists. Rome (AFP) - Italy's Prime Minister Matteo Renzi called Tuesday for a "European pact for freedom and security" following the attacks in Brussels claimed by the Islamic State group that killed around 35 people. "Today they hit Belgium, but they also hit the capital of the European Union," Renzi said in a speech, vowing that "it will take months, perhaps years, but we will beat them". "This is not the time for jackals, but nor is it the time for doves. We need a European pact, a pact for freedom and security," he said, referring to those who used the explosions as an opportunity to attack the EU or simply urge peace. "Europe must go all the way this time. We must invest in a common security and defence structure," he said, adding that the debate over defence integration has been raging since 1954, when a plan to form a European Defence Community (EDC) with a pan-Europe military fell through. Further attempts have been thwarted by traditional "NATO-first" reflexes, a lack of political will, conservative defence industry policies and fragmentation of military cooperation, according to the European Political Strategy Centre. "The security services must work together, and better together, with constant, timely and continuous cooperation," Renzi said, adding that "Italy unfortunately has experience to offer" -- a reference to Mafia and Red Brigades violence. The battle against "a threat that is global but killers which are local" should be fought "with security forces but also primary school teachers... if we are to save the next generation," he said. Belgium locked down its capital of Brussels, also home to the headquarters of the European Union and NATO, and imposed its highest level of security alert after the explosions. The fact that extremists were able to hit high-profile targets in Brussels, Europe's symbolic capital, just months after IS jihadists killed 130 people in Paris, raised fresh questions about the continent's ability to cope with the terror threat. James Douglas, who starred as an attorney on both the ABC primetime soap opera Peyton Place and the CBS daytime serial As the World Turns, has died. He was 86. Douglas died March 5, his family announced. His funeral took place March 18 in Bethlehem, Conn. Douglas appeared as Steven Cord on more than 400 episodes of Peyton Place, the first primetime serialized drama on U.S. television. The half-hour show, based on the sensational 1956 novel by Grace Metalious, ran for five seasons, 196469 and three times a week at its peak and was one of the first shows to deal frankly with sex. Cord had an intense on-again, off-again romance with Betty Anderson (Barbara Parkins) on the series, as he fought for her love with Rodney Harrington (Ryan ONeal), who was his half-brother. I joined the show in 1965 after it had been on the air for nine months. It was Episode 77, he said in an August 1968 interview with United Press International. Now, 400 episodes later, I think Ive had enough. He stayed with the show until the end, then returned for a 1985 reunion telefilm. Douglas played Oakdale lawyer Grant Colman on As the World Turns from 1973 to 1981 and then in three other stints that culminated in 1995. See More: Hollywood's Notable Deaths of 2016 A Los Angeles native who attended UCLA and served in the Army, Douglas was drawn to show business by his father, Stan Johnson, an actor who wound up serving as an art director on Peyton Place. Douglas appeared on such shows as Father Knows Best, The Millionaire, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp and Death Valley Days and in such films as Elvis Presleys G.I. Blues (1960) and Paul Newmans Sweet Bird of Youth (1962) before being cast as Cord. After Peyton Place, he appeared on such primetime series as The Bold Ones, Ironside and Spenser: for Hire and on other daytime soap operas like Another World, The Doctors, The Edge of Night and One Life to Live. Douglas was married to the late actress Dawn Busby. Survivors include children Kimberly, Taryn and Cort and grandchildren Marie, Suzanne, Peter, Julia, Michael and Mariah. TOKYO (Reuters) - A ship loaded with weapons-grade plutonium left Japan for the United States on Tuesday in what is the largest such shipment of the highly dangerous material since 1992, the environmental group Greenpeace said. The 331 kg (730 lb) of plutonium, enough to make about 50 nuclear weapons, was taken from a nuclear research center in the port town of Tokai Mura, and left on a British ship, the Pacific Egret, for transport to the U.S. Department of Energy's Savannah River Site in South Carolina, Greenpeace said. The website www.vesselfinder.com said the ship is a nuclear fuel carrier. The Japan Atomic Energy Agency (JAEA), which is the government agency responsible for the nuclear material, has not commented on the Greenpeace statement. An agency spokesman cited security reasons. The U.S. embassy in Tokyo also declined to comment. Shipments of plutonium are highly sensitive because it can be used in nuclear weapons or to make a so-called dirty bomb. In Japan, public sensitivity is also high because it is the only country that has been attacked with nuclear bombs. The shipment is a tiny portion of the nearly 50 tonnes of plutonium Japan holds. Most of it comes from reprocessing spent nuclear fuel burned in its reactors at power stations. All but two of Japan's reactors have been shut since a meltdown at a nuclear plant in Fukushima, north of Tokyo, after a powerful earthquake and tsunami in 2011. The plutonium being shipped was supplied by the United States, Britain and France for the JAEA's Fast Critical Assembly project in Tokai Mura, according to the International Panel on Fissile Materials. The agreement to transfer the material to the United States was reached in March 2014, the panel said on its website. (Reporting by Aaron Sheldrick and Yuka Obayashi; Editing by Robert Birsel) The city of Brussels was rocked by explosions Tuesday morning, . Nobody claimed responsibility for the attacks in the immediate aftermath, but they came just days after Paris massacre suspect Salah Abdeslam was apprehended in the Molenbeek district of Brussels. The most recent spasm of European violence has already sent ripples of grief in media and Facebook feeds around the world. Just days before all this, however, there were actually not one, but two bombings you may not have heard about both in Turkey. On March 13, a car bomb in the capital city of Ankara exploded leaving a people dead and more than 100 injured, according to the Turkish health ministry. On Saturday, a But people are asking, where is the show of global solidarity for Ankara that there was for Paris, and there is right now for Brussels? Or, in the words of Facebook user and Ankara resident James Taylor on the day his city was attacked: "You were Charlie, you were Paris. Will you be Ankara?" In fact, the global reaction to Turkey's deadly violence has been so muted that some people online felt compelled to speak out, some last week and some after Tuesday's attacks in Brussels. heart bleeds for Belgium but it makes me sick that noone reacted likethis for Turkey #PrayForBelgium #PrayForAnkara https://twitter.com/eplbible/status/712218037802409984 ... https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CeJOhFxWEAAstxo.jpg:large so horrific to hear what happened in brussels.. but why didn't ankara get the same kind of attention? Perhaps if people were just as vocal about the tragedies in #Ankara as they've been about #Brussels I'd take their feigned outrage seriously "Can you imagine the victims? The teenagers catching the bus to go home, the grandparents walking into town, the people waiting for a taxi after a long day laughing and socializing in the sun," Taylor asked in his March 13 post. "It is very easy to look at terror attacks that happen in London, in New York, in Paris and feel pain and sadness for those victims, so why is it not the same for Ankara?" Story continues Media (and social media) bias has been present in coverage of a number of terrorist attacks in Western countries, leaving in their shadows the stories of similar attacks in Muslim or developing countries. A day before the Paris attacks that left 130 dead, 43 died in a bombing in Beirut that went almost unrecognized. And in January 2015, the 17 left dead after an attack on the Paris office of satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo obscured the roughly 2,000 killed by the Islamic militant group Boko Haram in the Nigerian town of Baga. While coverage imbalances are often corrected after the fact, the latest example from Turkey shows it continues to be a potent issue. March 22, 2016, 9:41 a.m.: This story has been updated. The Hill A little more than two weeks stand between now and Election Day, and its likely going to come down to the wire as Republicans and Democrats duke it out for Senate supremacy. The two sides are fresh off of third-quarter fundraising releases and squarely in the middle of debate season, with Republicans starting to feel Washington (AFP) - US Secretary of State John Kerry heads to Moscow this week for talks with President Vladimir Putin, hoping to build momentum for peace in Syria after a partial Russian withdrawal and to restore a fragmenting ceasefire in Ukraine. But few experts expect Washington's top diplomat to make much headway with a Kremlin that has achieved its short-term goals and is seeking new victories. Having ensured that he has a seat at the top table of world diplomacy and that his allies in Damascus are in no immediate danger of defeat, Putin has ordered the bulk of his forces out of Syria without suffering great losses. Now, observers say, his separatist proxies in Ukraine are increasing pressure on the ceasefire line there, hoping that Europe's commitment to renew sanctions will waver this summer before Russia's September parliamentary polls. Joerg Forbrig, a fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, compared this week's trip by Kerry to Moscow to one he made last year to see Putin in Sochi after Russia helped Washington to negotiate the Iran nuclear deal. Russia carried through on its support for the Iran deal, helping ship out Tehran's uranium stockpile, and now Kerry wants Moscow to help push through a Syrian peace plan. "So he goes to Moscow to see if this positive momentum can be cultivated and perhaps extended. I don't think it can," Forbrig, an expert on central and eastern Europe, told AFP. "Russia has basically got out of this intervention everything that it needed," he argued, suggesting Moscow will be content to see peace talks drag on indefinitely if its interests are not again threatened. "It has a place at the negotiating table, it is sure to be part of the political process that is now underway ... So I think they've cashed in now." - New incentive? - Steven Pifer, a former ambassador to Ukraine and member of the US National Security Council, is less sure that, having brought Bashar al-Assad's regime to the negotiating table, the Kremlin will scale back its support for talks. Story continues "After the last week, with Putin having in a way declared victory, the Russians now have an incentive to see the negotiations succeed," Pifer -- now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank -- told AFP. "Assad's certainly in a more stable place than he was last summer, but if it deteriorates again, it looks bad for Putin if he has to send the military back in. So that may bring more into line the American and Russian aims." US and Russian spokesmen have confirmed Syria will be a key issue at the Kremlin talks on Thursday, but the crisis in Ukraine will also be on the agenda, and here too Putin may sense an opening to score points against the West. In a sign of the allies' close coordination, the US secretary of state will fly into Moscow on Wednesday hot on the heels of another key player, German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, who is also due at the Kremlin. Germany and France are leading the western push for the implementation of the 2014 Minsk Protocol, under which Moscow is to calm its separatist allies in Ukraine while Kiev reforms its constitution to hold new elections and grant the Donbass region federal autonomy. - Ceasefire violations - Last week, a senior State Department official told reporters that recent weeks have seen a stark increase in ceasefire violations, a development he attributed to Putin's desire to turn up the political heat on Kiev. US policymakers are sympathetic to Kiev's dilemma, arguing that Russian provocation acts as a "violent veto" on its attempts to pass reform -- but some in Europe are becoming frustrated with Ukraine's failure to prepare for elections. "If there's an uptick in violence, then Berlin gets very nervous, because they have no Plan B," Forbrig said. "They have absolutely no alternative to Minsk and they will ... increase their pressure on Kiev because that's the only point where they have leverage." "This undermines the unity on sanctions that we've seen so far," he said, noting that some of Germany's partners in Europe are already lukewarm on maintaining an embargo against Russia and may look for an excuse to back out. The talks in Moscow will also be overshadowed by the case of Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko, sentenced to 22 years for murder by a Russian court in what Kerry's spokesman called a "blatant disregard for the principles of justice." But Russian officials are unlikely to brook any American interference in a judicial case, no matter that Washington regards the action against the Ukrainian icon over the death of two journalists as a show trial. So is Kerry wasting his time? Or, worse than that, is he handing Putin a propaganda coup by heading once again to pay court to the Kremlin? "It's his job. He's a top diplomat. Their job is to go, try to talk, try to negotiate. That may seem naive to us, but they have to try," Forbrig said. "But I dont see this resulting in anything to be honest." Kesha Rose Sebert filed paperwork on Monday that's intended to have a New York appellate court weigh in on her dispute with producer Dr. Luke (Lukasz Gottwald). Last month, in the midst of a legal battle where Sebert alleges being the victim of sexual abuse, New York Supreme Court Justice Shirley Kornreich denied a preliminary injunction that would have allowed Sebert to record outside of Dr. Luke's purview. "You're asking the court to decimate a contract that was heavily negotiated and typical for the industry," said the judge at the court hearing. Mark Geragos, Sebert's attorney, wants another opinion. "Plaintiff seeks reversal of the Order on the following grounds," state her latest court papers. "First, the Court erred in basing its decision on its finding that Kesha could record without interference from Gottwald. Although it recognized that 'slavery was done away with a long time ago' and that '[y]ou can't force someone to work ... in a situation in which they don't want to work,' the Court's ruling requiring Kesha to work for Gottwald's companies, purportedly without his involvement, does just that." Sebert's side also believes that Kornreich made short thrift of the declarations from industry veterans attesting to the harm that the pop star would endure without the issuing of an injunction. Dr. Luke's legal team has presented Sebert's claims as financially motivated and has been pursuing its own claims against her for breach of contract. When Sebert first pushed for an injunction, a Dr. Luke spokesperson responded, "If Kesha now regrets her career being mired in legal proceedings, its entirely of her making." At the hearing last month, the judge seemed impressed by an offer made by Sony Music to allow Sebert to record without Dr. Luke's involvement. Geragos considered this to be an "illusory promise." He doesn't understand why the balance of equities favors the other side. "The Court did not explain, nor could it, why any potential harm to SME could not adequately be compensated by money damages if it were to prevail in the litigation," he writes in his pre-argument statement. "Indeed, SME, Gottwald, and all the related entities are each free to make music (and money) with other young talent. In the event they prevail in the litigation, they can recover money damages from Kesha for her breach of contract." Kiev (AFP) - Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Tuesday offered to swap two suspected Russian soldiers captured in the separatist east for Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko who was sentenced to 22 years by a Russian judge. Russian President Vladimir "Putin has said that after the so-called sentence, he will return Nadiya Savchenko to Ukraine," Poroshenko said in a statement published on the presidential website. "The time to keep promises has come. I, in turn, am ready to hand over to Russia two Russian servicemen detained on our territory for their involvement in the armed aggression against Ukraine." A judge in the southern Russia on Tuesday found the 34-year-old army helicopter navigator guilty of involvement in the June 2014 killing of two Moscow state television reporters in Ukraine's separatist east. Savchenko denies the charges and the Ukrainian foreign ministry on Tuesday vowed to keep up the fight for her release and return home. "This 'sentence' is not the end of our fight. It is the start of the new stage to #FreeSavchenko," Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin tweeted using the hashtag picked up by her supporters worldwide. Poroshenko echoed those comments only moments after Savchenko's sentence was read in the southern Russian city of Donetsk. "I am not only hopeful that Nadiya Savchenko returns to Ukraine but am also doing everything possible to make to happen." The pro-Western leader added that Savchenko's trial was conducted by a "disgraceful kangaroo court". Ukrainian television aired footage in May 2015 of two Russians who told reporters and their interrogators in separate interviews that they were acting servicemen who were sent into the war zone to support the pro-Moscow separatists by their Russian commanders. Russia claims that the two were no longer enrolled in the military at the time they crossed the border into the eastern Ukrainian war zone. It remains unclear when a Ukrainian court intends to issue a ruling in the two Russians' case. BISHKEK (Reuters) - Kyrgyzstan initiated a special meeting of a Russia-led regional security body on Tuesday to address tensions with its bigger neighbor Uzbekistan after a group of Uzbek armored vehicles and troops were deployed near their disputed border. The incident has not led to any violence, but underlined the strained relations between the ex-Soviet Central Asian republics and increased domestic pressure on Kyrgyz authorities to resolve frontier issues. Kyrgyzstan's foreign ministry said "an extraordinary session" of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, grouping a number of ex-Soviet republics, was held on Tuesday in Moscow and it was agreed to "monitor the situation". The CTSO will reconvene on Wednesday to discuss the matter further, the ministry said in a statement. Uzbekistan at the end of last week stationed two armored personnel carriers and about 40 soldiers in an area where its Namangan region borders Kyrgyzstan's western Jalalabad region. Kyrgyzstan, in turn, reinforced its own side of the border, which in the area in question has not been clearly or officially defined, making it a constant source of bilateral friction. Uzbekistan has since withdrawn the armored vehicles and both countries have withdrawn most of the deployed soldiers, leaving only a few border guards in the vicinity, the Kyrgyz official news agency Kabar said. Kyrgyz Prime Minister Temir Sariyev visited the Jalalabad region on Tuesday, urging worried local residents to stay calm, the government said in a statement. "We will resolve the border issues but that requires time and a diplomatic approach," it quoted him as saying. Uzbekistan's foreign ministry had no immediate comment on Tuesday. The private Uzbek news agency Novosti Uzbekistana quoted the country's Border Guard Service as saying that the reinforcement on its side of the border arose from a temporary closure of the border crossing point during road repairs. Jalalabad was hit by clashes between ethnic Kyrgyz and Uzbeks living in the area in 2010, when the government declared a state of emergency there and sent special forces to the city. (Reporting by Olga Dzyubenko; Writing by Olzhas Auyezov; Editing by Mark Heinrich) By Alex Lawler LONDON (Reuters) - Libya does not plan to attend an April 17 meeting of oil producers about freezing supply to support prices, a Libyan OPEC delegate said on Tuesday, joining fellow OPEC member Iran in snubbing the initiative. The absence of the two OPEC members would limit the impact of any freeze by producers from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries along with Russia, even though Libya's output has been curtailed for many months by unrest and the chance of it increasing production swiftly is low. "We are not going," the Libyan delegate said, referring to the meeting in Doha next month. "Clearly, they have to allow us to go back to our production when the security situation in the country improves." Libya has made its wish to return to pre-conflict oil production rates clear since four countries reached a preliminary deal on freezing output in February. Other producers understand this, the delegate said. "They appreciate the situation we are in." Qatar, which has been organizing the meeting, has invited all 13 OPEC members and major outside producers. The talks are expected to widen February's initial output freeze deal by Qatar, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia, plus non-OPEC Russia. The initiative has supported a rally in oil prices, which were about $41 a barrel on Tuesday, up from a 12-year low near $27 in January, despite doubts over whether the deal is enough to tackle excess supply in the market. Iran has yet to say whether it will attend the meeting. But Iranian officials have made clear Tehran will not freeze output as it wants to raise exports following the lifting of Western sanctions in January. The potential volume Libya and Iran could add to the market is significant. But conflict in Libya has slowed output to around 400,000 barrels per day since 2014, a fraction of the 1.6 million bpd it pumped before the 2011 civil war. Iran produced about 2.9 million bpd in January and officials are talking about adding a further 500,000 bpd to exports. So far though, Iran has sold only modest volumes to Europe after sanctions were removed. (Editing by David Clarke) London (AFP) - London's Gatwick airport stepped up security on Tuesday after a string of explosions in Brussels as British Prime Minister David Cameron prepared to hold an emergency cabinet meeting on the attacks. "As a result of the terrible incidents in Brussels, we have increased our security presence and patrols around the airport," the airport said in a statement. Cameron earlier said on Twitter he was "shocked and concerned" by the events in Brussels. "I will be chairing a COBRA meeting on the events in Brussels later this morning," Cameron said. COBRA meetings are held to discuss how the government responds to emergency situations and bring together ministers, police and intelligence officers. A string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station on Tuesday, killing at least 13 people, according to media reports, as Belgium raised its terror threat to the maximum level. (Reuters) - Lumber Liquidators Holdings Inc said on Tuesday it had reached a settlement with the California Air Resources Board, the state's clean air agency, to resolve an inquiry into the company's laminate flooring products sourced from China. The company, whose shares rose 10 percent on the news, agreed to pay $2.5 million to the agency. Lumber Liquidators' stock and sales have been hammered since a "60 Minutes" report on CBS last March said the retailer's laminates from China contained excessive levels of cancer-causing formaldehyde. (Reporting by Yashaswini Swamynathan in Bengaluru; Editing by Saumyadeb Chakrabarty) Photo by The Malaysian Insider A controversial Malaysian columnist on Monday complained that he was treated like a terrorist by Singapore immigration authorities before they eventually refused him entry into the city-state. Ridhuan Tee Abdullah wrote about the incident in his column for Malay-language news site Sinar Online and also published the piece titled "Know the true enemies of Islam on his Facebook page. I was treated like a terrorist. My photograph and fingerprints were taken, he said about a recent experience when he tried to visit Singapore with a friend for personal reasons. After more than two hours of questioning, I received a letter saying I was not allowed to go there. There was no reason given. But I am confident that it was due to my comments on the ultra kiasu, he declared. Tee has often used the term ultra kiasu to refer to the Democratic Action Party (DAP), a predominantly Chinese Malaysian political party. He has also been known to use the term on Christians and Chinese living in Malaysia as well. In the same column, Tee also accused the ultra kiasu of persuading the Muslims in Malaysia to bury the Islamist political party Parti Islam SeMalaysia (PAS) and claimed that Malays in Singapore have not been given decision-making positions or posts in the police, immigration or army. The Chinese Muslim has repeatedly criticised the Chinese minority in Malaysia, labelling them as racist and ultra kiasu for not showing gratitude towards the Barisan Nasional (BN) government. Tee, a Chinese Muslim, has become a controversial figure in Malaysia for his criticism of the Chinese minority in the country, saying that they have not shown gratitude towards the Barisan Nasional (BN) government. The Immigration and Checkpoints Authority (ICA) replied to Yahoo Singapores query saying that they do not comment on individual cases for reasons of confidentiality. However, they said that a visitors entry to Singapore is neither automatic nor a right. Each case is assessed on its own merits. Visitors must fulfill our entry requirements before they can be considered for entry. Those who are ineligible for a Visit Pass will be refused entry, they added. BERLIN (Reuters) - Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Tuesday that Germany would work with Belgium to find and punish the perpetrators of bombing attacks in Brussels. She added that the German cabinet would convene on Wednesday to discuss the implications for Germany of the attacks on Brussels airport and a metro train in the Belgian capital that killed at least 30 people. "We will work in every way with ... the Belgian security services to find, identify and punish the perpetrators of today's crimes," Merkel said. (Reporting by Joseph Nasr; Editing by Paul Carrel) The Hague (AFP) - Srebrenica, Vukovar, Sarajevo: towns and cities indelibly scarred by a painful and shameful history and seared forever into Europe's collective conscience. For 23 years, their names and the memories of tens of thousands of victims have stalked the halls of the UN tribunal set up to punish those behind genocide, mass rapes and ethnic cleansing during Yugoslavia's violent death throes. Now as the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) prepares to deliver its final verdicts before closing its doors in 2017 and handing over to another mechanism, opinion on its legacy is divided. Established by a UN mandate in May 1993, the court based in The Hague was a trailblazer in laying down ground-breaking jurisprudence for trying the worst of all crimes -- a decade before the creation of the International Criminal Court. With a judgement on Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Kardazic due on Thursday and a verdict expected in 2017 against notorious military chief Ratko Mladic, prosecutors say they have fulfilled a tough mission. The ICTY itself boasts "it has irreversibly changed the landscape of international humanitarian law and provided victims an opportunity to voice the horrors they witnessed and experienced". It also has an unrivalled record -- all of the 161 people indicted on charges of genocide, war crimes or crimes against humanity have been caught and processed. - No fugitives - Even though former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic died in his cell in 2006 before his trial ended, 80 others have been sentenced, most of whom are still serving long jail terms. "I think that the tribunal has done what it had to do. I can say mission accomplished," chief prosecutor Serge Brammertz told AFP. In the convulsions which tore apart Yugoslavia, national courts would not have been able to do the same work as the ICTY, which "can close with no fugitives at large, with all trials processed," he said. Story continues The court played an important role in investigating atrocities on the ground -- even during the height of the fighting -- amassing nine million pages of documents, leaving a major legacy for historians and activists. Brammertz also highlights the ICTY's outreach to national courts established in Bosnia, Serbia and Croatia where thousands of individuals are still under investigation. "National prosecutions have shrunk the space for denial," said former US ambassador for war crimes issues Stephen Rapp. Prosecutions and accountability are "one of the ways you remove the poison that affects the whole body politic," added Rapp, now an expert with The Hague Institute for Global Justice. But the court's reputation was undeniably blemished by several high-profile acquittals, amid unsubstantiated rumours of pressure by the United States. And experts caution that some of the tribunal's loftiest ambitions -- such as its UN mission to restore and maintain peace in the region -- remain unfulfilled. "I don't think that's necessarily the fault of the tribunal," said war crimes expert Rachel Kerr, a senior lecturer at King's College, London. "It may be that the lesson that can be taken from it, is that international criminal justice is not actually the best tool for fostering peace and reconciliation," she told AFP. American Eric Stover, who was among the first investigators on the ground and helped uncover a mass grave containing 200 bodies in the Croatian town of Vukovar in 1992, agrees. "Courts are backwards looking. They look at the facts and adjudicate individual responsibility. They're not designed as social engineering institutions," said Stover, now director of the Human Rights Center at the University of California, Berkeley. - Skewed legacy - Another problem was that, over time, the court was to some extent "hijacked" by the political agendas of the new Balkans nations as they jostled to join the European Union. The narrative was presented "that people were again sacrificing themselves for the good of Serbia by going up to this court that 'we don't recognise the legitimacy of'... because we're going to get EU accession," said Kerr. And while justice has been served for many, the sheer scale of the barbarity means it has not been delivered to all, experts agree. Perhaps the court's most telling legacy are the haunting statements of those who pleaded guilty. "This responsibility is mine and mine alone," former Bosnian Serb president Biljana Plavsic told the court in 2002, before being sentenced to 11 years in prison. "The knowledge that I am responsible for such human suffering and for soiling the character of my people will always be with me." By Elias Biryabarema KAMPALA (Reuters) - MTN Uganda, the country's largest telecoms firm, sees strong data sales helping 2016 revenue rise 7 to 10 percent and expects to seek a syndicated loan soon, its chief executive said on Tuesday. The division of South Africa's MTN Group, Africa's largest mobile networks operator, has a subscriber base of 8.9 million, the biggest in Uganda and ahead of second place rival India's Bharti Airtel. "The biggest reason for the (revenue) growth will be around our data," MTN Uganda's chief executive officer, Brian Gouldie, told Reuters. Voice still remains the main cash generator, accounting for about 56 percent of the 1.3 trillion shillings ($385.8 million) in revenue last year. But data is the fastest growing revenue stream, expanding 17 percent last year from 2014. Mobile penetration in Uganda stands at about 44 percent, offering room for mobile providers to expand. But competition has eroded margins since 2010 and encouraged some players to sell. Bharti Airtel bought Warid Uganda in 2013 and, in 2014, French telecoms firm Orange sold its Uganda unit to Africell. MTN Uganda has about 5.4 million data customers but only 9 percent of those are covered by 3G and 4G broadband networks. Gouldie said he aimed to boost that to 15 to 20 percent in 2016. "As our 3G and 4G penetration grows, so will our mobile data and ICT (information and communications technology) revenue grow," Gouldie said in an interview. MTN has also been investing in internet infrastructure. It has laid 3,500 km of fibre optic cables so far and plans to add 400 km this year, he said. He added the company aimed to secure a loan in the coming weeks to help to support its investment, although he did not give a value. In 2009, MTN Uganda raised $100 million from a syndicated loan. "We'll probably do something very similar in order to again generate liquidity ... so that we do have enough cash for both investments and operations," Gouldie said. ($1 = 3,370.0000 Ugandan shillings) (Editing by Edmund Blair and David Evans) Drinking moderate amounts of alcohol may not be as beneficial as previously thought, according to Canadian researchers. Researchers reviewed 87 long-term studies on alcohol and death rates and found that there are "reasons to be skeptical" in terms of the benefits of alcohol. Some previous studies had shown that moderate drinking could contribute to a longer life and healthy hearts compared to abstaining from alcohol. Moderate drinking was defined as one drink per day for women and two drinks per day for men, at least once a week. The researchers noted that this definition of 'moderate' was fundamental and that some of those being classified as 'abstainers' included individuals cutting out alcohol due to health issues; they indicated that studies that avoided such an abstainer bias showed no advantage for consumption. The research, led by Tim Stockwell of the University of Victoria's Centre for Addictions Research in British Columbia, Canada, was published in the Journal of Studies of Alcohol and Drugs and funded by the US National Institutes of Health. By Pius Sawa NAIROBI (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Beekeeper Ayenalem Ketema is the proud owner of three hives which have produced enough honey for the young Ethiopian to build a house equipped with solar panels and buy some farm animals with the proceeds. Ketema, who lives in Jimma in southwestern Ethiopia, left school when she was 17 and has kept bees for four years. I have benefited a lot from using a modern beehive, said the young farmer, now 22. She belongs to the Boter Boro Cooperative, whose members run 50 beehives between them. With the profit from the 60 kg (132 lb) of honey she harvests each season, Ketema has purchased a dairy cow, three sheep and six goats, and installed a solar system in her home. Now she has bigger ambitions. I plan to open up a wholesale honey shop where I can sell high-quality honey in large quantities in a bigger market, she said. Ketema benefited from a project led by the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE), which launched a fresh programme this month to provide work for around 12,500 young Ethiopians in beekeeping and silkworm farming. Nairobi-based ICIPE and the MasterCard Foundation plan to invest $10.35 million in the five-year project, which will support out-of-school and unemployed young people aged between 18 and 24 with starter equipment and training. The Young Entrepreneurs in Silk and Honey initiative will involve an additional 25,000 people in the value chain - from harvesting to processing, packaging and marketing of the two sets of products. HONEY POTENTIAL Ethiopia is Africas leading honey and beeswax producer, but honey production is largely traditional and only reaches around 10 percent of the countrys potential, experts say. The Horn of Africa nation produces dozens of honey varieties that could be of interest for the export market, said ICIPE Director General Segenet Kelemu, an Ethiopian who is a laureate of the LOreal-UNESCO For Women in Science award. The project will help to ensure food security, promote more tree-planting than tree-cutting, and encourage agro-forestry programmes to flourish, said Kelemu. Bees pollinate a wide range of crops and plants, playing a key role in the provision of food and nutrition. They also pollinate forage plants, indirectly supporting milk and meat production. Without bees and other related insect pollinators, our lives would be negatively impacted. This work will be generating great incentives to take care of bees and their well-being, Kelemu said. With the amount of annual global food production dependent on pollinators estimated at between $235 billion and $577 billion, bees must be included in plans to feed the worlds growing population, she added. Bees require flowering trees and vegetation from which they can secure high-quality pollen and nectar all year round. This means the young Ethiopian beekeepers will have to conserve trees and plant more of them, while reducing the use of pesticides that harm bees, Kelemu said. HIGH-TECH HIVES Alemayehu Konde Koira, senior manager of the youth livelihoods programme at the MasterCard Foundation in Toronto, said the modern hives that will be used in the Ethiopia project can produce 20 kg of high-quality organic honey each season, compared with traditional beehives which yield 6 to 8 kg of low-quality honey. The modern hives are more productive because they are a good size and well-ventilated, compared with the cramped hives many use, which are made of reeds and cow dung and hung up in trees. Technologically superior hives could transform the honey industry in Ethiopia, Koira said. The project is also fostering silk production because demand for raw silk has increased around the world, he added. Ethiopia anticipates that demand for its silk yarn will grow 5 percent per year. ICIPE provides technical training and know-how in silkworm rearing, cocoon production and silk post-harvest techniques, as well as supplying silkworm eggs. The MasterCard Foundation said the project would improve access to regional, national and international markets for young entrepreneurs. They will also be offered financial services so they can grow their businesses. When travelling through Ethiopia, the countryside is dotted with farmers trying to sell their honey by the roadside or in villages for brewing a local beer called tej. Whats urgently needed is an expansion of market opportunities for honey and silk farmers, said Koira. Centres will be set up to provide training and ensure young entrepreneurs can not only process their honey, beeswax, royal jelly and bee venom, but also tap into new markets. BUZZ AROUND WOMEN The project will apply lessons from earlier projects supported by the Swiss Biovision Foundation for Ecological Development and the International Fund for Agricultural Development in Ethiopia, Kenya and elsewhere in Africa. One key discovery has been the transformative power of new technologies. In the past, few women became beekeepers because traditional hives are usually placed high up in trees. But modern hives set on the ground make it far easier for them. Forty percent of the new projects participants will be young women. ICIPEs Kelemu said both beekeeping and silk farming require only small amounts of capital and land - most of which is owned by men in Ethiopia. The project will also attempt to break down barriers to womens participation in the two industries. Provided with the right tools, such as a modern beehive, young women can benefit from activities traditionally considered a man's domain, said Koira. (Reporting by Pius Sawa; editing by Megan Rowling. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women's rights, trafficking, corruption and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org) Rain greeted President Obama when he landed in Cuba on Sunday aboard Air Force One, but bad weather couldnt keep the crowds away. Even in the rain yesterday, the downpour, people were lining the streets under umbrellas and waving, Senator Amy Klobuchar, a Minnesota Democrat traveling as part of a U.S. delegation with the president in Cuba, said in an interview. Theres just very much much excitement of the acknowledgment of an American president visiting for the first time since Calvin Coolidge They were waiting to see the arrival of the president. The presidents trip to the country is the continuation of a gradual thaw between the United States and Cuba. Obama announced last year that the U.S. embassy in Cuba would reopen after being shuttered for more than 50 years. Then, on Monday, the president met with Cuban leader Raul Castro in Havana. Advocates of breaking down barriers between the two nations are celebrating the occasion and seizing on it to argue that the United States and Cuba will benefit from closer ties. Cuba has prepared for the visit by paving roads and repainting buildings. The crowds that lined up to see the president arrive suggest that Cubans greet these developments with excitement. For all the potential of the moment, however, it is impossible to know such a seismic shift in diplomatic relations will ultimately shake out. They have a basic, beautiful city here, but as we know, a lot of the infrastructure is decayed and it still is, and thats why we need more private investment and a different kind of economic system, Klobuchar said, making a case for ending the long-standing U.S.-Cuba trade embargo. The senator added that as more American tourists visit Cuba, business people are saying: Boy, were booked. We need to have more restaurants, and we need more products. Klobuchar warned, If we dont lift the embargo, then pretty soon other companies from other countries will move in, and they gonna be eating food from China and sleeping in hotels from Spain. Story continues Even in the rain yesterday, the downpour, people were lining the streets under umbrellas and waving. The embargos going to end, Obama declared on Monday, adding: When? I cant be entirely sure, but I believe it will end. Ultimately, however, that will take an act of Congress, and there are indications that U.S. lawmakers are in no hurry to undo the longstanding economic restrictions. There is evidence of public support for the ongoing thaw. As my colleague Marina Koren wrote, [S]urveys of Cuban Americans show the majority support the administrations efforts to normalize relations between the two countries, while surveys of Cuban citizens suggest an overwhelming majority believe a better relationship with the U.S. would benefit Cuba. Recommended: Donald Trump Claims He 'Had No Choice' But to Talk About His Anatomy But there are also plenty of dissenting voices. Dozens of anti-government protesters were arrested by police in Havana just hours ahead of the presidents arrival on Sunday. And critics of the White House are lining up to protest Obamas visit in their own right. Obama has chosen to legitimize the corrupt and oppressive Castro regime with his presence on the island, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz argued in a Politico op-ed. Political prisoners languishing in dungeons across the island will hear this message: Nobody has your back. Youre alone with your tormentors. The world has forgotten about you, Cruz wrote, warning of the dangers of a diplomatic detente. Cuba is in a period of transition. It remains unclear who will benefit the most from Americas closer ties with the island nationCuba with new jobs and new capital or the United States with a new market? Who will lose out? Will aspects of Cuban culture be lost or disappear entirely if American influence continues to expand? But as the differences between Klobuchar and Cruz suggest, achieving the congressional consensus necessary to advance that transition remains a heavy lift. Read more from The Atlantic: This article was originally published on The Atlantic. United Nations (United States) (AFP) - The United Nations said Tuesday it has closed its military liaison office in Dakhla, Western Sahara at the request of Morocco and withdrew three military observers posted there. It was the latest twist in a running dispute between the world body and Morocco, which was angered when UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recently referred to the "occupation" of the disputed territory. The three observers were transferred Monday to Ausserd in the western part of the Moroccan-controlled territory, UN spokesman Farhan Haq said. Rabat had given them 72 hours to leave. Haq said the Moroccan request was "the first request directly targeting the military component." The Moroccans on Sunday expelled most of the civilian experts attached to the UN mission in Western Sahara -- more than 70 people who were sent to the Canary Islands or sent on leave in their home countries. "It is making the direct dialogue with the Royal Moroccan Army more difficult," particularly in monitoring a ceasefire, he said. The UN mission, which has about 500 civilian and military personnel, was established in 1991 to monitor the ceasefire and prepare for elections in Western Sahara. But Morocco, which annexed Western Sahara in 1975, has resisted an election and instead proposes self-government under Moroccan sovereignty. Diplomats say the United States is pressing for a Security Council statement that calls for a lowering of tension and resolving the dispute, without taking sides. France, meanwhile, is intensifying efforts to reopen a dialogue between the United Nations and Rabat. When it took up the issue last Thursday, the Security Council was unable to arrive at a consensus, and left it to member states to make efforts on their own to try to patch up the dispute. Will "Munafik" beat "Polis Evo" and "The Journey"? 22 Mar Success after success has been achieved by horror flick "Munafik", the latest movie from Syamsul Yusof which has managed to collect RM17 million after just 26 days of screening at the cinemas. This means that the local movie produced by Skop Production is now the fastest local film to gross such a colossal amount in just a short amount of time. "Alhamdulillah, the movie is still 'hot' in cinemas now. The movie still has two more weeks of showing left." "My prayer has come true. In my heart, I have always wanted an Islamic themed movie to be seen as one of the successful movies in Malaysia," Syamsul wrote on his personal Facebook. The son to well-known director and producer Datuk Yusof Haslam added that one should never doubt the power of God as He always listens to the prayers and cries of His people. The movie's latest collection has beaten that of "Ola Bola" and is expected to beat the collection of "Polis Evo" and "The Journey", both which made more than RM17 million each. Washington (AFP) - Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed hope Tuesday that the United States will continue to support Israel at the United Nations by opposing all resolutions on the creation of a Palestinian state. Addressing the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Washington's most influential pro-Israel lobbying group, Netanyahu also said he was ready to "immediately" resume direct negotiations with the Palestinians. "A Security Council resolution to pressure Israel would further harden Palestinian positions and thereby could actually kill the chances of peace for many, many years," Netanyahu said via satellite video link from Jerusalem. "And that is why I hope the United States will maintain its long-standing position to reject such a UN resolution." The Israeli-Palestinian peace process has stalled completely since US mediation efforts failed in April 2014, and relations between Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama are notoriously rocky. Since then, Israel has worried that Washington, frustrated by the lack of progress since 2009, would abandon its historic support for Israel in the final months of the Obama administration in international bodies such as the UN's Security Council. The White House warned last year that it would reassess its policies and might withdraw its diplomatic cover at the world body. As Vice President Joe Biden headed to Israel earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal quoted senior US officials as saying the White House was working on plans for reviving peace talks and for a possible resolution, which could be outlined at Obama's final appearance at the UN General Assembly in the autumn. The United States has traditionally vetoed resolutions at the UN Security Council opposed by Israel. Netanyahu told an audience of 15,000 at AIPAC that "peace won't come through the UN Security Council but through direct negotiations between the parties." "I'm ready to begin such negotiations immediately, without preconditions, anytime, anywhere. That's a fact," he said. AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - Dutch police stepped up security patrols at airports and tightened checks at borders after Tuesday's attacks in neighboring Belgium, the security agency said. Travelers passing through Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport reported delays and a heavy police presence. Security agencies declined to give details of any further measures taken, but maintained the national threat level at "substantial", one notch below the highest. Flights were diverted from Brussels to Amsterdam following attacks at the Belgian capital's airport earlier on Tuesday in which at least 13 people are believed killed. Trains heading south to Belgium were subject to indefinite delays, Dutch state railways said. (Reporting By Thomas Escritt, Toby Sterling and Jochen Elegeert; Editing by Angus MacSwan) Lagos (AFP) - A judge on Tuesday adjourned the criminal negligence trial of popular Nigerian preacher TB Joshua over a fatal building collapse at his Lagos megachurch. Joshua, church trustees and two engineers are accused of criminal negligence and involuntary manslaughter after the 2014 collapse of a guesthouse at the Synagogue Church of All Nations (SCOAN) that left 116 people dead, most of them South Africans. Lagos High Court Judge Lateef Lawal-Akapo said the case would resume "on April 8 for arguments" after a fresh challenge was brought by the defendants to halt the trial. TB Joshua's trial has had several adjournments since last year due to numerous legal challenges. The criminal case follows a coroner's ruling in July 2015 that blamed the church and two engineers for the building tragedy. The inquest verdict attributed the collapse of the six-storey guesthouse to structural failures and said it did not have planning permission. Joshua, dubbed "The Prophet" and "Man of God" by his followers, maintains a mysterious "hovering" aircraft that was seen over the building before the tragedy, or a controlled explosion, was to blame. He never appeared to give evidence at the inquest and has repeatedly failed to come to court since the trial began last year, drawing criticism from Nigerians that the country's legal system is not strong enough to hold a rich and powerful man accountable. WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson said on Tuesday that the United States has no intelligence that indicates there is a plot to carry out an attack inside U.S. borders similar to the one in Brussels "At present, we have no specific, credible threat of any plot to conduct similar attacks here in the United States," Johnson said in a statement. Johnson added that the Transportation Security Administration is ramping up security in major city airports and rail and transit stations throughout the United States. (Reporting by Julia Edwards; Editing by Leslie Adler) When Rudy Ravindra went to cast his vote in the North Carolina primaries earlier this month, he was forced to spell his name out loud while a poll worker hid his ID from view, a process that Ravindra described as "humiliating." When he accompanied his wife while she voted at a different polling place, she was made to do the same thing in order to prove she was who she said. At each polling place, Ravindra didn't see anyone else subjected to the same spelling test and he thinks he knows why the two of them were singled-out. "That in a sea of white faces at both polling stations my wife and I were the only brown-skinned individuals ... led us to suspect that we were victims of racial prejudice," Ravindra wrote in a op-ed published in the News and Observer last week. Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article66929422.html#storylink=cpy In his op-ed, titled "My brush with North Carolina voter ID law," Ravindra described the "ordeal" of being forced to spell out his full, legal name, Rudravajhala Ravindra, before he could cast his vote, as the poll worker who had asked him to do it slowly typed each letter. "each time he made a mistake, I patiently corrected," Ravindra wrote. "Meanwhile, voters in adjacent lines came and went briskly." Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article66929422.html#storylink=cpy Ravindra's wife was asked to do the same, but, as far as Ravindra could tell, none of their white friends were made to spell their names aloud to prove they were who they said they were. "Our two Caucasian friends who live in different areas of town voted at different polling places. In contrast to our humiliating experience, however, they did not have to pass the spelling test and after a cursory glance at their IDs were allowed to vote." Story continues Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article66929422.html#storylink=cpy North Carolina's voter identification law, which requires voters to show a form of "acceptable photo ID" at the polls, has been criticized by many as unfairly discriminating against people of color, who may be less likely to have any of the necessary forms of identification. Defenders of the ID requirement say that it protects against voter fraud, despite the fact that such fraud is incredibly r. "The real motivation [behind the law] is to make it harder for those likely to vote Democrat to vote," Richard Hasen, a professor of law and political science at the University of California at Irvine, told the Los Angeles Times in February, speaking about North Carolina's voter ID law. After his voting experience, Ravindra said that he reached out to the director of the New Hanover County Board of Elections, who apparently apologized. "He said that the poll workers overstepped their authority and that they had no reason to subject us to that unnecessary exercise," Ravindra wrote. "He said poll workers only have to look at a photo ID to ascertain the bonafide of a voter. He apologized profusely." Whether Ravindra was targeted for the color of his skin or just made to jump through extra hoops for shallow reasons, he couldn't help but feel there was extra tension surrounding this election season. "In these days of Trumpism and shameless xenophobia and other assorted phobias, we can't be blamed if we are paranoid," Ravindra wrote. Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article66929422.html#storylink=cpy Read more here: http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/op-ed/article66929422.html#storylink=cpy Do you like the idea of a caviar and champagne cocktail? Or sipping on Bloody Marys that look like miniature tomatoes, with a side of balsamic vinegar pearls? We might be years away from hoverboards that actually hover, but inhaling your food through a straw or chowing down on pearlized cranberries is possible right now. This esoteric eating style is called molecular gastronomy, and its a form of cooking that fuses food science with culinary artistry. With food additives, the texture and shape of food can be altered, allowing chefs to get really creative. You can experience this at a number of high-end restaurants, but they come with a price tag thats inaccessible to many. Were sure chef Paco Ronceros $2,000-a-head menu is exquisite, but thats about eight months of groceries for the average millennial. However, a number of chefs are trying to democratize the molecular gastronomy experience, creating toolkits to allow amateur cooks to make their own masterpieces at home. Molecular gastronomy is a fantastic set of tools to play with ones food, 33-year-old Jonathan Coutu, Molecule-Rs cofounder, tells OZY. Montreal-based Molecule-R sells $50 DIY molecular kits designed to baby-step people through the process of turning fruit into flavored foam and vegetables into gelled spheres. Coutu formed Molecule-R in 2009 after getting frustrated with the disconnect in culture; molecular cooking was widely praised but available only to the elite. He didnt think a two-tier system for taste buds was fair. Coutu tells OZY that what makes molecular-dining restaurants costly is not the ingredients, which he called relatively cheap, but the experience level of the chefs. Take that away, and prices would drop considerably. What we aim to do is make it possible for foodies to experiment at home with the same techniques used by these chefs, he says. There were and are other kits available, but he believed they were too complex for beginners. The term molecular cuisine was coined in 1988 by French chemist Herve This and Hungarian physicist Nicholas Kurti. They focused on the chemistry of food preparation; they figured if they understood why mayonnaise firms when oil and eggs are added, they could innovate how people cooked. In 1992 they ran a workshop devoted to experimental cooking and showcased an inside-out Baked Alaska cold on the outside, hot in the center. This intrigued people, and many started experimenting in their own kitchens, leading to the rise of the celebrity molecular cooks we have today. Its fun for people who are looking for something different to serve, Cookistry food blogger and author Donna Currie tells OZY. But she warned that not all guests will be open to trying something new and that many of the kits dont contain enough product for more than a few experiments. But enough are curious that Molecule-R was confident releasing Molecular 50 Course Meal, their second cookbook, in late 2015. It features more complex recipes than book one, but they reckon people can handle it. Cooking chemistry-style will never be for everybody, but the joy of playing with your food intentionally is one that might have a long shelf life. Related Articles HAVANA (Reuters) - President Barack Obama spoke by telephone on Tuesday with Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel to offer his condolences and support after the attacks in Brussels that killed at least 34 people, the White House said on Tuesday. "The President reaffirmed the steadfast support of the United States for Belgium, and offered any assistance necessary in investigating these attacks and bringing those responsible to justice," the White House said. (Reporting by Jeff Mason and Timothy Gardner; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama) Havana (AFP) - President Barack Obama condemned the "outrageous" attacks Tuesday in Brussels that killed about 35 people, saying the United States would do everything in its power to hunt down those responsible. "We must be together regardless of nationality or race or faith in fighting against the scourge of terrorism. We can and we will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world," he said, speaking in the Cuban capital Havana. A series of explosions ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train, also injuring more than 200 in the latest attacks to rock Europe. Obama, on a landmark trip to communist-run Cuba, spoke by telephone to Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel to express his condolences and America's full support, the White House said. "The thoughts and the prayers of the American people are with the people of Belgium and we stand in solidarity with them in condemning these outrageous attacks against innocent people," said Obama. "We will do whatever is necessary to support our friend and ally Belgium in bringing to justice those who are responsible, and this is yet another reminder that the world must unite." Security was tightened across Europe after the attacks and there were similar moves in New York and Washington, where US authorities deployed counterterrorism reinforcements and the National Guard to airports and stations. The New York Police Department said there was no indication that the attacks in Belgium were connected to New York, but ordered stepped up security as America's biggest city of 8.4 million began the morning commute. By Richard Cowan WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama's Supreme Court selection Merrick Garland on Tuesday resumed meetings with senators in a push to convince Republicans who have vowed to block the nomination to reverse course and hold confirmation hearings this year. "It's crystal clear after talking to him that Judge Garland has both a brilliant legal mind and a heart of gold," New York Senator Chuck Schumer, the Senate's second-ranking Democrat, told reporters after huddling with the nominee. Those qualities, Schumer predicted, will convince Republicans to launch the confirmation process required to elevate Garland, an appellate judge and former prosecutor, to the Supreme Court. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, backed by most of his fellow Republicans, has insisted the Supreme Court vacancy resulting from conservative Justice Antonin Scalia's Feb. 13 death be filled by whomever succeeds Obama next January after the Nov. 8 presidential election. Garland on Tuesday also met with Senator Robert Casey in the Pennsylvania Democrat's office, and will continue a string of "courtesy calls" with Democrats. "I hope that if we can stay at it, maybe we will get a breakthrough where folks (Republicans) will be willing not just to meet but to actually cast a vote" on Garland, Casey told reporters after the meeting. Garland will hold private sessions with the relatively small number of the Senate's 54 Republicans who have agreed to meet him. McConnell has pledged to prevent any Senate floor vote on confirming Garland and opposes Judiciary Committee hearings. Garland, while considered a centrist, could tilt the Supreme Court to the left for the first time in decades. Following Tuesday's bombings in Brussels that killed at least 30 people, Schumer noted Garland led the U.S. government's prosecution of the two men convicted in the 1995 Oklahoma City federal building bombing that killed 168 people. "As someone who lives in New York who has experienced the horrors of terrorism close up and personal, the idea of having someone on the Supreme Court who understands those issues, as well as their horrible human effect, is very comforting," Schumer said. If the Senate does not act on Garland, the court vacancy could remain unfilled at least until the early months of next year, leaving it divided between four liberal justices and four conservatives. That creates the possibility of 4-4 split decisions, the first of which came on Tuesday and left in place a lower court ruling that two women could not sue a bank for loan discrimination. (Reporting by Richard Cowan; Additional reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham) HAVANA A thriving private sector economy. A hub for entrepreneurship and innovation. A center for small business and foreign investment. That's the grand vision that President Barack Obama set forth on Monday, as he spoke directly to several hundred Cuban entrepreneurs, or "cuentapropistas," at a town hall event held at a brewery in downtown Havana. The Q&A session, moderated by former CNN anchor and Cuban American journalist Soledad O'Brien, marked one of the cornerstone events of Obama's historic Cuba trip, an opportunity for him to promote a new economic relationship between the two countries. Obama used the occasion to highlight several American companies started by young people which are beginning to thrive in Cuba chief among them Airbnb, which is rapidly growing in the country as proof of the kind of business success that could be in store as a result of the easing of relations. "Businesses that start small even in a garage can grow into some of the world's most successful companies," Obama the audience. "That's what we are encouraging here today." But Obama's vision for a new Cuba stands in stark contrast to the current reality. The event was somewhat overshadowed by a joint press conference held earlier in the day with Cuban President Raul Castro, which took on a testy tone as Castro got pressed by American journalists about tough topics like human rights and freedom of speech. Castro, who hardly ever takes questions from the press, flatly denied that his country has a human rights problem, praised the country's socialist economy and at one point even challenged journalists to present him with a list of political prisoners because, in his view, there are none in Cuba. "What political prisoners?" he asked. That telling moment revealed just one of the many major structural barriers that will need to be overcome if entrepreneurship is to thrive in Cuba, starting with freedom of the press and open access to information. Story continues Major challenges ahead: Obama, along with other senior administration officials, openly acknowledged that, despite the promise that renewed relations between the United States and Cuba holds for entrepreneurship, severe hurdles remain. "When you meet the Cuban people, there's an entrepreneurial spirit," Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker said in an interview immediately following the town hall. "There's a desire to grow the private sector economy, but there are challenges." Highest on that list, according to Pritzker, is telecommunications and wireless connectivity, which is a major barrier to starting internet-based business in the country. Only 5% of Cubans have internet access, one of the lowest rates in the world. The Cuban government has made commitments to change and has established 50 WiFi hotspots across the island over the past year. For its part, the Obama administration has pushed the Cuban government to allow foreign direct investment in affordable internet access and wireless infrastructure. But even in downtown Havana, internet penetration is so weak that young Cubans congregate in droves at several of the city's parks located in the few public WiFi hotspots across the city. "Having a first class telecommunications infrastructure is essential to be an entrepreneur," Pritzker said. "That's the first need here." Google's head of Cuba operations, Brett Perlmutter, center right, and Alexis Leiva Machado, a Cuban sculptor known as Kcho, center left, walk inside the new Google technology center which will offer free Internet access in Havana. An even greater challenge is whether Cuba's government, which has long been organized around socialism and state-sector jobs, will fully embrace the move to a private sector economy. "There are some economic models that just don't work," Obama the audience. "That's just the objective reality that there's some economies that have had great difficulty in how they operate, and it gets harder and harder as time goes by." Bridging the gap will require the government to eliminate a host of regulations which make it difficult for average Cubans to start businesses. "Work has to be done to bridge these two economies," Pritzker said. "Cubans want to make sure they don't lose the benefits of the socialism system, and no one is trying to upset that. It's a question of how do they bridge into the 21st century economy?" In a marked change of course, the government has expanded licenses for private sector employment since 2010, which has led to an increase from 145,000 in 2009 to approximately 500,000 in 2015 of Cubans working in non-state jobs. But licenses are still restricted to only certain professions, like taxi drivers, Airbnb hosts or restaurant owners. Hope and change: Despite the barriers, Obama and Pritzker say they are optimistic that entrepreneurship will eventually thrive across the country. "Entrepreneurs flourish when there's an environment that encourages their success," Obama told the audience, adding that he believes that with more Americans traveling to Cuba, there will be a natural influx of new customers to fuel Cuban businesses. Obama also announced that the U.S. will, for the first time, welcome 50 Cuban entrepreneurs to the U.S. later this year to receive training, mentorship and guidance from successful US. business leaders. Pritzker says she sees strength in the country's openness and willingness to embrace change. "The biggest opportunity is that the country is open, and the people are open to embracing relationships around the world," Pritzker said. "I don't know how fast things progress, but I'm optimistic about the direction it's going. I think it will thrive." By Matt Spetalnick and Frank Jack Daniel HAVANA (Reuters) - U.S. President Barack Obama pushed Cuba to improve human rights during his historic visit to the Communist-led island on Monday, publicly sparring with President Raul Castro who showed flashes of anger and hit back at U.S. "double standards". Obama praised Castro for openly discussing their differences but he said a "full flowering" of the relationship would happen only with progress on the issue of rights. "In the absence of that, I think it will continue to be a very powerful irritant," Obama said in a joint news conference with Castro that began with jokes but was tense at times. "America believes in democracy. We believe that freedom of speech and freedom of assembly and freedom of religion are not just American values but are universal values," he said. Both men's remarks were broadcast live on Cuban state television from Cuba's Palace of the Revolution in a room draped with the Stars and Stripes and the Cuban flag. Castro countered that no country meets all international rights but appeared uncomfortable as he made the rare step of taking questions from journalists in a country where the media is state controlled. Obama, the first U.S. president to visit Cuba in 88 years, agreed in 2014 to improve relations with the former Cold War foe but he is under pressure at home to push Castro's government to allow political dissent and to further open its Soviet-style economy. He said the two sides would hold talks on human rights in Havana later this year. Opponents say Obama has given away too much as he improves ties, with too little from Castro in return, although the leading Republican candidate for the Nov. 8 presidential election, Donald Trump, said on Monday he would likely continue to normalize ties with Cuba if elected. Castro, an army general who became president when his ailing older brother Fidel retired in 2008, had never before taken questions from foreign reporters on live Cuban television and was clearly irritated when asked about political prisoners in Cuba, demanding the reporter produce a list of those in jail. "Tell me now. What political prisoners? Give me a name, or the names," Castro said. "And if there are these political prisoners they will be free before nightfall." Cuba says it has no political prisoners and that the dozens listed by dissident groups are instead common criminals. Castro said Cuba has a strong record on rights such as health, access to education and women's equality. His government criticizes the United States on racism, police violence and the use of torture at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba. Ben Rhodes, a senior Obama aide, later insisted that Cuba has political prisoners and said the U.S. government had shared lists of them with Cuba. He said Cuba has shifted from long prisons terms to short-term detentions of political opponents. Later in the evening, Castro sat between Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama for a dinner of rum flavored soup and pork, at a table that also included the leaders' top advisers. 'EMBARGO'S GOING TO END' Obama's ease with reporters' questions contrasted with Castro's manner. The tension was palpable as Castro declined to call on a slew of Cuban journalists who yearned for the rare chance to ask him questions. Fumbling with a headset providing translation, the 84-year-old leader scolded reporters when he was asked again about rights, saying he agreed to only take one question. Obama playfully encouraged him to address a second but Castro seemed reluctant as he obliged. "How many countries comply with all 61 human rights? Do you know? I do. None. None," Castro said. In another awkward moment, as the news conference ended, Castro lifted Obama's arm in the air as if to form a victory salute. Obama resisted, letting his hand hang limp rather than form a fist. As part of the diplomatic breakthrough in 2014, Cuba released 53 prisoners that the U.S. government considered political prisoners. But the dissident Cuban Commission of Human Rights and National Reconciliation says 79 are still behind bars, among about 40 held for peaceful political protest. "This list is here if they want to see it," commission leader Elizardo Sanchez said on Monday. His list also includes armed anti-government militants, convicted hijackers, army deserters and spies, but Sanchez said they are political because they were denied due process. Castro offered Cuba's recipe for better relations, saying the United States needs to lift its 54-year-old trade embargo on the island and hand back the Guantanamo Bay base to Cuba. Obama did not respond to the demand on Guantanamo Bay but said he was optimistic about the elimination of sanctions against Cuba. "The embargos going to end. When, I cant be entirely sure," Obama said. Obama efforts to encourage Congress to rescind the embargo has been rejected by the Republican leadership. Thwarted, Obama has instead used executive authority to loosen restrictions on trade and travel. Obama said direct flights from the United States would start this year. He said regular tourism to Cuba could happen "very soon," in comments to U.S. network ABC. A clutch of deals timed to coincide with the visit appeared to show the strategy was bearing commercial fruit, notably U.S. cruise company Carnival's announcement on Monday that it would sail the first ship from the United States to Cuba in more than 50 years, in a deal that will bring in thousands of U.S. tourists at a time. About a dozen major U.S. brands have stuck deals or are in talks with Cuba. Ahead of the meeting with Castro, Obama said Google would provide more Wi-Fi and broadband access on the island. Google said later its efforts were in the "early stages." (Additional reporting by Jeff Mason and Daniel Trotta; Editing by Kieran Murray and Alistair Bell) (Reuters) - Regular tourism to Cuba by U.S. citizens could happen "very soon," President Barack Obama said on Monday in an interview in Havana. "Inevitably it's going to happen," he told ABC News during his historic visit to the Communist-led island, noting that direct flights and visits by cruise ships from the United States were to begin soon. Current U.S. regulations limit most visits by U.S. citizens to Cuba to educational or cultural exchanges. (Reporting by Eric Walsh; Editing by Chris Reese) LONDON (Reuters) - A British national was among those injured after two explosions at Brussels airport on Tuesday, a spokeswoman for British Prime Minister David Cameron said. The spokeswoman said there was no detail of other British casualties at this stage from the attacks on the airport and a rush-hour metro train in the Belgian capital which killed at least 26 people. "We don't have confirmation of any other casualties or, for the worst, fatalities at this stage but details are still emerging so that picture and that information could change," she said. British police have said they would step up their presence at key locations and transport hubs as a precaution following the attacks, and Cameron's spokeswoman said the British intelligence hub, the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, had advised there was no need to raise the UK threat level. This currently stands at the second-highest level of "severe" meaning an attack is considered highly-likely. (Reporting by Kylie MacLellan; writing by Michael Holden; editing by Kate Holton) Washington (AFP) - NASA partner Orbital ATK was readying to send its Cygnus cargo ship to the International Space Station on Tuesday, a resupply mission that will include an unprecedented fire experiment after the craft leaves the orbiting outpost. The unmanned spacecraft is due to blast off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket at 11:05 pm (0305 GMT Wednesday), the start of a 30-minute launch window. There is a 90 percent chance that the weather will be favorable at the time of the planned launch, according to forecasts. Cygnus is expected to enter into orbit about 20 minutes after liftoff and will reach the International Space Station on Saturday, where it will dock with the help of the station's robotic arm in a procedure due to start at about 1040 GMT, according to NASA. The launch will mark Orbital's fifth supply mission to the orbiting laboratory, as part of a of a $1.9 billion contract with NASA to deliver necessities to the astronauts living in space. It will be the second since December, which marked the resumption of the company's missions after an Orbital Antares rocket packed with thousands of pounds of supplies exploded seconds after takeoff in October 2014. Orbital is due to carry out two other ISS resupply missions this year for NASA, with the next one to take place in early summer from the US space agency's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia with an Antares rocket. Tuesday's launch will be the second flight to the ISS of an enhanced Cygnus spacecraft, which will carry 7,900 pounds (3.6 metric tons) of supplies to the station -- including food, water, clothes for the ISS crew of six astronauts, as well as material to support dozens of science and research probes. "It's like Christmas when a supply craft arrives," said Orbital's Dan Tani, a former astronaut. "It's always fun to watch another vehicle approach and then it's like opening a box of goodies and finding some stuff you've been wanting and some surprises you didn't know about." Story continues - 'Crucial' fire test - Cygnus will stay at the ISS until May. Loaded with trash and once it is at a safe distance from the station, NASA engineers will then set off a blaze inside the capsule to see how large flames behave in space. NASA has set off tiny controlled fires in space in the past, but never tested how large flames react inside an orbiting space capsule. "Understanding fire in space has been the focus of many experiments over the years... while many small, centimeter-sized fires have been lit in space before, to really understand fire, you've got to look at a more realistic size," said Gary Ruff, one of the engineers heading the experiment at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. "The investigation is crucial for the safety of current and future space missions." The Cygnus cargo also includes an instrument, that, for the first time, will allow experts to evaluate, from space, the chemical composition of meteors entering Earth's atmosphere. The pressurized vessel is also transporting a new 3D printer and another scientific highlight includes a so-called Gecko Gripper, a mechanism similar to the tiny hairs on the feet of geckos that makes it possible for them to stick to surfaces. This technology could one day be used on the hands and feet of robots that would move along the exterior of spacecraft to carry out inspections and repairs. SEATTLE (Reuters) - A protester in the armed takeover of an Oregon wildlife refuge whose identity was revealed this week after he was indicted on three felony charges related to the occupation remains at large, officials said on Tuesday. A federal grand jury indictment accuses Jake Ryan of conspiracy to impede U.S. officers, possession of firearms and dangerous weapons in federal facilities and depredation of government property related to the 41-day standoff at Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in eastern Oregon. The indictment, dated March 8, charges Ryan and fellow protester Sean Anderson with damaging an archeological site considered sacred to the Burns Pauite Tribe, through the use of excavation and heavy equipment. Of the 26 defendants named in the indictment, Ryan and another protester, Travis Cox, are the only two who have not been arrested. Ryans name had previously been redacted from court documents because he has not been taken into custody, Gerri Badden, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Oregon, said on Tuesday. Prosecutors have previously said occupiers excavated a trench with "significant amounts of human feces," and plowed an improvised road on or adjacent to grounds containing sensitive artifacts. On Monday, U.S. Interior Department Secretary Sally Jewell visited the Malheur refuge and met with aggrieved leaders of the Paiute Tribe. The FBI has said it was working with the tribe to identify damage to artifacts and sacred burial grounds. A spokeswoman declined on Tuesday to elaborate on the agency's findings or the indictment. Badden said other defendants, including protest leader Ammon Bundy, were due in federal court in Portland on Tuesday for preliminary hearings. A Facebook message purportedly from Ryan's family posted on Monday asked supporters to "continue to be the moral support we need at this time." Jeanette Finicum, the wife of protester Robert "LaVoy" Finicum, who was fatally shot during a confrontation with state police, posted a Facebook message saying that Ryan is "guilty of nothing." (Reporting by Eric M. Johnson in Seattle; Editing by Sara Catania and Dan Grebler) NIAMEY (Reuters) - Niger's President Mahamadou Issoufou won a second term with 92.5 percent of the vote in a run-off election that the opposition coalition chose to boycott, the electoral commission said on Tuesday. Issoufou, an ally of the West in its fight against Islamist insurgents in West Africa, won the first round comfortably last month with 48 percent of votes but failed to clinch the outright majority required to avoid a second round. The candidate who came second, opposition leader Hama Amadou, has been in jail since November on charges relating to a baby-trafficking scandal, but was flown to France for medical treatment last week. Amadou says he is innocent and claims the charges against him are politically motivated. But the size of Issoufou's victory is unlikely to draw significant international criticism, in part because of the boycott, but also because the incumbent has been in power only since 2011. "The Nigerien people have spoken clearly and unequivocally," said Issoufou in a statement in which he laid out his plans for a second term, including increasing security and improving the country's infrastructure. "I hail their political maturity and strong mobilization." The Coalition for an Alternative (COPA), which unites about 20 political parties including Amadou's MODEN, called for a boycott of the polls claiming the process had been tainted by fraud. It described the election as a "sham" and said in a statement on Tuesday that it would refuse to recognize the results. "President Issoufou's mandate expires on April 1, 2016 at midnight. From April 2, our country will have no legitimate president," it said. The turnout of the election was 60 percent, the commission said. The vote is subject to confirmation from the constitutional court. Southern Niger, which borders Nigeria, has been the target of frequent deadly raids by Islamist Boko Haram militants. It also shares borders with Burkina Faso and Mali to the west, where al Qaeda-linked groups are active. Libya, home to Islamic State affiliates, lies on its northern border. (Reporting by Abdoulaye Massalaki; Writing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg and Edward McAllister; Editing by Richard Balmforth) By Yasin Kakande KAMPALA (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - As coordinator of a shelter for pregnant teenagers in central Uganda, Ritah Ssetumba has seen thousands of young girls struggling to cope with having a child but even she was shocked when an 11-year-old girl arrived pregnant and married. The girl, identified as Aidah, was referred to the Wamukisa Youth Centre by a village hospital in Buikwe District, 60 km (37 miles) from the capital Kampala, where she gave birth to a boy with her 16-year-old husband by her side. Aidah is one of about 300,000 girls each year to get pregnant in Uganda which has one of the world's highest rates of pre-teen and teenage pregnancies as the east African nation struggles to enforce laws to clamp down on child marriages. One in every four girls aged between 15 and 19 fall pregnant, according to the Uganda Bureau of Statistics, and nearly half of girls are married before 18. "Aidah was the youngest pregnant child we have ever got in almost a decade of our operations," Ssetumba told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in an interview at their premises in Kampala. "But what shocked us even more was that the girl had been married off by her mother a year earlier and she also considered herself married." According to Ssetumba the mother agreed to let the then 10-year-old Aidah marry the 16-year-old to settle a debt with his family. Aware of the dangers of child marriage, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, working with U.S. non-government organization Vital Voices Global Partnership, is trying to raise awareness among girls about the dangers of early marriage and teenage pregnancy through theatrical drama and plays in schools. This is the latest in a series of initiatives to back a campaign to reduce child marriages and teen pregnancies. Ugandan authorities have struggled to enforce laws that set a minimum marriage age of 18, prompting the Ministry of Health to launch a partnership with the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) last year aiming to reduce the practice by at least 10 percent in five years. Nakubulwa Mayi, a senior midwife at Mulago Referral Hospital the biggest hospital in the country, said pre-teen pregnancies posed serious physical and emotional risks to young girls. "At this age a girl should be playing with dolls but not to have to handle a baby," she said. HIGH NUMBERS OF CHILD BRIDESA study by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2013 indicated that early marriages and resultant pregnancies are the biggest cause of deaths among 15 to 19-year-old girls in Uganda, accounting for 20 percent of maternal deaths. Others of those who survive the pregnancies can suffer lasting complications like fistula and disability. But ignorance on risks of child marriage, limited access to education for girls, cultures dictating girls should marry young, and poverty, have all contributed to this growing trend of child marriage in Uganda, according to the 2015 National Strategy to End Child Marriage and Teenage Pregnancy report. Agnes Igoye, assistant coordinator of the anti-trafficking task force at the Ministry of Internal Affairs, said early marriage is a form of sexual and gender-based violence with physical, social and economic effects. "Once married, few girls return to school even if it becomes economically viable," she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Igoye said they were now visiting different schools asking the students to come up with stories related to child marriage and early pregnancy so her team could train the girls to perform such plays at schools and in community theaters. "These plays show that children know what is happening to them in our society and they also know that it's all wrong," she said. (Editing by Belinda Goldsmith; 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 www.news.trust.org) New Delhi, Mar.22 (ANI): Prime Minister Narendra Modi will arrive in Brussels for the first leg of his three nation visit to Belgium, United States and Saudi Arabia on March 30. During the Belgium visit, the Prime Minister will also take part in the 13th India-EU Summit at the invitation of the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk and the President of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker. "PM will visit Brussels on March 30 for 13th India-EU Summit," Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) official spokesperson Vikas Swarup told the media personnel here. European Union (EU) is India's leading trade and investment partner and biggest export destination. India and EU are also Strategic Partners since 2004. The 13th India-EU Summit aims to deepen the India-EU Strategic Partnership and advance collaboration in priority areas for India's growth and development. The Prime Minister will also hold a bilateral summit meeting with his Belgian counterpart Charles Michel. India and Belgium enjoy close and friendly ties. Belgium is India's second largest trade partner within the EU. The bilateral meeting between the two Prime Ministers will focus on further enhancing the economic partnership. The two Prime Ministers will also hold discussions on regional and global issues of mutual interest. From Brussels, the Prime Minister would depart for Washington D.C to attend the Fourth Nuclear Security Summit on March 31 and April 1. "From Brussels, the Prime Minister will proceed to Washington D.C. to participate in the Nuclear Security Summit on March 31st- April 1," Swarup said. "PM Modi is scheduled to also have some bilateral meetings on the sidelines of NSS 2016," he added. The first Nuclear Security Summit was held in Washington D.C. (April 2010) followed by the Summits in Seoul (March 2012) and The Hague (March 2014). The Nuclear Security Summit process has been instrumental in focusing leaders' level attention on the global threat posed by nuclear terrorism and urgent measures required to prevent terrorists and other non-state actors from gaining access to sensitive nuclear materials and technologies. From the United States, Prime Minister Modi will proceed for an official visit to Saudi Arabia on April 2 and 3. "PM is paying an official visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia on 2nd and 3rd April 2016," Swarup said. This is the highest-level visit from India to Saudi Arabia after the visit of the former prime minister Dr. Manmohan Singh to Riyadh in 2010. During the visit, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will hold discussions with King Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud on bilateral, regional and multilateral issues of mutual interest. India and Saudi Arabia share friendly relations based on close people-to-people contacts. The 'Strategic Partnership' established through Riyadh declaration in 2010 envisions a deeper engagement in political, economic, security and defence areas. In recent years, there has been significant progress in bilateral cooperation in such key areas of mutual interest. Saudi Arabia has become our 4th largest partner with bilateral trade exceeding USD 39 billion in 2014-15. Saudi Arabia is also India's largest crude oil supplier accounting for about one-fifth of our total imports. (ANI) Vatican City (AFP) - Pope Francis will wash the feet of 12 young asylum seekers to highlight the need for the international community to provide shelter to refugees, the Vatican said Tuesday. The pontiff will visit the town of Castelnuovo di Porto north of Rome on Maundy Thursday, which commemorates Jesus Christ's Last Supper with the apostles, and perform the Easter ritual there. "He will kneel in front of 12 asylum seekers to wash their feet in a gesture... bringing attention to their condition," Archbishop Rino Fisichella said. Francis has long called for the global community, and Europe in particular, to open its doors to refugees and step up the fight against xenophobia. The ceremony is part of the run-up to Easter Sunday, and has seen the Argentine pontiff in the past wash the feet of prison inmates and disabled people. Shortly after his election in 2013, Francis visited a youth detention centre where he performed the ritual on a group of young inmates including two Muslims -- the first Catholic leader ever to do so. This story was reported by Sarah Barr for the Juvenile Justice Information Exchange. JONESBORO, Georgia Leandra Phommavongsay began his speech to the dozen or so teenagers gathered in the back of a Clayton County courtroom by recounting his recent travels. He had been to California, and before that to Florida and to Texas, all places he hadnt ever expected to go when he was growing up in small-town Georgia, south of Atlanta. I just came from San Francisco. Im not sure youve ever seen San Francisco. But San Francisco is beautiful, he said. He had once been like them, Phommavongsay told the teens sitting in two rows, a few parents scattered among them. He hung out with the wrong crowd, and got into trouble with the cops for petty, and sometimes not so petty, offenses. They could go to San Francisco, too, the way he had for a job detailing cars. But only if they made the right choices during their time in the Second Chance Court program, a community-based diversion program that seeks to keep teenagers out of long-term lockup. Grow, man. Think, man. Forget the weed. Forget those bums on the block, he said. Hes now 21. He grinned at them. Go to Miami and get crazy on the beach. Phommavongsay landed in Second Chance five years ago after charges that included robbery and aggravated assault. The program has a long list of requirements, including strict GPS monitoring, regular school attendance, participation in programs such as drug treatment or family therapy and meetings with court officials. This story is part of Juvenile Justice. Scrutinizing controversial policies affecting young people at risk. Click here to read more stories in this investigation. Don't miss another Juvenile Justice investigation: Sign up for the Center for Public Integrity's Watchdog email. He completed the Second Chance program, went to cosmetology school and works in a print shop. He thinks he would like to open his own business someday. Without the program, he says his life would look much different: Id be dead or in prison. Story continues Second Chance Court is the kind of program counties across Georgia have deployed as part of an ongoing juvenile justice reform effort than began in 2013. Like states across the country, Georgia wants to keep teens out of prison and in their communities, with better outcomes for families, public safety and the states bottom line. The Republican-controlled Georgia Legislature passed the reforms unanimously in 2013, shortly after making major changes to the criminal justice system. Republican Gov. Nathan Deal, a former juvenile court judge, has championed the changes. The Georgia reforms, rooted in an overhaul of the juvenile justice code, included a move away from locking up status offenders and the creation of a statewide database of juvenile justice referrals and results. The state also launched the Juvenile Justice Incentive Grants program to fund evidence-based programs in the counties that take their cues from programs like Second Chance Court. Since 2013, the number of youth in secure confinement has dropped by 17 percent and youth awaiting placement has decreased by 51 percent. Georgias reforms hit many of the marks for reforms rooted in evidence about what works, said Mark Lipsey, director of the Peabody Research Institute at Vanderbilt University. Lipsey has helped the state, and many others, evaluate how well programs are working. Lipsey pointed to the states decision to make the reforms in the statute, emphasize evidence-based practices and assemble strong leadership teams as signs of a very strong effort. I think whats going on there is very much state of the art and quite remarkable, he said. Budget proposal When lawmakers were considering the reforms three years ago, researchers at the Pew Charitable Trust said the state could save $85 million during the next five years, largely from avoiding the costs of building two new secure facilities. Now, as the number of youth in detention facilities come down, the state has the potential to take money they would have spent on running the facilities and put the funding into additional community programming, said Joe Vignati, deputy commissioner of the Georgia Department of Juvenile Justice. The latest budget proposal from Gov. Deal calls for closing one long-term youth detention facility and moving more than $5 million into community-based alternatives. For example, the budget proposal includes $2.7 million for 40 step-down slots that help move kids from secure detention to residential facilities. The code overhaul is what allowed for the slots, but the money wasnt there in the first few years for the department to make use of them. Now they can as the savings from reform become tangible. Were basically taking all those funds and moving them from secure facilities into the communities. Thats a big shift, Vignati said. The costs of long-term and short-term lock-up still make up more than 60 percent of the state Department of Juvenile Justices budget, but the costs are growing more slowly than community services in the governors most recent proposal. From fiscal year 2014 to the fiscal year 2017 proposal, funding for community services grew 17 percent, from $82 million to $95 million in a budget of $334 million. Meanwhile, funding for secure commitment grew 11 percent, from $85 million to $95 million and secure detention grew 12 percent from $107 million to $120 million. Vignati said the costs of long-term and short-term confinement should continue to come down and the savings redirected to community programs as the state gets a handle on just how low the number of juvenile offenders they house can go. But even as fewer beds are used, the costs of running the existing facilities wont go away. They require staffing, heating and maintenance. Additional costs also could come from the need to update facilities built decades ago and to ensure theyre equipped to handle the highest-risk teenagers, who arent placed in community services, said Vignati. Were going to get tougher kids, theyre going to be more resistant to treatment so it requires more intensive services, he said. The state also has steadily increased the amount of funding dedicated to Juvenile Justice Incentive Grants program, from $6 million in the fiscal year 2014 budget to $8.8 million in fiscal year 2016. In the participating counties, 1,666 youth had access to evidence-based programming in the second year of the program, up from 1,122 in the first. The programs all are ranked effective or promising on a federal registry to reduce criminogenic behaviors in juveniles and the counties have chosen programs rooted in individual, family or group therapy. Overall, the counties saw out-of-home placements drop 54 percent in fiscal year 2015, compared with a 2012 baseline. Steve Teske, the Clayton County juvenile judge who started Second Chance Court and has helped lead the charge for reform statewide, said the grants have been instrumental in his county. The Second Chance program already was underway and showing significant decreases in secure commitment when the incentive program began. However, the grant allowed the county to target the needs of youth who still were being committed, often for family dysfunction, Teske said. During fiscal year 2015, out-of-home placements dropped 63 percent in the county. Mark Ferrante, a senior policy analyst at the Council on State Governments Justice Center, said Georgia also has been aggressive about pursuing federal funding to support its work. Theyre very thoughtful and proactive about applying for grants, he said. Don't miss another Juvenile Justice investigation: Sign up for the Center for Public Integrity's Watchdog email. Next wave of reforms As Georgia enters its third year of reforms, Vignati said the state has shown how to be smarter and more creative about juvenile justice. The key now is to build on the states progress. We have to keep our eye on what we set out to do and measure the changes and adjust the course as needed, he said. The Georgia Council on Criminal Justice Reform, which is charged with making recommendations to improve both the criminal and juvenile justice systems, called for the next wave of juvenile reforms to focus on schools in its latest annual report. Schools are one of the largest sources of referrals for the juvenile justice system. The proposed reforms aim to clarify the roles of schools and law enforcement on campuses. A student who shouts a swear word should be disciplined at school, not accused of disorderly conduct and sent to the juvenile justice system, said Teske, who is a member of the council. Similarly, a schoolyard fight shouldnt automatically bring assault charges. The overall objective is to stop criminalizing kids for what is typical adolescent behavior, he said. The report recommended that schools be required to develop and use a system of progressive discipline before a juvenile complaint is filed and that school systems enter into model agreements with law enforcement that clearly delineate how student behaviors will be addressed. The council also recommended measures to improve the procedural fairness of school disciplinary proceedings. The report also calls for the state to restrict secure detention for anyone age 13 or younger, unless they are charged with a serious crime such as murder. Since the reform, the state has seen a spike in the number of younger children held in secure detention. By expanding the detention of younger children and exposing such youth to the trauma correlated with detention, Georgia, is, in effect, voiding the beneficial effects of juvenile reform for this most vulnerable population, the council said. The new policies that direct juveniles into community-based programs largely have affected teenagers ages 15 and older because theyre more likely to commit serious crimes than younger children. That has created a vacuum that has unintentionally sucked younger children into the system, said Melissa Carter, executive director of the Barton Child Law & Policy Center at the Emory University School of Law. Carter said the states commitment to reform means that each round of policy recommendations can jump-start valuable conversations about what should happen next. For example, a discussion of how the youngest adolescents in Georgia should be treated in the justice system could re-energize a debate about whether to raise the age for when teenagers are automatically treated as adults. Georgia is one of only a few states that treats teenagers as adults beginning at age 17, rather than 18. Or, when policymakers consider the importance of restoring youth to their communities, it can prompt ideas about how to reintegrate youth who are serving long sentences, Carter said. I feel like were on solid footing. With every step forward, we start thinking about the next step, she said. Phommavongsay said hes confident he can move forward as well. He still makes mistakes, the kinds of regular growing-up moments he says feel like bumping his head, but hes stayed out of trouble a fact he credits in large part to Second Chance. He intends to keep it that way. Ive come too far. Ive learned too much, he said. This story is part of Juvenile Justice. Scrutinizing controversial policies affecting young people at risk. 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. By Nick Brown WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Puerto Rico will ask the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to validate a law that could let it cut billions of dollars from what it owes in debt at some public agencies, a key test in the islands efforts to weather a massive fiscal crisis. The U.S. territory, facing what its governor has called an unpayable $70 billion debt and a 45 percent poverty rate, will argue its case against financial creditors, including Franklin Advisers and OppenheimerFunds, who want to keep contentious restructuring talks out of court. As Puerto Rico leaders, creditors and U.S. lawmakers seek a debt solution in the U.S. Congress, the question before the Supreme Court is whether the island should be allowed to restructure debts under a court-supervised regime similar to Chapter 9 bankruptcy laws used by U.S. cities such as Detroit and Stockton, California. "It is very significant that the Supreme Court took this case we're seeing efforts to try to determine with some more clarity the status of Puerto Rico," said bankruptcy expert Melissa Jacoby, a professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law. Puerto Rico, which as a U.S. commonwealth is excluded from Chapter 9, passed the Recovery Act in 2014, a local restructuring law that lets it put public entities, such as power authority PREPA, into bankruptcy. Two U.S. court decisions deemed the Recovery Act invalid after PREPA creditors sued, with the Supreme Court agreeing in December to hear an appeal. Creditors say the act contradicts federal bankruptcy law, which prohibits states from making their own debt restructuring laws. Puerto Rico argues that if it is exempt from Chapter 9, it must also be exempt from the limitation on states passing their own laws. "It makes no sense to read a limitation on Chapter 9 to apply to a jurisdiction that is categorically excluded from that chapter," it said in January. The outcome could threaten a hard-fought, consensual restructuring at PREPA, where creditors holding most of the utility's $8.3 billion in debt agreed to take 15 percent reductions in payouts. Reinstating the Recovery Act could allow Puerto Rico to scrap that deal and instead put PREPA into bankruptcy, where it could impose deeper cuts and bind holdout creditors to the deal. Jacoby said the decision might come down to the court focusing on how Congress previously interpreted bankruptcy law. "It's all about legislative history," said Jacoby. (Reporting by Nick Brown; Editing by Daniel Bases and Peter Cooney) By Patricia Zengerle WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A small group of Republican lawmakers will join President Barack Obama's historic trip to Cuba on Sunday, underlining growing divisions in the party over the future of the United States' trade embargo against the island nation. At least five Republicans, all known for favoring normal trade relations with Cuba, will make the trip, congressional sources and lawmakers told Reuters. Republican congressional leaders have made opposition to President Barack Obama's easing of the Cuban trade embargo a hallmark of their foreign policy. But an increasing number of party members, drawn by the economic benefits of scrapping the cold war-era embargo, are lining up to back the White House. "This is the right policy. He's done the right thing," said Republican Senator Jeff Flake, an outspoken proponent of closer ties with Cuba who is going to Havana. Besides Flake, Republicans making the trip include House of Representatives members Mark Sanford, Tom Emmer and Reid Ribble, as well as Senator Dean Heller, congressional sources and lawmakers said. All of the representatives confirmed their participation, except for Heller, whose office declined requests for comment. But other lawmakers confirmed his travel. Republicans backing Obama's policy cut against the grain of the party's establishment thinking that seeks to avoid giving Obama any kind of policy win, either domestically or internationally. Normalizing relations with Cuba would be a significant foreign policy legacy for Obama. Many Republicans see the embargo as contrary to their party's pro-business tenets and believe the government should not tell citizens where they can travel. "It's about Americans' freedom and embracing engagement rather than isolation as a way of changing other governments," Sanford said in a Facebook post explaining his decision to make the trip. At least 15 of the 54 Republicans in the Senate, mostly members from states like Kansas where agriculture is a significant industry, have publicly backed increased Cuban trade or fewer restrictions on travel. Supporters of Obama's policy say the total number of Republican supporters in the House and Senate reaches several dozen. Some members say they want to see how the election plays out before speaking publicly. The U.S. embargo on Cuba, first imposed in 1960, can be lifted only via a majority vote in Congress, which is now controlled by Republicans. COLD WAR RIVALS Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro shocked the world in December 2014 by abruptly announcing the Cold War adversaries would move to normalize relations after more than a half-century's estrangement. The news drew immediate condemnation in Congress, where a bloc of mostly Republican Cuban-American lawmakers has worked to keep tight restrictions on trade and travel with Cuba for years. Although polls show 72 percent of Americans want to abandon the embargo, the Republican party line has firmly supported the restrictions. Critics of Obama's policy say Cuba's government is still too repressive for the United States to ease restrictions. But this week businessman Donald Trump, who has questioned the embargo, easily won the Republican primary in Florida, defeating leading embargo advocate Senator Marco Rubio. Trump's victory countered the long-standing assumption that the state's Cuban exiles would defeat any anti-embargo candidate. A young generation of Cuban-Americans has warmed to Obama's engagement policy, with many excited about the chance to open businesses in their homeland. Ribble, a founder of the House Cuba Working Group who is going on the trip, represents Wisconsin, one of several states where farmers want the chance to sell to an island just 90 miles from the U.S. coast. "American producers are missing out on a market that imports the vast majority of its agricultural products, and Cubans are missing out on exposure to the freedom and democracy that lies just 90 miles from their shore," Ribble said in a statement. (This story corrects name to Dean Heller not Mark in paragraph 5.) (Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick; editing by Don Durfee and Chizu Nomiyama) Dubai (AFP) - Top rights groups Tuesday urged the United States and other nations to stop selling arms to Saudi Arabia after it was accused of killing hundreds of civilians in its year-long air war in Yemen. Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch called on Washington, London and Paris to stop weapons deliveries to Riyadh, which is leading a mainly Sunni Arab coalition that launched air strikes against Iran-backed rebels in Yemen on March 26 last year. The UN human rights chief said last week that more than 3,200 civilians had been killed in the last year, with the vast majority of those deaths caused by coalition strikes. London-based Amnesty called on Washington and London to "halt all transfers of arms for use in the Yemen conflict". "Saudi Arabia's international partners have added fuel to the fire, flooding the region with arms despite the mounting evidence that such weaponry has facilitated appalling crimes," James Lynch, Amnesty International's regional deputy director, said in a statement. HRW also urged the United States, Britain and France to suspend all weapons sales until Saudi Arabia curtails its air strikes. "For the past year, governments that arm Saudi Arabia have rejected or downplayed compelling evidence that the coalition's air strikes have killed hundreds of civilians," New York-based HRW's deputy global advocacy director, Philippe Bolopion, said in a statement. "By continuing to sell weapons to a known violator that has done little to curtail its abuses, the US, UK and France risk being complicit in unlawful civilian deaths," he said. Saudi Arabia is the world's second-largest arms importer, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, and the United States and Britain are its main suppliers. - 'Schools, hospitals, homes' hit - Riyadh launched the intervention in Yemen last year after Shiite Huthi rebels seized control of large parts of the country, including the capital Sanaa, and forced the government into exile. Story continues Loyalist forces backed by coalition strikes and ground troops have since retaken much of the south but have failed to dislodge the rebels from other areas including Sanaa. Efforts to organise peace talks have so far made little headway and concerns have been growing as the number of civilian casualties mounts. Washington expressed its worries last week, with White House spokesman Josh Earnest saying the conflict "has caught too many innocent civilians in the crossfire". The coalition has said major operations are soon set to wind down and denied any intentional targeting of civilians. The coalition's spokesman, Brigadier General Ahmed al-Assiri, told AFP last week that an independent panel had been formed to investigate civilian deaths in the conflict. A strike earlier this month on a market in northern Yemen that according to the United Nations killed 119 people, including 106 civilians, has amplified concerns. Rights groups have accused the coalition of carrying out indiscriminate bombings, including through the use of cluster bombs. Amnesty said it had documented at least 32 air strikes by the coalition "that appear to have violated international humanitarian law" and killed 361 civilians. HRW said it had documented at least 36 "unlawful airstrikes" that killed at least 550 civilians, including on schools, hospitals and homes "with no evidence they were being used for military purposes". "How many more air strikes need to wreak havoc on civilians before countries supplying aircraft and bombs to the coalition pull the plug?" Bolopion said. Rob Ford, the former mayor of Toronto who lived a life of high political and personal drama, died Tuesday after a long battle with cancer, Ford's family announced in a statement. He was 46. "With heavy hearts and profound sadness, the Ford family announces the passing of their beloved son, brother, husband, and father, councilor Rob Ford earlier today at the age of 46," his family said. "A dedicated man of the people, councilor Ford spent his life serving the citizens of Toronto," his family, which also requested privacy, added. Ford was rushed to Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto on March 18 as his family began a bedside vigil. Since February, he had been undergoing radiation, surgery and chemotherapy treatment to battle a rare, aggressive form of cancer called pleomorphic liposarcoma. His death is only the latest headline generated by the polarizing Toronto mayor long known worldwide for his public stunts and gaffes. Ford's reality TV persona made him the constant butt of opening monologues by David Letterman, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert and other American talk show hosts. See More: Hollywood's Notable Deaths of 2016 Ford's alcohol and illicit drug abuse, which led to a stint in rehab, even had Jimmy Kimmel at one point grilling the Toronto mayor about his personal life during a bizarre March 2014 appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live! in Los Angeles. Kimmel reacted Tuesday to Ford's death on his Twitter account by saying: "Condolences to the family and fans of @TorontoRobFord - an unforgettable guy who loved his job and city like few men I've met." Ford was born May, 28, 1969, into a political family led by the late Doug Ford Sr., a self-made businessman who served as a member of the provincial legislature for four years to 1999. After serving for 10 years as a Toronto city councilor, the rotund Ford in 2010 was sworn in as the city's 64th mayor. His many followers saw Ford as a cost-cutting mayor out to stop the "gravy train" at city hall. His critics, by contrast, accused him of tarnishing Toronto's squeaky-clean image by admitting to using crack cocaine while in office, a concession that brought him personal and political ruin. Story continues Ford's celebrity as a troubled yet folksy politician also grew as he came under police investigation for mixing with known gang members and discussed oral sex during news conferences. He first stirred worldwide controversy after the gossip website Gawker in May 2013 released a photo in which he appeared outside a Toronto crack house with three individuals one of whom was later gunned down outside a downtown nightclub. The mayor first denied he used crack cocaine. Ford eventually came clean during a news conference in November 2013 outside his city hall office, where he said he had tried the illicit drug "probably in one of my drunken stupors." Despite his infamy, Ford earned kudos for his very public battle against addictions while in office, complete with denials, apologies, failed attempts to sober up and, eventually, medical treatment. "Even though I will lose precious material, please go to rehab," Stewart told Ford at one point during his Comedy Central show. The mayor was eventually stripped of his political powers following his Crackergate scandal. That still didn't stop Ford campaigning for re-election, complete with his own online video series, Ford Nation. His re-election bid was abandoned, however, in October 2014 when Ford revealed he was battling cancer. Survivors include his wife, Renata, and children, Stephanie and Douglas. Read More: Rob Ford Scandal: Toronto Mayor Insists He's No 'Gangbanger' Donetsk (Russia) (AFP) - A Russian court on Tuesday sentenced Ukrainian military pilot Nadiya Savchenko to 22 years in prison over the killing of two journalists, in a ruling set to exacerbate Moscow's feud with Kiev and the West. Judge Leonid Stepanenko found the 34-year-old guilty of involvement in the fatal 2014 shelling of the Russian state television reporters in east Ukraine, a widely-expected verdict slammed by Washington. Ukraine's pro-Western President Petro Poroshenko immediately pledged to "never recognise either this show trial or the so-called sentence", and offered to swap Savchenko for two suspected Russian soldiers currently on trial in Kiev. Crop-haired Savchenko -- who has become a national hero in her homeland and elected to parliament in absentia -- reacted as the judge read out the sentence at the end of the two-day ruling by shouting in Ukrainian and singing the Ukrainian national anthem. Her defence team said she did not plan to appeal the "illegal" verdict. The helicopter pilot -- who was fighting in a pro-Kiev militia group against rebels in east Ukraine -- insists she was kidnapped by separatist fighters before the journalists were killed in June 2014 and then illegally smuggled to Russia. - Calls for release - Kiev and its Western allies see Savchenko as the latest pawn in Moscow's broader aggression against Ukraine, that has seen Moscow seize the Crimean peninsula and fuel the separatist uprising. US State Department spokesman John Kirby blasted Moscow's "blatant disregard for the principles of justice" after the verdict and reiterated Washington's calls for "Russia to immediately release Nadiya Savchenko". The guilty verdict over the deaths of journalists Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin had long been considered a foregone conclusion and Kiev has been pushing for a prisoner swap to free Savchenko. "Putin has said that after the so-called sentence, he will return Nadiya Savchenko to Ukraine," Poroshenko said in a statement. Story continues "The time to keep promises has come. I, in turn, am ready to hand over to Russia two Russian servicemen detained on our territory for their involvement in the armed aggression against Ukraine," he said. Kiev says the two men -- Captain Yevgeny Yerofeyev and Sergeant Aleksander Aleksandrov -- were members of an elite Russian military intelligence unit helping rebels in east Ukraine. Russia insists the two servicemen were "volunteers" who were not on active duty and the Kremlin played coy in response to Poroshenko's offer. "Only the president can take that decision. What that is -- I cannot yet say," Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian news agencies. - 'Iron person with iron will' - Savchenko's lawyer Nikolai Polozov told journalists after the sentencing that she would "not appeal this illegal verdict" in which the pilot was also found guilty of illegally crossing the border into Russia and the attempted murder of civilians. "She is an iron person -- she has an iron will," Polozov said. Savchenko has threatened to start refusing all fluids 10 days after the sentencing as she bids to force her release in the latest of a series of hunger strikes she has staged since her arrest. Throughout her detention, she has struck a defiant pose and was sent to a psychiatric hospital near Moscow before being transferred to the Russian town of Donetsk near the Ukraine border for her trial. She has ridiculed the court from the defendant's glass cage and flashed her middle finger at judges earlier this month as her trial ended. Rights groups have also slammed the case. "Savchenko did not get a fair trial, and so her conviction is unsound and should not stand," said Hugh Williamson, the Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch. "There should be justice for the deaths of Kornelyuk and Voloshin, but justice wont be served by an unfair trial that was highly politicised from the start." The verdict looks likely to refocus some Western attention on Ukraine after Moscow broke out of international isolation over its role in the conflict there with its military intervention in Syria. US Secretary of State John Kerry and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier are to fly in to Moscow on Wednesday and, while the focus for Kerry at least is likely to be the Syrian conflict, Savchenko's fate looks set to be raised. More than 9,200 people have been killed since the Moscow-backed insurgency erupted in eastern Ukraine in April 2014, a month after Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula. The term Renaissance man is thrown around frequently. But who actually qualifies? If you go by the dictionary, its a person who has wide interests and is expert in more than one area. Good start. Moving on to Encyclopaedia Britannica, we learn that a Renaissance man is the philosophical concept of an uomo universale, or universal man. Developed in the 15th century, the concept is an ideal someone who reflects that man is limitless in his capacities for development. Say hello to Angelo Garro. To most people who have tasted his pig or drunk his wine, Garro may seem like the Renaissance man that Merriam-Webster or Britannica is defining. A transplanted Sicilian in San Francisco, he lives in a forge complete with a fig tree growing through the roof and can often be found sculpting metal, goggles on and sparks flying. In his spare time, he hunts boars and makes sausage and prosciutto. He also makes his own wine, pasta, grappa and balsamic vinegar. Garro, the boar hunter described in Michael Pollans The Omnivores Dilemma, is a well-known figure in the Bay Area, and can occasionally be spotted in parking lots or along the side of the road foraging for wild fennel. In the past year, Garro has achieved some national renown, too, in the form of his Omnivore salt blend. Once a treat reserved for friends and family, his sea salt, black pepper, dried fennel and red pepper mixture has gone viral. Thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign (featuring a short film, below, made by friend Werner Herzog), Garro began selling his signature blend to some 350 stores across the country, including Whole Foods and butcher shops. The advice that Garros Sicilian grandmother gave him upon leaving Italy is the secret behind his salt, he says. She too used a similar salt blend to season everything from fish, poultry and meat to vegetables and salads. You can make anything taste good, she said. That stuck in my head, Garro says. Life is going so fast. Were working like busy bees. But its not that big we still do small batches, around 6,000 bags of salt every couple of months. Its not like were some production line. Story continues Even so, one does wonder if all the salt leaves time for everything else. Garro has also thought of this, and hopes that once his new business stabilizes, hell be able to spend more time on other things, such as sculpture, cooking and friends. That said, Garro has continued to find time for new adventures, including auditioning for a part the role of a Sicilian mobster in a Hollywood movie. Its as crazy as America can be, he says, summing it all up. The Story of Omnivore Salt by Werner Herzog The Story of Omnivore Salt by Werner Herzog Related Articles Riyadh (AFP) - Saudi security forces have arrested a Shiite preacher accused of glorifying Lebanon's Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, a newspaper reported on Tuesday. Hussein al-Radi was detained after Gulf Arab states declared Hezbollah a "terrorist" group earlier this month and brought in tough new measures against anyone supporting it. The Al-Watan daily reported that security forces arrested Radi, from the Al-Ahsa oasis region in Eastern Province. "This is after he glorified the terrorist group Hezbollah and insulted the kingdom in a video clip that has been shared" online, the report said. Radi "also broke previous pledges he had made after defending the terrorist Nimr al-Nimr following his execution," it added. Nimr, another Shiite cleric from Eastern Province, was a driving force behind protests that began in 2011 among the Shiite minority in Sunni-majority Saudi Arabia. The Shiites complain of marginalisation. Nimr and three other Shiites were among 47 people executed on January 2 for "terrorism." Iranian demonstrators stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran and a consulate following Nimr's execution, prompting Riyadh to cut diplomatic ties. Al-Watan quoted a security source as saying authorities had shown "patience" over a number of violations Radi allegedly made. "But he continued to incite the public, taking advantage of the mosque platform to breach regulations." A video posted Sunday on YouTube showed the bespectacled Radi, with a bushy white beard, speaking at a podium where he hails Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah as a "hero." Radi also praises Iran as a regional and international power. An interior ministry spokesman could not confirm Radi's arrest to AFP but said: "I would assure you that ... laws in the kingdom are enforced." Ibrahim AlMugaiteeb, president of the Eastern Province-based Human Rights First Society, said Radi's arrest was no surprise. Story continues But even though the imam "pushed the envelope," AlMugaiteeb said he did not condone the arrest of an elderly religious figure. Other Gulf states have also taken measures against alleged Hezbollah supporters since the "terrorism" blacklisting. Bahrain announced it had deported several Lebanese residents for alleged links to the group. A Kuwaiti newspaper reported on Monday that authorities there had taken similar action against 11 Lebanese and three Iraqis. And the United Arab Emirates has reportedly put seven people on trial for allegedly forming a cell linked to Hezbollah. Dakar (AFP) - Senegal has voted overwhelmingly in favour of limiting presidential terms to five years, the country's interior minister said Tuesday, after a weekend referendum widely seen as a test of the president's popularity. Interior minister Abdoulaye Daouda Diallo said that 62.9 percent voted "Yes" on constitutional reforms while 37.1 per cent voted against it. Turnout was 40.42 percent of eligible voters, he told a press conference. The official referendum results will be published on Friday by the country's electoral commission and require constitutional court approval. President Macky Sall was elected in 2012 partly on a platform to reduce the presidential mandate from seven years to five. Sall had said reducing his own mandate would set an example within Africa, where many leaders cling to power beyond their allotted term. But Senegal's top court rejected his proposal in February, triggering the referendum to allow the reforms to come into force once Sall leaves office. Opposition parties and several civil society groups urged a "No" vote, arguing that Sall reneged on his promise to leave office early and criticising the referendum as a cop-out. The referendum became a de facto Yes/No vote on Sall's popularity, eclipsing more than a dozen other proposed points of reform to the constitution. NAIROBI (Reuters) - A senior Burundi army officer and ally of President Pierre Nkurunziza was shot dead in the capital on Tuesday, army sources said, the latest in a series of killings in an almost year-long crisis that risks plunging the African nation back into war. Lieutenant Colonel Darius Ikurakure was shot in the Defence Ministry at about 1 p.m. by a man who then managed to flee, one soldier told Reuters. Two other sources gave similar accounts. There was no official statement. Tit-for-tat killings of pro-government and opposition figures have sparked international concerns that Burundi, which emerged from an ethnically charged civil war a decade ago, could slide back into conflict. The crisis has rattled a region with a history of ethnic fighting, including neighbouring Rwanda which suffered a genocide in 1994. "Many were at home for their lunch during that time," one of the army sources, who asked not be identified, said. "That is why he was probably not seen and arrested." Ikurakure was commander of a combat engineering battalion based in Muzinda, northeast of the capital, Bujumbura. He was seen as close to Nkurunziza, with whom he fought as a rebel during the civil war that ended in 2005. Opponents accused him of being behind arbitrary arrests and killings in some areas of Bujumbura over the last year. The government says it only arrests those behind violence, and dismisses accusations of extra-judicial killing. Burundi's crisis erupted in April when Nkurunziza said he was bidding for a third presidential term. His opponents said the move was unconstitutional but he went on to win a disputed election three months later. (Writing by Edmund Blair; Editing by Ed Cropley) A federal judge has told American Idol-affiliated 19 Recordings that it won't be allowed to amend a lawsuit to address Sony Music's significant stake in Sweden-based streaming giant Spotify. Last June, in the midst of an ongoing lawsuit over royalties to such artists as Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood, the plaintiff attempted to add the claim that Sony had engaged in self-dealing by taking equity in Spotify worth potentially hundreds of millions of dollars in lieu of demanding fair-market royalty rates from the streaming company. 19 Recordings, founded by Idol creator Simon Fuller and controlled by the show's owner, Core Media Group (which is now part of a joint venture between 21st Century Fox and Apollo Global Management), alleged this was a breach of good faith and fair dealing. When the new claim was attempted, New York federal court judge Ronnie Abrams had already trimmed the lawsuit. For instance, she threw out the contention that Sony had improperly allowed digital service providers to sell disaggregated tracks to 19s disadvantage, noting the license agreements does not restrict or even address Sony's discretion to sell disaggregated tracks. The judge also addressed the claim that Sony was purposely drafting its contracts with streaming providers so that it would only have to account to artists for lower-rate "distributions" rather than higher-rate "broadcasts." Abrams decided that Sony had this discretion. Now, turning to Sony's stake in Spotify estimated to be more than six percent U.S. Magistrate Judge Gabriel Gorenstein isn't sold. "Such a low stake in Spotify does not allow a reasonable inference of 'self-dealing' between Sony and Spotify," he writes. That's not the primary basis for his decision not to allow an amended lawsuit, however. "More significantly, no self-dealing can be inferred regardless of Sonys position in Spotify because there is no allegation that the total compensation package Sony received from Spotify under the Spotify Contract is anything other than a fair market value," continues Gorenstein. "Thus, the fact that the royalty rate is below a market royalty rate does not demonstrate that the contract did not provide appropriate value in return for the rights Sony allowed to be exploited by Spotify." Story continues 19, represented by attorney Richard Busch, also aimed to have the advertising credits that Sony receives from Spotify brought up for review as part of the overall claim that Sony acted to deprive profit participants of the "fruit or benefit of its bargain." But here again, Sony's argument that it has discretion to structure a deal with Sony as it wishes becomes the poison arrow. Gorenstein points to the language of the licensing agreement that permits exploitation on a general or label basis, wishes to head off "creating a new right," and ultimately comes to the conclusion that a bare allegation that Sony is acting in its own self-interest consistent with its rights under contract isn't enough to survive a motion to dismiss. "Because the filing of the proposed complaint would be futile, the motion to amend is denied," he finishes in the opinion. The parties are due back in court on Tuesday for summary judgment arguments. Last month, Warner Music became the first major to promise artists that they would share in the spoils of any sale of Spotify equity. Aba (China) (AFP) - By mid-morning, Lobsang's leather cowboy hat is askew, his black robes dishevelled, and his breath stinks of booze. Once a nomad herder roaming the high Tibetan plateau, instead he stumbles around his sparse new concrete house. For decades he and his wife grazed yaks and sheep, living a life little changed in centuries, until they acquiesced three years ago to government calls to give up their yak-hair tents for permanent housing. Now they live in a resettlement village, row after row of identical blue-roofed grey shells, an hour's drive from Aba in Sichuan province along winding mountain roads. Everything changed when we moved to this town, said Tashi, who like her husband is in her 40s but not sure of her exact age. First we ran out of money, then he couldnt find suitable work and then he started drinking more and more. Chinese authorities say urbanisation in Tibetan areas and elsewhere will increase industrialisation and economic development, offering former nomads higher living standards and better protecting the environment. Those who move receive an urban hukou -- Chinas strictly controlled internal residence permits that determine access to social services. The government offers free or heavily subsidised houses, medical insurance, and free schooling. But critics say the drive has a one-size-fits-all approach and many former pastoralists have not prospered, despite its promises. Unlike the voluntary urbanisation of the early 2000s, when many adults maintained subsistence lifestyles while sending children and the elderly into towns, Andrew Fischer, of the International Institute of Social Studies at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, said: "The policy lock, stock and barrel shoves nomads into these resettlements thinking that is good for them. But then that gives rise to a variety of related problems like unemployment, social problems, alcoholism, et cetera, which are typical hallmarks of rapid social dislocation, he told AFP. Story continues - 'Too late' - At the resettlement facility, many relocated former herders complained to AFP they lacked work or training. Dolkar, 42, sold his last 13 yaks for 85,000 yuan (now $13,000) two years ago, a decision he now regrets, and has yet to find stable employment. "I thought this was a lot of money, but I didn't realise things in the town would be so expensive, he lamented. A person from the government came and convinced me I should move, but now I see Ive lost so much. I want to go back, but its too late. Now available urban jobs are low-wage, manual positions in construction or sanitation. But many nomads shun menial labour, having enjoyed wealthy status in the Tibetan community by virtue of their valuable livestock holdings. Sending people to urban areas only helps if there are jobs there, Fischer said. Its not like everyone can become a petty entrepreneur selling dumplings in the marketplace, the jobs need to be there and in the absence of that, the government moving them to urban areas isnt going to help. - Separatist forces - Critics say one goal of the urbanisation campaign is to give authorities more oversight over the people of Tibet, which has been ruled by Beijing since 1951. The resettlement village AFP visited is in what was Kham, the eastern part of pre-invasion Tibet, where Khampa warriors fought Communist forces, sometimes with CIA backing, until the late 1960s. Since 2000, government statistics show that urban residents have leaped by about 60 percent in the Tibet region itself, where officials launched a programme five years ago to establish Communist cadre teams in every locality. The region's top Party official, Chen Quanguo, has said each village should become a fortress to guard against and combat the infiltration of Tibetan separatist forces. Urbanisation efforts concentrate people into areas where they are far easier to surveil and where they become more dependent on state subsidies to survive - in other words, where they are easier to control, Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, told AFP. Environmental experts also say that rather than protecting mountain pastures, the policy has damaged their ecology, allowing invasive weeds to proliferate and change the nature of the soil. "Not using these grasslands long term doesn't work," said Sun Jie, deputy director of the Grassland Research Institute at the Inner Mongolia Academy of Agricultural & Animal Husbandry Sciences. "It's always been natural for grasslands to be used for grazing, the plants and the soil need it for healthy growth," she added. "Otherwise poor quality foliage moves in and contributes to soil decline." Across China, urbanisation is a top economic priority, with Premier Li Keqiang calling it the country's "grand strategy for modernisation" at a 2014 policy meeting. But benefits such as running water have come at the cost of Tibetan former nomads' sense of identity, with many complaining their sons and daughters are taught almost entirely in Mandarin. My children will never know our history, they wont understand our Tibetan traditions, said Dorje, who moved into the resettlement camp six years ago and occasionally works odd jobs. My grandchildren will never know I used to be a respected and wealthy man, they will only know poverty. The number 13 isnt exactly known as lucky, but its one that Americans will have to get used toat least for the next year. Thats where the United States landed in the rankings of the fourth annual World Happiness Report, an analysis of quality of life in 156 countries. The Sustainable Development Solutions Network, an independent network of academics, government officials, and private-sector advisors launched by the United Nations in 2012, released the report late last week. This year the SDSN, which mobilizes scientific and technical expertise to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals, focused on a new factor: how inequality affects quality of life. Income inequalities have been argued to be responsible for damage to other key supports for well-being, including social trust, safety, good governance, and both the average quality of and equal access to health and educationimportant, in turn, as supports for future generations to have more equal opportunities, the reports authors wrote. RELATED: You Know Income Inequality Is Bad When an Investment Bank CEO Says Its Destabilizing the Nation However, understanding inequality of well-being in various countries can help measure consequences of other inequality, such as health, education, freedom, and justice, according to the report. Scandinavian countries continue to top the list thanks to their strong social safety net, including equal access to education and health care. Denmark took the top spot, with Switzerland, Iceland, Norway, and Finland rounding out the top five. Although the United States, where roughly 22 percent of kids live in poverty, didnt crack the top 10, its 13th-spot finish was two ticks higher than its 2015 ranking. Burundi, which has been wracked by political unrest, came in last. Researchers examined six factors related to inequality: GDP per capita, healthy years of life expectancy, social support (having someone to count on in times of trouble), trust (a perceived absence of corruption in government and business), perceived freedom to make life decisions, and generosity (recent donations). The analysis found that differences in social support, income, and healthy life expectancy are the three most important contributors to happiness. Story continues The findings support other research, such as the Prosperity Index by the U.K.-based Legatum Institute, that suggests a countrys wealth does not guarantee happiness. Since the first World Happiness Report was published in 2012, Ecuador, the United Arab Emirates, and Venezuela have appointed ministers of happiness. Perhaps proving that one government official cant compensate for a nations woes, Ecuador, which was ranked 48th in 2015, fell to the 51st spot this year. RELATED: 10 Photos That Tell the Real Story of Poverty Around the World Measuring self-reported happiness and achieving well-being should be on every nations agenda as they begin to pursue the Sustainable Development Goals, Jeffrey Sachs, director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University and one of the reports authors, said in a statement. Indeed, the Goals themselves embody the very idea that human well-being should be nurtured through a holistic approach that combines economic, social, and environmental objectives. Rather than taking a narrow approach focused solely on economic growth, we should promote societies that are prosperous, just, and environmentally sustainable. Unfortunately, the disparity of happiness inequality around the world is only growing larger, according to the report. Happiness inequality has increased significantly, comparing 20122015 to 20052011, in most countries, in almost all global regions, and for the population of the world as a whole, the reports authors wrote. Sign the Petition: Join the Global Movement to End Extreme Poverty Related stories on TakePart: Women in Africas Largest Urban Slum Are Knitting Their Way out of Poverty Most of the World Still Can't Get Online, and it's Making Inequality Worse Joshua Jackson Explains the One Key Piece to Solving Global Poverty Original article from TakePart The man behind a deadly siege at a Sydney cafe fired at some of the hostages as they escaped but missed, possibly because of his limited experience with guns, an inquest heard Tuesday. Self-declared Muslim cleric Man Haron Monis took customers and staff at the upmarket Lindt cafe hostage on December 15, 2014, bringing the Martin Place financial district in Australia's largest city to a standstill. As the siege dragged on into the early hours of December 16, he became more erratic. When six hostages ran for a door he fired his shotgun, an act which was seen as a warning shot at the time. "It now appears that although his shot missed, the very strong inference is that Monis was shooting at the hostages," counsel assisting the inquiry, Sophie Callan, told the inquest. "The fact that he missed by some margin is consistent with him having limited experience with guns and with the difficulty of aiming his sawn-off shotgun, plus the suddenness of the escape." The inquest was told that police had hoped to "contain and negotiate" with Monis, who was armed with the gun and thought to have a bomb in his backpack. It was later discovered to be fake. Monis, who had asked police for an Islamic State flag but was refused, held the hostages for some 17 hours -- over which time five escaped, including two without his notice. By the time the six others ran for their lives at 2:03am on December 16, he still had not hurt anyone. But not long afterwards, he ordered cafe manager Tori Johnson, 34, to get on to his knees and put his hands on his head. Minutes later he shot him dead. The shooting prompted tactical police to storm the building. Monis and hostage Katrina Dawson, a 38-year-old barrister and mother-of-three, were killed in the firing. Australia raised its terror threat alert level to high in 2014 amid concerns of attacks by individuals inspired by organisations such as the Islamic State group. Since then, 14 people have been charged by a counter-terror unit investigating suspected acts of domestic terrorism, Australians fighting in Syria and Iraq and the funding of terror groups. Taiwan said Tuesday it was investigating allegations an Indonesian ship pursued and shot at two Taiwanese fishing boats in the Malacca Strait, warning Jakarta that violence on the high seas was unacceptable. The alleged incident occurred just days after Indonesia detained the crew of a Chinese boat suspected of illegally fishing in its waters off the South China Sea, sparking a tense standoff with Beijing. Taiwan's fishing agency said two tuna longliners were passing through Indonesia's waters early Monday when it was believed they were chased and fired at by official vessels. Taiwan's foreign ministry has asked its representative in Jakarta to investigate the allegations and establish whether it was an Indonesian government vessel that was involved. Taiwan's premier Chang San-cheng said authorities suspected a pirate ship was involved, but that possibly a government boat was to blame for the violent clash. "Even if it is Indonesia's economic zone, our boats can pass by without causing any damage, so there are many things to clarify," he said Tuesday. "(Indonesia) should not have used violent means against our boat even if the boat was engaged in illegal fishing I would like to state that this kind of violent means are unacceptable," he said. Taiwan's fishing agency said one of the boats had more than 10 bullet holes. The 20 crew aboard the fishing boats were safe and the vessels were en route to Singapore for a damage assessment, the agency added. Indonesia's foreign ministry and fisheries ministry said they were looking into the incident, but did not yet have any information. Indonesia in 2014 launched a tough crackdown on illegal fishing which involves sinking foreign vessels caught fishing without a permit after impounding the boats and removing the crews. The hardline policy has stoked tensions with Indonesia's neighbours and trading partners. Jakarta lodged a furious protest to Beijing on Monday after the Chinese coastguard intervened as Indonesian patrol ships tried to detain a fishing vessel near islands in the South China Sea. While Indonesia does not have territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea, Jakarta is nervous about Beijing's growing assertiveness in the region. Thirty-four people are dead and at least 230 are injured after three explosions ripped through the Belgian capital of Brussels on Tuesday morning. The Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for the attacks, but as European authorities scramble to investigate, Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz is already lobbing accusations at migrants and Muslims and calling on police to patrol Muslim neighborhoods across the United States. Below is post that appeared on Cruz's Facebook page just hours after the Brussels attacks: And here is a full transcript: Today radical Islamic terrorists targeted the men and women of Brussels as they went to work on a spring morning. In a series of co-ordinated attacks they murdered and maimed dozens of innocent commuters at subway stations and travelers at the airport. For the terrorists, the identities of the victims were irrelevant. They weare all part of an intolerable culture that they have vowed to destroy. For years, the west has tried to deny this enemy exists out of a combination of political correctness and fear. We can no longer afford either. Our European allies are now seeing what comes of a toxic mix of migrants who have been infiltrated by terrorists and isolated, radical Muslim neighborhoods. We will do what we can to help them fight this scourge, and redouble our efforts to make sure it does not happen here. We need to immediately halt the flow of refugees from countries with a significant al Qaida or ISIS presence. We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized. We need to secure the southern border to prevent terrorist infiltration. And we need to execute a coherent campaign to utterly destroy ISIS. The days of the United States voluntarily surrendering to the enemy to show how progressive and enlightened we can be are at an end. Our country is at stake. Story continues "Our European allies are now seeing what comes of a toxic mix of migrants who have been infiltrated by terrorists and isolated, radical Muslim neighborhoods," Cruz's post read, in one of its more chilling passages. "We need to immediately halt the flow of refugees from countries with a significant al-Qaida or ISIS presence. We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized." People gather at the Place de la Bourse in Brussels to pay tribute to the victims of Tuesday's terrorist attacks. The Islamophobic sentiment behind Cruz's remarks is pretty in-step with many on America's political right today. Shortly after terrorists killed 14 people at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino, California, in December, Cruz's fellow Republican presidential candidate, Donald Trump, called on an immediate halt to Muslims entering the United States. "Donald J. Trump is calling for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States until our country's representatives can figure out what is going on," a press release from the Trump campaign read at the time, according to CNN. In November, after terrorist attacks killed 130 people in Paris, France, 26 U.S. state governors had come out in opposition to letting Syrian refugees settle in their states. All 26 were Republicans. Donald Trump But Cruz's Islamophobia may be even more integral to his political identity than the more bombastic Trump's. A recent report from the Nation outlines how Cruz has surrounded himself with virulent Islamophobes in high-level foreign policy advisory positions, including Frank Gaffney, who is described as "the most notorious anti-Muslim activist in America today" and openly suspects that President Barack Obama is a Muslim. In November, Cruz called for the implementation of a "religious test" to determine if people entering the U.S. fleeing civil war in Syria and Iraq are Muslim. He has also equated the Justice Department's crackdowns on anti-Muslim violence with suppressing the free speech of people speaking out against the "threat" of Islam, according to Slate. Ted Cruz speaks to the media in Washington, DC, about Tuesday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. As for Cruz's proposal that Americans "empower law enforcement" to patrol Muslim neighborhoods, we've tried that before: Between 2003 and 2014, the New York City Police Department's Demographics Unit was deployed to heavily Muslim neighborhoods in the Tri-State area to surveil and suss out potential upcoming attacks. The unit was disbanded in April 2014 after authorities conceded their efforts did not generate a single piece of actionable intelligence. This is what happens when you demonize an entire religion comprising about 1.6 billion people for the actions of a small handful. Meanwhile, anti-Muslim violence across the U.S. has spiked in recent months. By Jon Herskovitz AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - A Texas former trooper who arrested a black woman motorist later found hanged in her jail cell pleaded not guilty on Tuesday on a misdemeanor charge of lying on the arrest report he made of the July 2015 incident, a court official said. Brian Encinia, who arrested 28-year-old Sandra Bland in Waller County, was fired this month for his conduct that escalated tension in the arrest, which led to her apparent suicide. Protesters gathered at the court about 50 miles northwest of Houston demanding a full accounting from law enforcement of the incident that fueled simmering tensions over suspected racial bias in U.S. policing. Encinia was indicted by the grand jury in Waller County in January. He is suspected of making false statements in the arrest report about the reason he removed Bland from her vehicle. The misdemeanor charge is punishable by up to a year in jail and a $4,000 fine. Bland, an African-American, was found dead in her cell three days after her arrest, with a trash bag around her neck. Bland's family has questioned autopsy reports that say she committed suicide. They have filed a wrongful death suit against the trooper and her jailors. The Texas Department of Public Safety has faulted Encinia for his conduct during the traffic stop. A dashcam video showed him shouting at Bland and failing to answer her when she asked numerous times why she was being arrested. Bland was charged with assaulting an officer, a felony, and critics said her race was an underlying factor in the traffic stop, and the way in which the trooper allowed the confrontation to escalate. Local officials have said she was not mistreated in jail. (Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by Sandra Maler) By Jon Herskovitz AUSTIN, Texas (Reuters) - Texas on Tuesday executed a convicted killer who repeatedly shot a city code officer inspecting piles of garbage at the death row inmate's former home, a department of criminal justice official said. Adam Ward, 33, was pronounced dead at 6:34 p.m. after receiving a lethal injection at the state's death chamber in Huntsville. The execution was the fifth this year in Texas, which has executed more offenders than any state since the U.S. Supreme Court reinstated the death penalty in 1976. Lawyers for Ward had filed an appeal to halt the execution, arguing he suffered from severe mental illness. The U.S. Supreme Court denied the appeal about two hours before the execution. "The crime for which Mr. Ward received the penalty of death was an act inextricable from the delusions and paranoia fed by his disabling bipolar disorder," lawyers for Ward said in a petition filed with the court. In 2005 in Commerce, about 65 miles northeast of Dallas, city code officer Michael Walker was called out to look at a heap of rubbish that Ward and his father hoarded inside and outside their home, the Texas Attorney General's office said. The family also hoarded guns, it said. When Walker approached the property taking pictures of its perimeter, Ward sprayed the city inspector with a hose he had been using to wash his car, and then argued with him, the office said. Ward then went back in the house to get a gun, and shot Walker, who was 46. "After Walker fell, Ward shot him again at close range. Walker sustained nine gunshot wounds in total and died," the office said. Ward confessed to killing Walker shortly thereafter, explaining he believed the city was after his family and was going to tear down their home, it said. (Reporting by Jon Herskovitz; Editing by David Gregorio, Sandra Maler and Bernard Orr) DIYARBAKIR, Turkey (Reuters) - Kurdish militants killed five members of Turkish security forces in three separate bomb attacks on Tuesday near the Syrian and Iranian borders, the army and security sources said, in an intensification of conflict in southeast Turkey. Hundreds of security forces personnel, militants and civilians have been killed since a 2-1/2 year ceasefire between the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the state collapsed in July. One soldier was killed and six more wounded in a bomb attack early on Tuesday in Nusaybin near the Syrian border, the army said. The area has been under a curfew since March 14 when security forces launched operations against militants there. Two police officers and one soldier were killed and nine security force members were wounded in a PKK bomb attack on a military vehicle in the town of Yuksekova, near the Iranian border, security sources said. A third roadside explosive device planted by the militants below up an armored vehicle in the Mazidagi district of Mardin province, also near Syria, killing one police officer and wounding three others, the sources said. Separately, the military said 23 Kurdish militants were killed in clashes in Nusaybin, Yuksekova and Sirnak on Monday. The PKK, designated a terrorist organization by Turkey, the United States and European Union, is carrying out a violent struggle for autonomy in the mainly Kurdish southeast. More than 40,000 people have been killed in the conflict since it began in 1984. (Reporting by Seyhmus Cakan; Writing by Daren Butler; Editing by Andrew Heavens and David Dolan) By Roch Bouka BRAZZAVILLE (Reuters) - Police and soldiers patrolled Congo Republic's capital and cellphone networks remained cut on Tuesday as authorities took action to stem possible unrest before announcing partial results from a presidential election. Veteran President Denis Sassou Nguesso is widely tipped to have won Sunday's vote, whose credibility the country's opposition and the United States have questioned. Hundreds of police guarded major roads and troops were deployed near the presidential palace, the defence ministry and the main traffic circle, witnesses said, as the government extended the telecommunications blackout into a third day. Sassou Nguesso, 72, pushed through constitutional changes at a referendum in October to remove term and age limits that would have prevented him from running again. He has ruled the oil-producing state for 32 of the last 37 years and must win a majority against eight opposition candidates to secure a third consecutive term without a run-off. The electoral commission said on Monday it expected to publish initial results on Tuesday. Votes from remote areas of the country are expected to take at least another day to collate. Many residents of opposition strongholds in southern Brazzaville left the city fearing violent protests and most shops remained closed. Voting was peaceful on Sunday but later police fired tear gas at crowds who had gathered to follow the count in the southern Bacongo neighbourhood. At least 18 people were killed by security forces in protests ahead of October's referendum. The government had announced a shutdown of mobile phone and internet services for Sunday and Monday, which it extended into Tuesday without explanation. The blackout was designed to prevent unofficial results circulating, Evan O'Connell, a consultant to the electoral commission, said by email. "Rumours of landslide victories of one camp or another are already circulating online, mainly driven by the diaspora which are the easiest way to create tensions," he said. The opposition says the vote was marred by fraud and plans to publish its own results, an action the government says would be illegal. The U.S. State Department said it had "received numerous reports of irregularities that have raised concerns about the credibility of the process", urging authorities in a statement to restore communications. Congo's election is also being watched closely across Africa, where several long-ruling presidents are seeking to stay on beyond constitutionally mandated term limits. In neighbouring Democratic Republic of Congo, opponents of President Joseph Kabila accuse him of trying to delay a presidential election scheduled for November. Kabila has declined to comment publicly on his political future. (Additional reporting by Lesley Wroughton in Washington and Aaron Ross in Kinshasa; Writing by Aaron Ross; Editing by Matthew Mpoke Bigg and John Stonestreet) Paris (AFP) - Tintin wept. Within hours of the attacks on Brussels Tuesday, tens of thousands of people were sharing images on social media of the country's most famous creation in tears. With many invoking Herge's cub reporter -- who always got the better of the baddies in the end -- one Twitter user put words into the boy hero's mouth: "Let's be strong, together and humane faced with these crazies. "We are all Belgians," said a user called Ulysse, as Paris and Berlin announced they would light up the Eiffel Tower and the Brandenburg Gate in the colours of the Belgian flag. But the most shared image of all was one showing a figure dressed in French colours putting an arm around a crying Belgian flag. The drawing by the acclaimed cartoonist Plantu of France's Le Monde daily was captioned with the dates March 22 and November 13, the day 130 people died at the hands of jihadist gunmen and bombers in Paris. As speculation turned to whether the same Islamic State cell had planned the attacks on both cities, several other widely-shared cartoons took a more defiant and typically irreverent Belgian tone. One showed a packet of fries, the country's most famous street food, with one of them seemingly giving the terrorists the finger. "There are still 11 million of us," a Brussels lawyer tweeted soon after the attacks. "You are an annoyance but we won't give you the pleasure. Vive la frite!" (Long live the fry!) The Belgian cartoonist Marec continued the theme, with the Statue of Liberty holding a packet of fries as Brussels' landmark "Peeing Boy" statue relieves himself onto the head of an Islamist extremist. - Troubled waters - The analogy proved too tempting for a dozen other artists who had the cheeky little chap created by Hieronymus Bosch the Elder liberally watering the word "terrorism", AK 47 rifles and sticks of dynamite. Another played on the statue's official name of the Manneken Pis to demand "Pis and love". Story continues The French film-maker and graphic novelist Joann Sfar had the boy crying on his pedestal saying, "Is a bit of peace too much to ask?" In another cartoon he posted on Instagram he had a tearful Tintin consoling his sidekick Captain Haddock: "Sometimes I want to leave for the Moon, Captain." The Twitter hashtags #Belgium and #PrayForBelgium were trending across Europe and the United States as thousands offered their sympathy and support, while in France another hashtag appealing for Muslims not to be blamed made the top three. Hundreds of people also offered to shelter people stranded by the transport chaos after the attacks with the hashtags #openhouse in English, French and Flemish. But reaction to the attacks took an uglier turn in Britain where two newspaper columnists Katie Hopkins and Alison Pearson sparked outrage by linking the attacks to the migrant crisis and Britain's possible exit from the EU. "Every one of you who said refugees are welcome... are responsible for Brussels," MailOnline columnist Hopkins tweeted. Daily Telegraph writer Pearson, who has urged Britons to vote to leave in June's referendum, said, "Brussels, de facto capital of the EU, is also the jihadist capital of Europe. And the Remainers dare to say we're safer in the EU!" A pro-government Turkish newspaper, the Star, labelled the country "Terrorist Belgium" on its front page on the morning of the attacks for allowing pro-Kurdish protests to take place in Brussels. It's time for your daily dose of trending tickers, the stocks you're following based on your Yahoo Finance ticker searches. American Airlines (AAL) The airline's shares are under pressure following the deadly terror attacks in Belgium. The company says initial reports indicating that one of the explosions occurred next to the airline's check-in area at the Brussels International Airport are inaccurate. Other travel stocks are taking a hit as well, including Expedia (EXPE), Delta Air Lines (DAL), United Continental (UAL), and TripAdvisor (TRIP). Apple (AAPL) The U.S. Justice Department said that it might not need Apples assistance in opening an iPhone used by a gunman in the San Bernardino attacks last year. The disclosure led a judge to cancel a court hearing that was scheduled to start today. Abercrombie & Fitch (ANF) Jefferies added the stock to its franchise pick list and raised its price target to $50 from $40. Facebook (FB) The social media giant activated its safety check feature after the deadly attacks in Brussels. This marks the first time that Facebook has turned on the alert in Belgium, according to a report by Belgian newspaper Le Soir. Symantec (SYMC) The company announced the next phase of its $5.5 billion capital return program by launching a $1 billion accelerated share buyback. The company expects to buy back a total of $2.3 billion worth of its shares between March 2016 and March 2017. Transocean (RIG) The stock is taking a hit after the companys CEO warned it wont begin charging higher rates for offshore rigs until 2019-2020. Carnival (CCL) The cruse line has won Cuban government approval to begin operating at the islands ports. The agreement grants Carnival access to Cienfuegos, Havana, and Santiago de Cuba starting in May. Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump yesterday in different interviews laid out his vision for a transformation of the role the United States plays in assuring the security of its friends and allies. Under a Trump administration, the US would look less like the worlds policeman, and more like the worlds rent-a-cop. Trump has been making many Americans nervous for months now, with speeches that stir up racial and religious animosities and policy pronouncements in areas like immigration and international trade that dont mesh with either actual or political reality. Related: New Levels of Chutzpah from Trump in DC In recent weeks, the worry about Trump as a potential president has infected US allies. Diplomats contacted by the Washington Post recently confessed deep concerns about how their countrys relationships with the US would survive a Trump presidency. Yesterday, as though determined to bring that simmering concern to a rolling boil, Trump suggested that the United States needs to back off its commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, the mutual defense association that has largely kept the peace in Europe since the end of the Second World War. While he didnt go as far as suggesting that the US actually withdraw from the alliance, he sent mixed signals in interviews with the Washington Post editorial board and then later, in an interview with CNNs Wolf Blitzer about what he thinks the US commitment to the alliance ought to be. NATO was set up at a different time, he told The Post. NATO was set up when we were a richer country. Were not a rich country. Were borrowing, were borrowing all of this money NATO is costing us a fortune and yes, were protecting Europe but were spending a lot of money. Related: Arizona and Utah Provide First Big Test of the Stop Trump Movement Number one, I think the distribution of costs has to be changed. I think NATO as a concept is good, but it is not as good as it was when it first evolved. And I think we bear the, you know, not only financially, we bear the biggest brunt of it. Story continues While the US does shoulder the largest share of the burden for funding NATO, the cost is not as overwhelming as Trump seemed to suggest. The roughly 22 percent of NATO $2.1 billion in operating costs that the U.S. provides came to less than half a billion dollars in 2016. NATOs operating expenses dont tell the whole story or even most of it. The largest expense incurred by member countries is related to the deployment of troops. But even there, the amount the US spends on helping to defend Europe, while large, is only a tiny sliver of the overall defense budget. The Defense Department last month announced that it would ask Congress to quadruple the amount of money it spends on its European Reassurance Initiative, which aims to keep a persistent air, land, and sea presence in the region. The increase is primarily in response to the growing aggressiveness of Russian in the east. Even that fourfold increase would bring spending on the project up to only $3.4 billion in 2017 less than one percent of the total US Defense budget. Related: Tuesday Primaries Could Push Trump to Do the Unthinkable: Ask for Help In both interviews yesterday, Trump repeatedly returned to the idea that the US ought to be financially compensated for providing protection to its allies around the world. I dont think were treated fair, he said in his interview with the Post. You know, South Korea is very rich. Great industrial country. And yet were not reimbursed fairly for what we do. Were constantly, you know, sending our ships, sending our planes, doing our war games, doing other. Were reimbursed a fraction of what this is all costing. Trump continued, If you look at Germany, if you look at Saudi Arabia, if you look at Japan, if you look at South Korea I mean we spend billions of dollars on Saudi Arabia, and they have nothing but money. And I say, why? Now I would go in and I would structure a much different deal with them, and it would be a much better deal. Trumps tendency to see everything in transactional terms appears to extend to the issue of international security. Under a President Trump, it seems, the US would not pursue global stability and international peace as goods in themselves, but rather as things that are optional worth having, but only if the price is right. Top Reads from The Fiscal Times: By Steve Holland and Emily Flitter WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump on Monday vowed an unbreakable U.S. alliance with Israel if he is elected president in November, seeking to clear up confusion over his repeated pledges to remain neutral in any peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. Trump's speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a powerful pro-Israel lobbying group, was part of a daylong effort by the anti-Washington candidate to persuade establishment Republicans to get behind his insurgent candidacy and give up on an effort to deny him the party's presidential nomination. Describing Israel as ready to negotiate a peace agreement, Trump said the Palestinians would have to be willing to accept that Israel will forever exist as a Jewish state and able to stop attacks on Israelis. "The Palestinians must come to the table knowing that the bond between the United States and Israel is unbreakable," the New York billionaire businessman said. Trump has drawn fire for his position on Middle East peace negotiations. He has described himself as extremely pro-Israel, but has said he would take a "neutral" stance in trying to negotiate an elusive peace settlement between Israel and the Palestinians. Trump's critics have said he could harm long-standing U.S. support for Israel. Trump's leading Republican rival, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, reminded the AIPAC gathering of Trump's position. "Let me be very, very clear," Cruz said. "As president I will not be neutral. America will stand unapologetically with the nation of Israel." Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton, a former secretary of state, used her AIPAC appearance to attack Trump. "We need steady hands, not a president who says hes neutral on Monday, pro-Israel on Tuesday and who-knows-what on Wednesday because everythings negotiable," she said. Clinton also took aim at Trump's vow that, if elected, he would deport illegal immigrants and bar Muslims temporarily from entering the United States. "If you see bigotry, oppose it, if you see violence, condemn it, if you see a bully, stand up to him," she said. TRUMP TELLS PEOPLE: "BE SMART" In a rarity, Trump delivered his AIPAC speech with the aid of a TelePrompter, abandoning his typical free-wheeling style. Throughout the day, his public remarks lacked their usual bombast, an obvious effort to appear more presidential. At a news conference, Trump presented himself as Republicans' best chances of capturing the White House in the Nov. 8 election. He took steps to appear as the nominee-in-waiting, releasing the names of some foreign policy advisers and pledging to name seven to 10 people he would pick for the Supreme Court. Trump said establishment Republicans would be making a mistake if they persuade a high-profile party leader to launch a third-party run to deny him the White House. He said it would "almost certainly" mean the Democrats would win the presidency. "If people want to be smart, they should embrace this movement," Trump said at the site of a new hotel he is building in Washington. "If they don't want to be smart, they should do what theyre doing now and the Republicans are going to go down to a massive loss." Trump laid out some foreign policy priorities in a CNN interview, saying the United States is contributing more than it should to the NATO alliance and that he would continue a U.S. thaw toward Cuba begun by President Barack Obama, who is now in Havana. Trump was in Washington for closed-door talks with a variety of Republicans organized by his top backer in the capital, U.S. Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama. It was his most overt bid yet to seek party unity at a time when many establishment Republicans bitterly oppose him. The meeting, held at the offices of the Jones Day law firm, included some Republican lawmakers and a former Republican speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives, Newt Gingrich, and former Congressman Bob Livingston. "We've had almost eight years of Mr. Obama, who's been a disastrous president. We have now an opportunity to change course or have four more years of the same. And I think that Donald Trump is the alternative," Livingston said after the session. Also at the meeting were Representatives Renee Ellmers of North Carolina and Chris Collins of New York, as well as former Senator Jim DeMint, who is head of the Heritage Foundation, an influential conservative Washington think-tank. In a separate session with the Washington Post editorial board, Trump named some members of his foreign policy team. The team included Walid Phares, who Trump called a counter-terrorism expert; George Papadopoulos, an oil and energy consultant; and Joe Schmitz, a former inspector general at the Department of Defense. Trump's rise has alarmed establishment Republicans who have tried in vain to stop him. Their best hope of derailing his insurgent candidacy is to stretch the contest out and deny him the 1,237 delegates needed to formally win the party's presidential nomination. Trump has 678 delegates to 423 for Cruz and 143 for Ohio Governor John Kasich, according to the Associated Press. If Trump does not win the 1,237 delegates, the Republican nominee would be decided at the party's convention in Cleveland in July. (Additional reporting by Susan Heavey, Mohammed Zargham, Susan Cornwell, David Morgan and Emily Stephenson; Editing by Jonathan Oatis and Leslie Adler) By Feroz Sultani KUNDUZ, Afghanistan (Reuters) - The new commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan apologized on Tuesday for the American bombing of a hospital last year that killed 42 people and wounded 37 more. General John W. Nicholson met family members of victims and the staff of the now-closed Medecins Sans Frontieres hospital in Kunduz, which was captured by Taliban insurgents for several days last year, to express his condolences. "As commander, I wanted to come to Kunduz personally and stand before the families, and people of Kunduz, to deeply apologize for the events" that led to the bombing, Nicholson said. "I grieve with you for your loss and suffering; and humbly and respectfully ask for your forgiveness," added Nicholson. A U.S. investigation found that the Oct. 3 air strike was a "tragic and avoidable" incident, primarily caused by human error. The U.S. military has disciplined more than a dozen personnel, including officers following the strike. MSF, known as Doctors Without Borders in English, has in the past publicly cast doubt on the idea that the strike could have been a mistake. The brief capture of the Kunduz provincial capital was arguably the biggest victory for the Taliban militants in the 15-year war since they were toppled by U.S.-led forces in late 2001. Afghan security forces, who suffered a record number of losses last year, have been struggling to contain Taliban militants who are fighting to topple the government of President Ashraf Ghani. Violence is at its worst since the departure of most foreign combat troops from Afghanistan in 2014 as the country is bracing for the start of the spring fighting season. (Writing by Hamid Shalizi; Editing by Alison Williams) By Colleen Jenkins (Reuters) - Three Mormon missionaries from Utah and a U.S. Air Force member and his family were among an unknown number of Americans hurt on Tuesday in the deadly bomb attacks in Brussels, government and church officials said. No Americans are known to be among the at least 30 people killed in the blasts at the airport and on a subway train in the Belgian capital, the U.S. State Department said. The blasts occurred Tuesday morning in Brussels, which is also the headquarters of the European Union. The attack on the subway train occurred at a station close to EU institutions. "We know that a number of U.S. citizens were injured in the attack, but we do not have an accurate figure right now," State Department spokesman John Kirby told a briefing. The American missionaries and service member were all injured in the attack in the departure hall of Zaventem airport, according to the military and church officials. The U.S. Air Force said the airman was from Joint Force Command Brunssum in the Netherlands. He was not identified by name, and officials provided no details on his condition or that of his injured family members. "We are saddened by today's attacks and extend our sincere condolences to the victims and families of those impacted," Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James said in a statement. The three missionaries were seriously injured and have been hospitalized, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said in a statement. The church identified them as Richard Norby, 66, Joseph Empey, 20, and Mason Wells, 19. They are based at the church's mission in Paris. Empey's parents said he had been treated for burns to his hands, face and head, and had undergone surgery for shrapnel injuries to his legs. "We have been in touch with him and he is grateful and in good spirits," Court and Amber Empey said in a statement. A fourth missionary, Sister Fanny Rachel Clain, 20, of Montelimar, France, who was with the American missionaries, also was hospitalized with minor injuries. Although Clain was with the three other missionaries who were injured, she had left them and passed through airport security when the explosion occurred, the church said. Three students from Quinnipiac University in Connecticut were in the Brussels airport at the time of the attack but are safe, the school said on Facebook. (Additional reporting by David Alexander, Idrees Ali and Phil Stewart; Editing by Chizu Nomiyama, James Dalgleish and Leslie Adler) By John Irish and Suleiman Al-Khalidi GENEVA (Reuters) - The U.N. special envoy on Syria said he hoped a meeting between the U.S. and Russian foreign ministers on Wednesday would give impetus to peace talks where the divisive issue of a political transition is stalling progress. Syria's government delegation has rejected any discussion of the future of President Bashar al-Assad, who opposition leaders say must go as part of any transition. Damascus has repeated its long-held view that "counter-terrorism" - its reference to rebel foes of Assad - should be the main focus of the process. "We are looking with great interest, expectation, hope that the talks in Moscow will be productive," U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura said after meeting the opposition High Negotiations Committee (HNC) in Geneva. "Honestly not everything will be solved in one day - but (it would be) productive ... to resume the talks with a much more in-depth address on the issue of political transition," he said ahead of the planned meeting in Moscow between U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov. De Mistura, who tried to keep an air of optimism before the talks adjourn on Thursday, describes Syria's political transition as "the mother of all issues." Emboldened by the Russian and U.S. muscle that pushed the warring parties to the negotiating table, he has refused to drop the subject. After five years of conflict that has killed over 250,000 and caused the world's worst refugee crisis, Washington and Moscow engineered a deal three weeks ago for a cessation of hostilities and crucial humanitarian aid to besieged regions. But the deal, not signed by any of the warring parties, remains fragile and diplomats are concerned that, after more than a week of talks, it is at risk of collapsing unless headway on the matter of political transition is made soon. "We always needed some help from Mr Kerry and Mr Lavrov because they proved in the past and I hope they will prove in the future that when they do have a common understanding, it helps enormously the process," de Mistura said. Russia, along with Iran, have been Assad's major allies in the conflict, while the United States and Gulf Arab powers have backed rebel forces to varying degrees. On Monday, the head of Syria's government delegation rejected any talk on the fate of Assad, reiterated that the Geneva talks must concentrate on counter-terrorism. Bashar Ja'afari accused de Mistura, a veteran Swedish-Italian diplomat, of "filibustering" and "wasting time" after Damascus received no responses to proposals made a week ago. Arguments over Assad's fate were a major factor in the failure of U.N. efforts in 2012 and 2014 to end the civil war. BARREL BOMBS, AID DELIVERIES Asaad al-Zoubi, head of the main opposition council's delegation, said on Tuesday it was "obvious that are no points of convergence" with the Syrian government. "There is a risk and I dont know where the breaking point is that if these talks go on without leading anywhere without coming close to the essential issue of transition, that surely there is a breaking point where the opposition will feel what is the use?" a Western diplomat told Reuters in Geneva. For the first time during the latest round of talks, the opposition accused the Syrian government of strengthening existing sieges, initiating new ones and stepping up a campaign of barrel-bombing across the country. "The government continues to flout international resolutions," Zoubi said. "Instead of lifting the sieges, the regime is tightening sieges on cities and ... the regime is renewing again its barrel-bombing of Syrian towns." A diplomatic source close to the talks said there were reports of barrel bomb attacks in the rebel-held eastern Damascus suburb of Ghouta. Rami Abdulrahman, director of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights which monitors the war through a network of contacts on the ground, said fighting had resurged in the Ghouta area in recent days. Russia's Defence Ministry said on Tuesday it had registered six ceasefire violations over the past 24 hours in other areas of Syria. The fragile cessation of hostilities agreement has, however, reduced violence in western Syria, allowing more aid to be delivered. A group of Syrian villages north of Homs under siege by government forces since 2012 received on Tuesday the first delivery since October last year, according to the Swiss-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). A convoy of 27 trucks containing medical, food, water treatment and other aid was sent to al-Houla, a rural district containing five villages and over 70,000 people, an ICRC spokesman said. In coming weeks, the ICRC plans to enter other areas in northern rural Homs such as Rastan, Talbiseh, Ghanto, Termalie and Dar Kbiereh, where an estimated 270,000 people live. (Additional reporting by Stephanie Nebehay and Lisa Barrington in Beirut; Editing by Mark Heinrich) The United States is ramping up security efforts after explosions killed at least 30 people and injured more than 100 in Belgium on Tuesday. Americans looked on in horror as footage of devastation from a Brussels metro station and nearby airport crossed the Atlantic reawakening fears of potential terrorist strikes domestically. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the two attacks, stating that IS extremists opened fire in the Brussels airport then detonated explosive belts, while a separate fighter detonated an explosive belt in the citys Maalbeek metro station. Police departments in major U.S. cities are increasing their presence at critical or highly trafficked locations, largely as a precaution, but also to assure the public of their vigilance and dedication to protecting unarmed civilians. New York City Police Department The New York City Police Department (NYPD) released a statement saying it is monitoring the unfolding events in Belgium closely and has been in touch with the Federal Bureau of Investigation as well as international partners. Additional counterterrorism teams from Counterterrorism Response Command, the Strategic Response Group and Hercules Teams have been deployed to crowded areas and transit locations as a precautionary measure and to reassure the public that NYPD is following the situation in Europe, according to the statement. Stephen P. Davis, NYPDs deputy commissioner of public information, said in the statement that there is no indication that the attack has any connection to New York. We will continue to follow the situation in Belgium closely with the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the FBI and adjust the departments deployments accordingly, he said. Davis noted that that latest terrorist attack comes at a time when the U.S. government is considering slashing counter-terrorism funding in urban areas like New York which has been the countrys top target for terrorists since 9/11. Story continues These attacks come at a time when the federal government has proposed cutting terrorism funding to New York City by roughly 90 million dollars, Davis said. Any cut in terrorism funding to New Yorkto what is widely recognized as the nations top terror targetwould be irresponsible. New York Mayor Bill DeBlasio met with representatives from the NYPD and the FBIs New York City field office before addressing his constituents Tuesday on counterterrorism initiatives. He asked New Yorkers to pray for the victims of the attacks and said they could expect to see extraordinary NYPD presence out over the coming days. He said the roughly 35,000 members of the NYPD will act as one Tuesday is ensure that everyone in the city can go about their business safely. Terrorists want to undermine our democracy. They want to undermine our values. They want to see us in panic and we refuse to be afraid. We refuse to change who we are, DeBlasio said during a midday news conference. We are going to respond to their efforts to create chaos by showing them order, by showing our society functioning, our city functioning. A police officer speaks to a traveller as he makes a patrol with his dog at Union Station in Washington March 22, 2016. (Joshua Roberts/Reuters) Los Angeles Police Department Similarly, the Los Angeles Police Department has not identified any connection between the tragedy in Belgium and its city, but deployed additional resources as a precaution to protect critical locations. At this time there has been no nexus to Los Angeles that has been identified from the attacks in Brussels. And out of an abundance of caution, resources are being deployed to critical infrastructures, LAPD Officer Liliana Preciado said to Yahoo News. Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia Cathy L. Lanier, the chief of the Metropolitan Police Department of the District of Columbia (MPDC), is asking residents to stay vigilant and aware of their surroundings. The department says it is monitoring intelligence reports and working with its federal partners to keep the public safe. Being the law enforcement agency that provides public safety to our Nations Capital the Metropolitan Police Department remains at a heightened state of alert at all times, Lanier said in an email to Yahoo News. We are aware of the tragic events in Brussels and are actively coordinating the appropriate resources with local and federal law enforcement and homeland security agencies to maintain the publics safety in the District. Amtrak Amtrak released a statement assuring that public that it will maintain a strong security posture to keep its passengers and employees safe. Partnering with local, state and federal law enforcement, robust security measures are in place at stations, on trains and along the tracks, it reads in part. Amtrak Police are working with state, local and federal law enforcement partners to gather and share intelligence. Extra officers have been deployed. New York City Police Department Transit officers do a random bag check at the subway station under Grand Central Terminal, in New York, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Authorities are increasing security throughout New York City following explosions at the airport and subway system in the Belgian capital of Brussels. (Richard Drew/ AP ) U.S. Department of Homeland Security The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is closely following the situation in Brussels and is in contact with its counterparts in the region. DHS will not hesitate to adjust our security posture, as appropriate, to protect the American people, Marsha Catron, a spokesperson for DHS, said to Yahoo News via email. DHS routinely shares information with state, local, federal and international law enforcement, including our European partners, intelligence and homeland security partners, and continually evaluates the level of protection we provide at federal facilities. The federal department, which was created in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks, encourages members of the public to report any suspicious activities in their communities to appropriate law enforcement. In other words, as the slogan says, If You See Something, Say Something. U.S. Department of State Secretary of State John Kerry said that the attacks in Brussels were an attack against the Belgian people and the very heart of Europe. Our thoughts are with all those in Brussels, including the injured and the loved ones of those who were killed, and with the first responders and security personnel who are working tirelessly to keep Brussels safe, Kerry said in a statement Tuesday. The U.S. Embassy in Brussels is making every effort to account for the welfare of American citizens in the city, and in the days ahead we stand ready to provide whatever support the Belgian Government may require. Earlier in the day, Kerry spoke to Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders on the phone to reaffirm the United States will stand firmly with Belgium and all of Europe in the face of this violence. Attacks like these, Kerry said, only deepen our shared resolve to defeat terrorism around the world. Related video: By Ian Simpson WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Baltimore community organizer Perry Hopkins, 55, is looking forward to stepping into a voting booth for the first time in his life this election season. Hopkins lost his never-exercised right to vote when he was convicted for drug and other offenses. He gained it back last month when Maryland joined a growing list of U.S. states making it easier for ex-convicts to vote. "To have the right to vote now is empowering. I'm stoked," said Hopkins, who spent a total of 19 years in prison for non-violent crimes, and was one of 40,000 in the state to regain his right to vote from a legislative action. "I plan to vote in every election possible. I'm voting for mayor, I'm voting for city councilman in my district, and, yes, I'm voting for president," said Hopkins. He hopes to vote for former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the front-runner in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination, on Nov. 8. Hopkins is among some 800,000 Americans who have regained the right to vote in the last two decades as about two dozen states have eased restrictions on felons casting ballots, according to the Sentencing Project, a prison reform advocacy group. The restoration of voting rights has drawn support from both Democrats and Republicans as a way to improve prisoners' reintegration into society. "The trend is to reconsidering policies and scaling back (restrictions). There are setbacks on the way, but the trend is in that direction," said Mark Mauer, the Sentencing Project's executive director. Advocates contend it is also a way of promoting racial justice, as African-Americans are convicted of crimes and sent to prison at about twice the rate of the overall U.S. population. Of the 5.8 million Americans banned from voting, 2.2 million are African-American, according to the group. In three states - Virginia, Florida and Kentucky - more than a fifth of black residents outside of prison are barred from casting a ballot. About 13 percent of the U.S. population is African-American. Story continues STATES' ACTION Wyoming's Republican-controlled legislature last year restored voting rights to felons convicted of non-violent crimes. A lawsuit before the Iowa Supreme Court aims to strike down the state's voting restriction. Iowa, along with Kentucky and Florida, have the country's harshest rules, prohibiting all ex-felons from voting unless they secure an exemption from the governor. In Kentucky, outgoing Democratic Governor Steve Beshear signed an executive order in November granting the vote to non-violent offenders who had finished their sentences, including parole. His successor, Republican Matt Bevin, rolled back the order, saying Beshear had acted without approval of the legislature. At least 60,000 California inmates had voting rights extended to them in August when state officials dropped their challenge to a court ruling that allowed newly released felons to cast ballots. "We're seeing more of these proposals. I do think that change takes time, it's an issue that we've seen people come around to," said Tomas Lopez, a counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice in New York, who tracks felon disenfranchisement. While the initiatives have seen bipartisan support in some states, that breaks down on the presidential campaign trail. Among Democrats, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont has a plank in his platform calling for the restoration of voting rights to ex-inmates. Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has called on the campaign trail for felons to get rights back. None of the three Republican candidates - real estate magnate Donald Trump, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Ohio Governor John Kasich - mention felons' voting rights in their platforms. PATCHWORK OF LAWS The United States has a patchwork of state laws governing felons' voting rights, many dating from the 19th century. They range from two states - Maine and Vermont - that allow prison inmates to vote, to the lifetime bans. Re-enfranchising felons has drawn uncommon political bedfellows, with the liberal American Civil Liberties Union aligned with Mark Holden, the general counsel for Koch Industries, the conglomerate controlled by conservative political donors Charles and David Koch. Efforts are also under way in Congress, often the scene of bitter partisan divide, to address the issue. Senator Rand Paul, a Kentucky Republican, has sponsored a bill that would restore voting rights in federal elections to ex-felons without violent offenses. Democrat Harry Reid of Nevada, the Senate minority leader, is co-sponsor. The American Correctional Association, the Police Executive Research Forum and the American Probation and Parole Association also have backed the trend as potentially helping to reduce crime. A 2011 study by the Florida parole board showed that ex-offenders who were able to vote were one-third as likely to end up back in prison. "To continue to place a scarlet letter on an individual as if they had a life sentence is just wrong," said Veronica Cunningham, the parole association's executive director. (This version of the story corrects the last name of counsel to Lopez instead of Perez in paragraph 15) (Reporting by Ian Simpson; Editing by Scott Malone and Frances Kerry) By Lawrence Hurley WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The Supreme Court on Tuesday sided with an Alaska moose hunter who contended the federal government overstepped its authority in banning hovercraft on National Park Service land in the northernmost U.S. state. The court, in a unanimous decision written by Chief Justice John Roberts, handed a narrow victory to John Sturgeon in his legal challenge to the U.S. government's power to prevent him from riding his hovercraft on a river through a federal preserve to reach remote moose-hunting grounds. People in some parts of the country, especially western states, have complained about too much federal control of public lands. The cause was embraced by protesters who in January took over buildings at an Oregon federal wildlife refuge in a six-week armed standoff with law enforcement authorities. The last protesters surrendered on Feb. 11. The Supreme Court threw out a lower court ruling favoring government, but did not decide the bigger question of whether the government can regulate hovercraft use on a waterway within park service property in Alaska. The answer to that question could have had implications for other park service regulations, including on oil and gas extraction. Roberts wrote that "vital issues of state sovereignty on the one hand, and federal authority, on the other" should first be addressed by the lower courts. Sturgeon was traveling on the Nation River in 2007 in the Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve when park service rangers detained him, saying he could not use his hovercraft. He argued the regulation banning hovercraft in federal parks and preserves has no force in Alaska because the river is owned by the state, which allows hovercraft. The state of Alaska supported Sturgeon, noting that Congress in 1980 specifically limited park service jurisdiction over land within a conservation area that is not federally owned. The nationwide rule banning hovercraft, which travel on a cushion of air, dates to 1996. Story continues The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled for the federal government in 2014. In his opinion reversing that decision, Roberts said federal law governing park service authority contains several Alaska-specific provisions, reflecting "the simple truth that Alaska is often the exception, not the rule." Roberts recalled that in 1867 Secretary of State William Seward negotiated to buy Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million, observing that despite the bargain price of two cents an acre the purchase was mocked as Sewards Folly. That changed as Alaskas natural resources, from gold and oil, emerged. Alaska became a state in 1958. The case is Sturgeon v. Frost, U.S. Supreme Court, No. 14-1209. (Reporting by Lawrence Hurley; Editing by Will Dunham) London (AFP) - Britain's finance minister came out fighting Tuesday after welfare cuts in last week's budget prompted the resignation of a top minister and unleashed vicious fighting in the Conservative Party before June's EU referendum. A combative George Osborne refused to apologise as he addressed the House of Commons for the first time since Iain Duncan Smith, the former work and pensions secretary, quit on Friday, leading to the ruling party's worst bout of feuding for years. While Duncan Smith resigned in protest at cuts to welfare payments to disabled people, the subsequent rows have highlighted the bitter atmosphere in Prime Minister David Cameron's party, which was already struggling for unity ahead of the June 23 referendum. Osborne is Cameron's closest ally and his hopes of succeeding him as leader have been badly damaged by Duncan Smith's resignation. He was forced to drop a planned A4.4 billion (5.5 billion euros, $6.2 billion) in cuts to a disability allowance as Duncan Smith quit two days after the budget. Following the U-turn, lawmakers in the lower house of parliament approved the budget by 310 votes to 275, clearing the bill over its first hurdle. But the vote followed days of rancorous debate. Welfare cuts have been a key plank of Osborne's efforts to reduce Britain's deficit through austerity measures over the last six years and it was not immediately clear how the gap in the figures would be plugged. Facing roars of criticism from opposition MPs and support from his own side as he addressed a crowded parliamentary chamber on Tuesday, Osborne confirmed there were no plans to cut welfare further in the current parliament. But in a robust defence of his position, he added: "It is a classic socialist illusion to think you can solve all of society's problems with taxes on the very richest." His address drew a furious response from John McDonnell, finance spokesman for the left-wing Labour party, who called it the "grubby, incompetent manipulation of a political chancer" and urged Osborne to quit. Story continues The resignation of Duncan Smith, who is campaigning against Cameron for Britain to leave the EU, led to public arguments between ministers in Cameron's government on Saturday and Sunday. Some charged that he had quit because he wanted to undermine the prime minister over Europe. Others leapt to his defence, accusing Cameron and Osborne of a high-handed approach to government and not consulting ministers and eurosceptics in their party on policy decisions. By Natalia Zinets and Pavel Polityuk KIEV (Reuters) - Ukrainian Finance Minister Natalia Yaresko threw her hat into the ring on Tuesday to head a technocrat government of people uncompromised by "a political past" after weeks of speculation over whether she would try to replace Arseny Yatseniuk. Yatseniuk's unpopular government has been hanging by a thread since three smaller parties quit his coalition and President Petro Poroshenko pushed for the premier to resign. Yaresko has been touted as a possible replacement, but the chances of that happening had appeared to fade last week after cross-party talks failed to achieve a breakthrough on how they would form a new government. Ukraine needs a stable government to conclude negotiations with the International Monetary Fund for new aid worth $1.7 billion to keep its war-torn economy afloat and pass economic and judicial reforms demanded by its Western backers. U.S.-born and a former U.S. State Department official and fund manager, Yaresko, 50, received Ukrainian citizenship when she took up the finance ministry job in Dec. 2014. She speaks fluent Ukrainian, albeit with an old-fashioned accent common to descendants of Ukrainian immigrants in North America. Though she might be a popular choice with Ukraine's Western allies, some believe she may lack the political muscle to push through reforms any faster than Yatseniuk could. Moreover, a source in Poroshenko's party told Reuters that it was more likely that the ruling coalition would push for parliament speaker Volodymyr Groysman, an ally of Poroshenko, to replace Yatseniuk. "In my opinion, only a technocratic government can deal with the problems in this of kind of political situation," Yaresko wrote in a Facebook post. She added that her team would have people "who do not have a political past, are not subject to any of the oligarchs, or "friends" of politicians, and have no future political ambitions." "I'm ready to assemble a team that is able right now to work in the interest of the whole country and all its citizens, and not some political or business groups." Yatseniuk's popularity has plummeted since coming to power in 2014 after the Maidan street protests ousted a pro-Kremlin president. This reflects voters' growing disillusion with the pace of change and what a top U.S. diplomat recently called "the unholy alliance of dirty money and dirty politics" still controlling the country. Although it jointly governs Ukraine in coalition with Yatseniuk's People's Front, Poroshenko's party tried to topple the government in a no-confidence vote in February. When that failed, it kept searching for possible replacements to Yatseniuk. "Everything changes every minute and the decision could be taken in the last moment," said the source in Poroshenko's party. "I fear that it could be too late," the source added, speaking about Yaresko's chances of becoming premier. A 38-year-old former mayor, Groysman was Poroshenko's favored candidate for prime minister after the 2014 parliamentary elections, but the appointment was scuppered by Yatseniuk party's overall win in the polls. A second source in Poroshenko's party told Reuters that the faction was split between those who supported Groysman and those who supported Yaresko. A new round of talks between the parties in the coalition could happen as early as Wednesday, a third source said. (Writing by Matthias Williams; Editing by Richard Balmforth) United Nations (United States) (AFP) - UN chief Ban Ki-moon condemned Tuesday's deadly attacks in Brussels, calling them "despicable" and demanding that those responsible face justice. Around 35 people died and more than 200 were injured when a series of blasts ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train during the morning rush hour in the latest attacks to rock Europe. "The despicable attacks today struck at the heart of Belgium and the center of the European Union," said a statement from Ban's office. "The secretary-general hopes those responsible will be swiftly brought to justice." Ban extended his "heartfelt condolences" to those affected and expressed his solidarity with the Belgian people and government. The bloodshed came just four days after the dramatic arrest in Brussels of Salah Abdeslam -- the prime suspect in the Paris terror attacks claimed by the Islamic State group -- after four months on the run. Ban "is confident that Belgium's and Europe's commitment to human rights, democracy and peaceful coexistence will continue to be the true and lasting response to the hatred and violence of which they became a victim today," the UN statement said. The UN Security Council also condemned the attacks. The 15 members of the panel "expressed their solidarity to Belgium in their fight against terrorism and stressed the need to intensify regional and international efforts to overcome terrorism and violent extremism, which may be conducive to terrorism," a statement said. Washington (AFP) - The United States on Tuesday slammed what it called Moscow's "blatant disregard for the principles of justice" after a court sentenced a female Ukrainian military pilot to 22 years in prison over the killing of two journalists. "We reiterate our call on Russia to immediately release Nadiya Savchenko and other unlawfully detained persons," State Department spokesman John Kirby said, as Secretary of State John Kerry prepared to head to Moscow for talks with Russian President Vladmir Putin on Syria and Ukraine. "Nadiya Savchenko deserves to go home to her family and friends and to join her colleagues in the Rada in building a better future for their country." Savchenko, 34, was found guilty of involvement in the fatal 2014 shelling of the Russian state television reporters in east Ukraine -- a widely-expected verdict. Savchenko -- who has become a national hero in her homeland and was elected to parliament in absentia -- reacted to the verdict by shouting in Ukrainian and singing the Ukrainian national anthem. "For nearly two years, Russia has unjustly detained Savchenko on charges that have no basis in fact and has denied her the basic protections of the rule of law," Kirby said. "She has reportedly endured interrogation, solitary confinement, and forced 'psychiatric evaluation'," he added. "The conviction and sentencing of Nadiya Savchenko to 22 years imprisonment show a blatant disregard for the principles of justice and contravene Russias commitments under the Minsk agreements." Kerry is due at the Kremlin on Thursday for talks with Putin on how to build momentum for peace in Syria after a partial withdrawal of Russian forces. The crisis in Ukraine was also expected to figure on the agenda. Embattled German auto maker Volkswagen last month launched a recall of a number of its new Passat cars in Europe owing to a potential electrical fault, a spokesman told AFP on Tuesday. The recall affected the B8 Passat mode, the spokesman said, without specifying the number of vehicles involved. "We have no knowledge of any accidents" related to the fault, he added, insisting that the recall was only small-scale. The B8 went on sale in Europe at the end of 2014. In Sweden, VW has written to "around 13,700 Passat owners ... asking them to contact a dealer to arrange a check-up," the carmaker's spokesman in the region told AFP. The fault could affect the engine, braking assistance and steering, but the vehicle "can still brake and turn," he explained. VW is currently engulfed in a scandal of global proportions after it was forced to admit it had installed emissions-cheating software in around 11 million diesel engines. By Oksana Kobzeva and Olga Popova MOSCOW (Reuters) - Western investments banks with Russian operations are reluctant to advise Moscow on planned privatizations, three Western banking sources told Reuters, citing fears about violating sanctions imposed on Russia over the Ukraine conflict. The caution illustrates the growing wariness of Western banks about getting involved in Russian finance deals even if they are not in areas directly affected by sanctions. Last week a European Union official warned banks considering buying Russian government debt that they should ensure any investment is not a way of circumventing sanctions on Russian state-owned enterprises. The Russian Economy Ministry last week sent requests for proposals (RFPs) to banks on advisory roles for the sales of stakes of 50.08 percent in oil firm Bashneft , 10.9 percent in diamond miner Alrosa and 10.9 percent in lender VTB . Banks were told to respond by the close of business on Monday, March 21. "We will not take part. We at first wanted to but talked to other European and U.S. banks and saw that none of them is going to," said a banker with a U.S. bank which received an RFP, speaking on condition that the name of his company was not disclosed. If Western banks steer clear of the deals it is likely to make it harder for Russia to sell the assets at an attractive price as it will dim the interest of foreign investors who usually follow international banks' advice. An alternative option would be to sell all or some of the stakes to a strategic investor. Based on current market capitalizations, the stakes could fetch around 430 billion rubles ($6.3 billion), Reuters calculations show. A number of Russian businessmen, including former TNK-BP co-owner Viktor Vekselberg and the head of oil firm Lukoil Vagit Alekperov, have expressed interest in buying some of the assets. However analysts warn that selling to private Russian investors would risk unflattering comparisons with the wave of privatizations in the 1990s, which led to the rise of the country's oligarchs and were blamed for widening the gap between rich and poor. Story continues "That could be a disincentive for privatization," said Charles Robertson, global chief economist at Renaissance Capital. RenCap was among the banks which received RFPs. TEN RESPONSES RECEIVED Goldman Sachs , JP Morgan , Credit Suisse , Deutsche Bank , Morgan Stanley , Barclays , Royal Bank of Scotland , BNP Paribas , UBS , Citi , UniCredit , Societe Generale , Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Raiffeisen were among the Western banks which received RFPs. Russian Deputy Economy Minister Nikolai Podguzov was quoted by Russian news agencies on Tuesday saying that a total of 10 banks have returned with answers to the ministry, including Western ones. He declined to name the banks or give details of their responses. Russian banks which were invited to submit proposals included the following lenders or their units: Sberbank , VTB , VEB, Gazprombank, Renaissance Capital, Alfa Bank, MDM Bank and The Auction House of the Russian Federation. Two Western banking sources told Reuters that Western banks see the privatizations carrying the same risks as helping to arrange the Russian sovereign Eurobond issue, since the deals could be seen by their governments as helping the Kremlin raise funds amid sanctions. The U.S. government has warned some banks that buying Russian debt would undermine international sanctions imposed on Moscow for its role in Ukraine, The Wall Street Journal reported last month. "Given the White House's position, banks will be afraid that it will be the same as with Eurobonds - it may be considered as helping the Russian government to raise money," said another executive with a U.S. bank. Western investment banks have been closing or scaling back their operations as the Russian economy shrank under pressure from falling commodity prices and sanctions. However, companies like financial advisory group Rothschild have been making cash from debt restructuring in Russia and some former Soviet countries. Oksana Tarasenko, a department head at the Economy Ministry, told Reuters request that Russian and foreign banks had submitted answers to the ministry. "As the next stage assumes a competitive comparison of the proposals, it is not expedient to name the banks," she said. The Russian Finance Ministry is betting on the privatizations to balance its budget and not exceed a deficit of 3 percent of gross domestic product in 2016. (Additional reporting by Darya Korsunskaya and Denis Dyomkin in Moscow, Sujata Rao in London; Writing by Katya Golubkova; Editing by Christian Lowe and Keith Weir) Havana (AFP) - The White House Monday all but ruled out a meeting between Barack Obama and veteran Cuban leader Fidel Castro during the US president's trip to Cuba. Senior Obama foreign policy aide Ben Rhodes said that neither the administration nor the Cuba authorities had asked for a meeting between Obama and the 89-year-old. "On this trip, we are not planning to meet with Fidel Castro," he said. "We have not requested such a meeting The Cubans have not requested such a meeting of us." Castro is rarely seen in public these days and when photographed in state-run media he has appeared in a wheel chair. Castro met Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro who visited the island late last week. Obama earlier suggested in a television interview with ABC that he may be open to a meeting. "If his health was good enough that I could meet with him, I'd be happy to meet with him. Just as a symbol of the end of, or the closing of this Cold War chapter in our mutual histories. It's not clear to me what the state of his health is." Paris (AFP) - French President Francois Hollande said Tuesday's attacks in Brussels that killed at least 26 people struck at "the whole of Europe". "Through the attacks in Brussels, the whole of Europe has been hit," Hollande said in a statement, urging the continent to take "vital steps in the face of the seriousness of the threat". French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said: "We are at war. Over the past few months in Europe, we have endured several acts of war." France, which neighbours Belgium to the south, was hit by two major terror attacks in 2015 and several of the jihadists involved came from Brussels. The November 13 attacks in Paris claimed 130 lives, 10 months after attacks on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket left 17 dead. The last surviving jihadist of a 10-man team who carried out the November attack, Salah Abdeslam, was arrested in Belgium on Friday, where the attackers had rear bases and what appears to be an extensive network of support. Speaking on Sunday, Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said Abdeslam told investigators "he was ready to restart something in Brussels". Following Tuesday's bloodshed in Brussels, Hollande spoke with Belgium's Prime Minister Charles Michel, and the two exchanged "information, intelligence" and discussed "questions of police and security cooperation," his office said. French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve earlier announced that Paris was deploying 1,600 additional police to border crossings and air, sea and rail infrastructure after the Brussels attacks. Germany and the Netherlands also announced stepped up security measures at borders, airports and rail stations. Bagatelle man shot by cops According to reports, at about 9.40 pm, Dacion Warner was walking along Bagatelle Road, Diego Martin when he was observed acting in a suspicious manner by officers of the Western Division. Warner allegedly pulled out a revolver with six rounds of ammunition and reportedly pointed it at the officers who returned fire striking him in the left hip. He was taken to the Port-of- Spain General Hospital and placed under police guard at Ward 21. Investigations are continuing. Fines for tendering false ticket Police Constable Sheraz Mohammed of the Marabella Police Station conducted investigations and both were arrested. Attorney Cedric Neptune made a stirring plea in mitigation on their behalf. Magistrate Dubay ordered Simon to pay a fine of $4,000 and compensation to Carrot Shed of $1,590. Spalding was fined $2,000 and allowed 30 days to pay it. Victim identified There was no move by the Belmont Police Station to inform the family that this man had no identification on him, said Junior Lakhansingh, the victims uncle. He was last seen alive on the Brian Lara Promenade on February 20, eating some chicken and chips. On February 21, he was shot dead along Piccadilly Road. 2 men executed Reports are that at about 4.45 pm yesterday, Charles and De Four were called out to Guaratta Hill for a lime by some of their associates. Minutes later, rapid gunfire filled the air as a group of men were seen running toward a white Nissan Tiida car parked nearby. The men got into the car which sped off. When residents investigated further, they discovered Charles and De Fours bodies on the ground. Police and emergency services were contacted and officers of the Maracas/St Joseph police station responded. Less than an hour later, a man believed to be the driver of the getaway car was arrested. Up to press time, he remained in custody being interrogated by officers. Police sources said that based on information received, arrest warrants are being prepared for other suspects. Officers said that arrests are imminent. The mother of one of the murdered men, arrived on the scene and had to be restrained as she become extremely emotional. Oh god! she cried out. Is only one son I have. That is my heart. He is my only child and they come for him today! Oh god this hurting me! My belly hurting! Police officers told reporters that the two victims were not known to them, but they are working on the theory that they may have been considered as informers and as such, were marked for death. Charles and De Four are the second and third persons to be murdered in Maracas/St Joseph in less than three days. Early on Saturday morning, 38-year-old Sherwin Wallace was shot dead on Maracas Royal Road, when gunmen intercepted his vehicle and riddled it with bullets. Police last night said they did not know if the murder of Wallace was linked to the double-murder yesterday, but at this stage in their investigations, they are not ruling any theory ou Legal wrangle in Dana murder inquiry It is the contention of the Prosecution that the charges of being a gang member should proceed summarily in accordance with Section 5 (1) of the Anti Gang Act of 2011 and another magistrate take over those proceedings. Assistant Director of Public Prosecutions George Busby has submitted that regardless of whether the charges were laid, as they were, by way of Information (which would make them indictable proceedings for a magistrate to proceed by way of inquiry), or by way of complaint for another magistrate to hear the matters summarily, the law provided that there shall be no objection taken or allowed as to any alleged defect in terms of the information laid to charge the accused persons. But Busby came to loggerheads with presiding magistrate Indrani Cedeno who called on the Prosecution to acknowledge if there was a defect, saying that it was the practice that when this occurs the Prosecution withdraws the charges, have them re-laid properly and then the matter proceeds summarily as intended. You cannot ignore that I have an Information here...The matter was laid in accordance with the Indictable Offences Act. The Court has to proceed with indictable offences under the Preliminary Inquiry Act, the magistrate noted. However, Busby contended there was no need for the Prosecution to withdraw the Information, stressing that the law was clear that the gang related charges should proceed summarily once none of the accused persons have convictions against them. He insisted that the Prosecution was ready to proceed with the indictable offences and maintained his position that the Court could not hear the summary matters. The Prosecution acknowledged it was a peculiar issue since it is the first time it has arisen because of the provisions of the Anti Gang Act. When the matter resumes on April 6, the defence will be given an opportunity to respond to Busbys submissions. Ramesh questions legality of JLSC He says his concerns are based on the provisions of Section 110 of the Constitution of this country. In the three-page letter dated March 21, 2016, Senior Counsel Maharaj repeatedly questioned if the JLSC is in accordance with the provisions of Section 110(2) and (3) of the Constitution. Those sub-sections specifically provide for the appointed members of the JLSC, they state, inter alia, that one such appointed member shall be appointed from persons who hold or have held the office as a Judge and that two of the appointed persons must have legal qualifications, one such person should not be a person in active legal office, Maharaj stated. The Service Commission Departments official website ( http:// www.scd.org.tt/) listed Chief Justice Ivor Archie as chairman of JLSC. Members include: Roger Hamel-Smith; Chairman of Public Service Commission, Dr. Marjorie Thorpe; David A.R. Patrick; and Annestine Sealey. Maharaj explained that based on information published on the JLSCs website , there are three ex-judges appointed and it does not consist of two members of the legal profession as prescribed in Section 110 (3) (b) of the Constitution The Constitution envisages that the JLSC should have only one ex-judge as a member of it. The three ex-judges have distinguished themselves as members of the Judiciary and there can be no doubt that they have the necessary qualities and capabilities to perform the functions and responsibilities of members of the JLSC, Maharaj stated. He emphasised that he was not disputing that the members have the necessary qualities and capabilities to perform the functions and responsibilities as members Israel Khan: Justice system on verge of collapse I suspect that if nothing is done quickly, what will happen is that life will become short, nasty and brutish in this country. We are already there, Khan said. The LAAA, he said, has suggested that to deal with the backlog of cases, murders must be categorised into first, second and third degrees, and to make the second and third degree bailable offences. Whether you retain the death penalty for the first degree, that is not our concern, he said. He suggested also that Government immediately establish, by legislation, a plea bargaining process to make it simple and not as cumbersome as it is at present. Calling on the powers that be to act expeditiously, he said the staff at the Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) and Legal Aid and Advisory Authority (LAAA) must not be seen and be treated simply as civil servants administering justice. He said the problems in the LAAA were similar to the DPPs office in terms of poor remuneration, inadequate accommodation, and retention of staff. The LAAA, in assigning attorneys, has outlived its usefulness, he said, We cannot cope. He said, We have come to the decision which is supported by the Chief Justice (Ivor Archie) and the current Attorney General (Faris Al-Rawi) that a Public Defenders department must be established to take care of Civil briefs and give advice separate from the Legal Aid and Advisory Authority. Persons charged with murder and who seek assistance from the LAAA, he said, do not have a Constitutional right of choice, however, LAAA still tries to give those persons a choice from a small pool of lawyers that it retains. For an accused person to get a fair trial and uphold the presumption of innocence, the accused must have a fair and impartial Judge, you must have a competent and experienced prosecutor and an experienced and competent attorney to match the skills of the prosecutor and vice versa, he said. However, he said that many local lawyers find the fees paid by the LAAA unattractive and would not represent the accused. Some lawyers, he said, look at the deposition and if they believe they cannot win, they would send back the briefs In addition, he said, We must instill in young graduates, and not so young graduates, that Legal Aid is not there to assist them in making a living. He did not elaborate. In terms of dealing with the issue of recidivism, he suggested that the State pour money into rehabilitating prisoners. He said, a lot of people were not concerned about what is happening in the prisons until it comes home to them with a relative or friend. BILLION$ DOWN THE DRAIN A Parliament committee heard that while $3.3 billion has already been lost through expenditure on the litigious issue of the World Gas-to-Liquids (GTL) project, a further $3.2 billion has gone down the drain in relation to a separate project involving an ultra low sulphur diesel (USD) plant constructed by South Korean firm Samsung Engineering and Construction Limited. Petrotrin officials told the Joint Select Committee on State Enterprises that the USD facility which was meant to handle highly toxic materials such as hydrogen sulphur was built with 200 design flaws, did not comply with required earthquake specifications and featured a beam which was bent out of shape. As in the case of the World GTL project, the USD project was entered into during the tenure of the Malcolm Jones-led board, back in 2009. The Parliament committee also heard of a $5.3B bond in relation to a separate project looming on the companys books; an expenditure of $200M on a new company headquarters which stands unfinished; problems with asset integrity; routine delays on projects and the crippling effect of the ongoing oil revenue downfall on capital development and operations. In relation to the USD project, the committee heard how Petrotrin entered into an agreement back in 2009. Committee chairman Independent Senator David Small said the project cost was the single largest capital expenditure in Petrotrins history. Yet, he said, the project lay incomplete for four years due to structural, steel and seismic design issues, according to 2016 budget documents. Petrotrins vice president - refining, Jonathan Barden, gave a detailed report. The USD project has, indeed, a very unhappy history, Barden said. Originally the project was started in 2009 with an anticipated completion date of 2012. A fixed-price contract was (awarded) to Samsung Engineering Construction Limited for US$220 million. There were amendments to that contract and that contract paid, essentially, US$260M to Samsung. But problems emerged. There was an extensive delay caused by industrial relations, Barden said. He said this delayed the project to 2013, when the plant was close to completion. However, during pre-commissioning activities a structural flaw was discovered. One of the beams on the plant actually bent, Barden said. Which was a very serious issue. When that was investigated, it was determined that that structural member had been inadequately designed. And some subsequent investigation indicated that it was not the only structural member that had been badly designed. A review, furthermore, indicated that in the original invitation to bid document issued in 2009 the wrong earthquake resistance had been specified. A value of 0.3g was stated, though the correct specification should have been 0.75g. By September 2014, Petrotrin sought to have joint remediation done with the same firm. Samsung proposed an unorthodox method to fix the problems, called base isolation. Controversial firm SNC Lavalin served as a consultant in relation to possible repair. But by August 2015, it was clear Samsung was not going to complete the plant. The contract was terminated in December 2015, two years after the flaws first emerged. Said Small, the short version of this is that 3,000 million has been spent on a project that was badly designed in the beginning. As it stands now we are not even sure if it is going to work, going forward. We have spent $3B and because of design imperfections. It looks complete but it has not been able to work. Jones served on the board from January 7, 2002, to October 11, 2010. The Committee heard of a US$35M sale of assets with conditional board approval in relation to the World GTL project to NiQuan Energy. Petrotrin President Fitzroy Harewood said the total expenditure on the GTL project was about $3.3B. Chief Financial Officer Ronald Huff said a US$850M bond due in 2019 (placed in 2009) looms over the companys operations in relation to a separate project, understood to be what is called the Gasoline Optimisation Project. It is never far from the back of our minds, Huff said. Harewood said the company has deferred some capital projects and reduced costs and is only spending on things needed to keep the refinery operations the main source of revenue going. Jail for plannassing wife Yesterday, a San Fernando Magistrate jailed the husband, Dirk Norton, 26, of Bayshore, Marabella, for 16 months, a sentence he would serve with hard labour. Women are not in your house to be beaten, for you would not want a man to beat your daughter, or your mother with a cutlass, Magistrate Brahmanand Dubay told Norton, a labourer, who on Friday had launched a cutlass-attack on his legally married wife and the mother of their two-year-old son, Nafisah Rajack, 21. The couple lived at Bayshore, Marabella, but on Friday, Rajack went to the San Fernando Magistrates Court where she took out a PO against Norton. The order compels Norton, though they lived in the same house, from physically harming his wife, Rajack, a security guard. Arrested on Friday, Police Constable Michael Noel charged Norton with assault, occasioning a wound, and a second charge of breaching a PO. Norton pleaded guilty before Dubay and the Courts police prosecutor Sgt Krishna Beedasie, related the incident as investigated by PC Noel. Dubay heard from prosecutor Beedasie that after Rajack was granted the PO in the magistrates court, she went home. But at about 3.30 pm, Noel went to the home in Bayshore, took up a cutlass and with the flat side, planassed his wife. She was struck on the left forearm. He also choked her. The magistrate heard that a neighbour intervened. Rajack went to the Marabella Police Station and made a report about the incident. PC Noel and charged Norton. The Prosecutor told Dubay that when confronted with the allegations, Norton told the police officers, Boss, I never do she nothing. But asked yesterday by Dubay why he planassed his wife, Noel said that he had gone to work, but after, he drank some rum. He continued, She came home and we start to argue. I did something I regret. I really regret I do it. The magistrate asked Norton if he was aware that the Protection Order prohibited him from physically abusing his wife, or, committing any acts of violence, and Noel replied, I wouldnt do it ever in life again. On the charge of assaulting Rajack, Dubay sentenced Norton to four months in jail and for breaching the PO, he was jailed for 12 months. The sentences are to run concurrently, so Norton would serve 12 months. Students sent home again The building was partially closed in 2014, due to safety and health reasons, and then completely shut down the following year. Students returned to classes at the facility on March 14 but were informed yesterday by staff at the campus that the building would be temporarily closed. When Newsday contacted the school, an official said paperwork needed to be finalised before the building could be properly handed over to the University. A few students pursuing the Artist Diploma in Music Performance and the Bachelor of Fine Arts (BFA) in the Performing Arts spoke to Newsday and expressed hope that the issue will be resolved soon. We were very happy to start school here at NAPA. It is a great facility so I was disappointed when we were sent home. Im really hoping that whatever the reason, it can be resolved quickly, one student said. Another student admitted that while he was happy that school ended early yesterday, he was disappointed that the campus was closed again. Everybody likes a half day at school but with the campus closed until we dont know when, it is disappointing, he said. Chairman: I wasnt at meeting to decide Jones fate However, Jupiter said he was appointed after an agreement for the project had already been entered into. Questions in relation to these matters were raised by Opposition Senator Wade Mark during a sitting of a Parliament committee on state enterprises yesterday. Were you a director on the board when this decision was taken back then, Mark asked. And did you preside on the board of directors recently when the decision was taken to drop this lawsuit against the former executive chairman or did you recuse yourself? Jupiter replied, I was not present at the decision with respect... to Malcolm Jones. I recused myself. The Petrotrin chairman further stated, the decision of the World GTL started in January 2005. I became a member of the board in June 2006. Other decisions took place after 2006, but the start of the decision was very clear. The decision to go with GTL was before I became a member of the board. Checks by Newsday showed Jupiter was appointed to the Petrotrin board on June 28, 2006. However, according to 2011 legal advice given by Vincent Nelson QC lead counsel in the dropped case against the former board one of the main lapses of due diligence in relation to the WGTL matter came on September 26, 2006 - three months after Jupiters appointment - when the board agreed, to enter into a joint and several guarantee to Credit Suisse. In relation to the boards decision to drop the lawsuit against Jones and the former board, the date of the current boards decision was not given, nor were further details such as whether the board saw it fit to seek further legal advice. Mark asked if there was consultation or communication with the Executive on the matter. Sharon Morris-Cummings, Petrotrin General Counsel said, The decision was taken by the board after it received legal advice in the matter...The matter was handled by the Attorney Generals office and then new advice came to the attention of the board and a decision was made thereafter. She said the advice came from, the counsel who were involved in the matter. JSC chides Permanent Secretaries Ministry of Local Government PS, Desdra Bascombe, said her agencies reports were sent in since 2014, although admitting the Palo Seco Agricultural Enterprises Limited (PSAEL) report is a work in progress. Small said she must quadruple her efforts, as the JSC is displeased that PSAEL reports are outstanding since 2008. Saying such delays are absolutely untenable, he said, We are not accepting an open-ended date for submission. Ministry of Tourism PS, Cecilia Greaves- Smith, said the latest report was sent to Cabinet, so will soon reach the JSC. Ministry of Community Development PS, Vidiah Ramkhelawan, blamed the reports delay on a change in ministry headquarters and PS-postholder, plus administrative delays. The report will be sent by month-end. Ministry of Housing acting PS, Simone Thorne Mora Quinones, said the East Port-of-Spain Development Company its reports for 2013/2014 and 2012/2013.However she said Udecott has not been able to find its reports for 2011/2012 and 2012/2013, earning the ire of Small who urged her to notify Udecott of the committee PP underinvested and undersaved Responding to a question posed by Newsday on this issue during a news conference at the Eric Williams Financial Complex, Imbert replied, I suggest you read the press release from the IMF and also read a press release that we sent out today. The minister indicated that in a direct quote the IMF said that in recent times with high energy prices, TT underinvested and undersaved. Imbert explained, What the IMF is saying in very diplomatic language is that the PP government benefitted from very buoyant energy prices, oil at (US)$100 (per barrel) and underinvested and undersaved, which is why we find ourselves in the position that we are in today. In its report, the IMF praised the ruling Peoples National Movement (PNM) for taking several difficult but necessary steps in light of sharply lower energy revenues. Those steps included widening the Value Added Tax (VAT) base and reducing the number of government ministries with a view to streamlining the civil service, as well as instituting spending cuts. Reiterating these points in its release, the Finance Ministry said the Government will build on these initial steps by instituting new measures to improve revenue collection. These include improving the collection of taxes from the gaming and betting industry, implementing public procurement legislation to ensure value for money, and introducing a fair and equitable property tax system. Saying Persad-Bissessar only read the first two paragraphs of the IMFs report and proclaimed were not in a crisis, Imbert added that the former prime minister did not read the third paragraph, which indicated were not in a crisis but we are in difficulty. He reiterated, We are in difficulty because the previous government underinvested and undersaved when it had all of these high oil prices. Asked if this was also an indictment of the actions for the former Patrick Manning administration from 2007 to 2010, Imbert replied, No. I mean, I can get a definition of the word recent for you but they said in recent times. The minister added, I think they are going back three/four years. I dont think theyre going back nine/ten years. They are talking about, in my opinion, over the last three to four years. What you need to know about the Octagon Art Festival on Sunday in Ames news THE CORPORATIZATION OF EDUCATION: GATES FOUNDATION, ARNIE DUNCAN AND BRUCE RAUNER By John Klyczek March 22, 2016 NewsWithViews.com For over twenty years, former Senior Policy Advisor in the Office of Educational Research and Improvement for the US Department of Education, Charlotte Thomson Iserbyt, has been warning us about the coming corporatization of education through fascistic charter school privatization that will be subsidized by public finances. Iserbyt, author of The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, has described the charter school takeover, otherwise known as the school choice movement, as [c]ollusion between neoconservatives, corporations, and leftists in education, including former conservative Secretaries of Education and the NEA, [which] enabled corporations to take control of American education. As a case study, Illinois current education debacle proves her predictions accurate. Please, pass this along to the appropriate people to help Mr. Trump more fully understand how our children are dumbed down deliberately Ordo Ab Chao: After operating without a budget for over two months, the Illinois State Legislature passed Senate Bill 2043 to appropriate $721 million dollars to fund state college and adult education programs. The emergency bill was intended to release funding for a number of public colleges, such as my alma mater, Eastern Illinois University, and Chicago State University, which may soon be forced to issue massive layoffs or possibly shutdown all operations indefinitely. Nevertheless, Governor Bruce Rauner vetoed the legislation. And the state legislators fell short by two votes to override the veto. According to a February 12th report from CNN Money, Eastern Illinois University laid off 198 staff members this week, and the college president is blaming the state government. The cuts impact 13% of the school's employees. On February 26th, the Chicago Tribune reported that Chicago State University sent notices of potential layoffs to all of its 900 employees. In an interview with CBS News, the President of Chicago State, Thomas Calhoun Jr., responded to the unprecedented layoffs: It is baffling to most of us who think deeply about this: that, on the one hand, our governor would talk about bringing jobs back to the state, attracting industry to the state, attracting the kinds of investments in our state [sic], while at the same time, cutting the very opportunity to provide a highly skilled workforce. It just doesnt make any sense. At first glance, Calhoun is right; at face value, it doesnt make any sense. But perhaps the governors doublespeak makes more sense when viewed from a Hegelian dialectical perspective. In Antony C. Suttons bombshell Americas Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull & Bones, he expounds his analysis of leaked membership booklets belonging to Iserbyts father, Clifton Samuel Thomson, who was inducted into The Order of Death in 1924 (Sutton 293). From these leaked Addresses books, which used to be called Catalogues (16), Sutton, a former Research Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution, reverse engineers the history of the Hegelian manipulation of the American education system by The Order: [p]rogress in the Hegelian State is through contrived conflict: the clash of opposites makes for progress. If you can control the opposites, you dominate the nature of the outcome (xiv). [1] The following is a simplified equation for the Hegelian formula: thesis + antithesis = synthesis (or problem + reaction = solution). Now, heres what it looks like when we fill in the equation with the pertinent variables concerning the conflict between Illinois obligations to pay its debts and its commitments to pay for public schooling: Thesis/Problem: The Old Guard Democrat Machine racks up the State of Illinois debt crisis until it threatens to collapse into insolvency; therefore, Antithesis/Reaction: Reagan-style Republican Rauner halts state and federal funds for education in order to stop the budgetary cancer from metastasizing; as a result, Synthesis/Solution: public education institutions, without public funds, will ultimately be forced to seek financing from the private sector or undergo privatization through charter school partnerships and voucher programs. In sum, Rauners words and actions are not really contradictory if his real stratagem is to attract private jobs and industry to Illinois by opening the floodgates for private charter schools to move into the public education market to fill up the void created by the budget cuts. Of course, the failed override of the governors veto was a result of Democrat Scott Drury voting against the proposal and Democrat Luis Arroyo not being in attendance, writes NBC News. And it was Democrats like former CEOs of Chicago Public Schools, Paul Vallas and Arne Duncan, who paved the way in Illinois for shutting down public schools and supplanting them with charters. Hence, a hand-in-glove Hegelian manipulation of the leftwing-rightwing political dialectic that is designed to narrow the education dilemma down to a debate about charter privatization one way or another. The Charter School Choice Lobby: There is abundant evidence to illustrate Rauners charter school agenda. Former charter school supporter who was US Assistant Secretary of Education under George H. W. Bush, Diane Ravitch, called Rauner one of the most important financial backers of charter schools in Chicago. During his run for the office of governor, Rauner ran a television advertisement in which he lionized how he helped start charter schools, such as Chicago Bulls Prep of the Noble Network of Charter Schools, to compete against failing school systems. According to the Chicago Tribune, Rauner has donated about $2.5 million to the Noble Network, and one of the charter schools has been named in his honor: Rauner College Prep. In fact, before winning the governorship, Rauner sat on the Noble Network Board, and he has also partnered with ACT Charter School. Now that he has taken office as governor, Rauner has appointed Beth Purvis, former CEO of the Chicago International Charter School, to be a key advisor on education policy. And he is paying her a $250,000 salary for her counsel. Rauners push for corporatized charter education is often couched in the euphemism school choice. For instance, in one of his campaign ads, which lauded his multi-million-dollar investments in charter schools, he stated, Ill give parents more control and choices. Two months ago, Rauner even proclaimed the week of January 24th through 30th to be School Choice Week in Illinois, saying that [c]harter schools are already providing many Illinois families with choices; we look forward to supporting the growth of charter schools through our federal grant. However, as Iserbyt has emphasized in The True Goal of School Choice, the buzzword school choice is nothing more than a code word for the fascistic privatization of public education. As a liaison to the Presidents Task Force on Private Sector Initiatives under Reagan, she was consulted on one of the first proposals for a school choice initiative: this writer [Iserbyt] inquired of one of President Reagans political appointees whether this initiative was not corporate fascism; a politically incorrect question that resulted in someone else replacing me as Liaison with The White House. To facilitate more school choice, Rauner has built a bipartisan coalition of state representatives and lobbyists who advocate voucher programs and other charter packages. The governor has appointed the Reverend James Meeks, a former Democrat State Senator, as the Chairman of the Illinois State Board of Education, despite the fact that Meeks holds no academic credentials to qualify him as an expert on education. Meeks, who endorsed Rauner during his electioneering, has expressed his openness to both charter schools and voucher programs: [i]f charters can do it, or vouchers can do it, whatever the board will think will close the education gap, stated Meeks. It should be noted that, during his race for office, Rauner poured $1 million into a South Side Community Federal Credit Union at 54th Street and Wentworth Avenue located about ten miles from Meeks Salem Baptist Church. Rauner has also allied with one of the biggest charter school lobbies in Illinois: One Chance Illinois. In fact, at least two key Rauner proponents are members of the Board of Directors for One Chance Illinois: Executive Director Myles Mendoza and Pastor Corey Brooks. Governor Rauner appointed Brooks to the Board of the Illinois State Toll Highway Authority after the Rooftop Pastor endorsed the governor and even appeared in a pro-Rauner campaign ad, according to NBC News. Mendoza, who was formerly a Senior Partner with Democrats for Education Reform, has worked with Rauner on some of those [school choice] issues before Rauner had the keys to the governors mansion, reports WBEZ News. Following the governors State of the State speech, Mendoza has avowed One Chance Illinois support for Rauner: [o]ne Chance Illinois supports the Governors pledge to create more quality school options for low-income children stuck in failing schools. One Chance Illinois believes that traditional, charter and private school providers can come together on a policy that benefits the neediest children, and rewards quality providers. Indeed, in his State of the State address, Rauner pushed for a Student and Career Success Package [that] will lift the cap on public charter schools and give parents and students more options. The Duncan-Gates Affair: The reaches of Rauners charter school comrades go beyond state-level special interests. One of his most powerful school choice cronies is Democrat Arnie Duncan: former CEO of Chicago Public Schools (CPS) who went on to serve as United States Secretary of Education under President Obama from 2009 until the end of last year. Duncan followed in the footsteps of his predecessor, former CPS CEO Paul Vallas, another bigtime Democrat charter school pusher. As CEO, Duncan basically mirrored Vallas privatization reform. For Duncans crowning achievement in Chicago was the Renaissance 2010 initiative, which had the goal of closing 60 to 70 schools and opening 100 new smaller schools by 2010, according to a document from the American Federation of Teachers. A Counterpunch article by Kenneth Libby reports that Duncan helped the city of Chicago open over 100 new schools (at least 84 charters run by Renaissance 2010 with 31 more planned [as of December 2008]), including the citys second Disney-run elementary school, 5 military academies with more in planning stages, for-profit schools, non-profit organizations receiving financial backing from educational venture funds, and charter schools funded by big business (Boeing, Citigroup, Bank of America, Washington Mutual, and the Gates Foundation among others all given corporate tax breaks, buyouts, and tax deductions that take money from our public schools). During Duncans tenure as CEO of CPS, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation donated over $137 million to the Chicago school system to invest in various charter school reform programs and initiatives that led to the creation of several successful small and charter high schools in Chicago, according to a Gates Foundation press release. At least $1.4 million went directly to the Noble Network of Charter Schools to fund two new schools and develop the infrastructure necessary to support additional schools based on the Noble Street model in Chicago. Gates philanthropy followed Duncan over to his federal post as US Secretary of Education. During Duncans tenure as US Secretary, the US Department of Education received $500 million co-contributed from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation and several other private donors. At least $178,114,911 of this investment was allocated specifically for expanding effective practices in turning around low-performing schools; providing support for high-quality school choices including charters and alternative school designs; as well as for digital learning and supporting extended learning time. [2] The ties between Education Secretary Arne Duncan and the Gates Foundation have been so strong that Teaching Ambassador Fellows, Joiselle Cunningham and Lisa Clarke, questioned the potential conflict of interest in an interview with then-Secretary Duncan: [o]ne of the particular questions we've heard teachers ask is if corporate-based philanthropists are playing too heavy a role in public education, and if there's a corporate agenda at the Department. Although Duncan denied that any corporations have a seat at the table in terms of policymaking, the New York Times writes that [s]ome officials complained that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was trying to handpick the winners of the Department of Educations $4 billion grant competition, known as Race to the Top. Senator Nancy C. Detert, chairwoman of the Education Committee in the Florida Senate said that The Gates program and the Arne Duncan program are pretty much the same program. Renowned critical theorist and pedagogue, Henry Giroux, has likewise called out Duncan as a corporatist. Giroux slams Duncans charter privatization schemes in several scholarly publications, including Chartering Disaster: Why Duncans Corporate-Based Schools Cant Deliver an Education That Matters and Obamas Betrayal of Public Education? Arne Duncan and the Corporate Model of Schooling. [See: Exposing the Global Road to Ruin Through Education] Duncans track record as a corporatist change agent speaks for itself. In a truly fascistic policy move back in 2009, then-Secretary Duncan even announced the appropriation of Stimulus Package tax dollars to be spent toward corporate charter school expansion in Illinois. The US Department of Education documents that Duncan today [April 20th, 2009,] announced that nearly $1.4 billion is now available for Illinois under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009. The stipulations of the ARRA funds required that [i]n order to receive today's funds, Illinois provided assurances that they will collect, publish, analyze and act on basic information regarding . . . progress on removing charter caps, and interventions in turning around underperforming schools. In October of last year, Duncan announced his resignation from the office of US Secretary of Educationjust three days after he authorized another $249 million in federal grants for charter schools. Coincidence or not, the timing is certainly perfect for Rauner and the school choice gang. Conceivably, the more Illinois state schools that go bankrupt, the more opportunities there will be for private charters to apply for these federal grant dollars to subsidize their takeover of insolvent public education institutions. The timing of Duncans federal grants and Rauners stonewall on the budget might remind people of a coincidental phone call by Rauner to the office of then-CEO of CPS, Arne Duncan, followed by the admission of Rauners daughter to Walter Payton High School, despite the fact that her tests scores were not high enough to meet Payton standards, according CPS Inspector General, James Sullivan. There was a phone call made to the CEO's office by Mr. Rauner, Sullivan said. Somebody in the CEO's office called Walter Payton and his daughter was admitted to the school." Fifteen months later, ABC News reports, Rauner made a $250,000 gift to the school he says was unrelated to the admission of his daughter. When questioned about the coincidence by a State Journal-Register columnist, Rauner at first denied any phone contact with Duncan. Then, he backpedaled and tried to spin his behind-the-scenes dealing with Duncan: I talked to Arne . . . I talked to him all the time. I said, Arne, is there a process? What do you do in a situation like this? Understandably, one might surmise that Bruce has still been talking all the time to his old pal Arne, who could provide a direct line to the White House as well as the Gates Foundation and other corporate handlersmaybe even coordinating corporate, federal, and state policy in anticipation of the Illinois budget impasse and the federal charter grant disbursement. Either way, Rauner look[s] forward to supporting the growth of charter schools through our federal grant, as he announced this January, during his proclamation of Illinois official School Choice Week. Goodbye, state universities. Hello, Gates universities. References: Sutton, Antony C. Americas Secret Establishment: An Introduction to the Order of Skull and Bones. Updated Reprint. Walterville, OR: Trine Day, 2002. Print. Please, click on "Mass E-mailing" below and send this article to all your friends . i 2016 John Klyczek - All Rights Reserved Footnotes: 1. Sutton writes, [f]or Iserbyt, in The Deliberate Dumbing Down of America, the American education system begins with Rockefeller and [Fredrick T.] Gates. But in fact, this statist system is a reflection of the Hegelian ideas brought to the United States by the Skull and Bones troika of [Daniel Coit] Gilman, [Andrew Dickson] White and [Timothy] Dwight, and then financed by Rockefeller (xv). Sutton documents how these three Bonesmen hijacked American education pedagogy, methodology, and curriculum through their influential posts as presidents of Yale University, Johns Hopkins University, Cornell University, the University of California, the Carnegie Institution, and the American Historical Association (62-111). 2. It is worth noting that, according to Sutton, the Ford Foundation has become an instrument of The Order ever since former US National Security Advisor, McGeorge Bundy, who is a Bonesman, took over the foundation presidency and used the Ford wealth so flagrantly against the wishes of the Ford family that Henry Ford II resigned from the Board of Directors (24, 52). John Klyczek has an MA in English and is a college English instructor, concentrating on the history of global eugenics and Aldous Huxley's dystopic novel, Brave New World. He is also a contributor to the Intrepid Report, the Dissident Voice, and Natural News. E:Mail: jaksne@yahoo.com Not Found The requested URL was not found on this server. Apache Server Port 80 The United Nations Secretary General is supposed to be a peace-maker and most importantly is supposed to observe neutrality in any conflict he is called to settle. But Ban Ki-moon, the current UN Chief has ignored his position and the role he needs to play and recklessly fell in his own trap and in the trap set by the wicked rulers of the Polisario and their Algerian mentors. The man who visited the Maghreb region lately in a declared bid to revive the deadlocked negotiations on the UN-sponsored Western Sahara settlement process ignited tension with a party to the conflict and fueled the tension created by this regional conflict. Instead of carrying out his mission as a neutral mediator, Ban Ki-moon espoused the separatist thesis exposed by the Polisario and completely ignored the grievances expressed by Morocco and many UN bodies and NGOs (the dire situation prevailing in the Polisario-run Tindouf camps, the absence of a census of the camps population) as he ignored the proposal made by the Kingdom, back in 2007, to grant a large autonomy to the disputed territory under Moroccan sovereignty. This proposal was and is described by the UN Security Council and many a world power as serious, credible and realistic. After the blatant bias he showed through his reckless remarks and following the firm response of all the components of the Moroccan society with its Government, Parliament, political parties, trade unions and civil society activists, Ban Ki-moon found himself in a very difficult situation. And for a reason. Morocco decided to suspend its $3 million voluntary contribution to the MINURSO, to reduce drastically the missions civilian staffers by expelling 84 out of 88 of the staff and threatened to pull out all or part of its 2,300 peacekeepers from UN peace missions around the world. And many influential members of the Security Council expressed in a way or another support to Moroccos standpoint, translating thus their disavowal of the UN Chief. Actually Ban Ki-Moon found himself in an awkward situation after the US mission to the United Nations issued in New York last week a statement renewing Washingtons support to the Moroccan autonomy initiative saying we consider the Moroccan Autonomy Plan as serious, realistic and credible and we think that this initiative is a potential approach likely to fulfil the aspirations of the Western Sahara people to run their own affairs in peace and dignity. We continue to support the UN-led process to bring about a peaceful, sustainable, and mutually-agreed solution to the conflict, says the UN administration. The same unchanged position was reiterated in Rabat by the US Ambassador to Morocco, Dwight L. Bush, in a statement to the media. The diplomat said that Washington is very concerned over the turn of events between the UNSG and Morocco and wants to help solve this problem. French Foreign Ministry spokesman renewed early last week Fances steady support to Morocco regarding the Sahara issue, while Russia affirmed, during the official visit of King Mohammed VI to Moscow last week, its opposition to any infringement of the parameters already defined by the Security Council. These two permanent members of the Security Council and four non-permanent members, namely Spain, Japan, Egypt and Senegal have also defended Moroccos position and openly refused to endorse the UN Secretary General, during a first meeting of the Security Council held last Thursday to debate the reasons behind the decisions made by Morocco in protest against the UN Chiefs missteps. Several analysts said the Security Council showed responsibility and balance during this meeting, since the Council, although it is seriously concerned about the impact of the quarrel between the UN Chief and Morocco, did not issue any resolution or decision. Ambassador of Angola, current chair of the Security Council, said that member States were urged to individually reach out to Morocco to try to stabilize the situation and to advance in a positive way. The Council did not express public support for Ban Ki-moon nor did it urge Rabat to reconsider its decisions regarding the MINURSO. Whatever the conclusions to be drawn by the Security Council, what is sure is that Ban Ki-moon was not taking seriously his position as the UN top diplomat when he made his trip to the region nor was he considering the Sahara issue as an important and sensitive question. After he was taken aback by Moroccos firm response to his thoughtless remarks, Ban Ki-moon has reportedly confessed that he never considered the Sahara conflict as a priority issue, that he ignored the ins and outs of the dossier, and that he just followed the recommendations of his staff. The least we can say of this confession is that it is surprising and hard to believe. How can staffers tell Ban ki-moon to use the word occupation when speaking of the situation in the Sahara while none of his five predecessors, who handled the issue before him ever used such jargon that transgresses the UN bodys neutrality and impartiality? How can they advise him to give the peace sign in the camp of one of the conflicting parties? How can they instruct him to bow to the banner of an entity that is not recognized as a UN member? Is he a mere puppet in the hands of his staffers and other advisors or was he heeding the instructions of some Polisario witches? The answer to all these questions is that Ban Ki-moon, who is supposed to be mentally healthy, has openly taken sides in a conflict he is supposed to help settle. Anyways, in Ban Ki-moons case, as a saying in Arabic goes, the justification is more serious than the offense. Two terrorists Monday opened fire at a hotel in the Malian capital, Bamako, where EU military instructors were lodging. The attack targeted Azalail Hotel Nord-Sud, located in a posh neighborhood of Bamako, near the US embassy and the UN headquarters in the Malia capital. The hotel is used by European Union multinational military training mission in Mali (EUTM Mali.) The assailants had been reportedly mowed down following a shoot-out that lasted for about one hour. The assailants tried to force their way into the hotel but were halted by the guards posted at the hotel entrance. The guards opened fire killing one of the attackers on the spot. No EU personnel have been hurt in the attack. The Malian capital came under attack last year on November 20 after terrorists stormed Radison Blu hotel taking 170 hostages and killing 20 of them. The West African country has been riddled with internal conflict and in 2012 it nearly fell into the hands of terrorist groups like Ansar Dine which were seeking to establish an Islamic state. French troops had to intervene to disrupt the jihadists advance. Around 10,000 international troops are stationed in the country, under the umbrella of the UN mission in Mali, MINUSMA. British Oil Company BP and Norwegian Statoil announced Monday they would withdraw their staff from two Algerian gas plants after terrorists fired rockets at the third largest gas field of the country situated in the Sahara desert. The companies will withdraw their staff from the In Salah and In Amenas gas plants as security measures after the In Salah gas plant came under attacks in the early morning of Friday. Terrorists reportedly fired homemade rockets at the plant without causing damage or causalities. Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) claimed responsibility for the attack. BP announced it will undertake a phased temporary relocation of all its staff from In Salah and In Amenas JVs in Algeria over the next two weeks, while Statoil spokesman said that the workers who are on rotation will not be replaced when they finish their shifts. Statoil announced it will also pull out the staff working at its operation center at Hassi Messaoud. The national petroleum company Sonatrach cooperating with the two Norwegian and British companies said its workers would maintain the production at the plants. In the wake of the Friday attacks, the Algerian army launched a wide search operation that resulted in the killing of four terrorists. Two explosions hit the Brussels airport Tuesday morning while another explosion struck the Maelbeek Metro station, near EU headquarters an hour later. The two terror attempts killed 34 people and injured scores of others. According to a provisional toll, the airport blasts killed 14 people and injured 81, while 20 people lost their life in the metro station where 55 were injured. The two blasts at Brussels Airport reportedly hit the American Airlines check-in desk in what is suspected to be a suicide bombing. The blasts sent shockwaves through the terminal building, shattering windows and knocking tiles off the ceiling. Flights from and to the airport have been cancelled until further notice. Authorities have also suspended train traffic to the airport as well as all public transport in the capital as a precautionary measure. Instructions have been also given to people stay at home and avoid gatherings. Security level has been raised maximum after the attack. Other airports in the EU block have also stepped up security measures. Belgian security forces have been on the alert since the Paris attacks of November 13 and mainly following the arrest on Friday of Salah Abdeslam, a suspect in the Paris attacks who had been on the run for four months. Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon told reporters that since the arrest of Abdeslam, the country has been on alert, bracing up for possible retaliation attacks. King Mohammed VI of Morocco who is on a working visit to the Czech Republic held tete-a-tete talks with President Milos Zeman in Prague on Monday. The two heads of State discussed topical regional and international issues as well as means to further consolidate the two countries political relations and enhance their economic exchanges. They also reviewed ways of enhancing cultural ties. The Czech Republic lists the North Africa country among 25 states it considers as priority countries. The Eastern European country opened a commercial representation office in Casablanca in 2013. The Kings trip to the Czech Republic which took place after his official visit last week to Russia translates his strategy to promote his countrys openness onto all parts of the world. Belgian media are reporting that these are the alleged terror suspects at Zaventem airport. Photo: Belgian Police The Latest: Terror attacks at an airport and metro station in Brussels on Tuesday left 31 dead and 250 injured. injured. ISIS claims its fighters are behind the attacks. claims its fighters are behind the attacks. Belgian media has released images from surveillance footage of the suspected attackers at Brusselss Zaventem airport. Two are believed dead, having blown themselves up. A manhunt is under way for one suspect who prosecutors believe fled the scene. scene. The suicide attackers have been identified as brothers Khalid el-Bakraoui, 27, and Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, 30. The third attacker has been identified as 24-year-old Najim Laachraoui. Police had been hunting him before the Brussels bombings; he is believed to be an accomplice in the Paris attacks. Some reports say Laachraoui has been arrested, but Belgian authorities have not confirmed. confirmed. At least seven Americans were among those wounded in the attacks, including three Mormon missionaries and a U.S. serviceman. ISIS claimed responsibility for the terror attacks on an airport and a metro station in Brussels on Tuesday. The terror group issued a statement, which spread across extremist outlets on social media, that spoke of martyrs who blew themselves up in both the airport and metro station. Here is the extremist groups claim, via the New York Times: Islamic State fighters carried out a series of bombings with explosive belts and devices on Tuesday, targeting an airport and a central metro station in the center of the Belgian capital Brussels, a country participating in the coalition against the Islamic State. Islamic State fighters opened fire inside the Zaventem airport, before several of them detonated their explosive belts, as a martyrdom bomber detonated his explosive belt in the Maalbeek metro station. Belgian prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw told reporters that authorities have not yet verified those claims, adding they cannot yet say whether there is a link between the November 13 Paris attacks and the massacre in Brussels. Belgian police confirm to @BuzzFeedNews that this photo shows 3 suspected #Brussels airport attackers pic.twitter.com/bKYNezVXvS Stuart Millar (@stuartmillar159) March 22, 2016 On Wednesday the two suicide bombers were identified by Belgian state media as brothers Khalid el-Bakraoui, 27, and Ibrahim el-Bakraoui, 30. Police have been searching for them since the March 15 raid on an apartment in Brussels, which led to the capture of Paris attacker Salah Abdeslam. The brothers were known to police, but their previous crimes were not related to terrorism. The Times reports: Ibrahim el-Bakraoui was sentenced to nine years in prison in 2010 after shooting at police officers following an attempted robbery of a currency exchange office. In 2011, Khalid el-Bakraoui was sentenced to five years in prison for attempted carjackings; at the time of his arrest, he had been in possession of assault rifles. The third attacker, wearing the white jacket and hat, has been identified as 24-year-old Najim Laachraoui. Laachraoui had ties to Salah Abdeslam, the final Paris suspect arrested last week. Authorities had been actively searching for him after Abdeslams capture; evidence indicates he is a likely accomplice to the Paris attacks possibly one of the bomb-makers. Prosecutors believe he also carried an explosive into the airport. Originally, they thought he might have panicked and fled, but now they believe he intended to escape and flee. This morning, reports circulated that he had been arrested, but Belgian prosecutors confirmed later he was still on the run. The third attacker, wearing the white jacket and hat, has been identified as 24-year-old Najim Laachraoui. Laachraoui had ties to Salah Abdeslam, the final Paris suspect arrested last week. Authorities had been actively searching for him after Abdeslams capture; evidence indicates he is a likely accomplice to the Paris attacks possibly one of the bomb-makers. Prosecutors believe he also carried an explosive into the airport. Originally, they thought he might have panicked and fled, but now they believe he intended to escape and flee. This morning, reports circulated that he had been arrested, but Belgian prosecutors confirmed later he was still on the run. A picture taken on March 22, 2016 shows a Belgian police vehicle driving past passengers who are evacuating the Brussels Airport of Zaventem. Photo: JONAS ROOSENS The Attacks: What We Know #NEWSGRAPHIC Explosions rock Brussels airport and metro service in Tuesday morning rush hour pic.twitter.com/fCUFNOfBoI AFP news agency (@AFP) March 22, 2016 Zaventem Airport Explosions The Belgian news agency Belga reports that shots were fired and shouts in Arabic were heard shortly before the two airport explosions. At least one of the blasts occurred in the departure hall near the American Airlines check-in counter. All flights were quickly canceled or diverted, and the complex was evacuated. Initially I thought it was the sound of a suitcase falling down, Jordy van Overmeir, a traveler at Zaventem, told Sky News. Then I came outside of the airport on the parking lot and there I saw people with head wounds, people crying, more blood on the road and glass everywhere. Suicide bombers were responsible for those two airport explosions. Police also discovered a third bomb in the airport that had failed to go off, reports ABC News. Authorities safely dismantled that explosive on the scene, but reports on Tuesday evening of another suspicious package have kept police swarming the Zaventem airport, and it remains completely closed off. Photos and video posted to social media show smoke billowing from the terminal as people fled Tuesday morning: Shocking picture shows the aftermath of inside Brussels airporthttps://t.co/xmlVWPCtu2 pic.twitter.com/TcWmdXqb3c HuffPostUK Pictures (@HuffPostUKPics) March 22, 2016 Smoke of #Brussels airport terminal after what sounded like two explosions just before 8 AM pic.twitter.com/d7e8mGBp1M Daniela Schwarzer (@D_Schwarzer) March 22, 2016 Passengers that are still located in other area's in the airport are asked to remain calm and wait for further information. Brussels Airport (@BrusselsAirport) March 22, 2016 At least eight Americans were hurt in the airport attacks. Three Mormon missionaries, all from Utah, were seriously injured in the Zaventem blast. A member of the U.S. military and four of his family members were also apparently wounded, but the injuries are said to be minor, reports NBC News. Maelbeek Metro Station Bombing A victim receives first aid by rescuers, on March 22, 2016, near Maalbeek metro station in Brussels. Photo: Emmanuel Dunand/AFP/Getty Images The Maelbeek metro station, the site of the third explosion, is close to European Union headquarters. The subway blast went off in the second car of a five-car train, just before the train was about to pull out of the station during the busy morning rush-hour commute. The metro bomb may have been the most deadly, leaving 20 dead and about 106 wounded. The conductor driving the train, who was unharmed, told Belgian station RTBF, Seeing the bodies on the floor, it marks you. This was the scene a short while ago, between the Arts-Lois and Maelbeek metro stations in Brussels. pic.twitter.com/aTZjqsF7Gt Evan Lamos (@evanlamos) March 22, 2016 Europe, U.S. on High Alert The bombings come four days after Salah Abdeslam, whos believed to be the only surviving suspect from the Paris terror attack, was captured in Brussels. Belgian police had been warned to be on alert for retaliatory attacks. We know that stopping one cell can push others into action. We are aware of it in this case, Interior Minister Jan Jambon said on Monday. Prime Minister Michel said what we feared has happened, adding that police are concerned that the attacks arent over. Authorities shut down all public transport in the city and advised residents to stay indoors. Officials lifted the lockdown around 4 p.m. local time on Tuesday, and some train service within the city began to resume, but residents were warned to viligant. Belgium is still under a Level 4 terror threat, its highest level. Facebook activated its Safety Check feature; Belgian officials encouraged Brussels residents to contact family and friends on social media or via text to avoid overwhelming the phone lines. Belgian officials also evacuated all nonessential workers from two nuclear facilities, reports the Times, though they stressed there was no specific threat against the sites. This was done, based on new information, and the events of today. Extra security measures were taken, said an official with the agency that oversees these plants. Security has also been stepped up across Europe, and the border between France and Belgium has been closed. German officials have also stepped up controls on its border with Belgium. France and the U.K. have also raised their terrorism threat level to the highest tiers. German police arrested three Kosovan men driving in a car with Belgian plates near its border with Austria, says Reuters. Authorities detained them over concerns that they may be plotting a separate attack; police did not think they had ties to the Brussels plot. Meanwhile, U.S. officials, including the NYPD, said they are also on high alert, but there is no known threat at this time. As a precaution @TSA is deploying addl security to major US airports and at various rail and transit stations - Secretary Johnson #Brussels Homeland Security (@DHSgov) March 22, 2016 NYPD commissioner Bill Bratton and Mayor Bill de Blasio addressed security concerns at a press conference Tuesday morning. The NYPD mobilized quickly in response to the Brussels attacks, according to Bratton, and the department doubled the number of transit cops on duty during the morning rush. Expect more cops on subways and at popular landmarks. Bratton: "We at any given time are very engaged in staying aware of potential threats in terms of individuals." Ramped up activity. Trevor Kapp (@tkapp20) March 22, 2016 Sending strength to @CharlesMichel and the people of #Brussels. @NYPDnews on increased alert across NYC. We will not live in fear. Bill de Blasio (@BilldeBlasio) March 22, 2016 We in New York City stand ready to fight in every way, de Blasio told reporters. De Blasio and Bratton reunited on Tuesday evening to reassure New Yorkers that there was no specific or credible threat against the city. The duo even rode the subway to Times Square to really hammer home that point. Arriving now at Times Square with Mayor @BilldeBlasio to brief NYers on counterterror & subway initiatives pic.twitter.com/liPHY6hHcV Commissioner Bratton (@CommissBratton) March 22, 2016 The Port Authority has ramped up security at the World Trade Center and its other locations. Governor Andrew Cuomo called for stepped-up security at major air and train hubs and bridges and tunnels. He added more state troopers to patrol these sites and deployed about 400 National Guardsmen to the NYC area. While theres no known credible threat to NYS at this time, we're stepping up security at high-profile locations: https://t.co/dwSkshWtFp Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) March 22, 2016 Parts of Denver International Airport were evacuated Tuesday afternoon after reports of a suspicious package near one of the terminals. Police and its bomb squad investigated and cleared the scene, and finding no real threat. Airports across the country had ramped up security in the wake of the attacks. Mourning, Tributes to Brussels Victims Governor Cuomo also announced Tuesday afternoon that One World Trade Center will display the colors of the Belgian flag in honor of the Brussels victims. Tonight, @OneWTC will be displayed in black, yellow and red as we stand in solidarity with the people of Belgium: https://t.co/jEya4TMUXf Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) March 22, 2016 The Eiffel Tower was also lit up in red, black, and yellow in solidarity with Brussels. A French cartoonist expressed the same sentiment in his own medium. The image quickly became ubiquitous across social media. People are now gathering for a vigil in Place de la Bourse in the central part of Brussels. Soon after the attacks, visitors came to the site and scrawled prayers and messages in sidewalk chalk. As darkness settled on the city, mourners lit candles and left flowers and ballons. Je Suis Bruxelles / Ik Ben Brussel read a large sign strung across the growing memorial: I Am Brussels. "Embrace those close to you". Messages in chalk at Place de la Bourse. #Brussels pic.twitter.com/ZBktSJbuxL Gabriel Gatehouse (@ggatehouse) March 22, 2016 Plusieurs centaines de Bruxellois rassembles ce soir place de la bourse a #Bruxelles pic.twitter.com/LXG4KjIRKA alice Serrano (@alicserrano) March 22, 2016 The scenes at Place de la Bourse now - crowds singing pic.twitter.com/PNpE2ZQi7I Ellie Swinton (@EllieSwintonITV) March 22, 2016 Mourners are gathering at the Place de la Bourse in central Brussels #BrusselsAttack pic.twitter.com/2GizlhBTje James Franey (@jamesfraney) March 22, 2016 Belgium will observe a three-day period of national mourning that started Tuesday. The Guardian reports the entire country will join in a moment of silence Wednesday at 12 p.m. local time to pay its respects to the victims. Political Leaders Respond President Obama delivered a short statement on the tragedy from Havana Tuesday morning. This is yet another reminder that the world must unite: We must be together regardless of nationality or race or faith in fighting against the scourge of terorrism, Obama said. French president Francois Hollande, months removed from last falls devastating attacks in his own country, called the bombings in Brussels an attack on all of Europe. Jexprime mon entiere solidarite avec le peuple belge. A travers les attentats de Bruxelles, cest toute lEurope qui est frappee. Francois Hollande (@fhollande) March 22, 2016 German chancellor Angela Merkels chief of staff, Peter Altmaier, pledged his solidarity with Belgium and declared that terrorists will never win. All solidarity now with EU, Belgium, #Brussels! Terrorists will never win: Our European values much stronger than hate, violence, terror! Peter Altmaier (@peteraltmaier) March 22, 2016 Donald Trump was among the first American political figures to publicly comment on the tragedy. The GOP front-runner decried the attacks, as well as the city they took place in. I know Brussels and Brussels is a total mess, and Im not talking about the attacks today, Trump told NBCs Today show, referring to immigration policies that had, in his view, made the city ungovernable. Shortly after, he echoed that sentiment on Twitter. Do you all remember how beautiful and safe a place Brussels was. Not anymore, it is from a different world! U.S. must be vigilant and smart! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 22, 2016 Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz released a statement promising that, as president, he would say the words radical Islamic terrorism. GOP presidential candidate John Kasich called for strengthening cooperation with allies. He also called for President Obama to cut short his Cuba trip to respond to the enemies of the west. Gov. John Kasich's statement on the terrorist attacks in #Brussels. pic.twitter.com/6gwCCMwJcy John Kasich (@JohnKasich) March 22, 2016 The Democratic presidential candidates also weighed in. Hillary Clinton appeared on the Today show, saying, The threat posed by the modern incarnation of terrorism is one that we have to be vigilant against. These terrorists seek to undermine the democratic values that are the foundation of our way of life. They will never succeed. -H Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) March 22, 2016 We have to remember that terorrists are trying to undermine the democratic values at the root of our way of life, the Democratic front-runner continued. We cant let them succeed. Bernie Sanders also expressed solidarity with Brussels on Twitter. We offer our deepest condolences to the people of Brussels and stand with our European allies to offer any necessary assistance. Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) March 22, 2016 Congressional leaders on both sides of the aisle offered support and solidary with European counterparts. This is a terrorist attack in the heart of Europe, GOP Speaker of the House Paul Ryan said earlier. As our countries have always done, we must confront this threat together. We must defend democracy and defeat terror. We stand in solidarity with the people of #Brussels, and pray for the victims of this horrendous act of terror. Paul Ryan (@SpeakerRyan) March 22, 2016 The U.S. stands with Belgium, and we pledge to do everything we can to assist our allies as they mourn this terrible loss. Senator Harry Reid (@SenatorReid) March 22, 2016 The State Department says that it will aid the Belgian authorities in any way it can. The United States stands with people of Belgium. We are ready to support the investigation as appropriate. John Kirby (@statedeptspox) March 22, 2016 This post has been updated throughout. Ladies in White being arrested. Photo: Adalberto Roque/AFP/Getty Images The Cuban government is not giving dissenters a free ride merely because a democratically elected president has dropped by for a visit. On Monday, more than 20 political dissidents were arrested, some on their way to a silent march, human-rights activist Elizardo Sanchez told CNN. Among the detained were the Ladies in White, a group made up of the family members of political prisoners. The arrest follows another sweep on Sunday, in which more than 60 protesters were detained as President Obamas plane was touching down in Havana. Antonio Rodiles, arrested. Photo: Adalberto Roque/AFP/Getty Images After an awkward press conference in which Cuban president Raul Castro showed off some artful press-dodging, asking CNN reporter Jim Acosta What political prisoners?, even more arbitrary detentions took place. Antonio Rodiles, a Cuban dissident, said that he and his wife were arrested in a violent way and detained for more than six hours for chanting in favor of democracy on their way to an interview with CNN on Monday. Rodiles said that he is being followed by the police and plans on being one of a group of dissidents to meet with Obama on Tuesday. According to Sanchez, there are 77 political prisoners in Cuban prisons and 11 under house arrest not including Mondays arrests. During the Monday press conference, Castro asked for a list of the arbitrarily detained political dissidents and said that he would release them immediately. (Obama told ABC that Castro has not handed over anyone just yet, but that he has given the Cuban president such lists in the past.) Deputy national-security adviser Ben Rhodes said that during the countries normalization discussions a list of 53 political prisoners was given to Castro, all of which he promptly released. Speaking in Havana on Tuesday, Obama said he was there to bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas. He continued, saying that although he cant tell the Cuban people what to do, he did not agree with Cubas suppression of dissenting voices. I believe citizens should be free to criticize their governments, said Obama. I believe citizens should be able to speak their minds without fear. U.S. military in Iraq (still). Photo: John Moore / Staff Good morning and welcome to Fresh Intelligence, our roundup of the stories, ideas, and memes youll be talking about today. In this edition, the U.S. acknowledges that it has a Marine base in Iraq, Obamas Cuban vacation has a downside, and Elon Musks personal life is nuts. Heres the rundown for Tuesday, March 22. WEATHER A winter storm is powering through the middle of the country from Montana to Michigan. In New York, the worst we have to look forward to is some cloud cover and temperatures in the 50s. [Weather.com] FRONT PAGE Pentagon Confirms Marine Base in Iraq Despite repeated assurances from the White House that the United States is no longer involved in a ground war in Iraq, yesterday the Pentagon was forced to confirm the existence of a military base in Northern Iraq, staffed exclusively by U.S. Marines. Officials were forced to make the disclosure after a rocket attack from ISIS militants killed one marine and wounded several more over the weekend. Between 100 and 200 troops are stationed at the base, which uses long-range cannons to provide support to the Iraqi military. The base was attacked again yesterday and marines killed at least two ISIS members in the fighting. [NYT] EARLY AND OFTEN Obama and Castro Hold Awkward Press Conference In a closely watched press conference yesterday, President Obama subjected Raul Castro to a good old fashioned American press-grilling. Castro responded like a real American leader: pontificating, changing the subject, cherry-picking questions, and finally just lying. [Politico] Democrats and Republicans Find Common Ground A new New York Times/CBS News poll released yesterday found a majority of Republicans think Donald Trump is embarrassing and half said they would be scared if Trump became president. Republicans still differ with Democrats in that they will vote for him anyway. [NYT] The Warren-Trump Twitter Beef Youve Been Waiting For Donald Trump is on the defensive after Massachusetts senator and progressive icon Elizabeth Warren called him a loser on Twitter. Trump responded by referencing a controversy in which Warren claimed to have Native American blood, repeatedly referring to Warren as an Indian and claiming she got her teaching position at Harvard because of affirmative action. Hillary Wins Israel Pander-Off Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump addressed the American Israel Public Affairs Committees annual conference in D.C. yesterday. Hillary seemed to win over the crowd by presenting herself as a steady alternative to Trump. He stayed on script and got a better reception than expected, but the speech probably wont put an end to his problems with Jewish voters. THE STREET, THE VALLEY Worlds Least Cool Hacker to Help the Government Todays planned hearing in the battle between Apple and the federal government over encryption has been postponed after the government said it may have found an outside player who can help unlock the phone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters. Everybody wins, everybody loses. Silicon Valley Old Guard Andy Grove Dies Andy Grove, the former CEO of Intel and a titan of the early Silicon Valley, has died. He was 79. Grove was Intels very first hire in 1968, and under his leadership, the company switched its focus to processors and became the dominant force in the industry. His management book boasts an incredible title right out of the universe of Jack Donaghy: Only the Paranoid Survive. [Reuters] Apple Debuts Smaller, Less Powerful iPhone, Really Hopes People Like Rose Gold Apple debuted a new collection of products yesterday but the keynote probably wont make it into the Tim Cook biopic. Apple lovers get ready for a smaller, more affordable iPhone, a smaller iPad Pro, new nylon watch bands, and a slight price cut for the Apple Watch. [CNet] Elon Musk Files for Divorce Twice From Talulah Riley, for Second Time Billionaire inventor Elon Musk he of Tesla fame has filed for divorce from British actress Talulah Riley for the second time in what is their second marriage to each other the third time in total. Confused? Imagine how he feels. [Reuters] MEDIA BUBBLE Sex Tapes Are Super Lucrative Following a massive victory for Hulk Hogan, who sued Gawker Media over posting part of his sex tape online, a Florida jury found Gawker liable for further punitive damages of $15 million, and fined Gawker publisher Nick Denton personally for $10 million. That makes the total pay out to Hulk Hogan $135 million. We Take Bath Salts in a Syrian Brothel: How Come Users Are Fleeing Vice? Vice Medias web traffic dropped 17.4 percent in February, shedding more than 10 million viewers. The problem apparently isnt Vices as much as Distractify.coms, a clickbait site under the Vice Media umbrella that everyone realized sucks. [Variety] Another Day, Another Online-Video Platform Matter, the popular long-form reporting web publication, is leaving its parent company, Medium, to become Matter Studios, which will offer a more diverse array of digital stories, podcasts, and videos. Matter Studios is positioning itself as the HBO of digital-media platforms, which we guess means it will produce reality shows about brothels. [PoliticoMedia] PHOTO OP Historic Cuba Visit Produces Historically Awkward Photo Wow. This is really something. Its so hard to look away. MORNING MEME Star Wars Gets Hands-y Incredible, and so much better than George Lucass CGI. [Elite Geek] OTHER LOCAL NEWS Hero Crime Fighter Now Hero Chicken Vendor In a job interview that really couldnt have gone any better, a teenager applying for a job at a New Orleans, Louisiana, Popeyes managed to foil a robbery and apprehend the thief mid-interview. And guess what? He got the job! [UPI] Surreal Tragedy in Las Vegas Kimberly Tripp died yesterday. The performer, better known as Mini Kim Kardashian from her show at the Beachers Madhouse at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada, was found by her boyfriend and stage partner Michael Rodriguez, also known as Mini Kanye West. [AP] HAPPENING TODAY Candidates Head West Everyones expecting a good day for Bernie Sanders today as Idaho and Utah turn out for their caucuses; the primary in Arizona will most likely go to Clinton. On the Republican side, Utah is expected to go to Cruz, but Arizona is anybodys guess. Last Chance to Save Kindle From Obsolescence; Actual Books Already Doomed Today is your last chance to update your early-generation Kindle e-readers or else they will lose the ability to connect to the cloud and you could lose all of your already-downloaded books. [Newsweek] Bernie Hits the Talk-Show Circuit Bernie Sanders will appear on Jimmy Kimmel Live! tonight even though he already has the demographic that watches it young white people totally sewn up. Not to be outdone, Clinton will appear on the show on Thursday. [AV Club] Its hard out there for a Republican voter. Photo: KENA BETANCUR This election cycle has plunged the Republican party into an existential crisis. Convinced that Donald Trumps candidacy would falter and fade early on, most Establishment conservatives have looked on in horror as hes risen in the polls and begun to collect delegates with ease. A new poll from the New York Times and CBS News illustrates their predicament of 362 Republicans surveyed over four days, 60 percent say theyre embarrassed by their partys presidential campaign, and 88 percent agree that their party is divided. Whats more, 58 percent say that the tone of this years campaign is more negative than that of campaigns in previous years. Of those Republicans surveyed, 46 percent say theyd like to see Donald Trump as the nominee, and a full three-quarters say thats what they expect. The will of the people has been Donald Trump, and if the party wont support him, they are not supporting the will of the people, Bryan Ottalini, a 59-year-old Trump supporter from Georgia, told the Times in a follow-up interview. I think it would be a definite deal killer for me as far as being a Republican. I would never vote Republican again. Nearly nine in ten Republicans agreed that a contested convention would be bad for the party. But voters were unnerved when it came to the recent bout of violence at Trumps rallies across the country. Sixty-four percent of all voters surveyed said they disapproved of how Trump handled the incidents, but they couldnt quite agree on who to blame: 29 percent blamed protesters, 23 percent blamed Trump supporters, and 43 percent blame both equally. On the whole, Democrats were more likely to see this years election in a positive light. Of the 388 Democratic voters surveyed, 82 percent have a favorable opinion of their party, and all but a small portion see their party as unified. But they do entertain doubts about Hillary Clinton, their partys front-runner 40 percent of Democratic voters dont see her as honest and trustworthy, and shes viewed unfavorably by 52 percent of all voters. Whats more, 56 percent of voters said theyd enthusiastically support Sanders if he became the nominee, while only 40 percent said the same for Clinton. Its rare, but not unprecedented, to have two front-runners who are so disliked. Perhaps both Trump and Clinton should take a lesson from our current president, whose approval ratings are at a three-year high because America evidently doesnt know what its got til its gone. Make American Jews Like Me Again Photo: George Frey/Getty Images The last time Donald Trump gave a speech to conservative Jews, he praised their skills at bargaining, criticized Shabbat, and suggested that his audience wouldnt support him because Jews prefer politicians they can buy off with donations. On Monday night at AIPACs annual conference, the GOP front-runner kept things far more kosher. Trump opened his speech by saying, Im not here to pander to you about Israel. As with so many of the Donalds statements, this turned out to be less than true. The GOP front-runner touted his experience in defending Israel experience that apparently consists of lending Rudy Giuliani his plane and heroically agreeing to serve as the grand marshal of a pro-Israel parade in 2004. He then pledged his animosity for AIPACs sworn enemies Iran, the United Nations, and Barack Obama. My number one priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran, Trump said. The problem here is fundamental. Weve rewarded the leading sponsor of terror. And weve received absolutely nothing in return. The United Nations is not a friend to democracy, the mogul continued. It is not a friend to freedom. It is not a friend to the United States and it is surely not a friend to Israel. Finally, Trump declared Obamas election to be a greater catastrophe for the Israeli people than the Second Intifada, saying, [Obama] may be the worst thing to ever happen to Israel, and you know it better than anybody. Trump went on to decry the rabid anti-Semitism in Palestinian culture, laud Israels generous offers during prior negotiations, and promise to move Americas embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, which he called the eternal capital of the Jewish people. Trump concluded by reminding AIPAC that some of his best grandkids are Jewish. The reception, which included multiple standing ovations, was considerably more friendly than many had anticipated. Still, its far from clear that Trumps speech will fix his problem with Jewish voters. According to Politico, Trump hoped his speech would quell concerns that he lacks the policy chops and intellectual curiosity to be commander in chief. But Trumps problem with hard-line pro-Israel voters may be less about ignorance than it is about heresy. At a news conference ahead of Trumps appearance at AIPAC, the Donald raised the possibility of eliminating American aid to the Jewish state, saying, There are many countries that can pay, and they can pay big-league. One of AIPACs primary reasons for existing is to lobby for foreign aid to Israel. Hours earlier, Clinton had accused Trump of being insufficiently committed to Israels security interests. Trump had previously said that he would be neutral in negotiations between Israel and Palestinians over the two-state solution. In a saner political climate, this statement would be uncontroversial is the American president supposed to officially promise that he or she will be biased in negotiations? If the United States isnt officially neutral, why would any Palestinian authority agree to have America broker an agreement? Nonetheless, Clinton made much hay of Trumps alleged gaffe. America cant ever be neutral when it comes to Israels security or survival, Clinton said. We cant be neutral when rockets rain down on residential neighborhoods, when civilians are stabbed in the street, when suicide bombers target the innocent. Some things arent negotiable. And anyone who doesnt understand that has no business being our president. To the extent that Trump has a foreign-policy worldview, it is diametrically opposed to the neoconservatism favored by AIPAC. In an interview with the Washington Post on Monday, Trump articulated an unabashedly non-interventionist global strategy. Trump told the paper that the United States should not be in the business of nation-building, saying, I watched as we built schools in Iraq and theyre blown up. We build another one, we get blown up. We rebuild it three times and yet we cant build a school in Brooklyn. We have no money for education because we cant build in our own country. The GOP front-runner suggested that the United States involvement in NATO may need to be diminished. We certainly cant afford to do this anymore, Trump told the Post. NATO is costing us a fortune, and yes, were protecting Europe with NATO, but were spending a lot of money. With the American Jewish community more broadly, Trumps primary liability isnt his muddled stances on Israel, but certain historical associations that his Muslim ban and praise of mob violence can invite. At AIPAC, a group of rabbis reportedly walked out on Trumps speech to study passages of the Torah focused on tolerance outside the Verizon Center. Youve heard it a million times: Only three countries in the world offer no guaranteed parental leave. The three? Suriname, Papua New Guinea, and the United States. Our government still doesnt seem willing to act on this shameful state of affairs, but in recent years, large, well-funded companies have been voluntarily moving toward policies that go beyond the bare minimum to offer competitive benefits for parents. Companies like Etsy, Netflix, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook have all updated their policies to reflect the reality that infants need time at home with their parents at the beginning of their lives. Today, New York Citybased digital agency ustwo is announcing Pledge Parental Leave with ten other founding partners, including Betaworks, Ideo, Made by Many, and Smart Design. The pledge, which all of the founding companies have signed on for, has four requirements for its partners. First, companies must offer three months of paid leave for the primary caregiver. They must also give three months of uninterrupted medical insurance and six months of job security for the person on leave, and the policy must be open and publicly available online. Pledge Parental Leave is focused on recruiting creative firms as partners, many of which are small workplaces with long hours and little attention paid to work-life balance. Needless to say, many of those teams are full of (and run by) young men who havent necessarily thought about parental-leave policies. Jules Ehrhardt, co-owner of ustwo and one of the brains behind the Pledge Parental Leave coalition, said it wasnt hard to convince these firms to join up. Theyre making the case, well-documented in other areas, that offering competitive and fair leave policies is cost-effective in the long run compared with the cost of recruiting and onboarding new employees to replace the ones lost to parenthood. The cost to recruit and replace an employee is about $20k more than providing paid leave, they argue on their website. Beyond a cost advantage, they argue that offering paid leave is good for company morale, recruitment, and retention of employees, and, finally, its the right thing to do. Thats a message that can easily get lost in the U.S., where many dont consider leave a basic human need. Pledges statement reads: Its basic human instinct, and frankly a human right, that parents should be with their child during their first few months. Plenty of companies tell their employees, Were more than a team, were a family. Prove it to them & set yourself apart by providing their actual family with the care and respect they deserve. The last requirement that partner companies publish their leave policy openly is a crucial one, according to Ehrhardt. Theres a real stigma attached to even asking what parental-leave benefits are, he says, and almost no one even asks. In a job interview or discussion with HR, no one wants to set off the Oh no, shes gonna have a baby alarms. This part of the pledge makes it easier to access that information without even having to ask. Ultimately, the goal is to get more companies to sign on, essentially by embarrassing them into participation, and to fill the gap as our country moves toward providing leave to parents as a standard. In 15 or 20 years, Ehrhardt says, I believe this wont even be an issue. It will be a matter of course for companies to provide leave, so, he says, youre standing on the wrong side of history if you refuse to start providing it now. For our latest installment of Out of the Box, we gave students in School of Visual Arts photography program some of springs most interesting fashion and accessories and asked them to explore them for a day through their own lens. What came back was an adventurous selection of images, each communicating different ideas and inspirations. Hailun Ma referenced Renaissance art and Chinese royal portraits using Dolce & Gabbana. Mahgameh Parvaneh drew a connection between Iranian womens rights and identity through a pair of LaCrasia gloves, and Katelyn Kopenhaver updated iconic fashion photography with a Brooks Brothers necklace. Click through our slideshow to see all these images and more. *This article appears in the March 21, 2016 issue of New York Magazine. Photo: Vote Trump, Get Dumped Chandler Smith, a 28-year-old mother of three from Cincinnati, Ohio, never considered herself much of a political activist. But a few weeks ago, she and her husband were talking about the GOP primary when they came up with an idea a Lysistrata movement for women whose partners were supporting Trump. We had a hunch that the combination of humor, anger, and sex would be pretty shareable, says Smith, who, along with her husband, got on the phone with some friends and started building a website that night. The website, Vote Trump Get Dumped, asks women to Join us by wielding your influence. Until Trump is defeated, we dont date, sleep with, or canoodle with Trump supporters. The Greeks did it. Women during the temperance movement did it. This is a tried and true method of getting mens attention when theyre being dumb. The site and its corresponding Twitter account @WomenDumpTrump which tweets misogynistic things the GOP front-runner has said about women and has collected more than 47,000 followers since launching on March 8 is Smiths way of doing her part to organize against a GOP candidate whose history of sexist comments could make a talk-radio host blush. This is meant to be a funny way to talk about serious issues. Were trying to get people talking about Trumps inability to control his tongue, and what that means about his suitability to govern and to represent America to the rest of the world, Smith says. Its not just the homespun efforts of people like Smith and her friends many of the most serious efforts at stopping Trump have come from women. The largest GOP super-pac working to defeat Trump, Our Principles PAC, is run by Katie Packer Gage, who was Mitt Romneys deputy campaign manager in 2012. The group, which was given $3 million in funding by GOP megadonor Marlene Ricketts, represents the largest effort by the Republican Establishment to go after Trump so far. Our Principles put a new ad out last week featuring women reading from the litany of sexist things Trump has said about women over the last few decades. It was viewed nearly 2.5 million times in the first two days. The fact that women are leading the anti-Trump coalition probably isnt an accident a Reuters poll released last week reveals that fully half of American women have a very unfavorable view of the GOP front-runner. Packer Gage isnt the only woman running an anti-Trump super-pac theres also Make America Awesome, run by GOP strategist Liz Mair, which ran ads in Iowa, New Hampshire, and Nevada. Its important for anyone who is legitimately conservative, libertarian, or civil-liberties-focused-progressive to organize against Trump, says Mair, whose super-pac has targeted Trump on his business record and past support for single-payer-style health care. It just so happens that the people who most successfully organized the fastest, and those who have had the biggest impact, are women. Maybe thats because were better multitaskers, or maybe we just happen to have special antennae that enabled us to see the Trump threat more clearly and earlier. I do think its interesting that the most effective critics of Trump seem to be women. It may also be that Trump represents everything the women working to reform the party have been trying to avoid. For Packer Gage, the anti-Trump effort is in some ways a natural extension of Burning Glass Consulting, the firm she started with Romneys former ad-maker Ashley OConnor in 2013 to help the GOP do a better job with women voters particularly single women, whove become an increasingly decisive voting bloc in the last several election cycles. In 2014, Burning Glass helped Republican candidates tailor their campaign messages to different segments of women voters and encouraged them to more forcefully respond to Democratic attacks on their records. I think one of the most important things we did as a party this cycle is we didnt nominate any cavemen, Packer Gage said at the time, referring to candidates like Missouri congressman Todd Akin, who famously lost a Senate race by declaring that a woman couldnt get pregnant from legitimate rape. In Trump, the GOP has managed to find someone with an even worse record of anti-women statements than they probably ever thought possible. He is a complete boor. He regularly makes sexist, demeaning remarks about women. He is the opposite of what the Republican party needs in order to win general elections, Packer Gage says. He isnt a man who has made a couple of ill-advised remarks about women. He regularly communicates that women have no value beyond their physical appearance and what they offer him personally. If women dont reject that behavior in our leaders, who will? Of course, none of the strategies used to thwart Trump have worked not the millions of advertising spent against him or the online campaigns. Nor have the gross comments he made about Megyn Kelly after she confronted him for calling women fat pigs on a debate stage. Even the allegations that his campaign manager assaulted a reporter, Michelle Fields, havent seemed to hurt him at least not yet. But if the attacks arent working now, Packer Gage and other Republicans working against Trump point out, theyre almost certainly going to in the general election: In 2012 Obama won 56 percent of women voters, helping seal his victory. Against Trump, she says, Hillary is on track to get 6065 percent of women. The GOP cannot overcome that. One recent ABC/Washington Post poll suggests that Trump could lose women to Hillary by as much as 21 points a number that suggests a significant loss of support for the party among women swing voters. But increasingly, the conservative women I spoke to werent willing to sit around and hope that Trumps record on women would become a campaign issue. I just kept thinking everyone was going wake up and realize what Trump was like, [that] they were going to get it, but they werent getting it. It got to this point that he had this momentum and it just was appalling to me that people had not stopped to see what this man stood for, says Donna Baer, who writes about her transition from being an Ivy Leagueeducated careerist to a homeschooling mother of ten. So Baer (whos Chandlers mom) started gathering her own opposition research under a website she called President Porno. There were groups talking about his tax policy and immigration policy and it seemed like a lot of people were talking about other things that were wrong with the candidate, but no one was talking about his views on women, Baer says. I felt like that had to be a voice that was heard. No matter where you are on the political spectrum, if you speak like that about over 50 percent of the electorate, you have a problem. Theres something wrong with you. Baer might not have extra millions lying around to give to the anti-Trump cause. But shes doing her part, too. The world focused its attention recently on Cheniere and the United States first liquid natural gas export. But the more telling story actually lies behind the scenes and stems from the state-controlled Russian corporation Gazprom. Over the course of the past six months, the company has begun to experiment with what it deems to be a new pricing strategy driven by conventional market forces, in which the company auctions off natural gas in a competitive marketplace. Gazprom is effectively deviating from their standard pricing convention, whereby the commoditys price is indexed or linked to oil via a long-term contract. While it is true that this weeks announcement focuses only on a small sub-sector of the companys clientele the Baltic States of Lithuania and Latvia the geopolitical implications are profound. Impact of the shale boom Across commodities, the influence of the shale boom has been felt from Riyadh to Moscow, and things arent changing any time soon. The United States shale boom, coupled with the output of other countries such as Australia, has afforded the United States and other countries the opportunity to now source their natural gas from a more competitive marketplace. Related: Seeing Beyond Sentiment In Oils Latest Rally As a result of this increasingly competitive landscape, global prices have converged, as a consumers location is no longer as important in dictating the price they receive as it once was. Ultimately, the influx of producers from the United States and Australia has suppressed the arbitrage opportunities that previously existed based on geography. Countries in the Asia-Pacific region and proximate to Russia are paying a premium. (Click to enlarge) The tightening of global prices over the past year and a projection through December 2018. Source: Timera Energy Outside of the overall price convergence, the latest moves by Gazprom are one of the first signs that the geopolitical implications of gas production increases are coming to fruition. In a competitive market, simple economics suggest that given the precipitous drop in oil prices and their linkage to natural gas, any rational producer would look for ways to support revenue levels, including price changes. But the Eastern European natural gas market is quite far from competitive, and it is no secret that the Russian government has historically been able to leverage their position as a key, if not the only, supplier of natural gas to these countries to maintain or demand a high price. Related: Have Oil Markets Grown Numb To Supply Disruptions? The recent news highlighting the change in pricing structure, despite being labeled as business as usual by company leadership, suggests that the Russian enterprise is looking for alternative ways to claw back market share. It can no longer strong-arm its consumers into an inequitable deal. Outside of the U.S., many other countries and their respective corporations, such as Norways Statoil, are beginning to infringe upon what had always been Russian dominated markets as well. In a world mired in geopolitical conflicts, European leaders have been looking for ways to reduce their dependency on Russian gas. Consequently, the auctions suggest that the pressure is finally being felt in Moscow. Another factor in Gazproms new strategy is the EUs pending antitrust concerns where the EU is effectively claiming price gouging against the company. In shifting to a blended pricing strategy of long term contracts indexed to oil and a market-based auction, the company is employing a win-win strategy that not only appeases the EU but also backs the strategic effort to regain lost market share and respective geopolitical influence. Whats next for Gazprom and Russia? As the rise of new and enhanced production capabilities in the natural gas market continues, energy-producing countries such as Russia and state-owned enterprises such as Gazprom need to adapt a more strategic focus. Marketplace actions, which suggest these countries and their corporations are revisiting their strategies, are a testament to the impact of the global supply increase. They also speak to the potential efficacy of these industries and their players as a foreign policy tool. Related: What Happens When Oil Hits $50? Furthermore, simply because Russia is opening itself up to a more market-oriented style of pricing doesnt mean that the geopolitical influence it has over Europe with regard to natural resources is going away any time soon. However, it does mean that the state-owned companies such as Gazprom have begun to feel the pressure. They may continue to act in ways consistent with preserving the status quo and maintaining market share. Studies suggest that Russia, as a low cost producer, may act in a fashion similar to OPEC and apply pressure to other market participants by using price to its advantage. This is an indeterminate path at best. The impact of increases in commodities production capacity and output across the world has forced the hands of the leading market players, and natural gas is no different. In regions of historic contention, this supply impact is beginning to reshape the relevant power dynamics that govern energy resources. It may ultimately serve to change regional geopolitical alliances as well. By Eric Simmons via Globalrisksinsights.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Oil prices have climbed by about 50 percent from their February lows, topping $40 per barrel. But the rally could be reaching its limits, at least temporarily, as persistent oversupply and the prospect of new shale production caps any potential price increase. U.S. oil production has steadily lost ground over the past two quarters, with production falling more than a half million barrels per day since hitting a peak at nearly 9.7 million barrels per day (mb/d) in April 2015. American oil companies have gutted their budgets and have put off drilling plans, with many projecting absolute declines in 2016. That has sparked a renewed sense of optimism among oil traders. Moreover, supply outages in places like Iraq and Nigeria have also knocked at least a quarter of a million barrels per day offline, an unexpected disruption that put upward pressure on prices in March. Geopolitical unrest still has the ability to influence prices, even while the world is awash in oil. More oil bulls are piling on in anticipation of the April OPEC meeting, on an unfounded belief that the production freeze may actually have any material impact on global oil supplies. Related: Horizontal Land Rig Count Summary 18th March 2016 But while oil traders have found some reasons to believe that oil prices are rising, there are just as many, if not more, data points to backup bearish sentiment. Storage levels in the U.S. continue to set records, hitting 523 million barrels for the week ending on March 11. Until inventories start to deplete in a significant way, oil prices will face a lot of resistance trying to break above $40 per barrel. Iran also continues to add production, albeit at a slower-than-expected rate. In fact, the rally to $40 was largely driven by speculation. As short bets peaked and started to unwind, traders closed out positions at a rapid clip, helping to push prices up by $12 to $13 per barrel in less than two months. The trend continued last week as hedge funds and other major money managers increased their net-long positions on crude by another 17 percent. Short positions are now at their lowest levels since last June. But now, with oil traders taking the most bullish positions in months while the fundamentals still have not shifted in a correspondingly significant fashion, traders have set up the conditions where oil prices could snap back to the downside. Once it becomes clear that OPEC wont come to the rescue, and traders have taken bullish bets to unwarranted levels, prices could fall back to the mid-$30s. Related: What Happens When Oil Hits $50? It isnt just a speculators game, however. The physical market could change as well with oil prices as high as they are shale drilling could comeback with oil prices at $40 per barrel and above. Some areas of North Dakota have breakeven prices at around $20 to $25 per barrel. Drilling for oil in shale is already a short-cycle event a well can take weeks or months to be completed, whereas an offshore project can take several years. On top of the quick lead times, U.S. shale companies are also sitting on thousands of drilled but uncompleted wells (DUCs). Over the past year, companies did not want to complete their wells and sell their output into a depressed market and/or they needed to save cash in the short-run so decided to defer well completions. That means a wave of production, the extent of which is unclear, could come back online when oil prices prove enticing enough. Reuters cited a Wood Mackenzie estimate that found that the backlog of DUCs has already begun to decline, falling by about one-third over the past six months. In the Permian Basin and the Eagle Ford, more than 600 wells sit on the sideline awaiting completion, which could lead to the production of an additional 100,000 to 300,000 barrels per day. The backlog of DUCs should be worked through this year and next, returning to normal by the end of 2017. Related: Oil Markets Increasingly Bullish As Long Positions Surge "If the number of DUCs brought online is surprising to the upside, that means U.S. production won't decline as quickly as people expect," Michael Wittner, global head of oil research at Societe Generale, told Reuters. "More output is bearish. Companies could even be forced to complete more wells in a rush to meet debt payments. Neil Atkinson, head of the oil market division at the International Energy Agency (IEA), largely agrees with the potential shale restart. If prices keep rising, we could find that because of the cost cutting and the technology improvements that some of this marginal production is switched back on, he said in a March 18 interview with Fuelfix. But how long does it take to reassemble crews, get the labor, the equipment and all the rest of it? This is what we dont know. Baker Hughes reported that the oil rig count actually turned positive last week, rising by one to 387 (the overall rig count declined by four to hit 476, due to the loss of five natural gas rigs). Obviously, one data point does not prove a trend, but the dramatic declines in rig counts in 2016 have slowed and basically come to a halt in March. It is too early to tell, but drillers could begin to add more rigs if oil prices rise above various breakeven points. That is not good news for oil prices. By Nick Cunningham of Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Four people have been killed in a suicide bombing in Turkeys largest city, Istanbul, as the Islamic State makes its presence felt more tangibly in the country, whose government is playing a dangerous double game over Syria. The attack on Saturday saw a suicide bomber target a busy tourist area, killing four people, including an Iranian and three Israelis, two of whom were U.S. citizens. According to Turkish officials, the suicide bomber was a Turkish citizen and a member of the Islamic State who was reportedly operating in Syria for two years before illegally re-entering Turkey. Israeli media maintains that the Israelis were deliberately targeted, based on the Twitter claim of a Turkish journalist that the suicide bomber followed the Israeli tourists from their hotel and waited until they exited the restaurant before launching the attack. Turkey is on full alertand the expectations are that while President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has lost control over this increasingly geopolitical gambit, he will also use this as a springboard for even more drastic security measures. After taking over the daily Zaman newspaper for the state and turning into a friendly mouthpiece, the government has also banned gatherings in the wake of the terrorist attacks, which include two recent high-profile attacks in the capital Ankara in addition to the attack last weekend in Istanbul. On Monday, Turkish police fired tear gas and rubber bullets into crowds of hundreds of people celebrating the Kurdish New Year, Nevruz, and dozens were arrested in an Istanbul neighborhood in the run-up to these celebrations. The situation in Turkey is spiraling out of control, and the attack in Istanbul is indicative of a very dangerous trend. The attack took place in a pedestrian thruway and will strike at Turkeys already troubled tourism industry. Too many conflicts on overlapping fronts are coming down to bear on Turkeys central streets. And what happens to Turkey will reverberate across Europe. The European Union is facing a major destabilizing crisis brought about ultimately by the conflict in Syria. At issue is the destabilizing force of more than one million irregular immigrants coming into the territory through Greece since January 2015. Turkey, of course, views this as a major bargaining chip with the EU. Last week, Turkey agreed to take back refugees and asylum seekers landing in Greece, thereby closing off this particular human smuggling route. In return, the EU will give Turkey 6 billion euros in aid to help 2.7 million Syrian refugees now in Turkey. Turkey is also trading in here on an eased European visa regime for its citizens. But its just a putting a bandage on an open wound. Closing off this human smuggling route will divert traffic to another. Either way, Turkey is clearly tearing apart at the seams. By Charles Kennedy for Oilprice.com More Top Reads From Oilprice.com: Reprinted from Mike Malloy Website Bet Ted Cruz wishes he had a Jewish Baby to exploit to AIPAC like the hairflap did today in the mass-pandering-fest. Cruz all but promised to turn the Gaza Strip into glass, while Donald Trump just kept yammering about how much he loved the Jews -- how many Jew friends he had, how his daughter is about to pop out a baby Jew ... I kept expecting Chris Christie to start pulling bagels out of his pockets. Hillary Clinton and John Kasich also took their turn wooing the Jews. Kasich gave the grown-up point of view. Hillary reminded the crowd that she's the True Blue Jew lover of the bunch as demonstrated by her successful oppression of the Palestinian people during her years as Secretary of State. What a surreal news day it has been. Watching the telescreens flip between shots of politicians ass-kissing AIPAC and Obama inspecting a gaggle of goose-stepping Cuban soldiers. Oh, and then there was Trump's press conference where he defended his punch-happy supporters, and campaign staffers. The only politician who avoided the Cubans, Jews, and bullies was Bernie Sanders, who stayed above the chaos while on the campaign trail in the West. (Image by Screenshort/MSNBC) Details DMCA Those who know that Donald Trump is an aberration may enjoy David Brook's recent column. It is an elitist mea culpa that stinks of anti-democracy. Brook's column, "No, Not Trump, Not ever" is the perfect read to understand the elitist nature of the mainstream media. To be clear, I know Donald Trump is wrong for America. Most know that. However, it is a derelict mainstream media that is primarily responsible for Donald Trump. Many blame the Republican establishment for condoning the likes of Trump, birthers, haters, liars, and other hacks in their party. That is only partially correct. The mainstream media gave the deviant behavior of the Republican renegades plausibility for existing. Now Brooks as a representative of a corrupt media is issuing a mea culpa? He starts with a condescending statement about the average American voter. In convincing fashion, Republican voters seem to be selecting Donald Trump as their nominee. And in a democracy, victory has legitimacy to it. Voters are rarely wise but are usually sensible. They understand their own problems. And so deference is generally paid to the candidate who wins. Voters are not unwise. They are low information who make bad decisions because of a derelict mainstream media. Donald Trump can get away with lying because the media has allowed the lies of the plutocracy to become the norm. The norm has failed most Americans. Hell, they voted for trickle down, lax regulations, wars, and much more. What have they received in return? A subpar existence. Brooks questions whether the voters' will should be respected. The question is: Should deference be paid to this victor? Should we bow down to the judgment of these voters? Only after holding voters in contempt did he provide his and the media's mea culpa. Many in the media, especially me, did not understand how they would express their alienation. We expected Trump to fizzle because we were not socially intermingled with his supporters and did not listen carefully enough. For me, it's a lesson that I have to change the way I do my job if I'm going to report accurately on this country. Really? Journalists are supposed to be well read in history. They are supposed to be that entity that provides transparency between the government and the people. They are the bridge between the powerful and the less powerful. They should represent the truth. Instead, they have become incompetent by design. The plutocracy wants low information citizen voters. They forgot low information voters are a double edged sword. And voting for a Donald Trump is that bad edge. David Brooks accurately describes Trump in a manner that should have been done months if not years ago. He is a childish man running for a job that requires maturity. He is an insecure boasting little boy whose desires were somehow arrested at age 12. He surrounds himself with sycophants. ... Donald Trump is an affront to basic standards of honesty, virtue and citizenship. He pollutes the atmosphere in which our children are raised. He has already shredded the unspoken rules of political civility that make conversation possible. In his savage regime, public life is just a dog-eat-dog war of all against all. As the founders would have understood, he is a threat to the long and glorious experiment of American self-government. He is precisely the kind of scapegoating, promise-making, fear-driving and deceiving demagogue they feared. Brooks answers his undemocratic question he stated at the beginning of his column. Trump's supporters deserve respect. They are left out of this economy. But Trump himself? No, not Trump, not ever. 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 Palestine Chronicle The apparently sudden Russian military withdrawal from Syria, starting on 15 March, left political commentators puzzled, but few of the analyses offered should be taken seriously. There is little solid information about why the Russian leader decided to end his country's military push in Syria. The intervention, which began last September, was enough to change the direction of the war on many fronts. However, one thing is certain: the Russian withdrawal is reversible, as indicated by Vladimir Putin himself. "If necessary, literally within a few hours, Russia can build up its contingent in the region to a size proportionate to the situation developing there and use the entire arsenal of capabilities at our disposal," he said at the Kremlin on 17 March. In fact, all parties involved are taking such a threat seriously, for the abrupt withdrawal has not renewed the appetite for war and does not present an opportunity for any major party in the conflict to pull out of the Geneva peace talks. It is safe to say that after five years of war in Syria, the conflict is entering a new phase. Not a political resolution, but a grand political game that could divide the country into several entities, along sectarian lines. If that takes place, it will bode badly, not only for Syria, but also the whole region. Division would become the buzzword according to which all current conflicts could expect to be settled. While Russia's motives behind the withdrawal are yet to be clarified, the intrinsic link between the move and the current talks, in which dividing Syria into a federation has been placed on the agenda, is unmistakable. "UN mediator, Staffan de Mistura, should be ashamed to have put 'federalism' on the agenda of this week's talks on ending the Syrian war and fashioning a 'new' Syria," wrote Michael Jensen in the Jordan Times. "Moscow, plus some Western powers, should also be sharply criticized for thinking of such a possibility." In fact, the model is not entirely Russian. The latter managed to rebalance the conflict in favor of the government of Bashar Al-Assad, but various other parties, Western and Arab, in addition to Turkey and Iran, have also managed to steer the conflict to a virtual deadlock. With no goodwill involved, and little trust among the conflicting parties, dividing the country has morphed from a far-fetched possibility to a genuine probability. As such, it came as no surprise that, while the Russian withdrawal was still taking place, and shortly after the resumption of talks in Geneva, the Kurdish-controlled area in Syria declared itself to be a federal region in the north. Of course, the move is unconstitutional, but Syria's violent bedlam has become the perfect opportunity for various groups to take matters into their own hands. After all, the very violent Daesh has carved a state for itself and fashioned an economy, created ministries and even written new school textbooks. However, the move by the Syrian Kurdish PYD is, in fact, more consequential. Daesh is a pariah group that is not recognized by any other party in the conflict. The PYD, which is an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), on the other hand, has much sympathy and support, from both the US and Russia. The group was credited for fighting Daesh intrepidly, and expected political dividends for that role. It was not, though, invited to the talks in Geneva. Although the federal declaration was seen as some sort of payback for being excluded from the talks, it is unlikely that the PYD made the decision without covert support from its main benefactors, who have been floating the idea of federation for months. For example, the idea was articulated by Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institute in a Reuter's op-ed last October. He called for the US to find a "common purpose with Russia," while keeping in mind the "Bosnia model." More recently, during testimony before a US Senate committee to discuss the Syria ceasefire, Secretary of State John Kerry revealed that his country is preparing a "Plan B" should the ceasefire fail. It may be "too late to keep Syria as a whole, if we wait much longer," he said. The Russian partaking in the war may have altered the landscape of the conflict on the ground, but it also further cemented the division model. Recent comments by Russia's Deputy Foreign Minister, Sergei Ryabkov, that a federal model for Syria "will work to serve the task of preserving [it] as a united, secular, independent and sovereign nation," was the Russian spin on Kerry's remarks. Considering the current balances of power in Syria itself and the region as a whole, it might eventually become the only feasible solution for a country torn by war and fatigued by endless deaths. Qatar and other Gulf countries, though, have already rejected the federalism idea, although considering the Syrian government's latest territorial gains, their rejection might not be a pivotal factor. Turkey also finds federalism problematic for it will empower its arch enemies, the Kurds, who, according to the model, will be granted their own autonomous region. The PYD announcement was a trial balloon at best, or a first step towards the division of the whole of Syria. Considering how grisly the Syrian war has been in these past few years, federalism might not strike many as a dreadful possibility, but it is. Arab countries are historically an outcome of Western and foreign meddling that divided the region in accordance to strategic interests and convenience. That "divide and rule" mindset has never been vanquished; indeed, it has been strengthened under the American occupation of Iraq. "'Federalism' in the context of this region is another word for division and partition," Jensen elaborated. "It is a curse word and a curse concept for countries in this region where sectarian and ethnic communities have been planted for centuries in the bodies of states, like raisins in a Christmas fruitcake." "Hillary Clinton never met a war she didn't like." Michael Collins Michael Collins (Image by anonymous) Details DMCA My guest today is political observer and writer Michael Collins. JB: Welcome back to OpEdNews, Michael. Let's jump right in. What's your take on the primaries so far? MC: Joan, it's a pleasure to talk with you today. The presidential primaries represent a choice between tragedy and real opportunity. A Republican tragedy is guaranteed through the impending nomination of Donald Trump. The man is never wrong, even when everybody knows the truth. Worse than that, Trump stands up in front of volatile crowds and plays on their worst fears. He talks about punching protesters and then people get punched. He talks about ISIS being involved in protests against him to further incite his supporters against protesters. Personal filters and boundaries are completely alien to Mr. Trump. This is something we've never seen before in a presidential campaign. With Trump as the Republican candidate, we will have months of this rhetoric more appropriate to a professional wrestling show than political discourse. The Trump tragedy is guaranteed, win or lose. If he wins, we face the possibility that he might actually get elected. If he loses the nomination, the outcome will be just as tragic. That tragedy presumes the likely Clinton nomination. An imploded Republican party with either Republican loyalists or Trump supporters sitting on the sidelines guarantees a Clinton victory. Let's look at the essence of her public record. JB: What is your major concern with Hillary? MC: She never met a war she didn't like. She voted for the Iraq invasion, the very worst foreign policy decision imaginable and the cause of over a million deaths. She either knew or should have known that the Bush White House lacked any real evidence to support the invasion. More recently, as Secretary of State under President Barack Obama, Clinton was instrumental in formulating and implementing the programs to oust Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and the legitimate President of Syria, Bashar Al-Assad. Not one of these nations posed an imminent threat to the security of the United States and she knew it. The current totals for lives lost in Libya and Syria as a result of the Clinton-supported chaos and mayhem is 100,000 people in Libya and 250,000 people in Syria. She didn't kill anyone with her own hands but her aggressive policies to create civil wars to oust Gaddafi and Assad destroyed the societies of the two nations and got a lot of people killed and injured. Libya is a failed state now. Syria has 11,000,000 displaced people with its infrastructure destroyed. I don't know exactly how many wars you need to support to acquire the label war monger but I am quite sure that war efforts with 350,000 dead in Libya and Syria meets the requirement. To paraphrase the Bible, we shall know her by her works. Hillary Clinton is a dangerous leader. If elected president, she has the potential to ruin much more than two countries. Next Page 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher). Reprinted from Consortium News At the annual AIPAC convention, the Democratic and Republican front-runners engaged in what might be called a "pander-off" as Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump tried to outdo the other in declaring their love and devotion to Israel. Yet, what was perhaps most troubling about the two dueling speeches was the absence of any significant sympathy for the Palestinian people or any substantive criticism of the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. By contrast, Sen. Bernie Sanders, who did not attend the AIPAC convention, delivered a foreign policy speech in Salt Lake City, Utah, that struck a more balanced tone and placed part of the blame for the Mideast problems on the policies of Netanyahu's right-wing government. However, in Washington before thousands of cheering attendees at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee convention on Monday, Clinton, Trump and two other Republican candidates, Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich, were in full pander mode. For instance, former Secretary of State Clinton depicted Israel as entirely an innocent victim in the Mideast conflicts. "As we gather here, three evolving threats -- Iran's continued aggression, a rising tide of extremism across a wide arc of instability, and the growing effort to de-legitimize Israel on the world stage -- are converging to make the U.S.-Israel alliance more indispensable than ever," she declared. "The United States and Israel must be closer than ever, stronger than ever and more determined than ever to prevail against our common adversaries and to advance our shared values. ... This is especially true at a time when Israel faces brutal terrorist stabbings, shootings and vehicle attacks at home. Parents worry about letting their children walk down the street. Families live in fear." Yet, Clinton made no reference to Palestinian parents who worry about their children walking down the street or playing on a beach and facing the possibility of sudden death from an Israeli drone or warplane. Instead, she scolded Palestinian adults. "Palestinian leaders need to stop inciting violence, stop celebrating terrorists as martyrs and stop paying rewards to their families," she said. Then, Clinton promised to put her future administration at the service of the Israeli government, asking: "The first choice is this: are we prepared to take the U.S./Israel alliance to the next level?" Clinton said, "One of the first things I'll do in office is invite the Israeli prime minister to visit the White House. And I will send a delegation from the Pentagon and the Joint Chiefs to Israel for early consultations. Let's also expand our collaboration beyond security." Clinton lashed out at the global boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement which has sought to convince Israel to respect the human and political rights of Palestinians by applying economic and moral pressure on Israeli businesses. Yet, instead of a non-violent movement to achieve change in the Israeli-Palestinian dynamic, Clinton saw anti-Semitism. "Particularly at a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise across the world, especially in Europe, we must repudiate all efforts to malign, isolate and undermine Israel and the Jewish people," she said, adding: "we have to be united in fighting back against BDS." Clinton also indirectly criticized Trump for having said earlier in the campaign that the United States should be "neutral" in its handling of peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians. "Yes, we need steady hands, not a president who says he's neutral on Monday, pro-Israel on Tuesday, and who knows what on Wednesday, because everything's negotiable," Clinton declared. Trump's No-Pander Pander Armed forces fighting decisive war against terrorism in tribal areas: Mamnoon Hussain WANA: President Mamnoon Hussain said on Monday that the armed forces were fighting a decisive war against terrorism in tribal areas and officers and soldiers were rewriting a history of valour and gallantry. Talking to army officers and soldiers here, the president paid tribute to the forces for their sacrifices, successes and achievements in the war against terror. This was first ever visit of any president to South Waziristan Agency since the operation had been initiated against terrorists in the area. The anti-state elements were out to weaken the country through their subversive activities but their evil designs were being foiled by the armed forces, he noted. Condemning recent terrorist attacks in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the president said that terrorists had no religion and they were enemy of humanity. He said the Operation Zarb-e-Azb was initiated as per spirit of Islam, as terrorism was a curse and the operation was launched to wipe out the menace. The president called upon the army to take stringent measures to save their future generations from terrorism. The nation, he said, had full confidence in the armed forces. About the temporarily displaced persons (TDPs), the president said they were being compensated and repatriated to their native areas in a dignified manner. The civil administration in the tribal agency had been reactivated and for this purpose, he said, locals were being inducted in Levies force so that the terrorists might not regroup there. About the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), he said the project would change the destiny of the country all the provinces as well as the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. It would usher in a new era of economic prosperity and development, he said. Earlier, General Officer Commanding Maj Gen Khalid Javed gave a detailed briefing to the president about the security situation in the tribal region. Khyber Pakhtunkhwa Governor Iqbal Zafar Jhagra and officials of the civil and military administrations received the president on his arrival. Later, the president visited Wana Cadet College and announced a grant of Rs 5 million for the college. India committed to peaceful and cooperative relations with Pakistan: Indian President ISLAMABAD: Indian President Pranab Mukherjee has said his country is committed to peaceful, friendly and cooperative relations with Pakistan. India remains committed to peaceful, friendly and cooperative relations with Pakistan, he said in a letter to President Mamnoon Hussain to felicitate him on Pakistan Day. I am of the firm conviction that our cooperation will lead to progress and prosperity in our region, the letter added. Indians should hang heads in shame over demolition of Babri Masjid: Pranab Mukherjee The letter, a copy of which was released by Indian High Commission in Islamabad on Monday, said the Indian president also extended best wishes to his Pakistani counterpart for his good health and well-being. The statement came at a time when Islamabad and New Delhi are trying to find a way out of the current impasse in their bilateral dialogue, interrupted due to the attack on Indian airbase in January. The incident in Pathankot had left at least seven security personnel dead, with India alleging that it was carried out from the neighbouring country. A Joint Investigation Team (JIT) formed by Pakistan to probe the incident will travel to India later this month in a move that may help pave way for key meeting between the foreign secretaries. Nawaz Sharif looking forward for Iranian President visit ISLAMABAD: Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has expressed the hope that the upcoming visit of Iranian President Hassan Rouhani will help revitalise bilateral ties. I am looking forward to welcoming President Rouhani later this week. The visit will be a great opportunity for us to review the whole range of bilateral relations and further strengthen brotherly ties, Mr Sharif said, while talking to Iranian Ambassador Mehdi Honardoost, who met him ahead of the presidents trip, here on Monday. Mr Rouhani will visit Islamabad from March 25 to 26. The Iranian president will be accompanied by a high-ranking political team and a large trade and economic contingent. This would be the first visit by an Iranian president to Pakistan in four years. President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad visited Islamabad in Feb 2012 for a trilateral summit with Afghan and Pakistani leaders. Mr Rouhanis visit is part of the Iranian governments international outreach for renewing ties with its traditional trading allies and partners after the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, a deal between Tehran and the P5+1 (Russia, China, the US, Britain, France and Germany), took effect on January 16 and provided for the lifting of nuclear-related sanctions. Mr Sharif has indicated the governments interest in economic and energy cooperation with Iran, saying that the revival of the economy and overcoming the energy deficit are high-priority areas of his government. Iran has been expressing keen interest in expanding energy cooperation with Pakistan, particularly for the export of electricity, natural gas, crude oil and petro-chemicals. Tehran is also desirous of taking part in infrastructure projects such as laying of highways and rail tracks; construction of dams; and establishment of oil refineries and power plants. Tehran wants to make the long held-up Iran-Pakistan gas pipeline the centrepiece of the renewed economic cooperation. Mr Honardoost reminded PM Sharif of the low volume of trade between the two countries, which currently stands at a few hundred million dollars. No deal with the PML-N govt over Musharraf: Chaudhry Shujaat LAHORE: Former president retired Gen Pervez Musharraf has denied that he left the country after striking a deal with the PML-N government, says PML-Q president Chaudhry Shujaat Husain. I spoke to Gen Musharraf and asked him about the deal rumours, he categorically denied that his leaving the country (for Dubai) was the result of any deal (with the PML-N government). He also did not seek pardon, Chaudhry Shujaat told a news conference at his residence on Monday. He said that the former army chief had also told him that he would return to Pakistan after his treatment. When doctors allow me, I will return to Pakistan, Shujaat quoted Gen Musharraf as saying. He said the former president had also invited him and Chaudhry Pervaiz Elahi to Dubai. We will decide (to meet him in Dubai) after consulting party leaders, he said. Ahmad Raza Kasuri, a former leader of the All Pakistan Muslim League, had claimed earlier that travel restrictions on the former military ruler had been lifted as a result of an off-shore deal struck with the Nawaz government. Chaudhry Shujaat also said that taking the issue of Gen Pervez Musharrafs travel abroad would be a waste of time and money. The joint session should be convened on the galloping price hike, unemployment and lawlessness in the country. After the verdict of the Supreme Court, the government was left with no other option but to allow Gen Musharraf to proceed abroad for treatment, he said. In reply to a question about efforts to form a grand alliance against the government, Chaudhry Shujaat said: The oppositions grand alliance will be formed only when the number of candidates for the slot of prime minister is reduced. He predicted that former president Asif Ali Zardari would also return. Talking about Mustafa Kamals sudden entry to the political arena, the PML-Q president said: Mustafa Kamal should pinpoint terrorist elements in the MQM. The entire MQM is not a terrorist party. Had it been so it would not have won seats in Karachi. He also suggested to Mr Kamal to name his party as MQM-Pakistan. We are an Egyptian based share holding, was established on 2012, working as stockbroker/ trader. Pls quote yr best CIF price for supplying premium quality used vegetable cooking oil suitable for Biodiesel for our local clients. Required quantity: 2000 MT/ Y. First shipment would be as a trial order of 50T. Payment Terms: Covered by irrevocable confirmed LC from first class bank, covering 100% of the goods. All charges, fees, commissions of the LC in Egypt will be born by us, while that of outside Egypt would be born by the supplier. Meanwhile, pls advice yr supply ability / month PHUKET, Thailand The temperature was high at Phukets recent Burgerfest (Saturday 19th March) as 16 of Phukets best restaurants, hotels and resorts battled away to find out who has Phukets Best Burger. An annual event now in its second year, the Burgerfest was again held at Royal Phuket Marina where approximately 800 1,000 people feasted on the grilled fare and discussions about bun to meat ratio were interspersed with cold beer and wine as the anticipation built. A small group of food experts and burger lovers gathered behind closed doors to blind-taste 16 of the islands best patties and buns (and so much more) as they ate their way through a challenging feast. After almost one hour of eating, judging and re-judging, the results were in. The winners were announced in front of a packed Town Square at the marina and the winner and home of Phukets Best Burger 2016 was Kata Rocks who went home with the islands burger bragging rights, the shiny perennial trophy, a wall-mounted certificate and a brand-new BBQ from BBQ Shop. Second place went to The Frying Kiwi with third to XANA Beach Club, last years inaugural winner. Introduced this year was a special Phukets Best Looking Burger category, which was voted on looks alone and exclusively by the Phuket media corps. Judging the same 16 burgers, the Phuket media announced JW Marriott Phuket Resort & Spa as the winner of the 2016 Phukets Best Looking Burger. A celebration of everything burger, organisers confirmed the 2017 Burgerfest will be even bigger and better. Watch this space! Credit: NIH Think your DNA is all human? Think again. And a new discovery suggests it's even less human than scientists previously thought. Nineteen new pieces of non-human DNAleft by viruses that first infected our ancestors hundreds of thousands of years agohave just been found, lurking between our own genes. And one stretch of newfound DNA, found in about 50 of the 2,500 people studied, contains an intact, full genetic recipe for an entire virus, say the scientists who published their findings in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Whether or not it can replicate, or reproduce, it isn't yet known. But other studies of ancient virus DNA have shown it can affect the humans who carry it. In addition to finding these new stretches, the scientists also confirmed 17 other pieces of virus DNA found in human genomes by other scientists in recent years. The study looked at the entire span of DNA, or genome, from people from around the world, including a large number from Africawhere the ancestors of modern humans originated before migrating around the world. The team used sophisticated techniques to compare key areas of each person's genome to the "reference" human genome. Working at Tufts University and the University of Michigan Medical School, the researchers made the findings with funding from the National Institutes of Health. HERV-enly find The findings add to what science already knows about human endogenous retroviruses, or HERVs. That's the name for the ancient infectious viruses that inserted a DNA-based copy of their own RNA genetic material into our ancestors' genomes. They're part of the same type of virus that includes the modern human immunodeficiency virus, which causes AIDS. Over generations, the virus-generated DNA kept getting copied and handed down when humans reproduced. That's how it ended up in our DNA today. In fact, about 8 percent of what we think of as our "human" DNA actually came from viruses. In some cases, HERV sequences have been adopted by the human body to serve a useful purpose, such as one that helps pregnant women's bodies build a cell layer around a developing fetus to protect it from toxins in the mother's blood. The new HERVs are part of the family called HERV-K. The intact whole viral genome, or provirus, just found was on the X chromosome; it's been dubbed Xq21. It's only the second intact provirus found to be hiding in human DNA. In the researchers' own words: "This one looks like it is capable of making infectious virus, which would be very exciting if true, as it would allow us to study a viral epidemic that took place long ago," says senior author and virologist John Coffin, Ph.D. of the Tufts University School of Medicine. "This research provides important information necessary for understanding how retroviruses and humans have evolved together in relatively recent times." "Many studies have tried to link these endogenous viral elements to cancer and other diseases, but a major difficulty has been that we haven't actually found all of them yet," says co-first author Zachary H. Williams, a Ph.D. student at the Sackler School of Graduate Biomedical Sciences at Tufts University in Boston. "A lot of the most interesting elements are only found in a small percentage of people, which means you have to screen a large number of people to find them." "This is a thrilling discovery," says co-first author Julia Wildschutte, Ph.D., who began the work as a Ph.D. student in Coffin's lab at Tufts. "It will open up many doors to research. What's more, we have confirmed in this paper that we can use genomic data from multiple individuals compared to the reference human genome to detect new HERVs. But this has also shown us that some people carry insertions that we can't map back to the reference." U-M genetics researcher Jeffrey Kidd, Ph.D., worked with Wildschutte when she was a member of his laboratory team. "These are remnants of ancient events that have not been fixed in the population as a whole, but rather happened in the ancestors of some people alive today," Kidd says. "There have been a number of examples of other HERVs that insert themselves next to human genes or near them, and have impact on their expression. We're interested in applying these methods to find other types of viral or mobile element insertions." Genetic teamwork The Michigan team used methods for characterizing repetitive DNA sequences that Kidd and his team had developed, while Coffin and Williams used complementary techniques. Wildschutte is now at Bowling Green State University. Many of the genomes they examined were from the 1000 Genomes Project, an international collaboration. Another set of genomes came from work Kidd and colleagues at Stanford University had done as part of the Human Genome Diversity Project, with a focus on DNA samples from African volunteers. These latter samples showed more signs of HERVs, in line with the high level of genetic diversity in African populations. That diversity stems from the longtime stability and intermixing of the continent's population - as opposed to other populations in Europe, Asia and the Americas that stem from specific out-migrations in ancient times. Cataloging all the HERV insertions in humans will require even more scanning of whole human genomes, which are becoming easier to come by as technology improves and becomes less expensive. And although intact proviruses lurking in our DNA may be rare, the impact of other HERV sequences on our health or disease is probably not. Explore further Ancient viral invaders in our DNA help fight today's infections More information: Julia Halo Wildschutte et al. Discovery of unfixed endogenous retrovirus insertions in diverse human populations, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2016). Journal information: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Julia Halo Wildschutte et al. Discovery of unfixed endogenous retrovirus insertions in diverse human populations,(2016). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1602336113 Lilypad reduces information gathering amidst a hectic classroom of students to just a few taps on a tablet. Students aren't the only ones taking notes in the classroom these days. Keeping track of students in a bustling environment is one of the many challenges faced by teachers on a daily basis. But for behavioral specialiststhe aides, psychologists and caseworkers who are also part of the classroom team "keeping tabs" poses a different set of challenges. These professionals are charged with gathering very specific data on student behaviors while also working with students to reach therapy goals. Researchers from Drexel University's College of Computing & Informatics , the School of Education and the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute are trying making it easier for these professionals to stick to their plans and understand how well they're workingeven after the bell rings. The solution that the team has in mind is an information system called Lilypad. An iPad application helps classroom staff to record behavioral information as it happens, while also guiding them through their intervention plan. A web portal will help administrators and school psychologists oversee interventions and provide more informed guidance on intervention plans. Additional components to Lilypad are also planned to engage parents and even students themselves in monitoring progress on behavioral goals. The persistent need for data collection and documentation of intervention plan implementation are driven by a provision of the U.S. Individuals With Disabilities Education Act, namely, that an individualized education plan (IEP) must be created for each student who is determined to have special needs. IEPs plot a course for more than 5 million students in the United States to achieve certain behavioral and learning goals throughout their school career. Teachers, school psychologists and specialists are responsible for documenting how this path is being followed and when the goals are reached. Lily Pad allows behavioral specialists to take notes in real time while they're working with students in a classroom setting. But documentation often takes the form of notes jotted by hand well after the fact, or a scattershot spreadsheet that is later interpreted as a homemade graph or chart. "It can be really difficult to take comprehensive notes in the classroom while also working with students," said James E. Connell, PhD, an associate professor in the School of Education and clinical director of the A.J. Drexel Autism Institute. Connell, who's input helped guide Lilypad's design, is a licensed school psychologist and studies the efficacy of intervention plans in school settings. He suggests that it can be difficult to determine if a particular intervention plan is working because of how challenging it is to record data on the fly. "In the midst of working with students, the behavior intervention specialist also has to note when behavioral issues occur, when benchmarks are reached and when particular actions were taken to implement the plan," Connell said. "And with multiple students with IEPs in one classroom, it's easy to see how inaccuracy can creep into the process." So the ambition for Gabriela Marcu, PhD, and her Empathic Design and Technology Research Group, was to build enough automation and simplicity into Lilypad's design that it could streamline the arduous recording and reporting process. Based on real-time notes from behavioral specialists, Lily Pad can generate reports on students' progress throughout the term. "Our main goal in making Lilypad is to help these professionals who are in an unpredictable environment and, in addition to their work with students, they are asked to record very specific information in a very accurate way," Marcu said. "It would be like asking a surgeon to take minute-by-minute notes on how a procedure is going, and those notes will become the legal health record." Marcu interviewed and observed behavioral intervention specialists over the course of several years to gain an intimate understanding of the challenges they're facing in the work environment. This understanding is the backbone of Lilypad's design. As a result, its many functions are distilled into just a few elements that require user interaction. The left side of the screen is a menu with the names of each student in the classroom. And at the top, four colorful widget buttons tally points toward reaching a student's behavior goals. Each widget button is linked to a particular behavior. The user taps the button to record when a behavior incident has occurredthese can be a behavior that the specialists are trying to reinforce, such as sitting quietly for five minutes; or a behavior they're trying to discourage like calling out without raising their hand. Each tap of the button creates a data point, noting the time, location, and behavior. The middle is a scrolling timeline, preprogrammed with the student's behavioral goals and capable of giving reminders throughout the day for how to reinforce those behaviors. This area can also be used to add time-stamped notes about when incidents happen and what occurred, so the user can capture details that are likely to be useful later on. Using these data points, Lily Pad can generate reports that chart particular behavioral goals for each student over a given time period. "This can be useful for the IEP team to see when particular negative behaviors are occurring throughout the day and pick up on patters that may be forming," Marcu said. "Specialists on the team need to understand what the shared goals are, how the student is progressing toward them, and to be prompted when they are going off course with respect to reinforcing positive behaviors or noting when behavioral incidents occurwhich is helpful data when adjusting the intervention plan." For researchers like Connell, there is an additional benefit in being able to see how closely an intervention plan is implemented. "There is tremendous value in understanding the success and failure of intervention techniques, but this can only be ascertained if they are administered with uniformity," Connell said. "Lily Pad's system of automated prompts and reminders helps to ensure that there is close adherence to the procedures set forth in the plans." The reports can also guide administrators in properly allocating staff and resources within their schools. They can be formatted for use as federally mandated IEP reports. And parents can look at them to better understand how their child is responding to the behavioral intervention plan throughout the school year. Lilypad is currently being tested in three classrooms in the Millville Area School District in New Jersey and the design will be continually improved and extended based on input from those users. Explore further Intervention improves teacher practices, student engagement in early elementary classrooms Despite worldwide concern about the consequences of "fracking," the British Columbia (B.C.) government is presenting its proposed Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) industry as both an economic benefit to the Canadian province and a source of 'clean' fossil fuel. Writing in the journal Environmental Communication, Sibo Chen and Associate Professor Shane Gunster from Simon Fraser University, analyze text and images from the regional government's "LNG in B.C." website the main source of public information about the project to extract LNG via hydraulic fracturing and export it to Asia. As Chen and Gunster note, the website copy "improbably but effectively" positions LNG as the opposite of other fossil fuels positioning natural gas as a clean alternative to oil and coal, and part of the pathway to what it calls a "low carbon future." The concept of "clean" is repeatedly expressed on the website through textual and visual signifiers. Even the project's logo leaf-like in shape and light green in colour suggests environmental friendliness. But in order to "sell" LNG as "clean," the website has also adopted many of the criticisms levelled at other fossil fuels, notably the tar/oil sands of Alberta, Canada. The authors write: "The immateriality of natural gas a substance that one cannot smell, touch or feel is invoked to reinforce its conceptual and affective distance and difference from the dense, toxic, and corrosive materiality of coal and bitumen in which the sensuous properties of these substances have been, discursively, inextricably bound together with their impacts as pollutants." "The idea, in other words, is that natural gas drilling has a small, almost imperceptible footprint like the gas it produces, this industrial activity is largely ethereal and will, therefore, have a minimal, almost imperceptible, impact upon the pristine wilderness of northern B.C." When it comes to dealing with the risks of LNG on its website, Chen and Gunster hold that the government takes the view that having information, or what they present as "facts", is sufficient. More emphasis is placed on being ready and able to take advantage of the many benefits a thriving LNG industry would bring but which, in reality, are based on the contested view that the Asian economy is both in need of energy and desires an alternative to coal to tackle its pollution issues. This article provides a fascinating insight into how governments create narratives to "sell" unpopular concepts to the public. It also shows that how we will achieve our promised "low carbon future" is still far from clear. Explore further French-Asian firms reveal LNG contract in Canada More information: Sibo Chen et al. "Ethereal Carbon": legitimizing liquefied natural gas in British Columbia, Environmental Communication (2016). Sibo Chen et al. "Ethereal Carbon": legitimizing liquefied natural gas in British Columbia,(2016). DOI: 10.1080/17524032.2015.1133435 Like other sea cucumbers, nocturnal "Burnt Hot Dog" sea cucumbers use their guts to help clean seafloors and coral reefs. These invertebrates take shelter during daylight hours before emerging at night to inch along the sandy seafloor in search of food. Feeding tentacles help the animal shove sand and rubble through its digestive system as it moves, absorbing nutrients from detritus (dead plant and animal matter) and expelling cleaner, oxygenated sand in its wake. Healthy marine ecosystems rely on animals that provide these types of frequent cleaning services; without them, an abundance of detritus can impact plant and animal health, which in turn decreases the health of the ecosystem as a whole. Credit: Keoki Stender Sea cucumbersthe floppy cousins of starfish and sea urchinsare particularly vulnerable to pollution and overfishing; scientists say this is bad news for ocean ecosystems worldwide. Holothuria edulisa type of slow-moving sea cucumber about the size of a classroom rulerboasts an important ocean role despite its uncanny resemblance to an overcooked sausage. This "Burnt Hot Dog" sea cucumber takes center stage in a new genetic study that digs into the animal's valued spot in marine ecosystems across Japan's Okinawa Island as well as its extreme vulnerability to environmental stress and overfishing. A team of researchers, including an expert from the California Academy of Sciences, says their study's findings are an urgent call for increased fisheries management and protections for ecologically important sea cucumbers, sometimes called the "vacuum cleaners of the ocean," worldwide. The study was recently published in the journal Conservation Genetics. Sea cucumbers, the often-overlooked cousins of starfish and sea urchins, are soft-bodied marine invertebrates that appear in myriad sizes, shapes, and thrilling colors in every ocean on Earth. More than 1,500 speciesincluding pleasingly-named "Sea Apples," "Strawberries," and "Sea Pigs"inhabit global oceans from the shallows to the mysterious deep seafloor. Despite their wide-reaching range and diversity of species, one Academy researcher says scientists need to know more about sea cucumbers' biology, natural histories, and ability to adapt to the modern threats of pollution, overfishing for food and medicine, and changing ocean climate. A rapid rise in East Asia's consumer demand for sea cucumbers for both food and medicine has increased fishing pressures in many parts of the world. Overfishing can spell extinction for species of sea cucumber that already face serious pollution and habitat destruction threats worldwide. For example, populations of Holothuria whitmaei and H. scabra -- once common in the entire Indian and Pacific oceans -- have recently declined 60 to 90 percent in most of their traditional ranges. Today, at least 16 species of sea cucumber are considered threatened with extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, a global authority on the conservation status of plants and animals. The above image depicts dried Holothuria sea cucumbers for sale in Hong Kong. Credit: Steve Taylor "It's easy to underestimate the sea cucumber," says Dr. Iria Fernandez-Silva, an Academy postdoctoral research fellow. "Sea cucumbers look goofy, move slowly, and barf up their guts when startled, but these invertebrates are superstar ocean cleaners that are hugely important to marine ecosystems. Our study looks into the genetics behind the economically-important species Holothuria edulis so we can understand the pressures they face and help protect threatened sea cucumbers globally." Like other sea cucumbers, nocturnal H. edulis use their guts to help clean seafloors and coral reefs. These Burnt Hot Dog invertebrates take shelter during daylight hours before emerging at night to inch along the sandy seafloor in search of food. Feeding tentacles help the animal shove sand and rubble through its digestive system as it moves, absorbing nutrients from detritus (dead plant and animal matter) and expelling cleaner, oxygenated sand in its wake. Healthy marine ecosystems rely on animals that provide these types of frequent cleaning services; without them, an abundance of detritus can impact plant and animal health, which in turn decreases the health of the ecosystem as a whole. A rapid rise in East Asia's consumer demand for sea cucumbers for both food and medicine has increased fishing pressures in many parts of the world. Overfishing can spell extinction for species of sea cucumber that already face serious pollution and habitat destruction threats worldwide. For example, populations of Holothuria whitmaei and H. scabraonce common in the entire Indian and Pacific oceanshave recently declined 60 to 90 percent in most of their traditional ranges. Today, at least 16 species of sea cucumber are considered threatened with extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, a global authority on the conservation status of plants and animals. Fernandez-Silva and two colleaguesDrs. Taha Soliman and James Reimer from the University of the Ryukyusare filling in a blurry picture of exactly why sea cucumber populations have trouble rebounding from overfishing and environmental stress. The team traveled around Okinawa Island to explore the genetic exchange between different populations of Burnt Hot Dog sea cucumbers, an overexploited species found along the island's varied coastline. When caught in Okinawa, Japan, H. edulis is prepared and dried for food, medicine, or export overseas. A recent uptick in commercial demand for H. edulisa species that hasn't historically been targeted by fishing interestscould be an indicator that more desirable sea cucumber species are becoming difficult to find in oceans worldwide. In Okinawa, the scientists were interested in comparing H. edulis population genetic diversityan extremely important factor in determining whether a population can safely survive in the face of stressalong a range of coastal habitats. A population of organisms that lacks diversity is more vulnerable to threats including disease, which can easily wipe out a population that is too genetically similar (and vulnerable to a particular pathogen). In the case of H. edulis, which has been known to reproduce both sexually and asexually, the researchers wondered what genetic diversity looked like in marine habitats ranging from relatively pristine to heavily developed and polluted. "The data tell a story," says Fernandez-Silva. "We saw low genetic diversity in some sea cucumber populations along Okinawa's eastern coastline, where water is polluted by nearby industry, runoff, and coastal development. In contrast, populations in more pristine sites on the island's west coast were more genetically diverse. Since populations appeared disconnected from one another, we can predict that overfishing might be the last straw for vulnerable sea cucumber populations ill-equipped for a comeback." The researchers say these genetic findings are red flags for stressed marine fisheries, and urge Okinawan officials to help study, monitor, and protect sea cucumbers as valued marine ecosystem-cleaners. Fernandez-Silva and colleagues are currently researching different species of sea cucumber in southern Japan, and say preliminary findings are showing similar connections between polluted environments and low population diversity. "Japan has the opportunity to become a leader in protecting ocean health," says Fernandez-Silva. "Urging other countries to tighten restrictions on sea cucumber fishing will help ensure the future of countless vulnerable species that help keep marine ecosystems clean and healthy. First, both Japan and Okinawa must act at home." Hawaii provides a heartening example of environmental stewardship in the South Pacific. In June of 2015, Hawaii's State Board of Land and Natural Resources passed an emergency ban on the taking and selling of sea cucumber species in state waters, which appeared to be experiencing "imminent peril" due to overfishing for export overseas. Earlier this year, Governor David Ige signed a more detailed, large-scale ban on commercial sea cucumber take that outlined a preliminary plan for more sustainable fisheries along Hawaii's shores. Fernandez-Silva and her colleagues hope that Japan and other global entities will follow suit, protecting ecologically importantand threatenedmarine species before they are lost forever. "Where ocean life is concerned, looks aren't everything," says Fernandez-Silva. "We urge global communities to speak up in defense of important marine species, even those that look like burned hot dogs. Our team will continue to explore and explain why these critical species are worthy of protection." Explore further Cracking the sea cucumber code More information: Taha Soliman et al. Genetic population structure and low genetic diversity in the over-exploited sea cucumber Holothuria edulis Lesson, 1830 (Echinodermata: Holothuroidea) in Okinawa Island, Conservation Genetics (2016). Journal information: Conservation Genetics Taha Soliman et al. Genetic population structure and low genetic diversity in the over-exploited sea cucumber Holothuria edulis Lesson, 1830 (Echinodermata: Holothuroidea) in Okinawa Island,(2016). DOI: 10.1007/s10592-016-0823-8 Charon and its tectonic belt marked in light blue. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI (Phys.org)Even though NASA's New Horizons mission provided invaluable information about Pluto's moon Charon and delivered detailed images of this unique and interesting rocky body, many mysteries still lie unresolved beneath its frigid surface. Recently, a team of scientists from the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, Israel and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), sought to solve one of Charon's secrets by creating a model that explains its internal evolution. The study was published in a Mar. 4 paper available on arXiv.org. New Horizons completed the first close flyby of the Pluto-Charon system on July 15, 2015. The spacecraft obtained high quality images of Charon's surface, identifying a series of perplexing and distinctive features. Among the most striking features observed are a series of canyons that cover the moon's surface in the region near its equator. These canyons have various sizes, cutting across and around other intriguing surface features. Some of these features are actually higher than the surrounding environment. Together, these conjoin to form what we have termed the 'tectonic belt', a collection of canyons, ridges and scarps, forming a great circle around Charon. "In some places, the features strongly indicate that the surface of Charon has been pulled apart. If Charon has undergone a period of expansion, it is possible that its surface stretched, giving rise to these kinds of features," Uri Malamud of the Israel Institute of Technology in Haifa, told Phys.org. According to the paper published by Malamud and his colleagues, Charon experienced two contraction-expansion episodes in its history that may provide the proper environment for the formation of the tectonic belt. They argue that the first episode must have happened within the first few hundred million years after Charon's formation, resulting in size changes that are sufficiently large to explain not only the extensional environment that could give rise to features like serenity chasma, but also other surface features along the tectonic belt that require a compressional environment. The model proposed by the authors considers several processes that change the internal structure of Charon as its evolution progresses. "We make the most basic assumption that Charon formed cold and undifferentiated, with a homogenous structure of mixed ice and rocks. We also consider, based on various related experimental studies, that Charon has residual porosity after its formation," Malamud said. The most massive objects naturally have the greatest pressure, and are therefore less likely to contain porosity. But Charon happens to belong to a class of intermediate-sized objects that are rather massive, but not enough to completely eliminate porosity. The scientists also emphasized that any object that is composed of rocky material also contains long-lived radioactive nuclides that release radiogenic heat over hundreds of millions of years. "In Charon, this heat builds up, causing the initially cold internal ice to warm up. Warm ice is more susceptible to compaction, and therefore Charon compresses and decreases in size," the researchers noted. However, there may be a different alternative to explain Charon's surface features. A cold initial state could be consistent with all three formation scenarios currently proposed in the scientific literature for Charon; even the in-situ formation scenario of Charon and Pluto (the hypothesis that Pluto and Charon formed in place as a pair) could fit observations. The other two formation scenarios are that Charon was captured by Pluto or that Charon formed as a result of a giant impact into Pluto (currently the favored hypothesis). "Our work therefore adds to the formation literature by pointing out that all options are definitely plausible, and that further studies are required," Malamud concluded. More information: The Contraction/Expansion History of Charon with implication for its Planetary Scale Tectonic Belt, arXiv:1603.00875 [astro-ph.EP] The Contraction/Expansion History of Charon with implication for its Planetary Scale Tectonic Belt, arXiv:1603.00875 [astro-ph.EP] arxiv.org/abs/1603.00875 Abstract The New-Horizons mission to the Kuiper Belt has recently revealed intriguing features on the surface of Charon, including a network of chasmata, cutting across or around a series of high topography features, conjoining to form a belt. It is proposed that this tectonic belt is a consequence of contraction/expansion episodes in the moon's evolution associated particularly with compaction, differentiation and geophysical reactions of the interior. The proposed scenario involves no need for solidification of a vast subsurface ocean and/or a warm initial state. This scenario is based on a new, detailed thermo-physical evolution model of Charon that includes multiple processes. According to the model, Charon experiences two contraction/expansion episodes in its history that may provide the proper environment for the formation of the tectonic belt. This outcome remains qualitatively the same even if we assume a different initial composition and mass. Two alternative explanations for the precise localization and orientation of Charon's tectonic belt are speculated. 2016 Phys.org Dark Energy Survey image of the region surrounding the faint dwarf galaxy Reticulum II. The nine brightest known stars in the galaxy are marked with red circles. Spectra showing the unique chemical content of three stars are shown. Credit: Alex Ji. Background image: Fermilab/Dark Energy Survey Reticulum II is an ancient and faint dwarf galaxy discovered in images taken as part of the Dark Energy Survey. It orbits the Milky Way galaxy about 100,000 light years away from us. Though the galaxy looks unassuming at first, the chemical content of its stars may hold the key to unlocking a 60-year-old mystery about the cosmic origin of the heaviest elements in the periodic table. Today in the journal Nature, a team of astronomers at MIT's Kavli Institute for Astrophysics and Space Research and the Observatories of the Carnegie Institution of Washington report on observations of this unique galaxy using the Magellan telescopes at the Las Campanas Observatory in Chile's Atacama Desert. Lead author and MIT physics graduate student Alex Ji explains more. Q: How are the heaviest elements in the periodic table created in the cosmos? A: Carl Sagan popularized the notion that we are all made of star stuff. He could say so with confidence because we actually know where nearly every element in the periodic table is made in the universe. But there's a hole in our understanding. The heaviest elements are made in what is called the "rapid neutron-capture process," or "r-process" for short, in which heavy elements are quickly built up from lighter seed nuclei. Gold, platinum, and uranium are r-process elements, as are more exotic elements like europium, neodymium, and gadolinium. The nuclear physics of the r-process was mostly worked out by 1957, but for almost 60 years astronomers have debated about the astrophysical site that could provide the extreme conditions for the r-process to occur. Synthesizing the r-process elements requires environments with a very large number of neutrons. The two best candidate sites are supernovae and merging neutron stars. Supernovae are the explosions that mark the end of a massive star's life. They often leave behind a remnant called a neutron star. During the formation of a neutron star, a large amount of neutrons is released. If two of these neutron stars happen to be orbiting each other, they will eventually merge to form one giant neutron star. During that explosion neutrons are released and r-process elements can form. Q: How does this dwarf galaxy help us understand the site of the r-process? A: Reticulum II is not the first ancient dwarf galaxy to have its chemical content examined; it's actually the 10th. But its chemical composition differs completely from those other galaxies. The stars in those first nine galaxies have unusually low amounts of r-process elements. Reticulum II, on the other hand, is chock-full of r-process elements. Its stars display some of the highest r-process enhancements we have ever seen. It's almost literally a gold mine. What this means is that a single rare event produced a rather large amount of this r-process material. All those elements were then incorporated into the surrounding gas and from there into the next generations of stars. It is those stars that we can still observe today. The single, prolific r-process event in this galaxy implies that a neutron star merger could have produced these elements in the early universe. A normal supernova would have produced less, and the observed enhancement could not have been as high, though it's also hypothesized that rare, magnetically-driven supernovae might be able to produce much more r-process material. Interestingly, there is indirect evidence that neutron star mergers do also synthesize r-process elements in the universe today. So it looks like neutron star mergers could be the primary r-process sites throughout cosmic time. It's amazing to think that Reticulum II preserved a signature of that extraordinary event for more than 12 billion years, just waiting for us to dig it up. Q: What was it like to be at the telescope and realize what you had found? A: Based on studying the other ultra-faint galaxies, I had expected to find stars with essentially none of these r-process elements and to further establish that these types of dwarf galaxies are devoid in these elements. So we had a plan to get some really good, low upper limits on the r-process content to push this issue. When we realized the stars in this galaxy were the complete opposite, and instead full of r-process elements, I was certain I had screwed something up. From the telescope in Chile I called my advisor Anna Frebel in Cambridge [Mass.] in the middle of the night to urgently talk about what was going on. Telescope time is precious and expensive after all and shouldn't be wasted. During the hour-long discussions that followed, I kept observing more stars while carrying out preliminary analyses of the data at hand to ensure that this was a real signal. At the observatory, astronomers work all night and sleep during the day. But after seeing the r-process elements in the first few stars, I couldn't sleep anymore; all I could do was stare out the window and hope the incoming clouds would go away again and the wind would die down. We were very lucky that it ended up being clear most of the four nights we had available. My last night there, the weather forecast, as translated from Spanish by Google, read "rain and wind." So I prepared myself to get no data that night. But it turned out Google had translated the word "despejado" incorrectly and in fact it was supposed to be "clear and wind." An important translation to get right, especially for astronomers! Explore further Tiny, ancient galaxy preserves record of catastrophic event More information: Alexander P. Ji et al. R-process enrichment from a single event in an ancient dwarf galaxy, Nature (2016). Journal information: Nature Alexander P. Ji et al. R-process enrichment from a single event in an ancient dwarf galaxy,(2016). DOI: 10.1038/nature17425 This story is republished courtesy of MIT News (web.mit.edu/newsoffice/), a popular site that covers news about MIT research, innovation and teaching. For full functionality of this site it is necessary to enable JavaScript. Here are the instructions how to enable JavaScript in your web browser 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 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! She leaves her parents home early every morning to head to her job at the All-Women Business Process Services and IT Centre. In just two years, al-Omran has gone from trainee to team leader, with three other women working directly under her. Its good to feel independent and achieve something in your career, al-Omran says. Read more: Why women should not be left behind in water management The young Riyadh natives team processes corporate invoices and payments at Saudi Arabias first business-process outsourcing center, a joint venture of Tata Consultancy Services, GE and Saudi Aramco. With several government agencies among its clients, the two-year-old center is part of the governments program to expand the Saudi economy from energy into knowledge work. Its also unique among GEs five global service centers: Only women work there. It now has nearly 1,000 employees and within two years, the center will have 3,000 women workers. The center sits at the intersection of demographics and business in Saudi Arabias capital. Previously, 80 percent of the countrys workforce was in the public sector; now the government is trying to stimulate private enterprise, and international companies have set up shop. The women-only facility is part of the National Transformation Initiative of King Salman and his son the Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and taps an unused resource, says Dr. Amal Fatani, the Saudi-born pharmacology and toxicology professor who heads the center. We are utilizing one of the most important treasures we have in this country: our daughters, says Fatani, a mother of four herself, who worked for decades setting up and running womens departments at Saudi Arabias first university, King Saud University, as well as at the Ministry of Higher Education. Although the government has embarked on a campaign to integrate women more fully into private enterprises, the workforce participation rate of the kingdoms women is still comparatively low. Just 13 percent of Saudi workers are female, although women account for 51 percent of university graduates, according to reported Saudi government statistics. (The number is higher in education and healthcare, where women account for around 40 percent of workers.) Fatani says that Saudi women prefer to work with other women. She say that it has been a great challenge convincing them to work in the private sector, as its mainly a mixed environment. At the TCS center, everyone from executives to janitors is female. In addition to recruiting candidates, the center also has to convince clients that Saudi women can do the work. That requires changing some incorrect stereotypes, says Deepa Vincent, the Tata manager sent to Saudi Arabia to head human resources for the center. Neither the requirement to wear the abaya nor the restrictions put on womens participation in society means that women are subservient or less talented in business, she says: A Saudi woman knows exactly what she wants. The initial efforts seem to be working. Clients include businesses in Turkey and North Africa, as well as in sub-Saharan Africa, Europe, the U.S. and India. They include the Saudi government, as well as sponsors Saudi Aramco and GE, which has promised to invest $1 billion in the country. For college students, the center is a sought-after place to work amid a dearth of options. Al-Omran is driven, studious and bilingual in Arabic and English, but Saudi Arabia is a tough place for a woman to be an accountant. So when al-Omran, about to get her bachelors degree in accounting with a diploma in financial modeling from Riyadhs King Saud University, heard about a new local company that was hiring female graduates, she applied. After she received her offer, her father, who works in the aircraft industry, visited the center and interviewed her new bosses to make sure it was an acceptable situation. With his support, al-Omran started as a trainee in January 2014. At a conference held in Accra dubbed Forest for future, new forests for Africa, Kofi Annan singled out Rwanda for praise, urging other African countries to learn from Rwanda as it has a simplified process of doing business. He also skewered practices that leads to corruption. Today there is too much bureaucracy, too much red-tape in Africa -- which also encourages corruption. Each time you need to get a permit for something, a hand comes out, he said. There are simple ways of doing business and African countries can do it. Rwanda is very high up the list of countries where it is easy to do business. They transformed themselves -- and other African countries can do that and set up structures and reduce bureaucracies in the system, he said. Mr. Annan lauded what he says is incredible reforms in Ethiopia in the area of agriculture. He said to bring about change, African leaders must have the political will and determination to clean up the system. We have also seen incredible reforms in Ethiopia in the area of agricultureso there are a couple of examples of African countries that demonstrate it can be done, he said. The reports reveal that the nationwide contest had been cancelled after the victim, Fedy Jayadi, 45, had choked to death on his third chicken wing. Mr Jayadi had reportedly been rushed to the hospital after he had begun to choke on his third wing, but had later collapsed with the paramedics pronouncing him dead. The 'Eat or Treat' contest had reportedly offered the sum of $1 billion rupiah (5,263) as the prize for winning the contest Mr Jayadi had reportedly reached the elimination round before the unfortunate incident had occurred, leading to the cancellation of the entire competition which had run across 239 KFC outlets across Java and Bali. President Mahama in a tweet condemned the act and urged Ghanaians to "stand in solidarity with Belgium". Background A blast was reported at the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels, which is just meters away from the Gare de Bruxelles-Schuman railway station. The Maalbeek metro station blast in Brussels has killed at least 10 people according to local police, as cited by TASS. The explosion came less than an hour after a bombing at a Brussels airport killed at least 34 people. David Ekemiy, a Nigerian, was arrested at his residence, Rasta Down near the Koforidua Polytechnic in the Eastern Region during a routine patrol by the Eastern Regional Loss Control Unit (LCU) of the Electricity Company of Ghana (ECG) with the assistance of the police. Read more: Pastor arrested for illegal connection According to the General Manager of ECG in the region, Ing. Michael Baah, the estimated units lost as a result of Davids actions is about 6,000 units, and added that the company is taking stringent measures to retrieve all the debt owed by customers. He said the company had been recording many losses in the region, and all were due to the activities of power thieves. Ing. Baah reiterated that the company was resolved to ensure that those caught in the act of illegal power connection faced the full rigours of the law. He said the practice was becoming too rampant in the region and it was time the culprits were brought to book, adding that the company is in the process of prosecuting all culprits of power theft in the region. See also: 17 arrested for illegal connection of power However, women often suffer from certain inequities related to the water and sanitation management decisions . As Ghana joins the rest of the world to mark World Water Day, here are three reasons why women should not be left behind in water sanitation and management. 1. Women are more vulnerable to water-related diseases. They are often more exposed to dirty water through their roles in carrying out domestic chores, such as cleaning toilets, preparing food, and washing clothes. Because the provision of hygiene and sanitation are often considered womens tasks, women participating in water management decisions will enable them to make good inputs that will promote and educate leaders in home and community-based sanitation practices. For instance, women should be active in sustaining local water management through watershed management, water harvesting, handpump repair, pipeline maintenance and so on. Women can thus be paid to run campaigns on purification and other ways of reviving traditional sources of water. 2. Women lose a lot of time fetching water, which has a negative impact on their economic lives, as well as their personal and family life. It therefore becomes imperative for financial decisions on water management to involve women. It is said that women have generally higher loan repayment rates than men, they better manage their income and tend to invest it in better family welfare, according to NGO Women Aid. In this regard, adequate resources should be allocated to implement gender strategies in the sector. Gender responsive budgeting should also not be overlooked as it will enable women and girls also benefit from hygiene and sanitation efforts. 3. As main stakeholders for water resources, women should be involved in water infrastructure decisions, particularly in the design, location and construction of toilets and sanitation blocks. As it stands, women are not given the required attention when constructing such facilities. He said he is surprised by the importation of mercenaries by the NPP to come and destabilize the country. His comment follows the arrest of three South African ex-police officers in the Central region over their alleged involvement in activities which could derail the security of the country by the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI). The trio arrested by the BNI are, 54-year-old Major Ahmed Shaik Hazis (Rtd.), 39-yearold WO/ Denver Dwayhe Naidu (Rtd.) and 45-year-old Captain Mlungiseleli Jokani (Rtd.), were picked up on Sunday March 20, 2016 at El Capitano Hotel in Agona Duakwa in the Central Region. The suspects according to BNI claim they are security management consultants, for one Hazis who was part of the flagbearer of the NPP, Nana Akufo-Addos security detail during the 2012 elections. BNI documents available to the media say "The trio, all ex-police officers were engaged in training fifteen young men in various military drills, including unarmed combat, weapon handling, VIP protection techniques and rapid response maneuvers." The BNI document stated that, "strangely, however, when the Police and BNI operatives went to the hotel to ascertain their mission they were refused entry by the trainees. However, the security operatives finally entered the place and conducted a search on them. Surprisingly, a comprehensive report on the operations of Superlock Technologies Ltd (STL) was found in the possession of Hazis. The document contained a detailed profile of all the workers of STL, past and present and went on to identify key staff members, giving an assessment of their strengths and vulnerabilities with the view to possibly compromising them so as to get them commit acts that will tend to favour a particular party in the 2016 elections, using the STL security infrastructure. Images of all workers of STL were also contained in the document." But Koku Anyidoho speaking on Kasapa-FM said, "The NPP is now dealing with mercenaries because somebody wants power at all cost. It is very scary. They did it to Kwame Nkrumah and now want to do it again." He said "If they were here in 2012, why were they not picked up? Their arrest means that the circumstances have changed this time around." "Nobody should panic and nobody should be afraid. The elections will be conducted in a peaceful manner and a president will be crowned. Akufo-Addo cannot intimidate anybody," he added. Read related: Ghana residents react to Ivory Coast terror attacks The BNI document stated that "Strangely, however, when the Police and BNI operatives went to the hotel to ascertain their mission they were refused entry by the trainees. However, the security operatives finally entered the place and conducted a search on them. Surprisingly, a comprehensive report on the operations of Superlock Technologies Ltd (STL) was found in the possession of Hazis. The document contained a detailed profile of all the workers of STL, past and present and went on to identify key staff members, giving an assessment of their strengths and vulnerabilities with the view to possibly compromising them so as to get them commit acts that will tend to favour a particular party in the 2016 elections, using the STL security infrastructure. Images of all workers of STL were also contained in the document." The project dubbed Ghana wash window project will enable about 22 Ghanaian water companies to apply for grants through comprehensive proposals. The project, when completed is expected to produce safer drinking water to at least 2 million Ghanaians with each site construction ranging between $75,000 to $100,000 thousand. Ghana will also benefit from 85 water treatment plants and production centers across the ten regions of country beginning from the Ashanti Region. The grant from the Dutch comes at a time when Ghana joins the rest of the world to mark World Water Day under the theme Better water, better jobs. Officials of Volta River Authority (VRA) and the power ministry were in Ivory Coast over the weekend to negotiate for extra power supply. The Chief Executive Officer of the VRA, Kirk Coffie, said Ivory Coast is willing to help and that over the weekend, they gave Ghana enough power. He added that they will also supply power to Ghana weekdays during off peak periods. I was in Ivory Coast with the Deputy Minister of Power, Jinapor and the Chief Executive Officer of GRIDCo to talk to them for some extra supply. They were willing and over the weekend they are able to give us enough and weekdays off peak they are able to also give us, he said on Citi FM. Touching on thermal plants, Mr. Coffie said adequate preparations have been made to buy crude oil, adding that the country has a million barrels of oil to be discharged to the various thermal plants to power it. We have made the adequate preparations to buy crude oilWe got almost a million barrelsWe discharged 300,000 barrels for our plants in Tema and we are on our way to discharge 400,000 barrels in Takoradi. The extra 200 will be discharged again in Tema, he said. Tullow Ghana declared force majeure on two cargoes of Ghana's Jubilee crude oil after an issue on the Floating Production Storage and Offloading (FPSO) facility that exports the oil. "We have deferred two liftings at Jubilee while we implement new operating procedures for off-take from the FPSO," the company said in a statement. Prior to Tullow's statement, the FPSO was scheduled to undergo a two-week maintenance on March 20. Ghana Grid Company on Sunday said power supply to Ghanaian consumers will be affected for a few days following the vandalism of some pipelines of WAPCo in Nigeria. A statement signed by the Chief Executive of the Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo), Mr. William Amuna said gas flow from the WAPCo pipeline has reduced to only 6mscf from the contracted volume of 120mscf. According to the court, the motion was also premature at this stage of the trial and also lacked merit. Read more: Counsel for Zanetor pushes for dismissal of suit Today's ruling is the second set back to Dr. Zanetor Rawlings to quickly bring the matter to an end as a similar motion was also dismissed for the same reasons a couple of weeks ago. Lawyers for Zanetor Rawlings filed the motion last week arguing the high court lacked jurisdiction over the matter due to the constitutional interpretation being sought and describing the entire action brought before the court was premature. Koku Anyidoho earlier accused the NPP of dealing with mercenaries in the country. He said "The NPP is now dealing with mercenaries because somebody wants power at all cost. It is very scary. They did it to Kwame Nkrumah and now want to do it again." But Obiri Boahen disagreed saying, "Only the unrepentant immature person will draw that conclusionthe police have not done any investigations, so, it is only immature people exhibiting amateurish [behaviour], who will draw that conclusion. "Even nursery kids will not talk that way. Lets not rush.It is absurdity of the highest order," he noted. " To draw that conclusion is madnesseven if criminals are arraigned before court, the presumption is that they are innocent until proven guilty," he told Accra-based Class FM on Tuesday, March 22, 2016. The trio arrested by the BNI are, 54-year-old Major Ahmed Shaik Hazis (Rtd.), 39-yearold WO/ Denver Dwayhe Naidu (Rtd.) and 45-year-old Captain Mlungiseleli Jokani (Rtd.), were picked up on Sunday March 20, 2016 at El Capitano Hotel in Agona Duakwa in the Central Region. The suspects according to BNI claim they are security management consultants, for one Hazis who was part of the flagbearer of the NPP, Nana Akufo-Addos security detail during the 2012 elections. BNI documents available to the media say "The trio, all ex-police officers were engaged in training fifteen young men in various military drills, including unarmed combat, weapon handling, VIP protection techniques and rapid response maneuvers." "What they are here to do is to train the security detail of Nana and Dr. Bawumia on how to control crowd because day in day out the popularity of our candidates begin to soar," he said. The three, 54-year-old Major Ahmed Shaik Hazis (Rtd.), 39-yearold WO/ Denver Dwayhe Naidu (Rtd.) and 45-year-old Captain Mlungiseleli Jokani (Rtd.) were arrested on Sunday March 20, 2016 at El Capitano Hotel in Agona Duakwa in the Central Region. A Bureau of National Investigations document said The trio, all ex-police officers were engaged in training fifteen young men in various military drills, including unarmed combat, weapon handling, VIP protection techniques and rapid response maneuvers. But, Perry Okudzeto has said it will be 'irresponsible' to identify the three as terrorists as being reported. According to him, the three are retired police officers from South Africa who offer private protection services for some IT companies. An alleged terrorist attack took place in not one, but two different transportation hubs located in Brussels, Belgium. Now, well-known stars like Kerry Washington, Eva Longoria, Sam Claflin, Iggy Azalea, and others are reaching out to send their thoughts, prayers, and positive vibes to the survivors as well as the victims families. The suspect who is a father of three, ha reportedly lured the girl to his house where he defiled her after sh was sent to fetch water at a bore hole by her mother. The young victim identified as Hafsat, was on her way back after fetching the water when the suspect intercepted her and lured her to his house. A resident said Joshua allegedly forced the girl into his room and locked the door after which he had carnal knowledge of her. As soon as they entered the room, Joshua bolted the door and had carnal knowledge of her. Efforts by the girl to raise an alarm while the act lasted proved abortive as he used his hand to cover her mouth and stop her from screaming." After the act, the girl ran home and reported the incident to her parents who alerted the police, leading to the suspect's arrest. The two brothers are are both married, confessed to the incest which happened at their home in Katariga, a community in the Sagnarigu District of the Northern Region, when they were summoned to appear before the chief of the area, Katariga Kamo Naa. The residents of the area who had gathered at the public hearing, were shocked as the brothers confessed that the day they were caught defiling the teenager, was not the first time they had sex with her as they had done it several times. The victim also narrated her ordeal at the hands of her two step-brothers, saying that on March 5, 2016, she was defiled by the two brothers while she slept in Amins room where she had gone to watch television in the night. After forcibly having sex with her, they warned her not to inform anyone about it but that she informed her mother of the assault but that she was branded a liar and a peddler of falsehood by her mother. The brothers continued to having carnal knowledge of the girl till they were caught on March 12, 2016, when Mashud forcibly had sex with her in his room when she returned from an errand. It was the victim's cry for help that attracted neighbours who caught the suspect in the act. Mysterious illness sickens over 22 persons, mostly children in Colorado, USA. According to , David Friedel, the citys fire chief, confirmed the news and said that though the cause is still unknown, but all victims were said to have falling ill after entering a pool at a recreation centre on Saturday, March 19,2016. Vanguard reports that the Airforce Alpha jets bombed some key facilities of Boko Haram and killed one of the sects kingpin during the operation. The Aiforce, on February 2, 2016, also destroyed the terrorists' logistics base at Garin Moloma, about one kilometer north of the Sambisa Forest. According to the Director of Air Force Public Relations, Group Captain Ayodele Famuyiwa, the hideouts of the sect in Yobe state has been destroyed and their movements destabilised. Famuyiwa said The target was selected after careful Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (ISR) by NAF Unmanned Combat Aerial Vehicle, UCAV. The mission, that was carried out in support of surface forces to further degrade the fighting capacity of the remnants of the insurgents, was successful. The target was probably an ammunition depot, a fuel dump or a facility housing other combustible materials. This effort is likely to create certain logistics constraints for the terrorists along the Allagarno axis. This is a follow-up to other interdiction missions previously carried out in Sambisa forest, Kumshe, Iza and other suspected terrorists hide-outs. Meanwhile troops from 22 Brigade Garrison on Sunday, March 20, 2016, killed a Boko Haram commander and 18 others. See Pulse Photo Gallery below. According to the Army spokesperson, Elements of 22 Brigade Garrison carried out a clearing operation at Dalore camp on Sunday in which they killed 19 Boko Haram terrorists among whom was Ameer of Dalore. The troops also captured 2 AK-47 Rifles, one Small Machine Gun and one Hand Grenade and recovered four pickup vehicles. The troops also rescued 67 hostages from the terrorists. The freed hostages are undergoing screening at Internally Displaced Persons in Dikwa. The government of Germany has also expressed their interest to help Nigeriatrain its security agencies and exchange intelligence that will help the ongoing fight against Boko Haram. Dr. Andrew Pocock, the former British High Commissioner to Nigeria, recently revealed in a report that the United States Of America (USA) and the United Kingdom (UK) spotted the location of the Chibok girls, but did nothing to rescue them. See Pulse Photo Gallery below. Speaking at the National Economic Council retreat on the economy held at the State House Conference Centre, Presidential Villa, Abuja, Monday, March 21, 2016, the President admitted that the privatisation of the power sector has not changed anything in terms of performance. Nigerians favourite talking point and butt of jokes is the power situation in our country. But, ladies and gentlemen, it is no longer a laughing matter. We must and by the grace of God we will put things right, Buhari said As listed by the President, some of the problems of the sector includes, constant power cuts destroying economic activity and affecting quality of life; high electricity bills despite power cuts and low supply of gas to power plants due to vandalization by terrorists. Others are obsolete power distribution equipment such as transformers; power fluctuations, which damage manufacturing equipment and household appliances and low voltage which cannot run an industrial machine. Buhari also highlighted solutions to the problems - he said the government will fast-track completion of pipelines from gas points to power stations and provide more security to protect gas and oil pipelines; adding that the power companies will be encouraged to replace obsolete equipment and improve the quality of service and technicians. He however charged the National Electricity Regulatory Commission (NERC) to ensure consumers get value for money and overall public interest is safeguarded. The Speaker made the call at the inauguration of the Mobile Health Centre for IDPs in Wasa, in Abuja. "When you look at the faces of the IDPs and the non-provision of facilities that will cater for their immediate health needs, it will be obvious that it is a serious problem. "Where you find healthy people, they can engage in the pursuit of happiness, wealth creation and generation", he said. EFCC Chairman, Ibrahim Magu and the Minister of Justice and Attorney-General of the Federation, Abubakar Malami are also said to have gone on the trip to Dubai, according to The Nation. Yes, the AGF and the EFCC chairman with some top officials of the anti-graft agency are in Dubai for a follow-up technical session on the Mutual Legal Assistance between Nigeria and the UAE, a government source said. I can confirm the official trip and it is meant to recover looted funds, the source added. The Federal Government team has met with those from the UAE on intelligence sharing, the list of those on EFCC radar, the number of highly-placed Nigerians with fat accounts in UAE and those with choice properties in Marina (Dubai), Bur Dubai, Abu Dhabi and Doha, another source said. The success of the collaboration between the Federal Government team and the UAE Government will determine when EFCC will release the concessions on some of these PEPs. Very soon, we will unveil these ex-political office holders, the source added. Kaduna State Senator, Shehu Sani had recently revealed that Nigerian officials had stashed over $200 billion in Dubai alone. The Nigerian government had, on January 19, 2016, signed a bilateral agreementwith the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to enable the extradition of corrupt officials hiding stolen funds in Dubai. ----------------------------------------------- This was revealed by Annkio Briggs, a human rights and minority rights activist who alleged that Yunusas legal team was more fortified that the prosecution team. Briggs also expressed her dissatisfaction at the way the trial was handled by the police. She said How come Yunusa, a Keke driver has a more formidable legal team comprising of good lawyers. I hear the defense team has up to 10 lawyersMs. Is he the one hiring the lawyers? Briggs also said I am not at all satisfied at the way this matter is going, this is a very sensitive case, if it was someone that went to Kano to abduct a 13-year old, the country would have been on fire by now. The Bayelsa and Delta state governors have not done anything to support the prosecution of this matter, abandoning the prosecution to the Police, who from what I saw in court , is not good enough. Yunusa, who pleaded guilty to the charges against him, has since been See Pulse Gallery below. The senior pastor was said to have been abducted alongside his Vice President, Reverend Iliya Anto and one Reverend Yakubu Zarma along the Kaduna Abuja Express Way According to Vanguard, the pastors were on the church farm, which was about 17km away from the Kaduna-Abuja expressway when they were whisked away. Report said another pastor, Jubrailu Ibrahim Wobiat, who managed to escape the attack recounted the the ordeal. He said: We went to clear the land to start building our seminary school. We finished work of the day and we were about leaving. The Vice President was to take off to Abuja, suddenly we saw men wearing masks and armed with AK-47 rifles. They were about six. They blocked the small access road leading to the main road as our President, his vice and the other clergy man were driving out of the place. They ordered them out of their cars, but one of the drivers who was driving the Vice President escaped and ran back to those of us who were still behind at the site to tell us about what had happened. We quickly abandoned our cars and ran into the bush for our dear lives and got to the Express Way to the town. The police later escorted us to pick our cars. They demanded for N100 million, they also told us that the Vice President is sick and they described a location where we could pick him. But when we went there with the police, we couldnt see him. Somehow, they were monitoring us." For today, March 22 2016: VANGUARD NEWSPAPER Power situation in Nigeria no longer laughing matter BuhariABUJA President Mohammadu Buhari on Monday woke up to the realities of epileptic power supply in Nigeria, saying that the situation was no longer funny. READ MORE No more elections in Rivers until peace returns INECPORT HARCOURT THE Independent National Electoral Commssion, INEC, has said that it will not return to Rivers until the state is conducive to conduct elections. READ MORE RMAFC disagrees with AuGF over NNPC N4.9trn unremitted revenueThe Revenue Mobilization Allocation and Fiscal Commission, RMAFC, yesterday, disagreed with the Auditor-General of the Federation, Mr. Samuel Ukura, over the alleged N4.9 trillion which he claimed the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, NNPC, failed to remit to the Federation Account. READ MORE____________________________________________ THE PUNCH NEWSPAPER INEC office deserted as Rivers APC demands poll cancellationThe Rivers State Chapter of the All Progressives Congress has called on the Independent National Electoral Commission to go beyond the suspension of state and National Assembly elections in eight local government areas of the state and cancel the entire exercise. READ MORE Lagos fire razes 100 buildings, kills two tradersNo fewer than 100 makeshift structures were razed on Monday after fire ravaged a part of Small Kuramo in the Lekki area of Lagos State. READ MORE Rapists strangle UTME candidate, dump corpse inside bushParents of 20-year-old Joan Egemba, have been thrown into mourning after their daughter was stabbed and strangled by some suspected rapists in the Ijebu Igbo area of Ogun State. READ MORE____________________________________________ THE NATION NEWSPAPER Seven ex-governors, others to lose loot kept in DubaiAll seems set for the repatriation of over $200billion stashed away by some former governors, ex-ministers and other public officers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), The Nation learnt yesterday. READ MORE Youth Corps member shot dead during Rivers rerun pollA National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) member on election duties was shot dead during Saturdays Rivers legislative election, it was learnt yesterday. READ MORE The union has described the action of the government led by Elrufai as anti-democratic and has called on Kaduna workers to ignore the governors directive. National Chairman of the Joint National Public Service Negotiating Council (Trade Union side), Comrade Kiri Mohammed who made the call said such a directives is discriminative and violated workers fundamental human rights. The statement further said the Joint Council pledges total support to the committed efforts of the NLC led by Comrade Ayuba Wabba to save the workers from undemocratic and anti-workers policies of Kaduna State Government. The attention of the Joint National Public Service Negotiating Council (Trade Union side) has been drawn to anti- workers action of Kaduna State Government by issuance of special exercises on staff verification forms, issued by the Kaduna State Government, office of the Governor to fill and indicate no to union. The Council discovered that after the exercise recently conducted, the State Government issued obnoxious policies compelling Civil Servants not to identify with any Trade Union of their choice. We hereby direct Kaduna State Civil Servants not to sign the form the union said. We have to fight corruption in two ways; one is by punishing those who steal, and making sure they pay for what they do. But we also must plug all the holes by building institutions and systems that prevent corruption in the first place, she said. If you have a financial system for running your financial accounts that is not computerised, that is not technologically based, youre still transferring cash, as we were doing in my country up until 2003, 2004, then youre opening up the place to a lot of people leaking, she added. The former minister has been severally accused of having a hand in the corruption which took place during the Goodluck Jonathan administration, under which she served. The issue is whether the Nigerian President under the constitution has the power to approve funds belonging to local, state and federal government- funds that have not been appropriated by the National Assembly. That is a criminal offence for which Okonjo-Iweala ought to face criminal prosecution, Edo State Governor, Adams Oshiomhole said during an interview with Leadership in December 2015. And they took cash from the CBN. The Money Laundering Act says if you take cash in excess of N5 million transaction, it is money laundering and it is criminal. So, by Dasukis letter, he has also confirmed that Okonjo-Iweala is a privy to spending money never appropriated and therefore criminal, and that cash were being moved contrary to the money laundering act. Just using Dasukis own defence, you can see a case of conspiracy has been established between Dasuki, Okonjo-Iweala and all those involved in that transaction, Oshiomhole added. Okonjo-Iweala has however vehemently denied the claims attributing them to attempts to tarnish her good image. According to him, the death penalty would discourage kidnapping and other associated vices in the state, adding that the assembly wants to be proactive in making laws that will protect lives and property. Also speaking on the forthcoming House of Assembly bye-election in Ife Central, Salaam said: We dont want bloodshed before, during and after the election, and that is why I am pleading with you to mount surveillance around lfe. The bye-election is taking place following the death of the House minority leader, Dejo Makinde, who represented the Ife Central constituency. According to Kafarati, he was forced to abandon the trial because his integrity was called into question. Online platform, Sahara Reporters had earlier accused the judge of delivering cash and carry judgments among other things. It is only in this country that people can wake up and start calling people names, Kafarati said according to The Cable. In the circumstance, I disqualify myself from this case. I will hereby send the case file to the chief judge for re-assignment to another judge, he added. Saraki had approached the court to seek the cancellation of charges of false declaration of assets brought against him by the Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB). The Supreme Court had earlier ruled that the Senate Presidents trial at the Code of Conduct Tribunal (CCT) must continue. --------------------------------------------- The ex-militant leader was listed as the first accused person in the charge filed in January 2016 before Justice Ibrahim Buba. The former Director General of the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA), Patrick Akpobolokemi and four other persons were also listed in the charge as co-accused persons. The EFCC has unable to arraign the ex-NIMASA boss and others due to Tompolo's failure to honour the court summons issued on him to appear in court, since January. Despite being declared wanted by the anti-graft agency, security operatives have combed possible hideouts of Tompolo but he is no where to be found. At the proceedings on Tuesday, March 22, 2016, Tompolo was again absent in court, as well as his lawyers, Tayo Oyetibo and Ebun-Olu Adegboruwa. The EFCC prosecutor, Festus Keyamo, told the presiding judge that Tompolo's name has been removed from the charge, and sought the court's permission to ahead with the other accused persons. He said Tompolo would be arraigned and tried separately once he has been captured. The other accused persons were however admitted to bail by Justice Buba after they plea not guilty to the charges which bordered on conspiracy, fraudulent conversion and laundering of various sums of money belonging to NIMASA. The trial has been adjourned till May 23. There are certain things leaders will do today, you will eat it tomorrow. You want to declare state of emergency, declare it and we will tell you that the state of emergency will not work too. This country belongs to all of us. Speaking on the rivers rerun elections that held on March 19, 2016, Fayose said I want to condemn the election in Rivers state. I want to condemn the militarisation. Like I said to some people yesterday, if say Ekiti election nobody was slapped, nobody died, the person defeated congratulated the winner, do we now call this Rivers election Rivers of Bloodgate? Because for a peaceful election in Ekiti and this in Rivers, the military has got no business in our election. Now, I want to say that if you watch the trend, PDP has always won all the elections after the annulment. Which means what happened in Rivers is just a service of ego of some individuals who believe they have Nigeria in their pockets, they can call the president at will to deploy the military and it is unfortunate that somebody would allow the military to kill his own people. I strongly condemn the elections in Rivers and charge that we sustain the legacy of transparent elections. For me in Ekiti, we learned from that and we are prepared. We prepare for election everyday and we are fully prepared, Fayose said. Fayose also blamed President Buhari for the violence that trailed the State and Federal legislative rerun polls in Rivers state. The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ekiti State also accused the Governor of shooting at his own car and blaming it on armed robbers. See Pulse Photo Gallery below. This is contained in a statement issued in Abuja on Monday, March 21, 2016, by Sani, President Muhammadu Buharis aide on Administration Matters. She said Nigerian women were aware of the fact that the National Assembly understood their yearnings and therefore expect them to promote all laws for the protection of womens rights and their potentialities. She said the lawmakers should be aware of Nigeria's commitment to various international instruments such as the Convention on the Elimination of All Kinds of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) and the African Charter for Human and People's Rights, among others. "It is in this light that I want to thank the President of the Senate, Bukola Saraki, for requesting that the proposed bill on gender parity and prohibition of violence against women be re-presented to the senate. "The Senate President has urged women to go back to the drawing table and review the document in such a way that it will stand a test of plausibility. "We are very hopeful that the content of the revised bill will appeal to many senators for adaptation as no nation prospers when over half of its population is disenfranchised, she said. Sani also commended the sponsor of the bill, Sen. Abiodun Olujimi, for her courage, especially now that the senate is made up of only six per cent women. The allegation was made by PDP spokesperson, Olisa Metuh via a statement released on Monday, March 21. It reads: The nation and the international community should hold INEC, security operatives and the All Progressives Congress (APC) responsible for any breakdown of law and order in the state over the non-release of the final results. The only reason for the seizure of the results is the fact that the PDP candidates were in clear and overwhelming victory in all the reruns, prompting the APC, in connivance with INEC, to seek to use the delay to manipulate the results. Nigerians and the international community can now see the desperation of the APC, which has now arm-twisted INEC in the unholy bid to alter the results of the elections and subvert the will of the people. We want the APC and INEC to mark the salient fact that the PDP, the people of Rivers state and indeed all Nigerians are already aware of the results from respective polling centres, wards and local government areas and will in no way whatsoever accept any final result that does not tally with the actual and already established figures from the polling units. We wish to remind the APC and INEC that Rivers state is a known stronghold of the PDP and the results from the elections cannot show otherwise. INEC should therefore understand that Nigerians are aware that in withholding the final results, they are ostensibly preparing grounds for chaos in the state. While we invite all to note the avoidable growing tension occasioned by the desperation of the APC to steal the mandate of the people, we caution INEC to extricate itself from the evil web and immediately release all the final results of the ballot as cast by the people and nothing more. INEC has said that it will not announce results or conduct any fresh elections in Rivers until peace is restored in the state. ------------------------------------------------ It reads: The U.S. Embassy is concerned about reports of violence, including the possible targeting of electoral officials, and irregularities during re-run elections in Rivers State on March 19, 2016. We condemn the use of violence and disruptions of the democratic process. We call upon the leadership of Nigerias political parties to urge their supporters to conduct themselves peacefully throughout the electoral process. We call on those dissatisfied to pursue a resolution of their grievances peacefully in accordance with the rule of law. Meanwhile the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has suspended the announcement of election results due to the violence which was recorded. ------------------------------------------------ The APC chairman in the state, Dr Davies Ikanya, made the call on Monday, March 21, at the state secretariat in Port Harcourt, Rivers capital. Flanked by the APC governorship candidate in Rivers in the 2015 election Ikanya and other state executives of the party, Ikanya alleged that the Police connived with the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP to manipulate the election. He refuted Governor Nyesom Wike's allegation that members of APC had stormed Mile 1 Police station on Sunday, March 20, to influence the result of PHALGA, pointing that it was the PDP that allegedly made effort to tamper with the result. Ikanya also accused Wike's Chief, Emeka Woke, of attempting to assassinate Peterside at UTC junction on Azikiwe road in Port Harcourt. He alleged that Woke and his team trailed the vehicle Vehicle conveying Peterside and others, and opened fire it. On the contrary, in an earlier statement by Wike's spokesman, Simeon Nwakaudu, the Governor alleged and his team shot at his Chief of Staff, Woke. The Nigeria Army has admitted to killing only seven civilians in the incident but the Islamic Human Rights Commission has called on the international tribunal which has a mandate to prosecute people for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, to open a preliminary enquiry into the Zaria incident which they claimed soldiers attacked the Islamic Movement of Nigeria's (IMN) supporters and destroyed its symbols and property. The clash which was said to have taken over 48 hours in the northern Nigerian city of Zaria left a trail of bloodshed and destruction including the alleged shooting of the movement's leader Sheikh Ibrahim Zakzaky and his wife Zeenat. IHRC chairman Massoud Shadjareh in the submission to the ICC said: "The scale and brutality of this massacre and unwillingness of the Nigerian government to implement due process makes it essential for the international court to investigate. The failure of the international community to act against atrocities on this scale stands to have grave consequences." "The crimes committed between the 12th and 14th December 2015 in Zaria, Kaduna State, by the Nigerian Army amount to crimes against humanity. The crimes committed by the Nigerian Army meet all the necessary legal requirements to warrant a preliminary investigation by the ICC prosecutor he said. IHRC said 217 people were confirmed killed in the attacks; another 219 are in detention while 482 are still missing. The group said the number of injured is believed to run into many hundreds. IHRC's filing to the ICC is largely based on eye-witness evidence of the army's assault. The majority of deaths were caused by gunshots fired by soldiers. Cases of people being burnt alive have also emerged. Injuries caused by machetes or other knife wounds have also been found on the corpses, and could be the work of the criminal groups that perpetrated acts of looting and mutilation alongside the military. Signs of torture and electrocution have been evidenced on the body of the IMN leader Sheikh Zakzaky and other detainees, two of whom died as a result thereof. The group claimed there was sexual violence including cases of rape against women affiliates of the IMN. A 14-year old female witness told IHRC that the military shot her in her private parts when she resisted attempts by soldiers to rape her. Some women reportedly had their breasts cut off and others were deliberately shot in the pelvic region, damaging their uterus. IHRC said further that evidence suggests that the army's assault was a systematic and pre-planned attempt to snuff out the IMN whose growing popularity have made it a thorn in the side of Nigerian governments. A similar army assault in July 2014 during a religious procession led to the deaths of 34 IMN members including three sons of Sheikh Zakzaky who were apparently singled out for execution. Eyewitnesses have reported that during the violence in December 2015, soldiers were seen celebrating and chanting slogans against the IMN, such as we have finished with the Shia and Zakzaky and no more Shias in Nigeria. Although the IMN has support among Nigeria's Sunnis and Shias it is often portrayed by its detractors as a Shia organization. The PTA Chairperson, Mrs Beatrice Akhetuanen, told a news conference that the panel would be working with the Police Station in Sabo, Yaba to investigate the teacher said to be perpetrating the act. According to multiple reports, the teacher, Mr. Olaseni Osifala, is said to havesexually harassed a JSS II student of the school. The report claimed the teacher was usually drunk, and started molesting the girl who screamed and was rescued by some of the girls, booing him. The student's mother alleged that she reported the case to the House Mistress who confirmed the teacher was in the habit of doing such and there was nothing anyone could do to him. She alleged that the case was also reported to the Vice Principal but she said the teacher would not be allowed to leave the school that instead, her daughter would leave. The PTA chairman, however, pleaded with the aggrieved parent to come forth so that the case could be looked into. ''The so-called parent has not shown herself, all efforts to get her has proved abortive. "When I tried calling the number I saw on the report, she did not pick her call", she said. According to a letter addressed to each member of the House titled NEW ACADEMIC RECORD BY AYODELE DANIEL DADA by the Majority Leader, Hon. Femi Gbajabiamila, and revealed by Leadership, the lawmakers were enjoined to admit Dada into the Green Chamber in order to celebrate his rare feat. In the last two weeks Nigeria and Nigerians have been inundated with news of the incredible performance of Mr Ayodele Dada a student of the Department of Psychology, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Lagos who set a new academic record by graduating with a 5.0 Cumulative Grade Point Average. The first time ever in the Universitys and perhaps Nigerias history. I believe as leaders and as a country its time we start celebrating our successes particularly in a period of great national despondency that has enveloped us for years now. As a House I believe we should recognize, celebrate and commend Mr Ayodele so as to encourage him and give hope and inspiration to many others. At the recent These offences included speeding, use of mobile phones, driving on the opposite side of the road, running red lights and not wearing seat belts. Abdullah Al-Samaeal, Saudi Aramco spokesman and supervisor of the program, urged children and passengers to act as traffic officials. He urged them to always hold the drivers for their traffic violations. Al-Samaeal was supported by Abdulmalek Al-Hamaidani, the acting director of traffic in Al-Ahsa. He said the community was responsible for increasing traffic awareness among children." The theme for the program was "Your Decision Determines Your Fate". Ikurakure was killed on Tuesday, March 22, 2016, from a vehicle that drove past the entrance to the army headquarters, officials said. It was gathered that the late commander was standing near a notice board in the yard when the killer bullet hit him. This was at the time many officers had left the headquarters for lunch. Before his murder, Ikurakure had been accused by opposition politicians and family members of people who have disappeared of involvement in torture and extra-judicial killings. But the lieutenant colonel had never responded to such accusations. Burundi has been in crisis since President Pierre Nkurunziza announced nearly a year ago that he would seek a third term in office, in spite a constitutional two-term limit, and won an election in July. Dozens of U.N. international staffers pulled out of the Western Sahara mission, known as MINURSO, on Sunday after Morocco demanded they leave because U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon used the term "occupation" during a recent visit to the region. "MINURSO has ... received a request to close its military liaison office in Dakhla in the coming days, which would be the first request directly targeting the military component," U.N. spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters. "There is no reason, none, for this escalation," he said. MINURSO's mandate comes from the Security Council. "We cannot allow the principle to be upheld that member states can arbitrarily go against their status of mission agreements and their commitments under the U.N. charter ... to abide by Security Council resolutions," Haq said. Without a properly functioning peacekeeping mission, Haq said, there was a risk of a resumption of conflict. Ban planned to raise Western Sahara with Security Council members on Monday, Haq said. U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric chided the council on Friday for not taking a strong stand in the dispute. The controversy over Ban's comments is Morocco's worst dispute with the U.N. since 1991, when the U.N. brokered a ceasefire to end a war over the Western Sahara and established the mission. Morocco had demanded last week that 81 U.N. international civilian staff and three African Union staff leave the mission. Haq said 73 of the U.N. personnel were temporarily reassigned. He noted that 11 individuals that MINURSO ordered out of the mission no longer worked there. Morocco had initially given the mission three days to withdraw the specified personnel but later extended that to "within the coming days." Rabat accused Ban earlier this month of no longer being neutral in the Western Sahara dispute when he used the word "occupation" to describe its annexation of the region in 1975, when Morocco took over from colonial power Spain. Ban had visited refugee camps in southern Algeria for the Sahrawi people, who say Western Sahara belongs to them. They fought a war against Morocco until the 1991 ceasefire. The Polisario Front wants a referendum on independence, but Morocco says it will only grant autonomy. The new occupants working the land, many of who had few farming skills when they were resettled, say they can barely make ends meet, let alone pay an extra levy. Their agricultural output is a fraction of the level seen before 2000, when President Robert Mugabe - saying he sought to correct colonial injustices - introduced land reforms which led to thousands of experienced white farmers being evicted. They are also being hammered by Zimbabwe's worst drought in a quarter of a century and toiling under a stagnating economy that has seen banks reluctant to lend and cheaper food imports from the likes of South Africa undermining their businesses. "Are farmers able to pay? I will say no. Is the land being productive? I will say no again," said Victor Matemadanda, secretary general of a group representing war veterans who led the land seizure drive in 2000 and are now farmers. He told Reuters that many farmers could not even meet water and electricity bills and that it was the government's obligation - not theirs - to pay the compensation. Zimbabwe Commercial Farmers Union President Abdul Nyathi also said his members would not be able to pay compensation. "Most of the farmers face viability issues, the government will have to look at other ways of raising money," he added. Mugabe's land reforms have led to about 5,000 white farmers being evicted from their land by his supporters and war veterans over the past 16 years, often violently. More than a dozen farmers have been killed. The land seizures, along with allegations of vote-rigging and rights abuses - all denied by Mugabe - led to Zimbabwe being targeted by sanctions from Western donors. This compounded the economic plight of the country, which saw financing from the International Monetary Fund, World Bank and African Development Bank frozen in 1999 after it defaulted on debts. The IMF's head of mission to Zimbabwe, Domenico Fanizza, said this month that improving fiscal discipline and re-engaging the international community should be priorities for Harare. He said this would "reduce the perceived country risk premium and unlock affordable financing for the government and private sector". DIVIDED OPINION In an attempt to woo back international donors and lenders, Finance Minister Patrick Chinamasa announced a package of major reforms on March 9, including the farm measure and a big reduction in public-sector wages. He said it had the full backing of Mugabe. The farm plan involves 300,000 families resettled on seized land paying an annual rent - based on the size of their farms - towards a compensation fund for those evicted. If they are unable to pay, however, it could be a major setback for the government's plans to shore up an economy that is stagnating after a deep recession in the decade to 2008, which slashed its output by nearly half, drove hundreds of thousands abroad in search of better paying jobs and has left the jobless rate at around 85 percent. The finance ministry did not respond to repeated requests for comment about the ability of farmers to pay the levy. Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe governor John Mangudya told Reuters that the farmers' situation should improve once the government grants them 99-year leases on their land, which he said would make it easier for them to secure financing from banks and to pay rent towards the compensation fund. All agricultural land in Zimbabwe is owned by the government and, at present, farmers have no legal claim on their farms - which they say has made banks reluctant to extend loans to buy fertilisers, seed and chemicals so they can raise output. But the government says it will imminently grant the leases. "We are saying that the land should produce, but we also know what the constraints are to increase production," said Mangudya. "That is why we need to finalise on the 99-year land lease agreements to make them bankable so that farmers have security of tenure. With that there is no reason why farmers should not be able to pay (rent)." Mugabe's land reform programme is a highly emotive issue, which has divided public opinion. Supporters say it has empowered blacks while opponents see it as a partisan process that left Zimbabwe struggling to feed itself. The land seizures have led to a steep fall in commercial agriculture output; yields for the staple maize have fallen to an average 0.5 tonnes percent per hectare from 8 tonnes in 2000 when white farmers worked the land. Mugabe acknowledged the skills of evicted white farmers last week, saying they had helped neighbouring Zambia to produce excess maize, which Zimbabwe was now importing. ELECTIONS A treasury ministry circular said that compensation would be paid out of rent from black farmers who benefited from the seizures. Chinamasa has not said when farmers would be expected to start paying the rents, or at what level they would be set. When announcing the measures, he said production on black-owned farms was "scandalously low" and that the economy was under siege from the drought. The white Zimbabweans who accounted for the majority of those evicted will be compensated only for the improvements they made to the farms, while the foreign owners forced out will be paid full compensation for land and improvements, under the plan. Chinamasa said Harare broke bilateral investment agreements with other countries when it seized farms owned by foreigners. Tony Hawkins, professor of business studies at the University of Zimbabwe, said the government was "going through the motions to keep the IMF happy". "They probably want the international community to see that they are doing something," he said. "I doubt they will press with this ahead of the elections," he added, referring to the 2018 general election. Farmers are an important voting block for Mugabe's ruling ZANU-PF party. Hundreds of evicted white Zimbabwean farmers are now farming in Zambia, Mozambique, Malawi and Nigeria, while others migrated to Europe, New Zealand and Australia. Hendrik Olivier, director at the formerly white-dominated Commercial Farmers Union (CFU), said the government had not yet approached evicted farmers to discuss compensation, and also cast doubt on the plan's viability. The CFU, which once boasted 4,500 farmers who produced 90 percent of Zimbabwe's export crops, including tobacco and horticulture produce until 2000, now only has 300 members. "It's a huge step forward, lets acknowledge that. In the past the government has said that it won't pay compensation," Olivier told Reuters. UPDATED: BRUSSELS Bombs exploded at the Brussels airport and one of the city's metro stations Tuesday, killing at least 31 people and wounding dozens, as a European capital was again locked down amid heightened security threats. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks. The two airport blasts, at least one of them blamed on a suicide bomber, left behind a chaotic scene of splattered blood in the departure lounge as windows were blown out, ceilings collapsed and travelers streamed out of the smoky building. About an hour later, another bomb exploded on a rush-hour subway train near the European Union headquarters. Terrified passengers had to evacuate through darkened tunnels to safety. "What we feared has happened," Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel told reporters. "In this time of tragedy, this black moment for our country, I appeal to everyone to remain calm but also to show solidarity." Belgium raised its terror alert to the highest level, diverting planes and trains and ordering people to stay where they were. Airports across Europe immediately tightened security. "We are at war," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said after a crisis meeting in Paris. "We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war." Added French President Francois Hollande: "Terrorists struck Brussels, but it was Europe that was targeted, and it is all the world which is concerned by this." European security officials have been bracing for a major attack for weeks, and warned that the Islamic State group was actively preparing to strike. The arrest Friday of Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in the November attacks in Paris, heightened those fears, as investigators said many more people were involved than originally thought and that some are still on the loose. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the Brussels attacks, saying in a posting on the group's Amaq news agency that its extremists opened fire in the airport and "several of them" detonated suicide belts. It said another suicide attacker struck in the subway. The posting claimed the attack was in response to Belgium's support of the international coalition arrayed against the group. Michel said there was no immediate evidence linking the attacks with Abdeslam. After his arrest, Abdeslam told authorities he had created a new network and was planning new attacks. U.S. President Barack Obama pledged to "do whatever is necessary" to help Belgian authorities seek justice. "We stand in solidarity with them in condemning these outrageous attacks against innocent people," Obama said in Havana, where he was closing a three-day visit. Western Europe has lived for decades under the threat of violence from homegrown nationalist and revolutionary movements. Muslim extremists from North Africa and the Middle East have attacked civilian targets without warning, ranging from France's 1960s war in Algeria through Libya's 1988 downing of an airline over Scotland to the 2004-05 attacks on the public transportation systems of London and Madrid. Certain neighborhoods in Brussels, like the Molenbeek quarter, have bred extremists and supplied foreign fighters. Plotters linked to the Paris attacks and others have either moved through or lived in parts of the city. Tuesday's explosions at the airport in the Brussels suburb of Zaventem came shortly after 8 a.m., one of its busiest periods. Belgian Health Minister Maggie de Block said 11 people were killed and 81 wounded. Eleven people had serious injuries, Marc Decramer of the Gasthuisberg hospital in Leuven told broadcaster VTM. The nails apparently came from one of the bombs. Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, told BFM television that the second, louder explosion brought down ceilings and ruptured pipes, mixing water with victims' blood. "It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed," he said. "There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere." "We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene," he said. Video taken moments after the explosions showed travelers huddled next to airport check-in counters and lying near luggage and trolleys as dust and the cries of the wounded filled the air. Dazed people stumbled from the scene, some with clothes and shoes blown off. Anthony Deloos, an airport worker for Swissport, which handles check-in and baggage services, said the first explosion took place near the Swissport counters where customers pay for overweight baggage. He and a colleague said the second blast hit near a Starbucks cafe. "I jumped into a luggage chute to be safe," Deloos said. The bomb on the subway train came after 9 a.m., killing 20 people and wounding more than 100, Mayor Yvan Majeur said. "The metro was leaving Maelbeek station for Schuman when there was a really loud explosion," said Alexandre Brans, 32, wiping blood from his face. "It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the metro." Near the entrance to the station, rescue workers set up a makeshift medical treatment center in a pub. Dazed and shocked morning commuters streamed from the metro entrances as police tried to set up a security cordon. The metro shut down after the attacks, as did the airport. More than 200 flights to Brussels were diverted or canceled, according to flight tracking service Flightradar24. By the end of the workday, city officials said residents could begin moving around on the streets of the capital and train stations were reopening. But Peter Mertens of the Belgian crisis center said the threat of more attacks "is still real and serious." At least one and possibly two Kalashnikovs were found in the departure lounge at the airport, according to a European security official in contact with a Belgian police official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the ongoing investigation. It was not immediately clear whether the firearms were used in the attacks. Travelers fled the airport as quickly as they could. In video shown on France's i-Tele television, men, women and children dashed from the terminal in different directions. Security officers patrolled a hall with blown-out paneling and ceiling panels covering the floor. Marc Noel, 63, was about to board a Delta flight to Atlanta, to return to his home in Raleigh, North Carolina. A Belgian native, Noel said he was in an airport shop buying automotive magazines when the first blast struck about 50 yards away. "People were crying, shouting children. It was a horrible experience," he said, adding that his decision to shop might have saved his life. "I would probably have been in that place when the bomb went off." EARLIER REPORT: BRUSSELS Bombs struck the Brussels airport and one of the city's metro stations Tuesday, killing at least 31 people and wounding dozens, as a European capital was again locked down amid heightened security threats. The two airport blasts, at least one of which was blamed on a suicide bomber, left behind a chaotic scene of splattered blood in the departure lounge as windows were blown out, ceilings collapsed and travelers streamed out of the smoky building. About an hour later, another bomb exploded on a rush-hour subway train near the European Union headquarters. Terrified passengers had to evacuate through darkened tunnels to safety. "What we feared has happened," Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel told reporters. "In this time of tragedy, this black moment for our country, I appeal to everyone to remain calm but also to show solidarity." Belgium raised its terror alert to the highest level, diverting planes and trains and ordering people to stay where they were. Airports across Europe immediately tightened security. "We are at war," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said after a crisis meeting called by the French president. "We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war." European security officials have been bracing for a major attack for weeks, and warned that the Islamic State group was actively preparing to strike. The arrest Friday of a key suspect in the November attacks in Paris heightened those fears, as investigators said many more people were involved than originally thought, and that some are still on the loose. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Tuesday's attacks, and Michel said there was no immediate evidence linking key Paris suspect Salah Abdeslam to them. After his arrest Friday, Abdeslam told authorities he had created a new network and was planning new attacks. At Brussels' Zaventem airport, the two explosions hit the departures area during the busy morning rush. Belgian Health Minister Maggie de Block told Belgian media that 11 people were killed and 81 injured. Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, told BFM television that the second, louder explosion brought down ceilings and ruptured pipes, mixing water with victims' blood. "It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed," he said. "There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere." "We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene," he said. Anthony Deloos, an airport worker for Swissport, which handles check-in and baggage services, said the first explosion took place near the Swissport counters where customers pay for overweight baggage. He and a colleague said the second blast hit near the Starbucks cafe. "We heard a big explosion. It's like when you're in a party and suddenly your hearing goes out, from like a big noise," Deloos said, adding that shredded paper floated through the air as a colleague told him to run. "I jumped into a luggage chute to be safe," he said. The bomb that went off an hour later on the subway train killed 20 people and injured more than 100, Brussels Mayor Yvan Majeur said. "The metro was leaving Maelbeek station for Schuman when there was a really loud explosion," said Alexandre Brans, 32, wiping blood from his face. "It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the metro." Near the entrance to the station, rescue workers set up a makeshift medical treatment center in a pub. Dazed and shocked morning commuters streamed from the metro entrances as police tried to set up a security cordon. The metro shut down after the attacks, as did the airport. More than 200 flights to Brussels were diverted or canceled, according to flight tracking service Flightradar24. At least one and possibly two Kalashnikovs were found in the departure lounge at the airport, according to a European security official in contact with Belgian police who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the ongoing investigation. It was not immediately clear whether the firearms were used in the attacks. Amateur video showed passengers fleeing as quickly as they could. In a video shown on France's i-Tele television, passengers, including a child running with a backpack, dashed out of the terminal in different directions as they tugged luggage. Another image showed a security officer patrolling inside a hall with blown-out paneling and what appeared to be ceiling insulation covering the floor. Marc Noel, 63, was about to board a Delta flight to Atlanta, to return to his home in Raleigh, North Carolina. A Belgian native, Noel says he was in an airport shop buying automobile magazines when the first explosion occurred 50 yards away. "People were crying, shouting, children. It was a horrible experience," he told AP. He said his decision to shop might have saved his life. "I would probably have been in that place when the bomb went off." EARLIER REPORT: BRUSSELS Explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, rocked the Brussels airport and subway system Tuesday, prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe. At least 26 people were reported dead. A spokesman for the Brussels Metro said 15 people were killed and 55 injured in an explosion on a train. Belgian media initially reported at least 13 dead in two explosions at the airport, but later decreased that to 11. "What we feared has happened," Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel told reporters. "In this time of tragedy, this black moment for our country, I appeal to everyone to remain calm but also to show solidarity." Belgium raised its terror alert to the highest level, diverting planes and trains and ordering people to stay where they were. Airports across Europe immediately tightened security. European security officials have been bracing for a major attack for weeks, and warned that the Islamic State group was actively preparing to strike. The arrest Friday of a key suspect in the November attacks in Paris heightened those fears, as investigators said many more people were involved than originally thought, and that some are still on the loose. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Tuesday's attacks, and Michel said there was no immediate evidence linking key Paris suspect Salah Abdeslam to them. After his arrest Friday, Abdeslam told authorities he had created a new network and was planning new attacks. "We are at war," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said after a crisis meeting called by the French president. "We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war." Belgian media reported that 11 people were killed at the airport, where two explosions splattered blood across the departure lounge and collapsed the ceiling. The explosions hit during the busy morning rush. Smoke was seen billowing out of the terminal. Anthony Deloos, an airport worker for Swissport, which handles check-in and baggage services, said the first explosion took place near the Swissport counters where customers pay for overweight baggage. He and a colleague said the second blast hit near the Starbucks cafe. "We heard a big explosion. It's like when you're in a party and suddenly your hearing goes out, from like a big noise," Deloos said, adding that shredded paper floated through the air as a colleague told him to run. "I jumped into a luggage chute to be safe," he said. Tom De Doncker, 21, check-in agent intern, was near the site of the second explosion. "I saw a soldier pulling away a body," he said. "It felt like I was hit too" from the concussion of the blast. Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, told BFM television that the second, louder explosion brought down ceilings and ruptured pipes, mixing water with victims' blood. "It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed," he said. "There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere." "We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene," he said. Near the entrance to Brussels' Maelbeek subway station, not far from the headquarters of the European Union, rescue workers set up a makeshift medical treatment center in a pub. Dazed and shocked morning commuters streamed from the metro entrances as police tried to set up a security cordon. "The Metro was leaving Maelbeek station for Schuman when there was a really loud explosion," said Alexandre Brans, 32, wiping blood from his face. "It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the Metro." Francoise Ledune, a spokeswoman for the Brussels Metro, said on BFM television there appeared to have been just one explosion on the subway in a car that was stopped at Maelbeek. Spokesman Guy Sablon said 15 were killed and 55 injured in that attack. At the airport, passengers fled as quickly as they could. Amateur video shown on France's i-Tele television showed passengers including a child running with a backpack dashing out of the terminal in different directions as they tugged luggage. Another image showed a security officer patrolling inside a hall with blown-out paneling and what appeared to be ceiling insulation covering the floor. Marc Noel, 63, was about to board a Delta flight to Atlanta, to return to his home in Raleigh, North Carolina. A Belgian native, Noel says he was in an airport shop buying automobile magazines when the first explosion occurred 50 yards away. "People were crying, shouting, children. It was a horrible experience," he told AP. He said his decision to shop might have saved his life. "I would probably have been in that place when the bomb went off." With three runways in the shape of a "Z," the airport connects Europe's capital to 226 destinations around the world and handled nearly 23.5 million passengers in 2015. Passengers were led onto the tarmac and the crisis center urged people not to come to the airport. More than 200 flights to Brussels were diverted or canceled, according to flight tracking service Flightradar24 Authorities told people in Brussels to stay where they were, bringing the city to a standstill. Airport security was also tightened in Paris, London and other European cities. In Paris, France's top security official said the country was immediately reinforcing security at airports, train stations and metros. EARLIER REPORT: BRUSSELS Explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, rocked the Brussels airport and subway system Tuesday, prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe. At least 28 people were reported dead. A spokesman for the Brussels Metro said 15 people were killed and 55 injured in an explosion on a train, and Belgian media reported at least 13 dead in two explosions at the airport, with many others injured. Belgium raised its terror alert to the highest level, diverting planes and trains and ordering people to stay where they were. Airports across Europe immediately tightened security. "We are at war," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said after a crisis meeting called by the French president. "We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war." European security officials have been bracing for a major attack for weeks, and warned that the Islamic State group was actively preparing to strike. The arrest Friday of a key suspect in the November attacks in Paris heightened those fears, as investigators said many more people were involved than originally thought, and that some are still on the loose. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Tuesday's attacks, and Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said there was no immediate evidence linking key Paris suspect Salah Abdeslam to them. After his arrest Friday, Abdeslam told authorities he had created a new network and was planning new attacks. Belgian media reported that 13 people were killed at the airport, where two explosions splattered blood across the departure lounge and collapsed the ceiling. The explosions hit during the busy morning rush. Smoke was seen billowing out of the terminal. Anthony Deloos, an airport worker for Swissport, which handles check-in and baggage services, said the first explosion took place near the Swissport counters where customers pay for overweight baggage. He and a colleague said the second blast hit near the Starbucks cafe. "We heard a big explosion. It's like when you're in a party and suddenly your hearing goes out, from like a big noise," Deloos said, adding that shredded paper floated through the air as a colleague told him to run. "I jumped into a luggage chute to be safe," he said. Tom De Doncker, 21, check-in agent intern, was near the site of the second explosion. "I saw a soldier pulling away a body," he said. "It felt like I was hit too" from the concussion of the blast. Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, told BFM television that the second, louder explosion brought down ceilings and ruptured pipes, mixing water with victims' blood. "It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed," he said. "There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere." "We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene," he said. Near the entrance to Brussels' Maelbeek subway station, not far from the headquarters of the European Union, rescue workers set up a makeshift medical treatment center in a pub. Dazed and shocked morning commuters streamed from the metro entrances as police tried to set up a security cordon. "The Metro was leaving Maelbeek station for Schuman when there was a really loud explosion," said Alexandre Brans, 32, wiping blood from his face. "It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the Metro." Francoise Ledune, a spokeswoman for the Brussels Metro, said on BFM television there appeared to have been just one explosion on the subway in a car that was stopped at Maelbeek. Spokesman Guy Sablon said 15 were killed and 55 injured in that attack. At the airport, passengers fled as quickly as they could. Amateur video shown on France's i-Tele television showed passengers including a child running with a backpack dashing out of the terminal in different directions as they tugged luggage. Another image showed a security officer patrolling inside a hall with blown-out paneling and what appeared to be ceiling insulation covering the floor. Marc Noel, 63, was about to board a Delta flight to Atlanta, to return to his home in Raleigh, North Carolina. A Belgian native, Noel says he was in an airport shop buying automobile magazines when the first explosion occurred 50 yards away. "People were crying, shouting, children. It was a horrible experience," he told AP. He said his decision to shop might have saved his life. "I would probably have been in that place when the bomb went off." With three runways in the shape of a "Z," the airport connects Europe's capital to 226 destinations around the world and handled nearly 23.5 million passengers in 2015. Passengers were led onto the tarmac and the crisis center urged people not to come to the airport. Authorities told people in Brussels to stay where they were, bringing the city to a standstill. Airport security was also tightened in Paris, London and other European cities. In Paris, France's top security official said the country was immediately reinforcing security at airports, train stations and metros. EARLIER REPORT: BRUSSELS Explosions rocked the Brussels airport and its subway system Tuesday, killing at least 28 people and injuring more than 50 people, according to Belgian media, injuring scores more and prompting authorities to lock down the Belgian capital. Belgium raised its terror alert to its highest level, diverting arriving planes and trains and ordering people to stay where they were. Airports across Europe immediately tightened security as a fleet of emergency vehicles roared in to handle the carnage at the Brussels airport. The explosions, which the Brussels prosecutor's office called terror attacks, came just days after the main suspect in the deadly Nov. 13 Paris attacks was arrested Friday in Brussels. After his arrest, 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam told authorities he had created a new network and was planning new attacks. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Tuesday's attacks. Belgian media reported that 13 people were killed at the airport. Brussels police spokesman Christian De Coninck said some people also died at the subway station but he had no exact numbers yet on the dead or injured. At the airport, two explosions splattered blood across the departure lounge and collapsed the ceiling. The explosions hit during the busy morning rush. Smoke was seen billowing out of the terminal. Anthony Deloos, an airport worker for Swissport, which handles check-in and baggage services, said the first explosion took place near the Swissport counters where customers pay for overweight baggage. He and colleague said second blast hit near the Starbucks cafe. "We heard a big explosion. It's like when you're in a party and suddenly your hearing goes out, from like a big noise," Deloos said, adding that shredded paper floated through the air as a colleague told him to run. "I jumped into a luggage chute to be safe," he said. Tom De Doncker, 21, check-in agent intern, was near the site of the second explosion. "I saw a soldier pulling away a body," he said. "It felt like I was hit too" from the concussion of the blast. All flights from Brussels were canceled, arriving planes and trains were diverted. Authorities told people in Brussels to stay where they were, bringing the city to a standstill. Airport security was also tightened in Paris, London and other European cities. European security officials have been bracing for a major attack for weeks, and warned that the Islamic State group was actively preparing to strike. Abdeslam's arrest on Friday heightened those fears, as investigators said many more people were involved in the Nov. 13 attacks that killed 130 people in Paris than originally thought, and that some are still on the loose. Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, told BFM television that the second, louder explosion brought down ceilings and ruptured pipes, mixing water with victims' blood. "It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed," he said. "There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere." "We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene," he said. Near the entrance to Brussels' Maelbeek subway station, not far from the headquarters of the European Union, rescue workers set up a makeshift medical treatment center in a pub. Dazed and shocked morning commuters streamed from the metro entrances as police tried to set up a security cordon. "The Metro was leaving Maelbeek station for Schuman when there was a really loud explosion," said Alexandre Brans, 32, wiping blood from his face. "It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the metro." Francoise Ledune, a spokeswoman for the Brussels Metro, said on BFM television there appeared to have been just one explosion on the subway in a car that was stopped at Maelbeek. At the airport, passengers fled as quickly as they could. Amateur video shown on France's i-Tele television showed passengers including a child running with a backpack dashing out of the terminal in different directions as they tugged luggage, Another image showed a security officer patrolling inside a hall with blown-out paneling and what appeared to be ceiling insulation covering the floor. Marc Noel, 63, was about to board a Delta flight to Atlanta, to return to his home in Raleigh, North Carolina. A Belgian native, Noel says he was in an airport shop buying automobile magazines when the first explosion occurred 50 yards away. "People were crying, shouting, children. It was a horrible experience," he told AP. He said his decision to shop might have saved his life. "I would probably have been in that place when the bomb went off." With three runways in the shape of a "Z," the airport connects Europe's capital to 226 destinations around the world and handled nearly 23.5 million passengers in 2015. Passengers were led onto the tarmac and the crisis center urged people not to come to the airport. In Paris, France's top security official said the country was immediately reinforcing security at airports, train stations and metros. EARLIER REPORT: BRUSSELS Explosions rocked the Brussels airport and the subway system Tuesday, killing at least 13 people and injuring many others just days after the main suspect in the November Paris attacks was arrested in the city, police said. Witnesses described the ceiling caving in and blood everywhere after two explosions in the departure hall at the Brussels airport. All flights were canceled, arriving planes and trains were diverted and Belgium's terror alert level was raised to maximum. Authorities told people in Brussels to stay where they were, bringing the city to a standstill. Security was also tightened at all Paris airports. European security officials have been braced for a major attack for weeks, and warned that Islamic State was actively preparing. The arrest of Salah Abdeslam in Brussels last week heightened those fears, as investigators said many people involved in the Nov. 13 Paris attacks that killed 130 people were still on the loose. After Abdeslam was arrested, Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said authorities learned he had created a new network around him and had access to several weapons, though there was no immediate indication that he or the Islamic State group had any involvement in Tuesday's attacks. Belgian media reported 13 people were killed at the airport. It was not clear whether any died in the metro explosion. Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, told BFM television that the second, louder explosion brought down ceilings and ruptured pipes, mixing water with blood from victims. "It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed," he said. "There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere." "We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene," he said. Near the entrance to the Maelbeek subway station, not far from the headquarters of the European Union, rescue workers set up a makeshift treatment center in a local pub. Dazed and shocked morning travelers streamed from the metro entrances as police tried to set up a security cordon. "The Metro was leaving Maelbeek station for Schuman when there was a really loud explosion," said Alexandre Brans, 32, wiping blood from his face. "It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the Metro." Francoise Ledune, a spokeswoman for the Brussels Metro, said on BFM television that there appeared to have been just one explosion, in a car that was stopped at Maelbeek. First responders ran through the street outside with two people on stretchers, their clothes badly torn. The explosions at the airport hit at the middle of the busiest time there. Smoke was seen billowing out of the terminal. Amateur video shown on France's i-Tele television showed passengers including a child running with a backpack dashing out of the terminal in different directions as they tugged luggage, Another image showed a security officer patrolling inside a hall with blown-out paneling and what appeared to be ceiling insulation covering the floor. "I knew it was an explosion because I've been around explosions before," said Denise Brandt, an American woman interviewed by Sky television. "I felt the explosion, the way it feels through your body. And we just looked at each other and I said 'Let's go this way.' It was over there. There was just this instinct to get away from it. Then we saw people running, crying, toward us. So I knew we were going in the right direction and away from it. " With three runways in the shape of a "Z," the airport connects Europe's capital to 226 destinations around the world and handled nearly 23.5 million passengers in 2015. Passengers were led onto the tarmac and the crisis center urged people not to come to the airport. "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" spends so much time prodding the "will they or won't they" story of Rebecca (Rachel Bloom) and Josh (Vincent Rodriguez III) that any rejection of our intrepid, depressive heroine was inevitably going to send her in a tailspin, or at least in a radically different direction. "Josh Is Going to Hawaii!" ended with Josh sticking with Valencia and Rebecca boarding a plane and inadvertently sitting next to her onetime/frequently canceled therapist Dr. Akopian (Michael Hyatt), ready to get some therapy done during the flight. But the plane, it turns out, isn't headed to Hawaii, but back to New York, and "Josh Has No Idea Where I Am!" Rebecca has contacted her old job to return, defeated, to the place where she was so miserable, but luckily (?) she downs a sleeping pill with a Bloody Mary and winds up in an old-fashioned "Christmas Carol"-style dream therapy session, with Dr. Akopian serving as her dream ghost guide (while the real Dr. Akopian sits uncomfortably with Rebecca falling asleep on her breast). Meanwhile, Paula (Donna Lynne Champlin) returns to Rebecca's place to celebrate her going to Hawaii with Josh, only to be stunned when Josh, Darryl (Pete Gardner) and Greg (Santino Fontana) show up. After briefly trying to figure out what Paula is doing in Rebecca's bathrobe, all four try to find out where Rebecca is and if she's OK. Initially, I figured much of the episode would address the strange way Paula straddles the line between living vicariously through Rebecca and...whatever brings her to put on her bathrobe and stay in her house while she's gone (and I would love to see a Paula-focused episode on that). Instead, we see the gang in full-fledged panic mode first when they worry Rebecca might be hurt, then when they go into her email (Paula knows all her passwords and is surprised the others don't know their friends') and find that she's moving back to New York. Paula worries she's lost her best friend ("it's worse than her dying, she's leaving us!"), Josh worries (Darryl: "Oh my god, the cheerful man is worried?") that she's returning to a place where she was miserable, Darryl worries he's lost his best employee and friend, and Greg does everything to assuage them in his typically unhelpful, sarcastic way, suggesting that Rebecca is just being dramatic again. Which isn't entirely incorrect; Rebecca is, by nature, dramatic, impulsive, and remarkably good at lying to herself and, when that fails, beating herself up and making everything worse. She worries that she always ends up alone, that love never lasts, and that, worse, "nobody loves me." It's a common train of thought for people dealing with depression or other mental illnesses, no matter how many people tell them otherwise. Dr. Akopian reminds Rebecca of this, bringing up how Paula called her a "put-togetherer" instead of a ruiner and swinging into a Supremes-style dream song that's joyful enough to get Rebecca bouncing along with her mouth agape. It's not the most consequential song in the show's history, mostly introducing and parodying the concept of all-seeing, all-knowing spirits who spend their time trying to serve one person. "Let's take you on a journey through time and space/you knew the answer all along/honestly it's a bit of a waste" and "It's not clear if I'm a hallucination/or actually magic/let's leave it vague/it's more interesting that way" are the funniest lyrics in the song, but there's also a spectacular bit where Dr. Akopian and the other ghosts look into the heads of four other people and cheerfully list of serious (to terminate a pregnancy or not) and not-so-serious (some idiot agonizing over buying another Porsche) quandaries before stopping off at Rebecca's first defining moment, during puberty ("Starting with a puberty memory? Harsh"). It's not time with an early boyfriend that's affected Rebecca's life, but rather an unexpected visit her father after her parents' divorce. Here we see young Rebecca already remarkably intelligent, impulsive, good at makeshift plans (she forged forms and created fake tickets to convince her mother she was going to Poughkeepsie and spent Bat Mitzvah money to get there) and utterly convinced that moving across the country will fix everything for her. Dad (John Allen Nelson) is a bad liar, clearly not happy and uncomfortable to see Rebecca, and though they spend one night together, she's met at the door the next day by her stern mother Naomi (Tovah Feldshuh). It's heartbreaking to see Rebecca rattle off all of the things she's planning to do with dad, from visiting museums to spending holidays with him, just before getting her heart broken, but what's worse is Rebecca seeing what happened after she was sent to the car and mom "ruined her life." It turns out that her mother actually argues in favor of her staying for a few days, only for dad to shoot it down, saying he wasn't prepared, that she's a cute kid ("she's not a kid, she's your daughter, you a--"), and that he can't have anyone holding him back. A final note of sacrifice complicates Rebecca's frosty relationship with her mother as mom promises not to tell her daughter about dad's disinterest in her, "not for your sake, but for hers." As Dr. Akopian says, "someone did love you...someone still does." That's not much help to Rebecca. "That's the bare minimum. Serial killers have mothers who love them." A second trip to college at Harvard tries to show another love in Rebecca's life, albeit not one we'd expect: Rebecca joins a wannabe-Sondheim musical version of "Moby Dick" directed by the most irritatingly pretentious senior in the history of the universe. Rebecca hooks up with the good-looking jerk over the friendly schmo she hit it off with on day one, assuming Akopian is trying to convince her she picked up the wrong guy (who slept around, causing Rebecca to quit). "Forget about the guys! That's the worst part of being a ghost and working with women..." The real love is musical theater: Rebecca was going to change her major to theater, a true passion, when she was pushed out of it. Instead of moving from law to music, she's reinterpreted her life as a musical, using it as a way to understand the world. I wasn't really looking for a logical explanation for the musical numbers, but this one makes as much emotional sense as it does logical sense (for this heightened world, at least). Rebecca fitting her passion into her life in the one place she feels most vulnerable, her own head, is at once sad and stirring, a way to keep herself going as much as it is to make sense of everything. I didn't think I'd wind up comparing "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" to a more joyous version of "Dancer in the Dark," but here we are. Rebecca can't recognize love when she does have it, either for a passion or a person, but Akopian takes a final trip to the present and her four friends gathered, distraught over her leaving. Even Greg, who's projecting an "I don't care, why am I here?" attitude, called every hospital (and a few morgues) in the area to make sure she was OK, a piano rendition of the "I Have Friends" chorus playing. When she does wake up and return home, exhausted, there is the expected embrace from Paula and Darryl and the bad-acting "whatever" reaction from Greg, but she's left alone with Josh, who found pictures of the two together that Rebecca had developed. How's this going to turn out? The episode ends on a cliff-hanger, but the best part of "Josh Has No Idea Where I Am!" (one of the best episodes of the series, really), is that it reinforces the idea that underneath all of the guy obsession and chasing, there's something more meaningful in the show. It may come in the guise of an unusually ambitious romantic-comedy, but "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" is more about self-love, and recognizing love and support from all areas, when you're at your lowest point. If that doesn't make it one of the most valuable shows on TV right now, I don't know what does. Stray thoughts: -Excellent work from Michael Hyatt, who's nurturing and patient while showing signs of someone who's had just about enough of Rebecca's nonsense when she can't see what's right in front of her. Bloom, as always, is great, especially when she's marveling at the powers Akopian has as a ghost. -Rebecca's first requests when she learns she's with a dream ghost: convincing Hitler to change some things he did, seeing what Oprah does in the tub, and visiting an alien planet to see a play. The tag sees Rebecca and Dr. Akopian doing the last bit and being moved to tears. "Love...is there anything more universal?" -If there's a longer version of that goofy "Moby Dick" musical, I would love to see it. "I am a pufferfish...I am also the queen of denial!" Same, Rebecca, same. -As someone who spent a good chunk of time in theater (high school and college) before deciding it wasn't for me, I recognized that weird body weight-sharing exercise that the creepy senior uses to seduce Rebecca. It usually doesn't end that way and actually can be helpful, though it certainly feels ridiculous when you're in the middle of it. -Darryl is worried that Rebecca might have been catfished by a drug smuggler, an idea he got from watching a show called "Catfished by a Drug Smuggler." -Middle-aged women (Paula and Dr. Akopian) think Greg's angry man thing is super-hot. -Love the cut to Rebecca's nemesis, Audra, and her former co-workers celebrating Rebecca leaving. "God, she's a heinous b----." -Not Dream Dr. Akopian passed the time watching "Broad City," one of the other best shows on TV right now. "Those girls just don't care." -There was no episode of "Crazy Ex-Girlfriend" last week, so I'll celebrate a bit late: the show got renewed for a second season in spite of its abysmal ratings. Here's to another year. Asked earlier this month whether she'd be indicted over her use of a private email server as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton responded: "It's not going to happen." Though Republicans characterized her response as hubris, several legal experts interviewed by the Associated Press agreed with the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination. The relatively few laws that govern the handling of classified materials were generally written to cover spies, leakers and those who illegally retain such information, such as at home. Though the view is not unanimous, several lawyers who specialize in this area said it's a stretch to apply existing statutes to a former cabinet secretary whose communication of sensitive materials was with aides not a national enemy. During her tenure as the nation's top diplomat between 2009 and 2013, Clinton's work emails were routed through a private computer server located in the basement of her New York home. The State Department now concedes that a small percentage of those messages contained sensitive national security information, including some later determined to be top secret. Computer security experts say the arrangement could have left the messages vulnerable to hackers, including those working for foreign intelligence agencies. Clinton has called her decision to rely on the home server a "mistake," but has also repeatedly asserted that none of the messages was marked as classified when she sent or received them. The FBI has for months been investigating whether the sensitive information that flowed through Clinton's email server was mishandled. The inspector general at the State Department has also been reviewing the issue. Regardless of the outcomes, there's no question the probes have created a major distraction as Clinton campaigns for her party's nomination. One potentially relevant statute carrying up to a year in prison makes it a crime to knowingly remove classified information and retain it at an unauthorized location. Former CIA Director David Petraeus pleaded guilty to that misdemeanor offense last year after providing eight black binders of classified information to his biographer. He was sentenced to two years' probation as part of a plea deal, and prosecutors made clear in that case that Petraeus knew he was turning over highly classified information. With Clinton, though, "I look at something which requires knowledge, and the first question I've got to ask is, 'How do they prove knowledge?'" said Bill Jeffress, a Washington criminal defense lawyer. While knowledge that information is classified is a critical component, it can likely still be established even in the absence of classification markings on the emails in question, said Nathan Sales, a Syracuse University law professor who used to work at the departments of Justice and Homeland Security and who thinks that the investigation raises important legal issues. "Sometimes information is so obviously sensitive that you can infer knowledge from the content," in which case the lack of markings may not matter for the purpose of establishing liability, Sales said. A separate law makes it a felony to handle national defense information with "gross negligence," by causing it to be removed from its proper place of custody or to be lost, stolen or destroyed. But that statute is part of the Espionage Act, a law used against former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden that's generally intended for people the government believes intended to harm U.S. national interests. Proving gross negligence requires showing an act was more than just a mistake. "One has to put this in perspective of what types of prosecutions have happened under the Espionage Act," said Jon Michaels, a national security law professor at UCLA. "And the universe of prosecutions under the Espionage Act is quite small compared to the amount of information transferred through non-secure means." Brad Moss, a Washington lawyer who deals regularly with security clearance matters, said the Justice Department could conceivably look to bring charges in the Clinton email case but prosecutors would have to decide if they "really want to take that gamble." Inquiries into mishandling of classified information generally end with a security clearance revocation rather than a criminal charge, he said. But Ronald Sievert, a former federal prosecutor and University of Texas adjunct law professor, said an argument could be made that Clinton's creation of a private email server amounted to gross negligence. Each prosecution of classified information cases has turned on different facts, making it hard to reliably predict outcomes, and the disparate punishments have frustrated efforts to draw meaningful parallels. Petraeus got probation for knowingly mishandling classified information while a former State Department employee, Stephen Kim, was sentenced to more than two years in prison for disclosing classified materials to a reporter. Kim's lawyer, Abbe Lowell, urged for Kim's release in light of what he said was a "profound double standard." The Clinton case indicates a "dysfunctional" system of overclassification, Lowell told AP. "One of the perpetual problems with the investigation or prosecution of so-called leaks cases about classified information is that the law doesn't recognize as a defense that the material should not have been classified in the first place," he said. Regardless of the legal question, if Clinton secures the Democratic presidential nomination she's certain to be dogged by the issue through the November election. "Ultimately, the real risk for the secretary might not be legal as much as it is political," Sales said. The week of March 21-25 2016 has been designated as Severe Weather Awareness week in Nebraska. Over 1,000 tornados strike the United States every year. Tornados can occur in any state. In Nebraska, tornado activity begins to occur in April and peaks usually in May and June. However, tornadoes can occur in Nebraska at other times of the year. The best protection citizens have against tornadoes is a well prepared plan of what to do when severe weather strikes. This plan includes having a safe place such as a basement or interior room to seek cover. On Thursday, a statewide tornado drill will be conducted. Locally, at 9:30 a.m. the Chadron Police Department 911 Center will activate the warning sirens in the communities of Chadron, Crawford and Harrison. The sirens will sound a three-minute steady blast. Residents and businesses are encouraged to participate in the drill. Please remember the outdoor warning sirens are designed to notify people who may be outside during severe weather. The sirens are not designed to provide adequate notification to people who may be inside a building. Therefore, residents are encouraged to invest in a NOAA all-hazards weather alert radio that will provide alerts and notification directly from the National Weather Service during severe weather. Have a plan in place for what to do when severe weather strikes. When a tornado is reported in the area, seek shelter in a basement. If there is not basement available, seek shelter in the center of the building such as an interior closet or hallway away from windows and doors. If you live in a mobile home, abandon it immediately and seek shelter in a more secure building. If you are caught outside and cannot seek shelter in a basement, lie flat in a ravine or ditch as close to the ground as possible. Be aware of possible flash flooding though and stay in those places for only as long as there is immediate danger. Thunderstorms often have severe lightning so stay away from tall objects such as trees, power poles and towers. Plan ahead. Know what to in the event a tornado occurs in our area. Dont wait until the last minute. If you have questions or to assist you in preparing a safety plan during a tornado, feel free to contact 911 Director Tony Serbousek at 308 432 0510 or Region 23 Emergency Manager Nan Gould at 308 432 2251. HOT SPRINGS When Susan Watt, Executive Director and Program Development head of the Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary and The Institute of Range and the American Mustang moved from Florida to South Dakota 28 years ago she didnt quite know what she was getting into. Now, more than a quarter-century later, as Watt reflects back on the satisfaction she feels in having helped Dayton O. Hyde achieve his dream of creating a sanctuary for wild horses, she can bask in the warm glow of satisfaction. Watt described herself as something of a radical when she was teaching school in the Deep South during the tag end of the Civil Rights crusades of the 1960s. And it was some of this kind of spirit shaking your fist at the powers that be that eventually led her to South Dakota and taking on the challenge of saving some land, the history of a ranch and keeping horses alive instead of turning them into canned dog food that led her to helping Hyde achieve his dream. Hydes dream Hyde ran away from his Michigan home before World War II, and ended up at his uncles Yamsi ranch in Oregon. There, he learned how to ride horses, work cattle and be a cowboy. He eventually got into rodeos, bronc riding at first, later clowning with Slim Pickens, when he was a rodeo clown, well before movies like Dr. Strangelove or Blazing Saddles made him a famous actor. Hyde also was a professional rodeo photographer with his work appearing in Life magazine. Things changed for Hyde following World War II he is a veteran especially after he took over his uncles ranch after his uncles death. Hyde raised a family on the ranch and continued what his uncle and the Yamsi cowboys had taught him, expecting to spend the rest of his days as a rancher and a writer Hyde has written 15 books for adults and children and contributed hundreds of magazine articles, too. However, in 1987, Hyde was in northern Nevada, buying feeder cattle for the Yamsi, when he saw hundreds of captured wild horses being held in government pens. With his love of horses, his heart went out to these animals. I owed these horses something, Hyde has said. All my life as a rancher Ive been riding mustangs, training them, using them. I needed the horses, but some part of me always hated to pull them in from their freedom. I have one ache and pain in my body from every horse I ever met, but so many memories, so much joy. Determined to free these animals, Hyde turned the ranch over to family members and set out for Washington, D.C., to find out what could be done. For the next six months, he met with federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) people and haunted the halls of Congress to get permission to start a large sanctuary where wild horses could be free. His idea was to create an Institute of Range and the American Mustang (IRAM) that might raise the money needed to fund a sanctuary. Hyde hit the mark with BLM, because the agency was looking for an out with wild horses public outcry over the fate of rangeland wild horses was growing and in Hyde they soon found one. To begin his sanctuary, Hyde needed land, prairie land. He was searching in northern Oklahomas Flint Hills when then South Dakota Gov. George Mickelson invited him to look over acreage south of the Cheyenne River, near Cascade. Mickelson flew Hyde over this land in a helicopter, and there Hyde discovered 8,300 acres of shortgrass prairie with canyons and the Cheyenne River that were ideal for horses. Sanctuary Hyde acquired the land and the first wild horses were released in the sanctuary they were trucked in from BLM rangelands further west in October of 1988. His dream quickly became a reality. However, the early days were no picnic. During the early 1990s, the sanctuary struggled to get on its feet and maintain finances. Hyde also worried about BLM taking the horses back. To prevent this, the sanctuary had to acquire legal title to the animals, so sanctuary supporters were asked to adopt the horses, with the understanding that the horses would remain on the sanctuary. In 1992, the sanctuary acquired the Cox family ranch, adjacent to the original 8,300 acres. This increased the sanctuarys acreage and added the Cox familys ranch house as a sanctuary headquarters, a visitors center and a gift shop. To fund this, Hyde maxxed out credit cards, begged loans from friends and applied for and won two grants: a $60,000 grant from Phillip Morris, and a $10,000 grant from Brach Candy. Two years later (1994), a mustang stallion was added to the 300 wild mares on the sanctuary, to offer the herd a more natural life. The birth of foals calmed the mares, made them easier to handle, and created the formation of bands within the herd. The stallion was quite a happy lad, too! These and other efforts brought more unadoptable BLM horses to the sanctuary, creating a necessity to provide the animals with additional forage, which upped the sanctuarys expenses again. Two movies Crazy Horse, a made-for-television movie; and Hildago, a Hollywood movie both filmed on the sanctuary, helped spark more tourists to visit the sanctuary, which augmented income. Today, the sanctuary is one of Hot Springs top tourist destinations, according to Watt and Karla LaRive, Communications Director and Cultural Relations Liaison. Today, the sanctuary includes a total of about 14,000 acres. And while Hyde remains the head of IRAM and the sanctuary, Watt, his friend and companion is the daily energy that flows into the sanctuary. Hyde says the sanctuary couldnt survive without her. Legacy Watt grew up in Alabama, and earned University of Alabama degrees in Home Economics and English. Her path to the sanctuary is equally fascinating as Hydes. After marrying her high school sweetheart, an Air Force man, she began teaching mentally-challenged children in Alabama. The couple would later adopt three children. Watt, like a lot of young girls, had some horsey ambitions, but didnt get her first horse until later in life, after moving to Texas. It was a swap, Wayne, her husband, could have his motorcycle; Susan, her horse. Tragedy hit Watt hard during the 1990s. She lost her daughter and Wayne, having served as his caregiver for a protracted illness. Exhausted, Watt sought a new direction for her life. After a visit to Africas Serengeti, the Tanzanian national park famous for its wildebeest and zebra migrations, Watt wanted to work at a wildlife sanctuary. She first saw Hyde on a television news program, and desired to connect with him, which proved a lot harder than simply picking up the phone, because Watt was unfamiliar with the West, with mustangs, even the BLM. She also discovered Hyde, who worked outdoors from dawn to dusk and disliked telephones in general wasnt easy to get hold of. When she finally did connect, Hyde told her to do some research, read his books. She first came to the sanctuary in December of 1995. The ground was white with snow, and she stayed the weekend. After this, she drove back to Alabama, packed her things and drove back to South Dakota with her dog and parrot. Today, Watt has a hand in everything on the ranch she takes people on tours, mails out information, handles tractors, and basically runs the place. There are three focus points in Watts current efforts, she says: Maintaining the habitat and a home for the horses. Offering the public a showcase destination to experience wild horses Economic development focused on tourism in the region. Watt and LaRive talk of the healing work that goes on at the sanctuary, people healing horses, horses healing people, and how this is a never-ending cycle of giving. And that has certainly proven true with Watt. Im here for protecting the land, the horses and the people who come to visit us, and the history that is here, she said. LaRive talks about the Lakota concept of tiyospaye, the extended family that forms among people of like interests, all of them linked by the power of sunka wakan, the horse. Hyde certainly knows his dream remains in capable hands. For more information about the sanctuary, visit the website http://www.wildmustangs.com/ Sidebar: New staff at IRAM/Black Hills Wild Horse Santuary Barb Amiotte, Tour Reservations Administrative Assistant, grew up on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, then moved to San Diego, CA where she resided for 35 years and worked with various organizations as Office of Criminal Justice Planning, Indian Child Welfare Consortium, Indian Human Resource Center and St. Vincent de Paul Travelers Aid Society and Indian Health Council, Inc. While in San Diego, Barb was a member of the Team Running Strong for the Billy Mills Foundation. She is also a board member and volunteer of her church. Barb has returned home to the Black Hills where she is perusing her dream and working at the Sanctuary. Melinda Kersten, Sponsor Program Administrative Assistant, comes to the Sanctuary with more than 20 years of experience in non-profit organizations with grant writing, fundraising, and project management in the northwest Indiana regional area. There, she has successfully secured grants from federal, state, local, corporate, and foundation sources. Her dream job and passion is to learn more about wild horses interests and their protection at the Black Hills Wild Horse Sanctuary. Melinda continues her involvement with the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) Wild Horse and Burro Advisory Committee as a liaison for the Sanctuary. PIERRE South Dakota food traditions will be the focus of this years history conference hosted by the South Dakota State Historical Society. The conference is April 29-30 at the Ramkota Hotel & Conference Center in Pierre. The theme of the conference is Everyone Eats: South Dakotas Food Heritage. We will be examining the way we value and appreciate our local, regional and national foodways, and what those traditions say about us, said Jay Smith, director of the museum of the State Historical Society at the Cultural Heritage Center in Pierre and conference organizer. Whether sitting down to a family dinner, slicing into fruit kuchen or grilling fresh-caught walleye by the river, it is certain that everyone eats! said Jay D. Vogt, director of the State Historical Society. This conference is a great opportunity to come and learn about South Dakotas food traditions and practices. The conference moderator will be Dr. Brad Tennant, professor of history at Presentation College in Aberdeen and president of the board of trustees of the State Historical Society. Fridays keynote speaker is Susan Evans McClure, director of Smithsonian Food History Programs at the National Museum of American History, discussing Food at the Nations History Museum. McClure oversees the creation, planning and production of programs that explore the complexity of American history through our experiences with food and agriculture. Other Friday speakers include Ken Stewart with the State Historical Society-Archives talking about breweries in South Dakota, South Dakota Magazine editor and state legislator Bernie Hunhoff talking about restaurants in South Dakota, Catherine Lambrecht speaking about heirloom recipes and Gwen Shock Cowherd discussing Germans from Russia foodways and traditions. Lambrecht is the founder of the Greater Midwest Foodways Alliance, and Cowherd is a South Dakota native who now writes about foodways and recipe books. A Friday evening reception will be held for conference attendees at the Cultural Heritage Center. Saturdays program promises to be an interesting and fun journey through South Dakota, Smith said, beginning with Sara Uthoffs presentation entitled In the Pioneer Kitchen with Laura in reference to Laura Ingalls Wilder. Uthoff, a respected authority on Wilder, is a reference librarian at Kirkwood Community College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and director of the Oxford, Iowa, Public Library. Other Saturday sessions include Jerome Kills Small, an Oglala Lakota from the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation and former University of South Dakota instructor, discussing Harvesting Foods and Medicines in the Siouan Homelands; and Kevin Gansz, curator of education at the Old Courthouse Museum and Pettigrew House Museum in Sioux Falls, who will make a presentation about Cruisin Cuisine: The Drive-Ins of Sioux Falls. Concluding Saturdays presentations will be Dr. Howard Bonnemann, a faculty member of the Dairy Science program at South Dakota State University, who will speak about Ice Cream in South Dakota: An SDSU Perspective. We anticipate that conference attendees will have an opportunity to sample SDSU ice cream at some point during the conference, Smith said. Results of the annual State Historical Society board of trustee election will be released at Fridays luncheon, and the Governors Awards for History winners will be announced at a luncheon on Saturday. The conference offers teachers the opportunity to earn 11 contact hours from the State Department of Education. For more information, call (605) 773-6000 or visit history.sd.gov and click on the history conference link. The early registration deadline is April 8. Fugitive Russian ex-lawmaker Yegiazaryan ordered to pay over $92.5 million MOSCOW, March 21 (RAPSI, Vladimir Yaduta) United States District Court for the Central District of California ordered Ashot Yegiazaryan, a former Russia's State Duma lawmaker, to pay over $ 92.5 million to businessman Vitaly Smagin who sought to have the LCIA award enforced. On March 17, U.S. District Judge Manuel Real ruled that the Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards (the New York Convention) afforded the court little discretion in reviewing arbitral awards as it manifested a general pro-enforcement bias. The court order indicated that [t]he confirmation of an arbitration award is a summary proceeding that merely makes what is already a final arbitration award a judgment of the court, and that non-finality of a foreign proceeding (one of the points put forward by Yegiazaryans lawyers) was not a jurisdictional defense to confirmation of an award under the New York Convention. As the court order summarized, [t]he petition and supporting evidence establish that the London Award is final and enforceable, and that the Arbitration Tribunal had jurisdiction over the parties and the dispute. The ruling of the U.S. court will be appealed, Michael Adler from Tantalo & Adler LLP law firm who represents Yegiazaryan told RAPSI. We believe it was inappropriate for the court here to enter judgment while the matter is pending on appeal in England. We anticipate promptly filing an appeal here, according to Adler. RAPSI has yet to obtain comments from Smagins lawyers. Smagin, 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. Yegiazaryan presented his objections to Smagins petition. He 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. Music Tsin Ting was a Chinese singer who died at the age of 88 on October 20, 2022. The news was first released on social... Sagarmatha Network Pvt. Ltd. is the organization dedicated in the field of printing, publishing service since 2001. As part of media, we've been publishing Review Nepal, an English medium weekly registered at District Administration Office (DAO) Kathmandu with registration number 130-162-163 and reviewnepal.com as an online digital newspaper, with registration number 849-075-076 at Department of Informational and Broadcasting (DIB) from Kathmandu, Nepal since 2003. The Indian Express March 21, 2016 The new enemy property ordinance is more draconian than the one in 2010. It retrospectively rewrites the 1968 act and forecloses judicial recourse for countless Indians Written by Ali Khan Mahmudabad Mauj-e khoon sar say guzar hi kyun na jaaey / Aastaan-e yaar say uth jaaein kya (Even if I drown in waves of blood/ How can I abandon the home of my beloved) The bloody events of Partition overshadowed Independence. Far from being an event in the distant past, Partition is a process that continues to unfold. Drawing a line across a map did not take into account the myriad ways in which Partition could actually never end. The messy and complicated migration of people would prevent this, and indeed, ultimately questions were bound to arise about how language, culture, history and indeed families, the carriers of human experiences, can be partitioned. My family underwent an internal partition like many other families. Ten years after 1947, my grandfather became a Pakistani citizen. My grandmother and father remained Indian citizens. Following the Indo-Pak war in 1965, a legal category called aEnemy Propertya came into force. Under the Enemy Property Act, 1968, properties of citizens belonging to the aenemya country were taken over by the governments of both India and Pakistan and temporarily vested in a custodian. By this time my grandfather was a Pakistani citizen, still holding property in India. This too was declared enemy property. In September 1965, my grandmother and other family members were summarily thrown out of their own home. Hostilities ceased, peace treaties were signed, but the enemy property law continued to exist. The intention of the original act was to maintain and preserve the properties during the war. The 1968 act upholds the title of the original owner. This was subsequently confirmed by many courts of law. My grandfather died in London in 1973 and my father, his only son, claimed his inheritance as an Indian citizen. The next 30 years of his life were spent battling for his rights as an Indian citizen. A legal odyssey began in the civil court of Lucknow, passed through the High Court of Bombay and ended in the Supreme Court (SC). Each court reinforced earlier orders and categorically upheld an Indian citizenas right to inherit his fatheras properties. Finally, in 2005, the SC restored the properties to my father and held that a citizenas rights could not be usurped in this manner and deemed the governmentas possession of the properties illegal since 1973. Importantly, the government had even appealed the SC judgment in 2005 but its appeal was rejected. Citizenship has always had a fraught relationship with property ownership but the battle was equally about a principle, about removing the blemish of aenemya with all its alienating implications. Five years after losing the case in the SC, the government suddenly brought in an ordinance in 2010, seeking to retrospectively change the original act of 1968. The 2010 ordinance lapsed and the original act remained unchanged, along with all the judgments that were based on it. However, properties that had been restored following the SC order were summarily retaken as enemy property in August 2010. Thus, a new legal journey began. Once more, the stigma of aenemya reared its head. We went from court to court seeking justice. More than five years passed, when suddenly on the very day (January 7, 2016) that our matter was listed for final hearing in the SC, we learnt that yet another ordinance had been promulgated. The new ordinance/ bill is more draconian than the one in 2010. It retrospectively rewrites the act of 1968 and renders all judgments made on the basis of the original act null and void. It seeks to undo decades of legal proceedings with little care for all the effort that countless Indians had spent on getting justice. Essentially, it closes the door to judicial recourse and transforms a acustodiana to aownera as it mandates the government to sell all these properties. However, the most insidious aspect of the ordinance is that the very meaning of aenemya has been redefined. The definition of aenemya now includes Indian citizens who happen to be the legal heirs of people who went to Pakistan. Faced with a choice during Partition, millions of Muslims opted to remain in India. Sadly, the new amendments make some Indian citizensa identities wholly contingent on whether a relative went to Pakistan. My father, an astrophysicist by training and twice an MLA in Uttar Pradesh, has spent most of his adult life battling for his rights. He is fortunate to have been able to do sobut for lakhs of Indian citizens, the door to the judiciary is shut through the new ordinance. Indeed, the reason for the promulgation of the ordinance has been that the custodian finds it difficult to do his job because of an increase in the number of legal cases related to aenemy propertya . As is inevitable, over the years, various vested interests have taken advantage of aenemy propertya and, indeed, one effect of the new bill is to metaphorically aput a lida on all matters related to it, so that retrospectively since 1968, aenemy propertya will no longer be subject to judicial scrutiny. The custodian continues to designate new enemy properties today despite the fact that hostilities ceased decades ago. In 2013, there were about 2,100 properties and in 2015, over 15,000 enemy properties. Many properties are not owned by Muslims but by people from other communities who have bought them over the course of the last 40 years. The ramifications of the bill will also undo their ownership. Ironically, while this has been happening, I have been teaching undergraduates about the history of nationalism. The day the Enemy Property (Amendment and Validation) Bill, 2016 was being passed in the Lok Sabha, we were discussing the idea of astrangersa as a political category. Although my father is an Indian citizen and, therefore, cannot be deemed a foreigner, the 2016 bill sees him, and many thousands like him, as strangers in their own country. The writer, 33, is assistant professor at Ashoka University and columnist for the Urdu daily aInquilaba. His family is affected by the enemy property ordinance and the case is sub-judice in the Supreme Court. Views are personal The Telegraph - 21 March 2016 Citizenship is a birthright; patriotism is an acquired attribute. None of us bawled "Bharat Mata ki jai" or "Jai Hind" in our cribs but we were, unconditionally, citizens of this country before we were continent and well before we learnt to think or act or walk or speak. This shouldnt need saying but in the present political climate, underlining the bl***ing obvious becomes a duty. Citizenship, in the jargon of medical insurance companies, is a pre-existing condition. Our rights as citizens cannot, should not, be taken away from us unless we break our republics laws. It follows from this that citizenship and its attendant promise of life and liberty, cannot be subject to litmus tests of patriotism devised by political parties, celebrity nationalists, bureaucrats and gau rakshaks. But increasingly they are. Just the past week produced four examples of the way in which this birthright is being challenged by people who would argue that being law-abiding is not enough; Indians have to demonstrate that they are good citizens. The implication in each case is that if we arent able or willing to perform designated patriotic exercises (or distance ourselves from unpatriotic ones) our standing as citizens, our rights, our liberties can legitimately be taken away from us. Lets discuss these four challenges in ascending order of awfulness. Anupam Kher, a distinguished actor who has recently acquired a reputation as the roving scourge of the politically correct, visited the Jawaharlal Nehru Universitys campus earlier this week to challenge the legitimacy of the post-bail political narrative first set out by Kanhaiya Kumar in his celebrated speech. In the question and answer session that followed Khers speech, someone argued, in defence of JNUs student community, that the slogans shouted on that fateful evening, celebrating the imminent disintegration of India and denouncing those who had a hand in executing Afzal Guru, had been raised by outsiders. Khers response was revealing. Did you, he asked, referring to JNU students in general, tear down the posters that celebrated Afzal Guru? No, you didnt. They remained stuck to the walls of university buildings for days. It was for Kher, a gotcha moment and it tells you everything that is important about the sarkari narrative on JNU. To be physically proximate to unpatriotic utterance calls your Indian bona fides into question. So the fact that JNUs students let those posters stay on JNUs walls was culpable in itself. For Kher, the universitys students had been found wanting in Indianness. Instead of scraping the posters off the buildings as any passionate patriot would have done, they had lived with them. This inertness, was a kind of complicity. Citizens have to prove themselves. Citizenship, in Khers view of the world, isnt a birthright; its a kind of probation and you only truly belong when you learn to perform your patriotism. But Kher, despite his proximity to the ruling dispensation, is a private citizen. His opinions dont formally represent the view of the State. Its a much more serious business when the National Council for Promotion of Urdu Language circulates a form to writers in Urdu, asking them to certify that their books - novels, short stories, plays, poems, memoirs etc - contain nothing that is critical of the policies of the government or the interest of the nation. The NCPUL encourages literary production in Urdu by buying books in bulk, and according to the Indian Express, this new form is meant to put Urdu writers on notice "...that in case of a breach, the NCPUL can take legal action against the author and take back the monetary assistance". The NCPUL is a government organization and it answers to the ministry of human resource development. The decision to get Urdu writers to sign on to this form was taken last year. It is, on the face of it, extraordinary that the government of India should ask writers to guarantee that their books contain nothing that is against "the policies of the government" or "the interest of the nation" or that is likely to cause "disharmony of any sort between different classes of the country". It is bad enough that a government should ask writers to self-attest that their novels and poems and essays are utterly conformist and docile, but it is particularly worrying when writers in a particular language, Urdu, who happen to be overwhelmingly Muslim, are singled out to sign this humiliating undertaking. The NCPUL directors justification is breathtaking in its candour. "Since we do not have the manpower to scrutinise every single line of each book, this form helps us place the onus on the authors." The onus for what? Are Urdu writers, in the opinion of the NCPUL and the HRD ministry, in the habit of cobbling anti-national and communally inflammatory material into their work? Curiously, the equivalent policy of the National Council for Promotion of Sindhi Language contains no such stipulation. The lesson to take away from this seems to be that some citizens are allowed to take their patriotism for granted while the patriotism of others (in this case, writers in Urdu) needs formal self-attestation. This bullying enthusiasm for applying loyalty tests to law abiding citizens reached a new low when the Maharashtra assembly unanimously voted to suspend Waris Pathan, on the charge of disrespecting the country. Pathans crime was refusing to say "Bharat Mata ki jai" when a Bharatiya Janata Party member of parliament insisted that he recite this slogan. The Nationalist Congress Party and the Congress joined the BJP in asking for Pathans suspension and the Speaker caved in to their demand despite the fact that Pathan had done nothing to warrant suspension in terms of the assemblys own rules. Pathans willingness to say "Jai Hind" as an alternative invocation of the nation was disregarded. Pathan was following the lead of his party leader, Asaduddin Owaisi, who had announced a few days earlier that nothing would make him say "Bharat Mata ki jai" It is one thing to criticize Owaisis declaration as a form of political grandstanding (as Javed Akhtar did in Parliament); it is quite another to suspend a democratically elected member of the legislative assembly for refusing to jump through political hoops at the behest of hostile fellow legislators. In a country in which MLAs have been known to hold up proceedings, throw furniture about and even assault each other, to punish an MLA for not saying something, for refusing to mouth a slogan that he felt was contrary to his religious principles, is truly Kafkaesque. The rights of citizenship, the rules of representative government are being cynically bent to accommodate a bullying jingoism. My last example is a hideous tragedy. A man and a 12-year-old boy taking oxen to a cattle market were lynched in a village in Jharkhand and hung from a tree. They happen to be Muslim. The five men arrested in connection with these murders happen to be Hindus. One of the five happens to be connected to a cow-protection society. The superintendent of police in charge of the case thinks that, prima facie, this is a case of cattle looting gone wrong, but he is also investigating other possibilities including ideological motives related to gau raksha. On social media some right-wing commentators favour personal enmity as the likelier explanation. They could be right but all of us should be deeply worried about the manner of this lynching. If this was a violent robbery that just happened to end in murder, why were the victims, one of them just a boy, left hanging on a tree? A hanging isnt just a murder, it is a kind of execution. When two Muslims in the cattle trade are lynched in this demonstrative way, it is reasonable to wonder if a message is intended. Jharkhand is a state ruled by the BJP. Unlike the lynching in Dadri, this one happened on its watch. This doesnt mean that Mohammad Majloom and Inayatullah Khan are exhibits A and B in some indictment of the BJPs Jharkhand government. We dont have to argue complicity to point out that Narendra Modis regime, which Arun Shourie mocked as the UPA plus a cow, has consistently dog-whistled about cow protection. Local party workers, MLAs, MPs, ministers, chief ministers said vile and temporising things after the Dadri lynching. The BJP has consistently equivocated in the aftermath of gau-rakshak violence; it should surprise no one if it turns out that Mohammad Majloom and Inayatullah Khan were lynched because their killers felt a sense of ideological impunity. Majloom and Khan quite likely died because in contemporary India, Muslims herding cows or eating meat arent always given the benefit of the doubt. As with Waris Pathan and Urdu writers and JNUs students, the burden of proof is sometimes reversed. We seem to be in the middle of a counter-reformation where new inquisitors refuse to take our citizenship, our innocence if you will, for granted. We - some more than others - are asked to prove our innocence and perform our Indianness to their satisfaction. We should refuse. There is no satisfying an Inquisition and as free citizens of a great republic we have nothing to prove. mukulkesavan[at]hotmail.com [Posted below are selected reports and commentary on the mass mobilisation by religious leaders in Pakistan opposed to the Punjab Protection of Women against Violence Act. See also a letter from the Feminist platform WAF to the Pakistan Prime Minister and to the Chief Minister of Punjab State ] Pakistan religious leaders slam womens protection act http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/03/religious-leaders-slam-women-protection-act-pakistan-160303160705361.html Pakistan: Womens Action Forum (WAF) Letter to Prime Minister and Punjab Chief Minister on Women Protection Act Punjab The News International, March 20, 2016 Standing up to the clerics by Ghazi Salahuddin When they sat together on a Mansoora table in Lahore on Tuesday, the religious leaders of Pakistan had women on their mind. They deliberated on the Punjab Protection of Women against Violence Act and demanded that the law be withdrawn before March 27; otherwise, they would launch a nation-wide movement against the government. Times have certainly changed, but there are intimations of the massive agitation that was mounted against Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1977. The Pakistan National Alliance (PNA) movement was largely religiously motivated. Its slogan was the establishment of the Nizam-e-Mustafa, though political parties were also a part of the nine-party alliance. And the irony is that Nawaz Sharif, though he had not yet emerged on the political horizon in 1977, would spiritually have belonged to that Islamist group. After all, his was the most prominent face in another Islamist alliance (an electoral one this time) that was formed in 1988 to confront Z A Bhuttoas daughter Benazir. The Islami Jamhoori Ittehad (IJI) also had nine parties. Throughout his political career, Nawaz Sharif has basked in the glory of conservative, even Islamist politics. Now, however, the religious parties have ganged up against their former ally. Is this an omen of some kind, indicating a shift in the ideological alignments of our political parties? Can we hope that the veto power that clerics had held over our politics is about to be curtailed? We need to look carefully at this emerging confrontation between the government and a united front of the religious groups in the context of the ongoing campaign against terrorism and extremism. This means that we can safely set aside an analogy between the PNA movement and the present stirrings. No mainstream political party is marching with the clerics and the establishment has obviously not nudged them into this defiance. While the immediate provocation is the aun-Islamica law on womenas rights, it is instructive to scan the joint declaration that was approved by around 30 religious outfits. There has been some discussion lately about a shift in the governmentas ideological sense of direction. First, the prime minister invoked a aliberala vision of Pakistan. Then, Mumtaz Qadri was executed. There have been some other signs of this shift. The declaration said that athe religious leadership stands united to safeguard Namoos-e-Risalat and the Muslim family systema . It is interesting that these religious parties are not ashamed to insist that the measures taken by the government that they deem to be secular and liberal in nature aare a revolt against the constitution and betrayal of the founding fathers of the countrya . Imagine in your mind the sight of the leaders that represent the entire spectrum of our religious constituency and ask yourselves if they could be the successors of the founding fathers of Pakistan. This, in a way, is a more sinister usurpation of what they call the ideology of Pakistan than any military intervention or imposition of martial law. This is one measure of how we, in a collective sense, relate to our history. This confusion has left us wandering in the wilderness. According to published reports, Jamaat-e-Islami chief Sirajul Haq, who presided over the meeting, said that athe women protection law is an attack on the Muslim family system and the rulers have been tasked to break ita . He argued that along with such measures as the execution of Mumtaz Qadri, the law was part of an international agenda and proved that the West had unleashed a cultural attack on the Muslim world. There is no denying that Pakistani society is very vulnerable to religions passions. Even when the Islamists are unable to win an electoral majority, their capacity to mobilise the streets on an emotional issue is considerable. Besides, this power becomes larger than what it actually is when the government loses its nerve or when some high functionaries play a collaborative role. That is how a Lal Masjid becomes possible. Have things changed since the Army Public School in Peshawar to an extent that the government can take on the clerics this time? The very reasons that the religious alliance has given for its exasperation are justification for not moving back. And if this is the resolve of the authorities, they should be grateful to the religious leaders for getting together and setting the stage for a decisive encounter. But we cannot be sure that Nawaz Sharifas administration would be able to muster the courage of its convictions. It is difficult to visualise a change of heart of such proportions in a short time. The PML-N, after all, has always been a right of centre, conservative party, and its affiliations with the militants in southern Punjab have been widely suspected. So, why did Nawaz Sharif step out of this shadow in November last year to perceive Pakistanas future in a aliberala and democratic dispensation? Why was he so enthusiastic in applauding the Oscar awarded to Sharmeen Obaild-Chinoyas short documentary on honour killing, when the Islamists were condemning it as a Western conspiracy to damage Pakistanas image? How did he find the courage to execute Mumtaz Qadri? And how was the landmark womenas rights law possible in Punjab? It seems rational to believe that this is a new game plan, devised in collaboration with the military establishment. The logic for this shift has been present for a long time. It would be a national tragedy if these initiatives were abandoned prematurely. Incidentally, the religious leaders also expressed their concern that the rulers were keen to improve ties with India. There has been some good news on that front too, and this process should also be protected. The fact that the law to protect women against violence has become the rallying point for all factions of Islamists and radicals, as well as moderates, is understandable. They resist the emancipation of women with full force. They know that the education of little girls and the freedom of women will effectively obliterate their kingdom of fear and obscurantism. It is for this reason that they so venomously disparage Western values and ideas. One reason for Islamophobia in Western countries, apart from violent extremism, is the status of women in Muslim countries. I read an article about a prominent French intellectual, Alain Finkielkraut, in The New York Times who argues that Islam and the French society are incompatible. He is obviously an anti-Muslim rightist. But I think that he has a point when he says that the main problem is the oppression of women in Muslim culture. aWeave got to help the Muslims resolve this questiona , he said. In Pakistan, we should not need anyoneas help to liberate our women. The writer is a staff member. o o o The News - March 17, 2016 Editorial: Fantastical fears The degree of frenzy stirred up by the Protection of Women Law passed unanimously by the Punjab Assembly last month is unexpected and rather alarming. Under pressure from religious parties, the Punjab government has stopped the notification of the law while its top brass contemplates what to do. What is unclear is whether the religious right has the political power to force the government into changing the law. The claims of religious parties, led by the JUI-F and the Jamaat-e-Islami, are widely exaggerated. The law has been labelled an aattack on the Muslim family systema, a promotion of aWestern immoralitya, an attempt at asecularisinga Pakistan and an attack on the arights of mena. The Punjab Protection of Women Law aims to protect women against domestic abuse and harassment in public spaces. Both are systemic issues prevalent in Pakistani society. This is as such not different from other laws passed to protect women against physical harm at both the federal and provincial levels. The Protection of Women Bill of 2006 is an example, with religious parties apparently un-threatened by the Musharraf-era legislation which amended Hudood Ordinance provisions. Even the most narrow-minded of critics of the recent law have shied away from arguing that husbands have a right to beat their wives or that men have a right to harass women. So the question is: if it is acknowledged that these practices are not desired in society, then why are the religious parties protesting a law that aims to put an end to them? The answer is simple: political expediency. The religious parties appear to have decided to construct an issue out of a non-issue simply to gain political mileage. One must remember that the law to regulate marriage in the Ayub Khan period was also opposed while religious parties attempted to thwart the rise of Zulfikar Ali Bhuttoas PPP by using the rhetoric of a athreat to Islama. The fact is that the law to protect women poses no threat to Islam. There appears to be nothing in the law that is either un-Islamic or violates cultural practices. After all, no culture and no religion a especially not Islam a sanctions violence of any kind against women. It seems the religious right is trying to remain relevant to the countryas politics by raising the slogan that somehow Islam is in danger because of this law. In a post-NAP Pakistan, religious parties have not been able to raise support in favour of their usual causes. That the execution of Mumtaz Qadri and passage of the womenas protection law are being condemned in the same line of argument suggests that our religious parties are trying to counter their own irrelevance to the politics of Pakistan. The Punjab government deserves praise for tabling the law and defending it as well. It must not give in to these demands. Otherwise, it will open itself to being held hostage over and over again. It would be unfortunate if a measure aimed at safeguarding a large proportion of the population had to be altered on the basis of whims expressed by the right wing. o o o The News - March 17, 2016 Activists come out against religious partiesa furore over pro-women law Karachi Often seen to have taken hard stances against each other, mainstream religious parties and scholars belonging to all schools of thought appear to be standing in unison against the pro-women bill recently passed by the Punjab Assembly. However, voices condemning the scholarsa demand to withdraw the aun-Islamica Punjab Protection of Women Against Violence Act-2015, by March 27, have also been raised as civil society activists on Wednesday gathered outside the Karachi Press Club and urged the Punjab government not to succumb to the partiesa pressure. The protest was organised under the banner of Joint Action Committee (JAC) a a coalition including organisations sucAh as the Human Rights Organisation of Pakistan, Urban Resource Centre, Peoplesa Labour Bureau, Aurat Foundation, Pakistan Medical Association, Pakistan Institute for Labour Education and Research and others. The JAC, welcoming the Punjab governmentas step, called for implementing the bill in letter and spirit. A representative of the National Organisation for Working Communities, Farhat Parveen, said, aIn a country where ahonoura killings and acid attack remain common, the passage of the bill in Punjab is a good omen and must be appreciated.a The Sindh government had already passed a law pertaining to providing protection to women from domestic violence in 2013 but was yet to implement it, she added. aWe strongly condemn the religious parties which have not only been mocking a serious bill protecting women from violence but also using the issue to pressure the government to gain personal benefits,a opined vice chairperson of HRCPas Sindh chapter, Asaid Iqbal Butt. The protestors also called for the legislation to be taken as a bench mark by the federal government as well as other provincial governments while also criticised the religious partiesa practice of doing politics in the name of women. Representatives of over 35 religious parties on the call of Jamaat-e-Islami (JI) had, on Tuesday, gathered in Lahore to warn the Punjab government of launching a mass protest movement if the bill was not withdrawn by March 27. This bill introduces, for the first time, an in-built implementation mechanism through the establishing centres in all districts for victims, court orders pertaining to provision of residence, protection as well as monetary compensation and introduction of GPS tracked electronic bracelets-anklets for perpetrators. o o o The Nation - March 16, 2016 Who gave these religious scholars the right to speak on behalf of women? by Shamila Ghyas People who have never raised their voice for child brides, for raped women, for the women who killed themselves due to a lack of justice, are in no position to have a say over women rights A lot has been said about the Womenas Protection Act of Punjab and one would have thought the topic would have been done and dusted by now. The Act consists of 31 clauses which provide a proper system for complaint registration as well as penalties for offenders. Women being protected from all forms of violence, what could be wrong in that? Apparently, a lot. All the religious parties in Pakistan have demanded that the government withdraw the bill. On the one hand, they term it un-Islamic while on the other, they say Islam does not allow violence on women. So if there is no violence allowed then why be against something that goes even further and protects the woman? Maulana Fazlur Rehman even went far enough to say the law has poison in it. He said that many of the clauses contradict Sunnah. This still very much counters their statement saying Islam does not allow violence against women. Mufti Naeem commented earlier that the law is not needed since just a mere 1% of women go through domestic violence. Does he know how many women exist in Pakistan and what a huge number, the (supposed) 1% he is dismissing actually amounts to? If the number of women abused does not reach 10,000,000 the violence should be swept under the carpet and be ignored? And letas not even get to the cases which go unreported and unrecorded. A lot of the complaints revolve around the man who assaults his wife being told to leave the home instead of the woman. He is also required to wear a GPS so his movements can be tracked. They say that is an insult to the dignity of a man to leave and to wear such a thing. I think it would rather be a humongous insult to the manas dignity IF he assaults his wife. But then that is just me and not the Maulanas teaching us about dignified behavior. There can be no arguments in favor of a man being allowed to assault and beat his wife or women in general. None. A man who does not intend on beating his wife would not have any problems with the bill. It does not affect him or his wife or his family. He should welcome it, for the people who do this will be the ones punished, not him. As for marriages breaking up, should a woman who is regularly beaten by her husband stay in such an abusive marriage in the first place? And no, since people will bring up children, they are equally affected by such marriages as are by broken ones. Perhaps even more. If the wife is so desperate and has nowhere to go, or is pushed down by the social stigma of awhat will people saya and abringing shame to the family,a the poor woman will probably not even report the violence to the police in the first place a leaving her marriage quite aintact.a There will be women who will abuse the law too; but even that has been taken into consideration. There is a fine as well as jail time in place. And putting all that aside, people who have never raised their voice for a raped woman, for the woman who killed herself due to lack of justice, are in no position to have a say over women rights. They never showed this much uproar for when an 11-year-old child was married off to a 50-yea-old man and died a week later due to internal injuries. They conveniently turned deaf and dumb when a man threw acid on the face of a woman who said no to marrying him. They secretly smiled at the brother who killed his sister because he saw her talking to a boy he did not like. What gives them the right to have a say in this when they have been quiet all along regarding every other atrocity that has taken place against women? Who makes them the experts? Just because they are scholars? Here, they are openly going against a law that is there to protect women. What is the point of such scholars when they are only encouraging violence with their stance? aIslam does not allow violence against women and we shall support every law that backs this up.a THIS is what they should be saying. THIS! No ifs and buts. There are no gray areas here. Think about the times when families pressurize daughters-in-law to get dowry from their respective families and this continues well into the marriage too. How many cases are there of families abusing them (daughters-in-law) to the point they actually die? Countless. Are we just supposed to express our grief when we read about such cases by shaking our heads and then moving on the to the next news? Is it not better to prevent such things from taking place entirely? Wonat the woman have been better off had the family/husband been punished before it got to the point where she didnat exist anymore? What about the children she left behind then? Suddenly, nobody is thinking of them anymore. Every single person who wants the Womens Protection Act in Punjab to be withdrawn is nothing more than a person with a severe inferiority complex who doesnt want to be punished by law when he beats, rapes, abuses, harasses, throws acid on women, etc. They come equipped with a mentality that man is superior to a woman and thus holds power over her. That includes the right to hit her when he wishes to. This also goes for the women who agree to be violated against and think it as being completely acceptable behavior. There are many women out there who support the weak, spineless characters who abuse and use religion to further their own agenda. If you are against the Act, it simply means you are saying it is okay to beat and rape women. Shamila Ghyas is an author who writes for Khabaristan Times and other publications. o o o Dawn - 21 March 2016 Mullahs on the warpath by Maheen Usmani Perhaps nothing unites our clerics more than womenas issues. The Council of Islamic Ideology deliberates on burning issues like underage marriage (the younger the better), can a woman object to her husbandas second, third and fourth marriages (no), can DNA be used as primary evidence in rape cases (of course not...duh), the interpretation of veil for women, is co-education kosher (no, such an unhealthy practice for society), should female judges be obliged to wear niqab (naturally, yes). Nowadays, the clerics have a new rallying cry. Mullahs a who seal their lips and eyes when women are raped, assaulted, burnt, murdered, humiliated, thrown out of houses, used as barter or traded to compensate for "insults" to ghairatmand (so-called honourable) men a are finally up in arms. What has got their goat this time? The Punjab Assembly has taken the unforgivable step of passing the Womens Protection Act, which seeks to give legal protection to women from domestic, psychological and sexual violence. How ridiculous is that, shout the clerics. This is "an un-Islamic law!" they thunder from their pulpits. Maulana Fazlur Rehman and his coterie are so incensed that they are racing to hold rallies to protest such a draconian move which will grant protection to women from their oppressors. How can this happen in Pakistan, they scream. Yes, they are the very same people who have decided that they are the stakeholders of a country whose very existence they not only campaigned against and denounced but whose founder they termed "Kafir-e-Azam." Now they have positioned themselves as the standard bearers of Pakistan and its ideology. In fact, they are corrupting its ideology to suit their ends. And the supine, pathetic so-called silent majority has let them. Examine: It took my mother 30 years to walk out of an abusive marriage and an honest infidelity In Punjab, violence is a way of life in many homes. Recently, I met a woman from the province who worked as a maid and was widowed at an early age and had struggled to raise her kids. One day when I said, "How sad that your husband died so younga" she interrupted me with a wave of her hand. "Baji, no, no, I am not sorry. He used to hit me so much. At least now no one can raise a hand to me. Its difficult yes, but now, I live life on my own terms." Surprised that this spirited tall woman had once been battered, I asked: "But why did you take it? Why did you not tell him to stop?a aBecause Baji, that is the way our men are, They beat us and we get beaten. That is our life." And this is exactly the kind of mindset the mullahs in Pakistan want to perpetuate: powerless women getting abused endlessly and accepting it as their due. Maheen Usmani is a freelance journalist. She has reported on varied subjects ranging from socio-political issues to sports, travel, culture and counter terrorism. Human Rights Watch - 29 February 2016 - Dispatches by Heather Barr (Senior Researcher, Womens Rights Division) Each year, dozens or even hundreds of women and girls in Afghanistan are subjected to invasive, humiliating, and sometimes painful vaginal and rectal exams in the name of ascience.a These so-called virginity exams are not just demeaning a they constitute sexual assault and are often used as evidence against women in court for the acrimea of zina, or sex outside of marriage. The governmental Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission recently interviewed 53 women and girls as young as 13 who had been accused of zina, an act punishable by up to 15 years in prison. Forty-eight of these women and girls had been sent for avirginity examsa performed by Afghan government doctors. Twenty were examined more than once a up to four times in a couple of cases. One woman said that there were six people in the room watching the examination. Doctors write reports based on these examinations, and they are used as evidence in courts hearing the amoral crimea accusation against the woman or girl. These reports often draw conclusions on whether a woman or girl is a avirgin,a and whether she recently or habitually engaged in sexual intercourse. aVirginity examsa are bogus. Many people mistakenly believe that virginity can be determined because the hymen is always broken when a woman or girl has sexual intercourse for the first time. This is simply not true. Some girls are born without a hymen; hymens often break during daily non-sexual activities, and some hymens remain intact after sexual intercourse. Purported virginity exams are so unreliable that the World Health Organization has said that they have no scientific validity and health workers should never conduct them. The continued use of degrading and unscientific avirginity examsa by the Afghan government is part of a broader pattern of abuses in which women and girls in Afghanistan are jailed on spurious amoral crimesa accusations, often in situations where they are fleeing forced marriage or domestic violence. The government should end these arrests entirely and reform the law that permits them. Banning all avirginity examsa could be an important first step toward reform. Afghan President Ashraf Ghani could abolish these exams through an executive order. Recognizing everyoneas inherent dignity, respecting human rights, and appreciating real science over pseudo-science all demand he do so. The New York Times, February 22, 2016 London a I gave a talk last month at the Galle Literary Festival in Jaffna, Sri Lanka. This festival, whose home is in the southern city of Galle, has become over the past decade one of the brightest lights in Sri Lankaas cultural firmament. This year, it established aoutreacha festivals in Kandy, in Sri Lankaas hill country, and in Jaffna in the North. Taking the festival to Jaffna, the northern province capital, was particularly significant. It is less than seven years since the brutal civil war between the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam and the Sri Lankan Army came to an end. Much has been reconstructed in the North, but the ghosts of conflict still haunt Jaffna, from bullet-marked buildings to the thousands of civilians who were killed in the waras bloody conclusion. Against this background, the festival provided a space for engagement with a wide variety of ideas in a way that does not often happen in a place like Jaffna. It opened with a discussion of Tamil literature, which has a long and important history that has helped shape and define Tamil identity. Acknowledging the sensitivities involved, the festival organizers held the session in Tamil. Strikingly, though, every panelist and many Tamil writers in the audience objected, insisting that it should have been in English. aWe donat want to be talking just to ourselves,a one said. That is not a sentiment I have often come across a and Iave taken part in many discussions about identity, in Europe and America. aTalking to oneselfa all too often seems to be the aim of identity politics in the West. A good case in point is the current fashion for denouncing acultural appropriation,a which denotes the use by people of one culture (especially privileged ones) of the symbols or ideas of another. This notion has led to bizarre cases such as a student unions banning sombreros and yoga classes. The trouble is, the history of culture is the history of appropriation. There can be no culture without people borrowing, stealing and appropriating from one another. The discussion about identity in Jaffna had a very different texture. For the Tamils there, identity was not a barrier to protect themselves from the rest of the world, but a means of engaging with that world. I had been equally struck by the response of the audience at an event a few days earlier in Colombo, the capital of Sri Lanka. I had been interviewed onstage in a conversation that ranged from my early life, to my sense of identity, to questions of free speech and censorship. I was critical of identity politics and supportive of the right to give offense. In particular, I defended the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo from charges of racism. I have spoken on similar themes to similar audiences in Europe and faced considerable criticism. What gives you the right to offend others, Iave been asked. Free speech comes with the obligation to use it responsibly, Iave been told. In one debate in Britain, about the fallout from the Charlie Hebdo affair, a fellow panelist bemoaned the fact that the debate had become polarized between those for and those against free speech. One cannot simply be for or against freedom, he argued: aIt is more complicated than that.a Would the panelist, I wondered, have made the same argument 200 years ago during the debate about the abolition of slavery? Would he have said: aOne cannot simply be for or against the abolition of slavery. Freedom is more complicated than that.a It was not a question I had to pose my Colombo audience. The people there implicitly understood the importance of freedom and, in particular, of free speech. Even those in the audience critical of the cartoons in Charlie Hebdo defended its right to publish them. There are deep ethnic, religious and sectarian tensions in Sri Lanka. The Tamil Tigers were a secular organization, but a sectarian one. In Samanth Subramanianas superb book about the war and its aftermath, aThis Divided Island,a one of his interviewees, who was drawn to hard-line Hinduism, suggested that the Tigers lost because they based their struggle on language, not religion. In fact, since the end of the war, Sri Lanka has witnessed a growth of sectarian religious movements. A more strident strain of Buddhism has developed, for example, which targets not Tamils, but Muslims. Islam in Sri Lanka is also changing. It used to be a relatively open, relaxed faith. Yet I was struck by how many women there now wear the burqa, something unimaginable a couple of decades ago. Many Sri Lankan Muslims, it appears, have gone to Gulf states as laborers, and returned bearing a sterner strain of Islam. Religious radicalism is still on the margins in Sri Lanka. Such trends are far more visible in other South Asian countries: the growth of Buddhist extremism in Myanmar, of Hindu fundamentalism in India, of Islamism in Pakistan and Bangladesh. The growth of these movements is what makes the response of the audiences in Jaffna and Colombo so significant. Itas a response too often ignored in the West. Many in the West cannot see beyond sectarianism or fundamentalist groups, failing to notice those who resist such ideas and movements. And by demanding bans on acultural appropriationa or the giving of offense, many adopt ideas about identity, culture and free speech that give more comfort to the sectarians than to those challenging them. Do we want a more open society or a more closed one? That is the heart of the debate, whether in Colombo, Jaffna or London. In the relatively open societies of the West, many demand a perversely, in the name of tolerance a the creation of more barriers between groups. In countries where the conditions of freedom are far more fragile, there is a greater recognition of the need for a more open society. We should all listen. Kenan Malik is the author, most recently, of aThe Quest for a Moral Compass: A Global History of Ethicsa and a contributing opinion writer. 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). Some interesting recent discussions of religion and the death penalty | Main | Unanimous Supreme Court suggests Second Amendment can preclude state felony prosecution for public weapon possession March 22, 2016 DOJ bragging about Smart on Crime initiative focusing on "more significant drug cases" Yesterday the Department of Justice issued this official press release titled "New Smart on Crime Data Reveals Federal Prosecutors Are Focused on More Significant Drug Cases and Fewer Mandatory Minimums for Drug Defendants." Here is how the release gets started: The Justice Department today revealed new data from its innovative Smart on Crime Initiative that show charging decisions by federal prosecutors in fiscal year 2015 resulted in prosecutors' focusing on more serious drug cases and fewer indictments carrying a mandatory minimum. Meanwhile, prosecutions of high-level drug defendants have risen and cooperation and plea rates remained effectively the same. The promise of Smart on Crime is showing impressive results, said Deputy Attorney General Sally Q. Yates. Federal prosecutors are consistently using their discretion to focus our federal resources on the most serious cases and to ensure that we reserve harsh mandatory minimum sentence for the most dangerous offenders. By ensuring fair and proportional sentencing, these policies engender greater trust in our criminal justice system, save federal resources and make our communities more safe. " As part of the departments Smart on Crime Initiative announced in August 2013 federal prosecutors were instructed to ensure the departments finite resources are devoted to the most important law enforcement priorities implicating substantial federal interests and to promote fair enforcement of our laws, especially for low-level, non-violent drug offenders. Since that announcement, prosecutions of serious drug defendants such as those involving a weapon or leaders of a conspiracy have increased, and there has been virtually no change in the rates at which defendants cooperate with the government or plead guilty. During the same time, the department has seen steady reductions in charges that trigger mandatory minimums and fewer federal drug charges for low-level, non-violent offenders. Notably, this Politico article reports that not everyone may think these developments represent good news: Some lawmakers have sounded skeptical that lowering the number of federal drug prosecutions is something the Obama administration should be celebrating. "I've heard that argument that 'we're always focusing on higher people that's why the numbers are down' for over 25 years. I do not believe that," Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said at a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing earlier this month. " Sessions acknowledged that the federal prisons are saving money as a result of fewer convicts coming their way, but he questioned the wisdom of that approach as heroin use has picked up dramatically across the country. "The prison population is declining at a rapid rate. It was 5,000 down last year. The budget for the prisons is being reduced as a result of a substantial decline in population. And at the same time, the drug use is surging and death are occurring. And on my opinion, it's going to get worse," Sessions said. However, Yates said Monday she remains hopeful that Congress will pass criminal justice reform legislation that will give federal prosecutors and judges even more discretion in drug cases. "At the risk of sounding maybe naive and overly optimistic, I really believe we have a very good chance of getting sentencing reform because its one of the few things out there for which there really is bipartisan support," the deputy attorney general said. "We have people on both ends of the spectrum that actually agree that this needs to happen, so you got to hope that when you have that, that we can actually bring this over the finish line. March 22, 2016 at 06:56 AM | Permalink Comments Neither Yares or the Doj can distinguish between violent offenders and run of the mill drug offenders. Its all about filling the Psr as full as they can chuck diddly stuff in. Not too many yrs ago, owi was a vilent felony. If the mandatory sentence for a state chare exceeded 1 yr, thats the definition if a felony. In Colorado, possesion of Mary Jane exceeded 1 yr, bingo all were violent felonys. I k ow, I know all of this has been backed off. But the system still needs so much done. Old boys say they need the mandatories fir drugs to catch and beat down terrorist. Great then change the guidelines so they only apply to this imaginary group. Enough said. All it takes is a Sen like Cotton and Bill Otis and Grassley to hang on to 40 yrs of failure and sell it big. Flip side is, progress has been made, which is great for defendents. Posted by: MidWestGuy | Mar 22, 2016 8:14:33 AM The problem is that the seriousness of the offense is dependent on what the prosecutor decides to charge. This frequently depends on the plea agreements of those in the conspiracy. I loved the FBI handbook that encouraged charging conspiracy because it was cheaper and it allowed the Prosecutor to tell the story. Posted by: beth | Mar 22, 2016 6:12:47 PM If they are focusing on bigger dealers, then why is Yates's home district still charging penny ante drug cases. A recent example is someone who sold less than a gram of heroin at a time. Posted by: defendergirl | Mar 24, 2016 9:28:54 AM In 2009 an African-American defendant was charged in Va. w/ possession with intent to distribute. Now here's the kicker, the prosecution presented no evidence, the narcotics (4 ozs) were found over 75 feet away from the defendant at the time of the arrest, no witnesses, no dna evidence. The defendant was given 22 yrs, did i also mention that this was also a 1st-time offense? At this point, the family has pretty much exhausted their expectations of finding a fair lawyer to defend the case, it's currently in the appeals phase. any recommendations for a lawyer, who's also supportive of the smart on crime initiative would be greatly appreciated.The trial attorney for the defendant completely abandoned his client during the trial. The case was tried in Chatham, Va.Circuit court. Best Regards Posted by: Leslie Bethel | Aug 26, 2016 2:22:08 PM Post a comment DOJ bragging about Smart on Crime initiative focusing on "more significant drug cases" | Main | Federal district judge interprets Nebraska law to preclude placing juve on its public sex offender list March 22, 2016 Unanimous Supreme Court suggests Second Amendment can preclude state felony prosecution for public weapon possession I wanted a chance to review closely the Supreme Court's notable Second Amendment work yesterday in Caetano v. Massachusetts, No. 14-10078 (S. Ct. March 21, 2016) (available here), before blogging about what strikes me as a significant constitutional ruling. But even after doing some more review, I am still scratching my head a bit regarding both the Court's brief per curiam opinion and the lengthy and forceful concurring opinion authored by Justice Alito and joined by Justice Thomas. Caetano strikes me as significant primarily because the Supreme Court has not ruled on the merits in a Second Amendment case since the 2010 McDonald ruling, and also because both McDonald and its landmark precursor, the 2008 Heller ruling, left so much uncertain about the reach and limits of the Second Amendment. In addition, the merits of the Caetano case seem significant because it involved (1) possession of a weapon other than a traditional firearm (a stun-gun), and (2) a state criminal conviction affirmed by a state Supreme Court based on possession of this weapon outside the home. Finally, as the title of this post suggests, it seems significant that not a single Justice dissented from the the Caetano per curiam ruling to vacate the judgment of the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts based on the Second Amendment. But Justice Alito's concurrence, which seems like it might have been initially drafted to serve as an opinion for the full Court, reasonably complained that the Courts per curiam opinion was "grudging" because it seems open to the possibility that the defendant might still have her felony conviction for possession of a stun-gun outside her home affirmed on some other grounds. Thus, as the title of this post is meant to indicate, I think the Caetano ruling only suggests a broadened application of the Second Amendment to limit a state felony prosecution. This Lyle Denniston post at SCOTUSblog captures these themes in its title: "The Second Amendment expands, but maybe not by much." And here is a telling excerpt from that post: The Court set aside the state court ruling, and told that tribunal to take another look. The decision left in doubt whether the conviction in the case would stand, and whether the state could come up with other reasons to support its ban. It is possible that the states highest court will call for new legal briefs or a hearing on what to do about the Boston woman in the case, Jaime Caetano. Her defense lawyer, Boston public defender Benjamin H. Keehn, said after the ruling Monday that he would seek to have her conviction vacated. Although she was found guilty of a serious crime (a felony) under the Massachusetts procedure used in her case, she was not given a jail sentence or a fine. Keehn said he was not positive what the Supreme Court ruling meant, and said he was studying whether there had been comparable situations in other cases returned to lower courts without specific instructions. March 22, 2016 at 08:07 AM | Permalink Comments Given the woman "was not given a jail sentence or a fine," the state very well might just let her go. OTOH, it perhaps makes it an ideal test case for them. Alito's opinion -- with Scalia probably, three justices took this case pretty seriously -- is overall pretty strong. SCOTUS should take a 2A for full review SOMETIME, but I guess now it makes sense to wait for a full court. The definition of "dangerous and unusual," for instance, warrants more discussion than shown here. So, "unusual" isn't just "what was around back in the day." Fine. The court below used rational basis to uphold the law, after saying stun guns weren't protected by the 2A. Alito challenged it on how dangerous stun guns were -- he actually argued it is less dangerous and that there might even be a reason based on conscience to use it. His opinion showed some empathy. Thought only liberals did that. Is that even allowed? /snark Posted by: Joe | Mar 22, 2016 10:40:12 AM BTW, agree the ruling in effect expands the 2A at least by a bit. I noticed that the opinion in passing spoke of "keep and carry" ... Heller/McDonald focused on the home though in passing noted the 2A meant more. The citation here was opaque. But, a lower court can take that to help protect a right outside the home. Posted by: Joe | Mar 22, 2016 10:42:39 AM @Joe I'm curious. Where do you see any empathy in Alito's opinion? I read it and I don't see it. Posted by: Daniel | Mar 22, 2016 3:41:23 PM To me, he showed empathy for the woman involved, drawing a sympathetic picture of the person herself, not merely in an above the fray way addressing the facts and law of the case. I realize they aren't the same thing, but saw both. http://grammarist.com/usage/empathy-sympathy/ The first page, setting up her fact situation, seemed the most clear there. Later, he spoke about how this could be a choice resting on conscience, how "tragic" her situation can be without proper protection, how people like are "left at mercy" of the state. The opinion was filled with sympathetic adjectives/language and showed "the ability to understand and share the feelings of another," namely the woman in question. How it was a "good thing" she did something or how she "stood her ground" etc. I felt able to understand the situation of the person in particular, she came alive. Posted by: Joe | Mar 22, 2016 5:01:21 PM One of the rare cases in which conservatives emphasize that the Constitution establishes principles to be applied to evolving circumstances -- rather than an exact rule intended by the Framers. That normally is the liberal bailiwick. Beyond holding that state court improperly minimized the right to bear arms by limiting that right to those weapons which were legal at the time of the Framing, not sure if it gives any guidance for future cases. Posted by: tmm | Mar 22, 2016 6:49:45 PM @Joe. Thanks for the follow-up. I don't agree with those definitions of sympathy and empathy in the link you provided--those words have become a lot like envy and jealousy, which people often mix up too. For the record, the etymology of the word sympathy means "same feeling" so it is especially odd to define it as not sharing the same feeling. Empathy, as defined by the person who coined the term the German philosopher Lotze, meant exactly the opposite of a shared feeling--it represented a psychological projection. But now that I understand where you are coming from I think we agree. Alito is showing sympathy as I would define it. He's not trying to project his own feelings into the victim but to say that he shares the victim's feelings. Posted by: Daniel | Mar 22, 2016 9:44:43 PM Merriam Webster: "Latin sympathia, from Greek sympatheia, from sympathes having common feelings, sympathetic, from syn- + pathos feelings, emotion, experience." It is not to me "odd" that English words develop over time to have somewhat different meanings than their foreign roots. And, I'm not using technical usage here; it is not as much "confusion" as you are using words in a certain sense. To be honest, I seem to be using the common usage that is usually used here. Thus, e.g., in a past comment you schooled Prof. Berman on how you were using a word. In fact, looking at Merriam-Webster, there are two definition of "empathy" and my usage is one definition while yours seems to be the other. Anyway, I noted "empathy" and "sympathy" (and the link provides the common usage in the U.S.) are different but he showed both. He showed "sympathy" -- a compassion that might but not necessarily involves sharing the other person's feelings. "I sympathize with you" etc. OTOH, he showed "empathy" -- (per Merriam-Webster) "action of understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to" her feelings/thoughts etc. He need not have "shared feelings" here and this in part caused problems when "empathy" was cited during the Sotomayor hearings. Many thought it mean she would only share the feelings of one side while it also mean an ability to understand without necessarily being sympathetic. Posted by: Joe | Mar 22, 2016 11:20:25 PM Liberal SJC blows off the law to keep the stain of a criminal conviction on someone who was defending herself. And all libs in here can do is snark. Cute. As for empathy--I think conservatives have empathy for people--they just don't allow it to twist the law. This doesn't seem to be an expansion of the Second Amendment right either. To bear arms is to carry them, and that implies being able to do so outside of the home. Posted by: federalist | Mar 23, 2016 9:54:56 AM Post a comment San Jose-based Coding Dojo wasn't supposed to be a school at all. As CEO Richard Wang explained to SFist last fall, the private postsecondary school's founder, Michael Choi, was managing several startups including real estate company Zurple. Struggling to onboard qualified engineers and developers, many of them with college degrees in areas outside of technical engineering expertise, Choi developed a training program and curriculum that, in the school's telling of its origin story, eclipsed his other work. Last fall, Coding Dojo had 600 students enrolled in courses like its onsite Silicon Valley 3 Full Stack program, a 14-week training camp priced at $13,495. "With the demand for web engineer jobs, students are really able to create a career right away with an above average salary," Wang said. "People just like to build things and solve hard problems, and being a web developer or engineer allows people to do more than transactional work. That's why people are really attracted to this field." That, and perhaps Coding Dojo's self-proclaimed 92-percent hire rate for jobs after the program has finished. Many bootcamp attendees are learning skills they might once have been trained in on the job, but now a secondary market of "camps" and "academies" with big promises, rigorous applications, low acceptance rates, and even alumni networks have filled in a growing technical gap. But sending students to jobs in an economic sector with some noted scorn for regulation, Coding Dojo and similar startup schools for tech jobs have faced criticism and even sanctions. In 2014, the program was one of 17 similar bootcamps operating without a license in California that received a letter from the state's Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education according to the Chronicle. Nine of those letters were of the cease-and-desist variety, threatening shutdowns if applications for licenses weren't received. Eight of those have submitted an application of some kind while only two have received licenses outright. As were four others, Coding Dojo was fined $50,000 for operating without a license. As part of California's Department of Consumer Affairs, the California Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education concerns itself with basic consumer protection" according to its chief Joanne Wenzel. While vocational schools must be licensed before they open and accept students, schools of this nature "dont see [themselves] as a traditional education," Wenzel said. But with traditional education comes traditional protections and insurances. If a licensed school shuts down mid-term, for example, students have recourse to seek reimbursements from a Student Tuition Recovery Fund. Furthermore, schools must publicly disclose verified program-completion and job-placement rates as well as alumni salary ranges. While school's like Coding Dojo taut some such figures, those aren't double-checked by the Bureau for Private Postsecondary Education as they might otherwise be. But Jenna Wolfe, who serves as director of corporate and legal affairs for Coding Dojo, has a different story to tell to the Chronicle. We submitted our full application for licensure in early June of 2015, she said. We pretty quickly got a confirmation that the office received it. We havent heard anything since then. Wenzel admits there's a backlog, but adds that "for most of these applications that we have pending, it has taken a while to get complete and compliant applications from them," and even some schools that received cease-and-desist letters have never responded to us. In 2014, a task force began meeting on the subject of coding schools, and eventually it recommended that coding programs receive an expedited approval process for coding boot camps. These are untested programs," Angela Perry, a law fellow at San Francisco civil rights law firm Public Advocates, told the Chronicle. "Most approvals are delayed because schools make errors in filling out their paperwork. We think that should raise a red flag." However, Theres nothing inherently wrong with coding boot camps, Perry went on. We just want to make sure if a student is investing $10,000 or $20,000 for a 10- or 12-week program, they are getting the services that are promised. Related: Average SF Tech Wages Up 12.8% To $176K (With Bonuses, Stock Options) Many of you will recall the plight of trans prisoner Michelle-Lael Norsworthy, who last year became the second trans inmate to be granted state-funded sex reassignment surgery only to be paroled shortly thereafter. Now out of jail, Norsworthy has relocated to San Francisco, where she was placed in a halfway house for recovering female addicts as she tells the Chronicle, it was the only place that would take her she's actually been sober for 20 years. And adjusting to civilian life continues to be strange and scary, especially because in addition to being a 52-year-old trans woman who's never lived among women before (she's spent most of her adult life, the last 30 years, in a men's prison), she's also a convicted felon who's likely to find difficulty finding a job or housing given that fact. She, will however, finally get the surgery she's desired for decades, with the help of Medi-Cal this summer. Norsworthy made headlines in April 2015 after a federal judge ruled that she had a right to state-funded surgery, as it was medically necessary. At the time, CA Attorney General Kamala Harris argued against the ruling, on behalf of the corrections department, which had long maintained that hormone therapy was sufficient. Within a month, Norsworthy was deemed eligible for parole after appearing before the parole board six times, and she was released in August 2015. Norsworthy was convicted at age 21 of second-degree murder following the 1985 shooting death of Franklin Gordon Liefer, Jr. in Fullerton, CA. Despite some terrible treatment by fellow male inmates she was gang-raped, for instance, in 2009 Norsworthy remained in the Mule Creek State Prison, a men's facility near Ione. She tells the Chron that the murder "haunts me to this day," and that her behavior at the time, being "overly male" and carrying guns was due to the fact that "I had spent my whole life denying who I was." She began identifying as female only a few years into her sentence, in the mid-1990s, and was diagnosed as a transgender woman in 2000 by prison doctors. It would be another 15 years before a judge would allow that gender reassignment surgery was medically necessary, but now she will get to have it as a civilian instead of as a prisoner. Following the ruling in Norsworthy's case, the California Department of Corrections established some official guidelines for treating transgender prisoners and determining when surgery is necessary, becoming the first state in the country to do so. Currently, there are 375 males and 26 females in the state prison system receiving hormone therapy and are considered transgender. Until they have surgery, they are housed in prisons based on their birth gender, with many in special protective housing. Norsworthy tells the Chron she's happy for her legacy already, saying she'll go to her grave knowing "that girls I left behind [in prison] will now have an opportunity to receive the same health care as people out here." Previously: California Becomes First State To Set Guidelines Governing Sexual Reassignment Surgery For Transgender Inmates We got early word this past weekend that the expected opening of chef Jonathan Waxman's first SF outpost, originally named Brezza Emporio and Pizzeria but rechristened as simply Waxman's, is due to happen tomorrow, Tuesday, March 22. The much anticipated Ghirardelli Square project certain to be one of the biggest openings of the year marks a homecoming for Waxman, who was born and raised in Berkeley and cut his teeth in the kitchen at Chez Panisse in its early days (replacing Jeremiah Tower after his departure in 1978) before moving to New York to make his name there most recently with the much acclaimed and beloved Barbuto. The menu at Waxman's, which you can see below, will change often based on seasonal ingredients and will feature pastas, antipasti, and Italian fare much like what's found at his Atlanta outpost, Brezza Cucina, which opened last October and a starring item will be Waxman's signature roast chicken with salsa verde. Also, this is a pretty huge project, with a 120-seat Cafe portion on one side, and a 120-seat restaurant on the other, with an additional 100 seats on an outdoor patio. The Cafe will open a bit later, after the restaurant ramps up. Waxman told Hoodline earlier this month via Marin-based partner Howard Greenstone that they decided on the name change because the Atlanta name "never really rolled off our tongues." Also, Greenstone said that Waxman is "deeply committed to this restaurant" and this homecoming is "deeply personal" for him. Update: In an official release, Chef Waxman says, "When I was growing up, Ghirardelli Square was one of the quintessential meeting places for San Franciscans... After introducing California cuisine to New York City, I am humbled to come back to my home state and be part of the revitalization of Ghirardelli Square." See the full menu below. Waxman has been widely praised for his "casually hip" food and effortless style and during a stint on Top Chef Masters Season 2, in 2010, he earned the nickname "the Jedi chef" for the seeming effortlessness and calm with which he pulled out perfectly executed plates. Also it should be noted that unlike many of his celebrity chef peers, Waxman has never been too interested in disseminating his brand far and wide or getting spread too thin. In addition to Barbuto, which remains in danger of an imminent closure at the landlord's hands, Waxman also owns and operates Jams, which opened last year at One Central Park, and Atlanta's Brezza Cucina. The full menu: Previously: Jedi Chef Jonathan Waxman Will Open Brezza Emporio And Pizzeria In Ghirardelli Square Next Year #SFPD increasing patrols in transit areas/SFO in response to overseas attacks. If you see something, say something. pic.twitter.com/xJJXfKpKl4 Albie Esparza (@OfficerAlbie) March 22, 2016 In the wake of this morning's deadly bombings at an airport and Metro station in Brussels, Belgium, local officials say that security will be increased across the city, as well as at San Francisco International Airport and on BART. The terror attacks, which at publication time had killed at least 34 people and injured hundreds more, involved "two explosions at the citys main international airport and a third in a subway station at the heart of the city," the New York Times reports. The first two explosions were reported at 9 a.m. Brussels time at Brussels Airport. Then, at 9:11 a.m., a bomb exploded in the last car of a subway train as left Brussels' Maelbeek station. "At least one of the two airport explosions was touched off by a suicide bomber," the Times reports. According to the Guardian, the Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attacks. San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee released a statement expressing sympathy for the victims, saying On behalf of the people of San Francisco, I express our deepest sorrow for the people of Brussels after the heartless attacks carried out today. We stand with the people of Brussels and all of Belgium and stand strong against intolerance. We pray for the families of the victims of these senseless acts of violence. According to Lee, "San Francisco public safety agencies are closely monitoring these incidents and have reported that there is no known threat to San Francisco. However, the San Francisco Police Department is on heightened alert with extra patrols and have asked for the publics help to report suspicious activity right away to 911." BART spokesperson Alicia Trott echos the mayor's words, saying that though there is "no credible threat" posted for the transit system, BART police will increase their patrols. .@SFBART Security Programs Manager confirms no credible threat. Still, we will have increased patrols #seesomethingsaysomething alicia trost (@AliciaTrost) March 22, 2016 According to KRON 4, "due to security measures BART isnt releasing the total number of security that has been increased," but BART police "are taking all measures to ensure the safety of passengers," a duty watch commander for the transit agency says. Down at SFO, spokesperson Doug Yakel tells CBS 5 that travelers should expect to immediately see heightened vigilance, in the form of increased patrols at the airport. Yakel says that SFO is in contact with the TSA and federal law enforcement officials in an effort to determine if passenger screening procedures need to change in wake of the Brussels attacks. In addition, San Francisco Police Department spokesperson Officer Albie Esparza says that the police will be "increasing patrols in transit areas/SFO in response to overseas attacks." "If you see something," Trott and Esparza both said via Twitter, "say something." Related: NYPD Intensifies Security After Brussels Terror Attacks STORM LAKE, Iowa | In a blow to business interests, the U.S. Supreme Court sided Tuesday with thousands of current and former employees at the Tyson Foods pork plant in Storm Lake, upholding a $5.8 million award to the hourly workers. The justices voted 6-2 to reject new limits the meatpacking giant asked them to impose on the ability of workers to band together to challenge pay and workplace issues. Peg Bouaphakeo and other Tyson Storm Lake workers sued in 2007 in U.S. District Court in Sioux City to collect back pay for the time they spent putting on and taking off protective work clothes and equipment before wielding sharp knives in slaughtering and processing the animals. A jury in U.S. District Court in Sioux City awarded $5.8 million in overtime and damages for more than 3,000 workers. The lower court decision was upheld by the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals in 2014. Because Tyson did not keep records, the workers tried to prove the damages based on an expert witness' statistical inferences of how long it took the workers to get ready for their jobs on the plant's slaughter or "kill" floor and the processing or "fabrication" floor. Tyson challenged the means by which the class-action status was granted. The questions before the court were whether statistics should have been allowed to determine damages for all employees. Rather than base the damages on the average amount of time it took employees to get ready, the award should have been assessed individually for each plaintiff, Tyson argued. I would like to thank Sen. Charles Grassley for his decision to allow the American electorate to have a voice in selecting a replacement for the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court. Sen. Grassley believes that the American people should be able to weigh in, with their vote for president in November, on a decision that could impact the direction of the court for the foreseeable future. Given the emotionally charged climate in an election year such as this, a politically charged confirmation hearing is the last thing our country needs. Senator Grassley has long been a champion of government transparency and consistent in his support for the constitutional responsibility of our elected representatives. Just as the president has the duty to put forth a nominee, the Senate is responsible to decide when the nominee will face the confirmation process. Dragging a nominee through the confirmation process during such a contentious election year climate does a disservice to the nominee, and the process. It further risks a result that a perfectly qualified nominee will suffer humiliation and rejection when he or she would otherwise pass muster in a non-election-year setting. Even Vice President Biden has expressed this very same position in the past. - Mike Hobart, Sioux City When you think of NASA, what comes to mind? Rocket scientists working in jet propulsion laboratories on super high-tech gadgets for the International Space Station (ISS), Hubble telescope or missions to Mars, most likely. What doesnt come to mind, perhaps, is NASA crowdsourcing freelancers to develop such gadgetry. But with the design of the robotic arm for the Astrobee flying robot used on the ISS, thats exactly what is taking place. Instead of going to a large engineering or design firm, NASA, in partnership with Freelancer.com, is using crowdsourcing a method often employed by small businesses when seeking innovative, low-cost solutions for this and other space-related projects. In doing so, NASA is also opening new doors of opportunity to the smallest designers and engineering businesses possible: freelance solopreneurs. NASA Robotic Arm Project Background In an email interview with Small Business Trends, Sebastian Siseles, international director for Freelancer, shared some background on the project and explained NASAs reasons for crowdsourcing development of the robotic arm. NASAs Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI) reached out to us after hearing about a partnership we had with ARKYD, the first publicly accessible space telescope, Siseles said. We hosted a successful contest for an ARKYD shirt design on our platform a couple of years back. When this news reached CoECI, they emailed us about their interest in connecting with our international community of skilled freelancers for their contests ideas. Siseles said that, together, NASA and Freelancer formulated a strategy for a series of crowdsourced contests and engagements to run over time. Contests are accessible to all Freelancer.coms users, and anyone can submit entries if they feel they have the right skill set. Freelancer.com is the perfect platform for this as NASA has access to millions of skilled professionals from around the world that are skilled in over 900 different categories, from design to engineering to data science and analytics, Siseles said. According to Siseles, NASA actively uses Open Innovation Service Providers (OISP) to drive innovation and increase the likelihood of finding successful solutions and fruitful partnerships. This OISP methodology allows NASA to publicly issue challenges to seek innovative solutions and build awareness and collaboration with a global public, Siseles said. OISPs also represent a cost-effective and efficient way to seek solutions to NASAs challenges. NASA Robotic Arm Product Participant Selection, Status The first phase of the NASA robotic arm project has already ended, and 3,000 entries were received. From that number, NASA chose 30 freelancers as finalists, six of which are from the U.S. With phase two underway, NASA is requiring each finalist to break down options related to designing the architecture behind the robotic arm. In an email interview with Small Business Trends, Ryan Boyd and Jade Johnson, two of the U.S.-based finalists, shared their reasons for getting involved with the contest: I love NASA and have always dreamed about working with them, Boyd said. I follow news pertaining to the International Space Station and, despite not having any background to speak of in robotics, I figured I would give it a shot. I have a good deal of (self-taught) knowledge about physics, astronomy, and space travel. Im also an Information Systems graduate and have a long-running professional background in data analysis and administration, programming and IT consulting. The imagery of the astronaut in space floated my boat enough to where I thought, Why not? What do I have to lose?,' Johnson said. Im a UX Designer, Information Architect and Techno DJ with a background in Visual Design. My intrinsic inclination for design and music software supports my abilities to design products for people. Freelancer was looking for designers that design for humans particularly in Industrial and Product Design, which is very similar to my field. When asked about his design concept, Boyd said, I took the simplest, most streamlined and minimalistic approach I could think of. Maximum functional efficiency was my primary consideration in putting the design together. The process involved designing, graphically representing and putting together a write-up explaining and supporting the structural decomposition of a robotic arm subsystem to be used on a free-flying robot aboard the International Space Station. Johnson said her design came as a result of many hours spent researching scientific journals and peer-reviewed articles. The plans were complex, and there was a ton of digging involved, Johnson said. Into the research, I ended up in the TED talk realm and was inspired by this man who designed his own prosthetic legs. With the Astrobee free-flying robot needing to perform human tasks along the ISS, it made the most sense to research the design behind bionic limbs and implement some of the strategies into the new model robotic arm. Aside from Boyd and Johnson, the other finalists are: Lise Delarme UK Judith Medina Mexico Lata Koundal India Marina Syryanaya Russian Federation Gemma Hopkins USA Avery Malachi USA Shagun Chauhan India Dani Pinzon Nicholls Colombia Mohammad Ali Bangladesh Anson Davis India Reuben Cruise Ireland Rishu Shrivastava India Mahfuzar Rahman Bangladesh Rick Paape USA Enton Biba Canada Cristi Giangu Italy Indranil Saha India Jeroen Oomkens Netherlands Hyunjung Kim Korea Charushila Gadve India Joshua Merrit USA Radomir Brzakovic Serbia Krisha Amatya Nepal Paula Berlowitz Brazil Conclusion If the NASA-Freelancer.com collaboration evidences anything, its that the sharing economy has grown to become a central aspect of how societies work. Everything from food to transportation, healthcare to municipal services and now even space are all key components. We at Freelancer.com say that its magical time to be an entrepreneur, Siseles said. You can literally pick up a credit card and a smartphone and start your business in less than 60 seconds, so we can envision that NASA will continue using our platform to crowdsource solutions to even more complex problems they might face in the near future. 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 WASHINGTON (, 2016)The U.S. Department of Defense recently announced the following contract awards that pertain to local Navy activities., is being awarded aindefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract in support of the Controlled Technical Services (CTS) program for the Naval Surface Warfare Center Dahlgren Division. The CTS program requires the development of miniaturized multi-chip processors and other related technologies, while maintaining system functionality. Work will be performed in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and is expected to be complete by February 2021. Fiscal 2015 operations and maintenance (Navy) funding in the amount of $35,000 will be obligated at time of award, and contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract was not competitively procured. The sole-source award is in accordance with Federal Acquisition Regulation 6.302-1(a)(2)(iii) - only one responsible source and no other supplies or services will satisfy agency requirements., is the contracting activity (N00178-16-D-0001)., is being awardedfor modification P00005 to a previously awarded firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract (N00019-15-D-5501) for the procurement of 325 AN/ARC-210 radios for domestic aircraft. Work will be performed in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and is expected to be completed in September 2018. No contract funds will be obligated at the time of award. Funding will be obligated on individual delivery orders as they are issued. The, is the contracting activity., is being awardedfor firm-fixed-price delivery order EF01 against a previously issued basic ordering agreement (SPE4A1-14-G-0009) for the procurement of 240 retrofit kit parts to modify the G3 generator converter units (GCUs) to G4 GCUs; four G4 GCU test units; and four field service representatives in support of the F/A-18 aircraft. Work will be performed in Vandalia, Ohio (98.8 percent); Naval Air Station (NAS) Oceana, Virginia (0.6 percent); and NAS Lemoore, California (0.6 percent), and is expected to be completed in June 2017. Fiscal 2015 and 2016 aircraft procurement (Navy) funds in the amount of $31,590,977 are being obligated at time of award, none of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The, is the contracting activity., is being awarded amodification to a previously awarded fixed-price-incentive firm target contract (N00019-14-C-0067) to exercise an option for the procurement of two A-Kits and two mechanisms in support of 16 full-rate production Lot III P-8A Multi-mission Maritime Aircraft. Work will be performed in Dallas, Texas (70 percent); and Seattle, Washington (30 percent), and is expected to be completed in March 2018. Fiscal 2016 aircraft procurement (Navy) funds in the amount of $9,062,408 will be obligated at time of award, none of which will expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The, is the contracting activity. PRINCE FREDERICK, Md. Disclaimer: In the U.S.A., all persons accused of a crime by the State are presumed to be innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. See: http://so.md/presumed-innocence. Additionally, all of the information provided above is solely from the perspective of the respective law enforcement agency and does not provide any direct input from the accused or persons otherwise mentioned. You can find additional information about the case by searching the Maryland Judiciary Case Search Database using the accused's name and date of birth. The database is online at http://so.md/mdcasesearch . Persons named who have been found innocent or not guilty of all charges in the respective case, and/or have had the case ordered expunged by the court can have their name, age, and city redacted by following the process defined at http://so.md/expungeme. (March 22, 2016)The Calvert County Sheriff's Office today released the following incident and arrest reports.WEEKLY SUMMARY: During the week of March 14 through March 20, deputies responded to 1,383 calls for service throughout the community.BURGLARY CASE #16-15866: On March 18, 2016, Deputy N. Barger responded to a reported shed burglary on Lexington Dr., in Dunkirk. Items stolen included a weed eater, leaf blower and a chain saw. The theft occurred sometime throughout the night.BURGLARY CASE #16-15704: On March 17, 2016, Deputy J. Migliaccio responded to a residence on Beaver Dam Rd., in Chesapeake Beach, for a burglary which occurred between 4 p.m. on March 7th and 9 a.m. on March 8th. Victim reports her purse was stolen. There were no signs of forced entry to the house.BURGLARY CASE #16-15073: On March 14, 2016, Deputy R. Kreps responded to North Solomons Island Rd. in Huntingtown for a reported burglary between 10 a.m. on March 12th at 2:15 a.m. on March 14th. Victim reports no items were stolen at this time.CDS VIOLATION CASE #16-15876: On March 18, 2016, Deputy T. Holt responded to Dowell Road, in Lusby, for the report of a disorderly subject., was outside speaking with one of the residents and trying to enter their vehicle and the driver appeared to be reluctant to let Eric enter. Eric was transported to the Detention center and charged with CDS possession (Methdone) and (Alprazolam). Eric was also charged with resisting arrest.CDS VIOLATION CASE #16-15855: On March 18, 2016, Deputy B. Boerum conducted a traffic stop on a vehicle in the area of Calvert Beach Rd. near St. Leonard Rd. in St. Leonard, MD. The driver,, was charged with possession of CDS paraphernalia (syringe) andwas charged with possession of CDS paraphernalia (syringe).CDS VIOLATION CASE #16-16138: On March 19, 2016, Deputy S.Moran was dispatched to Algonquin Trail, in Lusby, for a reported auto crash. Deputy Moran located suspected Suboxone (strips).andwere both charged with CDS possession-not Marijuana (Suboxone).CDS VIOLATION CASE #16-15969: On March 18, 2016, Deputy T. Mohler conducted a traffic stop at Solomons Island Rd., in the area of Old Field Ln., in Prince Frederick.was charged with CDS: Possess-not Marijuana (Suboxone strips), Driving on highway with a suspended license, Driving vehicle while impaired by drugs, Driving while impaired by drugs while transporting a minor, along with numerous other traffic related charges.CDS VIOLATION CASE #16-15584: On March 17, 2016, Deputy K. Williamson, along with other units responded to Greenspring Drive in Chesapeake Beach for the report of a suspicious vehicle located at a residence. Investigation revealed thatwas found to be in possession of CDS with intent to distribute Narcotics (Cocaine), CDS possession-not Marijuana (Heroin) and CDS Possession Paraphernalia (straws).DAMAGE TO PROPERTY CASE #16-15702: On March 17, 2016, Deputy R. Burggraff responded to Queensbury Dr., in Huntingtown, for a destruction of property complaint. The victim advised that when she arrived home that evening after work, she noticed the front window was broken. She observed that a small rock had apparently been thrown through the screen and into the window breaking it. She further advised that one of her driveway reflective markers was on the roof of her house.THEFT CASE #16-15099: On March 14, 2016, Deputy J. Livingston was dispatched to Lake Shore Drive, in Owings, for the report of a theft. Sometime after 11:00 p.m. on March 13, 2016, an unknown suspect stole a 2006 Cent Trailer from the victims yard.THEFT CASE #16-15708: On March 17, 2016, Deputy J. Migliaccio responded to a theft from an auto complaint on St. Andrews Dr., in Chesapeake Beach. The victim advised that her Jessica Simpson brand purse was stolen out of her unlocked car on the afternoon of March 16, 2016. GREENBELT, Md. (March 22, 2016)U.S. District Judge George J. Hazel sentenced Richard Spivey, age 52, of Waldorf, Maryland, today to 17 years in prison, followed by lifetime supervised release, for distribution of child pornography. U.S. District Judge George J. Hazel ordered that upon his release from prison, Spivey must register as a sex offender in the place where he resides, where he is an employee, and where he is a student, under the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act (SORNA). Spivey was taken into custody immediately following his guilty plea on September 25, 2015 and he remains detained.The sentence was announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein and Special Agent in Charge Kevin Perkins of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Baltimore Field Office.According to Spivey's plea agreement, between January 29 and 30, 2014, Spivey used a file sharing program to distribute over 2,000 files depicting children engaged in sexually explicit conduct. A search warrant was executed at Spivey's residence on June 18, 2014, and law enforcement seized numerous electronic devices, including a desktop computer, a laptop computer and two external hard drives. A forensic review of the electronic devices found thousands of image files and hundreds of movie files containing child pornography. Some of the files portrayed sadistic and masochistic conduct and other depictions of violence, as well as images of infants and toddlers.In addition, on Spivey's electronic devices law enforcement found videos that Spivey produced, depicting a prepubescent female in different stages of undress. Spivey admitted that he surreptitiously recorded the child while she was undressing, using a hidden camera. These videos constitute child pornography. Finally, Spivey also admitted surreptitiously producing videos of an adult female, while that person was in the bathroom in various stages of undress.This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative launched in May 2006 by the Department of Justice to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse. Led by the United States Attorneys' Offices and the Criminal Division's Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state, and local resources to locate, apprehend, and prosecute individuals who sexually exploit children, and to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, please visit www.justice.gov/psc. For more information about internet safety education, please visit www.justice.gov/psc and click on the "resources" tab on the left of the page.United States Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein commended the FBI, for its work in the investigation. Mr. Rosenstein thanked Assistant U.S. Attorneys Nicolas A. Mitchell and Kristi A. O'Malley, who prosecuted the case. BALTIMORE (March 22, 2016)Kaushik Kanti Modi, age 43, of Glen Burnie, Maryland, a native of India living illegally in the United States, pleaded guilty today to a money laundering conspiracy arising from a scheme to launder millions of dollars of fraud proceeds obtained from individual victims through a variety of scams.The guilty plea was announced by United States Attorney for the District of Maryland Rod J. Rosenstein; Special Agent in Charge Thomas Jankowski of the Internal Revenue Service - Criminal Investigation, Washington, D.C. Field Office; and Chief James W. Johnson of the Baltimore County Police Department."Criminal conspiracies such as this are loathsome crimes that victimize our nation's honest taxpayers," said Thomas Jankowski, Special Agent in Charge, IRS Criminal Investigation, Washington D.C. Field Office. "Today's plea is a reminder that IRS-CI will remain vigilant in our investigation of these schemes and will continue to work with prosecutors to combat this type of criminal conduct."According to his plea agreement, Modi received text messages from conspirators instructing him to buy large numbers of stored value cards, principally GreenDot cards, and to forward the PIN numbers of the cards to other unidentified co-conspirators.Modi's co-conspirators loaded money onto the stored value cards using a variety of scams. Some of the money came from calls made by persons impersonating IRS employees who convinced innocent taxpayers that they owed taxes to the IRS, and needed to send money to the co-conspirators to avoid arrest and incarceration. On at least two occasions, victims of the IRS impersonation fraud deposited money directly into accounts held in Modi's name. Other money was derived by offering merchandise for sale on the internet and then failing to provide the merchandise once money was received from the victim-purchaser.After money was loaded on the stored value cards, Modi was instructed to use the cards to buy money orders, principally MoneyGram money orders at Walmart stores, and then to deposit those money orders into bank accounts either in Modi's name or the names of others. From January 1, 2014 to March 24, 2015, Modi deposited 241 money orders totaling $2,077,308.20 into his bank accounts. Moreover, Modi frequently bought the money orders using stored value cards that were activated using the identification of identity theft victims.At the time of his arrest, Modi admitted that he knew that something was not right about the source of the money involved in the transactions, and accordingly, knew that the purpose of those transactions was to conceal the proceeds of unlawful activity.Modi has agreed to forfeit $902,678.08, the amount involved in the money laundering offense that the government has seized or restrained.Modi faces a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. U.S. District Judge J. Frederick Motz scheduled sentencing for May 12, 2016, at 10:00 a.m.Today's announcement is part of the efforts undertaken in connection with the President's Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force. The task force was established to wage an aggressive, coordinated and proactive effort to investigate and prosecute financial crimes. With more than 20 federal agencies, 94 U.S. attorneys' offices, and state and local partners, it's the broadest coalition of law enforcement, investigatory and regulatory agencies ever assembled to combat fraud. Since its formation, the task force has made great strides in facilitating increased investigation and prosecution of financial crimes; enhancing coordination and cooperation among federal, state and local authorities; addressing discrimination in the lending and financial markets; and conducting outreach to the public, victims, financial institutions and other organizations. Since fiscal year 2009, the Justice Department has filed over 18,000 financial fraud cases against more than 25,000 defendants. For more information on the task force, please visit www.StopFraud.gov.United States Attorney Rod J. Rosenstein commended the IRS Criminal Investigation and Baltimore County Police Department for their work in the investigation. Mr. Rosenstein thanked Assistant U.S. Attorney Evan T. Shea, who is prosecuting the case. Weeks after the U.K. government planned to pass a law that would ban the use of poppers, it was reported this week officials have dropped the proposal, according to Pink News. The U.K. Parliament voted and approved a blanket "legal highs" ban in January that would prevent the sale of drugs like alkyl nitrites (a.k.a. poppers), which are used by people to relax before anal sex. Home Secretary Theresa May pushed the measure through the legislation to make poppers, and other substances like laughing gas, illegal. Pink News writes, "in a drastic last-minute intervention, the government this week intervened to ensure that the ban on poppers will not go into effect." Had the measure been approved, it would have been enacted on April 6. In a letter addressed to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, Home Officer minister Karen Bradley confirmed the government's latest move: "I understand that the Council has now advanced its understanding of the psychoactivity of the alkyl nitrites group under the Act and concluded that only substances that directly stimulate or depress the central nervous system are psychoactive under the Act," she wrote. "Having given due consideration, the Government agrees with your advice and interpretation of the definition. "We do so in the understanding that 'poppers' have these unique indirect effects," she continued. "Our understanding is that this approach does not have any further implications for the operation of the Act and that other substances that the Act intends to cover are not affected. We remain confident that the psychoactivity of those substances can be established under the definition in the Act." Read the full note via Pink News. MP Mike Freer spoke to the website about the issue. "There was no evidence that poppers were psychoactive and now that has been officially confirmed, sense has prevailed," This text will be the link. "I am just disappointed that the Home Office didn't listen to representations at the outset and this mess could have been avoided. Karen Bradley as the new Minister has been supportive and deserves credit for helping untangling the mess." It was reported in January popular and openly gay MP Crispin Blunt spoke out against the proposed poppers ban. Blunt, who happens to be the uncle of actress Emily Blunt, called the measure "fantastically stupid." "I use poppers," Blunt said, according to TMZ. "I out myself as a poppers user. And would be directly affected by this legislation. And I was astonished to find that it's proposed they be banned and, frankly, so were very many gay men." VANCOUVER, Wash. (AP) -- More than 7,500 people turned out to a high school in Vancouver, Washington and another 10,300 showed up at an arena in Seattle on Sunday for Bernie Sanders rallies, two of three taking place in the state that day. The Vermont senator spent the past week in Arizona, and now is taking his campaign to Washington and other West Coast states that he hopes will help him make up ground after a solid delegate lead built up by Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton. ``Let us have a record-breaking turnout here in Washington,'' Sanders said at KeyArena in Seattle, rallying supporters with many familiar themes. Clinton has a lead of more than 300 delegates over Sanders from primaries and caucuses following a sweep of five states last Tuesday, so the Pacific Northwest has become important territory for him. Washington state, Alaska and Hawaii hold Democratic caucuses on Saturday, and Washington has the most delegates ultimately at stake with 101. In Vancouver, Sanders declared to a packed gymnasium that the nation's economic, campaign finance and criminal justice systems are ``rigged'' and criticized pharmaceutical companies for rising drug costs. What riled up the young, rowdy crowd most were Sanders' comments on health care and his support of gay marriage. ``Ten years ago, if somebody jumped up and said, `I think that gay marriage will be legal in 50 states in America in the year 2015,' the person next to them would've said `You are nuts, what are you smoking?''' Sanders said. In Seattle, Sanders applauded the city's move to incrementally phase in a $15-an-hour minimum wage by 2017 that took effect in April 2015. Lines outside the stadium were huge before the event, and according to Seattle officials, 5,500 people remained outside during Sanders' speech and another 1,500 left when they didn't make it into the stadium. Sanders addressed the overflow crowd outside before his official remarks. Some in line said they had arrived at around 10:30 a.m. for the rally that began around 5:40 p.m. Inside the arena, Sanders pledged to make it easier for people to vote. He elicited huge roars when addressing a number of issues such as racial justice, his intent to implement universal health care and fight climate change. ``In my view we have a moral responsibility to leave this planet to our children and grandchildren in a way that is healthy and habitable,'' said. Washington is reliably Democratic when it comes to presidential elections. It hasn't gone for a Republican candidate since Ronald Reagan in 1984. Vancouver, which has a population of 167,000, has been historically overlooked during presidential campaigns. History may repeat itself in the LGBT community as the U.S. Supreme Court hears oral arguments this week in Zubik v. Burwell, the latest challenge to the Affordable Care Act over contraception care. A number of state legislatures do take their cues from what happens at the federal level in the Supreme Court, said Rea Carey, executive director of the National LGBTQ Task Force, during a conference call March 21. Immediately after Hobby Lobby, we saw repercussions in the LGBT community. Carey said the 2014 Hobby Lobby decision, which ruled family-owned corporations could deny contraception coverage based on religious beliefs, prompted the Indiana legislature to take up debate for a religious-freedom bill that was seen as a way to deny services to LGBT people. In Indiana, we saw echoes of Hobby Lobby language, Carey said. LGBTQ people cant afford this growing tend of religious exemptions. Carey was joined on the call by Sara Hutchinson Ratcliffe, domestic program director for Catholics for Choice; Brigitte Amiri, senior staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union; the Rev. Barry Lynn, executive director of Americans United for Separation of Church and State; and Ann Marie Benitez, senior director of government relations with the National Latina Institute for Reproductive Health. The Zubik case represents a consolidation of seven court challenges filed against Health and Human Services Secretary Sylvia Burwell. Bishop David A. Zubik of Pittsburgh is the lead petitioner. Religiously affiliated schools, hospitals and nonprofits are challenging the Affordable Care Act requirement that they notify the federal government if they dont want to provide coverage for birth control to their employees or students. In those cases, insurers must step in to provide free, prescribed birth control. These institutions say they are still complicit, through the notification process, in enabling people to receive birth control. Amiri of the ACLU countered its not the opt-out form that triggers the coverage, but the Affordable Care Act. The Task Force is especially interested in this case because of the significant impact it could have on LGBT people and our families, Carey said, noting cisgender women, trans men and intersex people all have an interest in affordable access to family planning methods. Carey said a company might also use a religious exemption to avoid covering the cost of pre-exposure prophylaxis, called PrEP, which is a daily pill regimen shown to be effective in preventing HIV. Caitlin Conyngham, who works on PrEP programs at Philadelphia FIGHT, has described PrEP like birth control for HIV. This is a profoundly harmful interpretation of religious freedom, said Hutchinson Ratcliffe of Catholics for Choice. She said the appeals by the Catholic dioceses could impact hundreds of thousands of people, noting Catholic schools in the country employ 153,000 lay teachers and Catholic hospitals employ 750,000 people. Catholic nonprofits and hospitals are big businesses, she said. More broadly, Hutchinson Ratcliffe said about 70 percent of American Catholics have used some form of birth control and support others in making their own contraception choices. A decision is expected in the Zubik case in June. An Atlanta gay man is speaking out after he and his boyfriend were the victims of an anti-gay attack. Marquez Tolbert, 21, says he and his boyfriend, Anthony Gooden, 23, were doused with boiling hot water on Feb. 12 as they lay sleeping in the living room of the College Park apartment of Tolberts mothers after a long day of work. The attack caused second and third degree burns on the necks, backs and arms of the young couple. Project Q first broke the story on Tuesday. Tolbert said that he and Gooden left work at a nearby warehouse at about 7 a.m. on Feb. 12 and went to the Alexandria Landing apartment in College Park where Gooden lived with his mom. The two regularly spent time at the apartment and often slept there overnight during the nearly six weeks they dated. They were asleep on a mattress in the living room when Martin Luther Blackwell, 48, arrived. Blackwell was dating Goodens mom but didnt live at the apartment. He spotted the two men asleep and attacked them, according to an incident report from the College Park Police Department. Blackwell allegedly told police that he couldnt stand to see the two men sleeping together. They was stuck together like two hot dogs, so I poured a little hot water on them and helped them out, Blackwell told investigators. They was stuck like two hot dogs. Theyll be alright, it was just a little hot water. In an interview with WSB, Tolbert spoke of the terrifying night and the excruciating pain that followed. The pain doesnt let you sleep. Its just, like, its excruciating, 24 hours a day, and it doesnt go anywhere, said Tolbert. It doesnt dial down, anything. Its just there. According to WSB, Tolbert spent 10 days at Grady Memorial Hospital undergoing surgery that took skin from his thigh to replace skin on his back. Gooden was released from the hospital on March 11. Blackwell has been arrested and charged with two counts of aggravated battery and is currently being held in the Fulton County Jail. It remains to be seen if Blackwell will face federal hate crime charges for his role in the attack. Georgia is one of five states in the nation without a hate crime law. At press time, a Go Fund Me campaign launched by Vickie Gray, a friend of the Tolbert family has raised over $10,000 towards a $30,000 goal in the 17 days the campaign has been live. Those donating through the Go Fund Me website are given an up-close look at the extent of the physical harm the two men endured at the hands of Blackwell. Gray says Tolberts mother has also suffered throughout this ordeal. When he came out to her, she told me that her son being harmed was her greatest fear. Its a shame that our society places that kind on fear in a parents heart. It gives you a feeling of helplessness, and when it actually occurs, you lose hope. Marquez is home now, but has a long road to recovery. Through it all, he has remained strong and not disheartened by what has happened to him. I am so impressed by his character. He has been focused on healing, and in a way, has been holding up his mother. Tolbert tells Project Q that hes thankful for the donations and support hes received from the community. It gives you that feeling that not everybody in the world is bad. I am just glad there are people out there that care enough that they want to help, he said. NASA Animation of a supernova shock breakout NASA The brilliant flash of an exploding stars shockwavewhat astronomers call the shock breakouthas been captured for the first time in the optical wavelength or visible light by NASAs planet-hunter, the Kepler space telescope. An international science team led by Peter Garnavich, an astrophysics professor at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, analyzed light captured by Kepler every 30 minutes over a three-year period from 500 distant galaxies, searching some 50 trillion stars. They were hunting for signs of massive stellar death explosions known as supernovae. In 2011, two of these massive stars, called red supergiants, exploded while in Keplers view. The first behemoth, KSN 2011a, is nearly 300 times the size of our sun and a mere 700 million light years from Earth. The second, KSN 2011d, is roughly 500 times the size of our sun and around 1.2 billion light years away. To put their size into perspective, Earths orbit about our sun would fit comfortably within these colossal stars, said Garnavich. Whether its a plane crash, car wreck or supernova, capturing images of sudden, catastrophic events is extremely difficult but tremendously helpful in understanding root cause. Just as widespread deployment of mobile cameras has made forensic videos more common, the steady gaze of Kepler allowed astronomers to see, at last, a supernova shockwave as it reached the surface of a star. The shock breakout itself lasts only about 20 minutes, so catching the flash of energy is an investigative milestone for astronomers. In order to see something that happens on timescales of minutes, like a shock breakout, you want to have a camera continuously monitoring the sky, said Garnavich. You dont know when a supernova is going to go off, and Keplers vigilance allowed us to be a witness as the explosion began. Supernovae like these known as Type II begin when the internal furnace of a star runs out of nuclear fuel causing its core to collapse as gravity takes over. The two supernovae matched up well with mathematical models of Type II explosions reinforcing existing theories. But they also revealed what could turn out to be an unexpected variety in the individual details of these cataclysmic stellar events. While both explosions delivered a similar energetic punch, no shock breakout was seen in the smaller of the supergiants. Scientists think that is likely due to the smaller star being surrounded by gas, perhaps enough to mask the shockwave when it reached the stars surface. That is the puzzle of these results, said Garnavich. You look at two supernovae and see two different things. Thats maximum diversity. The diagram illustrates the brightness of a supernova event relative to the sun as it unfolds. For the first time, a supernova shockwave has been observed in the optical wavelength or visible light as it reaches the surface of the star. This early flash of light is called a shock breakout. The explosive death of this star, called KSN 2011d, as it reaches its maximum brightness takes 14 days. The shock breakout itself lasts only about 20 minutes, so catching the flash of energy is an investigative milestone for astronomers. The unceasing gaze of NASAs Kepler space telescope allowed astronomers to see, at last, this early moment as the star blows itself to bits. Supernovae like these known as Type II begin when the internal furnace of a star runs out of nuclear fuel causing its core to collapse as gravity takes over. This type of star is called a red supergiant star and it is 20,000 times brighter than our sun. As the supergiant star goes supernova, the energy traveling from the core reaches the surfaces with a burst of light that is 130,000,000 times brighter than the sun. The star continues to explode and grow reaching maximum brightness that is about 1,000,000,000 times brighter than the sun. Credits: NASA Ames/W. Stenzel Understanding the physics of these violent events allows scientists to better understand how the seeds of chemical complexity and life itself have been scattered in space and time in our Milky Way galaxy All heavy elements in the universe come from supernova explosions. For example, all the silver, nickel, and copper in the earth and even in our bodies came from the explosive death throes of stars, said Steve Howell, project scientist for NASAs Kepler and K2 missions at NASAs Ames Research Center in Californias Silicon Valley. Life exists because of supernovae. Garnavich is part of a research team known as the Kepler Extragalactic Survey or KEGS. The team is nearly finished mining data from Keplers primary mission, which ended in 2013 with the failure of reaction wheels that helped keep the spacecraft steady. However, with the reboot of the Kepler spacecraft as NASAs K2 mission, the team is now combing through more data hunting for supernova events in even more galaxies far, far away. While Kepler cracked the door open on observing the development of these spectacular events, K2 will push it wide open observing dozens more supernovae, said Tom Barclay, senior research scientist and director of the Kepler and K2 guest observer office at Ames. These results are a tantalizing preamble to whats to come from K2! In addition to Notre Dame, the KEGS team also includes researchers from the University of Maryland in College Park; the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia; the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland; and the University of California, Berkeley. The research paper reporting this discovery has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. Ames manages the Kepler and K2 missions for NASAs Science Mission Directorate. NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, managed Kepler mission development. Ball Aerospace & Technologies Corporation operates the flight system with support from the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado in Boulder. A ULA Atlas V rocket with the Orbital ATK Cygnus spacecraft is moved to the launch pad in preparation for its resupply mission to the International Space Station. Credit: Orbital ATK. Orbital ATK The Expedition 47 crew is at full strength after the arrival of three new crew members Friday night. NASA astronaut Jeff Williams and cosmonauts Oleg Skripochka and Alexey Ovchinin will be familiarizing themselves with station systems over the next few days and will be staying in space till September. All six crew members, including Commander Tim Kopra of NASA, cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko and British astronaut Tim Peake, spread throughout the orbital laboratory to explore a wide array of advanced space science. Kopra researched the impact of microbes on a crew members immune system and wrapped up a liquid crystal experiment. Peake participated in a secondary immune system study before getting gear ready for a combustion experiment. Malenchenko explored the changes in a crew members blood circulation in space, compared to their circulation on the ground. Orbital ATK is getting ready to launch its Cygnus space freighter to the International Space Station Tuesday night from Florida. The crew is training for its arrival Saturday night when they will capture it and attach it to the Unity module. Cygnus will deliver almost 7,500 pounds of research gear, spacewalk hardware and crew supplies to the Expedition 47 crew. On-Orbit Status Report Strata-1 Locker Preparation: On Saturday, Peake removed the EXPRESS Rack 8 locker from the Lab in preparation for the OA-6 Strata-1 installation. Strata-1 investigates the properties and behavior of regolith on small, airless bodies. Regolith is the impact-shattered soil found on asteroids, comets, the Moon, and other airless worlds, but it is different from soil here on Earth in that it contains no living material. Strata-1s goal is to give us answers about how regolith behaves and moves in microgravity, how easy or difficult it is to anchor a spacecraft in regolith, how it interacts with spacecraft and spacesuit materials, and other important properties. It is important to NASA to know how to set anchors in regolith, how to safely move and process large volumes of regolith, and predict and prevent risk to spacecraft and astronauts visiting these small bodies. Marrow Breath and Ambient Air Sample Setup: Williams prepared and temp stowed Marrow and GSC air sample collection hardware in the crew quarters for the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) Marrow investigation. The crew takes breath and ambient air samples immediately after waking. This investigation measures the effects of microgravity-induced marrow fat accumulation on red and white blood cells metabolism using breath and ambient air samples to measure carbon monoxide concentration. Radiation Area Monitor (RAM) Deploy: Williams installed 17 Area Dosimeter throughout the JEM Pressurized Module (JPM) and Japanese Experiment Logistics Module-Pressurized Section (JLP) for space radiation dosimetry. He also photographed each Area Dosimeter for ground verification purposes. JAXA Area PADLES (Area Passive Dosimeter for Life-Science Experiments in Space) is an investigation that uses area dosimeters to continuously monitor the radiation dose aboard the ISS. Radiation exposure can have significant biological effects on living organisms including the biological investigations being done on ISS in the JEM. Robonaut: On March 3 during Robonaut troubleshooting the Oscilloscope indicated an error message. Earlier this morning, Kopra ran a procedure and verified that the Oscilloscope is performing nominally. He also pre-staged probes for upcoming Robonaut troubleshooting. Observation and Analysis of Smectic Islands in Space (OASIS) Sample Container Exchange: Kopra removed the OASIS hard drive from the Optics/Illumination and removed the hardware from the Microgravity Science Glovebox (MSG) and stowed. Kopra completed the final science run of the OASIS experiment last week. Combustion Integrated Rack (CIR) Manifold Bottle Remove & Replace (R&R): Peake R&Rd a CIR Manifold Bottle on one of four CIR Manifolds. CIR provides sustained, systematic microgravity combustion research and houses hardware capable of performing combustion experiments to further research combustion in microgravity. This is for continuation of the Flame Extinguishment 2 (FLEX 2) investigation. The FLEX-2 experiment is the second experiment to fly on the ISS which uses small droplets of fuel to study the special spherical characteristics of burning fuel droplets in space. The experiment studies how quickly fuel burns, the conditions required for soot to form, and how mixtures of fuels evaporate before burning. Understanding these processes could lead to the production of a safer spacecraft as well as increased fuel efficiency for engines using liquid fuel on Earth Multi-Omics Saliva Operations: Peake supported the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Multi-Omics investigation by collecting body samples and inserting the samples in a Minus Eight-degree Freezer for ISS (MELFI) Rack. The Multi-Omics analysis of human microbial-metabolic cross-talk in the space ecosystem investigation evaluates the impacts of space environment and prebiotics on astronauts immune function, by combining the data obtained from the measurements of changes in the gut microbiological composition, metabolites profiles, and the immune system. Microbiome: Kopra completed a body sample collection and stowed the samples in a MELFI Rack. Microbiome investigates the impact of space travel on both the human immune system and an individuals Microbiome (the collection of microbes that live in and on the human body at any given time). Habitability Human Factors Directed Observations: Peake and Williams viewed various videos covering the different sessions of the Habitability experiment. The investigation collects observations about the relationship between crew members and their environment on the ISS. Observations can help spacecraft designers understand how much habitable volume is required and whether a missions duration impacts how much space crew members need. Orbital 6 (OA-6) On-Board Training (OBT) Offset Grapple Practice: Robotics Ground Controllers powered up the Mobile Serving System (MSS) in preparation for OA-6 Offset Grapple practice session. Ground Controllers also performed the MSS Pre-Launch Checkouts. The USOS crew practiced maneuvering the Space Station Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS) into the grapple envelope of the Permanent Multipurpose Module (PMM) Flight Releasable Grapple Fixture (FRGF). They performed this several times as well as a final run during which Ground Controllers safed the SSRMS to simulate a failure. The crew recovered by switching from the Cupola Robotic Workstation (RWS) to the Lab RWS. After the Offset Grapples Practice session, Ground Controllers reconfigured the MSS for nominal operations and maneuvered the SSRMS to the Node 1 Nadir Active Common Berthing System (ABCM) survey position in preparation for OA-6 capture on March 26. ARED Maintenance: Williams performed a task to tighten the set screws within the ARED flywheels and main arm fasteners. Two of the four set screws on the left side flywheel were unable to be torqued. However, ground teams accepted closeout of the procedure based on nominal torquing of the remaining set screws which resulted in minimal rotation of those screws. Todays Planned Activities All activities were completed unless otherwise noted. HRF Blood collection assistance HRF Sample Insertion into MELFI SM Ventilation Subsystem Preventive Maintenance, Group E FGB ??2 Circulation Fan Cleaning Vacuum Cleaning SM, DC1, MRM1, MRM2 Dust Filters Inspection of Air Conditioner for moisture Formaldehyde Monitoring Kit (FMK) Deployment Operations Grab Sample Container (GSC) Sampling Operations HRF Equipment Stowage MELFI- Overview OBT Multi Omics (MO) Bag retrieval Handover Multi Omics (MO) Checking packages before stowage Multi Omics (MO) Sample Collection Station Support Computer [X] Log Off Crew time for ISS adaptation and orientation Multi Omics (MO) Sample Insertion into MELFI ROBONAUT check Multi Omics (MO) Hardware stowage Combustion Integrated Rack (CIR) Rack Doors Open Combustion Integrated Rack (CIR) Manifold Bottle Replacement WRS Water Sample Analysis Counter Measure System (CMS) Exercise Overview Combustion Integrated Rack (CIR) Hardware Setup Combustion Integrated Rack (CIR) Rack Doors Close Station Support Computer 12 Log In ARED CMS Introduction CWC-I Gather Robotic Workstation (RWS) Setup MATRYOSHKA-R. Transfer of PADLES Detectors from Soyuz and Handover to USOS / r/g 1706 MATRYOSHKA-R. Photos of Transfer / r/g 1704 DOSIMETER- Dosimeter handover from RS and deployment COSMOCARD. Setup. Starting 24-hr ECG Recording / r/g 1703 COSMOCARD. Photography of the Experiment Ops / r/g 1702 ??? Maintenance HABIT- Procedure Review Crew time for ISS adaptation and orientation Weekly Housekeeping Cleaning SM and FGB Potok-150 MK Air Purification System Pre-filters CALCIUM. Experiment Session 1 r/g 1701 HABIT- Prep for the Experiment On-board Training (OBT) Cygnus Offset Grapple Countermeasures System (CMS) Tightening ARED Bolts Greetings Video Recording / r/g 1707 Marrow Breath And Ambient Air Sample Setup Subject On-board Training (OBT) Cygnus Offset Grapple OBT- SSRMS Debrief Conference TOCA Data Recording Observation and Analysis of Smectic Islands in Space (OASIS) Hardware Stowage CSA Generic Frozen Blood Collection Setup Radiation Area Monitors (RAM) Deployment Observation and Analysis of Smectic Islands in Space (OASIS) Historical Photo Crew time for ISS adaptation and orientation Water Recovery System CWC-Iodine Fill, Initialization HABIT- Questionnaire Exercise Data Downlink via OCA Water Recovery System CWC-Iodine Fill Terminate Completed Task List Items ESA PMM retrieve P/TV Red Dragon camera mod PCS 1553 card R&R Ground Activities All activities were completed unless otherwise noted. Offset Grapple practice session support Nominal ground commanding Three-Day Look Ahead: Tuesday, 03/22: OA-6 launch, SPHERES review/crew conference, Emergency Roles/Responsilities review, Neuromapping, Airlock, Node 3 bacteria filter R&R Wednesday, 03/23: SPHERES experiment run, JPM, JLP power panel installation, Cygnus OBT Thursday, 03/24: Cygnus OBT, Crew handover, Crew orientation QUICK ISS Status Environmental Control Group: Component Status Elektron Off 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) Norm Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Lab Off Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) Node 3 Full Up SOME are inventors and others patch holes in what the former invented. Font size: A - | A + IT expert Jozef Vegh feels somewhere in between, as one of his basic axioms when doing business is to listen to what the market and clients require. The Slovak Spectator spoke with Vegh about email archiving and information management, his internationally successful product, and about why he launched his IT company, TECH-ARROW in Slovakia. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement The Slovak Spectator (TSS): The fourth industrial revolution has become a regularly discussed topic. What do you understand from this term? Jozef Vegh (JV): For the first industrial revolution the steam engine was fundamental, but today we are somewhere else completely. I think that in terms of informatics it is the Internet of Things (IoT), i.e. when something physical joins with the virtual world, for example smart control of cars or towns, or your fridge will order your food. For example, Tesla is already testing autonomous or self-driving cars, and I expect that autonomous trucks that will start to drive on our roads. There will be more automation, which will have an impact on the labour market. People will need to be more educated as simpler work will be done by robots, while there will be a need for services. TSS: Is it possible to make plans in IT with respect to the speed with which technologies develop? JV: Steve Jobs said: You cant connect the dots looking forward you can only connect them looking backwards, which means that only when you are successful can you say how you have reached that success You should choose a path, stick to it, but also be open to new impulses. Your way does not need to be straight, but you should not lose momentum. There are several types of people: some are like Elon Musk [of Tesla] or Steve Jobs or Bill Gates, who create something world-shaking and then there are people who patch up holes. Here I would recall the words of a friend of mine, who also works in IT, who said: I have never made up something new. I only watched what others do and improved it. I am somewhere in between. I also invent new things, but as I do B2B [business-to-business], I try to listen to what the clients and the market require and deliver what is missing. Also, I think that an element of naivety, and a conviction that anything is possible, is needed too. TSS: You developed a successful software product for archiving emails. How did you come to the idea that this is a sector with potential? JV: After graduating in informatics in Bratislava I went to work in Vienna where I got a job in the H&S Heilig und Schubert Software company. There we worked on classical document management like scanning documents, saving documents, classification, passwords, etc. It was 2002 and people started to ask about emails. As I believe that it is necessary to listen to customers, we designed an Outlook application for archiving emails. Actually what happened during the dot.com bubble and the fall of Enron as well as the whole Arthur Andersen scandal, when many documents were shredded, resulted in adoption of the so-called SarbanesOxley Act in the USA. It was aimed at improving corporate governance and accountability, but part of it was actually a digital archive of all documents. On this basis several solutions for archiving emails were developed, as email is also a digital document. Another requirement from customers was a virtual email box. As it was almost 15 years ago and hardware was very expensive, email boxes were small and limited, as were emails. We solved both these aspects in our product, exchange@PAM which became successful initially in Europe. In 2007 US Sunbelt Software company approached us with an offer for cooperation after our product came out as the best in comparison with eight similar products. We developed together the Sunbelt Exchange Archiver (SEA) based on our original product, for which we received Best of IT Channel Vision, which is known as the IT Oscar, in 2007. [Slovak IT security firm] ESET received this prestigious award too, but one year later. In 2008 the first investor called us and in the end we and our Austrian partners sold the product for an eight-digit sum. TSS: Are there still gaps in the market, such as email archiving once was? JV: Actually, after email archiving we began to work on migration, which includes, for example, migration of electronic documents of one company from one system into another one, or into the cloud. But as a lot of people do not fully trust the cloud, they require hybrid solutions. And we will see what direction the market will take. TSS: What has the success of your email archiving product brought you from a professional point of view? JV: I learned a lot, as it got me amongst people from New York, Wall Street, venture capitalists, etc. This was also why we did it, i.e. to have a closer look at business and financial processes and to better understand the market. I travel abroad a lot, and what I hear there is that we have good technicians, but few businessmen who handle numbers well. Thus my vision was to comprehend the market and develop a product that would be not only good from the technical point of view but also successful financially. It also brought us a lot of new contacts, clients and new products. And I invested into my current company. TSS: Why, after working a lot abroad, have you launched your current company in Slovakia? JV: I come from here, I have family here and I feel good here. When I started to work in Austria back in 2001, as Slovakia was not a member of the EU, I had to get many documents and permissions. But after Slovakia entered the EU there is no more need for this. Moreover, the position of Bratislava is very good we are close to Vienna and several international airports, which means that within two or two and a half hours you can get to many places, and I think that in terms of this Bratislavas position is better than, for example, that of Prague. Moreover, the IT scene in the Bratislava-Vienna-Budapest triangle is very dynamic, with new technologies and a lot of startups. Last, but not least, IT is a sector in which you do not need to be physically somewhere to do your work. TSS: In spite of this you have launched a branch in Germany. Why have you launched a branch abroad and why did you choose this country? JV: The German-speaking market is close to me. I learned German as a kid and also it was the German market in which we succeeded with our product for email archiving. And Austria is just around the corner. In terms of launching a branch abroad, this is to enhance our profile, as we still fight with the fact that we are from the East. This is simply the mindset of people and Slovaks are not immune to this either. This also increases our chances on German-speaking markets to sell our products as Germans are more prone to buy products from Germans. We launched the branch in Nuremberg in 2013 with one business partner. But now we are changing this model and our goal is to have a virtual office in any bigger town in Europe. We will have a branch office in Berlin as there is a strong startup hub there, while my plan is to help Slovak startups to establish themselves abroad too. There are a lot of smart people and companies in Slovakia, but only a few of them are internationally successful. We have ESET, Sygic, Pixel Federation and some more, but I would like there to be more of them. TSS: The cloud makes the issue of protection of data on the internet even more crucial. What are the possibilities to improve this protection? JV: Security is important also for the Internet of Things when, for example, there will be a need to secure a freezer in order that somebody does not re-programme it for de-frosting. In terms of protection it is especially the human factor that fails. I believe that the weakest link in this chain is and will be the human being. There are plenty of antivirus, antispam or antimalware products, but it still happens that somebody unauthorised gets data. My opinion is that people are little educated in this field and thus when installing something they click on everything without reading what will this mean for them. Another aspect is passwords. There are a lot of password-saving apps people can use, for example. People should also change passwords regularly. All these require discipline, but the minimum they can do is to have one type of passwords for various categories like one for work and another for the internet. Also people should be careful when using freeware or shareware as I believe that nothing is for free. Slovakia already has one judge at EGC, Juraj Schwarcz. A hearing of the General Court (Source: Courtesy of the Court of Justice of the European Union) Font size: A - | A + Slovakia will have to relaunch the process of selecting an additional judge of the General Court of the European Court (EGC), as the courts committee has rejected Slovak candidate Maria Patakyova due to her lack of knowledge of French, Slovak Judicial Council chair Jana Bajankova announced on March 21. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement French is the working language of this court. Apart from Patakyova, who is vice-chancellor of Comenius University in Bratislava, the committee also rejected Maltese and Latvian candidates, said Bajankova as cited by the TASR newswire. A new election for the Slovak candidate should take place on June 27. It is expected that Slovakia will nominate a woman. Slovakia has managed to acquire one of the 12 posts of additional judges who should have joined the court as of September 1, 2015. Slovakia already has one judge at EGC, Juraj Schwarcz. The General Court is the first-instance body of the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg. It was established in 1998 to provide two-stage judicial supervision in certain areas and in order to relieve the Court of Justice itself. The General Court is made up of at least one judge from each member state (28 as of 2013, plus the additional 12 posts). The judges are appointed by common accord of the governments of member states. Their term of office is six years and is renewable. The judges appoint their president from among their own ranks for a period of three years. Robert Fico is starting his third term as a prime minister, thus becoming Slovakias longest serving prime minister, if the years are counted cumulatively. Font size: A - | A + Vladimir Meciar was the only one before him to be prime minister more than twice, but he only served one full term (1994-1998), while his other two turns took place within four years time between 1990 and 1994. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Fico was born in 1964 in Topolcany and in 1986 graduated from Comenius Universitys law school. Fico worked at the Law Institute of the Justice Ministry after graduation, and also served as an agent representing Slovakia before the European Court of Human Rights and the European Commission for Human Rights. He was politically active from a young age, joining the Communist Party of Slovakia in 1987. After the Velvet Revolution, he became a member of the Slovak Democratic Left (SDL) party, and became deputy chairman in 1998. In 1992 he was first elected MP. In 1998, Fico ran for the post of general prosecutor, but his party endorsed another candidate instead, arguing Fico was too young. That same year the election brought down the government of Meciar and SDL joined a ruling coalition of four parties led by the Slovak Democratic Coalition (SDK). Fico received the biggest number of preferential votes among party colleagues. In 1999, Fico left the party, saying he was disappointed with the way the government worked, and acted as an independent MP until the 2002 elections. Almost immediately after leaving SDL, however, he founded Smer, which he first labelled a party of the third way. Between 2002-2006 Smer was the main opposition party in the Slovak parliament. In 2004, it swallowed up nearly all the leftist parties active on the Slovak political scene, including SDL. In 2006, Smer won the elections with more than 29 percent of the vote and entered a coalition with two small parties: Meciars Movement for a Democratic Slovakia (HZDS) and the nationalist Slovak National Party (SNS). This brought heavy criticism to Smer from European partners, and the Party of European Socialists (PES) in the European Parliament suspended Smers membership until February 2008. Ficos first term as a prime minister was marked by the countrys entry into the eurozone but also by several big scandals, including the so-called bulletin-board tender and a murky emissions quota sale. Both incidents cost the country millions of euros. In 2010 Smer received more than 34 percent of the vote, but was outnumbered in parliament by a collection of right-leaning parties. Fico and his coalition were replaced by a coalition of four right-wing parties led by Prime Minister Iveta Radicova. But it was not long before Fico returned in full force, as he helped engineer the fall of Radicovas government, leading to an early election in March 2012, where his party secured the parliamentary majority of 83 seats. His 2012-2016 government was Slovakias first ever one-party government. He is married, with one son. Kalinak was first appointed interior minister in 2006. He regained the same post in 2012. Between the years 2010 and 2012 he was member of the permanent delegation of the parliament to NATO Parliamentary Assembly. Font size: A - | A + Robert Kalinak was born on May 11, 1971 in Bratislava. He graduated from Comenius Universitys school of law in 1995, and underwent post-gradual studies and bar exams at the same school. He is also member of the Slovak Bar Association. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement During his studies, Kalinak started doing business and opened a chain of cafes. He has also worked in several law firms. He was first elected to parliament in 2002 for the Smer party, which he co-founded. Moreover, he was elected member of the Bratislava Self-Governing Regions parliament in 2005. During his service as the interior minister, Kalinak has been involved in several scandals connected to the police. One of them involves ethnic Hungarian Hedviga Malinova (who has since married and now goes under the name Zakova) who reported to have been attacked in August 2006 after two men overheard her speaking Hungarian on the phone. Some men were investigated in connection with this incident, but not prosecuted, and the police closed the case in September 2006, concluding that the attack did not take place at all; rather, it was determined that Zakova should be charged with perjury and she was charged in early April 2014. The case has been sensitive issue in Slovak-Hungarian relations, and the Most-Hid party, now a member of the coalition, has been critical of the steps of the then government. Before becoming the labour minister in 2012, Jan Richter acted as Smers general manager since 2006. Font size: A - | A + Jan Richter was born in Zlate Moravce on October 5, 1956. He holds a degree from the school of law of Banska Bystrica-based University of Matej Bel, though there were some doubts about his bachelor title. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Richter began his political career in the Slovak Democratic Left (SDL), where he served as chair of its district branch and deputy chair of its regional branch in Nitra, in the years 1989-1991. In years 1998-2004 he served as secretary of the Bratislava branch of SDL. Richter became political secretary of the Smer party in 2005, and in 2006 he was elected to the parliament. Before becoming the labour minister in 2012, he acted as Smers general manager (since 2006). Ziga was first elected to parliament on the slate of Smer party in 2006, but he accepted an executive post instead and was appointed state secretary of the Economy Ministry. Font size: A - | A + Peter Ziga was born on July 27, 1972 in Kosice. He graduated from the University of Economics in Bratislava in 1995 and the University of Technology in Kosice in 2009, specialising in business economy. During his studies he participated in a course for students from eastern Europe, under the auspices of the Union Bank of Switzerland, in St Gallen. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Before starting his political career, Ziga worked as CEO and authorised representative of private companies, but also as the head of the communication department of VUB bank in Bratislava (1997-1998). Between the years 2003-2004 he served as advisor to the head of the Slovak Investment and Trade Development Agency. Ziga was first elected to parliament on the slate of Smer party in 2006, but he accepted an executive post instead and was appointed state secretary of the Economy Ministry. He also made it to parliament in 2010 and chaired the committee for controlling military intelligence. After the 2012 general election, Ziga was appointed minister of the environment. Slovakia sends its condolences to Belgium; the Foreign Affairs Ministry does not recommend travelling to Brussels. Font size: A - | A + Comments disabled The society cannot be defeated by fear, said Slovak President Andrej Kiska in response to the March 22 terrorist attacks on Zaventem airport and the metro in Brussels which have already claimed some 20 victims. It is horrible that also in the modern world there are people who commit such horrible, terrorist crimes. Such incidents should encourage everybody in Europe to support more unity, solidarity and the common fight against extremism. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement We have to be careful, but we cannot allow the fear to overpower us, Kiska told the TASR newswire. Prime Minister Robert Fico meanwhile initiated a meeting of the Security Council which decided that Slovakia should increase its threat level, which is currently only on the first, low level. Other security forces will meet soon and discuss whether to change the level of terrorist threat to Slovakia, Fico said, as quoted by TASR, adding that Hungary has already done so. Meanwhile, the Foreign Affairs Ministry said it is in contact with Belgian authorities, trying to learn whether there are any Slovaks among victims or the injured. The ministry also does not recommend Slovaks to travel to Brussels or, if they are already there, to avoid crowded people and public transport, and to respect the recommendations of local authorities, it informed on its website. More police officers in streets The Interior Ministry has meanwhile informed about the adoption of special measures. These include placing more police officers on the streets, intending to control traffic junctions, airports, bus and train stations. Moreover, there will be more patrols at places where more people frequent, like shopping centres, informed ministrys spokesperson Peter Lazarov. Also the Slovak Information Centre (SIS) intelligence agency has adopted adequate security measures. There is also an intensive exchange of information with its foreign partners and Slovak security forces, its spokesperson Branislav Zvara told TASR. Regarding transport to Brussels, the M. R. Stefanik Airport in Bratislava has adopted special measures. Moreover, all flights to and from Brussels are cancelled, with the next one being scheduled for Brussels-Charleroi at 12:10 on March 23, airports spokesperson Veronika Sevcikova informed. Buses belonging to Student Agency travelling from Prague to Brussels and then to London will slightly change their route. There will be a temporary stop set up close to Brussels, said companys spokesperson Ivana Kasicka. We will inform all affected clients about details, she told TASR. The case of Hedviga Malinova ends in Slovakia after 10 years, and will move to Hungarian courts. Font size: A - | A + Malinova (who has since married and now goes under the name Zakova) is an ethnic Hungarian who reported to have been attacked in August 2006 after two men overheard her speaking Hungarian on the phone. Some men were investigated in connection with this incident, but not prosecuted, and the police closed the case in September 2006, concluding that the attack did not take place at all; rather, it was determined that Zakova should be charged with perjury and she was charged in early April 2014. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Since she moved to Hungary and was granted Hungarian citizenship in December 2013, Zakova turned to the court in Nitra, asking for moving the whole proceeding to Hungary. Justice Minister Tomas Borec agreed that they will send the official request to move the case to Hungarian courts on March 17, the SITA newswire reported. Read also: Read also: Dates for Hedviga Zakova court case set Read more The Hungarian Justice Ministry will have to say whether the Hungarian laws enable them to take the case . Since perjury is classified as crime also in Hungary, there should theoretically be no obstacle, Gabor Kaleta of the Hungarian Justice Ministry told the Sme daily. If Hungary takes the case, it is possible that the court will have to invite all witnesses and make new expert opinions as well as present the evidence. It is possible it will decide that the case cannot be investigated as it took place 10 years ago and some evidence has been destroyed, Sme wrote. The regional prosecutors office in Presov has dismissed a complaint concerning the police inspectorates probe into a raid in Moldava nad Bodvou. Font size: A - | A + The controversial raid took place in a Roma settlement informally known as Budulovska, situated in Moldava nad Bodvou (Kosice Region), in June 2013, but the inspectorate of the Interior Ministry started a probe into its actions only a few months later. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement The prosecutors office however says that such a procedure was permissible. With the decision it turned down the complaint against the inspectorates decision to stop criminal prosecution in the case of the police raid, submitted in November 2015, the Sme daily reported. Several Roma complained after the raid that the police officers had beaten them without reason. They also entered their homes without permission and damaged their furniture, the locals complained. The prosecutor in his decision incomprehensibly respects the fact that the criminal prosecution was launched by the inspectorate in January 2014 and the first investigation of our clients was carried out in late February 2014, which is nine months after the incident, said lawyer Vanda Durbakova of the Centre for Civil and Human Rights in Kosice, as quoted by Sme. Read also: Read also: Investigation found no torture in infamous police raid Read more International law stipulates that the state authorities have to start the investigation of cases which indicate a potential police violation as soon as possible to secure the best quality of evidence possible, she added. The steps of the police inspectorate have already been criticised by Roma, their lawyer, international organisations and Ombudswoman Jana Dubovcova. They said it took the prosecutor six months to start criminal prosecution and that the hearings and evidence collection took another year and half. This may have caused it to be harder for traumatised people to remember all details, as reported by Sme. The prosecutor explains that the inspectorate could not do anything as it had not received any criminal complaint. It, however, dismissed the criminal complaint submitted by Durbakova in the name of one of the attacked Roma only a few weeks after the incident, Sme wrote. In addition, the respective investigative authority should start an investigation on its own if there are indications that the police may have abused their powers. Regarding these facts I consider the decision of the regional prosecutors office unlawful and in the name of my clients I will use all possible legal tools to reverse it, Durbakova added, as quoted by Sme. Several theatres will allow amateur actors to play their Kovaci (Blacksmiths) performance, which was stopped by Banska Bystrica Regions Governor Marian Kotleba. Font size: A - | A + Comments disabled Slovakias artists and theatres have shown solidarity to the amateur actors from the theatre ensemble of Jan Chalupka from Brezno who were not allowed to complete their play Kovaci by Milos Nikolic (Serbia) on March 14 in Banska Bystrica. The play was stopped by Kotleba, allegedly because it contained several vulgar expressions. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement The first to offer the play in its spaces is the Bratislava-based Theatre SkRAT which resides in A4 the Space for Contemporary Culture on Karpatska 2 in Bratislava. The performance takes place on March 22 at 19:30. Tickets have already been sold out. Regarding the theatres capacities, the play will be also screened in the nearby Cafe A4, the SITA newswire reported. Before the performance, there will be a public discussion, which starts at 18:00. The next performance will take place during at two theatre festivals in Medzibrod (on April 9 at 19:00) and Nove Mesto nad Vahom (April 10 at 18:00). Also Theatre Kolomaz from Trencin, which resides in local cinema Hviezda at Kniezata Pribinu street, will perform the play on April 11 at 18:00. Those tickets are still available and can be obtained via http://klubluc.sk/divadlo/program.htm, SITA wrote. In addition, the city theatre in Zilina (residing at Horny Val) will introduce the play on April 27, offering three performances. The first two at 11:00 and 13:00 will be for schools, while the one at 19:00 will be open for the public. Tickets can be obtained via www.divadlozilina.eu. Those interested in seeing the play can also follow the www.dsjchbrezno.sk website, SITA wrote. Meanwhile, the Slovak National Theatre (SND) published a call in which they expressed their concerns over the rise of extremism and anti-democratic statements of far-right representatives on March 18. Though its representatives did not comment on the political situation during the election struggle, the situation after the elections forces them to speak up, they claimed, as reported by SITA. They expect the new culture minister to condemn fascism and communism and support projects focused on supporting democratic principles, on describing the tragedies of the Holocaust or on critical thinking about authoritarian elements in contemporary society, SITA wrote. About 200 artists also signed a call against the current situation in Slovakia, saying that the political pseudo-elites have let the demons out of a bottle, as reported by the Dennik N daily. Read also: Refugees were a top issue in pre-election debates, but the new government did not write a single word about them in its programme priorities. Font size: A - | A + Even now, when members of far-right Peoples party Our Slovakia (LSNS), which has been gathering popularity on anti-Roma and anti-migrant rhetoric, are marching into the parliament, the new government still ignores these issues. Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement Skryt Remove ad Article continues after video advertisement It stems from programme priorities of the new government which may be the basis for its programme statement that representatives of Smer, the Slovak National Party (SNS), Most-Hid and Siet specified and inked on March 15. It seems like those parties havent understood the message of recent general elections, Jarmila Lajcakova of the Centre for Ethnic and Culture Research (CVEK) told The Slovak Spectator. Precitajte si tiez: Precitajte si tiez: Coalition introduces its priorities Read more When it comes to marginalised Roma communities there are no specific measures in the priorities, yet some MPs are clearly focusing on them. For example, parties plan to support job opportunities for people living in socially-excluded communities or enact stricter conditions for unemployed people to qualify for state welfare. Regarding foreign and European politics, they stated that they want to continue in the pro-European and pro-Atlantic orientation of Slovakia, update the security and defence strategy and strengthen the care about foreign Slovaks. There is nothing about refugees or migrants despite the fact that Smer stated before elections that the opinion on this issue will be a basic condition for creation of next government. I dont understand why program priorities lack a single mention about how government wants to deal with this problem, especially when considering the fact that this was one of the main pre-election issues, Zuzana Stevulova , the director of Human Rights League (HRL) told The Slovak Spectator. Refugees spark conflicts The government stance towards the issue of refugees is reflected in the first sentence of its programme priorities in which it writes about clear continuity in pro-European and pro-Atlantic orientation, according to Siets deputy chair Andrej Hrnciar. Parties discussed the issue during negotiations but it was difficult to reach an agreement because Most-Hid demands cancellation of the Slovak refugee quota lawsuit against the EU which is the exact opposite of what other parties want. Moreover Most-Hid would accept more than 200 refugees which the previous government pledged to accept on a voluntarily basis, the Sme daily wrote referring to a politician participating in negotiations wishing to remain anonymous. Expert on foreign issues of Most-Hid Frantisek Sebej did not say why refugees did not make it into the programme priorities because he did not participate in negotiations. However, he stated that his party will still pursue a milder approach toward refugees, as it did before the elections. Precitajte si tiez: Precitajte si tiez: Slovakia accepts current draft of EU-Turkey migration agreement Read more We havent forgotten the difference between our approach and the approach of Smer and other parties, Frantisek Sebej of Most-Hid told The Slovak Spectator. We will insist upon civilising the [governments] rhetoric and approach towards migrants. Nevertheless, it could seemingly be the impetus behind a potential battle between parliamentary parties; yet discussion about refugees does not necessarily need to cause huge conflict in the new government because several different opinions could result in a moderate approach, according to Hrnciar. Furthermore, programme priorities show that nationalist SNS which had been widely criticising NATO and the EU have resigned from this rhetoric and avoid the foreign policies issues, according to Milan Nic of the Central European Policy Institute (CEPI). Preparing instead of ignoring Programme priorities should reflect the current preparation of a new national integration programme for refugees and immigrants. To this effect, the European Commission should present a draft concerning asylum system reform soon and V4 countries (Slovakia, Hungary, Czech Republic, Poland) have the opportunity to negotiate for the best conditions it can get. For example, the draft should deal with moving of migrants who register in border countries of the Schengen area, including Slovakia and then disappear from them. There is a proposal that huge asylum centres will be built in border countries, Stevulova said. One of them could even be in Slovakia which would bring us new job positions and prestige of the country abroad. At the same time the governments rhetoric toward migrants should improve and depart from the current habit of describing the situation worse than it really is, according to Nic. Precitajte si tiez: Precitajte si tiez: Prosecutors office deals with Ficos statements Read more Prime Minister Robert Fico disserved Slovakia with his rhetoric, Nic told The Slovak Spectator. It was a big problem to explain to our partners that we are not Hungary [widely condemned for its strict anti-migrants approach]. It cannot be said how the governments parties will face these challenges, according to analysts. I dont know if it was discussed during negotiations but I know that [Most-Hid head] Bela Bugar and [partys deputy chairman] Lucia Zitnanska have not changed their opinion on this issue and they dont consider it to be unimportant, Sebej said. Repression may continue When it comes to the issue of marginalised Roma communities, analysts mostly pointed to the plan to make stricter rules for providing material need allowances for people unwilling to work. It means that government will continue with its repressive policy towards marginalised Roma despite the fact that it has not been working in recent years, according to them. The previous Fico government passed a bill saying that the state will pay the basic material-need allowance of 60.5 per month only to eligible adults who did not refuse the opportunity to work at least 32 hours each month doing community service jobs or voluntary work. The bills purpose was to incentivize working habits for long-term unemployed people and change peoples opinion about Roma unwilling to work, but had exactly the opposite effect, according to Lajcakova. It recalls 2013 when Marian Kotleba won in regional elections and all [politicians] were competing to see who will introduce stricter measures against Roma, Lajcakova said. Political parties spin the circle of who will be harder on minorities but this game has apparently only one winner. Precitajte si tiez: Precitajte si tiez: Busting the Roma welfare myth Read more It seems like some politicians imagine Roma like people who have dozens of job invites but they refuse them on a daily basis, she added. Vague priorities Other programme priorities which could affect marginalised Roma include combatting usury, unspecified changes in the school system, decreasing unemployment or improving education against extremism. None of them, however, contain specific measures. A plan to create 100,000 jobs could be a measure for 100,000 Roma or for zero Roma, Laco Oravec of Milan Simecka Foundation told the Slovak Spectator. They are not even able to name the group which those measures target. Also Government Proxy for the Roma Communities Peter Pollak criticises the document. Governments programme priorities dont contain any solutions to Roma issues and they indicate that political parties constructing this government have not shown their will to deal with this issue in this document on a governmental level, Pollak wrote in his press release. Focusing on Hungarians When it comes to the topic of minorities, the governments priorities are to create a fund for financing culture of minorities and improving the observing of legislation on language use of minorities. Additionally, teaching methodology of Slovak language at minorities schools should change so children who do not have Slovak as their mother tongue can learn it better. The last measure is to cancel the threshold of the minimum number of students which a school must have for its existence in regions with mixed nationalities. Some of those points are clearly Most-Hid pre-election promises targeted at the Hungarian minority in Slovakia, but all those measures do not reflect the width and complexity of minorities' issues, according to Oravec. Precitajte si tiez: Precitajte si tiez: Learning Slovak as a foreign language Read more Lajcakova agrees saying that priorities focus mainly on the Hungarian minority but do not deal with the issues of Roma or refugees. For example, the change of Slovak language teaching would be proper also for regular schools, not only those which focus on minorities, Lajcakova said. Human rights need their head One of the biggest problem of minorities and human-rights issues in Slovakia is that the state system which was dealing with those questions was dismantled by personnel and institutional changes. For example, parliament cancelled the post of deputy prime minister for human rights and national minorities in 2012. Moreover, the government proxy for minorities has weak powers and the post is not occupied, according to Oravec. In its reaction to programme priorities, Pollak sent to parties in the government a list of measures for helping marginalised Roma which they should adopt, adding that Slovakia can draw 380 million from EU funds by 2020, therefore money should not be a problem. By ignoring the problems of hundreds of villages which are currently dealing with issues in Roma communities we are creating an environment for the increase of radial and extremist groups in the country, reads Pollaks statement. Cuban President Raul Castro called on the US government to do more to lift the embargo and cautioned relations could not be normalized as long as the United States still occupies the Guantanamo Bay naval base. However, he asked the United States for a list of political prisoners and said Cuba is ready to release them. Chomsky argued that Obamas trip was necessary if the countries were to break down decades of distrust. "Symbolism is a big part of foreign policy and diplomacy, and clearly this visit is very symbolically important. US hostility and aggression toward Cuba has been very multi-faceted over the decades: military, covert, overt, economic, political, diplomatic," she recalled. Obama was moving toward improving ties very slowly, Chomsky pointed out. "This visit is a step toward acknowledging Cubas sovereignty and right to choose its own government, but less than a breakthrough, Id say," she maintained. The US leader was treading a fine line between offering respect for Cuban sovereignty and insisting on the US right to intervene in Cubas internal affairs, Chomsky argued. "I imagine that he will make statements that will allow different sectors to interpret his trip in different ways. I also expect that he will allow further economic opening towards Cuba," she said. The main obstacles to future progress were all on the US side, Chomsky insisted. "I would say that the main obstacle is the US assumption, attitude and policy that it has the right to determine Cubas future and dictate what type of government and political and economic system Cuba should have," she stated. All the hostility in US-Cuban relations had come entirely from the United States for more than half a century, Chomsky observed. Although widespread, the practice of shackling has been illegal in the country for almost forty years. "It was banned in Indonesia since 1977, but we still found examples of people who had been shackled for 15 years at a time because the stigma remains in the community and there is no access to mental-health care." Sharma remains optimistic, despite the countrys disheartening continuance of the practice. "The policy commitment and the political will is actually very strong in Jakarta at the central level." The problem, she states, is at the ground level where "rhetoric is not being transferred into practice." Sharma said HRW is "calling on the government to provide access to medication at community health centers." The organization has also developed a robust social media presence using the hashtag #breakthechains to increase awareness. Sharma argues that "in the short term the government must monitor institutions to effectuate a ban on shackling, but long-term there needs to be a shift to communities so people with mental illness can receive care close by." The Indonesian government cannot wait to act on this issue, Sharma explained. "Being in shackles is not only degrading and inhumane, but it can have an impact on physical health, you can develop muscular dystrophy where you cannot walk again because you are in such a confined space, it is very traumatic because there is no contact with the outside world. People told me that it was like living in hell." Stripe is currently operating in 25 countries, including the United States, Germany, Japan, Canada, and Australia. Stripe Atlas is also expected to begin its operation in Cuba in the nearest weeks amid the normalization process between Washington and Havana. "We have all of the major pieces lined up. We have already established relationships with our partners. We have been meeting and talking to entrepreneurs on the ground. And we will be incorporating the first Cuban companies very soon," Collison said. "You have got to count the timeline in a small number of weeks." The company announced earlier in March, that its new service Stripe Atlas would be available to Cuba following the removal of certain restrictions by the White House. Despite the reduction in tensions, the United States continues to maintain a trade embargo on Cuba mandated by Congress, even though Obama has been trying to persuade both chambers of the US legislative body lift the restrictions. Since the United States restored formal diplomatic ties with Cuba in July 2015, Obama has chipped away at the embargo with a series of executive orders that have opened the island nation to US tourists and some business ventures. The US restrictions on overall trade will remain in place until Congress changes or scraps the 1960 law that put the embargo in place. A study performed by Truthout indicates that the increasing amounts of plastic dumped in the ocean pose a significant threat to human health. Discarded at the rate of 8 million tons a year, equivalent to a dump truck every minute, the plastic is consumed by fish, and much of it is then consumed by humans. Dr. Debora Iglesias-Rodriguez, biological oceanographer at National Oceanography Centre at Britain's University of Southampton, said in an interview that, "nanoparticles of plastic getting into marine animals and the food chain are affecting fish fertility rates, and this affects food security and coastal populations." Decomposing plastic is concentrated in enormous spiraling currents called "gyres" that exist in every ocean. The North Pacific Subtropical Gyre, dubbed "the Great Pacific Garbage Patch," is twice the size of Texas, and located near the US West Coast, contains an "alarming amount" of plastic garbage. The major Populus market research agency carried out the poll in the United States and Great Britain on February 3-4, 2016, Forsa conducted the survey in Germany from February 4 to 8, and Ifop, the longest-established market researcher, polled people in France from February 3 to 5. There were 1,047 respondents in Britain, 1,004 in the United States, 1,002 in Germany and 1,499 in France. The international public opinion project Sputnik.Polls was inaugurated in January 2015. The project organizes regular surveys in the United States and Europe on the most sensitive social and political issues. About the Sputnik.Polls Project The international public opinion project was inaugurated in January 2015, in partnership with Populus, Forsa and Ifop France's oldest polling institute. The project organizes regular surveys in the United States and Europe on the most sensitive social and political issues. Sputnik (sputniknews.com) is a news agency and radio network with multimedia news hubs in dozens of countries. Sputnik broadcasts through its websites in over 30 languages, as well as analog and digital radio, mobile apps and social media. Sputnik newswires, available by subscription, run around the clock in English, Arabic, Spanish and Chinese. An anonymous Twitter account which had earlier claimed responsibility for the attack has also "liked" tweets that excoriated the Swedish media for "whitewashing immigration." The account is also reported to have liked The Daily Mail, where the Swedish media establishment is said to have created a "conspiracy" to hide the truth about the massive influx of asylum-seekers from the third world. A post on the now-deleted account also describes how overloading the media websites was revenge for the newspapers' "bias" and "propaganda." Several media companies' websites, including the heavyweight tabloid Aftonbladet, were knocked out for a few hours on Saturday night. The Swedish authorities are now intensely investigating the incidents. "This is probably the largest IT-attack we've ever seen. We have basically established what really happened, but nonetheless go on with our research," said Anders Ahlqvist, a cybercrime expert working for the Swedish police force. According to Ahlqvist, the police suspect that "millions of computers" could have been used in the attack. "Violent crime is rampaging, while police resources are on the decline. Before they get together any more resources, we help them the best we can," argued Mikael Johansson, denying allegations that the group members bear melee weapons when on patrol. The way the Soldiers of Odin operates has been earlier compared to motorcycle gangs. "It is structured in a somewhat similar way. We want to get in the right kind of people, but we do not want to usher in right-wing guys who think they can go out and fight in the streets," said Mikael Johansson. "There are about 100 full-time members, but we have a lot people willing to join and nearly 5,000 supporters," said Mikael Johansson. The anti-refugee group "Soldiers Of Odin," who derive their name from a Norse god, have been, by their own admission, patrolling the streets of Finnish cities 24/7 since September 2015. In 2016, far right militia groups under the same banner have been founded in Norway and Estonia. Anti-immigrant and anti-Islamist sentiment have been on the rise in Europe, where governments are struggling with an unprecedented wave of asylum seekers, which among other things have aggravated crime rates, as well as contributed to a growing sense of insecurity. The reason behind the dramatically increased forecast of corruption-related losses is due to the scope of the study, which looked at the broader impacts of the issue, such as the impact endemic corruption has on the willingness of companies to invest in certain countries or industries. Discussing today the costs of corruption and the possible EU response in tackling the issue #EuropeanParliament #Corruption Marco Hafner (@econ_hafner) February 16, 2016 Researchers also looked beyond the financial scale of corruption, taking into account the social and political costs, with the report stating: "corruption represents a substantial threat as a tool of organized crime and terrorist groups". "Corruption imposes significant social, political and economic costs. Not only does it result in huge amounts of money being lost annually, but corruption leads to more unequal societies, higher levels of organized crime, weaker rule of law and lower trust in public institutions," the report's main author, Marco Hafner wrote. In particular, the report raised concerns over public procurement corruption, which involves removing companies from the bidding process for governmental contracts, which critics argue then leads to a lack of competition within the market. The findings spelled out grim reading for Eastern European EU member states, with Poland, Romania, Lithuania, Cyprus and Croatia among the countries with the highest rates of public procurement corruption. Of concern to Brussels, many of the countries that receive significant EU grants were those found to have more significant corruption problems. Corruption Putting a Brake on Recovery Responding to the findings, Carl Doran, director of Transparency International EU, said it was clear corruption was deeply embedded in a number of EU states. "These figures confirm what we have always suspected corruption is a big black hole at the heart of the European economy and a brake on recovery." In order to address existing corruption issues, the report made a number of recommendations, including the establishment of an EU-wide procurement system, along with the creation of a European Public Prosecutors Office to investigate corruption cases across the bloc. However Mr Dolan from Transparency International says authorities need to do more to crack down on the issue. "Given the scale of the problem these are very modest proposals," he said. "And the fact that the EU has not been able to deliver on these very modest things is probably an indication of how low a priority this has been for the EU over the last number of years." Belgium has been heavily criticized in the French media, since the Paris attacks, with Le Monde newspaper calling it a "clearing house for jihadism" that risks becoming a "nation without a state." Broad Terrorist Network Dr Shiraz Maher, Senior Fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence (ICSR) at King's College London, told Sputnik in a statement that: "It is very likely that this attack will have been planned and prepared well in advance of last week's arrest of Salah Abdesalam, one of the central figures in the Paris attacks from last November. "It therefore points to the existence of a broad and sophisticated terrorist network in Belgium, that extends beyond the one which attacked France last year. "Our research shows that, per capita, Belgium has the highest number of foreign fighters in Syria of any European country. More than twice as many have gone from there as from France, and more than four times as many as from Britain," Dr Maher said in the statement to Sputnik. Intelligence Failures Belgian state broadcaster RTBF which has seen a copy of a police overview committee report says it had found one "glaring example" of intelligence failings which showed that "even before the Paris attacks, a nom de guerre used by one of the terrorists featured in several (police) databases in Belgium, but not in the central database." February 2016: A new statistical update on Belgian fighters in Syria and Iraq https://t.co/OGXbh5ogqp pic.twitter.com/BPkhf1tOVj Pieter Van Ostaeyen (@p_vanostaeyen) February 2, 2016 The report found that the intelligence services had the Abdeslam brothers on their agenda as far back July 10/11, 2014 when an "informant" told a police officer the willingness of Abdelhamid Abaaoud to recruit young people to carry out an attack. In 2003, the family moved to Damascus in Syria, where her rough life came to a halt, as Said Arif was arrested by the Syrian security police. Anna was never told why, but she and her children had to live under house arrest in different apartments; she also experienced what a Syrian prison is like. The same year, Anna managed, with the Swedish embassy's help, to finally return to Halmstad, where she received a warm welcome from her parents, who have supported her over the years. The monotony of life back in Sweden struck her as bland and domestic in comparison to the struggles in the East. In 2010, Anna separated from her husband, who spent time in various jails all over Europe, and told her Muslim friends she had started to doubt the existence of God and decided to take off the niqab for good. Almost a year ago, she learned that Said Arif, who had escaped from captivity in France, had been killed. There is, in any event, credible information that he died in a US airstrike in Syria, where he led an Islamist rebel group. "Beloved Terrorist" is expected to cast a long-welcome light on how many view secular life as empty, compelling them to embrace extremism and sectarian violence. Speaking about the current situation to broadcaster ORF, Mikl-Leitner said EU attention must turn to the potential opening up of an eastern Balkans route for refugees and migrants, following recent measures taken by member states to close the western Balkans route. With the number of refugees entering Europe expected to rise again in 2016, the interior minister said Austria was prepared to erect a fence along its border with Hungary, following similar developments in November last year near the town of Spielfeld, which is located close to Austria's border with Slovenia. "If it is necessary then we would build further fences just like in Spielfeld, build containers and put police and soldiers in the area," the Interior Minister said. EDINBURGH (Sputnik)Earlier in the day, a series of blasts hit Brussels' Zaventem airport and a city metro station, killing at least 34 people and injuring almost 200 others. The Belgian authorities are treating the explosions as part of a coordinated terrorist attack. Mike Hookem, defense spokesman for the UK Independence Party (UKIP) said that the attacks demonstrated that lax EU border controls were a direct threat to the country. "My reaction is that the attack in Brussels will have no effect on Brexit. We are as vulnerable to terrorist attack as the Belgians and had both the London attack in 2005 and many attempts since then. These attacks show the need for maximum European co-operation in sharing intelligence and co-ordinating our policies to defeat the enemy. Brexit could damage that co-operation," Rifkind, who is a member of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe's (OSCE) Eminent Persons Group, said. On June 23, the United Kingdom will vote on whether or not to remain part of the European Union. Supporters of the United Kingdom exiting the bloc, or Brexit, argue that EU membership has eroded Britains independence to make laws, direct its economy and control its borders. Opponents warn that leaving the EU could deeply harm the countrys economy. "There is an obvious lack of leadership in Sweden, and I think that the crisis is largely due to the erroneous assertion that we, as one of the world's richest countries, do not have the capacity to help," he said, praising Reinfeldt. Reinfeldt urged his compatriots not to exaggerate the refugee crisis as well as censured those who use the word "collapse" to describe the current asylum situation in Sweden. "If Sweden has collapsed and nothing works, what words have we have got left to describe what is now happening in Syria, Libya and Afghanistan? We must be careful with our words," Reinfeldt said. The former head of the Moderate party (Moderaterna), who topped a centre-right coalition government between 2006-2014, became known for his staunch pro-immigration stance. Famously, Reinfeldt rejected the notion that Sweden offers a safe haven for more refugees than the country can cope with, arguing that there is plenty of room in the Nordic countries for more human beings fleeing oppression and war. "What does the word "enough" mean? Sweden is full? The Nordic region is full? Are we too many people? We are 25 million people living in the North. I often fly over the Swedish countryside and I would advise others to do. There are endless fields and forests. There's more space than you might imagine", said Reinfeldt in 2014. Last year, Sweden took in around 163,000 refugees, according to the BBC, but has been struggling to provide housing and education for all, while the popular support for the current Prime Minister Stefan Lofven (the Socialist Party) is dwindling. On Tuesday, a series of blasts hit Brussels' Zaventem airport and a city metro station, killing at least 34 people and injuring 230 others . Belgian authorities are treating the event as a coordinated terror attack. Daesh has claimed responsibility Commenting on the attacks in an op-ed for Spain's El Pais newspaper, Torreblanca, a journalist and professor at Madrid's National University of Distance Education, writes that "all terrorist attacks perpetrated on European soil have a hopeless and infuriating script: while the terrorists strike Europe with all their strength, Europe's reaction is minimalistic." The terrorists' rationalizations for their behavior and their life path, the commentator suggests, "indicates a fierce hatred of all things European: personal freedoms, democratic values, religious tolerance. Anyone who partakes in this Europebecomes a potential target for attack, even if he is a Muslim. This explains why the terrorists who took 1,500 people hostage in Paris's Bataclan theatre [last November] did not separate them by religious or national affiliation." Scientists believe that hunters, who processed monkey meat that was infected with SIV the Simian Immunodeficiency Virus, contracted it themselves from contaminated blood, through small cuts and bruises. The SIV then mutated, breaking the human immune barrier, and became what is now known as HIV. By the 1980s, the HIV virus made it over to other countries, including the US, with major outbreaks occurring in San Francisco and New York. But while it was almost impossible to identify the first person who got infected in Africa during the 1920s, scientists and journalists have put a lot of effort into finding out who was to blame for the outbreak in the Western World in the early 80s. Randy Shilts, author of the 1987 book called And the Band Played On: Politics, People, and the AIDS Epidemic investigated the story of Patient Zero the man who is believed to be the first major transmitter of the disease. According to Shilts, doctors were able to link at least 40 initial HIV cases to a French-Canadian gay man a flight attendant called Gaetan Dugas who had a large network of sexual contacts across the US. In a YouTube video Randy Shilts said that it is through Gaetan Dugas, that doctors finally realized that theyre dealing with an infectious disease. With Gaetan you get a horrible combination of circumstances. You got a guy who has unlimited sexual stamina, whos very attractive, so he has unlimited opportunity to act out that sexual stamina, and hes a flight attendant with Air Canada, so he gets these flight passes so he could fly all over, to any number of cities. Shilts portrayed Dugas as being deliberate in knowingly infecting his sexual partners with the HIV virus, but his critics say the opposite. They believe that until his death from AIDS-related kidney failure in 1984, Dugas was doing what he could to educate people about HIV and to stop the further spread of the disease. Recent studies have questioned the Patient Zero theory, and scientists have argued that the virus was brought from Haiti to the US in the late 1960s, and not in the 1980s. Even though current statistics show that the majority of people with HIV live in Sub-Saharan Africa, other regions and continents are also largely affected. With 5 million patients in Asia Pacific, 2.4 million in Europe and North America, and with only 41% of patients receiving antiretroviral therapy globally, the modern plague remains a huge problem for people all over the world. "Its really up to them [the Iraqis], because even if we were to go in and send 25,000 or 35,000 troops in and retake Mosul. Then what?" Korb asked. "We have to leave some time." Korb noted that the US marines will support Iraqi security forces as they try to take Mosul back from the Islamic State, but even if they are successful, that would be only chapter one of the battle. The former senior Defense Department official warned we need to remember that 1,000 Islamic State fighters defeated an Iraqi security force in Mosul once that was 35,000 strong that the United States had invested $25 billion to train and equip. Earlier on Monday, Operation Inherent Resolve spokesman Col. Steve Warren told reporters that US marines deployed to the firebase in northern Iraq are supposed to be stationed there temporarily, but will stay as long as their capabilities are required. The Islamic State, also known as Daesh, is a designated terrorist group that has taken large areas of land in Iraq and Syria, where it proclaimed a caliphate. The terror group is outlawed in the United States, Russia and in several other countries. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) The US, British and French governments must halt all further arms sales to Saudi Arabia until the country ends its illegal air strikes on Yemen that have killed more than 500 civilians over the past year, a US-based human rights organization announced. "The United States, United Kingdom, France and others should suspend all weapon sales to Saudi Arabia until it not only curtails its unlawful airstrikes in Yemen, but also credibly investigates alleged violations," Human Rights Watch said in a news release on Monday. Since March 26, 2015, a Saudi-led coalition of mostly Arab countries has conducted military operations against the Houthi armed group in Yemen, and has carried out numerous indiscriminate and disproportionate airstrikes, Human Rights Watch stated. WASHINGTON (Sputnik) An opportunity to meet former Cuban President Fidel Castro and put a symbolic end to Cold War tensions between the United States and Cuba would be welcome, US President Barack Obama said during an interview in Havana. "I would be happy to meet with him [Fidel Castro], just as a symbol of the end of or the closing of this Cold War chapter in our mutual histories," Obama told ABC News. Earlier in March, US Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes said the White House had ruled out a meeting between Obama and Fidel Castro, and that it was something they "certainly wouldn't seek." WikiLeaks has recently published a set of emails from Alphabet's Jared Cohen, the head of "Google Ideas" division at the time, in which he notifies Clinton and a number of other high-ranking US officials about the development of a new system in 2012 intended to encourage Syrian opposition. "Please keep close hold, but my team is planning to launch a tool that will publicly track and map the defections in Syria and which parts of the government they are coming from," the email says. "Our logic behind this is that while many people are tracking the atrocities, nobody is visually representing and mapping the defections, which we believe are important in encouraging more to defect and giving confidence to the opposition." The EU's ideological blinders in its negotiations with Turkey, the political scientist says, is what leads its politicians to "persistently [remain] one step behind" Ankara's logic. This, he adds, comes first and foremost from the fact that both ideologically and in terms of his ruling style, "Erdogan is unlike other politicians." Taking a moment to review President Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ideological roots, something he had already done in detail on numerous previous occasions, Meyssan recalls that first of all Erdogan has his roots in "the Milli Gorus, a pan-Turkish Islamic movement with connections to the Muslim Brotherhood of Egypt, and [which is] favorable to the restoration of the [pan-Turkic] Caliphate. According to him and also to his allies," the Nationalist Movement Party, "the Turkish people are the descendants of Attila's Huns, who were themselves the children of the Steppenwolf of Central Asia, with whom they share endurance and cold-heartedness." Milli Gorus' ideology, the analyst notes, promotes the idea of Turkish racial superiority, with an Islamic bent. Moreover, "President Erdogan is the only head of state in the world who proclaims an ethnic supremacist ideology, perfectly comparable to Nazi Aryanism. He is also the only head of state in the world who denies the crimes of history, notably the massacres of non-Muslims by Sultan Abdulhamid II (the Hamidian massacres of 1894-95 at least 80,000 Christians murdered and 100,000 Christians incorporated by force into the harems), then by the Young Turks (the genocide of the Armenians, the Assyrians, the Chaldeans, the Syriacs, the Pontic Greeks and the Yezidis, from 1915 to 1923 at least 1,200,000 dead)" At the same time, Meyssan notes, Erdogan, "who is supported by only one third of the population, governs his country alone and by force. It is impossible to know precisely what the Turkish people are thinking, because the publication of any information questioning President Erdogan's legitimacy is now considered as an attack on state security, and leads immediately to prison." Last year, Ukrainian authorities updated the country's military doctrine, naming Russia as an 'aggressor nation', and labelling Moscow the main military threat to the country. Prior to its codification into law, the mantra had been repeated by Ukrainian authorities for nearly two years, since shortly after the Maidan coup d'etat, which resulted in Crimea breaking away from Kiev and rejoining Russia, and two of the country's eastern regions rising up in protest. The protests eventually morphed into a civil war after Kiev authorities sent military forces to crush the uprisings, a situation for which Kiev has blamed Moscow. Despite the dramatic worsening in diplomatic relations, Kiev has refused to abrogate the 1997 Russian-Ukrainian Treaty on Friendship, Cooperation and Partnership, which served as a border and security treaty, and enshrined the principle of strategic cooperation between the two countries. The treaty, extended in 2008, allows either party to withdraw from the treaty after informing the other party of its intention to do so. Speaking at a press conference in Kiev on Friday, Mikhail Pogrebinsky, a prominent Ukrainian political scientist and the head of the Kiev Center for Political and Conflict Studies, pointed out the legal and political paradox of the current situation, and suggested that it was an indication that Ukraine, no matter how combative its rhetoric may get, has no intention of denouncing the treaty which lays at the basis of its diplomatic relations with its eastern neighbor. According to Heinstein, "a similar scenario unfolded when Moscow supported the YPG in its fight against CIA-backed Sunni Arab rebels." To illustrate his statement the Israeli scholar refers to a story written by Mike Giglio of BuzzFeed. In his article, published on February 20, Giglio cited the commander of the US-backed "rebel battalion," Furqa al-Sultan Murad, who complained that his group in Aleppo came under attack from the Kurdish YPG militia. Murad told the reporter that his battalion had long been receiving "crucial supplies," including TOW anti-tank missiles, from Turkey through the city of Azaz. However, it is known that the same very route had been used by al-Qaeda's Syrian affiliates, the al-Nusra Front and Ahrar Al-Sham to receive military supplies. This begs the question of what faction Murad belonged to and whether it had close ties to al-Qaeda groups in the region. It also begs the question of why the US CIA and the Pentagon would supply weaponry to rival factions in the decade's most deadly conflict. Anyway, it is by no means indicative of Russian guilt: the so-called moderate Syrian rebels have been spotted many times defecting to al-Qaeda and Daesh or intermingling with other Islamic extremists. The once-lauded Free Syrian Army saw many desertions, according to a November 2015 Al Jazeera article, which cited "low pay, poor conditions and fragmentation." Some analyses, including a commentary by Sputnik , have questioned the true extent of Mr. Trump's support for non-interventionism, pointing to a list of foreign policy advisers he provided to The Washington Post during his Monday interview. This team, Sputnik's commentary said, "includes a string of individuals deeply invested in the military industrial complex." Subsequently, it concluded, "Trump may claim that he seeks to reign in US adventurism, but based on the records of his chosen advisers, a Trump presidency would likely mean business as usual." If this is the case, the question that arises is why the neoconservative elements of the Republican Party are so infuriated with Trump that they are willing to sink their own party's chances in 2016 in order to stop him. In op-ed published Monday, paleo-conservative commentator Pat Buchanan pointed to a string of plots by the neocons to steal the nomination from Trump, and failing that, to torpedo his candidacy in the November election. "Last week came reports of another closed conclave of the 'Never Trump' cabal at the Army and Navy Club in DC," Buchanan wrote. "Apparently, William Kristol [the co-founder of the Project for the New American Century, a think tank whose members held top positions in the George W. Bush administration], circulated a memo detailing how to rob Trump of the nomination, even if he finishes first in states, votes, and delegates." "Should Trump win on the first ballot, Kristol's fallback position is to create a third party and recruit a conservative to run as its nominee. Purpose: Have this rump party siphon off enough conservative votes to sink Trump and give the presidency to Hillary Clinton, whose policies are more congenial to the neocons and Kristol's Weekly Standard." The researcher explains that the CONPLAN 8022 concept included not only long-range nuclear and conventional weapons launched from the Unites States, but only nuclear and other weaponry deployed in Europe, in Japan and other sites. "CONPLAN 8022 gave the US what the Pentagon termed 'Global Strike' the ability to hit any point on the earth or sky with devastating force, nuclear as well as conventional," Engdahl stresses. The third step of the Pentagon controversial military plan a US Ballistic Missile Defense (BMD) system in Europe was unveiled in early 2007. Make no mistake: far from being 'defensive,' BMD is offensive in the extreme, the researcher points out. It became clear to Moscow that Washington was implementing a long-term strategy aimed at encircling and potentially obliterating Russia. The Pentagon's assertions that the system is supposed to counter a threat posed by Iran and North Korea did not sound convincing. "Missile weapons with a range of about five to eight thousand kilometers that really pose a threat to Europe do not exist in any of the so-called problem countries. And in the near futurethis is not even foreseeable. And any hypothetical launch of, for example, a North Korean rocket to American territory through Western Europe obviously contradicts the laws of ballistics. As we say in Russia, it would be like using the right hand to reach the left ear," Vladimir Putin stated at the Munich Conference on Security Policy in 2007. "The US embargo," the professors recalled, "is still the law of the American land. According to the United Nations, the embargo, which has been virtually universally condemned internationally, has cost the Cuban economy over $116 billion," a huge sum, given that the country's GDP amounted to $6.05 billion in 2011. And although ending the embargo is "not surprisingly, Cuba's sine qua non for normalizing relations with the United States," this is not something within the US president's prerogative, given that only the US Congress, which is Republican-controlled and hostile to the Obama administration, can vote to scrap the 1996 Helms-Burton Act. At the same time, the article notes, other measures, including the 1917 Trading With the Enemy Act, and the 1992 Torricelli Act, have also helped to frustrate any budding economic or business ties. Moreover, "while the Cubans view the embargo as the most serious impediment to re-establishing normal relations with the US, there are others," including Guantanamo Bay. "Although the naval station no longer has any American strategic or military significance, the US continues to occupy those 45 square miles of Cuban territory under a 113-year-old neo-colonial treaty from Theodor Roosevelt's day. Cuba, which hasn't cashed an annual American $4,085 'rent' check since 1960, wants its land returned. Washington says no." HAVANA (Sputnik) The US Senate could vote right after the upcoming November election on a bipartisan bill to lift the Cuban trade embargo, US Senator Amy Klobuchar told Sputnik on Tuesday. "That is my bill in the Senate. It is bipartisan. There are Democrats and Republicans supporting the bill," Klobuchar stated. "We have 24 co-sponsors, but many more senators out of the 100 say they would vote for it." Klobuchar noted the normalization of relations between the United States and Cuba that begun on the initiative of President Barack Obama will continue, but the lifting of the embargo will likely not take place before the election in November. . If you do not agree with the blocking, please use the Access to the chat has been blocked for violating the rules . You will be able to participate again through:. If you do not agree with the blocking, please use the feedback form The discussion is closed. You can participate in the discussion within 24 hours after the publication of the article. A news outlet based out of Pennsylvania has reported that a treasurer from a horsepersons organization has been found deceased after having been missing since February. An article by WGAL News 8 states that the body of Matthew Carter, 35, was found in the Susquehanna River at City Island this past weekend (during the afternoon of Sunday, March 20). WGAL News 8 has cited a press statement from the local coroners office as saying that an autopsy was performed this morning (Tuesday, March 22) and it was determined that Carters cause of death was fresh-water drowning. The release from the coroners office also states that no suspicious circumstances surround the case. News of Carters disappearance was featured last week in an article by The Paulick Report. The item had stated that police had been looking for Carter, who was the treasurer of the Pennsylvania Horsemen's Benevolent and Protective Association at Penn National racetrack. The Paulick Report article states that there was an ongoing investigation into accounting irregularities at the HBPA in which Carter was treasurer. Carter graduated from the University of Arizonas Racetrack Industry Program in 2009. Please join Standardbred Canada in offering condolences to the family and friends of Matthew Carter. (With files from WGAL News 8 and The Paulick Report) Word has come that horseman Benjamin 'Ben' Avery recently passed away in Augusta, Maine at the age of 87. The USTAs communications department has stated that Avery passed away this past December on Monday the 14th, to be exact. Avery drove and trained Standardbreds, but it had been a while since he was active in either capacity at least as far as charted races go. The last time Avery had driven in a charted race was 1990. As a trainer, he last entered horses to compete in 2002. He attended Cony High School and was drafted and served in the U.S. Army in Japan during the Korean War. He was married to Betty Avery. A memorial service to celebrate Benjamin's life will be held at a later date, and Trot Insider will update this notice with that information when it is available. UPDATE Trot Insider has learned that Ben had suffered from Alzheimers for the past nine years. He had been a patient at the Maine Veterans Home for almost two years before his passing. A memorial service is planned for May 14. It will be held at the Windsor Fair Grounds at 12:00 noon. Horsemen and wives are more than welcome to attend. Additionally, it might be wise to RSVP to the event, as a light luncheon is being planned. Please join Standardbred Canada in offering condolences to the family and friends of Ben Avery. (With files from the USTA) Dilapidated Wichita Planned Parenthood Begins Selling Abortion Drugs They Cannot Pronounce Contact: Troy Newman , President, 316-841-1700; Cheryl Sullenger, Senior Vice President, 316-516-3034, both with Operation Rescue WICHITA, Kan., March 22, 2016 / Standard Newswire / -- Operation Rescue has confirmed that for the first time, the Planned Parenthood office in Wichita, Kansas, is now providing medication abortions on a sporadic basis. It is operated by Planned Parenthood of Kansas and Mid-Missouri, which has been entangled in legal issues in Missouri over deceptive practices and an illegal relationship with a publicly funded university in Columbia.Abortions began at the run-down Wichita Planned Parenthood facility on Central Avenue on March 17, 2016, and is located in an area that allows it to target poor urban women of color.It appears that medication abortions will only be infrequently offered on one appointment day every two weeks at the hefty cost of $659."We plan to use every legal option available to us to make sure Planned Parenthood halts abortions in Wichita," said Operation Rescue President Troy Newman. "There's no way this ill-maintained dump of a building could be doing any kind of abortion if the laws on the books were properly defended in court and enforced."During a call to the Wichita office, a caller asked for information about the abortion drugs that were being prescribed, but the receptionist could not pronounce the names of either of the two drugs, Mifeprex and misoprostol.While Mifeprex is approved by the FDA for abortion up to 49 days, or seven weeks of pregnancy, the Wichita Planned Parenthood is offering it through 69 days, or nine weeks six days of pregnancy.In 2015, the Kansas Legislature passed a bill that redirected Federal Title X funds from Planned Parenthood. The Wichita facility had been a recipient of the tax money."The move to offer abortions in Wichita may be a way to recoup some of those lost funds off the backs of vulnerable pregnant women. This makes what Planned Parenthood is doing both predatory and exploitative," said Newman. "Planned Parenthood isn't in business for purely altruistic reasons. If a facility can't stay out of the red, it must find a way to pony up or shut down. For Planned Parenthood, selling abortions in poor Black neighborhoods is apparently seen as the easiest way to increase profits."Operation Rescue is one of the leading pro-life Christian activist organizations in the nation and has become a strong voice for the pro-life movement in America. Click here to support Operation Rescue. One incumbent is running in the five-candidate race for two open seats. ROSEVILLE, Calif. When Phoebe Ferguson was born in a Sutter Roseville delivery room this August, she weighed 9 1/2 pounds, and her skin was pink and warm. The absence of a cry, however, brought a harsh reminder that the newborn had died in her mothers womb earlier that day. Her parents had only a few hours to hold her before nurses sent her to the morgue. Later the nurses brought her back, slightly more mottled and cooler to the touch, so that her parents could cradle her body a little longer. They took turns holding Phoebe for two more days before saying a final, heart-wrenching goodbye. I carried her for nine months I wanted to see her, said mother Stacy Ferguson. I wanted to memorize every part of her. Giving her back was the hardest thing. Every time they brought her back, it was a reminder, said her father, Gavin Ferguson. If she were in the room with us and it were more gradual, it wouldnt be as bad. For parents, parting with a stillborn baby is the first step in a long and difficult grieving process, one that can take a lifetime to come to terms with. A new device called Cuddle Cot, installed at Sutter Roseville Medical Center this week in Phoebe Fergusons honor, aims to make that journey a little easier. The cooling device preserves a stillborn babys body in a bassinet or crib so that he or she can remain up to five days in a hospital room, extending the time a family has to photograph the infant, sing to it, take its measurements or show it to loved ones. When not kept cold, babies bodies begin to deteriorate after delivery. About 24,000 babies are delivered stillborn in the United States every year. What no one prepares you for is how quickly the babys body starts to break down, said Sharon Cox, who birthed a stillborn son 14 years ago and now runs the Sharing Parents support group for grieving parents at Sutter Roseville. Here you are with a limited amount of time to say hello and goodbye. Its very traumatic to see that happening to the baby. Cox, a chaplain, said bidding a proper goodbye is crucial to a healthy grieving process. Losing a newborn brings on a particularly complex grief, she said, because its so unexpected and so drastic. Youre constantly dealing with the longing, the wondering, she said. Were always rushed through grief to get to the other side. But if we dont take the time to work through grief during those hard moments, were always going to regret not having that time. When Rebecca Makris, of Livermore, Calif., lost her newborn son Tucker last year, she had 15 hours to spend with his body and to memorialize him as best she could. I got him dressed, I took photos, I kissed every inch of him, she said. I cried all over him and told him I was sorry and wished that things were different. You just try to take it all in, because these are the only memories youre ever going to have. Within weeks of losing Tucker, Makris wanted to help other parents cope with such tragedy, she said. She found a promising tool in the Cuddle Cot, a product developed in the United Kingdom and brought to the United States in 2013. Introducing other grieving parents to the device could give new meaning to her life after the loss, she said. It really helps me to know that my sons life ended, but Im helping another family, Makris said. It gives the baby more dignity, and it really lets the parents go through the motions a little easier. Makris launched into activism with the U.S. Cuddle Cot Campaign Initiative and raised more than $10,000 for new cots. At a cost of about $3,000 for each cot, shes placed three of the five in use in California so far, with the Sutter Roseville cot the first in Sacramento, Calif. The national campaign has placed about 90 cots in hospitals since 2014, said Lori Esteve, an organizer with the Florida-based nonprofit effort. Esteve said that when she delivered a stillborn son 30 years ago, she was told to simply go home and not think about it. When you go from planning a future to a funeral in a heartbeat, choices become very important, she said. Whether you choose time to be with your baby or not, having the choice makes a huge difference. The Cuddle Cot comes in a cobalt blue toy chest containing a cooling unit with a hose that attaches to a mat underneath the baby. The chest also contains a book for grieving parents. The cot at Sutter Roseville holds a letter from Makris about her own journey of loss and recovery. Soon it will also contain a letter from the Fergusons. On top of the chest is a gold plaque, noting that the gift is in memory of Tucker Makris, to honor Phoebe Ferguson. Every time I see her name on something, its beautiful, Gavin Ferguson said. Its a physical reminder that she existed. They always say that mothers protect their children, and mothers of stillborns protect their childrens memories, Stacy Ferguson said. With the plaque here, its like shes making a difference somehow. The debate over methanol in Kalama is beginning to heat up as both sides prepare for a hearing Tuesday on Northwest Innovation Works proposed plant. Proponents of the methanol plant have formed a new group, called Citizens for a Green Economy, to mobilize supporters. The group took out advertisements in The Daily News this week, which were paid for by the Cowlitz Economic Development Council. In the last 15 years Ive seen so many jobs lost and its just been frustrating to me to see the rampant increase in drug, alcohol and behavioral problems. The number one reason for that is a poor economy, said Brian Magnuson, spokesman for Citizens for a Green Economy and owner of Cascade Networks. Magnuson said he was spurred to action when he realized the draft EIS could make or break the methanol project. He joined forces with CEDC and JH Kelly to form the group. Over the last few weeks theyve gained endorsements from about 150 individuals, businesses, groups and state legislators. And theyre hosting informational sessions this weekend, plus a rally on Tuesday before the hearing to build support. I think the bottom line were getting sick and tired of having a bunch of people from outside this county come in and try to dictate what happens in our community, said Rob Harris, member of the CEDC and vice president of Longview-based JH Kelly. JH Kelly itself has high stakes in the project as it could be the contractor to build the $1.8 billion plant, which is expected to create 1,000 construction jobs and 200 permanent jobs. But Harris said his interest in the project goes beyone his company. Whether we build this plant or not, we want to see this project in our community, Harris said. But some opponents believe the Citizens for a Green Economy group is a thinly-veiled attempt from Northwest Innovation Works to garner last-minute support. I think the CEDC is using the green name to their advantage and Im just wondering how green this project is, said Sandra Davis, a member of Longview-based Landowners and Citizens for a Green Economy. Methanol opponents are building their own momentum, making yard signs, passing out flyers, hosting phone banks along with hosting an informational session Sunday in Kalama. Theres an impressive number of residents in Kalama who are self-organizing to protect their community (from) this project, said Jasmine Zimmer-Stucky, organizer with Columbia Riverkeeper. And its likely Tuesdays event will draw people from across the region, because of the Northwest Innovations proposals to build similar methanol plants in Tacoma and Clatskanie. The draft EIS is being analyzed by citizens across the region. Because Northwest is proposing three facilities, it is piquing the interest of three times as many communities as it would have if it was just Kalama, Zimmer-Stucky said. In Tacoma, about 1,000 people showed up at each scoping hearing for Northwest Innovation Works proposed methanol plant there, which would be twice as big as the Kalama facility. Its not clear whether the hearing will draw as large of a crowd here, but as a precaution, there will be about 12 police officers and sheriffs deputies at the hearing, said Kalama Police Chief Randy Gibson. The hearing on the draft environmental impact statement for the proposed plant will be held March 22 from 6 to 9 p.m. at the Kalama High School gym. tech2 News Staff After getting a nod from the government, the Cupertino tech giant has begun hunting for prime real estate to set up its flagship Apple Stores in India, reports The Times of India. Leading real estate firms seem to be scampering around trying to find massive plots in major cities not just for Apple but for Samsung as well. According to the same source, Samsung too has plans to set up massive retail stores and is looking for properties that are 15,000 to 20,000 square feet. Samsung may be looking to setup a store that is similar to the massive one in Korea (Samsung D'Light) and will add to the already existing 1,100 stores in India. The Korean company will also be setting up smaller 2,000-2,500 square feet stores just for its smartphones. Apple on the other hand is looking to set up its famous (and in some cases even patented) glass stores similar to the one at Fifth Avenue in New York. The same will be 2,000-3,000 square feet in size and will also include separate spaces for technical support and rooms for holding workshops. (Also Read: iPhone SE: Why Apple needs to gamble with a budget smartphone) Executives from top brokerage firms claim that Apple is looking for prime retail locations in Mumbai, Delhi, Bengaluru and Pune for its first phase of the larger stores. The second phase will consist of smaller outlets. The competition is heating up and after ignoring India for long, Apple CEO Tim Cook does pretty serious and the same was revealed during a recent town hall. For now, all eyes will be on Tim Cook tonight as the CEO unveils its revamped 4-inch smartphone tagged as the iPhone SE. The smartphone is expected to pack in specs similar to the iPhone 5s with a new design but not 3D Touch, which will remain exclusive to the iPhone 6s models for now. tech2 News Staff As drones are becoming a security hazard day by day, the Government of India has amended the Customs Baggage Declaration regulations to make it mandatory for people entering India to declare specifically if they are carrying drones. This amendment will come into affect starting April 1. A report by Medianama states that some of the listed items include jewelry over free allowance, gold bullions, satellite phone, currency over Rs 10,000 or USD 5,000, and seeds, plants etc. The notification also points out that those who would be carrying drones will have to fill further forms at the red channel, where the item might either be deemed ineligible for entry in India, or have a duty imposed upon it. As of now, there is no clarity on how much the duty might cost. This rule has made it very difficult for anyone to get their hands on drones in India. This month, the pilot of a Lufthansa passenger jumbo jet reported a drone aircraft nearly collided with the airliner on its landing approach to Los Angeles International Airport, according to the Federal Aviation Administration. U.S. Senator Dianne Feinstein of California, who has introduced legislation to require new safety features on drones, pointed to the close call as an example of the hazards posed to commercial aviation by unregulated drone activity. tech2 News Staff A few weeks before Huawei is set to unveil the P9 smartphone which will sport a dual-rear camera, the company's President was reportedly spotted using the device! A report by MyDrivers shared two images in which one could see President of Huawei, holding a strange phone which looks similar to the recent Huawei P9 leaks. Huaweis President of Consumer Business Unit in China, Zhu Ping had earlier shared the first teaser of the smartphone on Weibo and said, P9, mobile phone photography once again break! So cool. The leaked image shows a glass front with slimmer bezels on the sides, but abnormally large bezels on the top and bottom. The back shows off the all-metal build and this is where we notice the dual camera set up on the top, along with a dual tone LED flash and laser focus module below it, all enclosed within a glass insert. Going by previous reports, one can expect the premium version of the P9 to sport Huaweis own HiSilicon-made Kirin 955 SoC with 4GB of RAM. The regular P9 is expected to pack in a Kirin 950, Mali-T880 GPU and 3GB of RAM. The standard P9 is expected to feature 32GB of storage while the premium model will feature 64GB and 128GB of internal storage. The camera is expected to pack in two 12MP sensors with Leica optics. Both models are likely to run Android 6.0 Marshmallow. tech2 News Staff Microsoft India recently inaugurated Microsoft Openness Days, the open source conference for developers in India. The conference is aimed at helping 1000 architects, developers and cloud professionals discover and leverage the companys Microsoft Azure cloud platform for Government and enterprise solutions. The conference includes Open Hack, Indias first Open Source on Azure hackathon, organised by Microsoft with support from the Government of Telangana. This six-hour long hackathon will offer developers the opportunity to work on and showcase innovative applications (apps) and solution ideas based on the themes of the State Governments digital initiatives. Inaugurating the conference, Jayesh Ranjan, IAS, Secretary, Information Technology, Electronics & Communications Department, Government of Telangana, said, We are a firm supporter of technology to drive Telanganas growth and development. We are very pleased to partner with Microsoft to host the Open Hack in our state. We are confident that the immense talent of our developer pool, combined with Microsofts technologies and expertise, can help achieve our digital goals and in turn, the welfare of our citizens. Speaking on this occasion, Narendra Bhandari, General Manager - Developer Experience and Evangelism, Microsoft India, said, We are thrilled to host this unique, first-ever conference for cloud open source developers, and thank the Government of Telangana for their continued support. It is energizing to see young talent, develop technical solutions which will help us transform into Digital India. The Open Source on Azure hackathon will be followed by a showcase where developers will present their solutions and apps leveraging Microsoft Azure. The top six apps and the teams will be selected by Microsoft and T-Hub for further development, mentoring and to build market readiness. hidden US prosecutors said that a "third party" had presented a possible method for opening an encrypted iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters, a development that could bring an abrupt end to the high-stakes legal showdown between the government and Apple. A federal judge in Riverside, California, late Monday agreed to the government's request to postpone a hearing scheduled for Tuesday so that the FBI could try the newly discovered technique. The Justice Department said it would update the court on April 5. The government had insisted until Monday that it had no way to access the phone used by Rizwan Farook, one of the two killers in the December massacre in San Bernardino, California, except to force Apple to write new software that would disable the password protection. The Justice Department last month obtained a court order directing Apple to create that software, but Apple has fought back, arguing that the order is an overreach by the government and would undermine computer security for everyone. The announcement on Monday that an unnamed third party had presented a way of breaking into the phone on Sunday - just two days before the hearing and after weeks of heated back-and-forth in court filings - drew skepticism from many in the tech community who have insisted that there were other ways to get into the phone. From a purely technical perspective, one of the most fragile parts of the government's case is the claim that Apple's help is required to unlock the phone," said Matt Blaze, a professor and computer security expert at the University of Pennsylvania. "Many in the technical community have been skeptical that this is true, especially given the government's considerable resources. Former prosecutors and lawyers supporting Apple said the move suggested that the Justice Department feared it would lose the legal battle, or at minimum would be forced to admit that it had not tried every other way to get into the phone. In a statement, the Justice Department said its only interest has always been gaining access to the information on the phone and that it had continued to explore alternatives even as litigation began. It offered no details on the new technique except that it came from a non-governmental third party, but said it was "cautiously optimistic" it would work. "That is why we asked the court to give us some time to explore this option," a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, Melanie R. Newman, said. "If this solution works, it will allow us to search the phone and continue our investigation into the terrorist attack that killed 14 people and wounded 22 people." It would also likely end the case without a legal showdown that many had expected to reach the U.S. Supreme Court. An Apple executive told reporters on a press call that the company knew nothing about the Justice Department's possible method for getting into the phone, and that the government never gave any indication that it was continuing to search for such solutions. The executive characterized the Justice Departments admission Monday that it never stopped pursuing ways to open the phone as a sharp contrast with its insistence in court filings that only Apple possessed the means to do so. Nate Cardozo, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group backing Apple, said the San Bernardino case was the "hand-chosen test case" for the government to establish its authority to access electronic information by whatever means necessary. In that context, he said, the last-minute discovery of a possible solution and the cancellation of the hearing is "suspicious," and suggests the government might be worried about losing and setting a bad precedent. But George Washington University law professor Orin Kerr, a former Justice Department computer crime prosecutor, said the government was likely only postponing the fight. "The problem is not going away, it's just been delayed for a year or two," he said. Apple said that if the government was successful in getting into the phone, which might involve taking advantage of previously undiscovered vulnerabilities, it hoped officials would share information on how they did so. But if the government drops the case it would be under no obligation to provide information to Apple. In opposing the court order, Apple's chief executive, Tim Cook, and his allies have argued that it would be unprecedented to force a company to develop a new product to assist a government investigation, and that other law enforcement agencies around the world would rapidly demand similar services. Law enforcement officials, led by Federal Bureau of Investigation Director James Comey, have countered that access to phones and other devices is crucial for intelligence work and criminal investigations. The government and the tech industry have clashed for years over similar issues, and Congress has been unable to pass legislation to address the impasse. Reuters hidden The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday stepped into the high-profile patent fight between the world's two fiercest smartphone rivals, Apple and Samsung, agreeing to hear Samsung's appeal of what it contends were excessive penalties for copying the patented designs of the iPhone. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd paid Apple Inc more than $548 million in December related to a jury verdict from 2012. It is seeking to pare back the $399 million of that amount that was awarded for infringing on the designs of the iPhone's rounded-corner front face, bezel and colorful grid of icons, saying they contributed only marginally to a complex device. A Samsung spokeswoman said in a statement the court's review "can lead to a fair interpretation of patent law that will support creativity and reward innovation." An Apple representative declined to comment. Apple sued in 2011, claiming the South Korean electronics company stole its technology and ripped off the look of the iPhone. Last May, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington upheld the 2012 patent infringement verdict. The court, however, said the iPhone's appearance could not be protected through trademarks, forcing another trial later this month in federal court in San Jose, California, to recalculate some of the damages Apple is owed. The Supreme Court has not reviewed a design patent case in more than 120 years, when the products involved included a spoon handle and a rug. In court papers, Samsung said that for complex, modern products such as smartphones, design patents have led to "unjustified windfalls," far beyond the inventive value of the patents. On Monday, the high court said it would answer whether courts should award in damages the total profits from a product that infringes on a design patent if the patent applies only to a component of the product. Apple urged the high court not to take the case, saying Samsung's illegal conduct was clear. Samsung consciously decided to copy the iPhone after its debut in 2007, Apple said, and soon after its mobile devices "became iPhone clones." Samsung was supported by other major high-tech firms including Google and Facebook. The companies filed a friend-of-the-court brief that said the Federal Circuit decision will lead to more design patent lawsuits, which will stifle innovation. Samsung has said in court papers that if it wins the case, it expects to be reimbursed the money it has already paid. Reuters hidden China's most valuable start-up Xiaomi Inc is financially self-sufficient and has no plans to raise new funds for now, its global vice-president said on Monday, even as it is undertaking a planned expansion in India. Xiaomi, the world's fifth-largest smartphone vendor, also has no immediate plans for an initial public offering, Hugo Barra told Reuters in an interview. The company has "no need to raise more money and no plans to raise more money. No plans for now. No IPO plans either," he said. Xiaomi is expanding its production capacity in India, aiming to build two new factories with Taiwan's Foxconn this year in addition to one they currently operate to build phones locally. Xiaomi currently produces in India 75 percent of the phones it sells there and aims to raise that to close to 100 percent with the new factories, Barra said. The company last raised funds from investors in December 2014, tapping private equity funds including All-Stars Investment and DST Global, as well as Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC Pte Ltd for $1.1 billion at a valuation of $45 billion. The funds have been used to invest in more than 50 startups including video content providers in a bid to increase revenue from Internet services such as games and mobile payment apps that offer higher profit margins than handsets, Barra said. "All the money we have raised is allocated to investments. From an operations point of view, our business has been self-funded for sometime," Barra added. Xiaomi missed its 2015 global shipment target by 12 percent, selling 70 million handsets in a year when local rivals such as Lenovo Group Ltd and top player Huawei Technologies Co Ltd countered at home with similar Internet-only sales. Reuters tech2 News Staff After a short spring event, where Apple announced the iPhone SE and an all new 9.7-inch iPad Pro, the company also began the roll out of software updates for all of its devices. It seems that Apple came prepared and was ready to roll out not just an iOS 9.3 update but OS X 10.11.4, watchOS 2.2, and tvOS 9.2 software updates as well. We have already gone in depth about the update coming to Apple's smartphones and tablets with iOS 9.3. While the update is about 330MB in size, its main area of focus is bug fixing but it also delivers some brand new features like Night Shift, while improving on the existing ones (like adding Touch ID support for its Notes app). OS X 10.11.4 Coming to OS X 10.11.4 for desktops and laptops, Apple finally adds support for Live Photos (that debuted with the launch of the iPhone 6s) in the Messages app. The same is denoted with a small circular icon at the corner of a Live Image. Notes within the Notes app can now be password protected, which works in tandem with the iOS 9.3 update on smartphones and tablets. Apple also added an option to import notes from other note taking apps like Evernote (even Microsoft was after Evernote recently). Bug fixes and much needed performance improvements aside, the new update now also allows iBooks PDF files to be stored in iCloud. Also available are security updates for OS X Yosemite and OS X Mavericks that can be downloaded from the company's website. watchOS 2.2 Apple's Watch OS goes from version 2.1 to version 2.2 and gets some new features. Indeed the much-awaited feature is the ability to pair two Apple smartwatches with one smartphone. Clearly, this will need both the devices (Apple Watch and iPhone) to be updated to the latest version. Also added is Nearby feature support that lets users locate point of interest (POIs) easily. Also added are two additional buttons that were earlier accessible only via Force Touch and an improved glance feature. As always there are again performance improvements and bug fixes that are a part of this update. tvOS 9.2 Clearly the biggest update to arrive on tvOS 9.2 is Siri voice dictation which was demonstrated on stage at the Apple event. Users can now use Siri voice commands via Siri Remote to search the App Store and even enter passwords without using keyboards. Also added to tvOS 9.2 is the iCloud Photo Library. Another important feature that comes to tvOS is support for Bluetooth keyboards. Additionally, users can now even organise their apps using folders and tvOS also comes with an iOS 9 like app switcher as well. 2 election officials shot at Noakhali centre An assistant presiding officer and a polling officer received injuries as miscreants opened shots at a polling centre in Char King union of Hatiya upazila on Tuesday morning. The injured were identified Shahadat Hossain, assistant presiding officer, and Abdul Awal, polling officer, at 2 no centre on the Char King High School premises. Badiuzzam, presiding officer of the polling centre, said a gang of miscreants broke into the polling centre and tried to snatch ballots. As the officials there resisted, the miscreants opened fire on them, which left the duo injured. Later the injured were rushed to Hatiya upazila health complex.-- Noakhali, Mar 22 (UNB) Syrian government refuses to discuss Assad's future Syrian President Bashar al-Assad during an interview to a journalist from Dutch television station NPO2 in Damascus. Reuters, Geneva : The fate of President Bashar al-Assad will play no part in talks to end the Syrian war, the head of the government's delegation said, leading the U.N. peace envoy to warn that lack of progress on the issue could threaten a fragile cessation of hostilities. Damascus delegate Bashar Ja'afari said Assad's future had "nothing to do" with the negotiations, which entered their second week on Monday, insisting that counter-terrorism efforts remained the priority for the government. "The (terms of) reference of our talks do not give any indication whatsoever with regard to the issue of the President of the Syrian Arab Republic," he said when asked about the willingness of the government delegation to engage in serious talks on political transition. "This is something already excluded." U.N. envoy Staffan de Mistura - who describes Syria's political transition as "the mother of all issues" - responded by saying the government delegation's refusal to discuss it could lead to a deterioration of the situation on the ground. "Everyone more or less agrees, the cessation of hostilities is still holding," he said. "The same ... more or less for the movement on humanitarian aid. But neither of them can be sustained if we don't get progress on the political transition." The fragility of the three-week-old cessation, which was backed by the United States and Russia, was highlighted on Monday when Moscow said it had recorded six violations in the last 24 hours. The Syrian opposition accused the government delegation of wasting time by refusing to discuss the future of Assad. "It is not possible to wait like this, while the regime delegation wastes time without achieving anything," said Salim al-Muslat, spokesman for the opposition High Negotiations Committee. Arguments over Assad's fate were a major cause of the failure of previous U.N. peace efforts in 2012 and 2014 to end a civil war that has killed more than 250,000 people and caused a refugee crisis. The five-year-old conflict between the government and insurgents has also allowed Islamic State to take advantage of the chaos and take control of areas in the east of the country. Fighters from the jihadist group - which is excluded from the ceasefire deal - killed 26 Syrian soldiers on Monday west of Palmyra, a monitoring group said, after days of advances by government forces backed by Syrian and Russian air cover. Russian President Vladimir Putin said last week that the Syrian army would soon recapture Palmyra from Islamic State, which has held the desert city for nearly a year. Palmyra has both symbolic and military value as the site of ancient Roman-era ruins - mostly destroyed by Islamic State - and because of its location on a highway linking mainly government-held western Syria to Islamic State's eastern stronghold. The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the fighting took place about 4 km (2 miles) west of Palmyra. It was not possible to independently verify the death toll. Syria's state news agency SANA said the army and allied forces, backed by the Syrian air force, carried out "concentrated operations" against Islamic State around Palmyra and the Islamic State-held town of al-Qaryatayn, about 100 km further west. After more than five months of air strikes in support of Assad, which turned the course of the civil war in the government's favour, Putin announced the withdrawal last week of most Russian forces. But Russian planes have continued to support army operations near Palmyra, according to the Observatory and regional media. Tareque's plea to scrap another case rejected UNB, Dhaka : The High Court on Tuesday rejected a petition filed by sacked Rab official Tareque Sayeed seeking scrapping of another case in connection with the Narayanganj 7-murder. Selina Islam Beauty, wife of slain Narayanganj panel mayor Nazrul Islam, filed the case. The High court bench of Justice Enayetur Rahim and Justice Amir Hossian passed the order after the hearing on the petition. Lawyer Golam Kibira stood for Tareque Sayeed, while Deputy Attorney General AKM Maniruzzaman Kabir stood for the state. Earlier on March 15, the court turned down his prayer for canceling a case filed by Bijoy Kumar Paul, son-in-law of slain lawyer Chandan Kumar Sarker. On March 7, the HC bench felt embarrassed to hear the petition, and the documents of the petition were sent to Chief Justice SK Sinha. Later the Chief Justice made the bench for hearing the petition. On February 24, Tareque Sayeed filed the petition seeking cancellation of the case. On April 8, 2015, detectives pressed charges against 35 people, including three sacked Rab officials and prime accused Nur Hossain, in connection with the 7- murder. On April 27, 2014, Narayanganj panel mayor Nazrul Islam, his three associates and driver were abducted by miscreants from Fatullah area of Narayanganj. Hours after their kidnap, senior lawyer at District Judge's Court Chandan Kumar Sarker and his driver were also abducted on their way to capital Dhaka. Three days into their abduction, the bodies of six people, including those of Nazrul and Chandan Kumar, were recovered from the Shitalakhya River on April 30. Besides, the following day, the body of Jahangir, car driver of Nazrul Islam, was recovered from the river. After the murder of seven people, Selina Islam filed a case against six people while Advocate Chandan Sarkar's son-in-law filed another case. Sporadic violence mark UP polls Nine killed, 300 injured: Cocktail blasts, gunshots rock voting centres: Ballot papers stuffed: Polling suspended in 40 centres: AL contenders leading in most UPs Panic gripped the general voters when armed supporters of ruling party-backed candidates, locked in clashes with the followers of opponent contenders in different unions of Barisal on Tuesday. Sagar Biswas :The first phase of UP elections in the country's 712 Union Parishads [UPs] ended on Tuesday amid sporadic violence, leaving at least nine persons killed and 300 injured.Awami League nominated candidates and the party's rebels were reportedly heading in most of the UPs when the counting was going on for the posts of 'chairman' and 'member' of general and reserved seats. Out of 118 UPs, the Awami League -backed 'chairman' candidates won in 92, BNP -nominated candidates won in 6 and rebel and independent candidates won in 20 UPs till the time of filing this report at 9:15pm. According to first unofficial report available yesterday evening, Awami League candidate Kamrul Hasan was elected as chairman at Dholghata union of Maheshkhali upzila in Cox's Bazar district. On the other hand, the rebel candidate of ruling party Nur Ahmed was elected chairman at Saint Martin's union under Teknaf upzila.Just after ending of voting, Election Commissioner Md Abu Hafiz expressed satisfaction over the polls situation, and predicted that the number of vote casting may stand at around 60 per cent.On the other hand, Awami League rebel candidates, BNP, Jatiya Party, Workers Party and independent candidates rejected the voting in different areas within 10:00am raising allegation against ruling party for flexing muscle power. The voting began at 8:00am and it continued till 4:00pm without any break.Meanwhile, cocktail blasts and gunshots rocked the polling stations in different districts when ruling Awami League-backed candidates allegedly locked in clashes with the opponent candidates to occupy poling centres, snatching ballot boxes and stuffing ballot papers, which ultimately resulted suspension of voting in 40 centres by the Election Commission [EC].Nine persons were killed and 300 injured during and after the voting.At least five people were killed when Border Guards Bangladesh (BGB) members opened fire to stop ballot snatching after voting in Mathbaria upazila of Pirojpur on Tuesday evening.A group of people swooped on the BGB men when they were carrying the ballot boxes from the Safa Degree College polling centre at Dhonisafa union, police said.Later, the BGB men opened fire in retaliation upon directives from Executive Magistrate Kazi Ziaul Based.In another incident, the elder brother of a candidate Abul Kashem Shikdar, 60, was killed and 10 others were injured in a clash between the supporters of two member candidates in Nabagram, Jhalokathi. The victim, identified as brother of chairman candidate Chunnu Shikdar, was killed when he obstructed the followers of Sajib Hossain as they tried to forcibly capture Kaliandar polling centre. Meanwhile, a local Awami League leader Humayun Mallik, 70, vice-president of Kalisuri union unit in Bauphal, who received severe injuries in pre-poll violence, succumbed to his injuries at Barisal Sher-e-Bangla Medical College Hospital early Tuesday.Babul Hazi, 45, son of Aftabuddin was killed in an election violence at Borobagh Senior Madrasa center at Latifabad union under Kishoreganj sadar. Besides, another Awami League backed UP chairman candidate's brother was killed in a clash with supporters of his rival candidates during counting of votes in Khalijhuri upazial under Netrakona. The victim's name could not be ascertained immediately, police said. Of the injured, about 10 persons received bullet wound when police shot to disperse violent supporters of the electoral candidates in some UPs. Besides, the law enforcers charged baton, lobbed tear gas canisters and fired blank shots in around 50 UPs to maintain law and order.An assistant presiding officer and a polling officer were injured when miscreants fired bullets at a polling centre in Char King union of Hatiya in Noakhali. They are Shahadat Hossain, assistant presiding officer, and Abdul Awal, polling officer, at No: 2 centre.Superintendent of Police of Noakhali Md Ilias Sharif said that the police were trying to nab the criminals those involved in the shooting. Bangladesh Nationalist Party [BNP], Jatiya Party and individual candidates have alleged that ruling party Awami League-backed supporters forcibly occupied most of the polling centres from the early morning.Based on preliminary information, Assistant Secretary [election management and coordination cell] Ashfaqur Rahman yesterday afternoon said voting was halted in 40 centres of different UPs following irregularities and clashes.In most areas, the ballot-fight was held mainly between Awami League nominated candidates and party's rebel contenders. The BNP candidates, however, have appeared as potential contestants in several dozens of UPs. The activists of Jamaat-e-Islami, which has lost registration in EC, have extended their support to BNP in most UPs. In yesterday's election, the aspirants for Chairpersons' posts contested the race with party electoral symbols for the first time. The contests for the posts of members, however, were devoid of any party connection. Out of total 40 political parties, only 15 parties those registered with the EC have fielded their chairman candidates for the first phase. But 54 'chairman' candidates, 179 members and 54 reserved-seat women members have already won in the election without any ballot contest. The BNP could not field candidates in 'chairman' posts in 121 UPs. In 11 UPs, the election will be held on March 23. Besides, the election will be held in Neehla and Hoaikang UPs under Teknaf upzila on March 27.According to Election Commission, around 3,000 contenders are now fighting for the posts of 'chairperson' where about 26,000 candidates are contesting for the posts of 'member'. Apart from them, about 7,500 candidates are fighting for reserved seat posts of members. A total of 1.9 crore voters are expected to exercise their voting rights in this election. Local sources said, a group of miscreants stormed the centre and snatched away a number of ballot boxes about half an hour after the voting began at the Korapur polling centre in Barisal forcing the authorities to keep the polling halted. Besides, fifteen people received injuries in Rahamatpur union of Babuganj upazila in a clash between supporters of BNP-backed aspirants and AL-backed candidate. Reports reached from Patuakhali said, the polling was halted at two poling centres at Golachipa and Kolapara by the authorities in the morning after mass rigging and snatching of ballot boxes by Awami League activists. On the other hand, the candidates of BNP, Awami League rebel group and individual candidates rejected the vote at Boga, Kalimuri, Dhulia and Chotobighai protesting the occupying of centres by miscreants. Besides, the vote casting was halted at 12 polling centres of five upazilas in Satkhira -- Bhagbah, Avaytola, Datpur of Kumira union of Tala upazila, Alipur, Mahmudpur, Bharukhali of Sadar upazila, Kolatupi of Kushodanga union of Kolaroa upazila, Khejurbaria of Debhata upazila, Purbakhali, Mahjanpur, Mehedinagar of Kailashi union of Shamnagar -- due to vote-rigging and violence. As per complaint lodged by BNP candidate of Deyara union Ibrahim Hossain, the miscreants hurled five crude bombs at his resident in the morning. Another report said that Brammagasa union Awami League and their rebel candidates chased each other to occupy the polling centers leaving 10 people injured.The candidates of BNP in four unions of Kamalnagar upazila in Lakshmipur rejected the vote as Awami League men occupied the polling centers exploding cocktails at about 11:00am.President of Barisal North District unit of BNP and former MP Mejbauddin Farhad alleged that the activists of Awami League forcibly drove away BNP's polling agents from all centres in four unions of Hijla and eight unions of Mehendiganj. Echoing the same, general secretary of same unit Akon Quddusur Rahman said that the ruling party men applied force on opponent agents to leave the centres of 18 unions at Gournadi, Agoiljhara and Muladi. Suicide bomb blasts rock Brussels 34 die in metro, airport actions Hundreds of terrified passengers ran from the terminal, some of them covered in blood, after the blasts rocked the building at 8am. Internet photo Mail Online.com : Cowering under desks and running for their lives, this is the terrifying moment passengers were caught up in a suicide bomb attack at Brussels Airport today in a series of blasts that have killed at least 34 people across the city. Witnesses described apocalyptic scenes with blood and 'dismembered bodies everywhere' after two blasts rocked the terminal at around 8am (7am GMT), killing at least 14 people and injuring 35 others. Then 79 minutes later at 9.19am, at least 20 people were killed and 55 injured, some critically, when a blast hit a Metro station just 400 metres from the EU headquarters in the city centre. At the airport, there were reports of a firefight between police and the attackers who shouted in Arabic moments before detonating their bombs. A Kalashnikov was later recovered from the scene. The blasts, which detonated near the American Airlines and Brussels airlines check-in desks, sent shockwaves through the terminal building, shattering windows and knocking roof tiles off the ceiling as terrified passengers ran for their lives. The explosions have left countries worldwide reeling, with security placed on high alert, flights cancelled, Eurostar services suspended and France's border with Belgium shut down. Two suspects were arrested a mile from the Maelbeek metro station at around 11am as hundreds of troops and police flooded the streets of Brussels in the hunt for members of the terror cell. Soldiers have been also been deployed at the airport and other key locations across Brussels as Belgium raised security to its maximum level. The bombings come just a day after the Belgium Interior Minister warned of possible revenge attacks after the arrest of Paris massacre suspect Salah Abdeslam in the city on Friday. Photographs from inside the arrivals hall showed the floor covered in fallen tiles and dust as bloodied people hobbled out of the airport. Others injured were photographed lying on the floor. Firefighters who entered the terminal to search for survivors are said to have found a third unexploded device, while armed police in protective clothing combed the building for more wounded travellers and suspicious bags. London Mayor Boris Johnson today said 'there may be one UK casualty' in the explosions and another Briton is understood to have been injured in the airport attack. People already checked in were then slowly evacuated through emergency exits - but were told to leave all their hand luggage as police checked bags for more explosives. Evacuated passengers are being ferried onto buses and are being driven to a 'crisis centre' away from the airport, with women and children being moved first. All flights are being diverted from the airport this morning as it remains on lockdown. Flights due to land at Brussels-Zaventem, which handles 21million passengers a year, were sent to Antwerp, Liege, and Brussels Charleroi airports. Europe's biggest airports are all increasing their security today. Heathrow confirmed it had stepped up its own 'visible' security in the wake of the attacks - with large units of armed police patrolling the airport this morning. American Airlines confirmed that its planned flight from Brussels to Philadelphia in the US, which had been scheduled to depart at 9.40am had been cancelled in the wake of the blasts. A spokesman said: 'We are aware of an incident at the Brussels airport departure hall and are taking care of our customers, employees and contractors. At this time, all of our employees and contractors are accounted for with no reported injuries. 'American Airlines flight 751 has been cancelled for today. When operations at the airport resume, we will re-accommodate our customers.' Brussels Airport has announced it will be closed until at least Wednesday following two explosions in the departure hall. Terrorists then blew up a crowded Metro station in the city centre at around 9.19am, killing at least 10 people and seriously injuring dozens more. BNP, JP complaint with EC against vote-rigging Staff Reporter : Major political party Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) and the main opposition in Parliament Jatiya Party alleged widespread vote-rigging, ballot-stuffing and capture of polling stations by the ruling partymen during the voting. BNP on Tuesday lodged a complaint with the Election Commission against widespread vote-rigging, ballot-stuffing and capture of polling stations. A BNP delegation, led by party Vice-President Abdullah Al Noman met Chief Election Commissioner Kazi Rakibuddin Ahmad at his office and requested him to set an example by holding free, fair and impartial polls to at least in 50 UPs by canceling elections there. "We just have taken part in the elections only to prove the Election Commission has become a subservient organisation to the government. And it has been proved," he told journalists after meeting with the CEC. Besides, a Jatiya Party delegation, led by party Senior Joint Secretary General Mohammad Rezaul Islam Bhuiyan lodged a complaint with the Election Commission against widespread vote-rigging, ballot-stuffing and capture of polling stations. "We don't have confidence in the Election Commission. We lodged complaint but we know nothing whether the Election Commission will take action or not," he told journalists at the Election Commission Secretariat. "The Union Parishad election is nothing, but eyewash. What's the point of joining the polls when ruling partymen snatch results?" he said. BD wants return of $81m Philrem's P10m offer rejected Kazi Zahidul Hasan : The government of Bangladesh has rejected an offer from Philrem to return more than P10 million it earned in handling the $81 million stolen fund from Bangladesh Bank's account with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. The $81 million stolen fund was transferred to the Philippines Rizal Commercial Banking Corp (RCBC) from the Federal Reserve Bank in early February. Philrem is a Remittance Company in the Philippines. "Bangladesh has rejected the offer. Of course they are not interested in the P10 million. They are interested in recovering the $81 million," Senator Serge Osmena III said in a television interview on Monday, according to a report of The Philippine Star. At Thursday's Senate Blue Ribbon Committee hearing on the money laundering scandal, Philrem's owner Salud Bautista said they would return the entire amount they earned from handling the fund to the Bangladesh ambassador in Manila. "We will prepare a check. It will represent every centavo our company earned from this series of transactions. We will be returning P10,474,654," she said. She apologized for her company's involvement in handling the stolen funds. It was "unintended," she said. The $81 million allegedly stolen by Chinese hackers was transferred to four accounts in RCBC-Jupiter (Makati) branch, then to an account supposedly owned by businessman William So Go, then to Philrem, which delivered the bulk of the funds in pesos to Solaire Resort and Casino and Eastern Hawaii Leisure Co. When contacted, Subhankar Saha, an Executive Director and spokesperson for the BB, told The New Nation on Tuesday that they are not aware about the matter because there might be a government to government negotiation in this regard."There might be a negotiation through the diplomatic channels. But the BB has no information in this regard," he added.Subhankar Saha said, BB is going through its own way and keeping close contact with the Philippines central bank and Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMCL) to recover the stolen fund. On top of this, the Bangladesh Financial Intelligence Unit (BFIU) is also working on the issue as it had a deal with the Philippines counterpart to bring back any laundered money. "The BFIU is looking into the matter following proper procedures," he said. Referring to the interview of Senator Serge Osmena III, the BB spokesperson, "It's a petty amount we cannot accept it. We want to get back the full amount." Mr Obama's call on Saudis makes sense THE US President Barack Obama has publicly called upon the Saudi government to end its hostile outlook with Iran under a new policy to "share the neighbourhood" by achieving "some sort of cold peace" in the Gulf region. Breaking open to what was so far going behind-the-scenes conversations about the US-Saudi relationship vis-a-vis Iran the President may have sought to bring some public pressure on the Saudi leadership this time to create a situation of evenhandedness for the US policy in the region. Mr Obama is right to call for what seems to be a new balance of power in the region to end wars and hatred and make peace to bring prosperity to the people now suffering from devastation of civil wars in Syria, Iraq and Yemen. There are other countries facing threats of militancy and sectarian wars to endanger public safety and security. In view of Mr Obama a rapprochement of Saudi-Iran relations can only protect the region from sectarian wars and such other miseries. Nobody will disagree that antagonism between Iran and Saudi Arabia is enhancing Shiite-Sunni fetal enmity spreading whole of the region. Saudi Arabia so far enjoyed the special relation with the USA as its major ally in the Gulf region when Iran was its bitter enemy. But with the signing of the nuclear deal under which Tehran surrendered its nuclear ambition to make bombs, Washington is now trying to develop a mutuality to which Riyadh appears unwilling. Outwardly it seems to be a clear rebuff to Riyadh from the US President for attempting to stick to its past position when Iran is bringing pressure on the USA to come out of their troubled past. Mr Obama and many others blame Saudi Arabia and Sunni Arab countries as repressive and their strict interpretation of Islam contributing to extremism. His criticism of Saudi-Iranian leadership competition for the control of the Sunni-Shiite population and fanning proxy sectarian wars in the region equally makes sense. The wars have destroyed the region and it is only American leadership which can influence parties to end the hostility and build peace. But President Obama's presidency is nearing its end. The Muslim countries must realise by being enemies to each other who they are helping? Muslims are fighting Muslims under whatever name. The Muslims must unite to improve their international image. They have only the true external enemy and that is Israel. Instead to fighting Israel to save the Palestinians from genocide, Iran and Saudi Arabia are fighting proxy war against each other and it is only helping the enemies of the Muslim world. Mystery behind BB's account heist must be unearthed THE new governor at Bangladesh Bank Fazle Kabir has rightly placed priority on the retrieval of the US$81 million which was stolen from our Reserve last month. He stated this while speaking to the media on Monday. The question remains, however, how will this be done? The first step will be to identify those involved in the heist, both within and outside the country. The bank heist has shocked the entire nation and safety of the government Reserves must be top on the priority along with recovery of the stolen money. Philippine government's probe has revealed into which bank accounts the money had been deposited and how this was converted into local currency. There are many on the list of suspects. But it is still unclear how the money was siphoned off from the Bangladesh Bank and who are those involved in the scam. What the Bank management did to protect the Reserves and how hackers got away with the money. The three-member inquiry committee led by former Bangladesh Bank governor Mohammed Farashuddin has begun investigating the matter saying it will be a tough job but it has to be done in the interests of the country. The CID has also taken up investigations and FBI assistance may be sought if required. Governor Fazle Kabir's plan to restore confidence of bank officials and rectify technical glitches in the banking system appears to be the right priority at the moment. Skilled manpower and use of safety technology must come hand in hand. for developing a foolproof security system in the bank. Ensuring both will not be too difficult - at least for the second. With the Reserves growing adequate IT infrastructure with foolproof security is essential so that no such break can occur again. Getting the money back from the Philippines may prove more challenging. However these are short-term goals which can be easily dealt with. The far more pressing long-term goal is of course, to stem the rot of the government owned banks to ensure proper and efficient governance. To ensure this the main agents of the scams of the past - namely the Hallmark scam and the BASIC Bank scam, must be brought to book. This is essential to ensure that such actions do not ever occur again. Former LHA Chairman Buddy Webb addresses the HUD-run Lafayette Housing Authority, which may soon return to local control, during its March 17 meeting. Photo by Robin May At its March 17 meeting, the Lafayette Housing Authority approved a resolution to conduct a national search for a new executive director after abruptly deciding not to renew the contract of its current executive director, Katie Anderson. And that decision is not sitting well with a former member of the housing authority's board of commissioners. During the public comments portion of the meeting, former LHA Chairman Buddy Webb sounded off for the first time on his disillusionment with the widespread corruption at the agency and questioned why the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, which has been running the local agency since 2011, terminated Anderson's employment. Webb made clear his dissatisfaction with the decision to not renew Anderson's contract at the end of May, saying she has by all accounts been righting the ship and is among the most respected housing officials in the state. Webb mainly took issue with HUD's refusal to give a reason for terminating Anderson's contract. An answer could have come on March 17 from Floyd Duran, the housing director in Albuquerque, N.M., who is the most recent person to serve the dual role of LHA receiver and board chairman. Duran, who has held the post for about 18 months, attended last week's meeting. Webb began his work with the LHA in 1995 when the NAACP asked him to serve as an advisory board member. At the time, it was under the receivership of HUD in New Orleans due to discrimination in housing. Webb served in that capacity until it became an actual board of commissioners five years later, returning to local control under the leadership of Executive Director Walter Guillory. During the five years as an advisory board, Ill be quite honest with you, we had no contact whatsoever with HUD, said Webb. They were supposed to be overseeing Lafayette. Well if they were, I never saw them. They never met with the board, never really explained to the board what your positions were, what youre supposed to do and all these kinds of things. Webb then described his working relationship with Guillory. Walter Guillory, to his credit, did straighten out the discrimination and stuff and started innovating in programs, daycare, things of that sort, recalled Webb. And all of a sudden, he became quite recognizable in public housing. He was like one of the superstars, because Walter had reinvented housing. And I guess you kind of fall into that trap [because] I had known Walter before; otherwise I would not have gone over to the board. Floyd Duran, the public housing director in Albuquerque, N.M., has been serving as the LHAs receiver and board chairman for about 18 months. Photo by Robin May Webb went on to discuss a 2008 audit finding showing that Guillory had taken money out of a Section 8 reserve fund to pay for the development costs of St. Antoine Gardens, a low-income housing tax credit project in north Lafayette. Thats a big no-no, said Webb. I asked Walter about it, and he said, HUD was aware of it in New Orleans. 'Its all going to be taken care of. The developer is going to pay us the money back. So that was 2008. Im waiting for the 2009 audit to see if that had been taken care of, because that was a big amount of money. Webb says that he continued pressing Guillory about the audit until finally calling the CPA directly and discovering that the audit had been completed three months prior and sent to the LHA office in 2010 with Webbs name on it. Webb said he was shocked at what he saw when he finally read the report. Then I realized the abuse that was going on here in Lafayette, said Webb, noting that the audit, which eventually led to Guillory's departure and federal criminal charges against him, revealed widespread corruption at various levels of the agency. Mayor-President Joey Durel moved quickly to remove the local volunteer board (Webb had resigned immediately after alerting local officials about the audit findings), leading to HUD's takeover of the local agency. The dismissed board members sued Durel, and he repeatedly declined HUD's offers to name a new board. Guillory was sentenced to 28 months in prison in 2014 after being convicted on bribery and bid-fixing charges. Guillory was the only LHA employee who went to prison, but the audit had uncovered many more questionable dealings. Surely few can forget the Herculean workload of former City-Parish Councilman Chris Williams, who records show worked the equivalent of full-time as an LHA case worker while also working full-time at UL Lafayette, among other gigs. Williams and several other case workers were fired amid the scandal and sued for back-pay. After insisting for months that it would not settle Williams' suit, HUD caved in 2014, just as it had done for at least three others who filed similar lawsuits against the federal agency, and cut Williams a $30,000 check. There were so many people on the payroll here, [including] a lot of people in the community," Webb said at the meeting. "Years back there was even one of Joel Robideauxs administrators, that was a security expert that was on the payroll of housing and for whatever reason they let him go. Webb says records show that Marcus Bruno (who is now Robideaux's "government and constituent relations officer," a newly created position) was working 25 hours a week for the housing authority at the same time he was working full-time for Lafayette Consolidated Government. Bruno's work for the LHA was unbeknownst to the LCG administration, a former high-ranking official tells The IND. Amid accusations that Bruno had abused his position at LCG, his government job was eliminated in 2009 in what at the time was called a "restructuring" by the Durel administration. The reason Im saying this [is] there were so many people at the trough, said Webb. Then there was the [Disaster Housing Assistance] Program where Walter hired his friends [and was] paying them upwards of $90,000 a year without documentation with contracts that were written up by the assistant director, one without even Walters knowledge or approval." Webb said he called HUD in 2010 about the questionable 2008 audit findings to see if they had addressed it, only to discover that HUD hadnt even looked into it. I guarantee you, had I not addressed these issues and being a banker had a little bit of knowledge of financial statements, it wouldve probably gone on unnoticed and wouldnt have drawn up any red flags, Webb said. So that being said it was a great big disaster. And it was very unfortunate because it really hurt me because Walter was a very close friend. And no one likes to do it, but if youre breaking the law, youre breaking the law. The March 17 history lesson was necessary, Webb later told The IND, to explain why he does not trust HUD and its decision to remove Anderson. He fears that politics may very well be at play. She cleaned up a mess. And I say a mess with a capital M, Webb said, noting Andersons record of clean audits in recent years. LHA Executive Director Katie Anderson will leave office when her contract expires at the end of May. Photo by Robin May Ya know, if she were a civil service employee, shed have every right in the world to challenge that decision because you have to have a reason not to renew a contract, of why not to keep you employed," Webb said. "But under HUD, youre just gone." Webb was quick to point out that he was not at the meeting just to plead Andersons case but to remind anyone who will listen what might happen yet again under the wrong leadership. Mayor-President Joel Robideaux has agreed to reappoint the five board members one of whom must be a resident receiving assistance from the LHA that would bring the LHA out of HUD receivership and back under local control. Robideaux has not responded to The IND's request for the names of board members under consideration; he told The Daily Advertiser he would name a board by the end of March. A HUD spokeswoman confirmed to The IND that Robideaux will also have a role in choosing the new executive director. They may have their reasons for not renewing her contract," Webb said. [But] I think this community is owed an explanation. Additional reporting by Leslie Turk Lafayette Mayor-President Joel Robideaux has chosen Skyra Rideaux to lead the coordination of the neighborhood beautification initiative Project Front Yard. I wanted to find a person with a unique set of skills and experience who could leverage the Project Front Yard brand and take the work to the next level, said Robideaux in a statement. Skyra will be out in the neighborhoods working with the community to instill a sense of pride about what our community looks like and how we can work together to create a more welcoming community both for our own citizens and for our visitors. Rideaux most recently worked as executive director for the Lafayette Community Health Care Clinic and before that was in community relations for the Louisiana Immersive Technologies Enterprise and LUS Fiber. Project Front Yard, launched in 2014 under former Mayor-President Joey Durel's administration, is a community-wide education/beautification effort that focuses on engaging community members to improve the overall look of the city. Initiatives include revitalization of gateways, improved streetscapes, litter removal and prevention, public art and river cleanup. For more info, click here. An open house will be held this Saturday (and again on April 3) from 1-4 p.m. for parents interested in enrolling their child in Louisianas first Sudbury school. The education model takes its name from the Sudbury Valley School opened in Massachusetts in 1968. Sudbury is an education model like no other, save for homeschooling. In Sudbury schools we allow our students to continue their pursuit of knowledge in the same manner theyve been doing from birth, and in the ways that are most natural to each individual child. says Chantal Saucier, one of the founders of the school that will begin course work this fall in a converted house in Maurice. As parents, we want our children to grow into responsible, self-reliant, happy adults. A Sudbury school is a democratic school that focuses on what a child wants to learn without a curriculum or classes even, unless the student requests it. The students explore the world at their own pace and learns the things they want. Students can spend their time in school doing everything from daydreaming to researching. The best part is no mandatory testing (aka the greatest words ever spoken to any student). Chantal Saucier Graduates of the Sudbury school have many different options as far as their graduation requirements. They can complete a thesis project, much like in college, or the student can choose to move through different methods. The Lafayette Sudbury School will not be accredited, and therefore, wont offer a state-approved diploma. However, students can decide to take the GRE. The school works on paper much like a home-school education. Students will use a list of their accomplishments and experiences for college admissions or resumes. Or they can use their school time to prepare for the ACT or other tests for college admissions, depending on which college they want to attend. Sudbury schools have a high ratio of graduates who go on to graduate from college between 75 and 85 percent. Saucier, who holds a PhD in Francophone studies, is confident about replicating these results in Acadiana. I dont see why the outcome would be different in Louisiana, she says. Tuition for the 2016-2017 school year for a full-time student is $6,900; rates for part-time vary upon the number of days and siblings receive discounts. The school will also provide tuition assistance to families who can demonstrate a need. Fall 2016 will be the first school year for the Lafayette Sudbury School in Maurice. The school will serve grades K-12 (ages 5-18). There will be two one-week Sudbury Experience Camps in June at the school (June 6-10 and June 13-17). For more information visit the schools website, LafayetteSudbury.org or follow the school on Facebook at Facebook.com/LafayetteSudbury. 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. 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Life changed drastically for him this past July 8, 2015, when he and a fellow police officer responded to a call of an armed man breaking into a house on Third Street in Mounds. Sgt. Womack and then-Sgt. Terry Riddle responded to the call, with Womack pursuing the fleeing suspect into a wooded area behind the property. That, said Womack, is where and when he was shot, before dropping to a knee to fire shots back at the suspect, who was also hit. On Monday night, the mayor of Mounds and city council honored Womack, the department's K9 officer, for his contributions and honored others who provided service to him that day and later. Womack was presented with the American Police Hall of Fame Law Enforcement Purple Heart in recognition of the injuries he received this past July and an injury he received while helping a Pulaski County Deputy Sheriff clear some debris from I-57 in June 2013. He also received the American Hall of Fame General Commendation medal in connection with the July shooting. "Overwhelmed" is how Womack said he felt by the attention at Monday's evening. "The support of everyone who came out and with the care they took in order to assist me." Womack said he is waiting on his doctor's OK to return to work. His sciatic nerve was damaged by the bullet that struck him in his left leg and he said he has constant pain -- a level of eight on a scale of 10 in terms of intensity -- and experiences numbness from his left calf area on down. He started with the Mounds Police Department four years ago, after spending 24 years with the U.S. Army. "I'm just grateful for all the support at the (time of his shooting) and then afterward," Womack said. "I'm not a hero. I was just doing my job." Among those packing into the meeting room at the City Hall was Debby Brown, the Pulaski County dispatcher noted because she "remained the calm during the storm." Monday night, she dabbed her eyes and wiped away tears and hugged Womack after receiving her award. She said that was the first time she'd seen him since the shooting. After 23 years of service, Brown said she retired in January; she said she'd been considering it, but the July 2015 incident helped her make up her mind. "After that, (I said) I'm out, got to go, can't do that anymore," she said. Also honored Monday night were: Mounds Police Chief Terry Riddle, Medal of Valor, for proviving comfort, protective cover and securing evidence from the scene; Tracie Hafford, Pulaski County Ambulance, Award of Distinction; Steven McHughs, Pulaski County Ambulance, Award of Distinction; Everett 'Lennie' Roberson, community resident, assisting with Sgt. Womack, Award of Distinction; Jerome Johnson, community resident, assisting with Sgt. Womack from the wooded area, Award of Distinction; Tyrik Foulks, community resident, assisting with Sgt. Womack, Award of Distinction; Debby Brown, dispatcher, Pulaski County Sheriff's Office, Distinguished Service, Communications; Anthony Dover, Assistant Emergency Services Director for Pulaski County and a K9 handler with Pulaski County, providing care and support for K9 Bravo in both the June 2013 traffic crash and the July 2015 shooting, Meritorious Conduct; Lt. Ken Kerley, Mound City Police Department, who was just finishing an overnight shift as telecommunicator with the Pulaski County Sheriff's Office when he responded to the call and wound up providing emergency medical care and refusing to leave Womack's side until relieved that night by fellow officers; Medal of Honor; Mounds Police Officer Aubrey Edwards, Lifesaving Award, for rescuing a woman from a burning home in January 23, 2014. 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. NEW YORK Thomson Reuters (NYSE, TSX: TRI), the worlds leading source of intelligent information for businesses and professionals, announced today that its first-quarter 2016 earnings will be issued via news release on Tuesday, April 26, 2016. James C. Smith, president and chief executive officer, and Stephane Bello, executive vice president and chief financial officer, will host a conference call and simultaneous webcast that morning at 8:30 a.m. EDT. Discussions may include forward-looking information. You can access the webcast by visiting the Investor Relations section of the Thomson Reuters website. Registration for the webcast is now open. Additionally, an archive of the webcast will be available following the presentation. Thomson Reuters Thomson Reuters is the worlds leading source of news and information for professional markets. Our customers rely on us to deliver the intelligence, technology and expertise they need to find trusted answers. The business has operated in more than 100 countries for more than 100 years. Thomson Reuters shares are listed on the Toronto and New York Stock Exchanges (symbol: TRI). For more information, visit www.thomsonreuters.com. CONTACT Media Andrew Green Director, Corporate Affairs Tel: +1 646 223 4228 Email: andrew.green@tr.com Investors Frank J. Golden Senior Vice President, Investor Relations Tel: +1 646 223 5288 Email: frank.golden@tr.com Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev has extended condolences to the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Belgium Charles Michel over the explosions that occurred March 22 in Brussels. We were deeply saddened by the news of heavy casualties and injuries as a result of explosions in the city of Brussels, said the president. We are extremely outraged by this horrible tragedy, resolutely condemn all manifestations of terror and fully support the fight against terrorism. On the occasion of this tragedy, on behalf of the people of Azerbaijan and on my own behalf, I extend my deep condolences to you, the bereaved families and the loved ones of those who died, and also wish the injured the swiftest possible recovery, added President Aliyev. Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL) has enhanced security measures at Bakus Heydar Aliyev International Airport, as well as at Azerbaijans regional airports, Pasha Kesamanski, the AZAL press service head, told Trend March 22. These measures have been taken in line with instructions by AZAL management in connection with the terrorist attack at the Brussels airport. Officers of all security services at Azerbaijans airports also received instructional advices in accordance with the measures to strengthen flight security. AZAL said the civil aviation facilities in Azerbaijan go through regular inspections and systematic enhanced control measures. Armenia is in self-isolation and deep political, economic and demographic crisis, Hikmat Hajiyev, the Azerbaijani foreign ministrys spokesman, told Trend March 22. Hajiyev was commenting on Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharyans another remark against Azerbaijan. Hajiyev said that the policy being conducted by the Armenian military-political leadership is contrary to logic and far from civilized behavior and ethics. "These actions, based on the thought of a field commander and military dictatorship, pose a threat to the entire region, he said. Today Armenia is in self-isolation and deep political, economic and demographic crisis due to the militaristic policy of Yerevans military dictatorship." Hajiyev said that Armenias intensive violation of the ceasefire along the line of contact and on the Azerbaijani-Armenian border and other provocative actions once again testify to the essence of Yerevans regime. In this regards, Armenian officials statements on ceasefire, regional cooperation and conflict settlement cause laughter and disgust, Hajiyev 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 latest on Brussels airport and metro blasts: 18:57 (GMT +4) Belgian authorities confirmed the deaths of 34 people as a result of bombings in Brussels, Interfax reported citing local media. In addition, 198 people were injured. In the subway of the Belgian capital, according to the mayor's office, 20 people were killed, 106 injured. In addition, according to the firemen, 14 people were killed and 92 injured in bomb explosions at the Brussels airport. --- 17:49 (GMT +4) Belgium's Tihange nuclear power plant was evacuated of non-essential staff at the the request of the authorities, Sky News reports. --- 17:09 (GMT +4) Attacks in Brussels have lead to the deaths of 34 people in total, Reuters reports citing Belgian public broadcaster VRT. 20 people were killed in the blast on a metro train while another 14 died in explosions at Zaventem airport. --- 16:00 (GMT +4) Associated Press reports that the explosions at the Brussels airport and subway killed at least 28 people. A spokesman for the Brussels Metro said 15 people were killed and 55 injured in an explosion on a train, and Belgian media reported at least 13 dead in two explosions at the airport, with many others injured, AP has said. Belgium raised its terror alert to the highest level, diverting planes and trains and ordering people to stay where they were. --- 14:43 (GMT +4) Eleven people died in the twin blasts at Brussels airport, and at least 10 were killed at the metro station explosion, Sky News has reported citing Brussels fire brigade spokesman Pierre Meys. --- 13:37 (GMT +4) The blasts at the Brussels airport have killed up to 13 people and injured 35, Sky News reports citing Belgian public broadcaster VRT. Reports suggested there were fatalities in the underground blast too which injured several people, said Sky News. --- 13:14 (GMT +4) At least 13 people have reportedly been killed and dozens injured after two explosions at Brussels Zaventem Airport in an apparent suicide attack, Sky News reports. --- 12:59 (GMT +4) Another blast at a subway station occurred in the suburb of Maelbeek, CNN reports citing its affiliate RTL. All metro stations in the city have been closed, according to the official Twitter account for the city's transportation agency. --- 12:49 (GMT +4) The blasts at the Brussels airport killed up to 10 people and injured 30 others, reports Reuters. Another blast struck a metro station in the capital shortly afterwards, the report cited the Belgian public broadcaster RTBF. RTBF said the metro station hit by the explosion was close to European Union institutions. Authorities closed all metro stations in Brussels, but there were no details immediately available of any casualties in this second incident of the day. --- 12:37 (GMT +4) At least 10 people have been killed and several injured after the two explosions at Zaventem Airport in Brussels, Sky News has reported. Sky News has also said that there were fresh reports of an explosion at Maalbeek metro station in the city. --- 12:22 (GMT +4) Associated Press reports citing Belgian police that at least one person was killed in the explosions at the Brussels airport. One person has died and perhaps there are several more, AP cited a police official as saying. --- 12:05 (GMT+4) Sky News reports that the blasts centred on an American Airlines desk in a departure hall. --- 11:53 (GMT+4) The explosion rocked the check-in zone of Brussels Airport, killing several people and leaving multiple others wounded, NBC News has reported citing officials. The blast shook the departures hall shortly after 08:00 local time, according to the report. There was an explosion there are several dead and wounded but we can't say how many at this point," a federal police spokesman said. A security source told NBC News the explosion happened near check-in desk four but it was not immediately clear if terrorism was involved. --- 11:46 (GMT +4) Several people were injured at the departure hall of the Brussels airport, said Sputnik International. --- 11:30 (GMT +4) Twin explosions have been heard at the Zaventem airport in Brussels, Belgium, reports Sputnik International. The cause of the explosions is so far unknown. The ceremony of signing a memorandum on granting the official status of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) dialogue partner to Nepal was held in the SCO secretariat in Beijing March 22, a statement published on the Uzbek foreign ministrys website said. "SCO Secretary General Rashid Alimov and Secretary of the Nepalese Foreign Ministry Shankar Das Bairagi signed the document," the statement said. A decision to grant SCO dialogue partner status to Nepal was made by the SCO Council of Heads of State in Ufa. The memorandum stipulates interaction between the SCO and Nepal in the promotion of regional security and stability, the fight against terrorism, extremism, separatism and drug trafficking, as well as in trade, investments, energy issues and other fields. Nepalese Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli, as well as ambassadors and permanent representatives of the SCO member-states also attended the ceremony. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was established in 2001. It is a permanent intergovernmental international organization. The SCO members are China, Kazakhstan, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Afghanistan, Iran, Mongolia and Belarus are the SCO observer-countries, while Turkey, Sri Lanka, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Cambodia and Nepal are dialogue partners. More than half of the chief financial officers (CFOs) of 15 GCC insurers expect the growth in their company's operating profit to be moderate or high, said Moody's Investors Service in a new report. Although Moody's shares the expectations of the CFOs on a good number of important topics, they tend to be more optimistic on some issues, including the profitability outlook in the report, "Insurance - Gulf Cooperation Council Countries: CFOs Optimistic On Profitability Despite Competition and Stronger Regulation". "Profitability expectations for the next 12 months were generally buoyant among surveyed CFOs and more optimistic than our own view for the overall profitability of the industry. Forty-three percent of responding CFOs said they expect their company's operating profit to grow moderately next year (5 per cent-10 per cent), and 14 per cent expect stronger growth of more than 10 per cent," explained Mohammed Ali Londe, Moody's assistant vice president - Analyst. Conversely, Moody's expects the industry's operating profits to remain broadly stable, with some moderate downside pressures, particularly for insurers operating in jurisdictions where actuarial-led reserving measures have recently been introduced, such as the UAE in 2015. Reserve strengthening will apply downward pressure on profitability at least in the short term as regulators adopt similar measures across the GCC. Profitability pressure is the key concern for 2016 and beyond, according to the survey responses, which coincides with Moody's view. Asked to name their top three concerns, 40 per cent of respondents cited profitability pressures, 20 per cent cited the region's highly competitive environment, 13 per cent cited the new regulatory risk based capital (RBC) and Solvency II type requirements and 13 per cent cited the depressed oil price. On the enhanced regulations and its impact, the survey responses showed a depressed view, with 46 per cent expecting market consolidation, 20 per cent expecting capital raising, 27 per cent expecting other remedial actions and 7 per cent expecting issuance of hybrid debt to relieve pressures on capital. Moody's also expects capitalisation to be pressured for the region's insurers but does not expect to see any significant consolidation in the GCC. Moody's believes that well capitalised insurers are reluctant to take over insurers with weaker balance sheet. The rating agency expects insurers that are under pressure to either strengthen capital or, in the case of smaller insurers with less appeal to larger players / investors, to eventually enter into run-off. The recent volatility in the equity markets along with enhanced regulations have also driven CFOs to rethink their investment strategy, with the CFOs surveyed intending to keep a significant portion (minimum 10 per cent to over 30 per cent) of invested assets in investment-grade bonds to raise the quality and stability of returns from their investment portfolio. TradeArabia News Service From left to right: Savitri Jindal, Al Said and Jindal at the inauguration. Jindal Shadeed Iron & Steel (JSIS), a part of the Indian steel conglomerate OP Jindal Group, today inaugurated its newly expanded, state-of-the-art integrated steel complex at the Sohar Industrial Port, Oman. The steel complex includes the GCCs largest capacity electric arc furnace and rebar mill and would strengthen the domestic production capacity which is vital to the nations industrial growth. The inauguration was held in the presence of Sayyid Taimur bin Asad Al Said from the royal family, who dedicated the steel complex to the sultanate in the presence of Naveen Jindal, chairman of Jindal Steel and Power. According to a company statement, JSIS has made a capital investment of over $1 billion to expand the integrated steel complex. A 2.0-million-tonnes-per-annum (MTPA)-capacity steel melt shop (SMS) has already been commissioned in April 2014. The rebar mill, with a capacity of 1.4 MTPA, is the latest addition to the complex which was commissioned in January 2016. The new complex will also play a pivotal role from being a supplier of hot briquetted iron (HBI) to an integrated steel maker in the region. The integrated nature of the plant operations will also contribute to in-country value (ICV) as product of one unit would be fed to the subsequent one till reaching finished steel, adding value at each stage. And in the process, it will create substantial employment opportunities for the locals, the statement added. Commenting on the milestone, JSIS chief executive NA Ansari, said: Despite a critical steel market, we have established ourselves as a formidable player in the region and have achieved several production milestones in 2015. The newly expanded facility will further facilitate in making Oman self-sufficient in meeting its domestic demands for rebar. Jindal Shadeed is the only company in GCC to export special quality billets to Europe for automotive, welding, cold head quality (CHQ) etc. applications, and special quality round billets to Saudi Arabia for seamless pipe manufacturing. The capacity of the plant has been selected on the basis of demand in the GCC and the neighbouring countries and, through this complex, Oman will help reduce the dependence of the GCC countries on imports from outside the region. - TradeArabia News Service Leading companies involved in the construction of buildings, roads, bridges and power generation plants will be vying for the Dubai government's inaugural Taqdeer Awards, to honour firm with labour welfare practices. A workshop to create awareness on the Taqdeer awards was recently organised for the construction sector at the General Directorate of Residency and Foreigners Affairs (GDRFA) in its Dubai premises. Executives from leading construction firms, who attended the workshop, said these awards not only inspire them to further enhance their labour welfare measures but also ensure that every aspect of worker-related practices is taken care of. The Taqdeer Award (named after the Arabic word for appreciation), launched under the patronage of Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and chairman of the Dubai Executive Council, is the worlds first points-based award programme for recognising excellence in labour welfare practices and seeks to promote international best practices in labour welfare and enhance relationship between companies and workers. The awards are targeted at the construction sector in its first cycle. According to the latest Deloitte and Meed Projects report, over $390.8 billion worth of projects are under construction or in the pipeline in Dubai and the construction sector has a significant contribution in the UAE emirate's GDP (nearly eight per cent) and employs 500,000 workers. Fawzieh Shahrour, a trainer at Team Power International, which conducted the training, said: "The assessment criteria are quite comprehensive and cover several aspects of labour practices in an organisation." The assessment team will evaluate the companies on essential fundamentals such as labour policies, facilities, health and safety, labour security, recruitment and wages; culture and work environment which includes transparency, innovation and creativity, labour relations, communication and feedback, administration, and labour perceptions and feedback. The training workshop is aimed at helping companies understand details of each of these aspects so that they can understand areas they can improve upon." The training workshop was attended by around 30 representatives from different companies. Redha Ghanim, the senior manager, Al-Futtaim Carillion, who attended the session, said: "We believe that in order to continue improving and excellence, there should be challenges. The award brings before us a challenge and we are very keen, we would want to ensure we get the highest ranking." "Our company is very active in taking initiatives for the benefit of our workers, and our effort is to go an extra mile and give them more than expected. We have, for instance, a clinic within the company premises and many other facilities," stated Ghanim. The majority of the participants believe the award will benefit both workers and employers in Dubai as it keeps interests of both parties. Ahmad Ataya, the administration manager, Belhasa Six Construct: "These awards focus on the welfare of workers, which will improve their performance and, in turn, benefit the companies. It will benefit both employers and workers." "The award will also further enhance the image of Dubai on an international level as the companies, such as ours, will get recognition for their labour welfare measures," he added. Karim El Shennawy, the business development manager, Al Shafar General Contracting (ASGC), said: "Our company has clear labour welfare policies. By participating in the award, we will be able to assess if there are any areas we need to pay special attention to. This will help is ensure that there are no gaps in implementing labour welfare practices." The award will inspire all companies to achieve the highest ranking and excel and will benefit both workers as well as companies, said the participants. Bianca Wilton, the employee relations manager, Al Futtaim Carillion, said: "As the construction sector employs a very high number of workers, we believe the award rightly focuses on this sector in the first phase." "It will inspire all companies across the UAE, it will raise awareness on enhancing labour welfare measures," she added. Serin Mathew, the assistant manager, HR (human resources) operations, Chicago Maintenance & Construction Company, said: "As an ISO-certified company, we already have sound policies and practices in place. Taqdeer Award participation, I feel will help us focus on areas that need to be paid attention to, it will help us excel." Daq Tanvir, the HR manager for Dutco Balfour Beatty Group, said: "The award will help us benchmark against the industry and see where we stand. It will be a recognition for us on what we do and help us understand where we stand in the industry." In the first year of the award, only companies involved in the construction of buildings, roads, bridges, tunnels, plumbing installation and power generation plants are eligible for applying, said the GDRFA officials. These awards will encourage the construction companies in Dubai to set exemplary international standards in labour practices, they added.-TradeArabia News Service Jordan has announced that its first nuclear power reactor would be ready by 2025, aimed to meet the rising demand for the countrys electricity needs, said a report. The reactor with a total capacity of 1,000 megawatts will be ready and connected to the grid by 2025, Ahmad Hiyasat, director general of the state-owned Jordan Nuclear Power Company, was quoted as saying in a Business Standard report. He added that another reactor with the same amount of capacity would be ready shortly after the first one. Hiyasat noted that Jordan and Russia are currently conducting environmental impact studies on the location of the reactors and the water supply needed. He further added that studies are also underway to determine the best means of financing the project, which will cost around $10 billion, said the report. In October 2013, Jordan approved Russia's Atomstroyexport, a leading nuclear power service exporter, as technology provider for Jordan's first nuclear plant. Jordan, which imports some 97 percent of its energy needs, seeks to rely more on local resources of uranium in addition to oil shale and renewable energy, added the report. Aluminium Bahrain (Alba), the Bahrain-based leading international aluminium producer, has launched Phase II of its company-wide, cost reduction programme Project Titan. The new initiative aims to reduce cash cost by $100 per metric tonne of aluminium and step-up its production capacity to 1 million metric tonnes per annum by end of 2017. Project Titan Phase II, focused on optimising operational costs and boosting the Companys production, is an integral part of Albas strategy for value creation and reflects the current and expected market conditions in the aluminium industry, said a statement. Albas chief executive officer Tim Murray said: "Given the tough market conditions, we believe that we can do more than necessary and push ourselves in order to maintain our position as one of the leading, low cost producers in the aluminium industry. Through Project Titan Phase II, we seek to further improve our operational efficiency that will enable us to take advantage of the growth opportunities in the future. Alba has begun to conduct information sessions for its employees where members of the executive management team elaborate on specific goals and expectations of Project Titan Phase II. In February 2014, Alba had launched Project Titan as a two-year efficiency programme to drive revenue growth and boost profitability. Alba recently announced the completion of Project Titan Phase I with achieved savings of $148 per metric tonne against the set target of $150 per metric tonne. - TradeArabia News Service Egypt is preparing to buy French warships and a military satellite in deals worth more than 1 billion ($1.12 billion), La Tribune newspaper reported on Tuesday. The four naval vessels to be built by French naval shipyard DCNS include two Gowind corvettes, the newspaper reported, without citing sources. The military satellite would be supplied jointly by Airbus Space Systems, part of Airbus Group, and Thales Alenia Space, owned by French arms firm Thales and Italy's Finmeccanica, recently renamed Leonardo. Thales also owns 35 per cent of the DCNS shipyard. None of the companies agreed to comment. The deals are expected to be signed during a visit to Egypt by French President Francois Hollande on April 18. Egypt had originally been reported to be in talks to buy two French military satellites. - Reuters France has decided to deploy 1,600 additional police officers to bolster security at its borders and on public transport following the deadly blasts in Brussels on Tuesday, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve said. A total of 400 additional police officers will boost security in the greater Paris area, and military patrols will be refocused on public transport sites, the minister said after an emergency meeting with President Francois Hollande. Cazeneuve said the country continued to face an "extremely high" security threat four months after the Islamist militant attacks in Paris in November that killed 130 people. "After this morning's attacks in Brussels, I decided to deploy 1,600 extra police officers at different points across the country, at border checkpoints, and also on air, sea and rail transport infrastructure," Cazeneuve told reporters. (Reporting by James Regan; Editing by Leigh Thomas) Meanwhile, German authorities have stepped up security measures at airports, train stations and the borders with Belgium, France, the Netherlands and Luxembourg following explosions in Brussels, a spokesman for the federal police said on Tuesday. An additional police presence was noticeable at Frankfurt airport and train station on Tuesday morning, a Reuters eyewitness said. Reuters President Barack Obama on Tuesday called for nations around the world to unite to defeat terrorism, saying the thoughts and prayers of Americans were with Belgium after the attacks in Brussels that killed 34 people. "We must be together regardless of nationality or race or faith in fighting against the scourge of terrorism," Obama told Cubans during a historic visit to Havana. "We can and we will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world," he added. Earlier in the day, US Defence Secretary Ash Carter said the Brussels attack will not undermine the will of the US and its allies to ramp up the campaign against Islamic State. "No attack will affect our resolve to accelerate the defeat of ISIL," Carter told a hearing of the House Armed Services Committee, using an acronym for Islamic State. He did not attribute blame for the attacks on any specific group. The US was monitoring the situation in Brussels, including ensuring that US personnel and citizens were accounted for, he said. "We also stand ready to provide assistance to our friends and allies in Europe as necessary," he added.-Reuters Jet Airways, the second-biggest carrier by market share in India, will launch daily non-stop flights between India and Amsterdam next week, thus, shifting its base in Europe from Brussels to Amsterdam, said a report. From March 27, Jet Airways will operate two daily non-stop flights from its international hubs in Mumbai and Delhi, to Amsterdam Airport Schiphol, The Economic Times reported. "Jet Airways will also operate a daily flight to Toronto from Amsterdam. Schedules of all three flights have been planned to allow quick, convenient and seamless connections between India and Toronto via Amsterdam," said a release from the carrier. The airline has also entered into a codeshare partnership with KLM Royal Dutch Airlines and Delta Air Lines to provide convenient connections for guests to and from destinations across Europe and North America via Amsterdam, the report said. Fathi Khogaly has been appointed as the new general manager of Grand Hyatt Dubai, a luxurious property in the UAE emirate. Khogaly joins Grand Hyatt from his recent role as general manager at Hyatt Regency Dubai. Prior to this, he managed Grand Hyatt Dubai as hotel manager between 2010 and 2013. I am very excited about the opportunity and very happy to return to Grand Hyatt Dubai. I am honoured to have been given this great chance to manage and lead one of our flagship properties in the region, said Khogaly. An Egyptian national, Khogaly started his career with Hyatt in 1987 in Egypt, at the Hyatt Regency Cairo, in the food and beverage (F&B) department. He transferred to Hyatt Regency Dubai in 1988 and worked for 10 years in various roles in the F&B, catering and events departments. He also held the roles of resident manager at Hyatt Regency Dubai from 2007 to 2009, apartment manager for The Galleria from 2006 to 2007 and opening director of events at the Grand Hyatt Dubai from 2002 2005. - TradeArabia News Service More than 6,000 aviation enthusiasts experienced the wonder of Emirates flagship aircraft - the A380 at India Aviation, a five-day international air show held in Hyderabad. This marks the second time in the shows five-year history that the iconic aircraft has been on display. The popular double decker, standing over 24 metres high and with a wing span of nearly 80 metres- was on display between March 16 and 17 at Begumpet Airport, giving special guests the opportunity to tour its interior and experience its award-winning products in all classes of travel. The A380 also received a special visit from Indias Union Civil Aviation Minister, Ashok Gajapathi Raju and the Governor of State of Telangana - E. S. L. Narasimhan, who toured the impressive aircraft guided by Emirates cabin crew. The India Aviation Air show is a significant event in the region and we were happy to be back in Hyderabad with our iconic A380. Since Emirates launched its A380 service to Mumbai in 2014, more than 349,000 passengers have flown on the aircraft, and feedback from their experience is overwhelmingly positive. said Ahmed Khoory, Emirates senior vice president, commercial operations, West Asia and Indian Ocean. Our customers in India can also experience the double decker by connecting through our Dubai hub to more than 30 A380 destinations. With its quiet cabins, on-board lounge and shower spas in premium cabins, the A380 products and services are unparalleled in the industry, giving all our passengers on board an unsurpassed travel experience, he added. Emirates A380 static tour takes the guests across the aircrafts two decks, giving them a real-life glimpse of the spacious seats in Economy Class, lie-flat seats in Business Class and the 14- luxury First Class Private Suites. Guests also got to see the A380 Shower Spas and on-board Business Class lounge that are both fully set-up and equipped to portray an authentic inflight experience. Emirates is the largest operator of the A380, flying to 36 destinations around the world from Dubai. Recently, the airline announced that Vienna will be joining its A380 network in 2016. The airline currently has 74 A380s in service and has a further 66 on firm order. - TradeArabia News Service Bernie Sanders canceled both of his upcoming appearances in Wyoming hours after announcing he would visit the state. A winter storm set to hit Wyoming on Tuesday night prompted the cancellation, according to Wyoming Democrats Executive Director Aimee Van Cleave. The Democratic presidential candidate was scheduled to speak Wednesday afternoon at the Parkway Plaza Hotel and Convention Center in Casper. Later in the day, Sanders planned to speak in Laramie at the Laramie Community Ice & Events Center. In a statement after the cancellation, Sanders campaign said the candidate was looking forward to visiting the state in the near future. The Vermont senator is challenging former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination. Despite his outsider status, hes drawn considerable support, especially from younger voters. Former President Bill Clinton had planned to visit Cheyenne on Wednesday to campaign for his wife, Hillary, but the event was also canceled because of the weather forecast. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama visited Casper during the 2008 Democratic primary. But in heavily Republican Wyoming, the states Democrats are receiving unprecedented attention from the Clinton and Sanders campaigns, said Aimee Van Cleave, executive director of the Wyoming Democratic Party. In Wyoming, Clinton has 11 staffers. Sanders has four full-time staffers and two full-time volunteers traveling with them. An incredible amount of resources are being spent on Wyomings delegates, Van Cleave said. Wyoming will send 18 delegates to the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia in July. Fourteen of those are up for grabs. Four are superdelegates who have committed to Clinton, Van Cleave said. The process of selecting delegates in Wyoming begins April 9, at county Democratic conventions. Delegates chosen at those conventions will attend the Wyoming State Democratic Convention in May in Cheyenne, where the national delegates will be selected. But the proportion of candidates selected to go to the national convention for each candidate is based on the proportion of delegates they win at the county conventions on April 9, Van Cleave said. Its unlikely that Wyoming will go blue in the November presidential race, but in the presidential primary we have the opportunity to make a difference, since both candidates are competing for who will win this state, Van Cleave said. To participate in the Democratic caucuses, the deadline to register as Democrats is Friday. But many county clerk offices will be closed for Good Friday including Natrona Countys so people must be registered by Thursday. You can't woo a crowd of 5,000 rabid Bernie fans without working up an appetite ... So where do you chow down if you're Bernie Sanders in Arizona? Answer: Elvira's Restaurant in Tubac. The presidential hopeful stopped by the upscale Mexican restaurant Saturday on his way to Nogales, where he visited the international border fence to highlight immigration issues. (It's very possible he ate at a Tucson restaurant as well, so if you have any info let us know in the comments!) Tara Shultz, who was one of the two servers who waited on Sanders, said Sanders stopped in for lunch along with about 30 members of his campaign. "It was like a scene from a movie," she said. "They were on computers and laptops and there was so much going on, like 'Bernie's here, Bernie's here!' ... People started randomly coming into the restaurant. It was fun, it was intense." In order to accommodate everyone on such short notice, half of the members set up at a table, and the other half dined in the wine bar. They stayed for about an hour, Shultz said. So what did he eat? The green chicken enchiladas on the lunch menu, which feature "shredded all-white chicken" with "tomatillo-based salsa verde, sour cream and crumbled cheese garnished with cilantro." Apparently, Bernie thought they were "awesome." As far as dining etiquette goes, Shultz said that Sanders was "nice," but that the group looked like they were getting down to business and planning the rest of their day. Although Bernie didn't pick up the tab himself, one of the campaign members "was very generous" with the tip and left an extra gratuity beyond the required 20 percent. The handful of regulars barely look beyond their beers and cocktails when Austin Counts settles into a far corner of the Flycatcher bar. It is a Monday night in February, not exactly a party night. Counts strums on his guitar then fiddles with the tuning pegs while Tom Walbank blows into his harmonica, emitting what sounds like a quiet cough. The pair light into a cover of the Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee blistering blues rocker Walk On, with Counts singing the bluesy refrain Im gonna keep on walkin, till I find my way back home. When they finish, a few of the patrons politely applaud. One lets out a roaring Yeah! then returns to his beer and conversation. Background noise for a Monday night neighborhood happy hour. Once upon a rock-n-roll fantasy, Counts would have wanted to be the center of the audiences attention. Today, hes happy to be their distraction. For me its not even about them listening. Its about me going out and playing, he says. Living the fantasy There was a time in Austin Counts life when he wanted the spotlight, the glamour and all the bling that went with being bigger than life. He thought that would come with his first band, a hip-hop/funk group he formed when he was 15 and a sophomore at Catalina Foothills High School. The Union 5 went from playing parties and teen clubs to being the house band at Maranas New West and Gotham club. We were making $500 a show, two and three nights a week, Counts recalled, which back in 1999, when the band members were 18, 19 and 20 years old was a lot of money. It didnt take long before the money and minor celebrity went to their heads and members clashed over creative differences. Counts went out on his own, taking the stage name Dolemite Jones a nod to the Blaxploitation film genre that he loved and started doing solo rap shows using a PlayStation and prerecorded CDs. His star moment came when he opened for the rapper Nelly. Not long afterwards, Counts found himself in jail on a DUI charge. He was 20 years old. Six months later, at 21, he was arrested for his second DUI. I remember thinking What the hell am I doing with my life? he said, adding that his legal woes were all of his own doing. It was deserved. He served his jail time, lost his license and accumulated thousands of dollars in fines, which he settled after signing a record deal with a small indie label. Not much came of the deal, and Counts moved on to form Dolemite Jones as a band in 2001. They mostly played rap with funk influences along the lines of George Clinton and P-Funk. They played local clubs, toured the region and recorded an album. The run lasted a few years before the group disbanded in 2004, when several members started down questionable paths. They were drinking heavily and getting involved in drugs, and Counts said he wanted nothing to do with it. He had spent too much of his life witnessing the devastation of drugs. Life lessons Austin Counts was born in Alabama and raised by his mother after she and his father divorced. He grew up in the South, partly in South Carolina and then Houston, Texas. The family was poor, he said, bouncing from one bad neighborhood to another due largely to his mothers heroin addiction. He and his brother drifted between relatives before coming to Tucson to live with their father when Counts was 13. It was difficult growing up until we moved to Tucson, he recalled. Coming to Tucson, and living in the foothills, was a culture shock. I had a Southern accent and the kids here were upper-middle class, Counts said. They had stuff I didnt have. For a while it was so, so different, and a bit surreal. Suddenly we had a house and we were getting what we wanted. Counts found his soul in music after the move. His father, Nimbus Brewery owner James Counts, bought him a guitar and he taught himself to play when he was 13. I was more of an auditory learner, he said. I would listen to something and then play it. By the time he was 15, he had fully bought into the idea of becoming a rock star. A decade later, the idea gave way to reality and Counts started writing his second chapter. Growing up Counts was older than most of his classmates when he enrolled in the University of Arizona School of Journalism in 2008. He had always had an interest in writing and wanted to become a broadcast journalist. In his junior year, Counts and two classmates, including Arizona Daily Star reporter Curt Prendergast, teamed up to produce Another Side of the Border, a 30-minute documentary that examined life along the Arizona-Sonora border. The project went beyond the issues of immigration and drug smuggling to look more closely at the relationship between Arizona and Sonora. Counts graduated in 2011 and continued his journalism career, taking a job at the Nogales International newspaper in Nogales, Arizona. He commuted between Tucson and Nogales for three months. When his editors insisted that he move to Nogales at the end of his probation period, he resigned. He was married and his wife, Leila, was expecting their first child. The couple, who now have two children, didnt want to leave Tucson. Counts said he tried to get journalism jobs in Tucson but the industry was reeling from the downsizing that started with the economic crash in 2008. The Tucson Citizen had shuttered and other outlets were dramatically cutting staff. So Counts, 36, returned to a job he had done as a teen: cooking. He went to work for a retirement home, where he stayed for a year before becoming kitchen manager at The B-Line diner on North Fourth Avenue. He imagined going into the restaurant business for himself one day, maybe start out with a food truck. And then he saw the For Rent sign go up in late spring 2013 on the hole-in-the-wall space at 425 N. Fourth Ave. that was briefly home to Buddhas Dog House. With the help of his father-in-law his angel donor Counts signed the lease and launched the 4th Avenue Delicatessen in fall 2013. Entrepreneur and family man Austin Counts arrives at the deli a few minutes before 11 a.m. on a Monday, just as a few regulars start streaming in. He knows his customers by name and knows what they like. David from United Fire orders the T-Town on wheat turkey and bacon with pepper jack cheese and a special T-Town mayo. A woman who works at an office around the corner picks up a variety bag of sandwiches for her boss. Four girls who look like theyve stepped right out of a sorority house order as a man maneuvers the long narrow path from the door to the counter. His hair is disheveled and his baggy jeans crumpled as if he slept in them. He plops three dollars on the counter. The usual? Counts inquires. The man nods his head. Help yourself to a soda and bag of chips, Counts says. The man grabs a Coke from the refrigerator and a bag of chips from the shelf before taking a seat at a table close to the door. These are all people from the neighborhood, Counts explains. They come in here and they need to get their food quickly, but we talk about their lives and their jobs. It makes them want to come back. Its like Cheers, where everybody knows your name. Counts at home When he is not working, you will find Counts at home with his wife Leila and two young kids, Alex, 4, and Josephine, 2. Hes a great dad. Hes very involved. He cares a lot about his kids, said Leila Counts, assistant director of her familys 35-year-old Sandbox Early Childhood learning center. The couple has known one another since high school He said he had a crush on me, I kind of had a little crush on him but didnt start dating until 2010 after reconnecting through social media. Within six months, they were married. In many ways, Leila Counts, who has a masters degree in counseling psychology, is her husbands anchor, offering an optimistic alternative to his tumultuous childhood. With all his family issues, hes totally redefining what it means to be in a family and redefining for himself what that means, she says. His commitment to being a part of our family and being a husband and great father is really important to him. Hes done a lot of the really hard work to put the past in the past and be kind and be patient and be a good father. And be present. Walking back to music Tucson musician Tom Walbank started coming into the restaurant soon after Counts opened. The two had known each other from Counts early music days and it didnt take long before they were engaging in deep musical conversations. We would be talking about great blues guys like Lightnin Hopkins. Its not often as a blues player that you meet people who are into the old style, Walbank said. The conversations continued for six months, until one day last July when Walbank came to Counts with a proposal: Take over Walbanks gig at Sky Bar Tucson just up the street on North Fourth Avenue. It would be no big deal, Walbank assured him. Two 45-minutes sets. Just come up with enough music to fill 45 minutes then repeat it. Counts had a week. He mined his original songs, plucked a few solid covers and put together two completely different 45-minute sets. It was more of a challenge of, Could I pull it off? he said. It was a good way of proving to myself I could get into it again. Walbank knew Counts had untapped potential and boundless talent. It would be a shame to waste all that. He played me some of his stuff that hed been recording and they were really good, soulful songs mixed with blues, Walbank said. I was impressed and I wanted to get him back out there. His deli conversations with Walbank also reignited Counts musical passions. For months maybe even years, if he was completely honest with himself he had fantasized about playing music again. Its always been in me, wanting to get back out there and play in front of people, Counts said. I didnt take it as seriously until Tom kind of showed me that I could do this again. I might just (have remained) the guy who runs the deli and have my music. But being thrown under the bus and showing me that I could do it showed me that I would be a fool not to continue on with something I loved. I knew that music was something that was always important to him and I didnt understand why he had stopped, said Leila Counts, who said that with the exception of a few times in high school she had never seen her husband perform until recently. I think when he was younger, like many young musicians, he just wanted to chase the fame. Now he does it for the love of music. I think its a lot healthier and lot more fulfilling. love of playing Since last summer, Austin Counts has found a weekly home at Flycatcher, playing the Monday happy hour with Walbank. He picks up gigs around town, many of them with Walbank. In February, Walbank produced Counts indie EP Pima County Jail. The title song takes Counts back to jail and the time he spent in solitary confinement. He said it was his fault; he ditched his work release to hang out with friends, going so far as to arrange for a car to meet him at the work release location. Walbank described the project as a mirror into Counts musical soul. You can be a good player but have miserable songs. Austin was telling interesting stories and he was open to learn, Walbank said. He understood that it was journey. If you understand that, youve got a future ahead of you. Counts, who earlier this month launched a side business selling handmade trucker hats with repurposed patches he picks up at garage sales and thrift stores, isnt really looking for a future so much as a creative outlet. Music isnt about trying to make a career off of it and trying to be famous, he said between sets at The Flycatcher on that Monday night last month. Its about the love of playing music, being able to develop your soul and develop your playing and put it out. Someone is going to listen at some point and time. of Tucson, AZ passed away Thursday, March 17, 2016. She is survived by two children, Alicia of Peoria, AZ and Eric of Tucson and by her sister, Pamela Hopkirk of Orange Grove, CA. Peggy was born in Hemet, CA on March 15, 1949 and moved to Tucson shortly thereafter. She graduated from Catalina High School in 1967 and attended the University of Arizona. She truly cherished her horses and was involved in the Tucson hunter/jumper community. She was a docent at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum. Peggy was a gentle woman who felt most comfortable when caring for animals. There will be an informal memorial gathering on Wednesday, March 23, 2016 in Tucson at the Juan Santa Cruz Picnic area on N. Kinney Road near the Desert Museum: Gather at 3:00 p.m., memorial at 4:00 p.m. Details: http://bit.ly/1Zizb7C Memorial gifts may be made in Peggy's name to Therapeutic Riding of Tucson (TROT), 8920 East Woodland Road, Tucson, AZ 85749. Arrangements by ADAIR FUNERAL HOMES, Dodge Chapel. Harold B. Segel, 85, died March 16, 2016 of an apparent stroke. Born in Boston on September 13, 1930, he was the son of Abraham B. and Florence A. Segel of Brookline, MA. Considered by many as the dean of international Slavic scholars, Harold was professor emeritus of Slavic literatures and of comparative literature at Columbia University. He graduated from Boston Latin School in 1947, Boston College in 1951 with a degree in modern languages and Harvard University with a Ph. D. in Slavic languages and literatures in 1955. He began his teaching career at the University of Florida in 1955 and in January of 1959 joined the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Columbia University. At Columbia, he held appointments in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, the School of the Arts, the School of International and Public Affairs, and the School of General Studies. He was director of graduate studies in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, 1977 -1980; member, Council for Research in the Humanities, Columbia University, 1977 - 1979; chairman of the Council, 1978 -1979; member, the Columbia University Senate, 1978 - 1980, 1980 - 1982; and director, Institute on East Central Europe, 1978 - 1988. He held visiting professorships at Indiana University, the University of Pennsylvania and Stockholm University, Sweden. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Kosciuszko Foundation and the Polish Institute of Arts and Sciences in America, both in New York, NY. The recipient of numerous fellowships, grants and awards, he was twice decorated in 1975 by the Polish government for contributions on behalf of Polish culture, first at the Ministry of Culture in Warsaw and again at the Polish Consulate in New York. Harold's extensive publications fall into several areas: Polish literature, Russian literature, East European studies, German and Austrian literatures, and comparative literature. In the field of Polish literature, he was the author of The Major Comedies of Alexander Fredro; Polish Romantic Drama; Renaissance Culture in Poland: The Rise of Humanism, 1470 - 1543; Stranger in Our Midst: Images of the Jew in Polish Literature; and Political Thought in Renaissance Poland: An Anthology in English. He was also an editor of Poles and Jews: Myth and Reality in the Historical Context. His translation of Aleksander Fredro's Topsy Turvy Talk, Being the Napoleonic Memoirs of Count Alexander Fredro, initiated the Polish Review Library of Polish Classics series. In the field of Russian literature, he published: The Literature of Eighteenth-Century Russia: A History and Anthology in two volumes; The Trilogy of Alexander Sukhovo-Kobylin; Twentieth-Century Russian Drama from Gorky to the Present and The Walls Behind the Curtain: East European Prison Literature, 1945 - 1990. In the field of East European studies, he was the author of The Columbia Guide to the Literatures of Eastern Europe Since 1945 and The Columbia Literary History of Eastern Europe Since 1945. In the field of Austrian and German literatures, he published: The Vienna Coffeehouse Wits, 1890-1938 (commercially his most successful book), Egon Erwin Kisch: The Raging Reporter and a translation from the German of Travel Shadows by Justinus Kerner. In the field of comparative literature, he published: The Baroque Poem: A Comparative Survey; Turn-of-the-Century Cabaret: Paris, Barcelona, Berlin Munich, Vienna, Cracow, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Zurich; Pinocchio's Progeny: Puppets, Marionettes, Robots, and Automatons in Modernist and Avant-Garde Drama; and Body Ascendant: Modernism and the Physical Imperative. He is survived by his wife, Jeannette Jung Segel of Tucson and son, Abbott Gerson Segel, of New York, NY. At the request of the family services will be private. Arrangements by EVERGREEN MORTUARY. To leave condolences please visit www.evergreen-tucson.com. Four locations in or around downtown, including the Pima County Attorney's Office, were evacuated this afternoon after receiving bomb threats, authorities said. In addition to the county attorney's office, 32 N. Stone Ave., two El Rio facilities- Community Health Center, 839 W. Congress St., and the Neighborhood Center, 1390 W. Speedway Blvd.- were evacuated, said Officer Dan Lucas, a Tucson Police Department spokesman. The fourth building, located at 300 West Congress Street, houses IRS offices and the U.S. Immigration Court. The first call came in shortly before 11 a.m., the person on the line indicating that there was a bomb inside of the building. All four buildings decided to self-evacuate, Lucas said. As of 2:30 p.m., police had cleared two of the buildings. The closure of Tucsons Cherrybell mail-processing center will be further delayed until the Postal Service has completed updated studies into the planned consolidation of postal facilities across the country. On Monday, U.S. Rep. Raul Grijalva said he received notification of the closure deferral, which is the second one since last year. He said he is hoping the closure will be delayed for at least another year. This is letting me know that it is difficult to defend the closure, said Grijalva, who has been asking for more than three years that the Cherrybell Main Post Office, 1501 S. Cherrybell Stravenue, remain open to mail processing. The study has to be a study based on apples to apples, said Grijalva, explaining that there are postal centers that serve fewer people than Cherrybell that are not on the chopping block. In a news release, U.S. Rep. Martha McSally said she called for updated studies before the proposed consolidation of postal facilities, and Deputy Postmaster General Ronald A. Stroman confirmed the current studies will be updated and reviewed before any future decisions are made. I am pleased to see the Postal Service commit to take a fresh look at the situation around the country before making any new decisions related to Cherrybell, McSally said in the release. Earlier this month, McSally was joined by 33 lawmakers in a letter to Postmaster General Megan Brennan calling for a new look at the closure plans. The first phase of Cherrybells consolidation by the postal service to save money was in February 2013 when it consolidated the processing of mail originating in Tucson to Phoenix. The remainder of the consolidation was originally set for April 18, 2015, and was then deferred to July 11, 2015. It was postponed again, indefinitely. If Cherrybells mail services are moved to Phoenix, then the only function left at the Cherrybell station would be retail services and post office boxes. Consolidating the processing of mail to Phoenix will result in mail delivery delays for Tucson. Local leaders have said this delay will affect everything from businesses who rely on mail service to people waiting for their medications and retirees waiting for pension checks. Grijalva said he is pushing for answers about how long the deferral will be, and is hoping it is for another year so that a comprehensive study is completed. He also said a year will give people in Southern Arizona time to mobilize and push beyond deferred closure to push to leave it open. In addition to Southern Arizonans, Grijalva said, This issue now has bipartisan members of Congress supporting a transparent, comprehensive study, which makes for a strong case to keep Cherrybell open. The credit has to go to the patrons of the postal service in Southern Arizona who have never given up on this, and have supported a comprehensive study, Grijalva said. The Amphitheater School District will build a new school in Oro Valley which would focus on science, technology, engineering and math. The new school is scheduled to open for the 2017-2018 school year and serve about 500 students. Presidential Preference Election Polls open: 6 a.m.-7 p.m. Tuesday, March 22. Bring ID: Every voter must show show proof of identity before receiving a ballot. That ID must include the voter's photograph, name and address. An Arizona driver or identification license, tribal enrollment card or other federal, state, or local government issued identification are among the acceptable forms. Go to recorder.pima.gov for specifics requirements. For more information or to find your polling place: Call the Pima County Recorder's office at 740-4330 or go online to recorder.pima.gov On April 10, Jim Wood Jr. will raise a toast to his grandfather, Bill Wood. He hopes that others with family members or friends impacted by Alzheimers disease will do the same at the Sixth Annual Southern Arizona Wine to Remember to benefit the Southern Arizona Region of the Alzheimers Association Desert Southwest Chapter. It was a blast last year. Everyone had a really good time, and I think everyone was there for the same reason: One way or another they have been affected by this disease, said Jim, who witnessed the progression of Alzheimers disease from Bills diagnosis in 1993 until his death in 2000. It is helpful and refreshing to talk to other people who have had to care for family members who have passed on or currently have the disease. Last year we had some people there who were newly diagnosed, and it was interesting to talk to them as well. Jim Wood Sr. moved his family from Phoenix to Tucson in 1994 in order to help care for Bill. Jim Jr., who was 9 at the time, spent a great deal of time with grandfather. I got to see on the front line what a horrible disease this is. ... He went from being an incredibly funny and intelligent individual who knew everything and everyone around town to not knowing his own name or anyone elses and being a shell of himself, he said. Jim also saw the emotional and financial tolls that the disease can take on family, friends and caregivers. He said it was particularly difficult for his grandmother, who was Bills primary caregiver until he entered a memory-care facility in his final years. I saw the worry the family has to take on and the financial effects of the disease as well. My family was blessed. My grandfather had a successful career with Merrill Lynch and luckily he had the funds to pay for help, but obviously lots of families arent so lucky, said Jim, a financial adviser. Jims desire to assist others dealing with these issues has inspired his volunteerism with the Alzheimers Association Desert Southwest Chapter, which is dedicated to empowering and providing support for individuals, families, caregivers and communities affected by dementia in Arizona and southern Nevada. The chapter provides a wide range of advocacy, services and programs including a 24-hour helpline 1-800-272-3900 for information and referral to local resources; an Alzheimers resource library; confidential, free family care consultation to assist with guidance on care options, interventions, and planning for the future; and support groups for individuals with early stage dementia and caregivers. Additionally, education programs promote awareness about Alzheimers and related dementias, while early stage programming engages and educates those diagnosed with Alzheimers and their families. The nonprofit organization also promotes and funds research. The need for all services continues to grow, according to Kelly Raach, regional director of the chapters Southern Arizona Region. In Arizona, an estimated 120,000 people age 65 and older were living with Alzheimers in 2015; that statistic is expected to increase to 150,000 by 2020, according to facts and figures compiled by the National Alzheimers Association. For every person living with the disease, another four are touched by it as a family members, friends or caregivers. In 2014 statewide, 314,000 caregivers provided 357 million hours of unpaid care for those living with dementia. When people come to us, so many of them say, I felt like I was on an island by myself and suddenly they realize, I am not alone. We want them to feel like there is a place for them to go and make sure that they have support in place so no one feels like they are on this journey alone, Raach said. Raach said fundraisers such as A Wine to Remember generate funds that are vital to local programming while promoting awareness that Alzheimers is not a normal part of aging, but a progressive disease of the brain with no cure. We are slowly peeling back the layers of stigma associated with the disease. For lots of older adults it was OK to have physical conditions, but having something wrong with their mind or memory wasnt socially acceptable, she said. The Desert Southwest Chapter is also making an effort to ensure that educational information and services are available to the diverse cultural communities in Southern Arizona. We are very diverse in Southern Arizona, and lots of cultures believe in caring for aging family members themselves no matter what, while other cultures are more inclined to seek help, Raach said. We are trying to reach out to all different groups and cultures to make sure they can access the services and support they need. PHOENIX If Maricopa County is an indication, a lot of folks already have decided who they want to be the next president. It just may be that person is no longer running. Maricopa County Recorder Helen Purcell said Monday she had sent out 894,135 early ballots to the 1.25 million people eligible to vote in her county. And so far she had gotten back slightly more than 464,000. In Pima County, Recorder F. Ann Rodriguez said in a news release that 136,946 vote-by-mail ballots had been processed by the end of the day Friday. Democrats in Pima County had 76,744 ballots processed, while Republicans had 60,001. The totals accounted for about 61 percent of mailed ballots for both parties. The number of people voting early is no surprise. The ease of the process has resulted for years in more people casting their ballots by mail than in person on election day. But the returns also suggest that some of those voters may have jumped the gun a bit. Purcell said that 393,358 of those early ballots had come in before this past Wednesday. Thats when Marco Rubio concluded there was no way he could get the Republican nomination and folded his tent. Election officials will count the votes for Rubio, just as they will for Jeb Bush, Chris Christie and all the other Republicans who had gotten their names on the ballot. There are 14 names in all. Ditto for the Democrat side, where six candidates qualified for the ballot, though at this point Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are the only ones left standing. And, no, theres no way for those who already voted to get back the envelope and try again. Part of the reason people may have voted early is that Arizona law says only ballots received by county election officials by 7 p.m. on election day are counted. That pretty much makes anything dropped into the mail later than Friday risky at best. Some lawmakers have suggested altering the law to make any ballot legal that is postmarked by that deadline. Purcell doesnt think thats a good idea. The problem with that is not all of the post offices put a postmark on there, she said. Purcell said some early ballots come in with postmarks; others do not. So how do I determine whether that was really given to the post office prior to 7 oclock on election day? she asked. Those who are actually voting at the polls versus just dropping off early ballots will need photo identification. COOLIDGE The problem of blowing dust along the interstate will worsen in coming years, but detection and warning about the deadly threat is improving, experts at the 2016 Arizona Dust Storm Workshop said Monday. The problem is huge, said Arizona State University researcher Peter Hyde. Blowing dust in Central Arizona, including the dust that causes fatal crashes on Interstate 10, comes primarily from 350,000 acres of fallowed farmland, mostly in Pinal and Maricopa counties, he said. It is likely to increase with a hotter, drier climate and with reduced delivery of Central Arizona Project water and additional restrictions on groundwater pumping, said Hyde, a visiting professor with ASUs Environmental Fluid Dynamics Program. Restoration of dusty plots of land downwind of the interstate is needed, said Sen. Steve Farley, D-Tucson. Farley said he was caught in a dust-caused traffic pileup on Oct. 29, 2013, that came on so quickly there was no way signage or warnings would have helped. Three people died that day in a series of crashes. What youre doing here is saving lives he told the group of weather forecasters, transportation planners and academic researchers convened for the fifth straight year by the Phoenix and Tucson offices of the National Weather Service and the Arizona Department of Transportation. This years group included researchers and officials from Nevada, New Mexico, Texas and the state of Chihuahua in Mexico. Farley said he is working with federal soil conservationists to address the specific problem at his crash site, near some long-abandoned farmland between mileposts 212 and 214. He said a nearby 1979 project by the Natural Resources Conservation Service was successful in revegetating a small strip of land along I-10 and could be re-created at the crash site. Steve Smarik, Arizona resource conservationist for the weather service, said he thinks the 1979 test, which bulldozed berms and planted vegetation, successfully reduced blowing dust on the plot, but he has no data to show how much it helped. Smarik said the big hurdle is funding. Mitigating the dust problem in the West would require an army of conservationists akin to the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps, he said. It would be cheaper to build a 10-foot-high wall along the interstates in places where dust-caused accidents occur, he said. He joked that you would probably have to remove the sand dunes yearly. We need to disabuse ourselves of this notion that there is going to be easy mitigation or one answer, said University of Arizona researcher Kyle Rine, who has begun deploying a portable wind tunnel he built to measure dust coming off mine tailings to an I-10 hot spot near Picacho Peak. Dust storms come in three basic varieties, researchers said. The large-scale events that blow dust from state to state, and even across continents, are not seen in Arizona. The center of the state does get hit with towering haboobs caused by outflow winds associated with thunderstorms, Ken Waters, meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Phoenix, said. You can see those coming, he said, on radar and on the ground. They usually dont reduce visibility enough to cause wrecks. The killer storms are the narrow, low-lying dust channel events that pop up quickly and fly under the radar. Waters has developed a low-cost sensor to see the storms that the weather service cannot and deployed nine of them in areas identified as deadly by analyzing Arizona crash data. The sensor network made its first identification on Jan. 13 near Red Rock just north of Tucson, and the National Weather Service sent out an alert, he said. The weather service has issued more alerts about blowing dust in recent years, and the Arizona Department of Transportation has studied and improved its advice to drivers. Glenn Lader, of the National Weather Service office in Tucson, urged the group to focus on what can be done about mitigation of dust sources near the interstate, rather than the immensity of the problem. Lets tackle the hot spots, he said. OPINION: "While it is important to take on cutting edge programs for an institution, Best Practices would dictate a thorough analysis of the costs of a new program versus the proven effectiveness of that new program. After all, these are taxpayer funds we are dealing with," writes Nick Pierson, candidate for the Pima Community College Governing Board. Earthen architecture seems a grandiose term for the aspiring adoberos who were flinging mud at Pima Countys Canoa Ranch the other day. The term seems less than adequate, however, to describe the historic and stunningly beautiful Spanish mission churches at Tumacacori and San Xavier or the 650-year-old, four-story ruins at Casa Grande. Last week, a traveling band of national park preservationists and students learned the skills of making, building and preserving mud-based structures and applied those skills in conservation projects at the Canoa and Empire ranches, the mission at Tumacacori and the presidio at Tubac. Earthen architecture composes a vast majority of the vernacular architecture in the world, said architectural historian R. Brooks Jeffery. Its the most commonly used material, because it is the most readily available. It is also extremely vulnerable and techniques for preserving and restoring it need to be preserved as well, Jeffery said. He said the International Workshop on the Conservation and Restoration of Earthen Architecture (known by its Spanish acronym of TICRAT) seeks to elevate the humble building material and its craftsmen. The purpose really is twofold: valorizing adobe architecture. The buildings created of earth are equally valuable to those created of stone or any other material. The second is revalorizing the traditional craftsmen skills that produce it. In Mexico, they still valorize masons and adoberos. Here in the U.S., not so much. Needed Skills Jeffery is director of the University of Arizonas Drachman Institute, the outreach arm of the College of Architecture Planning and Landscape Architecture, which coordinated the workshop. The workshops have been organized since 1994 by the U.S. National Park Service and Mexicos Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia (INAH). Part of the reason for creating the partnership was a realization that park preservationists had specific skills that needed to be shared and that those with the skills were an aging group, said David Yubeta, who ran preservation programs at Tumacacori National Historical Park for 27 years until his retirement. The average age of restoration workers in the Park Service was 55, said Yubeta, We wanted a forum to talk to each other and learn what technologies weve all come up with. Training the next generation of preservationists is critical, he said. This years workshop was attended by 20 college students from six universities, in addition to park managers and preservationists in Mexico and the United States. Sarah Redden, who is pursuing her masters degree in historic preservation at Columbia University, said the workshop was an escape from a little bubble of learning about New York City architecture. I didnt know anything about earthen architecture or adobe, she said. Gabrielle Miller, who is working on a certificate in heritage conservation at the University of Arizona, said she was familiar with earthen architecture but appreciated the opportunity get her hands dirty actually making it. Sometimes, in the classroom, you become a really good writer, but you miss out on being able to connect to things to learn and to do the hands-on stuff, she said. Daniel Olvera, from the Baja California capital of Mexicali, is working on his doctorate in architecture at Universidad de Colima. He said he learned many techniques he can bring to his students in building construction and repair. His research involves figuring out why some adobe buildings in Mexicali survive earthquakes, while others crumble. Its partially the method of construction, he said, but primarily a function of the material used. The quality of the earth is the difference between a good adobe and a bad adobe, he said. Thats a lesson Yubeta learned during a U.S. Forest Service reconstruction project at Kentucky Camp in the Patagonia Mountains. He was brought in as the adobe expert. Every brick he made on site cracked, he said. The native soil had too much silt and not enough clay. That would have happened with the bricks used to rebuild a wall at the Canoa Ranch site, said Simon Herbert of Pima Countys Cultural Resources and Historic Preservation Office. They were made on-site, but the soil was imported from elsewhere. Breathing barriers The workshop is part skills-training and part Chemistry 101, Jeffrey said, from the composition of the soil and amendments used to make adobe blocks to the formulas for creating lime plaster that will allow adobe walls to shed rainwater, but still breathe enough to release any moisture that does seep in. Yubeta translated for Luis Fernando Guerrero Baca, of Universidad Auto noma Metropolitana of Xochimilco, as he mixed exact proportions of sand and lime with alum, lye soap or prickly-pear sap to create that breathing plaster. The real challenge to preserving adobe buildings, Yubeta said, is the continual maintenance they require. Adobe is a noble material, he said, but, unprotected, it tends to crumble back into the earth. That creates interesting questions for preservationists, who must decide whether to simply arrest that decline or restore buildings. The former option was taken at Tumacacori National Historical Park, where the remains of the mission are being maintained and not restored, said Yubeta. When repeat visitors would tell him you havent done anything here, he would take it as a compliment. At Canoa, Pima County has chosen to restore many of the buildings at what is now named the Historic Hacienda de la Canoa and Raul M. Grijalva Canoa Ranch Conservation Park. The ranch buildings are being restored or maintained at their period of cultural significance the ranching heyday of the 1940s and 1950s when it was known as the Manning Ranch and was the boyhood home of Rep. Raul Grijalva, D-Ariz., whose father worked there as a ranch hand. The 4,800-acre site has deeper historical significance, said Linda Mayro, Pima County cultural resources manager. Part of a Spanish land grant, it had been a working ranch since about 1820. It is in the historical floodplain of the Santa Cruz River and was a reliable source of water for Spanish missionaries and soldiers. It was first called Canoa in reports of the DeAnza expedition in 1774, which noted the hollowed out cottonwood logs, or canoas, used for water catchment by the Pima natives. Above the eastern riverbank, archaeologists have uncovered evidence of much earlier habitation. Building on history Even though the adobe wall workshop participants repaired Thursday is not, itself, all that historic or significant, it is part of something much larger. This is the embodiment of Arizona ranching history, historian Jeffery said. It is the boyhood home of a famous congressman. It represents layers of civilization from the Archaic Period all the way up to the 1950s, as well as the cultural landscape thats here. With care, adobe buildings can last indefinitely, said Jeffery. He worked several years for UNESCO in Yemen, where some mud buildings date to the time of Christ. You cant save them all, he said, nor should you. Help India! By IANS, Jammu: Jammu and Kashmirs ruling National Conference has set up a cell for the Kashmiri Pandit community, a party official said Friday. Support TwoCircles The cell will be headed by the partys legislative council (MLC) member and former chief secretary Vijay Bakaya, party president Farooq Abdullahs political advisor Aslam Goni said at a press conference here. Goni said Bakaya, with his experience and connectivity with the people at large, will be of a great help in articulating the cause of Kashmiri Pandit migrants. Bakaya said that he would devote himself to the upliftment of the community and get their problems of relief and rehabilitation addressed. Help India! By Zaidul Haque, TwoCircles.net Kolkata: In a clear departure from political parties releasing their manifesto before elections, the Students Islamic Organisation of India has released its West Bengal Assembly Election Manifesto 2016. SIO, a students organisation, presented the Election Manifesto with 29 demands, targeting the contesting candidates of all the political parties in West Bengal who are participating in the Assembly Election 2016. Support TwoCircles The manifestos primary demands include developing the education in the state besides maintaining communal harmony and fighting the fanatic forces. On the issue of education, the manifesto points out while the literacy rate in Kerala is 99%, it stands at only 77.08% in West Bengal. So, the new government must focus more on the education policy. The other demands are to increase the MBBS/MD/MD seats in medical colleges, development of the AMU campus of Murshidabad, more college and hostel in backward district, interest-free loan for higher studies and alcohol-free college campuses. Central President of SIO Ikbal Hussain at Press Conference in Kolkata At the release of the election manifesto, the organisations president of Ikbal Hussain said there is a need to improve the quality of the education in the state, giving special importance to technical and technological education. State Jamat-e Islami Hind president Muhammad Nuruddin said the trend of saffronising education poses a danger in the country and appealed to the secular political parties to consider the SIO election manifesto demands. (Photo: Sandip Saha) Help India! By Raqib Hameed Naik, TwoCircles.net Srinagar: The documentary film Children in Conflict Torn Kashmir produced by human rights activist Abdul Manan Bukhari was screened on the sidelines of the 31st Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in Geneva, Switzerland. Support TwoCircles The documentary, which highlights the extraordinary conditions in which the children are living in conflict zone of Jammu Kashmir and the problems they face, was screened before the audience at the All Parties Hurriyat Conference (APHC) headquarters at Rajbagh earlier this month. The international community should be informed about the situation of human rights violations in Kashmir and how the political uncertainty in Jammu & Kashmir is affecting Kashmiri children, both male and female, physically, mentally and socially, Manan told TwoCircles.net. Importantly, the documentary was scheduled to be screened on Wednesday, March 2 this month in a Srinagar-based hotel, but after district authorities raised objections on holding the screening at said venue, the venue was later changed to the APHC office in Rajbagh. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq, Chairman, APHC during the screening of documentary had promised to push for its screening in started 31st session of the United Nations in Geneva. During the function held at the screening of the documentary, the APHC said until an amicable solution for resolving Kashmir issue was found, Kashmiri children, youth, elderly people and women would continue to suffer from the situation arising from human rights violations. The new Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Centers recommendations for prostate cancer screening provide a model for prostate cancer screening that maximizes the benefits, in terms of reduction in prostate cancer-specific mortality, and minimizes harms to men from overdiagnosis and overtreatment. Andrew J. Vickers, PhD, Attending Research Methodologist, is a co-author on this publication, in press. Dr. Vickers research interests focus on models for risk prediction in medicine. One of his findings is that a single measure of prostate specific antigen (PSA) taken in middle age can predict aggressive prostate cancer up to 30 years following. He has also developed a statistical model to predict the result of prostate biopsy based on a panel of markers, and commercially available as the 4kScore. Here, Dr. Vickers speaks to UroToday about the rationale, deliberations, and conclusions of the authors of the new MSK recommendations to guide prostate cancer screening. Q: You and your co-authors state that the initiative to review and revise other, older, recommendations for prostate cancer screening was to address three limitations of previous screening guidelines. The first of these you name is an insufficient evidence base. Could you clarify this? We originally put our guidelines together as an internal document in 2011. At the time, there were certainly some limitations with existing guidelines. This was partly because the randomized trials on prostate cancer screening came out in 2009 and it often takes a bit of time for scientific findings to sink in. What we typically saw in the guidelines at the time was for men to be screened annually, and that the screening should include a DRE and PSA. Yet there was no evidence supporting annual screening, versus less often, such as every 2 years or 4 years. And there was good evidence, even then, that DRE should not be used as a primary screening test. If a patient has a low PSA, we should not be conducting a DRE. That was the situation at the time, and as we point out in the article, a lot of guidelines have shifted and are now more congruent with best evidence and, as a result, what we said then is what we are saying now. Q: A second shortcoming of previous screening guidelines the new MSKCC screening recommendations cite is a failure to link screening with treatment. Could you speak to this by an example of what you cite as a critical deficit? Taking a tube of blood and measuring the PSA doesnt save a patients life, but it also doesnt cause much harm. How we save someones life is by treating a cancer when it is localized and preventing it from spreading. How we cause harm is by treating a cancer that never would have affected someones lifeby giving a man radiotherapy or surgery even though his cancer would never become apparent in the course of that mans natural life. We cant think of screening as merely what do we do with the PSA and who we biopsy. We also have to think of whom we treat. We state clearly in the guidelines: prostate cancer is not an indication for treatment. At the time, the guidelines said nothing about treatment: they would say: Here is how you find prostate cancer. The NCCN guidelines now say you cant see this in isolation: you have to link the two togetherdiagnosing prostate cancer and how you treat prostate cancer the key thing being to avoid treatment of low risk disease. Q: Lack of risk stratification, I understand, is a shortcoming of other, or older guidelines. How do the 2016 MSK screening recommendations address this shortcoming? Lack of risk stratification characterizes both older and even existing guidelines. [According to] guidelines then, and now in many cases, when a man goes in for a PSA test and is told that his PSA is normal, his doctor says, Ill see you next year for a repeat test. What our guidelines say is that, depending on what the PSA is, [clinicians] can tell the patient to come back in 2 years or 4 years or 8 years. That is risk stratification. There is an important issue in terms of compliance. If I told a man, You are fine: see me next year, he may or may not come back. But if I say to him: Its nothing to panic about, but youre a bit high risk, so I really need to see you back in the next couple of years, he is much likelier to come back. We have shown that nearly half of deaths [from prostate cancer] before the age of 75 occur in men in the top 10% of PSA levels. Q: How have you converted that into a recommendation? We have said that men need to be informed about their risk and that screening should focus on those men at higher risk. You are better off spending your time chasing the man with a PSA of 2.5 ng / mL two years ago and who has not returned, than in getting more blood from a man who had a PSA of 0.5 ng / mL 12 months ago. MSKCC Risk-Stratified Approach to Early Detection of Localized Prostate CancerPSA test from age 45-70 with possible biopsy for PSA 3 ng/mL PSA test from age 45-70 with possible biopsy for PSA 3 ng/mL Regular screening for PSA 1 ng/mL and < 3 ng/mL Infrequent screening ending at age 60 for PSAs <1 ng/mL Q: You commented that most men can stop screening at the age of 60. Can you expand on this as a rule of thumb? Prostate cancer is a very slow-growing disease. If we havent seen evidence of it by the time a man is 60, it is not likely to affect him during the course of his natural life. What we actually showed in a paper in the British Medical Journal2 was exactly that. If a man of 60 has a low PSA, below 1 ng / mL, it is very, very unlikely that PSA testing will save his life. If we continue PSA screening, there is pretty good chance we will find a cancer, and if a cancer is found, its likely to be treated. So, a man with a low PSA at the age of 60 gets no benefit from continuing screening for prostate cancer, but can be harmed by over diagnosis and over treatment. A man with a low PSA at age 60 (<1 2 ng/mL) gets no benefit from continued screening for prostate cancer, but can be harmed. Q: In your Methods section, you and your co-authors make the point that you are addressing men in good health, rather thanas other recommendations have phrase itmen with a projected life expectancy of, say, 10 years, for example. What was the thinking behind this? The 10-year life expectancy was never adequately justified. It was not generated by a statistical model showing that if a mans life expectancy was 10 years or more, then screening is going to help him as opposed to if it is less than 10 years. It was always just a rough rule of thumba guess. In the screening trials, there is some evidence of a survival benefit at 8 to 10 years. The problem is that life expectancy at 10 years means that about half of people are going to die before 10 years. So, for prostate cancer screening, that would mean that only about half of men would have any chance of benefit. So we are more comfortable saying, Lets just deal in terms of age and the use of clinical judgment. Q: In the text of the 2016 MSK Guideline you describe a decision to depart from the use of a systematic method to search and select evidence for analysis, instead focusing on data from three well-known, high-quality studies, complemented by other data. Could you speak to the reasoning behind this decision? In guidelines, researchers typically ask questions such as How should we treat a particular kind of heart problem? The way to approach this would be to look at all the randomized trials investigating the different treatments for this heart problem and conduct a systematic review of them. The systematic review might show that heparin is better than aspirin, so we are going to recommend that a patient be given heparin rather than aspirin. That makes sense. How could we do this for prostate cancer screening? We dont do trials in which, for example, half of patients get screened every 2 years and half get screened every 4 years. We would have to look at the literature. If we do a literature search on whether DRE helps in the diagnosis of prostate cancer, we will end up with thousands of papers, a morass of data with no obvious way of sifting through it. When the USPSTF tried to do this, it came up with nonsense. You are better off restricting a review to a few very good studies. We also made some pretty uncontroversial statements such as that there is a lot of over-diagnosis. We cite the data for that from outside the three key studies. The question of whether PSA screening works and what should be the intervals for it we based on three high-quality studies. This was a scientific judgment on the best way of getting evidence on how one should screen and what the thresholds should befrom a limited number of high-quality studies. Q: In the larger sense, the new recommendations, I believe, aim to retain the mortality benefits of aggressive screening, and reduce the harms of over-detection and overtreatment. Are you satisfied that the recommendations could bring about this outcome? If these guidelines are followed, our best evidence suggests that we would reduce over-diagnosis and overtreatment of prostate cancer and retain most of the mortality benefits of screening. In the past 10 years the urology community has quite clearly failed, and failed badly, to change practice appropriately. We are still treating men with low-risk disease, even those well into their 70s. We are still biopsying men in the 70s and 80s with moderately elevated PSAs. Weve failed as a community to communicate to internists and primary care physicians that they should not be doing PSAs on older men. Urologists have to speak to the primary care physicians and say You have to stop doing PSAs for men in their 70s and 80s. They need to be putting 80% or 90% of their low-risk patients on active surveillance. Here is something that happened to me recently, and it is not an unusual story. A patient presents at MSKCC who is 78, and has morbid obesity and emphysema. He had one microfocus of Gleason 3 disease and was about to go under the knife by a urologist in New Jersey. The family intervened and brought the patient to Sloan Kettering. This is someone we would not treat: there is no chance that this person will suffer any morbidity from prostate cancer, let alone die from it. This is our routine day-to-day experience at MSK, and it is reflected in national figures. Q: Has clinical practice not caught up with consensus guidelines or guidelines not caught up with contemporary understanding of the diseases patterns of progression? In terms of PSAs, it is not the urologists who are taking the PSAs; its the primary care and internists. Our best guess as to whats going on is that patients are being seen for a heart problem or for their cholesterol to be measured, and [the doctors] run a panel of tests, and while they are at it, run a PSA. Urologists are getting these referrals and they are not proactively going back to the internists and primary care clinicians and saying that they should not be drawing PSAs on these patients. References: 1. Andrew J. Vickers AJ, James A. Eastham JA, Peter T. Scardino, Hans Lilja. The Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center Recommendations for Prostate Cancer Screening. Urology (2016), http://dx.doi:10.10.1016/j.urology.2015.12.054. Read Abstract 2. Carlsson S, Assel M, Sjoberg D, Ulmert D, Hugosson J, Lilja H, Vickers A. Influence of blood prostate specific antigen levels at age 60 on benefits and harms of prostate cancer screening: population based cohort study. BMJ. 2014 Mar 28;348:g2296. Written By: Barbara Jones for UroToday Over 30 people were killed and more than 100 injured after multiple terrorists attacks took place in Brussels on Tuesday. The Islamic State (ISIS) took credit for the attack, with many celebrating across various social media platforms ISIS in Brussels At least two explosions went off at the Zaventem airport, as hundreds of people scattered in fear. Brussels' threat level has been raised to "maximum" as the country has now been put on lockdown. According to New York Times' correspondent Rukmini Callimachi on March 22, ISIS has accepted responsibility through their news-wire Amaq News Agency, stating, "Islamic State fighters carried out a series of bombings with explosive belts and devices." Callimachi also notes that with each new attack, ISIS has been quick to claim responsibility. 22. And on cue, we now have a claim from ISIS: The Amaq News Agency has claimed that ISIS fighters detonated their vests at airport &station Rukmini Callimachi (@rcallimachi) March 22, 2016 Earlier in the week, 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam was captured by authorities in a massive raid and was determined to be the mastermind behind the Islamic terrorist attacks in Paris last November. Abdeslam was the final suspect being sought for the previous attacks, who was shot in the leg during the raid and taken into custody. The Brussels attacks have been reported as a possible retaliation from ISIS for Abdeslam's capture. Trump's response Following the attacks, GOP front runner Donald Trump took to Twitter to take shots at President Obama, who is currently on an historic trip to Cuba. Trump called Obama "ridiculous," accusing the president of being "treated badly" for not responding to the the ISIS attacks in a more timely manner. President Obama looks and sounds so ridiculous making his speech in Cuba, especially in the shadows of Brussels. He is being treated badly! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 22, 2016 Trump continued, calling Brussels a "disaster city" while calling for the suspects to be waterboarded once they are captured. Trump has been accused of being an "Islamaphobe" for his alleged anti-Muslim comments, but continues to remain consistent in his criticism. Trump Responds to Brussels Attack: 'We're Having Problems With the Muslims' https://t.co/lkUw6QNt84 (VIDEO) pic.twitter.com/Cqgo3zSv6e Mediaite (@Mediaite) March 22, 2016 During an interview on Tuesday morning with Fox Business, the billionaire real estate mogul continued his controversial campaign theme of attacking Muslims. "We're having problems with the Muslims," Trump said. He was asked about the Muslim ban he called for after the attacks in Paris, to which he said got "tremendous support." Continuing, the former host of "The Apprentice" pushed for increased security in heavy Muslim areas. "You need surveillance," Trump said, explaining, "You have to deal with the mosques whether you like it or not." When it was announced that Republican front runner Donald Trump would address those in attendance at the annual event for American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), many wondered what ramifications would take place. As expected, protesters made their opinion known outside and inside the venue. Anti-Trump coalition Shortly after 6:30p.m. local time, thousands anxiously awaited Trumps' AIPAC speech at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C. on Monday night. Outside of the arena, hundreds protested Trump's arrival, with one sign reading, "Jews against Trump- because we've seen this before." While the protesters were vocal on the outside of the convention center, those inside took a different approach, as reported on March 21. Trump received applause from the crowd as he spoke about being a strong supporter of Israel, and his plans to dismantle the recent Iran nuclear deal. Speaking in a well-prepared speech while looking at a teleprompter, the former host of "The Apprentice" laid out his vision for the future relationship between the United States and Israel. A group of Reform rabbis and lay leaders gather for a text study outside @AIPAC's plenary as Donald Trump speaks. pic.twitter.com/8GHcPq6f9G The RAC (@TheRAC) March 21, 2016 While Trump did have his supporters, others weren't so pleased. With a packed house, manywalked out during Trump's speech in protest to his alleged "bigotry" and "racism" as Rabbis gathered outside for a religious study. The number reached in the hundreds including those protesting outside the arena, and those who walked out during the speech. Strong sentiments outside #AIPAC2016 event at Verizon Center. @realDonaldTrump to speak at 545p pic.twitter.com/HG3WCcxb5y Suzanne Kennedy (@ABC7Suzanne) March 21, 2016 Hours before Trump's planned appearance, Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton took the stage and gave an impassioned speech at AIPAC. Speaking to the crowd, Clinton didn't mention Trump by name, but was clear in her criticism. "If you see bigotry, oppose it. If you see violence, condemn it. If you see a bully, stand up to him," Clinton said, saying that a leader should have "steady hands" who doesn't play "coy with white supremacists." Clinton has been a strong ally of Israel over the years, something that the billionaire real estate mogul has had a mixed record on since the start of his campaign. When asked where he stood on the Israeli-Palestine conflict, the former host of "The Apprentice" recently said he felt "neutral," despite being a supporter of Israel in the past. In explaining his answer, Trump said being neutral was the best way to get a deal done between the two nations. China delists company for violating disclosure rules Updated: 2016-03-22 08:18 (Xinhua) An investor browses stock information with his smartphone at a brokerage in Nanjing, Jiangsu province. [Photo provided to China Daily] SHANGHAI - The Shanghai Stock Exchange on Monday said it had, for the first time, delisted a company for breaching rules on information disclosure. The move was welcomed by investors as the stock regulator moved to crack down on fraud to restore investor confidence. An investigation found that Boyuan's violation was "very grave," the bourse said in a statement. Zhuhai Boyuan Investment Co forged bank's acceptance bills to cover up 380 million yuan ($58.7 million) in earnings its controlling shareholder had failed to pay. Meanwhile, it inflated assets, revenues and profits. The delisting highlights the China Securities Regulatory Commission's zero tolerance of major violations, it said. Hopefully the move will encourage listed companies to disclose information in accordance with rules and this could help better protect investor's legitimate rights and interests and promote the stable and healthy development of the capital market, it added. The China Securities Regulatory Commission launched an investigation into the case in June 2014 and handed it to the police in March 2015. Boyuan received a delisting warning on March 31, 2015 and halted trading of its shares on May 25 the same year. IMF denies pressing China for more currency data Updated: 2016-03-22 17:20 (Xinhua) BEIJING - The International Monetary Fund (IMF) on Tuesday denied a media report that it had asked China for more data on currency operations, saying China had disclosed data properly. "China subscribed to the Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS) at the end of 2015 and is disseminating its data accordingly," said a statement by an IMF spokesperson. "The Fund has not asked for any additional information," the statement added, stressing Chinese authorities and IMF staff are in close dialogue. The statement came in response to a report carried by Wall Street Journal, which cited "people familiar with the matter" as saying the IMF is calling on the Chinese central bank to release more data on its holdings of derivatives such as forwards. Nation 'to establish deeper ties with Germany' Updated: 2016-03-22 07:44 By Zhang Yunbi(China Daily) German President Joachim Gauck's visit to China will pave the way for greater cooperation and deeper links between two of the world's major economies, according to China's ambassador to the European nation. The visit by Gauck, who arrived in Beijing on Sunday, also showcases the high level of ties between the two countries, Shi Mingde said. Sino-German ties will "scale new heights" this year, as German Chancellor Angela Merkel is expected to visit China twice, Shi told China Daily in an interview. It is the first visit to China by a German president since 2010 and is in response to the visit to Germany by President Xi Jinping in 2014, the ambassador said. The first priority for the visit is to boost development of the two-way relationship and present Gauck with "a good opportunity to gain a better understanding of China from various angles", Shi said. Xi met with Gauck on Monday afternoon in Beijing. Gauck, who is scheduled to leave on Thursday, will visit Xi'an, the capital of Shaanxi province, where he will get a broader insight into China's history, Shi said. He will also visit Shanghai, where he will see "modern China and what has been achieved through reform and opening-up". Another highlight of the visit is the attendance by leaders from both countries at the opening ceremony of the China-Germany Year of Student and Youth Exchanges, Shi said. There are 300 high schools in Germany that teach Chinese and about 32,000 Chinese students are studying in the country, the largest single group of international students in Germany. Shi said, "The two countries have achieved progress on cultural and artistic cooperation, and this visit will see more cooperation programs settled." Merkel is expected to visit China later this year for the annual government consultations between the two countries and will also attend the G20 leaders' summit in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, in September, Shi said. As Germany will host the G20 summit next year, Shi said leaders of both countries have agreed to enhance coordination to ensure the continuity of the agenda in between the two summits. Beijing and Berlin share ideas on a range of international and economic issues and want to boost economic growth through innovation and structural reform, Shi said. Coordination across a number of sectors has been, and will continue to be, achieved, he said, adding that China can learn much from Germany's industrialization and progress. The two countries have reached consensus on the digital economy, green development, energy, electronic vehicles and advanced manufacturing sectors, and progress is being made, Shi said. zhangyunbi@chinadaily.com.cn China confirms four ships removed from UN sanctions Updated: 2016-03-23 01:51 By CHEN WEIHUA in Washington(China Daily USA) China confirmed on Tuesday that four ships have been removed from the list under new sanctions on the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) outlined by a United Nations Security Council resolution early this month. Hua Chunying, the foreign ministry spokeswoman, told a daily briefing in Beijing that the UN Security Council Sanctions Committee agreed that the four ships, which include Jin Teng, has nothing to do with the Ocean Maritime Management (OMM), a DPRK shipping firm known to transport arms and other illicit goods. "So it decided to remove the ships from the sanction list under the UN Security Council Resolution 2270," Hua said. She said the revision was made by the committee according to the latest development. "It reflects the consensus of all parties of the UN Security Council and conforms to the committee's rules of procedure," she said. According to a Reuters report on Tuesday, the ships were among a total of 31 vessels sanctioned by the 15-member Security Council on March 2 because of their linkage to OMM. "We discovered that they are not OMM ships," Reuters quoted China's Permanent Representative to the UN Liu Jieyi as saying. "The basis for the listing of the ships is basically that they belong to OMM, so if you make a mistake, then you correct the mistake," Liu told Reuters. Reuters also quoted a US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, as saying that the Security Council committee on DPRK sanctions agreed to the request after China secured written commitments the four vessels would no longer use DPRK crews. Jin Teng was a cargo ship detained by the Philippines days after the sanctions took effect. China has supported the UN Security Council Resolution 2270. It has also expressed that sanctions are not the goals and called for resumption of dialogues. China has put forward a parallel approach for the DPRK to abandon its nuclear weapon program while at the same time for the US and South Korea to agree to sign a peace treaty to replace the 1953 armistice agreement. Foreign Minister Wang Yi believes such an approach has rightly addressed the legitimate concerns of all parties. China is deeply concerned over the possible escalation of tension on the Korean peninsula, where the DPRK has continued to launch missiles while the US and South Korea are conducting largest ever military exercises. This year the annual military exercises involve more than 17,000 American and 300,000 South Korean troops. "We are concerned about the current situation on the peninsula. We hope that the DPRK would not do anything that violates the UN Security Council resolutions, and hope that relevant parties would keep calm and exercise restraint and avoid taking any action that may escalate rivalry and tensions," Hua, the spokeswoman, said on Monday after DPRK launched several missiles into the sea. chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com Marriott tops Anbang offer for Starwood Updated: 2016-03-22 11:35 By Paul Welitzkin in New York(China Daily USA) A Sheraton Hotel in downtown Brooklyn in New York City. Sheraton is a member of the Starwood hotel chain. Spencer Platt / AFP How badly Anbang wants the Starwood Hotel chain will likely be known soon after bidding rival Marriott raised the cash portion of its offer. Marriott International Inc on Monday increased its bid to $21 a share from $2, valuing its new stock-and-cash offer at about $79.53 a share, or $13.6 billion. Last week, Starwood Hotels and Worldwide Resorts Inc accepted a $13.2 billion takeover offer from Beijing-based Anbang and gave Marriott until Friday to make a counteroffer. Anbang and its partners - China-based Primavera Capital and private equity firm J.C. Flowers & Co - had agreed to pay $78 a share in cash for the luxury resort chain. A Wall Street Journal report said that Primavera and Flowers would provide equity financing for the Anbang bid, while lender China Construction Bank Corp would contribute the debt financing. "I expect Anbang to respond, likely raising its bid," David Loeb, an analyst at Robert W. Baird & Co, said. Anbang made no public comment on the latest Marriott proposal for Starwood, which operates the Sheraton and Westin hotels. "The current bid from Marriott is superior to Anbang's bid from last week. (Marriott's) stock is off a little, but even at the current share price, the nominal value is higher than Anbang's bid. Plus Starwood's board needs to look at the long-term value of what its shareholders will get," added Loeb. Some of that long-term value includes obtaining more cost savings from a tie-up with Bethesda, Maryland-based Marriott, which said in a statement that it "is confident it can achieve $250 million in annual cost synergies within two years, up from $200 million estimated in 2015, when Marriott made its first offer for Starwood". Marriott shares fell 86 cents to $72.30 on Monday, while shares of Starwood rose $3.62 to $84.19. Wes Golladay, an analyst at RBC Capital Markets, said last week that the Marriott offer has "the potential to create better synergies and more cost-cutting potential since they are already in the business". A combined Marriott and Starwood would create the largest hotel chain in the world. "We believe this is the best bid Marriott is willing to make," Canaccord Genuity analyst Ryan Meliker wrote in a research note, Reuters reported. Anbang made a dramatic entry into the United States two years ago when it bought the famed Waldorf Astoria New York hotel for almost $2 billion. Days before it contested Marriott for control of Starwood, it offered $6.5 billion to acquire Strategic Hotels & Resorts Inc, which owns several high-end properties, including the JW Marriott Essex House in New York and the Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego, California. Under the direction of Chairman Wu Xiaohui, Anbang has evolved from a mainland auto insurer into a major global financial services firm, amassing stakes in China Merchants Bank, the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, and real estate concern Wanke. Slowing growth at home and the desire to diversify overseas investments have spurred Chinese companies like Anbang to become aggressive acquirers. Separately, Starwood will become the first American hotel company to sign a deal with Cuba since the 1959 revolution, announcing a multimillion-dollar investment as US President Barack Obama made a historic visit to the nation. paulwelitzkin@chinadailyusa.com Navigation not 'being affected' Updated: 2016-03-22 11:35 By Chen Weihua in Washington(China Daily USA) A retired senior Chinese diplomat believes that China, the United States and Southeast Asian nations should peacefully settle disputes in the South China Sea. Wang Yingfan, China's permanent representative to the United Nations from 2000 to 2003, said Americans should understand that China has never created any obstacles to freedom of navigation in the region. The former vice-foreign minister said people who study international affairs understand why the US would send aircraft carriers and advanced aircraft to the sea. "It's not because freedom of navigation is being affected," he said on Monday, without further elaboration. Wang, who was heading a Foreign Ministry Policy Advisory Committee delegation in the US, made the comment in a talk on China's foreign policy and China-US relations at American University on Monday. Many Chinese believe the US has been rallying its allies to gang up on China in pursuit of its pivot-to-Asia strategy and to keep its primacy in the region, where China's influence has grown significantly. China is the largest trading partner for most countries in that area. Wang warned that the US should exercise restraint. "If you do too much, China has to react," he said. Wang believes that how much Chinese military hardware will be brought to the islands in the South China Sea depends to a large extent on what the US will do. China has long complained about the frequent US military surveillance off the Chinese coasts, regarding it as a major obstacle to improving bilateral military-to-military relations. Wang, also a former Chinese ambassador to the Philippines, recalled his first assignment in the Southeast Asia nation in mid-1970s that the Philippine map does not include some of the islands in disputes these days. He regretted that the Philippines did not even accept China's goodwill and generosity for shelving disputes and seeking joint development. Wang believes it's a bad idea for some Americans to suggest that the Chinese government clarify the Nine Dash Line in the South China Sea because it will trigger more disputes over sovereignty and further arouse the nationalistic sentiment in the countries involved, making it harder for the governments to reach a solution. He suggested that China, the US and ASEAN countries work together to ensure freedom of navigation. Wang said Americans should support Chinese initiatives of sharing resources there. He said that if the US can help to persuade its allies and related countries to agree to do that, it will be a big help to settle problems there. Wang stressed that China wants to have a peaceful rise, to have a strong relationship with the US. "We do not want to challenge the United States or drive out the US from Asia or from anywhere," he said. Despite the challenges, Wang said he is optimistic about the relationship. "I think our cooperation will be more wide-ranging and go deeper and deeper in different fields," he said. He cited the agreement reached on cybersecurity as a good example of how the two countries should address their differences. "I think that's the way our bilateral relations should go," he said. Cybersecurity, which had made frequent headlines in previous years, has become less intensive an issue after President Xi Jinping's state visit to the US last September, when the two sides reached consensus on certain issues. Lyn Fengding, former Chinese ambassador to Sweden, said there has been great progress in bilateral relations thanks to the efforts by both sides. Acknowledging that there have been problems, Lyn said that such issues require the two sides to come together to have discussions "so that some settlement and some compromise can be reached". chenweihua@chinadailyusa.com Belgium on high alert after blasts Updated: 2016-03-23 02:36 By Agencies and Fu Jing in Brussels(China Daily) Bombings at Brussels Airport, subway kill more than 30 in country's 'black moment' Two women wounded in explosions at the airport wait for help. [Photo/Agencies] At least 34 people were killed in twin attacks on Brussels International Airport and a rush-hour subway train in the Belgian capital on Tuesday, triggering security alerts across Western Europe. Officials at China's embassy in Belgium said that there had been no reports so far of Chinese killed or injured in the attacks. The emergency unit of University Hospital Saint-Luc, which is near the airport, said there were no Asians known to be among those sent there for treatment. The embassy has asked Chinese to exercise caution if they plan to visit Belgium. Belgian public broadcaster VRT put the death toll from the attacks in Brussels at 34, with 20 people killed in the blast on a subway train and 14 in explosions at the airport. "What we feared has happened," Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel told reporters. "In this time of tragedy, this black moment for our country, I appeal to everyone to remain calm but also to show solidarity." Michel canceled his visit to China. He had been scheduled to attend the Boao Forum this week. "The visit has been canceled due to what happened in Brussels," a source told China Daily on Tuesday. A witness said he heard shouts in Arabic shortly before two explosions struck a packed departure lounge at Brussels Airport. A federal prosecutor said one of the blasts was probably triggered by a suicide bomber. There was still some uncertainty about the number of casualties. The blasts at the airport and subway station occurred four days after the arrest in Brussels of Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in the terror attacks in Paris that killed 130 people in November. Belgium's security alert was raised to the highest level after the attacks. Police and troops on the streets were on alert for any further attacks. 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. YEREVAN, MARCH 22, ARMENPRESS. One of the most important issues of Armenia's domestic political agenda remains the adoption of a new electoral code. The draft Electoral Code has already been prepared and submitted for public discussion. "Armenpress" summarizes the results of the recent discussions of the draft Electoral Code and the possibility of cooperation between the political forces. The Opposition have their own ideas and proposals on the new electoral code, some of which are acceptable by the government, while others are not. However, if the government's disapproval of the oppositions proposals is understandable, the contradictions among opposition political forces to form a single platform on the election code are incomprehensible. Although the approaches of political forces are the same, forming a common platform to reach an agreement appears to fail. The main demands of the opposition are still the cleaning of the voter lists, publication of signed voters lists after the election, video broadcasting at all polling stations, inking of fingers in order to exclude the possibility of double voting, the expansion of public-sector involvement. The ANC has proposed to the Opposition to set up a common platform on these 5 key points. ANC faction head Levon Zurabyan, announced that they held discussions with various political forces, representatives of NGOs, adding that creating a common platform is in progress. However, the head of "Heritage" faction Zaruhi Postanjyan stated that "Heritage" sees no need to join ANCs proposed common platform, adding that the ANC took their suggestions and joined them. PAP has a similar stand. Party leader and head of the PAP faction Naira Zohrabyan also said that given the experience of the past, the PAP refrains from any triplet-quartet format of cooperation. She added that the PAP has its own approaches and proposals, and they will move forward accordingly. NA RPA faction head Vahram Baghdasaryan told journalists that some of the proposals of the opposition are acceptable. In particular, he mentioned the proposal to install cameras at polling stations, which can be applied in case of finding the appropriate mechanisms to launch it. The government is also ready to make provisions regarding the number of journalists and observers at polling stations, and is willing to listen to any reasonable offer. Vahram Baghdasaryan reiterated the government's position on the publication of voters lists, saying that it is human rights violation. Instead, the government offers an alternative. The draft Election Code stipulates that any observer or representative may request and receive the voters lists at any polling station, extract information and in case of violations apply to court. As a method for cleaning the voters list, the government considers voting by ID cards, which it is ready to discuss with the opposition. The government is also not against discussions on the ANC leader Levon Zurabyans 4 + 4 + 4 proposal, that is, to create a working group to review the Code, consisting of 4 representatives of the government, 4 opposition and 4 civil society members. Only time will show as to what extent the opposition will be able to create a common platform and agenda. The next debate is scheduled for March 22. According to the Armenian constitution, a new electoral code shall be adopted by June 1, 2016. Shant Khlghatyan YEREVAN, MARCH 22, ARMENPRESS. Artsakh Republic President Bako Sahakyan visited the Stepanakert municipality on March 22 and participated in the meeting of the architectural board, during which number of issues related to implementations of projects were discussed. "Armenpress" was informed by the Central Information Department of the Artsakh Republic President. President Sahakyan stressed the importance of a thorough discussion of all projects, noting that the main focus of the architectural strategy must be the improvement of the citys functional capacity and the architectural appearance. The meeting was attended by Prime Minister Arayik Harutyunyan and other officials. YEREVAN, MARCH 22, ARMENPRESS. In the wake of last weeks grassroots Fly-In to Washington, Armenian National Committee of America (ANCA) Legislative Affairs Director Raffi Karakashian has submitted testimony to key U.S. House and Senate panels supporting the foreign aid priorities of the Congressional Armenian Caucus and outlining the Armenian American communitys specific appropriations requests for Fiscal Year (FY) 2017, Armenpress reports, citing ANCA. Among the highest priority issues raised by Karakashian were 1) increased aid to Artsakh, including for the Lady Cox Rehabilitation Center in Stepanakert, a regional clinic serving over 1,000 children and adults with physical and mental disabilities every year, 2) a full suspension of military aid to Baku until Azerbaijan agrees to pull back snipers and heavy arms, ceases cross-border attacks, ends its threats of renewed war, assents to the deployment of gunfire locators and the addition of OSCE observers, and agrees to a settlement of regional conflicts through peaceful means alone, and; 3) a $10 million appropriation to help Armenia provide transition support to individuals from Syria who have found safe haven in Armenia. Parallel to this effort, friends of Armenia from across America have emailed and called their U.S. Representatives using the ANCAs online activism portals (anca.org/aid and anca.org/call) to co-sign a Congressional Armenian Caucus letter, led by Caucus Co-Chairs Robert Dold (R-IL) and Frank Pallone (D-NJ), calling upon the bipartisan leadership of the House Appropriations Subcommittee on State-Foreign Operations to support a similar series of Armenian-related foreign aid provisions. That letter is anticipated to be sent this week. The Armenian American community requests: 1) At least $5 million in U.S. developmental aid to Nagorno Karabakh, with special focus on expanding the Lady Cox Rehabilitation Center in Stepanakert, a regional clinic serving over 1,000 children and adults with physical and mental disabilities every year. 2) Zero-out U.S. military aid to Azerbaijan until its leaders agree with the Royce-Engel peace proposals to withdraw snipers and heavy arms, add OSCE observers, and deploy gunfire locator systems. 3) At least $40 million in U.S. economic assistance to Armenia targeted to growing the U.S.-Armenia trade and investment relationship. 4) At least $10 million in emergency aid to help Armenia provide transition assistance to the nearly 20,000 people who have fled to Armenia from Syria and elsewhere in the Middle East. 5) At least 10% of U.S. assistance to Georgia to be used for job creation programs in the Samtskhe-Javakheti region of that country. 6) Language strengthening Section 907 restrictions on U.S. aid to Azerbaijan. 7) Ending the exclusion of the Republic of Nagorno Karabakh from the peace process. There are 66 multi-level marketing businesses operating in Viet Nam, nearly half of which are wholly foreign-invested businesses. Illustrative image/ Photo enternews HA NOI (VNS) Minister of Industry and Trade Vu Huy Hoang has called for quarterly reevaluations of multi-level marketing firms, or pyramid schemes, operating across the country. The move comes in response to many cases of fraud being filed against multi-level marketing businesses operating pyramid schemes. In particular, the Lien Ket Viet Company was caught swindling some 60,000 people in more than 27 cities and provinces nationwide, appropriating a total of VN1.9 trillion (roughly US$85 million) since 2014. The companys business licence was revoked on March 9. The minister requested the provincial industry and trade departments to supervise firms operating pyramid schemes and people who join local multi-level marketing networks. Conferences, seminars and training sessions hosted by these firms need to fall under greater scrutiny. Hoang also asked local administrations improve public awareness of banned activities in a multi-level marketing context, the responsibilities of firms that operate such schemes, the participants rights and interests and issues related to commissions, bonuses and other economic interests. He said the Viet Nam Competition Authority (VCA) would co-ordinate with the market watch body to investigate these businesses more thoroughly to uncover violations and protect the customers legitimate rights. There are 66 multi-level marketing businesses operating in Viet Nam, nearly half of which are wholly foreign-invested businesses. The VCA recently revoked the business registration certificates of four multi-level marketing businesses: Con uong Viet Trade and Production JSC, Tam Nhin ai Hung 668 Limited Company, TNC International Trade and Im-Export JSC and Trai Tim Ngoc Viet JSC. All have headquarters in Ha Noi. VNS Worlds largest: The Jade Buddha for Peace statue will soon be exhibited at Hoang Phuc Pagoda, in the central province of Quang Binh. Photo giacngo.vn HA NOI The worlds largest Buddha statue, made of jade, has been brought to Viet Nam. It will be displayed soon in the central Quang Binh Province before it is exhibited in other northern localities. A solemn ceremony to welcome the statue will be organised at Hoang Phuc Pagoda in Quang Binh at 9am on March 27. The statue will be displayed there till April 5, while various worship ceremonies for national peace and security and lectures on Buddhism and peace will be hosted by senior Buddhist monks Thich uc Thien and Thich Chan Quang. The Jade Buddha for Peace statue has been carved from gemstone-quality jade called Polar Pride, discovered in north Canada in 2000. Ian Green, an Australian Buddhist, had invited artisans from Nepal, India and Thailand to carve the statue in Thailand. The statue is modelled on the Siddhartha Gautama Buddha statue inside the Mahabodhi Stupa in Indias Bodh Gaya. It stands 2.7m tall, weigh four tonnes and sits on a 1.4m-high solid alabaster throne. Its size and beauty make it a wonder of the world. The statue was first displayed in various pagodas in Viet Nam such as in the central city of a Nang, Ba Ria Vung Tau, HCM City and ong Thap in the south, besides the northern Bac Ninh Province in 2009. It was then moved to Australia before it toured the United States (2010), Europe (2011) and Asia (2012). According to monk Thich uc Thien, head of Hoang Phuc Pagoda in the central Quang Binh Province, the statue was first displayed in Viet Nam as the Vietnamese people love peace and believe in Buddhism, and thanks to the great support of Vietnamese enterprises in Australia. Its reported that after being brought to Viet Nam for the second time this year, the Jade Buddha will be permanently installed in Australia. Hoang Phuc is an ancient pagoda associated with King Monk Tran Nhan Tong (1258-1308), the third King of the Tran Dynasty (1226-1400) and the founder of the Truc Lam Zen Buddhist sect in Viet Nam. The pagoda was called Tri Kien (or Kinh Thien) at first and is located in Thuan Trach Village in Le Thuy Districts My Thuy Commune. King Monk Tran Nhan Tong gave lessons on Buddhism at the pagoda in 1301. According to historical books, lords Nguyen Hoang and Nguyen Phuc Chu renovated the pagoda in the 17th century. The renovation marked the period when our ancestors expanded the territory to the south, Thien said. On the occasion of welcoming the jade statue, the pagoda would distribute a holy paper containing the teachings of King Monk Tran Nhan Tong, Thien said. Organisers will also prepare up to 10,000 vegetarian food portions each day for tourists flocking to the pagoda during the time. While local localities have upgraded local infrastructure facilities for tourists, the organisers are encouraging local households to offer overnight home-stay services to tourists. Those who would like to stay longer in the locality could travel to ong Hoi City for hostel and hotel accommodation, Thien said. VNS YEREVAN, MARCH 22, ARMENPRESS. Two explosions occurred in the departure hall of Brussels airport on the morning of March 22 and several people were injured, Armenpress reports, citing Reuters. The blasts occurred four days after the arrest in Brussels of a suspected participant in November militant attacks in Paris that killed 130 people. Belgian police had been on alert for any reprisal action. Social media showed pictures of smoke rising from the departure hall where all windows had been shattered by the blast. Passengers were seen running away down a slipway from the departure lounge. Sky News television's Alex Rossi, at the scene, said he heard two "very, very loud explosions". "I could feel the building move. There was also dust and smoke as well... I went towards where the explosion came from and there were people coming out looking very dazed and shocked." "The thinking here is that it is some kind of terrorist attack - that hasn't been verified by any of the authorities here at the airport." Belgian media said rail traffic to the airport was suspended. There was no immediate official comment on the cause of the attack. LONDON Cameron heaped praise on Iain Duncan Smith, who quit as welfare minister on Friday over plans to slash state welfare payments for disabled people, saying they undermined the entire purpose of the administration and damaged national unity. Cameron confirmed in parliament that he was ditching the controversial planned cuts announced by his closest ally, finance minister George Osborne, in Wednesdays annual budget. Critics of Duncan Smith, a former Conservative Party leader and prominent supporter of Britain leaving the European Union, accused him of walking out to boost the Brexit campaign before the June 23 referendum. Duncan Smith rejected any link to the upcoming vote on EU membership, which has exposed deep splits among the Conservatives. In a highly damaging attack, he accused Cameron and Chancellor of the Exchequer Osborne of an indefensible attempt to balance the books on the backs of the most vulnerable people in Britain. The statement unleashed a wave of open criticism of the leadership from within the party. Reeling from what commentators said was the most dangerous crisis for the centre-right party in years, Cameron sought to reassert his authority, hitting back at Duncan Smiths accusations. "This government will continue to give the highest priority to improving the life chances of the poorest in our country," Cameron said in a statement in parliament. He said he was driven by a "deeply-held conviction that everyone in Britain should have the chance to make the most of their lives". "Securing our economy, extending opportunity: we will continue with this approach, in full, because we are a modern, compassionate one-nation Conservative government," he concluded. Trying to heal the wounds, he said Duncan Smith had contributed "an enormous amount to the work of this government and he can be proud of what he achieved" in six years as work and pensions secretary. Defence of ally Cameron also issued a clear public defence of finance minister Osborne, a potential successor, whose standing was rocked by Duncan Smiths scathing resignation letter. "None of this would be possible if it wasnt for the actions of this government and the work of the chancellor in turning our economy around," Cameron said. Osborne announced the 1.3 billion ($1.4 billion) of disability cuts in Wednesdays budget, at the same time as a tax cut for higher earners, which proved the final straw for Duncan Smith. But Cameron announced the cuts to disability benefits would be ditched. "We are not going ahead with the changes that were put forward," he said. Osborne was not in parliament and it was left to one of his junior ministers at the Treasury to defend the budget. Main opposition Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn called on Osborne to resign. Osborne should "either come here and explain how he is going to fill that hole" created in the public finances by ditching the welfare cuts, or "consider his position and look for something else to do", Corbyn said. AFP BRUSSELS Police have found the DNA of a newly identified suspect on explosives used in last years Paris attacks, a French source revealed on Monday, but Belgiums prosecutor admitted they are "far from solving the puzzle" of the killings. Belgian and French prosecutors met in Brussels to discuss the probe into the carnage in the French capital, following Fridays dramatic arrest of prime suspect Salah Abdeslam in Brussels after four months on the run. Belgian investigators named a suspected accomplice in the November 13 attacks as Najim Laachraoui, who was previously known by the false name of Soufiane Kayal. Laachraoui used the alias to travel to Hungary in September with Abdeslam -- the last known survivor of 10 people who carried out the wave of shootings and suicide bombings that left 130 people dead. Laachraoui is also believed to have travelled to Syria in February 2013. Traces of DNA from the 24-year-old, who is still at large, were found on the explosives used in the gun and suicide attacks in Paris, a source close to the French investigation said. Prosecutors meanwhile told Belga news agency that two detonators, along with a large cache of weapons, were found in the apartment from which Abdeslam is thought to have fled during a raid last week. "We have not a bad amount of pieces of the puzzle and in the last few days several pieces have found their place," Frederic Van Leeuw told a news conference in Brussels, flanked by Paris prosecutor Francois Molins. "But... we are still, far from solving the puzzle." Van Leeuw also admitted they "dont have the full timeline" for what Abdeslam did between November 14, when he evaded three French police checks and escaped to Brussels, and his arrest. Extradition call Investigators hope Abdeslams arrest during a raid on Friday, in which he was wounded in the leg, will generate new leads in the probe of the attacks that were claimed by the Islamic State jihadist group. Belgian authorities have been embarrassed by the revelation Abdeslam was found just around the corner from his family home in the gritty Brussels neighbourhood of Molenbeek, and may have been aided by friends and family. Molins, the French prosecutor, said France expected Abdeslam to be extradited to face trial over the attacks, despite his lawyer saying that he would fight the proceedings. "There is a strong expectation from the French justice authorities and particularly from the families of the victims that Salah Abdeslam comes to explain himself," Molins said. French President Francois Hollande, who has said he wants Abdeslam extradited as quickly as possible, held his first formal meeting with relatives of the Paris victims on Monday. AFP March 15 is consumers rights day in Viet Nam. Whats the significance of the day? The event is a milestone in the countrys efforts to protect Vietnamese consumers rights. In other countries this days has been observed for roughly the last 50 years. But for Viet Nam, March 15, 2016 was the first time it was observed as consumers rights day. The event showed the Governments resolve to protect consumers rights. The Law on Protection of Consumers Right came into force five years ago and it contains eight rights and responsibilities of a consumer. A key message of consumers rights day is the consumers right to safety. Why did Vinastas choose that slogan? Consumers nowadays face many risks, particularly unsafe food and low quality commodities. Thats why the consumers demand for safety is legitimate. It is not accidental that among the eight rights of a consumer, safety has priority. 2016 was the first year Viet Nam dedicated a day for consumers rights. I highly appreciated that decision made by the government. Among the eight rights of a consumer is the right to lodge a petition or complaint of low quality goods or services to authorities. Why havent many people exercised that right? I want to conduct a survey on that topic, but I dont have the money and could not find a sponsor. I think that Vietnamese people dont want to file a law suit for a simple matter that will be time consuming and they dont have much faith in getting justice. Also, the legal system in Viet Nam is very complicated. A case in point was a food poisoning in Ben Tre Province, in the Mekong delta in 2013 where more than 170 people were poisoned. But only 22 of them lodged a joint law suit. They won the case, but the 22 victims were compensated with a sum of only VN20 million (US$1,000). Thats not all; it took two years for the court to settle the case! It has been said that Vietnamese consumers dont have much awareness of their rights. Do you agree? I couldnt agree more! In reality, many of our consumers rights have been infringed upon, but no organisation stood up to protect their rights, even local governments. The existing Law on the Protection of Consumers Rights states clearly that each province must have an organisation to protect consumers. But until now only 50 out of 63 provinces and cities nation-wide have created organisations to protect their consumers. To my knowledge, only between 4-8 per cent of our government officers know about the Law on the Protection of Consumers Rights, even though it came into force five years ago. What should we do to ensure consumers rights? Since the enactment of the Law on the Protection of Consumers Rights, the general public and enterprises awareness of consumers rights has improved considerably. But it is still far away from consumers expectation. Unsafe and fake goods are still widely sold. To raise peoples awareness, we have to step up the communication campaign to all of society, including government officials, workers, farmers and others. However, the government should take the role as the director in the campaign as the State has both the authorisation and resources available to perform this task._VNS The accident at Ghenh Railway Bridge in ong Nai Province has stranded several trains at the Sai Gon Railway Station, and stopped others coming in from the Northern and Central regions at the Bien Hoa Railway Station. VNA/VNS Photo Manh Linh HCM CITY (VNS) The collapse of the Ghenh Railway Bridge in ong Nai Province after a barge collided with it on Sunday has virtually cut off the main rail link between the south and north of the country. The collision sent the middle span and three pillars of the bridge tumbling into the water. The barge capsized. The accident has stranded several trains at the Sai Gon Railway Station, and stopped others coming in from the Northern and Central regions at the Bien Hoa Railway Station in ong Nai. According to Viet Nam Railway Corporation, right after the bridge collapsed on Sunday, 18 trains scheduled to run in both directions were affected. Officials said 1,400 passengers had to be taken to Bien Hoa from Sai Gon Station and 1,500 other brought the other way around using shuttle buses. Hundreds other passengers decided to cancel their tickets and choose other forms of transportation. For now, the train services on this section have been suspended. The Sai Gon Railway Station has also announced that it has stopped accepting cargo consignments from today. o inh Duoc, deputy general director of the Sai Gon Transport Company, said the companys 11 wagons of cargo on its way to the North had to stop in ong Nai after the accident. Several consigners came to the site to unload their cargos, he said. Given the serious impacts on the North-South rail route, the Transport Ministry and local governments are seeking solutions to limit the damage caused by the accident. Deputy Transport Minister Nguyen Ngoc ong visited the accident site and said the Ministry would direct the Viet Nam Railway Company to create an operation schedule between Bien Hoa City and the northern region. The consequences of the accident are huge. The Transport Ministry will ask subordinate agencies to come up with solutions for salvaging the bridges pillars and spans, as also for restoration work. It should take about three to five months to complete, ong said. Following up on the accident, police in ong Nai Province said they had completed procedures to commence criminal proceedings. Nguyen Van Tho, head of the staff bureau of the ong Nai Provinces Police Department, said that the barge crew would be sued for violating water traffic regulations and causing serious consequences. We will send documents to the ong Nai Peoples Procuracy to complete the procedures. The first priority is to correct consequences of the railway bridge collapse, Tho said. The Ghenh Bridge linking two banks of ong Nai River was built by the colonial French administration early in the 20th century. VNS Minister of Public Security Tran Dai Quang (right) receives Chinese Deputy Minister of Public Security Meng Qingfeng in Ha Noi yesterday. VNA/VNS Photo Doan Tan HA NOI (VNS) Effective co-operation between the Vietnamese and Chinese ministries of Public Security has helped maintain order and security in their respective countries, senior officials said in Ha Noi yesterday. Deputy Minister of Public Security Le Quy Vuong and his Chinese counterpart Meng Qingfeng noted with pleasure that the two sides have actively co-ordinated to fight crimes such as hi-tech and telecom fraud, and drug and human trafficking. The Vietnamese official warned that criminal activities, especially cross-border will become more complicated; threatening social order, safety and security. Viet Nam and China need to enhance co-operation at the highest level through information sharing and investigation assistance, to arrest and return offenders to their respective countries, he suggested. It is also necessary to boost co-ordination in combating terrorism, trans-national crime, hi-tech crime, drug crime, and human trafficking, he said. The two ministries should also increase co-operation in training of law enforcement officials, he added. Deputy Minister Meng Qingfeng expressed his belief that the co-operation between the two ministries will yield further positive outcomes in the future, helping elevate the Viet Nam-China comprehensive strategic co-operative partnership to a new height. The same day, the Chinese deputy minister was received by Minister of Public Security Tran ai Quang who urged the two countries law enforcement agencies to implement the common perceptions reached by their Party and State leaders, along with the co-operation documents signed between the two ministries. VNS Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung meets with Russian Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev in Ha Noi yesterday. VNA/VNS Photo uc Tam HA NOI (VNS) Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung hailed the visit to Viet Nam by Russian Interior Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev saying it had helped boost ministerial co-operation and made a practical contribution to promoting ties between the two countries. The Prime Minister made the remarks at a reception for the Russian interior minister in Ha Noi yesterday. He said the friendship and partnership between Viet Nam and Russia had made remarkable strides in various realms, while mutual trust and understanding had been reinforced. He added that Viet Nam will always remember Russias valuable assistance in the cause of national liberation, reunification, reconstruction and development. The PM affirmed that Viet Nam will do its best to promote the bilateral strategic partnership and carry out major bilateral projects in economics and investment and trade; energy, oil and gas; science and technology; education and training, and technical military. The Vietnamese Government supports co-operation activities between Viet Nams Ministry of Public Security and Russias Ministry of Internal Affairs, especially in human resources training, experience exchanges as well as in preventing terrorism, crime, and ensuring cyber security and safety, he said. Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev told the host that the two ministries agreed on a number of co-operative activities during their talks in Ha Noi, including the signing of a joint action programme for 2016-2018, focusing on personnel training and professional exchanges. Russia hopes to increase co-operation with its Vietnamese partner and will support and protect Vietnamese citizens and businesses in Russia, he added. Ties in combating crime Also yesterday, while talking with Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev, Minister of Public Security Tran ai Quang said Viet Nam and Russia should enhance information and experience sharing in crime fighting and prevention. Minister Quang said the Russian Internal Affairs Ministers visit is an important event that will help strengthen bilateral ties in crime control and protection of security and order. The Vietnamese minister stressed the priorities of ensuring security and safety for each others diplomatic missions, entrepreneurs, students and citizens, and co-operating in professional training for law enforcement officers. Minister Vladimir Kolokoltsev appreciated the fruitful co-operation between his ministry and the Vietnamese Ministry of Public Security, and wished the Russia-Viet Nam comprehensive strategic partnership in general and the partnership between the two ministries in particular further development in the interest of both nations and for stability in the region and the world as a whole. VNS The Binh Trieu 2 Bridge in HCM City. The Binh Trieu 2 project approved by the then Prime Minister 16 years ago hasnt been finished and continues to waste the States money. Photo laodong.com.vn HCM CITY A project approved by the then Prime Minister 16 years ago hasnt been finished and continues to waste the States money. Binh Trieu 2 Project has been conducted under the build-operate-transfer format, but its investors and investment funds keep changing. The projects investor was Civil Engineering Construction Corporation No 5 (Cienco 5). Phase one of the project was building the Binh Trieu 2 Bridge and the second is upgrading 10.6km of roads. The 4.5km Highway 13 in the southern province of Binh Duong is in the most need of repairs. Its an important gateway connecting HCM City to Central Highlands provinces and the southern economic zone. Total investment for the project was VN341 billion (US$15.2 million). Construction on the project started in February 2001 and was expected to finish in a year and a half. But after three years, just the bridge had been completed. Cienco 5 representatives said the cost of the project had increased to more than VN1.2 trillion (US$53.3 million), because the fund for compensation had increased. The company could not continue to conduct the project, as it was too expensive, so it handed it over to HCM City authorities. The HCM City Peoples Committee in July 2004 asked the Prime Minister to let the HCM City Department of Transport become the projects investor. The project would be implemented under the municipal budget. The committee proposed the total investment in the project would be VN1.6 trillion (about US$75.2 million). Of this, VN1.2 trillion ($57.1 million) would be required for compensation. The project was scheduled to finish in 2006. The Government in November 2004 agreed to transfer the project to the HCM City Peoples Committee. A year later the committee passed the project on from the municipal Department of Transport to the HCM City Infrastructure Investment Joint Stock Company (CII). Instead of finishing the project in 2006 as the city had planned, the CII started its work in 2007, dividing the project into seven sub-projects. From September 2009 to August 2010 the CII implemented only sub-project No 3, which was upgrading Binh Trieu 1 Bridge. None of the other projects made any headway. Duong Quang Chau, CII investment director, told Lao ong (Labour) newspaper that the biggest difficulty was that the projects total investment increased too much, whereas the citys budget was limited. From July 2007 until now, the projects costs have continued to rise. Now it requires VN5.5 trillion (about $244.4 million), 15 times more than first allotted. As a result, Highway 13s upgrades under sub-project No 1 havent been completed. The 4.5km highway, which is HCM Citys north-to-east gateway, is untidy and always jammed with traffic. VNS Old apartment buildings in Ha Noi that are in danger of collapsing have remained in their current condition for years because residents, authorities and investors have failed to agree on a plan to upgrade the structures. Photo vanhien.vn HA NOI Old apartment buildings in Ha Noi that are in danger of collapsing have remained in their current condition for years because residents, authorities and investors have failed to agree on a plan to upgrade the structures. Of the 42 old apartment buildings that were classified as dangerous by the Department of Construction, two were ranked as D structures the most dangerous categorisation, which suggests immediate evacuation. They are the G6A Thanh Cong and the A Ngoc Khanh apartment buildings. Although residents in the two apartment buildings should move out as soon as possible, they have continued living there, despite fears that the buildings could collapse. The Department of Construction does not have any plan to upgrade the remaining 40 old apartment buildings, which were categorised as B and C buildings on the danger scale. A spokesperson from the department said the city would budget for an upgrade plan for the whole area, not individual apartment buildings. For the two D-level apartment buildings, local authorities would enact a plan to inform residents about the dangers, the spokesperson said. A representative of the two D-level apartment buildings said local residents hoped that authorities and investors would make a pledge regarding the rate of the projects progress and the structural quality of upgrades. Residents must have rights to supervise the upgrade project, the representative said. Nghiem Xuan Tuy, who lives in the G6A Thanh Cong apartment building, said residents in the building were worried because they were previously moved from the C1 Thanh Cong apartment building in 2008, but the upgrades still have not been finished. We want the city to have clear regulations about the upgrading period to avoid the problem that we must live in a temporary place for dozens of years, he said. Architect Nguyen Chien Thang from the Ha Noi Department of Planning and Architecture said that rebuilding old apartments, such as Giang Vo, Thanh Cong and Ngoc Khanh, was an urgent task needed to urbanise and improve residents living conditions. But the upgrade project stayed the same due to disagreement over the number of allowable storeys of buildings in the inner city. The number was limited, and investors wanted to raise the number of storeys. Statistics from the Ha Noi Department of Construction showed that the city had more than 1,500 old apartment buildings. Nguyen Chi Dung, deputy director of the department, said the department founded an inspection team in 2014 to check 940 buildings, and decided that 42 of the oldest and most dilapidated buildings would be checked the following year. After that, the department planned to produce a detailed plan to upgrade them. The upgrades would be more favourable when the Law on Housing was put into effect in July last year, Dung said. Under the law, local residents and investors would discuss an upgrade plan within three months. After the deadline, if they did not reach an agreement, local authorities would find measures to resolve it, including coercion if the building faced a high risk of collapse, said Dung. VNS The 2016 Labour Inspection Campaign was launched yesterday in northern Hung Yen Province with a focus on construction, the sector which has claimed the most lives of workers in occupational accidents in Viet Nam. Photo baodansinh.vn HUNG YEN (VNS) The 2016 Labour Inspection Campaign was launched yesterday in northern Hung Yen Province with a focus on construction, the sector which has claimed the most lives of workers in occupational accidents in Viet Nam. The campaign organised by the Ministry of Labour, Invalids and Social Affairs (MoLISA), Viet Nam General Confederation of Labour and Viet Nam Chamber of Commerce and Industry with support from International Labour Organization (ILO) and the Dutch Government is the second of its kind for the Labour Inspectorate with the first campaign in 2015 targeting the garment sector. Entitled Labour law compliance for safe construction sites, this years campaign aimed to promote better compliance of labour standards in the construction sector and to improve working conditions. Labour inspectors will conduct visits to at least 630 construction enterprises and construction sites across Viet Nam from March to November. Targeted compliance areas will include working and rest time, wages, internal occupational safety and health regulations and training, personal protective equipment, arrangement of construction sites working grounds and the use of vehicles or machines. According to MoLISAs occupational safety report for 2015, among reported fatal occupational accidents, the construction sector reported the most deaths. The industry accounted for 37.9 per cent of the 666 people who lost their lives at work and 35 per cent of 629 reported fatal occupational accidents, against 8 per cent and 7 per cent respectively of the second sector in the list mechanical manufacturing. MoLISA deputy minister Nguyen Minh Huan said at the launch that occupational accidents were complicated and were increasing. Apart from the responsibilities of both employers and workers, this situation is also traced back to limited dissemination of labour laws and ineffective involvement of the authorities, he said. Rene Robert, a specialist in Labour Administration and Labour Inspection from ILO, said that the construction sector typically accounted for the highest number of accidents and fatalities because in addition to being dangerous, it employed a lot of people. Statistics in 2014 showed that over 3.3 million Vietnamese people worked in construction. The role of labour inspection is not simply to find and punish violations, he said, adding that its ultimate goal is to improve workplace compliance and a decent and productive workplace. He called on the Government and social partners to pursue a range of measures to bring about a national preventative safety and health culture including improved legal frameworks for compliance and legal understanding for employees and employers. Nguyen Tien Tung, Chief of MoLISAs Inspectorate Department, said that a key goal of inspection was to prevent violations. He expected that the labour inspection campaign would help halve the number of accidents in construction. On Sunday, the 18th yearly National Week on Labour Safety and Hygiene - Fire and Explosion Prevention was launched in the northern province of Hung Yen. The event aims to call on all businesses, localities and labourers to observe the Law on Labour Safety and Hygiene when it comes into effect from July 1 this year. Last year, as many as 7,620 work related accidents were reported, resulting in 7,785 injuries, of which 666 resulted in death. The number of accidents and fatalities last year increased by 13.6 per cent and 6.2 per cent, respectively, compared with figures from 2014. VNS The Ghenh Railway Bridge in the southern province collapsed after it was rammed last Sunday morning by a barge carrying 800 tonnes of sand. Photo zing.vn ONG NAI (VNS) Deputy Prime Minister and Chairman of National Traffic Safety Committee Nguyen Xuan Phuc yesterday called for a raft of measures to restore normalcy at the earliest after the collapse of a railway bridge on Sunday. In doing so, he ruled out the feasibility of building a temporary bridge or floating bridge, which means all trains coming to the south will have to stop at the Bien Hoa Station in ong Nai Province, cutting short the main North-South rail link in the country. The Ghenh Railway Bridge in the southern province collapsed after it was rammed last Sunday morning by a barge carrying 800 tonnes of sand. Phuc asked Deputy Minister of Transport Nguyen Hong Truong, leaders of the ong Nai Peoples Committee and Viet Nam Railway Corporation to come up with solutions for addressing the accidents consequences. He also asked the provincial Peoples Committee Chairman, who also chairs the provinces Traffic Safety Committee, to guide local authorities in carrying out rescue operations and restore waterway and railway operations to limit damage caused by the accident. Relevant central and local agencies should mobilise all resources needed to quickly repair the bridge and restore the North-South railway route in the shortest time possible, he directed. The Deputy PM reiterated earlier assessments that it would take at least three to four months for the nations main rail route to be fully restored. He said local public security forces should protect the site, investigate the accident and impose stiff penalties on individuals and organisations violating marine traffic laws. Following instructions from the government, the general director of Viet Nam Railway Corporation has initiated efforts to adjust the rail route schedule towards reducing losses and inconveniences for passengers. The accident has stranded several trains at the Sai Gon Railway Station, and stopped others coming in from the Northern and Central regions at the Bien Hoa Railway Station in ong Nai. According to Viet Nam Railway Corporation, right after the bridge collapsed on Sunday, the schedules of 18 trains running in both directions were affected. Officials said that 1,400 passengers had to be taken to Bien Hoa from Sai Gon Station and 1,500 others brought the other way around using shuttle buses. Hundreds other passengers decided to cancel their tickets and choose other forms of transportation. For now, train services on this section have been suspended. The Sai Gon Railway Station has also announced that it has stopped accepting cargo consignments from yesterday. o inh Duoc, deputy general director of the Sai Gon Transport Company, said the companys 11 wagons of cargo on its way to the North had to stop in ong Nai after the accident. According to the management of Bien Hoa Railway Station, yesterday morning, the station received more than 3,000 passengers, as well as 1,000 tonnes of cargo sent to HCM City from Northern and Central regions. Several consigners came to the site to unload their cargos, he said. At the Bien Hoa Railway Station, hundreds of staff and police were mobilised to help passengers coming from Sai Gon Railway Station in HCM City. Despite the situation, these operations were conducted smoothly. Also yesterday, leaders from relevant agencies and Viet Nam Railway inspected the site and discussed plans for receiving passengers and cargo at Bien Hoa, Ho Nai, and Long Khanh Town stations. Deputy Transport Minister Nguyen Hong Truong asked the POSCO company to prepare plans to salvage the tug boat that sank in the accident. Another Deputy Transport Minister, Nguyen Ngoc ong, visited the accident site and said the ministry will direct the Viet Nam Railway Company to create a train schedule between Bien Hoa City and the northern region. This is a serious accident that has affecting marine traffic safety and seriously affected operations of the railway system, ong said. Nguyen Xuan Hoa, Chairman of Sai Gon Railway, said at yesterdays meeting that it would take at least three days to turn over the capsized barge. The plan to restore the bridge will be prepared later. Salvaging the tow boat will be difficult, officials said, explaining that large-sized vessels cannot enter the river. Hence the current plan is to use a 3,000-tonnes barge and 200-tonnes crane to lift the boat. The capsized barge, which had drifted 70 80 metres away from the collision site, has been secured to prevent collision with other boats or structures near the river. Meanwhile, police in ong Nai Province have said procedures have been completed to start criminal proceedings against those responsible for the accident. Nguyen Van Tho, head of the staff bureau of the ong Nai Police Department, said that the barge crew will be prosecuted for violating marine traffic regulations and causing serious consequences. We will transfer documents to the ong Nai Peoples Procuracy. But the first priority is to correct consequences of the railway bridge collapse, Tho said. Yesterday morning, police arrested Tran Van Giang, 36, of Bac Lieu and Nguyen Van Le, 28, of Soc Trang. Both the crew members had fled to Soc Trang after the accident happened. They have been brought to ong Nai for the investigation. Giang and Le are said to have jumped into the river and escaped as soon as the accident happened. The collision sent the middle span and three pillars of the bridge tumbling into the water. The 223-metre Ghenh Bridge across the ong Nai River was built in 1902 by the colonial French administration. VNS YEREVAN, MARCH 22, ARMENPRESS. The two explosions at Brussels airport resulted in casualties, "Armenpress" reports, citing the Laatste Nieuws newspaper. "Two explosions occurred in the departure area at Brussels airport. There are casualties. The airport is completely blocked; movement of aircrafts and vehicles is completely stopped. Currently, police forces, fire trucks and emergency personnel are arriving at the airport, writes the newspaper. According to Tass, the railway connection to the airport is also suspended. Residents get clean water in an area suffering from salt intrusion in Vinh Chau Town, Soc Trang Province. Photo zing.vn HA NOI (VNS) The Viet Nam Red Cross (VNRC) and the Procter and Gamble Company (P&G) will work together on humanitarian programmes as part of a co-operation agreement signed today in Ha Noi. "The agreement is an indication of our non-stop efforts to improve the quality of life of the Vietnamese people. We believe our co-operation will help more disadvantaged people overcome difficulties in their lives, VNRC Chairwoman Nguyen Thi Xuan Thu said at the signing ceremony. Under the framework of the agreement, VNRC and P&G will jointly execute various humanitarian programmes, including providing scholarships to poor students, supporting orphans and rolling out a clean water programme in disaster-hit areas of the country. The two sides will focus on P&Gs Childrens Safe Drinking Water Programme, which provides clean water to thousands of children and families in drought-hit areas and those suffering from salt intrusion and water shortage. Launched in 2004, the programme aims to bring clean water to people by providing P&G Purifier of Water packets, a water purifying technology developed by P&G and the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention. One packet can turn 10 litres of dirty, potentially deadly, water into clean, potable water within 30 minutes. The packets are provided on a not-for-profit basis and can be used anywhere in the world, including areas affected by natural disasters. VNS Students join outdoor games during the launch ceremony of "Mizuiku - I love clean water," an education programme on water source protection held in HCM City today. Photo Suntory PepsiCo HCM CITY (VNS) "Mizuiku - I love clean water," an education programme to promote childrens awareness of water conservation, was launched today in HCM City. The programme will benefit some 2,400 elementary students from 10 elementary schools in Bac Ninh, Ha Noi and HCM City with new initiatives, such as the water conservation and protection festival and outdoor activities for students. The programme is being jointly organised by the districts education and training divisions and the Suntory Group and Suntory PepsiCo Viet Nam Beverage as an initiative to celebrate World Water Day on March 22. As a unique hands-on education programme, Mizuiku combines both classes and practical activities as well as a variety of outdoor activities to educate children on the role of water, raising their awareness of the importance of water resources and water hygiene in their daily lives. The project also sponsors the installation of water facilities or renovation of rest rooms at participating schools. In 2015, the pilot programme was successfully rolled out at six elementary schools in Ha Nois districts of My uc and Thanh Oai, with the participation of some 1,600 pupils. In Japanese, Mizu means water and iku means education. Mizuiku is a natural water education programme that has been successfully deployed in the home regions of Mineral Water Suntory Tennensui since 2004. After 10 years of operation, the number of participants in Japan has reached over 100,000 children and parents. VNS YEREVAN, MARCH 22, ARMENPRESS. Parliamentary hearings on the draft Electoral Code began at the National Assembly. As "Armenpress" reports, representatives of parliamentary and non-parliamentary political forces and civil society are participating in the hearings. The draft EC has been broadly discussed on March 11 prior to this. The draft Electoral Code was also discussed at the Standing Committee on State and Legal Affairs on March 18. Jindal Steel and Power Limited (JSPL) has commissioned a 1.4 mtpa Rebar Mill at Sohar, Oman. The 1.4 mtpa Rebar Mill, the largest in Gulf and African region, along with the existing 2 MTPA SMS makes JSPLs Jindal Shadeed the largest integrated steelmaker in Oman. The new Rebar Mill capacity will significantly strengthen Omans domestic production capacity to substitute dependence on imports for the construction sector in the country, a company statement said today. The commissioning of the 1.4 mtpa Rebar Mill catapults Jindal Shadeed amongst the Top 3 integrated steelmakers in the fast-growing Arabian Peninsula. We are thankful to the Sultanate of Oman for their co-operation and support to enable us to complete the project in a record time," said Naveen Jindal, chairman Jindal Steel and Power Limited. In line with our commitment to strive for self-sufficiency in the geographies we operate in, we are confident that the Construction Sector of Oman would immensely benefit from Jindal Shadeeds new Rebar Mill," he added. Jindal Shadeed has made investments of over $1 billion in establishing Omans largest integrated steel facility. The company has invested $190 million to set up 1.4 mtpa Rebar Mill. The technology for the Rebar Mill has been provided by Danieli of Italy, a world-leading supplier of equipment and plants to metals industry. Jindal Shadeeds port-based integrated steelmaking facility would change the dynamics of Arabian Peninsulas steel market, which so far has remained dependent on imports from major steel-producing nations. Considering the 15 MTPA Rebar consumption in GCC countries, the production capacity of 1.4 mtpa at Rebar by Jindal Shadeed at Sohar (Oman) would add significant value to the construction sector of the region," said Ravi Uppal, MD and Group CEO, . The commissioning of the Rebar Mill in Oman would also enable us to market Made-in-Oman Jindal Panther TMT Rebars to our existing global customer base in GCC and Africa. The Oman Rebar Mill alongwith the Bar Mills capacities in India, enhances JSPLs global Rebar production capacity to 3.8 MTPA," Uppal added. JSPLs Jindal Shadeed had earlier set up the largest Electric Arc Furnace in the Arabian Peninsula. The company was also felicitated with the prestigious award as the Worlds best performing Midrex Plant (1.5 mtpa category). According to the company, Jindal Shadeed is the only steelmaker in GCC to export special quality billets to Europe for automotive applications as well as special quality round billets to Saudi Arabia for manufacturing of seamless pipes. With the commissioning of the Rebar Mill, Jindal Shadeeds capacities stand at 1.5 mtpa Hot Briquetted Iron (HBI), 2 mtpa Steel Melting Shop (SMS) and 1.4 mtpa Rebar Mill. acquired acquired Jindal Shadeed Iron & Steel (JSIS) in Sohar, Oman from Al Ghaith Holdings PJSC of Abu Dhabi in 2010. JSIS at Sohar is the first and largest Integrated Steel Plant in the Sultanate of Oman and fourth largest in the Gulf region. Jindal Shadeed commissioned its 1.5 mtpa Direct Reduced Iron (DRI) Furnace in December 2010, within a short period of its acquisition by . The company then successfully commissioned the 2 mtpa Integrated Steel Plant (ISP) in 2014. The facility is Omans first & largest Steel Melting Shop (SMS), and also the third largest unit in the West Asia & Gulf Region. The company has also set up the largest electric arc furnace in the Arabian Peninsula. Jindal Shadeed has made investments of over $1 billion in establishing Omans largest integrated steel facility. With the commissioning of the Rebar Mill, Jindal Shadeeds capacities now stands at 1.5 mtpa Hot Briquetted Iron (HBI), 2 MTPA Steel Melting Shop (SMS) and 1.4 MTPA Rebar Mill. India should invest in mapping the country's aquifers and take steps to aid recharge to check a looming water crisis, experts said. With 40 per cent of the country under the impact of consecutive failed monsoons, water rationing could become a norm in many parts of the country in the coming summer, they warned. According to a recent Central Water Commission report, water levels in the Maharashtra reservoirs are 58 per cent below normal. Alarming, as the summer is forecast to be long and dry. India's water crisis has been brewing for long. A 2007 report of an Expert Group on Management and Ownership of the Planning Commission showed that in 2004, as much as 28 per cent of all blocks showed alarmingly high levels of use. The mid-term appraisal of the 11th five-year Plan (2007-08 to 2012-13) also noted nearly 60 per cent of all districts had problems with either the quantity or quality of groundwater. Himanshu Thakkar, coordinator of the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People, network of organisations and individuals working in the sector, says the government should first acknowledge that groundwater is the country's 'water lifeline' and policies could then be framed. "Groundwater is the lifeline and if we want to sustain that, we need to first understand the recharge systems such as rivers, wetlands etc, and device methods to enhance and protect them. Second, we need to enhance groundwater resources through artificial means. Third, groundwater use should be curtailed through regulation. For this, a water aquifer map and budgeting are needed," said Thakkar. An aquifer is an underground layer of water-bearing rock, from which groundwater is extracted. The Union water resources ministry has undertaken a programme to map all aquifers over 1.4 million square km of area by 2022, with an investment of Rs 2,500 crore, to ensure sustainable extraction. Once the water in each district or block is known, a plan can be chalked to regulate usage for all purposes. A recent report by WaterAid shows India has more numbers living without access to safe drinking water than economically poorer African nations such as Nigeria, Ethiopia and Congo. Nearly 140,000 children die every year in the country due to diarrhoea. 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. WATERLOO -- A Waterloo man has been arrested for allegedly breaking into a house and chasing a man with a gun in February. Tanzell Martrell Washington, 23, of 110 Wellington St., was arrested Saturday on warrants for first-degree burglary and going armed with intent. His bond was set at $500,000. Authorities allege Washington called a woman who lived at 411 Randall St. the morning of Feb. 5 and then showed up at her home a short time later. The woman told Washington to leave, but he kicked in the door and entered, court records state. When he spotted Allen Gary in the home, Washington drew a revolver and attempted to pull the trigger, but the weapon didn't fire, records states. Gary fled outside, and Washington followed. Witnesses then heard a single gunshot outside. Gary fled to a nearby house, and Washington disappeared. No injuries were reported. The Randall Street house was searched by police and federal marshals in late February. At the time, officers were looking for Kevin Edwards, who is sought in connection with an October homicide that took the life of a 9-year-old boy. Edwards remains at large. Chase leads to arrest WATERLOO -- A traffic stop to detain a Waterloo man on warrants Saturday evening turned into a brief chase that left a trail of damage. Waterloo police attempted to pull over 42-year-old Timothy James McClain in connection with drug cases from 2014 and 2015 in the area of Glenny Avenue at about 5:20 p.m. Saturday. McClain refused to pull over, police said, and the pursuit continued until he lost control of his vehicle in the 900 block of Dena Street and struck a tree, court records state. He then backed into a light pole and struck several fences. The total damage is estimated at more than $3,000. Officers found more than 42 grams of marijuana, a digital scale and hypodermic needles. The arrest warrants stemmed from a March 2014 traffic stop on Falls Avenue where police found 22 grams of methamphetamine and a June 2015 traffic stop on Moir Street where marijuana was found in the bed of his truck. McClain, of 204 Moir St., was arrested for felony eluding, second-degree criminal mischief, two counts of possession of marijuana with intent to deliver, possession of methamphetamine with intent to deliver and possession of drug paraphernalia. Authorities going after alleged sex crimes INDEPENDENCE -- The Buchanan County Attorney's Office is pursuing charges against four individuals. Hodges Nathan Jr., 52, of Independence, is facing one count of third-degree sexual abuse enhanced as a second or subsequent sexual predatory offense. The charge is a felony. According to court documents, Nathan committed a sex act Oct. 25 against a woman's will. At the time, he was wearing an ankle bracelet, and the Iowa Department of Corrections was monitoring his movements. The criminal complaint filed by the Independence Police Department contains details provided by the alleged victim during two interviews. The woman told police she was in a relationship with Nathan and they spent the day together. According to the criminal complaint, Hodges made an advance on her, which she refused. She said he got angry and sexually assaulted her. In one account provided by the woman, Nathan left the residence because his ankle bracelet began to vibrate at 10 p.m. "This was a physical warning that he was not at his own residence, as per his agreement with the Iowa Department of Corrections," according to the complaint. In the second interview, the alleged victim said she managed to get Nathan to leave and chained the door behind him. According to court documents, authorities in Fayette County convicted Nathan of assault with intent to commit sexual abuse in September 2014. The charge is an aggravated misdemeanor. In a separate case, Junior Kahn, 21, of Cedar Rapids, is charged with third-degree sexual abuse for allegedly performing a sex act on a person 14 or 15 years old. A trial for Kahn is scheduled to begin April 6 in Buchanan County. In a third case, Timothy Crow, 33, of Hazleton, is accused of lascivious acts with a child, solicitation. On Feb. 26 he allegedly asked a minor at Independence High School for sex. He allegedly sent the request using a Facebook message. Also, Jennifer Frese, 26, of Aurora, is charged with child endangerment causing bodily harm, a felony. According to the criminal complaint, on March 10 Frese wanted to leave 102 Prospect St. in Aurora with her children but other family members refused to let her go. Frese allegedly got into a dispute. "During the argument, Jennifer threw (the child) to the ground from a standing position," according to Buchanan County Deputy Cory Hartmann. The child, a 10-month-old girl, landed on a hard floor and suffered a large lump on her forehead. WEST UNION A young woman died Monday evening outside her apartment, shot to death, according to Fayette County Sheriff Marty Fisher. The shooter later killed himself. Morgan Kaye, 27, and her assailant, Anthony Hebert, 27, of West Union, were both nontraditional students at Upper Iowa University but living off campus. It was a murder-suicide, Fisher said. He took her life (and) fled the scene. He added Kaye died from a single gunshot wound. Hebert was found with a self-inflicted gunshot wound. I dont know what kind of relationship it was, Fisher added. The incident began shortly before 9 p.m. Fisher, deputies and West Union police officers responded to a report of gunfire at 413 W. Linden St. in West Union. The scene is perhaps 2 miles north of the sheriffs office and jail, even less from the West Union Police Station and City Hall. Fisher said officers discovered the woman lying on the walkway near the front door to an apartment, No. 3. Andrew Wenthe, a spokesman for Upper Iowa, said the news hit many on campus. Last evening I learned about the incident in West Union and then it wasnt until very early this morning that it was involving two students, Wenthe said. It is something that we are prepared to deal with but certainly never want to have to deal with, he added. Upper Iowa has its own counselor, but administrators on Tuesday brought in additional help, according to Wenthe. The immediate focus and in days ahead will be providing support to students and faculty who knew Kaye and Hebert. Were all a big family here, Wenthe said. Wenthe said he could not confirm whether Hebert and Kaye lived together or what their relationship to each other was. As the investigation began, authorities developed a suspect. He was found in his pickup on Iowa Highway 150 south of Calmar in Winneshiek County. He apparently took his own life with a self-inflicted gunshot wound, Fisher said. The apartment complex in West Union is run by Northeast Iowa Apartment and Home Rentals in West Union. A person answering the phone Tuesday morning declined comment. Hebert online described himself as a student ambassador and athlete at Upper Iowa University. He said he previously served four years with the U.S. Marines starting in July 2007. He was studying law enforcement at the college. My goals are to obtain a bachelors degree in criminal justice and serve my community in a professional and proficient manner, Hebert wrote online. I will strive to help the community trust its law enforcement officers by implementing community-oriented policing tactics and upholding the law, he added. Toward that end, Hebert said he was working towards a degree covering topics like homeland security, firefighting and protective services. Hebert listed his hometown as San Jacinto, Calif. He said he previously studied at Mount San Jacinto Community College. On Upper Iowas website, Hebert is included as a member of the 2015-16 wrestling team, and Wenthe confirmed Hebert was a member of the squad. Hebert competed at 157 pounds and was described as a redshirt sophomore. In a professional biography online, Kaye said she worked for about 10 months as a bartender at Jimmy Ds in Hawkeye. She began in May 2015. Prior to that job, Kaye said she worked 11 months as a waitress and bartender at Cabo Blue in Fayette and before that as a personal trainer for 18 months at Anytime Fitness in West Union. She also listed her expectation of receiving a bachelor of applied science degree in pharmacy next year from Upper Iowa. Kaye said she previously earned an associate of science degree in biology from Northeast Iowa Community College and had a cosmetology license from Santa Monica College in California. In 2015, Kaye received the Churbuck Scholarship, which is awarded to a student pursuing a career in biological sciences. She also was raising money for the Upper Iowa University Dance Marathon next month on campus. Wenthe confirmed Kaye and Hebert were active at Upper Iowa. Both students were involved on campus, so obviously its affecting a lot of people, he said. The Iowa Division of Criminal Investigation and Winneshiek County Sheriffs Office assisted during the incident and during the investigation. ANCHORAGE, Alaska The investigation continues in the case of a former Waterloo man who was shot and killed in Alaska earlier this month. Marcus Dushun Cosby Jr. 24, was found dead outside an apartment building where he had been living in Eagle River, a community of about 22,000 people that is part of Anchorage. No arrests had been made in connection with Cosbys death, said Jennifer Castro of the Anchorage Police Department said Tuesday. Details werent immediately available, but Castro said authorities had been called to the Wood River Park Apartments on Centerfield Drive about 3:30 a.m. on March 11 to check on the welfare of people at the apartment. When they arrived, officers found Cosbys body two doors down from his address, Castro said. Cosby had multiple gunshot wounds, according to Anchorage police. Cosby had been living in Eagle River for some time, according to Castro. Services for Cosby are pending at Sanders Funeral Service of Waterloo. YEREVAN, MARCH 22, ARMENPRESS. Developments following the Brussels airport blasts on March 22, are in the spotlight of the Armenian Embassy in Brussels. As "Armenpress" reports, this was tweeted by the Armenian Foreign Ministry spokesman Tigran Balayan. "The Armenian Embassy in Brussels is following the developments. We will inform about any news, "he wrote. 17 people have reportedly been killed and dozens wounded after two blasts rocked Brussels Zaventem airport. The Brussels airport administration urged to stay away from the airport after the two explosions occurred. The airport management wrote on Twitter: "Two terrorist attacks happened at the airport. People are being evacuated from the building. Stay away from the airport area. Flights are canceled, "the statement reads. British BBC stresses the fact that the Brussels airport incident is followed by the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, the main suspect of the Paris attacks. According to Belgian media, the airport is closed for flights. There are reports on social media that people fleeing in panic from the scene. By Bill Hughes Mar. 21, 2016 | 01:51 PM | PADUCAH, KY UPDATE: Jeffrey Conrad has been sentenced to 7-1/2 years in prison, after the jury returned a guilty verdict on a lesser charge of 2nd degree manslaughter. Conrad will be eligible for parole after serving 20 percent of that sentence, minus time already served. Formal sentencing is set for May 6, in McCracken Circuit Court with Judge Tim Kaltenbach. ORIGINAL STORY: The trial of Jeffrey Conrad is now with a jury. McCracken Circuit Court Judge Tim Kaltenbach charged the jury of 7 men and 5 women, and they went into a room to deliberate about 1:00 pm Monday. They will decide the fate of Conrad, who is charged with the murder of Casey Cox on June 8, 2015. Evidence was presented last week, and closing statements were delivered Monday morning. Defense attorney Doug Moore told the jury that Conrad didn't wake up on the morning of June 8 looking for trouble, or planning to kill someone. He said Conrad saw a burglary in progress of his property - and tried to stop Cox and Brandon York from getting away. Moore said Cox repeatedly told the men to stop, but when Cox put their pickup truck in reverse and began moving toward Conrad's friend, Missy McKendree, Conrad fired his pistol, hitting Cox in the head in the head. Moore painted a picture of a man defending his friend from thieves who would do anything to get away. Commonwealth Attorney Dan Boaz said Conrad is not a responsible gun owner and that he acted as Cox's judge, jury and executioner. While not disputing that Cox and York were breaking the law, he said Cox was scared of a man who quickly drew a gun, and was simply trying to get to a safe place. Boaz told the jury that Conrad was angry because his property had been stolen, and he shot Cox because Cox didn't follow Conrad's orders at the scene. After a lunch break, a man was chosen as an alternate from among the 13 people who heard the case, and deliberations started. By Chris Skates Mar. 21, 2016 | 11:24 AM | PADUCAH, KY The overflow crowd gathered at McCracken County High School two Saturdays ago opened my eyes. Prior to that, I sensed a movement taking place in this country. I published a column here in May of 2015 and another a few weeks later predicting that there were two politicians that readers should expect big things from in 2016, one state and one national. Both were considered by most media at the time to be the longest of longshots. The two were Matt Bevin and Ted Cruz. Bevin of course went on later that year to pull a huge political upset and become governor of the Commonwealth. Now Cruz finds himself a very close second for his partys presidential nomination. When I made those predictions they were based only in part on the merits of the individual politicians, though their merits were significant. But equally as important, was the wind I sensed sweeping the country. Still, I didnt realize the magnitudethe power, of that wind until the Kentucky primary. On a gorgeous Saturday, the nicest one wed had in some time, hundreds of citizens in my home county in Kentucky, instead of recreating or working in their yards, lined up before polls opened to vote. Over and over as I waited in that line which weaved throughout the campus, I heard people remark, I didnt know there were that many of us. I knew what they meant. For some time now, many hard working, patriotic people have felt alone. They have felt abandoned by both parties. Many have felt that both they and perhaps their immediate circle of friends and family were the only sane folks left, that the rest of the world had lost its mind. But the truth is they arent alone. For those reasons, Election Day in Kentucky was uplifting and inspiring. As I made eye contact with one fellow voter after another I realized that the day was more than a part of the political process. It was validation. Without saying a word it was communicated throughout the crowd, Yes, I have sensed it too. Something is terribly wrong in the republic and we are stepping up to stop it through the peaceful, lawful, process afforded to us. Of course this process did not only occur in Kentucky. Voter turnout is setting records across the nation. Voters are energized and motivatedand yesfrightened. Millions are scared of what is happening to the country. And that takes us back to the quote I used to begin this column. We must be careful that this soft revolution we are undergoing as a country does not make the error Adams warned about. As of this writing, the night after the second Super Tuesday, both parties look precipitously close to doing just that. While Trump and Sanders may appear to be two candidates from either extreme of the political spectrum (right and left) I would posit that they are both in fact creatures of the left. Only their rhetoric differs. At the same time talk of contested conventions and third party candidates may be equally destructive. Its hard to wrap ones mind around all that is occurring. I have been a political junkie since I was a boy and Nixon dominated headlines. Yet I have never seen an election anything like this one. In the quote, Adams, the American Revolutionary, was describing his grave concerns about the direction of the French Revolution. It was a bloody coup much different than the American Revolution he helped lead. The French Revolution had no basis in a Judeo Christian ethic nor did it recognize inalienable rights endowed by a Creator. Instead it was based in the fancy of a brief moment in time, led by fiery spirits and flighty genius. Despite power brokers and millions of campaign dollars spent it will be up to us, the voters, to determine the scope and type of the mini-revolution of 2016. Will we tear everything down to ruins as the Jacobins did in France? Or will we, after much struggle, return to the principles that built the greatest nation on earth. Chris Skates is Supervisor of Lab Services at a Midwest utility; he has 27 years of experience in both fossil fueled and nuclear power generation. He is an Adjunct Scholar with The Cornwall Alliance for The Stewardship of Creation. Chris is also the author of dozens of nationally published articles in a diverse collection of publications including magazines like, Turkey Call, Electric Light and Power, American Coal, and Southern Writers. He has extensive public speaking experience on energy, political, and social issues, has presented multiple lectures around the country and has published three novels. When Roger Patterson and Robert Gimlin claimed to have shot footage of the creature known as Bigfoot in 1967, they unwittingly inspired a clutch of dirt-cheap docudramas where the line between fact and fiction was kept deliberately blurry. One of the most popular was Charles B Pierces The Legend Of Boggy Creek (1972), which purported to be an investigation into monster sightings in Arkansas swamp country. Years later, filmmakers Daniel Myrick and Eduardo Sanchez, searching for a story they could film cheaply and quickly, took inspiration from those movies to create The Blair Witch Project. They may also have been familiar with the Mondo Cane school of exploitation documentaries - where events were staged or manipulated - a technique that also inspired Cannibal Holocaust (1980). Then there was Man Bites Dog (1992), where a film crew follows a killer around Brussels as he randomly murders people. The film ends with a shot that would become the trademark of most future found footage films (including Blair Witch) as the cameraman drops the camera and the movie cuts to black. When Blair Witch opened in 1999, backed by a saturation marketing campaign, it went on to become one of the most profitable and influential horror films of all time, providing no-budget filmmakers with a virtual blueprint for realizing their vision as cheaply as possible. What was a novelty, however, quickly became tired, familiar and predictable as too many people with too little inspiration boarded the bandwagon. If youre in the mood for self-abuse though, try watching the following films in one sitting. 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(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 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ARMENPRESS. There are reports of an explosion at the Maalbek subway station in Brussels, following the airport blasts. As "Armenpress" reports, citing The Guardian, the subway station is close to the EU buildings. The inter-regional Brussels transport company (STIB) said that the subway system is entirely closed. The government has decided to declare the highest level of alarm in Belgium. 17 people have reportedly been killed and dozens wounded after two blasts rocked Brussels Zaventem airport. The Brussels airport administration urged to stay away from the airport after the two explosions occurred. The airport management wrote on Twitter: "Two terrorist attacks happened at the airport. People are being evacuated from the building. Stay away from the airport area. Flights are canceled, "the statement reads. The development of the events is closely followed by the Armenian Embassy in Brussels. British BBC stresses the fact that the Brussels airport incident is followed by the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, the main suspect of the Paris attacks. According to Belgian media, the airport is closed for flights. There are reports on social media that people fleeing in panic from the scene. 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. 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The Embassy regularly informs about the situation in the city on its Facebook page. Two explosions occurred in Zaventem airport of Brussels. The building is being evacuated. Another explosion occurred at Schuman district of Brussels. Do not go to the airport, do not cause traffic jams. Security and first aid to the injured is priority. All metro stations of Brussels are closed, the Embassy made these notes with an interval of a few minutes. 17 people have reportedly been killed and dozens wounded after two blasts rocked Brussels Zaventem airport. The Brussels airport administration urged to stay away from the airport after the two explosions occurred. The airport management wrote on Twitter: "Two terrorist attacks happened at the airport. People are being evacuated from the building. Stay away from the airport area. Flights are canceled, "the statement reads. British BBC stresses the fact that the Brussels airport incident is followed by the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, the main suspect of the Paris attacks. According to Belgian media, the airport is closed for flights. There are reports on social media that people fleeing in panic from the scene. YEREVAN, MARCH 22, ARMENPRESS. Representatives of the Armenian community in Belgium try to find out if there were Armenians in the zones of explosions, Peto Demirchian, a media relations officer for the Armenian Revolutionary Federation's Hay Dat Committee of Europe informed Armenpress. Names of victims or injured have not been published yet but we follow the developments. The situation in the city is rather strain, police officers and ambulance vehicles can be seen all over the city. As you know, explosions occurred both at the airport and subway station. Metro operation has been temporarily suspended; public transport does not operate in a regular way. The citizens are urged to be cautious, Peto Demirchian said. 17 people have reportedly been killed and at least 30 are wounded after two blasts rocked Brussels Zaventem airport. , following the airport blasts an explosion occurred at the Maalbek subway station in Brussels. YEREVAN, MARCH 22, ARMENPRESS. The Armenian Foreign Ministry expressed its condolences to the people of Belgium in connection to the blasts which occurred on March 22 in Brussels. As "Armenpress" reports, this was stated in the Twitter statement of the MFA: "We are shocked over the attacks carried out in Brussels. We express our solidarity to the people of Belgium. Our thoughts are with the victims' families and friends, "the statement reads. 17 people have reportedly been killed and dozens wounded after two blasts rocked Brussels Zaventem airport. The Brussels airport administration urged to stay away from the airport after the two explosions occurred. The airport management wrote on Twitter: "Two terrorist attacks happened at the airport. People are being evacuated from the building. Stay away from the airport area. Flights are canceled, "the statement reads. An explosion took place at the Maalbek subway station in Brussels, following the airport blasts. The development of the events is closely followed by the Armenian Embassy in Brussels. BBC stresses the fact that the Brussels airport incident is followed by the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, the main suspect of the Paris attacks. According to Belgian media, the airport is closed for flights. There are reports on social media that people fleeing in panic from the scene. YEREVAN, MARCH 22, ARMENPRESS. Armenians and Greeks jointly struggled for getting rid of Turkish yoke. Vice President of the National Assembly of Armenia Eduard Sharmazanov mentioned about this at the event headlined "Millennial fraternal friendship of Armenians and Greeks" dedicated to the independence of Greece held at State Linguistic University after V. Bryusov in Yerevan. Greece was under Turkish rule like Armenia, and Armenians and Greeks jointly struggled to get rid of Turkish Yoke. By destiny it happened so that we had Greek brothers in the roots of Armenian Fidayi movement. And it is worth mentioning that Armenians had a significant contribution to the independence struggle of Greece, Armenpress reports Sharmazanov mentioning. Referring to the event headlined "Millennial fraternal friendship of Armenians and Greeks", the National Assembly Vice President stated that the idea of the event is to congratulate Greece on the restoration of independence and to tell the world that Armenian and Greek peoples have always been together and will jointly struggle against genocides and for justice. We not only have common past but also common present. I am convinced we also have common future, Eduard Sharmazanov added. Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary Ambassador of Greece to Armenia Ioannis Taghis also attended the event. On March 25, 1821 Greece got rid of the Turkish rule. YEREVAN, MARCH 22, ARMENPRESS. President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan sent a condolence letter to Prime Minister Charles Michel of Belgium on March 22, in connection with the explosions in the Brussels airport and subway, which claimed the lives of dozens of innocents. As "Armenpress" was informed by the Department of Public Relations and Mass Media of the President's Office, the President's telegram reads: "At this difficult time, I express my condolences and support to you, the friendly people of Belgium and the victims' families and wish courage and patience. Armenia strongly condemns terrorism in any form and is committed to bringing its contribution to the international fight against this evil. " First, there was an accomplice rain that intensified as the presidential plane taxied down the runway after landing at the airport. The initial image that Cubans had of the president of the most powerful country on Earth turned out to be a gentle and solicitous father, holding an umbrella to protect his wife and daughters from the cloudburst as they descended the planes steps together, while offering his hand in greeting and a wide, warm smile to the welcoming group. Shortly thereafter, around six in the afternoon, during his televised visit to the Cathedral in the historic center of Old Havana, the first cheers were heard from the humble people in the surrounding neighborhoods, expressing their admiration and affection towards the visitor. The links of militants of the single party and other faithful of the Cuban regime were not adequate to avoid real contact between Obama and the people: this charismatic leader seems to exert such a natural power of seduction over the crowds that it causes them to upend the blockade of the official control. The scene was repeated when Obama went to the Ceiba tree at the Templete, one of the symbols of the capitals traditions, and later, when he unexpectedly dined at Restaurante San Cristobal, an eatery located in the popular district of San Leopoldo, in the heart of Centro Habana. Soon, word that he was in the area spread, and immediately, a crowd spontaneously swarmed around, just to see and greet the American president. Obama, Obama, Obama! chanted a crowd of all ages, while the presidential car and his accompanying entourage retreated to the Malecon, and a smiling and happy Obama waved through the window. It is clear that the 48 hours that Barack Obama will be among us are going to be more loaded with adrenaline than the Cuban authorities had anticipated. Now it seems obvious that, while high-level visitors, popes, presidents and others, have always complacently adhered to the script prepared by the choreographers at the Palace of the Revolution, the man in the White House has his own agenda, which hes determined to carry out. It is clear that, though Obama will condescendingly participate in the official part of the altarpiece hes required to perform, he is determined to feel his way around the Cuban peoples beat for himself. No one should be surprised if at some point he suddenly appears in the central courtyard of some dilapidated rooming complex in Havana. In fact, the talk in Havana is Barack Obamas daring appearance in the comedy show with the greatest TV audience in the country, Deja que Yo te Cuente, with Epifanio Panfilo as its main popular character, played by comedian Luis Silva. No doubt it is the most original way he has conceived to reach every household in Cuba, and Cubans are fascinated with that perspective. The natural and easy way Obama has chosen to mingle with Cubans contrasts stridently with the distant and hardbound historical leaders and their claque. It is known that autocrats not only remain isolated in a world that is unattainable for the ordinary Cuban, but that they also dont know how to smile. By now, Obamas detractors here and yonder must be tasting their own bile. It turns out that the US Presidents visit to Cuba is not really legitimizing the dictatorship, but those who some in the media have taken to calling ordinary Cubans. One can also imagine the bitterness and the powerlessness of the gerontocracy, that arrogant historic generation, witnessing Cubans sincere show of affection and admiration for the highest representative of what was, until barely fifteen months ago, the enemy Empire that hated us and was trying to smother us. Two full days remain to see how many and how unforeseeable are the cards our visitor has up his sleeve, but one may ask if we should expect other surprises. Without a doubt, todays emotions let us expect that, this US presidential visit to Havana leaves no room for doubt, even if only to show the world how much Cubans approve of the newest White House policies towards Cuba. It constitutes a resounding success for Obama. Translated by Norma Whiting Most bakeries in the humble neighborhood of La Timba could barely provide customers with baked goods this Monday. The security operation surrounding the Plaza of the Revolution for the US Presidents visit to Havana prevented several workers in these state facilities from getting to the area during the morning. With Obama, but without bread, said an elderly woman who tried her luck at several places and went home with an empty bag. Traffic was cut off on several major arteries and the Cuban capital on Monday was characterized by clusters of journalists everywhere. With each gathering, people speculated that soon the presidents car, known as The Beast, would come down their street. No one wants to miss the opportunity to get a picture on their mobile phone of the Obama family, which so far has generated very good feelings among Cubans. The eldest daughter is wearing sneakers, marveled Yusimi, 36, who expected the dignitarys family to be more formal. It has been a surprise and generated a lot of popular criticism that Raul Castro did not participate in the reception at the airport. People comment on the street that the US president held his own umbrella to protect himself from the rain, while Cuban officials relied on their sycophants to hold theirs. The Cuban Art Factory in Vedado was surrounded by a hubbub this morning in advance of a visit by First Lady Michelle Obama. Word spread among the neighbors and in a few minutes the nearest streets were filled with onlookers. The presidential entourage set off spontaneous reactions of joy, despite the poor coverage on official TV of the American presidents visit. I had to come by way of Cerro Avenue because Boyeros Avenue is closed, comments a man with a suitcase trying to get to the interprovincial Coubre Bus Station from Astro Station, a few yards from the Plaza of the Revolution. The collective taxis have also altered their routes to avoid the restricted areas. I had to go by interior streets, which are full of potholes because they didnt fix them for the coming of Obama, complains Rodney, driver of a deteriorated Cadillac that makes the trip between Fraternity Park and the Playa district. Several of his passengers in the car also criticized the closure of the shops and markets near places the occupant of the White House is expected to visit. Residents of San Leopoldo, near San Rafael and Lealtad Streets, where Obama ate last night at the San Cristobal paladar (private restaurant), still couldnt get over their astonishment. He came here, to this neighborhood, which is not Miramar or Old Havana, said an astonished Xiomara, a flowerseller who heard the shouting last night and went out onto her balcony to find, a ton of brand new cars. The menu the family asked for in the private restaurant is also the talk of the neighborhood. A sirloin, mijo, says the woman. In this block there are children who have never eaten beef, says Xiomara. The cup from which the president took a sip of Cuban coffee should end up in a museum, she says. The choice of the restaurant, away from the most exclusive circuit, caused people to feel warmly for the president who so far has won the favor of ordinary people. However, his presence has paralyzed a city where it is already complicated to get around and buy food. Its making me crazy! a woman shouted midday at the corner of Carlos III, after waiting more than an hour for a bus. YEREVAN, MARCH 22, ARMENPRESS. Saudi Arabia is prepared to sign up to an oil output freeze next month even without Iran taking part, Armenpress reports, citing Financial Times, a senior Opec delegate said, paving a way for a deal among big producers. Some of the worlds largest oil players will meet in Doha on April 17 to discuss restraining output. It follows a provisional agreement reached in February by Saudi Arabia, Russia, Qatar and Venezuela to freeze production at January levels. There is agreement from many countries to go along with a freeze, why make it contingent on Iran, said the delegate. The comments contrast with those from Gulf officials last month which suggested any deal was conditional on Iran, Saudi Arabias Opec rival, taking part alongside other big producer countries. Iran has sought to increase production and exports after the lifting of sanctions against its oil industry in January. Iranian officials have until now shown no willingness to back any deal that would result in restricting its own output. Questions have been raised among Gulf delegates about the countrys ability to ramp up output, suggesting this could be one reason for compliance even without Iran. Despite all the bragging, we have yet to see what Iran can do, said the delegate. Abdalla El-Badri, Opecs secretary-general, said on Monday at a news conference in Vienna: Maybe in the future they will join the group. They [Iran] have some conditions about their production. About 15 Opec and non-Opec countries accounting for two-thirds of global oil output have so far supported an oil freeze, Qatars energy minister Mohammed Bin Saleh Al-Sada said last week. Some market analysts have said an oil freeze at January levels will have a limited impact on supply and demand balances as many producer countries are producing near record levels. Even so, a provisional deal has helped to support prices and reverse negative market sentiment toward oil. Brent crude was at $41.47 on Tuesday, up 53 per cent since hitting a 2016 intraday low of $27.10 a barrel in January. Look at what it [the move towards the oil freeze] did to change the psyche of the market, said the delegate. Now the market can see people are gathering, people are communicating. This collaborative element has helped the price. Hedge funds and other speculators have dramatically increased their bets on a higher oil price in the past several weeks. Their combined net long positions in Nymex and ICE WTI are now at 172m barrels, from just 35m barrels on January 12. The delegate said he predicted higher oil prices by the end of the year, as excess supplies fell. A sense of urgency among all producers to improve the economic situation has been a catalyst to better engagement between producers, he added. Russia, he said, was now taking a leading role in engaging with other Opec producers. The countrys relationship with Saudi Arabia had improved, he added. Although a production freeze at January levels was most likely, the delegate said, he left the door open for more discussion on which marker is used. Well see who did what in January, February and March. Then maybe we can find numbers that add more credence in the market place, he added. Canl Bahis siteleri sektoru son derece onu ack ve farkl ozelliklere sahip bir sektordur. Elbette bahis secenekleri arasnda yuksek kazanc getiren alan kuskusuz canl bahistir. Peki, canl bahis nedir? Canl Bahis Nedir? Canl bahis adndan da anlaslacag gibi devam eden musabakaya bahis yapmaktr. Bu bahis musabaka devam ederken de yaplabilir olmasdr. Basta futbol olmak uzere voleybol, tenis, hentbol, basketbol, buz hokeyi ve masa tenisi gibi spor organizasyonlarna canl bahisler yaplabilmektedir. Canl bahis siteleri bu oyunlarn hepsine yuksek oranlara bahis yapmanza imkan tanr. En fazla tercih edilen futbol canl bahisleri diger alanlara gore daha fazla on plandadr. Siteden siteye degisen sartlar ve uygulama esaslar soz konusu olsa da kurallar sabittir. Canl bahisi populer klan ve heyecan katan en onemli ozellikle musabakann basladg ana dek bahis yapabilmedir. Canl bahis icerisinde yer alan secenekler kazanma sansnz da dogrudan arttrmaktadr. Ilk korneri kim kullanr, ilk tac, gol, sar kart, krmz kart gibi futbol musabakas icerisinde olabilecek hemen hemen her seye bahis yaplabilmektedir. Normal bahisegore de son derece yuksek oranda olmas avantajl yonlerini ortaya koymaktadr. Nitekim dogru secenek ksa surede kazancl ckmanza etki edecektir. Strateji ve dogru analizle 90 dakika gibi bir surede anaparanzkatlayabilirsiniz. Tabi bunu basarabilmek icin mutlaka musabakaya dair ayrntlar iyi degerlendirmek gerekir. Soz konusu musabakann detaylarn inceleyip, cezal, sakat oyuncu veya performans dusen takm oyunu gibi detaylar bilmek canl bahiste kazanc belirleyen onemli unsurdur. Guvenilir Canl bahis hem heyecanl zaman gecirmeyi hem de musabakalar takip ederken para kazanmay saglamaktadr. Canl Bahis Nasl Oynanr? Bahislerinizi guvenilir sitelerden gerceklestirdiginiz zaman herhangi bir sekilde para cekme de sorun yasamazsnz. Guvenilir bahis siteleri tespit edip sonrasnda da uyelik islemlerini tamamlamanz gerekmektedir. Belirlenen uyelik sartlarn yerine getirip hesabnza da paray aktardktan sonra bahis islemlerini sorunsuz yapabilirsiniz. Peki, canl bahis nasl oynanr? Oncelikle bahis konusunda mutlaka dogru site arastrmas yapmalsnz. Yapacagnz arastrma neticesinde buldugunuz site uzerinden canl bahisislemlerini gerceklestirebilirsiniz. Bunun icin uye olup, hesaba para atp, canl bahis bolumune girmelisiniz. Sonrasnda dahil olmak istediginiz musabakann saatini ogrenip, gerekli analizleri yapmalsnz. Tahminlerinizi belirledikten sonra karsnza ckacak olan bahis sayfasndan istediginiz hamleyi yapmalsnz. Bahis tutarn belirledikten sonra musabaka baslayacaktr. Canl bahis diger normal bahis esaslarna gore farkllklar icermektedir. Bunlardan en onemlisi musabakann gidisatna gore islem yapabilir olmaktr.Ayrca musabakann 2. Yarsna gore hamle yapp ayr bir bahisin soz konusu olmas da ciddi avantajdr. Dogru hamle ile sizde istediginiz bahisi yapp kazanc elde edebilirsiniz. Nitekim canl olarak yapacagnz bahis icin mac oncesi raporlara gore hareket etmek onemlidir. Cunku takmlarn durumlarn analiz etmek tahmin gucunu arttracaktr. Misal tamnn en iyi oyuncusu sakat ya da kart cezals ise takmn performansnda dusus yasanacaktr. Buna ek olarak takmn deplasman performans ile evinde ki performans ayr olacaktr. Burada da takmn musabakay nerede yaptgna bakmak gerekir. Bu ayrntlar da iyice analiz ettikten sonra bahsinizi yapp kazanmann keyfini yasayabilirsiniz. Canl Bahis Siteleri Son derece yuksek getiriye sahip bahis sektoru uzun zamandr faaliyet gostermektedir. Cok ciddi rakamlarn soz konusu oldugu bu sektor zamanla sanal ortamlara donusmustur. Elbette guvenli ve bir o kadar da avantajl olan bu siteler cok yonlu frsatlar sunmaktadrlar. Canl iddaa siteleri gerek yeni uyelere gerekse de hali hazrdaki uyelerine bolca bonus frsatlar vermektedir. Yatracagnz tutara gore belirlenen bonuslar site icerisinde rahat hareket etmenizi de saglayacaktr. Canl bahis sitelerini kullanmadan once mutlaka guvenli olup olmadgna goz atmalsnz. Zira baz kullanclar guvenli olmayan sitelerden yaptklar islemlerden dolay magdur olmaktadrlar. Nitekim guvenli ve sorunsuz hizmet sunan yurt ds site tercih etmek en dogru secenektir. Sektorde uzun yllar faaliyet gosteren siteleri tercih edebilirsiniz. Bu alanda yer alan yabanc siteler musteri memnuniyetine onem vermektedir. Oncelik site kullanclarn sorunsuz sekilde bahislerini yapabilir olmasn saglamaktr. Bahis sitelerinde amac hem daha fazla kullancya hizmet vermek hem de sektorde emin admlarla ilerlemek onceliklidir. Dogru site tercihi ile sizde canl bahislerinizi sorun yasamadan gerceklestirebilirsiniz. Sizler icin hazrlams oldugumuz canl bahis siteleri listesi su sekildedir; Mobilbahis Tempobet Bets10 Bahigo 1xbahis Betboo Youwin Superbahis Sralams oldugumuz bu siteler sektorde basarl islere imza atms sitelerdedir. Canl bahis konusunda beklentileri karslayacak olan bu siteler sizlere kolaylk sunmaktadrlar. Bol bonuslu secenekle de sizlere farkl bahis yonlerini sunacaklardr. Sistemsel etki icerisinde her zaman etkin sonuc alabilmek icin surekli olarak faaliyet icerisindedirler. Canl Bahis Taktikleri Bahis sektorunun en fazla dikkat edilmesi gereken hususu dogru taktik ve dogru tahmindir. Elbette dogru tahmini yapabilmek icin analizi cok iyi yapmak gerekir. Canl bahis taktikleri arasnda ilk sra analiz gelmektedir. Analiz yapamadgnz zaman basarl tahminlerde bulunmanz pek de mumkun degildir. Cunku bahiste onemli olan konu musabakann analizini cok iyi yaplmas gerektigidir. Canl bahisin ozelliklerini iyi bilmek ve nasl bir hamle yapacagnz bilmek gerekir. Ozellikle riskli maclarda yaplacak degerlendirmeler cok daha onemlidir. Canl bahis yapacaklarn takip edecegi degerler takmlarn durumlar ile alakal olmaldr. Performans uzerine kurulu bahis sisteminde takm degerlendirmesine iyi bakmak gerekir. Iki takmn son 5 macta nasl bir sonuc ortaya koyduguna bakarak hareket etmek onemlidir. Ayrca hangi takm evinde daha iyi performans sergiliyor diye de ayrca bakmak gerekir. Analizlerle alakal puan durumlarna da goz atmak cok onemlidir. Puan degerlendirmesinde oncelikle takmlarn ihtiyaclar ile dogru orantl hareket etmek gerekir. Cunku olusturulan performans takmn da durumunu ortaya koymaktadr. Nitekim istenilen sonucu elde edebilmek icin tum ayrntlar bilmek gerekir. Takm ici duzenden tutunda da takmn son durumuna kadar her ayrnt onemlidir. Iki takmn birbirleri arasnda ki sonuclar da incelemek gerekir. Burada dikkat edilecek detaylarn basnda maclarda kac gol oldugu ve gollerin hangi dakikalarda atldgdr. Cekismeli gecen musabakalarda bazen goller ilk yarda daha fazla olurken baz maclarda da ikinci yarda daha cok gol olmustur. Iki takm arasnda ki maclarda gollerin cogunlugu ilk yarda geliyorsa buna gore bahis yapabilirsiniz. Canl Bahis Siteleri Bonuslar ve Kampanyalar Bahis yapanlar veya yapmay dusununler sitelerin sunmus olduklar frsatlar merak etmektedirler. Cunku siteler daha fazla kullancya erismek icin her donem kampanyalar duzenleyerek kullanc odakl hamleler yapmaktadrlar. Canl bahis bonuslar ve kampanyalar oldukca populer olup, siteler bu konuda adeta birbirleri ile yarsmaktadrlar. Birbirinden farkl ozelliklere sahip olan kampanyalar size frsatlar sunmaktadr. Daha cok kazanma ihtimalinizi arttran bu bonuslar daha cesur olmanza da dogrudan etki edecektir. Nitekim bonuslar sitelerin cekiciligini ve avantajlarn arttrmaktadr. En cok kazandran canl bahis siteleri bedava bonuslar ve kampanyalar icin http://www.milano2018.com/canli-bahis-siteleri-2022/ linkinden yardm alabilirsiniz. Hos geldin bonusu ile baslayan ve sonrasnda para yatrdkca bonus veren cok sayda site bulunmaktadr. Canl bahis bonusu veren siteler yeni uyelere sunduklar frsatlar farkl kampanyalarla mevcut uyelerine de sunmaktadrlar. Hali hazrda siteyi kullananlarn da bonus frsatlarndan yararlanmalar icin donemsel kampanyalar olusturmaktadrlar. Boylece baska sitelere gidisler olmayacag gibi site de daha keyifli zaman gecirmek mumkun klnmaktadr. Bu tur eklentiler yapan sitelerde musteri memnuniyeti daha fazladr. Bahis siteleri ozellik ve uygulama bakmndan farkllklar bunyelerinde bulundurmaktadrlar. Verilen bonuslarn olusturulmas ve kullanclar aktarlmasnda yatrlan para miktarlar belirleyici olmaktadr. 1.000 TL yatran bir kullanc yuzde 20 bonus frsat olan bir kampanyadan 200 TL bonus kazanabilmektedir. Yatracag tutar 10.000 TL oldugunda bu bonustutar 2.000 TL olabilmektedir. Gerceklesen ve uygulanan esaslar tamamen donemsel olarak yaplan kampanyalarla alakaldr. Iyi Canl bahis siteleri bonuslar ve kampanyalar icin sitelerin vermis oldugu oranlar takip edebilirsiniz. Canl Bahis Siteleri Para Yatrma Online Canl bahis yapacaklarn merak ettigi konulardan bir digeri de para yatrma islemleridir. Oldukca onemli olan bu konuda hata yapmamak cok onemlidir. Canl bahis sitelerine para yatrma islemi sanlann aksine son derece basittir. Oldukca basit ve uygulama esas dogru etki olusturan bu yapda sizde islemi rahatca tamamlayabilirsiniz. Para yatrma konusunda su yolu izleyebilirsiniz. Guvendiginiz ve herhangi bir sekilde aklnzda soru isareti kalmayan bahis sitesine uye olmanz gerekmektedir. Uyelik islemini sorunsuz sekilde tamamladktan sonra para yatrma islemine gecebilirsiniz. Kullanacagnz siteye uye olduktan sonra karsnza kullanc ad ve sifresini gireceginiz yer gelecektir. Buraya giris yaptktan sonra site icerisine islemlere devam edebilirsiniz. Sitede yer alan para yatrma sekmesine tklayp sonrasnda karsnza gelen sayfay inceleyebilirsiniz. Para yatrma bolumunde yer alan ksma ne kadar para yatracagnz yazp devam tusuna basmalsnz. Yatrmak istediginiz tutar girip sonrasnda da devam tusuna bastktan sonra karsnza kart bilgilerinizi gireceginiz sayfa gelecektir. Kredi kart kullanarak para gondermek isteyenlerin tercih ettigi bu sayfa tum bilgiler girilip islem onaylanmaldr. Canl bahis sitelerine para yatrma islemini gerceklestirmek icin hesaba havale secenegini de kullanabilirsiniz. Site icerisinde musteri hizmetleri ile iletisime gecerek banka hesap numaralarn ogrenebilirsiniz. Belirtilen IBAN numarasna istediginiz tutar havale edebilirsiniz. Havale ederken acklama ksmna yazlacak bilgilere dikkat etmelisiniz. Kredi kart veya banka havalesi ile gerceklesen para yatrma islemi sonucunda site hesabnzdan bakiyenize bakabilirsiniz. Bakiyenize gore dilediginiz sekilde bahislerinizi gerceklestirebilirsiniz. Canl Bahis Siteleri Para Cekme Canl bahiste dogru hamleler ve dogru tahminler sonucunda kazandgnz bedeli geri almak isteyebilirsiniz. Kazanclarnz istediginiz banka hesabnza cekebilmek icin uymanz gereken kurallar soz konusudur. Oncelikle bahis sitelerinden para cekebilmeniz icin uye olurken dogru bilgi paylasmnda bulunmanz gerektigidir. Cunku canl bahis sitelerinden para cekme islemi icin kullanc hesab ile talep edilen banka hesap bilgilerinin ortusmesi gerekir. Yani uye olurken verilen bilgi ile banka hesab kime ait ise o bilgiler ayn olmaldr. Bu uygulama sitenin hem kullancsn hem de kendisini guvene alma politikasdr. Ayrca frsatclarn onune gecerek yeni bir uye olusumunun da onune gecmek amac gutmektedir. Uye olan kisi farkl para cekilme talebi verilen hesap farkl oldugunda para cekme islemi gerceklesmeyecektir. Bahisleriniz sonucunda kazanc elde edebilir ve bu kazancnz da hakknz olarak almak isteyebilirsiniz. Burada son derece basit uygulama soz konusu olurken siteler aras farkl gorunumler soz konusu olabilir. Fakat yine de tum sitelerde uyenin site icerisinde para cekme bolumune girmesi yeterlidir. Burada cekilecek olan tutarn belirlenmesi ve hesap numarasnn girilmesi ile birlikte islem onay gerekecektir. Para cekme taleplerinde sizden gerekli bilgiler istenmekte ve havale islemi istenilen bilgiler esliginde yurutulmektedir. Dogru bilgi paylasmak sorunsuz para cekebilmeniz en onemli kuraldr. Istenilen bilgiler girildikten sonra site sorumlular gerekli kontrolleri yapp herhangi bir sorun yoksa ksa surede hesabnza gerekli paray aktaracaklardr. Canl Bahis Sitelerinden Para Cekmek Icin Istenen Belgeler Bahis sitelerine uye olduktan sonra baz kullanclar para cekme taleplerinin karslanmadg konusunda sikayetlerde bulunmuslardr. Bu sikayetlersektorde uzun zamandr bulunan guvenilir bahis siteleri de yer almaktadr. Fakat sikayetlerin dayanaklarna bakldgnda ise islerin tamamen farkl oldugu gorulmektedir. Yasanan bu durum kullanclarn hatal bilgi girmesi ve uyelik bilgileri ile banka bilgilerinin uyusmamas ile dogru orantldr. Birde canl bahis para cekmek icin istenen belgeler eksik ya da hatal olarak sunulmus olabilir. Ortaya ckan karsklar neticesinde para cekme talebinde bulunan kisi istedigini alamadg icin sikayetci olmaktadr. Oysa ki istenilen bilgiler dogru ve istenilen evraklar eksiksiz sunulsa para cekme islemi sorunsuz olacak. Sitelerin para cekme konusunda dikkatli hareket etmesi hilelerin ve illegal faaliyetlerin onune gecmek adnadr. Cunku baz kullanclar farkl bilgiler vererek ikinci hesap acabilmektedirler. Bazen de bilincsizce hatal bilgi girilebilmektedir. Hatal islemlerin cozumu konusunda islem yaptgnz sitenin musteri temsilcileri ile gorusebilirsiniz. Talepleriniz dogrultusunda para cekme islemlerinde ki sorunlar giderilecektir. Canl bahis para cekmek icin istenen belgeler listesi su sekildedir; Kullanc bilgileri ile banka bilgilerini karslastrmak icin kimlik fotokopisi Banka hesap bilgileri Ikametgah ve kisiye ait herhangi bir fatura. Kacak Iddaa Turkiyede dogrudan bahis yapmak icin resmi kanallar kullanlabilmektedir. Fakat tercih edilen ve oran olarak cok daha fazla frsatlar sunan kacar iddaasiteleri bulunmaktadr. Bu siteler kanunlara aykr sekilde yaplmakta olup, yasal bir dayanag yoktur. Elbette bu sitelerin kurulus merkezi Turkiye olmayp, ds ulkelerdedir ve faaliyetler belirlenen siteler uzerinden yaplmaktadr. Kacak Iddaa oldukca riskli olup, cok dikkatli olunmas gerekir. Kacak Bahis Kanunlar cercevesinde istediginiz gibi bahis yapamayabilirsiniz. Bahis yapabilmek icin ya kanuni olarak sorun olmayan ulke dsnda ki kumarhanelere gitmeniz veya kacak bahis sitelerinden islem yapabilirsiniz. Zira bu durum tehlikeli olsa da cok sayda site guvenli sekilde bu alanda hizmet vermektedir. Kacak bahiste oldukca fazla secenek bulunurken yuksek oranda kazanc sunuyor olmas da ragbeti arttryor. Illegal Bahis Bahisin bircok alanda yasak oldugu Turkiyede bu alanda cok sayda yabanc merkezli siteler hizmet vermektedir. Illegal bahis sektorunde faaliyet gosteren siteler guvenli hizmet anlays ile kullanclarna frsatlar sunmaktadr. Yurt ds merkezli bu siteler sorunsuz sekilde hizmetlerini surdururken bulunduklar ulkelerde kanunlara uygun sekildedir. Elbette faaliyet noktasnda bulunduklar ulkelerde sorun teskil etmese de Turkiyede faaliyet gostermeleri kanunin yasaklanmstr. Yasads Bahis Gerek olusturulan etkenler gerekse de ortaya konulan riskler yasads bahis de oldukca tehlikelidir. Kanunlarn mudahil olduklar bu alanlar da hem kullanclar hem de populer bahis yaptranlar tum riskleri goze almaktadrlar. Fakat yasaklardan uzak sekilde guvenli hizmet sunan siteler de bulunmaktadr. Takipler neticesinde kapatlan sitelerin muhakkak alternatifleri kurularak yollarna devam etmektedirler. Canl Iddaa Siteleri Nelerdir? Dunya genelinde kabul gormus cok sayda guvenli hizmet veren populer bahis siteleri bulunmaktadr. Elbette bu siteler dunyann bircok ulkesinde faaliyet gosterse de Turkiyede yasaktr. Sektorde yer alan cok sayda legal iddaa siteleri bulunmaktadr. Herhangi bir kanunsuzlugun olmadg bu sitelerden hzl ve guvenli islem yaplabilmektedir. Tabi bu sitelerde uygulanan oranlar yasal olmayan sitelere gore daha dusuktur. Illegal sitelerin tercih edilme sebeplerinin en onemli etkeni de olusturulan oranlardr. Peki, Iddaa siteleri nelerdir? Faaliyetleri ve uygulama esaslar nelerdir? Turkiyede faaliyet gosteren yasal iddaa siteleri listesi su sekildedir; Iddaa Bilyoner Tuttur Birebin Oley Nesine Misli Iddaa 2004 ylnda hizmet vermeye baslayan Iddaa Spor toto tarafndan kurulmus olup, ilk etapta bayilik seklinde calsmaya baslamstr. Elbette zamanla gelisen teknolojiye ayak uydurarak internet uzerinde de populer bahis severlerin hizmetine sunulmustur. Kuruldugu donemde devletin resmi kurumu olarak faaliyet gosterirken gelinen yeni donemde ozellestirilmistir. Bilyoner Turkiyede faaliyetine 2006 ylnda baslayan Bilyoner ilk ozel yasal bahis sitesi olma ozelligine sahiptir. Guvenilir bahis siteleri Turkiyede bunlardr. Ksa surede populer olan site halen faaliyetlerini sorunsuz sekilde surdurmektedir. Tuttur Ksa surede adndan bahsettirmeyi basaran Tuttur 2009 ylnda faaliyetlere baslamstr. Guvenilir bahis siteleri arasnda yerini almstr. Gunumuze dek bircok alanda populer bahis yapanlara frsatlar sunarken avantajlar ile de begeni toplamstr. Birebin Kullanc odakl calsmalar surdurse de 2011 ylnda sektore giren Birebindiger sitelere gore daha az ragbet gormektedir. Bahis oynamak ise bu sitede oldukca kolaydr. Elbette farkl yaklasmlara sahip olmasndan dolay ilerleyen sureclerde adndan sklkla bahsettirecek gibi gorunuyor. Oley 2009 ylnda Dogus yayn gruplarnn istiraki olarak kurulmus olup yasal olarak herhangi bir sorunu olmayan sitelerdendir. Bahis siteleri arasnda hzl cks yapms bir sitedir. Oley yapms oldugu yenilikler ile kullanclarn da dikkatini ksa surede cekmeyi basarmstr. Nesine Birbirini takip eden surecte Nesine de yine 2006 ylnda hizmet vermeye baslamstr. Yasal bahis siteleri arasnda yerini almay basaran firma ksa surede sevilen ve ragbet goren bir site olmustur. Misli 2009 ylnda sektore cok hzl giris yapan Misli cok sayda reklam filmi ile on plana ckmay basarmstr. Internet uzerinden hem yasal hem de sorunsuz hizmet veren bahis sitelerinden bir tanesi olmustur. Canl Bahis Siteleri Kayt ve Uyelik Islemleri Her zaman populerligini koruyan ve surekli gelisim gosteren canl bahis gun gectikce daha da gucleniyor. Bahis oynamak icin ise sitelere uye olunmas gerekir. Yuksek getirisi ve begeni toplayan faaliyetleri ile cok sayda site bu alanda faaliyet gostermektedir. Elbette sorunsuz sekilde uye olmanz ve faaliyetler gostermeniz de oldukca kolaydr. Canl bahis siteleri kayt ve uyelik islemleri dakikalar icerisinde gerceklestirilecek yapya sahiptir. Uye olacagnz siteyi belirledikten sonra siteye girmeniz gerekmektedir. Girdiginiz sitenin ana sayfasnda uye ol ya da kayt ol bolumu bulunacaktr. Siteler arasnda degiskenlik gosteren bu alanda temel unsurlar bulunmaktadr. Elbette farkllklar olsa da temelinde benzer bilgiler uye olmak isteyen kisilerden talep edilmektedir. Uye ol bolumune tkladktan sonra karsnza uyelik bilgi formu ckacaktr. Bu formda sizin kim oldugunuzu ogrenmek ve sitenin guvenligini saglamak adna islemler yaplmaktadr. Uyelik formunda yer alan ad soyad bolumunu eksiksiz ve dogru sekilde doldurmalsnz. Sizden bu formda istenen bilgilerin tamamn girmeniz istenecektir. Istenen bilgiler mutlaka dogru ve eksiksiz sekilde olmaldr. Eksik veya hatal bilgi uyelik islemlerinde sorun teskil edebilir. Yine de yanls bilgi girisine ragmen uyelik islemleri tamamlanabilir. Fakat boyle bir yol izleyenler sonrasnda buyuk skntlarla karslasabilirler. Bu skntlarn basnda da para cekme islemlerinde yasanan sorunlardr. Uyelik islemleri dikkatli ve ozenle doldurulmas gereken yapdadr. Canl bahis siteleri kayt ve uyelik islemleri gerceklestirilirken verilen bilgiler site yonetimi tarafndan muhafaza edilmektedir. Herhangi bir sekilde 3. Sahslarla paylaslmas gibi bir durum soz konusu degildir. Bu faaliyetleri surduren sitelerin guven unsurlar arasnda bu nokta onceliklidir. Bahis sitelerine uye olurken hatal bilgi paylasmnda bulunmak size faydadan cok zarar verecektir. Diyelim ki bilgileri hatal girdiniz ve uyelik onayland. Uyelik tamamlandktan sonra siteye para yatrdnz ve kazanc elde ettiniz. Kazancnz sonrasnda hesabnza almak istediginizde karsnza banka bilgileri bolumu gelecektir. Para cekme talebi gerceklestikten sonra site uyelik bilgileri ile banka hesap bilgileri ortusmez ise paranz alamazsnz. Boyle bir durumla karslasmamak adna bu hususa ayrca dikkat etmelisiniz. Mar 21, 2016 | By Benedict Body Labs, provider of 3D human models for clothing, technology, gaming, and other applications, has today secured the exclusive rights to two 3D scanning patents issued to Brown University, as well as licenses to new technologies from Max-Planck-Innovation GmbH. Have you ever tried on a pair of jeans, ostensibly in your size, but found the proportions to be completely and utterly wrong for your legs? For many, this changing room mishap happens on a regular basis and proves a constant source of frustration. More often than not, the problem originates from clothing manufacturers basing their measurements on a single human model considered to be of average shape and size, a procedure which obviously risks alienating customers with certain body shapes. In 2013, one ambitious startup decided to address this problemas well as several related onesby devising a new, digital framework with which clothing manufacturers and other businesses could better understand human body shape and movement. The clever idea garnered much attention and, by November 2015, the company had secured $8 million in Series A funding, with which it was able to significantly expand its operations. That company, Manhattan-based Body Labs, specializes in providing accurate 3D models and animations of the human body, constructed from numerous 3D scans of real human models. Its technology is now used in a range of fields, from fashion to virtual reality, with companies using the virtual 3D bodies to create perfectly fitting clothing, realistic physical movements in computer games, and much more. In order to create its realistic 3D body models, Body Labs collects huge amounts of data from 3D scans of human models of all shapes and sizes, before aggregating that data to produce realistic virtual bodiesnot for a single, normal, body shape, but for a wide selection of physiques and postures. The statistical approach used by Body Labs incorporates machine learning algorithms and a comprehensive training set of human shapes and poses for converting shape parameters into statistically accurate 3D body models. Todays announcement sees the company taking an important step in its long-term 3D scanning and modeling evolution. With the acquisition of two patents issued to Brown University, in addition to licenses to several new technologies developed at Max-Planck-Innovation GmbH, Body Labs 3D and 4D scanning capabilities will be significantly enhanced, enabling the platform to produce more realistic body models and animations than ever before. "These exclusive patents and licenses enable us to unlock unprecedented personalization across the entire human body and ensure our technology is more accessible than ever to a growing list of industries," said William O'Farrell, co-founder and CEO of Body Labs. "It's been a privilege to be partnered with Brown University and the Max Planck Institute for the past three years. These patents and licenses enable us to further expand our relationship and drive rapid innovation in the 3D body modeling space. Both of the patents acquired by Body Labs concern, amongst other things, the ability to capture and depict 3D scans of human bodies whilst they are wearing clothes. The technology described in U.S. patent 9,189,886 B2, originally filed on August 14, 2009, would use a low-dimensional 3D model of the human body to accurately capture details of the human body shape, even when it is wearing clothes or obscured by other physical objects. Sensor measurements would be fitted to the body model, with fewer and less accurate measurements required due to the low-dimensionality of the model. Patent 20130249908 A1, filed on June 8, 2011, proposes a contour person (CP) model of the human body which combines accuracy and simplicity. Learned from a 3D model of the human body, the CP model would capture natural shape and pose variations, whilst offering the computational benefits of a a simple 20 part-based model. The proposed technology would be particularly beneficial for clothing design and manufacture, as the CP model could be dressed with a low-dimensional clothing model, represented as a deformation from the underlying CP model. Illustrations from U.S. patent 20130249908 A1 In addition to the acquisition of the two patents issued to Brown University, Body Labs has announced exclusive licenses to new technologies developed at Max-Planck-Innovation GmbH. These technologies will help Body Labs to improve its 3D representations of hands, feet, faces and heads, and will help to facilitate the integration of Body Labs technology into other industry workflows such as animation pipelines, gaming, virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), health, fitness and more. The Max-Planck-Innovation tech will also help Body Labs improve its representations of soft-tissue deformation captured from 4D scanners. The new patent and technology licenses acquired by Body Labs will enable the company to significantly improve its product as a tool for clothing designers and manufacturers. However, the 3D scanning innovator also regards developers of virtual reality technology as potential key beneficiaries of its ever-improving 3D scanning and modeling services. With Gartner predicting 25 million virtual reality headsets to end up in the hands of consumers by 2018, Body Labs seems to be focusing its attention in the right area. Being more-or-less unrivaled in its 3D body model services, the company is now well-placed to become a leading provider of virtual body data for VR software developers. Posted in 3D Scanning Maybe you also like: Mar 21, 2016 | By Benedict Crowd4Africa, a charitable organization based in Rome, Italy, is looking to raise 22,900 ($25,800) to provide 3D printing mini factories for two hospitals in Africa, one in Uganda and one in Congo. The mini factories will include equipment for turning plastic waste into 3D printing filament. Renato Regianni, a student at Romes Massimiliano Massimo Institute, has been keeping a close eye on global medical and technological developments for several years. A few months ago, Regianni started corresponding with Caritas, a Catholic charity operating in a number of countries around the world, which informed the student of an important problem faced by several hospitals in Africa: a lack of spare parts for crucial machines and systems, which in some cases has forced entire hospitals to temporarily close down while staff try to obtain a replacement part. Thinking about this problem, Regianni and a group of friends realized that 3D printing could provide the perfect solution both to this problem and to the problem of expensive and hard-to-find prostheses. Crowd4Africa, the organization of which Regianni is a member, consists of fifteen students aged 15-17 from the Massimiliano Massimo Institute, working with 20 volunteers from the industrial, academic, and healthcare industries and receiving additional help from 69 children and 40 parents from Making 3D Printers, a course teaching students aged 8-15 how to design and build their own 3D printer. The organizations latest project has two key objectives: to enable two African hospitals to produce replacement plastic parts for machinery, and to enable them to 3D print affordable prostheses for patients. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), only 2% of the 20 million people who require prostheses receive the necessary help for their condition. To maximize the benefits to those in need, the United Nations (UN) recommends that prostheses be manufactured in the area where they are to be distributed, reducing the cost of each prosthetic device from $300 to less than $10, as well as greatly reducing waiting time for patients. With this information in mind, Crowd4Africa is looking to set up a 3D printing mini factory in Lacor Hospital, Uganda, and the Caritas Centre of Kenge, Congo. Each 3D printing mini factory will consist of a Filamaker mini XXL Shredder (699) for converting plastic waste into pellets, a Noztek Pro extruder (1,930) for turning those pellets into filament, a 3D Systems Sense 3D scanner (442) for obtaining data for prostheses, an EWE Olympia 3D printer (5,978), 2x smaller 3Drag Futura Electronics 3D printers with CNC mill adapter kits ($900), and several other tools and accessories. In order to fund the two 3D printer mini factories, Crowd4Africa must raise 22,900. With 22 days of its Eppela campaign still left to run, the organization has already collected almost 15,000, putting it on course to smash its target and deliver its vital 3D printing equipment to both hospitals. Various incentives are offered to backers of the campaign, such as the chance to be a guest at one of the organizations laboratories to assist the 3D printing of a prosthesis from plastic caps (1,000). Lacor Hospital is the biggest non-profit facility in Uganda, helping more than a quarter of a million people every year, while the Kenge Caritas Centre in Congo employs only one physician, Dr Chiara Castellani, for 150,000 people across 5,000 square kilometers. Both facilities could benefit greatly from the assistance of 3D printing equipment, and Crowd4Africa will be giving a big final push over the next few weeks to ensure that it meets its target. Posted in 3D Printing Application Maybe you also like: Here's what we know about Humeysha: They're a quartet based in NYC (made up of Zain Alam, Dylan Bostick, Adrien DeFontaine, and John Snyder), they released their self-titled debut back in October, and their single is a marvelously mellow kind of psych-pop, but it's clean and sparkly like a diamond baguette, dappled with Bollywood-toned lilts, sung by Alam in both English and Hindi-Urdu (the project was initially conceived in India). Given the current trend for smothering recordings in reverb and lo-fi fuzz, this kind of high def clarity is a real palate cleanser. 'For Love, From the Law' always felt like the song meant to open the album from the moment it was finished, explains Alam. Between the verse and chorus, the lyrics alternate from Hindi-Urdu to English and then back. The song distills my familys stories of coming to the US from Pakistan, weaving in larger themes about promise, leaving for ones love, and lost homelands. Premiering below is the video for said track, which luckily, is as languidly appealing as the track. Kevin Jackson in Literary Review: The publication of this wonderful book is not far short of a miracle a corny word that would have made Sir William Empson harrumph, irritable scientific rationalist that he was. Until about ten years ago, Empsons admirers (our name is Legion, for we are many) had assumed that the only manuscript of The Face of the Buddha had vanished forever it was often rumoured to have been destroyed in the Blitz, until the first volume of John Haffendens invaluable Empson biography (published in 2005) established that it was in fact the man of letters John Davenport who had left it in a taxi when very, very drunk, circa 1947. Davenport was so embarrassed by his bungle that he did not confess to Empson until 1952. But his apology was far from accurate. Thanks to an inspired curator at the British Library (let his name be honoured: Jamie Andrews), we now know the full story. What actually happened is that Davenport, still three sheets to the wind, handed the manuscript and its photographic illustrations over to that most colourful figure of 1940s literary bohemia, the Tamil poet and editor ofPoetry London, Tambimuttu. Shortly afterwards, Tambimuttu quit London and returned to his native Ceylon, leaving The Face of the Buddha in the hands of his coeditor, Edward Marsh. And shortly after the handover, Marsh took ill and died. His papers remained unexamined until they were bought by the British Library in 2003. Andrews discovered Empsons material two years later. To Empsonians, this happy find was as exciting as, say, the discovery of an authenticated text of Cardenio would be to Shakespeareans. more here. YEREVAN, MARCH 22, ARMENPRESS. President of the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia Galust Sahakyan sent a condolence letter to President of the Belgian Senate Christine Defraigne and Presidents of the Belgian Chamber of Representatives Siegfried Bracke. As Armenpress was informed from the Public Relations and Media Department of the National Assembly, the letter reads, I am deeply shocked by the horrible terror acts that occurred in Brussels. We harshly condemn these terrible acts that claimed lives of numerous people. I think the civilized society must struggle against this evil with consolidated efforts prohibiting the spread of intolerance and extremism. I express our condolence and solidarity to the relatives of the victims on behalf of me and the National Assembly of the Republic of Armenia, wishing them patience and fortitude, and speedy recovery to the injured. YEREVAN, MARCH 22, ARMENPRESS. Donald Trump reacted to the terror attacks that rocked the Brussels airport and subway system on March 22, killing at least 26 and injuring dozens. Trump said the "absolutely horrible" attacks reinforce how important it is to make sure our border is secure and we vet anyone who enters the U.S. He explained that tragedies like this and what happened in Paris in November seem to be becoming more and more frequent. "We have a worldwide situation that is out of control," Trump said. According to TASS, Barack Obama, who is currently on a trip to Cuba, has been informed on the Brussels attacks. YEREVAN, MARCH 22, ARMENPRESS. On March 22 Armenian National Assembly (NA) Vice President Eduard Sharmazanov received Minister of Justice, Minister of Awqaf and Islamic affairs Yaqoub Abdulmohsen Al-Sane and delegation led by him. The meeting was attended by Ambassador of the Republic of Armenia to Kuwait Fadey Charchoghlyan and Kuwait's AmbassadorExtraordinary and Plenipotentiary to Armenia Bassam Mohammed Al-Qabandi. Armenpress was informed from the Armenian NA Public Relations and Information Department that welcoming the guests Eduard Sharmazanov highly assessed warm relations between the two countries and noted that despite the existence of a strong partnership, there are sectors which have potential and opportunity to get developed. NA Vice President expressed gratitude to the State of Kuwait for the humanitarian measure to grant the Armenian refugees, who survived from the Genocide, with the second fatherland. He expressed confidence that the Minister Yaqoub Abdulmohsen Al-Sanes visit to the Armenia's parliament will be a new impetus to develop already developed ties and implement new and mutually beneficial projects. In this context, the interlocutors stressed the importance of cooperation and mutual visits of the parliamentary friendship groups. During the meeting, NA Vice President also referred to the world's expanded and growing terrorism and manifestations of extremism; the issue of NKR conflict settlement. He stressed that terrorism has neither nationality nor religion. He condemned the terrorist act in Brussels held hours before, which caused the loss of innocent lives and injuries. Eduard Sharmazanov considered necessary to combine efforts to fight against this xenophobic phenomena. Armenian Vice President of the National Assembly, touching on Nagorno Karabakh conflict, noted that Armenia, unlike Azerbaijan's resolution, sees the problem exclusively by peaceful means, based on the self-determination of nations, in the context of the OSCE Minsk Group. In this context, Sharmazanov informed the guests that Turkey has been blockading Armenia for 23 years, which is unacceptable in the 21st century. Eduard Sharmazanov also thanked the State of Kuwait for providing humanitarian assistance. YEREVAN, MARCH 22, ARMENPRESS. The Foundation for the Preservation of Wildlife and Cultural Assets (FPWC) with the support of Brigitte Bardot Foundation and the Armenian Republics Ministry of Nature Protection will implement the transfer of two bears, which were brought to Yerevan from the Gyumri private zoo, to Libearty Bear Sanctuary in Romania on March 23 of the current year. This announcement was made by the partners during the press conference on March 22, Armenpress reports citing the Public Relations Department of FPWC foundation. All the necessary veterinary and export permits have been obtained, the multilateral agreements have been signed, means of transportation ready and the bears trip from Armenia to Romania is planned. Libearty Bear Sanctuary in Romania is a closed area of several hectares in accordance with the international standards, which is aimed for the residence of bears with health and psychological problems. During the quarantine period at Yerevan Zoo, the bears from Gyumri Misha and Masha have undergone all veterinary examinations, received all necessary treatments and were vaccinated against rabies. Their fur has significantly improved and their weight considerably increased. In contrast to the first days, the bears are not fighting for food and water with each other anymore. Fondation Brigitte Bardot, the main French animal welfare NGO has shouldered the expenses for food, care and transportation of the bears since November 2015. And the representatives of the Fondation just arrived to Armenia to accompany the bears to their new place of residence in the Romanian Libearty Sanctuary. In a few hours, the bear Masha and Misha, whose plight has shocked public opinion over the world, will leave their cages for a natural environment. Its a chance, a hope for all the wild animals unjustly imprisoned, deprived of liberty. The FPWC and my Foundation have worked together, with the support of the Ministry of Nature Protection, to achieve this great result. Beyond this particular case, I am pleased to learn that this Ministry will present on Friday a proposal to strengthen national legislation so that there is never again a zoo of shame as the one discovered in Gyumri. Armenia is now an example, the image of a progressive country, respectful of animals Bravo, Merci, said the founder of the Fondation and the world famous French actress Brigitte Bardot. In the future the cooperation between the Foundation for the Preservation of Wildlife and Cultural Assets and the Brigitte Bardot Fondation will be continuous. The public attention centered on Gyumri private zoos animals after the publication of The Daily Mail, where it was called the worlds saddest zoo. The zoo had only two bears and three lions. On February 10, 2016 the Foundation for the Preservation of Wildlife and Cultural Assets (FPWC) in collaboration with the Worldwide Veterinary Service (WVS) have organized the rescue of the Gyumri Zoo lioness Mary and her cubs Zita and Geeta to the Caucasus Wildlife Refuge in Urtsadzor, a privately protected area managed by the FPWC. The founder of the FPWC Ruben Khachatryan noted that during this year the Wildlife Rescue Center will be opened on the territory of the Caucasus Wildlife Refuge. The mission of the Center is to manage the incidents with wild animals both in Yerevan and the other regions of Armenia, as well as to implement information and education campaigns against illegal exploitations of wildlife. The specialist of the Center will examine the wild animals, provide medical assistance and care. During the press conference the Deputy Minister of Nature Protection Khachik Hakobyan noted that the Ministry of Nature Protection will submit a package of new legislative changes, which will be aimed at the protection of wildlife and animals. The Foundation for Preservation of Wildlife and Cultural Assets would like to express its gratitude to the Armenian Republics Ministry of Nature Protection, State Veterinary Agency under the RA Ministry of Agriculture, the RA Ministry of Finance Custom authorities, to all supporters and partners for their continuous support and trust, as well as the mass media for the active coverage of this issue. YEREVAN, MARCH 22, ARMENPRESS. On March 22 33 Members of Congress sent a letter to the Appropriations Subcommittee on State, Foreign Operations, and Related Programs Chairwoman Kay Granger (R-TX) and Ranking Member Nita Lowey (D-NY) in support of continued U.S. assistance in the Fiscal Year (FY) 2017 budget for the Republics of Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh, the Samtskhe-Javakheti region of Georgia, and at-risk minorities in the Middle East, Armenpress reports citing the Armenian Assembly of America (Assembly). "Continued U.S. support in the region is critically important," the letter read. Members of Congress requested at least $5 million for humanitarian and development programs in Nagorno Karabakh, appropriating no less than $40 million in overall economic aid (including Economic Support Fund, International Narcotics Control and Law Enforcement, and Global Health Programs) for Armenia, suspending all military aid to Azerbaijan, allocating at least 10 percent of aid given to Georgia towards funding sustainable job-creation programs in Samtskhe-Javakheti, enhancing Section 907 of the FREEDOM Support Act, and reinstating Karabakh in the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) Minsk Group peace process as a full negotiating partner. "The Assembly applauds the initiative supported by over 30 Members of Congress and their efforts to ensure the well-being of Armenia and Artsakh. I look forward to working with Congressional leaders to promote the important issues outlined in the letter," Assembly Executive Director Bryan Ardouny said. "We live in a dangerous time, as ISIS commits genocide against Christians and other minorities, millions of people have become displaced by violence and civil war, and Azerbaijan threatens a new war in the South Caucasus with its repeated cease-fire violations. With the proposed changes to the FY 2017 Appropriations Budget, the Administration has the opportunity to help resolve some of these critical concerns." The letter calls for a stronger U.S. stance regarding Azerbaijan's increasing number of hostile acts against Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh. Earlier this month, the Obama Administration released its budget for the upcoming year, maintaining a military parity between Armenia and Azerbaijan at $1 million for Foreign Military Financing (FMF) and $600,000 for International Military Education and Training (IMET), a decrease from the previous year. The letter recommends a suspension of U.S. military aid to Azerbaijan "until its government ceases cross-border attacks, ends its threat of renewed war, and agrees to a settlement of regional conflicts through peaceful means." Members of Congress are also requesting supplemental language to strengthen Section 907 of the FREEDOM Support Act. U.S. priority focuses on a peaceful settlement of the Karabakh conflict, yet the letter points out that Karabakh government officials have been excluded from the peace process since 1998. "Nagorno Karabakh should, in the interests of peace and basic fairness, be permitted to fully participate in all talks regarding its future. The best and most sustainable path to peace requires direct engagement with the people and government of Nagorno Karabakh, whose fate and future are the subject of ongoing talks and whose security will rest on the outcome of these negotiations," the letter reads. Last week, Secretary of State John Kerry confirmed that the crimes committed by ISIS constitute genocide against Yazidis, Christians, and other religious minorities, including Armenians. Armenia does not have adequate resources to continue helping refugees escaping from genocide. The Administration's proposed budget allocated nearly $3 billion for migration and refugee assistance, some of which could go towards Armenia's resettlement efforts. Armenia accepted the third largest amount of refugees in Europe, sheltering nearly 20,000 displaced Syrians. Armenia hosts six Syrian refugees per 1,000 nationals - a ratio much higher than many European countries or the U.S., especially noteworthy given the country's economic circumstance, reports the Armenian Agenda. "As a host country, Armenia has been absolutely exemplary in terms of the ratio of welcomed Syrian-Armenian refugees to the number of native inhabitants," said United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) Representative in Armenia Christoph Bierwirth. The letter suggests allocating international and U.S. aid to Armenia and "supporting the efforts to regional states to resettle those fleeing from Syria." The Appropriations Subcommittee suggests to putting in place "policies and programs to close gaps in the distribution of need-based aid to at-risk minority populations in Syria, including Armenians." The letter supporting increased assistance to Armenia and Nagorno Karabakh for FY 2017 was signed by Frank Pallone, Jr. (D-NJ); Robert Dold (R-IL); Gus Bilirakis (R-FL); Tony Crdenas (D-CA); David Cicilline (D-RI); Judy Chu (D-CA); Katherine Clark (D-MA); Mike Coffman (R-CO); Jim Costa (D-CA); Joseph Crowley (D-NY); Anna Eshoo (D-CA); Chaka Fattah (D-PA); James Langevin (D-RI); Barbara Lee (D-CA); Daniel Lipinski (D-IL); Zoe Lofgren (D-CA); Stephen Lynch (D-MA); Carolyn Maloney (D-NY); James McGovern (D-MA); Grace Napolitano (D-CA); Collin Peterson (D-MN); Jared Polis (D-CO); Mike Quigley (D-IL); Charles Rangel (D-NY); Linda Sanchez (D-CA); Loretta Sanchez (D-CA); John Sarbanes (D-MD); Jan Schakowsky (D-IL); Adam Schiff (D-CA); Brad Sherman (D-CA); Jackie Speier (D-CA); Dina Titus (D-NV); and Chris Van Hollen (D-MD). 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. IMGCAP(1)]Last week I met with a client for one hour to get his tax information. This is a client I have had since 1972. At this point his tax return is much less complicated and he could easily mail in his info, but then we would forgo the meeting. We met when his lawyer introduced me to help negotiate his divorce. I got it done and in a way that he and his soon to be ex-wife did not fight and remained friends (to this day!). Because of this I will never lose this client. We are truly in a great profession! At our meeting we catch up on each others lives, childrens and grandchildrens doings, health issues (thankfully nothing bad for either of us) and his work activities. He told me I could never retire and I assured him I will always be around to get his tax information. In actuality I havent prepared his return in over 30 years, but I am the person he meets with. Occasionally he calls with a quick question about something that has nothing to do about taxes; he knows that if he has a question about taxes or his return he needs to call Peter Weitsen, my partner of over 28 years. Last year his grown son had a problem that I was able to solve for him. My pleasureI love it when clients children call me. I have others like this and in some cases deal also with the children and grandchildren. We are truly in a great profession and tax season is the icing on the cake. We get to see and interact with clients that have become friends, even if it is for one hour a year. Edward Mendlowitz, CPA, is partner at WithumSmith+Brown, PC, CPAs. He is on the Accounting Today Top 100 Influential People List. He is the author of 24 books, including How to Review Tax Returns, co-written with Andrew D. Mendlowitz, published by www.CPATrendlines.com and Managing Your Tax Season, Third Edition, published by the AICPA. Ed also writes a twice-a-week blog addressing issues that clients have at www.partners-network.com. Art of Accounting is a continuing series where Ed shares autobiographical experiences with tips that he hopes can be adopted by his colleagues. Ed welcomes practice management questions and can be reached at (732) 964-9329 or emendlowitz@withum.com. (Bloomberg) A Washington-based watchdog group is taking aim at Donald Trump, accusing his foundation of making political contributions that may have violated its status as a tax-exempt charity. Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW, said that The Donald J. Trump Foundation in September 2013 contributed $25,000 to a political group associated with Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, according to a complaint filed with the Internal Revenue Service Monday. Tax law prohibits charitable organizations from engaging in political activities, including contributing funds to candidates, parties or political action committees. According to CREW, Trump's foundation did not disclose the contribution on its 2013 tax return, on which it declared that it had engaged in no prohibited political activities. Neither Trump nor his foundation has been accused of any wrongdoing. A phone call to the foundation wasn't answered, and Trump's campaign didn't immediately respond to a phone call and e-mail seeking comment. Whitney Ray, a spokesman for Bondi, declined immediate comment on the donation. "The IRS needs to look into this," CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder said in a statement. "It is a serious problem if charitable foundations are used to influence politics." David Brock, who leads American Bridge and Correct the Recordtwo Super-PACs that support Hillary Clinton's presidential campaignis the chairman of CREW's board. According to CREW, at the time of the foundation's contribution, Bondi was considering whether Florida should file a lawsuit similar to one that had been filed in New York, accusing the billionaire developer and his Trump Entrepreneur Institute, previously known as Trump University, of defrauding students. Bondi's office decided against filing its own lawsuit. The office had received only one complaint at the time, according to Ray, Bondi's spokesman. After reviewing it, Bondi's office referred it to the attorney general in New York. "Their lawsuit sought relief for any and all aggrieved customers nationwide," Ray said. Trump, who also hosted a fundraiser for Bondi in March 2014 at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, received Bondi's endorsement for the Republican presidential nomination earlier this month, days before Florida's winner-take-all primary. [Editor's Note: The Washington Post reported Tuesday that the Trump campaign admitted the donation was made in error.] The National Retail Federation is urging Congress to reject any form of consumption tax as it considers a variety of tax reform proposals in a hearing Tuesday. The NRF instead wants Congress to focus on changes to the income tax system that would broaden the tax base in return for lower rates. Replacement of our current income tax system with a consumption tax system would cause great disruption to the U.S. economy, NRF senior vice president for government relations David French wrote in a letter to the House Ways and Means Committee, which is holding a Tax Policy Subcommittee hearing Tuesday afternoon on tax reform proposals from three Republican lawmakers. Congress should not consider making this type of change at a time when the economy is stagnant and consumer confidence is so low. Adding a consumption tax on top of the current income tax would have even more negative consequences, French said. The subcommittee hearing is part of a series of sessions that the Ways and Means Committee plans to hold on tax reform. Rather than taking testimony from affected parties, the Tax Policy Subcommittee is hearing from lawmakers who have proposed legislation on the issue. Rep. Devin Nunes, R-Calif., a member of the Ways and Means Committee, testified in support of his bill, H.R. 4377, the American Business Competitiveness (ABC) Act of 2015. This proposal would tax a business based on its actual cash-flow instead of its income. Rep. Michael Burgess, R-Texas, discussed the merits of his bill, H.R. 1040, the Flat Tax Act. This proposal gives businesses and individuals the choice to opt-in to a 17 percent flat tax and to be taxed on a cash-flow basis for business activities. Rep. Robert Woodall, R-Ga., spoke in support of his bill, H.R. 25, the FairTax Act of 2015. This proposal would repeal all federal income, payroll and withholding, and estate and gift taxes. The taxes would be replaced with a national sales tax on gross payments of taxable property or services. Today the subcommittee will hold the first in a series of hearings to focus on fundamental tax reform, said chairman Charles Boustany, R-La. We are honored to have three of our esteemed colleagues join us today so we can learn about bills they have developed to take the tax system in a new direction, by moving away from income as the tax base and instead looking to cash-flow or consumption as a tax base that is more conducive to economic growth. These are important ideas, in which our colleagues have invested an enormous amount of time and energy. And it shows the seriousness of their commitment to the effort to develop a pro-growth tax system for the 21st century. Rep. Richard Neal, D-Mass., the ranking member of the subcommittee, voiced his frustration that Congress has not made more progress on tax reform. Todays hearing is yet another in a long line of hearings that we have had on this matter, he said in his opening statement. I must express my frustration at a hearing that seemingly takes us backwards. The time for talk has passed. Now is the time for action. While no consumption tax legislation has come close to passage, the NRF noted that a variety of consumption tax concepts have come up in Congress over the past decade and a half, including a European-style Value Added Tax to replace the current income tax system, a VAT in addition to the current income tax, a National Retail Sales Tax and a Flat Tax. NRF and other opponents argue the measures would raise prices and decimate consumer spending, which makes up two-thirds of the nations economy. Regardless of label, the proposals under consideration in this hearing are all consumption taxes, French wrote. It is the wrong time to consider a tax system that would increase the tax burden on consumption. French said consumption taxes are borne disproportionately by low and moderate-income families, who spend a higher proportion of their income than wealthier families. NRF believes a better approach to tax reform would be through income tax changes that would lower rates and broaden the base, French said. Studies have shown that this type of tax reform would have favorable affects on the economy, wages and retail spending. A 2010 Ernst and Young study commissioned by the NRF found that adding a 10 percent VAT to the income tax would result in the loss of 850,000 jobs in the first year, reduce gross domestic product for three years and bring a permanent drop in retail spending totaling $2.5 trillion over the first 10 years. A PricewaterhouseCoopers study conducted for NRF in 2000 said a Flat Tax would bring a five-year decline in GDP and a six-year decline in consumer spending while a National Retail Sales Tax would bring a four-year decline in GDP and an eight-year decline in spending. In contrast, a 2014 review by the congressional Joint Tax Committee found that broadening the base by limiting tax deductions and exemptions and using the revenue saved to lower rates would cause employment, consumer spending and GDP to grow. YEREVAN, MARCH 22, ARMENPRESS. Head of the Armenian Delegation to Euronest PA Artak Zakaryan expressed solidarity with the relatives of the victims of the Brussels attacks on behalf of the members of the delegation. As Armenpress reports, Zakaryan made a note on his page in Facebook that the Armenian nation grieves with the people of Belgium, and that the President of Armenia expressed his condolences to the Prime Minister of Belgium. "Today, our parliamentary colleagues with a moment of silence respected the memory of victims at the meeting. These tragic events prove once again that we must be united in the fight against all forms of terrorism, violence and xenophobia ", Zakaryan said. Two explosions rocked Brussels airport on March 22. According to new data, 34 people died and almost 200 were wounded in the airport attacks. The Brussels airport administration urged to stay away from the airport after the two explosions occurred. The airport management wrote on Twitter: "Two terrorist attacks happened at the airport. People are being evacuated from the building. Stay away from the airport area. Flights are canceled, "the statement reads. An explosion took place at the Maalbek subway station in Brussels, following the airport blasts. BBC stresses the fact that the Brussels airport incident is followed by the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, the main suspect of the Paris attacks. According to Belgian media, the airport is closed for flights. There are reports on social media that people fleeing in panic from the scene. Larsen & Toubro has assigned its creative mandate to Rediffusion Y&R. The account was won following a multi-agency pitch and will be handled out of Rediffusion Y&Rs Mumbai office. With an objective to bring in a committed focus on its key growth businesses, L&T recently decided to integrate its marketing communication duty under a single agency. D Morada, Vice President, Corporate Brand Management & Communications, L&T Group, remarked, L&T is a diversified conglomerate that caters to markets across several sectors. While each of our businesses addresses different markets, the core value proposition remains valid across all its business. To ensure consistency of brand positioning of the L&T Group, it was found necessary to have single creative agency to handle the advertising needs of all our businesses. After a detailed evaluation process we decided to award Rediffusion Y&R the creative mandate. It was based on the strength of understanding our business needs, and articulation of a strategy on the way ahead. The L&T brand has been built over decades with a lot of passion and commitment, and while selecting a partner we sought the same level of passion. On winning the account, Dhunji S Wadia, President, Rediffusion Y&R, said, Its an honour to win the creative duties for Larsen & Toubro, one of Indias most well-recognised brands. We really look forward to partnering L&Ts ambition of achieving greater heights and creating some great work together. We were given a very detailed and specific brief. This helped the team in terms addressing the issues and working on interesting creative solutions. We are delighted to be their partners among the number of agencies that participated in this pitch. Uttio Majumdar, Head of Operations, Rediffusion Y&R, Mumbai, added here, L&T is amongst one of Indias most iconic and respected brands and L&T Realty being a part of this family commands a high level of trust and loyalty. As they enter a new phase of development and aim to strengthen their presence in the overcrowded and often misunderstood real estate market, we at Rediffusion Y&R feel honoured to be selected as their partners and we look forward to helping them achieve their goals. Larsen & Toubro is one of Indias largest conglomerates that branches its interest across key sectors of the Indian economy, moreover maintaining market leadership in nearly all their major lines of businesses. With over seven decades of strong customer focused approach and continuous quest for world-class quality, their expertise stands unmatched across technology, engineering, construction, manufacturing and infrastructure. L&T Realty is amongst L&T Groups fastest growing business that spreads across Mumbai, Bangalore and Chennai, offering premium residential and commercial spaces. The company plans to expand rapidly in the next few years and establish itself as the most trustworthy and top-of-the mind brand in the crowded real estate business. The immediate mandate for the agency is to work closely with the L&T Realty team in strongly positioning the brand in the market. The Gunn Report, the global index of creative excellence in advertising, has published its 2015 Book and Showreel of the Year, a round-up and showcase of the worlds best advertising performance in the year January to December 2015 based on the results of 45 global, regional and national creative award contests. The Gunn Report 2015 Book and Showreel has been guest edited by Jeremy Craigen, Global Chief Creative Officer of Innocean Worldwide, who has penned the Introduction as well as chapter commentaries and analysis of the featured award-winning work. Also included are Messages to the Industry by guest essayists Wendy Clark, the newly appointed Chief Executive Officer of DDB North America and Nils Leonard, Chairman & Chief Creative Officer of Grey London. Advocates of creativity and very much at the forefront of our industry, they both address, in their own way, the challenging and rapidly changing landscape of the marketplace, the savvy consumer, and what to do to adapt. Wendy Clark, who worked client side at Coca-Cola North America for many years, has written a piece titled Together We Are More Than Enough, which conveys the necessity of applying changes in the workplace to cultivate a culture of togetherness, collaboration and trust. Nils Leonard, who has overseen seven of the most profitable and awarded years in Grey Londons 52-year history, has composed The Best Ads Dont Look Like Ads Anymore, which takes a close look at how advertising is changing as brands move away from just selling their products to now influencing popular culture by being useful, relevant, and mattering to society. In addition to the guest introduction, commentaries and essays, The Gunn Report Book includes: League Tables of the most awarded ads in Film, Print/Out of Home, Digital and All Gunns Blazing (the Integrated/Innovative et al work) League Tables of the worlds most awarded Agencies, Networks, Advertisers, Production Companies, Directors and Countries More than 160 award-winning ads showcased with their synopses and credits The Gunn Report for Media 2015, a global evaluation of media creativity, innovation and effectiveness Cases for Creativity 2015: Good Doing by James Hurman, founder of Previously Unavailable Consolidated Tables based on 17 years of overall performance 1999-2015 Showreel of the Year, a DVD presenting the top 100+ most awarded commercials and campaigns of 2015 This edition of The Gunn Report Annual showcases the very best creative campaigns of 2015 as selected by hundreds of industry professionals from around the world, and brings valuable insight and clarity by consolidating the data of the most important global, regional and national awards, said Donald Gunn, a champion of creativity and founder of The Gunn Report. The book serves as a unique reference as well as an essential inspirational and educational tool for those who are passionate or want to learn more about the power of creativity, he added. Times Network has unveiled the agenda and list of speakers for its second Digital India Summit & Awards 2016, which is being held on Tuesday, March 22, in New Delhi. The second Digital India Summit will see some of the most important architects of Indias digital revolution congregate for the all-day event. Times Network has organised the initiative to take a closer look at Indias progress in the digital world. Union Minister of Communications and Information Technology, Ravi Shankar Prasad, chief guest of the second Digital India Summit, will deliver the keynote address at the conclave. The Sessions and Speakers Delivering on Digital India Dream: The Story So Far This session will have panelists like Arvind Gupta (National Head-BJP-IT Cell), Amit Midha (President Dell Asia Pacific & Japan; Chairman, Dell Emerging Markets), Noshir Kaka (MD McKinsey India), Amit Jain (CEO, Uber India), Satyan Gajwani (Managing Director, Times Internet Ltd), R Chandrasekhar (President- NASSCOM), Karl Mehta (Founder, CEO, Edcast), and Joe So (Global CTO Enterprise Business Group-Huawei). This panel will discuss topics like Digital India: Where Do We Stand and Governments Key Initiatives under Digital India Program which includes Digital Locker, Twitter Samvad, Swach Bharat Mission Mobile App and Jeevan Pramaan. Building A Digital Economy The speakers at this session include Arun Tiwari (Chairman & MD Union Bank of India), Ravinder Pal Singh (Director Solutions Strategy & Biz Development Dell), Sandeep Aurora (Director, Marketing and Market Development Intel South Asia), Milind Bengali (Chief Operating Officer, Business Operations GTL Infrastructure Ltd), Chandan Kumar (Director, Marketing and Integrated Solutions Huawei Telecommunications India Pvt. Ltd), and Jagdish Mitra (Chief Strategy & Marketing Officer, Head Growth Factories Tech Mahindra). They will discuss the roadmap to change Indias future and throw light on Indias digital population that is transforming economy, business landscape, governance and society alike. Digital India Developing Digital Entrepreneurs This topic will be explored by speakers like Ravi Gururaj (Chairman Founder & CEO QikPod & NASSCOM Product Council), Sharad Sharma (Co-Founder iSpirt), Saurabh Srivastava (Entrepreneur & Co-Founder Indian Angel Network), Kavin Bharti Mittal (Founder & CEO, Hike Messenger), Sanjeev Aggarwal (Founder Helion Ventures), Sanjay Sethi (Founder & CEO ShopClues), and Mahesh Murthy (Founder & Co-Founder Pinstorm & Seedfund). The panelists of the third session will discuss about how the Internet is enabling entrepreneurs to tap the big Indian e-commerce opportunity. They will also talk about the entrepreneurial opportunities at the intersection of Make in India and Digital India. Making India an Electronics Manufacturing Hub The panelists on this session include thought leaders like Ajai Chowdhry (Chairman-Electronics Sector Skills Council of India), Sudhir Hasija (Chairman Karbonn), Nitin Kunkolienkar (VP & Director-MAIT & Smartlink), Sunil Vachani (CMD Dixon Technologies), and Murali Arikara (Executive Director Essential Energy India Pvt Ltd). They will discuss subjects like recent developments and incentives for the electronics industry along with the challenges involved. Developing Digital Workforce The discussion on this crucial area will have experts like Rahul Patwardhan (CEO NIIT), Shrikant Sinha (CEO-NASSCOM Foundation), Raj Raghavan (HR Head Amazon India), Prithvi Shergill (Global HR HCL Tech), Raja Sekhar Reddy (Director & Chief Operating Officer Innovsource Pvt Ltd), Ashok Reddy (Co-Founder Teamlease), and Vivek Madhukar Chief Operating Officer (Times Business Solutions), and discuss how critical the skilled workforce digital India mission is, and will examine the Governments measures to enhance digital literacy in the country. Minister of State for Information and Broadcasting, Colonel Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore will give a special address on the occasion. The Digital India Summit will conclude with an award function in the evening, the Digital India Awards, which will continue the objective of showcasing and honouring the most inspirational digital work in the country. Guest of Honour, RS Sharma, Chairman of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, will give away the awards. Award Categories Good For India has Smart City solutions in seven categories - E-governance solutions, E-education learning solutions, E-healthcare delivery solutions, Skills & employment solutions, Energy solutions, Environment solutions and Agricultural Solutions Good For Organizations has four categories under Digital Enterprise, which are Manufacturing, Services, Digital Start-up Innovators and Digital Social Innovation The awards have received an overwhelming participation from corporates and individuals. An eminent jury comprising Aruna Jayanthi, CEO, Capgemini; R Chandrasekhar, President NASSCOM; Kiran Karnik, Chairman, CII, National Committee Telecom & Broadband; Shinjini Kumar, CEO, Payments Bank, Paytm; Joy Chakraborty, COO, PD Hinduja Hospital; and Ashutosh Jain, Chief Information Security Officer, Axis Bank, judged the award entries in a daylong session. E&Y is the process partner for the awards. Partners Supporting the Event is the Lead Partner for the Summit and Award Partner for the Awards- Huawei, Our Lead Partners- GTL Infrastructure and Union Bank of India, Recruitment Partner Times Job, Digital Partner Tech Mahindra, Digital Storage Partner Western Digital, Knowledge Partner MAIT and Tech 4 Good Partner NASSCOM Foundation, Exclusive Chamber Partner FICCI. USAF. (U.S. Air Force Graphic by Rosario "Charo" Gutierrez) Predicting weather for space missions is tough enough. But when forecasts cover part of Floridas lightning alley, where a rocket blasting off could spur strikes, the demands of the job can skyrocket.Launches can trigger lightning strikes even when you dont have lightning in the area, said Kathy Winters, a launch weather officer with the 45th Weather Squadron, which tracks the climate around Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.An electrical field, Winters explains, may already be present in the clouds. So when a rocket blasts off, it can induce a lightning strike with its trail of exhaust -- a conductive path to the ground.If a strike happens to hit a rocket, theres a chance it could damage the self-destruct system, the only way to destroy an errant rocket.Its all about safety and thats a big reason why we do what we do on launch day, said Tech Sgt. Matthew Mong, a range weather forecaster with the squadron.Were basically sending up a giant conventional explosive, he added. And if you cant control when and how it goes, then there are potentially millions of people at risk.Space mission experts aim for specific times when they can launch rockets into orbit. Some launch windows are merely seconds, while others can be a few hours long.Its all about the orbit youre trying to get into, Winters said. Or if its a rendezvous (with another spacecraft) its going to be an even shorter launch window.Much of the squadrons efforts are focused on these windows. If a launch has to be scrubbed due to weather, the delay could cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. Forecasters attempt to avoid these costly delays, without being ruled by them.You cant be worried about how much its going to cost, Winters said of delays. You have to be focused on the weather rules and procedures. Everybody wants to see the rocket go, but only when its the right time.Armed with $80 million-plus worth of equipment, from towers, sensors and radars, the squadrons forecasters strive to be as accurate as possible. After all, with 30 launches scheduled this year, a lot is riding on them.Even when one team member is a no go for launch due to weather observations, especially wind speed and direction, the whole squadron is a no go.We report that to the range. Its then up to them if they want to launch, said Winters, noting shes never seen a weather rule waived since 2000 when she first started.About half of scrubbed missions are weather related, she added.Located between the Banana River and Atlantic Ocean, the spaceport gets wind gusts from opposing sides that can spawn erratic weather. Theres also the rare chance of a tornado or hurricane stalling missions.The weather is never boring, never redundant, Winters said. Its very challenging.Space launches, she noted, can handle strong winds anywhere from 20 to 50 mph, depending on the rocket.Forecasters try to glean reliable estimates from studying weather patterns in several 5-mile rings that dot the 500-square-mile area they cover. The tailored forecasts help thousands of Airmen and mission partners stay at work on critical missions when severe weather looms.It lets us keep things rolling, Mong said of the radar system. If we just did a blanket forecast we could stop work for hours for everyone and we wouldnt get a whole lot done here.Besides radar, simple but effective weather balloons mine the sky for upper-air conditions throughout the day, with more balloons used on launch days.That pretty much drives all model forecasting, Mong said of data collected by balloons that go as high as 115,000 feet. Without it, we couldnt really do much.When lightning is present, he added, forecasters remotely roll out a weatherbot to release a balloon while its operator stays indoors.Without accurate data, the odds of a rocket going up on its launch day are greatly impacted. Even with all the squadrons gadgets, the stormy nature of Central Florida still tests forecasters.Its a great location with not so great weather for what were trying to do, Mong said. But its an ideal place because of the ocean and the large area here that gives us more launch options. AF Research Lab seeks to turn waste into energy It may seem like a scene from Back to the Future, but the Air Force Research Laboratory is looking to turn fiction into reality with a nearly $7 million waste-to-energy project. The AFRL Advanced Power Technology Office has embarked on the waste-to-energy demonstration at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam, Hawaii, to convert waste products such as wood, plastics, biomass, and other materials into alternative fuel that can be used in a variety of military base applications. The project involves a gasification process, developed by Biomass Energy Systems, Inc., to convert wastes into synthesis gas (syngas), which can then be used to produce electricity. The demo runs through this summer and plans to show a system capable of converting up to 10 tons of waste per day into 300 kilowatts of continuous electric power, or the equivalent of the total electrical load for about 100 U.S. homes. This project is sponsored by the Hawaii Center for Advanced Transportation Technologies and is part of a larger microgrid effort demonstrating alternative energy technologies that could allow military bases to operate independently of the power grid for extended periods of time. This capability would be critical in the event of a break in power operations due to a public-grid outage, cyberattack, or other interruption of service. Through the project, AFRL aims to use this technology in an operationally representative environment. In doing so, lab researchers collect data that will help determine the best use for the technology and how to most efficiently incorporate it in future applications. "From an Air Force perspective, mission assurance is paramount," said Lt. Col. Scott Fitzner, chief of AFRL's Acquisition Systems Support Branch, which leads the Advanced Power Technology Office. "If a technology can provide mission assurance through energy assurance, it can then be considered for more widespread implementation." Waste-to-energy technology offers a number of benefits beyond energy production. Fitzner adds that the data collected through this effort helps researchers evaluate the technology to reduce the use of landfills and toxic burn pits on bases. Reducing landfill waste helps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions produced by the decomposition process. The 154th Air National Guard Wing complex on JB Pearl Harbor-Hickam was chosen as an alternative energy demo site because it represents a Pacific region environment where energy costs are high but the environment is conducive for various renewable energy technologies. Additionally, it demonstrates integration into an operational mission and addresses the need to explore independent means of energy production. Hawaii Governor David Ige recently committed the state to a 100 percent renewable energy standard by 2045. Following this initial demo, AFRL plans to implement the gasification process into the first phase of the base microgrid project. Longer-term efforts may explore the expanded use of the technology to produce fuel for vehicles and ground support equipment. Flying the RPA mission The aircraft is ready to fly, the ground control stations are up and running, and the crews have been briefed. Now its time to fly the remotely piloted aircraft. The pilot, sensor operator, and mission intelligence coordinator step into the control station to prepare for flight, but theyre not alone; they are joined by other Airmen, each in their respective locations. With the engines whirring up to speed, the launch and recovery element crew begins launch procedures for aircraft takeoff from the area of responsibility downrange. "The launch and recovery element is responsible for conducting the launches and recoveries of the MQ-1B and MQ-9 aircraft, said Tech. Sgt. Kory, the 432nd Wing/432nd Air Expeditionary Wing NCO in charge of the commanders action group. The LRE is located within range for C-band line-of-sight to conduct its operations in the traffic pattern, terminal area, and on the airfield. The LRE is responsible to power-up the aircraft Ku-band satellite terminal and hand the aircraft over to the mission control element crew. Aided by line-of-sight ground data terminals downrange, which are maintained by the 432nd Aircraft Communications Maintenance Squadron, the LRE crew launches the aircraft and climbs to an altitude where they can hand control of the aircraft off to the mission control element located stateside, via satellite links. During the hand off of the aircraft, ACMS maintainers in the (ground control station) enable and ensure a good Ku link to the MCE crews, said Senior Airman Robert, a 432nd ACMS training monitor. After the hand-off, the mission control element crew will fly the aircraft and carry out the mission, in of the specified mission areas: intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR); close-air support (CAS); air interdiction; combat search and rescue; or strike coordination and reconnaissance. RPAs allow us to not only conduct ISR and CAS, but also buddy lase for other assets, perform convoy and raid overwatch and even provide humanitarian support, said Maj. Patrick, the 432nd Wing chief of combat plans. The versatility of these aircraft give the supported commander a variety of options. While the pilot is busy flying the aircraft and the sensor operator is operating the multi-spectral targeting system (MTS ball), the mission coordinator is also engaged by providing real-time intelligence. Theyre looking for changes in terrain, weather, threats, and weapons systems because intelligence personnel can provide everything real time to the pilot and sensor (MTS ball), said Senior Airman Aaron, a 432nd WG/432nd AEW intelligence evaluator. Also supporting the crew is the distributed ground system, a group of imagery analysts who watch the live feed coming from the aircraft. They are able to determine the difference between a woman holding a child and a man holding a gun on zoomed-in images. Mission tasks are given by the air operations centers under the respective combatant commands. The air operations center determines where the aircraft will go, what mission is needed, and also give orders and guidance should the need for change occur. The wing operations center (WOC) acts as a central hub for critical mission support to the aircrew to accomplish the tasking orders from an air operations center. The main job of the WOC is to take care of the guys flying the mission to ensure mission success, said Maj. Steven, the 432nd WG/432nd AEW WOC deputy director. In the WOC were making sure crews are available, the weather is good, and planes can take off and fly with no problems, basically were monitoring all the factors so the mission can go smoothly. During the mission, if a strike is needed, a joint terminal attack controller can radio an RPA for help to coordinate an attack on enemy forces. "Partnering two different capabilities from the air and ground provides us with the ability to develop patterns of life for targets," said a JTAC assigned to Air Force Special Operations Command. "If and when the time comes to strike, we can do so with accuracy. This is instrumental in moving to a safer military for future conflicts. Not to mention, having the RPAs provide overwatch from the sky makes us feel safer as well." Supporting troops on the ground has been a frequent use for the RPA community in recent years. In some instances, RPAs are able to track high-value targets at night using an invisible infrared laser, which helps designate and illuminate targets for ground forces. If the need for a strike arises, the crew is prepared at a moments notice with precision accuracy. Not only can RPAs strike static targets, but also because of the high loitering time, moving targets as well. Because a combat air patrol is flown on a continuous basis, revolving shifts of Airmen in every career filed rotate throughout the CAP before the plane is landed and another one takes its place. After the mission is completed and the plane is ready to land, the mission control element will fly back to base, handing the aircraft back to the launch and recovery crew for landing. (Editors note: The last names in this story have been removed for security reasons.) Airman, family injured in Brussels bombings A U.S. Airman from Joint Force Command Brunssum in the Netherlands and members of the Airmans family were injured in an attack at the Brussels airport March 22, Air Force officials confirmed. "We are saddened by today's attacks and extend our sincere condolences to the victims and families of those impacted," said Air Force Secretary Deborah Lee James. "Our priority at this time is the safety and well-being of our Airmen and their families." More than 30 people were killed and hundreds more injured as a result of attacks at the airport and a metro station, according to Belgian officials. The Airmans and family members names and the nature of their injuries have not yet been released. "Our thoughts and prayers are with our Air Force family, and with the hundreds of others affected by these tragic events," said Air Force Chief of Staff Gen. Mark A. Welsh III. Support to Belgium President Barack Obama condemned the attacks during a speech from Havana. We will do whatever is necessary to support our friend and ally Belgium in bringing to justice those who are responsible, Obama said. And this is yet another reminder that the world must unite. We must be together, regardless of nationality or race or faith in fighting against the scourge of terrorism. We can and we will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world. During testimony to the House Armed Services Committee, Defense Secretary Ash Carter said U.S. officials are accounting for all personnel assigned in Europe. He added that the U.S. will provide whatever assistance Belgium needs. Brussels is an international city that has been host to NATO and the European Union for decades, Carter said. Together, we must and we will continue to do everything we can to protect our homelands and defeat terrorists wherever they threaten us. No attack can shake our resolve to accelerate the defeat of (the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant). Accountability European Command is working with subordinate commands to account for all service members -- including those on pre-approved leave. We are also working closely with our interagency partners and host nation counterparts to determine the appropriate steps to ensure the safety and security of all U.S. personnel, defense officials said. Consistent with the U.S. Embassy in Brussels, due to the heightened threat environment, U.S. citizens are urged to remain vigilant and aware of the local security situation, to follow local authority instructions and to monitor local media for further developments. (Jim Garamone contributed to this article) Delhi Lt Governor Najeeb Jung on Tuesday said Aam Aadmi Canteens, announced by the AAP government in 2015 for providing nutritious food at affordable rates, will be set up in several parts of the city in 2016. The government is expected to set aside Rs. 50 crore for the scheme, modelled after Tamil Nadus highly-subsidised Amma canteens, to provide nutritious food to migrant workers in the national capital. Though the per capita income is the highest in Delhi, my government is conscious of the fact that the city is home to many migrant workers who have left their families back home and cannot afford hygienic nutritious food even once a day, Jung said during his address on the first day of the budget session. The government will provide nutritious hygienically cooked meal to the vulnerable population at an affordable cost, he said. Ashish Khetan, Vice Chairman of the Delhi Dialogue Commission (DDC) of AAP government had announced the scheme in July last year. Jung said the government also intended to construct more old age homes for which land has been acquired at 10 locations in the city. The government now runs three such facilities. Also, in the present financial year, 3,84,545 persons have benefited under old age assistance scheme. Under Delhi Pension scheme to women in distress, 1,53,487 persons were benefited. Similarly, there are 2,334 beneficiaries under the scheme for financial assistance to poor widows for marriage of their daughters and orphan girls, Jung said. The five-day budget session will continue till March 31. Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia will present the Budget on March 28. YEREVAN, MARCH 22, ARMENPRESS. On March 22 Armenian President Serzh Sargsyan granted representatives of the executive body of Pyunik All-Armenian Human Resources Development Fund and a number of benefactors with high state awards for significant contribution to the strengthening of ties between Armenia and the Diaspora, as well as for an active charity. As Armenpress was reported by the Office of Public Relations and Mass Media of the Armenian President's Staff, Sargsyan presented the awards during a ceremony at the residence of the Armenian President. The President congratulated the awarded persons and thanked them for their patriotic activities. He also praised the performance of the fund "Pyunik" and active participation of members of the fund in solving the country's problems. Raj Thackeray says that RSS has put words in the mouth of Aney for evading criticism pertaining to Marathwada statehood issue. MNS Chief Raj Thackeray held the RSS responsible for the controversy which erupted after Maharashtra advocate general Shreehari Aney demanded statehood for Marathwada. According to Raj the RSS has a tendency to put words in the mouth of other persons and evade criticism. He also criticised the BJP which had mentioned about creating Vidharba state before the Lok Sabha election. He added that RSS supports the idea of smaller states. How did a person like Aney even think about the bifurcation of Maharashtra? He has been made a scape goat. Aney hails from Nagpur and he has been allotted a senior position even though he was unwilling to accept it. He had to resign for issuing controversial statements about the division of Maharashtra said Raj Thackeray. However BJP will now convey its message of granting statehood to Marathwada through leaders belonging to that region. Its a ploy of the saffron party to mislead the people so it wont be held responsible for any controversy arising out of this issue, he added. Earlier Aneys demand for separate Marathwada had created a furore in the assembly as Congress-NCP and Shiv Sena raised slogans and demanded his resignation. On the other hand, RSS ideologue M. G Vaidya said that Maharashtra must be divided into four parts instead of three. He said that RSS was always in favour of creation of smaller states. Vaidya also backed the idea of carving out Marathwada and Vidharba states out of Maharashtra. Speaking at a function in Nagpur, Vaidya said, A state reorganisation committed must be formed for the formation of smaller states. The population of newly formed states should not exceed three crores and must not be lesser than 50 lakhs. Maharashtra is being divided in four regions for the smooth functioning of RSS activities. The opposition has already asked the state government to clarify its stand about the formation of Vidharbha state. When Aney had pitched for the creation of Vidharba during the winter session of state legislature the government failed to take action against him. The government had softened its stand on Aney by saying that the comments made by him are his own views. On the other hand, Shiv Sena has always come forward in support of united Maharashtra. Apple on Monday announced that its new smaller iPhone SE, with features akin to its top-end devices, but in a 4-inch form factor, will be available in India early April for a price of Rs 39,000 for the 16GB version. The initially announced price was Rs 30,000 for the base model, which would have been very competitive for the Indian market. Prices for the new iPhone, in the US, start at $399 for a model with 16GB of storage. Thats less than the $450 price tag for the 5s. It will be free if customers commit to a two-year contract with their wireless carrier, as was the case with the 5s. The 64GB model of the iPhone SE, however, costs $499. The new iPhone SE, with Apples vaunted A9 chip, is much faster than Apples previous attempt at an entry-level phone, launched in 2013. Like the iPhone 6s, the iPhone SE will be able to take pictures at 12 megapixels. By comparison, the iPhone 5s camera is limited to 8 megapixels. The iPhone SE will also be equipped with a longer-lasting battery than the iPhone 5s and have faster wireless connections. It will also work with Apple Pay, the companys digital wallet. The phone will come in four colour options- silver, gold, space grey and rose gold. The new iPhone comes as sales taper off for the device that generates the bulk of Apples profits. Some iPhone users prefer the smaller size and have resisted upgrading to the larger models that Apple has shifted to in recent years to compete against Samsung. Display One of the main reasons the iPhone SE exists is that not everyone wants a large smartphone. Apple has found that some customers prefer the smaller screens found on earlier iPhones. This is why the iPhone SE has a 4-inch display. Its the first iPhone to offer this screen size since the 5s, which made its debut in late 2013. The iPhone SE will have the same screen resolution as the iPhone 5s: 1,136 by 640 pixels, which comes out to 326 pixels per inch (ppi). The 326 ppi is same density as the iPhone 6s, even though that phone has a larger 4.7-inch display with resolution of 1,334 by 750 pixels. The iPhone 6s Plus phablet has the biggest screen of all: a 5.5-inch, 1920 by 1,080 pixel display, with a density of 401 ppi. One major feature missing from the iPhone SE, thats found in the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus is 3-D Touch, which lets a phone distinguish between a light tap and a firm press, letting users control apps differently depending on how hard they push on their phones touchscreen. Chipset The iPhone SE has the same dual-core chipset as the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus, the A9 chip with an embedded M9 motion coprocessor. This is two-generations ahead of the A7 chip found in the iPhone 5s. Apple promises that itll be just as powerful and capable as the iPhone 6s and 6s Plus. Cameras On the rear, the iPhone SE will have a 12-megapixel iSight camera. Like the iPhone 6s and iPhone 6s Plus, the iPhone SE will be able to take Live Photos, short videos that are captured with every photo snap. Video recording can be done at up to 4K resolution at 30 frames per second. The iPhone SE will be aimed at first-time Apple buyers and those who want to upgrade from the iPhone 5S and 5C, which have not been updated in over two years. Orders for the iPhone SE will start from March 24. It will go on sale from March 31 in Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, New Zealand, Puerto Rico, Singapore, the UK, US Virgin Islands and the US. Apple says it will introduce the iPhone SE in India and several other countries in early April. Indian fast bowler S Sreesanth will begin a new innings in life after he decided to contest in Kerala assembly polls for the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The party has contacted him, but he has sought time to think about it till Wednesday. If he decides to contest from Thrippunithura, he will be pitted against excise minister K Babu. According to sources, Sreesanth has informed BJP top brass that he will decide on the matter after discussing with his family. Sreesanth said, Wait for a day, you will know from where I contest. Sources said that he will be contesting elections from Eranakulam. Members of Sreesanths family said he received a call from a top BJP leader in Delhi requesting him to contest from the Thrippunithura Assembly constituency. They also said Sreesanth is likely to meet BJP chief Amit Shah when he visits Kerala. When contacted, Kerala BJP president Kummanam Rajasekharan said the State leadership was not aware of the move but things will be clear in two days. A top BJP leader also said someone from BJPs central leadership must have contacted Sreesanth directly as he is a celebrity. If Sreesanth decides to contest the elections, he is likely to fight against State Excise Minister and Congress leader K. Babu for Thrippunithura seat in Ernakulam district. The Communist Party of India (Marxist) has not announced its candidate to the seat. After being exonerated in the 2013 IPL spot fixing-case by a Delhi court last year, Sreesanth is now a busy actor. He is currently shooting for a Hindi film produced by Pooja Bhatt. Mr. Babu, a close confidant of Chief Minister Oommen Chandy, has been winning from Thrippunithura since 1991. An alert was sounded after a threat about bombs in five flights of Jet Airways on Tuesday. The threat was received after when three of the flights had already landed at their destinations. Passengers were evacuated at Jolly Grant Airport in Dehradun after bomb scare in the Mumbai-Dehradun flight. The Delhi to Chennai flight was taken in an isolated area at IGI Airport after the threat. Security agencies are already on alert after the series of attacks in Belgian capital city Brussels. While the Jet Airways flight to Chennai was grounded nearly 20 minutes before take-off, the other four Dehradun-Delhi, Chennai-Delhi, Chandigarh-Delhi and Gorakhpur-Delhi flights were already in air when the call came. The call was made around 3.30 pm at the Jet Airways front desk in Chandigarh a few hours after the terror attacks at the Brussels airport and metro. After the four planes landed, the crew members and passengers on board were deplaned and security agencies started a thorough search. Three of them landed at Delhi while the fourth was diverted to Nagpur. The fifth Delhi-Chennai flight, which was supposed to take off at 4.05 pm has been stopped for security reasons. Final clearance for the flight was awaited till filing of the news report. Sources said, the aircraft were taken to the isolation bay at the Indira Gandhi International Airport. Experts from the bomb disposal squad were also pressed. Filmmaker Jon Favreaus upcoming 3D live-animation adventure fantasy film The Jungle Book, starring 12-year-old Neel Sethi as Mowgli, shows the Indian-American boy running for his life while surviving among various species of animals in a jungle. When it comes to stories from The Jungle Book, Indians feel a deep sense of ownership as the timeless tale is set in India. After getting the impressive line-up of Indian talent to voice the iconic characters in Disneys all-new, live-action epic film The Jungle Book, Disney India now gears up to welcome Neel Sethi aka Mowgli. Neel was hand-picked by director Jon Favreau from over 2000 hopefuls to play the role of Mowgli. 12-year-old Neel will visit India later this month to present the film and visit some very special sites while in Mumbai. The Jungle Book is Neels first film as an actor and interestingly he plays the only human being in the story! I have heard so many stories about the jungles of India from my maternal grandparents, who live here. I am so excited to be visiting my homeland once again. When my parents heard that I got the part to play Mowgli, they were so excited because the stories are based in India, says New York City based Neel. Speaking about the experience acting in his first film, the 12-year-old says, I am thrilled to have played Mowgli in my first film and befriend the much loved characters like Bagheera the Panther and Baloo the Bear. India is the first country internationally that I will be presenting the film in. I really hope people in India enjoy watching the jungle come to life! says the young actor. Finding the right kid to play Mowgli was imperative and we did an exhaustive worldwide search of 2,000 kids before we found Neel. He was one of the last people that I looked at, and right away, I felt that he had the same emotional and physical qualities that Mowgli had in the 67 animated version. His look was uncanny in how much he evoked what we wanted. He inherently had a good sense of fun and humor, says director Jon Favreau and further added Everything in this movie is geared toward the performance of this one kid. Ive worked with enough kids to be confident in my own taste and my ability to get the performance. He was just so real. He felt right. We knew we found our Mowgli. We are thrilled that Neel Sethi, who plays Mowgli in the film, is starting the films campaign with India. The Jungle Book and India have a special connection and it is indeed exciting that we are able to host Mowgli in India , says Amrita Pandey, Vice President Studios, Disney India. The Jungle Book is supported by Scarlett Johansson (Kaa the python), Ben Kingsley (Bagheera the panther), Idris Elba (Sher Khan the tiger), Bill Murray (Bhaloo the bear), Christopher Walken (King Louie the orangutan), and Lupita Nyongo (Raksha the mother wolf). The film is scheduled for an April 8, a week before coming out in the US. Maharashtra Advocate General Shreehari Aney, Tuesday, submitted his resignation to Governor C Vidyasagar Rao after facing flak over his statement in favour of a separate Marathwada state. During an event organised by the Marathwada Mukti Morcha, Aney, who is a known vocal supporter of a separate state of Vidarbha, had backed a separate state of Marathwada. He had earlier called for a referendum on the issue of carving out separate Vidarbha state. The Shiv Sena had taken the lead in protesting against Aney and had threatened to not allow the state assembly to function till Aney quit his post. However, after Aney submitted his resignation, the Shiv Sena said that they will continue to protest against him until he apologises to the people of Maharashtra. The Sena also demanded that the Fadnavis-led government should register a case against him. Congress leader Narayan Rane had hit out at Aney on Monday saying his head should be separated from his body, so he would understand how it feels when you break the state. Aney who hails from Fadnaviss hometown Nagpur and is said to be latters mentor when he grated in law, has earlier too landed the government on the backfoot. In December 2015, he had triggered a row after he spoke in favour of statehood for Vidarbha at a public function in Nagpur during the Winter Session. It had evoked sharp reactions from the Opposition and the Shiv Sena who wanted his resignation. Fadnavis had then come out in support of Aney. He had said the decision related to separate statehood solely came under the jurisdiction of Parliament and the Union government. Fadnavis had bailed him out on that occasion by stating, The remarks were Aneys private views and not in the capacity as AG. In February this year, while representing the state in court, Aney had remarked: The government is afraid of losing the paltry sum of Rs 30,000 to fraudulent claims. It does not realise that no man will try to defraud the state by claiming his own life. But then we cannot expect officials to understand the farmers plight while sitting inside air-conditioned offices in Mumbai. After repeated disruptions led to adjournment of the both Houses on Monday. The Opposition and Sena leaders threatened not to allow work unless Aney was divested of the constitutional post, after which Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said. I will make a detailed statement in the Assembly and the Council on Tuesday, said Fadnavis. Students went on a rampage in the University of Hyderabad on Tuesday and attacked Professor Appa Raos office & house and smashed the furniture, computers and windows, hours after he resumed his duties. The attack took place after Professor Rao, who is accused by students of Ambedkar Students Association of being responsible for the suicide of Rohith Vemula, arrived at the guesthouse in the campus and called a media conference. Prof Podile had gone on a long leave at the height of students agitation seeking justice for Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula, who had committed suicide on January 17 at a hostel room in the HCU campus. Rapid Action Force was called in to Hyderabad University campus as protesting students reportedly held VC hostage and demanded his resignation over Vemulas death. Glass panes were smashed, shelves were pulled down and other articles damaged with protesting students saying his return to work hurt their sentiments. Agitating students also also shouted Azadi slogans even as police threw a protective cordon. It may be mentioned Vemulas suicide brought about on the spur-of-the-moment outburst of grief and rage and a debate on caste discrimination in thousands of students across several universities. Students blame the dictatorial attitude of the Union government in allowing Rao to resume his duties VC of University of Hyderabad. Professor Appa Rao had in the last week of January proceeded on an indefinite leave in the wake of Rohiths suicide. One of the protesting students said, Our primary demand is that the VC should not come we lost Rohith Vemula. He (Prof Podile) is one of the culprits. Its over two months since the incident occurred but no action has been initiated, he said. The protesting students further demanded that the VC should be immediately arrested. A large number of police personnel were deployed near the Vice Chancellors lodge as tension prevailed on the campus. The development came amid news that Jawaharlal Nehru University Students Union (JNUSU) president Kanhaiya Kumar, who has been booked under sedition over raising of anti-national slogans inside the university, will be visiting Hyderabad Central University on Wednesday. Back in 2007, the U.S. autism rate was one in every 150 CHILDREN. Today, it's one in every 68 CHILDREN. Still no known cause, cure, or prevention. Today, according to these press releases, the UN is going to have a "celebration" of autism awareness. Scroll down to info on the FIRST Autism Awareness Day nine years ago in 2007. Back then, autism was described as "a growing global health crisis." I can't imagine how bad this year's Autism Awareness Day/Month is going to be : A month-long indoctrination into accepting autism as a normal part of the human condition. Autism is no longer a worldwide crisis. We're learning to adjust to disabled CHILDREN. In fact, we pretend that it's not just children who are like this--it's everybody. And what is really irrelevant are all those people who keep talking about environmental causes---especially the "vaccines cause autism" crowd. Im sure those who believe vaccines are related to autism will be even more denigrated---they're the reason we've never done anything for adults. We've been so busy looking for a link to vaccines--and there isn't one. How horrible is this? Children are being destroyed across the globe and we're being told it's nothing new. And if it's YOUR CHILD, that's just tough. Reality is being stood on its head, Examples: Known neurotoxins--aren't toxic. An epidemic is "better diagnosing. Regressive autism following vaccination is coincidence. Steve Silberman at the U.N. I'm speechless. We only need to accept all those around the globe who can't function, need constant care, have a myriad of health issues, and are a danger to themselves and to others. ---only in the Silberman world, autistic people are high functioning, verbal and able to care for themselves. They're neurodiverse! It must be our fault if we think autism is something bad. We need to ACCEPT autism. If we can't do do, we need to go away. I keep thinking about all the ASD kids I've worked with over the last ten years. Sad, pathetic individuals, many of whom are aging out of school. I think of Max who's 20 and folds diapers two days a week for a total of four hours. (His grandmother is from Germany and she told me that she remembers how he was as a baby, "He could talk in sentences.") There's 20 year old Ana, in diapers, with extreme echolalia, whose parents are very worried about where she'll be after high school next year. There's Faith who's in high school, afraid of most people and has constant tics and talks endlessly about Santa Claus. When have we so universally shut our eyes to such a catastrophe and pretended it just wasn't happening? Why are we so willing to let autism destroy everything before we'll recognize that something is horribly wrong? How can we possibly celebrate this nightmare? It kinda reminds me of the British selling airplane parts to the Germans during the 1930s. I wonder if there were any feelings of guilt after Coventry was destroyed. Events organized in celebration of World Autism Awareness Day, 2 April 2014 2016 Observance Autism and the 2030 Agenda: Inclusion and Neurodiversity Friday, 1 April 2016, 10 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. United Nations Headquarters, Trusteeship Council Chamber The 2016 observance of World Autism Awareness Day (WAAD) will look ahead to 2030 and reflect on the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their implications for improving the lives of people with autism, through a series of brief segments - compact panels, presentations and moderated discussions centered around key SDGs. 10:00 a.m. Welcome and Opening Keynote: Steve Silberman, author of Neuro Tribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity 10:35 a.m. Inclusive Education (Goal 4) 10:55 a.m. Bridging the Inequality Gap (Goal 10) 11:15 a.m. Video 11:25 a.m. The Autism Advantage: Follow-up to the Secretary-Generals Call to Action to Employers (Goal 8) 11:45 a.m. Accessible Communities (Goal 11) 12:05 p.m. Partnerships for Change (Goal 17) 12:25 p.m. Closing Remarks http://www.un.org/en/events/autismday/ 2016 Theme: "Autism and the 2030 Agenda: Inclusion and Neurodiversity" Autism and other forms of disability are part of the human experience that contributes to human diversity. As such, the United Nations has emphasized the need to mainstream disability in the Organizations development agenda. Mainstreaming disability requires an integral approach in the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of policies and programmes in all political, economic and societal spheres, so that inequality is not perpetuated. In September 2015, the UN General Assembly adopted the ambitious new 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, which includes 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and 169 targets that promise to leave no one behind. While all SDGs are universally applicable, disability and persons with disabilities are explicitly referenced in the following goals: 4) Quality Education; 8) Decent Work and Economic Growth; 10) Reduced Inequalities; 11) Sustainable Cities and Communities; and 17) Partnerships for the Goals. This years observance will look ahead to 2030 and reflect on the new SDGs and their implications for improving the lives of people with autism Autism Awareness Day 2007: About World Autism Awareness Day | What is Autism?/World Autism Awareness Day | Autism Speaks On December 18, 2007, the United Nations General Assembly adopted resolution 62/139, tabled by the State of Qatar, which declares April 2 as World Autism Awareness Day (WAAD) in perpetuity. Her Highness Sheikha Mozah Bint Nasser Al-Missned, Consort of His Highness Sheikh Hamad Bin Khalifa Al-Thani, the Emir of the State of Qatar, supported the campaign for a World Autism Awareness Day through the current 62nd UN General Assembly Session, garnering consensus support from all United Nations Member States. This UN resolution declares WAAD as one of only four official health-specific United Nations Days and will bring the world's attention to autism, a pervasive disorder that affects tens of millions. The World Autism Awareness Day resolution encourages all Member States to take measures to raise awareness about autism throughout society and to encourage early diagnosis and early intervention. It further expresses deep concern at the prevalence and high rate of autism in children in all regions of the world and the consequent developmental challenges. World Autism Awareness Day shines a bright light on autism as a growing global health crisis. WAAD activities help to increase and develop world knowledge of the autism epidemic and impart information regarding the importance of early diagnosis and early intervention. Additionally, WAAD celebrates the unique talents and skills of persons with autism and is a day when individuals with autism are warmly welcomed and embraced in community events around the globe. By bringing together autism organizations all around the world, we will give a voice to the millions of individuals worldwide who are undiagnosed, misunderstood and looking for help. Please join us in our effort to inspire compassion, empowerment and hope. Anne Dachel is Media Editor for Age of Autism. Web Toolbar by Wibiya Lap up some southern hospitality later this month, courtesy of East Thirty Six's Chef Brent Maxwell. On March 30, he'll combine his skills in French fine dining with dashes of Spanish, Creole and Cajun influences for an off-menu experience called Southern Shindig. The menu promises an explosion of flavours, beginning the night with some Kentucky Derby favourites such as the duck confit Hot Brown (an open-faced sandwich), and end up in the French Quarter with shrimp and grits (Mardi Gras beads optional). U-Feast is upping the ante on the booze, no less. Jim Beam's Canadian whisky ambassadorMatt Jones will walk attendees through the wonderful and trendy world of bourbon, and pair the evening's dishes with evolved libations. I had an opportunity to chat with Chef Brent Maxwell to find out more about his food philosophy and his take on southern eats: Where did you grow up? What is your culinary background? I grew up in small town Ontario, a place called Hillsburgh. I lived there until I was 20 and moved to Toronto to experience the culinary scene. I went to Humber College for my culinary training in 1998. You've worked in numerous kitchens, but most notable are your stints with O&B here in Toronto and Maison Pic, a tri-Michelin-starred bistro in southeastern France. How have these experiences influenced the way you cook and craft menus? O&B offers different experiences and styles in each restaurant. This has given me breadth and depth in cooking styles and flavours. And going to France for Maison Pic was an eye-opener in terms of learning about the art and intricacies of fine dining. How would you define or describe your personal food and cooking philosophy? I would define it as smart cooking, as in things and flavours that work together naturally, harmoniously. It is definitely French-based and branches out from there. Can you tell me your experience with cooking southern food in preparation for the U-feast menu? Well, it all ties in with French basics and its cooking foundations. It is all essentially grounded in French cuisine. The exception is that with southern food, it uses more flavours to accent everything spice and smoke, for instance. The menu we made for this event is on the heavier style. We focused on richer flavours and offering plates in a family-style manner. Tell me about the menu's inception. It works through the bourbons/whiskies. In fact, well be using bourbons directly in the dishes, in addition to the food complementing the drinks. Matt Jones will also be offering a flight of whiskies and interesting cocktails to pair with the evening's menu. In addition to including B.C.-sourced shrimp, how have you integrated your passion for sustainability and Oceanwise/Seafood Watch-approved items into this menu? The idea from the outset was to do southern-style dishes but with a focus on local, Canadian ingredients. We wanted to highlight B.C. shrimp because we have a great relationship withOrganic Ocean so we wanted to incorporate them into menu. And a Hot Brown sandwich traditionally uses turkey. But were elevating the dish by featuring King Cole duck legs from Ontario in our version. We want to show how delicious our homegrown food is. LIGHTNING ROUND Best thing you've eaten recently? We just returned from Australia. So it would probably be a restaurant there. In fact, we had pretty crazy tasting menus. The one that stuck out was from Quay. The standard of food there was stellar, and not just with the fine dining places even in the casual cafes, like eggs and toast everything was done super well. Theres attention to detail. Whats on your To-Eat list in Toronto? Definitely Alo and Dandylion. [Chef] Patrick [Kris] and I worked briefly together. He was on his way out of Luma and I on my way in. If you could cook with anyone, dead or alive, who would it be? What would you cook? Escoffier. Wed do some old-school stuff together classic French stuff from Le Guide culinaire. Favourite guilty pleasure? Ive phased out those old cravings for fast food. I used to get a Baconator once a year, but I dont even do that anymore. I've been pretty good with eating clean now. Find out more about U-Feast here. website@nowtoronto.com | @nowtoronto Read More.. Web Toolbar by Wibiya (NaturalNews) Whole Foods, the store that's trying oh so hard to provide its customers with healthy, natural and environmentally-friendly options has fallen flat on its face ... again. The most recent debacle comes from an image posted on Twitter of pre-peeled oranges resting in plastic containers and sitting on the store's shelves. It isn't so much the insane $5.99 per orange cost that ended up generating widespread attention, but rather the fact that the peeled orange was surrounded by plastic, hardly an environmentally-conscious move coming from a store that professes to have utmost care for the planet and its inhabitants in mind. "If only nature would find a way to cover these oranges so we didn't need to waste so much plastic on them," Nathalie Gordon (@awlilnatty) tweeted, hinting that the oranges should be left as is, with their natural covering on (what a concept) instead of being housed in plastic. Along with her tweet, she re-posted an image of the oranges from a picture she obtained from the image-sharing site, Imgur. What Whole Foods had to say, plus other people's reactions Whole Foods responded, making it clear that they were in the wrong. "These have been pulled," Whole Foods tweeted. "We hear you, and we will leave them in their natural packaging: the peel." The whole pre-peeled mess has been dubbed "OrangeGate," apparently started by Gordon. It even has its own hashtag for those who want to get in on the situation. Of course, many others have become involved, expressing their dissatisfaction over the matter. "You have GOT to be kidding me. More ridiculous than $9 spa water. Humans, you cray!" tweeted Michelle Taylor Cehn, who also authored a World of Vegan article on the topic. In it, she wrote, "When I walked into Whole Foods Market in Oakland and saw these naked mandarin oranges sitting in plastic jail cells, my jaw dropped too. I meanI know humans are capable of some pretty ridiculous and thoughtless things (::cough:: factory farming ::cough::), but this still got me to pause ..." The sliced produce dilemma continues Interestingly, there are people who don't have any problem with the packaging. For the most part, these individuals have cited health issues including arthritis that make peeling the fruit a challenge. Although Whole Foods says it will keep Sumos tangerines in their natural packaging the peel they will still keep some pre-peeled foods in their stores. "Orange and tangerine slices have long been a staple favorite in our stores, and we'll continue to offer them along with other sliced produce options for customers who are looking for added convenience," says Whole Foods Market senior media relations specialist Liz Burkhart. This isn't the first time Whole Foods has experienced consumer backlash. Whole Foods under a watchful eye considering past issues and questions about future goals You may recall how 70-year-old Margaret Dooley of Maplewood, New Jersey, accidentally forgot to pay for some cheese. It was hidden beneath her purse in the shopping cart, and the woman simply overlooked the product. Still, that didn't keep Whole Foods security employees from treating her like a horrible criminal, going so far as to take her photo and even ban her from the store! Then there's the store's plans to go entirely GMO free by 2018, a goal first mentioned by Whole Foods president A.C. Gallo during the 2013 Natural Products Expo West. It's safe to assume that people will be eyeing the store big-time, and that if the company strays from the plan either by the stated date or the products it carries, or both it will come under serious scrutiny on many levels, and social media will undoubtedly play a significant role. What you can do NOW to take control of the food you eat But why wait for Whole Foods to get its act together from a GMO-free perspective? While that's a smart move, you can learn more about the toxic foods that lurk in your food supply now, instead of waiting for various stores and restaurants to get on board. By reading Mike Adam's book, Food Forensics, you can learn all about pesticides, heavy metals and much more, so that you can remain informed about the foods you're ingesting. Pre-order the book today! Web Toolbar by Wibiya This Texas Independence Day proved sweeter than most, as Texans were finally freed from their ties to a controversial contract with Spanish toll operator Cintra, which filed for bankruptcy on Wednesday, citing $1.7 million in debt. Cintra is the owner of SH 130, Texas first foreign-owned toll road, which has the highest speed limit in the nation. Anti-toll groups describe the SH 130 project as being a tremendously unpopular, anti-liberty public private partnership. Texans Uniting for Reform and Freedom (TURF) and Texans for Toll-free Highways (TTH) have fought the projects inception since the tollway, which runs 91 miles from Austin to Seguin, was first built in 2012, arguing that it represents a multi-generational theft of public assets,reported the Examiner. State-sanctioned monopolies These controversial contracts called public private partnerships (P3s) will usher in the new railroad robber barons of our time private toll companies operating state-sanctioned monopolies and charging Texans a premium to drive. This is about our right to travel being trampled on by well-connected special interests with ties to the Texas Governor Rick Perrys office. But as the anti-toll groups predicted, the project failed due to low traffic counts. The fate of SH 130 will now fall under the leadership of Gov. Greg Abbott, who has made strides to eliminate toll roads completely in Texas. Cintra, which adopted a more inconspicuous name, the SH 130 Concession Company, began charging Texans to use the road on November 12, 2012. Its contract included a non-compete agreement prohibiting the expansion of free routes in the entire counties of Caldwell and Guadalupe for the next 50 years, revealed TTH, a non-partisan political action committee. SH 130 project shrouded in cronyism and corruption The contract also guaranteed the company 12 percent annual profit funded by Texas taxpayers, as well as forced Texans to cover unpaid toll fees accrued by Mexican drivers. The foreign-owned tollway cost Texas taxpayers nearly a quarter of a million dollars in advertising fees and a sizeable portion of $19 million in legal fees, which was spent trying to negotiate the contract with Cintra, reveals TTH. The SH 130 project, the first and only leg of the Trans Texas Corridor to ever be built, was shrouded in cronyism and corruption from the very start. Dan Shelley, lobbyist for Cintra, landed a job in Perrys office as his legislative liaison in 2003, got his former employer, Cintra, the development rights to the Trans Texas Corridor contract, then went back to work for Cintra after doing the dirty deed. Cintra has also been accused of bribing the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) in order to increase the toll roads speed limit to 85 MPH, while decreasing the speed limit on nearby U.S. 183 from 65 MPH to 55 MPH, in an attempt to both entice and force desperate drivers to pay tolls. Sacrificing public safety for greed The company offered TxDOT $100 million for setting the speed limit to the maximum 85 MPH, and TxDOT took it, wrote the Examiner. They threw public safety under the bus out of pure greed. Things like speed limits are being manipulated for money for the benefit a private corporation. Now that Cintra has filed for bankruptcy, its possible that the tollway could become free. Grassroots groups have advocated to have tolls come off the road once its paid for three legislative sessions, said TTH. Last year, the concept finally managed to take a step forward with passage of HB 2612 that commissioned a study to remove tolls from state-funded toll projects. House Transportation Committee Chair Joe Pickett strongly pushed removing tolls from the state-operated northern segments of SH 130 in order to immediately get some traffic relief on I-35 through downtown Austin. Todays announcement of Cintras bankruptcy may just hasten that plan. Sources: MyEmail.ConstantContact.com Examiner.com TexasTribune.org Read More.. Web Toolbar by Wibiya (NaturalNews) More than a half-dozen Western states that depend on the Colorado River Basin for the bulk of their water are drawing much more heavily from groundwater supplies than previously thought, according to a new study, which is the latest indication that the historic drought gripping much of the region is threatening their future access to water. According to The Washington Post, over the past nine years the basin -- covering Wyoming, Utah, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona and Nevada -- has lost some 65 cubic kilometers of fresh water, which is nearly double the volume of the country's largest reservoir, Lake Mead. It was a figure that truly surprised the study's authors, who used data from a NASA weather satellite to examine groundwater supplies. "We don't know exactly how much groundwater we have left, so we don't know when we're going to run out," said Stephanie Castle, a water resources specialist at the University of California, Irvine, and the study's lead author. "This is a lot of water to lose. We thought that the picture could be pretty bad, but this was shocking." About two-thirds of water lost over the past near-decade came from underground supplies, instead of surface water, the Post reported, citing the study's findings. "We were shocked to see how much water was actually depleted underground," Castle told the paper. Although surface water in the Colorado River Basin is regulated closely by the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation, states regulate groundwater on their own. And some of them, such as California, do not have groundwater management regulations, though others, such as Arizona, have gone as far as transferring surface water from the Colorado River to underground aquifers for later use. As noted by the Post: The Bureau of Reclamation allocates water in strict proportions to each of the seven states within the basin, where 40 million people rely on the Colorado River. Those allocations have gotten smaller as drought has swept the West over the past 14 years. Lake Mead is at its lowest level since it was created, after construction of the Hoover Dam in the 1930s, leaving a "bathtub ring" around the lake. Most years, every drop of water is pumped out of the Colorado River before it empties into the Gulf of California. Yet, what surprised researchers in particular was how much groundwater had been accounting for the difference. Indeed, in excess of three-quarters of water lost over the past nine years came from underground. And groundwater does not replenish itself as quickly as surface water, which collects from rain and snow. The unexpected heavy use is straining resources that were already limited. "You get a wet year, you get some precipitation, and those reservoirs can fill right back up," Castle said. "It can take years, or hundreds of years, to refill groundwater basins." 'We really don't know how much water is down there' "The Colorado River Basin is the water lifeline of the western United States," said senior author Jay Famiglietti, senior water cycle scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory on leave from UC Irvine, where he is an Earth system science professor. "With Lake Mead at its lowest level ever, we wanted to explore whether the basin, like most other regions around the world, was relying on groundwater to make up for the limited surface-water supply. We found a surprisingly high and long-term reliance on groundwater to Pidge the gap between supply and demand," he said. The study's authors concluded that federal officials allocated 30 percent more water from the Colorado River than was available; the gaps were then made up from groundwater. Across the Western states, farmers and urban centers that rely on groundwater are already seeing their water tables decline, which indicates that supplies are running low. "We really don't know how much water is down there. We've already depleted a lot of it. There could be more, but when we have to start to dig deeper to access it, that's a bad sign," Castle said. "If [ground water basins] continue to be depleted, they don't come back up." Read More.. Web Toolbar by Wibiya (NationalSecurity.news) The Russian government has issued a stark warning to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un that his bellicose rhetoric regarding preemptive nuclear strikes on South Korea and the United States could be laying the legal groundwork under international law for a preemptive military strike on his country instead. In a statement issued by the Russian foreign ministry, Moscow said that threats by Pyongyang to deliver preventative nuclear strikes are also creating tensions among North Koreas few remaining allies, which includes Russia. The Russian foreign ministry statement is also critical of Washington and Seoul for launching the largest joint military drills yet to be held on the peninsula, The Guardian reported. We consider it to be absolutely impermissible to make public statements containing threats to deliver some preventive nuclear strikes against opponents, the Russian foreign ministry said in response to North Koreas threats. Pyongyang should be aware of the fact that in this way the DPRK will become fully opposed to the international community and will create international legal grounds for using military force against itself in accordance with the right of a state to self-defense enshrined in the United Nations Charter, continued the statement, translated by Itar Tass news agency. The U.S. and South Korea on Monday launched their annual joint military exercises on the Korean peninsula, stepping up military operations in response to North Koreas recent nuclear test, the countrys fourth, in January, followed by a rocket launch in February. The Russian statement was critical of Pyongyangs threats, but it was equally critical of the joint U.S.-South Korean exercises, which it described as placing unprecedentedmilitary and political pressure on Pyongyang. Naturally, as a state, which is directly named as an object of this kind of military activities, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK) cannot but feel reasonably concerned for its security, the statement said. Pyongyang has said the military exercises, set to last until the end of April, are rehearsals for an invasion, but the North has said that many times in the past. Still, the Russian condemnation of its ally is itself remarkable, given Moscows historically close relationship with its Stalinist neighbor. One expert told The Guardian that Russias response should have been expected, given the tone of North Koreas public statements. Pyongyang should be learning that the types of threats they continue to make will have consequences, Daniel Pinkston, a Seoul-based North Korea researcher at Troy University, told the paper. The security dilemma dynamics that the behaviour and rhetoric set in motion are making Songun Korea less secure, not more secure, he added. This is the flaw in their national security strategy, and it will continue to be exposed in the future. Another expert said that the Moscow statement may instead be a warning to Pyongyang of what other nations may do, not Russia itself. Russia is pointing out to North Korea that its inflammatory rhetoric risks giving its opponents primarily South Korea and the US just cause to pursue military action against it, said regional expert Christopher Green. See also: The Guardian NationalSecurity.news NationalSecurity.news is part of the USA Features Media network of sites. Read More.. Web Toolbar by Wibiya It is actually really hard to find a storage unit in the present day that you can actually trust and be comfortable with. Thankfully, you only have to deal with a bad storage company when you sign up for the unit, after which it is yours to do with as you please. Unlike dealing with cranky, rude landlords at apartments all over the place, you dont have to talk to the storage company again until you move your stuff out again. All you need to do is make sure your rent is paid on time and that there is stuff in the unit that you dont need right now. You will only visit the unit if you need to make a transaction with the unit, whether it is to take something out or put something in. Even though you wont have to keep in touch with the storage company, there are some tips you can follow to make sure that your unit is actually pretty amazing when you are going to rent storage in any location, at any time. It Has To Be Your Type Just like you wouldnt date someone who wasnt your type, you shouldnt rent a storage unit out if it isnt your type. To figure out the type of unit that you need, you have to take a look at the stuff you need to put in it. See, the size of the unit that you want may not be enough to accommodate everything you have to put in it. A part of the contribution to this problem is that when people find apartments and move in, they bring all their stuff with them, even if they havent used most of it in decades. This results in there being a lot of surplus. You need to make sure that the unit you rent out is the right fit for you in terms of space. You cant really fit that grand piano into a tiny room along with everything else you own, can you? It is understandable that you want to save some money, of course, but this doesnt mean that you have to get the tiniest room in the world and then stack your stuff up to the ceiling. This will lead to a ton of problems when you are trying to get the stuff out again! Keep That Heat In Check WASHINGTON, March 22, 2016 The National Cattlemens Beef Association officially named Kendal Frazier as the organizations chief executive officer after serving nine months in an interim capacity. The announcement made today in an NCBA release comes after the resignation of former CEO Forrest Roberts in June. At the time, Roberts said he was leaving to pursue other opportunities in the cattle industry and agribusiness, and Frazier was named the interim CEO. In a statement, NCBA President Tracy Brunner said those involved in the selection of the new CEO wanted to take their time and make sure the right choice was made. Today, we can say with confidence that Kendal Frazier is the right leader for the association, Brunner said. With many years of experience working for state and national beef organizations, he has helped to guide our industry through some of its greatest challenges. Frazier said hes honored by the announcement and that that hell vigorously oppose the continued assault by the government on private property rights, work to expand markets for U.S. beef, and try to increase consumer trust in U.S. beef production. It has been my privilege to serve our industry, Frazier said. I have spent my career working with and for beef producers, so I am well versed in the many challenges and exciting opportunities that face our industry. Im looking forward to working with NCBAs leadership, membership, staff, state affiliates, state beef councils and other stakeholders. Like what you see on the Agri-Pulse website? See even more ag and rural policy news when you sign up for a four-week free trial Agri-Pulse subscription. At the Cattle Industry Convention in January, Frazier told Agri-Pulse that he has worked in all areas of the organization, most recently as the Chief Operations Officer. Before being the COO, he was the vice president of communications for the former National Cattlemens Association, originally joining the organization in 1985. Before his time at NCA, he worked with the Kansas Livestock Association as a communications director as well as a stint as a farm broadcaster in Kansas. Frazier takes over as NCBA begins work on the next farm bill as well as keeps up its push for ratification of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and repeal of the Waters of the U.S. rule. NCBA is the countrys largest beef industry trade group with over 28,000 individual members. #30 Globally, 650 million people are living without an improved source of drinking water, which includes public taps, protected wells, rainwater or water piped into households. A report on the state of the worlds water showed Equatorial Guinea, Angola, Chad and Mozambique joining PNG in the bottom five of a table ranking countries according to the percentage of households with access to clean water. PAPUA New Guinea, where 60% of the population live without a safe water supply, has the poorest access to clean water in the world, according to a study released to mark World Water Day. Henry Northover, head of policy for WaterAid, the organisation behind the study, said the global water and sanitation crisis was not a problem of limited supplies. This is not always an issue of scarcity by and large we are dealing with a distributional crisis. It is fixable with clear and coherent government policies, and with the focused support of international agencies, Northover said. The study also explored the high costs of water access, examining why the poorest communities often foot the largest bill. When there is no public access to clean water, people are forced to buy their water from street vendors, tanker trucks or other informal delivery services, all of which charge a premium. In Port Moresby, the average cost for 50 litres of water from a delivery service is 1.84 (K8.10), which accounts for half of a typical daily salary. This compares with 0.07(31 toea) for 50 litres of piped water in the UK. There is perverse irony when it comes to water poverty, Northover said. Those who have the least have to pay the most for this most essential of human needs. And they pay the most not in proportion of their income, but in absolute terms. The Islamic State Attempts To Eradicate Christians While Creating Killer Caliphate Urban camp holding 94 Assyrian families in Erbil, Iraq. ( Doug Bandow) ERBIL, IRAQ--Kurdistan in the north of Iraq has become a refuge for Christians and other religious minorities in the midst of the Islamic State's murderous rampage. In response the Republican-controlled House voted to designate the Islamic State's murderous campaign against Christians and Yazidis as genocide. It's an ironic judgment from a body controlled by the political party most responsible for the rise of ISIS--absent George W. Bush's foolhardy invasion of Iraq, the deadly movement would not even exist. Nevertheless, Secretary of State John Kerry last week used the term for the first time regarding the Islamic State, declaring that it "is responsible for genocide against groups" including religious minorities. The abundant crimes of Daesh, as it also is known, constitute an unprecedented religious war against members of minority faiths who until recently largely lived in peace with their Muslim neighbors. While Christians and other religious minorities suffered pervasive discrimination and persecution by such U.S. allies as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, these groups were largely unmolested by the secular dictatorships of Iraq's Saddam Hussein and Syria's Bashar al-Assad. Indeed, a Christian woman was better off living in Baghdad or Damascus than in Riyadh or Islamabad. Alas, George W. Bush's botched campaign against non-existent Iraqi weapons of mass destruction unleashed a tsunami of Islamist brutality. Newly empowered Shia turned the state against formerly ruling Sunnis, who responded with a virulent insurgency and indiscriminate terrorism. Christians, who possessed neither militia nor safe haven, suffered grievously, with hundreds of thousands driven from their homes, many fleeing to Syria. The collapse the latter into civil war left Christians (and other religious minorities) poised uneasily between the government and insurgents, with many leaning toward the former. After all, they lived the show in Iraq and didn't enjoy the ending. Worse was to come from the Islamic State, an outgrowth of al-Qaeda in Iraq which allied with disgruntled Sunnis to defeat Baghdad's forces in Iraq and displace both government forces and more moderate insurgents in Syria. As ISIS created its "Caliphate"--establishing its rule over a sizeable amount of territory--the group expanded its depredations against most everyone, including antagonistic Sunnis, but especially Christians, Yazidis and other religious minorities. Hence the brutal campaign detailed in the nearly 300-page report, "Genocide against Christians in the Middle East," issued by the Knights of Columbus and In Defense of Christians, a group which focuses on the Mideast. This sustained Islamist attack targets the roots of Christianity. Believers were first called Christians in Antioch, Syria (Acts 11:26). Iraqi Christians, known as Assyrians, were converted to Christianity 2000 years ago, apparently by St. Thomas. Christianity predated Islam by hundreds of years and was subjugated through military conquest, not converted through spiritual persuasion. Nevertheless, the Christian community remained vibrant and contributed greatly to Muslim-dominated societies in succeeding centuries. Even in recent years Christians enjoyed surprising influence and authority. A Christian founded the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. In Hussein's Iraq a nominal Christian, Tariq Aziz, held multiple high public positions. Today, however, the very survival of Christianity in its birthplace is in question. The report argued simply: "ISIS is committing genocide" against Christians in Iraq, Libya and Syria. "Killings, rapes, torture, kidnappings, bombings and the destruction of religious property and monuments are, in some instances, a matter of public record." But the document adds much more detail, reporting crimes largely hidden from public view in the West. Nor is this all. Explained the authors: "We are now being sent new stories and new evidence daily. So what is known about ISIS' genocidal atrocities will only increase, and the known scale of the horrors that have occurred can only expand with time." The words of ISIS are clear. The organization publishes a magazine named Dabiq, the place where the movement expects to destroy the "Crusader army," meaning Christians. This is no metaphorical quest. Explained the Islamic State: "We will conquer your Rome, break your crosses, and enslave your women, by the permission of Allah, the Exalted." If today's ISIS killers fail in this regard, "then our children and grandchildren will reach it, and they will sell your sons as slaves at the slave market." Nor is this viewed as a battle against secular armies. To the contrary, stated the Islamic State: "It will continue to wage war against the apostates until they repent from apostasy. It will continue wage war against the pagans until they accept Islam. It will continue to wage war against the Jewish state until the Jews hide behind their gharqad trees. And it will continue to wage war against the Christians until the truce decreed sometime before the Malhamah. Thereafter, the slave markets will commence in Rome by Allah's power and might." Some policymakers mistakenly believed the assault on Christians was limited--for instance, mostly occurring in Nineveh in 2014. However, noted the study, "Christians have been attacked throughout the region, not simply in the Nineveh area or only during the summer of 2014. Christians have been attacked and killed by ISIS and its affiliates in Syria, Libya, Yemen and surrounding areas." Indeed, the violence began in Iraq shortly after the U.S. invasion by ISIS' predecessor, al-Qaeda in Iraq. The Islamic State claimed to represent historic Islam and convinced some observers that it had replicated the practice of levying the jizya tax on Christians, otherwise leaving them at peace. In fact, explained the study, ISIS simply employed theological concepts which may "mean something contrary to historic Islamic practice" or "nothing at all." In this case, jizya proved to be a ploy, "almost always a term for extortion and a prelude or postscript to ISIS violence against Christians." In Nineveh, for instance, demands for the tax preceded "killings, kidnappings, rapes and the dispossession of the Christian population." In Raqqa the practice was employed only "after ISIS had already closed the churches, burned Bibles and kidnapped the town's priests." Scholar Alberto Fernandez called the concept "more a Salafi Caliphate publicity stunt than a careful recreation of jizya as practiced by the early Caliphs." It seems even ISIS, which positively gloried in its murderous ways, hoped to mislead its opponents as to the nature of its campaign. Unfortunately, there is no reason to believe that the Islamic State will change its behavior as long as any Christians or other religious minorities survive under its control. Argued the report: "Thousands of Christians, Yazidis, Shia and Sunni Muslims, Turkmen, Shabaks, Sabean-Mandeans, Kaka'en Kurds, and Jews have been--and will continue to be--targeted for extermination because of their religion by a well-financed and highly-organized network of criminal gangs." Yet to describe the Islamic State's crimes in generalities does not adequately communicate the truly horrific nature of its campaign. The NGO Shlomo recorded 1131 Christians murders between 2003 and 2014 in Iraq's Nineveh Plain, with more than 100 more since then. Patriarch Ignatius Youssef III Younan of Antioch, Syria believed more than 500 Christians in Iraq and more than 1000 in Syria were murdered. The Archbishop of Aleppo, Syria, Jean-Clement Jeanbart, said that hundreds of Christians have been killed or kidnapped in his city and perhaps thousands in Syria as a whole. Others have been slaughtered in Libya and elsewhere. While widespread murder is the Islamic State's most odious crime, the group inflicts grievous harm on those it does not kill. Those interviewed for the report cited all manner of bodily harm: "Choking, beatings with guns and electrical cords, mock executions, and withholding of food and water in the extreme heat are commonplace." Rape also is widespread, with more than "1500 Yazidi and Christian girls" taken as sex slaves. As in ancient times, they are sold and shared like chattel. At least 380 Christians are known to have been kidnapped in Syria and more than 150 have been seized in the Nineveh Plain since 2014. Such activities create "mental traumas" akin to PTSD, "Including intrusive thoughts of their captors, overwhelming emotions of fear and grief, and nightmares." In some cases, such as women repeatedly raped by ISIS fighters, there is "acute mental distress, even total mental breakdown." Moreover, the Islamic State coerced religious conversion. Dozens of Christians have affirmed Islam "after being deprived of food and water, and being beaten and threatened with death." This process might seem unimportant to nonbelievers but, reported the authors, "the violation of conscience--the spiritual rape--involved in a conversion through force works a state of mental and spiritual unrest that is difficult to put into words." A coerced conversion against one's beliefs "introduces fear, uncertainty, guilt, and shame into the most important and intimate relationship one can experience." There also is robbery of most everything Christians possessed--"homes, businesses, money, jewelry, clothes, and supplies." ISIS members often returned repeatedly to steal more. Islamic State fighters seized the luggage of Christians forced into exile. Those left in their homes were denied electricity, sanitation and water. Finally, there is religious cleansing. For instance, "Christians were rounded up into buses and driven out to a remote place to fend for themselves. Sometimes this was next to a river they had to cross, sometimes it was in the middle of the desert." Left without food and water, many had to walk for hours to reach safety. All told, noted the report: "ISIS generally operated with extreme indifference or hostility to the survival and well-being of its Christian victims." The report included detailed lists of crimes committed against Christians and Christians known to be murdered, as well as summaries of witness statements. These highlighted the tragedy that has overwhelmed the region's religious minorities. Those who escaped reported brutality, beatings, kidnappings, disappearances, expulsions, ransom demands, detentions, looting, churches vandalized and destroyed, homes seized, forced conversions, coerced marriages, and killing. Perhaps the saddest cases, tragically common, involved family members who chose to remain after ISIS's arrival, believing that the situation would quickly return to normal. Many since have not been heard from and their fate is unknown. Among the creepiest evidence of the depravity of the Islamic State is the "Subject/Prices of Selling Spoils of War" flier reproduced in the report. Almost beyond belief, this price list for sexual slaves has been confirmed as genuine by Zainab Hawa Bangura, the UN Special Representative of the Secretary-General for Sexual Violence in Conflict. The document complained about a drop in "demand in women and spoils of war" which cut ISIS revenues. Thus, the "caliphate" set price controls, with the penalty of death for any violations. Prices started at 50,000 dinars for a Christian or Yazidi woman between 40 and 50 and rose to 200,000 for any Christian or Yazidi child from one to nine. Only foreigners, as in "Turks, Syrians, and Gulf Arabs," were allowed to purchase more than "3 spoils." Bangura explained that such "spoils" often were first offered to Islamic State leaders, next to wealthy Gulf Arabs, and then to local fighters. Included within the report is a memorandum from ADF International detailing the extraordinary damage done Middle Eastern Christians. While Christianity is the most victimized faith worldwide, noted the group, "the persecution of Christian and other religious or ethnic minorities in Syria and Iraq differs significantly from the rest of the world due to the magnitude of the persecution and the intent behind it." The number of Christians in Iraq is estimated to have dropped from 1.4 million in 2003 to 275,000 today. In Syria the number has gone from 1.25 million in 2011 to about a half million today. As the Knights/IDC report substantiates, there is no doubt of widespread genocidal persecution of religious minorities. The biggest challenge is what to do about it. Many who pushed for the designation of "genocide" hoped to force a response from Washington. But there is little military option. After all, foolish U.S. intervention triggered the crisis in Iraq and Libya and exacerbated the conflict in Syria. Indictments under the International Criminal Court would provide moral satisfaction, but the Islamic State must be defeated for any prosecutions to occur. Indeed, defeat itself is the most important way to stop ISIS activities, and is primarily the responsibility of the Middle Eastern nations under attack from Daesh. Perhaps the most obvious response by Americans would be to offer more humanitarian aid and accept additional refugees. Despite security fears, the Islamic State is unlikely to attempt to use refugees, who typically wait years for resettlement, as a means to attack America. However, at least Muslim refugees could be taken in by the Persian Gulf States. Christians, Yazidis and other religious minorities lack any comparable Mideast sanctuary: only Lebanon is hospitable to non-Muslims, and is overwhelmed with refugees of all faiths. The slaughter of Middle Eastern Christians and other persecuted faiths is one of the great tragedies of our age. The Knights/IDC report helps bring the Islamic State's many crimes to life. There is no panacea, no easy solution to the ongoing conflict. But Americans can act even when their government cannot. Today they should act even if their government does not. March 22, 2016 CAIRO Some Egyptian water experts say ousted parliament member Tawfik Okasha endangered the countrys national security by meeting Feb. 24 with Israeli Ambassador Haim Koren in Cairo to discuss the construction of the controversial Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam. Parliament members voted overwhelmingly March 2 to revoke Okasha's membership for discussing the project with Israel. Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan have been trying for more than 1 years to navigate their numerous disagreements over the dams construction and how it will affect Egypts water supply. Former Egyptian Minister of Water Resources and Irrigation Mohamed Nasreddin Allam told Al-Monitor that Egypts negotiator in the Renaissance Dam process is well aware of Israels role in supporting the construction of the Renaissance Dam as well as its role in disrupting ongoing negotiations. Israel plays a pivotal role in the crisis, [but] given its water and political ambitions, it is not in Egypts best interests to have Tel Aviv as a mediator in the negotiations as [Israel] remains, in the end, a strategic enemy of Egypt, Allam said. He stressed that any talk with Israel about the dam should be limited to reducing Israels intervention against Egypts interests and minimizing Tel Avivs role in the Nile Basin, rather than encouraging Israel to mediate talks between Egypt and Ethiopia, which is what Okasha did during dinner with the ambassador. Okasha said in a Feb. 28 statement to Al-Monitor, I have asked Israeli officials to intervene to solve the Renaissance Dam crisis, as Tel Aviv stands behind the construction of the dam, and it plays a key role in this issue. Regarding an accusation of treason by his fellow parliament members, he said, I serve the interests of my country. Parliament members considered Okashas move as normalization of relations with Israel against the will of the Egyptian people, and said it amounted to interference in the work of the executive authority, considering that the Egyptian government is solely entrusted with the management of the diplomatic negotiations with regard to the Renaissance Dam. For his part, Hani Raslan, head of Nile Basin studies at Al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, told Al-Monitor that, while its no secret that Israel is a major player behind the scenes in the negotiations between Egypt, Ethiopia and Sudan, he considers Okashas action naive. Delivering the Nile water to Israel is [part] of its dream to become an official member of the Nile Basin countries and to impose its control over the region, he said. Raslan said there is an entire floor at the Ethiopian Ministry of Water and Energy dedicated to Israeli water experts, as confirmed by Sudanese Ministry of Irrigation Undersecretary Haidar Yousuf, who has spoken about it on several occasions. Raslan also stressed that Israels presence is heavily felt in the tenor of the negotiations between Ethiopia and Egypt. He pegged Israel as being behind vague proposals designed to establish trust with Cairo while not benefiting Egypt. These plans, he said, only provide for general concepts, without any restrictions to keep Ethiopia from reducing Egypt's share of the Nile waters. Okashas proposal to supply Israel with 1 billion cubic meters of the Nile water further stresses the approach of pricing and selling the river's water, said Raslan. According to Raslan, selling the water is an old demand of the upstream countries, which believe Nile waters should be redistributed among the countries that overlook the river and that upstream countries have the right to sell their surplus of water to Egypt, based on the lowest cost to provide alternatives to the Nile water. In other words, if the cost of water desalination is one dollar per one cubic meter, Egypt can pay starting half a dollar up to one dollar for one cubic meter from the Nile, Raslan said. Okasha said his meeting with the Israeli ambassador also touched on the Palestinian issue and the possibility of Israel building 10 schools in Egypt as compensation for the Bahr Al-Baqar primary school bombing by Israeli air forces in 1970. The attack killed 30 children and injured 50 others. Moreover, Okasha said he discussed the possibility of Israel dropping charges regarding international arbitration against Egypt in the gas supplies issue. March 22, 2016 Karam Qubrosi cant believe that Israel is allowing so many Gazans to travel on the occasion of Easter. This is a dream come true, especially for many of us in the age group of 18-35, he told Al-Monitor. Speaking to Al-Monitor after reaching the West Bank town of Beit Sahour, Qubrosi, 28, said that the last time Israel gave travel permits for men under the age of 35 to travel out of Gaza was at Easter 2008. That was the last time I was able to travel to Jerusalem for Easter, he said. Qubrosi explained the process of getting permits: Every church in Gaza gives names of its parish members who want to travel to the Palestinian department of civil affairs in Gaza, which then sends the requests to the Israelis for permission. Qubrosi, who plans to settle in the West Bank, said that Israel has been giving permits to various Gazan groups, including businessmen and Muslim worshippers, in recent months. Two hundred Gazans over the age of 60 were permitted to travel to Jerusalem on Feb. 26 for Friday prayers at Al-Aqsa Mosque. Permission for similar-sized groups have come every Friday. Some individual travel requests for humanitarian reasons are being granted, but not for groups. Explaining its position, the Israel Defense Forces announced March 21 that 800 entry permits to Israel were issued by the Coordination of Activities in the Territories, and that Gazans are being allowed to travel out of Gaza via Jordan. However, according to a March 10 Haaretz report by Israeli journalist Amira Hass, those traveling via the King Hussein (Allenby) Bridge are allowed to travel on the condition they not return within a 12-month period. In January, 351 departures were recorded from Gaza abroad via Allenby, and 301 in February. The monthly average in 2015 was just 121, Hass reported. Not all Gazan Christians who requested travel permits were given permission to celebrate Easter in Jerusalem, however. Samer Hanna Tarazi, 34, told Al-Monitor that while his wife and two children were given permission to leave Gaza, he was denied. The last time I left Gaza was nine years ago, he said. He has no idea why his request was rejected and so is applying again. Qubrosi added that he and his family are planning to stay in the Bethlehem area, even though he knows it is technically illegal, with the hope of eventually getting their residency transferred from Gaza to Bethlehem. Tarazi, whose family has yet to leave, has applied again, hoping that the Israelis will allow him to join his family in leaving Gaza for Jerusalem. My 7-year-old son has witnessed three wars and has never left Gaza. I would like to travel with him and the rest of the family as we celebrate Holy Fire on Saturday and Easter on Sunday at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem. Tarazi, a journalist who used to work for the official Palestine TV until the Hamas takeover of Gaza, doubts that the denial of permits follows any logic. My sister was given a permit and traveled to Ramallah two months ago, but now she was also denied along with me. Tarazi said that one or more members of many families are denied travel, which often forces them to rethink whether to go at all. Nashat Filmon, the director of the Palestinian Bible Society, explained to Al-Monitor how the travel permits become a way to escape. Life is so difficult in Gaza that when people do get permission to exercise their natural right to pray and visit the holy places in Jerusalem, Nazareth and Bethlehem, they often use it to run away from the difficult reality, he said. Filmon said that while he is sad at the sight of Gaza being emptied of its Christian presence, he doesnt blame Gazans for wanting to leave. Qubrosi agrees that many Gazans, especially young people, cant wait for a chance to leave Gaza permanently. Before 2000, we were happy when the Palestinian Authority was set up in Gaza. We had jobs and life was good. But now Gaza has become a big prison, he said. As he awaits his appeal, Tarazi laments the status of Gazans. My hope is that all of us Palestinian Arabs, regardless of our religious background, will gain the right to move around our country all year long and not just during holidays and based on an arbitrary decision by an Israeli military official. Article 13 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states, Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each state. The same passage continues, Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country. For all Palestinians, and especially the residents of the besieged Gaza Strip, this universal right has never been more important to their lives and their future. Ironically, the longer that this right is denied, the more Gazans will want to leave permanently. On the other hand, guaranteeing this right would go a long way toward convincing many of them to stay in their homes and their birthplace. March 22, 2016 TEHRAN, Iran The dynamics of the Iran-Turkey relationship are changing. A cursory glance at the Turkish prime ministers March 4-5 visit to Tehran including the way he behaved and was treated gives the impression of a change in tone and intentions. Ahmet Davutoglu headed a major delegation consisting of five ministers and dozens of Turkish companies and businessmen one of the largest such missions in the past decade. Two weeks later, Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif visited Turkey, expressing Tehrans readiness to enhance economic ties and regional cooperation. The question is whether these visits indicate a turning point in relations between these two important neighbors. The Arab Spring added new dynamics to Iran-Turkey ties. Prior to the uprisings, the relationship was defined by cooperation both political and economic in the absence of ideology. The emergence of the Syrian crisis, however, brought ideology to the forefront. Turkey, feeling the urgency to lead the Muslim Brotherhoods momentum across the region, reduced its choices to backing the Syrian opposition. Meanwhile, Iran, assessing developments in Syria through the lens of a strategic rivalry that saw its competitors arm a peaceful uprising, clung to the status quo. Iran was preserving its regional influence while Turkey was enhancing its sway. While politicized and sectarian identities amplified the Islamic State (IS) and its sibling organizations, they also hampered political dealings between Iran and Turkey, leaving their economic cooperation without a political parallel. Five years later, Davutoglu spoke with his Iranian hosts about common ground in Syria. And for the first time, the political elite in Tehran felt a different tone from both Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his prime minister. It is worth asking the origin of this change and its causes. First, there is the economic rationale. Russias unilateral sanctions have created an urgent Turkish need to enhance economic relations with other nations including Iran. Turkey and Iran have had nothing in common in the past five years in terms of their views of regional political developments. However, the Russian embargo has created an incentive to go beyond these political differences. While in Tehran, Davutoglu spoke about the two countries agreement to expand bilateral trade to $50 billon a year. In other words, Turkey is seeking to become Irans first trade partner. This enthusiasm is based on a lasting feature of Turkey-Iran relations: the decoupling of economics from politics. Unlike with Russia, the European Union and the United States, economic relations between Tehran and Ankara have never been conditioned on political prerequisites. This tells the elites of both nations that they can pursue their regional policies without jeopardizing economic relations. This is a major factor in favor of the expansion of the economic relationship between the two countries. Additionally, while heading to Tehran, Davutoglu must have had in mind the changing economic atmosphere in Iran and the opportunities after the Jan. 16 "Implementation Day" of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. Yet despite their importance, economic relations alone do not explain such a consequential change in the bilateral relationship. The second reason for this shift is the fact that unilateral strategic choices have not succeeded on the ground. Neither Turkeys choice to seek the toppling of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad nor Irans policy of restoring stability in a unified Syria has materialized. Yet, Irans strategic investment in Syria has proved successful in stopping what Tehran has viewed as a plot against its allies. Meanwhile, Turkeys investment in arming and supporting the Syrian opposition has not only failed to oust Assad, but also caused security and strategic challenges for itself. After finding itself up against IS, Turkeys security has been jeopardized, as seen in the unprecedented bombings on its soil. Ankaras policies have also led to the empowerment of Syrian Kurds, whom Turkey depicts as terrorists due to their historical affiliation with the Kurdistan Workers Party. Turkeys strategic choices on the Syrian crisis have opened a Pandora's box whose contents are spilling over into its own territory. Partnering up with Saudi Arabia and Qatar in support of the Syrian opposition has failed to change this strategic impasse for Ankara. The third reason for the change in Turkeys tone toward Iran stems from the shifting dynamics of the Syrian crisis after the Russian military intervention, and especially following Turkeys downing of a Russian fighter jet in November. It is obvious now that the latter was a miscalculation. No matter what Ankaras reasons for the shooting down of the jet were, it led to Russias deployment of the advanced S-400 air defense system on Syrian territory, thereby limiting Turkeys scope for maneuvering. It also made Russia the second international power, after the United States, to back the Syrian Kurds. This has hit a nerve in Ankara yet Turkey has not been able to do anything about it. Thus, scrambling to broaden the spectrum of its strategic choices, Ankara turned to Israel and Saudi Arabia. Yet, it knew that only Iran senses its strategic malaise, especially with regard to the Kurdish issue. This is why Turkey is now finally turning to Iran. What we are witnessing is a tactical modulation of strategic calculations. To be clear, tactical changes, once proven fruitful, can lead to a strategic re-evaluation and maybe reorientation. This is why the Iranians embraced Davutoglus new tone and are expected to keep moving on the same track, as indicated by Zarifs scheduling of his long-awaited trip to Turkey only two weeks after Davutoglus visit to Tehran. Zarifs statements during his visit elucidated Irans decision to expand relations with Turkey. At this stage, both Turkey and Iran comprehend the repercussions of an internationalized Syrian crisis for their own national security. This is why they need to collaborate if there is to be any sort of a regional choice about the internationalized Syrian crisis. They are also expected to stick to the agreed-upon code of their relations: decoupling regional rivalries from bilateral relations. By adhering to this code, they can open different files on different levels to discuss various issues without the risk of negative spillover effects. Moreover, continued Iran-Turkey economic relations, even during the most critical times, illustrate the demise of the all-or-nothing approach so common in Middle Eastern politics in the Iran-Turkey relationship. It also indicates both countries abilities to intersect different files, allowing them to do a lot in the face of rising challenges stemming from Syria and the region. March 22, 2016 In the eulogy he delivered at the freshly dug grave of Meir Dagan, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recalled that 15 years ago Dagan, then head of the Mossad, had shared with him a dire prophesy. According to Netanyahu, the man who had for years devoted himself to the fight against terror said that the fight against terror will continue for another 100 years. The prime minister promised in his March 21 speech, Just as we beat it in the past, we will continue and we will beat it in the future. Netanyahu went on to praise Dagan and said he had been aware of the dangers of radical Islam and saw in Islamist zealotry a tangible threat that cannot be ignored. Dagan was indeed aware of the threats facing Israel. He was not a pacifist, no Peace Now movement member. In his last speech, which he delivered at a March 2015 rally at Tel Avivs Rabin Square, Dagan said, Israel is a state surrounded by enemies. He agreed that one must not, under any circumstances, be sanguine about the regional threats, but was quick to add, Enemies dont scare me. I am concerned about our leadership. I am scared by the lack of vision and loss of direction. His comments generated vicious invective from the political right. Yariv Levin, then the head of the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, said, Meir Dagans irresponsible blabbering causes grave damage to the security of the state. Levin accused the former Mossad director of being motivated by political interests, saying that his hatred for the prime minister had blinded his ability to see things as they are. The man who devoted most of his life to safeguarding Israels security understood that the Mossad, the Shin Bet and the Israel Defense Forces have no solutions to a popular Palestinian uprising. Dagan, a retired general, was not the first senior defense official to doubt the ability of the strongest military in the Middle East to deal with stones and firebombs. Dan Shomron, the military chief of staff at the time the first intifada broke out toward the end of 1987, said, One cannot fight against stones. Shomron went as far as to hand his generals the book A Savage War of Peace: Algeria 1954-1962 by historian Alistair Horne. The book, published in Hebrew in 1989 by the Defense Ministry, describes the struggle of the Algerian national liberation front against the countrys French rulers, and the conflict between the government of Charles de Gaulle and the French settlers and generals who opposed a withdrawal from the French colony. Before then, the French politicians could not muster the courage to make a diplomatic move to end the bloodshed. Only Gen. de Gaulles ascent to power led to the start of prolonged negotiations with the rebels that ended in France evacuating Algeria and granting it independence. Shomron, too, came under criticism for his heretical claim that there is no military solution to the Palestinian uprising. Even after his death, the settlers keep hounding him. Last July, Israel Harel, the former head of the West Bank settlement council, described Shomrons comments at the time as quite a wretched statement to make, especially coming from the top commander. In an article for Haaretz, Harel wrote, When the chief of staff declares its not possible to win the war, the soldiers and commanders in the field lose all motivation. Some 20 years before that intifada of stones, during the war of attrition under the government of Prime Minister Golda Meir, Israels Film and Theater Censorship Board banned the screening of the highly acclaimed 1966 movie Battle of Algiers, directed by Gillo Pontecorvo. The censors explained that the movie could undermine public morale and kept it out of theaters for several years. In 1973, the Israeli public learned the hard way through the deaths of 2,297 soldiers the bitter lesson of excessive faith in military power, of arrogance and of the euphoria that followed the 1967 Six Day War. These phenomena, according to Dagan, have been replaced by fear, despair and stalemate through lack of vision, loss of determination and absence of leading by example. The results, he warned at the rally held under the slogan Israel wants change, will be a bi-national or apartheid state in which Israel governs 3 million Palestinians. Either scenario, he said, would be the end of the Zionist dream. In other words, it would spell the demise of the Jewish state, which adheres to the principles of democracy while safeguarding the security of its citizens. Dagans funeral was held the day after three Israelis were killed in an Istanbul terror attack. It is widely believed that the Islamic State operative who blew himself up in the heart of the Turkish city was not connected in any way to the Israeli occupation. Even if Israel vacates all the occupied territories and makes way for the establishment of a Palestinian state with its capital in East Jerusalem, more Israelis are likely to fall prey to suicide attacks and car bombs. As Netanyahu diagnosed in his eulogy, In the ever-changing Middle East there are threats that must be minimized to the extent possible. The prime minister did not forget to mention that alongside the dangers there are also opportunities that must be explored. In this context, he extolled Dagans contributions during his term at the Mossad helm to the growing cooperation with Arab states. Dagan understood that the cooperation with pragmatic neighbors could help Israel minimize the terror threat. In his final days, Dagan also recognized the great opportunity for Israel presented by the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, and with his remaining strength tried to promote a regional Israeli initiative. In his final public speech, Dagan said Netanyahu had not led a single true move to change the face of the region or to create a better future. Just 10 days later, the citizens of Israel re-elected the man who promised them that they would forever live by the sword and only the sword. March 22, 2016 ERBIL, Iraq These are critical times in the quasi-independent Kurdish entity in Iraq better known as the Iraqi Kurdistan Region, or simply Iraqi Kurdistan. Buoyed by a burgeoning energy sector, its leaders loved to boast that Kurdistan was going to be the new Dubai. Today its economy is collapsing, and so are its spirits. Decades of mismanagement, internal feuding and graft have caught up with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG). Relations with the central government in Baghdad are at an all-time low. Since February 2014, Baghdad has refused to pay the Kurds share of the national budget. The Kurds subsequently moved to sell their oil independently. The onslaught of Islamic State (IS) forces in 2014 coupled with a sharp drop in oil prices proved a tipping point. Ordinary citizens have taken to the streets in protest. Yet despite such adversity, Massoud Barzani, the Kurdistan Regions veteran president, says he is determined to lead his people to full-blown independence after a popular referendum that is scheduled to take place this year. Barzanis critics accuse him of using the independence card to deflect attention away from the financial crunch and the festering dispute around his presidency. Yet in some ways, conditions have never been riper for realizing the Kurds long-cherished dreams of statehood. Baghdad is bogged down with its own problems. IS retreat from the so-called disputed territories, including the oil-rich province of Kirkuk, claimed by the Kurds and the central government alike, have allowed the Kurds to assert their control over them. Turkey, a long-feared foe, has embraced the Iraqi Kurds as never before. A few dispute that the quietly determined Barzani is best fitted to shepherd his people to independence. He inherited the mantle of his late father Molla Mustafa Barzani, who is counted among the fathers of Kurdish nationalism. No other figure enjoys Barzanis stature in Iraqi Kurdistan. In an exclusive interview with Al-Monitor at his office overlooking Erbil, Barzani talked about the challenges that lie ahead. The text of the interview follows: Al-Monitor: You are talking about a referendum and about independence more loudly than ever before. Some people express skepticism, saying its a ploy to distract attention from your economic and political problems. They don't really believe you are serious. Are you serious? And if so, are you going to give us a date for a referendum, and what will the referendum be about? Barzani: Do you really believe that I would instrumentalize such a critical issue, one that concerns the fate of millions of people, after all the suffering they have endured, all the sacrifices they made, just to advance my own political future? I have come to this decision after all the very bitter experiences of these long and hard years because there is no other path. I ask you, what other way do we have? Let us look at our relations with Baghdad. There are roughly two periods. The first was from 1922 to 2003. During that time, 2,500 of our villages were destroyed; 182,000 people perished; 12,000 Kurds remain unaccounted for; 8,000 members of my own family, the Barzanis, were killed; 5,000 people were gassed to death in Halabja. Theres the balance sheet of that first period. In 2003, we took part in the overthrow of a regime that brutalized all Iraqis and we looked forward to living together in a new Iraq based on a new and democratic constitution with full and equal rights for all of its citizens. We helped write that new constitution and voted in favor of it. We showed goodwill and acted in good faith. It was clearly said in the constitution that committing to its principles was the key to Iraqs unity. But the Iraqi prime minister, with a single stroke of a pen, put an end to this. The [central] government froze the Kurds share of the budget and failed to uphold its commitments to us on numerous critical fronts. So now we are faced with two options. This first is that we abjure all our rights that we give up on federalism and become just another province in Iraq. The other is that we go to our people with a referendum and ask them what they want. The status quo is not sustainable. If things continue as they are, we will descend into the bloodshed and destruction of the past. Al-Monitor: And what will the question to your people be? Barzani: We have not yet finalized it. We are still having discussions about this. Al-Monitor: What are the options? Barzani: There will be one question. Al-Monitor: You mean whether the people want independence for Kurdistan or not? Or will the proposed referendum be held in the disputed territories as stipulated in the Iraqi constitution, asking people there whether they want to remain part of Iraq or be part of an independent Kurdistan? Barzani: This is part of the process as well Al-Monitor: Are you saying that you may put these two separate questions during the same referendum? Barzani: We havent decided yet. The questions may be put concurrently, or separately. But there will be a referendum Al-Monitor: But will it happen for sure this year? Barzani: I can say with utter conviction that, barring circumstances beyond our control, that yes, we are trying to do it this year. Al-Monitor: And do you have a date in mind? Barzani: I think it will be before October [before the US elections in November]. Al-Monitor: It is universally agreed that in order for Kurdistan to sustain itself as independent, it needs the backing of at least one of the neighboring powers, Turkey or Iran. Over the past few years, we have seen Turkish policies change dramatically in your favor. Will Turkey support an independent Kurdish state carved out of Iraq? Barzani: In the beginning, Turkey was against the federalism of Kurdistan, and look at our relations today. As long as the referendum is only for Iraqi Kurdistan, it has nothing to do with the Kurds in Turkey [there should be no problem]. So we do hope that Turkey understands and comprehends what Kurdistan is asking for. But at the same time we are talking to Baghdad, we will talk to Iran at the same time that we talk to Turkey. We want to do it in a peaceful and balanced way. Al-Monitor: Do you believe that if you declare independence, the current government in Turkey will accept it? Barzani: If the current Justice and Development Party [AKP] government does not recognize and accept an independent Kurdistan, I don't think any other government in Turkey would. Al-Monitor: Recep Tayyip Erdogan will be president [of Turkey] until 2019. So you are saying something needs to happen between now and then? Barzani: What do you mean something has to happen? Al-Monitor: Well, independence ideally should happen during this time, correct? Barzani: When Erdogan was prime minister, it was he who came to Erbil, and in Erbil said that the era of denying the Kurds was over. This was a very important development. I have met Erdogan many times, and I have seen that Erdogan has a better understanding of the Kurdish cause than most. What I heard from Erdogan, I heard from no one else. Al-Monitor: But Turkey has a big problem with its own Kurds, and it is getting rapidly worse. It seems to me that unless Turkey fixes that problem, even if Turkey supports your independence, it wont be on a sound foundation. Barzani: We wish that the peace process had not stopped, and we have tried our best to keep the peace process going. I dont want to go into details, but I think that, after the June 7, 2015, elections when they [the pro-Kurdish Peoples Democratic Party, HDP) got 80 seats in the parliament, we issued a statement saying that it would be a historic mistake if they were not going to be part of the coalition government [with the AKP]. And at that time, I thought that the [AKP] wasn't accepting HDP to be part of the coalition government, but later I heard from the people within HDP that it was they who didn't want to be part of the coalition. I think this was a big mistake. Al-Monitor: Because they didn't want to support Erdogan becoming a "sultan"? Barzani: The era of the sultan is over. On the contrary, if they had been part of the coalition, they could have said no to some of the issues that concerned them. I think that as long as there was a chance of them being in the parliament, to fight to make changes, they should have seized it. Now, I am very concerned and afraid. When we witness bombings in the cities, terror acts in the cities, in the name of obscure terrorist organizations, in the end they [the Turkish people] will hold all the Kurds responsible. And I fear that this will lead to ethnic conflict between the Kurds and Turks. Al-Monitor: It appears that there is going to be more and more pressure on you from Turkey to take action against the PKK [Kurdistan Workers Party], maybe in Sinjar. Do you feel that pressure? Barzani: No, we have our own agenda. Al-Monitor: But I have heard your son Masrour Barzani [the KRG intelligence chief] say that the PKK has to leave Sinjar. Barzani: Definitely, the PKK should leave Sinjar, and we want them to leave Sinjar peacefully not by force. Al-Monitor: And are the Americans intervening on your behalf on this matter? Barzani: The Americans don't intervene in domestic territorial issues. But the Americans know that there is no value to the PKK presence in Sinjar. Al-Monitor: How do you assess the recent declaration of a federal northern Syria? Barzani: I believe that the concept of federalism suits the situation in Syria. But there must be consensus on this among the Syrians themselves. When we declared federalism in the Kurdistan region [in October 1992], we didn't do it unilaterally. Al-Monitor: The Democratic Unity Party (PYD), which appears to be one of the driving forces behind this declaration, says it is committed to respecting other groups and to democracy. Barzani: Through its actions on the ground, the PYD does not appear to be sincere about democracy. Al-Monitor: What do you think of the deepening military and perhaps political ties between the Syrian Kurdish Peoples Protection Units [the armed wing of the PYD] and the Americans? Barzani: Any support to the PYD means support for the PKK. Al-Monitor: Do you believe the PYD and the PKK are the same? Barzani: They are exactly one and the same thing. Al-Monitor: Do the Americans believe that? Barzani: They know very well, but they don't want to say they know very well. You know the top priority for us and the Americans is the fight against [IS], so they might turn a blind eye. Al-Monitor: So let's talk about the fight against [IS]. Do you believe that Mosul has to be taken care of before independence? Barzani: There is no relation between Mosul and the independence of Kurdistan. Al-Monitor: No? You can be independent and still have [IS] in Mosul? Barzani: Why not? Al-Monitor: Dangerous neighbors. Barzani: The Kurds are used to living in a tough neighborhood. Al-Monitor: Why do you believe now is the right time to pursue independence? Barzani: I have always believed in this. When someone asks us Why now? I ask them Why not now? Al-Monitor: Because it hasn't worked with Baghdad? Barzani: It failed. Al-Monitor: How do you figure out the borders of your state, and how do you get the central government to agree? What do you do about Kirkuk? Barzani: Article 140 of the constitution, which was never implemented by the central government, calls for a referendum on the disputed areas, in Kirkuk and in Sinjar. If the people say they want to be part of Kurdistan, their voices must be heard and respected. If they decide not to be part of Kurdistan, we will hear their voices and respect their voices. Al-Monitor: But do you think the US has a role to play in helping a smooth transition? Barzani: Nobody can play a big role like the role the US can play, if they want to play that role. US security guarantees are vital for the viability of the Kurds, and we will be grateful if they dont oppose our independence. Al-Monitor: The other problem, of course, is the lack of unity between the Kurds. Barzani: We are seriously engaged with the PUK [the other main political party Patriotic Union of Kurdistan], and we will be with other parties. Gorran [the opposition Movement for Change] has played a destructive role, and they have made themselves irrelevant. Al-Monitor: As you move toward independence, do you have a road map? Barzani: Yes, definitely. We are going to reactivate the parliament with elections of a new speaker of the parliament. The independence of Kurdistan is bigger than parliament and political parties. Whoever wants to be a part of it is most welcome, and whoever wants to stay against it, they have to leave and find their own way. Al-Monitor: And you believe that you must remain president during this critical period? Barzani: My objective is to reach that point, to have an independent Kurdistan. And that is a pledge from me. The day we have an independent Kurdistan, I will cease to be the president of that Kurdistan. And I will congratulate the Kurdistan people and let someone else take my place. This is a pledge from me I will not be the president of Kurdistan. Al-Monitor: Really? Barzani: Yes. My goal is to establish an independent Kurdistan, not to remain president. Al-Monitor: Your plans were based on the idea that oil/energy wealth was going to finance your country. Oil prices have crashed. Aydin Selcen, the former Turkish consul general, suggested that Turkey should buy out the shares of all the producing assets in Iraqi Kurdistan and finance the construction of a natural gas pipeline all to the tune of some $8 billion. Is this a good formula? Have you discussed this with the Turkish government? Barzani: I really don't want to go into details. It's best to address this detailed question of the economy and oil to the council of ministers because they are responsible for it. Al-Monitor: But there is a general criticism of the way the energy deals are being made and that it's not transparent enough. Barzani: There must be shortcomings, but I dont have the details, so it's better to ask the council. Al-Monitor: A PUK delegation is going to Ankara soon to talk about the gas. Barzani: Gas belongs to all the people of Kurdistan. The KRG must deal with it not the political parties. On the oil and gas, it is the business of the KRG. It is not the business of the PUK. Al-Monitor: The issue of corruption, though, seems to be talked about a lot more during these very difficult times. What do you plan to do to clamp down on corruption? Are you ready to set an example by punishing guilty parties even if they have a high rank? Barzani: Yesterday, I had a meeting a very important meeting with the chief of the judicial institutions. These are the institutions that are responsible for implementing financial reforms. Al-Monitor: So we are going to see some arrests or judicial investigations? Barzani: I told them one thing: Nobody is excluded. If you find something on me, call me. And I will come to the court. [Nephew] Nechirvan [Barzani, the prime minister] must come to the court. Masrour [Massoud Barzani's son] must come to the court if there is something on him. First, we must start within my family, then start with the KDP [Kurdistan Democratic Party], and then start with the other political parties. So that's why whoever exploits their positions, I told these institutions that they have my full support [to pursue them]. You are legally responsible to fight corruption. So I want you to fight this. But if you dont do your job, then I will bypass you and fight corruption myself, but later don't blame me that I bypass laws in Kurdistan, because this is very important for us in Kurdistan to fight corruption and to fight those people who exploited their government position for oil contracts, sales of agricultural land and things like that. Whoever will be responsible from the Ministry of Interior, Ministry of Peshmerga, prime minister, any minister, any leader of the party, any security official they all must be held responsible for what they have done. Al-Monitor: I spoke to many young people, and they are complaining about corruption. Barzani: For us, it is an existential issue fighting corruption. So how I fought [IS] with all of the motivation and forces we have, I will fight corruption with the same dedication. Sherin Zadah contributed to this report March 22, 2016 There was much fanfare among government circles in Ankara after Turkey and the European Union concluded on March 18 what Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu calls a historic agreement aimed at stemming the uncontrolled flow of refugees to Europe. Not everyone in Turkey is convinced, however, that Ankara emerged from the bargain as a winner, as the government claims. Many also question the morality of using refugees to barter for gains that have nothing to do with the plight of desperate people. The agreement foresees sending back, beginning April 4, all refugees who cross or have crossed illegally into EU territory via Turkey after March 20. In return for each refugee sent back, a refugee will be sent to Europe from Turkey through legal channels. The ceiling for those to be sent to Europe will be 72,000, and if this is exceeded, the agreement will be deemed to have failed in its mission of discouraging illegal entry. On paper at least, there will be no forced or mass expulsions, and the process of returning refugees to Turkey will be monitored by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, which has expressed reservations about the legality of the agreement. The EU will also allocate 3 billion euros ($3.4 billion) to Ankara under the so-called Facility for Refugees in Turkey and will mobilize an additional 3 billion euros by the end of 2018. The EU will also grant visa-free travel for Turks by the end of 2016, provided Ankara satisfies 72 criteria, which the government says it is ready to do. The EU has also promised to re-energize Turkeys membership process by lifting barriers some member states had placed in Ankaras path. After the deal was struck in Brussels, Davutoglu announced a new and historic chapter in ties with Europe, asserting, Today we realized that Turkey and the EU have the same destiny, the same challenges and the same future. Prior to the summit, he had bragged about securing major concessions from the EU through the tough Kayseri bargaining he and his diplomatic team had conducted. This is a polite way of saying horse trading in Turkish and refers to the central Anatolian city of Kayseri, which is known for producing some of Turkeys richest and most resourceful businessmen. The president of the European Council, Donald Tusk, who, along with the president of the European Commission, Jean-Claude Juncker, negotiated the refugee agreement with Davutoglu, was more cautious. Some may think this agreement is a silver bullet but reality is more complex, he said during the press conference in Brussels after the deal was concluded. Tusk was echoing the sentiment of many EU leaders who argue that while an agreement has been made on paper, it remains to be seen if it can be implemented given the major legal and moral hurdles that have yet to be overcome. Amnesty International agreed with Davutoglu that the deal is historic, but for the wrong reason, calling it a historic blow to human rights. Promises to respect international and European law appear suspiciously like the sugar coating the cyanide pill that refugee protection in Europe has just been forced to swallow, the organization said in a statement. There are also doubts in Turkey about the agreement. Kemal Kilicdaroglu, leader of the main opposition Republican People's Party, accused the government of turning Turkey into a buffer zone for Europe against refugees. Why dont we give [the EU] 6 billion euros and let them take all the Syrians, Afghans and Pakistanis, Kilicdaroglu said cynically, trying to highlight the immorality of bargaining over the rights of refugees. He also accused the EU of violating its own principles. Who will they take in? University graduates, those who have skills. As to the rest they are saying, You are on your own, Kilicdaroglu said, indicating that such selectivity represented a great disrespect for human rights. Meanwhile, the Nationalist Action Party argued that the agreement, which aimed to keep foreigners out of Europe, posed a threat to Turkeys national interests. This agreement makes Turkey the EUs border guard and turns it into an assembly point for refugees so that EU countries do not feel discomfort, Sefkat Cetin, the partys deputy head, said in a statement. He accused the government of not considering the burden the agreement will place on Turkey and the social problems it will cause. Cetin also expressed doubts about the promise of visa-free travel for Turks in Europe, saying there is no definite indication as to when this will actually happen. Uluc Ozulker, a retired ambassador whose postings included Paris (2002-2005), agreed, arguing that it was not clear how the hurdle of Cyprus will be overcome. Turkey does not recognize Cyprus even though it is a fully fledged EU member. Cyprus will likely veto any visa deal until Ankara recognizes Cyprus, Ozulker told Al-Monitor. He also questioned the morality of the refugee agreement and expressed doubts that it can be implemented within the proposed time frame. Once such mass movements begin, they are hard to stop. Preventing refugees from coming is not possible or ethical. Neither is it ethical to be selective about who will be admitted, he said. Ozulker does not believe Greece, the country refugees go to from Turkey, has the capacity to organize in time to meet the requirements of the agreement. He is also skeptical that Turkey can fulfill the necessary legal requirements and questions how a divided parliament that can't agree on anything will be able to come up with the necessary legislation in 20-25 days. If the government passes these laws on its own in the parliament, this will invite fresh trouble, Ozulker said before going on to question how Turkey will train the personnel required by the agreement in 15-20 days. Ozulker is also doubtful that the EU promise to revisit Turkeys membership process will be kept, because there is a lack of will in Europe in this regard. One positive aspect to this whole affair is that Europe has seen that it needs to cooperate with Turkey. If Turkey can take positive steps in terms of democracy and human rights, this could also help bring the sides closer, Ozulker said. But there is a lack of will in Ankara in this regard, so we will have to wait and see what all this really translates into with regard to Turkish-EU ties. Two Alabama metros are among the country's top for attracting business in a March ranking by Site Selection magazine. The Tennessee River in Decatur. (AL.com file photo) Decatur-Morgan County and Auburn-Opelika were named top metros with populations of less than 200,000 people. Auburn-Opelika tied for sixth place with Lima, Ohio, while Decatur-Morgan County tied for sixth place with Burlington, N.C. The rankings are based on the number of projects announced in 2015. Site Selection said Auburn-Opelika had 10 last year, with Decatur-Morgan County following behind at eight. Morgan County Economic Development Association CEO/President Jeremy Nails said Morgan County businesses announced more than $231 million in new capital investment last year. The growth will create 653 jobs for the community. "Decatur-Morgan County is fortunate to have strong existing industries and new companies that are willing to invest and reinvest in our community," Nails said. Several Alabama cities also made Site Selection's Top Micropolitans of 2015. A micro area is an "urban core of at least 10,000 (but less than 50,000) population," according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The ranking includes Cullman (No. 2), Scottsboro (tied for No. 8), Valley (tied for No. 8) and Albertville (tied for No. 29). Click here for the list. herb_chicken_mediterranean_2_2.jpg Herb chicken Mediterranean pizza from Papa Murphy's. (papamurphys.ca) Twelve Papa Murphy's restaurants will open in the Huntsville/Birmingham market as the chain expands its presence during the next four years. The Take 'N' Bake pizza company said it will also open two stores in Raleigh, N.C., after signing expanded store development agreements with Waterman Acquisition Company. Papa Murphy's would not say where the restaurants will operate. "After experiencing significant growth with our Papa Murphy's stores in these markets over the last five years, I knew it was time to expand our portfolio and add these additional locations," said Boyd Simpson, Waterman owner and Papa Murphy's franchise owner since 2011. The deal with Waterman increases the Huntsville/Birmingham store count from 12 to 24 and 10 to 12 in Raleigh, bringing the total number of locations to 36 in both states. There are 42 Papa Murphy's locations operating in Alabama and North Carolina. Papa Murphy's launched in 1981 and has grown to more than 1,500 franchise- and corporate-owned stores in 38 states, Canada and the United Arab Emirates. A minimum net worth of $275,000 and at least $80,000 in liquid capital is needed to become a Papa Murphy's franchisee. The company has available markets in Clanton, Fairhope, Mobile, Robertsdale, Saraland and Semmes. The Alabama Symphony Volunteer Council is marking its 40th anniversary with a million-dollar home in Mountain Brook. The McTyeire home on Old Leeds Road has been announced as the location of the 2016 Decorators' ShowHouse. Fourteen design firms will transform the home that was once filled with the McTyeire's exquisite antiques and exotic worldwide souvenirs. The annual showhouse is one of the largest fundraising projects for the Alabama Symphony Orchestra. It opens to the public April 9 - 24, 2016. A showhouse sneak peek will take place Thursday, April 7, 2016. Reservations are required for that preview. The McTyeire home was owned by pioneering business owner Katherine McTyeire and her husband William McTyeire, Jr. until she passed away in 2013. Katherine McTyeire founded Iron Art, Inc., a popular home furnishings retail store and design studio. Her father Bert Meadows founded the Birmingham Ornamental Iron Company and her husband William McTyeire, Jr. is known for starting the Meadowcraft Furniture Division. She was among the first designers to participate in the first Alabama Symphony Volunteer Council Decorators' ShowHouse in 1976 and continued to take part for many years after. The French domestic architecture style home was designed by renowned Birmingham architect Henry Sprott Long and built by the McTyeires' as their dream home in 1969. The home sits on a crest and overlooks Shades Valley with stunning views from the pool and terrace, the location of many dance-filled evenings during the McTyeires' formal dinners. Chateau style hand-wrought iron railings highlight the limestone-trimmed exterior stucco. All of the ironwork in the home came from the McTyeire's wrought iron company. The interior features include marble floors and intricate moldings and woodwork. The home has five bedrooms and 7.5 bathrooms. Tickets to the showhouse are $15 until April 8, 2015 and increase to $20 after. Tickets for groups of 20 are $15 person. Shuttle parking will be at Mountain Brook Presbyterian Church located at 3405 Brookwood Road. There will be no parking onsite. Visit the showhouse website for more information and to purchase tickets in advance. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation has released more information concerning the body of an unidentified man found near the Alabama/Georgia line last Thursday. The body of a white male suspected homicide victim was found on U.S. 78 about 7 p.m. two to three miles from the state line in Haralson County, which borders Cleburne County in Alabama. The body is described as being between 40 to 50 years of age, 5 feet 10 to 6 feet tall, medium to heavy build with short dark colored hair. Authorities believe the man had been deceased for about two to three days before he was discovered. According to a news release, investigators say the body had three tattoos - two on his calf which read "CARNEY" and "TO THINE OWN SELF BE TRUE." Another, which was shown in a previous photo, reads "AURORA." Authorities believe the man was killed in another location and taken to that area. Anyone with any information, please contact the Haralson County Sheriff's Office at (770)-646-2011 or the GBI at 706-624-1424. St. Clair.PNG (Joe Songer/jsonger@al.com) Two St. Clair Correctional Facility were hospitalized today after they were injured, authorities confirm. Alabama Department of Corrections spokesman Bob Horton said both inmates sustained minor injuries. He did not confirm reports that the inmates were stabbed. "Officials are conducting an investigation to determine the cause of the inmates' injuries,'' Horton said. It is suspected the inmates were involved in an altercation. Horton said the prison is secured. An inmate was stabbed by another inmate on Saturday afternoon, also at the St. Clair facility. That assault at the Springville facility happened about 2 p.m. Horton said a corrections officer was able to move the injured inmate from the housing unit without incident. The inmate was taken to a hospital where he was treated. His injury was not life-threatening either. Horton said Correctional Emergency Response Teams (CERT) responded and are at the prison helping officers search the facility for contraband. The injuries comes one weekend after unrest at another Alabama prison. A riot erupted at Holman Correctional Facility March 18, leaving a corrections officer and Warden Carter Davenport with stab wounds. Two days later, on Monday March 13, an inmate was stabbed at Holman. A prison guard was stabbed early this month at St. Clair Correctional Facility. That assault happened about 12:30 a.m. March 7. Officers at the Springville lockup were called to one of the prison's cell block in response to an altercation between two inmates. The officer, Horton said, was stabbed while trying to detain the inmates. The officer was treated at the prison's infirmary, and then taken to an offsite medical facility. His injuries weren't life-threatening. Authorities today released the identity of a young mother shot to death inside her Birmingham home Monday night. The Jefferson County Coroner's Office identified the victim as Naki'a Darlene Harris. She was 18. Birmingham police responded just after 10 p.m. to the home at 1604 8th Court West. They found Harris inside the home, and medics pronounced her dead at 10:27 p.m. Investigators have not announced any arrests, but said they have identified a potential suspect. "Our investigators are pretty confident on who they're speaking with right now,'' Lt. Sean Edwards said Monday night. "We're pretty confident that by the end of the night we'll actually have a clear picture of who's responsible, we believe." Harris was the mother to a young son. She is the city's 23rd homicide victim this year. Anyone with information on this crime is asked to call Birmingham homicide investigators at 205-254-1764 or Crime Stoppers at 205-254-7777. AUBURN -- Taras Hrynyk, 86, of Richardson Avenue, Auburn, passed away at his home, surrounded by his family, on Tuesday, March 15, 2016. Mr. Hrynyk was born in Drohobych, Ukraine on March 29, 1929. He was the son of the late IIya and Kateryna Borys Hrynyk. Taras came to the United States as a teenager, attending schools in Philadelphia, West High School in Auburn and Onondaga Community College, becoming a certified toolmaker and draftsman. Taras enlisted in the U.S. Army during the 1950s and was honorably discharged. He was then employed locally by General Electric as a technician, Alco as an inspector and Columbian Rope as a tool maker. Taras was proud of his Ukrainian heritage; he was a member of the National Ukrainian Association and past president and trustee of the Ukrainian Sicz Club. He was a communicant of SS. Peter & Paul Ukrainian Catholic Church. Taras is survived by his loving family, his wife, Catherine Miner Hrynyk; his son, Greg Hrynyk and his wife Susan; his beloved grandchildren, of whom he was so proud, Melissa (Adam) Potter, Nicholas Hrynyk and Christina Hrynyk; his great-granddaughter, Amelia Potter; his sisters-in-law, Mary Arlene Cuddy and Mary Ann Miner; many nieces and nephews in the U.S. and Ukraine, whom he loved like his own children. He was predeceased by his parents; his two sons, Larry and Michael Hrynyk; his siblings, Lupco Hrynyk, Nadiya Fegetsyn and Maria Prymyak. Funeral services were held Monday, March 21 in SS. Peter & Paul Ukrainian Catholic Church, 136 Washington St., Auburn, and burial will be at St. Josephs Cemetery. In lieu of flowers, donations in memory of Taras Hrynyk may be made to either Hospice of the Finger Lakes, 1130 Corporate Drive, Auburn, or SS. Peter & Paul Ukrainian Catholic Church, 136 Washington St., Auburn 13021. Suicide and self-inflicted injuries are the leading causes of death among First Nations youth and adults. Toronto, Canada Donnie McKay keeps his phone close. A band councillor in Pimicikamak Cree Nation (Cross Lake) in northern Manitoba, McKay never knows when there will be a call to tell him that another person in his community of 8,000 has committed suicide. I just got a call last night from the paramedics again. Im just looking at my phone to see when its going to ring again, McKay told Al Jazeera in a telephone interview. Six people have committed suicide in Cross Lake since December 12, and 140 others attempted suicide in two weeks alone, many of them youths, McKay said. Its been a state of shock. Theres been a lot of trauma and everybody is on alert every night, trying to cope with the situation and this crisis, epidemic, pandemic, whatever you want to call it, McKay said. The staggering suicide rate pushed Cross Lake to declare a state of emergency early in March. McKay said that local leaders have called on the provincial and federal governments to send at least six certified mental health professionals to the community, including at least one child psychologist, to deal with the immediate crisis. Its been I dont know, he said, as his voice trailed off. It was like a volcano ready to erupt, and we dont know how to deal with that lava flowing down. Its the future that is dying Sylwia Krzyszton, a spokeswoman for Health Canada, told Al Jazeera that the department is aware of the tragic circumstances in Cross Lake First Nation and wants to express its deepest concern to everyone in the community. Krzyszton said Health Canada has reached out to Cross Lake to offer assistance. Extra mental health therapy services were made available in February and additional crisis mental health therapists will go to the community this month, she said. But McKay said a mental health worker came to the community last week for only eight hours, and two others that arrived on March 10 were only scheduled to stay until March 12. A nursing station serving the community is staffed by only two nurses, he added. What we require immediately are specialists and professional experts to come in and work with us on a 24-hour basis because we are working on this 24 hours a day, he said. Suicide and self-inflicted injuries are the leading causes of death among First Nations youths and adults under the age of 44. According to the Centre for Suicide Prevention, the suicide rate among First Nations males aged 15-24 is 126 per 100,000 people, compared with 24 per 100,000 for non-Aboriginal males. For First Nations females, the rate is 35 per 100,000, compared with only 5 per 100,000 for non-Aboriginal females. Its a problem for the whole community, but its a problem that its the youth that are dying. Its the future, said Gerald McKinley, an associate professor at the University of Western Ontario, who specialises in Aboriginal health issues in northern Ontario. McKinley told Al Jazeera that First Nations communities have experienced sudden increases in suicides before, including in the early 1970s on Ontarios Manitoulin Island, or in the Sioux Lookout region of northern Ontario in the mid-1980s. Suicide is associated with poverty, discrimination and ongoing colonisation of First Nations communities in Canada, he said, and having one suicide in a community can trigger other people. While suicide is not a traditional aspect of the culture, it spreads through a community like a virus, McKinley explained. I think the step of providing the tertiary care, so getting the crisis teams in there, is a really important step in slowing the spread within a community thats in crisis. But we also need to start thinking about what structural violence is in place thats enabling the conditions that are driving these children to decide to leave life. Government neglect The state of emergency in Cross Lake came only two weeks after another health and public health emergency was declared, this time in the Sioux Lookout region and Nishnawbe Aski Nation (NAN) territory in northern Ontario. Children as young as 10 have taken their own lives, toddlers have died as a result of untreated strep throat infections, and a woman died from respiratory problems after a local nursing station ran out of oxygen, said Alvin Fiddler, the Grand Chief of the NAN, which represents 49 First Nations communities. We hear stories like this almost on a daily basis, Fiddler told Al Jazeera. We know that there is something terribly wrong with the delivery of the healthcare and the public healthcare system in the north, he said. Whats even more concerning is the fact that the government has known about these issues for a long time If you know of a problem and you dont do anything to try to correct it, I would call that neglect. READ MORE: What mental illness means to me Karl Hele, director of First Peoples Studies at Concordia University in Montreal, told Al Jazeera that Aboriginal health is tied to long-standing issues related to Canadian colonialism. Inadequate housing, a lack of access to clean water, the high cost of food, long-standing abuse stemming from residential schools, and inadequate government funding directly tie into health problems in First Nations communities, Hele said. The government needs to provide equal funding, thats the minimum. They need to provide better housing and all the other support structures that allow for better health, he said. You can solve health crises, but as long as you have more people than are capable in a house and the house is full of mould, whats the point? Valerie Hache, a spokeswoman for Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, told Al Jazeera the department has reached out to NAN representatives to discuss the next steps following the emergency health declaration. The department has committed to solving the problem of drinking water advisories in First Nations areas, one of the demands put forth by NAN and Sioux Lookout leaders, within five years, Hache said. The government of Canada is engaging in a renewed, respectful, and inclusive nation-to-nation process, one that makes progress on issues most important to Indigenous communities, including safe drinking water, she wrote in an email. Furthermore, in an emailed statement, Health Canada spokeswoman Mylene Durette said the department was enhancing care in Sioux Lookout communities. We are hiring and training nurses, improving access to mental health support, improving infrastructure and ensuring needed pharmaceuticals and equipment are available, Durette told Al Jazeera. Health Canada invested more than $300m to support culturally relevant mental wellness programmes and services in First Nations on-reserve and Inuit communities in the past year, she said. Health Canada also spends $13.7m annually for programmes related to the National Aboriginal Youth Suicide Prevention Strategy. Overall, the department invests $2.5bn annually in First Nations and Inuit health, Durette said. READ MORE: The sad and the sadder me Report portrays a damning picture But a report by Canadas Auditor General, released last year, painted a damning picture of the quality of healthcare offered to residents of remote First Nations communities in Ontario and Manitoba. About 400 Health Canada nurses provide services to approximately 95,000 people living in these areas, the report stated. Health Canada provided $103m in 2013-2014 to support these nursing stations, and $175m over the same period to pay transportation costs when residents access medical services outside their community. But many nurses in these outposts did not have the training to respond to serious emergencies, and they were not given clear directives to act beyond their stated duties, the report found. Only one of 45 nurses surveyed in the report had completed all five necessary training courses, including advanced cardiac life support, trauma life support and advanced paediatric life support. And perhaps most damning was the conclusion that Health Canada did not take into account community health needs when allocating services, and had not made sure the communities had comparable access to services as others living in similar locations. Priority number one is ensuring that remote First Nations communities have access to healthcare providers. Health Canada supports access to a range of health services and benefits in First Nations communities including remote and isolated ones that are responsive to their specific needs and promote improved health outcomes, Durette said. Im past begging McKinley said any viable solution to the Aboriginal health crisis must be based within the communities and build on the strengths of those most at risk. Youth need to be involved in the solution. They need to be someone that we work with, he said. NAN Grand Chief Fiddler told Al Jazeera that he wants a face-to-face meeting with the Ontario and federal health ministers to craft a healthcare system that works for Sioux Lookout communities. I think with the urgency of the situation that were seeing on the ground, we cannot wait any longer, Fiddler said. We need to take action now. And in Cross Lake, McKay said that he is beyond begging. He wants Canada to uphold its promises related to development and employment plans for people in the community to pull themselves out of this crisis. Im past sympathy. Im past begging, he said. I just want my people to see that they have something to look forward to. Ahead of the new federal budget, set to be released late on March 22, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promised to make a historic investment in the countrys Indigenous peoples, likely to be in the billions of dollars. READ MORE: Canadas Lost Women Thessaloniki, Greece Kilkis hospital, just 50km from Greeces northern border, is busy these days. Being the closest to Greeces largest refugee camp at Idomeni, it is the first responder to medical emergencies. The maternity ward has taken on births at the 13,000-strong camp, but hardest pressed is its 18-bed paediatric ward, now permanently full, according to Theodoros Balabanidis, an ear-nose-throat doctor who heads the hospitals medical committee. If theres a sick child in the pediatric ward, the mother will be in there and usually the father comes with another two or three children, because they are worried about losing each other, says Balabanidis. We feed all of them for the few days they are here, he says. This is where the help of the local community is great. They bring food and clothing. These people often arrive with mud on their clothes and we offer them fresh things to wear. Like the rest of the national health system, Kilkis hospital has seen its budget cut every year for the past five years. The number of doctors has fallen by half to 42, as vacancies go unfilled. And, while it still suffers from shortages in medicines, bandages and other consumables, local volunteer groups alleviate these through collection drives. As Greece evacuates its eastern Aegean islands under the terms of Fridays EU-Turkey agreement, the number of refugees on the mainland is climbing, straining official resources. Of the current refugee total in the country just over 50,000 90 percent are spread between Athens and the northern border with the former Yugoslav Macedonia. The army has been opening up disused military bases at a rate of two a week for the past month to house them, but lacks the manpower to care for them. Instead, an army of volunteers has poured into the breach to distribute food and clothing, and raise aid locally. Citizens initiatives redouble their efforts Citizens solidarity initiatives created during the crisis to help destitute Greeks are now playing a key role in helping refugees. They have interfaced with the government and NGOs to provide much-needed manpower, and use their catchment areas to raise emergency aid. One of the most engaged is O Topos Mou (My Domicile), based in Katerini, about 150km from the northern border. It recently raised a train containers worth of medical supplies, some of which went to Kilkis. The organisation is also working to raise supplies in Germany. We need a Marshall Plan. We need help from abroad. We cannot lift this burden alone, says Ilias Tsolakidis, one of the groups founders and its main organiser. I see it in the people that offered help three years ago. If you went to a businessman then and said, Niko, I need help, he opened his wallet and gave you 100 euros. Today he gives you 20. And in another year he will say, I want to help, but I cant.' Tsolakidis still sends out local requests for aid to his 36,000-strong email database, but he has begun to build a separate one with German, French and Austrian addresses. Soon the 500 will be a thousand. The problem will become known abroad, he says. Some groups have come together on account of the refugee crisis. Knitting Solidarity formed last October in the northern city of Thessaloniki, after a group of women realised that refugees in Idomeni faced difficulties keeping warm. I was learning how to knit from YouTube videos and took three caps to kids in Idomeni, says Eirini Akritidou, one of the founders. Since then the group has spawned offshoots across Greece and abroad, but she senses a change among refugees. A smile is hard to come by these days. People are tired, trapped and frustrated. Knitting Solidarity is evolving accordingly. Were looking for families who can take people in. They make do with very little. All they want is a roof over their heads and a bath. Like many people in northern Greece, Akritidou is the grandchild of Greek refugees from the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Asia Minor (her grandfather was an unaccompanied minor, losing both parents on the way), and sensitive to the plight of todays displaced people. She has put up a young Syrian couple in a spare apartment, but says her motives go well beyond her personal feelings. A lot of people have a refugee background here. But thats not the only reason why people are hospitable. Its also a reaction to the way things are shaping up in Europe the xenophobia, the closure of borders and the raising of walls its a way to say, No, this is not Europe, Europe is something else. Maybe its utopian, maybe its wishful thinking, but it is good. Some refugees refuse shelter, still hoping that Greeces northern border, closed as of this month, will reopen to allow people to walk to Germany. Walid Jemu, a Syrian from Damascus, was recently camped at a petrol station about 20km from the border with his pregnant wife, a son, five, and a daughter, four. Greeks from a nearby village recently visited the petrol station, looking for families with small children. They gave me and my children food and asked me if I wanted to go to their house to stay for [a week], Jemu says. People here are kind and willing to help everybody, he says, but he refused the offer, hoping that Fridays summit in Brussels would lead to an opening up of European Union immigration policy. A coalition of the willing A small army of international volunteers has also made itself indispensable, especially in Idomeni, where the need for manpower is greatest. People have retained their generosity and humour and goodwill, says Phoebe Ramsay, a Canadian volunteer. Like most of the 150-odd gathered in the town of Polykastro, near the border, she barely sleeps. Using social media, the volunteers have organised themselves in three shifts around the clock, cooking and distributing food, giving out clothes and cleaning tents, assigning them to families who need them most. Yet it is the character of the refugees themselves that impresses her. There was a man sitting in the mud. Hed built a shelter out of sticks and UN blankets which of course were soaked. Hes cut a hole in one for a window. He says: Come, come and sit next to me. He cleans off a little piece of wood for me to come sit and offers me a piece of muddy orange, and tells me that four of his brothers were beheaded by the Daesh (ISIL). After we talk he says: Thank you so much for sitting with me.' Europes agreement with Turkey is raising practical and ethical questions. The United Nations High Commission for Refugees announced on Tuesday: UNHCR is not a party to the EU-Turkey deal, nor will we be involved in returns or detention. We will continue to assist the Greek authorities to develop an adequate reception capacity. Volunteers take little time to discuss the politics of Europes failure to formulate a consensual immigration policy, or even a humanitarian policy, in the face of the current crisis. Whether theyre acting individually or as part of the Greek solidarity movement, they seem to regard the necessity of their actions as self-evident. PHOTO GALLERY: Idomeni: On the brink of a humanitarian catastrophe Im a programmer. I solve problems in zeros and ones. Youre at a juncture and you need to make a decision, says Tsolakidis. These people are here I think we will soon have 200,000. What shall we do? Strangle them and bury them, thats what the extremist would say. What if we dont strangle them? We need to help them; because if we dont help them, we will have a hungry, unhappy bunch of people without hope, roving uncontrollably, and ending up on our doorstep, he says. My politics, my religion, my culture everything advocates against this. I cant even conceive of it. Qamishli, Syria Large crowds of Syrian Kurds gathered in towns and villages outside Qamishli in northern Syria on Monday to ring in the Kurdish new year. This years Newroz celebrations were bolstered by the Democratic Union Party (PYD) and allied groups declaration of a federal democratic system in Kurdish regions of Syrias north. Even if Newroz wasnt happening, we would still be celebrating, Rukan Butan, 23, told Al Jazeera in Amude, a village outside Qamishli. In the days leading up to the celebration, municipal workers in Qamishli could be seen stringing large banners picturing Abdullah Ocalan, the founder of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), across the citys four-lane streets. The banners were emblazoned with the slogan: Freedom of the Kurdish leader is freedom of the Kurdish people. In recent months, the city has been targeted by a string of bombings, attributed to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group. Last year in Hasakah in northern Syria, an ISIL bombing attack on the city amid Newroz celebrations claimed the lives of more than 20 people. Despite the celebratory atmosphere in Qamishli, events marking the new year were subdued compared with previous years because of security concerns, locals told Al Jazeera. Kurdish intelligence officials have taken stringent measures to guard against further attacks. Imports to the region were limited before the holiday, while motorcycles, which were used to launch previous attacks, were banned inside the city in the days leading up to the celebrations. The location for the days events was announced on the morning of Newroz. We can be under attack at any moment, Kameran Said, a commander in a volunteer protection force, told Al Jazeera. Local politics mixed with the economic rise of China has been driving Hong Kongs rising political tensions. Tim Summers is an Adjunct Assistant Professor at the Centre for China Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. Recent developments in Hong Kong from the violent disturbances in Hong Kongs Mong Kok district on the first day of the Chinese new year to the disappearance of publisher Lee Bo have taken concerns about political risk in Hong Kong to a new level, both in the city and beyond. The dominant explanation for Hong Kongs political problems in much of the international media and among some Hong Kongers is that they are the result of the central authorities (Beijing) tightening its grip on Hong Kong politics and society. But if anything, the occupy movement of autumn 2014 and debates since it have demonstrated the limits to Beijings ability to influence, let alone control, events in Hong Kong. Chinas impact on HK The reality is that a complex mix of local, national and global factors explain the underlying trends in Hong Kong. Significant stresses lie within Hong Kong itself rather than in the relationship between Hong Kong and Beijing. Socioeconomic forces are a key driver, in particular the growth in income inequality, rising prices of housing and other basic commodities, and the effect of increased immigration, especially from the rest of China. Governance challenges result from a constitutional arrangement whereby a legislature which is substantially elected effectively acts as opposition to an unelected executive. And although a sense of dysfunction has grown since Leung Chun-yings administration took charge in 2012, the roots of the current governance challenges predate his administration. Combined with growing socioeconomic divisions in Hong Kong, the impact of China's economic rise has fuelled new forces in Hong Kong politics, which in turn tap into long-standing antipathy to China's ruling Communist Party from a sizeable proportion of Hong Kong people. by Global politics is also a factor, with some arguing that the Hong Kong protests of 2014 should be seen as part of a global wave of protest; the Sunflower Movement in Taiwan in early 2014 certainly appears to have inspired some of Hong Kongs occupy protesters. Another structural factor needs more consideration. Although tensions had begun to appear in the first decade after the 1997 handover from Britain to China, they were balanced by the pre-2008 global and Chinese economic boom, with a sense that Hong Kong had broadly benefited both from Chinas economic rise and from globalisation. However, in recent years international concern about the implications of Chinas economic rise has grown, extending to many people in Hong Kong. For some, the growth in Chinese tourism, investment in property overseas, and commercial expansion have been a financial opportunity, but for many, their effect on rising prices and Hong Kongs changing demographic profile are a threat. This is all the more so for a crowded city which cant hedge the effect of Chinas rise as other global cities can although strengthening Hong Kongs economic links across Southeast Asia would help. The anti-mainland sentiment These trends may be further exacerbated by the sense among many Hong Kongers that, although the city is clearly accepted by the vast majority as a part of China, they have somehow not benefited from the rise of China. Dramatic transformations, particularly in places such as Shenzhen just north of Hong Kong, have brought Chinas cities closer to Hong Kong in terms of hard infrastructure, though Hong Kong still enjoys a separate political and legal system, and a better public provision of education and healthcare. OPINION: Hong Kong defying the Chinese Dream Combined with growing socioeconomic divisions in Hong Kong, the impact of Chinas economic rise has fuelled new forces in Hong Kong politics, which in turn tap into long-standing antipathy to Chinas ruling Communist Party from a sizeable proportion of Hong Kong people. In particular, there has been a steady rise in anti-mainland sentiment, seen in some politicians de-mainlandisation slogans dating back a number of years, and a growing emphasis on Hong Kong identity as something separate or different from Chinese identity. Post-Occupy, a frustrated minority have begun to advocate separation or independence for Hong Kong. These political trends have contributed to the polarisation of Hong Kong society and the futile political standoffs which have left the political reform process stalled and exacerbated the citys governance challenges. I contend that the causes of this are much more about the mutual interaction between the structural consequences of Chinas rise and local politics than any policy choices in Beijing. But the outcomes have created nerves in Beijing about its ability to influence events in Hong Kong, and the central governments responses have only hardened positions in the city. Indeed, rather than an increase in Beijings control, attempts to intervene simply highlight the limits of Beijings ability to influence Hong Kong politics and society. Several candidates for the February legislative by-election talked about the need to find a middle way, but they performed poorly. Instead, 15 percent of the votes cast went to the pro-independence Hong Kong Indigenous candidate. It therefore looks unlikely that moderate voices will prevail, and instead political and socioeconomic tensions will remain high through 2016 September legislative elections. With another small-circle Chief Executive (head of government) election to follow in spring 2017, the political tensions in Hong Kong will only rise further. Tim Summers is an adjunct assistant professor at the Centre for China Studies at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy. The president believes that the future of the US and the world will be decided in the Asia-Pacific region. God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference, the 20th-century theologian Reinhold Niebuhr once famously wrote. Arguably, this very much sums up the United States President Barack Obamas foreign policy doctrine and his valuation of American priorities in various regions. In fact, the president has been always open about the profound influence of Niebuhrs works, affectionately declaring in an interview, I love him. Hes one of my favourite philosophers. Obama saw himself as a perfect antithesis to the George W Bush administration, which combined coercive unilateralism with a missionary zeal to supposedly spread US-style democracy in the Middle East and beyond. The Bush era disasters heavily undermined neoconservatism, paving the way for the rise of more calibrated realists such as Obama, who appreciated the limits of US power and the virtues of strategic patience. As the Obama administration enters its twilight months in office, questions over its legacy and long-term historical significance have gained momentum. The most salient aspect of Obamas foreign policy, one could argue, is his gradual retrenchment from the Middle East, where the US has been hopelessly overstretched, in favour of an accelerating pivot to Asia, where booming economies and a rising China are reshaping the global order. Extending the olive branch Not long ago, prominent journalists such as James Traub were quick to portray Obama as a deflated, demoralised idealist, who has been well and truly mugged by reality. Multiple crises, from Russias annexation of Crimea to the rise of Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS), seemed to have undermined the US power, and extinguished Obamas hopeful vision of an orderly, rule-based international order. Asia is simultaneously a region where there is the greatest opportunity for expanded trade and investments and also where the US confronts its greatest rival, China. by In the Middle East, the Arab winter and the deadlock in Israeli-Palestinian negotiations swept away the wellspring of optimism generated by Obamas historic Cairo speech, where he unsuccessfully promised a new relationship between the US and the Muslim world. But soon it became clear that Obama had some foreign policy tricks up his sleeve. Obama managed to pull off an improbable and highly controversial nuclear agreement with Iran, while normalising relations with communist Cuba and becoming the first US president to visit Cuba in almost a century. True to his early promise of reaching out to historical foes, Obama oversaw a qualitative shift in Washingtons approach to former foes such as Tehran. But as Obama admits in his long interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, he has been committed to decouple from the conflict-ridden Middle East. Recognising the US failures in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, where its military interventions have created failed states and havens for extremism, Obama refused to even enforce his own redline on Syria, when the Bashar al-Assad regime was accused of using chemical weapons against its own population. Clearly, he had little appetite for additional US military entanglements in the region. Amid rising Saudi-Iranian rivalry, he has even encouraged Arab allies to find an effective way to share the neighbourhood [with Iran] and institute some sort of cold peace, giving birth to a post-American order in the region. OPINION: Finalising the TPP critical step for East Asia Instead, Obama, who was raised in Indonesia and Hawaii, has been primarily interested in augmenting US strategic footprint in the Asia-Pacific region, where [the US] can do really big, important stuff, which have ramifications across the board. Under Obama, who has visited Asia more than any of his predecessors in recent memory, the US has established cordial ties with former foes such as Vietnam and Myanmar, built strategic partnership with key Muslim countries such as Indonesia and Malaysia, upgraded high-level dialogue with China, negotiated a major regional trade pacts the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement and overseen a major improvement in its approval ratings. The Pacific president The revived interest of the US in Asia is based on a belief that the relationship between itself and China is going to be the most critical in the 21st century. More fundamentally, Obama believes that the future of the US and the world will be decided in the Asia-Pacific region, which is filled with striving, ambitious, energetic people. Exasperated by persistent anti-Americanism in the Middle East, Obama enthusiastically cites how Asians are pragmatists who are willing to work with the US and are committed to build businesses and get education and find jobs and build infrastructure. OPINION: Why Obama fails the leadership test in the Middle East In short, Asia is, simultaneously, a region where there is the greatest opportunity for expanded trade and investments and also where the US confronts its greatest rival, China. There are, however, concerns that the US may have missed the train, for it faces an uphill battle in maintaining its hegemony in Asia, especially as a resurgent Beijing gradually carves out a new Sino-centric order in East Asia. In economic terms, China is the leading trading partner of almost all East-Asian countries, while it is set to transform into the pillar of infrastructure development in Asia, thanks to major development initiatives such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Maritime Silk Road plan. China is the new economic pivot around which Asia revolves. Overseeing decades of rapid military modernisation, Beijing is also progressively pushing US naval forces out of its adjacent waters, upending centuries of Western military hegemony in Asia. Some of Obamas likely successors are far from helpful. Demagogues such as Donald Trump, who is calling for a return to 19th-century American mercantilism, is undermining Asias confidence in the US and its reliability as a superpower. Ultimately, it remains to be seen whether Obamas renewed focus on the region has been enough to prevent a post-American order in Asia. Yet one should credit him for becoming the first truly Pacific president in the White House, reorienting US foreign policy from the troubled Middle East to a promising Asia. This will be his greatest foreign policy legacy. Richard Javad Heydarian is a specialist in Asian geopolitical/economic affairs and author of Asias New Battlefield: US, China, and the Struggle for Western Pacific. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy. These attacks are identical to acts of murderous violence targeting identically-innocent people in different cities. Hamid Dabashi is the Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. In the course of the most recent acts of vicious violence targeting innocent people, the Brussels attacks have caused scores of casualties. Western Europe was on high alert after attackers launched twin assaults in Belgiums capital Brussels with bombs ripping through the airport and the underground metro line, Al Jazeera reported. More than 30 people were killed and hundreds wounded many in critical condition. Within hours, presumed supporters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group assumed responsibility via a Twitter account. ISIL supporters claim group responsibility for Brussels attacks, we read in the news. We have come to you with slaughter. This is digital warfare in action, with real victims, paralysing terror, and fictitious responsibilities. Any dimwitted cuckoo with a Twitter account can tweet F*** Belgium. Belgium wanted to bomb the Islamic State. Now enjoy what your hands have sown. Precisely the same tweets are, in turn, picked up by well-funded, rightwing, Islamophobic propaganda machines to denounce Islam, stigmatise Muslims, and further fuel the fire of xenophobic hatred now best exemplified by choice Republican candidates like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz. Systematic violence The vicious cycle therefore perpetuates and exacerbates itself. Murderous criminals commit acts of systemic violence targeting innocent people, and their kindred souls among the proto-Nazi Islamophobes pick up where their brethren have left off to perpetuate a cycle of violence. ISIL is US and EU militarism by other means, in urban disguise. ISIL is not a response to US or EU militarism. It is a software in the hardware of its machinery of death and destruction. by Innocent people from Brussels to Beirut, from Paris to Istanbul, from Baghdad to San Bernardino, and around the world are then caught in between this vicious circle. What is needed is a conceptual puncture and a categorical breakage to this vicious cycle. The slaughter of innocent people in Brussels is the extension of the slaughter of the innocent in the Islamic world, not in response to or revenge for it. When the criminal thugs gather around ISILs banner and commit atrocities around the world, they present it as acts of revenge against Western aggression. These are not acts of revenge and retaliation. These are identical acts of murderous violence targeting identically innocent people in different sites. The murderous outfit that calls itself ISIL is the crooked product, the diabolic extension and the ugly shadow of precisely what it is they say they are fighting. ISIL and Islamophobes Muslims must not fall into the trap of saying they are innocent and have nothing to do with these acts of violence. Of course they do not. It is like saying they are not responsible for global warming. There is no logical link between the crime and the declaration of innocence. Even declaring this is not Islam, or Islam is peaceful, or most Muslims are peaceful, is an admission of guilt by association. Critical thinkers in Europe and the US, too, must stop defending Muslims against such accusations as if the fabricated charges have any legitimacy. The more Muslims defend themselves, the more well-intentioned people in the United States and European Union keep exonerating Muslims, the more vicious this cycle perpetuates itself. This is a trap, a conceptual ruse, an analytical canard and a logical fallacy: fabricated by two identically vicious warmongers ISIL and Islamophobes to lend themselves non-existent legitimacy. OPINION: Brussels attacks: How rhetoric radicalises ISIL is US and EU militarism by other means, in urban disguise. ISIL is not a response to US or EU militarism. It is a software in the hardware of its machinery of death and destruction. ISIL was not invented by CIA or any other such outfit, as the ridiculous conspiracy theories would have it. ISIL is the logical extension of the US militarism, not its conspiratorial invention. The victims of US and EU invasions, occupations, bombings, drone strikes and deadly sanctions are identical with the victims of ISIL attacks from Iraq, Syria and Turkey to France, the US and Mali. We, as innocent people East, West, North and South of this fragile globe, are not fighting on two sides of two opposing ideologies. We are all French or Arab, Christian or Muslim, Belgian or Turk identical victims of only one militant ideology that targets and kills us with identically vicious tenacity. As we mourn the victims of any act of vicious violence in Brussels or in Beirut, in Paris or in Aleppo, in San Bernardino or in Istanbul, we must remain steadfast not to fall victim to the dimwitted conceptual trap this vicious cycle of violence has devised to perpetuate itself between (Terror and War on Terror). Terror and War on Terror are the mirror images of each other. We have nothing to do with either of those two vicious ideologies. We Muslims, Christians, Jews, gentiles, Europeans, Arabs, US citizens or otherwise are victims of it. Hamid Dabashi is Hagop Kevorkian Professor of Iranian Studies and Comparative Literature at Columbia University in New York. The views expressed in this article are the authors own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeeras editorial policy. Citing mass expulsion operation, relief groups pulling out say refugees are vulnerable after Turkey-EU deal. The UN refugee agency pulled out staff on Tuesday from facilities on Lesbos and other Greek islands being used to detain refugees as an international deal with Turkey came under further strain. Greece began arresting everyone arriving in boats from Turkey after the agreement went into effect on Sunday. They are being held at European Union-supervised registration centres known as hotspots, in what Greek government officials describe as compulsory supervision. Under the deal, detained refugees will be sent back to Turkey, which in return will receive additional EU financial aid and join an EU resettlement programme for Syrians and others fleeing war. The international medical humanitarian organisation Doctors Without Borders (MSF) also said it suspended its activities at the hotspot known as Moria on Lesbos island. Greece struggles to implement Turkey-EU refugee deal We made the extremely difficult decision to end our activities in Moria because continuing to work inside would make us complicit in a system we consider to be both unfair and inhumane, said Marie Elisabeth Ingres, MSF head of mission in Greece. We will not allow our assistance to be instrumentalised for a mass expulsion operation, and we refuse to be part of a system that has no regard for the humanitarian or protection needs of asylum seekers and migrants. The UN agencys spokeswoman Melissa Fleming said in Geneva it is concerned that the EU-Turkey deal is being implemented before the required safeguards are in place in Greece. Greece does not have sufficient capacity on the islands for assessing asylum claims, nor the proper conditions to accommodate people decently and safely pending an examination of their cases, said Fleming. About 2,000 people have been detained since the deal took effect, with refugees still arriving in boats despite the crackdown. Clearly we do not believe that, so far, Turkey has implemented what has been agreed. Migration flows are not significantly lower that should have happened immediately, Greeces government spokeswoman Olga Gerovasili said. Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, she said, telephoned German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday and urged her to press Turkey to crack down on refugee smugglers. She said full implementation of the agreement would require preparations for about 10 days. More than 50,000 refugees and migrants are currently stranded in Greece, with many still camped out at the closed Greek-Macedonia border where protests continued for a third day. One protester, a young Syrian man, set himself on fire during the protest. He was hospitalised with burns to his upper body, doctors said. READ MORE: Turkey and EU reach landmark deal on refugees About 12,000 refugees remain outside the border village of Idomeni, despite an appeal by the Greek government to move to nearby army-built shelters. Late on Tuesday, the humanitarian group Doctors of the World, or Medecins du Monde, said it was pulling out of Idomeni because of concerns for its staff amid rising tensions at the camp. We left because we felt threatened, group official Antonis Rigas said. Greek state TV began running short bulletins in Arabic for refugees, urging them to leave the border camp. Politicians, analysts and diplomats from more than 50 countries gathered in Doha, Qatars capital, to discuss struggles of the Arab world and possible solutions. Chairman of Al Jazeera Media Network Sheikh Hamad bin Thamer Al Thani launched the 10th Al Jazeera Forum Regional and International Struggles in the Middle East on Tuesday and said that this region is affected by developments on the global arena. He added that talks should help determine a clearer picture and a more comprehensive vision that answers many of the questions regarding how to end these crises. In a keynote speech, Qatars Foreign Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Abdulrahman bin Jassim Al Thani said the regions instability with conflict gripping several countries could be traced back to six decades of Israeli occupation in Palestine. He said there was an absence of any real international efforts to put an end to such an occupation, despite Israels violation of the international resolutions, laws and practices, as he called for a sovereign Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders. Qatars foreign minister also laid blame on the international community for failing to stop five years of bloodshed in Syria before adding that a solution was urgently needed to save Syria from fragmentation with its serious repercussions on the Syrian state, community and entire region. On the subject of rising Islamophobia across the world, with the religion being equated to terrorism, he said that this phenomenon would hurt international relations. Deep-rooted hatred towards Muslims and discrimination pose challenges for the entire world and threaten the stability of international relations between Muslim-majority countries and others, the foreign minister said. Hopes for Yemen The conflict in Yemen, which began one year ago, was also discussed. Saudi Arabia and its allies launched air attacks in March 2015 against the Houthi fighters which control large parts of Yemen. Yemeni Foreign Minister Abdel-Malek al-Mekhlafi said what began as a political dilemma in Yemen had been transformed into a sectarian conflict as a result of several variables, and that interference from countries such as Iran exacerbate the situation. In his view, the Arab alliance and the strength of the Yemeni people will cause the Houthi illusion to fade away and he hoped similar intervention could help in the push for peace in other Arab nations, especially Syria. In an interview with the AFP news agency, the foreign minister said that he was 99 percent sure UN-brokered peace talks would take place in Kuwait by the end of this month. The fighting in Yemen has killed almost 6,300 people, half of them civilians, since March 2015, according to the the World Health Organization. US presidential candidate and Texas senator Ted Cruz says it is time for law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighbourhoods in response to the series of deadly attacks in Belgium. Cruz, who is seeking the nomination in the Republican Party in the United States, said in a statement on Tuesday that authorities should implement the policy before those neighbourhoods become radicalised. We need to immediately halt the flow of refugees from countries with a significant al-Qaeda or ISIS presence, Cruz said, referring to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) group. READ MORE: After Islamophobia comes the criminalisation of Arabic In a separate statement posted on Facebook, Cruz said radical Islam is at war with us. And the truth is, we can never hope to defeat this evil so long as we refuse to even name it. He was also quoted as saying on Fox News television: ISIS has declared jihad on Europe and on the United States of America. They have declared their intention to murder as many innocents as possible. Earlier on Tuesday, a series of bomb attacks hit Belgiums capital Brussels killing more than 30 people and wounding about 200 others. ISIL said it was responsible for carrying out the blasts at Brussels airport and an underground train. A disgrace Cruz call drew a swift response from Debbie Wasserman Schultz, chairman of the Democratic Party, who called him a disgrace. His comments today were worse than opportunistic and inappropriate politicking in the way of the terrible tragedy in Brussels they were a shameful display of hate that only serves to foment anger and make the world less secure. Rising Islamophobia concerns US Muslims The Council on American-Islamic Relations the largest Muslim civil rights organisation in the US also condemned Cruz and called on him to retract and apologise for his unconstitutional policy proposal. Does that mean checkpoints on every corner? Does that mean your papers please requests for anyone who looks stereotypically Muslim? Does that mean kicking in the doors of Muslim homes and businesses? said Ibrahim Hooper, spokesman for the council, in a statement sent to Al Jazeera. Were harkening back to the dark days of the 1930s with this kind of mentality. Its unconstitutional. Its un-American and its unbefitting someone whos running for our nations highest office. Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump also reacted to the Brussels attack saying President Barack Obama has been so weak that terror groups are forming and getting stronger. Duma, occupied West Bank Ibrahim Dawabsheh woke in the early hours of Sunday morning to the sound of glass smashing, followed by a loud explosion next to him. Immediately he saw the flames, climbing higher at the foot of the bed. I pulled the bedsheets away and took my wife out of the room, Ibrahim told Al Jazeera. I told her to wake up my family, and so she went downstairs to wake them. Ibrahims concrete second-storey home stands in the heart of the West Bank village of Duma. It is around 25 metres away from the house where 18-month-old Ali Dawabsheh was killed in a horrific arson attack last summer. Both of Alis parents, Saad and Reham Dawabsheh, later died from their wounds; only their four-year-old son, Ahmad, survived. Ibrahim, a relative of the victims, witnessed parts of that attack and is due to be called in mid-April as a state witness in the trial of those accused, including Amiram Ben-Uliel, a 21-year-old Jewish settler living in an illegal outpost near Duma, and an unnamed 17-year-old. READ MORE: Duma attack Israeli settlers are burning everything After making sure his wife was safe on Sunday morning, Ibrahim, 24, tried to re-enter the bedroom and salvage personal items, but he was unable to locate anything amid the thick smoke. He says he then rushed to a window in an adjacent room overlooking the western slopes of Duma, in an attempt to catch a glimpse of the perpetrators. I saw two people dressed in black, running away from the house through the fields towards the road, he said. I thought about trying to catch them, by cutting them off at the road. I started to run, but Bashar, my brother, stopped me and brought me back to his house. In the meantime, a few dozen villagers had arrived at the scene of the fire. With rubber hosepipes, they began to tackle the blaze. Ibrahim returned to his home again, but the smoke made him feel ill. I went back downstairs and then I passed out, he said. When I woke up, I was in Rafidia hospital. Villagers said that they managed to bring the fire under control within 15 minutes, while a Palestinian fire truck came soon afterwards to put it out completely. Among those who pitched in was Bassam Dawabsheh, Ibrahims brother-in-law, who lives across the street. I heard screaming, so I looked out of my window and saw the smoke and the flames, Bassam told Al Jazeera. I was the first to arrive from the village, and the family was already outside and safe. He said the scene immediately awakened memories of the arson attack last summer. I knew right away it was the settlers who did this, because of the past experience that weve been through, Bassam said. Everyone in the village feels that they are being targeted. Everyone is afraid that next time, it might be them. Israeli police, however, have cast doubt on the allegation that Israeli settlers carried out the latest attack. In a joint statement with the Shin Bet security service, police said on Sunday that evidence found at the scene of the crime does not have the characteristics of a targeted arson by Jewish perpetrators, without offering further details. A police spokesperson declined Al Jazeeras request for further comment. Straddling both Areas B and C of the occupied West Bank, security in Duma is the sole responsibility of the Israeli army, according to the Oslo Accords. Under that agreement, the Palestinian Authoritys (PA) security services are not allowed to operate in these areas. In the aftermath of last years arson attack, groups of villagers set up night-time patrols to try to provide a Palestinian security presence. The volunteer operations carried on for a few months, but slowed down as winter set in. We were hoping to reach an arrangement with the PA to provide official patrols at night but so far we have not managed to reach an agreement, said Abdelsalam Dawabsheh, 45, head of the Duma village council. I am upset and frustrated, he added. People trust me and hold the council responsible for protecting everyone here. But we cant do anything to protect them. Duma is in danger. READ MORE: West Bank watchmen on guard for Israeli intruders For three nights before Sundays arson attack, Ibrahim and his wife said that they noticed strange noises coming from near their home. Huddled under a blanket in the corner of her in-laws living room, Yaqin Dawabsheh recalled the fearful, sleepless nights. We heard weird sounds around the house. We called the neighbours, but they didnt see anything. It sounded like people walking, moving around outside the house. When we turned the lights on, the sounds stopped, she told Al Jazeera. I was so scared that I thought about sleeping downstairs, but we checked outside and everything seemed OK, so we went to sleep in our house, Yaqin added. On Saturday, we went to bed around nine or 10pm, after the final prayer. When I woke up, I saw that our bed was on fire. Sitting on a plastic chair in front of his familys home, Ibrahim said he believed he was targeted by settlers because he was due to give evidence in the trial next month. It never crossed my mind that this was going to happen again. Now, I am preparing myself for the worst. Im not scared because I believe in God, but I know that its more likely that something horrible could happen again. No one has offered me any protection, and Im not even listed as a witness who is supposed to be protected, he added. But Im not scared, and I am still going to testify at the trial. Mahmoud Hussein, 20, released pending bail after being jailed for protesting while wearing a T-shirt condemning torture. An Egyptian arrested at the age of 18 while on his way home from a peaceful protest was ordered to be released pending bail after more than two years in prison. Mahmoud Mohamed Husseins release, ordered by an Egyptian court, was confirmed by his brother Tito on Twitter on Tuesday. My brother has been released on bail, Tito Tarek tweeted, adding the bail was set at 1,000 Egyptian pounds ($113). The US-based Robert F Kennedy Human Rights group, which had acted on behalf of Hussein, also confirmed the release order, describing the moment as a huge victory. Peter Greste returns to Al Jazeera! #FreeAJStaff [But] he is not yet physically free, Wade H McMullen Jr, managing attorney at the rights group, told Al Jazeera. The prosecution did not show up to [Tuesdays] hearing. So we will have to wait to see if the prosecution decides to appeal his release. He added there were serious concerns about the state of Husseins health. While being held at the Tora Investigations Prison, Mahmoud lost a significant amount of weight and his health has seriously deteriorated, he said, before adding that doctors have recommended that Hussein, now 20, receives urgent medical care. A nation without torture T-shirt Hussein was arrested on January 25, 2014, with police accusing him of illegal protesting, getting paid to protest, possessing Molotov cocktails, and belonging to a terrorist organisation. He was walking home from a peaceful demonstration to commemorate the third anniversary of the January 25, 2011 revolution that ousted long-time president Hosni Mubarak. He was detained while wearing a protest scarf and a T-shirt that read: A nation without torture at the el-Marg checkpoint in Cairo. Since his detention, Hussein faced near-automatic detention renewals, more than 20 of which were decided in his absence. Amnesty International cautiously welcomed news of his release. While the courts decision comes as a huge relief for Mahmoud Hussein and his family, it should not overshadow the outrageous injustice he has suffered, said Magdalena Mughrabi from the Middle East and North Africa Programme. He is a prisoner of conscience who should never have been jailed in the first place. The Egyptian authorities must now drop all charges against him. Follow Anealla Safdar on Twitter: @anealla Capitals traffic stands still after drivers demonstrate violently against new ride-hailing app services such as Uber. Thousands of taxi and motorised rickshaw drivers have brought the Indonesian capital Jakarta to a standstill in a rowdy protest against what they say is unfair competition from ride-hailing apps. Convoys of blue and white taxis operated by PT Blue Bird and PT Express Transindo Utama blocked the citys main thoroughfares on Tuesday, while clashes broke out between some drivers of traditional taxis and motorbike riders working for the online apps. The drivers are angry that services such as Uber, Grab and Go-Jek are offering rides at lower prices, claiming they are not paying taxes and are operating without official permits. Right now there are legal taxis and illegal taxis, said Mat Ali, 54, who drives an Express taxi and says his monthly income has fallen 60 percent since app-based taxis became popular. We are not allergic to competition with Uber and Grab but we just want them to meet the governments requirements. Tuesdays protest is the second major demonstration by taxi drivers in Jakarta this month, who say that competition from ride-hailing apps has severely reduced their income. Yet, the demonstrations seemed to elicit little sympathy from commuters in a city of 10 million people that already suffers massive congestion. This protest is so terrible. They really are rude and overbearing. I was very hurt, Dewi Gayatri, who missed her flight for a business trip to Makassar in eastern Indonesia, told AP. I still like Uber, and hope the government protects Uber, because its so easy to order and cheaper, she said. Jakarta, a city of 10 million people known for traffic jams, does not have a mass rapid transit system and dedicated bus lanes are often clogged with cars and motorcycles. The city is building a metro system but it will not be operational until late 2018. Road restrictions caused by the building work has worsened the already serious traffic congestion. Indonesias president has welcomed the competition provided by the new companies, but the status of their operations in the country is still unclear. Transportation Minister Ignasius Jonan said companies such as Uber were illegal unless they were registered as public transport providers and subject to the same rules as regular taxi operators. But the Communications Ministry, which oversees the app operators, has said the firms can go on operating. Companies such as Grab and Go-jek were running as usual on Tuesday despite the protests. Israeli president says he wants Washington to oppose any UN resolution on the creation of a Palestinian state. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has expressed hope that the United States will continue to support Israel at the United Nations by opposing all resolutions on the creation of a Palestinian state. Addressing the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Washingtons most influential pro-Israel lobbying group, Netanyahu said on Tuesday that he was ready to immediately resume direct negotiations with the Palestinians. A Security Council resolution to pressure Israel would further harden Palestinian positions and thereby could actually kill the chances of peace for many, many years, Netanyahu said via satellite video link from Jerusalem. And that is why I hope the United States will maintain its long-standing position to reject such a UN resolution. Netanyahu claimed that while he is immediately ready to begin talks for a two-state solution, his Palestinian counterpart, Mahmoud Abbas, is not. I am willing to begin negotiations immediately, without preconditions. Anytime, anywhere, Netanyahu said. The former chief negotiator for the Palestinian Authority Saeb Erekat, however, told Al Jazeera it was Netanyahu who was not serious about negotiations. He [Netanyahu] is the one who continues to build settlements and continues talking about negotiations while settlements are expanding, he said. If he wants to continue, he should stop the expansion of settlements that is an obligation, not a precondition. In his speech to AIPAC on Sunday, US Vice President Joe Biden took a tougher line than many US politicians, calling on Netanyahus government to demonstrate its commitment to a two-state solution and saying that settlement expansion weakened prospects for peace. United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also expressed concerns last month that a stalemate in the negotiations between Israel and Palestinians is reaching the point of no return for a two-state solution. The time has come for Israelis, Palestinians and the international community to read the writing on the wall: The status quo is untenable, Ban wrote in an opinion piece published in The New York Times. Keeping another people under indefinite occupation undermines the security and the future of both Israelis and Palestinians. US president says he came to Havana to bury last remnants of the Cold War, while urging freedom for all Cubans. President Barack Obama called on US Congress to lift the decades-old trade embargo on Cuba, saying the United States must admit the economic sanctions imposed in 1962 were a failure and it is time to move on. Speaking to an audience at the Grand Theatre of Havana on Tuesday, Obama also urged the communist leadership of Cuba to grant more freedom to its citizens. The US embargo which Cuba says has cost the country $1.1 trillion over five decades is an outdated burden on the Cuban people, said the American president. Obama and Castro hold historic meeting in Havana We have to have courage to acknowledge that it was not working. I know history but I refused to be trapped by it, said Obama, the first US president to visit Cuba in 88 years. I have come here to bury the last remnants of the Cold War. Obama also pointedly urged President Raul Castro, who was in the audience, to extend political and economic freedom to his people. Citizens should be free to speak their mind without fear, he said. The rule of law should not include arbitrary detention. Al Jazeeras Lucia Newman, reporting from Havana, said Cuban citizens were very moved by Obamas speech. But in an interview with Al Jazeera, Sujatha Fernandes, professor of sociology at the City University of New York, said there is still real fear of Cubans being able to express themselves. READ MORE: US-Cuba rapprochement and the future Obamas rationale for coming to Havana was grounded in the notion that direct interaction with Cubans would do more to empower them and bring about change than decades of isolation ever did. His meeting later on Tuesday with Cuban dissidents critical of Castros government was a prerequisite for the trip, the White House said, rebutting suggestions that Obama is rewarding a system whose limits on dissent run counter to American values. Following his meeting with the dissidents, Obama and his family joined Castro to watch an exhibition baseball game between the Cuban national team and the US baseball team Tampa Bay Rays at the Latinoamericano stadium in Havana. A timeline of assault on European soil claimed by various groups in the last 12 years. The deadly attacks on Tuesday at Brussels Airport and a metro station in the Belgian capital are the latest to hit Europe. Here is an overview of other major ones: November 13, 2015: Armed men linked to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL also known as ISIS) group attack the Bataclan concert hall and other sites across Paris, killing 130 people. A key suspect in the attack, 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam was arrested in Brussels on March 18, 2016. February 14, 2015: A gunman kills Danish filmmaker Finn Norgaard and wounds three police officers in Copenhagen. A day later the gunman, Omar El-Hussein, attacks a synagogue, killing a Jewish guard and wounding two police officers before being shot dead. January 7, 2015: A gun assault on the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo kills 12 people. Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claims responsibility for the attack, saying it was in revenge for Charlie Hebdos depictions of the Prophet Muhammad. May 24, 2014: Four people are killed at the Jewish Museum in Brussels by an intruder with a Kalashnikov. The accused is a former French fighter linked to ISIL. May 22, 2013: Two suspected al-Qaeda-inspired gunmen run down British soldier Lee Rigby in a London street, then stab and hack him to death. March 2012: French gunman Mohammed Merah, claiming links to al-Qaeda, kills three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi and three paratroopers in Toulouse, southern France. July 22, 2011: Anti-Muslim Anders Behring Breivik plants a bomb in Oslo then launches a shooting massacre on a youth camp on Norways Utoya island, killing 77 people, many of them teenagers. November 2, 2011: The offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris are firebombed after the satirical magazine runs a cover featuring a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad. No one is injured. March 2, 2011: An armed gunman Arid Uka shoots dead two US airmen and injures two others at Frankfurt airport, after apparently being inspired by a fake internet video purporting to show American atrocities in Afghanistan. July 7, 2005: 52 commuters are killed in London when four al-Qaeda-inspired suicide bombers blow themselves up on three subway trains and a bus. March 11, 2004: Bombs on four Madrid commuter trains in the morning rush hour kill 191 people in Europes worst attack. Sentencing of Nadezhda Savchenko for journalists killing by kangaroo court criticised by Ukraine president. A Russian court sentenced Ukrainian pilot Nadezhda Savchenko to 22 years in jail after finding her guilty of involvement in the killing of two Russian journalists during the separatist conflict in eastern Ukraine. Savchenko, 34, who has become a national hero in Ukraine, was defiant as the verdict was read out on Tuesday, singing the Ukrainian national anthem while standing on a bench. She has denied having anything to do with the deaths of the journalists who were killed in an air strike in 2014. Savchenko was accused of calling in the coordinates. The sentence is likely to further inflame Russias relations with Kiev, and prompt protests from the European Union, which has called for Savchenkos release. President Petro Poroshenko said Ukraine will never recognise the sentencing by a Russian kangaroo court. Ukraine will never I repeat, never recognise either the kangaroo court of Nadezhda Savchenko, nor the so-called sentencing, he said in a statement, in which he called on Russias Vladimir Putin to honour a promise to return Savchenko to Ukraine. Russian officials signalled that, once the trial was over, they may be open to negotiations about handing Savchenko over to Ukraine, possibly as part of a prisoner exchange. Kiev is holding at least two people it says are serving Russian soldiers seized on the battlefield in eastern Ukraine. Ukrainian Foreign Minister Pavlo Klimkin wrote on Twitter the result is an expected one, but all the same its pretty painful. I thank @FedericaMog for her personal attention to the #Savchenko show trial and EU diplomats for their presence in the courtroom. Pavlo Klimkin (@PavloKlimkin) March 21, 2016 The judge between shouted interruptions from Savchenko who was dressed in a T-shirt bearing the Ukrainian trident, a state symbol dismissed arguments from her lawyers that she could not have been involved in the journalists killings. The evidence provided by the prosecution side is trustworthy and completely disproves the theory of the defence about Savchenkos innocence, the judge said. Inside Story Left behind in Eastern Ukraine He said the court had decided to select as the final punishment for Savchenko 22 years of confinement of liberty with a fine of 30,000 roubles [$442]. Savchenko, who had taken leave from her job as a military pilot to volunteer with Ukraines ground forces fighting against the separatists in eastern Ukraine, was captured by pro-Moscow rebels in June 2014. She has repeatedly gone on hunger strike, and from the glass and metal cage where she has been held in the courtroom, has often shouted her view that she is the victim of a show trial aimed at humiliating Ukraine. In her absence, she was elected a member of the Ukrainian parliament. Europe tightens security after three blasts kill more than 30 people and world leaders vow to defeat terrorism. World leaders expressed shock and denunciations after the attacks in Brussels on Tuesday that killed more than 30 people and wounded about 200 others. Two explosions struck Brussels Zaventem airport, killing 14 people, while blasts also rocked the Maelbeek metro station in the centre of the Belgian capital, adding another 20 to the death toll that is likely to rise with many critically wounded. The assaults follow Novembers brazen attacks in Paris that killed 130 people, which the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group claimed responsibilty for. We are at war. We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war, said Frances Prime Minister Manuel Valls. US President Barack Obama, who is currently in Cuba, called for nations around the world to unite to defeat terrorism. We will do whatever is necessary to bring justice to those who are responsible, Obama said. We must unite. We must be together in fighting against terrorism. READ MORE: Europe on high alert after deadly Brussels attacks The attacks come three days after Salah Abdeslam, the most wanted suspect for the Paris attacks, was arrested in a shootout with police in the Belgian capital. We realise we face a tragic moment, we have to be calm and show solidarity, said Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel. A statement from Belgiums royal family said it was devastated by the attacks, and the thoughts of the King and Queen go first to the victims and their families and the rescue services, which are doing everything possible to help the victims. I strongly condemn these hateful attacks. Our thoughts go out to the victims and their families. We stand united against terrorism. Charles Michel (@CharlesMichel) March 22, 2016 US Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said despite Tuesdays carnage, acts of violence will not succeed, and she vowed to stand by the United States European allies. Meanwhile, French President Francois Hollande said the whole world was concerned by the events that unfolded in Brussels. Terrorists struck Brussels but it was Europe that was targeted, said Hollande. All the world is concerned. EU returns Brussels solidarity now & will help Brussels, Belgium & Europe counter terror threat https://t.co/khlX0qUvqb Charles Michel (@eucopresident) March 22, 2016 I have chaired a meeting of Cobra we are increasing police presence at ports, airports, Tube stations and international railway stations. David Cameron (@David_Cameron) March 22, 2016 Heightened security measures were imposed around the world, with Spain and the Czech Republic deploying more forces in transportation centres. New York City also added more security personnel to its main train station, and Israel briefly announced that all Israeli flights from Europe were cancelled, but later reinstated those. Terrorists will never win was what Peter Altmaier, chief of staff for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, said, while Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said the attacks have once again shown terrorisms global face. Pope Francis expressed his deepest sympathy to those affected by the deadly bombings in Brussels. His Holiness Pope Francis entrusts to Gods mercy those who died and he prays for those who have lost relatives, a statement said. One prominent Russian politician highlighted the assaults while saying they showed the need for Western powers to work with Moscow against armed groups. Its time for Europe to understand where the genuine threat is coming from and join efforts with Russia, lawmaker Alexei Pushkov said. Secret mission retrieves 19 of Yemens last remaining Jews to Israel as about 50 people choose to stay behind. Some of Yemens last remaining Jews have been airlifted to Israel after a covert operation retrieved them from the war-torn country. The Jewish Agency, which helps to organise the immigration of Jews to Israel, said on Monday that 19 people had landed in Israel from Yemen over the past few days. Nineteen individuals arrived in Israel in recent days, including 14 from the town of Raydah and a family of five from Sanaa, the agency said in a statement. It declined to provide details of the operation, but a spokesman told the AFP news agency that it took several months to prepare. Seventeen of those brought to Israel, including a rabbi carrying a 500-year-old Torah scroll, arrived on Sunday night, while the other two arrived a few days earlier. The agency said that around 50 Jews had decided to stay in Yemen, most of whom live in a compound near the US embassy in the capital, Sanaa, under Yemeni government protection. Hundreds of Jews have arrived in Israel from Yemen in recent years, but the latest arrivals had brought the mission to its conclusion, Natan Sharansky, the head of the agency, said. Sanaa and the town of Raydah to its north are both controlled by Houthi fighters who are battling loyalists of the internationally recognised government and its supporters in a Saudi-led coalition. Other operations have transferred Jewish populations from Ethiopia and, more covertly, from Arab or Muslim states with which Israel has no formal relations. READ MORE: Israels cancelled plan on Ethiopian Jews prompts rally On Sunday, hundreds of Ethiopian Israelis marched in Jerusalem after the Israeli government cancelled plans to allow their relatives to emigrate from the African nation, calling the move discrimination. Police and organisers estimated the crowd at up to 2,000 for Sundays march, which ended outside Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus office. Can orangutan expert Leif Cocks and special jungle schools in Sumatra help save the endangered species from extinction? They call him the orangutan whisperer. This is what the project's about. It's having orangutans, which were either doomed to death or a life in miserable captivity, now living free, independent lives in the forest... and doing well. by Leif Cocks, The Orangutan Project Leif Cocks is a former zookeeper from Australia who has dedicated his life to reintroducing endangered orangutans into the wild, something previously thought impossible. At a jungle school in Sumatra, Indonesia, rescued orangutans practise climbing, foraging and fending for themselves in the forests. Cocks has successfully reintroduced 180 of these animals and plans to save 8,000 more over the next decade. My goal is to save enough habitat that we can have 8,000 orangutans protected in reserves that we are looking after. And that will secure the species. Thats my goal. Thats at least a decent way of spending ones life. So can Leif Cocks and his jungle schools help to save the endangered species from extinction? 101 East treks deep into the Sumatran jungle with the orangutan whisperer and meets those he is desperately trying to save. Join the conversation @AJ101East. A UF club is teaching students about creating systems with artificial intelligence. Nicholas Kroeger, a UF computer science sophomore, and John Henning, a UF computer science and mathematics junior, recently established an artificial intelligence club after realizing UF doesnt offer courses on AI for undergraduate students. The club, which will meet Wednesdays at 6:30 p.m., teaches students how to build computers and software capable of intelligent behavior. Theres no undergraduate classes that I saw that I could take for AI and theres no AI undergraduate major, which I think is really important, Kroeger, 19, said. Id like to create those later on in life if I choose to pursue a Ph.D. Bernard Marger, a UF computer engineering senior, said UF used to have an undergraduate artificial intelligence curriculum, but it discontinued when the professor retired. In past years, Douglas Dankel II, a retired UF assistant professor, taught courses on artificial intelligence, artificial intelligence for computer games and knowledge-based systems. Kroeger said he reached out to Marger, 21, to establish the AI Club after attending an Association for Computing Machinery meeting, of which Marger is president. They established the club as a sub-organization of ACM. On campus, (ACM) serves as the predominant pre-professional organization for computer scientists and programming enthusiasts, Marger said. The Artificial Intelligence Club serves as a connection between the ACM general body and that technical concept area. Marger said he hopes the club teaches students skills they can apply to future careers and internships. During the first two meetings, the club taught about 15 members about artificial neural networks, a series of models that simulate brain functions and are the building blocks of AI. While Henning said the group is only focusing on teaching students about AI for the moment, they might change their goals in the future. They currently arent planning on trying to add AI classes to UFs curriculum. As the world keeps going, AI is becoming more prevalent, the 20-year-old said. Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now UF students will wear costumes and eat hamantaschen, triangle-shaped cookies, for Purim this Wednesday and Thursday. The Jewish holiday commemorates the Jewish people overcoming oppression and celebrating Queen Esthers saving them, said UF Hillels Rabbi Adam Grossman. Hillel, UF Chabad and the Jewish Student Union are hosting carnivals, themed dinners and gift-givings for the holiday. UF Chabad, which is spending $9,000 on events, will host Purim in the Wild West on Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. The event, which is only open to UF students, costs $10 with a Gator 1 Card. Students can ride a mechanical bull. On Thursday, they are also holding Megillah readings, which come from the Bibles Book of Esther, on the Plaza of the Americas, Fraternity Row and the law school, he said. Rabbi Berl Goldman, the executive director of UF Chabad, said Purim is an important holiday. We look forward to getting together with the entire Jewish Gator Nation to celebrate the Purim holiday, he said. Grossman said UF Hillel will celebrate Purim at its Food Truck Shabbat dinner Friday at 7:30 p.m. Hillel will also make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for Gainesvilles homeless residents March 29. Purim is a time to remember the people in our communities, he said. Within the holiday we need to remember to celebrate and impact our community. Leigh Bouskila, a UF business administration freshman, said she will wear cat ears to Chabads Wild West event. Its cool that we still get to do the holiday, even though we dont live at home, the 19-year-old said. Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now Future UF engineering students can intern in Sarasota, Florida, through the expansion of an engineering program. UF President Kent Fuchs announced at a press conference Monday morning that UFs College of Engineerings Florida Engineering Experiment Station will open its first physical extension, called the Innovation Station, in Sarasota County. Through the extension, students will work with professionals and companies in Sarasota, as they do in Gainesville. The station will provide scholarships for UF students to intern in Sarasota, said Erik Sander, the executive director of the Florida Engineering Experiment Station. While the station launched Monday, an office space and a permanent director havent been chosen. The station will be held in a 1,000- to 1,500-square-foot office space, and Sander will serve as the interim director. The project costs about $3 million, he said. A 5-year, $980,000 grant is being provided from the Charles and Margery Barancik Foundation, a philanthropic organization in Sarasota, and the Gulf Coast Community Foundation is providing a one year, $63,000 grant. Both UF and the Sarasota County government are providing $1 million each. Sander said the station will partner with academic institutions, including colleges and K-12 schools, to teach students about engineering. The concept and the idea is to introduce students to engineering and get them excited about careers in engineering, he said. He said the station is currently partnering with the State College of Florida and Sarasota County Public Schools. The station is planning to partner with the Ringling College of Art and Design and the New College of Florida to inspire more engineers in the state. UF has been working with Sarasota County for about 18 months to open the station. He said Sarasota County was chosen to host the station because of its diverse community and large number of business leaders. At the end of the day, this project and this initiative is about positively impacting the innovation economy in this region, he said. Jason Cochran, a UF computer science sophomore, said programs like the Innovation Station are needed for computer science and engineering students. He said the station will help entrepreneurs focus on solving complex problems. He hopes the station allows for new ideas and inventions, instead of more apps. Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now People mistake creation for innovation, the 20-year-old said. I dont think that the problem is that we dont necessarily have enough STEM majors; its that theyre not solving the right problems. To many, the thought of a school yearbook connotes images of mediocre Photoshop skills, pubescent faces on a blue background and sensationalized editorials about irrelevant varsity teams. For me, simply looking at one brings up long suppressed anxieties about collecting scrawled signatures and maintaining subjective relevancy. Yet regardless of whether those old middle and high school yearbooks instill angst or nostalgia, we cant deny their ability to reflect the past in shocking (and often uncomfortable) clarity. Yearbooks are unlike any other publication because this is their sole purpose: to capture the essence of a particular environment, time and experience. This leads us to the unavoidable question of So, wheres the UF yearbook? Well, you sort of missed the boat on that one. The first UF yearbook, misleadingly titled The Seminole, was published in 1910 and printed annually up until 1973, when financial issues supposedly interfered. Brought back in 1983 under the much more appropriate title, The Tower (like Century Tower, in case you didnt catch that), the yearbook flourished until financial issues once again ended its reign in 2008. I was lucky enough to meet with the university archivist, Peggy McBride, and sift through these dusty relics last week, as one of my English seminars was conducting research into Floridian and collegiate culture in the 1950s. We were somehow deemed responsible enough to handle a variety of archival materials from that infamous decade, and needless to say, I was in heaven. Despite the variety of materials at our disposal, I was drawn to the yearbooks. The phrase that comes to mind is Everything changes; everything stays the same. I laughed in disbelief at the Beauty section in the center of the yearbooks, with its full-page photos of blonde debutantes and accompanying descriptions of their well bred credentials. Immediately after, I gazed in disbelief at a photograph of drunken Hawaiian-shirt-clad upperclassmen that looked as if it could have been plucked off someones Instagram. More than anything, I was amazed at what a comprehensive image the yearbooks gave me. Sure, there were the fraternity formals and Homecoming bonfires, but also the racial inequality and Cold War tensions. I wondered where the students peering at me from black and white photographs were today. As my classmates flipped through glossy pages searching for photos of their grandparents, I was struck by the fact that fictional grandchildren of my own wouldnt be able to do the same. Bringing it back to the 21st century, I truly believe the UF yearbook should be revived from its extinction. For one, theres no other publication solely dedicated to conserving the present student culture in a way thats accessible to future generations. Sure, theres the Alligator, but thats more geared towards disseminating information than preserving it. Our personal collegiate souvenirs may remind us of our four years in Gainesville, but that neglects the more holistic student experience. Our undergraduate journeys are immensely personal in nature, yet we often underplay the influence UF as an institution has on them. Another potential hurdle is the sheer size of the UF Student Body, as any attempt to document the entire student experience is sure to exclude someone. But I suppose an incomplete attempt is better than none at all. I can only hope that at some point in the near future the yearbook will experience its third revival. Maybe we could name it The Potato. But in the meantime, I highly recommend you visit the university archives on UFs digital collections website and scroll through some of the old yearbooks. Maybe then youll be convinced. Marisa Papenfuss is a UF English junior. Her column appears on Tuesdays. Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now Core Campus is offering to again reduce the size of The Hub in order to make the project more appealing to the community. It is willing under its rezoning application to cut the number of beds by 32 to 635 and lower the building heights on the first row of apartments facing the street by one story. It has also submitted an alternative application for the property that shows what Core could build there by right under the existing zoning. That plan shows 591 beds and 12 more parking spaces. The rezoning plan now requires a 6-vote supermajority for passage. If the alternative by-right plan is approved by staff, it does not need council approval but the staff decision can be appealed to the citys Board of Adjustments. Flagstaff City Council will hold its second and final vote on the rezoning application at 6 p.m. Tuesday at City Hall, 211 W. Aspen Ave. Core wants to build a five-story, 667-bed apartment complex geared toward college students at the corner of Mikes Pike and Phoenix Avenue. A large number of the neighbors in the community have objected to the project, saying that its too big and doesnt fit in with the current size and scale of the neighborhood. Core sent an email to all of the Flagstaff City Council members on Friday with new sketches that show a red line where the company would drop the front of the building to three stories from four stories on all three sides of the building and then raise the building to five stories in the center of the parcel. Cores attorney Lindsay Schube said removing one story of apartments at the front of the building would reduce the number of beds that the company would offer from 667 to 635. The parking would stay the same at 231 spots. She said the changes mean the company would get less money from the building but Core Campus wanted to show its commitment to work with the neighborhood. We want it to be a nice building, an attractive building. We want to be a member of the community, she said. Core also submitted a new application to the city for the project site that shows what the company could build by right on the property. The drawings for that plan are not as polished as the ones for the current rezoning request before Council, Schube said. However, Core would use the same types of material on the facade of both buildings. The by-right plan shows a 3.5-story building with no commercial stores on Mikes Pike, a five-story building on Milton Road and a split 3.5-story and five-story building on Phoenix Avenue. There would be no stair stepping the building back from the street and the parking garage inside the building would not be covered, although it would meet the citys minimum requirements for Dark Skies. It also shows a 6-foot-tall base wall added to the building on Mikes Pike and part of Phoenix Avenue. Schube said the wall is required to raise the building out of the neighborhoods flood plain. It would be covered by landscaping. Core didnt put in the six foot wall in its original rezoning request to the city because of the retail shops that plan shows on Mikes Pike, she said. The requirements for a commercial building in a flood plain are more flexible than the requirements for a residential building in a flood plain. In order to make the retail viable on Mikes Pike, Core opted to reinforce the front of the shops in order to avoid having to build a six foot wall and stairs for customers to enter the stores. The by-right plan would have fewer beds, 591 beds with the revamped rezoning plan of 635, Schube said. The entrance to the parking garage on Mikes Pike for the building would be the same in both plans, Schube said. The by-right plan would require 12 more parking spots than the current plan for the project. Because of that, Core would not offer the city an extra $500,000 to help with a parking solution for the Southside. The landscaping and sidewalks around the building would also be different, she said. Under the current plan, the sidewalk on Mikes Pike would be eight feet wide and the landscaping would be five feet wide. Under the by right plan, the sidewalk would be five feet wide and the landscaping four feet. The cost to build under the by right plan would be slightly cheaper, which is why Core is willing to lose more beds under that plan, Schube said. However, Core prefers the current rezoning request because it creates a better building for the neighborhood. But, Core is perfectly comfortable with building under either plan. Schube said the company expects their by-right application to be appealed to the citys Board of Adjustments if the rezoning plan is not approved. The company will stick with its applications, she said. The Obama administrations foreign policy struggle with the Middle East concerning a chaotic Libya, Saudi airstrikes and the blowback of incessant drone strikes (not you, Iran nuclear deal; keep on keeping on) took a back seat this week to the so-far successful and front-page detente with Castro. So much so, in fact, the presidents daughters will be spending their Spring Break in Cuba. It has been nine decades since President Calvin Coolidge, the last American president to visit the Caribbean nation, arrived to address the sixth Pan-American Conference. Cuba was a vastly different country then, its populace still beholden to the great influence of self-interested American diplomacy. Now, almost a century later, the Castro regime has begun to open Cuban borders to American influence once again certainly for the better, but potentially also for the worse. Coinciding with President Obamas arrival to the island were Havana protesters who sought to bring to light the decades of human rights abuses unabashedly committed by Castro regimes. Fifty of the dissidents were arrested just hours before the president landed. This is a plight Obama should not ignore during his visit. In meeting with Castro, its a progressive presidents duty to recognize those protesting for the liberty of political prisoners and the rights of free speech and freedom of the press without the threat of totalitarian penalty. Obama must make sure his mission to ease tensions with Cuba, especially now in meeting with the despotic Castro regime, does not come across as insinuating U.S. complacency with the human rights abuses of the Cuban government. Here is a chance to win the trust of a number of Cuban citizens by showing interest in their empowerment citizens who, for decades, have deeply mistrusted the U.S. government on different bases: some forced to, some wholeheartedly convinced by their states propaganda and yet others informed on the truly questionable practices of American foreign policy in the last several decades. The restoration of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba has also opened the island to American business. In particular, U.S. hoteliers are hungrily sizing up Cuba for the opportunities its beachfronts have to offer. While economic opportunity undoubtedly lies here for the people of Cuba, this type of venture needs to be monitored very closely. Unfettered access to beachfronts across Cuba for U.S. hoteliers would wreak havoc on the pristine ecosystems that serve as a model of conservation for the world. Projects like beach dredging and condominium construction would most likely follow and, in turn, do unprecedented damage to reefs along the shoreline. The importance of preserving the Cuban wild cannot be understated. While many other Caribbean nations have forsaken their ecologies, Cubas untouched wildernesses, inland and onshore have created an asylum for many rare species of migratory birds, fish and reptiles. Furthermore, advances in medicine, deeper understandings of marine ecosystems and data for climate change are all possibilities Cuba can offer. While economic growth is undeniably important for the poor people of Cuba, their rich and diverse lands should not be subject to destruction all for the next Atlantis hotel. The U.S. has poisoned a great many of its own ecological riches. In the spirit of true progressiveness, here is a chance to make sure a potential new ally does not suffer the same fate. Justin Ford is a UF journalism junior. His column appears on Tuesdays. Enjoy what you're reading? Get content from The Alligator delivered to your inbox Subscribe Now Ombre hair is going to stay strong this year. How do we know? Because Kim Kardashian just got ombre hair again. However you feel about Kim K. being an indicator of trends, she's not the only celeb still rocking the ombre look (just check out the gorgeous Jamie Chung). And thanks to Instagram, we've discovered a whole new way people are getting ombre hair. Huda Kattan (famous beauty blogger and perpetual poster of all the newest hair and makeup trends) has recently been sharing videos of hairstylists applying ombre highlights with hairbrushes: Instagram content This content can also be viewed on the site it originates from. The final results of this weird procedure are the most subtle ombre highlights we've ever seen. But applying highlights with a brush? We reached out to Dana Ionato, a colorist at Sally Hershberger Downtown in New York City, to see if this process is legit. "This way of creating ombre highlights could work, as long as the saturation of the dye on the brush is even," says Ionato. "Using a brush eliminates the possibility of your hand pressing down too hard on the strands of hair when applying the highlights. A brush will give a faster, more natural-looking ombre instead of a hard and heavily saturated look. I've seen this done in Sweden, and I often apply ombre highlights with a comb for more even distribution." Are there any drawbacks to applying ombre with a brush? According to Ionato, the worst thing you could do is use the actual brush that appears in the video above. "The idea of this is great, but using a round brush is not the best idea because if that brush gets stuck during the application process, it's going to leave spots and bleed marks," she says. Aura Friedman, another colorist at Sally Hershberger, adds that a round brush is all wrong for another reason. "This technique works, but it doesn't look like her hair is healthy," says Friedman. "It seems as though the metal bristles of that brush would break the hair during application." Thankfully, Kattan posted another video of ombre highlights being applied with a paddle brush that appears to be free of metal bristles: 2005 .. POINT DE VUE USA should work on making India its global combat partner Alwihda Info | Par Hem Raj Jain - 22 Mars 2016 Bengaluru, India Sub:- (i)- USA should work on making India its global combat (and not merely strategic) partner (ii)- USA should be prepared to move UN to constrain India to recover $ ~ 15 Trillion tax out of black money --- Presently USA (the leader of free world) has mainly European countries (through NATO) and countries of European origin as its combat partner who with USA go in different parts of the world to fight the battle in the interest of bringing peace and stability and enforcing human rights in such regions. But this much has not served the purpose as is evident from gory situation in NAME, Ukraine, Afghanistan etc. Though USA has been carrying out military exercise with India but other countries too do the same hence it is meaningless for the purpose of combat requirement of USA. India of ~ 1.25 Billion people (with ~ 250 million Muslims including illegal immigrants) is the largest secular democracy of the world and that too in this part of Asia hence it is the natural ally of USA and should have been the combat partner of USA in making remaining world the human-rights-friendly-free-world (HRFFW). But India could not become so for the simple reason that it was not in position to take the risk & dangers of combat (in different parts of the world in tandem with USA) which naturally comes to any economically humble country. But fortunately for USA and for HRFFW not only economic hardship of India can be eliminated but it can provide enough money to India for purchasing military equipments etc which will enable India to become combat partner of USA if government of India (GOI) recovers Rs. ~ 1,000 Trillion tax money out of black money, as explained below, in view of the fact that if with $ ~ 4 Trillion reserve China can be so powerful then it does not require a genius of political economy to understand that what India will be with these extra $ ~15 Trillion:- http://www.alwihdainfo.com/Anna-Baba-Ramdev-Co-should-launch-agitation-across-India-to-recover-Rs--1000-Trillion-tax-out-of-black-money_a29355.html Though 99.9 % Indians want this tax money to be recovered from ~ one million tax evaders but due to corruption of public servants the GOI is not recovering this $ ~ 15 Trillion Tax money. Hence USA should issue ultimatum to India that in case India does not proceed to recover this $ ~ 15 Trillion in a time bound period of say one year (three months for raising demands for tax and another three months for realizing tax and another three months for initiating recovery proceedings against defaulters in fast track courts to be constituted for this purpose and another three months for recovery through these fast track courts) then it will be left with no other option than to move United Nations to constrain India to recover (for the people of India) this $ ~ 15 Trillion tax out of black money in accordance with UN Convention Against Corruption. It is hoped the USA will bring a paradigm shift in its global affairs and will rope-in India as its combat partner, as mentioned above, for the purpose of realizing human-rights-friendly-free-world. Regards Hem Raj Jain (Author of Betrayal of Americanism) Bengaluru, India Dans la meme rubrique : < > Tchad : "une cuisante defaite" pour "les pessimistes" du Dialogue national (Abdelmanane Khatab) Tchad : lechec de la politique de lemploi, une opportunite entrepreneuriale ? Tchad : aller au federalisme dans ce contexte, cest cautionner leclatement (Dr Oguelemi) Pour toute information, contactez-nous au : +(235) 99267667 ; 62883277 ; 66267667 (Bureau N'Djamena) 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] Register for more free articles. Sign up for our newsletter to keep reading. The business news you need Get the latest local business news delivered FREE to your inbox weekly. Sign up! Already a Subscriber? Already a Subscriber? Sign in Terms of Service Privacy Policy A crowd of 3,000 people filled the Pepsi Amphitheater at Fort Tuthill County Park for Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders second campaign stop in Flagstaff. Sanders campaign employee Sheila Angelo said the crowd set an attendance record for the venue just days after Sanders spoke to 900 people out of 2,800 attendees at a town hall at Twin Arrows Navajo Casino. Sanders addressed the overflow crowd at Twin Arrows for a short speech before the main event. At the Monday night rally, Sanders touted recent polls that suggested he would beat all three Republican candidates in the general election. I believe you are looking at the strongest Democratic candidate, he said to the cheering crowd. Sanders addressed the newly passed Arizona law banning ballot harvesting, saying he would call for the Department of Justice to end practices he called voter suppression. What we are seeing all over the country is cowardly Republican governors trying to suppress the vote, Sanders said. Republican governors, in a dozen different ways, are trying to make it harder for poor people, for old people, people of color and young people to vote. Sanders also commended Flagstaff on its work to set a higher minimum wage. I understand here in Flagstaff your city council is prepared to set a $15 an hour minimum wage, Sanders said to thunderous applause. And I applaud them. He said people around the country have told him they cannot get by on the current minimum wage, and reiterated he would continue to fight for a national $15 minimum wage. He said as president he would invest in infrastructure, including repairs for water systems, roads and railroads, which he said would create 13 million good paying jobs nationally. Sanders also called for reform within police departments. I was a mayor for many years and I worked with police departments, he said. I can tell you the vast majority of police officers are honest, hardworking and have very difficult jobs. But when a police officer breaks the law, they have to be held accountable. Sanders called for de-escalation of force in police departments and said departments should reflect the community in which they work. We have got to demilitarize local police departments, and we have to create police departments that reflect the diversity of the communities they serve, Sanders said. The crowd cheered when Sanders talked about his campaigns method of campaign funding. Sadly, it takes hundreds of millions of dollars to run a successful presidential campaign, he said. He criticized his Democratic opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, for accepting money from fossil fuel companies, super PACs and getting paid to give speeches on Wall Street. Sanders said the country needs real change, which he said would not come from a candidate who supported the war in Iraq, fracking and a candidate who received money from Wall Street and fossil fuel companies. The U.S. senator from Vermont drew cheers and applause when he said his campaign appeals to young people, through advocating for free higher education at public colleges and universities. He said the current system punishes students by leaving them in debt after paying for college. Sanders said a college education in the United States 50 years ago was virtually free, and said it would be possible to create that system again. Young people today may have a lower standard of living than their parents, Sanders said. That is the American dream in reverse. Sanders said he would propose a tax on Wall Street speculation, which would pay for the tuition. When Wall Street crashed, the middle class bailed them out, Sanders said. Now it is time for them to bail out the middle class. Throughout the speech, Sanders referenced various historical political movements, including formation of labor unions, civil rights for minorities, womens suffrage and gay rights. Sanders also addressed Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and his stance on immigration. People are tired of the ugliness of people like Sheriff Joe Arpaio, he said. The goal of a sane immigration policy is to unite families, not divide them. The goal of a sane immigration system is to end the deportations we are seeing. The crowd erupted in applause when Sanders addressed his stance on the climate and environmental issues. You know that in your beautiful state of Arizona, you have an amazing national resource, its called the sun, Sanders said to a laughing crowd. Sanders said he would make it a priority to invest in sustainable energy instead of fossil fuels. We have to take on the fossil fuel companies and tell them their short-term profits are not more important than he future of this planet, he said. Flagstaff residents Jerry Evans and Letha Spahr brought their daughter, Ali, a sophomore at Flagstaff High School to the rally to experience the atmosphere and hear Sanders speak, even though she is too young to vote. Ali said she liked Sanders stance on minimum wage and income inequality, and said she attended the rally because her parents are Sanders supporters. Letha said she voted early for Sanders, and said she liked that his campaign was free of Wall Street donors and big money. I agree with just about everything he is saying, Evans, who cast an early ballot for Sanders, said. I dont know how he can possibly do it all, but I think this is the start of something big. Strange motorcycle theft A Flagstaff woman was baffled last week when a man who claimed he wanted to buy her motorcycle used a crash as an opportunity to steal it. According to the police report, the crash happened at about midnight last Wednesday on Walnut Canyon Road. The victim told police she was trying to sell a motorcycle she had recently purchased from a salvage yard in Phoenix. A man she did not know expressed interest in purchasing the motorcycle, so she met him at an unknown location and went with him for a test drive from Townsend-Winona Road to Walnut Canyon Road. The pair crashed during the test drive. The reason for the crash was not immediately clear. The woman told police she slid away from the motorcycle when they crashed. The suspect, however, was not thrown very far. The victim said while she was on the ground, she saw the suspect get back on the motorcycle and drive away. The victim was transported to Flagstaff Medical Center for undisclosed injuries. The suspect was described as a skinny male, approximately 5 feet 11 inches tall with blonde hair and a goatee. He was wearing a black and red leather bike suit and helmet. The victim said she believed the motorcycle was a black and orange 2012 Kawasaki 300. It did not have a license plate. The investigation is ongoing. Charged with DUI Molly Anne Adams, 23, of North Center Street was arrested by Flagstaff Police Department and charged with extreme DUI at 1:51 a.m. Friday. City and county residents who want to report a crime but wish to remain anonymous may call Silent Witness at 774-6111 or (877) 29-CRIME, submit a tip online at www.coconinosilentwitness.org, or text the word Flagtip along with your information to 274637 (CRIMES). Rewards of up to $2,000 are given for information that leads to an arrest. A morning to study in a coffee shop turned into a moment Hannah Salesman will never forget, after Democratic presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders sat down next to her Tuesday morning. Salesman, a junior at Northern Arizona University, said she went to Macys European Coffee House for a coffee and to study after her session of student teaching, when the presidential candidate, who had been in town for a rally last night, sat down next to her. I was doing homework with my headphones in, and I was pleasantly surprised to see Bernie Sanders was sitting behind me, Salesman said, still shaking with adrenaline after her encounter. Salesman said Sanders walked into the coffee shop and ordered a coffee just like anyone else, then chose a seat near the side, visible from the window. I said How am I supposed to study now, Bernie? she said. And he said, Dont use me as an excuse. Sanders asked her what she was studying, and she said special education. She said the U.S. senator from Vermont then asked her to sit down with him, and the aspiring teacher chatted with him about education funding, Common Core and other issues. I had just voted for him! Salesman said. I told him I had just voted for him this morning, and he said, at least he got one vote in Arizona. She said she was nervous to sit down with the candidate she had chosen to vote for, but said he was really down-to-earth and easy to talk to. She said she was excited to tell her family about her chance encounter. Im going to tell them I got to sit down next to Bernie Sanders and talk about the education system in America, she said. While the coffee house filled to capacity quickly, a crowd gathered outside hoping to catch a glimpse of the presidential candidate on the morning of the Arizona presidential preference election. Many sported I voted stickers, indicating they had already gone to the polls Tuesday morning. Others told their friends and the surrounding crowd they had already voted by mail. A crowd of about 25 people gathered outside the coffee shop preparing for Sanders to leave. When he exited the shop, people pulled out their camera phones and followed Sanders down the street, as he shook supporters hands before getting into a white SUV and leaving. Ahram Online, by Zainab El-Gundy Ahram Online visits one of the best known "Syrian streets" in 6th of October City a district on the outskirts of the capital that is home to many thousands of Syrian refugees The famous Syrian street in October city (Photo: Zeinab El-Gundy) It was more than telling that when asked about directions to reach to "Syrian Street" in the heart of 6th of October City area, a young Syrian gave directions in a perfect Syrian accent. "You will find Syrian Street in front of Al-Hosary Mosque," he said. It is not a coincidence, as Al-Hosary Mosque and its charity association have been helping Syrian refugees in Egypt for five years now. "Syrian Street" starts from a building in front of the mosque that is known in the area as "Al-Amerikya" (The American) occupying a whole block. This is not the only "Little Damascus" in October City, which embraces thousands of Syrians, but it is one of the most famous. On the ground floor of Al-Amerikya building, which includes residential and administrative apartments, dozens of restaurants, from international fast food chains, famous Egyptian fuul and falafel outlets, and Syrian restaurants and cafes stretch all the way. Located beside 6th of October University, those restaurants do not suffer any lack of customers from young students who are looking for affordable food. Behind the building is a narrow street that leads you to "Syrian Street": a passageway between a complex of buildings full of Syrian shops and restaurants. Longtime Egyptian residents of October City told Ahram Online that many of those shops were formerly owned by Iraqi refugees who settled in October City for a couple of years following the US invasion of Iraq, before returning to their country. The word "Sham", which usually refers to Damascus for Syrians and the Levant for Arabs, in general is a common fixture in the names of the shops, regardless of what they sell. You will find large and famous Syrian restaurants selling shawerma and barbeque chicken as well as Syrian dessert shops selling grilled cheese konafa and Syrian ice cream. There are also Syrian mobile phone accessories shops, a barbershop, and a Syrian spices shop selling imported Syrian and Turkish spices via Turkey. There is also a small Syrian grocery where Syrian residents of October City come to buy Syrian cheese and other Syrian products that cannot be found in usual Egyptian groceries, along with pickles and spices that are currently made in factories in Egypt. "Made in Egypt by Syrian hands" is what you read on the products. In the passageway, chairs and tables are placed for a couple of cafes, some owned by Egyptians that seem oddly out of place. Rollins Follow Rollins 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 Mom always said that nothing good happens fast. If she was right, this new project at the Nebraska State Capitol is going to be a doozy since it is nearly 100 years in the making. Construction is well underway on the four courtyard fountains, which had been included in original plans for the building but were scrapped by financial concerns when the third Capitol building was constructed. It has taken nearly a decade for some former senators and other Capitol enthusiasts to see a dream come true. Capitol Administrator Bob Ripley, who says the fountains will be done in time for the 2017 Sesquicentennial activities, likens the task to building a ship in a bottle. The fountains are being built in courtyards that are completely surrounded by building. Dirt has to be removed through the hallways of the building. Construction materials, including yard upon yard of concrete, steel and stone, have to be brought through the building. Yes, it would have been much easier to build the fountains during construction of the original building. But, money was tight and folks were obviously in a hurry to build the third Capitol and do it right. The first lasted only a few years and had to be torn down because of inferior building materials. The second developed a huge crack in one wall, apparently because of shoddy building practices, and had to be torn down after the current Capitol was built around it. The history of the three Capitols in Lincoln began at statehood in 1867 with a two-story building with a central cupola, made of native limestone. The second Capitol was started in 1881 and finished in 1888. In 1915, plans began for the third and current Capitol on the same site. The second one was left in place and the new one built around it. Then the old was torn down and the center of the current Capitol stands in its place. Architect Bertram Goodhues design called for placement of a fountain in each of the four courtyards within the building, but the project as well as a set of murals in the tower was abandoned during the Great Depression. Talk of the fountains surfaced again after the murals were finally installed in 1996. That left the fountains as the last original design to be completed. Former Omaha Senators John Nelson and Scott Price were among those who pushed to make the fountain project happen. Nelson called the Capitol a state treasure that belongs to the people. He said we owe it to the people to assure its complete. The project became the first major one for the Nebraska Association of Former State Legislators, a group formed in 1976 that had previously only held reunion banquets. Many other former senators, including association director Vicki McDonald, stepped forward to get the project on track. The project comes with a price. Lincolns Kingery Construction Company won the bid for $2.79 million. A budget bill passed in 2014 authorized the Capitol Commission to use $2.5 million from the states rainy day fund to install the fountains, to make improvements to support the operation and maintenance of the fountains, and do associated courtyard landscape restoration. That money was hard fought. The Legislature had to override a veto from then-Gov. Dave Heineman, who used the all-too familiar line that he wanted to use every dollar available for property tax cuts. After all, a guys got to get re-elected. The governor said the courtyards were rarely used. But, another $500,000 was added to the fund in 2015 with a transfer of money already appropriated to the Capitol Commission but unused. Heineman suggested that private donors finance the fountains. But, the group persisted. Former Lincoln Senator DiAnna Schimek said its very important that the people of Nebraska have ownership of the building. They made great sacrifices for the original construction and completing the building as it was designed will be a tribute to those efforts. Goodhues fountains were inspired by the cooling fountains he saw on a trip through Persia. They included dish-like, cast bronze bubblers and designs representative of the many people groups who have inhabited the state. Ripley said Goodhues plans also called for colorful, flowering hedges. A return of that landscaping will make the courtyards more attractive and enticing to users. Hats off to all who are making the completion of the original State Capitol design a reality. Even if it took 100 years. Rollins Follow Rollins 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 The legislative session is moving quickly. It seems like it was only a few weeks ago when I outlined the top priorities to work on with the Legislature in my State of the State address. Working together, we have made progress on a number of key issues. With only a few weeks left, however, there is still much to accomplish before session adjourns and senators return home. A significant amount of work on top priorities like tax relief, infrastructure funding, and balancing the budget is yet to come. At the opening of session, I designated property tax relief as my number one priority. Wherever I travel, I continually hear from Nebraskans who feel the pain of our states high property taxes. Earlier this session, I testified at two hearings in support of property tax bills, which have been a collaborative effort between Senators Gloor and Sullivan and my administration. Nebraskans at those hearings confirmed the need for more property tax relief, and also provided feedback on how we could improve the bills. Following the hearings, the senators, their committees, and I have continued to work to make adjustments to these bills. After much discussion, the Revenue and Education Committees and I have agreed upon proposed amendments to the property tax relief bills. These amendments do three major things: First, they provide additional targeted direct property tax relief for ag land property taxpayers. Second, they limit the carryover of unused restricted funds by community colleges to 3 percent. Third, they make changes to our states education funding formula to enhance local accountability in our school districts. Because the amendment to LB958 contains significant changes from the original version, the Revenue Committee will hold a new hearing on the proposed amendment on March 24, 2016 at 2 p.m. at the Nebraska State Capitol. Nebraskans are invited to attend the hearing to give their feedback on the new proposed amendment. If you are not able to attend and would still like to testify, you are welcome to submit your written testimony to the Revenue Committee by emailing kdelka@leg.ne.gov. Written testimony must be submitted before the hearing to be included in the official record. In addition to property tax relief, we have been working with the Appropriations Committee on the Transportation Innovation Act (TIA), a bill that makes targeted investments to accelerate expressway construction and bridge repair. These targeted investments utilize existing sources of revenue, including a $50 million cash reserve transfer and unprogrammed motor vehicle fuel tax revenue. After advancing from committee unanimously, the TIA successfully passed the first round of debate with overwhelming support. There are two more rounds of debate on the TIA before it can reach my desk for approval. As always, my administration is also working to hold the line on the rate of growth in spending. Recently, the Appropriations Committee advanced a budget from committee that holds the line on spending similar to the responsible rate proposed in my budget. Holding the line on the rate of growth in spending is critical to ensuring that the Legislature and I can continue to provide tax relief in the coming years. As the session continues, my administration will continue to work with the Legislature to address these and other important priorities for hardworking Nebraskans. If you want to share your thoughts on these bills or others with your senator, you can find all of the information you need to contact your senator by visiting www.NebraskaLegislature.gov. 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. RALEIGH Do you wonder why political adversaries seem so often to talk past each other rather than produce useful debate on important issues? One reason is that, in many cases, they really aren't talking about the same things.Consider two issues drawing a lot of attention in North Carolina and across the nation this year: college costs and health care costs. Both have grown faster than the cost of other goods and services for many years. Both are putting significant pressure on family budgets as well as those of federal and state governments. And both are of great interest to liberal and conservative politicians, commentators, and analysts.But the terms "college costs" and "health care costs" often conjure up different images in the minds of the two ideological camps. For example, Democratic candidates Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton, and Roy Cooper are promising to combat the rising cost of college by having government pay more (or all) of the annual cost of tuition and fees.That's not really a policy intended to reduce the cost of higher education, however. It is intended to reduce the price charged to the direct beneficiaries of the service, namely students and their families.The cost of higher education would either stay the same or, more likely, rise if tuition were more heavily subsidized, in the latter instance because demand for college and university educations would increase. Institutions could add more personnel, more facilities, and more ancillary services without deterring most students from enrolling. Someone else would pay.The effects of heavily subsidized tuition on college costs have already been evident for decades . Increasing the subsidy would probably accentuate the effect. We've seen a similar effect of third-party payment on health care costs for the past half-century. When someone other than the patient is paying the bill, the patient has little incentive to shop around or forego low-priority medical services.Rather than shift rising costs around by manipulating the prices apparent to consumers, today's conservative reformers are interested in actually reducing those costs over time. Until recently, for instance, many North Carolinians were under the mistaken impression that their public university system was a "bargain," that it provided a tremendously valuable service to students and the general public at a relatively low cost.In reality, again, what the UNC system really did was charge a relatively low price. Its cost - total expenditure per full-time-equivalent student, from all funding sources - was higher than the national average. After the onset of the Great Recession in 2007 produced multi-billion-dollar deficits in the state budget, legislators and UNC officials had no choice but to target the cost of the system. They eliminated positions, ended some low-priority programs, and implemented other efficiencies. The price of an education at UNC rose a bit, via hikes in tuition and fees, but the inflated-adjusted, per-pupil cost of the system went down.There remain many ways that North Carolina policymakers can combat rising costs in these two key sectors. In higher education, it is apparent that the needs of some students are better and more efficiently served by the community college system than by the UNC system, at least for the purposes of acquiring the first two years of general-college education. New technologies, new systems to certify knowledge and skills, and new ways to organize post-secondary education also offer a great deal of promise.Two good ways to reduce the cost of Medicaid and other publicly funded health programs over time would be to relax restrictions on the ability of nurse practitioners to provide routine medical services, including prescriptions, and to end restrictions on robust competition among hospitals and surgical centers.Don't be distracted by political proposals that claim to reduce costs but really just reduce the apparent price, by shifting the costs over to employers or governments. You'll still end up shouldering much of those costs, in the form of lower wages or higher taxes. To make higher education and health care affordable means reducing the actual cost of delivering those services. There's no painless alternative. Policy analyst Melchior says rules would hike energy prices while making insignificant change in global temperatures CARY During his March 11 campaign stop in Raleigh, Democratic presidential hopeful U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, D-Vt., warned of planetary devastation from climate change unless the world shifts from fossil fuel-based energy to renewable forms of power.Meanwhile, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency chief Gina McCarty has said her agency would continue advancing the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan - requiring states to impose costly emission-reducing regulatory programs - even though the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay halting the plan after North Carolina and more than two dozen other states sued to stop it.Jillian Melchior, a fellow at the Colorado-based Steamboat Institute and the Independent Women's Forum in Washington, D.C., studies environmental regulatory issues. She said the left is "doing something that is deeply unscientific" by claiming the science is settled on man-caused global warming.on global temperatures, Melchior said.Scientific studies of the impact of the Clean Power Plan show temperatures will declineMelchior said.That would reduce sea level rise byMelchior said.The United States accounts for only 5 percent of global carbon-dioxide emissions. If America got rid of its cars, completely shut off electricity, and "goes back to the Dark Ages," the global temperature would drop just 0.15 degrees, Melchior said.Melchior offered her comments on March 4 at the Civitas Institute's Conservative Leadership Conference in Cary.One private sector study estimates the energy regulations would cost consumers as much as $39 billion annually, she said. Consumers in most states will see double-digit hikes in electricity bills, and the poor would be harmed the most.She cited studies showing energy now consumes about a third of the pre-tax incomes of families earning $30,000 a year or less. Black families spend about 50 percent more of their take-home pay on energy than their white counterparts do. Latino families spend about 10 percent more than white families.She said aNational Energy Assistance Directors Association study concluded that to pay higher power bills, between 20 and 25 percent of low-income families would give up medical or dental care, 25 percent would give up food for a day or more, and that one of five households reported a family member becoming ill because the family could not afford to heat its home during cold weather or cool itObama says the Clean Power Plan will inspire other countries to lower their carbon emissions, and called the Paris Climate Conference a resounding success.But Melchior pointed out that other countries are not bound by restrictions in the Paris accord, and it has no enforcement mechanism. The United States and China also have committed to a pact with China under which the U.S. would reduce carbon emissions by 32 percent between now and 2030, while over the same period China pledged only not to increase them.Melchior said.China approved 155 new coal power plantswhich will produce the equivalent of 40 percent of U.S. energy capacity, said Melchior.Meanwhile, U.S. air quality is at its cleanest levels of the past 20 years because of greater use of natural gas, not renewable power, Melchior said.and use the Clean Power Plan to shut down coal- and possibly natural gas-fueled power plants.With the growth of hydraulic fracturing processes,Melchior said. That gives the U.S.a manufacturing boom, and cheaper food and consumer goods.Even so, the Obama administration's expansion of regulations on fossil fuels has made renewable energy seem inexpensive by comparison, Melchior said.she said, noting that without taxpayer subsidies, Scheduling Flexibility and Online Learning Competency-Based Programs Credit for Prior Learning Financial Literacy The idea of free community college has become a topic of national debate in recent years, highlighted by Tennessee's and Oregon's enactment of statewide plans, and President Obama's advocacy for a nationwide program.North Carolina Attorney General Roy Cooper, who last week won the Democratic nomination for governor, has laid out a lofty education plan that includes tuition-free community college for North Carolina students. How to pay for this plan and its overall structure remains uncertain, but the flaws of similar plans-and more innovative ideas to improve access and outcomes for North Carolina's community college students-are worth discussion.In May of 2014 Tennessee became the first state to offer a free community college program, the Tennessee Promise . Under its guidelines, students who immediately enter community college after high school graduation may receive a last-dollar scholarship, which means the state pays tuition and fees not covered by federal- or state-funded grants. Students must maintain a 2.0 GPA and complete eight hours of community service each semester while they receive the scholarship.In July of 2015 Oregon became the second state to offer free community college with the Oregon Promise . Similar to the Tennessee's program, Oregon students must apply within six months of high school graduation and apply for other federal and state financial aid. But under Oregon's plan, students who qualify for the program receive a minimum of $1,000 in aid, even if their cost of attendance is completely covered by federal and state aid.One problem with both these programs is that the last-dollar approach disproportionately benefits wealthier students who are already likely to enroll and succeed in college. This is because wealthier students often do not qualify for the maximum Pell Grant award, and the state programs fill the gaps at higher dollar amounts than they do with lower-income students with higher aid amounts. However, a first-dollar program would have negative consequences for state budgets because altering the cost-of-attendance-another mechanism used to determine federal Pell Grant award amounts-would lower each student's ability to receive the maximum amount, meaning state funds would need to cover more of every eligible student's tuition.Furthermore, according to the American Association of Community Colleges, 25 percent of community colleges operate in states where most students can already attend for free or nearly free due to the availability of federal, state, and institution aid. In North Carolina the average cost of tuition at a community college in 2014 was $3,313, while the average amount of grant aid received was $4,592. Additionally, 65 percent of community college students in North Carolina received at least some form of grant aid.Perhaps the most concerning aspect of free community college is that completion rates at community colleges are already dismal. The guarantee of free tuition is unlikely to improve them. Nationwide, only 20 percent of first-time, degree-seeking students who enroll in community college ever earn a degree. The removal of all personal financial risk from attempting college does not incentivize students to complete their degrees. So far no program has proposed a safeguard against this issue.Finally, these programs only benefit students who enroll immediately after high school, despite the fact that 53 percent of community college students are over the age of 21.If the goal of free community college is to improve access-especially for low-income students-there are more effective methods that have a broader scope. North Carolina legislators should consider options such as the expansion of scheduling flexibility and online courses; development of competency-based education programs; awarding credit for prior learning; and increasing financial literacy among potential students.A large number of community college students have obligations such as work or family that affect their ability to succeed in traditional class structures. In response to this, community colleges should expand non-traditional class structures that include online, hybrid, accelerated, and weekend class options. These alternatives allow students to find a more equitable work-life balance, increasing the likelihood that they will continue to graduation.Online learning, specifically, can be vital to a student's success. A national study of community colleges found that students who take online classes are 25 percent more likely to not only complete their degree, but to do it in less time than students who only attend traditional classes.Additionally, research from the Community College Research Center indicates that students unable to register for necessary classes are significantly more likely to drop out and not return in the future. By using alternative class structures, colleges are able to offer more sections of classes than is possible with traditional weekday class structures, meaning that students are more likely to fulfill their program requirements on time and complete their program.Competency-based programs (CBPs) are an emerging form of higher education that have met with great success at community colleges across the United States. Rather than students earning credits based on hours spent in classrooms, CBPs incorporate credits for demonstrated competency in certain skills. Austin Community College of Texas was one of the first colleges to adopt a CBP. The college worked with local industry leaders to identify key competencies within their field, and designed curricula that would allow students to develop and demonstrate those skills.CBPs are an accelerated and flexible path to a community college degree, which specifically benefit nontraditional students who may have previous experience but have not earned formal credit. Additionally, these programs attempt to address a growing concern among business leaders that students are not learning applicable skills in the traditional brick-and-mortar classroom.Like competency-based programs, credit for prior learning (CPL) programs specifically target non-traditional students who return to school from the military, the workforce, or other non-academic learning experiences. The American Council on Education's College Credit Recommendation (CREDIT) Service is a nationwide program that "connects workplace learning with colleges and universities by helping adults gain access to academic credit for formal courses and examinations taken outside the traditional classroom." Currently only 22 of North Carolina's 58 community colleges utilize the CREDIT program, despite 2,000 colleges nation-wide that accept CPL.A study from the Council for Adult and Experiential Learning found that, of the institutions examined, six percent of students without CPL earned an Associate's degree, while 13 percent students with CPL earned an Associate's degree. Additionally, of the students who did earn degrees, those with CPL were more likely to finish their requirements in less time than those without. These results were consistent regardless of age, GPA, race, or financial aid status.Perhaps the single largest factor for increasing college access to low-income students is increased financial literacy. Nationwide, 20 percent of student eligible for grant-based aid never apply. The most commonly cited reasons include students who think the process is too difficult, or a misunderstanding of the difference between grant-based aid and student loans.An analysis by the Education Trust found that students from low-income school districts are less likely to complete the federal Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) than students at wealthier school districts in the same state. However, the report also highlighted the fact that the gap is comparatively small for students in North Carolina. This is most likely due to a coordinated effort between the College Foundation of North Carolina, the North Carolina Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators, and the State Employees' Credit Union that provides free help to students and parents in completing the FAFSA process.Policy makers nationwide are likely to continue parading support for tuition-free community college plans. However, the alternatives discussed above would not only offer a better pathway to promote access and success for the most vulnerable students; they have an added benefit of a significantly lower cost to taxpayers. Trae Patton/CBSRihanna, OK. But Adele twerking? Not what you might expect, but an adorable viral video of Adele pausing during a recent concert at London's 02 arena to attempt the saucy dance move, is driving her fans wild. "I think I just twerked," she marvels in cell phone video posted to YouTube as fans scream their approval. "You know, I can't do it that well. My whole body has to move," she explains before trying again. "My bum could break my back, its so enormous, she adds with a smile. Adele's tour, with or without twerking, continues in Europe into the summer before it heads to North America in July. Copyright 2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. The NY Post had a splashy (in both senses) photo of President Obama on the tarmac greeting the foreign hoo-ha of Cuba. There were several dignitaries in evidence as well as a number of Secret Servicemen, as is usual in all such circumstances. You know that old adage: a picture is worth 1,000 words? This picture says more, some of which surprisingly -- show learning on the part of our obdurate and preternaturally untransparent 44th. Or maybe his chief of protocol finally earned his keep by orchestrating the noted change in comportment. Let us count the ways. In previous such outings in rain or storm with President Obama, his Secret Service detail were shamefully abused by being forced to hold umbrellas over the heads of Obama and whomever else he thought warranted the cover. To outside observers, this may not seem a big deal, but to cognoscenti, the use of Secret Service agents for any purpose other than alert protection is unlawful. The president was informed of this misuse of his protection services by the Service. In this newest photo, as he makes what he hopes will be a legacy-cementing jaunt to the miserable Communist country at our foot, he holds his own umbrella. Note that he is holding it over himself. The foreign dignitary he is shaking hands with does not have a cover, nor does anyone hold one over his head. Obama, his tall elder daughter in sneakers behind him, shakes hands with Cuba's foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez. Three men appearing to be Secret Service, a few females standing behind the Cuban foreign minister, and fairly obviously, neither Raul nor ailing Fidel Castro bestirring themselves to appear on the runway as respectful nod to the significant visit by arguably the hegemon of the continent. If not the globe. This is the man who has loosened restrictions on travel and trade that mean billions in sales, inflated hotel usage, millions of tourists and the like, to this decrepit country hobbling along until either death or takeover frees the population from its 65-year-long Castroite handcuffs. Two nondescript greeter-women, without umbrellas, hold flowers, presumably for the president. They do not look enthralled. Slap in the face to the United States, as airstrip pomp is noticeably lacking for this apparently self-abasing chief executive, who has extended more than a hand in friendship to the renegade longtime Communist country a hop from Floridas nether toe. It is uncertain whether the president will inquire as to human rights on the brutal regime where persons with HIV, for instance, are sequestered, and reasons for incarceration vary from state crimes to poetry that runs against the tastes of the Castros. Prisons are notoriously unhygienic and unmodernized, far from the conveniences and allurements of Guantanamo. No squash courts, recreation, reading material or niches for Korans, exceptional menu fare that puts pounds on the once-rangy frames of terrorists caught on the battlefield in Muslim lands. No telling if hell request extradition of our criminals, like Joanne Chesimard, AKA Assata Shakur. Ready and waiting for a tell-all doc by the pubic-faced obeso: Michael Moore, documentarian of the assertion that Cuban medical care exceeds that available on the mainland. Maybe with Affordable Care Act implosions, price hikes, and disreputable absence of actual care, Moore is the person to shame this president into a belated recognition of ACA fails. Naah. Next, note that the president is again bowing from the waist to the foreign minister, as he did, notably, with the Saudi king early in his regime. (Obamas regime, not Abdullahs.) The protocol is that U.S. presidents never bow to foreign leaders. It lowers our prestige, and raises theirs. It is not done. Except by the groveler who cannot even yet, after seven years of making our country visibly weaker (ask any African head -- the weaker we get, the weaker they get. Talk to any small-nation potentate, such as the leader of Togo, trying to stay free) abase his country enough. Third, the sissyboy we have seen on girlie bikes while he is on his multimillion-dollar vacations in Marthas Vineyard and elsewhere is a sissyboy here, too. If all the men in the picture but he are without umbrellas, why does he have to be the sole meltable? It may be all right for Sasha to hold an umbrella, since shes female, and her clothing or shoes or hair may have set the American taxpayer back five figures, as we have read recently. Her graduation dress reportedly cost $30,000 -- nice work if you can get it. But this president: does he have to be the nerd o nerds? Be a male, O. Just because you live in a permanent protected bubble does not mean you have to lose your manhood. If the Cuban Foreign Minister can cope without a bumbershoot, you can, too. Fourth, note the smile on this statesmans face. Can you imagine Presidents Reagan, Bush 41 or 43 or Eisenhower making such photogenic tools of themselves for an enemy nation, even one on the verge of taking further advantage of the U.S.? Why not be presidential, greet ministers he meets with reserve and decorum? One notes that in Obamas forthcoming visit to the United Kingdom, Queen Elizabeth will not be meeting with this president. No doubt a considered response to his slap in the face to Great Britain when newly anointed 44th president, B.H. Obama, unceremoniously returned the iconic bust of Sir Winston Churchill, hero of the Second World War, on his White House ascendancy. And Obamas shockingly narcissistic gifts. A smaller photo in the Post article showed the president near his multi-million-dollar Beast, an armored car the likes of which no man on Earth has ever had. Hes smiling the signature wall-to-wall grin weve seen for seven and a half dispiriting years: Mr. Ecstatic, cruising in Cuba. How winsome. How much power can be exerted by such a namby-pamby leader-from-behind? There you have it: 1,000 words to explicate those telling historic pics. Hillary Clinton has walked back so many of her campaign statements, she should consider putting her pantsuits on backwards! Last week at a Democrat town hall meeting, Ms. Clinton vowed to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business. In their wake, she pledged $30 billion in a plan to transition the industry workers to clean-energy jobs. Democrats love using vague action verbs like transition, especially when they relate to social and economic adjustments other Americans are forced to make. Hillary, of course, would never dream of transitioning her own lifestyle into anything other than her above-the-law privilege and lucrative cronyism. Appalled reaction to her coal comments was swift, some of it coming from Democrat lawmakers like Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia. And even Barney Frank resurfaced to brand it a dumb thing to say, since older coal workers wouldnt end up in solar. Predictably, the former secretary of state at once retracted and then clarified her position in a staffer-crafted letter of apology that began, Simply put, I was mistaken in my remarks. The rest of the letter was couched in the usual bureaucratic jargon intended to mollify critics. You know my history and the depth of my commitment to our coalfield workers, families and communities, she pleaded. I feel so strongly that we need to stand with those who have kept Americas lights on and factories running for generations. Despite that bit of flattery, the lofty rhetoric didnt quite resonate as convincingly as what she had said about putting a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business. At a later rally, Hillary reassuringly shouted, I love coal miners! Well, she can forget about that comment going viral. It wasnt half as believable as her imitation of dogs barking. Stuff like that only adds to Hillarys credibility deficit. The more she opens her mouth, it seems, the wider that gap becomes. But sometimes Hillary plumb forgets, like when she accused Bernie Sanders in a recent debate of not supporting her health care act back in 1993. Where were you then, she roared, even though an old tape showed then-congressman Sanders standing right behind her on the stage as she thanked him for his support. They say an elephant never forgets. But a donkey? Of course Hillary, like most politicians, has a conflict when party ideology clashes with personal ambition. For example, her campaign was supposed to be all about serving as the guardian angel for Americas marginalized middle and lower classes, giving voice to their concerns, and promising them a better life under her presidency. But at a subsequent town hall meeting, Hillary again flunked the smell test as the candidate to whom these citizens could turn for answers. When a woman in the audience pointed out that her insurance costs for a family of four had more than tripled under the ObamaCare exchanges, Ms. Clinton advised the dismayed woman to shop around more diligently next time for a better deal. (By the way, whenever a candidate says, Im glad you asked that question! the translation is, Who let this creep in?) Naturally, Hill has the same confusion with the fate of miners in an age of global warming consciousness. She may have said flat out that more coal factories will be closed, but the situation is already bleak, even with heavy investment in new technologies for cleaner coal. Within a short time after the mandated EPA requirements and restrictions, 26 coal companies, large and small, have gone bankrupt and 264 mines closed. A third of the jobs have gone away, and the losses to the diminished coal industry have exceeded $650 billion; on the stock exchange the coal index lost 76% between 2009 and 2014. Nobody expects it to rebound. As the dirtiest of the fossil fuels, perhaps coal deserves its fate. Yet the United States still depends on it, primarily for 2/3rds of our electrical generation. And as the coal industry reminds us, it is the cheapest form of fuel, as well as the most abundant and easily available. Were it not for coal, millions around the world -- and especially in third-world countries -- would be without heat and electricity. China has been the largest coal producer for three decades, with 12,000 mines spread around the country. Once in a while Hillary barks out the truth, if only to apologize afterwards. Donald Trump has his own problems with what he says, but he sticks to his guns. As one of his supporters put it, Its refreshing. I like that he doesnt back down when people act like he said the worst thing in the world and demand an apology. As for Hillary, her kill coal sound bite will come back to bite her during the general election. Itll be like getting a lump of coal in her stocking months before Christmas. Long after it had become painfully obvious to even to the most casual observers, the Obama administration has decided that ISIS is guilty of genocide. It has, however, failed to admit that its own incompetence led to the conditions allowing ISIS to become a powerful force. The timing of Secretary of State Kerrys announcement, and the deployment of Marines from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit to Iraq, reveals much about the mindset of the administrations attitude towards foreign affairs, not just in the deeply troubled Middle East but also in its perception of the American role in the world. Since the end of World War II, the United States and its NATO partners have been the most powerful alliance on Earth, both politically and diplomatically. That partnership was hugely successful. Another world war was averted, and the Soviet Union was stared down and collapsed without yet another global conflict. A period of extraordinary prosperity was ushered in. Numerous nations gained independence. This was not accomplished without major cost, both to the U.S. taxpayer and to those who served and sometimes gave life or limb in the armed forces. But the results were extraordinary. Mr. Obama and those who ideologically agree with him nevertheless have been uncomfortable with Washingtons leading role. They disagree with the commitment of many billions of dollars to defense purposes instead of social welfare programs. They are troubled by the American philosophies of capitalism and individual rights. They seek to reduce the influence of the United States. Reducing Americas international role from one of leadership to just one of many, or in some cases a junior partner, just feels right to them. The conflict in Iraq had already long lost popular support before Mr. Obama took the oath of office in 2009. However, the continuing postwar presence of American troops served an important purpose. Iraqs internal conflicts, never far from the surface, were kept somewhat at bay as the nation moved slowly but significantly towards democracy. Who can forget the images of Iraqi voters proudly holding up purple thumbs, signifying that they had voted for the first time in a true election? Equally as important, the presence of U.S. troops kept a lid on the influence of the darkest forces in the region. That salutary effect was eliminated when those troops were wholly withdrawn, the last leaving on December 18, 2011, against the advice of current and former military leaders. Not long afterward, in 2014, ISIS began to seize territory in Syria and Iraq. Since then, as Secretary Kerry noted on March 17, ISIS has been responsible for genocide against groups in areas under its control (including Yezidis, Christians, and Shia Muslims), the enslavement and rape of females on a significant scale, and the destruction of world heritage sites. The American military response, limited use of bombing runs, was little more than the armed equivalent of a pinprick. The premature American withdrawal emboldened more than just ISIS. Moscow has long coveted a much larger role in the Middle East for several reasons. Russias navy is handicapped by a geography that makes many of its ports ice-bound for a portion of the year, so warm water alternatives are a much desired commodity. Hence, the importance of its naval base at the Syrian city of Tartus. This goal can also be seen in the recent agreement with Cuba to allow the Kremlins naval vessels to dock there. Syrias Bashir al-Assad has been a valuable ally for allowing the continuation of Russias armed presence in his nation, but the value of a powerful presence in the Middle East doesnt end there. Moscows economy is dependent on the export of energy. The ability to influence the Middle Eastern energy economy is a major factor in Putins aggressive planning for the future. Russias active use of military force in the Middle East was not aimed at stopping the depredations of ISIS, but on the twin goals of propping up a regime friendly to Moscows military goals and demonstrating the growing power of the Russian/Iranian alliance, which has now clearly replaced Western influence in the region. Israel, in particular, has been placed greatly at risk by the rise of Iranian influence in the region and Tehrans increasingly powerful missile arsenal. President Putin, however, has used the atrocities committed by ISIS as a justification for his commitment of Russian forces in the region. Secretary Kerrys long overdue acknowledgement of ISIS depredations and the deployment of Marines follow in its wake. What was unacceptable as an American initiative -- particularly the commitment of ground troops -- is now acceptable to the White House, so long as it is an act that dovetails with, and serves as a junior partner to, the actions of the Russian/Iranian axis. Frank V. Vernuccio serves as editor-in-chief of the NY Analysis of Policy & Government, and co-hosts the Vernuccio/Novak Report radio program. He is an occasional Fox News radio contributor. Before his AIPAC speech last night, Donald Trump sat down with Washington Post editors to discuss his foreign policy. The candidate has not said much of substance about what his foreign policy would be and has refused to say who has been advising him. But he revealed to the Post editors the names of several individuals that he called "top of the line" foreign policy advisers. He also ticked off some ideas for what a Trump presidency would do overseas. For the first time, Trump also listed members of a team chaired by Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) that is counseling him on foreign affairs and helping to shape his policies: Keith Kellogg, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, Walid Phares and Joseph E. Schmitz. Trump praised George P. Shultz, who served as President Ronald Reagan's top diplomat, and was harshly critical of current secretary of state John F. Kerry. He questioned the United States continued involvement in NATO and, on the subject of Russias aggression in Ukraine, said Americas allies are "not doing anything." "Ukraine is a country that affects us far less than it affects other countries in NATO, and yet were doing all of the lifting," Trump said. "Theyre not doing anything. And I say: 'Why is it that Germanys not dealing with NATO on Ukraine? Why is it that other countries that are in the vicinity of Ukraine, why arent they dealing? Why are we always the one thats leading, potentially the third world war with Russia.' " Trump said that U.S. involvement in NATO may need to be significantly diminished in the coming years, breaking with nearly seven decades of consensus in Washington. "We certainly cant afford to do this anymore," Trump said, adding later, "NATO is costing us a fortune, and yes, were protecting Europe with NATO, but were spending a lot of money." Trump sounded a similar note in discussing the U.S. presence in the Pacific. He questioned the value of massive military investments in Asia and wondered aloud whether the United States still was capable of being an effective peacekeeping force there. South Korea is very rich, great industrial country, and yet were not reimbursed fairly for what we do," Trump said. "Were constantly sending our ships, sending our planes, doing our war games were reimbursed a fraction of what this is all costing." Asked whether the United States benefits from its involvement in the region, Trump replied, "Personally, I dont think so." He added, "I think we were a very powerful, very wealthy country, and we are a poor country now. Were a debtor nation." A nation that has a $15-trillion economy is not poor by any stretch of the imagination. In fact, it's a stupid observation from a man who considers himself a genius. As for the rest, NATO has been on life support since the end of the Cold War. But the notion of collective security is still valid, and some sort of alliance needs to be maintained, or Trump's buddy Vladimir Putin will walk all over Europe. Maybe that's what Trump wants. As for NATO paying us for protecting them, Trump is stuck in the 1980s. Defense budgets in the alliance have been rising steadily over the last decade, and we've already drawn down our forces to the point that our strength is only 10% of what it was during the Cold War. Trump also demonstrates his ignorance about the U.S. not being compensated for our tripwire force in South Korea. We recieve nearly $900 million a year from South Korea, which amounts to about 30% of the salaries and benefits of the 28K troops that are stationed there. And that figure is set to rise every year through 2018. It's painfully obvious that Trump needs informed foriegn policy advisers who can give him a crash course in geopolitics. But I fear he is so ignorant, so misinformed of the realities associated with American leadership, that he could easily blunder into a war. President Obama stood next to Raul Castro at a press conference in Cuba yesterday and was browbeaten by the Communist dictator in a humiliating spectacle that no president no American should have taken so meekly. Washington Examiner editor Aaron MaClean: Before a televised press conference in Havana, Raul Castro harangued Obama about the continuing American blockade of Cuba, its illegal occupation of Guantanamo Bay, seemed to accuse the president of being friendly to destabilization in Venezuela, and implied that his own familys corrupt ownership of an entire country was justified because, unlike in America, We find it inconceivable that a government does not defend and ensure the right to health care, any patient, social security, food provision and development, equal pay, and the rights of children. Welcome to Cuba, Mr. President! With the man who ought to command the title of leader of the free world standing right next to him, Castro flatly lied to an American reporter who asked him about political prisoners, saying that CNNs Jim Acosta should give him a list when the press conference was over, because he was unaware of any such detainees. (A partial list is here, if youd like to see it.) When another reporter followed up on human rights issues, Castro responded with a robust defenseyou cant make this stuff upof Cubas commitment to a womans right to equal pay for equal work. And the president of the United States just stood there and took it. Virtually the only resistance he offered came at the end, when Castro, a man whom we may presume is accustomed to getting what he wants, grabbed Obamas wrist and tried to hoist it into the air for some sort of victory photo op. Obama responded by letting his wrist go limp as Castro weirdly waved his arm around in the air. A real president a real American would have walked off that stage and left the country immediately. But the president just stood there with a silly grin on his face, wallowing in the "historic" nature of the event. To allow Castro to spout nonsense about his "workers' paradise" without defending America's record of progress even going so far as to agree with the communist thug about our shortcomings literally turned my stomach. In each and every "human right" that Castro ticked off, Cuba comes up short. Food is rationed, and the people are on a strict caloric intake that is the lowest in the hemisphere. Shops are empty. Pensions are pitiful. Living in Cuba is a daily battle for survival. And Obama allows Castro to castigate the U.S. while standing there meekly like a student taking a dressing down from a teacher. He is cheered on the left for this, who love the way Obama never allows the chance for an American humiliation to escape. As for the rest of us, all we can do is hang our heads in shame that anyone such as this achieved the highest office in the land. Truth be told, chickens really do roost together . Specifically, I refer to Donald Trump's no respect stooge, Mr. Obama, and the communist duo of ruling dictators, the brutal Castro brothers. For 55 years, since stridently anti-communist Democrat JFK and the 1960s Cuban Missile Crisis, when the Soviets tried to place nuclear missiles on the island (removed after a successful U.S. naval blockade), America's relations with Cuba have been in a Cold War deep-freeze. Such are the fascist impulses (a concept historically and factually left-wing, but mis-defined in popular culture as right-wing) clear in the acts of anti-American Barack Obama and the like-minded leaders he supports. Like the Castros in Cuba (where opponents are jailed or otherwise literally silenced), Mr. Obama's subtler smiley face version involves the modern-day corrosive of stifling political correctness , the propagandist MSM , and the bully pulpit inherent in the U.S. presidency to steer the political conversation (read: drown out contrary voices). Indeed, if Cuba is an example of a political carrot (Obama's hope and change progressive agenda ), what, then, is the stick? Acoma Pueblo, in Valencia County in West Central New Mexico, is believed to have been established in the 12th century or even earlier, making it the oldest continuously inhabited community in the United States. The pueblo or village is located atop a 110-meter tall sandstone bluff, and until recently, could only be reached by a near vertical hand-cut staircase carved into the rock face. Acoma Pueblos soaring location has earned it the nickname of Sky City, and has impressed everybody who has laid eyes on it from the first European to the modern visitor. The first European contact with Acoma was made by the Spanish conquistador and explorer Francisco Vazquez de Coronado in 1540, who described it as "one of the strongest places ever seen, because the city was built on a high rock. The ascent was so difficult that we repented climbing to the top," he wrote. Photo credit: www.acomaskycity.org Almost sixty years later, the pueblo was nearly destroyed when colonial governor Juan de Onate began raiding Native American pueblos in the area. Anticipating an attack on Acoma, the villagers made the first move killing a number of Onates men, including Onate's nephew. This had dire consequence for the villagers two months later. To avenge the deaths, the Spaniards burned down the village, murdered more than 600 people and imprisoned approximately 500 others. Prisoners were sentenced to either forced slavery or bodily mutilation. At the end of the massacre, Acomas population of 2,000 people was reduced to approximately 250. These survivors began the long process of rebuilding their community. The Spanish, who had firm control over the area by then, began to impose taxes on crops, cotton, and labor on the Acoma and other villages. They also brought Catholic missionaries into the area. Between 1629 and 1640, the villagers were forced to build a church in Acoma. All of the building materials, including some 20,000 tons of earth and stone, and 30-foot beams were hauled up the steep slopes of the mesa. Acoma Pueblo is located on top of that soaring mesa. Photo credit: Jacqueline Poggi/Flickr These abuses of power by both religious and political authorities eventually led to the Pueblo Revolt. On August 10, 1680, some 17,000 thousand Puebloans, including 6,000 warriors rose up in vengeance against the 3,000 or so colonists. The tribes struck mission churches, killing 22 of 33 friars, and demolished and burned many of them. All the Spanish settlements in New Mexico were wiped out. Some 400 people were killed, the rest were driven out. Over the next few centuries, Acoma continued to suffer from raids and invasions from the Apache, Comanche, and Ute tribes. On occasions, the Acoma would side with the Spanish to fight against nomadic tribes. By the 1880s, railroads brought the pueblos out of isolation. Although they did succeed in retaining their land, they couldnt prevent missionaries and schools from coming into the area, and Acomans reluctantly gave way to modern life. By the 1920, most children from the community were in boarding schools. Today, the village has about 300 adobe buildings, but fewer than 50 permanent residents. Basic facilities such as electricity, running water, or sewage disposal are still absent at Acoma, so the remaining residents chose to live in nearby villages where such facilities are available. Also read: 11 Oldest Continuously Inhabited Cities in the World Aerial view of Acoma. Photo credit: Marshall Henrie/Wikimedia Photo credit: NRCS NM/Flickr Hand-cut stairway to Acoma. Photo credit: Richie Diesterheft/Flickr Today, a road leads to the top of the mesa. Photo credit: Richie Diesterheft/Flickr Photo credit: Ethan Kan/Flickr Photo credit: NRCS NM/Flickr The mission church of San Esteban Rey at Acoma Pueblo. Photo credit: Karla Kaulfuss/Wikimedia Photo credit: Jacqueline Poggi/Flickr Photo credit: Jacqueline Poggi/Flickr Photo credit: Jacqueline Poggi/Flickr Photo credit: Jacqueline Poggi/Flickr Photo credit: Tony Hisgett/Flickr You may also like: Sources: Wikipedia / Legends of America While the US has been enjoying Amazons Cloud Drive for quite some time in fact, they added options to it almost a year ago our northern brethren in Canada didnt get access to Amazons cloud services until 2013. To keep the service growing in Canada, Amazon is now offering two storage plans that allow customers to securely store their existing content and the ability to upload new content automatically. When you use the cloud for storage of photos, videos, movies, music and other files, you have instant access from wherever you are and these files are stored in their original size and resolution so there is no worry of losing the quality of those precious memories. Josh Petersen, Director of Amazon Cloud Drive said, Most people have a lifetime of birthdays, vacations, holidays, and everyday moments stored across numerous devices. And, they dont know how many gigabytes of storage they need to back all of them up. With the two new plans we are introducing today, customers dont need to worry about storage space they now have an affordable, secure solution to store unlimited amounts of photos, videos, movies, music, and files in one convenient place. The two plans are the Unlimited Storage Plan and the Unlimited Photos Plan for one flat fee per year. With each plan you receive a free three-month trial is for eligible customers in Canada. After the free trial period, the Unlimited Storage Plan will cost you $59.99 per year and you can store an unlimited number of any type file in Cloud Drive. Customers can turn on an auto-save feature that will automatically backup any photos or videos taken and then be able to retrieve them at full resolution. The second plan is the Unlimited Photo Plan that only costs $11.99 per year after the three-month free trail. This plan is for the photo buff and allows you to store an unlimited number of photos in Cloud Drive, as well as 5GB of additional storage for and video or document files you may want to store. Advertisement Prime members already have free Unlimited Photo Storage and can sign up for the Unlimited Storage Plan and begin storing unlimited videos and other files. Existing Cloud members can change their current plan by logging on to their Cloud Drive account and make the upgrade. With our love of photos and videos, why tie up your device storage or risk losing your files when everything can be stored securely in the Cloudfreeing up your smartphones storage for apps and other items you prefer store there. In todays deals we have a few goodies available from LG, Anker, Amazon and many other companies. Including Sandisk who has their 200GB microSD card available for just $79. This is currently the highest capacity microSD card available, and it will work with the LG G5, Samsung Galaxy S7 and Galaxy S7 Edge. Thats a whole lot of room for pictures, music and such. And coming in at $79 is an absolute steal for this. Considering it was nearly $200 just a few short months ago. Making that almost a 50% off discount. Its available on Amazon right now, and probably wont last long. Now onto the rest of todays deals, which will be updated throughout the day, below. Samsungs flagship smartphones are some of the best options out there if you need a good smartphone, but they all face the same problem; delays in getting updates. Although Samsung managed to rollout Android updates faster this year than in previous years, it still takes several months for users to get new software. The Galaxy Note 5 was released last August while Android Marshmallow was made available in October. However, only in recent weeks, Galaxy Note 5 owners in some countries began receiving the long-awaited update. According to a report from SamMobile, Galaxy Note 5 users in India can now rejoice with Marshmallow as the new software started rolling out in the country today. It can be download over the air (OTA), which means directly from the phone, without the need of a computer. The update weighs in at around 1.2 GB and after the process is done the firmware version will be N920GDDU2BPC4. The Marshmallow update wont bring any radical changes to the system, but it introduces several performance improvements and small visual tweaks here and there, including animations as seen on the Galaxy S7. Additionally, known Android Marshmallow features are present, such as Google Now on Tap, advanced app permissions, and more. Most users should see a notification alerting about the update, but in case you dont see it, just head to Settings > About device > Software update and tap the Update now button to initiate the process. The software will first be downloaded and then the update will be applied. Advertisement Marshmallow updates for the Galaxy Note 5 began rolling out on February 19, in countries such as Cambodia. In the following days, more countries started receiving the new software, and this is the normal procedure by Samsung they release updates in blocks of countries. For most users in the U.S., carriers have to release their own updates and they also started earlier this month. Even though everyone is talking about the Galaxy S7 and S7 Edge, the Galaxy Note 5 is still an amazing phone with top notch hardware and plenty of software features that set it apart from most Android devices. With a 5.7-inch Super AMOLED display, the Note 5 is powered by an octa-core Exynos 7420 processor, comes with 4 GB of RAM and 32 GB of internal storage. The rear camera is a 16-megapixel shooter while the front sensor is a 5-megapixel shooter. Its main signature characteristic is the S Pen stylus pen, and this beast has a list price of over $700 but can be found for as low as $449 thanks to several deals on the internet. A media report early today claimed that American tech giant, Apple Inc. is reportedly looking to buy a British chip design company thats responsible for the PowerVR brand of mobile GPUs. The company in question is Imagination Technologies, which is headquartered in the small town of Kings Langley in the Hertfordshire county of Southern England. While the report had claimed that the American company was in aadvanced talksa to buy the UK-based firm, Apple has since issued a statement to the LSE (London Stock Exchange) saying that while it did have negotiations with the aforesaid chipmaker, it does not intend to make an offer for the company right now. Imagination Technologies, for its part, has denied outright that there was any such M&A plans to begin with. Itas pretty evident as to why Apple will be interested in a company like Imagination Technologies. The Cupertino, California-based tech giant already uses Imaginationas PowerVR GPUs in its A-series mobile SoCs, but it clearly wants to start designing its mobile GPUs in-house. The iPhone-maker already has design capabilities for its mobile CPUs, thanks to its 2008 acquisition of PA Semi, which, at the time, was an independent fabless chip design company based out of Santa Clara, California. Following that acquisition, Appleas iPhone line of smartphones and iPad line of tablets started sporting SoCs that come with custom CPU cores that are designed in-house. It all started with the A6 SoC that could be found in the iPhone 5, and continues on with the A9X chip that powers the companyas newly-launched 9.7-inch variant of the iPad Pro. Advertisement Whatever be the fate of the acquisition talks, Apple is already Imaginationas third-largest shareholder, with the American company owning as much as 9.5 percent of the British tech company thatas said to have a market cap of A600 million. Intelas Atom line of mobile chips meant for smartphones and tablets also come with embedded PowerVR GPUs, but thatas to be expected seeing as the worldas largest chipmaker held as much as 16 percent in the UK-based company till as late as January, 2015. Apple is known for zealously guarding its hardware and software resources, so an Imagination acquisition, if it eventually does go through, may be bad news for not just consumers, but the industry as a whole, so to some, it wont exactly be a bad thing if the deal does eventually fall through. Apple recently announced that they were moving away from Amazon Web Services, the giant in the infrastructure as a service space, and signing on with Google Cloud Services. The deal was a bit unexpected, given Apple and Googles fairly public rivalry in the mobile space and Googles underdog status in the cloud services sphere. Said to be worth between 400 million and 600 million, the huge deal was set to throw Google Cloud Services headlong into the big leagues. According to some independent analysis by Deutsche Bank, however, there is reason to doubt that this deal will put a significant debt in the current status quo of the infrastructure as a service field. In a note to their investors on Monday, Deutsche Bank argued that the media is likely misrepresenting what has actually happened and that the dollar amounts being thrown around are absurd. The numbers they were referencing, specifically, were the figures above for Apples deal with Google, as opposed to the roughly $1 billion theyve spent with Amazon Web Services. According to Deutsche Bank, this eclipses the nearly $400 million that Google Cloud Services brings in within the course of a given fiscal year. Additionally, Apple moving most of their cloud and I.T. backend to Googles servers would mark a huge departure from business as usual for Googles cloud platform, which normally draws in smaller businesses and niche ventures from bigger names. Speculation is apparently running wild that Google may announce a price cut for their services at the upcoming NEXT conference, which would give the impression of trying to spark a price war with the otherwise high-margin Amazon Web Services. Advertisement The implications of the deal, in any case, seem to be a move into the larger section of the market for Googles cloud segment. Historically, Google Cloud Services hasnt quite had what it takes to beat Amazon Web Services or even Microsofts second-place Azure cloud platform at their own game. Googles suite of intricate, developer-focused tools give them an advantage over most others in the business, meaning that if the rumors are true and their gambit pays off, all-out war could break out in the top of the space. As with any other competition in the business world, of course, consumers will be the winners no matter who comes out on top. One of the most sought after features in smartphones in 2016 is going to be Quick Charge 3.0. With more and more smartphones doing away with removable batteries although LG did keep it, and you can rest assured that they will promote that feature quite often on the LG G5 technology like Quick Charge 3.0 is going to be a big deal. Quick Charge 1.0 and 2.0 were already big deals in the past few years, and Quick Charge 3.0 is even better. This new standard can charge your smartphone even faster than before, giving you about 3A to charge up your smartphone. You can go from 0 to 80% in about 35 minutes, which is a pretty insane feat when you think about it. Now that we have devices available that support Quick Charge 3.0, its time to start taking a look at chargers that can charge at 3A and are certified for Quick Charge 3.0. Which includes Aukeys dual-port wall charger here. Making it a pretty important charger, especially where most Quick Charge phones dont come with a Quick Charge compatible charger in the box. So in order to take full advantage of the new technology, customers are forced to go out and buy one. Maybe this Aukey Quick Charge 3.0 Wall Charger will be the right one to buy. Advertisement This charger can output 3A in each port. Whats interesting here is that while both ports do use Quick Charge 3.0, they also use Aukeys proprietary AiPower technology. AiPower is a way for your phone to get as much current as it can handle without damaging the device. You can think of it as talking with the charger and saying okay, I can only handle 2A and it only gives your device 2A of current. This is good for those that dont have Quick Charge 3.0 in their devices, or may have a device that doesnt have Quick Charge 3.0, like the Samsung Galaxy S6. Like other Quick Charge chargers, this one does in fact work with earlier versions of Quick Charge as well as conventional charging. So if you have a device, like the Nexus 9, that doesnt have any form of fast charging, you can still charge it without damaging your device. When I took this charger out of the box, the first thing I thought was how large this wall adapter is. We reviewed their Quick Charge 2.0 wall adapter last year. However that had just one port, not two. On top of that, Quick Charge 2.0 didnt use as much power as Quick Charge 3.0. More power means it needs more space, which is why the adapter is quite a bit larger. Its still fairly lightweight, so you can easily throw it into your bag when traveling, without any issues. However, the prongs do not fold down which can be an issue for some. Its not necessarily a deal-breaker, it just means youll need to be more careful when traveling with this one. The last thing youd want to do is bend one of the prongs on this charger. Advertisement Design-wise, theres not much here. Its basically just a black brick wall adapter that is curved on the left and right sides. Its in matte black, which is actually a nice color, as it doesnt get disgusting looking from fingerprints. Although thats not much of an issue with wall chargers as it would be with a smartphone or tablet. Its a pretty plain looking charger here. Nothing really stands out, in terms of logos or FCC information. It is all there, but its in black, so its not standing out that much. When you pick up this charger though, it definitely feels like something sturdy and made of quality. Not like it could be damaged easily, but something that will last quite a long time. While this charger is wider and lengthier than most other chargers, it doesnt cover up other wall outlets. This is important because covering up another outlet could be a deal breaker for many. Especially those that are already struggling to find an empty outlet in their home or office, where this charger might end up. And because it is wider, it means that it wont hinder the use of other outlets, even on a surge protector. Advertisement We used this charger with the Nexus 6P for about a week, and were pretty satisfied with how it charged our device. Using a USB Type-A to a Type-C cable, the charger charged about as fast as youd expect. It was about the same speed as our OEM charger from Google, as well as the other chargers weve used from Tronsmart and Aukey. We were unable to test out Quick Charge 3.0 speeds, since we dont have a Quick Charge 3.0 device in house. But it will work with the Samsung Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 Edge and LG G5, all of which were announced at Mobile World Congress and are now available (the LG G5 is on pre-order at some carriers and retailers and will be available at the beginning of April). As mentioned earlier on, if you have a device that doesnt support Quick Charge 3.0 you can still use this charger to charge it. And that is completely true. We used it with the Nexus 6P, and for kicks, the Sony Xperia Z3 which does support Quick Charge 2.0. Both charged at normal speed without getting any warmer than usual when using a method of fast or quick charging. On the safety side of things, this charger does have a bit more power than other chargers do (that arent Quick Charge 3.0), but Aukey does have a number of safeguards in place here so that your phone, tablet, or whatever you are charging doesnt overcharge, overheat, or worse, catch on fire. So when it comes to safety, theres nothing to worry about here with the Aukey Quick Charge 3.0 dual-port Wall Adapter. You can use it to charge anything (even the Google Chromebook Pixel if you have a USB Type-A to Type-C cable) without any issues. Advertisement Aukey has this wall charger available on Amazon for $24.99. Now, that may sound like a lot for a wall charger, but one thing to remember here is that your conventional wall charger doesnt have as much power inside, which requires more circuitry, not to mention certification from Qualcomm. At $25, this Aukey Quick Charge 3.0 wall charger is actually one of the cheaper models available on Amazon right now. And itll work perfect for your Galaxy S7, Galaxy S7 Edge, HTC One A9 or your LG G5. Wed definitely recommend this to anyone picking up a Quick Charge 3.0 device, or just want to get a future-proof charger these days. Aukey does also have a number of other Quick Charge 3.0 accessories available, which you can take a look at here. For many Android users, one of the clear benefits of rooting a device is that they can gain access to a deeper level of the operating system. Root access which essentially allows them greater control of the system, or allows the root-required apps they would like to install, the control needed to fulfill their functions. However, the downside of rooting is that changes made at the root level also have the ability to cause damage, sometimes irreparable damage or worse still, give certain apps abilities you might not want them to have. Last Friday, Google sent out an Android Security Advisory notice that a flaw in Android can result in applications gaining root access to devices. Needless to say, the result being the flaw is able to take control of devices and at the extreme, could result in local permanent device compromise. To be clear, this is not a new issue as the existence of the basis for this flaw dates back almost two years when it was first picked up. However, it seems more recently an app which had made its way onto the Google Play Store is one which has now been noted being able to take advantage of the vulnerability. Although, the security statement does make it clear this does not seem to be the purpose of the app, but instead an unfortunate byproduct. Advertisement Either way, the advisory notice was posted to firstly warn (not scare) Android device owners of the current situation and further advise on what is happening to remedy the situation. The post dated March 18th states that a fix for this flaw had already been scheduled as part of an upcoming monthly update. However, the recently noted app access has now escalated the issue to one which the Android security team deems as critically severe and as such a new security update is in the process of being put together for Nexus devices and will be rolling out imminently. The patch has also been passed to partner manufacturers so that they can look to apply it to their respective devices in due course. Of course, this does mean that if you are running a device which has yet to receive an update later than March 18th, your device is technically still prone to the vulnerability. Likewise, if you have received an update since March 18th, this does not necessarily mean that it is the fix included and in fact, it likely does not as partner manufacturer updates will take some time to begin rolling out. Those interested in reading more about the current situation with the CVE-2015-1805 flaw, can do so by heading through the source link below. Back before Mobile World Congress took place at the end of last month, LG had previously unveiled a duo of new smartphones which were set to join the LG X series of devices, dubbed the LG X Cam and the LG X Screen. Both phones are part of LGs mid-range device set, and they were both shown off at Mobile World Congress for attendees to get a close-up, first-hand look at each device. Last month during the announcement, LG had mentioned that a launch of both the X Cam and the X Screen devices would be happening sometime in March, and as of this evening, LG has just announced that both phones will be getting a global rollout starting this week. As South Korea is LGs main base of operation, both the X Screen and X Cam will launch this week in the country first, before heading to other global markets in which LG has planned to sell the phone. As stated during their initial announcement in the middle of February, in addition to South Korea, LG will be launching the X Cam and the X Screen in other key markets worldwide which includes Asia, Latin America, and Europe, although there is still no mention of a U.S. launch for either device leaving consumers to question if LG will roll them out in the U.S. market. Advertisement Both devices have their niche features. The LG X Screen comes equipped with the same second-screen with an always-on display that LG pushed out with the LG V10 last year, meant to give users a way to glance quickly at key information like notifications as well as the time and date. The second screen will be 1.76-inches in size with a 520 x 80 resolution, while the main display will be 4.93-inches in size with HD resolution. When it comes to the LG X Cam, users will get access to more robust camera features like the pop-out picture for creating a picture-in-frame effect, as well as the Animated Photo feature which LG states is only available on the X Cam, that lets users create a special image combining both video and still photos for a unique image. Both phones will come running on Android 6.0 Marshmallow. LG hasnt announced any pricing or specific launch dates for any region, as each will carry their own pricing and launch information. The worldwide tablet market may not be in the best of health, but Samsung continues to remain the top player within the segment, at least as far as Android OEMs are concerned. Its a different matter altogether that Android as a platform hasnt been able to dominate the sector nearly as much as it dominates the smartphone sector, meaning, Apple continues to remain the single largest tablet vendor worldwide with its iPad line of premium slates. However, that doesnt mean Samsung isnt bullish on tablets as a product category. Much like its smartphone business, the company has multiple lineups of tablets that are positioned in various segments of the market. While Samsungs Galaxy Tab S line represents the premium end of the spectrum, the companys Galaxy Tab E line addresses the entry-level segment. In between those two lineups lie the Galaxy Tab A line that is mostly populated with mid-range devices, including an 8-inch model and one with a screen size at 9.7-inches. Both those devices were launched last year and are admittedly getting a bit long in the tooth. Earlier rumors had also suggested that the South Korean company has an all-new 10.1-inch tablet in the pipelines for launch at some stage during this year. While the device apparently had the model number SM-T536, it wasnt identified by its eventual commercial name. Whats more, without any concrete info regarding the hardware specs of the upcoming tablet, it was well-nigh impossible for anyone to actually hazard a guess as to which category the upcoming device will fall into. However, the latest leak regarding Samsungs upcoming SM-T536 tablet comes by way of its GFXBench listing, meaning for the very first time, we get a look at some of the important hardware specs of the device thats slated to hit the store shelves presumably within the next few months. Advertisement According to the listing, the leaked tablet will have a 10.1-inch 1280 x 720 display, and come with Android 6.0.1 Marshmallow pre-installed. The device will be powered by an octa-core Cortex-A53 1.5 GHz CPU of unspecified make, but some reports indicate that either the Exynos 7870 or the Exynos 7850 may be the chip powering the device, seeing as the the GPU has been identified by the GFXBench listing as the Mali-T830 . The tablet is also expected to come with 2 GB of RAM and 32 GB of internal storage, alongside a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera and a 2-megapixel front-facing shooter. Its still not clear if the upcoming tablet will be the next in the long line of Galaxy Tab A devices or if it will be named the Galaxy Tab 5 and launched as the Galaxy Tab 4 replacement, but well keep you informed either way as and when we get to know anything more. Introduction Today, Apple introduced the long-rumored Apple iPhone SE for $399 with 16GB of storage and $499 with 64GB of storage. The design is rather a hybrid it has the iPhone 6S specifications (for the most part) with the size of the iPhone5S and Apple is calling it the most powerful 4-inch smartphone ever. This is quite typical, as with every device Apple makes it claims it is the most powerful device around. We decided to compare the new iPhone SE with a few Android devices near the same specifications and with smaller displays for the most part. We took the Motorola Moto G, the Asus ZenFone 2 Deluxe, the Sony Xperia Z5 Compact and the HTC One A9 and compared them to the Apple iPhone SE. Lets take a brief look at just how these devices are similar and different from one another. Specifications Advertisement Displays Taking a quick look at the displays, we see that Moto G comes in at 5-inches, the ZenFone 2 comes in at 5.5-inches, the Sony Xperia Z5 Compact splits the ruler at 4.6-inches and the HTC One A9 comes in at 5-inches. The Moto G, Sony Xperia Z5 Compact and the new iPhone SE all come with an HD display, while the ZenFone 2 and One A9 sport a Full HD display. All displays use the IPS LCD technology except the One A9 that uses AMOLED technology. The Android smartphone manufacturers have gotten away from a mini or compact size with most displays considered small at 5-inches, although the Z5 Compact a true mini breaks that barrier with 4.6-inches. The new iPhone SE comes in at a small 4-inches a size that Apple believes will sell well with their customers after all, they bought 30 million 4-inch phones back in 2015. According to Tim Cook, many of their customers have asked for it and he thinks it will sell wellalthough it might be more the $399 price tag than the size of its display. Processors Advertisement The processors vary quite a bit across the brands and models The Moto G uses a Snapdragon 410 Quad-Core, ZenFone selected the Intel Atom Quad-Core for their ZenFone 2, the Xperia Z5 Compact uses the powerhouse Snapdragon 810 Octa-Core, the HTC One A9 uses a Snapdragon 617 Quad-Core. The new iPhone SE uses Apples A9 Dual-Core processor, the same one as in the iPhone 6S. Memory The amount of RAM and storage memory also varies greatly and all of these smartphones have room for storage memory expansion except the iPhone SE with it, you have a choice of 16GB or 64GB and that is all. As far as RAM goes, the Moto G has 1GB, the ZenFone 2 has 4GB, the Sony Xperia Z5 Compact packs 2GB and the One A9 has a 2GB or 3GB model depending on the storage you select. The iPhone SE follows the Moto G and comes with only 1GB of RAM. As far as storage goes, the Moto G has 8GB, the ZenFone 2 has a choice of 64GB or 128GB, the Xperia Z5 Compact has 32GB and the One A9 has a choice of 16GB or 32GB. Expansion on the Moto G is 32GB, 128GB on the ZenFone 2, and 200GB on either the Sony Xperia Z5 Compact or the HTC One A9. As mentioned earlier, the iPhone SE, as with other Apple devices, offers no expandable storageit is either 16GB or 64GB, period. Advertisement Cameras Except for the 23MP main camera found on the Sony Xperia Z5 Compact, the remaining cameras are close in size. The Moto G, ZenFone 2, and the HTC One A9 use a 13MP lens and the iPhone SE uses the same 12MP iSight camera found on the iPhone 6S, which means it is a very good camera. The number of megapixels is only one piece of the puzzle when it comes to how good your photo will turn out. In a smartphone, the software plays a very important part in the sharpness and amount of graininess/noise. Apertures, the speed of the autofocus and the speed of the shutter all have their hands in the outcome. Battery Advertisement The batteries all vary in size and all five of these devices have non-removable batteries. The Moto G has a 2470mAh size battery, the ZenFone 2 has a 3000mAh battery, the Sony Xperia Z5 Compact has a 2700mAh battery, the One A9 has only a 2150mAh and the iPhone SE squeezes in only a 1642mAh battery. As with the camera, just because a battery is larger, does not necessarily mean it will last longer the power management functions have a lot to do with battery performance. Sony is excellent at squeezing out every drop of juice, something that Apple has never been accused of. Summary If there is truly a huge market for 4-inch smartphones these days, then Apple may have a real hit on their hands at $399 and $499, especially when it has many components of the more expensive iPhone 6S. The new iPhone SE will be available in gold and rose colors along with the traditional light and dark grays. Pre-orders will begin on March 24 with availability on March 31. Once it hits the US, it will be available in more than 100 countries by the end of May. Last week, Sony announced that it will start accepting pre-orders for its upcoming PlayStation VR headset from the 22nd of this month. Now that the day has finally arrived, various online retailers around the world have started accepting pre-orders for the device which comes as a package that includes not just the PlayStation VR core bundle but also a bunch of other goodies as part of the specially-curated launch bundle that includes a whole lot of additional hardware and software. One thing to note here is that as of today, Sony is only accepting pre-orders for the launch bundle, which comes with all the add-ons and cost $499. The company says it will start accepting pre-orders for the no-frills $399 core bundle from 7:00 AM PT next Tuesday (March 29th). Coming to a few more details regarding the difference between the $499 launch bundle which has gone on pre-order today and the $399 core bundle that is slated to go on pre-order next week, while the core PlayStation VR bundle includes the headset, the VR cables, stereo headphones and a PlayStation VR Demo Disc, the launch bundle additionally come with a PlayStation Camera, 2 PlayStation Move motion controllers and a PlayStation VR Worlds disc. All that for just a hundred bucks extra probably sounds good enough to quite a few gaming enthusiasts, especially as the two nearest competitors of the PlayStation VR, the Oculus Rift and the HTC Vive, both come with price-tags that are significantly higher than Sonys VR offering. While the Oculus Rift comes with a $599 price-tag, HTC is asking as much as $799 for its VR headset. Advertisement While pre-orders for the PlayStation VR launch bundle have already started in many regions around the world, Amazonas American and German websites are already out of stock as of press time. However, Amazon UK is still accepting pre-orders, so the site presumably still has some stock left. Other UK retailers like GAME apparently are also taking pre-orders, so VR enthusiasts in the country still have ways to book their unit right now. Having said that though, Sony says it will offer its customers more chances to pre-order the device before it is eventually launched this October, so those not being able to snare one in this round, thankfully need not despair. The LG G5 is the latest handset from LG and ever since its formal introduction at MWC last month, it has generated quite a lot of attention. You might think that a device which was being announced on the same day as the latest device(s) from Samsung may need to have some unique selling points to generate headlines and thankfully the LG G5 did, due to its more modular design where users can essentially hot swap out certain components. Components which LG affectionately dubbed as the G5s friends. Since then though, firm details on these friends have been a little limited and especially when it comes to the LG CAM Plus. This is a friend which can be attached to the G5 and essentially provides a grip for the camera, as well as a better ability to control advanced camera features. However, the price of such a useful accessory has yet to be fully disclosed by LG. During the announcement for the Canadian release of the G5, LG did confirm that the value of the CAM Plus would be $99 in Canada. Following which, a report out of South Korea suggested (based on a direct currency conversion) the price might be more towards $85. Now it seems we are starting to get a slightly better idea of what the price might be for the CAM Plus in the U.S. Advertisement It looks like B&H is one of the first online retailers to nail their prices to the mast as they are currently listing the LG CAM Plus and with the listing, comes a $69.99 price. Of course, this does not confirm fully that this will be the price of the CAM Plus but at least does provide further scope to where the CAM Plus will likely be positioned at. Not to mention, is the first proper U.S. relevant pricing that has come through and therefore seems like a more likely figure for U.S. buyers then either the Canadian or Korean announcements. Of course, if you are planning to pick up an LG G5 when they become available, then it looks like the listing is also now allowing you to pre-order the CAM Plus as well. Early today, terrorists attacked the international airport and subway station in Brussels, killing at least 31 people. Since then, the Belgian capital has been on lockdown as the officials attempt to find the identity of at least two suicide bombers that set off two of the three bombs at the airport. The terrorists could not have picked a worse time during the crowded early rush of people going to work. In this aftermath of chaos, many Canadians are wondering if their family and friends are okay and unharmed. In the spirit of extending a helping hand, Telus put out a tweet to Please connect with your loved ones in #Brussels. All calls and texts to and from the area are free until Apr. 5. This timeframe also includes Koodo Mobile as they waive the fee for all texts and calls to the area. Wind Mobile is also throwing out some goodwill and said that all calls and texts to Belgium will be free for all prepaid and postpaid subscribers from March 22 through March 28. One of our sources has reached out to all of the Canadian carriers to see if they are offering free text and calling, but have not heard back yet, except Wind Mobile. While these acts are very tragic, it is nice to see a lending hand to help those relatives to try and track down their loved ones. The major US carriers are also offering free texts and calling to Brussels and Facebook is offering free Safety Checks. Sometimes not knowing is the hardest thing to handle during this madness of terrorist attacks and during the aftermath as rescue workers work to account for everybody. The mobile phone is a device that so many carry with them all of the time and if cell towers or Wi-Fi is working, they can be a lifeline to either call for help or call to see if people you know have made it to safety. Rescuers can even try and make a phone call to you in an attempt to locate where you might be, as well as using the GPS to track where you are located. The mobile phone can be used for so much more than a mere phone call. Although the new Samsung Galaxy S7 series became the subject of numerous discussions over the past several weeks, and while the Korean tech giant is putting great emphasis on its latest flagships, this doesnt mean that the Samsung Galaxy S6 lineup launched last year is any less relevant than it was at the beginning of 2016. In fact, over the course of the last few weeks the Samsung Galaxy S6 made the jump from Android 5.0 Lollipop to Android 6.0 Marshmallow in a handful of regions, and now another carrier variant specifically T-Mobiles is getting ready to join the party. Although Android 6.0 Marshmallow is not yet available on T-Mobiles Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge, owners of the aforementioned device(s) can expect the software update to hit their smartphones in the near future. The carriers update page reveals that the Manufacturer Development stage has been completed, and the same page now lists both the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge as being in the Testing stages of Android 6.0 Marshmallow. During this stage, the two smartphones will go through the carriers certification process, and once the second step is complete, T-Mobile will begin the OTA (over-the-air) rollout and make the software package gradually available to Samsung Galaxy S6 owners. At the moment, there is no stable release timeframe, but assuming that the carrier wont hit any snags during the Testing phase then the rollout should theoretically commence fairly soon. Advertisement The Android 6.0 Marshmallow update for T-Mobiles Samsung Galaxy S6 series should include a handful of new features in both the operating system as well as the manufacturers proprietary TouchWiz UI. Marshmallow includes additions like Doze for better energy efficiency, along with Google Now on Tap and a new app permission manager. The new TouchWiz user interface also brings a handful of new features and a hidden option for DPI scaling, and in the case of the Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge, the new UI should also give users the option to change the width of the curved edge panel from 260 pixels to 550 pixels to accommodate additional content. Its worth noting that T-Mobile Poland has already released the update for the Samsung Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge last month and that Sprint did the same with its variants in the US a couple of weeks ago. Operation Midland: blind justice gets a kicking Operation Midland is closed. The Metropolitan Polices investigation into allegations that a ring of paedophiles operated out of Westminster is dead. After 16 months of lurid headlines and wicked whispers, the Met came up with zilch. Midland is one of a number of inquiries that began after Labours deputy leader, Tom Watson, said in the House of Commons in 2012 that there had been a powerful paedophile network linked to parliament and No 10. He went on to call ex-top Tory MP Leon Britton evil. The Met called Nicks claims credible and true. He was not an accuser. He was a victim. Before the completion of an inquiry, let alone any charges brought or a trial, the people behind the inquiry knew its outcome. It was all credible and true. No evidence. No matter. The victim would be avenged. Objectivity and impartiality were no longer important barriers to justice. What followed would resemble not so much justice as a ritual cleansing, in which the morally right would purge the past and make clean the present. You might call it a witch-hunt. Lets review the coverage. And we can begin with the Mirror, the paper that put so much stock in Nick, the man who said he knew children had been killed at sex parties. Nick said he had witnessed VIP paedophiles rape and murder children between 1975 and 1984. How many words does the Mirror tell its readers on the closure of Operation Midland, much of which was based on Nicks claims? Nothing. Not a single word. Zippo. Wow, indeed. This is the paper that told its readers: The Sun (front page): VIP Paedo Probe Collapses Readers are asked, Howe can he stay? Howe is Met chief Bernard Hogan-Howe. Page 4-5: Probe was based on ramblings of a lying fantasist madman. ANGRY Harvey Proctor last night accused the Met of wrecking his life with a VIP paedophile ring investigation based on the ravings of a mad fantasist. The gay ex-Tory MP, one of several prominent figures named by an anonymous accuser known only as Nick, wept with relief yesterday as the 3million Operation Midland inquiry shut down and he was told he faced no further action. He said: Operation Midland was based solely on the ramblings of a liar and a madman. The damage that has been done cant be undone. The Met allowed me to be wrongly depicted as a paedophile, child abuser and child murderer by a fantasist. These are some of the worst things that can be said of another human being. Nothing the Metropolitan Police do or say, no weasel words of regret, can remove that indelible stain. I hope they are proud of themselves for irreparably ruining my life. To be innocent and accused of something you never did in such a public fashion is hideous. Proctor deserves our sympathy. For those readers late to the story, the Sun gives a potted history of Nicks allegations: He claimed he had witnessed Mr Proctor strangling and beating to death two young boys at one of these parties. Nick also alleged former Home Secretary Lord Brittan, Britains most decorated soldier Lord Bramall, another senior Army officer and two ex-heads of MI5 and MI6 also attended sex parties in London. The claims caused a sensation when they were publicised by Labour deputy leader Tom Watson and the Exaro News website. The homes of 92-year-old D-Day veteran Lord Bramall and the late Lord Brittan were raided. And one senior detective described Nicks claims as credible and true. But doubts began to surface when Nicks stepbrother and ex-wife described him as a fantasist who was having a mid-life crisis. The claims against Lord Bramall were eventually dropped. Police also found there was no case against Lord Brittan. What say the police? Scotland Yard Deputy Assistant Commissioner Steve Rodhouse yesterday insisted Operation Midland had been handled well. He refused to apologise to Mr Proctor and said: I regret any distress caused to any individual but the Met cant apologise for investigating serious allegations. But why were these allegations played out in public? Was it all a panicked reaction to Jimmy Savile, a man celebrated in life but in death dug up and beaten with sticks a papal and British knight who had groomed the nation? Page 10: Mets disgrace The Suns lead editorial is given to a review of the Met, the police force that not so long ago was harassing Sun journalists. FROM start to finish there was a loathsome arrogance about the way Bernard Hogan-Howes Met Police conducted its VIP paedophiles witch-hunt. It was still evident yesterday even as Operation Midland was shut down in failure and disgrace They publicly insisted from the start the claims, from one man, were credible . . . and true. They turned out to be baseless smears blackening several distinguished names. But no one is held to account and no one resigns. And, despite zero evidence, no one prosecutes the victim for perverting justice or wasting police time. The Mail (front page): Humiliation of the Yard Only, they are not humiliated. They just carry on. The police do not listen. The police only tell. Controversially, there are no plans to prosecute Nick, despite calls for him and a news website which peddled his claims to be put on trial for allegedly perverting the course of justice. One of the most extraordinary claims was that former Prime Minister Ted Heath persuaded former MP Harvey Proctor not to castrate Nick with a penknife which was then handed to him to keep as a souvenir. The tone of the Mets statement was in sharp contrast to its media appeal to victims 15 months ago in which senior investigating officer Det Supt Kenny McDonald described Nicks allegations as credible and true. We should cheer this: Mr Proctor last night paid tribute to the free, inquisitive and independent-minded media, who have all supported me over the last year. Free speech matters. Journalism must not be regulated with licenses and a State-run board deciding what is and what is not important for people to know. Mr Proctor said: I believe Operation Midland should now be the subject of a truly independent public inquiry. I consider that Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, (Assistant Commissioner) Patricia Gallan, (Deputy Assistant Commissioner) Steve Rodhouse and (Det Supt) Kenny McDonald should tender their resignations. I believe Nick should be prosecuted for seeking to pervert the course of justice. Lord Bramall told the BBC: If theyd taken any trouble to put their effort into questioning the so-called victim, I think they would have found that (his allegations) were very unlikely. The Mail features the story over pages 4-5:. Guy Adams lists the charge sheet against the Met. He begins: In December 2014, Det Supt Kenny McDonald held an emotional press conference and described Nicks story as credible and true. McDonald has never explained why he made this extraordinary comment, given that Nicks claims hadnt been tested in court. At that point McDonald hadnt interviewed a single suspect, didnt know who the alleged murder victims were, and hadnt found a single body. So why did the police make such a big noise about the investigation? And how is it that amid the talk of VIPs and powerful people getting way with it, not a single top coppers name alive or dead was dragged into the mire? But surely the biggest issue is that the failures of Operation Midland make us suspicious of all other investigations into past crimes. In the rush to look on the publics side and morally correct, the police have damaged their own reputation and made us wary of complainants who allege they are victims of a cover up. Paul Sorene Posted: 22nd, March 2016 | In: Key Posts, Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink (ANSA) - Rome, March 21 - Italy was in shock Monday after Spanish authorities confirmed that seven Italians were among 13 Erasmus exchange students killed in Sunday's bus crash in the Catalonia region of Spain. The Italian victims were named as Francesca Bonello, Lucrezia Borghi, Valentina Gallo, Elena Maestrini, Elisa Scarascia Mugnozza, Serena Saracino, and Elisa Valent. Another 34 people were injured in the crash, six of them Italians. Two were treated and released, and four others - three young women and a young man - are still being treated for non-life threatening injuries at hospitals in Barcelona, Reus, Tarragona and Tortosa. The bus was taking the Erasmus students back to their base in Barcelona after attending Valencia's famous Las Falles festival, in which each city district burns a wood and paper mache monument it has worked year round to build. "I'm sorry, I fell asleep," the 63-year-old driver reportedly told emergency rescue workers at the crash site. The man is reportedly being investigated for 13 negligent homicides and is hospitalized in intensive care with a pulmonary contusion. Premier Matteo Renzi flew to Barcelona on Monday to personally convey the nation's condolences to the grieving parents, some of whom had driven all night to reach the Catalonian capital so they could identify their daughters' bodies because they couldn't get a flight. President Sergio Mattarella sent condolences to the families of the victims of "the extremely serious and absurd incident...which caused the death of so many young university students, a lot of them Italian. This is a very sad day for Italy and for Europe". Pope Francis sent a telegram to Tortosa Bishop Enrique Benavent Vidal, saying he was "deeply pained" at the "irreparable loss" of young lives, and voiced hope that the injured would recover quickly. Catalonia is holding two days of mourning on Monday and Tuesday. Under 2006 European Union regulations, professional drivers must not get behind the wheel more than nine consecutive hours and must rest for at least 11 consecutive hours within a 24-hour period. Transportation companies cannot offer bonuses or raises based on distances driven, and are as liable for any violations or crashes as the drivers are. (ANSA) - Rome, March 22 - This should be a good Easter for foreign tourism in Italy, the national tourist board ENIT said Tuesday. The best results are expected to come from within Europe, particularly Switzerland, the Netherlands, United Kingdom, France and the Czech Republic. Germany, Austria, Spain, Portugal and Hungary should also perform well, ENIT added. The forecasts are based on interviews with 150 international tour operators operating in 26 international markets. Over Easter art cities such as Rome, Venice and Florence remain the most popular destinations, while in this special Jubilee year devoted to mercy many tourists are also expected for religious reasons. During the spring period more generally the northern lakes and Adriatic coastal resorts will be a draw and increasing numbers are also expected in the southern regions and islands, with good prospects for Sardinia, Sicily, Campania and Puglia in particular. The situation is different for BRIC countries, although outbound tourism from Russia is expected to pick up again in 2016 after two difficult years. Arrivals from Brazil are expected to fall as a result of major domestic problems there. Forecasts for China for the coming months are optimistic despite slow economic growth, while the numbers from India continue to register a limited rise. "Our monitoring tells us that Italy has a positive tourist image and that the international markets appreciate our product line, often with a high evaluation," ENIT President Evelina Christillin said. "However, our country needs to increasingly orientate itself towards a tourist system that is mature and evolved, in which businesses must also be a factor of quality in the global offer," she continued. "We need to present a system that is complete with structures, services and products, an integrated system with the territory is its raw material and reception system as its central point," Christillin said. (supersedes previous)(ANSA) - Rome, March 22 - Italy was on maximum alert Tuesday in the wake of at least two terror attacks in Brussels, which Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said have not involved any Italian nationals. The so-called Islamic State (ISIS) terror group has claimed responsibility for the deadly attacks, Russian news agency TASS cited the ISIS-linked Amaq news agency as saying. "For now we have no record of Italian citizens involved in the Brussels attacks," Gentiloni said. He added he has spoken to his Belgian counterpart, who "is working with the embassies. It will be a few hours before the situation becomes clear". He added that "our diplomatic infrastructure has been activated to provide maximum assistance to our fellow nationals". The foreign ministry urged Italians in Brussels to "avoid going anywhere at the moment" and said its crisis unit is "active". Italian Ambassador to Brussels Vincenzo Grassi said "so far no hospital we have contacted has communicated the presence of Italians but this is not definitive". He said the Belgian cellphone network was "very bad, many hospitals are submerged with calls and we too are finding it hard to respond to all the questions arriving at the embassy". He said the situation was "still very confused". Belgian authorities earlier confirmed 26 people died and 130 were wounded in blasts at the capital's Zavantem national airport and at the Maalbeek Metro Station in central Brussels near European Union headquarters. An unexploded device and a Kalashnikov rifle were found at the airport, where government officials earlier confirmed 11 were killed and 81 were wounded. All transportation in Brussels has been shut down as the army took to the streets. The Italian interior ministry raised the security level at Italy's airports and Interior Minister Angelino Alfano has summoned the national public safety committee to assess "further measures to combat and prevent the terrorist threat". Premier Matteo Renzi will preside over that meeting to be held at 15:00, and will make a statement on the attacks at the premier's office in Palazzo Chigi at 16:00. (see related) (ANSA) - Caserta, March 21 - Three burglars who broke into a property in Villa Literno near Caserta early on Monday, prompting the homeowner to open fire and kill one of them, entered by a ground-floor bathroom window, sources have said. The burglars entered the villa while the owners - a couple and two of their three children - were asleep after forcing external window bars, the sources added. The owner opened fire as the three thieves were trying to steal a car. They escaped in their white BMW getway car, dumping the body of the shooting victim - said to be an Albanian national aged around 40 - at a hospital in Aversa. The BMW was later found burning in a field nearby, where firefighters arrived on the scene and put out the blaze. "It's not nice to shoot at a person," said the owner's wife. "But it's the eighth time they've tried to break in. If these bandits had told us they needed money we would have helped them as we've done in the past - but you can't break into our home, putting us and our children in danger". The woman added that their daughter raised the alarm when she came home from a party at 3:30 and saw someone driving her dad's car out of their gate. She said the burglars made off with a wallet containing 1,000 euros in cash, and tried to drive off in her husband's car. However when her husband started shooting at them from the balcony, the would-be car thief abandoned the car and jumped onto the white BMW instead. A neighbour said there had been numerous burglaries in the area recently. "The thieves are almost always foreign and we are tired of this situation," the neighbour said. The property owner, an industrial mechanic, has been placed under investigation in connection with the shooting. The possible charges against him have not been made known. (ANSA) - Rome, March 22 - Part of a priceless collection of Etruscan-era treasures that police discovered in a Geneva repository in 2014 is returning to Italy, including temple paintings, sarcophagi, friezes, statues and busts. The collection, which authorities believe disgraced British art dealer Robin Symes locked up in the repository, is estimated to be worth around 9 million euros in total. It consists of treasures believed to have been stolen by tomb raiders in the 1970s and 80s from excavations in Lazio, Campania, Calabria, Sicily and Puglia, art crime specialist General Mariano Mossa said at a news conference on Tuesday. Illegally exported and acquired by Symes, the pieces were destined for markets in Britain, the U.S. and Japan. Instead they remained hidden in crates for decades. Colourful Etruscan paintings recovered among the haul are "exceptional and unique", according to superintendent for Etruria Alfonsina Russo. She said their restoration could help shed new light on Etruscan art and the decoration of temples at the time. She is convinced that the decorated fragments and paintings of divinities derive from the raiding of an Etruscan temple in Cerveteri, north-west of Rome. They point to two phases of painting of the site: one in the middle of the sixth century BC and a refurbishment at the end of the same century. "In terms of the paintings of Etruscan temples we previously had only the fragments conserved in the Villa Giulia Etruscan Museum," she said. She added that she hoped their restoration would only take about a year, and that it could be open for the public to follow. (ANSA) - Rome, March 22 - The death toll from Tuesday terror attacks in Brussels has risen to 34, Belgian broadcaster VRT said. The Italian foreign ministry said Italian nationals were among over 100 injured in the attacks at Maelbeek metro station near European Union headquarters and Brussels' Zaventem airport. The authorities said at least 20 people were killed in the metro attack and at least 14 others were killed at the airport. The Islamic State (ISIS) terror group has claimed responsibility for the attacks, Russian news agency TASS cited the ISIS-linked Amaq news agency as saying Tuesday. Separately, Egyptian daily Al Watan's website cited the ISIS-linked Amaq News Agency as saying ISIS "has pledged further operations in Europe" and "stated that the (Brussels) operation was based on high-speed planning and enactment". An unexploded device and a Kalashnikov rifle were found at Brussels airport and bomb disposal experts conducted a controlled explosion. The Tihange nuclear power plant at Liege has been evacuated, Belgian broadcaster VTM said Tuesday, as part of the emergency measures. Rail traffic between Germany and Belgium has been interrupted, with trains arriving from Frankfurt and Cologne being made to stop at Aquisgrana. The blockade is expected to remain in force for the rest of the day. The border between Belgium and France has also been "totally closed" following the attacks, according to the railway consortium Thalys that manages high-speed rail connections btween France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. Road border crossings between France and Belgium have been closed too. Also on Tuesday, French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve announced the deployment of a further 1,600 police officers throughout France in response to the Brussels attacks. Italy was on maximum alert Tuesday following the terror attacks in Brussels. The foreign ministry urged Italians in Brussels to "avoid going anywhere at the moment" and said its crisis unit is "active". The Italian interior ministry raised the security level at Italy's airports and Interior Minister Angelino Alfano has summoned the national public safety committee to assess "further measures to combat and prevent the terrorist threat". Premier Matteo Renzi will preside over that meeting to be held at 15:00, and will make a statement on the attacks at the premier's office in Palazzo Chigi at 16:00. Alitalia cancelled all Tuesday flights in and out of Brussels. Brussels airport will remain closed until further notice. Alitalia is offering alternative flights. Italian intelligence sources said that the risk of such attacks in Italy remains high although there are no signs of an imminent action. The intelligence sources said the deadly attacks in Belgium came as no surprise, given that intelligence analysts had indicated a high risk of fresh attacks in Europe in the wake of the November 13 Islamist attacks in Paris that killed 130 people. Belgium and France are both at high risk due to their high numbers of radicalized Muslim citizens or residents and the fact that they house EU institutions. The sources said al-Qaeda and ISIS terrorist groups aim for waves of simultaneous attacks in European capitals, requiring long-term planning and military and logistical capabilities. Italy has received generic threats but allied intelligence services have given no indication of any imminent, specific threat. All national prefectures and police stations have orders to reinforce security measures at airports, railway stations, subways, and all areas considered at risk (ANSA) - Rome, March 22 - Defence Minister Roberta Pinotti was among the many Italian leaders to express their solidarity with the victims of Tuesday's multiple terrorist attacks in Brussels that left at least 26 people dead and 135 wounded. "Pain and mourning for the victims of the terrorist attacks in Brussels," Pinotti said in a post to her Twitter account. Health Minister Beatrice Lorenzin also entrusted her feelings to Twitter. "Their pain is my pain, our pain," she wrote. "Only a united and caring Euriope can defeat the ills of our time." Her thoughts were echoed by ex president of the republic Giorgio Napolitano, who described the attacks as an "insult to the unity and freedom of Europe". "They must become motivation not only for waging a common and boundless battle against international terrorism, but also for highlighting fully and with absolute determination those conquests of the European construction that we have let be scorned by those who deny them and obscured in the memory and conscience of too many citizens of our Europe," Napolitano said. Susanna Camusso, leader of Italy's biggest trade union federation CGIl, called on "diplomacy and peace" rather than weapons to speak in response to a "new series of attacks". Ex civil protection chief and centre-right mayor candidate for Rome Guido Bertolaso also made an appeal for peace. "These actions are not just the result of madness but also of the incapacity to manage complex problems on a global level," he said. "What is happening in Syria did not come about by chance bulldozers don't lead anywhere," Bertolaso continued. "I fear the problem of these attacks has also been caused by a series of bulldozers, metaphorically speaking. This is the lesson of history. Barbed wire, repression and canon fire have never improved mankind," he added. "Europe is burning under the fire of Islamic fundamentalism and the government appears not to notice: (Premier Matteo) Renzi, (Interior Minister Angelino) Alfano and (President Sergio) Mattarella tell us terrorism must be fought with culture but it is a phrase that is good for (wrapping) chocolates," said Bertolaso's right-wing rival for mayor, Brothers of Italy (FdI) president Giorgia Meloni, possibly alluding to the notes of love and friendship that are used to wrap Perugina's Baci chocolates. (ANSA) - Rome, March 22 - Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said Tuesday that Italy's level of alert remains at two on a scale of three after the terror attacks in Brussels, but added that security around potential targets has been beefed up. "We maintain alert level two, the one below the level when an attack is taking place," Alfano told a news conference after a meeting of security officials. "I have also authorised measures to reinforce the security of sensitive targets and there will be other expulsions of subjects who have not respected the rules of our country". Alfano said that an Iraqi national known to the French and Belgian authorities after making contact with terrorists was arrested in Naples on Tuesday. He said that no country could consider itself "zero risk" for terrorism, but added that "up to now our prevention system has worked well". The EU must set up "an integrated control system" for all member States, Alfano said after a meeting of the national public-order and security committee. He said the Italian authorities were studying possible "more effective security measures". But he insisted that the public should not be cowed into changing lifestyles by the terrorists. "Limiting movements is not the solution to defeat terrorism, it's fear," Alfano said. "Our freedom is under attack. Our grandparents won it, our parents defended it and we'll do everything to pass it on to our children". BEIRUT - The Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad on Tuesday condemned the bloody Islamist terror attacks in Brussels earlier in the day but accused the West of "mistaken policies". It also said Western powers have "become familiar with terrorism to serve their own interests," Syrian pro-government SANA news agency reported. Cairo's Al-Azhar University, considered the top theological authority in the Sunni Muslim world, on Tuesday said the Brussels terror attacks were "hateful crimes" that go "against the tolerant precepts of Islam, of all the monotheistic religions and human rights". (ANSAmed). Save the Children may halt activities in Greek hotspots After UNHCR decision; 'detention centers', concerns over Idomeni (ANSAMED) - ROME, MARCH 22 - Save the Children is currently weighing whether or not to stop its activities in Greek hotspots. The director of the Italian branch of the international NGO, Valerio Neri, on Tuesday praised the decision by UNHCR to halt some of its activities at the hotspots after new provisions brought in have transformed them into detention centers. UNHCR will continue to be present in order to monitor refugee rights and to provide information on how to request asylum. ''The EU-Turkey agreement,'' Neri said, ''to be implemented in the coming weeks is part of a context lacking the necessary procedures and facilities, as well as information, reception and security for migrants arriving on the islands. Moreover, we are particularly concerned about the thousands of people stuck at the border with the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, in Idomeni, in unacceptable environmental, hygienic and protection conditions, who have not been adequately informed of what will happen and who are living in a state of uncertainty, confusion and fear. Within this context, we are afraid that the protests underway in the camp may worsen and due to these people's belief that they have nothing left to lose, affecting the over 4,000 children including infants in the camp.'' ''In light of these developments, our organization as well - which until now has chosen to operate even in the centers in order to seek to safeguard children and especially unaccompanied minors, who are the most vulnerable group - is considering whether to revise is position in the coming hours. In the meantime, we have decided to suspend the transportation of migrants from some landing areas to the hotspots and the distribution of food and other essential supplies at the Moria site,'' Neri said. (ANSAmed). Libya: summit of neighboring countries starts in Tunis To seek peaceful solution to the crisis (ANSAmed) - TUNIS, MARCH 22 - A meeting of Libya's neighboring countries has kicked off in Tunis to examine the evolution of the Libyan crisis and study means to find a peaceful solution. Representatives of the UN, African Union, Arab League, Libyans and foreign ministers of Algeria, Egypt, Sudan, Niger and Chad are scheduled to attend. The Secretary General of the Arab League El Araby, in statements to the Egyptian Mena news agency, has expressed the hope that the ''Libyan national reconciliation government can soon move to Tripoli and take its powers''. According to El Araby, ''the new government will need to bring back stability and security in the country, rebuilding the armed forces''. The official spokesman of the Tunisian presidency of the Republic, Moez Sinaoui, stressed in an interview to a local radio that Tunisia has a very important mediating role in the Libyan crisis. ''Tunisia does not interfere in domestic affairs of other countries and thus also of Libya'', said Sinaoui, but can have the role of ''facilitator'' for the solution of the political crisis and the formation of a national unity government in Tripoli. (ANSAmed) (ANSAmed) - TEL AVIV, MARCH 22 - Observers with the UN Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) could return to the Syrian side of the Golan Heights they left a year and a half ago following fighting between the army of Bashar al-Assad and rebel groups, Yediot Ahronot reports. The paper said that over the past few weeks UNDOF officials have carried out inspections on the ground to verify whether it is possible for the peacekeepers to return. Last week, Israeli head of State, Reuven Rivlin, has raised the issue with Russian President Vladimir Putin and assured that Israel would welcome the deployment of observers along the boundary line with Syria on the Golan Heights. (ANSAmed) Grand Mosque of Rome condemns Brussels attacks 'Unite against monstrosities', says Redouane (ANSAmed) - ROME, MARCH 22 - The Islamic Center of Italy, which manages the Grand Mosque of Rome, has spoken out against Tuesday's terrorist attacks in Brussels, which killed at least 34 people. ''Terrorism is against all religions. In addition to condolences and condemnation, however, we need to find the strength to unite against these barbaric acts and violence, and not only to ensure and defend democracy, threatened as it is by obscurantist forces of unusual monstrosities,'' secretary general of the Rome Islamic Center, Abdellah Redouane, said. He added that any silence shown when faced with this violence must be condemned, and that support must instead be given to those working for dialogue between religions and cultures and for the promotion of pluralism and respect for freedoms.'' (ANSAmed). (ANSAmed) - Rome, March 22 - At least 34 people were killed and over 130 were wounded in a double terrorist attack in Brussels on Tuesday morning, according to official sources. Fifteen people died, 10 were seriously wounded and a further 45 sustained milder injuries in an attack at Maelbeek metro station near European Union headquarters, public transport company Stib has said. Earlier Belgian authorities said 11 people died in a separate double blast at Brussels' Zaventem airport. The so-called Islamic State (ISIS) terror group has claimed responsibility for deadly attacks, according to ISIS-linked Amaq news agency. The attack on the airport occurred at the check-in desks of American Airlines and the departure lounge was completely devastated. Scenes of panic were reported among the passengers, who were immediately evacuated from the airport, which was shut down. Eye witnesses said thousands of people were evacuated on the runway for security reasons, where they are still located. Others reported hearing gunshots before the blasts and that they heard someone scream in Arabic. According to Belgian media, an unexploded device was found inside the airport. An emergency plan is in place to divert flights to Charleroi and railway connections to and from the airport have been interrupted. The Belgian government immediately summoned a security council and the whole country was put on its highest alert level. Meanwhile, rail traffic between Germany and Belgium has been interrupted, with trains arriving from Frankfurt and Cologne being made to stop at Aquisgrana. The blockade is expected to remain in force for the rest of the day. The border between Belgium and France has also been "totally closed" following the attacks, according to the railway consortium Thalys that manages high-speed rail connections btween France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany. Road border crossings between France and Belgium have also been closed. Also on Tuesday French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve announced the deployment of a further 1.600 police officers throughout France in response to the Brussels attacks. Italian Foreign Minister Paolo Gentiloni said that so far there are no reports of Italians injured in the attacks. ''So far no Italian citizens have been reported as involved in the attacks'', Gentiloni said at the foreign ministry, opening the general council of Italians abroad. Gentiloni added that he spoke with his Belgian counterpart who ''is working with embassies and some hours will be necessary before the situation, which is tense, becomes clear''. (ANSAmed). Brussels attacks 'destabilize peace worldwide', Arab League 'Join forces and cut terrorism funding', says secretary general (ANSAmed) - CAIRO, MARCH 22 - The Arab League on Tuesday firmly condemned the Brussels attacks, saying that they aim to destabilize peace and security throughout the entire world. The statement was made by outgoing secretary general of the 22-nation group of Arab nations, Nabil El-Araby, at the group's headquarters in the Egyptian capital. He added that the international community should join forces to eradicate terrorism, dry up its sources of funding and prevent terrorists from getting ahold of modern technology to commit crimes. El-Araby expressed solidarity with the Belgian population, hit by ''his horrible crime''. He was speaking on behalf of the political organization that includes states from North Africa, the Horn of Africa and the Middle East. (ANSAmed). (By Paul Virgo). ROME - Italy increased its already intense security measures after 34 people were killed in terrorist attacks in Brussels on Tuesday. Three Italian nationals were among over 200 injured in the attacks at Maelbeek metro station near European Union headquarters and Brussels' Zaventem airport. They subsequently named as Chiara Burla, a 24-year-old Florence resident; Marco Semenzato, an architect from Veneto who had lived in Belgium for some time, and a Michele Venetico, a young Brussels airport employee who is the child of Sicilian migrants. They were all allowed to leave hospital after receiving treatment. The authorities said at least 20 people were killed in the metro attack. Two of the Brussels airport attackers blew themselves up and the third is a fugitive, Belgian federal prosecutor Frederic Van Leuw told a press conference Tuesday. The man was caught on surveillance cameras wearing a light-coloured jacket and hat while his two companions were all dressed in black. The Islamic State (ISIS) group, which was behind Novembers terrorist attacks in Paris, has claimed responsibility for the attacks, several sources said. A "secret cell" carried out the Brussels terror attacks that killed 34, the ISIS network Amaq News said in claiming responsibility for the attacks Tuesday. "What awaits you will be even harsher and more bitter," it said. ISIS's claim of responsibility is "information still to be verified", Belgium's federal prosecutor said on TV. But prosecutors was also quoted as saying that a bomb containing nails, chemical products and an ISIS flag were found in searches in the Schaerbeek area of Brussels. Rail traffic between Germany and Belgium was interrupted after the attacks, and the border between Belgium and France was shut down. French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve announced the deployment of a further 1,600 police officers throughout France in response to the Brussels attacks. The foreign ministry urged Italians in Brussels to "avoid going anywhere at the moment" and said its crisis unit is "active". Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said that Italy's level of alert remains at two on a scale of three, but added that security around potential targets has been beefed up. "We maintain alert level two, the one below the level when an attack is taking place," Alfano told a news conference after a meeting of security officials. "I have also authorised measures to reinforce the security of sensitive targets and there will be other expulsions of subjects who have not respected the rules of our country". Alfano said that an Iraqi national known to the French and Belgian authorities after making contact with terrorists was arrested in Naples on Tuesday. He said that no country could consider itself "zero risk" for terrorism, but added that "up to now our prevention system has worked well". The EU must set up "an integrated control system" for all member States, Alfano said after a meeting of the national public-order and security committee. Alitalia cancelled all Tuesday flights in and out of Brussels and more flights will be scrapped on Wednesday. The Vatican said Pope Francis's Easter schedule will not be affected by the attacks. Italian intelligence sources said that the risk of such attacks in Italy remains high although there are no signs of an imminent action. The intelligence sources said the deadly attacks in Belgium came as no surprise, given that intelligence analysts had indicated a high risk of fresh attacks in Europe in the wake of the November 13 Islamist attacks in Paris that killed 130 people. Belgium and France are both at high risk due to their high numbers of radicalized Muslim citizens or residents and the fact that they house EU institutions. (ANSAmed). BEIRUT - The Syrian regime said that attacks Tuesday in Brussels were the ''inevitable consequence of wrong policies'', according to state-run news agency SANA. An official source at the foreign ministry said the attacks in Brussels and others that previously took place in Paris and elsewhere in the world ''stress once again that terrorism has no boundaries'' and are ''an inevitable consequence of the wrong policies and of tolerance for terrorism to realize certain agendas and attempts to legitimize it through trying to classify as 'moderate' terrorist groups that are actually but offshoots of the Takfiri Wahhabi doctrine''. The reference was to Wahhabism, the official religion of Saudi Arabia, and to the US and other European countries that since 2012 have expressed willingness to support ''moderate'' armed opposition groups in Syria. The Syrian ministry called on the international community to stop terrorism. Al-Azhar says Brussels attacks violate Islamic teachings CAIRO - Sunni Islam's leading institute of learning with juridical authority, Al-Azhar, said Tuesday's attacks in Brussels were a ''hateful crime'' against the tolerant teachings of Islam as well as against all monotheistic religions and human rights. (ANSAmed). Grand Mosque of Rome condemns Brussels attacks The Islamic Center of Italy, which manages the Grand Mosque of Rome, has spoken out against Tuesday's terrorist attacks in Brussels, which killed at least 34 people. ''Terrorism is against all religions. In addition to condolences and condemnation, however, we need to find the strength to unite against these barbaric acts and violence, and not only to ensure and defend democracy, threatened as it is by obscurantist forces of unusual monstrosities,'' secretary general of the Rome Islamic Center, Abdellah Redouane, said. He added that any silence shown when faced with this violence must be condemned, and that support must instead be given to those working for dialogue between religions and cultures and for the promotion of pluralism and respect for freedoms.'' Brussels attacks 'destabilize peace worldwide', Arab League CAIRO - The Arab League on Tuesday firmly condemned the Brussels attacks, saying that they aim to destabilize peace and security throughout the entire world. The statement was made by outgoing secretary general of the 22-nation group of Arab nations, Nabil El-Araby, at the group's headquarters in the Egyptian capital. He added that the international community should join forces to eradicate terrorism, dry up its sources of funding and prevent terrorists from getting ahold of modern technology to commit crimes. El-Araby expressed solidarity with the Belgian population, hit by ''his horrible crime''. He was speaking on behalf of the political organization that includes states from North Africa, the Horn of Africa and the Middle East. The Boeing 737-800 crashed on Saturday after executing a go around and then circling the Rostock airport in Russia for up to two hours. All 62 people on board died in the crash.. Both recorders have been transferred for download and analysis to the IAC laboratory in Moscow. Specialists from the Russian investigation team are responsible for data download and analysis and began this this task today (22 March) in the presence of the UAE team head. H.E. Saif Mohamed Al Suwaidi, the director general of GCAA said: The data contained in the flight recorders, represents an important aspect of the investigation, The FDR data may show the progress of the flight and the behavior of essential aircraft systems. The investigation team will analyse the recorded data to determine the aircraft technical performance and crew control inputs. The CVR contains all communications which took place in the cockpit and communications between the crew and ATC. The CVR records the last two hours of the flight. Ismail Al Hosani, Assistant Director General of the Air Accident Investigation Sector, said: As of today all of the wreckage has been collected from the accident site and transported to a hangar for initial examination. The wreckage will be sorted and any parts that may require forensic examination will be identified. Meanwhile Flydubai has confirmed that the families of all of the victims had now been contacted. CEO, Ghaith Al Ghaith, said: Flydubai would like to express once again its deepest sympathies to all those who have lost loved ones in this terrible tragedy. The families of all those who have been affected by flight FZ981 remain our top priority. We would also like to express our gratitude for the work of the Russian officials, local authorities, emergency services and volunteers in difficult conditions in the aftermath of the accident and we continue to offer our support to them. Flydubai has opened its Family Assistance Centre in Rostov-on-Don to provide support and information to bereaved families. We would like to ask that the families and friends of those affected by this sad event are given the time and space they need to grieve, a company spokesperson said. Le CBD, cette molecule active du cannabis a aujourdhui le vent en poupe. Et cela est en grande partie du au fait quil permet... 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. Francis issues a message. Al-Azhar slams attacks that "violate the tolerant teachings of Islam". Explosions at the airport and a metro station kill 34 and wound almost 200 people. For 20 minutes we just stood there, not knowing what to do . . . There was nothing, neither police nor ambulances, says Lebanese witness. Vatican City (AsiaNews) This morning explosions occurred in the Belgian capital of Brussels, at the airport and a metro station. Reacting to the event, Pope Francis expressed his closeness in prayer to those who lost their life in todays attacks and reiterated his condemnation of the "blind violence" that causes so much pain. The pontiffs message, from Cardinal Secretary of State Pietro Parolin to the Archbishop of Malines-Brussels, Mgr Jozef De Kesel, reads: Learning of the attacks in Brussels, which have affected many people, His Holiness Pope Francis entrusts to God's mercy those who died and he prays for those who have lost relatives. He expresses his deepest sympathy to the injured and their families, and all those who contribute to relief efforts, asking the Lord to bring them comfort and consolation in this ordeal. The Holy Father again condemns the blind violence which causes so much suffering and imploring from God the gift of peace, he entrusts on the bereaved families and the Belgians the benefit of divine blessings. Sunni Islam's leading seat of learning, Al-Azhar, also issued a statement condemning Tuesday's attacks in Brussels, which "violate the tolerant teachings of Islam". This morning, two explosions occurred at Brussels Airport in Zaventem, one near a US airliner check-in desk. According to Belgian Minister of Health, Maggie de Block, 14 dead were killed and 81 wounded. An hour later, another blast hit the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels, close to the headquarters of the European Commission and the European Council, with 20 dead and more than a hundred wounded. Belgian authorities responded by locking down the citys main transport venues. The airport has been closed with consequences for air traffic in much of Europe, and so has the citys metro and bus service. Vehicular traffic is almost at a standstill, as armoured vehicles took up position in the citys streets. One witness to the unfolding events was Kassem, a Lebanese researcher who was at the airport ready to leave. "I arrived at 7:50 am. The explosion occurred 10 minutes later, in the departures hall. I did not understand immediately what was happening. Everyone started to scream. I saw a section of the ceiling collapse. We did not realise right away that it was a bomb. We started to run towards the exit, pushing each other. When I got out there was a second explosion, more powerful; shattered glass began falling on us. Outside everyone was in shock. I saw people crying, screaming; I could see the wounded. For 20 minutes we just stood there, not knowing what to do . . . There was nothing, neither police nor ambulances. We started walking, went down into the parking lot, following one another. No one gave us directions. Afterwards, police, soldiers, and ambulances began arriving. They continued the evacuation and blocked access to the airport." The city-state is still one of the most fertile grounds for the Christian faith in the whole of Southeast Asia. More than 1,100 catechumens will be baptised at Easter. This means an increase of 17 per cent over last year, said Mgr William Goh Chye Seng. However, the goal is Not to reach a number, but to spread the Gospels message of love and mercy." Singapore (AsiaNews/EdA) More than a thousand baptisms are expected on Easter Sunday in Singapore, confirming that the local Church is one of the most dynamic in South-east Asia. In its latest figures, the Eglises d'Asie (EdA) news agency reports that Christianity is the only growing religion in the country. Next Sunday, 1,127 catechumens will enter the community of believers, which already counts 196,000 members. By comparison, there will be only 5,000 new baptisms in France, home to 40 million Catholics. Baptism in the Archdiocese is not a mere formality, and can take more than year. The Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults entails weekly meetings with other catechumens, trained lay people and a priest. Each catechumen has a sponsor for the entire period of preparation. "This year, we have 992 new catechumens, said Archbishop William Goh Chye Seng. This means an increase of 17 per cent over last year. However, we can do better; we have to work harder. Hover, the goal is Not to reach a number, but to spread the Gospels message of love and mercy." Davinus Thiang, 28, will be baptised on Easter Day. "My mother, he said, was the only Catholic in my family". After her death, he began to look into her faith until he decided to embrace it. Even though she is Buddhist, my fiancee will be present at my baptism on Easter Sunday." Practice is very strong among Singaporean Catholics. In an average Mass during Lent, it is impossible to find an empty seat in Christ the King Catholic Church, in Ang Mo Kio district. The mass is solemn with a 30-member choir performing old and new songs. Counting readers, those who distribute the communion and those at the entrance, some 60 people are involved in the service. In most of the citys 31 parishes, parishioners also gather in the dining hall to eat together after the liturgy. For some parishes, the size of the crowds can be a problem. In some cases, they have had to expand because of more members. Singapore's religious landscape is constantly changing. Religiosity is progressing, but so is the number of those without religious affiliation. Between 2010 and 2015, Christianity is the only faith to expand, from 18.3 per cent came to 18.8 per cent. Buddhists are still the largest group, but dropped from 44.2 per cent to 43.2 per cent. Muslims also declined from 14.7 per cent to 14 per cent, as did Hindus, from 5.1 per cent to 5 per cent. By contrast, those without a declared religion rose from 17 per cent to 18.5 per cent. The vicariate responds to the appeal of the Salesian family, launched yesterday by Rector Major. Prayer meetings for kidnapped priest and slaughtered nuns. A special moment of recollection expected at the end of the Mass "in Cena Domini". "Still under strong shock; a thought to the Christians in Yemen who are without a shepherd". Sanaa (AsiaNews) - The Vicariate of Southern Arabia joins the appeal launched yesterday by the Rector Major of the Salesians, who asked members of the congregation and the entire Christian community to pray for the four nuns massacred in Yemen and for the liberation of Fr. Tom Uzhunnalil. The priest of Indian origin has been in the hands of the jihadist commando for more than two weeks. On March 4, the jihadists - perhaps close to the Islamic State - attacked the compound of the Missionaries of Charity in Aden, in the south of the country, killing four religious and 12 others . So far there has been no official word on the fate of the 56 year old Salesian born in Ramapuram, near Pala (Kottayam, Kerala), into a deeply Catholic family. His uncle Mathew, who died last year, was also a Salesian and the founder of the mission in Yemen. Father Tom has been in the Arab country for four years. During Holy Week and, in particular, on Thursday after the Eucharist "in Cena Domini", the Salesian Family is asking Christians to observe a moment of prayer for this special intention. Speaking to AsiaNews, Mgr. Paul Hinder, Apostolic Vicar of Southern Arabia (United Arab Emirates, Oman and Yemen), stresses that there is still a strong sense of "shock" caused by the "brutal murder" of the nuns. He asks for the "intercession" of the "four martyrs" for the sake of Yemen and the Middle East, for the "triumph of peace and end to the violence." The prelate confirms that "there is still no definite information" on Fr. Toms fate, though "the hope remains alive that it will be released." In the context of the Holy Week celebrations, adds the vicar, "I ask you all to pray" for the Indian priest, especially "during the hours of adoration" that will follow the rituals of the Last Supper. The vicar has reaffirmed his solidarity and sympathy "to those affected by the events in Aden, to the victims' families, the Missionaries of Charity, the Congregation of the Salesians" and "the few Christians remaining without a shepherd during this time of trial". Meanwhile, the haggard Christian community still present in Yemen - Fr. George, some nuns and some of the faithful, most of which are concentrated in Sanaa - is preparing Easter celebrations with discretion and in the midst of many difficulties. In the capital there will be moments of prayer, but celebrations will be simple, there will be no large gatherings, to avoid the danger of new attacks. There will also be private moments of prayer in Aden and other areas, held in anonymous locations. Many Dead After Explosions Rock Belgium's Capital Trending News: Terrorist Attacks In Brussels Have Killed Dozens; City On Lockdown Why Is This Important? Because this is another tragic terrorist attack on European soil. Long Story Short The Belgian capital has been hit by bomb explosions at Zaventem Airport and Maelbeek metro station with at least 26 reported fatalities. It has been suggested the attacks are revenge for the arrest of Paris terror suspect Salah Abdeslam. Long Story ISIS has claimed responsibility for the explosions at Brussels Zaventem Airport and the city's Maelbeek metro station that killed at least 26 people this morning. #BREAKING Brussels airport attack caused by suicide bomber: prosecutor AFP news agency (@AFP) March 22, 2016 Breaking: Islamic State claims credit for series of bombings in #Brussels in retaliation for its participating in coalition against ISIS. Mashable (@mashable) March 22, 2016 According to Belgian broadcaster RTBF, the federal prosecutor has indicated that the airport attack was the work of a suicide bomber and pictures have surfaced on social media of scenes of devastation in the departures area of the airport. There have been reports from news agency Belga, reported by the BBC, that voices were heard shouting in Arabic near the American Airlines counter immediately prior to the explosions, which took place at 8 a.m. local time. BREAKING: NYPD says it is increasing security around NYC in light of the explosions in #Brussels FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends) March 22, 2016 Explosions are believed to have occurred near the SN Brussels Airlines desk and the American Airlines desks in the departures hall. American Airlines has now stated that all of its employees and contractors are safe. Soon afterwards there was a bomb explosion at Maelbeek metro station near the offices of the EU and the Brussels metro system has been completely shut down. Videos have emerged of passengers being led down the tracks away from Maelbeek station. This was the scene a short while ago, between the Arts-Lois and Maelbeek metro stations in Brussels. pic.twitter.com/aTZjqsF7Gt Evan Lamos (@evanlamos) March 22, 2016 Initially it was reported by broadcaster VTM that 10 people had been killed in the metro blast, but they now appear to be saying that there have been no confirmed deaths after that explosion. At this stage, exact details on the attacks are unclear, but there has been speculation that the perpetrators are seeking revenge for the armed raid in Belgium that led to the capture of Paris bombings suspect Salah Abdeslam last Friday. Brussels, de facto capital of the EU, is also the jihadist capital of Europe. And the Remainers dare to say we're safer in the EU! #Brexit Allison Pearson (@allisonpearson) March 22, 2016 France has moved to send an extra 1,600 police officers to its borders while the UK governments COBRA emergency committee is meeting, Prime Minister David Cameron reported on Twitter. The attacks come only days after an Islamic State suicide bomber killed four in Istanbul. UPDATE: 8:10 a.m. Brussels transport authority has said that 15 died and 55 were wounded in the blast at Maelbeek metro station, but this total is provisional and could yet increase. The two explosions at Brussels airport were in the public drop-off area before any security checks take place, it is believed that they were at either end of the check-in area. Contrary to previous reports, American Airlines have told the BBC that they were not the closest checkin desk to either explosion. The latest estimates are that 13 died and 35 were injured at Zaventem Airport. Belgium has increased its terror threat level to four for the entire country all transport networks in Brussels have been suspended. UPDATE: 1:31 p.m. AP News reports that federal police in Belgium have issued a wanted notice for a suspect in the Zaventem airport bombing. BREAKING: Federal police in Belgium issue wanted notice for suspect in Brussels airport bombing. The Associated Press (@AP) March 22, 2016 Own The Conversation Ask The Big Question: Who is behind the attacks in Brussels and will they strike again? Disrupt Your Feed: Thoughts and prayers go out to the people of Brussels after yet another senseless attack on innocent people. Drop This Fact: Belgium has supplied the highest per capita number of fighters to Syria of any European nation, believed to be between 350 and 500 out of a total population of 11 million. Free newsletter Subscribe to our FREE newsletter service and well keep you up-to-date with the latest breaking news, cutting edge opinion, and expert analysis affecting both your business and the industry as whole. Please enter your email address below and click on Sign Up for daily newsletters from Australasian Lawyer. Baker & McKenzie partner Lauren Magraith has acted for the underwriters of the $135m an institutional placement and selldown of securities in Aconex Placement and the A$494m entitlement offer by Qube Holdings Limited. Completed this week, joint lead managers and $120m institutional placement of securities underwriters Macquarie Capital and UBS AG (both Australian branches), conducted a selldown of approximately $15m of existing Aconex shares in conjunction with the deal. Since it listed back in December 2014, Aconexs share price has gone from $1.90 to $5.60 and was added to the S&P/ASX200 index last Friday, lead partner on the deal Lauren Magraith said. Proceeds from the institutional placement will be used to fund the acquisition of Germany-based software firm Conject Holding GmbH. We have seen an uptick in activity over the past month, particularly in the equity capital markets space, Magraith told Australasian Lawyer. Capital markets had a slow start to the year, both domestically and in most regions offshore, due to macroeconomic factors and market volatility. However, post reporting season there has been an increase in activity with a number of secondary issuances and block trades being executed, and potential IPOs being tested with investors. We remain optimistic about the outlook going forward. Earlier this week, Magraith completed the $494m entitlement offer announced by Qube Holdings acting for the joint lead managers and underwriters. The proceeds will be used to fund its participation in the $9.05bn acquisition of Asciano Limited by a consortium including Qube, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, CIC Capital Corporation and a Brookfield Consortium made up of Brookfield Infrastructure Partners, GIC Private Limited, British Columbia Investment Management Corporation and Qatar Investment Authority. It represents the culmination of a long takeover battle for control of Asciano between the Qube consortium and the Brookfield consortium, which commenced back in July of 2015, she said. Both the Brookfield and Qube consortiums have joined together to agree a proposal for the break-up of Ascianos assets between the various parties, resulting in a $9.28 per share all cash takeover proposal for Asciano shareholders (vs the initial $9.05 cash-and-scrip proposal from Brookfield). The two litigation firms have agreed to terms in a funding agreement with ACA Lawyers to prosecute on behalf of shareholders who have suffered losses, according to a report by AAP.But rival law firm Maurice Blackburn has also flagged plans to file a shareholder class action against the company.Shareholders in this case have a pretty clear choice - they can either register with Maurice Blackburn which has recovered more than $2 billion for clients and is clearly the nation's leading class actions law firm, or they can take their chances with another firm that has yet to recover $1 from an Australian class action. the company said.Slater and Gordon is working on a restructuring proposal after announcing a $814m write down on UK operations last month, leading to a net loss of $985.3m. The firm, which became the first law firm to list on the ASX in 2007, has lost 90 per cent of its $2.75bn market value following its aquisiton of the professional services divisions of Quindell at around $1.3bn in 2015.Shareholders are now calling into question statements issued by the companys board of directors in relation to earnings guidance in 2015, AAP reported.JustKapital executive chairman Philip Kapp said that the claim may involve UK-bases institutional investors, who have also suffered losses as a result of the companys alleged misconduct.Slater and Gordon declined AAPs request for comment. The Australian government is being urged to pass legislation which would allow security-cleared lawyers to act as advocates for terrorism suspects in closed court hearings. A statement from the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security says that the bipartisan group recommends passing the Counter-Terrorism Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2015The bill would bring in a number of measures including introducing legislation to create a system of special advocates as soon as practicable and no later than the end of 2016 to represent the interests of control order subjects who have had information withheld from them. The committee says the proposed changes are in response to the evolving nature of the terrorist threat in Australia.Andrew Stott is to become managing partner of international TMT law firm Olswang Asia with effect May 1st. Stott has been in Singapore since 2012 when he joined the firm to launch its corporate practice. He will succeed Rob Bratby who is returning to London to take up a global telecoms and emerging markets role for the firm. Olswangs Singapore office also has a new partner following the promotion of commercial lawyer Matt Pollins. He becomes the firms first Singapore associate to join the partnership.Bird & Bird has hired two new partners for its Asia-Pacific offices. Jonathan Choo joins from Olswang in Singapore where he was head of the Asian arbitration and DR practice and co-head of the international arbitration group. Meanwhile Robert Rhoda joins the Hong Kong office from RPCs commercial disputes group.Witara Cakra Advocates in Indonesia has hired two partners to bolster its capital markets and banking capabilities. Kristo Molina and Fajar Ramadhan join WCA, the associate firm of White & Case, from Hiswara Bunjamin & Tandjung, associate of Herbert Smith Freehills . Molina has joined this week and Ramadhan starts next Monday. International law firm expands Asia-Pac locations Debevoise and Plimpton has announced the opening of its third Asia-Pacific office. Tokyo is the international law firms ninth location overall and aims to build on a 60-year relationship with Japanese clients. The office will be led by corporate partner Christopher Smeall and Naomi Aoyama, a Japanese bengoshi who is also qualified in New York. The new location will focus on mergers & acquisitions, financings and other transactional and investment matters, as well as corporate governance. Ashurst announces new global integrated platform Debevoise and Plimpton has announced the opening of its third Asia-Pacific office. Tokyo is the international law firms ninth location overall and aims to build on a 60-year relationship with Japanese clients. The office will be led by corporate partner Christopher Smeall and Naomi Aoyama, a Japanese bengoshi who is also qualified in New York. The new location will focus on mergers & acquisitions, financings and other transactional and investment matters, as well as corporate governance. Ashurst has launched a new integrated global team as it continues to innovate in line with client needs.Ashurst Advance will establish the firms R&D capabilities and will focus on three key areas of service delivery: legal resources, led by Ashursts Glasgow team; specialist legal project management, led by Sydneys Rachael Moore; and technology, led by Tae Royle in Brisbane.Partner Mike Polson and head of strategic projects Mark Higgs have been appointed directors of the new global team.John McGuinness has been appointed associate director of communications for baker & McKenzie in Asia-Pacific. The New Zealander will be responsible for the Firms internal and external communications strategy and execution at a regional level; and joins from Barclays Bank where he last held the position of Vice President of Corporate Communications for Southeast Asia and Australia.Corporate partner Aedamar Comiskey has added her name to the trio hoping to lead international firm Linklaters as senior partner. The Belgium-based lawyer joins Jean-Pierre Blumberg and Charlie Jacobs in the race to succeed Robert Elliott. Earlier rounds of the battle included Asia head Marc Harvey.The Law Society says that the legal profession adds $25 billion (around AU$46 billion) to the UK economy. The first study of its kind in the UK found that each 1 per cent growth in the legal profession adds 8,000 jobs and 379 million to the economy and every 1 of revenue generated in the profession adds 1.39 to the rest of the economy.The research also found that the sector grew by 8 per cent from 2014 to 2015 and that an estimated 370,000 people are employed in legal services in the UK. (63 per cent are solicitors or employed by solicitor firms.)Growth in the legal services sector has averaged 3.3 per cent every year for the last decade - outstripping UK economic growth rate of 1.2 per cent. The scholarship is the only national scholarship dedicated the helping Indigenous students in becoming lawyers.French, who is passionate about providing access to justice in rural and regional communities, wants to open up her own firm one day.[It means Ill] be a good role model to other students, she told Australasian Lawyer.There [are] not many indigenous people in the legal sector and its so important to have that connection with those people. Law Council of Australia president Stuart Clark AM presented the scholarship in Sydney last week. He said she had risen above a highly competitive field to be selected.Mikaelas story, at this very early stage, is already one of remarkable clarity of purpose, he said.Receiving the prestigious award, she said, connects her with previous recipients valuable connections as an external student where making friends and meeting people in the legal industry is hard.Because indigenous people are so underrepresented in the legal system and I think having people who have been so successful in the industry is very importantLiving in Cairns, French needs to travel between Cairns and Brisbane in order to sit exams and complete assessments. She said the money will help her will assist her in her studies for that reason.The scholarship means that French will now be able to relocate to Brisbane where therell be opportunities for her to begin her legal career by applying for clerkships. An emergency funding package worth $20m has been introduced to ease the pressure in NSW criminal courts by bringing in additional judges, public defence counsels and a new process to identify early guilty pleas. Yesterday, NSW attorney-general Gabrielle Upton announced that deputy director of public prosecutions John Pickering and Crown prosecutor Siobhan Herbert will join the District Court bench. [The two] were appointed to enable the District Court to schedule 126 additional sitting weeks, to provide much needed relief for courts experiencing delays in regional and metropolitan areas, she said. The funding package also delivers 130 sitting weeks over an 18-month period, which will be allocated based on need. According to a report by the Sydney Morning Herald, a lack of resources created a backlog of almost 2000 cases last year as Local and District cases are funnelled through the Downing Centre and Parramatta justice precinct. Last year, keeping prisoners in remand whilst awaiting trial cost an estimated $60m (a figure predicted to rise this year with the rising prison population). Upton said she hopes the new initiatives to identify early guilty pleas will boost court productivity. The NSW government is expected to introduce further reforms to avoid backlogs in the future. Upton allocated to additional judges last year to hear child sex abuse cases and implemented a trial for an online court last year. The Department of Immigration and Border Control has warned that people arriving and leaving Australia face delays in the next week due to strike action by staff members.From Tuesday 22 March until 01 April there is likely to be problems at various international airports and cruise ship terminals due to an industrial dispute over pay and conditions.Members of the Community and Public Sector Union (CPSU) are taking the action over pay cuts and loss of family friendly working conditions in a dispute that has been going on for almost two years."While the likely level of participation is unknown, we strongly encourage airline and cruise ship passengers to plan for potential delays by arriving at international airports and cruise ship terminals even earlier over the next few weeks," said a spokesman for the DIBP."The Department is working closely with stakeholders to minimise the impact on the travelling public, cargo and mail operations. We are also ensuring appropriate contingencies are in place for visa and citizenship services," the spokesman added.On Tuesday 22 March there is likely to be disruption at Cairns International Airport, Perth Airport, Darwin Airport and Adelaide Airport, while the action continues on Wednesday 23 March at Melbourne International Airport, Brisbane International Airport, Cairns International Airport, Perth Airport, Darwin Airport and Adelaide.The following day, Thursday 24 March there will be a 24 hour stoppage across all departmental work sites in Australia. This stoppage is expected to cause delays for travellers arriving and departing Australia at all international airports and cruise ship terminals.It continues on Friday 25 March 2016 at Sydney International Airport, Melbourne International Airport, Brisbane International Airport, Cairns International Airport, Perth Airport, Darwin and Adelaide.On Easter Sunday 27 March there will be disruption as Sydney International Airport, Melbourne, Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane, Cairns and Darwin and action at Sydney, Brisbane, and Cairns on Monday 28 March.Action is also scheduled for the 29, 30 and 31st March and the 01 April if there has been no settlement in the meantime."Striking workers are targeting the politicians and bosses who continue to treat them with contempt, but these rolling strikes may have some impact on the public, particularly at international airports. As with previous action at airports, we would advise passengers to contact their airline for information on whether they will be effected, and allow extra time when departing and arriving on international flights," said CPSU national secretary Nadine Flood"Some of the Border Force officers who'll be striking at airports and elsewhere still facing actual cuts to their take home pay Among the most disturbing cuts that the Government refuses to take off the table are the removal of essential family friendly conditions in many agencies that allow people to juggle their work with their parenting and other responsibilities," she added. Nicholas Jackson entered the dealership determined to leave with the keys of his brand-new BMW, but his plan had a few flaws. He offered to pay for the car with a credit card and an EBT card, to which the sales persons obviously kindly asked him to leave. Not being the type to take no for an answer, Nicholas admitted to losing a battle, but not the war.So he came back the next evening, broke into the dealership and got the car he must have felt he deserved, but was previously denied by the mean employees. Probably thinking ahead at the time he'll want to change the car, he also took the keys to 60 other vehicles from the dealership.Well, his plan turned sour when the car he stole ran out of gas - which, since it's a dealership car, probably meant two miles down the road (in this case, he actually made it to Palm City). He didn't have the money to fill it up and the people at the gas station probably denied his EBT card as well, so Nicholas was left with a dead car and a whole lot of useless keys.The Martin County Deputies responding to a suspicious person call found both the stolen car and key, and the man who did it. Nicholas didn't offer any explanation for his actions, but come to think about it, what exactly could he have said? "Officers, here, have my EBT card and let's forget about the whole incident, shall we? [wink]."Mr. Jackson was charged with Grand Theft Auto and was taken to Martin County Jail. His bail is set at $20,000, but something tells us that too can't be paid with food stamps. SUV Yes, we are amazed at the industry not following suit, especially since the Prancing Horse started the offensive back in 2011, with the brilliant FF We're mainly looking at Bentley and Aston Martin here, with the two British Grand Tourer builders ticking all the right boxes for building a proper four-seater, not just the 2+2 coupes or the large sedans they've offered so far.Under the VW Group umbrella, Bentley might just step up the Continental GT's game, with the Grand Tourer's next generation currently being in an advanced development stage, as shown by the various spyshots we've brought you.Moving over to Gaydon, the DB11 Aston introduced in Geneva brings the company into a new era, one that offers it the possibility to develop a GTC4Lusso rival. For now, we're bringing you the rendering above - coming from digital artist Rain Prisk , this offers us a brilliant taster.At the Swiss event, Andy Palmer, Aston Martin's CEO, admitted the DB11 is not just the most important car the marque has launched recently but makes for the top effort in the company's 103-year history.And we couldn't agree more. For one thing, the modular architecture that replaced Aston's aging VH platform would easily allow for some extra room in the back. As for the cabin, the Daimler collaboration could mean the interior would be gifted with all the right switchgear, leaving behind the outdated cabins Astons used to offer.Then we have the new engine compartment contents. The DB11 introduces a new 5.2-liter twin-turbo V12 and we're certain we'll get to see multiple incarnations of this versatile engine in the future. The low-end twist could very well serve a family-orientated Aston. And yes, the Brits will build an, but that's another story for another time. This is the second year when Chile decides to skip becoming a part of the Dakar Rally. The project was opposed by 42 deputies, while 33 voted in favor and 17 abstained. The main reason invoked by the opponents of hosting the Dakar Rally in Chile was an environmental one.The deputies say that hosting the rally leaves a serious impact on the environment and the effects of multiple cars, trucks and motorcycles passing through the Chilean countryside are hard to ignore.Having Chile out of the Dakar route for 2017 also has an impact on the competition because the tall sand dunes that are the trademark of the sporting event are hard to come by in South America, and Chile was the right scenery for at least a serious section of the overall route.The Minister of Sport, Natalia Riffo, says that the country is already striving to cover the costs of disaster relief in certain areas of Chile. Inclement weather and floods have wreaked havoc in Chile and Peru, and caused a lot of distress for the population in the affected areas.Minister Riffo says that the Chilean authorities acknowledge the importance of a major competition such as the Dakar Rally, but the costs for running the competition are too high. According to mostreliablecarbrands , ASO, the company that organizes the Dakar Rally, asked for $4 million (3.56 mil), a sum that, for the moment being, Chile can't afford to spend on sporting events.Last-minute rumors say that ASO is also contemplating leaving South America and organizing the Dakar Rally in a different part of the world, but where such a race will be staged is, for now, impossible to say. Dr. Hinds will be remembered as an iconic figure among both racers and the road racing enthusiasts in that part of Europe. A motorcycle fan from the age of 17, John Hinds got his medial degree in 2003 at the Queen's University Belfast.Right after he became a medical doctor, Hinds joined the Motorcycle Union of the country's medical team and was one of two doctors who rode motorbikes that provided rapid response for crashes during the races.Hinds and his colleague Fred MacSorley would ride behind the racers during the warm-up and opening laps of each race to make sure they could intervene quickly in case of a serious accident.It was during his volunteering work when Hinds understood the need of air ambulance and started advocating the creation of such a service, having even met the Health Minister in 2015.The meeting occurred days before Hinds was killed on the 4th of July while providing the usual medical support in a practice session for one of the Skerries 100 races. His wife carried on his legacy and the BBC awarded him the Get Inspired Unsung Hero award.Last week, Chancellor George Osborne announced 4.5 million ($6.4 mil or 5.7 mil) to help the Air Ambulance Service for Northern Ireland, the sole UK region without such medical infrastructure. As a sign of respect for the legacy of John Hinds, the helicopter will have the call sign "Delta 7," which was also used by him."The announcement was made at Craigavon Area Hospital, where the doctor was based before his death. Dr Hinds' family and partner took on his campaign for an air ambulance in the wake of his death," the Belfast Telegraph reports. The Daimler Santiago Truck Manufacturing Plant in Santiago Tianguistenco, in the State of Mexico, was presented with the 2015 Mexico National Quality Award. The award recognizes organizational excellence in terms of innovation, flexibility, and customer service. In a ceremony held at the official residence of the President of Mexico, Enrique Pena Nieto presented the 2015 Mexico National Quality Award to the Daimler Santiago Plant executive team. Every year, hundreds of businesses and institutions compete for the award with the objective of becoming the Mexican national benchmark for quality and competitiveness, according to Daimler. The Santiago manufacturing facility produces the Freightliner M2, Columbia, Coronado, and Cascadia models for the NAFTA and Latin-American regions, specifically for countries such as Peru, Chile, Colombia, and Puerto Rico, according to the company. Image courtesy of the Domestic Security Alliance Council. The FBI has issued a public service announcement warning vehicle owners and auto industry manufacturers about the threat of vehicle hacking. The notice was released in coordination with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. While manufacturers attempt to limit the interaction between vehicle systems, wireless communications, and diagnostic ports, these new connections to the vehicle architecture provide portals through which adversaries may be able to remotely attack the vehicle controls and systems, the PSA said. Third-party devices connected to the vehicle, for example, through the diagnostics port, could also introduce vulnerabilities by providing connectivity where it did not exist previously. The PSA provides steps that vehicle owners can take to minimize vehicle cybersecurity risks. Some of the advice provides this reminder: Hackers can make their job a whole lot easier if theyre also skilled con artists. Vehicle owners need to keep their guard up. For years criminal scammers have successfully hacked into computers using phishing email schemes that was the case with the much-publicized Sony Pictures security breach. Another popular hacking scam relies on phoning people at random and claiming to be a Microsoft tech support employee who just received an alert about a critical computer problem that needs immediate attention. Some computer owners have fallen for the ruse and handed control of their computer over to the scammer. What if criminals use similar tactics to hack vehicles? If a manufacturer issues a notification that a software update is available, it is important that the consumer take appropriate steps to verify the authenticity of the notification and take action to ensure that the vehicle system is up to date, the PSA noted. The FBI notice also warned manufacturers that if they regularly make software updates available online, criminals might eventually exploit this delivery method. A criminal could send socially engineered e-mail messages to vehicle owners who are looking to obtain legitimate software updates, the notice pointed out. Instead, the recipients could be tricked into clicking links to malicious Web sites or opening attachments containing malicious software (malware). The malware could be designed to install on the owners computer, or be contained in the vehicle software update file, so it could be introduced into the owners vehicle when he or she attempts to apply the update via USB. Hackers also might mail vehicle owners USB drives containing a malicious version of a vehicles software, the PSA said. The FBI notice also advised vehicle owners to make sure their vehicle software is up to date, to be careful when making any modifications to vehicle software, to maintain awareness and exercise discretion when connecting third-party devices to their vehicle, and to be aware of who has physical access to their vehicle. If vehicle hacking is suspected, vehicle owners need to notify the vehicle manufacturer or authorized dealer, NHTSA and the FBI. You can access the full PSA by clicking here. TomTom has released the results of the TomTom Traffic Index 2016, the annual report detailing the cities around the world with the most traffic congestion. This years list has had a shift in the standings with Istanbul being knocked off the top spot by Mexico City. Drivers in the Mexican capital can expect to spend on average, 59% extra travel time stuck in traffic anytime of the day, and up to 103% in the evening peak periods versus a free flow, or uncongested, situation adding-up to 219 hours of extra travel time per year. Next in the rankings are Bangkok (57%), Istanbul (50%), Rio de Janeiro (47%), and Moscow (44%), making up the top five most congested cities in the world, according to TomTom. Using data from 2015, the TomTom Traffic Index looks at the traffic congestion situation in 295 cities in 38 countries on six continents from Rome to Rio, Singapore to San Francisco. TomTom said it works with 14 trillion data points that have been accumulated over eight years. This is the fifth year of the TomTom Traffic Index. Looking at TomToms historical data, traffic congestion is up by 13% globally since 2008. However, there are striking differences between continents. While North Americas traffic congestion has increased by 17%, Europe as has only increased by 2%. It could be suggested that this points to economic growth in North America, and economic depression in the rest of Europe. This European figure could be heavily influenced by Southern European countries such as Italy (-7%) and Spain (-13%) where there has been a marked drop in traffic congestion in the past eight years, according to TomTom. Enterprise Rent-A-Car has opened one of its Exotic Car Collection branches in Switzerland. Photo courtesy of Enterprise Holdings. Enterprise Rent-A-Car has launched its Exotic Car Collection in Zurich, Switzerland. Whether its a Maserati, Mercedes, Porsche, or Ferrari, customers can now rent a luxury or exotic vehicle from Enterprises Exotic Car Collection branch in Zurichs financial district. A selection of the luxury cars will be located at the Park-Hyatt hotel, where guests can rent the vehicles through the hotels concierge. The Exotic Car Collection will be operated by AIL Autovermietung AG (AIL), the Enterprise-branded franchisee for Switzerland, according to the company. AIL is a fleet management and dealership company that dates back over 80 years. In 2014, AIL began operating the Enterprise brand with just 20 cars. It now has a fleet of more than 800 vehicles and 10 branches with airport locations in Zurich, Geneva, and Basel. The launch of the Enterprise Exotic Car Collection in Switzerland is a testament to our strong partnership with Enterprise, said Stefan Baumann, managing director of AIL/Enterprise Rent-A-Car Switzerland. This high-end rental service cannot be found anywhere else in the city. Its not only available to Swiss customers who enjoy high value vehicles, but to any customer looking for a luxurious experience in the center of Zurich. The opening of the Zurich branch is the latest in what has been a period of rapid expansion for the Enterprise Exotic Car Collection. In the last six months, Exotic Car Collection has opened a branch at Londons Heathrow Airport and seven locations in North America, according to the company. Switzerland is home to a large number of multinational corporations and banks, while its scenic natural environment and cosmopolitan cities make it an important leisure destination, as well, said Peter A. Smith, Enterprises vice president of global franchising. The expansion of Enterprise Exotic Car Collection in Zurich demonstrates the success of our efforts to grow the Enterprise brand, provide opportunity, and support to our franchisee partners, and continue to deliver high level service to customers. Photo via Wikimedia/Mattes Europcar Group, a European vehicle rental service, has signed a global partnership with the Professional Womens Network (PWN) Global, a nonprofit that supports executive and professional women. Gender mix is a key component of Europcars corporate values and is at the heart of the companys culture, with a perfect balance at group level between men (50.3%) and women (49.7%), according to the company. At board level, Europcar Group has 25% of women within its management board and 30% within its supervisory board. Europcar aims to support womens contribution at every level of the company. Called Women on the Move, this project will be developed in each of Europcars corporate countries. Ambassadors have been appointed to support, develop, and enable the partnership through projects around specific topics such as mentoring, training, personal, and professional development, according to the company. We are very proud of this partnership with PWN Global, and personally, this project is really dear to me, said Caroline Parot, Europcar Groups CEO Finance and member of the Management Board. In an industry often seen as male- dominated, Europcar has always been committed to womens contribution and development. This project involves all women from the company, at every level, from station to HQ and will bring great value to the company. At a commercial level, as part of the partnership, Europcar has become the mobility partner of PWN Global enabling members to benefit from its service at special rates. We are thrilled to launch our partnership with Europcar, as they support our vision of balanced leadership, said Sonya Richardson, president at PWN Global. Throughout our 25 city networks and with our global community, we are now able to offer our members quality worldwide mobility. PWN Globals aim is to support organizations and individuals, in all regions of the world, to strive for balanced leadership for the economic success of businesses, the performance of teams, and the advancement of professional women and men. Our partnership with Europcar brings us closer to achieving our goal. In addition, sharing this commitment with women customers, Europcars Spanish subsidiary has launched WomenCar with solutions meeting womens mobility needs. Currently being tested in Spain, this approach could be developed and rolled out in other Europcar corporate countries, says the company. Hertz has been a commercial partner with CAR Inc. since 2013. Photo courtesy of The Hertz Corp. Hertz Global Holdings has reached an agreement to substantially reduce its equity position in China Auto Rental (CAR Inc.), China's largest rental car company, while at the same time extending its existing commercial agreement between the two companies to 2023. Hertz has been a commercial partner with CAR since 2013, and the extension enables the company to participate in the anticipated growth of China's car rental market, according to Hertz. In 2015, Hertz announced that it intended to monetize its investment in CAR Inc. and use the proceeds for general corporate purposes. The company reached an agreement to sell 203,554,310 shares of CAR Inc. stock to UCAR Technology Inc. on March 13, 2016, with expected proceeds of approximately $240 million, according to the company. This transaction, together with two other share sales in 2015, reduces Hertz Global's ownership in CAR Inc. to approximately 1.7% of CAR Inc.'s total shares, says the company. "Through our relationship with CAR Inc., Hertz has extensive reach and brand presence in the rapidly growing Chinese market, and our customers will continue to have a broad access to car rental and ride services there," said John Tague, president and CEO of Hertz Global Holdings. "Extending our agreement through 2023 enables us to work with CAR to further leverage our global network to grow rental and car hire business into and out of China with business and leisure travelers." With the commercial agreement, CAR will have use of the Hertz brand while Hertz customers will have access to car rental and chauffeur services through CAR's locations in more than 700 locations across China, according to Hertz. CAR also has an agreement with UCAR, a leading ride-sharing company in China. A high-school science teacher is planning to fly a Cessna 182 from coast to coast next month using aviation biofuel made from Camelina plant seed oil. Well use a 50-50 blend of aviation biofuel and Jet A to power the fuel-sipping SMA diesel engine, said Ross McCurdy, who plans to launch from North Central Airport near Providence, Rhode Island, around April 16, and fly to Santa Monica, California. The blended fuel is a drop-in replacement for Jet A and can be used in jet engines, turboprop engines and aviation diesel engines.McCurdy has taken delivery of two 55-gallon drums of the special fuel at North Central, and has cached the fuel, in five-gallon cans, at airports along the route. Its easier to handle that way, we can just pour it into the plane, he said. McCurdy is planning to host events at the stops along his route to promote aviation, science education and clean energy. Hes bringing along his 12-year-old son for the flight, and several other pilots who will fly along at different times, most of them members of Paramus Flying Club, based in New Jersey, which owns the airplane. Our goal is to demonstrate the potential of renewable energy, McCurdy said. This will be the first transcontinental flight using aviation biofuel in a certified light aircraft. The planned flight stops are University Park Airport, in Pennsylvania; Moraine Airport, near Dayton, Ohio; Walnut Ridge Regional Airport, in Arkansas; Grand Prairie Municipal Airport, in Texas; Dona Ana County Airport, in New Mexico; Chandler Municipal Airport in Arizona; and Santa Monica. He plans to depart Santa Monica on April 22, Earth Day. McCurdy has been planning the flight for several years; we first interviewed him about the project in 2012, and in 2013 he flew the 182 from Providence to Kitty Hawk and back. Large-scale drones could safely fly in the National Airspace System by using ADS-B technology, according to NASA researchers. The agency said recently it has developed a patent-pending integrated communications and control system thats capable of collision warnings as well as real-time traffic and weather updates. Vigilant Aerospace Systems has recently signed a licensing agreement with NASA to develop the system. One of the major advantages of this system is that it uses existing FAA infrastructure to help keep drones away from other aircraft, said Kraettli Epperson, CEO of Vigilant. It also gives nearby aircraft the ability to be aware of the drone and improves situational awareness for the drone operator. Vigilant intends to commercialize the technology as part of its new FlightHorizon product suite, NASA said, and will equip both manned and unmanned aircraft with the hardware and software. The system provides synthetic cockpit views and detect-and-avoid commands to improve flight safety for all kinds of aircraft. The technology has been tested extensively on Armstrongs remotely piloted aircraft Ikhana Predator B. We were excited about licensing this technology because we see the potential for these particular inventions to not only make significant contributions to flight safety for both unmanned and manned aircraft but also to be a platform technology for the future of flight automation, said Epperson. 22 March 2016 13:21 (UTC+04:00) The staff of Azerbaijans embassy in Belgium and the countrys diplomatic mission to NATO were not affected by the explosions in Brussels, the embassy told Trend March 22. Azerbaijans diplomatic missions urged their employees and Azerbaijani nationals, living and staying temporarily in Belgium, not to go out and visit crowded places. Earlier, the Azerbaijani Foreign Ministry instructed the countrys embassy in Belgium to find out if there are any Azerbaijani nationals among the victims of the Brussels airport explosions. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 22 March 2016 14:11 (UTC+04:00) Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev has extended condolences to the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Belgium Charles Michel over the explosions that occurred March 22 in Brussels. We were deeply saddened by the news of heavy casualties and injuries as a result of explosions in the city of Brussels, said the president. We are extremely outraged by this horrible tragedy, resolutely condemn all manifestations of terror and fully support the fight against terrorism. On the occasion of this tragedy, on behalf of the people of Azerbaijan and on my own behalf, I extend my deep condolences to you, the bereaved families and the loved ones of those who died, and also wish the injured the swiftest possible recovery, added President Aliyev. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 22 March 2016 16:09 (UTC+04:00) Azerbaijans President Ilham Aliyev congratulated President of Pakistan Mamnoon Hussain on the occasion of the Pakistan Day. On my own behalf and on behalf of the people of Azerbaijan, I cordially congratulate you and the people of your country on the occasion of your public holiday - Pakistan Day, the president said. He added that Azerbaijan and Pakistan are bound by traditional friendship, cooperation and strategic partnership. The expansion and deepening of relations between the two countries is based on strong political will, mutual trust and confidence, added the president. I believe that we will continue joint efforts to strengthen friendly ties between our countries and peoples and successfully maintain our cooperation in bilateral and multilateral formats. On this remarkable day, I extend my best wishes to you, and wish the friendly people of Pakistan peace and prosperity, said President Aliyev. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 22 March 2016 16:14 (UTC+04:00) Armenia is in self-isolation and deep political, economic and demographic crisis, Hikmat Hajiyev, the Azerbaijani foreign ministrys spokesman, told Trend March 22. Hajiyev was commenting on Armenian Deputy Foreign Minister Shavarsh Kocharyans another remark against Azerbaijan. Hajiyev said that the policy being conducted by the Armenian military-political leadership is contrary to logic and far from civilized behavior and ethics. "These actions, based on the thought of a field commander and military dictatorship, pose a threat to the entire region, he said. Today Armenia is in self-isolation and deep political, economic and demographic crisis due to the militaristic policy of Yerevans military dictatorship." Hajiyev said that Armenias intensive violation of the ceasefire along the line of contact and on the Azerbaijani-Armenian border and other provocative actions once again testify to the essence of Yerevans regime. In this regards, Armenian officials statements on ceasefire, regional cooperation and conflict settlement cause laughter and disgust, Hajiyev 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 22 March 2016 17:43 (UTC+04:00) The pilots of Azerbaijani and Turkish armed forces conducted a joint operation during the TURAZ Sahini 2016 joint tactical-flight exercises in Konya, Turkey. The purpose of the operation was to destroy a supposed enemy's strategic facilities, as well as aircraft, the Azerbaijani defense ministry told Trend March 22. The plan of operation, weather conditions and other issues were discussed with pilots. The operation involving MiG-29, F-16 fighters and SU-25 bombers was conducted successfully and according to the plan. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 22 March 2016 20:50 (UTC+04:00) The Azerbaijani foreign ministry in strongest terms condemns the heinous terror acts perpetrated in Brussels that caused many deaths and injuries. We extend our heartfelt condolences to the families and relatives of those who lost their lives and wish for a speedy recovery to the wounded, the ministry told Trend March 22. The Republic of Azerbaijan, as a country suffering from terrorism, has always made its contributions to counter-terrorism efforts of the international community and jointly with the partners will continue to support the fight against all forms and manifestations of terrorism, the statement said. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 22 March 2016 09:49 (UTC+04:00) Following his spectacular crash at the Australian Grand Prix from which he thankfully escaped unharmed, McLaren-Honda driver and Official Ambassador of the 2016 FORMULA 1 GRAND PRIX OF EUROPE, Fernando Alonso today expressed his gratitude for the huge outpouring of support he has received from his fans in Azerbaijan in the wake of Sundays accident. I would like to thank all my supporters in Azerbaijan for their many messages of support over the last days. I am incredibly grateful to have escaped without serious injury from Sundays accident and know just how lucky I am to be alive. This is the life of a racing driver but it is helped so much by the unwavering support I have always received from my fans, which includes the many amazing people in Azerbaijan. More than ever, I feel so honoured to be the Ambassador for the inaugural F1 race in beautiful Baku and I cant wait to race in front of all of you this summer. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 22 March 2016 09:46 (UTC+04:00) Twenty-two PKK terrorists were killed in southeastern Turkeys provinces of Mardin, Sirnak and Hakkari on Sunday, Turkish military announced Monday, Anadolu reported. According to the statement released by the Turkish General Staff, 10 PKK members were killed in Mardin's Nusaybin district Sunday, which increased the total number of terrorists killed in the province to 42 since operations began. In Sirnak, five PKK terrorists were killed Saturday, bringing the total number of terrorists killed in the province to 33 since operations began. Also, one PKK terrorist was captured in Sirnak's Balveren village, the statement added. In Hakkari, seven terrorists were killed in Yuksekova district, increasing the total number of terrorists killed in the province to 45 since operations began. Also, two foreign nationals suspected of being Daesh terrorist group members were captured in Gaziantep, while three other foreigners were held in Hatay provinces while they were trying to cross into Turkey from Syria illegally. A joint counter-terrorism operation by the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) and police forces aims to captre PKK terrorists, dispose of planted explosives, fill in ditches, and remove barricades following the declaration of a curfew in Turkey's southeast on March 14. The PKK also listed as a terrorist organization by the U.S. and the EU resumed its 30-year armed campaign against the Turkish state in July 2015. Since then, around 300 members of the security forces have been martyred, and thousands of PKK terrorists have been killed in operations across Turkey and northern Iraq. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 22 March 2016 09:48 (UTC+04:00) Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan have cut the number of troops they had previously deployed at a disputed section of their common border in the Chalasart area, the Kyrgyz Border Guard Service reported on Monday, TASS reported. "As a result of the negotiations between border guard service officials of Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan on March 20 the sides cut the number of troops at checkpoints set up on Kerben - Ala-Buka road in the Chalasart area", the statement says. The sides have left only eight soldiers each there. "The situation on the Kyrgyz-Uzbek state borders Chalasart area section is characterized by relatively stable," the document says. On the Kyrgyz side of the border, this section is guarded only by the Border Service military. "Kyrgyzstans border units deployed at this border section have sufficient manpower and resources for ensuring border security", the report says. According to the reports, the public order in the cross-border area "is ensured by law enforcement agencies, jointly with which the border guards have been engaged in awareness-raising activities among the local population." Uzbekistan deployed two armored personnel carriers and 40 troops at the disputed border section in the Chalasart area on Friday and unilaterally closed the Madaniyat highway checkpoint on the border with Kyrgyzstan and imposed restrictions on Kyrgyz citizens entry at the Dostuk highway checkpoint. In response to this, the Kyrgyz side also sent two armored personnel carriers, special force troops to this area and stopped the passage of Uzbek citizens and their vehicles at the Baimak, Ken-Sai and Kadamjai highway checkpoints. After that, only one checkpoint - Kyzyl-Kiya, used for the passage of the residents of the Sokh and Shakhimardan enclaves, remained open on the border between the two states. The Kyrgyz Foreign Ministry sent a note of protest to Tashkent on March 18, demanding to remove block posts in the disputed territory. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 22 March 2016 16:15 (UTC+04:00) The ceremony of signing a memorandum on granting the official status of Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) dialogue partner to Nepal was held in the SCO secretariat in Beijing March 22, a statement published on the Uzbek foreign ministrys website said. "SCO Secretary General Rashid Alimov and Secretary of the Nepalese Foreign Ministry Shankar Das Bairagi signed the document," the statement said. A decision to grant SCO dialogue partner status to Nepal was made by the SCO Council of Heads of State in Ufa. The memorandum stipulates interaction between the SCO and Nepal in the promotion of regional security and stability, the fight against terrorism, extremism, separatism and drug trafficking, as well as in trade, investments, energy issues and other fields. Nepalese Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli, as well as ambassadors and permanent representatives of the SCO member-states also attended the ceremony. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) was established in 2001. It is a permanent intergovernmental international organization. The SCO members are China, Kazakhstan, Russia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Afghanistan, Iran, Mongolia and Belarus are the SCO observer-countries, while Turkey, Sri Lanka, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Cambodia and Nepal are dialogue partners. --- Follow us on Twitter @AzerNewsAz 3.0 ( - - ): editor [at] bahrainmirror.com Thank you for reading! Please log in, or sign up for a new account and purchase a subscription to continue reading. UK manufacturers are to be encouraged to apply for protected status for their regional speciality food and drink names, according to Elizabeth Truss, minister at the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). There are currently 73 regional speciality foods and drinks that boast EU protected status, such as Cornish pasties. These are granted Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) under European Union law, and cannot be called Cornish pasties if they are not made in Cornwall. The purpose of the scheme is to protect the reputation of regional products, promote traditional and agricultural activity and to eliminate non-genuine products, which may mislead consumers or be of inferior or different character. 200 or more Now, Defra would like to see that number rise to 200 or more, said Truss to producers gathered at Londons Good Housekeeping Institute. She added that the UKs protected foods were the jewels in the crown of the food industry, and contributed 900m to the UK economy. Truss said that gaining protection for a product allowed producers to raise their profile, and gave them a unique selling point, particularly in the export market. She said: I am very keen to encourage producers to get more products registered it is great for the reputation of British food. The guarantee of safety and provenance in a protected name makes overseas buyers so excited. France has 217 designations compared to our 73, and I think we can get at least as many. Three types There are three types of EU protected designation: Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) for products made within a region and with distinct characteristics; Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) for products manufactured within and associated with a region; and Traditional Speciality Guaranteed - TSG - awarded to foods produced by traditional methods for a minimum of 30 years. Traditional Bramley Apple Pie Filling was recently awarded TSG status. And an application for Welsh cakes to be given protection is one of 45 protected food name applications in the pipeline. A hot cross bun shortage has been avoided following successful talks between Allied Bakeries and union officials. As reported by the BBC, members of the Bakers Food and Allied Workers Union (BFAWU) were due to hold a 24-hour walk-out of the companys Cardiff bakery on Wednesday, after changes to holiday entitlement and shift patterns. However, British Baker has learned the strike has been called off in the wake of successful talks between union representatives and the company. John James, organising regional secretary for Region 2 of the BFAWU, said: We at the BFAWU have met with company representatives and have resolved the current issues. We will be having further talks in April. The BBC warned the strike could have affected the production of the 900,000 hot cross buns produced there, something which will now be avoided. Mike Auden, general manager of Allied Bakeries Wales, said: Following constructive discussions with unions, we are pleased to confirm that an agreement has been reached and it will be business as usual at our Cardiff bakery this week. Allied Bakeries recently reported a substantial increase in volume sales for the 16 weeks to 2 January. Consulates in U.S. Promote Citizenship For Immigrants Las Vegas, Nevada - Mexico is mounting an unprecedented effort to turn its permanent residents in the U.S. into citizens, a status that would enable them to vote - presumably against Donald Trump. Officially, Mexico says it respects U.S. sovereignty and has no strategy to influence the result of the presidential race. Yet Mexican diplomats are mobilizing for the first time to assist immigrants in gaining U.S. citizenship, hosting free workshops on naturalization. "This is a historic moment where the Mexican consulate will open its doors to carry out these types of events in favor of the Mexican community," Adrian Sosa, a spokesman for the consulate in Chicago, said before an event on March 19. In Dallas, about 250 permanent residents attended the consulates first "citizenship clinic" in February and another 150 in its second in March. In Las Vegas, the turnout topped 500. Underscoring the fine line that separates participation from interfering in another countrys election, Sosa noted that the consulate only hosts the event but it's community organizations who offer the advice. Laura Espinosa, deputy consul in Mexico's consulate in Las Vegas, said the main goal of the program is citizenship, and while that includes the right to vote, the government doesn't press people to do so. "Those who use this to vote, that's up to each individual," said Espinosa, who confirmed that most consulates have begun citizenship campaigns. "We don't have any opinion on that, because that would be totally interfering in internal affairs of the country." The government in Mexico City is holding off on engaging the Trump campaign directly until he becomes the nominee, said Francisco Guzman, chief of staff to Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto. Speaking with reporters on March 1, Guzman said the government plans to communicate with the campaigns of the nominees once they're chosen and try to dispel what it considers misinformation about Mexico and Mexicans. Brothers Plan to Paddleboard from Alaska to Mexico Ketchikan, Alaska - Two brothers from California have set off from Ketchikan to paddleboard to the U.S.-Mexico border. Casey and Ryan Higginbotham set off from Ketchikan on Friday on two 18-foot paddleboards with the goal of hand paddling 100-miles to Prince Rupert, The Ketchikan Daily News reported. "We want adventure. That's what we came for," Casey Higginbotham said. The brothers intend to spend the next five months making the 2,200-mile journey. They are hauling 70 pounds of dehydrated food, clothing and survival gear on custom racks above their boards. Food drops are planned for every 200 miles. The Higginbothams say they hope to cover between 10 to 25 miles of coastline a day and tentatively say they'll reach the end of their voyage in August. The brothers decided to make the trip about a year ago while seniors at Cal Poly State University in San Luis Obispo, California. The twin brothers often go on exciting expeditions and adventures. "We were just shooting ideas back and forth in Ryan's room, and it all kind of came together," Casey Higginbotham said. "And, you know how a lot of ideas kind of never come to fruition, but we just kept processing it, like, 'All right, let's really do it. We'll start working with shapers (for the paddleboards), start working with companies (for sponsors) and all right, here we go. Let's do it.' And now we're here in Ketchikan." According to the Guinness World Records, the longest paddleboard journey on record is an eight-day, 345-mile trek up the Florida coast in 2007. The Higginbothams said the trip is about escaping the 9-to-5 mentality and connecting with nature. "That's the cool thing about it to me, because in your everyday life, there's so many different things you have to worry about - I don't know, people calling you, paying rent, normal things that you worry about on a day-to-day basis," Ryan Higginbotham said. "Now all our day is going to be about food, water, warmth, and getting to where we need to go - completing the day's goal of paddling - and hopefully getting some footage." The brothers will be documenting their trip with video cameras and are collaborating with a filmmaking friend to create a documentary when the voyage is finished. They will be transmitting their progress on their website and with a Spot beacon. Gov. Rick Scott's entreaty to Florida Republicans to unite behind Donald Trump is largely falling on deaf ears, with some of the state's most prominent conservatives citing moral objections to supporting the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination. Scott waited until Trump had won last Tuesday's Florida primary to announce his endorsement of the real estate mogul, though his support was largely implied weeks before when he wrote an op-ed praising Trump. Like Trump, Scott was a wealthy businessman when he first ran for office in 2010. Though he lost control of the state Republican Party in an embarrassing coup last year, Scott is still viewed as the titular head of Florida Republicans and, as such, his call for the GOP to "coalesce" around Trump was widely expected to have a measurable impact. Instead, many of the party's luminaries, including Congressmen Carlos Curbelo and David Jolly, as well as Sen. Marco Rubio, whom Trump vanquished from the presidential race with his commanding Florida win, have yet to announce their support for a man they've decried as morally reprehensible. "It should be heartbreaking to every American that we have a frontrunner in the presidential race that suggests there will be a religious test for anybody who wishes to come to our shores," Rep. Jolly, a Clearwater Republican running for Rubio's open U.S. Senate seat, declared on the House floor in December. While the lack of a sizable response to the governor's commandment to some extent underscores his unpopularity, it also serves as a telling barometer of a party increasingly divided amongst itself, with potentially earth-shifting consequences. "I think you're going to see some traditional Republican folks turn either away from that race and not vote at all, or vote for a Democrat, which would be a bit unusual," said Florida Republican strategist Pete Dunbar. President Barack Obama will leave the White House in January 2017. Until then, he has plenty of time to weigh in on the race to elect his successor. He hasn't been secretive about his positions, especially where the Republican candidates are concerned. There is not a single candidate in the Republican primary that thinks we should do anything about climate change," Obama said during a recent press conference. PolitiFact Florida heard that claim and gave it a MOSTLY TRUE rating on its Truth-O-Meter. PolitiFact writer Joshua Gillin said the president is correct in the sense the candidates have not detailed their plans concerning climate change. "When youre talking about Ted Cruz and Donald Trump, well, Ted Cruz doesnt think climate change is manmade," Gillin said. "Donald Trump doesnt even think climate change is happening. At some point, hes even suggested that its a conspiracy from China to make the United States less competitive." Gillin went on to say John Kasich thinks climate change exists, but hes not detailed a plan to combat it. For that reason, President Obamas state received a MOSTLY TRUE rating. SOURCES: GOP presidential candidates don't have plan to fight climate change, Obama says Law enforcement officials are warning about a spike in overdose deaths connected to counterfeit Xanax in Pinellas County. Nine people died from overdoses between January and March, officials said during a news conference Monday. Three of those deaths are the result of counterfeit Xanax pills bought on the street, officials said. Officials said the cause of death was a lethal mixture of Xanax and Fentanyl. Fentanyl is a drug commonly used with cancer patients to relieve pain. Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said Fentanyl is "80 times more potent than morphine and about 50 times more potent than pure heroin." Officials said they strongly suspect six overdose deaths to be related to the same type of counterfeit Xanax/Fentanyl pills. The overdose deaths have all taken place from Largo south to St. Petersburg. Investigators said they've recovered similar counterfeit Xanax/Fentanyl pills in nine cases throughout the county and that those pills were produced to imitate the same size, shape and markings as Xanax pills. They said they don't know where the counterfeit pills are coming from, but that right now, it appears as though they are limited to Pinellas County. Officials warn people to use only pills that have been prescribed by doctors and purchased through a pharmacy. Officials said another three overdose deaths happened between October and January and that those deaths were attributed to the drug U-47700, which is an opioid painkiller. Bombs exploded at the Brussels airport and one of the city's metro stations Tuesday, killing at least 34 people and wounding dozens, as a European capital was again locked down amid heightened security threats. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks. Explosions rock Brussels airport and subway At least 34 people killed in three explosions, 187 wounded 2 explosions at Brussels Airport (Zaventem): 11 killed and 81 injured 20 dead, 106 injured in attack at Maelbeek Metro Station One of three suspects tied to the airport attacks sought In this image provided by the Belgian Federal Police in Brussels on Tuesday, March 22, 2016 of three men who are suspected of taking part in the attacks at Belgium's Zaventem Airport. The man at right is still being sought by the police and two others in the photo that the police issued were according to a the Belgian Prosecutors 'probably' suicide bombers. Bombs exploded at the Brussels airport and one of the city's metro stations Tuesday, killing and wounding scores of people, as a European capital was again locked down amid heightened security threats. (Belgian Federal Police via AP) ON THIS PAGE The two airport blasts, at least one of them blamed on a suicide bomber, left behind a chaotic scene of splattered blood in the departure lounge as windows were blown out, ceilings collapsed and travelers streamed out of the smoky building. About an hour later, another bomb exploded on a rush-hour subway train near the European Union headquarters. Terrified passengers had to evacuate through darkened tunnels to safety. "What we feared has happened," Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said. "In this time of tragedy, this black moment for our country, I appeal to everyone to remain calm but also to show solidarity." Belgium raised its terror alert to the highest level, diverting planes and trains and ordering people to stay where they were for most of the workday. Authorities also released a photo taken from closed-circuit TV of three men pushing luggage carts, saying two of them apparently were the suicide bombers and that the third dressed in a light-colored coat, black hat and glasses was at large. They urged the public to contact them if they recognized him. Police later conducted raids in Brussels searching for one of the suspects, and found a nail-filled bomb, chemical products and an Islamic State flag in the search of a house in the Schaerbeek neighborhood, the state prosecutors' office said in a statement. Airports across Europe and in the New York area tightened security. "We are at war," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said after a crisis meeting in Paris. "We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war." Added French President Francois Hollande: "Terrorists struck Brussels, but it was Europe that was targeted, and it is all the world which is concerned by this." European security officials have been bracing for a major attack for weeks and warned that the Islamic State group was actively preparing to strike. The arrest Friday of Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, heightened those fears, as investigators said many more people were involved than originally thought and that some are still on the loose. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the Brussels attacks, saying in a post on the group's Amaq news agency that its extremists opened fire in the airport and "several of them" detonated suicide belts. It said another suicide attacker struck in the subway. The post claimed the attack was in response to Belgium's support of the international coalition arrayed against the group. Facebook Safety Check Quickly find and connect with friends in the area. Mark them safe if you know they're OK. www.facebook.com/safetycheck/brusselsexplosions-march2016 __________________________________________________________________________________ Authorities found and neutralized a third bomb at the airport once the chaos after the two initial blasts had eased, said Florence Muls, a spokeswoman for the airport told The Associated Press. Bomb squads also detonated suspicious objects found in at least two locations elsewhere in the capital, but neither contained explosives, authorities said. Michel said there was no immediate evidence linking the attacks with Abdeslam. After his arrest, Abdeslam told authorities he had created a new network and was planning new attacks. U.S. President Barack Obama pledged to "do whatever is necessary" to help Belgian authorities seek justice. "We stand in solidarity with them in condemning these outrageous attacks against innocent people," Obama said in Havana, where he was closing a three-day visit. Western Europe has lived for decades under the threat of violence from homegrown nationalist and revolutionary movements. Extremists from North Africa and the Middle East have attacked civilian targets without warning, ranging from France's 1960s war in Algeria through Libya's 1988 downing of an airline over Scotland to the 2004-05 attacks on the public transportation systems of London and Madrid. Certain neighborhoods in Brussels, like the Molenbeek quarter, have bred extremists and supplied foreign fighters. Plotters linked to the Paris attacks and others have either moved through or lived in parts of the city. Tuesday's explosions at the airport in the Brussels suburb of Zaventem came shortly after 8 a.m., one of its busiest periods when thousands of people were inside. Belgian Health Minister Maggie de Block said 11 people were killed and 81 wounded. Eleven people had serious injuries, Marc Decramer of the Gasthuisberg hospital in Leuven told broadcaster VTM. The nails apparently came from one of the bombs. Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, told BFM television that the second, louder explosion brought down ceilings and ruptured pipes, mixing water with victims' blood. "It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed," he said. "There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere." "We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene," he said. Video from moments after the blasts showed travelers huddled next to check-in counters and lying near luggage and trolleys as dust and the cries of the wounded filled the air. Dazed people stumbled from the scene, some with clothes and shoes blown off. Anthony Deloos, an airport worker for Swissport, which handles check-in and baggage services, said the first explosion took place near the counters where customers pay for overweight bags. He and a colleague said the second blast hit near a Starbucks cafe. "I jumped into a luggage chute to be safe," Deloos said. The subway bombing came after 9 a.m., killing 20 people and wounding more than 100, Mayor Yvan Majeur said. "The metro was leaving Maelbeek station for Schuman when there was a really loud explosion," said Alexandre Brans, 32, wiping blood from his face. "It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the metro." Near the entrance to the station, rescue workers set up a makeshift medical treatment center in a pub. Dazed and shocked morning commuters streamed from the metro entrances as police tried to set up a security cordon. The airport was ordered closed for the rest of the day and CEO Arnaud Feist said the facility would be closed at least through Wednesday. About 600 flights in or out of Brussels were diverted or canceled, Muls said. The metro also was ordered closed as the city was locked down. By the end of the workday, city officials said residents could begin moving around on the streets of the capital and train stations were reopening. But Peter Mertens of the Belgian crisis center said the threat of more attacks "is still real and serious." At least one and possibly two Kalashnikovs were found in the departure lounge at the airport, according to a European security official in contact with a Belgian police official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the ongoing investigation. It was not immediately clear whether the firearms were used in the attacks. Travelers fled the airport as quickly as they could. In video shown on France's i-Tele television, men, women and children dashed from the terminal in different directions. Security officers patrolled a hall with blown-out paneling and ceiling panels covering the floor. Marc Noel, 63, was about to board a Delta flight to Atlanta, to return to his home in Raleigh, North Carolina. A Belgian native, Noel said he was in an airport shop buying automotive magazines when the first blast struck about 50 yards away. "People were crying, shouting children. It was a horrible experience," he said, adding that his decision to shop might have saved his life. "I would probably have been in that place when the bomb went off." Raw Video from the airport Raw Video from the metro station Terrorist Attacks and Threats in Belgium TIMELINE OF EVENTS The latest on explosions at Brussels airport and metro station (all times local): 11:30 p.m. A Belgian security official says the death toll has risen to 34 in attacks on the Brussels airport and a subway station. The official did not specify how many people were killed and wounded at each site. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because precise numbers were expected to be announced early Wednesday. Earlier, the government had reported 20 dead at the Maelbeek metro station, in the heart of the European Union's capital, and 11 dead at the airport, and scores of injured. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks. ___ 10 p.m. President Barack Obama has ordered that all American flags in the U.S. be flown at half-staff through Saturday out of respect for victims of the Brussels attack. Obama said in a proclamation issued hours after Tuesday's attacks that "the American people stand with the people of Brussels. We will do whatever it takes, working with nations and peoples around the world, to bring the perpetrators of these attacks to justice, and to go after terrorists who threaten our people." ___ 9:55 p.m. German police say three Kosovars who are suspected of possible links to an extremist network have been arrested on a highway in the south of the country. The state criminal police office in Bavaria confirmed a report by broadcaster Bayerischer Rundfunk that the three were arrested early Tuesday on the Munich-Salzburg highway, news agency dpa reported. According to the report, they were in a Belgian-registered car. However, the criminal police office said that there are no indications at this point of any link with Tuesday's attacks in Brussels. ___ 9:50 p.m. Police in the Belgian capital are calling on people who may have filmed images from the attacks on the city airport and subway to help assist with their investigation. Brussels police called in a statement late Tuesday for help from "anyone who has amateur film where the attackers may be in view and could help move their investigation forward." ___ 9:25 p.m. The U.N. Security Council has strongly condemned the Brussels attacks and urging intensified regional and international efforts "to overcome terrorism and violent extremism." A statement approved by the U.N.'s most powerful body expressed solidarity with Belgium and underlined the need to bring those responsible for "these reprehensible acts of terrorism to justice." The Security Council again urged all countries to combat "terrorist acts" and take measures to prevent and stop the financing "of terrorism, terrorist organizations and individual terrorists." U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon also strongly condemned the attacks and expressed confidence "that Belgium's and Europe's commitment to human rights, democracy and peaceful coexistence will continue to be the true and lasting response to the hatred and violence of which they became a victim today," his spokesman said. --- 8:25 p.m. Belgium's interior minister says authorities knew that some kind of extremist act was being prepared in Europe but that they were surprised by the scale of the attacks in Brussels. Interior Minister Jan Jambon said Tuesday that "it was always possible that more attacks could happen but we never could have imagined something of this scale." Jambon told RTL television that "we had no information about this, but we know that things were moving in Europe, in different countries, in France, in Germany, here." He said the Belgian authorities have no information about the planning of "any kind of action in Brussels at this time." --- 8:20 p.m. Some of Europe's best-known monuments have been illuminated with Belgium's national colors in a show of solidarity after the attacks in Brussels. At nightfall Tuesday, the Eiffel Tower in Paris lit up in the black, yellow and red colors of the Belgian flag. Berlin's landmark Brandenburg Gate, which after the November attacks in Paris was illuminated with the French colors of red, white and blue, also was lit up in Belgian colors. A few blocks away, some people laid flowers and lit candles outside the Belgian Embassy. And in Italy, Rome's Trevi Fountain joined in the show of Belgium's national colors. --- 7:30 p.m. Belgian federal prosecutors say a house search in the Brussels neighborhood of Schaerbeek has "led to the discovery of an explosive device containing among other things nails." Investigators also found chemical products and an Islamic State flag. Their statement said the Islamic State group had claimed responsibility for the attacks in Brussels via a press agency but that this information still needs to be verified. Prosecutors say it's not possible at this stage to establish any links between the attacks Tuesday in Brussels and those in Paris on Nov. 13 that left 130 people dead. --- 6:55 p.m. A Belgian prosecutor says police raids are happening around the country after two men "probably" staged suicide bombings at the Brussels airport and a third fled. Prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said Tuesday that the third suspect is actively being sought by police. At least 31 people were killed and nearly 190 wounded in the two airport bombings and another in the Brussels subway system. Prime Minister Charles Michel said the country will tighten security at its borders. He declared three days of national mourning after what he says were probably the most tragic attacks the country has seen in peacetime. --- 6:20 p.m. Federal police in Belgium have issued a wanted notice for a suspect in the Brussels airport bombing that they are still trying to identify. A man wearing a thick light-colored jacket with a black hat and glasses is suspected of committing an attack at Zaventem airport on Tuesday morning. They are urging the public to call them if they recognize the man. --- 6:15 p.m. Ralph Usbeck, 55, an electronics technician from Berlin, was checking his baggage for an American Airlines flight to Florida when the first blast struck in Brussels. He assumed it was a training exercise. He says "seconds later, a much more heavy, heavy detonation happened, some more distance (away) but much more heavy. This was the moment I realized this was a terrorist act." He says few people appeared worried after the first bomb went off but the second did spark panic and crying amid billows of "dirty dust, like from concrete." He says "it took a very, very long time till the ambulances came" - maybe 30 minutes. --- 6 p.m. The British government is warning Britons against all but essential travel to Brussels in the wake of the bomb attacks. Prime Minister David Cameron's office said the travel advice was being changed in line with the advice issued by Belgium authorities. Belgium on Tuesday raised its terror threat to the highest level - denoting "a serious and imminent threat" - and told residents to stay where they were after Tuesday's bomb attacks on the city's main airport and a subway train. The city's transit network was shut down for several hours. Downing St. said a team of British police had been sent to Brussels to help with the investigation into the attacks that have killed at least 31 people and wounded nearly 190. --- 5:50 p.m. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has pledged Belgium's prime minister her country's "full solidarity" following the Brussels attacks and says her Cabinet will discuss the bombings on Wednesday. Merkel spoke with Prime Minister Charles Michel and promised that "we will work in every way with his government and the Belgian security forces to find those responsible for today's crimes, detain and punish them." Merkel says "our strength lies in our unity, and our free societies will prove to be stronger than terrorism." --- 5:45 p.m. Airport security has been boosted across Europe - and even across the Atlantic Ocean following the attacks in Brussels. Police and aviation officials in the Nordic countries boosted security at major airports in Denmark, Sweden, Finland and Norway. German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere said security measures were increased at "critical infrastructure" in Germany and along its borders with France, Belgium and the Netherlands. Authorities also stepped up security around New York City even though there was no known link to the Brussels attacks that killed 31 people and left nearly 190 wounded. The Port Authority Police Department increased security at New York City's three area airports - John F. Kennedy, LaGuardia and Newark Liberty - and bridges, tunnels and the bus terminal. It placed anti-terrorist patrols throughout its trans-Hudson River system and the World Trade Center site. Additional bag checks also were being conducted at PATH stations. --- 5:35 p.m. Florence Muls, a spokeswoman for the Brussels Airport, says a third bomb has been neutralized at the airport after two other bombs killed at least 10 people there Tuesday morning. Muls told The Associated Press the third bomb was dispensed of "with a controlled action" once the chaos of the first explosives had eased somewhat. Elsewhere in the Belgian capital, anti-bomb squads detonated suspicious objects in at least two locations - the Maelbeek subway station and close to Brussels University a few miles further away. Authorities said those two did not contain explosives. A U.S. official has told the AP the explosives in Brussels appear sophisticated, and investigators will examine them to see if they bear the same characteristics to those used in the Paris attacks last year. 5:20 p.m. Russian President Vladimir Putin says the terror attacks in Brussels have underlined the need to pool global efforts for combating terrorism. Putin spoke in televised remarks Tuesday as he met with visiting Finnish President President Sauli Niinisto. Putin began by offering condolences to the families of the victims in Brussels. He added "we have repeatedly discussed the issues related to the fight against terrorism, and it's possible to efficiently combat it only by united efforts." Some other Russian officials and lawmakers have criticized Western reluctance to cooperate with Moscow on fighting terrorism amid the strain in Russia-West ties over the Ukrainian crisis. --- 5:15 p.m. The White House says President Barack Obama has expressed his condolences to Belgium and its people during a telephone conversation with Prime Minister Charles Michel following deadly terrorist attacks at the airport and a subway station. Obama also offered assistance with the investigation and with bringing the perpetrators to justice. The White House says the president reiterated U.S. support for the people of Belgium, NATO and the European Union. And he pledged the full cooperation by the U.S. in efforts to end terrorism. Obama placed the call from Havana, where he was closing a historic three-day visit on Tuesday. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate One moment, the four young women were driving through South Texas cotton fields after a quick spring break trip to South Padre Island. Then the driver glanced at the map on her telephone. The distraction caused the 18-year-old high school senior to lose control of the vehicle, which veered across the median and into the path of an oncoming 18-wheeler, police said. The impact crumpled the car, instantly killing two passengers, former Bellaire students Brittanie Johnson, 18, and Brianna Robinson, 19. Robinson's 17-year-sister, Jade, a Bellaire senior and standout on the volleyball team, died at a Corpus Christi-area hospital a few hours later. Shelby Coleman, 18, a Lamar High School senior, remains hospitalized in critical condition. "She was looking down (at Google Maps), trying to make sure she was in the right place," said Nathan Brandley, a Texas Department of Public Safety spokesman. "She felt lost and was trying to make sure she was in the right area. That's what caused her to veer off the road. It's horrible." The crash - one of thousands involving distracted driving each year in Texas - has left the young women's friends and families grieving and struggling to cope. "To be honest, I don't really know if I can wrap myself around it. It hasn't stopped since yesterday (Sunday)," said the sisters' 78-year-old grandmother, Bettye Greene, as she sat at the dining room table in her southwest Houston home. "I keep thinking, 'Where is she?' " Photos of the girls were spread out across the table, and more than a dozen of their classmates had gathered at the home to share her grief. Tight-knit team Jade and her older sister were a tight-knit team, despite their contrasting personalities, Greene said. Brianna, the oldest, was a daddy's girl, tranquil and loving, for whom swimming and track came easily. After graduating from Bellaire in 2014, Brianna had been studying at Houston Community College. She'd talked vaguely of wanting to be a flight attendant, Greene said, but hadn't yet found her niche. Jade was fiery and focused and more apt to take charge, said Greene, remembering how she tromped through the house each night, switching off the TVs. If Greene had fallen asleep wearing her glasses, her granddaughter would gently take them off and set them nearby. Jade encouraged her friends to push harder and aim higher and had won an athletic scholarship to Tennessee Wesleyan College, where she planned to pursue her ambitions to become a veterinarian, her grandmother said. But first, there was spring break. Johnson and Coleman had invited Brianna, and she'd brought her little sister along, Greene said. It had been Jade's first real trip anywhere without her mom, her first as a fledgling grown-up, said Twiler Portis, a longtime friend of the teens and their mother. Jade had called home every day, Portis said Monday. The last time the family heard from her was Sunday, around noon, just as the teens were starting their trip back from South Padre. Then, came the notification from DPS and a flood of sorrow. They were told the two had both died in the crash, then found out Jade had been tossed clear and taken to the hospital, where she was later pronounced dead after repeated efforts to resuscitate her. "It's pretty tough it's surreal," said Toren Robinson, Jade and Brianna's father, in a telephone interview. "I never fathomed this." In the midst of the tragedy, he was relying on his family, friends and faith. "It's a tough pill to swallow, caught up in the neck," he said. No one answered the door at Johnson's home in Manvel or Coleman's home in south Houston. 'Just makes you think' The tragedy stunned students and teammates alike at the two high schools. "I feel so bad. She had a scholarship and everything," said Ashley Inman, a Bellaire sophomore. "I think it opened a bunch of people's eyes up to being safe. It just makes you think." "It just doesn't seem real," said Cameron Curley, a Bellaire junior, remembering Jade's warmth and friendliness in a class they had together. "Because Jade - everyone loves her. She's a positive, bright person. As soon as she walked in my class, we were friends. She was just really nice, smart and into volleyball." Officials at Bellaire and Lamar high schools notified parents about the incident, and counselors were made available to students at both schools. "I can only say that I am so sorry for the loss each of these families is experiencing," Bellaire Principal Michael McDonough said in a recorded message to parents. "As you can imagine, this is a terribly difficult time for our school community, as well as the Bellaire school community." Lamar officials said, in a similar notification. At Bellaire High School, Jade's volleyball team met Monday morning. "While Jade had a major impact on the volleyball court, she was a positive force and role model off the court," according to a post on the team website. "She protected, encouraged and supported younger girls and inspired confidence in themselves to be the very best person they could be." The news also stunned Ashley Harris, Jade's future coach at Tennessee Wesleyan. "Getting that phone call is never an easy one. It just took everything out of me," Harris said. "I'm still really having a hard time trying to wrap my head around everything." Dangers of distraction Brandley said the crash underscores the dangers of distracted driving, blamed for one in five crashes in Texas. More than 100,000 traffic accidents in 2014 in the state were linked to distracted driving, a 6 percent increase over 2013. Distracted driving that year caused 3,214 serious injuries and 468 deaths, according to the state. "Whether using your phone for texting, tweeting, talking, or using it for GPS - it's taking your eyes off the road for anywhere from 3-5 seconds," Brandley said. "If you're driving, don't text and drive, don't get on social media websites," he said. "If you have to talk, use Bluetooth, or have an earpiece, or a speaker system in your car, or at least use speakerphone." A GoFundMe fundraising page has been established for the Robinson family. Dale Lezon contributed to this report. Health insurer Anthem is suing Express Scripts, a pharmacy benefit manager, to receive a larger share of savings on prescription medicines, according to npr. Here are five things to know: 1. Anthem claims it is overpaying for pharmaceuticals and not receiving the benefits from rebates Express Scripts negotiated with drug manufacturers. 2. In January, Anthem CEO Joseph Swedish said the payer could save nearly $3 billion in drug costs if Anthem reworked its contract with Express Scripts. Anthem has warned it will terminate its contract if the payer does not receive the price break it seeks. 3. An Express Scripts spokesman countered the company does not believe Anthem is entitled to $3 billion. 4. In 2009, Anthem sold its own PBM to Express Scripts, and the payer agreed to use Express Scripts for 10 years. However, the contract called for the two companies to renegotiate prices in December 2015. 5. In the suit, Anthem alleges Express Scripts has refused to negotiate prices in 'good faith.' Thus, the payer is seeking damages to compensate for overpaying for prescription drugs. More articles on coding & billing: Are ACOs & the Medicare Shared Savings Program working? 5 key points Surgeon pleads guilty to $3M insurance fraud 5 takeaways Making a theory a reality: A look into value-based payments' challenges, opportunities As expenses go up and reimbursement continues to fall, many physicians are struggling to stay afloat and are forced to see as many patients as possible in a day. To improve care, some experts claim physicians should be paid more, according to the Huffington Post. Here are four reasons: 1. Many physicians are paid the same amount for performing one surgery as they are for seeing a few patients in the clinic, leading some physicians to limit the amount of surgeries they perform. This may impede patient care as surgical options may prove beneficial for various patients. 2. Some physicians feel disengaged because of lack of compensation and physician autonomy. This may deter physicians from providing efficient care. 3. Some argue the healthcare system needs to pay primary physicians more because the demand far exceeds supply. When considering the stark income difference between specialists and primary care physicians, it is no surprise many medical students choose to subspecialize, creating a gap in primary care physicians. 4. The lack of compensation has lead many physicians to experience burn-out and stop practicing medicine altogether. More healthcare news: 5 legislative changes impacting ASCs March 22, 2016 Surgery Partners proposes $400M senior notes offering, Medical Facilities Corp. revenue hits $90M in Q4 6 key notes on ASC companies AmSurg employees volunteer at food bank: 5 things to know Here are five legislative changes impacting ASCs this month. Connecticut lawmakers examine 6% ASC tax repeal legislation Connecticut's Finance, Revenue and Bonding Committee is examining legislation to repeal a 6 percent tax placed on ASCs in the state. The Connecticut Citizens for Affordable Health Care argues 47 ASCs in Connecticut would be forced to close because of the tax, resulting in deductibles, co-payments and insurance for patients. Florida passes legislation extending recovery time at ASCs In February, the Florida House passed various free-market healthcare reform proposals. One proposal extended the time patients can recover at an ASC for up to 24 hours. CMS proposes its Value-Based Payment Modifier Program for 2016 Starting this year, CMS will apply the value modifier to physician payments under the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule for physicians with 10 or more eligible professionals, provided one physician submitted a Medicare claims in 2013. Providers failing to meet minimum reporting requirements will have a 2 percent drop in Medicare payment this year. Medicare to test alternative payment methods for prescription drugs CMS is seeking comments on various alternative payment approaches for Part B drugs to determine which methods have the highest quality care for the best value. Some of the proposals include lowering the add-on payments from 6 percent to 2.5 percent with an additional $16.80 flat payment and implementing risk-sharing with drug companies. Obama administration to rate health insurance plans by network size The Obama administration passed new rules allowing the administration to rate health insurance plans based on their network's size. Although the rules allow payers to sell health plans with narrow provider networks, consumers will be able to see the value of the plans as the government will attach a label listing the breadth of the network for each plan HealthCare.gov sells. More articles on surgery centers: AmSurg employees volunteer at food bank: 5 things to know SCA shorts increases 43%: 5 points ASC of Western New York achieves approval to move forward with $4.75M ASC: 5 key notes Wahiawa (Hawaii) General Hospital, the largest employer in Central Oahu, is facing financial troubles and has reached out to the state for help, according to a KHON2 news report. The hospital has recorded losses of $9 million over the last three years. The losses are largely attributable to reductions in government funding and lower inpatient admissions, according to the report. Wahiawa General's board of directors spoke with Hawaii Rep. Marcus Oshiro (D-Wahiawa-Whitmore Village) about its financial problems. The board said if the hospital doesn't get financial help within the next six to nine months, it will face choices about whether to scale back services or close. Rep. Oshiro is asking the state legislature and Gov. David Ige for about $6 million to save the hospital, according to the report. More articles on healthcare finance: Physicians who receive lots of pharma cash prescribe more brand-name drugs, study finds Presence CEO says poor collections to blame for $186M operating loss House Republicans unveil 2017 budget: 7 things for healthcare leaders to know Many patients in Massachusetts are choosing to receive care from larger urban teaching hospitals instead of community hospitals, a trend that may result in rising health costs, according to a study from the state's Health Policy Commission. The Health Policy Commission said community hospitals are being challenged by lower payment rates for commercially insured patients and the decision by more patients to go to larger hospitals in Boston for routine care, particularly commercially insured patients. The study states community hospitals are also being challenged by a lack of resources to invest in programs, staff, marketing fundraising and infrastructure to effectively compete for and attract patients. In 2014, the most recent year for which data are available, the five largest healthcare systems in Massachusetts accounted for 61 percent of discharges for commercially insured patients, compared to 54 percent in 2012, according to the study. Meanwhile, the study found primary care physician affiliations with hospitals have grown rapidly in recent years, and the majority of PCPs are now associated with a few provider systems. In 2012, 75 percent of visits to PCPs were to PCPs affiliated with one of the eight largest provider systems, and these visits constituted nearly 79 percent of all revenue for PCP visits in the state, according to the study. The Health Policy Commission warned this migration to higher-cost facilities by some patients may result in higher total medical spending and increased costs for all patients with commercial insurance through higher premiums. The study found average spending per commercial discharge at a Boston hospital was $981 to $4,775 higher than average spending per discharge, adjusted for severity, in other regions of the state. "The migration of patients for low-acuity care that could be provided in community settings also contributes to lower occupancy rates and less revenue for community hospitals," the Health Policy Commission wrote. The Health Policy Commission plans to meet with hospital executives and other stakeholders in the near future and eventually get behind specific proposals to help struggling community hospitals and address price variations, according to The Boston Globe. More articles on finance and revenue cycle management: Physicians who receive lots of pharma cash prescribe more brand-name drugs, study finds Presence CEO says poor collections to blame for $186M operating loss House Republicans unveil 2017 budget: 7 things for healthcare leaders to know Ruby Memorial Hospital in Morgantown, W.Va., went into a lockdown this morning for approximately four hours after an IT issue affected some clinical and security systems, reports MetroNews. Ruby Memorial Hospital, the largest hospital in the West Virginia University Hospitals family, started experiencing network issues around 12:30 a.m. Tuesday. Computers and applications controlled by computers were malfunctioning, according to a hospital statement obtained by WDTV. "There was a cascade of issues and it just went throughout the institution, and around 2:30 this morning one of our administrators said this is pretty serious, and this is something we need to address," Amy Johns, a hospital spokeswoman, told MetroNews. The IT issue caused the security cameras to go offline, so the hospital went on lockdown for approximately four hours until 8 a.m. The hospital indicates the issues were possibly caused by malware or a virus, but there is no indication any patient privacy or records have been compromised. "Patient information and employee information has not been compromised," Ms. Johns said in the report. "This is not an attempt to steal data. There is no indication that any data has left the building. It just appears that it was a mawlare or a virus." The hospital is operating normally, but there may be residual delays at outpatient centers, according to the report. More articles on malware: NYT, BBC among websites hit with ransomware in advertisements Ransomware attack shuts down 4 Ottawa hospital computers 3 things to know about ransomware As professionals advance in their careers, networking becomes increasingly important and simultaneously, increasingly difficult. The successful people most sought after for networking opportunities are often also extremely busy, receiving dozens of invitations per week and hundreds of emails each day. How do you get their attention and achieve opportunities to build meaningful professional relationships with others? In a recent article published inthe Harvard Business Review, Dorie Clark, a marketing strategy consultant, speaker and professor at Durham, N.C.-based DukeUniversity's Fuqua School of Business, outlines three secrets successful people use to network. 1. Figure out what sets you apart. Finding something you have in common with another person is one of the fastest ways to form a connection. But to really capture their interest, you need to show them something exotic, according to Ms. Clark. "The more interesting you seem, the more that powerful people will want to seek you out," she wrote. "And yet it can be hard for us to identify what's most interesting about ourselves; over time, even the coolest things can come to seem banal." Ms. Clark suggests asking your friends to pick out the most fascinating aspects of your life story, including interests and experiences, to help you create a list of possible conversation starters. 2. Cultivate expertise. "Almost nothing elicits more interest than genuine expertise," wrote Ms. Clark. "If someone is drawn to a topic that you're knowledgeable about, you'll move to the top of their list." Becoming an expert in something applicable to your field is certainly useful, but in terms of networking, sometimes it is even better when your expertise resides outside the borders of your profession. According to Ms. Clark, a financial journalist she profiled in her book Reinventing You began building more meaningful relationships with his sources after he started writing about food and wine. His Wall Street contacts began reaching out to him to get insights on exciting new restaurants or the best places to entertain clients. 3. Put yourself at the center of your network. It's not easy to build a powerful network if you aren't already powerful, Ms. Clark wrote. But it's possible. She references Jon Levy, a New York City resident and networking entrepreneur, who decided "the best way to get invited to the party is to host the party." Six years ago, he began hosting twice-monthly "influencer" dinners. He began by inviting the most interesting professionals he knew, then asking them to invite the most interesting people they knew. Now, Mr. Levy's gatherings attract Nobel laureates, Olympic athletes, scientists and music artists, among others. San Diego-based Scripps Health recently revealed it will lay off 69 employees. The layoffs, which will take place May 20 through Oct. 4, affect employees in the human resources and marketing departments. Scripps Health President and CEO Van Gorder, who has reinforced a no-layoff philosophy over the duration of his tenure, recently spoke with Becker's Hospital Review about the layoffs. Question: What were the circumstances surrounding the layoffs? Chris Van Gorder: Revenues have flattened out due to healthcare reform and payer mix changes and we are seeing an increase in government sponsored patients. Volume is up, costs are up and revenues are flat. Since we need to hit our financial targets to generate enough capital to comply with California's SB1953, which requires upgrading or replacement of our hospitals by 2030, we need to control our costs. But it's also the right thing to do for our patients. Lower costs means more affordable access for our patients. Q: How will employees and various departments be impacted? CVG: We are lowering our costs within corporate departments so there should be no impact on patient care. In fact, the intent is to lower costs in administrative functions to make sure we have the necessary resources for patient care. Q: All affected employees will be offered the opportunity to use the system's Career Resource Center. What is the center and how does it work? CVG: We have a no-layoff philosophy but with all the changes going on in healthcare we can't promise any employee that they will have the same job at the same location their entire career. So we created the Career Resource Center more than a decade ago. Experts in talent management, HR [Human Resources], EAP [Employee Assistance Program] and others assist staff whose positions are eliminated at no fault of their own to update their skills and obtain another position at Scripps. The impacted staff retain their salaries while in the CRC. In the more than 10 years we have had the CRC, more than 1,000 employees have participated, and I'm told more than 90 percent were successful in finding a new position. Q: Is the CRC a novel idea? Do a lot of other systems have similar centers? CVG: It's very unique. I don't know of any other. Q: What are your goals moving forward? CVG: Our goals are to rebase our cost structure by lowering our costs for the good of our patients and our staff. This will make sure Scripps remains financially strong so we are here for our patients when they need us while remaining a secure employer for our staff. We are also a major part of the San Diego and community economy. We provide many jobs at Scripps and even more for people who provide services to Scripps. More articles about layoffs: South Carolina health system cuts 400 jobs to stem losses CHI St. Alexius lays off 23, will shutter 2 inpatient units: 5 things to know 5 latest healthcare layoffs Franklin, Tenn.-based Capella Healthcare and Brentwood, Tenn.-based RegionalCare Hospital Partners have announced plans to merge, creating a combined company with 18 hospital campuses in 12 states. Here are 10 things to know about the deal. 1. The combined company's name will be RCCH Health Partners. 2. Under the agreement, Capella will be fully owned by RegionalCare, which was sold to Apollo Global Management last year. 3. Birmingham, Ala.-based Medical Properties Trust purchased Capella for $900 million in 2015. MPT will receive approximately $390 million for its equity investment and loans made as part of its 2015 transaction with Capella. Under the agreement, MPT will also receive about $210 million in mortgage loan prepayment for two Capella hospitals. 4. MPT's net proceeds from the transaction are expected to be about $550 million, which will be used to reduce MPT's debt. 5. Marty Rash, board chair and CEO of RegionalCare, will serve as executive board chair of RCCH Health Partners. 6. Regarding the merger, Mr. Rash said, "By creating a single, stronger organization, we'll have greater scale and stability as well as an expanded geographical reach." 7. Michael Wiechart, board vice chair, president and CEO of Capella, will serve as president and CEO of the combined company. He will also serve on RCCH Health Partners' board of directors. 8. The deal is subject to customary regulatory approval and is expected to close during the second quarter of 2016. 9. The combined company would include more than 13,000 employees, 2,000 affiliated physicians and $1.7 billion in revenues. 10. Rhoda Weiss, PhD, a Los Angeles-based national healthcare strategy and marketing consultant, follows healthcare mergers and partnerhips closely. Regarding the Capella-RegionalCare deal, she told Becker's, "It certainly makes a lot of sense for these two organizations that are nearly identical in size to work together. It's an exciting move for both and definitely covers a wide region of the country with no overlap. It will also make this new system much more attractive for other potential partners in those 12 states they cover." Dr. Weiss has never worked for either of the organizations involved in the transaction. More articles on healthcare transactions: 5 recent healthcare transactions and partnerships Atlantic Health System expands reach in New Jersey Nurses at Cincinnati-based St. Elizabeth Medical Center have filed a proposed class-action lawsuit against the hospital over how it classifies its pension plan, according to Bloomberg BNA. The religiously affiliated medical center currently treats its pension plan as a church plan, meaning it is exempt from the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. However, the lawsuit, which was filed March 17, alleges this is unlawful, and St. Elizabeth must comply with the ERISA. The class-action lawsuit accuses St. Elizabeth Medical Center of using the exemption to underfund the employees' pension plan by more than $204 million, according to the report. "As a result of its bogus claim that it is a church, the company avoids its statutory retirement plan funding obligations to employees and thereby obtains a competitive advantage over other healthcare providers who meet their financial obligations to their employees," the lawsuit claims. St. Elizabeth commented on the issue via a spokesman, according to the report: "We can't comment on any active litigation matter. However, as we stated previously, our senior management team and board of trustees have made the commitment to fund the pension at the same levels required of ERISA plans, even though we are not required to follow ERISA funding requirements as a non-ERISA church plan." Registered nurses at Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center, represented by the California Nurses Association, returned to work March 22 after a weeklong strike, according to a Los Angeles Times report. The strike involved 1,200 RNs who voted last summer to join the CNA. The nurses are seeking their first collective bargaining contract, and are asking for higher pay and more staffing. Contract negotiations began last September and the latest bargaining session was March 10, Patti Clausen, RN, BSN, chief nurse executive at Los Angeles Medical Center, told the Los Angeles Times. She noted hospital management is "open to bargain any time they [the nurses] ask us." More articles on workforce and labor management: Hospitals and unions: 15 recent conflicts, agreements Judge sides with Tulare Regional, ruling hospital may move forward with new medical staff organization Nathan Littauer Hospital, union reach contract agreement: 4 things to know To continue following the latest news and information for Bedfordshire and surrounding areas, simply enter your full postcode below A London investment fund is snapping up two major development sites in Northern Ireland. The deal reportedly includes the Sirocco Quays site in east Belfast, and Castlebawn in Newtownards, Co Down. The identity of the London fund has not yet been revealed. A billboard put up by real estate agency Colliers earlier this month has been updated to reflect the purchase of Sirocco. At one stage, the quays were to be transformed in a 600m investment. But the sprawling industrial area has been sitting largely disused for years after the developer went under. The site was previously in the hands of vulture-fund Cerberus. Plans for the waterside development included 5,000 apartments, a hotel, an international convention centre, a supermarket, leisure facilities and other retail sites. Asda had been tipped as operator of the supermarket. Ewart Properties sold the Sirocco site for 40m to the Carvill Group in 2006. The proposal was once billed as a new cultural destination for the city and one of Carvill Groups flagship Belfast projects. Planning permission was granted for the ambitious development. However, Carvill, which made its name in construction as well as housebuilding, went into administration in 2011. It is understood Belfast City Councils city and regeneration committee held a closed-doors meeting on the future of the Sirocco site last month. On the agenda was what could be done to revamp and rebuild the area once a new buyer was found. In May, it was reported that Ulster Bank had sold Northern Ireland property loans originally worth 1.4bn for 205m in a deal with the US investment firm Cerberus. Loans originally taken out by Carvill Group on the Sirocco Works in east Belfast and by Leaside Investments for the proposed Royal Exchange shopping centre in the city were believed to be part of the massive deal. The Sirocco site was one of the highest-profile in Belfast affected by the loan sale. The economic crash and collapse in property prices were seen as big factors in the demise of Warrenpoint-based Carvill Group and its plans for the site. Meanwhile, the Castlebawn project in Newtownards, Co Down, is also said to be sale agreed with the same London investment firm. Back in 2012, the go-ahead was given for a 50m retail development at the site. The 20,000 sq metre development was predicted to create 220 building jobs and 410 full and part-time employment positions. But the shopping centre part of the development, which had received planning permission, was quashed after a judicial review. And in 2015 there was serious doubt cast over the sites future after investment fund Cerberus appointed KPMG as administrators to the firm behind the development. Two major firms in the pork sector have made approaches to buy one of Northern Ireland's biggest meat firms. Dungannon-based Dunbia is one of the largest meat processors in the UK and Ireland, and turns over more than 800m each year. Danish Crown and Cranswick - two of the biggest players in the UK - have reportedly made approaches to buy the pig-processing division of the firm. In December, the Belfast Telegraph revealed that a teaser document had been prepared to be sent out to businesses potentially interested in snapping up the Co Tyrone company. The strategy is usually an early step to establish interest in a business before a formal bidding process begins. The latest reported development hints at a possible break-up of the firm. Dunbia started off life as a red meat processor, primarily beef, but has now grown its reach across the meat industry. According to a report by The Sunday Times, a deal for the entire group could be completed within weeks. There had been growing speculation that Dunbia was in the process of being sold to Brazilian firm JBS, which bought Moy Park last year. But the firm has dismissed those claims. Dunbia did not wish to comment on the latest reports. In a statement in December, Dunbia confirmed it was "considering options for maximising the potential of the company going forward" after having "received several serious expressions of interest from would-be investors over the past two years". It said it had enjoyed "consistent growth over the past number of years and has ambitious plans to grow and expand the business". Dunbia was established almost 40 years ago as Dungannon Meats, a frozen meat shop on the outskirts of the Co Tyrone town. Jim and Jack Dobson's business was going through a small number of cattle each week. It has since grown to employ close to 4,000 staff, 1,200 of them in Northern Ireland, across a dozen sites exporting beef, lamb and pork across the globe. Dunbia currently handles 7,000 cattle, 50,000 lambs and 15,000 pigs annually. Around half the business involves selling primarily beef and lamb to UK supermarkets, including Sainsbury's, one of the firm's first big customers. Rebranded as Dunbia in 2006, in the last three decades the company has taken over a number of other processors in Ireland and Britain. Its acquisitions have included Excel Meats and Newgrange Meats in the Republic, and Oriel Jones & Son in Wales. Dunbia is also now selling its pork into India. Dunbia boosted its profits by more than 40%, with turnover shooting up to 826m for the year, according to its latest accounts. The Irish Bank Officials' Association (IBOA) says Ulster Bank in Northern Ireland is passing on contributions of 1m a year to its workforce Union members have rejected a proposal from Ulster Bank that could see staff paying in more to a pension scheme following UK-wide changes by Westminster. The Irish Bank Officials' Association (IBOA) says Ulster Bank in Northern Ireland is passing on contributions of 1m a year to its workforce. It says this will hit 1,500 members of the defined benefit pension scheme. The changes to contributions for defined benefit pension schemes are happening as the result of UK-wide reform. "By imposing this additional burden on its workers, Ulster Bank would effectively wipe out the modest pay rises secured by our members recently," said IBOA general secretary Larry Broderick. A spokesman for Ulster Bank's parent company RBS said: "Reforms made to defined benefit pensions mean that the costs of our own scheme have risen. As a result RBS is proposing to increase the cost of being a member." Premium Margaret Canning Opinion Conservatives have gone back to traditional territory with a mini-budget that just might cost the party the next election Many of the measures in Kwasi Kwartengs first big statement as Chancellor had been trailed in advance changes to stamp duty, the cancellation of both the rise in National Insurance and the rise in corporation tax, and bringing forward a cut in the basic rate of income tax to 19 pence. Ahoghill woman Lynne McDowell has landed a job on Keep It Country TV Ahoghill woman Lynne McDowell has landed a job on Keep It Country TV A Co Antrim woman is the new face of Europe's only dedicated country music channel, Keep It Country TV. Lynne McDowell from Ahoghill has landed a hosting gig alongside Phil Mack, who is well-known among Ireland's country music fans for his self-titled TV show which has been running for around five years. London-based Lynne (33) co-hosts the Phil Mack Country Music show every Monday night at 9pm. "The response has been overwhelming from Ireland and the reaction from the US has been incredible too," she said. Lynne is as happy listening to new country artists as she is the older generation of stars. "Having just been to the huge Country to Country Festival in London last week, I would say Chris Stapleton is one of my favourites," she added. "I grew up listening to country music thanks to my dad and the artist I love most is John Michael Montgomery. It is great that with country music there is a lovely mixture of artists with strong appeal to a number of generations. "It is really encouraging to see." The former Ballymena Academy pupil started her career working for Jim Allister when he was a DUP MEP in Brussels. She swapped politics for the music industry in 2008 when she landed a job with the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) - a trade body for record labels and the people behind the BRIT Awards - where she became head of public relations. Last March Lynne set up Well Red, consulting for music and TV companies, including the Country Music Association based in Nashville. "It was a fantastic opportunity to work for Jim Allister in Strasbourg and Brussels," she said. "The desire was strong to work in music so I gave up politics to follow my dream in London." Lynne has been filming for Keep It Country TV at Phil Mack's studio in Essex since the channel launched on Sky at the end of January. She added: "Phil is an absolute superstar. He is genuine, a lovely man, full of fun and is very passionate about country music, especially artists from Ireland." Keep It Country TV is on Sky 389, Freesat 516 and on Freeview from April. Matthew Perry, who played Chandler Bing in Friends, has ruled out a return to the much-loved sitcom Matthew Perry has said he would not want to take part in a Friends reunion because it would "ruin" the sitcom's ending. Perry starred as Chandler Bing in US comedy Friends, which ended in 2004 after a decade-long run. Asked by TV presenter Phillip Schofield on ITV's This Morning about the idea of returning to the show having "left it so beautifully", the actor said there had been no "real talk" of reviving the show. He said: " That's the concern about doing a reunion show, or a movie, because it ended so well, and you don't want to ruin that. "Everyone always asks about a reunion, and there's been no real talk of that." Perry, 46, was the only one of the main cast who did not attend the cast reunion aired in February as a tribute to director James Burrows. The programme saw Jennifer Aniston, Courtney Cox, Lisa Kudrow, Matt LeBlanc and David Schwimmer back together to reminisce about their time starring in Friends. Perry was absent as he was rehearsing for his play The End of Longing in London, but sent a message via video link. In 2013, he joked in a The Hollywood Reporter round table that Friends was so laid back to shoot he wanted to go back in a time machine and say: "Let's not stop." Asked about the time machine idea, Perry told This Morning co-host Holly Willoughby that he wished it had run for longer. " It was such a great job, we all loved each other so much, and we all had such a wonderful time that subsequent jobs have been harder to do than that one," he said. "So, yeah. I guess it would be nice to go back and do more, because it was just so much fun." Schofield also revealed he made a brief appearance in Friends when he was part of the live audience. "One of my greatest claims to fame is the fact that I am in Friends," he said. "I am! I am - my laugh is in Friends. It's only very brief ... I was terrified you were going to re-shoot the scene and then I'd have to do it again. I didn't do it on purpose, it just happened. So my 'Ha!' is at the end of this scene." Perry was unimpressed, responding: "We have to talk about how much free time you have." The actor is currently starring in The End of Longing at the Playhouse Theatre in London. He will then return to the US to shoot The Kennedys: After Camelot, where he will star as Ted Kennedy alongside Katie Holmes's Jackie Kennedy. BBC presenter Kerry McLean has led tributes to her father who has died just six days after being diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. The popular radio star broke the news on social media yesterday when she described the man who had been a game warden in South Africa as a "brilliant" father and the "most amazing" grandfather. Kerry, who is married to fellow BBC presenter Ralph McLean, also revealed details of her late dad's funeral at their hometown of Ballymoney. The former civil servant died from a disease which claims the lives of around 200 people in Northern Ireland every year. It is a difficult illness to diagnose and treat successfully and often has a poor prognosis for sufferers. Kerry revealed her family's heartbreak on her Facebook page: "Our lovely daddy Shaun Turner passed away last night after a mercifully short battle with pancreatic cancer, just 6 days after diagnosis. "He was a brilliant husband and father and the most doting and amazing granda who ever walked this earth. "Our hearts are broken but full to bursting with all the love he gave us day and daily." She added that her father's funeral was due to take place on Wednesday at St Patrick's Parish in Ballymoney. Just two years ago Kerry told how she and her husband had moved to the north Antrim town to be closer to her parents. In the Belfast Telegraph feature she revealed an interesting career her father had once enjoyed, but which he abandoned once he found love at home. "My dad worked in South Africa as a game warden, met my mum on a visit home and never left. "He's a retired civil servant and mum is a trade unionist, although she was a teacher." Joking that she'd never won an argument with her mother, she quipped her father was a much softer touch. "With my dad, though, I could always get what I wanted." Expressing her sympathy to Kerry's family, Susan Cooke from Dollingstown in Co Armagh knows only too well of the devastating effects of the the disease. She launched the Northern Ireland branch of the Pancreatic Cancer Research Fund in 2014, a year after it claimed the life of her husband Colin, at just 45 - 11 weeks after diagnosis. Together with Omagh woman Kerry Irvine who runs Pancreatic Cancer Action, the pair offer a support group to sufferers and bereaved relatives based at Belfast's Mater Hospital. "It's a devastating disease and its symptoms are often very vague and often initially missed by some GPs," she said. "People often don't have the chance to come to terms with the diagnosis before they're dealing with a death. "We had one family who came to the support group who didn't even know their daughter had died from pancreatic cancer until her postmortem." She lamented the fact that only 88 of Northern Ireland's 1200 GPs have taken up an accredited E-learning course, "Pancreatic Cancer: Early Diagnosis in General Practice", created by the charity in conjunction with the Royal College of General Practitioners. She also pointed out that only 1% of government research funds are earmarked for study into pancreatic cancer. The support group takes place at Belfast's Mater Hospital's boardroom on the last Thursday of the month at 6.30pm Manchester United striker Wayne Rooney has paid a touching tribute to the two children who died in the Buncrana pier tragedy. Mark (12) and Evan McGrotty (8) were among the five people who lost their lives after the car they were travelling in plunged into the water at Buncrana Pier on Sunday evening. The two children were in the car with their dad Sean (48), grandmother Ruth Daniels (59) and her daughter Jodie-Lee (16) when the accident happened. Rooney, who has three sons under the age of six, used his Twitter account to pay his respects to the deceased young boys. Earlier on Tuesday, the five coffins bearing the remains of the victims arrived home in Derry, with a funeral service set to take place at the Holy Family parish church in Ballymagroarty at 2pm on Thursday. Devastating news about young Mark, Evan & family from Derry. Your support hasn't gone unnoticed. Prayers with family #rooneyformarkandevan Wayne Rooney (@WayneRooney) March 22, 2016 Irish Independent Unionist parties and Alliance have demanded that a large number of flags honouring the IRA should be removed from a Belfast city centre junction. The bright green flags dedicated to so-called D Company were erected over the weekend. They feature a dog, a reference to an old nickname that members of that group were known by. As well as festooning the Lower Falls area they extend to a busy junction outside the Millfield campus of Belfast Metropolitan College. Disgust was expressed on social media about the flags with some claiming the IRA's D Company was responsible for a number of the most shocking outrages of the Troubles, including Bloody Friday and the abduction and murder of mother-of-10 Jean McConville. It is unclear which group was behind the flags, which are believed to be part of the republican movement's commemoration of the centenary of the Easter Rising. There are reports they were erected by people in the local community. A Sinn Fein spokesperson said: "Sinn Fein had no involvement in the erection of these flags on a section of the Falls Road." DUP MLA William Humphrey has called for the immediate removal of the emblems. "I condemn the erection of these flags which glorify terrorists and terrorism," he said. "There can be no pretence that these are in any way historic. It is particularly galling that they have been erected outside a Belfast Metropolitan College campus and provisions for homeless people at a busy junction on the verge of the city centre." Mr Humphrey claimed the erection of the flags was an attempt to raise tensions ahead of the centenary of the Easter Rising this weekend. "This is clearly an attempt to heighten tension. There is no place for these flags in the public arena in modern society," he said. "The erection of these flags should be condemned by all right-thinking people and I call for their immediate removal." Alliance MLA Stewart Dickson has also called for the removal of the symbols. "Paramilitary flags are a scourge in Northern Ireland and there can never be any justification for them," he said. "We cannot simply turn a blind eye to the flying of such illegal flags. Public agencies such as the police, Roads Service and Housing Executive, alongside political representatives, have a duty to ensure communities are inclusive and welcoming, not promoting a climate of fear, which these flags clearly do. "I would call on the authorities to remove these illegal flags immediately. Alliance has long called for cross-party support to tackle illegal flags and there is an urgent need for action to be taken." TUV north Belfast Assembly candidate John Miller blasted the flags as "disgusting". "D Company of the IRA are a pack of bloodstained murderers who have caused huge death and destruction in north and west Belfast," he said. "The murderers of Jean McConville are not the sort of people who should be celebrated." An Audi Q7 like the one in which the family got trapped Algae on the slipway which would have made it difficult for the vehicle to get any traction Rescue services at the pier in Buncrana where a family of five perished after their car slide into Loch Swilly Emergency services on the pier at Buncrana after yesterdays tragic accident Tributes left at the scene of the tragedy. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker Francis Crawford Who raised the alarm, at the Scene at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal, after Five people, including children, have died after a car went off a pier. Picture Joe Bolan / Press Eye Francis Crawford Who raised the alarm, at the Scene at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal, after Five people, including children, have died after a car went off a pier. Picture Presseye Francis Crawford Who raised the alarm, at the Scene at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal, after Five people, including children, have died after a car went off a pier. Picture Presseye Garda at the Scene at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal, after Five people, including children, have died after a car went off a pier. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker Francis Crawford Who raised the alarm, at the Scene at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal, after Five people, including children, have died after a car went off a pier. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker Francis Crawford Who raised the alarm, at the Scene at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal, after Five people, including children, have died after a car went off a pier. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker Flowers left at the Scene at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker Flowers left at the Scene at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker John McCarthy from the RNLI at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker Martin McGuinness at the pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker The scene at the pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker The scene at the pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker The scene at the pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Margaret McLaughlin The scene at the pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Margaret McLaughlin The scene at the pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Margaret McLaughlin The scene at the pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Margaret McLaughlin The scene at the pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker Buncrana pier tragedy: Former Ballymena United footballer Davitt Walsh heroically dived into the water and saved baby. Image: RTE News Remains of the five members of the same family who drowned at Buncrana pier are taken to the family home on Tuesday morning. Photo: Joe Boland / Press Eye Remains of the five members of the same family who drowned at Buncrana pier are taken to the family home on Tuesday morning. Photo: Joe Boland / Press Eye Sean McGrotty and his two sons Evan and Mark died at the scene. His partner Louise wasnt present at the time of the tragedy, but her baby Rioghnach-Ann, whom she is cradling here, was rescued Remains of the five members of the same family who drowned at Buncrana pier are taken to the family home on Tuesday morning. Photo: Joe Boland / Press Eye Louise McGrotty with baby Rioghnach-Ann, who survived the tragedy, and son Evan (8), who lost his life Evan McGrotty, aged eight, died alongside his father Sean McGrotty (49), 12-year-old brother Mark, grandmother Ruth Daniels, 59, and her 14-year-old daughter, Jodie Lee Daniels, when their SUV sank after sliding off a "slippery as ice" slipway in Buncrana in March 2016. A grief-stricken mother who lost her two sons, partner, mother and sister in the Buncrana tragedy has said her baby daughter is her sole reason to go on. Louise McGrotty was away at a hen party when five members of her family died when their car slid into the ice cold waters of Lough Swilly from a slipway in Buncrana, Co Donegal, on Sunday night. Read More A witness has described hearing the last desperate screams of Sean McGrotty (49), his two sons Mark (12), Evan (8) and the boys grandmother Ruth Daniels (59). Mrs Daniels daughter 14-year-old Jodi-Lee also died when the familys Audi four-wheel drive slid on algae on the slipway and went crashing into the sea. Bystander Davitt Walsh, who had gone to the pier with his girlfriend for a walk, has been hailed a hero after he swam out and rescued Ms James and Mr McGrottys four-month-old daughter Rioghnach-Ann. The baby was rushed to Letterkenny General hospital where she was treated but has since been returned to her mother. Its emerged that Louise rang her children and spoke to them a short time before they died. She is being comforted by other family members and friends at her home in St Eithnes Park, in Derry from where preparations for all five funerals are being finalised. Fr Paddy OKane told the Belfast Telegraph Louises only reason to carry on living is her infant daughter. He said: Louise is struggling as anyone could imagine. The baby is what she is focusing on. She said that is her sole reason for living right now. Louise said to me, I have lost everyone, except little Rioghnach-Ann. She said Rioghnach-Ann is my reason to go on. There are no words of comfort that will help. It is not a time for pious platitudes. We can only be present with the family and let them know we care and we will do whatever it takes to help them. As a community we will come together on Thursday which will be a day of enormous grief for everyone. Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness visited Louise at her home where the local community has been left stunned. She actually spoke to her children around 7pm last night in a park in Buncrana and half an hour later they were gone, he said. To meet with her this morning was just a scene of utter devastation in the house. She is obviously surrounded by close family members, all of whom are just distraught. It is just one of the most heartbreaking scenes that you could ever envisage. The young woman that I met has to live with this for the rest of her life. How do you live with this? A statement from the two families said: Our families have been devastated by the tragic events in which five members of our family died in a terrible accident. The family has been inundated with support and sympathy from the local community and further afield and this is deeply appreciated. The McGrotty family home was spilling over with people from right across Derry gathering to offer condolences. These included the Bishop of Derry, Donal McKeown and his counterpart from the Church of Ireland Bishop Ken Good. Mr McGuinness also travelled to Buncrana to meet the volunteers from the RNLI who assisted at the scene on Sunday. He said: There are no words to sum up the heartbreak of the young woman who has lost her partner, two sons, her mother and her sister. It is a very, very sad house full of other relatives, hugely supportive at this difficult time. It is truly heartbreaking, mind numbing, shocking beyond belief. I have come to Buncrana to meet emergency services and to thank them for the work they did. Garda Superintendent Colm Nevin described the tragedy as one of the worst to ever hit Donegal. He thanked the emergency crews who attended the callout and the members of the public who assisted, in particular, Mr Walsh who displayed exceptional bravery. Condolences were also offered to the families from the Lough Swilly RNLI. Its Lifeboat Operations Manager John McCarter said: Our volunteer lifeboat crew were one of the first emergency services on scene and recovered the five casualties from the water. We were devastated to learn subsequently that those five people, including young children, had lost their lives. We wish to commend the actions of the member of the public who selflessly entered the water and rescued the baby and we wish them both a full recovery. Derry Mayor Elisha McCallion said: This tragedy has affected the entire community in Derry and Donegal and left all of us feeling distraught. My heart goes out to everyone affected by this tragedy, especially to Louise. I cant imagine what she is going through right now, it is just unthinkable and every mothers nightmare. This tragedy really captures the heart of every person and its important that we provide a forum for which people can express their condolences. The schools where Jodi-Lee, Mark and Evan were pupils, St Marys College, St Josephs College and St Eithnes Primary School, have all laid on counselling services for their friends and class mates. The Education Minister, John ODowd said: I offer my deepest sympathies to the families, friends and school communities who are all trying to come to terms with this terrible tragedy. The coffin of prison officer Adrian Ismay arrives at Woodvale Methodist Church in north Belfast Communities across Northern Ireland must stand together to reject the dark deeds of the dark men who murdered a prison officer, mourners at his funeral were told. Hundreds of family, friends and colleagues gathered in Belfast to say farewell to Adrian "Izzy" Ismay, a 52-year-old father of three who died after being injured in a dissident republican bomb attack. The president of the Methodist Church of Ireland, Rev Brian Anderson, told the congregation that the dark act which took Mr Ismay's life was in stark contrast to the light the Cumbrian-born Falklands veteran brought to so many. "In the darkest part of night, probably dressed in dark clothes, dark men did a dark, dark deed, bringing us to this place today, leading to the loss of Izzy, causing us to travel through the valley of the shadow of death," he said. Rev Anderson said the funeral provided a platform to send a strong message to those still intent on violence. "It gives me the opportunity to voice the opinion and the thoughts of the overwhelming number of people across our country to say we reject what you have done, we stand against what you have done, we want to build an inclusive peaceful society in Northern Ireland and your contribution to it we do not want," he said. "It's incumbent upon us as a society to ensure that those men who represent a time in our past don't get any fuel and we want them to go away and it's up to us at all levels of society to ensure we build a society that does not want them, does not need them and rejects them utterly." Mr Ismay served in the Royal Navy, seeing action in the Falklands War, before joining the Northern Ireland Prison Service in 1987. Away from his job as a trainer of new recruits to the service, he was heavily involved in volunteering work with the Scouts, St John Ambulance and Community Rescue Service. He died 11 days after suffering serious leg injuries when a bomb exploded underneath his van as he drove to work from his east Belfast home. A dissident republican group calling itself the New IRA, which opposes the Northern Ireland peace process, claimed to have carried out the attack on the long-serving officer. As the funeral took place in Woodvale Methodist Church off the Shankill Road, hundreds gathered in Belfast city centre for a public vigil for the officer. A host of dignitaries joined Mr Ismay's wife, Sharon, and three daughters, Samantha, Sarah and Tori, at the funeral service. Northern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villiers, Stormont First Minister Arlene Foster and Justice Minister David Ford attended, as did Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Chief Constable George Hamilton and NI Prison Service director-general Sue McAllister. The Irish Government was represented by the Department of Justice's acting secretary- general, Noel Watters. Scores of prison officers from Northern Ireland attended, as did representatives from other prison services. Mr Ismay's Prison Service cap, gloves and medals were set on top of his coffin as family members carried it from the church. Police fear the bombing was part of a planned surge in dissident activity ahead of the symbolic republican centenary of the Easter Rising against British rule in Dublin. Mr Ismay had been released from hospital in the wake of the blast in east Belfast on March 4 and had reportedly been making good progress. But he died unexpectedly last Tuesday when a blood clot triggered a heart attack. The results of a post-mortem examination led detectives to open a murder investigation. In the wake of Mr Ismay's death, a number of dissident republicans held in Maghaberry high-security prison in Co Antrim reportedly celebrated by lighting cigars. A 45-year-old man from west Belfast has been remanded in custody charged with the murder. Mr Ismay worked at Hydebank Wood Young Offenders Centre in south Belfast, where he trained new recruits to the Northern Ireland Prison Service (NIPS). All visits to Maghaberry and Hydebank Wood were cancelled today to allow staff to attend their colleague's funeral. An 80-year-old Belfast grandmother was left stranded at Manchester Airport after Flybe refused to let her board a flight when she turned up two minutes late at the gate, her family have said. Mary McGearty was reduced to tears by the "heartless and bureaucratic" manner in which the airline treated her, relatives told the Belfast Telegraph. The Ardoyne grandmother had made the trip to Manchester to visit her 90-year-old brother, who is seriously ill with cancer, and her 85-year-old sister whom she hasn't seen in a decade. Mary's grandson Chris Hughes said: "Granny came to the gate just as staff were closing it but they refused to let her through. She wasn't critically late - it was only two minutes - but they wouldn't allow her onto the flight on Sunday night. "She was late through no fault of her own - there had been delays at security. She isn't in the best of health herself and she is a slow walker so she couldn't make up the time. There was ample time to the flight's take-off but the lady at the gate wouldn't listen. "Then Flybe staff in both Manchester and Belfast City airports wouldn't book granny onto the next and last flight back to Belfast. She was left stranded in the airport. Our family is disgusted with Flybe. We will never fly with that airline again." A Flybe spokeswoman last night said: "Flybe regrets the upset and inconvenience caused to Mrs McGearty and her family. We have initiated a full investigation to determine what happened and why." She added that the airline's customer services department had been in touch with the family. Mr Hughes said his family had arranged the trip for their grandmother because they believed it was the last chance she would ever get to spend time with her brother and sister. Her family had moved from Belfast to Manchester when she was a child but Mrs McGearty had returned and reared her family in her native city. Her daughter, Charlotte, and her granddaughter, Michaela, accompanied her on the trip. "It was a beautiful, emotional occasion when granny was reunited with her brother and sister after so many years. "There were a lot of tears and laughter. But it all went sour on the journey home," Mr Hughes said. The family checked in at the Flybe desk at Manchester Airport 90 minutes before their flight, BE486, was due to depart at 6.45pm, but were delayed by queues going through security. "They set off straight for the gate when they got through security but granny is a slow walker. My family explained the reason for the delay to the lady who was closing the gate," Mr Hughes said. "She could see granny, she could see it was genuine - that it wasn't a case of people late because they were, say, drinking at the bar - but she would make no allowances. My family aren't the type to complain so they accepted the situation." Mr Hughes said his family then went to the Flybe customer services desk in the airport and asked to be booked onto the last flight to Belfast at 8.20pm. But he claimed the woman on the desk told them she "wasn't trained" to book flights and there was no one on duty who could help. "At this stage, granny was in tears. She just wanted to go home. My mum phoned home and, in desperation, my dad drove down to Belfast City Airport and went to the Flybe desk there and said he wanted to book a flight for his family back to Belfast. "The lady on the desk there said she couldn't do that because all travelling parties would have to be standing before her with ID. "My dad explained that Flybe were leaving an 80-year old woman and her family stranded overnight in Manchester Airport but the airline wouldn't budge." The family were forced to find overnight accommodation. They flew out of Liverpool yesterday to avoid using Flybe. Mr Hughes said: "I judge any organisation by how it treats old people and children. Flybe has failed abysmally. I travel a lot with work but I don't care if they offer the cheapest flight on any route - I will never fly with them again." An Audi Q7 like the one in which the family got trapped Algae on the slipway which would have made it difficult for the vehicle to get any traction Rescue services at the pier in Buncrana where a family of five perished after their car slide into Loch Swilly Emergency services on the pier at Buncrana after yesterdays tragic accident Tributes left at the scene of the tragedy. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker Francis Crawford Who raised the alarm, at the Scene at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal, after Five people, including children, have died after a car went off a pier. Picture Joe Bolan / Press Eye Francis Crawford Who raised the alarm, at the Scene at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal, after Five people, including children, have died after a car went off a pier. Picture Presseye Francis Crawford Who raised the alarm, at the Scene at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal, after Five people, including children, have died after a car went off a pier. Picture Presseye Garda at the Scene at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal, after Five people, including children, have died after a car went off a pier. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker Francis Crawford Who raised the alarm, at the Scene at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal, after Five people, including children, have died after a car went off a pier. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker Francis Crawford Who raised the alarm, at the Scene at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal, after Five people, including children, have died after a car went off a pier. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker Flowers left at the Scene at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker Flowers left at the Scene at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker John McCarthy from the RNLI at the Pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker Martin McGuinness at the pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker The scene at the pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker The scene at the pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker The scene at the pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Margaret McLaughlin The scene at the pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Margaret McLaughlin The scene at the pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Margaret McLaughlin The scene at the pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Margaret McLaughlin The scene at the pier in Buncrana Co Donegal. Picture Colm Lenaghan/ Pacemaker Buncrana pier tragedy: Former Ballymena United footballer Davitt Walsh heroically dived into the water and saved baby. Image: RTE News Remains of the five members of the same family who drowned at Buncrana pier are taken to the family home on Tuesday morning. Photo: Joe Boland / Press Eye Remains of the five members of the same family who drowned at Buncrana pier are taken to the family home on Tuesday morning. Photo: Joe Boland / Press Eye Sean McGrotty and his two sons Evan and Mark died at the scene. His partner Louise wasnt present at the time of the tragedy, but her baby Rioghnach-Ann, whom she is cradling here, was rescued Remains of the five members of the same family who drowned at Buncrana pier are taken to the family home on Tuesday morning. Photo: Joe Boland / Press Eye Louise McGrotty with baby Rioghnach-Ann, who survived the tragedy, and son Evan (8), who lost his life Evan McGrotty, aged eight, died alongside his father Sean McGrotty (49), 12-year-old brother Mark, grandmother Ruth Daniels, 59, and her 14-year-old daughter, Jodie Lee Daniels, when their SUV sank after sliding off a "slippery as ice" slipway in Buncrana in March 2016. The scale of the tragedy visited upon the relatives of those killed off Buncrana pier is beyond adequate description, the Bishop of Derry has said. Catholic cleric Donal McKeown and Church of Ireland Bishop for Derry and Raphoe Ken Good went to the home of Louise McGrotty who lost her husband, two children and her mother and sister in the drowning accident to comfort her and other bereaved relations. Read More There are no adequate words in the face of such pain, Bishop McKeown said. My thoughts and prayers are with those who are bereaved, in particular a grieving mother. I ask the people of the diocese to keep this family in your thoughts and prayers over the coming days and weeks. Bishop Good said the whole community had been touched by news of the deaths. Everybody right across the community, right across the whole country and right across the world I think wants to express their solidarity, their sympathy, their standing togetherness and thats what we want to do, he said. The familys parish priest Father Paddy OKane from Holy Family Church described the tragedy as the worst he had seen in 43 years and said the entire community was struggling to comprehend its magnitude. Words fail me to describe the depth of pain and the vastness of this tragedy, he said. He added: I am 43 years a priest and nothing compares to this. This is way beyond anything in my wildest imagination. This is the worst thing I have ever had. When I went up there this morning people were just standing around men were just standing looking at the ground not knowing what to say. All you can do is just shake their hand and say Im sorry. A respectful silence is all I could muster. Before I left the house I said the Lords Prayer with everyone to give Louise and her family strength. We all knew there was a terrible tragedy that happened in Buncrana last night but we didnt realise it was on our doorstep. Little did I know it was going to come here. It is understood the family had celebrated eight-year-old Evans first confession just a fortnight ago and were preparing for his first communion in May. Baby Rioghnach-Ann, the sole survivor of the accident, was christened in January. Fr OKane said: It was a time of celebration. Little did we think that so soon after we were going to have such a tragedy on our doorstep. Two weeks ago little Evan made his first confession here and he was about to make his first communion in May. Little did we think that two weeks ago he wouldnt be here. They are inconsolable. The mayor of Derry City and Strabane District Council Elisha McCallion announced that a book of condolence will be opened at the Guildhall in Derry for those who wish to express their sympathies for the five victims of the drowning tragedy. This is a terrible tragedy in Buncrana which has claimed the lives of five people, including three children, she said. It has affected the entire community in Derry and Donegal and left all of us numb. Who would have thought that a family day out could have ended so tragically. It is beyond belief and I cant put into words how sorry I am for the family and for those affected by this dreadful accident. This is a heart-wrenching story that really captures the heart of every person and it is important that we provide a forum through which people can express their condolences. Ulster Unionist leader Mike Nesbitt and party colleague Danny Kennedy at the funeral for murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay arrives at Woodvale Methodist Church PSNI Chief Constable George Hamilton at the funeral for murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay arrives at Woodvale Methodist Church The funeral for prison officer Adrian Ismay who died following a dissident republican bomb attack is underway in Belfast. The funeral for prison officer Adrian Ismay who died following a dissident republican bomb attack is underway in Belfast. The funeral for prison officer Adrian Ismay who died following a dissident republican bomb attack is underway in Belfast. Adrian Ismay: Funeral for prison officer targeted in van bomb The funeral for prison officer Adrian Ismay who died following a dissident republican bomb attack. Among the mourners was Justice Minister David Ford, George Hamilton Chief Constable of the PSNI, Kate Carroll widow of the late Stephen Carroll, Theresa Villiers Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and First Minister Arlene Foster. Mandatory Credit - Picture by Freddie Parkinson/Press Eye Tuesday 22nd March 2016 PACEMAKER BELFAST 22/03/2016 A PSNI officer salutes The funeral cortege for murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay arrives at Woodvale Methodist Church this morning. Mr Ismay died 11 days after being seriously injured in an under car bomb planted by a group calling itself the ONew IRAO on the 4th of March this year. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press Adrian Ismay: Funeral for prison officer targeted in van bomb The funeral for prison officer Adrian Ismay who died following a dissident republican bomb attack. Among the mourners was Justice Minister David Ford, George Hamilton Chief Constable of the PSNI, Kate Carroll widow of the late Stephen Carroll, Theresa Villiers Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and First Minister Arlene Foster. Mandatory Credit - Picture by Freddie Parkinson/Press Eye Tuesday 22nd March 2016 Adrian Ismay: Funeral for prison officer targeted in van bomb The funeral for prison officer Adrian Ismay who died following a dissident republican bomb attack. Mandatory Credit - Picture by Freddie Parkinson/Press Eye Tuesday 22nd March 2016 PACEMAKER BELFAST 22/03/2016 Sharon (wife) is comforted with Family and Friends During The funeral cortege for murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay arrives at Woodvale Methodist Church this morning. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - MARCH 22: A man displays the order of service as the funeral of murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay takes place on March 22, 2016 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Mr Ismay was seriously injured after a booby-trap device exploded under his van in east Belfast earlier this month. The 52 year old was thought to be recovering well from his injuries but died following a heart attack due to complications following the bomb attack. The new IRA, a dissident terrorist group have claimed responsibility for the murder. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - MARCH 22: Family members of Adrian Ismay comfort one another outside Woodvale Methodist church as the funeral of the murdered prison officer takes place on March 22, 2016 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Mr Ismay was seriously injured after a booby-trap device exploded under his van in east Belfast earlier this month. The 52 year old was thought to be recovering well from his injuries but died following a heart attack due to complications following the bomb attack. The new IRA, a dissident terrorist group have claimed responsibility for the murder. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - MARCH 22: Family members comfort one another outside Woodvale Methodist church as the funeral of murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay takes place on March 22, 2016 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Mr Ismay was seriously injured after a booby-trap device exploded under his van in east Belfast earlier this month. The 52 year old was thought to be recovering well from his injuries but died following a heart attack due to complications following the bomb attack. The new IRA, a dissident terrorist group have claimed responsibility for the murder. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - MARCH 22: Family members follow the remains of murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay as his funeral takes place on March 22, 2016 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Mr Ismay was seriously injured after a booby-trap device exploded under his van in east Belfast earlier this month. The 52 year old was thought to be recovering well from his injuries but died following a heart attack due to complications following the bomb attack. The new IRA, a dissident terrorist group have claimed responsibility for the murder. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - MARCH 22: A police officers salutes the hearse on arrival at Woodvale Methodist Church as the funeral of murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay takes place on March 22, 2016 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Mr Ismay was seriously injured after a booby-trap device exploded under his van in east Belfast earlier this month. The 52 year old was thought to be recovering well from his injuries but died following a heart attack due to complications following the bomb attack. The new IRA, a dissident terrorist group have claimed responsibility for the murder. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - MARCH 22: Sharon Ismay (2nd R) is comforted along with family members outside Woodvale Methodist church as the funeral of her husband, the murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay takes place on March 22, 2016 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Mr Ismay was seriously injured after a booby-trap device exploded under his van in east Belfast earlier this month. The 52 year old was thought to be recovering well from his injuries but died following a heart attack due to complications following the bomb attack. The new IRA, a dissident terrorist group have claimed responsibility for the murder. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - MARCH 22: A piper leads the cortege as the funeral of murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay takes place on March 22, 2016 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Mr Ismay was seriously injured after a booby-trap device exploded under his van in east Belfast earlier this month. The 52 year old was thought to be recovering well from his injuries but died following a heart attack due to complications following the bomb attack. The new IRA, a dissident terrorist group have claimed responsibility for the murder. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) A police officer stands guard near mourners as the funeral of murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay takes place on March 22, 2016 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Mr Ismay was seriously injured after a booby-trap device exploded under his van in east Belfast earlier this month. The 52 year old was thought to be recovering well from his injuries but died following a heart attack due to complications following the bomb attack. The new IRA, a dissident terrorist group have claimed responsibility for the murder. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Adrian's wife Sharon looks to the sky as the family walk behind the coffin. McBurney/Adrian Ismay Funeral of Prison Officer Adrian Ismay Pictured Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary for State Vernon Coaker after the funeral service Date: Tuesday 22 March 2015 Location: Woodstock Methodist Church, Belfast Credit: Liam McBurney/RAZORPIX Copyright: Liam McBurney/RAZORPIX Liam McBurney +44 7837 685767 +44 2890 660676 liammcburney@gmail.com Northern Ireland Justice Minister David Ford (centre) at Woodvale Methodist Church in north Belfast for the funeral of prison officer Adrian Ismay, who was murdered by dissident republicans. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday March 22, 2016. Mr Ismay, a married father-of-three, died eleven days after sustaining serious leg injuries in an under-vehicle bombing. See PA story ULSTER Prison. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire People attend a short vigil in Belfast city centre to remember murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay, whose funeral took place today. People attend a short vigil in Belfast city centre to remember murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay, whose funeral took place today. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday March 22, 2016. Mr Ismay, a married father-of-three, died eleven days after sustaining serious leg injuries in an under-vehicle bombing. See PA story ULSTER Prison Vigil. Photo credit should read: Lesley-Anne McKeown/PA Wire PACEMAKER BELFAST 22/03/2016 Family and Friends during The funeral cortege for murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay arrives at Woodvale Methodist Church this morning. Mr Ismay died 11 days after being seriously injured in an under car bomb planted by a group calling itself the ONew IRAO on the 4th of March this year. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press PACEMAKER BELFAST 22/03/2016 Justice Minister during The funeral cortege for murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay arrives at Woodvale Methodist Church this morning. Mr Ismay died 11 days after being seriously injured in an under car bomb planted by a group calling itself the ONew IRAO on the 4th of March this year. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press PACEMAKER BELFAST 22/03/2016 The funeral cortege for murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay arrives at Woodvale Methodist Church this morning. Mr Ismay died 11 days after being seriously injured in an under car bomb planted by a group calling itself the ONew IRAO on the 4th of March this year. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press PACEMAKER BELFAST 22/03/2016 Kate Carroll (widow of Stephen Carroll) During The funeral cortege for murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay arrives at Woodvale Methodist Church this morning. Mr Ismay died 11 days after being seriously injured in an under car bomb planted by a group calling itself the ONew IRAO on the 4th of March this year. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press PACEMAKER BELFAST 22/03/2016 Vigil at Belfast City Hall for murdered prison officer Adrain Ismay this lunchtime. Mr Ismay was burried at the same time the vigil took place. He was murdered earlier this month when a group calling itself the New IRA planted a bomb under his van. PACEMAKER BELFAST 22/03/2016 Sharon (wife) is comforted with Family and Friends During The funeral cortege for murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay arrives at Woodvale Methodist Church this morning. Mr Ismay died 11 days after being seriously injured in an under car bomb planted by a group calling itself the ONew IRAO on the 4th of March this year. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press Mandatory Credit - Picture by Freddie Parkinson/Press Eye Tuesday 22nd March 2016 Adrian Ismay: Funeral for prison officer targeted in van bomb The funeral for prison officer Adrian Ismay who died following a dissident republican bomb attack. Among the mourners was Justice Minister David Ford, George Hamilton Chief Constable of the PSNI, Kate Carroll widow of the late Stephen Carroll, Theresa Villiers Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and First Minister Arlene Foster. PACEMAKER BELFAST 22/03/2016 The funeral cortege for murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay arrives at Woodvale Methodist Church this morning. Mr Ismay died 11 days after being seriously injured in an under car bomb planted by a group calling itself the ONew IRAO on the 4th of March this year. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press PACEMAKER BELFAST 22/03/2016 Vigil at Belfast City Hall for murdered prison officer Adrain Ismay this lunchtime. Mr Ismay was burried at the same time the vigil took place. He was murdered earlier this month when a group calling itself the New IRA planted a bomb under his van. Alan Lewis - PhotopressBelfast.co.uk 22/3/2016 Mandatory Credit - Picture by Justin Kernoghan Family members weep as close family and friends help to carry Adrian's coffin at his funeral in the Shankill area of Belfast - The funeral for prison officer Adrian Ismay who died following a dissident republican bomb attack took place in Belfast today. Mr Ismay, 52, was seriously injured after a booby-trap device exploded under his van in east Belfast on 4 March. He was said to be recovering well, but died in hospital last Tuesday. A group calling itself the new IRA said it carried out the attack. A man has appeared in court charged with murder. PACEMAKER BELFAST 22/03/2016 Vigil at Belfast City Hall for murdered prison officer Adrain Ismay this lunchtime. Mr Ismay was burried at the same time the vigil took place. He was murdered earlier this month when a group calling itself the New IRA planted a bomb under his van. The funeral has taken place for a prison officer who died eleven days after a dissident republican bomb exploded under his van in east Belfast. Hundreds of family, friends and colleagues of 52-year-old Adrian Ismay attended the service at a church off the city's Shankill Road. The 52-year-old married father of three required surgery after an explosive device partially detonated under the van he was driving on Hillsborough Drive off the Woodstock Road just after 7am on Friday March 4 - causing a loud explosion. A host of dignitaries joined Mr Ismay's wife, Sharon, and three daughters, Samantha, Sarah and Tori, at the funeral service. The president of the Methodist Church of Ireland, Rev Brian Anderson, told the congregation that the dark act which took Mr Ismay's life was in stark contrast to the light the Cumbrian-born Falklands veteran brought to so many. "In the darkest part of night, probably dressed in dark clothes, dark men did a dark, dark deed, bringing us to this place today, leading to the loss of Izzy, causing us to travel through the valley of the shadow of death," he said. Rev Anderson said the funeral provided a platform to send a strong message to those still intent on violence. "It gives me the opportunity to voice the opinion and the thoughts of the overwhelming number of people across our country to say we reject what you have done, we stand against what you have done, we want to build an inclusive peaceful society in Northern Ireland and your contribution to it we do not want," he said. "It's incumbent upon us as a society to ensure that those men who represent a time in our past don't get any fuel and we want them to go away and it's up to us at all levels of society to ensure we build a society that does not want them, does not need them and rejects them utterly." Northern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villiers, Stormont First Minister Arlene Foster and Justice Minister David Ford attended, as did Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Chief Constable George Hamilton and NI Prison Service director-general Sue McAllister. The Irish Government was represented by the Department of Justice's acting secretary- general, Noel Watters. Scores of prison officers from Northern Ireland attended, as did representatives from other prison services. Mr Ismay's Prison Service cap, gloves and medals were set on top of his coffin as family members carried it from the church. Mr Ismay had only driven a short distance from his home when the device detonated as he went over a speed ramp. The long-serving officer was based at Hydebank Wood Young Offenders Centre in south Belfast and worked as a trainer for new recruits to the NI Prison Service. The man was taken to hospital and had undergone surgery and was understood to be recovering well. Mr Ismay died on Tuesday of a heart attack triggered by a blood clot, 11 days after he was injured in the dissident republican attack. The attack was claimed by renegade group the New IRA. As the funeral took place in north Belfast, in the city centre a public vigil for the officer was held outside City Hall. A crowd of around 100 people gathered for the vigil organised by the Irish Congress of Trade Unions, where a piper played before a minutes silence was held. Peter Bunting from ICTU said the vigil was an opportunity for the trade union movement to illustrate its revulsion at the murder of a worker and to display our solidarity with prison officers, its very important that those people are supported. He added: Today shows people are prepared to stand down people who murder workers. Also attending was Tony Jones (70) from Greenisland. His own father was a governor of Crumlin Road Prison and was killed by the IRA in 1979. I know what the family is going through because of my memory, he said. Its sad and Im very mindful of my own family today. Thats why Im here because I genuinely do feel for them. Police fear the bombing was part of a planned upsurge in dissident activity ahead of the symbolic republican centenary of the Easter Rising against British Rule in Dublin. All visits to Maghaberry and Hydebank Wood have been cancelled today to facilitate staff attending their murdered colleague's funeral. The turnout at Adrian Ismay's funeral reflected the character of the man mourned - big. "He was a big man with a big heart," his close friend and brother-in-law Ron Abrahams told the hundreds packed inside Woodvale Methodist Church in Belfast and the many more in the adjacent church hall or lining the streets outside. "If he could help he would, he never distinguished people by religion, race or colour - people were his priority." The same larger-than-life traits were emphasised by church minister Colin Duncan. "Izzy was a man of big stature and big personality and a big heart for people and his community," he said. The picture sketched for the congregation - of a kind-hearted family man who devoted almost all his spare time to community service - was the very antithesis of those who planted the bomb that ultimately killed him. Of the 250 operations launched by the Community Rescue Service in 2015, Mr Ismay, or Izzy to all who knew him well, was involved in 200 of them. Mr Duncan recounted one occasion when he had to abandon Christmas dinner with his family to take part in another volunteer search mission. "It is a mark of his character and personality that when they called he went, and he went without question and if somebody needed help, Izzy was there," said the cleric. His volunteering extended to the Scouts and St John Ambulance Service. Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close PACEMAKER BELFAST 22/03/2016 Vigil at Belfast City Hall for murdered prison officer Adrain Ismay this lunchtime. Mr Ismay was burried at the same time the vigil took place. He was murdered earlier this month when a group calling itself the New IRA planted a bomb under his van. Alan Lewis - PhotopressBelfast.co.uk 22/3/2016 Mandatory Credit - Picture by Justin Kernoghan Family members weep as close family and friends help to carry Adrian's coffin at his funeral in the Shankill area of Belfast - The funeral for prison officer Adrian Ismay who died following a dissident republican bomb attack took place in Belfast today. Mr Ismay, 52, was seriously injured after a booby-trap device exploded under his van in east Belfast on 4 March. He was said to be recovering well, but died in hospital last Tuesday. A group calling itself the new IRA said it carried out the attack. A man has appeared in court charged with murder. Photopress Belfast PACEMAKER BELFAST 22/03/2016 Vigil at Belfast City Hall for murdered prison officer Adrain Ismay this lunchtime. Mr Ismay was burried at the same time the vigil took place. He was murdered earlier this month when a group calling itself the New IRA planted a bomb under his van. PACEMAKER BELFAST 22/03/2016 The funeral cortege for murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay arrives at Woodvale Methodist Church this morning. Mr Ismay died 11 days after being seriously injured in an under car bomb planted by a group calling itself the ONew IRAO on the 4th of March this year. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press Mandatory Credit - Picture by Freddie Parkinson/Press Eye Tuesday 22nd March 2016 Adrian Ismay: Funeral for prison officer targeted in van bomb The funeral for prison officer Adrian Ismay who died following a dissident republican bomb attack. Among the mourners was Justice Minister David Ford, George Hamilton Chief Constable of the PSNI, Kate Carroll widow of the late Stephen Carroll, Theresa Villiers Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and First Minister Arlene Foster. Press Eye - Belfast - Norther PACEMAKER BELFAST 22/03/2016 Sharon (wife) is comforted with Family and Friends During The funeral cortege for murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay arrives at Woodvale Methodist Church this morning. Mr Ismay died 11 days after being seriously injured in an under car bomb planted by a group calling itself the ONew IRAO on the 4th of March this year. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press PACEMAKER BELFAST 22/03/2016 Vigil at Belfast City Hall for murdered prison officer Adrain Ismay this lunchtime. Mr Ismay was burried at the same time the vigil took place. He was murdered earlier this month when a group calling itself the New IRA planted a bomb under his van. PACEMAKER BELFAST 22/03/2016 Kate Carroll (widow of Stephen Carroll) During The funeral cortege for murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay arrives at Woodvale Methodist Church this morning. Mr Ismay died 11 days after being seriously injured in an under car bomb planted by a group calling itself the ONew IRAO on the 4th of March this year. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press PACEMAKER BELFAST 22/03/2016 The funeral cortege for murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay arrives at Woodvale Methodist Church this morning. Mr Ismay died 11 days after being seriously injured in an under car bomb planted by a group calling itself the ONew IRAO on the 4th of March this year. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press PACEMAKER BELFAST 22/03/2016 Justice Minister during The funeral cortege for murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay arrives at Woodvale Methodist Church this morning. Mr Ismay died 11 days after being seriously injured in an under car bomb planted by a group calling itself the ONew IRAO on the 4th of March this year. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press PACEMAKER BELFAST 22/03/2016 Family and Friends during The funeral cortege for murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay arrives at Woodvale Methodist Church this morning. Mr Ismay died 11 days after being seriously injured in an under car bomb planted by a group calling itself the ONew IRAO on the 4th of March this year. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press People attend a short vigil in Belfast city centre to remember murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay, whose funeral took place today. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday March 22, 2016. Mr Ismay, a married father-of-three, died eleven days after sustaining serious leg injuries in an under-vehicle bombing. See PA story ULSTER Prison Vigil. Photo credit should read: Lesley-Anne McKeown/PA Wire PA People attend a short vigil in Belfast city centre to remember murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay, whose funeral took place today. PA Northern Ireland Justice Minister David Ford (centre) at Woodvale Methodist Church in north Belfast for the funeral of prison officer Adrian Ismay, who was murdered by dissident republicans. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday March 22, 2016. Mr Ismay, a married father-of-three, died eleven days after sustaining serious leg injuries in an under-vehicle bombing. See PA story ULSTER Prison. Photo credit should read: Brian Lawless/PA Wire PA McBurney/Adrian Ismay Funeral of Prison Officer Adrian Ismay Pictured Shadow Northern Ireland Secretary for State Vernon Coaker after the funeral service Date: Tuesday 22 March 2015 Location: Woodstock Methodist Church, Belfast Credit: Liam McBurney/RAZORPIX Copyright: Liam McBurney/RAZORPIX Liam McBurney +44 7837 685767 +44 2890 660676 liammcburney@gmail.com Liam McBurney/RAZORPIX Northern Ireland Secretary for State Theresa Villers after the funeral service Liam McBurney/RAZORPIX Adrian's wife Sharon looks to the sky as the family walk behind the coffin. Liam McBurney/RAZORPIX A police officer stands guard near mourners as the funeral of murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay takes place on March 22, 2016 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Mr Ismay was seriously injured after a booby-trap device exploded under his van in east Belfast earlier this month. The 52 year old was thought to be recovering well from his injuries but died following a heart attack due to complications following the bomb attack. The new IRA, a dissident terrorist group have claimed responsibility for the murder. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - MARCH 22: A piper leads the cortege as the funeral of murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay takes place on March 22, 2016 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Mr Ismay was seriously injured after a booby-trap device exploded under his van in east Belfast earlier this month. The 52 year old was thought to be recovering well from his injuries but died following a heart attack due to complications following the bomb attack. The new IRA, a dissident terrorist group have claimed responsibility for the murder. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - MARCH 22: Sharon Ismay (2nd R) is comforted along with family members outside Woodvale Methodist church as the funeral of her husband, the murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay takes place on March 22, 2016 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Mr Ismay was seriously injured after a booby-trap device exploded under his van in east Belfast earlier this month. The 52 year old was thought to be recovering well from his injuries but died following a heart attack due to complications following the bomb attack. The new IRA, a dissident terrorist group have claimed responsibility for the murder. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - MARCH 22: A police officers salutes the hearse on arrival at Woodvale Methodist Church as the funeral of murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay takes place on March 22, 2016 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Mr Ismay was seriously injured after a booby-trap device exploded under his van in east Belfast earlier this month. The 52 year old was thought to be recovering well from his injuries but died following a heart attack due to complications following the bomb attack. The new IRA, a dissident terrorist group have claimed responsibility for the murder. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - MARCH 22: Family members follow the remains of murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay as his funeral takes place on March 22, 2016 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Mr Ismay was seriously injured after a booby-trap device exploded under his van in east Belfast earlier this month. The 52 year old was thought to be recovering well from his injuries but died following a heart attack due to complications following the bomb attack. The new IRA, a dissident terrorist group have claimed responsibility for the murder. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - MARCH 22: Family members comfort one another outside Woodvale Methodist church as the funeral of murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay takes place on March 22, 2016 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Mr Ismay was seriously injured after a booby-trap device exploded under his van in east Belfast earlier this month. The 52 year old was thought to be recovering well from his injuries but died following a heart attack due to complications following the bomb attack. The new IRA, a dissident terrorist group have claimed responsibility for the murder. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - MARCH 22: Family members of Adrian Ismay comfort one another outside Woodvale Methodist church as the funeral of the murdered prison officer takes place on March 22, 2016 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Mr Ismay was seriously injured after a booby-trap device exploded under his van in east Belfast earlier this month. The 52 year old was thought to be recovering well from his injuries but died following a heart attack due to complications following the bomb attack. The new IRA, a dissident terrorist group have claimed responsibility for the murder. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images BELFAST, NORTHERN IRELAND - MARCH 22: A man displays the order of service as the funeral of murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay takes place on March 22, 2016 in Belfast, Northern Ireland. Mr Ismay was seriously injured after a booby-trap device exploded under his van in east Belfast earlier this month. The 52 year old was thought to be recovering well from his injuries but died following a heart attack due to complications following the bomb attack. The new IRA, a dissident terrorist group have claimed responsibility for the murder. (Photo by Charles McQuillan/Getty Images) Getty Images PACEMAKER BELFAST 22/03/2016 Sharon (wife) is comforted with Family and Friends During The funeral cortege for murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay arrives at Woodvale Methodist Church this morning. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press The funeral of murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay at Woodvale Methodist Church, Belfast. Adrian Ismay: Funeral for prison officer targeted in van bomb The funeral for prison officer Adrian Ismay who died following a dissident republican bomb attack. Mandatory Credit - Picture by Freddie Parkinson/Press Eye Tuesday 22nd March 2016 Press Eye - Belfast - Norther Adrian Ismay: Funeral for prison officer targeted in van bomb The funeral for prison officer Adrian Ismay who died following a dissident republican bomb attack. Among the mourners was Justice Minister David Ford, George Hamilton Chief Constable of the PSNI, Kate Carroll widow of the late Stephen Carroll, Theresa Villiers Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and First Minister Arlene Foster. Mandatory Credit - Picture by Freddie Parkinson/Press Eye Tuesday 22nd March 2016 Press Eye - Belfast - Norther PACEMAKER BELFAST 22/03/2016 A PSNI officer salutes The funeral cortege for murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay arrives at Woodvale Methodist Church this morning. Mr Ismay died 11 days after being seriously injured in an under car bomb planted by a group calling itself the ONew IRAO on the 4th of March this year. Photo Colm Lenaghan/Pacemaker Press The funeral of murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay at Woodvale Methodist Church, Belfast. Copyright: Liam McBurney/RAZORPIX Liam McBurney/RAZORPIX Adrian Ismay: Funeral for prison officer targeted in van bomb The funeral for prison officer Adrian Ismay who died following a dissident republican bomb attack. Among the mourners was Justice Minister David Ford, George Hamilton Chief Constable of the PSNI, Kate Carroll widow of the late Stephen Carroll, Theresa Villiers Secretary of State for Northern Ireland and First Minister Arlene Foster. Mandatory Credit - Picture by Freddie Parkinson/Press Eye Tuesday 22nd March 2016 Press Eye - Belfast - Norther The funeral for prison officer Adrian Ismay who died following a dissident republican bomb attack is underway in Belfast. The funeral for prison officer Adrian Ismay who died following a dissident republican bomb attack is underway in Belfast. The funeral for prison officer Adrian Ismay who died following a dissident republican bomb attack is underway in Belfast. The funeral of murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay at Woodvale Methodist Church, Belfast. PSNI Chief Constable George Hamilton at the funeral for murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay arrives at Woodvale Methodist Church Ulster Unionist leader Mike Nesbitt and party colleague Danny Kennedy at the funeral for murdered prison officer Adrian Ismay arrives at Woodvale Methodist Church Belfast City Hall vigil for Adrian Ismay Belfast City Hall vigil for Adrian Ismay Belfast City Hall vigil for Adrian Ismay Belfast City Hall vigil for Adrian Ismay Belfast City Hall vigil for Adrian Ismay Belfast City Hall vigil for Adrian Ismay Belfast City Hall vigil for Adrian Ismay Flowers laid in tribute of Adrian Ismay Liam McBurney/RAZORPIX Prison officer Adrian Ismay Other tributes were also left Photopress Belfast Adrian Ismay / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp PACEMAKER BELFAST 22/03/2016 Vigil at Belfast City Hall for murdered prison officer Adrain Ismay this lunchtime. Mr Ismay was burried at the same time the vigil took place. He was murdered earlier this month when a group calling itself the New IRA planted a bomb under his van. "His priority was to help others," said Mr Duncan. Born in Carlisle in Cumbria, Mr Ismay served six years in the Royal Navy, seeing action in the Falklands War on board HMS Minerva and HMS Illustrious. His final posting in the Navy was in Northern Ireland and that is where he met his future wife Sharon, at a function on board HMS Caroline. No coincidence the last hymn sung at his funeral used a nautical metaphor to urge steadfastness in troubled times - Will Your Anchor Hold. The choice of the first hymn - Give Thanks - reflected another of the father of three's great passions: rugby. It shares the same tune as the anthem of his beloved Ulster Rugby team - "Stand up for the Ulstermen". Mr Ismay had been due to travel to the Aviva Stadium in Dublin last weekend to see Ireland take on Scotland in the last game of the Six Nations. He had also been looking forward to a long-planned family holiday in Florida. His fourth grandchild was on the way and his daughter Tori was soon to be married. The long-serving prison officer was a "devoted husband, father and grandfather", mourners were told. Mr Duncan acknowledged his loss had grievously hurt his other family - the Prison Service. As prison officers gathered outside the church, without uniforms and standing well away from the phalanx of media cameras, the minister noted how difficult it was for them to know their colleague was targeted because of the job he did. There were lighter moments in the service too. Mr Abrahams recalled his friend's great sense of fun and the many times they shared together trading stories at the bar. "He was generous to a fault, was always first to get the round in and usually last man standing," he said, recounting one notable exception at a wedding when "his feet couldn't keep time with his brain and he landed on his backside on the dance floor". In summing up a life that "touched so many", his friend expressed hope his memory would not fade. "Someone once said that you die twice - firstly in the physical world and secondly when the last person who remembers you says your name," he said. "Let us hope and pray that the name of Adrian Thompson Ismay will be remembered and spoken of for a very long time." The reported establishment of a governmental committee in Libya to assess compensation claims from victims of Colonel Gaddafi-sponsored IRA terrorism is an important development, MPs have been told. Foreign Office Minister Tobias Ellwood welcomed recent comments from Libyan deputy prime minister Ahmed Maiteeg that a committee would study the merits of calls for damages pay-outs. "This is welcome news," he told a Westminster committee. "This means you have already got someone at very senior ranks of government saying they are willing to look at this." Mr Ellwood was giving evidence to the Northern Ireland Affairs Committee, which is conducting an inquiry into the on-going failure to secure compensation for the British victims of IRA bombs made with Libyan Semtex. While the US, France and Germany negotiated multi-million pound settlements with Colonel Gaddafi for its citizens impacted by Libyan-directed terrorism, the previous Labour government in the UK has been heavily criticised for not striking a similar deal. Mr Ellwood struck a note of caution. He said while the issue was now on the radar of the new Libyan unity administration, substantive progress was still a way off. "Even if such a committee is formed, progress is unlikely to be rapid. The new Libyan government faces significant security, political and economic challenges," he said. "We would not want to raise expectations too early that any settlement in victims' favour is likely in the immediacy. "We will continue to support victims in efforts to seek redress and will encourage the Libyan authorities to engage with UK victims, victims' families and their representatives once stability returns and the security situation allows our embassy to reopen." Mr Ellwood said it was still too dangerous for victims and their representatives to travel to Libya to make their case in person. But he said when the situation improved he would facilitate a delegation to travel. "The last six months have seen changes take place in Libya which we've not seen for many years and talk of a formation of a committee, if you think of all the things that are going on in Libya, the difficulties they are enduring, that you then have a senior government minister committed to saying 'we will take a look at this' I think this is very important and welcome news," he said. "The Libyan government is more aware of this issue than they have been for many, many years." The attack happened in Great Victoria Street at around 9pm A 35-year-old man has been treated in hospital for head injuries after he was assaulted in Belfast city centre on Saturday. The attack happened in Great Victoria Street at around 9pm. The victim's injuries were not thought to be life-threatening. The assailant is described as being about 20 years old, approximately 5ft 9ins tall, of slim build with short black hair and was wearing a white tracksuit top and black tracksuit bottoms. The attacker made off on foot in the direction of Hope Street. It is not clear what the motive for the assault was. Detective Inspector Nigel Snoddy said: "I would ask anyone who knows anything about this incident to contact detectives at Musgrave Police Station on the non-emergency number 101. "Or if someone would prefer to provide information without giving their details, they can contact the independent charity Crimestoppers and speak to them anonymously on 0800 555 111." Ninety-three new jobs are being created by a window blind manufacturing company in Co Londonderry. Bloc Blinds has announced a 4 million investment which includes new facilities at its Magherafelt plant and a major drive to boost exports. Recruitment will take place over the next two years. Enterprise, Trade and Investment Minister Jonathan Bell said: "The 93 new manufacturing jobs to be recruited over the next three years will contribute 1.7 million annually in additional salaries to the local economy." Invest Northern Ireland has contributed 465,000 towards the investment. Bloc Blinds specialises in the design and manufacture of window blinds and recently moved into renovated and extended new premises at Station Road, Magherafelt. Cormac Diamond, managing director said: "This exciting investment follows encouraging business growth in recent years and underpins our ambition to increase sales particularly in Europe and the US." Katie Marks (aged 8) and Stewart Finlay (aged 9) are pictured with Titanic Belfasts Chief Executive as they help its search for its newest recruit - an inquisitive, enthusiastic child reviewer with a nose for a story and a passion for Belfasts history, the sea or Titanic! This Easter, Titanic Belfast is offering one lucky child the opportunity to experience all it has to offer for free for an entire year whilst casting their eye over its family trail throughout the galleries, on board SS Nomadic and its new audio guides as well as meeting its mascots. If you think your child has what it takes, visit www.titanicbelfast.com Picture by Brian Morrison Junior Titanic Explorer Wanted Katie Marks (aged 8) and Stewart Finlay (aged 9) help Titanic Belfast on its search for its newest recruit - an inquisitive, enthusiastic child reviewer with a nose for a story and a passion for Belfasts history, the sea or Titanic! This Easter, Titanic Belfast is offering one lucky child the opportunity to experience all it has to offer for free for an entire year whilst casting their eye over its family trail throughout the galleries, on board SS Nomadic and its new audio guides as well as meeting its mascots. If you think your child has what it takes, visit www.titanicbelfast.com Picture by Brian Morrison Titanic Belfast is on the lookout for its latest recruit - a child reviewer for 2016/17. Titanic Belfast, the word-class visitor attraction, is offering one lucky child the opportunity to experience all it has to offer for free for an entire year whilst casting their eye over its child friendly offering. This includes its brand new audio guide, family trail and mascots, which allows children to learn about the worlds most famous ship in a fun and challenging way interacting with characters throughout the exhibitions nine interpretive galleries. As well as hopping on board SS Nomadic, the last remaining White Star Line vessel with an array of WW1, WW2 history on top its Titanic connection. And it's not just the lucky explorer that gets to avail of Titantic Belfast's attraction - parents and siblings get to tag along too. Is your child the following? - Inquisitive - Enthusiast - Over the age of 5 and under the age of 13 (as of May 2017) - with a nose for a story - as well as an interest in Belfasts history, the sea or Titanics story? Then Titanic Belfast wants to employ them as their Junior Explorer this Easter. To enter download the form from www.titanicbelfast.com, specifying why your child should be the Junior Explorer and return it by email to competitions@titanicbelfast.com or by post to Junior Explorer, Titanic Belfast, 1 Olympic Way, Queens Road, Belfast, BT39EP before 9th May 2016. Sinn Feins Mary Lou McDonald has claimed she was subjected to heavy-handed and very invasive security searches while travelling home from the United States after St Patricks Day. The partys deputy leader described the treatment of Sinn Fein members by the US authorities as almost off the wall. Certainly people have to be kept safe and all the rest of it. We represent absolutely no threat to anybody and I think they know that, she said. It comes as Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams revealed he intends to write to the White House to complain about his treatment during the St Patricks Day festivities. Mr Adams was detained for over an hour while trying to gain access to the Shamrock Ceremony due to an administration error. He said that while he accepts an apology he does not believe the reason given for stopping his entry to the party. Controversially Mr Adams likened his treatment to that or civil rights campaigner Rosa Parks, claiming Sinn Fein would not sit at the back of the bus for anybody. Read more Speaking outside Leinster House today, Ms McDonald said her party were being treated unfairly year after year in the US but the White House incident had brought the situation into the limelight. Ill be meeting with the ambassador, well be talking to the authorities because this shouldnt be happening. Its completely unnecessary, she said. The administration in the US is well aware that Sinn Fein and the leadership of Sinn Fein over many years have been architects of the peace process, are a force for good, for positivity, for democracy. And whereas stringent security is defensible, singling people out, it seems to me simply on the basis of your political view, is not an acceptable thing to do, Ms McDonald said. Irish Independent Mark McGrotty, right, and his brother Evan pictured holding their baby sister Rionaghac-Ann Five coffins carrying the remains of the Buncrana pier tragedy victims have returned home ahead of their funeral as mourners and neighbours flocked to pay their respects. Books of condolences were opened at St Joseph's Church in Galliagh and Holy Family Church in Ballymagroarty in Londonderry, a city numbed by the scale of the grief wreaked on the remaining family of those drowned. Sean McGrotty, 46, died along with his two sons Mark, 12, and Evan, eight, their grandmother Ruth Daniels, 57, and her 14-year-old daughter Jodie Lee Daniels. The only survivor was Mr McGrotty's four-month-old baby girl Rionaghac-Ann. Hero rescuer Davitt Walsh swam out into Buncrana harbour in north Co Donegal on Sunday night in an effort to reach the six people trapped in a car that had slid off the slipway into Lough Swilly. Mr McGrotty handed him his baby out the broken driver's side window just moments before the Audi Q7 sank. Before the Dail held a minute's silence in their memory, Enda Kenny said he will never forget the chilling eyewitness accounts that have touched the entire island. Acting Taoiseach Mr Kenny said the magnitude of the horror put everything else in perspective. "Our hearts go out to them and what is a devastating impact on the lives of the extended family," he said. "We all know in our own lives the numbing grief that comes with the loss of a loved one. "In these circumstances, however, this is a particular and deepest grief, that the tranquillity and beauty of a sunny spring Sunday was shattered by this tragedy." Mr Kenny added: "I will recall - as many people will - forever the words of (eyewitness) Francis Crawford in his description of what happened. "And I admire the courage of Davitt Walsh, who rescued and saved the life of baby Rionaghac-Ann. "When you try to consider the horrendous impact of what was happening as that vehicle skid towards the water... "A father handing his own baby to the rescuer - to say 'save our baby' - this puts things into perspective and in context." Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin described it as an unspeakable tragedy and trauma. "The nation is truly shocked at the scale of that tragedy and its wider impact on the communities of Donegal and Derry," he added. Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams said the thoughts and prayers of everyone are with the family. Parish priest in Derry's Ballymagroarty, where the victims lived, Father Paddy O'Kane, spent his day preparing for Thursday's funeral as well as comforting the mother of the two little boys and the rescued baby, Louise James. She was in Liverpool at a hen party when the five members of her family drowned. Ms James told the priest she was "destroyed" and "lost" since the tragedy. Father O'Kane said the only "little sliver of hope" was the survival of baby Rionaghac-Ann. She is said to be in a stable condition at Letterkenny University Hospital. Security chiefs are closely monitoring a small number of people in the wake of the terror attacks in Brussels. The Government said there is no specific information of any threat to the country from international terrorism but a similar indiscriminate atrocity is possible, although not likely. No Irish people were caught up in the bombs at Zaventem airport in the Belgian capital or on the city's Metro line near the European Union headquarters. The parliament held a minute's silence in memory of the victims as the death toll rose to at least 34 with more than 200 injured. Acting premier Enda Kenny said: "I understand from our ambassador in Brussels that, as far as we are aware, no Irish citizen has been involved here with the tragic circumstances. "But we can't be certain yet as to the full impact of what has happened." President Michael D Higgins told Belgium's King Philippe of the sympathy of the Irish people "at this most difficult time". "I am deeply saddened to learn of the attacks and the tragic loss of lives in Brussels today," he said. "These attacks strike at the fundamental right of all to live in peace. "These actions must not undermine the will of all Europeans to live and work together." President Higgins expressed his "sincerest condolences" to the families of all those bereaved and affected by the bombings. "All of our thoughts are with the people of Brussels at this time of tragedy," he added. The Garda is liaising with authorities in Brussels and elsewhere in relation to the attacks, along with the Department of Foreign Affairs. The Government said security chiefs were continuing to closely monitor a number of people based in Ireland "whose behaviour may be of concern". Stressing that there is no intelligence of an immediate or specific threat to Ireland from international terrorism, officials said: "We cannot consider that we are immune from the threat. It remains the case that an attack here is assessed as possible but not likely. "The level of threat is kept under constant review by An Garda Siochana and all appropriate measures will continue to be taken by the authorities here. "For obvious security reasons, we could not go into the details of the operational responses. All the agencies here co-operate closely in respect of any threats that are identified." The Government said the Garda is co-operating very closely with its EU and other international security and intelligence counterparts in responding to terror threats. "The deplorable attacks in Brussels today have highlighted starkly once again the threat from international terrorism," it said. "There can never be any justification for such brutality. "Our thoughts are with the families and friends of all those who have lost their lives, and also with the injured and we hope for their speedy recovery. "Acts of violence like these are an attack on the democratic way of life that we in Ireland hold dear and the values that we share with our EU partners. Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald said: "We have to bear in mind too that an attack on our European neighbours is an attack on us all." Ms Fitzgerald said the Brussels bombings are another "dreadful reminder of the savagery of terrorists who hold our values and democracy itself in deadly contempt". "We know from the dark history of this island that while, despite the best efforts of police and security services, terrorists can succeed from time to time in carrying out attacks, ultimately democracy and our values will prevail." Ryanair said the upgrade fees were standard as there were only 28 seats left on the flight Ryanair is charging of a group of 28 British passengers in Brussels nearly 6,000 in total to change their flights to this evening. The Belgian capital has been hit by two major terror attacks, at Zaventem airport and Mallbeek metro station, which have left at least 30 people dead. And, addressing the House of Commons, Labour's shadow small business minister Bill Esterson said a group of Britons was trying to get home from the city a day earlier than planned and had been told the new flights would cost them 214 each. He said: "I have been contacted by a number of my constituents who are in Brussels, who travelled there today and are trying to get home, as I'm sure many others are as well. "They have been told by the airline Ryanair that it will cost them 6,000 to be brought back to this country. "I wonder if, through you, Mr Speaker, I can ask ministers if perhaps they might intervene and suggest to Ryanair and other carriers that all efforts are made to help those who want to come back to this country in a reasonable way." The group had arrived at the airlines desk at Brussels Charleroi airport and asked to change their flight to Manchester to this evening. They were asked to pay a 60 charge to change their flights plus an upgrade of 154 each to match the available fare on the new flights. A Ryanair spokeswoman told The Independent the high fare was due to the fact there were only 28 seats remaining on the flight. She said: "The reason for the upgrade is that there were only 28 seats remaining on this evenings flight. "This group, declined to accept this change offer as is their right and we look forward to welcoming them on their scheduled flight from Brussels Charleroi tomorrow. "As of 1.30pm today, there only 12 seats remaining on this evenings flight from Brussels Charleroi to Manchester as Ryanair has been prioritising free changes and transfers for passengers travelling on flights to and from Brussels Zaventem today and tomorrow. "We regret any inconvenience caused to this group but our priority today remains re-accommodating our disrupted Brussels Zaventem passengers, and all other passengers are free to avail of our change facility in the normal manner." In this image provided by Daniela Schwarzer, smoke is seen at Brussels airport in Brussels, Belgium, after explosions were heard Tuesday, March 22, 2016. (Daniela Schwarzer via AP) The aftermath of this morning's explosions at Brussels airport. Pic: Jef Versele/PA Wire The aftermath of this morning's explosions at Brussels airport. Pic Jef Versele/PA Wire NOTE TO EDITORS: This handout photo may only be used in for editorial reporting purposes for the contemporaneous illustration of events, things or the people in the image or facts mentioned in the caption. Reuse of the picture may require further permission from the copyright holder. The aftermath of this morning's explosions at Brussels airport. Pic: Jef Versele/PA Wire The scene at Brussels Airport after two explosions were heard. Pic @davidcrunelle/PA Wire The scene at Brussels Airport after two explosions were heard. Pic: @davidcrunelle/PA Wire A photo shows cars on a blocked highway near Zaventem, Brussels National airport, on March 22, 2016 after two explosions rocked the main hall of Brussels Airport, killing at least one person and wounding several others, officials said. AFP PHOTO / THIERRY MONASSETHIERRY MONASSE/AFP/Getty Images A picture taken on March 22, 2016 shows smoke rising from the Maalbeek underground, in Brussels, following a blast at the station close to the capital's European quarter. Pic Getty Images The scene at Brussels Airport after two explosions were heard. Pic: Stephanie Vanhemelryck/PA Wire The scene at Brussels Airport after two explosions were heard. Pic: Stephanie Vanhemelryck/PA Wire A photo taken on March 22, 2016 shows Brussels Airport, in Zaventem, after two explosions rocked the main hall of the airport, killing at least one person and wounding several others. The Brussels metro service was being shut down on March 22, its operator said, following a blast at a station close to the capital's European quarter. / AFP PHOTO / BELGA / Belgium OUT/AFP/Getty Images A photo shows cars on a blocked highway near Zaventem, leading to Brussels National airport, on March 22, 2016 after two explosions rocked the main hall of Brussels Airport, killing at least one person and wounding several others, officials said. AFP PHOTO / THIERRY MONASSETHIERRY MONASSE/AFP/Getty Images People walk on a blocked highway near Zaventem, leading to Brussels National airport, on March 22, 2016 after two explosions rocked the main hall of Brussels Airport, killing at least one person and wounding several others, officials said. AFP PHOTO / THIERRY MONASSETHIERRY MONASSE/AFP/Getty Images This view taken on March 22, 2016 shows the broken glasses at Brussels Airport in Zaventem after a two explosions targeted the main hall. A string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station today, killing at least 13 people, according to media reports, as Belgium raised its terror threat to the maximum level. / AFP PHOTO / BELGA / JONAS ROOSENSJONAS ROOSENS/AFP/Getty Images Passsengers wait, on March 22, 2016 near Brussels airport in Zaventem , following its evacuation after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Passengers who were evacuated from the airport wait in Zaventem, on March 22, 2016, after a string of explosions rocked Brussels airport of Zaventem and a city metro station, killing at least 13 people, according to media reports, as Belgium raised its terror threat to the maximum level. / AFP PHOTO / Belga / SEPPE KNAPEN / Belgium OUTSEPPE KNAPEN/AFP/Getty Images A passenger waits, on March 22, 2016 near Brussels airport in Zaventem , following its evacuation after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images A passenger waits, on March 22, 2016 near Brussels airport in Zaventem , following its evacuation after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Passengers gather, on March 22, 2016 near Brussels airport in Zaventem , following its evacuation after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Passengers leave with their luggages, on March 22, 2016 near Brussels airport in Zaventem , following its evacuation after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Belgium police officers block a street in Brussels on March 22, 2016 after an explosion occurred at a metro station. At least 13 people have been killed after two explosions occurred this morning in the departure hall of Brussels Airport. The Brussels metro stations have been evacuated after explosions at Schuiman and Maelbeek-Maalbeek. Government sources speak of a terrorist attack. The terrorist threat level has been heightened to four across the country. / AFP PHOTO / BELGA / PHILIPPE FRANCOIS / Belgium OUTPHILIPPE FRANCOIS/AFP/Getty Images Passengers leave with their luggages, on March 22, 2016 near Brussels airport in Zaventem , following its evacuation after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Two passengers wait, on March 22, 2016 near Brussels airport in Zaventem , following its evacuation after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Passengers are gathered near Brussels airport, on March 22, 2016 in Zaventem, following its evacuation after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images In this photo provided by Georgian Public Broadcaster and photographed by Ketevan Kardava a man is wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels, Belgium, after explosions were heard Tuesday, March 22, 2016. (Ketevan Kardava/ Georgian Public Broadcaster via AP) A picture taken on March 22, 2016 shows a Belgian police vehicle driving past passengers who are evacuating the Brussels Airport of Zaventem. Getty Images A picture taken on March 22, 2016 shows passengers boarding a bus as they evacuate the Brussels Airport of Zaventem, after a string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station, killing at least 21 people, as Belgium raised its terror threat to the maximum level. AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images The military police carries extra patrols at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, on March 22, 2016 in response to the attacks in the departure hall of Brussels Airport and at a Brussels metro station. / AFP PHOTO / ANP / Evert Elzinga / Netherlands OUTEVERT ELZINGA/AFP/Getty Images Policemen stand guard at the entrance of a security perimeter set near Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images A picture taken on March 22, 2016 shows passengers waiting in a bus as they evacuate the Brussels Airport of Zaventem, after a string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station, killing at least 21 people, as Belgium raised its terror threat to the maximum level. AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Policemen and soldier stand guard at the entrance of a security perimeter set near Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images A helicopter of the Belgian police flies above the area near Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images A picture taken on March 22, 2016 shows a Belgian emergency vehicle driving past passengers evacuating the Brussels Airport of Zaventem, after a string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station, killing at least 21 people, as Belgium raised its terror threat to the maximum level. AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Policemen stand guard at the entrance of a security perimeter set near Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images Policemen stand guard at the entrance of a security perimeter set near Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images A victim receives first aid by rescuers, on March 22, 2016 near Maalbeek metro station in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images A picture shows damage to the facade of Brussels Airport, in Zaventem, on March 2016 after two explosions in the airport. Belgian firefighters said there were at least 21 dead after "enormous" blasts hit Brussels airport and the city's metro system. / AFP PHOTO / BELGA / DIRK WAEM / Belgium OUTDIRK WAEM/AFP/Getty Images A security perimeter has been set, on March 22, 2016 near Maalbeek metro station in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images A victim receives first aid by rescuers, on March 22, 2016 near Maalbeek metro station in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images A victim receives first aid by rescuers, on March 22, 2016 near Maalbeek metro station in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images Closed off road between Maelbeek station and Arts-Loi in Brussels. Pic: Shigeo Sugimoto/PA Wire Passengers evacuate the Brussels Airport in Zaventem, on March 22, 2016, after a string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station, killing at least 21 people, as Belgium raised its terror threat to the maximum level. The blasts come days after the dramatic arrest in Brussels on March 18 of Salah Abdeslam, the prime suspect in the Paris terror attacks that killed 130 people in November, after four months on the run. AFP PHOTO / THIERRY MONASSETHIERRY MONASSE/AFP/Getty Images Firefighters arrive at a security perimeter set near Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images Passengers are evacuated from Brussels airport, on March 22, 2016 in Zaventem, after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Passengers are evacuated from Brussels airport, on March 22, 2016 in Zaventem, after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Passengers are evacuated from Brussels airport, on March 22, 2016 in Zaventem, after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Passengers are evacuated from Brussels airport, on March 22, 2016 in Zaventem, after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Passengers board a bus as they evacuate the Brussels Airport in Zaventem, on March 22, 2016, after a string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station, killing at least 21 people, as Belgium raised its terror threat to the maximum level. The blasts come days after the dramatic arrest in Brussels on March 18 of Salah Abdeslam, the prime suspect in the Paris terror attacks that killed 130 people in November, after four months on the run. AFP PHOTO / THIERRY MONASSETHIERRY MONASSE/AFP/Getty Images Passengers are evacuated from Brussels airport, on March 22, 2016 in Zaventem, after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Passengers are evacuated from Brussels airport, on March 22, 2016 in Zaventem, after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Police officers walk past as a group of travelers stand together, after services were suspended on the Brussels Eurostar train route because of the attacks in Belgium, at St Pancras international railway station in London, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Authorities locked down the Belgian capital on Tuesday after explosions rocked the Brussels airport and subway system, killing at least 13 people and injuring many more. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham) A police officers sets a security perimeter near Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images A police officers sets a security perimeter near Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images Emergency workers arrive at a security perimeter set near Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images An armed policeman secures the access to the terminal area of the Frankfurt Airport, on March 22, 2016, in Frankfurt, western Germany. The increased security comes in the wake of the explosions in Brussels, according to several media have claimed more lives. / AFP PHOTO / DPA / Boris Roessler / Germany OUTBORIS ROESSLER/AFP/Getty Images Policemen stand guard at the entrance of a security perimeter set near Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images An armed policeman secures the access to the terminal area of the Frankfurt Airport, on March 22, 2016, in Frankfurt, western Germany. The increased security comes in the wake of the explosions in Brussels, according to several media have claimed more lives. / AFP PHOTO / DPA / Boris Roessler / Germany OUTBORIS ROESSLER/AFP/Getty Images Policemen stand guard at the entrance of a security perimeter set near Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images First aid workers arrive atr Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images Belgian servicemen and police officers block the road outside the Prime Minister's office where a meeting of the National Security Council is held, in Brussels, on March 22, 2016, after a string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station, killing at least 21 people, as Belgium raised its terror threat to the maximum level. The blasts come days after the dramatic arrest in Brussels on March 18 of Salah Abdeslam, the prime suspect in the Paris terror attacks that killed 130 people in November, after four months on the run. / AFP PHOTO / Belga / JAMES ARTHUR GEKIERE / Belgium OUTJAMES ARTHUR GEKIERE/AFP/Getty Images French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve gives a statement after a meeting with French Prime Minister, French Defence Minister and French President following Brussels attacks on March 22, 2016 at the Elysee Palace in Paris. A string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station on March 22, killing at least 21 people in apparently coordinated attacks, officials said. / AFP PHOTO / STEPHANE DE SAKUTINSTEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP/Getty Images First aid workers arrive atr Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve gives a statement after a meeting with French Prime Minister, French Defence Minister and French President following Brussels attacks on March 22, 2016 at the Elysee Palace in Paris. A string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station on March 22, killing at least 21 people in apparently coordinated attacks, officials said. / AFP PHOTO / STEPHANE DE SAKUTINSTEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP/Getty Images Policemen speak at a security perimeter near Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images Belgian servicemen and police officers block the road outside the Prime Minister's office where a meeting of the National Security Council is held, in Brussels, on March 22, 2016, after a string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station, killing at least 21 people, as Belgium raised its terror threat to the maximum level. The blasts come days after the dramatic arrest in Brussels on March 18 of Salah Abdeslam, the prime suspect in the Paris terror attacks that killed 130 people in November, after four months on the run. / AFP PHOTO / Belga / James Arthur Gekiere / Belgium OUTJAMES ARTHUR GEKIERE/AFP/Getty Images A police officers sets a security perimeter near Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve gives a statement after a meeting with French Prime Minister, French Defence Minister and French President following Brussels attacks on March 22, 2016 at the Elysee Palace in Paris. A string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station on March 22, killing at least 21 people in apparently coordinated attacks, officials said. / AFP PHOTO / STEPHANE DE SAKUTINSTEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP/Getty Images French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve gives a statement after a meeting with French Prime Minister, French Defence Minister and French President following Brussels attacks on March 22, 2016 at the Elysee Palace in Paris. A string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station on March 22, killing at least 21 people in apparently coordinated attacks, officials said. / AFP PHOTO / STEPHANE DE SAKUTINSTEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP/Getty Images Firefighters arrive at the scene near Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 22: Crew and passengers are evacuated from Zaventem Bruxelles International Airport after terrorist attacks on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. At least 13 people are though to have been killed after Brussels airport was hit by two explosions whilst a Metro station was also targeted. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Sylvain Lefevre/Getty Images) BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 22: Crew and passengers are evacuated from Zaventem Bruxelles International Airport after terrorist attacks on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. At least 13 people are though to have been killed after Brussels airport was hit by two explosions whilst a Metro station was also targeted. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Sylvain Lefevre/Getty Images) A police officers sets security perimeter near Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images Picture taken with permission from the Facebook site of Jef Versele showing the aftermath of this morning's explosions at Brussels airport. A Eurostar representative gives advice to a traveler after services were suspended on the Brussels Eurostar train route because of the attacks in Belgium, at St Pancras international railway station in London, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, rocked the Brussels airport and subway system Tuesday, prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham) Police dog handlers speak to travelers as they patrol after Eurostar train services were suspended on the Brussels route because of the attacks in Belgium, at St Pancras international railway station in London, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, rocked the Brussels airport and subway system Tuesday, prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham) Belgian police officers detain a man at the Gare du Midi train station in Brussels, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, rocked the Brussels airport and its subway system Tuesday, prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler) Rescue teams evacuate wounded people outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels on March 21, 2016 after a blast at this station located near the EU institutions. Belgian firefighters said at least 26 people had died after "enormous" blasts rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station today, as Belgium raised its terror threat to the maximum level. / AFP PHOTO / --/AFP/Getty Images A man looks at flowers and a sign reading (Defy terror, protect freedom) outside the Belgium embassy in Berlin on March 22, 2016. People left tributes to the victims outside the embassy after a series of apparently coordinated blasts ripped through Brussels airport and a train. / AFP PHOTO / ODD ANDERSENODD ANDERSEN/AFP/Getty Images Police and rescue teams are pictured outside the metro station Maelbeek in Brussels, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, rocked the Brussels airport and its subway system Tuesday, prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner) Smoke billows from the Zaventem Airport after a controlled explosion in Brussels, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Bombs struck the Brussels airport and one of the city's metro stations Tuesday, killing and wounding dozens of people, as a European capital was again locked down amid heightened security threats. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler) Travelers wait at the counter of Brussels airlines in Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv, Israel, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. After the Brussels attacks, Israel briefly announced that all Israeli flights from Europe were canceled, then reinstated the flights, Israel Airports Authority spokesman Ofer Leffler said. Pini Schiff, former director of security at Ben-Gurion Airport, said the attack in the Brussels airport was a colossal failure of Belgian security, and he said the chances are very low that such a bombing could take place in Israels airport. Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport is considered among the most secure in the world, an outcome stemming from several Palestinian attacks on Israeli planes and travelers in the 1970s. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit) Police and rescue teams are pictured outside the metro station Maelbeek in Brussels, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, rocked the Brussels airport and its subway system Tuesday, prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner) An Israeli airport security guard patrols with a dog in Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv, Israel, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. After the Brussels attacks, Israel briefly announced that all Israeli flights from Europe were canceled, then reinstated the flights, Israel Airports Authority spokesman Ofer Leffler said. Pini Schiff, former director of security at Ben-Gurion Airport, said the attack in the Brussels airport was a colossal failure of Belgian security, and he said the chances are very low that such a bombing could take place in Israels airport. Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport is considered among the most secure in the world, an outcome stemming from several Palestinian attacks on Israeli planes and travelers in the 1970s. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit) A pilot and cabin crew are evacuated from Zaventem Airport in Brussels by bus after an explosion on Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, rocked the Brussels airport and subway system Tuesday, prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe. At least 26 people were reported dead. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert) The blown out facade of the terminal is seen at Zaventem airport, one of the sites of two deadly attacks in Brussels, Belgium, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Authorities in Europe have tightened security at airports, on subways, at the borders and on city streets after the attacks Tuesday on the Brussels airport and its subway system. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong) Policemen and soldiers stand guard near a security perimeter set in the Rue de la Loi near the Maalbeek subway station, in Brussels, on March 22, 2016, after an explosion killed at least 11 people, according to spokesman of Brussels' fire brigade A string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station on Tuesday, killing at least 13 people, according to media reports, as Belgium raised its terror threat to the maximum level. / AFP PHOTO / PHILIPPE HUGUENPHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images Policemem stand guard near a security perimeter set in the Rue de la Loi near the Maalbeek subway station, in Brussels, on March 22, 2016, after an explosion killed at least 11 people, according to spokesman of Brussels' fire brigade A string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station on Tuesday, killing at least 13 people, according to media reports, as Belgium raised its terror threat to the maximum level. / AFP PHOTO / PHILIPPE HUGUENPHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images A wreath is layed on a table along flowers and a candle inside the Belgium embassy in Berlin on March 22, 2016 as the national and EU flag is reflected in the window. People left tributes to the victims outside the embassy after a series of apparently coordinated blasts ripped through Brussels airport and a train. / AFP PHOTO / ODD ANDERSENODD ANDERSEN/AFP/Getty Images Travellers gather at Ryanair helping desk at Barcelona El Prat airport after the Brussels attacks, in Barcelona on March 22, 2016. Europe froze air and rail links to Brussels as the authorities tightened security in alarm over a series of deadly bomb blasts that ripped through the Belgian capital's airport and a city-centre metro station. / AFP PHOTO / PAU BARRENAPAU BARRENA/AFP/Getty Images A boy holds a placard expressing sympathy for the victims of the terror attacks in Brussels during a protest at a makeshift camp at the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idomeni on March 22, 2016. Greece will not be able to start sending refugees back to Turkey from March 20, 2016, the government said, as the country struggles to implement a key deal aimed at easing Europe's migrant crisis. The numbers are daunting: officials said as of Saturday there were 47,500 migrants in Greece, including 8,200 on the islands and 10,500 massed at the Idomeni camp on the Macedonian border. / AFP PHOTO / ANDREJ ISAKOVICANDREJ ISAKOVIC/AFP/Getty Images Travellers get informed at Ryanair helping desk at Barcelona El Prat airport after the Brussels attacks, in Barcelona on March 22, 2016. Europe froze air and rail links to Brussels as the authorities tightened security in alarm over a series of deadly bomb blasts that ripped through the Belgian capital's airport and a city-centre metro station. / AFP PHOTO / PAU BARRENAPAU BARRENA/AFP/Getty Images The Belgian and European Union flags fly at half mast outside the embassy of Belgium in London, in the wake of coordinated bomb attacks on the main airport and the Metro system in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday March 22, 2016. The attacks, condemned as "blind, violent and cowardly" by Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, came after the arrest in the city last week of terror mastermind Salah Abdeslam, who plotted November's Paris atrocity from the notorious Molenbeek suburb of Brussels. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Andrew Matthews/PA Wire The departure board at Rome's Fiumicino aiport displays the cancellation of flights to Brussels on March 22, 2016, in the wake of the series of apparently coordinated explosions ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train, killing at least 26 people. Authorities in Europe have tightened security at airports, on subways, at the borders and on city streets after deadly attacks on the Brussels airport and its subway system. / AFP PHOTO / TIZIANA FABITIZIANA FABI/AFP/Getty Images Travellers gather at Ryanair helping desk at Barcelona El Prat airport after the Brussels attacks, in Barcelona on March 22, 2016. Europe froze air and rail links to Brussels as the authorities tightened security in alarm over a series of deadly bomb blasts that ripped through the Belgian capital's airport and a city-centre metro station. / AFP PHOTO / PAU BARRENAPAU BARRENA/AFP/Getty Images Police officers patrol entrances to Rome's Fiumicino aiport on March 22, 2016, in the wake of the series of apparently coordinated explosions ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train, killing at least 26 people. Authorities in Europe have tightened security at airports, on subways, at the borders and on city streets after deadly attacks on the Brussels airport and its subway system. / AFP PHOTO / TIZIANA FABITIZIANA FABI/AFP/Getty Images The flags of Belgium and the European Union are seen flying on half mast reflected in the window of the Belgian embassy in Berlin on March 22, 2016. People left tributes to the victims outside the embassy after a series of apparently coordinated blasts ripped through Brussels airport and a train. / AFP PHOTO / ODD ANDERSENODD ANDERSEN/AFP/Getty Images An Italian police officer patrols with a dog at Rome's Fiumicino aiport on March 22, 2016 as security measures were reinforced in the wake of attacks in Brussels. European countries vowed to defend democracy against terrorism after blasts at Brussels airport and in the EU's institutional heart left at least 26 dead and dozens injured. / AFP PHOTO / TIZIANA FABITIZIANA FABI/AFP/Getty Images The Belgian flag flies at half mast above 10 Downing Street in London, in the wake of coordinated bomb attacks on the main airport and the Metro system in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday March 22, 2016. The attacks, condemned as "blind, violent and cowardly" by Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, came after the arrest in the city last week of terror mastermind Salah Abdeslam, who plotted November's Paris atrocity from the notorious Molenbeek suburb of Brussels. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire The Belgian flag flies at half mast above 10 Downing Street in London, in the wake of coordinated bomb attacks on the main airport and the Metro system in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday March 22, 2016. The attacks, condemned as "blind, violent and cowardly" by Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, came after the arrest in the city last week of terror mastermind Salah Abdeslam, who plotted November's Paris atrocity from the notorious Molenbeek suburb of Brussels. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire The Belgian and European Union flags fly at half mast outside the embassy of Belgium in London, in the wake of coordinated bomb attacks on the main airport and the Metro system in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday March 22, 2016. The attacks, condemned as "blind, violent and cowardly" by Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, came after the arrest in the city last week of terror mastermind Salah Abdeslam, who plotted November's Paris atrocity from the notorious Molenbeek suburb of Brussels. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Andrew Matthews/PA Wire A Belgian soldier patrols outside Brussels Central Station as people are allowed in small group of ten to reach the station in order to take their commuter train following attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights and European railways froze links with Brussels after a series of bombs blasts killed around 35 people in the city's airport and a metro train, sparking a broad security response. / AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images A man lights a candle at a makeshift memorial at Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) following attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights and European railways froze links with Brussels after a series of bomb blasts killed around 35 people in the city's airport and a metro train, sparking a broad security response. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images A man puts a Belgian flag at a makeshift memorial at Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) following attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights and European railways froze links with Brussels after a series of bomb blasts killed around 35 people in the city's airport and a metro train, sparking a broad security response. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images A Belgian soldier speaks to a police officer outside Brussels Central Station as people are allowed in small groups of ten to reach the station in order to take their commuter train following attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights and European railways froze links with Brussels after a series of bombs blasts killed around 35 people in the city's airport and a metro train, sparking a broad security response. / AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images A candle burns next to a heart drawing at a makeshift memorial at Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) following attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights and European railways froze links with Brussels after a series of bomb blasts killed around 35 people in the city's airport and a metro train, sparking a broad security response. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images A woman leaves a bouquet of flowers in the Belgian national colours next to a French national flag with the lettering 'Paris - Brussels - Solidarity' at the fence of the Belgian embassy in Paris on March 22, 2016, in tribute to victims of triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people. AFP PHOTO / THOMAS SAMSONTHOMAS SAMSON/AFP/Getty Images A woman lights a candle at a makeshift memorial at Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) following attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights and European railways froze links with Brussels after a series of bomb blasts killed around 35 people in the city's airport and a metro train, sparking a broad security response. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images A woman reacts as people gather at a makeshift memorial at Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) following attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights and European railways froze links with Brussels after a series of bomb blasts killed around 35 people in the city's airport and a metro train, sparking a broad security response. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images A Belgian police officer watches people walk past during an operation to limit the number of people allowed into the central Station in Brussels on March 22, 2016 following co-ordinated attacks at the Airport serving the Belgian capital and its Metro system. Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights and European railways froze links with Brussels after a series of bombs blasts killed around 35 people in the city's airport and a metro train, sparking a broad security response. / AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images People hold hands as they gather at a makeshift memorial at Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) following attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights and European railways froze links with Brussels after a series of bomb blasts killed around 35 people in the city's airport and a metro train, sparking a broad security response. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images People hold hands as they gather at a makeshift memorial at Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) following attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights and European railways froze links with Brussels after a series of bomb blasts killed around 35 people in the city's airport and a metro train, sparking a broad security response. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images A man plays the cello as people gather at a makeshift memorial at Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) following attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights and European railways froze links with Brussels after a series of bomb blasts killed around 35 people in the city's airport and a metro train, sparking a broad security response. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images A replica of the Manneken Pis statue stands at a makeshift memorial at Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) following attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights and European railways froze links with Brussels after a series of bomb blasts killed around 35 people in the city's airport and a metro train, sparking a broad security response. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images A picture taken on March 22, 2016 in Paris shows a view of a smartphone screening an Instagram page with the ashtag "#JESUISBRUSSELS" (#IAMBRUSSELS) and two tributes images picturing the color of the Belgian flag, a drawing by French cartoonist Plantu and the famous Belgian comic character Tintin, in tribute to victims of triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people. Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights and European railways froze links with Brussels on March 22, 2016 after rush-hour bomb attacks killed around 35 people in the city's airport and a metro train, sparking a broad security response. Within hours of Brussels attacks tens of thousands of people were sharing images on social media of Herge's cub reporter Tintin, the country's most famous creation, in tears. / AFP PHOTO / JOEL SAGET / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY MENTION OF THE ARTIST UPON PUBLICATION - TO ILLUSTRATE THE EVENT AS SPECIFIED IN THE CAPTIONJOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty Images People hold hands as they gather at a makeshift memorial at Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) following attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights and European railways froze links with Brussels after a series of bomb blasts killed around 35 people in the city's airport and a metro train, sparking a broad security response. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images Police forces block the access to the Maalbeek subway station, in Brussels, on March 22, 2016, after a series of apparently coordinated explosions that ripped through Brussels airport and the metro train, killing at least 14 people in the airport and 20 people in the metro in the latest attacks to target Europe. / AFP PHOTO / PHILIPPE HUGUENPHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images A man reacts as people gather at a makeshift memorial at Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) following attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights and European railways froze links with Brussels after a series of bomb blasts killed around 35 people in the city's airport and a metro train, sparking a broad security response. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 22: People leave tributes at the Place de la Bourse following today's attacks on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. At least 31 people are thought to have been killed after Brussels airport and a Metro station were targeted by explosions. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 22: A young boy helps light a candle as people leave tributes at the Place de la Bourse following today's attacks on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. At least 31 people are thought to have been killed after Brussels airport and a Metro station were targeted by explosions. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 22: A young boy helps light a candle as people leave tributes at the Place de la Bourse following today's attacks on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. At least 31 people are thought to have been killed after Brussels airport and a Metro station were targeted by explosions. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) People gather at a makeshift memorial at Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) following attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights and European railways froze links with Brussels after a series of bomb blasts killed around 35 people in the city's airport and a metro train, sparking a broad security response. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images Belgian flag flies at half mast above the Royal Palace in Brussels on March 22, 2016 in the wake of co-ordinated attacks claimed by Islamic State group (IS) millitants at the city's airport and in a Metro train. Belgium will hold three days of national mourning in the wake of the deadly attacks in the capital Brussels that killed around 35 people. "All national flags on public buildings will be at half-mast," Frederic Cauderlier, spokesman for Belgian premier Charles Michel, told AFP. / AFP PHOTO / BELGA AND Belga / NICOLAS MAETERLINCK / Belgium OUTNICOLAS MAETERLINCK/AFP/Getty Images BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 22: A message is written on the ground as people leave tributes at the Place de la Bourse following today's attacks on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. At least 31 people are thought to have been killed after Brussels airport and a Metro station were targeted by explosions. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 22: An Amtrak police K-9 unit checks the baggage of passengers at Union Station March 22, 2016 in Washington, DC. Security has been increased around the city after bombings in Brussels have left at least 34 people dead and scores more injured in the bombings. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 22: An Amtrak police K-9 unit patrols Union Station March 22, 2016 in Washington, DC. Security has been increased around the city after bombings in Brussels have left at least 34 people dead and scores more injured in the bombings. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 22: A K-9 unit patrols Union Station March 22, 2016 in Washington, DC. Security has been increased around the city after bombings in Brussels have left at least 34 people dead and scores more injured in the bombings. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) Belgian special police forces take position in Zaventem following blasts at Brussels airport and a metro station on March 22, 2016. The European Union vowed to defend democracy and tolerance and to combat terrorism "with all necessary means" after triple blasts struck Brussels, the 28-nation bloc's capital. Around 35 people were killed and more than 200 injured. The Islamic State jihadist group claimed responsibility. AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Servicemen of Azov, Ukrainian volonteers battalion, hold torches in front of floral tributes during a ceremony in front of the Belgian embassy in Kiev on March 22, 2016, in tribute to the victims of Brussels following triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. Belgium launched a huge manhunt on March 22 after a series of bombings claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train, killing around 35 people in the latest attack to bring carnage to the heart of Europe. / AFP PHOTO / ANATOLII STEPANOVANATOLII STEPANOV/AFP/Getty Images People holds a banner as they gather at a makeshift memorial at Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) following attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. A series of explosions claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train on March 22, killing around 35 people in the latest attacks to bring bloody carnage to the heart of Europe. THIERRY MONASSE AFP PHOTO / THIERRY MONASSETHIERRY MONASSE/AFP/Getty Images BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 22: A woman writes a message on the ground as people leave tributes at the Place de la Bourse following today's attacks on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. At least 31 people are thought to have been killed after Brussels airport and a Metro station were targeted by explosions. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) People look at informations inside the North station (Gare du Nord - Noordstation) on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, as stations are opened again with high security measures after a series of apparently coordinated explosions that ripped through Brussels airport and the metro train, killing at least 14 people in the airport and 20 people in the metro in the latest attacks to target Europe. Belgian police issued a wanted notice for a suspect in the bomb attack on Brussels airport on March 22 in which at least 14 people were killed. The Islamic State group officially claimed responsibility for the attacks in Brussels that left some 35 people dead and threatened further violence. / AFP PHOTO / Belga / NICOLAS MAETERLINCK / Belgium OUTNICOLAS MAETERLINCK/AFP/Getty Images BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 22: A Metro station is closed off at the Place de la Bourse following today's attacks on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. At least 31 people are thought to have been killed after Brussels airport and a Metro station were targeted by explosions. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) People take part in a rally on March 22, 2016 on the Palazzo di Citta square in Turin in memory of the victims of the attacks in Brussels. Around 35 people were killed and more than 200 wounded in a series of attacks in Brussels today claimed by the Islamic State group and described as a strike at the very heart of Europe. / AFP PHOTO / MARCO BERTORELLOMARCO BERTORELLO/AFP/Getty Images BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 22: A message is written on a wall following today's attacks on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. At least 31 people are thought to have been killed after Brussels airport and a Metro station were targeted by explosions. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) Police officers stand guard at the Brussels Airport in Zaventem following twin blasts on March 22, 2016. Around 35 people were killed and more than 200 wounded in a series of attacks in Brussels today claimed by the Islamic State group and described as a strike at the very heart of Europe. / AFP PHOTO / PATRIK STOLLARZPATRIK STOLLARZ/AFP/Getty Images A man holds a sign as people take part in a rally on March 22, 2016 on the Palazzo di Citta square in Turin in memory of the victims of the attacks in Brussels. Around 35 people were killed and more than 200 wounded in a series of attacks in Brussels today claimed by the Islamic State group and described as a strike at the very heart of Europe. / AFP PHOTO / MARCO BERTORELLOMARCO BERTORELLO/AFP/Getty Images People stand hand in hand in tribute to victims at a makeshift memorial in front of the stock exchange at the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 22, 2016, following triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. A series of explosions claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train on March 22, killing around 35 people in the latest attacks to bring bloody carnage to the heart of Europe. AFP PHOTO / THIERRY MONASSETHIERRY MONASSE/AFP/Getty Images A woman lights a candle in tribute to victims at a makeshift memorial in front of the stock exchange at the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 22, 2016, following triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. A series of explosions claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train on March 22, killing around 35 people in the latest attacks to bring bloody carnage to the heart of Europe. AFP PHOTO / THIERRY MONASSETHIERRY MONASSE/AFP/Getty Images A picture taken on March 22, 2016 shows a frame with an inscription which translates as "For our Belgian friends" among floral tributes, candles and notes at the Place de la Republique in Paris in tribute to the victims following a series of apparently coordinated explosions that ripped through Brussels airport and the metro train, killing at least 14 people in the airport and 20 people in the metro in the latest attacks to target Europe. Belgian police found a bomb and an Islamic State flag during a search of a Brussels apartment carried out hours after deadly attacks in the Belgian capital that killed around 35 people, prosecutors said. The Islamic State group officially claimed responsibility for the attacks. / AFP PHOTO / JOEL SAGETJOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty Images People stand hand in hand in tribute to victims at a makeshift memorial in front of the stock exchange at the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 22, 2016, following triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. A series of explosions claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train on March 22, killing around 35 people in the latest attacks to bring bloody carnage to the heart of Europe.KENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images A miniature sculpture of Brussels' landmark Manneken Pis (Little man Pee) is seen in tribute to victims at a makeshift memorial in front of the stock exchange at the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 22, 2016, following triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. A series of explosions claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train on March 22, killing around 35 people in the latest attacks to bring bloody carnage to the heart of Europe. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images A couple watches as the colors of the Belgian flag are projected on to the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin as the German capital shows its solidarity following the Brussels attacks on March 22, 2016. Security was tightened across Europe and transport links paralysed after a series of apparently coordinated explosions ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train, killing at least 34 people. / AFP PHOTO / ODD ANDERSENODD ANDERSEN/AFP/Getty Images Police officers patrol outside the Maelbeek - Maalbeek subway station in Brussels on March 22, 2016, following a series of attacks in Brussels today claimed by the Islamic State group killing at least 35 people were killed and more than 200 wounded. / AFP PHOTO / PHILIPPE HUGUENPHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images A woman holds a drawing by French cartoonist Plantu picturing a character made of a French flag consoling another made of the Belgian flag, in front of the Hotel de Ville in Paris as people gather for a tribute to the victims of Brussels following triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. Belgium launched a huge manhunt on March 22 after a series of bombings claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train, killing around 35 people in the latest attack to bring carnage to the heart of Europe. / AFP PHOTO / MARTIN BUREAUMARTIN BUREAU/AFP/Getty Images BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 22: A man waves a Belgian and Palestinian flag as a mark of solidarity at the Place de la Bourse following today's attacks on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. At least 31 people are thought to have been killed after Brussels airport and a Metro station were targeted by explosions. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) A member of the public holds a Belgium and Palestine flag at the Place de la Bourse in Brussels following the terrorist bomb attacks. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday March 22, 2016. The attacks, condemned as "blind, violent and cowardly" by Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, came after the arrest in the city last week of terror mastermind Salah Abdeslam, who plotted November's Paris atrocity from the notorious Molenbeek suburb of Brussels. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire BEST QUALITY AVAILABLE Handout CCTV image issued by Belgian Federal Police of three men they believed are connected with the explosions at Brussels airport. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday March 22, 2016. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Belgian Federal Police/PA Wire NOTE TO EDITORS: This handout photo may only be used in for editorial reporting purposes for the contemporaneous illustration of events, things or the people in the image or facts mentioned in the caption. Reuse of the picture may require further permission from the copyright holder. A Federal police helicopter shines light on roofs during searchings at the Place Princesse Elisabeth in Schaarbeek in the region of Brussels on March 22, 2016, during ongoing security operations in the wake of triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. A series of explosions claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train on March 22, killing around 35 people in the latest attacks to bring bloody carnage to the heart of Europe. / AFP PHOTO / Belga / James Arthur Gekiere / Belgium OUTJAMES ARTHUR GEKIERE/AFP/Getty Images A Belgian flag is display on the Trevi Fountain in Rome on March 22, 2016 in tribute to the victims of Brussels following triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. Belgium launched a huge manhunt on March 22 after a series of bombings claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train, killing around 35 people in the latest attack to bring carnage to the heart of Europe. / AFP PHOTO / GABRIEL BOUYSGABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty Images Messages and tributes left by members of the public at the Place de la Bourse in Brussels following the terrorist bomb attacks. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday March 22, 2016. The attacks, condemned as "blind, violent and cowardly" by Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, came after the arrest in the city last week of terror mastermind Salah Abdeslam, who plotted November's Paris atrocity from the notorious Molenbeek suburb of Brussels. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire Young women hold each other at a makeshift memorial in front of the stock exchange at the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 22, 2016, following triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. A series of explosions claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train on March 22, killing around 35 people in the latest attacks to bring bloody carnage to the heart of Europe. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images A woman reacts at a makeshift memorial in front of the stock exchange at the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 22, 2016, following triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. A series of explosions claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train on March 22, killing around 35 people in the latest attacks to bring bloody carnage to the heart of Europe. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 22: An Amtrak police K-9 unit patrols Union Station March 22, 2016 in Washington, DC. Security has been increased around the city after bombings in Brussels have left at least 34 people dead and scores more injured in the bombings. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) *** BESTPIX *** BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 22: Passengers are evacuated from Zaventem Bruxelles International Airport after a terrorist attack on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. At least 13 people are though to have been killed after Brussels airport was hit by two explosions whilst a Metro station was also targeted. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Sylvain Lefevre/Getty Images) *** BESTPIX *** BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 22: A young girl lights a candle at the Place de la Bourse following today's attacks on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. At least 31 people are thought to have been killed after Brussels airport and a Metro station were targeted by explosions. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) *** BESTPIX *** BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 22: People gather to leave tributes at the Place de la Bourse following today's attacks on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. At least 31 people are thought to have been killed after Brussels airport and a Metro station were targeted by explosions. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) *** BESTPIX *** A candle is lit at a makeshift memorial in front of the stock exchange at the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 22, 2016, following triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. A series of explosions claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train on March 22, killing around 35 people in the latest attacks to bring bloody carnage to the heart of Europe. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images A photo taken on March 22, 2016 shows the Belgian flag projected on Rome's Campidoglio in tribute to the victims of Brussels following triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. Belgium launched a huge manhunt on March 22 after a series of bombings claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train, killing around 35 people in the latest attack to bring carnage to the heart of Europe. / AFP PHOTO / FILIPPO MONTEFORTEFILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP/Getty Images A picture taken on March 22, 2016 shows the Royal Palace at Dam Square in Amsterdam displaying the colors of the Belgian flag in tribute to the victims of Brussels following triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. Belgium launched a huge manhunt on March 22 after a series of bombings claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train, killing around 35 people in the latest attack to bring carnage to the heart of Europe. / AFP PHOTO / ANP / Evert Elzinga / Netherlands OUTEVERT ELZINGA/AFP/Getty Images Women lay flowers in front of the Belgium Embassy in Berlin, Germany, Tuesday, March 22, 2016, after Tuesday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber) People bring flowers and candles to mourn at the Place de la Bourse in the center of Brussels, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Bombs exploded at the Brussels airport and one of the city's metro stations Tuesday, killing and wounding scores of people, as a European capital was again locked down amid heightened security threats. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner) People light candles in the shape of a heart outside the stock exchange in Brussels on Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, rocked the Brussels airport and subway system Tuesday, prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert) People gather at a makeshift memorial at Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) following attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. AFP/Getty Images People light candles at a makeshift memorial at Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) following attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. A series of explosions claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train on March 22, killing around 35 people in the latest attacks to bring bloody carnage to the heart of Europe. AFP PHOTO / THIERRY MONASSETHIERRY MONASSE/AFP/Getty Images Two Belgian flags are projected on Rome's Campidoglio Capitol Hill to honor the victims of the deadly attacks at Brussels airport and subway, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, rocked the Brussels airport and its subway system prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini) A writing on the asphalt reads "Brussels forever" at the place de la Bourse in the center of Brussels, where people write hundreds of messages on the ground to remember the victims of todays attack, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Bombs exploded at the Brussels airport and one of the city's metro stations Tuesday, killing and wounding scores of people, as a European capital was again locked down amid heightened security threats. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner) LOS ANGELES, CA - MARCH 22: A Los Angeles County Sheriffs deputy patrols Union Station train hub as security is heightened in reaction to bomb attacks in Brussels, Belgium this morning on March 22, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. At least 36 lives and injured at least 200 people in the morning rush hour bomb attacks at the international airport and a subway station. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images) The Belgian flag is projected on Rome's historical Trevi Fountain to honor the victims of the deadly attacks at Brussels airport and subway, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini) The Eiffel Tower is illuminated with the Belgium national colors black, yellow and red in honor of the victims of the today's attacks at the airport and the metro station in Brussels, in Paris, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus) BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 22: A person writes a message as people leave tributes at the Place de la Bourse following today's attacks on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. At least 31 people are thought to have been killed after Brussels airport and a Metro station were targeted by explosions. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) LOS ANGELES, CA - MARCH 22: Los Angeles County Sheriffs deputies patrol Union Station train hub as security is heightened in reaction to bomb attacks in Brussels, Belgium this morning on March 22, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. At least 36 lives and injured at least 200 people in the morning rush hour bomb attacks at the international airport and a subway station. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images) People light candles at the Place de la Bourse following today's attacks on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) People hold a banner reading in French and Flamish "I AM BRUSSELS" as they gather around floral tributes, candles, belgian flags and notes in front of the Bourse of Brussels on March 22, 2016 in tribute to the victims of Brussels following triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. Belgium launched a huge manhunt on March 22 after a series of bombings claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train, killing around 35 people in the latest attack to bring carnage to the heart of Europe. / AFP PHOTO / BELGA AND Belga / Aurore Belot / Belgium OUTAURORE BELOT/AFP/Getty Images A picture taken on March 22, 2016 shows the Belgian flag projected on the European Union Commisson building in tribute to the victims of Brussels following triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. Belgium launched a huge manhunt on March 22 after a series of bombings claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train, killing around 35 people in the latest attack to bring carnage to the heart of Europe. / AFP PHOTO / PHILIPPE HUGUENPHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images People hold a banner reading in French and Flamish "I AM BRUSSELS" as they gather around floral tributes, candles, belgian and peace flags and notes in front of the Bourse of Brussels on March 22, 2016. AFP/Getty Images A woman lights a candle among floral tributes and notes in front of the Bourse of Brussels on March 22, 2016 in tribute to the victims of Brussels following triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. AFP/Getty Images A woman lights a candle among floral tributes, a cross and notes in front of the Bourse of Brussels on March 22, 2016 in tribute to the victims of Brussels following triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. Belgium launched a huge manhunt on March 22 after a series of bombings claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train, killing around 35 people in the latest attack to bring carnage to the heart of Europe. / AFP PHOTO / BELGA AND Belga / Aurore Belot / Belgium OUTAURORE BELOT/AFP/Getty Images A picture taken on March 22, 2016 shows Red Cross tents and police vehicles at the Wetstraat - Rue de la Loi, which was evacuated after an explosion at the Maelbeek - Maalbeek subway station in Brussels. A series of explosions claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train Tuesday, killing around 35 people in the latest attacks to bring bloody carnage to the heart of Europe. / AFP PHOTO / Belga / LAURIE DIEFFEMBACQ / Belgium OUTLAURIE DIEFFEMBACQ/AFP/Getty Images Two women wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels, Belgium. Pic Ketevan Kardava/ Georgian Public Broadcaster via AP Belgian federal police released this image of Brussels bomb suspects. The two men on the left, each wearing a single black glove, are thought to be suicide bombers, while the third is thought to be on the run. Photos issued by the Belgian Federal Police of Najim Laachraoui, who according to local media is thought to be connected with the Brussels attacks, and who is believed to be on the run. Belgian Federal Police/PA Wire BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 23: A sad face is drawn on a Belgian flag near Maelbeek metro station following yesterday's attack, on March 23, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. Belgium is observing three days of national mourning after 34 people were killed in a twin suicide blast at Zaventem Airport and a further bomb attack at Maelbeek Metro Station. Two brothers are thought to have carried out the airport attack and an international manhunt is underway for a third suspect. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) TOPSHOT - Belgian police officers stand guard near Maelbeek - Maalbeek subway station in Brussels on March 23, 2016, a day after triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. A series of explosions claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train on March 22, killing around 35 people in the latest attacks to bring bloody carnage to the heart of Europe. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARD / AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images Photos shows colours of the Belgian flag being projected on to (from top L) the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the town council building in Belgrade, the Trevi Fountain in Rome, the Royal Palace at Dam Square in Amsterdam and Rome's Campidoglio in tribute to the victims of the Brussels attacks. AFP/Getty Images People gather to pay tribute to the victims of the Brussels attacks on the Place de la Bourse in central Brussels, on March 23, 2016, a day after the triple blasts killed some 30 people and left around 250 injured. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers attacked the symbolic heart of the EU. / AFP PHOTO / Belga / AURORE BELOT / Belgium OUTAURORE BELOT/AFP/Getty Images A man pays tribute to the victims of the Brussels attacks next to a Tunisian flag at a makeshift memorial on the Place de la Bourse - Beursplein square in Brussels, on March 23, 2016, a day after triple bomb attacks at the Brussels airport and at a subway train station killed 31 people and wounded more than 200. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers attacked the symbolic heart of the EU. / AFP PHOTO / BELGA / AURORE BELOT / Belgium OUTAURORE BELOT/AFP/Getty Images BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 23: A soldier checks the identification of a person entering Brussels Midi train station on March 23, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. Belgium is observing three days of national mourning after 34 people were killed in a twin suicide blast at Zaventem Airport and a further bomb attack at Maelbeek Metro Station. Two brothers are thought to have carried out the airport attack and an international manhunt is underway for a third suspect. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 23: People chant and sing songs at the Place De La Bourse in honour of the victims of yesterdays' terror attacks on March 23, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. Belgium is observing three days of national mourning after 34 people were killed in a twin suicide blast at Zaventem Airport and a further bomb attack at Maelbeek Metro Station. Two brothers are thought to have carried out the airport attack and an international manhunt is underway for a third suspect. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images) Candles and a printed message are pictured at a makeshift memorial on the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 23, 2016, a day after blasts hit the Belgian capital. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers killed 31 people in a strike at the symbolic heart of the EU. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images A Belgian flag is pictured onto one of the two lion sculptures at a makeshift memorial on the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 23, 2016, a day after blasts hit the Belgian capital. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers killed 31 people in a strike at the symbolic heart of the EU. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images Queen Mathilde of Belgium (C) meets soldiers during a visit to Brussels Airport, in Zaventem, on March 23, 2016, a day after triple bomb attacks at the Brussels airport and at a subway train station killed 31 people and wounded more than 200. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers attacked the symbolic heart of the EU. / AFP PHOTO / POOL / FREDERIC SIERAKOWSKIFREDERIC SIERAKOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images TOPSHOT - A boy lights a candle at a makeshift memorial on the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 23, 2016, a day after blasts hit the Belgian capital. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers killed 31 people in a strike at the symbolic heart of the EU. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARD / AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images A heavily armed police officer stands watch in front of Union Station in Washington, DC, March 23, 2016. A dozen Americans were wounded in the Brussels attacks and a number unaccounted for, but no US nationals were known to have been among the 31 dead, the State Department said Wednesday. / AFP PHOTO / Jim WatsonJIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images King Philippe - Filip of Belgium and Queen Mathilde of Belgium mourn after laying down flowers in the area of the explosion at the Maelbeek - Maalbeek subway station in Brussels, on March 23, 2016, a day after the triple blasts killed some 30 people and left around 250 injured. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers attacked the symbolic heart of the EU. / AFP PHOTO / BELGA / THIERRY ROGE / Belgium OUTTHIERRY ROGE/AFP/Getty Images People gather at a makeshift memorial on the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 23, 2016, a day after a triple bomb attack, which responsibility was claimed by the Islamic State group, left 31 dead and hundreds injured in the Belgian capital. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers killed 31 people in a strike at the symbolic heart of the EU. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images People gather at a makeshift memorial on the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 23, 2016, a day after a triple bomb attack, which responsibility was claimed by the Islamic State group, left 31 dead and hundreds injured in the Belgian capital. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers killed 31 people in a strike at the symbolic heart of the EU. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images Flowers and candles are pictured as people gather at a makeshift memorial on the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 23, 2016, a day after a triple bomb attack, which responsibility was claimed by the Islamic State group, left 31 dead and hundreds injured in the Belgian capital. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers killed 31 people in a strike at the symbolic heart of the EU. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images Flowers and candles are pictured as people gather at a makeshift memorial on the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 23, 2016, a day after a triple bomb attack, which responsibility was claimed by the Islamic State group, left 31 dead and hundreds injured in the Belgian capital. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers killed 31 people in a strike at the symbolic heart of the EU. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images Flowers and candles are pictured as people gather at a makeshift memorial on the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 23, 2016, a day after a triple bomb attack, which responsibility was claimed by the Islamic State group, left 31 dead and hundreds injured in the Belgian capital. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers killed 31 people in a strike at the symbolic heart of the EU. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images A woman hold a placard reading "Against terrorism and hatred, Solidarity" as people gather at a makeshift memorial on the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 23, 2016, a day after a triple bomb attack, which responsibility was claimed by the Islamic State group, left 31 dead and hundreds injured in the Belgian capital. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers killed 31 people in a strike at the symbolic heart of the EU. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images People gather at a makeshift memorial on the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 23, 2016, a day after a triple bomb attack, which responsibility was claimed by the Islamic State group, left 31 dead and hundreds injured in the Belgian capital. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers killed 31 people in a strike at the symbolic heart of the EU. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images A woman holds a placard with a heart-shaped Belgian flag reading "We want peace on Earth" as people gather at a makeshift memorial on the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 23, 2016, a day after a triple bomb attack, which responsibility was claimed by the Islamic State group, left 31 dead and hundreds injured in the Belgian capital. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers killed 31 people in a strike at the symbolic heart of the EU. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images Belgian flags reading "Pray for Belgium" are pictured as people gather at a makeshift memorial on the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 23, 2016, a day after a triple bomb attack, which responsibility was claimed by the Islamic State group, left 31 dead and hundreds injured in the Belgian capital. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers killed 31 people in a strike at the symbolic heart of the EU. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 23: Flowers, candles and tributes, to the victims and injured, continue to adorn the Place de la Bourse following yesterday's terrorists attacks on March 23, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. Belgium is observing three days of national mourning after 34 people were killed in a twin suicide blast at Zaventem Airport and a further bomb attack at Maelbeek Metro Station. Two brothers are thought to have carried out the airport attack and an international manhunt is underway for a third suspect. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images) BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 23: Paper butterflies and messages of support adorn the walls of the Bourse De Brussels building in the Place de la Bourse following yesterday's terrorists attacks on March 23, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. Belgium is observing three days of national mourning after 34 people were killed in a twin suicide blast at Zaventem Airport and a further bomb attack at Maelbeek Metro Station. Two brothers are thought to have carried out the airport attack and an international manhunt is underway for a third suspect. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images) Composite image showing Tower Bridge in central London lit in the colours of the Belgium flag as a tribute following yesterday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. PA Manchester Town Hall displays the colours of the Belgium Flag as a tribute following yesterday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. PA Brussels airport workers and their relatives hold candles as they pay tribute to the victims of Brussels triple attacks near the airport in Zaventem on March 23, 2016, a day after triple bomb attacks at the Brussels airport and at a subway train station killed 31 people and wounded more than 200. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers attacked the symbolic heart of the EU. / AFP PHOTO / PHILIPPE HUGUENPHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images Brussels airport workers and their relatives react as they pay tribute to the victims of Brussels triple attacks near the airport in Zaventem on March 23, 2016, a day after triple bomb attacks at the Brussels airport and at a subway train station killed 31 people and wounded more than 200. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers attacked the symbolic heart of the EU. / AFP PHOTO / PHILIPPE HUGUENPHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images Brussels airport workers and their relatives hold candles as they pay tribute to the victims of Brussels triple attacks near the airport in Zaventem on March 23, 2016, a day after triple bomb attacks at the Brussels airport and at a subway train station killed 31 people and wounded more than 200. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers attacked the symbolic heart of the EU. / AFP PHOTO / PHILIPPE HUGUENPHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images Brussels airport workers and their relatives place candles as they pay tribute to the victims of Brussels triple attacks near the airport in Zaventem on March 23, 2016, a day after triple bomb attacks at the Brussels airport and at a subway train station killed 31 people and wounded more than 200. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers attacked the symbolic heart of the EU. / AFP PHOTO / PHILIPPE HUGUENPHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images Brussels airport workers and their relatives place candles at a makeshift memorial as they pay tribute to the victims of Brussels triple attacks near the airport in Zaventem on March 23, 2016, a day after triple bomb attacks at the Brussels airport and at a subway train station killed 31 people and wounded more than 200. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers attacked the symbolic heart of the EU. / AFP PHOTO / PHILIPPE HUGUENPHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images Brussels airport workers and their relatives hold candles as they pay tribute to the victims of Brussels triple attacks near the airport in Zaventem on March 23, 2016, a day after triple bomb attacks at the Brussels airport and at a subway train station killed 31 people and wounded more than 200. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers attacked the symbolic heart of the EU. / AFP PHOTO / PHILIPPE HUGUENPHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images Two children write on a wall at a memorial for victims of attacks in Brussels on Wednesday, March 23, 2016. Belgian authorities were searching Wednesday for a top suspect in the country's deadliest attacks in decades, as the European Union's capital awoke under guard and with limited public transport after scores were killed and injured in bombings on the Brussels airport and a subway station. (AP Photo/Valentin Bianchi) People light candles which create an heart shape at at a wake of Brussels Airport employees on Martch 23, 2016 in Zaventem, a day after triple bomb attacks at the Brussels airport and at a subway train station killed 31 people and wounded more than 200. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers attacked the symbolic heart of the EU. / AFP PHOTO / BELGA AND Belga / YORICK JANSENS / Belgium OUTYORICK JANSENS/AFP/Getty Images A couple stand on March 23, 2016 in front of a makeshift memorial with floral tributes and candles in Brussels a day after triple bomb attacks at the Brussels airport and at a subway train station killed 31 people and wounded more than 200. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers attacked the symbolic heart of the EU. / AFP PHOTO / PHILIPPE HUGUENPHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images LONDON, ENGLAND - MARCH 23: The arches of Wembley Stadium are illuminated with the colours of the flag of Belgium on March 23, 2016 in London, England. Belgium is observing three days of national mourning after 31 people were killed in a twin suicide blast at Zaventem Airport and a further bomb attack at Maelbeek Metro Station. Two brothers are thought to have carried out the airport attack and an international manhunt is underway for a third suspect. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Ben Pruchnie/Getty Images) BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 23: A man wears the Belgian flag as people observe a one minute silence at the Place De La Bourse in honour of the victims of yesterdays' terror attacks on March 23, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. Belgium is observing three days of national mourning after 34 people were killed in a twin suicide blast at Zaventem Airport and a further bomb attack at Maelbeek Metro Station. Two brothers are thought to have carried out the airport attack and an international manhunt is underway for a third suspect. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images) *** BESTPIX *** St George's Hall in Liverpool displays the colours of the Belgium Flag as a tribute following yesterday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday March 23, 2016. Photo credit should read: PA Wire St George's Hall in Liverpool displays the colours of the Belgium Flag as a tribute following yesterday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday March 23, 2016. Photo credit should read: PA Wire A Belgian national flag is projected onto the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London, in solidarity with Belgium after the attacks that occurred yesterday in Brussels, Wednesday, March 23, 2016. Belgians began three days of mourning Wednesday for the victims of the Brussels airport and subway bombings, and the country remained on high alert as authorities hunted for one of the suspected attackers seen on surveillance video with two others who blew themselves up. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham) BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 23: A woman covers her face near Maelbeek metro station as she reacts following yesterday's attack, on March 23, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. Belgium is observing three days of national mourning after 34 people were killed in a twin suicide blast at Zaventem Airport and a further bomb attack at Maelbeek Metro Station. Two brothers are thought to have carried out the airport attack and an international manhunt is underway for a third suspect. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) *** BESTPIX *** The National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London are lit in the colours of the Belgium flag as a tribute following yesterday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday March 23, 2016. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Anthony Devlin/PA Wire The teams stand as a minute silence is observed for the victims of the Brussels attacks prior to the friendly football match between Romania and Lithuania in Bucharest March 23, 2016. Romania won 1-0. / AFP PHOTO / DANIEL MIHAILESCUDANIEL MIHAILESCU/AFP/Getty Images The National Gallery and fountains in Trafalgar Square, London are lit in the colours of the Belgium flag as a tribute following yesterday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday March 23, 2016. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Anthony Devlin/PA Wire London County Hall by the River Thames displays the colours of the Belgium Flag as a tribute following yesterday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday March 23, 2016. Photo credit should read: Ian West/PA Wire The National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London are lit in the colours of the Belgium flag as a tribute following yesterday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday March 23, 2016. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Anthony Devlin/PA Wire The National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London are lit in the colours of the Belgium flag as a tribute following yesterday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday March 23, 2016. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Anthony Devlin/PA Wire The National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London are lit in the colours of the Belgium flag as a tribute following yesterday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday March 23, 2016. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Anthony Devlin/PA Wire Messages written in chalk infront of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London which is lit in the colours of the Belgium flag as a tribute following yesterday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday March 23, 2016. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Anthony Devlin/PA Wire The National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London are lit in the colours of the Belgium flag as a tribute following yesterday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday March 23, 2016. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Anthony Devlin/PA Wire Messages written in chalk are seen in front of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London which is lit in the colours of the Belgium flag as a tribute following yesterday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday March 23, 2016. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Anthony Devlin/PA Wire The National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London are lit in the colours of the Belgium flag as a tribute following yesterday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday March 23, 2016. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Anthony Devlin/PA Wire Candles and messages in front of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London which is lit in the colours of the Belgium flag as a tribute following yesterday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday March 23, 2016. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Anthony Devlin/PA Wire Messages written in chalk infront of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London which is lit in the colours of the Belgium flag as a tribute following yesterday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday March 23, 2016. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Anthony Devlin/PA Wire Candles and messages in front of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London which is lit in the colours of the Belgium flag as a tribute following yesterday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday March 23, 2016. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Anthony Devlin/PA Wire People bring flowers and candles at Place de la Bourse, Brussels, to mourn for the victims on Wednesday evening, March 23, 2016. Bombs exploded Tuesday at the Brussels airport and one of the city's metro stations, killing and wounding scores of people, as a European capital was again locked down amid heightened security threats. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner) People gather at a memorial site located at the old stock exchange in Brussels on Wednesday, March 23, 2016. Belgian authorities were searching Wednesday for a top suspect in the country's deadliest attacks in decades, as the European Union's capital awoke under guard and with limited public transport after scores were killed or wounded in bombings on the Brussels airport and a subway station. (AP Photo/Valentin Bianchi) Hundreds of people come together at Place de la Bourse to mourn on Wednesday evening, March 23, 2016. Bombs exploded yesterday at the Brussels airport and one of the city's metro stations, killing and wounding scores of people, as a European capital was again locked down amid heightened security threats. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner) A small girl sits among candles set up at a memorial site located at the old stock exchange in Brussels on Wednesday, March 23, 2016. Belgian authorities were searching Wednesday for a top suspect in the country's deadliest attacks in decades, as the European Union's capital awoke under guard and with limited public transport after scores were killed or wounded in bombings on the Brussels airport and a subway station. (AP Photo/Valentin Bianchi) People bring flowers and candles to Place de la Bourse, Brussels, to mourn for the victims on Wednesday evening, March 23, 2016. Bombs exploded Tuesday at the Brussels airport and one of the city's metro stations, killing and wounding scores of people, as a European capital was again locked down amid heightened security threats. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner) Sonia (surname witheld) embraces her children Mateo and Alessia at The Place de la Bourse as she pays her respects to victims following yesterday's terrorists attacks on March 23, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images) People hold a banner showing the Brussels mascot defusing a bomb at Place de la Bourse on Wednesday evening, March 23, 2016. Bombs exploded yesterday at the Brussels airport and one of the city's metro stations, killing and wounding scores of people, as a European capital was again locked down amid heightened security threats. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner) Hundreds of people come together at Place de la Bourse to mourn on Wednesday evening, March 23, 2016 (AP Photo/Martin Meissner) Terror group Isis has claimed responsibility for two explosions at Brussels Airport and one at Maalbeek Metro Station on Tuesday morning that killed at least 30 people and injured dozens. At least one of the blasts at the airport is likely to have been carried out by a suicide bomber. Brussels was initially on lockdown but people have now been told that they can start to move around again. The terror alert has been raised to its highest level. Security across Europe has been tightened. Here is what we know so far: Brussels Airport Shortly after 8am local time, two explosions were heard minutes apart in the departure hall of the airport. One reportedly took place near the American Airlines check-in area, and another near the Brussels Airlines desk. Belgian media reported that at least 11 people had died and 81 people had been injured Belga news agency reported that shots were fired and Arabic could be heard before the explosions People could be seen fleeing the airport as smoke rose from the terminal building An eyewitness said: "It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed. There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere" Officials have urged people to stay away from the airport Brussels Airport has also told people to avoid the area, and it has cancelled all flights. It is expected to stay closed until about 6am on Wednesday At least one Kalashnikov assault rifle was found in the departure lounge, according to a European security official Florence Muls, the airport communications manager, has defended the security at the site, adding that the airport does not have the ability to impose controls at the terminal entry Maalbeek Metro station About an hour after the airport blasts, there was an explosion at Maalbeek Metro station, which close to a number of EU institutions. A photo from VRT showed that a train carriage was struck by the blast Guy Sablon, a Brussels transit spokesman, said 20 people had lost their lives in this attack and more than 100 had been injured, according to Mayor Yvan Majeur The entire Metro system in Brussels has been shut down Reaction Eurostar has suspended its services to Brussels-Midi station The public transport system in Brussels has been closed The European Commission has told people to stay at home or inside buildings. All EU institutions are on alert level orange Pope Francis has condemned the "blind violence" of the attacks Condemnation of the attacks also came from Donald Tusk, the European Council President, and US President Barack Obama In a joint statement, In this image provided by Daniela Schwarzer, smoke is seen at Brussels airport in Brussels, Belgium, after explosions were heard Tuesday, March 22, 2016. (Daniela Schwarzer via AP) The aftermath of this morning's explosions at Brussels airport. Pic Jef Versele/PA Wire NOTE TO EDITORS: This handout photo may only be used in for editorial reporting purposes for the contemporaneous illustration of events, things or the people in the image or facts mentioned in the caption. Reuse of the picture may require further permission from the copyright holder. The scene at Brussels Airport after two explosions were heard. Pic @davidcrunelle/PA Wire The scene at Brussels Airport after two explosions were heard. Pic: @davidcrunelle/PA Wire A photo shows cars on a blocked highway near Zaventem, Brussels National airport, on March 22, 2016 after two explosions rocked the main hall of Brussels Airport, killing at least one person and wounding several others, officials said. AFP PHOTO / THIERRY MONASSETHIERRY MONASSE/AFP/Getty Images A picture taken on March 22, 2016 shows smoke rising from the Maalbeek underground, in Brussels, following a blast at the station close to the capital's European quarter. Pic Getty Images The scene at Brussels Airport after two explosions were heard. Pic: Stephanie Vanhemelryck/PA Wire The scene at Brussels Airport after two explosions were heard. Pic: Stephanie Vanhemelryck/PA Wire A photo taken on March 22, 2016 shows Brussels Airport, in Zaventem, after two explosions rocked the main hall of the airport, killing at least one person and wounding several others. The Brussels metro service was being shut down on March 22, its operator said, following a blast at a station close to the capital's European quarter. / AFP PHOTO / BELGA / Belgium OUT/AFP/Getty Images A photo shows cars on a blocked highway near Zaventem, leading to Brussels National airport, on March 22, 2016 after two explosions rocked the main hall of Brussels Airport, killing at least one person and wounding several others, officials said. AFP PHOTO / THIERRY MONASSETHIERRY MONASSE/AFP/Getty Images People walk on a blocked highway near Zaventem, leading to Brussels National airport, on March 22, 2016 after two explosions rocked the main hall of Brussels Airport, killing at least one person and wounding several others, officials said. AFP PHOTO / THIERRY MONASSETHIERRY MONASSE/AFP/Getty Images This view taken on March 22, 2016 shows the broken glasses at Brussels Airport in Zaventem after a two explosions targeted the main hall. A string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station today, killing at least 13 people, according to media reports, as Belgium raised its terror threat to the maximum level. / AFP PHOTO / BELGA / JONAS ROOSENSJONAS ROOSENS/AFP/Getty Images Passsengers wait, on March 22, 2016 near Brussels airport in Zaventem , following its evacuation after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Passengers who were evacuated from the airport wait in Zaventem, on March 22, 2016, after a string of explosions rocked Brussels airport of Zaventem and a city metro station, killing at least 13 people, according to media reports, as Belgium raised its terror threat to the maximum level. / AFP PHOTO / Belga / SEPPE KNAPEN / Belgium OUTSEPPE KNAPEN/AFP/Getty Images A passenger waits, on March 22, 2016 near Brussels airport in Zaventem , following its evacuation after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images A passenger waits, on March 22, 2016 near Brussels airport in Zaventem , following its evacuation after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Passengers gather, on March 22, 2016 near Brussels airport in Zaventem , following its evacuation after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Passengers leave with their luggages, on March 22, 2016 near Brussels airport in Zaventem , following its evacuation after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Belgium police officers block a street in Brussels on March 22, 2016 after an explosion occurred at a metro station. At least 13 people have been killed after two explosions occurred this morning in the departure hall of Brussels Airport. The Brussels metro stations have been evacuated after explosions at Schuiman and Maelbeek-Maalbeek. Government sources speak of a terrorist attack. The terrorist threat level has been heightened to four across the country. / AFP PHOTO / BELGA / PHILIPPE FRANCOIS / Belgium OUTPHILIPPE FRANCOIS/AFP/Getty Images Passengers leave with their luggages, on March 22, 2016 near Brussels airport in Zaventem , following its evacuation after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Two passengers wait, on March 22, 2016 near Brussels airport in Zaventem , following its evacuation after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Passengers are gathered near Brussels airport, on March 22, 2016 in Zaventem, following its evacuation after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images In this photo provided by Georgian Public Broadcaster and photographed by Ketevan Kardava a man is wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels, Belgium, after explosions were heard Tuesday, March 22, 2016. (Ketevan Kardava/ Georgian Public Broadcaster via AP) A picture taken on March 22, 2016 shows a Belgian police vehicle driving past passengers who are evacuating the Brussels Airport of Zaventem. Getty Images A picture taken on March 22, 2016 shows passengers boarding a bus as they evacuate the Brussels Airport of Zaventem, after a string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station, killing at least 21 people, as Belgium raised its terror threat to the maximum level. AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images The military police carries extra patrols at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam, on March 22, 2016 in response to the attacks in the departure hall of Brussels Airport and at a Brussels metro station. / AFP PHOTO / ANP / Evert Elzinga / Netherlands OUTEVERT ELZINGA/AFP/Getty Images Policemen stand guard at the entrance of a security perimeter set near Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images A picture taken on March 22, 2016 shows passengers waiting in a bus as they evacuate the Brussels Airport of Zaventem, after a string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station, killing at least 21 people, as Belgium raised its terror threat to the maximum level. AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Policemen and soldier stand guard at the entrance of a security perimeter set near Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images A helicopter of the Belgian police flies above the area near Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images A picture taken on March 22, 2016 shows a Belgian emergency vehicle driving past passengers evacuating the Brussels Airport of Zaventem, after a string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station, killing at least 21 people, as Belgium raised its terror threat to the maximum level. AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Policemen stand guard at the entrance of a security perimeter set near Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images Policemen stand guard at the entrance of a security perimeter set near Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images A victim receives first aid by rescuers, on March 22, 2016 near Maalbeek metro station in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images A picture shows damage to the facade of Brussels Airport, in Zaventem, on March 2016 after two explosions in the airport. Belgian firefighters said there were at least 21 dead after "enormous" blasts hit Brussels airport and the city's metro system. / AFP PHOTO / BELGA / DIRK WAEM / Belgium OUTDIRK WAEM/AFP/Getty Images A security perimeter has been set, on March 22, 2016 near Maalbeek metro station in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images A victim receives first aid by rescuers, on March 22, 2016 near Maalbeek metro station in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images A victim receives first aid by rescuers, on March 22, 2016 near Maalbeek metro station in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images Passengers evacuate the Brussels Airport in Zaventem, on March 22, 2016, after a string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station, killing at least 21 people, as Belgium raised its terror threat to the maximum level. The blasts come days after the dramatic arrest in Brussels on March 18 of Salah Abdeslam, the prime suspect in the Paris terror attacks that killed 130 people in November, after four months on the run. AFP PHOTO / THIERRY MONASSETHIERRY MONASSE/AFP/Getty Images Firefighters arrive at a security perimeter set near Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images Passengers are evacuated from Brussels airport, on March 22, 2016 in Zaventem, after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Passengers are evacuated from Brussels airport, on March 22, 2016 in Zaventem, after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Passengers are evacuated from Brussels airport, on March 22, 2016 in Zaventem, after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Passengers are evacuated from Brussels airport, on March 22, 2016 in Zaventem, after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Passengers board a bus as they evacuate the Brussels Airport in Zaventem, on March 22, 2016, after a string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station, killing at least 21 people, as Belgium raised its terror threat to the maximum level. The blasts come days after the dramatic arrest in Brussels on March 18 of Salah Abdeslam, the prime suspect in the Paris terror attacks that killed 130 people in November, after four months on the run. AFP PHOTO / THIERRY MONASSETHIERRY MONASSE/AFP/Getty Images Passengers are evacuated from Brussels airport, on March 22, 2016 in Zaventem, after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Passengers are evacuated from Brussels airport, on March 22, 2016 in Zaventem, after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Police officers walk past as a group of travelers stand together, after services were suspended on the Brussels Eurostar train route because of the attacks in Belgium, at St Pancras international railway station in London, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Authorities locked down the Belgian capital on Tuesday after explosions rocked the Brussels airport and subway system, killing at least 13 people and injuring many more. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham) A police officers sets a security perimeter near Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images A police officers sets a security perimeter near Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images Emergency workers arrive at a security perimeter set near Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images An armed policeman secures the access to the terminal area of the Frankfurt Airport, on March 22, 2016, in Frankfurt, western Germany. The increased security comes in the wake of the explosions in Brussels, according to several media have claimed more lives. / AFP PHOTO / DPA / Boris Roessler / Germany OUTBORIS ROESSLER/AFP/Getty Images Policemen stand guard at the entrance of a security perimeter set near Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images An armed policeman secures the access to the terminal area of the Frankfurt Airport, on March 22, 2016, in Frankfurt, western Germany. The increased security comes in the wake of the explosions in Brussels, according to several media have claimed more lives. / AFP PHOTO / DPA / Boris Roessler / Germany OUTBORIS ROESSLER/AFP/Getty Images Policemen stand guard at the entrance of a security perimeter set near Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images First aid workers arrive atr Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images Belgian servicemen and police officers block the road outside the Prime Minister's office where a meeting of the National Security Council is held, in Brussels, on March 22, 2016, after a string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station, killing at least 21 people, as Belgium raised its terror threat to the maximum level. The blasts come days after the dramatic arrest in Brussels on March 18 of Salah Abdeslam, the prime suspect in the Paris terror attacks that killed 130 people in November, after four months on the run. / AFP PHOTO / Belga / JAMES ARTHUR GEKIERE / Belgium OUTJAMES ARTHUR GEKIERE/AFP/Getty Images French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve gives a statement after a meeting with French Prime Minister, French Defence Minister and French President following Brussels attacks on March 22, 2016 at the Elysee Palace in Paris. A string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station on March 22, killing at least 21 people in apparently coordinated attacks, officials said. / AFP PHOTO / STEPHANE DE SAKUTINSTEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP/Getty Images First aid workers arrive atr Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve gives a statement after a meeting with French Prime Minister, French Defence Minister and French President following Brussels attacks on March 22, 2016 at the Elysee Palace in Paris. A string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station on March 22, killing at least 21 people in apparently coordinated attacks, officials said. / AFP PHOTO / STEPHANE DE SAKUTINSTEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP/Getty Images Policemen speak at a security perimeter near Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images Belgian servicemen and police officers block the road outside the Prime Minister's office where a meeting of the National Security Council is held, in Brussels, on March 22, 2016, after a string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station, killing at least 21 people, as Belgium raised its terror threat to the maximum level. The blasts come days after the dramatic arrest in Brussels on March 18 of Salah Abdeslam, the prime suspect in the Paris terror attacks that killed 130 people in November, after four months on the run. / AFP PHOTO / Belga / James Arthur Gekiere / Belgium OUTJAMES ARTHUR GEKIERE/AFP/Getty Images A police officers sets a security perimeter near Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve gives a statement after a meeting with French Prime Minister, French Defence Minister and French President following Brussels attacks on March 22, 2016 at the Elysee Palace in Paris. A string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station on March 22, killing at least 21 people in apparently coordinated attacks, officials said. / AFP PHOTO / STEPHANE DE SAKUTINSTEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP/Getty Images French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve gives a statement after a meeting with French Prime Minister, French Defence Minister and French President following Brussels attacks on March 22, 2016 at the Elysee Palace in Paris. A string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station on March 22, killing at least 21 people in apparently coordinated attacks, officials said. / AFP PHOTO / STEPHANE DE SAKUTINSTEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP/Getty Images Firefighters arrive at the scene near Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 22: Crew and passengers are evacuated from Zaventem Bruxelles International Airport after terrorist attacks on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. At least 13 people are though to have been killed after Brussels airport was hit by two explosions whilst a Metro station was also targeted. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Sylvain Lefevre/Getty Images) BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 22: Crew and passengers are evacuated from Zaventem Bruxelles International Airport after terrorist attacks on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. At least 13 people are though to have been killed after Brussels airport was hit by two explosions whilst a Metro station was also targeted. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Sylvain Lefevre/Getty Images) A police officers sets security perimeter near Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images Picture taken with permission from the Facebook site of Jef Versele showing the aftermath of this morning's explosions at Brussels airport. A Eurostar representative gives advice to a traveler after services were suspended on the Brussels Eurostar train route because of the attacks in Belgium, at St Pancras international railway station in London, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, rocked the Brussels airport and subway system Tuesday, prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham) Police dog handlers speak to travelers as they patrol after Eurostar train services were suspended on the Brussels route because of the attacks in Belgium, at St Pancras international railway station in London, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, rocked the Brussels airport and subway system Tuesday, prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham) Belgian police officers detain a man at the Gare du Midi train station in Brussels, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, rocked the Brussels airport and its subway system Tuesday, prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler) Rescue teams evacuate wounded people outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels on March 21, 2016 after a blast at this station located near the EU institutions. Belgian firefighters said at least 26 people had died after "enormous" blasts rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station today, as Belgium raised its terror threat to the maximum level. / AFP PHOTO / --/AFP/Getty Images A man looks at flowers and a sign reading (Defy terror, protect freedom) outside the Belgium embassy in Berlin on March 22, 2016. People left tributes to the victims outside the embassy after a series of apparently coordinated blasts ripped through Brussels airport and a train. / AFP PHOTO / ODD ANDERSENODD ANDERSEN/AFP/Getty Images Police and rescue teams are pictured outside the metro station Maelbeek in Brussels, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, rocked the Brussels airport and its subway system Tuesday, prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner) Smoke billows from the Zaventem Airport after a controlled explosion in Brussels, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Bombs struck the Brussels airport and one of the city's metro stations Tuesday, killing and wounding dozens of people, as a European capital was again locked down amid heightened security threats. (AP Photo/Michel Spingler) Travelers wait at the counter of Brussels airlines in Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv, Israel, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. After the Brussels attacks, Israel briefly announced that all Israeli flights from Europe were canceled, then reinstated the flights, Israel Airports Authority spokesman Ofer Leffler said. Pini Schiff, former director of security at Ben-Gurion Airport, said the attack in the Brussels airport was a colossal failure of Belgian security, and he said the chances are very low that such a bombing could take place in Israels airport. Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport is considered among the most secure in the world, an outcome stemming from several Palestinian attacks on Israeli planes and travelers in the 1970s. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit) Police and rescue teams are pictured outside the metro station Maelbeek in Brussels, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, rocked the Brussels airport and its subway system Tuesday, prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner) An Israeli airport security guard patrols with a dog in Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv, Israel, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. After the Brussels attacks, Israel briefly announced that all Israeli flights from Europe were canceled, then reinstated the flights, Israel Airports Authority spokesman Ofer Leffler said. Pini Schiff, former director of security at Ben-Gurion Airport, said the attack in the Brussels airport was a colossal failure of Belgian security, and he said the chances are very low that such a bombing could take place in Israels airport. Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport is considered among the most secure in the world, an outcome stemming from several Palestinian attacks on Israeli planes and travelers in the 1970s. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit) A pilot and cabin crew are evacuated from Zaventem Airport in Brussels by bus after an explosion on Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, rocked the Brussels airport and subway system Tuesday, prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe. At least 26 people were reported dead. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert) The blown out facade of the terminal is seen at Zaventem airport, one of the sites of two deadly attacks in Brussels, Belgium, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Authorities in Europe have tightened security at airports, on subways, at the borders and on city streets after the attacks Tuesday on the Brussels airport and its subway system. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong) Policemen and soldiers stand guard near a security perimeter set in the Rue de la Loi near the Maalbeek subway station, in Brussels, on March 22, 2016, after an explosion killed at least 11 people, according to spokesman of Brussels' fire brigade A string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station on Tuesday, killing at least 13 people, according to media reports, as Belgium raised its terror threat to the maximum level. / AFP PHOTO / PHILIPPE HUGUENPHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images Policemem stand guard near a security perimeter set in the Rue de la Loi near the Maalbeek subway station, in Brussels, on March 22, 2016, after an explosion killed at least 11 people, according to spokesman of Brussels' fire brigade A string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station on Tuesday, killing at least 13 people, according to media reports, as Belgium raised its terror threat to the maximum level. / AFP PHOTO / PHILIPPE HUGUENPHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images A wreath is layed on a table along flowers and a candle inside the Belgium embassy in Berlin on March 22, 2016 as the national and EU flag is reflected in the window. People left tributes to the victims outside the embassy after a series of apparently coordinated blasts ripped through Brussels airport and a train. / AFP PHOTO / ODD ANDERSENODD ANDERSEN/AFP/Getty Images Travellers gather at Ryanair helping desk at Barcelona El Prat airport after the Brussels attacks, in Barcelona on March 22, 2016. Europe froze air and rail links to Brussels as the authorities tightened security in alarm over a series of deadly bomb blasts that ripped through the Belgian capital's airport and a city-centre metro station. / AFP PHOTO / PAU BARRENAPAU BARRENA/AFP/Getty Images A boy holds a placard expressing sympathy for the victims of the terror attacks in Brussels during a protest at a makeshift camp at the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idomeni on March 22, 2016. Greece will not be able to start sending refugees back to Turkey from March 20, 2016, the government said, as the country struggles to implement a key deal aimed at easing Europe's migrant crisis. The numbers are daunting: officials said as of Saturday there were 47,500 migrants in Greece, including 8,200 on the islands and 10,500 massed at the Idomeni camp on the Macedonian border. / AFP PHOTO / ANDREJ ISAKOVICANDREJ ISAKOVIC/AFP/Getty Images Travellers get informed at Ryanair helping desk at Barcelona El Prat airport after the Brussels attacks, in Barcelona on March 22, 2016. Europe froze air and rail links to Brussels as the authorities tightened security in alarm over a series of deadly bomb blasts that ripped through the Belgian capital's airport and a city-centre metro station. / AFP PHOTO / PAU BARRENAPAU BARRENA/AFP/Getty Images The Belgian and European Union flags fly at half mast outside the embassy of Belgium in London, in the wake of coordinated bomb attacks on the main airport and the Metro system in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday March 22, 2016. The attacks, condemned as "blind, violent and cowardly" by Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, came after the arrest in the city last week of terror mastermind Salah Abdeslam, who plotted November's Paris atrocity from the notorious Molenbeek suburb of Brussels. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Andrew Matthews/PA Wire The departure board at Rome's Fiumicino aiport displays the cancellation of flights to Brussels on March 22, 2016, in the wake of the series of apparently coordinated explosions ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train, killing at least 26 people. Authorities in Europe have tightened security at airports, on subways, at the borders and on city streets after deadly attacks on the Brussels airport and its subway system. / AFP PHOTO / TIZIANA FABITIZIANA FABI/AFP/Getty Images Travellers gather at Ryanair helping desk at Barcelona El Prat airport after the Brussels attacks, in Barcelona on March 22, 2016. Europe froze air and rail links to Brussels as the authorities tightened security in alarm over a series of deadly bomb blasts that ripped through the Belgian capital's airport and a city-centre metro station. / AFP PHOTO / PAU BARRENAPAU BARRENA/AFP/Getty Images Police officers patrol entrances to Rome's Fiumicino aiport on March 22, 2016, in the wake of the series of apparently coordinated explosions ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train, killing at least 26 people. Authorities in Europe have tightened security at airports, on subways, at the borders and on city streets after deadly attacks on the Brussels airport and its subway system. / AFP PHOTO / TIZIANA FABITIZIANA FABI/AFP/Getty Images The flags of Belgium and the European Union are seen flying on half mast reflected in the window of the Belgian embassy in Berlin on March 22, 2016. People left tributes to the victims outside the embassy after a series of apparently coordinated blasts ripped through Brussels airport and a train. / AFP PHOTO / ODD ANDERSENODD ANDERSEN/AFP/Getty Images An Italian police officer patrols with a dog at Rome's Fiumicino aiport on March 22, 2016 as security measures were reinforced in the wake of attacks in Brussels. European countries vowed to defend democracy against terrorism after blasts at Brussels airport and in the EU's institutional heart left at least 26 dead and dozens injured. / AFP PHOTO / TIZIANA FABITIZIANA FABI/AFP/Getty Images The Belgian flag flies at half mast above 10 Downing Street in London, in the wake of coordinated bomb attacks on the main airport and the Metro system in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday March 22, 2016. The attacks, condemned as "blind, violent and cowardly" by Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, came after the arrest in the city last week of terror mastermind Salah Abdeslam, who plotted November's Paris atrocity from the notorious Molenbeek suburb of Brussels. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire The Belgian flag flies at half mast above 10 Downing Street in London, in the wake of coordinated bomb attacks on the main airport and the Metro system in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday March 22, 2016. The attacks, condemned as "blind, violent and cowardly" by Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, came after the arrest in the city last week of terror mastermind Salah Abdeslam, who plotted November's Paris atrocity from the notorious Molenbeek suburb of Brussels. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire The Belgian and European Union flags fly at half mast outside the embassy of Belgium in London, in the wake of coordinated bomb attacks on the main airport and the Metro system in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday March 22, 2016. The attacks, condemned as "blind, violent and cowardly" by Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, came after the arrest in the city last week of terror mastermind Salah Abdeslam, who plotted November's Paris atrocity from the notorious Molenbeek suburb of Brussels. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Andrew Matthews/PA Wire A Belgian soldier patrols outside Brussels Central Station as people are allowed in small group of ten to reach the station in order to take their commuter train following attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights and European railways froze links with Brussels after a series of bombs blasts killed around 35 people in the city's airport and a metro train, sparking a broad security response. / AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images A man lights a candle at a makeshift memorial at Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) following attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights and European railways froze links with Brussels after a series of bomb blasts killed around 35 people in the city's airport and a metro train, sparking a broad security response. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images A man puts a Belgian flag at a makeshift memorial at Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) following attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights and European railways froze links with Brussels after a series of bomb blasts killed around 35 people in the city's airport and a metro train, sparking a broad security response. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images A Belgian soldier speaks to a police officer outside Brussels Central Station as people are allowed in small groups of ten to reach the station in order to take their commuter train following attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights and European railways froze links with Brussels after a series of bombs blasts killed around 35 people in the city's airport and a metro train, sparking a broad security response. / AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images A candle burns next to a heart drawing at a makeshift memorial at Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) following attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights and European railways froze links with Brussels after a series of bomb blasts killed around 35 people in the city's airport and a metro train, sparking a broad security response. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images A woman leaves a bouquet of flowers in the Belgian national colours next to a French national flag with the lettering 'Paris - Brussels - Solidarity' at the fence of the Belgian embassy in Paris on March 22, 2016, in tribute to victims of triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people. AFP PHOTO / THOMAS SAMSONTHOMAS SAMSON/AFP/Getty Images A woman lights a candle at a makeshift memorial at Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) following attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights and European railways froze links with Brussels after a series of bomb blasts killed around 35 people in the city's airport and a metro train, sparking a broad security response. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images A woman reacts as people gather at a makeshift memorial at Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) following attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights and European railways froze links with Brussels after a series of bomb blasts killed around 35 people in the city's airport and a metro train, sparking a broad security response. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images A Belgian police officer watches people walk past during an operation to limit the number of people allowed into the central Station in Brussels on March 22, 2016 following co-ordinated attacks at the Airport serving the Belgian capital and its Metro system. Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights and European railways froze links with Brussels after a series of bombs blasts killed around 35 people in the city's airport and a metro train, sparking a broad security response. / AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images People hold hands as they gather at a makeshift memorial at Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) following attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights and European railways froze links with Brussels after a series of bomb blasts killed around 35 people in the city's airport and a metro train, sparking a broad security response. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images People hold hands as they gather at a makeshift memorial at Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) following attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights and European railways froze links with Brussels after a series of bomb blasts killed around 35 people in the city's airport and a metro train, sparking a broad security response. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images A man plays the cello as people gather at a makeshift memorial at Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) following attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights and European railways froze links with Brussels after a series of bomb blasts killed around 35 people in the city's airport and a metro train, sparking a broad security response. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images A replica of the Manneken Pis statue stands at a makeshift memorial at Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) following attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights and European railways froze links with Brussels after a series of bomb blasts killed around 35 people in the city's airport and a metro train, sparking a broad security response. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images A picture taken on March 22, 2016 in Paris shows a view of a smartphone screening an Instagram page with the ashtag "#JESUISBRUSSELS" (#IAMBRUSSELS) and two tributes images picturing the color of the Belgian flag, a drawing by French cartoonist Plantu and the famous Belgian comic character Tintin, in tribute to victims of triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people. Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights and European railways froze links with Brussels on March 22, 2016 after rush-hour bomb attacks killed around 35 people in the city's airport and a metro train, sparking a broad security response. Within hours of Brussels attacks tens of thousands of people were sharing images on social media of Herge's cub reporter Tintin, the country's most famous creation, in tears. / AFP PHOTO / JOEL SAGET / RESTRICTED TO EDITORIAL USE - MANDATORY MENTION OF THE ARTIST UPON PUBLICATION - TO ILLUSTRATE THE EVENT AS SPECIFIED IN THE CAPTIONJOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty Images People hold hands as they gather at a makeshift memorial at Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) following attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights and European railways froze links with Brussels after a series of bomb blasts killed around 35 people in the city's airport and a metro train, sparking a broad security response. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images Police forces block the access to the Maalbeek subway station, in Brussels, on March 22, 2016, after a series of apparently coordinated explosions that ripped through Brussels airport and the metro train, killing at least 14 people in the airport and 20 people in the metro in the latest attacks to target Europe. / AFP PHOTO / PHILIPPE HUGUENPHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images A man reacts as people gather at a makeshift memorial at Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) following attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights and European railways froze links with Brussels after a series of bomb blasts killed around 35 people in the city's airport and a metro train, sparking a broad security response. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 22: People leave tributes at the Place de la Bourse following today's attacks on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. At least 31 people are thought to have been killed after Brussels airport and a Metro station were targeted by explosions. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 22: A young boy helps light a candle as people leave tributes at the Place de la Bourse following today's attacks on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. At least 31 people are thought to have been killed after Brussels airport and a Metro station were targeted by explosions. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 22: A young boy helps light a candle as people leave tributes at the Place de la Bourse following today's attacks on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. At least 31 people are thought to have been killed after Brussels airport and a Metro station were targeted by explosions. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) People gather at a makeshift memorial at Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) following attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. Airlines cancelled hundreds of flights and European railways froze links with Brussels after a series of bomb blasts killed around 35 people in the city's airport and a metro train, sparking a broad security response. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images Belgian flag flies at half mast above the Royal Palace in Brussels on March 22, 2016 in the wake of co-ordinated attacks claimed by Islamic State group (IS) millitants at the city's airport and in a Metro train. Belgium will hold three days of national mourning in the wake of the deadly attacks in the capital Brussels that killed around 35 people. "All national flags on public buildings will be at half-mast," Frederic Cauderlier, spokesman for Belgian premier Charles Michel, told AFP. / AFP PHOTO / BELGA AND Belga / NICOLAS MAETERLINCK / Belgium OUTNICOLAS MAETERLINCK/AFP/Getty Images BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 22: A message is written on the ground as people leave tributes at the Place de la Bourse following today's attacks on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. At least 31 people are thought to have been killed after Brussels airport and a Metro station were targeted by explosions. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 22: An Amtrak police K-9 unit checks the baggage of passengers at Union Station March 22, 2016 in Washington, DC. Security has been increased around the city after bombings in Brussels have left at least 34 people dead and scores more injured in the bombings. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 22: An Amtrak police K-9 unit patrols Union Station March 22, 2016 in Washington, DC. Security has been increased around the city after bombings in Brussels have left at least 34 people dead and scores more injured in the bombings. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 22: A K-9 unit patrols Union Station March 22, 2016 in Washington, DC. Security has been increased around the city after bombings in Brussels have left at least 34 people dead and scores more injured in the bombings. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) Belgian special police forces take position in Zaventem following blasts at Brussels airport and a metro station on March 22, 2016. The European Union vowed to defend democracy and tolerance and to combat terrorism "with all necessary means" after triple blasts struck Brussels, the 28-nation bloc's capital. Around 35 people were killed and more than 200 injured. The Islamic State jihadist group claimed responsibility. AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Servicemen of Azov, Ukrainian volonteers battalion, hold torches in front of floral tributes during a ceremony in front of the Belgian embassy in Kiev on March 22, 2016, in tribute to the victims of Brussels following triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. Belgium launched a huge manhunt on March 22 after a series of bombings claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train, killing around 35 people in the latest attack to bring carnage to the heart of Europe. / AFP PHOTO / ANATOLII STEPANOVANATOLII STEPANOV/AFP/Getty Images People holds a banner as they gather at a makeshift memorial at Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) following attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. A series of explosions claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train on March 22, killing around 35 people in the latest attacks to bring bloody carnage to the heart of Europe. THIERRY MONASSE AFP PHOTO / THIERRY MONASSETHIERRY MONASSE/AFP/Getty Images BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 22: A woman writes a message on the ground as people leave tributes at the Place de la Bourse following today's attacks on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. At least 31 people are thought to have been killed after Brussels airport and a Metro station were targeted by explosions. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) People look at informations inside the North station (Gare du Nord - Noordstation) on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, as stations are opened again with high security measures after a series of apparently coordinated explosions that ripped through Brussels airport and the metro train, killing at least 14 people in the airport and 20 people in the metro in the latest attacks to target Europe. Belgian police issued a wanted notice for a suspect in the bomb attack on Brussels airport on March 22 in which at least 14 people were killed. The Islamic State group officially claimed responsibility for the attacks in Brussels that left some 35 people dead and threatened further violence. / AFP PHOTO / Belga / NICOLAS MAETERLINCK / Belgium OUTNICOLAS MAETERLINCK/AFP/Getty Images BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 22: A Metro station is closed off at the Place de la Bourse following today's attacks on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. At least 31 people are thought to have been killed after Brussels airport and a Metro station were targeted by explosions. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) People take part in a rally on March 22, 2016 on the Palazzo di Citta square in Turin in memory of the victims of the attacks in Brussels. Around 35 people were killed and more than 200 wounded in a series of attacks in Brussels today claimed by the Islamic State group and described as a strike at the very heart of Europe. / AFP PHOTO / MARCO BERTORELLOMARCO BERTORELLO/AFP/Getty Images BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 22: A message is written on a wall following today's attacks on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. At least 31 people are thought to have been killed after Brussels airport and a Metro station were targeted by explosions. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) Police officers stand guard at the Brussels Airport in Zaventem following twin blasts on March 22, 2016. Around 35 people were killed and more than 200 wounded in a series of attacks in Brussels today claimed by the Islamic State group and described as a strike at the very heart of Europe. / AFP PHOTO / PATRIK STOLLARZPATRIK STOLLARZ/AFP/Getty Images A man holds a sign as people take part in a rally on March 22, 2016 on the Palazzo di Citta square in Turin in memory of the victims of the attacks in Brussels. Around 35 people were killed and more than 200 wounded in a series of attacks in Brussels today claimed by the Islamic State group and described as a strike at the very heart of Europe. / AFP PHOTO / MARCO BERTORELLOMARCO BERTORELLO/AFP/Getty Images People stand hand in hand in tribute to victims at a makeshift memorial in front of the stock exchange at the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 22, 2016, following triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. A series of explosions claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train on March 22, killing around 35 people in the latest attacks to bring bloody carnage to the heart of Europe. AFP PHOTO / THIERRY MONASSETHIERRY MONASSE/AFP/Getty Images A woman lights a candle in tribute to victims at a makeshift memorial in front of the stock exchange at the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 22, 2016, following triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. A series of explosions claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train on March 22, killing around 35 people in the latest attacks to bring bloody carnage to the heart of Europe. AFP PHOTO / THIERRY MONASSETHIERRY MONASSE/AFP/Getty Images A picture taken on March 22, 2016 shows a frame with an inscription which translates as "For our Belgian friends" among floral tributes, candles and notes at the Place de la Republique in Paris in tribute to the victims following a series of apparently coordinated explosions that ripped through Brussels airport and the metro train, killing at least 14 people in the airport and 20 people in the metro in the latest attacks to target Europe. Belgian police found a bomb and an Islamic State flag during a search of a Brussels apartment carried out hours after deadly attacks in the Belgian capital that killed around 35 people, prosecutors said. The Islamic State group officially claimed responsibility for the attacks. / AFP PHOTO / JOEL SAGETJOEL SAGET/AFP/Getty Images People stand hand in hand in tribute to victims at a makeshift memorial in front of the stock exchange at the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 22, 2016, following triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. A series of explosions claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train on March 22, killing around 35 people in the latest attacks to bring bloody carnage to the heart of Europe.KENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images A miniature sculpture of Brussels' landmark Manneken Pis (Little man Pee) is seen in tribute to victims at a makeshift memorial in front of the stock exchange at the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 22, 2016, following triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. A series of explosions claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train on March 22, killing around 35 people in the latest attacks to bring bloody carnage to the heart of Europe. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images A couple watches as the colors of the Belgian flag are projected on to the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin as the German capital shows its solidarity following the Brussels attacks on March 22, 2016. Security was tightened across Europe and transport links paralysed after a series of apparently coordinated explosions ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train, killing at least 34 people. / AFP PHOTO / ODD ANDERSENODD ANDERSEN/AFP/Getty Images Police officers patrol outside the Maelbeek - Maalbeek subway station in Brussels on March 22, 2016, following a series of attacks in Brussels today claimed by the Islamic State group killing at least 35 people were killed and more than 200 wounded. / AFP PHOTO / PHILIPPE HUGUENPHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images A woman holds a drawing by French cartoonist Plantu picturing a character made of a French flag consoling another made of the Belgian flag, in front of the Hotel de Ville in Paris as people gather for a tribute to the victims of Brussels following triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. Belgium launched a huge manhunt on March 22 after a series of bombings claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train, killing around 35 people in the latest attack to bring carnage to the heart of Europe. / AFP PHOTO / MARTIN BUREAUMARTIN BUREAU/AFP/Getty Images BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 22: A man waves a Belgian and Palestinian flag as a mark of solidarity at the Place de la Bourse following today's attacks on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. At least 31 people are thought to have been killed after Brussels airport and a Metro station were targeted by explosions. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) A member of the public holds a Belgium and Palestine flag at the Place de la Bourse in Brussels following the terrorist bomb attacks. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday March 22, 2016. The attacks, condemned as "blind, violent and cowardly" by Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, came after the arrest in the city last week of terror mastermind Salah Abdeslam, who plotted November's Paris atrocity from the notorious Molenbeek suburb of Brussels. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire BEST QUALITY AVAILABLE Handout CCTV image issued by Belgian Federal Police of three men they believed are connected with the explosions at Brussels airport. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday March 22, 2016. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Belgian Federal Police/PA Wire NOTE TO EDITORS: This handout photo may only be used in for editorial reporting purposes for the contemporaneous illustration of events, things or the people in the image or facts mentioned in the caption. Reuse of the picture may require further permission from the copyright holder. A Federal police helicopter shines light on roofs during searchings at the Place Princesse Elisabeth in Schaarbeek in the region of Brussels on March 22, 2016, during ongoing security operations in the wake of triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. A series of explosions claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train on March 22, killing around 35 people in the latest attacks to bring bloody carnage to the heart of Europe. / AFP PHOTO / Belga / James Arthur Gekiere / Belgium OUTJAMES ARTHUR GEKIERE/AFP/Getty Images A Belgian flag is display on the Trevi Fountain in Rome on March 22, 2016 in tribute to the victims of Brussels following triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. Belgium launched a huge manhunt on March 22 after a series of bombings claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train, killing around 35 people in the latest attack to bring carnage to the heart of Europe. / AFP PHOTO / GABRIEL BOUYSGABRIEL BOUYS/AFP/Getty Images Messages and tributes left by members of the public at the Place de la Bourse in Brussels following the terrorist bomb attacks. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Tuesday March 22, 2016. The attacks, condemned as "blind, violent and cowardly" by Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, came after the arrest in the city last week of terror mastermind Salah Abdeslam, who plotted November's Paris atrocity from the notorious Molenbeek suburb of Brussels. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Gareth Fuller/PA Wire Young women hold each other at a makeshift memorial in front of the stock exchange at the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 22, 2016, following triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. A series of explosions claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train on March 22, killing around 35 people in the latest attacks to bring bloody carnage to the heart of Europe. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images A woman reacts at a makeshift memorial in front of the stock exchange at the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 22, 2016, following triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. A series of explosions claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train on March 22, killing around 35 people in the latest attacks to bring bloody carnage to the heart of Europe. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 22: An Amtrak police K-9 unit patrols Union Station March 22, 2016 in Washington, DC. Security has been increased around the city after bombings in Brussels have left at least 34 people dead and scores more injured in the bombings. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) *** BESTPIX *** BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 22: Passengers are evacuated from Zaventem Bruxelles International Airport after a terrorist attack on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. At least 13 people are though to have been killed after Brussels airport was hit by two explosions whilst a Metro station was also targeted. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Sylvain Lefevre/Getty Images) *** BESTPIX *** BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 22: A young girl lights a candle at the Place de la Bourse following today's attacks on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. At least 31 people are thought to have been killed after Brussels airport and a Metro station were targeted by explosions. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) *** BESTPIX *** BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 22: People gather to leave tributes at the Place de la Bourse following today's attacks on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. At least 31 people are thought to have been killed after Brussels airport and a Metro station were targeted by explosions. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) *** BESTPIX *** A candle is lit at a makeshift memorial in front of the stock exchange at the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 22, 2016, following triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. A series of explosions claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train on March 22, killing around 35 people in the latest attacks to bring bloody carnage to the heart of Europe. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images A photo taken on March 22, 2016 shows the Belgian flag projected on Rome's Campidoglio in tribute to the victims of Brussels following triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. Belgium launched a huge manhunt on March 22 after a series of bombings claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train, killing around 35 people in the latest attack to bring carnage to the heart of Europe. / AFP PHOTO / FILIPPO MONTEFORTEFILIPPO MONTEFORTE/AFP/Getty Images A picture taken on March 22, 2016 shows the Royal Palace at Dam Square in Amsterdam displaying the colors of the Belgian flag in tribute to the victims of Brussels following triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. Belgium launched a huge manhunt on March 22 after a series of bombings claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train, killing around 35 people in the latest attack to bring carnage to the heart of Europe. / AFP PHOTO / ANP / Evert Elzinga / Netherlands OUTEVERT ELZINGA/AFP/Getty Images Women lay flowers in front of the Belgium Embassy in Berlin, Germany, Tuesday, March 22, 2016, after Tuesday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber) People bring flowers and candles to mourn at the Place de la Bourse in the center of Brussels, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Bombs exploded at the Brussels airport and one of the city's metro stations Tuesday, killing and wounding scores of people, as a European capital was again locked down amid heightened security threats. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner) People light candles in the shape of a heart outside the stock exchange in Brussels on Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, rocked the Brussels airport and subway system Tuesday, prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert) People gather at a makeshift memorial at Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) following attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. AFP/Getty Images People light candles at a makeshift memorial at Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) following attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. A series of explosions claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train on March 22, killing around 35 people in the latest attacks to bring bloody carnage to the heart of Europe. AFP PHOTO / THIERRY MONASSETHIERRY MONASSE/AFP/Getty Images Two Belgian flags are projected on Rome's Campidoglio Capitol Hill to honor the victims of the deadly attacks at Brussels airport and subway, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, rocked the Brussels airport and its subway system prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini) A writing on the asphalt reads "Brussels forever" at the place de la Bourse in the center of Brussels, where people write hundreds of messages on the ground to remember the victims of todays attack, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Bombs exploded at the Brussels airport and one of the city's metro stations Tuesday, killing and wounding scores of people, as a European capital was again locked down amid heightened security threats. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner) LOS ANGELES, CA - MARCH 22: A Los Angeles County Sheriffs deputy patrols Union Station train hub as security is heightened in reaction to bomb attacks in Brussels, Belgium this morning on March 22, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. At least 36 lives and injured at least 200 people in the morning rush hour bomb attacks at the international airport and a subway station. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images) The Belgian flag is projected on Rome's historical Trevi Fountain to honor the victims of the deadly attacks at Brussels airport and subway, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. (AP Photo/Andrew Medichini) The Eiffel Tower is illuminated with the Belgium national colors black, yellow and red in honor of the victims of the today's attacks at the airport and the metro station in Brussels, in Paris, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus) BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 22: A person writes a message as people leave tributes at the Place de la Bourse following today's attacks on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. At least 31 people are thought to have been killed after Brussels airport and a Metro station were targeted by explosions. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) LOS ANGELES, CA - MARCH 22: Los Angeles County Sheriffs deputies patrol Union Station train hub as security is heightened in reaction to bomb attacks in Brussels, Belgium this morning on March 22, 2016 in Los Angeles, California. At least 36 lives and injured at least 200 people in the morning rush hour bomb attacks at the international airport and a subway station. (Photo by David McNew/Getty Images) People light candles at the Place de la Bourse following today's attacks on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) People hold a banner reading in French and Flamish "I AM BRUSSELS" as they gather around floral tributes, candles, belgian flags and notes in front of the Bourse of Brussels on March 22, 2016 in tribute to the victims of Brussels following triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. Belgium launched a huge manhunt on March 22 after a series of bombings claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train, killing around 35 people in the latest attack to bring carnage to the heart of Europe. / AFP PHOTO / BELGA AND Belga / Aurore Belot / Belgium OUTAURORE BELOT/AFP/Getty Images A picture taken on March 22, 2016 shows the Belgian flag projected on the European Union Commisson building in tribute to the victims of Brussels following triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. Belgium launched a huge manhunt on March 22 after a series of bombings claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train, killing around 35 people in the latest attack to bring carnage to the heart of Europe. / AFP PHOTO / PHILIPPE HUGUENPHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images People hold a banner reading in French and Flamish "I AM BRUSSELS" as they gather around floral tributes, candles, belgian and peace flags and notes in front of the Bourse of Brussels on March 22, 2016. AFP/Getty Images A woman lights a candle among floral tributes and notes in front of the Bourse of Brussels on March 22, 2016 in tribute to the victims of Brussels following triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. AFP/Getty Images A woman lights a candle among floral tributes, a cross and notes in front of the Bourse of Brussels on March 22, 2016 in tribute to the victims of Brussels following triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital that killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. Belgium launched a huge manhunt on March 22 after a series of bombings claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train, killing around 35 people in the latest attack to bring carnage to the heart of Europe. / AFP PHOTO / BELGA AND Belga / Aurore Belot / Belgium OUTAURORE BELOT/AFP/Getty Images A picture taken on March 22, 2016 shows Red Cross tents and police vehicles at the Wetstraat - Rue de la Loi, which was evacuated after an explosion at the Maelbeek - Maalbeek subway station in Brussels. A series of explosions claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train Tuesday, killing around 35 people in the latest attacks to bring bloody carnage to the heart of Europe. / AFP PHOTO / Belga / LAURIE DIEFFEMBACQ / Belgium OUTLAURIE DIEFFEMBACQ/AFP/Getty Images Belgian federal police released this image of Brussels bomb suspects. The two men on the left, each wearing a single black glove, are thought to be suicide bombers, while the third is thought to be on the run. Photos issued by the Belgian Federal Police of Najim Laachraoui, who according to local media is thought to be connected with the Brussels attacks, and who is believed to be on the run. Belgian Federal Police/PA Wire BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 23: A sad face is drawn on a Belgian flag near Maelbeek metro station following yesterday's attack, on March 23, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. Belgium is observing three days of national mourning after 34 people were killed in a twin suicide blast at Zaventem Airport and a further bomb attack at Maelbeek Metro Station. Two brothers are thought to have carried out the airport attack and an international manhunt is underway for a third suspect. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) TOPSHOT - Belgian police officers stand guard near Maelbeek - Maalbeek subway station in Brussels on March 23, 2016, a day after triple bomb attacks in the Belgian capital killed about 35 people and left more than 200 people wounded. A series of explosions claimed by the Islamic State group ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train on March 22, killing around 35 people in the latest attacks to bring bloody carnage to the heart of Europe. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARD / AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images Photos shows colours of the Belgian flag being projected on to (from top L) the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the town council building in Belgrade, the Trevi Fountain in Rome, the Royal Palace at Dam Square in Amsterdam and Rome's Campidoglio in tribute to the victims of the Brussels attacks. AFP/Getty Images People gather to pay tribute to the victims of the Brussels attacks on the Place de la Bourse in central Brussels, on March 23, 2016, a day after the triple blasts killed some 30 people and left around 250 injured. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers attacked the symbolic heart of the EU. / AFP PHOTO / Belga / AURORE BELOT / Belgium OUTAURORE BELOT/AFP/Getty Images A man pays tribute to the victims of the Brussels attacks next to a Tunisian flag at a makeshift memorial on the Place de la Bourse - Beursplein square in Brussels, on March 23, 2016, a day after triple bomb attacks at the Brussels airport and at a subway train station killed 31 people and wounded more than 200. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers attacked the symbolic heart of the EU. / AFP PHOTO / BELGA / AURORE BELOT / Belgium OUTAURORE BELOT/AFP/Getty Images BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 23: A soldier checks the identification of a person entering Brussels Midi train station on March 23, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. Belgium is observing three days of national mourning after 34 people were killed in a twin suicide blast at Zaventem Airport and a further bomb attack at Maelbeek Metro Station. Two brothers are thought to have carried out the airport attack and an international manhunt is underway for a third suspect. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 23: People chant and sing songs at the Place De La Bourse in honour of the victims of yesterdays' terror attacks on March 23, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. Belgium is observing three days of national mourning after 34 people were killed in a twin suicide blast at Zaventem Airport and a further bomb attack at Maelbeek Metro Station. Two brothers are thought to have carried out the airport attack and an international manhunt is underway for a third suspect. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images) Candles and a printed message are pictured at a makeshift memorial on the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 23, 2016, a day after blasts hit the Belgian capital. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers killed 31 people in a strike at the symbolic heart of the EU. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images A Belgian flag is pictured onto one of the two lion sculptures at a makeshift memorial on the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 23, 2016, a day after blasts hit the Belgian capital. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers killed 31 people in a strike at the symbolic heart of the EU. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images Queen Mathilde of Belgium (C) meets soldiers during a visit to Brussels Airport, in Zaventem, on March 23, 2016, a day after triple bomb attacks at the Brussels airport and at a subway train station killed 31 people and wounded more than 200. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers attacked the symbolic heart of the EU. / AFP PHOTO / POOL / FREDERIC SIERAKOWSKIFREDERIC SIERAKOWSKI/AFP/Getty Images TOPSHOT - A boy lights a candle at a makeshift memorial on the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 23, 2016, a day after blasts hit the Belgian capital. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers killed 31 people in a strike at the symbolic heart of the EU. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARD / AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images A heavily armed police officer stands watch in front of Union Station in Washington, DC, March 23, 2016. A dozen Americans were wounded in the Brussels attacks and a number unaccounted for, but no US nationals were known to have been among the 31 dead, the State Department said Wednesday. / AFP PHOTO / Jim WatsonJIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images King Philippe - Filip of Belgium and Queen Mathilde of Belgium mourn after laying down flowers in the area of the explosion at the Maelbeek - Maalbeek subway station in Brussels, on March 23, 2016, a day after the triple blasts killed some 30 people and left around 250 injured. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers attacked the symbolic heart of the EU. / AFP PHOTO / BELGA / THIERRY ROGE / Belgium OUTTHIERRY ROGE/AFP/Getty Images People gather at a makeshift memorial on the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 23, 2016, a day after a triple bomb attack, which responsibility was claimed by the Islamic State group, left 31 dead and hundreds injured in the Belgian capital. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers killed 31 people in a strike at the symbolic heart of the EU. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images People gather at a makeshift memorial on the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 23, 2016, a day after a triple bomb attack, which responsibility was claimed by the Islamic State group, left 31 dead and hundreds injured in the Belgian capital. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers killed 31 people in a strike at the symbolic heart of the EU. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images Flowers and candles are pictured as people gather at a makeshift memorial on the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 23, 2016, a day after a triple bomb attack, which responsibility was claimed by the Islamic State group, left 31 dead and hundreds injured in the Belgian capital. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers killed 31 people in a strike at the symbolic heart of the EU. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images Flowers and candles are pictured as people gather at a makeshift memorial on the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 23, 2016, a day after a triple bomb attack, which responsibility was claimed by the Islamic State group, left 31 dead and hundreds injured in the Belgian capital. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers killed 31 people in a strike at the symbolic heart of the EU. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images Flowers and candles are pictured as people gather at a makeshift memorial on the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 23, 2016, a day after a triple bomb attack, which responsibility was claimed by the Islamic State group, left 31 dead and hundreds injured in the Belgian capital. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers killed 31 people in a strike at the symbolic heart of the EU. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images A woman hold a placard reading "Against terrorism and hatred, Solidarity" as people gather at a makeshift memorial on the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 23, 2016, a day after a triple bomb attack, which responsibility was claimed by the Islamic State group, left 31 dead and hundreds injured in the Belgian capital. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers killed 31 people in a strike at the symbolic heart of the EU. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images People gather at a makeshift memorial on the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 23, 2016, a day after a triple bomb attack, which responsibility was claimed by the Islamic State group, left 31 dead and hundreds injured in the Belgian capital. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers killed 31 people in a strike at the symbolic heart of the EU. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images A woman holds a placard with a heart-shaped Belgian flag reading "We want peace on Earth" as people gather at a makeshift memorial on the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 23, 2016, a day after a triple bomb attack, which responsibility was claimed by the Islamic State group, left 31 dead and hundreds injured in the Belgian capital. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers killed 31 people in a strike at the symbolic heart of the EU. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images Belgian flags reading "Pray for Belgium" are pictured as people gather at a makeshift memorial on the Place de la Bourse (Beursplein) in Brussels on March 23, 2016, a day after a triple bomb attack, which responsibility was claimed by the Islamic State group, left 31 dead and hundreds injured in the Belgian capital. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers killed 31 people in a strike at the symbolic heart of the EU. AFP PHOTO / KENZO TRIBOUILLARDKENZO TRIBOUILLARD/AFP/Getty Images BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 23: Flowers, candles and tributes, to the victims and injured, continue to adorn the Place de la Bourse following yesterday's terrorists attacks on March 23, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. Belgium is observing three days of national mourning after 34 people were killed in a twin suicide blast at Zaventem Airport and a further bomb attack at Maelbeek Metro Station. Two brothers are thought to have carried out the airport attack and an international manhunt is underway for a third suspect. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images) BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 23: Paper butterflies and messages of support adorn the walls of the Bourse De Brussels building in the Place de la Bourse following yesterday's terrorists attacks on March 23, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. Belgium is observing three days of national mourning after 34 people were killed in a twin suicide blast at Zaventem Airport and a further bomb attack at Maelbeek Metro Station. Two brothers are thought to have carried out the airport attack and an international manhunt is underway for a third suspect. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images) Composite image showing Tower Bridge in central London lit in the colours of the Belgium flag as a tribute following yesterday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. PA Manchester Town Hall displays the colours of the Belgium Flag as a tribute following yesterday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. PA Brussels airport workers and their relatives hold candles as they pay tribute to the victims of Brussels triple attacks near the airport in Zaventem on March 23, 2016, a day after triple bomb attacks at the Brussels airport and at a subway train station killed 31 people and wounded more than 200. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers attacked the symbolic heart of the EU. / AFP PHOTO / PHILIPPE HUGUENPHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images Brussels airport workers and their relatives react as they pay tribute to the victims of Brussels triple attacks near the airport in Zaventem on March 23, 2016, a day after triple bomb attacks at the Brussels airport and at a subway train station killed 31 people and wounded more than 200. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers attacked the symbolic heart of the EU. / AFP PHOTO / PHILIPPE HUGUENPHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images Brussels airport workers and their relatives hold candles as they pay tribute to the victims of Brussels triple attacks near the airport in Zaventem on March 23, 2016, a day after triple bomb attacks at the Brussels airport and at a subway train station killed 31 people and wounded more than 200. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers attacked the symbolic heart of the EU. / AFP PHOTO / PHILIPPE HUGUENPHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images Brussels airport workers and their relatives place candles as they pay tribute to the victims of Brussels triple attacks near the airport in Zaventem on March 23, 2016, a day after triple bomb attacks at the Brussels airport and at a subway train station killed 31 people and wounded more than 200. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers attacked the symbolic heart of the EU. / AFP PHOTO / PHILIPPE HUGUENPHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images Brussels airport workers and their relatives place candles at a makeshift memorial as they pay tribute to the victims of Brussels triple attacks near the airport in Zaventem on March 23, 2016, a day after triple bomb attacks at the Brussels airport and at a subway train station killed 31 people and wounded more than 200. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers attacked the symbolic heart of the EU. / AFP PHOTO / PHILIPPE HUGUENPHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images Brussels airport workers and their relatives hold candles as they pay tribute to the victims of Brussels triple attacks near the airport in Zaventem on March 23, 2016, a day after triple bomb attacks at the Brussels airport and at a subway train station killed 31 people and wounded more than 200. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers attacked the symbolic heart of the EU. / AFP PHOTO / PHILIPPE HUGUENPHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images Two children write on a wall at a memorial for victims of attacks in Brussels on Wednesday, March 23, 2016. Belgian authorities were searching Wednesday for a top suspect in the country's deadliest attacks in decades, as the European Union's capital awoke under guard and with limited public transport after scores were killed and injured in bombings on the Brussels airport and a subway station. (AP Photo/Valentin Bianchi) People light candles which create an heart shape at at a wake of Brussels Airport employees on Martch 23, 2016 in Zaventem, a day after triple bomb attacks at the Brussels airport and at a subway train station killed 31 people and wounded more than 200. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers attacked the symbolic heart of the EU. / AFP PHOTO / BELGA AND Belga / YORICK JANSENS / Belgium OUTYORICK JANSENS/AFP/Getty Images A couple stand on March 23, 2016 in front of a makeshift memorial with floral tributes and candles in Brussels a day after triple bomb attacks at the Brussels airport and at a subway train station killed 31 people and wounded more than 200. World leaders united in condemning the carnage in Brussels and vowed to combat terrorism, after Islamic State bombers attacked the symbolic heart of the EU. / AFP PHOTO / PHILIPPE HUGUENPHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images LONDON, ENGLAND - MARCH 23: The arches of Wembley Stadium are illuminated with the colours of the flag of Belgium on March 23, 2016 in London, England. Belgium is observing three days of national mourning after 31 people were killed in a twin suicide blast at Zaventem Airport and a further bomb attack at Maelbeek Metro Station. Two brothers are thought to have carried out the airport attack and an international manhunt is underway for a third suspect. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Ben Pruchnie/Getty Images) BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 23: A man wears the Belgian flag as people observe a one minute silence at the Place De La Bourse in honour of the victims of yesterdays' terror attacks on March 23, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. Belgium is observing three days of national mourning after 34 people were killed in a twin suicide blast at Zaventem Airport and a further bomb attack at Maelbeek Metro Station. Two brothers are thought to have carried out the airport attack and an international manhunt is underway for a third suspect. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images) *** BESTPIX *** St George's Hall in Liverpool displays the colours of the Belgium Flag as a tribute following yesterday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday March 23, 2016. Photo credit should read: PA Wire St George's Hall in Liverpool displays the colours of the Belgium Flag as a tribute following yesterday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday March 23, 2016. Photo credit should read: PA Wire A Belgian national flag is projected onto the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London, in solidarity with Belgium after the attacks that occurred yesterday in Brussels, Wednesday, March 23, 2016. Belgians began three days of mourning Wednesday for the victims of the Brussels airport and subway bombings, and the country remained on high alert as authorities hunted for one of the suspected attackers seen on surveillance video with two others who blew themselves up. (AP Photo/Matt Dunham) BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 23: A woman covers her face near Maelbeek metro station as she reacts following yesterday's attack, on March 23, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. Belgium is observing three days of national mourning after 34 people were killed in a twin suicide blast at Zaventem Airport and a further bomb attack at Maelbeek Metro Station. Two brothers are thought to have carried out the airport attack and an international manhunt is underway for a third suspect. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) *** BESTPIX *** The National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London are lit in the colours of the Belgium flag as a tribute following yesterday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday March 23, 2016. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Anthony Devlin/PA Wire The teams stand as a minute silence is observed for the victims of the Brussels attacks prior to the friendly football match between Romania and Lithuania in Bucharest March 23, 2016. Romania won 1-0. / AFP PHOTO / DANIEL MIHAILESCUDANIEL MIHAILESCU/AFP/Getty Images The National Gallery and fountains in Trafalgar Square, London are lit in the colours of the Belgium flag as a tribute following yesterday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday March 23, 2016. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Anthony Devlin/PA Wire London County Hall by the River Thames displays the colours of the Belgium Flag as a tribute following yesterday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday March 23, 2016. Photo credit should read: Ian West/PA Wire The National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London are lit in the colours of the Belgium flag as a tribute following yesterday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday March 23, 2016. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Anthony Devlin/PA Wire The National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London are lit in the colours of the Belgium flag as a tribute following yesterday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday March 23, 2016. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Anthony Devlin/PA Wire The National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London are lit in the colours of the Belgium flag as a tribute following yesterday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday March 23, 2016. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Anthony Devlin/PA Wire Messages written in chalk infront of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London which is lit in the colours of the Belgium flag as a tribute following yesterday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday March 23, 2016. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Anthony Devlin/PA Wire The National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London are lit in the colours of the Belgium flag as a tribute following yesterday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday March 23, 2016. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Anthony Devlin/PA Wire Messages written in chalk are seen in front of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London which is lit in the colours of the Belgium flag as a tribute following yesterday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday March 23, 2016. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Anthony Devlin/PA Wire The National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London are lit in the colours of the Belgium flag as a tribute following yesterday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday March 23, 2016. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Anthony Devlin/PA Wire Candles and messages in front of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London which is lit in the colours of the Belgium flag as a tribute following yesterday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday March 23, 2016. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Anthony Devlin/PA Wire Messages written in chalk infront of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London which is lit in the colours of the Belgium flag as a tribute following yesterday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday March 23, 2016. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Anthony Devlin/PA Wire Candles and messages in front of the National Gallery in Trafalgar Square, London which is lit in the colours of the Belgium flag as a tribute following yesterday's terrorist attacks in Brussels. PRESS ASSOCIATION Photo. Picture date: Wednesday March 23, 2016. See PA story POLICE Brussels. Photo credit should read: Anthony Devlin/PA Wire People bring flowers and candles at Place de la Bourse, Brussels, to mourn for the victims on Wednesday evening, March 23, 2016. Bombs exploded Tuesday at the Brussels airport and one of the city's metro stations, killing and wounding scores of people, as a European capital was again locked down amid heightened security threats. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner) People gather at a memorial site located at the old stock exchange in Brussels on Wednesday, March 23, 2016. Belgian authorities were searching Wednesday for a top suspect in the country's deadliest attacks in decades, as the European Union's capital awoke under guard and with limited public transport after scores were killed or wounded in bombings on the Brussels airport and a subway station. (AP Photo/Valentin Bianchi) Hundreds of people come together at Place de la Bourse to mourn on Wednesday evening, March 23, 2016. Bombs exploded yesterday at the Brussels airport and one of the city's metro stations, killing and wounding scores of people, as a European capital was again locked down amid heightened security threats. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner) A small girl sits among candles set up at a memorial site located at the old stock exchange in Brussels on Wednesday, March 23, 2016. Belgian authorities were searching Wednesday for a top suspect in the country's deadliest attacks in decades, as the European Union's capital awoke under guard and with limited public transport after scores were killed or wounded in bombings on the Brussels airport and a subway station. (AP Photo/Valentin Bianchi) People bring flowers and candles to Place de la Bourse, Brussels, to mourn for the victims on Wednesday evening, March 23, 2016. Bombs exploded Tuesday at the Brussels airport and one of the city's metro stations, killing and wounding scores of people, as a European capital was again locked down amid heightened security threats. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner) Sonia (surname witheld) embraces her children Mateo and Alessia at The Place de la Bourse as she pays her respects to victims following yesterday's terrorists attacks on March 23, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. (Photo by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images) People hold a banner showing the Brussels mascot defusing a bomb at Place de la Bourse on Wednesday evening, March 23, 2016. Bombs exploded yesterday at the Brussels airport and one of the city's metro stations, killing and wounding scores of people, as a European capital was again locked down amid heightened security threats. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner) Hundreds of people come together at Place de la Bourse to mourn on Wednesday evening, March 23, 2016 (AP Photo/Martin Meissner) Isis has claimed responsibility for the terrorist attacks on Brussels as police release a CCTV image of three suspects. At least 34 people have been killed and more than 200 injured after explosions at Brussels Airport and a city centre Meto station. Two bombs exploded at Zaventem airport just after 7am on Tuesday. It was reported that people ran toward the second blast moments after the initial explosion. Around an hour later a bomb was set off at Maalbeek Metro. Three of the alleged perpetrators of the Zaventem attack have been pictured in a still taken from airport CCTV footage. De Standaard reports that the two men to the left died in the suicide bomb attack, while the man in the white coat and hat s still being sought. The two suspected bombers were both wearing black gloves on their left hands only. Security sources have said the gloves could have been worn to hide the triggers for explosives. Bomb disposal experts also carried out a controlled explosion on another device in the city while an unexploded bomb belt was found in the airport. Belgium officials have said at least one attack was carried out by a suicide bomber, while all blasts are being reported as terror attacks. Nous sommes de tout coeur avec le peuple belge. Paris pense a vous. #Bruxelles Paris (@Paris) March 22, 2016 Belgium was effectively shutdown and people warned not to leave their homes or work after the attacks. And 225 troops have been deployed in the city in the wake of explosions. Brussels Airport will be closed on Wednesday, while some public transport restrictions have been eased. Belgian prime minister Charles Michel said "what we feared has happened, we were hit by blind attacks". Read More Belgian federal prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw is calling all three explosions in Brussels "terrorist attacks". He said "one attack was probably done by a suicide bomber". "We are at war," French prime minister Manuel Valls said after a crisis meeting called by the French president. "We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war." US president Barack Obama is pledging that the US will "do whatever is necessary" to help Belgium bring to justice the perpetrators of terrorist attacks that killed more than two dozen people at the airport and a subway station. He said the US stands "in solidarity" with Belgium in condemning "these outrageous attacks against innocent people". Mr Obama said the attacks are another reminder that "the world must unite" against the "scourge of terrorism". Pope Francis has also condemned the "blind violence" of the Brussels attacks and has offered prayers for the victims, their families and emergency responders. Francis's secretary of state, Cardinal Pietro Parolin, sent a telegram of condolences to the archbishop of Brussels, Mons Jozef De Kesel. Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Exp Handout photo taken with permission from the Facebook page of Bart van Meele of the scene at Brussels Airport after two explosions Islamic extremists struck in the heart of Europe on Tuesday, killing at least 31 people and wounding scores of others in back-to-back bombings of the Brussels airport and subway. Bloodied and dazed travellers staggered from the airport after two explosions - at least one blamed on a suicide attacker and another reportedly on a suitcase bomb - tore through crowds checking in for morning flights. About 40 minutes later, another blast struck subway commuters in central Brussels near the Maelbeek station, which sits amid the European Commission headquarters. Authorities released a photo taken from closed-circuit TV footage of three men pushing luggage trolleys, saying two of them apparently were the suicide bombers and that the third - dressed in a light-coloured coat, black hat and glasses - was at large. They urged the public to contact them if they recognised him. The two men believed to be the suicide attackers apparently were wearing dark gloves on their left hands. In police raids across Brussels, authorities later found a nail-filled bomb, chemical products and an Islamic State flag in a house in the Schaerbeek neighbourhood, the state prosecutors' office said in a statement. In its claim of responsibility, the Islamic State group said its members detonated suicide vests both at the airport and in the subway, where many passengers fled to safety down dark tunnels filled with hazy smoke from the explosion in a train pulling away from the platform. European security officials have been braced for a major attack and warned that IS was actively preparing to strike. The arrest on Friday of Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in the Paris attacks last November, heightened those fears, as investigators said many more people were involved than originally thought and that some are still on the loose. "In this time of tragedy, this black moment for our country, I appeal to everyone to remain calm but also to show solidarity," said Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, who announced three days of mourning in his country's deadliest terror strike. "Last year it was Paris. Today it is Brussels. It's the same attacks," said French President Francois Hollande. Belgium raised its terror alert to the highest level, shut the airport and ordered a city-wide lockdown, deploying about 500 soldiers onto Brussels' largely empty streets to bolster police checkpoints. France and Belgium both reinforced border security. Medical officials treating the wounded said some victims lost limbs, while others suffered burns or deep gashes from shattered glass or suspected nails packed in with explosives. Among the most seriously wounded were several children. The bombings came barely four months after suicide attackers based in Brussels' Molenbeek district slaughtered 130 people at Paris nightspots, and intelligence agencies had warned for months a follow-up strike was inevitable. Those fears increased following Abdeslam's arrest in Molenbeek, along with police admissions that others suspected of links to the Paris attacks were at large. A high-level Belgian judicial official said a connection by Abdeslam to Tuesday's attacks is "a lead to pursue". Abdeslam has told investigators he was planning to "restart something" from Brussels, said Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders. He said on Sunday that authorities took the claim seriously because "we found a lot of weapons, heavy weapons in the first investigations and we have seen a new network of people around him in Brussels". While they knew that some kind of extremist act was being prepared in Europe, they were surprised by the size of Tuesday's attacks, said Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon. "It was always possible that more attacks could happen, but we never could have imagined something of this scale," he said. Officials at the airport in the Brussels suburb of Zaventem said police had discovered a Kalashnikov assault rifle and an explosives-packed vest abandoned at the facility, offering one potential lead for forensic evidence. Bomb disposal experts safely dismantled that explosive device. A US administration official said American intelligence officers were working with European counterparts to try to identify the apparently skilled bomb-makers involved in the Brussels attacks and to identify any links to bombs used in Paris. The official said that at least one of the bombs at the airport was suspected to have been packed in a suitcase left in the departures hall. Three intelligence officials in Iraq told the AP that they had warned European colleagues last month of IS plans to attack airports and trains, although Belgium was not specified as a likely target. One of the officials said Iraqi intelligence officials believe that three other IS activists remain at large in Brussels and are plotting other suicide-bomb attacks. Leaders of the European Union said in a joint statement that Tuesday's assault on Brussels "only strengthens our resolve to defend European values and tolerance from the attacks of the intolerant". Reflecting the trauma of the moment, Belgian officials offered uncertain casualty totals at both the airport and subway, where police conducted controlled explosions on suspicious abandoned packages that ultimately were found to contain no explosives. Belgium's health minister, Maggie de Block, said 11 people were killed and 81 injured at the airport, where thousands of passengers were waiting to check luggage and collect boarding cards. Brussels Mayor Yvan Mayeur said 20 people died and more than 100 were wounded in the subway blast. Rescue workers set up makeshift first aid centres in a nearby pub and hotel. Passengers on other trains said many commuters were reading about the airport attacks on their smartphones when they heard the subway blast. Hundreds fled from stopped trains down tunnel tracks to adjacent stations. Political leaders and others around the world expressed their shock at the attacks. "We will do whatever is necessary to support our friend and ally Belgium in bringing to justice those who are responsible," US President Barack Obama said. Belgium's king and queen said they were "devastated" by the violence, describing the attacks as "odious and cowardly". After nightfall, Europe's best-known monuments - the Eiffel Tower, the Brandenburg Gate and the Trevi Fountain - were illuminated with Belgium's national colours in a show of solidarity. Rob Ford, the populist former mayor of Toronto whose career crashed in a drug-driven, obscenity-laced debacle, has died aged 46 after fighting cancer, his family said. Mr Ford rode into office on a backlash against urban elites. He cast an image sharply at odds with Canada's reputation for sedate, unpretentious politics. His tenure as mayor of the country's largest city was marred by revelations about his drinking problems and illegal drug use. He was repeatedly videotaped and photographed while intoxicated in public. Nevertheless, after losing that office he was later elected by a landslide to a city council seat, a job he held until his death. One after another, his statements and actions became nightly fodder for TV comedians and an embarrassment to many of the suburbanites he championed, including an incident when he k nocked over a 63-year-old female city councillor while rushing to the defence of his brother, councillor Doug Ford, who was insulting spectators in the council chamber. But his popularity continued. Even after a scandal broke about Mr Ford's use of drugs, hundreds of people lined up for bobblehead dolls of the mayor, signed by Mr Ford himself. As he sought a second term as mayor in 2014, Mr Ford was diagnosed with a rare cancer just two months before the election date. Malignant liposarcoma in his abdomen forced him to do what months of scandals could not - drop his bid for re-election. He underwent a series of aggressive chemotherapy treatments. "With heavy hearts and profound sadness, the Ford family announces the passing of their beloved son, brother, husband, and father, Councillor Rob Ford, earlier today at the age of 46," a statement from his family said on Tuesday. "A dedicated man of the people, Councillor Ford spent his life serving the citizens of Toronto." Current Toronto mayor John Tory said in a statement that "the city is reeling with this news". "He was a man who spoke his mind and who ran for office because of the deeply felt convictions that he had," Mr Tory said. "I know there are many who were affected by his gregarious nature and approach to public service." When Mr Ford was elected mayor in 2010, his bluster was widely known. A plurality of voters backed him, eager to shake things up at a City Hall they viewed as elitist and wasteful. Mr Ford's voter base resided mainly in the outer suburbs, a result of the Conservative provincial government's decision to force liberal Toronto to merge with five of its neighbouring municipalities in 1998, creating a mega-city that now has 2.7 million residents. Mr Ford appealed to conservative-leaning, working-class suburban residents with his populist, common-man touch and with promises to slash spending, cut taxes and end what he called "the war on the car". He first won as mayor by promising to "stop the gravy train" of government spending. His supporters got perhaps more turmoil than they expected. The international spotlight fell on Mr Ford in May 2013, when Toronto Star and the US website Gawker reported the existence of a video that appeared to show the mayor inhaling from a crack pipe. He denied the existence of the video but later backtracked when police said they had obtained it. Although he became the subject of a police investigation, Mr Ford was never charged with a crime. "Yes, I have smoked crack cocaine," Mr Ford told reporters. "But, no, do I? Am I addict? No. Have I tried it? Probably in one of my drunken stupors, probably approximately about a year ago." Despite immense pressure, Ford refused to resign. The city council stripped Mr Ford of most of his powers but lacked the authority to force him out of office because he was not convicted of a crime. Mr Ford announced he was entering rehab in April 2014 after newspaper reports detailed three different nights in which the mayor was extremely intoxicated. Although his cancer ultimately forced him to drop his re-election bid, Mr Ford opted to seek his old city council seat. It was in the same suburban district where he launched his political career and where his everyman style and conservative fiscal policies first gained a faithful following that became known as Ford Nation. He won his old seat in a landslide. His brother Doug replaced him on the ballot for mayor but lost. The youngest of four children, Rob Ford grew up in a palatial home in the Toronto suburb of Etobicoke. He dropped out of university after a year and worked at the family business. Ford is survived by his wife, Renata, and two children, Stephanie and Doug. A Russian court has sentenced a Ukrainian pilot to 22 years in prison after convicting her for complicity to murder in the 2014 deaths of two Russian journalists in eastern Ukraine, opening a door to a possible prisoner swap between the two countries. Ukraine president Petro Poroshenko quickly offered to exchange two Russians held in his country for the return of the pilot, 34-year-old Nadezhda Savchenko. Upon hearing the guilty verdict, Savchenko burst into song and started to chant "Glory to Ukraine!" which was echoed by Ukrainian spectators in the court room. The judge called for a break before returning to hand down the sentence, which also included a fine for crossing into Russia illegally. The Savchenko case has attracted strong criticism from the West and is an open wound for Ukraine, which says she was captured by Russia-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine and turned over to Russia, and therefore should be treated as a prisoner of war. Although a military pilot, Savchenko was fighting in a Ukrainian volunteer battalion against Russia-backed rebels when she was captured by the separatists in June 2014. She surfaced in Russia less than a month later. Moscow insists she escaped from the rebels and was captured after crossing the border by herself. Speculation persists that Moscow could agree to exchange her for the two Russians captured in eastern Ukraine. They are alleged to be active-duty soldiers despite Russia's persistent denial that it has sent troops or equipment to bolster the rebels. Mr Poroshenko offered a swap in a video statement released after the verdict. He claimed that Russian president Vladimir Putin had assured him last year that "he will return Nadiya Savchenko to Ukraine after the verdict". "In my turn, I'm ready to hand over to Russia two Russian servicemen who were captured on our territory for their part in an armed aggression against Ukraine," Mr Poroshenko said. The Russian men are now on trial, and Poroshenko said he will be willing to hand them over after the verdict is in. Fighting between Russia-backed separatists and government troops in eastern Ukraine has killed more than 9,100 people and left the rebel-held areas isolated from the rest of Ukraine. The judge dismissed all defence arguments and said he had no reason to doubt the testimony of the separatist rebels. After the judge pronounced sentence in the court room in Donetsk, a Russian town near the border with Ukraine., Savchenko shouted that he should have made it 23 years as prosecutors had asked. And then she sang. Andy Grove delivers the keynote speech on plug-in hybrid vehicles at the Plug-In 2008 conference in San Jose, California (AP) Andy Grove, the former Intel chief executive whose youth under Nazi occupation and escape from the Iron Curtain inspired an "only the paranoid survive" management philosophy that saved the chip maker from financial ruin in the 1980s, has died. Intel said Mr Grove, 79 died on Monday. He had suffered from Parkinson's disease and also battled prostate cancer in the mid-1990s. Mr Grove, a Hungarian refugee born Andras Istvan Grof who fled to America by boat in 1957 and westernised his name, was instrumental in building Intel into the world's largest chip company during his 37-year career there. He was a mercurial but visionary leader who helped position Intel's microprocessors as the central technology inside personal computers. His bet-the-company gamble - moving Intel from memory chips to microprocessors in the mid-1980s to serve what was still a fledgling PC industry - helped rescue Intel from a financial crisis and set it on course to becoming one of the most profitable and important technology companies of all time. "Andy made the impossible happen, time and again, and inspired generations of technologists, entrepreneurs, and business leaders," Intel CEO Brian Krzanich said. Robert Burgelman, a professor at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business who started teaching management classes with Mr Grove in the late 1980s, called him "one of the most incisive thinkers that I have ever come across". He said his technical and strategic abilities were critical in building Intel and fending off threats from Asian competitors. "I don't think Intel would have been Intel as we know it, and therefore the US chip industry would not have been what it is" without Grove, Mr Burgelman said. Intel created the world's first commercial microprocessor in 1971, but the company's primary focus was memory chips for mainframe computers. That was until the personal computer was invented and a new use for Intel's microprocessors emerged. Mr Grove's leadership of that transition affirmed his status as a key figure in the digital revolution and an icon of business leadership, whose manoeuvres have been studied and dissected in management classes around the world. Yet Mr Grove, known at times as combative and vindictive to those who crossed him, was also pilloried for his role in one of the biggest missteps in Intel's history: the company's intransigence after a major calculating flaw was discovered in 1994 in Intel's flagship Pentium microprocessor, an error that Intel had known about but deemed too insignificant to fix. Mr Grove's response to the outcry was to require customers who wanted to return flawed chips to call Intel and convince the company they needed a replacement. He later capitulated and set aside nearly a half a billion dollars for a no-questions-asked exchange programme. His mentality helped shape a strict, often caustic management style that is now as much a part of Silicon Valley lore as Mr Grove's relentless focus on sharpening Intel's technological advantages. He wrote several well-received books, including Only The Paranoid Survive, a 1996 treatise on the science of managing crises, and his 2001 autobiography, Swimming Across, a harrowing memoir of his childhood. Mr Grove also dabbled as an advice columnist, penning a series of newspaper columns on workplace dilemmas that earned him the nickname Dear Abby of the Workplace. His life was characterised by survival against all odds. He got past scarlet fever at four though it permanently damaged his hearing. A Jew growing up in Nazi-occupied Hungary, he survived the Holocaust by moving frequently as a child, boarding with family friends and taking on an assumed name. As the defeat of the Nazis opened the door for a brutal Stalinist regime, he made his escape in a daring run for the Austrian border. Penniless refugee Mr Grove immigrated to the US at 20 and would go on to amass a personal fortune believed to be worth around 400 million dollars (280m), according to Forbes magazine. Overcoming a sizeable language barrier, he enrolled at the City College of New York, where he studied engineering and paid his way by working as a student assistant. He moved west with his wife Eva and earned a doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, after which he landed his first post-PhD job at Fairchild Semiconductor, founded by the "traitorous eight" employees who left William Shockley's legendary Shockley Semiconductor Laboratory. Two of the eight, Gordon Moore and Robert Noyce, went on to found Intel. Mr Noyce also invented the first commercially viable integrated circuit during his time at Fairchild. Mr Grove was Intel's third employee, though Intel considers him one of the Santa Clara, California, company's founders. Mr Grove was named Intel's president in 1979, took the chief executive job in 1987 and in 1997 added the chairmanship to his duties. He stepped down as CEO in 1998, and relinquished his chairman title in 2005. In picking Mr Grove as its Man of the Year in 1997, Time magazine called him the "person most responsible for the amazing growth in the power and innovative potential of microchips", the core ingredient of the digital revolution. In a province where we have had more than our share of heartache in over four decades, the deaths of five people on Sunday in Buncrana are beyond words. The scale of this tragedy is almost impossible to comprehend, and the suffering is felt by everyone who can bear to think about the last moments of that family. The Bishop of Derry and Raphoe Ken Good summarised our feelings when he said: "It is impossible for most of us to comprehend the depth of heartache the bereaved are experiencing. "For Louise in particular, who has lost two of her children Mark and Evan; her partner Sean; her mother Ruth and her sister Jodie-Lee, the sense of loss is inconceivable." It is horrific to think how a family outing on a spring afternoon turned so quickly into utter tragedy. Every parent, grandparent and family member will chill at the thought of this happening to them, and the sheer human loss strikes at the heart of all of us. People everywhere have the utmost sympathy for the Daniels and McGrotty families, and particularly for Louise in her terrible loss. She is devastated, like the rest of her wider family, and she will face a terrible time ahead, mitigated only by the miraculous survival of her baby daughter Rioghnach-Ann, who was rescued in the nick of time by heroic passer-by Davitt Walsh. At the request of a horrified bystander, he stripped off and took to the water. His graphic account of the choices then available to him, and also to the trapped family, is chilling. In an act of supreme selflessness, the father handed over the tiny child who was then borne to safety by the near-exhausted Mr Walsh as he made his way back to the pier. The only sliver of light in this dark, dark picture is the fact that the tiny baby survived, to be cherished and treasured by her mother and the wider family. There is also comfort to be derived from the heroism not only of Mr Walsh, but also of the lifeboat crew and other rescue workers. They will have to live with the most terrible memories of what they witnessed on this day of tragedy as they try to come to terms with what has happened. There is an enormous challenge, too, for local clergy in trying to bring comfort for the family, and all the while dealing with their own grief. In the midst of this darkness there are the obvious human questions. How did this happen? Why did it happen? Was there anything more that anyone could have done to save these lives? If there are any answers to this, they can wait for another day. Now is the time for everyone to reflect on the fragility of life itself, to give thanks for the togetherness of their own family, and to offer their deepest prayers and sympathies to the wider family of those who were taken so cruelly from our midst. Relatives of murder victim Hossain Ali Shorkar mourn at their home in Kurigram district, March 22, 2016. Unknown attackers on Tuesday killed a Christian convert in northwestern Bangladesh, marking the fourth slaying of a member of one of the countrys religious minorities in 2016. Police said that at least two assailants hacked to death 68-year-old Hossain Ali Shorkar in Kurigram, the main town in Kurigram district where some 500 Christian families live. Hossain Ali used to go for a morning walk every day. As he was returning home from his walk at around 7 a.m., two or three motorcyclists hacked him on the shoulder from behind with a sharp weapon. He died immediately, Mohammad Tabard Ullah, the districts superintendent of police, told BenarNews by phone. The motive for the attack was not immediately known. Hossain had been embroiled in a property dispute with a tenant over the ownership of his house, Ullah said. He [the tenant] has been missing since yesterday. We are looking for him to ascertain whether he had any link with the murder, the local police chief superintendent said, adding that Hossains killers exploded Molotov cocktails as they fled the scene by motorbike. Relatives of the dead man told police that the missing tenant had also engaged Hossain in a debate about Christianity and Islam, Ullah said. Hossain converted to Christianity 26 years ago, according to Jahangir Michael, the head of the district branch of the Bangladesh Christian Association. In Kurigram district, we have 500 Protestant Christian families who have been living in the district peacefully. I think no local people have been involved in the attack, Michael told BenarNews. This is an act of the militants. He was killed for his faith, said Michael, adding that Hossain Alis daughter and son-in-law were involved in preaching Christianity in the district. We are now scared about our security, Michael said. One of Hossains neighbors, Azad, told BenarNews that Hossain mixed with people of all faiths. We do not believe that the local people killed him; outsiders murdered him, said Azad, 25, a student at a local college. Hossain was the second convert to Christianity and the fourth member of a religious minority slain this year in majority Sunni Muslim Bangladesh, after militants issued threats against minorities in 2015. On Jan. 7, suspected militants fatally stabbed an 87-year-old homeopathic doctor and Christian convert, Samir Uddin, in southwestern Jhenaidah district. On Feb. 21, Hindu priest Moharaja Jogeshwar Roy was killed and two other men were injured in an attack at a temple in the northern district of Panchagarh. And on March 15, Islamic State (IS) claimed responsibility for the killing earlier in the month of 45-year-old Abdul Razzaq, a member of the minority Shiite Muslim community who also lived in Jhenaidah, Reuters reported. The Bangladesh government has consistently denied that IS has a presence in the country and has blamed home-grown militants for carrying out attacks targeting religious minorities. The Christians have become common targets of the militants. The government must ensure the safety of all minorities including the Christians, Nirmal Rozario, general secretary of the Bangladesh Christian Association, told BenarNews on Tuesday. Film Director Rahung Nasution attends the premiere of Buru Island, My Homeland in Jakarta, March 20, 2016. Bent slightly forward, 80-year-old Hersri Setiawan carefully inspects a muddy and mossy tomb in front of him. Heru ... Her ... Ru, he says softly as the camera zooms in on his hand pointing toward letters engraved on the headstone. Yes, this is Heru, he says, beckoning his wife, Ita Nadia, and their daughter, Ken, to come over. The three gather around the tomb, clearing the weeds around the grave that holds the remains of Hersris old prison cellmate from one of the darkest episodes in modern Indonesian history: the anti-communist purge in 1965-66 that followed an attempted coup against President Sukarno. The scene is from an Indonesian-made documentary film Buru, Tanah Air Beta (Buru, My Homeland), which first screened in Jakarta on Sunday after its originally scheduled premiere at the German Cultural Center in the city was canceled last week. Police ordered that screening to be canceled following a report of a threat from a community group. The documentary by Indonesian director Rahung Nasution tells the journey of former political prisoner Hersri Setiawan to Buru, an isle within Indonesias Maluku island-chain. In the years after the attempted coup in September1965, many people with alleged links to the Indonesian Communist Party (PKI) were imprisoned on Buru without trial. The PKI was blamed for the failed coup, and at least 500,000 people many of them suspected communists were killed by the military and civilian death squads in the months that followed it. That chapter of the Southeast Asian countrys history remains a taboo subject in Indonesian society, and few if any Indonesian filmmakers have dared to tell this story. Two acclaimed documentaries about the counter-communist purge, The Act of Killing (2012) and The Look of Silence (2014), were both nominated for Oscars but made by an American, Joshua Oppenheimer. Vengeful eyes During the dictatorship of President Soeharto, Buru was one of the main places for the banishment and imprisonment of political dissidents a place where Hersri spent time with his friend, Heru Santoso. Heru also was Hersris cellmate while the two were incarcerated in Jakarta. We met and we became close, Hersri tells his wife and daughter in another scene. It was not the first time that Hersri tried to find where Heru was buried. Before he found his best friends grave in May 2015 when the documentary was shot Hersri had secretly visited the island in 1997 to find it, but to no avail. The film recounts many of Hersris memories of Heru. For example, Heru once asked Hersri to join him in an attempt to escape from the penal colony, but Hersri a former writer for a banned cultural organization with alleged links to PKI rejected the idea. The scene ends with a poem read by Hersri: "... shadow of striped uniform Vengeful eyes of the military Shadows of guns Blasting above heads Timor Leste Director Rahung said the idea for his film began in 2004 when he met Hersri in Timor Leste, a country that, after 24 years under Indonesian occupation, voted for its independence in 1999. Hersri, who worked as a translator for the Timor Leste Reconciliation Commission, told him about his experience as a prisoner on Buru island. He told me, I wanted to do a pilgrimage to Buru. Why dont you come and record my trip there? Rahung told BenarNews. Without hesitation, Hersri agreed. Filming on Buru The documentary took shape after Rahung met artist Dolorosa Sinaga a few years later, and she encouraged him to make a film commemorating that dark chapter in the countrys history. In February 2015, Rahung conducted a survey on Buru, during which he posed as the son of a former political prisoner to evade suspicion. In May, he and his crew began shooting the film. Rahung said he did not set out to make a profit through the documentary. He ended up spending his own money to complete the movie, which runs 48 minutes. He said he hoped that his film would educate a new generation of Indonesians about the events of 1965-66 and their aftermath. The premiere was moved to the National Commission on Human Rights office where it was twice screened on Sunday to audiences numbering in the hundreds. 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For Immediate Release, March 22, 2016 Contact: Patrick Sullivan, (415) 517-9364, psullivan@biologicaldiversity.org 30 Scientists, 100+ Environmental, Health Groups Urge Federal Government to Maintain Moratorium on Offshore Fracking in California SAN FRANCISCO In a letter sent today, more than 30 prominent scientists urged the federal government to continue the moratorium on fracking in federal waters off the California coast and to prepare a comprehensive environmental impact statement for the controversial oil-industry technique. 2015 Drew Bird Photography. This photo of oil rigs off the California coast is available for media use. Todays letter, signed by esteemed ocean and climate scientists including Drs. Sylvia Earle, Carl Safina, Michael Mann and risk assessment engineer Dr. Robert Bea, counsels the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management and the Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement to consider the documented risks of hydraulic fracturing and significant data gaps on offshore well stimulation. We strongly advise you to continue the current moratorium on offshore well stimulation in California until a comprehensive review and scientific studies demonstrate that fracking and acidizing do not threaten wildlife, the marine environment, coastal communities, and the climate, the letter states. In another letter sent today to the Department of the Interior, more than 100 health, environmental, labor and business organizations urged the federal government to ban offshore fracking. Given the known environmental and health hazards of fracking, as well as the information gaps of offshore fracking, we ask you to prohibit oil companies from fracking and acidizing wells off the California coast, states the letter, which is signed by the Center for Biological Diversity, Greenpeace, the Sierra Club, Defenders of Wildlife, Environment America, the Surfrider Foundation and the Pacific Coast Federation of Fishermens Associations, among many others. The federal government in February released a draft proposal to lift the offshore fracking moratorium, which had been put in place under a legal settlement with the Center for Biological Diversity and Environmental Defense Center. Interiors preliminary environmental assessment proposes allowing oil companies to frack and discharge their wastewater including toxic fracking chemicals into the ocean. Todays letters come just before the March 23 end of the public-comment period on the proposal to resume offshore fracking. After the close of comments the government could resume permitting offshore fracking for oil and gas off the California coast at any time. Oil companies have fracked at least 200 wells in state and federal waters off Long Beach, Seal Beach, Huntington Beach and in the wildlife-rich Santa Barbara Channel. Offshore fracking blasts vast volumes of water mixed with toxic chemicals beneath the seafloor, at pressures high enough to fracture rocks. The Center for Biological Diversity is a national, nonprofit conservation organization with more than 990,000 members and online activists dedicated to the protection of endangered species and wild places. Steinhoff's daring bid for Darty has paid off as the board of the French retailer has agreed to a R15bn deal, securing the top position for Steinhoff's Conforama business in Europe's third-largest economy. Conforamas all-cash offer crushed a competing one from Groupe Fnac which had reached an agreement with Darty for a lower, mostly paper swap in November last year. A successful deal will increase Conforamas scale and broaden its reach into white goods, such as fridges and stoves. Dartys board has said it will recommend the Steinhoff and Conforama offer to its shareholders, as it is higher, and provides greater certainty to its shareholders since it is all cash. Alan Parker, Dartys non-executive chairman, said the cash offer by Conforama represented a premium to the Fnac offer. It was also "a 54% premium to the price before any potential bidders emerged, and provides greater certainty for shareholders. As a result, the board currently intends to recommend the offer to Darty shareholders". Darty directors would no longer recommend the Fnac offer, the company said. Some Darty shareholders have already committed themselves through letters of intent to the offer from Conforama. Schroder Investment Management had agreed to sell its 14% stake in Darty, Steinhoff said. The momentum is in Steinhoffs favour, but shareholders still have to approve the bid and there is an outside chance Fnac may improve its offer. On Monday, the group said it had noted the Conforama announcement and that "Fnac is currently considering its position and urges Dartys shareholders to take no action". On Friday, Steinhoff announced it had reached an agreement with Dartys board, and said it would no longer consider paying 1.4bn for the Home Retail Group. The deal had the potential to ignite a bidding war as Sainsburys had made a 1.3bn approach to Home Retail. Steinhoff gave no details as to why it had backed away from the Home Retail transaction. Graham Renwick, Exane BNP Paribas retail analyst, said it was possible that Steinhoff had seen something it did not like while it was performing due diligence into the business. "It was always a little opaque as to why (it went after) Home Retail it is likely the synergies werent there. The general view in the market was that it (the deal) had high execution risk, looked like a bit too much work to do," Renwick said. "Our view was that Steinhoff was forced to (do) due diligence after the deal deadline was extended by a month with their offer and they have had a chance to think more about it and that its not the right deal for them," he said. Abandoning the pursuit of Home Retail had placed Steinhoff in a strong position to conclude the Conforama deal successfully, he said. "Fnac could potentially make a higher bid, but Steinhoff clearly have much deeper pockets. If Steinhoff are serious about buying Darty, then Steinhoff are going to win. I am not sure what Fnac will be able to come back with, especially after Steinhoff walked away from Home Retail Group," Renwick said. Oreos has developed a new campaign, Open Up with Oreo, which will run in more than 50 countries this year, including South Africa. The campaign will share the positive message of asking fans to open up their hearts to others while offering local consumers the chance to win one of three family trips to New York City worth R200,000 each. For a chance to win one of the trips to the home of Oreo, fans must purchase a pack of Oreo biscuits (176g or 429g) and SMS the last five digits of their barcode to 40185. Oreo cookie lovers can also enter online at www.letwonderout.co.za SMS rates and Ts & Cs apply. Building on the sense of childlike wonder, a series of wonder-filled activations are planned to open up in shopping centres in Joburg, Pretoria, Durban, and Cape Town. These engaging installations promise a unique experience of opening up and sharing wonder: Gateway: 23 to 28 March; Menlyn: 6 to 10 April; Maponya Mall: 13 to 17 April; and V&A Waterfront: 27 April to 1 May. Also Oreo lovers must visit Montecasino Piazza over the Easter weekend (25 to 28 March) with the whole family and be sure to (literally) look on the bright side (and by bright we mean the sky) every day at noon for a wonder-filled surprise. A positive and hopeful message We believe that Oreos optimistic and enthusiastic brand persona will be brought to life through the creative executions of this integrated campaign, said Grant van Niekerk, biscuits and groceries category marketing director of Mondelez South Africa. The work conveys a positive and hopeful message that we know will resonate with all our fans, as we encourage people to practise kindness and open up their hearts to others. This is also evident in the new 2D animated television commercial featuring upbeat vocals by Adam Lambert, which will flight for the duration of the campaign. Set against the backdrop of a playfully diverse roller rink, the story follows a young girl inspiring those around her to look inside themselves to let a little bit of wonder out and, in turn, let others in. In the advert, an Oreo biscuit is the catalyst for the characters to open up to each other. When asked about his collaboration with Oreo, Lambert said: I think it was kind of always my fantasy to record a song for a brand, especially Oreo. Their whole Open Up campaign really spoke to me, theyre encouraging people to be more open, look at our similarities - which is part of my own philosophy. To offer South African fans more variety and choice, Oreos recently brought out a brand new flavour: Oreo Chocolate Creme, which hit shelves in March and is available in 176g packs from leading retailers. Learn more about the Open Up with Oreo campaign by going to www.letwonderout.co.za and following Oreo on Facebook and Twitter @Oreo #LetWonderOut. This is another from the "You could not make this up" department. My daughter, a student in Pretoria, is being driven crazy by a downstairs neighbour whose dachshund barks for 50 minutes out of every hour when its owner is not at home. On Saturday, it reached an agonising pitch as the creature barked virtually non-stop for more than five hours. My wife found a help website for the Tshwane municipality that advised people to call the metro cops in the event of a noise disturbance. She did. The reply: Madam, I am sorry, we cannot help you. You see, we can go and talk to people who make noise, but we cannot talk to dogs. True story. Meanwhile, I had found an e-mail address for a department in the municipality that dealt with environmental issues. I fired off an e-mail without much hope of getting a reply, because in Joburg we have, apparently, long since given up on chasing this type (or any type) of noise offender. Great was my surprise, then, when I received a reply, before 10am on Monday. The e-mail had been seen and forwarded and acted on first thing that morning. I was amazed even more so because I am still waiting for our rubbish removal service, Pikitup, to respond to a complaint I made in December. Then I saw elsewhere on the Tshwane website that the municipalitys marketing slogan is: A better place to live. I must say, people, it is good to see a government authority living up to its marketing and brand promise, as opposed to mocking it through its day-to-day delivery, as we regularly do here in Joburg, A world-class African city. An Orchid to the Tshwane municipality for living up to its brand promise. There is an amusing TV ad running for Kias special deals on its vehicles. Its simple: animated chunks of clay that form and reform into numbers and offers. It reminds me of the entrancing Wallace and Gromit TV series, a favourite of my kids (and mine). It works. It entertains and gets the message across. So an Orchid to Kia. Public relations people seem to be ending up in my sights quite often these days for getting things wrong or not making the most of opportunities. The release sent out last week cannot escape comment. First, it had a silly, breathless headline about SA judge set to take Dubai Lynx by storm. Really? A South African, no matter how good or experienced, is not going to take that advertising awards ceremony by storm unless she shoots someone. Rule No 1 in good communication: Dont gush. Its demeaning and it makes me wonder, Why all the hoopla? However, the worst thing about the release was that it arrived at 8.30 in the morning on March 9. And no attempt had been made to change the future tense in which it was written. All of the copy spoke about how Joanina Pastoll, creative director for Cross Colours South Africa, will do this and will do that. The last line read: She will be bringing this passion to the festival, which will culminate in an awards ceremony on 9 March. In other words, Pastoll had been in Dubai for almost three days before this release landed on my desk. Thats a joke and they get an Onion. I suspect, as happens so often in the PR business, that client dithering prevented the release from being signed off and sent out as it should have been a week earlier. *Note that Bizcommunity staff and management do not necessarily share the views of its contributors - the opinions and statements expressed herein are solely those of the author.* In February we announced one of the biggest VC investments of its kind in an African company. At $40m it is so far the largest in an online travel company on the continent. Tasked with getting the message out in all the right places, I figured that landing our news in front of your FT.coms, TechCrunchs and VentureBeats would be a piece of cake given the size of the investment. Simply put theyre the Michael Jordans of funding announcements and this was our chance to get the nod from a few of them. Lesser deals had been featured beyond a roundup article only and we wanted a piece of the prestige. Getting top tech media interested in our story shouldve been easy enough to do; it had all the elements of what makes them tick a hefty price tag, a global technology investor on one side and an emerging markets tech company on the other, CEO and investor sound bites and a strategic partnership with a mobile telecoms giant a few carefully crafted email pitches and it shouldve been a certainty as soon as the embargo ended. Pity my piece of cake assumption couldnt have been further from the truth. Apparently it takes more than a paltry 40 mil to create a buzz The strategy Every PR announcement starts with planning. Taking what works and then plugging in fresh insights and contacts to move it from a generic approach to a custom one that marches to the beat of the writers you target. A few weeks before we were set to announce our news Skyscanner went live with theirs kudos to them; they raised $192m and their subsequent $1.6bn evaluation gave them Unicorn status; undeniably meaty enough to capture the attention of the global tech and business media. Skyscanners announcement also sprung me an olive branch to build a list of elite press contacts from big tech sites who are actually reporting on transaction news in the online travel space. It was as easy as visiting the sites reporting on the deals and then scooping the Reporters contact details; sometimes requiring a bit of sleuthing to uncover email addresses where they werent readily available. For the first time I also enlisted the help of a news wire distribution service to supplement the planned individual outreach. When it comes to PR I believe individual, personalised pitches trump the spray and pray method of the wire, but in this case the magnitude of our announcement warranted some added NOS. Exclusivity fail Like a rabid Tinderer I flirted openly with journalists who on any other day would be out of my league. I shopped exclusivity around to a select few before going public; one respected tech writer gave me a fleeting thrill when he responded positively to my advances, but he didnt want to take the story to his editor unless we disclosed a valuation which we werent keen to do. By familiarising myself with what they had recently covered I was able to knock on journalists doors with an informed angle and then use it as a point of reference in the outreach. An excerpt going something like I am writing to give you a heads up on news that will be released tomorrow regarding an investment in an online travel agency called Travelstart. The investment is a great example of the increasing focus of 'Western' venture capital investors on businesses whose growth plans are based on the rapid expansion of internet access and mobile phone usage across Africa. As the FT has highlighted in its Smart Africa series, according to McKinsey, by 2025, 500 million people in sub-Saharan Africa will have internet access and 360 million of those will access via smartphones. Africa has one the worlds fastest growing middle classes and entrepreneurs in the region are building companies that meet the particular needs of the population with different infrastructure and logistics than experienced in developed nations. In terms of the big name tech and media outlets, these efforts amounted to nil. Pre-brief fail With our announcement date fast-approaching and little interest in our offers of exclusivity I switched to pre-briefing to whet appetites. Under the conditions of the embargo I was able to drum up some interest by being totally transparent about the nature of the deal and again offering CEO and investor interviews to make it worthwhile for them. Emails were crafted more succinctly this time, and instead of a long-winded introduction, I approached them with the assumption that they knew our company this mindset helped me cut to the chase in the comms. Email subject lines and copy were split-tested, and follow ups on Twitter with a personal handle lent my faceless emails some humanness. Still none of them were stirred enough to get back to me either that or all the emails went to junk. Pursuing [insert big tech site] Is it worth it? Going after the likes of the Financial Times and TechCrunch was a strategy of guts and glory and while it didnt work for us this time, local media rewarded us handsomely for the same tactics. While we were dealing with rejection/being ignored a colleague asked, Is the exclusivity route worth the time and effort? Personally, I do not see value in it for an announcement like this. The content of the announcement is not worth the risk of getting a News in Brief exposure in other media just because it was run elsewhere, worse by a competitor media platform. Theres a lot of truth in that statement plugging away at a big tech site for coverage in exchange for exclusivity is risky. While we might hit the jackpot by getting featured on a major site, we may sacrifice exposure in local media which our customers and competitors are more likely to be reading. Word travels fast in the information age and giving one news site the scoop and still expect coverage on the same announcement from similar publications a few hours or day later is counter-productive. Locally (around Africa) ours was a positive foreign investment story which the press were delighted to hear about seeking street cred from global media houses is not the be all and end all. It was only when I attended a conference a few weeks after we went public that I realised our news got the mileage which validated the effort. A VC from Dubai spoke about deals in Africa and the Travelstart one was the first he mentioned. Late last week, Minister of Energy Tina Joemat-Pettersson inaugurated the 175MW Solar Capital facility based in De Aar, Northern Cape. It is the largest solar farm ever completed in the Southern Hemisphere, Africa and the Middle East region. Photo by Roger Sedres/ImageSA This launch of the facility is the culmination of a two-phase project. The first phase has a capacity of 85MW and the second phase an even larger capacity of 90MW. In total the facility is 473ha, consists of 503,942 modules and took a mere 28 months to construct. The amount invested in the project totaled R2.2bn and R2.6bn for the first and second phase respectively making an overall investment of R4.8bn in the development of the facility. Rising energy consumption According to Joematt-Pettersson, sub-Saharan Africa has seen tremendous economic growth and its energy consumption has risen by 45% since 2000. Many governments are now intensifying their efforts to tackle the numerous regulatory and political barriers that are holding back investment in domestic energy supply, and inadequate energy infrastructure puts a brake on urgently needed improvements in living standards. The Department of Energy (DoE) has been working hard to solve the energy shortage in South Africa through its Renewable Energy Independent Power Producers Procurement (REIPPP) Programme. This programme allows for foreign investment in renewable energy farms, and has enabled the establishment of various renewable energy facilities which assist in providing the grid with electricity, such as Solar Capital De Aars 175MW farm. Highest irradiation levels Paschal Phelan, chairman of Solar Capital, says that the launch of the facility is an important example of how solar power can assist in solving the current energy crisis in South Africa. The Northern Cape of South Africa has some of the highest irradiation levels in the world, with the location of this facility boasting 2168kWh/m. This allows the abundant sunlight in the region to be converted into green energy to be transferred to the national energy grid. Phelan explains that South Africa as a whole will benefit from the facility, as all power generated from the project will be exported into the national electricity grid. The electricity produced will be able to power approximately 75,000 South African homes every year. Photo by Roger Sedres/ImageSA He adds that, with the introduction of lithium batteries in the near future, power will not only be transferred during the day, but can also be provided at night when it is most needed. Positive local impacts Solar Capital has also invested in long-term economic development in and around De Aar. Phelan points out that the De Aar project has had positive economic effects in the local area. The facility employed over 2,000 local people at peak and currently employs approximately 100 people for operations and maintenance. He says that by the end of 2016 more than R24m will be spent on economic development in projects, such as a community leaders development programme, free Wi-Fi for the town of De Aar, a large community training centre that houses a computer training laboratory, as well as an arts training and exhibition centre. Photo by Roger Sedres/ImageSA The launch of the solar farm is not only a success in its own right, but also allows for the opportunity to spread the message of solar success. It has no mechanical parts, it has minimal operation costs, no emissions, no water usage and it is safe. It needs to be a priority in South Africa that we continue the investment in this source of abundantly free, green, sustainable energy, concludes Phelan. The economic landscape of South Africa is changing and this is leading to a constant downward trend in some parts of the mining industry, such as the gold mining industry where jobs have declined. On the other hand, energy projects require employment while mine land rehabilitation can unlock land value. Online toolkit for developing sustainability The Community-Based Renewable Energy Project has developed an online toolkit that facilitates the development of sustainable and bankable projects. Launched by Promethium Carbon, together with Harmony Gold, and funded by the British High Commission, the toolkit focuses on projects that will generate renewable energy, rehabilitate mining impacted land and create jobs. Launched during a function at the Chamber of Mines (the Chamber) in Johannesburg, the project integrates the three challenging issues of mine land rehabilitation, community development and energy pressure alleviation. Turning a negative into a positive Land rehabilitation and community development is part of the mining landscape. There are legacies we have to address and we need to do this through sustainable ways, says Roger Baxter, CEO of the Chamber. The project is aligned with the objectives of the Chamber in this regard. It demonstrates how a negative can be transformed into a positive and provides a long-term sustainable solution. It also creates synergy with the communities dealing with the environmental impact, he says. British funding Peter Boxer, deputy British high commissioner, adds to this, saying that mining has given so much to South Africa and it will continue to do so with projects such as these; thus leaving a positive legacy. The reason for the funding, he says is to build strong economies in the countries with which the United Kingdom (UK) wants to do business. Combating energy poverty Apart from this, we want to combat energy poverty. It is fundamental for communities to have access to energy and to prosper and while the government plays a role here, it is also the responsibility of the private sector to engage with communities. The opportunity to replace non-renewable energy with renewable energy and at the same time rehabilitate the land is an exciting one that also offers socio- and economic upliftment. The project benefits include economic alternatives for a post mine life, improved energy security, the creation of employment opportunities, mitigation of climate change and re-education of environment, reduction of environmental and health impacts and enabling the local government to support communities, says Robbie Louw from Promethium Carbon, adding that these address 14 of 17 global sustainable development goals. Land management imperative Professor Wayne Truter, a land rehabilitation, rangeland and forage specialist affiliated to the University of Pretoria explains that land rehabilitation is a vague term. We have to understand the land, how capable it is to support the system and then what the land use can provide to the community. Land management is imperative is the system is to be viable, as is land stewardship. This project brings this to the end land users as it gives them the tools to envision the viable opportunities it can provide. Rehabilitation does not happen overnight and that is why it is so important to involve the community from the start he adds. The project recognises the role of communities as it acknowledges, uplifts, invokes, empowers and integrates communities into a workable sustainable solution says Louw. The long-term objective of the project is to support and facilitate the development of programmes which will build on a 150-year-old mining legacy to ensure post mine life sustainability and a greener future. The National Empowerment Fund (NEF) has urged the liquid fuels industry to accelerate its black economic empowerment (BEE) tempo while pledging increased financial support to intensify transformation with priority focus on black women participation in the sector. Participation through ownership The challenge was expressed by NEF CEO, Philisiwe Mthethwa, at the inaugural NEF Fuel Expo, held to promote greater participation of black people in the sector through the ownership and management of petroleum service stations. "To date the NEF has invested a total of R408 million for the purchase of 77 service stations that are owned and managed by black entrepreneurs countrywide, and these support 2,310 jobs. Within the NEFs franchise portfolio of R709 million, service stations rank as the most vibrant and successful," she says. We are optimistic that this NEF Fuel EXPO will help increase our impact in transforming the sector. 37 of the 77 petroleum franchises that have been funded by the NEF, or 48%, are owned and managed by black women entrepreneurs, and we are determined to grow this margin to mirror our country's gender population demographics, she adds. Franchising a form of empowerment Mthethwa says franchising as a form of empowerment has proved to be generally efficient and more so when dealing with reputable brands like those who have partnership agreements with the NEF in the petroleum sector. To qualify for NEF funding, applicants must have been pre-approved by the franchisors. Over the past few years the NEF has entered into agreements with oil companies to facilitate the purchase of more service-station outlets by black entrepreneurs. More needs to be done She says that while the retail end of the liquid fuels industry has achieved meaningful transformation over the past 16 years since the adoption of the liquid fuels charter, more still needed to be done to achieve equity in the sector. More pressing is the need to increase participation of black people in the upstream sub sectors. We believe that the next aspiration is for black entrepreneurs to secure opportunities in the wholesale distribution of hydrocarbons, she explains. Possibilities limitless The possibilities for growth, therefore, are limitless. With well over 10 million registered vehicles on South Africas roads, there is more than enough latitude to drive inclusive growth, Mthethwa says. She added that the upstream portion of the liquid fuels sector holds great potential to produce black industrialists. While there has been positive progress in preferential procurement within the liquid fuels sector, the exception continues to be the procurement of crude oil. We believe the time has come for meaningful black participation and leadership in this area of the value chain, and this is one of the opportunities that beckon for black entrepreneurs in this important sector, she concludes. Following the approval for Thabametsi, a 1200 MW coal-fired power station near Lephalale, the Centre for Environmental Rights (CER), representing Earthlife Africa Johannesburg (ELA), appealed to the Minister of Environmental Affairs, Edna Molewa to set aside the approval. The Minister dismissed the appeal on 7 March 2016 but has amended and added certain conditions to the authorisation, including a climate change impact assessment, the first for South Africa. Thabametsi Power Project has been given six months to conduct a climate change impact assessment and a palaeontological impact assessment before the project can start. ELA, together with partner organisation groundWork and community networks in the Vaal, the Highveld and KwaZulu-Natal, argue that energy from renewable sources should be prioritised over coal-fired power because of coals detrimental impact on the environment and human health. Concerns over decision Although the Ministers acknowledgement that the climate impacts of coal-fired power generation must be assessed is a significant victory, CER has a number of concerns about the decision. These include: The Minister has not prescribed the scope of the climate impact assessment or the palaeontological impact assessment. The Minister has required the reports of both assessments to be submitted to the DEA for review, but did not require interested and affected parties to have an opportunity to comment on the assessments. The Minister has not made it clear that the authorisation which had been suspended by the appeal - remains suspended pending consideration and approval or rejection of the climate and palaeontological impact assessments by the DEA. ELA and the CER believe that the authorisation must remain suspended until that decision is made by the DEA. Most importantly, by requiring these additional impact assessments, the Minister has conceded that material impacts were not assessed before the approval was granted, which is contrary to the requirements of the National Environmental Management Act. We believe that the Ministers decision to uphold the authorisation, despite these deficiencies, makes it subject to review by the High Court. CER will write to the Minister on ELAs behalf, requesting clarification on these issues, and ELA will then evaluate whether to challenge the appeal decision in court. Although the law requires a comprehensive assessment of all impacts of a proposed development, climate change impacts are rarely given adequate consideration - despite their importance on both a national and global level. ELAs appeal argued that climate change impacts are much broader than merely a calculation of the projects expected greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions - consideration must also be given to the impact that the project will have on already-limited water resources and land productivity, which will worsen because of climate change. Other appeals The Thabametsi power station is one of eleven proposed privately owned coal-fired power plants (independent power producers (IPPs)) which have, or are expected to submit bids to sell electricity to Eskom under the Coal Baseload Independent Power Producer Procurement Programme (CBLIPPPP). ELA, groundWork and the South Durban Community Environmental Alliance have launched appeals against two other proposed IPPs, namely KiPower in Mpumalanga and Colenso in KZN. The outcomes of these appeals are awaited. A new coal-fired power station requires multiple regulatory approvals, including an environmental authorisation (often incorporating a waste management licence), an atmospheric emission licence and a water use licence. We may live in the age of tech and fast travel, but good ol' fashioned ships remain the primary, large-scale mode of transporting people and goods. That very same tech contributes significantly to the continued decline in shipping losses, but conversely also increases the cyber risk and piracy. Losses down Shipping losses continued their long-term downward trend with 85 total losses reported worldwide in 2015, according to Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty SEs (AGCS) fourth annual Safety and Shipping Review 2016, which analyses reported shipping losses of over 100 gross tons. Although the number of losses remained stable year-on-year, declining by just 3% compared with the previous year (88), 2015 was the safest year in shipping for a decade. You cant hack a sextant The shipping industrys reliance on interconnected technology poses risks. Cyber risk exposure is growing beyond data loss. There have already been a number of notable cyber incidents and technological advances including the internet of things (IoT) and electronic navigation means the industry may only have a few years to prepare for the risk of a vessel loss. Pirates are already abusing holes in cyber security to target the theft of specific cargoes, says Captain Andrew Kinsey, senior marine risk consultant, AGCS. The cyber impact cannot be overstated. The simple fact is you cant hack a sextant. For the first time in five years piracy attacks failed to decline in 2015. South East Asia attacks rose, accounting for 60% of all incidents. Attacks in Vietnam surged year-on-year. However, progress continues to be made in Africa with incidents down in West and East Africa, although the risk remains high. African coast remains a weak spot In 2015, East and West African coasts saw losses of six ships bringing the tally of vessels lost between 2006 and 2015 to 94. Shipping safety and security remains a challenge on the continent due to historic underdevelopment of the maritime industry. AGCS Africa expects an increase in losses as the industry acquires more ships in line with the African Unions Agenda 2063, which has prioritised the marine economy as a major contributor to growth within the continent. The insurance industry will continue to play a key role in protecting and growing marine insurance risks on the continent, says Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty Africa technical underwriting manager, Mark Govender. More than a quarter of all losses occurred in the South China, Indochina, Indonesia and Philippines region (22 ships). Losses increased year-on-year, unlike other major regions. Economic pressures challenge While the long-term downward trend in shipping losses is encouraging, the continuing weak economic and market conditions, depressed commodity prices and an excess of ships are pressurising costs, raising safety concerns. AGCS has seen an increase in frequency losses over the past year which can likely be attributed to some extent to this environment. It is critical that economic pressures do not allow a put it off until later safety mentality to develop. Some shipowners are already stretching maintenance to longest possible intervals while others are laying-up vessels, says Captain Rahul Khanna, global head of marine risk consulting, AGCS. The human factor As well as impacting investment in vessel maintenance, cost pressures can impair crewing conditions, ship safety and salvage and rescue. AGCS has seen an increase in fatigue-related insurance claims over the past decade. With crew numbers already often at their lowest possible level, and a future staffing shortage anticipated, longer shift patterns could exacerbate this issue. Meanwhile, training remains below par in some areas, such as electronic navigation, which should not be seen as panacea but as a complementary tool. Mega ship salvage issues The appetite for ever-larger container ships has seen cargo-carrying capacity of the largest vessels increase by 70% over 10 years to 19,000+ containers. Two mega ships, the CSCL Indian Ocean and APL Vanda were grounded in February 2016, raising questions about a more serious incident . There are concerns commercial pressures in the salvage business have reduced easy access to the salvors required for recovery work on this scale. The industry may need to prepare for a $1billion plus total loss scenario. Superstorms The report also notes that exceptional weather events are becoming more commonplace, bringing additional risks and disruption to supply chains. This year, the effect of a super El Nino is expected to lead to more extreme weather conditions. Meanwhile, bad weather was a factor in three of the five largest vessels lost last year, including the El Faro, one of the worst US commercial maritime disasters in decades. We are seeing more and heavier natural catastrophe events. Weather routing will continue to be a critical component to the safe navigation of vessels. says Sven Gerhard, global product leader hull & marine liabilities, AGCS. Peugeot Citroen South Africa's corporate restructuring in 2014 was aimed at streamlining the organisation and reshaping the company to improve efficiency, innovation and customer experience. The change brought about many opportunities for both brands and has allowed the company to continue its growth path in South Africa, with strengthened efforts to broaden both brands impact in the motoring arena. Following the changes at head office, it was only natural to see transformation within the dealer network. One such major adjustment was the recent takeover and relocation of Peugeot Empangeni to Richards Bay. The franchise, now known as Peugeot Citroen Richards Bay, has also changed ownership to the Midbay Group. The new dealership opened its doors at the beginning of this month. Marketing and brand manager for Goodyear South Africa, Tracy Maclear shares strategic insights into ensuring brand sustainability for the innovative tyre manufacturer. Tracy Maclear What does brand management mean to you? Maclear: Consumers do not buy what you sell. They buy what has value to them - Peter Drucker. The crucial first step is knowing who our target audience is and what has real meaning for them. With this insight, brand management is the art of creating and sustaining the brand through the consistent delivery of brand value at each touch point. Tell us about a day in your work life. Maclear: In one word: dynamic. Every day is different. We work with a wide variety of people, both within the organisation and externally. We also work on a range of different topics. There are many meetings, telephone calls and emails; but we also aim to make some time for fun. What activations do you have planned for your brand stable for the year? Maclear: We started 2016 with the roll-out of our revamped website which is focused on the consumers journey: to find the right tyre and the right dealer for tyre fitment. We have a number of exciting activations planned for the year including new product introductions, sales promotions, sponsorships and events. What do you see currently as the main challenges and opportunities for your brand sector? Maclear: Consumers rarely think about tyres until they need to buy new ones. Although they are recognised as crucial to vehicle safety, consumers generally have a limited understanding that one tyre can be safer than another, as the technology is not visible to the eye. This is a challenge, but also an opportunity. Does Goodyear still see the value of TV, print and other mainstream media? Maclear: We do believe there is still value in mainstream media. Media is certainly evolving; mainstream media is changing and digital channels have added a new, exciting dimension. The Goodyear Facebook and Twitter pages focus on relevant, interesting content that encourages sharing and conversation. What are your own personal favourite brands? Maclear: Goodyear of course, Disney and the Virgin Group. What do you love most about your brand? Maclear: Goodyear is focused on innovation and forward thinking. The company has been coming up with new ideas for over 117 years, such as the first tyre on the moon in the early 1970s. A further example is Goodyears latest concept tyre, the Eagle-360, developed with the autonomous vehicles of the future in mind, which was recently showcased at the Geneva International Motor Show. Tracy Maclear is the marketing and brand manager at Goodyear South Africa. She holds a bachelor of commerce honours degree majoring in marketing, strategic and financial management from the Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth. She started her career at Deloitte and has worked for Goodyear for over 18 years in marketing and sales positions, including a seven-year assignment at Goodyear's Europe, Middle East and Africa regional headquarters located in Belgium. Twitter turned 10 yesterday, 21 March, and the hashtag #LoveTwitter trended. Of course. Brands, celebs, football teams, news media and Twitter itself, reminisced on the good times since this social network revolutionised global communication and breaking news. Starting in on 3/21 and moving across the , we thank you for 10 incredible years. Love, Twitter#LoveTwitterhttps://t.co/pH4WWdgK6q Twitter (@twitter) March 20, 2016 Twitter founder and current CEO Jack Dorsey sent his first tweet 10 years ago on 21 March 2006. Twitter is now a global force: loved by celebrities, used by bad guys and politicians alike. And in between theres the rest of us, reading the news, following people we respect or are interested in, rallying behind social causes, starting a revolution, tracking memes, outing the haters, standing up to the trolls, actively involved in the conversation or just following and lurking in the cyber shadows. Twitter, which brings in $500m every quarter, is the town hall of the olden days, office water cooler chitchat, a bar fight, gossip from the smokers corner, coffee shop camaraderie, a global news network all in 140 characters, or as American comedian @MargaretCho says, Less than a sonnet, more than a soundbite. Twitter thanked all its fans and specific celebrity users for amplifying the social network. Users rallied around the hashtag #LoveTwitter to express their views on Twitter. Wired had a great tweet history of Twitter, describing it thus: People rightfully complain that the platform can be a hotbed for hostility. It also offers a loudspeaker for the disenfranchised, but swarms of voices also silence through harassment. Its a company, its a platform, and its the worlds biggest cocktail party. That means sometimes its a mess. From Dorseys first tweet to the evolution of Twitter as a celeb stalking tool to breaking news service, the power of real-time events and an organising tool for revolutions, Wired charts the most famous milestones of Twitter. Public space The New York Times polled influential Twitter users to find out how Twitter has redefined the conversation. #BlackLivesMatter activist Deray McKesson @DeRay, said Twitter has redefined the concept of public space. Author @JoyceCarolOates said Twitter offers a window into other lives and perspectives. .@DeRay, a Black Lives Matter activist, said Twitter "galvanized the nation https://t.co/7xkRX6lhN5 pic.twitter.com/R2ZDnRAutm The New York Times (@nytimes) March 21, 2016 Fast Company hosted a virtual retrospective with early adopters of the social network, originally called Twttr. For many the reality of the power of Twitter hit home during breaking news when the news started coming from people on the ground instead of news outlets. That is when it changed and became the powerful tool it is for people in the media and anyone who wants to insert themselves into a story or conversation. One of the best summaries of what Twitter has meant to many, the good and the bad, is summed up in the New York Times article, by activist Rachel Dolezal @RachelaDolezal, whose relationship with her Twitter followers changed when she was publically shamed for allegedly lying about her race: I would describe my first experiences with Twitter (before June 2015) as positive. It felt good to be able to have a platform for networking with others globally around shared goals, causes and interests. I saw Twitter as a tool for education, awareness and networking a platform that could organize activism and positive change. My experience changed when my personal life and identity came under such fierce media scrutiny last summer. In the wake of negative press, my relationship with Twitter switched instantly from love to hate. What once was a casual and positive place to go online became a space where I was mocked, bullied and even threatened. Twitter is as good as the people who use it Locally, @JHBPRGirl says Twitter is great for keeping your audience updated in a crisis; and helps you keep tabs on clients, competitors, media and influencers. On Twitters 10th birthday, here's another reason why I #LoveTwitter - helps you keep tabs on clients, competitors, media or influencers JHB PR Girl (@JHBPRGirl) March 21, 2016 US brand @DennysDiner reminisced about the early days before trolls were a thing and brands got excited about Twitter as a direct PR tool. LOL! Top tweets Newsweek did a roundup of the top weirdest tweets sent in the last 10 years. They call it their 10 best tweets, but that is doubtful as there are no nude Kim Kardashian selfies included to break the interwebs. Or this one from actor @Sethrogen poking fun at Kim Kardashian and Kanye West in a pre-wedding photo shoot for Vogue, highlighted by Twitter in their honour roll yesterday. The UKs Telegraph newspaper compiled a list of its 100 greatest tweets of all time which is an #awesome #list #LOL. Of course, the debate now moves to the next 10 years, with AdWeek asking how Twitter will capture the next generation. It concludes that its future is dependent on whether millennials and generation Z will show up to take part in the tweet storm. Numbers game The best Twitter listicle comes from Campaign magazine with great Twitter facts, like the fact that the Oscars selfie tweeted out by Ellen DeGeneres @TheEllenShow is the most retweeted tweet of all times: 3.3 million. Or that the most retweeted hashtag tradition is #FF (follow Friday); and that the word love has been mentioned on Twitter 34.8 billion times! More stats from blogs on Twitter: Number of people that use Twitter: 320 million Estimated number of registered users on Twitter: 1.3 billion Unique monthly visitors to Twitter.com (desktop and mobile): 120 million Daily active Twitter users: 100 million Average number of followers per Twitter user: 208 Number of Twitter accounts that have ever sent a tweet: 550 million Percentage of active Twitter users that log onto it more than once a day: 34% *Source: DMR. Its the celebrities of course who win with followers, not necessarily erudite content, in the top 10 most followed on Twitter: 1. Katy Perry @katyperry: 84.8 million 2. Justin Bieber @justinbieber: 77.4 million 3. Taylor Swift @taylorswift13: 73.2 million 4. Barack Obama @BarackObama: 71.4 million 5. YouTube @YouTube: 60.6 million 6. Rihanna @rihanna: 57.4 million 7. Lady Gaga @ladygaga: 57.3 million 8. Ellen DeGeneres @TheEllenShow: 55.9 million 9. Twitter @twitter: 53.6 million 10. Justin Timberlake @jtimberlake: 52.8 million *Source: FriendorFollow. And when it comes down to the network, this is why Twitter is the greatest network, as summed up by this user @karenmcgrane: Twitter is for strangers you should be friends with. Well, some of them. The rest are just looney tunes. The City of Cape Town is the place to be next month as WTM Africa begins on 6 April 2016 With just under three weeks to go, momentum around WTM Africa 2016 is swiftly building. As Africas leading B2B exhibition for inbound and outbound Africa travel and tourism, and with over 500 exhibitors on board, WTM Africa 2016 is on track to reach new heights and exceed 2015 figures. Through its industry networks, global reach and regional focus, WTM Africa 2016 will create personal and business opportunities providing exhibitors, visitors and buyers with a diverse array of offerings, from world-renowned networking opportunities to interactive and trendsetting conferences and panel discussions presented by internationally acclaimed experts. Included in the list of over 500 exhibitors showcasing their premium services at WTM Africa 2016 are international tourism organisations such as Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Reunion Island, Mauritius, Ghana, Maldives, India, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, Thailand and Zambia. Adding to WTM Africas already impressive 2016 line-up is the prestigious buyer programme. This programme offers travel industry buyers the opportunity to directly engage with WTM Africa exhibitors. Buyers can look forward to a variety of benefits at WTM Africa such as a personalised diary of appointments with exhibitors of their choice, and exclusive formal and informal networking opportunities. WTM Africa will have buyers attending from across the world from locations such as the United Kingdom, Germany and Italy; western countries within the Americas; the Asian states of India and China and of course African buyers from countries such as Nigeria and Tanzania. SKAL, the trusted voice in the travel and tourism industry, is a strategic partner this year for WTM Africa and members around the globe have been encouraged to register and attend this years jam-packed event. Globally, SKAL represents senior managers and executives in the travel and tourism industry and has approximately 16,000 members in 400 clubs spread throughout almost 80 countries. During this years WTM Africa, the events programme will host relevant tourism seminars, bringing international speakers and experts to share their wealth of knowledge to WTM Africa visitors. One of our speakers at WTM Africa is Keith Jenkins who is the founder and publisher of the multiple award-winning Velvet Escape luxury travel blog. In addition to being a travel blogger, Keith is the CEO of iambassador - the worlds leading international travel blogger network - a company he founded in 2011. Keith, and other travel experts will share their knowledge with visitors throughout the three day event. Held at the tip of Africa, in the Host City of Cape Town, WTM Africa brings the world to Africa, and Africa to the world. The exhibition will take place over three days, 6-8 April 2016, at the CTICC; whereby travel professionals from South Africa, the continent of Africa and the globe will gather to do business. Have you preregistered to attend WTM Africa 2016 yet? If not, nows your chance as WTM Africa. Avoid standing in long queues and paying the onsite registration fee. Register www.wtmafrica.com. The men, Kyaw Moe Hlaing from Tinnmagyi Village in Kyauktaw Township and Aung Than Tin from Kalamataung Village in Minbya Township were convicted under Sections 17 (1) and 17 (2) of the Unlawful Association Act. Their lawyer, Ko Tun Hla said: After they confessed to having ties with the Arakan Army in court they were each given three years in prison. We will file for appeal if they want [us to]. The two were arrested in April 2015 when the Burma Army and Arakan Army were fighting in the area of Pichaung. Translated by Thida Linn Edited in English by Mark Inkey for BNI The villagers voiced their concern at the Phyu Min Tun Company Ltds activities at the mountain, which is in Karen National Union (KNU) controlled territory, at a meeting between the KNU, local residents and civil society organisations held on 13 March in a catholic church on Matkalay Road in Mawlamyine. They called on the Phyu Min Tun Company not to continue with mineral testing after their current mineral testing period ends at the end of April. The villagers said that their livelihoods depend on the mountain and that a cement factory would pose a threat to the environment and destroy their heritage. Naw Phaw Naww, a local resident of Min Lwin village said to KIC News: There are farms and orchards for our livelihood. We can get firewood, wood, bamboo, and vegetables by relying on this mountain. If the mountain became depleted after the company carries out its businesses, things will not return to normal again. We object [to it]. Naw Ka Paw Say, a Karen Development Network (KDN)s official who has been helping the villagers said: The company has used various methods to try and persuade the local residents. They said they would just be asking for permission to carry out testing, but we are worried that the contract [they have been granted] includes permission to build a factory. The local residents are opposed to this project. Pado Saw Ko Linn, the KNU Thaton District Secretary said: So far, we have only allowed the testing stage of this project. As an organisation we do our work and also represent the people. We will not do anything the public does not want. We will ask what the public wants [to happen] after the testing period and we will follow their wishes. The Ministry of Mines gave the Phyu Min Tun Company permission to carry out mineral testing at Mwin Lin Mountain from 22 April 2015 to 21 April 2016 and to carry out a feasibility study in the area from 22 April 2016 to 22 April 2017. Local residents submitted an appeal to the Mon State Government in May 2015. It said that they objected to the mineral testing and the construction of a cement factory in the area of Min Lwin Mountain. The Pein Hne Taw village group is a group of six villages in the foothills of the Min Lwin Mountain. They are: Min Lwin, Wanbeinn, Htinyarlu, Pein Hne Taw, Pantharyar, and Aleywar. Translated by Thida Linn Edited in English by Mark Inkey for BNI The 241 meter high dam will flood an area of more than 640 sq kms, including hundreds of villages, farms and ecologically sensitive forest areas. A statement released by the Save the Salween Network said: We deplore the Burmese governments attempts to push ahead with mega dams in ethnic conflict zones, against the wishes of local ethnic communities. This shows bad faith towards the peace process, and will destroy the trust of ethnic stakeholders and exacerbate conflict. The statement continued: The mighty Salween River must be left in its natural free flowing state, supporting the rich biodiversity of ecosystems along its entire length, which provide food security for ethnic communities throughout the river basin. The incalculable environmental and social costs of damming the river far outweigh any of the supposed economic benefits. The Mong Ton Dam project is backed by a consortium of firms led by the China Three Gorges Corporation, a Chinese government owned firm who run the largest dam in the world on the Yangtze River. The other foreign firms involved in the project are Sinohydro, China Southern Power Grid and a subsidiary of the Electricity Generating Authority of Thailand (EGAT). The local partners are the Burmese Ministry of Electric Power and the International Group of Entrepreneurs (IGE), a firm controlled by the offspring of the late Aung Thaung, the long-time industry minister for General Than Shwes military regime. An Australian firm, SMEC, has been hired to conduct environmental and social impacts assessment studies for the Mong Tong dam project. SMECs attempts to hold consultations last year with affected communities in Shan state garnered a lot of criticism from activists including a group called Action for Shan State Rivers, who alleged that SMEC was carrying out the studies in a manner that was not consistent with international standards. Action for Shan State Rivers also alleges that SMEC did not do enough to inform villagers about the potentially huge impact the dam would have on their livelihoods and the local environment. The activists claim that SMEC chose to hold information sessions that were designed to give villagers a favourable impression of the dam project, something that conflicts with the firms role of studying the dams downstream impacts By Shan Herald Agency for News (SHAN) 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 A member of Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz's national security team says the infamous Senator Joseph "Joe" McCarthy was "spot on" in his hunt for secret communists. Clare Lopez spoke to South Carolina radio host Vince Coakley and said we need to depose the non-existent ranks of the Muslim Brotherhood in the government. Brotherhood affiliates and associates and those connected to it are the go-to advisers, if not appointees, for the top levels of national security in our government, in this administration for sure, but going back many decades, really, is the program of this Brotherhood, she claimed. [...] We can go all the way back, of course, to the time of the Cold War and back to the 1920s, 30s, 40s when communists, you know, the KGB, infiltrated our government at the very highest levels, she said. And then, like now, we were unprepared and in large measure unaware of what was going on, at least until the House Un-American Activities got rolling in the 1950s with Sen. Joseph McCarthy, who absolutely was spot-on in just about everything he said about the levels of infiltration. So we have precedent for this where we were not fully aware of the infiltration occurring at the time. It wasn't entirely clear what Ted Cruz meant when he called for patrolling and securing Muslim neighborhoods, but this could be a hint. The idea that the Muslim Brotherhood controls or influences significant parts of our government is a long-running conspiracy theory. In addition to accusations that President Obama himself is a secret Muslim, former Attorney General Eric Holder was also accused of either being a member of the Muslim Brotherhood or taking orders from them. Longtime Clinton adviser Huma Abedin has also been accused of being a Muslim saboteur of some description who may have even been responsible for Benghazi. Or something. Joe McCarthy never actually exposed secret communist forces in the government and the scope of his accusations didn't stop at political ideology. McCarthy also deployed homophobic attacks against fellow congressmen and he was eventually censured but not before launching an investigation of the U.S. Army. This is the legacy Cruz adviser Clare Lopez calls "spot on." Ted Cruz is just as bad or worse than Donald Trump and he's the GOP's only realistic alternative to Trump. While GOP presidential frontrunner has responded to today's terrorist attack in Brussels by calling for more torture, the GOP's only realistic alternative to Trump has called for an inquisition in Muslim neighborhoods. Ted Cruz responded to the attack by blaming political correctness and immigrants, because of course, and said we need to "secure" Muslim neighborhoods. CRUZ: "Our European allies are now seeing what comes of a toxic mix of migrants who have been infiltrated by terrorists and isolated, radical Muslim neighborhoods. [...] We need to immediately halt the flow of refugees from countries with a significant al Qaida or ISIS presence. We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized. We need to secure the southern border to prevent terrorist infiltration." Given that law enforcement already has the power to patrol Muslim neighborhoods just like any other neighborhood under their jurisdiction, it's not entirely clear what Cruz is proposing, but we can infer. It's the call to "secure" neighborhoods "before they become radicalized" that's concerning. What does that mean exactly? Does that mean deploying political officers who will clamp down on free speech? Does that mean restricting the free exercise of religion? Bear in mind, Ted Cruz is the supposed religious liberty candidate. If you were to judge based on just the reaction of Republicans, you could say terrorism works. Just one attack sends Republicans flying completely off the rails, prompting them to call for restrictions on free speech, closed borders, torture, and foreign intervention. Everything the terrorists want Republicans would give to them. They're afraid of their own shadows. Far more people are killed by guns on a daily basis in America, but Republicans routinely respond to our crisis here at home by calling for more guns. If Muslim neighborhoods need to be "secured," it would be to protect them from the kind of people who vote for Ted Cruz. If the Utah delegation has their way, the next wannabe Bundy clan will have one less thing to worry about. Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz and his colleagues from Utah have introduced legislation to strip federal agencies of their authority to police federal land. It would strip officials in the Forest Service and the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) of their authority to enforce laws regulating federal land. Rather, local and state authorities would be provided with a block grant to enforce the laws instead. Speaking to Deseret News earlier this month, Chaffetz accused those federal officials of being more Rambo and less Andy Griffith than I would like. As I'm sure you recall, it was the Bureau of Land Management (BLM) that found itself on the other side of dozens of Bundy militiamen in Nevada. The BLM agents were merely there to enforce laws routinely broken by Cliven Bundy. Likewise, the Bundy occupation of a federal wildlife refuge in Oregon was prompted by the prosecution and conviction of ranchers who faced charges for setting federal land on fire. If federal agents really were "more Rambo and less Andy Griffith" as Congressman Chaffetz alleges, they would gunned down the Bundy clan in both instances and they would have been justified in doing so. Instead, federal authorities gave the Bundy clan a rope to hang themselves with and now nearly three dozen of them have been indicted on federal charges. Local authorities are not equipped to handle these situations and, as we've seen in some cases, they may not necessarily be interested in enforcing the law. Grant County, Oregon Sheriff Glenn Palmer is under investigation by state authorities for his close association and cooperation with the Bundy squatters. Kangana Ranaut: Brand Ambassador for Melange by Lifestyle Bollywood Wardrobe Staff Kangana was spotted looking all classy at an event in Mumbai where she was launched as the new brand ambassador for Melange by Lifestyle for their Rethink Ethnic campaign. The greatest part about this campaign was that it was inspired by Kangana and her fearless individualistic sense of style. Inspired by Kangana's fierce persona and earthy vibes, the ensemble she wore was an embodiment of exactly that. Indian sensibilities incorporated into a very chic and classy outfit which only Miss Ranaut can pull off with such ease. Pictured wearing a collared-buttoned down kurta in Indian blue with repeat patterns all over, paired with white straight pants lends it the western summer sensibility. The white and blue ombre dupatta with print patterns at its ends completes the entire outfit beautifully. The choice of going completely Indian with the jewellery lifts the entire ensemble up by lending it the touch of gold. Nude ankle strap sandals work well by not taking away that look from the rest of the outfit. This outfit from Melange is definitely true to its name of "Rethink Ethnic" and clearly looks great on this gorgeous actress is what we think. Kangana is already a true fashion inspiration and her role as Melange's brand ambassador is only going to further strengthen her image of a fashionista. Shocking Facts About Secret Affairs! Pulse oi-Praveen Extra marital affairs are a crime. But still, they occur almost all over the world. To put it in a nut shell, when a married person gets into physical intimacy with someone outside the married relationship, it is known as extramarital affair or infidelity. Also Read: Shocking: Are All Women Bisexual? Though all laws and all religions condemn such an act, the number of these cases is increasing in the recent years. Also, as cheating became easy due to the latest technology like mobile and internet, adultery has increased everywhere. Also Read: This Is Why Men Love Nerdy Women As the gap between two human beings is increasing, extramarital love is becoming rampant. Now, let us know about certain bizarre facts about such affairs. Fact #1 Another study reports that most of the coital deaths' (death during sex) occur during extramarital sex (as the people involved would be stressed out and excited). Fact #2 In a study, many participants admitted that the best opportunity to cheat spouse and have fun with an extramarital partner is during business trips at work. Fact #3 A recent study claims that men who come to hospitals for treatment for a fractured penis generally admit that it happened during an extramarital romance'. Fact #4 Though most of us think that affairs are the reasons for high divorce rate, a recent study claims that money is the reason for increasing divorce rate. In fact, most of the infidelity issues are forgiven even after being caught. Fact #5 Another study claims that emotional cheating is more damaging than physical cheating. This is because emotional closeness to another person can harm a marriage more. Fact #6 Another study says that the number of women who got into extra marital relationships has increased in the recent years may be because women are now financially powerful. Fact #7 A study says that nearly 70% of all extramarital affairs happen in workplaces! GET THE BEST BOLDSKY STORIES! Allow Notifications Story first published: Tuesday, March 22, 2016, 5:01 [IST] ROORKEE (PTI): Seeking to tap innovative ideas from academic campuses, Defence Ministry has set the ball rolling for collaboration with IITs, NITs, IISc and other top institutions to work out a research and development paradigm which will include both "innovation and production" for the sector. "I have already instructed DRDO and our other organisations to tie up with academic institutions in tapping the potential for innovation there and use it for not just academic research but also for defence production, based on merit," Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar has said. The Union minister, an IIT-Bombay alumnus, was speaking at the opening ceremony of the three-day technical festival 'Cognizance 2016' of IIT Roorkee on March 28. "Some IITs, some NITs, IISc, some regional engineering colleges and other top academic institutions, we have planned to tie up with to work out R&D not just for innovation but production in the defence sector too. "And, I think in six-twelve months we should be in a position to start the programme," he said. Parrikar, while addressing a gathering of students, academicians and guests at the Convocation Hall emphasised the government's 'Make in India' vision and asked students to contribute to the country's growth story by innovating. "I don't claim that all intelligence lie at IITs, but a substantial amount of it does. I mean look at this Convocation Hall, it was a hangar used during the Second World War or something and you have turned it into this big facility, therein lies your innovation," he said, as he received a loud applause. He also proposed using defence offsets to create projects that bring in academic participation. "I think we should also use defence offsets to create such type of research projects in defence with academic participation," Parrikar said. The minister cited example of some of the projects taking place in few institutions like IIT-Bombay with Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the US. Parrikar went down memory lane and even recalled his days of entrepreneurship. "After finishing college, we started our own venture and later decided to enter politics. But, innovation is something the campus environment promotes and if you have great ideas then this programme fits in right there," he said. The 60-year-old politician graduated in 1978 and was awarded the Distinguished Alumnus Award by his alma mater for his achievements in 2001. A BAE Systems photo. LONDON (BNS): The first production standard Cased Telescoped Cannon System has been handed over to the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD). It is the first delivery of 515 new 40mm cannons by CTA International (CTAI) - a 50/50 joint venture company between BAE Systems and Nexter Systems. The canon system was ordered for the British Army for use in the Ajax and Warrior vehicles. The new cannon fires 40mm Cased Telescoped ammunition. The ammunition is neatly contained in a straight tube instead of the traditional bullet shape and can deliver a more explosive charge - up to four times the power of the 30mm rounds it replaces, BAE Systems said in a statement. The current types of ammunition developed for the cannon include armour piercing and training rounds - while a new airburst round for engaging light vehicles and infantry spread over a large area, and a point detonating round which can penetrate thick concrete - are currently undergoing qualification. CTAI is also working on an anti-aerial airburst round for airborne targets. The cannon uses a new rotating breech system, with ammunition loaded at a 90 degree angle to the barrel before being rotated into firing position. Loading the ammunition sideways saves a large amount of space in the vehicle, allowing this to be used to store more ammunition or other equipment. The handover of the first cannon follows many years of exhaustive testing and qualification, which has proved the effectiveness and reliability of the system. A Lockheed Martin PAC-3 Missile WHITE SANDS MISSILE RANGE, N.M (BNS): A Lockheed Martin PAC-3 Missile Segment Enhancement (PAC-3 MSE) Missile successfully detected, tracked and intercepted a tactical ballistic missile (TBM) target at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, as part of a U S Army-led flight test. The PAC-3 Missile is a high-velocity interceptor that uses hit-to-kill technology to defend against incoming threats, including TBMs, cruise missiles and aircraft. The flight test was carried out on 17 March 2016. "The PAC-3 MSE continues to demonstrate its reliability and hit-to-kill capability," said Scott Arnold, vice president of PAC-3 programs at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control. "The enhancements of the MSE will provide the warfighter with the tools needed to defend against current and evolving threats." Building on the battle-proven PAC-3 Missile, the PAC-3 MSE brings a larger, dual-pulse solid rocket motor, larger control fins and an upgraded support system. These enhancements nearly double the missile's reach, and dramatically improve performance against missile threats, a Lockheed Martin statement said. HMS Artful. A UK MoD photo HM NAVAL BASE CLYDE (BNS): The British Royal Navy has commissioned the third Astute-class attack submarine HMS Artful during an official ceremony at the Clyde naval base last week. The vessel was commissioned on March 18 in the presence of Adm. George Zambellas, the First Sea Lord and head of the Naval Service, his wife and representatives of the companies involved in Artful's construction, the UK defence ministry said. HMS Artful was handed over to the Royal Navy by BAE Systems in December 2015 following which it was undergoing sea trials to prove its systems and equipment at sea. Artful is the first of the Royal Navy's submarines to be fitted with the Common Combat System (CCS), which is regarded as the digital 'brain' of the boat controlling its 'eyes', 'ears' and 'nervous system', the Defence Ministry said. The first operational deployment of HMS Artful is slated for 2017. Two other ships of the class, HMS Astute and HMS Ambush, have successfully conducted operational deployments. Both have deployed to the Mediterranean, and Middle East where they have been involved in anti-smuggling and security operations and have provided Tomahawk Land Attack Missile (TLAM) capability in support of anti-terrorism operations in the region. The Astute-class submarines incorporate advanced stealth technology along with world class sonar system, greater firepower and latest communication systems. The underwater vessels are designed to carry out a range of key strategic and tactical roles, including anti-ship and anti-submarine operations, surveillance and intelligence gathering and support for land forces. Each sub can carry a mix of up to 38 Spearfish heavyweight torpedoes and Tomahawk land-attack cruise missiles, and can target enemy submarines, surface ships and land targets with pinpoint accuracy. The submarine can cruise at speeds in excess of 20 knots while submerged. BAE Systems has been contracted to build seven submarines in the class. The next two submarines in the class, Audacious and Anson, are currently being built in Barrow, with Agamemnon and the unnamed Boat 7 to follow. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 22/03/2016 (2405 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. OTTAWA The Liberal government is planning to pile on more than $100 billion in public debt over the coming years as part of an ambitious strategy it hopes will revive economic growth over the long haul. However, the blueprint tabled Tuesday has no firm timetable on when the deficits will end and the return to balance is now poised to be sometime beyond the next election. The document predicts big spending on investments like infrastructure will boost the countrys real gross domestic product by 0.5 per cent this year and one per cent in 2017-18. Finance Minister Bill Morneau receives applause as he tables the federal budget in the House of Commons in Ottawa on Tuesday, March 22, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld To help get it there, the government is brazenly shattering its election promise to run modest deficits of no more than $10 billion before balancing the public books in four years. Now, even five years looks like a reach and thats before the Liberals deal with billions in electoral promises that failed to make the cut in this budget. The budget has opened spending floodgates that will lead the country to projected shortfalls of $29.4 billion this year, $29 billion in 2017-18, $22.8 billion in 2018-19, $17.7 billion in 2019-20 and $14.3 billion in 2020-21. Program spending will rise by an average of 6.3 per cent in the next two years, compared to annual average increases of just 0.4 per cent between 2011 and 2015 under the Conservative government, according to Scotiabank economist Mary Webb. Finance Minister Bill Morneau tried to reassure Canadians that the deficits are part of the plan to give Canada a growth rate thats going to put us in a continually strong fiscal position. If that higher growth kicks in a little early, Morneau said, its even possible the books could be balanced in five years. Were going to get ourselves to a balanced budget itll take a few years, but well get there through strong investments, Morneau told a news conference before tabling the budget in the House of Commons. At the same time, Morneau made it clear how badly his government is relying on that growth to materialize soon, if only to make good on outstanding election promises such as the commitment to spend billions more on home-care health services. Over the long term were starting today with investments investments that are going to make a real difference, said Morneau, who maintained that $1 in infrastructure spending will create more than $1 in economic activity. As expected, the government numbers also include a hefty contingency cushion of $6 billion, which could ultimately help the Liberals beat the low fiscal expectations. Experts, however, were skeptical that Ottawas plan to stimulate the economy will have the desired effect on growth. It looks like a bit of a stretch, said Jean-Francois Perrault, Scotiabanks chief economist and a former senior Finance Department official under Morneau. Perrault, who was assistant deputy minister of economic and fiscal policy until the end of 2015, credited the governments decision to put more cash in the pockets of lower-income earners through changes to the federal child benefit plan. That demographic is more likely to spend the money, he said. Over the longer term, the governments pledge to launch transformative infrastructure projects could generate a significant positive impact on the economy, Perrault added. But the bulk of the Liberal infrastructure plan is only set to kick in after 2019 election year. Craig Alexander of the C.D. Howe Institute think tank, said he believes the government investments in areas like infrastructure will help the economy but probably not as much as Ottawa expects. Alexander expects the investments to only boost real GDP growth over the next two years by about 0.2 or 0.3 per cent. The real problem is the fact that the government doesnt have the money to pay for all the new initiatives, said Alexander, referring to the string of projected deficits. The cautionary note is the fact that once youre running deficits its very easy for them to run larger than you anticipate. *The Liberal plan will raise public debt by more than $110 billion between 2015-16 and 2020-21, he added. The budget confirmed that government is on track to break their three major fiscal targets that helped them win the October election. The Liberals vowed to balance the books by 2019-20 a promise Prime Minister Justin Trudeau insisted in December was very cast in stone. They also vowed to lower the countrys net debt-to-GDP ratio in each year of their mandate to 27 per cent. The ratio, also known as the debt burden, represents a governments capacity to pay back debt. On Tuesday, Morneau said the government would only lower the ratio over the course of the mandate. It is not projected to fall to 27 per cent. During the campaign, Trudeau also pledged to respect a $10-billion upper limit for annual deficits unless the economic situation got radically worse. The economy dipped in the first few months that followed the election, but recent data suggest overall conditions have improved since the start of 2016. The opposition Conservatives have repeatedly criticized the government for planning to drive Canadians deeper into debt, even though the country is not in recession. The Tories insist they left the Liberals with a surplus in 2015-16, but Tuesdays budget says the final figure will be a $5.4-billion shortfall. Follow @AndyBlatchford on Twitter Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 22/03/2016 (2405 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. TORONTO Canadian film star Ellen Page says shes happier and more creatively inspired than shes ever been since announcing two years ago that she is a lesbian. And so shes putting herself front and centre with her latest passion project, Gaycation. The Viceland travelogue follows Page and her pal Ian Daniel as they explore LGBTQ cultures around the world, examining the discrimination, and even death, people face if they reveal themselves to be lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans or questioning. Actress Ellen Page poses at the premiere of "Tallulah" during the 2016 Sundance Film Festival on Saturday, Jan. 23, 2016, in Park City, Utah. Page says she's happier and more creatively inspired than she's ever been since announcing two years ago that she is a lesbian.THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-Photo by Danny Moloshok/Invision/AP Im producing movies and telling stories that I want to tell, Page says of this new phase of her career, which includes producing as well as starring in last years lesbian drama Freeheld and the upcoming survival tale Into the Forest. Being closeted hurt my career way more in my opinion, because I was not happy and I was not inspired and I wasnt really enjoying my job anymore, says the Halifax-bred Page in a recent interview. For me, it became way more important to get to live my life and be my authentic self more so than being in the movies, quite frankly. And so right now thats what Im focusing on, Im focusing (on being) the happiest in my life and in my work than Ive ever been. In Gaycation, Page says shes more than just a talking head shes part of the team hashing out which countries to visit, which issues to delve into, and how to frame the stories they discover. The 29-year-old Juno star says she was most surprised to learn about LGBTQ issues in Brazil, which she assumed would be more welcoming because of its relatively progressive image. While there, Page and Daniel party in the streets of a gay-friendly slum, but later they meet a former cop who plainly states that he has murdered LGBT people. You have Carnival it celebrates sexuality and identity and there are so many trans dancers and the year that we were there there was a float specifically celebrating sexual identity, says Page, who told the world she was gay while speaking at a human rights youth conference in 2014. But (Brazil) has the highest rate of LGBTQ murders in the world. The fourth instalment of Gaycation focuses on the United States but part of the episode involves a First Nations gathering in Saskatchewan, Page points out. That episode airs Wednesday on Viceland. Already have an account? Log in here SHAWNIGAN LAKE, B.C. - Residents around Shawnigan Lake on southern Vancouver Island are celebrating a court victory halting work at a quarry that accepts contaminated soil. 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 22/03/2016 (2405 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. It took a year and nearly $250,000 of taxpayers money, but Killarney-Turtle Mountain Mayor Rick Pauls finally believes the community has a long-term solution to its doctor shortage woes. Speaking on behalf of a 15-member doctor recruitment committee, Pauls said the community reached out to a Winnipeg firm that specializes in headhunting professionals approximately a year ago. Those consultations netted two doctors willing to practise in Killarney. Dr. Mark Bemment As a council, its the easiest $250,000 weve ever spent, Pauls said. We wanted to recruit community-specific doctors, and people believe its money well spent. Killarney currently has four doctors who equate to 3.5 positions at the Tri-Lake Health Centre. The facility, one of the largest in the region, is allocated 5.5 positions from Prairie Mountain Health. The new doctors Dr. Kate Roche, from Ireland, and Dr. Mark Bemment, from England will bring Killarney up to a full complement. We shouldnt see a disruption of service for a number of years, Pauls said, referencing a number of emergency room closures that have plagued Westman communities, including Killarney, over the past decade. Pauls said being able to have a full slate of doctors was a critical component in the doctors decisions to come to Killarney. In the past, workload was cited as one of the most common reasons doctors choose to leave small communities, according to PMH management. In extreme cases, two or three doctors have been asked to keep ER services open in a community, leading to burnout. Pauls said quality of life was the driving factor behind the doctors decisions to come to Killarney knowing there will be a one-and-five rotation in the ER, and that the workload will be spread around. A one-and-five rotation in rural hospitals equates to covering one week of ER services, which are open 24-7, every five weeks. Pauls said maintaining a reasonable rotation is critical to not only attracting new doctors, but retaining the doctors the health region already employs in the community. The biggest reason for optimism, however, is that these doctors were headhunted specifically for Killarney, according to Pauls. These are doctors who were not looking to leave their positions overseas, Pauls said. They werent handing out job applications or job hunting. We approached them with an opportunity. Pauls said the recruiting agency contacted several doctors practising in the United Kingdom. Ten candidates were selected and proposed to Killarney stakeholders. Many of the doctors in the first group, however, were people who moved to the U.K. to practise, something that set off red flags for the group. There was some concern from committee members that if these people were willing to relocate once, that Killarney would only serve as another stepping stone to another facility, possibly a bigger centre. Its not uncommon for international medical graduates who sign four-year terms in small Manitoba communities to leave once their service agreements are fulfilled. Often, they leave for larger communities, where they may already have family. Pauls said the firm went back to the drawing board and found 10 additional candidates. From that group, two were selected. Rick Pauls In January, Killarney approved funds to fly Bemment to Killarney. One month later, Roche jumped the pond for a visit. Pauls said community members toured them around town during their week-long stay, took them ice fishing and showed them the facilities where they would be practising. We tried to show them the good, the bad and the ugly, Pauls said. We wanted them to make informed decisions, and we dont want them to think its all roses here. Were not a perfect community. PMH CEO Penny Gilson said the practice of communities recruiting doctors is longstanding in the area. Its been happening ever since Ive been in health care in rural Manitoba, Gilson said. Sometimes its a community that sells the community we can sell the job. At the moment, PMH is advertising for family physicians in several communities, including Birtle, Carberry, Deloraine, Glenboro, Grandview, Hamiota, Melita, Minnedosa, Roblin, Shoal Lake and Souris. Gilson said Killarney isnt jumping the queue by recruiting more independently. She said PMH management will pay close attention to how successful Killarneys recruitment program is at retaining the pair compared to the success rate of international medical graduates. The health region is stepping up to cover relocation fees, as well as immigration and licensing costs for the doctors to the same degree it does for IMGs. In Pauls mind, theres no question that the community has a better chance of retaining the new doctors past their four-year contract for one simple reason. Theyre not looking to come to Canada to be a doctor. They are looking to come to Killarney to be a doctor, so were fairly confident they will be here long term, Pauls said. ctweed@brandonsun.com Twitter: @CharlesTweed Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 22/03/2016 (2405 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. WINNIPEG An isolated reserve under one of Canadas longest boil-water advisories is looking for more money to build an all-weather road which advocates say will save lives while correcting a historical wrong. Shoal Lake 40 First Nation, on the Manitoba-Ontario boundary, was cut off a century ago during construction of an aqueduct which carries fresh water to Winnipeg. Surveyors said at the time that the land was largely uninhabited with the exception of a few Indians. While water continues to flow to the Manitoba capital, the reserve of several hundred people has been under a boil-water advisory for 18 years. A water treatment plant is prohibitively expensive without a road to transport construction material and supplies. A boy from the Shoal Lake 40 First Nation sits on a bridge over a channel on on Thursday, June 25, 2015. An isolated reserve under one of Canada's longest boil-water advisories is looking for more money to build an all-weather road. THE CANADIAN PRESS/John Woods Residents use an aging ferry to get to the reserve in the summer and a treacherous ice road in the winter. People have died falling through the ice. All three levels of government announced in December that they would share the cost of construction by chipping in $10 million each. It was originally estimated to cost $30 million to build a permanent road dubbed Freedom Road by residents but that has been revised to $46 million after a detailed design study. Were not at all surprised that the price is different than people thought it might be in 2011, said Ernie Gilroy, head of the East Side Road Authority which is overseeing construction. This is the Precambrian shield here Its tough terrain. Gilroy said the study determined the road needs a tougher rock base. The bridges being constructed by the city of Winnipeg have also tripled in price, he said. Only the provincial government has confirmed it will cover the increased cost. Premier Greg Selinger said Manitoba has enough money in its infrastructure budget to chip in another $5.5 million. Weve always said were in for a third, Selinger said Tuesday. Its a simple matter of justice for those people to have access in and out of their community. Then they can start improving the quality of their water. We have to rectify that situation. Advocates asked Winnipeg city council to boost its contribution to $15.5 million as well. Shoal Lake 40 resident Sharon Redsky said the community has suffered enough. Its going to save lives, she told councillors on Tuesday. Nine people have lost their lives in Shoal Lake just trying to get home. I think its really important that we tell the families that their lives werent lost for no reason. Chuck Wright of the Friends of Shoal Lake 40 travelled recently with many city councillors to the reserve to see the predicament first-hand. Its time for the city to do the right thing, he said. Many of us in Winnipeg see this as a symbolic road to reconciliation, Wright told council. Its a first step to righting those wrongs that have historically happened. Mayor Brian Bowman, noting the federal government is still working with the $30-million figure, said extra cash will not be allocated in this years city budget. But Winnipeg is committed to the road and will see it built, he said. Make no mistake about it, the commitment and the leadership has been there and will continue to be there to ensure that we get the job done. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 22/03/2016 (2405 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. OTTAWA Almost 119,000 families who are living on the street or on the verge of becoming homeless could find themselves with new or refurbished affordable housing units promised in the federal budget released Tuesday. The document also proposed changes to employment insurance, to make it easier to qualify and to extend benefits in areas hard-hit by job losses. The budget sets aside $2.3 billion over two years for affordable housing, including doubling spending on a federal affordable housing program and adding $111.8 million to help 61 cities tackle the ongoing challenge of homelessness. Minister of Finance Bill Morneau delivers the federal budget in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Tuesday, March 22, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld Included in that amount will be about $200 million over two years to repair and build affordable housing units for more than 5,000 low-income seniors and $739 million over the same time for housing for First Nations, Inuit and northern communities. Many of the 570,000 units of social housing the government funds across Canada arent energy or water efficient, or are in dire need of repair. Anti-poverty advocates and housing providers had asked the government for much more $3.2 billion to renovate old units and build 100,000 new units nationwide to aid the estimated 200,000 people who experience homelessness annually and reverse years of declines in federal spending on affordable housing. All Canadians need and deserve housing that is safe, adequate and affordable, the budget document says. Without it, Canadians feel less secure and that makes it harder to accomplish every other goal from raising healthy children to pursuing education, jobs and opportunity. When affordable housing is in short supply, Canadas whole economy suffers. The budget also sets aside $89.9 million over two years to create or renovate more than 3,000 shelter spaces for women escaping domestic violence that are either in short supply or non-existent in many communities. The money is part of a larger push by the government to tackle a number of social issues, including growing student debt, joblessness in hard hit, resource-rich regions of the country and the cost of child care. The government banked $500 million for child care next year as incentive to the provinces to join a proposed national child-care system. The government has for months been pushed to extend EI benefits for workers in provinces like Newfoundland and Labrador, Alberta and Saskatchewan and cities like Sudbury, Saskatoon and Calgary, who are about to see their benefits run out. The government says it will add five weeks to the regular benefits those workers receive, effective this July but retroactive to January 2015, costing federal coffers $405 million this year and $177 million next year. Long-tenured workers in the 12 regions identified in the budget could also see an extra 20 weeks of benefits, to a maximum of 70 weeks again, starting this July but retroactive to January of last year. The move is designed to help laid-off workers while they search for work, possibly in an entirely different industry. Hassan Yussuff, president of the Canadian Labour Congress, said older workers have harder times finding new jobs. He said while he would have preferred more uniform national measures, hes pleased to see the government recognize the difficulties those workers face in a sometimes turbulent job market. He said overall, the employment insurance changes in the budget were very much in line with what the Canadian Labour Congress has pushed for. The budget also halves the two-week waiting period for benefits starting next year and adds $19 million to speed up processing of benefit applications and $73 million over two years to hire more people at call centres Students will find more money through non-repayable grants, with $684 million banked over the next two years to increase federal support to almost 100,000 middle income students, about 247,000 low-income students and 16,000 part-time students. Student groups said the extra grant money would be helpful for students, as would broadening eligibility for federal help with student loans, but it was only part of a much larger promise Liberals made to students in the election. We need a national vision where students from British Columbia to P.E.I. and everywhere in between are able to access post-secondary education, said Bilan Arte, national chairwoman of the Canadian Federation of Students. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 22/03/2016 (2405 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. OTTAWA The federal government is launching its ambitious plan to revamp and restore Canadas infrastructure with a lot less money than it originally promised, but is willing to pick up more of the tab for cities and provinces. During the election campaign, the Liberals said they would add just over $5 billion in new infrastructure spending this year and a further $5 billion next year. The federal budget tabled Tuesday, however, shows that in the first year of the plan, the government will spend just $2.7 billion on green infrastructure such as water treatment plants and social infrastructure like seniors homes and public transit. Minister of Finance Bill Morneau delivers the federal budget in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Tuesday, March 22, 2016. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld The money is part of the first phase of the Liberal spending program. The budget says the two-year, short-term plan will target the countrys aging, crumbling infrastructure and help protect it from the effects of climate change, such as flooding in western Canada. Over this year and next, the government will spend about $6.8 billion more than whats already on the books for federal infrastructure spending. Budget documents show most of the spending in the Liberals infrastructure plan will occur after 2019, when the next federal election is scheduled to take place. That is part of phase two that the budget says will be broader and more ambitious by targeting large-scale projects that often take years to plan and start construction. Investing in infrastructure is not just about creating good jobs and economic growth, the budget document reads. Its also about building communities that Canadians are proud to call home. The Liberal infrastructure plan was a cornerstone of the governments election platform that promised economic spinoffs from each infrastructure dollar spent. The budget lays out how the money will head to provinces and cities that have lobbied the Liberals for more targeted funding with fewer strings attached. Raymond Louie, president of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities said details about spending requirements will be worked out in the coming months. He said there are a number of projects across the country that just need federal cash to get started like transit infrastructure that is in need of refurbishment and affordable housing in Canadas largest cities. Jeanette Southwood, a vice-president with Engineers Canada, pointed to a small hiccup in getting projects started: The numbers are telling us that we dont have enough engineers in the country right now. The budget shows that the government plans to cover up to half the cost of public transit projects and work on water and wastewater systems like pipes and treatment plants, evidence that the traditional funding model where cities, provinces and Ottawa each cover one-third of costs is at an end. This is a tremendous change in policy by the federal government, Louie said. The federal government has no control over when those projects take place, which often means that money trickles out. There is still about $9 billion left in the governments premier infrastructure fund that the previous Conservative government started and the budget says the Liberals plan to speed up money destined for provinces and territories under the New Building Canada Fund. The Liberals promised to give any leftover money from their new infrastructure program directly to cities through the gas tax fund, a portion of revenues from gasoline sales thats earmarked for infrastructure improvements. For a start, the budget indicates, the government will put about $262 million in new money over the next two years into the gas tax fund from older infrastructure programs that are coming to a close with little possibility of spending the remaining cash they hold. With files from Murray Brewster Already have an account? Log in here SELKIRK, Man. - Manitoba Progressive Conservatives say a Tory government would work to find ways to keep more doctors from leaving the province. 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 22/03/2016 (2405 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. BRUSSELS Quebec actress Salome Corbo was checking in at the Air Canada counter when the first blast rocked Brussels airport in Tuesdays terror attacks that killed dozens in the Belgian capital. In the ensuing chaos as she fled, Corbo says she came close to where the second explosion went off. It was very spectacular, she told Cogeco Nouvelles. I was right near the second blast. I heard the first one, quickly tried to get away and the second one was nearby, right near me. Ive had this buzzing in my ear I cant get rid of. Police patrol near ambulances at a staging station near a metro after an explosion in Brussels on Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, rocked the Brussels airport and subway system Tuesday, prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe. At least 26 people were reported dead. (AP Photo/Virginia Mayo) The attacks at the citys airport and subway together killed at least 31 people and wounded 187 others. Corbo, one of many Canadians caught up in the maelstrom, said she immediately realized it was a terrorist attack. Were in Europe and it took a fraction of a second to come to terms with what had happened. A first explosion, you move. A second, its obvious its that (an attack) and you hurry up. Ottawa native Thorfinn Stainforth said he was in a taxi approaching the terminal when his driver got a message from a dispatcher advising of a bomb alert at the airport. They kept going, but then emergency crews began arriving in droves and they pulled over as traffic snarled. We didnt see any smoke, we didnt see any panicked people, we just saw a lot of security cars and people everywhere, said Stainforth. If we had been probably 10 minutes earlier we would have been exactly where the bombing was. From that sense I fell pretty shaken up, but pretty lucky. Canadian Michelle Betz, who flew in to the airport about an hour before the first bombing there, said she passed Maelbeek subway station, which was also attacked, in a cab en route to her hotel. So just missed that one as well, thank goodness, she said. Betz, who helps develop independent media around the world, said she found the experience disconcerting despite the fact that she often travels to conflict zones. I am kind of used to a certain amount of disarray and crazy things going on and expect that in most of the places I go to, but did not expect that here in Brussels at all, she said. The mayor of a Quebec town who was also in Brussels on Tuesday said he heard sirens of emergency vehicles blare for hours as the Belgian capital became a paralyzed city. Drummondville Mayor Alexandre Cusson and a colleague were headed to the Belgian federal parliament for meetings. We were at the hotel around 8:30 a.m. when we were informed about what happened, he told The Canadian Press. The area became very busy and we heard the sounds of sirens and emergency vehicles for hours. Since then the public transport system, trains, buses, metro and the airport nothing has been working. People are waiting hours to get taxis. Its a paralyzed city. Cusson said officials from Quebecs government office in Brussels contacted them to make sure they were safe. They strongly suggested we stay at the hotel all day, he said. So all of our meetings today were cancelled. Michel Audet, Quebecs delegate-general in Brussels, said his employees were on their way to the office when the attacks occurred. I had to do a head count and went about tracking down those who werent there, he said in an interview. Quebecs delegation office is a short walk from Maelbeek station. Audet said there will definitely be fallout from the attacks. Today, were in crisis-management mode, looking after victims and making sure people are OK but there will need to be psychological healing, he said. This is a major emotional shock for many people. They will have to learn to take public transit, the metro, again. Lee Rosky, of Halifax, athletic director at the International School of Brussels, has lived in the city with his wife and two children for three years. One of our alumni and a fairly prominent person in our community has actually become the poster boy for this thing, he said. He was pretty severely injured (at the airport) and his picture popped up fairly quickly, which kind of hit home fast. With files from Magdaline Boutros in Montreal and Keith Doucette in Halifax Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 22/03/2016 (2405 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. WINNIPEG Several Winnipeg high schools have cancelled European trips and others are considering their options after deadly attacks in Belgium. Students from College Jeanne-Sauve in the Louis Riel School Division and from Oak Park in the Pembina Trails division were supposed to leave for trips Tuesday, but both were called off. And all Europe-bound trips were halted for students in the St. James-Assiniboia School Division, which is working with its tour operator to ensure the safe return for students, staff and chaperones already overseas. Louis Riel Supt. Duane Brothers said parents agreed with officials that a trip to Brussels and Paris should be cancelled. Students at Oak Park were supposed to fly into Brussels on Tuesday night and then bus to France. Air Canada offered to fly them directly to Paris, but it was decided to cancel altogether. Student safety is first and foremost in our minds right now, said Pembina Trails Supt. Ted Fransen. Brothers acknowledged its disappointing for students to see their plans cancelled. I imagine people for the last week have had things packed and were looking at their itineraries and lots of excitement, he said. But my understanding from high school administration is their communication with parents was there was a high level of concurrence that this was the right thing to do. (CJOB) Already have an account? Log in here WINNIPEG - Manitoba NDP Leader Greg Selinger is promising more money for the environment and defending the cost of his election campaign commitments. 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 22/03/2016 (2405 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. TORONTO More than a month after the sexual assault trial of Jian Ghomeshi captured the countrys attention, the spotlight is set to fall once again on the disgraced broadcaster and his accusers as an Ontario judge delivers his decision this week. Regardless of the outcome, a number of observers believe Ghomeshis case has already had an impact on the reporting of sexual assaults and the publics understanding of how they are prosecuted. People were talking about something quite serious that our society needs to learn more about, said Constance Backhouse, a University of Ottawa law professor who researches sexual assault legislation. Its really important to have conversations to discuss issues of sexual assault, consent, the role of the criminal law in assessing this Here we brought all of these things to the fore. Jian Ghomeshi is escorted by police out of court past members of the media in Toronto on November 26, 2014. More than a month after the sexual assault trial of Jian Ghomeshi captured the country's attention, the spotlight is set to fall once again on the disgraced broadcaster and his accusers as an Ontario judge delivers his decision this week. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darren Calabrese Ghomeshi the once popular host of CBC Radios Q pleaded not guilty to four counts of sexual assault and one count of overcoming resistance by choking. He didnt testify in his own defence, leaving the bulk of evidence at the trial to come from the three women whose allegations formed the bedrock of the case. The first complainant testified that Ghomeshi suddenly yanked on her hair when they were kissing in his car in late 2002. A few days later, she said he abruptly pulled her hair while they were kissing in his home and started punching her in the head. The second complainant, actress Lucy DeCoutere the only woman who can be identified in the case testified Ghomeshi suddenly pushed her against a wall, started choking her and slapped her face when they were kissing in his bedroom in the summer of 2003. The third woman testified that while kissing Ghomeshi on a park bench in 2003, he suddenly bit her shoulder and started squeezing her neck. Each woman had her testimony methodically dissected by Ghomeshis high-profile defence lawyer, Marie Henein, who ultimately accused all three of lying under oath. While Heneins cross-examination led to some dramatic moments, most observers agreed she was going about her job without fault. Within the parameters of our existing law, her cross-examination was an excellent one, said Backhouse. The parameters of our existing law, our presumptions and our focus on women as false testifiers, do I think thats fair? No, I dont. But within the parameters of the law Im not going to fault Henein. With the first complainant, Henein produced friendly emails, including one with a bikini photo that the woman sent to Ghomeshi after the alleged assaults, asking the broadcaster to contact her. The woman said she didnt remember the emails when she spoke to police, but said she sent them as bait so she could confront Ghomeshi about the alleged assaults. In DeCouteres case, Henein showed the court an email DeCoutere sent Ghomeshi hours after the alleged incident in which she expressed a desire to have sex with him. Henein also produced a hand-written letter the actress sent him days later that ended with the words: I love your hands. DeCoutere emphasized the correspondence didnt mean the alleged assaults didnt happen. The third complainant acknowledged she deliberately misled investigators by not initially telling them she had a sexual encounter with Ghomeshi a few days after the alleged assault. She said she was embarrassed and didnt think it was relevant, but told police about it days before she testified. Henein also revealed that the third woman and DeCoutere exchanged thousands of messages in which they discussed their allegations and their shared contempt for Ghomeshi. The reams of correspondence between the third complainant and DeCoutere in particular appeared to undermine the prosecutions case, one legal observer said. The independence of witnesses is paramount in any trial, and Lucy and the other complainant, by them speaking so much and the sort of gratuitous comments like we got him, takes away the legitimacy of the allegations, said lawyer Marcy Segal. There should never be collusion. There did not need to be that type of in-depth communication between them. Segal also warned against concluding that Crown prosecutors failed to adequately prepare for the case as much of the complainants post-alleged-assault contact with Ghomeshi was only revealed once the trial had begun. The expectations of the public towards the Crown, in my view, were unfair, she said, noting that the legal system in general could improve to better prepare complainants for whats expected of them and could move to require police to check in with complainants about a month before trials. For those who routinely deal with victims of sexual assault, however, the trial with its intense scrutiny on the women was seen as one which will deter future complainants from coming forward. Its going to make women feel even more reluctant than they already feel about reporting to police or proceeding to a criminal trial and thats unfortunate because in our society, the ultimate accountability for this kind of behaviour is to be found through the criminal law, said Pamela Cross, legal director at Lukes Place Support and Resource Centre for Women. The present criminal process is not appropriate for cases of sexual assault. Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 22/03/2016 (2405 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. OTTAWA Some of what was said Tuesday about the federal budget tabled in the House of Commons by Finance Minister Bill Morneau: Today, we begin to restore hope for the middle class. Opening line of Morneaus speech. ___ The fate of the middle class and the fate of the country as a whole are one. Canada will not prosper if the middle class doesnt prosper. Morneau. ___ This budget is a nightmare scenario for taxpayers who will be forced to pick up the tab for todays Liberal spending spree. interim Conservative leader Rona Ambrose. ___ This budget puts taxpayers on the hook for out-of-control Liberal spending that will lead to more waste and mismanagement. Ambrose. ___ Families across Canada are worried about their jobs and struggling to make ends meet but todays budget told them they would have to wait longer for help. NDP Leader Tom Mulcair. ___ The government missed an opportunity today to really deliver change. Mulcair. ___ We are disappointed that there were no changes made to the Automotive Investment Fund, beyond extending it another three years, and no mention of the vital aerospace industry beyond the space program. Jerry Dias, national president, Unifor. ___ The government must focus on the projects that will benefit Canadas economy the most: trade-enabling infrastructure, urban infrastructure and measures to support our resource and manufacturing sectors. Perrin Beatty, president, Canadian Chamber of Commerce. ___ In its platform, in a written letter to CFIB members and in campaign stops across the country, the new government promised to reduce the small business corporate tax rate to nine per cent by 2019. That promise was broken today as it announced the rate will remain at 10.5 per cent after 2016. Dan Kelly, president of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. ___ We are pleased the government has taken a careful and measured approach to infrastructure spending. Spending will be staggered over ten years, with the lions share of spending back-ended to allow sufficient time for planning and consultation. Ian Russell, president and CEO of the Investment Industry Association of Canada. ___ The increase of $256 million over two years to the international assistance envelope is a step in the right direction. The government must ensure that every dollar committed truly is spent. Gillian Barth, president and CEO, CARE Canada. ___ Now come the next big steps. Replacing the Conservative-appointed CBC board that presided over the devastating cuts to our public broadcaster, and developing a new vision that sees the CBC as a public trust, not just a business. Martin OHanlon, president of media union CWA Canada. ___ Students became a powerful political force during the last election, and the promises made and delivered to us in this budget are proof of that. Bilan Arte, national chairperson, Canadian Federation of Students. ___ I want to congratulate our federal partners for their bold vision for the future of our country. Working together, we will create jobs, give people affordable housing, improve transit, and protect the air we breathe and the water we drink. Raymond Louie, president, Federation of Canadian Municipalities. ___ The government has clearly recognized the need to make substantial investments in the conservation of special areas on land and in the ocean. We welcome the significant funding of $123.7 million for new national parks and marine protected areas. Eric Hebert-Daly, national executive director, Canadian Parks and Wilderness Society. ___ If this government held a contest to pick a title for this budget, the winner would probably be Spendy McDebtface.' Aaron Wudrick, federal director, Canadian Taxpayers Federation. ___ Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 22/03/2016 (2405 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. The Brandon Sun editorial, Stop Ignoring Plight Of First Nations (March 11) ended as follows, That any of our citizens live in Third World conditions is disgraceful and all the more so if we turn a blind eye to it. The Brandon Sun is being kind to us. Our behaviour toward First Nations peoples might be excused if it is a matter of ignoring or being ignorant of the plight of First Nations peoples. But we cannot make that claim. We are all too familiar with their plight. And we respond to their plight poverty, unemployment, violence, dysfunctional families, poorly educated with racism and bigotry. Firm in our beliefs that First Nations peoples are the cause of their own circumstances. Archeological findings prove their remarkable history in (what we call) Canada goes back tens of thousands of years a reality that First Nations peoples have always known to be true. They constructed and maintained civilizations defined through their spiritualities, economies, justice systems, languages, governing structures, civil structures, rules that survive (where they are allowed to survive) to this day. Adaptation would have been a key feature of these civilizations to survive and thrive through tens of thousands of years. Within our history, the First Nations peoples proved themselves able to adapt to significant challenges that came with the arrival of explorers, missionaries, traders, settlers. They created significant relationships with these people, our forefathers. Helping settlers to survive a strange and (for them) harsh world. Forming economic alliances among themselves and with European businesses. Sharing with newcomers their knowledge of the land and its resources. The treaties that the First Nations peoples entered into with the British and Canadian governments were instruments that formalized their attitude of sharing and adapting. Of particular note, First Nations peoples negotiated the inclusion of support with respect to education, health, housing and agriculture. The history of these treaty negotiations make it clear that the First Nations peoples knew that their lives would be changing forever and, in order to survive, they would need to learn new ways. What First Nations peoples did not expect is the intent of our forefathers to rid themselves of the Indian problem. Reserves were created as virtually nothing other than holding pens for First Nations peoples. Government-hired Indian agents controlled the lives of these peoples. Their spiritual, cultural and social practices were forbidden. Travel outside the reserve required approval. Reserves adjacent to communities that grew to exceed a specified size were removed. Foreign systems of justice, organization, culture and spirituality were imposed. Where First Nations peoples became successful farmers, local farmers successfully lobbied the federal government to forbid First Nations farmers to sell their produce outside the boundaries of their respective reserves. Farm equipment dealers who engaged in commerce with successful First Nations farmers were told to stop. Children (ages five years and up) were rounded up to attend residential schools. Here they were taught the shamefulness of being Indian. They were taught that the proper skills for raising children and socializing included: punishment, ridicule, as well as sexual, physical, emotional and psychological abuse. They were taught to be wary of and resist attempts by their parents to radicalize them to Indian ways when they returned home at school breaks. Today, reserve boundaries have been replaced with boundaries around ourselves, our communities. First Nations business is not always welcome. The resource industry working in the backyards of First Nations communities are slowly, ever so slowly, offering inclusion. Through devolution of governmental programs, we have left First Nations communities to administer their own misery deliberately underfunding them and then accusing them of mismanaging their affairs. In a perverse way, we can say that First Nations peoples adapted to this new way of living. This we now recognize as the plight of First Nations peoples. And in a perverse way, we blame them for their plight. What must be respected and admired is that through it all the spirit and pride of First Nations peoples has survived. Through it all, the First Nations peoples have never given up trust and hope in, for them, the sacredness of the treaties. The sacred idea of the living together of two cultures in mutual respect, support, harmony and sharing. It is beyond time for us to be the other party to the treaty that the First Nations peoples thought we were and would be and still believe that we can be. Rosemarie and Chester Letkeman Brandon Opinion Hey there, time traveller! This article was published 22/03/2016 (2405 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current. Universities are places where debate is open and encouraged thats academic life, thats the lifeblood of debate and engagement that we live on here and that we try to convey to our students. Steve Robinson, Brandon Universitys acting vice-president academic and provost The initially sunny burst of community optimism that greeted the announcement of a joint business school in Brandon by BU president Gervan Fearon and Assiniboine Community College president Mark Frison last November is slowly being overshadowed by a growing storm of internal controversy at BU. Last week, the Sun received several leaked documents that suggest a backlash against the proposal by faculty and department leaders, including Heather Gillander, the universitys business administration chair. As we reported yesterday, a memo written by Gillander and addressed to Fearon on Feb. 12 advises the proposal is significantly different than the one originally presented to her department in September 2015. The initial proposal apparently received majority support from the business administration department. As such, Gillander wrote that a majority of the departments faculty members voted not to participate in the joint program as currently described. There are apparently several points in dispute as the proposal currently stands. Gillander also noted in her memo to Fearon that the concept currently being discussed is not a new, innovative program and will ultimately reduce pathways for students, and in the departments opinion, will reduce the number of students taking a business program in Brandon. Her report also accuses Frison of making demands upon the university, stating that the deal wont go forward unless students spend the first two years of the four-year program at ACC an assertion Frison says is based on a misunderstanding of the dialogue between the two institutions. At the same time, Gillander suggests the university will sustain a net loss from both the transfer fo students with ACC and from the MBA program, with the university losing about $100,000 in 2021-22. There is no financial benefit to the university from the joint program, Gillander wrote. The current business school proposal has already received affirmation at the department level, BUs Arts Faculty Council, senate and board of governors. According to BU economics Prof. Joe Dolecki, who leaked the documents to the Sun last week, a motion moved by business administration Prof. Darek Klonowski to have the AFC withdraw its support of the joint business school failed by an 11-6 tally at a March 15 AFC meeting. A subsequent motion, moved by business administration Prof. Michael Malazdrewicz, proposed that the AFC reaffirm its support but also recommend that external assistance, as agreeable to the department, is offered to the department in planning its collaboration with ACC. Steve Robinson, as noted above, says these kinds of bumpy-road discussions and debates are to be expected when two entities come together in this kind of merger. But the fact remains that there seems to be a growing belief among affected faculty that the business school proposal is being rammed through without due diligence. And this needs to be addressed before the two institutions can move forward on a joint business school if they can agree to move forward at all. The hurdle here is obvious, though not insurmountable. The role of a community college that specializes in addressing skilled trade shortages in our province is quite different than the think-tank setting of a university discipline. The two cultures are unique and have at their core a different raison detre. And from these differences often arises a prejudice among university staff that the quality of education at a trade school is somehow lacking by comparison. And thats unfair. But if Gillander is right, and the proposed MBA program will actually grant a masters in accounting thus more skilled trade than academic concerned faculty members at BU may have a fair point. If the university and the college administrations are still intent upon holding a soft opening for the program this fall, there is very little time to change the programs direction. Perhaps both sides should slow down a bit and try to come to a better consensus of what this new business school should be. And if that takes an extra year, so be it. After all, its not in the communitys interest to see the proposal fail. The funeral for a prison officer murdered by dissident republicans in the North will take place in Belfast today. Family, friends and colleagues of 52-year-old Adrian Ismay will attend a service at a church off the city's Shankill Road. Mr Ismay, a married father-of-three, died 11 days after sustaining serious leg injuries in an under-vehicle bombing. As the funeral takes place in north Belfast, in the city centre a public vigil for the officer will be held outside City Hall. British and Irish government ministers will attend the funeral service at Woodvale Methodist Church, as will Stormont First Minister Arlene Foster. Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness will not be there. It is understood the family declined an offer from the Sinn Fein veteran to attend. A dissident republican group calling itself the New IRA, which opposes the Northern Ireland peace process, claimed to have carried out the attack on the long-serving officer. Police fear the bombing was part of a planned upsurge in dissident activity ahead of the symbolic republican centenary of the Easter Rising in Dublin. Mr Ismay had been released from hospital in the wake of the blast in east Belfast on March 4 and had reportedly been making good progress. But he died unexpectedly last Tuesday when a blood clot triggered a heart attack. The results of a post mortem led detectives to trigger a murder investigation. In the wake of Mr Ismay's death, a number of dissident republicans held in Maghaberry high security prison in Co Antrim reportedly celebrated by lighting cigars. A 45-year-old man from west Belfast has been remanded in custody charged with the murder. Mr Ismay worked at Hydebank Wood Young Offenders Centre in south Belfast where he trained new recruits to the Northern Ireland Prison Service (NIPS). All visits to Maghaberry and Hydebank Wood have been cancelled today to facilitate staff attending their murdered colleague's funeral. Two women have been arrested by gardai following searches targeting a crime gang in the south east. Officers say they recovered stolen property to the value of 75,000 following the searches in counties Waterford and Wexford. Communities across the North must stand together to reject the dark deeds of the dark men who murdered a prison officer, mourners at his funeral were told. Hundreds of family, friends and colleagues gathered in Belfast to say farewell to Adrian "Izzy" Ismay, a 52-year-old father of three who died after being injured in a dissident republican bomb attack. The president of the Methodist Church of Ireland, Rev Brian Anderson, told the congregation that the dark act which took Mr Ismay's life was in stark contrast to the light the Cumbrian-born man brought to so many. "In the darkest part of night, probably dressed in dark clothes, dark men did a dark, dark deed, bringing us to this place today, leading to the loss of Izzy, causing us to travel through the valley of the shadow of death," he said. Rev Anderson said the funeral provided a platform to send a strong message to those still intent on violence. "It gives me the opportunity to voice the opinion and the thoughts of the overwhelming number of people across our country to say we reject what you have done, we stand against what you have done, we want to build an inclusive peaceful society in Northern Ireland and your contribution to it we do not want," he said. "It's incumbent upon us as a society to ensure that those men who represent a time in our past don't get any fuel and we want them to go away and it's up to us at all levels of society to ensure we build a society that does not want them, does not need them and rejects them utterly." Mr Ismay served in the British Royal Navy, seeing action in the Falklands War, before joining the Northern Ireland Prison Service in 1987. Away from his job as a trainer of new recruits to the service, he was heavily involved in volunteering work with the Scouts, St John Ambulance and Community Rescue Service. He died 11 days after suffering serious leg injuries when a bomb exploded underneath his van as he drove to work from his east Belfast home. A dissident republican group calling itself the New IRA, which opposes the Northern Ireland peace process, claimed to have carried out the attack on the long-serving officer. As the funeral took place in Woodvale Methodist Church off the Shankill Road, hundreds gathered in Belfast city centre for a public vigil for the officer. A host of dignitaries joined Mr Ismay's wife, Sharon, and three daughters, Samantha, Sarah and Tori, at the funeral service. Northern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villiers, Stormont First Minister Arlene Foster and Justice Minister David Ford attended, as did Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Chief Constable George Hamilton and NI Prison Service director-general Sue McAllister. The Irish Government was represented by the Department of Justice's acting secretary- general, Noel Watters. Scores of prison officers from Northern Ireland attended, as did representatives from other prison services. Mr Ismay's Prison Service cap, gloves and medals were set on top of his coffin as family members carried it from the church. Police fear the bombing was part of a planned surge in dissident activity ahead of the centenary of the Easter Rising. Mr Ismay had been released from hospital in the wake of the blast in east Belfast on March 4 and had reportedly been making good progress. But he died unexpectedly last Tuesday when a blood clot triggered a heart attack. The results of a post-mortem examination led detectives to open a murder investigation. In the wake of Mr Ismay's death, a number of dissident republicans held in Maghaberry high-security prison in Co Antrim reportedly celebrated by lighting cigars. A 45-year-old man from west Belfast has been remanded in custody charged with the murder. Mr Ismay worked at Hydebank Wood Young Offenders Centre in south Belfast, where he trained new recruits to the Northern Ireland Prison Service (NIPS). All visits to Maghaberry and Hydebank Wood were cancelled today to allow staff to attend their colleague's funeral. The National Security Council are closely monitoring a small number of people in the wake of the terror attacks in Brussels. The Government said there is no specific information of any threat to the country from international terrorism but a similar indiscriminate atrocity is possible, although not likely. No Irish people were caught up in the bombs at Zaventem airport in the Belgian capital or on the city's Metro line near the European Union headquarters. The Dail held a minute's silence in memory of the victims as the death toll rose to at least 34 with more than 200 injured. Acting Taoiseach Enda Kenny said: "I understand from our ambassador in Brussels that, as far as we are aware, no Irish citizen has been involved here with the tragic circumstances. "But we can't be certain yet as to the full impact of what has happened." President Michael D Higgins told Belgium's King Philippe of the sympathy of the Irish people "at this most difficult time". "I am deeply saddened to learn of the attacks and the tragic loss of lives in Brussels today," he said. "These attacks strike at the fundamental right of all to live in peace. "These actions must not undermine the will of all Europeans to live and work together." President Higgins expressed his "sincerest condolences" to the families of all those bereaved and affected by the bombings. "All of our thoughts are with the people of Brussels at this time of tragedy," he added. Gardai are liaising with authorities in Brussels and elsewhere in relation to the attacks, along with the Department of Foreign Affairs. The Government said security chiefs were continuing to closely monitor a number of people based in Ireland "whose behaviour may be of concern". Stressing that there is no intelligence of an immediate or specific threat to Ireland from international terrorism, officials said: "We cannot consider that we are immune from the threat. It remains the case that an attack here is assessed as possible but not likely. "The level of threat is kept under constant review by An Garda Siochana and all appropriate measures will continue to be taken by the authorities here. "For obvious security reasons, we could not go into the details of the operational responses. All the agencies here co-operate closely in respect of any threats that are identified." The Government said the Gardai are co-operating very closely with its EU and other international security and intelligence counterparts in responding to terror threats. "The deplorable attacks in Brussels today have highlighted starkly once again the threat from international terrorism," it said. "There can never be any justification for such brutality. "Our thoughts are with the families and friends of all those who have lost their lives, and also with the injured and we hope for their speedy recovery. "Acts of violence like these are an attack on the democratic way of life that we in Ireland hold dear and the values that we share with our EU partners. Justice Minister Frances Fitzgerald said: "We have to bear in mind too that an attack on our European neighbours is an attack on us all." Ms Fitzgerald said the Brussels bombings are another "dreadful reminder of the savagery of terrorists who hold our values and democracy itself in deadly contempt". "We know from the dark history of this island that while, despite the best efforts of police and security services, terrorists can succeed from time to time in carrying out attacks, ultimately democracy and our values will prevail." Police in the North are appealing for witnesses following a shooting in Co Armagh yesterday. A man is reported to be in a stable condition in hospital, after being shot outside a school in Craigavon yesterday afternoon. Terrified children watched on as a man was shot multiple times outside St Brendan's Primary School in the Moyraverty area of the Co Armagh town. The victim, who is understood to be known to police, was targeted in a drive-by attack when a gunman opened fire from a passing car in Craigavon. The shooting took place at about 3pm as many pupils were leaving for the day. It is understood a number of children were boarding a nearby bus when the gunfire rang out. It is believed the man was there to pick up a child. Police said he was in a stable condition in hospital. Detectives believe a black BMW 525 Sport - reg JIG 8111 - which was found on fire in nearby Deramore Drive may be linked to the shooting. Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Chief Inspector Jon Burrows said: "The area was very busy and we believe a number of people may have witnessed this shooting. "We would ask anyone who has information to contact us as soon as possible so we can progress our investigation. "There are no words to describe the foolhardiness and complete disregard for the safety of the children and parents who were in the area at the time." Sinn Fein Assembly member for the area John O'Dowd condemned the attack. "This was a terrifying experience for pupils and staff at the school," he said. "Those who carried out this shooting showed absolutely no regard for the pupils, their parents, school staff and the wider community. "There can be no place for guns in our society. "I would encourage anyone with information on this shooting to bring it forward to the PSNI." SDLP Upper Bann MLA Dolores Kelly has called for the community to unite against violence. "All violence on our streets in unacceptable but this attack, outside a school while children were meeting their parents, was utterly deplorable," she said. "Those responsible showed a breathtaking recklessness with the safety of these children. "It is time now for people to step up to the mark and unite against those who want to return violence to our streets. This means more than simply denouncing it. It means co-operating with the police and coming forward with information that will help bring these criminals to justice." Trade union SIPTU has defended its decision to withdraw from DART discussions at the Workplace Relations Commissions. Management and unions had been due to attend talks tomorrow aimed at averting industrial action over a new 10 minute service due to come in on April 10. By Fiachra O Cionnaith, Political Reporter Ireland's political leaders have condemned the Brussels attacks in the strongest possible terms, saying they are an attempt to strike at the "very heart of the European Union" and to plant fear and racism in member nations. Party leaders from all sides of the political divide hit out at the "atrocities" during a Dail debate this morning which saw a minute's silence observed for those who have lost their lives in the terrorist attack. While confirming no Irish citizen is known to have died or been injured by the events in Belgium today, caretaker taoiseach Enda Kenny said the numbers who have lost their lives are "substantial" and that the incident must not be allowed to be repeated again. Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin supported to remarks, saying the bombings are "an attack on all of us" and "strike at the very heart of European people and the European Union". Condemning the terrorist attacks "in the strongest possible terms", Sinn Fein leader said there is a "deep sense of shock" over what happened, while leading Independent Alliance TD Shane Ross said he wanted to express "utter revulsion" over this morning's attacks - stressing Ireland must present a "united" position on the matter. Acting Tanaiste and Labour leader Joan Burton said the attacks are an "attempt to destroy our freedom" and that while they may "fly under the flag of religion they are political in nature". Underlining the need not to discriminate against sections of society over what has happened, Anti-Austerity Alliance-People before Profit TD Paul Murphy said "the purposes of the attacks would appear to be an attempt to divide people and creation a situation of racism" in western countries. Fine Gael MEP and director of elections Brian Hayes had earlier spoken to RTE radio from the European parliament in Brussels, saying officials have been "told to stay indoors, we'll be here for the foreseeable future". In a statement, Foreign Affairs Minister Charlie Flanagan said the attacks must be condemned and urged Irish citizens in Belgian to take the necessary precautions. "I am horrified by reports of multiple explosions in Brussels, Belgium, and my thoughts are with those affected. "The consular section of my department, in conjunction with our embassy in Belgium, are working with the local authorities. "Anyone with concerns for family and friends can contact the consular division of my department on +353 1 418 0200. "Any Irish citizens in Brussels or Belgium should exercise caution and closely follow the instructions of local authorities," he said, adding his department "will be updating our guidance as this situation unfolds". Two men have been arrested after a robbery in west Dublin yesterday afternoon. A man sitting in a van outside a supermarket in Balgaddy, Lucan, was approached by two men who produced a suspected firearm and demanded cash at around 2pm. They left the scene in a Ford Mondeo Car, which was abandoned on Esker Lane a short time later. Gardai carried out a search of the area and two men were arrested. They are currently being detained at Lucan Garda station. Gardai have they recovered the proceeds of the robbery, as well as a suspected firearm. Dozens of families are protesting in Dublin over eviction notices they have been served in Tyrellstown. Around 40 tenants in the Cruise Park estate have been told their leases are being terminated, after loans attached to the properties were sold. Leighton Aspell "would not want to swap" Many Clouds as the rider prepares to make history with a third successive win in the Crabbie's Grand National. Triumphant on Pineau De Re in 2014, Aspell partnered the Oliver Sherwood-trained Many Clouds to victory 12 months ago and the combination are favourites to become the first since Red Rum to land back-to-back runnings of the Aintree spectacular. His form was given a major boost when Don Poli was third in the Cheltenham Gold Cup, with Many Clouds having been a four-length second to Willie Mullins' runner at Aintree in December when conceding 5lb to the Irish ace. Many Clouds was last seen enjoying the perfect prep race at Kelso, and Aspell said: "Oliver has done a great job of training Many Clouds this year. Many Clouds gave 10lb to Cue Card at Wetherby (Charlie Hall Chase) but went there seriously under-cooked and it was a bit of a blip. "But then to be second to Don Poli, giving 5lb, was a good run and then it was a really good performance against Smad Place - they pulled clear - in the BetBright Chase at Cheltenham and a lovely run around Kelso nine days ago was perfect. "Many Clouds has always been a very good jumper but it was great to feel the enthusiasm and energy he had at Kelso. "You don't have to school him very often - he is very, very good - you just give him a pop a few days before he runs. I am sure Oliver is just freshening him up right now. The next week and the following week, we will do something more serious and get him spot on. "I am not a bit worried about the weight or Many Clouds' condition, he is really tip-top, but at the moment it looks a very strong race. I would not want to swap him." Speaking at an Aintree media lunch, Aspell added: "I'm blessed to have won two Nationals. Aspell on Pineau De Re in 2014. "The first year was a complete shock (in winning the race) and I didn't know how to react. "Last year, I was in front from three out and though you are screaming for the line, by the time you get there, it is just a release of emotion. "Winning the National twice has not changed me but it has changed my life. It has raised my profile and is a big icebreaker - helping me with some better rides on Saturdays." Don Poli was the most high-profile withdrawal following the latest acceptance stage, with 96 horses still in the reckoning. Other notable performers taken out include Valseur Lido, Foxrock, Sam Winner, Lord Windermere, Long Run and Shotgun Paddy. US President Barack Obama has said the terror attacks in Brussels are a reminder of the need to unite "in fighting against the scourge of terrorism". Mr Obama, speaking while on a historic visit to Cuba, sent a message of support to America's "friend and ally" Belgium. An Iraqi identified by French and Belgian authorities as having contact with terrorists has been arrested on a European warrant in Italy. Italy's interior minister Angelino Alfano said the Iraqi was arrested on Tuesday near Naples, but he did not elaborate on whether the connection was directly related to the attacks in Brussels, or the November attacks in Paris. A group of Britons who are in Brussels for an official tour of the European Parliament have accused budget airline Ryanair of "absolutely atrocious" customer service after they were told it would cost them around 6,000 (7,600) to fly home early in the wake of bomb attacks in the Belgian capital. Councillors were among the party of 28 people from north-west England who had been invited to Brussels by British Labour MEP Afzal Khan. They flew into Brussels South Charleroi Airport with Ryanair this morning and were due return on Wednesday night. One of the group, councillor Chris Webb - who represents the Northenden ward at Manchester City Council - said after arriving they were told the centre of the city was "in lockdown" following the attacks on the metro system and Brussels Zaventem airport. He explained that the group, which ranged in age from 18 to 80, feared for their safety and wanted to return home today. But Mr Webb said he was told by staff at Ryanair's customer service desk at the airport that it would cost around 6,000 to change the flights. He then spent more than two hours trying to speak to someone from the airline over the phone, without success. "It's absolutely atrocious. This is a stressful situation as it is," he said. "Obviously it doesn't compare to the tragedy of the lives lost. But all I want is for us to get a flight home." He added: "There's a lack of understanding. "Their first reaction was 'pay for a flight home', not 'you already have a flight home, you are a customer'." Bill Esterson, Labour MP for Sefton Central, raised a point of order in the UK's House of Commons to urge ministers to "intervene and suggest to Ryanair and other carriers that all efforts are made to help those who want to come back to this country in a reasonable way". Ryanair issue a statement which noted that the group had paid 20 (25.50) each for the flight departing on Wednesday. The no-frills airline said they were offered to alter their schedule to return today at a cost of 60 (76.70) for the "change fee" and 154 (197) for the difference in fares. The statement went on: "Ryanair has been prioritising free changes and transfers for passengers travelling on flights to and from Brussels Zaventem today and tomorrow. "We regret any inconvenience caused to this group but our priority today remains re-accommodating our disrupted Brussels Zaventem passengers, and all other passengers are free to avail of our change facility in the normal manner." A manhunt has been launched for one of the terrorists behind coordinated bombings in Brussels which left 34 dead and almost 200 injured. As a series of police raids were mounted across Belgium, prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said two suicide bombers died in the attack on the main airport in Brussels and a third was being "actively" sought. Belgian police issued an image of the man, one of three seen pushing luggage trolleys through Zaventem airport moments before two bombs exploded. A third bomb was deactivated at the airport hours after the attack. In a statement, Belgian police appealed for information about the man, who is wearing a hat and a light-coloured jacket. "Police are looking to identify this man. He is suspected of having committed the attack at Zaventem on Tuesday March 22," it said. "If you recognise this individual or have information regarding this attack please call 0800 30 300." Mr Van Leeuw said: "A photo of three suspects was taken at Brussels airport. "Two of them have probably committed a suicide attack, the third - dressed in a white jacket and wearing a hat - is actively sought." Meanwhile raids are taking place across Brussels. Multiple reports of anti-terror raids are now under way in Schaerbeek, north-eastof central Brussels, according to Belgian police sources. The prosecutor added: "Various departments and experts are currently in various crime scenes. This will take place for many hours to come. "Due to the violence of the attacks, this investigation is particularly difficult. "Various operations are ongoing across the country and several witnesses have been heard. "Federal magistrates supported by magistrates from our organisation are present in various strategic and operational points as well as in the government's crisis centres in order to coordinate operations. "Several explosions have been heard. They are due to bomb squad activity upon the discovery that the suspects might have left explosives behind. And this could continue." The airport attack was followed by a bomb blast on a Metro train in the city centre as terrorists inflicted a new outrage on a European capital. Eyewitnesses have described "chaos" as they ran from the sound of explosions during suspected terrorist bomb attacks in Brussels. Two blasts were reported at the city's airport and another at the Maelbeek metro station. Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, told BFM television that the second, louder explosion brought down ceilings and ruptured pipes, mixing water with blood from victims. "It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed," he said. "There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere." "We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene," he said. Graphic shows location of attacks. Jef Versele, 40, from Ghent, Belgium, was at the airport and described the scene as "unbelievable". "I was on my way to check in and two bombs went off - two explosions," he said. "I didn't see anything. Everything was coming down. Glassware. It was chaos, it was unbelievable. It was the worst thing." He added: "People were running away, there were lots of people on the ground. A lot of people are injured." Mr Versele was two or three storeys above the source of the explosion but he said many people around him were hurt. "The bomb was coming from downstairs. It was going up through the roof. It was big. "About 15 windows were just blown out from the entrance hall," he added. He said the emergency services were still securing the area. Bart van Meele had planned to take a 30th birthday trip to Milan and had passed through security in the terminal when he heard an explosion. Speaking from the airport, with sirens wailing in the background, the Apple worker, who was evacuated along with thousands of other people, said: "One of the explosions I heard, and then afterwards people started running. "It's OK, I'm very calm but it's a bit crazy. You never really think it would happen to you but it's OK." Mr van Meele, who lives in Belgium but is from the Netherlands, added: "We are all next to the airport, there are a lot of people here. I was inside the terminal, and then people started running very, very fast and then it was quiet for a time and then again they started running and it took a while before we got any information." Stephanie Vanhemelryck, 24, who lives 45 minutes from the airport, described the aftermath of the attacks. "I arrived there after the explosions happened. I pass the airport while I go to work. I get the train to work. And when I arrived there, there was an immediate evacuation." As she was guided away from the main building, Ms Vanhemelryck said she saw several injured people, including a "few security guards injured with head wounds". She said initially people did not seem to realise the severity of the situation, but "emotional chaos" followed. "It was fine in the beginning but as more people started to arrive there was way more chaos", she said. "People started getting cold. People started crying." She added: "When more people started to come outside, more emotional chaos started to happen - but not like running around. More like emotions flowing." On the metro, traveller Evan Lamos tweeted a picture of passengers climbing from his train into the tunnel, saying: "We are being evacuated from the back of the Metro, between Schuman and Maelbeek. "Smoke in the tunnel as we evacuate." Brussels resident Shigeo Sugimoto said he was one stop away from where the metro was hit and heard people shouting. He wrote on Facebook: "I am fine !! But i was in the metro when suddenly some one start shouting 'explosions!!! Evacuation!!! "Ouch!!! I was just one station ahead before when explosion happened !!!!!!!!" He posted pictures showing cars and people standing in the road and wrote: "Maerbeek (sic) now apocalypse!!!" The US government has said it may not need Apple's help to unlock an encrypted iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino attackers. In a filing late yesterday, federal prosecutors said "an outside party" came forward over the weekend and showed the FBI a possible method for unlocking the phone used by gunman Syed Farook in the December 2 terror attack in California. Authorities need time to determine "whether it is a viable method that will not compromise data" on the phone. If viable, "it should eliminate the need for the assistance from Apple" according to the filing, which sought to delay a much-anticipated court hearing over the issue today. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym granted that request and ordered the government to file a status report by April 5, US Attorney's Office spokesman Thom Mrozek said. The fact that a third party may have found a way into the phone without Apple's help appears to contradict every sworn affidavit and filing put forward in the last month by the Justice Department. The government has argued repeatedly in each of its filings that Apple's help is necessary and that the company was the only one that could provide investigators with what was needed. "Without Apple's assistance, the government cannot carry out the search of Farook's iPhone authorised by the search warrant," prosecutors argued. Apple has said in its filings that the government did not exhaust all its options, and politicians have criticised the FBI for not doing more to try to crack the iPhone itself before seeking Apple's help. Apple said today that it was premature to declare victory in the company's dispute with the government because it was possible authorities could come back in a few weeks and insist they still needed Apple's help Lawyers for the company also said Apple had no idea what method the FBI was now exploring to try unlocking the encrypted iPhone. While the company is hoping the government will tell Apple about whatever method used to access the phone's encrypted files, the lawyers said it may be up to the FBI to decide whether to share the information. In sworn evidence earlier this month, FBI director James Comey told the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee that agency investigators had approached even the National Security Agency for help, but did not have success. Fourteen people were killed in the San Bernardino attack by Farook and his wife Tashfeen Malik. The couple were later killed in a gun battle with police. Prosecutors have argued that the phone used by Farook probably contains evidence of the attack in which the county food inspector and his wife murdered people at a holiday lunchn attended by many of his work colleagues. The FBI has said the couple was inspired by the Islamic State group. Investigators are still trying to piece together what happened and find out if there were collaborators. The couple destroyed other phones they left behind and the FBI has been unable to circumvent the passcode needed to unlock the iPhone, which is owned by San Bernardino County and was given to Farook for his job. Last month, Judge Pym ordered Apple to create software that would disable security features on the phone, including one that erases all the information if a passcode is incorrectly entered more than 10 times. That would allow the FBI to electronically run possible combinations to open the phone without losing data. Apple said the government was seeking "dangerous power" that exceeded the authority of the All Writs Act of 1789 it cited and violated the company's constitutional rights, harmed the Apple brand and threatened the trust of its customers to protect their privacy. The 18th-century law has been used on other cases to require third parties to help law enforcement in investigations. The company said the order was unreasonably burdensome and once created, it would be asked to repeatedly design such software for use by authorities at home and abroad, and the technology could fall into the hands of hackers. It's not clear what method the government now wants to test. But even as the FBI has insisted that only Apple is able to provide the help it needs, some technical experts have argued there are other options. The most viable method involves making a copy of the iPhone's flash memory drive, said Jonathan Zdziarski, a computer expert who specialises in iPhone forensics. That would allow investigators to make multiple tries at guessing the iPhone's passcode. A security feature in the phone is designed to automatically erase the data if someone makes 10 wrong guesses in a row. But if that happens, Mr Zdziarski said, investigators could theoretically restore the data from the back-up copy they have created. The data itself would remain encrypted until the phone is unlocked, but it would remain viable while investigators continued to guess the passcode, he added. "It's a lot more involved than it sounds," Mr Zdziarski warned, and no-one had demonstrated that it would work in this case. But he said a number of computer hardware and data recovery experts told him it could work. Some experts have also suggested that investigators could use lasers and acid to deconstruct the phone's memory chip, in order to physically examine the encrypted data and the encryption algorithm, in hopes of cracking the code. But hardware experts say that method has a high risk of destroying the memory during the process. The notion of copying the flash memory was raised by congressman Darrell Issa, a California Republican who previously ran a car alarm business, during a congressional hearing earlier this month, when Mr Comey insisted that his bureau had explored all other possibilities. It has also been promoted by technical experts advising the American Civil Liberties Union, which has filed a court brief supporting Apple's position. "It seems technologically doable so long as there is not something critical that we don't know about Apple's hardware," ACLU staff lawyer Alex Abdo said. But Mr Abdo noted that the government had dismissed the idea several weeks ago. He said the fact that the government now says it only learned of a possible solution over the weekend suggests it may be something else. There is also the possibility that the National Security Agency has come forward with a method it did not previously share, or that some private contractor thinks they have found a solution, experts said. Mr Zdziarski said the FBI often consults with private forensic contractors and it is possible that someone may have only come forward in recent days. If the solution works, that would severely undercut the government's effort to order Apple's assistance under the All Writs Act, said Mr Abdo, who noted that the law requires a strong necessity for the requested assistance. "To me, it suggests that either the FBI doesn't understand the technology or they weren't giving us the whole truth when they said there is no other possible way" of examining the phone without Apple's help, Mr Abdo said. "Both of those are scary to me." Don't Miss the Latest News Subscribing is the best way to get our best stories immediately. 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... PARIS: Former world number one Simona Halep said Friday she will fight until the end to prove she did not... BRUSSELS: EU leaders will debate how to handle Europes energy shock Thursday, with capitals at loggerheads over... Historically, the decorative khayamiya textiles formed part of capacious pavilions or "travelling palaces" seen across the Arab world. Today they are still conspicuous in daily life as celebratory backdrops at events such as weddings, graduations, feasts, receptions and funerals. Needlework is a craft that we might tend to associate with women. However, a group of male artisans in Cairo known as the tentmakers have been stitching fabulously detailed cloth in traditional arabesque and geometrical patterns and lotus and papyrus designs for generations, handing down their skills from father to son. Evidence suggests that these traditional cloths have been made in Egypt since pharaonic times. Mead became famous in the 1920s and '30s for her books based on research in Oceania supporting the view that gender behaviour, including the work that men and women do, is culturally determined. Something tells me that the cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead would have enjoyed hearing that a documentary award in her name had gone to a film about men who sew. A break during filming of The Tentmakers of Cairo. In 2015, the American Museum of Natural History announced that Canberra filmmaker Kim Beamish had won the Margaret Mead Film festival for The Tentmakers of Cairo. He shared the prize with Iiris Harma, director of Leaving Africa: A story of friendship and empowerment. Last year The Tentmakers also won the Prix Buyens-Chagoll prize at Visions du Reel, Switzerland, and the El Ray Award for Excellence in Documentary Narrative Filmmaking at the Barcelona Film Festival. And it screened at the Canberra International Film Festival as well. Beamish and his young family arrived in Cairo in January 2011 when his wife took up a position there. He was introduced to the tentmakers and found himself so taken with them and their work that he began to film. He soon realised that politics and current affairs was just about all they talked about, with huge demonstrations erupting in Tahrir Square, and continued to film them over the next three years. The tentmakers ply their craft in a covered market, Chareh El Kiamiah, in the Old Islamic area of the city, a destination that has found its way onto the itinerary of the intrepid international visitor. The men hand-stitch colourful applique onto backing cloths at lightning speed, wielding large needles and a hefty pair of tailor's shears. Thimbles are worn and that's about it for tools of trade. Sewing machines are only used in order to join large panels together. Beamish had found himself in Egypt at a liminal moment, when events that became known as the "Arab spring" were taking place. The microcosm of Egyptian life that he observed within the covered souk near the old city gate of Bab Zuweila was inevitably swept up in it. "What is the world coming to?" someone asks. Marist has agreed to change the name of a student house that honours a senior church official who helped protect a paedophile brother and shuffle him to another school. Marist College Canberra was approached late last year and asked to consider changing the name of one of its eight student houses, Othmar House. Brother John "Kostka" Chute was sexually attracted to young boys. Credit:Martin Jones The house is named after Brother Othmar Weldon, who was the subject of damning criticism in the child abuse royal commission's study of Marist Brothers last year. Brother Weldon, the chair of Marist's provincial council in the 1960s and 1970s, learned of a complaint that Brother John William Chute, known as Brother Kostka, had molested a child at a school in Lismore. The blowtorch is set to be turned on the ACT Brumbies board this week after one of the most dramatic days in the Super Rugby club's history with chief executive Michael Jones successful in gaining an injunction to allow him to return to work. Mr Jones will arrive at Brumbies headquarters on Wednesday morning to resume his role less than 48 hours after being stood down by the board in the wake of a radio interview on the weekend, during which he warned, "if I go to war, it's going to get ugly". Waiting to hear of fate: Michael Jones outside the ACT Supreme Court last month. Credit:Rohan Thomson Mr Jones used whistleblower laws and an alleged breach of contract to temporarily prevent the Brumbies' board from standing him down. It is set to ignite an off-field war involving Mr Jones, the Brumbies board and the University of Canberra. Blythe Masters is confident that Australia will build one of the world's first bitcoin-like databases for settling equities trades, allowing brokers to save millions of dollars in back office costs. The former high-profiled JPMorgan banker, who is now running a New York-based blockchain startup in which the ASX has a stake, said distributed ledger technology "is probably one of the biggest ideas I have come across in 30 years" working in financial services. "I believe the project the ASX is running has the potential to be one of the first successful [blockchain] projects in the world," she told a packed ballroom at the ASIC Annual Forum in Sydney on Tuesday. A blockchain, or distributed ledger, is a network of computers that each hold an identical copy of all transactions. The ledgers are automatically synchronised, providing members of the network with a single source of information. It's the same technology that allows the cryptocurrency bitcoin to be exchanged without a "trusted third party" intermediating the trade. Snowy Hydro has been fined $40,000 after its Red Energy unit failed to obtain customer consent to extend sales contracts once they had expired between 2013 and 2015. The company has also entered into court enforceable undertakings to comply with the law in future. This is Snowy Hydro's second run-in with the regulator in recent years. Credit:Andrew Sheargold "By not telling customers about their options to shop around and switch retailers at the end of a contract, and then entering those customers into new contracts without their explicit informed consent, Red Energy did not allow customers to make informed choices about their energy supplier," the chairman of the Australian Energy Regulator, Paula Conboy, said. The regulations are in place to ensure households "are fully informed and make an active choice of their retail energy supplier", she said. The Reserve Bank of Australia's attempts to talk the local currency lower last year prompted criticism from the US Treasury. The US representative office at the International Monetary Fund in September "expressed concern over the authorities' public statements on the desired direction of the exchange rate" during consultations on Australia, according to a report issued on Monday in Washington. In August, the RBA's monthly policy statement modified its reference to the exchange rate. After saying that currency "depreciation seems both likely and necessary" in July, governor Glenn Stevens said in the following month that, "the Australian dollar is adjusting to the significant declines in key commodity prices". "Every country at the moment typically wants a lower exchange rate," said Richard Grace, chief currency and rates strategist at Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Sydney. "If a central bank says the exchange rate should be lower based on fundamentals, then they're not breaching any guidelines according to the IMF or the US Treasury. When they step out of that, I guess this is why Australia has been pin-pointed." Iluka Resources is looking for a new chief executive after David Robb decided to step down in the second half of 2016. Mr Robb has been at the helm of the mineral sands miner since October 2006 and will stay on until his successor is in place. Iluka Resources is searching for a new CEO to replace David Robb. Credit:Philip Gostelow Chairman Greg Martin said Iluka would consider internal and external candidates to replace Mr Robb, who guided the company back into the black in 2015 with a full year profit of $53.5 million. "Iluka has been transformed under David's 10-year leadership and is very well placed financially at present with no debt, significant funding capacity and positive cash flows supporting investment and shareholder returns," Mr Martin said in a statement on Tuesday. "A single retiree...would be liable for higher land tax payments living in a five bedroom home on a double block of land than if they lived in a two bedroom apartment. Thus land tax would incentivise landowners to select housing that best fits their needs." It was first introduced to the colony in 1895 by premier George Reid, who would go on to become Australia's fourth Prime Minister, as a revenue raising measure. "A secondary objective was...to break-up the large estates owned by New South Wales' well-heeled property owners so that the land could be more effectively utilised and cultivated," the McKell paper recounts. I've always considered Belgium to be a secret pocket of harmony in the European Union, a country intent on letting bygones be bygones; it's populace determined not to break under the sad reality that they have been a major battleground for so many wars over the centuries from Napoleonic times to both world wars. The kingdom has rebuilt and regrouped with such fluid grace many times in the past 200 years, that one could almost say they have been stubbornly obtuse when it comes to dealing with security threats and aggression. For tourists or new residents it's like a melding of the best vignettes of Paris chic, and the hipness of Amsterdam, but with none of the legendary French disdain. This is the home of Rubens, the grand master painter, of chocolate and fine lace, but more importantly it has been my second home since the mid 1990's. That is why I sit here in the calm of Melbourne, yet I feel utterly assailed on such a visceral and personal level by the bombings in Brussels. My heart races and my chest is tightening to the point suffocation. I lived, loved and worked in this tiny, yet not inconsequential European nation for more than a decade and half commuting from Australia to Europe in my role as Special Ambassador for aid agency CARE International as our international secretariat was located in Brussels, but ultimately I fell in love with the place and the people and the ease of life there. But party leaders should think carefully before committing themselves to a preemptive strike against Trump. Not only could it cost them the election it could cost them the party itself. On Wednesday, The Washington Post editorial board came out resoundingly in favour of the latter. They called for party leaders to do everything in their power to force an open convention and then deny Trump the nomination. A few days later, the New York Times detailed the efforts of a group of Republicans organising a "100-day campaign" to do just that. With his primary victories last Tuesday, Donald Trump is now the only candidate with a reasonable chance of winning the Republican nomination before the convention in July. In the war for control of the GOP, party leaders now face an unwelcome choice: allow Trump to lead the party to ruinous defeat in November, or launch a preemptive strike against his nomination. As the authors of the preemptive strike doctrine that triggered the Iraq war, Republican leaders should by now be well-versed in its many problems. Even if they successfully deposed Trump, GOP leaders would still be stuck with a fractured, fractious party. Trump supporters would view any move against their candidate as the action of an imperious and undemocratic establishment denying the will of the people. They would not be wrong. During his campaign, Donald Trump has shown disdain for the democratic process. Credit:AP The Trump and anti-Trump factions would be at each other's throats at the convention, with little hope of reconciling in time for the November election. Indeed, the party would devolve into an all-out civil war, with the Trump insurgency splitting off for a third-party run. True, Trump signed a no-third-party pledge back in September. But there is little doubt Trump will shred that non-aggression pact as soon as it no longer serves his purposes. With the party's vote split, both the Republicans and Trump would be smashed in the November election, and party leaders would shoulder the blame for their role in denying Trump the nomination. And that's the best-case scenario. That's because there is a very good chance a preemptive strike at the convention simply wouldn't work. To stop a Trump nomination, party leaders would first need to prevent him from getting the required 1237 delegates before July. There is no reason to think they can. Party leaders have been trying to stop Trump from acquiring delegates for months. Here is the new rule for student groups on campus at one of our leading universities: you can have any faith you like, as long as it's not any faith in particular. As of November last year, the bolshie student politicians running the University of Sydney student union have voted to stop clubs and societies from defining themselves by reference to a particular creed. Because, er, discrimination, or something. No meaningful cultural revolution will come from a grammatically challenged Universities Australia manifesto with a 10-point action plan that isn't. Credit:Michel O'Sullivan And the union's board has inaugurated this new reign of tolerance by deciding to kick one of its oldest and largest interdenominational faith based groups off campus. The Evangelical Union has been around doing its thing since the 1930s my grandma was on the committee. For 86 years they have been doing their same earnest and mildly irritating thing, floating around campus in green T-shirts inviting people to interminable barbecues. The idea for one of the most ambitious collaborations to date between China and Hollywood didn't come from an embassy office in Washington or Beijing, or from a power lunch in Beverly Hills, but from a bunch of Bruce Lee fans brainstorming in the San Fernando Valley over a decade ago. "We were just trying making a movie about kung fu 'cause we liked kung fu," said Kung Fu Panda 3 director Jennifer Yuh Nelson, who served as head of story on the first Kung Fu Panda and has shared directing duties on the last two films. "We never thought of it as a business decision." With China set to become the largest film market in the world by 2017, if it wasn't a business decision at first, it is now. Kung Fu Panda 3 is the first movie to be animated in both English and Mandarin, and the first co-production between California-based DreamWorks Animation and its Shanghai-based venture, Oriental DreamWorks. The most ardent audiences for the films about a pudgy panda named Po have been in China, and the latest instalment, which opened simultaneously in the US and China, is no exception: The well-reviewed movie (80 per cent on Rotten Tomatoes) made a respectable $US41 million ($54 million) domestically in its opening weekend but a far more impressive and record-breaking $77 million in China, where its release was timed to the Chinese New Year. Manildra, the ethanol producer that enjoys mandated sales into the unleaded petrol supply in NSW, paid just $6.5 million in company tax on sales of more than $1 billion, according to its latest annual accounts, data released for the first time by the Australian Tax Office shows. Manildra is owned by prolific political donor Dick Honan through his personal company Honan Holdings. Dick Honan at the Manildra Ethanol Plant in Bomaderry. Credit:South Coast Register Nowra According to electoral records, Mr Honan donated $147,000 to the Liberal and National Parties at state and federal level in 2014-15 and $32,000 to Labor. New ideas and innovation in renewable energy may "wither" if the Turnbull government forces vulnerable new ventures to borrow funds rather than receive grants, green power advocates say. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull and Environment Minister Greg Hunt on Wednesday clarified the future of the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency two bodies that provide financial support to emerging renewable technologies. Green power advocates are concerned any merger between the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and ARENA will mean only loans would be available - and grants would be scrapped. Credit:Jessica Shapiro The government will establish a $1 billion Clean Energy Innovation Fund, from which both the CEFC and ARENA would draw funds to support emerging renewable technology projects. Until now, the CEFC has issued loans that must be paid back while ARENA provided grants, including a focus on projects in the research and development phase that would otherwise struggle to attract investment. The Joint Strike Fighter program was bedevilled by a "conspiracy of optimism" in its early phase and such an ambitious project is unlikely ever to be repeated, a leading defence analyst has said. But Andrew Davies, senior analyst with the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, said that despite delays and cost overruns, the JSF or F-35 Lightning II plane remained the best option on the world arms market for Australia's future air combat. Dr Davies told a Senate hearing into the JSF that Australia should be prepared to buy more existing Super Hornet fighter jets if problems and delays with the JSF continue. While rejecting the more dire criticisms of the aircraft - including claims it won't measure up to other fighters already flying - Dr Davies said the program had been poorly managed early on. It was about half-way through Monday night's interview with 7.30 host Leigh Sales when Malcolm Turnbull took exception to the term "knifed" and urged the media to avoid using "violent metaphors" to describe political tussles. But Hansard footage has emerged on Tuesday morning showing the Prime Minister twice used the same term to attack his political opponent. "Knifed" is a term commonly used by media since 2010 to describe leadership spills involving deposed former prime ministers Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd and more recently, Tony Abbott. Tony Abbott says not much has changed since Malcolm Turnbull took over and now the numbers suggest he's right. About 80 per cent of bills introduced by the Turnbull government are based on Abbott government policies and decisions, according to new research conducted by the parliamentary library. Of the 104 bills introduced by the Coalition since the September 14 leadership change, only 19 have been based on Turnbull government decisions, the research obtained exclusively by Fairfax Media show. And even some of those bills were heavily based on earlier Abbott government bills. The estranged wife of celebrated Ukrainian pianist Vadym Kholodenko has been charged with killing the couple's two daughters at their Texas home. Benbrook Police say Sofya Tsygankova, 31, has been charged with two counts of capital murder in the deaths of daughters, Nika, 5, and Michela, 1. Vadym Kholodenko and his wife Sofya Tsygankova in 2014. Credit:Fort Worth Star-Telegram Kholodenko, 29, discovered them in their bedrooms early on Thursday when he went to visit them at their mother's house in suburban Fort Worth. The charges can bring the death penalty in Texas. Anthony Raymond, Gregory Bonasera, and cherished pooch, of Porcelain Bear. When lit, it throws movement and striations onto the walls, providing ambience and theatre." Her pieces are timeless and "sit comfortably in any space". And they travel she launches into the US market in April. Hugh Altschwager of Inkster Maken. Credit:Lachlan Moore articoloarchitecturallighting.com.au Copper ID (Industrial Design) Nicci Green of Articolo. In 2009, Ed Linacre began shaping salvaged materials into sculptural forms in his backyard. Then he conceived the idea of combining his bowerbird tendencies with his industrial training and turning his creations into lighting. He joined forces with Viktor Legin in 2010, forming Copper ID three years later. While other lighting designers favour one or two key materials, the duo use a grab bag, whatever they can lay their hands on, much of it repurposed. "Natural materials turn me on," Linacre says. "Nonferrous metals, timbers, ceramics, stones, unpredictable materials that have qualities, or some would say imperfections, unique to themselves that make each product one of a kind." "I work with a variety of materials," adds Legin. "But my favourites would have to be timber, ceramics and anodised aluminium. I love the timber grain and the fact that every piece is unique." Much of their inspiration comes from just beyond the front door. With names like Nest, a bamboo pendant moulded into a honeycomb design; Droplet, an aluminium and timber 'droplet of water frozen in time'; and Topaz, off cast brass forged into shapes resembling mineral crystals, inspiredly re-imagined. copper-id.com Inkster Maken You can take the boy out of the country, but not the country out of the boy. Hugh Altschwager of Inkster Maken hails from South Australia's Limestone Coast, where he had the light-bulb moment of forging lampshades out of local limestone. He wanted a shade for a hut on his parents farm and what better place to look than the nearest outcrop. Moving to Melbourne, he set up Inkster Maken in 2013 and then began bringing much of the down-home limestone with him. "South Australian limestone has a distinct texture and tone. It gives off a warm light and the stone is porous, with tiny air bubbles, so it both absorbs light and reflects it," he says. He often teams the limestone with timber, "a tactile, renewable resource that provides endless options for design and practical uses." While his materials are tied to the land, he looks north for much of his inspiration. "I like the simplicity and quality of Scandinavian and Japanese design," he says. "I also love their craftsmanship and respect for materials." Apart from his head-turners, the name attracts comments. A reflection of his heritage, "Inkster" is his mother's maiden name and "Maken" Dutch for Make. The appeal of lighting? "Lighting can transform a space like no other feature. I am always drawn to warm and inviting spaces this is a natural human reaction." inkstermaken.com Mark Douglass Design Mark Douglass' showroom in Richmond's Burnley Street Studios is a rainbow of rich colour, like light through a prism. Glass is his prime medium and he exploits its transparency, translucence and crisp colours to the full, with lighting that looks spectacular both on and off. While at high school, Douglass worked part-time for his electrician uncle, crawling into ceiling cavities and learning about wiring. "When I started making glass, I added steel and then had the three main components I use in my designs . glass, metal and power." He made his first light while studying at the Chisholm Institute of Technology, now part of Monash University, in 1995. After a foray into art glass, he switched back to lighting in 2009. "Lighting and glass work so well together," he says. "Your ceiling is a blank canvas, on which glass can be a major feature." And, with handmade glass, no two items are the same. "When you illuminate glass, the undulating surface creates interesting effects that change when viewed at different angles. This, in combination with different light levels including natural sunlight, makes my lighting individual." markdouglassdesign.com Porcelain Bear Gregory Bonasera has long been fired up over porcelain lighting, experimenting in the form back in the 1980s. After working under his own name, he established Porcelain Bear in 2008 and welcomed Anthony Raymond to the business two years later. "We're passionate about porcelain," Bonasera says. "We are seduced by its qualities: hardness, translucence or opacity, dignity, integrity, purity and strength. We love its technical boundaries, which we push, because we know them intimately." Bonasera and Raymond combine centuries-old slip casting with state-of-theart computer-aided design. "Our work looks precise, almost as if it's made by mechanical methods, but it's all handmade," Bonasera says. Keeping lines of communication open and treating your parents like the adults they are is another piece of common advice. Many elderly people may be able to stay at home by having home care packages. To obtain one, your parents will need to be assessed by an aged care team. The My Aged Care contact centre, run by the Department of Social Services, can organise an assessment. Extra home help is often a good option and the conversation can be framed in a positive tone. Obtaining help can supplement the activities your parents feel they can cope with and allow them to continue living at home. It can be a really confronting time. Dominique Bergel-Grant There are four levels of home care available, and several providers, so it might be worth shopping around for a service best suited to your parents' needs. Short-term respite care is also available. When it comes to full-time care, it starts to get more complicated, particularly financially. Accommodation costs and care fees depend on which residential facility your parents move into, their income, assets and the services they use. Generally speaking, there are three levels of fees: a daily care fee, an accommodation fee (known as a refundable accommodation deposit or RAD) and a means-tested care fee. The daily care fee is $47.86 a day. The RAD can vary between about $200,000 and $2.5 million, with the average being about $300,000-$400,000. As the name suggests, the RAD is refundable, albeit with no interest. There are choices to be made about how to fund the cost of the RAD, including selling or renting the family home. It is true that the RAD can be partly or fully subsidised by the government, leading some families to think that their parents are better off running down their finances. But Jones cautions against such an attitude. "If you have money, you will have the choice over the facility and which room you want," he says. Some rooms are shared with shared en suites, Jones says. The other point to think about is making sure elderly parents have an enduring power of attorney, a formal document that gives another person the authority to make legally binding decisions on their behalf. "It is really important to make these appointments before a person becomes incapacitated to make decisions." Appointing an enduring guardian is also highly recommended. This gives a representative the ability to make health and lifestyle-related decisions. Mindful of challenges ahead She fits the demographic mid-40s, professional with children but Christa Meek doesn't consider herself part of the "sandwich" contingent. At least not yet. Meek's two kids, at 11 and 13, are dependent of course but her parents, in their late 60s, are well and enjoying retirement in country Victoria. A former minister of religion and a teacher, they stay with the family in Melbourne every school holidays to help and regularly have the grandchildren to visit. But it's becoming a different situation for the other side of the family. Meek's mother-in-law was recently diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment. The 74-year-old former teacher and wife of a sheep farmer has had memory issues for at least a couple of years, says Meek. She had become less assertive and more forgetful enough for her children to suggest a trip to the doctor. It took months for this to happen and the implications of the assessment are still not being discussed openly. But Meek, an academic in genetics at Monash University, is mindful of the experience of a friend who had the responsibility of caring for her mother after she was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. The friend sought the professional advice of a financial consultant, who specialised in navigating Centrelink requirements for aged care. The friend also engaged a private social worker to find and secure a suitable placement in an aged care facility. Pieces of debris that could be linked to missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370 and washed up on the Mozambique coast have arrived in Canberra for analysis. Specialists in the ACT say tests for marine growth on the possible aircraft debris might hold "valuable information" that could shed light on the plane's mysterious disappearance two years ago. The only confirmed piece of debris from flight MH370 washed up on Reunion Island in July 2015. Credit:FDC Investigators from Australia and Malaysia, as well as staff from Geoscience Australia, the Australian National University and Boeing will this week examine two items which arrived in Canberra on Sunday. The Beijing-bound Boeing 777 veered off its planned route from Kuala Lumpur and vanished shortly after midnight on March 8, 2014. Environmentalists are calling for the NSW government to include coal mining in its "pay to pollute" scheme after analysis revealed the industry was responsible for a significant proportion of the heavy metal pollution in NSW waterways including arsenic, lead and selenium. According to research by community action group Lock the Gate Alliance, coal mining is responsible for 60 per cent of arsenic discharges, 23 per cent of all lead discharges and 71 per cent of selenium into water sources. Coal mining also accounts for significant levels of air pollution, with 77 per cent of all PM10 particles in NSW emanating from coal mines and over half the PM2.5 fine particles. Fine particles are particularly dangerous to human health because they can lodge deep in the lungs. Environmentalists are calling for the NSW government to include coal mining in its "pay to pollute" scheme. Credit:Max Mason-Hubers The government's load-based licensing scheme is currently under review by the Environmental Protection Authority and an issues paper is due out shortly. Under current legislation, most of the heavy polluters including sewage treatment plants, electricity generators, steel production, chemical plants, petroleum exploration, coal seam gas, waste incinerators and the pulp and paper industry must pay to discharge to the environment. Qusay Al Mhanawi fled his home in war-ravaged Iraq in hope of a better life for him and his family. Years later, after a long stint in a refugee camp in Syria, he made it to Australia as a refugee. He had reason to be happy last Friday, being four days into a five-day holy celebration as part of his Mandaean faith. But that celebration turned into overwhelming grief for his family at 6.30pm that day when the father-of-one was shot dead while sitting in his car in Heckenberg in Sydney's south-west. A man is dead and another man has been arrested following reports of a domestic dispute in Sydney's south-west overnight, police say. Police were called to a townhouse on Airdsley Lane in Bradbury just after 7.30pm on Monday to reports of a domestic dispute between two men and a woman. When officers arrived, two men appeared to be involved in a fight in a vehicle parked outside the townhouse. One of the men, aged 36, died at the scene, although police have not revealed how he died or what injuries he suffered. The second man, aged 47, was arrested and taken to Campbelltown police station where he was being questioned over the man's death. No charges had been laid on Tuesday morning. EXCLUSIVE More than $4 million in public funding is being withheld from the NSW Liberals by authorities until the party can prove hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations it received before the 2011 election that swept it into power were not illegal. The donations were made by the controversial Free Enterprise Foundation, which the Independent Commission Against Corruption heard had "washed" illegal contributions from property developers before donating them to the NSW Liberals. More than $690,000 in donations remains unverified. Ms Callan also told the inquest that on two occasion senior police commanders decided against a plan to end the siege on their own terms. About 11 hours into the seige, at 8.20pm, senior police commanders had a teleconference where the head of the tactical operations unit attempted to persuade the other commanders to abandon the defensive strategy in a favour of a "deliberate action" plan. The deliberation action plan "would allow police to resolve the siege at a time and by tactical methods of their choosing rather than in response to Monis' actions," Ms Callan said, paraphrasing the tactical commander. But after 20 minutes of discussions the tactical commander was overruled and it was decided negotiations would continue and the emergency action plan would be executed if the need arose. The proposal was raised again during another telephone conference at 11.35pm, after there had been a handover in police command and personnel about an hour and a half earlier. By now, police had heard Monis advising the hostages to call their loved ones via a surveillance device inside the cafe, the inquest heard. Negotiators noted this decision by Monis as "a finality thing" in their logs, Ms Callan said. The inquest heard that Assistant Commissioner Mark Jenkins was briefed that Monis' backpack likely contained two to four kilograms of explosives and "if the bomb was triggered, those inside the cafe and those attempting a rescue were not likely to survive". On this advice, and the advice of the commander of the tactical operations unit, Assistant Commissioner Jenkins decided the "contain and negotiate" strategy should continue, Ms Callan said. It was only after a bomb robot swept the cafe at 2.34am, 20 minutes after police had stormed the cafe and fired 22 rounds at Monis, that it was confirmed no explosive device existed. The bomb inside Monis' backpack was a speaker, with wires hanging out. Police formed the "strong view" that the containment strategy could deliver a "peaceful negotiated outcome", the inquest heard. "That view was based on matters such as Monis not having harmed any hostages, despite having threatened to do so, Monis not having reacted violently despite the escape of five hostages on two separate occasions and the fact that Monis' behaviour had not escalated despite most of his demands not being met," Ms Callan said. The final violent moments of the siege, which claimed the lives of Katrina Dawson and Mr Johnson, were covered in detail as the inquest was shown new footage of CCTV vision of the police raid. Two minutes before police stormed the cafe, Monis was heard saying words to the effect: "You'll be all right everyone, you'll be fine," the inquest heard. A minute later, at 2.13am, he executed cafe manager Mr Johnson, shooting him in the back of the head after forcing him to kneel in front of him. "Inexplicably, he then said words to the effect 'Don't move, everything will be fine'," Ms Callan said. However, as Ms Dawson and Mr Johnson were rushed with fatal injuries to hospital, their families, who had gathered at the NSW Supreme Court less than 150 metres away and had heard the gunfire, were kept in the dark about their welfare by authorities. Due to the lack of police information, the hostages' families resorted to smartphones to check media coverage of the seige. Only the families of those hostages who had escaped were assured of their safety when they were reunited. As a result, "the Dawson and Johnson families effectively deduced their loved ones had been killed by a process of elimination as they were the only ones remaining," Ms Callan said on Tuesday. The inquest heard Ms Dawson was discovered lying in a pool of blood beneath chairs in the north-west corner of the cafe by one of the two officers who fired at Monis, known only as "Officer A" and "Officer B". Filip Lovely is sticking with public transport. Credit:Tony Walters The number of rail commuters has soared in areas of Sydney such as Rhodes, Auburn and Green Square, where populations are exploding, according to a Fairfax Media analysis of Transport for NSW figures. Yet at stations further afield such as Gosford, Penrith, Fairfield and Blaxland, rail patronage has fallen by up to 25 per cent despite modest population growth. Mr Lovely said he "would not have been able to live" without his car in Illawong but found himself driving less and less after moving to Stanmore. Now, he regularly takes trains all over Sydney: to the city, Chatswood, Bankstown and Padstow. "I have never looked at a timetable. I just walk to Stanmore and wait, max, 10 minutes, if I'm unlucky," he said. In contrast, Ms Rogers found catching the train from the Central Coast to her previous job in North Sydney more frustrating than sitting in traffic for up to three-and-a-half hours a day, five days a week. "It was a pain driving ... but I couldn't rely on [public transport], so it just wasn't worth it," she said. Inner- and middle-ring suburban stations showed stellar growth between 2004 and 2014, according to the analysis. Rhodes and Green Square, which have experienced rapid growth in apartment developments, have had increases in train patronage of 464 per cent and 421 per cent, respectively. Similarly, Wolli Creek grew by 387 per cent and Mascot by 296 per cent between 2004 and 2014. Populations in these areas skyrocketed by 20-35 per cent over the same period, and have risen even further since the data was collected. Green Square and Mascot have also benefited from a Keneally government decision in 2011 to subsidise a station access fee for commuters at the two non-airport stations. Independent transport expert Garry Glazebrook said rapid growth in patronage at most stations in the inner suburbs reflected both an apartment boom and gentrification in areas such as Marrickville. Patronage soared by 56 per cent at Redfern, 45 per cent at Dulwich Hill and 44 per cent at Erskineville. By contrast, patronage had been falling on train lines where there had been no improvements in service speeds or frequencies, such as the Blue Mountains and Central Coast lines. "The Blue Mountains has always been a bit of a retirement area," he said. Dr Glazebrook said the decline could also be linked to an ageing population and improved roads such as the M7 making it easier to drive to work. In western Sydney, the picture is mixed. The north west, around Ryde, and parts of the west and south west, such as Auburn and Parramatta, have experienced strong population growth, matched by rapid rises in rail usage. Patronage at Auburn station rose by 62 per cent and at Parramatta by 37 per cent between 2004 and 2014. However, older, established suburbs such as Campbelltown and Penrith haven't grown significantly. Rail usage at both stations has fallen by nearly 20 per cent. "However, this is expected to change in future as redevelopment starts occurring in the large areas of older, low density housing," Dr Glazebrook said. "This has already started around places like Blacktown." Geoffrey Clifton, a lecturer in transport at the University of Sydney, said the decline in patronage at stations in outer parts of the Sydney basin was unexpected, given these populations had grown. "It could be ... people not needing to travel into the city for work, and it could be more people working from home," he said. The figures are likely to put further pressure on the Baird government to reject advice from the state's pricing regulator to significantly raise fares for commuters travelling long distances on the rail network. The Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal is due to release its report in May. NSW Commuter Council chairman Kevin Parish said the figures were surprising. 'It could mean that there's been a transition of rail patronage to cars. I do know a few people who have given up travelling by train and now go by car," he said. Mr Parish said he regularly received complaints about overcrowding on trains to the Blue Mountains, Central Coast and South Coast. The Central Coast desperately needed more peak-hour services, as well as more parking spaces at train stations, Ms Rogers said. "Unless you're there by 6.30am you've got to park a mile away." A Transport for NSW spokeswoman said factors such as employment and an ageing of the population could lead to variations in barrier counts at train stations. "With recent high levels of take up of Opal by public transport customers, Transport for NSW will have more accurate and timely patronage information in the future to assist with transport planning," she said. A man and a girl have been arrested by counter-terrorism police from Operation Appleby in Sydney. Milad Atai, 20, and a girl, 16, were arrested in a park at Guildford, in Sydney's west, on Tuesday morning. Both are expected to be charged with getting funds to, from or for a terrorist organisation. The charge carries a maximum 25-year prison sentence. Police will allege the pair, who are friends, were both sending money overseas to Islamic State. A Queensland man charged with incest involving his niece has had his conviction quashed after arguing he was legally entitled to marry her. The man was in 2008 convicted on his own guilty plea of three counts of incest involving the 17-year-old girl. The man successfully argued that incest convictions didn't apply to "carnal knowledge between persons who are entitled to be lawfully married". Credit:Virginia Star He was handed a sentence of two years behind bars that would become suspended after six months. But in July last year, he received legal advice the convictions should be challenged by arguing that, at the time of the offence, the charge in the criminal code didn't apply to "carnal knowledge between persons who are entitled to be lawfully married". A Queensland police officer has been suspended from duty after allegedly breaching a domestic violence order. The 46-year-old police liaison officer from the northern region has also been charged with common assault. A Queensland police officer has allegedly breached a domestic violence order. He will face Mossman Magistrates Court on Wednesday. * National domestic violence helpline: 1800 737 732 or 1800RESPECT. In an emergency, call triple-zero. A Zika virus outbreak could strike "before we know it" as one in five cases go undetected, a public health officer dealing with a case in north Queensland says. Townsville Public Health Unit director Steve Donohue said authorities weren't particularly worried about the disease spreading from a Bowen woman diagnosed on Friday after returning from Tonga but there were real concerns further north. The Aedes aegypti mosquito can carry the Zika virus. Credit:AP The disease, which triggered a global health emergency this year after being linked to birth defects, needs to become established in the local mosquito population to create serious problems. Outside of scattered but increasing reports of sexual transmission, the Aedes aegypti mosquito is the only species capable of transmitting the virus. An 18-month-old boy has been hit by a car and killed in a driveway of a Twin Creek Court home this afternoon. Police were reportedly still at the scene late in the afternoon. Police on the scene where an 18-month-old boy was struck by a car and killed. Credit:Rory Sheavils/Daily Mercury A police spokesman told the Whitsunday Times details were limited, but confirmed it was a little boy who had been killed. "We got a call about 2.50pm this afternoon that a child had been hit and killed at the driveway of a private residence on Twin Creek Court, Cannonvale," he said. Customers who fail to pay their power bills could be asked to pay them up front, as the result of a state government inquiry. An investigation launched in response to a torrent of power disconnections has stopped short of recommending power companies be allowed to ration or reduce the electricity available to those having the most trouble paying their bills. Electricity companies will be able to force customers to pre-pay in extreme situations. However, the final report of the Financial Hardship Inquiry by the Victorian Essential Services Commission calls for energy companies to be able to demand customers pre-pay for power in extreme circumstances. Commission chairman Ron Ben-David said the suite of recommendations in the report, which would change the way energy companies are allowed to manage customers struggling to pay their bills, should ensure that fewer people end up in severe trouble. The investigation into the gunning down of gangland lawyer Joe "Pino" Acquaro has broadened beyond mafia involvement. The 54-year-old was shot a week ago while walking to his car parked in a street in Brunswick East after closing up his Lygon Street cafe Gelobar in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Mr Acquaro was murdered in St Phillip Street, the side street next to his Lygon Street cafe and gelateria Gelobar. Credit:Jason South Despite police believing a $200,000 contract had been taken out on his life by the Calabrian mafia, homicide squad Detective Inspector Mick Hughes said the investigation was following several lines of inquiry. "Suffice to say, contrary to reporting in recent times, every avenue of investigation is still open. We have not focused on any single direction of investigation," he said. A Victorian mechanic is gaining notoriety on social media after posing for photos next to an alleged car thief he apprehended in a dramatic citizen's arrest on Monday afternoon. In the photos posted to Facebook, Joe Fontana smiles gleefully for the camera while giving an emphatic thumbs up, as the alleged thief lies on the ground beside him in handcuffs. Minutes earlier, about 3.30pm on Monday, Mr Fontana was inside his Ballarat workshop when he saw a black Commodore pull up outside the business. He watched on the security cameras as the man circled the car yard a few times. Special Operations Group police were called in to arrest a man after he allegedly fired shots and threatened police with a gun near Traralgon. Police arrested two men at a Callignee South address, in Gippsland, at 10am on Tuesday. A Callignee South man was arrested after shots were fired and he threatened police. Credit:Georgia Matts The incident began when police were called to another property in Neaves Road, Callignee, at 2am after residents nearby heard shots fired. When police arrived a man, 43, of Callignee South, allegedly drove towards them and threatened the police officers with a gun before driving off. "We have been overwhelmed by the love and support from the community during our five-year search and are especially thankful for the outpouring of support we have received overnight." The family said they were waiting for an update from Victoria Police and the state's coroner to determine the next step. Family and friends visited the home on Tuesday morning, dropping off flowers and expressing their support. Detective Sergeant Adam Forehan, who has been investigating the case since Mr O'Keeffe vanished, told reporters outside the home on Monday that the discovery was "very, very tragic". Police at the O'Keeffe's family home on Summerhill Terrace, Highton. Credit:Pat Scala "You could only imagine the feeling one would go through when discovering remains of what you believe to be your beloved son underneath your house," he said. The grim discovery was made at the Summerhill Terrace house about 1.50pm on Monday. Mr O'Keeffe disappeared from his parents' Highton home on the morning of July 15 without his medication, wallet, or spare clothing. While it has been confirmed the remains belong to an adult, the family will have to await the results of DNA tests to confirm without doubt they are those of Mr O'Keeffe. Forensic tests could also establish a cause of death. "We're treating it at the highest level at this stage, until we satisfy ourselves that there is no suspicious activity," Detective Sergeant Forehan said. The O'Keeffe's family home on Monday afternoon. Credit:Pat Scala He could not comment on whether police had previously searched the area under the house, and it is unclear whether the remains were located in an area which could be easily accessed. Police finished examining the scene and removed the remains on Monday night, all while the O'Keeffe family stayed inside. Daniel O'Keeffe's sister Loren putting up posters in Collingwood. Credit:Facebook His family initially thought he may have been living with homeless people to understand what it was like to live on the streets. Then, in November 2011, he was believed to have walked into a Brisbane medical centre and asked for a glass of water. The family said the receptionist at the centre called them after seeing a television interview and said Mr O'Keeffe was "visibly unwell" and going by his middle name James. Security footage was thought to have confirmed the story and the family spent two months in south-east Queensland searching for him. A high-profile social media campaign, Dan Come Home, was launched soon after Mr O'Keeffe disappeared. The Facebook page in his name has more than 63,000 followers. In a Facebook post on Monday, the O'Keeffe family said it was with "heavy hearts" that they were able to share that "Dan's remains were discovered earlier today". On the Dan Come Home website, Mr O'Keeffe was described as a "kind, gentle, friendly guy who's respected by his students, admired by his friends and adored by his family". The website said Mr O'Keeffe had been suffering with depression and anxiety before his disappearance. One of his two sisters, Loren, established the Missing Persons Advocacy Network, designed to create awareness of those who are missing and provide practical support for their families. Mr O'Keeffe was due to start a carpentry apprenticeship the week after he went missing. He had not long before opened a martial arts academy in Werribee and lived between his parents' house and his girlfriend's Docklands apartment. He did not have his wallet, identification or his medication on him when he went missing. Tributes began to flood the family's Facebook page only minutes after news of the grim discovery was posted. "Your tireless effort to find Daniel will always be remembered and carried on within all those who also have loved ones missing as well as those who have not," wrote one concerned user, while another said: "I obviously don't know you or your family personally, but I think we as a community held hope with you all that Dan would eventually come home, safe. My heart is breaking for you all xx." Others hoped the find might bring some closure for the family. A female Mandurah teacher, who resigned following claims she had sex with a student, will have her case heard in Perth after a request to move the case was denied. The woman, who appeared in Mandurah Magistrates Court on Tuesday morning, was not required to enter a plea to six counts of sexual penetration of a child over 16 under her authority and four counts of indecently dealing with a child over 16 under her authority. The woman leaving an earlier court appearance. Credit:Richard Polden Magistrate Vivien Edwards refused an application by her lawyer to move the matter to Bunbury as the offences occurred in Mandurah. It is understood the teacher resigned from a private school in Mandurah after allegations of an inappropriate relationship with a student. A West Australian child has been hospitalised after contracting meningococcal disease according to state's health department. Described as "school-aged" by WA Health, the child is understood to be recovering from the life-threatening illness, caused by a bacterial infection. Meningococcal symptoms may include high fever, chills, headache, neck stiffness, nausea and vomiting, drowsiness, confusion, and severe muscle and joint pain. This is the third reported case of meningococcal in WA for 2016, with 17 cases reported last year. In January a young adult was rushed to hospital after being diagnosed with the life-threatening and infectious disease in what was the first recorded case in WA for 2016. Time in the US has spoken to the photographer who took what has become one of the defining images of the Brussels attacks. Ketevan Kardava, a special correspondent for the Georgian Public Broadcast network, was at Brussels Airport on Tuesday morning when two explosions tore through the departures hall. She took a photograph, of a stunned and injured woman in a shredded yellow jacket, which has since been published on front pages across the world. Kardava told Time that the woman in the yellow jacket was not crying or yelling, but "looking around in fear". Describing the horror in the airport, she said: "Doors and windows were flying." "Everything was dust and smoke. Around me there were dozens of people without legs, lying in blood," she said. "I couldn't believe I still had my legs. I was in a state of shock. "I wanted to run to a safe place too. But I also wanted to take pictures. As a journalist, it was my duty to take these photos and show the world what was going on. I knew I was the only one at this spot." Paris: The International Criminal Court has convicted a Congolese politician, Jean-Pierre Bemba, of war crimes and crimes against humanity, finding him culpable of a devastating campaign of rape, murder and torture in the Central African Republic in 2002 and 2003. A panel of three judges convicted Bemba of murder and pillaging on Monday, and defined the large-scale rape by his soldiers as a crime against humanity and as a war crime. Jean-Pierre Bemba, right, at the International Criminal Court at The Hague on Monday. Credit:New York Times Other international courts, including the UN tribunals for war crimes in the former Yugoslavia and in Rwanda, have issued convictions for rape as a war crime and a crimes against humanity, but Monday was the first time the International Criminal Court, in The Hague, has done so. Largely because of pressure from human rights advocates and women's groups, organised or mass rape is increasingly being recognised and prosecuted as a weapon of war, not as a byproduct of it. Amsterdam: Dutch officers fired a warning shot during the arrests of three suspects at Amsterdam's central station on Tuesday evening, an official police tweet said. A police spokeswoman declined to provide further details. No one was injured during the arrests. Amsterdam, Netherlands A witness told a Reuters reporter at the scene he heard a shot being fired and saw a suspect running. The area around the central station was cordoned off and there was a heavy police presence. Sign up for our amNY Sports email newsletter to get insights and game coverage for your favorite teams Bedford-Stuyvesant elementary schools must offer gifted and talented programs for kindergarten students so they dont get left behind the rest of the city, local parents told education honcho Carmen Farina during a town hall meeting on Monday evening. The public schools czar announced the scheme will finally come to the neighborhood this fall, but may first launch it with only third graders, as their intelligence is easier to gauge. But some residents said that still wont help their kids stay competitive with other districts, which already have the program and are testing tots when they are still too young to tie their own shoes. We just want to be competitive and the sooner we can be competitive I think thats better for everybody, said Caitlin Hoop, whose 4-year-old son will start kindergarten this fall. The longer we wait to start, I think were at a disadvantage. Families in District 16 which covers most of the nabe and part of Crown Heights last year grilled Department of Education honchos about why they were one of the few in the city without the academically rigorous program, which places students who score high marks on an option exam into advanced classes. Young Bedford-Stuyvesant brainiacs who make the grade currently have to bus over to other districts if they want to take part. But officials responded that there werent enough local whiz kids acing the quiz for it to be worthwhile, so parents rallied to register more pupils to sit this years exam and increase the odds. The department refused to reveal how many ultimately sat or how many passed before families are notified of their acceptance, but it was evidently enough for the agency to extend the accelerated classes to some local elementary schools for the 2017 year, and middle schools starting in 2018. The city says it will work with the parents on District 16s Community Education Council to ultimately decide whether to start the program with third graders or younger kids, but Farina said she strongly preferred the former option, because it is easier to identify clever kids when theyre old enough to grasp the concept of a test. We would have the ability to look at the second graders and really see their performance, rather than depend on kindergartners who may or may not know what kind of testing theyre going through, she said. Local parents arent alone in demanding an earlier start, however Borough President Adams believes every student entering pre-kindergarten should have to sit the test to ensure minority kids are put on an early path to the citys top specialized high schools, which this year offered just 10 percent of places to black or Latino teens, he wrote in a recent opinion piece for the Daily News. The education department will now have to find teachers to lead the programs in the area, and will introduce training programs for educators interested in conducting the new classes. Friday Night Football: Scores, stats, recaps from Week 9 With only two more weeks left in the regular season, teams are fighting for postseason posititioning...or just for a chance to make the playoffs. 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 ... 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. One of the candidates running to become Somersets Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) has spoken out this week against cutbacks to the police force in the Burnham-On-Sea area. Speaking to Burnham-On-Sea.com, Mark Weston said that more needs to be done to protect police services in the area. We need to protect the front line, thats officers on the beat working from local police stations, instead of inflating the back office. Over the last three years police numbers have fallen but the human resources team has more than doubled. Police stations have closed, yet the public relations team has grown by a quarter and the office of the Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) now costs 100k more than the Police Authority it replaced. Avon and Somerset is now on its fifth Chief Constable in less than three and a half years. No wonder the current PCC is relying on the keep politics out of policing slogan. What we need in Avon and Somerset is clear, strong leadership rather than hollow catch phrases dusted off to distract voters from the real issues. He added: Politics has always been a part of policing. The PCC has real power to hire and fire Chief Constables, controls a 270.7 million police budget and sets the local priorities for policing in Avon and Somerset spending taxpayers hard earned money to keep them safe. In the past the force priorities were set in London and the budget was set by the Police Authority (made up primarily of elected Councillors) the current system changes this and gives power to the people to hold their PCC to account at the ballot box. And so it should be. Thats why it is so important everyone gets out and votes on May 5 for this important role. Thats why I am standing as a Conservative candidate. And the choice is clear: vote for a candidate who promises the world but delivers unsafe streets and wasted money. Or vote for me a Conservative PCC who will work with the Government to deliver lower crime and safer communities, while providing effective use of resources. Im already campaigning to save our police stations and custody suites in Yeovil, Minehad and Burnham-On-Sea. I will make sure your priorities are heard and reflected in our policing priorities. One way to deliver safer communities and competent management is to explore collaboration with neighbouring forces be it back office roles or joint procurement as well as combining the latest technology with traditional policing. Residents tell me they see rarely see the police patrolling their neighbourhood, Neighbourhood Watch Groups are being left to wither away (see final version December 2015 6.3 link), and Speed Watch volunteers are crying out for support. The debate comes as residents across the Burnham-On-Sea and Highbridge area will go to the polls to elect a Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC) on Thursday 5th May. Also see: Police to open library office when Burnhams Police Station shuts Burnham-On-Sea Police Station to close as move to fire station nears Burnham voters set to go the polls to choose police commissioner SODA POLITICS Taking on Big Soda [and Winning] Marion Nestle Oxford University Press 508 pages; Rs 676 Last month, Coca-Cola suspended bottling operations at three plants in India, including in Rajasthan. This plant has been in the eye of protests by local farmers, who complained that the company was using depleting ground water reserves in the parched north-western state. Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages, a subsidiary of The Coca-Cola Co, however, has claimed that it was a responsible corporate citizen, harvesting rainwater and encouraging farmers to use drip irrigation, which is a more efficient method of watering crops than traditional alternatives. While the debate over corporate ethics will continue, the country's Rs 14,000-crore soft drinks industry is facing other challenges. In the Budget for 2016-17, the Union government raised excise duty on soft drinks to 21 per cent from 18 per cent. This is the second year that the sector has faced a levy increase and, this time it will affect the price by one to two per cent, in turn hitting sales. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, the country's two major soft drink producers, are already reeling from single-digit volume growth, with more and more customers moving to healthier drinks. In this context, Marion Nestle's new book on how to fight the behemoth that is the soft drink industry and achieving that feat of registering a win for good health advocates is timely. The Paulette Goddard Professor of Nutrition, Food Studies and Public Health at the New York University, Ms Nestle has been at the forefront of the fight for food choice, healthy living and against obesity in the US since before publishing her breakout book, Food Politics (2002). Now, she focuses her attention on the despicable marketing practices soft drink companies employ to expand sales and profit at the cost of global health. At the start of her book, Ms Nestle writes about her fascination with soft drinks, or sodas: "Sodas are astonishing products. Little more than flavoured sugar water, these drinks cost practically nothing to produce or buy, yet have turned their makers - principally Coca-Cola and PepsiCo - into multibillion-dollar industries with global recognition, distribution, and political power." She also writes about why advocacy against soft drinks is necessary: "An occasional sugary drink is hardly a health concern. But many Americans - especially those who are young, members of minority groups, and poor - habitually drink large volumes of soda on a daily basis at great harm to their health." Soft drink companies, Ms Nestle demonstrates in her book, target these vulnerable groups. In the chapter "Starting Early: Marketing to Infants, Children, and Teens", she links the habit of TV watching and soft drink consumption by children: "Soda drinking is so closely linked to watching television that its consumption can be predicted by formula: the probability that children will consume sodas up to three times per week rises 50 per cent for every hour a day they watch television, and by 60 per cent if they are watching commercials." Like everything else in this wonderfully erudite book, this information has been sourced from a scholarly study - one that goes on to claim: "Nine out of 10 food advertisements shown during Saturday morning children's television programming are for foods high in fat, sodium, or added sugars, or low in nutrients." But this book is also about the solutions, which, for Ms Nestle, lies in advocacy. In subsequent chapters, she outlines tried and tested tactics used by public health advocates and campaigners in the US - and can be adopted by their counterparts in the other countries. The breadth of the book's ambition is evident in Ms Nestle incorporating voices from within the soft drink industry into conversations about how to promote healthy living. In the course of committed advocacy, it is often easier to aim one's attacks at the monoliths of corporate structures, but it is more difficult to deal with individuals. One of the most interesting individuals in Soda Politics is Dr Derek Yach, a South African health professional who supervised a 2003 consultation report for the World Health Organization (WHO) "aimed at establishing a research basis for a global strategy to reduce obesity." As expected, he ran into trouble with "big soda" and was forced to quit his job as director of non-communicable diseases at the WHO, even as his report was being published. Then, in 2007, he joined PepsiCo as the vice-president of global health policy. Next year, he published an editorial in British journal Public Health Nutrition explaining the move, and PepsiCo Chief Executive Office Indra Nooyi explained the hiring as: "We have asked Derek to change this company; in five years we want to have most of our product line meet the international standards supporting life-long health." So how successful was Dr Yach? About 65 per cent, he claims. While he did manage to steer PepsiCo towards producing healthier alternatives for soft drinks, with the global recession impacting profits, the company had to focus more and more on its core products, even as Dr Yach left for other engagements. This incident illustrates the complexity of the battle and how people inside and outside the industry must come together to make it a success. Even as it is in talks with Dell to acquire the Perot Systems business, French IT services and solutions provider Atos has strengthened its senior leadership by hiring a key executive to manage its global delivery. The Euronext-listed company has appointed Sean Narayanan, former chairman and managing director for LiquidHub India, as its chief operating officer (COO) and head of global delivery for its consulting and system integration business. Before joining LiquidHub in July 2014, Narayanan was a key executive at IGATE (now part of Capgemini), where he was the chief delivery officer and also a board member of one of its business units. Narayanans joining of Atos assumes significance at a time when the company is engaged in serious talks with Dell to acquire the Perot Systems business. According to several sources in the know, Atos is learnt to have outbid most other suitors including Indias top IT outsourcing services company Tata Consultancy Services. The discussion is reaching a stage of finality, said a top official who was previously engaged in the conversation with the company. Atos might have already made it, added the source. A Dell spokesperson declined to comment on the matter. We wont have any comment on speculation regarding the Dell Services business, a global spokesperson of the company replied in response to an email query. A detailed questionnaire sent to Atos global communication team members on Monday evening did not elicit any response. Founded in 1988 by Ross Perot, a former independent candidate for the US Presidential election, Perot Systems was acquired by Dell in 2009 for $3.9 billion. Dell, primarily a hardware company then, was looking to build its capabilities in the services space. The Perot Systems business now accounts for the major part of Dells services business, which is headed by former Wipro joint CEO Suresh Vaswani. According to analysts tracking the company, the companys valuation has not grown much since Dell bought it. Dell has around 50,000 employees for its services business. For Atos, which is still heavily focused on Europe and is looking to build ready-to-leverage capabilities in the US, the acquisition of Perot Systems makes sense, say analysts. The companys intent to go for an aggressive acquisition-led growth was clear when it was in talks with IGATE last year for an acquisition. Its European IT services major Capgemini acquired the firm. The acquisition of Xeroxs IT outsourcing business late 2015 had already given Atos good scale in the services space. If Atos seals the deal with Dell, the acquisition would give it onshore presence in the US, which it has been trying to build. It can also have strong delivery presence in India as the European company still lags behind most global IT services and consulting companies, said a senior investor source. From next month, Indian refiners would begin importing from Iran on a free-on-board (FOB) basis against cost, insurance and freight (CIF) basis. From April 1, all importers will move to FOB as it is cheaper, said an official with a private refining company. FOB means the buyer charters a vessel to lift from a terminal in the producing country and pay for the cost of shipping the crude. CIF is where the seller incurs the costs and pays freight, including insurance charges. International sanctions on Iran were lifted in January, giving India unrestricted access to the countrys . An official with Mangalore Refineries and Petrochemicals (MRPL), a subsidiary of Oil and Natural Gas Corporation, said, We would be importing the Iranian crude based on our month-on-month economics.Bharat Petroleum Corporation (BPCL) said the company would begin importing Iranian crude in a few months. Europes protection and indemnity (P&I) club would provide reinsurance up to $580 million, insurance sources said. They added that there were still some issues because the London P&I club was now reluctant to take risks. According to a senior public general insurance official, some reinsurers are apprehensive about providing cover because theres no blanket lifting of the sanctions on Iran. OIL IS WELL India is Irans biggest oil client after China Under pressure from US and other western powers, India had cut down purchases from Iran Iran offers a 90-day credit period to India compared to a 30-day credit period by others MRPL and Essar Oil are the two main buyers of Iranian crude oil, importing around 10 million tonnes a year between them India currently imports 260,000 barrels of oil a day from Iran After the sanctions, Indian refiners have expanded their crude baskets from regions such as Asia-Pacific and Latin America P&I is a third-party-liability insurance for shipowners, operators and companies that charter ships. The insurance covers their legal liability in the event of a crew getting injured or dying in an accident. It also covers collision, wreck removal, marine pollution, stowaways, cargo damage and fines levied by foreign governments or port authorities. In such a club, members contribute to the clubs common risk pool. Indian public sector general insurers, including official reinsurer GIC Re, and shipping companies are planning to set up a P&I club to provide cover to Indian shipping companies. Cover for cargo will be provided by the P&I club and that will kick in whenever there is a higher capacity demand. Once all the players begin Iran crude import, this would come into force, said a senior insurance underwriting executive with a state-owned insurer. Indian insurers used to depend on European companies to re-insure their risks. However, with the sanctions on trade with Iran from both the US and the European Union, the European firms had refused to re-insure. Large covers like these are only given if the particular insurer or group of insurers have enough reinsurance capacity to deal with the risk. Indian insurers used to face a lot of difficulty in insuring refineries importing Iranian crude. For this, a Rs 2,000-crore Indian Energy Insurance Pool was proposed to be set up to cover the refineries that were importing crude oil from Iran. However, this failed to take off owing to the differences in opinion between oil companies and the former government on the size of the cover and pool. While oil companies were asking for a cover of Rs 9,500-11,000 crore, the government offered only Rs 2,000 crore. Of the Rs 2,000-crore insurance pool, the petroleum ministry was to contribute around Rs 1,000 crore through the Oil Industry Development Board, and the finance ministry another Rs 1,000 crore. State-owned general insurers had also invited their private sector counterparts to be part of this pool but they all decline, citing high associated risks. Setting new standards of corporate governance, has reacted proactively to concerns raised by proxy firms by filing detailed responses to the exchanges. The clarifications, which came directly from the board of directors, pertain to three key resolutions which are up for vote through postal ballot, which is open till March 31. Two of these pertain to the proposed 2015 stock incentive compensation plan and a third related to the reappointment of Jeffrey S Lehman as an independent director. In a filing on Tuesday, said, The board believes that all three resolutions are key to strategy execution and delivering shareholder value. Without naming any proxy firm, it said, It is understood that certain proxy firms have recommended a voting against three of the items that have been proposed to be passed through postal ballot dated February 24, 2016. The Board of Limited has reviewed these reports and is sharing this response for shareholders to consider while making their decision.Of the three proxy advisory firms operating in India, Stakeholders Empowerment Services (SES) had opposed all the three resolutions, while Institutional Investor Advisory Services (IiAS) had opposed the one relating to the independent director. Bengaluru-based InGovern Research said it made a note of the independent director whose tenure was exceeding 10 years, but said it took a pragmatic view, since the company had also acknowledged the issue. But, InGovern did not recommend voting against any of these resolutions. J N Gupta, managing director of SES, which had released its report on March 16, said, We sent the same to the company the same day. They have not sent any clarification to SES but sent a communication to BSE/NSE, etc. This is surprising, keeping in mind that while they are concerned that proxy advisory have issued AGAINST recommendation, they are not clarifying the issue to these firms but to the stock exchanges and general investors, who do not have these reports available. Gupta added, ... SES stands by its recommendation. On the stock incentive plan, the concerns were that there was no disclosure on the performance conditions for the grant of these stock incentives and that the delegation of authority to the administrator of the scheme was unfettered and obviates the need for shareholder approvals. To this, the company clarified the scheme was just an extension of the 2011 restricted stock units plan and the Nominations and Remunerations Committee recognised in the Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) regulations and the Act is the administrator. And, the authority delegated to it could be exercised within what is permitted under law. Considering that the stock incentives would be granted over a period of four to seven years, it would be impractical to seek specific approvals for such parameters from the shareholders, Infosys said in the exchange filing. Gupta did not sound convinced. The logic of the company that it is nothing but the extension of ESOP (employees stock option plan) 2011 which was already approved by shareholders does not carry any weight and the justification is at best technical. If shareholders approved something in the past, it does not mean that they will approve the same perpetually. Amit Tandon, managing director of IiAS, said the firm has issued a rejoinder to the Infosys statement. IiAS had also opposed the reappointment of Lehman as independent director, citing his long tenure of nine years on the Infosys board, which affected his independence. Also, the firms had pointed out his attendance record of less than 75 per cent in board meets. Arguing that the company was in full compliance of Sebi and company law requirements, Infosys said as the average tenure of the other directors is just 2.1 years and the managing director himself is only 1.5 years into the job, Lehman brings to the board unique and invaluable inputs bridging between past and current perspectives. It also pointed out how the last promoter-director had stepped down in October 2014 and most of the current board came in January 2014. In its rejoinder, IiAS said, IiAS believes that instead of debating the legality of Jeffrey Lehmans reappointment, Infosys would be better placed in assessing what it should do as a good corporate governance practice. Infosys has always looked at the bigger picture and set its standards on good governance well ahead of corporate India. Why, then, has it begun nitpicking on as obvious an issue as director rotation? Shriram Subramanian of InGovern Research saw the silver lining in the whole issue when he said that the Infosys boards reaction showed that the company took the proxy firms seriously. This is how it is globally. Only if like Infosys do this will it percolate down to other firms. Infy is bringing this global practice to India; that is good. In a big positive for Kesoram Industries, the B K Birla group company today sold its investments in listed worth Rs 400 crore to Birla group holding company, Pilani Investments. The move is part of an attempt to reduce its debt worth Rs 4,000 crore and improve cash flows. The investments were sold to NSE-listed Pilani Investments by way of bulk deals on the BSE on Tuesday morning. Kesoram sold investments in Century Textiles (27.5 lakhs shares), Century Enka (13.4 lakhs shares), Mangalam Cements (38.2 lakh shares), Mangalam Timber (25.3 lakh shares), Aditya Birla Fashions (31.9 lakh shares), AB Nuvo (6.14 lakh shares) and Grasim (1.4 lakh shares). Kesoram shares rose 3.68% to Rs 96 a share on Tuesday morning trades. The company is in transition, with Aditya Birla group chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla taking key decisions for the company as his ailing grandfather takes a back seat. On February 17, Kesoram announced that the Aditya Birla group was raising its stake in to 50% from 46% by way of a preferential share issue. Kesoram is the second B K Birla group company after Century Textiles in which Kumar Mangalam Birla-owned promoter are raising their holdings. B K Birla has said in the past that Kumar Birla would take charge of his group after him. In September last year, Kesoram had sold its tyre unit to Singhania family-promoted JK Tyre for Rs 2,200 crore. The acquisition is expected to help JK Tyre, the country's third largest player by revenue, to strengthen its position in the industry and enter the two-wheeler and three-wheeler tyre market. The company has reported losses for last four years due to high interest burden. Analysts said Kesoram and Century Textiles would merge their cement operations with Aditya Birla groups Ultratech, a move that has been denied by the Aditya Birla group. Kumar Mangalam Birla-led Kesoram Industries is taking a series of steps to bring the loss-making company back on track. On Tuesday, Kesoram sold shares worth Rs 400 crore in various listed companies of Birla group to Pilani Investments, the holding company of Birla group. This comes months after Kesoram sold its tyre business to JK Tyres for Rs 2,200 crore. The latest move is part of a restructuring plan by Kesoram to reduce its debt worth Rs 4,800 crore and improve cash flows. The investments were sold to NSE-listed Pilani Investments by way of bulk deals on Tuesday morning. Kesoram sold investments in Century Textiles (2.75 million shares), Century Enka (1.34 mn shares), Mangalam Cements (3.82 mn shares), Mangalam Timber (2.53 mn shares), Aditya Birla Fashions (3.19 mn shares), AB Nuvo (614,000 shares) and Grasim (140,000 shares). Kesoram shares closed 10 per cent up at Rs 101 per share on Tuesday as investors bet on the company's sagging fortunes to turn around. The company is currently in transition, with Aditya Birla group chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla taking key decisions as his ailing grandfather, BK Birla takes a back seat. The company made a loss of Rs 274 crore for the quarter ending December 2015 on revenues of Rs 1,020 crore. The sale was expected to help the company reduce its debt which ballooned to Rs 4,800 crore as on September last year. Kesoram has reported losses for the last four years because of high interest burden. The board of the company has also given a go-ahead to sell off its spun pipe and the heavy chemical units located in West Bengal. Analysts said Kesoram and another BK Birla group company, Century Textiles, may merge their cement operations with UltraTech Cement in future. However, this possible merger has so far been denied by the Aditya Birla group. On February 17, Kesoram announced that the Aditya Birla group was raising its stake in Kesoram Industries to 50 per cent from 46 per cent by buying preferential shares worth Rs 180 crore. Kesoram is the second B K Birla group company after Century Textiles in which Kumar Mangalam Birla-owned promoter companies are raising their holdings. Strengthening its presence in agri segment, Mahindra & Mahindra group announced its entry in the branded dairy products business on Tuesday. The Mahindra group introduced Saboro brand milk in four variants double toned, full cream, protein rich and cream rich in Indore. M&M had introduced Saboro branded apples a couple of years ago in India and expanded its footprints into branded grapes both for domestic and overseas markets. With our launch today, we are confident that Saboro will establish itself as a premium brand for milk in India in the near future, said Pawan Goenka, executive director, Mahindra & Mahindra. The company has put in place an advanced milk collection supply chain, connecting around 70 villages near Indore. With Saboro, through our unique Farm to Fork model, we have entered the branded dairy segment with an aim to connect the farmers with the discerning Indian customers who look for dairy products that are fresh and of the highest quality, said Ashok Sharma, chief of the companys agri business. M&M plans to launch a range of fresh dairy products in Madhya Pradesh over the next one year. The Madras High Court has refused to give a stay on Union Health Ministry's decision to ban 344 (FDC) drugs. The Court has allowed three weeks' time to the Centre to file affidavit and asked it not to take a coercive step against the manufacturers and stockists. The developments comes in the back of a writ petition filed by the Federation of South Indian Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association (FOSIPMA), a federation of pharmaceutical manufacturers of all the southern states. The federation argued that the centre has taken action without sending show cause notice to the pharmaceutical manufacturers and no communication happened in this regard until the drugs were banned. This is against principles of natural justice, they alleged. The federation also argued that the Section 26A of the Drugs and Cosmetics Act, 1940 which gives powers to the central government to prohibit manufacturing of drugs and cosmetics in public interest, should be read along with other sections that constitutes the Drug Technical Advisory Board (DTAB) and Drug Consultative Committee (DCC), when such powers are used. The bench comprising of Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice M M Sundresh, observed that the safety standards are an issue to be decided by the experts and it is a matter of health. The Court refused to give an interin stay on the government's order. Considering today's order, the traders' association Tamil Nadu Chemists and Druggists Association (TNCDA), which claims a strength of over 30,000 members in the State, said that it would not be approaching the court now and would try to work within the three weeks' time given by the Court to sort out the stocks and return those which are of banned combinations. It would also seek the drug control officials to provide them enough time to return these stocks to the manufacturers. Agri-biotechnology major Monsanto India today announced its resignations of its Chief Financial Officer, Abdul Alim Sayed and Director C Ravishankar. A decision in this regard was taken at the meeting of the Board of Directors of the company held in Mumbai Tuesday. "The Board of Directors of the company at its meeting has taken the following decisions: Resignation of Abdul Alim Sayed, Chief Financial Officer (CFO) with effect from March 31, 2016," Monsanto India said in a regulatory filing. C Ravishankar has also resigned as Director of the company with effect from March 22, it said. The company said it has appointed Piyush Nagar as Additional Director of the company from March 23. Monsanto India is a subsidiary of US-based Monsanto, engaged in selling agri-inputs. The month-long strike at Tata Motors' Sanand plant finally came to an end on Tuesday with workers and management reaching a consensus over the issue of suspended workers. Work will resume from Wednesday. After several rounds of talks failed between the workers and the management, a meeting with state labour secretary Sanjay Prasad on Tuesday proved conclusive. The company has agreed to take back 13 suspended workers from the group of 26, the others too said they would join back at the earliest. The remaining 13 workers would continue to get an allowance (about 75 per cent of their salary) during the time an independent committee conducted its enquiry into the suspension. The committee is expected to submit its report within four-six months. As for the two workers who were suspended in December, the enquiry is complete and a decision would be taken within a week, said M S Patel, assistant labour commissioner of Ahmedabad. Umesh Rathod, a striking worker, said: "We would sit with the human resources officials on Wednesday to decide which 13 workers would be joining back. We have also requested the company to not take action against any worker who fails to join back on Wednesday, as many are out of town for Holi, he said. The company has agreed, he added. Around 422 permanent workers had gone on strike at Sanand from February 22, demanding the re-instatement of 28 suspended workers. Two workers were suspended on December 16, 2015 on grounds of indiscipline. The workers union named Bharatiya Kamdar Ekta Sangh Sanand (BKSS) was recognised by the labour department on March 17. Tata Motors said over e-mail that the workmen will call off the strike and restore normalcy and operate as per productivity, quality, discipline & safety requirements. It added, "The enquiry of two workmen suspended in December 2015 has been completed and the company will initiate actions at the earliest on their submission of the reply to the second show-cause." HISTORY OF THE DISPUTE Dec 16,15 Tata Motors suspends two workers at Sanand plant for indiscipline Tata Motors suspends two workers at Sanand plant for indiscipline Feb 22,16 Workers protest demanding enquiry re-instatement of those suspended Workers protest demanding enquiry re-instatement of those suspended Feb 22,16 Company suspends another 26 workers Company suspends another 26 workers Feb 25,16 Workers, management meet at assistant labour commissioner's office, talks fail Workers, management meet at assistant labour commissioner's office, talks fail Mar 12,16 22 Trade Unions in state extend support to workers 22 Trade Unions in state extend support to workers Mar 14,16 State government expedites work on recognising union State government expedites work on recognising union Mar 17,16 Bharatiya Kamdar Ekta Sangh Sanand (BKSS) is recognised by labour dept Bharatiya Kamdar Ekta Sangh Sanand (BKSS) is recognised by labour dept Mar 22,16 Workers and Tata Motors reach agreement over issues Source: Workers, labour department officials US-based renewable energy company SunEdison, battling to pare its $11-billion debt, is not finding buyers for its projects in India. A deal to sell its 1,480 megawatt (Mw) Indian portfolio to Macquarie Capital has fallen through. This is likely to hit the valuation of the projects, estimated by the market at Rs 7,600 crore. Adani Power and Tata Power were in discussions with to buy the projects, sources said. Adani Power did not respond to queries from Business Standard. NATIONAL SOLAR MISSION: THE SUNRISE SECTOR Solar power capacity target: 100,000 Mw by 2022 100,000 Mw by 2022 Grid-connected project: 60,000 Mw 60,000 Mw Rooftop solar & off-grid: 40,000 Mw 40,000 Mw Current capacity: 5,248 Mw 5,248 Mw Tender issued during 2015-16: 6,000 Mw (Till January 2016) 6,000 Mw (Till January 2016) Target for 2016-17: 15,000 Mw The spokesperson of Tata Power stated, "The company does not respond to market speculations. We maintain that we are evaluating various options to create shareholder value."SunEdison's portfolio includes 410 Mw of operational solar power projects, 80 Mw of operational wind projects and 1,000 Mw of recently-won solar power projects, including a 500 Mw project in Andhra Pradesh that the company won at a historic low bid of Rs 4.63 per unit. Market sources said some global funds were interested but no one would buy SunEdison's entire Indian portfolio. Apart from the commissioned projects, those under development are also on the block. "Global fund agencies are looking at commissioned projects and Indian will be interested in projects that are under development. Even the deal with Macquarie Capital is not completely off, it might buy some small assets," sources said. Operating in India for five years, SunEdison's projects are in Gujarat, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka Telangana and Jharkhand. The company has committed to developing 15 gigawatt (Gw) of renewable energy in India. An e-mail sent to did not elicit any response till the time of going to press. India sold 425 Mw of solar power projects to TerraForm Global for $231 million in December 2015. Business Standard had reported earlier that SunEdison was laying off 5-10 per cent of its workforce in India. The share price of the financial vehicle Yieldco, seen as an instrument to fund SunEdison's acquisitions, was under pressure because of the company's rising debt, said an industry expert. "This is hampering the sale of projects. SunEdison is trying to reduce its debt and at the same time is participating in tenders in India. Cashflow from Yieldco is under a cloud and SunEdison needs to look at project sales," he said. In an earlier interview to this newspaper, Ahmad Chatani, global CEO and president, SunEdison, said the company had no specific strategy to meet its target of 15 Gw by 2022. "I do not know five years down the line how much we are going to do. We don't have a forecast for next year. In the 11 months since we committed to 15 Gw, we have done close to 2 Gw," he added. said it is making efforts to confirm the status of its passengers and employees at the Brussels airport, where two explosions ripped through the departure hall during the morning rush hour Tuesday, leaving 21 dead and over 35 injured. Brussels airport serves as Jet Airways' European hub for international operations. The airline had, however, recently announced relocation of this gateway to the Dutch capital Amsterdam from coming Sunday. "We are aware of the bomb explosions at Brussels airport. is making all efforts to confirm the status of all its guests and passengers," the airline said in statement. It also said that as per the first information, its aircraft at Brussles were safe. operates daily flights between Brussels and New Delhi and Mumbai in India and Newark and Toronto in North America. The Naresh Goyal-promoted airline started using the Belgian capital as a hub in September 2007, when it began flying to Europe, making it the first Indian airline to have full-scale operations outside the country, besides national carrier Air India. According to the data with the website, Jet Airways flight 9W 230 from New Delhi reached Brussels at 8:08 am, just minutes after the bomb blast at the Departure airport at 8.00 am. Flight 9W 228 from Mumbai had landed at Brussels at 7.11 am local time. Currently, Jet Airways operates daily non-stop flights to its European gateway at Brussels airport from its domestic hub in Mumbai and New Delhi. All flights after the explosions at the departure terminal of the Zaventem airport been diverted to neighbouring airports. The airport has been shut. American taxi-hailing app and its Indian counterpart Ola, often intensely competing with each other on discounts and service, are now caught in a legal battle over alleged fake bookings. moved the Delhi High Court on Tuesday, accusing Ola of making false bookings on its platform. Demanding Rs 49.61 crore in damages, alleged that Ola set up fake rider accounts, misled its drivers via fake calls impersonating Uber and gave misleading information. Bengaluru-based Ola, which has the highest share in the taxi-app space with Uber catching up fast, has denied the allegations. In view of the submission made by Ola, judge Vipin Sanghi directed it to abide by its statement and listed the matter for further hearing on September 14. Defendants (Ola and its subsidiary Serendipity Cabs) emphatically deny the allegations. Counsel for defendants states they have not done anything to interfere with plaintiffs (Uber) business as alleged, or its system by making false accounts, bookings or cancellations... nor has any intention of doing so. Defendants, their agents and employees shall abide by this statement, the court said. WAR ON WHEELS Gloves off between Uber, Ola NUMBERS DONT ADD UP 50% Ubers claimed India market share 75% Olas purported market share VALUATION $60 bn Ubers estimated worldwide valuation. US-based ride-hailing company seen as one of the most valuable start-ups. No separate estimate available for India entity $5 bn SoftBank-backed Olas valuation PROJECTION OF TAXI APP MARKET IN INDIA: $7 bn in 2020 Sources: Companies, industry estimates It also issued notice to Ola and Serendipity asking them to file their written statement, reply and submit documents within four weeks. According to sources, Uber in its petition alleged that Ola created as many as 93,859 false rider accounts on the US major's technological platform by stating fake names, e-mail IDs and untraceable phone numbers. "The company alleges that Ola made 405,649 false bookings of taxi rides and thereafter cancelled them to create frustration and disrupt business. Also, according to Uber, Ola's employees impersonated Uber officials and circulated damaging text messages," said sources. Uber has claimed that at least 20,000 drivers have left the company's platform owing to these reasons. According to Uber, it has paid around Rs 5 lakh as cancellation charges and alleged that by making false bookings, Ola was squatting on the cabs associated with Uber. Meanwhile, Ola told the court that Uber's plea is the direct result of a contempt petition it has filed against the latter accusing the US-based taxi aggregator of not complying with court directions to phase out diesel cabs. ON A COLLISION COURSE February 2016: A contempt of court plea was filed by Ola Cabs against Uber, claiming that the US giant flouted courts earlier directives and is still adding and plying diesel vehicles in Delhi. Uber India, on the other hand, accused Ola of submitting false and fabricated documents to the court for achieving illegal business gains A contempt of court plea was filed by Ola Cabs against Uber, claiming that the US giant flouted courts earlier directives and is still adding and plying diesel vehicles in Delhi. March 2016: Ola launched a new class of Micro cabs, which have a base fare ranging from Rs 35 to Rs 45, at rates of Rs 6/km. The launch of the new fleet was seen as an attempt to undercut the prices of UberGo, Ubers cheapest class of cab available in the country, which ranges from Rs 6 to Rs 8/km. Ola launched a new class of Micro cabs, which have a base fare ranging from Rs 35 to Rs 45, at rates of Rs 6/km. The launch of the new fleet was seen as an attempt to undercut the prices of UberGo, Ubers cheapest class of cab available in the country, which ranges from Rs 6 to Rs 8/km. March 2016: On the very same day Uber launched its bike taxis uberMoto, Ola announced that it has launched its pilot Bike Taxis in Bengaluru. Sources said that Ola purposely coincided its launch with Uber. "All the allegations made by Uber in the plaint listed for hearing before Delhi High Court are denied in their entirety and we have apprised the court accordingly that the allegations by Uber are frivolous and false to its own knowledge," Ola stated. "We can only speculate this is a counter to the contempt proceedings pending against Uber in the high court... This is an effort to divert attention from the current realities of the market where Uber has faced major setbacks including the recent incidents of its vehicles being seized by government authorities. We stand by our contempt petition that Uber has been plying new diesel vehicles within Delhi in wilful and deliberate defiance of the local rules and regulations," Ola stated. The weakness in stock prices of public sector undertakings (PSUs) may mean the latter buying back their own scrips from shareholders, including the promoter (government) so that the Centre can raise money. The stock prices of some have come off 20 to 60 per cent. The top 50 PSUs have over Rs 2 lakh crore in cash. This puts them in a position to spend money on share buybacks. Since the buyback process is more time-consuming, the Centre is planning the ground work in advance. "We could see buyback programmes in 2016-17. This would help the government meet two objectives. It would support the depressed stock prices and would help the government sell its holding at a price higher than the current market price," said a source. Companies including Coal India, ONGC (Oil and Natural Gas Corporation), NMDC, Oil India, and Bhel (Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited) will most likely go for buybacks given the high cash on their balance sheet. As the stock prices of these companies have come off sharply from one-year highs, the government isn't keen on selling stakes at current market prices, the source added. According to market experts, buyback through the tender route will enable the promoter (government) to participate and allow the company to set the buyback price far higher than the current market price. Deven Choksey, chief executive officer (CEO) of KR Choksey Securities, says a buyback would send a positive signal to the market. "Typically, buybacks happen at a premium to the market price. This results in a boost to investor confidence," he said. So far this financial year, the government has raised Rs 19,300 crore by selling stakes in PSUs. The Centre is likely to fall short of its divestment target this financial year, like it did in the past five years. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his Budget speech had said the the government would "adopt a comprehensive approach for efficient management of government investment in PSUs by addressing issues such as capital restructuring, dividend, bonus shares, etc." Rajeev Thakkar, chief investment officer of Parag Parikh Financial Advisory Services Mutual Fund, says the government should be careful in selecting the companies for buybacks. "PSUs need cash over a period of time for their capital-expenditure needs. Taking out cash through buybacks from the PSU and sending it to the government may constrain the company," he said. According to sources, the government is considering buybacks in unlisted PSUs as well. Experts believe this could be to rejig the capital structure before they go public. The department of divestment is said to have asked the ministry of corporate affairs (MCA) to clarify some rules on buyback of unlisted firms. The army conveyed in writing to the defence ministry its reservations against building six bridges for the World Cultural Festival (WCF) organised by Sri Sri Ravi Shankar's (AOL) Foundation from March 11-13. The army regarded WCF as "a private function". Yet the defence ministry overruled the army's written representation, ordering first one, and then two, bridges to be constructed over the Yamuna, for what it regarded as a "public function." Business Standard has accessed the army's letter to the defence ministry, written in the third week of February, conveying the personal decision of the army chief. The letter cited three arguments why operational army bridges should not be used for a private event. The army's first objection was that the bridging equipment was stored across various army cantonments. Transporting these to Delhi would req-uire a major logistical effort and expense. The second reason was that these bridges co-mprised valuable operational equipment, which had a finite service life in terms of the number of times they could be launched. The army argued that this limited service life should be safeguarded for war. The third reason was the impropriety of deploying military troops for what it considered a private function. Overruling these objections, the defence ministry explicitly took the view that WCF was a public function. It conveyed to the army that a private function was one "organised by a private individual, for private purposes, in private premises." It told the army that, where large public attendance was expected for a function that the government had cleared, it would have to take responsibility for public safety, traffic control, crowd control, etc. With the defence ministry effectively overruling the army's objections, the generals say they took on the job whole-heartedly "in the spirit with which it built bridges for the Kumbh Mela in Allahabad, and organised the annual Amarnath Yatra". An engineer regiment from Meerut was moved to build and maintain the bridges, while equipment was transported from a large number of cantonments. The "Regulations for the Army" lays down rules for "Employment of troops on duties in aid of civil authorities". According to Paragraph 301, troops may be called in for "maintenance of law and order; maintenance of essential services; assistance during natural calamities such as earthquakes and floods; and any other type of assistance which may be needed by the civil authorities." In overruling the army's written objections, the defence ministry relied on the fourth clause: "any other type of assistance which may be needed by the civil authorities." Army generals say the Delhi and Uttar Pradesh governments had jointly cleared WCF, while the Delhi government had requested for bridges. The decision to overrule army reservations to building bridges, however, was taken by the defence ministry. The (AOL) Foundation chose to hold the World Culture Festival on the Yamuna floodplains in spite of being aware of the environmental, legal consequences, letters exchanged between it and the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) show. The letters, accessed by the environmental non-government organisation Yamuna Jiye Abhiyan during the case before the Green Tribunal (NGT), show the foundation had twice been refused permission to hold an event in the area by the DDA. Reviewed by Business Standard, they show constant communication between the Vyakti Vikas Kendra, a registered trust under which the AOL foundation functions, and the office of the chief engineer in charge of DDA's eastern administrative zone. Queries sent to AOL on the disclosure remained unanswered at the time of this story going to print. The letters, which form part of DDA's official submission to NGT, also point to a tug of war between the foundation and DDA over granting permission to hold the event over the last year. They also show the DDA repeatedly shifting its official position on the matter. The DDA had initially stated in a letter dated 18 May, 2015 that permission could not be granted owing to the area falling within the active boundaries of the Yamuna floodplains where it says, 'The Green tribunal (NGT) had banned all activities'. However, a letter dated 11 June eventually allowed permission after imposing a few conditions. This happened after AOL had countered the DDA by saying all activities are not banned and it will not undertake any construction which pollutes the river in any form. The Yamuna Jiye Abhiyan's founder Manoj Mishra says this contradicts AOL's official stance before the NGT where it claimed it could have chosen an alternative site had someone raised concerns regarding the ecological sensitivity of the area earlier. The NGT in its order said it had given the nod to the event despite proof of environmental damage and violation of norms because the matter had been brought to court's notice too late in the day and there was a "reason of fait accompli capable of restoration and restitution." The correspondence shows DDA yet again written to the AOL in a letter dated 30 November saying the event could not be allowed on the flood plains and had suggested using any of the other venues available with it after paying all requisite usage charges. Finally, on 15 December permission was finally granted to the AOL after the DDA wrote a letter saying competent authority, in this case the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi's office had granted permission for the event. The same letter was also marked to the office of Personal Secretary to the Urban Development minister. The letters also point out that AOL had repeatedly asked all charges for using the land be waived off since the festival was cultural in nature. "It is again reiterated the festival is purely cultural, spiritual and non commercial and therefore may be allowed to be held free of charge as requested earlier", it had told the DDA in its final letter to the DDA dated 4 December. Consequently, the DDA had said "No booking charges are leviable. The Organisation has to deposit Rs 15 lakh as security deposit (refundable)." The event, held between 11-13 March have been condemned by environmentalists for checking the natural flow of the Yamuna by the building of pontoon bridges and artificial embankments and the levelling of a large area irrespective of the natural flora. The Green Tribunal (NGT) had also noted that work in the area 'has further disturbed the aquatic life of the river and destroyed water bodies and wet lands on the flood plains, which were in existence'. However, it had set an initial fine of Rs. 5 Crore as compensation for damaging the biodiversity of the flood plains apart from ordering AOL to bear the entire cost of restoring the area to its natural state within two weeks. However, it had later brought it down to Rs 25 lakhs, accepting the foundation's plea that the rest 95 per cent of the interim compensation be paid in three weeks times. The defunct Kingfisher Airlines, which owes around Rs 9,000 crore to various banks, had used a valuation of Rs 4,100 crore (done by Grant Thronton in 2011-12) for its brand as the single largest collateral for its loans. However, an evaluation done by the lenders through RBSA Advisors in 2013 found the valuation to be around Rs 200 crore, or five per cent of the valuation by Grant Thornton. Another valuation done in 2015 pegged it at Rs 100 crore. This assumes significance in the context that Kingfisher Airlines operating licence was suspended in October 2012 by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation. The airline shut shop in October 2012. Banks had relied on Grant Thorntons high valuation of the Kingfisher Airlines brand and associated trademarks while funding Kingfisher. RBSA Advisors, a global valuation and transaction advisory firm having offices across India, New York, Singapore and Dubai, confirmed that it had carried out two valuation exercises for the brand in 2013 and 2015. Rajeev Shah, managing director and CEO of RBSA, however, refused to divulge any further information on the matter citing confidentially agreements. It was State Bank of India (SBI), on behalf of the consortium of lenders, which selected and appointed RBSA Advisors for valuation of the Kingfisher Airlines brand in 2013, said a source familiar with the development. According to sources, RBSA has highlighted the fact that the rights that have been assigned to the banks are only pertaining to Kingfisher registered under the Class 39 under the Trade Marks Act, 1999. Class 39 broadly refers to transport; packaging and storage of goods; travel arrangement, etc. The banks do not have any right over the intangibles or brands of Kingfisher Beer and beverage business category. In an e-mailed response, Grant Thornton told Business Standard: We fully stand by our brand valuation report, which we believe was appropriate in the context of when it was done and the purpose for which it was done. Grant Thornton will obviously be pleased to offer all the information we have in connection with the matter to the appropriate authorities, and support any investigations. It, however, did not respond to queries related to what was the exact valuation of the brand it had calculated in 2011, or whether it repeated the valuation excercise later. Grant Thornton India LLP is reportedly under the scanner of the Serious Fraud Investigation Office, which is looking into the brand evaluation carried out by the firm for the Kingfisher Airlines. Even though Indian atomic facilities do not face terrorist threats as serious as those in Pakistan, a US report on preventing nuclear terrorism has expressed concern over "insider threats" against India's nuclear assets. "There are concerns about insider threats within Indian nuclear facilities," said report titled 'Preventing Nuclear Terrorism: Continuous Improvement or Dangerous Decline?' released by the prestigious Harvard Kennedy School ahead of the Nuclear Security Summit here this month. India faces significant insider corruption though it is thought to be less severe than in Pakistan or Russia, it said. In 2014, Vijay Singh, a CISF head constable at the Kalpakkam Atomic Power Station, shot and killed three people with his service rifle. Although the CISF had a personnel reliability programme in place, it was not able to detect Singh's deteriorating mental health, despite multiple red flags including him saying that he was about to "explode like a firecracker", the report said. "Given the limited information available about India's nuclear security measures, it is difficult to judge whether India's nuclear security is capable of protecting against the threats it faces," the report said. "Although India has taken significant measures to protect its nuclear sites, recent reports suggest that its nuclear security measures may be weaker than those of Pakistan, though likely adversary threats in India are less extreme. Overall, the risk appears to be moderate, and there is no clear trend, either upward or downward," it said. Noting that India has a relatively small stockpile of nuclear weapons and weapons-usable nuclear material at a limited number of sites, which are believed to be heavily guarded, the report said unlike Pakistan, India has a civilian plutonium reprocessing program. According to the report, US officials have reportedly ranked Indian nuclear security measures as weaker than those of Pakistan and Russia, and US experts visiting the sensitive Bhabha Atomic Research Centre in 2008 described the security arrangements there as "extraordinarily low key". The threats to India's nuclear security systems have to confront appear to be significant- though not as great as the threats that exist in Pakistan, it said. India faces threats both domestically and from attacks by terrorist groups based in Pakistan. The report cited the January 2 Pathankot airbase attack by heavily-armed militants of the Jaish-e-Mohammed that killed seven security personnel. The attackers were able to infiltrate the base by climbing over a tree that had grown along the side of a security fence in an area where floodlights were not operating, it said. Read more from our special coverage on "EXCISE DUTY" Jewellers to continue strike, despite assurance of no inspector raj Around 25,000 jewellers assembled at Zaveri Bazaar here on Tuesday to demand rollback, despite the fact that the government had imposed Section 144, which prevents gathering of more than five people at one place.Earlier in the day, a number of small jewellers had opened their shops after 21 days of strike but they downed shutters after knowing the strike was still on. There was some confusion among jewellers about the status of the strike, especially in the wake of imposition of Section 144.We unanimously decided to continue our strike till the government rolls back the fully, said an India Bullion And Jewellers Association official. Agreeing with this, Lala Ashok Kumar Phophalia, general secretary of Delhi Jewellers Association, said the government had tried to remove procedural obstacles by clarifying over raids, search and seizures but the jewellers' concerns remained unresolved. "We have circulated communications among ourselves (various associations) not to call off strike till excise is fully rolled back.The finance ministry had on Monday clarified, All payments of central will be applicable since March 1, 2016 based on first sale invoice value. The central excise authorities will not challenge the valuation given in the invoices provided the caratage/purity and weight of the gold/silver with precious stones, and carats of diamond /precious stones are mentioned in the invoices. The department will not conduct any arrest or criminal proceeding.The ministry also directed the central excise department not to visit the manufacturing units/shops/place of business /residence of the jewellers. Apart from that, the department would not conduct any search and seizure of stocks. At the same time, the government has ensured that exports should not suffer. The circular says exports of jewellery will be allowed on shelf declaration and submission of legal undertaking to customs without the need to get it ratified by the department. Despite assurances, jewellers continued their stir, which had started with the Budget announcement by Finance Minister Arun Jaitley about levy of one per cent excise duty on gold jewellery. However, some large jewellers have seen sales continuing through their franchises and counters in big shopping malls and big retails chains. Many jewellers have also reportedly sold jewellery from backdoors to cater to the upcoming marriage season requirements. Large companies, according to reports, have initiated the process to get themselves registered with the excise department. There were wide expectations that shops will open and imports of gold will begin resulting in to fall in discounts have belied and NCDEX polled gold discount widened from $30 to 33 per ounce today. Prime Minister will pay a two-day official visit to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, it was announced on Tuesday. Modi, invited by King Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, will be the first Indian prime minister visiting the kingdom after Manmohan Singh, who visited Riyadh in 2010. During April 2-3 visit, the prime minister will hold discussions with King Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud on bilateral, regional and multilateral issues of mutual interest, an official statement issued in New Delhi said. "India and Saudi Arabia share friendly relations based on close people-to-people contacts. The 'Strategic Partnership' established through Riyadh Declaration in 2010 envisions a deeper engagement in political, economic, security and defence areas. In recent years, there has been significant progress in bilateral cooperation in such key areas of mutual interest," it said. Saudi Arabia is also India's largest crude oil supplier accounting for about one-fifth of India's total imports. Indians form the largest expatriate community in Saudi Arabia and their contribution in the progress and development of their host country is well recognised. There are over 2.96 million Indian nationals presently working in Saudi Arabia. Ahead of the visit by a Pakistani probe team in connection with the on an IAF base, NIA today released the photographs of four terrorists killed during the counter offensive which began on January 2 and lasted more than 80 hours. The move comes barely a few days before the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of Pakistan visits New Delhi to ascertain the facts of the case and investigation carried out by the Investigation Agency. The NIA's handout featured the bodies of the four slain terrorists with description of their height. The anti-terror probe agency has said one of the terrorists did not have a toe in both the feet. The picture has been circulated and public asked to share information about them. The agency has already approached the Interpol for issuance of Black Notice for the four. The international notice is issued for identification of unidentified bodies found in a country. About the remaining two, the NIA was planning to approach another forensic laboratory for conducting a fresh test of the samples recovered from the Airmen billet at the Pathankot air base. Forensic laboratory in Chandigarh had said they had found human remains in the samples handed over by the NIA. It will take some time before the identity of the remaining two was acertained, an official source said, hinting the same may not be completed before the Pakistani SIT's departure from India. The SIT will be arriving here on March 27 and would be holding consultations with the NIA about the probe conducted so far, the sources said. India has already sent a Letters Rogatory to Pakistan seeking certain details about the four. India has been seeking details of the phone numbers dialled by the four terrorists ahead of the attack on the airbase on the intervening night of January 1 and 2. The numbers are believed to be in the names of people connected with Jaish-e-Mohammed terror group 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 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, 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 using the phone snatched from the jeweller friend of a 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, sources said. The Odisha government's plan to collect about Rs 1,500 crore from mine owners by the end of March, 2016 towards their contribution to the (DMF) has hit the wall with Delhi High Court restricting the government authorities to take any coercive action to collect the fund. The Mines and Mineral Development and Regulation (amendment) Act, 2015 had stipulated that all mineral rich states would constitute DMFs for the districts where mining activities are being carried out with contributions from mine owners operating in that district. While mine owners were asked to contribute an amount equal to 30 per cent of their royalty payment obligation to DMF, the money collected on this head was supposed to be spent on various developmental activities at the local level. The mine owners, who were unhappy with the imposition of this new levy as they felt it would push up their cost in a depressing commodities, were particularly peeved when the Union mines ministry came out with a notification in September, 2015 asking the miners to pay their contribution to DMF with retrospective effect from 12 January, 2015 when the new MMDR Act was enforced. The Federation of Indian Mineral Industries (FIMI), representing the mine owners, had gone to the Delhi High Court against the notification. The court, while issuing notices to the respondents, said, "no coercive steps shall be taken" pursuant to the impugned order of the Union government dated September, 16, 2015 to the extent that it directs establishment of DMF retrospectively from January 12, 2015. The miners argue that in the case of coal, the ministry of coal has asked the owners of coal blocks to pay to DMF from the date of issue of notification or constitution of DMF (whichever is later), whereas the mines ministry has asked the lessees of other major minerals to contribute to DMF retrospectively. Meanwhile, most of the mine owners are waiting for the final disposal of the case before making their full contribution to the DMF, in the process hitting the collection of funds for developmental work in many backward mineral rich districts in resource strained states like Odisha. "The court has not stayed the notification of the mines ministry on DMF, it has just said no coercive action shall be taken for collection of funds. We hope miners would contribute to DMF in time", said Deepak Mohanty, director mines, Odisha government. But the collection figures hint at the hesitation among miners to give their contribution. By the middle of March, only Rs 100 crore was collected towards DMF in Odisha out of the expected amount of Rs 1500 crore. Most of this amount has again come from coal companies with the other miners shying away. The crop insurance scheme, Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY), will enable farmers get more for less, said Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley at an event in Mumbai on Tuesday. The government had launched the PMFBY and the Unified Package Insurance Scheme for farmers. The main difference between the old crop insurance scheme and the new one is that farmers are going to pay less. There has been a considerable debate on the crop insurance schemes. The older schemes were linked to loans. They met with modest success, said Jaitley. He said farmers need security, especially now, with two back-to-back bad crop seasons. Under the new schemes, the risks covered would be larger and the compensation paid higher, and thus, these would be attractive to farmers. For the past two years, we have had deficit monsoons. We hope for a better monsoon this year. But with the new scheme in place, we shall be better equipped to safeguard farmers, said Jaitley. The government is looking to cover half the farmers in the country in the first phase of the scheme. At present, only 20 per cent cultivators are covered by crop insurance. A detailed protocol for assessment of losses after harvest and payment of claims, prevented sowing and localised risks will be followed. For the insurance and reinsurance companies, the idea of low-cost accident and life insurance is that 50 per cent of agricultural community can also benefit for it, which will add to the overall numbers. Numerically, it will be of great significance , he added. The government is planning to spend Rs 5,500 crore for the crop insurance scheme that was announced earlier. In his Budget speech, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said the farmers would pay a nominal premium for the coverage. PMFBY was approved by the Cabinet in January. Here, there will be a uniform premium of 2 per cent to be paid by farmers for all kharif crops and 1.5 per cent for all rabi crops. In case of annual commercial and horticultural crops, the premium to be paid by farmers will be only 5 per cent. The balance will be paid by the government. For a premium of Rs 5,145 a year, farmers will be able to avail of minimum insurance cover for their crop, tractors, pump-sets, self and accidents under the Unified Package Insurance scheme being readied along with the PMFBY. This package of seven products will be first tried in 45 districts. Expansion will be decided after the response. PMFBY has officially already been launched for the entire country. The Centre and state governments plan to subsidise up to 90 per cent of the premium a farmer has to pay under the new scheme. The seven insurance components apart from PMFBY in the united package are fire insurance; a personal accident coverage of Rs 2 lakh under the Pradhan Mantri Suraksha Bima Yojana; agriculture pump-set insurance; agriculture tractor insurance provided by a third party; life insurance through the Pradhan Mantri Jeevan Jyoti Bima Yojana, and student safety insurance. Digital transactions such as emails, blogs and downloads may soon be taxed if the recommendation of a committee on e-commerce levy are accepted. The committee was set up by the Central Board of Direct Taxes. It has recommended a tax of six to eight per cent on 13 services, in a bid to prevent tax avoidance by multinationals. This is beyond the Budget proposal to impose an equalisation levy of six per cent on online advertisement, provision for digital advertising space or any other facility or service for online advertisements. IN THE OFFING Some B2B services on which the committee has recommended equalisation levy of 6-8% Online advertising or any services, rights or use of software for online advertising, including advertising on radio & television Digital advertising space Designing, creating, hosting or maintenance of website Digital space for website, advertising, e-mails, online computing, blogs, online content, online data or any other online facility Any provision, facility or service for uploading, storing or distribution of digital content Source: Committee on Taxation to examine the business models for e-commerce It is based on Base Erosion and Profit Shifting guidelines of The Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) - which provides economic solutions to member nations. The committee submitted its report on February, but it was made public on Monday. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in the Budget proposed an entity making payment to a non-resident entity exceeding Rs 1 lakh a year for online advertisement would withhold tax at six per cent of the gross amount paid as equalisation levy. The proposal is expected to not only affect Google and Facebook but many start-ups that rely heavily on digital advertising. However, the committee's recommendations include advertising on radio and television, designing, hosting of websites, email, blogs, and facilities for collecting online payments. Besides, it has recommended the levy for downloading music, movies, games and software through the Internet. However, all those services have to be B2B in order to attract this levy and not business-to-consumer. "The limit of Rs 1 lakh is low and it should be increased. Further, if the service is related to doing business outside India, whether an equalisation levy is applicable is a matter of debate," said K R Sekar, partner, Deloitte Haskins & Sells LLP. ABC News(BRUSSELS) -- Top lawmakers briefed on the Brussels attacks say its likely the arrest of Paris terror suspect Salah Abdeslam accelerated the timetable for the bombings in Brussels. These attacks must have been in the planning stages for several months, and I think if the cells thought that they may be under investigation, that could prompt them to carry them out more quickly, Rep. Michael McCaul, R-Texas, the chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said Tuesday. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, agreed. I think that the plot given the sophistication of it, the explosives used, the multiple points of attack, had to have been in the planning prior to Abdeslam's arrest, but very well could have been accelerated because of that arrest, he said, adding that his arrest may have still saved lives by forcing the plotters to speed up their timetable. Lawmakers suggested a link between ISIS and the attacks after the discovery of an ISIS flag in a raid by Belgian authorities. The terror group also claimed responsibility for the bombings. I think it has all the hallmarks of an external operation, not only inspired [by ISIS], McCaul said. I think this is probably again one of these foreign fighter-type threats we saw in the Paris attacks, and we know that the tenth Paris attacker was taken into custody several days ago and theres some talk about cooperation. Schiff said the attackers certainly look like theyre connected to the Paris attackers, but did not elaborate on any connections. Its hard to imagine that this is unconnected with what we saw in Paris, he said. The California Democrat said he is concerned about follow-up attacks in Brussels or even potentially more likely in Paris or Germany. Asked how the U.S. could address some of the security concerns at home after the attacks, Schiff said theres only so much you can do. Some target are just going to be too soft to really defend, he said. Rep. Chris Stewart, R-Utah, another member of the House Intelligence Committee, was at a loss for words when asked how Congress should respond to the bombings. There is no magic bullet here, he said. Copyright 2016, ABC Radio. All rights reserved. Water levels at 91 major reservoirs nationwide are the lowest in a decadeno more than 29%, according to the latest weekly bulletin of the Central Water Commission (CWC). As World Water Day is marked today, water levels at Indian reservoirs are 71% of last year, or 74% of average storage over the last decade, the CWC data reveal. The 91 major reservoirs contain 157.8 billion cubic metre (BCM) of water; the capacity of these reservoirs is 250 BCM. Another 400 BCM water is available for irrigation in India through groundwater, according to this answer given by the government in the Lok Sabha (the lower house of Parliament) in July 2015. With more than three months for the monsoon, which breaks in the first week of July, 2016 is on course to witness the worst water scarcity in a decade. Source: Weekly bulletins of Central Water Commission, March 2016 and April 2015. Reports of widespread scarcity are already evident, as is conflict over water use for agriculture, domestic use and manufacturing. Thousands of villages in Maharashtras Marathwadafacing record-breaking droughtdepend solely on water from state-supplied tankers, with the city of Latur supplying water to its people once in three weeks. Last week, the Latur district administration, fearing violence over water, imposed restrictions on assembly. Fodder camps in parched rural Maharashtra shelter not just cattle but hundreds of families. The government is now recommending that towns and cities stop water supply to swimming pools. Madhya Pradesh (MP) is bracing for drought and the government is preparing to send tankers to villagers. In Bundelkhandspread across MP and Uttar Pradeshthere hasnt been water to sow the winter crop, agricultural productivity has halved and people find it hard to buy salt. In Odisha, farmers have broken embankments of public lakes to save crops. Farmers demanding water recently blockaded Bangalore. And the water crisis in Karnataka is witnessing a fallout in Andhra Pradesh (AP) and Tamil Nadu. AP, Uttarakhand, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu likely to be Indias most water-scarce states this summer. South India is the worst off, reservoir levels at 20% Reservoirs in Indias eastern and central regions have the most water, with levels at 44% and 36%, respectively, of capacity; while levels in the south, west and north are 20%, 26% and 27%, respectively, according to the CWC data. The 10-year average for water levels is 38.5%. The Krishna river basin in peninsular India is particularly short of water, affecting Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. The Indus, Tapi, Mahi, Cauvery and Godavari basins are also deficient basins, todays data reveal, forecasting scarcity situations in the coming months in Maharashtra, Gujarat, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Jayakwadi in Aurangabad districtin Marathwada, parts of which are enduring the worst drought in a century, as IndiaSpend reported in Januaryof Maharashtra has only 1% water left of its 2.17-BCM capacity. The reservoirs of Bhima Ujjani in Maharashtra with a capacity of 1.5 BCM and NagarjunaSagar in Andhra Pradesh with 6.8 BCM storage capacity are empty. Source: Central Water Commission Bulletin March 2016; Reservoirs in Madhya Pradesh contain 33% more, while those in Tripura contain 320% more water than average. No lessons learned, no preparations evident Availability of water has been taken for granted till recently. It is so no more. The rapid growth in population, coupled with increasing economic activities, has put a tremendous pressure on the available water resources, said this report tiled Reassessment of Water Resources Potential of India 1993, Central Water Commission. Warnings about Indias water crisis are not new and rarely make news, as the CWC report did not in 1993, when Indias population was 880 milliona third less than that today. IndiaSpend has reported on the worlds worst groundwater crisis and how half the groundwater in Indiawhich uses 37% more fresh water than Chinais contaminated. ALSO READ: Recharge groundwater to keep taps flowing, say experts Water for drinking and sanitation was given the highest priority in the National Water Policy 2012, preceding agriculture and economic purposes, such as industry and power generation. Rural India lives in about 1.7 million habitations (including villages), three-quarters of which1.3 million gets 40 litres of water per person per day for all uses, including drinking and other usage like bathing, washing clothes, utensils and sanitation. There are 66,093 rural habitations in India where the drinking-water source is contaminated with either one or more chemicals, such as like arsenic, fluoride, nitrate, iron and salinity; although this is down from 84,292 over two years, as IndiaSpend reported on 2015. IndiaSpend Water-guzzling crops and power outages Of 650 BCM water available for irrigation, 15%, or 100 BCM of water, is used by sugarcane (the crop uses water from reservoirs as well as groundwater), which is planted on no more than 2.5% of Indias farmland. Sugarcane uses a disproportionate amount of water, this Current Science study explained. Agriculture and industry compete for the same water, and overuse, as with sugarcane, affects Indians in other ways, such as electricity generation. For instance, low water-levels in West Bengal forced a shut down of the National Thermal Power Corporations Farraka coal-fired plant, causing outages in Jharkhand, Bihar, Odisha and West Bengal Electricity generation at Parli in Maharashtra, Raichur and Sharavathi in Karnataka are facing similar shutdowns. Maharashtra and Karnataka are generating half the power they are capable of because of the unfolding water crisis. Forensic audit firms are seeing a surge in demand from banks to probe accounts that have not defaulted but might have started to show some early signs of trouble. Lenders started making this request in the face of pressure from bad loans. Forensic auditors said banks usually use these services once a company defaults on repayment. But, now, lenders are not waiting for a default to happen and are on the vigil if they sense trouble in the offing. Vikram Babbar, executive director, Fraud Investigation & Dispute Services, EY, said banks were now following a proactive approach and would be looking at using forensic audits if they suspect any trouble in the account. Analysts said sometimes a promoter would not have defaulted on a loan to a particular lender but might have had trouble in meeting a repayment deadline at other banks. This might raise an alarm. Bankers have their ear to the grapevine to catch news of companies being in trouble or of a possible fund diversion. We also do asset-tracing for banks. But sometimes by the time we get there, it is too late, said Reshmi Khurana, managing director of Kroll India. So what needs to happen more often is a systematic monitoring of accounts that are in distress and not wait for them to get into corporate debt restructuring. And, we have been seeing that banks have started coming on to us early to ask for audit rights of a company and gain additional information which can provide leverage in times of negotiation with the promoters. Sometimes they are called before the default. Apart from this, banks have also become cautious in internally identifying accounts that might need attention. As a result, audit firms have seen an increase in demand for training purposes as well. The demand for anti-fraud training by banks of frontline staff has also increased. With the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) insisting on banks cleaning up the books, there has been a surge in requests for forensic audits. In the last quarter, these requests have increased by almost five times, added Babbar. A systemic review carried out by RBI, which had asked banks to recognise certain assets in the December- and March-ended quarters of this financial year, had led to an increase in bad loans. The central bank had also prodded banks to step up the fight in tackling the rising non-performing assets issue. Around 40 banks have evinced interest to open up their branch network to more than one insurance company in the life, non-life and health segments. From April 1, new norms for corporate agency channels will come into place. Nilesh Sathe, member (life) at the Insurance Regulatory and Development Authority of India (Irdai), said even those banks that are promoters of insurance companies have expressed interest to follow an open architecture. This means those without bank partners or promoters can tie up with these banks. This would help them reach customers throughout the country through these bank branches. According to corporate agency rules, banks can tie up with up to three life, three non-life and three standalone health insurers to sell their insurance products. However, with banks being given the ultimate liability on any product they sell, experts say the opening up might not yield any results in the near term. Corporate agency network by banks was earlier called bancassurance, which used to follow a model wherein one bank could tie up with only one life, one non-life and one health insurance company. After the insurance sector was thrown open to the private sector in 2000, the early entrants rushed in and established tie ups with banks. Some were also promoted by banks - ICICI Prudential Life Insurance, SBI Life, IDBI Federal Life etc. Irdai has said that from FY17 onwards, bank boards will be required to give a clear plan as to how and by when would they open up their branch network to more than one insurer in each category life, non-life and health insurance. This is because even after Irdai opened up the bancassurance network to more insurers, no bank approached the regulator for additional tie-ups. Regulatory and Development Authority of India (IRDAI) will take up the matter of non-inclusion of public general companies in the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana. At present, they are not part of the scheme. Nilesh Sathe, Member-Life, said that they will take up the issue with the government. These state-owned insurers have about 300,000 agents that sell products in rural and urban areas. G Srinivasan, chairman and managing director of New India Assurance said that the scheme will be successful only if they are made part of the scheme. "Our branch network and people on ground are very high. This can make a big difference to the scheme in rural areas. We are hopeful that we would be made part of the scheme," he added. Public sector non-life insurers have more than 9,000 offices across the country. The government is planning to spend Rs 5,500 crore for the crop insurance scheme that was announced earlier. In his budget speech minister Arun Jaitley said that the farmers will pay a nominal premium for the coverage. The Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana has been approved by the cabinet in January. Here, there will be a uniform premium of 2 per cent to be paid by farmers for all Kharif crops and 1.5 per cent for all Rabi crops. In case of annual commercial and horticultural crops, the premium to be paid by farmers will be only 5 per cent. The balance premium will be paid by the government. Here, there is no upper limit on government subsidy and even if balance premium is 90 per cent, it will be borne by the government. Insurance executives said that the Modified National Agricultural Insurance Scheme (MNAIS) had high premium rate due to which farmers could not afford it. It is anticipated that there would be clusters that would be formed of districts to implement the scheme. Senior insurance officials said that that how the clusters are classified will define how the premiums will be fixed. Apart from this, Regional Rural Banks also raised the issue of providing coverage to crop damage due to attacks by wild animals. Several cases of crop damage have been reported due to attacks on the farm land by elephants, which have destroyed the crops. However, ministry officials said that they will look into this issue. The use of technology has been mandated in the PM Crop Insurance Scheme unlike the other schemes prior to this. The idea was to have one scheme that had the best features of all previous schemes incorporated into it, with weakness removed. PMFBY will have actuarial yield-based scheme with provision for upfront premium subsidy to be released to insurers. The sum insured will be same for both loanee and non-loanee farmers. Also, there would be no capping and there will be full claim amount paid against the sum insured. This scheme will also cover localised risks like inundation and post harvest losses. Setting a new precedence, the Union Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Development of North Eastern Region (DoNER), MoS PMO, Personnel, Public Grievances, Pensions, Atomic Energy and Space, Dr Jitendra Singh initiated a telephone feedback mechanism for grievance redressal of the citizens here today. He personally called three complainants chosen on random basis, who had registered their grievances in the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances (DARPG) and their grievances were disposed off. The Minister sought their feedback regarding the response given by the Government to the grievances. These complainants included Shri Vijay V Lambat (Nagpur, Maharashtra) who had complained regarding the refund of money from Income Tax Department. The second person contacted by the Minister was Shri Aravindbabu Pormar from Bangalore. He had complained against Railways and sought refund of money from the Ministry of Railways. The third person contacted was Shri Paladugu Samba Siva Rao from Odisha, who had grievance related to Provident fund with the Ministry of Labour and Employment. The citizens contacted thanked the Minister and the department. They also suggested that the citizens should be contacted once over phone before closing the grievance. The Minister assured that the department is committed to take steps in this direction. . . The Minister said that this direct citizen contact through telephone will not only enable us to assess the level of satisfaction received by the complaints after the redressal of grievance, it will also help in offering us valuable inputs required to improve the grievance redressal mechanism. He said that this is in line with the Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modis dictum of minimum government, maximum governance with citizen centric approach. In the current age of social media and web portal, this approach will also give the citizens a feeling of direct involvement in the governments grievance redressal mechanism. . . The Minister said that in future, he himself will be calling the citizens at random and verify whether their complaints have been disposed off. He also said that the Secretary or senior official from the department will also make call to the citizens to verify the status of grievance. He further informed that during the last one year, ending December 2015, the grievance cell has received nearly 10 lakh complaints as compared to the average of 2-3 lakh yearly complaints earlier. He also expressed his happiness over the fact that nearly 90% complaints are redressed now. . . Dr Singh also said that the rising number of grievances being registered by the citizens are an indication of the increasing faith of public in the personal interest in the redressal of grievances of the public by engaging with them over phone. The social media will also be used in the grievance redressal, he added. . . Shri Devendra Chaudhry, Secretary, DARPG said that now on an average 1,500 grievances are disposed off in a day and nearly 45,000 grievances in a month. He also said that the department has made a list of more than 12,000 officers across the departments who are being contacted for the redressal of grievances. . . The receipts of grievances have increased from about 5 lakhs to about 12 lakhs and at the same time the disposal has also increased from about 4 lakhs to nearly 11 lakh during the period of June, 2014 to February, 2016. . . The Centralized Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) Portal, a web based portal, has been designed and implemented in all the Ministries / Departments of Government of India. A customized software with local language interface has also been designed for the state governments. This software is called CPGRAMS - States. . . The Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances, Ministry of Personnel has Public Grievances Division which is responsible for issuing policy guidelines coordinating and monitoring of issues regarding redress of public grievances and staff grievances in general and for the central government in particular. The state module of CPGRAMS has been implemented in 9 States/Union Territories namely Haryana, Odisha, Rajasthan, Puducherry, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Uttrakhand, Jharkhand and Punjab. . . The PG Division also coordinates the Citizen Charter and Information and Facilitation Counters (IFCs) initiative of the Government of India. With the objective of improving public service delivery and making governments citizen-centric, an assessment improvement framework called "Sevottam" has been developed. Support is provided to Ministries / Departments and also State Governments to introduce the Sevottam framework for better service delivery. . . The Division also provides secretarial support to the Standing Committee for grievances to the Joint Secretary and above level officers headed by the Cabinet Secretary. . . KSD/NK/PK/KM General Dalbir Singh, the Chief of the Army Staff, paid homage by laying wreath on the mortal remains of Sepoy Vijaya Kumar K, who lost his life in an avalanche triggered by a mild earthquake in Kargil Sector on 17 March 2016. In a solemn wreath laying ceremony at Base Hospital Delhi Cantonment today, General Dalbir Singh expressed his deep condolences to his family of Sepoy Vijaya Kumar K and stated that the Army is proud of soldiers like him, who despite great difficulties in the most inhospitable conditions, defend our borders with utmost dedication. . . Army rescue teams had managed to recover the mortal remains of the soldier from under twelve feet of snow on the third day of a grueling search operation. Avalanche rescue dogs, deep penetration radars and metal detectors were also pressed into service in the rescue operation. . . The mortal remains of 23 years old Sepoy Vijaya Kumar K was moved from Kargil to Leh on 21 March 2016. A wreath laying ceremony was conducted at Leh early in the morning on 22 March 2016 after which the mortal remains were transported to Delhi by air. . . The mortal remains of the brave soldiers will reach Thiruvananthapuram by air on night of 22 March 2016. They would thereafter be transported to his home town in Tirunelveli (Tamil Nadu) by road, where the cremation ceremony will take place with full military honours, tentatively on 23 March 2016. . . The brave soldier belongs to Vallaramapuram village of Thirunelvelli District of Tamil Nadu and is survived by his parents and two younger sisters. A write up on Sepoy Vijaya Kumar K is attached. . . Col Rohan Anand, SM. . PRO (Army) The India-Russia Joint Commission meeting was held here today to discuss bilateral cooperation between the two countries. The Russian delegation was chaired by Mr. Vladimir Andreevich Puchkov, Minister of the Russian Federation for Civil Defense, Emergencies and Elimination Consequences of Natural Disasters and the Indian delegation was chaired by Union Home Minister Shri Rajnath Singh. . . Union Home Minister Shri Rajnath Singh said that the two countries are linked by geography, history and culture and the linkages in the field of disaster management have continued to grow beyond boundaries. Shri Rajnath Singh mentioned that during the 3rd World Conference on Disaster Risk Reduction during March last year in Sendai, Japan we had agreed to enhance ongoing cooperation in dealing with emergency situation, natural disasters, research and training. . . Shri Rajnath Singh said that India is one of the most disaster prone countries in the world. Floods, droughts, cyclones and landslides are common hazards, he added. He mentioned that the country is committed for convergence of disaster risk reduction with developmental programmes and disaster management is not an issue of disaster alone rather it has now become more of development issue. . . Shri Rajnath Singh said that the cooperation in the areas such as controlling floods, minimizing its consequences as well as collaboration in capacity building has been rightly highlighted in our Joint Implementation Plan. He hoped that with the signing of the Joint Implementation Plan, the two countries will acquire new character with enhanced levels of cooperation in the field of Disaster Risk Reduction. . . Speaking on this occasion, Shri Kiren Rijiju said that the output of this deliberation will pave way for the comprehensive and structured cooperation to build capacities of the first responder and other allied forces. He said that the Annual Summit meeting between the Prime Minister of India and the President of the Russian Federation is the highest institutionalized dialogue mechanism under the Strategic Partnership between India and the Russian Federation. . . Shri Rijiju further said that the field of Disaster Management would initiate new era of friendship that will enable both sides to work in close proximity in order to minimize the risk we face due to increased frequency of natural calamities. He further said that India will be benefitted by the state of the art technology and structures, Russia have created to monitor real time basis different events. . . Shri Rijiju mentioned that India has developed sufficient experience in handling disasters and has always been willing to extend technical and financial support to the neighbouring countries. In the aftermath of Nepal earthquake 2015, India was the first country to provide humanitarian assistance and to lead the rescue efforts, he added. . . The Minister of State for Home Affairs mentioned that India has adopted an integrated approach to ensure sustainable, inclusive development. He said that India is making consistent efforts to include disaster mitigation features into the new development programs including revisiting some of the ongoing development schemes for mainstreaming disaster risk reduction. . . Earlier, the Russian delegation visited the Headquarters of National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) where DG, NDRF Shri O.P. Singh made a presentation to the visiting delegation. The Russian delegation expressed their satisfaction on the visit and mentioned that the bilateral cooperation in the field of disaster management between the two countries will be carried forward in future. . . The 10 member Russian delegation, senior officers of MHA, NDRF and NDMA attended the meeting. . . The Tourist Info/Helpline- Toll Free Number 1800111363 or a short code 1363 of the Ministry of Tourism is gaining popularity among Tourists and it has received a total of 17911 calls as on 20th March, 2016 since its launch on 8th February, 2016. The focus of the Tourist Infoline is on IEC i.e. Information, Education and Communication for the Tourists followed by a Helpdesk. This service primarily serves those who know very little about India or about travel within India, and those who do not understand Indian systems and often not even English. . . This Infoline service provides information relating to Travel & Tourism in India to the domestic and International tourists/visitors and to assist the callers with advice on action to be taken during times of distress while travelling in India and if need be alert the concerned authorities. . . Tourists travelling in or planning to travel to India can seek help and information for a hassle free experience. The calls made by tourists (both international and domestic) while in India will be free of charge. The international tourists in India and also international callers who speak the aforesaid languages will be directed to the call agents proficient in the respective language. . . Due to reports regarding incidents involving crime against tourists especially the women tourists, there had been a concern expressed by the foreign tour operators and prospective visitors to India regarding the safety and security of tourists. There was also a serious concern about the tout menace and cheating of tourists. Therefore, on the occasion of Good Governance Day on 26th December,2014, Dr. Mahesh Sharma, the Minister of State (I/C) for Tourism & Culture and Minister of State for Civil Aviation had launched a Incredible India Help Line on a pilot basis and to be operated in house to address and guide the tourists during any emergencies which may include medical, crime natural calamities or on being stranded. This service was available as toll free on telephone 1800111363 or on a short code 1363. The Minister of Tourism further promised that this 24X7 Helpline would soon be available in 10 International languages. . . Keeping his promise, Dr. Mahesh Sharma on 08th February, 2016 had launched the 24x7 Toll Free Tourist Infoline in 12 International Languages including Hindi and English" available on the existing Toll Free Number 1800111363 or on a short code 1363 at a function here today. This project is being implemented by the Ministry of Tourism, Government of India through M/s. TATA BSS who have been associated with the work after open bidding process. The languages handled by the contact centers include ten International languages besides English and Hindi, namely, Arabic, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Portuguese, Russian and Spanish. . . The Union Minister for Rural Development and Drinking Water and Sanitation Shri Birender Singh today said that to achieve the goals of Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM), funds will not be a constraint. Speaking at the closing ceremony of Rural Sanitation and Water Supply Week at Raipur in Chhattisgarh, he said that under SBM (Grameen) and Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMGSY), funds will be allocated to the states as per their demand. He expressed satisfaction that the pace of construction of toilets in rural India has gathered momentum and the States like West Bengal, Karnataka, Rajasthan and Maharashtra have taken the lead in construction of Individual Household Latrines and community toilets. He also informed that many of the States may achieve the target of Open-Defecation Free status in 2017 or 2018, well before the target of 2nd October, 2019. Sikkim and Kerala are now Open Defecation Free, ODF States. . . Shri Singh said that merely achieving the target of toilet construction will defeat the very purpose of swachhta mission and added that more importance should be attached to the sustainability of the programme and change in the mindset. The Minister informed that 8 to 10 percent of the Ministrys budget will be spent on various campaign strategies in future. Shri Singh also underlined that the participation of the citizen and ownership to the programme is the key to success. . . Shri Singh gave awards to 24 sanitation champions from the state and along with the Chief Minister of Chhattisgarh Shri Raman Singh. They also declared 110 Gram panchayats and 154 villages of the state as Open Defecation Free (ODF). Shri Raman Singh announced that his state will become ODF by December 2018. . . Rural Sanitation and Water Supply week was inaugurated at Mohali in Punjab on 16th March by Minister of State for Drinking Water and Sanitation, Shri Ram Kripal Yadav. This has become an annual feature after Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi had launched the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan on 2nd October 2014 to realise its vision of Clean India by October 2, 2019, the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi. . . <><><><><><> . SNC Belgium's neighbours France, Germany and the Netherlands tightened border security today after the attacks on Brussels airport and metro system that left at least 26 dead. In France, where November terror attacks were intricately linked to jihadist networks in Belgium, an additional 1,600 police were being deployed to border crossings, airports, ports and train stations, said Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve. "Access to public transport areas will be restricted to people with tickets and/or ID cards," and they may be frisked, he said after a meeting with President Francois Hollande. Cazeneuve also called on Europe to "further boost coordination and the fight" against terrorism. "These events that strike at the heart of Europe show the need to reinforce even more the fight against terrorism," he said. In France soldiers have already been patrolling rail stations and the airport under a state of emergency after last year's attacks, but armoured vehicles and elite police units joined them today at Paris' Charles de Gaulle and Orly airports. The Thalys high-speed trains -- targeted in a previous aborted attack -- linking France and Belgium were not operating today, and the Eurostar train suspended its Brussels route. The minister said French authorities have already prevented 10,000 people from entering the country since the November attacks in Paris that claimed 130 lives. In Germany, controls at the border with Belgium as well as airports and stations were also boosted, a spokesman for the federal police said. The Netherlands also stepped up security at national airports and train stations and tightened controls on the southern border with Belgium. "Out of precaution we are taking a number of additional measures in the Netherlands," the Dutch coordinator for terrorism and security said on its website. "That means there will be extra police patrols at Schiphol, Rotterdam and Eindhoven and border controls on the southern border," the statement added. Justice Minister Ard Van der Steur also said the country would boost police at train stations, the Dutch news agency ANP reported. President Barack Obama is in Cuba, and Silicon Valley is tagging along for the ride. Executives from several technology companies are travelling with the US president on his goodwill tour or introducing new business initiatives focused on the island-or both. Among the companies joining the Cuba parade this week are Google parent Alphabet Inc, Airbnb, PayPal Holdings, Priceline Group, Stripe and Xerox Corp. One main area of focus is money transfers. Lifting restrictions on moving money between the two countries was one of the first things the Obama administration sought to relax since ... Terror struck Europe on Tuesday as two deadly blasts - blamed on a suicide bomber - ripped through the Zaventem airport here killing at least 13 people. A third explosion followed at a Metro station in the heart of the Belgian capital, claiming 15 more victims. Scores were also injured in the coordinated attacks -- only four days after Belgian Police arrested the suspect in the Paris terror attack which killed 130 people in November. The injured included two employees of the privately-owned Indian airline Jet. One was an Indian. "Jet Airways guests and staff on the landside at have been moved away far-off from the terminal. Transit guests who were in the terminal building have been shifted to hangers in coaches," the airline said in a statement. "Our Brussels staff is co-ordinating with airport authorities and security agencies to arrange immigration formalities as soon as possible to move the transit guests out of the airport." Explosion at Brussels Zaventem airport. Photo: Twitter Prime Minister Charles Michel blamed terrorists for the carnage. "We were already fearing attacks. That has happened now. We confront a situation where many people have died," a sombre Michel told the media. He said Belgium was "determined to deal with the situation". Michel said a suicide bomber was involved in the airport attack, which took place at 8 a.m. in a departure area, shattering windows, furniture as well as machinery, leaving it resembling a war zone. The airport -- the biggest in Belgium -- and all public transport were shut down after the bloodbath. And so was the European Union headquarters, located near the Maalbeek Metro station where 15 people died, said the Guardian newspaper. "The Metro was leaving Maelbeek station for Schuman when there was a really loud explosion," Alexandre Brans, 32, told the media, wiping blood from his face. "It was panic everywhere." Belga news agency reported that shots were fired and shouts in Arabic were heard before the two airport blasts, BBC said. An intern working at the airport told Al Jazeera: "When I heard the first explosion, lots of people started screaming and running. When I heard the second explosion, which was about 30 seconds after the first, everything got chaotic. I could see panic on everyone's face, blood on their bodies." Hundreds of people fled the airport building, some with blood on their faces. First reports said the blasts were centred at the American Airlines check-in desk. The false ceiling in that building came crashing down. Most media outlets put the death toll at the airport at 13. TV footages showed a number of Indian passengers being evacuated from the airport. Two Jet Airways planes had arrived earlier in the day from Mumbai and Delhi. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said the terror attacks were "disturbing" and "condemnable". He conveyed his condolences to the families of the deceased. "May those injured recover quickly." The attacks came as the Belgian capital was on a state of high alert following the arrest of Paris terror attack suspect Salah Abdeslam in the city on March 18. Belgium Interior Minister Jan Jambon said the country was braced for possible revenge attacks after the 26-year-old's capture. Pictures showed the terminal windows blown out from the force of the explosion and plumes of smoke rising high into the sky. Video also showed terrified passengers running for their lives out of the terminal. Sky News Middle East correspondent Alex Rossi, who was at the airport, told the channel: "I could feel the building move." CNN quoted a tourist, Anthony Barrett, as saying that he heard the explosions from his hotel across the terminal building. "When I opened the curtains and looked out, I could see people fleeing," he told CNN. Barrett said he saw 19 or 20 stretchers with people on them. Luggage trolleys were also used to transport the wounded. The Brussels airport, originally built in 1944 and with three runways, said there were two explosions at the building and everyone was ordered to leave immediately. France is seeking Abdeslam's extradition so he can stand trial for his alleged role in the November 13 rampage of gunfire and suicide bombings which killed 130 people in Paris. The US Justice Department said on Monday that it might no longer need Apple's assistance in opening an iPhone used by a gunman in the San Bernardino, California, rampage last year. The disclosure led a judge to postpone a court hearing over the issue and temporarily sidesteps what has become a bitter clash with the world's most valuable company. In a new court filing, the government said an outside party had demonstrated a way for the FBI to possibly unlock the phone used by the gunman, Syed Rizwan Farook. The hearing in the contentious case - Apple has loudly opposed opening the iPhone, citing privacy concerns and igniting a heated debate - was originally set for Tuesday. While the Justice Department must test this method, if it works "it should eliminate the need for the assistance from Apple," it said in its filing. The Justice Department added that it would file a status report by April 5 on its progress. The change is a reprieve in the clash that has erupted over how and when the authorities should use the troves of digital data collected and stored by tech companies. The two sides have traded barbs over the issue since last month, when Apple received a court order demanding that the company weaken the security of the iPhone so law enforcement officials could gain access to the data in it. The case has been viewed as a watershed moment in the debate over privacy and security. Apple had opposed the court order, arguing that it would be a slippery slope that could force the company to open many iPhones, thus compromising the privacy of its customers and the strength of its product security. President Obama said this month that the law enforcement authorities must be able to legally collect information from smartphones and other devices, adding that he opposed the stance on encryption taken by tech companies like Apple. Late on Monday, Judge Sheri N Pym, the federal magistrate judge in the United States District Court for the Central District of California who was set to hold the hearing, agreed to grant the Justice Department's motion to postpone the hearing. The emergence of a potential third-party method to open the iPhone was a surprise, as the government said more than a dozen times in court filings that it could open the phone only with Apple's help. The FBI director, James B Comey Jr, also reiterated that point several times during a hearing before Congress on March 1. The new method could forestall, but is unlikely to entirely head off, a showdown between Silicon Valley and the Justice Department over encryption. "This will only delay an inevitable fight over whether the government can force Apple to break the security of its devices," said Alex Abdo, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, an advocacy group. For the Justice Department, cracking the iPhone would be a mixed blessing. While it would give investigators access to data that they see as crucial to a terrorism investigation, it would cut short the encryption debate that the FBI had been trying to start for years before the Apple case came along. While contentious, the Apple case neatly crystalized that debate in a way that abstract discussions never had. The court fight, regardless of its outcome, would have increased the likelihood that Congress took up legislation to address the issue. Shelving the San Bernardino case could remove a sense of immediacy on the topic. The case could flare anew in court if the third-party method for opening the iPhone falters. In a conference call late Monday, a federal law enforcement official, who spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity, said the government legally had to explore all outside methods of opening up the iPhone. If the government exhausted those options, then it could turn back to the courts to compel Apple to help open the device. The law enforcement official declined to name the outside party that approached investigators with a possible method for opening the phone. He said that investigators were cautiously optimistic about getting data from the phone, but that further testing is required. The government has been using the All Writs Act, a legal statute that dates to 1789, as a key underpinning of its case. "The issue at hand is whether the government can use the All Writs Act to force an unwilling third party, Apple, to create what it claims is a back door," said Joseph DeMarco, a former federal prosecutor who filed a brief on behalf of law enforcement groups that supported the Justice Department in this case. "But if it can find a willing third party to break into the phone, then the All Writs Act argument is moot." In a statement, Melanie Newman, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said the FBI had continued to work on ways to gain access to the contents of the iPhone used by Farook, even as the fight between Apple and the government was unfolding. A senior Apple executive, who spoke to reporters on the condition of anonymity late Monday, said should the government fail to unlock the phone and continue its fight with the company, Apple would want to know more about the outside party that has claimed it can break into the iPhone, in order to learn what methods could circumvent the company's security features. The executive said that Apple had no knowledge of what capability the government might soon have and that it learned about it on Monday. In the meantime, Apple has continued to repeat its message of privacy. At a product event on Monday at the company's Cupertino, California, headquarters, Timothy D Cook, Apple's chief executive, emphasised a philosophy of helping to protect users' data. "This is an issue that impacts all of us and we will not shrink from this responsibility," Cook said. 2016 The New York Times News Service The first ever initial public offering (IPO) by an e-commerce company in the domestic market has failed to excite brokerages. Reliance Securities believes the valuations are expensive even compared to that of global e-commerce giants such as Amazon and Alibaba. IIFL has asked its clients to avoid the IPO citing concerns including threat from e-commerce giants. Meanwhile, S P Tulsian Investment Adviser has advised investors to remain away from the issue citing corporate governance issues and promoters track record. Post-listing market cap of around Rs 2,300 crore appears expensive based on annualised FY16 sales of Rs 350 crore, and profit after tax of Rs 13 crore, say IIFL analysts Saptarshi Mukherjee and Amod Joshi in a note. Angel Brokings Amarjeet S Maurya and Milan Desai, too, are of the view that InfoEdge is expensive on EV/revenue basis and have assigned a neutral rating on the IPO. Asset Management announced on Tuesday it had agreed to acquire the onshore fund schemes managed by JPMorgan Asset Management India (JPMAM), including its India-based onshore mutual fund business and the international fund of funds. The buyout is subject to regulatory approvals. JPMorgan is the seventh global financial services firm to exit the Indian mutual fund (MF) sector in the past three years. Last year, Goldman Sachs sold its MF business to Reliance Capital for Rs 243 crore in a deal valued at 3.4 per cent of the former's Indian assets under management (AUM). Deutsche MF sold its business to DHFL Pramerica reportedly for Rs 400 crore (or two per cent of the German entity's Indian fund management arm's assets). The AUM of JPMAM is Rs 7,081 crore, while that of combined entities amounts to Rs 8,757 crore as on December 31. Asset Management, which has long been among the bottom 10 fund houses in terms of assets managed, now stands to enter the top 20 club. did not reveal the deal price but said the deal size "was in line with the recent transactions in the MF space." "We will reach a critical size with this acquisition. We had domestic assets of about Rs 3,000 crore, including the PMS (Portfolio Management Services) assets. With this buyout the asset size will balloon to about Rs 10,000 crore. This will be a big confidence booster to our distributors as well," said Nitin Jain, chief executive officer (CEO), global asset and wealth management, Edelweiss Group. According to experts, Edelweiss will get about Rs 1,500-2,000 crore of equity assets of JPMorgan, which is a good thing. "It can leverage the foreign bank network of JPMorgan," said Manoj Nagpal, CEO, Outlook Asia Capital. JPMAM had been scouting for buyers for many months. However, the plan had taken a backseat after the crisis caused by the Amtek Auto default. The fund house had an exposure of nearly Rs 200 crore to Amtek Auto debt paper through two of its debt schemes. Earlier this month, Tata Mutual Fund was reportedly in the race for buying the fund's assets at one per cent of JPMAM's AUM. In March last year, Reliance Capital Asset Management and at least two other large and two mid-sized asset management companies were reportedly keen on buying JPMAM's assets. "Given the complementary business advantages and the significant business that JPMAM has built, this acquisition is a natural win for both Edelweiss and JPMorgan. There will be planned investments in the business in terms of products, technology, distribution, and a clear strategy to compound growth," said Rashesh Shah, chairman and CEO, Edelweiss Group. The Chennai-bound Jet Airways flight, which was moved to an isolated area at the Indira Gandhi International ((IGI) Airport following bomb threat, was on Tuesday diverted to Nagpur. A Mumbai-bound Jet Airways flight was also evacuated at the Jolly Grant Airport in Dehradun after bomb threat was received for five flights of the Jet Airways. The threat was received after three of the flights had already landed at their destinations. Last Thursday, two flights were grounded at the IGI airport due to a bomb scare. In a claim that is being firmly rejected by the Iraqi military, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIS) stated that a British suicide bomber has killed more than two dozen Iraqi army troops in an attack on Monday. According to the Guardian, a man named Abu Musa al-Britani rammed his vehicle into a gathering of Iraqi army troops and vehicles near al-Asad air base in the province of Anbar, killing 30 soldiers, the group claimed on social media. However, the Iraqi military flatly denied the report, saying that the attacker had been the only victim of the explosion. has featured British foreign fighters in its propaganda, including Mohammed Emwazi, who appeared in execution videos that documented the killing of several western journalists and aid workers. He was later killed in a drone strike. Last September, Prime Minister David Cameron said that UK had carried out drone strikes that killed two other Britons fighting for Islamic State. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj on Tuesday confirmed there are no reports of any Indian causality in the twin bomb attack at the Brussels airport. Swaraj said that the Indian Embassy in Brussels will provide all necessary assistance to the Indians stuck in Belgium, adding that she has spoken to Ambassador Manjit Puri in this regard. "I am in touch with Mr Manjeev Puri Indian Ambassador in Brussels. He has informed me that so far there is no report of any Indian casualty," Swaraj tweeted. "However, an Indian lady crew member of Jet Airways is injured. She has been rushed to the hospital. Please do not worry. Indian Embassy in Brussels will provide all assistance," she further said in series of tweets. Meanwhile, the government has issued high alert at all airports and metro stations of the country. At least 13 people have lost their lives while 35 others seriously injured following the suspected terrorist attack at the Brussels airport. Two explosions reportedly shook the building shortly after 8 a.m. local time, leaving the passengers terrified. The incident took place four days after the arrest of Paris attack mastermind Salah Abdeslam from the Belgian capital. British Prime Minister David Cameron has also expressed his shock and concern over the incident. Putting the Havana government in a spot, U.S. President Barack Obama asserted that his Cuban counterpart Raul Castro also delivers satisfactory answers to queries on human rights, political prisoners and economic reforms. According to CNN, even though both leaders did not agree on several grounds, they found common ground on the topic of the economic embargo on Cuba, which both want lifted and Obama declared that "the embargo's going to end," though he couldn't say when. Answering a question on why his regime was keeping Cubans incarcerated for expressing anti-government views, Castro went on the defence saying, "Did you ask if we had political prisoners? Give me a list of political prisoners and I will release them immediately," Castro said defensively when asked by CNN that why his government was incarcerating dissidents. Castro later read out a list of areas where he said the U.S. was failing and ended the question-and-answer session after a second inquiry on human rights, saying he'd said "enough." In his own message on human rights, Obama defended his decision to come to Cuba even as government dissent is punished. "We have decades of profound differences. I told President Castro that we are moving forward and not looking backwards. We will continue to stand up for basic principles that we believe in. America believes in democracy. We believe that freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, are not just American values but universal values," he said. Stressing that work toward improving economic conditions in his country was progressing, Castro said that a longstanding trade embargo prevents a full restoration of ties. "Much more could be done if the U.S. blockade could be lifted," Castro said. "The most recent measures adopted by his administration are positive but insufficient." Agreeing with Castro, Obama said that the restrictions would eventually be removed, adding that, "The path that we're on will continue beyond my administration. The reason is logic. Describing the meeting between People's Democratic Party (PDP) president Mehbooba Mufti and Prime Minister Narendra Modi over government formation in Jammu and Kashmir as travesty of democracy, the Conference on Tuesday said that she should either form the government with the BJP or step down as the prolonged deadlock is causing pain to the state. "The NC wants that there should be a civilian government in place without further loss of time. The current situation saddens us. Democracy is being taken for a ride; the mandate given by the people is being thrown to the winds. The two parties qualify to form a government and if they cannot then for the sake of democracy they should step down," Conference leader Mustafa Kamal told ANI here. Kamal further alleged that Mehbooba went to meet the Prime Minister unprepared. "She should have gone there with all cards in her hand. She could have gone to Delhi after meeting her party executives which she has not done, she went without doing her home work and it is unfortunate and this will result in extension of painful wait," he added. Mehbooba, who called on Prime Minister Modi at the latter's official 7, Race Course Road (RCR) residence in the capital, dubbed the meeting to be 'positive' and said that a final call in this regard would be taken after the legislature's meet on March 24. "I am satisfied after meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It was a very positive meeting. A stalemate was going on for a long time. A final call will be taken after the legislature meet on Thursday," Mehbooba told the media. The Congress Party on Tuesday staged a protest against the Devendra Fadnavis-led Maharashtra Government with regard to the fire at Deonar dumping ground. The protestors raised anti-government slogans and denounced the state government at the BMC Commissioner's Office. "On 28th January 2016, fire erupted at Deonar dumping ground. This troubled the common of Mumbai, especially the ones living in the nearby areas it became difficult to breathe for them in the poisonous air. We thought that the BMC took some effective measures but yet again the dumping ground is on fire. They are not doing anything. The government has made life of common like garbage," Congress leader Sanjay Nirupam told ANI here. The residents near the Deonar dumping ground continued to suffer for the third day in a row on Tuesday as the poisonous smoke engulfed the entire area, affecting the air quality and making it difficult to breathe. The fire that broke out at Mumbai's Deonar dumping ground earlier on Sunday, intensified later and spread to around two-three square kilometres. The Election Commission on Tuesday expressed satisfaction on the overall poll preparedness in the poll bound state of Assam. Talking to reporters here, Chief Election Commissioner Nasim Zaidi said that the commission is committed to ensure that every voter can exercise their democratic rights. He instructed the district administration to re- assess the vulnerable areas. He also said that all polling stations in rural areas will be guarded by the central armed police forces. In Assam, polling for the first phase of polls will be held on April 4 in 65 seats. The scrutiny of nomination papers will be held on March 19, while March 21 is the last date of withdrawal of nominations. Assam has a total of one crore 98 lakh voters. The Election Commission has announced two-phase voting for the 14th Assam assembly elections on April 4 and 11, while the votes will be counted on May19. The tenure of the Tarun Gogoi Government comes to an end in June. Terming the meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the government formation in Jammu and Kashmir as a 'positive' one, People's Democratic Party (PDP) Chief Mehbooba Mufti on Tuesday said a final call on the matter would be taken after the legislature's meet on March 24. "I am satisfied after meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi. It was a very positive meeting. A stalemate was going on for a long time. A final call will be taken after the legislature meet on Thursday," Mehbooba told the media here. Mufti met Prime Minister Modi at the 7 Race Course Road today, in a last ditch effort to renew a partnership between the PDP and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to form government in Jammu and Kashmir. Mufti, who reached New Delhi yesterday for talks with the BJP leadership, has called for a legislature party meeting on March 24. The state is under Governor's rule since the death of chief minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed three months back. However, as per reports, her meeting with the Prime Minister failed to take place and she returned to Srinagar. PDP-BJP negotiations had hit a roadblock last week when Mehbooba returned to Srinagar on Saturday morning as her expected meeting with Prime Minister Modi to seal a deal did not happen. The Congress Party on Tuesday lashed out at Prime Minister Narendra Modi over the ongoing political crisis in Uttarakhand and said that he should practice 'raj dharma' abiding by the Constitution of India instead of encouraging horse trading. Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala alleged that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is making a mockery of India's Constitution by indulging in such petty politics. "We want to humbly tell Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi by reminding him of 'raj dharma' that his duty is towards the Constitution not towards petty politicking and horse trading by the BJP which he is encouraging," Surjewala told ANI here. "We would like to say that the entire episode where a Union Minister took nine rebel MLAs at night in an airplane. The way Haryana Government is keeping and protecting those MLAs, the way Union Ministers are meeting those MLAs reflects politics of mudslinging of buying MLAs of using money and muscle power is ruling the roost under the active protection of the Prime Minister of the country." added. The Congress leader further said if the Prime Minister is going to violate the Constitution with such impunity then who is going to protect the same. "These are fundamental questions that the Prime Minister needs to introspect and ponder over. What would happen to the Constitution of India? What would happen to his oath of office?" he added. The Uttarakhand battle reached the corridors of the Rashtrapati Bhavan yesterday with BJP demanding President Pranab Mukherjee to dismiss the Harish Rawat-led government while the Congress accused the ruling dispensation at the Centre of destabilising the grand old party. Launching a frontal attack on former Uttarakhand chief minister Vijay Bahuguna, one of the nine Congress MLAs who revolted against the Harish Rawat-led government and joined hands with the BJP, the Congress yesterday expelled his son Saket Bahuguna and party's state organisation secretary Anil Gupta for six years on charges of indiscipline and anti-party activities. Vijay Bahuguna and the other eight rebel MLAs have also been issued notices by Speaker G.S. Kunjwal under the anti-defection law. The Congress has told all of its MLAs that any indiscipline will not be tolerated at any cost and strict action will be taken against the violators. Chief Minister Rawat yesterday accused the NDA Government of attempting to destabilise his government while rejecting the BJP's allegations of corruption in his state. The Congress Party on Tuesday asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to rise above narrow confinements of power to form a government with the People's Democratic Party (PDP) in Jammu and Kashmir, which is at present facing a severe deadlock. "The progress and path of development begins forthwith. So, we request Prime Minister Narendra Modi to rise above the narrow confinements of power and ensure that PDP-BJP Government is formed at the earliest, without trappings of power and in order to ensure progress, peace and development in Jammu and Kashmir," Congress spokesperson Randeep Surjewala told ANI. "The manner in which for nearly last three months, the BJP and the PDP are setting terms with each other does not go well for our democracy. It's important, particularly when every day we see Pakistan's attacks on our borders, more so in Jammu and Kashmir, the way terrorists continue to infiltrate.its extremely important that a democratic government fulfils the aspirations of the people of Jammu and Kashmir," he added. Surjewala further stated that a sensitive border state like Jammu and Kashmir is of paramount importance, adding that formation of a government and giving an elected government to the people of the state should be the first priority in the interest. Earlier today PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti met Prime Minister Modi at the 7 Race Course Road, in a last ditch effort to renew a partnership between the PDP and the BJP to form government in Jammu and Kashmir. Mufti, who reached New Delhi yesterday for talks with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leadership, has called for a legislature party meeting on March 24. The state is under Governor's rule since the death of chief minister Mufti Mohammed Sayeed three months back. However, as per reports, her meeting with the Prime Minister failed to take place and she returned to Srinagar. PDP-BJP negotiations had hit a roadblock last week when Mehbooba returned to Srinagar on Saturday morning as her expected meeting with Prime Minister Modi to seal a deal did not happen. Jawaharlal Nehru University students' union president Kanhaiya Kumar met Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi at his residence here on Tuesday and thanked him for supporting the varsity students following the controversy over the February 9 event. Accompanied by delegations from the JNU and the All India Students' Federation (AISF), Kanhaiya met Gandhi at around 11:30 a.m. "When the JNU controversy took place..Rahul Gandhi ji and other leaders went there. So, a delegation of JNU came here to thank Rahul ji. In the coming days, they will be meeting other leaders also whoever supported the movement. We will continue this fight to protect the autonomy of the Constitution. We will fight the attempts of the RSS to attack the institutions of prominence in the country," Students' Union of India (NSUI) president Rozi John told the media here. "We have not come here to do politics of election. We are working under the university and working against the attacks on the educational institutions by the RSS. We are fighting for the students' rights," he added. The Congress vice-president had earlier attended a solidarity meeting at the JNU to demand Kanhaiya's release. Gandhi, who had also joined the protest march demanding justice for Kanhaiya, attacked the Centre and Prime Minister Narendra Modi accusing them of crushing voices of the students across the country and pitched for a law to protect them from discrimination and suppression. Meanwhile, amid the protest against Hyderabad University Vice-Chancellor P. Appa Rao, who resumed office today after going on leave amid the storm following the suicide of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula, Kanhaiya would be visiting Hyderabad University tomorrow. Rao was under fire for his handling of the suspension of the five Dalit students, one of whom, Rohith Vemula, committed suicide on January 17. The varsity students had vehemently protested demanding his resignation. 26-year-old Vemula, who hanged himself in Hyderabad Central University campus in January, was suspended from his hostel in August last year for allegedly attacking an ABVP leader. Sepoy Vijay Kumar K, the soldier who was martyred during an avalanche in Biamah area of Kargil sector on March 17, was accorded full military honours in a solemn wreath laying ceremony held in Leh in the early hours of Tuesday during which the Army paid its homage. After the wreath laying ceremony, the mortal remains of the martyr have been flown to New Delhi where Army Chief General Dalbir Singh will pay his homage. After the wreath laying ceremony at New Delhi, the mortal remains of the soldier will be flown to his native place in Vallaramapuram village of Tamil Nadu's Thirunelvelli district, where the funeral ceremony would be conducted with full military honours. Sri Lanka and Saudi Arabia have inked an agreement to set up an electronic system that would streamline recruitment from the island nation. Saudi Deputy Labor Minister for Customer and Labor Relations Ziad Al-Sayegh has said the agreement was recently signed in Colombo during the bi-annual joint technical committee meeting held to monitor the progress of labor relations, reports Colombo page. The electronic system will function through Saudi Ministry of Labor's Musaned website and will keep a tab wages of the domestic workers and charged levied by exporting countries. The new system will enable competitiveness between recruitment agencies and reduce delays. Both nations had last year signed a labor pact protecting the rights of workers and employers, covering 12 categories of domestic workers including housemaids, drivers, cleaners, and waiters employed by individuals. The new agreement includes details of working conditions, health and safety requirements and that the contracts be in a language understood by the workers. If the workers want to leave after serving for two years, the employers must agree to terminate the service contracts and employees have the right to retain all their travel documents. NASA has released a new gravity map of Mars, providing the most detailed look at the Red Planet's hidden interior. Lead author Antonio Genova of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) said that gravity maps allow them to see inside a planet, just as a doctor uses an X-ray to see inside a patient. Genova added that the new gravity map will be helpful for future Mars exploration, because better knowledge of the planet's gravity anomalies helps mission controllers insert spacecraft more precisely into orbit about Mars. Furthermore, the improved resolution of this gravity map will help the researchers understand the still-mysterious formation of specific regions of the planet. The improved resolution of the new gravity map suggests a new explanation for how some features formed across the boundary that divides the relatively smooth northern lowlands from heavily cratered southern highlands. Also, the team confirmed that Mars has a liquid outer core of molten rock by analyzing tides in the Martian crust and mantle caused by the gravitational pull of the sun and the two moons of Mars. Finally, by observing how Mars' gravity changed over 11 years, the period of an entire cycle of solar activity, the team inferred the massive amount of carbon dioxide that freezes out of the atmosphere onto a Martian polar ice cap when it experiences winter. They also observed how that mass moves between the South Pole and the North Pole with the change of season in each hemisphere. The map was derived using Doppler and range tracking data collected by NASA's Deep Space Network from three NASA spacecraft in orbit around Mars: Mars Global Surveyor (MGS), Mars Odyssey (ODY) and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Like all planets, Mars is lumpy, which causes the gravitational pull felt by spacecraft in orbit around it to change. "With this new map, we've been able to see gravity anomalies as small as about 100 kilometers (about 62 miles) across, and we've determined the crustal thickness of Mars with a resolution of around 120 kilometers (almost 75 miles)," said Genova. "The better resolution of the new map helps interpret how the crust of the planet changed over Mars' history in many regions." The study is published online in the journal Icarus. Mullah Muhammad Rasool, the chief of a breakaway faction of the Afghan Taliban, has been detained by the Pakistani authorities. The two Taliban leaders, who claimed his detention, did not mention when Rasool was taken into custody. They, however, confirmed that he fled recent infighting in southern Afghanistan. "I can confirm that Mullah Rasool has been arrested by authorities in Pakistan after he crossed the border," express tribune quoted one of the Taliban leaders as saying. Another Taliban leader in Rasool's camp also confirmed his detention. Last November, Rasool was chosen by several Taliban cadres to head them after they opposed Mullah Akhtar Mansoor's ascendency to head the splinter group. Dozens of Taliban insurgents, including the breakaway faction's deputy chief Mullah Mansoor Dadullah and his brother, were killed when Mullah Mansoor's loyalists launched a major offensive against dissidents in Zabul province. The loyalist of Mullah Mansoor captured the areas in Khak-e-Afghan district of Zabul after clashes in mid-November. While Mullah Rasool and his second deputy Abdul Manan Niazi managed to escape. The rival factions of Taliban have recently been engaged in clashes in Herat province. Rasool was the part of a Taliban delegation that had arrived in Islamabad in July last year for peace talks but he has not yet come up with a policy about negotiations under the Quadrilateral Coordination Group. Meanwhile, a Taliban leader informed that a top-level delegation of Afghan Taliban military leaders had recently visited Iran in an effort to increase cooperation in view of the emerging threats from the Islamic State, also known by its Arabic acronym Dai'sh, in Afghanistan. However, Taliban spokeman said the he was unaware about the visit. Nepal Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli, who is presently in Beijing on an official visit, called on Chinese President Xi Jinping. Both leaders discussed matters related to mutual interests and bilateral cooperation during the meeting, which was held at Beijing-based 'Great Hall of the People', reports The Himalayan Times. In a bid to shift away from heavy dependence on India, Nepal yesterday signed an agreement with China to use transit facilities for third country trade by using ports of the northern neighbour. Both countries exchanged views on consolidating the bilateral relations, according to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. During the meeting , Oli requested China to build three rail lines, one connecting three of Nepal's most important cities, other crossing the border from China into Nepal and a monorail in Kathmandu. Hou Yanqi, deputy head of the Chinese Foreign Ministry's Asia Division, described the rail connectivity as a "longer-term plan". Oli handed over an invitation letter to Xi Jinping to come to Nepal on behalf of Nepal's President Bidhya Devi Bhandari. New Delhi, Mar. 22 (ANI): Two innovators from Mizoram and Assam and a Bodo writer from Kokrajhar are currently residing at the Rashtrapati Bhawan in New Delhi as a part of 'In-residence programme' for displaying extraordinary skills. 49- year-old Lal Biakzuala Ralte from Mizoram with his extraordinary innovation of bamboo splint-making machine drew attention of the organizers of the In-residence programme. He is one of the seven selected participants living at Rashtrapati Bhawan. Ralte has developed a manually operated machine, which can slice bamboo strips and convert the strips into sticks. It is useful for making incense sticks, tooth -picks and ice cream-sticks. It has an advantage over conventional method of using knives for rural individuals, who cannot afford and use electricity operated machines. "In our place, we have lots of bamboo so some entrepreneurs came and started incense making machines but they faced the problems regarding labour. They wanted help, so from that I took a cue and started working on this machine," he said. The Innovation Scholars In-Residence Scheme was launched by the President in 2013 with a view to promoting the spirit of innovation and giving further impetus to grassroots innovation activities. The main objective of the scheme is to provide an environment to grassroots innovators at the Rashtrapati Bhavan to work on a project in hand and take their innovative ideas forward. Beside Ralte, Swapnanil Talukdar from Assam has also been invited for his innovation on foot-operated page-turning device for differently-abled. "It is a page turning device for differently-abled. For a disabled person turning a page is very difficult. So, I wonder how do they turn a page, they use their tongue, nose or other parts to turn a page. We worship books. So I thought why not to innovate a device which is manual," Talukdar said. Talukdar's journey from a student to innovator is marvelous. He also won Dr A. P. J. Abdul Kalam Ignite Awards in 2014. As a young innovator, he is an inspiration to many youth in the northeast region. "As a student, we take part in extracurricular activities but when you are an innovator you are learning the tactics of life of how you can encourage people. This is aspect every youth should learn about. I believe people are already following me so if I can guide them technically and psychologically youths can come ahead," he added. Along with innovators, a Bodo writer from Kokrajhar, Jwishri Boro, also got an opportunity to showcase her work. Four writers from around the country were called as a part of the In-residence program. The opportunity helps the budding writers and poets to showcase their work. "I am fortunate enough that I got an opportunity to come here because each one of us aspires to accomplish our dreams. The writer's who came here last year where from our batch only and they informed us about this Writers In-Residence programme at President House. It is a very good opportunity for young writers especially the opportunity come from the President itself," said Jwishri Boro. Such initiatives facilitate a means of cultural and intellectual exchange by bringing together artists from different parts of the country. According to some recent reports, Olivia Newton-John's former boyfriend, who disappeared 11 years ago during a fishing trip, has been found alive and secretly living with his new lover. The reports by a leading magazine claim that Patrick McDermott, who dated the Australian star for nine years, is living in Mexico, having settled down with a European girlfriend, says News.com.au. "It's rumoured he was with a German national. I spoke to people there. The girl he was travelling with was described as having a German accent," told investigator John Nazarian. Though speculative theories at the time ranged from self-harm to accidental death, Mr Nazarian described them as "preposterous." McDermott was 48 then, when he went missing from the fishing boat 'Freedom,' which had set off from San Pedro Marina for a fishing trip on June 30, 2005. Officials revealed that McDermott disappeared shortly after filing for bankruptcy, having unpaid debts totaling more than 30,000 dollars at the time, including 8000 dollars in child support owed to his former wife Yvette Nipar for their son, Chance. After the historic removal of international sanctions on Iran, Pakistan is all prepared to improve its trade relations with Tehran as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani is expected to visit Islamabad later this week. Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has expressed his desire to strengthen relations with Iran during a meeting with Iranian envoy Mehdi Honardoost yesterday. "The visit will be a great opportunity for us to review the whole range of bilateral relations and further strengthen our brotherly ties," an official statement quoted Sharif as saying, reports the Express Tribune. Congratulating the ambassador on his new assignment, the Prime Minister hoped that the former would make valuable contributions in strengthening bilateral relations between both countries. He added that Islamabad greatly values its fraternal ties with Iran and considers Tehran to be a close friend and neighbour. "We are pleased to note that international economic sanctions on Iran have been lifted, paving the way for expeditious resumption of commercial and economic ties between our countries. I am looking forward to welcoming President Rouhani later this week," said Sharif. Prime Minister Sharif had on his visit to Iran this January invited the Iranian President to visit Pakistan. Rouhani will be accompanied by a high-ranking political team and a large trade and economic contingent. This would be the first visit by an Iranian President to Pakistan in four years. The two countries are likely to push for the Iran-Pakistan (IP) gas pipeline project during the Iranian President's visit. This project was commissioned in December 2014 but was stalled after sanctions were placed on Tehran. Pakistan views this visit as great opportunity to improve bilateral relations with Iran. A grocery-store owner in Charsadda's Shabqadar tehsil has been shot dead by unknown assailants in his shop. Malikabad area residents and police sources allege that the man, who they claim was not of sound mind, called himself a prophet. Shabqadar Station House Officer Murtaza Khan, however, denied the claims, saying the crime appears to be a case of personal enmity. The man's family registered an FIR against unknown assailants. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday condemned the deadly multiple explosions in Brussels and offered his condolences to the family of the deceased. "News from Brussels is disturbing. The attacks are condemnable. Condolences to families of the deceased. May those injured recover quickly," the Prime Minister tweeted. Meanwhile, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj has said that there have been no Indian casualties in the attack, in which almost 21 deaths have been reported so far and several have been injured. "I am in touch with Mr Manjeev Puri Indian Ambassador in Brussels. He has informed me that so far there is no report of any Indian casualty. However, an Indian lady crew member of Jet Airways is injured. She has been rushed to the hospital. Please do not worry. Indian Embassy in Brussels will provide all assistance," Swaraj tweeted. Earlier, twin explosions ripped through the departure hall of Zaventem Airport in Brussels. The blasts come days after the capture of prime Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam in Brussels which killed 130 people. The passengers were seen evacuating from the airport in Belgian capital after smoke was seen rising from the terminal building. The airport is being evacuated and has been closed to flights, as per reports. Rail transport to the facility has also been halted. New Delhi, March 22 (ANI): When 'Bajrangi Bhaijaan' makers roped in a child actor for the film, it went on to become one of the biggest blockbusters of 2015 at the box-office and following the footsteps, another young actor will be seen in John Abraham starrer 'Rocky Handsome.' When John Abraham was asked whether a child actor in a film is the next big thing in Bollywood, he told ANI, "I don't think we are following any trends. Bajrangi Bhaijaan is such a beautiful film, beautiful emotions and we all loved it. Rocky Handsome has similar emotions but the difference is stories are not similar at all." "We have such high-octane action that you have never seen in India", he added. The film stars a seven-year-old girl Diya Chalwat and the story revolves around how Kabir played by John is very fond of her and while he goes on a mission to take revenge from the drug mafia who kidnaps her. 'Rocky Handsome' will clash with Hollywood superhero film 'Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice' at the domestic box-office. Directed by Nishikant Kamat, who also plays a negative role, 'Rocky Handsome' will hit the theatres on March 25. As many as four people were killed while six others injured after a truck collided with an auto rickshaw near the Food Corporation of India (FCI) godown in Allahabad district of Uttar Pradesh on Tuesday morning. The injured were rushed to a nearby hospital for immediate treatment. The police are investigating the exact cause of the accident. Trading of Nifty 50 index futures on the Singapore stock exchange indicates a flat opening on the domestic bourses today, 22 March 2016. In overseas markets, Asian stocks were trading mixed. US stocks closed slightly higher yesterday, 21 March 2016, steadying after five straight weeks of gains, led by telecommunications and health care stocks. Closer home, foreign portfolio investors (FPIs) bought shares worth a net Rs 1396.33 crore yesterday, 21 March 2016, as per provisional data released by the stock exchanges. Domestic institutional investors (DIIs) sold shares worth a net Rs 618.77 crore yesterday, 21 March 2016, as per provisional data. NTPC announced that the unit-I of 250 megawatts (MW) of Nabinagar Thermal Power Station of Bhartiya Rail Bijlee Company, a subsidiary of the company has been commissioned on 20 March 2016. With this, the total installed capacity of Nabinagar Thermal Power Station has become 250 MW and the total installed capacity of NTPC group has become 45798 MW. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 21 March 2016. Bharti Airtel announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement with American Tower Corporation through its subsidiary company, Airtel Tanzania, for the sale of approximately 1,350 of its communications towers in Tanzania. Under the agreement, American Tower may acquire up to approximately 100 additional sites currently in development for an additional consideration. Airtel will be the anchor tenant on the portfolio under a lease with a ten-year initial term. The tower sale agreements allow Airtel to focus on its core business and customers, besides helping deleverage through debt reduction, and significantly reducing the on-going capital expenditure on passive infrastructure. The transaction is expected to close during the first half of 2016, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approval. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 21 March 2016. Adani Ports & Special Economic Zone turns ex-dividend today, 22 March 2016 for interim dividend of Rs 1.10 per share for the year ending 31 March 2016 (FY 2016). Expectations of a bigger rate cut of 50 basis points from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) at its monetary policy review early next month triggered the latest upmove on the domestic bourses yesterday, 21 March 2016, with barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, moving past the psychologically important 25,000 mark. The Sensex gained 332.63 points or 1.33% to settle at 25,285.37, its highest closing level since 6 January 2016. Powered by Capital Market - Live News On 22 March 2016 A.K.Capital Services announced that the Company is in the receipt of the Order for approval of shifting of registered office address of the Company from The Regional Director, Northern Region, Ministry of Corporate Affairs dated 17 March 2016 which was duly received by the Company on 21 March 2016. In this regard, the Company has further informed that the Registered Office of the Company is hereby shifted from Registrar of Companies, National Capital Territory of Delhi and Haryana to Registrar of Companies, Mumbai. The registered address of the Company will be: 403. 4th Floor, East Wing, Tulsiani Chambers, Free Press Journal Marg, 212, Nariman Point, Mumbai - 400021. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Bharat Forge gained 0.38% to Rs 878.05 at 15:20 IST on BSE after media reports of plane maker Airbus is in initial talks with Indian companies, including Bharat Forge and a Mahindra Group unit to have some of its aircraft parts forged in India. Meanwhile, the BSE Sensex was up 75.91 points, or 0.3%, to 25,361.28. On BSE, so far 63,192 shares were traded in the counter, compared with an average volume of 70,659 shares in the past one quarter. The stock hit a high of Rs 891.85 and a low of Rs 872.85 so far during the day. The stock hit a record high of Rs 1,362.90 on 6 April 2015. The stock hit a 52-week low of Rs 720.65 on 12 February 2016. The stock had outperformed the market over the past one month till 21 March 2016, gaining 13.44% compared with Sensex's 6.65% gains. The scrip had also outperformed the market in past one quarter, rising 2.42% as against Sensex's 1.75% fall. Bharat Forge's net profit fell 15.4% to Rs 166.16 crore on 9.9% decline in net sales to Rs 1029.35 crore in Q3 December 2015 over Q3 December 2014. Bharat Forge (BFL) is the flagship company of the $3 billion Kalyani Group and a global provider of high performance, innovative, safety & critical components and solutions to various industrial sectors including automotive, oil & gas, power, construction & mining, aerospace and rail & marine. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Bharti Airtel announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement with American Tower Corporation through its subsidiary company, Airtel Tanzania, for the sale of approximately 1,350 of its communications towers in Tanzania. Under the agreement, American Tower may acquire up to approximately 100 additional sites currently in development for an additional consideration. Airtel will be the anchor tenant on the portfolio under a lease with a ten-year initial term. The tower sale agreements allow Airtel to focus on its core business and customers, besides helping deleverage through debt reduction, and significantly reducing the on-going capital expenditure on passive infrastructure. The transaction is expected to close during the first half of 2016, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approval, Bharti Airtel said. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 21 March 2016. NTPC announced that the unit-I of 250 megawatts (MW) of Nabinagar Thermal Power Station of Bhartiya Rail Bijlee Company, a subsidiary company of the company has been commissioned on 20 March 2016. With this, the total installed capacity of NTPC group has become 45,798 MW. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 21 March 2016. Adani Ports & Special Economic Zone (APSEZ) turns ex-dividend today, 22 March 2016 for interim dividend of Rs 1.10 per share for the year ending 31 March 2016 (FY 2016). Persistent Systems announced plans to organize its business around four key growth strategies viz. Digital, IBM Alliance, Services and Accelerite. Unique to Persistent, the company's product development and technology DNA drive all four growth strategies, the company said. The new structure along with new leadership responsibilities will be effective 1 April 2016, it added. Persistent Systems said it also plans to strengthen its corporate functions as part of corporate operations that will enable and accelerate the four growth strategies. Atul Khadilkar will be the President for corporate operations, it added. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 21 March 2016. Jain Irrigation Systems announced that a meeting of the securities issuance committee-1 of board of directors of the company is scheduled to be held on Thursday, 24 March 2016 to consider allotment of 1.41 crore ordinary equity shares of Rs 2 each cash at a premium of Rs 78 each in conversion of 1.41 crore equity warrants of Rs 80 each allotted to promoter group entity JAF Products, on preferential allotment basis. The announcement was made before market hours today, 22 March 2016. Tata Global Beverages announced that it has yesterday, 21 March 2016, sold 92.48 lakh equity shares of Re 1 each held in Titan Company (TCL) constituting 1.04% of the paid-up equity capital of TCL as a market transaction. The announcement was made before market hours today, 22 March 2016. Kesar Petroproducts announced that a meeting of the board of directors of the company will be held on 25 March 2016, inter alia, to consider and allot equity shares upon conversion of warrants earlier issued on preferential basis. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 21 March 2016. Allcargo Logistics said that a meeting of the resource raising committee of the company will be held on 28 March 2016, inter-alia, to consider and approve mode of raising of funds upto Rs 300 crore by issue of permitted securities and seek approval of shareholders of the company. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 21 March 2016. Coffee Day Enterprises said that the board of directors of the company at its meeting held yesterday, 21 March 2016, inter alia, approved draft disclosure documents for issue of rated, unlisted, secured, redeemable, non-convertible debentures of Rs 265 crore on private placement basis. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 21 March 2016. Canara Bank announced that the board of directors of the company at its meeting held yesterday, 21 March 2016, permitted the bank to raise capital of Rs 3000 crore through issue of Basel-III compliant Tier II bonds by way of private placement at a coupon rate as decided by the bond committee of the bank to support the asset growth and maintain comfortable level of CRAR. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 21 March 2016. Excel Industries said that a meeting of the board of directors of the company will be held on 28 March 2016, inter alia, to consider the proposal for buyback of fully paid equity shares of the company. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 21 March 2016. Borosil Glass Works announced that it has made an investment of Rs 22 crore by way of subscription in 6% optionally convertible non-cumulative redeemable preference shares in Hopewell Tableware, its unlisted wholly owned subsidiary. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 21 March 2016. Indoco Remedies announced that it has received the Establishment Inspection Report (approval) from US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) for its solid dosages manufacturing facility at Goa (plant I). The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 21 March 2016. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Bharti Airtel rose 0.18% to Rs 354.20 at 9:17 IST on BSE after the company said it has entered into a definitive agreement with American Tower Corporation for the sale of about 1,350 of its communications towers in Tanzania. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 21 March 2016. Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 31.29 points or 0.12% at 25,254.08. On BSE, so far 15,000 shares were traded in the counter as against average daily volume of 4.61 lakh shares in the past two weeks. The stock hit a high of Rs 356.10 and a low of Rs 353.70 so far during the day. Bharti Airtel announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement with American Tower Corporation through its subsidiary company, Airtel Tanzania, for the sale of approximately 1,350 of its communications towers in Tanzania. Under the agreement, American Tower may acquire up to approximately 100 additional sites currently in development for an additional consideration. Airtel will be the anchor tenant on the portfolio under a lease with a ten-year initial term. The tower sale agreements allow Airtel to focus on its core business and customers, besides helping deleverage through debt reduction, and significantly reducing the on-going capital expenditure on passive infrastructure. The transaction is expected to close during the first half of 2016, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approval, Bharti Airtel said. On consolidated basis, Bharti Airtel's net profit declined 22.2% to Rs 1116.90 crore on 3.7% growth in net sales to Rs 24065.90 crore in Q3 December 2015 over Q3 December 2014. Bharti Airtel is one of the leading global telecommunications service providers with operations in 20 countries across Asia and Africa. Powered by Capital Market - Live News With immediate effect BS announced that Kamesh Yalamarty, Managing Director of the Company, has resigned, vide his Letter dated 18 March 2016, from the post of Managing Director as well as from the Directorship of the Company with immediate effect. The Board of Directors of the Company by way of a Circular Resolution passed on 22 March 2016 has accepted his resignation and consented to relieve Kamesh Yalamarty of his duties and responsibilities vested by the Board as Managing Director, with immediate effect. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Canara Bank rose 0.47% to Rs 193.85 at 12:25 IST on BSE after the bank's board of directors permitted the bank to raise capital of Rs 3000 crore through issue of Basel-III compliant Tier II bonds by way of private placement. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 21 March 2016. Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 42.45 points or 0.17% at 25,242.92. On BSE, so far 83,248 shares were traded in the counter as against average daily volume of 3.51 lakh shares in the past one quarter. The stock hit a high of Rs 194.50 and a low of Rs 192.25 so far during the day. The stock had hit a 52-week high of Rs 411.45 on 15 April 2015. The stock had hit a 52-week low of Rs 156.20 on 29 February 2016. The stock had outperformed the market over the past one month till 21 March 2016, gaining 12.41% compared with Sensex's 6.65% gains. The scrip had, however, underperformed the market in past one quarter, declining 20.76% as against Sensex's 1.75% fall. The large-cap bank has equity capital of Rs 542.99 crore. Face value per share is Rs 10. Canara Bank announced that the board of directors of the bank at a meeting held yesterday, 21 March 2016, permitted the bank to raise capital of Rs 3000 crore through issue of Basel-III compliant Tier II bonds by way of private placement at a coupon rate as decided by the bond committee of the bank to support the asset growth and maintain comfortable level of CRAR. Canara Bank's net profit fell 87% to Rs 84.97 crore on 1.4% decline in total income to Rs 12050.63 crore in Q3 December 2015 over Q3 December 2014. The Government of India held 66.3% stake in Canara Bank as per the shareholding pattern as on 31 December 2015. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Key benchmark indices hovered in negative zone in morning trade. At 10:15 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, was down 91.31 points or 0.36% at 25,194.06. The 50-unit Nifty 50 index was currently down 29.10 points or 0.38% at 7,675.15. The Sensex reversed direction after hitting its highest level in almost 11 weeks in opening trade. The barometer index rose 45.64 points or 0.18% at the day's high of 25,331.01 in opening trade, its highest level since 6 January 2016. The Sensex fell 107.56 points or 0.42% at the day's low of 25,177.81 in morning trade. The Nifty rose 6.85 points or 0.08% at the day's high of 7,711.10 at the onset of trading session. The index fell 35.10 points or 0.45% at the day's low of 7,669.15 in morning trade. The market breadth indicating the overall health of the market was strong. On BSE, 1,049 shares rose and 669 shares fell. A total of 115 shares were unchanged. The BSE Mid-Cap index was currently up 0.6%. The BSE Small-Cap index was currently up 0.41%. Both these indices outperformed the Sensex. In overseas stock markets, Asian stocks edged lower as investors refrained from taking bets ahead of the Good Friday holiday. US stocks closed slightly higher yesterday, 21 March 2016, steadying after five straight weeks of gains, led by telecommunications and health care stocks. Capital goods stocks gained. Bharat Heavy Electricals (Bhel) (up 3.06%), BEML (up 3.44%), Bharat Electronics (up 1.76%), L&T (up 1.16%), Punj lloyd (up 1.54%) and Siemens (up 1.09%) gained. Crompton Greaves (down 0.63%), ABB India (down 0.06%) and Thermax (down 0.48%) declined. Telecom stocks rose. Idea Cellular (up 0.2%), MTNL (up 0.09%), Tata Teleservices (Maharashtra) (up 2.68%) and Reliance Communications (up 0.48%) rose. Bharti Airtel declined 1.34%. Bharti Airtel after market hours yesterday, 21 March 2016, announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement with American Tower Corporation through its subsidiary company, Airtel Tanzania, for the sale of approximately 1,350 of its communications towers in Tanzania. Under the agreement, American Tower may acquire up to approximately 100 additional sites currently in development for an additional consideration. Airtel will be the anchor tenant on the portfolio under a lease with a ten-year initial term. The tower sale agreements allow Airtel to focus on its core business and customers, besides helping deleverage through debt reduction, and significantly reducing the on-going capital expenditure on passive infrastructure. The transaction is expected to close during the first half of 2016, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approval. Persistent Systems fell 4.4% to Rs 707.65, with the stock sliding on profit booking after the company announced plans to organize its business around four key growth strategies viz. digital, IBM alliance, services and Accelerite. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 21 March 2016. Shares of Persistent Systems witnessed a sharp rally over the past two trading sessions. The stock surged 13.31% in the preceding two trading sessions to settle at Rs 740.20 yesterday, 21 March 2016, from its close of Rs 653.20 on 17 March 2016. The digital domain combines a technology partner ecosystem, solutions and a unique architecture for enterprise digital transformation or the transformation to become software-driven in business. The IBM alliance focuses on the long-standing multi-dimensional relationship between Persistent Systems and IBM. The services segment focuses on services for software and product development. The Accelerite division focuses on products that include business-critical infrastructure software for enterprises, telecom operators, and the public sector. On the macro front, data released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) after market hours yesterday, 21 March 2016, showed that India's current account deficit (CAD) narrowed to $7.1 billion or 1.3% of GDP in Q3 December 2015 from $8.7 billion or 1.7% of GDP in Q2 September 2015 and $7.7 billion or 1.5% of GDP in Q3 December 2014. The contraction in CAD was primarily on account of a lower trade deficit. After moderating in Q2 September 2015, net foreign direct investment (FDI) again picked up and stood at $10.8 billion in Q3 December 2015. Net FDI inflows during April-December 2015 jumped 24.8% over the level during the corresponding period of the previous year. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Committee to submit its Report within sixty days In the Union Budget 2016-17, the Central Excise duty at the rate of 1% (without input tax credit) and 12.5% (with input tax credit) has been imposed on all articles of jewellery (except for silver jewellery, other than those studded with diamond, ruby, emerald or sapphire). A Sub-Committee of the High Level Committee has been constituted in this regard to interact with Trade & Industry on Tax Laws. The Sub-Committee will be chaired by Dr. Ashok Lahiri and will consist of: a. three representatives of the trade [to be decided by the Government]; b. one legal expert [to be decided by the Government]; c. officer concerned from the Ministry of Commerce & Industry [MoC&I] to be nominated by the MoC&I; and d. high level officials from the Central Excise Department to be nominated by the Central Board of Excise and Customs (CBEC). The composition of the Sub-Committee will be circulated once the names of its members are finalized. All associations will be given an opportunity to submit representation before the Sub-Committee in writing and the all India associations to state their case in person. Terms of reference of the Sub-Committee will include the issues related to compliance procedure for the excise duty, including records to be maintained, forms to be filled including Form 12AA, operating procedures and any other issued that may be relevant. The Sub-Committee will submit its report within 60 days of its constitution. Till the recommendations of the Sub-Committee are finalized, the following shall be adhered to: a) All payments of Central Excise duty will be based on first sale invoice value; b) The Central Excise authorities will not challenge the valuation given in the invoice provided the caratage / purity and weight of the gold/silver with precious stones; and carats of diamond/precious stones are mentioned on the invoice; c) The Central Excise Officers will not visit the manufacturing units/ shops/ place of business/residence of the jewelers; d) No arrest or criminal prosecution of any jeweler will be done; e) No search or seizure of stocks by any central excise official will be effected; f) Exporters will be allowed to export on self-declaration and submission of LUT to customs without the need to get LUT ratified by central excise. Prevailing system will continue. The registration of the establishment with the Central Excise Department can be taken within 60 days from 1st March, 2016. However, the liability for payment of Central Excise Duty will be with effect from 1st March, 2016, and as a special case for the month of March, 2016, the assessee jewelers will be permitted to make payment of excise duty along with the payment of excise duty for the month of April, 2016. Powered by Capital Market - Live News With effect from 21 March 2016 Gujarat Lease Financing announced that Ankit Patadiya, Company Secretary and Compliance Officer of the Company has tendered his resignation and his resignation has been accepted with effect from the close of normal office hours on 21 March 2016. Consequently, he ceased to be Compliance Officer and Key-Managerial Personnel of the Company with effect from 21 March 2016. Powered by Capital Market - Live News IPO receives bids for 55.28 lakh shares The initial public offer (IPO) of Infibeam Incorporation received bids for 55.28 lakh shares compared with 1.25 crore shares on offer. The IPO was subscribed 44% on the second day of the issue, data on NSE website updated until 16:00 IST showed. The issue closes tomorrow, 23 March 2016. The company has set Rs 360-432 per share price band for the IPO. Infibeam Incorporation becomes India's first e-commerce company to tap the capital market through an initial public offer (IPO). The proceeds of the IPO will be used for expansion of business, which includes setting up a cloud data center, setting up 75 additional logistics centres, purchase of software and purchase of property for shifting of the registered and corporate offices of the company. Promoted by Ajit Mehta, Jayshree Mehta, Vishal Mehta and Malav Mehta, Infibeam Incorporation is an e-commerce company focused on developing an integrated and synergistic e-commerce business model. It owns and operates the Infibeam BuildaBazaar e-commerce marketplace, which provides cloud-based, modular and customizable digital solutions and other value added services to enable merchants to set up online storefronts. The BaB Marketplace enables merchants to access customers across multiple sales channels and provide cost-effective marketing and distribution solutions. As of 31 December 2015, the BaB Marketplace had 48,724 registered merchants, which increased at a CAGR of 272.95% from 350 registered merchants as of 31 March 2012. Infibeam Incorporation also operates Infibeam.com, a multi-category e-retail website primarily focused on fast moving product categories. The e-retail business strategically follows an asset light inventory model. From the net proceeds of the IPO, the company has earmarked Rs 235.20 crore for setting up a Tier III data center and for purchase of property for shifting of the registered and corporate offices of the company at the location of the proposed Tier III data center in Ahmedabad. The company proposes to invest Rs 37.50 crore from the net proceeds of the IPO for setting up additional 75 logistics centres in 70 cities in India. Infibeam currently has 12 logistics centres strategically located in 11 cities across the country. The company proposes to spend Rs 67 crore from the net proceeds of the IPO for purchase of certain software from third parties for setting up a software platform for providing mobile ad framework which includes customer targeting based on mobile criteria such as device, operating system, carrier or features of the device. Based on consolidated financial performance, Infibeam Incorporation reported net profit of Rs 6.57 crore on revenue from operations of Rs 171.26 crore for six months ended 30 September 2015. The company reported a net loss of Rs 9.78 crore on revenue from operations of Rs 288.27 crore for the year ended 31 March 2015. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Mahindra & Mahindra rose 2.07% to Rs 1,252.65 at 14:30 IST on BSE after the company announced that its Mahindra Agri Business forayed into dairy business with the launch of its branded dairy products, 'Saboro'. The announcement was made during market hours today, 22 March 2016. Meanwhile, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 152.77 points or 0.8% at 25,132.60. On BSE, so far 69,699 shares were traded in the counter as against average daily volume of 74,227 shares in the past one quarter. The stock hit high of Rs 1,263.40 and low of Rs 1,226.10 so far during the day. The stock had hit a record high of Rs 1,441.45 on 7 August 2015. The stock had hit a 52-week low of Rs 1,092 on 12 February 2016. The stock had underperformed the market over the past one month till 21 March 2016, declining 0.26% compared with Sensex's 6.65% gains. The scrip had also underperformed the market in past one quarter, dropping 3.89% as against Sensex's 1.75% fall. The large-cap company has equity capital of Rs 310.55 crore. Face value per share is Rs 5. Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) said that it has launched Saboro milk in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. The company will introduce a range of fresh dairy products in Madhya Pradesh over the next one year. The company under the Saboro brand, will offer an assortment of products, the first of which is the Saboro pouch available in four variants- double toned milk, full cream milk, protein rich milk and cream rich milk. The company will be investing around Rs 5 crore in the first year for the set up of village level collection centre (VLC), infrastructure and brand building. The company expects to achieve around 5% market share in the first year of Rs 260 crore industry in Indore. M&M's net profit declined 14.2% to Rs 807.99 crore on 17.1% growth in net sales to Rs 10900.39 crore in Q3 December 2015 over Q3 December 2014. Mahindra Group enjoys a leadership position in tractors, utility vehicles, information technology, financial services and vacation ownership. In addition, Mahindra enjoys a strong presence in the agribusiness, aerospace, components, consulting services, defence, energy, industrial equipment, logistics, real estate, retail, steel, commercial vehicles and two-wheeler industries. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Due to delay in arbitration to resolve dispute among promoters Mahaan Foods announced that the Company's business has severely suffered due to disputes amongst the promoters of the Company. The inter-se disputes amongst the promoters of the Company was settled through execution of Memorandum of Family Settlement (MOFS) on 31 August 2010 which was taken on record by the Hon'ble Company Law Board, New Delhi vide its order dated 03 September 2010. Since then, the family settlement under MOFS remains to be fully executed despite the process of arbitration undertaken by the parties as per directions of Hon'ble High Court in the year 2012. On account of delay in the process of arbitration, an application was filed in the Hon'ble Delhi High Court to deal with the issues arising out of implementation of MOFS. At a hearing held on 21 March 2016, the Hon'ble Delhi High Court has fixed the next date of hearing on 18 May 2016. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Key benchmark drifted lower in early trade. At 9:26 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex was down 47.85 points or 0.19% at 25,237.52. The losses for the 50-unit Nifty 50 index were higher in percentage terms than those for the Sensex. The Nifty was currently down 28.25 points or 0.37% at 7,676. The market breadth indicating the overall health of the market was positive. On BSE, 692 shares rose and 491 shares fell. A total of 76 shares were unchanged. The BSE Mid-Cap index was currently up 0.13%. The BSE Small-Cap index was currently up 0.08%. Both these indices outperformed the Sensex. In overseas markets, Asian stocks were trading mixed. US stocks closed slightly higher yesterday, 21 March 2016, steadying after five straight weeks of gains, led by telecommunications and health care stocks. Bharat Heavy Electricals (Bhel) (up 3.17%), Lupin (up 1.72%) and Tata Steel (up 1.05%) edged higher from the Sensex pack. NTPC rose 0.06% after the company announced that the unit-I of 250 megawatts (MW) of Nabinagar Thermal Power Station of Bhartiya Rail Bijlee Company, a subsidiary of the company has been commissioned on 20 March 2016. With this, the total installed capacity of Nabinagar Thermal Power Station has become 250 MW and the total installed capacity of NTPC group has become 45798 MW. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 21 March 2016. Bharti Airtel slipped 0.16%. Bharti Airtel announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement with American Tower Corporation through its subsidiary company, Airtel Tanzania, for the sale of approximately 1,350 of its communications towers in Tanzania. Under the agreement, American Tower may acquire up to approximately 100 additional sites currently in development for an additional consideration. Airtel will be the anchor tenant on the portfolio under a lease with a ten-year initial term. The tower sale agreements allow Airtel to focus on its core business and customers, besides helping deleverage through debt reduction, and significantly reducing the on-going capital expenditure on passive infrastructure. The transaction is expected to close during the first half of 2016, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approval. The announcement was made after market hours yesterday, 21 March 2016. Adani Ports & Special Economic Zone fell 2.01% to Rs 238.85 after turning ex-dividend today, 22 March 2016 for interim dividend of Rs 1.10 per share for the year ending 31 March 2016 (FY 2016). Meanwhile, data released by RBI after market hours yesterday, 21 March 2016 showed that India's current account deficit (CAD) narrowed to $7.1 billion (1.3% of GDP) in Q3 December 2015 from $7.7 billion (1.5% of GDP) in Q3 December 2014. Powered by Capital Market - Live News After seeing volatility during the second half of the trading session, key benchmark indices eked out small gains. The barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, rose 46.54 points or 0.18% at 25,331.91, as per the provisional closing data. The 50-unit Nifty 50 index rose 10.65 points or 0.14% at 7,714.90 as per the provisional closing data. The two key benchmark indices staged a rebound in late trade soon after extending losses in mid-afternoon trade as European stocks trimmed initial losses triggered by explosions at the Brussels airport and Maalbeek station on the Brussels Metro in Belgium. The market breadth indicating the overall health of the market turned positive from negative in late trade. On BSE, 1,345 shares gained and 1,257 shares declined. A total of 172 shares were unchanged. The BSE Mid-Cap index was provisionally up 0.52%. The BSE Small-Cap index was provisionally up 0.27%. Both these indices outperformed the Sensex. The total turnover on BSE amounted to Rs 3006 crore, higher than turnover of Rs 2929.96 crore registered during the previous trading session. In overseas stock markets, European stocks trimmed initial losses triggered by deadly attacks in Belgium. Belgium's key index the BEL-20 index was currently off 0.27%. Media reports said that two explosions at the Brussels Airport killed at least 10 people. Earlier, during the global day, Asian stocks ended on a mixed note. US stocks closed slightly higher yesterday, 21 March 2016, steadying after five straight weeks of gains, led by telecommunications and health care stocks. Metal and mining stocks rose on renewed buying. Vedanta (up 3.03%), Tata Steel (up 2.89%), Hindalco Industries (up 1.86%), Bhushan Steel (up 2.35%), Steel Authority of India (Sail) (up 1.17%), JSW Steel (up 1.8%), Jindal Steel & Power (up 1.99%) and NMDC (up 2.34%) rose. National Aluminium Company (down 0.5%), Hindustan Zinc (down 0.61%), Hindustan Copper (down 2.09%) edged lower. High Grade Copper for May 2016 delivery was currently off 0.02% at $2.292 per pound on the COMEX. Adani Ports & Special Economic Zone dropped 1.76% to Rs 239.45 after the stock turned ex-dividend for interim dividend of Rs 1.10 per share for the year ending 31 March 2016 (FY 2016). Before turning ex-dividend, the stock offered a dividend yield of 0.45% based on the closing price of Rs 243.75 yesterday, 21 March 2016. Maruti Suzuki India rose 0.44% after the company announced that it will start deliveries of its newly launched compact SUV, Vitara Brezza, to customers from 25 March 2016. The vehicles will be retailed from the company's over 1,800 sales outlets spread across India, Maruti Suzuki India said. Within the first fortnight of its launch, the new vehicle from the company has received around 70,000 customer enquiries and 20,000 bookings, it said. The announcement was made during market hours today, 22 March 2016. Meanwhile, a foreign brokerage has reportedly maintained its buy rating on the Maruti stock. The foreign brokerage has reportedly said that a cyclical passenger vehicles recovery is on the horizon in India. It expects Maruti to record a 23% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in its earnings per share (EPS) over FY 2017-18. On the macro front, data released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) after market hours yesterday, 21 March 2016, showed that India's current account deficit (CAD) narrowed to $7.1 billion or 1.3% of GDP in Q3 December 2015 from $8.7 billion or 1.7% of GDP in Q2 September 2015 and $7.7 billion or 1.5% of GDP in Q3 December 2014. The contraction in CAD was primarily on account of a lower trade deficit. After moderating in Q2 September 2015, net foreign direct investment (FDI) again picked up and stood at $10.8 billion in Q3 December 2015. Net FDI inflows during April-December 2015 jumped 24.8% over the level during the corresponding period of the previous year. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Key benchmark indices extended losses and hit fresh intraday low in afternoon trade. At 13:18 IST, the barometer index, the S&P BSE Sensex, was down 105.16 points or 0.42% at 25,180.21. The 50-unit Nifty 50 index was currently down 30.95 points or 0.4% at 7,673.30. The Sensex fell 123.89 points or 0.48% at the day's low of 25,161.48 in afternoon trade. The barometer index rose 45.64 points or 0.18% at the day's high of 25,331.01 in opening trade, its highest level since 6 January 2016. The Nifty fell 37.60 points or 0.48% at the day's low of 7,666.65 in afternoon trade. The index rose 6.85 points or 0.08% at the day's high of 7,711.10 at the onset of trading session. The market breadth indicating the overall health of the market was even. On BSE, 1,184 shares rose and 1,184 shares fell. A total of 177 shares were unchanged. The BSE Mid-Cap index was currently up 0.37%. The BSE Small-Cap index was currently up 0.15%. Both these indices outperformed the Sensex. In overseas stock markets, Asian stocks witnessed a mixed trend. Shares of exporters led a rally in Japanese stocks on a weaker yen against the US dollar. The Nikkei 225 Average closed 1.94% higher. US stocks closed slightly higher yesterday, 21 March 2016, steadying after five straight weeks of gains, led by telecommunications and health care stocks. Index heavyweight and housing major HDFC fell 0.92% to Rs 1,141.50. The stock hit high of Rs 1,149.05 and low of Rs 1,136.50 so far during the day. Index heavyweight Reliance Industries (RIL) rose 0.5% to Rs 1,041.35. The stock hit high of Rs 1,052. 50 and low of Rs 1,036.75 so far during the day. IT stocks were mixed. Infosys (down 1.26%) and Wipro (down 0.78%) edged lower. HCL Technologies (up 0.45%) and TCS (up 0.17%) gained. Auto stocks were mixed. Ashok Leyland (up 1.02%), Tata Motors (up 1.04%) and TVS Motor Company (up 2.52%) gained. Eicher Motors (down 0.5%), Bajaj Auto (down 0.27%), and Hero MotoCorp (down 0.42%) declined. Mahindra & Mahindra (M&M) rose 2.14% after the company announced that its Mahindra Agri Business forayed into dairy business with the launch of its branded dairy products, 'Saboro'. It has launched Saboro milk in Indore, Madhya Pradesh. The company will introduce a range of fresh dairy products in Madhya Pradesh over the next one year. The company will be investing around Rs 5 crore in the first year for the set up of village level collection centre (VLC), infrastructure and brand building. The company expects to achieve around 5% market share in the first year of Rs 260 crore industry in Indore. The announcement was made during market hours today, 22 March 2016. Maruti Suzuki India rose 0.7% on media reports that a foreign brokerage has maintained its buy rating on the stock. The foreign brokerage reportedly said that cyclical passenger vehicle recovery is on the horizon. It expects Maruti to record a 23% compound annual growth rate (CAGR) in its earnings per share (EPS) over FY 2017-18. On the macro front, data released by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) after market hours yesterday, 21 March 2016, showed that India's current account deficit (CAD) narrowed to $7.1 billion or 1.3% of GDP in Q3 December 2015 from $8.7 billion or 1.7% of GDP in Q2 September 2015 and $7.7 billion or 1.5% of GDP in Q3 December 2014. The contraction in CAD was primarily on account of a lower trade deficit. After moderating in Q2 September 2015, net foreign direct investment (FDI) again picked up and stood at $10.8 billion in Q3 December 2015. Net FDI inflows during April-December 2015 jumped 24.8% over the level during the corresponding period of the previous year. Powered by Capital Market - Live News The Government of India which accords utmost importance to the welfare of Ex-Servicemen, has kept its promise with regard to the historic decision taken on 05 September 2015 to implement the more than four decades old demand of Ex-Servicemen for One Rank One Pension (OROP), by ensuring that payments have begun to the concerned in record time. Orders had been issued with regard to this historic decision, through a notification on 07 November 2015 by the Department of Ex-Servicemen Welfare (ESW) of the Ministry of Defence. Then within just three months of the issue of these orders, the Department of Ex-Servicemen Welfare (ESW) brought out detailed OROP tables on 03 February 2016. The 101 tables in these implementation orders contain revised pension of different ranks and categories. In the past implementation of CSC-2012 and 6th CPC had taken a longer time. More than two-thirds of the Ex-Servicemen have now been paid the OROP arrears. Payments have now reached the accounts of 13.02 lakh pensioners amounting to about Rs. 2,293 crore. This amount has been released through Defence Pension Disbursing Offices (DPDOs), the State Bank of India (SBI) and the Punjab National Bank (PNB). The details are as follows:- As on March 17, the DPDOs have released an amount of about Rs. 606 crore to about 3.20 lakh defence personnel. The SBI has as released upto March 17 an amount of Rs. 1,337 crore to 7.75 lakh pensioners which includes Family Pension cases. The PNB has released as on March 17, an amount of about Rs. 350 crore to about 2.07 lakh pensioners which includes Family Pension cases. Other Banks who have also been assigned the task of disbursement of revised defence pension to Ex-Servicemen have been directed to complete the process of payment latest by March end. Powered by Capital Market - Live News Awaits Delhi High Court order on the matter With reference to the Interim Injunction on prohibition of manufacture and sale of "Corex", Pfizer announced that the Honourable Delhi High Court at the hearing held on 21 March 2016, was pleased to extend the interim injunction suspending the operation of the Notification dated 10 March 2016, banning the manufacture for sale, sale and distribution of fixed dose combination of Chlopheniramine Maleate + Codeine Syrup till the next date of hearing. The Company is awaiting the Order from the Honourable Delhi High Court in this respect. Powered by Capital Market - Live News At least 23 people were killed as two deadly explosions rocked the Zaventem airport and another the main metro station here on Tuesday, four days after the arrest of the Paris terror attack suspect in the Belgian capital. In what looked like a coordinated terror strike, a suicide bomber was apparently involved in the airport carnage where two quick explosions just after 8 a.m. left a part of the departure hall looking like a war zone. At least 13 people were killed and over 30 injured, Belgian media said. Even as Belgium raised its terror alert to the maximum, a third equally powerful blast occurred -- at the Maalbeek Metro station near the European Union building killing at least 10 people. An Indian woman crew member of Jet Airways, which had just landed at Brussels, was injured and rushed to a hospital, Indian External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj tweeted. The plane had taken off from Delhi. It was not immediately clear how the crew member got wounded. An hour earlier, another Jet plane had landed -- from Mumbai. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel appealed to people to "avoid any movement". The airport was hurriedly evacuated and both the airport and Metro station were shut down. Belga news agency reported that shots were fired and shouts in Arabic were heard before the two blasts, BBC said. People were seen coming out of the airport building with blood on their faces. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said: "News from Brussels is disturbing. The attacks are condemnable. Condolences to the families of the deceased. May those injured recover quickly." Initial reports said the blasts were centred at the American Airlines check-in desk. The false ceiling in that building came crashing down while all the glass windows, furniture and machinery were shattered. A later report said one explosion occurred at the departure area, where public access was easy, and another at the runway. BBC and most media outlets said several people were killed at the airport. Belgian broadcaster RTBF quoted hospital sources to say that 10 people had been killed and 30 injured. Daily Mail of London put the death toll at 13. Pictures showed the terminal windows blown out from the force of the explosion and plumes of smoke rising high into the sky. Video also showed terrified passengers running for their lives out of the terminal. Sky News Middle East correspondent Alex Rossi, who was at the airport, told the channel: "I could feel the building move." The incident came as the Belgian capital was on a state of high alert following the arrest of Paris terror attack suspect Salah Abdeslam in the city last week. On Monday, Belgium's Interior Minister Jan Jambon said the country was braced for a possible revenge attack following the capture of the 26-year-old Abdeslam. CNN quoted a tourist, Anthony Barrett, as saying that he heard the explosions from his hotel across the terminal building. "When I opened the curtains and looked out, I could see people fleeing," he told CNN. Barrett said he saw 19 or 20 stretchers carrying people. Luggage trolleys were also used to transport the wounded. "It is clearly a very serious incident." The Brussels airport, which was originally built in 1944 and has three runways, said there were two explosions at the building and everyone was asked to leave. France is seeking Abdeslam's extradition so he can stand trial for his alleged role in the November 13 rampage of gunfire and suicide bombings which killed 130 people in Paris. Global private equity investment firm Abraaj Group on Tuesday led a $150 million fundraising drive by Indian E-commerce grocery startup BigBasket. "We are excited about the investment opportunities in India, a key geography for us, where we continue to identify and partner with market leading companies," Abraaj Group Asia head Omar Lodhi in a statement. "Abraaj will leverage its strong experience in the consumer sector to enable BigBasket to further enhance its strong domestic position," he added. In addition to the participation of existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners, Helion Advisors, Zodius Capital and Ascent Capital in the BigBasket's latest fundraising, new investors, World Bank subsidiary International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Sands Capital also marked their entry. "We intend to increase the reach of our just-launched one-hour express delivery service and also launch our marketplace for specialty stores in the coming months," said BigBasker co-founder V.S. Sudhakar about the utilisation of the raised funds. "The proceeds of this round of fundraising will be used to finance BigBasket's growth through further penetration into existing markets, expansion into Tier II cities across India, scaling-up of its recently launched express delivery and specialty store business that caters to top-up and emergency purchases, and increasing the product range offered to customers," he added. Founded in 2011, the online grocery startup currently operates in eight metro and 10 tier two cities retailing over 19,000 products from a range of 1,000 brands which include fruits, vegetables, meat, beverages and personalAcare products. For Abraaj Group, this is the third investment in E-commerce, after acquiring stakes in Turkish online retailer Hepsiburada and Dubai-based cab hailing app Careem. After entering India in 2006, this is its latest move is the here, following investment in Hyderabad based Care Hospitals and a gigawatt scale renewable energy platform partnership with Aditya Birla Group. The resignation of Maharashtra's Advocate General Shrihari Aney on Tuesday has given renewed voice to those advocating the creation of separate states of Vidarbha and Marathwada. "He has only spoken the truth. As long as Mumbai continues to control Vidarbha and Marathwada, the people of these regions shall be suffocated in every respect," said Vikram Bokey, a pro-Vidarbha campaigner and president of V.B. Foundation. Advocate General Aney reportedly said on Sunday at an event in Jalna district that "Marathwada bore more injustice than Vidarbha and should therefore be independent. Pressure has to be put at the Delhi level to form a separate state as the demand does not come under the purview of Mumbai." The AG had earlier called for carving out a separate state of Vidarbha from Maharashtra. His comments invited calls for his sacking from political quarters. As the controversy continued, Aney handed over his resignation letter to Maharashtra Governor C.V. Rao on Tuesday, official sources said. "A majority of the people want a separate state. What is wrong if Aney has expressed their genuine, deep feelings," said Vikram Bokey, also president of the Maharashtra Organic Farmers Federation. In a message to Aney on Tuesday, Bokey said: "It's a passing phase and we are all with you... Keep it up." Hitting out at the government, Bokey said the BJP has become "intolerant" of even larger public sentiments pertaining to emotional issues like Vidarbha and Marathwada and sacrificed the AG to serve its narrow political aims and to cling on to power with ally Shiv Sena. The national President of BJP Mahila Morcha and chairperson of Maharashtra Women's Commission Vijaya Rahatkar who hails from Aurangabad (Marathwada) also came out in support of a separate state of Vidarbha and Marathwada. Former Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) spokesperson M.G. Vaidya commented that the ideal population of any state should be about three crore only for which smaller states are required. Maharashtra has a population of over 12 crore. The government must set up a commission to carve out smaller states to ensure better governance and rapid progress of the people, he added. While relinquishing his post, Aney made it clear that neither Fadnavis nor Rao sought his resignation. He said he quit on his own volition as it pertained to "conflict of duty" and concerned "institutional stability". Aney had succeeded Sunil Manohar last October. Alibaba, China's largest e-commerce company, is preparing to unveil its first internet-connected smart car in April, the People's Daily reported on Tuesday. According to the company's Chief Technology Officer Wang Jian, internet character is one of the car's technological innovations. Details of the SUV will be unveiled at a launch event in April. This is an energy-saving car whose battery will retain 80 per cent of its storage capacity after running 160,000 km. Internet cars adopt technologies including computer, modern sensor, information fusion, telecommunication, artificial intelligence and automatic control. The car jointly developed by Alibaba and Shanghai Automotive Industry Corporation (SAIC) is equipped with real car-based smart operation system which has proprietary intellectual property rights. Independent development of smart operation system plays a key role in the process to transform an ordinary car to an internet car. In order to fulfil this task, Alibaba arranged over 800 researchers for the project and invested billions of dollars into the project. Wang added the internet car will not only promote people-to-car communication, it will expand car-to-car, car-to-road, and car-to-infrastructure communication too. The Indian Army chief, General Dalbir Singh on Tuesday paid homage to Sepoy Vijay Kumar K. who lost his life in an avalanche in the Kargil sector of Jammu and Kashmir last week. General Singh laid a wreath on the mortal remains of Vijay and and said the army was proud of soldiers like him, who despite great difficulties in the most inhospitable conditions, defend our borders with utmost dedication, an official statement said. The general also conveyed his condolences to the bereaved family. The soldier's body was recovered from under 12 feet of snow on Sunday. He was buried under an avalanche in the Kargil sector on the Line of Control on Thursday. Sepoy Sujit was however rescued on the first day itself, and is stable and recovering. The army pressed avalanche rescue dogs, deep penetration radars and metal detectors to search for the missing sepoy, despite adverse weather conditions. The deceased soldier hailed from Vallaramapuram village in Tirunelveli district of Tamil Nadu, and is survived by his parents and two younger sisters. An Army statement called him "outstanding" and "Gallant Thambi', which means brother in Tamil. He was inducted onto the post in December 2015. The soldier, who was said to be very attached to his parents, had his mother's photograph along side when his mortal remains were recovered. Posted in a rifle company, Sepoy Vijay ventured to serve on a difficult post located at approximately 17,500 feet that remains isolated and inaccessible for as long as six months every year during winters. Jet Airways has said that it was trying to ascertain the status of all its staff and passengers at the Brussels Zaventem airport, which was rocked by twin bomb blasts on Tuesday morning. "Jet Airways is making all efforts to confirm the status of all its staff and guests," the airline said in a statement. "As per first information, the Jet Airways aircraft in Brussels are safe." Two Jet Airways flights, one from New Delhi and the other from Mumbai, had landed at Brussels around the time of the blast. According to the data with the website, Jet Airways flight 9W 230 from New Delhi reached Brussels at 8:08 a.m., just minutes after the bomb blast at the Departure airport at 8.00 a.m. Flight 9W 228 from Mumbai had landed at Brussels at 7.11 a.m. local time. Several people were said to have been injured at the airport, with media putting the number of dead at 13. Currently, Jet Airways operates daily non-stop flights to its European gateway at Brussels airport from its domestic hub in Mumbai and New Delhi. All flights after the explosions at the departure terminal of the Zaventem airport been diverted to neighbouring airports. The airport has been shut. At least 13 people were killed when two massive explosions shattered the Zaventem airport here on Tuesday, only days after the arrest of the Paris terror attack suspect in Brussels. Scores of people were also injured in the blasts which took place one after the other just after 8 a.m., triggering a panic run from the airport and bringing down the false ceiling in a part of the departure hall, media reports said. Even as Belgium immediately raised its terror alert to the maximum, a third explosion took place -- at the main Metro station near the European Union building. Both the airport and the station were shut down. BBC and most media outlets said several people were killed at the airport. Belgian broadcaster RTBF quoted hospital sources to say that 10 people had been killed and about 30 injured. Daily Mail of London put the death toll at 13. People, including passengers, were seen coming out of the airport building with blood on their faces. There were no reports of Indian casualties, the government said in New Delhi. Initial reports said the blasts were centred at the American Airlines check-in desk. But a later report said one explosion occurred on the runway and another at the departure area where public access was easy. Belga news agency reported that shots were fired and shouts in Arabic were heard before the two blasts, BBC said. Pictures showed the terminal windows blown out from the force of the explosion and plumes of smoke rising high into the sky. Video also showed terrified passengers running for their lives out of the terminal. Sky News Middle East correspondent Alex Rossi, who was at the airport on his way to Tel Aviv, said: "I could feel the buildings move." The incident came as the Belgian capital was on a state of high alert following the arrest of Paris terror attack suspect Salah Abdeslam in the city last week. Only on Monday, Belgium's Interior Minister Jan Jambon said the country was braced for a possible revenge attack following the capture of the 26-year-old Abdeslam. CNN quoted a tourist, Anthony Barrett, as saying he heard the explosions at about 8 a.m. from his hotel across the terminal building. "When I opened the curtains and looked out, I could see people fleeing," he told CNN. He said he saw about 19 or 20 stretchers carrying people so far. Luggage trolleys were also being used to transport the wounded. "It is clearly a very serious incident," Barrett said. Brussels airport said that there had been two explosions and the building was being evacuated. "Don't come to the airport area," it said in a tweet. France is seeking Abdeslam's extradition so he can stand trial for his alleged role in the November 13 rampage of gunfire and suicide bombings that killed 130 people in Paris. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said they were monitoring the situation minute-by-minute. A Jet flight from Mumbai landed in Brussels at 7.11 a.m. (local time) and another, from Delhi, landed minutes after the explosion, at 8:08, according to information on Flightradar24 website. The airline said it was trying to ascertain the status of crew and passengers. The aircraft are safe, Jet Airways said in a statement. External affairs ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup said he spoke to Indian ambassador Manjeev Singh Puri who said there were no reports of any Indian casualties. BJP legislator Ganesh Joshi, accused of injuring police horse 'Shaktiman' whose leg had to be amputated later, was granted bail on Tuesday on a personal surety of Rs.25,000. Joshi, who has denied having attacked the horse, was in 14-day judicial custody after an Additional Chief Judicial Magistrate court refused him bail earlier. The horse's condition is stable but his hind leg has been amputated following serious injuries that he suffered during a protest by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) last week. The issue created a nationwide furore and outcry by animal lovers, forcing the Uttarakhand government to order arrest of the BJP legislator. Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi is now perhaps ruing his earlier brash comment when, in an apparent mood of disdain and haughtiness, he had asked "Who is Badruddin Ajmal?" The target was the president of the All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF). Now, on the eve of the assembly elections on April 4 and 11, not only Gogoi and the Congress but the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) too is wary about the likely impressive performance of the AIUDF. Badruddin and his brother Sirajuddin, the two leading lights of the AIUDF, are sure that no one can form the next government in Assam without their support. Badruddin thinks that his party may bag 30-35 seats in the 126-member assembly. Two factors are now working towards polarising the votes of the Bengali-speaking Muslims in favour of the AIUDF. The first is the all-out effort that the BJP and the RSS are putting forth for winning the elections. The second is the Congress' refusal to agree to the AIUDF's call for a Bihar like grand alliance for defeating the BJP. That the Ajmal brothers have ultimately decided to contest a larger number of seats - from the initially contemplated 60 to 76 - is a direct fallout of the Congress' decision to contest alone. The Congress is, no doubt, in the midst of a dilemma. It does not want to lose Hindu votes by striking an alliance with the AIUDF as the Hindus still constitute a little more than 65 percent of Assam's population. But the party's voter base overwhelmingly consists of Bangladeshi immigrants and Muslims. The recent trend among the Bengali speaking Muslims of the state for tilting towards the AIUDF may cost the Congress dearly. Gogoi is, no doubt, trying hard to offset this trend. Even at this advanced age - he'll be 80 on Apil 1 - he is tirelessly touring the Muslim-dominated areas particularly the 'char' lands. However, as per latest information, Badruddin's charismatic personality is still holding sway among the minority population. This is quite natural because to a large number of people of Assam, Badruddin is not just a political leader but also a 'holy man' who can work miracles. He has earned the equivalent of a masters in Arabic language and theology from the Darul Uloom Deoband Islamic School. His family owns almost the whole of the Hojai town in Nowgaon district. He has the largest agar plantation in India and runs a Rs.2,000 crore perfume business. He runs the Haji Abdul Majid Memorial Hospital, Asia's largest rural charitable hospital and also owns what is arguably Asia's richest NGO - Markaaj-ul-Maaris. That such a man can easily match the financial powers of mainstream political parties is beyond doubt. But he has also been helped by the changing demographic character of Assam. While Muslims constituted 30.9 percent of the population in 2001, their share jumped to 34.2 percent in 2011. In 2001, only six districts had a Muslim majority. In 2011, Muslims constituted the majority in nine districts. Badruddin, however, leaves no stone unturned to prove that his party has its base among all sections of the people. The claim is not without reason. The working president of his party is Aditya Langthsa, a Dimasa tribal. Moreover, in the 2014 parliamentary elections a prominent Hindu named Radheshyam Biswas had won from the Karimgunj constituency on the AIUDF ticket. In the last Bodo Tribal Council (BTC) elections the AIUDF had won four seats although critics say that this became possible due to an increase in the number of Muslim population in the BTC area. There is however no doubt that the AIUDF has spread its tentacles far and wide in Assam. In the 2009 Lok Sabha polls, its only success was in the Dhubri constituency but in 2014 it bagged three Lok Sabha seats - Dhubri, Barpeta and Karimgunj. In the 2006 assembly elections, the AIUDF won 10 seats but in the assembly poll of 2011 the figure jumped to 18. Similarly, in the 2011 assembly polls, the AIUDF's vote share was 12.6 percent, increasing to 15 percent in 2014. In the 2014 parliamentary elections, the AIUDF had established comfortable leads in 24 assembly constituencies. If this trend continues, then Badruddin's prediction of 30-35 seats in 2016 may come true. There are, however, some impediments before him. His influence is mainly confined to lower Assam and the Barak Valley. In upper Assam, which has the largest concentration of seats, Badruddin faces opposition from the Assamese speaking Muslims. This has perhaps tempered his ambitions to some extent. But, after the elections, Badruddin may come out as a balancing factor - a kingmaker for some or a spoiler for sundry others' ambitions. (22.03.2016 - Amitava Mukherjee is a senior journalist and commentator. The views expressed are personal.He can be contacted at amukherjee57@yahoo.com) The mortal remains of an army soldier killed by Kargil avalanche were Tuesday flown from Leh town to New Delhi, an official said. "The mortal remains of our martyr, Sepoy Vijay Kumar, have been moved after a brief wreath laying ceremony at Leh," Colonel S.D. Goswami, spokesman of the army's Udhampur-headquartered Northern Command, told IANS in Jammu. The mortal remains will be taken to Thiruvananthapuram by air and reach there at 10.40 p.m. "From Thiruvanathapuram, the martyr will undertake his final journey by road to his home town in Tirunelveli (Tamil Nadu). Cremation is planned tomorrow (Wednesday)," Colonel Goswami said. The Brussels terror attacks are a result of the wrong policies of the European Union, Walid Muallem, Syrian foreign minister said on Tuesday, condemning the incident, state news agency SANA reported. While "vehemently" condemning the bombings that rocked Brussels and killed at least 34 people and wounded over 170, Walid Muallem said the terrorist attacks in the European city was a result of the "wrong policies and capitalizing on the terror to achieve certain agendas". The attacks in Brussels and Paris and elsewhere are reminders that terrorism has no boundaries, Muallem said, referring to its previous accusations against the West of supporting the insurgency in Syria. The Syrian government repeatedly warned the backers of the rebels from the repercussions of the terrorist groups on Europe. Meanwhile, the ministry urged the community to exert all efforts to counter the threat of terror and stop the flow of support to the jihadi groups in Syria. Branded budget hotel chains in domestic hotel industry are driving the growth of hotel bookings online, revealed a report by Google India compiled by looking at the search trends for both domestic and international travel sector for the upcoming holiday season. The report further revealed that Internet users in the country are lapping up the budget hotels online which is evident in the growth of Google search queries. Branded budget hotel queries in India are growing at 179 percent Year over Year ( YoY) in comparison to just 36 percent YOY growth in generic budget hotel queries. The overall queries for 'Accommodations' as a whole are growing at 37 percent YOY. "Newer players in the segment have energised the travel vertical by unlocking a brand new inventory online. They have been quick to capitalise on the online demand with aggressive advertising spends in building their brands, which is leading to overall category growth for the Industry," said Director Sales of Google India Vikas Agnihotri. "We expect this segment to continue to see massive growth with leisure travel expected to pick up in the coming summer holiday season. As part of our own efforts to boost the sector, we're sponsoring Great Indian Travel Festival which is currently live - to provide users a central destination for all the great holiday deals that are available online for the upcoming holiday season," added Agnihotri. In terms of top destinations searched for accommodation during March to June period of 2015, Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Goa, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala and Delhi-NCR are the most searched destinations. The survey also indicated that leisure destinations will be the next growth driver for branded budget hotel category as today out of the top 50 domestic destination searched, only 30% of destinations represent leisure travel. As per industry estimates, the inventory in the budget hotel space is expected to grow further with both new and existing players expected to bring up to 10,000 new rooms online this year. In terms of outbound data (International) compiled basis Google search queries Between January to September 2015, 25% of search queries are for International air tickets growing at 43% YOY while 22% of search queries are for International holidays growing at 30% YOY. UAE, USA and Thailand take the top positions for most searched international destinations with a healthy growth rate of over 35% YOY. Search queries also reveal that the Indian travelers have taken a liking to niche travel destinations with Seychelles topping the chart followed by Hungary, Czech Republic, Russia, Greece and Norway. Thailand was the most searched holiday destination between March to June 2015 followed by USA, UAE, Singapore and Maldives. Camera-trapping data has quashed reports of presence of a second tiger in Nagaland's Medziphema village where a big cat was recently killed by locals, a Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) statement said on Tuesday. The state forest department, WCS and Nagaland Wildlife and Biodiversity Conservation Trust had set up camera-traps near the kill-site and around the village where the presence of a tiger was reported by the locals. "It is unlikely that there is a resident population of tigers in the area. There is habitat for tigers, but little prey," Varun Goswami, scientist at the WCS India Programme, who led the effort, said in a statement. A week of camera-trapping with 17 units allayed fears of any tiger's presence, he said. "Tigers, however, can disperse into Nagaland from multiple directions -- the forests of Karbi Anglong towards the northwest, or perhaps, Myanmar to the southeast," said Goswami. In fact, on closer interaction, residents of Medziphema revealed that tigers do occasionally pass through the area. A dispersing tiger, which landed in Medziphema, a small village near Dimapur, was shot dead by panic-stricken villagers on February 29. Tigers have not been officially recorded from the area in over a decade. Two days later, residents of the same village claimed another tiger in their area after three youth walking in a nearby forest reported catching a fleeting glimpse of a large, cat-like animal that they had surprised while it was feeding on a wild pig. Tigers can move large distances when they are dispersing, according to Ullas Karanth, renowned tiger expert from WCS. "Our long term research shows evidence of tigers travelling up to 300 km or more," he added. Two motorcycle-borne criminals looted Rs.3.5 lakh from the power station in Loni in Ghaziabad district of Uttar Pradesh, a senior police officer said on Tuesday. "A case has been registered by Loni police and investigation initiated. Other power stations have been advised to seek police help while collecting cash," Superintendent of Police (rural) R.K. Pandey said. Junior engineer Vinod Kumar Singh of the Uttar Pradesh Power Corporation Limited on Tuesday lodged a police complaint that the criminals barged into the Loni power station on Monday evening while he was accepting payments against power bills at the cash counter and escaped with the collected money. The police said the UPPCL has introduced online as well as cheque system for clearing power bills. However this system is yet to be introduced in rural areas. Hence, the bill payments were taken in cash from rural consumers. US President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met in Washington some days ago and signed a joint statement reiterating their resolve to fight climate change, adding that both the countries "must and will play a leadership role internationally in the low carbon global economy over the coming decades". Let's not forget that the US is the only developed country that never signed the Kyoto Protocol. Canada is the only country that ratified and then walked out of the Kyoto Protocol without meeting its legally binding targets. Canada and the US are the first and second largest per capita emitters of greenhouse gases (GHGs) in the world today, the positions both would retain for years to come. To many who are now quite conversant with such official rhetorics, the statement beckoned the end of 100 days of wordy celebrations of success of the Paris climate agreement of December 12, 2015, and the start of yet another era of endless joint communiques peppered with promotional promises. Similar bilateral statements intended to save the world and protect future generations from a climate cataclysm were plentifully propagated during the months leading to the Paris meeting. This particular statement, though well-intended, looked rather helpless because of several reasons. First, Obama's term is coming to an end next January. Second, the front-runners to succeed him are shying away from the issue of climate change, leave alone declaring any specific proposals on tacking it. Second, the American presidential debates reveal familiar lines of business-as-usual or even signal the eminent danger of undoing the success of the Paris agreement. Third, Canada not presently being part of the Kyoto Protocol, has not even declared its legally binding pre-2020 ambitious target of emission reduction. Such a target is one of the key issues for successfully implementing the universal agreement reached in Paris. It's not only Obama, one of the passionate champions of climate change, who would be exiting the world theatre. There will be unprecedented and eminent exodus of key personalities that worked relentlessly for the fruitful outcome at Paris. Recently, Laurent Fabius quit both as French foreign minister and the president of COP-21, where he was hailed as the "messiah" of the new universal climate agreement. The executive secretary of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Christaine Figures, who was a key figure in coordinating the nuts and bolts of the Paris agreement, has declared that she will step down in July at the end of her six-year term. She firmly stated that she would not accept any extension. Achim Steiner, the UN under-secretary general and the executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) that, inter alia, facilitates the implementation of the climate change agreement globally, will soon be finishing his tenure and has already accepted a new job not directly related to climate change. Hela Cheikhrouhou, head of the UN's Green Climate Fund set up to provide $100 billion per year to the developing countries to help them cope with climate change, also said that she would stand down in September. (The fund has so far attracted about $10 billion in pledges from 43 nations, after repeated delays. It has so far dispersed $1.5 billion.) To top it all, the towering figure that took climate change as a global priority from day one of his UN assignment as secretary general, Ban Ki-moon will be relinquishing his office when his term ends by the end of 2016. Indeed, it is true that the institutions matter more than the personalities when it comes to serving the long-term cause like climate change. However, considering that the Paris agreement is not even open for the signature, (scheduled to start on April 22), leave alone the implantation, the sheer number of impending exits makes the whole scenario look like a change of guard of climate change. It also takes the recent joint statement between the US and Canada somewhere in the 'cloud-network', to use contemporary terminology, with scant regard towards the need of urgency. During the 100 days after the historic agreement in Paris, the world is inundated with alarming news which all point to the fact that while climate change is happening faster than expected, the action to prevent it is slowing down. The phrase "changing of the guard" is used to refer to the situation where the guards from earlier shift would change and the new guards for the next shift would replace them. It is not known if this change of the guard has ever taken place at a time so dramatic and so critical as 2016, when uncontrolled climate change is fast approaching. (Rajendra Shende is chairman TERRE Policy Centre and former director of the UNEP. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at shende.rajendra@gmail.com) The Chinese government has approved a motion to celebrate a National Day of Space Flight on April 24 every year starting from 2016, the media reported on Tuesday. The year 2016 marks the 60th anniversary of the beginning of China's spaceflight development, the People's Daily reported. On April 24, 1970, China launched its first man-made earth satellite, Dongfanghong-1, making China the fifth country then to launch a domestically produced satellite using domestically produced rockets. The other four countries were Russia, the US, France and Japan. In the 60 years, China has developed two bombs and one satellite project, mastered manned space flight, launched a lunar exploration project and generally achieved rapid growth in space technology, according to information on the official website of the central government. Liang Xiaohong, a former senior official from China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation who is also in charge of research for China's carrier rocket, continuously advocated for a national space holiday over the last five years. The National Day of Space Flight is not only a day for astronauts, it is also meant to get young people interested in space science and to pay respect to scientists. Climate change is likely to make the wine producing regions of France and Switzerland too hot for traditionally grown grapes, and vineyards in these regions may then have to switch to hotter climate varieties, change long established methods, move or go out of business, suggests a new NASA study. In much of France and Switzerland, the best years for grapes are traditionally those with abundant spring rains followed by an exceptionally hot summer and late season drought. This drives vines to put forth robust, fast maturing fruit, and brings an early harvest. In the new study, published in the journal Nature Climate Change, the scientists analysed 20th and 21st century weather data, pre-modern reconstructions of temperature, precipitation and soil moisture, and vineyard records going back to 1600. They showed that in the relatively cool winemaking areas of France and Switzerland, early harvests have always required both above average air temperatures and late season drought. This is because in the past, droughts helped heighten temperature just enough to pass the early harvest threshold. The researchers said that up to the 1980s, the climate was such that without the extra kick of heat added by droughts, vineyards could not get quite hot enough for an early harvest. That has now changed. The study found that since then, overall warming alone has pushed summer temperatures over the threshold without the aid of drought. On the whole, France warmed about 1.5 degrees Celsius during the 20th century, and the upward climb has continued. "Now, it's become so warm thanks to climate change, grape growers don't need drought to get these very warm temperatures," said lead author Benjamin Cook, climate scientist at NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. "After 1980, the drought signal effectively disappears. That means there's been a fundamental shift in the large-scale climate under which other, local factors operate," Cook said. The finding is important because higher quality wines are typically associated with earlier harvest dates in cooler wine growing regions, such as France and Switzerland. "Wine grapes are one of the world's most valuable horticultural crops and there is increasing evidence that climate change has caused earlier harvest days in this region in recent decades," Cook pointed out. "Our research suggests that the climate drivers of these early harvests have changed," Cook noted. The Congress on Tuesday sharpened its attack on the Maharashtra government, alleging existence of a few cases of "Maha conflict of interest" as a number of ministers are holding key positions in construction and other private companies. "Maharashtra health minister (Deepak Sawant) is also director of an Eye Hospital. If this isn't conflict of Interest, then what is it?" Congress' official twitter handler INC India said in a tweet about about the Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena government. It cited similar instances of other ministers, like Minister of State for Housing Ravindra Waikar, PWD Minister Chandrakant Patil, Women and Child Welfare Minister Pankaja Munde, Minister of State for Industries Pravin Patil and Minister of State for Finance Deepak Kesarkar. The Congress said in another tweet: "Maha conflict of Interest in @Dev_Fadnavis' Government. Shouldn't these Ministers step down?" The Congress alleged that while Pankaja Munde is on the board of at least five companies, Minister for Housing Waikar is on the board of a construction firm. Similary, junior minister Pravin Patil is on the board of Pravin Builders and Developers, the Congress alleged. While Deepak Sawant is a legislator from the Shiv Sena, Pankaja Munde is the BJP legislator from Parli. In another tweet, the party slammed the Maharashtra government for water crisis in parts of the state. "The anti-people face of the BJP stands exposed. Shows no compassion for a parched population," it said. Analysing data from NASA's planet-hunter, the Kepler space telescope, astronomers have captured for the first time a brilliant flash of an exploding star's shockwave or "shock breakout" in the optical wavelength or visible light. The team led by Peter Garnavich, astrophysics professor at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, analysed light captured by Kepler every 30 minutes over a three-year period from 500 distant galaxies, searching some 50 trillion stars. They were hunting for signs of massive stellar death explosions known as supernovae. For the first time, a supernova shockwave has been observed in the optical wavelength or visible light as it reaches the surface of the star. This early flash of light is called a "shock breakout". The explosive death of this star, called KSN 2011d, as it reaches its maximum brightness takes 14 days. The shock breakout itself lasts only about 20 minutes, so catching the flash of energy is an investigative milestone for astronomers. In 2011, two of these massive stars, called red supergiants, exploded while in Kepler's view. The first behemoth, KSN 2011a, is nearly 300 times the size of our sun and a mere 700 million light years from Earth. The second, KSN 2011d, is roughly 500 times the size of our sun and around 1.2 billion light years away. "To put their size into perspective, Earth's orbit about our sun would fit comfortably within these colossal stars," said Garnavich. The "shock breakout" itself lasts only about 20 minutes, so catching the flash of energy is an investigative milestone for astronomers. "In order to see something that happens on timescales of minutes, like a shock breakout, you want to have a camera continuously monitoring the sky," Garnavich added. Supernovae like these - known as Type II - begin when the internal furnace of a star runs out of nuclear fuel causing its core to collapse as gravity takes over. The two supernovae matched up well with mathematical models of Type II explosions reinforcing existing theories. But they also revealed what could turn out to be an unexpected variety in the individual details of these cataclysmic stellar events. Understanding the physics of these violent events allows scientists to better understand how the seeds of chemical complexity and life itself have been scattered in space and time in our Milky Way galaxy "All heavy elements in the universe come from supernova explosions. For example, all the silver, nickel, and copper in the earth and even in our bodies came from the explosive death throes of stars," explained Steve Howell, project scientist for NASA's Kepler and K2 missions. The research paper reporting this discovery has been accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journal. The 85th death anniversary of Shaheed Bhagat Singh, the revolutionary icon of the freedom struggle, who attained martyrdom at the young age of 23, falls on March 23, 2016. Alongwith Sukhdev and Rajguru, Bhagat Singh was hanged to death less than a week before the commencement of the Karachi session of the Indian National Congress, on March 29, 1931, a landmark event of India's freedom struggle in which economic freedom was equated with political freedom. The year 1928 was marked by an anti-Simon Commision upsurge everywhere in India. On 30 October 1928, the Simon Commission faced a large hostile crowd led by Lala Lajpat Rai at Lahore Station. The Lala was severely beaten by the Police under J. A. Scot, British SP and he later succumbed to his head injury. The whole nation was stunned by this savagery. As news of the attack on Lajpat Rai spread, the country reacted with anger. Bhagat Singh was appalled. He could not believe that a white man could dare take a stick in hand and set upon Lajpat Rai. The HSRA (Hindustan Socialist Republic Army) decided to undertake retaliatory action. On 17 December, Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, Sukhdev and Chandra Shekhar Azad mistook the ASP, J.P.Scot for Saunders, as they pounced upon him and shot him dead. A few months later, on 8 April 1929, Bhagat Singh and Batukeswar Datta threw a bomb in the Central Legislative Assembly Hall in Delhi. It was hurled from the midst of a packed gallery, not aimed at anybody, but to draw the attention of the House, the Indian people and the British rulers in India. As Bhagat Singh and Batukeswar Dutt had planned not to escape after throwing the bomb, they were arrested. While Dutt was sentenced to transportation for life in the Assembly Bomb Case, Bhagat Singh, alongwith Rajguru and Sukhdev, was sentenced to death for the murder of Saunders in what became famous as the Lahore conspiracy case. While in jail, Bhagat Singh took up the cause of bettering jail conditions and commenced a hunger strike. The Jail Committee requested Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt to give up their hunger strike but they declined. As the fast continued indefinitely with no solution in sight, Jawaharlal Nehru visited Bhagat Singh and the other hunger strikers in jail. Nehru gives an account of his visit in his Autobiography: "I saw Bhagat Singh for the first time, and Jatindranath Das and a few others. They were all very weak and bed-ridden and it was hardly possible to talk to them much. Bhagat Singh had an attractive, intellectual face, remarkably calm and peaceful. There seemed to be no anger in it. He looked and talked with great gentleness." Finally, it was Bhagat Singh's father who had his way. He came armed with a resolution by the Congress urging them to give up the hunger strike. The revolutionaries respected the Congress party because they knew of its struggle for India'a freedom. They called Gandhi 'an impossible visionary' but they saluted him for the awakening he had brought about in the country. As days of execution of Bhagat Singh and his comrades drew near, appeals from all over India, from all sections of people poured in, usually addressed to the Viceroy asking him to stay the execution. Gandhi met Irwin on i9th March and pleaded for the reprieve of Bhagat Singh and his two colleagues from the death sentences to which they had been condemned. He reinforced this oral request with a powerful appeal to the charity of a "great Christian" in Young India. Bhagat Singh, Rajguru & Sukhdev were hanged to death on March 23, 1931. As the news of Bhagat Singh's execution spread the nation went into mourning. There were processions throughout the country. Many went without food. People wore black badges and shut down their businesses to express their grief. A pall of gloom hung over the Motilal Nehru pandal at the annual Congress session in Karachi. When the session was scheduled for 29 March, 1931 nobody had an inkling that Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru would be hanged six days ahead of schedule. A procession to be led by president-elect Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was abandoned in grief. Jawaharlal Nehru sponsored a resolution which was seconded by Madan Mohan Malviya. According to Kuldip Nayar in 'The Life and Trial of Bhagat Singh': "Gandhi chose Nehru to pilot the resolution because he was popular among the youth. Patel was heckled." A part of the resolution read: "This Congress while dissociating itself from and disapproving of political violence in any shape or form, places on record its admiration of the bravery and sacrifice of the late Sardar Bhagat Singh and his comrades, Sukhdev and Rajguru, and mourns with the bereaved families the loss of these lives. This Congress is of the opinion that this triple execution is an act of wanton vengeance and is a deliberate flouting of the unanimous demand of the nation for commutation." What soothed the emotions was a speech by Bhagat Singh's father, Kishen Singh. Delegates wept loudly and openly as Kishen Singh recalled Bhagat Singh's words: "Bhagat Singh told me not to worry. Let me be hanged. But he made a fervent appeal: 'You must support your general (Gandhi). You must support all Congress leaders. Only then will you be able to win independence for the country.'" Subhash Chandra Bose had told Gandhiji that they should, if necessary, break with the Viceroy on the question of Bhagat Singh and his two comrades: "Because the execution was against the spirit, if not the letter, of the Delhi pact." Still, Netaji added: "It must be admitted that he (Gandhi) did try his very best." Gandhi's secretary, Mahadev Desai also quoted the Mahatma as saying : "I was not here to defend myself and hence I have not placed the facts as to what I have done to save Bhagat Singh and his comrades. I have tried to persuade the Viceroy with all the methods of persuasion I had. After my last meeting with the relatives of Bhagat Singh, on the appointed date, that is , 23rd morning, I wrote a personal letter to the Viceroy, in which I had poured in my whole being-heart and soul-but it has all gone in vain... Pandit Malaviyaji and Dr Sapru also did their utmost." Lord Irwin took the public into confidence on his reasons for rejecting Gandhi's appeal. In his farewell speech on 26th March, 1931, Irwin said: "As I listened the other day to Mr. Gandhi putting the case for commutation formally before me, I reflected first on what significance it surely was that the apostle of non-violence should so earnestly be pleading the cause of devotees of a creed fundamentally opposed to his own, but I should regard it as wholly wrong to allow my judgment on these matters to be influenced or deflected by purely political considera-tions. I could imagine no case in which under the law the penalty had been more directly deserved." The jail diary of Bhagat Singh makes for an interesting historical reading. He wrote shortly before his death : "They (the youth) should aim at a Swaraj for the masses based on socialism. That was a revolutionary change which they could not bring about without revolutionary methods..." Bhagat Singh exhorted Punjab's youth to follow Nehru. He called Nehru and Bose as a "redeeming feature of the freedom struggle" during the 1920s. In his last letter to his youngest brother, Kultar, he quoted the popular Urdu couplet: Khush raho ahle watan hum to safar karte hain (Goodbye, dear countrymen, we proceed on our journey). (22.03.2016 - Capt. Praveen Davar is member of National Commission for Minorities. The views expressed are personal. He can be contacted at praveendavar@gmail.com) Renowned Italian fashion designer Giorgio Armani has pledged to go 100 percent fur-free across all his labels from the Autumn-Winter 2016 collection onwards. Armani's no-fur promise follows similar commitment by fashion brand Hugo Boss last year, and comes after the designer worked closely with Humane Society International (HSI) and The Fur Free Alliance, which was a coalition of 40 animal protection organisations in 28 countries working to end the fur trade. "Armani is the first word in luxury fashion, and so it is hugely significant for the global fashion industry that Armani has pledged to remove animal fur from all his new collections going forward," Claire Bass, executive director of HSI in Britain, said in a statement. "Those designers such as Prada, Fendi and Michael Kors who continue to put animal suffering on the catwalk are looking increasingly isolated, with this move by Armani probably the most powerful message yet that killing animals for their fur is never fashionable," Bass added. Pleased to announce the move, Armani says that the "Armani Group has made a firm commitment to abolish the use of animal fur in its collections". "Technological progress made over the years allows us to have valid alternatives at our disposition that render the use of cruel practices unnecessary as regards animals. Pursuing the positive process undertaken long ago, my company is now taking a major step ahead, reflecting our attention to the critical issues of protecting and caring for the environment and animals," Armani said. HSI recently exposed the suffering of rabbits, as well as foxes, raccoons, dogs which were confined in small, bare, wire cages on Chinese fur farms. The video made by the society also exposed the brutal methods used to kill foxes and raccoon dogs. Popular rapper Yo Yo Honey Singh, who set the stage on fire with his performance at an award function in Dubai after an 18-month hiatus, feels great to perform after a long time. "I am overwhelmed with the response and love showered on my performance. It was a great feeling to perform after such a long time," Singh said in a statement. The "Blue eyes" crooner was missing from the limelight for 18 months due to his struggle with bipolar disorder and alcoholism. Singh, who was one of the performers at the event, was seen shaking a leg with Bollywood' livewire actor Ranveer Singh who did an impromptu dance to the song "Pinga". It was picturised on actresses Deepika Padukone and Priyanka Chopra from filmmaker Sanjay Leela Bhansal's magnum opus "Bajirao Mastani". The "Angrezi beat" rapper also shared the stage with actress Jacqueline Fernandez on the hit number "Yaar naa miley" from the Salman Khan starrer "Kick". Actor Varun Dhawan, who is known for his electrifying dance moves, even dedicated a special on-the-spot rap song for the "Dheere dheere" crooner to welcome him on stage. Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Chief on Tuesday said she had a "positive meeting" with Prime Minister Narendra Modi here. "It has been a positive meeting with PM and I will go back to Srinagar and take the next step," Mufti told the media outside the Prime Minister's official residence at 7 Race Course Road. "I am content after meeting PM," she added. "Stalemate (in J&K) has been continuing since two-three months. I feel positive after this meeting," said Mehbooba, daughter of Late Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayed. She also said that she has called for a legislature party meeting on Thursday and will take further decision there. Beirut, March 23 (IANS/AKI) Radical Lebanese Shia movement Hezbollah on Tuesday deplored the deadly Brussels bombings and blamed hardline Sunni Islamists for exporting from Syria and the Middle East to Europe. "The fire that is blazing throughout the world, particularly in Europe is that same one that has been lit in Syria and other countries in the region," its political wing said in a statement. The statement blamed the Brussels attacks on "Takfiri" terrorists, a reference to ultra-extremist Sunni Muslims. It expressed "complete solidarity with innocent people in general, and Belgium and its people during their harsh plight". Hezbollah accused some nations of funding hardline jihadist groups and of "providing support and protection to countries that are harbouring terrorists" and called for "clear and transparent" regional and international cooperation to fight . "Remaining silent over this issue is a major sin and it will only lead to more death, killings, and destruction," it said. At least 34 people were killed and some 200 injured in coordinated bomb attacks on Brussels' main airport and the subway. One of the two airport blasts is believed to have been a suicide bombing. --IANS/AKI vd Tension prevailed in Hyderabad University on Tuesday as students ransacked the office of Vice-Chancellor P. Appa Rao to protest his return from a nearly two-month leave. The students barged into the office of the vice chancellor and ransacked the furniture. Raising slogans and blaming him for the suicide of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula, the students also attacked his car. The attack occurred minutes before Appa Rao was to address media persons to announce that he has resumed duties as the vice chancellor. The incident once again triggered tension on the campus as police rushed additional forces to prevent further violence. The students resorted to protests since Tuesday following reports that Appa Rao is returning to resume duties as the vice-chancellor. He had gone on leave on January 24 amid massive protests on the campus over the suicide of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula. The Joint Action Committee for Social Justice, an umbrella grouping of various students' bodies, has blamed Appa Rao, central ministers Smriti Irani and Bandaru Dattatreya and a leader of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) for the suspension of five Dalit students, one of whom Rohith committed suicide on January 17. India on Tuesday received visa applications for five members of the Pakistani team probing the cross-border terror attack on the Pathankot airbase in January this year. "We have today received visa applications for five members of the Pakistan joint investigation team (JIT)," external affairs ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup said at a media briefing here. "The modalities of the visit will be discussed now that we have the composition of the team," Swarup said. He, however, added that he did not yet have the details of the JIT members. Following a meeting with Sartaj Aziz, advisor to the Pakistan prime minister on foreign affairs, on the sidelines of the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) ministerial meeting at Pokhara in Nepal last week, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj announced that the Pakistani JIT would arrive in India on March 27 and start its work from the following day. Seven Indian security personnel lost their lives when terrorists from across the border attacked the Indian Air Force base in Pathankot, Punjab, early on January 2. The Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) claimed responsibility for the attack in which all the six terrorists also were reportedly killed. The attack derailed the proposed foreign secretary-level talks that were scheduled for the middle of January after the two countries agreed in December last year to start a comprehensive bilateral dialogue. 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 JIT to India to probe the attack. Sudhir Parikh, a prominent Indian-American doctor and publisher has dissociated himself from 'Indian Americans for Trump 2016', a group supporting Republican frontrunner Donald Trump. "I allowed myself to be identified with that group," he said in an emailed statement "because some members of the group are friends of mine". "I wish to clarify that I no longer belong to the group and I do not support the candidacy of Mr. Donald Trump," Parikh, founder chairman of Parikh Worldwide Media publishing house, said without assigning any reason. "For over three decades I have supported both Democrat and Republican candidates based on their individual merits and their commitment to the interests of the Indian-American community and US-India relations," he wrote. "I remain committed to this course," added Parikh, who had been named chair of fundraising and advisory committee of Indian-Americans for Trump 2016 formed in January. Calling Trump the "best hope for America", the group from New York Tristate area formed a Political Action Committee (PAC) to support and raise funds for him. Headed by Dr A.D. Amar, a business professor with Seton Hall University in New Jersey, the group's sole declared goal is "to garner actively the support of all Americans, but particularly Indian-Americans, to have Donald J. Trump become the next President of the USA." An Indian trade body based here on Tuesday expressed deep shock over the "heinous and horrible" terror attacks in the Belgian capital that left at least 28 people dead. Europe India Chamber of Commerce secretary general Sunil Prasad said the "barbarity" was against humanity. "We condemn these attacks and the terrorists who carried out this heinous and horrible barbarity." Such a terrorist attack would have far-reaching geopolitical consequences for the entire Europe, he said. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Brussels to attend the EU-India Summit on March 30. "We hope the security situation in Brussels will significantly improve and the Belgian authorities will take all necessary security measures for a successful visit of Modi," Prasad added. An Indian woman crew member of Jet Airways was injured on Tuesday in the explosions at Brussels airport, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said. "I am in touch with Manjeev Puri Indian Ambassador in Brussels. He has informed me that so far there is no report of any Indian casualty," tweeted Sushma Swaraj. "However, an Indian lady crew member of Jet Airways is injured. She has been rushed to the hospital," the minister said in another tweet. "Please do not worry. Indian Embassy in Brussels will provide all assistance." At least 13 people were killed when two massive explosions shattered the Zaventem airport on Tuesday. Rome, March 22 (IANS/AKI) The Islamic State group has reportedly claimed the terrorist blasts at the Brussels airport and a city metro station on Tuesday and pledged to stage similar attacks in Europe. IS's Amaq news agency took credit for the Brussels attacks, praising their "planning, rapid execution and dynamism" on the Telegram messaging application, Egyptian daily El-Watan reported. The message also vowed "further similar operations in Europe", according to El-Watan. At least 14 people are believed to have died in two explosions at the Zaventem airport and 20 more in the bombing at the Maelbeek metro station about an hour later. At least one of the explosions was caused by a suicide bomber, Belgium's federal prosecutor was quoted as saying. --IANS/AKI mr/ Italian police seized assets with estimated worth of 500 million euros ($563 million) from a leading clan of "the Ndrangheta mob in the southern Calabria region" on Monday, local media reported. The operation was ordered by prosecutors of the local Anti-Mafia District Directorate (DDA), and targeted at the Iannazzo crime family which is considered a powerful clan based in the region's third largest city of Lamezia Terme, Xinhua quoted Ansa news agency as saying. The seized assets included 53 plots of real estate and farmland, 24 commercial buildings, 27 vehicles and shares of at least 21 companies, the organised crime investigation group of Italy's finance police said in a statement. Many of the assets were directly linked to local businessman Franco Perri who is allegedly a close associate of the Iannazzo clan. The entrepreneur was thought to have developed "a solid and lucrative relationship with the Iannazzo family's current boss, up to the point of being considered as acting in collusion with the clan," the anti-mafia prosecutors told a press conference on Monday. Overall some 65 people and 44 companies were involved in the investigation that resulted in the raids, local media reported. Magistrates ordered no arrests, but decided to make a broad "preventive" seizure of the suspects' assets, which is a special procedure allowed by Italian anti-mafia legislation to target at the economic power of organised crime syndicates. Rome, March 22 (IANS/AKI) Italian authorities boosted security at airports and train stations after Tuesday's terror attacks at Brussels airport and a metro station left 34 people dead. All flights to and from Brussels from Rome's Fiumicino and Ciampino airports were cancelled and passenger checks were tightened while security was also ratcheted up at airports in Milan. Security was also strengthened at the Belgium's embassies to Italy and the Vatican in Rome as well as at the ambassador's residence and at Belgian cultural institutes, Italian daily La Repubblica reported. Italian trade associations voiced concern that the Brussels attacks would negatively impact tourist bookings in Rome and other Italian cities ahead of Easter, usually one of the busiest times of the year. Brussels was in lockdown after Tuesday's attacks and its airport and the entire public transport system in Brussels were closed. --IANS/AKI mr/ Jet Airways on Tuesday cancelled all its flights to and from Brussels until Wednesday after two of its staff members were injured in the bomb blasts that rocked the city's Zaventem airport on Tuesday morning. Two of the airline's flights from India had landed before and around the time of the attack, but all passengers and crew were safe. "Jet Airways has cancelled flights operating to/from and via Brussels until tomorrow Wednesday 23 March. The airline has also offered a waiver on cancellation, rebooking and rerouting of tickets for travel to/from/via Brussels until March 26," an airline spokesperson said. According to the airline, following the deadly explosions, the Brussels airport has been closed until 6.00 a.m. local time on March 23. The airline informed that two of its staff members sustained injuries in the explosion at Brussels airport. "Both of them are receiving medical care at hospitals," the spokesperson said. The airline elaborated, that as per the latest information received from Brussels, its guests have been accommodated at three locations by Jet Airways staff in co-ordination with the local authorities. "Arrangements for their food and comfort have been made till the situation normalises," the spokesperson added. "We are working very closely with the Indian Embassy and are in touch with the Indian Ambassador to plan the next steps for evacuation of our guests from Brussels once the airport becomes operational." Two Jet Airways flights, one from New Delhi and the other from Mumbai, had landed at Brussels around the time of the blast. According to the data from aviation website Flightradar24, Jet Airways flight 9W 230 from New Delhi reached Brussels at 8.08 a.m. local time, just minutes after the bomb blast at the departure terminal at 8 a.m. Flight 9W 228 from Mumbai had landed at Brussels at 7.11 a.m. local time. Several people were said to have been injured at the airport, with media putting the number of dead at 13, while blasts were also reported from elsewhere in the city including a subway station. Currently, Jet Airways operates daily non-stop flights to its European gateway at Brussels airport from its domestic hubs in Mumbai and New Delhi. The attacks coincidentally came a day after the private Indian airline announced it will shift its European base out of Brussels to Amsterdam. On Monday, the airline had announced that it will shift its European hub from Brussels to Amsterdam, and plans to launch daily non-stop flights from New Delhi and Mumbai to Amsterdam, starting from March 27. A Jet Airways flight from Delhi to Chennai was searched here on Tuesday evening after an anonymous caller reported that a bomb had been placed in the plane, police said. Police said the call regarding flight 9W832 was received at around 4 p.m., just before it was to take off with some 115 passengers. "A thorough search is being conducted in the plane" at the Indira Gandhi International Airport, Deputy Commissioner of Police Dinesh Kumar Gupta told IANS. He said all the passengers had been evacuated and taken to a safe place. Jammu and Kashmir is likely to have a new government as early as the next week that will end the two-month-old political stalemate in the state after Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chief Mehbooba Mufti's "positive" meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the capital on Tuesday. As Mehbooba met the prime minister at his official 7 Race Course residence, a senior PDP leader and former minister Nayeem Akhtar said in Jammu that "hopefully "government should be in place by March 29". Mehbooba's meeting with Modi came days after she flew back to Srinagar rather upset after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) snubbed her over the PDP's fresh conditions for continuation of the ruling alliance in the state, which has been without an elected government since Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed died on January 7. BJP general secretary Ram Madhav, in charge of the party's affairs in Jammu and Kashmir, said last week that his party would not be accepting any fresh demands and conditions from the PDP after Mehbooba's meeting with BJP president Amit Shah failed to break the deadlock. But on Tuesday she appeared upbeat, dropping hints that a new government in Jammu and Kashmir may be formed soon. "It has been a positive meeting with the prime minister and I will go back to Srinagar and take the next step," Mehbooba told the media as she emerged from Modi's residence. "I am content after meeting the prime minister. I feel positive after this meeting." Asked if she would be sworn in soon as the chief minister of Jammu and Kashmir, Mehbooba replied, "I have been authorised to take the final call on the government formation and hold discussions regarding the issue by the party's legislature party." She also said that she has called for a legislature party meeting on Thursday and will take further decision there. "There is a particular forum to make announcements. Everything can't be announced here," she said. Asked if Modi gave any assurance regarding her party's demands over government formation, Mehbooba said: "When you meet prime minister of the nation and discussions held are positive, then naturally we find more ways to the solutions of the problems faced by people of Jammu and Kashmir." Mehbooba arrived in New Delhi on Monday in an indication that channels of communication with the BJP have been restored. Jammu and Kashmir has been without an elected government after Mehbooba's father, Chief Minister Mufti Sayeed, died in a Delhi hospital and the state came under Governor's Rule. The PDP and BJP formed a coalition government in Jammu and Kashmir in March 2015 after assembly elections threw up a fractured mandate. Mehbooba has been dragging her feet over government formation in the state after her father's death, and refused to take oath as the new chief minister till several demands made by the PDP were met by the BJP-led central government. It was not immediately known what changed Mehbooba's heart. However, there were reports that a group of defectors from the PDP was readying to support the BJP if Mehbooba did not relent from her apparently non-negotiable stand. The defection threat reports came even as Jammu and Kashmir has the toughest anti-defection law in the country. No number of lawmakers can defect from a political party to claim a split, according to the law. "Even if all the 27 MLAs of the PDP had chosen to defect, the president of the party could still write to the speaker of the legislative assembly declaring the breakaway group as defectors and seek action against them as per the provisions of the anti-defection law," a constitutional expert said in Srinagar. The Kremlin on Tuesday confirmed that Russian President Vladimir Putin will meet US Secretary of State John Kerry during the latter's upcoming visit to Moscow this week. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said the crises in Syria and Ukraine would top the agenda, while the two sides are also expected to discuss a broad range of other issues, Xinhua news agency reported. However, Peskov did not give the specific time of their meeting and declined to comment on possible results of the visit. Kerry will pay a working visit to Russia on Wednesday and Thursday to meet with Russian Foreign Minster Sergey Lavrov. A British judge has urged pop star Madonna and her former husband Guy Ritchie to resolve their ongoing custody dispute over their 15-year-old son Rocco, warning them of ruining his childhood. Madonna and Ritchie faced off in court on Monday. The judge ruled that Madonna can drop her legal proceedings in London so that the legal battle can continue in the US judicial system, reports people.com. However, the judge did not rule over whether Rocco should return to New York to be with Madonna. The British High Court judge, Alistair MacDonald, also urged the estranged couple to work together to resolve their differences over Rocco's custody. "For all the media coverage, comment and analysis, this is a case born out of circumstances that arise for countless separated parents the world over," the judge wrote in his ruling. "I renew, one final time, my plea for the parents to seek, and to find an amicable resolution to the dispute between them." "It would be a very great tragedy for Rocco if any more of the precious and fast receding days of his childhood were to be taken up by this dispute. Far better for each of his parents to spend that time enjoying, in turn, the company of the mature, articulate and reflective young man who is their son and who is a very great credit to them both," the judge added. Andrew S. Grove, former chief executive and chairman of Intel Corporation who contributed immensely to the semiconductor giant's success, passed away on Monday at the age of 79. Both during his time at Intel and in retirement, Grove was one of the most influential figures in technology and business, writing best-selling books and widely cited articles, and speaking out on an array of prominent public issues. His books High Output Management (1983) and Only the Paranoid Survive (1999) remain some of the most highly regarded management books. "We are deeply saddened by the passing of former Intel chairman and CEO Andy Grove," said Intel CEO Brian Krzanich in a statement. "Andy made the impossible happen, time and again, and inspired generations of technologists, entrepreneurs, and business leaders," Krzanich noted. Grove was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease in 2000. However, the cause of his death has not yet been determined, a spokesman for the family was quoted as saying by the New York Times. Present at Intel's 1968 founding with Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore, Grove became Intel's president in 1979 and CEO in 1987. He served as chairman of the Board from 1997 to 2005. Born Andras Grof in Budapest, Hungary, Grove immigrated to the US in 1956-57 having survived Nazi occupation. He studied chemical engineering at the City College of New York, completing his Ph.D. at the University of California at Berkeley in 1963. After graduation, he was hired by Gordon Moore at Fairchild Semiconductor as a researcher and rose to assistant head of R&D under Moore. When Noyce and Moore left Fairchild to found Intel in 1968, Grove was their first hire, the statement added. Grove played a critical role in the decision to move Intel's focus from memory chips to microprocessors and led the firm's transformation into a widely recognised consumer brand. Under his leadership, Intel produced the chips, including the 386 and Pentium, that helped usher in the personal computer era. Grove and his wife, Eva, were married for 58 years and had two daughters and eight grandchildren. Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chief Mehbooba Mufti on Tuesday met Prime Minister Narendra Modi at his residence over the formation of the new government in Jammu and Kashmir in alliance with the Bharatiya Janata Party. Mufti's decision to meet Modi has fuelled hopes in Jammu and Kashmir that channels of communication with the BJP have been opened once again. The government formation in Jammu and Kashmir has been deadlocked since then chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed's death in a Delhi hospital on January 7. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will on March 30 embark on a three-nation tour during the course of which he will attend the 13th India-EU Summit in Brussels, Belgium, and the Nuclear Security Summit (NSS) in Washington. "The prime minister will pay his first official visit to Brussels on March 30, 2016, for the 13th India-EU Summit at the invitation of President of the European Council Donald Tusk and President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker," external affairs ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup said at a media briefing here. "The European Union (EU) is India's leading trade and investment partner and biggest export destination," Swarup said. "India and EU are also strategic partners since 2004. The 13th India-EU Summit aims to deepen the India-EU strategic partnership and advance collaboration in priority areas for India's growth and development." According to Swarup, Modi will also hold a bilateral summit meeting with Belgium at the invitation of Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel. Stating that India and Belgium enjoyed close and friendly ties, he said: "Belgium is India's second largest trade partner within the EU. The bilateral meeting between the two prime ministers will focus on further enhancing the economic partnership. The two prime ministers will also hold discussions on regional and global issues of mutual interest." From Brussels, Modi will proceed to Washington D.C., US, to participate in the Fourth Nuclear Security Summit on March 31 and April 1. The first NSS was held in Washington in April 2010 followed by the summits in Seoul in March 2012 and The Hague in March 2014. "Fifty-two countries and four international organisations are expected to attend the 2016 summit," Swarup said. "The Nuclear Security Summit process has been instrumental in galvanising leaders' level attention on the global threat posed by nuclear terrorism and urgent measures required to prevent terrorists and other non-state actors from gaining access to sensitive nuclear materials and technologies," he said. This year's summit is expected to take stock of the progress of the previous NSS communiques and work plan as also outline a future agenda. "As for past summits, a number of countries may project the respective steps taken by them to strengthen nuclear security since the last summit, including in the form of submissions of national progress reports," the spokesman said, adding that India would also be doing the same. He said that India has contributed constructively durting the NSS preparatory meetings from 2014 to 2016 at the level of sherpas. According to Swarup, Modi will make some specific announcements and proposals with regard to nuclear security during his interventions at the NSS. The prime minister is also scheduled to have bilateral meetings on the sidelines of the summit. "India is committed to the success of the NSS process. India's participation in all the NSSes from 2010 is a demonstration of our high-level commitment in this regard," Swarup said. From Washington, Modi will fly to Riyadh for a bilateral visit to Saudi Arabia on April 2 and 3. He will be visiting the Gulf kingdom at the invitation of King Salman Bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud. This is first prime ministerial visit from India to Saudi Arabia after the visit of then prime minister Manmohan Singh in 2010. During the visit, Modi will hold discussions with King Salman on bilateral, regional and multilateral issues of mutual interest. "India and Saudi Arabia share friendly relations based on close people-to-people contacts," Swarup said. "The 'strategic partnership' established through the Riyadh Declaration in 2010 envisions a deeper engagement in political, economic, security and defence areas. In recent years, there has been significant progress in bilateral cooperation in key sych areas of mutual interest," he said. Saudi Arabia is India's fourth largest partner with bilateral trade exceeding $39 billion in 2014-15. It is also India's largest crude oil supplier, accounting for about one-fifth of the country's oil imports. "Indians form the largest expatriate community in Saudi Arabia and their contribution in the progress and development of their host country is well recognized," the spokesman said. There are over 2.96 million expatriate Indians in Saudi Arabia, many of whom are blue collar workers. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will visit Belgian capital Brussels on March 30 as scheduled, the external affairs ministry said on Tuesday. Modi is scheduled to travel to Belgium for the 13th India-European Union Summit at the invitation of European Council President Donald Tusk and European Commission chief Jean-Claude Juncker. The India-EU Summit aims to deepen the India-EU strategic partnership and advance collaboration in priority areas for India's growth and development. On Tuesday, two deadly blasts -- blamed on a suicide bomber -- ripped through the Zaventem airport of Brussels, killing at least 13 people. A third explosion at a Metro station in the heart of the Belgian capital later claimed 15 more lives. Scores were also injured in the coordinated attacks that come only four days after the Belgian police arrested a suspect in the Paris terror attack that killed 130 people in November. Modi earlier tweeted to condemn the attacks. "News from Brussels is disturbing. The attacks are condemnable. Condolences to families of the deceased. May those injured recover quickly," Modi tweeted. An MEA statement on the prime minister's impending visit said the EU is India's leading trade and investment partner and biggest export destination. India and EU are also strategic partners since 2004. During his visit, Modi will hold bilateral summit meeting with Belgian leaders following an invitation from the Belgium's Prime Minister Charles Michel. India and Belgium enjoy close and friendly ties. Belgium is India's second largest trade partner within the EU. "The bilateral meeting between the two prime ministers will focus on further enhancing the economic partnership. The two prime ministers will also hold discussions on regional and global issues of mutual interest," the MEA statement said. India is unperturbed by Nepal's signing a transit and transportation agreement with China during the visit of the Himalayan nation's Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli to Beijing. "Our age-old ties with Nepal are unique and special," external affairs ministry spokesman Vikas Swarup said during his weekly media briefing here on Tuesday. "They are characterised by an open border based on shared history, geography, culture, close people-to-people ties, mutual security and close economic linkages," Swarup said. "We have at present 26 land customs stations with Nepal of which 10 can handle commercial cargo trucks." The transit and transportation agreement was among 10 agreements Nepal and China signed on Monday, a day after Oli began a week-long trip to China. The visit is significant in the light of Nepal's efforts to reduce its decades-old dependence on India after Madhesi protestors in the southern plains, agitated over a new constitution, blocked supply trucks coming in from India. The five-month-long blockade caused huge crises as fuel and medicine supplies dried up. Kathmandu blamed New Delhi for supporting the protestors but the allegation has been denied. The blockade halted for months Nepal's third-country trade, apparently prompting the Nepalese government to look for an alternative to India's Haldia port. The transit agreement with China gives Nepal an option to use the next nearest Tianjin port in China that is 3,000 km from Nepal border. Haldia port is 1,000 km away. Swarup said that two integrated check points at Raxaul-Birgunj and Jogbani-Biratnagar were under construction and two more at Sunauli-Bhairawa and Nepalganj Road-Nepalganj would be undertaken in the next phase. "Two rail links between Jogbani-Biratnagar and Jayanagar-Bijalpura-Bardibas are under construction and three more routes between Nepalganj Road-Nepalganj, New Jalpaiguri-Kakarbhitta and Nautanwa-Bhairawa will be undertaken in the next phase," he said. As for roads, the spokesman said 605 km of roads in phase one of the Terai road project were under construction of which 87 km has already been completed while 900 km more would be undertaken in the next phase. He said a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on the Raxaul-Amlekhgunj petroleum pipeline was signed in August last year. "The 600 MW Muzaffapur-Dhalkebar transmission line was inaugurated last month and India is exporting 330 MW of electricity to Nepal," Swarup said. Swarup also pointed out that two-thirds of Nepal's global trade was with India and over 90 percent of its third country exports and imports transited through India. Millions of Nepalis live and work in India and hundreds of thousands crisscross the open India-Nepal border every single day, he added. "Of course, Nepal as a landlocked country is free to explore any practical option it wants but our relations with Nepal have their own natural logic," the spokesman said. "We are not in the comparison business. Is there any other country in the world which can have the kind of relationship that Nepal has with India?" he asked. Government forces in Nigeria have killed 58 Boko Haram fighters in the latest military operation in the country, Nigerian Army spokesman Sani Usman said on Tuesday. Two hand grenades, 52 motorcycles, several bags of foodstuff were also recovered during the operation carried out by troops in Nigeria's northeast Borno State late Monday, said Usman, adding that the military also lost a soldier in the gunfight, Xinhua reported. The announcement followed the killing of at least 27 Boko Haram terrorists in separate raids last weekend by the military. With the latest development, the Nigerian government said it is winning the war against terrorism and has "technically defeated" Boko Haram. French President Francois Hollande on Tuesday said the terror attack in Belgium was an attack on Europe. "Terrorists struck Brussels but it was Europe that was targeted and all the world that is concerned," he said. "Today it is Belgium, yesterday it was France," he said, adding that global efforts were needed to fight terrorism. "The French government has taken measures to reinforce security at ports, stations, airports," he said after a meeting. Tuesday's terror attack in Belgium, which left 28 people dead, came four days after police here arrested in Brussels a suspect in the Paris carnage of November that left 130 people dead. Employees of the Tihange nuclear power plant in the Belgian town has been evacuated, according to reports from Flemish media outlet VTM. The causes for the evacuation were not immediately made known. The threat level in Belgium was raised to its highest - 4 - from the previous 3 following explosions at Brussels airport and on a city subway train in which at least 34 people were killed and over 170 injured. --Indo-Asian news Service ahm/vm US President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro sparred over human rights issues, including the American prison at Guantanamo Bay and Cuba's political prisoners, media reports said on Tuesday. During a historic news conference on Monday evening in capital Havana, Obama and Castro acknowledged deep disagreements on these issues. But the two leaders also found common ground on the topic of the economic embargo on Cuba, which both want lifted. Obama went so far as to declare that "the embargo's going to end", though he did not say when, CNN reported. In an extraordinary sign of shifting attitudes, Castro was willing to answer one question on why his regime was keeping Cubans incarcerated for expressing anti-government views. "Did you ask if we had political prisoners? Give me a list of political prisoners and I will release them immediately," Castro said defensively. Unaccustomed to press conferences, Castro at first appeared confused at whether the question was directed to him and later asked for it to be repeated as he juggled the headphones he wore to hear its translation. Later, Castro delivered a litany of areas where he said the US was failing, from inadequate health care to lower pay for women. He ended the unprecedented question-and-answer session after a second inquiry on human rights, saying he had said "enough". In his own message on human rights, Obama defended his decision to come to Cuba even as government dissent is punished. "We have decades of profound differences," Obama said when asked what his message on human rights was during his "frank conversation" on the issue with Castro. "I told President Castro that we are moving forward and not looking backwards". Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama were later welcomed at a state dinner, along with some members of US Congress and senior White House staff. The two leaders formally had an hour-long meeting earlier on Monday at the Palace of the Revolution in Old Havana, his third meeting with the Cuban leader since work began to reopen diplomatic ties to the island. After the meeting, Obama also participated in a business forum with Cuban entrepreneurs, US businessmen and representatives from Cuban state companies where he said he would continue working to adopt changes that would improve and increase access to internet on the island. Obama became the first president to visit Cuba after 88 years. He arrived on the island on Sunday. His three-day visit marks the culmination of a thaw in relations between Washington and the Communist island that began in December 2014 - 55 years after Fidel Castro seized power. The last and only American president to visit Cuba while in office was Calvin Coolidge in January 1928. TV actor Paul Adelstein, who essayed Paul Kellerman in the TV series "Prison Break", which was aired from 2005 to 2009 will reprise his role in the upcoming revival of the series. Adelstein will joins the original cast members of the series, who are returning which includes actors Wentworth Miller (Michael Scofield), Dominic Purcell (Lincoln Burrows), Sarah Wayne Callies (Dr. Sara Tancredi), Robert Knepper (T-Bag), Amaury Nolasco (Sucre) and Rockmond Dunbar (C-Note), reports variety.com. The new "Prison Break" will be a sequel to the first four seasons. The next chapter shall pick up when clues surface in the TV series, that suggest a previously thought-to-be-dead Michael (Miller) may be alive. Lincoln (Purcell) and Sara (Callies) will be reuniting to engineer the escape as three of Fox River State Penitentiary's most notorious escapees, T-Bag (Knepper), C-Note (Dunbar) and Sucre (Nolasco), are pulled back into the action. Adelstein appeared in all four seasons of the original drama, 46 episodes in total. He has starred in "Private Practice," had a long-running recurring role in "Scandal" and currently stars in Bravo's "Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce" opposite actress Lisa Edelstein. The revived "Prison Break" will premiere during the 2016-17 television season, though no premiere date has been announced. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday condemned the Brussels terror attacks which left 13 people killed and scores injured. "News from Brussels is disturbing. The attacks are condemnable. Condolences to families of the deceased. May those injured recover quickly," Modi tweeted. The two massive explosions shattered Belgium's Zaventem airport, only days after the arrest of the Paris terror attack suspect in Brussels. President Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday greeted the Pakistan government and people on their national day, observed on March 23. In his message to his Pakistani counterpart Mamnoon Hussain, the president said: "Please accept my greetings on the occasion of the National Day of Pakistan. "India remains committed to peaceful, friendly and cooperative relations with Pakistan. I am of the firm conviction that our cooperation will lead to progress and prosperity in our region," he said, extending his "best wishes for your good health and well-being". Pakistan observes its National Day on March 23, to mark the anniversary of the resolution for Pakistan at the Muslim League's Lahore meeting in 1940 and acceptance of its constitution in 1956. Clashes broke out between protesting students and police on University of Hyderabad campus on Tuesday evening. A few students and policemen were injured in the clashes outside the bungalow of Vice Chancellor P. Appa Rao, where the students had been protesting since morning as he resumed duties after nearly a two-month-long leave. Violence broke out as police used force to disperse the students. Television visuals show policemen and women dragging the students, some by their hair, thrashing them and beating them up with batons. One policeman was also injured when students pelted stones. Police bundled out many students out of the campus, triggering strong protest by teaching and non-teaching staff members. Police also arrested few students and faculty members. Additional forces including personnel of paramilitary Rapid Action Force (RAF) rushed to the campus. Security was further tightened amid reports that Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student leader Kanahiya Kumar will be visiting the campus to pay tributes to Rohith Vemula, the Dalit research scholar who committed suicide in January this year. A section of students alleged that Appa Rao was sent back to prevent Kanahiya Kumar's visit to the university. After a lull of more than a month, protest returned to University of Hyderabad on Tuesday as Vice-Chancellor P. Appa Rao came back from leave and resumed his duties. The development triggered strong protest from the students, who ransacked the vice chancellor's bungalow on the campus. The students barged into bungalow and ransacked the furniture. Raising slogans and blaming him for the suicide of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula, the students also attacked his car. The attack occurred minutes before Appa Rao was to address media persons to announce that he has resumed duties as the vice chancellor after nearly two month leave. The incident once again triggered tension on the campus as police rushed additional forces to prevent further violence. The students resorted to protests since Tuesday following reports that Appa Rao is returning to resume duties as the vice-chancellor, and raised slogans like "Killer VC go back". The Joint Action Committee for Social Justice, an umbrella grouping of 14 students' bodies, has refused to accept him as the vice chancellor. It threatened that the university will be shut down if Appa Rao doesn't step back. Protestors also took strong exception to the action of Appa Rao in inviting a particular group of students for a meeting of the executive council before resuming duties. Appa Rao, however, told reporters that no court or any higher authority has directed him not to resume duties as the VC. Terming the attack on the VC bungalow as unfortunate, he said the violence will not help anybody and instead bring bad name to the university. Denying that there was any political intervention in suspension of five Dalit students including Vemula, he said the academic institutions should not be seen from political angle. The VC said if anybody has grievances, they can approach the courts. To another query, he said he would seek security in view of the prevailing situation on the campus. Appa Rao had gone on leave on January 24 amid massive protests on the campus over the suicide of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula. Vemula, one of the five Dalit students suspended by the university following clash with a leader of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP) in August last year, committed suicide on the campus on January 17. This triggered massive protests. On a complaint by a student, police had booked Appa Rao, central minister Bandaru Dattatreya and ABVP leader Sushil Kumar under SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act and for abetment of suicide. JAC also blamed Union Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani for bringing pressure on the university authorities at the request of Dattatreya to act against Dalit students, who were members of Amedkar Students Association. Several top politicians of the country including Congress vice president Rahul Gandhi, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and CPI-M general secretary Sitaram Yechuri had visited the campus to express solidarity with protesting students demanding justice for Vemula's family. The union human resources development ministry formed a judicial commission to probe the suicide of Vemula. After two weeks of protests by students, SC/ST teachers and other faculty members, the classes resumed from February 1. Actor Shahid Kapoor, who reunites with filmmaker Vishal Bhardwaj in upcoming film "Rangoon", says its shooting has been a "demanding and exhausting" experience for him. Shahid, who stars alongside Saif Ali Khan and Kangana Ranaut in the highly anticipated film, tweeted on Tuesday: "Finally back after the most demanding and exhausting schedule of my life. 'Rangoon'." He even shared a photograph of himself from the set in which he can be seen sporting a long beard with dust all over his body. "Rangoon" is a period romance drama and will feature Shahid as a soldier, and will release on September 30. The RSS has expressed its displeasure at BJP leaders describing Prime Minister Narendra Modi as "god's gift to India" in the recent national executive meeting while also suggesting the party go ahead with the issue of "nationalism" but add development to it, informed sources said on Tuesday. After the recent meeting of its Pratinidhi Sabha at Rajasthan's Nagaur, the RSS leaders on Tuesday held discussions with the top Bharatiya Janata Party leaders at Deendayal Shodh Sansthan. The meeting was convened to convey the outcomes of the meet to the BJP, said informed sources. From the RSS, Suresh Bhaiyyaji Joshi, Krishna Gopal and Dattatreya Hosabale attended while the BJP was represented by president Amit Shah, general secretary (organisation) Ramlal and vice president Vinay Sahasrabuddhe. Sources said that the RSS leaders expressed displeasure over the remarks made by union minister M. Venkaiah Naidu describing Modi as god's gift to the nation, and suggested the BJP leadership not encourage "individual worship" as "organisation" is supreme in the RSS. Naidu, while presenting political resolution on the last day of the national executive meeting on Sunday, dubbed Modi "god's gift to India" and a "messiah of the poor" and said India is recognised and respected everywhere because of him. The RSS also supported BJP's move to go ahead with the issue of nationalism but also suggested the issue of development be incorporated to it, sources said, adding it was of the view that nationalism and development are complementary to each other and the party should go ahead focussing both issues in upcoming assembly polls in five states. The BJP and the RSS leaders also discussed issues related to the states of West Bengal, Kerala, Assam, Tamil Nadu and Puducherry where polls will begin next month. They also took up the issue of forming a new government in Jammu and Kashmir with coalition partner Peoples Democratic Party - which was hanging fire after its leader Mehbooba Mufti sought certain assurances but now seems more possible following her "positive" meeting with Modi here on Tuesday. According to sources, the issue of reservation also came up at the meet and BJP leaders requested the RSS leadership not to express its views publicly on reservation because it embarrasses them and the prime minister is required to clarify the party's position over the issue. The RSS had said that demands for reservation by the affluent sections of society only reflected deviation from the spirit of the constitution. Its views came in the wake of the recent pro-quota agitation by the Jat community in Haryana and the Patel community's agitation in Gujarat. In Haryana, the BJP has formed a committee under Naidu to look into the aspects of Jat reservation. The JNU row and the Rohit Vemula suicide case also figured in the meeting, the sources said. Several people were killed on Tuesday when two massive explosions devastated the departure area of the Zaventem airport in the Belgian capital, triggering panic. The Belgian fire service told local media there were at least several dead and wounded in the blasts which were centred at the American Airlines check-in desk, BBC reported. Belga news agency reported that shots were fired and shouts in Arabic were heard before the two blasts, BBC said. The airport was hurriedly evacuated and had been closed for flights, BBC said. Pictures showed the terminal windows blown out from the force of the explosion and smoke rising high into the sky. Video also showed terrified passengers running for their lives out of the terminal. Sky News Middle East correspondent Alex Rossi, who was at the airport on his way to Tel Aviv, said: "I could feel the buildings move." The incident came as the Belgian capital was on a state of high alert following the arrest of Paris terror attack suspect Salah Abdeslam in the city last week. Only on Monday, Belgium's Interior Minister Jan Jambon said the country was braced for a possible revenge attack following the capture of the 26-year-old Abdeslam. CNN quoted a tourist, Anthony Barrett, as saying he heard the explosions at about 8 a.m. from his hotel across the terminal building. "When I opened the curtains and looked out, I could see people feeling," he told CNN. He said he saw about 19 or 20 stretchers carrying people so far. Luggage trolleys were also being used to transport the wounded. "It is clearly a very serious incident," Barrett said. The Brussels airport said that there had been two explosions and the building was being evacuated. "Don't come to the airport area," it said. France is seeking Abdeslam's extradition so he can stand trial for his alleged role in the November 13 rampage of gunfire and suicide bombings that killed 130 people in Paris. Rights activist Irom Sharmila, who has been on a fast unto death since November 4, 2000 demanding repeal of the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, on Tuesday rejected an offer for a personal recognizance bond for getting bail. After her refusal, she was sent to judicial custody. The law under which she is detained envisages keeping her for a year at one go, and she is released at the end of each year. Sharmila is being held on charges of trying to commit suicide, which she has been vehemently denying. On Tuesday, when the court of the chief judicial magistrate, Imphal West, offered her the bail, she rejected it saying she does not agree with the charge levelled against her. Last year, the district and sessions court in Imphal West had ruled that she was not guilty of attempting to commit suicide and ordered her release. However, within two days, she was rearrested since she continued her fast even after being released. Coming out of the court, Sharmila told reporters that though Prime Minister Narendra Modi has been saying that his government has taken up many developmental works, there were many drawbacks. After she rejected the bail offer, she was taken to the security ward of J.N. Institute of Medical Sciences in Imphal where she has been staying all these years. Sharmila is scheduled to appear before the Patiala House Court in Delhi later this month. Police had arrested her in Delhi in 2006 when she went there to sit on a fast at Jantar Mantar. She was also charged there with attempting to commit suicide. Sharmila recently said she was disappointed by the way people had stopped supporting her cause and asked for a public opinion on whether people want her to stop the campaign. Congress president Sonia Gandhi on Tuesday expressed shock and deep concern over the terror attack at the airport and metro in Belgium's capital Brussels. Condemning "unequivocally" the terror attack that has so far resulted in 23 deaths, Gandhi said "such cowardly acts can never defeat the resolve of the entire world community to fight terrorism in all its manifestations". The Congress president said her party and the entire country stood with the people of Belgium in this hour of crisis, her party said in a series of tweets. "She hoped and prayed that the casualty figures and the number of injured remain low," a party tweet said. Two massive explosions shattered Belgium's Zaventem airport on Tuesday morning, four days after the arrest of a Paris terror attack suspect in Brussels. A Slovenian diplomat was injured in the Brussels airport bombing on Tuesday, the foreign ministry of the central European nation said. The ministry, however, did not identify the diplomat but said he has been hospitalized. His condition is stable and he is out of danger, it said. According to the daily Delo, a newspaper published from the capital Ljubljana, the ministry said no other Slovenian citizen has been hurt or is reported missing after deadly blasts at Brussels airport and a metro station left at least 34 people dead and some 170 injured. South Korea and the US on Tuesday began a four-day joint navy exercise in South Korean waters amid mounting tensions with North Korea. The joint maritime exercise will be conducted in the Yellow Sea and the Sea of Japan and will include 50 warships from both countries, a South Korean navy spokesperson told EFE news agency. The navies will conduct special maritime operations and live-fire drills against mock hostile submarines, aircraft and warships till Friday. The new exercises are part of the large-scale Foal Eagle manoeuvre, which began on March 7 and will continue till April. These annual military exercises are the largest ever conducted in the Korean Peninsula and involve more than 17,000 American and 300,000 South Korean troops. North Korea, which considers these joint military exercises "invasion drills", responded with threats of pre-emptive strikes and launched several short and medium range missiles, including one on Monday. The US has a permanent force of around 28,500 troops in South Korea to defend it against North Korean aggression in an arrangement dating back to the end of the Korean War (1950-53). A group of 25 students of International Policy Studies from US' prestigious Stanford University called on the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday, an official statement said. The group included students from various countries, including India. The statement said the prime minister, welcoming the students, said that they are "soon-to-be policy-makers", and therefore, what they assimilate at this point in time, will definitely shape their decisions and choices in the near future. In the course of interaction, Modi answered questions on diplomatic relations between countries, India's relationship with neighbouring countries, the Act East Policy, his recent visit to Silicon Valley, his commitment to technology and e-governance, and competitive cooperative federalism. The transfer of cases to Pakistan military courts have appeared to decline as for the past couple of months not a single case has been transferred, a media report said on Tuesday. According to sources, the cases are with the interior ministry, but these have not been sent to the army authorities apparently because of missing documents, Dawn online reported. The slowing down is also being linked to appeals pending before the Supreme Court. Executions in at least eight high-profile cases have been stopped because of the appeals in the apex court. The last batch of cases was transferred in December 2015, which included an attack on a bus in Karachi's Safoora Goth on May 13, 2015, in which 45 Ismailis were killed, and the murder of rights activist Sabeen Mehmood. After last December, sources in the interior ministry claimed the provinces and the Islamabad administration forwarded only those cases which were already under trial in anti-terrorism courts or where the offences were not covered by the Pakistan Army Act. According to an official, trial in these cases is under way at a normal pace and the accused in most of the cases were "facilitators" and, therefore, the interior ministry did not recommend their transfer. The problem emerged when the interior ministry, in September last year, asked the defence ministry for the age of the detainees at internment centres whose cases had to be transferred to military courts. Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump favours a non-interventionist foreign policy focused on reducing the US engagement in conflicts abroad while vowing complete support for "our most reliable ally" Israel. He favoured a non-interventionist foreign policy to facilitate rebuilding infrastructure and the economy at home, the billionaire told the Washington Post's editorial board Monday. Hours later, Trump -- whose promise to be "neutral" in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, has caused concern among pro-Israel activists -- sang a different tune before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's annual meeting. In any negotiation, he pledged, "we will send a clear signal that there is no daylight between America and our most reliable ally, the state of Israel". Trump also lambasted the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by President Barack Obama, who he noted was "in his final year, yay". He pledged to relocate the US embassy in Israel to the "eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem". Making a departure from his usual extempore speeches, Trump delivered a carefully worded address with the aid of a teleprompter bringing the crowd to its feet at times. "I didn't come here tonight to pander to you about Israel," he claimed, "That's what politicians do -- all talk, no action." He also reached out to the Republican leadership with a private meeting with Republican lawmakers amid efforts by the Republican establishment to somehow stop him from getting the party nomination. Earlier in the day, Trump was attacked by Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton for suggesting in past interviews that he would remain neutral in negotiating the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. "We need steady hands," Clinton told AIPAC, referring to the real estate mogul but not naming him. "Not a president who says he's neutral on Monday, pro-Israel on Tuesday and who knows what on Wednesday because everything is negotiable." "Well, my friends, Israel's security is nonnegotiable!" she said. "You'll get a glimpse of a potential US foreign policy that would insult our allies, not engage them, and embolden our adversaries, not defeat them," Clinton said setting a hawkish tone. "For the security of Israel and the world, we need America to remain a respected global leader, committed to defending and advancing the order." The two other Republican presidential candidates, Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich, also made their support for Israel and opposition to the Iran deal a centrepiece of their remarks. Clinton's Democratic rival, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, was the only major candidate who skipped the AIPAC meeting. (Arun Kumar can be contacted at arun.kumar@ians.in) A total of eight foreign suspects of Islamic State (IS) were captured recently as they were attempting to infiltrate Turkey through southern border provinces with Syria, according to officials and local news reports on Monday. Security forces at the Gorentas border town of Hatay province detained three suspected foreign IS terrorists on March 20 while they were trying to cross from Syria into Turkey illegally, Xinhua cited Turkish General Staff as saying on Monday. Two foreign IS suspects were detained by officers of the Ermis border patrol in the southeastern Gaziantep province on the same day while attempting to cross the Turkish-Syrian border illegally, Dogan News reported. Three foreign IS suspects were detained in Kilis province on March 18, Kilis governor's office stated. The suspects were later handed to gendarmerie officers. The captures came at a time when the Turkish security forces are on high alert to catch IS militants who have been detected inside the country and are allegedly in pursuit of carrying out attacks across Turkey in crowded places. Two people were arrested on Tuesday in Australia's New South Wales state for allegedly financing the Islamic State (IS) terror group. They were accused of being involved "in obtaining money to send offshore to assist the IS in its activities," said New South Wales state Police deputy commissioner Catherine Burns. One of the two detainees, Milad Atai, 20, was under investigation for months as part of "Operation Appleby" which police began in September 2014 after discovering the alleged planning of a terrorist attack in the country. Burns said that the case of the second detainee, a 16-year-old girl, is a serious matter and that police have begun analysing the factors contributing to the radicalisation of the minor. "It is disturbing that we are continuing to see a trend of teenage children involved in activities that they should really not be involved in at all," Burns added. Bihar's ruling Janata Dal-United on Tuesday suspended two of its legislators from the party for six years -- one for saying he will again begin committing murders and another for describing the national anthem as a symbol of slavery. Gopal Mandal and Rana Gangeshwar Singh had been suspended by the party for making objectionable statements in public, JD-U state president Vashisht Narain Singh told reporters here. "It was decided at the core meeting of the JD-U, attended by chief minister Nitish Kumar and other senior party leaders. The JD-U national president Sharad Yadav was also informed about it," he said. The two legislators had been issued show cause notices to explain themselves, Vashisht Narain Singh said. Gopal Mandal, who is involved in a number of criminal cases, on Tuesday said he would now resort to the politics of murder. He said he would re-start killing just as he used to do in the past. "Main ab hatya ki rajniti hi karunga aur hatya karwaunga" (I will now do politics of murder and order murders)," said the legislator from Gopalpur in Bihar's Bhagalpur district at a function. He also said: "Pahle bhi hatya karta tha, ab bhi karoonga (I used to commit murders in the past and will do it again). Ruing the "false" allegations levelled by his rivals in the opposition, Mandal said he would again wield a gun to kill. The other lawmaker, Rana Gangeshwar Singh, who is a member of the legislative council, on Tuesday described India's national anthem ('Jana Gana Mana') as a symbol of slavery that paid tribute to those who exploited the Indians. It is high time there was a review of 'Jana Gana Mana' and it was replaced with another poem, said Gangeshwar Singh at a function to mark Bihar Diwas in Samastipur district of the state. His comment invited immediate protests with some people at the function shouting slogans against him and demanding an apology from him. Gangeshwar Singh had left the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) last year to join the JD-U. Vehicle owners in Uttar Pradesh (UP) will now be able to take their old registration numbers by paying a fee of Rs.25,000. The state government has issued an order to this effect, an official said on Tuesday. Necessary amendments were effected in the Motor Vehicle Act of 1998, thereby paving the way of registration number portability in the largest state of the country, the official told IANS. Under the new scheme, anyone who applies for retaining the same registration number for the new vehicle should have been owned the old vehicle for over three years. In case the vehicle is 15 years old and the car has been junked, the owner would have to cut the chasis number and deposit it at the Regional Transport Office (RTO) to claim the same number again, the official said. With reference to the report, "Govt mines tax data to prune list", the move to monitor people with annual taxable incomes of over Rs 10 lakh, who have not given up their cooking gas subsidy shows the government's seriousness about the issue. The government had earlier decided that would not be available for those whose taxable incomes are above the Rs 10 lakh limit. The data cited in the report states that there are 163.5 million LPG consumers in the country of whom 147.8 million are getting the subsidy transferred directly into their bank accounts. The petroleum minister seems so obsessed with his "wish list" that he questions the two million individuals earning over Rs 10 lakh a year who are receiving the subsidy when nine million have already surrendered theirs. But has he thought about his own colleagues, who continue to enjoy a plethora of tax-free subsidies? The question is: Why are some people (read politicians) more equal than others in the country? Is Pradhan or Prime Minister Narendra Modi listening? S K Gupta New Delhi 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 There are around 30 regulators in different economic sectors and they have to deal with corporate titans who are not easily tamed. Last month, the Supreme Court stated in a judgement that there had been serious allegations of illegalities and deficiencies in the regulatory regime of mining leases. A parliamentary committee recently remarked that the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) stood as a passive regulator and failed to exercise punitive action against defaulters. Union Minister of Shipping is not satisfied with the coverage given to the ports sector by the media in the national capital. At a conference in New Delhi recently, he told journalists, "Your organisations are not giving much coverage to the exemplary work being done by our ministry, maybe because there are no ports in Delhi." Jail seems to make authors out of some. A book written in prison by Sahara group chief Subrata Roy, which was released last month, is enjoying considerable success. A mail from the corporate communications team of Sahara India Pariwar claims that for a month now, Life Mantras has been among the top five bestselling non-fiction books in the country, according to Nielsen BookScan. The book, which contains anecdotes about Roy's time in jail, topped the list last week. But Roy has more to offer as a writer: Life Mantras is, in fact, the first book in his Thoughts from Tihar trilogy. Former prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru had penned The Discovery of India while in jail for his participation in the Quit India Movement. Napolean Bonaparte and Adolf Hitler, too, turned writers in prison. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi has urged student associations to come together on a single platform to highlight the victimisation of students across universities. Speaking to Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) students union president Kanhaiya Kumar along with a delegation of the All India Students Federation (AISF) members at his Tughlak Lane residence on Tuesday, Gandhi said the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led governments action against Kumar on sedition charges was not an isolated incident. The Congress leader said it was a systematic assault beginning with the Ambedkar Periyar Study Circle at Indian Institute of Technology -Madras, then Film and Television Institute of India - Pune, Hyderabad Central University, Allahabad university and the latest being JNU. Saiyad Wali Ullah Qadri, president of the Left-backed AISF, said Kumar had sought a meeting with Gandhi to thank him for his support during his arrest. Gandhi, in turn, assured them that he would continue to support students whenever the government attempted to muzzle their voices, Qadri added. Kumar is out on a six-month interim bail following his arrest by the Delhi Police over a controversial event held on JNU campus allegedly to mark the memory of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru, in which anti- slogans were allegedly raised. Among the others who were present at the hour-long meeting with Gandhi included Students Union of India chief Roji M John. We may have political and ideological differences with these organisations, but we have been rendering issue-based support to Left-backed organisations whenever there have been attempts by the ruling government to clamp down on campuses to impose their fascist ideology, John said. Kumar also apprised Gandhi of the long-standing agitation against University Grants Commissions decision to cut down on student scholarships and how an inquiry committee was dragging its feet in submitting its report in the matter. To expose the governments machinations, student organisations plan to organise a programme bringing together students who had been victimised by the authorities and where the government was infringing upon the autonomy of institutions. Tweeting about the meeting from his official handle, Gandhi said: Met a delegation of student leaders from AISF and JNUSU president. Gandhi had visited the JNU campus on February 13, a day after Kumar was arrested, and in an all-out attack on the Narendra Modi government at the Centre, Gandhi had drawn parallels with the Nazi regime of Hitler, accusing the Modi government of suppressing students' voice. The student leaders said they would continue engaging with Gandhi, adding that this was purely issue-based and not for any electoral tie-ups. Maharashtra Advocate-General Shrihari Aney on Tuesday submitted his resignation to Governor C Vidyasagar Rao, following an uproar in the Assembly over his demanding statehood for . The BJPs ruling partner, the Shiv Sena, and Opposition parties had demanded Aneys suspension. Aney had on Sunday at a function demanded that be made a state. The Shiv Sena had threatened that its ministers wont attend cabinet meetings and its legislators wont participate in the proceedings of the legislature unless the government sacked him. When the Assembly convened on Wednesday, Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said Aney had submitted his papers to the governor. The government had disowned Aneys statement on statehood for region, he said. The Opposition wanted to know if the governor had accepted Aneys resignation. Congress and NCP legislators entered the well and shouted slogans. Some Sena legislators waved Aneys photo and demanded that he apologise. But Speaker Haribhau Bagde disallowed debate on the chief ministers statement and asked members to raise questions. However, Opposition members tried to rake up Aneys resignation while Sena members preferred to sit quiet. Fadnavis said the A-Gs post was a constitutional one. Governor accepts resignation or seek state cabinet's advice. He said the state cabinet would suggest to the governor that Aneys resignation be accepted. PDP chief has arrived in Delhi and is likely to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The talks are expected to break the stalemate on government formation in Jammu and Kashmir. The BJP has already made it clear over the weekend that it will not accept any new conditions for government formation. So just a prolonged spell of optics? Or something more complex? The fact is, two partners extremely unwilling to tie up with one another are wearing their heart on their sleeve. The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) does not want to appear too eager to form the government in partnership with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). The BJP is equally conscious that with PDP as an ally, it would have to make several political compromises. But it also knows that it neither has the strength nor the political capital (candidates put up by it in the valley came third) to form a government on its own. While in the past the BJP and the National Conference (NC) have been in alliance, this time, with so much said and done, it doesnt seem possible. So there are no other alliance partners. It is either a BJP-PDP alliance or fresh elections. The PDP has made it clear to their party boss that fresh elections is not an option. So both BJP and PDP want to show their respective constituencies PDP in the valley and BJP in Jammu that they are in no hurry. It is also a way for the leadership to try and outstare each other. Meanwhile, like everywhere else, it is also about the money. The PDP want to show that though in the past J&K used to be shortchanged the centre used to promise money and then not pay this time, money for the reconstruction of the state after the floods in 2014 will have to come upfront before any political promises can be made. The centre has already signed an MoU with the World Bank to enable the J&K government to access rehabilitation funds at nominal rates of interest. But Mehbooba is asking for more. Asking for more is an eternal truth. Everything points to a PDP-BJP government before the week is out. Watch this space. At least 17 Hindus were among 20 people who have died after consuming spurious liquor during Holi celebrations in Pakistan's Sindh, two years after a similar tragedy struck the country's southern province. Police said 34 people were rushed to a hospital in the Tando Mohammad Khan district yesterday, where 20 of them, including two women, died. "Three of the patients are in a critical condition while 11 have been discharged," the medical superintendant of Liaquat University Hospital, Wajid Memon, was quoted as saying by GeoNews. A senior police official said they consumed the liquor to celebrate Holi. "They had brought the cheap moonshine from a local dealer," he said. Residents staged a protest against the police for failing to stop the illegal sale of hooch in their neighbourhood. Following the protest, the area Station House Officer has been suspended and two persons have been arrested for brewing the illegal drink. The latest incident is a reminder of a similar tragedy in Hyderabad and Karachi in 2014 during Eid-ul Azha celebrations when 29 people had died after consuming hooch. Alcohol consumption is banned in Pakistan for Muslims but non-Muslims are allowed to ration alcohol from special liquor shops run by provincial excise departments. Two Jet Airways crew members were injured in the explosions that rocked Brussels' Zaventem airport today which led the airline to cancel all its flights to and from the Belgian capital till tomorrow. "Two Jet Airways staff have sustained injuries in the explosion at Brussels airport. Both of them are receiving medical care at hospitals," the airline said. While the airline did not share details on the injured crew, sources said that the two cabin staff --Nidhi Chaphekar and Amit Motwanai, belonged to Mumbai. As per the latest information received from Brussels, Jet Airways passengers have been accommodated at three locations by the airline staff in co-ordination with the local authorities, it said. Arrangements for their food and comfort have been made till the situation normalises, Jet Airways said. "We are working very closely with the Indian Embassy and are in touch with the Indian Ambassador to plan the next steps for evacuation of our guests from Brussels once the airport becomes operational," the airline said. A series of explosions ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train today, killing around 35 people and injuring more than 200 in the latest attacks to rock Europe. Brussels airport serves as Jet Airways' European hub for international operations. The airline had, however, recently announced relocation of this gateway to Dutch capital Amsterdam from coming Sunday. Meanwhile, Jet Airways has cancelled flights operating to/from and via Brussels until tomorrow. Following explosions, the authorities have announced closure of Brussels airport till 0600 hrs (Local Time) tomorrow. Jet Airways has also offered a waiver on cancellation, rebooking and rerouting of tickets for travel to/from/via Brussels until March 26, the airline said. The airline said for further information passengers can contact Jet Airways contact centre in India 1800225522, 1-877-8359538 (The United States) and 08081011199 (The United Kingdom). 21 AAP MLAs, who hold the posts of parliamentary secretaries, today met Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal over notices issued to them by the Election Commission after a petitioner alleged that the posts were akin to "office of profit". Petitioner Prashant Patel, a Delhi-based advocate, alleged that the MLAs have become subject to disqualification for holding the posts, a charge that was "dismissed" by Kejriwal in the meeting. "Discussions were held with the CM over the issue. He (Kejriwal) said that it was crystal clear that there was no violation of any constitutional provision citing a number of court judgements from the past," one of the MLAs, who was present in the meeting, said. The party insisted that the post of parliamentary secretary was not an 'office of profit' as the secretaries were not provided any monetary allowance and were not entitled to any special privilege. Sources in the EC said the matter was still at a "nascent" stage and that a decision will be taken only after the legislators have filed their response. They have been asked to respond on or before April 11. All the 21 legislators, were present at the meeting held at Kejriwal's residence. Kejriwal had appointed them as parliamentary secretaries to ministers for "smooth functioning" of the government on March 14 last year. Although they do not receive remuneration or perks from the government, they are provided transport for official purposes and space in the minister's office to facilitate their work, if needed. At least 24 Hindus, including six women, have died after consuming spurious liquor during Holi celebrations in Pakistan's Sindh, two years after a similar tragedy struck the country's southern province. Police said 35 people were rushed to a hospital in the Tando Mohammad Khan district late last night, where 24 of them died. Six were women. "They were celebrating the festival of Holi this week and purchased the cheap liquor from a dealer in Tando Muhammad Khan," senior police official in Hyderabad, Haq Nawaz, said. "The condition of the remaining persons was also not good," he said. Following the tragedy, residents staged a protest against the police for failing to stop the illegal sale of hooch in their neighbourhood. Authorities have suspended the area Station House Officer. Two persons have been arrested for brewing the illegal drink. The latest incident is a reminder of a similar tragedy in Hyderabad and Karachi in 2014 during Eid-ul Azha celebrations when 29 people had died after consuming hooch. Alcohol consumption is banned in Pakistan for Muslims but non-Muslims are allowed to ration alcohol from special liquor shops run by provincial excise departments. A court here today ordered the registration of a criminal case against 32 officials of Amritsar Central Jail in connection with the custodial death of an inmate in 2013. SHO Sukhjinder Singh said an FIR under different sections of IPC had been registered against 32 officials. They were held responsible for the custodial death of the inmate Raju in the Amritsar Central jail here in 2013. He had died allegedly due to inhuman torture and lack of treatment inside the jail. A court here had initiated inquiry following the directions of Punjab and Haryana High Court where the deceased's mother had filed a writ petition against the accused jail officials. The SHO said the 32 officials who were booked are yet to be arrested. A Delhi court has acquitted five persons, accused of abducting and killing a businessman last year, after witnesses turned hostile. Additional Sessions Judge Manoj Jain held that serious damage has been caused to the prosecution after two material witnesses, including the complainant, turned hostile. "... It is very much evident and palpable that a serious damage has been caused to the case of prosecution by the aforesaid two material witnesses. They both have turned hostile and have not come up with anything which may connect any accused with the incident in question," the judge said. According to the prosecution, victim Gurudas was beaten up and abducted on April 10, 2015 from a financial firm's office owned by his friend Besant Kumar, also the complainant in the case. The gang of five men -- Amit Maan, Ravi, Umed, Ram Singh and Kuldeep -- armed with sticks, barged into the office and ransacked it before abducting Gurudas in a car, it said, adding the businessman's body was fished out of a drain in north Delhi's Jharoda village on April 12, 2015. Later, complainant Basant Kumar turned hostile and told the court that more than 25 people entered his office and started beating Gurudas, the court noted. It also observed that Kumar failed to identify the accused paraded by the prosecution. The second witness, arraigned by the prosecution who was working under the deceased, also turned hostile saying all he saw was a crowd in front of the office, it said. The court, however, accepted the post-mortem report which concluded that the victim was strangulated to death and also suffered a head injury caused by some blunt object. The court observed that the hostile witnesses had caused irreparable damage to the case and acquitted the accused. The 86 Indian fishermen, who were released from a Pakistani jail recently and crossed over to India yesterday at Wagah border, will reach here tomorrow. Soon after they arrival, the fishermen were taken to Red Cross building in Amritsar from where they will take Mumbai-bound Suvarn Jayanti Express tonight, M I Sutaria, who is heading the team set up by Gujarat government for bringing back the fishermen, said. After reaching Vadodara, the fishermen will embark for their homes in Gujarat, Diu, Daman and Dadra Nagar Haveli. Pakistan handed over 86 fishermen to India at the Wagah Border, a day after they were released by the authorities upon completing their one-year sentence for allegedly trespassing into Pakistan's territorial waters. Some 377 more Indian prisoners are languishing in the Malir jail of Karachi in Pakistan out of whom 116 have to complete their sentences while the remaining 261 are undertrials. Both Indian and Pakistani fishermen are often arrested for illegal fishing since the Arabian Sea border is not clearly defined and many boats lack the technology to fix their precise location. The philosophy, life and cultural influences of the Parsis in India, whose Zoroastrianism faith is considered among the world's oldest religions dating back around 3,500 years in Central Asia, is now being showcased in a special exhibit here. The showcase 'Threads of Continuity: Zoroastrianism Life and Culture,' inaugurated by Minority Affairs Minister Najma Heptulla at the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts here last evening puts the spotlight on the micro minority community in the country with Parsi life in Gujarat and the Deccan displayed in detail. Wishing the community on Navroz, a New Year festival that marks thanksgiving and celebration of nature, Heptulla thanked them for making her an "honorary Parsi." She also used the occasion to highlight the steps taken by her ministry for the cause of all the minority communities in India. Meanwhile, the exhibition, curated by Shernaz Cama, Dadi Pudumjee, Ashdeen Lilaowala and Kritika Mudgal, attempts to explain Zoroastrian philosophy, whose essence is a sacred thread that signifies a continuity linking all creation. "The whole concept of ethical belief of humility with excellence spoken in the Bronze Age by a great soul Zarathpustra. He raised several questions in his songs about why good people suffer, how is that there is evil in this world and what does one do to make others happy," Shernaz Cama, director of Parzor Foundation, a Delhi-based community organisation mandated by Unesco to preserve Parsi-Zoroastrian heritage said. "Such existential questions trouble us even today and we keep seeking answers to them. This exhibition and two month long programme will help us understand the answers to these questions," Cama said. The exhibition is part of 'Everlasting Flame International Programme,' organised by Minority Affairs Ministry under their Hamari Dharohar (Our Heritage) a collaboration with Culture Ministry and the Parzor Foundation which is set to continue here till May 27. Among the exhibits on display are rare artefacts and manuscripts from institutions, individuals and museums from across the world including Iran, Russia and Uzbekistan besides installations and video recordings representing the practices of the faith. Fine shawls with exquisite embroideries and adaptations of various lifestyle rituals like the use of vermilion for auspicious occasions can be seen in the show. The Parsi-Zoroastrians are less than 0.01 per cent of the population in India. Ali Jannati, former diplomat Minister of Islamic Culture and Guidance of Iran, among the guests at the inauguration talked about the over 1000 year-old ties between Iran and India and commended the Parsis for "preserving the culture of their forefathers and safeguarding the ties between India and Iran." Stating that the culture of peace harmony and friendship propagated by people of India and Iran is under severe threat and was being "consciously weakened" by activities of violent extremists. "For this reason the popularisation of this culture by upholding human and other values of two great civilizations must continue with great intensity," Jannati said. Pune-based industrialist Cyrus Poonawalla, who sponsored the exhibition thanked the Modi government which he said went "out of their way to encourage the festival." A scintillating performance titled 'Elemental Divine' by contemporary dancer and choreographer Astad Deboo beginning with chants from 'The Avesta,' the religious book of Zoroastrians that contains a collection of sacred texts marked last evening's opening. A feast of traditional Parsi dishes was also spread out in the famous 'Lagan-nu-Bhonu' at the event. Delhi Lt Governor Najeeb Jung today said "Aam Aadmi Canteens", announced by the AAP government in 2015 for providing nutritious food at affordable rates, will be set up in several parts of the city this year. The government is expected to set aside Rs 50 crore for the scheme, modelled after Tamil Nadu's highly-subsidised Amma canteens, to provide nutritious food to migrant workers in the national capital. "Though the per capita income is the highest in Delhi, my government is conscious of the fact that the city is home to many migrant workers who have left their families back home and cannot afford hygienic nutritious food even once a day," Jung said during his address on the first day of the budget session. The government will provide nutritious hygienically cooked meal to the vulnerable population at an "affordable cost", he said. Ashish Khetan, Vice Chairman of the Delhi Dialogue Commission (DDC) of AAP government had announced the scheme in July last year. Jung said the government also intended to construct more old age homes for which land has been acquired at 10 locations in the city. The government now runs three such facilities. "Also, in the present financial year, 3,84,545 persons have benefited under old age assistance scheme. Under Delhi Pension scheme to women in distress, 1,53,487 persons were benefited. "Similarly, there are 2,334 beneficiaries under the scheme for financial assistance to poor widows for marriage of their daughters and orphan girls," Jung said. The five-day budget session will continue till March 31. Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia will present the Budget on March 28. The AAP Cabinet today approved the constitution of fifth Delhi Finance Commission even as the recommendations of the fourth panel are yet to be implemented. The newly approved panel will consist of a chairperson and three members including a member-secretary who will be appointed by the Lt Governor on the recommendation of the Council of Ministers of Delhi. It has been initially constituted for a period of one year and the appointment of the chairperson and members and its terms and conditions will be notified separately, a government statement said. Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia had tabled the fourth Finance Commission report during the last winter session of the Delhi Assembly. The recommendations of the fifth Commission are proposed to be effective from April 1. The Fourth Commission's report, that includes certain recommendations which may result in a confrontation between the Centre and the AAP government, spells out measures needed to improve the financial situation of the civic bodies. AAP said it will implement the report only after the union government implements the recommendations contained in it which has been asked to ensure that the Union Urban Development Ministry does not deal with matters related to constitution and powers of the local bodies. In June last year, the Delhi High Court had pulled up the city government saying it cannot wait for acceptance or implementation of the fourth Commission's findings before constituting the fifth one. The setting up of the fifth Commission has to be done "independently" and every five years, it had observed. ABVP activists and some students from the Left organizations had heated arguments during an "informal" discussion organised by the ABVP on 'Truth of JNU' at the Fergusson College campus here. ABVP's Jawaharlal Nehru University unit's president Alok Singh was also present during the event. Police, who eventually intervened and dispersed the crowd, said that some students from the Left groups reached the spot and started arguing with the ABVP members. It led to angry exchanges and slogan-shouting. "We pacified the crowd and dispersed the students. No case was registered against any group," a police officer said. ABVP is organising a series of such events at various colleges. Today's event was second in the series. "The college had denied permission and still ABVP organised the program at a time when the examinations are going on," said a student from an Ambedkarite group. But ABVP members said they sought permission, but as it was an informal discussion, the college authorities said the permission was not needed. "When the program was underway, members of AISA, SFI and AISF came and to disrupt it, started shouting slogans such as Lal Salaam, Kanhaiya Kumar Zindabaad," said ABVP office-bearer Nikhil Karampuri. Principal of Ferguson College Ravindra Pardeshi said no permission had been granted to ABVP. "Anticipating that the argument could turn violent, we called the police," he said. The ABVP later staged another discussion at the Ranade Institute of Journalism. The institute authorities did not allow them in at first, so the ABVP members and the institute students started discussion sitting on two sides of the gate. Later they were allowed to have a discussion inside the campus. Meghalaya Chief Minister Mukul Sangma today said militant outfit Achik National Volunteer Council (ANVC) "cheated" the government as it did not bring all its members on board after it signed the peace pact in 2004. Sagma told the Assembly that the government will henceforth study and find out the actual intent of the militant outfits who express their willingness to join the mainstream to ensure that there is no space for them to "misuse" the offer for peace by the government. "We want to ensure that the militant outfits do not resort to the same tactic adopted by ANVC where they cheated the government," Mukul said replying to a call attention motion moved by United Democratic Party legislator Jemino Mawthoh on the reported peace offer made by the Garo National Liberation Army (GNLA). He said, ANVC at the time of signing the agreement (in 2004) hid the fact that there were still quite a number of cadres under leadership of a militant named Mukos, who continued to remain in the jungles. "The total numbers of cadres available with the ANVC then were never revealed to the government," he said while referring to recent arrest of a top ranked ANVC member for selling of arms to the GNLA. Stressing on the need to learn from past mistakes, he said, "Utmost due diligence is required to be engaged upon by the government while embarking on peace dialogues." He said the government would wait for the militant outfits, including GNLA to "demonstrate" their commitment and sincerity to the offer for peace dialogues. The government's stand on the issue would be consistent and all militant outfits opting for peace talks are expected to show sincerity and commitment to it by abjuring violence and withdraw from all their anti-national and criminal activities, he said. He claimed that militant outfits have no choice but to surrender in the face of persistent arms operations by the state police. "All intelligence inputs available with the state government today indicate that they (militant outfits) are under pressure and they will accept this offer of the state government (for peace talks) not by choice but on compulsion," he said. "There is no safe haven anymore for them. They are on the run," he claimed. (REOP CES18) Sangma said Meghalaya has been able to ensure implementation of several key projects despite attempts to dislodge and delay them by militants. In this context he cited the example of a bridge over Simsang River at Williamnagar under East Garo Hills District, which was delayed by the militants for decades because it leads to the main area used by them as their hideout. The chief minister also lauded the people of North Garo Hills district for deploying about 50 local youths to ensure that no members of any armed outfits attempt to dislocate developmental programmes including NREGS. A 22-year-old Afghan student was allegedly stabbed to death by a fellow countryman with whom he was studying at the Post Graduate Government College here under an exchange programme, police said today. The victim, Sanaullah, was allegedly stabbed in the abdomen by Ehsanullah (24) yesterday, over an old enmity as other students looked on in shock, Sec 32 SHO Baljit Singh said. "The students intervened and rushed Sanaullah to the Government Medical College and Hospital in Sector 32 for treatment, but he succumbed to injuries," he said. He said that the Afghanistan embassy officials in New Delhi have been informed about the incident. "They have reached here and are involved in completing the formalities," Singh said. A murder case has been registered against the accused, he said. The college principal, however, told reporters that she was not aware of the incident as she was out of station. To cater pilgrims, Aiana Hotels & Resorts, a global hotel management company today announced the launch of a 611-room hotel in the Holy City of Mecca. "Saudi Arabia is a key market for us. We are conscious of the deep religious sentiment that drives millions of devout pilgrims to the Holy City of Makkah (Mecca) every year and our key focus will be to offer a comfortable and seamless experience while being mindful of the austere nature of their travel," Aiana Hotels & Resorts Joint MD and CEO Amruda Nair said in a statement. The global hotel management firm also unveiled the design and architectural elements of 'Aiana Suites and Residences', a 180 key luxury property in West Bay in Doha to be launched in Q4 of 2016. ****** Mullen Lintas bags creative mandate for VOOT * Advertising agency Mullen Lintas has bagged the creative mandate of Viacom 18's video on demand platform VOOT. The agency's mandate would be to provide strategic recommendations pertaining to marketing and promotion of the brand and also provide ideas that go beyond conventional advertising, it said in a statement today. "As we set out to launch a new brand in this space, we needed a creative partner who could not only help in building a distinct positioning for VOOT, but also bring-to-life key facets of our product and content proposition in the campaigns," Viacom18 Digital Ventures Chief Operating Officer Gaurav Gandhi said. VOOT is a free, ad supported, digital video-on-demand platform from the house of Viacom18, which runs channels like COLORS, Nickelodeon, Comedy Central, MTV. Motorola India launches Moto G4 for Rs 12,499 * Motorola today launched the fourth generation of its best selling Moto G series handset 'Moto G4' for Rs 12,499. Equipped with a 5.5-inch display, 13MP rear and 5MP front camera, the Moto G4 will compete with devices of firms like Xiaomi, Meizu, Micromax and Lenovo. The company had previously launched Moto G4 Plus for Rs 13,499 equipped with a fingerprint sensor. The Moto G4, however, doesn't have a fingerprint sensor. ********* Lenovo appoints Sumir Bhatia as VP Data Center Group APAC * Chinese tech giant Lenovo has appointed Sumir Bhatia as Vice President of Data Center Group (DCG) for Asia Pacific, effective immediately. Based in Singapore, Bhatia will report directly to Ken Wong, Senior VP and President at Lenovo Asia Pacific, it said in a statement today. With the appointment, Bhatia will take over Asia Pacific DCG leadership responsibilities from Amar Babu, who is also Lenovo APAC Chief Operating Officer and ASEAN General Manager, it added. ********* NEC India appoints Takayuki Inaba as Managing Director * NEC India today said it has appointed Takayuki Inaba as its Managing Director. He will be responsible for leading and expanding NEC India's business offerings in the country and will report directly to Tetsuro Akagi, CEO of NEC Asia Pacific and Senior Vice President of NEC Corporation, NEC said in a statement. Inaba joined NEC in 1988. Prior to this new appointment, he was an Executive Specialist at NEC's Global Products and Services Division, before moving to the Marketing and New Business Creation Division. Tamohara Investment appoints Sudhanshu Asthana as CEO * Tamohara Investment Managers today said it has appointed Sudhanshu Asthana as its CEO and CIO. The company is a boutique investment management firm that provides, among others, advice for domestic as well as offshore equity investments. Sudhanshu's appointment would strengthen the firm's global position and future prospects with respect to the India business, Tamohara said in a release. Earlier, he has served at Axis Mutual Fund, Barclays Wealth India and SBI Fund management, among others. He would also be a partner at Tamohara. * * * * * * Over 3cr per day cashless transactions a day: Stain Creditcare * Microfinance lender Satin Creditcare today said it is facilitating over 3 crore cashless transactions a day to minimise financial risks and boost operational efficiency. The key objective of the project is to handle problems such as the time consuming process of cash counting and reconciliation, lack of operational efficiency and various financial risks, it said in a statement. "The Cashless Project is in partnership with ItzCash, as to address the problem of cash carrying. The cash collection from centers through closed loop prepaid cards was piloted in Loni (Maharashtra) and Khair (Loni) branches," Vivek Tiwari, COO, Satin Creditcare Network said. * * * * * * Lindstrom Ind launches workwear services for retail industry * Lindstrom India, a subsidiary of a Finnish workwear service company Lindstrom Group, today said it is expanding into the retail sector. The company will now offer workwear solutions to the retail sector, including the rental of customised workwear as per the company's requirements along with its ongoing servicing and maintenance, a company statement said. "We see huge growth potential across industries in India and believe that workwear plays a very important role in the maintenance of health, hygiene and safety at the workplace," Lindstrom India Managing Director Anupam Chakrabarty said. * * * * * * BEML bags twin awards for skill development, CSR initiatives * Bengaluru-based defence PSU Bharat Earth Movers Ltd (BEML) has bagged two awards for excellence in training, learning and development programmes and outstanding contribution in Corporate Social Responsibility. The awards instituted by Employer Branding Institute, Mumbai are presented in recognition of Talent Management, Talent Development and Talent Innovation, a BEML statement said. The awards were presented in the Asia Best Employer Brand Awards 2016 (7th Edition) programme held in Singapore yesterday, it added. PayPal extends refund claim time to 180 days * PayPal, a payments platform, today said it has extended the time for customers and merchants to file a refund claim to 180 days from 60 days at present. The extended period will be applicable for all PayPal users and will cover both goods and services, it said in a release. With the extension, merchants will get more time to alleviate customer concerns and process refunds in a smooth and efficient manner, it added. Anupam Pahuja, Managing Director, PayPal India said: "The extended refund period is another step towards improving the user experience and enabling them to manage refunds effectively thereby increasing customer delight. Credit rating agency Moody's today estimated Bharti Airtel deal with American Towers Corporation to be around USD 200 million. "Details of the sales agreement have not been disclosed. However, assuming a sales price per tower of around USD 150,000 - which is line with our original estimates in March 2015 for Bharti's African tower sales transactions - we estimate proceeds would be around USD 200 million," Moody's said in a report. Bharti Airtel on Monday said that it has entered into an agreement with ATC for sale of approximately 1,350 mobile towers in Tanzania for an undisclosed amount and the proceeds will be used for reducing debt. Sources said that after the deal with ATC, total money raised from divestment of mobile towers in Africa by Airtel would around USD 2 billion. "The company has committed the proceeds from all tower asset sales to debt reduction, which we view positively. Bharti's ongoing monetisation initiatives, including the Tanzania tower sales, will support debt reduction and help mitigate the ultimate effect on leverage metrics of its spectrum acquisition activities," Moody's said. Airtel's net debt at the end of December stood at Rs 78,816 crore. Till October, Airtel completed the sale of about 8,300 mobile towers in Africa for USD 1.7 billion (about Rs 11,000 crore), and used it for reducing debt. Moody's Investor Service sees Airtel deal to buy spectrum of Videocon Telecom for Rs 4,428 crore as credit positive as it will further enhance Bharti's spectrum holdings, an increasingly important resource as Indian operators focus on 4G rollout. "The spectrum acquisition from VTL is credit positive as it will improve Bharti's network quality and capacity and ultimately enhance its competitive positioning in six circles," Moody's said. The Left-affiliated All India Students' Association (AISA) and Revolutionary Youth Association (RYA) will launch a national campaign, 'Utho Mere Desh-Naye Bharat Ke Wastey, Bhagat Singh - Ambedkar Ke Rastey' tomorrow. Dipankar Bhattacharya, general secretary, CPI-ML, Amit Sengupta, journalist, Ram Karan Nirmal and Amarendra Arya (ex-students of Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University, Lucknow, who protested against Prime Minister Narendra Modi during their convocation), and Ashutosh, ex-JNUSU president, were among those present when the campaign was announced. Beginning tomorrow, it will continue till April 14, they said. "After emergency, this is a dangerous period and the nation is facing a battle between fascism and democracy," poet Gauhar Raza said at the press conference. Targeting the media, the poet said the most serious danger for a democracy was when the media acts against intellectuals and the common man. "Democracy was achieved after a prolonged struggle. Elsewhere, democracy came as a commercial break, but it has been sustained in our country. Even today, we don't see that sort of oppression of intellectuals like in Pakistan, Afghanistan or Bangladesh, but the difference is that the media there stands with the people and does not act as a tool of the establishment," he added. Claiming that Rohith Vemula was driven to commit suicide by a conspiracy against Dalits, Dalit activist Karamsheel Bharti said, "Today humanity is under threat. The media never takes our (Dalits') issues seriously. This is a conspiracy against Dalits." They campaign will be taken across the country and participants will "expose" the present government and its anti-Dalit and anti-student policies, they said. The activists demanded that the sedition charges against JNU students be dropped and also sought the scrapping of the sedition laws, enactment of a Rohith Act to end caste discrimination in educational institutions and resignation of HRD minister Smriti Irani. Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav today attacked the Centre's NDA Government, saying country cannot be run by making "false promises". "BJP government at the Centre, which took votes of the people by making false promises stands exposed. The country cannot be run through false promises," Yadav said, while addressing a rally in Satiyaon sugar mill premises. Yadav noted the country cannot attain progress without development of the state. Claiming that the SP government fulfilled all its 2012 assembly poll promises, he said "SP has fulfilled its promise of constructing biggest sugar mill in the country in record time". "The government has given jobs to those unemployed and 'Samajwadi Pension' to poor people. It has also made arrangements for free medical facility and education," he said. "White Mughals" holds a special place in William Dalrymple's heart as it was his first history book and the only love story he has written. The writer-historian has now turned a narrator to tell the unusual but tragic love story between James Achilles Kirkpatrick and Khair-un-Nissa, the Muslim princess of Hyderabad in "The White Mughal - Love and Betrayal in India". Dalrymple says he always wanted a documentary on the book as it lends itself beautifully to the screen. "I originally wanted a documentary when I wrote the book but I had given up and then last year BBC carried an India series and they got in touch and commissioned it. In India, it is going to be shown by Discovery." The documentary, slated to premiere on Discovery channel at 9 PM on March 28, will see the author visiting the places where the romance between British diplomat and Khair flourished in the 18th century India. "'White Mughals' is the only love story. The other book is about war. I was very taken up with the story when I came across it. It took me five years to research. At that time I did not know how to write history. It was a big learning," Dalrymple told PTI. The author says it was quite difficult to contain the 700 pages long story in a one hour narrative but credits director Spike Geilinger and producer Lydia Conway for doing a great job. "We struggled in bioling down 700 pages down to an hour long story. I read it and presented it but they played a major role in transforming the book into a documentary," he said. The book presents an interesting point in the history where the early British settlers intermingled with Indians freely, sometimes ditching their culture for the culture of their adoptive country. Kirkpatrick converted to Islam to marry Khair-un-Nissa which created a huge scandal at the time as there was a growing apathy in the Britishers against the officers, who had gone native. Dalrymple says historians have largely ignored this brief period of intermingling between the two cultures despite so much being written on the colonial past in India. "The starting point of 'White Mughals' was to throw light on an interesting period. I believe the interaction between Indian and British in the 18th century has been covered up or ignored by historians. "There were different set of rules for the 19th century but in 18th century, there was a huge amount of interaction be it social, political, friendship, economic or sexual. My task was to know more about this period and this one story about Khair and James seemed to symbolise the whole period." The story of James Achilles Kirkpatrick and Khair-un-Nissa will also get a movie with British actor-director Ralph Fiennes at the helm. Punjab Pradesh Congress Committee president Capt Amarinder Singh today ridiculed and dismissed the allegations levelled by the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) against his son Raninder Singh about having seven companies in foreign countries. "It is amusing that the Akali-BJP and the AAP have found a common cause and a common enemy in me", he observed, while adding, "it seems Jaitely (Union Minister Arun Jaitley) proposes and AAP disposes". "It is a classic case of enemy's enemy becoming a friend", he remarked, while pointing out, both the Akali-BJP, particularly Jaitely, and the AAP had started seeing a common enemy in him. Addressing a press conference here, Capt Amarinder referred to the so called "revelations" made by the AAP leaders, which, he said, were actually from the IT department's challan, apparently provided to them by the department allegedly at Jaitely's behest, which in turn was "based on false, fabricated and fictitious information derived from a stolen document". The former Chief Minister alleged that after having failed to generate the desired impact by getting a false complaint lodged in a Ludhiana court against his son, the Union Finance Minister was now trying to use the good offices of the AAP, which has mastered the art of "spreading lies", against him. "Their aim is not to prove any point, but to create a false perception as, otherwise, they have nothing which they can use against me in the campaign", he claimed, while adding, "they apparently assume that by the time these allegations are proved wrong they may have already achieved their purpose of defaming me during run up to the elections". "But we are not going to take it lying down and we will drag them to court for criminal defamation", Capt Amarinder said, while asserting, "we will not let them to carry on with their slander campaign, not at least against us". He alleged that AAP has always survived on "lies and slander" and it was trying to do the same thing in Punjab as its "bubble has already burst in the state and its graph had started going down." Alleging that AAP and the Akali-BJP were together in the "slander" campaign against him and his party, he claimed that their (the AAP and the BJP) relationship dates back to 2011 when Kejriwal's show in the Ram Lila Maidan in New Delhi was managed by the RSS and the BJP. (REOPENS DES 44) Amarinder alleged at that time also they (AAP) launched a slanderous campaign against the Congress to help BJP and now they are doing it again in Punjab at Jaitley's behest who wants to avenge his Amritsar defeat, even if it means to find a common cause with the AAP. "Even recently Kejriwal shared dais with the BJP leaders at the event of a sect head known for his proximity to the RSS", he pointed out. Capt Amarinder said, the IT department at the "behest" of its boss Arun Jaitely, had claimed to the media that they had attached so many "annexures" with the complaint. "Show me an annexure or the document which the IT or the AAP can claim to be proved true", he said, while stating that they were deliberately holding back the annexures since these "cannot stand legal scrutiny". Yesterday, AAP leaders had targeted Amarinder alleging that his son Raninder Singh's trust floated at least seven companies having accounts in a Switzerland based bank. Meanwhile, accusing its state and central leadership of hobnobbing with the ruling Shiromani Akali Dal and the Bhartiya Janata Party, 12 senior Bahujan Samaj Party leaders today joined the Congress. They were inducted into the Congress by PCC president Capt Amarinder Singh in presence of senior party leaders and legislators. Those who joined the party today included Jarnail Singh Nangal who had contested from Phagwara and Samittar Singh Sikri who had contested from Sham Chaurasi as the BSP candidates. They alleged that the Dalits and downtrodden who had always supported the BSP were disillusioned with the party and they were now returning and looking to the Congress which has always watched their interest. Others who joined today included Vijay Pandori, Amarjit Khuttan, Jatinder Mohan, Sukhdev Singh Chaukria, Parminder Both, Beant Singh Bawa, Ginai Husan Lal, Jaswinder Kaur, Balwinder Singh Bodh and Balvir Thakur. Amid uncertainty over his party's alliance prospects in poll-bound Tamil Nadu especially with DMDK, BJP President Amit Shah will "review the political situation" of the state during his brief visit here tomorrow. Shah is scheduled to attend a function involving Kanchi seer Jayendra Saraswathi here and is also likely to meet senior office-bearers of the state unit, a party leader said. "Since the state is going to polls, he will review the political situation but as of now there is no word on him meeting DMDK founder Vijayakant," the senior leader told PTI responding to a possible Shah-Vijayakanth meeting. According to official sources, Shah is expected to arrive in the evening on Wednesday and proceed to the venue. He was later slated to leave for Kerala, another poll-bound state, they said. BJP's alliance prospects with DMDK, which was part of the NDA for the 2014 Lok Sabha polls, are in a limbo with the actor-politician not only giving confusing signals on a tie-up but also announcing the party's decision to go solo in the May 16 Assembly polls. Although BJP's Tamil Nadu in-charge and Union Minister Prakash Javadekar had called on Vijayakanth earlier, DMDK had described the meeting as a 'courtesy call.' Shah, credited with scripting the party's success in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls and some of the subsequent state Assembly elections such as Haryana and Maharashtra, faces an uphill task in ensuring a good show in Tamil Nadu as the voters have traditionally favoured the two Dravidian parties, DMK and AIADMK since 1967. DMK had wrested power from Congress in 1967 in the state and thereafter the fight has been confined between it and arch rival AIADMK, founded by actor-politician M G Ramachandran. (Reopens MDS2) Later, BJP Tamil Nadu unit President Tamilisai Sounderrajan said Shah was visiting the city for a "private function" which was "neither political nor party-related." BJP was trying to revive the front that faced the 2014 Lok Sabha polls but alliance parties are putting forward "some conditions," she said in an apparent reference to DMDK and PMK insisting that their leaders will be the Chief Ministerial candidates. "But as far as BJP is concerned, people's welfare is our only motive. There is no compulsion for us to form an alliance by making compromises," she told reporters. BJP MP Anurag Thakur today hit out at Himachal Pradesh Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh after accusing him of maintaining "double standards". He said that the approach followed by Congress of "family first, party next and nation last" is hampering the image and growth of the nation at large. "Thanks to the back and forth by the CM on the India- Pakistan match, HP not only incurred losses due to the cancellation of the match but no team now wishes to play in Dharamsala given their concern over security," Thakur said. Commenting on the proposal by Singh on hosting IPL and thereby offering tax exemption, hesaid, "Unfortunately, the world does not move as per Singh's whims and fancies, helping him to satisfy his political agendas. "Had he been concerned about the state's image and welfare of the people, he would have thought before giving out various misleading statements pertaining to the India-Pakistan match." Thakur said he was concerned not because the cancellation of Dharamsala as its venue but because HP was shown in a poor light. Deadly bomb blasts in Brussels prompted Argentina to raise its security alert level today as it prepared for a visit by US President Barack Obama. "All the security forces have been put on high alert due to what has just happened in Belgium," said media minister Hernan Lombardi. He spoke on radio station La Red after a cabinet meeting chaired by President Mauricio Macri. Obama was due to arrive with First Lady Michelle Obama and their two daughters late Tuesday evening in Buenos Aires. He was to fly there from Havana, where he is wrapping up a three-day visit to Cuba. Today's attacks in Brussels killed about 35 people and wounded more than 200 others. The historic Plaza de Mayo where the Casa Rosada presidential palace stands in Buenos Aires was closed to traffic, and underground train stations in the area were closed. Obama was scheduled to meet with Macri at the Casa Rosada on Wednesday. He will later lay a wreath at Buenos Aires Metropolitan Cathedral and meet elsewhere with young businesspeople. He is scheduled to leave Argentina on Thursday night after spending leisure time in the tourist city of Bariloche. Army today paid tribute to Sepoy Vijay Kumar K, who was killed on March 17 during an avalanche at Biamah area of Kargil sector in Jammu and Kashmir's Leh district. The soldier was accorded full military honours in a solemn wreath laying ceremony held in Leh in the early hours today, Defence Spokesperson said. After the ceremony, the mortal remains of the soldier were flown to New Delhi where the Army Chief will pay homage, he said. The mortal remains of the soldier will be then flown to his native place at Vallaramapuram village of Thirunelvelli District in Tamil Nadu, where the funeral will be conducted with full military honours. Vijay is survived by his parents and two younger sisters. The rescue teams of Army managed to recover the body of the sepoy from under 12 feet of snow on March 20 during a search operation following an avalanche. A series of explosions ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train today, killing around 35 people and injuring more than 200 in the latest attacks to rock Europe. Security was tightened across the jittery continent and transport links paralysed after the bombings that Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel branded "blind, violent and cowardly". "This is a day of tragedy, a black day," Michel said on national television. Foreign Minister Didier Reynders warned that authorities fear suspects could still be at large in the city that is home to both NATO and the European Union. The bloodshed came just four days after the dramatic arrest in Brussels of Salah Abdeslam -- the prime suspect in the Paris terror attacks claimed by the Islamic State group -- after four months on the run. Belgian authorities had been on alert after Abdeslam, Europe's most wanted man, told investigators he had been planning an attack on Brussels. Two blasts shattered the main hall of Zaventem Airport at around 8:00am (1330 IST), with prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw saying there was probably at least one suicide bomber. A third hit a train at Maalbeek metro station in the heart of the city's EU quarter, just as commuters were making their way to work in rush hour. Pierre Meys, spokesman for the Brussels fire brigade, told AFP at least 14 people had been killed at the airport, while Brussels mayor Yvan Mayeur said "around 20" died in the underground blast. More than 200 people have been wounded, several critically. Witnesses said victims lay in pools of blood at the airport, their limbs blown off. There were chaotic scenes as passengers fled in panic, with a thick plume of smoke rising from the main terminal building. "A man shouted a few words in Arabic and then I heard a huge blast," airport baggage security officer Alphonse Lyoura told AFP, his hands bloodied. "A lot of people lost limbs. One man had lost both legs and there was a policeman with a totally mangled leg." An army team later blew up a suspect package at the shuttered airport, with media reporting police had found an unexploded suicide vest. At Maalbeek station, paramedics tended to commuters with bloodied faces as the streets filled with the wailing of sirens. At least two Polish nationals and a Briton were confirmed among the injured in a city that is the EU's symbolic capital. The bombings triggered a transport shutdown, with flights halted and metro, tram and bus services all suspended. Airports across Europe swiftly announced they were boosting security, including in London, Paris, and Frankfurt. Across the Atlantic, New York and Washington ordered extra counter-terror officers to crowded areas and train stations. Around 35 people were killed and over 200 injured today in a series of explosions that ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train, the latest attacks claimed by Islamic State militant group to rock Europe. Security was tightened across the jittery continent and transport links paralysed after the bombings that Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel branded "blind, violent and cowardly". "This is a day of tragedy, a black day," Michel said on national television. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks. Foreign Minister Didier Reynders warned that authorities fear suspects could still be at large in the city that is home to both NATO and the European Union. The bloodshed came just four days after the dramatic arrest in Brussels of Salah Abdeslam -- the prime suspect in the Paris terror attacks claimed by the Islamic State group -- after four months on the run. Belgian authorities had been on alert after Abdeslam, Europe's most wanted man, told investigators he had been planning an attack on Brussels. Two blasts shattered the main hall of Zaventem Airport at around 8:00am (1330 IST), with prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw saying there was probably at least one suicide bomber. A third hit a train at Maalbeek metro station in the heart of the city's EU quarter, just as commuters were making their way to work in rush hour. Pierre Meys, spokesman for the Brussels fire brigade, told AFP at least 14 people had been killed at the airport, while Brussels mayor Yvan Mayeur said "around 20" died in the underground blast. More than 200 people have been wounded, several critically. Witnesses said victims lay in pools of blood at the airport, their limbs blown off. There were chaotic scenes as passengers fled in panic, with a thick plume of smoke rising from the main terminal building. "A man shouted a few words in Arabic and then I heard a huge blast," airport baggage security officer Alphonse Lyoura told AFP, his hands bloodied. "A lot of people lost limbs. One man had lost both legs and there was a policeman with a totally mangled leg." An army team later blew up a suspect package at the shuttered airport, with media reporting police had found an unexploded suicide vest. At Maalbeek station, paramedics tended to commuters with bloodied faces as the streets filled with the wailing of sirens. At least two Polish nationals and a Briton were confirmed among the injured in a city that is the EU's symbolic capital. The bombings triggered a transport shutdown, with flights halted and metro, tram and bus services all suspended. Airports across Europe swiftly announced they were boosting security, including in London, Paris, and Frankfurt. Across the Atlantic, New York and Washington ordered extra counter-terror officers to crowded areas and train stations. : The 2016-17 budget presented by Arunachal Pradesh Chief Minister Kalikho Pul today proposed ambitious expansion plan for the police force in the state with higher allocation for modernisation. Pul in his budget speech laid special emphasis on modernisation of the police force to ensure security and safety to the people. "Our government has already announced creation of 2022 posts in Arunachal Pradesh Police and in addition to this, 400 women police personnel and 50 women traffic personnel will be recruited," the chief minister said. Police personnel would also be provided with allowances for purchase of uniforms and the amount would be directly credited in their bank accounts, Pul said. "As a major step towards providing better facilities to the women police, the government proposes to keep a provision of Rs 44 crore for construction of women police station including housing facilities in all districts. To contain increasing crime rate in the state capital, the budget also proposed to install state-of-the-art network of CCTV cameras at all strategic points. The budget also proposed to establish community policing suvidha centre besides providing ration allowance of Rs 1000 to police personnel per month. Pul said, the government would embark on an ambitious prison reforms by encouraging inmates to join various courses offered by IGNOU. An amount of Rs 4 crore has been proposed in the budget to undertake prison reforms, he added. Assam and Nagaland Governor P B Acharya today greeted people on the eve of Holi, the festival of colours. Holi celebrates the triumph of good over evil, bridges social gaps and renews relationships, the Governor said in a statement here. "Holi may be celebrated by various names and people of different states might be following different traditions, but what makes the festival so unique and special is its spirit which remains the same throughout the country and even across the globe," he added. The Governor also appealed to the people to celebrate the colourful festival in the spirit of amity and strengthen the bond of unity and integrity. Keeping in view the forthcoming elections in Assam, he said voting is one of the biggest rights endowed on the people by the Constitution and as citizens of the biggest democracy, all eligible voters should exercise this right conscientiously without any fear or favour. Ending the two-day long deadlock in Odisha Assembly over shifting of the rail wagon repair factory from Narla in Kalahandi district, the House today resolved to lodge a protest with the Railway Ministry and demand re-establishment of the proposed project. The decision was announced by Speaker Niranjan Pujari after a two-and-half-an-hour special debate on the issue. All MLAs cutting across party lines resolved that the House committee will meet Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu and hand him over a memorandum requesting not to shift the proposed rail wagon repair factory from Narla in backward Kalahandi district to Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh. The House witnessed pandemonium for two days with Opposition members demanding a special debate on the issue. Though the speaker initially did not allot time for the discussion, he had finally accepted the opposition Congress and BJP demand and fixed a time for the debate. No business could be transacted in the House since yesterday till the special discussion was held this afternoon. Participating in the special debate, Leader of Opposition Narasingha Mishra of Congress wondered how the state government could not know about the proposed shifting of the Railway project. "I smell politics for ignoring the project which was to be set up in Kalahandi," Mishra said adding that he would suggest a visit of the Assembly Committee to meet the Railway Minister in Delhi. Senior BJP leader K V Singhdeo wondered how the ruling BJD could not know about the Railway ministry's decision of shifting the project to Andhra Pradesh when one of its MPs is a member of the Railway Standing Committee. This apart, there was no allocation in the Pink Book for the project which was announced in 2013-14, he said. "Rather than finding fault in each other, I will suggest that let the Assembly Committee headed by the Speaker visit Delhi and try to bring back the project to the state," Singhdeo said. BJP member Rabi Naiak on the other hand alleged that the project was shifted due to non-cooperation of the state government. Government Chief Whip Ananta Das said it was unfortunate that the project has been shifted from a backward area to a developed region of Andhra Pradesh. "There is a similar project in Andhra Pradesh, but no such railway project in Odisha," he said adding that members of all the parties have agreed to demand re-establishment of the project in Kalahandi. Replying to the debate, Odisha Commerce and Transport Minister Ramesh Majhi said the Railway ministry had announced a new new rail wagon repair factory in Visakhapatanam in 2015-16 budget without consulting Odisha government. "The Odisha government had provided all the logistic support including land, water and others for setting up the rail wagon repair factory at Narla. But, the Railway ministry did not make any allocation for the project," he said adding that the water resources department had allowed free of cost water for the proposed factory at Narla. The required land for the project has been kept ready and the state government has demanded the revival of the Narla wagon repair factory project. The speaker said steps would be taken to prepare a memorandum to be submitted to the Railways minister on the proposed rail wagon repair factory at Narla keeping in view the opinion of the house members. Earlier in the morning, the house witnessed uproarious scenes over the issue which led the speaker to adjourn proceedings thrice before allowing a special debate during the post lunch session. A string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station today, killing at least 13 people, according to media reports, as Belgium raised its terror threat to the maximum level. Two explosions targeted the main hall of Zaventem Airport at around 8:00 am (1330 IST), with a third hitting the Maalbeek metro station, near the European Union's main buildings, just as commuters were making their way to work in rush hour. Belgian media reports said at least 13 people had been killed and 35 injured at the airport, while an AFP reporter said at least 15 people with bloodied faces were being treated by emergency services outside the metro station. The blasts come days after the dramatic arrest in Brussels on Friday of Salah Abdeslam, the prime suspect in the Paris terror attacks that killed 130 people in November, after four months on the run. There were chaotic scenes at the airport as passengers fled in panic, with a thick plume of smoke rising from the main terminal building. The blasts smashed the windows of the departure hall and sent ceiling tiles shattering to the floor. Witnesses told Belga agency there had been shots and shouts in Arabic at the airport before the blasts hit at the airport on the northwest outskirts of Brussels. "There have been two explosions at the airport. Building is being evacuated. Don't come to the airport area," the airport said on Twitter, as police cars and rescue vehicles rushed to the scene. "All airport operations have been suspended until further notice," it said. Interior Minister Jan Jambon announced that Belgium's terror threat had been raised from three to a maximum of four. Airports in neighbouring France, Germany and the Netherlands as well as Britain swiftly boosted security in response. The blasts triggered a transport shutdown in Brussels, with all flights halted in and out of the airport and the city's metro, tram and bus services suspended. European Union staff in Brussels, where the 28-nation bloc has its headquarters, were told to stay indoors or at home. Sweden's Prime Minister Stefan Lofven branded the blasts an "attack against democratic Europe", while British premier David Cameron tweeted: "I am shocked and concerned by the events in Brussels. We will do everything we can to help." "We heard the explosion and felt the blowback," Jean-Pierre Lebeau, a French passenger who had just arrived from Geneva, told AFP, adding that he had seen wounded people and "blood in the elevator". At least 13 people were killed and 35 others injured as twin explosions rocked the main hall of Brussels Airport in Belgium today. Belga agency reported at least 13 people had been killed and 35 others injured in the blasts. Interior Minister Jan Jambon announced that Belgium's terror threat had been raised to its highest level, as witnesses told there had been shots and shouts in Arabic at the airport before the blasts hit the departure hall. Federal police told Belga that they could confirm one dead, amid chaotic scenes at the airport on the northwest outskirts of Brussels. "There have been two explosions at the airport. Building is being evacuated. Don't come to the airport area," the airport said on Twitter. Television images showed passengers fleeing chaotic scenes, with thick black smoke rising from the terminal building, where the windows had been shattered. Another blast was reported at the Maalbeek metro station. Images on social media showed collapsed floor tiles littering the floor of the terminal hall. The airport has been shut down until further notice, Eurocontrol, the European organisation for air navigation safety, confirmed on its website. Public broadcaster RTBF said regional authorities had gone into emergency mode. Police told Belga agency that at least one person had been killed and several others wounded. RTBF said the blasts at the airport on the northwest outskirts of Brussels hit shortly after 8:00 am (0700 GMT). The blasts come days after the dramatic arrest in Brussels on Friday of Saleh Abdeslam, prime suspect in the Paris terror attacks that killed 130 people in November, after four months on the run. There was no immediate confirmation of the cause of the blasts. Europe's main stock markets retreated as the broke, with London's benchmark FTSE 100 index dropping 0.6 per cent compared with Monday's close and Frankfurt's DAX 30 shedding 1.1 per cent. Mike van Dulken, head of research at Accendo Markets, said that the "explosion at Brussels airport... Has knocked sentiment". "First we were kept together by the border police, then they gave us the order to evacuate," Lebeau said. The ceilings collapsed, he said, describing a smell of gunpowder at the scene. With shock on their faces, Jean-Pierre Herman embraced his wife Tankrat Paui Tran, who he had just gone to collect from the airport after her flight from Thailand. "My wife just arrived," Herman said. "I said hello, we took the elevator and in the elevator we heard the first bomb. "The second exploded just when we got off. We ran away to an emergency exit. I think we are very lucky." An AFP correspondent on their way to the airport said roads to the terminal had been blocked and trains halted. Charlotte McDonald-Gibson, a British journalist living in Brussels, told AFP there had been "total confusion" at the airport, where she was having breakfast. "Suddenly staff rushed in and said we have to leave," she said. "They rushed out and into the main terminal A departures building. Nobody knew what was going on. "It was total confusion, people were just standing around wondering what was happening." There was no immediate confirmation of the cause of the blasts. Europe's main stock markets retreated as the news broke, with London's benchmark FTSE 100 index dropping 0.6 per cent compared with yesterday's close and Frankfurt's DAX 30 shedding 1.1 per cent. British premier David Cameron tweeted that his country would do "everything we can to help," and announced that Britain's COBRA security committee would meet today. Russian President Vladimir Putin said the blasts "show once more that terrorism knows no borders and threatens people all over the world", according to a Kremlin statement. "The fight against this evil requires vital international cooperation," he added. The blasts come as Abdeslam, Europe's most wanted man, remains in a high-security prison in Belgium following his arrest last week in the gritty Brussels neighbourhood of Molenbeek, just around the corner from his family home. Belgium's Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said at the weekend that Abdeslam -- believed to have played a key logistical role in the carnage in Paris -- had been planning some sort of new attack. At the airport, Jean-Pierre Herman and his wife Tankrat Paui Tran embraced with shock on their faces. "My wife just arrived," Herman said. "I said hello, we took the elevator and in the elevator we heard the first bomb. "When we came out of the elevator at that moment the second bomb exploded and then we saw doors flying, (the) glass ceiling come down and smoke." An AFP correspondent said roads to the airport had been blocked and trains halted. Charlotte McDonald-Gibson, a British journalist living in Brussels, told AFP there had been "total confusion" at the airport, where she was having breakfast. "Suddenly staff rushed in and said we have to leave," she said. "They rushed out and into the main terminal A departures building. Nobody knew what was going on. "It was total confusion, people were just standing around wondering what was happening. A string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station today, killing at least 21 people in apparently coordinated attacks, officials said. Two explosions targeted the main hall of Zaventem Airport, with a third hitting the Maalbeek metro station near the European Union's main buildings, just as commuters were making their way to work in rush hour. Pierre Meys, spokesman for the Brussels fire brigade, told AFP at least 21 people had been killed -- 11 at the airport and "around ten" more at the metro station. There were chaotic scenes at the airport as passengers fled in panic, with a thick plume of smoke rising from the main terminal building. The blasts smashed the windows of the departure hall and sent ceiling tiles shattering to the floor. "We heard the explosion and felt the blowback," Jean-Pierre Lebeau, a French passenger who had just arrived from Geneva, told AFP, adding that he had seen wounded people and "blood in the elevator". Witnesses told Belga agency there had been shots and shouts in Arabic before the blasts hit the airport on the northwest outskirts of Brussels. At Maalbeek station, at least 15 people with bloodied faces were being treated by emergency services on the pavement, an AFP reporter said. The explosions triggered a transport shutdown in the city that is home to the headquarters of both the EU and NATO. Flights were halted with metro, tram and bus services all suspended. "These attacks mark another low by the terrorists in the service of hatred and violence," said EU President Donald Tusk. The bloodshed comes days after the dramatic arrest in Brussels on Friday of Salah Abdeslam -- the prime suspect in the Paris terror attacks claimed by the Islamic State group that killed 130 people in November -- after four months on the run. Airports in a string of cities across Europe swiftly announced they were boosting security, including in London, Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Prague. Interior Minister Jan Jambon announced that Belgium's terror threat had been raised from three to a maximum of four, and the country's national security council was due to meet. Brussels residents were told to "stay where you are", while Deputy Prime Minister Alexander De Croo urged people to avoid making calls to stop the city's mobile networks getting saturated, and to communicate with online messages instead. Sweden's Prime Minister Stefan Lofven branded the blasts an "attack against democratic Europe". A series of apparently coordinated explosions ripped through Brussels airport and a city metro station today, killing at least 26 people in the latest attacks to target Europe. Security was tightened across the jittery continent and transport links paralysed after the bombings that Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel branded "blind, violent and cowardly". "This is a day of tragedy, a black day," Michel said on national television. Two blasts targeted the main hall of Zaventem Airport at around 8:00am (1130 IST), with prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw saying the assault likely involved at least one suicide bomber. A third hit Maalbeek metro station near the European Union's main buildings, just as commuters were making their way to work in rush hour. Pierre Meys, spokesman for the Brussels fire brigade, told AFP at least 11 people had been killed at the airport, while transport operator STIB said at least 15 others had died in the underground blast and 55 were wounded. Witnesses said victims lay in pools of blood at the airport, their limbs blown off. There were chaotic scenes as passengers fled in panic, with a thick plume of smoke rising from the main terminal building. "A man shouted a few words in Arabic and then I heard a huge blast," airport baggage security officer Alphonse Lyoura told AFP, his hands bloodied. "A lot of people lost limbs. One man had lost both legs and there was a policeman with a totally mangled leg." The explosions triggered a transport shutdown in the city that is home to the headquarters of both the EU and NATO. Flights were halted with metro, tram and bus services all suspended. The bloodshed comes days after the dramatic arrest in Brussels on Friday of Salah Abdeslam -- the prime suspect in the Paris terror attacks claimed by the Islamic State group -- after four months on the run. European leaders reacted with shock and solidarity, urging cooperation in the fight against terrorism on a continent that has been on high alert for months. "The whole of Europe has been hit," said French President Francois Hollande, whose country is still reeling from jihadist attacks in Paris that killed 130 people in November. Airports across Europe swiftly announced they were boosting security, including in London, Paris, Frankfurt and Amsterdam. Major international train lines into Brussels were suspended, while security was also beefed up at Belgium's nuclear plants and at EU buildings in the French city of Strasbourg, home to the European Parliament. Interior Minister Jan Jambon announced that Belgium's terror threat had been raised from three to a maximum of four, and the country's national security council was due to meet. Residents were told to "stay where you are", while Deputy Prime Minister Alexander De Croo urged people to avoid making calls to stop the city's mobile networks getting saturated, and to communicate with online messages instead. Sweden's Prime Minister Stefan Lofven branded the blasts an "attack against democratic Europe". British premier David Cameron tweeted that his country would do "everything we can to help," and announced that Britain's COBRA security committee would meet today. Russian President Vladimir Putin said the blasts "show once more that terrorism knows no borders and threatens people all over the world", according to a Kremlin statement. "The fight against this evil requires vital international cooperation," he added. The blasts come as Abdeslam, Europe's most wanted man, remains in a high-security prison in Belgium following his arrest last week in the gritty Brussels neighbourhood of Molenbeek, just around the corner from his family home. Belgium's Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said at the weekend that Abdeslam -- believed to have played a key logistical role in the carnage in Paris -- had been planning some sort of new attack. At the airport, shaken witnesses spoke of how the blasts sent ceiling tiles shattering to the floor and left a smell of gunpowder in the air. "We heard the explosion and felt the blowback," Jean-Pierre Lebeau, a French passenger who had just arrived from Geneva, told AFP, adding that he had seen wounded people and "blood in the elevator". Jean-Pierre Herman and his wife Tankrat Paui Tran embraced with shock on their faces. "My wife just arrived," Herman said. "I said hello, we took the elevator and in the elevator we heard the first bomb. "When we came out of the elevator at that moment the second bomb exploded and then we saw doors flying, (the) glass ceiling come down and smoke." At Maalbeek station, more than a dozen people with bloodied faces were treated by emergency services on the pavement, an AFP reporter said. Edging back from the podium during a joint press conference with Barack Obama, Cuban President Raul Castro began to fidget with his headphones and look around the room quizzically. "What did you say about political prisoners? Can you repeat that question about political prisoners?" the 84-year-old Castro asked. Obama and Castro talked up a new era in US-Cuba relations yesterday, but two cultures, two political systems and two generations collided spectacularly during a sometimes testy and frequently awkward joint appearance. The scene inside the Palace of the Revolution -- carried live on Cuban television -- appeared nothing short of revolutionary for a former guerrilla commander who has spent a lifetime near the apex of power in a one-party state. For weeks before that moment, Cuban and American officials had been locked in intense negotiations about whether reporters would be allowed to ask questions after a historic meeting between the two leaders in Havana. After all, Chinese President Xi Jinping had faced reporters' questions when Obama went to Beijing. In the end, Castro had agreed to mark the first visit of a US president in 88 years with one question from journalists less reverential than Cuba's state-controlled media. It was just one of a series of differences to overcome between old Cold War enemies and two men who were born 30 years apart -- one in the heart of global capitalism, the other in a tropical testing ground for Communist ideology. Cuba and the United States lie just 90 miles (145 kilometres) apart, but appear to operate in different centuries. While Americans fetishize the new and shiny, Cubans out of necessity tend to cars that were built before Obama was born. As the questions rolled in, the negotiated common ground between those two worlds appeared to fall away. "You are asking me too many questions," Castro half-joked. "I think questions should be directed to President Obama." The tension built as Obama appeared to fear he had gone too far in pushing for more questions, before pressing his point yet further. "He did say he was only going to take one question, I was going to take two, but I leave it up to you if you will address that question," Obama said, adding: "I'm sure she'd appreciate just a short brief answer." "There is a program here to be fulfilled," said Castro. "I know that if I stay here, you'll make 500 questions. I said that I was going to answer one. Well, I'll answer one and a half." After sketching out another answer, Castro declared, "We have concluded." But the awkwardness was not yet over. As the two leaders milled around the stage, feeling their way to the exit, an effort by Castro to raise Obama's arm in victory fell flat. Instead of the leftist symbolism of a clenched fist, Obama opted to let his wrist go limp. Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal today sought NITI Aayog's support for helping farmers in the state by introducing special schemes. Interacting with a delegation comprising NITI Aayog Member Ramesh Chand and Advisor Jitender Kumar, who called on him at his residence today, Badal underscored the need for formulating special schemes to promote crop diversification and agro-industry, a statement said. He said the farming community in the state was facing a severe crisis and though the state government was making all efforts to resolve the situation, NITI Aayog could play a proactive role with the help of the Centre. The chief minister also asked the delegation to expedite the approval for the renovation of Upper Bari Doaba Canal (UBDC), which was pending with the Centre. The delegation assured Badal of all help in helping the state's agriculture sector. Belgian authorities urged the media to refrain from reporting on the probe into triple bomb attacks in Brussels today that killed at least 26 after some said raids were under way in the city. "The federal prosecutor notes that certain journalists are reporting information about the investigation under way," a statement said. "The federal prosecutor urges the press to immediately refrain from conveying information relative to the investigation so as not to harm the inquiry," it said. Speaking to local television, Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said: "We fear that people are still at large" following the attacks on Brussels airport and a busy metro station. Federal prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw earlier said the authorities "were doing everything possible to track down the attackers and to see if there are others who may have fled". Today's attacks come just four days after key Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam was arrested in Brussels following a series of police raids across the city. On Tuesday last week, police also shot dead a man linked to the November Paris attacks which left 130 people dead, with information gleaned during that raid apparently helping them track down Abdeslam. The Rs 70-crore IPO of Bharat Wire Ropes sailed through on the last day of the offer today as the issue was oversubscribed 1.21 times. The initial public offering (IPO) received bids for 2,11,28,700 shares against the total issue size of 1,75,00,000 shares, as per NSE data till 1800 hrs. The qualified institutional buyers (QIBs) portion was subscribed 1.01 times and that of non-institutional investors 2.02 times. The portion set aside for retail investors was also oversubscribed 2.08 times. The Maharashtra-based specialty wire ropes manufacturer fixed the price band at Rs 40-45 for the IPO. As per draft papers, the company is aiming to raise Rs 70 crore through the issue. The proceeds will be utilised for setting up a manufacturing plant at Chalisgaon in Maharashtra and for other general corporate purposes. The issue is being managed by Intensive Fiscal Services and BOB Capital Markets. The equity shares of the company are proposed to be listed on BSE and NSE. Since the beginning of 2016, four firms -- Quick Heal Technologies, TeamLease Services, Precision Camshafts and HealthCare Global Enterprises Limited -- have come out with their IPOs. Describing Bihar as the "religious capital of India", state's Industry Minister Jai Kumar Singh today pressed for "equal focus" on its development on the lines of Delhi and Mumbai. He was speaking at the inauguration ceremony of the 104th birth anniversary celebrations -- Bihar Utsav 2016 -- of the state at INA Dilli Haat, which started on March 16 and will go on till March 31. The government of Bihar has been organising this event every year in Delhi since 2010. This year an exhibition-cum- sale has been organised. The theme of this year's celebration is 'Tourism, Tradition, Art & Culture and Ambience of Bihar'. The major attraction at this year's festival is live demonstration of handicraft making. "Bihar is the religious capital of India. It is essential to focus on equal development of Delhi, which is the capital of India, Mumbai, the business capital of India and Bihar, the religious capital of India," he said. Bihar is the birth place of Buddhism, Jainism and is endowned with a huge number of Hindu temples and Islamic shrines. The exhibition-cum-sale is showcasing tourism, tradition, art, culture and cuisines of Bihar in Delhi highlighting the development of Bihar through 55 stalls of handloom and handicrafts. Main attractions on these stalls are Bhagalpuri silk, Madubani paintings, Siki products, famous handloom bed sheets of Bans Bigha, wooden crafts and leather products. The food court features a menu of mouth watering Bihari cuisines like litti choka, son papdi, makhna kheer, belgrami. For the first time a selfie zone has been created here, where one can click an image with the backdrop exhibiting the seven commitments ('Mukhyamantri ke Saat Nischaya') of Chief Minister Nitish Kumar. The NCP today claimed departments headed by BJP ministers had been allotted nearly 50 times more money than what was given to the Shiv Sena ministers in Maharashtra's Budget for FY17, presented last week. Leader of Opposition in the Legislative Council Dhananjay Munde, speaking during the debate on Budget, also said that while the Governor in his speech announced some new schemes, there was no allocation for them. "Governor spoke about a memorial for Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj and (late Sena chief) Balasaheb Thackeray, but the government made no mention of it in the Budget. (Sena's MoS for Finance Deepak) Kesarkar, if I were a Shiv Sainik, I would have refused to read the Budget speech," Munde said. "I can understand if BJP leaders lie, but it is shocking that they have spoken lies through the Governor's mouth," he added. The NCP leader said while a total of Rs 95,000 crore were allocated to departments headed by BJP ministers, merely 2,000 crore were allocated for departments headed by Sena ministers. "Subhash Desai's department (Industries) has been given Rs 40 crore, Diwakar Raote's department (Transport) has been given Rs 130 crore, Eknath Shinde (PWD) has been given Rs 120 crore, Ramdas Kadam (Environment) Rs 35 crore. Only Health department headed by Deepak Sawant has been given Rs 1,544 crore only because they couldn't reduce it," he said. Munde said each department of BJP ministers received what those held by Sena Ministers received together. "You (Sena ministers) could have tolerated if the BJP gave you one ministerial berth less. But if you don't get money to do people's work, why are you in power?" he asked. Ruling BJP MLA Ghanshyam Tiwari today cornered the Vasundhara Raje government on the issue of demolition of temples here for Jaipur Metro route and demanded that the government reconstruct the temples to make Jaipur safe. Speaking on demand for grants for the department of Local Self Government in the assembly, Tiwari said the city of Jaipur was founded with principles of Vastu Shastra but the Vastu of the city has been disturbed due to the Jaipur Metro Railway project. Tiwari said that no temple was demolished after Jaipur was established, even in the regime of (Mughal emperor) Aurangzeb but it happened this time and the government should atone and set up the temples again with 'Pran Pratishta' of idols to make Jaipur safe. He said that the government should take care to reconstruct Rojgareshwar Mahadev temple. Several temples have been shifted due to the metro rail project inside the walled city of Jaipur that included Rojgareshwar Mahadev temple near Chhoti Chopad which invited sharp criticism for the Vasundhara Raje government. Tiwari stressed that he is favour of Metro railway, but whatever (demolition) happened to the temples was was not good. The stereotype that "blondes are dumb" is simply wrong, according to a new US study which found that the average IQ of light-haired people may actually be slightly higher than those with other hair colours. The study of 10,878 Americans found that white women who said their natural hair colour was blonde had an average intelligence quotient (IQ) score within 3 points of brunettes and those with red or black hair. "Research shows that stereotypes often have an impact on hiring, promotions and other social experiences," said Jay Zagorsky from Ohio State University. "This study provides compelling evidence that there should not be any discrimination against blondes based on their intelligence," said Zagorsky. The study found that the average IQ of blondes was actually slightly higher than those with other hair colours, but that finding is not statistically significant, he said. "I do not think you can say with certainty that blondes are smarter than others, but you can definitely say they are not any dumber," he added. The results for blonde white men were similar - they also had IQs roughly equal to men with other hair colours. Data from the study came from the US National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 (NLSY79), a national survey of people who were between 14 and 21 years old when they were first interviewed in 1979. The findings showed that blonde-haired white women had an average IQ of 103.2, compared to 102.7 for those with brown hair, 101.2 for those with red hair and 100.5 for those with black hair, Zagorsky said. Blonde women were slightly more likely to be in the highest IQ category than those with other hair colours, and slightly less likely to be in the lowest IQ category, he said. The findings were published in the journal Economics Bulletin. Government bonds (G-Secs) prices ended mixed after a day of heavy trading due to alternate bouts of buying and selling even as rate cut hopes continued to dominate sentiment. The interbank money market turned weak after a lack of demand from borrowing banks in the face of ample liquidity conditions in the banking system. The 7.59 per cent government security maturing in 2029 decline to Rs 99.09 from overnight level of Rs 99.31, while its yield moved up to 7.70 from 7.67 per cent. The 7.59 per cent government security maturing in 2026 inched down to Rs 100.57 from Rs 100.5725, while its yield remained stable to 7.50 per cent. The 7.88 per cent government security maturing in 2030 moved down to Rs 100.1575 as compared to Rs 100.29, while yield eased to 7.86 per cent from 7.85 per cent. The 7.72 per cent government security maturing in 2025 was quoted lower at Rs. 100.0775 as compared to Rs. 100.1575, while its yield inched up to 7.71 per cent from 7.69 per cent. However, 8.27 per cent government security maturing in 2020, the 7.68 per cent government security maturing in 2023 and the 8.40 per cent government security maturing in 2024 were quoted substantially higher at Rs 102.40, Rs 99.67 and Rs 103.45, respectively. The overnight call money rates ended sharply lower at 5.90 per cent against Monday's closing value of 6.60 per cent. It hovered in a range of 7.50 per cent and 5.80 per cent during the trade. Meanwhile, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), under the Liquidity Adjustment Facility (LAF), purchased securities worth Rs 213.16 billion in 50-bids at the overnight repo opertions at a fixed rate of 6.75 per cent this evening. It sold securities worth Rs 84.75 billion from 36-bids at the overnight reverse repo auction at a fixed rate of 5.75 per cent late yesterday. Branded budget hotel chains are driving growth of online domestic hotel bookings as hospitality firms jump on digital bandwagon after a slow start to make inventory available on Internet, says a report. As per Google Travel Trends report, branded budget hotel queries in India are growing at 179 per cent year-on-year in comparison to just 36 per cent in generic budget hotel queries. The overall queries for 'accommodations' as a whole are growing at 37 per cent annually. "With over 300 million Indians online and growing rapidly, hotel providers have been slow to catch on the digital bandwagon, with only 20 per cent of total hotel inventory available online," the report said. Seizing this massive opportunity, several players, including new and established players are focused on bringing quality budget accommodation online across the country. "With the availability of this new inventory online, the report reveals that Internet users in the country are lapping up the budget hotels online which is evident in the growth of Google search queries," it added. Budget hotel queries already account for 35 per cent of total accommodation queries and a large share of 47 per cent of search queries are for the brands providing budget hotel inventory online. Commenting on the findings of the report, Google India Director Sales, Vikas Agnihotri said: "Newer players in the segment have energised the travel vertical by unlocking a brand new inventory online." They have been quick to capitalise on the online demand with aggressive advertising spends in building their brands, which is leading to overall category growth for the industry, he added. Agnihotri further said: "We expect this segment to continue to see massive growth with leisure travel expected to pick up in the coming summer holiday season." In terms of top destinations searched for accommodation during March to June period of 2015, the report said Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka, Goa, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala and Delhi-NCR are the most searched destinations. With the growing demand for branded budget hotel, players are investing in creating a distinct brand positioning as budget hotel providers are likely to see faster growth compared to generic travel aggregators, it said. As per industry estimates, the inventory in the budget hotel space is expected to grow further with both new and existing players expected to bring up to 10,000 new rooms online this year, the report added. In terms of outbound data (international) compiled basis Google search queries between January to September 2015, UAE topped the list, followed by US, Thailand, UK and Singapore. British Prime Minister David Cameron today expressed "shock" and promised every possible help to Belgium after a string of explosions ripped through Brussels airport and a city metro station, killing at least 21 people and prompting a high-security alert across European nations. "I am shocked and concerned by the events in Brussels," Cameron posted on Twitter shortly after the broke. "We will do everything we can to help." The prime minister added he will be chairing a COBRA meeting, held to discuss emergency situations and bring together cohesive government response, later in the day. "I will be chairing a COBRA meeting on the events in Brussels later this morning," Cameron said. Meanwhile, security was beefed up across major airports in Europe including London's Gatwick airport as fear of another imminent terror attack remains very strong. "As a result of the terrible incidents in Brussels, we have increased our security presence and patrols around the airport," the Gatwick airport said in a statement. Earlier in the day, a string of explosions rocked Brussels Zaventem international airport and a city metro station, killing at least 21 people, according to local media reports. Police said the attacks were caused by suicide bombers. The blast at the Maalbek metro station occurred in the close vicinity of the European Union institutions and killed 10 people and wounded 55 others. Brussels has both NATO as well as European Union (EU) headquarters. The terror strike is widely seen as a revenge attack for the arrest of Paris terror attacks prime suspect, Salah Abdeslam, who was arrested in the Belgian capital last Friday, four months after France's deadliest terror attack in November, claimed by the Islamic State, that killed 130 people. Cameron himself has spent much time in Brussels recently, in and out of EU summits to renegotiate Britain's membership of the bloc. Brussels airport is closed until further notice, Eurocontrol, the European organisation for air navigation safety confirmed on its website today following twin explosions. Two blasts were heard at the airport shortly after 8:00 am (0700 GMT), Belgian media reported. Belgian police said at least one person had been killed and several wounded. Syria's peace talks remained at an impasse today, even as deadly attacks in Brussels highlighted the urgency of ending the brutal conflict, seen as a trigger for extremist attacks around the world. UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura voiced "horror and outrage" at the attacks claimed by the Islamic State group that killed around 35 people in the Belgian capital Tuesday. "The tragedy in Brussels ... Reminds us that ... We have no time to lose," UN Syria envoy Staffan de Mistura told reporters in Geneva. "We need to extinguish the fire of war in Syria," he said, insisting that "to fight terrorism, the best formula is to find a solution for political transition in Syria." The main opposition umbrella group, the High Negotiations Committee (HNC) also stressed the need to rapidly end the five-year conflict, which has killed more than 270,000 people and displaced millions. HNC spokeswoman Bassma Kodmani said the UN-brokered Syrian peace talks were "more vital than ever". "The Geneva process is today fundamental to reestablishing the global political order and avoiding the chaos that fanatics are threatening us with here in Europe and there in the Middle East," she said in a statement. But despite the calls to speed up the process, the Geneva talks, which are in their second week, remain indirect and continue to move at a snail's pace. Conceding that progress remains slow, de Mistura has stressed the importance of getting the opposing sides to reach a basic understanding on how to advance to a second round of talks, tentatively scheduled for next month. The envoy, who has been shuttling between the two sides, said today he is eager to make progress before the negotiations pause on Thursday, telling reporters: "We are all working hard on getting a common understanding." But the talks continue to stumble on the fate of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, with the regime's lead negotiator in Geneva, Bashar al-Jaafari on Monday reiterating that discussing the issue was "excluded." Hisham Marwa, who serves as a consultant in the HNC delegation, meanwhile told AFP Tuesday that any talk of leaving Assad in power is "absolutely unacceptable". Assad's fate has been a key obstacle in the latest talks aimed at ending Syria's devastating five-year war, which has killed more than 270,000 people and displaced millions. France-based Middle-East expert Agnes Levallois told AFP the regime was dragging its feet in the talks, "because when real negotiations begin, it will be the beginning of the end. Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis today said the government would ask the Governor to accept the resignation of Advocate General Shreehari Aney, who put in his papers in the backdrop of the controversy generated over his espousal of separate Marathwada state. "Shreehari Aney has made some statements which are not in accordance with the state government's stand. He has given his clarification to the government. Also, Aney has submitted his resignation to the Governor and as per procedure, he is taking cognisance of the same," Fadnavis said while making a joint statement in both Houses of the state Legislature. Leader of Opposition in the Legislative Assembly, Radhakrishna Vikhe Patil then asked if Aney's resignation has been accepted as the AG had made statements that were "intended at breaking the state." "What he said is wrong. He should apologise to the House for making such statements," he said. Responding to Vikhe Patil, Fadnavis asked the Opposition to remain serious on the issue. "According to Constitutional provisions, he has been appointed by the Governor. Opposition should remain serious on the issue. According to protocol, the Governor will ask for an opinion from the government. We will take the decision in the Cabinet and convey to the Governor that his resignation be accepted," the CM said. Meanwhile, Shiv Sena legislators staged a dharna at the main entrance of Vidhan Bhavan shouting slogans demanding Aney be tried under the "sedition" charge. Following the Chief Minister's statement, the Sena members and ministers, who had earlier announced they would not take part in House proceedings and attend Cabinet meetings, later joined the proceedings during Question Hour. Prime Minister David Cameron today condemned the "appalling and savage" attacks in Brussels and warned of a "very real terror threat" to Europe, as Britain deployed extra patrols at ports, airports, metro stations and major railway stations. "We face a very real terrorist threat right across the different countries of Europe and we have to meet that with everything we have," Cameron said following an emergency cabinet meeting to determine UK's response after a string of explosions ripped through Brussels airport and a city metro station, killing at least 34 people and prompting a high- security alert across European nations. One British national was also injured in the attack. Expressing solidarity with Belgium, Cameron said: "These were attacks in Belgium; they could just as well be attacks in Britain or in France or Germany, or elsewhere in Europe and we need to stand together against these appalling terrorists and make sure they can never win." The prime minister promised all possible help to Belgium as he recalled the July 7, 2005, terror bombings on London's transport system that killed 52 people. "We will do everything we can to help. These are difficult times, these are appalling terrorists but we must stand together to do everything we can to stop them." "What we should be doing today is expressing our sympathies and condolences with the people in Belgium who have suffered this appalling terrorist attack. We in this country know what that feels like because of what we experienced in 7/7," he said. Meanwhile, security was beefed up across major airports in Europe including London's Gatwick airport as fear of another imminent terror attack remains very strong. "As a result of the terrible incidents in Brussels, we have increased our security presence and patrols around the airport," the Gatwick airport said in a statement. The UK's most senior counter-terrorism officer, Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley, said increased police activity in the UK was a precaution, but not in response to any specific information or intelligence. Earlier in the day, a string of explosions rocked Brussels Zaventem international airport and a city metro station, killing at least 34 people, according to local media reports. Police said the attacks were caused by suicide bombers. The blast at the Maalbek metro station occurred in the close vicinity of the European Union institutions and killed 20 people and wounded 106 others. Brussels has both NATO as well as European Union (EU) headquarters. The terror strike is widely seen as a revenge attack for the arrest of Paris terror attacks prime suspect, Salah Abdeslam, who was arrested in the Belgian capital last Friday, four months after France's deadliest terror attack in November, claimed by the Islamic State, that killed 130 people. The Centre today issued an alert to heighten security at major airports and metro networks across the country in the wake of multiple blasts in Brussels that claimed several lives. In a communication, the central government asked the state governments and security agencies, including CISF, to beef up security at airports in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Kolkata. Instructions have also been given to tighten security in metro networks in Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai and Bengaluru, official sources said. Almost all airports in the country and the Delhi Metro are guarded by the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF), other metro networks are protected by respective state police forces. The central communication was issued after a series of apparently coordinated explosions ripped through Brussels airport and a city metro station, killing at least 26 people in the latest attacks to target Europe. Government plans to open new industrial tribunals, mainly in newly formed states such as Telangana and Chhattisgarh, for speedy delivery of justice to workers, Union Minister Bandaru Dattatreya said today. Also, the government is taking steps to fill vacancies at existing 22 Central Government Industrial Tribunal-cum-Labour Courts, the Labour Minister said. "We are planning to open six new CGIT Courts in all the newly formed states, and will also take steps to fill the existing vacancies in CGIT-cum-LCs," Dattatreya said after a conference of presiding officers of CGIT-cum-LCs here. "At present there are two CGIT-cum-LCs at Chandigarh which cater to Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir. We have planned two tribunals in Jammu & Kashmir and Himachal Pradesh." Similarly, the Centre will two tribunals in Chhattisgarh and Bihar, he said. At present there is one tribunal at Ranchi and another at Dhanbad. "We have also plans to open two tribunals in Telangana and Andhra Pradesh," he added. The CGIT-cum-LCs are set up under the provisions of Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, for adjudication of industrial disputes arising in central sphere. There are 22 CGIT-cum-LCs in various states. The CGIT-cum-LC No 1, Mumbai, and CGIT-cum-LC, Kolkata, also function as National Tribunals. The CGIT-cum-LCs are headed by Presiding Officers who are selected from amongst High Court Judges (serving/retired) or Distt./Addl. Distt. Judges (serving/retired). "We will also take steps to fill the existing vacancies in these tribunals. The funds will be provided for infrastructure of these courts," the minister said. "We must have an instinct to go ahead with zeal to maintain industrial harmony by all ways and means like holding as many lokadalats and camp courts as possible for encouraging litigants to come forward for quick redressal of their grievances and disputes. A special watchdog body today, sought criminal charges against two suspects allegedly behind the massive USD 81 million money-laundering scandal that has shaken the Philippines. The Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) asked Justice Department prosecutors to file charges against businessman Kim Wong and Chinese casino junket operator Weikang Xu for their alleged role in laundering USD 81 million in Bangladesh's foreign reserves through the Philippines. The Bangladeshi funds were allegedly transferred through a Philippine bank to casinos in Manila where most of the funds have disappeared. The hackers apparently took advantage of Philippine laws granting strict secrecy to bank depositors as well as exempting casinos from money-laundering oversight. The complaint, citing testimony of a Senate probe of the scandal last week, showed that the accounts of both suspects had received the money. "Wong knew or should have known that the funds that were remitted/transferred... Were part of the stolen funds from Bangladesh Bank, and are therefore proceeds of an unlawful activity," the complaint read. The department has also summoned Maia Deguito, branch manager of the RCBC bank where the hacked funds were transferred, to answer questions ahead of possible charges against her as well. Meanwhile, RCBC bank, one of the country's largest banks, said it had sacked Deguito as well as assistant branch manager Angela Torres over the scandal. The two were fired for "violating bank policies and procedures and falsification of commercial documents," and for facilitating the alleged money-laundering of the $81 million, an RCBC statement said. "Appropriate charges in court will be filed by the bank against Deguito and Torres by next week," RCBC said. Other bank officials will likely face "various sanctions," in the coming days, the statement added. Deguito had previously denied any wrongdoing but also said she was living in fear. "I did not do anything wrong. If this is a nightmare, I want to wake up now," she previously told a Manila TV station. The incident has raised fears that the Philippines will be seen as a haven for money-laundering despite its previous efforts to tighten controls to meet international standards. The AMLC's executive director Julia Abad conceded that the country's money-laundering laws needed improvement. She said that when the USD 81 million came into the country's banking system, it failed to raise eyebrows because similar huge amounts were already coming in. "On its face, there is nothing irregular about that transaction of USD 81 million," she told reporters today. But she also said her council only had about nine analysts overseeing hundreds of transactions each day. Abad said the council's powers should be increased to cover the country's growing casino industry, adding that the Philippines was one of only two countries that exempted casinos from money-laundering rules. China today lodged a protest with Japan over its approval of new high-school textbooks that describe the disputed islands in the East China sea as its "inherent territory". "The Chinese side is seriously concerned and we have lodged solemn representations to Japan," Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told a press briefing. Hua reaffirmed that the Diaoyu Island which Japan calls Senkaus and its adjacent islets have been an inherent part of Chinese territory since ancient times. "No matter how Japan tries to propagandise its wrong position on the islands, it will never change the fact that China has sovereignty over them," Hua said. "The Nanjing Massacre is a severe crime committed by Japanese militarists during World War II," Hua said, adding that China has abundant historical and legal evidence to prove it. She said the substantial deletion exposes Japan's reluctance to face up to history, "which is a dangerous signal." In the latest review, a total of 259 textbooks were given approval out of 261 that took part in the process, according to the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology. "We urge Japan to reflect on its militarist aggression, educate its younger generation correctly, and improve ties with its neighbors through practical action," Hua said. China is embroiled in a territorial row with Japan over the disputed islands, known as the Senkakus in Japan, which controls them, and claimed by Beijing as the Diaoyus. Philippine sailors threw "fire bombs" and brandished knives at Chinese government vessels during a dispute over contested fishing grounds in the South China Sea, Beijing said today. Philippine media this week said local fishermen had been rammed by the Chinese coast guard while fishing off Scarborough Shoal, which China has occupied since a 2012 stand-off but which lies within the Philippines' claimed exclusive economic zone. The incident is the latest in a series of sometimes violent disputes between China and other claimants to the South China Sea -- through which about a third of all the world's traded oil passes -- that have put the region on edge. Speaking at a regular press briefing, Chinese foreign ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said that the Philippine fishing vessels had "defied" orders to leave the area. "People on Philippines' vessels even brandished knives and hurled firebombs at Chinese ships," she said, adding that the attacks were intended to "deliberately provoke" Chinese law enforcement vessels "and seriously endanger the order and safety of Huangyan's territorial waters." Scarborough Shoal is known as Huangyan in China. Tensions in the South China Sea have mounted in recent months since China transformed contested reefs into artificial islands capable of supporting military facilities. China claims almost all of the sea, including some islands currently controlled by the Philippines. Beijing has never clearly defined its claims to the strategic region. Manila has brought a case before an international tribunal to rule on the disputes over territories, including Scarborough Shoal. The move has infuriated Beijing, which insists the matter is outside the court's remit. A ruling on the matter is expected before May. Chinese telecommunications giant ZTE said today it expects the United States to lift restrictions on its business, amid talks with Washington over allegations it violated trade sanctions against Iran. Washington earlier this month slapped restrictions on ZTE and three linked companies for illicitly re-exporting controlled items from the US to sanctioned countries including Iran. The curbs require ZTE to have specific licences before shipping US-made items to the parent company or the other three named firms. The move threatens the Chinese firm's ability to buy technology hardware and software in the US "ZTE has committed to, and fully expects to, fulfil all of the commitments in order to be removed permanently from the entity list," ZTE said in a statement, referring to the restrictions. In the meantime, it said, it had obtained a "temporary general licence". "This interim relief will enable ZTE to continue serving its major stakeholders as it works with the US authorities to reach a permanent resolution." The Chinese government condemned the measures when they were imposed, with a commerce ministry official expressing "strong dissatisfaction and firm opposition". Tuesday's ZTE statement did not give the terms of the licence or say what requirements were met to obtain it. "ZTE is fully committed to complying with the laws and regulations in the jurisdictions in which it operates, and will be continuing to make further contributions to (the) global telecoms industry," it said. The case dates back to 2012 when the US Department of Commerce first began investigating the transfer of US technology to Iran, according to media reports. Washington in January eased several restrictions on doing business with Iran following an international agreement over its nuclear programme. But sanctions linked to accusations that Tehran supports terrorism remain in force, still largely blocking US companies from business with Iran. ZTE is China's second-biggest telecoms equipment maker with customers in more than 160 countries. China said today it has widened a ban on ivory imports as it comes under pressure to restrict a trade which sees thousands of African elephants slaughtered every year. Imports of all ivory and ivory products acquired before 1975 will be banned until the end of the decade, the State Forestry Administration said on its website. The measure came into force on Sunday. It also extended until the same date existing bans on imports of African ivory carvings acquired after 1975, and all ivory hunting trophies. China is seen as the major source of demand for African ivory, with prices for a kilogram (2.2 pounds) reaching as much as USD 1,100. Conservationists estimate that more than 20,000 elephants were killed for their ivory last year, with similar tolls in previous years. The WWF campaign group says 470,000 of the animals remain. The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) took effect in 1975. It banned the ivory trade in 1989. Like other countries, China permits the resale of ivory bought before the 1989 ban -- and also has a stockpile purchased with CITES approval in 2008, which it releases for sale with certification. Activists say the trade in legal ivory acts as a cover for illegal imports and call for a complete ban on sales. The issue came up during President Xi Jinping's state visit to the US last year, when the White House said in a statement that the two countries "commit to enact nearly complete bans on ivory import and export". The measures would include "significant and timely" restrictions on hunting trophy imports and steps to halt domestic commercial ivory trade, the statement added. Beijing imposed a temporary ban on imports of ivory carvings last year, but campaigners described the move as more symbolic than effective. The Chinese territory of Hong Kong - a key hub for the trade -- said in January it would tighten restrictions on ivory imports and exports including a ban on trade in hunting trophies, but did not give a clear timescale. China's newly extended import bans do not outlaw its existing domestic trade, and appear to potentially allow imports of some raw ivory dating from after 1975. The State Forestry Administration said imports of ivory artefacts for "teaching and scientific research, cultural exchange, public display and law enforcement" purposes were not covered by the extended ban. Experts say most illegal ivory is headed for China, where it is seen as a status symbol. By some estimates the country accounts for as much as 70 percent of global demand. Underlining the scale of the trade, state media reported Monday that police in south China's Guangdong province seized about 450 kilograms of smuggled ivory in a raid earlier this month. A 68-year-old Christian convert was hacked to death in Bangladesh today by three motorbike-borne unidentified assailants, the latest in a slew of attacks on minorities by Islamists in the Muslim majority country. Hossain Ali, a freedom fighter and former inspector of family planning, was killed by unidentified miscreants in the northern Bangladeshi town of Kurigram this morning. Ali's body was recovered with his throat slit, police said. He was attacked by three unknown miscreants. The miscreants riding a motorbike attacked Ali at about 7:00 AM, the Superintendent of Police in Kurigram said. The attackers fled the spot after exploding two Molotov Cocktails, the official said. Ali converted to Christianity ten years ago, the SP was quoted as saying by the Daily Star. There have been systematic assaults in Bangladesh over the past six months specially targeting minorities, secular bloggers and foreigners that have killed at least nine persons including two foreigners and wounded more than 100. Last week a top Shia preacher and homoeopathic doctor was stabbed to death in southwestern Bangladesh in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group. A Hindu head priest was hacked to death on February 21 by gun-and-cleaver wielding Islamists at a temple in northern Panchagarh district's Debiganj Upazila. In September last year, Italian aid worker Cesare Tavella was murdered by unidentified assailants in Dhaka, and within five days of that incident Japanese farmer Kunio Hoshi was killed. Both attacks were claimed by IS-affiliated militants. Also, moderate Sufi saint Khizir Khan, progressive book publisher Faisal Arefin Dipon, and a Sufi shrine worker were murdered while two Christian pastors, one an Italian doctor, narrowly escaped attacks. The IS has claimed a series of attacks against religious minorities in the Sunni-majority Bangladesh, which was declared officially secular after a deadly liberation struggle against Pakistan in 1971. Democratic presidential frontrunner Hillary Clinton today condemned the explosions in Brussels that killed around 35 people, saying they will not be intimidated by the attacks while Republican candidate Donald Trump asked the US to be more vigilant. Clinton said the attacks will only strengthen their resolve to stand together as allies and defeat terrorism and radical jihadism around the world. The former Secretary of State said though terrorists have once again struck at the heart of Europe, but their campaign of hate and fear will not succeed. "The people of Brussels, of Europe, and of the world will not be intimidated by these vicious killers. Today Americans stand in solidarity with our European allies," she said. "Our thoughts and prayers are with the families of those killed and wounded, and all the people of Belgium. These terrorists seek to undermine the democratic values that are the foundation of our alliance and our way of life, but they will never succeed," Clinton said. Trump, on the other hand, called for more vigilance. "Do you all remember how beautiful and safe a place Brussels was? Not anymore, it is from a different world! US must be vigilant and smart!" he said in a tweet and criticised Obama in another tweet. "President Obama looks and sounds so ridiculous making his speech in Cuba, especially in the shadows of Brussels. He is being treated badly!" Trump said. The White House said Obama was apprised of the explosions in Brussels. "US officials have been and will continue to be in close contact with their Belgian counterparts," a White House official said. The Ohio Governor John Kasich said "along with every American, he is sickened by the pictures of the carnage, by the injuries and by the loss of life." "Today's attack is a brutal reminder that the international community must come together to destroy ISIS. This type of barbarism cannot be allowed to continue," said Senator Bernie sanders, the Democratic presidential candidate. "The horrific attacks in Brussels were sadly predictable. And they are a reminder of what should by now be painfully obvious: the United States and Europe are at war with ISIL," Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham said in a joint statement. "There should be no doubt that ISIL poses a real, direct, and growing threat to the United States. ISIL remains in control of its sanctuaries in Iraq and Syria. It is expanding across the Middle East, Africa, and parts of Asia and radicalising terrorist recruits in the United States and Europe," they said. "As our countries have always done, we must confront this threat together. We must defend democracy, and defeat terror," said Paul Ryan, Speaker of the US House of Representatives. (Reopens FES114) US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter said that the attacks reinforces the need to accelerate the defeat of Islamic State militant group that has claimed responsibility for carrying out the deadly attacks. "The Brussels attacks reinforce our need to accelerate the defeat of ISIL. We have a strategy for doing so," Carter told lawmakers during a Congressional hearing convened by the House Armed Services Committee. "We need to get across the finish line quickly. We've got to be agile in the defeat of ISIL. And that means we need to be agile in this matter of reprogramming as well," he said as he described ISIL as the greatest threat facing the US and its allies. Carter was responding to a question from Congressman Mac Thornberry, Chairman of the House Armed Services Committee on how ISIS can be defeated in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Brussels. "Brussels is an international city. It has been host to NATO and to the European Union for decades. Together, we must and we will continue to do everything we can to protect our homelands and defeat terrorists wherever they threaten us," Carter said. Carter said, "in addition to local forces we're working with, 90 per cent of our military coalition partners - from Europe, the Gulf, Asia - 26 countries in all, including our ally Belgium - have committed to increase their contributions to help accelerate the defeat of ISIL," he said. Trump also called for closing of the American borders. "We have to close our borders, make them so strong and let people into our country, but they have to be people that are going to be wonderful for our country," Trump was quoted as saying by the Fox . "I'm very strong on borders. I mean, I've been very, very strong from the beginning. I came out strong on trade, strong on borders and that was the initial and then you had the Paris attack and we started talking more in terms of military, also. But we have to strengthen up our borders a lot. And you know in the southern border, we're going to build a wall. We're going to absolutely build a wall," Trump said. Trump said Obama is taking in thousands of people, distributing all over the US. "We are having problems with the Muslims and we're having problems with Muslims coming into the country and we are seeing it, whether it's California where they killed the 14 people, the two young married couple, I guess she possibly radicalised him, nobody knows," he said. Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar today solicited people's cooperation in the implementation of a complete ban on country-made liquor in the state from next month. "The ban (on the manufacture, trade and sale of country made) on liquor will be implemented with people's cooperation and not with the fear of either government's machinery or the law," Kumar said while inaugurating a two-day Bihar Diwas celebrations at historic Gandhi Maidan. He said that the government would take the help of school children who would take pledge from their parents not to consume liquor. Kumar said that teachers, Vikas Mitra, Tola Sewak, Anganwadi workers and others would be roped in for creation of a positive atmosphere for implementation of ban on country-made liquor in the state. Kumar said that some women had demanded a total prohibition on alcohol in the state during an official function last year in Patna to which "I promised them that I would enforce ban on liquor if I return to power." Kumar said that he had announced on November 26 on the occasion of 'Prohibition Day' that his government would implement a complete ban on country made liquor from April 1, 2016. The government will bring a bill in the ongoing budget session of state legislature that would have a provision of death penalty for those caught manufacturing illicit liquor, he said adding that country made liquor must be destroyed by March 31. Kumar asserted that he would not allow 'home delivery' of liquor in the state. Haryana Industries Minister Captain Abhimanyu today said a common facility centre for plywood industry will be built at an estimated cost of Rs 16.87 crore with assistance from the Centre and Indian Plywood Industries Research and Training Institute, Bengaluru. The facility centre will be helpful for about 100 plywood industrial units in district Yamunanagar. The Industries Minister was replying to a question by MLA, Ghanshyam Dass, during the Haryana Vidhan Sabha Session here today. He informed the House that under the Enterprises Promotion Policy-2015, emphasis had been laid on the development of micro, small and medium industries, which included the plywood industry of Yamunanagar. While the Central Government provides assistance of 70 per cent for development of common facility centre, under this policy, the State Government's share has been increased from 10 per cent to 20 per cent. He said the share of industries for establishing joint ventures with the objective of arranging raw material from surrounding areas, has been fixed at 10 per cent. He said that a report regarding the plywood industry of Yamunanagar had been prepared. He said that Poplar could be brought in from part of Uttar Pradesh bordering the district. Reiterating that the State Government was laying emphasis on modernisation of the plywood industry of Yamunanagar, the Minister informed the House that these units met 50 per cent of the total demand of the country. Haryana Health Minister Anil Vij said the government hospital at Dabwali in district Sirsa is being upgraded as a 100 bedded hospital. The Department has already given its approval on December 1, 2015. Vij was replying to a question during the ongoing session of Haryana Vidhan Sabha here today. He said after the upgradation of the hospital, the people of Sirsa, Dabwali and adjoining areas would be benefitted and they would not have to visit hospitals in Rajasthan, especially Bikaner and Jaipur for treatment. He said the state government is dealing with the problem of shortage of doctors in Primary Health Centers (PHCs), Community Health Centers (CHCs) and all hospitals. Therefore, one medical officer, one Ayurvedic medical officer and one dental doctor would soon be posted in all PHCs in rural areas. The Health Department has now also granted permission to Ayurvedic doctors to prescribe allopathic medicines so as to benefit the patients. Vij said Biometric Attendance System would be installed in all hospitals to ensure the presence of doctors and para-medical staff. This would end complaints of patients regarding absence of doctors. Haryana Development and Panchayats Minister, O P Dhankar, said Rs 10,024.38 lakh have been spent on construction of Individual Household Latrines (IHL) in the rural areas of all 21 districts under the 'Swachh Bharat Mission (Gramin)' from October, 2014 to March 10,2016. A target has been set to construct more than 4.22 lakh IHL units in the rural areas by October 2, 2019, under Prime Minister, Narendra Modi's 'Swachh Bharat Mission'. The Minister was replying to a question by INLD MLA, Zakir Hussain. The Minister informed the House that 2,29,574 IHLs had been constructed by people at their own cost. He said that presently, more than 80,000 households did not have IHL units. Replying to a supplementary question about alleged fraud in construction of IHLs in Mewat, Dhankar assured the House that departmental inquiry would be conducted and baseline survey would again be conducted. If required, the government would consider getting a probe conducted by the State Vigilance Bureau, he added. Haryana Transport Minister Krishan Lal Panwar, said that demand for power in the State during summer was between 7,000 and 9,000 MW, and in winter it was between 3,000 and 6,300 MW. Presently, the State has availability of 10,082.83MW power from all sources, he added. Panwar was replying to a question on behalf of Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar, raised by MLA, Balwan Singh Daulatpuria. He also tabled a statement regarding 6,294.78MW being purchased by Haryana from 46 companies. Panwar informed the House that the Haryana Electricity Regulatory Commission fixed the power tariffs every year by adopting the process of public hearing. He said Rs 6,438.55 crore, including principal and surcharge, were pending against defaulters of Uttar Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam and Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vitran Nigam till December, 2015. The Minister informed the House that for recovery of outstanding amount in rural areas, it was decided that principal amount of the old arrears would be recovered from the consumers in five regular installments along with current bills. After paying the last bill and installment, the entire surcharge amount would be waived off, he added. He said that the State Government had implemented the 'Mhara Gaon Jagmag Gaon' scheme on 83 feeders, which has now been extended to cover 260 feeders. Many consumers came forward to pay their arrears after the implementation of this scheme, he added. Meanwhile, Haryana Assembly today passed Haryana Appropriation (No.1) Bill , 2016 to authorize payment and appropriation of Rs 18143,53,32,000 from and out of the Consolidated Fund of the state of Haryana. This Bill was introduced for the appropriation out of the Consolidated Fund of Haryana of the sums required to meet supplementary grants made by Legislative Assembly for expenditure for 2015-16. Congress today demanded action against six Maharashtra ministers accusing them of "shamelessly pursuing" business interests even after assuming office, insisting this is a "blatant conflict of interest". "Maharashtra government should take immediate action against them and launch a thorough probe to find out how they have used their official positions to benefit their private concerns," it said. It claimed the ministers who are linked to private firms are Health Minister Deepak Sawant: chairman of Anideep Eye Hospital; MoS for Housing Ravindra Waikar: Board of director of a construction firm; PWD Minister Chandrakant Patil: Director of Telematic Interactive Pvt Ltd; Women & Child Development Minister Pankaja Munde: on the boards of at least 5 companies; MoS for Industries and Mining Pravin Pote Patil: Director on the board of Pravin Builders and Developers (India) Pvt Ltd.; and MoS for Finance and Rural Development Deepak Kesarkar: on the board of Sindhudurg-based Innovators Resorts Pvt Ltd. In a commentary titled "Maha corrupt Maharashtra Govt Ministers are running private companies", it said according to the Constitution, no MLA can hold an office of profit while serving in the Assembly. In the commentary posted on its website, the party noted that the average salary of an MLA in Maharashtra is Rs 75,000, with ministers earning even more. This of course does not include the many perks that are given to ministers, it said. "The BJP in Maharashtra has been grossly violating the norms of Indian democracy," it alleged, saying after the nexus between Education Minister Vinod Tawde and various companies was exposed, it has now come to light that many ministers in the Devendra Fadnavis' government are directors of private firms. The AICC was also critical of two of these ministers for defending their action. It recalled that after getting all these privileges, Sawant said, "How will ministers eat?" Chandrakant Patil said if ministers didn't hold on to these positions they would have to resort to corruption. The party also took to Twitter to target the six ministers under the tag #corruptFadanavisgovernment. "Maha' conflict of Interest in @Dev_Fadnavis' Government. Shouldn't these Ministers step down?", it asked. The National Green Tribunal has imposed a penalty of Rs 20 lakh on a developer in Uttarakhand for construction of hotel within 200 meters from the Ganga river bank. The green panel slapped the environmental compensation on Darrameks Hotels and Developers Pvt Ltd after it noted that the project proponent violated the order passed by Uttarakhand High Court which prohibited construction of any commercial unit within 200m of the river bank. "The Project proponent (Respondent No. 1) shall be liable to pay environmental compensation of Rs. 20 Lakh for violating the conditions set in the Consent to Establish issued by the Uttarakhand Environment Protection and Pollution Control Board (UEPPCB) and for disturbing the immediate/direct catchment of the river Ganga by changing the drainage pattern through the use of JCBs (mechanical excavators) for levelling the area. The tribunal also pulled up Uttarakhand government for issuing No Objection Certificate (NoC) to the hotel, located adjacent to the river, without inspecting the site in question. "It was the responsibility of Uttarakhand and its various instrumentalities to find out whether the said hotel project could have been permitted to be constructed in the impugned plot of land, which is contiguous with the river bed. However, it is noted that the concerned authorities do not seem to have visited the area and issued the NOCs without the application of mind. "This fact gets substantiated by the later letters issued by UEPPCB, which also contained the said condition, but the agency never bothered to take action against the project proponent for the violations committed by it in view of the court/government orders that were in force at that point of time," the bench said. It also constituted a committee headed by Uttarakhand pollution control board to inspect the site in district Tehri Garhwal of Uttarakhand and give its recommendations with respect to the hotel project and its impact on Ganga. The tribunal directed the committee to submit its report within four weeks and prohibited Darrameks Hotels and Developers Private Limited from further construction on the area till the time the panel submits its report. The judgement came on a petition filed by Rajiv Savara, a chartered accountant by profession, who had alleged that illegal commercial construction on the river bank was posing a serious threat to the ecology and causing irreparable damage to the river. Delhi Police was today directed by a court here to file an action taken report (ATR) on a criminal complaint seeking registration of FIR against AIMIM President Asaduddin Owaisi for alleged offences of sedition and causing enmity between different groups. Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Munish Markan asked the SHO of Karawal Nagar police station through the DCP (North-East Delhi) to file the report detailing the action taken on the plea on May 7. The complaint filed by Swaraj Janata Party's national president Brijesh Chand Shukla, alleged that on March 13, Owaisi had voluntarily said that "even if somebody puts a knife at me, I will not say 'Bharat Mata ki jai'" and his expression showed "disaffection and includes disloyalty and all feeling of enmity". During the arguments, advocate Rajesh Kumar, appearing for the complainant, said the matter comes under the definition of section 124A (sedition) of IPC as the statement made by Owaisi showed his disloyalty and disaffection towards the nation. The complaint sought a direction to the police to lodge an FIR against Owaisi for the alleged offences under sections 124A (sedition) and 153A (promoting enmity between different groups on grounds of religion, race etc) of IPC. The plea alleged that the act of Hyderabad MP showed he was not loyal to India and was trying to harm the country's reputation and his statement comes under the definition of sedition charge. "...It is correct that our Constitution does not permit to say 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai' but the Constitution also does not allow to say 'koi meri gardan par churi rakh de tab bhi mai Bharat Mata ki jai nahi bolunga' (even if somebody puts a knife at my neck, I will not say Bharat Mata ki jai)," it alleged. The complainant said he had filed the complaint in this regard with the Delhi Police but no action was taken and thereafter, he approached the court. A public interest litigation (PIL) has also been filed in the Bombay High Court by a Pune-based social activist urging it to take legal action against both Owaisi and AIMIM MLA Warris Pathan for refusing to chant 'Bharat Mata ki jai'. The PIL urged the court to order an inquiry into the speeches made by the duo in the recent past in which they had allegedly showed dishonour to the motherland by such remarks. The actual distribution of compensation and crop insurance to drought-hit farmers rocked the Legislative Assembly today with the main opposition Congress cornering the BJP government on the issue. The matter was raised during Question Hour by Congress MLA Dhanendra Sahu through a starred question. Sahu asked Agriculture Minister Brijmohan Agrawal to give the exact number of farmers who have been covered under the Crop Insurance Scheme during Kharif 2016 and the number of districts covered under it. "How much amount of premium was deposited by farmers under crop insurance and how much by the government," Sahu questioned. Replying to the queries, the minister said that 2,176 hectares of land had been insured and premium was charged at the rate of Rs 1,000 per acre. He added 75 per cent of premium was paid by farmers while 20 per cent was paid bythestategovernment and rest by Central government. "Payment of about Rs 500 crore is pending for disbursement to farmers against crop damage under the crop insurance policy and it is likely to be distributed by the insurance companies in next two months," Agrawal said. However, Sahu questioned the assessment made by the government on total crop damage as the actual survey report of crop loss is yet to be released. To this, Agrawal replied that under provisions of Rule 6-4 of Revenue Circular Book, compensation is being provided for non-irrigated and irrigated land to farmers under the drought-relief measures. Interrupting him, Sahu said how can Patwaris have submitted the survey report without physically assessing the actual crop damage. To this, the minister said the 'Crop Anewari (estimate) Report' doesn't have any role to play as the government, under modified Rule 6-4 RBC, has taken farmer as a unit forcrop loss assessment. "If any farmer has not been compensatedforhis crop damage, he can apply to the respective district collector latest byMarch 31. Compensation will be released on the basis of physical verification," Agrawal said. However, senior Congress MLA and party's state unit chief Bhupesh Baghel said that government has distributed only Rs 450 crore out of Rs 1,200 crore allotted by Central government for drought relief measures. Baghel accused the government of deliberately withholding the actual report. The Congress members then asked the government to prove that actual survey of crop damage due to drought has been undertaken even in a single village. However, Agrawal maintained that his government is committed to the cause of farmers and every farmer in drought-affected areas is being given compensation as per the revised norms. Not satisfied with the reply, Congress members created uproar by shouting slogans and staged walkout for some time. Saudi-led coalition air strikes hit an Al-Qaeda training camp in the network's southeastern Yemen stronghold today, killing and wounding dozens, government officials in the region said. "An Arab coalition air force targeted an Al-Qaeda training camp, killing and wounding dozens" in Hajr, west of Hadramawt's provincial capital Mukalla which has been held by the jihadists since April. Tribal sources in the area told AFP that a series of air strikes hit the camp and that wounded militants were taken to a hospital in Mukalla. Witnesses there reported seeing around nine vehicles carrying casualties from the area. Dozens of Al-Qaeda militants were meanwhile seen rushing to the hospital to donate blood, according to residents. The coalition, which launched an air campaign against Iran-backed rebels in Yemen a year ago, began targeting jihadists for the first time last week in Yemen's second city Aden. Al-Qaeda and the Islamic State group have taken advantage of the conflict between the rebels and coalition-backed loyalist forces to reinforce their presence in the south and east of the country. The Yemen-based Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, or AQAP, is classified by the United States as the network's deadliest franchise and had claimed attacks on the West in the past. Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis today said drought in various parts of the state was not hydrological but agricultural, based on criterion laid down by the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF). "The criterion for declaring drought was prepared in 1970 and amended twice. The criterion have been prepared as per NDRF norms," Fadnavis said, during a debate in the Legislative Assembly. "When we declare drought, there are two conditions: agricultural drought and hydrological drought. This means the 'anewari (crop yield) and rainfall should be less. This is NDRF norm. "Sadly, as per this norm, we saw agricultural drought to some extent but it was not a hydrological drought," he added. Leader of Opposition Radhakrishna Vikhe-Patil had moved an adjournment motion and sought resignation of Minister for Rehabilitation Eknath Khadse for failing in his duties to provide relief to farmers from Amravati division despite the report by the Divisional Commissioner. After the motion was rejected by the Chair, entire Opposition staged a walk out from the House. The Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court had passed strictures on Friday by saying that government needs to come out of from deep slumber on drought situation faced by Amravati division farmers. It had also passed strictures on Mantralaya (state secretariat) 'babus' for not understanding the plight of the farmers by sitting in air-conditioned rooms in Mantralaya. The state government acted even before the High Court strictures by reaching out to drought hit farmers from Amravati division and east Vidarbha, Fadnavis said. Both Vikhe-Patil and NCP group leader Jayant Patil criticised Government on the same and sought Khadse's resignation. Fadnavis said it was not state Government but NDRF which prepared the parameters for declaring drought in any state. The Enforcement Directorate (ED) has examined Pune-based stud farm owner Hasan Ali Khan in connection with its probe into a money laundering case against the businessman and others. Official sources said Khan was called yesterday to the agency's office here to remain present and render help in "extricating" data from the hardware of the gadgets seized from his premises during a searches conducted by it on February 9, after a gap of two years. The agency also wanted to take his voice samples to match them with certain audio evidences, they said. However, Khan's lawyer Prashant Patil told PTI that taking a voice sample of his client was against the law. "Nothing substantive was asked and Khan was threatened to speak something which the officer shall write on a piece of paper and then the officer would record the voice sample. To this, Khan refused as it's against principles of natural justice," Patil said. He said Khan told investigators that he was "ready to cooperate with them" but they should record his voice sample in "normal conversation mode". Agency sources said Khan's statement was not recorded and will be done at a later stage, if required. Patil said his 61-year-old client was "medically unwell and in a critical condition". The agency, which has booked Khan and few of his alleged associates under criminal charges of money laundering in 2011, had swooped down on a dozen premises last month in connection with its probe. The agency then had said it had seized about Rs 26.30 lakh cash, documents and computer hardware containing information. The sources said the action (searches on February 9) against Khan and his other associates in the case has come about after a two-year lull as the agency wants to revive the case and bring to light additional evidences so that a trial against him in a Mumbai court could be initiated and the case brought to its logical conclusion. Khan, who was also jailed under the provisions of the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), was released on bail in August last year. Khan came under the scrutiny from multiple agencies including the Economic Offences Wing of the Mumbai Police in 2007 which had been probing him and his associates for charges of money laundering, income tax evasion and violations of the Passport Act. He was slapped with an Income Tax notice demanding taxes over Rs 50,000 crore and it was claimed to be the biggest individual case of black money stashed abroad and also that of the highest tax evasion by an individual in the country. While the I-T department raised a tax arrear demand of Rs 50,345.73 crore on Khan, ED registered a criminal case of money laundering against him for allegedly stashing away USD eight billion of unaccounted money in foreign banks. ED has attached few immovable assets of Khan and it is in process to confiscate them soon even as the hearing of the said case in a Mumbai court is scheduled for early next month. The case, also being probed by the Income Tax department and few state police units for various IPC offences, is also crucial for the agencies to crack from the point that he is the only entity named exclusively in the Terms of Reference of the Special Investigation Team (SIT) on black money that was notified by the government last year. The Eiffel Tower will be lit up today evening with Belgium's national colours in solidarity with the victims of the Brussels attacks, Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo announced. The symbol of Paris will be bathed in black, yellow and red light in homage to "the victims, their loved ones and all the people of Belgium," she said in a statement following the attacks that killed at least 26. "Today Europe is targeted at her heart," Hidalgo said. "Once more it is basic values that are attacked: freedom, humanism, tolerance and unshakeable commitment to democracy." She expressed her "full solidarity and that of Parisians," the statement said, adding that the mayor spoke to Brussels counterpart Yvan Mayeur to "tell him how much we share their sadness and grief. At least eight people died while four others were hospitalised in Tando Muhammad Khan near Hyderabad in Pakistan, after they consumed toxic liquor, police said. The victims were yesterday brought to the Civil Hospital in Hyderabad where eight of them, including two women, died, a senior police official said. Four other persons who were hospitalised are still in critical condition, the police official said. Most of those killed are from the minority Hindu community, said senior police official in Hyderabad Munir Ahmed and added the people responsible for the sale of the toxic liquor have been arrested. "They consumed the liquor in Tando Muhammad Khan to celebrate the festival of Holi which is this week. They had brought the cheap moonshine from a local dealer," Ahmed said. The police officer said three of the deceased belonged to one family. Those killed were identified as Bharo, Kangi, Shabnum, Mano, Moti Thakur, Papu Thakur, Hero Thakur and Allah Dino Mallah. Relatives of the dead later blocked the Hyderabad and Badin highway road to protest the failure of the police to stop the sale of toxic liquor, he said. The latest incident is a reminiscent of a similar tragedy that took place in Hyderabad and Karachi in late 2014 during Eid ul Azha celebrations when 29 people had died after consuming toxic moonshine. Alcohol consumption is banned in Pakistan for Muslims but non-Muslims are allowed a ration of liquor which is sold at special wine shops run by the provincial excise departments under government control. Last year in December also four people had died in Karachi after consuming toxic liquor. Eight suspected Naxals, including a woman, were arrested today during a joint operation by security forces in Chhattisgarh's Sukma district. They were apprehended from Murki and Rampuram villages under Gadiras police station limits when the forces were carrying out 'area domination exercise' in the region, Sukma additional Superintendent of Police Santosh Singh told PTI. A joint squad of Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) and district police force had launched the operation in the interior of Gadiras, around 400 km from Raipur, he said. Those arrested were identified as Madavi Muya (35), Somaru (35), Kawasi Manga, Podiyami Bheema, Padami Muya (28), Banjami Hidma (32), Madvi Veera (36) and the woman Madkami Hidme, all residents of different villages in Gadiras region. They were suspected to be involved in several incidents of violence during the last year's panchayat polls, planting of IEDs, digging of roads to hamper vehicular movement, dropping of Maoist pamphlets and putting up posters and banners, etc., the ASP said. European countries today vowed to defend democracy against terrorism after blasts at Brussels airport and in the EU's institutional heart left around 35 dead and more than 200 injured. As Belgium's allies voiced anger and solidarity, Russia and Turkey -- themselves targets of deadly attacks in the last eight months -- said the blasts rammed home the need to fight terrorism of every hue. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel described today as "a day of tragedy, a black day," while European Union (EU) president Donald Tusk lashed "another low by the terrorists in the service of hatred and violence." Around Europe, national leaders pledged support for Belgium and many characterised the attacks -- explosions that ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train during rush hour -- and as an assault on liberty itself. "At this difficult hour, Europe stands up, together and as one. Belgium is not alone," German Foreign Frank-Walter Steinmeier said. "Our Union's capital is under attack. We mourn the dead and pledge to conquer terror through democracy," the Greek foreign ministry said in a tweet. It added in French, "Nous sommes tous Bruxellois," -- "We are all citizens of Brussels." Spanish Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy said: "Terrorism will never defeat us. The union of democrats in Europe will always prevail over barbarism and madness." Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven described the blasts as "an attack against democratic Europe. We will never accept that terrorists attack our open societies." Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi tweeted: "My heart and spirit in Brussels, Europe," while Interior Minister Angelino Alfano said "the Brussels attacks strike the heart of our Europe." "The whole of Europe has been hit," French President Francois Hollande declared, urging the continent to take "vital steps in the face of the seriousness of the threat." In Paris, the Eiffel Tower was to be lit up in the colours of Belgium on Tuesday night in homage to "the victims, their families and the Belgian people," said city mayor Anne Hidalgo. "We will never let these terrorists win," said British Prime Minister David Cameron. "We face a very real terrorist threat right across the different countries of Europe and we have to meet that with everything we have." Across the Atlantic, US State Department spokesman John Kirby said "The United States stands with the people of Belgium. We are ready to support the investigation as appropriate." Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said: "My thoughts are with the victims as we stand with Belgium and the EU. Authorities in Europe have tightened security at airports, on subways, at the borders and on city streets after deadly attacks today on the Brussels airport and its subway system. The Paris airport authority said security was tightened at all Paris airports soon after the Brussels explosions on Tuesday morning. Airports in London, Prague, Amsterdam, Vienna, and many others, also saw increased security. The attacks come just days after the main suspect in the November 13 Paris attacks was arrested in Brussels on Friday. In Moscow, Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov told Russian agencies that authorities will "re-evaluate security" at Russian airports, although its measures are already among some of the toughest across Europe. There have been mandatory checks at the entrances to airports since a 2011 suicide bombing at Moscow's Domodedovo airport that killed 37. Gatwick airport said that "as a result of the terrible incidents in Brussels we have increased our security presence and patrols around the airport." Heathrow said it was working with police to provide a "high-visibility" presence in light of the attacks. In Germany, the state rail system, Deutsche Bahn, has halted its high-speed rail service from Germany to Brussels. The company said its ICE trains are now stopping at the border city of Aachen. The British, Dutch and Polish governments convened emergency meetings as they beefed up security at airports. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Britain's David Cameron vowed to help Belgium. "Our thoughts are there, in Brussels and we are praying for the victims," said Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo, who canceled a routine conference to attend an emergency meeting with her government security council. Austrian Interior Ministry spokesman Karl-Heinz Grundboeck said more police are on the streets and at airports in Vienna and other major Austrian cities even though there appears to be no "Austria connection." Spain's Interior Ministry said officials were meeting to discuss the situation following the blasts in Brussels but that for the moment Spain was maintaining its Security Alert Level 4 one step below the maximum that has been in place since the Charlie Hebdo attacks in Paris in January 2015. France published today a decree setting a January 1 deadline for cigarette manufacturers to introduce plain packages, but Japan Tobacco International immediately said it would challenge the measure. The publication of the decree was the culmination of efforts launched by the government in 2014 to require tobacco firms to sell cigarettes in packages that contain neither logos nor distinctive colouring. But Japan Tobacco International's French subsidiary quickly announced it would challenge the decree before the Council of State. "The introduction of plain packages doesn't take into account the damage it does to the property rights of companies, in particular intellectual property rights," JTI France's Corporate Relations and Communications Director Benoit Bas said in a statement. That is the argument tobacco companies have used against the introduction of plain packaging in Australia. In 2012, Australia became the first country to mandate plain packaging for cigarettes in a bid to reduce smoking rates, and is being followed by Ireland and Britain as well as France. The British ban on logos and branding on cigarette packets goes into force in May, but tobacco firms have filed a legal challenge. The appeal by JTI before the Council of State, which is France's supreme court for administrative justice, won't suspend the introduction of plain packages. Tobacco firms lost their legal cases in Australia and failed to have the matter accepted for international arbitration. French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve today said Paris was deploying 1,600 additional police to border crossings and air, sea and rail infrastructure after the Brussels attacks which killed at least 21 people. "Access to public transport will be restricted to people with tickets and/or ID cards," and they may be frisked, he said after a meeting with President Francois Hollande. Cazeneuve also called on Europe to "further boost coordination and the fight" against terrorism. "These events that strike at the heart of Europe... Show the need to reinforce even more the fight against terrorism," he said. The minister said French authorities have already prevented 10,000 people from entering the country since the November attacks in Paris that claimed 130 lives. London's Gatwick airport stepped up security today after a string of explosions in Brussels as British Prime Minister David Cameron prepared to hold an emergency cabinet meeting on the attacks. "As a result of the terrible incidents in Brussels, we have increased our security presence and patrols around the airport," the airport said in a statement. Cameron earlier said on Twitter he was "shocked and concerned" by the events in Brussels. "I will be chairing a COBRA meeting on the events in Brussels later this morning," Cameron said. COBRA meetings are held to discuss how the government responds to emergency situations and bring together ministers, police and intelligence officers. A string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station on Tuesday, killing at least 13 people, according to media reports, as Belgium raised its terror threat to the maximum level. Delhi High Court today asked the Centre to give an "overall and integrated" timeline of steps it proposes to take to improve policing and reduce crime, particularly against women, children and the elderly in the national capital. A bench of justices Badar Durrez Ahmed and Sanjeev Sachdeva issued the direction after perusing a letter from the Centre which stated that inducting more personnel in Delhi police is a "continuous process" and was "likely to take some time". The bench said the letter cannot leave the issue of increasing the number of cops as "open-ended and vague" and added "the bottomline is that you have to spend money on security of people". It also suggested Centre to have a large pool of officers containing a special section entirely for VIP duty. "You should have a time schedule. Give a concrete timeline," the bench said and asked Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Sanjay Jain to file an affidavit "demonstrating an overall and intergrated timeline of proposed steps to improve policing and reduce incidents of crime, particularly against women, children and elderly". The court said the affidavit should also contain a specific plan with regard to use of technology to improve investigation mechanism. "This would be in sync with the separation of crime investigation from law and order," it added. Referring to the letter, the ASG told the court that currently the police to population ratio was 244 and it would come down to 230 after they induct 4227 more cops which has been approved by the Ministry of Finance. He said the benchmark for police to population in urban areas was 227. The court asked Delhi police to give "statistics with regard to number of cases which are decided by the sessions court, the High Court and Supreme Court in the last five years". Police was asked to also indicate in its affidavit "the number of cases in which there were convictions and number of cases in which there were acquittals". "This way we will know how many of the people you catch go scot-free," the bench said, adding that this would also show whether there has been any improvement in the crime situation in Delhi. "Figures with regard to crime against women and senior citizens to be given separately," it said. It also lamented that the disposal rate of criminal cases in High Court and even the Supreme Court was slow, especially where older matters were concerned, due to fewer number of judges. On the issue of setting up CCTVs in the national capital, Delhi government said that tendering process for the cameras has begun and soon they would be seen across the city. With regard to cameras in 44 identified sensitive areas in the national capital, the city government said that the mechanism for sharing feed has to be decided as Delhi police wants it entirely for itself. The Delhi government said that no one agency or authority alone can be allowed access and control of the feed. The court, however, was of the view that police has to have control and first access to the feed as they are the ones who will respond first to any crime. It, thereafter, said that it would examine the issue and the manner of sharing the feed would be considered on the next date of hearing, May 4. Meanwhile, Delhi police told the court that it has initiated a pilot project of installing 10 CCTV cameras in 10 police stations of Delhi and tenders for it have been floated. It said the tenders would be opened in May this year. On the last date of hearing, the court had pulled up police for its failure to instal CCTV cameras at all police stations here, despite having taken initiative 13 years ago. The court had also termed the police's response in the matter as "a complete eyewash" and said the force did not even know whether the cameras it has installed so far were working. It also said the police does not even know whether the cameras in its 108 police stations are working and wanted to know the reasons they were not working. The court was hearing a PIL initiated by it after the December 16, 2012, sensational gangrape case, and in which it has been periodically giving directions with regard to improving crime investigation and protection of women. Global warming may make the famous vineyards of France and Switzerland too hot for traditionally grown grapes, which may affect good quality wines from those regions, researchers warn. Temperature is the main driver of grape-harvest timing, and in the last 30 years, progressive warming has pushed harvest dates dramatically forward across the globe, from California to Australia, South America and Europe. In France, where records go back centuries, since 1980 harvest dates have advanced two weeks over the 400-year mean. These earlier harvests have meant some very good years. However, existing studies suggest that regions here and elsewhere will eventually become too hot for traditionally grown grapes. Vineyards may then have to switch to hotter-climate varieties, change long-established methods, move or go out of business. Scientists analysed 20th and 21st-century weather data, premodern reconstructions of temperature, precipitation and soil moisture, and vineyard records and going back to 1600. They showed that in the relatively cool winemaking areas of France and Switzerland, early harvests have always required both above-average air temperatures and late-season drought. In the past, droughts helped heighten temperature just enough to pass the early-harvest threshold. Normally, daily evaporation of moisture from soil cools earth's surface. If drought makes soils dryer, there will be less evaporation, and thus the surface will get hotter. The researchers said that up to the 1980s, the climate was such that without the extra kick of heat added by droughts, vineyards could not get quite hot enough for an early harvest. That has now changed; the study found that since then, overall warming alone has pushed summer temperatures over the threshold without the aid of drought. On the whole, France warmed about 1.5 degrees Celsius during the 20th century, and the upward climb has continued. "Now, it's become so warm thanks to climate change, grape growers don't need drought to get these very warm temperatures," said lead author Benjamin Cook, scientist at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory and NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies. The regions affected include familiar names including Alsace, Champagne, Burgundy, Languedoc. These areas grow Pinot Noirs, Chardonnays and other fairly cool-weather varieties that thrive within specific climate niches, and turn out exceptionally after an early harvest. The earliest French harvest ever recorded - 2003, when a deadly heat wave hit Europe and grapes were picked a full month ahead of the once-usual time - did not produce particularly exceptional wines, researchers said. "That may be a good indicator of where we're headed. If we keep pushing the heat up, vineyards can't maintain that forever," said Elizabeth Wolkovich, from Harvard University. The study was published in the journal Nature Climate Change. Shares of realty firm Godrej Properties Ltd (GPL) gained over 2 per cent today after the company announced setting up of a real estate fund, which has raised USD 275 million, with Dutch pension fund APG as the lead investor. The stocks surged 2.09 per cent to Rs 293.80 on BSE. At NSE too, shares of the company jumped 2.09 per cent to Rs 293.90. GPL, the real estate arm of the Godrej group, yesterday said it has "created a dedicated real estate funds management business in India and Singapore -- Godrej Fund Management (GFM)". "GFM has raised a USD 275 million (Rs 19 billion) pool of capital, Godrej Residential Investment Program II (GRIP II), with Dutch pension fund asset manager APG Asset Management NV (APG) as the lead investor," it had said. The fund will invest in residential projects in India. All academic institutions and hotels have been directed by the government to inform it about a foreign student or a guest within 24 hours of their making an entry. In a gazette notification, the Home Ministry said every university and educational institution shall furnish to the Foreigner Regional Registration Officer information in respect of foreign students enrolled in the institute within 24 hours of his or her arrival. While course name, course duration and fee structure have to be furnished at the beginning, a half-yearly report has to be given on attendance of the student in the class, result and general conduct of the student. The Home Ministry also said all hotels will require to furnish details of a foreign guest, including his or her signature, on arrival at its premises. The foreign visitor's name and nationality have to be maintained in a register. The hotels have to furnish details from the foreign guest about his or her purpose of visit to India, proposed duration of stay, whether employed in India, address to which the visitor is proceeding besides others. Every particular, other than the signature of the keeper of a hotel or a visitor, which is required to be recorded in the said register, shall be recorded by the keeper of the hotel in English language, if he is so able, or otherwise, in an Indian language. If a visitor does not understand English language, it shall be the duty of the keeper of the hotel, if so requested, to explain to the visitor the requirements of the government order. (REOPENS DEL57) The keeper of the hotel will, as soon as may be but not more than twenty-four hours, after the arrival of a foreigner, transmit a copy of the particulars written duly completed from the particulars furnished by the foreigner, to the registration officer, the notification said. The Home Ministry said 'hotel' includes any boarding-house, club, 'dak-bunglow', rest house, hostel, paying guest house, 'sarai', rented accommodation, hospital, or other premises of like nature, furnished or unfurnished, where lodging or sleeping accommodation is provided for reward. 'Keeper of a hotel' means the person having the management of a hotel and includes any person authorised by him, and competent to perform the duties of the keeper of the hotel. 'Sign' includes, in respect of a visitor who is unable to write, the marking of a thumb impression or other mark by means of which he is accustomed to attest a document; and 'Visitor' means a person for whom accommodation is provided at the hotel, the notification said. However, the order is not applicable to anyone registered as Overseas Citizen of India Cardholder under the Citizenship Act, 1955, the notification said. Setting a precedence, the government today launched a telephone feedback mechanism for grievance redressal of citizens. Initiating the process, Union Minister of State for Personnel and Public Grievances Jitendra Singh personally called up three complainants chosen on a random basis, who had registered their grievances with the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances and their grievances were disposed off. The Minister sought their feedback regarding the response given by the government to the grievances. The complainants included Vijay V Lambat (Nagpur) who had complained regarding the refund of money from Income Tax Department. The second person contacted by the Minister was Aravindbabu Pormar (Bangalore) who had complained against Railways and sought refund of money from the Ministry of Railways. The third person contacted was Paladugu Samba Siva Rao (Odisha) whose grievance related to provident fund with the Ministry of Labour and Employment. The citizens contacted thanked the Minister and the department. They also suggested that the citizens should be contacted once over phone before closing the grievance. The Minister assured that the department is committed to taking steps in this direction. Singh said "this direct citizen contact through telephone will not only enable us to assess the level of satisfaction received by the complaints after the redressal of grievance, it will also help in offering us valuable inputs required to improve the grievance redressal mechanism." "In the current age of social media and web portal, this approach will also give the citizens a feeling of direct involvement in the government's grievance redressal mechanism," he said. The Minister said that in future, he himself will be calling the citizens at random and verify whether their complaints have been disposed off. Singh said that during the last one year, ending December 2015, the grievance cell has received nearly 10 lakh complaints as compared to the average of 2-3 lakh yearly complaints earlier. He claimed nearly 90 per cent complaints are redressed now. The government is targetting to award road projects worth Rs 1 lakh crore in North East in the next five years, Union Minister Nitin Gadkari has said. Chairing the meeting of the Parliamentary Consultative Committee of the Ministry of Road Transport & Highways, Gadkari informed that "there is a target to award road projects worth Rs 1 lakh crore in the North East during the next five years." The meeting was held here last evening to discuss the functioning of National Highways and Infrastructure Development Corporation Ltd ( NHIDCL) and the issue of road safety, the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways said in a statement. Through a presentation made on the functioning of NHIDCL, the committee was informed the company is working to fast pace the construction of National Highways and other infrastructure in the North Eastern states and strategic areas. NHIDCL is entrusted with 109 projects in 13 states including Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Nagaland, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Tripura, Sikkim and West Bengal. The total length of the projects is 7,148 km and they are at various stages of project development, the statement said. The minister also informed that several bridges have come up on the river Brahmaputra, providing relief to a large number of people. Gadkari also informed there are plans for making 1,100 km all-weather road at Rs 12,000 crore in Uttarakhand, of which about Rs 650-700 crore worth of work has already been awarded. Regarding road safety, the committee was informed that the government has set a target for reducing road accident fatalities by 50 per cent by 2020 and has taken several steps to prevent road accidents. A National Road Safety Policy has been approved, which outlines various policy measures like promoting awareness, establishing road safety information data base, encouraging safer road infrastructure, enforcement of safety laws etc. The government has constituted the National Road Safety Council as the apex body to take policy decisions in the matter of road safety. "The Ministry has evolved a multi pronged strategy to tackle the problem based on the 4 Es viz Education, Engineering ( both of roads and vehicles) Enforcement and Emergency Care," the statement said. Road safety has been made an integral part of road designing, safety audits are being taken up for selected stretches of National Highways, around 700 accident black spots have been identified and remedial steps are being taken at such spots. "The threshold for four-laning of National Highways has been reduced from 15,000 Passenger Car Units (PCUs) to 10,000 and about 52,000 km of state highways are set to be converted into National Highways," it said. It is planned to set up model driving training institutes in states and run publicity campaigns in print and electronic media. NHAI provides ambulances at a distance of 50 km on its completed stretches of National Highways. Pilot projects for cashless treatment of road accident victims has been started on Gurgaon-Jaipur, Vadodara - Mumbai stretch of NH 8 and Ranchi-Rargaon-Mahulia stretch of NH 33. The ministry plans to extend this scheme to road accident victims on North-South corridor, East-West Corridor and Golden Quadrilateral. Members of the Consultative Committee appreciated the work being done by the Road Transport and Highway Ministry. They also pointed out certain problems in their respective areas, which were noted for follow up action. The NDA government wants to make the Northeast a hub for trade with South East Asian countries but for that peace must prevail in the region, Home Minister Rajnath Singh said today. Addressing a 'Sainik Sammelan' on the occasion of 181st Raising Day of Assam Rifles here, Singh said for development of any region, connectivity is of utmost important as it enhances contacts that leads to more trade. "We want to make the Northeastern region as the hub of our trade with South East Asian countries. But for that peace must be prevailed," he said. Singh said Assam Rifles, with its glorious past, has to play an important role in ensuring peace in the Northeast. "With increased connectivity, contacts will be enhanced and that will boost cross-border trade," he said. The Home Minister said the kind of development that had to take place in the Northeast has not been happened even after almost seven decades of independence. "Our priority is fast-pace development of the Northeast," he said. Singh said insurgency continued to plague the region while there have been Maoists activities in some pockets of the region. He said several forces have been trying to destabilise and weaken India through their nefarious deigns. "Our army, paramilitary forces and police are taking on such challenges. You (Assam Rifles) will have to defeat all destructive forces operating in the Northeast," he said. Complimenting Assam Rifles for beginning the process for inducting a batch of 127 women in its rank, the Home Minister stressed the need for increasing the number of women in the force on the lines of other paramilitary forces of the country. Singh said insurgency was at its lowest now in the Northeast and there has been a 30 per cent decrease in violence. Level of violence was lowest last year in the Northeast in the last 18 years, he said. Assam Rifles is the oldest paramilitary force in the country and it was set up in 1835 with Shillong as its headquarters. Over the course of its history, the Assam Rifles and its predecessors have served in a number of roles , conflicts and theatres in World War I and II during which it had served in Europe, Middle East and Myanmar. The Assam Rifles, under the control of Ministry of Home Affairs, at present is serving in different capacities, including maintaining internal security, anti-insurgency operations and guarding the Indo-Myanmar border. Singh, who is on a two-day tour of Meghalaya, had yesterday said the Centre was ready for talks with insurgent groups in the Northeast if they shun violence. "We are ready for talks with anyone who gives up violence. I appeal to everyone to shun violence," he had told reporters here. There are two militant groups in Meghalaya, HNLC and ANVC, active in Khasi hills and Garo hills regions respectively. The central government is in talks with a number of insurgent groups, including NSCN-IM and ULFA(pro-talks). However, several outfits are against any kind of negotiation and continue to indulge in violence that include NSCN-K, PLA in Manipur and Paresh Baruah-led faction of ULFA. (Reopens DES11) Singh also announced creation of 2,500 posts of havildar to remove stagnation at the elementary level in the force. Earlier, the DG Assam Rifles HJS Sachdev while addressing the troops said the force will stand to benefit as more sophisticated weapons would be introduced for counter insurgency operations. The Gujarat Congress today staged a walkout from the Assembly during Question Hour on the issue of removal of a question related to the state Waqf Board, after the Opposition alleged that it was done in the last moment at the behest of ruling BJP government. During the Question Hour today, Congress MLAs raised their objection when Deputy Speaker Atmaram Parmar skipped question no.5 and called out the next question for discussion. In the printed booklet of questions, it was written that "since the matter raised in the question is sub-judice, it has been removed upon the request of the minister". The question, which was submitted by Congress MLA Mohammad Javed Peerzada ahead of the session, was related to the sale of property lying under state Waqf board. When Leader of Opposition Shankersinh Vaghela and senior Congress MLA Shaktisinh Gohil asked Parmar to allow their MLA to raise the question in the House, the Deputy Speaker opined that the question has been removed from the official list upon request by the concerned minister and it is not possible for him to allow that question. On this, Gohil argued that it is illegal to remove a question once it has been selected and given priority number for discussion in the House. He also cited a recent circular of Assembly Secretariat, in which, Gohil claimed that it was clearly mentioned that no question can be removed once it is selected after the draw and alloted priority number. Replying to Gohil, Gujarat Law Minister Pradeepsinh Jadeja claimed that no one can question the decision of Speaker about the selection of questions. Jadeja also claimed that such a circular becomes null and void if it violates the rules which govern the Assembly. "This question was related to Waqf Board properties and a case is in the court. Since the question has been removed by the Speaker, it is not proper to raise question against this decision. Assembly Rules are above any circular," said Jadeja, who also handles legislative affairs department. Unhappy with explanations given by Parmar and Jadeja, the LoP Vaghela announced to boycott the Question Hour and walked out of the House with 50-odd Congress MLAs. While talking to media, MLA Peerzada alleged that government intentionally removed his question as it was related to some controversial approvals given by state Waqf Board to sell some of its property, which according to him, is not permitted under the law. "Waqf Board indulged in corruption by selling various properties, such as crematoriums, shrines and even mosques. Since my question would have exposed the illegal approvals given by Waqf Board to sell these properties, it has been removed on the last moment," Peerzada alleged. According to Vaghela, such tradition of removing 'uncomfortable' questions was started when Narendra Modi was the Chief Minister in Gujarat. "Such unethical practices started ever since he (Modi) became the CM in 2001. This is a mockery of the system. The Speaker is supposed to protect the rights of each member of the House. But it seems that Speaker only protects the ruling party members," Vaghela told reporters. The Madras High Court has quashed a charge sheet filed by police against a 75-year-old woman charging her with subjecting her granddaughter-in-law to cruelty and warned that further prosecution in the case would amount to abuse of process of law. Justice P N Prakash of the court's Madurai bench, allowing a petition filed by the septuagenarian woman as well as the complainant's married sister-in-law residing in Bengaluru, said "usual allegations of cruelty that are normally levelled against the family members in matrimonial cases, have been made here also". He said even the Supreme Court felt that IPC Section 498-A (woman being subjected to cruelty by husband or his relatives) had earned "a dubious place of pride amongst the provisions that are used as weapons rather than shield by disgruntled wives". The judge said in the present case, the sub-inspector of All Women Police Station, Madurai South, had registered a case against the grandmother and sister of the complainant's husband under IPC sections 498A, 406 (criminal breach of trust) and 506 (criminal intimidation). The petitioners had sought quashing of the charge sheet. (REOPENS LGM1) In another case booked against a family of three by All Women Police at Palayamkottai, the judge quashed the charge sheet in view of a compromise reached between them and the complainant woman. "Considering the nature of allegations and in view of joint memo of compromise, this court is of the opinion that no useful purpose would be served in keeping the matters pending," the judge said, quashingthe entire proceedings pending on the file of the Additional Mahila Judge, Tirunelveli. The Bombay High Court today rapped municipal corporations and district councils across Maharashtra for failing to comply with directions of the court to provide clean and safe public toilets for women. The high court had on December 23, 2015, issued several guidelines to be implemented by all civic bodies and district councils across the state while observing that a woman has the right to have a safe and clean toilet at all convenient places which in a way impacts their right to live with dignity. The court, which was hearing a public interest litigation on the issue of lack of public toilet facilities for women in the state, had then asked the civic bodies to file compliance reports. When the matter came up for hearing today, a division bench of Justices A S Oka and Revati Mohite-Dere expressed dissatisfaction with non-compliance of its order. "There has only been partial compliance despite sufficient time granted to the corporations to take steps to comply with the directions of this court," the court said. The bench directed all municipal corporations to file their affidavits and be represented on the next date of hearing on April 22. "The affidavits must record the outer limit by when the corporations will comply with our directions. If we find failure on part of the civic bodies to take concrete steps, then it will be viewed seriously and appropriate action will be taken," the bench said. The court noted that Ulhasnagar municipal corporation, instead of constructing new toilets, was demolishing the existing ones. Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai (MCGM) in its compliance report said it has formed a committee which has formulated a scheme to provide adequate number of toilets for women. "Budgetary provision of Rs 5 crore has been made for the year 2016-17 to procure e-toilets. 90 toilets have been set up in the last one year and permissions to install 48 more has been sought," the report said. In its December order, the high court had directed all civic bodies to formulate a comprehensive scheme for construction of toilets for women on streets. It had said the scheme shall identify spots on all major and arterial roads for construction of toilets and also include its management and maintenance. The toilets should have regular supply of electricity and water and adequate security. Kerala High Court today directed the state government to inform its stand on handing over the probe to the CBI in a particular solar scam case. The direction was given by Justice B Kemal Pasha on a petition by Saritha S Nair, prime accused in the solar panel scam, who alleged that a businessman had paid money to the Chief Minister's Office in connection with a solar project. She alleged that businessman Malleli Sreedharan Nair had met the Chief Minister to get a personal assurance from him before investing an initial amount of Rs 40 lakh in the project. "Amounts were also paid to the office of the Chief Minister," the petitioner alleged. Accusing the Special Investigation Team set up by the state government to probe the scam of "consciously refusing" to look into "evidence" relating to the meeting between the CM and the businessman, Saritha said "she is even willing to produce such evidence even before the court". She pleaded with the court to direct the state government to conduct a re-investigation into the case registered in Konni Police station by a separate and competent investigating agency, if possible by the CBI. Saritha is facing cheating cases in the scam in which scores of people were allegedly duped of crores of rupees after being promised solar panel solutions. University of Hyderabad VC Prof Appa Rao Podile, who went on leave at the height of an agitation over the suicide of research scholar Rohith Vemula, today resumed charge amid protests from a section of students, who ransacked his official residence leading to tension on the campus. Raising slogans against the Vice Chancellor, agitating students barged into his residence (VC's lodge), broke window panes, smashed doors and television among other items, protesting against his resumption of duty. Prof Podile, who is in the eye of a storm over Vemula's suicide on January 17, had proceeded on leave on January 24 as the agitating students demanded his resignation and held vigorous protests seeking "justice" for Vemula. A battery of high-profile leaders, including Rahul Gandhi and Arvind Kejriwal had visited HCU at the height of protests. Based on a complaint by a section of students, Cyberabad police had registered a case against Union Minister Bandaru Dattatreya, Podile and three others in connection with the suicide. Podile was scheduled to hold a press conference this morning but it was cancelled following the violence. One of the protesting students said, "Our primary demand is that the VC should not come...We lost Rohith Vemula. He (Podile) is one of the culprits. Its almost over two months since the incident but no action has been initiated." The protesting students demanded that the VC be immediately arrested. A large number of police personnel were deployed near the Vice Chancellor's lodge as tension prevailed on the campus. D Prashant, one of the five suspended students, said the VC had no moral right to resume duties and conduct an Executive Committee meeting as a case with regard to Vemula's suicide was still pending against him. "At the behest of (Union Minister) Venkaiah Naidu, he (VC) came to UoH (University of Hyderabad, also called HCU). At the behest of central government, he occupied the VC seat despite the fact that the whole University resisted against it," he said. "We are appealing to the police to arrest him (VC) first as he has not got any interim relief from the High Court on his petition (in the suicide case)," Prashant said. He claimed some of the ABVP members vandalised the VC's residence to tarnish the image of the agitating student community and divert the whole issue. Some members belonging to ABVP later gathered at the VC lodge to prevent the protesters from entering the house. Speaking to reporters, Podile said, "I was having a meeting with some deans and members of the executive committee on how to handle the things in the university. Meanwhile, a group of students came, banged the doors, ransacked the office and resorted to violence of a magnitude which we have never seen in the university." "This is a black day for the University of Hyderabad," he said. Our internal mechanisms will address if the students have some issues. Unfortunately, these group of students have broken everything. They have not given any representation... they have not even asked to talk. They just banged and broke the doors, Podile said. "If any group of students can dictate who should be the Vice Chancellor, this is going to be a national problem not just in University of Hyderabad. Tomorrow, any hundred or fifty students can say this particular Vice Chancellor should be there. "The students did not resort to a dialogue. They should have given me a representation. Without telling anything ransacking the office to this magnitude is uncalled for and not expected from students of University of Hyderabad. All the teachers feel that this is unbecoming of the students," he said. Podile said he will seek security from local police following the "vandalism". "The matter is in the court. Judicial Commission is there (probing Vemula suicide incident). Let the report come. Why are they ransacking the office? This we cannot tolerate. We are going to seek the help of local police," he told reporters. When asked about the proposed visit of JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar to HCU tomorrow, the VC said, "I have not given any permission for the meeting. There was no letter (requesting permission for meeting) from anyone on this. I will have to discuss with police and my colleagues then only I can comment." He advised media not to sensationalise the issue and to verify facts before reporting. "Media should collect facts and then report. They should not look for sensation. They talk to two or three students and put out banner stories. That is not the way to project the university and damage the reputation of the university and we are worried about it," he added. Five persons, including a 55-year- old woman, were arrested and heroin worth around Rs 20 crore allegedly seized from their possession as Delhi Police claimed to have busted an inter-state drug cartel. The accused, identified as Balkar Singh (36), Gurcharan Singh (35), Manjeet Singh (40), Satnam Singh (42) and Krishna Devi (55), allegedly used to procure drugs from several states and supplied the same mostly to their clientele in Punjab, DCP (Special Cell) SK Yadav said today. A Special Cell team first arrested Balkar and Gurcharan, both recently released from Kapurthala jail in Punjab, on March 16. The duo had picked up a consignment from sources in Delhi and Uttar Pradesh. Around 3.50kg heroin was recovered from their possession, police said. During interrogation, they told police they had met one Satnam Singh in jail and he was their main supplier. Satnam turned out to be a leading drug dealer in UP's Shahjahanpur who also had his network in Roorkee and Haridwar. After he was arrested, Satnam led police to Manjeet, who was nabbed on March 18. The last accused, Krishna Devi, was arrested yesterday. Police said they recovered another 2.25kg of heroin during the investigation. "The value of the total heroin recovered is worth around Rs 20 crore on the international market," a senior official said. Police said Krishna Devi has been in the narcotics business for around 25 years and was earlier arrested in cases of kidnapping for ransom, dacoity, rioting, etc. Her husband was a farmer who passed away in 2007. The IMF today said it has not asked China for "any additional information" on the currency operations in the world's second biggest economy. Refuting media report in this regard, an IMF spokesperson said in a statement: "China subscribed to the Special Data Dissemination Standard (SDDS) at the end of 2015 and is disseminating its data accordingly." "The Fund has not asked for any additional information," China's state-run Xinhua quoted the statement as saying. The statement came in response to a US media report stating that the IMF has called on the Chinese central bank to release more data on its holdings of derivatives such as forwards. Meanwhile, Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in his meeting with IMF Chief, Christine Lagarde voiced China's disapproval of any "currency war," as it would not help global economic recovery. China has no intention to boost exports by devaluating the yuan, as this is not conducive to China's economic transformation either, Li told Lagarde when she called on him here yesterday. Li said China will continue to push forward with financial market reform and construction of legal system, and press ahead with developments to the yuan exchange rate formation mechanism in line with the principles of independence, gradualism and controllability, state-run media reported. China will, according to its economic fundamentals and the need to maintain financial stability, make the exchange rate of yuan float in two ways within a reasonable range, and maintain the exchange rate "basically stable at an adaptable and equilibrium level," Li said. China's move last year to devalue its currency nearly four per cent has sent world markets in a tizzy. It was stated as a move to increase the value of its exports, which Chinese officials denied. Chinese economy last year has slowed down to 6.9 per cent, its weakest growth in a quarter century. The government has cutdown growth target to 6.5 per cent for this year. In his meeting with Lagarde,Li also vowed that China is capable of preventing regional and systemic financial risks. He said that most of China's big commercial banks are state-owned. The government's debt ratio, especially that of the central government is comparatively low while the people's saving rate is comparatively high. Lagarde, who is here for the China Development Forum, spoke highly of China's 13th Five-year Plan, saying it will help China's economy continue to play a leading role in world economic development, the report said. She also praised China's recent policy communication on the exchange rate of yuan as effective, as it strengthened the international market's confidence. India and Russia today decided to enhance mutual cooperation in counter-disaster management with a special focus on under-water rescue, aviation rescue and fire fighting capabilities. A Russian delegation led by Minister for Civil Defence, Emergencies and Elimination of Consequences of Natural Disasters, Vladimir Puickkov today visited the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) headquarters here to forge a cooperation pact between the two sides. NDRF chief O P Singh sought sharing of expertise between the two sides keeping in mind the forces' challenges in the Urban Search and Rescue (USAR), Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear combat and training of disaster canine squads. "There is a lot of scope for Indo-Russian cooperation in crisis management. Russia has the latest monitoring system, equipment and tools through which much can be learnt. There is always a scope for acceleration and optimisation of emergency response activities. "Russia can provide consultancy services in establishing state-of-the-art National Emergency Operation Centre in Delhi," Singh said. On his part, Puickkov said they look forward to creating a "special working group" between the two sides even as he invited the NDRF to visit their training and other facilities in Russia. The other areas and forms of co-operation wherein the two sides are planning to join hands are: early warning, assessment of risk, joint conference, workshops, training of specialists, mutual assistance in providing technical facilities and equipment, planning and carrying out activities related to emergency preparedness, prevention and response among others. The NDRF chief also briefed the Russian delegation about the Indian scenario vis-a-vis disasters and about the role of the force. The NDRF is the mainstay central force for disaster response in the country and functions under the Union Home Ministry. It has 12 battalions (about 12,000 personnel) located at various bases in the country for these tasks. In order to create jobs on a large scale, should emerge as an attractive destination for big manufacturing firms that are moving out of China because of rising wages and demographic transition, NITI Aayog Vice Chairman Arvind Panagariya said. "It seems that there is going to be massive shift in the large scale firms (from China). ought to be the destination (for them). It is very good time for (to attract these firms)," Panagariya said addressing a CII conference here. "The demographic transition (ageing population) in China is opposite of that in India. The workforce is declining in China. So the labour intensive industries move out of China and go somewhere else," he said. "Today you observe is that wages in China rising and already these are about two to three times. In manufacturing if you convert these to Indian rupees then the average wage is about Rs five lakh (every year)," he added. Citing an example of Foxconn which employs 1.3 million workers, he said: "In its single establishment, you see 20,000 workers. These are the kind of firms those are moving out (of China). There is a question. Where would they go? Right now some are going to Vietnam, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and some are coming to India also." Panagariya was of the view that if India wants transformation then it needs to bring workers into non- agriculture areas. "If you talk about transforming the workforce of 500 million with half of it in agriculture, then clothing, food processing, footwear and electronic products are the segments where India need to succeed," he added. Auto parts, machinery sector, chemical industry and petroleum refining are the industries on manufacturing side which are successful but don't create a lot of jobs, he said. The services sector provides jobs to skilled workers not to those who don't have skills. Thus these sectors are very skill intensive, he added. Panagariya said: "The transformation of workers is much slower in India in terms of their movement out of agriculture to non-agriculture and that is where the manufacturing is crucial link." The output share of agriculture (in Indian Economy) has come down to about 16 or 17%, which used to be half of GDP when we got independent, he said. Even in 1991, when reforms were launched in India, the share of agriculture was about 30% (in Indian Economy. A 19-member Indian team today left for Bordeaux in France to compete in the 9th International Abilympics, an event for persons with disabilities, from March 23 to 27. The athletes are being supported by the Hans Foundation, a charitable trust fund. Abilympics, coined from Olympics of abilities of persons with disabilities (PWDs), is a global work skills competition held every four years. It aims to promote social awareness in the field of skills development and employment both locally and internationally, and foster friendship among the competing nations. The contingent of 19 participants was selected from across the country such as Ahmedabad, Pune, Gwalior and Jabalpur (MP), Delhi, Bihar, Allahabad, Chennai and others, to represent India in Bordeaux this year. An Indo-Canadian specialist on cross cultural family mediation will be honoured with the prestigious Gandhi King Ikeda Award for Peace at a ceremony in the US for promoting peace and human rights education. Dr Mohamed Keshavjee, a South Africa-born specialist will be conferred the award in Atlanta on April 5 at the 2016 edition of the Annual Peace Fair and Interfaith Assembly hosted by the Martin Luther King Jr. International Chapel. Keshavjee will make a keynote address that will highlight the roles of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela at the event commemorating the 48th death anniversary of Dr King. His address is entitled 'Gandhi, King and Mandela- Precursors to Transformative Mediation in the twentieth Century'. "Dr Mohamed Keshavjee will be honoured with the Gandhi King Ikeda Award for Peace in recognition of his ongoing dedication to emphasing the role that cosmopolitan ethics and transformative mediation play in promoting peace and human rights education," the organisers said in a statement. "The Award signifies the values practiced and preached by Mohandas K Mahatma Gandhi, Dr Martin Luther King Jr and Dr Daisaku Ikeda, celebrating the three great leaders' commitment to humanitarianism and non-violence," it said. "Keshavjee articulates and embodies the principles most characteristic of these exemplars and his contributions advance the human capacity to realise Dr King's vision of a world distinguished by the dignity of nature with rights in the order of the law," said Dr Lawrence Edward Carter Sr, Dean of King Chapel. Keshavjee has spent three decades working with the secretariat of the Aga Khan in France on programmes aimed at improving the quality of life of people in some of the poorest areas of the world through the Ismaili Imamat and the Aga Khan Development Network. Keshavjee's recently published memoir 'Into that Heaven of Freedom' has been hailed in a number of countries which launches in India and South Africa later this year. Delving into his ancestral connections in Gujarat and other areas of India; the migration of some of them to South Africa and then to East Africa, and the Ismaili community finally settling across the globe; the book chronicles the history of South Asians in Africa with a particular focus on the role played by Mahatma Gandhi in the evolution of African political consciousness. Keshavjee now lives in the UK with his wife Dr Amina Jindani, a world-renowned specialist on tuberculosis who works at the St George's University Hospital in London. Jammu and Kashmir Governor N N Vohra today greeted the people on Holi and hoped that the festival of colours would be a harbinger of peace, progress and prosperity in the state. In his message, the Governor said, "the celebration of festivals, an important part of our rich cultural heritage, strengthens the bonds of brotherhood, love and amity. Sepoy Jagdish Chand, who bravely chased and killed one of the terrorists who had attacked the Pathankot air base before being martyred, was among the 58 personnel who were honoured with gallantry and other service-related awards by President Pranab Mukherjee here today. Chand was honoured with Kirti Chakra, the second highest peace-time decoration, for displaying great presence of mind, valour and conspicuous gallantry before making the supreme sacrifice. His award was handed over by the President to his wife, who received a rapturous clapping from the audience which included Vice President Hamid Ansari, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, among others. Col M N Rai of Gorkha Rifles was honoured with Shaurya Chakra (Posthumous) for unprecedented courage and valour, well beyond the call of duty, that he displayed during an encounter in Pulwama district of Jammu and Kashmir on January 27, last year. His daughter, Alka Rai, who had left the nation emotionally devastated as she rose above her grief to shriek an old Gorkha war cry just before his cremation last year, stood up in attention as her mother received the award from the President. Havildar Tanka Kumar Limbu of the 21 Para, who had taken part in the operation on June 8, last year along the Indo-Myanmar border, was also given Shaurya Chakra. Mohammad Shafi Sheikh and Reyaz Ahmad Lone, two constables of Jammu and Kashmir Police, were also honoured with Shaurya Chakra (Posthumous). The same award also went to Hira Kumar Jha, Second-in-Command of CRPF's 7th Battalion, who was killed in an encounter with Naxals in Bihar last year. Meanwhile, Vice Chief of Navy Vice Admiral P Murugesan was given Param Vishist Seva Medal and Deputy Chief of Army Lt Gen Subrata Saha was given Uttam Yudh Seva Medal. Jawaharlal Nehru University Students' Union (JNUSU) president Kanhaiya Kumar would visit Hyderabad and Vijayawada tomorrow and the day after, a senior CPI leader said here today. Kumar would speak at the Hyderabad Central University (HCU) tomorrow evening and a meeting on 'Constitutional Rights' at the Sundarayya Vignana Kendram here on March 24, CPI national executive member K Narayana said. The JNUSU president would speak on the same topic at an event in Vijayawada on March 24 evening, he said. The events are organised by student groups and AISF, he said. Kanhaiya Kumar shot to national limelight after facing sedition charges. A group of students today allegedly ransacked the official residence of Hyderabad Central University (HCU) Vice-Chancellor Prof Appa Rao Podile, protesting against his resumption of duty after having been on long leave. Prof Podile had gone on a long leave at the height of students' agitation seeking justice for Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula who committed suicide on January 17 at a hostel room in the HCU campus. JNU students' union president Kanhaiya Kumar, who is out on bail in a sedition case, today met Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi. Kanhaiya, accompanied by a delegation of JNU students and members of All India Students Federation (AISF), met the Congress Vice President at his residence in Tughlaq lane area here. While Kanhaiya did not interact with the media after his an hour-long meeting, NSUI Chief Roji M John described it as a courtesy call to thank Gandhi for his support during the ongoing row at the university. "A JNU delegation headed by Kanhaiya met Rahul Gandhi, it was a courtesy call. They thanked him for his continuous support ever since the issue started. "Gandhi not only supported the students at JNU but also FTII and IIT Madras where students have been protesting against the way government is attacking institutions. We will continue this fight to protect autonomy of institutions," John told reporters. Gandhi in his tweet merely said, "met a delegation of student leaders from AISF and JNUSU President". The Congress leader had visited the JNU campus on February 13, a day after Kanhaiya was arrested in a sedition case over an event at the varsity against hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru during which anti-national slogans were allegedly raised. In a hard-hitting attack on Modi government over JNU student's arrest, Gandhi had virtually drawn parallel of it with the Nazi regime of Hitler, accusing NDA of "suppressing" students' voice and telling students "don't let those bullies push you around". JNU students union president Kanhaiya Kumar who is out on bail in a sedition case, will be visiting Hyderabad Central University tomorrow where he is expected to join the protest against Rohith Vemula's suicide. Kumar will also meet Vemula's mother. Vemula, a Dalit PhD scholar, was found hanging at the Hyderabad varsity's hostel room on January 17. "Kanhaiya is leaving for Hyderabad tomorrow along with a delegation of JNU students and members of All India Students Federation (AISF). He is expected to address the protest gathering over Vemula's suicide and also meet his mother," an AISF member said, adding that he will be back in Delhi on March 25. The Hyderabad University witnessed protests after Vice Chancellor Appa Rao Podile resumed office today after going on leave amid the storm following the suicide of Vemula. The students, who have been protesting ever since Vemula committed suicide, vandalised the VC's residence where he was due to address the press in a shortwhile. JNU students who are caught in a row over an event on campus against hanging of Parliament attack convict Afzal Guru during which anti-national slogans were allegedly raised, have been protesting in the national capital demanding resignation of HRD minister Smriti Irani over Vemula suicide issue. Earlier in the day, Kanhaiya had met Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi at his Tughlaq lane residence to thank him for his support during the ongoing controversy. Thinking of a perfect gift for in-laws could be brain wracking but Kate Middleton came up with an amazing answer to what should be her first Christmas present to the Queen after marriage -- homemade chutney. In an ITV documentary 'Our Queen at 90' to celebrate the monarch's milestone birthday on April 21, Kate has disclosed her worries about buying Queen Elizabeth II a Christmas present for her first year at Sandringham in 2011. She eventually vowed to bring along something homemade, whipping up a batch of chutney from her own grandmother's recipe. Speaking about the episode, Kate says she had been relieved to notice the Queen put it on her dining table the next day. In her first ever solo television interview, the Duchess of Cambridge was quoted by The Telegraph as saying, "She (the Queen) really cares." "I can remember being at Sandringham, for the first time, at Christmas. And I was worried what to give the Queen as her Christmas present. I was thinking, 'Gosh, what should I give her?" the 34-year-old royal says in the documentary. "I thought back to what would I give my own grandparents. And I thought, 'I'll make her something'. Which could have gone horribly wrong. But I decided to make my granny's recipe of chutney," she says. "I was slightly worried about it, but I noticed the next day that it was on the table. I think such a simple gesture went such a long way for me and I've noticed since she's done that on lots of occasions and I think it just shows her thoughtfulness, really, and her care in looking after everybody," Kate adds. The recipe is thought to have been a marrow chutney, which takes several hours to prepare. The instructions are detailed in her sister Pippa Middleton's 2012 recipe book Celebrate, entitled 'Granny's Marrow Chutney'. The Duchess did not specify which granny passed the recipe onto her. The two-hour documentary also features contributions from Prince Charles and Duchess of Cornwall, Kate's husband Prince William, Prince Harry, the Duke of York, and Princesses Beatrice and Eugenie. According to the Radio Times, 11 members of the royal family have given face-to-face interviews, making it "a record-breaker before a single moment is broadcast". The head of Ukraine's state security services said today he could not rule out Moscow's involvement in the deadly Brussels blasts, prompting the Russian prime minister to call him a "moron". Today attacks on the Belgian capital's international airport and a metro train killed around 35 people and were claimed by the self-proclaimed Islamic State group. But Ukraine's SBU state security service chief Vasyl Grytsak told reporters a possible Russian role could not be ruled out. "I do not make unsubstantiated statements and affirm anything," Grytsak said in televised comments. "But I would not be surprised if these acts of terror in Brussels have a Russian trace." Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev issued a swift and blunt response. "SBU chief Grytsak, who made the announcement about Russia's involvement in the Brussels terrorist attacks, is a moron," Medvedev wrote on Facebook. Relations between the two ex-Soviet neighbours have been frozen since Russia's March 2014 annexation of Ukraine's Crimea peninsula and the subsequent outbreak of a pro-Moscow eastern separatist revolt. Russia denies Ukrainian and Western charges of sparking the conflict in reprisal for the February 2014 ouster in Kiev of the country's Kremlin-backed president. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Tuesday offered to swap two suspected Russian soldiers captured in the separatist east for Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko who was sentenced to 22 years by a Russian judge. Russian President Vladimir "Putin has said that after the so-called sentence, he will return Nadiya Savchenko to Ukraine," Poroshenko said in a statement published on the presidential website. "The time to keep promises has come. I, in turn, am ready to hand over to Russia two Russian servicemen detained on our territory for their involvement in the armed aggression against Ukraine. On the World Water Day, members of Andhra Pradesh Legislative Council and Legislative Assembly today took a pledge that they would do their bit to conserve water and strive to make the state drought-free. Chairman A Chakrapani administered the pledge to the members in the Council. Speaker Kodela Sivaprasada Rao administered the pledge in the Assembly after Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu made a 25-page statement highlighting the need to conserve water and the various steps initiated by his government in this regard. "...I will not waste a drop of water and will be a partner in water conservation. I will do my bit for conserving water and building drought-free Andhra Pradesh," the pledge read. Naidu said his government was trying to build a Smart Water Grid to make the state drought-proof in next five years. "The vision of the government is to make the state drought-proof within five years with the aim of eradicating poverty and reducing economic inequalities through better water management. Water conservation mission has been launched as a sub-mission under Primary Sector Mission. "Inter and intra-linking of rivers from surplus to deficit basins is a major drought-proofing measure, which will also help in ground water recharge," the Chief Minister said. "Through inter-linking of rivers, it is proposed to utilise 150 to 200 tmc ft of water thereby bridging a gap ayacut of 15 lakh acres and creating a new ayacut of 14 acres in drought-prone areas of Rayalaseema (four districts), SPS Nellore and Prakasam districts," he added. The state government has been requesting the Centre to take up inter-linking projects like Vamsadhara-Nagavali, Mahanadi-Godavari and Godavari-Krishna-Penna-Palar and Cauvery, Chandrababu said. Smart Water Grid would be created on the lines of electric power grids to ensure water supply to needy areas by storing water in surplus areas. A number of cascades would be developed in all the river basins in the state through inter-linking of all tanks while a series of check dams and sub-surface dams would be constructed at suitable locations on all minor rivers and streams to recharge ground water, the Chief Minister said. A massive programme of digging ten lakh farm ponds was undertaken under the Panta Sanjivani scheme for water supplementation during times of scarcity. The farm ponds would also help in recharge of ground water, Naidu added. Speaker Kodela cut Leader of Opposition Y S Jaganmohan Reddy short when the latter sought to find fault with the Chief Minister's statement on irrigation projects. "Today is World Water Day....Don't dilute the issue. There is no scope for any discussion on the government's statement," the Speaker told Reddy. YSRC members rushed into the Well of the House but the Speaker strongly told them to not to create a scene. The Speaker then administered the pledge to the MLAs and adjourned the House till Saturday. Water Resources Minister Devineni Umamaheswara Rao read out the Chief Minister's statement in the Council. Differing with the Delhi High Court interim order lifting the ban on fixed dose combination (FDC) medicines of some pharma companies, the Madras High Court today refused to interfere with the Centre's order prohibiting their sale and manufacture in India. A bench of Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Justice M M Sundresh declined to stay the Centre's March 10 notification banning over 300 FDC drugs by refusing to concur with the Delhi High Court's interim order granting relief to some major pharmaceutical companies against the government decision. "On consideration of the matter, we respectfully disagree with the view of the single judge of the Delhi high court and are not inclined to pass an all-encompassing order," the bench said. The court also issued notice to both the Centre and the state government to explain their stand on a petition filed by Federation of South Indian Pharmaceutical Manufacturers Association seeking to quash the notification. A single judge of Delhi High Court had first passed the interim order in favour of pharmaceutical companies on March 14 and identical relief was given subsequently to those who approached it and the relief is granted till March 28. With two high courts differing on the issue, there is a likelihood of the matter reaching the Supreme Court. The division bench of Madras High Court did not agree with the contention of senior counsel Vijay Narayanan, who appeared for the petitioners, that identical relief as granted by Delhi High Court be considered in the matter. The Pharma Association contended that Centre had unilaterally and arbitrarily prohibited the sale and manufacture of the FDCs produced for decades, without complying with process of natural justice. "We are of the view that the mere fact of the sale of medicines for the last so many years ipso facto cannot call for the sale to continue when an expert body has gone into the issue. The larger public interest would weigh in favour of not staying the effect of the notification," the bench said. Further, it directed the Centre not to initiate coercive steps against the manufacturers, stockist, agents, in view of the stock which would have already been manufactured. Under attack for favouring a separate Marathwada state, Maharashtra Advocate General Shreehari Aney today resigned but ruled out any apology asserting that he stood by his view. Aney, appointed as AG by the Fadnavis Government last year, submitted his resignation to Governor C Vidyasagar Rao after his remarks generated a huge controversy with the opposition Congress and NCP and ruling partner Shiv Sena crying foul over it besides causing distress within the state BJP. Aney, however, drew support from sections in the Congress from Vidarbha as he had earlier called for a referendum on carving out a separate state for the region. Shortly after Aney put in his papers, Fadnavis told the legislature that the government would ask the Governor to accept his resignation. Later, Aney told PTI, "I stand by my statement that the demand for a separate Vidarbha has to be considered. With reference to Marathwada, there is a long road ahead because a movement has to be built before it can happen." On the Opposition parties' demand seeking an apology from him, he said, "I am not apologising. Let them do what they think." "If the post of AG is the price I have to pay for the creation of Vidarbha, it is a very cheap price," he said. At an event in Jalna district of Marathwada on Sunday, Aney had said, "Marathwada bore more injustice than Vidarbha and should therefore be independent. Pressure has to be put at the Delhi level to form a separate state as the demand does not come under the purview of Mumbai." Apart from the Congress-NCP opposition, Shiv Sena had yesterday moved separate motions in the Assembly seeking Aney's dismissal. Taking strident stand against him over the issue, Sena had even threatened that it would boycott Cabinet meetings if Aney was not sacked. With the issue snowballing into a major controversy, Fadnavis had yesterday sent signals that Aney would be stepping down. Aney drew support from an unexpected quarter with prominent Congress leaders from Vidarbha Vilas Muttemwar and Nitin Raut endorsing his view. Fadnavis spoke to Aney yesterday and is understood to have suggested to him to tender his resignation. Aney met the CM at his official residence 'Varsha' last evening. With even ally Shiv Sena joining the protests against Aney in both Houses of Legislature, Fadnavis was left with little choice. Sena ministers had even threatened to boycott the cabinet until Aney was sacked. Fadnavis, in a joint statement to both Houses of the Legislature, said, "According to Constitutional provisions, he has been appointed by the Governor. According to protocol, the Governor will ask for an opinion from the government. We will take the decision in the Cabinet and convey to the Governor that his resignation be accepted." Muttemwar, a former Congress MP, said in Nagpur that Aney had only echoed sentiments of people of both regions. "Majority of Congress workers and leaders from the region are in favour of separate Vidarbha though the state leadership was not much inclined to the creation of Vidarbha. But Congress men have made their intentions clear long back that they want a state," Muttemwar said. "Not only Congress, the BJP too had supported the cause and adopted a resolution for creating smaller states like Vidarbha in BJP national executive held in Bhubneshwar in 1996," he said. Former state minister Nitin Raut said even Dr B R Ambedkar had favoured separate Vidarbha and Marathwada. He said Aney's remarks and subsequent demand over his sacking in the state legislature were not at all issues for the House. When large number of farmers are committing suicide and water crisis and severe drought were looming large in state, he wondered how can the House discuss other issues like Aney, Vidarbha and Marathwada. Defending his stance, Aney said both Vidarbha and Marathwada have been neglected by previous governments and if anything, Marathwada suffers more. He said he had to fight hard in courts to ensure that water was released for Marathwada, and was still fighting for Vidarbha and Marathwada's irrigation rights in Aurangabad bench (of HC), and for farmer's rights in the Bombay bench. "Vidarbha's statehood struggle has gone on for over 40 years, while Marathwada's struggle is yet to start or may have just begun. By merely attaching itself to Vidarbha's statehood demand, Marathwada will not get statehood," he said. "It (Marathwada) would need to establish its demand and will have to develop its own leadership," he said. "Vidarbha or Marathwada cannot be created by the Chief Minister at the state level, but would have to be created by Delhi, and it is for the people of Marathwada to undertake long agitation to establish their demand," he said. Treasury benches and Opposition NCP were today locked in verbal duel in the Legislative Council over strictures passed by Nagpur bench of Bombay High Court on government for failing to include 4,000 villages of Vidharbha in list of drought-affected villages of Maharashtra. Notwithstanding the objection raised by Parliamentary Affairs Minister Girish Bapat on how Leader of Opposition (LoP) Dhananjay Munde was continuing with his speech even after Council Chairman Ramraje Nimbalkar rejected the adjournment motion moved by him, Munde continued to raise the issue, attracting strong objections from Treasury benches. As the uproar continued, the Chair adjourned the proceedings three times. Raising the issue, Munde wanted to know why villages of Vidarbha were left out despite the report from Divisional Commissioner. Making an intervention, Bapat argued why was the LoP being allowed to speak when the motion was rejected. "The Opposition while in power could not wipe out drought in last 15 to 20 years. It is your sin," Bapat said. After the House reassembled, deputy Chairman Vasant Dawkhare allowed Munde some more time to speak which was again strongly objected to by Bapat. The Parliamentary Affairs minister said that it was not as per the procedure. "We want a reply from the government. The government is trying to suppress the debate on drought," Munde said. As the uproar continued, the Chair again adjourned the proceedings. Showing "tremendous courage" a class 10th student gave his exam despite getting the of his father's death due to blood cancer. Moments before the exam, on March 1, Suraj Kadam, a school student in Osmanabad district in Maharashtra, was informed about Jambuwant Kadam's demise. Despite the tragic news, Suraj, a resident of Katri village in Tuljapur, appeared for the exam and after it,rushed to attend his father's last rites. Suraj has two elder brothers. "Their father would have been proud of the courage they showed in facing this tragedy," Suraj's mother, Shaila Kadam, told PTI today. District education officer Sachin Jagtap, who was on an inspection round at the exam hall where Suraj appeared for the exam, said the teenager had shown 'tremendous courage' in the face of such a tragedy. Debris that might be part of a plane engine has been found on the southern coast of South Africa and will be checked to see if it belongs to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which vanished two years ago, Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said today. Liow said the debris was discovered near Mosselbay town. "Based on early reports, there is a possibility of the piece originating from an inlet cowling of an aircraft engine," but a further examination and analysis are needed to verify whether it belongs to Flight 370, he said in a statement. Liow said a team will be dispatched to retrieve the debris. The Malaysia Airlines jet disappeared on March 8, 2014, with 239 people on board while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The plane remains one of the biggest mysteries in modern aviation. An Australian-led underwater search in the southern Indian Ocean, where the plane is believed to have crashed, has found no trace of it so far. A piece from one of the plane's wings was found washed ashore on France's Reunion Island last July. Two more possible pieces of debris which were discovered recently in Mozambique are being examined by an international investigation team in Australia.Investigators have said the search will end by June unless fresh clues are found. Malaysian tribal activists who have fought for years against a planned hydroelectric dam declared victory today, saying the state government has scrapped a project that would have flooded rainforests and displaced 20,000 tribes people. Since 2013 activists and local tribes in Malaysia's Sarawak state on Borneo island have blockaded jungle roads leading to the proposed dam site on the Baram river. They say decades of government-orchestrated logging and dam-building have led to social and environmental disaster. With elections in Sarawak expected within weeks, activists said the state government had sent them a letter stating that plans to forcibly acquire necessary land had been revoked. "That means the dam project has been called off," said Peter Kallang, chairman of the NGO Save Sarawak's Rivers. "The struggle to resist the proposed Baram dam has finally paid off, because now the dam is scrapped." That could not be immediately verified, however. Sarawak Chief Minister Adenan Satem was quoted by Malaysian media a year ago as saying the dam would go ahead. No government statement was immediately seen. The dam would have flooded an area half the size of Singapore and was part of a controversial state government drive to use hydroelectric development to spur economic growth in one of the country's poorest regions. Much of Sarawak is a jungle wilderness slashed by untamed rivers. Authorities had previously declared plans for around a dozen dams, saying Sarawak must tap its massive hydroelectric potential to provide power for hoped-for investment in a nascent industrial sector. Three dams have already been completed, at Batang Ai, Murum and Bakun, and have become lightning rods for criticism. Activists say they will provide far more power than the state needs, and have destroyed fragile ecosystems and uprooted tribes that had made their homes in the rainforest for thousands of years. The dam-building spree was launched by Sarawak's former chief minister Abdul Taib Mahmud, who stepped aside under a cloud in 2014 after 33 years in power. Critics accused Taib of running Sarawak like a family business, doling out government contracts and timber concessions to relatives and friends, and disrespecting tribal rights. Decks seem to have been cleared for revival of PDP-BJP alliance in Jammu and Kashmir with the regional party chief Mehbooba Mufti meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi here today in renewed efforts for formation of a government after a prolonged deadlock. After the 15-minute meeting at the Prime Minister's residence, 56-year-old Mehbooba told reporters it was "very positive" and "good" in addressing issues pertaining to the people of the state and that she was "very satisfied". The meeting took place a day after Mehbooba arrived here barely three days after she had returned to the Kashmir Valley after her talks with BJP President Amit Shah had hit a road block. After hardening of her stand following her father Mufti Mohammed Sayeed's demise on January seven this year, the PDP Chief is understood to climbed down on her demands for assurances like handing over of power projects to the state, enhancing relief to flood victims and vacation of land by the army. She, however, remained non-committal on these issues. "We are seeing a stalemate for last two to three months over government formation in the state but today I am satisfied. I am very satisfied," she said and announced that the party's future course of action would be announced at the PDP legislature party meeting this Thursday. To a question whether the stalemate has ended, she said, "When you meet the Prime Minister of the country, naturally the solution to the problems faced by the people of Jammu and Kashmir is more clear". Asked about the Modi-Mehbooba meeting, Union Minister Prakash Javadekar said at a BJP briefing it was "constructive and good". A BJP source said the alliance government in the state could be in place in the next one week. Mehbooba will be flying back to Srinagar tomorrow where she will brief her party legislators on Thursday. "I had been authorised by the party MLAs to take a decision. I have convened a meeting on Thursday and after that we will announce the future course of action." On government formation in the state, she said, "As I said I will talk to my MLAs because that is the forum. This is not the place. There is a particular place to make such announcements. I will go back to Srinagar and take the next step." Sources in the PDP said that after the legislative party meeting, the two sides would meet for government formation and giving final touches to the cabinet which will be headed by Mehbooba, the first woman Chief Minister of the state. Last Thursday, BJP's chief interlocutor Ram Madhav had announced that his party would not be accepting any fresh demands from its erstwhile ally PDP and put the ball in their court while stressing that his party would respect the 'Agenda of Alliance' document. Today's meeting was eyed with suspicion by opposition National Conference and Congress who asked the PDP leadership to come clean on the deal with BJP. National Conference spokesman Junaid Muttoo said the PDP President should come out in a transparent manner and tell the people of the state about her demands and response of the Prime Minister. "If she had to surrender herself in this fashion, why were the people of Jammu and Kashmir deprived of an elected government for last three months," he said. Another spokesperson of the National Conference Sarah Hayat Shah tweeted "so much drama and suddenly Mehbooba says the meeting with the PM was very positive. What about the CBMs, AFSPA, the power projects?" State Congress Chief G A Mir termed the demand for more Confidence Building Measures (CBMs) by PDP ahead of government formation as a drama and said Mehbooba owes an explanation to the people of the state as to why she was instrumental in imposition of two-and-a-half month Governor's rule in the state. "It was all drama enacted by PDP over the issue of CBM as a condition before BJP to be taken ahead of government formation. It was aimed to test waters in Kashmir Valley where they have lost their ground," he said. Mehbooba came to Delhi yesterday after PDP made it clear to BJP that there was some miscommunication and no fresh demands had been raised by the party for stitching an alliance. This is her second visit to the national capital in five days after her talks with BJP President Amit Shah on Thursday failed to make any headway triggering speculation that the two parties could be making renewed efforts to reach out to each other in a bid to break the prolonged impasse. The fresh efforts from PDP, which has 27 MLAs in the 87-member state Assembly, come in the backdrop of repeated assertions made by BJP that it was committed to implementation of Agenda of Alliance arrived at by late Mufti Mohammed Sayeed. The talks with BJP, which has 25 MLAs, had hit a roadblock last week when the party's interlocutor Ram Madhav made it clear that no fresh demands would be entertained from PDP and that they had to decide whether they want to form a government based on the Agenda of Alliance document. PDP and BJP had formed an alliance on March one, last year with Sayeed as the Chief Minister. Both the sides had formed an Agenda of Alliance which sought to address internal and external dimension of the state. PDP had toughened its stance after Sayeed's demise by seeking concrete plans for the state's development, including handing over of power projects to the state and vacation of land by the army before the coalition could be revived. Governor's rule was imposed in J-K on January 8 after Mehbooba decided against taking over the reins after her father's death. Decks seem to have been cleared for return of a PDP-BJP government in Jammu and Kashmir after a prolonged deadlock with the regional party chief Mehbooba Mufti meeting Prime Minister Narendra Modi here today. After the 15-minute meeting at the Prime Minister's residence, 56-year-old Mehbooba told reporters it was "very positive" and "good" in addressing issues pertaining to the people of the state and that she was "very satisfied". The meeting took place a day after Mehbooba arrived here barely three days after she returned to Kashmir Valley after her talks with BJP President Amit Shah had hit a road block. After hardening of her stand following her father Mufti Mohammed Sayeed's demise on January seven this year, the PDP Chief is understood to have climbed down on her demands for assurances like handing over of power projects to the state, enhancing relief to flood victims and vacation of land by the army. She, however, remained non-committal on these issues. "We are seeing a stalemate for last two to three months over government formation in the state but today I am satisfied. I am very satisfied," she said and announced that the party's future course of action would be announced at the PDP legislature party meeting this Thursday. To a question whether the stalemate has ended, she said, "When you meet the Prime Minister of the country, naturally the solution to the problems faced by the people of Jammu and Kashmir is more clear". Asked about the Modi-Mehbooba meeting, Union Minister Prakash Javadekar said at a BJP briefing it was "constructive and good". A BJP source said the alliance government in the state could be in place in the next one week. Former Deputy Chief Minister and senior BJP leader Dr Nirmal Singh termed the meeting as "positive" for government formation. "It (meeting between Mehbooba and Modi) is positive development(for the formation of new government). It is a good thing and we welcome it", Singh told reporters in Jammu. Mehbooba will be returning to Srinagar tomorrow where she will brief her party legislators on Thursday. "I had been authorised by the party MLAs to take a decision. I have convened a meeting on Thursday and after that we will announce the future course of action." On government formation in the state, she said, "As I said I will talk to my MLAs because that is the forum. This is not the place. There is a particular place to make such announcements. I will go back to Srinagar and take the next step." Sources in the PDP said that after the legislative party meeting, the two sides would meet for government formation and giving final touches to the cabinet which will be headed by Mehbooba, the first woman Chief Minister of the state. Last Thursday, BJP's chief interlocutor Ram Madhav had announced that his party would not be accepting any fresh demands from its erstwhile ally PDP and put the ball in their court while stressing that his party would respect the 'Agenda of Alliance' document. Today's meeting was eyed with suspicion by opposition National Conference and Congress who asked the PDP leadership to come clean on the deal with BJP. The Metro-Link Express for Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad (MEGA) Company Limited, in a submission made before the Gujarat High Court today, offered relocation option to residents facing displacement due to the proposed metro rail project. MEGA Company Ltd, which has maintained that the metro project route could not be altered, offered to relocate 22 petitioners residing in the city's Jivraj Park Society to Vejalpur area. Respondent Anil Gupta, General Manager (Planning) of MEGA, submitted before the division bench of judges A J Uraizee and Z K Saiyed that the company would go ahead to acquire the land if petitioners agreed to be relocated at the given address. The petitioners will respond to the offer in the next hearing scheduled on March 29. The petitioners, including residents and shop-owners of Mangal Deep and Vishwakarma residential societies of Jivraj Park area, from where the north-south elevated corridor of the proposed metro rail starts, had moved the high court, alleging that acquisition of their properties by MEGA was not in accordance with the provisions of Land Acquisition Act of 2013. They had claimed that they would lose their houses and shops due to the project and the state-owned MEGA, which is undertaking the project of Metro Rail, is not ready to provide anything beyond cash compensation against the acquisition of their properties, which is a violation of the Act. Indian industries have managed to maintain and increase their market share in most of the sectors despite countries all over the world experiencing fall in exports, Union Commerce Secretary Rita Teaotia said today. "... It is not just India that has seen fall in exports, China last month reported 25 per cent fall in exports. Europe, US, (in) all countries the demand has contracted, this is the situation," Teaotia told reporters here. "We are going to have to see that we strengthen our industry to be able to ride out this period, to maintain the market share; and I may assure you that most of the sectors are managing to maintain their market share, even increase their market share." "It is the price realisations which have reduced and which hopefully as the commodity prices begin to improve and the global economy strengthens, those will also go up." Teaotia was speaking to reporters after meeting exporters along with the state government officials here. She said sectors like pharmaceutical gems and jewellery have been good for the country in exports. Pharma sector has continued to remain robust and to increase its market share across the globe, textile sector and garments export in some markets continued to remain robust, she said, adding that gems and jewellery has certainly "held its own." Engineering exports except for the last three months have performed very well, she said. On India's export situation, she said figures for the last more than one year have not been at all positive, and it is an "issue" that "concerns" all of us. She said "the commodity prices have hardened throughout the world, what we are seeing is of course sharp fall in petroleum prices which is all good for India, but also we have been seeing a sharp fall in the prices of other commodities." There has been currency devaluation in many countries which has affected the competitiveness of Indian products and there has been contraction of global demand, she added. Responding to a question about the concerns that were shared by the exporters at the meeting today, she said regarding the state government issues were about tax refund, land availability and stamps duty, among others. Maritime Training and Research Foundation (MTRF) has planned a series of skill development initiatives to promote merchant navy as a lucrative career option among students across the country. "Our prime goal is to impart world-class training to Indian seafarers and spread awareness about merchant navy in the country. In the current year, we plan to organise road shows in select cities in association with various universities," MTRF chairman Capt Nalin Pandey said. "Our road shows will render free career guidance to students keen on working as officers across various categories aboard specialised cargo ships," he said. MTRF is promoted by Maritime Association of Shipowners, Shipmanagers & Agents (MASSA). "We also endeavour to constantly upgrade the world-class training infrastructure promoted by MTRF. So far, we have spent over Rs 75 crore to develop the infrastructure at MASSA training institutes located in Mumbai and Chennai," Pandey said. MTRF's move to strengthen its training infrastructure and promote merchant navy as a career option is expected to offer a plethora of employment opportunities to the youths, he said. Growth of India's merchant navy workforce is projected to be phenomenal as over the last decade seaborne trade has grown at twice the global growth rate of 3.3 per cent, Pandey said. According to Shipping Ministry data, cargo traffic at Indian ports has doubled to 1 billion tonne per annum over the last decade and is expected to reach 1.7 billion tonne per annum by 2022. The country's maritime export-import has been growing at an average rate of 4.5 per cent year-on-year and accounts for about 95 per cent of the total import-export trade volume of India, a statement from MTRF said, Over the next 10 years, India's maritime export import is anticipated to grow in the range of 5-10 per cent CAGR, it said. Two persons were killed allegedly by Naxals on suspicion of being police informers, at separate places in Chhattisgarh's worst insurgency-hit Sukma district, police said today. While Kicche Mukka was killed in Polampalli police station area this morning, Sona Muchaki (40) was axed to death by Maoists in Chhindgarh area last night, Sukma Additional Superintendent of Police (ASP) Santosh Singh told PTI. Both the villages are around 450 km from the state capital. As per preliminary information, a group of rebels stormed into the house of Kichhe at Polampalli, after he returned from his fields this morning. He was dragged out and killed with sharp weapons, he said. The reason behind the murder is yet to be ascertained as no pamphlets were dropped by assailants. However, there are reports that Kichhe was a former Salwa Judum (erstwhile anti-Naxalite movement) leader and also working for Congress for sometime but it is yet to be verified, the ASP said. In a separate incident, Sona was brutally axed to death in front of his wife and children by Naxals at Rokel village under Chhindgarh police outpost, he said. According to pamphlets dropped by the ultras, Sona allegedly helped security forces in setting up a police camp in the village. He was also acting as a police informer since 2011, the ASP said. Naxals are frustrated with increasing pressure of security forces and development works being carried out by the administration. Due to this they are killing innocent villagers and branding them as police informers, he claimed. Cases have been registered and security forces have been sent to nab the assailants, Singh said. The 10 key agreements signed with China has lessened Nepal's excessive dependence on India and provided a "psychological boost" to the land-locked country to become self-reliant, the Nepalese media commented today, a day after Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli met China's top leadership. Nepal and China yesterday signed major deals which included a landmark transit treaty that will see the end of Nepal's near-total dependence on Indian sea ports for trade. China has also pledged to boost cooperation with Nepal in "key areas", including connectivity, industrial capacity, oil and gas during the ongoing week-long visit of Oli. The deals made banner headlines in major dailies here. In a report in Nepalese language daily 'Nagarik', senior economist Bishwombhar Pyakurel said the agreements will help Nepal in expanding international trade, giving it a "psychological boost" to become economically self-reliant. "This will loosen the landlocked country's geo-political compulsion," Pyakurel told the daily. The daily in its front-page report noted that Nepal "has been freed from the situation to face Indian economic embargo" as the deals provide access to the sea route close to China. Former commerce secretary Purushottam Ojha said the transit treaty was the "most important event in Nepal's economic history." He, however, said Nepal cannot benefit from it "unless we link China through railway or road networks." "The agreement will not only reduce Indian pressure, but will also open door for Nepal to have access to central Asian economies," he said. As per the agreements, China will provide assistance to Nepal for installing solar panels in 32,000 households and 21 billion rupees in aid, 25 per cent of which would be in the form of grant for an airport in the tourist spot of Pokhara. China will also provide assistance in exploration of gas and petroleum products in southern Nepal and construct a bridge to connect western Nepal to Tibet. Another leading daily 'The Kathmandu Post' reported that the "use of Chinese facilities could start in 2020 at the earliest, when Chinese rail network will reach Kerung". The daily in a report said Nepal and China signed an agreement to use a port on the northern border "in a bid to shift away from the heavy dependence on India". The 'Himalayan Times' in its editorial said the deals were "historic" and would have "far-reaching importance to Nepal." "The long-felt want of Nepali people for a transit transport treaty with China has been fulfilled now," it said. China has agreed to build the Xiarwa river bridge, which will remove the transport barrier between the Chinese border and Nepal's remote Karnali region. The national daily described it as a "lifeline to the region's economy". "These agreements...Will further widen and strengthen the bilateral relationship of mutual benefit, particularly helping the landlocked Nepal to diversify its trade, to strengthen cross-border connectivity, to expand Nepal's development infrastructure," it said. Nepal today became a dialogue partner of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO), a Beijing-based regional security grouping. Nepal was officially made a dialogue partner after a memorandum was signed by SCO secretary-general Rashid Olimov and visiting Nepalese Foreign Secretary Shanker Das Bairagi. Nepalese Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli attended the signing ceremony. The SCO was established in 2001 to promote cooperation on security-related issues and strengthen mutual trust, friendliness and neighborliness among the member states, Nepalese Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs Kamal Thapa said at the ceremony. Nepal would "adhere to the principles, values and objectives" of the vibrant regional organisation, and participate actively in its future activities and progress, Thapa was quoted as saying by the official Xinhua agency. As a dialogue partner, Nepal is able to participate in the multi-field cooperation of the SCO, which has an increasing presence in international affairs, Olimov said. As Nepal joins the SCO, it will create new opportunities for the SCO's mutually beneficial cooperation and benefit people living in the extensive region that the SCO covers, Olimov added. Last Monday, Azerbaijan officially became a SCO dialogue partner upon the signing of a similar memorandum. The SCO consists of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. India, Afghanistan, Iran, Mongolia and Pakistan are observer states. Nepal has sought China's assistance in building a monorail network in Kathmandu and a cross-border rail line from a Tibetan town to Lumbini, a popular pilgrimage site and the birthplace of Buddha, a senior Nepalese official has said. "The two sides have also agreed on building railways in Nepal," Gopal Khanal, foreign affairs adviser to Nepal Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli, told Japanese agency Kyodo . Oli, who arrived here on a week-long visit has signed 10 agreements during his meeting Chinese Premier Li Keqiang. This included a landmark transit treaty to end the near-total dependence on India for essential supplies. Khanal said Nepal is seeking China's assistance in constructing a monorail in Kathmandu and a rail link from China's Gyirong to Lumbini. By 2020, China plans to extend the high-elevation Qinghai-Tibet Railway to Gyirong, which borders Nepal. Yesterday, Oli proposed two rail kinds of railway projects to China when he met Premier Li, said Hou Yanqi, Deputy Director General in Foreign Ministry's Asia Department. "The first is projects of Nepal connecting cities in Nepal, and the second is a cross border railway," she said. Hou said Oli "raised the issue of building a cross-border railway between China and Nepal" for which he has got a "positive response from the Chinese side and the two sides have agreed to conduct feasibility study at an early date." China has expanded its railways to Shigatse or Xigaze -- the seat of Panchan Lama in 2014 in Tibet. It is about 450 kilometres from Kyirong, 26 kilometres from Rasuwagadi in Nepal. China plans to extend its rail link to Kyirong by 2020. Referring to the transit treaty which the Nepalese government hopes will end its dependence on India, Khanal said "the Transport Transit Agreement is a milestone for Nepal." "Although many details will have to be worked out, the treaty will tremendously boost the confidence of Nepalese people," Khanal said. So far, Nepal has conducted trade with third countries through the Indian port of Kolkata. The Japanese agency report said that during Oli's February visit, India offered access to a second port, Visakhapatnam, in a move understood in Kathmandu as the southern neighbour's attempt to woo Nepal away from seeking sea access via Chinese territory. Khanal said the preliminary understanding was that China would allow Nepal to use Guangzhou port in southern Guangdong province. Oli will also be seeking Chinese assistance to build fuel reservoirs at three locations in Nepal to avoid the crisis experienced during the border blockade by Madhesis, the Indian origin people who were agitating against the new Constitution. The Nepal government blames the blockade on India. "China has always been a helping and non-interfering neighbour. The prime minister's visit will focus on taking relations between the two neighbours to a new level by securing a trade and transit treaty and inviting big Chinese investment to Nepal," Khanal said. (Reopens FGN 39) Khanal said the Free-Trade Agreement, which the two sides agreed for a feasibility study, would allow Chinese banks to open branches in Nepal to facilitate trade. Oli also hopes to improve road connectivity with China's help, especially by repairing the Tatopani route - the biggest trading route between the two nations - that went into disuse after heavy damage caused by last year's devastating tremors. Oli will seek Chinese cooperation in widening the second biggest trading route - the Kyirong-Rasuwagadi route, he said. It is not clear whether this was included in the 10 agreements two sides signed yesterday. Since the Tatopani and Rasuwagadi routes can be difficult to operate during harsh Himalayan winters, Oli will propose building a new all-weather trading route - the Kimathangka route in the Sankhuwasabha district of eastern Nepal. Khanal said that Oli will also seek Chinese investment to build the 443 MW Upper Arun hydroelectric project, also located in Sankhuwasabha. The agreements concluded yesterday included a treaty on economic and technical cooperation to build a Regional International Airport Project at Pokhara, Nepal's famous tourist site for which China will extend USD 216 million soft loan. Malaysia today said it will send a team to retrieve a new piece of plane debris found along the southern coast of South Africa this morning to check if it belongs to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which vanished mysteriously two years ago. Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said thedebris which was found near the town of Mosselbay could possibly originate from an inlet cowling of an aircraft engine," but further examination and analysis are needed to verify whether it belongs to Flight 370. He said that the Ministry of Transport and the Department of Civil Aviation Malaysia were in close contact with the South African Civil Aviation Authority on this matter. Further examination will be required to verify if the debris belongs to the missing MAS jetliner MH370. Liow said a team will be dispatched to retrieve the debris. The Malaysia Airlines flight MH370, carrying 239 passengers, including five Indians, enroute from here to Beijing, had disappeared on March 8, 2014. The plane Boeing 777 is believed to have ended its journey in the southern Indian Ocean. Earlier this month, Mozambican civil aviation authorities had handed over suspected debris from missing flight MH370 to Malaysian experts after the piece was found by an American amateur investigator. Currently these parts are being examined by experts in Australia. Investigators have said the search will end by June unless fresh clues are found. The second anniversary of the plane's disappearance was marked on March 8th. Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak had expressed confidence that the wreckage of the missing Flight MH370 would be found. Niger's President Mahamadou Issoufou secured 92 per cent of the vote in a controversial run-off ballot boycotted by the opposition, according to official results released today. His sole challenger Hama Amadou, imprisoned since November on shadowy baby trafficking charges, was flown to France days before the second round for medical treatment and the vote was marred by low turnout and an opposition boycott. The electoral commission said Amadou got only seven percent of the ballots cast. The election pitted 64-year-old Issoufou, a former mining engineer nicknamed "the Lion", against Amadou, 66, a former premier and parliament speaker known as "the Phoenix" for his ability to make political comebacks. Issoufou won 48.4 percent in the first round on February 21. Amadou scored just 17.7 per cent in the initial vote. Amadou was forced to campaign from behind bars after being detained on November 14 on baby-trafficking charges he says were concocted to keep him out of the race. Issoufou, who took office in 2011, campaigned on pledges to bring prosperity to the impoverished but uranium-rich country and vowed to prevent further attacks from jihadists in its vast remote north, and from Nigeria's Boko Haram Islamists to the south. The West African state, where three-quarters of the population live on less than USD 2 a day, has only had a multi-party democracy since 1990. WIBAUX John Jacob Hollstein, 91, of Wibaux, passed away Sunday, March 20, 2016, at the Glendive Medical Center in Glendive, Montana. Visitation will be held from 1-5 p.m. and 6-7 p.m., March 23, at the Silha Funeral Home in Beach, N.D. A Prayer Service will be at 7 p.m., March 23 at the Silha Funeral Home in Beach. Funeral Services will be at 2 p.m., March 24, at the United Community Church in Beach. Silha Funeral Home of Beach has been entrusted with the arrangements. John was born in Beach on April 17, 1924 to Charles and Elizabeth (Ulfers) Hollstein. He was delivered by midwife Mrs. George Nutter, grandmother of former Governor Donald Nutter of Montana. John was educated in the Beach school system and graduated from Beach High School with the class of 1942. He excelled in Football and Music. John married Connie Mosser on Feb. 8, 1945 at the Beach Congregational Church. They were married for 71 years and lived on the Hollstein family ranch in Wibaux County. John ranched with his brother-in-law, Dick Mosser at Maurine, South Dakota for many years, where they ran a yearling cattle operation. John enjoyed his ranching days there and also ranching in Wibaux. He and the Miske family had many good times trailing cattle back from summer pasture. In 1997, John and Connie adopted a young child, Tsering Palmo (Sangha), that they had became acquainted with through their mission work. Tsering was a Tibetan child in a refugee school. Tsering was very important to her Dad. Later, Tserings cousin, Tenzin, also became their foster daughter. John was a lifelong member of the Beach Congregational Church, which later became the United Community Church, which both his grandfathers had started in the 1900s. John was raised in a Christian home and he never departed from his faith. He was president of the new church building committee and sang in the choir for 52 years, as well as singing in the Beach Community Choir. John taught Sunday school until he was in his eighties. John and Connie had enjoyable trips to Hawaii and Europe, where they visited Connies British relatives in England. John had a pilots license and owned a Cessna 182. He enjoyed taking friends and family flying over the Badlands and flying to the South Dakota Ranch. John was on many committees for ranching and farming over the years and won an achievement award for conservation in 1969. John was preceded in death by his parents, Charles and Elizabeth; his sisters, Ruth and Ilo; and his brother, Charles who was killed accidentally at age 9. John is survived by his wife, Connie of Wibaux; his daughter, Tsering (Namgyal) Sangha and their daughter, Claire of Billings; his foster daughter, Tenzin (Jampa) Norbu and their daughter, Tenzin of Minneapolis, Minn.; his nephews, Kindrick (Linda) Strong of Wisconsin, Doug (Rosie) Mosser of Wibaux and Randy (Sue) Mosser of Medora, N.D., and his nieces, Martha Rosenthal of Wisconsin, Marilyn (Merle) Koon of Pittsburgh, Penn., and Jayne (Vern) Harkins of Boulder City, Nev. Remembrances and condolences may be shared with the family at: www.silhafuneralhomes.com. The Environment Ministry has given clearance to state-run Neyveli Lignite Corporation's (NLC) 2.25 million tonnes per annum Bithnok lignite mine in Rajasthan. "In view of the recommendations of the EAC (Expert Appraisal Committee)... And submission of stage-I FC, the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change hereby accords environment clearance to Bithnok Lignite Mine... Of NLC," the Environment Ministry said in a letter to NLC. The clearance is subject to compliance of the terms and conditions like the maximum production from the mine at any given time shall not exceed the limit as prescribed in the environment clearance and the production shall be within the mining lease area, among others, the letter said. According to NLC's website, Bithnok thermal power project with the linked lignite mine of 2.25 MTPA capacity at Bithnok, in Bikaner district of Rajasthan is being set up at an aggregate estimated cost of Rs 2,709.93 crore. Power Purchase Agreement has been signed with Rajasthan discoms. "Agreement for supply of 25 cusecs of water from IGNP canal has been entered," NLC said. The Rajasthan government has issued award for acquisition of 1,175.87 hectares of private land in Bithnok and 1,863.184 hectares of government land will be diverted to the project by the state government after takeover of private land. The project is proposed to be implemented through engineering, procurement and commissioning contract mode and is expected to be commissioned by 2019. The Coal Ministry had accorded approval for revised mining plan in June 2015. India today downplayed Nepal signing a landmark transit treaty with China along with nine other agreements, asserting that no country can replicate the the "special and privileged" relationship the Himalayan nation has with it. External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Vikas Swarup, when asked about the pacts, said relations between India and Nepal have their "natural logic" and that New Delhi was not in the business of "comparison". "It (Nepal) is a landlocked country. Nepal is free to explore any option it wants but no country can replicate the kind of relations Nepal has with India which is based on the logic of geography, very close people-to-people ties," he said. Nepal and China yesterday signed 10 agreements including a landmark transit treaty to end the land-locked country's total dependence on India while Beijing agreed to extend the strategic Tibet rail link to Nepal to boost connectivity. Nepalese Prime Minister K P Sharma Oli is in Beijing where he held talks with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang and other senior Chinese leaders. "No other country can replicate the special and privileged relationship Nepal has with India... Our age-old ties with Nepal is unique and special characterised by open border, shared history, geography, close people-to-people contact, mutual security and close economic relationship," Swarup said. Oli had visited India last month during which he had said Nepal does not play India or China "card" and there is "no question" of favouring one over the other as it is not a viable "policy option". He had also said that "misunderstandings" between India and Nepal "do not" persist anymore, calling it the "most important" outcome of his first visit here. Giving details of economic engagement Nepal has with India, he said "We have at present 26 land customs stations with Nepal of which 10 can handle commercial cargo trucks." He said two more trading points are under construction and construction of two more will be undertaken in next phase. The spokesperson also referred to the railway connectivity projects as well as road development projects India is undertaking in Nepal's Terai region. The MEA spokesperson said two-third of Nepal's global trade involves India and millions of Nepalese people live and work in India while hundreds of thousands criss cross the open border between the two countries daily. The Gujarat government today conceded in the Legislative Assembly that it had not taken any decision on inclusion of transgenders in the list of Socially and Educationally Backward Classes, also known as Other Backward Classes (OBCs). In 2014, the Supreme Court had asked the state government to recognise the transgenders as OBCs, senior Congress leader Shaktisinh Gohil pointed out. In his written reply, Social Justice Minister Ramanlal Vora said the Supreme Court had indeed passed such a direction, but the matter was still under consideration of the state government. Gohil later criticised the BJP government for not taking decision, saying "It is very unfortunate that despite the Supreme Court giving a direction in 2014, the government has not given OBC status to transgenders even after two years. The AAP dispensation is not tabling any new bill during the Budget Session of the Delhi Assembly as the central government is already sitting on 14 bills, including the one on Lokpal, Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia today said. The Budget Session of Delhi Assembly began today and Sisodia said he was "saddened" over the delay on part of the Centre. He said if the Centre does not give nod to the city government's bills at the earliest, there is "no benefit" of tabling new bills and sending them to it for approval. "We pass bills from here (Delhi Assembly). We work hard to prepare them, but the Centre sits on these bills passed by the Assembly," he said. Sisodia will present the Budget on March 28. The session will conclude on March 31. "We have sent several bills to the Centre which are very important for Delhi, including fomation of a new university, amendments in the Labour Laws, journalist salary bill. If we continue to send bills from here to the Centre, there is no benifit." "Lokpal Bill, which is a very important, is also pending with the Centre. We are today fighting for ACB (Anti- Corruption Branch) and if Lokpal would been appointed today, corruption would been rooted out from the top to bottom," Sisodia said. He said people of Delhi have been waiting for the Centre's approval for 14 bills which should have become laws by now. "We would have been able to increase seats in NSIT (Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology) after making the institute a university, but the bill pertaining to this is still pending with the Centre," the deputy chief minister said. Earlier this month, Sisodia and Delhi Assembly Speaker Ram Niwas Goel had met Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh over 14 bills of the city government pending with the Centre for approval for the past several months. The bills include Delhi Jan Lokpal, MLA Salary Amendment, CrPC Amendment and Delhi School Education (Amendment). There is no place for militancy and terrorism in Islam, Bangladesh Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina asserted today as she sought cooperation from Muslim scholars to clamp down on those engaged in terror acts in the name of Islam. "I seek your cooperation in establishing the belief among people that there's no place of militancy and terrorism in Islam...This is a religion of peace. Please, publicise it," she said while addressing the National Khatib Conference at Bangabandhu International Conference Centre here. Hasina urged the Islamic scholars and the people of the country to take steps against those engaged in subversive and terrorist acts in the name of Islam. "Please stay alert and keep them away from such activities," she said in the backdrop of a slew of attacks by Islamists, including against minorities in the Muslim majority country. Her comments came hours after a 68-year-old Christian convert was hacked to death in by three motorbike-borne unidentified assailants in the northern Bangladeshi town of Kurigram. Hasina also lamented that some countries often mix militancy with Islam. "For a handful of people, we've to endure this immense pain...This is really very painful for us," she said. She also mentioned that often people with vested interests wanted to create instability in the country. "But it is the duty of the government to provide safety and peace to the people of the country along with ensuring food, shelter, medicare facilities and education so that their lifestyle can be improved. We're working towards that direction," the Prime Minister said. There have been systematic assaults in Bangladesh over the past six months specially targeting minorities, secular bloggers and foreigners. These incidents have killed at least nine persons including two foreigners and wounded more than 100. Last week a top Shia preacher and homoeopathic doctor was stabbed to death in southwestern Bangladesh in an attack claimed by the Islamic State group. A Hindu head priest was hacked to death last month by Islamists at a temple in northern Panchagarh district. There has been no report of any Indian casualty in the twin explosions at the Brussels airport, the Ministry of External Affairs said today. "We have spoken to our Ambassador. No reports of any Indian casualties," External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Vikas Swarup said. The twin explosions rocked the main hall of Brussels airport killing at least one person and wounding several others, officials said in Brussels. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is scheduled to visit Belgium on March 30 for the India-EU Summit. From Belgium, he is scheduled to travel to Washington for Nuclear Security Summit from March 31. Local manufacturers of Holi colours and sprinklers are facing huge losses ahead of the festival as Chinese-made alternatives are selling like hot cakes, an Assocham survey has revealed. The survey said Chinese products were more "innovative" and were cheaper by up to 55 per cent, due to which they were outselling the ones manufactured locally in states like Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat. "Invasion of innovative and fancy Chinese Holi toys and colours despite the central government's efforts to promote 'Make in India', is making survival difficult for small manufacturers, most of whom have been engaged in this business for decades and are now facing losses to the tune of a whopping 75 per cent as only about quarter of their products find favour with customers," said the survey conducted by Assocham Social Development Foundation. "There is a price difference of over 55 per cent between Chinese Holi colours and sprinklers and those made by local manufacturers which is a primary reason for former's brisk business," Assocham Secretary General DS Rawat said. According to the survey carried out among over 250 manufacturers, suppliers and traders, a majority felt traditional 'pichkaris' have almost disappeared from markets due to minimal consumer interest, while 'Made in China' Holi toys and colours were preferred by customers as they were much cheaper. Many respondents also rued rampant use of harsh skin-damaging chemicals like acids, alkalis, diesel, engine oil, glass powder and mica apart from cheap quality of plastic being used to manufacture low-cost water guns. Most local manufacturers claimed they only sold colours that are natural, organic and skin-friendly. As per a rough estimate by Assocham, every year over 5,000 colour manufacturing units produce over 5 lakh kg of gulal to be used on Holi across India out of which 2 lakh kg is used across Uttar Pradesh alone. The industry body has also urged the Uttar Pradesh government to promote 'Holi Tourism,' across the state where it was celebrated with great zest by locals and tourists alike. Camera trapping has allayed fears of presence of any tiger at Medziphema village in Nagaland where a big cat was killed by locals a few days ago. The forest department, Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and Nagaland Wildlife and Biodiversity Conservation Trust had set up camera-traps near the village where the presence of tiger was reported by the locals. "After seven days of camera trapping with 17 units, no evidence of any tiger was found, WCS scientist Dr Varun Goswami, who led the effort, told PTI from Dimapur. There is a habitat for tigers but very little prey is available. The big cat population has not been officially recorded in Nagaland in over a decade, he said. "Tigers, however, can disperse into Nagaland from multiple directions - the forests of Karbi Anglong towards the northwest, or perhaps, Myanmar to the southeast," Goswami said, adding after interacting with residents of Medziphema it was learnt that tigers occasionally pass through the area. "Tigers can move large distances when they are dispersing. Our long term research shows evidence of tigers travelling up to 300 km or more," said Dr Ullas Karanth, a renowned tiger expert from WCS. One such dispersing tiger was shot dead by the panicked villagers "in self defense" on February 29. Two days later, a youngsters walking in a nearby forest had reported catching a fleeting glimpse of a "tiger-like" animal. A noted Indian-American physician has withdrawn from a committee formed to campaign for Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump, saying that he does not support the business tycoon's candidacy and wishes to stay "neutral". Padma Shree awardee Sudhir Parikh of New Jersey had been appointed the chair of fund raising and advisory Committee of 'Indian-Americans for Trump 2016'. 'Indian-Americans for Trump 2016' -- which was registered as a political action committee (PAC) on January 21 with the federal election commission -- aims at garnering support of Indian-Americans to have Trump become the next President of the US. Parikh told PTI he withdrew from the group as he wants to be "neutral" and will continue to support any candidate, Democrat or Republican, who "supports the Indian-American community and helps promote US-India relations. That has been my cause for the last 35 years." In aseparatestatement,Parikh said he does not support Trump's candidacy. "Recently, I have been associated with a group calling itself 'Indian-Americans for Trump 2016'. I have done so because some members of the group are friends of mine, and I allowed myself to be identified with that group. I wish to clarify that I no longer belong to the group and I do not support the candidacy of Donald Trump," Parikh said in the statement. He added that for over three decades he has supported both Democrat and Republican candidates based on their individual merits and their commitment to the interests of the Indian-American community and US-India relations. "I remain committed to this course," he said. In a statement in January, the PAC said A D Amar, a business professor with Seton Hall University in New Jersey has been elected as its president; while New York-based attorney Anand Ahuja as its vice president. Earlier, the committee in a statement has said that "On realising that the agenda of Donald J Trump for President 2016 is focused on reviving the American economy, rightly bringing America on the world stage, defeating terrorism and establishing peace through strength; many Indian-Americans believe that he is the best hope for America and the right candidate to be the next president of the US". Laying bare a half-century of tensions, President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro Tuesday prodded each other over human rights and the longstanding US economic embargo during an unprecedented joint news conference that stunned Cubans unaccustomed to their leaders being aggressively questioned. The exchanges underscored deep divisions that still exist between the two countries despite rapidly improved relations in the 15 months since Obama and Castro surprised the world with an announcement to end their Cold War-era diplomatic freeze. Obama, standing in Havana's Palace of the Revolution on the second day of his historic visit to Cuba, repeatedly pushed Castro to take steps to address his country's human rights record. "We continue, as President Castro indicated, to have some very serious differences, including on democracy and human rights," said Obama, who planned to meet with Cuban dissidents Tuesday. Still, Obama heralded a "new day" in the relationship and said "part of normalizing relations means we discuss these differences directly." Castro was blistering in his criticism of the American embargo, which he called "the most important obstacle" to his country's economic development. He also pressed Obama to return the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, which is on the island of Cuba, to his government. "There are profound differences between our countries that will not go away," Castro said plainly. White House officials spent weeks pushing their Cuban counterparts to agree for the leaders to take questions from reporters after their private meeting, reaching agreement just hours before Obama and Castro appeared before cameras. It's extremely rare for Castro to give a press conference, though he has sometimes taken questions from reporters spontaneously when the mood strikes. While the issue of political prisoners is hugely important to Cuban-Americans and the community, most people on the island are more concerned about the shortage of goods and their struggles with local bureaucracy. Castro appeared agitated at times during the questioning, professing to not understand whether inquiries were directed to him. But when an American reporter asked about political prisoners in Cuba, he pushed back aggressively, saying if the journalist could offer names of anyone improperly imprisoned, "they will be released before tonight ends." "What political prisoners? Give me a name or names," Castro said. Cuba has been criticised for briefly detaining demonstrators thousands of times a year but has drastically reduced its practice of handing down long prison sentences for crimes human rights groups consider to be political. Cuba released dozens of prisoners as part of its deal to normalise relations with the US, and in a recent report, Amnesty did not name any current prisoners of conscience in Cuba. Lists compiled by Cuban and Cuban-American groups list between 47 and 80 political prisoners, although Cuban officials describe many as common criminals. Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser, said the US regularly raises specific cases and some are resolved, but added Cuba typically insists they're being held for other crimes. Rhodes said, "I've shared many lists with the Cuban government." Obama's and Castro's comments were broadcast live on state television, which is tightly controlled by the government and the Communist Party. At an outdoor cafe in Havana, about a dozen Cubans and tourists watched in awed silence. One woman held her hand to her mouth in shock. "It's very significant to hear this from our president, for him to recognise that not all human rights are respected in Cuba," said Raul Rios, a 47-year-old driver, who also expressed agreement with Castro's defence that Cuba is good in some areas, no country is perfect and all should try to do better. Ricardo Herrera, a 45-year-old street food vendor said, "It's like a movie but based on real life." After responding to a handful of questions, Castro ended the conference abruptly, declaring, "I think this is enough." Obama then appeared to lean in to pat Castro on the back. In an awkward moment, the Cuban leader instead grabbed Obama's arm and lifted it up as the US president's wrist dangled, an image that immediately grabbed attention on social media. White House officials said Obama did not plan to meet with Fidel Castro, the older brother of the Cuban president and his predecessor in office, hoping to keep the visit focused on the future of the island. Rhodes, the White House adviser, said there were also other considerations, including Castro's "health issues." Obama, in an interview with ABC News, said he has no problem with such a meeting "just as a symbol of the end of this Cold War chapter. The Northern Cheyenne tribal president has called for the banishment of nontribal members involved in drug-related activity on the reservation following a Saturday shootout. Northern Cheyenne Tribal President Llevando Fisher has declared a state of emergency on the reservation. Fisher said after the Saturday shootout between two known drug users, the reservation's "tremendous" problem with drugs and drug violence has reached its peak. The shooting occurred at the Cheyenne Depot Gas Station and Convenience Store in Lame Deer. Not only were the two shooters hit, but a female bystander was injured by a ricocheting bullet. One of the shooters was involved in a shooting last summer in which one person was injured, Fisher confirmed. Tribal police have one person in custody from the Saturday shooting, said Federal Bureau of Investigations Agent Todd Palmer. Neither shooter was injured critically, and the bystander has been released from the hospital. Drug crimes The Northern Cheyenne Tribal Council has hired Dion Killsback to update tribal legal codes to include laws pertaining to drug use, Fisher said. The tribe wants to begin working on the new drug codes immediately and present them to the Northern Cheyenne people in the fall. After that, the council plans to adopt the laws and begin prosecuting tribal members for crimes related to methamphetamine and other drugs. Existing tribal codes address marijuana, alcohol and intoxication, but not other drugs. "People look at our numbers and say we don't have a drug problem because we're arresting people for intoxication," Fisher said. "But we have a tremendous drug problem." Northern Cheyenne is at least the second reservation to explore banning drug dealers from coming on to the reservation. Last September, the Blackfeet Nation's tribal council began exploring banishment. Blackfeet Nation Chairman Harry Barnes said his reservation needs the ability to ban drug dealers. Tribal courts only have the ability to prosecute misdemeanor crimes and cannot define their own misdemeanor and felony laws because they are subject to federal definitions, Barnes said. The Tribal Council used language written in the 1870s to declare that tribes had a right to expel undesirable people from the reservation, Barnes said. The federal government has told Barnes this will only move the problem off the reservation, not stop drug dealing. Barnes has argued this is the best solution for now because the reservation doesnt have jurisdiction over these crimes. Minor drug crimes aren't a priority for the federal government, which has jurisdiction over all felony crimes committed on the reservation, Barnes said. "If you don't prosecute them, what are we supposed to do?" Barnes said. 'Patchwork quilt' Drug dealers know about the "patchwork quilt of prosecution" Barnes said. There is a better chance that a drug crime will be ignored on the reservation than in one of the neighboring counties, which have the ability to prosecute felony crimes. So the reservation will arrest a drug dealer, turn the case over to federal prosecutors, and begin a game of "catch and release" Barnes said. "It's fine for fish, but not so good with drug dealers," Barnes said. Barnes said tribal lawyers are still trying to determine if they can ban people from the reservation. Maylinn Smith, a law professor at the University of Montana, said this is a common problem for tribes that have struggled with defining their criminal jurisdiction. "Tribes are frustrated by the limitations put on the justice systems in Indian Country," Smith said. Banning drug dealers is the only option they have to address the problem, she said. The hope is that a tribal hearing would have nothing to do with the judicial branch of the Blackfeet Nation. It would be a tribal right to hold a hearing to determine if someone were no longer allowed on the reservation. Once that is established, Tribal or Bureau of Indian Affairs agents would then have the right to escort known drug dealers off the reservation without having to arrest them. Ultimately, banned dealers would operate remotely and be subject to the district courts of neighboring counties, Barnes said. It's not that the Blackfeet Nation doesn't want to deal with their drug problem, it's that they can't, Barnes said. Barnes makes it clear, this is not a banishment in the traditional tribal sense. A tribal member might be precluded from returning to the tribe for a term of five years if they are found to be involved with drug activity, but they won't lose their membership. The Northern Cheyenne have a similar mentality and do not intend to banish enrolled tribal members. Tribal members involved in drug activity should be charged for their drug activity and then placed in long-term treatment, Fisher said. The tribe would have to contract out for treatment services until it could build its own facility, Fisher said. Andhra Pradesh Assembly Speaker Kodela Sivaprasada Rao today said it was the onus of every member to protect the "dignity and sovereignty" of the House. "Everyone should try to protect the dignity and sovereignty of the House. The House is always supreme," the Speaker remarked, even as he announced that the High Court of Judicature at Hyderabad has set aside an interim order issued by a single judge staying the Assembly's proceedings (of December 18, 2015) placing YSR Congress MLA R K Roja under suspension for a year. "I am yet to receive the full text of the judgement (by a division bench headed by acting Chief Justice Dilip B Bhosale). But, according to information, the court has set aside the order of the single judge (issued last week)," the Speaker said, after Legislative Affairs Minister Yanamala Ramakrishnudu wanted to know about the High Court verdict on an appeal filed by the Legislature Secretary. "We have been hearing rumours about the court judgement. Since it is on a matter pertaining to the House, we want to know from you about the judgement. Everybody in the House is anxious to know about it," a visibly joyous Yanamala said. "Past is past. Let us all uphold the dignity and sovereignty of the House," the Speaker added. Roja, the so-called "firebrand", MLA from Nagari in Chittoor district, was suspended from the service of the House for a year for using "unparliamentary" and "abusive" language against certain members of the TDP, including Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu, on December 18 last year. TDP MLA V Anitha complained against Roja to the Committee of Privileges of the Assembly and sought necessary action. A four-member committee headed by Deputy Speaker Mandali Buddha Prasad was specially constituted to look into the behaviour of Roja and four other MLAs of YSRC in the House, amid allegations of use of unparliamentary and abusive language by them. The Buddha Prasad committee held the opposition MLAs guilty of misconduct and recommended a one-year suspension of Roja and stern action against another MLA Kodali Srivenkateswara Rao (Nani). It recommended letting off three others - Jyothula Nehru, Chevireddy Bhaskar Reddy and K Sridhar Reddy - with a warning after they expressed "regrets" over their behaviour and promised to mend their ways. Though Nani also expressed regrets, the committee wanted stern action against him given his behaviour and use of derogatory words. The Committee of Privileges endorsed the Buddha Prasad committee report and suggested action against the erring MLAs as recommended. The Assembly discussed the matter for over four hours yesterday and decided to exonerate Nehru, Bhaskar Reddy and Sridhar Reddy while deferring a decision on Nani. The House decided to give one more opportunity to Roja to appear before the Committee of Privileges though she did not attend four previous meetings citing different reasons. "The year-long suspension against Roja will continue, pending disposal of the matter by the Committee of Privileges," the Speaker announced. Incidentally, Roja all through stoutly refused to express regrets to the House over her behaviour. "Even if she expresses regrets now, the House can still take disciplinary action against her," a key Legislature functionary pointed out. The TDP is said to be keen on leaving Roja no escape route out of this tangle. Pakistan has decided to "opt out" of the ambitious SAARC satellite project which was proposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for all member countries of the regional grouping nearly one-and-half-years back. Modi, during last SAARC Summit in Nepal in November 2014, had announced India's decision to develop the satellite to benefit all member countries in various fields including telecommunication and tele-medicine. "Pakistan has decided to opt out of the satellite project. So it cannot be called a SAARC satellite. It will be a South Asia satellite," External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Vikas Swarup said. In June 2014, Modi had asked ISRO to develop the satellite which can be dedicated as a "gift" to the neighbouring countries. India had held deliberations with experts from other SAARC countries to finalise modalities for the satellite exclusively for the regional grouping. Asked about last week's SAARC Foreign Ministers' meeting in Nepal's Pokhra, Swarup said India "pursued connectivity issues which it has been pushing strongly. "Two agreements were close to finalisation which could not be finalised in the last summit," he said, terming the discussions as very positive. "Discussions were very positive. There was a lot of sentiments that South Asia is among the least connected regions of the world and that needs to be changed," said Swarup. Pakistan will host the next SAARC summit from Nov 9-10. He said the outcome of the next summit should be positive going by "tone and tenor" of discussions in Pokhra. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj attended the Pokhra meeting. Independent legislator Sheikh Abdul Rashid today accused PDP leadership of "hurting" the sentiments of people of Jammu and Kashmir by "sacrificing its self-respect to grab power". "Kashmiris are neither beggars nor want meager concessions from New Delhi, but have been distancing from Sang Pariwar over its agenda. "By sacrificing its self-respect to grab power, PDP has hurt the sentiments of the people of the state," Rashid, who represents north Kashmir's Langate in Assembly, said. He said PDP president Mehbooba Mufti was expected to persuade Prime Minister Narendra Modi to offer dialogue to Hurriyat for permanent resolution of Kashmir, talks on self-rule and an assurance that BJP will respect the special status including Article 370 and separate flag and separate constitution for the state. "But BJP has made her to have a shameless surrender and all her tall claims during last two months have dashed to earth. She should have surrendered on the very first day after Mufti (Mohammad Sayeed's) Sahib's demise, rather than making things suspicious and sensational for about two months. "May she answer what stopped her from going to fresh polls or having an alliance with secular forces, when everybody begged her for the same?" Rashid said. He said Mehbooba needs to understand that "the battle is not about return of power projects, financial packages or other routine issues". "Had these been the basic issues, then BJP should had been the better choice than other political parties for the people of the state," Rashid said. The legislator said people were expecting that Mehbooba would rectify the huge mistakes committed by PDP leadership in the past and prefer to dissolve the assembly but "it is obvious that she had neither been sincere to people, nor to her own agenda". "Talking about agenda of alliance is a move to hide the failures and Mehbooba needs to understand that Kashmiris have rejected the so called agenda of alliance from the day one as majority of the people of the state have very serious and basic concerns and reservations with the ideology and programmes of BJP," he said. The Cauvery Water Resource Environment Protection Association today moved the Madras High court bench seeking a direction to prevent sand mining near the Iron Age urn burial site at Adichanallur, located on the banks of the Tamirabharani river. Admitting the petition filed by Association President T N Mahendrakumar, Justices S Manikumar and C T Selvam posted the case for hearing on April 11. The petitioner submitted that Adichanallur is a famous archaeological site. It was brought to light by Jagor, a German, in 1876. Later, excavations carried out by British and French archaeologists there described it as the most extensive prehistoric site of South India, the petitioner said. The site had also been declared an ancient monument under Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Site and Remains Act. The petitioner alleged that sand was being mined from a place close to the site and stored in a particular area. Though he had written to the Public Works Secretary and Tuticorin district collector to take steps to stop mining, nothing had come about so far, he said. The petitioner contended that mining would destroy the monuments and asked the government to intervene and stop mining activities at the site. Prime Minister Narendra Modi today greeted the people of Bihar on the occasion of 104th birth anniversary of the state. "Bihar Diwas greetings to the people of Bihar", the Prime Minister tweeted. The separate province of Bihar and Orissa was carved out of Bengal in 1912 and the Bihar government marks the birth of the state on March 22 annually. Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had taken the initiative a few years ago to mark the day with festivities. The state observes three-day celebrations starting March 22 at the historic Gandhi Maidan annually. The closing day of the anniversary celebrations this year coincides with Holi festivities on March 24. On the occasion, Bihar's Department of Industry is organising 'Bihar Utsav 2016' at INA Dilli Haat from March 16 to March 30. From 2010, the government of Bihar has been organising the 'Bihar Utsav' in Delhi marking the foundation day showcasing the art, craft, culture and development of Bihar. The theme for 'Bihar Utsav' this year is tourism, tradition, art and culture and ambience of Bihar. A police constable was killed and another injured whenthree members of Raju Theth gang opened fire at the policemen in Nagaur district, Rajasthan Home Minister Gulah Chand Kataria told the state assembly today. The accused armed with AK-47 rifle and pistols had escaped from Jaipur yesterday after their accomplice Shankar was arrested. A Quick Response Team (QRT) of Nagaur police had stopped the SUV in which the gang members were travelling and they opened fire at the QRT team injuring constable Khuma Ram and Harendra. "The injured were taken to Nagaur district hospital where they were given primary treatment and referred to MDM hospital in Jodhpur where Khuma Ram died during treatment," Kataria informed the assembly. Khuma Ram died last night. The minister said that the accused fired 35 rounds on the police team which also fired around 18-19 rounds. 'Taking advantage of the darkness of the night, they managed to escape and left the vehicle. On a tip off, police had nabbed a wanted criminal Shankar yesterday in Mansarovar area whereas three others managed to escape. Ammunition in large quantity, one knife, 7 mobile phones were seized from the vehicle and efforts are on to locate the accused, the minister said in the Zero Hour when the Leader of Opposition Rameshwar Dudi raised the issue and held the Home minister "responsible" for deteriorating law and order situation in the state. Dudi said that the criminals escaped with his uncle's SUV on February 27 in Bikaner but police failed to stop the vehicle. The minister said that it was the same vehicle and admitted that there might be some "carelessness" on part of the police to act on the incident of February 27 and said he will look into the matter. Notorious criminal Raju Theth is the rivalof dreaded criminal Anadpal Singh who managed to escape from the custody of police when he was being taken back to high security jail in Ajmer from a court of Nagaur last year. The minister said that the police have arrested 12 aides of Anandpal as well as those including a police commando who helped Anandpal to escape. When the opposition members raised the issue of Anandpal, Kataria said that he was committed to finish the criminal gang and the state police was doing its job. After the reply, the leader of opposition said that the minister's reply was not satisfactory and the Opposition Congress staged a walk-out. (REOPENS DES 37) During the Zero Hour, the Home minister said the government will consider to accord the status of Martyr to policeman killed in firing incidents. The minister said that there is no provision so far but the government will consider if it receives any suggestion in this regard. Belgian police today found a bomb and an Islamic State flag during a search of a Brussels apartment carried out hours after deadly attacks in the Belgian capital that killed around 35 people, prosecutors said. "The searches that took place in the Schaerbeek (district) found an explosive device containing among other things nails," the federal prosecutor said in a statement. "Investigators also discovered chemicals and a flag of the Islamic State," the statement added. Pope Francis will wash the feet of young refugees during the Easter Week foot-washing ritual, after making official his practice of having women participate in the ceremony as well as men. The Vatican didn't said today if non-Catholics would be among the 12 refugees participating in the Holy Thursday rite at an asylum center in Castelnuovo di Porto, north of Rome. Within weeks of becoming pope, Francis stunned conservatives by washing the feet of women and Muslims at a juvenile detention facility. The ritual re-enacts a rite Jesus performed on his apostles before being crucified. Vatican rules had long called for only men to participate, recalling Jesus' 12 apostles and cementing the doctrine of an all-male priesthood. But Francis in January changed the regulations to explicitly allow women to participate. Prince Harry today played Holi with Nepalese villagers and had his face smeared with red powder paint by them to celebrate the arrival of spring. The 31-year-old royal was given a rapturous welcome in Okhari by villagers who decked him with garlands and scarves. The prince's cheeks and forehead were covered when he took part in a powder paint fight as Nepalese villagers celebrated Holi. The Hindu ritual, which marks the arrival of spring, involved revellers throwing paint and coloured water at each other. He visited Okhari, a village in the mountains, to see the Gurkha Welfare Trust's efforts to rebuild a school wrecked by last year's massive earthquake. The prince had spent the previous night as the guest of Mangali Tamang, the 86-year-old widow of a former Gurkha rifleman, the BBC reported from Nepal. He described the experience of sleeping under the same roof as the Nepalese family as "peaceful, actually. Lots of dogs barking, but it didn't seem to bother them." The prince visited the Gauda Secondary School in the village, to see how the British-based Gurkha Welfare Trust is helping to fund the rebuilding after it was damaged during last year's earthquake. The prince's five-day trip is celebrating 200 years of relations between Nepal and Britain. His tour comes as the country is rebuilding after last year's devastating earthquake which killed more than 8,000 people. A section of jewellers in Uttar Pradesh has decided not to celebrate Holi to protest against imposition of 1 per cent excise duty on jewellery items. "Around five lakh jewellers from Uttar Pradesh will not celebrate Holi this year including 10,000 from Kanpur", Uttar Pradesh Jewellers Association President Mahesh Chandra Jain claimed. Jewellers and bullion traders have been on strike since March 2 against the budget proposal to impose 1 per cent excise duty on non-silver jewellery items. "Thousands of wholesale and retail markets are closed and traders are continuing their protest", Jain said. The protest will continue on Holi and we have decided to hold demonstration at MLAs and MPs houses so that they raise the issues with the government, he added. "We are more concerned about employees, daily wages workers and small scale traders. They have the crisis of bread and butter now", Jain told PTI. "We will not call off our strike till the Centre withdraws 1 per cent excise duty on non-silver jewellery," he said. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in the Budget for 2016-17 had 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. Back in October 2010, famed atheist Christopher Hitchens and Christian author and speaker Larry Alex Taunton met at the packed Babcock Theatre in downtown Billings for a lively debate. The two men, friends away from the debating stage, ate dinner together that night. The next day they enjoyed a seven-hour drive through Yellowstone National Park. Fourteen months later, Hitchens died from complications related to esophageal cancer. Now Taunton has written a book about his relationship with Hitchens, their road trips together and the Billings debate, which he calls pivotal. Taunton, executive director of the Fixed Point Foundation in Birmingham, Ala., will return to the Babcock stage on Thursday to speak about the his book The Faith of Christopher Hitchens: The Restless Soul of the Worlds Most Notorious Atheist. The talk will begin at 7 p.m., and tickets are $5 at the door. We thought, 'Wouldnt it be cool to launch the book from the very stage where that debate took place?' Taunton said in a telephone interview. Ill be recounting that evening, showing some clips from it and then do a Q-and-A and a book signing. What many people who attended the 2014 debate may not have realized is that there were a lot of gestures, comments and statements between the two men that only they understood. Some of it is very funny, some deadly earnest, Taunton said. They are references to private conversations or other things." He will point those moments out during his talk. Even people who didnt make it to the debate will find it interesting, he said. Whether youre a Christian or a fan of Christopher Hitchens, I think youre going to love this book, and I think youre going to love this presentation. Gentle respect People on both sides of the Christian-atheist debate have praised the book. Well-known Christian apologist Ravi Zacharias has endorsed it, Taunton said, and Michael Shermer, publisher of Skeptic magazine has been quoted as saying, This book should be read by every atheist and theist passionate about the truth. Taunton, who founded Fixed Point, is in his 11th year leading the nonprofit. It came out of his increasing frustration with the way Christianity was represented in the media, either by people who claimed to be Christians or by the mischaracterization, often in major media outlets. He wanted to counter negative stereotypes, like the Church Lady, portrayed by Dana Carvey on Saturday Night Live, or the hateful words spewed by religious organizations such as the Westboro Baptist Church. I wanted to see a Christianity that engaged the world, that had intellectual teeth, and do so in a way that was fair, open, thoughtful, Taunton said. I didnt really know if that would resonate, but Ive been pretty busy for the last decade. Taunton writes for publications including The Atlantic and USA Today, and appears on cable news outlets and on radio programs. Last year he debated with a Muslim cleric on Al Jazeera before an audience of 260 million people. He splits his time between the United States and Europe. Taunton has debated well-known British atheist Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, four times, and developed a friendship, as he did with Hitchens. Maybe thats because of the way he approaches his defense of Christianity. Taunton quotes I Peter 3:15 out of the New Testament: Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect. Thats a very hard line to walk, he said. How do you defend your position and be gentle and respectful? Thats hard. The tendency among some Christians is to be all defense and no gentleness or respect, he said. Others lean toward gentleness with respect, but compromise everything they believe. I didnt compromise anything on stage with Christopher, debating Christopher, he said. But I didnt attack the man. I wanted to be ruthless with the ideas he held to, but respectful to the man. I cared about the man. The pair's history Taunton first met Hitchens when Taunton was asked by the organizers of the Edinburgh International Festival in Scotland to sponsor a debate that featured Hitchens and Oxford professor of mathematics John Lennox, a Christian apologist. From Hitchens writing and TV interviews, Taunton expected to encounter a mean, hateful man. Instead Hitchens walked straight into Tauntons hotel room, as if he were continuing a conversation the two had been previously having. Hitchens was upset about something the archbishop of Canterbury had done. He asked Taunton, "Whatever happened to the Church of England that believed in something? Taunton told Hitchens he sounded like he was nostalgic for a church that took the Bible seriously. He turned to me and said, Perhaps I am, " Taunton said. Over the next several years, the two saw each other at various events, and their friendship grew. All that culminated in their debate in Billings. Taunton plans to share his insights into Hitchens while in Billings. Theres so much more to him than the witty atheist that people saw on the stage, he said. "You get him away from the fans and the cameras and microphones, and Christopher was a different person," Taunton said. The Punjab government today passed a Bill which provides for a framework for regulation and settlement of agricultural debts. Moving 'Punjab Settlement of Agricultural Indebtedness Bill' on the floor of the House on the concluding day of Budget session, Agriculture Minister Tota Singh said the Bill aims to provide a forum for determination and expeditious settlement of debts of agriculturists and all other persons dependent upon agriculture with a view to alleviate their difficulties. Noting that agricultural indebtedness has increased manifold, he said, "It is an outcome of the mismatch between the prices of agricultural inputs and minimum support prices of agricultural produce." "Consequently, the livelihood of farmers and all other persons dependent on agriculture have been adversely affected," he added. These persons raise loans from institutional and non-institutional resources, he said, adding that institutional loans were regulated through various special legislations governing the institutions providing such loans. However, non institutional loans are largely unregulated with no easily accessible forum for remedy, he said. "As per the Bill, the interest payable on the debt shall be calculated at such rate as may be notified by the government," he said, adding "the interest payable on the debt shall be simple interest calculated on yearly basis". The government shall establish a District Agriculture Debt Settlement Forum at every district of the state to carry out the purposes of this Act within the territorial jurisdiction of such district, Singh said. He added that the chairman of the Forum shall be a retired District and Sessions Judge or a retired Additional District and Sessions Judge. Participating in discussion on the Bill, Leader of Opposition Charanjit Singh Channi (Congress) said there is a need to find out why farmers are falling in debt trap and committing suicides. He said the rate of interest on loans taken by farmers from banks and commission agents must be fixed. Channi also sought a package from the Centre to bail out peasantry from the debt trap in the state. Sunil Kumar Jakhar of Congress urged political parties cutting across party lines to approach the Centre to take steps to bail out farmers from debt trap. "Earlier, the One Time Settlement (OTS) scheme of the government to settle debts, failed. We should come out with ways how farmers income can be made surplus," he said. Adesh Partap Singh Kairon, who is an Akali Minister, said that with this Bill, the process to settle debts of farmers has been simplified. Earlier, Minister Anil Joshi (BJP) had to withdraw the Bill introduced by him on setting up of physiotherapy council as Channi (Congress), Kuljeet Singh Nagra (Congress) and Virsa Singh Valtoha (SAD) opposed it. The House also passed 'Punjab Gau Sewa Commission Bill' to ensure the protection accorded to cow under any law. Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal told the Assembly that Punjab government is constructing cowsheds in all the districts of the state. "These cow sheds are being constructed on areas varying between 25 acres to 100 acres," he said. The House also passed 'Amritsar Walled City (Recognition of Usage) Bill' moved by Minister Anil Joshi (BJP) despite stiff opposition from his party colleague Manoranjan Kalia. Kalia said the Bill should be re-considered as there is provision under it in which commercial establishments in the walled city will be regularised benefitting the "wrong doers." "If you want to benefit those whose commercial establishments are within walled city then it should be done for entire Punjab," he said. Besides, the House also passed other Bills including Punjab State Commission for Women (Amendment) Bill, Punjab Infrastructure (Development and Regulation Amendment) Bill, Punjab State Commission for Minorities (Amendment) Bill, Punjab Bovine Breeding Bill, Punjab Municipal (Amendment) Bill and Punjab Package Deal Properties (Disposal) Amendment Bill. Later, the House was adjourned sine die after holding legislative business. Asserting that SC/ST people are equally competent to do private jobs, Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan today asked the industry to voluntarily give reservation to the weaker sections, claiming it will help curb naxalism. "Why are youths drifting towards naxalism? It is happening because they are not getting opportunities," Paswan said on the sidelines of an event here. "Providing quota in private jobs will help cool down anger among SC and STs," The Union Minister for Consumer Affairs said suggesting that the vulnerable youths from these sections are taking to extremist ideology due to the lack of employment avenues for them. Currently, the industry does not seem to be bothered about the backward sections of society, he added. Making a strong pitch for job quota in private sector, the Minister said: "The private industry, which is benefiting from the government, should reserve jobs if not at Class I and Class II but at least at Class III and Class IV levels to provide just reservation to scheduled caste (SC) and scheduled tribes (ST)." Even in media, there should be one per cent reservation for SC/STs, Paswan said. On industry's concern that introduction of quota would impact quality of manpower, Paswan said, "Are not SC and ST people capable of doing even peons job? If you cannot reserve jobs at Class I and Class II level. At least you can provide at Class III and IV level." The Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) chief also said SC and STs are competing for civil service since India's independence and they are "equally competent to do private jobs." Asked if the government will speak to the industry on this issue, Paswan said: "This is our party's demand. I feel that the industry should come forward on its own and play an affirmative role. Thereafter, the government will definitely think about it." Paswan thanked Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his categorical assertion that there will be no dilution in the existing reservation policy in government jobs. BJP leader Prakash Javadekar, however, downplayed the Union Minister's remark, saying, "This has been his view for a long time. Home Minister Rajnath Singh on Tuesday ruled out withdrawal of Assam Rifles from Indo-Myanmar border and its replacement with another paramilitary force, saying no such decision has been taken yet. "We have not taken any decision yet. Whenever we take any such decision, we will let you know," he told reporters here on the sidelines of a 'Sainik Sammelan' organised on the occasion of 181st Raising Day of Assam Rifles. There have been reports that the central government may entrust the task of guarding this border to another border guarding force, Indo-Tibetan Border Police (ITBP). Border Security Force (BSF) was earlier being considered for the task and it had also prepared an assessment report in this regard. India and Myanmar share an unfenced border of 1,643 km adjoining Arunachal Pradesh (520 km), Nagaland (215 km), Manipur (398 km) and Mizoram (510 km) and permit a "free movement" regime up to 16 km across the border. Assam Rifles, raised in 1835, functions under the operational command of the Union Home Ministry. The Home Minister is on a two-day tour of Meghalaya beginning yesterday. ReNew Power Ventures Private Ltd today said it has signed a debt financing agreement of USD 250 million with Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC), the US government's development finance institution. "The funds will be utilised to construct up to 400 MWs of new solar power projects in India across multiple states," the company said in a press release. ReNew Power Chairman and CEO Sumant Sinha said, "ReNew Power will have an edge in the solar competitive bidding scenario through this long term OPIC facility. With another high quality lender on board, ReNew Power continues to hold its leadership position in the renewable energy space in India." OPIC is proud to partner with ReNew Power in delivering innovative clean energy solutions throughout India, said Elizabeth Littlefield, OPIC's President and CEO. "By supporting the construction of new solar power projects, OPIC looks forward to helping ReNew Power meet India's growing energy needs while further reducing the country's carbon footprint," Littlefield added. Founded in 2011, ReNew Power has now more than 2,400 MWs of clean energy assets. Currently, it has presence in nine states (Gujarat, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh & Jharkhand) in the country. The company is backed by marquee investors like Goldman Sachs, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), Asian Development Bank and Global Environment Fund. Founded in 2011 by Sumant Sinha, ReNew Power has now more than 2,400 MWs of clean energy assets. Currently, it has presence in nine states (Gujarat, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh and Jharkhand) across the country. The company is backed by marquee investors like Goldman Sachs, Abu Dhabi Investment Authority (ADIA), Asian Development Bank and Global Environment Fund. In the last one year, ReNew Power has ramped up its solar energy portfolio. It recently signed Power Purchase Agreements (PPAs) for four solar ground mounted projects with combined capacity of 286 MW in Telangana. Further, it has also won bids in Karnataka (180 MWs) and Jharkhand (522 MWs) for which the PPAs will be signed shortly. Some of ReNew Power's notable achievements: ReNew Power is the best capitalized renewable energy company in the country. 1) Renew Power is the largest capital raiser in debt markets in the renewable energy IPP sector in the last 3.5 years with over Rs. 8,000 cr of debt sanctions. 2) In September 2015, ReNew Power installed and commissioned India's tallest wind tower. It is a lattice/tubular tower (hybrid tower) of 120 m height, installed for the first time anywhere on-shore in the world. 3) Also, in September 2015, ReNew Power launched the first ever infrastructure bond issuance credit enhanced by IIFCL, rated AA+. 4) All ReNew Power projects are UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) registered. 5) Scheduling and forecasting is being done for all ReNew Power projects through ReNew Power Information System, which won the Skoch Smart Technology Award 2015. 6) Currently commissioned ReNew power projects have mitigating 1.5 million tons of CO2 emissions till date, and will mitigate more than 28 million tons of CO2 emissions in their lifetime. Fostering respect for other cultures and beliefs will help the international community face the growing challenges of rise of extremism and threats to peace and security, India said on the occasion of Nowruz, the Persian New Year that marks the beginning of spring. "...The international community also faces a number of challenges of peace and security, rise of extremism and the like. Celebrations like Nowruz will help us in facing these challenges by fostering mutual understanding and respect for each other's culture, traditions and beliefs," India's Ambassador to the UN Syed Akbaruddin said at the International Day of Nowruz, commemorated yesterday. The International Day of Nowruz was proclaimed in 2010 by the General Assembly, and India has been co-sponsoring the commemoration at the world body along with Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Akbaruddin said the Parsi community, which celebrates Nowruz,is woven integrally into the cultural fabric of India. The community has contributed significantly towards building and strengthening modern India, he said. The community's growth in India, from the first migrants who landed in the country centuries ago, holds a lesson on how nations can embrace migrants seeking refuge and peace "in distant lands in these troubling times," he said. Drawing parallels between the central message of Nowruz and that of the International Day of Yoga, he said both days symbolise peace and "harmony with nature." "This central message of Nowruz is also one of the key messages of the International Day of Yoga as underscored in the Yoga Day resolution namely 'building better individual lifestyles devoid of any kind of excesses'," he said. He added that on the first year of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the central message of Nowruz is indispensable for achieving the "transformative agenda and the goals we have set for ourselves towards sustainable development." In his message on the day, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that conflict, discrimination and other violations of human rights continue to take an immense toll and the occasion should be used to spread its essential message of hope and renewal around the world. "We must respond with compassionate action that addresses immediate suffering while tackling root causes. With its focus on good relations, environmental stewardship and lasting peace, Nowruz is an occasion to strengthen our resolve to leave no one behind in our journey to a better future," he said. UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova called Norwruz "an outstanding manifestation of how living cultural heritage expresses the way we understand the world and the means by which we shape it for the good of all. Gambhir voiced India'sfirm resolve to protect all its citizens from all acts of terrorism in Jammu and Kashmir. "We cannot and will not allow terrorism to prevail," she said. Gambhir reminded the UN that the trail of the most "horrifying" and "dastardly terror attack" of 9/11 led all the way to Abbottabad in Pakistan, where Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden had been hiding for years and was killed by US forces. She also noted that the land of Taxila, one of the greatest learning centres of ancient times, "is now host to the Ivy League of terrorism" and attracts aspirants and apprentices from all over the world. "The effect of its toxic curriculum are felt across the globe," she said, adding that itisironical that a country which has established itself as the global epicentre of terrorism, is preaching human rights and talks about the ostensible support for self-determination. She also told the UN General Assembly that shortly before Pakistan gave its "hypocritical sermons" in the world body, its envoy in New Delhi was summoned in the context of the most recent of the terror attacks in Uri that claimed 18 Indian lives. "That terrorist attack is part of a trail of continuous flow of terrorists trained and armed by our neighbour and tasked to carry out terrorist attacks in my country," she said. Sharif raised the Kashmir issue with almost every world leader - including those from the US, the UK, Japan and Turkey - yesterday. He sought their intervention to resolve the matter. (Reopens FGN2) Pakistan's representative, exercising the Right of Reply to India's response, said the Indian government has chosen to "criticise" Sharif's statement, which "reflects the sentiments and aspirations of the oppressed people" of Jammu and Kashmir. "The dispute of Jammu and Kashmir cannot be wished away," he said, adding Pakistan will continue to stand by the people of Kashmir and extend its "full diplomatic and political support" to their movement for freedom from "Indian oppression". Again referring to the "cold-blooded murder" of militant Wani, he said it sparked protests across Kashmir in an "irrefutable evidence" of the Kashmiri people's rejection of "Indian occupation". He said the right to self determination has been "promised" to the people of Kashmir by the international community through a series of Security Council resolutions. "Although this promise has yet to be realised seven decades later, time has not weakened their resolve," he said, adding that the people of Kashmir look towards the international community, particularly the members of the UNSC, to deliver on the pledge to hold free and impartial plebiscite to enable them to decide their future. "This is the democratic and legal right of the Kashmiri people," he said, adding that "no amount of verbiage" used by Indian delegation can "obfuscate" this reality. Government has extended by three months the tenure of A P Shah Committee looking into the dispute over natural migrating from state-owned ONGC's idle blocks in KG basin to neighbouring fields of Reliance Industries. The committee has been asked to submit by July 31 its report on "acts of omission and commission" as well as compensation to ONGC, an oil ministry official said. The extension was necessary as RIL and its partner Niko Resources of Canada joined the inquiry committee only on February 19 and have submitted voluminous data which needs to be studied, he said. "They (the committee) sought an extension," he said. The ministry had constituted the one-man panel under Justice (Retd) A P Shah after US-based consultant D&M, in its final report, stated that as much as 11.122 billion cubic meters of natural gas, worth over Rs 11,000 crore, had migrated from idling Krishna Godavari fields of Oil and Natural Corporation (ONGC) to adjoining KG-D6 block of RIL. The panel initially sought written comments on the D&M report and the issue of connectivity of reservoir from all parties to the case. While ONGC and upstream regulator DGH responded, RIL and its partner Niko questioned the very constitution of the panel and decided not to participate in its proceedings. However, their 30% partner BP plc of UK agreed to participate in the proceedings. RIL and Niko later had a change of heart and agreed to participate in the inquiry. The official said since RIL and Niko submitted their response together with voluminous data late, the Shah Committee wanted more time to study it. The panel has been asked to look into legal, financial and contractual provisions and submit a report. It has also been asked to report any "acts of omission and commission" on part of all the stakeholders including RIL, ONGC, the Directorate General of Hydrocarbons and the government, according to the terms and reference of the panel. It has been asked to "quantify the unfair enrichment, if any, to the contractors of the adjacent block KG-DWN-98/3 (KG-D6) and measures to prevent future unfair enrichment to these contractors on account of migration." It has also been asked to "recommend action to be taken to make good the loss to ONGC/government on account of such unfair enrichment to the contractors." The official said the government will decide on future course of action based on the recommendations of the Committee. RIL has 60 per cent interest in KG-D6 block, while Niko holds 10% stake. BP holds the remaining 30%. DeGolyer and MacNaughton (D&M), had in its November 30 report, established that reservoirs in ONGC's Krishna Godavari basin KG-DWN-98/2 (KG-D5) and the Godavari-PML are connected with Dhirubhai-1 and 3 (D1 & D3) field located in the KG-DWN-98/3 (KG-D6) Block of RIL. It states that as much as 11.122 billion cubic meters of ONGC gas has migrated from Godavari-PML and KG-DWN-98/2 to KG-D6. Of the 58.68 bcm of gas produced from KG-D6 block since April 1, 2009, 49.69 bcm belongs to RIL and 8.981 bcm could have come from ONGC's side, D&M said. At gas price of USD 4.2 per million British thermal unit, the volume of gas belonging to ONGC which RIL has produced comes to USD 1.7 billion (Rs 11,055 crore). ONGC had in 2013 claimed that RIL had deliberately drilled wells close to the common boundary of the blocks and that some gas it pumped out was from its adjoining block. RIL, on the other hand, has maintained that it has "scrupulously followed every aspect of the production sharing contract and has confined its petroleum operations within the (boundaries of its) KG-D6 block" in Krishna Godavari basin. D&M estimated that ONGC's Godavari-PML had 14.209 bcm of gross in-place reserves and KG-D5 another 11.856 bcm. RIL's D&D3 fields held 80.697 bcm gross in-place reserves. Of these, 12.80 bcm of Godavari-PML, 8.01 bcm of KG-D5 and 75.33 bcm of KG-D6 are connected, it said. It estimated that 11.89 bcm of gas from ONGC blocks would have migrated to KG-D6 by January 1, 2017. This volume would rise to 12.713 bcm by May 1, 2019. The volume of gas remaining after this would not be economically viable for ONGC to develop. D&M was jointly appointed by ONGC and RIL to find if the neighbouring fields are connected. Arterial roads in central and east Delhi were choked with stretches around the ITO junction witnessing long tailbacks for hours following the cave-in of a portion of the road on Bhairon Marg. Traffic snarls in and around ITO and the Ring Road stretch near Sarai Kale Khan started right in the morning peak hours and deteriorated by 12 PM. Long tailbacks were also witnessed on Vikas Marg, the stretch near Pragati Maidan, and arterial roads in central Delhi, a senior traffic official said. A portion of the road caved in on Bhairon Marg, where repair work was underway, triggering the traffic mayhem, officials said. "To tackle the situation, traffic from Ring Road to Mathura Road has been diverted till the repair work is over," said Special Commissioner of Police (Traffic), Muktesh Chander. Adding to the mess was a leaked pipeline that caused flooding in an area near the ITO flyover by afternoon. The situation was also aggravated by a chain of trucks which were allowed to ply in the morning after being stalled in east Delhi due to traffic jams last night. Commuters passing through these areas during the day had a harrowing time and had to spend hours on stretches which they said would normally take them a fifth of the time to cross. The Delhi Traffic Police helpline was bombarded with phone calls till evening with people enquiring about traffic congestion and road diversions, the official said. Vehicles on the three major arterial stretches -- Mathura Road, Tilak Marg and Sikandra Road -- converge at the ITO junction either to take a right towards Vikas Marg, heading east, or move straight towards Bahadur Shah Zafar Marg, which leads towards central Delhi. Traffic on all three stretches was thrown out-of-gear in the day. In the afternoon, thousands of vehicles were stuck on Vikas Marg, compelling Delhi Police to deploy officials to manage the situation. Commuters also complained about inadequate police presence near the road cave-in site. Eyeing multi-billion dollar deals, Russia is sending a 500-member delegation to the defence expo scheduled to be held in Goa later this month. From Kamov helicopters to latest Kalashnikov rifles, Russia is exhibiting a whopping 800 defence-related products at the four-day exhibition beginning March 28. In addition, Rostec State Corporation, an umbrella organisation in Russia of about 700 organisations, intends to discuss creation of joint production of ammunition with the Defence Ministry. United Engine Corporation (UEC) will present models of aircraft and marine engines. "We are very excited to come to India to be part of Defexpo India 2016. These are exciting times for India's defence industry as Asia's geo-politics increasingly takes shape around India," said Sergei Chemezov, CEO of Rostec State Corporation, who will also be heading the Russian delegation. He added that Russia is deeply committed to partnering with India in the 'Make in India' endeavour and to strengthen partnerships, both from manufacturing and joint development perspectives for military and civil cooperation. Russian Helicopters will showcase the Mi-38 and Ka-226T during the event. The delegation will hold talks with state-run Hindustan Aeronautics Limited and Pawan Hans Limited, which operates helicopters Mi-172 and other aircraft. Russian Helicopters also plans to organise a presentation of the Mi-38 and Mi-171A2 for Pawan Hans Limited. A Russian court today found a Ukrainian pilot guilty of complicity to murder in the deaths of two Russian journalists in eastern Ukraine, opening a path to a potential prisoner swap Nadezhda Savchenko, 34, was serving in a Ukrainian volunteer battalion against Russia-backed rebels when she was captured by separatist rebels in July 2014. She later surfaced in Russia. Prosecutors said Savchenko called in coordinates for the shelling that killed two journalists and several civilians near the Russian border in July 2014. She denied being in the area at the time and insisted that she had been captured by the rebels a few hours before the mortar attack that killed the journalists and civilians. Upon hearing the guilty verdict today, Savchenko interrupted the judge and began belting out a Ukrainian song at the top of her voice. The judge, who was about to pronounce sentence, called a break in the hearing. The Ukrainian government says Savchenko is a prisoner of war and should be released under current truce agreements in eastern Ukraine. Speculation persists that Moscow might agree to exchange her for two Russians captured in eastern Ukraine and alleged to be active-duty soldiers despite Russia's persistent denial that it has sent troops or equipment to bolster the rebels. Russian officials have insisted that they would not even discuss a possible prisoner swap before the verdict was in. Fighting between Russia-backed separatists and government troops in eastern Ukraine has killed more than 9,100 people. The Savchenko case has attracted strong criticism from the West and is an open wound for Ukraine, which says she was captured by Russia-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine and turned over to Russia, and therefore should be treated as a prisoner of war. Saudi security forces have arrested a Shiite preacher in the east of the kingdom, charging that he "glorified" Lebanon's Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah online, a newspaper reported today. Hussein al-Radi was detained after Gulf Arab states declared Hezbollah a "terrorist" group earlier this month and brought in tough new measures against anyone supporting it. The Al-Watan daily reported that security forces arrested Radi, of the Al-Ahsa oasis region of Eastern Province. "This is after he glorified the terrorist group Hezbollah and insulted the kingdom in a video clip that has been shared" online, the report said. Radi "also broke previous pledges he had made after defending the terrorist Nimr al-Nimr following his execution," it added. Nimr, another Shiite cleric from Eastern Province, was a driving force behind protests that began in 2011 among the Shiite minority in Sunni-majority Saudi Arabia, who complain of marginalisation. He and three other Shiites were in a group of 47 people executed on January 2 for "terrorism." The newspaper quoted a security source as saying authorities had "met with patience" a number of violations Radi had allegedly made. "But he continued to incite the public, taking advantage of the mosque platform to breach regulations." Iranian demonstrators stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran and a consulate following Nimr's execution, prompting Riyadh to cut diplomatic ties. Other Gulf states have also taken measures against alleged Hezbollah supporters since the terror blacklisting. Bahrain announced it had deported several Lebanese residents for alleged links to the group. A Kuwaiti newspaper reported yesterday that authorities there had taken similar action against 11 Lebanese and three Iraqis. And the United Arab Emirates has reportedly put seven people on trial for allegedly forming a cell linked to Hezbollah. Brokered political conventions are neither good nor bad. Sometimes they are simply necessary. That could be the case with the Republicans this year, as it was in 1952 and 1976. The Montana delegation were bitter-enders at the contested 1952 Republican national convention. The contest for the Republican presidential nomination was between Ohio Sen. Robert Taft, and Gen. Dwight Eisenhower. Taft, the Republican Senate leader, was fondly known in Republican circles as Mr. Republican. He was a prominent member of the party establishment. The Ohio Senator had opposed most of the New Deal programs. He and his supporters were critical of the me-too Republicans who had decided to accept them. Eisenhower, the insurgent candidate, popularly known as Ike, was a newcomer to Republican politics, with no record on the issues. The Montana delegation went to the national convention in Chicago pledged to Taft. While Taft and Eisenhower had each prevailed in five state primaries, and neither had a majority of the delegates necessary to win the party nomination, Taft had slightly more delegates than Eisenhower when the convention opened. The competition for a majority of delegates was fierce, and the maneuvering intense. Montanans for Taft The critical development occurred during the seating of the Georgia and Texas, delegations where the established Republicans had considered only Taft loyalists to be delegates to the national convention. The Eisenhower faction challenged the seating of the Texans and Georgians, making a persuasive case for fair play in the convention floor debate. Their challenge prevailed, and with the seating of substitute delegations, Eisenhower pulled ahead of Taft in the delegate count. On the first ballot, Ike led 595 to 500, with 604 needed to win the nomination. Before a second ballot could begin, sensing that Eisenhower was the probable winner, numerous delegations began changing their votes to support him. When the dust settled, it was Eisenhower 845, and Taft 280. Among the bitter enders for Taft who didnt get on Ikes bandwagon was the entire Montana delegation. In 1976, the Republicans again convened with no majority candidate. Challenger Ronald Reagan slightly trailed President Gerald Ford. The Montana delegation was unanimous for Reagan. The Reagan supporters suspected that the Ford forces had hinted to several prominent senators and governors that they were likely to be tapped by Ford to be his running mate. Reagan, therefore publicly named as his running mate, Pennsylvania Sen. Richard Schweiker, and proposed a rule to the convention that would require both candidates to reveal their running mate choices before any balloting for president. Reagan hoped that those not chosen by Ford, perhaps feeling deceived, would release their delegations to vote for Reagan. When the rule failed by a slender 51 vote margin, it was clear that Ford had a lock on the votes to win the nomination, which he did, 1,187 to 1,070, with the Montanans sticking with Reagan. 27 votes matter It now appears possible, for the first time since 1976, that no Republican candidate will have a majority of delegates going into the 2016 national convention. Montana Republican primary voters need to know that by new state party rules, at least through the first national convention roll call vote, this years delegation must all agree to support the candidate who finishes first in the June 7 primary election. This is important because, occurring late in the process, Montanas primary and its small, but solid block of 27 votes could be decisive in determining whether there will be a brokered convention. So, in this years Republican primary election, cast your ballot carefully. Bob Brown, of Whitefish, is a former Montana secretary of state and state Senate president. The sedition law, which has come under focus after the JNU row, needs "reconsideration," newly-appointed Law Commission Chairman Justice Balbir Singh Chauhan said today but asserted that the panel will not jump to any conclusion before hearing out stakeholders. "Actually it (sedition law) requires reconsideration. We do not know what is the problem, what are the difficulties. We will hear all the stakeholders, consult criminal lawyers," the former Supreme Court judge told PTI. He said the recently-reconstituted 21st Law Commission "cannot jump to any conclusion" before understanding the difficulties relating to section 124 A of the IPC dealing with sedition. "What are the difficulties, why it requires reconsideration, whether there is any need of change of definition. And only then we will make a report. We cannot jump to any conclusion...," he said. He said the priority for the Commission would be come out with the report on comprehensive review of the criminal justice system which would include a relook at the Indian Penal Code (IPC), Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPc) and the Evidence Act. While IPC and CrPC are handled by the Union Home Ministry, the Evidence Act comes under the domain of the Law Ministry. Justice Chauhan said the government has given the Commission a list of issues for its consideration, including hate speech, live in relations, rights of victims and "comprehensive review" of the criminal justice system. "We will take up the issues one by one, otherwise it will be difficult to hand over reports," he said. The issue of sedition law, which was part of government's effort to review the criminal justice system was referred to the 20th Law Commission headed by Justice A P Shah in 2012. But the previous Commission could not submit a report on the issue. Arrest of JNU students union president on charges of sedition triggered a debate on whether this law can be misused to crush freedom of expression. Against the backdrop of JNU row, the government had earlier this month acknowledged in the Rajya Sabha that the definition of sedition law is "very wide". Home Minister Rajnath Singh had agreed for an all-party meeting to discuss the issue after the Law Commission submits its report on sedition law. The government had rejected Opposition charge that it was rampantly using the law, contending that except the one case of JNU, sedition cases have mostly been registered outside Delhi. "Anybody, who speaks against the government can be booked under sedition law. Amendments have been suggested because the definition is very wide...There are various cases. That is why concerns were have been raised. I would like the ask the Law Commission to consider a very comprehensive review," Minister of State for Home Kiren Rijiju had said replying to questions. Rijiju said the Law Commission, in its 42nd report submitted in June, 1971, had noted that the sedition law is "defective" but did not favour its deletion. Quoting figures from a report of National Crime Records Bureau, he said a total of 47 cases under the sedition law were reported across the country in 2014 of which the maximum 16 cases were registered in Bihar in which 28 arrests were made. The second highest is Jharkhand, he had said adding that Kerala and Odisha follow them in the descending order. Activists of women's wing of Shiv Sena today disrupted a rally addressed by BJP leader and president of the state women's commission, Vijayatai Rahatkar, for allegedly supporting the idea of separate Marathwada and Vidarbha states. Sena activists allegedly ransacked the pandal of the event in Bodhale Nagar locality. Officers of Mumbai Naka police station said complaints were registered by both the sides. Rahatkar, talking to reporters earlier, had allegedly expressed support for separate states. State Advocate General Shreehari Aney triggered the controversy over the issue when he voiced support for separate Marathwada state in Jalna two days ago. Even as Uttarakhand Police horse 'Shaktiman' recuperates from a fractured leg, a batch of his 20 colleagues are undergoing a gruelling three-month training at the ITBP academy near here to learn special skills of keeping protesters at bay during law and order duties. A contingent of 20 horses and 30 handlers from Uttarakhand Police came from Dehradun in January this year to the National Equine Training School (NETS) at the forces' Bhanu camp for learning special skills and techniques of crowd control, mob dispersal and patrolling in mountainous terrain. The trainers of the border guarding force--Indo-Tibetan Border Police-- will be training the animals. Officials said the police horses like 'Shaktiman' were sent to the academy here on a request by Uttarakhand government to Union Home Ministry last year. He said the horses--Akbar, Sultan, Altamas, Naaz, Nawab, Neelam, Angoori, Raka, Mandakini, Diana and Julie among others are around the same age group as 13-year-old 'Shaktiman' and are being given special training to render duties in the hill state for effective upkeep of law and order duties as part of the mounted police unit of the state. 'Shaktiman' was recently operated upon after he broke his leg in an attack by a BJP MLA during a protest march in Dehradun on March 14. The horses, unlike 'Shaktiman' who was without any body armour, are being trained by providing them partial body cover which is required to keep them safe while rendering duties during protests and other similar policing duties when mounted police is called in to deal with protests. "The recent incident involving Shaktiman is surely at the back of the minds of the trainers but every time they train a police horse, the aim is to make him stronger and sturdier than what they are," the officials said. (Reopens DES 43) The trainers are also imparting the handlers in keeping their horses happy and understand their vital body language like hunger, pain and anger. "The horses and their handlers are also imparted some skills as used by the famed Royal Canadian Mounted Police. A total of 30 handlers are being trained against 20 horses so that they can be rotated while being on long or back-to-back duties," they said. The NETS of the ITBP is part of the National Training Centre for Dogs and Animal Transport for training police dogs and their trainers in the country. Archaeologists in the UK who discovered and helped to identify the mortal remains of King Richard III have created a 3D interactive representation of the grave and the skeleton of the monarch. The team from University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS) has created a fully rotatable computer model which shows the king's remains in-situ as they were found during the 2012 archaeological excavation. Using photographs taken during the project, sophisticated photogrammetry software has been used to create an accurate representation of the grave and the skeleton. The interactive model, which can be explored via the 3D sharing platform Sketchfab, graphically shows in a new and immersive way the minimal reverence with which the king was buried. "Photographs and drawings of the grave, whilst dramatic, are only two-dimensional and do not always best show nuances in spatial relationships that a three-dimensional model can," said Mathew Morris, Site Supervisor for University of Leicester Archaeological Services. "Photogrammetry provides a fantastic analytical tool that allows us to examine the grave from angles that would have been physically difficult or impossible to achieve during the excavation, and gives us the ability to continue to examine the king's grave long after the excavation has finished," he said. Archaeologists discovered that the poorly dug grave was not only too short for the king, but was messily dug with sloping sides and an uneven base. This made it awkward for the burial party to lay the body out neatly in the grave. Instead, it was left slightly slumped on one side with the head propped up because it would not fit properly - physical evidence which fits with historical accounts which say that Richard III was buried without pomp or solemn funeral. "During the excavation in 2012 we took photographs of the skeleton from multiple angles to create a lasting record of how the king's bones were positioned in the grave before we exhumed them," said Morris. Photogrammetry is used in a wide range of fields from topographic mapping to the movie and gaming industry. It is often used by archaeologists because it provides a quick, extremely versatile and cost-effective method of recording and analysing complex objects and surfaces using software that turns multiple two-dimensional digital photographs into a three-dimensional model. Under suitable conditions, the technique can produce geo-referenced results similar to those of laser scanning and can be applied to photographs taken during archaeological excavations, building surveys and laboratory conservation. The software, Agisoft's Photoscan, looks for points of commonality in overlapping photographs of a single object or surface from which it can extrapolate a three-dimensional point cloud which can be converted to a polygon mesh. The photographs can then also be used to render the surface reconstruction to create a photo-realistic effect. President Pranab Mukherjee today awarded 'Shaurya Chakra', the third highest peacetime gallantry award, posthumously, to slain CRPF officer H K Jha for valiantly leading and laying down his life while taking on armed Naxals in Bihar's Jamui district in 2014. Jha's wife Binu received the medal from Mukherjee at a ceremony at the Rashtrapati Bhavan here. The medal was awarded on India's 69th Independence day last year, which coincided with what would have been the late officer's 46th birthday. Also, last year, Jha was the only paramilitary officer to get a military bravery medal. Jha, an officer of the country's largest paramilitary force, led an anti-Naxal operation on July 3, 2014 in Jamui district of Bihar which led to the arrest of the wife of a hardcore Maoist leader Sidhu Koda and subsequently of two other ultras. Born on August 15, 1969, Jha rose through the ranks in the force within a short span of time by the sheer virtue of his daredevil exploits and was the Second-in-Command of the 7th battalion of the Central Reserve Police Force (CRPF) which is deployed in the Left Wing Extremism-hit areas of the state. While laying siege upon a Maoist hideout in Jamui's Lakhari village, the slain officer laid out his strike team in an strategic manner and began the assault but was hit by enemy fire and the bullet pierced through his right eye and exited from the back. Jha collapsed on the spot but not before giving a tactical advantage to his team and draining out the bullets and ammunition of the Naxals. "Jha was conferred with this rare honour for making supreme sacrifice while displaying exceptional leadership and raw courage in the face of grave adversity during the said operation," his citation read. The officer, who hails from Jharkhand capital Ranchi, volunteered to be posted in the anti-Naxal operations grid after he had various stints in Jammu and Kashmir and insurgency-hit areas of North East. Jha is survived by his wife and two young children. CRPF Director General K Durga Prasad was present during the investiture ceremony held at the hands of the President, the supreme commander of armed forces. Congress President Sonia Gandhi today condemned the terror attack in Brussels, insisting such cowardly acts could never defeat the resolve of the world community to fight terrorism in all its manifestations. Expressing shock over the blasts, she hoped and prayed that the casualty figures and number of injured remained low and said the Congress as indeed the entire country stood with the people of Belgium in this hour of crisis. Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi too condemned the attacks. "Strongly condemn the attacks in Brussels. My thoughts & prayers are with the families of the victims and the people of Belgium," he tweeted. (Reopens DEL46) Deploring Brussels explosions, CPI(M) today said killings of innocent people is "unacceptable" and insisted perpetrators of the crime be brought to book. "The tragedy at Brussels today follows the recent terror attacks at Ankara and Istanbul. Deaths of innocents tragic and deplorable. "Killing of innocents is unacceptable. The perpetrators of this crime must be brought to book. #BrusselsIstanbulAnkara (sic)," party general secretary Sitaram Yechury tweeted. The government today launched a study to assess the health needs and issues of elderly people in the country, a move aimed at formulating better schemes and policies for them. Terming it the "largest survey of its kind", the Union Health Ministry launched the Longitudinal Ageing Study in India (LASI), which will survey over 60,000 elderly people and provide data on their health needs. "The study is important due to the increasing population of elderly people in the country. It will provide valuable data on their health needs and the issues faced by them given the changing social structures," health secretary BP Sharma said. The study will help the "ministry draw up policy tools to address their issues". The LASI study will provide guidance for designing schemes for the elderly, he said. Sharma also said that the Health Protection Scheme announced in the 2016-17 budget has a special component of Rs 30,000 for the elderly in the family. DG, Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), Soumya Swaminathan said this is a tremendous opportunity as it will pave the way for other studies on social justice issues. Anita Agnihotri, Secretary, Social Justice and Empowerment, said the study will help design policies to mainstream the elderly, reduce their vulnerabilities and enhance access to various services. LASI is the largest study on the elderly population in the country. The International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) in Mumbai in collaboration with Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and University of Southern California (USC) in the USA is undertaking it under the aegis of the Health Ministry. LASI is jointly funded by the Health Ministry, the United States' National Institute on Ageing and the United Nations Population Fund-India. A Union Health Ministry statement said population ageing is taking place in nearly all the countries and the global share of older people aged 60 years or over increased from 9.2 per cent in 1990 to 11.7 per cent in 2013 and will continue to grow as a proportion of the world population, reaching 21.1 per cent by 2050. Presently, about two thirds of the world's elderly people live in developing countries. By 2050, nearly 8 in 10 of the world's elderly population will live in the less-developed regions, it said. Referring to the 2011 census, the Health Ministry said that the 60+ population accounted for 8.6 per cent of India's total population or 103.84 million elderly. With currently 1.3 billion people, India is projected to become the world's most populous country within a decade. There are several forces driving India's population growth and changing age structure, including an upward trend in life expectancy. An Indian born in 1950 could expect to live for 37 years, whereas life expectancy at birth today has nearly doubled to 68 years. By 2050, it is projected to increase to 76 years. As a result, India's population will rise from 1.3 billion to an estimated 1.7 billion by 2050, with a much larger elderly share of around 340 million. Including the pre-retirement phase (population age 45+), the proportion will rise to over 30 per cent or almost 600 million persons. Between 2011 and 2050, the number of old people of age 75 and above is expected to increase by 340 per cent, the Health Ministry statement said. "As no sufficiently broad nationally representative dataset on older population is currently available in India, comprehensive new scientific data is needed to conduct analyses of health, economic and social challenges based on population ageing to formulate mid and long-term policies and programmes to address these and other challenges presented by population ageing. "LASI will contribute greatly to the newly launched National Programme for Healthcare for the Elderly (NPHCE) and the social and economic security programmes planned to be initiated by the Ministry of Social Justice and Empowerment (MoSJE)," the Ministry said in the statement. "The study will be important as it will investigate various health structures and impact of social determinants on the health of the elderly. It will also help in the framing of evidence-based policy," said Jagdish Prasad, Director General of Health Services (DGHS). French authorities said today there was "a very strong suspicion" that the first case of microcephaly linked to the Zika virus had been detected on the Caribbean island of Martinique. The case would be the first on French territory of microcephaly, a birth defect thought to be caused by Zika, the mosquito-borne virus that has spread rapidly through South America. French Health Minister Marisol Touraine said a total of 130 pregnant women had been diagnosed with the Zika virus in the Antilles islands, which include Martinique, as well as French Guiana on the South American mainland. "For one of them, we have elements that lead us to believe her baby has contracted microcephaly and that this microcephaly is directly linked to her infection with the Zika virus," said Touraine. Tata Steel's Sukinda Chromite Mine (SCM), located in Jajpur district of Odisha, launched a 'Snakes Are Friends' campaign to create awareness on conservation and importance of snakes. The campaign, launched in Sukinda on the occasion of World Forest Day yesterday, aims to create awareness mainly among school children, women Self-Help Groups (SHG) and farmers, who regularly encounter the reptiles in the fields. Bhubaneswar-based voluntary organisation 'Snake Helpline', which works towards rescue and rehabilitation of snakes and helps public in peaceful co-existence with them, will provide expertise and train persons of Tata Steel Rural Development Society (TSRDS) to carry out the campaign, a company release said. Subhendu Mallick, General Secretary and founder of Snake Helpline, had an interactive session on popular myths versus realities of snakes, identification of venomous and non-venomous snakes, snake-bite symptoms, first-aid and importance of snakes in biodiversity. Students of nearby schools, members of women SHGs, farmers from Sukinda and Bamnipal area, Tata Steel officers, members SCM Workers Union attended the session. The campaign was launched in the presence of V P Upadhaya, Director (Special), Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Soumya Ranjan Behera, Senior Scientist, Odisha State Bio-Diversity Board, Pankaj Satija, General Manager, Operations, Ferro Alloys and Minerals Division, Tata Steel, Mr Shibojyoti Dutta, Head, Climate Change and Strategic Planning, Tata Steel and other dignitaries. Tata Trusts, a philanthropic organisation, has partnered with Jaldhaara Foundation (JF) to provide "innovative" solutions to address the growing concerns of water crisis in the city. The partnership aims to deliver 96.5 crore litres of safe drinking water, dispensed by 65 WaterHealth Centers (WHCs) by 2018 and scale up to around 698 crore litres by 2033. Marking 'World Water Day' today, Tata Trusts, in association with JF, will set up 15 WHCs here and another 50 in North Karnataka to provide safe and assured drinking water to quality-affected areas, Tata Trusts said in a statement. The WHCs that are being designed and managed by WaterHealth International (WHI), a global leader in decentralised water purification systems, are a key initiative under Tata Water Mission, it said. This flagship programme of the Trusts aims to explore technology solutions to bring potable water to the marginalised communities and create a healthy future through access to safe, assured and adequate drinking water while also improving sanitation and hygiene, it added. According to the Department of Rural Development and Panchayat Raj, the drinking water crisis in North Karnataka looms large in over 4,000 villages and 38 towns which have been contaminated with nitrates and fluoride. Tata Trusts, through Tata Water Mission and JF will enable the construction of WaterHealth Centers to provide potable water at subsidised rates. The WaterHealth Centre here is the first initiative of the partnership in Bengaluru, it said. Arun Pandhi, Programme Director, Tata Trusts said, the Tata Water Mission has been launched to facilitate a more rigorous and focused intervention in mission mode, and make a significant difference in a sustainable manner. The mission had already reached out to more than 1.5 million people across eight states of Gujarat, Uttarkahand, Nagaland, AP, Telangaha, Jharkhand, Odisha and Karnataka. Vikas Shah, Chief Operating Officer (COO), WaterHealth International said, WaterHealth International is pursuing the goal of providing clean and safe water access (globally) to 100 million people by 2020 which clearly requires a significant scale up of Company's operations and footprint. LINCOLN Health care services here are kind of hit and miss anymore, Joyce Cheney said after sweeping the strip of carpeting in front of the cash register at the Mountain View Co-op store where she works. Shoppers were intermittent on Thursday, so she had time to reflect on what local health care means to her community, which is losing its only doctor at the end of June. Health care, provided by PureView Health Center in Helena, has become a divisive issue in this town thats isolated in the mountainous country between Helena and Missoula. Cheney, a Lincoln resident for eight years, said its uncertain these days if anyone will be at the local clinic when she calls. You call out there to make an appointment and you get the answering machine, she said. Sometimes you get a call back. Not very often. Local criticism of PureView Health Center has been sharp lately, and a local group has called for terminating the organization's services in Lincoln. Incomplete or incorrect information being spread by critics fuels the unrest that is polarizing the town, say those who want to retain medical services from PureView. Adding to the distrust is a lack of understanding about the complex relationship that governs how health care in Lincoln is provided. All PureView employees except the director are county employees, Lewis and Clark County officials said, and PureView is managed by a board on which the county commission has but one vote. The county doesnt have authority over PureViews budget, which also is a function of the organizations board. The Lincoln Hospital District has no authority over PureView and only leases the Parker Medical Center building to PureView. If the clinic were to close, it wouldnt be good, Cheney said. Its just kind of peace of mind for people out here, way in the middle of nowhere, basically, she continued. Its just kind of nice to know theres a medical facility close if anything happens. Mary Ann Mailloux, manager of the D & D grocery store for more than a decade and a Lincoln resident for 23 years, also recognizes the importance of local health care. Having local medical care, she said, its extremely important. Not everybody here can drive and get themselves to see someone. Retired people, younger people who are unemployed and families with children all rely on local health care, Mailloux said. We didnt have (a clinic) for a long time, and it was very hard for a lot of people. Mailloux didnt know of that nights town meeting on health care until reading a story in the towns paper, the Blackfoot Valley Dispatch, the day that the meeting was to be held. Hopefully it will be well attended, she said. Talk of the town Gray hair and older age were common denominators among many of the roughly 30 people who came for the discussion that was organized by the Upper Blackfoot Community Council. Others who filled the chairs were younger. Audience comments to those who organized the meeting and were there to explain how medical services are provided emphasized the need for medical services if Lincoln was to have a future. There are enough boarded-up buildings in town, one person said, and added he didnt want to see another empty building a fear for the fate of the clinic building leased to PureView. PureView represents a makeover of the Helena-based medical provider and its leadership. Prior to PureViews creation, health care criticism was perhaps louder and even included the hospital district. Thats changed. Jim Bosshardt, the hospital districts chairman, is vocal in his support of PureView and its director, Jill Steeley, who was hired in March 2015 and began work in May. The hospital district has the best working relationship with the Helena clinic that its had in 10 years, he said. So too did he endorse the relationship with Lewis and Clark County and the services PureView provides. I feel really confident, he said. Weve really got something good, and its just going to continue to be better, Bosshardt added. But in an editorial response in January to an article in the Blackfoot Valley Dispatch, Anthony DiPietro, spokesman for Citizens for Responsible Medical Care, leveled an array of accusations at PureView Health Center. He also called for the Lincoln Hospital District and the county commission to sever its relationship with PureView as the communitys medical provider. If the clinic were to close, town residents would have to travel to Missoula or Helena, options that Cheney and Mailloux said they didnt see as realistic or convenient. There was little criticism of the clinics operation Thursday night and none of the fiery rhetoric thats come from the Citizens for Responsible Medical Care. Eric Bryson, the countys chief administrative officer, said he was surprised that none of the vocal opponents of PureView were at the meeting. These are the people that actually care about their medical services, he said of the audience. Laura Nicolai, a Lincoln resident who represents her town on the PureView board and is a Lincoln Volunteer Ambulance emergency medical technician, called on those at the meeting to stand up to the vocal minority of critics. Stand up and dont be afraid, she said. You have all of us behind you. After the meeting Nicolai said, Im grateful that theyre not here so the voices of the others in the community could be heard. Intent to provide care County Commissioner Susan Good Geise is a PureView Health Center patient and sought to reassure those at the Lincoln meeting of PureViews intent. PureViews here to stay unless the people of Lincoln dont want PureView here, she said. That was the message from Eric Schindler, chairman of the PureView board, who said one of the organizations missions is to provide health care services for those who are underserved. We want to be here to help you, he said but explained if the community didnt want service from PureView, the organizations board was ready to move on. There is no federal requirement that PureView serve Lincoln, and there are no provisions that attach any of the federal funding to Lincoln, Schindler added. PureViews budget for fiscal year 2016 the fiscal year began June 1 and ends July 30, 2016 anticipates a nearly $130,000 loss between revenue and expenditures for its Lincoln operations. The loss is expected and said to reflect PureViews mission to serve those who lack access to health care. Patient revenue is anticipated to be a little more than $244,000, and grant and other medical revenue will add nearly $285,500 to the bottom line that falls short of the projected operating cost of more than $658,600. Concern exists that community unrest could add to the deficit, however, if fewer people come for health care. The Lincoln clinic sees about eight patients a day, the audience was told. Dr. Leonard Blinder, who is the PureView doctor in Lincoln, announced earlier this year that he would be ending his relationship with PureView in June. Physicians who come to Lincoln are eligible for loan repayment through the National Health Services Corp. that will pay $25,000 a year for two years toward a doctors education loans. A husband and wife, both doctors, served the community for two years prior to Blinder. This two-year cycle has created concern in the community for the causes and continuity of care. Blinder, who will go to work at the VA in Helena, has said he will remain the medical director for the Lincoln Volunteer Ambulance, which resolves one of the significant uncertainties the community faces. Domino effect The ambulance service is required to have a physician as its director or it will be limited to only transporting without providing care for patients. Aaron Birkholz, the ambulance service president and part of its crew as an advanced emergency medical technician, is among those who clearly understand the consequences of losing the clinic. The Lincoln ambulance service is supported solely by the revenue it receives when patients are able to pay for calls, Birkholz said, explaining each call costs the service between $500 and $1,000. If PureView leaves and there is no medical provider at the clinic, the ambulance service wont be able to financially withstand the demand for services, he said. Birkholzs prognosis for the ambulance service was it would last about a year before shuttering its doors without a clinic operating in Lincoln. And if the town rejects PureView, emails indicate there may be few if any options for local health care. A March 15 email from Mary Jane Nealon, director of innovation at Partnership Health Center in Missoula, said federal Health Resources Services Administration grants are distributed in what they call service area competitions and require a medical services provider to be part of a defined geographic area to provide service there with grant funds. Lincoln falls under the Lewis-Clark service area so we are unable to work with the clinic in Lincoln, Nealon wrote. Even if Lincoln was in our service area there may have been other concerns, but at this point, it is moot since we are unable to operate in that area. The emails dont come as a surprise to Bosshardt, the Lincoln Hospital Districts chairman, who said I know theres no place else to go. Plan for the future Recruiting doctors to Lincoln is difficult, as they see few patients compared to busier medical facilities where there is more diversity each day. And with the certificate to practice medicine comes significant debt that challenges repayment by those who go into primary care, said Schindler, the PureView board chairman. Another difficulty noted by Steeley, PureViews director, is to then tell that prospective doctor that the job comes with also being the radiologist, the pharmacist and handling the front desk when necessary. PureView is trying to recruit a doctor, but its also interested in a nurse practitioner, Steeley said, explaining the two roles can provide the same services that are needed at the Lincoln clinic. A nurse practitioner would also be more comfortable with the slower pace of the clinic, she added, to address concerns from the recent turnover in clinic doctors. Lets just think about whats going on here and not get sucked into the misinformation, said Zach Muse, vice chairman of the Blackfoot Community Council, who explained that misinformation from day one has been the problem. A lack of factual information has created the community rift, said Bill Frisbee, the community councils chairman who retired from the Air Force in 2004 and moved to Lincoln as his parents lived there. Despite the divide thats been created by this lack of knowledge, he said hes optimistic of what's ahead. This, I think, will go a long way, Frisbee said. Its a step in the right direction. The Telangana government is examining a proposal to instal one lakh CCTV cameras at a total cost of Rs 959 crore in two years, the state Legislative Assembly was informed today. "As a part of the citywide CCTV system, the government will set up 10,000 CCTV cameras in all sensitive and hyper-sensitive areas, at all input junctions while about 90,000 cameras are expected to be set up under Community CCTV Project as per the Provisions of Public Safety Measures Enforcement Act," Home Minister Nayani Narasimha Reddy said in his reply. The one lakh CCTV cameras will be connected to the Command Control Centres at police station level, Zonal DCP office and Centralised Main Command Control Centre at Banjara Hills in the city, he said. The data in the CCTV cameras will be stored for 30 days and analysed at the Command Control Centre. Any offender entering Hyderabad will be identified with the help of CCTV Surveillance System immediately, Reddy said. "For this, a 24-storied Command Control Centre at Road No.12, Banjara Hills, Hyderabad is planned for construction to act as Technology Fusion Centre which will be helpful for all the government departments, including the police," Reddy said. The project cost of City Wide CCTV System is Rs 657 crore and the project cost of the Command Control Centre is Rs 302 crore (total RS 959 crore) and the project will be completed in a span of two years, he said. Citing the example of police cracking the kidnap and murder of a 10th standard student in 48 hours last week, the Home Minister said the installation of CCTV cameras would be highly helpful in checking rowdyism, terrorism and naxalism. (Reopens BES13) Meanwhile, during the day's proceedings, Legislative Affairs Minister T Harish Rao alleged that Congress MLA D K Aruna made some objectionable comments about the Deputy Speaker Padma Devender Reddy who was in the Chair. Demanding apology from Aruna, he said action will have to be taken against her if she failed to do so. With Aruna denying having made any such remark, the Deputy Speaker said the matter is left to the wisdom of the opposition and its member. The House continued debate on Demands for Grants for the third day. The discussion was on Municipal Administration, Panchayat Raj, Rural Development, Roads and Buildings, Major and Medium Irrigation, Minor Irrigation and Energy. The debate generated some heat with opposition Congress, TDP and BJP attacking the government and the ministers replying. Tension prevailed in Shahpur area here today after a cleric of a mosque was assaulted by some youths inside a bus. Maulana Nor Mohammad was going from Shamli to Shahpur yesterday when six youths entered the vehicle near Bhaju village here and assaulted him, SP Rural Alokpirye Dershi said. The accused later fled from the spot, he said. A case has been registered against six unidentified youths in connection with the case, he said. The cleric, who works in a mosque in Kamalpur village, was taken to a hospital for treatment. Meanwhile, locals staged a demonstration outside Shahpur police station and blocked the road for several hours in protest against the incident, police said. Security has been tightened in the area and extra police personnel deployed after the incident, Dershi added. Today's attacks in Brussels that killed at least 26 people struck at "the whole of Europe", French President Francois Hollande said. "Through the attacks in Brussels, the whole of Europe has been hit," Hollande said in a statement, urging the continent to take "vital steps in the face of the seriousness of the threat. "France which was itself attacked in January and November last year is fully engaged in that. France will implacably continue the fight against terrorism both on the international level and at home." The November 13 attacks in Paris claimed 130 lives 10 months after attacks on the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo and a Jewish supermarket left 17 dead. French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve earlier announced that Paris was deploying 1,600 additional police to border crossings and air, sea and rail infrastructure after the Brussels attacks. The three absconders accused, including main accused, of the March 18 killing and hanging of two cattle traders at Latehar in Jharkhand surrendered to a local court today. The main accused Arun Sao of Balumath village and Sahdeo Soni and Vishal Tiwari of Jhabar village, where the bodies were found, surrendered to the court of the sub-divisional judicial magistrate and were sent to 14 days in judicial remand. On March 19, five persons were arrested in connection with the incident which had triggered violence leaving a sub-divisional officer and six policemen injured. The police claimed that the motive behind the killing of the two persons - a 32-year-old man and a 13-year-old boy was to loot their animals and they were left hanging from a treee at Jhabbar village to make it look like a suicide. The two were killed after leaving their homes with animals for Tutilawa village in neighbouring Chatra district for an animal fair. Jharkhand Chief Minister Raghubar Das today announced financial assistance of Rs one lakh each to the two bereaved families. US presidential hopeful has declared that his first foreign policy priority would be to dismantle the Iran nuclear deal and what he said was Tehran's global terror network. "My number one priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran," the Republican frontrunner yesterday told the conference of the US pro-Israel lobby AIPAC in Washington. "I have been in business a long time. I know deal making. And let me tell you, this deal is catastrophic. For America, for Israel and for the whole of the Middle East."Trump -- unusually, speaking from a teleprompter -- did not receive as warm a reception at the AIPAC event as he does in his bombastic campaign rallies, but the crowd warmed to his attacks on Iran and US President Barack Obama. "With President Obama in his final year -- yeah! -- he may be the worst thing to ever happen to Israel, believe me. Believe me," he said to applause. "We will totally dismantle Iran's global terror network which is big and powerful but not powerful like us," he vowed, accusing the current White House of pressuring US allies while rewarding enemies like Iran. Republican presidential front runner Donald Trump has said he would "dismantle" the "disastrous" nuclear deal with Iran and would veto any UN-imposed Middle East peace agreement even as he pledged his complete support to Israel if elected US president. "My number one priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran. I have been in business a long time. I know deal-making and let me tell you, this deal is catastrophic - for America, for Israel, and for the Middle East," he said. "The problem here is fundamental. We have rewarded the world's leading state sponsor of terror with USD 150 billion and we received absolutely nothing in return," he said in an address yesterday to the annual conference of the powerful American Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC). Alleging that the recent nuclear deal with Iran doesn't even require Iran to dismantle its military nuclear capability, Trump said it places limits on its military nuclear programme for only a certain number of years. But when those restrictions expire, Iran will have an industrial-size military nuclear capability ready to go, and with zero provision for delay no matter how bad Iran's behaviour is, he said. The deal is silent on missile tests but those tests do violate UN Security Council Resolutions and no one has done anything about it, he said as he went on to slam the UN. "First, we will stand up to Iran's aggressive push to destabilise and dominate the region. Iran is a very big problem and will continue to be, but if I'm elected President, I know how to deal with trouble," he said. "Secondly, we will totally dismantle Iran's global terror network. Iran has seeded terror groups all over the world. Third, at the very least, we must hold Iran accountable by restructuring the terms of the previous deal," Trump said. Laying out his vision of US-Israel relationship, the real estate tycoon vowed that as American president, he would work to destroy the alleged global terrorist network of Iran and prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons. Claiming that the UN is not a friend of democracy or freedom, Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump has pledged to veto any UN-imposed Middle East peace agreement as he pledged his complete support to Israel as US president. In his address yesterday to the annual conference of the powerful American Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC), Trump claimed that with President Barack Obama in his final year, discussions have been swirling about an attempt to bring a security council resolution on the terms of an eventual agreement between Israel and Palestine. "Let me be clear: An agreement imposed by the UN would be a total and complete disaster. The United States must oppose this resolution and use the power of our veto. Why? Because that's not how you make a deal," Obama said amid loud applause from the audience. Laying out his vision of US-Israel relationship, the real estate tycoon vowed that as American president, he would work to destroy the alleged global terrorist network of Iran and prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons. "My number one priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran. I have been in business a long time. I know deal-making and let me tell you, this deal is catastrophic - for America, for Israel, and for the Middle East," he said. "The problem here is fundamental. We have rewarded the world's leading state sponsor of terror with USD 150 billion and we received absolutely nothing in return," he said. Alleging that the recent nuclear deal with Iran doesn't even require Iran to dismantle its military nuclear capability, Trump said it places limits on its military nuclear programme for only a certain number of years. But when those restrictions expire, Iran will have an industrial-size military nuclear capability ready to go, and with zero provision for delay no matter how bad Iran's behaviour is, he said. "First, we will stand up to Iran's aggressive push to destabilise and dominate the region. Iran is a very big problem and will continue to be, but if I'm elected President, I know how to deal with trouble," he said. "Secondly, we will totally dismantle Iran's global terror network. Iran has seeded terror groups all over the world. Third, at the very least, we must hold Iran accountable by restructuring the terms of the previous deal," Trump said. The deal is silent on missile tests but those tests do violate UN Security Council Resolutions and no one has done anything about it, he said as he went on to slam the UN. "The United Nations is not a friend of democracy. It's not a friend to freedom. It's not a friend even to the US where as all know, it has its home. And it surely isn't a friend to Israel," he said adding the UN cannot impose a solution. "The parties must negotiate a resolution themselves. The US can be useful as a facilitator of negotiations, but no one can tell Israel it must abide by some agreement made by others thousands of miles away that don't even really know what's happening. When I'm president, I will veto any attempt by the UN to impose its will on the Jewish state," he said. Two dalit men were gunned down by unidentified assailants in a village in Bihar's Begusarai district, police said today. The incident took place late last night at Masudanpur village under Balia police station and the two victims were identified as Lakhan Ram (29) and Mahesh Ram (26), superintendent of police Manoj Kumar said. Both the men died on the spot, he said adding land dispute is suspected to be the motive behind the crime. A case has been registered and raids were being carried out to nab the culprits, he said. Two members of a Punjab-based gang were arrested here for allegedly duping over 150 people of their state and several banks to the tune of Rs 70 lakh by acquiring debit and credit card details from them, police said today. Acting on a tip-off, Naveen Chaddha (30) and Rakesh Kaliya (49), both residents of Ludhiana, were arrested as soon as they landed at Harni airport here on Sunday night, Police Commissioner, E Radhakrishna, told PTI. They were produced before a local court yesterday which remanded them in 10 days police custody, he said. As many as 165 credit and debit cards of different banks, four mobile phones and Rs 20,000 cash was recovered from the duo, Radhakrishna said. During interrogation, Chaddha and Kaliya confessed to cheating SBI, Industrial bank, IDBI, Bank of India, Axis Bank to the tune of around Rs 70 lakh in the last one-and-half years and revealed that four others are part of their gang, he said. Explaining their modus operandi, the Police Commissioner said the gang members first took details of debit, credit cards, including ATM PIN number, from card holders in different cities of Punjab by telling them that they will receive additional money in their accounts. "After obtaining the details, the gang members travelled to Panaji, Pune, Ahmedabad and some other cities and withdrew money from various ATM kiosk," he said. As soon as the transaction was complete, they used to cut off the power supply of the kiosk so that the transaction is not registered in the bank's record. They also ensured that ATM card of one bank is used to withdraw money from another bank's kiosk, the senior official said. They then used to approach the bank, claiming that the transaction failed due to some technical snag and filed claims. They would then get the amount deposited into their accounts, he said. City police teams will be dispatched to Punjab, Goa and Maharashtra for further investigations and nab the four other members of the gang, Radhakrishna said. After a flurry of last-minute votes, the Sweet Sixteen Montana Mint Pizza Championship Bracket is set. You can vote online until 10 p.m. Sunday. Can Eugene's Pizza repeat as Montana's best pizza? On any given night, the crowd at Eugenes Pizza in Glasgow is large enough to fill the parki The top four seeds all advanced in the Sausage and Bacon Divisions. In the Sausage Division, the four teams facing off for a spot in the Final Four are Howards (Great Falls), Rosas (Bozeman), Little Big Men (Lewistown) and Ponderosa (Scobey). The Bacon Division will see a matchup that includes Mooses (Kalispell), Biga Pizza (Missoula), Friday Night Pizza (Philipsburg) and Mackenzie River Pizza (Everywhere). Biga Pizza clinched its spot after winning the closest race from round one, defeating Jane Doughs (Joliet) and Guidos (Billings) by 6 and 8 votes, respectively. The Extra-Cheese Division saw the biggest upset of Round 1. The No. 11 seed Bum Steer out of tiny Flaxville knocked off No. 3 Tower Pizza (Missoula) and withstood a tough push from No. 14 Red Dog Saloon (Libby). They will face Me Too Pizza (Culbertson), Stageline (Great Falls) and Nalivkas (Havre). Defending champion Eugenes Pizza (Glasgow) advanced to the Sweet 16 in the Pepperoni Division, along with Red Lodge Pizza Company and Iron Star Pizza (Big Timber), which mounted an impressive social media campaign effort. Joining them in the Sweet 16 is Stretchs Pizza (Malta), which won the write-in fan vote competition. They narrowly edged out Fergies Pizza (Plentywood), Hangar Bar (Glasgow), and the Mighty Mo Brewery (Great Falls) for the last spot. (Pizza Hut, Costco, and Cenex received more write-in votes than wed like to acknowledge). The Montana Mint Pizza Championship Bracket started with 60 teams, and is now down to the final 16. Voting for the final four will start next week. Amid political crisis in Uttarakhand, rebel Congress MLAs of the state who stayed here for two days today alleged that the Assembly Speaker is acting like a party president. "We arrived here on Sunday from a hotel in Gurgaon and reaching Delhi today. Harish Rawat government has lost majority. "The Speaker is acting like a party president which is unfair," Harak Singh told PTI over phone. He said that there should be division of votes on the state's annual budget and the rebel MLAs will vote against the government The MLAs left for Delhi today. The MLAs led by Harak Singh stayed in a private farm house on Delhi road on the outskirts of the city and reached Delhi today. There were 8 MLAs excluding Vijay Bahuguna. The United Nations says it has closed a military liaison office in the disputed Western Sahara after Morocco gave the UN observers there 72 hours to leave to protest remarks by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. It follows Morocco's expulsion of 84 international civilian staff members with the UN peacekeeping mission in the Western Sahara. Morocco annexed Western Sahara in 1975 and fought the Polisario Front independence movement until the UN brokered a ceasefire in 1991, which the peacekeeping force has been monitoring. It has tried unsuccessfully since then to organize a referendum on Western Sahara's future. UN deputy spokesman Farhan Haq said Tuesday that the Dakhla liaison office, which dealt with the Moroccan army in the area, was closed Monday and the three military observers were relocated to another site. The UN has said it remains committed to ensuring a credible investigation into alleged human rights abuses in Sri Lanka during the final phase of the civil war that ended seven years ago. Deputy spokesman for UN Secretary General, Farhan Haq was responding to a question yesterday in New York at a press briefing. The question related to recent comments made by Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena that he was not in agreement in having international judges for the local probe process for war crimes and human rights accountability. The UN Human Rights Council resolution of 2014 which blamed both sides - the government and the LTTE - for war crimes, had prescribed an international investigation. The UNHRC chief in his last report to the council had also insisted on foreign judges, questioning the credibility of the Sri Lankan judiciary to deliver justice. "UN Human Rights Council can evaluate how it is going, but we want to make sure there is a credible investigation into this," Haq said adding that the UN had made it clear to Sri Lanka what their guidelines were for a credible investigation. Urdu poet Manzar Bhopali has met Madhya Pradesh Governor Ram Naresh Yadav and demanded a probe into the last 10-year tenure of the Secretary of Madhya Pradesh Urdu Academy (MPUA). Manzar met Yadav last evening and handed him a memorandum demanding a probe against the Secretary Nusrat Mehdi, who he alleged was indulged in irregularities in Urdu Academy for the last decade. He alleged that on one side the state government was laying stress on minority education and development but on the other hand there were shortage of officers in many offices such as the Urdu Academy. To press his point, Manzar alleged that Nusrat was also on deputation at Urdu Academy from the school education department for the last 10 years. He further alleged that Urdu Academy has shown disparity in distribution remuneration to the Urdu scholars which is against the rule, and demanded that all the Urdu poets should be given remuneration equally. He has demanded from the state government not to appoint any officer from education department to any institution. The MPUA Secretary had recently approached MP Women's commission and had filed a complaint with police alleging that Manzar had passed a derogatory remark against her. A man with dual Iranian-Turkish citizenship and two Iranians have been charged with engaging in hundreds of millions of dollars in transactions on behalf of Iran and Iranian entities in violation of US sanctions, the US Justice Department said. Reza Zarrab, 33, a resident of Turkey who holds dual citizenship, was arrested March 19 and presented in federal court in Miami yesterday, the department said. The Iranians -- Camelia Jamshidy, 29, and Hossein Najafzadeh, 65 -- remain at large. "As alleged, these defendants conspired for years to violate and evade United States sanctions against Iran and Iranian entities," said US Attorney Preet Bharara. "By allegedly laundering money through institutions around the world, Reza Zarrab, Camelia Jamshidy, and Hossein Najafzadeh undermined the US sanctions regime imposed against Iran, and committed federal crimes," Bharara added. The defendants are accused of conspiring between 2010 and 2015 to dodge US and international sanctions against Iran by hiding financial transactions carried out on behalf of Iranian entities. "The charges announced today should send a message to those who try to hide who are their true business partners," said Diego Rodriguez, assistant director in charge of the FBI's New York office. The Madras High Court Bench here today dismissed the anticipatory bail pleas of two city-based doctors booked for allegedly implanting expired coronary stents in heart patients under a government insurance scheme for poor people. Justice P N Prakash rejected the anticipatory bail petitions of Dr D Saravanan, head of Saravana Multi-Speciality Hospital, and Dr R A Janarthanan, observing they had acted in gross disregard of the sacred oath taken by them as doctors. The two have been charged with implanting the stents in six patients after the expiry date knowing fully well that they were old stocks. "My judicial conscience is standing in the way of granting the relief of anticipatory bail to Saravanan and his cohort R A Janarthanan," the judge said. ...The doctors against whom case was registered by crime branch police under IPC for various offences including conspiracy and cheating and Drugs and Cosmetics Act "are medical professionals to whom the patients surrender their body, mind and soul on the altar of the operation theatre. They have acted in gross disregard of the sacred oath" The Judge said two staff of the hospital had told the police that the doctors, in connivance with one Tirumala Traders, had knowingly purchased the expired stents and implanted them in patients covered by the Chief Minister's Comprehensive Health Insurance Scheme. The fraud had come to light when officials of Vidal Health TPA PVt Ltd, who guided the scheme, inspected the hospital on information that expired stents had been used and found two expired stents in the store room. The hospital and the suppliers blamed each other and gave counter complaints against each other over the issue. Later, they arrived at a compromise and withdrew the complaints. However, police investigated a complaint by the Vidal Health TPA Pvt Ltd and found that out of 11 expired stents only five were seized and the remaining implanted. Additional Advocate General Chellapandian, who opposed the bail pleas, said expired stents had been used. The Judge pointed out that Saravanan had agreed he had received 11 expired stents from the suppliers but could not account for six stents. "The natural inference that even a child can draw is that the stents have beenimplanted into poor patients who are now carrying them in their bodies and it is not known when they are going to kick the bucket before their natural expiry date," the Judge said. The judge, however, granted conditional bail to thehospital staff saying there were mere cat's paw of the doctors. They were young people and their future would be ruined if they were arrested. The three were asked to execute a bond for Rs.10,000 each with two sureties for the like sum and asked to cooperate with the investigation andsign before the city crime branch police daily at 10.30 am. Senior Congress leaders from Vidarbha today came out in support of Shrihari Aney, who resigned from the post of Maharashtra Advocate General following a controversy over his remarks on separate Marathwada, saying he had only echoed the sentiments of the people of both regions. Aney had last year created a stir after he called for a referendum on the issue of carving out separate Vidarbha state. Congressmen have made their intentions clear long back that they want a separate (Vidarbha) state, Vilas Muttemwar, a former seven-time MP, said. "Not only Congress, BJP too had supported the cause and adopted a resolution for creating smaller states like Vidarbha at the BJP national executive held in Bhubneshwar in 1996," Muttemwar told PTI today. Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Union minister Nitin Gadkari had also supported the demand. The issue was raised even during the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections in 2014, he said. On Aney's remarks, Muttemwar said he did nothing wrong and only echoed the sentiments of the people of both regions. "Aney belongs to a family who had all along supported Vidarbha. As an individual, he too was entitled for his views on separate Vidarbha and Marathwada," Muttemwar, who turned 67 today, said. Nitin Raut, former Maharashtra EGS Minister and three time MLA from dalit dominated Nagpur (North), criticised those are opposing Aney's stand. Even Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar had favoured Vidarbha and Marathwada, Raut told PTI. Aney's remarks and subsequent discussion and demand over his sacking in the Legislature was not at all an issue for the House when a large number of farmers are committing suicides and severe drought was looming large in state. He wondered how can the House discuss issues pertaining to Aney, Vidarbha and Marathwada in such a situation. He also disapproved the demand for sedition charges against Aney by Shiv Sena saying that it is "uncalled for". Aney's grandfather Bapuji Aney too had demanded separate statehood for Vidarbha from Justice Fazal Ali Commission, which had strongly recommended creation of Vidarbha. Notably, Congress leaders and workers in majority from Vidarbha region are in favour of separate statehood though the state leadership does not seem to be much inclined towards the idea. After memorable performances in films like "Gangs of Wasseypur", "Masaan" and "Dilwale", Pankaj Tripathi feels he is finally at a stage where he can strike a balance between commercial Bollywood fares and independent cinema. "Commercial films give you a wide exposure. For 'Dilwale', I got calls from countries like Oman. Its reach is huge. Similarly, doing independent projects satisfy the actor in you. I want to balance such films with interesting roles in independent cinema," Pankaj told PTI in an interview. He is currently shooting with Rajkummar Rao for "Newton". "'Newton' is a black comedy, a social satire. Amit Masurkar is directing the movie and Drishyam films is producing. Rajkummar Rao is in the movie. I am playing a very important character. It is a very interesting project," he said. The actor is also starring in "Nil Battey Sannata" and "Life Biryani". The movie, slated to release on April 22, has garnered praise from Aamir Khan, who called it "inspiring and uplifting". In "Nil Battey Sannata", Pankaj is in the role of a school principal. The movie, also starring Swara Bhaskar and Ratna Pathak Shah, is about a maid's dream to give her daughter a good education even though the child rebels against it. The movie is a heartwarming story. Pankaj says his role of a simple railway employee in "Masaan" is one of his favourite part as it was inspired by his father. "'Masaan' was a small role but people connected with it. I loved playing a man who does not have many complexities in life. I was inspired by my father for this role. You find such characters in novel or in stories. You don't find such parts in movies where characters are either good, bad or grey." Asked about his days of struggle, Pankaj says for close to a decade he kept running from one audition to another but "Wasseypur" finally helped him establish as a performer and he is happy with the way his career has shaped up after the film. "I am happy with my career. There are not many dilemmas in my life. I want to keep my equilibrium in this complex world. I am not running after a big house or a big car. I want those things but there is no desperation. Rather, I would love to find scripts that give me a chance to perform and are close to life. Acting is something that Pankaj stumbled into by chance. "I feel when you are young, you are looking for avenues to express yourself whether it is art, politics or hooliganism. I was active in student politics but then I saw a play 'Andha Kuan' and it shifted something inside me. I realised this was what I wanted to do, this is how I wanted to express myself." He got admission in National School of Drama (NSD) to fulfill his dream of becoming an actor. Interestingly, there was not much resistance from his family for his unconventional career choice. "My father wanted me to become a doctor and I tried but it did not work out. My father is a simple man. When I told him that I wanted to do theatre, he asked 'Can you earn a living by it?'. When I said yes, he was okay with my choice." The journey from there, however, was a long one and after theatre, the actor decided to shift to Mumbai like many other strugglers. "I did a lot of plays and then went back to Patna to do theatre. I did not have any starry dreams but by that time I was married and had kids. There was no money in theatre and I had to run my house. "I had a friend Bhanu Uday, he was in Mumbai and he called me. I did not come here for the glamour of cinema." Pankaj hopes that his success in Bollywood inspires many more from his place, Gopalgunj, Bihar to join the industry. "My father is 92 and every time he reads something about me in the newspapers, I feel it gives him more life. My family is happy that everyone in Gopalgunj knows me. I hope there are many more youngsters who join the industry from my area. Acting is not the obvious career choice there but hopefully it will change. The White House has all ruled out all but ruled out a meeting between Barack Obama and veteran Cuban leader Fidel Castro during the US president's trip to Cuba. Senior Obama foreign policy aide Ben Rhodes said that neither the administration nor the Cuba authorities had asked for a meeting between Obama and the 89-year-old. "On this trip, we are not planning to meet with Fidel Castro," he said. "We have not requested such a meeting The Cubans have not requested such a meeting of us." Castro is rarely seen in public these days and when photographed in state-run media he has appeared in a wheel chair. Castro met Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro who visit the island late last week. Obama earlier suggested in a television interview with ABC that he may be open to a meeting. "If his health was good enough that I could meet with him, I'd be happy to meet with him. Just as a symbol of the end of, or the closing of this Cold War chapter in our mutual histories. It's not clear to me what the state of his health is. A building at the University of Wolverhampton Business School wastoday named after leading NRI industrialist Lord Swraj Paul. Unveiling the building, Paul, the Chancellor of the University, said, "Wolverhampton University is close to my heart. It is a great university. I pay tribute to and congratulate the Vice-Chancellor and the wonderful staff and student body who work so hard to make the University world class." "It is a great honour to have this building named after me. I am also delighted that we have within the building the Caparo Management Suite. I am delighted to be associated with the City of Wolverhampton and would like to thank Graham Evans, MP,and the Wolverhampton Partners in Progress for including me in its Famous Sons and Daughters project," he said. Noting that Wolverhampton is an excellent university, Paul said he fully endorses its motto that it is the university of opportunity. Stating that the university is expanding in all directions nationally and internationally, Paul said, "Wolverhampton has the most diverse student body in the UK and welcomes students from all over the world, from all backgrounds and ethnicities." Paul said he is fully committed to the institution's vision of being a university of opportunity bringing business and students together and contributing to economic growth. "I am grateful to the Partners in Progress for giving me this award and am honoured to be called a son of this great city," he said. Referring to the recentdeath of his son Angad Paul, CEO of Caparo Group, Paul said, "This is an occasion when I really miss my son, Angad, because he actually took a great deal of the responsibility from my shoulders, leaving me more time to spend on my two great interests -- children and education." "And just a few months ago we were here to dedicate the Ambika Paul building in memory of our daughter Ambika, an angel who changed my life. "Angad, I am proud of the contribution you made to building Caparo and all your other achievements. Both of you will always remain in our hearts," Paul said. RIVERTON, Wyo. Rocky Mountain Power is asking state regulators to approve a price decrease totaling $2.65 million. The Ranger of Riverton reported that the power company has asked for the rate change as part of an annual filing to the Wyoming Public Service Commission and new rates would go into effect in May. For the average customer the proposal would reduce their annual electricity bill by $1.56. A Rocky Mountain official says customers' rates are set to anticipate the variable costs of electricity such as coal, natural gas and wholesale purchases. Companies adjust rates as those variables fluctuate. Rocky Mountain provides power to about 138,000 customers in Wyoming. US Consul General Craig Hall today called for effective water diplomacy to save lives and ensure sustainable development. "We know that effective water diplomacy and development aid can save millions of lives and help the countries develop sustainability and peacefully. Two of the world's greatest river basins - the Ganges and the Brahmaputra capture water from east and northeast India, Bangladesh, Bhutan, Nepal and China," Hall said at a programme here to mark World Water Day. Working together across national and state boundaries to manage water use is critical to regional development, he added. A day-long awareness session was held at the American Centre here on issues related to water. Ron Meyer's documentary film 'When the water tap runs dry' and United Nations documentary 'One Water' were screened and interactions of school students with sustainability experts were held. By Nidhi Verma NEW DELHI (Reuters) - Oil minister Dharmendra Pradhan will push for state-run firms to win development rights for the vast Farzad B gas field in Iran during a visit to that country next month. India, the world's third-biggest oil importer and fourth-biggest consumer, wants to increase dealings with Gulf countries that supply the bulk of its oil needs. Pradhan said he is "hopeful" a deal on Farzad B could be concluded during his visit to Tehran on April 9-10. "In Iran our primary interest is in E&P (exploration and production). We have old engagements with Iran and we continued to buy oil from Iran in difficult times," Pradhan told reporters. A consortium headed by ONGC Videsh, the overseas exploration unit of Oil and Natural Gas Corp, discovered the Farzad B gas field in the Farsi offshore block in 2008, but was unable to get permission to develop it due to Western sanctions against Iran over its nuclear programme. ONGC Videsh last year submitted a $3 billion field development plan to Iranian authorities to develop Farzad B, which is estimated to hold initial in-place reserves of 12.5 trillion cubic feet, with a lifetime of 30 years. India was one of a few countries that never halted oil imports from Iran during sanctions that were partly lifted in January. India is Iran's second-biggest oil client after China. Pradhan said he will also discuss India's interest in developing Chabahar port in Tehran and building industrial complexes there. Modi wants local companies to increase foreign energy deals, taking advantage of low global oil prices and a slowdown in overseas acquisitions by China. (Reporting by Nidhi Verma; editing by Susan Thomas) By Tom Arnold and Jonathan Saul DUBAI/LONDON (Reuters) - More than two months after international nuclear sanctions on Iran were supposed to have ended, frustration is deepening that few trade deals are going through as foreign banks shy away from processing transactions with the country. Iranian hopes of rapidly ending the country's economic isolation are fading as particularly European banks - some of which have already been hit by hit huge U.S. fines for sanctions busting - fear falling foul of the many other restrictions imposed by Washington that remain in force. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has accused the United States of foot-dragging following the official implementation in January of a nuclear deal with major powers. "The Americans have not acted on their promises and (only) removed the sanctions on paper," he said in a televised address on Sunday, complaining that international financial transactions faced problems because banks "fear the Americans". Many nuclear-related sanctions did end when the 2015 nuclear deal was implemented on Jan. 17, including measures imposed by the European Union and rules allowing U.S. authorities to go after foreign companies and individuals dealing with Iran. Agreements on a number of major contracts have been announced with great fanfare, with Tehran hoping relief from the crippling sanctions will lead to billions of dollars in trade and investment, reviving the economy and raising Iranians' living standards. However, significant sums have yet to start flowing. U.S. banks are still forbidden to do business with Iran and while lenders based elsewhere are not covered by this ban, major problems remain. Chief among these are rules prohibiting transactions in dollars - the world's main business currency - from being processed through the U.S. financial system. The Iranian business community believes the United States has failed to spell out exactly what is permitted and what is not, leading to the uncertainty that makes international banks reluctant to process Iranian-linked transactions. "We have to try to put pressure on America to make this issue clear. Otherwise, removing the sanctions does not mean anything," said Ferial Mostofi, chairwoman of privately-owned Iranian project management firm KDD Group. KDD Group, which is active in sectors including iron, steel and mining, has noticed greater business interest from abroad, she said, but so far no deals have been concluded. "If the banking situation stays as today, definitely we shall be facing problems for the payments," said Mostofi, who also chairs the Investment Commission at the Iran Chamber of Commerce. The U.S. Treasury, which is responsible for enforcing sanctions on Iran, gave no immediate response to a request for comment. Iranians based in Dubai, historically one of Iran's main trading partners, complain they cannot get letters of credit to finance deals with their home country, while others have even had their company bank accounts closed in recent weeks. The problems are also complicating Iran's plans to sell more oil, as well as recover up to $100 billion in assets that had been frozen by the sanctions in foreign bank accounts. AGREEMENTS, FEW DEALS Since January, Iran has struck agreements worth an estimated $50 billion with countries including Italy, Japan, South Korea, Russia, Germany and others involving trade, project finance and other investment. Agreements include a contract to buy 118 Airbus jets worth $27 billion. However, the funding needed to turn agreements into firm deals is another matter. One Airbus executive told a conference in Paris last month that "we only see the back of banks at the moment", telling them: "Don't be afraid!" Banks remain deterred by a $9 billion U.S. fine on BNP Paribas in 2014 for violating U.S. financial sanctions and other penalties, and the head of the French banking federation told the conference that lenders had yet to be assured of "complete legal security and clarity". That will be tough as long as Washington keeps the ban on processing dollar transactions for Iran in the U.S. system. "Until U.S. sanctions are lifted European banks with major operations in the States, of which there are many, will still be exposed to onerous trade restrictions unless they can prove complete separation of European and U.S. divisions of their business," said George Booth, a partner at law firm Pinsent Masons. "That's easier said than done. It should not be underestimated the level of internal restructuring required to satisfy this criteria," said Booth, who advises firms hoping to do business with Iran. Seyed Arash Shahr Aeini, deputy chief executive of the Export Guarantee Fund of Iran, an Iranian government agency, said so far only smaller banks were willing to become involved, and transactions were limited to around $50 million. "Some small amounts have gone through but the huge amounts will require the involvement of big foreign banks which were active in Iran projects before the sanctions were imposed. They are still reluctant to start doing business with Iran." In recent weeks SWIFT, the global payments network, has reconnected several Iranian banks to its system, allowing them to resume cross-border transactions with foreign banks four years after they were cut off. While an important step towards re-integrating Iran into the global financial system, the outcome has appeared patchy so far. Two banking sources said most international banks were still refusing to accept cheques from holders of accounts at one major Iranian commercial bank that has been reconnected. Ali Sanginian, chief executive of Amin Investment Bank, Iran's largest investment bank, blamed the delay in reintegrating Iranian lenders on the remaining sanctions, the banks' anxieties and outdated technology used in Iran. An international banker in the region said his bank's aversion to Iranian transactions had not changed. "Around 85 percent of trade is in U.S. dollars and if you're dealing in dollars you cannot risk that by involvement with Iran," the banker said. Of the transactions that are happening, some are in euros and other currencies, permitted under the current arrangement. "Notwithstanding the relaxation of the position, it is still unclear as to whether if you are moving U.S. dollars around they may get held up in the banking system," said James Kidwell, chief executive of shipping group Braemar. "Some people are probably choosing to transact in euros to avoid that problem." Iran has managed to sell oil to India and other buyers in euros. It told trading partners which owe it billions of dollars that it wants to be paid in euros, reported last month, citing a source at state-owned National Iranian Oil Co. (additional reporting by Tom Pfeiffer; editing by David Stamp) Oil prices rose in early Asian trade on Tuesday, adding to gains from the previous session after data showed US crude inventories fell for the first time since January and as commodity prices broadly strengthened. US crude futures for May, the front month from Tuesday, were up 10 cents at $41.62 a barrel at 0026 GMT. The previous front month gained 47 cents, or 1.2 per cent, to settle at $39.91 before expiring on Monday. The May contract finished up 38 cents at $41.52 on Monday. Brent crude futures for May delivery were 8 cents higher at $41.62. On Monday, the contract climbed 0.8 per cent to $41.54 a barrel. Brent has risen more than 50 per cent from 12-year lows in January. "The current risk-on environment remains conducive for commodity prices to consolidate after a strong rebound in the last six weeks," ANZ said in a morning note. "However, a further improvement in fundamentals will be needed for bulks, crude oil and base metals to rally further." Stockpiles at the Cushing, Oklahoma delivery hub for U.S. crude fell 570,574 barrels to 69.05 million in the week to March 18, traders said on Monday, citing data from market intelligence firm Genscape. Cushing inventories had previously risen toward 70 million barrels, causing market participants to fear they could hit capacity. Iran may join other oil producers planning to freeze production to support prices at a later date, Opec's secretary general said on Monday, as the country is seeking to raise its exports after Western sanctions were lifted on Tehran in January. Producers from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and non-members are due to meet on April 17 in Qatar discuss the output freeze. Iran is keen to increase its oil exports, which fell by more than half during the sanctions over Tehran's disputed nuclear programme, and has said it should not be bound by a production freeze until it can recover its market share. By Jonathan Saul and Osamu Tsukimori LONDON/TOKYO (Reuters) - Ship insurers have stepped in to help plug a shortfall in cover for transporting Iranian oil resulting from the fact that U.S. reinsurers are still restrained by Washington's sanctions, according to officials involved in the initiative. International oil and shipping companies have been eager to boost business with Iran since international sanctions related to its nuclear programme were lifted in January, but securing proper insurance cover has been among the stumbling blocks in recent weeks. The insurers' move will benefit Iran as it seeks to further ramp up production and exports. An Iranian official said on Tuesday that exports had risen by 900,000 barrels per day to 2.2 million bpd in the past two months. That creates a need for cover that U.S.-domiciled reinsurers cannot fill as they remain barred from trading with Iran under separate U.S. financial sanctions that remain in place. The gap in third-party liability insurance and pollution cover for vessels has been addressed through this week's initiative by the International Group of Protection and Indemnity (P&I) clubs, which brings together leading marine insurers owned by shipping clients and reinsured internationally. The International Group has created a "fall-back" of $500 million additional coverage per ship for Iranian oil at no extra cost to the members, the Japan P&I Club said on Tuesday. This raises the default insurance coverage for tankers carrying Iranian oil to $580 million per ship from $80 million. Mike Salthouse, deputy global director with the North of England P&I Association, told Reuters: "We have produced a sticking plaster to tide us over." Nonetheless, the wider financing problems faced by Iran - as international banks still remain wary of dealing with it - are still expected to have an impact. "For even a routine claim, I expect it to be quite difficult to process the payment for Iran," Salthouse said. "Because sanctions are enforced so robustly, everyone is acutely aware of their obligations and there is a huge amount of caution in dealing with anything Iranian." Although $580 million coverage is still less than 10 percent of the normal liability coverage of $7.8 billion per ship, Asian shippers such as China, India and South Korea, and some shippers in Europe, may find that enough to transport Iranian oil, an official with Japan P&I Club said. Japanese shippers, however, are more risk-averse and may continue to use the government's special sovereign shipping insurance to import Iranian oil until normal P&I coverage becomes available again, industry officials have said. Tokyo stepped in to help its oil importers after Western sanctions imposed over Tehran's disputed nuclear programme curbed the ability of private insurers to provide tanker cover. (Editing by Christian Schmollinger and Mark Trevelyan) PayPal were celebrating today after they won the Diversity Champion Award at the inaugural HR Champion Awards. The awards were held at Dublins Guinness Storehouse and more than 200 people attended. The global payments leader received the award in recognition of its key inclusion initiatives. These include providing staff with diversity and inclusion training, supporting women in business, supporting a yes vote in the Marriage Equality Referendum, PayPals commitment to hiring from the live register and having a vibrant multicultural workforce. PayPal employs 2,400 people in Ireland across its European operations centres in Ballycoolin Business Park, Dublin and Dundalk, Co. Louth. They claim that their diverse, multi-cultural team is integral to PayPals international business spanning over 179 million PayPal users across 203 markets. Vice President of Global Operations for Europe, the Middle East and Africa, Louise Phelan commented, "PayPal is an extremely diverse workplace because we support our customers and merchants through 12 languages from our centres of excellence in Dublin and Dundalk. Im really proud that we have been recognised as a company that leads the way when it comes to diversity and inclusion." Source: www.businessworld.ie About us The National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) have released an investor report which indicates that while overall the Brexit would be negative for Ireland, there would be opportunities also. According to the report, foreign firms in the UK might consider relocation following Brexit. This may be especially pertinent for firms who use the UK as a base for its EU operations and Ireland could a beneficiary from this displaced FDI. Estimates suggest some 6 billion of FDI might be attracted to Ireland in the case of Brexit. For example, following UK exit, some activity in London may be forced to move to within the EU in order to properly service the single market. Dublin would be an obvious choice for relocation. The quantum of relocated activity would depend heavily on the outcome of post-exit trade discussions. However, the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages. There is significant employment related to Irelands trade with the UK. While the UK might only account for 16-17% of Irelands total exports, 30% of all employment is in sectors which are heavily related to UK exports. If the UK labour market was closed off to Irish emigrants following Brexit, the likely result is upward pressure on unemployment rates and downward pressure on wage rates. The ESRI estimated the effect of an inflow of 60,000 labour force participants in Ireland i.e. non-outflow due to migration restrictions, shows that unemployment would rise by 0.4% and wages in Ireland would fall by almost 4%. Furthermore, SMEs (particularly agri-food and tourism) are likely to be more affected than larger companies by the introduction of tariffs and barriers to trade. Source: www.businessworld.ie About us It was announced today that Virgin Media Business has launched its search for the most innovative and exciting businesses within Ireland and the UK with VOOM 2016. Entrepreneurs and small and medium-sized businesses will have the opportunity to pitch their ideas to Richard Branson to win a slice of a prize fund worth over 1.2million. In addition, two runners-up from each category will each receive a cash prize of 25,000, a Virgin Media Business broadband package, mentoring, financial advice and brand support. 'VOOM 2016 is open to applications from Ireland and the UK. Entrants will have a platform to highlight their success and boost their businesses. Throughout the competition - and new for this year - entrants will receive news, tips and mentoring from top professionals sourced through LinkedIn. Richard Branson, Peter Kelly at Virgin Media Business UK, and a distinguished team of judges will pick a winner in each of the two categories - Start-up and Grow - at a live finale on 28th June 2016. This year, the entry and online voting platform is powered by Crowdfunder, and entrants also have the opportunity to raise funds for their business by crowdfunding their VOOM entry. The top crowdfunding business will be named Champion Crowdfunder 2016 - and will win 63,000 (50,000) cash and other great prizes including a bespoke media campaign from JCDecaux. Vice President of Virgin Media Business Ireland, Gavan Smyth says, "This is an entirely merit based programme so the most innovative, disruptive and original business concepts are the ones that could make it to the top and ultimately present their case to Richard Branson in person. Its now time to enter and see how far you can bring your ideas. Its a great way of trialling your business plan and your market entry strategy." CEO of The Irish Internet Association, Joan Mulvihill added, "The VOOM 2016 programme is a very competitive environment to project yourself into for validation, appraisal, feedback and potentially funding or other business supports. Im delighted that it has been opened to Irish businesses and Im looking forward to seeing them taking part in the programme." Source: www.businessworld.ie About us John Jacob Hollstein, 91, Wibaux, Mont., passed away March 20, 2016, at Glendive Medical Center, Glendive, Mont. Services will be held at 2 p.m. MDT Thursday, March 24, at United Community Church, Beach. Visitation will be held from 1 to 5 p.m. and 6 to 7 p.m. MDT Wednesday at Silha Funeral Home, Beach, where a prayer service will be held at 7 p.m. MDT. John was born in Beach on April 17, 1924, to Charles and Elizabeth (Ulfers) Hollstein. He was delivered by midwife Mrs. George Nutter, grandmother of former Gov. Donald Nutter of Montana. John was educated in the Beach school system and graduated from Beach High School with the class of 1942. He excelled in football and music. John married Connie Mosser on Feb. 8, 1945, at Beach Congregational Church. They were married for 71 years and lived on the Hollstein family ranch in Wibaux County. John ranched with his brother-in-law, Dick Mosser, at Maurine, S.D., for many years, where they ran a yearling cattle operation. John enjoyed his ranching days there and also ranching in Wibaux. He and the Miske family had many good times trailing cattle back from summer pasture. In 1997, John and Connie adopted a young child, Tsering Palmo (Sangha), that they had become acquainted with through their mission work. Tsering was a Tibetan child in a refugee school. Tsering was very important to her Dad. Later, Tserings cousin, Tenzin, also became their foster daughter. John was a lifelong member of the Beach Congregational Church, which later became the United Community Church, which both his grandfathers had started in the 1900s. John was raised in a Christian home and he never departed from his faith. He was president of the new church building committee and sang in the choir for 52 years, as well as singing in the Beach Community Choir. John taught Sunday school until he was in his 80s. John and Connie had enjoyable trips to Hawaii and Europe, where they visited Connies British relatives in England. John had a pilots license and owned a Cessna 182. He enjoyed taking friends and family flying over the Badlands and flying to the South Dakota Ranch. John was on many committees for ranching and farming over the years and won an achievement award for conservation in 1969. John was preceded in death by his parents, Charles and Elizabeth; his sisters, Ruth and Ilo; and his brother, Charles, who was killed accidentally at age 9. John is survived by his wife, Connie, Wibaux; his daughter, Tsering (Namgyal) Sangha and their daughter, Claire, Billings, Mont.; his foster daughter, Tenzin (Jampa) Norbu and their daughter, Tenzin, Minneapolis; his nephews, Kindrick (Linda) Strong, Wisconsin, Doug (Rosie) Mosser, Wibaux, and Randy (Sue) Mosser, Medora; and his nieces, Martha Rosenthal, Wisconsin, Marilyn (Merle) Koon, Pittsburgh, and Jayne (Vern) Harkins, Boulder City, Nev. Remembrances and condolences may be shared with the family at: www.silhafuneralhomes.com. Irish provider of digital commerce and retail solutions to the travel industry, Datalex, have today released results for year ended 31 December 2015. The results show a 55% increase in profit after tax to US$4.2m and 17% increase in platform revenue to US$22.8m A number of new customers began using the Datalex platform in 2015, including JetBlue Airways and Beibu Gulf Air, the company's third customer in China. CEO of Datalex plc, Aidan Brogan today commented, "2015 was another year of strong performance for Datalex which further solidifies our position as a leader in digital commerce for travel retail. We continued to deliver double-digit growth in our revenues, Adjusted EBITDA and cash and short term investments, while undertaking significant investment in key scaling capabilities, including our product and our people." Source: www.businessworld.ie About us It was announced today that MetLife Foundation and Verb, in collaboration with MetLife Ireland, have launched the Inclusion Plus competition in Ireland which will see finalist social ventures compete for 50,000 in grant funding. The competition is open to all entrepreneurs, not-for-profits and existing companies that help advance the financial well-being of Irish people who arent currently able to optimize what the financial system has to offer. It was launched to enable low to moderate income people access to financial products, services and programmes that will encourage financial well-being and knowledge. Competitors will submit a product, service, programme or innovation to improve financial health and well-being for people in Ireland. The proposal should demonstrate that it will improve peoples access, adoption and usage of financial products and services. The deadline for entries is April 29th 2016 and finalists will compete for a total of 50,000 in grant funding. The initiative is part of a broader partnership between MetLife Foundation and Verb that will run across at least 10 countries in multiple languages over the next three years, helping to advance financial inclusion for large numbers of the estimated 2 billion people globally who do not currently have any access, and the billions more who cannot maximize the offerings available. Other countries that will host the competition in the next year include China and India. CEO of Verb, Suzi Sosa says, "Our goal is to help our clients build social innovation ecosystems. Financial well-being is a complex problem that cannot be solved by any single solution. Our competition platform enables us to engage entrepreneurs, investors, corporate partners, mentors and thousands of people from the general public. By strengthening connections among these groups, we dont just find one great idea, we actually strengthen the innovation ecosystem." Source: www.businessworld.ie About us There was celebration in Limerick this week after Limerick City was named as a 'European City of the Future' at the prestigious 'FDI European Cities & Regions of the Future Awards' ceremony in Cannes, France. The awards recognise the most attractive locations in Europe for future inward investment and have become a key benchmark of FDI competitiveness across the region. They serve as a barometer of attractiveness for the many cities and regions, from Ireland to Russia and from Finland down to Greece, that are proactively pitching themselves for inward investment. Limerick City was last month announced as 'European City of the Future' in its population category as well as a list of the Top 10 Northern European Cities, which also features London, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Dublin and Stockholm. Limerick City, which was nominated by Limerick City and County Council, also has been named runner-up in its population category for 'Business Friendliness', 'Economic Potential' and 'FDI Strategy'. Chair of the Council's Economic Development, Enterprise and Planning SPC, Cllr. Noel Gleeson said, "Limerick City's strong performance in this award scheme sends a clear message to potential investors that business opportunities are being opened up in Limerick and the public has renewed confidence in the economic future of their city and county." He added, "Existing multinationals and large national companies are expanding and increasing their workforces and Limerick is becoming increasingly noted as an attractive destination for inward investment from global, tech, and other companies. Our growing international reputation will help consolidate this progress." Source: www.businessworld.ie About us It was announced today that International drinks group, Quintessential Brands have acquired the Dublin Whiskey Company as part of a 10 million investment that will see it build a new Dublin whiskey distillery and visitor experience for its established portfolio of Irish whiskey brands including the Dubliner and The Dublin Liberties. The development will support up to 55 jobs over the next 18 months. The multi-million euro acquisition includes the historic Old Mill Street building in the heart of the Liberties, which was traditionally the centre of whiskey distillation in Dublin. The site has full planning permission for a distillery and a unique natural spring water source to be used in the process. The distillery will employ up to 15 people and up to a further 40 people will be involved in its construction. The Dubliner Irish Whiskey and The Dublin Liberties Irish Whiskey are already sold in a number of markets including the USA, Ireland and the UK which will soon extend to over 50 countries around the world. This follows Quintessential Brands Irelands acquisition of First Ireland Spirits in 2014 which included its extensive Irish creams and liqueurs brand portfolio and production facility in Abbeyleix, Co Laois, and is part of the Groups ongoing strategy to grow its brands and operations in Ireland. In 2015, Quintessential Brands Ireland invested 4 million in doubling the production capacity of First Ireland Spirits, including the introduction of a comprehensive whiskey bottling operation. It already employs a total of 40 people in Ireland. Quintessential Brands CEO Warren Scott today commented, "The addition of the Dublin Whiskey Company paves the way for us to create an Irish whiskey distillery and a home for our Irish whiskey brands in the famous Liberties area of Dublin which will allow us to further develop our Irish whiskey portfolio and become a leader in Irish spirits." General Manager and Master Distiller of its Irish whiskey operations, Darryl McNally added, "The Dublin Whiskey Company distillery will produce single malt Irish whiskey and we will have the first spirit flowing from the stills at the end of summer 2017. This is a long-term strategy for our business and we shall be investing 10 million in our Irish whiskey operations, including the distillery and maturation of stock. He continued, "Through First Ireland Spirits we have been in the whiskey business since 1994 and now we are set to take this to an entirely new level. We plan to become a leading player in the Irish spirits industry with an award-winning and exciting portfolio of brands selling half a million bottles globally, Source: www.businessworld.ie About us Welcome Lucrezia! Intern for the Italian version Published on March 22, 2016 Story by Cafebabel IT Translation by: Cafebabel en it pl fr es de The Italian version of cafebabel can count on an extra pair of hands during its editorial transition. 23-year-old Lucrezia is from Lecco and studied in Milan; shell be on an internship in the cafebabel Paris office for the next two months. Welcome! cafebabel: What were you doing the week before you came to Paris? Lucrezia: Looking for a way to make my suitcase less heavy. cafebabel: Before that? Lucrezia: I was finishing my exams thinking of Paris all the while! cafebabel: What brought you to cafebabel? Lucrezia: I wanted to see if I could become a journalist! I wanted to be able to tell stories. cafebabel: If you could choose a nationality other than Italian, what would it be? Lucrezia: Probably Greek. I've always liked the beach... cafebabel: Where would we find you on a typical Friday night? Lucrezia: In a Parisian bar with some friends. The same in Italy, to be honest! cafebabel: Your favourite book? A film that you hate? Lucrezia: Dino Buzzati, but dont force me to choose one in particular! And I cant deal with horror films; I never make it through to the end! cafebabel: One good thing about not being in Italy right now? One bad thing? Lucrezia: Being in Paris and doing tonnes of new things! Though I would have liked to be able to bring all my friends in my suitcase cafebabel: Whats your favourite planet? Lucrezia: Saturn, I think thats the most interesting. cafebabel: Whats your mission for the next two months at cafebabel? Lucrezia: To write loads! And to not think that about what I will do two months from now Story by Cafebabel IT Translated from Benvenuta Lucrezia, stagista per la versione italiana di cafebabel A lot can happen in a course of a week. Not everything merits an editorial, but some items deserve a comment. So we are offering Up and Down, where we give a brief thumbs up or down on different issues. Starting next week, Up and Down will appear on Mondays. Up On March 14, CHI St. Alexius Health announced it was closing two units, inpatient pediatric and rehab, and laying off 23 employees and reassigning 39 others. The action was prompted by new models of care and reimbursement methods affecting the health care industry, according to a St. Alexius statement. Later, St. Alexius said it would work with Sanford Health to move pediatric patients to Sanford. The closings and layoffs were met with community disappointment, especially the pediatric decision. By Wednesday, St. Alexius reversed itself and announced the pediatric unit will remain open. St. Alexius made the right decision to keep the pediatric unit open. They listened to a public outcry and responded. Its not easy to make a public about face, but St. Alexius showed they cared about their community in doing so. Down Twice voters in the Williston Public School District No. 8 rejected bond referendums to update facilities in the district. Last week the school board decided to go around the will of the people and in an unanimous vote, decided to build a $16.9 million facility by dipping into the building fund. This wont require a vote. The boards also discussing putting a mill increase, from 10 mills to 20 mills, on the next ballot. While the two rejections were difficult for the board to accept, finding a way to circumvent the vote hurts the boards credibility. Why hold a vote if you intend to get the result you want one way or another? The boards image is tarnished. Up When someone dies we often say we want to celebrate their life. Thats certainly the case with Sheila Schafer who died Wednesday at 90. She was called the First Lady of Medora, but she was much more than that. She was an ambassador for the entire state, a woman who wasnt afraid to make her views know. Along with her husband, Harold, she helped make North Dakota a better place to live. What better tribute than to say she left North Dakota better than when she was born. Down There are few things the Tribune feels more strongly about than adherence to open meeting and open records laws. So it was disappointing last week when the attorney general ruled the North Dakota Health Council violated the open meetings law when it failed to give timely notice of a meeting where a vote was held on radioactive oilfield waste rules. This was a controversial issue and council needed to take care in holding the meeting. Theres no serious punishment involved, the council must provide minutes of the meeting to those who raised objections and anyone else who has questions about the meeting. Theres no good reason for the council, the governing and advisory body of the state Department of Health, for being careless and violating the law. Up A fundraising effort will be launched in the near future to purchase a rare dinosaur fossil in the state. Dakota the dinosaur was found in 1999 by a student on his familys land. The Legislature has approved partial funding for the purchase, but the state must raise $1.5 million in matching funds over the next three years to complete the deal. A combination of public funds and donations is the best approach and, if successful, will provide North Dakota with a nice piece of history. Down The Tribune has commented on the past about the challenges the state faces in dealing with hard drugs. The seriousness of the issue was re-enforced last week with the arrest of suspected heroin dealers in Fargo and another overdose death. Bemidji, Minn., is reporting similar problems. Its a shame the problem appears to be increasing and its going to require increased diligence by everyone. The True Cost: Fashion at what price? (1/2) Published on March 22, 2016 en fr it es pl de In response to the imminent opening of Belgium's fifth branch of Primark and seeing as H&M owns 3,900 branches across 61 countries the European Greens held a screening and post-film debate of the documentary "The True Cost" on the 2nd of March. The documentary lifts the curtain on "fast fashion", a global phenomenon dominated by major ready-to-wear clothing brands. Whilst generating a strong demand for cheap clothing through advertising, they use workers in developing countries to produce huge quantities of low-cost fashion. Andrew Morgan's film also shows that alternatives do exist; such as "People Tree", an equitable and sustainable clothing line. Its founder Safia Minney was invited as "guest of honour" to the debate, chaired by English MEP Jean Lambert. Consume more, pay less For 20 years, "fast fashion" has pushed consumers to buy ever-greater quantities of clothing. The result: 80 million items are bought each year around the world four times more than 20 years ago! Until the sixties, 95% of clothes worn in the United States were manufactured within its own borders. Today, 97% of production has relocated to developing countries, as brands push for increasingly low prices. "A brand wants to sell a t-shirt for four dollars while its competitor is selling it for five," explains Arif Jebtik, proprietor of a factory in Bangladesh, "The brand wants us to decrease our prices, otherwise it will go elsewhere. So I reduce the price. I keep them consistently low. We must survive we dont have a choice." According to Livia Firth, director of a brand consultancy firm on sustainability, businesses capitalise on this need for employment by turning workers into slaves. During the debate, Mario Ivekovic, president of the Croatian trade union Novi Sindikat, stressed that workers in the Croatian textiles industry also endure such conditions: "In Eastern Europe, there is neither freedom of association nor a democratic trade union in the textiles industry. If workers demand better salaries, brands threaten to move to Asia." Consumers are just another cog in the system created by labels whose only objective is profit. On the one hand, their advertising makes us believe that their products will make us happy and that we are wealthy since we can bulk-buy. On the other, businesses exploit workers by making them produce increasing quantities of clothing at low wages. Manufacturers keep prices low by suppressing trade unions and the social rights of workers, such as health insurance, pensions and holiday leave; or by skimping on security. On the 24th of April 2013, more than 1000 textiles workers died in the collapse of the Rana Plaza textile factory in Bangladesh. What became the worst "accident" in the history of the textiles industry, opened the public's eyes to the darker side of fashion. But it's only the tip of the iceberg. Fires in factories are common and deaths number in hundreds. The silence of the cotton fields Cotton is the most commonly used fibre in clothes manufacturing. With the emergence of "fast fashion", demand for the crop has increased. To keep up, companies such as Monsanto have developed and patented a form of genetically modified cotton that requires the intensive use of pesticides, toxic to our health and that of the soil. In villages of the Pendjab region of India where cotton is grown, hundreds of people suffer from cancer, mental health problems and physical handicaps. Families are forced into debt trying to care for children or family members, because fertiliser and pesticide manufacturing companies refuse to acknowledge the secondary effects of their products. Farmers also get into debt buying seeds, GM cotton and even more fertiliser. Following an increase in production after the "fast fashion" boom, yields are now stagnating as this type of crop impoverishes the soil. To recuperate their lost profits, companies seize farmers land, leaving the latter without the resources to feed their families. More than 250,000 farmers have committed suicide over the past 16 years. It's the largest wave of suicides ever recorded in history. These are the same companies that finance pharmaceutical production to treat the diseases that they create. As ecological activist Vandana Shiva explains: "If you have cancer, companies make a profit from it its a win-win situation. While for nature and for people, its a no-win situation." Trailer for The True Cost --- Read the second part of this article here. --- This article was published by our local team at cafebabel Brussels. Story by Helena Van Aelst Translated from The True Cost : la mode a quel prix ? (1/2) SHARE CONTRIBUTED PHOTO Train will perform with Bob Schneider at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday at the American Bank Center, 1901 N. Shoreline Blvd. Wednesday CULTURE: Del Mar College's Foreign Languages students invite the community to celebrate "Holiday of the French-speaking World." Learn more about the gastronomy of French-speaking countries as a local chef presents fun facts about their unique cuisine. The event will be from 5:30 to 8 p.m. Wednesday in Room 106 of the Coles Classroom Building, Del Mar College East. Cost: Free. Information: 361-698-1582. SEMINAR: Current hiring opportunities and career benefits for correctional officers and other positions with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice will be presented during a hiring seminar at 6:30 p.m. Wednesday at Corpus Christi Workforce Solutions office, 5858 S. Padre Island Drive. Cost: Free. Information: www.tdcj.texas.gov. CONCERT: Train will perform with Bob Schneider at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday at the American Bank Center, 1901 N. Shoreline Blvd. Cost: $37-$77. Information: americanbankcenter.com. FARMERS MARKET: The Corpus Christi Downtown Farmers Market will be from 5-8 p.m. Wednesdays at the Art Center of Corpus Christi, 100 N. Shoreline Blvd. Cost: Free. Information: Growlocalstx.com. FAMILY: The Aquarium at Rockport Harbor will host a Crafts and Coffee class from 10 a.m. to noon Wednesday at 706 Navigation Circle, Rockport. The craft will be beaded jellyfish. Cost: Free. Information: 361-727-0016, www.rockportaquarium.com. For more events check Caller.com/vivacc SHARE Jose Aliseda By Krista M. Torralva of the Caller-Times Gov. Greg Abbott appointed 156th District Attorney Jose Aliseda to a board that oversees monitoring and treatment of sex offenders after completing their prison sentence. Aliseda joins four other appointees on the Governing Board of the Texas Civil Commitment Office. The term lasts through Feb. 1, 2018. As district attorney, Aliseda prosecutes criminal cases in Bee, Live Oak and McMullen counties. He is a former state representative, former county judge and Navy veteran. The program was created in 1999 to treat violent repeat sex offenders who completed their prison sentences but were considered a threat to society and needed treatment. The Legislature revamped the program last year amid issues that called into question whether it was unconstitutional, according to the Houston Chronicle. The newspaper in 2014 started a series of stories that revealed that the more than 350 men committed didn't complete treatment and weren't released. Former chairman Michael Seiler, a former state district judge, was stripped of authority after a state judicial commission reprimanded him amid accusations of bias, the newspaper reported. Last month, Seiler resigned from the bench in lieu of criminal prosecution over accusations of campaign solicitation, according to the newspaper. Twitter: @CallerKMT Rachel Denny Clow/Caller-Times City workers use a rented water truck as needed to maintain beach roads. The method is new, and since the service started, it has helped to curb the number of vehicles getting stuck in the sand, officials say. SHARE Rachel Denny Clow/Caller-Times James Holliday, a heavy equipment operator with the city of Corpus Christi, fills up a truck with water to dampen beach roadways as needed. Rachel Denny Clow/Caller-Times City workers use a water truck as needed to wet down the sand and make it more compact in areas where visitors would likely be driving. The method is new, and since the service started, it has helped to curb the number of vehicles getting stuck in the sand, officials say. By Kirsten Crow of the Caller-Times Coming into Corpus Christi's busiest recreational seasons, city officials are using a maintenance method intended to make the beach more drivable and help prevent erosion: a water truck. Workers have been renting the truck for about eight months, city officials said: It's brought out on an as-needed basis to wet down the sand on Gulf beaches and make it compact in areas where visitors would likely be driving. The water truck helps maintain access, said Jay Ellington, interim assistant city manager. For those without four-wheel drive, it can be a dubious proposition to drive on the sand for fear of getting stuck. In the drier months, the sand becomes so soft that it can make it nearly impassible for some vehicles. The sand must be "smooth and compacted for safe travel," Ellington said. "We sell you a permit to drive out there, so we have to respectfully keep that travel lane in condition for you, as well as a place for you to park," he said. The truck which is currently being rented for about $5,000 per month, but will soon drop to a $4,000 payment per month uses water from fire hydrants, carrying about 4,000 gallons at a time, according to city staff. The truck is also used for watering vegetation and spraying off access roads when sand accumulates, said Warren Monyelle, maintenance operational supervisor. Water drawn from the fire hydrants is metered to keep track of how much is being used, said interim parks and recreation director Stacie Talbert Anaya. It amounts to about 450,000 gallons of water per month but because the truck is also used for other purposes, it's not known how much of the water is used on the beach, Monyelle said. City officials are exploring various water sources and evaluating which would be best long-term, Talbert Anaya said, adding that using water from fire hydrants is helpful in flushing the dead-end mains. State agencies require that dead-end mains be flushed at least once per month because water stagnates at the end of the pipe, causing disinfects break down, said Gabriel Ramirez, water quality manager. The city is looking at purchasing a water truck instead of renting. That's estimated to cost approximately $120,000, Monyelle noted. The experiment of using the water truck on seven miles of Corpus Christi's Gulf beaches has been a success, with far fewer people getting their vehicles stuck in the sand, city officials said. It has also been helpful in staving off erosion, staff said. Beach operations crews continuously work to maintain the profile, stability and elevation of the beach a process that is built on science, according to officials. Workers aim for a minimal beach width of 150 feet, and a 3 percent slope from the toe of the dune to the water's edge, Ellington said. "We're trying to maintain an elevation there ... and that 3 percent slope," he said. "So maintaining part of that is to keep the sand in place where you want it." Ellington added that the city abides by a maintenance plan that is approved through the Texas General Land Office and the Army Corps of Engineers. Keeping up the beaches is something of a Sisyphean task, methodical and manpower intensive. Sometimes hours of work is simply washed away in a higher-than-usual tide, officials said. For example, workers were recently moving surplus sand that had accumulated on Packery Channel to an area farther south on the beach where more sand was needed. But while the project was still in progress, storms washed much of the sand away, Monyelle said. It was expected that workers would begin that process again although on a smaller scale after spring break. Then a severe storm Saturday washed more of the sand away. Now, crews will likely only grade the area, since there may not be enough sand to move it by the truckload, Monyelle said. Packery Channel and its adjacent beaches are monitored by scientists with the Conrad Blucher Institute at Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi, who work with the city for research-based beach management involving the collection and analysis of data, said Deidre Williams, coastal research scientist with the institute. There is purpose and methodology in the overall beach maintenance program, Williams said. Top priorities include stabilizing the beach for adequate access to beachgoers, and also to protect the city in a storm, she added. "(The beach) is a work in progress because they are constantly fighting nature," Williams said. "I call this perpetual care because it's never going to end. When they wake up, it's like 'Groundhog Day.'" Twitter: @CallerCrow SHARE By Krista M. Torralva of the Caller-Times A bank robber and his getaway driver were sentenced to federal prison Monday. Senior U.S. District Judge John Rainey sentenced Manuel Salas of Lubbock to seven and a half years and Joyce Jenkins of Pearsall to more than three years, according to a U.S. Attorney's Office news release. The pair pleaded guilty last year to a bank robbery on March 24 in the 4100 block of South Alameda Street. Corpus Christi police have said Salas slipped a note to a bank teller demanding cash and displayed a handgun. The teller gave Salas about $5,000, police said, and left in a car Jenkins drove. Prosecutors said the duo were involved in other area bank robberies. Twitter: @CallerKMT Natalia Contreras/Caller-Times Members of Abundant Life Fellowship Church along with elected officials broke ground in January for a 210-feet-tall cross at Interstate 37 and Carbon Plant Road, across the highway from the Coastal Bend State Veterans Cemetery. SHARE GABE HERNANDEZ/CALLER-TIMES Mayor Nelda Martinez talks about the Corpus Christi Cross Project National Campaign during a news conference Monday, March 21, 2016, at the Abundant Life Fellowship in Corpus Christi. GABE HERNANDEZ/CALLER-TIMES Michael Tuck Jones talks about the Corpus Christi Cross Project National Campaign and the ND2NO Technology Corp. during a news conference Monday, March 21, 2016, at the Abundant Life Fellowship in Corpus Christi. GABE HERNANDEZ/CALLER-TIMES Michael Tuck Jones talks about the Corpus Christi Cross Project National Campaign and the ND2NO Technology Corp. during a news conference Monday, March 21, 2016, at the Abundant Life Fellowship in Corpus Christi. By Fares Sabawi of the Caller-Times Since a San Antonio man filed a lawsuit to relocate a 230-foot cross planned for an area off Interstate 37, more people have jumped on board to make sure the project goes through. Patrick Greene initially sued the Rev. Rick Milby of Abundant Life Fellowship, but amended his lawsuit late last week to drop the pastor as a respondent. His amended action accused Mayor Nelda Martinez and city council members Carolyn Vaughn and Lucy Rubio of violating law when they attended the January groundbreaking for the cross. Greene said in his lawsuit the defendants represent people who hold many different and "were aware no government official may take any actions which would give the normal passer-by the impression that they are showing preference of one religious faith over another." City Attorney Miles Risley told the Caller-Times the lawsuit was frivolous and said Greene was misinterpreting the law. Risley vowed to fight it and pursue court fees if Greene decided to push the matter further. First Liberty Institute, a Plano-based legal organization that has taken on high-profile religious cases, offered to defend Milby for free. Milby said he was informed about the amended lawsuit, but that his lawyer is still planning a response. Martinez said she is also aware of the amendment, but hasn't received a formal notice of the suit. The pastor received more support Monday, when San Antonio-based company ND2NO announced in a news conference it was teaming up with the church to raise funds for the cross. Martinez and Vaughn each attended the conference, and Martinez reiterated her support of the project. The company's chief operations officer Michael "Tuck" Jones spoke to city leaders and local media while rubbing a small crucifix that belonged to his father. "This cross reminds me of your cross," Jones said when explaining why he wanted to lend his services to the church. The company's starting off with coupons from two restaurants to raise funds. People who purchase a "smart card" on their phone will receive reusable coupons to Papa John's and Texas Roadhouse that designate funds for the cross project. "We're trying to let people be able to get their investment back (on their contribution)," Jones said. Milby said he appreciated the support for the project. "God has been sending us people form everywhere to help us out," Milby said. "What we need now is people in Corpus Christi to get on board. This is a community effort." SHARE Rabbi Emeritus Kenneth D. Roseman Lesson in representative democracy The Republican leadership in the U.S. Senate asserts that Americans ought to have "a say" on who sits on the Supreme Court. Wait a minute! We had our say. It's called elections. Each of us had the opportunity to vote for the president and two senators. Then we expected them to fulfill the posts which they were awarded for the full length of their term, not just until it became politically expedient to hide behind the absurd notion that every controversial issue requires a popular referendum. This is called representative democracy and that's how our political system is structured. To call for a plebiscite on the SCOTUS nomination either betrays a woeful ignorance about our system of government or a cynical manipulation of it for partisan political purposes. In either case, it ill-befits the purpose and dignity of the offices to which we elected our representatives, and it teaches a terribly misguided lesson to our youth about being involved in our body politic. They should get on with the jobs which we entrusted to them since we have already had our say. R3's report exploring the worlds best technology-driven marketing approaches, the AdTech 40, features 40 case studies, of which 12 (30 percent) come from Asia. R3 examined trends in ad and marketing technology in an effort to identify digital best practices, judging the cases on four criteria: proven on top brands, proven on innovation, proven through recognition, and most importantly, proven on results. The APAC-led cases include examples Coca-Cola, Chevrolet, Uniqlo and MasterCard. Through the process, R3 identified five key findings on ad tech trends in APAC. Here are those findings, in R3's own words. 1. Tech drives integration in APAC The rise of ad tech has been a big factor in the changing dynamics of client/agency relationships and the massive shift toward integration. Clients are demanding digitally savvy agencies, and not only are agencies having to beef up their own digital chops, they are also increasingly having to work with other agencies and vendors to deliver on client demands. In AdTech 40, we see some of the best examples of integration between clients and agencies, agencies and tech vendors, and agencies with other agencies coming from the APAC case studies. A prime example would be MasterCards Digital and eCommerce Engine, a global initiative led out of APAC, which is a collaboration between several agencies and tech vendors that drove a 16 percent lift in GDV across the markets. 2. Ad tech flourishes in Chinas unique ecosystem Anyone who has worked in or with China can tell you, almost all of the major tech players of the West, and even from other APAC countries, dont exist in China. However, Chinas digital landscape has taken on a life of its own; its not lagging behind the rest of the world. Quite the opposite, actually. Major platforms unique to China, WeChat in particular, are pushing brands to the forefront of tech-driven marketing. China has almost 700 million people registered on social media, and brands like Coca-Cola are using that to their advantage. Coca-Colas Lyric Coke took advantage of both WeChats QR code technology and Chinese youths social media habits to increase summer sales by 10 percent when compared to the previous year. 3. Auto brands take the lead Auto is a leading category in tech, and almost half of the automotive case studies in AdTech 40 were led out of APAC, while the other half were global initiatives that covered APAC markets. This is no doubt driven in part by the fact that China is the worlds largest car market, and Asia is home to a growing population of young, tech savvy millennials looking to purchase a car for the first time. With some of the largest marketing budgets in the world, auto brands constantly have to innovate and integrate the latest technologies into their vehicles, it makes sense that their marketing approaches would follow suit. For example, in Australia, Chevrolet created a virtual reality test drive to show off the vehicles capabilities at motor shows, while in China, Mini partnered with Uber in a collaborative campaign that led to a 5 percent sales growth in Q1 2015 for the car brand. 4. APAC consumers demand engagement The AdTech 40 case studies are broken down into four categoriesengagement, acquisition, targeting and performanceand 50 percent of the winners in APAC leveraged tech to increase engagement with consumers. Feeling connected to a brand is very important to APAC consumers, who often seek out an interactive experience and generally enjoy engaging with their favorite brands through social media or attending outdoor events. Creating this type of experience doesnt necessarily mean a massive initial investment to drive business and ROI. Uniqlo in Australia created an engaging experience to drive t-shirt sales, using a brainwave scanner to show consumers what shirt matched their mood, that generated over 20 million PR impressions, 2 million social impressions, and over 35,000 engagements throughout the course of the campaign. 5. A true mobile-first market 2016 has been dubbed by many as the year of mobile, and driven by booming smartphone penetration rates and social media users, APAC is leading the way in becoming a true mobile-first market. Brands in APAC are using social as an innovation space and leading in areas like m-commerce and user-generated content, which is evident by the fact that every winning case except one in APAC had some type of mobile component. Whether its Budweisers Megahit WeChat campaign in China or Network Sevens The Big Adventure mobile app in Australia, brands are taking advantage of consumers smartphone addictions and cross-screen tendencies. The Chinese yogurt brand, Yili Meiyitian, integrated its mobile campaign seamlessly into consumers daily lives by installing health monitoring tech on commuter buses in Beijing and having the health-check data sent to the commuters phones. The campaign drove Yilis brand rating past its competitors in terms of both innovation and social responsibility, and garnered over 3 million shares on WeChat. APAC is definitely as the forefront when it comes to integrating tech and digital into a marketing campaign to leverage business results. "It's clear that marketers and agencies in Asia Pacific have the unique ecosystem and opportunity to do world leading work, said Greg Paull, R3 principal. We look forward to seeing more and more." Do you remember the story about colonial Americans experimenting with socialism? Probably not. Its a tale that rarely finds its way into the textbooks of high school and college students. Indeed, I had been out of school nearly 20 years when I first heard about it. If your not familiar with this part of American history, this short video by Larry Schweikart will fill you in on explains what happened when the early settlers who arrived at Plymouth and Jamestown in the early 1600s experimented with socialist communes. (Spoiler alert: It didnt work out.) | BY Ricki Green | The Taboo Group has boosted its ranks with the hiring of Matilda Hobba as client services director. Hobba joins the agency with over 13 years experience at Clemenger BBDO, GPY&R and, most recently, Cummins&Partners. Over her career she has been a part of many successful, award-winning campaigns notably Pure Blonde, HBA, Mercedes-Benz, Schweppes and Oakley. Based on much of her work at GPYR, Hobba was ranked as one of the top 50 Account Directors in the world by The Directory Big Won Rankings 2015 report. Says Hobba: Taboo is an agency Ive long admired. Not only for the work they do, but also for their innovative culture. They have a unique range of skill sets under one roof, and a way of working which clients really respond to. There are also some really exciting things in the pipeline which will continue to see the business go from strength to strength. Jewish Neighborhood Becomes Arab in NY Times AIPAC Story | Main | Analyst: New Hamas Leadership is Emerging March 22, 2016 American Veteran Killed by Palestinian Terrorist, Washington Post Drops Print Coverage The Washington Post has failed to provide print readers with information it posted online about a former U.S. serviceman killed in a Palestinian terrorist attack in Israel. On March 8, 2016, 28-year-old American tourist Taylor Force was stabbed to death by a Palestinian Arab in part of municipal Tel Aviv. Ten others were also wounded, including Forces wife, before the attacker was shot by police. Three other terrorist attacks occurred in Israel on the same day, wounding a total of 14 victims. U.S. Vice President Joe Biden was in Israel the day of the attacks and was staying less than a mile from where Force was murdered. Taylor Force was a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point and an Army officer who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. He was in Israel for a school trip with Vanderbilt University Owen School of Managements masters in business administration (MBA) program, in which he was a enrolled. Force was visiting Israel to learn about start-up companies and global entrepreneurship. The Washington Post reported Forces death and, importantly, the details of his life in an online article about the terror attacks (A rash of bloody attacks greets Biden in Israel,? March 8). Online, The Post noted that Force was a combat veteran? who was on an Owen school trip to Tel Aviv? when he was murdered. However, in print, The Post omitted this information about Forces life. The day after The Post article online, the papers print edition condensed the U.S. veterans life of service into two words at the end of a sentence in a story about Vice President Bidens trip: ?less than a mile away a Palestinian went on a rampage in the Arab-Jewish quarter of Jaffa that left an American tourist dead (Biden travels to Israel to discuss billions in military aid,? March 9).? The Post failedin an article that spanned more than 1,200 wordsto mention the dead Americans name or the fact that his wife, also an American, was critically injured. Greater detail was provided in a Post online blog about education, called Grade Point. On March 9, the blog, written by Post reporter Susan Svrluga, offered details about Forces life, including quotes from fellow soldiers who served with him (Vanderbilt student fatally stabbed in Israel was West Point grad, war veteran?). One of those soldiers, David Campos-Contreras, called Force the kind of person who would keep you alive. And did. He did keep us alive.? A West Point classmate, David Simpkins said of the deceased veteran: I couldnt think of someone was more of a model of Americas finest than himHe was as honest and heartfelt as they come, but now hed dead.? Yet, none of this information could be found in the papers print editions in the subsequent two weeks. A Lexis-Nexis search turned up no Post articles that were devoted to the murder of Force and near-murder of his wife. An American veteran who fought terrorists in Iraq and Afghanistan was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist while on a school trip to Israelless than a mile away from a visiting U.S. vice president; how could this not be worth ink and space in print? Posted by SD at March 22, 2016 12:40 PM The original reports were incorrect - Taylor was not married. Posted by: cc at March 22, 2016 07:14 PM How can you justify omitting a discussion in print of this fine man murdered by a Palestinian terrorist? Posted by: Thomas Kaplan at March 24, 2016 03:04 PM An American tragedy. Where have our so-called values gone, that we cannot be given the opportunity to grieve the loss of an heroic American? Posted by: Anonymous at March 25, 2016 10:41 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 Monday, March 21, 2016 at 9:31PM Stephan Lam/Reuters Apple CEO Tim Cook started off its SE event without shying away from a hot topic. He addressed the ongoing legal battle the company has with the FBI, which is trying to extract information from an iPhone owned by one of the accused shooters of 2015s San Bernardino attack. Cook says he owes it to their customers to protect their privacy and data. The first legal hearing of the case will happen tomorrow afternoon in a Central California District court. Cook said during the press event, We did not expect to be in this position at odds with our own government. We believe strongly that we have a responsibility to help you protect your data and protect your privacy. We owe it to our customers, and we owe it to our country. This is an issue that impacts all of us, and we will not shrink from this responsibility. Source: The Verge + ABC News Tuesday, March 22, 2016 at 9:59AM LG and Sony models have been given the nod by Netflix and recommended TVs which offer faster performance, and improved playback experience for users. What makes specific models more beloved by Netflix? The first TV manufacturers to achieve the Netflix Recommended TV designation for 2016 models are: LG - for UHD TVs with webOS 3.0 - for UHD TVs with webOS 3.0 Sony - for Android 4K UHD TVs Check here for the specific models that received the designation. Among other benefits, these TVs both have Instant On so that the TV wakes quickly, and Internet TV services and smart menu features are ready to use right away. They also have TV Resume, which means when Netflix was the last used app, the TV comes right back to Netflix when turned back on again -- just like smartphones and tablets do today. Overall, these devices deliver faster performance and easier access to the most popular services. But in a twist, Mr Jones' lawyers launched an urgent application in the ACT Supreme Court on Tuesday afternoon, following the Brumbies dramatic decision to stand him down on Monday night. Legal battles are set to draw out for months as the Brumbies try to focus on winning games on the field and aiming for a drought-breaking title, starting with a match against the Free State Cheetahs in South Africa on Sunday morning. The Iranian Missile Photo That CNN Missed | Main | American Veteran Killed by Palestinian Terrorist, Washington Post Drops Print Coverage March 22, 2016 Jewish Neighborhood Becomes Arab in NY Times AIPAC Story In 2010, Israeli approval of 1600 housing units in the Jewish neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo in northern Jerusalem drew U.S. ire March 23 Update: New York Times Corrects: Ramat Shlomo Not an "Arab Neighborhood" In their article today in The New York Times, "Clinton and Trump, in Speeches, Vow to Protect Israel but Differ on the Means," Mark Landler and Maggie Haberman err: In March 2010, while serving as secretary of state, [Hillary Clinton] sharply criticized the Israeli authorities for approving new Jewish housing in an Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem when the United States was trying to get the Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table. In that speech, which was less warmly received than Monday's, Mrs. Clinton described the American role in the peace process as, if not neutral, then as an honest broker between the two sides. "Our credibility in this process," she said, "depends in part on our willingness to praise both sides when they are courageous, and when we don't agree, to say so, and say so unequivocally. (Emphasis added.) In fact, the housing in question was not in "an Arab neighborhood of East Jerusalem," but in Ramat Shlomo, a Jewish neighborhood in northern Jerusalem located over the 1967 armistice line. As Mark Landler himself reported at the time ("As U.S. and Israel Meet, Netanyahu Takes Hard Line on Jerusalem Housing," March 23, 2010): The crowd of 7,000 quieted down quickly when Mrs. Clinton bluntly warned that the status quo in the Middle East was unsustainable, and that Israel's continued construction of Jewish housing was undermining the prospect for peace talks between Israelis and Palestinians. Mrs. Clinton defended her rebuke of Mr. Netanyahu's government over its announcement of 1,600 housing units in East Jerusalem during Mr. Biden's visit. The move, she said, jeopardized indirect talks that the administration is trying to broker between Israelis and Palestinians. ''Our credibility in this process depends in part on our willingness to praise both sides when they are courageous, and when we don't agree, to say so, and say so unequivocally,'' she said. In her call to Mr. Netanyahu, she demanded that Israel reverse the housing plan in the neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo; that the Israelis avoid further provocations in Jerusalem during planned peace talks; and that Mr. Netanyahu commit to substantive rather than procedural negotiations with the Palestinians, as Israel has said it would prefer. (Emphases added.) CAMERA has contacted Times editors to request a correction. Stay tuned for an update. Posted by TS at March 22, 2016 07:20 AM Interesting that the replica of 770 (the Brooklyn home of the Lubavitcher Rebbe) and the only brick house in Jerusalem is now suddenly located in an 'Arab' neighborhood. That's taking Chabad outreach a bit far! Posted by: Menucha Levin at March 23, 2016 05:10 PM Chaim Ben Pesach has a great take on Hillary and Biden siding with the Palestinians on Netanyahu settling Jews in Israel's Capitol Jerusalem. This is a must hear. https://youtube.com/watch?v=v19IsGDxnpc Posted by: Anonymous at March 27, 2016 06:06 AM 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 The Crown is relying on, among other things, bloody footprints matching Klobucar's Puma shoes, a spot of Mr Gajic's blood found on Klobucar's left shoe, a timeline that they say places the accused in the unit at the time of the killing, and call records showing he used the dead man's phone to call a relative and former housemate when he left the unit. 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. "The Australian Electoral Commission has made it clear to CPSU through negotiations that they would be willing to reach agreement and retain many of the workers' rights and conditions that are at the centre of this dispute, but Minister Cash through the Public Service Commission has refused to let them, despite her public statements," she said. "He agreed that self-directed activities are good but was of the view that there are a range of activities available that do not put the neck at risk of further injury, as does Bikram yoga," the judgement said. AUSTIN, Texas -- Austin police are searching for an Ocean Springs man last seen Friday night after traveling to the Texas city for the SXSW Music Festival with friends. According to Ocean Springs resident Larry Ratcliff, his son -- 27-year-old Jason Joel Ratcliff -- left Ocean Springs with friends Thursday night and drove through the night before arriving in Austin Friday morning. That night, he and his friends were in an Austin club called Hotel Vegas. That was the last time he was seen. "He met some new friends there and when the friends he came with were ready to leave, he told them he would catch up with them later," Larry Ratcliff said. Austin police Det. Eva McGuire is actively working the missing person case. "We're following up on every possible lead we can," she told The Mississippi Press Tuesday, adding that as an open investigation there was limited information she could give out on the case. Larry Ratcliff said McGuire had told him she had done a check of all local jails, hospitals and morgues, but Jason Ratcliff had not turned up in any of those locations. Jason Ratcliff, a college student, had recently received a student loan check for $5,000, his father said, adding he was unsure how much cash Jason had taken with him to Texas. Jason's cell phone and clothes were left at the southwest Austin home of friends Kyle and David Hopper sons of Ocean Springs residents and longtime Ratcliff friends Steve and Cindy Hopper. Larry Ratcliff said his son stays with him in his Old Spanish Trail home "most of the time," but he had last seen his son Wednesday evening when Jason came by the house. Jason Ratcliff is described as 6-1 in height and 170 pounds, with brown hair and brown eyes. Anyone with information on his whereabouts is asked to contact Det. McGuire at the Austin Police Department at 512-974-5227. On Wednesday morning in the wake of the attacks in Brussels, Mr Turnbull "strongly encouraged" union members to rethink the industrial action and urged them "to pursue their complaints, their disagreements with the government through other means". PASCAGOULA, Mississippi-- Ribbons were cut Tuesday as small businesses seized the opportunity to mingle and network with larger industries as the 27th Annual Jackson County Industrial Trade Show was held at the B.E. "Mac" McGinty Civic Center in Pascagoula. The trade show not only allows businesses of any size or type to promote their brands and services to other businesses in a centralized location, but it also provides a setting where intimate conversations where attendees can discover products and opportunities they may not have originally known existed or were available to them at their leisure. Joan Branson, Chairwoman of this year's event from Ingalls Shipbuilding sees this annual event growing bigger and better every year. Branson also discussed this event's widespread reach and the perks to participating. "Our community doesn't end with the boundaries of Jackson County, it extends," Branson said. "Can you imagine the amount of knowledge in one place and the sharing of the knowledge? Opportunities are endless." Businesses spanning from St. Louis to Atlanta to Mobile were present to allow their brands to be incorporated with the trade show as well as to foster relationships that may lead to potential future business. According to Branson, an invitation was even extended to Louisiana . Co-chairwoman Trudi Dixon of Chevron, thought the event is a tremendous help to all businesses, especially the smaller brands. "The opportunity to network with other businesses is key," Dixon said. "Smaller businesses and larger industries have the opportunity to share ideas and foster relationships that will last even after they depart from here today." Mike Mangum, former Jackson County Board of Supervisors member and current President of the Jackson County Industrial Suppliers Association, was the keynote speaker for the event. Mangum cited unity and its importance in his brief speech on working together for the betterment of the county. "It is important to know everyone we work alongside," Mangum said. "That way, we can promote each other's businesses and maintain fruitful, prosperous relationships." Betty White of Ingalls Shipbuilding described what she say from newer businesses and their ability to showcase the different thing they brought to the table. "I see a lot of new exhibitors that are interfacing more and showing newer products," White said. "This is good for us because it provides us with a lot more value, opportunity, and the different commodities we can display." "It is not only important that they have their elevator speeches and make good impressions, it is also in the follow-up," Branson said. "To have this many people in this venue in one day is like six months of work. If you tried to make individual appointments with each company, it would take a fairly long time. The goal for all businesses here is to accomplish what you can in one day." A plethora of sponsors helped to make the annual event possible as there were gold and silver sponsors, and branding sponsors. If interested in learning more about the Jackson County Trade Show, the Jackson County Industrial Suppliers Association meetings, or general mebership information, contact the Chamber of Commerce at (228)-762-3391 or JohnsonL@jcchamber.com [Your Business Name] Contact Info Phone: Fax: Email: Web: CAPITOLHILLCUBANS.COM Business Overview Geographic Area Line of Business Brands We Carry Products and Services Discounts Offered Additional Information Business Hours Timezone We Accept 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. Cook Street homicide 003.jpg Investigators walk towards the scene of an apparent homicide off of Cook Street in the Ocean Beach Estates subdivision Tuesday morning. A sheriff's deputy found the body of a black male laying on a dirt road off of Cook Street during a routine patrol Tuesday morning. (Warren Kulo/Gulflive.com) OCEAN SPRINGS, Mississippi -- An as-yet unidentified black male was found dead on a dirt road by a Jackson County Sheriff's Deputy on routine patrol Tuesday morning. The body was found laying on the dirt road which runs off of Cook Street in the Ocean Beach Estates subdivision -- a sprawling development just northeast of the St. Andrews community near Ocean Springs. There are no houses on the dirt road where the victim was found. Jackson County Sheriff Mike Ezell said the deputy found the body between 8:30-9:30 a.m. Tuesday. Ezell described the victim as a black male in his late 20s to early 30's, wearing a plaid shirt and long, blue jean-type shorts. He had no identification on him when he was found. Ezell said investigators have sent information on the victim to other local law enforcement agencies in the event a missing person report might match the description of the victim, but there had been no response as of late Tuesday morning. Investigators have not released the probable cause of death as they await the arrival of the coroner's office, but Ezell said they consider the case a suspicious death. "To me, it appears to be a homicide," Ezell said, without elaborating. Applications are invited by Military Hospital, Nasirabad. Military Hospital is looking out for 4 Ward Sahayika Post. To know more about pay scale, eligibility, how to apply, selection procedure and important dates scroll down. Name of the Post and Number of Posts: Ward Sahayika (Female Candidate only): 4 Posts. Who is Eligible for the Military Hospital, Nasirabad Job? Qualification: Candidates interested to apply for the above post must be qualified as per the organisations requirement. Qualification becomes manadatory to test the skills and their perseverance in doing a certain job. Candidates should be Matriculation or equivalent from a recognized university or Board. Age Limit: 18-25 years. Pay Scale: INR Rs.5200-20200 + Grade Pay Rs.1800/- Location of the Job: Ajmer. How to Apply for Military Hospital, Nasirabad Job? Candidates who are interested to apply for the above mentioned jobs must see that they are eligible for this job. Once they find themselves eligible they can apply for this job through post in a prescribed format. Do not forget to send the applications along with other necessary documents. The address where the applications need to be sent is, The Commandant Military Hospital Nasirabad, Ajmer (Raj), PIN-305601. Important Dates to Apply for the Job? Last Date to Apply: 11th April 2016. The Vice Chancellor of Mumbai University, Dr. Sanjay Deshmukh has plans to make the Mumbai University digital within the next year. He also plans to introduced long-distance online courses for easy access by students. The online courses will include courses in subjects like social sciences, natural sciences and others like music. Under the virtual education network (VSAT), about 40 virtual classrooms will be started across the campuses of Mumbai University. These will use satellite based broadcasting for lectures. According to reports, the VC has assured that, all students passing out of the Mumbai University next year will be given digital certificates. Also, the digital access to marks has already been enabled for previous years students on the website. But these assurances have come despite the undecided fate of its longstanding contract with MKCL, its digital partner, for transfer of digital data of over 6 lakh students enrolled in the university. The VC has also assured that steps are being taken for upgradation of the existing infrastructure, along with the addition of new. A new initiative called the 'Friends of Mumbai University' has also been launched, which would help in mobilising resources by voluntary givers. The aim is to rope in people from across states and countries, who are 'well-wishers' of the university, and who will help in the development of the university, on an ideology of philanthropy. He also announced that access to digital mark sheets has already been made available to the students through the official website. , . D From China To America Hello, everyone, Thanks for coming. By the way, how many are from China in this room? Well, over twenty years ago, like some of you here in this room, I came to America from the mainland China as an exchange student. I am sure each one of you has your unique story of coming to this beautiful land. Today, I would like to share my story with you. I was born in a tiny mountain village at the foot of the Great Wall in northeast of China. It was the time of Chinese Cultural Revolution. Many stores have been told about the Chinese culture revolution. China was very poor at the time. People had no freedom and no hope. If you were born a farmer, you would likely die of a farmer. People had no food. To live was to survive. The beautiful season like this right now was the toughest time for many Chinese, especially for those Chinese in countryside. People were starving to death, they barely had nothing to eat, they ate grass, leaves or whatever eatable. Hundreds of people died of famine. Food was the number one thing in peoples mind. In the old days in China, the first thing people saw each other was to ask: Have you eaten? I believe some folks in the country still carry this tradition. I think it has a lot to do with what people experienced in the past. It was one of the darkest periods of Chinese history. But I was born in a loving home. I had vague memories of my father playing flute and my mom played in local theater. My father was a county official at the time, like a county executive. Our family was doing ok relatively speaking. However, tragedy stroke on our family. My father died of cancer suddenly. I was eight years old. Suffering for our family started and continue until I came to America. We were the poorest among the poor village. We had only one blanket for a family of five and one small muddy room. The room was leaking when rains and icy cold in winter. Whenever it was raining, water was accumulated inside the room. In winter our eyebrows became icy white after a night sleep. Very often we barely had enough clothes and shoes to keep us warm in winter. Of course, we never had enough food. We had one meal a day for most time of the year. The tough living conditions made a lot of people gave up at that time without hope. A lot of parents even gave up hope for their children. However, my mother never gave up her hope for a better life for her children. She was a single mother with four little kids from eight months old to thirteen years old. Without enough food, clothes, shelter, my mother encouraged us to read and write. My mother always believed her sons would be somebody someday. My mother could read, though she could not write. She knows many Chinese folk stories. She loved to sing, too. We learned a lot by listening her telling stories and her songs. In order to get help from friends of my father, she asked us to write letters to them. Without money to buy paper, pens, we practice our study on any kid of paper including newspapers, grocery papers to practice writing. Sometimes, we had to practice homework such as writing, math in sand. At the same time, she tried to improve our Chinese writing by writing these letters. She discouraged us to do farm work, so that we could be focus on reading. At that time, boys and girls had to learn farm work because communist party called people to do so. My mother was brave and knew the only thing that could lift us out of property was to get a good education. So whenever we were required to do farm work, my mother would persuade the teachers and local leaders to let our brothers work on bulletin boards, flyers to strength our Chinese writing skills. Sometimes, we would join a team of so called Chairman Mao Propaganda team, rather than working in the farm. We were very successful in doing this, because we were always top students in our class with great handwriting and writing skill, and very good at talk and show. It seems that my mother knew what would surely happen later on. So she tried to prepare our brothers for the future. She simply believed that reading was very important in our life. She just liked the people who read a lot. My father had college education, which was very rare in China at the time. When I was about 14, Chairman Mao passed away and Deng Xiao Ping became Chinese senior leader. China started reform. People had to pass the entry test to go to college. I want to mention one very interesting thing about China during Maos time. People were admitted to college not because of their academic credentials, but because of their ties to the party officials. With help from my fathers friends, I got a teaching job at a high school in my hometown after my graduation from my high school. You might be wondering how come I became a teacher at such young age. Well. At that time, not many people in Mainland China even finished elementary school. Unlike here in the America, you did not need to have a certificate or pass certain test to qualify being a teacher. It was very normal that high school graduates taught high school students and college graduates taught college students. Right after Deng Xiao Pings reform started, my county leaders believed that English would be required in general test eventually. They decided to select some young teachers and gathered them together, and to teach them English. Then the trained young teachers taught high school students English. I was selected. The entire training was three months, which was a critical three months for me. I immediately realized that three months would be a great opportunity for me to learn English. It might be very possible to change my fate, because at that time very few young people ever learned English at all. It might be relatively easier for me to pass the entry test and get into college. And I was right. I made a full use of these three months, working day and night to study English. After these three months intensive English training, I was back to the high school. Borrowing a radio box from a friend, I kept learning myself by listening Beijing English broadcasting for another year. Then I took the English exam at annual entry test. Ive got the best score in English in the entire county. I was admitted to Zhengder College, which was a teachers college for those who will become a teacher. One main reason why I selected that college was that the teachers college provided free food, and free trip back and forth from home to school. For me, at that time, my first goal was to go to college and get high education, so that I could have a promising and bright future. It was also very practical and critical for me to change my residency from countryside to city one by going to college. It was huge different between a countryside residency and a city in China at the time. Chinese in the countryside were in at the bottom of the society, even right now. Getting into Zhengder College, I found out that out of twenty classmates, I was the only one from a tiny mountain village, others are from cities or towns. It was not strange at all, because no one was taught English at high school. Most college students with English major at that time came from well to do families or families with some special background. I found myself being the poorest student in the class. Zhengder is popular place for summer resort. It was summer resort for royal family at Qing Dynasty. Our classmates often had fun over there, but I could not. I could not afford to buy a ticket. I even did not have a single picture taken during my entire college time in Zhengder, because I could not afford it. Over two years in Zhengder, I only had one piece of clothes for winter, summer, fall and spring. Even now, my classmates back in China still remember me as the one in black color cloth year around. Recently when our classmates were gathered together in Beijing, one classmate mentioned that I could not afford to buy a belt, so I used a rope to tie my pans. I could only dreamed of other recreational activities, such as movies, picnics, outing and sighting as my classmates did. In a way, it helped me. I found myself spend most of my time either reading or doing some physical activities such as running around the city. I keep the hobby of running for over ten years until I came to America. After graduated from Zhengder, I was assigned to teach high school students English in Qian Long County. I could not choose what I want to do. In China, they had a system called allocation. People were allocated or assigned a job. Though teaching was not my ideal job or my future goal, I worked very hard. I was very responsible for the kids, because they were just like me from countryside. I knew very well that these kids had no future in China if they could not go to college. Fortunately, my students knew it too. They studied very hard. Without any English background, after two year of English studying, some of my students even got score of 99 out 100. I suddenly became so popular in Qian Long County and in Qian Long Dao city. The county and city communist government officials believed that I was a great promising young man. They sent me to H. University to improve my English and finish my bachelor degree. In the middle of 1980s, sending a young man to a college was a very unique situation in China. It lasted only two or three year in H. Province. I was lucky that I got that opportunity. At this time, the government decided not to train me to be a future teacher, but a future leader in the city, at least in education. I enjoyed my time in H. University and had my eye opening experience. It was at H. University where I met my American teacher, my sponsor or my American mentor. Her name is D. C. D brought me to America and took care of me like her own son. Before I talk about D.C, let me say a few words about my mother, who is my hero. It was my mother who taught us never give up, and always be prepared for the future. My mother taught me that if we work hard enough, we can always change our fate. It was my mother who taught me that tomorrow is always better. Overcame many difficulties, and with the help from my father friends, my mother managed to send my elder brother at gage of 15 to Beijing Steel and Iron Company, and he got every benefits as Beijing citizen. With my moms help and support, my younger brother passed the college entrance exam with top score in H. Province (a state in the US) and got admitted in Beijing University (Harvard in the US). It was my mom who helped me to go to college and encouraged me to go to America. It was her Chinese folk stories and her songs that made us find pleasures in history and reading. My young brother got degree in Chinese history, a typical liberal art major. My mother lost her husband at a very young age and never remarried. She suffered a lot, yet, she never gave up in looking for a better future for her children. Years ago, her story was published in Mainland China. Yes, indeed, my mother is a great woman. She is over seventy years old now, very independent and very active. She has become very devoted to Buddhism. She has traveled the country to teach Buddhism, compassion and love for all human beings. She has hundreds of students. She even converted our home to temple for people to pray. She has become one of leaders in Buddhism in China and received warm welcome by former Chinese President Jiang Ze Min. She is very proud of herself. Yes, we are very proud of her, too. About my teacher, sponsor, or mentor, D. C. I really did not know much about her at all while she was teaching us English in H. University. In fact, she only taught me maybe just two or three weeks all together. However, she found out that I was outstanding out of all the students that she met in China. She especially liked what I wrote as homework while she was teaching us. When she came back to America, she shared what I wrote to her colleagues, including the President of University of C. I guess my writing touched people at University of C. At one gathering, then the President asked D.C, What is the plan next for this young man? D said I would love to have him come over to America to further his study. And the president agreed. In January 10, 1987, I left Beijing to America. Once I was in the University of C. The administration staff called D.C. that I was here in the school. She was so surprised and was very delighted. I did not tell D that I was coming to America, because I wanted to give her a surprise. (Well, I know now it was very true. I should not do that.) She said that she was in a meeting; she would pick me up that afternoon. She was so happy to see me and gave me a big hug. She promised me that she will take care of me like a mom. She really did later on. And gradually I understand who D was. D.C. was a mother with two kids, who were two or three years younger than I am, a PH.D in psychology, Miss State, Send place of Miss American in 1963, and the then the state delegate and Education Committee Member. She was from a decent family. Her father was former state Chief Judge. Her husband was the owner of top five company in the country in college business. He was trustee for about twenty universities in the state. They are very kind, very generous and very popular in the state. He was running for governor at that time, and he won two terms. I was surprised to know her background and touched by what she had done for me. D helped me with everything. She drove me around and showed me to her friends. Like any other parent, she paid everything for my stay in University of C, like food, dormitory, books, everything. She also opened account for me, and put some money for allowance. When I transferred to M University, she drove me door to door looking for apartment for me. She brought me to see the president of M University, the Dean of Political Science Department and International Study Director to show her concern about me to study in M University. The first year when I didnt have scholarship, she paid everything for me tuition, food and room. She drove more than seven hours to Mtown to show me the campus, to see her friend and to get me into Mtown University. She was not only financially support me. She taught me a lot. The first books that D gave me are Democracy in American by the French author Alexis de Tocqueville. Very often she brought me to State Capital to listen to the political debate. D and her husband welcomed me to join their campaign for governor. D invited me to attend big events like dinner with Chinese Ambassador, Senator, and governor inauguration. D sat up a fund for me to travel the entire America continent one summer to learn and observe America. D and her husband are great people. They helped me understand a lot about America and the people. They showed me that everyone is equal in America. They taught me that America is full of opportunities. They encourage me to work hard. I am forever grateful to D and her husband. After I left Mtown University, it was not easy for me to find a job with a political science and public administration degree. But I never gave up. I always tried very hard. I never forget how hard my single mom worked for my brothers, and I never forget how much D and her husband had taught me. I started as an administrative assistant in furnished luxury apartment. With that job, I learned about bookkeeping. One year later, I got a job as bookkeeper in Great New York City Mutual Housing Association. I was promoted as financial officer six month later, due to my hard working, overseeing financial operations and administration. At Mutual Housing Association, I started to update the association financial net working systems. The organization was small without much funds to hire outside consultant to do computer work. I took it over myself. Working day and night for half a year, I established the new financial systems including computer network and financial reporting. Then I realized that I would have no problem making a living with knowledge of combination of computer and finance. While I was doing independent finical systems consulting, I took everything opportunity to learn computer, finance, accounting, budget and payroll. Without any savings, I took many training like company training or conference training. Many times, I ate and slept in the workplace, library or book store after work to make sure my work well done and to update myself with new knowledge. For many years, I mastered many financial systems and worked for many organizations very successfully. In 1996, when the Government of the New York City was establishing an accounting systems manager program , I was honored and hired as one of 12 senior professionals to address and improvement NY government financial operations and systems. During my time at NY government, together with other professionals, I was leading in fixed financial systems implementation for the entire city, overseeing the budget and spending of the Office of the Chief Information Officer and updating NY government budget systems of budget formulation and execution. Over years, I accumulated a rich experience and unique combination knowledge and skills of management, budget, finance, accounting and payroll. Thats how I seized this great opportunity of BFO Officer with this great organization NY BA. I really and truly thank Ms. L. B, my supervisor, very much for offering me this great opportunity. I feel very lucky to work with you all, such wonderful people. My understanding is: you will be just fine, if you never give up. No matter where you are from with what kind of back ground, you will be just fine in America, if you keep working hard, working intelligently and being always ready. America is a great country and American is a great people. Right now I am married a beautiful lady with two lovely daughters. My wife whom I met at Mtown University was also an exchange student from China like me Thank you very much. I would love to answer any question you may have. I am located on the third floor. You can visit me or email to me at any time. Chevrolet has blown the wraps off the Colorado Xtreme, a thinly disguised study for the upcoming facelift of the international version of GMs pickup truck, at the 37th Bangkok International Motor Show in Thailand. A quick reminder here that its a different model than the North American Chevrolet Colorado, while to add to the naming confusing, in some markets, the global Colorado is sold as the S10, including in Brazil, Argentina and Mexico, and in Australia and New Zealand, its badged as the Holden Colorado. If you look beyond the dramatic additions, including the snorkel, hood scoops, rugged bumpers, wheel arch extensions, side plates, a safari bar, 18-inch wheels in full-mud terrain tires and the two tone interior upholstery, what youre left with are the cosmetic changes that will be applied to the production 2017 Colorado that was recently spied undisguised in China. On the outside, this translates into a boxier front end design thats more in line with other recent Chevrolet products, including the American Colorado Inspiration came from many sources, said GM International Vice President of Design Michael Simcoe. In particular, we looked at the U.S. market, where Chevrolet is the leader in truck design. Looking at the Xtreme, it is clear that the North American market influenced many of the styling cues. The end result is a serious pickup with no compromises. GM also gave the interior a makeover with an updated design for the dashboard that gains the newest MyLink system equipped with the latest Apple CarPlay and Android Auto connectivity technology. The production 2017 Colorado should follow by early next year. Photo Gallery The brand-new 2017 GMC Acadia is about to arrive in showrooms, but the American car company doesnt seem too eager to get rid of the previous model. It looks like GMC will sell both models to retail customers for a limited time and this information comes from General Motors spokesman Brian Goebel. Although the official didnt discuss a timetable, the older model will be sold under the Acadia Limited for the 2017 model year. According to Automotive News, the decision was a manufacturing one, as the brand new model will be built in Spring Hill, Tennessee, instead of GMs plant in Lansing, Michigan, where the current Acadia, together with its sister vehicles (the Enclave and Traverse) is still produced. GM wants to keep a full production schedule at the plant until another product will fill the Acadias vacant spot, as Goebel explained: Given the fact that those sister vehicles will continue their production, the current Acadia will continue to be built to offer another option for our customers. Compared to the older model, its successor appeals to a different segment, being 17 centimeters (7 inches) shorter so theres no chance of the two competing with one another. PHOTO GALLERY While the US-spec version of the hydrogen-powered car will be on display in New York, Honda has already delivered the first example in its home market. The keys were handed over to the Japanese Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), during a ceremony attended by Takahiro Hachigo, President, Chief Executive Officer and Representative Director of Honda Motor Co., Ltd, and Tsuyoshi Hoshino, Parliamentary Vice-Minister of Economy, Trade and Industry. When I got behind the wheel of the Clarity Fuel Cell for the first time today, I felt Hondas strong passion toward the realization of a hydrogen society, said Hoshino in a statement. In the Japanese market, the Clarity FCV is priced at 7,660,000 Yen (equal to $67,995). The hydrogen model is offered in three exterior colors and has a total driving range of around 750 km (470 miles), tipping the scale at 1,890 kg (4,167 lbs). The next market in which Honda will introduce its hydrogen-powered car will be North America, with its debut announced for the event in the Big Apple, which opens its gates for the media on Wednesday, March 23. Unlike the Japanese version, this one will get an estimated driving range of just over 300 miles (more than 480 km) and it should start from roughly $60,000 in California. In Europe, the Clarity will arrive by the end of 2016. PHOTO GALLERY Subaru wants to implement an automatic emergency braking system as standard on nearly all of its new models sold in the United States, three years ahead of proposed government regulation. That means by 2022, the Japanese car manufacturer plans to add the safety system as standard in its line-up, being one of 20 automotive manufacturers committed to include this driver assist technology. Abridged AEB (automatic emergency braking system), the tech helps prevent crashes or reduce their severity by applying the brakes for the driver. It works by using sensors and cameras to detect an imminent crash, warning the driver before taking action and stopping the car (or trying) although evidence suggest that AEB effectively reduces crashes and injuries by 40 percent. NHTSA and IIHS issued a challenge to the industry in September 2015 in order to encourage car makers to make AEB a standard feature. Its an exciting time for vehicle safety. By making emergency braking systems standard equipment on their vehicles, these 20 automakers will help prevent crashes and save lives. Its a win for safety and a win for consumers, said U.S. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx. Mind you, the technology is currently available on nearly all Subaru models as an optional feature. PHOTO GALLERY The purpose of food stamps is to help low-income households make ends meet a noble idea that sometimes gets abused in real life by people like Nicholas Jackson. Last Thursday, the 36-year old man tried to fund the purchase of a $60,000 BMW with his Electronic Benefits Transfer (EBT) card and a credit card. And thats only half the story, as after managers at the auto dealership in Pompano Beach, Florida, declined Jacksons business, he returned the following night and stole the BMW X6 he so desperately wantedalong with the keys to 60-other vehicles! Jackson didnt manage to go far, as according to the Martin County Sheriffs Office, he ran out of gas and money to fill his tank at the intersection of SW Baneberry Trail and SW High Meadow Avenue in Palm City, where abandoned the BMW. He was caught shortly after and following a free ride to the Martin County Jail, he was charged with grand theft auto and is currently being held on a $20,000 bond. Photo Gallery Video Although we dont have an official confirmation yet, Toyota is likely getting ready to reveal the plug-in version of the Prius at the New York Auto Show. Unlike the previous iteration, Toyota has decided to give the PHEV version new styling features in order to make the two versions more visually distinctive with the single teaser image showing a totally different lighting signature of the rear end. This rendering from Japans MagX, imagines what Toyota is planning to reveal at the New York Auto Show and we think it looks very, very convincing for a render. The rear end is now dominated by the single rear light that follows the shape of the rear spoiler while the front takes styling cues from the Toyota Mirai, giving a face way more acceptable than that of the normal Prius. Its no secret that Toyota wants to offer a whole family of Prius models while giving each one a character of its own is definitely the way to go. All we have to do is wait for the official reveal to see if the render artist is right or not. PHOTO GALLERY Photo: Contributed - Zontar Nobody likes to discover that they have been manipulated by a negotiation tactic. Once burned, do you feel like telling the world about it? I am about to tell the world about how I allowed myself to be manipulated by a negotiation tactic, one I ought to have been prepared for because it is regularly used on my clients by ICBC and other insurance companies. This is my second of a series of columns exposing tactics used by insurance companies when negotiating personal injury claims. By learning about these tactics, I am hopeful that you might avoid being manipulated by them in any negotiation you might encounter. A number of displays had been set up one evening at the all-inclusive resort in Mexico where we had been staying. A beautiful stone chess set caught my eye. My father had handcrafted a wooden set, which got me interested in playing chess when I was a boy, so even though I had never become a master chess player, I liked the idea of having a beautiful set in our home. Perhaps my own children would show an interest. I was new to holidaying in Mexico, but knew enough that you never pay the sticker price. It was a handsome price, I didnt expect it to be so expensive. I really had no idea what it should cost, though. Each piece had to be hand carved, and then theres all the stone tiling on the board. A piece of art, really. You get what you pay for, right? This was nothing like the multitude of mass produced trinkets that crowded all the other shelves. I felt a little guilty dickering on the price of such a beautiful piece of art, but haggling is what its all about when youre wheeling and dealing in Mexico. I got a really good deal at the end, convincing the seller to let the set go at a significant discount. The sick feeling in my stomach when I realized I had grossly overpaid came when following my wife around a nearby town a couple days later. The exact same style and quality of chess set was on display by the dozen, the sticker price even less than the deal I got from the vendor at the resort. How did I, someone who negotiates millions of dollars of claims every year, get taken in a negotiation? By entering into the negotiation without having a clue about the value of the item I was negotiating for. The grossly inflated sticker price set the stage of the negotiation, and the vendor was able to suck me in to paying much more than I should have by giving me what felt like a great deal because he reduced his price so much. Its a classic tactic in an ICBC claim negotiation. Theyll start negotiations at $5,000.00 or less for claims in which fair compensation for injuries and losses is $40,000.00 or more. By doing so, they set the stage of the negotiation. The unsuspecting injury victim knows enough to not accept ICBCs first offer, and feels as though they got a good deal when ICBC goes up to $15,000.00. The most fun example of this in my practice was with a client who retained me after ICBC had offered eight thousand dollars to settle a soft tissue injury claim. They ended up settling for fair financial compensation of over eight hundred thousand dollars. How do you protect yourself from this negotiation tactic? Do what I should have done in Mexico. Find out the true value of the item for which you are negotiating so that an unfairly high (or low, in the case of a personal injury negotiation) sticker price doesnt manipulate you into an unfair result. If negotiating for a house, consult an appraiser or real estate agent. If negotiating for a vehicle, consult a vehicle appraiser. If involved in a personal injury claim negotiation, ask a personal injury lawyer for a free claim evaluation. This article is written by or on behalf of an outsourced columnist and does not necessarily reflect the views of Castanet. Photo: Contributed - Google Street View Trout Creek Elementary A decision by School District 67 to close Trout Creek Elementary is not sitting well with some residents. A community meeting to discuss the closure will be held Wednesday night at 7 p.m. at the Summerland Baptist Church. Along with the closure, district trustees have ordered the four remaining schools in Summerland to be reconfigured. Organizers of the meeting claim these decisions will leave the remaining elementary school, Giant's Head Elementary, over capacity. "This decision will not only have implications on Trout Creek but our community as a whole as it will leave our community with few or no seats for new students in the elementary level," an information email stated. "We will review the proposal and process put forth by the school district, mayor and councils position on this issue, actions already in motion and how you can help." The board voted to close three schools in the district, including Trout Creek Elementary, at a meeting 12 days ago. Closures take affect at the end of the current school year. Photo: Contributed Canada's "badass" defence minister is coming to town. Harjit Sajjan made international headlines when he was named to the key Trudeau government cabinet role of defence minister after a 2007 photo of the former soldier went viral. The photo that took social media by storm shows a grinning, bearded Sajjan wearing a camo flak jacket, dark shades and perhaps most striking of all a brown turban. It was a sign that traditional political barriers were being broken. The Sikh immigrant from India has since been a poster boy highlighting the rising number of Sikhs in Canadian politics. Sajjan will be keynote speaker at the 32nd anniversary dinner of the 883 (Kelowna) Wing of the Royal Canadian Air Force Association at Kelowna's Coast Capri Hotel April 8. The 45-year-old former detective with Vancouver Police's gang crime unit is the first person of colour to run the country's military. Kelowna-Lake Country MP Stephen Fuhr, a retired Canadian Air Force pilot, is chairman of the Standing Committee on National Defence. I cannot believe the highly paid and supposedly intelligent city staff have suggested the answer to the crime in the Mushroom Beach area is to put in an off-leash dog park! Where do they think the criminal element will go then? Further up the beach! Instead of putting great value on the beaches other cities would die for, these brilliant minds want to turn them into dog parks! Didn't we taxpayers just cough up more money for more policing? How about regular patrols? And I am still reeling about the thought that they have recommended the small beach by the Sails for a dog park. Have they lost their minds? Most world class cities on water don't allow dogs anywhere near their beaches! Maureen Holm Photo: Contributed Two longtime datacentre rivals have merged in Kelowna. Provision Data System has joined forces with upstream provider and competitor Dargal Solutions, becoming the second-largest commercial data centre provider in the city. The two units will operate under the Provision Data banner and provide expanded capacity and services to Kelowna and Western Canada. Dargal director of technology Ian McLaughlin will become the combined companies' new chief technology officer. Getting Ian was a coup. His wealth of knowledge and experience in the industry is unparalleled in the Okanagan Internet community said Jeremy Fichtner, Provisions CEO. Before joining Dargal in 2002, McLaughlin started Okanagan Internet Junction in 1994. It was the first ISP in Vernon and grew to service 11 communities in three provinces by 2000. Provision will continue to support local market needs in small to medium businesses and foster home-grown high-tech Internet-based ventures. Nothing is more rewarding than seeing a small start-up grow and become a thriving business. We have customers that grew from a single server to full racks, selling their services worldwide, Fichtner said. The merger completed Dec. 31, but has only just been announced. Provision Data is located in the Landmark campus. Formed in 2002, it provides co-location and hosting services worldwide as well as local IT services, such as: two datacentres, corporate network IT design and support, hardware and software sales, Internet services to the Landmark campus, wireless Point2Point Internet services in Kelowna, server backup and support. Photo: Thinkstock.com A Kamloops man is facing charges after allegedly bludgeoning a chihuahua-mix to death with a fence post. Crown counsel has charged Christopher Mathes with animal cruelty under the Criminal Code of Canada in the beating death of the familys Chihuahua-mix dog on Thanksgiving 2015. B.C. SPCA investigators say the incident occurred during a family dinner, when the five-year-old dog named Jersey bit a family member, causing a small wound. Mathes allegedly took the dog outside and beat him repeatedly over the head with a four-foot-long fence post, said SPCA prevention and enforcement officer Marcie Moriarty. The B.C. SPCA was alerted to the situation and found the dog buried in a cardboard box. Moriarty said the necropsy performed on Jersey showed the dog, which was adopted by the family through a rescue group, died of blunt force trauma caused by multiple blows to the head. If convicted, Mathes faces a maximum fine of $75,000, up to five years in jail or up to a lifetime ban on owning animals. Malawi to ease ban on cement imports ICR Newsroom By 22 March 2016 Malawi's government has relaxed its ban on the importation of cement to protect consumers from exploitation of high prices by the local industry. Following the issuing of import licences by the government to some importers, legally-imported cement is expected to increase competition and stabilise cement prices in the country. Cement demand has surged due to an expanding construction market. In the southern region, where cement is supplied by local producers, prices are higher than in Lilongwe in the central region, where imported cement, mainly from Zambia, drives up competition. In Zambia cement prices have fallen from US$10 to US$4/bag following Dangote Cement's entrance into the market. The prices of cement in southern region, where cement is supplied by local industries, is higher than Lilongwe as in the central region as imported cement, mostly from Zambia, drives up competition. In Zambia the price of cement has been reduced from US$10/bag to U$4/bag after Dangote Cement introduced its product. Dangote cement is being sold at ZMW59 (US$5.20), which is considerably more expensive than other locally-produced cement. Malawi's Ministry of Industry and Trade spokesperson, Wiskes Mkombezi, warned against smuggled cement, saying all imports should be cleared by the ministry to avoid bringing into the country products that may be injurious to the public health, public morals and others. Malawi's Bureau of Standards also ensure that the imported cement conform to the International Standards Organisation (ISO). Since the licence issuance was put in place, Shayona has increased the price from MWK5500 (US$7.99) to MWK5600/bag. Dangote cement is being sold at MWK5900. Published under Washington Should advocates, educators, and others writing rules on tests and spending under the Every Student Succeeds Act hew very closely to the new law and preserve as much flexibility as possible for statesor use the opportunity of negotiated rulemaking (or neg reg for the cool kids) to help advance an equity agenda? Its tough to tell where the regulations will end up, but that general philosophical question has undergirded at least some of the discussion during Monday and Tuesdays negotiated rulemaking sessions here. Prior to the start of neg reg, the U.S. Department of Education posed questions for each of the topics under negotiation. Those topics are supplement-not-supplant (which deals with how federal dollars replace local spending) and assessment, which covers a whole host of things (including computer-adaptive tests, allowing advanced math tests to count for 8th grade accountability, using nationally recognized tests in place of state exams for high school accountability, and tests for special populations of students). More here . During Mondays session , some of the discussion on supplement-not-supplant focused on issues that some could argue arent covered under that portion of the law, like the fact that teachers who serve low-income students often make less, as a group, than those that work in schools with a wealthier student population. (That point was brought up most prominently by Karen Hawley Miles, the executive director of Education Research Strategies, who is not a negotiator but gave a presentation to help get the panel up to speed on supplement-not-supplant.) And the theme continued Tuesday, with talk about a provision discussed in neg reg that would allow 8th graders who are taking advanced math courses (i.e. Algebra, Geometry, or Algebra II) to use a test in that subject for accountability purposes, instead of the state assessment everyone else takes. In high school, those students must then take a test that corresponds to whatever level of math they are inso they might take the Algebra II test while most other students take Algebra I. This something the department had already allowed, through a waiver, before ESSA passed. The department has proposed adding a twist to make it clear that the advanced math tests must meet the rigorous requirements for assessmentand that the state makes sure that all kids have the opportunity to pursue advanced math coursework. While nearly everyone on the panel liked the idea of equitable access to advanced classes, some of the negotiators were in different placesat least rhetorically on how far they should go to make it happen. Liz King, the director of education policy for the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, said, it would be a shame to miss an opportunity to expand rigorous coursework. But Alvin Wilbanks, the superintendent of Gwinnett County public schools in Georgia, worried the proposal might make it harder for districts to offer alternative, advanced classes or tests, just because the whole state cant make it happen. I dont believe we ought to limit the district and schools that can make this work, he said. And Derrick Chau, the director of secondary instruction at the Los Angeles Unified School District, worried the language about access might be going too far beyond the scope of ESSA. Some of the additional language may be overreaching, he said. Tests for Students in Special Education Meanwhile, there was a spirited debate on how the regulations should handle language in ESSA that says that no more than 1 percent all students statewide can take tests intended for those with severe cognitive. disabilities. Some advocates have worried that cap will be hard to monitor district-by-district. King argued it makes sense to have a definition of the 1 percent cap, in part to deal with that issue. But Tony Evers, the state chief in Wisconsin, noted that there has long been a 1 percent requirement without additional parameters. He worried any change could conflict with the main law for special education, the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Some advocates who attended the negotiations are hoping there wont be any changes to the language in the law on the 1 percent cap. We have a delicately balanced compromise as it relates to the 1 percent cap in ESSA, said Noelle Ellerson, the associate executive director of policy and advocacy for AASA, The School Superintendents Association. In her view, ESSA represents a significant shift in authority and decision-making to the state and local level, and she questions why ESSA would go further than the No Child Left Behind Act, which it replaced, in defining that term. High School Tests Another key point in negotiations: What, exactly, should constitute a nationally recognized test? Most folks expect that it could mean the ACT or the SATbut theres nothing in the law that requires that, said one negotiator, Delia Pompa of the Migrant Policy Institute. She and others on the panel expressed concern about the lack of accommodations for students in special education and English-language learners in using those tests. Kerri Briggs of Exxon, a former Bush administration official who is representing the business community on the panel, said she thinks states should be able to use their best judgement in figuring out what a nationally recognized test is. But Evers and King agreed that there should be language in the regulations clarifying that districts that choose a nationally recognized high school assessment should go with the same test for all kidsit shouldnt vary school to school, or student to student, as it could under a recently enacted Arizona law. Cross-posted from High School & Beyond . ACT Inc. announced Tuesday that it has added a new test to its lineup: the PreACT , a multiple-choice test designed to prepare 10th grade students for the companys college-entrance exam. The PreACT, which will be available in the fall of 2016, is a paper-based, multiple-choice test in the same four subjects that appear on the ACT: English/language arts, math, reading, and science. It will not include a writing section. On the ACT college-entrance exam, the writing section is optional. The PreACT uses the same format, types of questions and 1-36 score scale as the ACT. At one hour and 55 minutes or less, the PreACT is an hour shorter than the ACT college-entrance exam without the writing portion. It will cost $12 per student. The Iowa-based testing company is aiming the new product at schools, districts, and states. Its not linked to scholarship opportunities, as is the College Boards PSAT. Officials said the new tests core purpose is to give students a preview of the experience of taking the ACT, and a sense of how theyll do on the college-entrance exam. In fact, theyll be answering real ACT questions. Paul J. Weeks, ACTs senior vice president for client relations, said in an interview that all the questions on the PreACT will be repurposed questions from earlier ACT exams. Since the PreACT aims at the same age group of students that take the rival College Boards PSAT, I asked Weeks if the PreACT was intended to be a PSAT competitor, since the two companies have been engaged in an increasingly intense battle for market share for their respective product lines. I think it will be, he said. But he added that that wasnt the original idea behind it. The PreACT was developed because school and district staff members expressed the need for a test that would let students practice for the ACT, produce early scores that would signal areas of weakness, and produce results quickly, Weeks said. ACT puts full-length practice versions of the college-entrance exam online, but Weeks said the PreACT program would make a practice experience available to all students in a given school or district, rather than leaving it to individual students to seek out on the website. Because the questions are nonsecurethey wont be used anymore on the ACT, so theyre no longer a secretschools and districts can give the PreACT whenever it works for them, and students can see the original questions, and their answers, within two weeks of taking the test, Weeks said. The PreACT could replace a hole in the market left by the demise of two tests which have been traditional run-ups to the ACT college-entrance exam: Explore, typically given in grades 8 or 9, and Plan, for 10th grade students. Those tests accounted for 1.8 million administrations in 17 states in 2014. But that same year, ACT announced that it was sunsetting Explore and Plan , as it unveiled a new suite of summative tests for grades 3-10 called ACT Aspire. ACT Aspire was intended to capture a big chunk of the common-core testing market just as the PARCC and Smarter Balanced tests, funded by the U.S. Department of Education, were set to make their debut. Four statesAlabama, Arkansas, Wisconsin, and Wyomingbought the Aspire system to use statewide this school year, and its also used in more than 900 individual schools or districts. Videos Sorry, there are no recent results for popular videos. Originally posted at Curriculum Matters. A new study of Reading Recovery, a 1-on-1 reading intervention program for 1st graders, found that the program had a significant positive impact on students reading achievement . The evaluation, conducted as part of a federal Investing in Innovation scale-up grant, analyzed reading performance for nearly 7,000 1st grade students at more than 1,000 schools over four years. Students were randomly assigned to either the treatment group, in which they received 30 minutes a day of 1-on-1 lessons taught by a trained Reading Recovery teacher, or a control group, in which they received their schools regular interventions. Students participated in either condition for 12 to 20 weeks. The researchers, from the Consortium for Policy Research in Education at the University of Pennsylvania and the Center for Research on Education and Social Policy at the University of Delaware, looked at student performance on the Iowa Test of Basic Skills tests of reading comprehension and decoding, as well as an early-literacy screener used for Reading Recovery. They found that students in the treatment group significantly outperformed those in the control group. For total reading on the Iowa Test, the treatment group scored at the 36th percentile after the five-month period, while the treatment group scored at the 18th percentile. (All student participants were struggling readers to begin with.) The growth rate for Reading Recovery participants was 131 percent of the national average growth rate for 1st graders. Large Effect Size The effect size was among the largest for any intervention for early literacy that has been rigorously studied, said Philip Sirinides, a senior researcher at CPRE and a principal investor in the study. In fact, the report states that the effect size was 4.6 times larger than average for studies with comparable outcome measures. The positive effects held up for students in rural schools and English-language learnerstwo subgroups that the i3 program focused on. The study also looked at longer-term impacts of the program, using a quasi-experimental design. The researchers found that, five months after students finished the Reading Recovery program at the end of 1st grade, significant positive impacts remained, though at a slightly reduced effect size. The researchers also looked at whether the impact remained at the end of 3rd grade, using standardized test scores in reading. But because the sample was much smaller by then, were not able to reach a definitive conclusion at all, said Abigail Gray, a senior research specialist at CPRE and also a co-lead on the study. Cost as a Barrier Teachers who administer the Reading Recovery program must complete an intensive, year-long professional-development program, as well as receive subsequent training and support while they are using it in their classroom. In total, the $45 million federal scale-up grant provided funding to train about 3,500 Reading Recovery teachers, who then provided intensive instruction to about 62,000 students. (About $5 million of this funding was used for the evaluation.) Many district and school leaders have said the cost of the Reading Recovery program is a barrier to implementation, as the study explains. In a section with case studies, the report notes that hesitation to commit to Reading Recovery was generally presented in terms of a cost-benefit analysis; they feared that the per-pupil cost was disproportionate to the limited reach of the program (e.g., eight students per Reading Recovery teacher). The cost per pupil on the grant was $134. Also, 1-on-1 interventions overall tend to have larger impacts than small- and whole-group interventions. And only about 10 percent of students in the control group for this study were receiving any 1-on-1 interventions, according to the researchers. The effect sizes are still quite large, said Gray, even given the differences in the kinds of interventions provided. Related stories: The Obama administrations Department of Labor is moving to revamp the overtime rule under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA). Today, so long as they earn at least $23,660 a year, people in salaried jobs are not required to receive overtime pay if they exceed 40 hours a week. Last summer, the Department of Labor proposed that the minimum amount be changed to $50,440 a year. The proposed change was submitted to the federal Office of Management and Budget last week, the final step in the process of issuing a new rule. If the rule is approved, it is estimated that more than five million employees will be affected. It is easy to see the proposals appeal. U.S. Secretary of Labor Tom Perezs blog post announcing the proposal begins with a touching anecdote about the manager at a discount retail store in Massachusetts, who works long hours with no overtime pay. Its easy to empathize with the concern, especially for any of us who have even a distant memory of 12-hour days spent landscaping or selling doughnuts for minimum wage. Of course, there are also a number of possible unintended consequences--with the new rule potentially forcing businesses to eliminate employee flexibility, downsize staff, or reduce base pay. But I dont want to wade into the macro debate here. (If youre interested in the big picture debate, you can check out arguments for the new rule here , here , and here and arguments against it here , here , and here .) What I do want to touch upon is what the proposed change might mean for education. As Ive noted before, one big problem with federal policy and regulation is that its not a delicate, surgical intervention. The implications for education are complex and uncertain. For instance, while one might think that a fair number of teachers might be covered by the new rule, there is a professional exemption which means it doesnt apply to teachers, clergy, architects, dentists, and so on. But many school administrative and support staff would be affected, as would nearly all preschool staff (who are not defined as teachers by the Department of Labor for purposes of FLSA). And lots of people employed by local educational programs, advocacy groups, and the like could be affected too. Similarly, while organizations with budgets of less than $500,000 a year are exempt from the law, understand that its the whole organization that matters and not just the program in question. So, if a program is run by a YMCA or local initiative, it has to be the entire enterprise thats spending less than $500,000 a year. Moreover, certain entities, including schools and preschools, and government agencies are never exempt. What to make of all this? Think about summer programs or charter schools that run based on elbow grease and the passionate commitment of small staffs. Or of local tutoring and mentoring programs that rely upon single twentysomethings who arent earning big bucks. Many of these employees do the work out of passion. They recognize that this kind of work doesnt lend itself to conventional 9 to 5 days and can require long, irregular hours out in the community. The new rule could bring many such efforts to a grinding halt. An employee who makes $40,000 a year would not be allowed to say, Gosh, I dont mind working long days or irregular hours because I believe in what were doing. It would be the law, not a suggestion. An employer that allowed that would be guilty of violating federal employment law. This means that hours would have to be systematically policed and curtailed for any employee earning under $50,440, whatever the practical consequences. Furthermore, employers like charter schools, mentoring programs, and preschools generally dont have in-house counsel or a lot of money set aside for lawyers, so they have reason to be careful. The easiest way to stay on the right side of the law and keep their budget from getting eaten up by overtime is to track hours carefully and ensure that employees are working exactly 40 hours. The need to worry about any missteps means that the safest best for employers is to invest in a time clock, require everyone to arrive and depart at the same time, and eliminate room for employee discretion or flexibility. While the case for the change is easy to make, the benefits come at a price. The new rule may force programs that rely on their flexibility to become more bureaucratic. It may frustrate passionate and committed employees whove chosen to throw themselves into local mentoring or tutoring programs. It may make it more expensive to provide programs and preschools, reducing their availability and the number of kids who can benefit. It may make it harder for all-hands-on-deck charter schools to thrive. These are not the considerations that will determine whether the law is adopted, but theyre well worth our attentionand a useful reminder that the impact of regulations is almost always broader than we might imagine. Georgia Northwestern Technical College students Barry Arrington of Calhoun; Tanner Boyd of Armuchee, Ga.; Bo Dooley of Calhoun; Burt Burns of Lindale, Ga.; and Evan Brackett of Rome, Ga. of will be headed to the National Leadership and Skills Conference in Louisville, Ky. June 21-24. The GNTC team took home top honors in the TeamWorks competition at the State of Georgia SkillsUSA Competition held in Atlanta March 17-19. Our team is the first to ever qualify to compete nationally from the state of Georgia, said GNTC Director of Construction Management Donnie Holmes. This team had to work together to complete a project from a set of plans that included masonry, carpentry, electrical, and plumbing work. They were so far ahead on their timetable to complete the project that they added on to the plans and still completed the project before the deadline. Among the things judges graded the GNTC team based on the colleges Gordon County Campus were working within building codes, jobsite safety and cleanliness, proper use and accountability of tools and equipment, and the overall efficiency of the team project. The SkillsUSAs competition website states that, TeamWorks is not only a SkillsUSA competition, but a way of learning to help maximize their skills for their future. The team will represent Georgia Northwestern at the 52nd Annual National Leadership and Skills Conference competition the week of June 22 in Louisville. More than 6,000 (high school and collegiate) students from across the country will compete hands-on in more than a hundred various trade, technical and leadership fields. We saw incredible success at the state competition with 15 students earning honors for their respective competition, said GNTC SkillsUSA Coordinator Michael Meyer. This is a great reflection on the college programs which trained them and the kind of pro-active students these men and women have become. Also placing on the state level of SkillsUSA were Tanya Person of Trenton and Ashley Clark of Calhoun (Chapter Display - Bronze), Melisa Fajardo of Dalton (Customer Service - Bronze), Jacob Prater of Kingston, Ga. (Electrical Construction Wiring Silver), Stone Dowling of Chickamauga (Information Technology Systems Silver), Cougar Roberts of Rossville (Prepared Speech Silver), Brandy LeVan of Rock Spring (Promotional Bulletin Board Bronze), Andrew Copeland of LaFayette (Welding Bronze), and Tyler Daubert of Rome, Ga., Jeremy Duvall of Armuchee, Ga., and Ryan Fincher of Cedartown, Ga. (Welding Fabrication Silver). GNTCs Director of Aviation Maintenance Jon Byrd also took part in this years event serving as a judge for Georgias SkillsUSA Aviation Maintenance competition. For more information, contact 706.764-3588 for the GNTC SkillsUSA Coordinator Michael Meyer. Or, send an e-mail to mmeyer@gntc.edu. 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.... Does a fidgety, distractible, and disruptive youngster have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder? Or is the behavior just an example of the emotional ups and downs of young childhood? A recent highly-publicized study in Taiwan has renewed interest in this question. Its findingsand the results of similar studies conducted in other countrieslend credence to the idea that immaturity may be driving some diagnoses and subsequent medication for ADHD, a disorder linked to inattention, impulsive behavior and excessive activity. Several other studies have had similar results. Well talk about the findings here, and offer some takeaway tips for educators and parents. Linking ADHD to Relative Age In Taiwan, the cutoff age for school entry is Aug. 31. (Compulsory education begins at age 6, but children can enroll in preschool at age 4.) Children born in August would typically be the youngest children in their class. Children born in September, on the other hand, would be the oldest. The study, Influence of Relative Age on Diagnosis and Treatment of Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder in Taiwanese Children , published March 10 in the Journal of Pediatrics, looked at more than 378,000 children ages 4 to 17, between 1997 and 2011. Researchers found that 4.5 percent of boys born in Augustthe young oneswere diagnosed with ADHD, and 3.3 percent were taking medication for it. In contrast, among boys born in Septemberchildren who would be the oldest of their grade-level peers2.8 percent were diagnosed with ADHD and 1.9 percent were taking medication. Among girls, the same pattern held but the overall rates of diagnosis were much lower. The study found that 1.2 percent of August-born girls were diagnosed with ADHD and 0.8 percent were taking medication; among September-born girls, 0.7 percent were diagnosed with ADHD and 0.5 percent were medicated for it. As the researchers examined births through the year, they found that the closer that children were to the school enrollment cut-off age, the more likely they were to be diagnosed with ADHD. The pattern was true for preschool and elementary-school children, but not adolescents. The researchers think overall age and maturity could be behind this difference. Other research has come to the same conclusion, including studies conducted in the United States , Canada , Iceland and Sweden . Interestingly, the pattern did not hold true in among children in Denmark , according to one study. In Denmark, children generally start school in the year they turn 7. Researchers in the Denmark study suggest that the difference may be that many Danish familiesabout 40 percent, in this study hold their children out from formal education if they are born late in the calendar year. The ADHD Diagnosis Takeaway for Educators and Parent Whatever the causes for ADHD, its on the rise in the United States. About 7.8 percent of children ages 4-17 were diagnosed with ADHD in 2003, but by 2011 that had risen to 11 percentabout 6.4 million kids. A valid diagnosis of ADHD should be made after examining how a child behaves at school, at home, and with his or her peers, said David Anderson, the senior director of the ADHD and Behavior Disorders Center at the New York-based Child Mind Institute. The behavior has to be occurring in more than one context, and these studies suggest that careful diagnosis is not happening everywhere, he said. But parents need not fear an evaluation, Anderson said. They should look for practitioners who are as willing to consider other explanations as they are to rule in ADHD, he said. That health-care provider should also be willing to explain the evidence base behind any treatment, Anderson stressed. And because school is such an important part of a full evaluation process, teachers need to be prepared to offer their assessment. This ADHD checklist from the Centers from Disease Control and Prevention offers an sample of behaviors to be aware of. And finally, ADHD does not always require medication. Parents are expecting that were going to tell them they must pursue medication, he said. But we can engage in a number of environmentally based interventions in order to help support that childs function. Behavioral therapy is the preferred first step for children under age 6 , according to the American Academy of Pediatrics, and parents often feel more comfortable with therapy than with medication for young children, Anderson said. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says several parent training programs are effective for children with ADHD and disruptive behaviors in general, including Triple P (Positive Parenting Program) and the Incredible Years parenting program . What these programs all have in common is that they want the adults in a childs life to reinforce positive behaviors. In school, an intervention program such as a Daily Report Card can be an effective way to consistently reward children for positive classroom behavior. These concepts are so much easier to think about conceptually than they are to actually apply, Anderson said. It requires going against basic human behavior, which is noticing the behaviors that frustrate us. But catching children being good can be remarkably effective, he said. Related Stories: for the latest news on special education policies, practices, and trends. A photo shows the old, left, and new Blue Moon taps. The MillerCoors beer is introducing new packaging and designs with a brighter and cleaner look. (Blue Moon) Dick Leinenkugel has logged countless hours in Texas and Southern California lately, spreading the gospel of shandies in locales with abundant sunshine and underdeveloped craft beer markets. "I think we're poised for a very big year," said Leinenkugel, 58, president of the Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing Company. Advertisement As the craft beer industry continues to boom, Chicago-based MillerCoors purveyor of mainstream beers like Miller Lite and Coors Light is responding by doubling down on Blue Moon and Leinenkugel, the two top sellers in its Tenth and Blake craft and imports division. Beginning next month, quirky television commercials will attempt to introduce consumers throughout the U.S. to Leinenkugel: "German-style beer crafted with the spirit of Wisconsin." Meanwhile, Blue Moon Brewing Co., best known for its Belgian White ale, is unleashing its own promotional barrage, including its first new packaging in more than 20 years, an ad campaign, and, this summer, the opening of a brewery in Denver's burgeoning craft beer scene in the River North art district. Advertisement It's all about staying relevant in an increasingly competitive craft beer landscape, said Ashley Selman, MillerCoors vice president of marketing. "We just need to keep introducing ourselves and to make ourselves accessible." Last summer, millennials in consumer focus groups informed MillerCoors that the Blue Moon packaging was "dark, lonely and weirdly mystical," Selman said. The new look is brighter and cleaner than the old, and intended to better represent the experience of having a Blue Moon Belgian White in a glass at a bar, typically garnished with an orange slice, she said. With Leinenkugel, the challenge is to grow its following beyond the Great Lakes. One of the new commercials features a multiracial group of 20- and 30-somethings each with an instrument camping on the banks of a river and drinking Summer Shandy. A moose swims by as they slowly groove into a shuffling, old-timey rendition of Boston's "More Than a Feeling." "If you're from Illinois or Wisconsin, you know Leinenkugel," Selman said. "Other parts of the country still don't know us that well." Whether Blue Moon and Leinenkugel are craft-brewed is a matter of some dispute. MillerCoors, which owns Blue Moon, has updated its packaging, including its bottles. (Handout) From the MillerCoors perspective, Blue Moon is the top-selling craft beer in the U.S. by volume, citing data from the Chicago-based market research firm IRI, and Leinenkugel is a craft brewery dating back to 1867. But the Brewers Association, the trade group representing the vast majority of craft brewers in the U.S., defines craft breweries as being small, independent and traditional. Neither Blue Moon nor Leinenkugel fits the criteria to be considered a craft brewer, said Julia Herz, spokeswoman for the association. Advertisement Blue Moon has updated its packaging. (Handout) Blue Moon Belgian White is seen by many to be a "gateway" beer to craft, but its corporate ownership has long rankled some in the craft beer community. The Miller Brewing Co. acquired Leinenkugel in 1988. "You've got the big brewers trying to act like the small and it remains to be seen whether the marketplace will support that," Herz said on MillerCoors' recent efforts with Blue Moon and Leinenkugel. MillerCoors' Selman called the definition of craft "a moving target." "Does it matter whether some people call (Blue Moon) craft or some people don't?" Selman said. "Not really. Ultimately, consumers decide whether they like our beer or not." What can't be argued is that the beer landscape has changed dramatically in recent years. In 1995, when Blue Moon was first brewed as the Belly Slide Belgian Wit in the tiny Sandlot brewery at Coors Field, there were 794 craft breweries in the U.S., according to Brewers Association data. Now, there are more than 4,200. Advertisement Last year, the volume of beer produced by craft brewers increased by 13 percent, according to the association. As craft beer and Mexican imports have cut into market share of domestic mainstream beers, large beer companies have fought back on several fronts, such as acquiring craft breweries, revamping marketing on legacy beers, and creating line extensions or new products. MillerCoors has done all of the above, including buying the San Diego-based craft brewery Saint Archer Brewing Co. last year. But for now, the focus in the Tenth and Blake division is on growing sales for Blue Moon and Leinenkugel, Selman said. Last year, the Blue Moon family of beers which includes a White IPA, Cinnamon Horchata Ale and the Harvest Pumpkin Ale, among other styles made about $166 million in grocery store sales, an increase of 5.6 percent from the previous year, according to IRI data for the year ended Dec. 27. The Belgian White still represents the bulk of Blue Moon sales about $113 million in supermarket sales last year, an increase of 9.6 percent from the previous year, according to the IRI data. But over the past five years, the IRI data show that the growth of Blue Moon sales has slowed, particularly for seasonal and variety pack beers. The growth of the craft beer industry has "contributed to the challenges that Blue Moon has faced," said Dan Wandel, principal of beverage alcohol client insights at IRI. Advertisement Leinenkugel's Summer Shandy is the top selling shandy in the U.S., according to IRI data, despite facing similar competitive challenges. As beer drinkers increasingly open their minds to flavored beers, Wandel said, the Grapefruit Shandy in particular "has been able to capitalize on this trend." Both Blue Moon and Leinenkugel tend to appeal to more affluent consumers and younger drinkers, particularly millennials, according to Nielsen data. When Dick Leinenkugel got involved in the family business in 1987, the Chippewa Falls-based brewery only produced four types of beer, he said. Shandies were introduced in 2007 and now represent about 70 percent of Leinenkugel sales, he said. "There's no question we've grown because of people growing interested in trying new styles of beer," he said. Still, Leinenkugel said the national push won't mean the local market will be neglected. "We're not going to forget who brought us to the dance," he said. Advertisement gtrotter@tribpub.com Twitter @GregTrotterTrib Trains wait on sidings at the BNSF rail yard on Western Avenue near 18th Street close to the Metra Station on March 21, 2016. (Michael Tercha / Chicago Tribune) A proposed 278-mile rail line billed as relief for freight and traffic congestion in the Chicago area is getting a hearing next month from a federal regulator, even as one potential customer said it's not interested. The Surface Transportation Board, an arm of the U.S. Department of Transportation, has scheduled public meetings in April to get input on the three-state proposal, partly due to its potential for "significant environmental impacts." Advertisement Its developer, Great Lakes Basin Transportation, hasn't publicly divulged its funding sources, but said it envisions the privately financed freight rail project to run in relatively sparsely populated areas from near La Porte, Ind., to Milton, Wis., and to connect with existing major railroads. The proposed $8 billion rail line would enable freight traffic not destined for, or originating in, Chicago to bypass a Chicago terminal area characterized as "congested" in a Surface Transportation Board notice that appeared in the Federal Register on Friday. Freight transit times through the Chicago area could be reduced from as long as 30 hours to as little as 8 hours, Great Lakes says. Advertisement That, in turn, could also provide relief to suburban commuters both in cars and on passenger trains as more freight trains bypass the downtown area, said Great Lakes founder and managing partner Frank Patton. Great Lakes said its project would provide major railroads including BNSF Railway, Union Pacific, Norfolk Southern and CSX "more efficient options to route trains through the city." The Illinois Department of Transportation had no immediate comment on the proposed project, which Patton has discussed for years. But Union Pacific said Monday that, "after carefully reviewing the proposal, Union Pacific determined in July 2014 that it was not interested in moving forward with a discussion on the Great Lakes Basin Railroad's bypass project." "We have repeatedly communicated this position to Great Lakes Basin's leadership team," Union Pacific spokeswoman Calli Hite said. "Union Pacific is focused on several major public-private partnerships, including CREATE, which will benefit the region and enhance efficiency for Chicago-area and regional railroad operations." CREATE, or the Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency program, is a partnership between the U.S. Department of Transportation, the state of Illinois, the city of Chicago, Metra, Amtrak and the nation's freight railroads to improve rail line efficiency. The proposed Great Lakes project would typically consist of two tracks and allow for movements of up to 110 trains a day and could cause the closure of some small rural roads, according to the Surface Transportation Board notice. Great Lakes said its route would include flyovers, or overpasses, over existing rail lines that it encounters so neither train must wait for the other. "By doing that you eliminate what is now a huge amount of the congestion in the Chicago terminal," said Patton, a former Union League Club of Chicago president and a former software company owner. Advertisement The Surface Transportation Board said it will prepare an "environmental impact statement" and, as part of the process, hold eight hearings, including April 11 in Manteno, April 19 in Rockford, April 20 in Rochelle and April 21 in Seneca. Manteno Mayor Tim Nugent called the Great Lakes project "quite a grandiose undertaking" and said railroads need the line. "They've got the Surface Transportation Board involved, which is the next step," said Nugent, who plans to attend the April 11 hearing. Great Lakes' Patton said the estimated tab for the project, which has 14 investors he declined to name, is about $8 billion. Great Lakes estimates 15 percent to 25 percent of freight traffic doesn't start or end in Chicago, yet must fight its way through a crowded terminal area that also must accommodate Metra and Amtrak passenger trains. Joseph Schwieterman, director of the Chaddick Institute for Metropolitan Development at DePaul University, said the proposed freight rail project would be "good news for shippers looking to one day avoid the traffic entanglement that our city has become." Advertisement "We have almost forgotten in this country how to build new lines for freight movements," Schwieterman said. The Chicago area "simply won't have enough rail capacity to handle all the projected traffic growth," he said. "This problem is putting wind in the sails of this project's supporters." Schwieterman said there's enough undeveloped land "around the periphery of our region to build this line with relatively little demolition required." Funding will be a key factor in whether the project comes to fruition. "A strong coalition has been put together," said P.S. Sriraj, interim executive director of the Urban Transportation Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who has seen the proposal. "It seems like they've done their homework about the need and feasibility of it." Great Lakes' plans, according to the Surface Transportation Board, include building a terminal near Manteno that would provide switching, servicing, and car and locomotive repair. The environmental study is expected to take 18 months to 36 months, Patton said. Advertisement The board's environmental impact statement will analyze the potential impacts of construction and operation, including for alternative routes. The board could deny Great Lakes' petition or application to build. Receiving a permit to build alone would cost $30 million to $50 million, Patton said. To acquire the land, property owners would be offered the equivalent of $20,000 an acre, receive free residential electricity, and receive access to the rail if they have, say, grain to ship, Patton said. Patton didn't rule out using eminent domain to get certain parcels. byerak@tribpub.com Twitter @beckyyerak Johnathan Allen, 24, from left, David Elam, 25, and Antonio Monix, 23, testify at a hearing on youth unemployment hosted by the Chicago Urban League on Jan. 25, 2016. (Zbigniew Bzdak / Chicago Tribune) Disturbing unemployment trends among Chicago youth are mirrored in some Cook County suburbs, including a stark north-south divide. Nearly 40 percent of black 20- to 24-year-olds were both out of school and out of work in Cook County in 2014, compared with 15 percent of Hispanics and 8 percent of whites in those age groups, according to a report released Tuesday by the Great Cities Institute at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Advertisement The numbers are particularly troubling for young black men, 45 percent of whom were neither working nor in school in Cook County, compared to with 17.7 percent of Latino men and 9.1 percent of white men, the report found. That's far worse than the national average of 32.1 percent for black men in that age group, as well as what was found in New York City, Los Angeles County and Harris County, which includes Houston, according to the report. Advertisement The statistics echo Chicago data released in January by the institute that showed 47 percent of black men in their early 20s are neither in school nor working. The report was prepared for a hearing Tuesday before the Cook County Board's Workforce, Housing and Community Development Committee that will include testimony by young people. Cook County Commissioner Bridget Gainer, D-Chicago, said she called for the hearing because she was struck by the January report for Chicago that showed the areas with highest youth unemployment also were experiencing the most violence. The intent is to get the information in front of county lawmakers as they plan their next budget and to get an update on the summer jobs plan from the Chicago Cook Workforce Partnership, which administers federal funds for such programs. "This has been a very difficult year for us in Chicago, and as we approach the summer, are we adequately prepared to provide jobs for young people?" she said. "We'd rather (look at) that in March than July." Karin Norington-Reaves, CEO of the Chicago Cook Workforce Partnership, told the commissioners that her organization's funding "allows us to barely make a dent." The partnership's current budget is just under $60 million, about half of it federal funding and the rest from private donors and foundations. She said there are about 200,000 disconnected youth in Chicago and it costs about $4,500 to serve each young person, services that include preparing youth for jobs. The federal money is limited to year-round programming, so the partnership does not have a large-scale summer program, Norington-Reaves said. Advertisement The One Summer Chicago program administered by the city expects to employ about 25,000 young people this summer, said Mary Ellen Messner, deputy commissioner of youth services at the city's Department of Family and Support Services. There were 66,000 applicants last year. The department, which has 163 private employer partners, has also applied for a $2 million federal grant to put 300 more out-of-work and out-of-school youth into summer jobs, with the intent it would become year-round employment, Messner said. Like in Chicago, Cook County youth unemployment statistics show great disparities between communities to the north and south. A cluster of suburbs in southern Cook County had the greatest concentration of out-of-work youth, with Harvey, Markham, Hazel Crest, Sauk Village and Ford Heights showing joblessness rates of over 60 percent for 20- to 24-year-olds. By contrast, a cluster of northwest suburbs showed low joblessness rates of 30 percent or less among 20 to 24-year-olds, including Palatine, Inverness, Schaumburg, Arlington Heights, Elk Grove Village, Streamwood, Hoffman Estates, Mount Prospect and Wheeling. The joblessness rate includes people who may be in school. Advertisement Joblessness is concentrated in "economically abandoned sectors of Cook County resulting from deindustrialization," the authors write in the report, and reflect "the long-term impacts of 40 years of economic decisions by portions of the private sector seeking to be more competitive in the global market." The hardest-hit areas seem to be those that most relied on manufacturing jobs, study co-author Teresa Cordova said. "The strategy of bringing back jobs is also bringing back these areas that have really suffered as manufacturing left," she said. While Cook County's black youth showed the worst employment rates compared with blacks in the other localities in the study, Latinos and whites fared better in Cook County than the comparison regions. For example, 12 percent of Latino 20- to 24-year-olds in Cook County were out of school and out of work, better than the 15.2 percent national average for Latinos, 19 percent in New York City and 14 percent in both Los Angeles and Harris County. Cordova said further study needs to look at the types of jobs and incomes people are getting, as previous research has shown Latinos make up a lot of the working poor. Advertisement In addition to summer jobs, the report points to criminal justice reform, apprenticeships, incentives to bring anchor employment centers to disinvested neighborhoods, and small business incubators within neighborhoods as strategies to combat youth unemployment. aelejalderuiz@tribpub.com Twitter @alexiaer An earlier version of this article included incorrect jobless percentages in the second paragraph. The figures have been corrected. An interview with Deuki Hong and Matt Rodbard, the authors of "Koreatown: A Cookbook," at Dancen in Lincoln Square. (Chicago Tribune) Chef Deuki Hong and journalist Matt Rodbard arrived in Chicago hungry Monday. By the time I encountered the co-authors of "Koreatown: A Cookbook," for an early dinner at Dancen, the small Korean grill restaurant in Lincoln Square, they had already lunched at Au Cheval and stopped for a nibble at Tank. (I'm sure they were off to something else delicious after that.) Tuesday, the pair will be at Mott Street for a dinner marking the publication of their book. The dinner is billed as Shot + 6 dishes + book and costs $48 per person. There are two seatings, at 6 and 8:30 p.m., and tickets can be ordered here, or telephone the restaurant at (773) 687-9977. Advertisement Each seating will begin with an apertif shot of Sudachi shochu. On the menu: skewers of miso eggplant and shrimp with pork belly, Brussels sprouts with lamb pancetta and maple brown butter, a sweet and spicy braised chicken that Hong is cooking, and stuffed cabbage. Nate Chung, one of the partners in Mott Street, says the cabbage will contain pork shoulder and crispy rice. That Hong and Rodbard are being feted at Mott Street is appropriate. The authors included the 1401 N. Ashland Ave. restaurant and a recipe for stuffed kimchee and pork shoulder, lasagna-style from chef Edward Kim in the book, which distills two years of research, interviews and eating in Korean-American neighborhoods across America into an accessible and very readable work with 100 recipes designed for the home cook. Advertisement Hong is the chef at Kang Ho Dong Baekjeong, the enormously popular Korean barbecue restaurant in Manhattan. Rodbard is contributing editor at Food Republic and author of "Korean Restaurant Guide: New York City." wdaley@tribpub.com Twitter @billdaley Cafeteria food is a lot better than you remember it at Saint Lou's Assembly, just opened in Fulton Market. (Alexander Gouletas ) Is there something in the water? First, The Northman's quiet weekend opening, and now, Saint Lou's Assembly, the latest concept restaurant from the 16" on Center group (owners of Dusek's, Punch House, Thalia Hall, and Longman & Eagle), popped up out of nowhere today. Straight off the also-secret opening of the group's bar, Moneygun (which opened two weeks ago to minimal fanfare and maximum surprise), Saint Lou's Assembly is an homage to the classic "meat-and-three" a meat course plus three side dishes found throughout the South. The chef? L&E's Jared Wentworth. Advertisement The cafeteria-style space (attached to Moneygun) seats 50; diners walk down a counter with a plastic tray and pick from a buffet. The concept is named after Louis D., the proprietor of a meat-packing plant called Monarch Provisions that opened in 1947 on Fulton and Sangamon. Wentworth adds a Midwestern spin on the Southern meat-and-three with cafeteria-meets-steakhouse dishes, such as meatloaf Wellington ($18) and herb-crusted prime rib ($26). All prices include three sides; options range from green bean casserole to braised kale. Daily specials and rotisserie items round out the menu. Advertisement A few items star at lunch only (beef short rib pot pie, $14; fried chicken, $12). Desserts ($5) like pecan pie, bread pudding and chess pie are offered all day. For drinks, expect draft beers, a rye sweet tea ($10) and a selection of boozy floats like the banana cognac (house-made banana soft drink, vanilla gelato and Hennessy, $10). A patio will offer additional seating, while a curbside pick-up for carryout orders is in the works. Saint Lou's is open seven days a week 11 a.m. to 10 p.m. Saint Lou's Assembly, 664 W. Lake St., 312-600-0600, www.saintlouschicago.com jbhernandez@chicagotribune.com Twitter @joeybear85 Today we bring a little comfort food nostalgia, the chicken-fried steak. How can something so humble go with wine, a beverage many consider more high-brow? Well, that type of seemingly disparate pairing can lead to the best matches. Here Champagne, Chilean pinot noir and Italian sangiovese step up to the task. MAKE THIS Advertisement Chicken-fried steak with pan gravy On a plate, stir together 1/4 cup flour and 1/2 teaspoon each salt, pepper and paprika. Coat 2 cube steaks with mixture, pressing in to use all the flour. Heat 1 cup vegetable oil in a skillet to 375 degrees. Fry steaks until well-crusted on one side, about 2 minutes. Turn; cook 2 minutes. Remove steaks from skillet. Pour off all but 2 tablespoons oil. Return skillet to medium-low heat. Whisk in 2 tablespoons flour; cook, 1 minute. Add 2 tablespoons chopped tomato and 1 tablespoon chopped onion. Whisk in 1 1/4 cups milk; cook until thick, 3 minutes. Season to taste. Serve gravy with the steaks. Makes: 2 servings Advertisement Recipe by William Rice Eat. Watch. Do. Weekly What to eat. What to watch. What you need to live your best life ... now. > DRINK THIS Pairings by sommelier Rachael Lowe of Spiaggia, as told to Michael Austin: Pierre Paillard Brut Blanc de Blancs, Bouzy, Champagne: This grower producer sources grapes from the Grand Cru village of Bouzy for this intensely mineral wine made of 100 percent chardonnay. Expect aromas of chalk, green apple, quince, almond skin and a hint of wet straw. The acidity, structure and bubbles of Champagne always complement richer foods wonderfully, and this one will cut through the batter, and the richness of the meat itself. 2011 Garcia + Schwaderer Pinot Noir, Casablanca Valley, Chile: This husband-and-wife team came together after making wine at separate wineries, and their pinot noir is very well-balanced, with aromas of raspberry, strawberry, a slight herbaceous note of dried thyme and rosemary, and a hint of smoke. The wine is delicate enough to work with the vegetal components of this dish, while the natural acidity will cut through the meat and gravy perfectly. 2012 Dei Vino Nobile di Montepulciano, Tuscany, Italy: Since 1985 the Dei family has been producing sangiovese-based wines in Tuscany, and this is a great expression of vino nobile, showing notes of plum skin, cranapple, leather, sage and a touch of smoked meats. Sangiovese's proclivity for higher acid and tannin makes this an ideal pairing, as it not only will balance the richness of the meat, but also the zingy tomato notes in the sauce. foods@tribune.com Twitter @pour_man Two iconic characters in capes rocketed the comic-book industry into the American mainstream: Superman and Batman, twin pop-culture monuments who, though born in the late '30s, still reign ageless. And on March 25, these Spandex heavyweights will go (Super-)mano a (Bat-)mano for the first time on the big screen, in director Zack Snyder's "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice." So who has the edge in this epic showdown of DC Comics's most popular warriors? Sure, Superman is the stronger combatant - but don't think Batman doesn't have something in his utility belt to counter him. To weigh their pros and cons, here's our tale of the tape: Advertisement BIRTH NAME Superman: Kal-El Advertisement Batman: Bruce Wayne Advantage: Superman, with a name so distinctive, fan Nicolas Cage even tagged his son with it. OFFICIAL CHARACTER HEIGHT Superman: 6-foot-3 Batman: 6-foot-2 Advantage: Push OFFICIAL CHARACTER WEIGHT Superman: 235 pounds Advertisement Batman: 210 pounds Advantage: Depends of weight of Batman's gadget-laced utility belt. HAIR Superman: Signature S-curl Batman: Potential "helmet hair" from the cowl. Advantage: Superman Advertisement LOGO Superman: Chest-spanning "S" Batman: Fear-inducing black bat Advantage: Batman. The "Bat-Signal" looks impressive projected into the midnight skies over Gotham. SECRET IDENTITY Superman: Bumbling, stumbling newspaper reporter Clark Kent Advertisement Batman: Billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne Advantage: Superman - those media connections pay off in times of trouble. ICONIC CRASH PAD Superman: Icy "Fortress of Solitude" Batman: Dank, subterranean "Batcave" Advantage: Batman - better manservants. Advertisement PERSONALITY Superman: Earnest do-gooder (aka "The Big Blue Boy Scout") Batman: Dark, moody, tortured vigilante Advantage: Superman. Batman's a real downer as a plus-one. ORIGIN STORY Superman: The infant Kal-El's parents rocketed him away in a capsule like a cosmos-Moses ("cos-Moses"?) before they died in the explosion of home planet Krypton. Advertisement Batman: Young Bruce Wayne saw his own parents murdered before his eyes, while old enough to remember the psyche-scarring event. Advantage for lifelong mental torture as compelling narrative: Batman FIGHTING ATTRIBUTES Superman: Super-flight, super-speed, super-hearing, super-intelligence, super-near-invulnerability, super-heat vision. Batman: Hand-to-hand combat; a street fighter's hard-won guile. Advantage: Batman Advertisement WEAKNESS Superman: Kryptonite radiation, love of humanity Batman: No actual superpower, Catwoman's feline allure Advantage: Batman SIDEKICK Superman: Usually works alone Advertisement Batman: Most often Robin, the Boy Wonder Advantage: Superman. Poor, ever-grieving Batman has had to endure too many sidekick deaths by nefarious means. NOTABLE VILLAINS Superman: Lex Luthor, Brainiac, Bizarro, Zod Batman: Joker, Riddler, Penguin, Bane, Ra's al Ghul Advantage: Batman - arguably the greatest rogues' gallery in comics history. Advertisement CREATORS Superman: Nerdy, outsidery Canadian/Cleveland boys in the '30s (Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster) Batman: Streetwise, outsidery New York lads in the '30s (Bob Kane and Bill Finger) Advantage: You pick OSCAR NOMINATIONS AMONG BIG-SCREEN ACTORS Superman: Reeve, Routh, Cavill et al.= zero Advertisement Batman: Keaton, Clooney, Bale, Affleck = 14. Advantage: Batman MEMORABLE MUSIC Superman: John Williams' triumphant horns in the original films Batman: Hans Zimmer's Dolby-splitting bass synthesizers in the Christopher Nolan films Advantage: Depends on the darkness of your mortal soul. Advertisement ROMANTIC HIGHLIGHT Superman: Flying a charmed Lois through the gentle evening sky. Batman: Getting face-licked by a villainous, leather-loving Catwoman. Advantage: You pick - this one says more about you. BEST DEATH Superman: Memorably slain by a monster named Doomsday (before inevitable resurrection) Advertisement Batman: Flatlined by Darkseid (before inevitably cheating death via time travel) Advantage: Superman - he "revived" much more quickly. MOTTO/OATH Superman: "Truth, justice and the American way." Batman: "And I swear bythe spirits of my parents to avenge their deaths by spending the rest of my life warring on all criminals." Advantage: Superman's for bumper sticker; Batman's for eight-decade narrative. Donald Trump's much-anticipated address to a leading pro-Israel lobbying group Monday evening was light on his trademark improvisation and full of standard rhetoric favoring the U.S. ally. In a departure from his shambolic, off-the-cuff approach at his campaign rallies, Trump mostly stuck to prepared remarks read from a teleprompter, declaring at the outset that he's "a newcomer to politics but not to backing the Jewish state." Advertisement Playing to his image as the anti-politician, Trump asserted that he "didn't come here tonight to pander about Israel. That's what politicians do all talk, no action," he told the assembled members of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. But his relatively staid speech stuck largely to themes tailored to appeal to the pro-Israel crowd, including bashing President Obama's nuclear agreement with Iran as "disastrous" and decrying Palestinians for "glorifying terrorists." Advertisement He also vowed to move the American Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a goal of pro-Israel advocates. Trump, who has been criticized for lacking specificity in his policy proposals, peppered his address with details on ballistic weapons, terrorist groups and Middle East geography. He said he had studied the "catastrophic" Iran nuclear deal "in great detail actually, I would say, greater by far than anybody else," an assertion that prompted laughter from the audience. AIPAC helped lead a massive but ultimately unsuccessful effort to stop the deal last summer. Trump, who had said during a Republican debate that he would want to appear "somewhat neutral" in order to negotiate a peace deal between Israelis and Palestinians, sided decisively with Israel in his remarks Monday night. "The Palestinians must come to the table knowing that the bond between the United States and Israel is absolutely, totally unbreakable," he said. He kept references to 2016 electoral politics relatively light, save for a quick jab at Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, whom he called "a total disaster." "She and President Obama have treated Israel very, very badly," Trump said. Earlier in the day, Clinton took several pointed, if veiled, swipes at Trump, for both his campaign rhetoric and his self-described neutrality on Israel-Palestinian relations. Advertisement "Yes, we need steady hands, not a president who says he's neutral on Monday, pro-Israel on Tuesday, and who-knows-what on Wednesday because everything's negotiable," Clinton said in her speech Monday morning. "Well, my friends, Israel's security is non-negotiable." Trump did insert some of his signature unconventional rhetorical flourishes into the speech's traditional format. He noted, as he has before, that he served as grand marshal in a 2004 pro-Israel parade in New York a time of violent clashes in the Gaza Strip that, Trump claimed, risked the safety of supporters of Israel in the United States. "Many people turned down this honor," he said. "I did not. I took the risk and I'm glad I did." He closed his remarks noting that his daughter, Ivanka, whose husband, Jared Kushner, is Jewish, had converted to Judaism and is expecting "a beautiful Jewish baby." "In fact, it could be happening right now, which would be very nice, as far as I'm concerned!" he said. Advertisement Follow @melmason for more on the 2016 presidential race. Top Legal Questions on Hate Crimes When victims of crime appear to be targeted for their race, nationality, religious beliefs, or sexual orientation, one of the first questions that gets asked is whether the attack was a hate crime. As when Dylann Roof shot and killed nine parishioners in a historic black church in Charleston, South Carolina after telling them, "I have to do it. You rape our women and you're taking over our country. And you have to go." Ultimately, Roof was not charged with a hate crime, which can raise even more questions about what qualifies as a hate crime and when and how they are prosecuted. Here are a few answers to those questions: After three Muslim students were shot in the head in a Chapel Hill condominium complex, many thought the killings would be prosecuted as a hate crime. We took a look at federal hate crime legislation and state statutes on the matter, which can vary from state to state. In the wake of Dylann Roof's massacre in Charleston, seven churches in five states caught fire, leading many to wonder whether all church fires should be charged as hate crimes. But first, investigators must determine whether the fire was even arson before trying to discern a racial or religious motivation for the fire. In a country that values free speech so highly, differentiating between humor and hate can be a difficult task. When, if ever, do crass, tasteless jokes rise to the level of threats or intimidation? It may come down to ascertaining the speaker's intent, an even thornier legal question. Once you've figured out whether a particular criminal offense qualifies as a hate crime, next comes determining the proper punishment. Generally, states have hate crime enhancements that allow for tougher penalties for hate crimes. But whether you spend a year in jail or ten will depend on whether you're charged by state or federal authorities. So where do most hate crimes happen? While most might assume that southern states have the most racially motivated crimes, the top three on the FBI's annual report on hate crime statistics may surprise you. Hate crimes can happen anywhere. If you've been charged with a hate crime, or believe you've been the victim of one, you should contact an experienced criminal law attorney near you. Related Resources: "Contrary to popular belief, we are allowed more than one passion in life," says author Rachel Star. (pepifoto / iStock) Is the daily grind swallowing every bit of time and energy you once swore you'd pour into, say, acting, designing apps or making artisanal yogurt? Sure, writing a resignation letter might feel liberating in the heat of the moment, but not many are willing to either swallow their pride and crash on their parents' couch, or drag their spouse and kids into financial crisis. "My job pays the bills. I can't afford to give that up," says 25-year-old Kayla Buell, creator of Gen Y Girl, a website focused on helping young professionals navigate the corporate world. "But as soon as I get home, I get to tap into my creativity by blogging." Advertisement According to a 2015 Gallup study, millennials ages 18 to 34 are the least engaged generation at work, mainly because they "may not be working in jobs that allow them to use their talents and strengths." So how can you come up with the time, energy and motivation to pursue a passion, while holding onto and not hating your day job? Advertisement Those who have found a sweet spot agree that looking for silver linings in your current position is a crucial step toward a dream career. "Monday through Friday, from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., I work at a super-stressful, not-so-creative desk job in a big supply-chain department. I don't always love it. You know what I do love? Fixing problems," says Miami-based Buell. "That's what helps me get through the day." On the other hand, if nothing gets you psyched about work, resist the temptation to slack, says San Diego resident Paul Angone, best-selling author of "101 Secrets for Your Twenties" (Moody). "You're doing yourself a disservice by not learning as much as you could from that job." Instead, keep your eyes open for hidden benefits. Five years ago, when Angone started flirting with the idea of becoming a full-time author and a speaker, his 8-to-5 marketing job helped provide for two small children and paid student loans plus a pricey rent in Los Angeles. He soon realized his job could help support his creative endeavors too. "I took advantage of a tuition benefit to afford my master's degree and created a website," recalls Angone, founder of AllGroanUp.com, a "what now?" guide for millennials. Another common roadblock that keeps millennials stuck in ill-fitting careers is the lack of time spent perfecting skills that could land them a dream job. Michael Price, author of "What Next? The Millennial Guide to Surviving and Thriving in the Real World" (Priceless Media Group), advises young people to polish their craft during the pockets of time they would otherwise use to unwind. Advertisement "From 18 to 21, I worked at a call center, did contract work for a marketing agency and worked retail, so I spent my lunch breaks, nights and weekends learning digital media and marketing," said Price. "Now, at 30, I am the social media director for one of the country's top creative agencies." In pursuing dreams, some will be faced with failure. Rather than dwelling on it, use it to propel yourself forward, advises Angone. "After racking up a year's worth of rejections from numerous publishers, my dream was dying like a salmon lying on a summer sidewalk. Failure forced me to learn more about Web designing, social media and blogging, which in the end made me a better writer." Similarly, don't mope around if opportunities seem to elude you. "Waiting on luck to strike keeps many of us stuck. You don't need to be a signed recording artist to sing; there's YouTube, Periscope, amateur nights, SoundCloud," says Rachel Star, an author, creative entrepreneur and blogger at "Move Chick, Get Out Your Way," a personal development blog about living the life you want to live. Stepping into your ideal business through a side door, suggests Price, could speed things up a bit. "That's Trent Reznor's story from Nine Inch Nails. He wanted to be a musician, so he got a job as a janitor at a local recording studio and asked to use the facility after hours." Advertisement If that's out of reach, seek out a mentor who knows the ropes of your prospective career. "It doesn't have to be a CEO," says Buell, who recommends finding "someone whose lifestyle you're interested in having." One thing to ask yourself early on in this journey: Do you really need to be cashing in on your passion? For example, says Star, coming to terms with the fact that she wasn't going to become a millionaire author lifted a huge weight off her shoulders. "Way too much pressure to put on something that I love to do," she says. "The financial expectations on my passion shifted considerably when I struggled to sell $5 copies of my book yet easily sold a wall print on fancy paper with cool fonts and gold for $23." There comes a time when you have to decide whether your goals are worth the trouble. Advertisement "Life is too short to spend it chasing a dream that you no longer want," says Star. "Contrary to popular belief, we are allowed more than one passion in life." Sometimes, those who decide to keep plugging away do see their dreams come to fruition. After exhausting days at work, Buell admits to sometimes having "zero brain power left for blogging." Then, she remembers her first book, "Corporate Survival Guide for Your Twenties: A Guide to Help You Navigate the Business World," is coming out in June. "It makes me feel like those late nights working on the things I love were for something. It reminds me that we can achieve our goals if we're willing to work hard enough for them." A passenger talks on the phone as American Airlines jets sit parked at their gates at Washington's Ronald Reagan National Airport. (Susan Walsh / AP) It started with a proposed law to set minimum seat sizes on planes. Then a senator took on hotel resort fees, and another put airline surcharges in his crosshairs. And then the Senate released one of the most passenger-friendly Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization bills in a generation. An unprecedented number of pro-consumer laws have been introduced in Congress in the past month, giving travelers hope that their next trip could be better than the last - smoother, more comfortable and with fewer surprise fees. Advertisement Call it a Travel Rights Spring. But will it last? The reason for this legislation is obvious to anyone who travels. For decades, travelers - particularly airline passengers - have complained about shrinking seat sizes and rising fees. It wasn't a question of whether Washington would intervene, but when. Advertisement "The airlines' quest for ever more revenue has gone way too far," says Richard Orr, a frequent traveler who works for a sporting goods chain in St. Charles, Missouri. Like other travelers, he's been surprised at the rapid-fire introduction of these proposed laws in February and March. "Congress is finally taking concrete action," he adds. And how. The prelude to Travel Rights Spring was the House version of the FAA reauthorization bill, which contained a number of unexpected consumer provisions. Among them: a requirement to notify passengers of their consumer rights, the extension of the Advisory Committee for Aviation Consumer Protection and a requirement that airlines refund baggage fees for luggage delayed more than 24 hours on domestic flights. But Congress was just getting warmed up. A few days later, Rep. Steve Cohen, D-Tennessee, introduced the Seat Egress in Air Travel (SEAT) Act, which would have established a minimum seat size and a minimum distance between rows of seats for the safety and health of passengers. Although it failed as an amendment to the FAA reauthorization, it remains a stand-alone bill. Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 24 Los Angeles International Airport's score in the 2015 Airport Food Review was 44 healthy restaurants out of 49 restaurants. (Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times) Then the Senate took up the issue of minimum seat size when Sen. Charles E. Schumer, D-New York, announced plans to add an amendment similar to the SEAT Act to the Senate version of the FAA funding bill. Congress doesn't want to help only airline passengers. In late February, Sen. Claire McCaskill, D-Missouri, introduced the Truth in Hotel Advertising Act of 2016, a law that would prohibit hotels from advertising a room rate that doesn't include all mandatory fees. If passed, the law would effectively kill "resort fees" added to your bill after the initial price quote. Hotel guests are furious about these surcharges, which they say are unfair and deceptive. Next, two Senate Democrats introduced the Forbid Airlines From Imposing Ridiculous Fees Act of 2016, or the FAIR Fees Act, which would prohibit air carriers from imposing fees that are "not reasonable and proportional" to the costs incurred by the air carriers. Advertisement "This measure will ground the soaring, gouging fees that contribute to airlines' record profits and passengers' rising pain," said Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Connecticut, who co-sponsored the FAIR Fees Act. "With all the frills of flying already gone, airlines are increasingly resorting to nickel-and-diming consumers with outrageous fees." But the biggest surprise came when the Senate introduced its version of the FAA bill, which contains numerous pro-consumer provisions, including better fee disclosure by airlines, automatic refunds for fees, and a review of how airlines reveal information on their decisions to delay or cancel flights, which may fully or only partially be the result of weather-related factors. These clauses sent shock waves through the aviation community, which believed a Republican-controlled Senate wouldn't interfere with a deregulated airline industry. Jean Medina, a spokeswoman for Airlines for America, an airline trade group, described the legislative proposals to regulate airline fees and seat size as laws "cloaked under consumer protection that will actually harm customers who would end up paying more to fly than they do today." "These efforts are a misguided attempt at re-regulation of an industry that has been deregulated - to the consumer benefit - since 1978," she says. Consumers beg to differ. "Air travel has become so miserable," says Willa Kubasta, a retired medical assistant and office manager from Renton, Washington. "I'd rather spend more and have the privilege of being treated humanely and not like the lowest class of citizen." Advertisement Henry Strozeski, a former chief financial officer for a nonprofit organization in Winter Park, Florida, agrees that customers are tired of the airline price games - dangling a low fare in front of a passenger, only to add fees for things such as confirmed reservations and seats with a reasonable amount of legroom. "Would it lead to higher prices?" he asks. "Yes, but the cost is worth it. Government mandates like air bags and seat belts increase the cost of automobiles, but most of us feel that the safety gains outweigh the increased cost. Repealing child labor laws would probably reduce the cost of labor for many items and keep more industries from moving overseas, but not many people would think the benefits outweigh the cost." Advocates say the timing is right and that they'll fight to make Travel Rights Spring a reality. "This kind of consumer-friendly lawmaking doesn't spring spontaneously out of Congress," says Charlie Leocha, chairman of Travelers United, an advocacy organization. "These aviation changes are being proposed now after years of meeting week after week with House and Senate staffers about the importance of consumer issues." Kevin Mitchell, whose Business Travel Coalition represents frequent business travelers, says Washington has reached a tipping point. "Many senators grasp the anger among their constituents toward access to power among special interests in Washington and their seemingly easy ability to have members of Congress do the bidding of airlines contributing money instead of consumers providing votes," he says. Advertisement Paul Hudson, president of FlyersRights.org, which represents air travelers, says his organization will keep pushing Congress to return to "reasonable regulation" and consumer-friendly competition policies. Congress has little choice, he says. The alternative is "continued degradation of air travel and more monopoly, hurting both passengers and the U.S. economy." Indeed, consumer representatives have set their sights on a higher goal. "While seat sizes are an important issue for travelers, it is small ball compared to the larger, looming issues that travelers face," says Trey Bohn, the executive director of Travelers' Voice, an advocacy organization. At some point, Congress will need to address the lack of competition among airlines, he notes. The solution? Banning future airline mergers, allowing foreign carriers to compete on domestic routes and sunsetting controversial "code-sharing" antitrust immunity provisions that allow airlines to collude. And that's likely to make the fight for these consumer bills seem like a polite debate. Janet Godinez, left, and her sister Crystal Godinez talk during a news conference March 22, 2016, about their hope that a police video of their brother's death would soon be released. (Terrence Antonio James / Chicago Tribune) The sister of a 24-year-old man who died in police custody last summer has filed a lawsuit in an effort to get the city of Chicago to release a police video that purportedly shows the man's arrest. The lawsuit says a police video was shot during the arrest of Heriberto Godinez on July 20, 2015, and that it shows "a police officer standing on Heriberto's neck as Heriberto is facedown on the ground." Advertisement The city has denied efforts to obtain the video through Freedom of Information Act requests on the grounds that doing so would interfere with investigations, according to letters from the Chicago Police Department and the Office of Emergency Management and Communications that are attached to the lawsuit. At a news conference Tuesday, Janet Godinez, Heriberto's sister, asked Mayor Rahm Emanuel to "hand over that video." Advertisement "We need to know what happened. Everything has been getting denied. Why?" Godinez asked. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > Heriberto Godinez was found early in the morning of July 20 rummaging in a garage in the 3000 block of West Pershing Road, after police responded to calls of disturbances in the area, authorities said at the time. Officers thought Godinez might have been mentally ill and took him into custody after the owners of the property said they did not know him. Godinez began sweating heavily and his breathing became labored, so officers called paramedics. By the time paramedics arrived, Godinez was unresponsive, officials said at the time. According to the Cook County medical examiner's office, Godinez died of cocaine and alcohol poisoning, with physical stress from his being restrained "a significant contributing factor," the Tribune reported last year. As part of the fallout from the police video of Laquan McDonald being shot by an officer, Emanuel announced a new policy in February under which the city will release, within 60 days, audio and video recordings and police reports related to shootings, deaths in police custody or other major uses of force by officers. Law enforcement agencies can seek an additional 30-day delay. "We are calling and asking the mayor to do the right thing here and let the Godinez family see the video, release it to the Godinez family and the public, which is what we thought maybe might happen after the Laquan McDonald scandal, but that has not happened yet," said Torreya Hamilton, one of the attorneys for the family at a news conference. A spokesman for the city's Law Department said that the city recently "announced it would release the evidence and videos for all currently open cases, including this occurrence. We are in the process of assembling and preparing the materials in all open cases for disclosure, and hope to complete that work within the next couple of months, if not sooner." gwong@tribpub.com A Russian court on Tuesday sentenced a Ukrainian helicopter navigator to 22 years in prison in a contentious murder trial that has drawn sharp condemnation from the West. A judge convicted Lt. Nadiya Savchenko, 34, of directing mortar fire that killed two Russian journalists during pitched fighting in eastern Ukraine in 2014. Savchenko claimed that she was innocent and that pro-Russian separatists abducted her in Ukraine before crossing the border and delivering her to Russian police. Shortly after the verdict was delivered, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko said in a statement that he would not recognize the court's decision, which he called a "shameful show trial." He also said that he would continue to demand Savchenko's return to Ukraine, offering a trade in exchange for her freedom. "I am ready to hand over two Russian servicemen detained in our territory for their participation in the armed aggression against Ukraine," Poroshenko said in a statement, referring to two alleged Russian servicemen arrested for fighting alongside pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine last May. They are being tried on terrorism charges. Savchenko's trial became a cause celebre in Ukraine, where she was elected a member of parliament while in Russian custody and awarded the title Hero of Ukraine. She was equally demonized in the Russian news media as a member of a far-right paramilitary battalion who was driven by ethnic hatred for Russian speakers. As the judge delivered the guilty verdict on Tuesday, Savchenko began singing the Ukrainian national anthem, forcing a court recess. Few expected leniency as the sentencing resumed. "For us it isn't really important what figures are in the verdict, whether it was 25 or 30 or 22 years," said Oleksiy Ryabchyn, a member of Ukraine's parliament, who joined other Ukrainian lawmakers in traveling to the border town of Donetsk, Russia, where the verdict was delivered. "It was just the end of the judicial stage for releasing Savchenko. Now the political stage begins." The office of Russia's chief prosecutor said Tuesday that it was satisfied with the court's decision "given the gravity of the acts committed by her." Prosecutors in the case had asked for 23 years in prison. Savchenko was also fined 30,000 rubles, or $440, for illegally crossing the border from Russia into Ukraine. U.S. officials, including Secretary of State John F. Kerry, have urged Russian President Vladimir Putin to release Savchenko as part of the Minsk accord, which was agreed to by Russia, Ukraine, France and Germany and provides a road map to end the conflict in eastern Ukraine. The agreement stipulates the release of all hostages by all parties to the conflict. Russia claims that the agreement does not apply to Savchenko because of the criminal charges against her. Russian officials have repeatedly said there could be no discussion over Savchenko's release until the court delivers a verdict. Ukraine has demanded sanctions against Russian law enforcement and judicial officials responsible for Savchenko's detainment. $115M Awarded to Hulk Hogan in Gawker Sex-Tape Case Former wrestler Hulk Hogan was brought to tears by a jury verdict last week. It was a victory for him, as Hogan was the plaintiff in an invasion of privacy case against Gawker media. The website Gawker.com published a video of Hogan sleeping with a former friend's wife and the star sued for invasion of privacy. A Florida jury agreed completely with Hogan's complaint that the sex tape was not news and awarded him $115 million. But the case isn't over, according to The New York Times, and Gawker may still face financial review for punitive damages. Distressing Publication The wry news website Gawker started as a gossip source and is known for its no-holds-barred approach. In this case, the media outlet argued that it did not profit from publishing Hogan's sex tape and that it was a legitimate journalistic move given Hogan's own outspokenness. The arguments did not fly with a Florida jury. The community of Hogan's peers reportedly deliberated for 6 hours before awarding him even more than he asked for in his claim. Hogan -- known as Terry Bollea in court -- was awarded $50 million compensatory damages for harms from the publication, and $60 million for the resultant emotional distress. According to The New York Times, punitive damages will be considered separately. Gawker may be made to pay even more for its publishing transgression, purely as punishment. The company will face close financial scrutiny and risks another huge financial blow. But if it's worried, it is putting on a good show. Keeping Cool Gawker's founder issued a statement saying that the jury did not hear all the facts and that Gawker was already working on an appeal to address that. He said the company is feeling positive about success on appeal and will ultimately win this case. Whether or not that is true, some predict that the verdict here will have a chilling effect on media outlets. Few organizations can afford to pay hundreds of millions for an invasion of privacy and may thus pass up what were once considered hot scoops. While there are those who mourn any limitations of freedom of the press, some may consider more circumspection on the part of media good news. The verdict here indicates that, even in a hyper-connected society, there are still people who believe not all information is the public's affair and needs to be shared. Follow FindLaw for Consumers on Facebook and Twitter (@FindLawConsumer). Related Resources: Only days ago in Brussels, as Western leaders celebrated the arrest of a key terrorist suspect, Belgian officials warned that there were dozens more jihadists at large in the city and that more attacks were being planned. They couldn't have known how right they were. I traveled to Brussels on March 16, to attend the German Marshall Fund's Brussels Forum, a meeting of U.S. and European officials, foreign policy experts and journalists, where the fight against terrorism was at the top of the agenda. Two senators and several Obama administration officials who attended had just passed through the main terminal of the Brussels airport. On Tuesday morning, it was hit by what Belgian authorities described as a suicide attack. At least 26 were killed and many more wounded at the airport, and in a parallel attack on the city's subway system. Advertisement When I passed through the terminal less than 24 hours before the attack, an increased security presence was visible. But as with most Western airports, there were no individual checks of passengers entering the main building, which was crowded with arriving and departing passengers on a busy weekday morning. Tensions were already high. On my flight from Dulles, there had been two security related delays. One man was arrested for assaulting a flight attendant, after he refused to follow instructions from the flight crew. Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders spoke to the Brussels Forum on Sunday morning and detailed the successful efforts to arrest Salah Abdeslam, believed to be one of the main plotters of the Paris attacks in November. He was captured in the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek. Advertisement Abdeslam told Belgian authorities while in custody that "he was ready to restart something from Brussels," Reynders said. Belgian intelligence determined that Abdeslam had built a new network of support in Brussels in the four months since the Paris attacks, expanding to include criminal networks that worked with the terrorists to share apartments and leverage connections to procure weapons. "There are many networks, not only members of his family," Reynders said, adding that there more than 30 people had been involved in the terrorist attacks in Paris and "we are sure there are others." The problem of foreign fighters leaving Europe for Syria and then returning to Europe to level attacks on civilians is not new. In May 2014, a French national returned from Syria to Europe, where he attacked the Jewish museum in Brussels. Intelligence sharing between the United States, European countries, and countries in the region especially Turkey is key to combatting this threat, Reynders said. He added that cooperation was improving. Gen. Gratien Maire, France's Vice Chief of Defense, said the threat posed to Europe by terrorists connected to the Islamic State, such as Abdeslam, is more dangerous than in the past, because the terrorist organization has territory, weaponry and support that provides important advantages to returning foreign fighters. "They have really an unprecedented level of financial and military means available to them," he said. Without stopping the Islamic State militarily and drying up their finances, there's no way to counter their threat to Europe, he said. Regional officials at the conference emphasized that security precautions alone will never be totally effective in fighting the terror threat. They called on the West to do more to address the root causes of unrest, including the lack of economic opportunity and the narrative of the extremists in Muslim countries. "Today we are all targeted," said Youssef Amrani, the head of mission for the Royal Cabinet of Morocco. "Today we feel we need a comprehensive approach towards fighting against terror." Sen. Jeff Sessions, who spoke on the panel with European officials at the forum, pointed to the arrests in Brussels last week as an important change in the narrative about the international fight against the Islamic State. "It's important that the long arm of the law is perceived as successful and I think this is a blow to the positive message to the ISIL message that they are going to win," he said. Advertisement Now the terrorists have reclaimed that narrative. As the investigation into Tuesday's attacks in Brussels advances, the main questions authorities will be asking include whether the Belgian anti-terror operations in Molenbeek only days earlier caused the remaining sleeper cells to activate what appear to have been latent, but well planned operations. The Belgian security apparatus will surely double down on its clamp down on those suspects it has under surveillance. For the American officials and experts who traveled through the Brussels airport this past weekend, this was a close call. Whether that will result in a change in how the United States thinks about the fight against the Islamic State remains to be seen. Bloomberg View Josh Rogin is a Bloomberg View columnist who writes about national security and foreign affairs. The horrible and evidently Islamist terrorist attacks in Brussels make clear that this president has failed to protect the West from the growing threat from the Islamic State, which under President Barack Obama has spread throughout the Middle East and strikes at Western cities with sickening regularity. The Washington Post reports: "The Islamic State asserted responsibility for the attacks, according to a statement posted on the Amaq Agency, a website believed to be close to the extremist group. The message said Belgium was targeted for its participation in the international coalition battling the Islamic State. Advertisement "If the Islamic State link is confirmed, it would mark another deadly strike less than a week after a suicide blast in Istanbul that killed five people, two of them with dual U.S. and Israeli citizenship." And yet the president, as recently as his Atlantic interview with Jeffrey Goldberg, insists we can walk away from the Middle East. Obama has failed to learn the lessons of not only 9/11, but Paris, San Bernardino, Istanbul and now Belgium. Advertisement Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, the day after speaking to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee policy conference, told a scrum of reporters Tuesday morning that "these attacks will continue until ISIS is defeated." He castigated the president for "political correctness" in refusing to recognize the nature of the threat we face and again called for measures such as halting entrance of Syrian refugees and re-examination of the visa waiver program. While his own plans to defeat the Islamic State include stepped up bombing and arming the Kurds, he now, as he has begun to do regularly, includes in his policy prescriptions the need to embed forces on the ground. He also asserted that Obama should return from Cuba or go to Brussels, rather than continue to "grovel" at Castro's feet. He seized the opportunity to bash Donald Trump. "It is striking that the day after Donald Trump called for weakening NATO, withdrawing from NATO, we see Brussels, where NATO is headquartered, the subject of a radical Islamic terror attack," he said. "Donald Trump is wrong that America should withdraw from the world and abandon our allies. Donald Trump is wrong that America should retreat from Europe, retreat from NATO, hand Putin a major victory and while he's at it hand ISIS a major victory." In a sit-down afterward that The Washington Post and a number of other journalists attended, Cruz picked up on his criticisms of Trump. He asserted that Trump's worldview is similar to that of left-wing politicians from Jimmy Carter to Secretary of State John Kerry, to whom Trump has given money. Trump, he argued, in calling for the impeachment of President George W. Bush, echoes the rhetoric of the "fever swamps" of the left. Asked if Trump is intent on rewriting Republicans' foreign policy, Cruz said dismissively, "I don't think he has enough knowledge to be rewriting (conservative foreign policy)." And in some of his harshest criticism of Trump, Cruz said that while Trump sounds angry and tough, on substance he is "weak" and he "believes in isolationism." He further mocked Trump for claiming at AIPAC that he had studied the Iran deal more than anyone else. The reaction, he recalled, was "unrestrained laughter." Expand Autoplay Image 1 of 73 A soldier directs motorists arriving at Brussels' airport in Zaventem on April 11, 2016. (Thierry Roge, AFP/Getty Images) While the tragedy in Brussels is one more reminder for the country at large of the dangers of Islamist terrorism and the Obama-Kerry-Clinton foreign policy failure, it is also Cruz's chance, maybe the best one yet, to point out that Trump would be worse as commander in chief than Obama, who has, Cruz noted, not gone as far as Trump in suggesting we bug out of NATO. Cruz is on firm ground both in arguing that Trump is entirely clueless on the specifics of foreign policy and in emphasizing that rather than "Make America great," Trump's policies would double down on the Obama approach of retreat and retrenchment, making the United States and our allies that much more vulnerable. Will GOP voters perk up? If they don't, Hillary Clinton will be able to run to the right of Trump in the general election as the tougher, savvier candidate to become commander in chief. The large majority of voters is likely to agree. Washington Post Jennifer Rubin writes the Right Turn blog for The Post, offering reported opinion from a conservative perspective. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, left, takes his seat next to Sen. Dick Durbin, D-Ill., as they arrive for a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing after President Barack Obama announced Judge Merrick Garland as his nominee to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, on Capitol Hill in Washington, Wednesday, March 16, 2016. (J. Scott Applewhite, AP) Recently, I was invited by a well-respected legal organization to speak at their monthly lunch meeting. As a group of 200 Washington-area lawyers sat eating in a packed Chinatown restaurant, I began to share my thoughts regarding the current vacancy on the Supreme Court caused by the untimely death of my friend, Justice Antonin Scalia. Midway through my remarks, a group of protesters rose from their seats near the front of the room and began shouting "Do your Job!" As these disrupters stood chanting and holding professionally printed signs, it reinforced my belief that by deferring the confirmation process until after this toxic election season, the Senate is doing exactly what it should: We are doing our job. Advertisement Now that a majority of states have held presidential primaries, and as this hostile election cycle turns from those contests to general election, organized disruptions of any thoughtful discussion about the Supreme Court will only intensify. Make no mistake: These protesters are not interested in seeing the Senate take seriously its constitutional duty to provide advice about, and determine whether to give or withhold consent to, a consequential Supreme Court nomination. They care little about the Senate operating as a check and balance to the executive branch and instead simply insist that the Republican-led Senate do what progressive activists want and rubber-stamp a presidential appointment. Advertisement Liberals want above all to shift the balance of the Supreme Court to the left, a move that will have dramatic consequences for the lives and freedoms of all Americans for generations. By means of this lifetime judicial appointment, Democrats want to reshape the Supreme Court to reach different outcomes on issues ranging from individual gun rights to religious liberty to affirmative action to the very system of constitutional checks and balances designed to limit the overreach of an ever-expanding administrative state. Among the most important ways that our nation's founders sought to restrain executive power was to entrust the Senate with the advice-and-consent power for presidential nominations including nominations to the Supreme Court. As the president and his political allies lecture the Senate on how it should fulfill this constitutional responsibility, it seems clear that the Senate must seek to protect the judicial branch from ever-increasing partisan and political influences. The legitimacy of the Supreme Court rests on the public's perception that our judiciary is fair, impartial and not susceptible to the pressures of partisan politics. By seeking to thrust a confirmation battle into the middle of a particularly bitter presidential election, President Barack Obama carelessly risks further polarizing and politicizing the confirmation process, and further damaging the integrity and public standing of the Supreme Court as an institution. Perhaps Vice President Joe Biden put it best while serving as Senate Judiciary Committee chairman in 1992. He said, "Senate consideration of a nominee under these circumstances is not fair to the president, to the nominee, or to the Senate itself ... [W]here the nation should be treated to a consideration of constitutional philosophy, all it will get in such circumstances is partisan bickering and political posturing from both parties and from both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue." I agree with what the vice president said then, that "the Senate Judiciary Committee should seriously consider not scheduling confirmation hearings on the nomination until after the political campaign season is over." Throughout the years, responsible elected officials of both parties have rightly concluded that deferring the confirmation process until after a politically charged presidential election is in the best interest of fair treatment for a nominee and preserving the dignity of the Supreme Court. In the weeks and months to come, we can expect professional political activists on the left to ramp up efforts to organize protests and media campaigns, and persistently badger Republican senators to "do their job" by rubber-stamping a nominee in the midst of political turmoil. This partisan campaign by the left is only more evidence that the best way for the Senate to do its job in such a caustic environment is to insulate the Supreme Court from polarizing political gamesmanship. The liberal left is seeking to bully the Republican-led Senate into ignoring its constitutional responsibilities and further destroying our nation's delicate system of checks and balances. Reflecting on the Senate's solemn duty with respect to Supreme Court nominations, I am more resolved than ever to move forward with the confirmation process only after this toxic election season is over. Bloomberg View Advertisement Sen. Orrin Hatch is the senior Republican senator from Utah and president pro tempore of the Senate. Donald Trump campaigns in Arizona with two immigration hard-liners, former Gov. Jan Brewer and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. (Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times) It's not exactly Tiny Tuesday. But after weeks of high-stakes, cross-country balloting, today's presidential contests make for a fairly modest go-round. Only a few states will be voting. Arizona holds its primary and Utah its precinct-level caucuses. Democrats in Idaho will also caucus. Advertisement A mere 149 delegates will be up for grabs on the Democratic side, a fraction of the 2,383 needed to win the party's nomination. On the Republican side, 98 delegates will be awarded; it takes 1,237 to clinch the nomination ahead of the party's summer convention. Despite the relatively meager pickings, Tuesday's balloting is not without import. Advertisement Here are five things to watch: Can Donald Trump finally win majority support? The New York real estate developer seems poised to take Arizona, claiming all 58 delegates in the state's winner-take-all primary. His hard-line stance on immigration and signature promise to build a wall along the border with Mexico seem tailor-fit for Arizona, the epicenter of anger over illegal immigration. The question is how big a win can Trump manage? The GOP contest has moved beyond intangibles like momentum into the hard calculations of delegate math. Discuss this story on our Facebook page >> Still, Trump has never won a majority of the vote in any state, though he came close in Massachusetts and Florida, suggesting he has a sturdy floor of support beneath him but might also face a ceiling. That could hurt him as the race goes forward, especially if he runs as the Republican nominee in the general election. Can Ted Cruz hit the magic 50% mark in Utah? Utah, with its sizable Mormon population, is the rare place where Trump is a considerable underdog. His disparagement of immigrants and exclusionary talk of banning Muslims have not gone down well in a state built by newcomers fleeing religious persecution. Advertisement Nor has he been particularly successful in caucus states, which require a high degree of organization and a passionate set of followers. Enter Cruz, who is second to Trump in both delegates and the number of states won. The Texas senator has prevailed in several caucuses and sees an opportunity to walk away with a split decision Tuesday assuming Trump wins Arizona which is not a bad way to head into the lull over the next two weeks. (There are no Republican contests until April 5 in Wisconsin.) The question is whether Cruz can win at least 50% of the Utah vote. If so, he takes all 40 delegates. Otherwise they are divided proportionally. Whither John Kasich? The Ohio governor carried his home state last week in a must-win primary and did so handily despite a strong push by Trump. But that is Kasich's one and only victory and it was on his political turf. To be anything more than a glorified favorite-son candidate and build the momentum needed to force a contested GOP convention Kasich's only shot at the nomination he needs to start winning elsewhere. Advertisement A victory in Arizona or Utah seems exceedingly unlikely. He did campaign in the latter, however, and picked up a few meaningful endorsements. If Kasich is blown out, especially in Utah, it could stall the little bit of momentum he's enjoyed coming out of Ohio. Whither Bernie Sanders? The first member of Congress to endorse Sanders' upstart campaign was Rep. Raul M. Grijalva, a liberal Democrat who represents southern Arizona. Sanders has advertised extensively in the state and drawn sizable crowds. Yet surveys suggest Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton is waltzing to another win in Arizona. The pollsters got it wrong in Michigan, where Sanders scored a big upset. But after going 0-for-5 last week, the Vermont independent badly needs a victory to quash growing talk that it's time for him to exit the race, or at least turn his sights on Trump and leave Clinton be. As a caucus state, Utah could give Sanders his best shot at avoiding another shutout on Tuesday, given the devotion of his followers. Advertisement Signs of a Latino backlash? Like its two neighbors, California and Nevada, Arizona has a large and growing Latino population that, over time, is expected to turn the state from a solid Republican redoubt into a presidential swing state. The transformation was expected to take some time, putting Arizona on the competitive map in perhaps 2020. The question is whether Trump, with his incendiary language and insulting comments about Mexicans, has hastened that political shift. Arizona holds a closed primary, preventing Democrats from crossing over to register their views on Trump. So the best gauge will be turnout on the Democratic side. Daywatch Weekdays Start each day with Chicago Tribune editors' top story picks, delivered to your inbox. > A surge in the Latino vote would suggest the community is becoming energized and more politically engaged the same phenomenon seen in California after passage of Proposition 187, the measure that sought to end public services for people in the state illegally and sparked a major Latino backlash. mark.barabak@latimes.com Advertisement Follow @markzbarabak for national & California politics. MORE FROM POLITICS 'A good villain': Trump aids Latino activists in trying to turn Arizona blue Hillary Clinton challenges Donald Trump over 'dangerously wrong' views on Israel A subdued Donald Trump sticks to standard pro-Israel positions in speech to lobbying group 'The Good Wife': Good Law? -- Season 7, Episode 17 Pistols, plagiarism, and public sex. Oh and the ever-present law firm politics and the never-ending grand jury investigation. Just another day here at "The Good Wife" offices. With only a few episodes left in the landmark series, it's hard to tell where this story is going, if anywhere. Is Alicia going out with a bang, or a whimper? And what's the deal with suing gun shops? Here's your legal and love story recap from last night's episode, "Shoot." Episode Recap (Spoiler Alert): To be honest, we're getting the sense that "The Good Wife" is merely playing out the string. The simmering passion between Alicia and Jason Crouse is here, but not going anywhere. In fact, it moved back a step when Alicia saw Jason kissing another woman, and forward two middle school steps when she gives him a public hand job under a restaurant table to end the episode. The "will she or won't she" drama of Diane's all-female firm gets drug along for another week. And the grand jury investigation, which was intriguing when we didn't know what it was about, is now only interesting to those who want to see Eli stand on a trashcan in a handicap-accessible bathroom. Really, the entire show is now just a showcase for, as our Legal Professional writer Casey Sullivan called Lucca Quinn, "the best dressed lawyer on TV." We're pretty much only watching for her wardrobe and how the writers will plan for her eventual spinoff series. Legal Roots: The most compelling five minutes of the episode are its first, where a motel owner's daughter is the unintended victim of neighborhood gun violence. The big question is whether a billboard he put up, blaming the store that sold the gun that killed his daughter, is defamatory. The general rule is that firearms dealers are not liable for deaths or injuries from the guns they sell. There may be exceptions, however, for stores that knew or should have known the guns were being used in the commission of crimes. In this case, a creative take on Chicago's gun violence epidemic got an equally creative legal solution -- while the judge ruled that the billboard was defamatory, his damages award to the gun shop was a paltry ten cents per day, effectively, if not explicitly, sanctioning the billboard. Legal Fiction: Grand jury proceedings ain't nothin' to f*** with. And yet here we are with Eli's eavesdropping, and Mike Tascioni telling Alicia not to invoke her spousal privilege and accuse another witness of having a faulty memory. This entire storyline seems like an excuse to get Eli and Mike (and his dog) some airtime, and it's highly unlikely real world attorneys would take a criminal investigation this lightly. Legal Babble "Truth is an absolute defense against defamation." This is true. The central element to any libel or slander claim is that the statement at issue is false. Trying to prove the truth of the statement here, "Gloria's Murdered My Daughter," is bold move, and one that doesn't quite work out for Cary. Legal Verdict More sex with Jason. More grand jury stuff. More backroom dealing at Lockhart Agos and Lee. While episodes this season have become predictable, the end is still a mystery. Will Alicia and Lucca join Diane's women lawyers dream team? Will they take over the firm themselves? Will Alicia even be a wife at the end of "The Good Wife"? Here's hoping that in answering those questions, the series regains a little of its spark. What did you think of this week's episode of "The Good Wife"? Is the show guilty of making any legal mistakes? Check back here for more legal recaps of "The Good Wife," and send us a tweet at @FindLawConsumer with the hashtag #TheGoodWife. Related Resources: March is Colon Cancer Awareness Month, and the perfect time to think about colon health. Unfortunately, less than half of people aged 50 and older get tested for colon cancer. But early detection can save lives. Colorectal cancer is the third most commonly diagnosed cancer and the second leading cause of cancer death in the U.S., yet it has a 90 percent cure rate when detected early, according to the American Cancer Society (ACS). Advertisement "We say the best screening is the one that actually gets done," says Dr. Judy Yee, professor and vice chair of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging at University of California, San Francisco. CT Colonography (CTC) or "virtual colonoscopy" a less invasive, safe and sedation-free alternative to the colonoscopy is increasing colorectal screening rates. CTC uses high-tech, low-dose X-rays to produce moving images of the colon, which doctors examine to detect colorectal cancer and precancerous polyps. Advertisement If you're interested in avoiding a colonoscopy, but want to get the screening needed to verify your colorectal health, consider the following about CTC, an ACS recommended screening test: Comprehensiveness: The exam can detect abnormalities outside of the colon, including early-stage cancers in the liver, kidney and lungs, and can pinpoint potentially dangerous conditions, like aneurysms. In this way, it serves as two or even more detection tests in one. Accuracy: CTC is just as accurate as a colonoscopy for detecting clinically significant polyps and cancers; however, you don't have to undergo sedation. There's no need to take time off work or have someone drive you from the hospital. Affordability: This exam costs a fraction of the price of a standard colonoscopy and is covered by several major insurers. Your insurance company can verify whether CTC is covered under your plan. Non-Invasive: While a colonoscopy is the standard procedure, there is a small risk of serious complications associated with the test. However, CTC is non-invasive, as no needles or scopes enter the body. Only a small tube is placed in the bottom of the colon to help distend the colon for viewing. Improved screening rates: Availability of CTC screening significantly boosts colorectal cancer screening rates, according to studies at National Military Medical Centers in Bethesda, MD, and San Diego. The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force recently released draft recommendations naming CTC as an "alternative screening test," and Medicare is currently reviewing coverage of this test in order to provide seniors with a lifesaving alternative. Bottom line: not enough people are getting screened for colon cancer. Whatever screening alternative you prefer, make sure you schedule this vital appointment and encourage loved ones to do the same. Advertisement StatePoint A passenger attacked and tried to stab an Uber driver Sunday night on the way from Campton Hills to St. Charles, according to St. Charles police. Tyler Royer, 26, 1600 block of Avalon Court in St. Charles, has been charged with aggravated assault, reckless conduct and two counts of battery, all misdemeanors. Advertisement St. Charles police officers responded to a report of a fight shortly after 10:30 p.m. Sunday near Randall Road and Main Street. When officers got there, they said that a driver working for the ride-share company Uber had been attacked by Royer, his passenger. The request for the Uber ride was generated by an employee at the pub where Royer had been, said St. Charles police spokesman Dave Kintz. Advertisement The driver, a 54-year-old man, had picked up Royer in Campton Hills and was taking him to a undetermined address in St. Charles, according to police. Royer was highly intoxicated and fell asleep in the back seat without telling his driver exactly where to take him, according to police. When the driver tried to wake up Royer, the passenger became enraged and attacked the driver, according to police. Royer is accused of grabbing the driver by the face and pulling on his head, nearly causing him to veer off the road. The driver estimated he was driving about 45 miles per hour when Royer started to attack him, police said. Royer also punched and kicked the inside of the car, according to police. The driver then pulled into the parking lot of a store near Randall Road and Main Street, where he tried to get Royer out of his car, according to police. That's when Royer pulled a 4-inch knife and tried to stab the driver, who ran into the store and told a clerk to call 911, police said. When officers got to the parking lot, Royer tried to run away and threw the knife into a retention pond, according to police. Officers quickly took Royer into custody, police said. The driver was not seriously injured during the incident and the car was not damaged beyond minor scuffing, according to police. No one with Royer's personal information is an Uber account holder, a company representative confirmed. The driver, whose name police are not releasing, reported using the Uber app. Police never spoke with the pub employee who used the app to make the request with Uber, Kintz said. The screening process for Uber drivers includes a review of motor vehicle and criminal records at the county, state and federal levels, but passengers, referred to by the company as "riders," are not subject to the same requirements. People using the app as riders do have to verify their identity with the app by providing a valid phone number and payment information, but that doesn't include any additional passengers on the ride or passengers taking a ride requested by a third party using the app. Advertisement When drivers accept a rider's request, they see the app user's first name and location. Riders can enter their destination address into the app before pickup, but they don't have to. Uber reached out to local police to assist their investigation, an Uber spokeswoman said in an email. "Our prayers and wishes for a speedy recovery are with the driver, and we're relieved he wasn't seriously injured," she wrote. Royer has a history of violent and drug-related convictions in Kane County, records show. Most recently, in November 2015, Royer pleaded guilty to possession of a controlled substance and was sentenced to two years of probation. In December 2009, he was found guilty of resisting a peace officer after getting caught drinking underage and sentenced to 100 days in county jail with 50 days probation. Advertisement In February 2010, Royer was convicted of battery causing bodily harm, charges made in June 2008, and sentenced to five months in county jail with another five months on probation and ordered to pay $695 restitution, Kane County records show. He has also been convicted of marijuana possession, criminal trespass to property, retail theft and several traffic offenses. hleone@tribpub.com Burr Ridge could see a fifth hotel and an adjacent events center if parking and architectural design issues can be worked out. A Hampton Inn and Suites, and The Falls event center have been proposed for the Estancia Corporate Centre property on the 100 block of Harvester Drive. The Hampton Inn would be a 101-room, four-story facility and the nearby The Falls would be a one-story building able to accommodate up to 700 people for weddings, corporate meetings and other events. Advertisement "Two national firms are looking at coming into the village," said attorney Jim Olguin, representing Estancia. "You have Hilton, which Hampton is one of its products, searching for a location to fill in somewhere between Midway (Airport) and Bolingbrook, that has always looked at Burr Ridge as a place it wanted to be. You also have The Falls, which is looking to enter the Chicago market and picked Burr Ridge." Members of the village's Plan Commission expressed concerns over the projects when they were presented Monday. Parking issues and the "cookie cutter" look of the Hampton were two major concerns raised. Advertisement Even counting the parking spaces used for the two office buildings already in the Estancia complex, which Olguin said would be available as most of the event center's happenings will be on weeknights and weekends, the parking is 100 spaces short of village requirements. "You are 100-plus parking spaces deficient, at best," Plan Commission member Robert Grela said. "For me, personally, that is just undo-able." Olguin said most events at the center would be tailored for about 100 people, meaning about 50 cars on site, below the 63 spots specifically designated for the events center. He said there would be synergy with the events center drawing on the office buildings' parking spaces when workers were not present. An events center, a representative of The Falls said, is like a banquet hall, but does not have an in-house food service. Clients are welcome to use their own caterer. Several Plan Commission members expressed disappointment with the Hampton Inn design, saying the facility didn't have the look of other Hampton properties. "I've stayed at some beautiful Hampton inns. This is not one of them," Luisa Hoch said after viewing the proposed designs. Commission Chairman Greg Trzupek also felt more needed to be done to make the hotel and events center match the complex's office buildings. "They can fit in better with the existing buildings," Trzupek said. Advertisement Resident Mark Toma said hotels often draw a "transient" clientele and "can be a target of crime." He cited several arrests that have taken place at and near area hotels. He said with funds generated by the village's hotel/motel tax restricted to tourism activities, the village does not get a huge benefit from its four existing hotels. "University of Kansas research shows that a hotel causes a 3- to 8-percent drop in property values," Toma said. "What do [hotels] do for residents?" Estancia's Olguin said the Hampton Inn would be "60-70 percent corporate folks." "It would have a different demographic than other hotels," Olguin said. "The events center is going to be having weddings. Those do not draw transients." The proposed hotel and events center will be back before the Plan Commission for further discussion at 7:30 p.m. April 18 at Village Hall, 7660 County Line Road. Advertisement Kevin Beese is a freelance reporter for Pioneer Press. For the second consecutive year, proposed state budget cuts threaten to deprive the Chicago High School for Agricultural Sciences of educational resources, supplies and technology vital to the Mount Greenwood school's curriculum. Gov. Bruce Rauner's fiscal year 2017 budget, proposed last month, would eliminate a $1.8 million line item for agriculture education that provides secondary agriculture programs across the state with grant funds for the purchase of instructional materials, professional development opportunities for teachers and help developing Common Core-aligned curricula. Advertisement Rauner's proposal would move the $1.8 million allocation to the general state aid to education budget, where local schools could continue using it to fund agriculture education programs or instead move the funds to cover other needs. Last year, CHSAS ultimately received $11,700 through the line item, which was restored when Rauner signed into law HB 3673, an elementary and secondary education appropriation bill that kept schools open and ensured teachers were paid in spite of the state's budget impasse. Advertisement The allocation was about six times more than the typical agriculture education program received, due to the size and scope of CHSAS' program. Ag School Principal Bill Hook said the state money is distributed evenly among the school's five agriculture education pathways and often pays for significant projects, materials or field trips. "It looks different every year," he said, "but at the end of the day, (if the funding is cut) it will mean less opportunity for students." While the loss of nearly $12,000 in funding would not make or break the Ag School, failure to fund the agriculture education line item could have wide-ranging effects on the program, and agriculture programs across the state, that go beyond pure grant dollars and cents. The portion of the $1.8 million allocation that isn't distributed to agriculture education programs as incentive grants about 60 percent funds the operation of Facilitating Coordination in Agricultural Education, a state program that aims to improve and expand agricultural education in Illinois. FCAE, through its six-member staff, provides agriculture education programs across the state with Common Core-aligned curriculum resources, professional development opportunities for teachers and on-site technical assistance. The project provides the state's 322 agriculture programs with access to free electronic textbooks and teaching resources like online testing software and PowerPoint presentations that agriculture teachers can use or adapt to their own lessons. Were the agriculture education line item to be zeroed even if individual high schools chose to continue funding agriculture education it would mean the elimination of the FCAE program and with it, the potential loss of agriculture education programs that rely on the project for technical and pedagogical assistance, Jess Smithers, FCAE's coordinator, said. Advertisement "I think it could have a negative impact on the number of programs and the number of students that are involved in high school agriculture programs, which is going to have an impact on the food and agriculture industry as far as generating interest in those types of careers and providing the talent for Illinois' food and agriculture industry," Smithers said. While the Ag School, with its unique focus on agriculture education and advanced curriculum that mirrors the animal science program at the University of Illinois, would be better positioned to weather the loss of FCAE's assistance than smaller high school agriculture programs, it would still stand to lose a fair amount if the initiative were eliminated, according to Luke Allen, an FCAE program advisor. "This year, [CHSAS] has three new agriculture teachers," Allen said. "One of the things we provide is a course that is just for new teachers to help them learn to become better teachers, to help them through the year. "That course would no longer be paid for or be available." FCAE's field staff members, like Allen, visit individual schools to offer assistance on curriculum improvement, teacher development and help managing or working with local chapters of the Future Farmers of America. Allen said he fears elimination of the FCAE and the services it provides could significantly impact agriculture teacher retention, which he called "one of the major challenges we face in agriculture education." Advertisement Because the state produces only a fraction of the agriculture educators it needs to meet growing student demand, losing existing teachers is especially problematic. Enrollment in state secondary agricultural education programs has increased by more than 5,000 students in the past 15 years, but the number of agriculture teachers has not grown to meet the demand. Over the past five years, the four state universities that train agriculture teachers have graduated only 20 qualified candidates per year, 14 of which on average choose to accept agriculture teaching positions, Smithers said. Illinois has had an average annual demand for 46 secondary agriculture teachers over the same period. As a result, out-of-state graduates and alternatively licensed or provisional teachers fill the majority of agriculture education positions. "In a few instances, the shortage of candidates has caused programs to close, has not allowed programs to expand from one teacher to two teachers, or has caused programs to shrink from two teachers to one teacher," Smithers said. While the number of students enrolled in Illinois' secondary agriculture education programs has continued to increase, the state could stand to produce significantly more students who go on to careers in food and agriculture-related fields. Advertisement A 2015 Purdue University study funded by the U.S Department of Agriculture found that over the next five years there would be nearly 60,000 annual openings for college graduates with expertise in food, agriculture, renewable natural resources and the environment. However, because there will be an average of only 35,400 new U.S. graduates with training in those fields each year, nearly 40 percent of those jobs will be filled by graduates with training in other disciplines. "There's definitely a shortage of individuals going into the food and agriculture industry, and that kind of reiterates the importance of our work in trying to improve and expand the high school agriculture education programs," Smithers said. "Because if we can maintain and expand at that level, we're going to encourage more students to go on at the community college or university level and enter a career in the agriculture industry." Sen. Bill Cunningham (D-18th), whose district encompasses Mount Greenwood, has proposed a bill that would ensure the state budget line item that since 1989 has been dedicated to agriculture education would remain that way. Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday > "It's something that several of us are alarmed by because it's really a missed opportunity," Cunningham said of the proposed elimination of the agriculture education line item. "Agriculture and agribusiness is a growth industry when it comes to jobs projecting into the future, but institutions of higher education are not going to graduate enough qualified students who will be able to fill those jobs. "That's what we're really hoping to address with this bill." Cunningham's bill, which made it out of the Senate Education Committee on Wednesday, would use the $1.8 million appropriation to maintain the FCAE and prioritize hiring agricultural education teachers. Advertisement The bill, SB 2975, would establish agriculture education as a teacher shortage area, meaning that agriculture teachers would have entree to federal student loan forgiveness and that retired agriculture teachers could return to the classroom without impacting their pensions. The plan would also create a competitive agriculture education teacher grant program that school districts could apply for to offset the salaries of agriculture teachers. "We need to be prioritizing the industries that make Illinois great. Agriculture is one of those industries," Cunningham said. "We need to continue to invest in agriculture education, not just end it." zkoeske@tribpub.com How to Legally Limit Worker Cyberloafing Cyberloafing is the new word for procrastination and distraction at work. Surfing the web is the way we waste precious minutes of the day when we're paid to labor. The practice reportedly costs national businesses tens of billions of dollars annually. Understandably, companies are interested in programs that can curb their workers' enthusiasm for the web's many temptations without impinging on the online activities necessary to the business. There are different ways to approach the problem and to block employee access and track activities. First, a Big Caveat A report in the Wall Street Journal looks at the latest software created to tackle cyberloafing and highlights issues of concern. It does not, however, address the fact that many of us bring our own devices to work now in the form a smartphone. Our personal tech is available even when the company has a system in place to monitor or limit internet use on its computers. That said, some workplaces also ask employees to turn over their phones for security reasons. Preventing cyberloafing is surely an added benefit of such policies. Now, the Systems Jeremy Glassman and a team of researchers at Arizona State University designed software for stopping cyberloafing. The program blocks web access to video sites that slow a company's system generally, limits time spent on social networks and other sites that have legitimate uses for work but are also used personally, and blocks what employees should not be looking at, like porn. The system can also track time on certain sites so that employees become accustomed to only spending the appropriate amount of time on any activity. But Glassman warns against being too rigid in implementing a system, suggesting there should be back and forth with workers on what they need. He has a point. Your marketing people may monitor social networks for many reasons and your bloggers may need to look at some sites you might have put off limits if they didn't cause you to reconsider. With so many uses for the web at work, it's best not to assume you know what exactly people need and to make them part of the conversation. In fact, initiating this kind of discussion is a good opportunity to learn what your employees need and to gently remind them of the company's concerns. It may also serve as a reminder to you to ensure the legality of your Internet policy. Talk to a Lawyer Having an internet policy is important for more than just efficiency reasons. Beyond cyberloafing and its costs, a business is at risk when it is unaware of legal issues surrounding Internet use. Speak to a lawyer about your cyber security and anti-loafing software advantages and concerns. It may save you a bundle long-term. Follow FindLaw for Consumers on Google+. Related Resources: I watched both recent presidential candidate debates. I've come to the conclusion that Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton wants to give all these immigrants who are here illegally health care and a Link card. Then the Republicans want to build a 20-foot wall and have Mexico pay for it. In either case, we lose. This is the first election that I'm scared to death no matter who wins. Tom, Burbank Advertisement Donald Trump has said there will be riots if he isn't nominated. Will he send brown-shirted thugs to break the windows of the homes and businesses of Muslims, Hispanics and others he hates? Congress did not prevent Donald Trump from speaking in Chicago. He chose not to appear to face protesters exercising their First Amendment right to object to his views. It was not a violation of his rights; it was his own cowardice. Advertisement Al, Tinley Park The other day writer Phil Arvia wrote a story about how proud his friend was for being part of the protesters at the Trump rally. How can he be proud of being part of urban terrorists that fought with police, beat up people and threatened so many others. How does he feel about the police officer that had to tell his parents or wife and kids that he is in the hospital because some protester threw a brick at his head? Adam LaRoche said the White Sox altered an agreement he made with the team about his son. Well, I think Adam altered the agreement with the White Sox. When you agree to a $15 million a year contract, you're expected to produce at a high level. Eighty-nine hits, 12 home runs and a .207 batting average on the year is garbage. I think Adam LaRoche should have cashed his 2015 checks wearing a ski mask and gloves, because he was robbing the White Sox. He should apologize to Jerry Reinsdorf for ripping him off, and for his low-class comments about the team that paid him millions even though he under-performed. Rick, Evergreen Park Watching the Republican debates, the thought of one of these candidates being president scares me. I used to vote Republican. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's secretive ways are also frightening. They keep talking about donations her husband, former President Clinton, got from Wall Street. He's running a charity doing good in Third World countries. How can they complain about that when they don't say anything about businessmen the Koch brothers doing charitable work that's biased toward their well-being? I don't understand how Republicans can put somebody this poor up for election. I have a Republican survey. The questions, no matter how you answer, can be made out to be whatever they want. I'm removing my registration from the Republicans' list. Daily Southtown Twice-weekly News updates from the south suburbs delivered every Monday and Wednesday > I listen to talk radio. They ask people to call. They give the caller one second. The host talks over the people that call. They don't give the people a chance to say what the people want to say. But when the caller calls and talks over the host, they get really mad and they hang up on those people. Then they have something nasty to say about the people that called up. That is not right. They should listen to what the people have to say and let them say what they've got to say. Otherwise, tell them not to call at all. Rose, Lemont I thought Democratic presidential candidate Bernie Sanders would do a lot better than fellow candidate Hillary Clinton since she's got baggage to carry. I can't understand how many stupid people we have in this country that would vote for her or back her. I guess they're taking over President Obama's voting privileges. Advertisement Republican candidate Donald Trump does not have the personality to be a president. He's a BBB a big-mouthed billionaire bully and not presidential material. Lolo, Oak Lawn What's Speak Out? Speak Out allows readers to comment on the issues of the day. Email Speak Out at speakout@southtownstar.com or call 312-222-2427. Please limit comments to 30 seconds or about 120 words and give your first name and your hometown. Stay on top of the news all day with the Tribunes web notifications. Well let you know right in your web browser when theres big breaking news happening, and also share our editors top picks so you see the best of what the Tribune has to offer. FindLaw Legal Blogs FindLaw's Legal Blogs bring you the latest legal news and information. Both consumers and legal professionals can find answers, insights, and updates in the blogs listed below. To receive blog posts right in your inbox, subscribe to FindLaws Newsletters. Park Ridge Police Sgt. Jean Delfosse holds a nasal spray form of Narcan, an antidote that can reverse an overdose of heroin and opiate-based painkillers. Park Ridge police officers are now equipped with Narcan. (Jennifer Johnson / Pioneer Press) Armed with a simple nasal spray, Park Ridge police officers are joining a growing number of first responders who now have a way to potentially save the life of a drug overdose victim. On March 16, officers began carrying naloxone, known largely by its brand name Narcan. It's a prescription medication that, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, "can stop or reserve the effects" of an overdose of heroin or painkillers like morphine, hydrocodone or oxycodone. Advertisement Park Ridge police officers recently underwent training in how to better recognize the signs and symptoms of a drug overdose and how to deliver the dosage of Narcan. Deputy Police Chief Duane Mellema called the process "pretty straightforward." "They insert the syringe into the nasal passage and squirt the dosage," Mellema said. "Within three to five minutes, it should take effect. If it doesn't take effect, we re-dose the person." Advertisement Last November, the FDA approved the use of Narcan in a nasal spray. It was previously available only by injection, according to a 2015 statement from the FDA. With police officers often the first to arrive at the scene of a drug overdose, having them equipped with a nasal syringe of Narcan "is another opportunity for us to intervene and help people in a significant way," Mellema said. He puts the medication in the same category as the portable automated external defibrillators that officers also carry and have used to deliver a shock to the heart of individuals in cardiac arrest. Police Chief Frank Kaminski also compared Narcan to the in-car defibrillators, which he said have saved several lives over the past few years. "This gives us another opportunity to save people," he said of Narcan. Each unit of the antidote costs between $30 and $35, Kaminski said, with the department spending about $300 to $400 a year to keep its squad cars stocked. Though new to Park Ridge police, the city's paramedics have been equipped with a form of the drug for nearly 30 years, according to firefighter/paramedic Matt Jarka. The medication can work quickly on a patient who is unconscious or has an altered mental state, he said. "The onset is within 30 seconds to two minutes," Jarka said, adding that he has seen the medication work well on patients. Jarka said Narcan is typically administered by Park Ridge paramedics "between five and 10 times a year on average, though some years you'll have a little bit of a spike." Advertisement Park Ridge police responded to 11 "incidents relating to drug overdoses in both 2014 and 2015," said Julie Nistler, police records supervisor. "We haven't responded to a high enough volume of calls to say it's some kind of endemic," he said. "It's not something we can ignore, but I can't see it being a large-scale problem in the community in any way, shape or form." The recent death of a 27-year old-man who was found unconscious outside his apartment near Touhy and Broadway avenues was blamed on a combination of heroin and hypothermia, the Cook County medical examiner's office determined. More police departments are being equipped with naloxone or Narcan. Lake County began training officers from multiple police departments in 2014, and in DuPage County, where Narcan was approved for emergency medical treatment in 2013, the medication was credited with saving 32 lives in 2014 and another 61 lives in 2015, the Naperville Sun reported in January. One of the positives of Narcan is that it does not have side effects and will not cause harm if given to someone who, it turns out, has not overdosed on an opiate drug, said Park Ridge Police Sgt. Jean Delfosse, who trained patrol officers in the use of Narcan. Overdoses of heroin can occur because the type of heroin being used across the country is "more pure" than it was in the past," he said. Advertisement "They're not handling their dosages like they used to," Delfosse said of users. Self-reported use of heroin among local high school students is "very low less than 3 percent," said Teri Collins, executive director of the Maine Community Youth Assistance Foundation, which works to curb and prevent substance abuse among teens in Maine Township. But, she said, heroin use tends to go up once young adults enter their 20s. "As they get older, they are making a choice of not doing [heroin] or pursuing it further," Collins said. "Most of the heroin overdoses I know of in the past six months have been people in their 20s." Prescription painkiller abuse is also a problem that is seen nationwide and student surveys have shown usage is up in Maine Township as well, Collins added. "But it's still relatively low compared to drinking," she said. Collins said giving police access to Narcan means the drug can be administered even more quickly because police officers are often the first to arrive when someone had overdosed. Advertisement "Most of these overdoses are accidental," Collins said. "Anything we can do to give somebody another chance is a good thing." jjohnson@pioneerlocal.com Twitter: @Jen_Pioneer Water main work to close road Eastbound 42nd Street and westbound Hart Road in Highland will be closed at Kennedy Avenue as the town continues its Kennedy Avenue water main installation. The road sections will be closed for up to three weeks, according to the Highland Police Department. Eastbound 41st Street at Kennedy Avenue, meanwhile, is expected to be reopened Thursday, if not sooner, because of the work. Drivers should continue to use 42nd Street as the detour until then. Advertisement Bison-tennial Public Art Project underway in Porter County Life-size fiberglass bison painted or adorned in a myriad of creative ways will soon be displayed throughout Porter County and the rest of Indiana as part of the Indiana Association of United Ways' Bison-tennial Public Art initiative. The art project is an officially endorsed legacy project of the Indiana Bicentennial Commission to celebrate Indiana's 200th birthday on December 11. United Way of Porter County recently received four fiberglass bison sponsored by Prompt Ambulance, Portage Township Schools, Indiana Dunes Tourism and Task Force Tips. The four blank canvases will be painted by a variety of artists, including Opportunity Enterprises' Amazing Artists program participants and Portage High School art students. More information is at IndianaBisonArt.org. Advertisement Good Friday cleaning set at Al Thomas building State Rep. Vernon G. Smith, D-Gary, is reaching out to senior residents of the Al Thomas building, 100 W. 11th St. in Gary, in an effort to urge them to sign up for the annual Good Friday Cleaning on March 25. The African-American Achievers Youth Corps., Inc. will help senior citizens with a variety of household chores. Sign-up is in the building's lobby. More information about the cleaning or participation in the African-American Achievers Youth Corps., Inc. is with Smith at 219-887-2046. Porter Regional Hospital sets job fair for nurses, medical techs Porter Regional Hospital is hosting a job fair from 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. April 7 in the Community Room at the hospital, 85 East U.S. 6, Valparaiso. The job opportunities available include full- and part-time positions with experience-rated base pay. Nursing students are welcome to attend the job fair to learn about the Patient Care Intern Program. More information is at PorterHealth.com or 219-983-8580. Purdue North Central open house is April 7 Purdue University Northwest will host an open house on the North Central Campus from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. April 7 in the Library-Student-Faculty Building. The open house is open to prospective students of all ages and their families. This event is appropriate for high school students, community college graduates, veterans and adults thinking about attending college. The general open house will begin at 5:30 p.m. with campus tours offered at 5:30 and 6:15 p.m. An Academic, Student Service and Activity Fair will continue throughout the evening where students can explore majors, clubs and activities and discover the various types of assistance that PNW offers to support student success. More information is at www.pnc.edu/admissions/openhouse/ or 219-785-5505. Holistic Living event set for April 30 A Holistic Living Festival will be held by the organization Devoted 2 Healing from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. April 30 at the Trustee Circle of Services, 2835 165th Street, Hammond. Devoted 2 Healing is a nonprofit organization that helps empower people to make informed lifestyle choices. Alternative lifestyle vendors and practitioners will offer vegan snacks and meals and various healing modalities. Blood pressure screening will be available. More information is at 219-477-8135. Advertisement Post-Tribune The 5-year-old Syrian girl - the victim of a firebombing attack at her home - draws a picture of her dream home during a break between multiple surgeries to heal her badly burned body. The local Muslim community embraced her last week at the Northwest Indiana Islamic Center in Crown Point. (Jerry Davich / Post-Tribune) Her 5-year-old face droops like a melted candle, revealing sagging skin reconfigured by multiple surgeries. Her tiny arms are scorched and twisted by severe burns. A wrapping on her head allows holes for her sad eyes and deformed mouth. Yet, somehow, a smile erupted while she colored a picture of what her dream home would look like, a somber contrast from its reality. Advertisement The Syrian girl was a victim of an April 2014 firebomb attack in the eastern Syrian province of Deir el-Zour, an attack made by ISIS terrorists, the family said. She was with her mother and sister, who also were badly wounded in the attack. The girl caught on fire but her mother couldn't find her in the nighttime terror. The girl had to roll around alone to put out the flames embroiling her body, a family member said. By the time neighbors found her, the girl's skin was scorched and her chin was fused to her chest. Advertisement For months, she suffered without professional medical care. It was too dangerous to find in her community, ripped apart by rebel fighting in a country that erupted in war five years ago this month. The girl's family could use only ointments and prayers to soothe her pain. "She survived by the grace of God," her uncle said through a translator. The girl's family eventually fled their warring country, joining an estimated 10 million other Syrian refugees forced to resettle away from their homes. Her family escaped to Turkey to find her professional medical care, but her parents returned to Syria to care for their other children and extended family. The girl's uncle stayed with her as she underwent more than 20 surgeries. He relocated to Turkey and found work in the education field. The girl and her uncle have since become inseparable, and it was no different when I met them Saturday night. They were honored guests of the Muslim community at the Northwest Indiana Islamic Center in Crown Point, where nearly 200 members turned out to welcome them. The members brought dishes of food, small gifts, big smiles and loving affection. I joined them for a potluck dinner while talking with the girl and her uncle through a translator, Ferass Safadi, a member of the mosque. The affable father of five from Valparaiso invited me to the center to meet the girl, who could serve as the victimized face of the Syrian conflict. "These poor victims of terrorists are not terrorists," Safadi told me as the girl quietly colored at our table. He politely referred to Gov. Mike Pence's executive order in November suspending the resettlement of Syrian refugees to Indiana following the terrorist attacks in Paris last fall. Advertisement To my knowledge, no Syrians have resettled in our state, or possibly visited here, since that order was issued. No one knows this more than our local Muslim community. According to the Indiana Family and Social Services Administration, which administers the Syrian resettlement program, Indiana has formally accepted less than 50 refugees from Syria since the country's civil war began, about half of them coming here last year. The girl and her uncle whose names and faces I can't reveal for the safety of their family in Syria are in Northwest Indiana only temporarily. "To show our love and support for them," Safadi said. They are soon returning to Boston, where the girl is receiving medical care for her injuries, compliments of Shriners Hospitals for Children. The charitable organization accepted the girl as a patient while she was in Turkey. For months, her uncle searched for expert treatment from anywhere in the world through humanitarian aid agencies. After more months of securing proper documentation and other paperwork, the girl was finally accepted by Shriners. Advertisement In Turkey, the girl was visited by Aza Alfrhan, a Crown Point woman and member of the Islamic center here. She travels back and forth to the Middle East to offer humanitarian aid to Syrian refugee families and others in need. The girl caught her attention and stole her heart. She helped arrange for her health care in this country and for the girl's visit last week. "To show her and her uncle that we care about them," said Alfrhan, whose husband, Dr. Almuhannad Alfrhan, is vice president of the AIMS hospitalist group in this area. "Hundreds of thousands of Syrian civilians have been killed, and many others are suffering in silence," he told me. "The least we can do for them is to let the American people know about their struggle, hoping that someone someday will be able to do a little more to ease their suffering." I witnessed this Saturday night at the center, as the young girl made fast friends with other girls her age. They laughed, they played, they giggled. It was heartwarming to watch. Advertisement "We can't thank you enough for trying to expose the truth about the Syrian tragedies to our fellow Americans," said Almuhannad Alfrhan, whose practice focuses on Starke County. After dinner, he showed a gripping video about the travesties of the Syrian civil war and his center's efforts to provide aid to victims in Turkey and elsewhere. The center's members have contributed and delivered several truckloads of goods to refugees. They converged Saturday to also mark the fifth anniversary of the Syrian conflict and its complexities, a somber occasion for them. "Many of us thought it would last less than a year," Safadi whispered during the video. According to the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, more than 3 million Syrians have fled to neighboring countries such as Turkey, Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan. Another 6 million refugees are displaced in Syria, including the girl's family. "We have no idea where they are," her uncle said while feeding his niece through the hole in her head bandages. Advertisement The uncle was fearful of revealing any identifying information about himself or his niece, for the safety of their family. But he was very appreciative of any efforts to tell their story to Americans. He often placed his hand over his heart to show his gratefulness. Post Tribune Twice-weekly News updates from Northwest Indiana delivered every Monday and Wednesday > Everyone at the center was warm and welcoming, also grateful to show a shade of their world that doesn't get enough publicity in our country, let alone in our state, which has hung a "no vacancy" sign since November. "My gratitude and appreciation go all the way to everyone involved who rescued and saved this girl's life, and to those willing to help her and her uncle," said Imam Mongy Elquesny, the center's leader. "These are the real religious people. God almighty has allowed all of us to witness and share a little bit of her." The girl, who rarely spoke, flashed a bright smile every once in a while. Before she entered the mosque for after-sunset prayers, an older man walked up to her, knelt down and gently kissed her badly deformed hands. "God has blessed you," he told her. She smiled and walked hand in hand with her uncle to pray for their family. Advertisement jdavich@post-trib.com Twitter @jdavich Indiana is suffering a severe teacher shortage. Throughout Indiana, 19 percent of first-year teachers don't come back to their jobs. In high-poverty schools, 29 percent quit their jobs or go to other schools after the end of the first school year. Retention levels are very low at some of our schools in Gary and East Chicago. The following figures are from the 2012-14 school years. At New Tech Innovative Institute in Gary, the rate was 39 percent. At East Chicago's Block Middle school, it was 42 percent. Also in East Chicago, Lighthouse Charter School had a rate of 45 percent. And Lincoln Achievement Center in Gary was at 51 percent. Advertisement For the past decade, the Indiana General Assembly has caused great damage to public education to the point that teachers don't want to teach in Indiana anymore. Who can blame them? The Republican legislators have attacked the teachers' unions. The GOP won't let educators receive additional money for earning a master's degree and getting advanced education training. In addition, they keep interfering with local control. Advertisement Teachers don't mind being held accountable, but the Indiana General Assembly's majority party wants to hold educators responsible for student scores. Teachers are teaching, but the truth is that some students don't want to learn and some parents don't care if their children get an education. Why should teachers be penalized by those who don't value education and refuse the parental responsibility of encouraging their children to do their homework, study for exams and even show up at school? Educators don't mind being held accountable, even with test scores as part of the evaluation, but politicians continue to put additional pressure on teachers to essentially "force" students to learn as opposed to teaching the students who want to learn. Teaching is no longer enjoyable and certainly not fulfilling when an educator is judged on factors beyond his control. We did do something positive this legislative session to move toward a long-term solution for teacher retention. We passed House Bill 1002 in a bipartisan manner. House Speaker Brian Bosma, R-Indianapolis, was the bill's author and I was the co-author. The bill provides for a generous scholarship to top students who want to be teachers. A student, who qualifies for the scholarship, would get a $7,500 stipend and could apply for it each of the student's four years at the university. It is an excellent program, but the program doesn't begin until 2017, meaning the first students, benefiting from this program, won't enter the classroom professionally until 2021. The scholarship will help toward a long-term solution, but we are in a crisis now and need short-term answers as well. I believe those answers should include a marketing campaign designed to attract talented, young people, minorities in particular, into a career as teachers and also encourage them to eventually become administrators of schools. Additionally, Indiana- must reduce its reliance on test scores. The ISTEP has been a flawed test over multiple years and there have been significant problems with the administering of the tests. Last year, Indiana Superintendent of Public Instruction Glenda Ritz brought together 50 of the state's top education experts to study teacher retention and recruitment as part of a Blue Ribbon Commission. After six meetings over three months, the commission issued its recommendations for strategies to end the teacher shortage. Those recommendations included: Establish a statewide mentoring program. Advertisement Start a marketing campaign. Recruit diverse teachers. Allow for locally established pay models. Post Tribune Twice-weekly News updates from Northwest Indiana delivered every Monday and Wednesday > Reduce teacher assessment's over-reliance on test scores. Allow for more clinical experiences. Allow more opportunities for growth. Advertisement Provide time to participate in job-embedded professional development. Compensation for professional development, including earning a master's degree Teachers generally believe there is a lack of administrative and professional support. There is an underlying feeling that those for whom they work so hard don't appreciate them. Even worse, teachers have been scapegoated by politicians looking for quick solutions and easy answers. There are no quick fixes to problems in education, but there are solutions if the Legislature and the public commit themselves to implementing them while respecting these educators who devote their lives to children for very little pay. State Rep. Vernon G. Smith is the ranking Democratic member of the House Education Committee. The village of River Forest and Dominican University are splitting the cost to remove a sanitary sewer line from the stormsewer system at the college's Priory Campus. (Steve Schering / Pioneer Press) River Forest and Dominican University have agreed to share the cost of separating a recently discovered sanitary sewer line at the college's Priory Campus from the village's new storm sewer system. According to Village Administrator Eric Palm, the connection was unknown when the village began its northside stormwater management project, which split the combined sanitary and storm sewers in the area. As part of the project, a new 96-inch trunk sewer was built underneath Greenfield Street, which now carries stormwater into the Des Plaines River. Advertisement The northside project was designed to provide flood relief to one of the more susceptible areas of the village. Previously, the combined sewer system ran to a Metropolitan Water Reclamation District plant for treatment, Palm said. After completing the north side project, Palm said a sanitary line at Dominican University's Goedert Center, which village documents had shown to run south into the still-existing combined sewer system, was instead discovered to be running north, right into the new stormwater system. Advertisement "As part of the [north side project], we had to pick up the storm sewer line that ran under the north parking lot at the Priory Campus," Palm said. "Later, it was determined the sanitary from the Goedert Center ran in that same line. The original records had the pipe going south to Division Street. I can't tell you the reason why, but my guess is somebody made changes to run it to the north which didn't matter [at the time] when the whole village was on a combined system." Phase one of the north side project began in April 2015, but work to connect the Priory Campus' pipe to the new storm sewer was not completed until mid-November, Palm said. Village staff investigated the sewer infrastructure and discovered the Goedert Daycare Center's sanitary sewer was connected to the storm sewer flowing to Greenfield Street. While Palm said the amount of sanitary runoff flowing into the system, and in turn the Des Plaines River, was minimal due it being diluted prior to entering the river, a remedy was planned upon discovery. "It is still an improper connection," Palm said. "It had to be done. We can't have sanitary running through a storm pipe." According to the village memo, Dominican University solicited estimates and entered into a contract with Harrington Site Services to complete the remedy work for a not-to-exceed cost of $60,000. "In order to facilitate all this, my office and Dominican had conversations about it," Palm said. "Ultimately, from my perspective, this was a change that was necessitated by the village's project. Once work is completed, we'll reimburse them half that amount not to exceed $30,000." In a prepared statement, Dominican University said its Goedert Center for Early Childhood Education was moved from its main campus to a renovated maintenance garage on the Priory Campus in 2006. Advertisement "The university worked with the Village of River Forest to rectify a sewer connection that was installed years ago and no longer met current village code," the statement said. "The project is complete and we split the cost with the village." According to Allison Fore of the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District, the MWRD was not familiar with the Dominican University project, but is supportive of plans to separate sanitary and storm sewer systems. "We certainly support separation projects as they will significantly contribute to the alleviation of basement backups and flooding issues," Fore wrote in an email. "It is important during the process to verify that all storm connections are truly stormwater. We certainly support their efforts in addressing this issue." The agreement was accepted unanimously by the Village Board during its March 14 meeting. Trustee Roma Colwell-Steinke was absent. sschering@pioneerlocal.com Twitter: @steveschering While many films have covered the various ins and outs behind the 2008 housing bubble in exhausting detail, the crash's complicated economic minutia often have a tendency to overwhelm the crisis' disturbing human struggles. Rather than retread the hows and whys, director Ramin Bahrani's '99 Homes' attempts to shift its focus away from dipping stock data and toward the real life tragedies left in their wake -- resulting in a gripping thriller that examines the cost of "success" within a corrupt system. After being evicted from his home along with his son and mother, unemployed single father Dennis Nash (Andrew Garfield) is left without many options. Desperate for a job, Nash turns to the very man who kicked him out of his house, a real estate broker named Rick Carver (Michael Shannon). Hoping to earn enough to buy his house back, Nash ends up working for Carver, and soon finds himself deeply entangled within the increasingly corrupt housing market. As roles are reversed, Nash will have to decide just how far he's willing to go to succeed. In the film's opening scene, we are first introduced to the morally ambiguous Rick Carver through a powerful extended single shot, offering a rather enlightening first impression that uses form to enhance our interpretation of the character. After one of Carver's evictees commits suicide, the camera pans from the brutal aftermath to Carver's intense gaze, directly connecting the two images on screen, irrevocably tying the business man to the violent repercussions of his work. From there, the shot follows Carver as he answers a phone call, brushes off the police, and heads straight out the door to his car -- all in one unbroken sequence. On the surface, it seems as if the man is too busy to even care about the death, but key intonations and expressions from Michael Shannon clue us in to the his deeper distress. He's trying to dismiss the trauma, but the weight of the opening image carries through, heightened by the lack of cuts, allowing us to witness the build-up uninterrupted. This dichotomy between the outward callousness of his job and more internal pangs of unease goes on to layer much of Shannon's performance, and the actor does a remarkable job of creating a multifaceted antagonist who is capable of being truly despicable without becoming a one-dimensional villain. Likewise, co-star Andrew Garfield imbues Nash with a palpable level of desperation and frustration, easily allowing the audience to empathize with his plight. And much like in the opening shot with Carver, director Ramin Bahrani uses camera work and editing to enhance the character's emotional beats. On that note, Nash's harrowing eviction sequence is a real standout, as the filmmakers employ chaotic handheld shots and disorienting cuts to heighten both the outward and internal confusion, disorder, and loss of control present in the scene, placing the audience in the same frenzied state of mind as the protagonist. As Nash gradually transforms throughout the runtime, the narrative maintains its focus on the human struggles related to the financial crisis, offering an affecting peek into the lives torn asunder by rampant foreclosures. And though the film touches upon corruption and blame within the housing market, banking world, government bureaucracy, and citizens themselves, the story ultimately avoids any real political lean or intentions. The details of the crisis are deeply imbedded into the script's DNA, but at the end of the day the movie really becomes an absorbing morality tale -- one tied to themes of greed, exploitation, family, and the true nature of success. With that said, the film's approach can be lacking when it comes to subtlety. Though the ironic role reversal that Nash ultimately finds himself in does prove to be rather powerful, the execution can be just a tad overbearing at times. Likewise, the resulting drama is fairly predictable. Thankfully, these minor flaws prove to be just that, minor, and the climax takes us to an appropriately open-ended yet emotionally satisfying conclusion. Using the 2008 housing bubble as its backdrop, '99 Homes' effectively portrays the human struggles related to the crisis while simultaneously offering a universal parable related to timeless themes of corruption, guilt, ethics, and empathy. Marked by strong direction and a captivating performance from Michael Shannon, the film leaves a lasting impact -- one that proves to be moving and deeply frustrating in equal measure. The Blu-ray: Vital Disc Stats Broadgreen Pictures brings '99 Homes' to Blu-ray on a single BD-50 disc that comes housed inside a standard keepcase. After some skippable trailers, the disc transitions to a traditional menu screen. The packaging indicates that the release is region A coded. By Dezan Shira & Associates Editor: Jake Liddle Chinas Ministry of Finance (MOF) and the National Archives Bureau have jointly adopted a revised Administrative Measures on Accounting Records. In effect since the beginning of the year, the new measures are significantly different to the previous 1999 legislation and are important for all enterprises with operations in China. The new measures have been formulated in accordance with Chinas Accounting Law, Archives Law and other related laws and administrative regulations. They primarily aim to consolidate the administration of accounting records and amend regulations of record retention periods and electronic filing systems. Electronic Filing The new measures explain that companies may utilize information technology, such as computer and network communication, as a means of managing accounting records. Electronic accounting materials formed internally within a company, which fall under the scope of archiving, may be kept solely in electronic form if the following criteria are satisfied: The source of electronic accounting materials formed are true and valid, and are formed and transmitted via electronic equipment; The accounting system used is able to receive and read electronic accounting materials accurately, completely and effectively; able to create output of accounting materials such as accounting vouchers, account books and financial accounting statements which comply with the national standard archive format; and has set up the necessary audit and signing procedures such as handling, examination and approval; The electronic records management system used is able to receive, manage and utilize electronic accounting records effectively, satisfies the long-term retention requirements of electronic records, and has established the referencing relationship between the electronic accounting records and related hard copy accounting records; Effective measures are adopted to prevent electronic accounting records from being tampered with; Backup system for electronic accounting records is established for effective protection against natural disasters, accidents and vandalism; and The electronic accounting materials formed are not accounting records which are worthy of permanent preservation or possess significant preservation value. Previously, all units utilizing computing for accounting purposes were required to retain all printed paper copies of account materials. Particularly, companies using tape, magnetic disk, CD, microfilm or other forms of magnetic media for saving account records needed to report to the MOF and National Archives. Retention Period The retention period of accounting records shall start on the first day following the end of the accounting year. Below is a table comparing the retention period for required accounting records of enterprises and other types of organizations according to the old and new measures: Violation of the terms of the new measures could result in penalties imposed by the finance authorities and archive administrative authorities. 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. Tax, Accounting, and Audit in China 2016 This edition of Tax, Accounting, and Audit in China, updated for 2016, offers a comprehensive overview of the major taxes that foreign investors are likely to encounter when establishing or operating a business in China, as well as other tax-relevant obligations. This concise, detailed, yet pragmatic guide is ideal for CFOs, compliance officers and heads of accounting who must navigate the complex tax and accounting landscape in China in order to effectively manage and strategically plan their China-based operations. Annual Audit and Compliance in China 2016 In this issue of China Briefing, we provide a comprehensive analysis of the various annual compliance procedures that foreign invested enterprises in China will have to follow, including wholly-foreign owned enterprises, joint ventures, foreign-invested commercial enterprises, and representative offices. We include a step-by-step guide to these procedures, list out the annual compliance timeline, detail the latest changes to Chinas standards, and finally explain why Chinas audit should be started as early as possible. Managing Your Accounting and Bookkeeping in China In this issue of China Briefing, we discuss the difference between the International Financial Reporting Standards, and the accounting standards mandated by Chinas Ministry of Finance. We also pay special attention to the role of foreign currency in accounting, both in remitting funds, and conversion. In an interview with Jenny Liao, Dezan Shira & Associates Senior Manager of Corporate Accounting Services in Shanghai, we outline some of the pros and cons of outsourcing ones accounting function. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (R) meets with International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Christine Lagarde, who is here to attend the China Development Forum, in Beijing, capital of China, March 21, 2016. [Xinhua] Chinese Premier Li Keqiang Monday voiced China's disapproval of any "currency war," as it would be no good for the world economic recovery. China has no intention to boost exports by devaluating the yuan, as this is not conducive to China's economic transformation either, said Li while meeting with Christine Lagard, managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Li said China will continue to push forward with financial market reform and construction of legal system, and press ahead with developments to the yuan exchange rate formation mechanism in line with the principles of independence, gradualism and controllability. China will, according to its economic fundamentals and the need to maintain financial stability, make the exchange rate of yuan float in two ways within a reasonable range, and maintain the exchange rate "basically stable at an adaptable and equilibrium level," the premier stressed. He also called on major economies facing increasing uncertainties and volatilities of the world economy, to strengthen macroeconomic coordination to keep the stability of the global economic and financial systems. The government attaches high importance to the communication with the market, as well as the role of the IMF and other international financial institutions. The government will strengthen dialogue and cooperation with them to give more signals to shore up market confidence, Li said. The premier also vowed that China is capable of preventing regional and systemic financial risks. He noted that most of China's big commercial banks are state-owned. The government's debt ratio, especially that of the central government is comparatively low while the people's saving rate is comparatively high. The central government could support banks to maintain the capital adequacy ratio at a relatively high level by market means. The central bank also has many tools to prevent financial risks. Lagarde, who is here for the China Development Forum, spoke highly of China's 13th Five-year Plan, saying it will help China's economy continue to play a leading role in world economic development. She also praised China's recent policy communication on the exchange rate of yuan as effective, as it strengthened the international market's confidence. She said the IMF lauded China's continuous efforts to reform and stands ready to strengthen communication and coordination with China to send positive signals to the market. Boao Forum for Asia is expected to help Australia make vital connections in Asia so that Australia can participate in its growth, Australian Minister for Tourism and International Education Richard Colbeck told Xinhua on Sunday. Colbeck will attend this year's Boao Forum as the representative of the Australian government. He views the forum as playing "a prominent and unique role to enable people from government, business and academia from Asia and beyond to discuss issues that matter to Asia." "This year's theme, Asia's New Future: New Dynamics and New Vision, is of great interest to Australia and will provide a perfect opportunity to showcase our National Innovation and Science Agenda (NISA) and the exciting investment opportunities," he said. He said Australian businesses, universities and research organisations are among the best in the world. Together with the country's regional free trade agreements, they have the potential to drive growth and prosperity throughout the region. From 2014 to 2015, Australia has successfully signed free trade agreements with its major Asian trading partners of South Korea, Japan and China. Colbeck is expected to promote and strengthen Australia's trade and investment links with China and the region at the forum. "I will highlight the opportunities presented by the free trade agreements that Australia has recently established with China, Japan and South Korea." "These free trade agreements have spurred demand for Australia's goods and services, and generated new business and investment opportunities which will drive economic growth and prosperity." Colbeck holds that there are five key "super-growth" sectors that will provide economic growth for Australia over the next decade and the Asian region will be a key market for these sectors. They are food, gas, wealth management, tourism and international education. As the global population grows by 60 million per year, demand for food will increase. Meanwhile, with Asia's growing middle classes set to boost their protein intake, this presents a great opportunity for Australian agribusiness. Rapid growth in emerging economies has led to air pollution in the major cities in the northern hemisphere which will underwrite demand for Australian gas, a cleaner and greener alternative. Wealth management is also a key growth sector as three billion people in Asia will join the middle class by 2030 and by 2050 the region will account for more than half the world's financial assets. You are here: Home File photo of a voter casts his ballot in Beijing. [Photo: Xinhua] The Communist Party of China (CPC) urged local officials to strengthen monitoring ahead of the local elections. In a meeting concerning the monitoring of cadres, which was convened in recent days, the Organizational Department of the CPC Central Committee urged officials in all areas to study instructions on elections issued by Xi Jinping, the general secretary of CPC Central Committee. Supervision of the elections should be a top priority this year, it said. More than 900 million Chinese voters will directly elect over 2.5 million county- or township-level lawmakers in elections this year. The department said lessons should be learned from election corruption cases in the provinces of Hunan and Sichuan. It also called for strict supervision of the authorities and the people. A zero-tolerance attitude toward corruption should be held, the department said. It underscored that the forming of cliques, vote-buying, selling office, asking for positions, fraud for posts, leaking secrets and others would not be tolerated. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) on Monday released a work plan on attracting and maintaining talent, as part of the country's development and rejuvenation. All local authorities were asked to implement the requirements, which will help to make China a magnet for talented individuals, according to the plan. The plan asks to break down the shackles hindering talent development on both ideology and institutional mechanism. China should give full play to the vigor and innovation capability of talent, to gain an edge in terms of international talent competition, the plan said. The plan said following the CPC leadership should be the fundamental principle of China's talent work. The market should also be highly valued and play a key role in the distribution of human resources. The work of talent recruitment and management should embody an international vision, the plan said, adding that various measures can be employed to gain and retain talented people. The evaluation system should put equal focus on integrity and ability. It is the practical capacity, demonstrated achievements and contributions that really matter for talent assessment, the plan said, rejecting a former over-emphasis on education and published papers. The goal is to form a sound system where talent is nurtured, evaluated and distributed systematically, and the whole of society values talent and innovative ideas, the plan said. Nine pharmaceutical companies in six provinces are investigated by China's Food and Drug Administration in the recent illegal vaccine trading case which is worth more than 570 million yuan (US$88 million). They were found to have fabricated distribution channels and will be primarily held responsible for the illegal circulation of problematic vaccines, the administration said. Three of the companies are based in Shandong Province, two in Shaanxi Province and the rest in Hebei, Henan, Hunan, and Jilin provinces. They include Hebei Weifang Biological Production Supply Center, affiliated to Hebei Disease Control and Prevention Center, and Shandong Shijie Biological Pharmaceutical Co Ltd, listed on the "New Third Board," or National Equities Exchange and Quotations. Investigators in the six provinces have been urged to check possible violations and report their findings by March 25. Investigators in Changsha, capital of Hunan, have been sent to the Hunan Huayi Biological Production Co Ltd, one of the nine blacklisted firms. Xinhua News Agency reported that one arrest has been made in the scandal. A mother and daughter suspected of selling the vaccines were arrested in Shandong Province last week. The case is the largest of its kind in China in terms of the amount of money involved. The vaccines confiscated in the case include 25 types that fall under the second category. According to the suspects' account book, they were resold in 24 provincial areas. According to Shandong police, even though all vaccines involved in the case are made by licensed producers, their quality is questionable as they were not stored or transported under approved conditions. In a surprising turn of events, the U.S. government on Monday paused its battle with Apple over an iPhone, and what may be its greater goal of mandating "backdoors" in consumer encryption. On Monday afternoon, the Justice Department told a judge it needs a couple weeks to try 'new' ways of accessing whatever may be on the device, without Apple's helpand with an assist from unnamed experts from outside the agency. If Feds found flaw to get into that iPhone they will drop the case so Apple can't seek discovery to learn the flaw. https://t.co/ciH7lVIDiY Kim Zetter (@KimZetter) March 22, 2016 We don't know what methods. They may or may not be newly developed methods. Who exactly is that outside help the FBI is now working with, since Apple won't help? The NSA? Some private security firm or individual? No one has said at the time of this blog post. From Andy Greenberg at Wired: On Monday afternoon, the Justice Department filed a motion for a continuance on a hearing set to happen tomorrow in Riverside, California, where it would have argued its case that Apple must help it to crack the iPhone 5C of dead San Bernardino killer Syed Rizwan Farook. The FBI hasn't given up on accessing the data in Farook's phone. But it now says it may not need Apple's assistance to crack the device after all, which it had previously told a judge it could legally compel using the 1789 law known as the All Writs Act. The FBI says its request was triggered by new information it obtained over the weekend. "On Sunday, March 20, 2016, an outside party demonstrated to the FBI a possible method for unlocking Farook's iPhone," the Justice Department's lawyers wrote in the court filing you can read here. "Testing is required to determine whether it is a viable method that will not compromise data on Farook's iPhone. If the method is viable, it should eliminate the need for the assistance from Appleset forth in the All Writs Act Order in this case." The timing of Monday's Justice Department request made for an interesting news day. Hours earlier, Apple held one of their big product launches, focused on new iPhones and iPads. Nice to know they still include un-backdoored security. Showmanship at Apple events is a long-established tradition, but the livestreamed Apple event included a "One More Thing" kicker like none before it. This time, CEO Tim Cook directly addressed the company's battle with the FBI. "We did not expect to be in this position at odds with our own government," Cook said. "But we believe strongly that we have a responsibility to help you protect your data and protect your privacy. We owe it to our customers and we owe it to our country. This is an issue that impacts all of us." It's as if that legendary "1984" ad became real. As Katie Benner and Matt Apuzzo in the New York Times put it, the postponement filing amounts to the FBI "temporarily sidestepping what has become a bitter clash with the world's most valuable company." From the NYT: The emergence of a potential third-party method to open the iPhone was a surprise, as the government said more than a dozen times in court filings that it could open the phone only with Apple's help. The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey Jr., also reiterated that point several times during a hearing before Congress on March 1. The new method could forestall, but is unlikely to entirely head off, a showdown between Silicon Valley and the Justice Department over encryption. "This will only delay an inevitable fight over whether the government can force Apple to break the security of its devices," said Alex Abdo, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union, an advocacy group. If the Justice Department does get what they say they want right nowa successful crack of a terrorist's iPhonethis whole legal battle with Apple fizzles, and FBI doesn't get to push for the bigger war on encryption. That war began long before San Bernardino, as Boing Boing oldtimers, cypherpunks, and @Snowden followers no doubt know. Public outcry over the FBI's legal assault was swift and sustained. If someone at the Justice Department imagined that the nation's mood after San Bernardino would create a welcome climate for an encryption land grab, they miscalculated. "Leave Apple Alone!," the internet cried out. But it's bigger than a collective fondness for Apple. In demanding the impossiblesecurity that only allows 'good guys' to get inthe U.S. government picked a fight with math. You never win a fight with math. Again, from the Times: While contentious, the Apple case neatly crystalized that debate in a way that abstract discussions never had. The court fight, regardless of its outcome, would have increased the likelihood that Congress took up legislation to address the issue. Shelving the San Bernardino case could remove a sense of immediacy on the topic. Former Justice Department computer crime prosecutor Orin Kerr, now a law professor at George Washington University, told Reuters Monday the government is likely only postponing the fight. "The problem is not going away, it's just been delayed for a year or two," he told Joe Menn at Reuters. An Apple executive told reporters on a press call that the company knew nothing about the Justice Department's possible method for getting into the phone, and that the government never gave any indication that it was continuing to search for such solutions. The executive characterized the Justice Department's admission Monday that it never stopped pursuing ways to open the phone as a sharp contrast with its insistence in court filings that only Apple possessed the means to do so. Nate Cardozo, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group backing Apple, said the San Bernardino case was the "hand-chosen test case" for the government to establish its authority to access electronic information by whatever means necessary. In that context, he said, the last-minute discovery of a possible solution and the cancellation of the hearing is "suspicious," and suggests the government might be worried about losing and setting a bad precedent. More on Monday's #FBIvsAPPLE news: Wired | Reuters | New York Times. And Kim Zetter at WIRED has a great explainer of some of the methods the FBI may be using to attempt to get into the iPhone. In related news, Reuters reported Monday that a group of US senators is circulating draft legislation to give federal judges a clear legal basis on which to issue "backdoor" orders like the one in FBI vs. Apple. This proposed legislation doesn't sound great. The proposal from Senators Richard Burr and Dianne Feinstein, the top Republican and Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, does not spell out how companies must provide access or the circumstances under which they could be ordered to help. It also does not create specific penalties for noncompliance, leaving that determination to judges, the sources said. Previous legislative efforts have focused on requiring technology products to have a built-in "back door" for law enforcement. The latest approach would not mandate any specific technology, but rather would require companies to figure out how to access the data. "Requiring companies to figure out how to access the data" sounds like another way of saying, "guys we still want government backdoors." It's hard not to read tonight's events as permanently damaging the credibility of #FBI claims on encryption. This was basic pre-trial work. Edward Snowden (@Snowden) March 22, 2016 Reporters: Look back on those first two days of reporting based on #FBI claims. They exploited trust in pursuit of precedent. #AppleVsFBI Edward Snowden (@Snowden) March 22, 2016 You are here: Home Police in south China's Guangdong Province assess some of the 450 kilograms of smuggled ivory seized by border control police earlier this month. [Photo/Xinhua] Police in south China's Guangdong Province have seized about 450 kilograms of smuggled ivory, Xinhua News Agency reported on Monday. The haul is worth an estimated 18 million yuan (2.78 million U.S. dollars), according to Guangdong Public Security Department. On March 4, border police in Zhuhai City, Guangdong, received a tipoff that contraband would be transported from Hong Kong to Zhuhai. Police intercepted an unlicensed speed boat, which was headed toward Zhuhai from Hong Kong around 11 p.m. that night. The boat was carrying 221 pieces of ivory. The boat crew had all fled before police arrived. The ivory is now in the custody of the customs department and the investigation continues. Anyone involved in the illegal ivory trade faces a maximum life sentence. China will establish a national groundwater monitoring system during the next five years to prevent excessive exploitation, a government official said on Monday. The system will include more than 20,000 monitoring stations across the country, according to Yan Yong, an official with the Department of Water Resources under the Ministry of Water Resources. The move is aimed at countering the overuse of groundwater that is now rife in more than 300,000 square kilometers of Chinese territory. In some areas in North China, where water shortages are most severe, groundwater still accounts for more than 70 percent of the water supply, the ministry said in a guideline in August. "We cannot wait for problems to take place and then try to rectify them," he said during a news conference before World Water Day on March 22. The authorities will also explore using the system to ration groundwater, he said. Yan explained that the monitoring system will enable the authorities to identify areas in a timely way where overuse is taking place and act quickly to prevent it. More than 17 billion cubic meters of water that should be left in the ground are being taken from underground sources each year, according to the ministry. "The problems that come along with the over-extraction are virtually impossible to rectify," he said, adding that ground subsidence as deep as two meters had hit some areas because of the abuse of water resources. In Hebei province, where groundwater overuse is most serious, the central government has launched a restoration program that devotes more than 7 billion yuan ($1.07 billion) each year to cope with groundwater overuse and restoring water levels. Yan said a key step in that program is to reduce water consumption in the agricultural sector. Groundwater in the province has also been rationed to each individual user in different sectors, he said. However, the groundwater level in the province has only been restored by a small margin and progress has been minor, he said. Wang Zhi, deputy head of the Department of Policies, Laws and Regulations at the ministry, said it is still working to draft a new regulation on the use and protection of groundwater. China has expanded its ban on ivory imports to protect African elephants, the State Forestry Administration announced on Tuesday. From March 20, 2016, to Dec. 31, 2019, the country will forbid imports of ivory and ivory products acquired before the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) took effect in 1975. Two one-year bans launched last year will be extended to the end of 2019. On Oct. 15 last year, China levied a one-year ban on imports of African ivory acquired as hunting trophies. It came after another one-year ban made on Feb. 26 last year, which prohibited imports of African ivory carvings acquired after CITES. The trade and sale of ivory carvings are legal in China if the activities conform with certain regulations. Ivory may only come from two sources: items imported before the country joined CITES in 1981, and 62 tonnes of raw-ivory stock bought from four African countries in 2008, as permitted by CITES. Raw elephant ivory and products should only be processed at designated places, sold by certain outlets and must be individually tracked. Each legal product has been cataloged and is traceable by its own unique photo ID. Flash China said on Monday its continued mutually beneficial cooperation with Cuba does not target any third party, nor will any third party affect the in-depth development of China-Cuba ties. Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying made the remarks at a daily press briefing in response to U.S. President Barack Obama's current visit to Cuba. "We have taken notice of President Obama's visit to Cuba. We are glad to see the normalization of the relations between the two countries," Hua said. She said the current positive momentum between the two states is in line with the interests of the Americans and Cubans as well as the peace, stability and development in the region. "We hope that both sides can consolidate the current momentum," Hua said, urging the United States to completely lift its decades-old embargo against Cuba as soon as possible. As for the association between China-Cuba relations and the U.S.- Cuba relations by some media recently, Hua said China pays more attention to mutual benefits and win-win cooperation in the modern international relations. China and Cuba have maintained long-term friendly cooperation and will continue to boost the mutually beneficial cooperation, Hua said. Obama arrived in Cuba on Sunday for a historic visit that could mark the beginning of a new era in U.S. relations with its neighbor after more than 50 years of Cold War-era animosity. Prior to his trip, the Cuban government ruled out the possibility of offering political concessions to Washington as a precondition to restoring full bilateral ties with the United States. Havana stressed Washington's economic and financial blockade of the island remains in force despite new measures announced last week by the White House to relax aspects of the embargo. The visit which ends on Tuesday, the first by a U.S. president since 1928, marks the most important moment since Obama and Castro agreed in December 2014 to restore diplomatic ties and end half a century of hostility following Cuba's revolution, which ousted a pro-American government in 1959. Flash Russia will unilaterally monitor the cease-fire situations in Syria as from Tuesday if the United States fails to respond to Moscow's proposal on a joint monitoring mechanism, the Russian general staff said Monday. Russia proposed on Feb. 25 to initiate a joint mechanism with the United States to monitor the implementation of truce in Syria, but Washington has not given any response, the Russian Defense Ministry said Saturday in a statement. "In case of the absence of a U.S. response to the proposal, Russia will begin on March 22 unilaterally applying the rules stipulated in the agreement," said Sergey Rudskoi, head of the Russian Defense Ministry's Main Operational Directorate. He added that Russia still stands ready to discuss such a mechanism with U.S. representatives. "The Russia-U.S. joint work on Syria has been effective in many prospects, despite some fundamental differences between the two sides," said Rudskoi. The officer also noted that military means could be used only when reliable evidence shows systematic breaches of the truce deal in Syria. A cessation of hostilities plan under the auspices of the United States and Russia went into effect late February in all Syrian cities. The truce has so far been largely adhered to despite sporadic violations. Russia began to withdraw the main part of its troops from Syria on Tuesday, after an air campaign of more than five months in the war-torn country at the request of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry will visit Russia on Wednesday and Thursday over the Syria crisis. You are here: Home Flash At least 70 Al-Shabaab militants have been killed and 30 others captured in heavy fightings by Somalia's Puntland forces in the past four days, officials said on Monday. Puntland Minister of Information Mohamud Hassan said their forces the fightings took place in Suuj Valley in Nugal region, northern Somalia, and the government forces have overpowered the insurgents. "We have killed 70 Al-Shabab fighters. We also arrested 30 of them. This is a military victory against terrorist group," Hassan said. He said more than 500 militants, who stormed the region, have now been surrounded by the Puntland forces, and the forces are also pursing those who escaped. Al-Shabaab militant group did not comment on the victory by Puntland forces. Al-Shabaab has been facing a major onslaught from the Somali security forces backed by the African Union Mission to Somalia (AMISOM) troops. Kenyan soldiers have killed more than 50 militants in the past week in different shootout incidences in southern Somalia. Flash Russia on Monday urged action from the United States for a joint mechanism to monitor the cease-fire in Syria, saying some militant groups are violating the truce. Delay in the development of such a mechanism would be "counterproductive" and Russia would have to take unilateral actions against the militants in violation of the cease-fire regime, the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement. Russia proposed on Feb. 25 a joint mechanism with the United States to monitor the implementation of truce in Syria, but Washington has not responded, according to Russia. Earlier in the day, Lt. Gen. Sergey Rudskoi of the Russian General Staff said Moscow would unilaterally monitor the cease-fire in Syria as from Tuesday if the United States fails to respond to its proposal. Flash "Many people" are still being sought by investigators in connection with the Paris terror attacks, the French and Belgian public prosecutors said in a joint press conference on Monday. Police officers guard the area where a Paris attacks suspect got arrested in Brussels, Belgium, March 18, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] Belgian federal prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw and Paris public prosecutor Francois Molins spoke to the media in Brussels following the arrest on Friday of Salah Abdeslam over the November attacks in which 130 people were killed. Van Leeuw told reporters: "The investigation is not over. Other individuals need to be found," adding, "We have a lot of pieces of the puzzle but we are still far from having completed the puzzle. We are working on clues and trying to find evidence." Molins said: "We are far from having all the pieces. There are still many people who are sought and who must explain themselves." Both prosecutors stressed the importance of Franco-Belgian co-operation in the ongoing investigation. Van Leeuw said: "We have a very close collaboration with the anti-terrorist section of the Paris prosecutor's office. We are faced with groups of people who are not restricted by borders but who are often linked by language, for example French." Abdeslam's lawyer, Sven Mary, announced on Saturday that his client planned to sue Molins, accusing him of leaking elements of his testimony. Regarding the accusation, the Paris prosecutor told reporters on Monday: "We have the opportunity to express ourselves according to our own procedural rules. These rules require the prosecutor to respect the secrecy of the investigation, but allow the prosecutor to provide objective information to correct erroneous information and to prevent the spread of unfounded rumours." Molins said he could not confirm whether Abdeslam had intended to carry out other attacks. He said a Franco-Belgian team was working together on 15 criminal investigations. Flash File photo taken on May 27, 2015 shows the departure hall of Brussels Internatinal Airport in Brussels, Belgium. Explosions were heard at Zaventem Airport in Brussels shortly before 8 a.m. March 22, 2016 local time, where several people were injured, Belgium's RTBF quoted witnesses as reporting. (Xinhua/Ye Pingfan) At least 26 people were killed and 136 injured in explosions on Tuesday at Brussels airport and on a city subway train, according to the latest figures published by Belgian media. Belgian media reported twin explosions were heard shortly before 8 a.m. local time (0700 GMT) at Brussels Zaventem airport, leaving the departure hall heavily damaged. Shots were fired and there were shouts in Arabic shortly before the explosions, said the Belgian news agency Belga. Unconfirmed reports on social media had said the blast took place near the American Airlines check-in counter, but the American Airlines said none of its employees were reported injured in the explosions. Belgian intelligence had advance knowledge of plans to carry out terrorist attacks in the country but was unaware of their time or location, police was quoted by the French BFMTV as saying. "Due to two explosions at Brussels airport this morning, the airport is closed until further notice," Brussels airlines announced at its official website, adding that all flights were canceled and the complex was evacuated. Rail and bus traffic to the airport was suspended as well. Meanwhile, the metro stations were closed and passengers were evacuated. People were asked to keep away from the metro station by staff. Shortly after the blasts at Brussels airport, Belgium raised its alert level from three to the maximum of four, a spokesperson with Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon said. The blasts, injuring a dozen people, occurred days after the arrest in Brussels of a suspected participant in the terror attacks in Paris in November 2015 that killed 130 people. Belgian police had been on alert for any reprisal action. So far, there was no immediate claim of responsibility for Tuesday's attacks. World leaders expressed concern about the explosions in the Belgian capital, as British Prime Minister David Cameron said on his Twitter that they would do everything they can to help. Russian President Vladimir Putin strongly condemned the explosions in Brussels and assured the Belgian people of solidarity in times of difficulty. "President Putin has already sent and expressed condolences to Belgium in connection with the death of civilians in a series of explosions in Brussels," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters. Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven described the blasts on Tuesday as an attack against European democracy, saying in a statement that "we will never accept that terrorists attack our open societies." Danish Prime Minister Lars Loekke Rasmussen also denounced the explosions as a "despicable attack" on Twitter, saying that his thoughts were with the victims and their families. Follow China.org.cn on Twitter and Facebook to join the conversation. You are here: Home Flash The Greek Foreign Ministry expressed solidarity with Belgium after blasts rocked an airport and a metro station in Brussels Tuesday morning. "Brussels, our Union's capital is under attack. We mourn the dead and pledge to conquer terror through democracy," the Greek Foreign Ministry wrote on its Twitter account. At least 13 people were reportedly dead after the explosions in Brussels. The threat level in the Belgian capital was raised from 3 to maximum 4. Meanwhile, Greek airliner Aegean announced that all flights to Brussels have been canceled until further notice. Brussels-bound Aegean flight A3620, which departed from Athens International airport Tuesday morning, will land at Dusseldorf airport of Germany. The World Wide Web Consortium, the decades old champion of the open Web, let down many of its biggest supporters when it decided to cater to Hollywood by standardizing DRM as part of the spec for HTML5. This week, the W3C is meeting in Cambridge, Mass, where my Electronic Frontier Foundation colleague Danny O'Brien has gone to agitate for a non-aggression covenant that would prohibit W3C members from using the DMCA to go after security researchers and implementers who break the DRM they're standardizing. The Free Software Foundation rallied a group of Web users who protested the meeting, while the MIT Media Lab hosted a discussion of the W3C's actions with Joi Ito, Richard Stallman, Danny O'Brien and Harry Halpin. The W3C's meeting continues today. "I was just on the fourth floor of the building we were just in, where I was drinking nice glasses of red wine with the representatives of Comcast, MovieLabs, and Netflix," O'Brien said, speaking through a bullhorn. "And it was great to be able to stop the discussion we were having, and to say that I had to go talk to the dozens and dozens of people down there who disagree with everything they're saying." As the protesters bear down on the Microsoft building, they launch into a chant that riffs on the UNIX command to delete a file: "RM DRM! RM DRM!" Suddenly, Stallman strides to the front of the marching column to confer with Rogoff. "Richard Stallman just pointed out that Windows users probably won't understand that chant," Rogoff says, his voice distorted by the the bullhorn. Richard Stallman Braved a Winter Storm Last Night to March Against DRM [Jon Christian/Motherboard] Scenes From Anti-DRM Protest Outside W3C [Parker Higgins/EFF] Rogue archivist Carl Malamud writes, "Readers may recall a long-simmering dispute over the use of common abbreviations required in citations, a technical standard known as the Uniform System of Citation. One explanation of that standard is a manual every law student knows, The Bluebook, long published by the Harvard Law Review Association in cooperation with 3 other law schools." In 2014, a law professor in Japan wrote about 5 years of frustration trying to gain the blessings of the Harvard Law Review Association to use those abbreviations in open source software. Since then, I've been working with Chris Sprigman of NYU on an open implementation of that standard. The Blue Wars got even more intense this Christmas eve with an urgent communication from the Association's law firm, and then last month hundreds of law students from Harvard, Yale, NYU, and Stanford wrote petitions to the Blue People urging them for them to welcome free and open. That open implementation, a book we call Baby Blue's Manual of Legal Citation, is now online and has been extensively examined and revised. Yesterday, I submitted a detailed account of the Blue Wars to the Harvard Law Record, the student newspaper of Harvard Law School. My hope is that peace is at hand and we'll all be able to work together and gather in a big tent for the First Global Citation Congress. It is time for peace. I'm especially grateful to Mr. Michael Zuckerman, the new President of the Harvard Law Review Association for his patience and civility in our discussions over the last few weeks. He's a good guy and I appreciate the time he's spent going over their concerns. We didn't make all the changes they suggested, but we made many, and I look forward to working with him in the future as we explore the future of citation. Nixon aide/Watergate jailbird John Ehrlichman confessed to Dan Baum that Richard Nixon started the War on Drugs because "We knew we couldn't make it illegal to be either against the war or black, but by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities." Baum uses the quote to kick off a long, provocative, informative piece about how to end the war on drugs (ideally, he says, by legalizing everything and selling it in state-run dope stores that could adjust prices dynamically to make it too cheap to sustain a black market, but expensive enough to deter overindulgence), and what realpolitik obstacles stand in the way of a lasting peace in our time. If it is now time to start thinking creatively about legalization, we'd be wise to remember that, like carefully laid military plans, detailed drug-liberalization strategies probably won't survive their first contact with reality. "People are thinking about the utopian endgame, but the transition will be unpredictable," says Sterling, of the Criminal Justice Policy Foundation. "Whatever system of regulation gets set up, there will be people who exploit the edges. But that's true for speeding, for alcohol, for guns." Without a state-run monopoly, there will be more than one type of legal, regulated drug market, he says, and the markets won't solve every conceivable problem. "Nobody thinks our alcohol system is a complete failure because there are after-hours sales, or because people occasionally buy alcohol for minors." Legalizing, and then regulating, drug markets will likely be messy, at least in the short term. Still, in a technocratic, capitalist, and fundamentally free society like the United States, education, counseling, treatment, distribution, regulation, pricing, and taxation all seem to better fit our national skill set than the suppression of immense black markets and the violence and corruption that come with it. Legalize It All [Dan Baum/Harpers] (Image: Elvis Presley meeting Richard Nixon. On December 21, 1970, at his own request, Presley met then-President Richard Nixon in the Oval Office of The White House. Elvis is on the right. Waggishly, this picture is said to be 'of the two greatest recording artists of the 20th century'. The Nixon Library & Birthplace sells a number of souvenir items with this photo and the caption, "The President & the King." ) A signage of Tencent is seen at its headquarters in Shenzhen city, South China's Guangdong province, March 29, 2013. [Photo/IC] Market-driven firms surpass State-owned enterprises in worth The value of China's top 100 brands surged 13 percent to $525.6 billion last year despite the country's economic slowdown, an annual survey released on Monday showed. And, for the first time ever, market-driven brands that are owned by entrepreneurial companies contributed more than half, or some 51 percent, of the value of the top 100, surpassing the State-owned enterprises, the survey known as the BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Chinese Brands said. The 2016 edition of the survey was released in Beijing by the New York-based research firm Millward Brown, which owns BrandZ, and the communications group WPP Plc. It said the result showed evidence of China's continuing transition to a market economy. "The robust increase in brand value reflects the continued optimism of Chinese consumers, while demonstrating how resilient strong brands are in times of economic turbulence," said Doreen Wang, global head of BrandZ. Personal care and jewelry were the fastest-growing categories in terms of brand value, followed by real estate, insurance, airlines and travel agencies, the survey revealed. This is evidence that consumers are still spending on nonessentials, luxuries and big-ticket items, Wang said. They are also spending more on products relating to personal care and health, she added. According to the survey, Tencent remains China's most valuable brand, growing its value 24 percent to $82.1 billion, followed by China Mobile at $57.2 billion and Alibaba at $47.6 billion. The highest new entrants were telecoms brand Huawei, ranking seventh with a brand value of $18.5 billion and online retailer JD.com Inc that ranked 15th with a value of $9.4 billion. Huawei has a strong worldwide presence and its smartphone business has been a powerful growth engine while JD, a challenger to Alibaba Group Holding Ltd, has benefited from the expansion of its mobile offering, the worldwide extension of its e-commerce platforms and partnerships with premium international brands. "China is the most dynamic market in the world in terms of mobile use, and companies that intend to build their brands there should not underestimate the speed of the digitalization and mobilization wave," said Wang. This year has witnessed a rapid expansion in Chinese companies' overseas takeover. But experts have cautioned that Chinese acquirers can't assume that they can replicate their domestic success formula overseas. "Just because you are very successful in China doesn't mean that you can translate those successes factors into activities in the rest of the world," Hans-Paul Burkner, global chairman of Boston Consulting Group, told China Daily. Burkner was reacting to latest figures from the United States research firm Dealogic that showed Chinese companies have agreed $102 billion in foreign deals so far this year, which is already level with the record $106 billion signed last year. Recent highest-profile examples include State-owned China National Chemical Corp offering $43 billion for the Swiss company Syngenta AG, a huge global supplier of pesticides and seeds, and a $13 billion cash approach for Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc, by Anbang Insurance Group Co. But despite the mushrooming activity, Burknerwhose global management consulting firm has offices in 46 countriescautioned, "the world is not 'flat'. It's very different and diverse". Burkner joined a host of global CEOs at the China Development Forum in Beijing over the weekend. "I'm sure some Chinese companies will learn this the hard way, but they will also become internationally minded and appreciate the differences, and prepare themselves better." Expansion overseas by some of China's largest corporates has hit a few bumps along the way. In the latest example earlier this month, the US government imposed restrictions on ZTE Corp that made it difficult for the Chinese telecom equipment and smartphone maker to acquire US components, by requiring its suppliers to apply for an export license before selling ZTE any US-made equipment or parts. In January, Chinese property giant Dalian Wanda Group Co was also forced to reassess its plans for a historic skyscraper in Madrid, amid a dispute with local authorities over its redevelopment plans. Burkner said the biggest challenge for Chinese companies is that they are going from a "protected" world to a "unprotected" world, and that the factors that contributed to their domestic success do not exist in overseas markets. For example, robust demand in the past three decades meant that they were able to grow fast even without a clear strategy or customer-centric approaches, he said. Compromised environmental and labor regulations also meant they had limited experience in dealing with unions and environmentalists overseas. Chinese companies often find themselves in a wonderland overseas, he said, where there is slow market growth, saturated brands, decentralized power structure, and governments' anti-dumping, anti-monopoly investigations. "You need to be open. That's said, I believed Chinese companies could learn faster than their predecessors because they can learn from their mistakes. Failures are the best teachers," he said. Zhao Linghuan, CEO of private-equity firm Hony Capital, however, said companies should also be "very careful when applying past experience". Also at the forum, he said Hony has been particularly active in deals that integrate overseas brands into the Chinese market. "Sometimes the more (lessons) you apply, the heavier the loss. "The rapid advancement in technology means many past experience has become irrelevant for now," he said. Hony is involved in the ongoing $3.3 billion bid by Zoomlion Heavy Industry Science & Technology Co for US crane-maker Terex Corp. If it succeeds, the merged company could become the world's second-largest equipment engineering corporation. Hony also raised eyebrows when its parent company, Legend Holdings Corp, took a stake in WeWork, a platform for booking shared workspace in the US. 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. People walk pass a Sheraton Hotel in downtown Brooklyn in New York City. Sheraton is a member of Starwood hotel chain.[Photo/Agencies] Marriott International Inc won over Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc with a sweetened bid worth more than $14.4 billion, just days after a Chinese insurance company appeared to steal it away from the hotel chain with a more lucrative offer. Starwood, which owns Sheraton, Westin and St. Regis, over the weekend became the first US hotel operator to gain access to Cuba, a day before the arrival of President Barack Obama. It is the first visit to Cuba by a sitting president in almost 90 years as relations between the two nations thaw. The revised deal would give Starwood shareholders $21 in cash and 0.80 shares of Marriott Class A stock for each Starwood share. Starwood shareholders are also expected to get Interval Leisure Group stock valued at $5.83 per share. Taken together, that would value Starwood stock at $85.36 per share, or about $14.41 billion. Just days ago, Anbang Insurance Group Co put up an offer of $83.83 for each Starwood share, or approximately $14.15 billion. Starwood stockholders would have received $78 in cash for each share they own plus $5.67 in stock for a spinoff of a vacation business. Anbang made a dramatic entry into the United States two years ago when it bought the famed Waldorf Astoria in New York for almost $2 billion. Days before it contested Marriott for control of Starwood, it laid down $6.5 billion to acquire Strategic Hotels & Resorts Inc, which owns several high-end properties, including the JW Marriott Essex House in New York and Hotel Del Coronado in San Diego. Starwood, based in Stamford, Connecticut, offered a unique opportunity for Marriott because the hotel chain put itself up for sale. Marriott, based in Bethesda, Maryland, said one of the key assets Starwood brought to the deal was its much loved loyalty programStarwood Preferred Guest. Marriott said on Monday that it is confident that it can achieve $250 million in annual cost savings within two years of closing on the Starwood transaction. That's $50 million more than in estimated in November, when it gave its initial offer to Starwood. Marriott and Starwood still anticipate the deal closing around midyear, assuming it receives the necessary approvals. Shares of Starwood gained $2.43, or 3 percent, to $83 before the market open. Sydney Opera House in Sydney Nov 11, 2014. [Photo/IC] CANBERRA - Boao Forum for Asia is expected to help Australia make vital connections in Asia so that Australia can participate in its growth, Australian Minister for Tourism and International Education Richard Colbeck told Xinhua on Sunday. Colbeck will attend this year's Boao Forum as the representative of the Australian government. He views the forum as playing "a prominent and unique role to enable people from government, business and academia from Asia and beyond to discuss issues that matter to Asia." "This year's theme, Asia's New Future: New Dynamics and New Vision, is of great interest to Australia and will provide a perfect opportunity to showcase our National Innovation and Science Agenda (NISA) and the exciting investment opportunities," he said. He said Australian businesses, universities and research organisations are among the best in the world. Together with the country's regional free trade agreements, they have the potential to drive growth and prosperity throughout the region. From 2014 to 2015, Australia has successfully signed free trade agreements with its major Asian trading partners of South Korea, Japan and China. Colbeck is expected to promote and strengthen Australia's trade and investment links with China and the region at the forum. "I will highlight the opportunities presented by the free trade agreements that Australia has recently established with China, Japan and South Korea." "These free trade agreements have spurred demand for Australia's goods and services, and generated new business and investment opportunities which will drive economic growth and prosperity." Colbeck holds that there are five key "super-growth" sectors that will provide economic growth for Australia over the next decade and the Asian region will be a key market for these sectors. They are food, gas, wealth management, tourism and international education. As the global population grows by 60 million per year, demand for food will increase. Meanwhile, with Asia's growing middle classes set to boost their protein intake, this presents a great opportunity for Australian agribusiness. Rapid growth in emerging economies has led to air pollution in the major cities in the northern hemisphere which will underwrite demand for Australian gas, a cleaner and greener alternative. Wealth management is also a key growth sector as three billion people in Asia will join the middle class by 2030 and by 2050 the region will account for more than half the world's financial assets. BEIJING, March 21 (Xinhua) -- China and Nepal on Monday signed a memorandum of understanding on a feasibility study on a free trade area (FTA), the Ministry of Commerce (MOC) said on Monday. Minister of Commerce Gao Hucheng and his Nepalese counterpart signed the memorandum, according to an MOC statement on its website. The two countries will set up a working group to research areas of common concern, according to the statement. Ties between China and Nepal have seen sound development in recent years. China has become Nepal's second-biggest trading partner and its major source of foreign direct investment. China's non-financial outbound direct investment in Nepal was $32.03 million in 2015. Bilateral trade hit $866 million. The FTA will further boost bilateral trade and investment, the statement said. Qiao Di, a 24-year-old insurance manager. [Photo provided to China Daily] I entered the insurance industry by accident, really. After graduating from Zhejiang University in Hangzhou, with a bachelor's degree in marketing, I went to the Chinese University of Hong Kong to study for a master's. Then I worked at an education startup for a year. I gained some really valuable experience from everything I didmarketing to customer services to product designbut working 15 hours a day was too tiring. While I was thinking about pursuing a doctorate two years ago, I got to know a former Zhejiang University student who was working as an agent at an insurance company in Hong Kong. I was particularly interested in learning how the market works in Hong Kong, so I thought it might be a good idea to enter the industry. It's a well-paid job with flexible working hours, but still I had a hard time at the beginning. As a graduate from the mainland, I did not have wide range of contacts and had to start everything from zero. I spent a lot of my leisure time reading books and conducting research, seeking guidance and communicating with experienced colleagues. Now I have been promoted to a managerial role after just two years on the job. In the next a couple of years, I hope to bring my experience and knowledge back to the mainland, and will probably start a company. Although the mainland insurance market seems less developed compared with Hong Kong, it has promising prospects and more space to develop. A farmer harvests rice in the village of Gangzhong in China's eastern Zhejiang province. China has managed to grow itself out of grain shortages but it is facing fresh challenges, including rural workers moving to better paying jobs in cities. [Photo/Agencies] As China begins its 13th Five Year Plan (2016-20) one of the key components will be agriculture and food security. For decades, agriculture has occupied the minds of successive leaders as the country moves from its agricultural base to an economy driven by innovation and technology. China today produces a quarter of the world's food and manages to feed a fifth of the world's population on just 10 percent of the planet's agricultural land. But the question for China is: What now? After several years of good harvests, China has managed to grow itself out of grain shortages but structural problems still remain. The new Five Year Plan aims to address some of the challenges that agriculture faces such as mechanization, supply chains, food processing and farming models. Some of these issues will be addressed at the upcoming Boao Forum for Asia in a panel discussion on the future of agriculture. The forum will be held at Boao, in South China's Hainan province, from March 22 to 25. As it stands, China still relies on small family holdings to produce much of its food. This traditional model faces fresh challenges as more and more rural workers move to better paying jobs in the cities. One of the questions that will be put to the forum is: Will the Chinese family-based farming model continue to work, or should the government allow land acquisitions (with the right to use land, not the ownership) and give way to big-farm agriculture as in the United States? Or should it adopt the models used in Japan and South Korea which are more reliant on technology and smaller landholdings? Doug Ferguson, partner-in-charge of KPMG's Asia and international markets group, said China is "essentially self-sufficient in rice, grain, pork and, to a certain extent, seafood". "It does, however, need to import beef, dairy products and branded food products such as powdered milk," he told China Daily Asia Weekly. Ferguson said safety issues in some domestic processed foods have left consumers seeking imported products. "That is why Chinese investors are looking at Australia's agricultural sector, especially dairy. "They are buying into dairy for premium safety products products that are processed and packaged in Australia and exported from Australia." The file photo shows the Shanghai Tower, China's tallest skyscraper, in Lujiazui, the financial and trade zone in Shanghai. [Photo/IC] Shanghai government announced its decision on Monday to lower social security premium contributed by companies by 2.5 percentage points, making it the seventh region to launch similar easing measures. Such decision is expected to lighten corporate burden by about 13.5 billion yuan ($2.1 billion) this year, according to a government announcement. The city will slash the premium rate contributed by companies for mandatory pension by 1 percentage point, medical also by 1 percentage point and unemployment insurance by 0.5 percentage point, while maintaining the same level of social security benefits. Five provinces, Guangdong, Yunnan, Gansu, Guizhou and Jiangsu, together with Tianjin municipality, have reduced the social security premium on companies' behalf, in a drive to boost real economy. Guangdong province cut the premium rate for unemployment, medical and working injury insurances, saving corporate expenditures by 35 billion yuan ($5.39 billion). According to a government guidance released last month, Tianjin will lower companies' contribution to social insurances by a combined 1.43 percentage points. Chongqing municipality and Qinghai province are planning to be the next two, reported the 21th Century Business Herald, as the regions have brought up such cuts on agenda as part of the supply-side reform. Shanxi, Hunan and Shandong provinces are studying to combine the medical insurance and maternity insurance, and will likely launch the guideline later this year, said the newspaper. Maternity and medical insurance premium currently total 8 to 10 percent of monthly salary, and by combining the two, the premium will be lowered modestly, Qi Chuanjun, deputy secretary general of the center for international social security studies at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, told the newspaper. The move comes in response to a general cry for easing corporate burden by government officials and scholars, as Chinese employers are reportedly burdened with one of the highest social security obligation in the world. Total payment, including pension fund, medical insurance and housing provident fund, amounts to 44.1 percent of an employee's monthly salary. Oban, a port city in Scotland, Sept 11, 2014. [Photo/IC] Chinese companies eye big prospects in infrastructure China's involvement in Scotland's infrastructure projects will help improve its ground commuting system and is expected to spur local employment, industry experts said on Tuesday. Scotland signed a memorandum of understanding on Monday with Chinese investment group SinoFortone Group and China Railway No 3 Engineering Group, the largest construction company in the world, to bring about infrastructure projects with a potential value of 10 billion pounds ($14.3 billion). "With high-speed trains traveling at a speed of over 300 kilometers per hour, it certainly will help Scotland change the situation in which its ground commuting systems long been dominated by automobiles. And related projects can generate a large number of jobs and construction materials supplying businesses," said Luo Renjian, a researcher at the Institute of Transport Research at the National Development and Reform Commission. Luo said that even though China is a latecomer to the field in comparison with its German and French rivals, its railway infrastructure building ability and rail equipment companies have thrived thanks to cost advantages, reasonable delivery times and flexible financing models. The latest agreement will pave the way for significant investment in fields such as clean energy, transport and affordable housing, analysts said. At the agreement signing ceremony, Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon was joined at Bute House by Peter Zhang, the managing director of SinoFortone Group, Sir Richard Heygate, senior adviser for China Railway No 3 Engineering Group, and Chinese Consul General Pan Xinchun. "We have been cooperating and engaging with China since 2007 and I further progressed Scotland's business credentials during my trip last year, and this Memorandum of Understanding will strengthen our economic links with China in a number of areas," Sturgeon said. "We have high hopes for Scotland's economy and it is in a strong position, but if we can drive further growth by looking beyond our shores and building relationships with firms across the world then we will seek to make that happen." "We are delighted to act as a bridge between Chinese infrastructure expertise and finance with Scotland, to provide a real example of the benefits of the Belt and Road Initiative in action," Zhang said. Consul General Pan congratulated all sides on this agreement and said this project will benefit not only Chinese enterprises but also the Scottish people. Sir Brian Souter from Souter Investments said SinoFortone's investment will be good for Scotland's economy, create jobs and enable growth. Models pose for a photo with the newly introduced version of the GA6, a homegrown car produced by Guangzhou-based GAC Motor, on Monday in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province. [Photo/China Daily by Qiu Quanlin] Company wants to tap into growing global demand for Chinese automobile brands GAC Motor, a division of the Hong Kong- and Shanghai-listed Guangzhou Automobile Group Co, plans to build car-assembling facilities overseas to meet the increased demand for Chinese homegrown vehicles, a senior company executive said. "We are conducting research on the sites of the overseas factories in Russia and Iran, to prepare for booming demand for Chinese vehicles," said Wu Song, general manager of GAC Motor. Overseas sales of its cars, under the Trumpchi brand, grew 38 percent year-on-year in 2015, with the name becoming especially well known in the Middle East, according to a company source. In Kuwait, a market known as a playground for international luxury car brands, GAC Motor has grabbed a 40 percent share of Chinese homegrown vehicles, according to the company source. Founded in 2008 in Guangzhou, capital of Guangdong province, GAC Motor focuses on the production and sale of Chinese homegrown vehicles, and has built a sales network covering 18 countries and regions. "As a young Chinese home-developed carmaker, we are growing, based on the principles of making quality and safe cars, rapidly both in the domestic and overseas markets," said Wu. Wu was speaking after the Guangzhou-headquartered company unveiled its brand new 1.5T versions of its star SUV, the GS4, and the GA6 sedan on Monday. Both the GS4 and GA6, which have been installed with new self-developed power engine technologies, with the peak torque of 235nm, will soon be sold in overseas markets, according to Wu. The output of GAC Motor's domestic factories was already at full capacity last year, driven by a sharp increase in sales. "We are expanding domestic production capacity to meeting the increased market demand," said Wu. In the first two months of this year, GAC Motor sold about 55,000 Trumpchi-branded cars, four times the amount in the same period in 2015, according to the company source. According to Wu, the second phase of the company's assembling facilities will be put into operation by June, bringing its total annual production capacity to around 400,000 vehicles. GAC Motor's plan to build overseas facilities follows the overseas market expansion of other Chinese carmakers in recent years. Shanghai's SAIC Motor Corp, for instance, has already announced the opening of its first-ever Middle East head office in Dubai, amid soaring demand for affordable luxury cars in the Gulf region. "Chinese carmakers are entering a quick development period, with the international market becoming an important area for sustainable business growth," said Wu, adding that the company will export more vehicles to the Middle East. Sales of Chinese homegrown vehicles grew by 15 percent year-on-year in 2015, an increase higher than jointly invested international brands, according to the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. Growth of technology brands has boosted strength of market-driven brands of the top 100 Chinese brands, said the 2015 BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Chinese Brands annual survey. According to the study, published by global communications group WPP and global brand agency Millward Brown on March 21, technology brands account for 27 percent of the total value, up from 16 percent just two years ago. Three tech brands, Tencent, whose brand value rose to $82,107 million in 2015, Baidu, whose value rose to $26,849 million, and Huawei, with brand value at $18,501 million, are among the top 10 most-valuable Chinese Brands of 2015. Let's take a look at the top 10 brands listed in the survey. No. 10 China Life, an insurance company The United States Department of Commerce is expected this week to lift export curbs it imposed on Chinese telecom company ZTE Corp for alleged violations of a US trade restriction. "The relief would be temporary in nature and would be maintained only if ZTE is abiding by its commitments to the US government," Reuters reported on Monday, citing a senior official at the agency. The details of the commitments are expected to be published this week in the US Federal Register. The restrictions imposed earlier this month made it difficult for ZTE to acquire US components by requiring its suppliers to apply for an export license before shipping any US-made equipment or parts to ZTE. The department had said the license applications generally would be denied. "We are aware of the latest media reports. ZTE has been actively cooperating with relevant US departments and has had constructive discussions over the past two weeks," said a ZTE statement e-mailed to China Daily. "ZTE hopes to make positive progress through open dialogue to ensure we keep our promises and commitments to our employees, customers and business partners," it added. According to ZTE, as a responsible business, the company strives to ensure all operational activities adhere to international trade practices and the laws and regulations of host countries, and it will "keep communicating with relevant parties to resolve the issue as soon as possible". Minister of Commerce Gao Hucheng said last week that China is "greatly dissatisfied" with the US decision to ban the Shenzhen, Guangdong-based company from buying parts from US suppliers. "I hope the US could handle the issue with discretion to avoid harming the stable, healthy development of Sino-US trade ties," said Gao. As of Monday, ZTE stocks had remained suspended in the Shenzhen and Hong Kong bourses for two weeks. According to US research consulting firm International Data Corp, ZTE is currently the No 4 smartphone vendor in the US, with a 7 percent market share, behind Apple Inc, Samsung Electronics Co and LG Electronics Inc. It sells handset devices to three of the four largest US mobile carriersAT&T Inc, T-Mobile US and Sprint Corp. The company is also working on promoting Pre5G, an intermediate step between the current 4G and 5G technology, and making innovative use of Massive MIMO (multiple input multiple output) technology to enhance wireless spectrum efficiency, boost network capacity and allow faster speeds. "When people are considering fully accomplishing the standardization of 5G around 2018 and 2019 and implementing large-scale commercialization by 2020, ZTE is keen on providing a certain scale of Pre5G services to its customers," said Xiang Jiying, chief technology officer of ZTE's wireless products division. The company announced last month that it will market Pre5G technology in at least 10 countries and regions across Asia and Europe in 2016. Members of the media and invited guests take a look at the new iPhone SE during an event at Apple headquarters in Cupertino, California, on March 21, 2016. [Photo/IC] SAN FRANCISCO - Apple Inc on Monday unveiled a new smartphone and a new tablet both having smaller screens in its efforts to retool its product lineup of iPhones and iPads. At an event held at its headquarters in Cupertino, California, the Silicon Valley technology company also announced a series of upgrades to its hardware products, including Apple TV and Apple Watch, and software services, such as iOS. The new phone, named iPhone SE, has a 4-inch screen, same as the iPhone 5 series initially released in 2012 and smaller than the iPhone 6 series rolled out about a year ago. iPhone 6 and 6s have 4.7-inch screens, and iPhone 6 Plus and 6s Plus have 5.5-inch screens. Greg Joswiak, head of iPhone marketing, explained that Apple has witnessed that its 4-inch devices still have a huge market, and therefore has packed into iPhone SE functionalities as powerful as those in iPhone 6s. The new tablet computer, a new iPad Pro, is a 9.7-inch device, down from the 12.9 inches introduced at the autumn product launch last year. Apple has positioned iPad Pro as a replacement for laptop computers. However, with the Apple product's high price tag, the strategy aims mostly at professionals. Compared with previous spring product launches, the event on Monday lasted about an hour and seemed to be less of a "sensation," both on the scene among Apple officials and out at large among industry analysts. Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook took the chance to talk about his company's dispute with the US government. "We believe strongly that we have a responsibility to help you protect your data and protect your privacy," he said. He was referring to the US Department of Justice's request for Apple to help hack into an iPhone 5c used by Syed Farook, who together with his wife Tashfeen Malik shot dead 14 people on Dec 2 last year in San Bernardino, California, before being killed by police. A federal judge sided with the government on Feb 16 and ordered Apple to provide specialized software to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) for investigation into the San Bernardino carnage. Apple has refused. Cook has been vocal defending the company's position. The two sides are scheduled to appear at a hearing on March 22, a day after the spring launch, before Judge Sheri Pym, of US District Court, Central California. URUMQI - China and Germany are planning a huge trade and logistics park in Urumqi, capital of Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur autonomous region. Urumqi Economic and Technological Development Zone (UETDZ) and the port of Duisburg will build a trade and logistics park close to Urumqi West Railway Station with a core area of 2.2 square kilometers, extending to a potential full area of 120 square kilometers, according to the memorandum signed on Thursday. A newly established company, Xinjiang International Railway Port Limited Liability Company with a registered capital of 200 million yuan ($31 million), will be responsible for the operation of the park. The Port of Duisburg, considered the world's largest inland port, will hold 20 percent of the company. The UETDZ and associates will hold the remaining 80 percent stake. A weekly cargo train service will open in the first half of this year between Duisburg and Urumqi, according to the agreement. Cargo will then take only 12 days from Xinjiang to Germany, rather than the current 45 days by sea, said UETDZ official Liu Shaohua. The park, close to Urumqi high-speed rail terminal and airport, will integrate railways, highways and air transit, said Chen Gang, head of the UETDZ committee. The annual rail cargo is expected to reach 20 million tons in 2020 and 50 million tons in the long term, said Chen. The plan will make Xinjiang part of the European logistical network and bring Sino-Europe trade to a new level. China's trade with the EU dropped by 7.2 percent in 2015, but Duisburg expects extensive cooperation with Xinjiang in trade and logistics, said Erich Staake, chairman of Duisport Group. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (R) meets with International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Christine Lagarde, who is here to attend the China Development Forum, in Beijing, capital of China, March 21, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] China is opposed to any "currency war", which would be detrimental to the smooth recovery of the world economy, said Premier Li Keqiang while meeting with Christine Lagarde, managing director of the International Monetary Fund, in Beijing on Monday. China will not use yuan depreciation to boost exports, since this would affect the country's efforts to upgrade its economic structure, he said. The premier said China will push forward reform of the yuan's exchange rate mechanism and ensure the yuan's exchange rate floats within a reasonable band and is kept largely stable at an appropriate and balanced level, according to an official statement. China's debt ratio especially that of the central government is quite low, while the country's savings rate is high, he said. Moreover, Chinese banks' capital adequacy ratio, which measures their capability to tackle risk exposure, is kept at a high level, meaning that China is capable of preventing any regional or systemic financial risks from materializing, Li said. He urged the major economies to improve macroeconomic policy coordination to anchor the global economic and financial system. China is willing to promote dialogue with major international economic and financial institutions, including the IMF, to send messages that help boost market morale and promote economic and financial stability, Li said. Lagarde, who was in Beijing to attend the China Development Forum, which concluded on Monday, said China's recent communication with the international community on such issues as the yuan's exchange rate is effective and helps improve market confidence. If, like me, you are an avid follower of international relationships, then things seem to have suddenly gotten a bit complicated, at least in the West. China is focusing strongly on its 13th Five-Year Plan (2016-20), with an enthusiastic welcome from the head of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in Paris and plaudits from a number of analysts; however, all of a sudden Washington, London and the European Union are all in turmoil, for different reasons. So here's my highly personal take on what's going on, and what may happen - it's called sticking your neck out. Back in May last year, David Cameron's Conservative Party won a surprise victory over the opposition Labour Party, which has collapsed in complete disarray, and continues to be an ineffective opposition. A kind of national stability followed as Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne continued his austerity policy, bringing the country's finances back up to speed. A key pillar of the government's strategy rapidly became clear - a strengthened relationship with a China that was growing ever-stronger on the world financial and diplomatic stages was, and continues to be, central to London's policy. Back in Whitehall, things suddenly turned a bit nasty and a bit complicated. The Conservative Party has long been divided over the issue of EU membership. Cameron, as part of his manifesto ahead of last May's general election, pledged a referendum on continued UK membership, as a way of getting the so-called Eurosceptics on board. He probably wishes now he'd been a little less specific in his promise - the referendum is due in under 100 days and it's tearing the party apart. In Europe itself, the three crises faced by the 28-strong group of nations don't get any better. There has been a slightly improbable deal with non-member Turkey, in which Turkey agreed to take back migrants from Syria, Iraq and other places in return for cash to deal with the logistics, and a promise that Syrians would be accepted from Turkey after appropriate screening. Plus negotiations for Turkey to join the EU would be accelerated. I doubt it will work. And in the meantime the EU's open-borders policy in mainland Europe is under threat from the migrant issue and recent terror attacks in Paris. And by the way, the Greek debt crisis continues. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, a man described by some commentators as a misogynistic, racist blowhard looks set to win the US Republican presidential nomination. Blimey, as my fellow London cockneys would say. So here's where I stick my neck out. I confidently forecast that eventually common sense will prevail in the UK, and the referendum will be won by those wanting to stay. In the US, reason will prevail, and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton will win the presidential campaign for the Democrats, becoming the first woman in the White House. As I said, the above is purely a personal prediction, based on 50 years of watching the parade. Time will tell. Contact the writer at chris@mail.chinadailyuk.com Chinese President Xi Jinping (R) holds talks with visiting German President Joachim Gauck at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, on March 21, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] German President Joachim Gauck's visit to China will pave the way for greater cooperation and deeper links between two of the world's major economies, according to China's ambassador to the European nation. The visit by Gauck, who arrived in Beijing on Sunday, also showcases the high level of ties between the two countries, Shi Mingde said. Sino-German ties will "scale new heights" this year, as German Chancellor Angela Merkel is expected to visit China twice, Shi told China Daily in an interview. It is the first visit to China by a German president since 2010 and is in response to the visit to Germany by President Xi Jinping in 2014, the ambassador said. The first priority for the visit is to boost development of the two-way relationship and present Gauck with "a good opportunity to gain a better understanding of China from various angles", Shi said. Xi met with Gauck on Monday afternoon in Beijing. Gauck, who is scheduled to leave on Thursday, will visit Xi'an, the capital of Shaanxi province, where he will get a broader insight into China's history, Shi said. He will also visit Shanghai, where he will see "modern China and what has been achieved through reform and opening-up". Another highlight of the visit is the attendance by leaders from both countries at the opening ceremony of the China-Germany Year of Student and Youth Exchanges, Shi said. There are 300 high schools in Germany that teach Chinese and about 32,000 Chinese students are studying in the country, the largest single group of international students in Germany. Shi said, "The two countries have achieved progress on cultural and artistic cooperation, and this visit will see more cooperation programs settled." Merkel is expected to visit China later this year for the annual government consultations between the two countries and will also attend the G20 leaders' summit in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province, in September, Shi said. As Germany will host the G20 summit next year, Shi said leaders of both countries have agreed to enhance coordination to ensure the continuity of the agenda in between the two summits. Beijing and Berlin share ideas on a range of international and economic issues and want to boost economic growth through innovation and structural reform, Shi said. Coordination across a number of sectors has been, and will continue to be, achieved, he said, adding that China can learn much from Germany's industrialization and progress. The two countries have reached consensus on the digital economy, green development, energy, electronic vehicles and advanced manufacturing sectors, and progress is being made, Shi said. zhangyunbi@chinadaily.com.cn Signs adorn a road in Sanya, Hainan province, congratulating the city on hosting the first Lancang-Mekong Cooperation Leaders' Meeting, which takes place on Wednesday. Premier Li Keqiang will attend a welcoming dinner on Tuesday before meeting with leaders from Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam the following day. During the gathering, Li will hold bilateral meetings with leaders from the five countries. He will also meet the media together with Thai Premier Prayut Chan-o-cha. Li is also expected to elaborate on the development of the Lancang-Mekong Cooperation framework and announce a series of proposals and measures to keep it on track. Key areas of cooperation include improving connectivity, industrial capacity cooperation and agriculture, deepening cross-border economic cooperation, making proper use of water resources and reducing poverty. Chen Fengying, director of the World Economy Department at the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations, said, "I believe this upcoming meeting is a very good start for regional cooperation in the Lancang-Mekong region. "I place the highest priority on regional connectivity, because this is how the Lancang-Mekong mechanism operates rapidly and effectively." Chen said this framework operates effectively, compared with other regional ones, because the areas for cooperation are now much broader, while previous frameworks focused on water resources and agriculture. The Mekong River is known as the Lancang in China. Nyunt Maung Shein, chairman of the Myanmar Institute of Strategic and International Studies, said that under current cooperation programs countries on the upper reaches of the river such as China, Myanmar, Thailand and Laos have worked together on irrigation along the waterway. Zhao Yanrong contributed to this story. zhangyue@chinadaily.com.cn Premier Li Keqiang and Nepal's Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli (second left) witness the signing of documents after their meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on Monday. Feng Yongbin / China Daily China will start a feasibility study on free trade with Nepal and consider extending a rail link to its mountainous neighbor, Premier Li Keqiang said on Monday. Li and Nepal's Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli witnessed the signing of an agreement to start the free trade study and nine other documents after their meeting at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing. The agreements include a concessional loan for a new airport in Pokhara, Nepal, a tourist destination. The two premiers also discussed establishing cross-border economic cooperation zones, and agreed that China will facilitate cross-border transit links to landlocked Nepal. Li suggested expanding cooperation on reconstruction after the devastating earthquake that hit Nepal in April last year. Oli told Li that his country upholds the one-China policy and will not allow any forces to conduct activities in Nepal that hamper China's interests. He also thanked China for its prompt assistance after the earthquake, adding that Nepal will take part in China's Belt and Road Initiative and expects to benefit from China's development. President Xi Jinping told Oli during their meeting later on Monday that China expects to forge a "community of common destiny" with Nepal. "The stability and development of Nepal is in line with the common interests of China and India," Xi said, adding that Beijing is willing to discuss trilateral cooperation with Katmandu and New Delhi. He also said China expects to carry out long-term energy cooperation with Nepal and is willing to give necessary policy support. Hou Yanqi, deputy director of the Department of Asian Affairs at the Foreign Ministry, said, "This is a historic visit." The visit is the first to China by a government head from Nepal in seven years. In September, the Himalayan nation adopted its first post-monarchy constitution after years of conflict. Hou also said China was already planning to extend a rail line from Xigaze in the Tibet autonomous region to Gyirong on the border with Nepal. "I believe that in the long term China and Nepal will be linked by rail," she said. Mahesh Kumar Maskey, Nepal's ambassador to China, said the Belt and Road Initiative will help to realize connectivity across the Trans Himalaya Economic Corridor, adding that Nepal is eager to be linked to China by rail. He said Nepal's economy would benefit greatly if the country could attract one-tenth of the 23 million tourists expected to visit Tibet this year. During Oli's weeklong trip to China - his first since he took office in October - he will also attend the Boao Forum in Hainan province and visit Xi'an in Shaanxi province and Chengdu in Sichuan province. lixiaokun@chinadaily.com.cn Chinese medical students get opportunity for clinical training at Ivy League school The president of the prestigious Yale University in the United States has led a delegation to visit Peking University where he gave a speech to students on Monday. The move was part of a bid to further the close collaboration between the two institutions. Professor Peter Salovey said Yale signed a memorandum of understanding with its famous old Chinese counterpart that will allow medical students from Peking University to participate in clinical training at Yale. Salovey said during his speech that Yale was proud to have signed the agreement. Lin Jianhua, president of Peking University, said the arrival of the delegation from Yale was the highlight of the ongoing Peking University-Yale University Exchange Week, which kicked off on March 14. The exchange week included performances by a singing group of Yale students, academic exchanges in psychology and medicine, and in-depth discussions about future collaborations. "We are confident that this and future PKU-Yale Exchange Weeks will bring our two universities even closer together by expanding our academic and research cooperation and by encouraging cultural exchanges," Lin said. In recent years, top Chinese universities have worked closely with prestigious universities in the US on such things as disciplinary building, teaching, scientific research, and exchanges of students and culture. Lin said collaboration between the two universities started in 1984 and has covered many fields during the past three decades. Each year, undergraduate students from both universities attend summer schools at the other university. Collaboration has included the exchange of doctoral candidates in the field of history, and joint research in Chinese law and policy. Salovey, a renowned professor and scholar in psychology, delivered a speech to students on the theme of "Emotional Intelligence: is there anything to it?" In the speech, he elaborated on how emotional intelligence, a theory he and others described in 1990, has acted as a source of information and enriched people's lives. After the speech, Salovey answered questions from three Peking University students and said he was glad to see that the theory of Emotional Intelligence was well-received among Chinese scholars. Salovey got his PhD in psychology from Yale University in 1986 and has been working at the university on academic and administrative affairs since then. zhaoxinying@chinadaily.com.cn File photo shows the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) in Livingston, Louisiana, the United States. U.S. scientists said Thursday they have detected the existence of gravitational waves, which were predicted by Albert Einstein's theory of general relativity 100 years ago. [Photo/Xinhua] Ground infrastructure construction on China's gravitational wave research project, Tianqin, began on Sunday in Zhuhai, Guangdong province. At an estimated cost of 10-20 billion yuan ($1.5-3 billion), the project plans four steps during the coming two decades to launch three satellites into high Earth orbit and detect gravitational waves. The first step includes the construction of a 30,000-square-meter research building, a 10,000-sq-m ultraquiet cave laboratory and a 5,000-sq-m observation station on the Zhuhai campus of Guangzhou-based Sun Yat-Sen University. "We will take steps to raise funds for the program because Tianqin is such a big project planned over such long period of time," Li Miao, director of the university's Institute of Astronomy and Space Science, told Beijing Youth Daily. That report said the city government of Zhuhai will invest 300 million yuan in the project to get it going. "Given the overall investment scale, the project will seek various sources of funds for each of its different parts, including financing from local governments and private companies," Li said. On Feb 11, scientists at the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory, or Advanced LOGO, in the US confirmed they had directly detected gravitational waves for the first time. That captured the interest of scientists who were engaged in related research worldwide. A few days later, scientists at the Chinese Academy of Sciences announced that they would propose a space-based detection program by the end of this year that could be part of the European Space Agency's ELISA project. "We have been cooperating with the European Space Agency since 2009. It has been accumulating theoretical research on this subject for three decades," said Wu Yueliang, vice-president of the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. "In this sense, we have an advantage over other gravitational wave research projects in China. "It is good to have competing projects, because China now has too few such programs." Predicted by Albert Einstein 100 years ago, gravitational waves are tiny ripples in the fabric of space-time caused by violent astronomical events. Wu Ji, director of the National Space Science Center at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, was optimistic about funding for such speculative science during the 13th Five Year Plan (2016-20). "With the initial success of Advanced LOGO, I think Chinese decision-makers are likely to allocate more resources to gravitational wave research in the coming five years," he said. chengyingqi@chinadaily.com.cn A woman in traditional costume picks tea leaves at Pinghu plantation, March 21, 2016. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn] In a village characterized with She ethnic group, tea plantation helps villagers live a decent life and preserve their ethnic characteristics. Covering an area of more than 1,000 mu (667 hectares), Pinghu tree plantation in Houdun village, Ningde city, Southeast China's Fujian province, has seen its most teas sold to Beijing and EU countries, with an annual income of more than 10 million yuan ($1.5 million). Workers in the plantation are all She people, who are used to singing local songs when they pick tea leaves. The songs in their dialects have been listed as national intangible cultural heritages since 2006. With an average income of 12,000 yuan per capita, which is above the average income of farmers around the country in 2015, "our villagers prefer to develop our tea industry rather than work in urban areas, which contributes to our harmonious village, since the elders can be taken care of by their children, teenagers and much younger children be accompanied by their parents," said Lei Lanmei, secretary of Houdun village. Zhang Xinyan, a post-doctorate student born in the 1990s from Nankai University in Tianjin, works parttime as a sleep tester. She tries on a hotel in Beijing, Dec 13, 2013. [Photo/IC] BEIJING - Wu Jun has always been a light sleeper. But the part-time "sleep tester" has turned his sensitivity to light and noise, once a curse, into an opportunity to travel and make money. "Sleep is far more than just a bed. Hotel doors, windows and curtains are all important factors that influence sleep quality," said Wu, 37, who reviews hotels for Chinese travel website Qunar. The World Sleep Day was observed in China on Monday. According to a survey conducted last year by the China Sleep Research Society, 38.2 percent of urban adults have trouble sleeping, much higher than the world average of 27 percent. China's growing middle class is increasingly conscious about health and quality of life. For the country's upwardly mobile travelers, picking a hotel is no longer just about price. Wu, who is based in Shanghai, is among some 10,000 part-time sleep testers recruited by Qunar nationwide since 2010. The job requires testers to find hotels, stay for at least one night, and review them online by uploading photos and leaving comments about the quality of guest rooms, amenities and transportation. "I write about the brand of bed sheets, quilt materials, air conditioner noise and light sources," he said, adding that a bright digital clock beside his pillow is enough to keep him from falling asleep. "For an airport hotel or a hotel next to a busy street, double-pane windows are a must for keeping out noise, and curtains are also important to make the room dark as night during the daytime," he said. Wu has loved hotels ever since his parents took him on frequent trips as a boy. After graduating from Shanghai University of Finance and Economics as a public management major, he found a marketing job in a hotel. Beijing roast duck is served for German President Joachim Gauck during this visit to China. [Photo provided to China Daily] On the first night during his visit to China, German President Joachim Gauck tasted the famed local dish, Peking duck, along with other delicacies in a traditional Chinese courtyard. The restaurant Gauck visited on March 20 is located in Guijie, a popular food street in Beijing famed for midnight dining and spicy crayfish. The dinner for Gauck was composed of dishes such as fried lion's mane mushroom, sweet and sour ribs, and smoked sausage, reported Beijing Youth Daily on its public account on social networking platform WeChat. Crayfish was not served for reasons of etiquette. The 76-year-old and his entourage finished all the food with forks and knives rather than chopsticks. Gauck seemed to be happy with the meal, saying "tastes good" to the waitress. The dinner cost more than 200 yuan ($31) per person, an upper middle level of consumption for the street. In fact, before Gauck's visit, this restaurant had received other foreign leaders such as Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, former President of the Swiss Confederation Ueli Maurer, and Willem-Alexander, the King of the Netherlands. Unlike these heads of state, US Vice-President Joe Biden preferred more ordinary food. In a 2011 visit to China, Biden and his men dropped by a snack store in Beijing and ate noodles with soybean paste, a local delicacy, spending a total of 79 yuan. Gauck is the first German President to visit China in six years. His next stop is Shanghai where he will visit a Jewish refugee memorial and Tongji University, a school established by a German physician more than a century ago. After that, he will go to Xi'an in Northwest China's Shaanxi province, where he will visit churches and mosques in order to understand the integration of different ethnic groups. Demand for general aviation aircraft in China is on the increase for everything from disaster relief to scientific research, according to private company that has sold nearly 100 planes in under two years. General Dynamic Aero Tech, founded in 2014, has offices in Shanghai, Hubei's capital city Wuhan, Wenzhou in Zhejiang province and Xi'an, capital city of Shaanxi province, as well as in Zhejiang's Ningbo where its sales center is located. "Our company has sold 95 jets with prices ranging from 3 million yuan ($460,000) to 120 million yuan since late 2014 and they are being widely used in industries and sectors such as agriculture, fishing, and maritime surveillance," said Sun Liguo, vice-president of the company. Their clients are mainly domestic buyers and the most expensive plane sold by the company is being used in air patrol for public security, Sun added. "As the aero industry is becoming more accessible to the private sector, the general aviation market will become very promising," Sun said. There were nearly 2,000 general aviation aircraft in China by the end of last year. A new judicial interpretation on patent disputes was published on Tuesday, aimed at providing better protection for innovators and improving technological developments in China, officials of the national top court said. Effective from April 1, the interpretation is an updated and revised version of one also issued by the Supreme People's Court in 2009, Song Xiaoming, chief judge of the No 3 Civil Tribunal under the top court, told a news conference. The top court decided to update the interpretation due to the increasing number of patent disputes over the past five years and the pace of technological development, according to Song. Wang Chuang, deputy chief judge of the tribunal, said that the new interpretation will provide more legal protection for innovators. It will also address a major complaint in previous patent disputes, that it was hard to collect evidence and lower compensation, Wang added. In an unprecedented move, President Xi Jinping has asked all institutions in China to hire professional legal representatives and advisers. It should become an encompassing system for all political parties, government departments, citizens' organizations such as trade unions and women's federations and State-owned institutions, to have public-sector lawyers or corporate legal counsels, Xi said on Tuesday at a meeting of the Central Leading Group for Deepening Overall Reform. The group is the top decision-making body for China's reform and transition. The statement issued after the meeting did not specify how the change is to proceed, nor did it appoint representatives to any central government institutions. The initiative will help develop the rule of law in China, Xi said. The meeting also decided to select future legislators, judges and prosecutors from professional lawyers and legal scholars. Wang Junfeng, president of the All China Lawyers Association, welcomed the move, adding that since the late 1970s, when China began its reform and opening-up, more than 300,000 certified lawyers have been cultivated, a sufficient number to accomplish the planned change. "The Chinese legal profession is capable of providing very experienced people to serve as legal counsels to the top-level government entities such as the State Council," Wang said. Yang Weidong, a law professor at the Chinese Academy of Governance, said legal advisers will serve as members of judicial think tanks for the government. "With the legal advisers, officials can learn more about the law in the process of policymaking and project management. Having legal advisers will help them reduce the risk of making mistakes in their work," Yang said. Ruan Chuansheng, a lawyer in Shanghai, said some government agencies in Shanghai have already been hiring legal advisers since the city was chosen in 2013 as China's first pilot judicial reform area. The reform has resulted in a marked increase in officials' legal awareness, Ruan said. The meeting also decided to speed up the building of a unified system to provide equal access to investors from all sectors to facilitate partnerships between the government and private stakeholders. Contact the writers at caoyin@chinadaily.com.cn Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli (R) shakes hands with Russian natural gas company Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller in Beijing, China, March 22, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] BEIJING -- Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli met with Gazprom CEO Alexei Miller in Beijing on Tuesday, vowing to improve China-Russia energy cooperation. Bilateral energy cooperation has continued to progress under the strategic leadership of Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to Zhang. Energy cooperation is of strategic and long-term significance in bilateral relations, he said. He spoke about the construction of the China-Russia east-route natural gas pipeline and the Yamal liquefied natural gas (LNG) project, and called on both sides to maintain momentum of the projects, adding that discussions should start on new collaborations and cooperation models. He said the two sides should expand cooperation in product chain integration, oil and gas equipment-manufacturing, processing services,project construction and oil sales. Miller said Russia attached great importance to energy cooperation with China and that the east-route natural gas pipeline construction was being promoted, as planned. Russia is willing to work with China to accelerate the negotiation on the western route program, which would elevate bilateral energy cooperation to a new level, said Miller. British sculptor Antony Gormley's public project Event Horizon that features a life-size human figure sculpture on the roof of a building in Hong Kong.[Photo by Oak Taylor-Smith/ China Daily] In less than a minute, Antony Gormley creates his latest sculpture in front of a full house of teachers and students who attend his lecture at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing, on a recent night. He takes the top slice of a loaf of bread placed on a table, eats a bit and puts it back. "It does not taste very nice. I'm beginning to regret (eating) it," says the London-born sculptor as he swallows the bread, causing the auditorium to burst into laughter. "You just witnessed a sculpture being made: A loaf of bread that is one bite less is becoming my energy. It might become a thought." It reminds people of another work of the 66-year-old artist called Bed, in which he stacks up more than 8,600 loaves of bread to form a cube, and hollows out the top center by eating out two images of his recumbent body. Since the 1980s, Gormley has used his body as a material and the subject of his works. In doing so, he encourages viewers to probe the relationship between their physical and spiritual lives and the environment they live in. "I'm interested in how things that we already know about can be transformed, so that we look at the world again in a way that we wouldn't if we hadn't come across it (being) translated in this way." Although many of his works look quite abstract, Gormley says viewers need no instruction or information or catalog to understand them. He sees his exhibitions - including the one currently on at the Galleria Continua Beijing - as an invitation for people to return to their first-hand experiences and to recognize physical feelings. The show displays several of Gormley's iconic cast iron body statues and mild steel sculptures that transform the human body into the structure of a high-rise building. The centerpiece is an installation called Host, in which the gallery's central space is filled with seawater and clay. The mixture of about 95 cubic meters contains seawater shipped in from the Tianjin coast and red earth from Beijing's Changping district, in the 50-50 ratio. The audience can stand on the threshold of three gates on one side, and look at the water surface that extends as far as 23 meters. This is the third time Host, a work devoted to a specific site, is on show, after being conceived for and shown in the United States in 1991 and later in Germany in 1997. Host is closely related to Asian Field, another installation presented in Guangzhou, which then toured Beijing, Shanghai and Chongqing in 2003. About 210,000 small clay figures, crafted by local farmers of southern China under Gormley's guidance, occupied the exhibition space impressing many Chinese who saw their first Gormley work then. If your experience with Hungarian food has never gotten beyond goulash - and not very good goulash in China sometimes - head to the Minzu Hotel for a surprising feast. The Hungarian embassy, visiting chef Andras Beretvas and the hotel kitchen team hosted a gala dinner last week to launch a Hungarian Food Festival at the hotel, and the dishes will be part of the buffet spread and lunch and dinner until April 15. Not to be missed: Hortobagyi stuffed pancakes, with a rich sauce redolent with the country's favorite spice, paprika. The pancakes, filled with minced and stewed meat, were originally invented for the 1958 World's Fair in Brussels. Lively folk dancing on Fridays gives a meal a party atmosphere, and look for a special selection of Hungarian wines on the final night. The buffet is 138 yuan ($21.35) at lunch and 158 yuan at dinner. The hotel usually has a foreign and a Chinese food festival running concurrently in its restaurants; a Hunan menu is running concurrently with the Hungarian. 51 Fuxingmennei Street, Xidan, Xicheng district, Beijing. 010-6601-4466. US President Barack Obama, accompanied by First Lady Michelle Obama, waves his hands, when arriving in Cuba, March 20, 2016. [Photo/Xinhua] US President Barack Obama's visit to Havana is touted as "historic" mostly because he is the first sitting United States president in 88 years to set foot on Cuban soil. In that sense, he has made history by simply being there. What makes his trip truly historic, and potentially "game-changing", however, is that it represents a change in the US' approach to the country, from containment to engagement, demonstrating once again, after the negotiated resolution of the Iran nuclear issue, that engagement can work a miracle where confrontation can't. Washington's overtures to Havana today are in themselves an admission that decades of US endeavors to maneuver "regime change" in Cuba have failed. From the Bay of Pigs invasion to Operation Mongoose, from assassination attempts to the embargo, Washington tried everything conceivable to get rid of Fidel Castro and the government he led. None of those attempts, by 10 successive US presidents, worked. Instead, they ended up self-demeaning, and increasingly isolated Washington from the rest of the world. The United Nations General Assembly has for 24 consecutive years passed resolutions appealing to the US to end its economic, trade and financial embargos against Cuba. Obama is worth acclaim in that he has finally sought to put an end to that abortive, obsolete, and increasingly unpopular policy. The thaw in relations with Cuba will certainly be remembered as a prominent part of Obama's legacy as US president, along with the peaceful resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue. But it would be naive to pin too much on this visit. The US Congress still has to agree to lift the embargo. Obama can do little about that. He is not expected to nominate a US ambassador to Cuba, which would be otherwise logical, legitimate, and more than appropriate, because he does not want a symbolic blow to his legacy by a failure to have the appointment confirmed. Not to mention that he arrived with an agenda that is destined to be unpopular with his hosts. He will reportedly criticize the host country's human rights record, ask for "democratic reforms", and make those preconditions for further rapport. In anticipation of that, one of Cuba's official newspapers foresees "a long, difficult road" ahead, because, as it stated, Cuba will retain "unconditional commitment" to its own choice of government. Unless Washington can control its impulse to impose its will on Havana, it should not be too optimistic about what it can get in return. 'What if this is 'as good as it gets'?" Jack Nicholson asks, as he walks through his psychiatrist's waiting room in the eponymous film. At the recent meeting of G20 finance ministers in Shanghai, participants were asking much the same questionand not just with regard to medium-term expectations of weak global growth. Many are now wondering whether China's current growth rate will be as good as it gets for a long time to come. Determining the validity of such fears requires understanding what is driving China's economic slowdown. Some offer a straightforward explanation: China, along with other major emerging economies, has become ensnared in the "middle-income trap", unable to break through to advanced-economy status. But this assumes that some exogenous force or tendency causes countries to become "stuck" at a particular income level-a view that one academic study after another has debunked. To be sure, countries do often struggle to achieve high-income status. According to the World Bank, only 13 of 101 countries classified as middle income in 1960 had reached high-income status in 2008. Moreover, some middle-income countries, after promising growth, spent decades "trapped" at a certain per capita income level. Argentina, for example, kept pace with the United States in per capita income growth from 1870 to 1940; since then, the gap has been widening steadily. And even countries that make it to high-income status sometimes regress to middle-income levels. But studies suggest that fast-growing low-income economies are also likely to become fast-growing middle-income economies, and ultimately to graduate to high-income status. An economy gets stuck because it fails to adjust, as the basis for growth changes. In fact, the lack of capacity for self-transformation normally would have been visible at low-income levels, too. What, exactly, does the needed adjustment entail? While the specifics vary across countries, the innovation-focused Neo-Schumpeterian growth theory, proposed by economists Philippe Aghion and Peter Howitt, offers some important insights. Aghion and Howitt view innovation as any change that leads to the introduction of new products or processes in the market where a company operates. Countries far from the world technology frontier are better off imitating existing technologies and adapting them to local conditions, but over time such countries must improve their capacity for innovation. Studies have also shown a positive link between innovation and social mobility, and even between innovation and income inequality. A screenshot from CCTV news of Wang Nana, whose personal identification was used by another woman to obtain her degree.[Photo/CCTV] A woman, who faked the identity of someone else to enter Zhoukou Vocation and Technology College in Central China's Henan province in 2003, has had her diploma invalidated and been dismissed as a teacher by the school where she worked. Nine government or college staff members involved in the scandal are being investigated and given penalties such as warnings and other disciplinary penalties. More details about how the impostor could get away with such a crime for so long need to be made public, said Beijing Times on Monday: There is hardly a way to remedy the wrong to woman who should have been enrolled all those years ago. She has every right to demand the whole truth and that justice be done after failing to enter the college as intended. Although the responsible officials, including the impostor herself, have received belated punishments, what really happened 13 years ago remains unclear. The victim still does not know how her admittance to the college was stolen by the impostor. Such being the case, justice has not yet been done even though she has received support for punishing those responsible. Key information about how the impostor managed to get away with it has not been revealed. More, it is not known whether those held responsible abused positions of power or not and what their respective roles in this shameful fraud were. Holding a person accountable should be based on disclosing all his or her misdeeds, otherwise it is impossible for people to believe that justice has been done. In the aforementioned case, local investigators only acknowledge that there were "loopholes" in the college's enrollment process, but a judicial investigation into these has not been launched. That the impostor succeeded in "buying" someone's college entry with the help of others suggests more than just the exploitation of some loopholes in the system. To some extent, that one of the individuals responsible has died made it more difficult for the investigators to dig up the facts. Yet this does not justify their failure to provide further evidence, because there were a number of departments and individuals involved in the case. An independent and fair investigation is needed to disclose the truth behind the scandal. Tigerair recently announced a new nonstop flight between Wuxi city in East China's Jiangsu province, and Singapore, on four days a week. Starting April 28, it will add to the airline's existing dozen direct flights from China to Singapore, including from Guangzhou, Haikou and Hong Kong. The Sunan Shuofang International Airport in southern Jiangsu that serves both Wuxi and nearby Suzhou has been expanding rapidly in recent years, according to Ho Yuen Sang, Tigerair's managing director and chief operating officer. The new service will help more leisure and business travels in the region, he said. Chinese visitors usually travel to Singapore for shopping and sightseeing, among other activities. Related: Local flavor of Yunnan tourism Former Ukrainian army pilot Nadezhda Savchenko listens to her lawyer Nikolai Polozov from a glass-walled cage during a verdict hearing at a court in the southern border town of Donetsk in Rostov region, Russia, in this still image taken from video March 21, 2016. [Photo/Agencies] MOSCOW - A Russian court has found Ukrainian army pilot Nadezhda Savchenko guilty of complicity in killing civilians, including two Russian journalists, in 2014, the RIA Novosti news agency reported Monday. "Savchenko has committed murder following a prior arrangement by a group of persons, based on hatred and enmity," it quoted the presiding judge as saying in the courtroom. The actions of the accused were motivated by hatred toward people in the rebellious Lugansk region in eastern Ukraine, as well as against Russian-speaking people, the judge said. The 34-year-old Ukrainian female pilot was also found guilty of illegally crossing the Ukrainian-Russian border. Prosecutors have asked to sentence Savchenko to 23 years in prison. The Ukrainian pilot rejected the ruling and demanded her release and return to Ukraine. She said that she would resume a hunger strike. Savchenko has been tried in Russia after being accused of directing artillery fire during hostilities between Kiev government troops and separatists in eastern Ukraine in June 2014, which resulted in the killing of two Russian reporters. The pilot has denied the charges and said she had been kidnapped in Ukraine and then handed over to Russian authorities. Savchenko, who is considered a national hero by many Ukrainians, announced a hunger strike earlier this month, but stopped it following a request by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko. Many world leaders, including U.S. President Barack Obama, French President Francois Hollande and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, have demanded the immediate release of Savchenko. The Kremlin, in response, said it was not going to interfere in the trial. The final verdict to Savchenko is yet to be announced. Wang Yingfan, former Chinese permanent represntative to the UN, talks about Chinese foreign policy and China-US relations to students and faculty at American University on Monday. Chen Weihua/China Daily A retired senior Chinese diplomat believes that China, the United States and Southeast Asian nations should peacefully settle disputes in the South China Sea. Wang Yingfan, China's permanent representative to the United Nations from 2000 to 2003, said Americans should understand that China has never created any obstacles to freedom of navigation in the region. The former vice-foreign minister said people who study international affairs understand why the US would send aircraft carriers and advanced aircraft to the sea. "It's not because freedom of navigation is being affected," he said on Monday, without further elaboration. Wang, who was heading a Foreign Ministry Policy Advisory Committee delegation in the US, made the comment in a talk on China's foreign policy and China-US relations at American University on Monday. Many Chinese believe the US has been rallying its allies to gang up on China in pursuit of its pivot-to-Asia strategy and to keep its primacy in the region, where China's influence has grown significantly. China is the largest trading partner for most countries in that area. Wang warned that the US should exercise restraint. "If you do too much, China has to react," he said. Wang believes that how much Chinese military hardware will be brought to the islands in the South China Sea depends to a large extent on what the US will do. China has long complained about the frequent US military surveillance off the Chinese coasts, regarding it as a major obstacle to improving bilateral military-to-military relations. Wang, also a former Chinese ambassador to the Philippines, recalled his first assignment in the Southeast Asia nation in mid-1970s that the Philippine map does not include some of the islands in disputes these days. He regretted that the Philippines did not even accept China's goodwill and generosity for shelving disputes and seeking joint development. Wang believes it's a bad idea for some Americans to suggest that the Chinese government clarify the Nine Dash Line in the South China Sea because it will trigger more disputes over sovereignty and further arouse the nationalistic sentiment in the countries involved, making it harder for the governments to reach a solution. Don Sun (right), president of the Silicon Valley branch of the Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs (APAPA), and Jerry Chen (left), vice-president of the Silicon Valley APAPA chapter, hold the open letter to Judge Danny Chun that will be printed in the March 26 national edition of the New York Times. LIA ZHU / CHINA DAILY As the April 14 sentencing of former NYPD Officer Peter Liang draws near, an Asian-Pacific American group has been working to help Liang gain leniency from the judge. Their recent efforts include placing a full-page ad in major print media. In an open letter to Judge Danny Chun, the Asian Pacific Islander American Public Affairs (APAPA) asks him to consider all the prior fatalities involving NYPD officers as well as the "mitigating factors" and the "lack of aggravating factors" and impose a "no jail, probation" sentence. The open letter will be carried on a full page ad in the March 26 national edition of New York Times. The mitigating factors listed in the letter include Liang's lack of experience and training, his lack of a prior criminal record and that he poses no danger to the community, as well as the nature of the case it being an accident. "We think the trial was fair and we respect the criminal justice system and the verdict of the jury. But there's a good chance for the judge to hand down a lenient sentence considering these factors," said Don Sun, president of the Silicon Valley chapter of APAPA, who initiated and coordinated the effort with the other 15 APAPA chapters in the country. "When drafting the letter, we consulted with district attorneys and police experts, as well as Harvard law school professors. They all think it is mild, empathetic and legally sound," he added. "We are not trying to challenge the judicial system but want to implore the judge and the public to be empathetic, as he is not a vicious criminal," said Jerry Chen, vice-president of the Silicon Valley chapter of APAPA. In their letter, the group also expressed sympathy to the African-American community over the recent deaths of Akai Gurley, the victim in Liang's case, and others from police officers' use of force. "Any accidental loss of life is a tragedy to the victim, the accused and the society," says the letter. "More importantly, the response of the criminal justice system can potentially create more collateral damage, particularly where the larger context is framed by complex racial tensions." Sun said his group had been discussing ways to help Gurley's family and would resume efforts to collect donations after the sentence is made. Liang was convicted on Feb 11 of second-degree manslaughter and official misconduct in the 2014 shooting of Gurley in a Brooklyn housing project. The manslaughter charge carries up to 15 years in prison. Tens of thousands of members of Chinese communities held rallies in more than 40 cities on Feb 20 to show support for Liang. "Liang's case is a rare opportunity to unite so many Chinese in their history of striving for rights (in the US)," said Sun. "But after the rallies, it seems they don't know where to go. As a grassroots organization, APAPA should lead community efforts to a new level, which is to shift the focus from street protest to affecting decision-making, and the first step is to make our voice heard and eventually accepted by mainstream society." For the New York Times advertisement, Sun said his group had raised most of the cost but there's still short of around $3,000. "We hope the community would chip in whatever little they have to get involved in the drive," he said. He said it was important to educate the Chinese community about the judicial system. His group has recently signed a year-long contract with a local farmer's market to set up a booth there promoting voter registration and citizen's duties. "If everyone set aside two hours a month for civil rights efforts, it would be a huge force," said Sun. liazhu@chinadailyusa.com Cuba's President Raul Castro (R) and US President Barack Obama (L) attend a press conference at the Revolution Palace in Havana, capital of Cuba, on March 21, 2016. Raul Castro and Barack Obama on Monday expressed the willingness to continue the process of the normalization of bilateral relations on the basis of respect and national sovereignty. [Photo/Xinhua] HAVANA - In a press conference on Monday, Cuban leader Raul Castro and US President Barack Obama reviewed the two countries' conflicts, focusing on the continuing economic embargo and the Guantanamo Naval Base. While the historic trip of Obama to Cuba is seen a major step in thawing relations, this conference was a stark reminder of the conflicts that still divide the two governments. The two men stated their readiness to work together on common challenges, but Castro did not deviate from the grievances standing in the way of the normalization of ties. "The blockade remains in force, it contains discouraging elements, intimidating effects and is guilty of extraterritorial outreach," said Castro. "Much more could be done if the blockade was lifted. We recognize the position of President Obama against the blockade and his repeated appeals to Congress to have it removed. However, the most reasonable measures by his administration are positive but insufficient," he added. Castro also demanded the return of "the territory illegally occupied by the Guantanamo Base". The US first leased the Guantanamo Bay camp from Cuba in 1903, for which it pays a ludicrously low rent of $4,085 a year. Havana has been demanding its return ever since the Cuban revolution in 1959. Castro also lambasted Washington for its continued intervention in Cuban affairs, saying that "nobody should demand that the Cuban people renounce their freedom and sovereignty". Castro acknowledged deep differences on "political systems, democracy, human rights, social justice, and world peace" between the two sides. He also chastised the US for not ensuring people's right to "healthcare, education, social security, food, development and equal pay". Concerning the issue of human rights, on which the United States has openly demanded changes in Cuba, Castro said that no country on the Earth fully meets all international human rights standards. He also said that he has planned to discuss the issue of Venezuela but that there has not been enough time to do so. However, Castro mentioned "the destabilization that (the US) is seeking to foment in Venezuela ...which is counterproductive to the atmosphere on the continent". In response, Obama initially struck a conciliatory note. He acknowledged that the actions taken by Washington in the past half a century had not been good for the United States or for Cuba. He pledged that "the embargo is going to end. When, I cannot be entirely sure...and the path is going to continue beyond my administration" before reiterating the call for the Republican-held Congress to lift the blockade. Obama also said that "the future of Cuba will be decided by Cubans, and not by anybody else". The US president went on to hail Cuba's "enormous achievements in education and healthcare", while also welcoming relevant Cuban criticism on the United States, saying that "we welcome that constructive dialogue as well. We can learn and make the lives of our people better". He added that it was his goal to help "bring Cuba online. In the 21st century, countries cannot be successful unless their citizens have access to the Internet". Castro also listed the agreements struck between both countries since December 2014, saying new accords were inked Monday concerning agriculture and the joint fight against cancer and the Zika virus. Castro ended the conference with a note of conciliation, stating that "destroying a bridge can be an easy and quick undertaking but its solid reconstruction can prove a long and difficult endeavor. I hope for a new type of relationship, one that has never existed before." Obama's visit to Cuba, which started on Sunday and ends on Tuesday, has been the first by a US president since 1928. It marks the most important moment since Obama and Castro agreed in December 2014 to restore diplomatic ties and end half a century of hostility between the two countries. The visit is part of Obama's Latin America tour that will also take him to Argentina. Highlights *Two explosions hit Brussels airport *At least 14 killed and 80 injured in Zaventem airport blasts; 20 dead and 106 injured in metro station blast *Airport on lockdown as train and plane services suspended *Explosion also hits Maelbeek metro station close to EU *Islamic State group claims responsibility *The blasts come days after the capture of Salah Abdeslam, the main suspect in the Paris attacks in November 6:10 Belgium bombings raise security worries at US airports Major US transportation hubs were on alert on Tuesday with police out in force, and part of Denver International Airport's main terminal was evacuated inresponse to a possible security threat. 3:48 'We're going to go after them' - US President Obama US President Barack Obama observes a minute's silence for the victims of the Brussels attacks prior to a baseball game in Havana, Cuba, March 22, 2016. [Photo/Agencies] US President Barack Obama said the US-led coalition would continue "pounding" Islamic State targets in Iraq and Syria following the attacks in Brussels, BBC reports. "We're going to go after them," the US president told ESPN during his visit to Cuba. IS has claimed responsibility for the attacks in the Belgian capital. 2:43 'I share your pain': King Philippe of Belgium addresses the nation Belgian King Philippe delivers a speech from Brussels Royal Palace following bomb attacks in Brussels and Belgium's National airport of Zaventem , Belgium March 22, 2016. [Photo/Agencies] In a televised address to the nation, King Philippe of Belgium said he and Queen Mathilde "share the pain" of all those who had suffered in the attacks, BBC reports. "Today our country is in mourning. For each of us this 22 March will never be a day like any other. The broken lives. The profound injuries. This suffering is that of the whole country," he said. "We express all our support to the members of the emergency and security services. And to all those who spontaneously offered aid" he added. "Faced by the threat we will continue to respond together." 00:58 Image of airport attack suspects released An image widely published by Belgian media is said to show three men who are believed to have carried out the attack at Zaventem Airport, BBC reports. The two men dressed in black are believed to have blown themselves up, while the man in white is thought to have escaped, RTBF reported. The men in black both appear to be wearing a single black glove on their left hands, which some reports suggest could have been in order to conceal detonators. 00:28 King of Belgium to address the nation King Philippe will speak at 19:00 local time (18:00 GMT). Earlier, a Royal Palace spokesperson said the King and Queen Mathilde had been left "shocked" by the attacks, BBC reports. 00:25 Unexploded airport bomb detonated by security services Security services found and destroyed a third bomb at Zaventem Airport, the provincial governor of Brabant Flanders has said, BBC reports. 00:02 Public transport starts to resume after Brussels attacks Railway services in Brussels were due to resume at 4:00 pm local time (1500 GMT) after they were halted following Tuesday's attacks on the Belgian capital. National railway operator SNCB said trains would be allowed through Brussels and stations would reopen, with three exceptions. Schuman and Luxembourg stations are located in the European district of the city, close to the scene of the Maelbeek subway explosion on Tuesday morning. Brussels Airport railway station will also remain closed, following double explosions in the departure hall of the airport at about 8:00 this morning. 23:50 Brussels attacks 'not a surprise': UK security expert Professor Anthony Glees, Director of the Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies at the University of Buckingham, believes Belgiums fractured and divisive society is a reason that radical Islam could flourish under the radar screen, and the political and cultural constraints in the country are something that the Belgian government should think about. [Full story] 23:35 Islamic State group claims responsibility Islamic State group claims responsibility for Brussels attacks in statement issued via its A'maq news agency, BBC reports. 22:20 Obama briefed on Brussels blasts US President Barack Obama has sent a message of support to the people of Brussels, saying: "We can and we will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world," BBC reports. 21:54 Nuclear power plant in southeast Belgium evacuated Employees of the Tihange nuclear power plant in the Belgian town of Huy in the province of Liege has been evacuated, according to reports from Flemish media outlet VTM. The causes for the evacuation were not immediately made known. The threat level in Belgium has been raised to the highest level 4 from the previous level 3 following explosions at Brussels airport and on a city subway train, during which at least 31 people were killed and 197 injured. 21:47 '20 people killed in metro blast' - Brussels mayor The mayor of Brussels says 20 people have died and 106 were injured in the blast on the metro train. Yvan Mayeur told a news conference that 17 people were severely injured. Public broadcaster VRT says at least 34 people were killed in total, at the metro and the airport. 21:33 Army detonating explosive package at Brussels ariport The Belgian army's explosives is carrying out a controlled explosion of a suspicious package at Brussels airport, Belgium's crisis centre reports. Earlier, a controlled explosion was carried out close to the Maelbeek metro station folllowing the attack there. 21:23 Brussels metro bomb went off 'as train left station' Brussels transport company STIB has given more details about the metro blast at Maelbeek station, according to Belgian broadcaster RTBF. A three-carriage train was just leaving the station in the direction of Arts-Loi, the next stop a short distance away, when the blast happened, RTBF said. The bomb was apparently detonated in the middle carriage, which was running along the platform at the time. The driver immediately halted the train and evacuated the first and last carriages. 21:10 Police discover unexploded suicide vest at Brussels airport - report Police have found an unexploded suicide vest at Brussels airport, according to Belgian broadcaster VTM. Earlier reports said a Kalashnikov rifle was also found. 21:05 US Secretary of State John Kerry 'closely monitoring the situation' A spokesman for John Kerry, the US scretary of state, said Mr Kerry was "closely monitoring the situation and extends his condolences to all those who have fallen victim today." He said: "State Department officials are in touch with our embassy in Brussels. The embassy released a security message this morning, recommending that individuals shelter in place and avoid all public transportation. "US citizens are urged to be aware of local events, follow local authority instructions and to monitor local media for further developments. "Our embassy will continue to update with further information when available. We continue to work to determine the status of all American citizens in Brussels. "The United States stands with people of Belgium. We are ready to support the investigation as appropriate." 20:50 Brussels in lockdown after triple bombing Belgium's crisis centre has urged people in Brussels to stay safe and stay indoors. Schoolchildren have been urged to stay at school and office workers have been asked not to go out. The last time Brussels went into lockdown was in November, in the aftermath of the Paris attacks. The country-wide alert level is again at its highest. 20:39 Police raids under way in Brussels in connection with attacks Belgian police are raiding several places in Brussels following deadly blasts killing at least 26, public broadcaster RTBF reported on Tuesday. The house searches are connected to several people suspected of being linked to the attacks on the Belgian capital earlier Friday, the report added. 20:08 Kalashnikov rifle found at airport departure lounge - report Belgian state broadcaster RTBF is reporting that a Kalashnikov rifle has been found in Brussels airport departure hall. The rifle, recognizable by its distinctive design, was also used by the Paris attackers. 20:00 Belgian royal family distressed by attacks King Philippe and Queen Mathilde have issued a statement in response to the bombings. "Distressed by the odious attacks on Brussels-National and the Brussels metro. Our thoughts are with the victims, families and emergency services." 19:55 Francois Hollande: 'Terror threat requires global response' [Photo/Agencies] Speaking at a press conference, French President Francois Hollande condemned what he called the "heinous" attacks in Brussels today. He said attacks had been directed at Belgium, but it was Europe that had been targeted and the whole world that should be concerned about the attacks. He said there was a "global threat which necessitates a global response". 19:30 EU flags lowered to half mast [Photo/twitter] 19:27 Brussels metro: 15 dead, 55 wounded in Maelbeek bombing The Brussels metro operator has confirmed a provisional death toll for the attack at Maelbeek station: 15 dead, 55 wounded, BBC reports. 19:25 Attacks were 'blind, violent and cowardly' - Belgian PM Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel has urged Belgians to "be calm and show solidarity" following Tuesday morning's explosions in Brussels, in which he confirmed there were "numerous deaths and numerous people injured -- some seriously". 19:18 'Explosions may affect tourism activities' Anthony Dworkin, a senior policy fellow specializing in European counter-terrorism at European Council on Foreign relations, says the Brussles explosion may have some impact on tourism activities intuitively, but currently there is no way to quantify or know for certain how much the impact would be. It will not have impact on business activities, as business investments tend to be long term. The significance of the explosion is that it happened under a condition when Brussels already increased its security policing, therefore it shows security in Brussels is worse than European leaders think. Increasingly frequent attacks like the Paris and Brussls attack will impact people's perception of Europe and the UK as a safe place, and impact tourism levels consequently. 19:10 Belgian federal prosecutor: 'Explosions were terror attacks' The Belgian federal prosecutor Fredere Van Leeuw has confirmed that the three explosions this morning - two at Brussels Airport and one in the subway station Maelbeek - were terror attacks, BBC reports. The anti-terror section of the federal prosecutor's office has opened a criminal investigation, the prosecutor's office said. 19:00 Small blasts near Maelbeek station Small blasts, thought to be controlled explosions, have been heard close the Maelbeek metro. Local media said it appeared to be the work of the police bomb squad, Reuters reports. 18:50 No Chinese casualties: China Embassy in Belgium China Embassy in Belgium hasn't received any report of Chinese casualties. The embassy has sent staff to the Zaventem airport to get more information. The embassy has urged citizens in Belgium to be careful and to avoid airport and crowded places. Chinese citizens can contact these numbers in case of emergency. Belgian crisis center: +32-1771/+32-(0)25064711 China Embassy in Belgium: +32-476751182 Police: 101 British Prime Minister David Cameron, following the attacks in Brussels, called an emergency meeting of COBRA, the special government committee that handles national security at a time of crisis. Britains level of security alert for international terrorism is currently at severe, which means an attack is highly likely, officials said. The COBRA committee, named after Cabinet Meeting Room A in which h it holds its meeting, groups senior cabinet ministers, intelligence service chiefs, senior police officers and members of the military, including Britains elite SAS army unit. Officials said the meeting would focus on the security situation in the UK and Europe in the wake of the Brussels attacks on its airport and a metro station. Intelligence help would be offered to the Brussels authorities as well as medical experts who specialise in blast injuries. Heathrow and Gatwick Airports reported that security had been increased as a result of the attacks. To contact the reporter: chris@mail.chinadailyuk.com The Chinese embassy in Belgium hasn't received any reports of Chinese casualties in the aftermath of explosions at the Brussels airport and its subway system. The embassy has sent staff to Zaventem airport to get more information. Most of those injured were sent to Saint Luc hospital near the airport. Doctors with the emergency department there said they hadn't seen any Asian patients and Asian names were not on the injuries list, sources close to the embassy told China Daily. The embassy has urged citizens in Belgium to be careful and to avoid airports and crowded places. Chinese citizens can contact these numbers in case of emergency. Belgian crisis center: +32-1771/+32-(0)25064711 China Embassy in Belgium: +32-476751182 Police: 101 China's Global Newspaper Sorry, the page you requested was not found. Please check the URL for proper spelling and capitalization. If you're having trouble locating a destination on Chinadaily.com.cn, try visiting the Chinadaily home page (Photo : Anthony Devlin - WPA Pool/Getty Images)) Being less expensive, the second Chinese endeavor towards studying gravitational waves will have certain limitations with regards to detection and thus will only target a particular group of stars for observation. Advertisement China laid the foundation for infrastructure of its "Tianqin" gravitational wave research project at the coastal city of Zhuhai on Sunday. This is the second Chinese proposal initiated for the exploration of gravitational waves in addition to the highly ambitious and expensive "Taiji" program. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement The Guangdong-based Sun Yat-Sen University revealed its plan of studying the gravitational waves at a symposium on February 21 and estimated the completion of the program in about 15 to 20 years. The program aims to launch three synchronized satellites, forming an equilateral triangle to detect and observe the gravitational waves, as per Li Miao, Dean of the university's Institute of Astronomy and Space Science. The Tianqin program is headed by Luo Jun, a physicist at the Sun Yat-Sen University. It is said to be a low-key project in terms of resources required and expenses incurred with an estimated cost of 15 billion yuan (2.3 billion U.S. dollars). Being less expensive, the second Chinese endeavor towards studying gravitational waves will have certain limitations with regards to detection and thus will only target a particular group of stars for observation. Situated in the southern coastal city of Zhuhai, the research building of the Tianqin project has an impressive infrastructure, spanning over 30,000 square-meters possessing a 10,000 square-meter ultra-quiet cave laboratory and a 5,000 square-meter observation station. According to Gerhard Heinzel, an eLISA (Evolved Laser Interferometer Space Antenna) physicist, these research programs are too vast in terms of costs and resources and might be difficult for a single country to handle. Chinese researchers from the Taiji program have also hinted at the possibility of a merger with European programs like eLISA. Wu Ji, Director-General of the Chinese Academy of Sciences' National Space Science Center, said that the two Chinese projects should be integrated, keeping in mind the cost constraints. However, no concrete information regarding a merger with either European or Chinese programs has been provided. With the initiation of infrastructure for the Tianqin research program, it is only a matter of time before these questions are answered. Advertisement Tagschina, China Scientists, China technology, China water project, gravitational waves, gravitational wave astronomy black holes colliding merging, gravitational attraction, ELISA Test, The Chinese Academy of Sciences, Stars, space observatory (Photo : Getty Images/ China Foto) China has opened the Jinghong hydropower plant into the Mekong River to provide water for downstream countries. Advertisement China's Jinghong Hydropower Station has released emergency water supply of up to 2,190 cubic meters per second into the Mekong River to the immense relief of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. By Sunday, March 19, the water had reached Northern Thailand. The emergency water supply plan will last from March 15 to April 10. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement The Mekong River, which runs through China's Yunan province, Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, is reportedly at its lowest level since 1926. Owing to the worsening El-Nino conditions, Vietnam is facing its worst drought in almost a century. The worries of the Vietnamese people have been exacerbated by the fact that Thailand's temporary pumping station have extracted up to 47 million cubic meters of water from Mekong into the Huai Luang River, in Thailand's Nong Khai province. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang at a news conference in Beijing on March 15 had said that China and the five countries sharing the drought-hit river are on good neighborly terms and are willing to help each other out in this difficult situation. "China is willing to enhance... co-operation with related countries... in water resources management and disaster response, to benefit the people in the region," Lu said. China's efforts to alleviate the drought in the five Southeast Asian countries have been widely applauded. Thai Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha expressed his gratitude as the water supply from China reached Northern Thailand by March 19. With drought zones being declared in 46 districts of 12 provinces, Thailand is dealing with the worst drought in two decades and undoubtedly China's help has come as a great relief. Pham Hong Giang, President of Vietnam 'National Committee on Large Dams and Water Resources Development,' has also voiced appreciation for China's decision to release water supply to the drought hit countries, describing it as a 'cooperative move', Xinhua reported. According to the Global Drought Information System, El-Nino will continue to exert its influence throughout the spring of 2016. China's decision to release emergency water from the Jinghong Hydropower Station into the Mekong River comes as a ray of hope to people of the five Indochinese Peninsular countries. Advertisement TagsUS-China relations, China Drought 2015, Thailand, Vietnam-China relations, Laos-China Relation, china-myanmar, Cambodia (Photo : Reuters) Studio Ghibli has been using Toonz since 1995 for animated films such as Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke Advertisement Studio Ghiblis prominent software animation that has been used for popular animated such as Princess Mononoke becomes free and open source. Software animation Toonz was created by Italian studio Digital Video as a tool for creating traditional 2D animation. Toonz was first launched on the market in 1993 and was used to turn hand-drawn art into vector graphics. It quickly became one of the most powerful tools in 2D animation. Studio Ghibli has been using it since 1995 and used it to produce Futurama, Asterix, and even some video games like Discworld 2. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement Currently, the Japanese media and telecommunications company Dwango acquired it and plans to openly distribute it. It will also focus on customization and training, but will still sell a premium version to companies at a very competitive price. Toonz will include features developed by Studio Ghibli which has been a long time Toonz user. Through OpenToonz, Dwango will create a platform that will aspire to have research labs and the animated film industry actively cooperating with each other. "Our requirement was that in order to continue producing theatre-quality animation without additional stress, the software must have the ability to combine the hand-drawn animation with the digitally painted ones seamlessly," said Atsushi Okui, Studio Ghibli's executive imaging director. Toonz has the potential to expand the limits of the somewhat insular creative world of animation. Both novice animators and established studios can now have access to a professional-level suite. Its flexibility is one of its most valued abilities, as the software can work with old-school hand-drawn animation as well as completely digital productions. Toonz is also used by Rough Draft Studios, the group behind Futurama and The Simpsons Movie. Advertisement TagsStudio Ghibli, Toonz, Hayao Miyazaki, futurama, Dwango, animation, Studio Ghibli movies (Photo : Getty Images.) Experts claimed that the tough nature of sanctions, which were likely to threaten ZTE's global supply chain, prompted ZTE officials to quickly negotiate with U.S. Commerce Department. Advertisement The United States government plans to temporarily lift export restrictions on Chinese telecom company ZTE Corporation, a senior Commerce Department official said. Last month, US Commerce Department had leveled tough trade sanctions on ZTE Corp., citing the company had compromised on national security by violating restrictions on exporting American technological products to Iran. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement "As part of the effort to resolve the matter, and based upon binding commitments that ZTE has made to the US government, Commerce expects this week to be able to provide temporary relief from some licensing requirements," the senior Commerce official said. But the official also added that the respite "would be temporary in nature and would be maintained only if ZTE is abiding by its commitments to the U.S. government." All the specific details of the agreement will become public after it is published on Federal Register this week. The agreement is seen as a result of ZTE's week long negotiation with US Commerce Department. The senior officials from US Commerce Department informed that discussion with ZTE was constructive and result oriented. Experts claimed that the tough nature of sanctions, which were likely to threaten ZTE's global supply chain, prompted ZTE officials to quickly negotiate with U.S. Commerce Department. Chinese government also criticized the sanctions. China's Commerce Minister Gao Hucheng said that China hopes ZTE will be removed from black list "in order to avoid harming the stable, healthy development of China-U.S. economic and trade relations." The trade sanctions imposed on ZTE on the first week of March was fallout of 2012 investigation by U.S. Commerce Department. The investigation was in response to Reuters report alleging that ZTE had exported software products of top US companies to Iran. The report claimed that exported goods amounted to worth millions of dollars. Iran's controversial nuclear program has been a major bone of contention between Iran and America for almost one decade. US claims that Iran's nuclear program is threat to global peace. U.S government imposed many trade restrictions on US tech companies on trading with Iran, citing that Iran may use the technology to bolster its nuclear technology. Although US and Iran reached a deal on nuclear issues in 2015, trade restrictions on US tech companies are still very much in place. Advertisement TagsZTE Corp, ZTE China, ZTE Export Curb, ZTE Trade Sanctions (Photo : Getty Images) Susi said Indonesia felt "sabotaged" after last Saturday's maritime clash in its efforts to maintain peace and stability in the disputed waters. Advertisement Beijing demanded Indonesia to release the eight Chinese fishermen it arrested and detained following a maritime confrontation that ensued between the two nations in the South China Sea last Saturday, reports said. "The Chinese side urges the Indonesian side to immediately release the fishermen being captured and to assure their safety," China's Foreign Ministry told the Global Times. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement Last Saturday, a Chinese fishing boat was attacked and harassed by armed Indonesian vessels before Chinese coast guard came to its rescue. Members aboard Eight crew members of the Chinese fishing boat were operating well within the "traditional Chinese fishing grounds." Indonesian authoritites tried to confiscate the boat but was stopped when Chinese coast guard came to their aid. Although the Indonesian navy failed to confiscate the boat, it arrested eight crew members of the Chinese fishing vessel, Kway Fey 1008. China's foreign ministry maintained that the boat did not enter Indonesian waters. Exclusive economic zone For its part, Jakarta reiterated that the Chinese fishing vessel was operating illegally when it encroached into its exclusive economic zone (EEZ) near the Indonesian-controlled Natuna Island in the South China Sea. Indonesian naval officials said they were about to arrest the fishing vessel when the Chinese Coast Guard allegedly started ramming the boat back into international waters. The Indonesian government has sent a protest letter to Sun Waide, China's charge d'affaires in Indonesia. Bilateral relations Weide echoed the statements of the Foreign Ministry and called on Jakarta to release the detained crew members. "I asked the minister to release the eight fishermen detained by Indonesia," he said after being summoned by Susi Pudjiastuti, Indonesia's minister of fisheries and maritime affairs. "I emphasized that we hope the Indonesian side can proceed from fundamental interest of our good bilateral relations and solve these kinds of issues," he added. No rival claims Indonesia has no rival claims to the reefs and islands with China in the South China Sea and has acted as an 'honest broker' between China and the claimant countries over the years, reports said. But Susi said Indonesia felt "sabotaged" after last Saturday's maritime clash in its efforts to maintain peace and stability in the disputed waters. Susi said Jakarta may take the case to an international court. Advertisement TagsIndonesia, Natuna Islands, Exclusive economic zone, fishing vessel, South China Sea, international court, protest letter, china (Photo : Vernee/Uber) The Vernee Thor features a MediaTek MT6753 chipset Advertisement Chinese smartphone maker Vernee is preparing to launch three new smartphones with different MediaTek processors sometime next month. Among these devices are the affordable Vernee Thor and the high-end Vernee Apollo handset, which is currently attracting the international spotlight due to its very powerful configuration. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement Vernee, a newcomer in the Chinese smartphone business, recently announced that it is partnering with American online transportation network company Uber Technologies Inc., in order to make the Vernee Thor a certified Uber smartphone. The Chinese company did not provide any more information about the purpose of the new partnership, so it is unclear what exactly both companies are planning to do. Specs-wise, the Vernee Thor will feature a 5.0-inch On-cell display screen with HD pixel resolution. The phone comes with a 13 megapixel camera on the back and a 5 megapixel camera on the front. Under the hood, the Thor packs a MediaTek MT6753 processor, 3GB of RAM, up to 16GB of built-in memory storage, and a 2,800 mAh battery. As for Vernee's Apollo smartphone, it is expected to feature a 5.5-inch display screen with a 1,440 x 2,560 pixel resolution (Quad HD), and will come with the Android 6.0 Marshmallow operating system out of the box. It will have a 21 megapixel rear-facing camera and an 8 megapixel front-facing camera. The most interesting part of this device is that it will have 6GB of RAM inside, MediaTek's latest Helio X20 chipset (MT6797) and 128GB of internal memory storage. Other specs include a fingerprint sensor, Force Touch, USB Type-C port and support for 4G LTE connectivity. Advertisement TagsVernee Uber Thor Smartphone March April 2016, Vernee Thor Specs, Vernee China Smartphone News, Vernee Apollo (Photo : Getty Images) Reports said that the US is boosting the East Asian countries' military capabilities as a way of standing up to China's alleged militarization of the region. Add to this, Washington has been busy making its presence felt in the region through its freedom of navigation principle. Advertisement Beijing questioned the recent US-Philippine agreement allowing the US military the use of five Philippine bases known as Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA), saying the deal was an obvious move of Washington to militarize the South China Sea region. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the the deal should not jeopardize other nations' security interests and sovereignty and not be targeted at any third party. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement "I also want to point out that recently, the US military likes to talk about the so-called militarization of the South China Sea," Hua said. Military capabilities "Can they then explain, isn't this kind of continued strengthening of military deployments in the South China Sea and areas surrounding it considered militarization?" she asked. Reports said that the US is boosting the East Asian countries' military capabilities as a way of standing up to China's alleged militarization of the region. Add to this, Washington has been busy making its presence felt in the region through its freedom of navigation principle. The US and its regional allies have criticized China for its assertive pursuit of territorial claims in the South China Sea region following its construction of airfields and other military facilities. Planes for rent Neighboring countries, which have rival claims in the region, have raised concern about China's alleged militarization of the disputed areas and turned to the US for military support. The Philippines and Japan recently entered into an agreement whereby the former will rent planes from Tokyo that will be used to patrol its territories in the disputed waters in the South China Sea. China claims almost the entirety of the oil and gas-rich South China Sea, where $5 trillion worth of trade-borne ships pass through every year. Freedom of navigation Neighbors such as Taiwan, Brunei, Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines have overlapping claims in the disputed international waterway. The US said it is not taking sides among the claimant countries but only wants to ensure that freedom of navigation in the seas will be upheld. Two of its allies, Malaysia and Australia, have called for freedom of navigation to be exercised in the South China Sea. The US said it will send more ships to the region as a way of showing that the freedom of navigation in the seas will continue despite concerns raised by China. "We've been extremely consistent in saying that our activities will continue, that we will send our ships and our planes to that part of the world as we require, as it is necessary in accordance to international law," Australian Defense Minister Marise Payne said on Monday. Advertisement TagsSouth China Sea, Philippines, US-PHL military bases agreement, Freedom of Navigation, Malaysia, Australia, china (Photo : Conflict News Twitter Account) The Zaventem airport is being evacuated by all airport staff and passengers. All incoming flight schedules are cancelled. Advertisement Two explosions occurred in the departure area and the subway station of the Zaventem airport in Brussels, Belgium. The deathtoll increased to 13 people while 35 sustained severe injuries. The source of the explosive device is still unknown. The Zaventem airport is being evacuated by all airport staff and passengers. All incoming flight schedules are also cancelled. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement The rail transport services have been cancelled and people are highly advised not to go to the airport. The city museums were also shut down. The European Union Metro Station initiated a lockdown after the airport attacks. To ensure safety, all staff and personnel were highly advised to stay inside. The airport blasts comes four days after Salah Abdeslam, the primary suspect for the Paris attacks, was captured in Brussels. Abdesalam was born and raised in Brussels. The 26-year-old suspect confessed to the investigators that he wanted to participate as a suicide bomber during the Paris attacks but backed out at the last minute. The Belgian Police warned that there might be repercussions after Abdesalam's arrest. Jan Jambon, Belgium's interior minister, previously stated through a radio interview that the country was on high alert for any terrorist activity or a possible attack of revenge. Prior to the two explosions, shots were fired and there was someone reciting a line in Arabic language, Reuters reported. The emergency services have cleared the airport after the explosion but more bombs have been identified in the vicinity, according to Het Laatse Nieuws, a Belgian News Network. "I was on a break and heard and felt a big explosion," said Niels Caignau, a Swissport employee. Caignau added that they saw the whole incident over the departure hall and a huge cloud of smoke rose from the airport building. British Prime Minister David Cameron expressed his concern over Belgium's safety through Twitter. "We will do everything we can to help," wrote Cameron. World leaders from Georgia, Lithuania, Latvia, and Republic of Kosovo also expressed the same sentiment. Cameron recently announced that he will soon chair an important meeting for COBRA, UK's emergency commitee. The Zaventem airport is located approximately 11km from Brussels and handled 23 million passengers last 2015. Advertisement TagsBrussels, explosions, Airport, subway station, 13 dead, bombings, revenge in Paris attacks (Photo : Bruce Bennett/Getty Images) Drone maker DJI announced that it is building an agricultural service network for farm-use drones. Advertisement Shenzhen-based drone maker DJI Innovation Technology Co has revealed that it is currently setting up a network to promote and support the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) (or drones) in agriculture. DJI said that it will train 10,000 people across China in UAV operations, and will also set up 100 centers offering after-sales service nationwide, according to China Daily. DJI added that it will give subsidies to up to 10,000 people who are planning to start a business in agricultural drones. Like Us on Facebook Advertisement DJI officials say that using drones in agricultural or farm work has many benefits. Cao Nan, DJI sales director, said that their agricultural drone can load up to 10 kilograms of pesticide and spray it over an area of up to four hectares in an hour. Cao added that the drone has the work efficiency of more than 40 farm workers, helping to solve the current lack or shortage of farmhands in rural areas. Wang Fan, DJI's public relations officer, said that their first agricultural drone, the MG-1, needs both specialized sales and after-sales support. These, along with test flights and assembly, will be provided in the network the company is currently setting up. The Demand for Farm Drones To date, agricultural drones haven't made much progress in China compared to other countries. According to industry statistics, agricultural drones only have a penetration rate of 3 percent in China, which is significantly lower than the 50 percent penetration rate that such drones have in both the United States and Japan. Based on this, there is a huge potential for growth in the agricultural drone market. The Chinese government also promotes the use of modern agricultural machinery, and has issued policies that encourage the use of drones for farming. And with the current modernization of agriculture, it is also believed that the demand for more advanced machinery for agricultural use will rise. Advertisement Tagsagriculture, drone, farm, DJI, china Jews escaping from Yemen on a secret mission save an ancient Torah scroll 22 March, 2016 by Gregory Tomlin , | JERUSALEM (Christian Examiner) Israel has undertaken a secret mission to rescue some of the last remaining Jews from war-torn Yemen. The Jewish Agency announced yesterday that 19 Yemeni Jews had arrived in Israel on a covert flight like something out of movie plot, bringing with them the only surviving Torah scroll in the country. The removal of the scroll, estimated to be between 500 and 800 years old, essentially acknowledges the end of the presence of Jews in the Arabian country though 50 Jews elected to stay in a compound near the U.S. embassy. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met with the Yemenite "olim" or immigrants after their arrival. He then read from the Torah scroll with one of the Yemeni children. "Welcome to Jerusalem, to the Land of Israel. I am very excited to see you here," Prime Minister Netanyahu said. "It is moving that you know to read from the Torah. This is the basis. For many years we have thought about bringing you and with God's help, it is over." Israel has a long history of sneaking Jews out of tight spots. According to the BBC, in 1949-50, just after Israel's creation in 1948, 51,000 Yemeni Jews came to the country with "Operation Magic Carpet." Only a handful remained, but those have increasingly come under attack as Houthi rebels aligned with the Islamic State have gone to war with the Yemeni government. In a statement, the Jewish Agency said Jewish teacher Moshe Yaish Nahar was murdered in Raydah in 2008. In 2012, another member of the community, Aharon Zindani, was also murdered and a Jewish woman abducted and forced to convert to Islam and marry a Muslim man. The agency said Zindani's relatives were some of the Jews rescued from the country. One of the families that arrived in Israel was from Saana, the center of the fighting between the government and rebels. Natan Sharansky, CEO of the Jewish Agency said the airlift of the Jews from Yemen closes a chapter on one of the world's oldest Jewish communities, but "Yemenite Jewry's unique, 2,000-year-old contribution to the Jewish people will continue in the State of Israel." Trump, Clinton, Cruz not asked enough about their faith by press, author Stephen Mansfield says Guest Reviewer | 22 March, 2016 by Michael Foust WASHINGTON (Christian Examiner) Some political pundits say religion is discussed too much in political life. Author Stephen Mansfield says it's not discussed enough at least, not in the ways it needs to be. [Ninety] percent of Americans believe in God, so let's stop acting like religion is some odd thing that is superglued onto an otherwise good person's life. The New York Times bestselling author has a new book, "Ask the Question," (Baker) that urges the press to take religion more seriously during the presidential race, beginning by asking the candidates specific questions about how faith shapes their positions and policy. As it stands now, Mansfield says, religion is either completely ignored or only used by the press as a way to criticize conservatives for holding to supposedly "outdated" positions. Both approaches are wrong, he says. "The Constitution forbids religion tests, and we don't want a candidate for high office, a candidate for the presidency, to have to take a written exam to confirm they are orthodox in one direction or the other," Mansfield told the Christian Examiner. "On the other hand, I quote in the book the Founding Fathers where they specifically say: We expect the people to pay attention to the religion of the candidates. We're simply doing what the Founding Fathers expected the whole country to do." Mansfield is the author of some 20 books, including "The Faith of George W. Bush" and "The Faith of Barack Obama." A Pew Research Center survey earlier this year found that 51 percent of Americans and 64 percent of Republicans prefer a candidate who shares their religious beliefs. Additionally, 40 percent of Americans said political leaders talk "too little" about their faith, while only 27 percent said political leaders talk "too much" about it. The Christian Examiner recently spoke with Mansfield about the 2016 election and what he thinks the press gets wrong about religion. Following is a transcript, edited for clarity: Christian Examiner: What led you to write this book? Stephen Mansfield: The short answer is that I decided to make a point I had been making for eight years in a more direct way. I wrote the "Faith of George W. Bush" years ago, and I made the point in that book that if a politician's or candidate's faith is sincere, it's the most important thing about him. It definitely tells us how they're going to lead. I made the same point again in the "Faith of Barack Obama." As I saw this [2016] presidential election shaping up, I realized that a lot of people think we're heading into a secular direction, but nothing could be further from the truth. This election is shaping up to be as faith-based as any in American history. CE: Why should we care about a candidate's faith? Mansfield: If we're going to vote, we're going to care about anything that affects what they do in office. If our assumption is that religion is just window dressing and that it never affects their public life, then we shouldn't care. But we have lots of examples throughout American history that confirms that what a president does believe religiously has a dramatic effect on what they do in office. It's not to go after a certain religion, but it's simply as a way to say, 'If you are saying you're faith-based, then we need to know how that will shape you in office,' because it affects the direction of our country. They can have their faith, and I'm thrilled for it. I just want to know what it is. CE: Some Christians will appreciate what you're book is saying, but they get a little nervous when what they view as a hostile media begins picking apart conservative Christian beliefs. How do we tackle this subject without it turning into an attack on Christianity? Mansfield: I certainly share that concern. But my book is written not only to voters but also to the press. And I am saying: Look, you in the media are not very versed when it comes to religion. You tend to treat religion as an oddity of someone's life, and it's time to realize that religion has a profound effect on not just on the Right but at every level. Frankly, Hillary Clinton is saying nothing different about the influence of religion on her life than Jerry Falwell said. There's deep concern that the press picks at religion, and particularly conservative religion. The press is definitely part of the problem not only in their not educating themselves well but also that they're not reporting on religion as anything other than like a carnival freak show. CE: Has there been a time in American history when this issue was covered appropriately? Mansfield: Yes, and for a good portion of our early history really up to the 1800s religion was covered with respect. It was assumed that candidates had a faith. There might be some discussion and debate about their denomination. You'd have articles about whether they were tithers or whether they had ever served as an elder in their church. That started to change when you began to have more or a progressive and anti-religious orientation in the early 1900s. CE: What is the solution? Mansfield: The solution involves at least two things. First of all, that we ask the question. For example: Mrs. Clinton, you say that you are faith-based, and you say you are particularly faith-based when it comes to your immigration policy. Would you draw the line between some tenant of your faith a Scripture, a cardinal doctrine of the Methodist church and what you believe about immigration? Second, that the press starts treating it as what it really is; 90 percent of Americans believe in God, so let's stop acting like religion is some odd thing that is superglued onto an otherwise good person's life. Trump flips on 'taking sides' with Israel; Cruz points out Trump's use of term 'Palestine' 22 March, 2016 by Gregory Tomlin , | WASHINGTON (Christian Examiner) Less than one month after refusing to say what side he would take in future negotiations between Palestinians and Israelis, presidential front runner Donald Trump has changed course. During his address to the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) March 21, Trump told attendees he had not come to the gathering to pander to it. Instead, he took a hardline stance that could only be taken as an endorsement of the Israeli position in those decades-long negotiations including recognizing Jerusalem as the "eternal Jewish capital." "I came here to speak to you about where I stand on the future of American relations with our strategic ally, our unbreakable friendship, and our cultural brother, the only democracy in the Middle East, the State of Israel," Trump said. However, several times during the event, Trump hinted that he already saw "Palestine" as a legitimate state, referring to the Palestinian Authority (PA) and some territories under Israeli control by the name. Republican challenger Texas Sen. Ted Cruz pounced on the gaff. "Let me just say at the outset," Cruz said, "Perhaps to the surprise of the previous speaker, Palestine has not existed since 1948." In 2017 we will have a commander-in-chief who will say to Iran, 'Either you shut down your nuclear program, or we will shut it down for you. ... Weakness is provocative. Appeasement increases the chance for conflict. Cruz also reminded the crowd during his address that Trump had pledged on multiple occasions to be neutral in the negotiations between Israel and the PA. "Let me be very, very clear: As president, I will not be neutral," Cruz said. Trump said his main goal, if elected president, would be to dismantle the nuclear deal reached between the United States, its European allies and Iran. The candidate called the deal a win only for Iran and a catastrophic loss for the America, Israel and the remainder of the Middle East. He said he could achieve a better "deal." "The problem here is fundamental. We have rewarded the world's leading state sponsor of terror with $150 billion and we received absolutely nothing in return," Trump said. He added that the deal eventually allows Iran to obtain nuclear weapons, especially after the monitoring of Iran's nuclear program ends. Some of Iran's efforts, he said, include Iran's funding and arming of Hezbollah, the Shiite jihadist and political organization in Lebanon. Trump said the group had "received sophisticated anti-ship weapons, anti-aircraft weapons, and GPS systems on rockets. Now they're in Syria trying to establish another front against Israel from the Syrian side of the Golan Heights. Trump said Iran's recent missile tests illustrate the impotence of the United Nations and shows that the organization, even though its headquarters are in the United States, is no friend to America. In fact, Trump said, the UN is "not a friend of democracy. It's not a friend to freedom." He also said the UN would never make a deal that did not benefit Israel. Deals, he said, are made by negotiators, rather than imposed by a third party. If the UN imposes a peace deal, it would be rewarding Palestinian terrorism. "It's not up the United Nations to impose a solution. The parties must negotiate a resolution themselves. The United States can be useful as a facilitator of negotiations, but no one should be telling Israel it must abide by some agreement made by others thousands of miles away that don't even really know what's happening," Trump said. During his address, Cruz reiterated his positions on Israel, including his promise to tear up the Iran nuclear deal on his first day in office. He likened the deal to "Munich in 1938" the last chance the world had to stop Adolf Hitler before the Nazi war machine launched its Blitzkrieg. "I recognize for years a whole lot of presidential candidates, both Republicans and Democrats, have said that. Indeed, I recognize some candidates have said that standing here today. Here's the difference: I will do it," Cruz said. "In 2017 we will have a commander-in-chief who will say to Iran, 'Either you shut down your nuclear program, or we will shut it down for you," Cruz said. "Weakness is provocative. Appeasement increases the chance for conflict." Cruz also said he would oppose the growing boycott, divest and sanction (BDS) movement against Israel that has gained momentum in left-leaning circles, and even among some church groups such as the Presbyterian Church in the USA. He said he would prohibit federal funding to universities and organizations that adopt the policy. Cruz said the barrier to peace in between Israel and its neighbors is not Israel. "It is the Palestinian Authority in a unity government with Hamas that celebrates the murder or innocent women and children and even incites and compensates for the terrorist attacks." Should the UN attempt to push through a unilateral recognition of Palestinian statehood, Cruz said the U.S. would veto the move and, if president, he said he would fly to New York to cast the vote. About a million Christians have fled Syria since the civil war started, Chaldean Catholic bishop Antoine Audo said last week, which amounts to 66 percent of the total population of 1.5 million Christians present in the country before March 2011. "I think now there are maybe 500,000. Two-thirds have left mainly due to the insecurity," the Aleppo priest said in Geneva where he had gone to attend a side event of the UN Human Rights Council. The northern city of Aleppo witnessed an even larger proportion of migration of Christians, with only 40,000 now remaining in the city, out of the population of 160,000, before the conflict began. Audo said that all of Aleppo's three cathedrals have been destroyed because of violence perpetrated in the city during the last five years. The bishop expressed his perplexity as to why the militants always targeted Christian sites in particular with the intent to destabilize a population, which they also did in Homs and several other cities. He refused to blame President Bashar al-Assad for the conflict, and said that Christians were never targeted during his regime. According to him, "there is no persecution of Christians" by the Assad government, but the Christians were only "targeted" by jihadists such as ISIS to "destabilize the Syrian society and transform the war into a confessional war." He believed that if national polling were to be done, as many as 80 percent of Christians would vote for Assad, and that he would emerge victorious with over 50 percent overall support, including of the Sunnis. The Assad regime and a coalition of Saudi Arabia and the West have been in a gridlock for years. The international community have pushed hard in the UN to have Assad step down as President, a demand which Damascus never agrees to discuss, calling it a "red line" in negotiations, which must not be crossed. The Bishop told the reporters that since the ceasefire implemented on February 27, the basic necessities of water and electricity are being restored. Russian President Vladimir Putin has withdrawn his troops from Syria, suggesting that the conflict is coming nearer to its end. "I consider the mission set for the defense ministry and the armed forces on the whole has been accomplished," Putin said in a statement on March 14, adding that the pullout was "in accordance with the situation on the ground [in Syria]." Last month, Pope Francis had met with Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill in Havana, Cuba, where they signed a joint declaration stating their concern about the Middle East. "We call upon the international community to act urgently in order to prevent the further expulsion of Christians from the Middle East. In raising our voice in defence of persecuted Christians, we wish to express our compassion for the suffering experienced by the faithful of other religious traditions who have also become victims of civil war, chaos and terrorist violence," the declaration states." "Thousands of victims have already been claimed in the violence in Syria and Iraq, which has left many other millions without a home or means of sustenance," it continues. "We urge the international community to seek an end to the violence and terrorism and, at the same time, to contribute through dialogue to a swift return to civil peace. Large-scale humanitarian aid must be assured to the afflicted populations and to the many refugees seeking safety in neighbouring lands." Wheaton College announced appointment of new provost, Margaret Diddams, who will be the college's first woman in the position in its 150-year history. An alum of the institution, she serves as a professor and Assistant Provost at Seattle Pacific University at present. She graduated from Wheaton in 1983, with a bachelor of arts in psychology before moving on to New York University, where she pursued a masters and Ph. D in industrial and organizational psychology. "She has earned respect across her campus for her wise, relational leadership, and comes to Wheaton with a strong calling to expand its role as a leader in Christian higher education, in the church, and in society," Philip Ryken, college's president was quoted as saying in a statement. Diddams will be starting her job as a provost on June 1, after Stanton Jones steps down, as he had announced he would last year. "Dr. Margaret Diddams is a seasoned educator who is passionate about the liberal arts and the life of faith in Jesus Christ, with broad interests across the disciplines," Ryken said. Diddams told the Chicago Tribune that it was a privilege for her to come back to Wheaton. "I am the first female (provost) and, yes, I think that is a big deal," she said. After joining the institution, one of her focuses will be on increasing the diversity at the campus. "Growing up in Rogers Park, even 50 years ago, was an incredibly diverse community," she said. "I don't see people as 'the other,' thanks in part to my upbringing." "I fell in love with Wheaton College in 1978 when I arrived on campus for my interview and saw the motto, 'For Christ and His Kingdom,'" Diddams recounts. "At Wheaton, I learned that a robust Christian education grounded in the liberal arts creates networks of knowledge, faith and experience to transform individuals in preparation to serve others. Building on that foundation, I view scholarship and learning as a form of faithfulness and worship." She joined the Seattle Pacific University in 1993 as a faculty, and became the Assistant Provost in July 2010. "As a professor, I have created a faithful and authentic dialogue between Christianity and my field while inviting my students to take part," Diddams said. "In my career as an administrator, I have created structures to strengthen that work for others. I am ready to come home to Wheaton to serve and give back to an institution that has always been precious to me." Three explosions rocked Brussels on Tuesday, killing at least 28 people and injuring over 200, according to the latest media reports. ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attacks, according to a website affiliated with the militant group. Two bombs exploded at the Brussels Zaventem airport at 8:00 am local time (07:00 GMT) near excess baggage counter and near Starbucks cafe in the departure hall, killing 14 people and injuring 92. The third bomb went off at a train that had stopped at Maelbeek subway station at about 9:10 am, and killed 20 people and wounded another 106. Prime Minister Charles Michel condemned the attacks as "blind, violent and cowardly", adding that this was a "tragic moment in our country's history. I would like to call on everyone to show calmness and solidarity." The first two bombs at the airport went off within 15 seconds of one another, with a distance of 20 meters between them. At least one of the explosions appear to be carried out by suicide bombers. Eyewitness accounts say that the explosions brought down the ceiling of an airport wing, shattered glass windows, and ruptured pipes. The third explosion of the Maelbeek subway station was not every far from the European parliament and the headquarters of the European Union. The injured at the station were taken to a local pub, which served as a makeshift treatment center. Donald Tusk, EU President said: "These attacks mark another low by the terrorists in the service of hatred and violence." The Belga news agency reported that some shouts in Arabic were heard before the bombs exploded, and that there were sounds of firing. Another local news channel RTBF said that a Kalashnikov rifle was discovered at the departure hall at the airport. The attacks come four days after Salah Abdeslam, the prime suspect in the Paris attacks, was arrested in Brussels. He is the lone survivor of the 10 militants who were at the forefront of carrying out the attacks which killed 130 people. He had told the authorities that he had formed a new team to carry out more attacks. However, officials have not yet confirmed whether there is a direct connection between his arrest for the Paris attacks and the recent attacks in Brussels. Belgium's terror alert level has been raised to the maximum, and international train travel to and from Belgium has been suspended. Other cities in Europe including Paris and London have also been put on high alert, and their airport security was tightened. In college, I told my friends that I wanted the Jars of Clay cover of All My Tears played at my funeral: When I go dont cry for me / In my Fathers arms Ill be. I disliked the thought of my loved ones saddened at my death, since I knew I would be in a better place. For Christians, the phrase is no mere euphemism; our death brings us to Jesus, sin clawing at our heels no more. In my youthful zeal, I thought my funeral should be a joyous celebration. I wasnt alone. Many funerals today are not about mourning death but a celebration of life. As our culture discards all-black attire and other formalities of a traditional funeral, families create more personalizedand often more upbeatexperiences to honor the deceased. Earlier this year, the BBC reported on the trend of happy funerals, noting that Monty Pythons Always Look on the Bright Side of Life had become the UKs most popular song played at memorial servicesreplacing Verdis Requiem. After celebratory memorial services, we are encouraged to move on, comforted by memories and knowing that the person weve lost is no longer in pain. But this positive focus can afflict and baffle people deep in grief. As Daily Mail columnist Bel Mooney wrote last year, Even though modern, cheerful funerals can be hugely touching and beautiful, a part of me wonders whether they show how petrified people are of death, and of the long agony of bereavement. Christians understand the impulse to celebrate even as we mourn. A life that was well-lived commends Christ to a watching world, and the hope of eternal life proclaimed ... 1 You have reached the end of this Article Preview You have reached the end of this Article Preview To continue reading, subscribe now. Subscribers have full digital access. Have something to add about this? See something we missed? Share your feedback here. Where Can Christians Go to Literally Mourn the Shedding of Innocent Blood this Friday? #ProLifeGoodFriday Abortion Observation Marks the Loss of Nearly 60 Million Children Contact: Tom Ciesielka, 312-422-1333, CHICAGO, March 22, 2016 / "These children's lives are ended, deliberately, before they even get to take their first breath," explained Eric Scheidler, executive director of the Pro-Life Action League. "As Christians, we seek Christ's forgiveness for our sins. This sin of killing our own children is one of which our entire society must repent. If we cannot protect the child in the womb, we will never truly be a civilized, compassionate people. As long as we continue to discard unborn babies, all efforts to help the poor, needy and disenfranchised ring hollow. Unborn lives matter to Jesus." These prayer vigils at abortion clinics in 28 states include seven in California, five each in Pennsylvania, Texas and New York, four in Ohio and Illinois. Well over half of the abortion locations are affiliates of Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion chain. Under social media hashtag #ProLifeGoodFriday, participants will share their thoughts and experiences on The Way of the Cross for Victims of Abortion. "More than 3,300 babies are put to death by abortion every day in the United Stateseven on Good Friday," declared Scheidler, "and it's happening in our town, in every town. This solemn day that has been revered for centuries is an ideal time for pro-life Americans to put their convictions into effective action. Each year, we witness how prayers offered for all the victims of abortionthe children lost, the mothers wounded, the communities blightedare changing hearts and saving lives," Scheidler added. The Pro-Life Action League invites clergy and concerned individuals to participate in this nationwide prayer service, The Way of the Cross for Victims of Abortion, in their own communities. A list of observance locations across the nation is Click here to watch a 2 minute video documenting The Way of the Cross. About the Pro-Life Action League The Pro-Life Action League was founded by Joe Scheidler in 1980 with the aim of saving babies from abortion through direct action. Not content to await a political or judicial solution to abortion, the League seeks to stop the killing of unborn children right now through all available peaceful means, including public protest, sidewalk counseling, education, youth outreach, and national leadership. Visit Share Tweet Contact: Tom Ciesielka, 312-422-1333, tc@tcpr.net CHICAGO, March 22, 2016 / Christian Newswire / -- As Christians worldwide mark the suffering and death of Jesus Christ on Good Friday, March 25, 2016, the Pro-Life Action League leads Christians across America in The Way of the Cross for Victims of Abortion , commemorating the deaths of the nearly 60 million children lost to abortion since its legalization in 1973. Seventy abortion facilities coast-to-coast will be surrounded by somber crowds praying and meditating on this Christian holy day."These children's lives are ended, deliberately, before they even get to take their first breath," explained Eric Scheidler, executive director of the Pro-Life Action League. "As Christians, we seek Christ's forgiveness for our sins. This sin of killing our own children is one of which our entire society must repent. If we cannot protect the child in the womb, we will never truly be a civilized, compassionate people. As long as we continue to discard unborn babies, all efforts to help the poor, needy and disenfranchised ring hollow. Unborn lives matter to Jesus."These prayer vigils at abortion clinics in 28 states include seven in California, five each in Pennsylvania, Texas and New York, four in Ohio and Illinois. Well over half of the abortion locations are affiliates of Planned Parenthood, the nation's largest abortion chain.Under social media hashtag #ProLifeGoodFriday, participants will share their thoughts and experiences on The Way of the Cross for Victims of Abortion."More than 3,300 babies are put to death by abortion every day in the United Stateseven on Good Friday," declared Scheidler, "and it's happening in our town, in every town. This solemn day that has been revered for centuries is an ideal time for pro-life Americans to put their convictions into effective action. Each year, we witness how prayers offered for all the victims of abortionthe children lost, the mothers wounded, the communities blightedare changing hearts and saving lives," Scheidler added.The Pro-Life Action League invites clergy and concerned individuals to participate in this nationwide prayer service, The Way of the Cross for Victims of Abortion, in their own communities. A list of observance locations across the nation is available here About the Pro-Life Action LeagueThe Pro-Life Action League was founded by Joe Scheidler in 1980 with the aim of saving babies from abortion through direct action. Not content to await a political or judicial solution to abortion, the League seeks to stop the killing of unborn children right now through all available peaceful means, including public protest, sidewalk counseling, education, youth outreach, and national leadership.Visit www.prolifeaction.org home Life 3D images of sites in Middle East gathered to preserve history The crisis in the Middle East and North Africa has resulted to a lot of damage to historical sites and priceless artifacts. The mass destruction has prompted historians, members of the academia and governments to find a way to preserve the sites, if only through 3D images. The Institute for Digital Archaeology has launched a project aimed at doing this. Called Million Image Database, the endeavor is a joint project of several groups. "In collaboration with UNESCO, engineering specialists at Oxford University, our other academic partners, and the government of the United Arab Emirates, we are in the process of capturing millions of 3D images of threatened objects," the institute explains in its website. "Armed with lightweight, discreet and easy-to-use 3D cameras, our dedicated volunteer photographers are capturing high quality scans at important sites in conflict zones throughout the Middle East and North Africa." Early this year, the institure distributed low-cost but high-tech cameras to volunteer photographers who would take images of the sites located in areas where there is conflict. Numbering about 5,000, these cameras can take high quality images for inclusion in the institute's open-source database, for use in "research, heritage appreciation, educational programs and 3D replication." The institute will be producing the first full-scale replication of a heritage site this April by means of "proprietary cement-based 3D printing techniques." According to Breitbart, this will be the triumphal arc of Palmyra, a site destroyed by IS last October, which will be displayed in Times Square in New York and Trafalgar Square in London. Other replicas will be made throughout the year until 2017. Meanwhile, in Syria, French and Syrian archaeologists are also working together to capture images of the country's sites that are threatened by the presence of the terror group Islamic State. According to The Christian Post, the endeavor is a joint project of the Syrian Directorate General of Antiquities and Museums and Iconem, a French imaging company. Maamoun Abdulkarim, head of DGAM, said, as quoted by Breitbart, "This solution gives our archaeological sites a real hope of renaissance and allows the memory of them to be preserved, no matter what happens." home World Pope Francis condemns indifference of authorities to refugee crisis Pope Francis has condemned authorities who continue to act indifferent towards the ongoing refugee crisis. Pope Francis spoke about the poor response of authorities to the refugee crisis. The pontiff likened the situation to the time that Jesus Christ was denied justice when he was crucified, Christian Today reports. The pope told the thousands of Christians present at St. Peter's Square during the Palm Sunday Mass that Jesus also became the victim of indifference when his followers abandoned him before the crucifixion. He likened the situation to the present suffering of the more than 1.1 million refugees who fled the chaos from their homeland and sought asylum in Europe. "I am thinking of so many other people, so many marginalised people, so many asylum seekers, so many refugees," said Pope Francis. "There are so many who don't want to take responsibility for their destiny." The statement was clearly a reference to the migration debate among European nations. He described how Jesus was humiliated, mocked, insulted, beaten up, and given a crown of thorns. Francis said the crucifixion was also a form of "disgraceful condemnation" by the authorities at that time, the Associated Press relays. "Even as every form of justice is denied to him, Jesus also experiences in his own flesh indifference, since no one wishes to take responsibility for his fate," the pope added. Instead of helping the refugees settle in another place, some European countries responded to the crisis by closing up their borders. The move left thousands of migrants stranded in Greece. In addition, a new deal mandates that those who travel to Greece illegally will be deported to Turkey. The deal, which was created to fight smuggling, was supposed to take effect on Sunday. Pope Francis led the waving of olive branches to mark the opening of the Holy Week before he started the Mass at St. Peter's Square. After that, he toured around the square on his popemobile to greet the people who came to celebrate Palm Sunday. home US Victims of Christian Prayer Center's pay-to-pray scam can receive refund The office of the state attorney general in Washington has ordered the websites owned by Christian Prayer Center to be shut down. The center was found to have been scamming people into paying for prayers. "I believe in the power of prayer," attorney general Bob Ferguson said in a statement reported by The Guardian on Wednesday. "What I do not believe in and what I will not tolerate is unlawful businesses that prey upon people taking advantage of their faith or their need for help in order to make a quick buck." The Christian Prayer Center was put up by Benjamin Rogovy, a businesman who charged people from $9 to $35 for intercessory prayers. He set up the website christianprayercenter.com and its Spanish counterpart, oracioncristiana.org, fake ministries, and non-existing Pastor Eric Johnson and Pastor Carlson. Among those who fell victim to the scam is one family whose child is terminally ill. They paid CPC $35 first, then their credit card was charged a second and third time without them knowing. It was when the father discovered those charges that he contacted Daniel Davis, the assistant attorney general. "The pastor was a sham," Davis said, as quoted in another report by The Guardian. "The testimonials were fictitious as well." The company, according to Ferguson, amassed more $7 million from 2011 to 2015, duping 125,000 people, with a total of more than 400,000 transactions overall. Rogovy is also involved in two other scams, a fake consumer complaint agency and a fake ordination service. He has reportedly agreed to return a total of $7.75 milion to 165,000 people. People who wish to have a refund can file a complaint at the office of the attorney general before June 12. Those affected will receive an email by April 6 coming from the Christian Prayer Center regarding the process to be followed. The Burmese government have been urged to repeal laws which hinder religious freedom by a coalition of groups at the United Nations Human Rights Council (HRC). Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), a religious freedom charity, signed a joint statement alongside the Jubilee Campaign, a charity for persecuted Christians, which called for the government to promote freedom for all religious groups. The statement came as Burma went through its universal periodic review (UPR). Under the UPR process every member country has its human rights record reviewed. However the Burmese government has not accepted all of the recommendations and CSW says many of the rejected suggestions "carry utmost importance" for religious freedom. On top of that 35 of the rejected proposals relate to the rights of the Muslim Rohingya, a persecuted minority in Burma. At a side event at the UN HRC, a panel of activists which included Cardinal Charles Maung Bo, a Catholic leader in Burma, spoke on the importance of religious freedom. Bo said: "Whatever the perspectives and there are, within my country, a variety of perspectives about the origin of the Rohingya people, there cannot be doubt that those who have lived in Myanmar for generations have a right to be regarded as citizens, and that all of them deserve to be treated humanely and in accordance with international human rights." On Tuesday Burma's first civilian president for 70 years was nominated, ending decades of totalitarian military rule. Benedict Rogers, CSW's East Asia team leader said: "This is an exciting and yet a critical time in Burma. The country faces at long last the arrival of a democratically elected government, and yet the military retain a very key role in the governance of the nation. "There is at long last a realistic hope of change, and yet many challenges still remain. Religious intolerance and ethnic conflict are two of the major challenges for the country," said Rogers. "We hope that the new government will find ways to promote unity in diversity, equal rights for all, a federal solution for the ethnic conflict, action to address hate speech and prevent discrimination, and policies to promote inter-religious harmony, freedom of religion or belief, and peace." 850 Palestinian Christians granted visas to visit Jerusalem for Easter Israeli authorities have granted 850 Palestinian Christians living in Gaza permits to travel to Jerusalem and Bethlehem over Easter. "This is the first time such a large number of Christians from Gaza received permits to travel to the West Bank and Jerusalem," Muhammad al-Maqadma, spokesperson for the Palestinian Ministry of Civil Affairs, told Ma'an News. The permits, which have been granted to Christians of different ages for a period spanning 45 days, were the result of the "dedicated efforts" by Minister of Civil Affairs Hussein al-Sheikh. In previous years, "permits were given randomly, and if they don't have them for the whole family, they cannot come," Father Jamal Khader, the rector of the Latin Patriarchate of Jerusalem, said in a press briefing last week. "Can you imagine some members of the family coming to celebrate in Jerusalem and leaving their family behind? It's not in our tradition, we celebrate together. So we had the experience in previous years when very few came. This year, I'm not sure." There are around 8,000 Christians living in Jerusalem, 50,000 in the West Bank and fewer than 2,000 in Gaza. Christians are still facing restricted access to Easter services in Jerusalem, however, according to Yusef Daher, secretary-general of the Jerusalem Interchurch Centre. Easter has coincided with the Jewish Passover celebrations for the past two years, and while those celebrating the Jewish festival roam freely, there are restrictions on Christian movement. Israel has placed restrictions on reaching the Church of the Holy Sepulcher for Holy Week and Easter, through a network of police barriers. "This [restrictions] did not happen ten years ago," Daher told the Catholic Herald. The Holy Fire ceremony part of Easter celebrations for both Greek Orthodox and Armenian Christians involves the sharing of fire that, according to tradition, has been brought from the tomb of Jesus. The flame is passed from person to person by torches. This fire is then sent to various parishes in Israel. It has been a point of contention over the past decade, and police say the single exit into the plaza means the ceremony is a high risk if fire were to break out. American Red Nuns who follow a life of prayer open new monastery in Thailand A group of American Redemptoristine nuns has opened a new monastery in Korat City, Thailand. "Our contribution to the world's need is prayer," said Sister Joan Claver, who has been a nun for 63 years and is the prioress and founder of the new monastery, according to the Catholic News Agency. She added, "We have great admiration for apostolic work like preaching or nursing and family life, but we as Redemptoristine nuns are called to this distinct way of contemplative prayer life. All together we contribute to build a better society and a better world." It was in 2011 when the Order of the Most Holy Redeemer from St. Louis, Missouri visited Thailand to find where they can build the monastery. Today, the priory has four nuns and one aspirant. The nuns are called Red Nuns because they wear a red habit in addition to wearing a scapular and a choi-mantle with a coloured medallion of the Most Holy Redeemer. They also wear a belt with a 15-decade rosary, which has a medallion embossed with the emblems of Jesus Christ's passion. They pray several times a day. "We follow a life of prayer in every moment right from the time we wake till rest," said Sister Maria Suphavadi Kamsamran, a Thai Redemptoristine sister. "Our meditation ranges from Jesus Christ's infancy in the crib to the Passion on the Cross and the Holy Eucharist which are our spiritual sources." Sister Maria said they "are grateful to God and to the Diocese of Nakhon Ratchasima for granting us support in our prayer ministry." The new monastery has a private chapel, cells for nuns and a refectory. It was the Diocese of Nakhon Ratchasima that granted the nuns 3.2 acres of land in Korat, about 136 miles from Bangkok. Bishop Joseph Chusak Sirisut held a Mass and blessed the monastery last October. "I want the diocese to be also a focal centre of prayer," he said. The Redemptoristine nuns were founded by the Italian Venerable Maria Celeste Crostarosa in 1731. Bangladesh: murdered Christian convert, 68, had spoken of risks he faced A Christian convert in Bangladesh stabbed to death by suspected Islamic militants had spoken of the risks he ran and prayed for protection. Police said three attackers approached 68-year-old Hossain Ali on a motorbike while he was taking his regular morning walk in the town of Kurigram and then stabbed him in the neck. A member of staff from Redcliffe College in Gloucester told Christian Today he had said: "Lord, look at this, they don't know anything, they don't understand, forgive them." He prayed that God would "place me under Your control". The killing is the latest in a series of attacks on minorities in the country. Atheist bloggers have been murdered as well as liberal activists and members of minority Muslim sects and other religious groups. Kurigram district police chief Tobarak Ullah told AFP: "He died on the spot. The attackers exploded a molotov cocktail to create panic and left the scene on a motorcycle." He said Ali had converted to Christianity in 1999 from Islam. "We are not sure whether Islamist militants carried out the attack," he said, but added that the pattern of killing bore the hallmarks of recent attacks by Islamist militants. Three men were picked up for questioning, he said. Over the last few months, Islamic State has claimed responsibility for several killings including the murder of a Shiite convert from Sunni Islam in the southwestern town of Kaliganj and of an alleged Christian convert. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government has denied IS has a presence in the country and police say domestic militant group Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen is behind the attacks. At least five militants of Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen have been killed in shootouts since November, as security forces have stepped up a crackdown on militants seeking to make the moderate Muslim nation of 160 million a sharia-based state. Additional reporting by Reuters. Brussels terror attacks: Why #StopIslam isn't the answer to anything So, it's happening the inevitable reaction to the Brussels attacks. The hashtag #StopIslam is trending. Katie Hopkins is blaming it on refugees, Telegraph columnist Allison Pearson is using the deaths as an argument for leaving the EU. While the wounds of the injured are still gaping and the sorrow of the bereaved is just beginning, the world rushes to judgment. Only it doesn't, not quite. A good number of the #StopIslam tweets are from people appalled at the sentiment, not people supporting it. And there's another Twitter hashtag trending, too: #PrayForTheWorld. Yes, an event like this draws out the crazies, the haters and the plain thoughtless. But it also reveals the vast reservoirs of human sympathy within the hearts of ordinary people, and their instinctive sense that wickedness like this is exceptional rather than normal. And it has not repeat ad nauseam, not happened because Islam is bad, violent or inherently cruel. It has happened because some Muslims have become corrupted by a false ideology and learned a terrible, nihilistic creed that values human life at less than nothing. But this is the danger: that we judge the many by the actions of the few, and let our attitudes to the refugees trekking across Europe, the displaced people in miserable border camps, the hapless voyagers on overcrowded craft, be formed by actions of those whom these people would repudiate in horror. The danger is that instead of seeing a friendless child or a desperate parent longing for a home and security, we see a potential terrorist. After all, they are Muslim; and perhaps their skin is a slightly different shade from our own. I don't believe it. I believe the overwhelming majority of refugees, and the overwhelming majority of Muslims who already live in Europe, want the same as anyone: to live peacefully. I believe that's what should control our attitude to them. It's about respect for them as human beings, about recognising them as children of God, and about refusing to give in to fear of the unknown. "Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it," says Hebrews 13:2. Nowadays the angels may be disguised as Eritreans, Syrians or Iraqis. Their wings are folded under shabby jackets and their celestial radiance concealed under the grime of the road, but they are unquestionably among those beaten back at the Macedonian border or waiting in a squalid camp at Calais. And let's face the other danger, too. We may entertain angels unawares, but we may also entertain demons. Of the millions on the move yes, many of them Muslims it only takes a dozen to bring a city to a halt and cause unimaginable suffering. Anyone who has a heart grieves over what has happened, and fears for what lies ahead. Paris has been attacked, now Brussells. Where next? Berlin, Munich? London again? How can they be stopped? Donald Trump has an idea: a huge wall, all the way along the Mexican/US border. It's absurd, but its brutal simplicity has struck a chord. It won't work for America, and it wouldn't work for Europe. #StopIslam? Islam is already here. #StopRefugees? All of them? How do you plan to do that? Frauke Petry, leader of Germany's far-right AfD party, suggested shooting them. Really? Children too? The truth is that those Joseph Conrad called the "terrible simplifiers" can be found on both sides. They are the terrorists who think the answer lies in a suicide bomb and they are the politicians and pundits who think it lies in a razor-wire fence. Democracy, decency and above all Christianity require a better answer. Yes, we should be hyper-vigilant. We should control our borders and yes, there are legitimate questions about how that control can be exercised. We should find and root out violent radicalism. But we shouldn't fall for the fantasy that if we closed the borders and created a Fortress Europe we'd solve the problem. It's harder than that. It means asking not what religion someone is, but why it has curdled in them and poisoned their minds. It means facing up to issues of justice, opportunity and integration all the boring, routine work of government and civil society that makes no headlines and never trends on Twitter. It means, above all, thinking as Christians, who recognise the infinite value of every individual and resist any attempt to demonize them because God loves them, but also because it might turn them into demons. Follow Mark Woods on Twitter: @RevMarkWoods Christian MPs hit back at #StopIslam, say religious freedoms must be protected for Muslims Christian MPs have hit back at calls to reduce freedoms for Muslims after terrorist attacks hit Brussels on Tuesday. Several blasts in the Belgium capital have left dozens dead and led to a number of global politicians call for curbs on freedoms for Islamic communities. ISIS have claimed responsibility for the attacks. Donald Trump, frontrunner for the Republican nomination, called for surveillance of Muslims and repeated his suggestion of refusing entry to all Muslim migrants to the US. "This is going to happen in the United States," he warned. Ted Cruz, Trump's closest rival for the GOP nomination also criticised plans to allow "tens of thousands of Syrian Muslim refugees" to enter the US. The presidential candidate called for "Muslim neighborhoods" to be patrolled. However a number of Christian MPs lambasted the remarks and said freedom for all religions must be protected. "If there was to be a response to Brussels that limited the freedom of Muslims then the freedom of other faith groups would suffer as well," said Labour's faith envoy, Stephen Timms. Timms spoke alongside fellow Christian in the Labour party Liam Bryne, MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill and Conservative MP for Congleton, Fiona Bruce at an event on extremism in parliament this evening. Bryne said Daesh (a derogatory Arabic term for Islamic State) sought to eliminate freedom of thought and expression for Muslims as they rolled different strands of Islam into one state. "The narrative we must defend is one of pluralism and diversity." Freedom of conscience, said Bryne, is "ground we can unite on." Fiona Bruce said it was right people want to see their security protected after attacks such as those in Brussels and Paris. She added: "The challenge is to ensure that we do not throw out the precious right to free speech, to freedom of expression and even of the right to protest by over-legislating when these atrocities occur. "It is critical we protect people," she said "It is the first duty of any state. "But equally if we lose our freedom of expression so many other rights will follow after that. We have got to protect it." Christians and Muslims join forces to promote ethical finance Christians and Muslims have united to launch a new ethical financial services initiative to tackle inequality and poverty. The Church of Scotland and the Islamic Finance Council UK (IFC) announced the venture on Tuesday. It will be the first time Christian and Muslim financial initiatives have joined forces. The two faith groups will examine the "practical commercial viability" of new models designed to promote ethical banking and fight poverty. They said the initiative arose out of a shared belief that current financial institutions had "lost their social conscience". The project aims to research, shortlist, test and establish a "viable ethical finance business solution", said the groups. The Church of Scotland is the country's largest religious body. The IFC is an Islamic group which aims to promote fairer banking. Rt Rev Dr Angus Morrison, moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, launched the initiative on Tuesday in Edinburgh. He said: "Our current system has gone badly wrong, creating massive inequality and the destruction of our shared natural resources by money-making machines overtaking commerce that serves the common good. "The Christian and Islamic faith traditions share a commitment to economic justice and a call to an equal distribution of the gifts of God. "By collaborating and 'putting our money where our morals are' we have an opportunity to live out our common values and make a tangible change for those most affected by poverty. Active concern for our communities is an obligation and we look forward to meeting the challenge together." IFC advisory board member Omar Shaikh said: "In recent years we have developed a strong relationship with the Church of Scotland and this project is a result of that positive engagement and the mutual desire to work collaboratively on a project which brings together the best of our respective faiths. "The positive message of faith groups working together presents a beacon of light which we hope can inspire many others across the world." He continued: "Scotland has a proud heritage in ethical finance with the savings bank movement able to trace its origins back to the Rev Henry Duncan of the Church of Scotland. This model was also used as the blueprint for the early Islamic banking attempts in the 1960s, which makes it particularly poignant that this new initiative in being led in Scotland." Cuban pastors 'not very optimistic' on expanding ties with American churches even with restored U.S.-Cuba relations As the relations between the United States and Cuba have been restored under the Obama administration, American churches are looking at more opportunities to spread God's Word in the Caribbean island nation. U.S. President Barack Obama landed in Cuba on Sunday to begin a three-day official visit, the first U.S. president to do so in 88 years. The U.S. has eased travel restrictions to Cuba that facilitated Christian mission trips. However, the Cuban government still requires visas for every visit and restricts American missionaries to work only with one Cuban denomination per visit, CBN reported. Cuban churches were earlier reported to have expressed cautious optimism about expanding ties with their American counterparts. However, Brian Stewart, founder of Action Cuba who has completed his 50th trip to Cuba, told CBN that most of the optimism is actually on the American side. "The pastors [in Cuba] that I spoke with a few weeks ago are not very optimistic," he said. Stewart said the pastors told him that Cuba has a centralised economy, which means all cash donations sent from overseas will go to the Communist Party first. "They are a little pessimistic that there will be a trickle-down effect on their daily lives," he said. They are thinking that the opening could be short-lived if a Republican wins the White House as some of the Republicans' comments point that these new policies could be rolled back. Stewart said what they're looking for is for the Communist Party to ease restrictions on American missionaries to do religious work in Cuba. "We are heavily monitored. We have to get a visa. There are a lot of restrictions," he said. He said Cuban churches now "are heavily dependent on help from America and other countries." "They would really love to have church-to-church partnerships where people could come down and help them start agricultural projects and other micro businesses that would allow them to meet their own expenses to do community outreach," he said. Donald Trump flounders as he seeks to woo pro-Israel lobby Donald Trump sought to win the support of the most powerful pro-Israel lobby group in the US on Monday. The Republican frontrunner joined other presidential candidates in addressing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) annual conference. Although he has previously pledged to be "neutral" on the conflict, he told the 18,000 audience "there is no moral equivalency" between Israel and Palestine as he slammed the Palestinian Authority for fostering a society which glorified terrorists as "heroes" and "martyrs". He told delegates that "the days of treating Israel like a second-class citizen will end on day one" of his presidency, after several had questioned his views on the Israel-Palestine conflict. The build-up to the speech focused on pledges from some Jewish leaders to walk out in protest. However there did not seem to be any sign of protest as the New York billionaire spoke using auto-cues for the first time. He has previously ridiculed politicians for speaking for using prompts. Trump spent much time criticising the Iranian nuclear deal as well the Palestinian government although he received his loudest cheers when he said Obama "may be the worst thing to happen to Israel" and called Hillary Clinton "a total disaster". However Trump was heavily criticised by fellow Republican candidates Ted Cruz and John Kasich. Cruz attacked the frontrunner and said: "As president, I will not be neutral. America will stand unapologetically with the nation of Israel." Cruz also picked up on Trump's referring to Palestine as a country. "Palestine has not existed since 1948" he said immediately after taking the stage. Hillary Clinton, who leads the polls for the Democratic nomination, also laid into Trump for his wavering on Israel. "We need steady hands, not a president who says he's neutral on Monday, pro-Israel on Tuesday and who knows on Wednesday," Clinton said to applause. "Israel's security is non-negotiable." She continued, "We can't be neutral when rockets rain down on residential neighborhoods, when civilians are stabbed in the street, when suicide bombers target the innocent. Some things aren't negotiable, and anyone who doesn't understand that has no business being our president. "Now, we've had dark chapters in our history before. We remember the nearly 1,000 Jews aboard the St Louis who were denied entry in 1939 and sent back to Europe. But America should be better than this. And I believe it's our responsibility as citizens to say so." Clinton said: "If you see bigotry, oppose it. If you see violence, condemn it. If you see a bully, stand up to him." Government defeated as Christian peers vote to accept 3,000 child refugees Peers have defied the government again after they voted to accept 3,000 unaccompanied child refugees from Europe. The House of Lords voted in favour of an amendment to the Immigration Bill by 306 to 204 which would require the government to accept additional children, currently in Europe, into Britain. The government has insisted on a policy of only accepting refugees from camps based in Syria and surrounding countries as it says they are the most vulnerable. However peers argued taking in 3,000 unaccompanied children from Europe would protect them from exploitation, people trafficking and abuse. Labour's Lord Dubs, who tabled the amendment, arrived in the UK as a refugee on the famous Kindertransport, which helped children fleeing Nazi Germany travel to Britain. "I would like other children who are in a desperate situation to be offered safety in this country and be given the same opportunities that I had," he told peers. The Bishop of Chelmsford, Stephen Cottrell, who has a seat in the House of Lords, spoke in support of the amendment and said it was a "small but beautiful thing that we can do". Tim Farron, the leader of the Liberal Democrats who is also a Christian, welcomed the Lords' vote and said it showed peers were more in touch with the public than the Prime Minister. "The Government must stop ignoring the British people and the thousands of orphaned children languishing across Europe," he said. "Cameron should show some humanity. A small sacrifice from a large nation would turn these kids' lives around. "The Government must listen to this strong message from the Lords, it is time he stopped making excuses and did the right thing." The Christian peer Lord Alton, who has campaigned against the persecution of Christians, also spoke in favour of the amendment. The vote comes after extensive campaigns from charities including Home for Good and Save the Children who have called for the government to accept 3,000 unaccompanied children from Europe. The government has agreed to accept 20,000 refugees by 2020 but only from camps in the Middle East. In response to the amendment, government home office minister Lord Bates said the move could encourage more to risk "lethal" journeys across the Mediterranean. "We have a principled objection. That the people most at risk are in the region," he said. "I question whether it [the amendment] identifies, or provides help, for the right people. We believe we should not be doing anything that encourages one child to make that perilous journey." The Immigration Bill will now return to the House of Commons where MPs will consider the amendment before a vote to decide whether it becomes law. Government is 'complicit' in stagnant gender pay gap, MPs say The government is "complicit" in the failure to close the gender pay gap, according to MPs. A 20 per cent difference in pay between men and women has remained steady for four years, despite the government's stated aim to eliminate the pay gap within a generation, a report released by the Women and Equalities Select Committee said today. The report states that unless change is implemented, women will be unable to fulfil their potential, costing the economy 36 billion in skills. It demands that more should be done for women returning to work and more attention paid to "highly feminised" industries, such as retail, care and cleaning. "The gender pay gap is holding back women and that isn't going to change unless the government changes its policies now," said MP Maria Miller, the chair of the committee. "The pay gap represents a massive loss to the UK's economy and we must address it in the face of an ageing workforce, a skills crisis and the need for a more competitive economy. "If the government is serious about long-term, sustainable growth it must invest in tackling the root causes of the gender pay gap. Adopting our recommendations would be a significant step towards achieving the goal of eliminating the gender pay gap within a generation." The report recommends that fathers should be offered three month's paid leave and that flexible working hours should be available for all employees. Speaking to Christian Today, gender justice specialist Natalie Collins praised the report, but added: "It is obviously great that this issue is being raised, however the pay gap is just one piece of a much bigger puzzle. The basic issues such as welfare cuts that particularly affect women have not been mentioned in the report. "Tackling the issue of wage is important, however we cannot have this conversation without talking about the wider implications of welfare cuts affecting women," she said. "For example, the change from child benefits to universal credit means that the money no longer goes directly to the mother. This means that women won't necessarily have access to the money, for example, if they are with an abusive partner." Pay is just one aspect of a woman's welfare, and tackling issues such as workplace bullying and male violence more generally is also vital, Collins added. "This is a missed opportunity to connect wage inequality with wider issues that are facing women in society," she said. "If we don't have refuges for domestic violence, how can we hope to have equal pay?" TUC general secretary Frances O'Grady said: "David Cameron promised pay equality within a generation, but this won't happen by tinkering around the edges. We need a proper shake-up of the current order. "If we don't tackle problems like occupational segregation, the motherhood pay penalty and barriers to more equal parenting, the gender pay gap will take decades to close." Islamic militants gun down 4 Bible translators in raid on Wycliffe office in Mideast Islamic militants mercilessly murdered four defenceless Wycliffe Bible translators in the Middle East this week, the Bible translating ministry reported. The Wycliffe report said the militants barged into the translator's office, immediately shooting and killing two of the translators. In a heroic effort to save the lead Bible translator, two workers laid on top of him, using their bodies as shield, CBN News reported. The two workers were killed, the report said, leaving unclear whether the lead translator survived the attack. After killing the translators, the attackers destroyed most of the equipment in the office and burned all the books and other translation materials that they could get hold of. Despite the gruesome killings, Wycliffe Associates is thanking God that the computer hard drives containing the translation work for eight language projects were not destroyed. "The remaining translation team has decided to re-double their efforts to translate, publish, and print God's Word for these eight language communities," the ministry said in a statement. The ministry requested prayer for the families of the murdered translators. "Please ask the Lord to mend the hearts and wounds of the translation team who have gone through this horrible ordeal," Mae Greenleaf, a prayer coordinator said in a statement. Although lives lost cannot be replaced, she said the ministry will replace the lost equipment and continue its work of propagating God's Word in the Middle East. "Pray with me for the killers too," she said. "Pray for these whose hearts are so hard. Pray the Lord will open their eyes to what they have done. Please ask the Lord to meet them, each one, right where they are. Pray that He will show Himself merciful, that they will know His forgiveness, His love, and His peace." Earlier, controversy hit Wycliffe Associates when a dispute over the "literal common language for Father and Son of God" led the ministry to part ways with a group of translators, the Blaze reported. Wycliffe Associates announced this month that it would not be renewing its affiliation with Wycliffe Global Alliance, an international organisation of more than 100 translators that was formed back in 1991. In a statement, Bruce Smith, president of Wycliffe Associates, said the split was triggered by a dispute over the language used to describe Jesus and God. "For Wycliffe Associates, literal translation of Father and Son of God is not negotiable," Smith said. The controversy stemmed from the way Wycliffe Global Alliance presented the biblical Trinity to Muslims. Some translations attempted to "soften" the language describing the relationship between Jesus and God so as to not confuse adherents of Islam who might incorrectly believe as a result of certain phrasing that God and Mary Jesus' mother had sexual relations, Christianity Today reported. Just 50 Jews left in Yemen after covert airlift operation Just 50 Jews remain in Yemen after 19 were airlifted to Israel in a final covert rescue mission on Sunday, marking the end of a Jewish community dating back 2,000 years. The secret operation was announced some time after the plane landed at Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion Airport on Sunday and the passengers had made their way to their temporary homes. Seventeen Jews were rescued from Yemen on that plane, following two who were airlifted earlier last week, leaving behind 50 who chose to stay in the country. They live mostly in a compound near the US embassy in the capital, Sana'a. Among the group rescued was the community's rabbi, who brought with him a Torah believed to be over 500 years old. Yemen has become increasingly hostile to its dwindling Jewish population. There has been a Jewish presence in the country since the first century and 50,000 Yemeni Jews still lived there in the middle of last century, but for the last 70 years Israel has been secretly rescuing them. Israel declared Sunday's airlift the last of its covert rescue operations, marking the end to the "historic mission". Sana'a fell under the control of the rebel Houthi movement in 2014. The Houthi are from a branch of Shia Islam and hold the motto: "Death to America, death to Israel, curse the Jews, victory to Islam." The end of the historic mission "is a moment of utmost significance for the state of Israel and Jewish immigration," said Natan Sharansky, head of the Jewish Agency for Israel. "This chapter in the history of one of the world's oldest Jewish communities is coming to an end, but Yemenite Jewry's unique, 2,000-year-old contribution to the Jewish people will continue in the state of Israel," he added, Sulaiman al-Dahari was rescued from Yemen with his family. "The situation is mixed between fear and poverty," he told CNN. "The economic situation is bad. I feel comfortable here in Israel. "Of course, I will get back to Yemen, because my family and I love Yemen." Lee Strobel explains why he went from atheist to devout Christian Lee Strobel, bestselling author of "The Case for Christ", is now celebrating his 34th Easter as a Christian. This, after spending his life prior to the book and his investigation into the reliability of Gospels as an atheist. After finding faith many years ago, he remains as convinced as ever in the truth of Jesus's death and resurrection. While still an atheist, it was his background as a journalist that prompted Strobel to investigate and conduct extensive research into Christ with the help of religious and historical expert. He originally embarked on the project to discredit the veracity of Christ's resurrection and dissuade his recently converted wife from life as a Christian, but in the end he was the one who was powerfully converted. "For nearly two years, I explored the minutia of the historical data on whether Easter was myth or reality. I didn't merely accept the New Testament at face value; I was determined only to consider facts that were well-supported historically. As my investigation unfolded, my atheism began to buckle," he recounted in an article for Stream. One of the first pieces of evidence he gathered was actually from atheist historian Gerd Ludemann who declared Jesus' death by crucifixion "indisputable." This was supported by a thorough study by A. N. Sherwin-White of Oxford, who himself cited ancient eyewitness accounts of Jesus' death. As more evidence piled up that built the timeline for the events surrounding Jesus' death and resurrection, Strobel recounted scholar Willian Lane Craig's position that it would be unlikely for the story of the empty tomb to explode with no basis since its location was known to all and could have been verified by supporters of the idea and naysayers alike. But even Jesus' opponents said that the tomb was empty, saying that the body was taken, although there was none who had a clear motive for doing so. "We have nine ancient sources, inside and outside the New Testament, that confirm the apostles' conviction that they encountered the resurrected Christ. Repeatedly, these sources stood strong when I tried to discredit them. Could these encounters have been hallucinations? No way, experts told me. Hallucinations occur in individual brains, like dreams, yet Jesus appeared to groups of people on three different occasions including 500 at once!, " Strobel said. In the end, Strobel, a man armed with logic,education and skepticism, was finally convinced by the overwhelming evidence laid out in front of him and he completely embraced the truth not because he was afraid of death or needed a psychological crutch but because of the facts. "I read books by skeptics, but their counter-arguments crumbled under the weight of the historical data. No wonder atheists so often come up short in scholarly debates over the resurrection. In the end, after I had thoroughly investigated the matter, I reached an unexpected conclusion: it would actually take more faith to maintain my atheism than to become a follower of Jesus," he said. Mom in shock after finding heart symbol used by paedophiles printed on toy car A Florida-based toy company has pulled a toy car for sale from the market following the discovery that a heart symbol printed on the item is similar to a sign used as a secret code by paedophiles preying on young girls. Mom Nicole O'Kelly told WFLA-TV that she bought the toy car for her two-year-old daughter at a Monster Jam event in Florida. Printed on the pink toy truck is a heart shape symbol. She began to investigate its meaning and was shocked to find out that it was a symbol used by paedophiles. "This is pink. This is for little girls, especially at a predominately male event," she said, according to Christian News Network. According to the report, when a paedophile sees the heart symbol, it's a code "meaning this child is ready for sex." "It's the most vile thing you can ever imagine," Pasco County Detective Anthony Bossone said. He said the heart symbol targets girls while the triangle symbol targets boys. The toy manufacturer, Feld Inc., which designed the toy, said when they learned about the symbol's meaning, they pulled all their items from shelves. "We reacted immediately. We wanted to do the right thing as quickly as possible," representative Stephen Payne. "I had no idea there was an underlying meaning of these symbols and the deplorable behavior," he stated. "We just don't know if a crime was committed here ... We just want to make sure it doesn't happen again." Feld is offering refunds for the toy and reiterated that the company was not aware of the symbol. "Customers who have purchased this truck can contact our customer service department for an exchange or refund. The company was not aware of the disturbing message contained in the truck's design, nor did we intend to use any design that had a secret or double meaning. We are currently reviewing our merchandise to ensure that it's appropriate for our customers," he said. Paedophile bishop Peter Ball impersonated twin brother at services The disgraced paedophile bishop Peter Ball stood in for his twin brother, also a bishop, on a number of occasions, the Church of England has admitted. Ball resigned as Bishop of Gloucester in 1993 after he received a police caution for gross indecency. It has now emerged he replaced his identical twin Michael, then Bishop of Truro, at services and official duties on an unknown number occasions in the 1990s. The current Bishop of Truro, Tim Thornton, said there are "one of two bits of evidence" which show Bishop Peter carried out duties that should have been performed by Bishop Michael. "It might be that Bishop Peter thought it was clear that he was being Bishop Peter, and on some occasions might have made it very clear at the beginning that he was there in place of his brother, but it might not have been evident to everybody," Thornton told BBC Radio Cornwall. The Diocese of Truro has appealed for information from churchgoers to investigate what happened when the two men were together in Cornwall between 1993 and 1997. Thornton said if he had held service it would been a "limited number". However a spokesman from the Diocese of Truro confirmed Peter Ball was granted "Permission to Officiate" within the Diocese of Truro in 1995 by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Lord Carey. The spokesman said: "There was an initial permission granted for a period of six months from March 1st, 1995, and then this was then extended by three years from September 1st, 1995." Ball, now 84, was convicted of sex abuse against a string of young men who came to him for spiritual guidance. He was jailed for 32 months after a trial in October. An independent inquiry is currently investigating whether there was a deliberate cover up of Ball's crimes, which were carried out between 1977 and 1992 while he was Bishop of Lewes. When a police investigation discovered his abuses in 1993, he was not prosecuted but was just given a warning and resigned. It has since been revealed that while the investigation was ongoing, police and prosecuters received a number of letters of support from George Carey, as well as from MPs, a High Court judge and members of the royal family. Should Christians wear a crucifix? "The crucifix is not a decoration; it's not a work of art with many precious stones like you see. The crucifix is the mystery of the 'annihilation' of God out of love," Pope Francis told those gathered at Santa Marta for morning Mass yesterday. Pope Francis is of course right. Although his main reflection focused on the symbolic significance of the crucifix and the image of the serpent, his comments above got me thinking about how the crucifix is used as a decorative symbol outside Christianity and how Christians can benefit from its prominence. For Christians, the crucifix is never simply a decorative object and viewing it solely as one strips away its significance. But how do we deal with its prolific use in consumer culture where it's often used for commercial or controversial aims? The cross features in so much of popular culture, be it music videos, jewellery or art. In many cases its use has no intended relevance to Christianity or it's incorporated to exploit or mock the Christian faith. The commercialisation of a symbol which is of unquantifiable significance to Christians will naturally generate criticism, cause offence and result in believers objecting to its use in this way. But the crucifix acts as a reminder of Christ's suffering in whatever way it is portrayed, whether this consequence is intentional or not. The connection between Christ's sacrifice cannot be erased because of the context in which the symbol is placed. We shouldn't condone the crucifix being denigrated but its presence in the midst of a sea of secular imagery should be welcomed. Commercial uses aside, some Christians are even against the crucifix been worn for religious purposes. For many Catholics the crucifix is a symbol which isn't just found in church but it's one that has a prominent place in the home and even on their person. On Good Friday, Catholics around the world kiss the wood of the crucifix at Mass as part of the Veneration of the Cross and throughout the year the rosary, which features a crucifix, is used for prayer. So is it OK for Christians to wear a crucifix? I think what matters most is how we use the symbol. A cross or crucifix on a necklace should be regarded as more than just a piece of jewellery but as a tool to help us contemplate Christ's suffering and God's love for us. During his homily on Tuesday, Pope Francis also said that to understand the "history of our redemption" we must look at the crucifix. I'd argue that this is why so many Christians have an attachment to the symbol in a tangible form. With a crucifix you can run your fingers over the marks which represent the nails that pinned Christ to the cross, visualise his suffering and meditate on the scale of his sacrifice. In addition to this, a crucifix doesn't just become a reminder to the wearer and the Christian community, it also reminds everyone the wearer comes into contact with. Our actions are the greatest way that we can define our identities but our appearance is a factor too, which helps to explain why so many Christians have fought for the right to wear their crosses. Wearing a crucifix can be an intentional act of visual witness. As the pontiff said on Tuesday, salvation "was not accomplished with a magic wand" and so the wearing of a cross or crucifix shouldn't be viewed as a good luck charm but as a tool to guide us into deeper meditation on how Jesus gave his life for us and what that means. Tullian Tchividjian: I will always regret what I did Tullian Tchividjian, who was fired from his position at Willow Creek Presbyterian Church after revelations of a previously unconfessed affair, has said he will "forever regret" the effect his actions have had on his ex-wife and children. Tchividjian issued what his publicist says is his final statement on the issue, saying: "I recently confessed to my pastor and elders a previous failure from a few years ago. I deeply regret my actions and putting myself in the compromising position that led me to sin the way I did. My heart grieves for all of those that have been hurt by my selfishness and foolishness." His publicist Hunter Frederick clarified that the previous affair took place in 2014, before the relationship that led to his departure from Coral Ridge. He also denied that Coral Ridge's elder board had advised him to keep the relationship from his wife, saying they had urged caution in how he told her because there were children involved. His comment appears to refer to a Christian Post report citing a Coral Ridge source who claims two elders knew about the 2014 affair but did not tell the others. Tchividjian said the process of repentance is "progressive and painful", adding he was "so thankful for the elders of Willow Creek Church who have been nothing but gracious and firm with me since I have arrived and they continue to do so today. Even though this previous sin happened before I came to Willow Creek, it pains me deeply to know that something from my past could in any way hurt these gracious people today." Tchividjian said: "I hope and pray that the events in my own life over the past couple years serve as a warning to all who, like I did, believe they are standing firm." In a post for the Aquila website entitled 'Should We Have Hired Tullian?' Tchividjian's pastor at Willow Creek, Kevin Labby, wrote that giving him a title when he arrived at the church created the false impression he was functioning in a ministerial capacity. However, he said churches were bad at restoring those who had fallen and that Jesus was 'scandalously generous' to his repentant ministers. "So, in the last analysis, would I do it again? Yes. A thousand times yes. I love Tullian. A lot. Sure, I kind of want to punch him right now, but only like two brothers duking it out in the backyard and then coming in for supper. Would I do this again, the same way? No. I've learned a lot and I'm learning still. "Would I love to see our churches work out a better way of doing this moving forward, for the glory of God and the good of ministers and their families? Good grief, yes. It's time to run to our wounded, not away from them." Why Christians don't need a 'good deed feed' to show off "You are the light of the world. A town built on a hill cannot be hidden. Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, that they may see your good deeds and glorify your Father in heaven." (Matthew 5:14-16) "Be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them. If you do, you will have no reward from your Father in heaven. So when you give to the needy, do not announce it with trumpets, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and on the streets, to be honoured by others. Truly I tell you, they have received their reward in full. But when you give to the needy, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. Then your Father, who sees what is done in secret, will reward you." (Matthew 6:1-4) You'd be forgiven if you're confused at this point. Are Christians meant to broadcast their good deeds, like a lamp on a stand, or give in secret, so as not to show off their righteousness before others? A new app seems to advocate for the former. To celebrate the Pope's 79th birthday in December, the Polish Church created a free app to help Catholics log their good deeds online. Functioning as a news feed similar to Facebook, users post a description of their 'works of mercy' either spiritual or corporal and add a photo and a few hashtags. They then promise to either do the deed, or pray about it, and once it's posted to their 'wall', others are invited to do the same. It's designed to encourage, and challenge, one another in living out the Christian faith. "It is our answer to what I should do as a... simple person, what I can do for other people," Father Jozef Kloch told Vatican Radio. "What is very interesting about this application is interaction. It means I can write what I will do in this week, how I can be 'misericors': How I can be good for other people." It's all quite sweet, really. Scroll through the feed and you'll see people around the world promising to do everything from praying for the persecuted Church to feeding their neighbour's hungry cat. Some pledges are slightly more odd; burying the dead, or "instructing the ignorant", but then it was originally written in Polish, so some nuances may have been lost in translation. What remains to work out, however, is whether we're in need of such an app at all. If Christians are meant to give to the needy in secret is the Misericors app just a way to show off, like the Pharisees who were so clearly admonished by Jesus for doing so? Do we really need to take a photo every time we donate to a food bank, or "start talking to someone with a bad reputation"? To me, it comes across as a little self-indulgent not to mention time consuming and the context of the above passages gives us an idea of what Jesus actually meant. When he tells the disciples they are "the light of the world", it's in the context of the beatitudes. Jesus is talking about how Christians should live in the light of his coming, and promising to make all things new. When he urges his disciples to let their light shine before others, he's calling them to live out in the world not shy away from it. To loosen the chains of injustice, share their food with the hungry and clothe the naked. But here's the catch: to "glorify your Father in heaven". Not to point out how good they are, or add a star to their 'faithful Christian' chart. But to point to God and His goodness. So when he later says, "be careful not to practice your righteousness in front of others to be seen by them", this isn't a contradiction at all. Jesus is saying our good deeds need to come from a place of love for him "we love because he first loved us" (1 John 4:19) not because we want to be seen by other people to be doing the right thing. We don't earn our way to heaven by clocking up brownie points, but we are called to live generously, and in a way that speaks of God' abundance and grace to those around us. Women more religious than men, especially Christian women Women are more religious than men, especially Christian women, according to the latest report from Pew Research. Many religious denominations, such as Roman Catholics and Orthodox Jews, allow only men to be clergy. "Yet it often appears that the ranks of the faithful are dominated by women," says the report. In the US, women are more likely to say religion is very important to them and to pray more often. The trend has become so marked that some churches are even changing their decor, music and worship styles in an attempt to attract more men. "Christian women are more religious than Christian men. By contrast, Muslim women and Muslim men show similar levels of religiousness," says the report, noting that Muslim women tend not to go to mosque often because of religious norms. While 83 per cent of women worldwide identify with a faith group, this falls to just under 80 per cent for men. In Muslim countries and Israel, men attend services more often than women. But in Christian countries, it is predominantly women. Regarding prayer, the number of women who pray daily is 8 per cent higher than men. The one exception is Israel where more men pray daily. However, the research shows that when women work outside the home, their levels of religious commitment fall to similar levels as the men. "It does suggest that social and cultural factors, such as religious traditions and workforce participation, play an important role in shaping the religious gender gap," says the report. One of the biggest religious gender gaps is in the birthplace of Pope Francis, Argentina, where there is a 20-point gap between men and woman on daily prayer 32.5 per cent of Christian men report praying daily, compared with 52.9 per cent of Christian women. Across the 53 countries with enough Christian respondents to allow for data analysis, 53 per cent of Christian women and 46 per cent of Christian men say they attend services at least once a week. The gap between men and women is biggest in Columbia and Italy. Regarding belief, women in most countries have similar or higher levels of belief in hell, heaven and angels than men. Exceptions include Lebanon, where men are more likely than women to believe in heaven and hell, and Pakistan, where men are more likely to believe in angels. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A legendary Mexican drug cartel founder known for his own extreme personal tragedies is scheduled to soon be released from a U.S. prison. Jesus Hector Palma Salazar, nicknamed "El Guero Palma" or Blondie for his looks, is to be freed by June, according to the U.S Bureau of Prisons, as he has completed his sentence. It remains to be seen what will come next for the former Sinaloa Cartel boss, as Mexico's drug landscape has changed mightily since he was arrested 20 years ago. "EL CHAPO" FALLS: Wife of Sinaloa Cartel leader Guzman speaks out Palma Salazar, 55, is expected to return to the crime group he launched a generation ago with the trafficker known as "El Chapo," who was recently arrested in Mexico months after being interviewed by American actor and sometimes magazine writer Sean Penn. Palma Salazar has seen horrific tragedy. A rival gangster, Rafael Clavel Moreno, once seduced his wife; got her to withdraw $7 million from a bank then decapitated her and sent Palma Salazar her head. He also shoved Palma Salazar's children to their deaths from a bridge in Venezuela. "It devastated him," recalled Mike Vigil, a retired chief of international operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration and author of the book "Deal." THE ARREST: New images of El Chapo's capture don't show his best side "After his kids were killed, he lost all of his morality," Vigil said of Palma-Salazar. "He took off the gloves," Vigil said, contending that Palma Salazar shifted from the surgical use of violence to wholesale killing. Clavel Moreno was later stabbed to death. Palma Salazar had a front-row seat to the start of modern Mexican drug cartels. After the chief leader of the once mighty Guadalajara Cartel was captured in 1989, Mexico saw the rise of crime bosses across the country from what were then smaller, less feared groups. LOOKING BACK: What Los Mochis, Sinaloa looked like before drug violence took over Palma Salazar and Joaquin Guzman Loera, "El Chapo" seized the opportunity to launch the Sinaloa Cartel, which remains one of Mexico's longest running and strongest crime alliances. The death of Palma Salazar's family revealed a dramatic shift in Mexico's drug violence. "Before it was kind of like the Italian Mafia, you don't screw with the family, " Vigil said. Vigil predicted Palma Salazar will soon be back in business. "I don't know how much money he has now, but the fact of the matter is that this is the only business he knows," Vigil said. "One thing about 'El Guero Palma' is he loves the power," he is addicted to power," he said. "He has been without power for a long time and will want to regain it." A flight attendant dropped her bags, kicked off her shoes and sprinted out of the Los Angeles International Airport after being selected for a random screening. The behavior, you could say, was suspicious. Those initial qualms proved to be founded. Los Angeles Airport police discovered an estimated 70 pounds of cocaine in her baggage, according to the Los Angeles Times. The unidentified woman remained at large, leaving behind a pair of Gucci heels, NBC News reported. She was believed to be a flight attendant for JetBlue. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate In a strange twist, reports on Monday claim to know where the ex-boyfriend of legendary pop star Olivia Newton-John is, after he went missing more than 10 years ago. US Magazine, Australia's Woman's Day, Fox News and other outlets reported on Monday that cameraman Patrick McDermott is alive and well, in Mexico with a woman. In an "exclusive," Woman's Day says McDermott, who vanished during a California fishing trip in 2005, is in the isolated Mexican village of Sayulita with what appears to be a German girlfriend. "Patrick's probably now working in the yachting industry for a high-profile family down there," private investigator Philip Klein told the website. It's a far cry from the life McDermott spent with Newton-John, who was touring in Australia when McDermott, then 48, vanished. Sympathy from fans around the globe flowed in after news broke the former "Grease" star's boyfriend went missing. But it appears McDermott had a lot to run from. Fox News says that at the time of his disappearance, he filed for bankruptcy and had unpaid debts totaling more than $30,000. McDermott was also accused in reports of faking his death. Newton-John, now 67, has moved on with her life. She's still performing and US Magazine says she secretly wed natural remedy company founder John Easterling in 2008. There's been no response from Newton-John on the latest development. If you ask you don't always receive. But in the case of the new tea service at Bistro Menil, asking did the trick. Chef Greg Martin explained that he recently added afternoon tea at the chic museum restaurant because his servers were telling him that customers were asking for some delicious afternoon indulgence. It seemed like the right idea. "We were doing so many bridal showers and baby showers that we decided to go ahead and give it a try," he said. "And it's perfect for afternoon get-togethers." And how. Bistro Menil's afternoon tea might be the most charming, pleasant additions to the city's morn-to-night dining show. While elegant, it is anything but stuffy. In fact, it's a lot of fun; think of it as a posh happy hour without the posing. For $45 per person, the tea service begins with champagne in a generous coupe or sparkling soda. That is followed by a demitasse of soup du jour. Next comes a tea tower of sandwiches and canapes including house-cured salmon finger sandwiches, mini BLT sandwiches, zucchini ribbons and serrano ham skewers, and wild mushroom and walnut pate crostini. The sweets presentation: chocolate mousse and vanilla creme brulee with toasted chocolate brioche sandwiches filled Nutella. Who can resist chocolate mousse, we ask? Oh, and the tea choices include black teas, flavored black teas, green tea and herbal teas. Martin notes, however, that many guests skip the tea altogether and order more champagne. The afternoon tea service is offered Wednesday through Sunday from 2 to 5 p.m. (It's by reservation but you can even call the day of, Martin said.) Without advertising it, the tea service has taken off, Martin said. "I had no idea this was a thing in Houston but it is," he said. "It also tells me something about my city. We are there. My whole life I wanted Houston to be this huge, diverse multicultural place. This exemplifies that. If people come out for tea, we're there. We're that kind of town." Houston also is a rose wine kind of town. And Bistro Menil is ready to serve that, too. Now through the end of April, the restaurant will offer a flight of five 3-ounce pours of new roses on the menu. It's only on Thursdays and it's from 4 to 9 p.m.; $25 per person. Bistro Menil is at 1513 W. Alabama, 713-904-3537; bistromenil.com A 41-year-old man has been found dead from an apparent suicide several days after, and near where, the nude body of his wife was discovered in a southwest Houston ditch. Ramon G. Contreras was discovered about 12:30 p.m. Monday at the home the couple shared in the 8900 block of Westplace Drive, according to the Houston Police Department. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Authorities are searching for a 54-year-old man accused of indecency with a child in Harris County. Troy Lee Lively is charged with two counts of indecency with a child after he allegedly molested two victims while he was staying with their families, according to the Harris County Sheriff's Office. Deputies said Lively lives a nomadic lifestyle, staying with friends or family until moving on. His last known residence was in the Channelview area. Lively is described as 5 feet 5 inches and about 180 pounds. He has light brown and gray hair and gray eyes. Lively drives a black 1997 GMC Yukon with Texas license plate FYK9513. The sport utility vehicle is primer black and has orange or red decals on the hood and sides, which may be images of flames. Anyone with information about Lively or his whereabouts is urged to contact the Harris County Sheriff's Office Crimes Against Children unit at 713-830-3250, or Crime Stoppers at 713-222-TIPS (8477). Jess Nevins is a quiet, unassuming librarian at Lone Star College-Tomball, where he helps students, faculty and staff navigate through the maze of books. But underneath his professorial demeanor is a man obsessed - with superheroes and pop culture. For the past 10 years, Nevins has dedicated himself to scouring every corner of the world for popular literature in all different languages, uncovering Egyptian and Indonesian dime novels, a Burmese equivalent to the popular British detective Sherlock Holmes and even a Japanese King Kong. His decade-long search has culminated in a 1,000-page tome of a guide to global popular literature for the first half of the twentieth century called The Encyclopedia of Pulp Heroes, which is expected to come off the printers this spring. "Most people today would think that popular culture was the purview of Americans. The world of popular culture is gloriously varied and complex, and there's just so much stuff in it that we don't know or have just forgotten about," Nevins said. "What we know about in America is really limited compared to what's out there." Nevins' faculty position as division liaison for English, literature, education, languages and developmental studies at the LSC-Tomball Community Library allows him to do what he loves, which is hours upon hours of reading and researching. He can work on developing his book on the job since full-time faculty are expected to produce academic works. More Information Want to know more? Lone Star College-Tomball librarian Jess Nevins is expected to have his 1,000-page reference book entitled "The Encyclopedia of Pulp Heroes" published this spring. The book covers a mix of American and international global genre literature of the first half of the twentieth century. Nevins is working to find a publisher for forthcoming reference book entitled "Costumed Avengers and Ubermenschen: The 4,000-Year History of the Superhero," which spans from the "Epic of Gilgamesh" to the appearance of Superman in the twentieth century. See More Collapse The quiet librarian by day sees himself as part academic, historian, detective, writer and archeologist. In that vein, Nevins has traveled to London, usually spending his two weeks of vacation at the British Museum combing through its extensive archive of global popular literature. There, he would spend 12 hours a day excavating treasure troves of information, taking pictures for his records and compiling his encyclopedia of pulp heroes, often times with characters never before seen by an American audience. "I have an advantage over previous writers in that I have the Internet, and I have access to all the databases that an academic librarian does, so I can do research on things that previous writers don't," Nevins said. "I'm the beginning of the next wave of scholars of popular culture who are not going to be limited by language. They're going to be able to find wonders that I don't know about." Some authors that Nevins has discovered are hugely prolific, writing 70 or more novels in a career that spanned 30 years and 50 characters, like detective-inspector Andrew Frampton of Scotland Yard. But a Google search back in 2007 of T. Arthur Plummer only brought up 118 hits. "Posterity is cruel," Nevins said. Sometimes, it's not just finding the work that's difficult. Language and cultural barriers can be a tremendous hurdle to reading and understanding global literature. Not so for Nevins. When tasked with translating languages like Finnish, Bahasa, German or any other languages for his book, Nevins has used the Internet to crowd-source translations or relied on Google Translate. Sometimes, a good ol' dictionary for an accurate word-for-word translation will do the trick, too. "It was a lot of work at the time. I may not be smarter than a lot of writers, but I can outwork them," Nevins said with a chuckle. Writing and compiling information for an encyclopedia requires expert research skills and a deep understanding of copyright laws. Since Nevins is the most prolific writer and researcher on staff at the college library, he's often tasked with teaching young college students how to cite sources, use databases for academic research and thumb through books at the library for English and other research papers. He even works with staff and faculty who may need help themselves researching advanced topics. "He does have such a wide variety of interests," said Pamela Shafer, director of the LSC-Tomball Community Library. "He works with staff and faculty who are pursuing advanced degrees. Because of his research skills for his writing, he translates a lot of that for what he does every day." Nevins has a restless spirit. He has published 10 books to date, including guides, encyclopedias and other academic reference material related to popular literature, also known as pulps since the cheap wood pulp made printing paper and mass circulation cheap. Dime magazines were a form of pulp fiction, featuring famed American characters like master detective Nick Carter, Doc Savage and Lone Wolf Lawman. "Nobody else on our staff is that prolific," Shafer said. "He's so well-rounded as far as being a librarian is concerned People think librarians are - and we are into books - but we have other interests too. He's such a prolific writer and so accomplished in that area." Some heroes can fly, shoot webs and even control the weather. Others may not be heroic at all and instead are driven by vengeance and bloodlust like the Punisher. But they all teach us something about the human condition and may even encapsulate popular sentiment at the time. And that history is worth saving. "I get up early, work on the weekend, write at night," Nevins said. "It's the discovery of parts of our past that nobody knows about." Catholic and Muslim leaders Tuesday were quick to denounce Brussels terror attacks, with Pope Francis condemning the airport and subway explosions as "blind violence" and a Belgium Islamic group denouncing the attacks "with force and without reservation." The attacks came less than a week after Paris terror suspect Salah Abdelslam was arrested in the city. In a telegram to Brussels Archbishop Jozef De Kesel, the pope expressed sympathy for the victims, their families and rescue workers at the scene of the carnage. At least 34 were killed in the blasts, and dozens more were reported injured. "The Holy Father again condemns the blind violence which causes so much suffering and implores from God the gift of peace," Today's Catholic tweeted Tuesday, quoting from the pontiff's telegram. Pope Francis called for prayers to bring all Belgians "the benefit of divine blessings." In Brussels, the Belgian Muslim Executive Committee, an umbrella organization of Islamic groups, denounced what it called "acts of extreme cruelty against innocent civilians." Religion News Service reported the organization previously had been criticized for not condemning violence linked to ISIS. Belgium is one of the leading recruiting locations for Islamic extremists. Muslim Executive Committee Chairman Salah Echallaoui issued a statement said his group condemned the attacks "with force and without reservation." "Muslims are also affected by these terrible acts," he told the Belgian newspaper De Standaard. "But we are hoping that the population will have enough sense not to blame all Muslims. That's what the terrorists want, to set one part of society against the other." This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate GALVESTON A former pediatric oncologist at M.D. Anderson pleaded guilty in federal court Tuesday to collecting thousands of images and videos of child pornography on his home and state computers. Dennis Patrick Meehan Hughes, pleaded guilty to one count each of receipt of child pornography, access with intent to view child pornography and possession of child pornography. U.S. District Judge George C. Hanks, Jr. set sentencing for June 1. Hughes, 49, remains free on $50,000 bond. He resigned from M.D. Anderson in the days following his June arrest. He turned over his license permanently to the Texas Medical Board in August, forgoing a lengthy review of his qualifications. THE ARREST: M.D. Anderson pediatrics doctor charged with child porn M.D. Anderson initiated outreach, contacting the families of approximately 300 young cancer patients, many of whom traveled long distances to be treated at Houston's world renowned center. Hughes spent about 80 percent of his work time in a lab and 20 percent with patients, M.D. Anderson officials said. Assistant U.S. Attorney Sherri Zack told the judge that investigators found 329 videos and 2,693 images on his computers, including a laptop computer in his work office that is owned by the cancer center. An FBI agent and a police detective executed a search warrant at his Pearland home June 5 based on information that he had been downloading files from a website known to distribute child pornography. THE FALLOUT: Doctor charged in child porn case resigns from M.D. Anderson The bulk of the images the FBI viewed were of naked prepubescent girls, some with grown men, in sexual situations. Investigators collected eight digital cameras, a laptop, an iPad, six thumb drives, DVDs, memory cards and a hard drive all suspected to contain pornography exploiting children. Hughes was forthright with the investigators, telling officials executing the search warrant that his pattern was to download images onto an external flash drive and then erase and clean it and start over. He admitted to police that one thumb drive contained 8,200 files, most of which appeared to be pornographic images of children. Hughes, who was not under arrest at that point, told an FBI agent he had been looking at pornography since the late 1990s. Hughes, who is originally from New Jersey, graduated from Yale Medical School in 1996. The guilty plea was not part of a plea bargain made with prosecutors, officials said. Hughes waived his right to trial and agreed to proceed to sentencing. If convicted, he could face up to 40 years in prison. Houston police late Monday were continuing to search for the assailant who fatally shot a man riding a bicycle in the Greenspoint area. Apartment residents heard gunfire at about 8:30 p.m. along the 13200 block of Northborough. Last March, Chinese state security agents secretly detained Houston businesswoman Sandy Phan-Gillis as she tried to pass through an immigration control connecting the mainland with Macau. Since then, her arrest has been raised several times at high government levels. Deputy Secretary of State Tony Blinken mentioned it again during a visit to Beijing in January. A bipartisan congressional committee called for her quick release. Former Mayor Annise Parker pleaded on her behalf in a letter to Chinese prosecutors. But almost exactly one year after she was taken into custody, the 55-year-old's fate remains very much unclear, as does the reason for her detention. Beijing has released no information other than that she is under investigation for spying and stealing state secrets. Her lawyers have yet to meet with her or see details of any accusation. And since China in April released a Houston geologist who had been imprisoned on charges of industrial espionage, Phan-Gillis is now the only U.S. citizen in China accused of being a spy. American experts in such cases and those who knew Phan-Gillis in Houston remain confounded about what could have raised Beijing's ire. The situation is so strange that some in Congress have even suggested issuing a travel advisory for China warning about the possible risks. Her case raises questions about the safety of Americans doing business in China under the presidency of Xi Jinping, who has arrested at least nine foreigners on allegations of spying in the past two years and oversaw the passage of a sweeping national security law last summer that grants authorities broad discretion about what constitutes espionage. It was approved as Chinese authorities have increasingly blamed "foreign forces" for protests in Hong Kong and elsewhere. 'No one is safe' "It should be a red flag for persons who are visiting," said U.S. Rep. Al Green, a Houston Democrat, in a telephone interview about Phan-Gillis' arrest. "If they have something we don't know, they should share it with us. She has a clean record, she's been to China many times, she was building goodwill between the U.S. and China ... other persons traveling should be concerned." Phan-Gillis is the only American who China has publicly accused of spying since 2008, when Xue Feng, the Chinese geologist from Houston, was formally charged of the crime. By that point, Xue, 51, had already spent five months in jail. He was in prison for another two years, in which time he said he was tortured, before a Beijing court sentenced him to eight years in prison in 2010. Chinese prosecutors accused Xue of endangering its national security after he purchased an oil industry database for his Colorado employer, IHS Inc. His lawyers argued the information, containing coordinates of more than 30,000 oil and gas wells belonging to China National Petroleum Corp., was classified only after he bought it. Xue said much was public anyway and related to old wells. But China has been known to broadly consider any information about its commodities as secret. The case prompted strong appeals and criticism from the White House and in April, Xue was released after having been granted credit for good behavior and time served. Espionage and endangering state security is a relatively rare charge for Americans in China, said John Kamm, executive director of the Dui Ha Foundation, a San Francisco human rights group focused on China. Since 1972, he has handled about 6,000 such cases in China, but he said only about a dozen involved American citizens. In all, 110 American citizens have been detained, imprisoned, or released on bail or probation in China, according to a State Department response to a congressional committee in October. About 40 of those were reportedly held on charges related to their commercial activity. Another 15 were prevented from leaving China until a business dispute had been resolved. "This case is strikingly unusual in this respect: Sandy Phan-Gillis is like the poster child for good U.S.- China relations," Kamm said. "If Sandy Phan-Gillis is not safe in China, no one is safe." He pointed to her long record of promoting China in Houston. Poster child A Vietnamese refugee of Chinese descent who became a U.S. citizen, she helped lead and later served as president of the Houston Shenzhen Sister City Association since 1994, founded Houston's Chinese New Year festival, took youth groups to China and introduced the country's sport of shuttlecock to Houston elementary schools. She coordinated training programs for Chinese nurses in Houston. When a senior Shenzhen police officer was badly hurt during a training exercise with Houston police in 2011, she was his liaison. Phan-Gillis forged "deeper relationships between Houstonians and the people of China for the benefit of our respective citizens," Parker said in a letter to Chinese prosecutors in October. In her professional life, Phan-Gillis worked with several consulting companies over the years, most recently the Hong Kong-based O & P Enterprises, which helped business between China and Houston, including scouting investment opportunities for wealth management firms interested in liquefied natural gas. She had no known connections with Taiwan and had not protested against Tiananmen Square, two areas about which China is very sensitive. Of the other eight foreigners detained for espionage since 2014, four are Japanese. Tokyo has denied the allegations, and few details have been released though their arrests come at a time of escalating tensions between the two governments. The nationality of a fifth detainee is unknown, though the person apparently was arrested near the North Korean border. 'Friend of China' A Swedish human rights activist, Peter Dahlin, was held for several weeks in January but released after he appeared on state media and confessed to breaking the law by supporting Chinese human rights lawyers. Dozens of Chinese lawyers and their assistants were arrested in a major government crackdown on such groups last year. Chinese authorities in 2015 also released a Canadian woman who had been held with her husband since August 2014. Julia Garratt is out on bail but her husband, Kevin, was moved to the more serious status of criminal detention. The two are Christians who own a coffee shop near the North Korean border and ran a prayer facility. Though Christianity is technically permitted in China, it is tightly controlled by the atheist Communist Party, which is struggling to control the spread of religion among a broader effort to clamp down on dissent. By comparison to those detainees, Phan-Gillis is not publicly known to have participated in any activity which could seem offensive to Beijing, Kamm said. "That's the message that makes this unusual," he said. "This is not what Sandy was doing. If she was a big missionary, it would be different. She is a successful businesswoman and friend of China for many, many years." Rapid slowdown Some have speculated that her detention might be related to people Phan-Gillis knew in China. In the past two years, the Xi administration has launched an aggressive campaign against corruption, which critics say has also wrongly ensnared some of his political opponents. Her arrest comes at a difficult time for one of the world's biggest economies, which after years of extraordinary growth is experiencing a rapid slowdown. It has stoked fears not only of a global recession but also of unrest within China. "It could mean she has become involved in some investigation of important people in China, people she may have been relying on to do business who are under political attack by the government," said Jerome Cohen, a professor at New York University and expert on Chinese law who worked on Xue's release. "It's possible that if she cooperates with them that she may not be indicted or she could be indicted on a lesser charge." But the Chinese legal process is completely opaque and its conviction rate nearly 100 percent, he said. Though Chinese law limits detention and has a time line for when suspects should be charged, indicted and prosecuted, there is broad discretion to seek extensions, he said. In Phan-Gillis' case, she was held for six months under residential surveillance, allowing police to detain her without charges while they investigate national security breaches. In September, she was moved to a formal detention center, though she has yet to be officially charged of a crime. That month, in a letter transcribed by U.S. consular officials and released by her husband, Jeff Gillis, Phan-Gillis said hers is "not a criminal case. This is a political case. I hope you can lobby for an exchange of political prisoners." Washington does not have an extradition treaty with Beijing. But at least 40 of China's 100 most-wanted fugitives accused of economic crimes live in the U.S., according to a list Beijing released last year. U.S. authorities have recently detained several Chinese for spying or stealing technology. But experts say a prisoner swap is unlikely as it has never happened before. Public or private Phan-Gillis' case highlights the sensitive position of both families and governments when a citizen is imprisoned in China. Because the process is so secret and Beijing so authoritarian, they often opt for back-door diplomacy. For Xue, that meant his case remained secret for two years until it appeared to have completely stalled. Phan-Gillis' arrest was kept quiet until she was formally charged and her husband launched a media campaign coinciding with Xi's U.S. visit. But within days he had shut it down, saying it was best to leave negotiations to the State Department. The agency said consular officials have visited Phan-Gillis 12 times since her arrest and are monitoring the case closely. "There's more benefit to be gained from publicity than from keeping quiet," said Cohen, the law professor. "On the other hand, in Xue Feng's case, we did a lot but it didn't get him released. It depends in part on what the nature of the case is and if any Chinese leaders take an interest." Meanwhile family and friends of Phan-Gillis wait, and worry. In three weeks, she will turn 56 in the detention center in Nanning, Guangxi, a province bordering the country of her birth. A prosecutor in Wharton County has accused the elected district attorney of working repeatedly to keep blacks off juries in that rural county southwest of Houston. In a hearing earlier this month, Assistant District Attorney Nathan Wood told a judge that his boss, District Attorney Ross Kurtz, told him to keep black residents off juries in criminal trials in order to improve the prosecution's chances of winning the case. "I was not 'instructed' to strike black jurors so much as I was advised or encouraged to do so as a matter of trial strategy," Wood recently told a judge. "Whatever the true intentions behind the statements made in our office, they made me feel uncomfortable." The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that it is illegal for attorneys to consider race when deciding who gets on a jury. The issue emerged during a black woman's trial that began in February with Wood and another prosecutor striking the only three blacks on a jury panel. Defense attorney Mark Racer objected, forcing the prosecutors to give race-neutral explanations for their actions. "This is just a win-at-all costs mentality that shouldn't be there," Racer said this week. "And clearly one of the prosecutors was uncomfortable with it." Kurtz on Tuesday denied the allegations in an email to the Houston Chronicle. "My instructions and guidance has always been and will always be that prosecutors should not take race into account in exercising the choices allowed by law on which potential jurors to strike," he said. The allegations raise questions about other convictions in Wharton County where blacks my have been excluded from juries, according to defense attorneys. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate Sam Houston goes head-to-head with George H.W. Bush in Texas own historical version of March Madness. The Texas General Land Office a state agency headed by Bushs grandson George P. Bush is hosting a contest all this month to determine the top Texan in the states history. The contest is part of the Save Texas History project. The initiative tries to rally public support and public funding for the preservation and promotion of the historic and documents in the (General Land Office) archives. This month it's trying to get Texans hyped for history by playing off the NCAA Tournament. The Top Texan Tournament sees some of the most famous men and women in the states history facing off. Voting is already down to the elite eight. A breakdown of the remaining candidates is in the gallery. READ MORE: 25 awesome maps that help explain Texas Texas luminaries like Janis Joplin and Howard Hughes already have crashed out of the tourney. Modern figures like George W. Bush and Michael Dell are out as well. One woman is left: former Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day OConnor. Only the biggest names remain. Here are the quarterfinal match-ups: Stephen F. Austin vs. William B. Travis; George H.W. Bush vs. Sam Houston; David Crockett vs. Dwight Eisenhower; Juan Seguin vs. Sandra Day OConnor. Voting for the current round ends Wednesday. The Top Texan will be named March 31. Vote now for your favorite. See the gallery above for a look at the candidates for best Texan ever. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, who has said there is a "war on faith" in this country and frequently touts his support of "religious liberty" laws, called for stepped-up police patrols of "Muslim neighborhoods" in the wake of Tuesday's terror attacks in Brussels. In a Facebook post later turned into a campaign press release, Cruz said, "We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized." His comments followed news reports of explosions at a Brussels airport and train station. Federal authorities said the Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks that occurred a little more than an hour apart. The attacks occurred four days after the capture of Europe's most wanted man, Salah Abdeslam, in Brussels. He is the sole survivor of the 10 men believed to have been directly involved in the Islamic State attacks that killed 130 people in and around Paris Nov. 13. RELATED: After Brussels, calling cooler heads Cruz, the junior senator from Texas, is locked in a battle with billionaire Donald Trump for the Republican nomination for president. Both candidates reacted to news of Tuesday's attacks in Belgium with calls for increased security and limits on people entering the country from the Middle East. Trump, the GOP front-runner, initially said the United States should close its borders. The New York real estate mogul drew enormous criticism last year when he said United States should temporarily bar Muslims from entering the country; on Tuesday he said "I would be extremely careful about people from the Middle East coming into our country." Cruz also said the country should "immediately halt the flow of refugees from countries with a significant al Qaida or ISIS presence." RELATED: Cruz prepares legislation to keep out Syrian Muslim refugees It was Cruz's call to patrol Muslim neighborhoods in a bid to prevent radicalization that drew the most attention. "He is calling on domestic law enforcement to throw a blanket of suspicion over an entire religious community, based on where they worship and how they look," said David Harris, who teaches law enforcement and national security issues at the University of Pittsburgh School of Law. "The idea that the police department is going to roll through a so-called Muslim neighborhood and spot the signs of radical jihad is absurd on its face." The effort also would run up against credible constitutional challenges, said Hina Shamsi, director of the National Security Project at the American Civil Liberties Union in New York City. "Profiling people based on their religion is unconstitutional," she said, citing the First Amendment. In the aftermath of 9/11, the New York Police Department mapped Muslim communities and sent undercover officers and informants into mosques for surveillance. The ACLU sued in 2013 alleging warrantless searches and religious persecution, and the city, under the leadership of Democratic Mayor Bill de Blasio, settled the suit in January, agreeing to change its practices. The Associated Press reported in 2012 that the surveillance program "led to no threats, terror cases." In subsequent comments to clarify his remarks, Cruz and his campaign cited New York City's efforts as an example to follow. "Mayor de Blasio succumbed to unfounded criticisms and eliminated the efforts of law enforcement to work with Muslim communities to stop radical Islamic terrorism," the Cruz campaign said in an email that compared Cruz's proposed policing with law enforcement divisions that target drugs, gangs, human trafficking and organized crime. RELATED: Fact Checker: Cruz's claim about NYPD's program spying on Muslim communities "It is going to require an empowered, visible law enforcement presence that will both identify problem spots and partner with non-radical Americans who want to protect their homes," Cruz spokeswoman Catherine Frazier said. Tim Ryle, executive director of the Texas Police Association, said law enforcement already is empowered to engage in the kind of surveillance Cruz is suggesting. "But, generally speaking, law enforcement works all areas of its jurisdiction," he said. "It's not about one neighborhood or another neighborhood. It's about all of it. ... We constantly try to surveil criminals anywhere in the country, whether terrorists or car thieves." He added, "American law enforcement is very effective at fighting criminal elements, including terror." John Esposito, professor of religion and international affairs at Georgetown University, and author of "Unholy War: Terror in the Name of Islam," said high-profile policing of American Muslim communities would fuel greater radicalization, validating the talking points of extremist groups who claim that the West is at war with the entire religion of Islam. Citing Cruz's call during a December debate to "carpet bomb" parts of the Middle East to combat the Islamic State, Esposito said the Texas senator has a habit of statements that could worsen the problem of radicalization. RELATED: Carpet bombing ISIS not as easy as Cruz thinks "What you're talking about is killing the vast majority of the civilian population. That's the kind of statement a terrorist makes," Esposito said. "These comments have international repercussions." Salaam Bhatti, a lawyer and spokesman for the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community, a self-described international revival movement within Islam, said efforts to combat radicalization should refute the narratives pushed by extremist organizations. "We need to have efforts to really get to know each other," Bhatti said, citing a Pew Research survey that found 60 percent of Americans do not know a Muslim. "We can't defeat extremism by resorting to extremism ourselves," Bhatti said. "We have to maintain a focus on superior ideas." Esposito noted that Trump's approval ratings improved after he called for banning Muslims from entering the United States or declared that "Islam hates us." He suggested Cruz may be borrowing a page from the former reality television star's playbook. "Each one of them is struggling to up the ante, to make the strongest possible to statement, show they'll be the most muscular," he said. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate In the days before Tuesday's Utah Republican caucus, supporters on the campaign trail of Ted Cruz have offered a novel appeal: that the Texas senator could fulfill a Mormon end times prophecy. The comments were first reported by the Salt Lake City Tribune Saturday from a campaign rally in Utah, the only U.S. state with a Mormon majority, and a state where Cruz stands a good chance of passing the 50 percent threshold to win a full slate of delegates. Die-hard Cruz supporter and media icon Glenn Beck, who the website LDS Living calls "one of the most influential Mormons in the media today," invoked a Mormon end times prophecy at a rally in the city of Provo. RELATED: Beck warns of 'violent revolution' after 2016 election "Like many Mormons, I believe in a prophecy that the Constitution will one day hang by a thread in the last days. I believe that time is now, and I believe people like (Utah Sen.) Mike Lee and Ted Cruz will save it," Beck said. The Christian website Charisma News, where Cruz and his campaign leadership have published articles, wrote that Beck's comments were a reference to the Mormon "White Horse" prophecy, suggesting that Cruz could be the horse. In 1902, Mormon Elder John Roberts wrote in his journal that the prophet Joseph Smith had said, "You must continue to petition Congress all the time, but they will treat you like strangers and aliens and they will not give you your rights, but will govern you with strangers and commissioners. You will see the Constitution of the United States almost destroyed. It will hang like a thread as fine as a silk fiber." "It will be preserved and saved by the efforts of the White Horse," wrote Roberts, who went on to predict that "a terrible revolution will take place in the land of America" in which "the most terrible scenes of bloodshed, murder and rape that have ever been imagined or looked upon will take place." RELATED: Romney to vote for Cruz in Utah caucuses At the Provo rally, the SLC Tribune reported, many attendees answered Beck's comments yelling, "I believe." It's not the first time the "White Horse" prophecy has been invoked on the campaign trail. The SLC Tribune reported in 2007 that the presidential campaign of Mormon former Mass. Gov. Mitt Romney had "resurrected (the) last days prophecy of (a) Mormon saving the Constitution." AUSTIN -- Texas unwillingly took another step toward an overhaul of its foster care system Monday, as a federal appeals court denied the state's attempt to pause the revamp and a federal judge appointed two "masters" to oversee it. The U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals' denial of state Attorney General Ken Paxton's request for a stay leaves intact the December 2015 ruling by Judge Janis Graham Jack, who found the system "broken" and unconstitutional. Jack ordered the overhaul in a scathing 255-page order that concluded foster children "almost uniformly leave state custody more damaged than when they entered." On Monday, she appointed two masters to oversee the revamp and system generally: Kevin Ryan, who has been tapped for similar jobs by several federal courts, and Francis McGovern, a mediator who serves as president of the national Academy of Court-Appointed Masters. Both joint "masters" will start work April 1. It was not immediately clear if Paxton's office would challenge the appointments or appeal the 5th Circuit's ruling. "We will continue to vigorously defend the law and the state's foster care program," said Cynthia Meyer, a spokeswoman for the Attorney General's Office. Paul Yetter, a Houston lawyer who is leading the challenge to the Texas foster care system, called it "a tremendous day for thousands of children in Texas state foster care." "After years of unsuccessful attempts to address the failings of an undeniably broken system, meaningful reform can finally take root," Yetter said in a statement. "We look forward to collaborating with this all-star panel of Special Masters and the state to make things right for our kids." Yetter's lawsuit, filed in Corpus Christi by Children's Rights, a New York-based advocacy group, alleged that Texas officials violated the rights of the children by moving them around repeatedly; placing them in unsafe care; keeping them there too long; failing to employ enough caseworkers; and not properly investigating and inspecting homes, among other allegations. Jack's ruling required the state to improve caseworker turnover rates, enact new policies that allow children to speak privately to caseworkers, better track child-on-child abuse and stop placing long-term foster care children in unsafe environments. Paxton's motion argued that Jack erred by ignoring precedents for handling complaints by foster children and improperly condemning the entire system. It also said the ruling was "so broad that it fails to give the defendants fair notice of its parameters and is virtually impossible to follow." The three-judge panel said the ruling could not be considered overly broad, however, because it had not been fully settled since its ultimate impact would be determined in part by the masters. The panel, which was made up of three judges appointed by former President George W. Bush, found there was "evidence supporting the grave problems" identified by Jack. "The public interest also supports allowing the special master to proceed," the panel wrote. "Because the safety and rights of vulnerable children are at stake, and the immediate injunctive relief ordered is concentrated on a single, narrow mandate, the (precedent) factors weigh in favor of denying a stay." -- As primaries roll on, Cruz slams Trump on Israel policy, by the Chronicles Kevin Diaz. Hoping to rally conservatives and highlight his differences with billionaire Donald Trump, Sen. Ted Cruz delivered a sharp rebuke to the GOP front-runner Monday in a speech bef ore the nation's premier pro-Israel lobbying group. The Texas Republican's basic message: He is the true champion of Israel, while Trump has talked of brokering a deal between Israelis and Palestinians. Cruz's speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, the most visible foreign policy pronouncement of his campaign so far, came on the eve of Tuesday's voting in Utah and Arizona, where he hopes to change the trajectory of the race. -- Firm linked to Paxtons legal troubles is fined, by the Chronicles Mike Ward. Mowery Capital Management, a McKinney-based investment firm with ties to indicted Attorney General Ken Paxton, has been fined $90,000 for violating state securities laws by providing false documents to Texas investigators and misleading clients about a past bankruptcy, state filings show. The order requires Mowery Capital and its head, Frederick Fritz Mowery, to immediately cease and desist from engaging in any fraudulent conduct enumerated herein in connection with rendering services as an investment adviser, according to the 24-page order that cited six specific violations of state securities law. -- FOLLOW UP: Liberal group asks Rangers to probe Millers Jesus Shot trip, by the Chronicles Brian Rosenthal.Progress Texas filed a two-page complaint alleging Miller intentionally abused his office in February of 2015 by using at least $1,120 in public money for private gain. Abuse of office involving that amount of money is a Class A misdemeanor, punishable by up to a year in jail and a $4,000 fine. Politicians like Sid Miller using their office to benefit themselves is inexcusable, said Lucy Stein, advocacy director for the group. These guys think that they're above the law, and they aren't. -- OVERNIGHT: Explosions rock Brussels airport, subway; 13 reported dead, by the APs Lorne Cook and John-Thor Dahlburg. Belgium raised its terror alert to its highest level, diverting arriving planes and trains and ordering people to stay where they were. Airports across Europe immediately tightened security as a fleet of emergency vehicles roared in to handle the carnage at the Brussels airport. The explosions, which the Brussels prosecutor's office called terror attacks, came just days after the main suspect in the deadly Nov. 13 Paris attacks was arrested Friday in Brussels. After his arrest, 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam told authorities he had created a new network and was planning new attacks. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Tuesday's attacks. -- Themes emerge in Senate property tax hearings, QRs Kimberly Reeves. Dont expect the battle lines to curtail local spending to begin and end with revenue caps next session. Members of Sen. Paul Bettencourts Select Committee on Property Tax Reform & Relief have suggested a far more complex agenda next session, gathered from town hall-style meetings around the state. The easiest mark would be the proposal for a 4 percent revenue cap Bettencourt unsuccessfully carried last session. Lawmakers have attempted to tinker around the edges of city and county budget spending for at least a decade, resulting in one a memorable moment in Texas House lore. Next session promises similar pushback. CAPITOL DAYBOOK HOUSE: 10 a.m.: Mental Health, Select [ E2.016 ] 1 p.m.: Business & Industry [ E2.010 ] SPEED READ Texas Take: A blue Texas with Clinton-Castro? Houston Chronicle Panel mulls recording of police interrogations, Houston Chronicle Houstons credit downgraded by second ratings agency, Houston Chronicle Grieder: Seriously, Republicans. Its time to drink the Cruz Kool-Aid, Texas Monthly With an Orthodox focus, Ted Cruz reaches out to Jewish donors and voters, The Washington Post Exclusive: Marco Rubio rejected unity ticket with Ted Cruz, Politico Utah governor backs Ted Cruz ahead of Tuesday caucus, The Dallas Morning News VP guessing game draws some to Fort Worth, Fort Worth Star-Telegram New police body cam law gets positive reviews as cops start requesting grants, Quorum Report Ex-Texas trooper in Sandra Bland case set for arraignment, Houston Chronicle DPS: Troopers not enforcing immigration, The El Paso Times Austin police fire officer who fatally shot naked teen, Austin American-Statesman Cuban-Americans in Houston divided over visit, Houston Chronicle Cuban refugees flocking to Texas border, The Texas Tribune Obama spars with Castro over human rights, The Washington Post Raising the Bars: Whats next for Texas criminal justice reform? Texas Observer Rick Perry seen as hope by anti-Trump forces, Fort Worth Star-Telegram Rice among schools facing questions over massive endowments, Houston Chronicle As judge moves toward changing Texas foster care, Abbott installs longtime aide atop CPS, The Dallas Morning News Federal judge taps 2 to oversee Texas foster care, Houston Chronicle RACE TO THE WHITE HOUSE -- Trump, Clinton aim to pad delegate lead in Western states, the APs Steve Peoples. Arizona and Utah feature contests for both parties, while Idaho Democrats also hold presidential caucuses. Trump and Clinton hope to strengthen their leads in delegates that decide the nominations, as Democrat Bernie Sanders and Republicans Ted Cruz and John Kasich struggle to reverse the sense of inevitability taking hold around both party front-runners. Despite the tough talk, both Trump and Clinton face challenges on Tuesday. Trump's brash tone has turned off some Republican voters in Utah, where preference polls suggest Cruz has a chance to claim more than 50 percent of the caucus vote and with it, all of Utah's 40 delegates. Trump could earn some delegates should Cruz fail to exceed 50 percent, in which case the delegates would be awarded proportionally based on each candidate's vote total. -- Clintons backers prepare general election ad blitz, by NYTs Maggie Haberman. The super PAC supporting Hillary Clinton is preparing to reserve roughly $70 million in television ads to begin after the Democratic National Convention and to run through the fall general election in important battleground states such as Ohio and Florida, the first large-scale mobilization that any group has made. Over the coming days, the group, Priorities USA, will begin making reservations in those states, as well as in Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Hampshire and Virginia, said the groups chief strategist and co-chairman, Guy Cecil. The aggressive move comes as the super PAC looks to the fall and what could be a crowded market of television ad reservations. -- A whirlwind day in DC showcases Trumps unorthodox views and shifting tone, by WashPosts Philip Rucker and Robert Costa. Donald Trump endorsed an unabashedly noninterventionist approach to world affairs Monday during a day-long tour of Washington, casting doubt on the need for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and expressing skepticism about a muscular U.S. military presence in Asia. The foreign policy positions outlined in a meeting with the editorial board of The Washington Post came on a day when Trump set aside the guerrilla tactics and showman bravado that have powered his campaign to appear as a would-be presidential nominee, explaining his policies, accepting counsel and building bridges to Republican elites. 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. Ontario Minister of Community Safety and Correction Services Yasir Naqvi heads into the Thunder Bay District Jail on Wednesday, January 13, 2016. Naqvi, who was in the city to attend a caucus meeting along with other provincial ministers, took a tour of the facility to see the aftermath of a riot that severely damaged the upper floors and two fires that happened just at the tail end of 2015. Canada to Make it Easier to Hire French Speakers for Skilled Jobs Outside Quebec CIC News Aa Accessibility Font Style Serif Sans Font Size A A Pour la version francaise, cliquez ici. The government of Canada has announced that it will soon be simpler for employers in some regions of Canada to hire French-speaking skilled workers through a new option known as Mobilite Francophone. In an expansion of the International Mobility Program (IMP), Mobilite Francophone will exempt Canadian employers from the Labour Market Impact Assessment process when they hire francophone foreign workers in managerial, professional and technical/skilled trades occupations (NOC skill level 0, A or B) to work in francophone minority communities outside Quebec. This new option is scheduled to come into operation on June 1, 2016. A LMIA is a document that serves as proof that there will be a positive or neutral impact to the Canadian labour market if an employer hires a foreign national in certain situations. The IMP is an umbrella program that includes all streams of work permit applications that are exempt from this requirement. Mobilite Francophone is the latest such stream, joining other IMP streams such as the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the International Experience Canada (IEC) program. Exemptions from the LMIA process are based on: broader economic, cultural or other competitive advantages for Canada; and reciprocal benefits enjoyed by Canadians and permanent residents. Canadas Minister of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship, John McCallum, made it clear that the Liberal government has high hopes for this initiative, not only for local economies and Canadian employers, but also for the foreign workers themselves. Giving foreign workers who arrive in Canada under this stream the means to transition to permanent resident status is a clear goal of the government. We want francophone minority communities in Canada to continue to be vibrant and growing. Thats why were going to encourage skilled francophone workers to come to Canada and settle in communities outside of Quebec, and were going to encourage them to apply for permanent residence if they would like to stay, said Mr. McCallum. At the time of writing, it remains unclear exactly what criteria may be applied in order to define which communities (and consequently, which employers) will be able to participate in the Mobilite Francophone stream. While the majority of francophones in Canada live and work in the province of Quebec, many regions across the country continue to have vibrant francophone communities. The working language of many of these communities is generally English, but French retains an important role in the community. More than one million Canadians outside Quebec report French as being their mother tongue. The largest francophone communities outside Quebec are in Eastern Ontario and New Brunswick, but sizeable francophone communities are found in each province and territory. The department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC, formerly known as CIC) aims to have francophone newcomers make up at least 4 percent of all economic immigrants settling outside Quebec by 2018, with an additional target of 4.4 percent by 2023. To learn more about the International Mobility Program, send an inquiry to wp@canadavisa.com 2016 CICNews All Rights Reserved Canadas Immigration Minister Pledges to Make Permanent Immigration Easier for Students CIC News Aa Accessibility Font Style Serif Sans Font Size A A The government of Canada is looking at ways to make the immigration process for international students in Canada easier and more straightforward, with Immigration Minister John McCallum stating that we should be doing everything we can do to court them, adding that they are the cream of the crop. Since the launch of the Express Entry immigration selection system in January, 2015, many international students in Canada have faulted the system for making their pathway to permanent residence more uncertain than previously. The number of international students studying in Canada is over 300,000, a figure that is constantly growing. Many of these students are choosing Canada over other developed countries because of certain advantages that studying in Canada can bring, such as access to post-graduation work permits and the potential to obtain permanent resident status, not to mention the quality of education on offer. Speaking after a meeting with provincial and territorial government representatives last week, Mr. McCallum said he intends to launch federal-provincial talks to reform Express Entry, which was launched by the previous Conservative government. Ideas that have been floated for tweaking the Express Entry system in order to assist international students include giving graduates specific points for education and work experience in Canada. We must do more to attract students to this country as permanent residents . . . International students have been shortchanged by the express entry system. They are the cream of the crop, in terms of potential future Canadians, said Mr. McCallum. Express Entry and international students The Express Entry system requires candidates eligible for permanent resident status to make an expression of interest in immigrating to Canada. The government of Canada then invites certain individuals from this pool of candidates to apply for permanent residence using a points-based system. Presently, a significant number of points are allocated to individuals with a job offer from a Canadian employer or nomination from a Canadian province. In order for the job offer to be valid for the purposes of Express Entry, a positive Labour Market Impact Assessment (LMIA) must be issued. Since its launch, Express Entry has had repercussions for international students wishing to remain in Canada after their studies who, until 2015, typically followed a path to permanent residence that did not require their employer to obtain a LMIA. Good news for students currently in Canada Before winning last years election, the now-governing Liberal Party pledged to conduct a review of the Express Entry system and make changes, if necessary. The latest remarks from the Immigration Minister have been well received by international students currently studying in Canada, who may note that the department of Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship (IRCC, formerly known as CIC) has been proactive in many areas since the current government came into office just over four months ago. International students currently in Canada are encouraged to apply for a post-graduation work permit upon completion of their studies in Canada. This will allow them to enter the Canadian labour market and gain valuable work experience for up to three years. The current government, which has been highly receptive to international students concerns, has at least three years left on its mandate, so by the time existing international students are working in Canada post-graduation, their pathway to permanent residence is expected to be more straightforward than at present. Why study in Canada? Many international students choose Canada over other potential destinations, such as the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and France, because of certain advantages that come with studying in Canada. With quality and more affordable tuition at renowned universities and colleges in safe cities, and employment options both during and after the study period, the decision to study in Canada can be life changing, says Attorney David Cohen. If you add to this list of reasons a clear pathway to permanent resident status and, eventually, Canadian citizenship, studying in Canada becomes an even more attractive proposition. I am glad that the current government is focusing on this so early in its term in office, and I anticipate that changes favourable to international students will be brought about before too long. Canada wants students because Canada is all about nation building. Young, intelligent newcomers who have proven they have the credentials and means to assimilate should play a significant role in that. Canada wants students to come here, study, contribute socially and economically, and stay permanently. Canada: a country of diversity and opportunity Individuals around the world thinking of coming to study in Canada should note that the country is made up of a number of provinces, each of which presents certain advantages for international students. These advantages may be in relation to transfer programs, cost of living, available study programs, employment prospects upon graduation, and available immigration opportunities. To learn more about provinces and locations in Canada as they relate to higher education, click here. Alternatively, choose from the following list of options: International students currently studying in Canada, as well as graduates who have completed their studies in Canada, are encouraged to fill out a free immigration assessment to determine their options for obtaining Canadian permanent residence. If you wish to learn more about obtaining a Post-Graduation Work Permit, please send an email to wp@canadavisa.com. Include information about your study program and employment prospects, if applicable. If and when changes affecting international students are made to Canadian immigration programs, CICNews will provide detailed updates. 2016 CICNews All Rights Reserved Charter schools offer a lifeline to parents who cant afford to pay private tuition or move to a better neighborhood. The rapid expansion of charters has done more to spread high quality education in Americas cities than perhaps any other modern reform. And yet, the way charters enroll students could be improved. Several cities have recently adopted a simple reform that has increased access to charter schools among disadvantaged parents. In most cities, when the number of applicants to a charter exceeds the number of seats available, enrollment offers are determined randomly. The process ensures that all applicants have an equal chance of getting in. But in reality, some parents face greater barriers than others. Parents must first know that charter schools exist and that their kids are eligible to attend them. Not all do. Even parents who are aware of charter schools may not appreciate that getting in to one requires more than the traditional registration process. There are deadlines for turning in application materials that often differ from school to school. Navigating all this takes time and energy that can be difficult for poor families to muster. A recent survey conducted by the Center on Reinventing Public Education (CRPE) found that anywhere from a quarter to a third of parents had trouble determining whether their children were eligible to attend a particular charter school. Similarly large proportions of parents said that they had difficulty with application deadlines and paperwork. These troubles were especially pronounced for parents with low levels of education and parents of children with special needs. Several cities have adopted a new system to enroll students in both charter and district schools that couples fair lotteries with an inclusive application process. Under so-called common enrollment, parents turn in a single form listing in order the schools that they would like their child to attend. Each student is then given a randomly generated lottery number and an algorithm then matches students to school seats according to availability and the familys stated preference. This process is based on the efficient matching strategies for which Alvin Roth won the Nobel Prize in economics. A similar process is used to assign medical students to residencies and match those seeking kidney transplants to donors. Common enrollment by this design is not entirely new. New York City uses such a system to assign students to district high schools. Survey evidence presented by CRPE shows that the most disadvantaged parents find the common-enrollment process much easier to navigate than the school-based lottery system. My own research shows that the adoption of a common-enrollment system in Denver dramatically increased the proportion of low-income students and non-English proficient students entering charter schools in kindergarten. Common-enrollment systems also produce vastly improved information about parental perceptions of school quality. Currently, districts can rate schools based on test scores or they can ask for parent feedback. They otherwise have little reliable information about what parents truly think. A common-enrollment system can help policymakers understand how parents view particular schools. In Newark, New Jersey, which employs such a system, half of all K-8 applicants listed North Star Academy Charter School as a preference, and 40 percent listed TEAM Charter Schools (affiliated with the popular KIPP network). The district reported that each of the Top Seven options listed by Newark parents were charter schools. Thats powerful data showing just how much local parents value charters. Many charter school supporters remain wary of embracing common enrollment. The most common concern is that a central bureaucracy cant be trusted to execute the common-enrollment process fairly, accurately, and on time. Many charter school operators entered the sector precisely because they didnt trust the central administration to handle basic schooling functions correctly. Delays or mistakes in the process would be particularly troublesome for charter schools, which rely on their enrollments for revenue. Not all has gone smoothly where common enrollment has been tried. But for the most part, common enrollment has been conducted competently and on-time. Cities like New York and Boston only need to expand their current common-enrollment systems for district schools to include charter schools. In other cases, outside consultants with experience implementing these programs can help to ensure that the process is adopted smoothly. Third-party auditing can easily check that matches are administered fairly. Some charter school leaders that I have spoken with are skeptical of the sameness between charter and district schools implied by a common application system. Charters that value their autonomy are wary of ceding any control to the central district. Could a common-enrollment system become the Trojan Horse that opens the door to greater regulation of charters, and eventually makes them indistinguishable from regular district schools? Its doubtful. In fact, it isnt obvious that a common-enrollment system opens any meaningful regulatory doors at all. Charter schools operate autonomously, but even under the current system, charters arent supposed to have a say in who applies or is offered a seat. Adopting a common-enrollment system doesnt make a single additional student eligible for admission or change the fact that applicants are randomly assigned to seats. It just changes who collects the application forms. That charter schools are public schools often gets lost in the heated debate over education reform. While they arent held to some of the byzantine operational rules imposed by the central system on traditional district schools, charters should be thought of as one schooling option among several offered by the government to best serve the communitys needs. A common-enrollment process is consistent with that vision for urban education reform. Photo by Joe Raedle / Getty Images Shortly after two terrorist bombs ripped apart the departure hall at Brussels Airport, killing at least 11, and a third bomb ended the lives of at least 15 more in the nearby Maelbeek subway station, the editor-in-chief of the French-language Le Soir posted an editorial on the Belgian papers website. The noise is continuous, wrote Beatrice Delvaux. It comes out from everywhere, crossing the street like an open wound. Ambulances, fire engines, police vans, unmarked cars with flashing blue lights scream as they go. People stop, look, in a daze: their eyes are empty. Delvauxs description of the bedlam around her will ring true to anyone who has had the terrifying experience of hearing news announcements that the unthinkable is happening, not streets and worlds away, but right around the corner. And yet, Delvaux goes on, because its her job to describe what she sees and to comment on its causes. They know all this is true, she writes of the physical and emotional chaos in Brussels today. They know too that they knew: this was going to happen, this was bound to happen. Its the sadness above all that is infinite; it seeps from the paving stones and trickles from the pavements. The sadness is appropriate and understandable, but I bridle at Delvauxs apparent resignation that that this was bound to happen. Yes, I suppose that we must concede that an attack on Brussels was likely, considering that the city had become known in recent months as the incubator of the terrorist cell that attacked Paris in November 2015. This past weekend, Belgian authorities finally nabbed Salah Abdeslam, a 26-year-old Frenchman of Moroccan descent alleged to have participated in the attacks. He had been hiding out for the last four months in Molenbeek, the Brussels neighborhood and hotbed of Islamic radicalism. But nothing about Islamic terrorism in Western Europe is inevitable. Multiculturalism has invited the problem. Decades of failure to assimilate young male Muslims into the European cultural mainstream have produced a generation of angry misfits, vulnerable to radicalization and eager to express its dissatisfaction through Islamist violence. As the New York Times reported, Few countries have been more vulnerable than Belgium. It has an especially high proportion of citizens who have traveled to Iraq, insular Muslim communities that have helped shield jihadists, and security services that have had persistent problems conducting effective counterterrorism operations, not least in its four-month effort to capture Mr. Abdeslam. If the solution to the problem of homegrown Islamic terrorism in Western Europe were easy, we wouldnt keep reading about these awful massacres. As intractable as it may seem, however, it is not inevitable, and Europes elites will get nowhere if they dont abandon this notion. Seeing the indiscriminate slaughter of innocents as fated is one step away from seeing it as deserved. Neither is true. Photo by Sylvain Lefevre/Getty Images Peste 300 de liceene s-au inscris in Startup School si sunt gata sa invete bazele antreprenoriatului tehnologic. Vezi cum a fost la evenimentul de lansare a programului national de educatie antreprenoriala By the end of 2016, nearly four million people may be infected with the Zika virus, according to the World Health Organization. In fact, the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) has found that factors like weather, travel and poverty could increase outbreaks this summer. Specialized computer simulations indicate that summer weather conditions could increase the outbreak throughout the East Coast and southern U.S. The agencys analysis found that winter weather conditions are too cold for the mosquito to survive outside southern Florida and southern Texas. This research can help us anticipate the timing and location of possible Zika virus outbreaks in certain U.S. cities, said NCAR scientist Andrew Monaghan, the lead author of the study. The study authors said long-range weather forecasts for this summer indicate a 40-45 percent chance of warmer-than-average temperatures over most of the continental United States. Monaghan said this could lead to increased suitability for the mosquito that carries the virus in much of the South and East, although above-normal temperatures in the hottest regions of Texas, Arizona and California are less favorable for the species. Researchers said that northern U.S. cities could become vulnerable if a related species of mosquito that is more tolerant to cold temperatures begins to carry the virus. The virus, which is transmitted to humans by mosquitos, first gained media attention earlier this year when affected Latin America countries, including Brazil, Argentina, Guatemala, Venezuela and Ecuador reported an uptick in Zika, a disease first discovered in Uganda in 1947. Symptoms of the virus are typically mild, resembling the flu, except that pregnant women can suffer more serious consequences. Microcephaly, a birth defect that may cause an infants head to stop growing after birth, is associated with the virus. Besides affecting health, there are other consequences of this latest disease outbreak. Zika virus isnt going anywhere, said Frank Esper, MD, infectious disease specialist at University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Childrens Hospital. If its anything near what happened with SARS or with Ebola, people are going to be very hesitant to travel to those areas. Florida Governor Rick Scott declared a state of emergency in four counties where health officials detected the virus. This can have a substantial economic impact if this virus gets established in Florida, that people may not be going there, Dr. Esper said, noting that Canada lost billions of tourism dollars when SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome) traveled from China to Toronto while countries like Brazil, which is preparing to host the 2016 Summer Olympics, stand to lose even more. In addition to tourism, many Latin American countries lack medical infrastructure and resources for early intervention, if they experience an influx of children with developmental disabilities caused by the microcephaly linked to Zika. You can have a lifetime of disabilities just because you were not able to intervene during that time, says Dr. Esper. According to Irfan Akhtar, a pandemic modeling expert at Aon, the main impact of the virus will be on tourism and on business disruption. There are technology and food and beverage companies in South America that are likely to be impacted by Zika. Because there are mild symptoms associated with the virus, it can spread rather easily without being recognized, he said. University of Missouri researchers say a combination of different strategies is needed to fully tackle the the Zika virus. Tackling mosquito-borne viruses requires focus on both humans and insects, said Alexander Franz, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Veterinary Pathobiology at the MU College of Veterinary Medicine. While my team is focused on the mosquitoes, other researchers are focused on creating vaccines and therapies for the people infected. Both approaches are needed to successfully stop the spread of the virus. Franzs research is focused on genetically manipulating mosquitoes so they no longer support transmission of mosquito-borne viruses to humans. Finding a way to make mosquitoes resistant to the Zika virus could effectively interrupt the viral transmission cycle, Franz said. Previously, Franzs research team successfully genetically manipulated mosquitoes to be resistant to the Dengue virus, another mosquito-borne virus affecting people in the tropics. Franz said his success generating stable resistance to the Dengue virus in mosquitoes could help him tackle the Zika virus. Daniel Jackson, M.D., a maternal and fetal medicine specialist at MU Health Care and assistant professor in the Department of Obstetrics, Gynecology and Womens Health at the MU School of Medicine, is concerned with the potential connection of the Zika virus to microcephaly, a permanent birth defect that can cause lifelong developmental problems in infants. There is a lot we still dont know right now about the relation of Zika and microcephaly, Jackson said. However, there have been several cases of microcephaly identified in babies also infected with the Zika virus. I advise pregnant women, or women considering pregnancy, to avoid traveling to countries affected by the virus until more research is done. Jackson said it is important for expecting mothers to know that having the Zika virus does not guarantee their children will have microcephaly. Overall, both Jackson and Franz believe it will require an integrated approach to answer all the unknown questions about the Zika virus. A judge sentenced an Indianapolis man to more than two life sentences in prison on Friday for his role in a 2012 house explosion that killed two people and destroyed or damaged dozens of homes. Bob Leonard was convicted last month on all 51 counts he had faced, including murder, arson and insurance fraud charges. Leonard, 57, received two consecutive life sentences without parole on the murder counts, along with 70 years on the other charges, according to Allen Superior Court Executive John McGauley. Prosecutors said surveillance video, witness testimony and DNA evidence proved Leonard was involved in the plot with his half brother and others to use natural gas and a microwave to blow up the house to claim $300,000 in insurance. Leonards half brother, Mark Leonard, was convicted of being the mastermind behind the Nov. 10, 2012, explosion. He was sentenced in August to two life sentences, along with 75 years in prison. The home was owned by Mark Leonards girlfriend at the time, Monserrate Shirley, who testified that Bob Leonard was brought into the plot after a first attempt to burn down her house failed in October 2012. Prosecutors allege the suspects planned to destroy the house by filling it with natural gas. A microwave apparently set to start on a timer sparked the blast. The explosion destroyed the home and the house next door, killing her neighbors, Jennifer and John Dion Longworth. It also damaged or destroyed more than 80 other homes in a subdivision on Indianapolis south side. Leonards attorneys left court after the sentencing without commenting, but Longworths father, John, said he had expected that Leonard would receive a life sentence. Hes put away for the rest of his life, which will keep him from hurting anybody else, he told WISH-TV. During Bob Leonards trial last month, Shirley told jurors that when she asked him about the explosion that killed her neighbors, he replied: Oh well, they died. You were in it. You talk, we talk. Prosecutors presented 16 days of testimony during Bob Leonards more than monthlong trial in Fort Wayne, where it was moved because of high publicity in Indianapolis. Mark Leonards trial was held in South Bend. Bob Leonard didnt testify in his defense, and his attorneys called just two witnesses who were on the stand for about a half hour. Shirley, who testified against both men, has pleaded guilty to two conspiracy charges. She faces a 20 years to 50 years in prison when sentenced. Her cooperation also led to charges against two alleged co-conspirators, Glenn Hults and Gary Thompson, who were scheduled for a joint trial in June. Thompson faces two counts of murder and 47 arson-related counts, while Hults faces a charge of conspiracy to commit arson. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Federal officials have failed to ensure regular inspections are carried out at dozens of Native American schools, where safety hazards have ranged from exposed electrical wires and broken windows to a natural gas leak, a government watchdog said. Nearly 200 schools in some 20 states fall under the oversight of the Interior Departments Bureau of Indian Education an agency that faced recent scrutiny for rundown classrooms before receiving $138 million in funding this year to bring buildings to code and replace others altogether. The Government Accountability Office report released Wednesday found that even with improvements in the works, disrepair could persist without a system for making sure schools undergo annual inspections and have plans in place for promptly making repairs, especially when a threat is posed to students. Indian Affairs cannot ensure that the learning and work environments at BIE schools are safe, and it risks causing harm to the very children that it is charged with educating and protecting, the congressional watchdog said. The federally run schools, primarily on rural reservations, serve 47,000 Native American children. At one school, documents showed four aging dormitory boilers failed an inspection and were blamed for high carbon monoxide levels and a natural gas leak, but werent repaired until about eight months later, the watchdog said. The problem boilers represented the most alarming example of safety hazards included in the report that was drafted after GAO site visits to 16 schools in Arizona, New Mexico, Utah, South Dakota and Oklahoma. The report did not identify the school or say whether carbon monoxide had sickened any students. In a response enclosed in the GAO report, Larry Roberts, the Interior Departments acting assistant secretary for Indian Affairs, said the department agreed overall with the findings, which come as federal officials attempt to overhaul the Bureau of Indian Education school system and turn over more control of the schools to tribes. The Interior Department is seeking $1 billion to improve classrooms and technology at the schools, and introduce Native American cultural programs for students. The GAO report raised concerns that the overhaul for the schools did not include a plan to support tribes in addressing disrepair as they take over the schools. Without Indian Affairs support of BIE schools to address these deficiencies, unsafe conditions at schools will persist and may endanger students and staff, the GAO said. Roberts said the department would develop a new tracking and reporting system for inspections and repairs. According to the report, 69 schools did not receive building inspections in 2015 up from 55 schools in 2012 while inspections for other some other schools were incomplete The GAO report said the inadequate reporting has left the Interior Department without an accurate look at the full scope of potential safety hazards at the schools. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. North Carolina is reversing warnings about water that health officials said was too polluted to drink and now reassuring residents who live near pits that hold waste from decades of coal-burning for electricity that their well water is safe. The state health agency issued written warnings last April to the owners of 330 water wells near eight Duke Energy power plants that their well water was too contaminated with vanadium and hexavalent chromium to use. Now a new letter is being sent to homeowners who draw from 235 of those wells suggesting more confidence in the safety of the water. The remaining 95 water wells will continue to carry a do not drink warning because of the presence of arsenic, cobalt or other pollutant, an agency spokeswoman said. The letter, which the Department of Health and Human services began mailing out Friday, states that the water is as safe to drink as water in most cities and towns across the state and country. State agencies fanned out to test the groundwater near coal-burning plants owned by the countrys largest electric company after a massive coal-ash spill two years ago. The disaster left a 70-mile stretch of the Dan River coated in toxic sludge and raised about concerns arsenic and heavy metals in the water. The new guidance from North Carolina health officials reversing the earlier dont-drink water warning is perplexing residents like Deborah Graham, who lives near Duke Energys Buck power plant in Salisbury. I kind of feel the state is kind of flip-flopping and now trying to back-peddle to get themselves out of a situation, Graham said. Im not going to drink the water. She said she was persuaded by state toxicologist Ken Rudos warning last year that the state was being cautious due to the lack of clear research showing how much vanadium and hexavalent chromium heavy metal elements is too much. Rudo is on leave from his toxicology post and declined to discuss the departments change when contacted by phone. At a Salisbury public meeting last summer, Rudo said the states caution was prompted in part because hexavalent chromium can change the bodys DNA in ways that can lead to cancer. There really is no safe level of exposure to a carcinogen like hexavalent chromium, the Salisbury Post reported Rudo as saying. However, State Health Director Dr. Randall Williams said the Department of Health and Human Services now has more information than it did last year about the risk posed by the amounts of vanadium and hexavalent chromium in the water and determined the warnings werent needed. The warnings were based on a standard much stricter than nearly anyplace else in the country. In an abundance of caution, we purposely set very cautious levels last year, Williams said. We now think its appropriate to drink the water. Hexavalent chromium is a human carcinogen when inhaled and oral exposure can harm the liver, kidney and other organs, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Vanadiums cancer and other health risks are less well known. Both can occur naturally in soil or as a result of industrial byproducts like coal ash. Duke Energy has said all along that its coal-ash pits were not polluting the private wells of surrounding homes. The company applauded the states latest move. Spokeswoman Paige Sheehan wrote in an email that the evidence demonstrates that the water is safe, just as safe or better than the public water supplies millions of people in the nation rely on. The company has delivered bottled water for most of the past year to about 380 households to give them peace of mind while more research was done, Sheehan wrote. Duke will continue delivering water to neighbors near the power plants where wells were tested, Sheehan said. They include 214 neighbors of the Allen plant in Belmont and 80 homes near the Buck plant in Salisbury. The company is providing water to residents near most of the plants where toxic coal ash is buried. They include Duke Energys Asheville, Belews Creek, Cliffside, Marshall, Roxboro and Sutton facilities. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. New LP 'Varmints': Composer Anna Meredith's Bold Departure From Classical Towards Pop Screenshot of Anna Meredith taken from Dec 11, 2012 The Vinyl Factory video of "The Vinyl Factory Presents 'Anna Meredith - Black Prince Fury EP'" (Photo : (The Vinyl Factory, YouTube)) Classical composers don't always remain classical composers. Some embrace multiple projects; others ditch the medium entirely for something more down-to-earth. Neither column can perfectly sum up the experience of composer Anna Meredith regarding her sudden departure from the classical medium and her foray into world of electronica and pop music -- a genre which, at 37, she admitted was foreign territory. A former in-house composer with the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra and with Sinfonia ViVA, her electronic work (previewed in her 2012/2013 EPs) has culminated in the March 4th release of her debut album Varmints (under Moshi Moshi Records). According to The Guardian, Meredith had "grown frustrated by classical's constraints", referring to the labor that classical composers must endure for the relatively brief premieres they enjoy, and also of the scathing (and potentially career-shattering) criticism they face upon the release of every work. The odds of a piece falling flat to a glazed audience lies in the face of every aspiring composer. Anna Meredith craved something different. Of her choice to explore new areas, she went on to say, I dont want to write music that people are enduring just to get to the Elgar in the second half." To counter, Meredith has embarked on a new path that has been called "maximalist", a touch more pop-friendly, and still as retaining all the hallmarks of a seasoned composer. A classically trained clarinetist, her album Varmints is rich with an affinity for woodwinds and brass -- often triumphant, manic, and at times, cataclysmic. Curiously, this transition comes at a time of relative success for Anna Meredith (winner of the 2010 Paul Hamlyn Award for Composers and a commissioned composer for the 'Ten Pieces' project at BBC Proms). She was even recently commissioned to write a piece for the Kronos Quartet's 'Fifty for the Future' project: The Kronos Learning Repertoire. As part of a project to make fifty unique 21st Century scores available to the public, at no cost, composers both young and old are participating to be a part of this unique pantheon -- among them are Philip Glass, Laurie Anderson, and the younger Anna Meredith. Her piece was recently announced to be a part of the second year of 'Fifty for the Future'. Still, an interview with DIY revealed that Meredith has derived more enjoyment from her electronica leanings. Proud of her ambition, the transition seemed to pay off in the release of Varmints. By retaining her composers' training, but indulging in the pop & electronica communities, Anna Meredith has opened herself up to a new realm of diverse crowds and venues. To The Guardian, she described the experience of playing in front of a club full of people who are largely eager, curious, and ready to move -- quite the contrast from the stoic crowd of a classical recital hall. The marriage of her genre-fusing sensibilities in Varmints has been lauded by many critical outlets, including Pitchfork... but don't take their word for it; give yourself a listen in the Spotify link above, and hear Anna Meredith personally describe her transition below. (She's still very much a classical composer, of course.) 2016 The Classical Art, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. TagsAnna Meredith, Kronos Quartet, Electronica TV Musical Comedy Crazy Ex-Girlfriend New Episode Spoilers After Early Renewal Spoiler Alert: Tonight, the CWs hit musical comedy Crazy Ex-Girlfriend is all new. Recently, it was announced that The CW has renewed the show for another season. Check the report below for a look at tonights all new show and all the shows that got an early renewal. The official plot synopsis for tonights all new episode of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, titled Josh Has No Idea Where I Am!, reads: Rebecca gets stuck on a plane with her therapist, who takes her on a surprising journey. Meanwhile, in West Covina, Josh, Paula, Darryl and a reluctant Greg come together to find Rebecca. Recently, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend was given an early renewal by The CW. CW President Mark Pedowitz made the annoucement, saying (via Hollywood Reporter): "The CW has become home to some of the most critically acclaimed shows on broadcast television, with a wide array of fantastic scripted series across the week, ranging from musical comedy, to superhero action, to gritty sci-fi dramas. As we continue to further our strategy of more year-round original programming, picking up these 11 series for the 2016-2017 season puts us in a great position of having proven, high-quality shows to launch in the fall as well as midseason and summer of 2017." Be sure to tune into the all new episode of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, tonight at 8:00 p.m. eastern on The CW. 2016 The Classical Art, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. TagsTV, Musical, Comedy, Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, New, Episode, Spoilers, Early, Renewal 'Dr Who' & Richard II David Tennants Father Rev Dr McDonald Passes Our thoughts are with David Tennant and his loved ones tonight. The former Doctor Who star and current Royal Shakespeare Company Richard II lead lost his father late last week. Rev Dr Sandy McDonald was suffering from a pulmonary fibrosis. Rev Dr Sandy McDonald served as Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland for a brief period between 1997 and 1998. Rt Rev Dr Angus Morrison,the current moderator spoke to reporters about Rev Dr Sandy McDonalds passing, telling Edinburghnews.scotsman.com: Dr Sandy McDonald was a wonderful man and minister. Genuine love for people was a defining mark of his ministry. He had a special concern for the well-being, at every level, of his fellow ministers. Sandys memory will be cherished by many. Edinburgh News went on to quote some other members of the Church who they quoted, reporting: Beloved figure, widely admired for his fearlessness, generosity and irrepressible high spirits. Rev John Chalmers also made a statement about the passing, saying: Working with Sandy McDonald was one of the great pleasures of my career in ministry. It was no surprise to me when Sandy called for a serious dialogue on the right to die he was a man who tempered his views in the light of reality, he was a man who sat lightly to dogma and who preferred faith in action. The Church of Scotland needs a new breed of Sandy McDonalds who catch a passion for the good news of Jesus Christ, but whose understanding of the faith is not frozen in time, but develops and matures with new revelation and understanding. 2016 The Classical Art, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. TagsRichard II, David Tennant, Father, Rev Dr McDonald, Passes AKRON, Ohio -- Two men are accused of robbing a convenience store at gunpoint and shooting at one of the men inside after he chased after them. Shawn Prude, 18, and Dyron Miley, 18, both of Akron are charged with aggravated robbery, a first-degree felony. Prude is being held in the Summit County Jail on $100,000 bond. Miley is not in police custody and a warrant was issued Sunday for his arrest. The duo about 10:30 p.m. on March 13 walked into the Luei's Market in the 900 block of North Howard Street. They forced four employees into the back of the store at gunpoint. Three customers were inside the store at the time. The duo stole $7,000 and ran from the store on North Howard toward East Mildred Avenue. Some of the employees chased the robbers from the store, police reports say. The robbers fired several gunshots as they ran away. A 36-year-old employee returned the gunfire. One of his bullets hit a house on East Mildred, according to police reports. No one was injured in the incident. Another armed robbery happened Sunday in the area surrounding the North Hill market. An 11-year-old boy, his 16-year-old brother and a third man followed a man from the store and robbed him at gunpoint, according to police. Belgium Attacks People bring flowers and candles to mourn at Place de la Bourse in the center of Brussels, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Bombs exploded at the Brussels airport and one of the city's metro stations Tuesday, killing and wounding scores of people, as a European capital was again locked down amid heightened security threats. (Martin Meissner) CLEVELAND, Ohio - While the travel and lodging industry took a hit today following deadly attacks in Belgium that killed and injured dozens of people, apprehension about global business travel depends on who you ask. Jim Kuhn, of Kuhn Global Talent in Hudson, said his main thoughts centered around the safety of his business associates in Brussels and concern for their families. His largest U.S. based specialty chemical client's offices are located in Evere, located very near the international airport in Brussels, and both colleagues and candidates travel frequently in the morning when the terrorist attacks took place. Jim Kuhn, of Kuhn Global Talent in Hudson "The older I get, the more I appreciate the relative safety of living in the U.S.," Kuhn said. "I am repulsed by the insanity of the terrorists and pray for the people and loved ones killed and injured in the Brussels attacks." But like many long-time business travelers, Kuhn doesn't believe that the attacks will impact business travel. "Business is business and travel will not decrease in Europe, except for leisure travel," he said. "If people have a choice, they won't put their families in harm's way if they can help it, by taking other forms of transportation, other than air or train." Security was tightened across Europe, just four months after coordinated attacks in Paris killed 130 people. Air travel and hotel bookings in Paris dropped in the aftermath. Stocks at several airlines, hotels, and travel websites were down in morning trading Tuesday, but slowly holding steady in the mid-afternoon. "While the attacks took place in Brussels, it is likely to have an impact on European travel demand in general," said Raymond James' analyst Savanthi Syth, in a note to clients. "The attacks come during peak Easter travel and ahead of peak summer travel." But apprehension about global travel depends on who you ask. Just two months after terrorist attacks in Paris, more than 90 percent of U.S. and European business travel buyers reported that their company's travel to and within Europe had remained largely unaffected by the Paris terrorist attacks, according to polls conducted in January by the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) and its European partner associations. The online survey included 135 travel buyers from the U.S. and 85 from Europe. The organization issued a statement of sympathy to the people of Brussels today and continually updated their blog with press releases in efforts to keep members up to date on the latest information related to the terrorist attacks. Colleen Gallagher, a spokeswoman for the organization, said they will most likely do another survey following these latest attacks. Stacy Johnson, an organizational effectiveness specialist at MetroHealth, who spent time in Belgium a few years ago as part of a graduate program affiliated with Case Western Reserve University, called the terrorist attacks heartbreaking. And while she believes both leisure and business travel will be impacted in the short term, she doesn't believe it will last long. "Belgium has a very international and diverse culture and a wonderful rich history there," she said. Stacy Johnson, an organizational effectiveness specialist at MetroHealth "I think that when you have any type of catastrophe or terrorist attack, there will be a short term impact on travel, but Brussels plays a central role in the European economy, and I don't think the impact will last long." Franc Jeffrey is CEO of EQ Travel, a corporate travel management company with offices in the United Kingdom and Boston, wrote in an article last month for the Risk Management Monitor that there will likely be another terrorist attack in Europe in 2016. "Although it's a sad state of affairs that there will most likely be another terrorist attack in Europe sometime in 2016, it doesn't mean that a high degree of risk involved for you, personally. According to the U.S. State Department, the number of U.S. citizens killed overseas by incidents of terrorism from 2001 to 2013 was 350. In other words, your odds are greater to be killed in a car crash (one in 19,000), drown in your bathtub (one in 800,000), or be struck by lightning (one in 5.5 million) than to perish in a terrorist attack (one in 20 million)," the article read. No matter how business or leisure travel is affected, or what the odds are of being involved in a terrorist attack, the focus now is on the people whose lives are forever changed in Belgium. Michael E. Stanek, VP. And chief financial officer at Hunt Imaging LLC in Berea Michael E. Stanek, VP. and chief financial officer at Hunt Imaging LLC in Berea said the company closed its packaging plant in Temse, Belgium a few months ago. But Stanek reached out to check on the company's general manager Viviane DeDecker. She now works from home to serve their European customers. "The sad thing is that even if they catch these killers there are others waiting to take their place," DeDecker told Stanek yesterday. "The only thing we can do is not to give in and let fear take over our lives." Banks operating in Northeast Ohio are much healthier overall than banks throughout the rest of Ohio and the United States. However, two local banks -- both of them large -- aren't quite as healthy as they were two years ago, according to the latest financial strength ratings from Bauer Financial, an independent ratings company in Florida. First, the good news: 29 of the 32 banks operating in Northeast Ohio are rated as superior or excellent, with ratings of five or four stars. That means 91 percent of local banks meet Bauer's definition to be included on its list of "recommended" banks. That's better than the U.S. figure, where 84 percent of banks are recommended. The health of Northeast Ohio banks are also better than the health of banks statewide; 88 percent of all banks in Ohio are recommended. It's also good that while Bauer says that 3.2 percent of the nation's banks are deemed "problematic," no banks in Northeast Ohio are in trouble that steep. In Ohio, 1.5 percent of banks are rated as problematic. Only three local banks aren't on Bauer's recommended list. They are Geauga Savings in Newbury, Hometown Bank in Kent and NYCB/ Ohio Savings, based in New York. Geauga Savings has a rating of three stars, which means "adequate." Hometown Bank and NYCB/ Ohio Savings have ratings of 3.5 stars, which means "good". It's also significant that 30 percent of local banks have improved their ratings in the last two years. The industry has continued to recover since the economic/ mortgage crisis of 2008-09. However, two local banks have seen their ratings drop in the last two years: Huntington dropped from 5 stars (superior) to 4 stars (excellent). And NYCB/ Ohio Savings dropped from 4 stars (excellent) to 3.5 stars (good). Neither of those are alarming, but just an indicator that it's difficult for banks to keep their finances at the highest levels. Bauer analyzes issues such as banks' profits, lending and assets. "We remain confident in our standards, which are unchanged," said Huntington Bill Eiler. "We do not monitor this ratings agency." At Ohio Savings, spokeswoman Donna Winfield said: "We don't work directly with the agencies and therefore we cannot address why their ratings have changed. We have been, and will continue to be committed to providing top quality service to our customers." Consumers and businesses should care about bank ratings because a bank with a weak rating -- a 1 or a 2 -- is more likely to look for ways to cut expenses (perhaps by reducing customer service); less likely to invest in new technology and services; and more likely to be distracted by its problems. Banks with strong ratings are more likely to remain independent and are more likely to develop new products or services. Strong banks are more likely to offer loans to individuals and businesses and more likely to offer those loans at competitive rates. When the banking crisis started in 2008, only two of the 14 largest banks in this region had five-star ratings: Dollar Bank and Third Federal Savings. They have retained those ratings. When the worst of the banking crisis was over in 2010, eight local banks had the top rating of five stars, in part because they stopped risky lending and were forced to get stronger. Today, 18 local banks have five stars; that's more than half of all local banks. The ratings of local banks have improved in the last three to four years because the weakest banks have been purchased by other, stronger banks. At the same time, many strong banks have agreed to merge with bigger banks because banks are getting squeezed by mounting regulatory and technology costs at a time when profit margins are challenged, by comparison. Regardless of a bank's health, consumer deposits are insured up to $250,000 by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. The coverage is per account holder per bank, so a person could have $250,000 coverage in an individual account and $250,000 coverage in a joint account at one bank, and identical coverage for accounts at another bank. In the chart below, see the ratings of all of the banks in Greater Cleveland, now, six month ago and two years ago. Five stars means superior, four stars means excellent, three-and-a-half stars means good and three stars means adequate. Bauer recommends people do business with banks with ratings of four or five stars. moreland-hill-sunoco-fe75a53c8f003d97.jpg Detectives have arrested and charged a Bedford man in a Friday robbery at Sunoco in Moreland Hills, police said Tuesday. (Brenda Cain, cleveland.com) MORELAND HILLS, Ohio -- Detectives arrested a Bedford man accused of robbing a gas station Friday in Moreland Hills. Charles L. Bryant, 50, is charged with robbery in the incident at Sunoco on Som Center Road, police said. He is also charged with fleeing and eluding from an Orange Village officer who tried to stop his car after the robbery. An investigation revealed Bryant has been attending school at Cuyahoga Community College's Eastern Campus in Highland Hills. Campus security arrested him Monday after spotting his car on campus, Moreland Hills Police Chief Kevin Wyant said Tuesday. Bryant is currently in custody at the Beachwood Police Department and will appear Thursday in Bedford Municipal Court, Wyant said. Detectives think Bryant is the man who stole money during a struggle with a Sunoco employee, Wyant said. The man entered the store just before 3 p.m. and bought a bag of chips. The employee opened the register to make change, and the man grabbed the cash, police said Friday in a news release. The man did not show a gun but kept his hand in his pocket as if he had one, the employee told police. The man pushed the employee into another room before he grabbed an undetermined amount of cash and exited the store. He left in his car, police said. An Orange Village officer tried to stop a car that matched a description broadcast over police radio. The driver sped away without stopping, and the officer did not follow due to safety concerns, police said. Bryant's criminal history includes previous convictions for robbery and drug possession, according to Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court records. In 2004, Bryant was sentenced to five years in prison after pleading guilty to aggravated robbery, drug possession and failure to comply in two separate cases. He was sentenced to four years in prison after pleading guilty to another robbery charge in 2011, records show. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- After spending two years in a prison in California's Mojave Desert, Jimmy Dimora has been moved to a federal facility in West Virginia. Dimora, 60, is now at the Beckley federal correctional institution in Beaver, West Virginia. The prison has a medium-security facility with an adjacent minimum-security camp. While still more than 300 miles away from Cleveland, it is much closer than the 2,000-mile trek to the Victorville prison where he was housed since 2014. A spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons said in an email that Dimora was moved Wednesday. He refused to say why the former Cuyahoga County commissioner was transferred. Dimora is serving a 28-year prison sentence. Prosecutors put him at the center of a years-long pattern of corruption that touched multiple city and county offices. The former commissioner and county Democratic Party chairman has maintained his innocence. He has asked President Barack Obama to grant a petition for clemency. Prior to Victorville, Dimora was housed at a facility in Gilmer, West Virginia and in Youngstown. He is suing Corrections Corporation of America, the private prison company that owns the Youngstown facility, over a slip-and-fall that happened in 2012. Messages left for his attorney, Dennis Lieberman, were not immediately returned. The federal prison bureau regularly accommodates requests from inmates to be housed near their home and family. It makes exceptions for security purposes, inmate protection, disciplinary sanctions or special medical needs. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A Hampton, Virginia sex offender faces federal charges in Cleveland after flying here to have sex with what he believed to be a 14-year-old girl, according to a criminal complaint. David Lee Boesen, 33, had months of sexually-explicit chats with what turned out to be an investigator from the Ohio Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force. He also sent packages of candy, lingerie, stuffed animals and toys as gifts for a 14-year-old at a Brook Park address he got from the investigators, the complaint says. Boesen told the investigator at one point that he believes a girl as young as 12 should be able to have sex with whoever they want. "A 12 year old can say yes or no," Boesen said, according to the complaint. "That's why I hate today's society." Boesen, who is a registered sex offender due to convictions in his home state, was arrested at Cleveland-Hopkins International Airport on Friday. He admitted in an interview with investigators that he had sex toys and condoms in his carry-on bags, the complaint says. He appeared in front of a federal magistrate judge Monday. He is charged with coercion or enticement of a minor to engage in sexual activity and travel in interstate commerce for the purpose of engaging in any illicit sexual conduct with another person. He will be held with no bond until his case is completed. Edward Mullin, Boesen's attorney, said he was appointed by the court on Monday and is still reviewing the case. According to the criminal complaint, Boesen served jail time in Virginia for explicitly chatting with a 14-year-old girl. He admitted to a U.S. Secret Service agent that he had sexual relationships with girls as young as 15. The complaint also says that he spent at least $650 on the trip. He told the investigator at one point that his mother warned him against going but that he was not scared because he believed that there was girl waiting for him in Ohio. CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Add an eleventh restaurant to Zack Bruell's formidable group of eateries. Bruell has formed a partnership with the new Hilton Cleveland Downtown Hotel, slated for a June opening. The owner of Parallax, L'Albatros, Cowell & Hubbard and 7 other Cleveland eateries will help to open The Burnham restaurant in the 600-room Hilton, 100 Lakeside Ave. East, next to the new Cleveland Convention Center. Bruell is creating a modern American menu - his first bill of fare inspired by the cuisines of the New World - in concert with the Hilton Cleveland Downtown's French-born executive chef Maxime Kien, and another Ohioan, Ryan Beck, who will serve as chef de cuisine for The Burnham's two restaurants. Carolyn Deming, spokeswoman for the Hilton Cleveland Downtown, says that despite the hotel chain's corporate fire power executives believed it crucial that it bring in a chef well-versed in the local restaurant scene. "Hilton is a global institution, but [this] hotel is in Cleveland. We want to ensure we're doing right by Clevelanders - and nobody knows the Cleveland restaurant scene like Zack Bruell," Deming says. Bruell says he has been involved in opening upwards of 20 restaurants in Cleveland and other parts of the nation. He adds that accepted the challenges this latest venture poses a number of other reasons. "First off, I understand the Cleveland market. How many times have you see somebody come in from out-of-town who has the talent but who doesn't understand what local customers want? I grew up here and have been back for 34 years. I guess I just 'get' Cleveland." But it's more than the addition of a new hotel on the city's hospitality landscape, and the coming of the Republican National Convention this July, Bruell says. "It's about bringing more people to the city - bringing major conventions to that convention center," he says. "This project has the possibility being one of the projects that's crucial to the renaissance of downtown Cleveland. One of the things that jump-started that renaissance is the Cleveland Convention Center - and the one missing link to that was a hotel directly associated with the Convention Center," Bruell says. With the construction of new guest accommodations, condos and other residences, Bruell adds that he has seen their impact on his existing Cleveland restaurants. "These rooms and buildings bring walk-in traffic. These people who come to conventions, come to visit or live here want to experience Cleveland. The way I see it, the more people who are in the central business district in downtown Cleveland, the better it is for everybody." The Burnham's name honors famed urban designer Daniel Burnham, an architect who designed the 1903 Group Plan in Cleveland where the Hilton is being built as well as Flatiron Building in New York City and helped plan the 1893 Chicago World's Fair exhibition. When it opens, The Burnham will occupy two levels and seat 217 guests. Its design includes an open kitchen motif and a bar area, terrace and private dining space. Because the restaurant will feature two dining areas, Bruell, Kien and Beck are developing a pair of menus - both of them a work-in-progress, Bruell says. The flavors, however, "will be very different from all my other restaurants," Bruell says. He prefaces by explaining that the menu "isn't Asian-influenced, European-inspired or an international concept. "I'm talking about a fusion of American regional dishes - things like Grilled Walleye With Charred Corn Sauce, Sweet Pepper Relish and Sauteed Rhubarb. Or a Strip Steak With Goat Cheese Creme Brullee and Wild Mushrooms. Or Buffalo Wing-Style Pizza with onion, celery root confit and Blue Cheese Crema. Or how about Bread Pudding With Foie Gras and Gizzards, with a Cabernet Sauce." Those are dishes aimed for the main dining room, which Bruell describes as a more formal dining setting where meals typically progress through appetizer, salad, entree and dessert courses. For the more casual diners seated in the bar area, the entire emphasis will be on small plates. "The idea will be to order three or four small plates," he says. "We're talking about things boudin sausage with mashed potatoes; what's more 'Cleveland' than sausage with potatoes? Or fried confit of chicken thighs with Swiss cheese dumplings - dumplings are quintessential Cleveland. "We're playing with ideas like garlic-and-onion beignets with malt vinegar aioli, or a mac-and-cheese bowl topped with greens and pork belly, a disc of jalapeno corn bread on top, and a sherry vinegar sauce," Bruell adds. The Hilton will be a second consulting chef role for Bruell. He remains consulting chef for Table 45 restaurant at The InterContinental Hotel and Conference Center Cleveland on the campus of the Cleveland Clinic. Raphael Cintron.jpeg Raphael Cintron, 26, of Lorain was arrested after an armed robbery at a Lorain convenience store Monday. Police say Cintron's 14-year-old brother pointed a shotgun at a store clerk and demanded cash from the register. (Lorain Police Department) LORAIN, Ohio -- A 14-year-old boy pointed a shotgun at a clerk, and demanded cash from the register at a West Side convenience store Monday afternoon, police said. Police arrested the boy and his 26-year-old brother, Raphael Cintron, after a foot chase. Officers found about $200 taken from the store in the boy's pants pocket, Lorain Police Det. Jason Orellano said. Both are charged with aggravated robbery, tampering with evidence, and obstructing official business, according to police. Cintron will be arraigned Tuesday in Lorain Municipal Court. The boy is in a juvenile detention facility. Officers responded to a hold-up alarm at Jay's Mini Mart in the 2000 block of Leavitt Road at 12:46 p.m. The store clerk told police two males wearing ski masks and dressed in all black took the money and ran south toward West 23rd Street, according to a police report. Witnesses saw the two suspects go into their own home in the 2200 block of West 23rd Street. A SWAT team went into the house, but the suspects were not there, Orellano said. Officers spotted the suspects walking nearby. Officers chased them into a field behind a church in the 2000 block of Reeves Avenue, and they gave up without incident about 3:45 p.m., Orellano said. Police are looking for a third suspect in the case. They have not found the shotgun. The boy is a student at General Johnnie Wilson Middle School. School officials told police he was not in school because he is suspended, according to Orellano. Like Chanda Neely on Facebook. Follow me on Twitter: An employee hands a customer their order at the drive-thru window of a Wendy's restaurant in Peoria, Illinois. Daniel Acker | Bloomberg | Getty Images Wendy's customers asked for weeks: Where's the breach? And for weeks it remained a mystery. In early January, many customers who frequented the burger joint's locations in Florida, Nevada, California and Illinois began to complain on social media about unauthorized transactions on their credit cards. Kristin Faltin, a student at Northern Illinois University, suspected her credit card information was stolen in early January after a trip to a Wendy's in DeKalb, Illinois. "It was through a drive-thru, so I'm not sure if it was run through a card reader," Faltin told CNBC.com. "I had insufficient funds or not enough credit so they weren't able to get much from my account." News of the Wendy's hack didn't surface until security blogger Brian Krebs reported it in late January. When Wendy's reported earnings in February, it acknowledged "unusual credit card activity" stemmed from malware on certain Wendy's restaurants systems. What it didn't say is whether those restaurants were owned by the companies or by franchisees. Therein lies the rub. The big difference between Wendy's malware incident and other prominent hacks, like the one Target suffered during the holiday shopping season in 2013, lies in where responsibility for the breach is assigned. In late 2015, the credit card industry imposed rules on itself requiring all retailers to upgrade to new card readers that accept EMV (Europay, MasterCard, Visa) chips, meant to enhance security. The readers require users to insert, not swipe, their cards. Part of the new EMV card reader machine protocol moves fraud liability away from banks and to retailers and merchants. Failure to upgrade to the new system, for which the initial deadline has already passed, doesn't carry any specific punishment with it unless the business owner is victim of a hack. In the case of this year's Wendy's hack, if the franchisees are at fault they will face the brunt of costs affiliated with reimbursing hacking victims. Hackers don't discriminate between company-owned stores and franchises, and likely had no way of knowing whether they were attacking a corporate entity or a small franchisee with a few million dollars in revenue and several dozen employees. Regardless of whether business owners are franchisees or independent business owners, the liability has already moved away from corporate parents and big banks to small businesses. "Each franchisor contract is different; they can mandate franchisees use certain technologies," said Jim Huguelet of The Huguelet Group, an information technology consulting firm specializing in retail. "If they haven't looked at their contracts recently, I would suggest they take a look" to determine liability in the event of a hack. Many Wendy's franchisees have yet to make the upgrade to new card-reading technology. In its annual investor day report, Wendy's told shareholders that it has deployed new point-of-sale technology in all of its restaurants, but that 40 percent of all restaurants, which includes franchisees, have yet to make the upgrade. The company said it expects to complete full installation of new point-of-sale technology by the end of 2016. When asked if Wendy's new point-of-sale technology includes EMV card readers, company spokesman Bob Bertini said most stores have yet to install the readers. That would put Wendy's more than a year behind the credit card industry's deadline for full compliance with the new rules. The burger chain is not alone. Consulting firm Strawhecker Group, which focuses on payments, found that of 90 companies representing about 4 million merchants, nearly 40 percent of respondents had fallen behind in their EMV reader implementation plan. "A lot of key stakeholders in the EMV migration were not prepared," said Jared Drieling, Strawhecker's business intelligence manager. The Wendy's Faltin visited, and where she suspected her account was hacked, isn't owned by the corporation. It is affiliated with Saren Restaurants. Faltin said she was reimbursed quickly for the card she suspects was compromised at Wendy's. Saren Restaurants runs seven other Wendy's in Illinois, its operations executive Sean Niklas told CNBC. Niklas says the hacking incident stemmed from legacy point-of-service technology used at certain restaurants. He said the location where Faltin believes her account was hacked did not have upgraded payment readers, but that he plans to install them in all of his stores. Instead of swiping a credit or debit card, the new EMV machines require users to insert their cards briefly into the machine. The process takes marginally longer than swiping cards, which has created consternation but didn't appear to generate a real impact on retailer revenues during holiday shopping season after the new rules were implemented in October. The industry expectation for the new EMV credit and debit cards is that consumers' data will be better protected and more difficult to steal at the point-of-sale. Still, the shift in liability has generated consequences for retailers and customers alike. "It's increasingly likely this is going to get resolved through litigation," said David King, a senior manager focused on cybersecurity and compliance with UHY Advisors. In fact, it already is. Whereas Faltin was reimbursed, not every hack victim is so quickly remunerated. A Florida man says he got charged for hundreds of dollars by national retailers after his account was hacked at a Wendy's. His credit union has yet to reimburse him and he is suing Wendy's for damages, according to his attorney, John Yalchunis. Yalchunis said the case is being handled as a class action suit, meaning the burger chain's problems could be growing as a result of the January hack. Wendy's has other legal headaches. The company and one of its biggest franchisees, DavCo Restaurants, have sued each other in a dispute over Wendy's decision to require franchises to install new point-of-sale systems and make other site upgrades that DavCo said are too costly. DavCo executives and their lawyers did not respond to requests seeking comment. Wendy's declined to comment on the lawsuits. "Until this investigation is completed, it is difficult to determine with certainty the nature or scope of any potential incident," said Bertini, the Wendy's spokesman. "Because the investigation is active and ongoing, we cannot provide additional details at this time." A still image from the Wendy's "Where's The Beef" television ad. Source: YouTube Maayan Zilberman oozes style. Top to bottom, her look is thoughtful, cool and sexy. So it's no great surprise to find she's a former lingerie designer. But today, the fashionista and serial entrepreneur is making candy yes candy with a stylish twist. Zilberman is the brains behind New York City-based Sweet Saba, a luxury candy line launched in November. Her avant-garde collection includes edible versions of candy lipsticks, sunglasses, mix tapes and records that include hand-painted details. She also produces sugar crystal candy that looks like glass statues, which are handmade, with flavors including champagne and ginger. The only problem? The yummy candy just might be too beautiful to eat. "The way I approach candy is more from an artistic perspective," she said. "It's for grown-ups. I'm asking customers to take a moment to think about what it looks like, what it might taste like and what the experience might be." Prices range from $5 into the thousands of dollars for custom orders. Entrepreneur Maayan Zilberman is the creator of candy line Sweet Saba. Sophie Bearman | CNBC As a child, Zilberman immigrated to Canada from Israel, and her fascination with creativity started early. She used to bake with her grandfather, experimenting and making sculptures in the kitchen. "Sweet Saba" is named after him. "Saba" means grandfather in Hebrew. "Baking was exciting to me as a kid because it was the fantasy of turning [materials] into something else," she said. Zilberman's creative resume includes a luxury lingerie brand she co-founded called, The Lake & Stars, which had its final season in the fall of 2012. From there, she moved on as a creative director of Frederick's of Hollywood, which was undergoing a rebranding. But working on more established, large brands means distance from the actual end products. This artist-entrepreneur yearned for a more hands-on connection with what was being created. Then came the candy. "I wanted to get back to my roots of making art, and I didn't have an art studio at the time," Zilberman said. "So I started making small sculptures in my kitchen where I could make a mess. The most convenient medium I had at the time was sugar." Serial entrepreneur Maayan Zilberman is the creator of candy line Sweet Saba. Shes taken a high-brow approach to candy-making with her luxury line including crystals, mixtapes and sunglasses. Sophie Bearman | CNBC She eventually posted the items online to share with friends, who began to order them. "I started to look at the numbers and opportunity and realized this was a business," she said. With no formal training in cooking or baking, Zilberman said, she "learned everything on YouTube." Her candy is available exclusively at SweetSaba.com, and in pop-up shops in and around New York City, including a collection at The Standard Hotel during Fashion Week in February. The next pop-up shop is scheduled for late spring. Since launch, the candy business has grown at least three- to four-fold, month over month, with "several thousand customers," Zilberman said. That estimate excludes special orders and artist fees for commissioned works. Projected sales for the remainder of 2016 are in the six-figure range, she said. She also plans to open retail locations in Los Angeles, New York City and Tokyo by 2017. Entrepreneur Maayan Zilberman is the creator of candy line Sweet Saba. Sophie Bearman | CNBC And her unique, luxury candy has attracted top clients. Customers include W Magazine, which commissioned Sweet Saba to make candy for its Golden Globes party. Other clients include fashion label Alice+Olivia, and Adam Selman, a favorite designer of pop star Rihanna. She never knows who will call for an order. Zilberman was recently commissioned to design a candy wrestling belt. Abdalla Salem El-Badri, OPEC Secretary General, appears on stage on Day 1 at the International New York Times/Energy Intelligence Oil & Money Conference at The InterContinental Hotel on October 29, 2014 Iran may join other oil producers planning to freeze production to support prices at a later date, OPEC's secretary general said on Monday, since the country is seeking to raise its exports. Producers from the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries and non-members are due to meet on April 17 in Qatar discuss the output freeze. But Iran is seeking to increase exports, following the lifting of Western sanctions in January. "I hope the result of the meeting will be positive," Abdullah al-Badri said at a news conference in Vienna. "They are not objecting to the meeting but they have some conditions for the production and maybe in the future they will join the group," he said of Iran. The comments are a further sign that Iran's position will not derail a wider agreement on the output freeze. Gulf oil exporters including Saudi Arabia had previously maintained that all major producers should participate. watch now watch now watch now watch now watch now watch now With Easter expected to be a peak time for tourism, the explosions will have a "catastrophic" effect on the city of Brussels, a British MEP in the Belgian capital told CNBC. "It's a very, very busy part of Brussels, and it was at a time when people were all going to work and going about what would have been an ordinary, normal Tuesday in Brussels. So the effect is going to be pretty catastrophic on Brussels," Richard Ashworth, Conservative MEP for South East England, told CNBC Tuesday. "I remember back to the last lockdown (around) Christmas, the town was simply deserted a town which at Christmas is heaving with tourists. Now we're coming to the Easter break no doubt a peak time for tourism in Brussels and yet again for the town this is going to be quite catastrophic I'd have thought." At the time of the interview, Ashworth was speaking from inside the European Parliament in Brussels, which was on lockdown, following a series of explosions that took place in the Belgian capital. While an official death toll is yet to be released, at least 31 people are reported to have died in explosions at Brussels' main airport, and at the Maelbeek metro system, which is located near the EU institutions. Eyewitness account Describing the event from inside the building, Ashworth said there was an "immense amount of uncertainty" in the city, and security had been put at maximum level. "Things have quieted down a little right now, but the situation nevertheless remains very uncertain. All public services have been cancelled here in Brussels for the day and effectively I suspect that the town is going back into lockdown which we last saw in (November)." In late November, the capital went on lockdown as police carried out a number of raids in and around the city, in search for those behind the deadly attacks seen in Paris that month. Just a few days prior to Tuesday's attacks, one of the suspects Salah Abdeslam was captured in a police raid in Brussels. Having viewed the aftermath of the attack at Maelbeek station, Politico reporter, Zoya Sheftalovich told CNBC it was "general pandemonium", with emergency services having difficulty reaching those wounded. With many wondering if Tuesday's events are related to Abdeslam's arrest, Ashworth said if this is the case, it would be quite reasonable to presume there's a "bigger community" supporting the so-called Islamic State (IS) in Brussels, than originally believed. "It is clear that the Brussels authorities will clamp down again and have a very, very high level of security for some time. But if we do have a big (IS) community (that's) well-resourced, able to carry out exercises like this, it's easy to see that whereas before they committed acts in Paris other European cities would be just as vulnerable." "The nations need to work together on this and it's intelligence which I think is a big issue, sharing intelligence, gathering intelligence, working together on intelligence." "The message is loud and clear: we need to work together." The attacks came four days after the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in the November Paris terror attacks. European stocks were under pressure but had come off their lows following deadly attacks at Brussels main airport and on the city's metro system. U.S. equities were mixed by late morning. The attacks in the Belgian capital on Tuesday are unlikely to have a long-term impact on markets, but they could result in new roadblocks to cross-border commerce and lend momentum to Euro sceptics, analysts told CNBC. European Union member states should close their borders until the continent gets the security situation under control, retired U.S. Army Col. Jack Jacobs said Tuesday. "Once you are in Europe, the first place you land in Europe, you're wherever you want to go in Europe," he told CNBC's "Squawk Box." "It's been astonishing for decades, how the Europeans could be as complacent as they have been about security when the borders are completely and totally open." More than 400 million EU citizens, as well as non-EU nationals, business travelers, and tourists, are able to travel throughout 26 European countries known as the Schengen area without having their passport or visa checked. Maintaining security and holding the European Union together is a huge challenge with significant implications for U.S. multinationals, said Joseph Quinlan, chief market strategist for U.S. Trust of America Private Wealth Management. "The European Union, the economy is $18 trillion. If it does become more difficult to move goods, people, and so forth, that's a big issue for the markets," he told "Squawk Box." Michael Tyler, chief investment officer at Eastern Bank Wealth Management, said the attacks may feed fears in Britain about the perceived failure of European countries to integrate immigrants. At the time he spoke, no suspect had been identified. Britain will hold a referendum on whether to stay in the European Union on June 23. "I think it gives the exiters a little bit more momentum and a little bit more focus today," Tyler told "Squawk Box." watch now French President Francois Hollande said on Tuesday that the attack on Brussels was an attack on all of Europe. When it comes to the economy, he may be more right than he knows. After attacks in Belgium's capital claimed the lives of at least 31 people, the country reintroduced border checks. That move, and the attacks themselves, raise further questions about the future of an open borders policy that is critical to the movement of people and commerce in most of the European Union. German police conducts a control at the German-Belgian border in Aachen, Germany, to check vehicles. Ina Fassbender | Reuters The region's Schengen Agreement, originally signed in 1985, allows travelers to cross borders of participating countries without immigration controls or passport checks. Currently it includes 22 EU countries, plus four European Free Trade Association member states. "Today's attacks are certainly not good news for Schengen. When countries first started instituting border controls across Europe in September, it was a question of managing the flow of migrants," Ian Bremmer, Eurasia Group president, told CNBC in an email Tuesday. "With Paris, suspending Schengen became a question of national security. Brussels fits into this latter category." The Brussels attacks struck as Europe is still recovering from terrorist attacks that killed 130 people in Paris last fall. Security experts and some European citizens are likely to call for tighter border controls that can make it harder for terrorists to move from country to country. "I think that like many other agreements, the Europeans will try to keep Schengen in place. But countries will be more willing to ignore the rules and introduce border controls if they feel they have to do it," Adriano Bosoni, senior Europe analyst at geopolitical research firm Stratfor told CNBC on Tuesday. "Once you are in Europe, the first place you land in Europe, you're wherever you want to go in Europe," retired U.S. Army Col. Jack Jacobs told "Squawk Box" on Tuesday. "It's been astonishing for decades, how the Europeans could be as complacent as they have been about security when the borders are completely and totally open." Why open borders matter But open borders are fundamentally important to the European economy. Many companies based in the region have structured their operations across borders, with factories and offices in multiple countries. Those firms would face an immediate increase in transportation and labor costs simply to move goods between their assembly plants. Bremmer pointed out that 1.7 million people cross European borders every day to get to work. The chief executive of automaker Opel, Karl-Thomas Neumann, told Reuters earlier this month that his company regularly ships parts between Germany, Spain, Poland, Britain and Italy, which with the exception of the UK are all members of the Schengen Area. "We have huge logistics operations in southern Europe; any disruption would have an immediate impact on the bottom line," Neumann told the news service. A study conducted by German research institute Bertelsmann Stiftung forecast last month that increased border controls would cost Germany, Europe's biggest economy, about 77 billion euros ($86.3 billion) between now and 2025. The researchers noted that Germany would be hit particularly hard if the Schengen agreement were dissolved, because it is surrounded entirely by Schengen states. watch now watch now watch now The current agreement allows participating countries to temporarily reintroduce border controls by submitting a request to the European Commission. However the commission's website describes that move as a "step of last resort and would be used only if all other measures...were ineffective in mitigating a serious threat." Eurasia Group's Bremmer told "Squawk Box" Tuesday morning that a possible model for Europe's borders can be seen between Israel and Palestine. "If you can't keep the refugees out, then you have to ensure that you keep security measures strong," he said, adding that such a system would likely lead to increased surveillance and "differentiated rules for those that are deemed to be potential threats." "There's going to be a lot of social instability that comes with that. It will tear at the fabric of what we think Europe is. It'll certainly hurt the economies," Bremmer said. "But nonetheless, if you're going to double down on security and we see this happening in France after the November bombings...I think [Israel-Palestine is] the sort of model we should increasingly be looking at," Bremmer said. On NBC's "Today" show, Trump said he would be "fine" with waterboarding Salah Abdeslam, an organizer of the Paris attacks recently captured in Brussels. "Frankly the waterboarding, if it was up to me, and if we changed the laws or have the laws, waterboarding would be fine. If they could expand the laws, I would do a lot more than waterboarding." Trump also said if the Brussels attacks happened in the U.S. he would "shut down" the borders. "I will tell you, I've been talking about this a long time, and look at Brussels," Trump said on Fox News. "Brussels was a beautiful city, a beautiful place with zero crime. And now it's a disaster city. It's a total disaster, and we have to be very careful in the United States, we have to be very careful and very vigilant as to who we allow in this country." Trump , who has based his campaign on cracking down on immigration including a proposed ban on all Muslims entering the U.S., immediately seized on the Brussels attacks. As Republican voters head to the polls Tuesday in Arizona and Utah, the world's attention turned to Brussels where terrorists killed at least 31 with bombs at the city's main airport and on a subway train. The strikes come four months after attacks in Paris, claimed by ISIS, killed 130 people. The attacks in Brussels will once again drive terrorism to the top of the presidential campaign agenda and could give a boost to Donald Trump and his fiery anti-immigrant rhetoric. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), Trump's main rival for the GOP nomination, also reacted strongly to the Brussels attack but stopped short of Trump's rhetoric, focusing instead on criticizing President Barack Obama. "Radical Islam is at war with us. For over seven years we have had a president who refuses to acknowledge this reality," Cruz said in a statement on Facebook. "And the truth is, we can never hope to defeat this evil so long as we refuse to even name it. That ends on Jan. 20, 2017, when I am sworn in as president." The Brussels attacks will not fundamentally alter the nature of the Republican presidential campaign but it may further motivate Trump's most fervent supporters who strongly back his call to block Muslim immigration, reject Syrian refugees and build a giant wall with Mexico somehow paid for by the Mexican government. In Tuesday's primaries, Trump is likely to score a win in Arizona, where the victor gets all of the state's 58 delegates. But Cruz is expected to beat Trump easily in Utah, whose large Mormon population is deeply hostile to Trump and his rhetoric. Such a split decision will keep alive GOP establishment hopes to stop Trump from getting the 1,237 delegates he needs to secure the nomination before the party's convention in July. The next battleground will come in Wisconsin, which votes April 5 and awards most of its 42 delegates to the statewide winner. Trump is deeply unpopular in reliably Republican counties outside Milwaukee but draws strong support as he often does among struggling white voters in more rural areas of the state. Wisconsin may come down to the level of turnout in these blue-collar Trump strongholds versus the more establishment-friendly areas around Milwaukee. And Trump's angry reaction to the Brussels bombing could drive numbers up among his staunchest supporters. Cruz, once again, will see some of the anti-Trump vote siphoned off by moderate Ohio Gov. John Kasich. From Wisconsin, the GOP race will turn to the Northeast with a primary in Trump's home state of New York on April 19 that he is expected to win by a large margin. A week later, voters go to the polls in Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Pennsylvania and Rhode Island. If Trump sweeps Wisconsin and New York and most of the April 26 states, he will be on track to win the delegates he needs to avoided a contested convention. The Brussels attacks on Tuesday will also distract from a rambling and bizarre interview Trump gave to The Washington Post editorial board on Monday in which he rolled out a foreign policy advisory team that baffled many in the party. Asked if he would target ISIS with a tactical nuclear weapon, Trump responded that reporters and editorial writers at the meeting were all very good looking. Now few will be talking about those gaffes and instead will focus on the need to be ever more vigilant against terrorist attacks both in the heart of Europe and potentially on American soil. That's Trump's most comfortable ground. Shares of health insurer Centene gained more than 4 percent after the firm announced it had received approval for its $6.3 billion acquisition of Health Net from health insurance officials at the California Department of Managed Health Care (DHMC), one of two regulatory agencies in the state needed to sign off on the deal. "We think the approval from the DMHC reflects significant momentum in the regulatory approval process," said Susquehanna analyst Chris Rigg in a research note to clients. He said key concessions the firms offered for approval, included maintaining Health Net's operations and headquarters in the state, and investing more than $300 million in programs and infrastructure to improve health care for low-income Californians. "We believe the conditions imposed by the DMHC are in line with the companies' expectations," Rigg said. Final approval of Centene and Health Net's merger now rests with the California Department of Insurance (DOI). The department of justice signed off on the deal last August, terminating its antitrust review early. "Centene and Health Net expect to close the transaction shortly after receipt of approval from the California Department of Insurance, subject to satisfaction or waiver of the closing conditions," the two firms said in a press release announcing the deal. "On a day when this whole group went down, let me tell you why it could be smart to own an airline stock or a company like Priceline, but it could be foolish to bet on a cruise company like Carnival or Royal Caribbean ," Cramer said. Going into Tuesday's action Delta , United Continental and American were all up versus where they traded prior to the Paris attacks in November. After the London subway attacks in 2005, Priceline plunged 4.5 percent in the next five sessions, but a week later the stock made all of its losses back. However, Cramer also noticed the pattern that eventually investors stop being scared, and the travel stocks rebound. "That is just a fact, and an understandable one at that," the " Mad Money " host said. In the wake of Tuesday's terrorist attacks in Brussels, Jim Cramer did some serious thinking. He noticed a pattern that every time a terrible attack occurs, every stock in the travel and leisure space goes lower. I think the whole group is a steal, even as we know that the two airlines most impacted by the tragedy, Delta and American, could see some near-term earnings pressure from cancelled booking because of their substantial overseas business. The difference for Cramer was related to another story in the headlines recently Zika virus. The stocks Cramer found were most immune to Zika were airlines and online travel agents, with Delta, United, American and Southwest all trading at cheap levels. Currently, airlines are actually profitable, and costs are contained, especially as Cramer does not expect the price of oil to rebound much higher than current levels. Additionally, companies are generating growth an trading with strong balance sheets. Read more from Mad Money with Jim Cramer Cramer Remix: This stock survives the election Cramer: Stocks are incredibly undervalued Cramer: Sherwin-Williams deal a 'shocker' "I think the whole group is a steal, even as we know that the two airlines most impacted by the tragedy, Delta and American, could see some near-term earnings pressure from cancelled booking because of their substantial overseas business," Cramer said. Cramer also had his eye on Expedia and Priceline, which sell at just 16 times next year's earnings estimates. As for the cruise lines, Cramer's concerns over the Zika virus are too great. His reasoning stemmed from the fact that Zika began in Latin America and has been steadily moving its way north and could spread to the Caribbean, soon. Given that the Caribbean represents a majority of Carnival's revenue and 43 percent of Royal Caribbean's capacity, it could be a big deal for these companies. "As the Zika virus spreads, I worry that people who are young enough to have kids will try to avoid it, and that will likely mean they avoid cruising the Caribbean Sea, which could represent a major hit for these companies," Cramer said. So, while Carnival and Royal Caribbean could present a picture of being historically cheap stocks, Cramer wasn't willing to gamble on them. Until he has a clearer picture of the potential damage that Zika could cause, he recommended investors to steer clear from this group. watch now watch now watch now watch now watch now Donald Trump said Tuesday that authorities interrogating Paris terror suspect Salah Abdeslam should "do whatever they have to do" to get information in light of the deadly terrorist attacks in Belgium. Trump said on NBC's "TODAY" if he were elected president he would make sure the United States has "strong borders," and said people looking to come into the country would need "absolute perfect documentation." He and other presidential candidates reacted to the deadly explosions that rocked the main Brussels airport and the metro system near European Union buildings. Brussels was on lockdown, with Tuesday's blasts coming four days after the arrest of Abdeslam. Abdeslam should be subjected to harsh interrogation techniques, Trump told NBC. Belgian authorities should be able to "do whatever they have to do" to get information from the suspect, he continued, adding waterboarding "would be fine." "If they could expand the laws, I would do a lot more than waterboarding," he continued. "You have to get the information from these people. And we have to be smart. And we have to be tough. We can't be soft and weak." Dismissing critics who say harsh interrogations don't yield reliable information, Trump said: "I am in the camp where you have to get the information, and you have to get it rapidly." Trump made his first remarks on the Brussels terror attacks on Twitter. "Do you all remember how beautiful and safe a place Brussels was. Not anymore, it is from a different world! U.S. must be vigilant and smart!" GOP rival Ohio Gov. John Kasich tweeted a statement on the Brussels attacks. It read in part: "We must ... redouble our efforts with our allies to identify, root out and destroy the perpetrators of such acts of evil," the Kasich statement read, in part. "We must strengthen our alliances as our way of life and the international system that has been built on our common values since the end of the Second World War comes under challenge." It read, in part: "Make no mistake these terror attacks are no isolated incidents. They are just the latest in a string of coordinated attacks by radical Islamic terrorists perpetrated by those who are waging war against all who do not accept their extreme strain of Islam." "When I am sworn in as president," the Cruz statement continued, "we will name our enemy radical Islamic terrorism. And we will defeat it." Cruz later criticized Trump for saying to The Washington Post that he favors a light footprint in the world. "Donald Trump is wrong that America should withdraw from the world and abandon our allies," Cruz told reporters Tuesday. The Texas senator also called for a halt to the entrance of Syrian refugees into U.S. until a screening review can be conducted. Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton said in a statement Tuesday: "Terrorists have once again struck at the heart of Europe, but their campaign of hate and fear will not succeed." The statement also read, in part: "Today's attacks will only strengthen our resolve to stand together as allies and defeat terrorism and radical jihadism around the world." She also tweeted: These terrorists seek to undermine the democratic values that are the foundation of our way of life. They will never succeed. -H In an interview with MSNBC on Tuesday, Clinton outlined her strategy for stopping the spread of terrorism. "I think we do have to have a clear objective of defeating ISIS, of defeating the tactics and activities of terrorists. That's something I've been talking about for some time," said Clinton. "I think the way to do that is to deprive them of territory in Syria and Iraq, to stop the flow of foreign fighters, arms, weapons, and to take them on the Internet, which they use in quite a sophisticated way. That means we have to work with other countries. We have to work with our European friends and allies." WILLIAM WEST | AFP | Getty Images An iron ore oversupply still needs to "work through the system," Fortescue Metals Group chairman Andrew Forrest warned, even after a recent rally in the price of the steel-making ingredient. Forrest, who was speaking to CNBC on the sidelines of the Boao Forum for Asia, added that the "errors" of iron ore majors in flooding the market with supply would "plague China, Australia and the iron ore price for a good period of time." Forrest has called for an Australian inquiry into the iron ore industry, after low-cost, high-volume production swamped the market, sending prices assessed by The Steel Index to a record low of $37 a ton in December. The slump in iron ore prices has had a "cataclysmic effect on the Australian economy" and led to a "wanton loss of jobs," the veteran miner told CNBC at the conference on Hainan island in China. "An inquiry could've stopped oversupply a year ago." BHP Billiton , the so-called Big Australian, trimmed its full-year iron ore forecast in January, after output was hit by a damn-burst at its Samarco joint venture with Vale in Brazil. Fortestcue's larger rival, Rio Tinto , said at the same time that it expected to boost production and shipments in 2016. Amid a downturn in the commodity cycle, top miners have ramped up production in order to cut their costs per unit, which in turn has added to the oversupply, Forrest did not specify a price target or a time frame for the digestion of oversupply but his comments come after a rally in iron ore that pushed spot prices as much as 48 percent higher so far this year to $63.30 a ton. On Monday the price of iron ore, including cargo and freight, for immediate delivery to the port of Tianjin, was $58 a ton. To increase Fortescue's market share in China amid the ongong commodities downturn, this month the company announced a deal with Vale that could see the Brazilian giant take a minority stake in the Australian miner. Morgan Stanley faces a $35 million charge after wealth advisors were found to have engaged in fraud and breached fiduciary duty to an elderly client, according to an arbitration panel appointed by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. Lawyers for Lynnda Speer, widow of Home Shopping Network co-founder Roy Speer, said Florida Morgan Stanley wealth advisors Terry McCoy and Ami Forte were responsible for unauthorized trades on Roy Speer's account. A FINRA panel on Monday determined that McCoy and Forte were guilty of elder exploitation, breach of fiduciary duty, constructive fraud, negligence and negligent supervision. Lawyers for Speer's widow alleged that Forte manipulated the account during a yearslong affair she had with Roy Speer, who died in 2012. The FINRA panel found for damages of more than $32.8 million and costs of more than $1.5 million, in addition to legal fees in the case, which have yet to be determined. "I am very pleased the arbitrators realized Ms. Forte and her colleagues breached their fiduciary duties to Roy and his foundation and exploited him during a time of his continuing mental and physical decline," Lynnda Speer, wife to Roy Speer for more than 50 years, said in a statement. watch now watch now watch now Police in New York are visibly increasing their presence after Tuesday's deadly bombings at Brussels' airport and metro system, authorities told NBC News. The New York Police Department told NBC it was increasing security at mass transit points, bridges and tunnels and major city landmarks. That has been a standard NYPD response in past to major terror incidents overseas. Transit authorities in Washington also indicated, via tweet, that they would step up precautionary patrols Tuesday morning. Extra officers have been deployed and are on the look out for suspicious activity, an Amtrak spokeswoman told CNBC. Frances Townsend, former Homeland Security adviser to President George W. Bush, said it is much more difficult to enforce spot checks in an open transportation system, such as a metro train or subway, than in a closed system, like an airport. "The challenge there is you increase patrols and sort of random security measures to try and throw off any terrorist who is doing surveillance and trying to launch an attack, but [that is] very, very hard in open systems," she told CNBC's "Squawk Box." Officials have beefed up security lines at airports because they believe the airlines are the targets, but those measures need to be more broadly applied, said Robert Liscouski, former assistant secretary for infrastructure protection at the Department of Homeland Security. watch now watch now watch now watch now Tuesday's explosions at Brussels airport and on the subway network will turn the spotlight on the Belgian capital's Molenbeek suburb which has long been a hotbed of Islamist extremism. Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam was also nabbed there on Friday. In November, NBC News took a look at the neighborhood. As France bombs ISIS targets in Syria following the horrific attacks in Paris, experts warned the roots of the onslaught were much closer to home: young people turning to radical Islam because they don't feel they belong in Europe. At least half of the extremists who killed nearly 130 people on Friday are thought to have been raised in France and neighboring Belgium. A woman walks by in the Brussels district of Molenbeek, March 19, 2016. Eric Vidal | Reuters "We are breeding a generation of kids who are estranged from their own societies," U.K.-based expert on radicalization Bill Durodie said. More from NBC News: Deadly explosions rock airport, subway in Brussels 20 Years and 13 Alibis Later, Murder Charge Thrown Out Tense Cuban Leader on Political Prisoners: Give Me Names! Security forces have zeroed in on a poor Molenbeek suburb of Brussels, where several people were detained in a series of raids since the ISIS-linked attacks. Tiny Belgium with a population of just 11 million has the highest number per capita of militants fighting in Syria and Iraq, experts say. Many are from Molenbeek, which has a long history of links to extremism. According to Claude Moniquet, a former Belgian intelligence agent and co-founder of the European Strategic Intelligence and Security Center, poverty and segregation are feeding extremism in the area. He said some parts of Molenbeek are 80 to 90 percent Muslim, "so there is no mixing, no interaction with other communities." You begin to hate the society you were brought up in. Adam Deen Quilliam Foundation On top of this, officials have not taken on the extremist ideology head-on, Moniquet said. "They completely let the bad guys do absolutely what they wanted," he said. "They have been too nice, too tolerant, too bland. They didn't want to see radical Islamism in this part of the country because the only thing interesting for them is peace [and quiet] and to be reelected." Belgian Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected lynchpin behind the Paris attacks, lived in the district but is now believed to be in Syria. He is also said to be linked to thwarted attacks targeting a Paris-bound high-speed train and a church near the French capital earlier this year. Reuters reported that Brahim Abdeslam, one of the suicide bombers who blew himself up outside a Paris cafe, owned a bar in Molenbeek. His younger brother Salah, whose name was on rental documents for a car found outside the Bataclan concert hall where most of the Paris victims were killed, is one of the most wanted men in Europe after escaping to Belgium and eluding a dragnet in Molenbeek, where he lived with his two brothers. Two men who allegedly drove him back there hours after the assaults were charged with participating in a terrorist activity on Tuesday, Belgian officials said. Molenbeek Mayor Francoise Schepmans acknowledged that a small number of the neighborhood's Muslims had been radicalized but denied it was a big problem, according to The Associated Press. Long a way-station for immigrants to Belgium, Molenbeek has been linked to other terror attacks and attempted attacks. Moroccan-born Ayoub El-Khazzani, who opened fire on a high-speed Paris-bound train on August 21, lived there. So did another French Muslim, Mehdi Nemmouche who is believed to have fought in Syria is facing trial for the deaths of four people shot at a Jewish museum in Brussels, Belgium, in May, 2014. "The global picture is of the community left alone with no one from the state or authorities really wanting to know what's happening inside, letting people organize themselves for good things and bad things," Moniquet added. Molenbeek provides a grim lesson of what is happening in other parts of Europe, according to Adam Deen, a former British radical who is now part of U.K. anti-extremist organization the Quilliam Foundation. Muslims are increasingly being offered a very narrow interpretation of Islam Wahhabism, the strict sect aggressively promoted by Saudi Arabia throughout the world, he said. "What this does is create a sense of alienation from the place you were born and brought up. You begin to hate the society you were brought up in," said Deen, who says he still practices Islam but has abandoned extremism. "Now what happens is that any Muslim who wants to be active within the Muslim community, the default position is Wahhabism or a varied form of it." He added: "Wahhabism creates a binary outlook on the world. That kind of indoctrination [which preaches that] all non-Muslims are non-human make it is quite easy to put a bomb in a public place." With no "counter-narrative," a small number of adherents find themselves at ISIS' door, Deen added. Indeed, there were believed to be around 1,200 French ISIS recruits in Syria and Iraq in by the end of 2014, according to a January study by the International Center for the Study of Radicalization and Political Violence. Belgium sent some 440, the report said the highest per capita of any European nation. Germany and the U.K. both sent more than 500. The car that was used by Pope Francis during his visit to the U.S. last September could now be yoursthrough an auction. Charitybuzz and the Archdiocese of New York have teamed up to auction one of the 2015 Fiat 500 Lounge Hatchbacks provided by Chrysler . The net proceeds of the auction will benefit Catholic schools, charities, and relief services. The car is currently available to bid on the auction site Charitybuzz until 3 pm ET on Mar 31. The bids started at $10,500 last Thursday for the acting pope-mobile and the current highest bid is $46,000. watch now watch now watch now watch now watch now watch now watch now watch now watch now watch now A series of deadly explosions rocked Brussels on Tuesday, targeting the Belgian capital's main airport and metro system. Belgian officials said the bombings at Zaventem airport and the Maelbeek metro station killed at least 34 people and injured more than 230, according to reports. Officials raised the city's terror threat level and shut down public transit after the blasts. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel called Tuesday a dark moment for the country. "What we feared has come to pass. Our country has been struck by attacks which are blind, violent and cowardly," Michel told a news conference. Interior Minister Jan Jambon told NBC News that authorities were now in a high state of alert and working "day and night to arrest these guys." "The people of IS are also professionals. So that means that the job is extremely difficult and we are doing everything to make it to a success." CNBC CNBC The explosions reignited terror concerns only four days after police captured the most-wanted suspect in last year's Paris terrorist attacks, which killed 130 people. Deputy Prime Minister Didier Reynders said no information suggested the attack was linked to the arrest of the suspect, Salah Abdeslam, who was captured in Brussels. The so-called Islamic State claimed responsibility for Tuesday's attack, according to a post by affiliated Amaq Agency. U.S. government agencies said the terrorist group's claim appears authentic, Reuters reported, citing U.S. officials. Tweet The Islamic State group subsequently issued an updated communique threatening other countries taking part in the anti-ISIS coalition. The statement promised "dark days" for countries allied against the Islamic State, threatening that "what is coming is worse and more bitter." But Belgian Federal Prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said it was too early to link the bombings to the Paris attacks. Attackers set off two bombs, which contained nails, at the Zaventem airport, sending passengers fleeing, NBC News reported. Belgian news agency Belga said shots were fired and Arabic was shouted before the blasts, Reuters said. Photos from the scene showed bloodied victims, smoke, shattered windows and debris. Security services destroyed a third bomb found there. The explosives were contained in suitcases, NBC News reported, citing counterterrorism officials. Zaventem airport was evacuated, all flights were suspended and trains to the facility were suspended, VRT said. Arnaud Feist, the CEO of Brussels Airport Co., said the airport will remain closed on Wednesday. The U.S. State Department Tuesday issued a travel alert for citizens travelling to Europe following Tuesday's attacks. The travel alert, which expires on June 20, advised U.S. citizens to exercise vigilance when in public places or using public transportation. Federal police confirmed to NBC that the three men in the photo below are considered suspects in the airport bombing: Belgian Federal police spokesperson's office confirming that the three men in photo are considered the suspects in Tuesday's airport bombing in Brussels. Source: Belgium Federal Police Police issued a wanted notice for a possible suspect, issuing a photo of a man dressed in white, wearing a hat and pushing a luggage cart. Van Leeuw said the other two suspects likely blew themselves up at the airport. He added raids are taking place across the country. Belgian police are searching a residence that may have served as a staging ground for the attack, a senior U.S. intelligence official told NBC News. Belgian authorities said they found chemical products, an Islamic State flag and an explosive containing nails during a raid in the Brussels neighborhood of Schaerbeek, according to the AP. After the blast at the metro station of Maelbeek, close to the European Union institutions in central Brussels, the city's public transport authority said all metro stations were closed. By about 4:25 p.m. local time, the Belgian crisis center said people could move around the city again and metro stations would start reopening despite a continued threat, according to The Associated Press. Charlotte Van Driessche, who was on the metro train behind the one under attack, told public broadcaster VRT: "We heard a loud bang. There was chaos immediately as everyone suspected the attack was linked to the blast in Zaventem. There was a huge amount of panic. ... There was a terrible smell, a real smell of burning." Aftermath of explosion at the main airport of Zaventem in Brussels. Jef Versele People are evacuated from Brussels airport in Zaventem on March 22, 2016, following twin blasts. Dirk Waem | AFP | Getty Images The Belgian ministry of health said the airport bombing killed at least 11 people and injured 81. Yvan Mayeur, the mayor of Brussels, said 20 people were believed dead and 106 injured in the metro bombing. Officials are still trying to determine whether another attack is imminent. Mourners gathered in Brussels on Tuesday night, laying flowers and candles around makeshift memorials. Speaking in Cuba on Tuesday morning, President Barack Obama pledged to support Belgium in bringing the attackers to justice. "We stand in solidarity with them, condemning these outrageous attacks against innocent people," he said. Obama spoke with Michel, offering assistance in investigating the attacks, the White House said. Policemen at a security checkpoint outside the Midi train station following bomb attacks in Brussels on March 22, 2016. Christian Hartmann | Reuters People display the Belgian flag at Beursplein Square after Tuesday's attack in Brussels. Alexander Koerner | Getty Images People place flowers for the victims of the Brussels attacks, in front of the Belgian embassy in Moscow, Russia, March 22, 2016. Maxim Zmeyev | Reuters The Obama administration is expected to announce new airport security measures in response to the attacks, Reuters reported, citing a government source. The Department of Homeland Security separately said the Transportation Security Administration would send additional security to major U.S. airports as a precaution. VRT said at least one of the Brussels airport explosions happened near the check-in desks for American Airlines, but the airline later disputed that report. The company told CNBC in an emailed statement it had accounted for all of its employees and contractors with no reported injuries. Starbucks said initial indications showed a blast went off near one of its stores in the airport. The company said one employee was injured and it has accounted for all other workers. The U.S. Air Force confirmed an Airman and four of his family members were injured in the airport attack. The Air Force did not identify the man, his family members or the nature of their injuries. The Mormon church also said three missionaries were injured at the airport. They were listed in critical condition. Belgium has been on high terror alert since the Paris attacks on Nov. 13. Former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin told CNBC that the attacks were "tragic events" but added that Europe could only "reduce" the threat of terrorism. "I do believe that our strategy should be very different than the one it is. Much less military approach than a political approach, trying to find solutions in the Middle East, and we are far from doing that," he said. European stocks closed mixed Tuesday and gold rallied. U.S. stocks traded slightly higher, as did stocks in Asia. watch now watch now watch now Current and former U.S. and European counter-terrorism officials, who are experts on ISIS in Europe, told NBC News that the location and timing of the attacks just days after the capture of the suspected operational leader of the Bataclan massacre in Paris suggested a "shocking" level of unpreparedness by Belgian authorities. They described Brussels, especially the Maelbeek neighborhood near the site of the subway strike, as an explosive mix of highly capable foreign fighters trained by ISIS and sympathetic locals who are unknown to authorities but eager to help in attacks. More from NBC News: 'Let's hunt them down': World leaders respond Why is this Brussels suburb home to so many extremists? Deadly explosions rock Brussels airport and subway They noted that when Bataclan terror suspect Salah Abdeslam was arrested last week, authorities found a huge cache of weapons, prompting Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders to warn of other imminent attacks. "He was ready to restart something in Brussels," Reynders said at the German Marshall Fund's Brussels Forum. Besides discovering "a lot of weapons, heavy weapons," Reynders said, "we have found a new network around him in Brussels." Clint Watts, a former FBI and U.S. Army counter-terrorism official and expert on how ISIS operates, told NBC News that Belgian authorities should have been more prepared for Tuesday's attacks. "That they could sit for four months, not only in Belgium but in Brussels and especially in Maelbeek, and plot these kinds of attacks just four days after the arrest of such a high-level network facilitator this is shocking to me because they should have been on the highest level of alert," Watts told NBC News. "It is hard to conceive that this would happen on such a large scale when it was so obvious that these guys were operating there," Watts said of ISIS. "After [Abdeslam's] arrest, you would have to assume everyone in the network was preparing to launch whatever they had." "After the Paris attacks, it was a question of not being able to run all the leads down," Watts said. After Tuesday, "It's no longer a capacity problem, it's a competency problem." watch now watch now watch now Brussels was hit by a series of explosions on Tuesday, with multiple people reported dead or injured following a suicide attack on its main airport and a bomb on its metro system. The so-called Islamic State, also known as ISIS, has claimed responsibility, according to the blog of Amaq Agency, which is affiliated to the terrorist group. The attack follows last week's arrest of Salah Abdeslam in the Belgian capital. Abdeslam is a major suspect in November's Paris attacks that killed 130 people and is known to have links to the so-called Islamic State terrorism group, also called ISIS. CNBC takes a look at the threat posed by Islamist jihadist groups to countries and regions around the world. People bring flowers to the Belgian Embassy in Moscow to pay tribute to the Brussels terror attack victims, March 22, 2016. Mikhail Japaridze | TASS | Getty Images Europe Outside of Belgium, France is considered at high risk of attacks, due to ongoing threats by Islamist groups and recent French military intervention against ISIS in Syria. A state of emergency was declared following the Paris attacks and remains in place ISIS has said that France will remain a key target, according to media reports. Comparatively high numbers of radicalized Muslims have left both Belgium and France to fight for insurgent groups in Iraq and Syria approximately 37.9 Belgian citizens per million, according to estimates from data provider IHS Jane's. In the U.K., the threat from terrorism is rated "severe" by its government, meaning an attack is judged highly likely. There are five levels of threat, with "severe" the second-most serious. Middle East Recent attacks: ISIS militants killed 26 regime commandos in Palmyra in Syria on Monday, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Despite recent territorial losses, ISIS still control swathes of eastern Syria. There are continued attacks across Syria, as fighting continues between government forces and insurgent groups that include ISIS. At least 470,000 Syrians have been killed since the war began in 2011, according to the Syrian Center for Policy Research. On Monday, ISIS killed 26 Syrian government commandos as they battled to retake the UNESCO World Heritage Site of Palmyra, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. ISIS and other insurgent groups also control parts of Iraq, particularly in the regions bordering Syria. The threat from terrorism remains high in Turkey, which neighbors Syria to the north. Further attacks by groups including ISIS and Kurdish extremists are viewed as likely by the U.K. Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO). The U.S. Homeland Security Committee says that an ISIS-linked Syrian individual was planning an attack on the U.S. Consulate in Istanbul in December. West Africa Recent attacks: Three militants opened fire on a beach resort in Cote d'Ivoire this month, killing 18 people. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) claimed responsibility for the attack, according to media reports. Three police officers and five-alleged Boko Haram suicide bombers were killed during clashes in Niger on Wednesday, Reuters reported. Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has gained a foothold in northern Mali, as well as Mauritania, Niger and Algeria to the north. The jihadist group aligns itself with the main Al Qaeda organization and is dedicated to destabilizing governments in the region and implementing shariah (Islamic) law. In March, AQIM claimed responsibility, according to media reports, for an attack on a beach resort in Cote d'Ivoire that killed 18 people, including several foreigners. "There is unquestionably a need to improve border security and intelligence-sharing across West Africa, but ultimately, even the most sophisticated defense apparatus will not be able to prevent such attacks 100 percent of the time," Sean Smith, Africa analyst at risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft, said in a note after the attack. Further south, Nigeria and surrounding countries continue to struggle with Boko Haram, an ISIS-aligned jihadist group. It has attempted to establish a "caliphate" or Islamic state in northern Nigeria, exploiting the government's weak control of the large area. Last Wednesday, Reuters reported that three police officers and five alleged-Boko Haram suicide bombers were killed in Niger during armed clashes. North Africa Market watchers seeking income should invest in master limited partnerships (MLPs) as oil prices have stabilized, according to Global X Funds' CEO Bruno del Alma on Monday. "MLPs are probably the best asset class in our opinion," del Alma told "Closing Bell." "If you look at the infrastructure side of master limited partnerships, they're somewhat isolated from oil prices." He added that these companies are generating income at about 7 percent. Still, market watchers remained cautious as just a year ago MLPs were deemed attractive but substantial share price fluctuation burned eager investors. "We think it's worth it," del Alma said about possible risks, "We think it's one of the most attractively priced asset classes right now." The CEO also warned against exploration and production names, but encouraged investments in infrastructure and pipeline companies in the sector. watch now watch now watch now Europe is taking the wrong approach to fighting terrorism, former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin has told CNBC. Speaking immediately after a series of explosions rocked the Belgian capital of Brussels, de Villepin said that they were "tragic events" but added that Europe should be showing that it is sticking to its rule of law and can only "reduce" the threat of terrorism. "I do believe that our strategy should be very different than the one it is. Much less a military approach than a political approach, trying to find solutions in the Middle East and we are far from doing that," he said. A series of deadly explosions hit Brussels on Tuesday. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel told a news conference that terrorists had committed murder in Zaventem Airport as well as at the Maelbeek metro station. He labelled it a cowardly attack and said it was a black day for Belgium. Speaking on the outskirts of the Boao economic forum in China, de Villepin said that Tuesday's events would only create more fear and said that there should not be any "triumphalism" when known terrorists are caught by police. The blasts come four days after the capture of Salah Abdeslam, a suspect in last year's Paris attacks, in Brussels. "I do believe we are not addressing right the issue of terrorism today," de Villepin added. UTICA, N.Y. SUNY Polytechnic Institute (SUNY Poly) will use a $25,000 grant from First Niagara Banks Mentoring Matters program for the work of its career-services center in that area. The grant funds will benefit the centers mentoring program, which helps students arrange workplace-site visits, informational interviews, and job shadowing, SUNY Poly said in a news release issued Friday. The funding will also help the school organize workshops, panels, career-services presentations, and assistance with other career-services events. On behalf of the SUNY Polytechnic Institute Foundation, Id like to extend our genuine appreciation for First Niagaras support of the student-mentoring programs here at SUNY Poly, Nick Grimmer, assistant VP of development for SUNY Poly, said in the schools news release. Their tremendous investment will have a significant impact on the resources that we are able to provide to the students who work with our career-services office. I am very proud to say that First Niagara Bank is a true philanthropic partner of SUNY Poly and our foundation. Since launching Mentoring Matters in 2007, First Niagara has provided a total of $850,000 in grants to Central New York mentoring organizations and $7.25 million across the company. First Niagara created the program to support organizations that help children improve their grades and school attendance; enhance their self-esteem; avoid the dangers of drugs and alcohol; and have a better opportunity for a brighter future, according to the news release. The relationship between a mentor and a mentee can have a lasting, positive effect on a child both academically and personally, David Kavney, First Niagaras Central New York market executive, said in the SUNY Poly news release. Through our strategic partnerships with organizations like SUNY Poly, we are able to cast a wide net of support to programs and initiatives in the communities where our customers and employees live, work and do business. Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com IMAGE CREDIT: http://sunnysyracuse.com, the website for Sunny 102 (WZUN) SYRACUSE, N.Y. Radio station WSEN 92.1 FM is combining with Galaxy Communications Sunny 102 (WZUN 102.1 FM) to create what Galaxy CEO Edward Levine is calling a superstation. WSEN has been operating at 8456 Smokey Hollow Rd. in the town of Lysander. We are thrilled to be able to continue the legacy of WSEN by combining it with Sunny 102 to create a superstation. Weve expanded our playlists to incorporate a tremendously wide variety of music. Plus, we preserved several jobs for some of Syracuses best known radio personalities, Levine said in a news release. Syracusebased Galaxy Communications owns WZUN. Galaxy describes itself as a locally owned and operated company that operates 14 radio stations. Bath, New Yorkbased Family Life Ministries bought WSEN and WMCR-FM in Oneida from Leatherstocking Media Group in December, according to a Feb. 18 posting on the website for RadioInsight, an industry trade publication. Following the original assignment application, Family Life amended its plans to convert 92.1 WSEN-FM to non-commercial status, the RadioInsight article said. The same article also noted that anonymous domain registrations had been made the previous day for addresses that included 1021WSEN.com and 102WSEN.com. Sunny 102 will continue its operations from Galaxy headquarters on Walton Street in Syracuse. WSEN on-air personalities including Gary Dunes, Diane Wade, and John Carucci have joined the Sunny 102 on-air lineup. Gary Dunes is now on the air with Big Mike & Cindy in the morning and John Carucci has joined Rick Gary in the afternoon from 3 p.m. to 7 p.m. Diane Wade is on air from Noon to 3 p.m. Listeners can hear the combined programming of Sunny 102 and WSEN 92.1 on both frequencies through this weekend. The programming then moves to 102.1 FM only as of Monday, according to the Galaxy news release. Contact Reinhardt at ereinhardt@cnybj.com Hi, I'm Jillian, a higher education reporter in the spring of 2016. I covered public health and safety in the spring of 2015. I like to tell all kinds of stories, so feel free to reach out with tips or ideas at 815-298-9190 or jillianideutsch@gmail.com. Follow this search 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 Best of Business 2022: Learn Who Won Our 15th Annual Reader Poll Local professionals chose their favorite business and professional services, products, healthcare, dining and more. Find out who their top picks are. A vintage postcard celebrates Rainbow Lake in Overton Park. Go Play If you want personality, you gotta #GoMemphis SHARE By John Beifuss of The Commercial Appeal A free preview look at the Overton Park segment of an upcoming PBS program titled "10 Parks That Changed America" will take place at 7 p.m. Wednesday (March 23) at the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art. Producer Dan Protess and program host Geoffrey Baer will share clips and discuss the show, which is part of an ongoing PBS series titled "10 That Changed America." Described by production company WTTW in Chicago as a "broad look at our built environment," the series begins on April 5 this year with "10 Homes That Changed America," followed by "10 Parks That Changed America" on April 12 and "10 Towns That Changed America" on April 19. (Locally, "10 Parks" will air at 7 p.m. April 12 on WKNO-TV and again at 7 p.m. April 13 on WKNO2.) According to WTTW, the parks episode traces the evolution of city parks "from public squares, to picturesque landscapes, to play lots carved out of overcrowded immigrant enclaves, to postindustrial pleasure grounds." Parks featured with Overton in the program are Central Park and High Line Park in New York City; Freeway Park and Gas Works Park in Seattle; the Neighborhood Parks of Chicago; Squares of Savannah in Savannah, Georgia; Fairmount Park in Philadelphia; the San Antonio River Walk; and Mt. Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Most of the parks were selected for their influence on landscape and design, but with Overton Park "it's less about design more about the battle to protect it from the freeway," Protess told The Commercial Appeal last year. For more information on Wednesday's event, visit www.brooksmuseum.org. The flu is here, and it's sending more Memphians than usual to the ER SHARE By Jody Callahan of The Commercial Appeal Reported sexual assaults increased at five of the Memphis-area's seven major institutions of higher learning last year, according to the annual "Crime on Campus" report released recently by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. That mirrored a statewide trend as the report shows that sexual assaults across Tennessee's colleges and universities increased dramatically over that period, going from 94 in 2014 to 119 in 2015 (26.6 percent). There were just 53 reported in 2013. The number of reported rapes also increased from 51 in 2014 to 56 in 2015 (9.8 percent). Sexual assaults increased to varying degrees at the University of Memphis (from 2 to 6), Rhodes College (17 to 21), Christian Brothers University (0 to 4), Southwest Tennessee Community College (1 to 2) and the Memphis College of Art (0 to 1). The University of Tennessee Health Science Center reported no such offenses in 2014 or 2015. LeMoyne-Owen College reported one in 2014, but TBI showed that the school had no crimes on its campus in all of 2015. TBI officials couldn't explain that apparent glitch late Monday, so that school isn't included in these tallies. Rhodes officials confirmed Monday that they are investigating an anonymous report that two women were sexually assaulted at a fraternity house early Saturday morning. Rhodes spokesman Ken Woodmansee would not identify which fraternity, however. "This past Saturday, the Rhodes Office of Campus Safety notified students, faculty and staff that two female students anonymously reported that they were victims of sexual assault earlier that morning. According to the report, the alleged incidents occurred within an hour of one another in a fraternity house. Rhodes Campus Safety filed a memo with the Memphis Police Department and is currently investigating the matter," the school said in a statement. Ike Sloas, Rhodes campus safety director, said the school's high sexual assault numbers are possibly a product of efforts to increase reporting of such incidents. "We made a large effort in the last few months, the last year, to increase our accessibility for reporting sexual misconduct on campus," Sloas said. "We believe that's having an impact on bringing the number of incidents forward. At some point, then, we're going to plateau on those numbers." Sloas noted that the school had three reported incidents in 2013. That jumped to 17 in 2014, then to 21 this year. Barbara King, executive director of The Exchange Club Family Center, suspects new attitudes toward reporting sexual assaults are also at play in the statewide numbers. "I think they're being reported (more). I think these women are not so ashamed and not so afraid to bring it out in the open. I'm sure it is increased incidents to some extent, but I believe that now they're empowered to do something about it," she said. "I think it's a hopeful sign. It'll make the offenders think twice since it's not going to be kept secret." Overall, reported criminal incidents on college campuses decreased by 7 percent statewide last year, the TBI said, going from 6,394 incidents in 2014 to 5,945 in 2015. At the Memphis schools, overall reported incidents dipped at the U of M (7.8 percent), Rhodes (13.9 percent) and Southwest (9.1 percent). Broken down, the U of M had 307 reported incidents in 2014 and 283 last year, a decrease of 24. Rhodes had 137 incidents in 2014 and 118 last year, a drop of 19. Southwest had 66 incidents in 2014 and 60 last year, a drop of six. Reported incidents rose, however, at CBU (45 incidents to 50, or 11.1 percent) and MCA (19 incidents to 23, or 21.1 percent). UTHSC reported 40 incidents in both 2014 and 2015. Assistant voting machine tech Michael Dandridge inspects a "zero tape" from a machine at the Shelby County Election Commission headquarters. Technicians as well as trained auditors inspect each machine to ensure the serial numbers match records, that no votes are currently shown to have been cast, and that voter ID information is accurate. SHARE By Linda A. Moore of The Commercial Appeal Following a shortage of voting machines that led to long lines on primary election day, the Shelby County Election Commission voted unanimously Monday to supply voters with more machines. The vote lowers the ratio from one machine for every 1,500 voters to one machine for every 500 voters. The election commission has additional voting machines in storage and will not need to purchase more. As primary election day ended on March 1, voters reported lines that were up to an hour long. Throughout the day, election commission officials distributed an additional 81 machines to deal with voter demand. Although the commission has consolidated some voting locations, that did not reduce the need for machines. However, it was unclear if all of the voting sites will be able to accommodate more machines, said Joe Young, deputy administrator of elections. He assured commissioners that if the layout of a voting site could not hold the added machines, he would alert them in time. The next election is the Aug. 4. state primary and the Shelby County general election. Also on Monday, the commission also unanimously certified the March 1 primary results. Commissioner Norma Lester noted that she found discrepancies in the election results, but none were significant enough to change the final results. Attending the meeting was Linda Phillips, a candidate for the job of administrator of elections. Phillips, a former election administrator in Tippecanoe, Indiana, was interviewed earlier this month via telephone, along with Chris Thomas, a former Lakeland city manager, county commissioner, probate court clerk and Memphis City Schools board member. Phillips is being considered to replace Richard Holden, who retired in December, ending a term marred with problem elections and a vote of no-confidence from the County Commission and Memphis City Council. Another candidate has already turned down the job, citing family concerns. . After the meeting, Phillips interviewed the commission, asking questions about its budget and criticisms from the news media and the public. Lester acknowledged that some of the assessments were justified while commission chairman Robert Meyers said that what has saved the commission's credibility is its transparency. He attributed the problems to "inadequate leadership and inadequate training." SHARE MaKayla Dyer, 8, was killed by a shotgun blast Saturday, Oct. 3, 2015, in White Pine. By Richard Locker of The Commercial Appeal NASHVILLE A state House committee on Tuesday voted down for this year a bill that would have penalized adult gun owners who leave loaded guns unlocked and accessible when children under age 13 get hold of them. Penalties would increase under the bill if the child hurt or killed themselves or somebody else with the gun. The House Civil Justice Committee killed the bill on a 2-7 vote, with Democrats Bill Beck and Sherry Jones of Nashville voting to advance the bill and seven Republicans voting against it Reps. Mike Carter of Ooltewah, Jim Coley of Bartlett, Martin Daniel of Knoxville, John Forgety of Athens, Jamie Jenkins of Somerville, Jon Lundberg of Bristol, and Courtney Rogers of Hendersonville. The bill, called MaKaylas Law by its sponsors, was prompted by the gun deaths of 12 children in Tennessee since January 2015, including 8-year-old MaKayla Dyer of White Pine in East Tennessee, who was shot by her 11-year-old neighbor after he removed his fathers shotgun from a closet last October. MaKaylas mother, LaTasha Dyer, appeared before a Senate committee earlier this month to urge passage of the bill. National Rifle Association lobbyist Erin Luper told the same Senate committee that her organization opposed the bill because its a gun owners responsibility to safely store guns and the state shouldnt impose a criminal law on them. Rep. Sherry Jones, D-Nashville, the House sponsor, told the House committee Tuesday that The only people who would be impacted would be irresponsible gun owners who leave loaded guns unlocked and accessible to children under 13. The bill would make it a violation for an adult to recklessly place, leave or store in plain view and readily accessible to a child under 13 if the gun is left unattended, not under the owners control, and either contains ammunition or ammunition is in the immediate vicinity unless the gun has a trigger lock or similar device or is in a locked container or cabinet accessible only by the owner or the owners spouse. After the defeat, Beth Joslin Roth, policy director for Safe Tennessee Project, vowed to return with the bill next year. Sen. Sara Kyle, D-Memphis, the Senate sponsor, said that if the bill isnt the way, then what is? What efforts can be brought forward to protect children in Tennessee. We dont want to fill up prisons with irresponsible gun owners. The purpose is to deter. Beth Harwell SHARE By Sheila Burke, Associated Press NASHVILLE Activists who want the state Legislature to expand Medicaid benefits to Tennesseans who lack health coverage are turning up the heat on House Speaker Beth Harwell. About 20 billboards went live across the state Monday asking Harwell to help pass Insure Tennessee, the governor's Medicaid expansion plan. The proposal would cover about 280,000 Tennesseans who lack insurance. Activists had already paid for three billboards in Nashville. But a coalition of more than 70 business and community leaders decided to take the campaign statewide because they want Harwell, R-Nashville, to bring a full vote to the House floor. Martha Ingram, a Nashville philanthropist and one of the state's wealthiest citizens, is among the Insure Tennessee supporters making a push to expand health care coverage across the state. Ingram, in a conference call to reporters Monday, said she got involved because she was disappointed in lawmakers for refusing to pass Insure Tennessee and said she thought they were not fulfilling their responsibilities to citizens. "I honestly don't really know how they sleep at night," Ingram said. The new billboards are in Memphis, Nashville, Knoxville, Chattanooga, Jackson, Clarksville, Cookeville, Murfreesboro, Tullahoma, Elizabethton, Johnson City, Bristol and Kingsport. "I always welcome hearing the opinions from people across this state on an issue that is important to them," Harwell said in an emailed statement. "However, Governor Haslam decided earlier this year not to pursue the implementation of Insure Tennessee. As Speaker, I cannot unilaterally bring it to a vote. All bills go through the committee process, and this has failed to receive the support needed to advance. "At the end of session last year, I began to have discussions with members of the House and the administration on creative elements that could garner widespread support. These elements reflect not only a desire to assist, but also to enhance, the effectiveness of our current TennCare program. I'm confident we will reach a solution and have an announcement by mid-April." Republican lawmakers have rejected Haslam's Medicaid expansion plan amid fears that it was too closely linked to President Barack Obama's signature health care law. The Tennessee Hospital Association has been pushing for Insure Tennessee, saying that small hospitals might be forced to shut down without federal money that would come with Medicaid expansion. Activists believe that Harwell has the power to help get the bill passed despite resistance in the General Assembly. And they think the time to do it is now. "It can be done, and it must be done," said Mary Falls, a member of the group from Nashville. "Our state's hospitals and our health care infrastructure, along with the health of more than 280,000 Tennesseans, depends on it." Larry Coyne/The Commercial Appeal Stadium Manager Mike Nasypany builds up the pitchers mound at Tim McCarver Stadium for the Memphis Chicks season. the park commission got better clay for the mound free of sand and gravel for a better foothold. SHARE March 22 25 years ago: 1991 Dr. Irving P. McPhail, president of LeMoyne-Owen College since July 1, 1987, has resigned according to a board member of the predominantly black private school at 807 Walker. T.R. McLemore, a member of the board of trustees for 50 years, confirmed in a telephone interview that board chairman Jed Dreifus told him McPhail had resigned. McPhail was the seventh president of the school, which was established as the Lincoln School in the 1860s. 50 years ago: 1966 SPACE CENTER, HOUSTON Virgil Grissom, Edward H. White and Roger B. Chaffee, two veteran astronauts and a rookie, were chosen Thursday to fly the nation's first three-man space mission, taking the Apollo spaceship on its maiden manned voyage. The space agency also revealed it was studying the feasibility of performing a five-man space rendezvous, between the orbiting Apollo ship and Gemini 12, a two-man spacecraft. America's first space triplets will orbit Earth up to 14 days, hopefully by the end of the year, testing the craft like one planned to someday fly men to the moon. 75 years ago: 1941 Park Field, the 1,000-acre government reservation near Millington, dormant since 1918, may come to life again as the site of a multimillion-dollar Quartermaster Corps depot which the War Department has proposed to build at Memphis. 100 years ago: 1916 The county convention, ordered by former mayor E.H. Crump's Democratic County Committee, will meet today. 125 years ago: 1891 UNION CITY, Tenn. A very large catamount, or American tiger, was captured near Reelfoot Lake, about 12 miles from this place. SHARE Pablo Martinez Monsivais/Associated Press Cuban President Raul Castro lifts up the arm of President Barack Obama after their news conference. Castro's willingness to take questions in public would have never occurred in his brother Fidel's regime. concession to Obama, Castro agreed to a public news conference. President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro, left, walk during a welcoming ceremony at the Palace of the Revolution, Monday, March 21, 2016, in Havana, Cuba. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) President Barack Obama speaks at an event on entrepreneurships and opportunity for Cuban people, Monday, March 21, 2016, at La Cerveceria in Havana, Cuba. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) By Karen Deyoung And Juliet Eilperin, Washington Post HAVANA In an extraordinary news conference Monday afternoon, President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro sparred over human rights, the Guantanamo prison and their views of their own countries and the world, even as both hailed Obama's historic visit here as a new step in normalizing relations. The event was marked by a jarring juxtaposition of diplomatic formality and public jousting, as Castro responded to questions from American reporters by either ignoring them or dismissing them as misguided. In what appeared to be an angry response to a question about political prisoners here, posed by CNN correspondent Jim Acosta, whose father emigrated from Cuba, Castro said: "If there are political prisoners, give me a list, right now. What political prisoners?" "Give me a name or names, and if there are political prisoners, they will be free by tonight," he added. While human rights activists say several dozen people are serving long prison sentences here for alleged political offenses, Cuba maintains that those said to be political prisoners have been convicted of common crimes. For his part, Obama seemed to relish the opportunity to display his comfort in discussing both the things they agreed on, and those they did not. The public exchange was virtually unprecedented in Cuba. Appearing together after a closed-door meeting on the first full day of Obama's visit to Cuba, the first by a sitting U.S. president since 1928, the two leaders began with magnanimous statements about the dramatic improvement in relations. Their work together "benefits not only Cuba and the United States, but the entire hemisphere," Castro said. Obama responded that "it's fair to say the U.S. and Cubans are now engaged in more areas than at any time in my lifetime." Quoting Castro's words, he acknowledged that "the road ahead will not be easy. Fortunately, we don't have to swim with sharks to achieve the goals that you and I have set forth." But their differences were clear. Obama said he had spoken "frankly" to Castro about free expression and democracy in their two-hour meeting. Obama also said he and Castro had spoken openly about U.S. concerns over Cuba's human rights record, calling such delicate discussions a prerequisite to truly normalizing relations. "This is something that we are going to stay on," Obama said, adding that if the two countries could make progress on the issue, their relationship could blossom. "In the absence of that, I think it will continue to be a very powerful irritant." Castro called on the United States to abandon the territory it occupies with a military base at Guantanamo Bay, on Cuba's southwestern tip, and to remove the U.S. embargo against Cuba. He said relations would never be fully normal until both were accomplished. "We recognize the position President Obama is in, and the position his government holds against the blockade," as Cuba calls the embargo "and that they have repeatedly appealed to Congress to have it lifted," he said. The U.S. says it has no intention of leaving the U.S. base at Guantanamo Bay or relinquishing the territory, which it holds under a 1903 lease that can only be canceled by agreement of both parties. By Grace Tatter, Chalkbeat Tennessee When Tennessees public pre-kindergarten program was found lacking last year in a nationally scrutinized study, advocates of early childhood education braced for a legislative agenda this year that might scrap the initiative. Instead, lawmakers passed a bill Monday evening designed to make Tennessees pre-K classrooms stronger, albeit without additional money to help achieve the goals. The measure also would put the onus on local districts to address some of the findings of the Vanderbilt University study. The House voted unanimously in favor of the bill, which was approved easily last week by the Senate. The legislation is expected to be signed by Gov. Bill Haslam, whose administration has cited pre-K as a significant strategy for closing the states achievement gap. The vote is a partial victory for advocates of early childhood education, still reeling from the five-year Vanderbilt study released last September that found that students who attended Tennessees public pre-K program eventually did worse in elementary school than their peers who had no pre-K at all. At the time, the studys researchers said they hoped that the findings would lead to improvements in the quality of Tennessees Voluntary Pre-K program, rather than fuel efforts to end the states decade-old initiative. Sponsors say the 2016 legislation aims to do just that. It will require local districts to develop plans for implementing certain best practices in pre-K classroom before they can receive state funds for pre-K, including offering meaningful professional development for teachers. The local plans also must show how the district would improve instructional alignment in pre-K classrooms with K-3 classrooms cited by researchers as a possible reason for a drop-off in pre-K students academic performance by grade 3. We took that Vanderbilt study and said, We need to improve what were doing,' said Rep. Mark White of Memphis, one of the sponsors. When a (district) makes an application to the state, we need to hold them to a higher standard. However, the bill also has been amended to scrap the additional $1 million initially earmarked to provide professional development for teachers, as well as to develop a screener to assess pre-K students kindergarten readiness. Lead Vanderbilt researcher Dale Farran said Monday that the bill is a great thing, but added that districts might struggle to develop local plans on their own. Im not sure that districts will be able to give anything thats genuine in response, because its so hard to do, she said. Its certainly a great goal, but districts need help achieving it. The Vanderbilt research team has been working with Metro Nashville Public Schools to implement the best practices outlined in the bill something that wont be possible for every Tennessee district, she noted. The researchers hope to release a document based on their work with Nashville to help guide other districts. Before Mondays vote, there was little debate in the House. But Rep. Bill Dunn of Knoxville, a frequent pre-K critic, spoke for 10 minutes on his concerns about the current state of Tennessees pre-K program. Other representatives, including Rep. Antonio Parkinson of Memphis, used the issue to urge the legislature to incorporate other Vanderbilt studies, including one on Tennessees Achievement School District, as the basis for future legislation. Clarification: March 28, 2016: The story has been clarified to reflect that the $1 million fiscal note was eliminated because Gov. Bill Haslam included $1 million for screening in his budget proposal. Chalkbeat Tennessee is a nonprofit news organization covering educational change in public schools. Read more about Tennessee education news at tn.chalkbeat.org. March 22, 2016 - Shicara Kidd wipes paint off her shoe while priming boards to be used to board up five blighted properties in the Heights neighborhood this week as 50 high school students from Kingsbury and Douglass high schools partner with the Heights CDC, Young Life and Streets Ministries to address blight in their community. (Jim Weber/The Commercial Appeal) SHARE By Tom Charlier of The Commercial Appeal Just as she was instructed, LaQuitta Mullins took it nice and slow with the circular saw, steadily guiding it across a sheet of plywood as the motor whined and sawdust flew, peppering her sweater and safety goggles. The 17-year-old who attends Douglass High School was among about 50 students volunteering to spend spring break week helping to combat blight in the Douglass-Bungalow-Crump area of North Memphis. The wood she was cutting will be painted with art and used to seal up the front door of one of the many vacant homes in the neighborhood. "I like helping out in the community," Mullins said Tuesday morning as she wiped sawdust from her face after finishing her first experience with a circular saw. The work by the students from Douglass, Kingsbury and White Station high schools was organized by groups that include Heights Community Development Corp., Young Life Memphis, Street Ministries and First Baptist Church. Throughout they week, they'll be cutting, decorating and installing wood to be used in boarding up five empty, blighted homes on Mt. Olive Road and Sydney Street. Jared Myers, with the Heights CDC, said vacant homes, held by owners located as far away as Singapore, have been a scourge to the neighborhood. They turn into havens for criminal activity prostitution, drugs and vandalism and drag down property values of neighboring homes by an average of 10 percent, he said. "That number is exponentially higher when you have a lot of blighted property," Myers said. The plywood panels to be used in boarding up the homes will be decorated with Bible verses, anti-gang and anti-drug slogans and other positive messages, organizers said. Frederick Lee, 47, a teacher at Douglass, said the work could help return the area to the more vibrant neighborhood he remembers. "I grew up here in the neighborhood, so we're working to get it back to the way it used to be," Lee said. Kelly Morrow, who works with Young Life, said it wasn't too difficult to recruit kids to spend part of their spring break volunteering. "They were all pretty excited to have something to do," she said. SHARE By Daniel Connolly of The Commercial Appeal Collierville's police department is looking to hire about six entry-level police officers, Lt. David Townsend said Tuesday. The suburban department is visiting various job fairs at sites such as Southwest Tennessee Community College and elsewhere, Townsend said. "We're heavy on the recruiting trail right now, trying to get some qualified officers." Those interested in applying can download an application at colliervillepolice.org/opportunities. The salary ranges from $34,400 to $56,600, depending on qualifications. Applicants must be U.S. citizens and have at least an associate degree or two years previous experience in law enforcement, or two years active duty military experience. They must pass a physical fitness test, a medical exam, a psychological examination and a background investigation. New police officers go through a 12-week training program, then further on-the-job training. SHARE "The Family Circus" creator Jeff Keane is among attendees slated for the National Cartoonists Society convention in May. By John Beifuss of The Commercial Appeal Funny business will meet the serious business of tourism revenue and children's charities when the artists behind "The Family Circus," "Beetle Bailey," "Mutts," Mad magazine and hundreds of other favorites gather in Memphis this spring for the annual convention of the world's oldest, largest and most prestigious organization for professional cartoonists. Now in its 70th year, the National Cartoonists Society, which typically convenes in such larger or more exotic locations as New York or the Bahamas, has chosen Memphis for its May 26-29 event, built around the annual "Oscars of cartooning," the Reuben Awards. Why Memphis? "I love the idea of the Peabody ducks," said NCS president Bill Morrison, 57, an artist for "The Simpsons" and "Futurama." "That's just such a cartoonish thing. It sounds like something a cartoonist would have come up with, to have a ceremony twice a day where ducks march through a hotel lobby." More crucially, the cartoonists have partnered with St. Jude Children's Research Hospital for a May 26 campus visit and public fundraiser that will be the most ambitious project yet in the society's new "Cartooning for Kids" charity initiative. The fundraiser is a follow-up to a 2015 convention "scouting trip" to Memphis. Several cartoonists made a visit to St. Jude, where patients and cartoonists drew funny pictures for each other. "It was such a rewarding experience, I think we got more out of it than the kids did," said Steve McGarry, 63, an artist on the "Despicable Me" and "Minions" movies, who is president of the NCS Foundation, the organization's charitable arm. "I view their decision as a win-win for the patient families," said Richard Shadyac Jr., the president and CEO of ALSAC, the fundraising organization of St. Jude. "Kids really relate to cartoons and cartoonists. Think about the fact that we were all kids once, and we all loved cartoons. And even as adults we love cartoons." Regena Bearden, vice president of marketing and communications for the Memphis Convention & Visitors Bureau, said Memphis was competing with Nashville for the cartoonists convention, but the visit to St. Jude a facility that specializes in the treatment of cancer and other childhood deseases "made the difference. What was scheduled to be a stop for an hour or two turned into an entire afternoon, they were such creative and caring people." Representing newspaper comic-strip and panel cartoonists, comic-book artists, animators, greeting card illustrators, graphic-novel creators, editorial cartoonists and others, the National Cartoonists Society was founded in March 1946 with a roster that included such legends of the art form as Milton Caniff ("Terry and the Pirates"), Ernie Bushmiller ("Nancy") and Rube Goldberg (for whom the Reuben Awards are named). The Memphis convention is expected to attract about 500 folks, Morrison said, including at least nine artists whose syndicated strips appear in The Commercial Appeal: Lynn Johnston ("For Better or Worse"), Jeff Keane ("The Family Circus"), Patrick McDonnell ("Mutts"), Greg Evans ("Luann"), Greg Walker ("Beetle Bailey"), Robb Armstrong ("Jumpstart"), Rick Kirkman ("Baby Blues"), Jerry Scott ("Zits," "Baby Blues") and Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Mike Peters ("Mother Goose & Grimm"). Other notable confirmed attendees include Sergio Aragones, 78, famous for the gag cartoons he has drawn for decades in the page margins of Mad magazine, and Paul Coker Jr., 87, production and character designer on such Rankin-Bass holiday specials as "Frosty the Snowman" and "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town." The convention's centerpiece is the May 28 black-tie Reuben Awards ceremony, which McGarry characterized as the "Oscars of cartooning." The highlight is the Reuben for Outstanding Cartoonist of the Year, which in the past has gone to such artists as Al Capp ("Li'l Abner"), Chester Gould ("Dick Tracy"), Charles M. Schulz ("Peanuts"), Gary Larson ("The Far Side") and Bill Waterson ("Calvin and Hobbes"). Although the cartoonists are a "zany" bunch, "We're not into vandalism," Morrison said. "We're not like rock stars where you're going to see people out of control." However, "Most of us do carry something to draw with, so I'm sure once we get to that wall at Graceland, the pens are going to come out." He said The Peabody had invited the cartoonists to choose someone to act as "honorary duck master" during the convention, but the Walt Disney Co. had denied permission for the use of a Donald Duck mascot. As a result, Morrison said, "We're in negotiations with Warner Bros. for Daffy Duck." NATIONAL CARTOONIST SOCIETY CONVENTION AND REUBEN AWARDS WEEKEND May 26-29, Memphis. May 26: Cartoonists United for St. Jude Kids fundraiser. VIP meet and greet, 5:30 p.m.; dinner, silent auction, improv cartooning, and more, 7 p.m. Tickets start at $150. Call (901) 373-5051, or visit stjude.org/cartoonistsunited. May 28: Reuben Awards banquet, The Peabody. Visit reuben.org. SHARE Memphis got a brief respite Monday when a dubious de-annexation bill was referred back to a state Senate committee for review. It needs to die there. A version of this bill passed by the House seems to be taking punitive aim at Memphis and Chattanooga, with the other affected cities Knoxville, Kingsport and tiny Cornersville in south-central Tennessee in an effort to withstand a challenge to state constitutional precedents against legislation that targets limited jurisdictions. We feel comfortable saying that after Lt. Gov. and Senate Majority Leader Ron Ramsey, R-Blountville, said he is not happy that the House sponsor of the bill, Rep. Mike Carter, R-Ooltewah, included Kingsport in the bill without asking him. Ramsey's Northeast Tennessee Senate district includes Kingsport and he filed an amendment on Friday to remove Kingsport. Asked if he believes it is fair for the General Assembly to target only five cities for de-annexation, Ramsey said: "That's a good question. That's the reason I'll vote no on the bill." Ramsey also questioned the fairness of the bill given that cities legally annexed territory under state annexation law in affect at the time. Chattanooga's announced plan in 2009 to annex its reserve areas, and objections from affected residents ignited a moved by Hamilton County legislators to change the state's annexation statutes. That led to a moratorium on annexations and the subsequent 2014 law that allows residents targeted for annexations to say yay or nay in a referendum. On the Memphis side, the legislation appears to be a way to help South Cordova and Windyke-Southwind residents, who have never gotten over being annexed, to get away from Memphis. The proposed de-annexation bill would allow residents to petition for de-annexation referendums and then vote in the referendums to separate themselves from their cities. They still would be required to pay a share of general obligation debt the city took on since their annexations. The administration of Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said that, under the bill, 10 areas of Memphis would be eligible, costing the city some $28 million in annual taxes and more than 100,000 residents if all 10 decided to bolt. That would be a devastating blow for a city already facing a financial quandary, brought on in part by a shrinking tax base and having too few people in too big of a space. Because of that, it is not unreasonable for Strickland and City Council to consider an orderly shrinking of Memphis' footprint. We need to pull in our borders gradually with a corresponding plan to shrink our budget. But lopping off sections of the city without regard of the financial impact is irresponsible. That is why, beyond the unfairness of the de-annexation bill, the Senate needs to kill the legislation. SHARE By Michael Gerson WASHINGTON In a time of brushfire populism, the problem is not the populace, it is the populists who seek to lead it. The two candidates who call themselves revolutionaries Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump are, in fact, backward looking, intellectually timid and unresponsive to the real needs of the working and middle classes. This judgment emerges from some basic economics (bear with me). The last several decades have seen both dramatic increases in productivity and the fading of the traditional, American, middle-class dream. The globalization of labor markets (creating competition with skilled workers abroad) and new technology and automation (hollowing out whole categories of labor at home) have placed downward pressure on wages and put a relentless emphasis on acquiring new skills. If the global economy were your boss, he or she would be demanding harder work for less money while making you go to school at night. Unfortunately, this creep is actually most people's boss, ultimately. The populists are right that important institutions have been woefully unresponsive to these changes. A recent Casey Foundation report found that 82 percent of African-American and 79 percent of Latino fourth-graders are reading below proficient levels. How are they being prepared for the new economy? Nearly 10.2 million young people in America are not in school or in the workplace. How did they fall between the sidewalk cracks of American life? Colleges and universities in America graduate only about half the students who enter, leaving many in debt and without a diploma to show for it. What is Sanders' liberal populist answer to these challenges? He wants to increase Social Security benefits for everyone, including the wealthy; he wants free college education for everyone, without a serious emphasis on quality; he wants to break up the big banks; and he wants a single-payer health care system. "What kind of guts does it show to promise people free things?" asks Jonathan Cowan, President of Third Way, a moderate Democratic think tank. The centerpiece ideas of the Sanders campaign could have been proposed by Hubert Humphrey in the 1960s. Sanders would massively expand the commitments of 20th-century liberalism, defiantly un-updated for 21st-century challenges. His campaign is progressive nostalgia in concentrated form. Trump, the other self-described revolutionary in the race, is running a campaign entirely based on nostalgia. He proposes to return America to greatness by personally reversing globalization. "I'll bring back our jobs from China, from Mexico, from Japan, from so many places," he says. But how? There is no real policy beneath the pledge. It is entirely magical thinking. The parts of Trump's economic plan that can be weighed and measured the productivity loss from expelling millions of workers and the global recession that might result from blowing up the global trading order with tariffs are frightening. Where Trump is not vacuous, he is dangerous. Working-class people and their challenges should transform the Republican Party. But Trump's welcome to these voters includes deception, exploitation and crackpot policies that make their eventual disappointment and alienation assured. "The populists," says Cowan, "are not the revolutionaries" -- assuming (for the sake of this argument) that revolution involves an ambitious, modern vision of economic adaptation. And who might the real revolutionaries be? Proposals by Third Way to improve the quality of higher education and encourage savings and capital accumulation for lower income people are practical and promising. Reform conservative plans to increase the rewards for work and encourage social mobility fall into this same category. Centrist Democrats and reform conservatives disagree on many things. But their arguments draw the outlines of an actual 21st-century politics, which puts the best instincts of the left and right to work on real contemporary problems, rather than promising empty revolutions that look mainly to the past. And what politicians in our system might carry on an adult conversation about the goal of ensuring that all Americans are prepared for the new economy? The answer, surprising myself even as I write it, would probably be President Hillary Clinton working with House Speaker Paul Ryan and an emerging Republican anti-poverty caucus (think Sens. Tim Scott of South Carolina and Mike Lee of Utah) in the Senate. There are many other reasons to oppose Clinton for president (or, if you are a Democrat, to want Ryan deposed and the Senate retaken). But if the goal is addressing working-class struggles, the real revolution might come from a divided government. Michael Gerson is a columnist for the Washington Post Writers Group. Contact him atmichaelgerson@washpost.com. 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) 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 The IT skills gap and talent shortage remains an ongoing business challenge as technology becomes the cornerstone of nearly every industry. That shift means there is a bigger demand for tech pros with specific skill sets; and companies are hiring qualified individuals faster than schools can graduate candidates with the right skills. A recent survey from Brilliant, a staffing firm that specializes in temporary staffing, permanent search, and management resources for accounting, finance and information technologies, in conjunction with Richard Curtin, director of Surveys of Consumers at the University of Michigan, found that companies are still hiring in the IT industry, and businesses are looking to fill open positions. The survey looked at data from human resources and hiring manager professionals across a number of industries to find out what their hiring goals are, and how they've changed over the previous quarters. The study found that open and unfilled IT positions dropped compared to the Q2 2015 hiring forecast, from 58 percent of companies in Q2 to 33 percent in Q4. The largest growth in jobs occurred in technical services, at 15 percent, which includes jobs such as help desk personnel and desktop support. There was a decline in openings for software and database administration positions, including jobs in big data. And businesses are looking to fill these openings immediately with only 4 percent of respondents suggesting they want to wait until after Q4 to hire. "The biggest challenge is that there continues to be a limited supply of talented IT professionals. Therefore, we anticipate an increased pressure on salaries and wages. As a result, the compensation for IT professionals will continue to increase, while companies will be forced to increase spend on IT. Further, this increase in demand for IT professionals will also lead to more companies willing to hire interim or contract professionals rather than hire on a permanent basis," according to Jim Wong, CEO of Brilliant. A job seekers market The upside to the skills gap is that those who do have the right skills are in a good position to find the best job offer. Essentially, it's a tech job-seekers market and companies are moving to attract people with competitive offers and perks. The most recent study found that 37 percent of respondents said they were turning to temporary professionals to fill the skills gap. This is decline in temporary workers from the Q2 hiring study, which found that 63 percent of businesses were using temp hires. The study suggests that this decrease points to successful hiring in the past and the overall decline in projected openings for additional IT staff. [ Related Story: Welcome to the gig economy ] Not the lack of skills you might think While there is certainly a lack of qualified candidates with skills ranging in big data to cloud to Internet of Things, those aren't necessarily the skills hiring managers are most looking for. The study found that the biggest skillset gap wasn't in any specific area or industry of tech, but rather hiring managers were looking for the right "soft skills." At the top of the list, 25 percent said they were looking for workers with expertise in certain areas, but did not specify which areas. Next on the list, 25 percent were concerned with finding a "cultural fit," which is a 10 percent increase from the last two quarters. Beyond that, 18 percent said they were looking for individuals with problem-solving skills as well as communication skills. The best place to find tech job seekers Landing the right candidates is one thing, but it's another to figure out the best place to find qualified candidates. The most popular source in recent years has typically been, and continues to be, the more traditional route of search and recruitment firms. And for IT workers, referrals and word of mouth are another highly popular way to land the right talent, with 20 percent saying they hired the bulk of workers through these channels in Q4. In Q3, 17 percent of companies cited online job boards as their main source of hiring, but that increased to 19 percent in Q4. Interestingly, in Q3, 13 percent of companies said they hired the bulk of workers through social media, but that has since dropped down to 6 percent in Q4. Meanwhile, companies citing resumes submitted via the company website as the source for new hires increased from 7 percent in Q3 to 11 percent in Q4 for the IT sector. [ Related Story: 5 hot trends in software development hiring ] Technology prompting more hires Technology drives nearly every industry and, as a result, business leaders are starting to view IT in a different light. IT is no longer simply the department that handles networks, hardware and business software. It's become a cornerstone of innovation as more workers rely on technology day to day. "Companies view technology as an investment as opposed to an expense. Technology can create efficiencies and allow businesses to scale without having to add fixed costs. Businesses know they can get an ROI through investing in technology," says Wong. And part of that investment can be seen in an uptick in companies reporting that they don't plan to reduce their IT teams. The survey found that 64 percent of businesses report they do not have plans to change the size of their current IT teams, whether through firing or hiring employees. However, 12 percent of businesses still report that they plan to increase the size of their teams, while only 7 percent report a plan decrease; 17 percent are unsure. Wong also says that the data suggests that companies are turning to technology to improve business practices, make departments more efficient and stay ahead of the curve. Leaders are starting to view technology as a way to save costs in the long run by increasing overall productivity and efficiency. "Essentially, companies want to be able to do more with less," Wong says. Overall, it's simply good news for IT workers, and even temporary or contract employees, as businesses begin a shift towards investing in their careers. "In sum, the demands for IT professionals mean higher compensation and wages, increased investments by companies to pay more for qualified professionals, and more reasons to hire temporary or contract professionals to fill those IT roles," says Wong. This story, "The future looks bright for IT workers" was originally published by CIO . The FBI says it may have discovered a way to break into the iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino mass shooters, and the agency has asked a judge to postpone a court hearing in the matter that was scheduled for Tuesday. "On Sunday, March 20, 2016, an outside party demonstrated to the FBI a possible method for unlocking Farook's iPhone," lawyers for the government said in a court filing Monday afternoon, referring to the shooter Syed Farook. "Testing is required to determine whether it is a viable method that will not compromise data on Farook's iPhone. If the method is viable, it should eliminate the need for the assistance from Apple set forth in the All Writs Act Order in this case," the government lawyers wrote. The court filing doesn't describe the proposed method, but the government says it received suggestions for how it could break into the phone from various outside parties. It's an unexpected development in a high-profile case that has pitted Apple against the U.S. Department of Justice. The conflict highlights the tension between the need for strong encryption and the requirements of law enforcement to investigate crimes. The FBI has said it needs help getting around Apple's encryption so it can access Farook's device, an iPhone 5C. It says the phone may hold clues about whether Farook and his wife acted alone when they went on a killing spree in San Bernardino last December. The government has said the couple were suspected terrorist sympathizers. Apple has fought back, saying providing access to the device would require it to create a new version of its iOS software for that purpose, and that doing so would weaken security for all its users. Apple is also worried that the case could set a legal precedent that would require Apple and other companies to give the government access to encrypted personal data in the future. If the government has indeed found its own way in, it may get the data it needs without a court battle, meaning no precedent will be set. In February, Apple said it would fight a U.S. magistrate judge's order requiring it to assist the FBI. A hearing was set to take place in Los Angeles Tuesday afternoon, where lawyers for Apple and the government were expected to square off. It's unclear now if the hearing will go ahead. In its court filing Monday, the FBI says it has continued to look for a way to access the data on the phone, even as it pursues its case against Apple. It doesn't describe the method it plans to try, but some researchers have theorized that the device could be accessed through cloning. A key protection that the government is up against is a mechanism that will permanently lock the phone if an incorrect pass code is tried 10 times. With cloning, multiple copies are made of the phone's memory and pass codes are tried against each copy. It doesn't matter if one copy becomes locked, because investigators can move on to another copy. In essence, it gives the FBI multiple tries at guessing the pass code without having to worry about the phone destroying its data. The method was brought up at a hearing of the House Judiciary Committee earlier this month, when Representative Darrell Issa, a California Republican, suggested it could be used. But to date, no one has publicly demonstrated that it would work. It's unknown if that's the method the government now plans to use, and other techniques may have been suggested as well. Whatever method it is, the government now wants to postpone Tuesday's hearing until it can try it out. It suggests it will file a status report by April 5, when presumably it will reveal the outcome of its efforts. Apple didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. Government lawyers said in the court filing that they contacted Apple to ask its position and that Apple's lawyers requested a conference call with the court. It's not called Silicon Valley for nothing. Andy Grove, the former Intel CEO who died Monday, is credited with turning the semiconductor maker into one of the world's most important companies. Intel was founded in 1968 by Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore (of Moore's Law fame), but Grove was there at the start of an incredible period for the computing industry. In the same year that Intel was formed, famed computer scientist Douglas Engelbart held a demonstration on the potential of computers. Before a conference audience in San Francisco, Engelbart used a mouse, videoconferencing, windows, word processing and other technologies to illustrate the future of computing. This "Mother of All Demos," crystallized the possibilities. Three years after the founding of Intel and this demo, the name "Silicon Valley" made its first appearance in 1971. Grove, an engineer with a Ph.D from the University of California at Berkeley, became Intel's president in 1979 and its CEO in 1987, and gets much of the credit for Intel's business success. "RIP Andy Grove," tweeted venture capitalist and inventor Marc Andreessen, shortly after the news of Grove's death was announced Monday by Intel. "The best company builder Silicon Valley has ever seen, and likely will ever see," he wrote. Andreessen's tweet is both praise for Grove as well as an epitaph for Silicon Valley. Its underlying questions are these: Is there anyone today in Silicon Valley who can build to the size and scale of an Intel? Is it even possible to do so? Grove feared Silicon Valley was losing its ability to scale -- to take something small, a startup, and turn it into something very large. Under Grove, Intel helped create Silicon Valley's hyper-competitive environment, a world where "only the paranoid survive," as he famously put it in the title of his book. Competition is the fuel of growth, and the U.S. today leads the world in semiconductors, but barely, with 51% of the global market in 2014. Source: IHS Technology Nine out of the top 20 semiconductor companies are American, according to U.S. government trade reports. The industry employs 250,000 direct workers. In 2010, Grove worried about the future of America's technology innovation engine. It wasn't just Asia's ability to produce things at lower cost, but whether the U.S. could succeed without manufacturing. "The underlying problem isn't simply lower Asian costs," wrote Grove, in a 2010 essay for Bloomberg Business. "It's our own misplaced faith in the power of startups to create U.S. jobs." Grove argued that startups by themselves can't increase tech employment. What's needed is the process of scaling up, building factories that employ thousands. This no longer happens in Silicon Valley. Today, some of the most highly valued tech companies, employ relatively few. In 2015, Forbes pointed out that Snapchat had a $15 billion valuation and only 330 employees. "You could say, as many do, that shipping jobs overseas is no big deal because the high-value work and much of the profits remain in the U.S.," Grove wrote in the Bloomberg piece. "That may well be so. But what kind of a society are we going to have if it consists of highly paid people doing high-value-added work and masses of unemployed?" Grove saw the job machine breaking down throughout the economy. He was writing during the Great Recession. While employment has picked up since then, in some of the occupations that matter to manufacturing, the forecast is troubling. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, in a recent update of its occupational outlook, put the 10-year job outlook for electronic and electrical engineers at "0% -- little or no change." The IEEE-USA, the largest professional engineering association in the U.S., said the BLS estimates "are probably correct." Grove acknowledged that Intel was formed at a time when scaling a company was easier to accomplish. China wasn't a factor in 1968. But with the loss of manufacturing, the U.S. is breaking the chain of experience, Grove wrote. He argued for a new systems of incentives and "an extra tax on the product of offshored labor." "Without scaling, we don't just lose jobs - we lose our hold on new technologies," he wrote. As of the end of 2014, Intel had 106,700 employees worldwide, with approximately 51% of those employees based in the U.S. China, meanwhile, has a formal plan for gaining dominance of the semiconductor industry. Its National Integrated Circuits Industry Development Plan seeks to lead the world "in all areas of the integrated circuit supply chain by 2030," U.S. trade officials recently noted. Grove could be wrong about the risks. The work in robotics, self-driving cars and artificial intelligence could lead to all kinds of new companies and industries. Instead of going to seed, Silicon Valley may be shifting from an economy once built on computers, to something more powerful. Perhaps a new generation of people with the capabilities of Andy Grove will figure it out. But until then, his warning and legacy remains. Intel's former CEO Andrew S. Grove, who is credited with the transition of the company from making memory chips into microprocessors for the PC era, has passed away at the age of 79. Grove, who became Intel's president in 1979 and CEO in 1987, was the first hire when Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore founded the company after quitting Fairchild Semiconductor in 1968. He had been hired by Moore at Fairchild as a researcher after graduation and rose to assistant head of research and development under Moore. Born Andras Grof in Budapest, Hungary, in 1936, Grove grew up during a dangerous time for Jews in Hungary in the face of the Nazi advance. His family was able to avoid capture during World War II, and Grove left Hungary in 1956, walking across the Hungarian border to Austria after the former Soviet Union invaded Hungary to quell an uprising. He applied for refugee status in Austria and was eventually granted entry to the U.S. in 1957, going to live with a relative in New York. He put a childhood fascination with chemistry into his schooling. Grove fostered integration at Intel, combining the manufacturing teams and R&D teams to work as a unified force. The approach persists today across Intel's chip manufacturing plants worldwide. After becoming president, Grove helped Intel change its primary business from memory chips to microprocessor manufacturing for the emerging personal computer revolution. Intel now dominates the market for processors for PCs and servers, but has struggled in the new and important growth markets of tablets and smartphones. In his book "Only the Paranoid Survive," Grove described how Intel survived the dramatic changes in the computer industry. A fighter throughout, Grove opted for a non-conventional but eventually successful treatment for his prostrate cancer, a decision he discussed in a 1996 cover story in Fortune. He has also backed research into Parkinson's disease, which he suffered from. Grove and his wife Eva were married for 58 years and had two daughters and eight grandchildren. Key tech leaders mourned Groves death late Monday. Some of these started and grew their companies at around the same time that Intel was also growing into a dominant chip making giant. Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates described Grove as one of the great business leaders of the 20th century. The software company contributed the operating system for the PC while Intel provided the processors in a powerful alliance during Groves tenure that was dubbed in the industry as Wintel. That alliance was to be shaken up later by a boom in mobile phones and tablets driven by Apple and Google, running newer operating systems on chips designed by ARM and other players. Apple CEO Tim Cook called Grove one of the giants of the technology world. Michael Dell, CEO of Dell, described Grove as a teacher, friend and leader. Told it like it was and made it happen, Dell said in a Twitter message. Dell started as a PC company and diversified into other areas including services. 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. Nicholas Soames is in the grip of powerful emotions. Words pour out of him during this interview. He feels very strongly that various people and institutions Iain Duncan Smith, Liam Fox, Boris Johnson, the British press and the Conservative Party have not behaved as they ought to behave. Of IDSs resignation he says: I think he did it in a very gauche way, and I shall be having words with him next time I see him. Hes my friend, but what he did is very regrettable. Of Fox: Im ashamed that Liam Fox should have thought it necessary to write to the American ambassador, as if the President of the United States will breach the constitutional niceties. I hope that when the American President comes here he will make plain the views of the American Administration on what they believe to be good for security in western Europe, and peace, and prosperity. Of Boris: I deeply regret the fact that hes jumped ship. Of the press: I am quite confident that such is the attention span of the press, which makes a gnat look like an intellectual giant, that within a week you will have moved on. And of the effect of IDSs resignation on the Conservative Party: Its not dangerous, but its a bloody nuisance, and it has destabilised an already fractious and not very well disciplined party, with a lot of new people to whom the concept of loyalty and sticking with it under fire appears to be in its infancy. The Europe issue is of profound importance to Soames, and helps to explain why he is so steamed up. He is committed to the cause of keeping Britain inside the European Union, and uses a vivid analogy to convey his frustration with the refusal of successive Tory leaders to confront their Eurosceptic opponents: If you have an Alsatian sitting in front of you, and it growls at you and bares its teeth, there are two ways of dealing with it. You can pat it on the head, in which case itll bite you, or you can kick it really hard in the balls, in which case itll run away. Successive Prime Ministers, and its not the present Prime Minister alone, have never understood that they have to take these people on. But in this conversation, held just before the Prime Ministers Commons statement yesterday afternoon, we started with IDS, whose resignation on Friday night had surprised Soames as much as everyone else. ConHome: What do you make of this whole IDS business? Soames: Well I tell you what I make of it is this. Nothing that Im going to say is off the record, and Im going to tell you the truth of what I think, OK, so it may not be popular. But I have known Iain Duncan Smith for a very long time. He was the ADC to the General in Rhodesia when my father [Christopher Soames] was the Governor. He was John Aclands ADC, and a brilliant man he was. He was an honourable, straightforward, decent soldier. My father christened him Iain Drunken Smith because he wouldnt drink. He had all the young gentlemen to dinner and Duncan Smith wouldnt drink. So Ive known him since then and my parents were very fond of him, and that counts for something with me. And I liked him, the little I knew of him, and I could see hed done a very good job, and the next time I see him, hes in the Houses of Parliament, where he comes in representing the ferret stranglers seat of Chingford. And were not on the same wing of the party, weve always had a cordial relationship, I did not want him to be the leader of the party, and I did not think it was a successful leadership, personally I think it was crazy, like a fox, that he tried to do it, but anyway he did, and you know, he did his best, you cant fault him on his effort. And then he goes off and he has a damascene experience, which presumably the vile reptiles laugh at, that he went to Gallowgate and those terrible housing estates, and I know them quite well, because I fought a Glasgow seat in the 79 election, I fought Glasgow Clydebank so I know exactly what he saw, and Im not as good a man as he is, because I didnt do anything about it, which he did. He came back to London, all fired up, and he set up the Centre for Social Justice, with that wonderful lady Philippa Stroud, who I think is tremendous, and I think theyve achieved a great deal. He volunteers out of a sense of again, these are all words that people loathe now and laugh at but it was a high sense of public duty, to come back into the government, rather in the same way that Alec Home came back as Foreign Secretary, he came back to do this one job. So I cant tell you because Im just a very junior humble backbencher, and I know nothing of what goes on in the gilded inner things of the Government, any more than anyone else does who isnt there I had no idea he and the Chancellor didnt get on I always thought and know the Prime Minister had a very high regard for IDS, what hed done. And so what happened on Friday evening came to me as a shock, and I didnt realise it was all so bloody difficult I have to say, I am surprised at the way it happened. And it seems to me that if you are a big, grown-up man and he was a serving soldier, he felt the whistle and crack of the enemys displeasure you can sit down at a table with the Prime Minister and the Chancellor and say, I want you to know that unless you sort this out, I am going to resign. So I on the one hand am very sad to see him go, but Im very displeased at the way that its happened. I do not believe it had anything to do with Europe. I do not believe that Duncan Smith is in any way a dishonourable human being. Hes on the hard right of the party and Im on the soft left, and Im a profound pro-European and hes a profound anti, but he always has been. So the people in the Tory Party who are Outers will try to work this thing up as being, nudge nudge, wink wink, really about Europe. Its got F All to do with that. And its quite clear from his interview on Andrew Marr that that was the case. I thought it was a formidable performance, a formidable performance, and I believed every word of it. ConHome: How dangerous is it? Soames: Its not dangerous, but its a bloody nuisance, and it has destabilised an already fractious and not very well disciplined party, with a lot of new people to whom the concept of loyalty and sticking with it under fire appears to be in its infancy. So I think its been a damned nuisance, and thats the point. And I want the Prime Minister to come to the House of Commons today, and reset the north star on the compass, and refind true north, tell it the way it is, and then were going to get on with it. And I think the Conservative Party has got to take a rain check. Some of our colleagues, I mean over the weekend on the television I saw a young man called Mr McPartland, and another woman called Miss Allen, neither of whom Im conscious of ever having seen before in my life, talking in the most unbelievable terms about the Government. They completely seem to forget the extraordinary triumphs of the Chancellor on the economy, the Governments success on the academies, on welfare. What other government since 1948, including Lady Thatcher, has managed to get a grip of the welfare state? Its got great credit to it in home affairs, in social reform, policing, education, I mean its an extraordinary government, and it can and will go on to be an extraordinary government. This is what my father would have called a kick in the gullet, these are inconveniences, what did Harold Macmillan say, these are little local difficulties. And of course we live in a 24-hour world. So I read the press today, and you know, I sometimes wonder which country Im living in. Read the Mail. Its absolutely fantastic. Youd have thought thered been a coup by a black African dictator. Its just absolute f***ing nonsense. A minister has resigned in unusual circumstances. He hasnt been found rogering a guardsman in Hyde Park or stealing stuff. Hes resigned on a point of principle. And that of course is beyond the press. ConHome: Well Soames: It is beyond the press. Its done because he feels he can no longer do it. But I think he did it in a very gauche way, and I shall be having words with him next time I see him. Hes my friend, but what he did is very regrettable. ConHome: What do you think about Boris joining the Soames: I love Boris. Hes a great friend of mine. When Boris wrote that book about my grandfather [Winston Churchill], I think he did a brilliant job. I love him for everything that he is, and I love him for his failings as well as his triumphs. I deeply regret the fact that hes jumped ship. I know for a fact hes not an Outer, because he told me, and I think that he went through agony to come to this decision, and thats his look-out, but I spoke to him, actually from the carpark at Ascot Race Course, where I was about to go and enjoy a nice days steeplechasing, and it was on the day before he announced, he announced on the Sunday, and he was under great personal pressure, and he said You dont know how awful this is, and Im not Diogenes, Im afraid, I take people as they say it, and I think he was under great pressure. And I think he came down on the wrong side. Another subject occurred to Soames: Im terribly interested in ConservativeHome. I think its got very good journalists and I think it writes very well. But you keep banging on about the Conservative Party. Now what is the Conservative Party? I dont know how many members its got. But I mean its tiny. Its absolutely minute. You show me how many parliamentary constituencies have more than 1,000 members. One, two? Ive got 500 members [in Mid Sussex], and Ive got a majority of 24,000. I do not believe I am in Parliament to govern for the Conservative Party. I am genuinely a One Nation Tory, always have been, and I wholly support the Prime Minister. What is the party? Its 200,000 very old people. ConHome: One hundred thousand, I think. Soames: OK, but the population of this country is 70 million. The Tory Party is not Britain. It is a political party. Im not dissing them, I love them, I grew up in it, and my own association are absolutely marvellous, theyve supported me through thick and thin, Ive never had a cross word with them ever, and I wouldnt be a Member of Parliament without them. But the idea that the whole of this thing were trying to do is about the Conservative Party is not true. Its about the nation. Thats what Im trying to say. This is going to read so badly. ConHome: No its not. Im interested in how worked up you are. Soames: I am worked up about it. Because I think we could throw away something really amazing. I think this is one of the great reforming governments in this country, and its got a long way to go. And suddenly one of the great architects and leaders of it has butted out, and Im really upset about that. ConHome: But you still look at some of the newspapers? Soames: I read them every day, but they just drive me to drink. The Daily Mails a fantastic newspaper, unbelievably successful. But I violently disagree with everything that it stands for, just about everything. And yet Im a staunch Conservative. But you look at a man like Dacre. Paul Dacre must be one of the greatest editors Fleet Streets had for years. Amazing man. Spends his whole life talking about fat cats. He had two boys at Eton! And he owns a deer forest in Argyllshire! How dare he! I cant stand the cant. Youre going to have fun with this, arent you. I just think the hypocrisy of the whole thing is rank, rank. ConHome: Have you recently started tweeting a lot more? Soamess tweets have a unique flavour, especially his hashtags: #wrongthingtodo, #steadyupkeepthefaith, #makethebestofit, #gatheryeroses, #infuriatingforpassengers. Soames: Do you know, I never tweeted until I had dinner with two of my favourite Members of Parliament, the wonderful Margot James and Karen Bradley, who is a Home Office minister. I find it a discipline, to have to say it in 140 letters. Brevity is a wonderful thing. I go sort of feast and famine on it. ConHome: On Sunday you retweeted something Thomas Aquinas said: Friendship is the source of the greatest pleasures, and without friends even the most agreeable pursuits become tedious.' Soames: Friendships matter very much in the House of Commons. And thats why I think its a pity in our own party, you know when I came here [in 1983], we were all much closer together, much more bound together even if we disagreed. We all tended to pull together. The Chancellor went to the 22 last Wednesday, after the Budget, and I shouldnt think there were 60 people there. Im not sure whether its because so few of them have been in the Army [in which Soames served as a young man]. When I joined there were still in the Whips Office two people whod been ashore on D-Day. ConHome: Europe you obviously care very deeply about. Soames: Yes I do. ConHome: The comparison with the 1975 referendum is interesting. Not many people now speak of Europe as a noble cause, which some of the war generation did. Soames: Will you let me give you a copy of the speech I made in the European Affairs debate? That says it all. Our whole political discourse no longer carries any reference to what went before. And I grew up in an era, and in a household, where history mattered and where it was a beacon and a reference point for how you went forward. It is so historically important for Britain to be part of the European Union. Europe is so much more than milk and money. I know how irritating it is, and I know in parts how badly run it is. I know all of that. Again Soames leapt to another aspect of the subject: I think its very important the American President coming here. Im ashamed that Liam Fox should have thought it necessary to write to the American ambassador, as if the President of the United States will breach the constitutional niceties. I hope that when the American President comes here he will make plain the views of the American Administration on what they believe to be good for security in western Europe, and peace, and prosperity. He has every right to say so, and I commend to you John McCains statement a man whom Liam Fox regards as a hero, on the hard right of the Republican Party, absolutely adamant that Britain has to stay. This is the single most important political decision thats going to be taken in my lifetime. Im coming to the end of my political life [Soames is 68], and I am going to do whatever I can to hopefully persuade my fellow citizens that they must vote to stay in the European Union, even if they have to hold their nose doing so. ConHome: Was it a mistake to have this referendum? Soames: Well what is the point in giving a hostage to fortune when you dont need to? ConHome: Well Cameron probably did need to. Soames: There are two ways in my view to deal with this. If you have an Alsatian sitting in front of you, and it growls at you and bares its teeth, there are two ways of dealing with it. You can pat it on the head, in which case itll bite you, or you can kick it really hard in the balls, in which case itll run away. Successive Prime Ministers, and its not the present Prime Minister alone, have never understood that they have to take these people on, and that if you really believe that Europe is Britains destiny, and we have to be part of the European Union, then you should always say so. ConHome: If when he gave that Bloomberg speech Soames: I thought the Bloomberg speech was absolutely excellent. ConHome: It wasnt exactly kicking the Alsatian in the balls. Soames: No it wasnt. But I thought it was a bloody good speech. It had a construction, an architecture and a plan. But we got off the plan a bit. ConHome: Well the plan was to say to the Eurosceptics, look, you can have your referendum, but Im going to win it Incidentally, how do you feel about being the centrepiece of a satirical column on ConHome? Soames: Oh well I adore Reggie. No, no, no, I regard it as a tremendous honour. I dont think Ive ever been mentioned on ConservativeHome except in his column. As Soames rushed off to the Chamber, he offered a final thought about the IDS affair: I am quite confident that such is the attention span of the press, which makes a gnat look like an intellectual giant, that within a week you will have moved on. Meanwhile, this is the story, and it is a minor bump in the road of delivery of this great programme of reform. Political capital really is like personal capital in that it can grow and shrink. George Osborne lost a bit of it when he shelved pension reform pre-Budget, and quite a bit earlier when he ditched tax credit savings last autumn. His mother of all differences with Iain Duncan Smith has lost him more still. Contrast the Chancellors balance in the political bank with Stephen Crabbs. The new Work and Pensions Secretary has been quietly building his reputation in Wales, where he helped to gain the Party seats last May. David Cameron and Osborne needed him to escape from the Personal Indepence Payment imbroglio. The promotion represented a further uptick on his account. And so it is that Crabb was able to announce yesterday not only that the PIP savings have been shelved, but that there will be no compensating reductions elsewhere in the Work and Pensions budget. (Well, strictly speaking the formal position is that there are no plans for such savings, but the practical effect appears to be the same.) So theres now a hole in Osbornes Budget bucket worth 4.4 billion. ConservativeHome readers scarcely need me to point out that if this accomodation had been reached last week, Iain Duncan Smith wouldnt have felt he had to resign in the first place. The whole business has had all the rationality of a complimentary exchange between Arsenal and Spurs fans before a particularly tasty derby. There have been jokes in the press about crabs moving sideways but this one moving upwards. Yesterday, he inched forwards. This Remain-backing-social-justice-supporting-son-of-a-single-mum-raised-in-a-council house has acted from a position of strength. There is a Crab the dog in Two Gentlemen of Verona who joins three or four gentlemanlike dogs under the dukes table. The Work and Pensions Secretary may identity with this canine figure. He had not been there a pissing while, says his owner, but all the chamber smelt him. I will lower the tone further by pointing out that Crabb is not outside the tent pissing in but inside the tent pissing out. In this respect as in some others, his position is different from his predecessors. It sometimes happens after a family row that no-one can remember afterwards what it was all about. That might just be the position now despite the loss of a former Party leader and reforming Cabinet Minister were it not for the interplay between policy differences, a small Commons majority and the EU referendum. Cameron should send for Michael Gove to help steady the ship, but will instead negotiate the iceberg-laden waters as before, or try to. Who was right and who was wrong? I have a lot of sympathy for Duncan Smith over the way what was done was done, but some too for Osborne because what was done needed to be done or something like it, anyway. There is no case for simply letting the PIP budget rip. Of course, when I say what was done, I mean what now will not be done. It is no use supporting deficit reduction on paper but opposing every plan to reduce it in practice. Close An ex-health director of Brown County in Wisconsin is among the latest who have reported health problems related to wind power. According to a USA Today report, Chua Xiong claimed in an email that she gets migraine headaches when she visits Duke Energy's Shirley Wind Farm. Her revelation came just as developers are eyeing more high-profile wind farm projects in Wisconsin. Xiong has since retired. Brown County Citizens for Responsible Wind Energy (BCCRWE) claims that the email, sent by Xiong to an intern on Nov. 21, is further proof that the low-frequency sound from wind turbines caused some residents to suffer from health problems. However, Xiong later stated the following month that there isn't sufficient evidence to link the turbines to the migraine. That caused the BCCRWE to claim that Xiong made the statement in order to avoid litigation with Duke Energy, and that her inaction will result in the prolonged daily suffering of Brown County residents. There are a long line of reports that wind turbines are causing health problems to those who live nearby. In an article published by National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) entitled "Adverse health effects of industrial wind turbines", it was reported that people who live or work near industrial wind turbines have experienced decreased quality of life, annoyance, stress, sleep disturbance, headache, anxiety, depression, and cognitive dysfunction. Suggested causes of symptoms include a combination of wind turbine noise, infrasound, dirty electricity, ground current, and shadow flicker. In a 2009 article by The Telegraph, a New York paediatrician, Dr Nina Pierpont, identified about 12 different health problems associated with WTS that range from tachycardia [abnormal heart beat], sleep disturbance, headaches, tinnitus, nausea, visual blurring, panic attacks with sensations of internal quivering to more general irritability. She said that the vibration and noise emitted by wind turbines can produce a range of symptoms which she has named "Wind Turbine Syndrome" or WTS. Pierpont observed that the illnesses associated with WTS would disappear when the person moves away from the wind turbines. She said she expected that the wind industry would try to discredit and disparage her for the statements. See Now: What Republicans Don't Want You To Know About Obamacare Another Journalist Arrested In Chhattisgarh By Countercurrents.org 22 March, 2016 Countercurrents.org Police high handedness against human rights activists and journalists continue in Chhattisgarh. In the latest incident the police picked up journalist Prabhat Singh working with Patrika. He earlier worked with etv from Dantewada. Yesterday morning he posted on Facebook how Inspector General Of Police Bastar Range Srp Kalluri crafted his ouster from ETV. Dantewada SP denied any such act carried out by Dantewada police. He said direct action was taken by Jagdalpur (Bastar) police. The arrest of Prabhat Singh comes after a series of attack on democratic organisations, activists and journalists in the state. On 20th February, Soni Sori was attacked with an acid like substance. The Jagdalpur Legal Aid group (Jaglag), currently consisting of lawyers Shalini Gera and Isha Khandelwal were also hounded out of Jagdalpur on the 20th night, an hour before Soni Sori was attacked. Their landlord was picked up and detained in the police station and under threat asked them to vacate their house and office. Jaglag has been providing legal aid to adivasi prisoners under trial in the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh since 2013. For the past year and a half, both lawyers were being hounded by the local police. They have been faced with thinly veiled threats at press conferences insinuating that the police are closely monitoring NGOs providing "legal aid to Naxalites". Their clients have been informed that the police are about to arrest them for Naxalite activities. Visiting journalists and researchers have been told that they are a "Naxalite front. The local Bar Association, clearly prompted by the police, took out a resolution on October 3rd 2015 prohibiting them from practicing in the local courts. On their complaint, the State Bar Council of Chhattisgarh passed an interim order allowing them to practice again. Bela Bhatia, an independent researcher, living in Bastar has similarly been working with Soni Sori and Jaglag on documenting and filing cases of human rights violations and peoples livelihoods. She has also been collecting information on the systematic use of violence by armed personnel and security forces. Bela Bhatia has also been threatened and her landlord is being found for questioning. Ex-Salwa Judum members, under the banner of Samajik Ekta Manch and groups such as the Naxal Pedit Sangharsh Samiti have threatened her along with Jaglag and Soni Sori. Malini Subramanium, an independent journalist, reporting on issues in Chhattisgarh including the closing down of schools, women and children, brutal violence by security forces against the adivasis, fake encounters and surrenders in the Bastar. The domestic worker in Malinis house was called and kept in the police station till late at night to terrorize her into implicating the journalist of being Naxalite. Her landlord was similarly threatened by the police into asking her to vacate the house. Malini, fearing for the safety of those who have always stood by her, left Jagdalpur on 19thFebruary. US Presidential Candidates Give Warmongering Speeches Backing Israel At AIPAC Conference By Barry Grey 22 March, 2016 WSWS.org Four of the five candidates for the Democratic and Republican presidential nominations sought to outdo one another in pledging unqualified support for Israel and issuing threats against Iran and its allies in appearances Monday before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the most powerful pro-Israel lobby in the US. All three Republican candidates spoke at the Washington DC event, as well as the Democratic front-runner, Hillary Clinton. Her Democratic opponent, Bernie Sanders, skipped the event to campaign in western states holding primary contests on Tuesday. Clinton delivered a bellicose speech pledging to step up US support for Israel and threatening war against Iran. She went out of her way to satisfy the most diehard defenders of the Israeli state and its brutally repressive policies against the Palestinian people, with the possible exception of those openly fascistic elements who call for the expulsion of the Arabs from a Greater Israel. She used her appearance before AIPAC to attack Republican front-runner Donald Trump for having suggested that he would serve as a neutral broker in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. We need steady hands, she declared, not a president who says hes neutral on Monday, pro-Israel on Tuesday, and who knows what on Wednesday, because everythings negotiable. Well, my friends, Israels security is non-negotiable. Clinton also implicitly distanced herself from the Obama White House, whose relations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu have been tense, reaching a near-breaking point over the nuclear accord with Iran promoted by the US president. We will never allow Israels adversaries to think a wedge can be driven between us, she told the cheering audience. Promising, if elected in November, to take the US alliance with Israel to a new level, Clinton called for increased military aid and closer economic links with the Zionist state. She denounced Palestinian terror attacks on Israelis while making no mention of the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have been killed and wounded in the Israeli wars, bombings, targeted assassinations and deadly acts of repression, including the 2014 invasion of Gaza that killed over 2,300 Palestinians, the vast majority of them civilians. She equated criticism of Israeli war crimes with anti-Semitism and implicitly backed efforts by Zionist and pro-Israel organizations to ban anti-Israel protests on US college campuses. Clinton cited three evolving threats to Israeli security: Irans continued aggression, a rising tide of extremism across a wide arc of instability, and the growing effort to delegitimize Israel on the world stage. To combat these dangers, she declared, The United States and Israel must be closer than ever, stronger than ever, and more determined than ever to prevail against our common adversaries While giving Israeli leaders political amnesty for their murderous attacks on Palestinians and Arabs in neighboring countries, Clinton accused the leadership of the Palestinian Authority of complicity in the recent rash of stabbings and other individual attacks on Israelis. These attacks must end immediately, she said. And Palestinian leaders need to stop inciting violence, stop celebrating terrorists as martyrs and stop paying rewards to their families. This is the same person, it should be recalled, who as First Lady met with the wife of then-Palestinian Authority President Yasir Arafat in November of 1999 and kissed her on the cheek. At that time, Washington was heavily promoting the so-called peace process, the main purpose of which was to align the Palestine Liberation Organization with US imperialist interests in the Middle East and integrate its security forces with the Israeli military and intelligence apparatus. Even then, after an outcry from Israeli officials and US Zionists, Clinton turned around within hours and denounced Suha Arafat for making inflammatory statements about Israels use of poison gas against Palestinians. On the military/security front, Clinton called Monday for a quick conclusion to negotiations on a new ten-year US-Israel defense memorandum of understanding, adding that as president she would make a firm commitment to ensure Israel maintains its qualitative military edge. She urged the US to provide Israel with the most sophisticated defense technology, including new missile defense systems such as the Arrow Three and Davids Sling. In regard to anti-Zionist protests on US campuses, Clinton lined up squarely behind the Israel lobby and its near-universal support within the US political establishment. She denounced the campaign for a boycott of Israeli academics from the right, branding it as anti-Semitic. Particularly at a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise across the world, especially in Europe, she declared, we must repudiate all efforts to malign, isolate and undermine Israel and the Jewish people. She went on to accuse supporters of the boycott campaign of attempting to silence and bully pro-Israel students. Clinton reserved her most belligerent remarks for Iran. While defending her support for the nuclear accord sponsored by the Obama administration, Clinton pledged to respond to even the smallest Iranian violation of its terms, including through the reimposition of all the sanctions and with force if necessary. She went on to call for additional sanctions in response to Irans recent missile launchings and demanded that the European Union brand the Iran-allied Hezbollah movement in Lebanon a terrorist organization. After promising to expand the war against ISIS, Clinton somewhat apologetically declared her support for a resumption of negotiations for a so-called two state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. She signaled that any such agreement would have to be on Israels terms, saying she would vigorously oppose any attempt by outside parties to impose a solution, including the UN Security Council. Trump devoted almost his entire speech to denouncing the nuclear accord with Iran and pledging to dismantle it and stand up to Irans aggressive push to destabilize and dominate the region. He went on to denounce the United Nations and the Obama administration for treating Israel like a second-class citizen, promised to veto any Middle East agreement drawn up by the UN, and concluded that as president he would move the US embassy to the eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem. The speeches of all of the presidential candidates make clear that what is being prepared after the November elections is an escalation of war in the Middle East and beyond. End The Harassment And Intimidation Of Soni Sori, Lingaram Kodopi And Others: IndiaMattersUK By IndiaMattersUK 22 March, 2016 Countercurrents.org IndiaMattersUK calls on the Chhattisgarh Government in India and the states police, in particular Inspector General (IG) of Police Bastar Range SRP Kalluri, to end the harassment and intimidation of Lingaram Kodopi, Soni Sori and other victims of violation and abuse and guarantee their safety. On 20thFebruary, 2016, Soni Sori, an Adivasi (indigenous people) school teacher turned social justice campaigner in Chhattisgarh, India, was attacked with a corrosive chemical substance that was rubbed onto her eyes and face to blind and disfigure her. This attack occurred in the Bastar district of Chhattisgarh state as she was about to file a complaint against the IG of Police, Bastar Range, SRP Kalluri for atrocities committed by the IG and his forces against indigenous people in the state. Soni Sori was previously brutally tortured and sexually assaulted whilst in police custody. Soni Sori, and her nephew Lingaram Kodopi, a journalist and human rights activist, have raised their voices against violations such as rape of women, pillage and burning of houses and killings of villagers in fake encounters in the state. As a result, both have been imprisoned in the past and have been continuously harassed by the police. In 2011, Amnesty International in a public statement declared Soni Sori and Lingaram Kodopi as Prisoners of Conscience and demanded their unconditional release[1]. Since February 2016, the Chhattisgarh police have sought to frame Lingaram, along with other members of Sonis family, as having been behind the latest attack on Soni Sori. The constant targeting of the family by the state machinery has driven Lingaram to despair. Lingaram has publicly declared that he will end his own life on 23rd March (Martyrs day in India). This Statement calls on Chhattisgarh State Government and police, in particular IG Kalluri, to end the harassment and intimidation of Lingaram Kodopi, Soni Sori and others and declares that the Chhattisgarh government and the state police will be responsible for any untoward actions or incidents that affect Lingarams wellbeing. Why are Soni Sori, Lingaram and many others being harassed and tortured by the police? India's economic boom based on mining and industrialisation in states like Chhattisgarh, Odisha and Jharkhand has led to large-scale deforestation, displacement and loss of livelihood for the local populations, the majority being indigenous 'Adivasi' communities. Local people are innocently caught in the crossfire of war between the state and mining corporations on one side, and the Maoists groups, who are active in the area, on the other. As a result young men and women in villages have been experiencing harassments, illegal detention, rape and torture by the police and paramilitary forces and their associates. A number of social and political activists and human rights defenders in Chhattisgarh, including Dr Binayak Sen, have been imprisoned for highlighting the human rights violations in the state. In sharp contrast, police officers orchestrating such violations are awarded medals by the Indian government. Ankit Garg, Superintendent of Police of Dantewada, received the Police Medal for Gallantry on Indias Republic Day 2012. A few months before, on 8th October 2011, Ankit Garg witnessed and was responsible for ordering the electric shock treatment and sexual assault on Soni Sori whilst in police custody. SRP Kalluri, known for various crimes such as ordering rape in custody, killings in fake encounters, was awarded the Presidents Police Medal for Meritorious Services on the same occasion in 2013. Further info: Soni Sori and Lingaram Kodopi If Adivasi resistance in the warzone of Chhattisgarh in Indias tribal belt has faces and names, they are that of Soni Sori and Lingaram Kodopi. Lingarams story, however, remains little known, yet he has been and remains Soni Soris ultimate and indispensable confidant and support. We know all too well that a tried and tested tactic of state attempts to obliterate adivasi dissent, which has been gaining power and momentum since organised attempts at mass mobilisation by the local Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Soni Sori, exposing gross human rights violations together with the journalism of Lingaram Kodopi and via critical legal aid and representation by the Jagdalpur Legal Aid Group. Lingaram Kodopi is a fearless and talented journalist, exposing gross atrocities against Adivasi people in the state where there is total breakdown of state accountability. Inspired by the ideas and actions of people such as Che Guvera, Nelson Mandela and Dr Bhimrao Ambedkar, and with a sharp, questioning and investigative mind, Lingaram is a rare breed in the state of Chhattisgarh where Adivasis are systematically and violently denied access to education, among other fundamental rights. His primary crime against the State is his understanding and assertion of Adivasi rights; as Javed Iqbal wrote, Lingaram wants to help the Adivasis, his own people, which means to ensure them a fair stake in their forests, their lands, and their rights, which is completely against the policies of the Chhattisgarh government. That alone is a crime. That alone, makes him a Maoist sympathiser[2]. In 2009 Lingaram Kodopi was held by police in Dantewada district with the intention to pressurise him into becoming a Special Police Officer (SPO). Later in April 2010, he participated in the 'Independent Peoples Tribunal on land acquisition, resource grab and operation Green Hunt' in New Delhi and recounted his experiences at the hands of the Chhattisgarh police force. After studying journalism, Lingaram documented police and paramilitary atrocities including recording the accounts of villagers whose homes were burned and razed to rubble in a three-day police operation in March 2011. In September 2011, Lingaram was arrested and charged with sedition, waging war against the state and for anti-state activities under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act and the Chhattisgarh Public Security Act and was (falsely) accused of organising an attack against a local politician in 2010 and for supporting a money exchange between local Maoists and a staff member of a steel company that planned to do business in the Maoist-controlled area. What had been Lingarams real so-called crime? In April 2011 he video documented and exposed how the police had destroyed three Adivasi villages during an anti-Maoist operation[3]. Lingaram has also consistently spoken out about state laundering of funds that were marked for welfare plans for tribals that never materialised. He has also unequivocally supported and advocated for other tribals who have been victims of state violence and repression. Lingarams situation is far from an aberration from what has been happening in Chhattisgarh since 2005, against the backdrop of Booming India that has resulted in over 7,000 Adivasis being been assaulted, raped, tortured and killed; more often than not having been branded as Maoists or Naxalites and implicated in false encounters with the police. Soni Sori, was attacked on 20th February with an acid-like substance and was subsequently told that her daughter awaited the same fate. Soni, however, is unrelenting in her commitment to exposing the annihilation of the Adivasi people by the state[4]. On 11th March, the threats took on even more overt and visible form when IG of Police SRP Kalluri himself told Lingaram that he would be framed as a Naxalite and be implicated in a false encounter. The Police have also been trying to frame Lingaram, along with other members of Sonis family, as having been behind the latest attack on Soni. In despair, as a result of these threats and constant hounding by the state machinery, Lingaram has declared that he will end his own life on 23rd March (Martyrs day in India). He told the Times of India, "Let me decide the date of my death myself. I won't allow Bastar IG to decide that. It's better to kill yourself instead of being shot at by police's gun who would consider me a Maoist or attacker of my own aunt."[5] There is a vital and urgent need to get this story out. The battle that Soni Sori and Lingaram are fighting takes place in Chhattisgarh, Indias tribal belt, which is nothing short of a banana republic. With the rampant crackdown on dissent taking place in India today (i.e. Hyderabad University and Delhis JNU), the already dire prospects for any accountability and Rule of Law in Chhattisgarh are growing ever more bleak. Key links Lingaram Kodopi Who is Lingaram Kodopi? Kractactivist https://kractivist.wordpress.com/political-prisoners-2/lingaram-kodopi/ Soni Sori's nephew Lingaram alleges police pressure, threatens to end his life on March 23 Times of India http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/raipur/Soni-Soris-nephew-Lingaram-alleges-police-pressure-threatens-to-end-his-life-on-March-2/articleshow/51366981.cms?from=mdr India Journalist Lingaram Kodopi released on bail Committee for the Protection of Journalists https://cpj.org/2013/11/indian-journalist-lingaram-kodopi-released-on-bail.php The curious case of Lingaram Kodopi DNA India - http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column-javed-iqbal-the-curious-case-of-lingaram-kodopi-1591574 Soni Sori Soni Sori says its time for the final battle The Hindu - http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/soni-sori-says-its-time-for-final-battle/article8343653.ece My face today is the face of Bastars fight The Hindu http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/my-face-today-is-the-face-of-bastars-fight-soni-sori/article8328898.ece Where every human rights activist is labelled a Maoist: Chhatisgarh https://sabrangindia.in/sabrangthemes/jangal-do-ya-phaansi?qt-view__themes__page=7#qt-view__themes__page [1] https://www.amnesty.org/en/press-releases/2013/08/release-prisoners-conscience-soni-sori-and-lingaram-kodopi/ [2] http://www.dnaindia.com/analysis/column-javed-iqbal-the-curious-case-of-lingaram-kodopi-1591574 [3] https://youtu.be/LR4BdBWoPC0 [4] http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/other-states/my-face-today-is-the-face-of-bastars-fight-soni-sori/article8328898.ece [5] http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/raipur/Soni-Soris-nephew-Lingaram-alleges-police-pressure-threatens-to-end-his-life-on-March-2/articleshow/51366981.cms?from=mdr lndia Matters UK (lMUK) is a coalition of academics, lawyers, students, activists, media personnel and individuals who are deeply concerned about the increasing and unacceptable levels of state repression and diminishing democratic spaces, intolerance and disregard for Rule of Law in lndia today. lMUK aims to raise local and international awareness about state policies and practices of targeted violence and vigilantism against Adivasis (indigenous populations), Dalits (marginalised castes), Muslims, women, doctors, scientists, intellectuals, media personnel, nationalities (diverse ethnic, linguistic, religious and cultural groups). Working in coalition with other individuals and groups, lMUK is committed to help bring about effective international responses to developments and issues of concern in India and to promote the goal of the Indian Constitution - to secure all its citizens, justice: social, economic and political. lMUK will share and compile factual evidence and reports through public meetings and screenings; lobby politicians, experts and professionals and relevant people in the UK and also internationally; and offer support and solidarity to individuals and groups in India who are victims of state violence and abuse. lf these issues in India today matter to you, please contact us at: infoindiamattersuk@gmail.com The Tree That Replaced Auschwitz: Latehar And Signs Of Our Times By Mithilesh Kumar 22 March, 2016 Countercurrents.org When human beings were pushed into a soon to be sealed chamber and gassed in the concentration camp of Auschwitz they scratched the cold, hard, thick walls with their nails. Who knows what they were trying to do? Leaving a mark that once they were alive too, also a human being. Or did they think that by sheer force of human will they could scratch the wall out and free themselves. Maybe it was utter desperation, maybe it was utter hope. Maybe more tragically, it was both at the same time. As I looked at the picture of Latehar Killings I was taken back to what I have read about Auschwitz and seen in the pictures. I was wondering when I saw the pictures of two human beings (one just a 12 year old boy) hung from a tree what had they to scratch to tell their story of torture and murder. The setting was diametrically opposite from that of the gas chamber. There were open fields and the lone tree on which this once-living bodies hung. It was not Auschwitz but it was equally, if not more, efficient in achieving the desired result which the camp set out to do. The tree had replaced Auschwitz. There is now no more need of a camp. No more laying of the logistical apparatus of killing. The bureaucracy of citizen killing has been replaced by a form of free competition of butchery. The entire country has not been turned into a concentration camp. Camp would mean something which is stationary even if for a short time. A day, a month, years. Auschwitz camped from 1940 to 1945. It involved infrastructure, bureaucrats, doctors, army; an ensemble of state apparatus. Also gas. Even that must have cost money. Latehar might have lasted for just a few minutes. How many Latehars have we seen already and how many bodies have passed in front of our eyes? Do the math and tell me which one is more efficient and cost-effective? Everything is being contractualized and outsourced then why not the scientific extermination of people. Like everyone else, I am trying to make sense of Latehar Killings. It has been variously called lynching, mob violence etc. I humbly disagree. Lynching and mob violence has an element of spontaneity, something devilishly elemental. This, on the other hand, was as cold as death. The calculation must have been precise and the chilling thing is that it becoming more and more precise with each incident. Compare Dadri to Latehar. If you are of a certain age in India hanging bodies from a tree is not a new thing that you would have witnessed. Sometimes the images came from abroad. Najibullah might still ring a bell. Then there was Badaun. The list could go on. I want to find a pattern here to make some sense. Maybe there is something to it. I am also making sense in a more autobiographical way. One of the alleged murderer in Latehar shares my first name: Mithilesh. I have lived my entire childhood in Jharkhand. I have been to Latehar. I lived in Khunti, Hazaribagh, Jamshedpur, and Ranchi in that order. I was in Khunti when a certain charioteer was arrested in Samastipur. That was the moment. A moment when a child of 10 could make the difference between one religion and the other and that the other is actually an alien. Needs to be driven out. It is a knowledge after which there is no forgiveness. Who knows what this Mithilesh who has been arrested for the alleged murder was doing on 23rd October 1990? But our fates, as it were, sealed that day. And maybe just here I could make some sense, not of the killing per se but of the planning and the politics of it. I must also add that this was precisely the time I heard the word Fascism apart from Scud Missiles, Patriot Missiles, Kuwait and a little later Sarajevo. I also for the first time saw on the pages of The Hindu (I think) a young couple kissing while a city was being bombed by NATO. These images are compressed in my memory but I hope it makes a point and I urge the reader to send me a copy of that picture if they find it. I have been looking all these years. But this is a digression. The recent events need not be mentioned here as we all know it. One word which has come to be used to describe our times is Fascism. It is a useful term to think of our times after all it is the most odious form of state arrangement human civilization has yet seen. But it is my submission that we will be missing something important if we start looking for correspondence between the Fascism of yore and what is happening now. This is one thing which I think has been missing or not dealt enough in our analysis. We began with Auschwitz so let us dwell on it a bit. The Fuhrer wanted the Jews, in toto, to be exterminated. That was the final solution he was so assiduously seeking. For him there was no Good Jew or a Bad Jew. Being a Jew was enough. Not so now. One has to bow down on the altars of state and non-state power and prove that one is a good Muslim, a good Dalit or even a good Marxist-Leninist to escape punishment. All else is bad. The Fuhrer mobilized one against the other. But the one and the other were homogeneous. The Aryan and the Jew. What the modern leader seeks is to fracture the society at every point of identity. It will be fractured even, say among, Dalits and Adivasis. There will be concerted attempts to woo a section of these oppressed peoples. A wedge is then driven. This is micro-managing conflicts or rather micro-manipulating conflicts. It is not only Hindu and non-Hindu but if one looks closely the schism is sought to be created on every available identities. It is also not divide and rule. That is too crude an instrument for the rulers now. It is centralizing power through decentralization. It is mobilization by fragmentation. It is an inelegant phrase but it will have to do for now. It is precisely because of such decentralization that the camp is becoming increasingly unnecessary if not totally redundant. There will always be a need for a prison or an Abu Ghraib to concentrate the centrality of power. With this fragmentary mobilization comes a new technology of killing. We do not need a bumbling bureaucrat of an Eichmann. Each file he had to push has now transmuted itself into a human capable of killing those who have been identified as enemies. The bureaucracy of killing is not needed. Bureaucracy leaves too much of a paper trail and can lead to trials as the governments have increasingly found out. The state, or at the least government, can be challenged and questions ask of it. Latehar will never lead to a file in a government department almost certainly. It is this informalization of killing by the state that is a new phenomenon. It is not giving up the monopoly of violence just networking and channelizing it differently. What it does then is that it makes every Latehar an issue of law and order. Even the progressive elements ask for the perpetrators to be arrested and punished. Law to be more assertive and punitive. We must be a little careful here for that is what the state wants too. A law punitive enough to discipline its subject closely and if possible to the point of the individual. Radical and emancipatory politics needs to come up with a vocabulary and politics to match this phenomenon. Finally, to the tree that has witnessed the killings, which became the instrument of killing. Auschwitz is now a museum that reminds us of the horrors humanity is capable of. That tree perhaps one day will be cut down or felled by lightning or by itself but it will always remind us in its anonymity that we are living in a time when we cant even erect a memorial for those innocent lives that have been massacred. There will be no nail marks. And maybe from this realization we have to learn new expressions, new vocabulary of resistance that strongly challenges the state that has failed its citizens. Mithilesh Kumar is a PhD Candidate at Western Sydney University, Australia. His interest is in the issues of logistics, migration and labour, political philosophy and theory. He wants to work on the nature, evolution and innovation of the Indian state with respect to social and political movements in India. Email: kmithilesh@hotmail.com SHARE By Susan Orr of the Courier and Press Did a group of Vectren employees fall victim to deception, or did they just make a bad financial choice? The answer will determine whether a civil suit against the Evansville-based company can go forward. The case a dispute over retirement benefits involves a group of 17 current and former Vectren employees who filed suit against the company in March 2015. In U.S. District Court in Evansville on Monday, Judge Richard Young met with attorneys for both parties to ask some questions about the case. "This is a complex factual scenario here," Young said. The case has its roots in 2000, when Southern Indiana Gas and Electric Co., or SIGECO, became a Vectren subsidiary. At that time, Vectren offered SIGECO employees the option to continue with SIGECO's defined-benefit retirement plan or switch to a cash-balance plan. In their suit, the plaintiffs allege that Vectren misled them about the plans, leading them to choose the cash-balance plan when they would have done better to stick with the defined-benefit plan. In a subsequent filing, Vectren argued that the six-year statute of limitations to file a claim had run out, and it asked the court to enter a summary judgment in its favor. In response, the plaintiffs' attorneys argued that the statute of limitations should not apply in this case because Vectren actively sought to deceive its employees. This argument whether or not Vectren engaged in deception was the focus of Monday's oral arguments. "There's an egregious failure to provide accurate information to the plaintiffs," plaintiffs' attorney Todd Barsumian told Young. Barsumian referenced a study that Vectren commissioned in the 1990s as it sought to reduce its pension costs. According to that study, Barsumian said, Vectren learned most of its employees would be worse off financially under a cash-balance plan. But Vectren told employees that the cash balance plan would be as good or better than the SIGECO plan, Barsumian said. This, Barsumian said, was "an affirmative act of concealment" on Vectren's part. Employees did not learn of the disparity between the plans until a 2013 meeting on retirement benefits, he said. Attorney Andrew Miroff, who is representing Vectren, offered a different version of events. Vectren clearly communicated to employees that they had a choice to make, and that individual situations would vary based on various factors. Employees were also urged to seek outside financial advice before making their decision, Miroff said. Miroff also said Vectren offered a choice even though it was not legally required to do so. The company would have been within its rights to move all employees to the cash-balance plan, he said. "If there was this sinister plan, they (Vectren) wouldn't have offered a choice. They would have converted everyone over." Now, it is up to Young to decide whether the case will move forward. The judge has not said when he might make this decision. SHARE *** North High School senior Jacob Muller has been selected to perform as a member of the Colt's Drum & Bugle Corps of Dubuque, Iowa. Muller, a member of the corps brass section (trumpet line), is one of only 150 students selected for the position. The Colts, named "Iowa's Ambassadors of Music" by the Governor of Iowa, are an elite nationally-ranked, world-class competitive drum and bugle corps. They performed in the 2009 Presidential Inaugural Parade in Washington, D.C. To be selected, participants undergo a competitive audition process. As a member, Muller will travel with the Colts and perform throughout the summer, beginning Memorial Day weekend and concluding in mid-August. He will perform with the Colts in Evansville at the Drums on the Ohio DCI event this coming June. Tickets can be ordered at dci.com. He has been a four-year member of the North Green Brigade marching band and has performed in the EVSC Honors Band. After the summer tour ends in mid-August, he will be attending Indiana University where he plans to study finance. His parents are Aaron and Regina Muller. *** Ellen Gore of Newburgh was recently initiated into The Honor Society of Phi Kappa Phi, the nation's oldest and most selective collegiate honor society for all academic disciplines. She was initiated at The University of Findlay. *** Meghan Lasher of Evansville recently participated in the University of Findlay's musical theater production of "SMILE: The Musical," a story of a fictional California Young American Miss beauty pageant. UF students participated as cast members and/or as members of the production crew. *** Five students from the Evansville Vanderburgh School Corp. will be among approximately 5,000 high school students competing at the Business Professionals of America national conference May 5-9 in Boston. The following students have qualified to compete. The award they won at the state level and school is noted below. Delaney Pfeiffer, second in Graphic Design Promotion, Southern Indiana Career and Technical Center Maria Trimborn, second in Digital Publishing and seventh in Fundamental Desktop, North High School Alex Majors, third in Fundamentals of Web Design and fifth in SQL Database Fundamentals, North High School Donnie Croxton, second in Cyber Security, Central High School Matthew Parker, first in Computer Security, Reitz High School The students advanced to the national competition by competing against nearly 1,500 students at the state level in Indianapolis. To advance, students had to finish in the top two for teamed events, the top three for judged events and the top five for written or computer tests. SHARE Daniel Wooters By Shannon Hall of the Courier and Press The man who was shot and killed by Evansville Police last week after he stole an officers car may have been drunk, according to 911 audio. A TGI Fridays manager who spoke to 911 operators before the incident on March 15 said Daniel Wooters, 38, started to threaten customers after the manager cut Wooters off from buying any more drinks. I asked him to leave because he was trying to smell my servers hair and was making several of our guests uncomfortable, the manager said, according to the 911 recording obtained by the Courier & Press. In the call, the TGI Fridays manager describes the man as white and wearing a dark jacket, blue shirt and jeans, and that he had a duffle bag. In another call, an unnamed mall security guard tells dispatch, We have a man at our TGI Fridays who is threatening to kill people. The call came in about 8:30 p.m. March 15. Wooters ended up leaving the property after Eastland Mall security came to TGI Fridays, but walked to the Fifth-Third Bank parking lot near the Eastland Mall. A witness in the parking lot told police that Wooters looked into his car before the witness told him to go away. Soon after, a uniformed officer driving a police cruiser approached Wooters in the parking lot. Thats when Wooters advanced on the officer with a knife, according to police. The officer distanced herself and Wooters climbed in the police car and drove west on Morgan Avenue. The female officer told police that the crusier didnt contain any additional weapons, according to dispatch recordings. Police Sgt. Jason Cullum said Wooters somehow damaged a front axle on the cruiser and lost control near the 3300 block of Morgan Avenue. He said Wooters then got out of the car and advanced toward pursuing officers with a knife. Three officers fired at Wooters and he dropped to the ground, according to police. Police identified them Monday evening. They are: Jason Thomas, 16 years of service; Zach Elfreich: 10 years of service; and Dexter Wolf, two years of service. The officers reportedly performed CPR until medical personnel arrived. Wooters was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. Wooters was listed as homeless but has family in Carbondale, Illinois, according to Vanderburgh County Chief Deputy Coroner Steve Lockyear. An autopsy was performed Wednesday. Lockyear said Wooters died of internal bleeding from multiple gunshot wounds to the chest. Lockyear said he wasnt able to say how many wounds Wooters had or where they were located until a final autopsy report, which would be finished in a 2-3 months. No officers were injured. The three officers involved in the shooting were placed on paid administrative leave, per Evansville Police Department policy. The Courier & Press filed requests for body camera and dash camera footage from the March 15 incident. The police department said the footage isnt available yet due to the ongoing investigation. Earlier in the night, dispatch received a call about 6:40 p.m. concerning a white man with a dark jacket and a dark shirt with short hair. A manager at Chilis, near Eastland Mall, told dispatchers that a man came in and asked to leave his duffle bag at one end of the restaurant and sat at the other end, according to the 911 calls. Police werent able to locate the man and are looking into the possibility that the man at Chilis was also Wooters. In August, Wooters was arrested and charged with public intoxication and disorderly conduct. He was drinking at bar and became belligerent, according to a probable cause affidavit. He started arguing and fighting with the manager, court documents state. Key moments in audio, per EPD: Sussex News Story Saved You can find this story in My Bookmarks. Or by navigating to the user icon in the top right. Network and cloud vendor Verizon has launched a new partner program in Australia, declaring that it wants to funnel 70 to 80 percent of sales through the channel within 12 months. My target for Australia is that same time next year I would like our indirect partner business to count for about 70 to 80 percent of our business, Verizon Asia-Pacific managing director for enterprise Australia, Japan and Korea, David Kim told CRN. Thats a bold statement in that were just launching [the partner program], but we see this as a significant market. Verizon, best known in Australia as a giant US telco, has provided mobile security, cloud, networking, Internet of Things and communications solutions both directly and to large multinational integrators in the past. However, a broader partner program was first launched in the USA in 2012 - a channel that has now grown to more than 1,300 partners. The partner program was then rolled out to Europe in 2014, with the Australian version launched this week. I think theres an opportunity for partners to leverage our relationships with existing clients, Kim said, referring to Verizons existing base of direct clientele. And maybe even expand that into the state and federal government sectors. Kim told CRN that the vendor intends to hire state-based channel managers to run the partner program, as well as building a [partner program] team across three cities: Sydney, Melbourne and Canberra. The Verizon partner program will have four tiers member, silver, gold and platinum with Sydney service provider DX Solutions announced as a foundation member. The combination of Verizons product capabilities and our market leading reputation, products and services, means we are able to offer a very compelling value proposition, said DX Solutions managing director Peter Yialas. Last month, Verizon shut down its public cloud platform after intense competitive pressure from the likes of AWS and Microsoft. The New York-headquartered vendor has more than 177,700 employees across the world. Networking News CRN Exclusive: Verizon Channel Chief Famularo Is Moving On, VP Schijns Set To Lead Carrier Channel Gina Narcisi Share this Verizon Enterprise Solutions' Channel Chief Adam Famularo is leaving the company effective April 1 to become the CEO of a software company, fulfilling a longtime personal goal. Famularo, who has headed up the global channel organization for the past 18 months, will be succeeded by Verizon Vice President Janet Schijns, a five-year Verizon channel veteran who is highly regarded by partners. "Verizon's channel partners are in good hands," said Verizon Senior Vice President of Global Sales George Fischer in a prepared statement. "Janet is well suited to lead the channel sales group. Her strong background in this arena, proven track record of excellence and close work with the channel sales team will further the strategy and drive expansion of our program." [Related: Verizon Launches First-Ever Distributor Program, Helps Partners Deepen Security Offerings] Famularo said he will formally hand over the reins as vice president of global channels to Schijns on April 1 and announce his next opportunity in early April. He told CRN that leaving the carrier was one of the hardest decisions he ever had to make. "This was a very hard move for me because Verizon is so dedicated to the channel with such a great leadership team. Me leaving at this time is in no way a reflection on Verizon," he said. Famularo has left the carrier in good hands by passing the channel baton to Schijns, said Bob Venero, CEO of Holbrook, N.Y.-based solution provider Future Tech, No. 232 on the CRN 2015 Solution Provider 500. "Janet knows the channel well and is very driven and motivated," he said. "There is no doubt that Adam's exit is is not going to hurt them in any way. In fact, he has set up Janet to continue to drive sales growth in the channel." Andrew Pryfogle, senior vice president of cloud transformation for Petaluma, Calif.-based Intelisys, a Verizon master agent that has experienced significant sales growth Verizon, said it has been "refreshing" to see the "enormous commitment" Verizon has made to the channel under Famularo. "We have been big fans of Adam," he said. "A lot of the credit for the channel gains at Verizon are a result of Adam's leadership. Janet Schijns is a respected and experienced leader in the channel and we are confident she can build on the success we are experiencing. We had a monster 2015 with Verizon and we are forecasting even bigger growth in 2016. We are confident that Verizon will stay the course on their commitment to the channel and we are bullish on our future together." Under Famularo, the Basking Ridge New Jersey based Verizon's partner program has flourished. Famularo has helped drive channel business and grow its agent channel by ten times alongside his team. The carrier also developed and introduced a resale channel model, a full public sector channel organization, as well as a distributor program under Famularo's command. "The leadership in Verizon are all strong believers in building out the channel business it was never just me," Famularo said. "By me jumping out and Janet jumping in, it won't change whatsoever." Schijns has been closely involved with the channel in her previous role with Verizon, so the transition between channel chiefs will be seamless, Verizon said. As vice president of enterprise marketing, Schijns worked on channel marketing, including marketing for Verizon's partner program. Schijns has been working directly with channel partners in helping to grow their business by selling Verizon's vast portfolio of services and products, the carrier said. Famularo has been working with Schijns for years on channel marketing. She also helped to build Verizon's initial agent program, he said. "[Schijns] is first and foremost a channel advocate," Famularo said. "Her team has always been my team that helped us build and develop the channel business the way it is today. She will be able to bring over her leadership attributes and pick up exactly where I left off." Verizon's message to partners during the transition is that the carrier doesn't plan on missing a beat, Famularo said. "Everything we are doing now in the channel, we expect it to go even faster under [Schijn's] leadership," he said. Steve Burke contributed to this story. Ransomware has been around since 2013, but it was the success of CryptoLocker that spawned a booming vertical market for criminals. Last week, as June came to a close, criminals leveraged the fear associated with the Petya ransomware family to create chaos across the globe. Last week's attack, dubbed NotPetya, masqueraded as a ransomware attack, but that wasn't the real goal. While the funds collected by the criminals have been retrieved, experts have determined that chaos was the ultimate goal. The attack started with M.E.Doc, a company that develops accounting software used by almost every company in Ukraine. In fact, early spread of NotPetya focused entirely on organizations in Ukraine and Russia. Authorities in Ukraine seized M.E.Doc servers on Wednesday, and are investigating the company over the global attack. The authorities say it was M.E.Doc's alleged poor security practices that enabled the attackers to leverage their software update process and push malicious code to the public. Putting M.E.Doc's security issues aside, the reason the NotPetya attack spread so quickly had a lot to do with a serious lack of security basics at the victim organizations and attacks like this should worry everyone working in the security space. But when it comes to ransomware alone (not chaos-driven attacks like NotPetya), most victims have a shared connection they lacked some essential security basics, and that's what this article will address. The effect of ransomware has been felt by organizations both large and small; each of them well aware of the risks associated with this type of malware. Some even had, what they assumed, were solid defenses against this type of attack - but their assumptions were wrong. Daniel Tharp, a government IT manager in New Mexico, recently published a blog post on Ransomware that's worth further examination. In it, he addresses the topic of ransomware as something that's here to stay and hammers home some essential practices that administrators can use to help defend their networks and users from the threat. "The trouble with ransomware right now is that it behaves like a standard application. It doesn't require local administrator privileges, it doesn't care if UAC is on, and most of them make use of the standard Windows API for encryption, which you can't disable without really messing up a workstation. So if we can't control the behaviors, we have to make do for controlling the vectors," Tharp said in an interview with Salted Hash. For example, there's a great Office ADMX template for disabling macros. The template kills the non-executable variants of Ransomware that are starting to gain in popularity among criminals. One of the reason such variants exist is because they load directly into RAM and bypass most restriction policies. Tharp's post lists a number of other protective steps; we've reproduced a few of them below. Avoid mapping your drives and hide your network shares. WNetOpenEnum() will not enumerate hidden shares. This is as simple as appending a $ to your share name. Work from the principle of least permission. Very few organizations need a share whereby the Everyone group has Full Control. Delegate write access only where its needed, dont allow them to change ownership of files unless its a must. Be vigilant and aggressive in blocking file extensions via email. If youre not blocking .js, .wsf, or scanning the contents of .zip files, youre not done. Consider screening ZIP files outright. Consider if you can abolish .doc and .rtf in favor of .docx which cannot contain macros. Install the old CryptoLocker Software Restriction Policies which will block some rootkit-based malware from working effectively. You can create a similar rule for %LocalAppData%\*.exe and %LocalAppData%\*\*.exe as well. It was pointed out in the Reddit comments, that if its at all feasible, run on a whitelist approach instead of a blacklist. Its more time-intensive but much safer. Backups. Having good, working, versionable, cold-store, tested backups makes this whole thing a minor irritation rather than a catastrophe. Even Windows Server Backup on a Wal-Mart External USB drive is better than nothing. Crashplan does unlimited versioned backups with unlimited retention at a flat rate, and theres a Linux agent as well. Hell, Dropbox does versioned backups. Get something. "I didn't make mention of it at all in the article, but some firewalls have the ability to block connections to known botnet servers," Tharp explained, "If that's not available, you can use DNS sinkholing to block connections to known bad domains. SANS released a tool to that end for Windows Server DNS and documentation for it here. This isn't enough on its own but answering this issue needs a multi-layered approach." He offered another tip for organizations that manage their shares with File Server Resource Manager. Those that do can set file screens. "You might want to add a screen like *decrypt*, one for *.locky, and look at the common names given for the decryption help instructions (e.g., help_your_files.txt for CryptoWall). FSRM can take action if a screened file is attempted to be written, which includes firing arbitrary commands. You could kill your LanManServer service, for example," Tharp said. It's possible that after seeing Tharp's list, some administrators will consider the information old news - and if so they're not wrong. But consider this, if these protections are dated why is ransomware still so effective? The gut reaction is to blame the user, and that's not wrong either. However, sometimes the user is always going to be a problem the trick is to expect an end user will eventually make a mistake and look for ways to limit exposure regardless of what they're doing. Tharp says he was taken to task by fellow administrators because some of the things he suggested were outdated, particularly the blacklist-based Software Restriction Policy. "In my defense, that was one point out of seven, but people have really pushed me to point out that a whitelist-based solution is better than a blacklist-based one. I don't disagree at all, but if you're an MSP with 150 clients that's a lot of R&D time to be billed," he said. "If you're managing one infrastructure you should certainly spend the time to work on an application whitelist. AppLocker is available in Enterprise versions of Windows and has some huge timesaving features, like the ability to allow certain signed publishers across the board. If you don't have AppLocker, working with Software Restriction Policies on a whitelist basis will also do what you need but with a bit more work." The point is that while some of these methods might seem old, they're still needed. They're the basics that most organizations are missing. Rather than using a layered approach, organizations rely on a mix of endpoint signature-based protections and awareness training. Teaching users is good, but it isn't a foolproof method of defense. "My last thought is that if the end-user is put in a position where they're my last line of defense to not open that attachment, to not click that ad, then I have failed them. Not to say that training is useless; we conduct security awareness training and are rolling out phishing testing, but the responsibility ultimately falls on my team to prevent them from ever being put in that position in the first place," Tharp said. "It's a team effort, but don't mistake it for being a 50/50 split of duties, it's something closer to 97/3. So, do everything you can to close the vectors of infection, and have those well-trained users represent your plan F, G, or H in mitigating this threat. Plans A through E are all on you." Ransomware infections are being reported consistently in the media these days. Anti-Virus can't stop these types of infections, because the vendors have a hard time keeping up with the latest variants. Adding fuel to the fire, because the latest generation of ransomware payloads are smaller scale and more focused, IDS/IPS protections do little to prohibit their spread as well. So the key is to use a layered approach like the one Tharp outlined. However, it's the existence of (current) tested backups, paired with a solid BC/DR plan that's going to make a world of difference in most cases. As part of the interview, Salted Hash asked Tharp to share some ransomware-based war stories, as they almost always make for a good lesson. His deliver as expected: "I did see it put a company out of business, we were called for the first time after the damage was done. Their antivirus didn't catch the Ransomware until it had finished encryption, and when it sprang into action, it not only deleted the virus but also the registry keys the virus created that contained the data on how to decrypt when payment was received. "You know the story, [the company] never tested their backups [and discovered that] backups hadn't run in five years. We had the AV vendor on the phone seeing if there was any way to un-quarantine the registry keys, no solution could be found. "On the other hand, an organization where users knew that their workstations were treated like disposable goods and put everything on the server, was hit. The file server did backups twice daily just with standard Windows Server Backup going to a $50 external hard drive. "That was all it took to have them operational again in hours. It doesn't have to be a gigantic expense to work from a reactive-only standpoint. Add on a cloud-backup solution that supports versioning and you at least don't have to worry about how you're going to figure out who you were supposed to bill for that order." Related video: Ransomware marketplaces and the future of malware The FBI has added the Syrian Electronic Army to their Cyber's Most Wanted list, placing Ahmad Umar Agha (Th3Pr0), Firas Dardar (th3shad0w) in the top two slots. A third person, Peter "Pierre" Romar, was also charged along side the others. The U.S. District Court of the Eastern District of Virginia has issued arrest warrants for all three defendants. Agha and Dardar were charged with criminal conspiracy relating to: engaging in a hoax regarding a terrorist attack; attempting to cause mutiny of the U.S. armed forces; illicit possession of authentication features; access device fraud; unauthorized access to, and damage of, computers; and unlawful access to stored communications. Romar faces similar charges. In a press release, the U.S. Department of Justice summarized the complaint: "The conspiracy was dedicated to spear-phishing and compromising the computer systems of the U.S. government, as well as international organizations, media organizations and other private-sector entities that the SEA deemed as having been antagonistic toward the Syrian Government. When the conspiracys spear-phishing efforts were successful, Agha and Dardar would allegedly use stolen usernames and passwords to deface websites, redirect domains to sites controlled or utilized by the conspiracy, steal email and hijack social media accounts." Romar acted as a middle-man in some cases, helping extortion victims funnel money to Dardar in order to avoid problems paying a Syrian bank due to regulatory sanctions. FBI The pro-Assad group has used their attacks against the White House, the Associated Press, CBS News, the Guardian, the New York Times, MelbourneIT, and others to spread propaganda for the Syrian leader and for personal gain. Their methods are simple, social engineering mostly, but once they have a foothold within an organization they are capable of wrecking havoc. Here at Salted Hash, there's a personal tie to the group, because IDG was one of the few reported attacks by the SEA that failed. In 2014, the SEA attempted to target IDG over a negative opinion piece that was slated to run. We fully documented the attack, and investigated the Phishing attempts to such a degree that we discovered the staging servers and additional victims. A full account of the SEA's attack against IDG can be viewed here. A few days after that story ran, we published a follow-up once The3Pr0 started to make threats. Since then, no further attacks have been detected. While adding the most public members of the group to the Most Wanted List is a big step for the FBI, the members of the group remain at-large in Syria. The odds of them being arrested and shipped to the United States for trial are slim at best, and that's unfortunate. BRIDGEPORT Its a thankless job, but somebody has to run the citys Republican Party. As of Tuesday that somebody is Mike Garrett. Garrett, a former mayoral contender and a member of the state central committee, was elected GOP chairman after John Slater decided four years was enough. I think its necessary, said Garrett, 65, of he decision to succeed Slater. When Theodore Roosevelt was president he was known as a trust buster. He fought against the evils of monopolies. In Bridgeport we have a monopoly a political monopoly. And no good can come of a monopoly. According to the Registrars of Voters, there are just 3,639 Republican voters in Bridgeport versus 42,543 Democrats and 15,551 unaffiliated voters. Im willing to step in and try to get this Republican Party to get competitive and to challenge and to keep honest the Democrats, Garrett said. Slater said that after four years, he wanted to focus on his job in finance. Mikes a great guy, Slater said. Hes always one of the very first people I go to for advice. Often the GOP chairman is the Republican voice in Bridgeport, though for the past two years the party had Enrique Torres on the otherwise Democratic-dominated City Council. Republicans had hoped the divisiveness of last years Democratic mayoral primary and Novembers general election would have helped Torres to become Bridgeports chief executive. But even under those conditions the GOP did not perform well. Torres lost both the mayors race and his council seat. This years focus will be the presidential race. Garrett admitted there may be an open national convention with none of the contenders obtaining 1,237 delegates. But he added specifically about controversial front-runner Donald Trump, I dont think Republican leaders should insert their will over the will of the people. If the people want a populist like Donald Trump, thats what they want, Garrett said. At this point in our history maybe thats the way to go. He sure has captured the imaginations of a lot of people. Thumbs up to the new guidelines issued last week by the national Center for Disease Control and Prevention for prescribing narcotic painkillers. The over-prescription of the highly addictive opioids is one factor in the growing epidemic of opioid and heroin overdose deaths in Connecticut and the country. The guidelines, which took two years to develop and were fought by drug companies, call for the use of alternative treatments for chronic pain and for the lowest possible dose not to exceed seven days when painkillers are needed. Treatment of cancer or end-of-life conditions are exempt. The 12 new guidelines are only recommendations, but we encourage doctors and dentists to follow them in hopes of preventing addictions or the risk of unused pills falling into the wrong hands. Thumbs up to the many inquisitive and skilled local middle and high school students who won awards Saturday for their projects at the Science and Engineering Fair at Quinnipiac University. Among first place winners in the physical science category were Christopher Popham of Greenwich, and Xiaotian Zhang and Arun Soni of Westport; second place winners included Martha Haddad of Danbury. In the life science category, first place awards went to Alexander Wada and Colin MacFadden of Greenwich, Analiese Seaman of New Fairfield who attends St. Gregory the Great in Danbury, Lasya Josyula of Danbury and Ashlinn Derleth of Trumbull and Christina diBenedetto of Stratford; and a second place to Sanju Sathish of Greenwich. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate STAMFORD A Newfield neighborhood is in shock and the family and friends of a 25-year-old cancer survivor are in mourning after the man was shot by two city police SWAT team members Monday night. Dylan Pape, a Norwalk Community College student, was killed Monday evening after police received a call from his familys Wedgemere Road home stating he was threatening harm with what police thought was a real gun, but turned out to be a fake. The cause of death was a gunshot wound to the abdomen, a spokeswoman for the State Medical Examiners office said late Tuesday afternoon. But, she added, the manner of death was suicide. The puzzling determination of the manner of death could mean Pape intentionally put himself in harms way, but neither the police nor the Chief States Attorneys Office would clarify the medical examiners ruling, except to confirm that Pape was shot by police. Until we can sit down with the state police and get further along in the investigation, we cant say more about it, Stamford Assistant Police Chief James Matheny said. The Western District Major Crime Squad of Connecticut State Police is investigating the shooting. The two Stamford officers, who were not immediately identified, have been placed on modified duty. It was an abrupt end to a promising life for a young man who aspired to a career in health care after surviving childhood cancer. Pape was a 2008 graduate of Stamford High School and a year later enrolled in Norwalk Community Colleges nursing program while receiving scholarships from The Susan Fund, which provides financial and emotional support to childhood cancer survivors. His cancer experience has shaped the focus of his life, stated Papes 2011 biography on the Susan Funds website. He enjoys interacting with people and feels that he has developed a deep compassion for others. His reference noted that Dylan exemplifies the courage and determination of scholarship honorees. Pape, who was still enrolled at NCC, also worked part-time jobs, including in a dermatologists office and at Norwalk Hospital, according to the Susan Fund. He was most recently employed at Astacio Plumbing & Heating in Stamford, whose owner, Richard Astacio, joined the dozens of family and friends expressing grief on social media as news of Papes death spread. I pray for peace and mercy for the Pape family, Astacio wrote on Facebook. Pape was also active in cancer charities, joining the Susan Fund team in the Connecticut Challenge Bike Ride and Stamford Hospitals annual Hope in Motion event. He was the younger brother of former Trinity Catholic High School basketball standout Amanda Pape, who went on to lead the Sacred Heart University womens basketball team and was inducted into the Fairfield County Hall of Fame. Pape is also survived by his older brother, Ryan, his mother, Linda, a nursery school teacher, and his father, Richard, a longtime facilities director at the Taubman Co., operator of the Stamford Town Center. A sad day Police received a 911 call from Papes Wedgemere Road home about 7:45 p.m. Monday about a 25-year-old man there with a gun threatening harm. The Special Response Team, Hostage Negotiation Team and K-9 Unit responded, a police press release said. After an hour-long intense negotiation, Pape was shot by two members of the Special Response Team after appearing with what police thought was a real gun. Pape was taken to Stamford Hospital, where he later died. Matheny said the gun was black and looked like a semiautomatic pistol, but it turned out to not be real. Matheny said he did not know if the gun was a pellet gun or an AirSoft pistol or something else. Today is a sad day in our community, Stamford Mayor David Martin said. Any loss of life, no matter the circumstance, is tragic for all involved. My thoughts and prayers go out to the family and our police officers. Chief States Attorney Kevin Kane said Danbury States Attorney Stephen Sedensky will supervise the investigation. State law enacted last year prohibits the states attorney from investigating any deaths involving police in the same district. Stamford States Attorney Richard Colangelo is heading the investigation of a Fairfield police officer who shot and killed attorney Christopher Andrews, who police say was armed with a knife at the time he was killed at his home last month. Kane said the investigation into the Stamford shooting will take some time to complete before a detailed report can be released. It is important for us that the police take their time and do it right, he said Tuesday afternoon. Kane said he received a call from Colangelo reporting the shooting late Monday night, before Pape died. The shooting was condemned by David McGuire, the legislative and policy director for the ACLU of Connecticut. We do not know what happened to Dylan Pape, and we have no assurances, under Connecticut law, that we ever will, McGuire said in a statement. This is sadly not the first time that a SWAT unit has killed someone in a Connecticut home. Connecticut residents need and deserve transparency about how, when, and why police use SWAT units. Stamford police union president Sean Boeger took issue with McGuires comments and said the Stamford Police Departments record is speaks for itself. The point is, our officers are here to protect the public while looking out for our own safety and if you look at the history of the Stamford police department we are head and shoulders above what you see in the rest of the nation, Boeger said. Told to evacuate The police action was unusual in the upscale Newfield neighborhood where Pape lived in a colonial on a quiet cul de sac. Wedgemere Road resident Todd Buccheri said he heard a knock on the door Monday night and opened it to see 10 to 15 police cars on his street and an officer at his doorstep. Somebody came to the door and said there was somebody with a gun and we had to evacuate our house, Buccheri said. He chose to not leave, but said he went outside near his garage, where he heard shots and later saw the ambulance arrive. Two neighbors on Eden Road, whose properties back up to Wedgemere Road, said they also heard shots Monday night. I heard one bang, then I thought I heard two more a very short time after, said one neighbor, who requested his name not be used. The man first thought it was an engine backfiring, either from a car or a fuel-powered generator, which are popular in the wooded neighborhood. It was so quick, he said. Another Eden Road resident, Russell Hart, said he heard someone speaking loudly behind the home Monday evening and then realized it was police on a megaphone. He said it sounded like the officer was telling someone to stay calm and he was there to help. I heard some screaming or shouting and it went on for quite a while, Hart said. Hart said a police officer then knocked on the door and said the situation appeared to be under control. The officer remained parked in front of his home to make sure no one ran through the property, Hart said. Then suddenly, I heard four very loud shots in rapid succession, Hart said. I was surprised. They were really loud, Then he said he heard some more shouts and he thought to himself that everyone was OK. I heard the shouts, which I took to mean he was all right, Hart said. Staff writer Martin Cassidy contributed to this story. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate 5 1 of 5 Alexander Soule / Hearst Connecticut Media Show More Show Less 2 of 5 Show More Show Less 3 of 5 4 of 5 / Show More Show Less 5 of 5 STAMFORD As the owner of Lord & Taylor debuts its new Find @ Lord & Taylor luxury discount concept to reinvigorate the venerable brand, the Lord & Taylor location in Stamford has been quietly undergoing its own rejuvenation as its 50-year anniversary approaches. On Tuesday, the changes underway were quite audible, if not quite visible behind screens of opaque plastic on the main level of Lord & Taylor at its hilltop store at 110 High Ridge Road. The store has remained open throughout the upgrade, which is expected to be completed by this fall, with the company having focused on new flooring, lighting and fitting rooms and reorganized floor space to accommodate new brands. Cuba and the US sign Memorandum of Understanding to cooperate in agriculture Agricultural authorities of Cuba and the United States -Gustavo Rodriguez and Thomas Vilsack, minister and secretary of the Department of Agriculture, respectively- signed on Monday in this capital a Memorandum of Understanding, as part of the program of the official visit to the island of US President Barack Obama. The text is aimed at promoting cooperation in agricultural trade, productivity, food security, and sustainable management of natural resources, as well as protection against the introduction and spread of pests, diseases of plants, animals and the environment. Vilsack agreed with his host that the embargo is a barrier to full mutual links, and the presence of the US head of state in Havana is a reflection that it should be eliminated in Congress through the political pressure needed, he said. Meanwhile, he added, we will continue to promote cooperation and I have asked my working group to work with the Cuban Ministry of Agriculture to create a work schedule that makes the achievement of the objectives of the current memorandum possible. Source: www.cibercuba.com Cuban and US Foreign Ministers meet in Havana Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez received US Secretary of State John Kerry at the headquarters of the Foreign Ministry in Havana on Monday morning. The meeting was held in a respectful and constructive environment. The two officials exchanged on the current situation of the ties between Cuba and the US, including the results of the joint work since the reestablishment of diplomatic relations, especially, in the cooperation in areas of mutual benefit and the dialogue of bilateral and multilateral issues, as well as the next steps to move forward to improve relations. Minister Rodriguez acknowledged president Obama's position in favor of the lifting of the US embargo, and the measures taken to modify its application that, though positives, are still insufficient to create mutually profitable economic relations. He stressed that to have normal relations it will be essential that the US lift the embargo, the devolution of the occupied territory of the Guantanamo Bay naval base, and for policies that are hurtful to Cuban sovereignty to be eliminated. Both sides agreed that there still differences between the two governments in issues as political systems, democracy, human rights, the concept of national sovereignty and the application and understanding of the International Law. Source: www.cibercuba.com 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. Leesburg Electric: With prices soaring, late fees are being waived Prices are up, so Leesburg Electric has decided that, as of Oct. 1, late fees will be waived. People from the community look through prints during the Print Palooza. The money raised during this event went to the Printmaking Club for members to attend the Southern Graphics Council International Conference. Hundreds of vibrant, artistic prints were on display for people of the community to buy during the Print Palooza, a fundraising event held by the Printmaking Club at the Memphis College of Arts. The club also gave tours of the art studios and demonstrations of different printmaking techniques on Saturday. aWe want to involve the community with the Memphis College of Arts, specifically the printmaking department since it is a lesser known medium,a Kelli Laderer, 20, a printmaking and graphic design sophomore from Lacombe, Louisiana and the president of the Printmaking Club, said. aWe also want to raise money for members to go to The Southern Graphics Council International Conference.a This event is a printmaking conference where students from all over the world can network, find jobs and internships, and apply for graduate schools. aIam going to look for internships and to participate in the print exchange,a Laderer said. aI get someone elseas work and they get mine, and we learn from the different techniques.a Maritza Davila, professor and head of the printmaking program, said the SGA Conference is a yearly event where students get to meet artists and learn more about graphic schools. aThey get to show their work, get materials and equipment, and watch demonstrations of printmaking methods. It helps students develop skills beyond school, and they come back excited and renewed about printmaking,a Davila said. The prints from the sale were created by students from as far as 30 years ago. aI had to make the choice to clear out these prints from the archives and I didnat want to throw them out, so a student proposed to sell them,a Davila said. aThat idea was brought to the club, and they ran with it.a The Printmaking Club is a way for students to get together outside of class, Joshua Strydom, 23, a printmaking and photography senior from Zimbabwe, said. Makayla Boswell People from the community look through prints during the Print Palooza. The money raised during this event went to the Printmaking Club for members to attend the Southern Graphics Council International Conference. aYou can take a class in printmaking or join the club and learn printmaking techniques without taking a class,a Strydom said. aIt allows you to become well-rounded in the arts and expands across majors.a Makayla Boswell Maritza Davila, professor and head of the printmaking department, demonstrates how to transfer prints during the tour. During the tour, people also learned about bookbinding and papermaking. Cherilyn Kish, 20, a sophomore sculpture major from Kansas City, Missouri, said her sculpting classes clash with the printmaking classes. aI can still learn about printmaking even though I canat take the classes,a Kish said. aWe donat have Greek Life, so we focus on clubs where we get to explore more art mediums. We get together and do stuff for the community like raise money for businesses. Itas an awesome thing we have here.a As members of the community explored the studios, Laderer and Davila showed the different types of printmaking and how the processes work. Art students were working on different projects, like bookbinding and papermaking. Makayla Boswell People from the community look through prints during the Print Palooza. The money raised during this event went to the Printmaking Club for members to attend the Southern Graphics Council International Conference. Tania Cruz, 21, a printmaking sophomore, did a hands-on demonstration for the group. aI love the process of printmaking,a Cruz said. aIt takes a long time to get the perfect product. After multiple tries, when you get the final product, itas like crossing the finish line of a marathon.a Candidates for student government president and vice president will face questions from the University of Memphis student body Monday at 7 p.m. in the UC River Room. The senate and independent candidates will also present their cases for why they should be elected. Students are encouraged to come and listen to candidates opening statement, followed by an open question portion. If students are unable to attend the meeting, they can submit any questions or comments to the U of M student government twitter page and will be read at the meeting. Nicolas DAlto and Jarad Jirari are representing the Peoples party. Jared Moses and Natalie Moore will represent the Refresh party. This years forum is aimed to be more of an informative and less about character attacks, Jacob Wheeler, a senior at the U of M and the student government election commissioner, said. Last years campaign was rife with accusations of phone hacking and racist comments between the two parties at the time, MAD and SHIFT. The party usually names change after almost every election. Ultimately, the executive office was split, SHIFTs David Knowles taking the presidency and MADs Raven Douglas taking the vice president position. Last year some of the rhetoric from candidates went a little awry, Wheeler said. It was a very intense election cycle. That election became quickly about character attacks. Wheeler said the election committee is making a priority to keep the meeting with as little drama as possible. The commission may not have the power to completely control what is said between parties, but Wheeler has the final say on what can be published on a banner or flyer. Each candidate gets a personal budget approved by the commission. Materials, like stickers handed out to students or banners hung in the University Center must get approved by Wheeler first. We are highly encouraging civility in this election, said Wheeler. Campaigning started Sunday, March 20 and will carry on for two weeks. Polls will open for voting on Tuesday, March 29 at 8 a.m. and will close Thursday, March 31 at noon. In previous years, student body voting took place on the SGA website. Last year the website crashed during the polls, so we had to get an extension on voting, Wheeler said. However, only 11 percent, or 2226 students, voted in the 2015 student government election. In hopes of avoiding any complications during the voting, students will go to Tiger Zone this year to vote. Students will use their ID number and will follow notifications along the page that will guide the user to each ballot. Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are social media sites that candidates use for campaigning. Social media is the best way to reach out to the students who are ultimately voting for you, said Wheeler. He added that its useful everywhere and we see it even in the current presidential campaign. Wheeler believes it is important for students to attend. It will allow students to come and inquire about issues and questions they want answered. Its their biggest time to get their campaign out to multiple students at once, Wheeler said. The two parties will propose their main focuses in the meeting and will be able to directly answer concerned students and faculty to learn more about the future SGA leaders at the U of M. Since campaigning has just started the dividing line between the parties has yet to be identified, but Wheeler is confident in both. I think any one of them will do a fantastic job, Wheeler said. Because this is the only meeting scheduled and campaigning only lasts two weeks, it is important that students attend the meeting to hear what is impending for the university. The success of this forum largely depends on the students and how involved they are, Wheeler said. 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 Not long ago, a friend of mine received some terrible on-line reviews for his first book. He is only in his 20s, so hadnt been prepared for such a torrent of abuse. I thought Id comfort him by sharing some of the online reviews my last book received after it was published in America. Oddly enough, as I trawled through them, I became strangely addicted to the insults being hurled in my direction. More authors should be aware of the masochistic pleasure to be found in reading dud reviews of their work. Many lovers of English literature consider Middlemarch by George Eliot the greatest novel ever written, but not all subscribers to Amazon. For Ezra Macdonald, it is a 'tedious book... a load of boring words about some people complaining about each other, and being idiots Total waste of money, writes someone who calls herself Poetry Lady. Meanwhile Richard D. Storm Sr thinks it Boring and E.A. finds it not so interesting nor anything newsworthy. Lori A. Lofgren warns: I think you may be disappointed. Moderately tedious, writes T. M. Sell. Someone called simply Suz is doubly disappointed first because it is not what I expected and second because there are no pictures. My critics arent just confined to America. Very disappointed with this dull book after all the hype, writes Richard J, in the UK, adding: I wont be buying any more books by this author. I. Bryant thinks that Craig Browns attempt to show what a clever chappie he is has resulted in a heap of boring froth. Having sent my friend this little bundle of hatchets, I thought I would broaden my horizons by looking at the online reviews of the great classics of world literature. My own book may well be a heap of boring froth, etc, etc, but what of Charles Dickens and George Eliot? It turns out that they fare little better. Amazon has a handy mechanism for fast-tracking bad reviews. You simply click on the 1 star option, and up pops the abuse. Perhaps I should add that all the following reviews are word-for-word true. More authors should be aware of the masochistic pleasure to be found in reading dud reviews of their work Craig Brown Many lovers of English literature consider Middlemarch by George Eliot the greatest novel ever written, but not all subscribers to Amazon. I found it very difficult to get into this book, writes A.J. The prose seems laboured, overly flowery, and doesnt flow at all. Declaring it a far from enjoyable read, he concludes that it just didnt work for me. Alison agrees. I just couldnt get into it, she writes, it just wasnt for me. Im sorry, Ms Elliott [sic]. Ezra Macdonald is less apologetic. Blimey, this is a tedious book. I must be missing something. For him, it is a load of boring words about some people complaining about each other, and being idiots. He then argues that it would have been substantially improved if the author had bothered to include some action, perhaps a few zombies, aliens, lasers or spaceships... Dull, dull, dull. Thomas Hardys Tess Of The dUrbervilles fares even worse. I personally, along with the rest of my A-level literature class (and the teacher), detest this book, writes Amazon Customer. ... out of a class of about 15 people, only one person managed to read the book all the way through... The only thing this book was good for was making me angry, annoyed and sleepy. L. C. Jones goes even further: A turgid slog through an extremely dull milkmaids life. But a slight glimmer of hope for Thomas Hardy comes in a review by Nicola: Not really my thing only read like three chapters and couldnt understand half of it but probably a good book for someone who likes this sort of thing. Quite a few Amazon customers are sniffy about Charles Dickens Great Expectations Quite a few Amazon customers are sniffy about Charles Dickens Great Expectations. A boring story of an annoying boy! is the way A Customer summarises it, while Evalesco asks: Does it make me a philistine that I thought this book was simply awful? before answering his own question: I suspect not. This book is spectacularly dull; its inane, directionless, confused, dreary, circumlocutory and self-indulgent... torturously slow and incredibly badly written... whining drivel... poor, poor, poor. If he were alive today, Leo Tolstoy might also be disappointed by some of his reviews on Amazon, particularly for War And Peace. Not a page turner for me, sorry Tolstoy, writes S. Green, who adds that he or she: Gave up through boredom after just a few chapters. And P.G.H. says: A waste of my life. Very disappoin-ted... what a waste of time. Far from being a great Russian masterpiece, War And Peace is for him nothing but endless drivel. Others agree. Rubbish, so disjointed, writes Brian Johnson. Overrated... Far too long and muddled, agrees Ted Davison. These readers write with an almost tangible sense of indignation. It is almost as though they would like to resurrect Tolstoy, Dickens, Hardy and Eliot just so they could force them to apologise in person for wasting their time. Alan Dove successfully sued his employers for age discrimination and won 63,000 in compensation My first reaction on reading that a 61-year-old sales rep had been awarded a fat payout for hurt feelings, because his young boss made fun of him, was: Oh, for heavens sake, grow up. Alan Dove successfully sued his employers for age discrimination and won 63,000 in compensation. He told the tribunal that his thirtysomething head of sales, Gareth Thomas, had nicknamed him Gramps. Mr Dove was more than ten years older than anyone else on the sales team at luxury jewellers Brown & Newirth and said he found the nickname disrespectful and hurtful. Ah, diddums. Workplace teasing is a fact of life. As the old saying goes: If you cant take a joke, you shouldnt have joined. Surely this kind of banter should have been water off a ducks back to an experienced salesman in his early 60s. Hes not part of the mollycoddled safe space generation. Hes a year younger than me. We had it drummed into us from an early age that: Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me. So I found it hard to understand why Alan Dove, who isnt even a grandfather, could get upset at being called Gramps. Ive been called a lot worse. But then I read on and realised this story was about much more than harmless name-calling. Gareth Thomas sounds like the kind of boss who thinks The Office is a training video and sees the grotesque David Brent as a role model. In his defence, Mr Thomas claimed that all the members of the sales team had nicknames, him included. He was known as Gimp Boy a name he probably gave himself, in honour of the Bruce Willis character in Quentin Tarantinos cult movie Pulp Fiction. Instead of raging against the dying of the light, 73-year-old Harrison Ford is still playing all-action Indiana Jones Im surprised he didnt call Finchy as a character witness. Fans of The Office will recall Finchy was a loud-mouthed bully, whose main claim to fame was that hed once thrown a kettle over a pub roof in Cheltenham. The nickname was just part of a concerted campaign of belittling and undermining Mr Dove. He was told that customers didnt want to work with him any more because he was too long in the tooth an allegation utterly refuted by one client said to have complained about him. Over a period of time, company director John Ball transferred Mr Doves customers to Mr Thomas, before sacking him last April, after he turned 60. It brought to an end 25 years of loyal service. Mr Dove, from St Albans, Herts, joined Brown & Newirth in 1990 and rose through the ranks to take responsibility for central England, South Wales and the Channel Islands. The tribunal, in Watford, decided he had been discriminated against on grounds of age. In the normal course of events, I would deride the easy money compensation culture. But in this case, it appears Mr Dove was appallingly treated and no one, apart from his ex-employers, should begrudge him a penny. Id argue further that he deserved better. If hed taken Brown & Newirth for a six-figure sum, it would have served them right. You have to ask yourself: why would they want to get rid of him? There are some jobs which are too demanding physically for the over-60s. But selling wedding rings isnt one of them. On the contrary, Id have thought that the knowledge, experience and personal touch which comes with a quarter-century of experience would be invaluable. We dont know all the specifics of this case, but Mr Doves experience will be familiar to countless others across Britain. They may not have been subjected to exactly the same treatment, but theyll have ended up in the same boat. In every sector of the economy, people in their late 50s and early 60s are finding their careers being brought to an abrupt halt. Its got nothing to do with ability or performance, its all about money. Older workers are more expensive. They are better paid and saddle companies with higher pension contributions and bigger premiums, if theyre lucky enough to have a private health scheme. The easiest way to cut costs is to get rid of them and replace them with cheap young staff, happy to accept short-term contracts and forgo traditional employee benefits. Tens of thousands of people every year find their employment terminated before they have reached their maximum pension entitlement. They may have worked for their firms for decades, but loyalty counts for nothing. All this is happening at a time when we are being told we will all have to work an extra eight years to fund our retirement. But where are these jobs coming from? This is supposed to be the age of the silver surfer, the sexy septuagenarian. We are bombarded with images of Helen Mirren and Susan Sarandon shimmering on the red carpet Yes, retailers like B&Q say they love hiring older men and women, because they are more efficient and courteous than youngsters. But the grey-hairs you see in your local DIY superstore are working on the tills, stacking shelves or mixing paint. You wont catch B&Q headhunting a regional sales manager in his 60s, or appointing a grandmother as head of human resources. This is supposed to be the age of the silver surfer, the sexy septuagenarian. We are bombarded with images of Helen Mirren and Susan Sarandon shimmering on the red carpet. Instead of raging against the dying of the light, 73-year-old Harrison Ford is still playing all-action Indiana Jones. Octogenarian Rupert Murdoch has just jumped the broomstick with supermodel Jerry Hall, soon to enter her seventh decade. But back in the real world, companies are cynically throwing fit, capable sixtysomethings on the scrapheap, even though theyre still some way off their first pair of incontinence pants. I can remember attending the leaving-do of a forcibly retired, late-50s friend. His young boss lavished such fulsome praise upon him, that when it came to his turn, he began by asking: Then why the hell are you sacking me? So I dont blame Alan Dove for taking his callous, ageist ex-employers to the cleaners. Good on yer, Gramps. In the wake of the Brighton bomb, Jeremy Corbyn invited the leaders of the IRA to Westminster for a cosy chat. Now one of his closest allies has suggested that this might also be the way to get through to Izal. Christine Shawcroft, a member of Labours national executive committee and a leading light in Momentum this years answer to Militant thinks he should make them a nice cup of tea. Corbyn has already ruled out military action against Izal and says he wouldnt let police marksmen shoot suicide-bombers and terrorists on the streets of Britain. So why not try a fireside chat? In the wake of the Brighton bomb, Jeremy Corbyn invited the leaders of the IRA to Westminster for a cosy chat Shawcroft said: Bombing them and attacking them has got us nowhere, so why not get the teabags out? She imagined voters reacting positively and saying: That Jeremy Corbyn, you know, faced with terrorists, hed sit down and have a cup of tea with them. Ive heard of Tea With Mussolini, but this is ridiculous. Still, since Corbyn seems never to have met a terrorist he doesnt like, it might work. But, just in case, hed be wise not to let them anywhere near the cake knife. A video has emerged of hardline Shia Muslims flagellating themselves with razor-sharp blades attached to blood-drenched chains. In Tooting. The practice known as zanjeer zani is so barbaric, its even banned in Iran. But not, it seems, in South London. A video has emerged of hardline Shia Muslims flagellating themselves with razor-sharp blades attached to blood-drenched chains Apparently, the video was shot in a marquee erected on a pay-and-display car park with the permission of Wandsworth Council. Before we rush to judgment, we should remember that it is our duty to celebrate diversity. Instead of forcing this vulnerable, oppressed minority underground, we should invite them to stage a demonstration of zanjeer zani at Wembley Arena. Im sure people would pay good money to watch and it would be a perfect warm-up for the cage fighting. The University of Sheffield has issued a guide to using the toilet after cleaners complained about the appalling mess. Im assuming this is aimed at students from cultures where they are not used to flush lavatories. A couple of years ago, DHL in Swindon had to install hole-in-the-floor loos because Eastern European staff were unfamiliar with traditional toilets. And elfnsafety got in on the act, too, leading to Tayside NHS producing instructions, with diagrams, on avoiding injury while using the toilet. It was called Good Defecation Dynamics. The University of Sheffield has issued a guide to using the toilet after cleaners complained about the appalling mess Operation Midland, the deranged investigation into paedos in high places, has been officially wound up in ignominy. The decision was confirmed in a graceless, defensive statement from Scotland Yard yesterday. The historic sex crimes witch-hunt has left an indelible stain on the Yard at least while Met chief Bernard Hyphen-Howe remains at the helm. In other news, someone has uncovered a blog which the recently deceased Paul Daniels wrote a few years ago, admitting some of the women he had slept with may not have been over the age of consent. I half expect to see a senior Yard officer standing outside his funeral, appealing for his victims to come forward and promising that all allegations will be treated as credible and true. Sir Leon Brittan and Lady Diana Brittan in 1992 After 16 months and at a cost of at least 2million, the grotesque Scotland Yard witch-hunt known as Operation Midland has finally come to an ignominious end. Based on allegations by suspected fantasist identified only as Nick, that a VIP paedophile ring operated at the heart of the establishment in the 1970s and 80s, it has taken 31 detectives away from vital duties and dragged the reputations of innocent men through the mire. The accusations that a hugely distinguished war hero, an ex-prime minister, a Home Secretary, MPs and the former heads of MI5 and MI6 were involved in child rape and murder were outlandish to say the least. Yet the police swallowed them whole, notoriously describing them as credible and true. There was no corroboration but, in an inversion of a fundamental principle of justice, everyone named was treated as guilty. Labour deputy leader Tom Watson led the hue and cry in Parliament, saying he believed the allegations were sincere and demanding urgent police action. That action was swift and brutal. One of the accused, Field Marshal Lord Bramall, a 92-year-old highly decorated Normandy veteran, had his house ransacked by 22 officers as his terminally ill wife looked on. Meanwhile, Lord Brittan was hounded up until his death over false rape claims. Even after those claims were shown to be untrue, it took a stoical and dignified campaign by Lady Brittan to get Met Commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe to issue an apology albeit a grudging and partial one. The equally blameless Lord Bramall has had no apology at all, leaving him bemused and angry. With a series of important revelations, the Mail led the way in exposing this shambles of an operation and former MP Harvey Proctor, the last suspect to be cleared, acknowledged this by thanking the free and independent-minded media for their support. This is precisely what a free Press is for. At the interview, Mr Proctor was accused of attempting to castrate Nick using a penknife. It was suggested it was (former prime minister) Edward Heath who persuaded me not to castrate Nick with it, Mr Proctor said later, adding that he had never owned a penknife. Even though the inquiry has not led to a single charge, there is no hint of remorse from the Yard. It refuses to admit its gross errors, or that the heavy-handed raids on the homes of innocent people were outrageously disproportionate. Worst of all, Deputy Assistant Commissioner Steve Rodhouse described the conduct of his officers as absolutely right. What a chilling conclusion. The Met has shown utter contempt for the inalienable right of everyone to be presumed innocent until proven guilty and its arrogant insistence that its officers didnt do anything wrong is simply an affront to justice. It also proves they have learned absolutely nothing from this fiasco. Osbornes black hole THE planned 4.4billion cuts to disability benefits were abandoned yesterday, as the Prime Minister sought to heal his fractious party following the acrimonious resignation of Iain Duncan Smith. The announcement and the pledge that there would be no more welfare cuts before 2020 may help restore calm but Mr Cameron still has a long way to go to pacify Tory backbenchers and constituency footsoldiers, who remain furious at the treatment of IDS. THE planned 4.4billion cuts to disability benefits were abandoned yesterday, as the Prime Minister sought to heal his fractious party following the acrimonious resignation of Iain Duncan Smith And there is another problem. Where is that missing 4.4billion going to come from? Yet more borrowing or further tax rises would be a huge mistake, so it must be from the state if not the welfare budget, then from somewhere else. (May we suggest that the 12billion foreign aid budget would be a good place to start.) Despite constant shroud-waving about the savagery of cuts, public spending will still rise from 756billion this year to 821billion by 2020. PANAJI (PTI): As many as 28 companies from Israel will be participating in the upcoming Defexpo in Goa to be held between March 28 and 31, a senior official said Monday. "SIBAT, the International Defence Cooperation Directorate at Israel's Ministry of Defence will present a record number of Israeli companies at the country's pavilion at the upcoming Defexpo India exhibition, reflecting the strengthening technological cooperation between the two countries," a senior official said. "Twenty eight Israeli companies will present a wide range of advanced technologies many of them operational including sophisticated sensors and systems protecting borders and sensitive facilities, robotic and automotive logistics, electro-optics for artillery and infantry, airborne satellite communications, fire control solutions, tactical medical equipment, and more," he added. Enlisting our sympathy? Jeremy Clarkson Jeremy Clarksons love for his late mother, Shirley, who died in 2014, aged 79, emerged in his talk with Charlotte Edwardes for The Times but was it to enlist our sympathy? He said that, during arguments with executives at the BBC about his alleged racism, he told them: My mothers just died. Leave me alone. But they wouldnt. After this touching story he told Ms Edwardes: By the way, all the time I was talking about my mother, I could see your knickers. He cant help himself, can he? Princess Dianas alleged regret for giving her November 1995 BBC interview might now be shared in the upper echelons of the Corporation. Theyve been regarded with suspicion ever since by the Queen. Hence the extraordinary access given to ITV for their Our Queen at 90 film, which includes the first broadcast interview with the Duchess of Cambridge. However, my source says: Some BBC executives are uncomfortable about having a relationship with the monarchy. RE Kates interview, those who have seen the trailer mention her regal pronunciation and clipped phrases. Has the Duchess had elocution lessons? My source says: No, she has merely gone native. Being surrounded by royals and courtiers who have a particular way of speaking has rubbed off. No trace of estuary English remains. The BBC also earned royal displeasure in 2000 when it suddenly pulled the plug on well-advanced plans to televise the Queen Mothers 100th birthday pageant. Labour-supporting director-general Greg Dyke took the view that the pageant would clash with the BBCs popular soap opera, Neighbours. ITV stepped in and their coverage attracted their highest early evening audience in seven years and more than twice the number who tuned in for Neighbours. Well-spoken: The Duchess of Cambridge during an interview for the upcoming ITV documentary Our Queen Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams, refused entry to President Obamas reception for St Patricks Day, likens his treatment to that of black civil rights heroine Rosa Parks, who in 1955 famously refused to give up her seat on a Montgomery, Alabama, bus. Sinn Fein wont sit at the back of the bus for anyone, he declared. How pathetic. He had arrived almost an hour late. His admittance would have interrupted Obamas welcoming speech. Its surprising he was invited at all given his links with Irish terrorism. Working out what to buy your in-laws for Christmas can be testing enough but it is surely near impossible when they happen to be the Queen. However, in a rare and exclusive interview the Duchess of Cambridge reveals that she was in that exact predicament during her first Christmas with her royal highness. She says: 'I can remember being at Sandringham, for the first time, at Christmas. And I was worried what to give the Queen as her Christmas present. I was thinking, "Gosh, what should I give her?"' Scroll down for video The Duchess of Cambridge reveals that she made the Queen homemade chutney for their first Christmas together at Sandringham In her interview as part of a documentary celebrating the Queen's 90th birthday, Kate reveals that she turned to her own grandmother's recipe to handcraft her gift. She continued: 'I thought, "I'll make her something." Which could have gone horribly wrong. But I decided to make my granny's recipe of chutney. 'I was slightly worried about it, but I noticed the next day that it was on the table. I think such a simple gesture went such a long way for me and I've noticed since she's done that on lots of occasions and I think it just shows her thoughtfulness, really, and her care in looking after everybody.' The touching anecdotes from the Duchess are part of Our Queen At Ninety, a historic two-hour ITV documentary which will be broadcast for the first time on Easter Sunday. The Duchess also reveals that Her Majesty was very supportive when helping her get used to public appearances. The pair pictured at a fashion show at De Montfort University, Leicester in March 8 2012 During her first solo interview the Duchess also reveals that her son George refers to the Queen as Gan-Gan. Pictured at sister Charlotte's christening in July last year Like the record-breaking monarch it celebrates, its a programme with a record of its own since it includes contributions from more members of the Royal Family than any royal documentary ever made. In her first solo interview, the Duchess explains how the Queen has gone out of her way to help her adjust to life in the spotlight since she married Prince William in 2011. Shes been very generous, she says. I feel shes been a gentle guidance really for me. You can read more about the programme in this week's Easter special of the Radio Times One day still sticks out in the Duchesss mind 8 March, 2012. It was Day One of the Queens Diamond Jubilee tour of the United Kingdom. The Duchess was minus her husband who was on duty with the RAF in the Falkland Islands as she joined the Queen and Prince Philip in the East Midlands. The most memorable engagement for me, I suppose, was an away-day to Leicester. I went without William so I was rather apprehensive about that, says the Duchess, in conversation with the director of the programme at Kensington Palace. While describing herself as a very small element in such an important day, the Duchess says that the Queen was very supportive. The fact she took the time to make sure that I was happy and looked after me shows just how caring she is. She also explains how excited the Queen was by the arrival of Princess Charlotte last May. Its very special having a new little girl. I feel very, very lucky that George has got a little sister. 'The Queen was really thrilled that it was a little girl and I think as soon as we came back here, to Kensington, she was one of our first visitors. The Duchess reveals that two-year-old Prince George has a special name for his great-grandmother. He calls her Gan-Gan, she says, adding that Gan-Gan is particularly attentive whenever the younger Cambridges are staying with her. She always leaves a little gift or something in their room when we stay. And that just shows, I think, her love for her family. To read more about the programme see this week's Radio Times, on sale now. A glamorous London blogger who posted an image of her arms on her Instagram account has hit back at those who have criticised her for not 'shaving'. Mother-of-four Courtney Adamo, 35, who was born in LA, posted a photograph to show off a watch she was wearing on the social media site last week. However, while most of the comments were positive, a few of her 148,000 followers remarked on the amount of hair on her forearms. Mother-of-four Courtney, who's currently travelling the world on a gap year with her children and husband, received a barrage of negative comments about the hair on her arms Would you shave? This snap of blogger Courtney Adamo's left arm caused a stir after some followers of her Instagram account commented not on the watch as she'd hoped but on the amount of blonde hair on her arms The post was supposed to attract attention to the Daniel Wellington watch that LA-born Courtney was wearing but instead some followers became fixated with the blonde hairs which surrounded it - and the contrast with her smooth legs, also on show. mms_alshammari wrote: 'Is it that hard to shave your hands? At least laser the hair off. Just a suggestion I hope you don't take it as offensive. Your arms would look much smoother and more feminine.' Another observer, mmlakte, called it 'gross' while kpmorecraft admitted she would avoid a 'hairy' photo of herself, saying: 'I dont hide it or erase it. But I also dont highlight it on social media. And I would forgo a pic because of it.' Elsewhere, some said it had brought the issue of shaving arm hair into the spotlight: 'Thank you for this post. I too have a lot of arm hair but Ive been removing it for half my life. Ive decided to stop.' Courtney, mother to children Easton, Marlow, Quin and Ivy with husband Michael, was clearly surprised by the references to the blonde hairs, penning a blog in response. Courtney, who gave up her life in north London to travel, told Femail: 'The global nature of social media means that women are subject to not only our own societys peculiar standards of beauty but the entire world's.' Army of love: Courtney has amassed 148,000 followers sharing the details of her glamorous family life 'Arm hair is just the latest to pop up. Its not something Ive ever cared about (I took the offending picture after all). Some women may think its "gross", but hey, thats what makes the world go round' In her blog, Courtney also added that until this week, she'd never given any thought to the possibility of shaving her arms. 'It never occurred to me that people would shave their arms. Frankly, I dont feel insecure at all about them. This is how they look.' Courtney Adamo She wrote: 'In fact, it never occurred to me that people would shave their arms. Okay, I know Olympic swimmers do, but! Frankly, I dont feel insecure at all about my arms. This is how they look.' 'Dont we already have enough pressure on us to meet societys arbitrary standards of beauty? Why are we encouraging (or more accurately, pressuring) each other to have more insecurities?' However many of the 131 comments on the original post commented positively on Courtney's body hair. Frankiejesse wrote: 'Each to their own I guess but tanned skin and blonde arm hair is gorgeous in my opinion, nothing screams summer like that look' while asliceofcreativelife wrote: 'I love the fact that you feel this way. I also do so. And I love the fact that you have hairs.' Millesimebaby added: 'Your arm hairs are bleach blonde! Gorgeous! That is summer right there.' 'Dont we already have enough pressure on us to meet societys arbitrary standards of beauty?' Courtney says she was surprised by the amount of comments that referenced her arm hair This isn't the first time the blogger, who describes herself as part carefree bohemian adventure and part minimalist design-conscious urbanite, has found herself in a social media storm. Two years ago, Instagram removed an image of her then 19-month-old daughter Marlow, saying the playful snap intervened guidelines on how children should be shown online. The social media company removed the photograph of Marlow wearing yellow wellington boots and lifting her vest above her tummy and also deleted a picture of the tot at the beach with her father. At the time, she said: Its the people that are making a fuss and sexualising it whose mindset you have to question. War has broken out between Italian label Aquazzura and Ivanka Trump after the designer brand accused the businesswoman of copying one of its shoe designs. The luxury footwear brand, whose celebrity fans include Kendall Jenner and Emma Stone, has publicly spoken out against the 34-year-old designer, claiming she has ripped off one of the design for its Wild Thing sandal. It claims Ivanka's version, the Hettie sandal, is an imitation of Aquazzura designer Edgardo Osorio's $785 lace-up slingback shoe with a fringe. Scroll down for video Public shaming: Italian fashion label Aquazzura has hit out at Ivanka Trump, accusing her of copying the design of its Wild Thing sandal (right) for her eponymous label's Hettie shoe (left) Speaking out: The brand publicly shamed 34-year-old Ivanka on its official Instagram account, accusing her of 'blatantly stealing' its design without 'care' Posting a picture of the two sandal designs on Instagram, the brand accused Ivanka of 'blatantly' copying, adding: 'Shame on you, Ivanka Trump!' The caption accompanying the image of a red Aquazzura shoe and a gold Ivanka shoe read: 'One of the most disturbing things in the fashion industry is when someone blatantly steals your copyright designs and doesn't care. 'You should know better. Shame on you, Ivanka Trump! Imitation is not the most sincere form of flattery.' In a series of provocative hashtags and including Ivanka's Instagram handle, it continued: '#madeinitaly #italiansdoitbetter'. Harsh words: The brand's founder Edgardo Osorio has hit out at Ivanka, who is currently expecting her third child, saying that she should 'know better' Spot the difference? Ivanka's Hettie sandal (pictured) has the same ankle ties and fringed toe band as the Aquazzura design; it also comes in a similar red color, as well as a black option The original? Aquazzura's Wild Thing shoe (pictured) retails for more than five times Ivanka's design When it comes to price, Aquazzura, whose shoes sell for $785 eclipses Ivanka's, which are currently sold at Nordstrom, retail for $145. 'We understand the importance of protecting the integrity of original designs, especially as they get interpreted at all price points,' a spokeswoman for Nordstrom told Mashable. 'We try to avoid duplications where we can.' Daily Mail Online contacted a spokesperson for Ivanka Trump for comment. The feud between the two brands has been brewing for some time. Standing strong: Despite Aquazzura's claims, Ivanka posted this image of a model wearing the controversial shoe design on her Instagram account recently In January, Aquazzura wrote on one of Ivanka's own posts '@ivankatrump you should be embarrassed for copying young designers! Shame on you!!!! [sic]' Aquazzura's latest assault on Ivanka has attracted support from Instagram followers of the brand who spoke in support of the post. one wrote: 'Glad you made post about it! We stand by you! You shoes are amazing and the most comfortable! It's hard to copy comfort... I hope so!' But some spoke out in support of Ivanka whose shoes they said were more reasonable. With his pukka background (Harrow and the Coldstream Guards), plummy vowels, fondness for perfectly cut suits and friendship with the Prince of Wales, it would be easy to make the mistake of thinking actor Edward Fox is a conventional man. However as proved by his comments this week about men and their primal need to play the field and spread their seed that would be quite a blunder. In truth Fox, 78, is a bohemian eccentric who holds a selection of rather startling views, particularly when it comes to relations between the sexes. Scroll down for video Close: Edward Fox and his ex-wife Tracy Reed, who died in 2012, at their daughter Lucy's 21st birthday in 1981 Women can be wantonly savage to men. Men will never understand women, he has said. Why is his outlook so unconventional? One might look to his own father, Robin, a theatrical agent who was famously and continuously unfaithful to his wife, for an explanation of why he has no regard for the accepted rules of monogamy. It is also true that Edward had a deeply upsetting matrimonial experience which perhaps persuaded him there was no point in hoping for a faithful happy ever after. His first wife, the actress Tracy Reed, captivated him to such an extent that they were married when he was just 20. Described as beautiful, funny and very naughty, she was a cousin of hell-raising actor Oliver Reed, was shown briefly nude in the film Dr Strangelove, and narrowly missed out to Diana Rigg for the part of Emma Peel in The Avengers. But in 1961, after three years together, she left Edward for another man and went on to marry three more times. Their daughter, Lucy, said: The marriage was doomed from the start, but they never stopped being close friends. They really loved each other so much. He mourned her deeply and attended her funeral following her death in 2012. Indeed, for many years he didnt marry his partner, the actress Joanna David, and it was said this was because he hadnt the heart to try again after the bitter failure of his first union. Together since 1971: For many years Edward didnt marry his partner, the actress Joanna David, and it was said this was because he hadnt the heart to try again after the bitter failure of his first union He and Joanna have been together since 1971. However, he has never made any pretence of being entirely faithful to her, nor has he expected her to be faithful to him. In fact, he told a rather surprised interviewer recently that she certainly had not. She was naughty and a flirt, he said of her apparent indiscretions. Ms David, who played the Duchess of Yeovil in Downton Abbey, has always firmly declined to discuss the topic whenever asked. Actress: In 1974, when Joanna was 27, the couple had baby Emilia, now the star of Silent Witness She has simply said: Were not going to go into that; we just wont touch on that. I think Edward and I understand each other. As you get older in a relationship, you have to accept each other as you are and get on with life. So what drives the grand, complicated man whose flaws and virtues she has decided to accept? Born in 1937, Edward is the oldest of the three sons of theatrical agent Robin Fox and Angela Lonsdale. His younger brothers are James, the actor, and Robert, the film and theatre producer. They were raised in Chelsea and East Sussex in a rather colourful milieu. Robin Fox had announced that he had no intention of being faithful while Angela was pregnant with Edward. I shall sleep with whoever I like, he declared. There was a long affair with his secretary, Ros Chatto, and also a liaison with Marina Duchess of Kent. Angela noted: He left me often but not for long. He was always home on Friday. Edward went to Harrow despite failing the entrance test because his father had been there. He did not enjoy the experience. I wasnt expelled but I left early, he admitted. Afterwards he did two years of National Service and then took a job at Marks & Spencer before joining Rada. Determined to plough his own furrow, he again left early. Then came the marriage to Tracy Reed. The year after his divorce came through, he started an affair with theatrical titan Dame Eileen Atkins. That ended when he was cast opposite a young Joanna David in a production of Sheridans The Rivals in 1971. Blonde, petite and ten years his junior, he pursued and won her. Fox later admitted this caused his affair with Atkins to implode violently, as these things usually do. Dame Eileen later revealed: He believed that a womans place is in the home. A job came up for me in America and he said to me that if I took it then we would be finished. I took it and we finished. It was six months before we talked again. I love him dearly. During the early days of his and Joannas relationship, Edward was at the peak of his fame, owing to his role in the 1973 smash hit film The Day Of The Jackal. The couple set up home together in Little Venice, North London. Family holidays were taken in Dorset, and eventually they bought a second home there, to which they have now retired. Family: Their second child, Freddie (right), now an actor and model, was born in 1989 In 1974, when she was 27, they had baby Emilia, now the star of Silent Witness. At first, Joanna gave up her promising career to raise Emilia. As Fox said, he could never have married a real actor wife like Vanessa Redgrave, who was so dedicated that work was the be-all and end-all. Happily, Joanna agreed: In a relationship where youve got two actors, somebody has to be running the ship, otherwise its chaos, she said. Despite his unconventional attitudes, it is clear Edward Fox is sustained by an intense religious faith Fox has hinted that it was during this period with one young child that he was unfaithful. He says that he had other lovers plural but has never revealed any names. As to the impact on the marriage, he says that it was never truly threatened by the infidelities. Endangered, possibly, and theres been trouble along the way for sure, he said. I think the minute a woman feels her husband or lover is attracted by someone else, she always feels that he may leave a note on the breakfast table, saying: Darling, I never want to see you again. Thats natural, but Ive never come near to writing the note. He said that his wife who worked in plays during term times accepted his foibles and had a dalliance of her own. Their second child, Freddie, now an actor and model, was born in 1989. There followed a debilitating health crisis for Joanna, who required an operation in 1993 to cure a brain condition that damaged her spinal cord and put her in a psychiatric hospital for a month. And this, it seems, changed everything. Joanna said: The operation was 100 per cent successful, but it was ghastly afterwards because I got post-operative depression. Emilia added: Mums breakdown was a big thing in all our lives . . . For Fred, Dad and I, it took almost losing Mum to realise how precious she was. Joanna slipped back into depression in 2001 after contracting Menieres disease, a rare disorder of the inner ear. It did leave me in a terrible state, she said. Soon after, in 2004, to the surprise of family and friends who were not invited, she and Fox married. Later, she said the ceremony had been arranged because the vicar, our dear friend the Reverend John Slater, was terribly ill and, in fact, died two weeks later. We wanted him to marry us; that was the impulse behind it. Despite his unconventional attitudes, it is clear Edward Fox is sustained by an intense religious faith. He once mused: Im not a real gentleman at all. Really no one is a gentleman. Jesus Christ was one, but one falls far short of that. You can see why his family declare him virtually a long-buried fossil and say they struggle to bring him into the 21st century. Advertisement Prince Harry was today reunited with a Gurkha fighter he first met 26 years ago on a visit to Salisbury Plain in Wilthisre with his father Prince Charles, as he attended an engagement at the Gurkha headquarters in Pokhara as part of his official five day visit to Nepal. Retired Major Bishnukumar Pun, 57, was famously pictured with the then six-year-old Harry during the visit and shared the photo with the Prince today, joking that they both looked somewhat different now. He told the prince: 'That's the photo. That was me, young and handsome. You were clean shaven then!' Scroll down for video Prince Harry was reunited with retired Major Bishnukumar Pun, 57, who was famously pictured with the then six-year-old Harry on Salisbury Plain 26 years ago. The pair met as Harry visited the Gurkha headquarters in Pokhara as part of his official five day visit to Nepal Major Pun was asked to chaperone the six-year-old for for the day and the regiment had made him a mini kukri, mini uniform and mini walking stick Major Pun, who lives in the UK and works for the Gurkha Welfare Trust, said: 'I met Prince Harry 26 years ago when the Prince of Wales was Colonel-in-Chief of our regiment, 2nd Gurkhas. 'We were stationed out in the UK on Salisbury Plain and on the last day of the training exercise he paid us a visit. 'And because Prince Harry had an interest in all things military and tanks and things Prince Charles brought him along. 'I was asked to chaperone him for the day and the regiment had made him a mini kukri, mini uniform and mini walking stick. He had a great time, and so did I.' Retired Major Pun, who lives in the UK and works for the Gurkha Welfare Trust, first met Prince Harry 26 years ago when the Prince of Wales was Colonel-in-Chief of the regiment, 2nd Gurkhas. He showed Harry a photo of them taken together at their first meeting, joking that the Prince was clean shaven and he was young and handsome back then Prince Harry With Sgt. Bishnu Of The 2nd King Edward Vii's Own Gurkhas On Salisbury Plain Wiltshire in 1991. Today the retired Major recalled the meeting with affection, saying they had both had a great time The Prince's engagement was the most formal of his tour of Nepal so far, and he changed into his No.1 uniform for a wreath-laying ceremony at Gurkha headquarters. After a commemoration ceremony Prince Harry planted a tree in the grounds of the camp. It was an echo of his mother, Princess Diana, who planted a tree at the British Gurkha Camp, Kathmandu in 1993. During the event he also learned more about the work of the Gurkha Welfare Scheme and the famously gruelling Gurkha recruitment process. Prince Harry became the king of colour today when he was plastered with powder paint during a celebration of Holi, a popular Hindu festival, as he continued his five-day official visit to Nepal The ceremony started with the head girl of Gauda Secondary School, Juna Garung, 15, who smudged paint on both of the Prince's bearded cheeks and, according to tradition, Harry responded with the same On a visit to a school in the foothills of the Himalayas, the Prince took part in the annual tradition of a paint fight Each year 240 Nepali young men are selected to join the British Army, following a highly competitive and rigorous series of physical and mental tests. He then presented an MBE to Captain (rtd) Bhaktabahadur Rai for the work he'd done in bringing safe running water to 39 districts of Nepal. The Captain was in charge of a rural water scheme that brought potable water and understanding of hygiene and sanitation to thousands. Harry presented him the medal and said: 'So many years of service and finally you receive this. This is very special.' Harry was left with red paint all over his bearded face and clothes (left), but he took it all in good spirits and gave participants a round of applause (right) The defeated Prince shrugged in acceptance as he was smeared with yet more colourful paint The Prince, his staff, his police bodyguards and even journalists ended up being painted by the Prince's Nepali hosts The royal couldn't contain his laughter as he got into the spirit of the Hindu festival of colour, celebrated in spring Cptn Rai then thanked him profusely, but Harry replied: 'No, thank you so much.' Earlier in the day, the Prince became the king of colour when he was plastered with powder paint during a celebration of Holi, the Hindu festival of colour. On a visit to a school in the foothills of the Himalayas, the Prince took part in the annual tradition of a paint fight. And he certainly gave as good as he got on a day that saw him mobbed by well-wishers who crowded around the royal to place garlands around his neck. The gloves were off and Harry gave as good as he got, smearing his Nepalese hosts in colourful paint powder The Prince washed off most of the paint before he left the school, but his white shirt was still heavily stained as he walked down a mountain path to a helipad for a helicopter flight to his next engagement Prince Harry pictured with staff and pupils from the Gauda Secondary School in Nepal. The school, which has 216 students, was razed to the ground in last April's earthquake The ceremony started with the head girl of Gauda Secondary School, Juna Garung, 15, who smudged paint on both of the Prince's bearded cheeks and, according to tradition, Harry responded with the same. But the event soon descended into good-natured chaos when the Prince's former Army colleague, Gurka officer Major Prakash Gurung, threw red powder down Harry's front. Harry, 31, of course, who is on a five-day official visit to Nepal, couldn't wait to retaliate. 'Ah, right!' said the Prince with a grin, scooping up a handful of paint and throwing it in return. Prince Harry gets swamped with garlands as he arrives to visit Gauda Secondary School In chaotic scenes, the prince was greeted by hundreds of excited villagers lining the route to the tiny hamlet of Okhari after trekking an hour through the mountains to reach it Each one had a gift to place around the prince's neck, which Harry thanked them for by bowing his head, placing his hands together and saying Namaste. By the time he reached the gate to the school he was almost bent double by the weight of the gifts and sweating profusely, but still managed to smile and offer his thanks The prince appeared genuinely touched by the warmth of the welcome as he walked through the entrance heralded by a band of men called Naumati Baja, loudly playing traditional horned instruments as the schoolchildren and villagers cheered and thrust posies of flowers into his hands From then the gloves were off, and the Prince, his staff, his police bodyguards and even journalists ended up being painted by the Prince's Nepali hosts. One person to escape untouched was the BBC's royal correspondent Nicholas Witchell famously called 'that awful man' by his father, Prince Charles, but when the Prince saw him he said: 'Did it not go on you?' When Witchell replied that he had to appear on television shortly after, the Prince joked: 'All the better. We've got the paint here!' The Prince washed off most of the paint before he left the school, but his white shirt was still heavily stained as he walked down a mountain path to a helipad for a helicopter flight to his next engagement. The Prince Harry has expressed his hopes that his visit will 'shine a spotlight' on the country and his colourful appearance will certainly create a lasting impression Despite the high temperatures, Prince Harry managed to carry off his weighty garland of scarves and garlands with aplomb The royal was led into the Guadu secondary school which is undergoing reconstruction after last year's earthquake Prince Harry laughs at bursting a baloon at Gauda Secondary School, which was hit by the earthquake last April As he was walking down the path he proved that any ill-feeling between the Royal family and Witchell is long forgotten. The presenter was trying to walk in front of him while talking into the TV camera when his cameraman stumbled and fell backwards. 'We'll wait,' said the Prince as he paused to allow Witchell to start again. Witchell thanked him, he said: 'I just didn't want to see both of you fall over.' The Prince had a brief wait at the bottom of the mountain path before the Nepali Army Aviation Mi-17 helicopter arrived, and when it came into view Harry, who flew Apache helicopters in the Army, grabbed his iPhone from his private secretary Edward Lane-Fox and filmed the chopper landing as it blew up a huge cloud of dust and leaves. The Prince's next engagement was the most formal of his tour of Nepal so far, and he had to have another wash before changing into his No.1 uniform for a wreath-laying ceremony at Gurkha headquarters in Pokhara The tree planting was an echo of Harry's mother, Princess Diana, who planted a tree at the British Gurkha Camp, Kathmandu in 1993 Prince Harry lays a wreath for Gurkha killed fighting for the British abroad. Each year 240 Nepali young men are selected to join the British Army, following a highly competitive and rigorous series of physical and mental tests After placing the wreath Harry saluted the monument erected in memory of Gurkha's killed fighting for the British abroad During the event the Prince also learned more about the work of the Gurkha Welfare Scheme and the famously gruelling Gurkha recruitment process Earlier in the day Harry had arrived at the earthquake damaged school weighed down with garlands and scarves. In chaotic scenes, the prince was greeted by hundreds of excited villagers lining the route to the tiny hamlet of Okhari after trekking an hour through the mountains to reach it. Each one had a gift to place around the prince's neck, which Harry thanked them for by bowing his head, placing his hands together and saying Namaste. By the time he reached the gate to the school he was almost bent double by the weight of the gifts and sweating profusely, but still managed to smile and offer his thanks. The prince appeared genuinely touched by the warmth of the welcome as he walked through the entrance heralded by a band of men called Naumati Baja, loudly playing traditional horned instruments as the schoolchildren and villagers cheered and thrust posies of flowers into his hands. The prince even gamely agreed to take part in a volleyball match with students at Guadu school The Queen's grandson flung himself around the makeshift court, teasing his opponents As he jumped to bat the ball the Prince's shirt rode up showing a flash of his stomach The Prince cheekily told an opponent he'd give them a leg up next time after they missed a shot Eventually, with the help of his aides, Harry was able to pull the offerings from around his neck and was given a material sarong to wear round his torso known as a bhangra, used by the Gurung people when herding sheep and goats, and an elaborate necklace. HARRY'S TASTE OF LIFE IN THE FOOTHILLS OF THE HIMALAYAS Last night the prince slept in a modest home-stay with a Nepalese family up on the mountain, an experience he described as 'amazing'. Harry tasted rural life in a village in the foothills of the Himalayas, sitting down to dinner with an elderly widow and her family and then bedding down in a sleeping bag in her sparsely furnished communal room. Reflecting on his short period with Mangali Tamang, 86, a widow of a former Gurkha rifleman: 'It was amazing really, peaceful actually.' Harry added: 'Lots of dogs barking, but it didn't seem to bother them, apparently the locals, they're happy if the dogs are barking, but they're not happy if they dogs are not barking.' He added: 'The family were fantastic we had a proper feast of a meal and then they vanished, that was it, never saw them again. 'We all went to be early so we were tucked up by half past eight, then everything started to come to life at quarter past, half past five.' Advertisement He was warmly welcomed to the school by one of the elders who said: 'We cannot express how grateful we are for you to come here and really see on the ground what you might have heard and seen on the media.' The Gauda Secondary School, which has 216 students, was razed to the ground in last April's earthquake, although fortunately as it was on a Saturday no students were injured. The pupils, many of whom trek two hours each way every day to attend, missed just a month of schooling, before moving into a series of temporary classrooms with corrugated iron roofs. A new earthquake-proof school is now being built thanks to funding from the Gurkha Welfare Trust. Work began back in December and should finish by June. Harry was shown round the temporary classrooms by head girl Juna Garung, 15, and was left gaping at the views of the mountains they offered. 'This is just amazing, let me do a quick picture. I know these are makeshift classrooms but those views are amazing,' he said. Afterwards the prince even gamely agreed to take part in a volleyball match with students - and showed his bare stomach and well as his competitive streak. The Queen's grandson flung himself around the makeshift court, using his 6ft 2in height to his advantage. He was also heard teasing his opponents, saying: 'I'll give you a leg up next time', when one failed to make a shot. This morning, the prince rose to see the spectacular sunrise over the distant Himalayan mountains. As the sun climbed its rays picked out peaks and as the minutes passed more of the impressive range was revealed. When Harry trekked up to the tiny village of Leurani yesterday afternoon the cloudy conditions had obscured the famous mountain range, but the skies had cleared by the following morning. Looking at the impressive view Harry, who was casually dressed and wore a cap, said: 'Nice to be able to see where we are' then added, 'in the shadow of the Himalayas.' He spent the previous night in the modest home of Mangali Tamang, 86, a widow of a former Gurkha rifleman, an experience he described as 'amazing'. After spending the night with a local family in the hilltop village of Leorani, the Prince watched the sunrise As the sun climbed its rays picked out peaks and as the minutes passed more of the impressive range was revealed The Prince left Leorani this morning for an hour long trek through the mountains Mrs Tamang had dished up a meal of rice, chicken curry, mixed vegetables, dahl and pickles for the Prince and his entourage. It had been cooked by her daughter-in-law Guan Shobra Tamang, 53, with the help of some Gurkhas and Harry followed local custom and ate with his fingers, sitting between the two women. A pint-sized pooch now boasts a wardrobe bigger than that of most humans after its owners spent more than 30,000 on doggy fashion outfits, accessories and high-end beauty products. Mum and daughter Josephine and Kelly Carter from Carshalton, Surrey, bought chihuahua Queenie two years ago and admit to spending a fortune on their dog can lead the way in canine couture. Not only does Queenie have a bulging bespoke wardrobe filled with sparkly fashion ensembles and matching luxury poo bags, she even has her own bright pink personalised buggy in case she doesn't want to get her paws dirty. Scroll down for video Chihuahua Queenie has a wardrobe worth thousands of pounds and leads the way in canine couture Mum and daughter Josephine and Kelly Carter from Carshalton, Surrey, have spent a whopping 30,000 on their pet in the two years they've had her The pint sized pooch even has her own personalised buggy in case she gets tired of walking anywhere And to ensure she feels her best as well, Josephine and Kelly shell out hundreds each year for 'pawdicures', holistic doggy massages and reiki sessions 'to balance her chakras' - on top of a range of expensive beauty products such as toothpaste and shampoo. The trendsetting handbag hound gets snapped by 'puparazzi' wherever she goes and has some 30,000 followers on Twitter who want to keep up to date with her latest style tips. Josephine, 50, who owns dog fashion website Licks of London, a dog fashion website, said: 'Queenie is worth every penny. I spend way more money on Queenie and her wardrobe than I do on my own, I just can't help myself and when I can I make sure we're matching, even when it comes to her poo bags. Queenie has more fashion choices than many humans in her bulging bespoke wardrobe worth thousands Her owners spend hundreds on sparkly accessories each year, including collars, jewellery wigs and hats 'She has her very own personalised buggy too, complete with fully functioning chandelier, which helps her to get around as she's so tiny but we make sure she gets a good walk every day too. 'Queenie has the highest end beauty products including her toothpaste, shampoo, conditioner and doggy nail varnish, she always has to sparkle and loves being pampered. 'She's the most glam dog around and I constantly have people coming over to us asking for photos and where her outfits from, people even recognise her in the street now. Queenie's owners Josephine and Kelly admit they spend more time and money on their dog than themselves But they insist she is 'worth every penny' and that 'life is too short' for her to be wearing an 'ugly collar' Not only has she got a wardrobe bigger than most humans', her toy box is the envy of dogs everywhere 'Our motto is to not follow trends in the dog world but set them, life's too short for an ugly collar. 'People think we are barking mad but I wouldn't change it for the world, it's all just a bit of fun.' Queenie, who turns three in June, has taken the internet by storm and now has a whopping 30,000 followers on Twitter, including celebrities like Jonathan Ross. Josephine says she always wants Queenie to 'sparkle' and her range of accessories and clothing ensure she does just that everywhere she goes Josephine and Kelly say Queenie is a celebrity in the canine world and gets VIP access to all the events she attends, which recently included Crufts After competing in dozens of competitions Queenie now even 'judges' them and has been granted VIP access to all the shows she attends. Josephine added: 'I can't take Queenie anywhere without people making a fuss, she's definitely a celebrity in her own right in the doggy world. 'She's in her element at shows too, she just sits backs and relishes in her outfits and the attention she receives. 'We're not silly with dressing Queenie up, if it's hot she goes au naturel but in the winter she's so tiny and gets cold quickly, plus she absolutely loves it. The mother and daughter confess to spending 2,000 on 'doggy holidays' every year - and that's on top of the luxury boarding kennel costs of 1,000 when they go away alone and 1,200 worth of travel expenses to shows Her wardrobe is neatly organised with her various accessories stored in corresponding boxes - 1,200 is spent on her leads and collars alone MONEY SPENT EACH YEAR Hats, wigs and necklaces - 110 Coats - 840 Toys - 520 Leads & Collars - 1,200 Buggy - 100 Everyday dresses - 840 Couture outfits and hats (for events and shows) - 600 plus a year Doggy Birthdays, barbecue's, doggy bags for guest's and presents - 600 Holistic Doggy massage - six sessions 180 Doggy Reiki sessions to balance her Chakras - four sessions 120 (30each) Doggy Toothpaste - 27 Poo Bags to match outfits - 40 Travel expenses to shows and hotels - 1,200 Boarding while we're on holiday - 1,000 Vets Routine check-up and boosters - 50.98 Pawdicure, grooming & products - 720 Food and supplements - 336 Flea and worm treatment - 149.08 Doggy holidays - 2,000 Bedding and blankets car seats - 170 Advertisement 'Humans wear clothes every day to keep warm, it's no different for Queenie. 'By the time we get home she can't wait to stretch out on her own black velvet chaise lounge, which is encrusted in diamonds and has pink lining to match the curtains in the living room. 'Queenie loves a nice long soak in the bath too and after she gets a pretty pawdicure, with special doggy friendly nail varnish, which finishes her day off nicely.' After starting her online business nine years ago, Josephine says the company's sales have rocketed since Queenie became 'managing director'. Josephine said: 'I've always loved dogs and grew up with Yorkshire Terriers but three years ago I decided it was time for a change. 'I kept being drawn back to chihuahuas, they're so smart, adorable and loving and Queenie is all that and more. 'She's the star attraction of Licks of London now and our sales have rocketed in the past three years, and it's all down to Queenie. 'I love spending money on her, when we go abroad now my partner Del knows to scout out the best doggy boutiques before we even get there as that's they're the first place I want to visit. 'I hate leaving Queenie so I always need to take her a present home, even in the week if I leave her for even a few hours I have to take her a new toy home. 'Queenie really is pawtastic and the best example of why a dog is a girls best friend.' The old slogan is 'a diamond is forever', but diamond engagement ring trends have certainly changed over the years. While the round diamond solitaire has 'always maintained the number one position' on the popularity charts, Mode.com notes that other styles have come and gone over the past century, and the way rocks are showcased has shifted, too. In a new video, the site showcases 100 years of engagement rings, documenting how brides traded in the art deco favorites of the 1930s for the war bride metals of the 1940s, platinum in the 1960s for yellow gold in the 1970s, and white rocks in the 2000s for colorful ones in the current decade. Scroll down for video History of bling: A new video takes a look back a century of diamond engagement ring trends, starting with the 1910s (pictured) Classic: At the beginning of the century, men who bought women diamond typically bought simple rings Times start changing: In the 1920s (pictured), there was a move toward Edwardian designs with ornate filigree metalwork All that glitters: The feminine lace like designs highlighted the sparkly effect of the diamond Throwback: Lately, women who've been opting for vintage styles seek out 20s-style rings like these Though the video begins in the 1910s, diamond engagement rings were still very rare at the turn of the century. According to a 2015 Citigroup report, by 1940 just 10 per cent of US-based brides were proposed to with a diamond ring. In fact, men were just as likely to give their fiancees sapphires, rubies, or emerald. For those who did get engaged with a diamond, it was quite a classic design that topped the trends in the 1910s. Mode's video spotlights a round, European-cut diamond set into a six-prong mounting of 14k yellow gold, which has been beautifully placed in a lush velvet box. In the 1920s, diamond engagement rings took an opulent but ladylike turn, reflecting the trends of Edwardian England. In the video, a ring with a 'lacy white look' encapsulates the decade and certainly illustrates a big change from the years before. An ornate design runs down the sides of the band, while pierced openwork mounting surrounds the center stone. Going Gatsby: By the '30s, geometric art deco rings were all the rage Gem stone love: However, by the time most women still weren't getting diamond rings, but sapphires, rubies, and emeralds All the riches: Only some members of the elite actually bought diamonds before the 1940s By the 1930s, art deco was all the rage, and that aesthetic made its way into jewelry, too. Though rings then still often featured a round-cut stone, the settings were less than uniform. The video features a diamond in a geometric setting, which brings to mind scenes from The Great Gatsby. However, the '30s were also the years of the Great Depression in the US, and demand for diamonds plummeted. Men were more likely to buy modest metalwork rings, if they bought them at all. To fix this, South Africabased cartel De Beers Consolidated Mines, Ltd. (which has since evolved into popular jewelry brand De Beers) launched a marketing campaign that would fix the slump and change the way the world valued diamonds forever. Buying up the bling In the '40s, diamonds slowly started to see a rise in popularity War brides: Because of metal rationing during World War II, though, rings were often made with lower-quality materials Getting a reputation: More and more women started to see diamonds as a symbol of love Building an empire: DeBeers launched its 'A Diamond is Forever' campaign to paint diamonds as both a status symbol and a way to profess love Promoting ideas that diamonds are rare, indestructible, and symbolic of love, De Beers' campaign made diamonds a go-to for popping the question. In 1947, they launched their 'A Diamond is Forever' slogan, and would highlight in the press how the precious stone was worn by celebrities and the social elite increasing demand in the lower and middle class. All that diamond-focused Hollywood glamour likely had something to do with the look of diamond engagement rings in the 1940s, when bigger was certainly considered better. But even if men were starting to shill out more often for diamonds, they weren't springing for platinum or 14k gold though they didn't really have a choice. Due to metal rationing during World War II, many had less-pure metals to choose from for jewelry. Looking to the silver screen: By the '50s, women were growing more inspired by movie stars Going Hollywood: In the press, DeBeers started highlighting diamonds worn by celebrities, giving them an A-list appeal More bling, please: Though a solitaire like this one remained popular, some rings were being made with more diamonds on either side, too Shifting shapes: In the '60s, demand for fancy cut stones, like this emerald-cut style, grew Fashionable jewels: Women began to make a statement with the cut of their ring, opting for pear, marquise, or heart-shaped With diamond sales on the rise and the war over Americans were offering their brides-to-be pricier rings made with white gold and platinum in the 1950s. And not only were they opting for round solitaires, but clearly influenced by De Beers' campaign some were adding glitzy diamond side stones, too. By the 1960s, round-cut stones were still the most popular, but there was a rise in demand for stones in other shapes, too. More and more women bucked tradition with emerald-cut, pear, marquise, and heart-shaped diamonds. Groovy glitz: In the '70s, yellow and rose gold became more popular than white gold and platinum Go glitzy or go home: Fancy-shaped stones were still popular, and extra stones flanked the main ones Piling it on: Mode.com showcases a '70s engagement ring made with a wedding band to match Awesome: For the '80s look, women were back to round-cut stones, but baguette diamonds on the sides added flair A must: By now, few women got engaged without getting a rock from their men Serious sparkle: Elizabeth Taylor's 68-carat diamond from Richard Burton still influenced styles, with bigger being viewed as better In case anyone still thought they didn't need a diamond, Richard Burton set demand even higher in 1969 when he proposed to Elizabeth Taylor with a 68-carat pear-cut rock, thereafter known as the Burton-Taylor diamond, which she wore around her neck. Of course, regular consumers weren't exactly following suit but they did take some glitz cues from the famous couple, piling on plenty of smaller stones around around a larger rock into the '70s. The decade also saw yellow gold as the most popular metal, matching the warm hues favored in fashion and decor. Trends in the 1980s, though, went back to white gold and platinum, and brides favored round stones sometimes flanked by rectangular baguettes, as seen in the video. Glistening gems: According to Mode, radiant-cut stones became quite popular in the 1990s Maximizing the sparkle: Jewelers often paired them with triangular diamonds on either side The source: The video uses rings from Peter Jon Shemonsky Fine Antique and Estate Jewelry A little square: In the 2000s, princess-cut stones became increasingly popular, and women opted for bands with more stones set into them Doing research: However, after Blood Diamond starring Leonardo DiCaprio came out in 2006, there was an increased concern about buying conflict-free bling Feeling good about glitz: Conflict-free diamonds are mined in Canada, Russia, Australia, and even some places in Africa According to Mode, radiant-cut became a go-to shape of the 1990s, with many jewelers pairing them with triangular stones on either side. The square style remained popular into the 2000s, when princess-cut stones gained popularity. However, the new millennium saw another major change int he way diamonds are viewed, thanks to the 2006 Leonardo DiCaprio movie Blood Diamond. The film for which Leo was nominated for an Oscar shed light on the fact that diamond are often mined in war zones and sold to to finance insurgency. But while a small minority of shoppers now seek out conflict-free diamonds which are often mined in Canada, Russia, and Australia diamond sales certainly haven't declined. Interestingly, though, it's no longer just classic white diamonds that customers are picking out. With stars like Adele, Carrie Underwood, and Kelly Clarkson flaunting yellow stones on the red carpet, the nonfamous have also been hinting to their future husband that they'd like a colored stone, too. For the 2010s, the video spotlights a yellow rectangular cushion-cut diamond in a platinum halo setting. Not just black and white: By the 2010s, colorful stones were seen as unique and glamorous Sunny stones: Yellow diamonds like those wore by Adele, Carrie Underwood, and Kelly Clarkson have seen more interest finishes, claim it can empty a magnum in 45 seconds and produce a spray of up to 23 feet The creators of the device, which comes in three A 'Champagne gun' that allows users to spray entire bottles of the expensive sparkling drink like a super-soaker is being marketed to nightclubs - and very affluent club-goers - by a Miami-based nightlife supplier. The product, which is being touted as 'the world's first Champagne gun', costs $499 - and that is before buyers invest in the enormous magnum of Champagne needed to fill it. Available in three different metallic finishes - gold, rose gold and chrome - the gun produces a 16 to 23 foot spray for a duration of 45 seconds. Scroll down for video Take aim: A new 'champagne gun', pictured in use in a promotional video, has gone on sale that enables people to spray the contents of champagne bottles Champagne wars: The device, pictured above, costs $499 to buy and only takes magnums Versatile: Distributors claim the gun can be used to display champagne and pour the drink as well as spray it For the less hedonistic - or those who do not take pleasure in wasting their drinks - it comes with an attachment for serving the champagne by pouring. Distributors claim some people might want to use the gun for decoration by using it to display their magnums of champagne. It only works with magnum-sized bottles. To use, attach the bottle to the gun, shake and then shoot for a 45 second stream of champagne. The Miami-based company distributing the product, describes it as a 'party weapon'. It claims on its website: 'The world's first party weapon has finally arrived to the United States. With the nightlife scene growing faster than ever, this Champagne gun can make a difference in ways people view your company and lifestyle!' Show off: The gun, pictured above, has a special attachment for pouring instead of spraying Impressed? US distributor Jeremy Touitou hopes the gun, pictured above in promotional images, will be popular in VIP areas Unusual: The gun, pictured in an ice bucket, is the invention of a French company whose mantra is 'bubbles not bullets' The gun, it claims, will help nightclubs, bars and lounges to bring in more business, saying it will 'draw everyone to your location'. It adds: 'Just reload with any Champagne Brand's Magnum bottle and can work with a service spout or a diffuser. It's easy to use, meaning it won't be hard to train your host, bottle service girls, and bartenders. 'Pool parties? Outdoor events? Want to give people the ultimate VIP experience? This Champagne gun will shoot showers from 16 to 23 feet for 45 seconds, that's enough time to get that perfect Snap in.' The gun is the invention of French company Extra-Night whose mantra is 'bubbles not bullets'. They have recruited Jeremy Touitou, 32, and Edouard Huc, 36, from Miami, whose sparkler supplies company King of Sparklers, to distribute the gun in the US. Powerful: Jeremy claims the gun shoots champagne from 16 to 23 feet for a duration of 45 seconds Hedonism: The marketing video features actors, such as the man pictured drinking from the gun, engaging in potential uses of the device Shower time: The video shows a man and woman, pictured, shooting champagne into a club Confident: Business partners Jeremy Touitou, 32, pictured left, and Edouard Huc, 36, were recruited by the gun's French creators to distribute it in the US Jeremy told Daily Mail Online: 'A friend of mine working in the alcohol industry introduce me to the persons in charge of the invention of this product, who are based in France. 'My friend knew we would be a good fit to distribute this product in America due to the activity of our company King of Sparklers which has been supplying most of the nightclub, and party venues in the country in party supplies for the past 5 years.' Jeremy told Miami New Times he hopes clubs will use them in VIP areas or as decoration behind the bar. A promotional video for the product demonstrates potential users for the gun. African American women explain the beauty and prejudice attached to the term 'skin tone' in a new word association video. The clip, created by Cut.com as a part of their One Word series, sees the filmmakers sit down black women of all ages and shades to get their personal feelings on the term - and the results are varied to say the least. The first bunch of women use words such as 'beauty', 'beautiful' and 'variety', but it quickly becomes clear that the women themselves are deeply divided on the issue. Telling it straight: A new clip sees several black women asked to play a word association game with the term 'skin tone' Across the board: The women are hugely divided on the top, with some saying it 'doesn't really matter', while other say it has 'a lot of effects' on people's views 'I think skin tone doesn't really matter, it's really who the person is on the inside,' says one woman, while a following interviewee entirely disagrees, saying: 'Skin tone has a lot of effects on the way people view a lot of things.' 'Yesterday, there was an older African American woman and I told her I'm mixed and what I was mixed with and she told me that there was nothing black about me,' reveals one young woman. Another interviewee of a particularly light complexion recounts a similar tale, saying that someone she knew once told her: 'You know, I don't really think of you as black. You look white, like your skin is white.' She adds to the filmmakers: 'Even though I say I'm mixed, it's like they're doubting what my experiences have been and what I've been through.' One woman went so far as to say that the term itself automatically brings the word 'discrimination' to her mind, saying that her light skin has seen her been called 'white bread' or 'glow in the dark' by other African Americans. Taking a shot: This young woman recalls the time she met an 'older African American woman' whom after she told her that she was mixed race, said 'there was nothing black about me' Making a point: This woman remembers how someone she knew told her that 'I don't really think of you as black. You look white, like your skin is white' even though she is of mixed race Differing views: Some view the term as meaning 'beauty', while others say it brings 'discrimination' to mind From within: Some of the ladies tell stories of how even their family members are judged by their differing shades 'It's kind of messed up that I hear it in the black community and I don't really hear it anywhere else,' she says. However, it seems the perception of judgement goes both ways, with one darker-skinned woman claiming that: 'I even have family members who, because they are light-skinned or mixed race, they kind of act like a little bit better than you.' Another women claims she has had people 'make fun of me left and right' for her dark skin tone, but as she grew older she grew to love her color, saying that she 'realized that there are just so many beautiful shades'. 'Whether you're super dark, black as night, chocolate, mocha, mixed and are super light, almost white, it doesn't matter as much as people think,' concludes one woman with a different point of view on the subject. 'Because at the end of the day, we're all black, and we all end up getting treated almost exactly the same.' On the lighter side: This woman claims to have been bullied because of her light skin, adding that 'it's kind of messed up that I hear it in the black community and I don't really hear it anywhere else' More to say: Other videos in the latest One Word installments look at the terms 'angry black woman' and 'can I touch your hair?' Big difference: Some of the ladies are immediately offended by the use of the term angry black woman, while others try to define just what makes an angry black woman One way or another: When it came to people touching their hair, the women were again totally divided, with some saying 'no' outright and others thinking it was perfectly fine and not offensive Cut.com also created two other videos for their One Word series also featuring black women, with the other phrases being 'angry black woman' and 'can I touch your hair?' Again, the results are widely varied. Some of the women are offended by the idea of someone being called an angry black woman - 'why does race have to come into it?' asks one - while others seem to legitimize the concept. 'Probably the majority of them are single mothers,' explains one woman. 'That's a recipe for a good angry black woman.' As for the question of 'can I touch your hair?' there were plenty of straight up 'no's and 'sure's, but even more eye-rolling looks of recognition. Chelsea Clinton's growing baby bump was on full display at her latest political pit stop, as she continues to travel across the country to fervently campaign for her mother Hillary during the primary elections. The 36-year-old, who is expecting her second child with husband Marc Mezvinsky this summer, traveled to Tacoma, Washington, on Tuesday to speak at Bates Technical College on her mother's behalf. Chelsea has stuck to a uniform of blazers, jeans, and loose-fitting tops busily campaigning, but the expectant mom couldn't hide her motherly glow - or her baby bump - as she took to the stage to promote Hillary's political agenda. Baby on board: Chelsea Clinton dressed her growing baby bump in a fitted shirt and a black blazer while traveling to Tacoma, Washington, to speak at Bates Technical College on her mother Hillary's behalf Growing family: The 36-year-old is expecting her second child with husband Marc Mezvinsky, 38, this summer The only child of the Democratic presidential candidate and former President Bill Clinton wore a form-fitting blue shirt and jeans, which she topped with a smart black blazer, as she urged more than 200 people to support her mother at Saturday's precinct caucuses. Chelsea, who has a one-year-old daughter Charlotte, spoke candidly about how motherhood has made her even more aware how important the 2016 presidential election is, as she maintained that Hillary is the best person to lead the country. Like her heavily-pregnant pal Ivanka Trump, who has also been busy campaigning for her father Donald to win the Republican nomination, Chelsea doesn't appear to be slowing down at all during her pregnancy. Just a few days ago, Chelsea joined Lena Dunham and America Ferrera on a panel to discuss the presidential election in Los Angeles. Famous friends: Chelsea joined Lena Dunham on a panel to discuss the presidential election in Los Angeles on Sunday. The Girls star often shares her supporter for Hillary on her social media pages Family: Chelsea's baby bump remained hidden at the New Hampshire primary in early February. The expectant mom and her father, former President Bill Clinton, are pictured with Hillary at the primary gathering While Lena and America both shared their support for Chelsea's mother, Lena admitted that she has received more hostility from Bernie supporters than Republicans for backing Hillary 'I have received more hostility for voting for a qualified female candidate than I have ever received anywhere from the American right wing,' she said. 'The fact that other members of the Democratic Party have spoken to me like I was an ill informed child for voting for someone who represents everything I think this country should be is outrageous.' Meanwhile, Chelsea spoke against the 'normalization of hate speech' and said it was now 'treated as unexceptional'. Despite her busy travel schedule, the former first daughter has managed to find some down time during this demanding election season. Less than two weeks ago, Chelsea was home in New York City where she and her husband Marc, 38, enjoyed a Saturday stroll through the park. Downtime: Chelsea and Marc took their one-year-old daughter Charlotte for a walk in the park earlier this month Special moment: Chelsea and her husband are pictured leaving Lenox Hill Hospital in New York with her parents after the birth of her daughter in September 2014 Chelsea donned a classic tan trench coat, a bright orange scarf, and a cap pulled low over her face for the the family outing. The soon-to-be mother-of-two walked arm-in-arm with her husband, who pushed their daughter Charlotte in a stroller. Three days later Chelsea was back on the campaign trail in Salt Lake City, Utah, telling Democratics that she believes the upcoming 2016 presidential election is the most important one in her lifetime. And while politics has always been an important part of her life, Chelsea said motherhood has made her care even more about her leaders - something she didn't even think was possible. 'I'm here clearly as a proud daughter but also as a mom,' she said. 'I couldn't imagine a better grandmother for my children. I also couldn't imagine a better president for my children.' Chelsea announced her pregnancy on Twitter in December last year, writing: Next summer, Charlotte is going to be a big sister.' She added that she felt very blessed. A teenage girl was left fighting for her life after developing toxic shock syndrome from using tampons. Peyton Caples, of Ventura, California, was just 15 when she contacted the rare illness, which was initially misdiagnosed as a virus. She was rushed to hospital when the 'virus' became steadily worse and she felt weak, feverish and was struggling to walk. There, as she was repeatedly vomiting, doctors discovered her body was swelling and she had 'the heartbeat of a baby'. She was transferred to intensive care where she was diagnosed with toxic shock syndrome, and as blood poisoning ravaged her body, her kidneys and liver began to fail. Peyton Caples, now 17, was left fighting for a life after developing toxic shock syndrome from using tampons Miss Caples was rushed to hospital where doctors pumped her full of antibiotics as her organs began to fail Medics desperately pumped her full of antibiotics in a bid to save her life, and miraculously, she pulled through and survived. It is thought she caught the deadly infection as a result of using tampons - but she insists she didn't leave them in for longer than the recommended time. Now 17, she has shared the shocking images of her in hospital to warn other of the dangers of toxic shock syndrome. Recalling the horror of being in hospital, Miss Caples said: 'I felt like I'd been shot. I've never been so ill in my life. 'I got to the intensive care unit at Ventura County Medical Centre in Ventura, California, and my heartbeat was the same as a baby's. 'I started throwing up and medics put five IVs in my arms and a tube down my nose. 'I remember having no family members in the room and screaming for my grandma Bonnie. 'I had a 103 Fahrenheit [39.4 Celsius] fever but they couldn't give me medicine for it because my kidneys and liver were failing. 'My tongue was white then turned red. I had the worst sore throat ever, they gave me water but it hurt too bad to drink anything.' She has now shared the shocking images of her in hospital to warn other of the dangers of tampons Miss Caples had been using tampons which she believes triggered her toxic shock syndrome Miss Caples had begun feeling ill during her period a few days earlier in June 2013, yet had just recovered from glandular fever for which she was taking steroids, and so thought nothing of it. She had been using tampons, but insists she had not left them in for any longer than the recommended time, as instructed on the pack. But over a few days her condition deteriorated, and she began to feel feverish. She said: 'I started feeling really faint and nauseated. I could barely walk, but didn't think much of it because I was on steroids for a different illness. 'On the third day I started feeling better so my friend came over. But I felt really sick when I stood up.' Her grandmother Bonnie, 67, called the doctor's surgery immediately, and a nurse arrived at Miss Caples' home. The nurse said she was probably suffering from a virus, but also ordered a blood test in case Miss Caples was anaemic, a condition where a woman is deficient in iron, making them more susceptible to infections. But later than night, after the nurse left, Miss Caples could barely walk. 'I had a horrible fever and was nauseous,' she said. 'When I finally went to sleep I woke up throwing up and feeling really weak.' WHAT IS TOXIC SHOCK SYNDROME AND HOW DOES A TAMPON CAUSE IT? Toxic shock syndrome (TSS) is a rare but life-threatening bacterial infection. It is caused by staphylococcus aureus and streptococcus pyogenes - bacteria that normally live harmlessly on the skin, nose or mouth. But they can invade the body's bloodstream, where they release poisonous toxins. The toxins damage tissue, including skin and organs, and can disturb many vital organ functions. TSS is a medical emergency and sufferers must seek medical help as soon as possible. Toxic shock syndrome (TSS) is a rare but life-threatening bacterial infection caused by staphylococcus aureus (pictured) and streptococcus pyogenes Signs of TSS include a temperature of 38.9C or above; fainting; widespread; flat, red skin rash; three or more organs affected by infection; infection caused by staphylococcus or streptococcus. If left untreated, TSS can cause shock and organ damage that results in death. Anyone can develop TSS but for reasons that are not fully understood, a significant number of cases are in women who are on their period and using a tampon - particularly those designed to be 'super absorbent'. The role of tampons in toxic shock syndrome remains unexplained. One theory is that if a tampon is left in your vagina for some time, as is often the case with the more absorbent types of tampons, it can become a breeding ground for the bacteria. Another theory is that the fibres of the tampon may scratch the vagina, allowing the bacteria or the toxins to enter the blood. No evidence has been found to support either theory. Source: NHS Choices Advertisement Once again, she went to see her doctor, who diagnosed a bad virus and told her she would feel better in a few days. While her grandmother told her not to use tampons anymore, she had continued. That night, she started struggling to walk and passed out on the floor. She said: 'I couldn't walk at all. I was in so much pain. I felt like I was dying. I was having horrible pain everywhere. 'My legs felt like they were dead and I could barely move. I passed out right when I stood up. 'I fell straight onto my friend who called my grandma to say we needed to take me to the emergency room.' In hospital she was barely able to breathe and doctors immediately started hydrating her. Thirty minutes later she was transferred to intensive care, as doctors tried to figure out what was wrong with her. 'They started me on different antibiotics to help,' she said. 'I couldn't bend my arms, my whole body was swollen and I could barely see. 'They pricked all of my fingers for blood.' In intensive care, doctors pumped Miss Caples with antibiotics in a bid to save her life. She is pictured after recovering She took days to sit up and walk again after battling the potentially-deadly infection. She is pictured in hospital Miss Caples' parents, Shelley and Evan, both 47, and her brother Curren, now 20, were in Germany at the time. Curren is a professional skateboarder and was competing in skateboarding competition X Games. As soon as they heard Miss Caples was fighting for her life in hospital, they booked flights home, arriving the next day. 'At that point doctors said it could be toxic shock, but, they didn't know yet,' Miss Caples continued. 'My parents watched me while I slept that night and noticed the tube in my nose was red and the bag where it emptied had a lot of my blood filling into it. 'The nurse turned off the pump part of it and the bleeding stopped. Later that night they put it down further. 'I woke up screaming because it was so painful. 'My heartbeat jumped from 70bpm to 150bpm and I was screaming and crying for my mom and it felt like I had been shot.' Miss Caples said: 'Never did I think at 15 I'd be a survivor. But everything happens for a reason' Later that morning, she was officially diagnosed with toxic shock syndrome and started on antibiotics. 'I kept having to get IVs changed because my veins would collapse,' Miss Caples said. 'I still wasn't allowed to eat or drink, so I was starving and still in pain.' After two day, Miss Caples was allowed to eat. 'But I cried because it hurt too much to eat anything,' she said. 'I still couldn't walk that night. The next night doctors allowed me to stand up. It was really hard to stand but I was proud of myself. Never did I think at 15 I'd be a survivor Peyton Caples, 15 'The next day they let me walk to a chair which made me more proud of myself but it hurt really bad to walk. 'Since I was getting stronger the next day they got me a wheelchair and let me out of intensive care and into a regular room. I was released two days after getting a new room.' Miss Caples is now banned from using tampons, and has shared the horrific pictures of herself in hospital to warn others of the danger of toxic shock syndrome. She has recovered well and plans to start at community college later this year to study fine art. Something was terribly wrong. Id just missed a call on my mobile from my 76-year-old father and while hed usually leave a message, this time he immediately rang again. In a barely audible voice, he said he was with his GP, whod made an emergency home visit as he was feeling frighteningly unwell with flu-like symptoms. The doctor grabbed the phone to say hed rung for an ambulance. I was worried, naturally, but also shocked Dads usually in perfect health and only three days before hed been on great form, telling jokes and demonstrating his new hobby: playing the ukulele. I met the ambulance at Kings College Hospital in London as Dad was stretchered in. His face was flushed and his hands felt hot and moist. He told me that he hadnt eaten and had barely drunk for three days, and felt desperately weak. Pervasive: Swine flu officially called the H1N1 flu virus is not only still with us, but has been the main strain of the virus circulating this flu season It was horrifying to see him in such a state, but the biggest shock was yet to come. Swabs of his nose and throat revealed that Dad had the scary sounding swine flu, which I naively thought had disappeared after the 2009 pandemic. In fact, swine flu officially called the H1N1 flu virus is not only still with us, but has been the main strain of the virus circulating this flu season, explains Dr Richard Pebody, head of flu surveillance at Public Health England. Indeed swine flu has been one of four main strains of flu in circulation since 2009, says Professor Wendy Barclay, chair in influenza biology at Imperial College London. Its known to particularly affect pregnant women, adults with long-term conditions such as diabetes, and children last week a three-year-old from Corby, Northamptonshire, died from suspected swine flu. Overall intensive care admissions with flu are up from 1,187 last year to 1,557 so far this year. This year there has been a surge in the number of swine flu cases and in the number of flu cases ending up intensive care nearly half of these intensive care admissions were for H1N1, compared with just 10 per cent last year. Overall intensive care admissions with flu are up from 1,187 last year to 1,557 so far this year. As with other types of flu, swine flu symptoms typically clear up at home with bed rest. But if you think this years flu is worse, then you might not be far wrong. As John Oxford, emeritus professor of virology at Queen Mary University of London, explains: H1N1 attacks the upper and lower airways and can go deep into the lungs, causing more severe symptoms. However, swine flu symptoms are generally so similar to other flu that it can only be properly detected with lab tests of nose and throat swabs. Virus: This colorised image from a transmission electron micrograph depicts the A H1N1 swine flu virus Patients are usually admitted to hospital with flu only if they develop complications such as pneumonia. Complications occur more often in the over-65s and under-twos, says Professor Oxford which is why my father was sent to hospital. But this year the hospital admissions for flu have seen a spike in younger and middle-aged adults. This is not a surprise when swine flu is about, explains Dr Pebody, as the elderly have tended to avoid the virus because they have immunity from the strain circulating between the 1918 pandemic and the late Fifties. Swine flu also hits younger adults because theyre not given the jab. Yet despite the rise in swine flu cases and hospital admissions, the virus is less harmful than it was in 2009 (when it caused at least 388 deaths in the UK), partly because many of us have had it or been exposed to it. That means were less likely to catch it again, and if we do, it wouldnt be as severe. However, experts are concerned about the high level of swine flu cases and the rise in hospital and intensive care admissions. Flu viruses are constantly mutating, and its possible that H1N1 is becoming more vigorous, says Professor Barclay. Not becoming a nastier illness, but perhaps infecting people more easily. Contagious: Overall intensive care admissions with flu are up from 1,187 in 2015 to 1,557 so far this year The virus mutates when it replicates, says Professor Oxford, adding that a version that, for instance, is more effective at getting deeper into the respiratory tract will thrive. He finds it worrying that my father now making a good recovery was hit by swine flu: firstly because of his age and secondly because he had his annual flu jab in October. If there are signs that swine flu is moving into the elderly Id be extremely worried, he says. The H1N1 component of the vaccine has been successful until now. In fact my father may have succumbed because his immunity was low: hed had some late nights, and lack of sleep affects immunity. Or he might have got a particularly high dose of the virus for example, if someone sneezed directly into his face. Dad was kept in overnight on an isolation ward, and treated by nurses in masks. Then he was sent home to recover, with the standard advice: rest, drink plenty of water, keep warm and take paracetamol or ibuprofen to relieve aches and lower temperatures. Readers worried about swine flu are advised that its not too late to take precautions. If youre in an at-risk group, get your jab, says Professor Maureen Baker, chairwoman of the Royal College of General Practitioners. URINARY incontinence the urge to urinate frequently affects around three million people in Britain. Lee Ryan, 49, an office administrator from Essex, underwent a new technique for it, as he tells SOPHIE GOODCHILD THE PATIENT My BLADDER issues began about ten years ago. When I had the urge to go, I just had to go straight away. I initially thought I was getting old or it was the coffee I used to drink around ten cups daily so I cut back, but it didnt make a difference. I even thought it was diabetes at one point and went to see my GP, but my blood sugar levels were normal so he said not to worry. But it was becoming worse and I was getting up several times a night to go. My daughter is at university in Brighton and when my wife Debbie and I went to see her, Id have to stop every so often to go to the loo and would sometimes get caught short on the motorway hard shoulder. Eventually, a couple of years ago my doctor referred me to a specialist at University College Hospital in London who diagnosed an overactive bladder. Common issue: Urinary incontinence the urge to urinate frequently affects three million people in Britain This meant the muscles around my bladder were contracting too soon and too often. I was prescribed tablets to stop the bladder from spasming, but they didnt work and I suffered side-effects, so had to stop taking them. Then, in June 2015, I was referred back to the hospital to see consultant urologist Mahreen Pakzad. Initially she put me on another pill, but after four days I started to have heart palpitations so I came off that too. Given drugs were not suitable, Ms Pakzad outlined three other options. One involved inserting a needle twice a week near my ankle and sending an electrical current via the nerve there up to nerves that control the bladder. But you have to keep going to hospital for this, and the hospital is an hour and a half away from where I live, which would have a big impact on my life. Or I could have Botox injections every nine months to paralyse the bladder muscle. Ms Pakzad said this can sometimes overparalyse the muscle so you need to use a catheter four times a day to empty your bladder that was a no-no. The third option was something called sacral neuromodulation, which involves having a device inserted in the lower back, like a pacemaker. Equal: Men often think urinary incontinence is a womans problem but its not both sexes are equally affected, but men are more reluctant to come forward This would send an electrical current to the nerves surrounding the bladder to stop them making the muscles contract. It appealed to me, because although there was a tiny chance of overparalysing the bladder, if it worked, it would be a permanent solution. First, the doctors had to check the treatment was going to work by using a temporary device. In January, I had a wire fitted in my lower back along the nerve to the bladder. This operation took about an hour under general anaesthetic, but I was out of hospital the same day. The wire was then connected to an external battery pack that I had clipped to my belt for almost a month. The downside was that you cant get the equipment wet Debbie had to wrap cling film around the area before I had a wash. But it worked I only got up twice in the night the whole month. This meant I was suitable for the permanent internal battery implant, which I had put in at the end of January. The implant was inserted under my skin just above the right buttock and attached to the wire in my back. The procedure was quicker than before but once again I was under general anaesthetic. Urge incontinence is caused by an overactive bladder when the bladder fills with urine it spasms, triggering the need to urinate even if not full. Leaks can occur if this spasming continues, which cause embarrassment There was no pain from the operation, just discomfort for a few days. I can feel the implant occasionally it presses into the muscle in the right buttock and aches a bit. I control the electric pulses with a remote, so I can find the right amount of current without it being uncomfortable. It feels like someone is tapping you softly. I only go to the loo around seven times a day now and rarely during the night. The desperate urgency has gone which is such a relief: Im back to being a regular person. THE SURGEON Mahreen Pakzad is a consultant urological surgeon at University College Hospital in London. Men often think urinary incontinence is a womans problem but its not both sexes are equally affected, but men are more reluctant to come forward. Of those men with urinary incontinence, a third have urge incontinence an uncontrollable urge to go to the toilet. Other common bladder problems in men can be prostate-related (as the gland puts pressure on the bladder and urethra). Less common is stress incontinence, which is when you pass urine accidentally because of a sudden increase in pressure within the abdomen coughing or jumping are triggers. Urge incontinence is caused by an overactive bladder when the bladder fills with urine it spasms, triggering the need to urinate even if its not full. Leaks can occur if this spasming continues, which cause deep embarrassment. The exact cause is unknown, but it is usually triggered by overactivity of the detrusor muscles of the bladder wall. In terms of treatment, my patients start by completing a bladder diary, recording everything they drink and their urinating episodes for three days and nights this helps identify obvious triggers, such as caffeine or fizzy drinks which can irritate the bladder lining. If the problem persists, medication which relaxes the muscles around the bladder may help, but not all patients respond well and side-effects can stop them taking them. Men's health: Other common bladder problems in men can be prostate-related (as the gland puts pressure on the bladder and urethra) The next step is one of three options. The first is Botox injections, to paralyse the muscles slightly to reduce spasm. But there is a 5 to 10 per cent risk the bladder is overparalysed and the patient needs to use a catheter until the Botox wears off. Lee wanted a permanent solution, so we opted for sacral neuromodulation, a relatively new therapy that stimulates the nerves supplying the bladder muscles directly, via a small electric current in the lower back, as well as the nerves leading to the bladder. This is thought to shock the nerves to return to normal. We start by testing the patients suitability by fitting them with a temporary wire and a small battery pack that emits electric pulses. Here the patient has a 20cm long wire implanted into the lower back through a tiny incision. One of the ends is pulled so it pokes out of the buttock through a 5cm incision, and is attached to a small battery pack worn on the patients belt. The test phase can last between four to six weeks. Lees bladder diary revealed he experienced an 80 per cent reduction in symptoms during this phase; if the improvement is more than 50 per cent then the permanent stimulator is fitted. This involves removing the external wires and battery and implanting a permanent wire and stimulator, which goes into the top of the buttock. Lee was then given a remote the size of a mobile phone to adapt the currents strength. The success of the procedure is around 75 to 80 per cent. Every night at 10 pm John Lynch would call up the stairs for his 14-year-old son Jake to come down for his toast and milk. The evening of Tuesday, March 19, 2013 was no different. This time, however, Jake didnt reply. Over the past few months, the young teen had become increasingly quiet and subdued, spending a lot more time in his bedroom. His parents thought he was revising; Jake had been anxious about his studies and indeed seven weeks earlier hed been prescribed Prozac to help with his exams, as the family were told by his doctor. When Jake didnt answer that night, his parents took one look at each other and, instinctively knowing something was very wrong, both ran upstairs. They opened their sons bedroom door to find him in a pool of blood; hed shot himself with the small rifle his mother Stephanie used at a local gun club. Too young: Weeks after being put on Prozac, Jake Lynch, 14, took his own life by shooting himself Bereft: Stephanie McGill & John Lynch tragically lost their son Jake, 14, at their home in Clondalkin, 2013 As John, a fireman, desperately performed CPR, Stephanie called 999, but Jake died in hospital a few hours later. For the family, the terrible heartbreak of his death is compounded by the horrifying realisation that the very medication meant to help him, might have made him suicidal. As his mother points out: My son had no history of self-harm, depression or suicidal thoughts, hed just had anxiety. But 46 days after starting on Prozac, he shot himself. I later discovered to my horror that Prozac has a higher risk of suicide in children and adolescents. It was the first time Id heard about these side-effects if Id known before there is no way I would have taken that risk with my child, especially as Jake wasnt even depressed. Over the past decade there has been a huge rise in antidepressants handed to children and adolescents, with prescriptions doubling to an estimated 100,000 a year. Last month, a major report on mental health published by NHS England suggested that one in ten children aged five to 16 has a diagnosable mental health problem. Psychological therapy can help, but experts say waiting times can be so long GPs feel obliged to resort to prescribing antidepressants. The report found most children and young people get no support. Even for those who do, the average wait for routine appointments for psychological therapy was 32 weeks in 2015/16. But while antidepressants do help some, there is growing concern about the potential harm the drugs can cause. A major new study has found that drugs commonly prescribed for depression in children doubled their risk of suicidal thoughts. The research, published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ), looked at popular antidepressants, known as SSRIs (serotonin selective reuptake inhibitors), with brand names including Cymbalta, Lustral, Effexor, and Prozac the drug Jake was prescribed. Much-loved: This is the last picture of Jake - taken just weeks before his fifteenth birthday Researchers analysed data from 70 drug trials involving 18,000 patients. Significantly, they looked at previously unseen data not the officially published trial results GPs might see but the much fuller reports drug companies have to provide to licensing bodies, the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Authority (MHRA) in the UK, and the European Medicines Agency (EMA). These reports are not easy to get hold of indeed it took a ten-month battle with the MHRA and EMA to see them, says the expert who led the research, Peter Gtzsche, a professor of clinical research design and analysis at the University of Copenhagen. His team looked at the individual reports on each patient that drug companies provide to the regulators. What they discovered was shocking. We found major harms caused by the drugs that were then left out of the publicly published articles, says Professor Gtzsche. My son had no history of self-harm, depression or suicidal thoughts, hed just had anxiety. But 46 days after starting on Prozac, he shot himself For example, four deaths that appeared in patient reports werent mentioned in the official records. In one case a patient tried to kill herself and died four days later in hospital. But it wasnt recorded as a death involving the drug on the grounds that the hospital had taken her off the drug so she wasnt taking it when she died, says Professor Gtzsche. A further 62 suicides were clearly listed in individual patient reports, but in the published articles, 27 had been categorised more vaguely, either as worsening depression or emotional lability a medical term that means rapidly changing emotions. This is not the first time serious questions have been raised about the safety of antidepressants in children. In 2003 a BBC Panorama programme revealed that GlaxoSmithKline had hidden trials showing that children who took the SSRI Seroxat were more at risk from suicide. The trials showed that 6.5 per cent of children prescribed the drug suffered emotional lability compared with 1.4 per cent of those taking a placebo. In 2012 the company was fined a record 2 billion by a U.S. court, in part for wrongly promoting Seroxat as a treatment for childhood depression between 1997 and 2004. By 2005 authorities in the U.S. and UK had banned Seroxats use in children. Carefree: Jake enjoyed a healthy childhood and was a happy-go-lucky boy until adolescence Link? In 2003 a BBC Panorama programme revealed that GlaxoSmithKline had hidden trials showing that children who took the SSRI Seroxat were more at risk from suicide The link between suicide and Seroxat is the best known, says Professor Gtzsche, but Pfizer (which makes Lustral) and Eli Lilly (the makers of Prozac) have also hidden suicides and suicide attempts. The latest findings have provoked the ire of psychiatrists. Theres no evidence or data from this . . . or previous published trials of an increase of actual suicide in young children who take antidepressants, declared the Royal College of Psychiatrists. The possible risks of harm always have to be balanced against the benefit of treating depression effectively. A spokesperson for UK drug regulator the MHRA, says there are already strong warnings in information provided to patients and prescribers. With the exception of fluoxetine [the generic name for Prozac] the risks of all SSRIs outweigh the benefits when used on children, so they should not be used in this patient group. A major issue in monitoring this problem is that there is no official record of how many deaths might be linked to the drugs. I later discovered to my horror that Prozac has a higher risk of suicide in children and adolescents. It was the first time Id heard about these side-effects if Id known before there is no way I would have taken that risk with my child, especially as Jake wasnt even depressed However, a bereaved father who has searched coroner reports dating back ten years, claims hes found 3,600 suicides involving antidepressants, 70 of them children. (The father, who wishes to remain anonymous, has posted his findings on the website antidepaware.co.uk) Of course, this is far from a scientific study. However, even some psychiatrists themselves now believe these drugs shouldnt be given to children. Dr Joanna Moncrieff, a senior lecturer in psychiatry at University College London, says the suicide risk isnt very big for adults but the signs are certainly there for children. She wrote the BMJ editorial that accompanied the recent study, pointing out that the drugs are only modestly more effective than a placebo, so if the published trials underestimate the risks, any benefits may not outweigh the risks. My profession has failed to do enough research to understand what these drugs do in the brain, she told Good Health. And until we know more, I believe we should stop giving them to young people. Pain: I think these pills may do more harm than good. But theyre cheaper than counselling, and its families like mine who pay the price, they added Gendered issue: There is a huge gender gap with the overwhelming majority of suicide victims being men There is a place for antidepressants, adds Professor David Healy, a psychiatrist from Bangor, North Wales, who first raised concerns about SSRIs more than 20 years ago. They are valuable drugs when used carefully I prescribe them to my own patients but we cant just rely on what the trials say. It would help if doctors were more ready to listen when patients tell them about the side-effects. However, their tendency is to believe the claims contained in flawed trials that side-effects are rare and my patients tell me that often the response is to advise a higher dose. Jake Lynchs dose of Prozac was doubled one week after he started on it. The teenager, from Dublin, was first prescribed the drug after struggling to adjust to a new routine at secondary school. The school had raised concerns about an essay hed written, which they described as dark, Jake saw a psychologist and was diagnosed with mild Aspergers, which affects how people make sense of the world and relate to others. Jakes mother Stephanie asked if he could be referred for cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT). But she says that when his father took Jake to the appointment they saw a psychiatrist: the ten-minute appointment ended with Jake being prescribed Prozac to help with his exams. Within days of starting Prozac, for the first time in his life Jake had problems getting to sleep and would wake up early. He became withdrawn and moody. At the time I put it down to teenage hormones, and more schoolwork Later the psychiatrist said shed diagnosed anxiety disorder, but John said he wasnt told that. I knew nothing about Prozac but thought it would be OK as it was prescribed by the psychiatrist. Within days of starting Prozac, for the first time in his life Jake had problems getting to sleep and would wake up early. He became withdrawn and moody. At the time I put it down to teenage hormones, and more schoolwork. Six days after starting the drug, Jake walked out of a mock exam. Later at home he sat on the sofa and cried uncontrollably for three hours. I didnt connect his symptoms to the medication, says Stephanie. I persuaded myself it was exam stress. How I wish now that Id just poured it down the sink. The following week his dose was doubled. He was still quiet and moody, but there were no more meltdowns. We saw the psychiatrist 19 days later and I said I didnt think the drug was working, but she reassured us the symptoms should pass in three or four weeks. The Lynches will never know if she was right. Three weeks after that appointment, they held Jakes funeral, which was attended by 700 people. The day he died, Jake seemed restless and agitated. At 5pm, I asked him if he was OK and he said he didnt feel well. His cheeks were flushed and I thought he was coming down with a cold. We dont want Prozac banned, but we do want parents to be given all the information about the risks, says Stephanie McGill & John Lynch Concern: Last month, a major report published by NHS England suggested that one in ten children aged five to 16 has a diagnosable mental health problem We later found out that hed emailed a friend the day before saying he was feeling a bit down and drugged out of his mind on his medication. The coroner recorded an open verdict, saying he couldnt rule his death was suicide because Jakes email indicated he was not in his right mind and so couldnt have planned a suicide. I would argue he wasnt in his right mind because of Prozac. Jake died just five weeks from his 15th birthday. The Lynches are now campaigning for a warning about side-effects to be put on packaging not just on the leaflet in the box. We dont want Prozac banned, but we do want parents to be given all the information about the risks, says Stephanie. I think these pills may do more harm than good. But theyre cheaper than counselling, and its families like mine who pay the price. A spokesperson for the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry said: Any allegation against medicines produced by our members is treated seriously not only by our members but by our regulators. The review of antidepressants described in the BMJ articles will certainly be reviewed by companies, regulators and other stakeholders. For families such as the Lynches with their personal stake in this story, any such review is tragically too late. Has pasteurised milk reached its sell-by date? Over the past few decades, raw or unpasteurised milk has been seen as bacteria-ridden Russian roulette in a bottle. But a growing body of evidence now suggests that pasteurisation may be robbing us of vital protection against serious allergies, as well as destroying a range of life-enhancing nutrients. While you can legally buy raw milk from farmers, fresh milk sold in Britains High Streets must, by law, be pasteurised a technique that involves heating it to 72c (162f) for 25 seconds. This eliminates E.coli and other potentially lethal pathogens such as campylobacter, salmonella and listeria. However, the process seems to also destroy beneficial elements that protect us from a host of ailments, in particular allergies in children and adults. Are they milking our concerns? Over the past few decades, raw or unpasteurised milk has been seen as bacteria-ridden Russian roulette in a bottle A study of more than 1,100 children by paediatric allergy specialists at Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany, found that those who regularly drank unpasteurised farm milk were significantly less likely to develop asthma. The findings of this large-scale, long-term (six-year) study are in line with earlier, smaller studies. But the German study also points to omega 3 fatty acids as the substance in raw milk that may be key to the benefits. Tabea Brick, one of the immunologists who led the research, says that these play a crucial role in enabling the body to create chemicals that reduce harmful inflammation. Asthma is essentially an inflammatory allergic reaction in the airways of the lungs. Fresh, unprocessed cows milk has a higher content of omega 3 than does pasteurised, homogenised [where its treated to stop the cream separating] or low-fat milk, she says in this months edition of the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. This factor partly explains why children who consume the unprocessed product are less likely to develop asthma. Our bodies cant make omega 3 fatty acids, but they can be obtained from foods such as dairy and fish. Nevertheless, the authors of the study held back from recommending switching to untreated milk. They worry that the benefits may be outweighed by any potential danger from dangerous stomach bugs. Instead, the researchers urge that milk producers develop processing methods that are gentler than pasteurisation, that can both protect the beneficial components in milk, while eliminating any potentially dangerous pathogens. Pasteurisation was first performed in 1862, by Louis Pasteur and Claude Bernard. It was first used industrially in Germany in the 1880s. But for decades it was controversial. It is still not actually compulsory in England and Wales. Is nature best? growing body of evidence now suggests that pasteurisation may be robbing us of vital protection against serious allergies, as well as destroying a range of life-enhancing nutrients In the Twenties, only 1.5 per cent of Britains milk was pasteurised. The majority of our milk was still raw in 1939. This remained true in many small UK towns and rural areas well into the Fifties. Pasteurisation was made compulsory in Scotland in 1983. But unpasteurised green-top milk is still legal in England and Wales despite two Parliamentary bids to outlaw it in the Eighties and Nineties if bought directly from farmers. In the latter half of the 20th century, pasteurisation was the subject of bitter debate in the UK. Food scientists, such as the eccentric television pundit Magnus Pyke, lambasted as irrational and mystical those who opposed the sterilisation process on the grounds that it destroyed milks natural goodness. But now medical research is discovering raw milks ability to alleviate severe allergy. Last November, researchers at Londons Population Health Research Institute reported in the journal PLOS ONE that UK children who drank unpasteurised milk had a significantly lower risk of rhinitis, hay fever and allergic conjunctivitis. In a similar vein, when dermatologist Dr Donna Torley, at Southern General Hospital in Glasgow, examined the results of 24 previous research reviews in 2013, she found that consuming unpasteurised milk plays a significant role in reducing the risk of children developing eczema. The benefits may even be passed on in the womb. Mothers who drink unpasteurised milk are less likely to have children who suffer childhood asthma and other allergies, according to a German study published in the journal Current Opinion in Gastroenterology in 2012. Scientists have also discovered more about how pasteurisation diminishes the benefits of natural milk. Back in the day: In the Twenties, only 1.5 per cent of Britains milk was pasteurised. The majority of our milk was still raw in 1939. This remained true in many small UK towns and rural areas well into the Fifties A study by Australian pharmacists, published in the International Journal of Food Sciences and Nutrition last month, found the sterilisation process can cut levels of vitamin D by up to 20 per cent. And a report in the British Medical Journal in 2014 cited evidence indicating that pasteurisation kills beneficial bacteria that boost the guts ability to absorb nutrients. The bacteria also produce vitamin K, which helps blood to clot and bones to grow properly. Dr Hilary Longhurst, a consultant clinical immunologist at Barts Health, believes, however, that we should stick with pasteurisation as the simplest and most cost-effective way to protect public health. She adds: People have forgotten the dangers of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and foodborne infections. Indeed, worries persist about the safety of unpasteurised milk. In 2014, the Food Standards Agency (FSA) said it had found three separate incidents involving six cases of E.coli infection that were potentially linked to drinking it. The cases involved five children aged one and 12 years old and one adult aged 28. The FSA says unpasteurised milk should not be consumed by children or people with weakened immune systems. However, rigorous testing found no trace of the harmful bacteria in the farms milk sampled. And last year an in-depth safety review by the FSA ruled that while raw milk should continue to be sold, this could only be direct to consumers on specifically licensed farms, in farm shops and at farmers markets. The FSA believes this is the best way to maintain safe hygiene standards. This month, it published on its website a list of some 100 approved producers. A hospital suffering a chronic shortage of beds has resorted to putting patients in a gym. Crisis-hit Bristol Royal Infirmary, which was placed on 'black alert' last week, adopted the practice after struggling to cope with a surge in cases. A black alert - the highest level - means hospital services are almost at capacity and unable to cope with demand. The hospital trust admitted putting patients in the gym is 'far from ideal' but a necessary move to make space for other patients being admitted to hospital in an emergency. It stressed that beds in the gym are 'identical' to those on the wards and have all the necessary equipment. Bristol Royal Infirmary has resorted to putting patients in its gym overnight due to a shortage of beds This is the third time this year the hospital has been put on black alert as soaring numbers of patients require care. One man claims the shortage of beds means means he was 'kicked out' of a ward to free up space for others waiting on temporary beds, despite recovering from a life-threatening infection. The patient, cyclist Andrew Llewellyn, said he was given only a few hours warning before he was discharged from the hospital after six months. Mr Lewellyn, from Stroud, Gloucestershire, claims he was in 'no fit state to leave the hospital' and had nowhere else to go because he had builders at his home. The 61-year-old said: 'They came and told me I had to go because there was a bed crisis and patients were waiting on temporary beds in the gym. 'But I still felt very poorly and was in no condition to leave. I was still having diarrhoea from the antibiotics they had been pumping into me.' Mr Lewellyn, who had blood poisoning, C-Diff and E.Coli, said he was 'as weak as a kitten'. Hospital staff told him they wanted to move him to the discharge lounge. When he said he would need to lie down they replied, 'Well, we've got reclining chairs,' he claims. 'I had kidney problems and it was the worst part of the whole time I was in hospital. My life was in real danger,' he said. 'The whole experience was horrendous. I was in no fit state to leave hospital that day and I told them I had accommodation issues but they did not relent. 'The NHS is not supposed to discharge anyone from hospital unless it is safe - and I'm sure it was not safe for me to go then.' Andrew Llewellyn, 61, claims the shortages of beds at the hospital meant he was 'kicked out' of hospital too early. He was forced to sleep on a mattress on a friend's floor as there were builders in his house Mr Lewellyn, a retired semi-professional cyclist, had originally been told to expect discharge on Thursday or Friday last week, but claims he was 'kicked out' of his bed at 9am on Tuesday. University Hospitals Bristol NHS Foundation Trust, which runs the BRI, apologised to Mr Lewellyn for his experience. Had hospital staff known he couldn't return to his own home, alternative arrangements would have been made, a spokeswoman said. She continued: 'After such a long stay in hospital it is especially disappointing that things did not go well for him. 'Mr Llewellyns consultant confirmed that he was fit for discharge on the day he went home and whilst we were aware that it was Mr Llewellyns preference was to stay longer, once patients are fit for discharge our aim is to get them home as soon as possible. 'Staff responsible for arranging Mr Llewellyns discharge were not aware that he could not return to his own home, had this been the case he would not been discharged and alternative arrangements would have been made.' The hospital was placed on 'black alert' last week - meaning it is nearly at capacity and cannot cope with demand - last week, for the third time this year The spokeswoman added the hospital has to house patients in their rehabilitation gym overnight in order to free up capacity on the wards. They said patients in these areas always sleep in hospital beds which are identical to those used in ward areas, they have both oxygen and suction equipment and are staffed to the same standards as the wards. Patients are 'carefully selected', to ensure it is safe for them to stay outside of the main wards, she said. She said: 'We accept that these arrangements are far from ideal. 'They are only ever used in extremis when demand is such, that to not open extra capacity such as this would result in unacceptable risks for other patients needing admission to hospital. 'Patient feedback from those who have spent time in one of these areas has been extremely positive and we are very grateful for the patience and understanding patients and their families have shown our staff and others in recent weeks.' Women in the US have a longer life expectancy than men, scientists have revealed. However, women spend more of their golden years living with disabilities. Experts analyzed data from 1982, 2004 and 2011 taken from studies on disability trends on US adults over the age of 65. Over that period, the average womans life expectancy rose by two years from 82.5 to 85.5 years. Men dont live as long but their life expectancy rose by five years from 80 to 84 years. But despite their longer lives, women over the age of 65 spent an estimated 30 per cent of their remaining years on disability. Meanwhile, men started out spending 22 per cent of their remaining years disabled but that figure dropped to 19 per cent by the end of the study. Scientists revealed women are living longer than ever - as their life expectancy rose from 82.5 to 85.5 years, compared to only 84 years for men. But, women spend more of their older years disabled Lead study author Dr Vicki Freedman, of the University of Michigan, told Reuters that it is hard to pinpoint exactly why women may experience more years of disability. But, the scientist noted that it may stem from unequal progress in treating their health conditions or different shifts in gender lifestyle habits, such as smoking and exercise, over time. Dr Freedman said: Older women also have fewer economic resources than men on average so they may not be as able to accommodate their declines in functioning when they do occur. Whatever the reason, this is an important trend to continue to monitor as the large Baby Boom cohorts continue to reach old age. Being disabled makes it harder for a person to complete daily activities, such as dressing, bathing, shopping, cooking or driving. Women are biologically more hearty than men so instead of dying from a heart attack or something like that they recover, but they recover disabled Dr James Kirkland, of Mayo Clinic Severe disability in which people had trouble with at least three activities declined for both men and women during the study period. In 1982, 13.2 per cent of women and 10.7 per cent of men suffered from severe disability beyond age 65. But by 2011, this dropped to 10 per cent of women and seven per cent of men, the scientists reported in the American Journal of Public Health. The study is limited in that it relied on data from only three years which means the researchers didnt get to explore how disability onset or recovery might influence life expectancy. The scientists also limited their analysis of disability to mobility and completion of daily activities excluding other conditions that could influence health and quality of life. Women over the age of 65 spend an estimated 30 per cent of their golden years on disability, compared with men, who only spend 19 per cent of their older years disabled, experts found However, it is possible that the heartiness that makes women outlive men might also be the reason for their greater propensity towards disability, according to Dr James Kirkland, director of the Robert and Arlene Kogod Center on Aging at the Mayo Clinic. Dr Kirkland, who wasnt involved in the study, told Reuters: Women are biologically more hearty than men so instead of dying from a heart attack or something like that they recover, but they recover disabled. Furthermore, women may also assume caretaker roles leaving less time for activities that normally keep disability at bay, noted Dr Lili Lustig, of the Cleveland Clinic. And, women may also lack the same financial resources to stop working as they get older or pay for the services they need, added Dr Lustig, who wasnt involved in the study. Women may also struggle to pay for basic needs, such as food, medicine and housing. Dr Lustig told Reuters: Women are not prepared for the golden years. Alzheimers disease may strike women harder than men, research suggests. Women seem to have worse memory, thinking power and spatial awareness than men at a similar stage of the disease, according to a major review of dementia research. The British team which conducted the study said that the findings should trigger a re-think as to the way Alzheimers is screened for, diagnosed and treated. In 2015, there were an estimated 46.8 million people worldwide living with dementia, of which Alzheimer's is the most common form, according to Alzheimer's Disease International. Alzheimers disease may strike women harder than men, new research suggests. Women seem to have worse memory, thinking power and spatial awareness than men at a similar stage of the disease (file photo) Experts know that women are slightly more likely than men to suffer from the disease - but until now there was little awareness that the disease also strikes women harder. The scientists, from the University of Hertfordshire, found that men with Alzheimers consistently outperform women on a number of fronts. According to the review, published in the World Journal of Psychiatry, women with Alzheimers have poorer long-term memory than men - both in terms of episodic memory about their own experiences, and semantic memory about more general concepts such as names of colours and days of the week. The authors found that women with the disease also perform less well in terms of visual-spatial ability and verbal skills. Professor Keith Laws of the Hertfordshire School of Life and Medical Sciences, said: Sex differences in neurocognitive function are relatively well established in, for example, autism, schizophrenia, depression and dyslexia. Despite clear evidence, however, that Alzheimers disease is more prevalent in women, until recently little research had focused on neurocognitive differences in men and women with Alzheimers disease. His team looked at the results of 15 previous studies, involving more than 2,000 people with Alzheimers. 'SEVERE STRESS IN MIDDLE AGE CAN LEAD TO ALZHEIMER'S BY DAMAGING THE BRAIN' Stress in middle age could cause dementia by damaging the brain, a study found. Neurons involved in chronic anxiety and fear 'extensively overlap' in areas also associated with Alzheimer's disease, scientists said. Mid-life stress has been previously linked to a higher risk of Alzheimer's disease. The latest study showed the mechanism of how chronic stress physically damages the brain potentially leading to dementia. Chronic stress is defined as 'prolonged activation' of the normal stress response in other words stress over long periods of time. The University of Toronto study suggested reducing chronic stress by therapy, exercise or mindfulness training a form of meditation might be ways to reduce the risk of Alzheimer's. The research was published in the journal Current Opinion in Psychiatry. Advertisement When combined, the results showed that men performed better than women on all fronts. The authors wrote: Although not unanimous, the evidence presented in this review converges on the multiple cognitive abilities being more adversely affected by Alzheimers disease in women than in men. Men modestly but significantly outperform women in all of the cognitive domains assessed. Neither any differences in age nor dementia severity could account for the male advantage. Alzheimers results in progressive degeneration and death of nerve cells, causing a decline in cognition and memory functions. The team are unsure exactly why women are affected more severely but suggested several possibilities. One theory is that the reduction of oestrogen in postmenopausal women diminishes cognitive functions such as memory, which is subsequently compounded by Alzheimers. Another possibility concerns the fact that men have traditionally spent more time in work, and this activity may give them greater cognitive reserve, enabling them to better resist the impact of the illness. Cognitive reserve is a the degree to which a person can function despite damage of the brain. People with a lot of cognitive reserve generally cope better with advancing dementia. Women are also more likely to be carriers of a specific gene - APOE 4 - which is linked to severity of Alzheimers. Professor Laws said: Our findings may have important implications for variation in the risk factors, progression and possibly the treatment of Alzheimers disease in men and women. For instance, genetics are hard to change but easier to screen, cognitive reserve is modifiable and with more women working, the next generation may suffer less. Researchers said women may fare worse because men have traditionally spent more time in work. This activity may make their brains better able to resist damage reducing the impact of the illness. Pictured are scans of the brains of Alzheimer's patients It is therefore fundamental that we continue to identify the role of sex differences to enable more accurate diagnoses and open up doors for new treatments to emerge. Dr James Pickett, head of research at the Alzheimers Society, said: We already know that two thirds of people living with dementia are women. This could be in part due to the fact that women live longer, but it also appears that women are at a higher risk of developing dementia for reasons that we dont yet know. This review pulls together much of the existing evidence to give us a clearer idea about the impact that Alzheimers disease has, particularly for women. The authors of the review have some interesting theories about why women may be affected by Alzheimers more than men including genetics and hormones. Another theory is that the reduction of oestrogen in postmenopausal women diminishes brain functions such as memory, which is subsequently compounded by Alzheimers. Pictured is a brain shrunk by the disease 'These need to be explored in greater depth so we can understand if there are ways we can address the particular needs and experiences of women with Alzheimers disease and other forms of dementia. However, its key to remember that, regardless of gender, no two people with dementia are the same and will experience different signs and symptoms. Dr Laura Phipps from Alzheimers Research UK added: Age, genetics and lifestyle all combine to influence our memory and thinking skills, how they change as we grow older and in diseases such as Alzheimers. This review discusses differences in memory and thinking skills between the sexes and suggests that women with Alzheimers perform slightly worse than men on some tasks, although researchers still need to fully explore the reasons behind this and whether these subtle differences could impact on clinical practice. A leukemia patient contracted an allergy to kiwi after receiving a bone marrow transplant, scientists have revealed. Prior to the procedure the patient had not suffered with the allergy. But, in the aftermath of the stem cell transplant, he experienced two sudden allergic reactions, after eating the fruit, experts said. The bone marrow donor was the mans sister who is known to be allergic to kiwis, according to scientists from the Technical University of Munich. A series of tests confirmed that the 46-year-old's new kiwi allergy originated in the donated stem cells. This is the first confirmed instance of an allergy being transferred to a patient through a donors stem cells, doctors said. Scientists revealed a 46-year-old man contracted an allergy to kiwis after receiving a bone marrow transplant from his sister, who is allergic to kiwis. The man never had a history of kiwi allergy before the transplant Before now, examples of allergy transfer from an allergic donor to a non-allergic recipient through hematopoietic cell transplantation had been described in several reports. However, in those cases, scientists could not confirm that the allergic reaction in the recipient was elicited from the donors cells. The 46-year-old patient in the case report received myeloablative hematopoietic stem cell transplantation known as HCT from his kiwi-allergic sister. And, after the transplant was completed, he had to episodes of oral allergic syndrome after consuming kiwi. The scientists set out to confirm that the allergy originated in the donors transplanted cells. They not only wanted to show that the allergy was transferred by HCT, but to also find out just how allergies could be transferred through that process. An ImmunoCAP test which is used to diagnose allergies was given to both the patient and his sister. Both of them tested positive for kiwi allergies. They also performed basophil activation test which are skin tests used to identify allergies. The scientists tested the effect of kiwi extract on both the man and his sister. The man had two allergic reactions after consuming kiwis following the transplant. This is the first instance of an allergy being transferred from a donor to a patient through stem cells, pictured, scientists say The case report said: Basophil activation upon kiwi extract was demonstrated in both recipient and donor. The team used a technique called fluorescent in situ hybridisation (FISH) to determine where the allergic cells originated. They found that the allergies came from the stem cells the man received from his sister. The case report said: Exemplified in this patient, we show for the first time that allergy transfer is mediated by the donor's cells. The authors noted that their approach using customized kiwi extract could serve as a model for future studies. Risk is higher in young children who go through repeat Scientists revealed giving antibiotics to children under 2 increases their risk of childhood obesity by up to 25 per cent Giving children antibiotics before they are two years old, increases the risk they will become obese, experts have warned. Three of four courses of the drugs in their early years is linked to childhood obesity, a new study conducted by a team at the universities of Colorado and Pennsylvania concluded. Study author Dr Frank Irving Scott said: Antibiotics have been used to promote weight gain in livestock for several decades, and our research confirms that antibiotics have the same effects on humans. Our results do not imply that antibiotics should not be used when necessary, but rather encourage both doctors and parents to think twice about antibiotic usage in infants in the absence of well-established indications. The team of scientists performed a large cohort study in the UK to assess the link between antibiotic exposure before age two and obesity at age four. They found that children with antibiotic exposure had a 1.2 per cent absolute and 25 per cent relative increase in the risk of early childhood obesity. That risk was strengthened by repeat exposure to antibiotics. Dr Scott said: Our work supports the theory that antibiotics may progressively alter the composition and function of the gut microbiome, thereby predisposing children to obesity as is seen in livestock and animal models. Antibiotics are prescribed in the US during an estimated 49 million pediatric outpatient visits each year. And, more than 10 million of those annual prescriptions are written for children without a clear reason. The finding is surprising, scientists note, as there is an increased awareness of the societal risks of antibiotic resistance. Our work supports the theory that antibiotics may progressively alter the composition and function of the gut microbiome, thereby predisposing children to obesity Dr Frank Irving Scott, of University of Colorado and University of Pennsylvania Furthermore, children are known to face other tangible risks to antibiotics, including dermatologic, allergic and infectious complications, inflammatory bowel disease and autoimmune conditions. The scientists noted that further research must assess whether these findings remain into adolescence and young adulthood. Additionally, scientists must investigate whether specific types of antibiotics are more closely linked with obesity. The American Gastroenterological Association is currently promoting and sharing research related to antibiotics and obesity, and their reaction to the gut microbiome, to better inform parents and doctors. The study was published in the journal Gastroenterology. But, the virus has been detected in the Aedes albopictus Zika virus is currently transmitted through the Aedes aegypti The imminent Zika virus outbreak in the US could be much worse than expected, scientists have warned. Currently, the virus is only transmitted through one species of mosquito the Aedes aegypti. But if another mosquito species that is known to harbor the virus Aedes albopictus ends up being capable of transmitting Zika as well, the outbreak will be more widespread. Outbreaks of the virus will hit the US even more than already expected particularly in the cities of Miami, Houston and New York. And, parts of the world previously believed to be low risk including Canada, Chile and countries in Europe and Asia would probably experience Zika, as well. The Zika virus is transmitted by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, but another species - Aedes albopictus - has also been detected with the virus. If the second species also transmits the virus, an outbreak in the US will be worse than expected, experts warn. Pictured, a map showing Zika risks associated with both mosquito types Even regions currently considered 'low risk' for the virus - such as Europe and Asia could face outbreaks of the virus. Pictured here, a map showing the Zika risks associated with the second mosquito Dr Sahotra Sakar, of the University of Texas at Austin, said: The spread depends critically on if a second mosquito species is a very good transmitter of Zika. If it is, then the risk is even worse than what has been forecast so far. Both of the mosquito species have been detected with Zika but only Aedes aegypti has been effective at spreading the virus thus far. Scientists from University of Texas and University of New South Wales in Australia found that if the second mosquito species spreads Zika, more places will experience outbreaks than previously thought. The scientists found that the World Health Organization and other agencies have forecast the spread of Zika with too little information about the effectiveness of different types of mosquitoes in spreading the disease. If the Aedes aegypti mosquito is the only species capable of spreading the disease, then existing models significantly overestimate the danger of Zika in most of the world. For instance, in the US, only Florida, Texas and Louisiana would experience widespread Zika cases as those states are home to the Aedes aegypti. Dr Sarkar said: Among urban areas in the US, Miami and Houston are at the greatest risk. In general there is greater risk to Florida than Texas because more travel to Latin America and the Caribbean occurs there. The Aedes aegypti mosquito (pictured) has been transmitting the virus throughout Latin America and the Caribbean over the past several months. Scientists anticipate the mosquito spreading to the US - along with the virus - by this summer Yet, if a second species is able to spread Zika, the WHO model underestimates the likelihood of transmission, the study concluded. The virus could spread to Canada, Chile, Europe and Asia and in the US, New York would face an even higher risk than Houston. Regardless of the outcome, scientists urge US cities, such as Miami, Orlando, Houston, Tampa and New Orleans, to step up efforts to sample and monitor local mosquito populations. Those cities should also be prepared to implement drastic mosquito control measures. Travelers to Latin America should also continue to take precautions to protect themselves. Dr Lauren Gardner, of University of New South Wales, said: The risk of additional Zika spread is further heightened by the upcoming 2016 Summer Olympics, which will be hosted in Rio de Janiero, Brazil, the epicenter of the Zika virus outbreak. The vaccine for meningitis B should be made available to more children to give parents peace of mind, experts have demanded. The Bexsero vaccine is only given in the first year of life, and only to babies born since May 2015. More than 823,000 people have now signed a petition calling for the Government to make it available to older children. But the Government insists that it would not be cost effective to vaccinate more babies, because the risk of meningitis B peaks in very young infants. Today, experts called for peace of mind to be taken into account when officials calculate cost effectiveness, rather than simply looking at how many illnesses are averted for each pound spent. More than 800,000 people signed a petition calling on the Government to provide the Meningitis B vaccine for all children following the death of two-year-old Faye Burdett who died on Valentine's Day Addressing to the Commons Petitions Committee this afternoon in the second evidence session, Sue Davie, chief executive of the Meningitis Now charity, said that the vaccine should be made available to children until the age of five. She said: Ever since we knew the vaccine would be available back in January 2013 when it was licensed, we have been calling for under fives, as the most at-risk group, to be protected. The burden of disease is greatest among under fives. Vinny Smith, CEO of the Meningitis Research Foundation, said the cost-effectiveness model was unfair on several levels. The model does not take into account the peace of mind benefits, he said. That is not just a phrase made up by two charities trying to put their cause forward. It is something that is has benefit to every parent and it is something that they value, something that they would put a value to if they could in this model, and it is something that this model does not take into account. Mr Smith said meningitis is a fiendishly difficult disease to detect. It often looks like flu. It has rapid onset and no matter how quickly you respond to that you might be able to do nothing about it. The petition gathered momentum after Faye Burdett's harrowing pictures were shared by her parents. It was signed by 823,341 people - the most in Parliament history. Today, was the second hearing So the most important thing to help make sure we dont have the tragic stories that we had last week is to protect people up front. 'The only way to do that is vaccines. WHAT IS MENINGITIS B AND WHO IS ELIGIBLE FOR THE VACCINE? Meningitis B is a bacterial infection, most often striking in children under one year old. Symptoms include a high temperature with cold hands and feet, confusion, vomiting and headaches. If caught early and treated with antibiotics, most people will make a full recovery. There are about 1,200 cases each year in the UK. In 2014, the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, the expert body which advises the government on vaccinations, recommended that babies be given the meningitis B vaccine, from two months of age. The committee had previously ruled that the vaccine should not be introduced - because, it said, it was not cost-effective. It was announced in June that the vaccine would be given to all babies when they reached two months of age. Booster jabs are also given at four months and 12 months as part of the childhood immunisation programme from September 2015. The idea was to protect those most at risk - with cases of meningitis B peaking in infants at around five or six months of age. The JCVI did advise a catch-up programme for slightly older babies who were three or four months old in September 2015 - but not for any other age group. Advertisement The petition became the most-signed in parliamentary history after the parents of a toddler who died from the disease shared a shocking image of the youngster covered in a rash and lying in a hospital bed just before she died. Two-year-old Faye Burdett, from Maidstone, Kent, caught the infection and died on Valentines Day after an 11-day battle. Although only infants are given the vaccine on the NHS aged two months, four months and 12 months until a few weeks ago parents of older children were able to pay to get it privately. But the publicity following Fayes death triggered a rush for the jabs, and all private stocks have now run out. Last week, her parents gave their tragic account of what happened to Faye and told the committee they had shared the picture to try to prevent others suffering the same fate. Former England rugby captain Matt Dawson, whose son Sam survived meningitis C, also spoke at the two-day hearing - and told MPs there needs to be more awareness of the condition. He joined the campaign following his two-year-old son's battle with meningitis, which he survived, in February this year. The Department of Health has repeatedly said it is following guidance from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation, which advises the Government on the cost-effectiveness of vaccinations. But Professor Andrew Pollard, chair of the JCVI, told the hearing that his terms of reference were set by the Government - and his committee has asked them to reassess those parameters. It was just cost effective for infants - and in the other age groups, with the data we have at the moment, it doesnt meet those criteria. Professor John Cairns, of the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, is heading a working group commissioned by the Government to reassess how the cost-effectiveness of vaccines is calculated. He told the hearing: We have had extensive discussions on peace of mind. Meningitis Now founder Steve Dayman, whose baby son Spencer died from meningitis in 1982, said that the working group should also take into account the long-term impact of meningitis on families who lose a child. Many grieving parents lose their jobs and even their homes, he said, with the taxpayer having to foot the bill. These factors should be taken into account when officials decide not to fund vaccines, he said. The accusation that India's ruling party is polarising society could apply more to the opposition parties, which have launched a no-holds-barred campaign against it by seeking to deepen political and emotional fissures between various communities, including the Dalits and Hindus at large. All the long-standing ills of India are being placed at the door of the BJP and RSS. Every incident involving a Muslim or a Dalit is being blown out of proportion by a sensation-seeking media. Polarisation One major terrorist incident in Paris and the flood of refugees from Islamic countries entering Europe have unleashed an anti-Muslim phobia in Western democracies. The Modi government has not been able to counter the opposition's negative projection of India Sweden is expelling refugees; some East European states will accept only Christian ones; differences over refugee quotas for individual countries have become contentious, with Britain, the so-called mother of democracy, unwilling to receive any significant number. US presidential hopeful Donald Trump wants to ban the entry of Muslims into the US. The majority of states there have voted against accepting any refugees from West Asia. Some Sikhs have been physically targeted in the US because they sport beards and turbans. Compared to this surge of anti-Muslim sentiment (not to mention the killing of Blacks by US policemen) in established democracies, sporadic incidents in India are deplorable aberrations. Unfortunately, the ruling dispensation has not been able to counter the oppositions destructive projection of isolated incidents as an emerging norm. The furore over rising intolerance in India has galvanised US evangelist lobbies to raise the issue of religious freedoms in India, with the State Department issuing a long-winded protest on visa denial to a US delegation travelling to India to investigate matters. A senior state department official had earlier applauded the award wapsi campaign. That the US should highlight the values of pluralism and democracy that unite it to India, and then question our democratic credentials by casting doubt on religious freedom in India, is standard American sanctimoniousness. As part of the unremitting secular attack on the ruling party, the recent World Cultural Festival has been castigated, with environmental sensitivities exploited to generate greater public reproof. The National Green Tribunals decision to allow the event, a commentary says, will now lead to real estate sharks, strip miners... to exult and policemen, if they stumble upon a rape in progress, can argue that the victim should have come to them before it started, its already a fact accomplished. These ludicrous conclusions are being drawn from the supposed abdication of responsibilities by the NGT. Secularism The World Culture Festival will in the main be Hindu, kitsch and chaos, the commentary adds. A Sufi festival would have no doubt escaped such denigration. Hindu evidently sits well with kitsch and chaos, given the organic link between it and poor taste and disorder. The secularists are fascinated by Pakistan, and so the commentary asks why it should be seditious for students to yell Pakistan Zindabad and land up in jail. The spirit of reasoned dissent, without which democracy withers, is being snuffed out, as unpatriotic, it says. So true. We are killing all Hindus who dont believe in the RSS. We are using airpower, tanks and artillery to decimate Kashmiri terrorists. We have jihadi groups seeking the destruction of Pakistan. We cannot abuse Modi any more. We are told that as we become more like them, Pakistan is becoming more like we used to be. Absolutely. Pakistan is now truly secular and all jihadi elements have been eliminated, beginning with Hafiz Saeed, Lakhvi and Masood Azhar. Dawood Ibrahim has been handed over with apologies. And let us note that, unlike Afzal Guru and Yakub Memon, who were hung to pander to majoritarian blood-lust, Mumtaz Qadri was executed in the teeth of popular opposition, with the government knowing there would be a price to pay, the commentary says admiringly. Commentary Of course, the bloodthirsty Supreme Court judges have hung more people than Saudi Arabia has. It recalls approvingly that the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has told the SC, stray dogs have killed more people in that metropolis than terrorists have. True, stray dogs entered the Taj and Oberoi hotels and other places and bit 166 people to death. On two other occasions earlier they caused havoc with bombs tied to their tails. The religion of the greatest number is the greatest good, obviously cannot apply to Hindu India. If we were a Muslim nation, then of course we would proudly be the Islamic Republic of India. The government is ridden by decrepit sadhus and swayamsevak zealots, an unholy alliance of the knackered and the knickered. So true. The Budget was actually drawn up at Nagpur and Modis agenda is decided during Kumbh Melas when the knackered are there in countless numbers. A Tagore work is cited, in which a character says, what I worship is much greater than the nation. To worship the nation is to bring about its destruction. The commentary says, A century later, that still says it all. Does it, when we became two nations? What is greater than the nation to worship? The United Nations? (Didnt exist then.) God? (Doesnt exist for many.) Ones religion? (The Secular reject it.) In an exclusive interview with India Today Group Editorial Director (Publishing) Raj Chengappa, Canadian-Pakistani cleric Tahir-ul-Qadri has said the ideology of the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIS) is that of disbelief in Islam. It is anti-Islam and against the teachings of the prophet of Islam and those of the Quran, Qadri said on Monday. Qadri was in India to participate in the recently-concluded World Sufi Forum organised by All India Ulema and Mashaikh Board (AIUMB), an apex body of Sunni Muslims in India. The ISIS ideology is Kufr (disbelief in Islam). It is anti-Islam; against the teachings of the prophet of Islam and those of Quran, said Qadri, asserting that ISIS was conducting a fasad (spreading mischief) and there was no concept of jihad in their character, performance, behaviour or ideology. Canadian-Pakistani cleric Tahir-ul-Qadri said ISIS ideology is deeply un-Islamic and 'anti-human'. I say it is the most heinous crime to declare themselves (ISIS) an Islamic state as they have nothing to do with Islam. It is a terrorist state, an anti-human state, an anti-religion, and anti-faith state, the Sufi cleric told India Today. Contending the belief proffered by the ISIS that its fighters go to heaven by sacrificing their lives for the organisation, Qadri said loot, plunder and murder were not part of Islam. I want to send the message that whatever they are doing is not jihad, but fasad. The people dying there in the ISIS are not going to heaven; they are going to hell because they are killing mankind, they are killing the innocent, the civilians. Capturing land, killing people and looting money is not Islamic ideology or any other religious ideology, Qadri said. Qadri also took on Jamiat Ulema-e-Hind president Maulana Arshad Madani who had criticised PM Modi, who attended the World Sufi Forum, for dividing Muslims along sects and causing consternation in the community. Madani had claimed that Sufism was not part of Islam as it did not find any place in the Quran or the Hadith. Qadri declared that despite being promised paradise, ISIS fighters would find eternal damnation for killing the innocent, capturing and, and looting The Narendra Modi government is trying to divide the Muslims and create animosity within. We are not opposed to them (Sufis), but they are part of the community. This regime is raining fire on Muslims as a whole. While the government is trying to play one section against the other, they failed as they could gather just a few thousand in the event, Madani had lashed out. Qadri contended: I dont agree with this comment. Maulana Madani Sahabs elders were also Sufis. So it would be a very strange thing to say that it has nothing to do with the Holy Prophet and Islam. Qadri went on to list past clerics of the Deoband school who were ardent claimants of Sufism. Maulana Ahsraf Ali Thanvi was a practicing Sufi and he followed the Chishtiya order. He was the student of Haji Mudadullah Mohajir Madani. "Maulana Kasim Nanowtwi, Maulana Rashid Ahmad Gangohi or Maulana Husain Ahmad Madani were all claimants of Sufism. "All other great Ulama of Deoband were followers of the path of Sufism, and they belonged to the silsila chishtiya. Even today they practice Sufism, making murids or students. Deobands official narrative was never anti-Sufism. There were and are differences of interpretation of certain things, aspects or ideas, but there was never a negation of Sufism from the official narrative of Deoband. This is a new thing that I am hearing for the first time, he said. Responding to Tahir-ul-Qadris comments, Madani clarified his position. We are all Sufis, but what is this Sufism. Being a Sufi is not a bad thing. Those who are Muslims are also Sufis. We the people of Deoband are Sufis, but in Islam there is nothing that is apart from and different from Prophet Muhammad. Sufism is also the same: following his path is Sufism. Removed from the Prophet, Sufism is nothing. Islam is not the name of Sufism, Islam is the way to follow the path told by Prophet Muhammad. Sufism does not find a place in Hadith or Quran. What is Sufism; we do not accept anything apart from the Prophet neither will the world accept. In his speech at the event, Prime Minister Modi had stressed how Sufism engaged with Indias spiritual tradition and evolved its own ethos. Congress lawmaker Shashi Tharoor found himself under fire on Monday, after he made a comment comparing JNUSU president Kanhaiya Kumar with freedom fighter Bhagat Singh. The GOP was quick to distance itself from the Thiruvananthapuram MPs comment. Kanhaiya was booked for sedition after he allegedly raised anti-national slogans at an event held to commemorate the death of Parliament attack case convict Afzal Guru. He is currently out on bail. Shashi Tharoor made the comments in an address to JNU students, after a girl brought up Bhagat Singh The BJP has gone all-out in targeting the JNUSU president and his supporters for their alleged role in the February 9 event. Political parties - the BJP, the Congress and the Left - which have turned the controversy into a nationalism versus anti-nationalism debate, were quick to attack Tharoor. In an address to JNU students on Sunday, the Congress had said that Bhagat Singh was the Kanhaiya Kumar of his time, as the freedom fighter was also charged with sedition during the British rule. The biggest victims of sedition law under the British rule were Jawaharlal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi, Bal Gangadhar Tilak and Annie Besant, Tharoor had said. When a girl mentioned Bhagat Singhs name, Tharoor quickly responded by saying Bhagat Singh was the Kanhaiya Kumar of his time. JNUSU chief Kanhaiya Kumar (left) is facing sedition charges, as Bhagat Singh (right) did during British rule Congress managers realised the damage the controversy could cause to the partys electoral prospects ahead of the 2017 Assembly polls in Punjab, the home state of Bhagat Singh, who was hanged by the then British rulers. The party promptly distanced itself from the controversy, even as some party leaders tried to play it down by saying the remark was Tharoors personal opinion. The concerned Opposition fielded Manish Tewari, who also hails from Punjab, to face the media. There has been only one Bhagat Singh. There is only one Bhagat Singh, Tewari said, clearly indicating the AICCs disapproval of Tharoors remark. Bhagat Singh cannot be compared with anyone. He certainly cannot be compared to a youth of today, said Congress veteran Ghulam Nabi Azad. The BJP dubbed Tharoors comment an insult to the great freedom fighter and all patriots of the country. Bhagat Singh went to the gallows chanting 'Bharat Mata ki Jai' while fighting for the country's Independence. Comparing Kanhaiya Kumar with Bhagat Singh is an insult to the freedom fighter and all patriots. Shashi Tharoor should clarify, if Kanhaiya is Bhagat Singh, then what are Rahul and Sonia Gandhi, BJP spokesperson Shahnawaz Hussain said. The way the Congress is raising anti-national slogans, even Gandhi and Nehru would have been upset, he added. As Tharoors comment went viral on social media, he went into damage control mode and clarified that he did not intend to equate Kanhaiya with Bhagat Singh. You are finding one marginal thing which was said in response to a comment from the audience. Bhagat Singh was fighting colonial rule and foreign oppression and Kanhaiya is fighting for his beliefs in a very different democracy. So the situations are different. The comparison was - young, Marxist, idealist, passionately committed to their motherland, in their 20s...that's all, said the Congress MP from Kerala. Tharoor had told the JNU students that even though he did not support some of the slogans that were raised on campus, they cannot be equated with sedition. In a move being seen as a last-ditch effort to form the government in Jammu and Kashmir, People's Democratic Party chief Mehbooba Mufti arrived in Delhi on Monday with sources claiming she might meet the Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a day or two. Her decision to visit Delhi comes after Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said at the BJP's national executive meeting that the party is fully committed to the agenda for alliance signed with the PDP, when the two parties joined hands last year to govern Jammu and Kashmir. Last week, Muftis meeting with BJP chief Amit Shah failed and she had returned to Jammu and Kashmir. People's Democratic Party chief Mehbooba Mufti is back in Delhi, as her party urges her to progress government formation talks with the BJP Sources said the BJP refused to buckle under the pressure of her demands, and she also wanted to meet the PM. However, she could not get any time and had to return. Sources said a section of the PDP wanted her to move forward on government formation. A PDP leader said Mehbooba might meet the prime minister in a day or two, and that this would lead to government formation in the state. Former Finance Minister Haseeb Drabu, who has been a key negotiator from the PDPs side, is also in New Delhi. The PDP has been maintaining that it has not set any new conditions for the alliance. However, the party says it seeks the time-bound implementation of different issues spelled out by both the parties in the Agenda of Alliance. Jammu and Kashmir has been under Governors Rule since January 7, the day sitting Chief Minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed died. Alarmed by insider involvement in a syndicate of smugglers and human traffickers, the Bureau of Immigration has launched a massive manhunt to identify rogue elements within the organisation. The matter was recently discussed during a high-level meeting between immigration officials, Delhi Police, and intelligence agencies. Information was shared with the Delhi Police, who have registered three cases over the last five months to probe the nexus. The Delhi Police have registered three cases over the past five months to probe the link between immigration officials and traffickers We have registered cases in which the role of immigration staff is being investigated, DK Gupta, DCP IGI, told Mail Today. The Bureau of Immigration has also alerted the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI) to gather information regarding such activities, sources said. Helping smugglers It has been noticed that some immigration officials at the Indira Gandhi International Airport are helping traffickers and smugglers. In some instances, it was also found that passengers cleared by immigration were sent on arrival to another country as their documentation was not proper, said an immigration official. Immigration officials are facing charges of helping a travel agent for allegedly waving through three men carrying passports in the ECR (emigration check required) category, without proper documentation. According to the police, these men were noticed by protector of emigrants (POE) under the Ministry of External Affairs, and later a case was registered by Delhi Police. Earlier cases In a case registered in October last year, Delhi Police are probing the role of an immigration staffer in helping a passenger travel without proper documents to a Middle East country. Later, the passenger was deported. In another incident in October last year, 12 fliers were arrested at the Delhi airport for allegedly trying to travel to Abu Dhabi on fraudulent visas. AH Ansari, who was the main accused and was found with a fake ticket, revealed that 11 others were travelling on fake documents. Ansari was part of a 12-member group which was travelling in the same manner and was helped by airport officials in clearing the immigration channel without being caught. We are probing the role of immigration staff in this case as well, a police officer said. Earlier, immigration officials had provided a list of passengers who travelled without proper documents on various airlines, to probe the role of insiders. The department had named at least 50 passengers who took international flights to Europe and Gulf nations. The bureau asked the airlines for the visa and travel history of these passengers, but has not mentioned the reason for asking these details. A controversial Janata Dal-United JD(U) MLA in Bihar has threatened to revert to the politics of murder, while another party legislator has mocked the national anthem, calling it a symbol of slavery. The pair were promptly suspended by the party, which also served show-cause notices to them on Tuesday. The ruling party was left red-faced after its Gopalpur MLA Neeraj Kumar Mandal aka Gopal Mandal said that he would take recourse to the politics of murder just the way he had been doing in the past. JD(U) legislator Rana Gangeshwar (left) criticised the national anthem, while Neeraj Kumar Mandal said he would resort to the 'politics of murder'. Addressing a pre-Holi gathering at a Kavi Sammelan in Bhagalpur district, Mandal said: I will resort to the politics of murder. I used to do it in the past and will do so again in future. Mandal said that he had enough arms and ammunition and would protect even those who had not voted for him in the last assembly elections. The legislator also scoffed at Chief Minister Nitish Kumars decision to enforce prohibition in the state from next month. Dubbing it a wrong decision, he said that people would make use of cannabis and marijuana in absence of alcohol. But then, can Holi be celebrated without booze? he asked. This is not the first time that the legislator had kicked up a storm in recent times. Last month, he had threatened to chop off the tongues of his rivals. Earlier, he was also accused of having threatened to throw a state police official into river Ganga. He also boasted that he was used to being in and out of jail. Another JD(U) legislator, Rana Gangeshwar Singh, also courted trouble on Tuesday when he allegedly showed disrespect to the national anthem at a public function in the Samastipur district. How can Jan gana mana be the national anthem? he asked. It is so improper. It is a symbol of slavery. I do not know how it became the national anthem. When one hears it, it seems as though slavery is being praised, he said, and called for the withdrawal of the national anthem. The remarks of the MLC, who had switched over to JD(U) from the BJD before assembly elections, drew angry protests from the audience. Cracking the whip on the two, the partys core committee decided to suspend them immediately. Holding the school identity card of his dead 16-year-old daughter, Neha Yadav, Birpal Yadav said: I could not sleep for 58 days. I had to find the bus which killed my daughter. Neha was crushed under the wheels of a speeding bus near Sector 51 in Noida in January. With the police doing little to investigate and trace the bus that killed the girl, her family took it upon themselves to track down the vehicle, a job that should have been done by investigators. After a 58-day hunt, the bus has been identified - but the driver claims he was not behind the wheel in January when Neha was killed. Neha Yadav (left) was run over by a bus on her way to school in January. Her father Birpal Yadav has managed to track down the bus responsible - in the hope of catching the driver - after the police failed to do so. I still regret having taken her to school on my bike. I usually drop Neha and her younger brother Tushar (12) by car. But that day, I took the two-wheeler. Most of my family members are not very educated so we wanted our kids to study in English medium schools. Neha was a very bright student and wanted to be an IAS officer, Birpal, a resident of Sector 51, told Mail Today. On January 19, a speeding private bus hit Yadavs motorbike while on the way to Nilgiri Hill Public School in Sector 50. Yadav and his son Tushar were spared as they fell on the other side of the street, but Neha fell under the wheels of the bus. Her family believes that she would have survived the initial impact, if the driver had not accelerated away from the spot. She was run over by the rear wheels too. The family's ordeal only worsened after Nehas death, when police failed to find any leads in the case. I started going to Sector 49 Police Station every day for updates in the case, but instead of helping us they would ask us to bring our car and take them out on investigation. The police were very negligent. So, we decided to investigate the case in our way, he said. Moving on to probe the case on their own, the family somehow managed to get a few digits of the bus-number from an eyewitness - but the entire registration number was not confirmed. It was a wild goose chase for us. As the accident had taken place just in front of a bank, we decided to scan their CCTV footage. Their camera had captured the accident but the number on the vehicle was still not clear, he said. The family then took the footage to a photo lab in Noida, who advised them to go to another lab in Delhi to get a clearer image of the vehicle's bus-number. A breakthrough came when the lab in Delhi sent the image to a lab in Kolkata, which gave them the exact number of the bus. The family started visiting all the bus parking lots in Noida, Ghaziabad and Delhi and left no stone unturned to track the bus. Finally, the male members of the family started waiting near the accident spot in shifts to catch the bus. We used to wait by the road, expecting the bus to be soon back on the street. We used to stand throughout the day in shifts. We have a large family, so we divided our duties. Eventually, on Friday, Nehas uncle Pramod Yadav spotted the bus. Yadav, along with other locals, chased and stopped the bus near Khoda and handed the driver over to the police. Rajesh, the bus driver, has been arrested and the bus seized. But the driver has told the police that he only recently started driving the bus - which he admits was the same one involved in the accident. The Central Industrial Security force (CISF), responsible for airports across the country, has beefed up security at all sites including Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. According to the CISF, security personnel are conducting double-checks to prevent anyone from entering the airports with explosives and weapons. The CISF has also deployed armed staff in civil dress at all airports forecourts for better preparedness in case of an attack. Tense times: Security personnel are conducting double-checks to prevent anyone from entering Indian airports with explosives and weapons Jet Airways call centre received bomb threats for five of its aircraft on Tuesday, almost two hours after blasts ripped through the Brussels airport, killing 34 people. While three of the planes had already taken off by the time the threat calls were received, the fourth aircraft, which was bound for Chennai, was diverted to Nagpur, sources said. Another Chennai-bound plane was grounded and is undergoing checks by the security agencies, a senior police officer said. Jet Airways has received a security alert for five flights from Delhi. All flights are on ground and are being checked by security agencies at the respective airports, the airline said in a tweet, but did not share specific details. The Delhi-Chennai flight 9W829, which was diverted, landed under emergency conditions at the Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar International Airport in Nagpur at 4.40pm with 154 passengers on board, including BJP leader Subramanian Swamy, and seven crew members. While the passengers were taken to the airport lounge, their baggage was searched thoroughly with the help of sniffer dogs. The security personnel checked the aircraft also, they added. The latest report of the Committee on Subordinate Legislation, tabled in the Lok Sabha on March 15, is a remarkable document. The committee was supposed to deliberate rules relating to the size of pictorial health warnings on tobacco packs, but it has ended up being an unabashed manifesto of the tobacco industry. Cigarette companies, pan masala and gutka manufacturers, and beedi kings should be grateful to our lawmakers for so eloquently articulating their standpoint - be it the denial of a link between tobacco and cancer, or loss of business due to cigarette smuggling. The esteemed Parliamentarians are glorifying the tobacco industry as an employment and revenue generator (file picture) While glorifying the tobacco industry as an employment and revenue generator, the report makes a mockery of health concerns and desperately attempts to downplay - and even deny - the health impacts of tobacco. While doing so, the MPs have accepted arguments put forth by the tobacco industry as evidence, but have dubbed research studies quoted by the Ministry of Health about tobacco-related diseases or tobaccos link with cancer as claims. The health ministry has been asked to produce more evidence about health impacts, while questionable surveys about health warnings being ineffective cited by the tobacco industry have been extensively quoted. Parliamentarians want us to be convinced that tobacco is vital for the Indian economy and people's wellbeing. The report says: Tobacco plays a very important role in economy supporting crores of livelihood and generating significant tax revenues and foreign exchange. It describes the central excise rate for cigarettes as high and discriminatory - an argument cigarette companies advance after every Budget. As for its main task - examining the 2014 notification on increasing the size of pictorial warnings - the panel feels that larger health warnings on cigarette and beedi packs will be too harsh and will result in flooding of the market with illicit cigarettes. As a token of consideration, the panel has suggested a marginal increase in the size of pictorial warnings from the present 40 to 50 per cent. At the same time, it has recommended that pictorial warning rules for beedi, chewing tobacco, zarda and khaini should be relaxed. The health ministry notification seeks an increase in the size of health warning to 85 per cent of principal area of a pack for all tobacco products. The panel is particularly soft on the beedi industry, which finds solid representation on the panel itself (in the form of beedi baron-turned-MP Shyama Charan Gupta, among others). Every page of the 109-page report has distinct pro-tobacco tone. Tobacco industrys propagandist arguments have been repeated ad nauseam, but deposition of the health ministry and health advocates is summarily dismissed in a few paragraphs. Of 17 stakeholders called to depose before the committee, as many as 13 represented the tobacco industry. Curiously, the All India Beedi Federation has been listed as an NGO. It is surprising that while the finance ministry has gone tough on tobacco - in successive Budgets as well as in proposed GST structure which talks of a sin tax on tobacco - members of Parliament are trying to create roadblocks and singing paean to tobacco industry. Weeding out unregulated drugs Leading drug companies have approached the courts against the recent ban imposed by the drug regulator on 344 drugs which fall under the category of irrational Fixed Dose Combinations (FDCs). They are claiming that their FDCs have been in the market for several years, and are safe because no adverse drug reactions have been reported. It is time we put profits before patients by adopting stricter drug regulation This argument is fallacious because FDCs have been in the market due to holes in the regulatory system - which the drug authority is now trying to plug. Second, the absence of data on adverse reactions does not automatically mean that a drug is safe. It is well-known that post-marketing surveillance - a mechanism to collect and record adverse drug reactions - is the weakest link in the drug regulation in India. The health system is highly privatised. Doctors dont keep record of patients and the drugs they prescribe. Even if some adverse drug reactions are reported by patients, doctors dont know whom they should report to. Moreover, the drug authority has been engaging with the drug industry for more than a decade now to weed out irrational combinations from the market. The issue was also investigated by the parliamentary committee on health in 2012 and it was found that many of the FDCs in Indian market are being marketed illegally as they had no approvals or clinical trial data. It is time we put profits before patients and moved towards the rational use of medicines. Software for traffic data accuracy The eight-lane Delhi-Gurgaon expressway, notorious for traffic jams, is now attracting the attention of scientists. Traffic can be effectively managed only when authorities have evidence-based data about flow, speed, and bottlenecks, instead of conventional data. Researchers from the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, and the National Institute of Technology, Surat, have demonstrated that the use of video image-processing software can yield fairly accurate data on all traffic parameters. The Delhi-Gurgaon expressway is notorious for heavy traffic jams An image processing software, Traffic Analyzer and Enumerator (TRAZER), was deployed to process video-captured data collected from the expressway to check accuracy based on traffic count, speed and lateral placement of vehicles on road. Data was also used to analyse distribution of vehicles across road width and its effect on speed of different vehicle categories. The software was calibrated for Indian road conditions like mixed traffic. The rate of flow was observed to be in the range 5,000 to 7,000 vehicles per hour in the selected stretch. Vehicles were camera-trapped and followed up for a distance to calculate speed. It was noted that vehicle speeds decreased gradually from median-side lane to shoulder-side lane. Trinamool supremo Mamata Banerjee is busy with her elaborate road shows With the West Bengal Assembly elections closing in, the political turf in this poll-bound eastern state seems to have given way to a riot of colour. On one hand, Trinamool supremo Mamata Banerjee is busy with her elaborate road shows, aided with much fanfare and zeal, while the Congress-Left combination, once the biggest political adversaries, are engaging in united door-to-door canvassing against the incumbent government. Once arch-rivals, both Congress and CPI-M activists are now campaigning together in various pockets of West Bengal. However, resolutions on some segments - for instance, decisions on who to pit from which constituency against Didis nominees - are yet to be decided. Senior Congress leader Shankar Singh, a probable candidate from Nadia district, is already campaigning with CPI-M supporters in the district. Leaders from both the parties have made their agenda clear - to fight jointly against the TMC. Toongate professor Ambikesh Mahapatra, who has previously mocked Didi, will be contesting the polls as an independent candidate from the Behala East seat in Kolkata. His Trinamool opponent is Kolkatas Mayor Sovan Chatterjee. BJP state unit president Dilip Ghosh has also been seen leading a bike rally at Kharagpur on his Royal Enfield motorcycle. Meanwhile, Didi has already devised unique tools for canvassing, even scripting a play to reach out to maximum number of voters in rural Bengal. Arun Jaitley lauded photographers for capturing iconic moments of history Union Finance Minister Arun Jaitley has lauded photographers for capturing moments of history, as he referred to the iconic images of Mahatma Gandhi walking with stick at the Dandi March. Have we not repeatedly seen Gandhiji with a stick in his hand walking? Many of us today have forgotten the Dandi yatra itself, but that imprint of the great photograph of the moment, which found a place in history, really reminds us of what the historical events were, he said after distributing the Fifth National Photography Awards. New buying rules for the armed forces The defence ministry has finalised new rules which are aimed at transforming the way equipment is purchased by the Armed Forces. The new policy was approved ahead of the Defexpo exhibition starting in Goa, where weapon companies from across the world will gather to participate in Indias growing arms bazaar. The thrust is on new rules under the Make in India campaign. The Government will also soon notify rules for allowing agents under defence contracts and ease norms on blacklisting companies. Rajnath visits Sangma's family Home Minister Rajnath Singh met the family of PA Sangma in Shillong and expressed his deepest condolences over the demise of the former Lok Sabha Speaker. The Union Home Minister is in Shillong to attend the raising day function of countrys oldest paramilitary force - Assam Rifles - but made it a point to find time for Sangmas family. The Home Minister recalled his long association with PA Sangma and said that he was an affable leader, who had friends across the political spectrum. Good news for OROP Pensioners After meeting the demands for One Rank One Pension (OROP), the defence ministry has made sure that the benefits of the new plan reach veterans on time. It wants all the pensioners to get their money before Holi. The Government claimed on Monday that more than two-thirds of ex-servicemen (around 13 lakh people) have already been paid arrears. BJP booklet to educate voters The BJP is in full poll mood. The party celebrated its achievements in the General Secretarys Report tabled at the National Executive meet and it also plans to distribute a booklet containing the resolution and achievements in a concise form among members, especially MPs and MLAs so that it can be used to preach to voters in the upcoming polls. Siddaramaiah's ACB has rendered the Lokayukta toothless and powerless Three decades ago, a famous dramatist of Karnataka, Master Hirannaiah, had launched a campaign against corruption through his satire play, Lanchavatara. He earned such popularity that politicians avoided attending his plays despite receiving invitations, because he would rip their reputations in front of the audience. Master Hirannaiah had come up with a unique solution to end corruption in the public sphere if any government body is corrupt, take out its head! Now, politicians in the state are using this famous line to describe what Karnatakas Chief Minister Siddaramaiah has done to undermine the capability of the anti-corruption agency, the Lokayukta, which was considered a model for the rest of the country. Last week, the state set up an Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB), literally rendering the corruption watchdog Lokayukta toothless and powerless. The fact that the government order was passed hurriedly overnight without even informing the Congress Legislature Party or the Legislative Assembly and Legislative Council led to plenty of speculation. Former Union minister SM Krishna slammed Siddaramaiah for the wrong move, while former Lokayukta Justice Santhosh Hegde termed it a dangerous trend. The Siddaramaiah-led Congress government received widespread criticism for establishing the ACB under the purview of the bureaucrats, unlike the Lokayukta where the police wing enjoyed absolute autonomy while probing corruption cases against government servants and elected representatives. The Congress leaders are also unhappy with Siddaramaiahs decision, which is not a collective one, and they believe people may not be in favour of it. The new ACB will be headed by the state chief secretary, who in turn reports to the CM. Anti-corruption crusaders are of the view that this will end the independence and the autonomy of the Lokayukta in investigating corruption-related cases. Tomorrow, if there is a complaint against Siddaramaiah, then an Advisory Committee will screen the complaint before taking a decision on its fate. Everyone agrees that this is an unhealthy trend as far as Karnataka is concerned, because the Lokayukta had played an effective role in curbing corruption in the last 15 years. The ACB, on the other hand, will send the wrong signal to society. Justice Hegde, who played an instrumental role in the ouster of BJP leader BS Yeddyurappa from the CMs chair in the mining scam, was clear that there was a hidden agenda behind the government forming the ACB. According to him, the government is taking shelter under a court order, which recommended the creation of a Vigilance Wing for each department. But that does not mean that the government can snatch away the autonomy of the Lokayukta. First, the government is delaying the appointment of the new Lokayukta ever since Justice YS Bhaskar Rao quit after his son was named in a charge-sheet accusing him of running an extortion racket. Several cases are pending probe in the Lokayukta and the morale of the officers is at an all-time low. Going a step ahead, the government now intends to hand over the 800 plus cases pending before the Lokayukta to the ACB. The police wing in the Lokayukta could suo motu take up cases against any corrupt officer against whom a complaint is lodged. But under the ACB set up, the investigation team has to take approvals from a Vigilance Advisory Body, Secretary DPAR (Department of Personnel & Administrative Reforms) and in cases of the state Chief Secretary. The anti-corruption crusaders have launched a state-wide agitation urging withdrawing the government order on creating the ACB. But Siddaramaiah is adamant and has informed the the state legislature that there was no question of dismantling the ACB. Truth remains elusive DK Ravi's parents wait for the CBI report For the last week, the parents of IAS officer DK Ravi, who died under mysterious circumstances last year in Bengaluru, have been picketing the homes of politicians in the city. Their mission is to seek the truth from the CBI on the circumstances leading to their sons death. The state government has washed its hands of the issue after handing over the case to the CBI. A preliminary unofficial report from the CBI indicated that Ravi may have committed suicide, but the reasons are yet to be established. On the first death anniversary of Ravi, his parents came to Bengaluru in a convoy and staged demonstrations at important places. Later, they went to the homes of Union ministers, including DV Sadananda Gowda and HN Ananthkumar. In fact, Ravis parents have issued an ultimatum to the government - they would dig the grave of the IAS officer and order a fresh autopsy to ascertain the truth. Opposition fails to take up people's cause The BJP in Karnataka seems to be running out of steam because its leaders are picking on issues that they feel will pay them political dividends in the long run, conveniently ignoring the real issues. A severe drought is causing havoc across the state. In addition, erratic power and inadequate water supply coupled with a scorching summer have made people question the Congress government about basic necessities, while the BJP is largely missing these issues. Half of Karnataka is facing an acute water shortage, with people waiting hours for supplies Right now, the BJP is single-mindedly focusing on demanding a thorough probe into the death of its party worker. But it should not ignore the issues affecting the common people. Half of north Karnataka is facing an acute water shortage. In some districts like Raichur, the situation is worse with people waiting for hours for one pot of water. The summer heat is also taking a toll on the livestock, with hundreds of farmers reporting the deaths of their cattle and sheep. Agricultural work has taken a severe hit, as power is being supplied for 3-6 hours to the villages and farmers are unable to pump water to their fields. In a scenario like this, the BJP ideally should have taken the Congress to task for ignoring the plight of the people. Last year too, Siddaramaiah got away despite more than 1,000 farmers who lost their crops or were unable to pay their farm loans committing suicide. Under such circumstances, people expect the opposition to voice their problems. While almost all political parties in poll-bound Tamil Nadu have got their own mainstream news channels and newspapers, apart from mouthpieces and organs, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) has no such sympathetic media organisation to back its poll efforts. As a remedy, it has embarked on an aggressive social media campaign to reach out to voters. The campaign is in full swing, though BJP national president Amit Shah will formally inaugurate it on Wednesday when he is in the state along with state BJP in-charge and national general secretary P Muralidhar Rao. Since the BJP has not chosen a local face to lead the electoral battle in the state, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will continue to be the poll mascot Every party in Tamil Nadu either owns a media organisation or has sympathisers in mainstream media. Jaya TV is associated with the CM; the Sun TV network is owned by the Marans; Kalaignar TV is owned by the Karunanidhi family; Captain TV is the mouthpiece of Vijayakanth of DMDK; while Mega TV and Vasantha TV owe allegiance to the Congress. "We dont have this advantage and thus we are reaching out through an aggressive and efficient social media campaign, said a senior BJP functionary. As the party has yet not decided on a local face to lead the battle and wishes to market Narendra Modi as its poll mascot, this social media blitz has come to be called a faceless campaign. According to party sources a dedicated 25-member social media team is already working, and as per an internal report submitted by the team, the launch of Tamil Nadu BJPs mobile application is also on the anvil. The BJP is already running as many as 870 Whatsapp groups across the state. The highlight is the way the party is converting it into a public outreach strategy. Leveraging its online reach, BJP is organising local group meets under the V4NaMo programme. Facebook chats with party leaders and functionaries are being planned, sources said, though none of the party leaders have yet made time for that. The party seems to have already emerged a winner in its social media presence against major parties such as AIADMK and DMK. Taking into consideration figures till March 19-20, the number of Facebook likes for BJP Tamil Nadu page was over 3.5 lakh while AIADMK stood at just over 2 lakh. DMK stood way behind at 30,000 likes. DMK patriarch K Karunanidhis son Stalin, who has raked in over 16 lakh likes on his Facebook page, is followed by a distant Karunanidhi, at just over 5 lakh. Jayalaithaa has nearly 1.2 lakh likes, while actor-turned-politician Vijaya-kanth has nearly 80,000 people liking his page. On the other hand, BJP state unit president Tamilisai Soundararajan has had just over one lakh likes. Modi answered questions on India's relationship with neighbouring countries Prime Minister Narendra Modi held wide-ranging discussion with a group of 25 students from Stanford University during which he answered questions on India's relationship with neighbouring countries and competitive cooperative federalism. The group from the International Policy Studies department of the varsity comprised students from various countries, including India. BJP to celebrate Bhagat Singh With the issue of nationalism dominating the political discourse, the BJP announced a three-day programme to commemorate Bhagat Singhs death anniversary. Party leaders across the country will pay tribute to the martyr on Wednesday, sing Singh's favourite song Rang de basanti chola on Holi and on the last day, and burn effigies of the mindset that insults martyrs. The saffron party BJP also attacked Congress over MP Shashi Tharoor's remarks comparing JNUSU leader Kanhaiya Kumar to the freedom fighter and demanded an apology from them Taking problems personally Jitendra Singh phoned randomly-selected people Union Minister of State for Personnel and Public Grievances Jitendra Singh personally called up people, chosen randomly, and sought feedback regarding complaints made by them. They had registered grievances with the Department of Administrative Reforms and Public Grievances. The government on Tuesday launched a telephone feedback mechanism for grievance redressal of citizens. No phones in the House please! Journos covering the Budget Session of Delhi government were barred from taking phones inside the Delhi Assembly. The move came after a phone rang while Yashwant Sinha was addressing MLAs as part of an orientation programme on March 15, following a request by Speaker Ram Niwas Goel. A strict check was maintained and those with phones were not allowed to enter. Whistleblower in politics soon Anand Rai will contest the Madhya Pradesh elections in 2018 Anand Rai, a key whistleblower in Madhya Pradeshs sensational Vyapam scam, is all set to float a political party and contest the 2018 elections in the state. Rai says his party will aim to weed out corruption from the state as well as fight for farmers and Dalits. For exposing various irregularities and scams in the government, I was harassed continuously. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi has defied the BJPs attacks on him over his JNU visit, in solidarity with the varsitys students' union president Kanhaiya Kumar. Kumar was arrested on charges of sedition after anti-India slogans were raised on the campus at an event to commemorate Afzal Guru. Not only did he visit JNU and address the left-wing students, who were then agitating for Kumars release - he also met a delegation of JNU students led by Kumar on Tuesday amid rumours that the AISF leader might switch political colours. JNU Students' Union president Kanhaiya Kumar met Congress VP Rahul Gandhi at his residence After being catapulted to fame in the wake of his arrest and release on bail, it had also been claimed that Kumar would campaign for the Left in the upcoming West Bengal elections. Kumar has laid the claims to rest, asserting that he wants to pursue an academic career. Kumar will be visiting the Hyderabad Central University (HCU) on Wednesday, where he is expected to join the protests against Vice Chancellor Appa Rao Podile resuming office after going on leave due to the trouble after Rohith Vemulas suicide. Kumar will also be meeting Vemulas mother. In their first meeting since Kumars release, the JNUSU president was accompanied by a delegation from the JNUSU and Left-backed All India Students Federation (AISF). Kumar met the Congress vice-president at latters residence. No details of the meeting emerged as Kumar did not interact with the media after his hour-long meeting. However, Congress students' wing NSUI chief Roji M John described it as a courtesy call to thank Gandhi. A JNU delegation headed by Kanhaiya met Rahul Gandhi. It was a courtesy call. They thanked him for his continuous support ever since the issue started. Gandhi not only supported the students at JNU but also FTII and IIT-Madras where students have been protesting against the way the government is attacking institutions. "We will continue this fight to protect autonomy of institutions, John said. Kumar and Gandhi have been relentlessly attacking the current BJP dispensation, alleging that the regime has been gagging political dissent, free speech and freedom of expression. Amid today's bombings in Brussels, Thomas Cook this morning said its summer bookings are struggling in the face of ongoing terrorism threats, causing customers to delay their holiday plans. As a result of the indecision, the holiday firm said in a trading update that its summer bookings are 5 per cent lower than last year, with only 40 per cent of its 2016 summer season currently sold, 'with bookings below last year as we continue to prioritise margins over volumes'. Peter Fankhauser, the firm's chief executive, said: 'Thomas Cook continues to operate in a volatile market environment. We know that customers want a summer holiday but we can see that some are leaving it later to book this year as they consider their options.' Holidays delayed: Thomas Cook said in a trading update today that its summer bookings are 5 per cent lower than last year, with only 40 per cent of its 2016 summer season currently sold The travel firm reported increased demand for safer destinations such as Spain, having taken early actions to move flights away from Turkey, Tunisia and Egypt, following terror attacks over the past year. It also said it had sold more long-haul trips to places such as the USA and Cuba. Last month rival Tui Group also warned that summer bookings to Turkey had fallen sharply and holidaymakers were reverting to old favourites such as Spain and Greece for their travels amid geopolitical concerns. Yet despite the undercooked bookings, the company said prices were holding up and that it was sticking to its full year results guidance. Thomas Cook said the winter session was finishing as expected, with 90 per cent of its programme sold, 2 per cent lower than at the same point in 2015. It said average prices had increased by 2 per cent, while total bookings were 3 per cent lower than last year. Simon French, analyst at broker Cenkos, said: 'The later booking profile, influenced by terrorist activity, is also seeing demand shift to the Canaries, Balearics and mainland Spain with the group benefitting from its early rebalancing of capacity. We maintain our full year forecast.' The travel market has been hit hard by the spate of terrorist attacks across the globe over the past twelve months. The latest this morning at Brussels airport, where two explosions have taken place, has caused shares in European airlines and travel groups to decline sharply in early trading. Thomas Cook shares topped the FTSE 250 fallers list, dropping 7 per cent or 6.1p, at 86.7p, while Tui shares shed 3.5 per cent or 35p to 968p. A terrifying scam has emerged which sees fraudsters record telephone conversations between customers and their bank to glean vital details and raid accounts, Action Fraud warns. The scam starts with fraudsters contacting people by text message, letter or e-mail purporting to be from their bank, and requesting the victims contact them using a telephone number provided. This part is nothing new. Around 8,000 of these e-mails are reported each month, according to City of London police statistics, and the true number is likely to be far higher Crafty criminals: According to Action Fraud, there has been a rise in a telephone fraud which sees scammers recording conversations to glean details However, in a shocking new twist, if the customer calls the number, they are quickly redirected by criminals to a genuine member of bank call centre staff. The fraudsters then record this conversation using equipment easily bought online. They then make a note of the victim's security answers and personal details to then call up and pose as them shortly afterwards to siphon cash from the account. Action Fraud says the scam is highly successful for criminals as the fraudster's presence is unknown to both the victim and the bank. In one report made to Action Fraud, a victim was contacted directly by the scammers purporting to be the bank to request further details so that validation could be gained for further transactions. It is unknown how the fraudsters get hold of their victims' contact details in the first place. In some instances victims have already been locked out of their telephone banking through incorrect security details being provided. This latest scam once again highlights the grey area of banking fraud and whether or not refunds would be issued by the bank. Action Fraud says it cannot comment on whether banks would refund, and that it would be up to each individual bank to decide and investigate but does concede it's a 'murky area.' VICTIM OF BANK FRAUD? Have you fallen victim to bank fraud? Get in touch: lee.boyce@thisismoney.co.uk It cannot put a figure on how many have fallen victim to this 'recording' scam, but its intelligence shows there has been a large increase in attacks in recent months. To combat this new fraud, Action Fraud says bank customers should never provide personal or financial details to an unsolicited caller. They should always contact the bank on a trusted number found on their website or correspondence that is known to be authentic, such as a statement. When contacting your bank, request confirmation of any possible communication made by your bank, prior to giving out any personal details. One of the best ways to combat these types of attack is to go into a branch if you still have one nearby to check whether correspondence is genuine and treat it with suspicion. We reported last week how financial fraud losses reached 755million last year. A large chunk of this money is from the huge rise in telephone attacks. To show how difficult it has become to tell the difference between genuine phone calls and phony ones, we published a recording last month asking whether this HSBC answerphone message is genuine or not 81 per cent of our readers think it is a scammer. In fact, the call - you can listen below - is a genuine message left by HSBC: A former State Department employee was sentenced to nearly five years in federal prison for 'sextorting' women as young as 18 while he worked at the US Embassy in London. Michael C. Ford, 36, of Alpharetta, Georgia, sent emails to thousands of women claiming to be a member of a fictitious Google account deletion team in order to get their passwords and access sexually explicit photos from their accounts. The married father-of-one targeted college-aged sorority girls and aspiring models, and threatened to release the photos if they did not comply with his orders, which included taking videos of other women in gym locker rooms. According to the US Attorney's Office, Ford hacked into 450 email and social media accounts belonging to 200 victims. He forwarded himself 1,300 emails that included sexually explicit pictures, and threatened at least 75 victims. Michael C. Ford (pictured left and right), 36, sent emails to women claiming to be a member of Google's account deletion team in order to get their passwords and access sexually explicit photos from their accounts Ford (pictured right with his wife, Theresa Drollinger-Ford) sent 800 phishing emails and 180 follow-up messages in one day, targeting college-aged sorority girls and aspiring models Ford conducted most of his phishing, hacking and cyberstalking from his desk at the US Embassy in London between January 2013 and May 2015, when he was arrested at an Atlanta, Georgia airport on his way back to London. He pleaded guilty to nine counts of cyberstalking, seven counts of computer hacking to extort and one count of wire fraud in December. He was sentenced to four years and nine months followed by three years on supervised release on Monday. The 36-year-old was also granted a request to delay the start of his prison term until after August 1 so he can witness the birth of his second child, who is due in late July. Ford told U.S. District Judge Eleanor Ross he was feeling small and looked down upon in his personal and professional lives and retreated into an online world where the people he was interacting with didn't seem real, he said. He told the court: 'What I did was a low and cowardly act by a person who was desperate'. Ford, who cried as he addressed the judge, said he wanted to get caught so he'd be fired and could leave an unbearable work situation without having to say he was a quitter. He also claimed to suffer from severe depression and suicidal thoughts. Ford sent up to 800 phishing emails and 180 follow-up messages in one day to potential victims who hadn't responded to his initial email, prosecutors said. On another day, he sent initial harassing emails with photos attached to 98 new victims. He would use the women's passwords to access their email and social media accounts and searched for sexually explicit photographs and personal information. He sent messages threatening to put the images online or send them to the women's families and friends if they didn't do what he wanted, a practice known as sextortion, prosecutors said. In several instances, Ford followed through on his threats to release the photos. Among the women he targeted were an 18-year-old from Kentucky and a 22-year-old from Illinois. In one email, he wrote: 'I want you to video girls in the changing room (of her gym). If you don't, I send your details and pictures to everyone. 'What do you say? Looks like you've made up your mind. Get ready for my email and post to go out tomorrow morning. Enjoy!' He wrote to another victim saying, 'Don't worry, it's not like I know where you live,' and then sent a second email with her home address. He later wrote: 'I like your red fire escape ladder, easy to climb.' Ford (pictured left with his wife), threatened to put the images online or send them to the women's families and friends if they didn't comply with his demands, which included taking videos in a gym locker room Ford was sentenced to four years and nine months followed by three years on supervised release. He was granted a request to start serving after August 1 so he can witness the birth of his second child. Pictured with his wife In another message he referred to himself as a talent scout. He emailed one of the victims saying 'finally, I found you! What do you think? Nice a**.' She then asked him where he got the pictures from, to which he replied: 'I'm a wizard, I have lots. Did you like it?' He then said he could send it on to one of her friends and included a list of emails of the victim's acquaintances. One victim, identified only as B.M., told the judge she was afraid when he pressured her to take videos of women in a gym locker room, sending her an email that included her home address and the address of the preschool where she worked. 'Overall, it was really scary,' B.M. told the judge. 'I felt like someone was going to show up anytime, anywhere.' Prosecutors said one victim said she considered carrying a gun because she was afraid he'd physically attack her, while another slept with a knife under her pillow. More than 30 of Ford's friends and family members, including some who'd traveled from England, packed the courtroom on Monday to show support. A dozen people, including his wife, addressed the court either in person or by video, describing Ford as a doting husband and loving father to his 2-year-old son. The judge told Ford she was 'utterly disgusted' by what he'd done, especially given the support and love that was clearly available to him from his friends and family. Assistant Attorney General Caldwell said: 'Ford engaged in an international sextortion campaign. Fire lasted for 25 minutes and caused $100,000 in damage, crews said Around 140 guests evacuated from their rooms after fire on an escalator Three hotel workers at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas have been hospitalized due to an escalator fire that also caused the casino to be evacuated. The staff were all taken to the emergency room suffering from smoke inhalation after a blaze broke out at around 3.30am at the top of the main escalators leading to the hotel's convention center. Smoke filled the center and nearby ballroom, leading to an evacuation of part of the glitzy hotel the Clark County Fire Department said. Three hotel workers have been taken to hospital suffering from smoke inhalation and hundreds of guests evacuated after an escalator fire broke out at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas (pictured) Smoke filled the ballroom and convention center portion of the hotel, forcing guests to be evacuated from those areas, while another 140 had to be evacuated from their rooms after the fire at around 3.30am Evacuations affected 140 hotel rooms on three floors of the Palace Tower for about two hours, while some shops nearby and a part of the casino floor also were briefly evacuated. The three employees were treated and released from a Las Vegas hospital later in the morning, a University Medical Center spokeswoman said. No patrons or hotel guests were injured. Robert Merritt, 54, who was on vacation with his family from the Chicago area, said his wife and daughter were staying in a Palace Tower room that was not evacuated. He said they were startled by the alarms, truck sirens and fire department response but were not given any directions or had any communication from the hotel. He said: 'I just think they made a horrific mistake by not getting basic communications to people in Palace Tower. 'I was given the Disney PR line, which is: "This is a happy place. There's nothing wrong.'" Clark County Deputy Fire Chief Jeff Buchanan defended his department's actions, saying they do not have the manpower to alert every person in a particular building if they are not directly affected. Buchanan added that alerting guests who are not affected to a fire in the building can also cause unnecessary panic, potentially leading to injuries. Guests posted images of the empty casino floor and hotel interior during the blaze (pictured) which officials said lasted around 25 minutes and caused around $100,000 in damage There also is no specific guidance or standard procedure on how property owners should communicate with unaffected guests, he said. The hotel, which has not commented on why some guests were not informed of the fire, said the blaze took 25 minutes to contain and all hotel and casino operations have since returned to normal. The fire department said it is investigating the cause of the fire, which caused damage estimated at $100,000. Caesars Palace had no known building safety violations, and all safeguards were activated during the fire as designed, the county's building department said. The casino-hotel also has had regular building and fire inspections. The state Mechanical Section of the Division on Industrial Relations, which inspects escalators, didn't immediately have comment. A Colorado landlord will let dogs with good references live in the apartment he rents - but not anyone who supports controversial Republican frontrunner Donald Trump. Mark Holmes, 62, warned anyone voting for the billionaire TV personality 'not to call' as he disagreed with the 'hate' Trump is preaching. His advert has led to some anonymous callers who back the firebrand Republican leaving hate messages on his voicemail. Taking a stand: Mark Holmes has said it will not let his apartment to anyone supporting Donald Trump Mr Holmes placed the advert for the two-bedroom apartment that is part of his home in Grand Junction last week. It includes an 'organic garden space, hot tub and great backyard' - but the long-time activist warned Trump supporters against applying. He told the Daily Sentinel: 'He's preaching hate and he's preaching...a lot of venom, spit and vinegar. And I live in the top part of the house. 'I don't want anybody that even thinks that Donald Trump can be a good president to live in my home.' He added: 'I don't know what to do anymore about what's going on in this country. It's just a mess. 'I didn't do it as a gimmick to rent at all. I think people just don't understand that [Trump's possible election] is going to happen.' Controversial: Mr Holmes said he disagreed with the 'hate' Trump is preaching and called the country a 'mess' THE ADVERT AS IT APPEARED For rent: Downtown apartment, 2 bedrooms. Includes organic garden space, hot tub, great backyard. You can bring your dogs if they have references as good as yours. If voting for Donald Trump, do not call. Advertisement Mr Holmes, a resident of Colorado since the 1970s, who was active in protesting against the Vietnam War, remarked: 'I want to pick people who don't mind spending a night in jail during a Gandhi-type of protest.' Since his advert went viral, he was accused of discrimination but excluding renters because of their political stance is not prohibited by federal law [unlike sex or race]. A spokesman for the US Department of Housing and Urban Development said: 'This has nothing to do with the Fair Housing Act. But it seems to be a first, and it's original.' During the bitterly fought Republican election, Trump's brash statements have caused controversy and accusations of incitement to violence from his supporters against protesters. The frontrunner was criticized for failing to disavow support from white supremacist David Duke. Advertisement One of the most recognisable fleets of armed forces helicopters carried out a six-hour farewell flight today - ahead of their retirement after 36 years of service. The Sea King aircraft, known as the 'Junglies' as a nod to the historical role helicopter commando squadrons played in Borneo in the 1960s, looped over the West Country in a six-hour flypast. Dubbed the 'Land Rover of the skies' and the 'Green Giants' of the Fleet Air Arm, the Sea King has been in service with the Commando Helicopter Force since 1969. The fleet of Sea King helicopters over Durdle Door in Dorset on their farewell flight before they are retired officially on March 31 The fleet also flew over the former helicopter base at Portland in Dorset on Monday as part of the six-hour fly-by to celebrate their service Five Sea King Mk4 helicopters did a loop over the West Country on Monday. They are also known as the 'Land Rover of the skies' due to their large size and sturdy build The green helicopters were used in the Falklands, Bosnia and Northern Ireland, and in Iraq and Afghanistan. As well as ferrying the green berets into action, the helicopters were used to deliver essential supplies, including field guns and Land Rovers, whenever needed. Most recently they saw action in Iraq and were instrumental in the opening hours of the 2003 war with Saddam Hussein by landing Royal Marines on the Al Faw peninsula. The Sea King, which will be replaced by the Merlin MK4, will go out of service on March 31 2016 following a disbandment parade to be held on Wednesday at RNAS Yeovilton. Members of the public were told in advance where the impressive aircraft would be, so they could get to the best vantage point to wave them off The 'Green Giants' also flew over Glastonbury Tor, in Somerset - a much calmer journey than those they have seen in the past in conflict zones The helicopters, which have most recently been providing assistance in Afghanistan, set off at 8:30am from Yeovilton, Somerset and flew until past 2pm The two front-line Sea King Mk4 squadrons have also been committed to around the clock in Afghanistan, supporting the mission of all Allied forces there. Upgraded for its mission in Helmand, the most advanced version of the Sea King features improved rotor blades and defensive aids and decoys to fend off enemy attack. It also has night vision goggles to allow the crew to fly at all times and in all weather conditions. The helicopters, which are synonymous with the Royal Marines, flew through cloudy skies over Bath, in Somerset. They were brought into service 36 years ago The Sea Kings, pictured flying over Portsmouth Dockyard, earned the nickname 'Junglies' as a nod to helicopter squadrons before them fighting in Borneo in the 1960s The squadron was recently upgraded for a mission in Helmand, with the most advanced version of the Sea King featuring improved rotor blades and defensive aids and decoys to fend off enemy attack. The first in a series of decommissioning events took place on Sunday, when a 'Junglie' landed on the HMS Bulwark, currently at sea off the Devon coast, for the last time. Most recently the Sea Kings saw action in Iraq and were instrumental in the opening hours of the 2003 war with Saddam Hussein by landing Royal Marines on the Al Faw peninsula Captain James Parkin said: 'The 'Junglie' Sea King has given fantastic service to the British Armed Forces over the last 36 years all over the world. 'It's been great to see a 'Junglie' Sea King at sea for one final time, and I look forward to the 'Junglie' Merlins becoming just as familiar a sight on our deck in the future.' The first in a series of decommissioning events took place on Sunday, when a 'Junglie' landed on the HMS Bulwark, currently at sea off the Devon coast, for the last time. Commander Gavin Simmonite, the final commanding officer of 848 Naval Air Squadron, which is also to be disbanded, said: 'The Sea King has been a wonderful workhorse. 'It is a great pleasure to fly and an aircraft that has created a thousand memories for the aircrews who have flown it and for those on the ground watching it go about its business. It just doesn't get any better.' The fleet in Dartmouth, Devon, on their farewell flight. They will be replaced by the Merlin Mk4 which will undertake both combat and humanitarian missions The Royal Navy craft flew over the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Monday's fly-by. They were used both for ferrying green berets into action and taking essential supplies into the field The fleet whirred down the south coast, passing over Portland Bill Lighthouse in Dorset ahead of a disbandment parade happening on Wednesday On Monday, five of Sea King Mk4 aircraft took off from Yeovilton, Somerset, where they are based, at 8.30am and performed a loop of the West Country. The fleet flew over Portsmouth, Poole, Plymouth, Okehampton, Bristol and Glastonbury in the six-hour farewell tour before landing back at Yeovilton just before 2.30pm. A Navy spokesman said: 'The mighty Sea King will also be remembered by many for its work with the United Nations in Bosnia and its humanitarian support work in the Lebanon, West Africa, Philippines and the Caribbean. 'Although 848 Naval Air Squadron is to disband, the mantle and legacy of the Sea King will be picked up and carried forward by the Merlin, which is already in service with the Commando Helicopter Force.' Commander Gavin Simmonite, the final commanding officer of 848 Naval Air Squadron, which is also to be disbanded, said: 'The Sea King has been a wonderful workhorse. A man charged with assault after punching and kicking an anti-Trump protester at one of The Donald's rallies in Arizona is a member of the Air Force. Staff Sgt. Tony Pettway, a response force leader, is assigned to the Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson and works in security forces. Davis-Monthan is reviewing the situation and will take appropriate action, said 2nd Lt. Sydney Smith of the 355th Fighter Wing public affairs office. Tony Pettway, right, who was arrested for assault after he was filmed punching and kicking an anti-Trump protester in Tuscon on Saturday, is a staff sergeant in the Air Force, a source confirmed Pettway is currently stationed at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson and works in security forces, but has previously served in South Korea and been awarded three commendation medals At least five people were arrested in connection with two Trump rallies held in Fountain Hills and Tuscon, Arizona, on Saturday amid allegations that his often-divisive campaign is promoting violence Airmen are allowed to participate in political events on their own time, Smith said. He added: 'We believe wholeheartedly in our fellow Americans' rights to express their views on political issues, and we condemn any attempt to silence those views through force or violence.' Pettway was released without being booked into jail. It is unclear if he has an attorney. Pettway, 32, began active duty in the Air Force in August 2002 and completed his basic training at Lackland Air Force Base in Texas, Air Force Personnel Center spokesman Mike Dickerson said. He was stationed in South Korea twice and in New Mexico before moving to Davis-Monthan in December 2012. Dickerson said Pettway has received a commendation medal on three occasions but didn't know what they were for. Pettway, who has been charged with misdemeanor assault with injury, was one of several people arrested across two Trump rallies in Arizona that turned nasty over the weekend. Three demonstrators were arrested at Trump's rally in Fountain Hills, Arizona, after they blocked the main road leading to the event in an attempt to deter attendees Linda Rothman, 67, was also arrested by police in Tucson (pictured) for misdemeanor assault without injury, though officers did not say how the incident occurred Corey Lewandowski (pictured center left and right, in a dark suit) also courted controversy after he was filmed pulling on the collar of one demonstrator Earlier in the day three anti-Trump protesters were arrested in Fountain Hills after using their cars to blockade the main road leading to where the Republican frontrunner was holding his rally. Two more activists were pictured being led away by security at the Tuscon rally before Pettway lashed out and was also taken away by police. The demonstrator that Pettway is accused of beating had been waving an image of The Donald with a Confederate flag printed across his face to highlight the divisiveness of his campaign. Meanwhile a second protester being escorted out behind him was wearing a KKK-style hood and throwing a Nazi salute. The incident was caught on video. People can be heard cheering as Trump denounces the protester wearing a KKK-style sheet. 'There's a disgusting guy. Puts a Ku Klux Klan hat on. Thinks he's cute. He's a disgusting guy. I'm going to tell you folks, that's a disgrace. They are taking away our First Amendment rights.' Jacinta Gonzalez (right), the 2011 Soros Justice Fellow, was among those arrested in Fountain Hills after using a bike lock to attach herself to the window-frame of a van, blocking the road Corey Lewandowski, Trump's campaign manager, was also criticized after the event for grabbing the collar of a male demonstrator, causing him to lash out. Tucson police also arrested 67-year-old Linda Rothman on a misdemeanor count of assault without injury. They haven't said why she was arrested. Authorities in Phoenix, where Trump held a rally earlier in the day, also arrested several protesters. Maricopa County Sheriff's deputies identified three protesters who were arrested while helping block the only major highway leading to a Trump rally in metropolitan Phoenix. The couple lives in a one-bedroom apartment in a converted terraced house, which they share with three other tenants Bella and Max have rejected financial support from her parents - worth an estimated $600 million combined She shocked the world when she tied the knot in a secret ceremony on September 18, 2015 - but most shocking of all - was the absence of her famous mom and dad, Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise. Now for the first time, Bella Cruise is opening up about her big day and married life in an exclusive interview with Daily Mail Online. Bella, 23, and Max, 29, had a Scientology wedding at the lavish Dorchester Hotel in London. Bella - and her brother Connor Cruise were raised in the Church of Scientology, where their father is one of its most prominent figures. Newlyweds: Bella Cruise and Max Parker pictured taking a romantic stroll through London after visiting flower market for a gift for Max's mom Modest lifestyle: The couple lives in a one-bedroom apartment and have rejected financial support from Bella's famous parents, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Cruise and Kidman are worth an estimated $600 million combined Flower power: Bella and Max picked up flowers for his mom as well as a venus flytrap for their apartment For years, speculation over Bella's strained relationship with mom Nicole Kidman has been blamed on her loyalty to Scientology and her father. Laying to rest rumors of disconnecting from Kidman since the actress was labeled a 'suppressive person' by Scientology chiefs because she refused to join, Bella insists she's often in contact with Kidman and Cruise. 'Of course [we talk], they're my parents,' she says. 'Anyone who says otherwise is full of s**t.' Asked if he's a member of Scientology himself, Max says: 'No,' but reveals Bella is still active. However, despite Bella saying all is well with she and her mom - Kidman didn't attend the wedding even though she was in London at the time. Visible: Bella's wedding band seen up close since the top secret ceremony Cruise's work schedule is the excuse given privately for his absence. When asked if it was hard not to have his famous father-in-law walk Bella down the aisle to give her away Max tells Daily Mail Online, 'Yeah. It is what it is.' As for Max's parents attending the nuptials - his mother Beverly Parker tells Daily Mail Online from her home, in Croydon, they didn't go to the wedding either in fear of it being made public. 'We didn't go but we knew all about it. We stayed away, we didn't want the media circus,' she reasoned when pressed as to why she didn't want to attend. So how does she feel about Max marrying Bella? 'The pair of them are lovely, I'm very pleased for them both and they're very happy,' she says bursting with pride. It's no coincidence that Bella is arguably the happiest she's every been since finding love with Max, something which Beverly puts down to her living in England. 'That [Hollywood] is what she's getting away from,' Beverly spills. Max's parents Beverly, 59, and Lester, 63, are still yet to meet Cruise, 53, and Kidman, 48. Asked if she wanted to meet them, Beverly says: 'No, no, there's no need for that.' Adding: 'At the end of the day they're just people aren't they?' The guest list for their wedding was restricted to their most trusted friends, leaving most relatives uninvited and unaware it was even happening. Secret ceremony: Bella and Max had a Scientology wedding ceremony at the lavish Dorchester Hotel in London on September 18, 2015 Whoa baby: 'I'm 23, so we'll see. I'm still a baby myself,' Bella tells Daily Mail Online when asked about children Max shakes his head when asked if he had Cruise's permission to propose, 'No,' he smirks - but things are patched up and he insists both the Mission: Impossible actor and ex-wife Kidman have now embraced him. The couple has even rejected financial support from Bella's parents - worth an estimated $600million combined. They live in a one-bedroom apartment in a converted terraced house, which they share with three other tenants. Bella drives a modest Fiat 500 - and Max, an IT Specialist, gets to work by catching a public bus before walking to catch a train. He works long hours and is often too tired to go out for expensive dinners or posh cocktails when he gets home. 'I'm still a regular guy,' Max insists when comparing his daily routine to that of his new celebrity relations but he understands why others may think it's strange. Asked if Bella's detached herself from the fame and fortune side of her life, Max agrees: 'Yeah, you could say that. It's more [of a] weird [situation] for everyone else.' Both Max and Bella are fiercely proud of their independence and are determined to live their lives away from the spotlight. Wedding day: Bella and Max embrace as they celebrate their big day with close friends after the super private ceremony in London Doting dad: Tom Cruise did not attend Bella's wedding due to his 'work schedule'. Cruise seen here walking through Central Park in 2010 with son Connor, and daughters Bella and Suri Strained relationship? Bella tells Daily Mail Online, 'Of course [we talk], they're my parents. Anyone who says otherwise is full of s**t' (Bella with mother Nicole Kidman and brother Connor in 2004) They both refused to reveal where they first met or share any details of first dates or Max's proposal. They share a passion for music and Bella, who has a nose piercing and ever-changing hairstyles, will rarely travel anywhere without a playlist fired up on her iPhone. Their whirlwind romance is showing no signs of slowing down. Boasting about her husband, Bella can't help but giggle: 'I'm very lucky.' Asked of their future family plans and desire to start their own family, Bella says: 'I'm 23, so we'll see. I'm still a baby myself.' Meanwhile Max refuses to rule out rumors they may already be expecting their first child together. 'Not quite yet,' he says with an air of disappointment. The cocaine is worth an A flight attendant who packed 70lbs of cocaine in her carry-on luggage ran off barefoot, leaving behind a pair of Gucci shoes when she was selected for a random screening,NBC reported. Investigators are still searching for the woman who fled Los Angeles International Airport on Friday night, leaving behind the shoes as well as two bags filled with drugs. A TSA officer told the LA Times the flight attendant was a 'major airline employee,' but her identity has not be revealed. Scroll down for video A flight attendant fled on foot after it was discovered she smuggled 70lbs of cocaine (pictured), worth $2 million, on to a flight The flight attendant had 70lbs of cocaine in two carry-on rolling suitcases, which Marshall McClain, president of the Los Angeles Airport Peace Officers Association estimated was worth $2million. Flight crew are normally allowed to bypass security checks, but she was pulled aside for a random screening. She made a phone call in another language, and appeared nervous, according to authorities who spoke to NBC. When she was asked to produce her employee identification in another screening room, she made off with her bags. She soon ditched the two rolling suitcases along with her designer shoes and left the terminal. The flight attendant was caught on video, although the footage has not been released. McClain told the LA Times: 'I dont believe anybody would trust a mule with that amount of dope the first time out. 'Youre talking about $2 million worth of cocaine thats pretty troubling. This is more than likely not her first time doing this.' According to NBC Los Angeles, the flight attendant was scheduled to fly to LaGuardia Airport in New York City. When Dennis Erickson passed away in December and left his house and contents to the Celebration Church in Lakeville, Minnesota, his colleagues at the house of worship might not have been too surprised. After all, Erickson, who had no family and had lived at the home with his parents until they died, had few others to give his worldly possessions to. But when they opened up the house it was a different matter: on almost every surface and almost every space, Erickson had carefully placed toy cars, bikes and trucks - 30,000 of them, in fact, more than one for every day he'd been alive, and certainly one of the biggest collections in the world. Wheely enthusiastic: When Dennis Erickson died at 69, he left his home and its contents to the Minnesota church he ushered at. Little did the church know that included 30,000 toy vehicles worth six figures A lot going on under the hood: Erickson kept his passion a secret from his colleagues, but continued to order new toys up until his death. The miniatures took up every room in his house 'It was breathtaking when I walked in,' Lisa Lundstrom, the churchs chief financial officer, told KSDK. 'Literally it's floor to ceiling every single room.' She's not exaggerating: foyer, living room, bedroom - even the bathroom of this two-story suburban home is filled with cars ranging from two-foot toys big enough for a child to sit in to miniature machines the size of fingertips. Many sit behind the plexiglass windows of hand-built display cabinets, but others rest on carpets, the tops of shelves or even each other. 'Im still a bit overwhelmed,' Lundstrom said, 'Its nuts!' Auto-buff Erickson, who also kept meticulous notes on his encounters with real cars and filed away automotive brochures, began collecting the toys from the age of nine, right up until he died in his sleep 60 years later. Newly ordered vehicles were even arriving by mail after he'd passed away. And now it falls to Lundstrom to sell the collection, which she believes could be worth well into six figures - that money will then be used to improve the church's youth facilities. But, she says, they'll all have to go in one lot. 'If I tried to sell it separately, the rest of my life would be Dennis life,' she joked. Heaven on wheels: To a car fanatic, Erickson's home would have been heaven - every room is filled with toy cars, bikes, trucks and other miniatures, many enclosed in hand-made display cases Real wheels: Erickson also owned four real cars, including this '59 Edsel. He left the collection to the church because he had no family or dependents And it's not just toys that he'd collected either; the car fan had four real-life gas guzzlers: a Ford Model T, a '59 Edsel, a '66 Rambler and a '77 Bonneville. But the Bonneville didn't go to the church. That prized possession went to Erickson's friend Glenn Lindell, who had once gone on a fondly remembered road trick with Erickson in that same car. 'It's really a surprise,' Lindell told KSDK, 'but I thank him for it very much.' According to a 2014 report by Autoblog, the largest toy car collection in the world is owned by Lebanese rally racer Billy Karam, who has 'over 30,000' models. That record no longer appears to be on the official Guinness World Records website, but would still put Erickson in the top tier of world collectors. There's little doubt that not having a partner or children helped Erickson in his collecting. But he wasn't laid to rest alone. Lunstrom said: 'He didn't have family to put a funeral together for him, we did it as a church, because he was our family.' Ramblin' man: This '66 Rambler was another of Erickson's prized automobiles Hundreds of rapists and child molesters have been removed from the sex offenders register to protect their human rights (stock photo) Hundreds of rapists and child molesters have been removed from the sex offenders register to protect their human rights. Nearly 700 people convicted of sex crimes have successfully appealed against being kept on the list for life, potentially risking public safety. It follows a ruling by unelected judges that it is disproportionate to place sex attackers on the register indefinitely without giving them a right of challenge. Victims campaigners yesterday said they were outraged that criminals who had committed horrendous abuse were free to walk the streets unmonitored. In the past four years 679 offenders including at least 170 rapists and 157 paedophiles have been told they no longer have to register with the police. Perverts convicted of raping boys and girls, incest and taking indecent images of children have all taken advantage of the Supreme Court judgment, made under the European Convention on Human Rights controversial right to a private life. More than half of the 1,289 applications submitted since the change was introduced in 2012 were successful, Freedom of Information requests by the BBC revealed. Britain has around 50,000 sex offenders on the register. The judgment means even the worst paedophiles can ask to be removed from the list 15 years after their release from prison. David Hines, founder of the National Victims Association, said he was appalled that people who had committed horrific crimes were no longer on the register. In 2012, Home Secretary Theresa May issued the minimum appeal rights allowed by the Human Rights Act He said: I think the public will be outraged as well. These people should stay on the register. This is not protecting the public. An NSPCC spokesman said: It shouldnt be forgotten that every sex offender has committed horrendous abuse and left a trail of victims in their wake. Before anyone comes off the... register they should undergo a risk assessment and if they still pose a threat to children must remain on it. We also believe those on the register have to be strictly monitored and this should include regular visits from the police. Under the Sexual Offences Act 2003, all rapists and paedophiles sentenced to more than 30 months in prison were placed on the register indefinitely, with no opportunity for review. The worst offenders were forced to inform the police of their movements to protect the public. Those considered to be of the lowest danger level only had to report to a police station once a year to identify themselves and any change of address. But in 2010, Englands Supreme Court said keeping offenders on the register for life was disproportionate if they could prove they were no longer a threat. In 2012, Home Secretary Theresa May issued the minimum appeal rights allowed by the Human Rights Act. Before recommending someones removal, a senior officer has to carry out a robust review and be satisfied that it is not necessary, for the purpose of protecting the public from the risk of sexual harm. Victims are not necessarily notified that their attacker has been taken off the register. Of the 44 forces that can approve applications, 40 responded to the FOI requests. Police in North Wales, Wiltshire, Northumbria, Northern Ireland and Devon and Cornwall gave the green light to most applications each approving more than 75 per cent. Requests were the least successful in Dyfed-Powys and the City of London, where none were approved, and in North Yorkshire at only seven per cent. Last night a Home Office spokesman said: Public safety is at the heart of all decisions taken by police. Those who continue to pose a risk will remain on the sex offenders register if necessary, for life. A man who has four drunk driving convictions and killed a 70-year-old grandfather as he crossed a road a decade ago is back in jail. David Shilcock, 52, from a south Adelaide suburb, was sentenced to three weeks in jail on Monday for getting behind the wheel once again in July and violating his lifetime licence disqualification, according to The Advertiser. Despite losing his licence in 1988, Shilcock, who has extensive tattoos covering his chest and face, hit and killed Frank Ferris, 70, as he was crossing Grand Junction Road in May 2006. David Shilcock, 52, (pictured) from Adelaide, was sentenced to three weeks in jail on Monday for getting behind the wheel once again in July and violating his lifetime licence disqualification Despite losing his licence in 1988, Shilcock hit and killed Frank Ferris, 70, as he was crossing Grand Junction Road (pictured) in May 2006 The serial driving offender then fled the scene and left Mr Ferris injured on the road. Police had to ram Shilcock's car with a patrol car to get him to stop driving and discovered he had a blood alcohol reading five times over the legal limit at .243. Shilcock was sentenced to just over four years in prison for killing Mr Ferris after pleading guilty to the charge of causing death by dangerous driving. Although his licence had already been taken away, the sentencing judge banned Shilcock from driving again which he violated in July 2015. Mr Ferris' son, Terry Ferris, said the three week jail sentence for Shilcock's recent violation is 'a joke.'Shilcock was sentenced to just over four years in prison for killing Mr Ferris Shilcock, who has extensive tattoos covering his chest and face (pictured), was sentenced to just over four years in prison for killing Mr Ferris 'I am pretty disgusted that he's back behind the wheel, he doesn't care about the law at all,' Mr Ferris said. Terry said he was not surprised Shilcock got behind the wheel again despite court orders and that he fears he could hurt someone else in the future. 'It's an absolute joke really, maybe if something happened to one of the judges' families there might be something more done about it,' he said. The crack-smoking former mayor of Toronto has been moved into palliative care following unsuccessful cancer treatment, according to his chief of staff. Rob Ford, 46, had been undergoing his tenth round of chemotherapy treatment in his home town for an aggressive form of cancer that has reoccurred despite surgery. Staffer Dan Jacobs confirmed to Dailymail.com that the most recent treatment had been unsuccessful and that Ford is now in palliative care, but denied it was end-of-life treatment. Scroll down for video Rob Ford, 46 (pictured in 2015), has been moved into palliative care following chemotherapy which failed to eradicate tumors on his bladder, bit aides insist he is simply resting while being assessed for more treatment Jacobs said that the specialist care was simply designed so Ford could regain his strength while doctors decide if he is healthy enough to undergo another round of treatment. A statement issued by Jacobs said: 'Councillor Ford remains hospitalized at Mount Sinai, with members of his family at his side throughout the day, and some also staying the night. 'At this time, the treatment that Councillor Ford is receiving is palliative in nature. 'To be clear, he has not been transferred to any kind of 'palliative care unit', he remains on the same floor, and on the same wing where he has received his chemotherapy treatments. 'Palliative care is often administered in conjunction with other treatments, and he has in fact been receiving it almost since first becoming diagnosed, both at home and the hospital. 'This is quite typical for those who are diagnosed with serious illnesses and injuries. 'The purpose of palliative care is to deal with symptomatic issues, such as pain and discomfort, and physical and mental stress, and to allow the patient to be as comfortable as possible. 'Part of his palliative care includes sedation, which is also an element of the team's pain management. 'As Councillor Ford and his brother Doug have said several times throughout the course of treatment, pain has been an ongoing issue, and the Councillor is now resting comfortably thanks to the efforts of his medical team. 'Doctors have been clear since Councillor Ford's diagnosis that he is dealing with an extremely serious illness. 'We have not been given any indication of when he could possibly be discharged or a different treatment course be attempted, but they have also been clear that he still faces challenges. 'They are very concerned with the reappearance and progression of the disease, but everyone is hopeful that his body will be able to fight back enough that he can then undergo further treatment.' Ford (pictured in 2014) achieved notoriety after he was filmed smoking crack cocaine during a drunken binge in 2013 but refused to resign. He was forced out of re-running for office after being diagnosed with cancer Ford gained global notoriety after a video emerged in 2013 purporting to show him smoking crack cocaine during a drunken stupor. Following weeks of intensifying media scrutiny Ford eventually admitted smoking illegal drugs while in office, buying the drugs and driving while drunk, but refused to resign his position. In early 2014 Ford was believed to have checked into a treatment clinic to deal with his alcohol and drug problems, before reemerging and announcing his intention to run for reelection as mayor. Shortly afterwards he was diagnosed with pleomorphic liposarcoma, a rare and hard-to-treat cancer found in soft, fatty tissue of the body, after he was admitted to a hospital with abdominal pain. That diagnosis led to Ford calling off his bid for the mayor's seat, though he did run again for his old council seat in an election which he won. After 27 days of radiation and five rounds of chemotherapy treatment Ford had the tumor removed in September of last year. However just a month later doctors discovered another two tumors on his bladder, leading to another five round of chemotherapy. Advertisement Apple unveiled a 4-inch handset dubbed iPhone SE on Tuesday, with the new iPhone SE now going on sale in Australia at $679 for the 16GB model and a smaller iPad Pro that will start at $899 for the 32GB model. It is the first 4-inch phone to be revealed since the iPhone 5s and 5c and was announced at a press conference in San Francisco alongside a new 9.7-inch iPad Pro. In Australia, the iPhone SE will be on sale for $679 for the 16GB model, which is much cheaper than Australia's iPhone 6s current starting price of $1079. For the 64GB version of the iPhone SE, Australians will pay $829. The smaller iPad Pro will start at $899 for the 32GB model in Australia, while those who need more storage can go for the $1049 128GB model, or fork out $1399 for an enormous 256GB of storage. Scroll down for video Apple has gone back to its roots today by unveiling a 4-inch handset dubbed iPhone SE. The phone was announced at an event in San Francisco by Apple's Greg Joswiak (pictured) Apple's Watch will come with a range of colourful nylon straps (selection pictured) Apple's boss Tim Cook opened the event by revealing there are now one billion active Apple devices globally. The iPhone SE is said to have the same performance as the 6S and 'delivers incredible battery improvements' - although Apple did not give any specifics. It has a 12MP iSight camera with True Tone flash and can capture 4K video, edit up to 2 streams and has TouchID for Apple Pay built in. It will be available in space grey, silver, gold and rose gold metallic finishes in 16GB and 64GB. In addition to the iPhone SE, Apple unveiled a new 9.7-inch iPad Pro. It has nearly identical features and specifications as the bigger model, with an A9X processor and RAM upgrades from the 12.9-inch model. AUSTRALIA'S iPHONE SE AND NEW IPAD PRO SPECIFICATIONS AND PRICES Specification iPhone SE New iPad Pro Screen size: 4-inches 9.7-inch True Tone display Chip: 64-bit A9 chip 64-bit A9X chip Processor: M9 motion co-processor Integrated M9 co-processor Camera: 12MP iSight camera with Retina Flash 12MP iSight Camera with True Tone Flash and a 5MP FaceTime HD camera with Retina Flash Panoramas: Up to 63MP Up to 63MP Video: 4K quality 4K quality Operating system iOS 9.3 iOS 9.3 Assistant: Always-on 'Hey Siri' Always-on 'Hey Siri' Extras: Apple Pay, improved battery life, faster Wi-Fi and LTE Less than 1lb (0.45kg) in weight, four speakers, with accessories including a pencil, keyboard and smart adapters Colours: Four: rose gold, gold, silver and space grey Four: rose gold, gold, silver and space grey Price: $679 for 16GB and $829 for 64GB $899 for 32GB, $1049 for 128GB and $1399 for 256GB Availability: Orders begin on March 24 and shipping starts on March 31 Orders begin on March 24 and shipping starts on March 31 Prices for the iPhone SE start at $679 in Australia and will be available in space grey, silver, gold and rose gold metallic finishes (pictured from left to right) in 16GB and 64GB versions The iPhone SE is said to have the same performance as the 6S and 'delivers incredible battery improvements' - although Apple did not give any specifics The iPhone SE is said to have the same performance as the 6S and 'delivers incredible battery improvements' - although Apple did not give any specifics. It has a 12MP iSight camera with True Tone flash and can capture 4K video, edit two streams and has TouchID for Apple Pay It also includes the 12.9-inch model's updated display technology to support the Apple Pencil. Speaking at the event, Apple's Phil Schiller said: 'We started iPad with a 9.7-inch display, and we've sold over 200 million. This is the ultimate upgrade.' Other specifications include a so-called True Tone display that automatically alters the colours depending on ambient light conditions. It has a smart keyboard designed for smaller design, and comes in a 256GB version. Both the iPhone SE and the new iPad Pro will be available to order from 24 March and shipping will begin on 31 March. DAILYMAIL.COM'S FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF THE IPHONE SE The rose gold iPhone SE is pictured in the foreground at the event in San Francisco Mark Prigg from Dailymail.com said: 'The key to the iPhone SE is a simple - familiarity. This is a handset that looks identical, on the outside at least, to the hugely popular iPhone 5s, with the only obvious difference being a new matte metal finish. 'However, switch it on, and it becomes apparently this is a 'retro' iPhone in looks only. It's blazingly fast - and playing several high intensity games show that this really is as powerful as the current flagship, the 6s. 'The camera has also had a huge update, and it boasts a 12MP camera, which, in our limited testing, produced some great shots - not quite as impressive as the 6S plus, but you can also create live pictures, which is a welcome addition. 'It's just as well built, and the new rose gold option is beautiful - despite the rather ugly plastic antenna strips. 'In terms of weight, it's identical to the 5 series, and as an iPhone 6s Plus users, it feels small at first - but after a few minutes, one suddenly remembers how nice having a small phone can be - and I'd expect many to buy this as a backup or second phone. 'With the TouchID sensor you can use a print instead of a password, and also use Apple Pay. 'Overall, the iPhone SE is a fascinating product, and one destined to do incredibly well. 'It really hits a sweetspot in the Apple lineup of people who perhaps don't want, or can't afford a flagship handset. 'It will undoubtedly do the job Apple wants it to, attracting new users during a time when sales of the flagship model are stalling. 'It may seem like a step back, and a 'retro' handset - but the SE could be the sleeper hit of the iPhone range, and bring millions of new users who previously haven't wanted to commit to an expensive flagship handset. 'It's about giving customers options - and for an awful lot of people, the SE will do everything they want.' Advertisement Apple also showed off a new range of watch bands (right), including a black version of the Milanese Loop, new colours for Hermes straps and another line of bands made from nylon at today's event. The tech giant's boss Tim Cook (left) said the Apple Watch sold particularly well in December - possibly because people bought the devices as Christmas presents The iPhone SE is pictured with its starting price in the US. Apple also said the latest update for its operating system, iOS 9.3, will be available from today The new iPad pro, at right, is seen next to an older version and the Apple pencil, middle, during an event at Apple headquarters. has nearly identical features and specifications as the bigger model, with a A9X processor and RAM upgrades from the 12.9-inch version Prices for the new iPad Pro (specifications pictured with Phil Schiller) will start at $899 for the 32GB model in Australia, while those who need more storage can go for the $1049 128GB model, or fork out $1399 for an enormous 256GB of storage. The new iPad Pro is also available to order from 24 March and will begin shipping on 31 March TIM COOK ADDRESSES ENCRYPTION Apple boss Tim Cook began the event by discussing the encryption battle with the FBI. He revealed there are now more than a billion Apple devices in use around the world. 'We built the iPhone for you, we know it is a deeply personal device,' he said. 'About a month ago we asked Americans across the country to join in a conversation 'I've been humbled and deeply grateful for the support we've recieved. 'We did not expect to be at odds with our own government, but we believe strongly we have a responsibility to protect your data. 'We will not shrink from this responsibility.' Advertisement It will come in four metal finishes and will be available in rose gold for the first time. Apple also said the latest update for its operating system, iOS 9.3, will be available from today. Commenting on the iPhone SE, Stephen Ebbett, global director of gadget insurer Protect Your Bubble, told MailOnline: 'A less powerful processor would have been perfectly acceptable in a cheaper iPhone but, with the processor and graphics on par with the iPhone 6s, youre left wondering what features have Apple scrimped on to keep costs down? 'Other than the screen size, not many it seems.' Carolina Milanesi of Kantor World Panel added: 'There's a lot there in terms of price. $399 is good price point, and I expected $450. It's also great for expanding Apple's ecosystem.' The beginning of the event concentrated on Apple's environmental and health schemes. Lisa Jackson, Apple's environmental head, said the firm is now 100% renewable in 23 countries around the world. She then showed a video about a robot called 'Liam' that can recycle parts from old iPhones. 'There is no other machine that can do what Liam can,' said Ms Jackson. 'It separates the iPhone into its components.' Parts are detected, removed and then separated so the materials inside those parts can be re-purposed. To rescue cobalt and lithium from the battery and extract silver and platinum, for example, so the materials in an old iPhone can live on. Jeff Williams, Apple's Chief Operating Officer then unveiled CareKit - a follow-up to the firm's ResearchKit. Apple CEO Tim Cook shows off the new, smaller iPad Pro at the company's product launch event at Apple headquarters in Cupertino The event was held at Town Hall, a small theatre (exterior pictured left and interior right) inside Apple's HQ in Cupertino holding around 500 people. It is expected to be the last time the space is used before Apple moves to its new 'spaceship' HQ next year - which has a far larger theatre sunk underground in the middle of the loop The phone is the first 4-inch phone to be unveiled since the iPhone 5s (pictured) and 5c. Apple ditched the smaller models in favour of its current iPhone 6 and 6 Plus range, but said it was now responding to customer feedback Apple Senior Vice President of Marketing Phil Schiller (pictured) introduced the new iPad Pro (right). The new Lightning to SD Card Camera Reader and Lightning to USB 3 Camera Adapter make it easy to download photos and videos from a digital camera to iPad (left) Apple's boss Tim Cook revealed there are now 1 billion active Apple devices around the world (pictured). He also began the event by discussing the encryption battle with the FBI, adding the company will not shrink away from protecting the firm's customer's data 'Virtually overnight, the research studies we launched became some of the largest in history with tens of thousands of people signing up,' he explained. He specifically quoted a Parkinson's Disease study that became the largest of its kind in 24 hours. He said: 'Researchers are gaining insights that weren't possible before...and Research Kit is opening up all kinds of possibilities.' Under CareKit, the first app will be used to study Parkinson's Disease, and six medical centres will start using the app immediately. Apple is working with Texas Medical center to develop app for surgery patients to track information Last month, Apple announced a first-quarter net profit rise of 1.9 percent to $18.36 billion, (12.85 billion) while revenue increased 1.7 percent to $75.87 billion (53.02 billion). While both were records for the company, the figures fell short of analyst expectations. DAILYMAIL.COM'S FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF THE IPAD PRO The iPad Pro and Apple Pencil is pictured. DailyMail.com believes the tablet will be popular with corporate groups DailyMail.com's Mark Prigg said: 'With its vast screen, the iPad Pro was billed as a powerful laptop replacement - but what about those who want a smaller, normal sized iPad? 'The new 9.7-inch iPad Pro offers a solution - the power of the larger machine crammed into a smaller tablet. 'Its virtually identical, even having the same smart keyboard available to help those who need to type. 'The new iPad is also cheaper, something sure to attract many corporate buyers to it. Several analysts we spoke to reckon it might become a huge hit in the corporate world because of this. 'In use, its fantastic - if you like the iPad. It has many of the same advantages including a blazing fast processor and the same incredible screen as its big brother. 'However, Apple still needs to work on the iOS software for the Pro line, and even though the keyboard shortcuts and in screen video windows make it possible to use this as a laptop, one feels Apple still has a little work to do before it can really take on the laptop. 'However, this wont stop the iPad Pro. 'For many users, creative types and corporate groups in particular, the new iPad Pro might well be the perfect tablet - the power of the Pro, but in the size of the hugely popular original iPad.' Advertisement At the same event, Jeff Williams, Apple's Chief Operating Officer unveiled CareKit - a follow-up to the firm's ResearchKit. Under CareKit, the first app will be used to study Parkinson's Disease, and six medical centres will start using the app immediately. Apple is working with Texas Medical center to develop app for surgery patients to track information Speaking at the event, Apple's Phil Schiller (pictured) said: 'We started iPad with a 9.7-inch display, and we've sold over 200 million. This is the ultimate upgrade.' The new iPad is shown in the background with the Apple Pencil The new iPad Pro has a smart keyboard designed for the smaller design (pictured), and comes in a 256GB version The new iPad Pro is seen on display during an event at the Apple headquarters in Cupertino. It is available in rose gold for the first time It reported lower-than-expected iPhone sales in the latest quarter, its slowest-ever growth in shipments, as the company began to feel the effects of economic softness in the critical Chinese market. Apple said in February it sold 74.8 million iPhones in the three months ending 26 December, the first full quarter of sales of the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus. This rise in iPhone shipments was the smallest since the second fiscal quarter of 2013. It is hoped the smaller iPhone SE will bolster this. Apple also showed off a new range of watch bands, including a black version of the Milanese Loop, a new colour for Hermes straps and another line of bands made from nylon at today's event. A selection of Apple's new colour options for its Watch straps is pictured. Nylon versions are pictured far left in red and black Apple Sr. Vice President of Marketing Phil Schiller introduces the new iPad Pro. It has a 64-bit A9X chip that rivals most portable PCs, along with a four-speaker audio system that is twice as powerful The tech giant's boss Tim Cook said the Apple Watch sold particularly well in December - possibly because people bought the devices as Christmas presents. He said of the company's earnings: 'Our team delivered Apple's biggest quarter ever, thanks to the world's most innovative products and all-time record sales of iPhone, Apple Watch and Apple TV.' Earlier this month, Apple unveiled a new night mode for iOS devices designed to help owners sleep. Called 'Night Shift', it was shown off as part of a beta version of iOS 9.3, the firm's next update, and will be available on the iPad Pro by default. Tim Cook made specific reference to the feature at today's event. 'Many studies have shown that exposure to bright blue light in the evening can affect your circadian rhythms and make it harder to fall asleep,' Apple said. A smaller update concerned Apple TV. Tim Cook (pictured) said it had the largest sales ever for Apple TV last quarter and there are now 5,000 apps. As part of the update, Apple is adding folders to organise apps on your homescreen, dictation, Siri - all available today 'Night Shift uses your iOS device's clock and geolocation to determine when it's sunset in your location. Then it automatically shifts the colors in your display to the warmer end of the spectrum, making it easier on your eyes. 'In the morning, it returns the display to its regular settings.' Behavioural expert Jo Allison from Canvas8 added: '[It] may seem like a small feature but as 95 per cent of people use their laptop, smartphone or watch TV an hour before bedtime, Apple is positioning itself as a brand that really cares for it users' health.' PHONE SPECIFICATIONS - A COMPARISON HANDSET SCREEN SIZE STORAGE FRONT-FACING CAMERA REAR-FACING CAMERA iPhone SE 4 inch 16GB and 64GB 1.2MP with flash 12MP Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge 5.5-inch 32GB 5MP 12MP Samsung Galaxy S7 5.1-inch 32GB 5MP 12MP iPhone 6s 4.7-inch 16GB, 64GB and 128GB 5MP 12MP iPhone 6s Plus 5.5-inch 16GB, 64GB and 128GB 5MP 12MP Lumia Cityman 5.7-inch 32GB 5MP 20MP Lumia Talkman 5.2-inch 32GB 5MP 20MP iPhone 6 4.7-inch 16GB, 64GB and 128GB 1.2MP 8MP iPhone 6 Plus 5.5-inch 16GB, 64GB and 128GB 1.2MP 8MP Amazon Fire 4.7-inch 32GB and 64GB 2.1MP 13MP Samsung Galaxy Note Edge 5.6-inch 32GB and 64GB 3.7MP 16MP Samsung Galaxy S6 5.1-inch 32GB, 64GB and 128GB 5MP 16MP Samsung Galaxy S6 Edge 5.1-inch 32GB, 64GB and 128GB 5MP 16MP HTC One M9 5-inch 32GB 4MP 20.7MP Samsung Galaxy S5 5.1-inch 16 and 32GB 2MP 16MP iPhone 5S 4-inch 16, 32 and 64GB 1.2MP 8MP HTC One 4.7-inch 32 and 64GB 2.1MP 4MP HTC One M8 5-inch 16 and 32GB 5MP 4MP iPhone 5C 4-inch 16 and 32GB 1.2MP 8MP Nokia 1020 4.5-inch 32GB 1.2MP 41MP Samsung Galaxy S4 5-inch 16, 32 and 64GB 2MP 13MP Nexus 5 4.95-inch 16 and 32GB 1.3MP 8MP Phil Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of worldwide product marketing, talks about the Apple pencil during an event at Apple As Lindt cafe gunman Man Monis grew increasingly jumpy and erratic during the siege he told his 18 hostages that he was putting them on a points system for good or bad behaviour. Evidence at the inquest into the Sydney siege on Tuesday heard that the mood of the gunman swayed dramatically and that he was 'increasingly jumpy' and nervous about what was going on outside the cafe as darkness fell on the evening of December 15, 2014. The inquest has also been shown footage of Man Monis lying dead on the floor of the Lindt Cafe after the siege. Monis behaviour was tense and erratic with him expressing concern about movements outside the window and telling hostages he was maintaining an account for each of them,' Counsel assisting the inquest, Sophie Callan said. 'So that if they did the right thing they would attract points. But if they were not honest that would count as debits against them. Scroll down for video The family of Lindt cafe siege victim Katrina Dawson arrive at the inquest on Tuesday, from left her mother Jane, brother Sandy and father, Alexander The husband of Lindt Cafe siege victim Katrina Dawson, Paul Smith, arrives at the inquest into the siege in Sydney on Tuesday The hostages (Pictured at the siege beginning inside the Lindt cafe) noticed Man Monis became jumpier as night fell and the siege dragged on into the early hours of the morning Lindt cafe gunman Man Monis grew increasingly jumpy and erratic during the siege he told his 18 hostages (pictured holding an Islamic flag to the cafe window) that he was putting them on a points system for good or bad behaviour Sydney siege gunman began 'increasingly jumpy' and tired inside the Lindt cafe siege and refused to leave the hostages unattended even though he wanted to go to the toilet, the siege inquest has heard 'He continued to be concerned about police coming close to the cafe and had hostages warn negotiators on a number of occasions that the police should stay away or he would shoot one of the hostages.' At one point, he singled out hostage Selena Win Pe and threatened to shoot her 'in 15 minutes' unles she could convince the police negotiators to turn off the lights outside the cafe in Martin Place. Ms Callan said that at other times Monis was fixated on radio coverage of the siege and seemed pleased that police were 'emphasising that they were confident the siege could finish peacefully'. He listened to Radio 2GB for much of the evening and ordered his hostages to send out messages to the media. Lindt cafe siege chief investigator Detective Chief Inspector Angelo Memmolo (pictured outside the inquest on Tuesday) showed the hearing images of Man Monis lying dead inside the cafe after the siege had ended When six hostages led by Jarrod Hoffman managed to escape from the cafe at 2.03am, a furious Man Monis shot into the glass wall of the cafe and just minutes later shot cafe manager Tori Johnson dead Lindt cafe manager Tori Johnson (above, left) was executed by gunman Man Monis at 2.13am, after which police stormed the cafe shooting dead Monis and the finding the barely breathing form of Katrina Dawson (above, right) who could not be revived Lindt cafe gunman Man Monis ordered Tori Johnson to put his hands on his head and to kneel at 2,06am, and then shot him in the back of the head at 2.13am. When Mr Johnson slumped to the floor, Monis said 'Don't move, everything will be fine', the inquest into the deadly Sydney siege heard on Tuesday. After the flash of the shotgun fire, a police sniper called Sierra 3 radioed in 'White Window 2 Hostage Down'. The Sydney siege gunman began 'increasingly jumpy' and tired inside the Lindt cafe siege and refused to leave the hostages unattended even though he wanted to go to the toilet, the siege inquest has heard. Before midnight, he was so uneasy when he wanted to urinate he didn't risk going to the toilet and a bottle was obtained from the kitchen and the gunman urinated in the corner,Fiona Ma then took the bottle and emptied it. The inquest also heard that Lindt cafe manager Tori Johnson sent out a text message from inside the Lindt cafe asking police be told that the lobby door of the cafe was unlocked and that gunman Man Monis was alone in one corner. 'Tell the police the lobby door is unlocked. He's sitting in the corner on his own,' was the message Mr Johnson sent out. From 7.15pm police had audio from inside the cafe via a surveillance device, which was played to the inquest. Police move in to end the Sydney siege after Man Monis turns his shotgun on cafe manager Tori Johnson On the recording hostage Jarrod Hoffman suggests to Man Monis that the two pregnant hostages Harriet Denny and Juliet Taylor be let free. Evidence was also given that Monis became increasingly jumpy as night fell just before 8pm and wanted all the lights turned off in Martin Place. Counsel assisting, Sophie Callan, said a blue flashing Christmas light made Monis nervous and hostage Marcia Mikhael conveyed message that police should stay away or Monis would shoot a hostage. Monis was also 'fixated' on media coverage and listened to Radio 2GB throughout the evening. He also continued to request to have a conversation with then Prime Minister and a Islamic state flag presented to him. He became frustrated that he was not given a flag, a conversation with Mr Abbott and the lights remained on in Martin Place and regarded that as evidence the police were not taking him seriously. CCTV footage shows the dramatic escape of six hostages who burst through the doors in the lobby of the building and outside to freedom The escape of the six in the early hours of December 16, 2014 was followed by Man Monis firing his second shot into the cafe's glass doors, and then a final shot to murder Tori Johnson before police stormed the cafe The evidence was given on the second day of the resumption of the inquest into the Lindt cafe siege by Man Haron Monis in December 2014. On Monday, the inquest heard that a triple-zero phone call made by Tori Johnson where he was told by a police dispatcher to 'hang on' as he read out a message while being held at gun point. Photos of the knife and gun used in the siege were also supplied to the inquest along with the shocking telephone note crafted by Monis. Mr Johnson was heard saying Australia was under attack from Islamic State and there were three bombs in Sydney's CBD as he relayed the deadly intentions of gunman Man Haron Monis after he was taken hostage in Martin Place in December 2014. 'I have a gun in front of me. Australia is under attack by Islamic State, there are three bombs in different locations,' the cafe manager can be heard saying in the chilling recording. The call was made at 9.14am - about an hour after Monis entered the Lindt Cafe and took 18 hostages. Monis shot dead Mr Johnson during the 17-hour siege. Mr Johnson was told to 'hang on' and 'stay on the line' several times by the police dispatcher as she tried to gather information on the hostage situation and find the location of the cafe. Initially she did not know where Martin Place was. 'Lindt Chocolate Cafe, that's where I am,' Mr Johnson said. Despite having a gun pointed at him, Mr Johnson calmly told the dispatcher after several minutes on the phone that he needed to 'finish reading this message... sorry I have a gun in front of me'. Monis claimed that other 'brothers' were at Martin Place, Circular Quay and George Street and were in control of three bombs, which could be detonated by a radio. Monis claimed that other 'brothers' were at Martin Place, Circular Quay and George Street and were in control of three bombs, which could be detonated by a radio 'Police should not come close to me and other brothers otherwise they will explode the bombs. Some hostages have been taken,' the message read out by Mr Johnson said. 'The plan is to request Tony Abbott to call them or me and to have them have a debate, while it is broadcast live on ABC national radio. Mr Johnson calmly repeated Monis' demands several times as the operator sought to clarify information. 'He wants ABC radio to contact his phone number,' he said. 'He's got a very large gun in front of me, I'm sorry.' The operator said: 'I understand that sir, I'm trying. I'm getting them, I'm getting the authorities.' Mr Johnson said: 'He's just threatening everyone he'll shoot them. He's putting people in front of doors with their hands up.' The inquest heard that police arrived within minutes of the triple-zero call made by Mr Johnson. 'One cannot help but admire the calmness and coolness with which (Mr Johnson) managed that call,' counsel assisting, Jeremy Gormly SC, told the inquest. FULL TRANSCRIPT OF TORI JOHNSON'S TRIPLE-ZERO CALL Tori Johnson: I have a man in front of me, I'm just giving you his phone number. Dispatcher: Where are you? Tori Johnson: I'm calling from Martin Place. Dispatcher: Can you tell me what street you're on? Tori Johnson: On the corner of Phillip Street. I need to read a message to you. Dispatcher: Can you just hang on a minute. Phillip Street, is that in Martin Place? Tori Johnson: Phillip Street, Sydney, yes. Dispatcher: Okay, so that's in Sydney. Do you know the cross streets to where you are? Tori Johnson: The cross street is Martin Place and Phillip Street. Dispatcher: But Martin Place is not actually a street. Tori Johnson: Martin Place is a street, yes. It's a pedestrian street. Dispatcher: Okay but it's not actually a road. I need a road... so I can see Bent Street and I can see Bridge Street. Are either of those near you? Tori Johnson: We're above Martin Place train station. Dispatcher: Okay so you're further down Phillip Street, so you're above Martin Place train station are you? Tori Johnson: That's right. In between Elizabeth and Phillip Street. Dispatcher: Oh Elizabeth okay so that's a cross street for me so that helps. So Elizabeth Street so what have you got there? Tori Johnson: I have a message to read to you. Dispatcher: Okay. Tori Johnson: Um, about Phillip Street I don't know exact location but I ask them not to explode it. Three evacuations should be evacuated. This is the message I am reading from someone who is standing in front of me. Dispatcher: Right, so there is an object is there? Tori Johnson: There's bombs in three locations. Dispatcher: Okay. Tori Johnson: Yep, he just wants me to read exact message. Dispatcher: okay. Tori Johnson: About George St I don't know the exact location but I ask them not to explode it. Three locations should be evacuated: Martin Place and Channel Seven, Circular Quay and George Street. Police should not come close to me or other brothers otherwise they will explode the bombs. Some hostages have been taken. Dispatcher: Okay, hang on a second. So we've got Channel Seven, What were the other ones you gave me? Tori Johnson: Circular Quay and George Street. Dispatcher: I'm just confirming where you are now? Tori Johnson: Yep, it's Lindt Chocolate Cafe, that's where I am. Dispatcher: Okay, just stay on the line with me please. Tori Johnson: Sorry there's more message I have to read to you as well. Dispatcher: Alright well you just need to hang on a second. From the Lindt Chocolate Shop is it? Tori Johnson: That's right. Dispatcher: Okay just stay with me on the line please. **Can hear Tori Johnson telling people in the background that the shop is closed.** Dispatcher: Have you closed the shop have you? Tori Johnson: Yes we have and both doors are locked. I need to finish reading this message. Dispatcher: Yes I understand that just hang on a minute. Tori Johnson: Sorry I have a gun in front of me. Dispatcher: Okay. Tori Johnson: So Australia is under attack by Islamic State, there are three bombs in three different locations. Martin Place, Circular Quay and George Street. I want to contact other brothers and ask them no to explode the other two bombs, but I can't contact because they don't carry phone with them. They have radio with them. The plan is to request Tony Abbott to call them (brothers) or me and to have a debate while it is broadcast live on ABC national radio. So that is why they have radio and the best way to contact them is by voice message to announce that they should not explode the bombs. They listen to anything I tell them. The device placed inside the radio is another way of exploding the bombs. Advertisement The siege began when Monis entered the Lindt Cafe in central Sydney on the morning of December 15, 2014, and took 18 people hostage Counsel for Mr Johnson's family (pictured right: Tori's partner Thomas Zinn) asked for the triple-zero call to remain private because the 'grief and emotions' of the families of the victims had not subsided State Coroner Michael Barnes had earlier dismissed an application from Mr Johnson's family asking for the triple-zero phone call not to be played to the public. Counsel for Mr Johnson's family, Gabrielle Bashir SC, told the hearing on Monday that 'grief and emotions' of the families of the victims had not subsided, and that they should be protected from further pain. However counsel assisting, Jeremy Gormly SC, said the evidentiary significance of the calls were of the highest order, adding that it was during the calls that Monis announced himself to the world. 'We have the note from which he was apparently asked to read. And in it Monis makes his statement to the world at large about what he is doing,' Mr Gormly said. '... the first two lines are: 'Australia is under attack by Islamic State. There are three bombs in three separate locations'.' The family of Lindt Cafe siege victim Katrina Dawson arrive at the Sydney Siege inquest on Monday. Pictured left to right: father Alexander Dawson, mother Jane Dawson and brother Sandy Dawson Lindt Cafe siege hostage Selina Win Pe at the Lindt Cafe Siege inquest in Sydney on Monday Lindt Cafe lead investigator detective Inspector Angelo Memmolo was present at the Lindt Cafe Siege inquest in Sydney on Monday The siege began when Monis entered the Lindt Cafe in central Sydney on the morning of December 15, 2014, and took 18 people hostage The final stage of the inquest into the Sydney siege where 18 people were taken hostage will examine the siege itself, including the police response and management The final stage of the inquest into the siege, which began on Monday, will examine the siege itself, including the police response and management. The process is expected to take at least eight weeks. The siege began when Monis entered the Lindt Cafe in central Sydney on the morning of December 15, 2014, and took 18 people hostage. Johnson was fatally shot by Monis, who was killed when police stormed the building after a 17-hour stand-off. Katrina Dawson was killed when she was hit by shrapnel from police bullets. A young woman has bravely confronted a man who was caught allegedly trying to upskirt her on a train after she fell asleep. She was travelling from Sydney on a Newcastle-bound train last Thursday at 11.30am when she noticed the man in front of her trying to allegedly push his phone under his seat. The woman, who was wearing shorts, said she had fallen asleep with her knees up and woke to find the man allegedly trying to film her. Scroll down for video The woman was travelling from Sydney on a Newcastle-bound train last Thursday at 11.30am when she noticed the man in front of her trying to allegedly push his phone under his seat She started filming the man before confronting him and asking him to stop recording her. Newcastle Police confirmed to Daily Mail Australia they are investigating the incident after the woman reported it and gave them the footage she had filmed on her phone. She posted the video on Facebook on Monday accusing the man of being a 'grub' and claims he just nodded when she told him to stop filming. 'This grub got on the train at Central and sat directly in front of me, he kept looking around suspiciously but I ignored it,' she said. 'Halfway to Newcastle I woke up from a nap with my knees up in shorts and noticed he was filming me from underneath his chair. The woman, who was wearing shorts, said she had fallen asleep with her knees up and woke to find the man allegedly trying to film her. She started filming him before confronting him and asking him to stop recording her The footage shows the man's phone being placed in a gap underneath his seat. He adjusts the camera several times throughout the video 'He did it for another half hour until I finally mustered up the courage to tell him to stop.' The woman said she went to the front of the train and told the driver about the incident and he contacted police at Broadmeadow train station. The footage shows the man's phone being placed in a gap underneath his seat. He adjusts the camera several times throughout the video. Police are now trying to get CCTV footage to help with their investigation. Sir Leon Brittan and Lady Diana Brittan in 1992 Scotland Yards 2million VIP paedophile murder inquiry ended in utter humiliation for the force yesterday but it refused to apologise for the shambles. Sixteen months after Operation Midland was launched, the Metropolitan Police finally admitted they had found no evidence to support astonishing claims that a string of Establishment figures were responsible for killing three boys in the 1970s and 1980s. Embarrassingly for the force, detectives discovered nothing to even justify asking prosecutors to consider bringing charges. Officers found no bodies and are still unsure if anyone was killed. Nobody was arrested. In a carefully worded statement, the force tried desperately to justify the probe, saying it had been handled well. But it refused to say sorry to those whose lives had been ruined, or reputations shattered, by a suspected fantasist called Nick whose claims triggered the investigation. Controversially, there are no plans to prosecute Nick, despite calls for him and a news website which peddled his claims to be put on trial for allegedly perverting the course of justice. One of the most extraordinary claims was that former Prime Minister Ted Heath persuaded former MP Harvey Proctor not to castrate Nick with a penknife which was then handed to him to keep as a souvenir. The tone of the Mets statement was in sharp contrast to its media appeal to victims 15 months ago in which senior investigating officer Det Supt Kenny McDonald described Nicks allegations as credible and true. The decision to close Midland was announced minutes after Mr Proctor, 69, was told he would face no further action. The former Tory MP was accused of being part of a murderous VIP paedophile gang which included Mr Heath, ex-Home Secretary Leon Brittan, two former spymasters and an ex-Army chief. The Met statement made clear that officers had found no evidence against any of the men. Operation Midland also investigated distinguished former Chief of the Defence Staff, Lord Bramall, 92, over claims that he indecently assaulted Nick at a military base in the West Country. The D-Day veteran, not accused of murder, was cleared in January. In other developments yesterday: Mr Proctor called for Met chief Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe and three senior officers to resign; Sir Bernard, who has refused to apologise to Lord Bramall, is expected to step down later this year despite recently being awarded a 12-month contract extension; The NSPCC suggested genuine victims of abuse might have been ignored because of Operation Midland; The officer in charge of the shambolic investigation insisted it had been handled well; A former Director of Public Prosecutions said detectives had been paralysed by fear and had indulged in a macabre version of Cluedo. Mr Proctor last night paid tribute to the free, inquisitive and independent-minded media, who have all supported me over the last year. Operation Midland began to unravel last September, after the Daily Mail revealed detectives had grave doubts about Nicks testimony. Pictured is Field Marshall Lord Bramall and Lady Bramall at a party on October 31 at a party in London At the interview, Mr Proctor was accused of attempting to castrate Nick using a penknife. It was suggested it was (former prime minister) Edward Heath who persuaded me not to castrate Nick with it, Mr Proctor said later, adding that he had never owned a penknife. HOW DAILY MAIL LED THE WAY TO EXPOSE THE FLAWED INQUIRY By Stephen Wright, Associate News Editor for The Daily Mail For six months, the Daily Mail led the way in exposing the growing shambles of Operation Midland. Our coverage held senior Scotland Yard officers to account and finally forced them yesterday to admit they had found no evidence to support lurid allegations of VIP murder and abuse. Last September we revealed how officers had grave doubts about the testimony of the alleged victim known only as Nick. At the time, Yard spin doctors tried to rubbish the story, telling journalists: You dont know what we have got. But within days, the Met had withdrawn its earlier description of Nick as a credible and true witness. The officer who had uttered the phrase was later removed from the inquiry. We also revealed how the home of former Army chief Lord Bramall was searched in front of his terminally ill wife. We told how Met Chief Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe faced a barrage of calls to apologise and put VIP child abuse fantasists in the dock and how D-Day veteran Lord Bramall was later cleared. The Mail exposed major discrepancies in Nicks story, and concerns about his links to the controversial news website Exaro and Labour deputy leader Tom Watson. Last month, we revealed how the Met was preparing to close Operation Midland and that ex-Tory MP Harvey Proctor would face no charges. The Yard denied the story and hinted that charges could be looming, with sources again hinting that they had found evidence of wrongdoing. The force also faced criticism for a separate bungled rape inquiry into former home secretary Leon Brittan, including the revelation that his accuser was a mentally ill Labour activist who openly regarded the late Tory peer as her enemy. Advertisement Mr Proctor said: I believe Operation Midland should now be the subject of a truly independent public inquiry. I consider that Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, (Assistant Commissioner) Patricia Gallan, (Deputy Assistant Commissioner) Steve Rodhouse and (Det Supt) Kenny McDonald should tender their resignations. I believe Nick... should be prosecuted for seeking to pervert the course of justice. Lord Bramall told the BBC: If theyd taken any trouble to put their effort into questioning the so-called victim, I think they would have found that (his allegations) were very unlikely. Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe In a statement running to more than 1,000 words, the Met said it will not apologise for carrying out its duty to investigate serious allegations of non-recent abuse. Addressing Mr Proctors calls for Nick to be prosecuted, the Met said: In the course of the investigation, officers have not found evidence to prove that they were knowingly misled by a complainant. Later, the officer in charge of Operation Midland, Mr Rodhouse, stopped short of saying he was confident there was never a VIP paedophile ring, but stated that the evidence had not reached the right threshold for charges. He refused to apologise to Mr Proctor, saying: The Met cant apologise for investigating serious allegations of crime. I do regret if anyones been distressed by this investigation, but it was right that the investigation took place. Mr Rodhouse rejected calls for him to resign. Former DPP Lord Macdonald QC said: Paralysed by the fear of appearing unsympathetic to the victims of crime, the police have indulged in a macabre version of Cluedo in which distinguished public servants, many long dead, have been reduced to the status of playing cards. An NSPCC spokesman said: It has taken many years for the public to believe that child abuse is a prolific problem but with disproportionate attention given to some cases over others, there is a danger the progress that has been made will be tragically undermined. Amidst all of the inevitable blame and counter-blame as this operation ends we mustnt forget the victims of sexual abuse who will have suffered life-damaging experiences and, in many instances, are still seeking justice. Child abuse campaigner Peter Saunders said: The initial investigation and initial accusations obviously carried enough credibility and weight that the police felt justified in launching an investigation. Where they made an error was to refer to somebodys testimony as credible and true. That was very, very unfortunate. Former Tory MP Harvey Proctor was cleared of abuse allegations MPs who targeted me should hang their heads in shame, says Proctor By Chris Greenwood, Crime Correspondent for The Daily Mail MPs were last night told to say sorry for outspoken comments they made during the probe into Westminster paedophile rings. Former Tory MP Harvey Proctor, cleared of abuse allegations, accused politicians of whipping up a febrile atmosphere which led to innocent men being dragged into the investigation. As Scotland Yards probe collapsed yesterday, he asked for an apology from Labours Tom Watson and John Mann as well as Tory MP Zac Goldsmith saying they should hang their heads in shame. Labour deputy leader Mr Watson, dubbed the Witch Finder General by his critics, met Nick the only complainant in the case after he had written of abuse by his stepfather and a group of men. Mr Watsons spokesman last night said he would not comment. Mr Goldsmith said that the idea of apologising to Mr Proctor is absurd as he was still pursuing claims of abuse at a care home in his south-west London constituency. He had trumpeted his belief in a VIP conspiracy during a speech in Parliament last November. He told MPs there had been a cover-up of abuse at Elm Guest House involving establishment figures including a former cabinet minister, later identified as Leon Brittan. Mr Goldsmith also took part in a bizarre Australian TV news documentary, in which he declared the genie is out of the bottle. Mr Mann, a forceful campaigner for victims of historic sex abuse, branded the inquiry a distraction and said he was pleased it is over. The Labour MP said his focus has always been on other areas of investigation involving a care home in Lambeth and allegations in Leicestershire and Nottingham. Saying the claims by Nick seemed unlikely, he said the failure of Operation Midland by the Met means the police can now concentrate on more substantive information. However, MP Simon Danczuk, who helped to expose Sir Cyril Smith as a child abuser in his Rochdale constituency, said a Westminster network should not be dismissed. Mr Danczuk said that, despite operational errors, Operation Midland had been a worthwhile exercise. He claimed Nick was not a reliable witness and decided not to pursue his case. But there can be absolutely no doubt that abuse of children was taking place in and around Parliament and we should not throw the baby out with the bathwater, he added. We know this because of the overwhelming evidence against Cyril Smith and the serious allegations made against both [Labour peer] Lord Janner and [Tory MP] Sir Peter Morrison. We also know that these perpetrators often operate within networks. House prices in middle-class areas jump by tens of thousands of pounds if the local primary school wins a better OFSTED grade, a study said on Monday. It found that for every single-point increase in the rating of a school, property prices around the catchment area went up by around half a percentage point. The link between small changes in school ratings and house prices a shift from good to excellent in inspection findings can push up prices noticeably underlines the way better-off people can buy good schooling for their children, the study said. Homes in affluent areas can go up by 50,000 if OFSTED inspectors say the local primary school is improving (picture posed by models) The scale of increase means that in England, where an average home currently costs just over 300,000, a one-point improved OFSTED grade for a primary school puts typically 15,000 on the value of houses in the catchment area. In the most affluent areas, the increase in value is 1.5 per cent, which means local homes go up in price by around 50,000 if inspectors say the local primary is getting better. However the study, by Dr Iftikhar Hussain of Sussex University, warned that there is bad news for homeowners if their local primary drops a notch in the OFSTED rankings. A worse score deflates house prices by the same proportion, he said. And the score achieved by primary schools has almost no effect in poor and deprived neighbourhoods, he added. The findings demonstrate the operation of powerful ties between good state schools and house prices which have led critics to complain that middle class families can buy good schooling for their children buy paying premiums on their homes. The difference between a primary school being rated 'good' or 'excellent' by OFSTED can have a noticeable effect on the house prices in the catchment area Dr Hussein said: What is clear from the results is that richer households are more willing and able to pay for higher quality schools. The paper, based on an analysis of the property market around more than 8,000 primary schools, was unveiled at the Royal Economic Society conference in Brighton. It said that annual changes in exam results or other indicators of how a school is performing had no impact on the local housing market. People seem to be using OFSTED results as a quick and easy proxy for the quality of a school, whereas they find it much harder to fathom changes in a schools SATS results, Dr Hussein said. Open Spaces Society: 'money has more decibels than peace and quiet' In some cases these events may even be illegal due to 1967 law Campaigners say peace and quiet of British parks is being destroyed The peace and quiet of Britains parks is increasingly being destroyed by commercial events that blast out music and turn parks into mudbaths, campaigners say. Among council-backed events that have upset people seeking calm in an increasingly noisy world are music festivals, motor races, a boozy Oktoberfest and a festival which left a park looking like a war zone. The Open Spaces Society, the conservation body that campaigns to protect Britains parks and green spaces, accuses councils of riding roughshod over the wishes of residents. Scroll down for video The peace and quiet of Britains parks is increasingly being destroyed by commercial events that blast out music and turn parks into mudbaths, campaigners say. Battersea Park (pictured) is hosting electric motor racing event, Formula E, which is a cause of concern for the group Friends of Battersea Park The societys general secretary, Kate Ashbrook said that parks were increasingly being used for loud events that damage the environment. But she said money has more decibels than peace and quiet. Writing in the societys Open Spaces magazine she said: Its all about attracting big business and commercial sponsorship at the expense of quiet enjoyment. Many parks were created in Victorian times to satisfy the human need for fresh air and tranquillity in an increasingly dense urban area. That need is greater now than ever. Of course local authorities are strapped for cash. Of course they must find savings and generate income. But they should not do so in ways which conflict with the ethos of those far-sighted peoplesome of them our founderswho secured these open spaces in the first place. She said that in some cases the events may even be illegal as under a 1967 law governing parks in the capital consent by government minister is required for any works, including temporary ones, on the commons which she argues councils are not doing. A previous event at Platt Fields Park in Manchester, the Parklife music festival, led to the Friends of Platt Fields Park writing: the park is in a terrible state with whole areas just a sea of churned up mud, mud strewn pathways, potholes and cracked tarmac. Everywhere smells of urine. It is soul destroying and we apologise to all of you who go into the park at the moment that you have to be confronted with such a mess. A host of other events are to be held at Platt Fields this year including the Mega Mela on July 30-31 billed as the biggest festival of south Asian culture in the North of England. Manchester City Council were not available for comment at the time of writing. Brighton City Council has come under criticism for staging the Shakedown Music Festival in the South Downs National Park (pictured) an event which critics say will disturb wildlife and damage the park, claims the council rejects Brighton City Council has come under criticism for staging the Shakedown Music Festival in the South Downs National Park an event which critics say will disturb wildlife and damage the park, claims the council rejects. Battersea Park in south London is to host an electric motor racing event, Formula E, which is expected to generate 600,000 for Wandsworth Council. For almost three weeks in high summer, the park will be taken over by industrial activity on a huge scale, and will be at high risk of damage especially if the weather is wet Frances Radcliffe, chairman of the Friends of Battersea Park Frances Radcliffe, chairman of the Friends of Battersea Park, said: For almost three weeks in high summer, the park will be taken over by industrial activity on a huge scale, and will be at high risk of damage especially if the weather is wet. We do not want to see this lovely green space so abused. One Battersea resident Dr Phyllis Conners, said of last years event: The three weeks before the race began it was clang, bang, clang, bang from 7.30am until 10.30 at night. It was unrelenting noise like I have never heard. Ealing Council is holding an Oktoberfest modelled on the famous Munich celebration - for 1,500 people on Acton Common this year between August 10 and August 14. The London Oktoberfests organisers say they will serve 20,000 litres of Bavarian beer by staff dressed in traditional Dirndls and Lederhosen. But critics fear that the beer festival will be too big for the park. Today Show host Lisa Wilkinson has revealed her husband once smacked their son for misbehaving amid a heated debate on a father who recently had his assault conviction overturned in court. This week, a judge quashed the conviction telling a court disciplining a child does not turn them into a criminal after an Adelaide father was said to have smacked his son, 12, three times. On Tuesday, Wilkinson was joined on the show alongside journalist Shelly Horton and Nine News reporter Peter Stefanovic to discuss whether it was okay for parents to smack their children. Scroll down for video Today Show host Lisa Wilkinson (pictured) revealed her husband once smacked their son for misbehaving The mother of three revealed her husband once smacked their son Louis (pictured doing a surprised live cross from Thredbo last July) after he misbehaved as a child Wilkinson, who has three children - daughter Billi and sons Jake and Louis - with media personality Peter FitzSimons, admitted her husband once smacked their child in the past after he misbehaved On Tuesday, Wilkinson was joined on the show alongside journalist Shelly Horton (centre) and Nine News reporter Peter Stefanovic (far right) to discuss whether it was okay for parents to smack their children 'In my experience, we've got three kids. I never smacked the kids,' Wilkinson revealed. 'There were times when the boys were about 15, I would've liked to have smacked them but they were too big,' she continued as she laughed. But Wilkinson, who has three children - daughter Billi and sons Jake and Louis - with media personality Peter FitzSimons, admitted her husband once smacked their child in the past. 'Peter did once and that was with our second son Louis because he had shocking road sense and there were a couple of times when he was nearly completely cleaned up,' she said. 'And there was the one time when he was just about to go out and Pete gave him a big smack and he never did it again.' Wilkinson said she never laid a finger on her kids but her husband once smacked their son for misbehaving Wilkinson revealed she 'tried to reason' with her children when they misbehaved in an attempt to draw the line Happy snap: Wilkinson pictured here with son Jake and daughter Billi, who she shares with her husband Stefanovic then questioned the mother of three on what method she used to draw the line with her children after she revealed she had never laid a finger on them. 'I try to reason with them,' Wilkinson responded. 'And must say, they've grown into good kids so I don't know whether I got it right or wrong.' Stefanovic also weighed in on the controversial discussion, revealing he believed parents should smack children - but only to an extent. 'There's a difference between discipline and there's a difference between abuse. I'm for it... I was smacked as a kid, only a couple of times,' he said on the Channel Nine program. 'It was enough to get the point. It got to the point where all my dad had to do to me was give me a look, right. It was in his eyes and I knew 'okay'. 'If you don't smack and sometimes words just aren't enough, especially when someone is really young. They need to know there is a line there and if you cross that line, you're gonna get stung a little bit.' A father who smacked his child had his assault conviction overturned in the Adelaide Supreme Court (pictured) on Monday This comes after it was revealed in court that a father was said to have smacked his son on the thigh telling him: 'If you're going to act like a four-year-old, I'll treat you like a four-year-old.' On Monday, Justice David Peek quashed the conviction telling the South Australian Supreme Court the father's decision to smack his child was 'not unreasonable', The Advertiser reported. In handing down his judgement Justice Peek said there was some redness but no bruising left by the smacks, and said there was no issue with the discipline. 'It is very important that parental conduct which is not considered unreasonable in the Australian community should not be stigmatised as criminal offending in a criminal court,' he said. The 43-year-old father, Air Force pilot, is said to have slapped his child three times on the leg for misbehaving The judge also described the 43-year-old pilot as being 'of excellent character and work ethic' and a 'good, loving father'. 'The pilot gave evidence that he tried to instil self-discipline in his son and values similar to those of the Air Force including respect, dignity and integrity,' Justice Peek told the court. The 43-year-old had taken other steps to attempt to disciple his child who was behaving 'indignantly' such as putting him in 'time-out' before the smacking incident. The pilot's former wife, with whom he shares custody of the 12-year-old boy with, is said to have reported the incident to police. Jeremy Corbyn must stop meeting with anti-Semites if he wants to win back Jewish voters, community leaders said yesterday. Jonathan Arkush, the president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said the Labour Party traditionally supported by many Jewish people was losing their trust. Mr Corbyn has hit back at accusations of anti-Semitism, saying he had condemned all forms of prejudice many times and that his critics were not listening. Mr Corbyn has hit back at accusations of anti-Semitism, saying he had condemned all forms of prejudice The Labour leader was asked about the issue after former Labour treasurer Lord Levy said he would give up his party membership if the leadership failed to condemn anti-Semitism. Lord Levy said he had been shocked and horrified by the views of those admitted into the party, and it had made him question remaining a member. Vicki Kirby, vice-chairman of the partys branch in Woking in Surrey, said Jews slaughter the oppressed and suggested Adolf Hitler might be the Zionist God. She was let back in to the party, but suspended earlier this month. Hard Leftist Gerry Downing, who has spoken of the need to address the Jewish question, won an appeal against suspension, but was expelled after new evidence came to light. Mr Corbyn said yesterday: Lord Levy clearly hasnt been listening to the seven times since I became leader that Ive absolutely condemned anti-Semitism Im disappointed he has made the remarks. He knows full well what my views are. He told Sky News that racist allegations in the party were properly and thoroughly investigated. Vicky Kirby was initially suspended from the party for sending a series of anti-Semitic posts on Twitter, in which she described Israel as 'evil'. But she was readmitted to the party and elected to a key local party role But Mr Arkush said: What we are seeing at the moment is widespread concerns being voiced by senior Labour Party figures, by no means limited to Jewish figures in fact, the majority are not Jewish. There is an issue of trust in the minds of many in the Jewish community towards Labour. Im not saying that Labour have completely lost that trust, Im saying that relations are under deep strain. Mr Corbyn has faced claims that he has tolerated anti-Semitism in those with whom he associates. He has described representatives of militant Islamist groups Hamas and Hezbollah as his friends, attended events organised by Holocaust denier Paul Eisen and shared platforms with a pro-Palestinian campaigner who advocated suicide bombings. Mr Arkush met Mr Corbyn last month. He said: I had a very good conversation with Jeremy Corbyn, but one matter I highlighted was meetings hes had in the past with real dyed-in-the-wool anti-Semites, including representatives of Hamas and Hezbollah. Lord Levy said he had been shocked and horrified by the views of those admitted into the party, and it had made him question remaining a member It would make a real difference to members of the Jewish community but also senior figures in the Labour Party who are wanting to feel confident in the leaders commitment to properly oppose anti-Semitism, if he would say that having thought about the issues, I will not be having any more meetings with anti-Semites, still less will I call them friends. This is not about criticism of Israel every country can be subject to criticism. But theres an ideological bigotry towards Israel prevalent on the far Left, that Israel can do no good. That whatever it does, it gets no recognition and nothing will ever earn a good word. Labour MP John Mann, who chairs an all-party group on anti-Semitism, said: Theres clearly a problem with anti-Semitism on the Left and some of that has inveigled its way into the Labour Party. The Tories would use headhunters to scour the country for more women and ethnic minority candidates under proposals unveiled by controversial chairman Lord Feldman. In a review of the party published last night, the peer a close personal friend of David Cameron said there was a need for a more diverse selection of candidates. He also backed down on proposals to encourage Conservative Party associations to merge following an uproar from grassroots activists, who said it would have reduced the influence of ordinary members and given far too much power to Tory high command. The Tories would use headhunters to scour the country for more women and ethnic minority candidates under proposals unveiled by controversial chairman Lord Feldman (pictured) There would be a basic membership to the Conservative party at 25 a year, a silver membership for anyone who gave 50 and gold membership for those who could stump up 100 However his plans to reform the party's membership and structures are still likely to trigger alarm. In a money-spinning move, it proposes three classes of membership, depending on how much someone is willing to pay. There would be a basic membership at 25 a year, a silver membership for anyone who gave 50 and gold membership for those who could stump up 100. Silver members would be invited to drinks receptions at party conferences and 'meet the ministers' events, while gold members would be able to have campaign calls with 'senior party members'. Lord Feldman's report said the party had to do more to attract women, ethnic minorities and working class people and proposed using headhunters to try and recruit a more diverse generation of candidates. It also suggested that women in the party felt ignored. Members of the Conservative Women's Organisation were quoted as saying they felt they had not been recognised by the party hierarchy for bringing forward good female candidates and that they 'believe they are treated more as a 'friends' organisation than a mainstream part of the party.' Last night former Tory leader Lord William Hague described the proposals as 'sensible' and said they would 'assure the future of the party' The watering down of the merger proposals which would have seen up to 90 per cent of the party's 650 Conservative associations axed followed a furious backlash from grassroots Tories after the Prime Minister told MPs not to vote on the EU 'because of what your constituency association might say'. 'I'm fine, dear. Just a normal day at Tory central office' Lord Feldman had argued that mergers were needed to free up more resources for campaigning. But the review concluded that associations with 100 members or more will be able to opt out. The party chairman said that to continue to win elections, the party needed to 'adapt'. 'Last year we delivered the first Conservative majority Government since 1992,' he said. 'But far from being complacent, we are taking the opportunity to make changes that will give us the strongest possible platform for future electoral success meaning that we can continue to deliver the policies that are good for Britain.' Last night former Tory leader Lord William Hague said: 'These are sensible proposals to assure the future of the party. I believe they will assist in attracting and retaining members, and will help the party to be represented locally in all parts of the country.' West African cocoa farmers may not all benefit equally from the Fairtrade chocolate eggs bought by consumers this Easter, new research has found. Dr Elizabeth Fortin from the University of Bristol Law School has investigated whether the Fairtrade scheme represents a fair deal for all farmers, or just a select few. Dr Fortin and her co-researcher, Dr Roy Maconachie from the University of Bath, explored the lives of women farming Fairtrade cocoa in Ghana, the worlds second largest cocoa producing country. They found that, while it was a positive force, women farmers were not benefitting from Fairtrade to the same extent as their male counterparts. Dr Fortin said: Fairtrade is contributing positively to the lives of many cocoa farmers, including women, but such benefits are differentiated, benefiting those who are relatively privileged and educated more than those who are not. Consequently, due to cultural norms, men often benefit most from Fairtrade. Moreover, many of the poorest and most marginalised farmers in such areas are excluded from participating at all in such co-operatives. These are predominantly women. The project was funded by a British Academy small grant, which allowed the researchers to undertake fieldwork in July. A film, shot using participatory video, was taken back to Ghana for dissemination and feedback in January and the final version screened to the Fairtrade Africa Convention in February. To find out more about the project, read the researchers article in The Guardian. The Metropolitan Polices decision to shut down Operation Midland, having failed to substantiate any claims from its only witness, is a humiliating admission of incompetence. Here, GUY ADAMS lists the charge sheet against the Met... Sir Leon Brittan and Lady Diana Brittan in 1992 Operation Midland was launched in November 2014 to investigate claims by a witness called Nick that he was preyed on by an influential group of MPs, Cabinet ministers, top soldiers and intelligence chiefs between 1975 and 1984. Nick says the group murdered three fellow victims in his presence. The Met has yet to fully explain why it chose to launch what is believed to be the first murder investigation in British history without any bodies, and without anyone knowing who was supposedly murdered. In December 2014, Det Supt Kenny McDonald held an emotional press conference and described Nicks story as credible and true. McDonald has never explained why he made this extraordinary comment, given that Nicks claims hadnt been tested in court. At that point McDonald hadnt interviewed a single suspect, didnt know who the alleged murder victims were, and hadnt found a single body. The Met eventually issued a formal apology for McDonalds use of the word true in September 2015, days after the Mail revealed officers had grave doubts about Nicks testimony. It grudgingly admitted there are questions as to whether Nicks claims are credible and true. The following month, McDonald was replaced as the head of Operation Midland. It has never been fully explained why it took nine months for the Met to issue its apology. Former Tory minister Lord Brittan died in January 2015. Just weeks later, 35 officers from Operation Midland ransacked his homes in London and Yorkshire, climbing into the lofts and removing phones, diaries, clothes and computers in what many critics saw as a fishing expedition. During the final months of his life, the Tory peer had also been investigated over baseless historic rape claims made by a witness called Jane, a Labour activist with mental health problems. In October 2015, Panorama revealed that Lord Brittan had been exonerated over Janes allegations long before his death, but police had failed to inform him. He therefore died under a cloud. It soon emerged the CPS had told the police at least four times that there were no grounds for a prosecution based on Janes claims. However, the Met under pressure from Labours deputy leader Tom Watson repeatedly asked them to review the decision. Friends of Lord Brittan described the forces conduct in the case as being as far away from natural justice as its possible to get. In February this year, Lord Brittans widow accepted a full apology from Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, the head of the Met, over the way his force dealt with the false sex claims. However, friends of Lady Brittan said she regarded the apology as partial and inadequate. The climbdown came as London Mayor Boris Johnson decided to renew Sir Bernards 280,000-a-year contract for a year rather than the three years he expected. Panorama examined Nicks claim that he saw the hit-and-run murder by members of the alleged paedophile ring of a boy in Kingston, south-west London, in the early 1980s. The programme found no evidence that such a murder, alleged to have occurred in broad daylight, took place. Panorama also established that every child from the school that the alleged victim went to, and with the same first name, is still alive. The Met has not said why, in light of these obvious inconsistencies, it continued to regard Nick as credible. It emerged that one of Operation Midlands supposed corroborating witnesses, Darren, was a convicted bomb hoaxer. A second witness, David, claimed to have been pressurised into making false claims by Chris Fay, a convicted fraudster who went to prison in 2011. The Met has not explained why they were ever taken seriously. In March 2015, the police raided the home of Harvey Proctor in Leicestershire. They removed a lorry-load of possessions which have not been returned to the former Tory MP. News of the raid was immediately leaked to the news agency Exaro. Mr Proctor was interviewed by Operation Midland three months later. Among other things, he was accused of attending sex parties in a swimming pool. He is unable to swim. At the interview, Mr Proctor was accused of attempting to castrate Nick using a penknife. It was suggested it was (former prime minister) Edward Heath who persuaded me not to castrate Nick with it, Mr Proctor said later, adding that he had never owned a penknife. Mr Proctor also pointed out that he and Mr Heath were sworn enemies. Its unclear what evidence, beyond Nicks say-so, convinced the Met to take this extraordinary allegation seriously. Mr Proctor worked as private secretary to the Duke and Duchess of Rutland and lived in a grace-and-favour cottage on the 18,000-acre estate at Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire. During the police investigation, the estates legal advisers, who had apparently had contact with detectives, decided that it was no longer possible for me to continue doing my job at Belvoir Castle, he said. He lost both his job and his home as a result of Operation Midland. Pictured is Field Marshall Lord Bramall and Lady Bramall at a party on October 31 at a party in London At the interview, Mr Proctor was accused of attempting to castrate 'Nick' using a penknife. 'It was suggested it was (former prime minister) Edward Heath who persuaded me not to castrate "Nick" with it,' Mr Proctor said later, adding that he had never owned a penknife Mr Proctor revealed the two junior police officers who conducted the 6.5-hour interview (at which he was not offered a cup of tea, coffee, or even water) were so badly briefed that they did not know his full name. Although he uses Harvey, his first name is in fact Keith. Also in March 2015, 20 officers raided the home of Field Marshal Lord Bramall, former chief of defence staff. They spent ten hours rifling through the 92-year-old D-Day veterans possessions while his wife, who at the time was dying, was shunted from room to room. The officers found no evidence to link Lord Bramall to any abuse claims, but didnt tell him he was cleared until ten months later. The development was announced in an 890-word statement which didnt contain a single word of apology and was released to the media at 8.27pm on a Friday. Lord Bramall was accused of abusing Nick in his office at a military facility in Wiltshire. At the time, access to the field marshal was closely controlled by his aide-de-camp. However, police did not contact the aide-de-camp for a full ten months. When they did, he exonerated Lord Bramall. The BBC, by contrast, tracked down the aide-de-camp within a fortnight. Nick claimed that his stepfather had taken him to the same military facility, the Wilton Barracks. It took the police five months to check this basic fact. In January 2016, it further emerged that police on the operation which has employed around 30 officers for more than a year, at a public cost of 2 million had still not bothered to contact, let alone interview, Nicks ex-wife. A man who was doused in petrol and set alight by a stranger when he was just six-years-old has revealed he has forgiven his attacker for leaving him with horrific burns to 70 per cent of his body. Jandamarra O'Shane, now 25, from Cairns in Far North Queensland, was randomly attacked by Paul Wade Streeton, then 26, on October 10, 1996 after he walked into the little boy's school playground, tipped fuel over his head and set him on fire with a cigarette lighter. Mr O'Shane, who is now a father to six-year-old son Raupena, said he often thinks about the traumatic event and has developed an 'understanding of what his mother went through that day'. Scroll down for video Jandamarra O'Shane (pictured) was doused in petrol and set alight by a stranger when he was just six-years-old and has revealed he has forgiven his attacker Jandamarra O'Shane (pictured) from Cairns in Far North Queensland, was randomly attacked by Paul Wade Streeton, then 26, on October 10, 1996 when he was just six-years-old 'It's something that is really popping up a lot in my head I think because my son is now in school and coming up to the age I was when it happened,' Mr O'Shane told New Idea on Monday. The 25-year-old said he and his mother Janda have both forgiven Streeton for the attack, a fact they would be prepared to tell him if they were to ever come face-to-face again. 'I will decide what is right for me and I do know, when the time comes, if it does happen, it is going to be my closure,' he said. Mr O'Shane spent four months in the Royal Children's Hospital in Brisbane following the attack, suffering excruciating burns to 70 per cent of his body. He said he can recall the moment a man walked up behind him when he was playing in the school yard at recess and began to smell petrol. Mr O'Shane, who is now a father to six-year-old son Raupena (pictured), said he often thinks about the traumatic event Mr O'Shane spent four months in the Royal Children's Hospital in Brisbane following the attack, suffering excruciating burns to 70 per cent of his body 'I thought it was someone had broken down outside the school, but then I just started to burn and I looked at my arm and it was on fire,' Mr O'Shane told The Brisbane Times in 2011. The principal of Cairns North State School Michael Aitken managed to douse the flames and get the little boy to hospital. Although he remarkably survived the ordeal, Mr O'Shane was bullied at school due to his bandages and visible burns. He also suffered incredible pain even after he was discharged from hospital, due to his skin stretching as he grew and had multiple skin grafts to treat the affected areas. Streeton was handed down a life sentence for the random attack. At the time New South Wales Magistrate Pat O'Shane, who also happened to be the uncle of Mr O'Shane's mother, dubbed the life sentence as 'too harsh,' Mamamia reported. Although he remarkably survived the ordeal, Mr O'Shane was bullied at school due to his bandages and visible burns He suffered incredible pain even after he was discharged from hospital, due to his skin stretching as he grew and had multiple skin grafts to treat the affected areas After the violent attack, Mr O'Shane received a multitude of flowers and letters of support from well wishers - and even spoke to his idol Michael Jackson on the phone. 'I only got to talk to him on the phone,' Mr O'Shane told SBS in 2014. 'But even that is something that I'll never forget because I grew up idolising Michael Jackson and trying to do his dance moves and sing along with him and music itself was part of my recovery as well; just to keep me happy and stuff like that.' Boxer Lionel Rose gave the brave little boy his world title belt to aid his recovery and the Brisbane Broncos paid him a visit in hospital. Within minutes of Stephen Crabbs intervention the Treasury and DWP insisted he had meant only that there were no current plans for more savings Plans to slash billions from the welfare budget were scrapped yesterday in a bid to end the civil war in Tory Party ranks. On a day of what opposition MPs said was chaos and conflicting messages, the new Work and Pensions Secretary ruled out further benefit cuts despite a 4.4billion hole in the Budget. Within minutes of Stephen Crabbs intervention, however, the Treasury and DWP insisted he had meant only that there were no current plans for more savings. One aide said: This is a clear direction of travel and we are not going to be coming forward with new cuts next week or next month. It would be irresponsible, however, to rule them out altogether. Boris Johnson added to the Governments woes with what was seen as a jibe at leadership rival George Osborne. He said it had been wrong for the Chancellor even to consider making cuts to the Personal Independence Payments given to the disabled. Londons mayor told ITVs The Agenda that Mr Crabbs statement on PIP benefits made it obvious that the Government admitted that it was a mistake. The Liberal Democrats labelled it a Budget farce, while Labour accused the Government of being in disarray. The Chancellor came under blistering attack from Opposition MPs for failing to appear before the Commons to clear up the confusion over the 4.4billion black hole in his Budget made by the scrapping of the cuts. Mr Osborne was labelled submarine George, as Labour and the Lib Dems demanded his resignation. There was also continued sniping over his record from Tory backbenchers. Mr Osborne will launch his fightback by opening todays Commons conclusion of the Budget debate. The Chancellor is expected to insist that his measures were compassionate and the act of a One Nation Conservative government determined to deliver both social justice and economic security. After the resignation of Iain Duncan Smith from the work and pensions post over PIP payments triggered days of civil war, the Prime Minister spent yesterday trying to regain control. David Cameron (left) heaped praise on Mr Duncan Smith for his enormous contribution to welfare reform and delivering social justice. Boris Johnson (right) added to the Governments woes with what was seen as a jibe at leadership rival George Osborne David Cameron heaped praise on Mr Duncan Smith for his enormous contribution to welfare reform and delivering social justice. The comments were meant to calm IDS supporters furious at the way ministers have briefed against him since his exit on Friday. Mr Cameron also gave a glowing vote of confidence to the Chancellor who was badly bruised by Mr Duncan Smiths claim that his Budget risked dividing the country. The remarks, made in a statement to MPs, were an attempt to quash rumours of a rift between the PM and Mr Osborne over the Budget Ossyshambles. In a further concession to Eurosceptic Tory backbenchers, the Government caved in over the imposition of VAT on womens sanitary products and solar panels. Ministers will not oppose rebel amendments which effectively defy the EU and allow Britain to set its own VAT rates. To try to end the internal strife, Mr Crabb then made his statement to MPs. He said: Behind every statistic is a human being and perhaps sometimes in government we forget that. I am absolutely clear that a compassionate and fair welfare system should not just be about numbers. The move away from benefit cuts paves the way instead for tax rises, a further squeeze in Whitehall spending or more Government borrowing. Tory MPs say Mr Osborne is fighting of his political reputation in the wake of Mr Duncan Smiths resignation. David Davis, the former shadow home secretary, said that if there was a leadership election in the next six months the Chancellor would be sunk without trace. Next time you treat yourself to a new gadget or sound system for your car, you might want to think again. Sneaky insurance companies are refusing to pay out claims to motorists who make even the most basic modifications to their vehicles without telling them. The Financial Ombudsman says it has seen a spike in complaints from furious motorists who have been fobbed off by their insurance company when their car is stolen or damaged. Sneaky insurance companies are refusing to pay out claims to motorists who make even the most basic modifications to their vehicles Drivers have had their claims refused after installing alloy wheels, or a roof rack on their car without telling their insurer. The ombudsman said some people have been encouraged to soup up their car after watching too many episodes of programmes like MTV show Pimp my Ride. Changes include tuning the engine, or adding a spoiler to make the car look more sporty. But, according to the independent disputes arbitrator, you do not have to be a boy racer to see your insurance claim rejected. There have even been reports of a motorist being rejected for a claim after putting a religious sticker on his rear window. The risks of being turned down by an insurance company are particularly high for those buying second cars which have been modified in any way. Insurance companies can reject claims even if the buyer does not know it has been modified. The Ombudsman said even the most innocent modifications - such as a new CD player - are being used by insurance companies as an excuse not to pay out a claim. Insurance firms say installing items such as a CD player can make a vehicle more attractive to thieves It said: These modifications can potentially lead to an insurer rejecting the claim or voiding the policy altogether, treating it as if it has never existed. One case it dealt with involved a driver whose parked car was stolen when he went to his local gym. He lodged a claim and was totally shocked when his insurer refused to pay out. The insurer said it was clear from the information he provided that his car had been modified. But he had not informed the insurance company about the changes and had answered no when asked when applying for the policy if he had modified or altered his vehicle. Modifications listed by the firm in the small print included changes to the engine, plus cosmetic changes to the bodywork, suspension, wheels or brakes. In fact, all the driver had done since taking out the policy was install a satnav unit, a bluetooth phone kit, a Playstation for the back seats and a CD changer. The insurance company said this made the car more attractive to thieves. But the Ombudsman upheld the customers complaint and said there was no way the customer could have known these changes were considered to be modifications. The Ombudsman said some people have been encouraged to soup up their car after watching too many episodes of programmes like MTV show Pimp my Ride. Pictured, a clip from the hit show Pictured, an example of how the popular MTV show transformed a vehicle with speakers and plush interior James Daley, founder of consumer website Fairer Finance, accused insurance companies of burying information in the small print. He said: Insurance companies should never be allowed to get away with these sneaky tricks. They tend to be very strict on customers who make any changes to their cars. If they want to do this they have to make it crystal clear to customers. But often they bury information in the small print in the back of their policy documents. The Ombudsman said it received 7,361 complaints in total about motor insurance last year and 25,000 enquiries from disgruntled customers. Other common complaints include insurers refusing to pay out claims if a car is involved in an accident and was not repaired properly. The average insurance premium soared by a fifth last year to 625.70 the biggest annual increase since 2011 according to the AA. This is the shocking moment a group of armed robbers adopted military-style tactics as they carried out a terrifying bank raid on a popular holiday island. Dramatic video footage, released by police this week, shows a group of armed men storming a bank in Sardinia and forcing staff and members of the public to lie down on the floor. The masked attackers, armed with shotguns, can be seen marching into the bank while accomplices drive a van right up to the entrance in a bid to help them easily make off with their gains. Dramatic CCTV footage shows masked robbers storming a bank in Sardinia while armed with large shotguns The masked robbers order staff and members of the public to get down on the floor as they carry out the raid Terrified members of the public can be seen lying on the floor as the armed robbers brandish guns at them and order them to remain still. The robbers then transfer the stolen goods into the large dark-coloured van before speeding off. CCTV footage shows staff lying on their front as they desperately try to avoid eye contact with the attackers Brought to Britain: Lord Alf Dubs was one of thousands of child refugees saved from the Nazis under the Kindertransport project Peers last night voted to allow 3,000 child refugees travelling alone into the country. The Government was defeated in the House of Lords over the plans, which were put forward by a Labour Peer who survived the Holocaust. Lord Alf Dubs was one of thousands of child refugees saved from the Nazis under the Kindertransport project and brought to Britain in the late 1930s. He called on ministers to show similar compassion to child refugees today. There are around 26,000 child refugees in Europe travelling without a parent, relative or guardian. He said the move would protect children from exploitation, people trafficking, and abuse. Speaking after the debate, Lord Dubs said: Im delighted with the result and trust the House of Commons will now accept our amendment, and help give 3,000 children a safer and better future. He added: I would like other children who are in a desperate situation to be offered safety in this country and be given the same opportunities that I had.' But speaking before the vote, David Cameron said the Government opposed the amendment. He said more child refugees would be taken but only from the region and not from Europe. On the move: A child refugee child walks in a muddy refugee camp near the Greek border village of Idomeni He told the House of Commons: We do not support the Dubs amendment because, as I said previously, we think it is right to take additional children over and above the 20,000 refugees, but to take them from the region and to do so by working with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. I think that the unfairness, if I might say that, of comparing child migrants in Europe with the Kindertransport is that countries such as France, Germany, Italy and Spain are safe countries, where anyone who claims asylum and has family in Britain is able to come to Britain. I do not believe that it is a fair comparison. Migrant housing: A Syrian child stands outside a tent at a refugee camp at Islahiye in Gaziantep, Turkey Peers voted by 306 votes to 204 to amend the Immigration Bill in order to require the Government to let the children, currently in Europe, come to Britain. I would like other children who are in a desperate situation to be offered safety in this country and be given the same opportunities that I had Lord Dubs Speaking after the vote Lib Dem leader Tim Farron said: Cameron should show some humanity. A small sacrifice from a large nation would turn these kids lives around. The Government must listen to this strong message from the Lords, it is time he stopped making excuses and did the right thing. The amendment states the Government must allow the children to come to Britain as soon as possible after the Bill becomes law. Lord Alton of Liverpool said if Britain turned its back on such children it would be a lasting stain on its reputation. Crossbencher Baroness Neuberger said: We could do it in 1930s, why cant we do it now? Kindertransport: Four young members of a group of German-Jewish refugees arrive in Southampton in 1939 Home Office Minister Lord Bates said the Government had pledged to take 20,000 Syrian refugees by 2020, and 51 per cent of the 1,000 people who have arrived so far have been children. Other countries are not doing a fraction of what we are doing Lord Bates, Home Office Minister He said the Government was concentrating its efforts on helping Syrian refugees before they reach Europe. We have a principled objection. That the people most at risk are in the region. I question whether it identifies, or provides help, for the right people. We believe we should not be doing anything that encourages one child to make that perilous journey. Police say wounded men and third person will be charged over the incident Both shooter and victim were taken to hospital after the attack Two people have been shot and a third person arrested during a drug deal gone wrong at Georgia State University, according to police. Officers believe a student drug dealer shot another person outside the Piedmont North residence hall at around 9.30pm on Monday, according to WSBTV. The shooting happened inside a car in the parking lot of the student housing block as the student attempted to sell two men a pound of marijuana. Two people have been wounded and one has been arrested following a shooting at Georgia State University at around 9.30pm on Monday night outside the Piedmont North building (pictured) Officers said that the victim and the shooter were transported to hospital, and the shooter was arrested (pictured, a man in handcuffs near the scene) Investigators say the student dealer climbed into the backseat of the blue Honda Accord in order to complete the deal, but an argument broke out,11 Alive reports. The driver of the car and the dealer, neither of whom have been identified, opened fire, cops said. Officers say the driver was shot three times while the dealer was shot once before both were transported to hospital. Witnesses said the driver was alert and conscious before being put into an ambulance, while the condition of the dealer was unknown. The third man is believed to have vaulted a fence and alerted campus police to the shooting, before dozens of officers made their way to the scene. Police said they intend to charge all three men in connection with the incident, though the charges were not immediately available. Images from the scene show a large number of students gathered around on the upper balcony levels of the Piedmont North building, which overlooks the crime scene. A man wearing tracksuit pants and a dark top was also pictured near the scene in handcuffs before being led away by officers. Student Cameron Byers told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution he heard arguing while walking back to his residence hall after class. The victim was reported to be conscious and breathing before being taken to hospital, while the condition of the shooter has not been released (pictured, the man in handcuffs is led away) Dozens of police were pictured outside the Piedmont building on the GSU campus Monday night following the attack outside the dining hall (pictured) He said: 'I thought it was just regular stuff. Then I heard a gunshot and I turned around to see what was happening. 'I went inside because it was a gunshot because I was kind of nervous so my friends started talking about it and cops started coming.' A call by Dailymail.com to Georgia State University Police was not immediately returned. On social media many students criticized GSU officials for apparently failing to issue an email warning about the shooting, and questioned whether they are being kept safe on campus. This is not the first time GSU students and staff have been targeted by people wielding guns. Back in March last year a GSU staff member was robbed at gunpoint at around 5.40am on Piedmont Avenue, close to the scene of today's shooting. University records show that in December two GSU students were robbed at gunpoint in their home off-campus, while another armed robbery was reported near the campus library in January. All five people have been charged with concealing a serious offence Police have arrested and charged five people in a series of raids Mr Al Mhanawi was caught in the crossfire of an argument on Friday night The three-day manhunt ended the same day as Mr Al Mhanawi's funeral Russell has been charged with eight offences including murder He is suspected of the shooting death of Qusay Al Mhanawi, 46 Matthew Russell, 28, turned himself into police at 11am on Tuesday The 28-year-old man who allegedly shot and killed a father-of-one as he was sitting in his car on Friday night turned himself into police at 11am on Tuesday - the same day the victim's family gathered for his funeral. Matthew Russell, who is accused of shooting Qusay Al Mhanawi, 46, is in police custody in Bankstown, a south-west Sydney suburb, as Mr Al Mhanawi's family laid him to rest just a few kilometers away, according to Nine News. Police charged Russell with murder, two counts of attempted murder, two counts of shooting with intent to murder, discharging firearm in public place, possess firearm and driving while disqualified, police said Tuesday afternoon. He has been refused bail and is will appear at a Bankstown Local Court on Wednesday. Mr Al Mhanawi, 46, was shot dead on Friday night while sitting in a parked car and talking on his phone after a spray of bullets were fired, intended for two brothers in Heckenberg, south-west Sydney. Scroll down for video Matthew Russell (pictured), 28, who allegedly shot and killed father-of-one 46-year-old Qusay Al Mhanawi, turned himself into police at 11am on Tuesday Mr Al Mhanawi (pictured), 46, was shot dead in Heckenberg, south-west of Sydney, on Friday night at about 6.30pm A three-day manhunt, during which five other people were arrested for concealing a serious offence, came to an end on Tuesday - the same day as Mr Al Mhanawi's funeral Five people have been arrested in relation to the shooting during the three-day manhunt for Russell. Early Tuesday morning police raided a home in their search of Russell and arrested three people - a 31-year-old woman, a 39-year-old woman and a 19-year-old man. All three were charged with concealing a serious offence and the man was also charged with drug possession, Nine News said. A 30-year-old man was arrested in a police raid on Saturday and pointed his hand in the shape of a gun (pictured) at reporters and yelled: 'Bang, bang' The man, who was charged with concealing a serious offence, also spat at reporters and said, 'you mutt' as he left the police station His pregnant girlfriend (pictured), 20, was also charged with concealing a serious indictable offence. She denied knowing Mr Russell or anything about his car Police did not find Mr Russell at the address (pictured) but did find his 15 model silver Holden Commodore with number plates removed Another two people were arrested and charged with concealing a serious offence during a house raid on Saturday. Russell's 2015 model silver Holden Commodore with number plates removed was found sitting in the garage of the home of a 30-year-old man and his 20-year-old pregnant girlfriend. The pair created a scene during their arrest and the man pointed his hand in the shape of a gun at reporters and shouted 'bang, bang' after he was arrested and charged. Mr Al Mhanawi (pictured left) was sitting in his car around 6.30pm on Friday on the street outside his family home when he was hit by a spray of bullets intended for brothers Latu and Tyson Vakauta Mr Al Mhanawi (left) lived on Matthew Avenue in Heckenberg, where the incident took place The man also spat at reporters, and said: 'You mutt'. Mr Al Mhanawi was sitting in his car around 6.30pm on Friday on the street outside his family home when he was hit by a spray of bullets intended for brothers Latu and Tyson Vakauta. They are understood to have been arguing on the footpath about a female. When Mr Al Mhanawi was shot in the head and chest, he lost control of his car and it lurched forward, striking one of the brothers, aged 20. Mr Al Mhanawi (far right) moved to Sydney from Iraq several years ago and has been described by relatives as a devoted family man The brother was treated by paramedics for a broken collarbone and has been in a stable condition at Liverpool Hospital. His 25-year-old brother has been speaking with Green Valley police. Mr Al Mhanawi died at the scene. His father, Jabbar Al Mhanawi, had watched from his house as his son's car was hit by bullets just metres away When he reached the vehicle, blood was flowing from his son's injuries like 'water from a tap' as he held him with both hands while he died. Mr Al Mhanawi was described by his family as a devoted family man who moved to Sydney from Iraq several years ago. Brothers Latu and Tyson Vakauta, who are understood to have been arguing on the footpath about a woman at the time of the shooting A 25-year-old high school teacher who was killed after her car and a refrigeration truck collided head-on has been remembered by students for her smile, kindness and humour. Melissa Bond suffered fatal injuries and died at the scene of the horrific crash at Appin, south-west of Sydney, when she was on her way home from school on Monday shortly after 5.30pm. Tributes have started to flow for the John Therry Catholic School teacher as news of her death left shocked students, colleagues and family devastated. Melissa Bond, 25, suffered fatal injuries and died at the scene of the horrific crash at Appin, south-west of Sydney, when she was on her way home from school on Monday shortly after 5.30pm The school sent a text message to parents on Tuesday morning to inform them of the Year 9 and PE teacher's death. 'Miss Bond you had such a strong relationship with everyone from (John Therry) and no one can grasp the fact that such a beautiful woman like you had to be taken so early,' one student wrote on Facebook. 'You built such a strong relationship with everyone; someone who wasn't a teacher but a friend, it just doesn't feel real. Rip you beautiful woman, you will forever hold such a strong part of our hearts.' Catholic Education Diocese of Wollongong director of schools, Peter Turner, said the school community was mourning the loss of 'an outstanding young woman' and they were 'deeply shocked' and 'heartbroken'. Police are investigating the circumstances surrounding the fatal crash on Monday where Melissa Bond's car and a refrigeration truck collided head-on Melissa died at the scene and the truck driver was taken to Liverpool Hospital suffering back and neck pain 'Melissa, a much loved and popular teacher at the school was travelling home at the end of the school day yesterday when she was involved in a motor vehicle accident on Appin Road at approximately 5:30pm,' Mr Turner said. 'As a member of the PDHPE team and the Year Coordinator for Year 9 students, Melissa was a dedicated and outstanding young teacher and role model, highly respected by her principal, colleagues and students. 'The wider Catholic community deeply mourns the loss of a fine young woman, a wonderful and passionate teacher who cared most about her students, their learning and their wellbeing.' Police are investigating the circumstances surrounding the fatal crash on Monday. Ms Bond died at the scene and the truck driver was taken to Liverpool Hospital suffering back and neck pain. The stretch of Appin Road where she was killed has been a point of controversy within the community given more than 40 people have died on it in the past 20 years. Tributes have started to flow for the John Therry Catholic School (pictured) teacher as news of her death left shocked students, colleagues and family devastated The stretch of Appin Road where she was killed has been a point of controversy within the community given more than 40 people have died on it in the past 20 years But the District Attorney's Office says it's all legal until the animal is hurt Photographs showing a dog tied to the back of a moving flatbed trailer on Texas's Highway 59N have horrified thousands of viewers since they were posted on Facebook Sunday - but the District Attorney's Office says there's nothing illegal about it. The images, taken just outside the city of Humble, near Houston, show the poor creature looking uncomfortable on the back of the trailer, which is attached to what appears to be a work van. In one of the photos, the wind appears to be blowing strongly into the dog's face. In another, its head, ears and tail are all pointed down, making it appear frightened. Blown around: The wind appears to be blowing strongly into the face of this dog, which was seen being driven around at speeds of up to 65mph on Texas's Highway 59N Sunday - but this is totally legal, the DA's office said Frightened: The dog's posture in this image - ears, tail and head down - make it appear frightened. Viewers were quick to react to the images, expressing horror that the animal was subjected to such treatment But according to KSDK, the District Attorney's Office says that nothing seen in the photographs is actually illegal in the state of Texas. The only way police could intervene is if the animal was injured - something that Monica Schmidt of the Houston Humane Society says is 'highly likely.' 'We really need stricter laws in Texas to be able to protect those animals that can't protect themselves,' she said. 'Every dog owner should be saddened that as a society that happens here in Houston, on our highways.' She added: 'You get a sense of disbelief that this could even happen, and you think, "Are you sure this isn't Photoshopped?", because it's just so horrible that anybody would do that.' Schmidt wasn't the only one shocked by the images - the Facebook post in which they first appeared was shared thousands of times, attracting many comments from disgusted users. 'That's so terrible,' wrote one person, 'I can only imagine how terrified that poor baby was!' Another said, 'Oh my god that makes me sick to my stomach.' Chadian teenager Zouhoura, whose gang-rape by young men from well-to-do families sparked unprecedented mass protests in her country, says she wants justice for herself and for 'all women' who have long suffered in silence. On February 8, the fragile-looking 16-year-old was assaulted in a brutal attack that shocked many in the poor central African nation. This horrific event triggered weeks of of demonstrations by thousands of young people in the streets. Chadian teenager Zouhoura, whose gang-rape by young men from well-to-do families sparked unprecedented mass protests in her country, says she wants justice for herself and for 'all women' Zouhoura was on her way to school in the capital N'Djamena with a friend when a car with tinted windows pulled up alongside them. Five boys were in the vehicle, whom Zouhoura later learned were rich sons of the ruling class. 'They grabbed me by the neck and threw me into the car,' Zouhoura said. 'They took me outside the city by force...You know the rest.' Zouhoura has since returned to France, where she had already lived with relatives from 2009 to 2015. She has decided to speak out publicly in Paris to fight impunity for sex criminals in her homeland. 'There has never been justice before over the rape of a Chadian woman,' said Zouhoura, her gaze firm from beneath a grey headscarf. 'I'm not the only victim. There are other women and girls who have been raped - I know them - and they have remained anonymous, they have said nothing,' she added in an interview on Friday. Zouhoura, who was kidnapped and raped by young Chadians dignitaries of the regime, held a press conference, on March 18, 2016, in Paris Encouraged by her father, who lives in the eastern French town of Nancy and is an opponent of the hardline regime of President Idriss Deby Itno, Zouhoura agreed to address a meeting and give an interview. 'I expected him to say 'Wait, we need to settle this in the family,' but no, he didn't hesitate. He told me to 'go and file a lawsuit',' the youngster said of her father. 'To start with, I said nothing, but later, when I saw that everybody was supporting me, I told myself, why not speak out, (and) fight this?' Zouhoura said that when she turned to the police in Chad they didn't react at first. Detectives considered that a rape claim against the sons of senior officials in the regime was taboo. 'I talked, I talked. They threatened me,' she said. Furious to discover that Zouhoura was seeking action against them, the alleged rapists posted images of the assault on social networks. But their action backfired as photos of the naked girl in tears sent a shockwave of disgust across Chad. The horrific event triggered weeks of of demonstrations by thousands of young people in the streets of N'Djamena Despite the regime's tight security, which leaves opponents little room for manoeuvre, hundreds of schoolchildren demonstrated in the capital on February 15. They were dispersed by riot police and one youth, 17-year-old Abbachou Hassan Ousmane, was shot dead. The protest movement spread to other Chadian towns in the days that followed. More young demonstrators were wounded and at least 17 were arrested, but the wave of solidarity spread abroad. To see Chadians from the diaspora joining the protest as far afield as London and Washington encouraged Zouhoura. When Chadian authorities 'saw that the people were demonstrating and that my picture was circulating everywhere on social networks, they were quick to arrest the criminals,' she added. The five alleged rapists, who include the sons of three generals, were taken into custody together with four suspected accomplices, including a son of Foreign Minister Moussa Faki Mahamat. But Zouhoura doubts that they will ever be brought to trial. 'In Chad, there is no justice... I am not even sure that they are in prison,' she said. Although she is sceptical, she is determined to at least try to have them held to account. 'I want justice to be done, so that this doesn't happen again,' she commented. Zouhoura's voice sometimes chokes and a tear rolls down her cheek. It is tough to speak out to journalists about rape. 'It had to be done, it was necessary,' she insisted. Carla Montoya, 21, (pictured) was arrested after her four-year-old daughter died of a skull fracture and brain bleed A 21-year-old Nebraska woman has been charged with killing her four-year-old daughter after she tossed the child into her bed three times. The final Carla Montoya tossed Caylee Hoehne into bed she said she was 'very upset'. Montoya told police she grabbed Caylee around her torso and squeezed her before throwing her into bed, according to Ohama.com. The 21-year-old said she thought Caylee might have hit her head on the bed frame or the wall. Caylee then suffered a skull fracture, a brain bleed and her body was covered with bruises that indicated she was suffering routine abuse. Caylee's unresponsive body was initially brought to Faith Regional Health Services in Norfolk, Nebrasak, on March 13. She was flown by medical helicopter to the Omaha Children's Hospital & Medical Center in Omaha where she died around 5.30pm. Montoya will appear in court on Tuesday. If convicted, she will face a minimum sentence of 20 years and a maximum of life in prison. Montoya allegedly tossed Caylee (pictured) into a bed, which caused the skull fracture. The little girl also had bruises and signs of abuse all over her body Former Brisbane Lions AFL player Albert Proud has been denied bail a second time after bashing his girlfriend so badly she lost a litre of blood. Proud has been in custody since he was arrested following the attack on his now former partner, 35-year-old Richelle Kadadi, outside her home at Sunnybank in Brisbane's south, in November. She suffered a subdural haematoma and excessive blood loss from the attack. The 27-year-old had applied for bail to attend a rehabilitation facility run by a religious organisation, but the court denied the request due to a lack of professionally qualified staff at the facility. Scroll down for video Retired AFL player Albert Proud has been has been denied bail a second time after brutally bashing his now former girlfriend last year Proud (left) was arrested following the alleged attack on his now former partner, 35-year-old Richelle Kadadi (right), outside her home Police previously charged Proud with attempted murder, however this charge was downgraded in January when he pled guilty to grievous bodily harm and wilful damage. But he still faces a lengthy jail term when eventually sentenced. The 27-year-old's lawyer, Kris Jahnke, on Tuesday unsuccessfully argued granting bail would allow him to attend a rehabilitation centre run by a religious organisation. 'The organisation may be useful for some people who have less-worrying criminal histories ... but there's just no indication on the material Mr Proud would receive any proper professional assessment or assistance at the centre,' she said. Supreme Court Justice Jean Dalton noted the facility was run by volunteers. Proud's criminal history reflected problems with alcohol which made him violent and he was a danger to police when drunk, the court heard. Friends of the mother who was have launched an online campaign to raise awareness of the threat of domestic violence which has since raised more than $18,000 Proud played 29 games for the Brisbane Lions between 2007 and 2010, before his career came to an end in 2011 following a separate incident. It is understood Proud battled alcohol abuse and mental health issues following the death of his mother. He has tried unsuccessfully to be admitted to mainstream rehabilitation centres. 'The grievous bodily harm is a very serious, very nasty attack in a domestic situation,' Justice Dalton said. 'The complainant was very badly injured and would have died if she had not received medical attention.' Proud played 29 games for the Lions in a stop-start career from 2007-10. Kadadi suffered a subdural haematoma and excessive blood loss from the brutal attack last November He did not appear in court for the bail application. In January, Magistrate Sheryl Cornack chided prosecutors for taking too long to get the brief together and said the case should have received 'prompt attention'. A Go Fund Me appeal to help cover Ms Kadadi's medical expenses raised more than $18,000. She has documented her recovery on social media, this month posting about other patients she has met in rehabilitation, many of whom cannot speak or walk. 'It's devastating and I thank my lucky stars every single day I am so blessed,' she posted. National domestic violence helpline: 1800 737 732 or 1800RESPECT. In an emergency, call triple-zero. George Clooney has penned a glowing email supporting democratic front runner Hillary Clinton George Clooney has chosen his candidate in the 2016 presidential election and isn't shy about telling his fans he's 'with her'. The actor penned an email to Hillary's supporters on Monday calling the former secretary of state the 'one consistent voice' in the election. 'If you listen to the loudest voices out there today, you'd think we're a country that hates Mexicans, hates Muslims, and thinks that committing war crimes is the best way to make America great again. 'The truth is that the only thing that would prevent America from being great would be to empower these voices,' Clooney writes, seeming to call out GOP front runner Donald Trump. Clooney then praises Clinton for being the 'voice of tolerance and experience' as well as 'a candidate who knows firsthand the complexity of our international relationships'. Clinton also sent out an email on Monday telling her supporters if they added their names to her campaign supporters and they could win a chance to have champagne with her, Clooney and his wife, Amal, in Los Angeles. Clooney's letter also invites Clinton's backers to enter the contest for the private fundraising dinner in April at his home. A donation is not required to enter the contest, but the campaign is asking for $10 donations in the letter. Clooney called Clinton the 'one consistent voice' in the election and is hosting a fundraiser for her in April Clinton and Clooney are offering her backers a chance to meet the actor, the candidate and Clooney's wife, Amal (pictured), at the fundraiser, where a ticket costs $33,400 per person Tickets to the Los Angeles event are priced at $33,400 per person, with money going to the Hillary Victory Fund, a joint committee of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. 'As this primary process continues, Hillary could soon have an insurmountable delegate lead and with that, the Democratic nomination. An off-duty police officer who was found dead early Monday morning, was a nine-year-veteran who had just been promoted to detective. Detective Matthew Kurtz, 34, was found shot to death in a parked car around 7.15am near the abandoned Amboy Cinemas. Kurtz's black Dodge had a shattered window on the passenger side of the door. Detective Matthew Kurtz (right), 34, was found shot to death in a parked car around 7.15am near the abandoned Amboy Cinemas in New Jersey. He's pictured with his wife Jamie In November, Kurtz (right) received his gold shield and was transferred to the Investigation Division, making him a detective Kurtz's black Dodge (pictured) had a shattered window on the passenger side of the door Middlesex County Prosecutor Andrew Carey said that police responded to the scene after receiving reports of a body found in a car on the site. He said that the victim was identified as a Sayreville police officer, who worked in an undercover capacity. Carey added that it appeared the officer died from gunshot wounds. Kurtz joined the force in 2007, received valor awards for their actions in saving the life of a local man in a house fire in 2014, according to NJ.com. In November, Kurtz received his gold shield and was transferred to the Investigation Division, becoming a detective. He and another officer charged into the blaze and pulled Max Klitzke to safety. Sayreville Mayor Kennedy O'Brien told NJ.com: 'We lost a very good and fine young police officer today. 'And our hearts and our prayers are with him, his parents, his wife, and his children.' It's unclear if the gunshots caused the officer's death and no more details have been released. However, Carey said, Kurtz suffered one or more gunshot wounds. Police have not said if they are seeking a suspect. The theater where the officer was found dead has been closed since 2005. It's unclear if the gunshots caused the officer's death and no more details have been released. No alert has been issued for a possible gunman The Austin police officer who shot dead an unarmed, naked black 17-year-old last month will be fired. Geoffrey Freeman, 42, is being let go after 10 years with the force for violating policy by shooting David Joseph, 17, last month when the teen began charging at him. In a memo outlining the disciplinary action, Police Chief Art Acevedo said Freeman, who is also black, should not have confronted the teenager alone and that his decision to draw his weapon wasn't warranted. Acevedo added that there were other ways he could have stopped Joseph. Fired: Geoffrey Freeman, 42, (left) is being let go after 10 years with the Austin police force for shooting dead David Joseph, 17, (right) last month when he could have used other non-lethal means to detain him Freeman's lawyers with the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas say they will appeal. The general counsel for the group has said Freeman feared for his life when he fired his gun at Joseph. The group will use the 'resources necessary' to ensure that Freeman's 'good name is restored and that he will be back to work,' Executive Director Charley Wilkison said in a statement. Acevedo said he has 'indefinitely suspended' Freeman, which he says is the department's term for firing. If Freeman appeals, the firing isn't final until an arbitrator upholds it. Travis County prosecutors also are investigating the shooting and plan to present the case to a grand jury for possible criminal charges. Acevedo's memo to the interim director of civil service explains that Freeman was one of four officers who responded to a call about a naked man running across a roadway on at 10am February 8. When Freeman got to the neighborhood, he could not find any potential suspect. He cleared the call but stayed in the neighborhood, eventually locating Joseph shortly after 10.30am. Joseph was naked when Freeman found him and was not in possession of any weapon. Pictured: An officer talks to witnesses at the scene. In a memo outlining the disciplinary action, Police Chief Art Acevedo said Freeman, who is also black, should not have confronted the teenager alone and that his decision to draw his weapon wasn't warranted An autopsy found that Joseph had marijuana and an anti-anxiety drug in his system when he was fatally shot In a verbal statement issued shortly after the shooting, Freeman said that he provided Joseph with an initial set of commands, but that Joseph did not respond to them. Instead, Freeman said, Joseph charged at him and he fired his handgun. According to the disciplinary memo, Freeman knew the other officers were on their way and had even asked for extra help because he believed the person had a mental illness or was high. It concludes Freeman should have waited for other officers before confronting Joseph. If he had to detain him alone, the memo states, he could have used a stun gun, pepper spray or even physical force to stop Joseph when the teen kept coming toward the officer after Freeman told him to stop. The memo notes that Freeman weighed about 240 pounds, while Joseph weighed about 146 pounds. An autopsy found that Joseph had marijuana and an anti-anxiety drug in his system when he was fatally shot. Civil rights groups have criticized the fatal shooting and said it showed the need for Texas law enforcement to undergo de-escalation training to avoid using deadly force, according to BuzzFeed. Austin police chief of staff Brian Manley, center, explaining the shooting to reporters last month Austin NAACP President Nelson Linder met with Joseph's family last month. He said the family is distraught and overwhelmed with grief. 'The bottom line is a young man is dead,' Linder said. 'He lost his life based on poor conduct and terrible tactics.' Joseph was a charter school student at Premier High School and was on track to graduate this spring. Another car, 'possibly a taxi', was also seen in the area at the time Police are searching for a ute travelling with its headlights off on Father-of-three was gunned down last Tuesday as he left Melbourne cafe A ute travelling with its headlights turned off in the area where gangland lawyer Joseph Acquaro was gunned down last week could be an important piece of evidence to solve his murder. Joseph 'Pino' Acquaro, 55, was shot dead in what police have described as a 'targeted attack' as he walked towards his car after closing his Gelobar cafe at Brunswick East in the early hours of last Tuesday. Detectives say he was shot about 12.55am and witnesses have described hearing several loud bangs and a car speeding off. Scroll down for video Criminal lawyer Joseph 'Pino' Acquaro speaks at a function at the Reggio Calabria Club on Brunswick Road in Parkville on January 1, 2016 in Melbourne - he was gunned down outside his gelato bar last Tuesday Joseph Acquaro was killed in the street outside his Brunswick East gelato bar in the early hours of 15 March in a suspected Mafia contract killing On Tuesday, Victoria Police said they were looking for a light-coloured ute travelling with its headlights turned off between Lygon and Nicholson streets about 12.30am to 1am. The vehicle, which police said was no heavier than one tonne, may have travelled along Barkly Street as far as St Georges Road. Detectives would like to speak with anyone that saw the ute travelling east on Barkly Street or parked in the area around the time of the shooting. Police would also like to speak to the occupants of another vehicle, 'possibly a taxi', that drove past it about the same time. The appeal for information comes as the partner of Mr Acquaro paid tribute to her 'knight in shining armour' a day before his funeral. Marisa Di Liso, 51, will be among the family and friends who will farewell the slain father-of-three at a ceremony on Wednesday. Marisa Di Lisio (pictured) has described Mr Acquaro as 'a gentleman in every sense of the word'. She has also spoken of the moment she found out that Mr Acquaro had been killed after seeing news reports about a shooting early on Tuesday Ms Di Lisio, 51, who runs Melbourne cafe Bella Cosi, said she had known Mr Acquaro since she was 16 and revealed that they started their relationship 20 years ago. On the eve of his funeral she wrote: 'How blessed and thankful I am to have experienced a love so true' The lawyer was gunned down outside his gelato bar at Brunswick East, in Melbourne's inner northern suburbs Ms Di Liso posted a tribute in Tuesday's Herald Sun newspaper. 'What a beautiful world this would be if there were more people like you, a gentleman in every sense of the word,' she wrote. 'How blessed and thankful I am to have experienced a love so true.' His funeral will be held at 10.30am on Wednesday at St Mary's Star of the Sea Catholic Church in West Melbourne. The service will be followed by a burial in Yarraville. Mr Acquaro was a criminal lawyer who had represented a raft of prominent gangland figures in Victoria. Court documents show there was a $200,000 contract on his head, and he had been warned by police his life was in danger. Victorian Police have named Melbourne businessman Tony Madafferi (pictured) as a suspect in the $200,000 alleged contract on lawyer Joseph Acquaro, an allegation Mr Madafferi strenuously denies Court documents claim that police have accused Antonio 'Tony' Madafferi of allegedly placing a $200,000 bounty on the head of Joe Acquaro (pictured) because he believed Acquaro was leaking information to media This bounty had reportedly increased to half-a-million dollars in the months before he was gunned down. The execution-style hit on Mr Acquaro is being investigated by Victoria Police's gangland squad, the Purana Taskforce, which was set up in 2003 in response to the city's underworld war. Mr Acquaro had spoken of his 'power struggle' with pizza chain owner Tony Madafferi months before he was gunned down, it has emerged. Mr Madafferi, who is the brother of mafia drug kingpin Frank Madafferi, was suspected of putting a $200,000 bounty on the head of the slain lawyer, according to court documents seen by the ABC. Underworld figures have claimed that Mr Acquaro, 55, was shot up to five times outside his gelato parlour in Melbourne early on Tuesday because he 'knew too much' about the mafia. The homicide squad is waiting for an autopsy report to confirm how many times Mr Acquaro was shot An image of a young Joseph Acquaro who was shot up to five times outside his gelato parlour in Melbourne last Tuesday Two detectives visited Mr Madafferi (pictured) at his fruit shop in south-eastern Melbourne, court documents have alleged Tony Madafferi, who denies any connection with the Joseph Acquaro contract, is the brother of jailed mafia drug boss Frank Madafferi (above left). Mr Acquaro is also believed to have represented Mafia drug boss Pasquale Barbaro (above right) Mr Acquaro had a career representing prominent Calabrian Australians, some of whom had mafia links. He represented Frank Madafferi and former mafia crime boss Pasquale Barbaro when both men were accused over their part in a 2007 importation of 1.2 million Ecstasy tablets from Italy. More than 30 men were convicted and jailed over the plot to smuggle the drugs in tomato tins to Australia. Frank Madafferi received a 10-year sentence. Pasquale Barbaro is serving life. Mr Acquaro reportedly felt isolated after a falling out with the Madafferi brothers with whom he had been lifelong friends. They are believed to have fallen out over business dealings and the fact that Mr Acquaro's sons were becoming close to the Madafferi brothers, which their father did not want. The Herald Sun has revealed that Mr Acquaro's office was ransacked and his Mercedes Benz smashed by young crime figures shortly before his death. He also caught an ex-employee and others searching for files. Police officers investigate the scene after the shooting of criminal lawyer Joseph Acquaro last Tuesday Floral tributes lay out the front of the ice cream parlour on Tuesday afternoon Mr Acquaro's body was found on a footpath in East Brunswick by a rubbish-truck driver about 2.30am on Tuesday. His partner of 20 years, Marisa Di Lisio, spoke about the moment she found out that Mr Acquaro had been killed after seeing news reports about a shooting early on Tuesday. Ms Di Lisio, 51, who runs Melbourne cafe Bella Cosi, said she had known Mr Acquaro since she was 16 and revealed that they started their relationship 20 years ago. She described the lawyer as a 'loving' family man who adored his children, as well as her three sons. But Ms Di Lisio revealed that they would argue about the fact that he 'couldn't say no'. The lawyer, who had aspirations to be Melbourne's 'godfather', was stripped naked, pistol-whipped and beaten in a pizza restaurant 14 years ago over suspicions that he was a police informer. Police documents seen by the Herald Sun detailed how mafia 'money man' Mario Condello blamed Mr Acquaro after police became aware of an attempt to launder proceeds through an estate agency. But Mr Acquaro was later freed after convincing Condello, who was later killed, that he was not to blame, the newspaper said. Mr Acquaro's murderer remains on the loose and police want to speak to any witnesses who heard shots or a car travelling fast the wrong way up the one-way street where his body was found. The homicide squad is waiting for an autopsy report to confirm how many times Mr Acquaro was shot, or what type of gun was used. Eating out in Australia can sometimes be eye-wateringly expensive. And diners who thought Sydney racked up the most overpriced bill - well think again. Melbourne has been crowned the most expensive city in the country to dine out for two, where the average cost for a casual meal and a couple of drinks recorded at $61, a new data has revealed. Coming in at second place was Perth with an average of $57.50, while Adelaide forked out the cheapest on the same meal costing patrons just $50.50 on average. Brisbane couples would be set back by an average of $55.50 while Sydney was surprisingly the second cheapest at $51.60, according to deals app for bars, pubs and restaurants Clipp. Melbourne is officially the most expensive city in Australia to enjoy a casual meal out and a couple of drinks on the side, a new data has found (stock image) A meal for two will set Melbournians back an average of $61, while Adelaide came in as cheapest at $50.50 'Fifty to seventy dollars is too costly for a casual meal out, especially since we are cooking less than ever before,' CEO and co-founder of Clipp Greg Taylor said. 'If we eat out three times a week, our spend is close to $200 a week. 'Those inside the industry know that many of the most popular restaurants are willing to offer meals for close to half the price yet the public are often last to know about it.' Findings were based on the average total price for a glass of house wine, a schooner of Carlton Draught, a burger and a small pizza. The most expensive beer in the country is in Sydney with an average price of $6.60 for a schooner on tap, while Brisbane recorded the cheapest at $5.50. However, house white wine is far more expensive in Brisbane, topping the nation at $9 while Adelaide was the cheapest at $6.50. Melbourne (picture of Flinders St. Station) has officially been crowned the most expensive city in the country Sydney (picture of the Harbour Bridge and Opera House) was surprisingly the second cheapest at $51.60 Coming in at third place is Brisbane (picture of the Story Bridge) with an average meal for two costing $55.50 Perth (picture of the Esplanade and Skyline) is the second most expensive city to dine for two costing $57.50 Adelaide couples forked out the cheapest on the same meal costing patrons just $50.50 on average (picture of the Adelaide Festival Centre) The data also uncovered the most expensive and cheapest suburbs to have a night out in each capital city, and in many cases there were few surprises in the locations named. Diners can expect to see an expensive bill in Sydney's exclusive eastern suburb of Double Bay, with the same casual meal costing $68.50. While Sydneysiders can expect to get their hands on the cheapest meal in St Marys in western Sydney for $46.25. In Melbourne, the inner-city suburb Southbank costs the most at $71 while the commuter town of Werribee will set a couple back $48 for a meal. Findings were based on the average price for a glass of wine, beer, a burger and a pizza (stock image) Diners can expect to see an expensive bill in Sydney's exclusive eastern suburb of Double Bay (stock image) Eating out in Australia can be expensive - and a data has found Melbournians forks out the most (stock image) Brisbane's CBD was the most expensive at $63.50 with Strathpine coming in cheapest at $44, while in Perth, trendy Subiaco will set couples back $69, with beachside city Rockingham coming in cheapest at $51.20. For Adelaide residents, a casual meal out could cost $55.20 in North Adelaide while Kilburn is the cheapest suburb at $43.70. 'It was really interesting to analyse this data as there wasn't one city which was uniformly the most expensive for each item, with quite a big price difference between the cheapest and most expensive cities,' Mr Taylor said. AFL star Tom Hawkins' new wife has told how she felt 'violated' after thieves stole her couture wedding dress and luxury car just days after the couple tied the knot. The Geelong Cats forward, 27, married his childhood sweetheart Emma Clapham in a lavish ceremony on the Bellarine Peninsula, south west of Melbourne, on Saturday. But their wedding car went missing from outside their Newtown home on Tuesday morning with Ms Clapham's two beautiful Sonia Capalazzo gowns inside it. The founder of lifestyle website Who Loves That took to social media to issue a desperate plea for help to track down the dress and car. AFL star Tom Hawkins (left) married his childhood sweetheart Emma Clapham (centre) in a lavish ceremony on the Bellarine Peninsula, south west of Melbourne, on Saturday 'Car stolen... With my wedding dresses inside it.... What a welcome into married life. Public plea to please help return my dresses,' she tweeted. Despite the theft, she said that 'no one could take the smile off my newly married face'. 'Whilst the dresses hold so much sentimental value and I would love them back no one can take the smile off my newly married face. Thanks again everyone! Nothing beats community love! 'Thanks for everyone's help. In the grand scheme of things that can go wrong in life, this is by far not the worst thing.' The founder of lifestyle website Who Loves That took to social media to issue a desperate plea for help to track down the dress and car The couple's wedding car went missing from outside their Newtown home on Tuesday morning with Ms Clapham's two beautiful Sonia Capalazzo gowns inside it Ms Clapham said the wedding car was parked outside their home and they suspect it was stolen at around 3am because neighbours heard a car 'speed off' Ms Clapham said the wedding car was parked outside their home and they suspect it was stolen at around 3am because neighbours heard a car 'speed off'. Both her structured wedding dress for the ceremony and plunging frock for the evening celebrations were in the car due to be sent for dry cleaning when they were stolen. 'We're covered by insurance and there were no other valuables because I cleaned out the whole car, so when you put it into perspective, it's not too bad,' she told the Herald Sun. 'But the dresses absolutely hold sentimental value and I just feel violated.' The couple, who are both from the NSW Riverina and have farming backgrounds, said their vows on the eve of the new AFL season. They shared their first kiss when they were both just 17 and Hawkins proposed in Fiji in September last year. During the ceremony, Ms Clapham was flanked by six bridesmaids including siblings and school friends. The car theft has been reported to police. If you have any information, phone Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or go to www.crimestoppers.com.au They shared their first kiss when they were both just 17 and Hawkins proposed in Fiji in September last year A brave mechanic who rammed a drug addict off the road for allegedly stealing his car has posed for a photo moments after detaining him in a dramatic citizen's arrest. Joe Fontana says he was inside his workshop in Ballarat, Victoria, on Monday afternoon, when an 'ice junkie' broke into his beloved pickup truck parked outside and sped away. Jumping into his boss's car, Mr Fontana then engaged in a 17-kilometre high speed chase, eventually catching up and forcing the driver off the road and out of the car. After throwing a few spirited punches, Mr Fontana made a citizen's arrest and proudly flashed a thumbs up for a photo next to the handcuffed man when police arrived. Joe Fontana, a mechanic from Ballarat, posed next to a man that allegedly stole his pickup truck and led him on a 17-kilometre high speed car chase Mr Fontana said he rammed the alleged thief off the road (using his boss's car) and detained him while he waited for police to arrive Posting an amusing description of events online, Mr Fontana quickly reached social media stardom - racking up close to 8,000 shares in less than a day. 'Got my ute back, pity he fell on my fist many many times, he threw the first punch as soon as i opened the door (check out my right eye in the pics),' he wrote. 'So then it was self defence (sic), and i defended the sh** out of myself.' A Victoria Police spokesman confirmed to Daily Mail Australia that a 26-year-old man had been arrested and charged with theft of motor vehicle. 'It is believed a group of witnesses observed a man allegedly stealing a Silver Ford Duel cab ute on Wiltshire Lane in Ballarat about 3.30pm,' he said. 'The witnesses then followed the allegedly stolen vehicle onto Weighbridge Road where it is believed a collision between the vehicles occurred.' 'The driver of the stolen vehicle was apprehended by the witnesses at the scene until police arrived a short time later.' Mr Fontana used his boss's car to chase down the 'ice junkie' that allegedly stole his car, but she seemed okay with the damage, writing: 'Happy days Joe, had to take one for the team' Mr Fontana was happy to be reunited with his car, but disappointed to find not everything was how he had left it. 'He p***ed himself in my ute when i was giving him his due! It's everywhere! In my cup holders and sh**!,' he wrote. Unfortunately, his bosses car was a little worse for wear after the dramatic car chase. But she seemed to be okay with it, writing: 'Happy days Joe it (sic) had to take one for the team.' The 26-year-old man faced Ballarat Magistrates Court on Tuesday, charged with unlicensed driving, going equipped to steal and committing an indictable offence while on bail, The Courier reported. He made no application for bail, but his lawyer told the court his client was withdrawing from an addictive drug. A luxury retreat has left more than a third of New Zealand's top judges too sick to preside over court cases. Over fifty Supreme, Appeal and High Court justices attended the Higher Courts Conference at Chateau Tongariro in the country's North Island on Friday, with 18 of them contracting a gastro bug after the conference, Stuff.co.nz reported. The mass sickness forced the cancellation of court hearings in Wellington, with three Court of Appeal sittings cancelled 'due to unforeseen circumstances', along with at least one High Court sitting. The Higher Courts Conference was hosted at a luxury lodge in Chateau Tongariro on New Zealand's North Island which left 18 top judges with a gastro bug Wellington's High Court: The mass sickness forced the cancellation of court hearings in Wellington, with three Court of Appeal sitting cancelled 'due to unforeseen circumstances', along with at least one High Court sitting A Judicial Office spokesperson confirmed in a statement that 18 judges appeared to have contracted the 'short-lived gastro bug' after the conference. Most of the judges have since recovered but the cause of the illness remains unknown. Chateau Tongariro's luxury lodge hosted the conference in the central North Island, with rooms priced up to $400. The lodge has its own restaurant but the manager of the lodge declined to comment on the gastro outbreak when contacted by Stuff.co.nz on Tuesday. A spokeswoman from Waikato Population Health, which investigates viral outbreaks in the region, confirmed they were informed of the gastro outbreak by conference organisers. She said both the lodge and judges would be interviewed to determine the cause of the mass sickness. The lodge has its own restaurant but the manager of the lodge declined to comment on the gastro outbreak An aristocratic city banker shot himself minutes after confessing to his wife that he was having an affair, an inquest heard. Hugh Clavell Mansel, 67, who had also been anxious about the impending retirement from his high-flying job, grabbed a shotgun from his collection after hanging up the phone to wife Diana. Despite the shock of the confession, Mrs Mansel had tried to reassure her husband of 31 years that things would be okay when she realised his state of mind. Immediately after the 'strange' phone call Mrs Mansel, who was away visiting a relative at the time, called a friend and asked them to check on her husband. Richard Henry arrived at the property and discovered several suicide notes Eton-educated Mr Mansel had left. Police found Mr Mansel's body in woods near his six-bedroom home near Wareham in Dorset after he confessed to his wife Diana that he had been unfaithful Police later found Mr Mansel's body in woods near to the family's six-bedroom home, Thornmoor House near Wareham, Dorset. Father-of-two Mr Mansel was a partner in Smith and Williamson, an investment banking firm in London. His family had military pedigree and his late father, Major Rhys Clavell Mansel was decorated for gallantry in the First World War. His grandfather, Colonel John Delalynde Mansel, was also commended for his part in the Boer war, and once brought a live tiger back from India to the ancestral home of Smedmore near Wareham. Mr Mansel lived eight miles from the Grade II-listed stately home, which is now owned by a relative, the acclaimed historian Dr Philip Mansel. The inquest heard that Mr Mansel had been suffering anxiety about his retirement, which was six months away, before his death. Mrs Mansel, 65, told the Bournemouth hearing she had noticed her husband had lost weight and appeared troubled but had no idea he had been seeing another woman. She said he called her at 7am and admitted cheating on her. She said: 'He said "I have done something so dreadful to you - I have had an affair". 'I said "We are all human, it just happens that I haven't had one". He just seemed so anxious. 'I said "It's fine, I don't mind" but he wasn't listening. 'He didn't say he was going to do anything, but I knew he wasn't in good shape.' She added: 'Over the years he did confide in me about his enormous anxiety, but there was only so much I saw. Coroner Mr Sherrif Payne recorded a verdict of suicide at Bournemouth Coroner's Court 'I thought he was losing weight, but I thought it was because he wasn't looking forward to retirement. I didn't know how extreme he was.' At the time of his suicide on November 14 last year Mr Mansel was preparing to retire as a partner from investment banking firm Smith & Williamson. Mr Sheriff Payne, the Dorset coroner, said: 'At the age of 67 thoughts of retirement had come to the forefront. 'Mr Mansel did not like the idea of advanced age and this increasingly played upon his mind. 'His wife had some very strange communications with him. He phoned her in the morning and confessed to an affair and she forgave him for this, but she was obviously concerned about his condition. 'So concerned she started heading back to Wareham and also contacted friends to go back to Wareham. 'The notes he left gave out instructions to sort out his affairs and indicated he would take his own life.' Mr Payne recorded a suicide verdict. Dramatic footage has captured the distressing aftermath of the explosion at Brussels Airport which has claimed 34 lives. A video uploaded to Twitter shows people fleeing the area while the injured are tended to on the pavement and bodies carried out. One hurt person lies on the floor outside the airport as a man stands over him. Others clutch desperately onto their phones as they try to contact loved ones. Caring for the injured: Three people can be seen tending to the bloodied body of a fallen victim, trying to make them comfortable on the side of the road - it is not known whether they were dead or alive More disturbingly, three people can be seen tending to the bloodied body of a fallen victim, trying to make them comfortable on the side of the road - it is not known whether they were dead or alive. A third clip shows someone being carried out of the building supported by two others, 'Is he dead?' a French woman can be heard saying. Witnesses described apocalyptic scenes with blood and 'dismembered bodies everywhere' after two blasts rocked the terminal at around 8am (7am GMT), killing at least 14 people and injuring dozens of others. Then 79 minutes later at 9.19am, at least 20 people were killed and scores injured, some critically, when a blast hit a Metro station just 400 metres from the EU headquarters in the city centre. Hurt: One person lies on the floor outside the airport as a man stands over him. A third clip shows someone being carried out of the building supported by two others, 'Is he dead?' a French woman can be heard saying This afternoon, Russian media claimed Muslim convert brothers Ivan and Alexey Dovbashi from Belarus and compatriot Marat Yunusov may have been behind the attacks. The trio are said to have fought for ISIS in Syria. The bombings come just a day after the Belgium Interior Minister warned of possible revenge attacks after the arrest of Paris massacre suspect Salah Abdeslam in the city on Friday. Other shocking videos show the smoke billowing outside the airport and bloody passengers running for their lives after deadly blasts ripped through the American Airlines check in desk. Footage shows people sprinting away from the scene of the explosion through smoke filled corridors in the terminal. Panic: Video shows passengers running away from the scene of the explosion at Brussels Airport this morning A changed city: Smoke can also be seen coming from the Metro station amid reports ten more people have been killed in a separate attack Witnesses described seeing 'dismembered bodies everywhere' after the blasts which are believed to have centred on the American Airlines check-in desk at around 8am (7am GMT). There were reports that shouts in Arabic were heard in the building before the two explosion and shots were fired in the aftermath. Firefighters who entered the terminal to search for survivors are said to have found a third unexploded device, while armed police in protective clothing combed the building for more wounded travellers and suspicious bags. The explosions, coming just four months after the Paris attacks, have left countries around the world reeling, with security services placed on high alert, flights cancelled, Eurostar services suspended and France's border with Belgium shut down. Carnage: A soldier walks through debris after two explosion rocked a terminal building at Brussels Airport The attacks came just a day after a secret police dossier revealed there could be up to 90 'kamikazes' waiting to launch suicide bomb attacks in Europe after returning from Syria disguised as migrants. Brussels Airport has announced it will be closed until at least Wednesday following two explosions in the departure hall. Photographs from inside the Airport arrivals hall showed the floor was covered in fallen roof tiles and dust as bloodied people hobbled out of the airport. Others injured were photographed lying on the floor. Mike Baird has questioned whether an anti-bullying sex education program was appropriate for school children and backed the federal governments decision to gut Safe Schools. The NSW Premier said Malcolm Turnbulls decision to overhaul the program for LGBTQI youth was sensible and reasonable, just a day after Mr Bairds Victorian counterpart Daniel Andrews said he will continue to fund the program in all secondary schools with the state purse. 'There is third-party material, links through to websites that I think, if you have a look at it, youd think: "How on earth can out children be looking at this?"' Mr Baird told ABCs 702 Sydney on Tuesday. Scroll down for video NSW Premier Mike Baird told (pictured) ABC's 702 Sydney that some of the content in the Safe Schools program was inappropriate and said the federal government's overhaul was 'sensible and reasonable' I think that the changes that the federal government announced are sensible and reasonable. The Premier's office declined to clarify what he considered inappropriate about the third-party websites to Daily Mail Australia. Mr Baird had previously said he supported the Safe Schools program in NSW schools. On Monday night, a bisexual teen boy told ABCs Qanda panel the Safe Schools program had been saving the lives of LGBTQI youth. Mr Andrews told the live television audience and panellists echoed that it saved lives, and criticised the federal government's decision to overhaul the Safe Schools program. 'There is third-party material, links through to websites that I think, if you have a look at it, youd think: "How on earth can out children be looking at this?"' Mr Baird said on Tuesday (stock image) The Victorian Premier took issue with students now requiring parental permission to attend the Safe Schools program because some young people can't talk to their parents about their sexuality or gender identity. Mr Baird said students should require parental permission to join the program However, Mr Baird disagreed, on Tuesday saying: Parental engagement is a good thing. I dont think that in the context [of a student who may not come forward] whether a program is running or whether there is a permission slip from a parent, that is necessarily going to change the individual circumstances of a student at all. If these sorts of programs are running, we just want parents to be aware they are running. Mr Baird said on Tuesday it was more appropriate for school counsellors, who this month received a $51 million funding boost, to support students struggling with their gender identity or sexuality. Is the best way to deal with them a generic approach across people who potentially arent qualified, [or] have professional capability [school counsellors] there for those students, Mr Baird said. I think it is an appropriate thing for counsellors to be involved in, we need to do everything possible to help those kids. The furore comes after the Prime Minister announced the program would be gutted after the right faction of the Liberal backbench led by George Christensen and Cory Bernardi called for an independent review into Safe Schools. Victoria Premier Daniel Andrews (pictured) said the state will continue to fund the original Safe Schools program with their own budget on Monday's Qanda While Mr Baird declined to further clarify what he found inappropriate about the Safe Schools program, Mr Christensen said it had 'bad content'. 'We're not going to have students exposed to websites that take them off to adult shops or to groups that are running sex toy workshops for youth and that sort of thing. That's got no place in this program.' On Qanda, Liberal MP Josh Frydenberg said the original program had asked Year 7 and 8 students to 'pretend that they are aliens from another planet who come here and they are genderless', asking the students 'what would they do without any genitals'. He said students were 'subject to' the program, and questioned whether they were 'age appropriate or even appropriate at all'. Mr Frydenberg appeared to take issue with the program accepting 'the fluid nature of gender' which 'goes beyond boys and girls', and appeared to see a problem with the program encouraging the use of gender neutral pronouns. The independent review found that some of the programs content may be inappropriate for young children. Safe Schools Coalition Australia said the independent review found no problems with its official resources, which were deemed appropriate for use in schools. 'I think the problem is politicians are using young, innocent, in-pain children as political bullets. That is unacceptable,' bisexual student Carter Smith (pictured) told ABC's Qanda panel on Monday night in a heated debate about the Safe Schools program, which aimed to stop bullying of LGBTQI students in schools On Qanda, Liberal MP Josh Frydenberg (pictured centre) criticised that the original program had asked Year 7 and 8 students to 'pretend that they are aliens from another planet who come here and they are genderless', asking the students 'what would they do without any genitals' The Australian Human Rights Commission on Friday said they had some concerns about the federal governments proposed changes. They said they welcomed reasonable adjustments to the program. Mr Frydenberg appeared to take issue with the program encouraging gender neutral pronouns We would support measures to improve and enhance the resources, and to ensure the age-appropriateness of materials for children and young people, National Childrens Commissioner Megan Mitchell said. However, there does need to be careful consideration of the impact of the Governments proposed parental consent measures on children struggling with sexual orientation, gender identity or intersex status. While we recognise the rights of parents to be informed and engaged in their childs education, it is important to ensure children who have not yet come out to their family can still access the program and its resources. The ACT government on Monday joined Victoria in openly defying the federal government by offering to fund an unchanged program with their own budgets. The BBC will replace departing presenter James Martin with a series of guest hosts when the chef leaves Saturday Kitchen at the end of the month. Michel Roux Jr will present the first programme after Martin's departure on April 2, while Rick Stein, Masterchef judge John Torode and Lorraine Pascale are among the famous names set to take the helm over the next few weeks. Chinese food specialist Ching-He Huang, Italian restaurateur Gennaro Contaldo and British chef Matt Tebbutt have also been confirmed as guest presenters. Scroll down for video James Martin, pictured, will be replaced by a series of guest hosts on leaving Saturday Kitchen next month The BBC has confirmed Michel Roux Jr, left, will be the first guest host, with Rick Stein, right, also lined up Former model turned chef Lorraine Pascale, pictured, said she was 'so excited' to guest host the show Roux Jr said: 'I've been a fan of the show for many years and can't wait to cook up some magic with some of the great chefs the show attracts.' Pascale added: 'I am so excited to be hosting Saturday Kitchen. I will miss sitting at home on the sofa in my pyjamas watching James Martin but so happy to be a part of the next chapter of this quintessential show.' Meanwhile, Torode said he was 'really excited to be part of the new Saturday Kitchen family'. Martin will present his last Saturday Kitchen on BBC One on March 26 after 10 years with the show. Chinese food specialist Ching-He Huang is another of the famous faces who will take on hosting duties Chef Gennaro Contaldo, who mentored Jamie Oliver in the 1990s, will host Saturday Kitchen later this year Matt Tebbutt, pictured right on Market Kitchen with Penny Smith, has appeared on Saturday Kitchen before and will return as one of the guest hosts The live cookery programme has become a hit with viewers since its inception in 2002, fronted by a then relatively unknown Gregg Wallace, followed by Antony Worrall Thompson. A BBC spokeswoman said Martin's last show would be 'packed with plenty of nostalgia, classic clips from James's tenure, and surprise appearances by some of the big name chefs who have made his 10 years so memorable'. A carer rifled through a 92-year-old woman's bag to steal 40 to pay for a Mother's Day meal - but was caught red-handed on a hidden camera. The pensioner's shocked niece watched footage streamed live from the clandestine device as Lorraine Cenci, 44, left the elderly victim on the toilet and took two 20 notes from her bag. Debi Riley, 52, and husband David watched from a car outside her aunt's north London home as the film was streamed from a camera that looked like a speaker. Cenci, of Enfield, north London, avoided jail when her 18-week prison sentence was suspended for 12 months at Highbury Corner Magistrates' Court. Mrs Riley and her husband acted like 'MI5' to trap the carer for SureCare, which the family pay up to 1,500 per month. Mother-of-three Cenci helped the vulnerable widow, who suffers from osteoporosis, onto the toilet on March 5. Lorraine Cenci pictured outside court yesterday The camera caught her picking up her handbag from next to her bedside cabinet and removing two 20 from an envelope inside. After watching on his phone as Cenci pocketed the cash, Mr Riley rung the police who arrested her. Mrs Riley who cares for her aunt, said: 'My aunt doesn't know about it and she's not going to know. She would never trust a carer again if she found out. It would absolutely mortify her. 'I knew it was going to be a lax sentence, that's why we have gone to the press to get as much exposure as we can. 'Care companies need to be more stringent with the staff they employ.' Mr Riley, a 57-year-old cabbie, added: 'When it's someone caring for the vulnerable they should be dealt with as strongly as possible. She should never be in a position of trust again. 'My heart bleeds for the people who haven't got anybody to do this.' The family set up the sting operation, hiding the camera on the bedside cabinet of the widow's home in Enfield, and even wrote down the notes' serial numbers. The court heard how Cenci justified the theft as a 'moment of madness' to fund a Mother's Day dinner. Sentencing Cenci, District Judge Julia Newton said: 'It was an abuse of trust on one of the most vulnerable members of society. 'This is an extremely serious offence. 'You have taken advantage of a situation involving one of the most vulnerable persons in society. You took advantage of the employment to pay for a meal.' Cenci is pictured on a hidden camera rifling through the pensioner's things at her home in north London The carer, 44, then goes through the vulnerable 92-year-old's bag unaware she was being watched live The family became suspicious when 210 went missing in three occasions starting in January and so they set up the camera. Penny Fergusson, for the prosecution, said: 'Her nephew became suspicious. He says over the last weeks money had been going missing from her purse. 'The victim's family set up CCTV in her home. 'On March 5 the defendant was seen on CCTV to take money from the purse of the victim. 'The police were called by the defendant's nephew. She was searched and the two 20 notes were found in her possession. The serial numbers matched.' Cenci, wearing gold hooped earrings and a black jacket, only spoke in court to confirm her details and to plead guilty to one count of theft by employee. Cenci proceeded to remove two 20 notes from the woman's purse, seen by her niece Debi Riley and her husband David after they set up a camera that looked like a speaker Highbury Corner Magistrates' Court heard Cenci, pictured pocketing the cash, said the theft was a 'moment of madness' to fund a Mother's Day dinner Parveen Kousar, in mitigation, said: 'It was a moment of madness. 'Her family had booked a table for a Mother's Day dinner. 'She wasn't in the position to pay for her own lunch. That was what she needed it for and why she committed this offence.' She also ordered for Cenci, who has lost her job, to carry out 80 hours unpaid work, pay back the 40 in compensation, pay 85 costs and an 80 victim surcharge. Mrs Riley added: 'We were like the MI5 trying to work out the right position for the camera.' Mrs Riley, pictured, set up a secret camera to snare her 92-year-old aunt's carer Lorraine Cenci, 44, stealing from the elderly woman's bag In a statement a SureCare said: 'We suspended the care worker in question as soon as we became aware of the allegation and subsequently dismissed her for gross misconduct. 'We carry out advanced Disclosure and Barring Service (a government service) checks on all prospective care workers. 'As soon as the allegation was made, we reported it to the local authority and the Care Quality Commission and appropriate information was provided to the DBS. George Osborne today refused to apologise for planning more than 4billion in cuts to disability benefits in last week's Budget - only to drop the plan 48 hours later. The Chancellor fought his corner as he insisted he would 'listen and learn' from Budget mistakes but struck an aggressive tone as he addressed MPs on his 'botched' plans. The embarrassing U-turn on disability cuts has left a 4.4billion black hole in his Budget plans but he insisted he would not break the Tory manifesto pledge by targeting benefits handed to wealthy pensioners to plug the shortfall. Chancellor George Osborne struck an aggressive tone today as he faced MPs for the first time since dropping a major part of his Budget Mr Osborne blasted Labour for ruining the public finances but dodged repeated calls for him to apologise for the about-turn on plans to slash personal independence payments (PIP) handed to more than 600,000 disabled people who need help dressing, undressing or using the bathroom. The policy prompted the resignation of Iain Duncan Smith as work and pensions secretary and triggered days of bitter Tory infighting about the direction of the Government. Alternative cuts have not been identified - beyond a promise not to find them in the welfare budget - meaning MPs were asked to pass a Budget missing its biggest revenue raiser. Mr Osborne had faced calls from Tory MPs to make up the 4.4billion shortfall in the welfare bill by cutting the free bus passes, TV licences and winter fuel allowance given to all pensioners regardless of their income, but Mr Osborne ruled this out today. Labour has demanded Mr Osborne quit as Chancellor over the row. Mr Osborne conceded the debate over his eighth Budget had been 'lively' but insisted: 'Let's be clear: The key principles behind this Budget are if we are going to deliver a strong and compassionate society for the next generation we have to live within our means, we have to back business to create jobs. 'And we have to make sure work pays by putting more money into the pockets of working people. 'That is what we committed to in our manifesto, that is what the British people elected us to deliver, that is what this Budget does.' The Chancellor, seen today leaving Downing Street, took the rare step of leading a Budget debate amid claims he 'botched' the plans Mr Osborne said he was 'sorry' Mr Duncan Smith had resigned over the Budget measures and praised his 'achievements' in office. He said: 'The decisions we made to keep our economy secure are always difficult and where we don't get them right I have always been prepared to listen and learn.' As he attempted to get back on the front foot, Mr Osborne claimed his Budget did mean 'we are all in it together'. Mr Duncan Smith used the phrase in his explosive resignation letter last week in a furious attack on the Government for undermining social justice in Britain. Challenged to apologise by former shadow chancellor Chris Leslie, Mr Osborne said: 'Where we have made a mistake, where we have got things wrong, we listen and we learn - that's precisely what we have done. 'But where is the apology from the Labour Party?' Corbyn ally Diane Abbott dismissed noisy support for Mr Osborne on the Conservative benches as 'Tory boys' who want to get 'into NO 10 good books' Mr Osborne's speech was praised by Tory grandee Sir Nicholas Soames who reserved harsh criticism for shadow chancellor John McDonnell Mr Osborne refused to spell out where he would find alternative savings, insisting the Government would take its time and revise its welfare cap in light of the new forecasts at the autumn statement. In his reply, shadow chancellor John McDonnell blasted: 'Don't tell us we are all in this together'. He slammed the Chancellor's actions as those of 'the grubby, incompetent manipulations of a political chancer'. And turning to Mr Duncan Smith - ignored by Labour leader yesterday - Mr McDonnell said: 'I do not agree with a single policy he pursued - but I do not doubt his sincerity.' The exchanges turned angry as two Tory MPs linked Mr McDonnell's alleged support for the IRA to the Brussels attacks - prompting the Speaker to intervene. Tom Tugendhat, the Tory MP for Tonbridge, said: 'He stands with bombers who murdered my friends in N Ireland.' Earlier, Robert Chote, the head of the Officer for Budget Responsibility, said that following the decision to cancel the PIP cuts, the Government was now set to exceed its own welfare cap by 4 billion a year. Stephen Crabb, left, the new work and pensions secretary, arrived in Downing Street today for the first Cabinet meeting since Iain Duncan Smith resigned. Also seen today was Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond He told the Commons Treasury committee: 'Taking into account the loss of the money from PIP, you breach by about 4 billion in most years. 'It bobs up and down, but it is essentially 4 billion a year.' Mr Osborne faced charges yesterday that he was 'hiding' from MPs questions about his 'botched Budget' when he sent junior minister David Gauke to answer a Commons urgent question. His appearance today comes a day after Stephen Crabb, the new work and pensions secretary, confirmed the Government would not replace controversial cuts to the personal independence payment (PIP) with other welfare savings. Boris Johnson last night piled on the pressure by describing the policy as a 'mistake'. The policy, which would have raised 1.3billion a year by 2019/20, prompted the explosive resignation of Mr Duncan Smith on Friday night and its cancellation leaves a black hole in Mr Osborne's plans. The Cabinet met this morning for the first time since Mr Duncan Smith's resignation. The Chancellor praised the former work and pensions secretary, echoing David Cameron's attempt yesterday to call a truce on the Tory infighting. Environment Secretary Liz Truss, left, Home Secretary Theresa May, centre, and Defence Secretary Michael Fallon, right, were all seen in Downing Street today ahead of the Cabinet Mr Osborne said: 'As Conservatives, we know that those who suffer most when Britain loses control of its public finances and the economy crashes aren't the best off but the poorest and the most vulnerable. 'That's what's informed all we have done over the last six years and was at the heart of the manifesto we were elected to deliver. 'I'm sorry Iain Duncan Smith chose to leave the Government last week, and want to recognise his achievements in helping to make sure work pays, breaking the old cycles of welfare dependency and ensuring the most vulnerable in our society are protected. 'That's work this government will go on doing.' Mr Osborne added: 'We were elected by the British people a year ago on a manifesto that committed to economic security, controlling public spending and lower taxes for working people and business, precisely because we know that is how we deliver more opportunity in our society. That is the commitment we are delivering in this Budget. 'It is a Budget of a compassionate, one nation Conservative Government determined to deliver both social justice and economic security. 'It's a Budget that puts the next generation first.' Shadow chief secretary Seema Malhotra said Mr Osborne had to answer questions about what would fill the blackhole in his plans. She said: 'The Tories are in disarray over their unfair Budget. 'Vague promises of 'no plans' to make further welfare cuts are not good enough. Given the Tories' record of unfairness we need clear answers from George Osborne on who will pick up the bill for his failure and what this mess means for his already discredited fiscal rule.' Ministers have been asked 17 times how to fill the gap in the Budget left by the U-turn on personal independence payments. Boris Johnson appeared in Downing Street today as he was due to attend a meeting of the political cabinet in Downing Street London Mayor Mr Johnson last night piled the pressure on Mr Osborne by describing the PIP plans as a 'mistake'. He told ITV's The Agenda: 'I think I have already said very clearly that the Government has decided collectively and quite rightly to take the PIP aspect of it [the Budget] and try to sort it out. 'It's obvious from what's happened that it's admitted that it was a mistake.' Mr Osborne presented his Budget, pictured, less than a week ago but will today explain to MPs how to defend his plans Former Chancellor Ken Clarke today played down the row and told the BBC it was 'absurd' to reduce the Budget to right between Mr Osborne and Mr Duncan Smith. Mr Clarke said it was 'quite right' for spending to be higher now than it was when he was in No 11. But he said: 'I mean we have reached the astonishing position where we're paying out more to disabled people by benefits than the entire budget of the Ministry of Defence.' Mr Clarke added: 'What (Mr Osborne) should do is explain the underlying strategy about why we need to tackle the deficit. 'Creeping into the debate about policy is somehow we don't need to bother, that money is cheap, let's just borrow it, tax should be things that only go down and spending that only goes up and we don't challenge any of the powerful lobbies that exist nowadays.' Former Tory leader William Hague today slammed Mr Duncan Smith's resignation. Writing in the Telegraph, he said: 'Iain's resignation was very much the wrong thing to do, for himself, his work, his party and his country. 'It was wrong for him because whatever the outcome of the EU referendum in June, he could have moved to another department, leaving behind a distinguished record on welfare reform, and applied himself to new tasks in a government that needed him. 'It was wrong for his work because many of his essential changes, such as the hugely popular cap on welfare payments that had grown out of control, will now be defined in the minds of many by his parting attack on the Government's policies, rather than by his advocacy of those same policies for the last six years.' Mr Duncan Smith used a BBC interview on Sunday to claim Mr Osborne's Budget was 'deeply unfair' after resigning over cuts to disability benefits Former leader William Hague blasts Iain Duncan Smith for resigning over the Budget because it could hand May's elections to the left Lord Hague today criticised Iain Duncan Smith's decision to quit the Government William Hague today slammed Iain Duncan Smith as 'wrong' for quitting over the Budget. In his regular column for the Daily Telegraph, Lord Hague said his successor as Tory leader had trashed his own career and threatened his own welfare reforms. And he warned sparking the worst bout of Tory infighting since the dark days of John Major's government risked handing seats to the left at May's elections. The Tories are fighting to reclaim council seats across England and want to secure second place at the Scottish Parliament elections in May. The biggest prize would be retaining City Hall in London. Lord Hague said: 'Iain's resignation was very much the wrong thing to do, for himself, his work, his party and his country. 'It was wrong for him because whatever the outcome of the EU referendum in June, he could have moved to another department, leaving behind a distinguished record on welfare reform, and applied himself to new tasks in a government that needed him. 'It was wrong for his work because many of his essential changes, such as the hugely popular cap on welfare payments that had grown out of control, will now be defined in the minds of many by his parting attack on the Government's policies, rather than by his advocacy of those same policies for the last six years.' He added: 'Many party members will feel let down by such an unhelpful development so close to elections in Scotland, Wales and London. 'Resigning now is damaging not just to the Prime Minister and Chancellor, but also to every Conservative candidate for a seat in an assembly, or a police commissionership, or for Mayor of London. 'And these are the people to whom we ex-leaders have a special responsibility, because they tramped the streets for us when we needed them.' Sir Nicholas Soames today joined the criticism, dubbing Mr Duncan Smith's move a 'bloody nuisance'. He said: 'It's not dangerous, but it's a bloody nuisance, and it has destabilised an already fractious and not very well disciplined party, with a lot of new people to whom the concept of loyalty and sticking with it under fire appears to be in its infancy.' Ex-chancellor Ken Clarke under fire after backing cuts to 'astonishing' disability benefits bill Former chancellor Ken Clarke said the problem with the policy had been working out how to 'sell it' Tory grandee Ken Clarke was blasted as 'wholly disingenuous' today after he defended the now abandoned proposal to cut disability benefits. The former chancellor said Britain had reached the 'astonishing position' of spending more of disability benefits than it does on the Ministry of Defence. He told the BBC it was 'quite right' that spending had increased but defended the intention of the curbs to 'aids and appliances' in personal independence payments. Mr Clarke was slammed by shadow work and pensions secretary Owen Smith following the interview. The cuts have been cancelled following a furious row that led to the resignation of Iain Duncan Smith. His replacement Stephen Crabb last night warned government against forgetting the 'human' behind statistics. Mr Clarke told the BBC: 'They have been paying for extra costs for people who are not incurring extra costs. And they had a study on which it was based. 'When they announced it, even the Labour party did not create very much stir. But then came all the politics of the budget.' He added: If you had an appliance you were regarded as having extra cost. A very good civil servant called Paul Gray studied it and found 90 per cent of them didn't have extra cost. 'The actual underlying income of disabled people nowadays is quite rightly vastly higher than it was in my day as chancellor. Shadow work and pensions secretary Owen Smith said Mr Clarke was 'charming' but 'wholly disingenuous and inaccurate' about spending on disability benefits 'We've reached the astonishing position where we are paying out more to disabled people by benefit than the entire budget of the Ministry of Defence. 'But you see it is very difficult to change, they should have worked out how they were going to explain it, how they were going to sell it.' Mr Smith said: 'Ken Clarke charming and avuncular, as ever, on BBC Radio 4 but wholly disingenuous and inaccurate about PIP cuts and spending on disabled.' Advertisement A witness of the Brussels carnage has revealed the heat from the Metro after the explosion was so intense that people on the street were burned. Dafydd ab Iago, a journalist living in Brussels, gave a horrifying account of the scene after a train was blown up in one of a series of terror attacks. The 47-year-old from Abergavenny, South Wales, told The Sun: The heat was so intense that people on the street outside the Metro were burned. People were lying on the street but the dead werent there. There could be people hurt from all over Europe. His comments came as shocking footage emerged of children screaming as they were evacuated from a crowded carriage after another was blown up. Video from the smoke-filled tunnels beneath the city showed dozens of people calmly filing out of a carriage as the desperate cries of the youngest passengers echoed through the darkness. Strangers stopped to help each other on to the tracks as others held hands and walked away. The video is believed to have been taken moments after a bomb was detonated on a train at nearby Maelbeek station, just 400m from the EU's headquarters. Just over an hour earlier, two explosions killed at least 14 in a suicide attack on the Belgian capital's main airport. Brussels public transport authority has revealed that the three-carriage train at Maelbeek was ripped apart by a single explosion, with the bomb set off in its middle carriage. It is not known if it was a suicide attack or a planted bomb. Commuters on the Metro at the time described hearing a loud bang before they were evacuated from trains and forced to walk down smoke-filled tunnels and along the track to the closest safe station. The image below is being used by the Belgian media who claim this is the damage caused by the bomb at the Maelbeek Metro station in central Brussels yesterday morning. It has not been verified by the authorities but is being widely circulated on social media. Explosion: The image above is being used by the Belgian media who claim this is the damage caused by the bomb at the Maelbeek Metro station in central Brussels yesterday. It has not been verified by the authorities but is being widely circulated on social media. Victim: A bloodied commuter is given oxygen and treated for a head injury on the kerb outside the Metro station where a train was blown up Evacuation: Those on the tube network were evacuated from smoke-filled tunnels and walked along the tracks to the nearest station Survivors: Commuters on the Metro at the time described hearing a loud bang before they were evacuated from trains (pictured) Panic: Commuters in the Metro described a bang, and a rush of air that made their ears pop before they tore open the train doors and walked down the track to the closest station Aftermath: A man lies stricken on the pavement as survivors kiss in relief after surviving the bombing, which has killed at least ten Emergency: A victim is treated under a blanket to keep them warm next to a woman with a h4ead injury as rescue workers treat victims outside the Maelbeek underground station Bravery: People injured are treated, comforted and given water by the emergency services as they help the wounded Emergency: Victims of the Brussels Metro bombing are treated on the pavement outside the station - yards from the EU's main buildings Lockdown: Rue de la Loi, which runs outside the station, is sealed off by police and the emergency services in the wake of the 9.19am attack Destruction: Bricks on the walls of a nearby car park were reduced to rubble by the force of the explosion in the Metro station A witness said: We left Maelbeek station towards the centre at around 9.07, 9.10, when we felt an explosion which appeared to come from the front of the train. TIMELINE OF TERROR: HOW THREE BOMB BLASTS ROCKED BRUSSELS 8am: Two explosions rock Zaventem Airport killing 14 people near the check-in desks 8am onwards: Terrified passengers seen streaming out of the terminal building in Brussels while flights are diverted to other airports 8.30am: Witnesses describe blasts so powerful that victims were thrown in to the air 9.19am: A third bomb blast rips through Maalbeek Metro station killing 20 more people 9.23am: Eurostar services in and out of Brussels are suspended 11am: Belgian prosecutors Fredere Van Leeuw confirmed that the three explosions were terror attacks 11am: Two suspects arrested one mile away from Metro Station blast 12pm: A Kalashnikov and unexploded suicide bomb vest are found in the rubble at the airport Advertisement The lights went off, there was panic given what happened at Brussels airport. The doors of the train were forced open to get off the train. There was a lot of smoke. We left via Maelbeek station. The glass doors were blown out. The explosion must have been enormous. Emergency services at the scene were carrying the dead and injured out of the station on stretchers. Alexandre Brans, 32, who was wiping blood from his face, said: 'The metro was leaving Maelbeek station when there was a really loud explosion. It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the metro.' Ten people are said to have been killed at the Metro bombing at 9.19am. Brussels resident Shigeo Sugimoto said he was one stop away from where the metro was hit and heard people shouting. He wrote on Facebook: 'I am fine !! But i was in the metro when suddenly some one start shouting 'explosions!!! Evacuation!!! 'Ouch!!! I was just one station ahead before when explosion happened !!!!!!!!' He posted pictures showing cars and people standing in the road and wrote: 'Maerbeek (sic) now apocalypse!!!' Mr Sugimoto said he saw a man with blood on his face in the vicinity of Maelbeek station in the EU quarter, near the European Commission's main building. He was at Arts-Loi station, one ahead of Maelbeek, and told the Press Association: 'On the ground, there were already people walking every direction to distance (themselves) from metro and the Belgian army were there trying to make people calm. 'I saw a guy, blood over his face, dragged by another person. Then police start blocking the street and I could only see ambulances go and come.' Evan Lamos was among the thousands of commuters on tube trains yesterday morning when the network was attacked. He was on two stops away from Maelbeek and the passengers on his train were evacuated from the carriages into a smoke-filled tunnel and then walked along the tracks to the exit at the nearest station. He said: 'There was a dull thud. We felt a blast of air and my ears popped shortly afterwards. The Metro stopped immediately'. Rescue effort: A Maelbeek victim is carried on to a stretcher as Brussels is hit by a string of bombings Terror attack: The second bombing in Brussels yesterday hit Maelbeek station - where the injured lay stricken on the pavement The walls of a nearby car park were reduced to rubble after a bomb was detonated on an underground carriage at Maelbeek station Mr Lamos was told that there was 'an incident on the line', suggesting that a train may have been bombed. Ian McCafferty was on the Metro when the explosion took place in Maelbeek. He told Sky News: 'I was getting off at the station before Maelbeek and we heard a very loud thud. The stations are much closer together than in London so we heard it clearly. 'Panic set in and people rushed off the train. We ran to the stairs and were met by soldiers who quickly evacuated the station'. Maelbeek is the station that most EU workers use daily. The European Commission's vice-president Kristalina Georgieva said meetings were cancelled and urged people to 'stay home or inside buildings'. The metro station is close to the commission's Berlaymont headquarters, the European Parliament and the European Council's Justus Lipsius building in the Belgian capital. Ms Georgieva said on Twitter: 'Following situation in Brussels. EU institutions working together to ensure security of staff& premises.Please stay home or inside buildings. 'All EU institutions are at alert level ORANGE - all meetings on premises and outside cancelled, access only for staff with badges.' Panic: A fire caused by one of the explosions in the terminal is tackled by airport staff with extinguishers surrounded by baggage and falling roof tiles Obliterated: Ceiling tiles and debris are littered across the floor of the terminal building after twins blast rocked the check-in area A police officer directs passengers in a smoke filled terminal at Brussels Airport after two explosions ripped through the terminal A terrified passenger cowers under a check-in desk moments after two explosions rocked Brussels Airport in a suicide bomb attack Passengers shield themselves under bags as smoke and debris fill the terminal in the moments after the twin blast at Brussels Airport Hero: A survivor carries an injured person across the departure hall next to a body in the moments after the double airport bombing Blast zone: The two bombs are believed to have gone off in these areas of the arrivals hall, as thousands were checking in for flights A European Council tweet said: 'Closely monitoring the situation. All meetings cancelled this morning. Priority to ensure safety of staff & visitors.' Witnesses described apocalyptic scenes with blood and 'dismembered bodies everywhere' after two blasts rocked the check-in area at Brussels Airport at 8am (7am GMT) in a suspected suicide bombing. There were reports of a firefight between police and the attackers who shouted in Arabic moments before detonating their bombs. An unexploded suicide vest was later found in the rubble and a Kalashnikov rifle beside the body of a dead terrorist. The blasts, which detonated near the American Airlines and Brussels Airlines check-in desks, sent shockwaves through the terminal building, shattering windows and knocking roof tiles off the ceiling as terrified passengers ran for their lives. The explosions have left countries worldwide reeling, with security placed on high alert, flights cancelled, Eurostar services suspended and France's border with Belgium shut down. The bombings come just a day after the Belgium Interior Minister warned of possible revenge attacks after the arrest of Paris massacre suspect Salah Abdeslam in the city on Friday. The attacks came just a day after a secret police dossier revealed there could be up to 90 'kamikazes' waiting to launch suicide bomb attacks in Europe after returning from Syria disguised as migrants. Speaking yesterday, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said: 'What we feared has happened.In this time of tragedy, this black moment for our country, I appeal to everyone to remain calm but also to show solidarity.' The British Foreign Office yesterday confirmed one Briton had died in the explosions and another UK citizen is understood to have been injured in the airport attack. Carnage: At least eleven people have died and several injured after two explosions rocked Brussels Airport in a suspected terror attack A soldier walks through debris after two explosion rocked a terminal building at Brussels Airport Injured passengers are covered in blood and dust after the explosions in the terminal building Hundreds of terrified passengers ran from the terminal, some of them covered in blood (left), after the blasts rocked the building at 8am The explosions come just a day after the Belgium Interior Minister warned of possible revenge attacks after the arrest of Paris massacre suspect Salah Abdeslam in the city last week. At the airport, shouts in Arabic were reportedly heard before the explosions which sent shockwaves through the terminal building, shattering windows, knocking roof tiles off the ceiling and sending terrified passengers running for their lives. Samir Derrouich, who works at a restaurant in the airport, told MailOnline: 'The two explosions were almost simultaneous. 'They were both at check in desk. One was close to the Starbucks. It was awful. There was just blood. It was like the apocalypse.' Photographs from inside the arrivals hall showed the floor covered in fallen tiles and dust as bloodied people hobbled out of the airport. Others injured were photographed lying on the floor. Video shows terrified passengers running for their lives out of the terminal. In the aftermath of the explosions at the airport, thousands of people waiting for flights yesterday morning were penned inside the terminal as police sealed off the shattered arrivals hall. Fire fighters who entered the shattered building are said to have found a third unexploded device. People already checked-in were then slowly evacuated through emergency exits but were told to leave all their hand luggage as police checked bags for more explosives. Evacuated air passengers are being ferried onto buses and are being driven to a 'crisis centre' away from the airport. Women and children are being moved first. A man lies injured on the floor after two explosions rocked the area near the American Airlines check-in desk Air stewardesses look shocked as they flee the terminal building in the wake of the suspected suicide bombing Pauline Deglume tweeted: 'My godfather is located at the airport and said he saw dismembered bodies everywhere.' Dries Valaert, 30, was waiting to get his boarding pass from a check in desk when the blast struck. He told MailOnline: 'There was a first blast and then ten seconds later a second explosion. It was a big big blast, the ceiling went down. It was just 30 metres from where I was. 'I saw people down on the ground and I just went running. I jumped over the security fences towards the departure gates as I thought it would be safer. My first intuition was to get out in case their were attackers with guns. I saw a woman around 18 years old with a hole in her hand with blood pouring out and a man with an injured ankle and two people down. There was lots of panic. People were running all over the place.' Mr Valaert, who was flying to a business meeting in Berlin, said he believed the bombs were hidden in suitcases that had just been checked in. He said: 'The explosions were just behind the service desks, they were blown towards us. To me it is the most realistic possibility. I don't think it was someone with a suicide vest.' Armed police in protective clothing combed the building for more wounded travellers and suspicious bags. All flights were being diverted from the airport yesterday morning as it remained on lockdown. Armed police have arrested two men and already have CCTV of one of the Brussels airport bombers including the moment he detonated his suicide belt, MailOnline can reveal. Every space in the city's airport is covered by four CCTV cameras, including the arrivals hall where at least 14 were killed and 35 were seriously injured. Maelbeek station's surveillance network is also being used to pinpoint the moment that 20 people were murdered and 55 were maimed 79 minutes later The Belgian Foreign Ministry has confirmed they believe some of the terrorists involved are 'still at large'. Minutes later two suspects were held at gunpoint at Brussels North railway a mile from Maelbeek subway. It is not yet known if they were linked to the bombings. A third suspect has been arrested on a train near Amsterdam and a suspect package at Gard du Nord in Paris delayed Eurostar services yesterday afternoon. Police are already looking at hours of CCTV footage before and after the explosions as they hunt for those behind the attacks. But security sources said yesterday they believe they do have video of one of the terrorists moments before he detonated one of three bombs. Surrounded: Two men on their knees with hands on their head are held in Brussels as the authorities Drama: Two men were pinned to the ground by armed police and special forces as the hunt for members of the terror cell behind yesterday's bombings in Brussels started Interventions: The arrests came as the authorities start to round up any people deemed a risk to the public, including here at Brussels North station - a mile from the Maelbeek bombing Across the border: A suspect with his hands up is arrested as he is taken off a train because of suspicious activity at Hoofddorp Station in Amsterdam There were also reports the Tihange nuclear power plant, around 90km from the capital, is being evacuated of all non-essential staff as Belgium raised security to its maximum level. Police and special forces are looking for known members of any terror cell who may be planning more attacks. They will also round up anyone who may pose a threat to the public, or acting suspicously, in an attempt to foil any more attacks. Special forces are also patrolling the streets in case of more bombings or marauding gunmen used to kill 131 people in at least five Paris attacks in November 13 last year. Britain and United States will already be playing a key role in trying to help the Belgian authorities work out who was behind the attacks. Both MI5 and the CIA have stations in Brussels and its teams have 'unique expertise' that will help trace those behind the bombings. The National Crime Agency, Britain's FBI, will also be in the city already because of the heightened terror threat. Tech specialists will be scanning the phone numbers, email addresses, IP addresses, GPS records and forums known to be used by terrorists - and tracing links to Britain and America. Armed presence: A soldier with his face covered guards a road near the Maalbeek subway station as they try to stop any further attacks Deployment: Scores of armed forces have flooded the streets of Brussels as suspects remain at large Since the Paris attacks, Scotland Yard has had officers in the French capital as well as in Brussels when it emerged the attackers were based in the Belgian capital. These British officers, and diplomats, will be helping with the investigation. Armed police have been deployed to airports, train stations, ports and border crossings around the world in the immediate aftermath of yesterday's suspected suicide attacks in Brussels. From New York to Moscow, security measures were stepped up at transport hubs across the globe with police and military personnel carrying out extra high-visibility patrols and additional checks. The border between France and Belgium was closed, Eurostar services in and out of Brussels were suspended and airlines to and from other destinations were warning passengers of potential disruption as the effects of yesterday morning's terror attacks were felt around the world. Train and bus stations, ports and road checkpoints were also put on high alert, with armed police on the streets in major global cities including London and New York, sniffer dogs deployed and extensive border checks put in place. London mayor Boris Johnson said there would be an increased security presence at transport hubs in the city, while the country's most senior counter-terrorism officer Mark Rowley said police forces across the UK had increased their presence at key locations as a precaution in the wake of the Brussels attacks. And in the US, the NYPD said it would be increasing security measures at mass transit points, bridges and tunnels, and other landmarks following yesterday's attacks. Police and soldiers carrying guns were also seen at airports in the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy, while in France - still shaken from the November attacks in Paris - officers remained on high alert. Troops have also been deployed other key locations across Brussels as Belgium raised its security level to 'maximum' in the wake of the attacks. The entire border between Belgium and France was placed on lock-down, and the Thalys train service - which travels between France, Belgium and the Netherlands - was halted in the wake of the explosions, the operator said. Dutch military police were carrying out additional high-visibility patrols at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam Armed officers make their way through the Eurostar terminal at St Pancras station in London. There was an increased security presence at transport hubs across the city Salah Abdeslam (left), one of the most wanted men in Europe, did plan to carry out a suicide bomb attack at the Stade de France. However, his lawyer claims the French prosecutors' statement alleging Abdeslam's involvement breached his client's confidentiality Armed police have been deployed to airports, train stations, ports and border crossings around the world in the immediate aftermath of today's suspected suicide attacks in Brussels. From New York to Moscow, security measures were stepped up at transport hubs across the globe with police and military personnel carrying out extra high-visibility patrols and additional checks. Flights to Belgium were suspended or diverted with the airport shut again tomorrow, the border between France and Belgium was closed and Eurostar services in and out of Brussels were halted after up to 34 people were killed in attacks on the city's airport and the Maelbeek Metro station. Train and bus stations, ports and road checkpoints were also put on high alert, with armed police on the streets in major global cities including London and New York, sniffer dogs deployed and extensive border checks put in place as the ripples from this morning's attacks were felt around the world. In Frankfurt, Germany: An armed policewoman on patrol in the city's airport as security measures were ramped up at transport hubs around the world In Amsterdam: Dutch military police were carrying out additional high-visibility patrols at Schiphol Airport In London: Armed officers make their way through the Eurostar terminal at St Pancras station. There was an increased security presence at transport hubs across the city Up to 14 people were killed in a blast in the Brussels Airport departure lounge, and a further 20 were feared to have died in another explosion at the Maelbeek Metro station, close to the EU headquarters. As passengers fled the smoking airport and the bomb-hit station, Belgian authorities shut down the airport, metro system, buses, trams and major railway stations in the capital - and the state of high alert was also apparent in other major cities. The entire airport complex was evacuated and trains to the airport were stopped. Passengers were taken to coaches from the terminal that would remove them to a secure area. Chief executive Arnaud Feist said the airport would be closed again tomorrow, when he will look at when it might reopen. 'Brussels airport has been shot in the heart,' he said. 'Wed like to thank the police and rescue services and the people present at the terminal. Id like to thank them from the bottom of my heart. 'There were more than 600 flights scheduled so except flights that left before 8 a.m., all flights are cancelled and flights will be cancelled tomorrow as well.' All three main long-distance rail stations in Brussels were also closed, and train services on the cross-channel tunnel from London to Brussels were suspended. Aftermath: Airports around Europe were on high alert today after two explosions shook Brussels airport (pictured) in a suspected suicide bombing A spokesman for British Prime Minister David Cameron said British citizens were advised to avoid all but essential travel to Brussels, in line with the advice issued by Belgium authorities. The UK's most senior counter-terrorism officer Mark Rowley said British police forces had increased their presence at key locations as a precaution in the wake of the Brussels attacks, while London mayor Boris Johnson said there would be an increased security presence at transport hubs in the city. The Home Office said that the UK's borders with Belgium and France was also being tightened, with increased searches of incoming vehicles including cars and vans, additional security checks at ports and on some flights, and sniffer dogs deployed at St Pancras and Dover. And in the US, the NYPD said it would be increasing security measures at mass transit points, bridges and tunnels, and other landmarks following today's attacks. Police and soldiers carrying guns were also seen at airports in the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy, while in France - still shaken from the November attacks in Paris - officers remained on high alert. Station blast: Around 90 minutes after the airport blasts, up to 20 people were killed when an explosion hit a Metro station (pictured) near the EU headquarters in the city centre in another suspected terror attack HIGH ALERT AROUND THE GLOBE AFTER BELGIAN ATTACKS Extra armed police on the streets, sniffer dogs and increased security checks at airports were just some of the measures brought in as the world reacted to this morning's attacks in Belgium. NEW YORK: Elite counter-terrorism reinforcements deployed to crowded areas and train stations. WASHINGTON DC: Additional K9 sweeps and patrols carried out as a 'precaution'. UK: Airports, including Heathrow, Gatwick, Glasgow and Manchester, are increasing security and Prime Minister David Cameron is convening the government's emergency COBRA committee. Eurostar trains between London and Brussels-Midi have been suspended. FRANCE: Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, said the country was reinforcing security at airports, train stations and on metro services, with an extra 1,600 additional police deployed. RUSSIA: Authorities to 're-evaluate security' at airports, although Russia's measures are already among some of the toughest across Europe. GERMANY: State rail system, Deutsche Bahn, halts high-speed service from Germany to Brussels with trains are now stopping at the border city of Aachen. Armed police on patrol in the country's airports. NETHERLANDS: Extra security measures including armed police have been put in place at the country's airports and borders. EGYPT: Top security officials have been asked to personally handle security checks inside airports and in outside areas like hotels and car parks. AUSTRIA: Extra police on the streets and at airports in Vienna and other major Austrian cities. SPAIN: The Interior Ministry said officials would meet later today to discuss the situation but that for the moment Spain was maintaining its Security Alert Level 4. GREECE: Police added additional security at airports, metro stations and embassies with uniformed and plain-clothed officers. Advertisement Troops have also been deployed other key locations across Brussels as Belgium raised its security level to 'maximum' in the wake of the attacks. The entire border between Belgium and France was placed on lock-down, and the Thalys train service - which travels between France, Belgium and the Netherlands - was halted in the wake of the explosions, the operator said. Witnesses described apocalyptic scenes with blood and 'dismembered bodies everywhere' after two blasts went off near the American Airlines and Brussels Airlines check-in desks at Brussels Airport at 8am (7am GMT) in a suspected suicide bombing. In France: French police patrol the road border between Belgium and France In France: French police controls near Estrun, which is around 40 miles from the border with Belgium Then 79 minutes later at 9.19am, a blast hit a Metro station just 400 metres from the EU headquarters in the city centre. At the airport, shouts in Arabic were heard before the explosions which sent shockwaves through the terminal building, shattering windows, knocking roof tiles off the ceiling and sending terrified passengers running for their lives. American Airlines confirmed that its planned flight from Brussels to Philadelphia in the US, which had been scheduled to depart at 9.40am had been cancelled in the wake of the blasts. A spokesman said: 'We are aware of an incident at the Brussels airport departure hall and are taking care of our customers, employees and contractors. At this time, all of our employees and contractors are accounted for with no reported injuries. 'American Airlines flight 751 has been cancelled for today. When operations at the airport resume, we will re-accommodate our customers.' In Rome, Italy: Police officers perform security checks outside Fiumicino Airport near Rome today In Rome: An Italian police dog sniffs passengers' luggage at the Leonardo Da Vinci airport in Fiumicino In Denmark: Armed police patrols were also being carried out at Copenhagen Airport this morning Eurostar, which links London with Brussels and Paris via the Channel Tunnel, said no trains are currently running to or from Brussels Midi station. Passengers were being advised to postpone their journeys. Services had been terminating at Lille in France, before the entire route was suspended - and the train company was looking into instead running a train service between London and Lille. A spokesman said: 'We have suspended all services to and from Brussels until further notice. We are looking at running a shuttle service between Lille and Brussels.' A spokesman for travel organisation Abta said British holidaymakers in Brussels should follow the instructions of the Belgian authorities, while those due to travel should contact their transport provider. In London: Travellers stand in a long queue at St Pancras, after all trains in and out of Brussels were suspended this morning In Germany: Two armed policewoman guard the gateway to the airport in Frankfurt The two explosions in Brussels Airport are thought to have happened happened close to the American Airlines and Brussels Airlines counters in the departures hall He added that although Belgium is a popular destination for UK visitors, March is 'one of the quieter months for leisure travel'. The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has updated its travel advice for Brussels. It issued a statement which read: 'You should stay away from crowded places and avoid public transport at this time.' British officials in the city have been given the same instructions, the FCO said, while the Metropolitan Police in London were appealing for any UK nationals in Brussels who may have had images of footage of the incidents to come forward to help with the investigation. Prime Minister David Cameron has called a meeting of the government's emergency COBRA committee, and said Britain would 'do everything we can to help'. WHAT TO DO IF YOU'RE IN BRUSSELS TODAY British travellers and holidaymakers in Brussels this morning were being advised to follow advice given by the Belgian authorities, as well as the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. The FCO has today updated its travel advice for Brussels. It issued a statement which read: 'You should stay away from crowded places and avoid public transport at this time.' Travel organisation Abta advised people to follow the FCO guidelines. Facebook has also activated its 'safety check' system to help people check on friends and loved ones in the aftermath of the attacks in Brussels. The Belgian Crisis Centre has given the Belgian telephone number 0032 2753 7300 for concerned family or friends. Concerned British nationals can also call the FCO on 020 7008 0000. Advertisement Britain's official terrorist threat level stands at 'severe', the second-highest level on a five-point scale, meaning an attack is highly likely. All flights between the UK and the main airport in Brussels have been cancelled for the rest of today, and Brussels Airlines cancelled 25 flights between UK airports - Heathrow, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol and Edinburgh - and Brussels. Eight flights between Heathrow and Brussels were cancelled by British Airways. In London, police were carrying out extra patrols of airports, and advising passengers to check with their airlines before travelling. A Gatwick spokesman said: 'The safety of passengers and staff at Gatwick is the airport's absolute priority. As a result of the terrible incidents in Brussels, we have increased our security presence and patrols around the airport.' Similar steps were being taken at other airports, including Heathrow, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Manchester, and Heathrow was advising passengers to check their flight status with their airline. Aeroports de Paris, which operates the Charles De Gaulle and Orly airports, said they were both operating as normal - but that extra security measures brought in following the terror attacks on the city in November were still in place and passengers should continue to allow an extra hour for checks. France's civil aviation authority said five international flights headed for Brussels had been diverted to French airports. Top French security official, Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, said the country was reinforcing security at airports, train stations and on metro services, and immediately increased its vigilance after the Belgian attacks. Major stations remained open but police were patrolling in the city's Gare du Nord, from where Eurostar operates trains to London and Brussels. France has been on the highest alert since the November 13 attacks in Paris that left 130 dead. In London: Armed police officers patrol Heathrow Airport's Terminal Five today Dutch anti-terrorism services NCTV said they were raising airport security and tightening southern border controls, but that the threat level in the Netherlands was unchanged at 'substantial'. 'We are taking extra security measures as a precaution,' the Dutch service said in an online statement, notably stepping up police patrols at Amsterdam's Schiphol international airport, Rotterdam and Eindhoven. Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov said authorities will re-evaluate security at Russian airports. In 2011, a suicide bombing at a Moscow airport killed 37 and injured many more. Frank Brehany, consumer director of holiday consumer watchdog www.holidaytravelwatch.com said anyone travelling today should expect to see a heightened sense of police visibility and security measures. 'We are all used to seeing armed police and military working around airports and I think this will be much more evident today,' he told MailOnline. 'It's a consequence of the times we live in and most reasonable travellers and holidaymakers will accept this sadly - although with a heavy heart. In Rome: An armed police officer stands guard at the Fiumicino Airport today In Rome: Many airports have stepped up their security today with extra police patrols taking place 'It's a sign of the times we live in and until such time these issues are resolves this will be something we have to live with.' Mr Brehany said that British travellers in Brussels today should follow advice given to them both by local authorities and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, as well as letting people know they are safe. 'If you have been caught up in any issues, if you are at the airport it is imperative you contact the British Embassy in Belgium to let them know if you are okay, or if you have been injured to let them know where you are.' 'There may be anxious relatives who will be ringing the consular service in Brussels.' He said that passengers travelling around the world today should be aware that they may face disruption such as cancellations and delays, but said those in airports outside of Brussels should still expect to be looked after by their airlines. 'It's one of those thorny issues because most people's thoughts are not on consumer rights at a time like this - but they do still have consumer rights,' he said. In London: Armed police stand guard at Downing Street as Prime Minister David Cameron chaired an emergency meeting of the COBRA committee In London: An armed officer carries out a patrol in Westminster. Britain's official terrorist threat level stands at 'severe', the second-highest level on a five-point scale, meaning an attack is highly likely 'I don't think anyone would dispute that these are extraordinary circumstances, but airlines are still obliged to provide passengers with the care they are entitled to. 'Compensation is a more difficult subject - there will be disruption around Europe, and that could be down to air traffic control in a situation like this. This is akin to an act of God or a force majeure and airlines and passengers weren't to know something like this was coming.' Security services have been on a high state of alert across western Europe for fear of militant attacks backed by Islamic State, which claimed responsibility for November's Paris attack. CALL FOR MORE BEHAVIOURAL DETECTION OFFICERS AT AIRPORTS More security officers trained in spotting unusual behaviour should be deployed at airports following the explosions in Brussels, an expert has said. Matthew Finn, managing director of aviation security consultants Augmentiq, insisted 'we cannot look at aviation security as just the screening checkpoint', and called for authorities to take a 'holistic view' to combat the threat of further incidents. Mr Finn said that airports in the UK, the US and Switzerland are using behavioural detection officers in a bid to spot potential attackers. 'They can patrol the vulnerable areas land-side, looking at how people are conducting themselves to see if there's anything that doesn't look quite right.' He also called for security agencies to 'get better at using CCTV' because 'we can't put people everywhere'. Advertisement While most European airports are known for stringent screening procedures of passengers and their baggage, that typically takes place only once passengers have checked in and are heading to the departure gates. Following an attempted ramraid attack at Glasgow Airport in 2007, several airports stepped up security at entrances by altering the pick-up and drop-off zones to prevent private cars getting too close to terminal buildings. Raffaello Pantucci, an international security expert for the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) said attacks on airport usually suggest an international terrorism plot, as they are high profile targets which can undermine global security. However, he said it would not surprise him if today's blasts were linked to the arrest last week of he arrest of Salah Abdeslam, the quartermaster for the Paris massacres. 'At this point, there has not been a claim of responsibility,' he said. 'An airport usually suggests international terrorism, but it would not surprise me if it was linked with the wider community around that network.' On the issue of airport security, he said: 'Most airports you cannot get in without layers of security. 'They have long been targets and they are quite hard targets. The reality is, they are also high profile targets. 'If you can launch an attack there, you are striking at the international border and getting a lot of attention. 'If you attack that, you undermine the global security.' But he said more security measures could be rolled out at European airports, pointing to countries which have been afflicted by terrorism, like Pakistan. He said: 'There is also more you can do. You can push out more security. 'In international airports, the security really starts a lot earlier, such as when people come to the car park. Australian authorities are 'urgently' trying to find out whether any citizens have been killed or injured in the Brussels terror attacks and issued a stark warning not to travel to Belgium. At least 26 people have been killed and more than 50 others injured in Belgium's capital after a series of blasts struck the city's airport and a metro station near the Australian Embassy. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has offered the 'thoughts, prayers and solidarity' of the Australian people to those affected by the deadly explosions. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop condemned the series of 'coordinated terror attacks' and confirmed that all 35 diplomatic staff are safe. Australia is 'urgently seeking to determine' if any citizens have been killed or injured in Brussels bombing attacks, pictured is the destruction at Brussels Airport At least 13 people have died and up to 50 injured after two explosions rocked Brussels Airport in a suspected suicide bombing on Tuesday morning An injured and bloodied man was seen lying in the airport after a series of blasts on Tuesday morning She revealed that the government has upgraded its travel advice for Belgium from 'a high degree of caution' to 'reconsider your need to travel'. 'The Australian Government condemns the coordinated terror attacks in Belgium. Our thoughts and sympathies are with the people of Belgium,' she said. 'The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade is urgently seeking to determine whether any Australians have been affected. 'I understand Belgian authorities have activated their emergency plan in response to these attacks and increased the national threat level to its maximum level. 'We have upgraded our travel advice for Belgium to advise Australian travellers to reconsider their need to travel. Australians in Brussels should remain attentive to their surroundings, avoid affected areas and follow the instructions of local authorities. 'I have spoken with our Ambassador Dr Mark Higgie for an assessment of the situation and confirmation that our Embassy staff and their families are safe. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull tweeted saying: 'Deeply concerned by the attacks in Brussels. Australians' thoughts, prayers & solidarity are with the people of Belgium.' Julie Bishop has condemned the series of 'coordinated terror attacks' in Brussels and said authorities are 'urgently' trying to find out if any Australians have been killed or injured Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull also tweeted saying: 'Deeply concerned by the attacks in Brussels. Australians' thoughts, prayers & solidarity are with the people of Belgium' At least 23 people have been killed and dozens injured in Belgium's capital after a series of blasts struck the city's airport and a metro station (pictured) near the Australian Embassy Labor leader Bill Shorten tweeted: 'These are shocking and distressing events unfolding in Brussels. Australian hearts go out to all those who live in this great city.' Australian airports have confirmed that they have consulted Federal Police following the shocking attacks - but said any increased security measures would be a matter for the Federal Government. The Australian Embassy in Brussels has said it is 'closely monitoring' the situation, but so far it is not aware of any Australians caught up in the suspected suicide bombings. Witnesses described apocalyptic scenes with blood and 'dismembered bodies everywhere' after two blasts rocked the American Airlines check-in desk at Brussels Airport at 7am GMT. Australian businessman Peter Presnell live tweeted the terrifying moment his plane landed at Brussels Airport exactly when the deadly explosions went off. He said the plane was 'calm' and that they disembarked around an hour later before being taken to a remote hangar with hundreds of other passengers. 'Explosion at Brussels airport just as we landed,' he tweeted at around 8am local time. Australian exchange student Mia Egerton-Warburton (left), who flew into Brussels on Monday night, said her group had been warned to stay indoors. Peter Presnell (right) live-tweeted the blasts A woman can be seen diving for cover after the explosions at Brussels Airport on Tuesday The blown out windows of Zaventem airport are seen after a deadly attack in Brussels Dozens of emergency service workers could be seen surveying the damage and helping the injured people Around 90 minutes after the airport attack, ten were killed when an explosion hit Maelbeek metro station - which is just a 10 minute walk from the Australian Embassy. The explosions come just a day after the Belgium Interior Minister warned of possible revenge attacks after the arrest of Paris massacre suspect Salah Abdeslam in the city last week. At the airport, shouts in Arabic were reportedly heard before the explosions which sent shockwaves through the terminal building, shattering windows, knocking roof tiles off the ceiling and sending terrified passengers running for their lives. Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade upgraded its travel advice for Belgium from 'a high degree of caution' to 'reconsider your need to travel'. Its latest advice stated: 'Belgium has been subject to terrorist attacks. Belgium has increased its National Threat Level to Level 4 of 4. 'All Brussels public transport (buses, trams, metro) has been shut down. We recommend you reconsider your need to travel to Belgium at this time. 'Australians in Belgium should remain attentive to their surroundings, avoid affected areas and follow the instructions of local authorities, including staying where they are and remaining indoors. Australian airports confirmed they were being guided by the AFP but any increased security measures would be a matter for the Federal Government. Australian exchange student Mia Egerton-Warburton, who flew into Brussels on Monday night, said her group had been warned to stay indoors and that all public transport had been shut down. At the airport, shouts in Arabic were reportedly heard before the explosions which sent shockwaves through the terminal building, shattering windows and knocking roof tiles off the ceiling Around 90 minutes after the airport attack, ten were killed when an explosion hit Maelbeek metro station - which is just a 10 minute walk from the Australian Embassy 'We're feeling a bit shocked, confused and wary of possible further attacks,' the 20-year-old told AAP. 'To give you an insight into how tense it is, a car alarm just went off in the street outside our room and literally everyone was looking out their windows. People stopped walking.' The University of Western Australia student, who has been studying in the UK, said her group's plans for sightseeing had been cancelled and they would now leave Brussels on Wednesday. 'All our families are pretty panicked, basically telling us to get out of Belgium,' she said. 'We are too scared to go to the grocery store at the moment, so we are basically stuck inside hungry.' The city has gone into lockdown with people advised to stay inside and all flights and train services cancelled. No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but it comes four days after the arrest of Paris terror suspect Salah Abdeslam. A soldier walks through debris after two explosion rocked a terminal building at Brussels Airport Photographs from inside the arrivals hall at the airport showed the floor covered in fallen tiles and dust as bloodied people hobbled out of the airport. Others injured were photographed lying on the floor. Footage showed terrified passengers running for their lives out of the building. Firefighters who entered the terminal to search for survivors are said to have found a third unexploded device, while armed police in protective clothing combed the building for more wounded travellers and suspicious bags. In the aftermath, thousands of people waiting for flights this morning were penned inside the terminal as police sealed off the shattered arrivals hall. People already checked in were then slowly evacuated through emergency exits but were told to leave all their hand luggage as police checked bags for more explosives. Facebook has activated its safety check feature for Brussels, to allow people in the city to confirm they are safe. A Government official has been photographed in the street reading secret papers again - today with a document about securing the 'most sensitive communications'. The unknown civil servant was snapped on Whitehall heading toward today's Cabinet meeting. The document, which is marked 'official sensitive' and is a draft working paper. It discusses improvements to 'secret' and 'top secret' communications and talks about protection of the Armed Forces and the Ministry of Defence via 'cyber threat awareness, detection and reaction'. Anyone leaving No 10 Downing Street passes a notice pointing out photographers are allowed to take pictures of anyone in the street and urging them to cover their documents. Private papers were left on show by an official walking on Whitehall again this morning - this time discussing the security of Government communications The documents pictured today said the 'health and care system' posed 'unique challenges' for cyber security because of the 1.6million people working in 40,000 organisations all with access to different data. It said: 'The Government will set new data security standards for the health social care system, alongside a new consent/opt-outs model.' The paper said 'departments and the wider public sector' would be offered support to increase their resilience to a 'cyber attack'. It said: 'Departments will minimise the likelihood and impact of a cyber incident by implementing best practice as provided by the National Cyber Centre. 'Government will also ensure that it is able to respond effectively to cyber incidents through a programme of incident exercises and regular testing of Government networks.' The gaffe is the second caught by political photographer Steve Back this year. In January, an official in Downing Street was pictured with a document revealing details about an event on Syrian refugees due to take place in Davos. There has been a long line of ministers and civil servants walking past photographers camped in Downing Street with papers on show. Perhaps the most famous example of all was Cabinet Office Minister Oliver Letwin being photographed disposing of papers in St James Park. It was reported last year a new sign had been put up just inside the famous No 10 door warning people Downing Street was a 'public highway' frequently inhabited by press photographers. As recently as last year, a 'sensitive' document about the possible privatisation of Channel 4 was snapped as an unnamed official arrived in Downing Street. Hugh Powell, the deputy national security adviser, was caught with papers about Ukraine in 2014, left, while in 2009 then Labour MP Mike O'Brien was photographed showing off notes on his way into the energy department The revelation of the document caused embarrassment for the Government after ministers have repeatedly denied it is being considered, makes the case for 'extracting greater public value' from the channel 'focusing on privatisation options in particular.' The document, dated 24 September, reads: 'In your recent meeting with Matt Hancock you agreed that work should proceed to examine the options for extracting greater public value from the Channel 4 Corporation (C4C), focusing on privatisation options in particular, whilst protecting its ability to deliver against its remit. 'This submission outlines the options we propose to exploreincluding a recommendation that you write to C4 requesting that they open their books'. The Liberal Democrat business secretary Vince Cable was caught with his papers on show in November 2010. Were you caught up in the attacks? Call MailOnline on 0203 615 1875 or email anthony.joseph@mailonline.co.uk Witness reports seeing bodies thrown into the air as explosions went off They have told how ceiling collapsed after bombs ripped through terminal This is the shocking X-ray which shows a bolt inside a survivor of the Brussels attacks which left 34 people dead. The three-inch bolt is seen just inches from the heart of the patient at the Military Hospital in Neder-over-Heembeek in northern part of the Belgian capital. At least 34 people have been killed and many more have been left injured after a series of bombs blasted inside an airport terminal and Metro station. It has been reported that at least one of the bombs at Brussels Airport contained nails. The three-inch bolt is seen just inches from the heart of the patient at the Military Hospital in Neder-over-Heembeek in northern part of the Belgian capital Terrified passengers at Brussels Airport have told how there was 'just blood' everywhere after this morning's bomb blast and likened the horrific aftermath to 'the apocalypse'. Witnesses described gruesome scenes inside the terminal in the wake of the suspected suicide blast which has claimed the lives of at least 14 people and left 50 more injured. Blood-soaked passengers sprinted for their lives as smoke filled the area near the check in desks. Alphonse Youla, who was working on a stand putting security wrapping around suitcases, said: 'I heard a man shout some Arabic words then an explosion.. then a second explosion, a massive explosion, much bigger. 'It was a horror. I saw at least seven people dead. There was blood. People had lost legs. You could see their bodies but no legs.' One witness struggled to hold back tears as he described victims who had lost their legs lying in pools of blood in the airport's main hall. Air stewardesses look shocked as they flee the terminal building in the wake of the suspected suicide bombing Witness: Samir Derrouich (pictured left) described how 'there was just blood. It was like the apocalypse' while Dries Valaert (right) described a 'big, big blast' Terrified passengers at Brussels Airport have told how there 'just blood' everywhere and likened scenes after the bomb blast to the 'apocalypse' Others described seeing 'dismembered bodies everywhere' and the ceiling collapsing after two blasts rocked the building. Just 90 minutes later a blast hit a Metro in the Maelbeek area of Brussels claiming another 20 lives. Samir Derrouich, who works at a restaurant in the airport, said: 'The two explosions were almost simultaneous. They were both at check in desk. One was close to the Starbucks. It was awful. There was just blood. It was like the apocalypse.' Dries Valaert, 30, was waiting to get his boarding pass from a check in desk. He said: 'There was a first blast and then ten seconds later a second explosion. It was a big big blast, the ceiling went down. It was just 30 metres from where I was. I saw people down on the ground and I just went running. A person is carried to safety as troops helped the injured and secured the area after the explosions in the terminal building Devastated airport workers embrace in the aftermath of the attacks at Brussels Airport this morning Witnesses described horrific scenes inside the terminal in the wake of the suspected suicide blast Alphonse Youla (pictured), who was working on a stand putting security wrapping around suitcases, said he heard 'a man shout some Arabic words then an explosion' 'I jumped over the security fences towards the departure gates as I thought it would be safer. My first intuition was to get out in case their were attackers with guns. 'I saw a woman around 18 years old with a hole in her hand with blood pouring out and a man with an injured ankle and two people down. There was lots of panic. People were running all over the place.' Everything was coming down. Glassware. It was chaos it was unbelievable. It was the worst thing Witness Jef Versele Mr Valaert, who was flying to a business meeting in Berlin, said he believed the bombs were hidden in suitcases that had just been checked in. He said: 'The explosions were just behind the service desks, they were blown towards us. To me it is the most realistic possibility. I don't think it was someone with a sucide vest.' He said he did not hear anyone shout anything before the blasts. 'I saw two people dead. I looked around as I ran away and saw them lying there.' Martin Buxant tweeted how a witness had told him: 'We saw bodies go up in the air and then falling down heavily.' There were reports that shouts in Arabic were heard before the explosions and shots fired in the aftermath. Around 90 minutes later, ten were killed when an explosion hit a Metro station near the EU headquarters in the city centre in another suspected terror attack. An injured bombing survivor covered in bandages holds her hand to her face in the aftermath of the attacks Evacuated passengers are pictured leaving Brussels Airport, in Zaventem in the aftermath of the explosions Shocked passengers were seen in tears as they streamed out to the airport terminal this morning Carnage: At least eleven people have died and several injured after two explosions rocked Brussels Airport in a suspected terror attack Photographs from inside the arrivals hall showed the floor was covered in fallen roof tiles and dust as bloodied people hobbled out of the airport. Others injured were photographed lying on the floor. Video shows terrified passengers running for their lives out of the terminal. The explosions come just a day after the Belgium Interior Minister warned of possible revenge attacks after the arrest of Paris massacre suspect Salah Abdeslam in the city last week. Jef Versele, 40, from Ghent, Belgium, was at the airport when he heard the two explosions. 'I was on my way to check in and two bombs went off - two explosions,' he said. 'I didn't see anything. Everything was coming down. Glassware. It was chaos it was unbelievable. It was the worst thing.' He added: 'People were running away, there were lots of people on the ground. A lot of people are injured.' Survivors described horrific scenes inside the airport terminal as they emerged from the building A woman is pictured in tears after boarding a bus having survived the suspected terror attacks today A private security guard helps a wounded women outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels Firefighters search the terminal for explosives and survivors (left) as a man lies injured on the terminal floor Witnesses reported seeing victims lying in pools of their own blood as smoke filled the terminal Mr Versele was two or three storeys above the source of the explosion but he said many people around him were hurt. 'The bomb was coming from downstairs. It was going up through the roof. It was big. 'About 15 windows were just blown out from the entrance hall', he added Images on social media showed shattered windows and smoke rising from an airport building. People could be seen fleeing in terror in video footage shot from an airport car park. Footage from inside the building showed a scene of devastation with ceiling tiles strewn across the floor and suitcases abandoned. Passengers were led onto the tarmac and travellers were urged to stay away from the airport. Around 90 minutes later, ten were killed when an explosion hit a Metro station near the EU headquarters in the city centre in another suspected terror attack Passengers described seeing 'dismembered bodies everywhere' and the ceiling collapsing after two blasts rocked the building Broken windows seen at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels, Belgium, Shouts in Arabic were reportedly heard before the explosions which sent shockwaves through the terminal building, shattering windows He added: 'I saw two men face down with blood pouring out of their heads. The injuries were so awful. You cannot imagine. People were so injured. 'I did not see the man who shouted in Arabic as he was behind me. I just heard the words. I don't speak Arabic so I don't know what he said.' Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, told BFM television that the second, louder explosion brought down ceilings and ruptured pipes, mixing water with blood from victims. 'It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed,' he said. 'There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere.' 'We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene,' he said. There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere Passenger Zach Mouzoun Local taxi driver Philippe told Belgium website DH.be that he walked into the terminal to see what was going on and faced a 'pond of blood' and 'dismembered bodies'. He accused emergency services of taking too long to arrive at the scene. He said: 'It is total carelessness: not a police officer, not a paramedic for several long minutes - even though we are in a level three (terror alert). Very Belgian organisation.' Marc Noel, 63, was about to board a Delta flight to Atlanta, to return to his home in Raleigh, North Carolina. A Belgian native, Noel says he was in an airport shop buying automobile magazines was the first explosion occurred about 50 yards away. 'People were crying, shouting, children. It was a horrible experience,' he told AP. He said his decision to buy the magazines might have saved his life. 'I don't want to think about it, but I would probably have been in that place when the bomb went off.' Bart van Meele had planned to take a 30th birthday trip to Milan and had passed through security in the terminal when he heard an explosion. Two blasts detonated near check-in desks at Brussels Airport at 8am (7am GMT) in a suspected suicide bombing A soldier walks through debris after two explosion rocked a terminal building at Brussels Airport Passengers and airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem near Brussels Speaking from the airport, with sirens wailing in the background, the Apple worker, who was evacuated along with thousands of other people, said: 'One of the explosions I heard, and then afterwards people started running. It's OK, I'm very calm but it's a bit crazy. You never really think it would happen to you but it's OK.' Mr van Meele, who lives in Belgium but is from the Netherlands, added: 'We are all next to the airport, there are a lot of people here. I was inside the terminal, and then people started running very, very fast and then it was quiet for a time and then again they started running and it took a while before we got any information.' Sky News Middle East correspondent Alex Rossi, who was at the airport en route for Tel Aviv, told the channel people were 'dazed and shocked'. Mr Rossi, who had checked his luggage through the main baggage area and was at a departure gate, said he thought he was 'fairly close' to the explosions but he could not be sure. He told Sky News as he was being ushered out of the airport along with other passengers: 'We felt the walls of the building rock. Dust came down from the ceiling.' Meanwhile it also emerged today that Norwich City footballer Dieumerci Mbokani was 'unharmed but shaken' after being caught up in the terror attacks. The 30-year-old was at the airport when the blast rocked the terminal. He has since returned home to be with his family, the club said. Norwich City footballer Dieumerci Mbokani was 'unharmed but shaken' after being caught up in the terror attacks at Brussels Airport Brussels Airport, which handles serving 23.5 million passengers per year, told users on Twitter: 'There have been 2 explosions at the airport. Building is being evacuated. Don't come to the airport area. 'Don't come to the airport - airport is being evacuated. Avoid the airport area. Flights have been cancelled. 'All airport operations have been suspended until further notice. Follow the information on our website. 'Passengers that are still located in other areas in the airport are asked to remain calm and wait for further information.' Prime Minister David Cameron called a meeting of the Government's Cobra emergency committee and tweeted a message of support, saying: 'I am shocked and concerned by the events in Brussels. We will do everything we can to help.' Foreign secretary Philip Hammond, speaking in Downing Street, said: 'It's an ongoing incident. We are in contact with the Belgian authorities and we will give them every assistance we can.' Security has been increased at London Gatwick following the explosions in Brussels, an airport spokesman said today. Islamic militants are believed to have hacked to death a Christian convert during a knife attack on a busy street in northern Bangladesh. Hossain Ali was walking through Kurigram when at least two people jumped the 68-year-old victim. Eyewitnesses claim the men slashed Ali's neck. Police believe the victim was on his regular morning walk when the killers jumped out at him. Police in Bangladesh believe ISIS is responsible for the fatal attack on 68-year-old Hossain Ali in Kurigram Bangladesh's prime minister Sheikh Hasina claims ISIS does not have any influence in the country despite the organisation claiming several earlier attacks including the murder last week of a Shiite convert District police chief Tobarak Ullah said: 'He died on the spot. The attackers exploded a molotov cocktail to create panic and left the scene on a motorcycle.' Ullah said Ali had converted to Christianity from Islam in 1999 but he was not sure whether the deadly attack was carried out by Islamists or if there was another motive. 'He was not a pastor or reputed Christian. Also there were some disputes over his family properties,' Ullah said. Nobody has claimed responsibility for the killing. But in recent months militants claiming allegiance to ISIS have claimed responsibility for a series of attacks on converts and minorities including Shiite, Sufi and Ahmadi Muslims, Christians and Hindus. Last week the ISIS said it killed a Shiite convert from Sunni Islam in the southwestern town of Kaliganj. Hossain Ali, 69, was murdered while on his routine morning walk in the town of Kurigram, Bangladesh In January an alleged Christian convert was also murdered by the same group. Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina's government denied that ISIS has a presence in Bangladesh. It blames the banned homegrown militant group Jamayetul Mujahideen Bangladesh for the upsurge in deadly violence. Advertisement The United Nation is accusing Greece of turning migrant reception centres into 'detention facilities' in the wake of the new deal between the EU and Turkey to send back asylum seekers with no legitimate claims. The deal took effect on Sunday, but that has not stopped nearly 1,000 migrants and refugees from crossing the Mediterranean from Turkey to Greece since, and dozens were seen arriving at the port of Mytilene on Lesbos on Tuesday morning. As news began to spread of potential repatriation to Turkey, hundreds of migrants and refugees stuck in a makeshift camp in Idomeni, a village near the closed Greek-Macedonian border, organised a mass protest which saw several men set themselves on fire in desperation. The UN's refugee agency (UNHCR) has today said it refuses to 'be involved in returns or detention' of migrants from Greece, adding that the country is not prepared to implement the deal properly and may send refugees back to Turkey without properly assessing their asylum claims. A man runs after he tried to set himself on fire during a protest at a makeshift camp at the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idomeni in the wake of the EU's new deal with Turkey to send back asylum seekers with no legitimate claims Nowhere to run: The men who set themselves on fire were quickly surrounded by others who tried to stop the self-immolation Immolation: Two refugees set themselves on fire as a man on the left tries to put the fire out during a protest by refugees and migrants demanding the Greek-Macedonian border be opened, at a makeshift camp near the village of Idomeni, The UNHCR has today stopped all transports of new arrivals from the shores of the Greek islands to government registration centres, because the EU-Turkey deal means it can no longer guarantee 'freedom of movement' of migrants, a spokesperson said. 'Under the new provisions, these sites have now become detention facilities', the UNHCR said in a statement on Tuesday. 'Accordingly, and in line with our policy on opposing mandatory detention, we have suspended some of our activities at all closed centres on the islands,' it added. 'UNHCR is not a party to the EU-Turkey deal, nor will we be involved in returns or detention,' the agency said Tuesday, adding though that it would 'continue to assist the Greek authorities to develop an adequate reception capacity.' It pointed out that Greece currently 'does not have sufficient capacity on the islands for assessing asylum claims, nor the proper conditions to accommodate people decently and safely pending an examination of their cases.' The UN agency said 934 refugees and migrants had landed on Lesbos alone since the accord took effect. New arrivals: Migrants wait to be transferred to the Moria registration centre after arriving at the port of Mytilene on the Greek island of Lesbos, following a rescue operation by the Greek Coast Guard at open sea A Syrian refugee carries his daughter as they arrive at Mytilene on Lesbos, where UN has stopped their transports of migrants from ports and shorelines to a reception facility because they fear they may be sent back to Turkey without proper assessments Fears: The UNHCR is worried that Greece is not prepared to implement the EU-Turkey deal agreed last week Rescued: Dozens of migrants and refugees were seen arriving at the port of Mytilene on Lesbos, lining up to be taken to the Moria camp, after being saved by Greek Coast Guard overnight on Tuesday Risk: The UNHCR said the EU-Turkey deal means they can no longer guarantee 'freedom of movement' of migrants after they have been taken to the Moria registration centre Stay or go: The The EU-Turkey agreement is aimed at putting new arrivals with viable asylum claims on a fast-track for processing, but those who are turned down for EU asylum will be returned to Turkey The EU and Ankara struck a deal on Friday aiming to cut off the sea crossing from Turkey to the Greek islands that enabled 850,000 people to pour into Europe last year, many of them fleeing the brutal war in Syria. The agreement, under which all migrants landing on the Greek islands face being sent back to Turkey, went into effect early on Sunday. 'They are being held at a closed registration and temporary accommodation site in Moria on the east of the island,' it said, adding that the 880 others who arrived before Sunday were being hosted separately at the Kara Tepe centre, which is run by the local municipality and 'remains an open facility'. And starting already on Saturday, Greek authorities had begun accelerating the transfer to the mainland of some 8,000 refugees and migrants who had arrived on the islands before March 20, to separate them from those subject to return to Turkey. UNHCR said it had until now been supporting the so-called 'hotspots' where refugees and migrants were received, assisted and registered on the Greek islands. But it said it would not participate in closed centres. 'This includes provision of transport to and from these sites,' the agency said. It stressed though that it would 'maintain a presence to carry out protection monitoring to ensure that refugee and human rights standards are upheld, and to provide information on the rights and procedures to seek asylum.' 'UNHCR staff will also continue to be present at the shoreline and sea port to provide life-saving assistance,' it said. Refugees and migrants wait to board a bus to the Moria registration centre after arriving at the port of Mytilene A young refugee girl who was saved by the Greek Coast Guard overnight, walks covered with a blanket as she disembarks a Frontex patrol vessel at the port of Mytilene on Lesbos An Afghan migrant holds his son as they wait to be transferred to Moria after Greek Coast Guard picked up dozens of refugees and migrants on the Mediterranean The United Nation is accusing Greece of placing thousands of migrants and refugees arriving on its islands in detention centres A slogan reading 'Stop Deportation' is seen on a wall at the Moria registration centre on Lesbos island Meanwhile, the EU Commission has said the support staff needed to implement the EU-Turkey deal including hundreds of translators and migration officers would not start arriving on the Greek islands until next week. 'We are conscious of the difficulties,' EU Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas said in Brussels. 'And we are working 24-7 to make sure that everything that needs to be in place for this agreement to be implemented soon is happening.' Commission officials added that returns cannot start until Greece changes its law to recognize Turkey as a 'safe country' for asylum applications, meaning thousands will be stuck in camps. The EU-Turkey agreement clinched in Brussels last week is aimed at putting new arrivals in Greece seeking asylum on a fast-track for processing, but those who are turned down will be returned to Turkey. The deal also foresees the right to appeal any decision to transfer the individual back to Turkey. Migrants, meanwhile, continued to reach Greek islands in large numbers, as smugglers appeared to be opting for more overnight crossings and increasingly dangerous routes. As news began to spread of potential repatriation to Turkey, hundreds of migrants and refugees protested at the makeshift Idomeni camp at the Greek-Macedonian border, including this mother and her young children Migration restrictions along the so-called Balkan route, the main path for migrants and refugees from the Middle East to the EU, has left thousands of migrants trapped in Greece Migrants block a railway during the protest demanding the opening of the border between Greece and Macedonia in the northern Greek border station of Idomeni A migrant holds up a cardboard placard claiming animals live under better conditions than the migrants in the camp in Idomeni, Greece Young children block the railoroad during a protest held by migrants to call for the reopening of the borders at a makeshift camp at the Greek-Macedonian border near the village of Idomeni A woman cleans her tent at the Greek-Macedonian border, in Idomeni, Greece, in front of wall graffiti declaring the area 'Idomeni's Ghetto' Four people died Sunday while trying to reach Greece, two men off the island of Lesbos and two girls off the tiny islet of Ro, the coast guard said. More than 1,600 people made the crossing to Greece on Sunday, and 262 were rescued in five incidents after vessels sank or were in distress. 'We face an uphill effort. Implementation of this agreement will not be an easy issue,' Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said. He met in Athens with EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos and urged him to increase pressure on Turkey to crack down on smugglers. Migrants and refugees have been stranded in Greece since Austria and Balkan countries started border closures in recent weeks. The number stranded reached 50,000 on Monday, with some 12,000 still camped out on Greece's closed border with Macedonia. On the Greek mainland, army personnel expanded refugee shelters at sites in the central and northern parts of the country mostly at former army bases so migrants who traveled to the Greek islands before the agreement came into effect could be resettled. The blasts at Brussels airport and its metro station wounded scores more It comes after some 34 people were killed in several explosions in Belgium Anti-terrorist units will also be stationed at the World Trade Center There will be more officers on the Subway and the DC Metro Homeland Security have ramped up security at major U.S. airports and rail and transit stations around the country following the deadly blasts in Brussels. They have also considered bringing in extra checks for passengers coming in from Belgium. Belgium is one of 38 countries whose citizens generally do not need a visa to visit the U.S On Tuesday police across America have ramped up precautions at, tourist landmarks and mass transit points in the wake of the attacks that have left at least 34 people dead. Scroll down for video Police forces across America, including the NYPD, have ramped up security at airports, tourist landmarks and mass transit points in the wake of the deadly blasts in Brussels that left at least 28 people dead. New York National Guard members are pictured on patrol at Penn Station Amid fears the bombings are the actions of coordinated jihadis, forces including the NYPD and DC police have moved to increase their presence at key locations, including Penn Station in New York (pictured) Metro-North Railroad police officers patrol Grand Central Terminal, in New York, the busiest train station in the country, in the wake of the bombings Heavily-armed NYPD officers stand against maps at the Times Square Subway station as residents get on with their morning commute Officers carrying automatic weapons line up with their backs against the wall at the Times Square Subway Forces including the NYPD, DC police and Chicago PD have moved to increase their presence at key locations while others have urged residents to be more vigilant and report anything suspicious. Amtrak also confirmed more officers would be visible at their train stations around the nation. The Port Authority announced early on Tuesday morning they would be stepping up precautions at New York and New Jersey's three major airports - La Guardia, JFK and Newark - and will deploy heavy-weapon officers throughout terminal buildings. Anti-terrorist units will also be stationed at the World Trade Center and Grand Central Terminal - America's busiest train station. AIRPORTS, POLICE FORCES AND TRANSIT AUTHORITIES STEPPING UP SECURITY IN WAKE OF ATTACKS Atlanta Hartsield-Jackson International Airport Amtrak - Working with state, local and federal officials. Have also increased passengers Charlotte Mecklenburg Airport - North Carolina Chicago Police (CPD) Chicago Transit Authority - Airports and major train stations Los Angeles International Airport Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) - Boston and surrounding areas Massachusetts State Police Nashville International Airport Nassau County (NCPD) - Long Island NYPD Niagara Frontier Transportation Authority (NFTA) - Buffalo and Niagara Falls Transit Police controlling airports and trains Port Authroity - New York and New Jersey transit police in charge of aiports and PATH train stations Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority - Philadelphia and suburbs Toronto - Metrolinx and TTC Advertisement Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered the increases in security across New York on Tuesday morning. He also sent 400 more National Guardsmen to be stationed in the Big Apple. In a strongly-worded statement, he said: 'The senseless attacks that struck the people of Belgium earlier today have left us all stunned and heartbroken. 'These were acts of pure evil that have claimed the lives of people who were doing nothing more than going about their days. 'My heart grieves for all those who have been impacted, and as we learn more about these attacks, New York will continue to stand shoulder to shoulder with the international community against terrorism as the world has done for us in the past. 'And as we have seen time and again, when we are united, terror has never prevailed and never will. On behalf of all New Yorkers, I offer my thoughts and prayers to the people of Belgium on this tragic day. 'I have directed state law enforcement officials to step up security at high-profile locations around the state, including our airports, bridges, tunnels and mass transit systems. 'Public safety is paramount, and I want the people of this state to know that we are working with all local and federal partners, remaining vigilant and taking all necessary measures to keep New Yorkers safe.' Cuomo also directed One World Trade Center to be lit up in Red, Yellow and Black in solidarity with Belgium. Washington DC's Metro Transit police confirmed there would be more officers stationed across the subway system. There are also plans are underway to roll out a major show of police force at Reagan National Airport and Dulles International Airport, in the Washington area. Atlanta Hartsield-Jackson International Airport is now operating on heightened security alert. A spokeswoman for Los Angeles International Airport says at this time there are 'no specific threats' but as a precaution they have increased police visibility. Massachusetts State Police also said they were increasing their presence near transportation sites in the state, while the MBTA in Boston said more patrols will be stationed across the city. Chicago police said there is no indication the city is a target, but Interim Police Supt. John Escalante has ordered stepped up presence at airports and transportation sites within Chicago,' according to an email sent to CBS. SEPTA, the operators of Philadelphia's transport system, reminded passengers: 'See Something, Say Something.' In Canada, extra security was put in place at Toronto's major transit hubs, including Union Station. None of the forces said they had received a credible threat in the wake of the terrorists attacks. Two explosions shook Brussels airport and another hit its metro station in a suspected suicide bombing NBC News reporter Tom Winter tweeted: 'NYPD to ramp up security at mass transit points, bridges & tunnels, and other landmarks following today's attacks in Brussels.' President Obama spent under a minute in today's speech in Cuba addressing the terrorist attacks that happened this morning in Brussels. Obama said the 'thoughts and the prayers of the American people' are with the people of Belgium' today following the Brussels terrorist attacks that killed at least two dozen people today from Havana. 'We stand in solidarity with them in condemning these outrageous attacks against innocent people,' Obama said. 'We will do whatever is necessary to support our friend and ally Belgium in bringing to justice whoever is responsible and this is yet another reminder that the world must unite.' 'We must be together - regardless of nationality, or race, or faith - in fighting against the scourge of terrorism,' the president added. 'We can and we will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world. He was criticized by leading politicians, including Ted Cruz, for going to a baseball exhibition game in Havana this afternoon instead of flying home. Donald Trump also commented on the suicide bombings. 'Do you all remember how beautiful and safe a place Brussels was. Not anymore, it is from a different world! U.S. must be vigilant and smart!' wrote the Republican front-runner on Twitter. Trump then said in an interview on Fox News the US needs to 'shut the borders,' a statement he repeated later in the morning while appearing on Today. In that appearance he also told Matt Lauer he is a firm believer in using torture to get information from people behind attacks like the one in Brussels, stating; 'Waterboarding is fine.' New York Mayor Bill De Blasio said there will be an 'extraordinary' presence of police in New York in the coming days He also tweeted his support for Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel and added: 'We will not live in fear' A pair of New York City Police Transit officers patrol in New York the subway station in Times Square Metro-North Railroad police officers guide a K-9-unit through Grand Central Terminal as commuters make their way to work A pair of Metro-North Railroad Police officers patrol in New York's Grand Central Terminal A pair of New York City Police Transit officers patrol in New York the subway station in Times Square A NYPD officer pokes his head into a Subway carriage as part of heightened security checks across the city Cops stand around in the Subway as New Yorkers go about their daily commute. More officers have been stationed at transport hubs to increase 'visibility' Officers huddle together as passengers watch on amidst the heightened security A heavily-armed patrolman stands outside the Armed Forces recruiting center in Times Square Police reiterated the slogan seen on steps on the New York Subway around the country after the deadly attacks in Brussels A NYPD officer looks on as the mascots in Time Square stand in between tourists NYPD transit were under high alert along with police dogs at the 42nd street Times Square Subway station The Department of Homeland Security said they were 'closely monitoring the unfolding events' on Tuesday morning and would 'not hesitate' to up security levels Governor Andrew Cuomo ordered the increases in security across New York on Tuesday morning along with a strongly-worded statement. He also sent 400 more National Guardsmen to be stationed in the Big Apple Boston Mayor Marty Walsh also posted in solidarity with the people of Brussels Airports around the rest of the country were on high alert today after two explosions shook Brussels airport (pictured) in a suspected suicide bombing Brussels airport was shut down completely after this morning's blasts, with flights into Belgium being diverted elsewhere, and Eurostar services in and out of Brussels were suspended. The Thalys train service - which travels between France, Belgium and the Netherlands - has been halted in the wake of the explosions, the operator said. Eurostar said no trains are currently running to or from Brussels Midi station. Passengers were being advised to postpone their journeys. Services had been terminating at Lille in France, before the entire route was suspended - and the train company was looking into instead running a train service between London and Lille. Witnesses in Belgium described seeing 'dismembered bodies everywhere' after the blasts hit the American Airlines check-in desk at around 8am (7am GMT). There were reports that shouts in Arabic were heard before the explosions and shots fired in the aftermath. Around 90 minutes later, 10 people were killed when an explosion hit a Metro station near the EU headquarters in the city center in another suspected terror attack. American Airlines confirmed that its planned flight from Brussels to Philadelphia in the US, which had been scheduled to depart at 9.40am had been cancelled in the wake of the blasts. A spokesman said: 'We are aware of an incident at the Brussels airport departure hall and are taking care of our customers, employees and contractors. At this time, all of our employees and contractors are accounted for with no reported injuries. 'American Airlines flight 751 has been cancelled for today. When operations at the airport resume, we will re-accommodate our customers.' A spokesman said: 'We have suspended all services to and from Brussels until further notice. We are looking at running a shuttle service between Lille and Brussels.' A spokesman for travel organisation Abta said British holidaymakers in Brussels should follow the instructions of the Belgian authorities, while those due to travel should contact their transport provider. He added that although Belgium is a popular destination for UK visitors, March is 'one of the quieter months for leisure travel'. Around 90 minutes after the airport blasts, 10 people were killed when an explosion hit a Metro station (pictured) near the EU headquarters in the city centre in another suspected terror attack The Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) has updated its travel advice for Brussels. It issued a statement which read: 'You should stay away from crowded places and avoid public transport at this time.' British officials in the city have been given the same instructions, the FCO said. Prime Minister David Cameron has called a meeting of the government's emergency COBRA committee, and said Britain would 'do everything we can to help'. Britain's official terrorist threat level stands at 'severe', the second-highest level on a five-point scale, meaning an attack is highly likely. In London, police were carrying out extra patrols of airports, and advising passengers to check with their airlines before travelling. A Gatwick spokesman said: 'The safety of passengers and staff at Gatwick is the airport's absolute priority. As a result of the terrible incidents in Brussels, we have increased our security presence and patrols around the airport.' A spokesman for Heathrow Airport added: 'We take the safety and security of our passengers and colleagues very seriously. 'In the light of events in Brussels airport, we are working with the police at Heathrow who are providing a high visibility presence. We expect flights to Brussels Airport to be affected and ask passengers travelling there to check their flight status with their airline.' Aeroports de Paris, which operates the Charles De Gaulle and Orly airports, said they were both operating as normal - but that extra security measures brought in following the terror attacks on the city in November were still in place and passengers should continue to allow an extra hour for checks. The families of Katrina Dawson and Tori Johnson had to work out for themselves their loved ones had been killed in the deadly siege at Lindt Cafe in Martin Place, an inquest has revealed. Mr Johnson, the 34-year-old manager of the chocolate cafe in inner Sydney, was the first to be killed in the early hours of December 16 following the 16-hour siege. Lone wolf gunman Man Haron Monis ordered Mr Johnson to kneel in front of him and shot him in the back of the head execution style at 2.13am from 75cm away, the inquest has heard. Mrs Dawson, 38-year-old barrister and mother-of-three, had been shot in the crossfire that followed and was most likely killed by shrapnel from a NSW Police bullet. To their distress, the families had resorted to checking media coverage when the siege ended and worked out for themselves Mr Johnson and Mrs Dawson were lost when all others families were reunited. Scroll down for video Lindt Cafe manager Tori Johnson (left), 34, was shot in the back of the head execution style by lone wolf Man Haron Monis. Barrister and mother-of-three Katrina Dawson (right), 38, was killed in the crossfire between police snipers and the gunman The Dawson and Johnson families effectively deduced their loved ones had been killed by a process of elimination as they were the only ones remaining, counsel assisting the Coroner Sophie Callan told the inquest on Tuesday. The families of all hostages had been gathered at the NSW Supreme Court about 150 metres from the Lindt Cafe. Floral tributes for Sydney siege victims Katrina Dawson and Tori Johnson Theyd heard the gunfire but lack of police information meant the families were unsure about the welfare of their loved ones. The barrister and mother had been found in a pool of blood underneath chairs in a corner of the cafe. One of the two officers who fired a total of 22 shots at Monis confirmed Mrs Dawson still had a pulse when she was found, though paramedics said she was unresponsive, pale and having difficulty breathing. The 38-year-old died at 3.12am at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital in Camperdown. Three other hostages were also struck and injured by police bullets. The Dawson and Johnson families effectively deduced their loved ones had been killed by a process of elimination as they were the only ones remaining, counsel assisting the Coroner Sophie Callan told the inquest on Tuesday (Mrs Dawson left and Mr Johnson right) Monis was the only other person killed in the siege, and died instantly after at least two bullets or bullet fragments hit him in the head and 11 others hit his body. Mrs Dawson was most likely killed by shrapnel from a police bullet. She died shortly after He was reloading his gun when he was killed after firing two shots at snipers in the crossfire. No shot fired by Monis other than the one that killed Mr Johnson hit anyone. A total of 18 hostages had been held by Monis, though many escaped throughout the siege. The gunman fired his first shot at 2.03am when some hostages fled, before he executed Mr Johnson 10 minutes later when the cafe manager reached for his gun. It was those shots which triggered the emergency action plan when police stormed the building. Police had previously been following a contain and negotiate strategy, and planned to only enter if a hostage was killed or seriously injured. I expect questions will be asked of the relevant police commanders and tactical commanders about the appropriateness of setting the emergency action triggers as death or serious injury to a hostage or whether something less should have prompted the emergency action to be carried out, Ms Callan told the inquiry. The family of siege victim Katrina Dawson arrive at the inquest on Tuesday (from L-R her mother Jane Dawson, father Alexander Dawson, brother Sandy Dawson and sister-in-law Nikki Dawson) I expect questions will be asked of the relevant police commanders and tactical commanders about the appropriateness of setting the emergency action triggers as death or serious injury to a hostage or whether something less should have prompted the emergency action to be carried out, Ms Callan said On two occasions, senior police commanders had questioned whether they should storm the building. However, police were acting on advise Monis was carrying two to four kilograms of explosives powerful enough to instantly kill all hostages and officers on the scene. That claim later proved to be false. The gunman was in fact carrying a speaker with wires hanging out of his backpack. The inquest is being conducted at John Maddison Tower on Goulburn Street in central Sydney. Tori Johnson's mother Rosemary is pictured breaking her silence near the anniversary of her son's death Ms Johnson grieves with fellow mourners at the extensive floral tributes lay at Martin Place in the aftermath of the siege Tori Johnson's sister Camille Johnson speaks on the one-year anniversary of her brother's murder Katrina Dawson's father Alexander Dawson and sister-in-law Nikki Dawson leave the Lindt Cafe Siege inquest in Sydney on Tuesday Mrs Dawson's mother, brother and father arrive at the inquest on Tuesday Tori Johnson's father Ken at the inquest on Tuesday at John Maddison Tower on Goulburn Street in central Sydney A total of 18 hostages had been held by Monis, though many managed to escape throughout the siege A Brooklyn grand jury indicted Lin Li, 24, for leaving her baby daughter in a container filled with water, causing her to drown A 24-year-old mother has been formally charged with drowning her two-year-old daughter by forcing her head under water and then leaving the room. Lin Li, from Brooklyn, faces life imprisonment for murder, manslaughter and other charges. She was allegedly angry with her daughter, Melody Pheng, for wetting herself and so put her in the bath inside a storage container and let it fill up with water. Melody was found unconscious and unresponsive around 8.30pm on Sunday, March 13 when police officers went to the family's apartment in the Sunset Park neighbourhood. The child was taken to Maimonides Hospital, where she was pronounced dead. After an autopsy, the city's Office of the Chief Medical Examiner said on March 15 she had drowned and Li was then charged. Her 30-year-old father, whose name was not released, was trying to resuscitate the girl when police arrived. Melody's four-year-old brother was also inside the house and allegedly told authorities he heard her say, 'No mommy,' according to the New York Daily News. Neighbors said the parents moved into the second-floor apartment about six months ago, and the children, who had been living with grandparents in China, joined them early last month, the New York Times reported. Li's son was found with bruises around his neck and he was taken to hospital for observation. He has been placed in the custody of child protective services. A law-enforcement official said, in a video-taped interview, Li had admitted to pushing her daughter's head underwater in a basin and then leaving the room. The girl's father was asleep at the time of the incident, the official added. Li's lawyer Martin Marshak, told reporters his client, who does not speak English, is 'very upset and her husband...is very upset about having the family torn apart', the Wall Street Journal said. Li allegedly put the child's head under the water, removing her when she was unresponsive, the criminal complaint showed He said Li was in police custody from Sunday and had made a statement to police without any lawyer present. 'What did they do with her? Where did she go? What did she say? How much pressure was put on her to make a statement? I don't know', he said. 'That's what we have to find out and that may ultimately lead to the outcome of this case.' Global leaders have united to condemn this morning's deadly bomb attacks in Brussels, with David Cameron calling on the world to 'stand together' to defeat terrorism. The Prime Minister said he was 'shocked and concerned' by the 'appalling and savage' terror attacks in the Belgium capital, in which 34 people are feared to have died and 170 injured - including at least one Briton - and said Britain will 'do everything we can to help'. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel has described today's attacks as a 'black moment for our country', while Barack Obama and other world leaders have been quick to show their support. The US President said the 'world must unite... regardless of nationality or race or faith in fighting against the scourge of terrorism'. But the Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump used today's attacks in Brussels to repeat his call for the US to 'shut the borders,' condemning the 'different world' in Europe. Scroll down for video David Cameron (pictured in Downing Street this afternoon) sent his sympathies and condolences to the Belgium Prime Minister and said: 'We need to stand together against these appalling terrorists' US President Barack Obama (pictured giving a statement on his historic visit to Havana, Cuba today) said the 'world must unite' regardless of faith in the fight against terrorism 'I have friends who live in Brussels, they say the place is literally disintegrating,' Mr Trump said live on TV earlier today. And while the Kremlin has offered its condolences to Belgium and expressed solidarity after today's attack, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova sparked controversy when she said the the West's politics of 'double standards' had led to terrorist attacks. She also claimed that the frozen diplomatic relations between NATO and Russia have slowed the fight against terrorism. Landmarks around the world will light up with the colours of the Belgium flag tonight, with Downing Street flying the black, yellow and red-striped flag at half-mast over Downing Street and the French reflecting the flag on the Eiffel Tower tonight. French President Francois Hollande said the deadly blasts had struck at 'the whole of Europe', adding: 'This war against terrorism needs to be carried out with cold blood.' Angela Merkel's chief of staff Peter Altmaier said terrorists 'will never win,' and added that European values are 'much stronger than hate, violence and terror'. Pope Francis also slammed the 'blind violence' of a series of coordinated explosions in Brussels, offering his prayers for the victims. 'Pope Francis entrusts to God's mercy those killed, and shares through prayer the suffering of their relatives,' the Vatican's Secretary of State Pietro Parolin said in a telegram to Jozef De Kesel, the archbishop of Mechelen-Brussels. 'The Holy Father once again condemns the blind violence which causes so much suffering and, imploring the gift of peace from God, invokes divine blessings on the bereaved families and the Belgian people,' the telegram said. Francis expressed his 'deepest sympathy to the injured and their families, and all those who contribute to relief'. Security has been stepped up throughout the UK, with more armed police on patrol at the Eurostar terminal at St Pancras International Mr Michel appealed for 'everyone to remain calm but also to show solidarity' in the face of the 'blind, violent and cowardly' attacks as he told a press conference this morning: 'What we feared has happened'. European Union Council President Donald Tusk said he was appalled by the attacks - one of which took place at a metro station just yards from the EU's Brussels headquarters. 'These attacks mark another low by the terrorists in the service of hatred and violence,' said Mr Tusk, adding that the EU 'will fulfill its role to help Brussels, Belgium and Europe as a whole counter the terror threat which we are all facing.' Mr Obama interrupted his historic visit to Cuba to condemn the 'outrageous attacks'. 'We will do whatever is necessary to support our friend and ally Belgium to bring to justice those who are responsible,' the US President said in a statement in Havana today. 'This is just another example that the world must unite; we must be together regardless of nationality, or race or faith in fighting against the scourge of terrorism. 'We can and we will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world.' So far there is one British citizen confirmed as injured in the attacks. Downing Street said they are being treated but no further information was given. Donald Trump was swift to say today's attacks on Brussels was proof that the US needs to 'shut the borders', condemning the 'different world' in Europe At least 23 people have been killed after multiple attacks in Brussels. Above, emergency personnel tend to injured people at the Maelbeek metro station in the capital The remarks from US Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump undermined the messages of unity Donald Trump claims to be 'far more correct about terrorism than anybody - and it's not even close' Britain has stepped up police presence and security checks at key transport hubs but the terror threat remains at 'severe' - meaning a terrorist attack is 'highly likely', and France has deployed an extra 1,600 police officers to border crossings and air, sea and rail infrastructure. David Cameron (pictured with Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel at last week's EU summit) phone his Belgian counterpart to offer practical help with the investigation and identifying victims Mr Cameron offered the Belgian Prime Minister help by supporting police officers in the investigation and identification of victims. Condemning the attacks in a statement earlier today, he said: 'These are appalling and savage terrorist attacks and I've just spoken to the prime minister of Belgium to give our sympathies and our condolences to the Belgian people. 'We absolutely stand with them at this very difficult time. These were attacks in Belgium; they could just as well be attacks in Britain or in France or Germany or elsewhere in Europe. 'We need to stand together against these appalling terrorists and make sure they can never win. I've also made sure that we've offered every support to the Belgian security and policing and intelligence forces at this time.' Germany and the Netherlands also announced they had ramped up security measures at borders, airports and rail stations. 'Through the attacks in Brussels, the whole of Europe has been hit,' Mr Hollande said in a statement, urging the continent to take 'vital steps in the face of the seriousness of the threat'. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls added: 'We are at war. Over the past few months in Europe, we have endured several acts of war.' 'The thoughts and prayers of the American people are with the people of Belgium' @POTUS on the attacks in #Brussels https://t.co/TWxnIDfDqL The White House (@WhiteHouse) March 22, 2016 Landmarks around the world will light up with the colours of the Belgium flag tonight, with Downing Street flying the black, yellow and red-striped flag at half-mast over Downing Street (pictured) But the remarks from Mr Trump undermined the messages of unity. He took to Twitter to say: 'Do you all remember how beautiful and safe a place Brussels was. Not anymore, it is from a different world! U.S. must be vigilant and smart.' UKIP CONDEMNED FOR SAYING BRUSSELS ATTACKS PROVE WHY BRITAIN IS SAFER OUTSIDE THE EU David Cameron (pictured right) hit out at Nigel Farage (left) for saying today's attacks proved why Britain must leave the EU, saying it was 'not appropriate at this time to make any of those sorts of remarks' Ukip was condemned today for using today's deadly Brussels terror attacks to boost their argument for leaving the EU. Nigel Farage and other prominent figures in the party blamed the blasts in the Belgium capital - which has killed at least 34 people - on the EU's freedom of movement rules and accused Britain's pro-EU politicians of 'putting lives at risk for the sake of political union'. But David Cameron hit out at the remarks, saying it was 'not appropriate at this time to make any of those sorts of remarks'. Bookmakers viewed today's events in Brussels as making a Brexit more likely, with betting firms narrowing the odds on an 'Out' vote in June's referendum. Mr Farage responded to the Brussels attacks on Twitter by saying he was 'upset' and 'even more depressed for the future'. He also retweeted a post that branded Brussels as the 'jihadist capital of Europe... the Remainers dare to say we're safer in the EU'. The Ukip leader was called 'shameless Brexit scum' by British expats living on the continent. But Mike Hookem, Ukip's defence spokesman, said: 'What is shameless is putting lives at risk for the sake of political union.' He added: 'Cameron says we're safer in the EU. Well, I'm in the centre of the EU and it doesn't feel very safe. Ukip's London mayoral candidate Peter Whittle also linked the attacks on the EU referendum debate, telling LBC that today's events in Brussels 'has happened as a result of people going over borders and having free movement'. 'At the moment the way things stand, our membership of the EU means we actually have a problem with our security and that is appalling,' Mr Whittle told LBC radio. Michael Heaver, Mr Farage's spokesman, also condemned the EU's open border policy, writing on Twitter: 'Rampant jihadism combined with open borders is a cocktail for disaster. #Brexit'. Asked about the remarks from leading Ukip figures this afternoon, Mr Cameron said: 'I think it is not appropriate at this time to make any of those sorts of remarks. 'What we should be doing today is expressing our sympathies and condolences with the people of Belgium who have suffered this appalling terrorist attack. 'We in this country know what that feels like because of what we experienced in 7/7. We saw what happened in Paris. 'This is the latest terrorist outrage and today is a day for sympathy and condolence, for enhancing our own security, for working with our own colleagues and offering them every help we can and making sure we are very clear that we will never let these terrorists win.' Advertisement He even called in to a live debate on the Fox & Friends TV channel to pledge to close America's borders if he is elected President in November. 'Look at Brussels, look at Paris, look at so many cities that were great cities. Paris is almost as bad. Paris is no longer the City of Lights, Paris has a lot of problems. 'All you have to do is speak to the people who live there where the same thing has happened and they are in fear. The city is in fear. 'And we have to be smart in the United States,' he added, condemning US authorities for 'taking in people without any real documentation'. He later claimed: 'I have proven to be far more correct about terrorism than anybody - and it's not even close.' Mr Cameron this morning chaired the Government's emergency Cobra committee meeting to assess Britain's response to the latest attacks to hit a European capital, which came just four days after the capture of Paris attack suspect Salah Abdeslam. Today's Cobra meeting lasted around 40 minutes and decided to increase police presence at ports, airports, Tube stations and international railway stations with a particular focus on entry points on the east coast. Mr Cameron has offered Belgium authorities help with practical support in the investigation and the identification of victims. His spokeswoman also said the Government was looking at increasing the number of armed response units available in the event of an attack in the UK. It was attended by Mayor of London Boris Johnson, Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond, Home Secretary Theresa May, Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin, Culture Secretary John Whittingdale, national security agency officials, senior members of the intelligence agencies and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner. Ms May today urged the British public to 'remain alert but not alarmed' and confirmed the UK was not changing the terror threat from its current status of 'severe'. 'I'm aware of reports the terrorist group Daesh have claimed responsibility,' she told MPs during an appearance before the Home Affairs Committee. 'We stand together against the terrorists and they will not win. She added: 'I would like to reassure this committee and the public that while we will know more in the coming days and hours we are doing everything we can to help the Belgian authorities, to work with our international partners and of course to keep people in this country safe and secure.' Britain's former reviewer of terror laws Lord Carlile said today's attacks in Brussels highlighted the desperate need for more international co-operation on tackling terrorism. Mr Michel echoed the call for greater co-operation this morning, telling a press conference: 'We must face this challenge in solidarity, united, together'. Mayor of London Boris Johnson said there was no intelligence to suggest there was an imminent attack planned in the capital but said police had stepped up a presence at transport hubs across the capital 'purely for the purpose reassurance'. The Home Office announced this morning that enhanced security measures were being put in place at the UK-Belgium and UK-French borders. Border officials will carry out searches of all in-bound tourist vehicles, additional opening of car boots and transit vans and heightened border force presence at ports, additional security checks on flights and specialist search dogs have been deployed at key transport hubs, including at Kings Cross St. Pancras and at Dover. The government's emergency Cobra committee meeting assessed Britain's response to the attacks this morning. In a statement this afternoon Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn said: 'We stand in solidarity with the victims of these horrific attacks, their friends and families, and the men and women of the emergency services. 'We must defend our security and values in the face of such terrorist outrages, and refuse to be drawn into a cycle of violence and hatred. 'We take pride in our societies of diverse faiths, races and creeds and will not allow those who seek to divide us to succeed.' French President Francois Hollande (left) said Europe must unite to defeat the 'war against terrorism with cold blood' while the country's Prime Minister Manuel Valls (right) said Europe was 'at war' David Cameron said the world must stand firm in the face of terrorism, saying on Twitter: 'We will never let them win' Ukip used today's attacks in Brussels as a reason to quit the EU, with the party's leader Nigel Farage saying he was 'depressed for the future' and retweeted a message saying Brussels was the 'jihadist capital of Europe,' adding: 'And the Remainers dare to say we're safer in the EU! #Brexit' But Ukip used today's attacks in Brussels as a reason to quit the EU, with the party's leader Nigel Farage saying he was 'depressed for the future' and retweeted a message saying Brussels was the 'jihadist capital of Europe,' adding: 'And the Remainers dare to say we're safer in the EU! #Brexit'. Peter Whittle, Ukip's candidate for the London mayoral elections, sparked more anger by tweeting: 'We have terrorists coming into Europe and this is what happens when we have open borders.' 'DOUBLE STANDARDS' TO BLAME? While the Kremlin has offered its condolences to Belgium and expressed solidarity after today's attack, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova sparked controversy when she said the the West's politics of 'double standards' had led to terrorist attacks. She also claimed that the frozen diplomatic relations between NATO and Russia have slowed the fight against terrorism. While Russia and the United States have brokered a fragile peace agreement in Syria, the two countries still disagree on how to tackle terrorist threats posed by the Islamic State group. Prominent Russian lawmaker Alexei Pushkov also had a jab at Europe and NATO following the Brussels attacks. Pushkov later offered his condolences, but said 'it's time for Europe to understand where the genuine threat is coming from and join efforts with Russia.' Advertisement And Ukip's defence spokesman Mike Hookem sent out a statement minutes after the attack condemning the EU's open border policy as 'a threat to our security'. But Mr Cameron hit back at the remarks from Ukip, saying it was 'not appropriate' to make political points on a day when Britain should be 'expressing our sympathies and condolences with the people of Belgium who have suffered this appalling terrorist attack'. Speaking in Downing Street today, the Prime Minister added: 'We in this country know what that feels like because of what we experienced in 7/7. We saw what happened in Paris. 'This is the latest terrorist outrage and today is a day for sympathy and condolence, for enhancing our own security, for working with our own colleagues and offering them every help we can and making sure we are very clear that we will never let these terrorists win.' European capitals have been on high alert since November's Paris attacks, where 130 people were killed in multiple attacks across the French capital. It triggered efforts by European leaders to step up the sharing of information between security services. European countries have differing levels of cooperation between their police and security services, with security agencies in Belgium notoriously poor with sharing information with the country's police compared to Britain and France. The Brussels district of Molenbeek has emerged as a home of jihadis in Europe and police have carried out a number of raids on suspected terrorists in the area since the Paris attacks. Mayor of London Boris Johnson (pictured attending a meeting at Downing Street this morning) said there was no intelligence to suggest there was an imminent attack planned in the capital but said police had increased their presence at transport hubs across the capital Britain has stepped up police presence and security checks at key transport hubs such as Heathrow airport (pictured) but the terror threat remains at 'severe' - meaning a terrorist attack is 'highly likely' Fears also arose that jihadi terrorists could pose as refugees fleeing into Europe as hundreds of thousands of people flood into the continent from the Syrian civil war. But despite agreement between the main leaders such as Mr Cameron and French President Francois Hollande, EU officials watered down proposals that would have required systematic checking of all passports at the borders of the EU's passport-free zone. Britain's Home Secretary Theresa May backed plans to force airlines to collect personal data on everyone flying in and out of Europe but the proposals were blocked by EU officials MEPs also blocked plans backed by Britain's Home Secretary Theresa May to force airlines to collect personal data on everyone flying in and out of Europe in a bid to identify potential terror suspects and track their movements. British politicians united this morning in expressing their shock and concern at the unfolding events in Brussels. Mr Johnson said police were increasing their presence at key transport hubs but stressed that there was no intelligence to suggest an attack was imminent. The London Mayor, who will attend Downing Street's Cobra meeting this morning, said: 'Everybody obviously is very distressed at the scenes from Brussels, our thoughts are very much with the victims, their families in Belgium. 'But I want to stress that we have no intelligence that there is any imminent plan against this city. 'We are stepping up a presence at transport hubs and at major airports but that is purely for the purpose of reassurance and doesn't reflect any intelligence we have to London.' Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Mayor of London Boris Johnson, Scotland's First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and Lib Dem leader Tim Farron all took to Twitter to sympathise with the victims. The terror alert in all EU institutions has been set at its highest level and all meetings were cancelled. European Union staff who work in Brussels were told to 'stay at home or inside buildings' this morning following reports of explosions at a metro station close to the EU Commission's Berlaymont headquaters. Kristalina Georgieva, vice president of the European Commission, told staff on Twitter: 'All EU institutions are at alert level ORANGE - all meetings on premises and outside cancelled, access only for staff with badges.' Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond arrives at a meeting of the Government's emergency Cobra committee this morning to assess Britain's response to the Brussels attacks Britain remains on high alert for a terror threat although authorities have not raised it to the highest level despite November's Paris attacks and today's events in Brussels. The UK remains outside Europe's open border Schengen area, meaning it carries out systematic checks on all passengers entering the country - unlike across most of the continent. But authorities in Britain have warned that a terror attack is still highly likely and earlier this month a top police officer said ISIS might be planning a 'spectacular' attack in the UK, warning that the terror group wants to sow fear by committing massacres on the 'Western lifestyle'. Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley warned: 'In recent months we've seen a broadening of that, much more plans to attack Western lifestyle, and obviously the Paris attacks in November. More armed police are patrolling tourist destinations across London today, such as at Horse Guards Parade (pictured), following the deadly attacks in Brussels today 'Going from that narrow focus on police and military as symbols of the state to something much broader. And you see a terrorist group which has big ambitions for enormous and spectacular attacks, not just the types that we've seen foiled to date.' Mr Cameron has postponed planned meetings to chair a meeting of the emergency Cobra committee later this morning. Armed police officers are on high alert today, including outside the Houses of Parliament (pictured) as Britain responds to the Brussels attacks Taking to Twitter shortly after Brussels was hit this morning, the Prime Minister said: 'I will be chairing a COBRA meeting on the events in Brussels later this morning.' 'I am shocked and concerned by the events in Brussels. We will do everything we can to help.' Mayor of London Mr Johnson tweeted: 'Shocked and saddened by events in Brussels - the thoughts of Londoners are with the victims this morning.' Meanwhile all flights between the UK and the main airport in Brussels have been cancelled for the rest of today after attacks in the Belgian capital. Brussels Airport announced that it will be closed until Wednesday following two explosions in the departure hall. Brussels Airlines cancelled 25 flights between UK airports - Heathrow, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol and Edinburgh - and Brussels. Eight flights between Heathrow and Brussels were cancelled by British Airways. All Eurostar trains to and from Brussels were suspended, with services from London terminating in the French city of Lille. Mr Rowley said the Metropolitan Police has mobilised additional officers to carry out 'highly visible patrols' at key locations in London and said the number of officers deployed will be regularly assessed. He urged the public and businesses to be 'alert but not alarmed' and report anything suspicious to the confidential Anti-Terrorist Hotline on 0800 789 321. Police in Manchester also urged people to remain vigilant of any threats and said they are working closely with Manchester Airport to ensure the 'appropriate response is in place'. 'WE'RE HAVING PROBLEMS WITH THE MUSLIMS' DECLARES DONALD TRUMP AS HE SAYS BRUSSELS IS 'LITERALLY DISINTEGRATING' AFTER ATTACKS Donald Trump said today's attacks on Brussels proved why he was right to call for the US to 'shut the borders' as he claimed the Belgian capital was 'literally disintegrating' Today's attacks on Brussels are further proof that the West has 'problems with the Muslims,' Donald Trump has declared as he claimed the Belgian capital is 'literally disintegrating'. The Republican presidential candidate was swift to respond to the events in Brussels this morning, repeating his pledge to 'shut the borders' if he is elected to the Oval Office in November. He even phoned in to a live debate on the Fox & Friends TV channel to make his argument, suggesting that authorities should monitor mosques for terrorists. But Barack Obama sent out the opposite message, insisting now was a time the world must unite more than ever before. The US President interrupted his historic visit to Cuba to condemn the 'outrageous attacks' and said the Americans will 'do whatever is necessary to support our friend and ally Belgium to bring to justice those who are responsible'. 'This is just another example that the world must unite; we must be together regardless of nationality, or race or faith in fighting against the scourge of terrorism. 'We can and we will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world.' Barack Obama pictured talking with National Security Adviser Susan Rice on the phone with Homeland Security today) interrupted his historic visit to Cuba to condemn the 'outrageous attacks' and said the Americans will 'do whatever is necessary to support our friend and ally Belgium' Striking a very different tone, Mr Trump said this morning: 'Frankly, we're having problems with the Muslims and we're having problems with Muslims coming into the country,' he told Fox & Friends. 'We have to deal with the mosques whether we like it or not. These attacks are not done by Swedish people. That I can tell you. 'We have to be smart. We have to be vigilant. We have to watch very closely what's going on. We have to look at the mosques, we have to study what's going on.' Claiming Europe's capital cities were 'disintegrating,' Mr Trump added: 'Look at Brussels, look at Paris, look at so many cities that were great cities. Paris is almost as bad. Paris is no longer the City of Lights, Paris has a lot of problems. 'All you have to do is speak to the people who live there where the same thing has happened and they are in fear. The city is in fear. 'And we have to be smart in the United States,' he added, condemning US authorities for 'taking in people without any real documentation'. Mr Trump said: 'Brussels is an amazing example: Brussels was an absolutely crime-free city, one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and now you look at it, it's a disaster. 'Those countries better get smart face because they're just disintegrating. I have friends who live in Brussels, they say the place is literally disintegrating.' He later claimed: 'I have proven to be far more correct about terrorism than anybody - and it's not even close.' Advertisement This is the shocking moment a parent was filmed texting while their child sits precariously on the edge of a lion enclosure. The photograph comes from video showing the child's minders placing the youngster on the rails that are designed to stop people from falling into the den. It was filmed inside Little Rock Zoo, in Arkansas, where a three-year-old boy was critically injured in 2014 after he fell into a jaguar exhibit. The footage showed the child's parents sitting him on the protective barrier of the lion exhibit (pictured) It occurred at the Little Rock Zoo (pictured) in Arkansas, where in 2014 a toddler fell into a jaguar den According to KARK, the zoo stepped up security in areas not enclosed by wire fencing after being shown the harrowing video. In 2014, a toddler fell into the jaguar enclosure while being held by a family member on the railing. Employees at the zoo responded immediately, holding off the cats with a fire extinguisher as they lowered a ladder and removed the child, who was conscious and responsive the entire time. The child was taken to the hospital with extensive lacerations, a depressed skull fracture, and minor puncture wounds according to KTHV, though it was not known if this was caused by the 15ft fall or the cats. In the wake of that incident, the zoo installed wire fencing around areas considered to be high risk. A man who thought he was going to die when he felt the bones in his head breaking as he was bitten by a bear has had his skull reconstructed with part of his pelvis. Alexei Koptyakov was horrifically mauled by a bear in Russia in an attack that has been compared to the film 'Revenant,' in which a similar assault takes place. He only escaped death when he passed out after a second mauling by the infuriated animal, but was left with no nose or mouth after the attack. The reconstructed face (right) of Aleksey Koptyakov who thought he was going to die when he felt the bones in his head breaking as he was bitten by a bear. Pictured left before the attack He was left with no nose or mouth, and it took 11 hours for doctors to stabilise him in emergency surgery The 29-year-old had been walking back from a hunt in Karpinsk in central Russia's Sverdlovsk Oblast region, when he heard his dog Thunder pick up a scent and start barking. 'I thought it might be a bird and when I checked it out I found him standing outside a small cave. But inside there was a huge bear, and when it came out it went straight for me,' he said. He said that he had attempted to step backwards and slipped on the wet stone, with his gun going off in the process. He added: 'I thought the sound would scare the bear off, but it actually made it even more angry and it came at me even faster. I tried to reload the gun, but by then it was already on me.' Koptyakov managed to get one blow at the bear hitting it with the gun, but then it sank its teeth into his head. 'I tried to put my hands on my head, but it bit both of my hands and I couldn't use them after that to defend myself as it bit me on the head again,' he said. 'I curled into a ball, and could hear my bones cracking. 'At that point I didn't expect to live any longer, I was hoping it would eat me quickly so I wouldn't suffer too much.' Koptyakov was moved to a specialised hospital that deals with jaw injuries in the city of Yekaterinburg in central Russia's Sverdlovsk Oblast region The attack has been compared to the scene in the film The Revenant in which Leonardo DiCaprio's character is mauled by a bear He said the bear was determined to apparently cause him pain, and continued to maul him for several minutes before lumbering off into the forest. Seconds later it had rushed back and attacked him again. Koptyakov said it was difficult to remember much after that, but he remembers the bear leaving for the second time, and seeing the snow around him covered in blood. He said: 'Somehow I managed to crawl to the road. When I saw a passing car, I could not even shout, as my throat was ripped, so I started waving.' Koptyakov pictured with a gun and game on a hunt before the violent bear attack took place Incredibly several vehicles did not stop to help him, but eventually a truck driver pulled up alongside. When he saw how badly injured he was, he had promised to call an ambulance but had driven off. Alexei was finally rescued by a tourist from the city of St Petersburg in north-western Russia called Alexander Deryugin. He took him to the hospital in Karpinsk and he was later moved to a specialised hospital that deals with jaw injuries in the city of Yekaterinburg, where he spent five days in an intensive care with his serious injuries. He also had no nose or mouth, and it took 11 hours for doctors to stabilise him in emergency surgery. Alexei's surgeon Alexie Dikarev said: 'Afterwards he could not swallow or chew any food.' Advertisement Wanted: Police have issued an appeal to catch this ISIS suspect, seen on CCTV footage dressed in a white shirt and jacket and wearing a dark hat as he pushed a luggage trolley through the airport minutes before two bombs rocked Brussels Airport A jihadi bomb suspect calmly walked out of Brussels Airport yesterday moments before his two accomplices massacred 14 people in a double suicide bombing, officials believe. Three ISIS attackers said by the terror group to be wearing suicide vests were seen on CCTV wheeling suitcase bombs into the busy check-in area just after 8am local time (7am GMT) after arriving in a taxi. Two of the men, who were pictured wearing black gloves believed to contain detonators on their left hands, exploded their nail-shrouded devices in the first of twin terror attacks on the Belgian capital that left at least 34 people dead. U.S. officials who studied the CCTV said the third bomber had already abandoned his bomb and his departure from the airport 'appeared to be planned'. Less than 80 minutes later, a further blast on a Metro train at Maelbeek station - near to the EU Parliament building - left another 20 people dead. It was unclear whether the missing airport suspect was responsible and Belgian police were last night 'actively searching for' Europe's most-wanted man, who had been wearing a white coat, glasses and a hat. Other reports suggested the 'man in white' fled the airport after his devices failed to detonate. The Belgian army was said to have found and neutralised his abandoned suitcase and a suicide vest left at the scene. Belgian police launched a major manhunt to find him as ISIS claimed responsibility for the massacres, which killed 34 in total and injured 200. Local mayor Francis Vermeiren confirmed the ISIS suspects checked in their explosives-packed suitcases just seconds before the atrocities. He said: 'They came in a taxi with their suitcases, their bombs were in their bags. 'They put their suitcases on trolleys, the first two bombs exploded. The third also put his on a trolley but he must have panicked, it didn't explode.' Belgian newspaper HLN said a taxi driver told police he believes he unwittingly drove the bombers to the airport and was abruptly ordered not to touch their suitcases when he offered to help them with their luggage. The two men whose suitcases successfully detonated blowing themselves up in the process - were wearing gloves on their left hands, which security sources say would have hidden the triggers for their explosives. It is a similar technique said to have been used by the jihadists who carried out the sickening Paris massacres last November. Witnesses to the attacks on the French capital, which killed 130 people, told in the aftermath how they saw the attackers holding a detonation mechanism in their hand with a cord travelling to a suicide vest. The third Brussels suspect fled the terminal before the carnage ensued and U.S officials believe his calm departure indicates he may have planned all along to leave before the bombs exploded. Belgian police have issued a 'wanted' poster showing him wearing a light-coloured coat and black hat while wheeling his suitcase on a luggage trolley. 'Police are looking to identify this man. He is suspected of having committed the attack at Zaventem on Tuesday March 22,' a police spokesman said. A string of anti-terror raids were carried out across the Belgian capital last night, with police confirming another nail bomb, an ISIS flag and several 'chemical products' were found at a house in the Schaerbeek area which was searched in connection with the terror attacks. First picture: These three men, pretending to be air passengers, are believed to be the terrorists who carried out the Brussels Airport attacks. The two suspected suicide bombers on the left were both wearing black gloves - which the Belgian media says would have hidden the triggers for their explosive vests. The third suspect in the hat is believed to still be on the run after dropping his nail bomb Close up: One of the two men at the airport who was pictured wearing a black glove, believed to contain a detonator on his left hand In detail: The other man said to have had a detonator, who later exploded his nail-shrouded device at Brussels Airport yesterday Cover: Belgian police are 'actively searching for' Europe's most-wanted man, who had been wearing a white coat, glasses and a hat Police swooped on a number of suspects but the Belgian Foreign Ministry said many of those behind the chilling terror plot are 'still at large'. It emerged as the world comes to terms with yet another deadly terror attack in Europe - just four months after 130 people were massacred in Paris. In all too familiar scenes, terrifying photos showed bloodied victims and maimed bodies after two bombs were detonated at Brussels' main airport. An eyewitness said the blasts were so powerful that victims were thrown in the air, leaving the floor strewn with bodies, limbs and debris. Among the 14 dead was said to be a man holding a baby. There were reports of gunfire and shouts of God is great in Arabic. Police reportedly later found two AK-47 rifles and an unexploded suicide bomb vest. Just 79 minutes later, commuters on their way to work lost limbs as a third bomb tore apart a train carriage on the Metro line in Maelbeek killing 20 and injuring more than 55, including 10 critically. Horrifying pictures, many of which resemble the heartbreaking devastation seen in the wake of the London 7/7 bombings, show innocent commuters covered in blood and sprawled out on the floor after being targeted in the attack. One survivor said it was like the 'apocalypse'. Panic: A fire caused by one of the explosions in the terminal is tackled by airport staff with extinguishers surrounded by baggage and falling roof tiles Obliterated: Ceiling tiles and debris are littered across the floor of the terminal building after twins blast rocked the check-in area A soldier walks through debris after two explosion rocked a terminal building at Brussels Airport - but security sources say Belgian police already have CCTV of at least one bomber and the explosion Europe now remains on high alert amid fears of further attacks from ISIS, which has already threatened to hit the UK 'harder and more bitter'. In a statement released following the Brussels attack, the terrorist group said on its official Telegram account: 'We promise to the states that are allied against the Islamic State that they will face dark days in return for their aggression against our state. 'And what will await you will become harder and more bitter through the grace of Allah. 'In praise of Allah who has made our blows precise and helped us succeed. we demand for him to accept our brothers among the martyrs.' Brussels remains on lockdown today with police desperately carrying out a series of anti-terror raids in a city which has already been deemed a 'clearing house for jihadism'. More jihadis have travelled from Belgium to fight for ISIS in Syria and Iraq than have gone from any other European country. In the wake of November's Paris massacres, it emerged that those behind the attacks masterminded them from Brussels leading French media to heavily criticise the Belgian authorities. Bomber Salah Abdeslam, who was finally arrested on Friday, had links with the Brussels district of Moelenbeek - an area with a large North African population - whose mayor once described it a 'terrorists' den' because of the number of jihadists living there. In light of the Brussels attacks yesterday, two men were arrested at gunpoint outside the city's North railway station, a mile from the Maelbeek subway. Another man was also taken into custody by armed police at Brussels South railway station near the suburb of Schaerbeek. German media reported that three men were arrested on suspicion of terror offences on a motorway between Munich and Salzburg. The men were said to have been Kosovans who had travelled from Brussels, and the Office of Criminal Police of Bavaria said inquiries were ongoing. Another person was also arrested on a train near Amsterdam, while hours later shots were fired at the Dutch capital's main train station during an arrest attempt. Police later confirmed the arrests in Amsterdam were not related to Brussels and the suspects were detained on suspected drug offences. A suspect package found at Gard du Nord in Paris also delayed Eurostar services yesterday afternoon. Fires burn among bags and debris as passengers flee the terminal in the immediate aftermath of two explosions at the check-in desks An person is carried to safety as troops helped the injured and secured the area after the explosions in the terminal building A man runs for cover: Witnesses described apocalyptic scenes with blood and 'dismembered bodies everywhere' after the two blasts Terrified passengers run for their lives in a cloud of smoke moments after the explosions ripped through the terminal Explosion: The image above is being used by the Belgian media who claim this is the damage caused by the bomb at the Maelbeek Metro station in central Brussels this morning. It has not been verified by the authorities but is being widely circulated on social media. MailOnline earlier revealed that authorities already have CCTV of one of the Brussels airport bombers including the moment he detonated his bomb. Every space in the city's airport is covered by four CCTV cameras, including the departures hall where at least 14 were killed. Maelbeek station's surveillance network is also being used to pinpoint the moment that 20 people were murdered 79 minutes later. Police are already trawling through hours of CCTV footage filmed before and after the deadly explosions as they hunt for those behind the attacks. The carnage began at 8am yesterday when two metal-shrouded bombs were set off in the check-in area of Brussels airport. A third unexploded suicide belt was found in the rubble. Just 79 minutes later a bomb blew up an underground train. Shocking images from Maelbeek station show the mangled remains of the train, smoke pouring out of the building and casualties littered on the pavement outside - just 400metres from the EU's headquarters. The bomb went off at 9.19am - just over an hour after the two explosions killed at least 14 in a suicide attack on the Belgian capital's main airport. Experts believe the bombs were loaded with metal shrapnel to inflict maximum casualties. An X-ray image of a bolt inside the chest on one patient at a military hospital showed how they came with inches of death. Doctors at the Hospital Gasthuisberg in Leuven, east of Brussels, which treated 13 victims, said all the bombs contained metal objects. Patients taken there suffered fractures, burns and deep cuts thought to have been caused by bolts or nails. Five of them were seriously injured. At the nearby KU Leuven hospital, Dr Marc Decremer said 11 casualties were treated for serious injuries including three or four children. 'We have seen deep flesh wounds,' he said. 'That can be caused by flying glass thrown by the explosion, or by the bomb, or by particles in the bomb.' The British Foreign Office confirmed two Britons were injured in the explosions, while three American missionaries from Utah were also seriously hurt. A Foreign Office spokesman said: 'Embassy staff are providing consular assistance to two injured Britons and are ready to support any further British nationals that have been affected. British nationals should follow the advice of local security authorities and check our travel advice for updates.' Mormon church officials said the three missionaries from Utah were Richard Norby, 66, Joseph Empey, 20, and Mason Wells, 19. Mr Empey is said to be recovering well after being treated for second-degree burns to his hands, face and head as well as shrapnel injuries. Surrounded: Two men on their knees with hands on their head are held in Brussels as the authorities Drama: Two men were pinned to the ground by armed police and special forces as the hunt for members of the terror cell behind the attack Interventions: The arrests came as the authorities start to round up any people deemed a risk to the public, including here at Brussels North station - a mile from the Maelbeek bombing Across the border: A suspect with his hands up is arrested as he is taken off a train because of suspicious activity at Hoofddorp Station in Amsterdam Brussels' public transport authority has revealed that the three-carriage train at Maelbeek was ripped apart by a single explosion, with the bomb set off in its middle carriage. It is not known if it was a suicide attack or a planted bomb. Christian Delhasse, the driver of the Metro train, told Belgian broadcaster RTBF: 'Seeing bodies on the floor, it leaves a mark on you. 'I did what I had to do. Nothing happened to me, no injuries.' Commuters on the Metro at the time described hearing a loud bang before they were evacuated from trains and forced to walk down smoke-filled tunnels and along the track to the closest safe station. TIMELINE OF TERROR: HOW THREE BOMB BLASTS ROCKED BRUSSELS 8am: Two explosions rock Zaventem Airport killing 14 people near the check-in desks 8am onwards: Terrified passengers seen streaming out of the terminal building in Brussels while flights are diverted to other airports 8.30am: Witnesses describe blasts so powerful that victims were thrown in to the air 9.19am: A third bomb blast rips through Maalbeek Metro station killing 20 more people 9.23am: Eurostar services in and out of Brussels are suspended 11am: Belgian prosecutors Fredere Van Leeuw confirmed that the three explosions were terror attacks 11am: Two suspects arrested one mile away from Metro Station blast 12pm: A Kalashnikov and unexploded suicide bomb vest are found in the rubble at the airport 1.50pm: Dutch Police stop international train from Brussels to Amsterdam at a station just one stop from Holland's Schiphol Airport as a precaution and search the train and its passengers 3pm: Belgian TV station reports at least one of the bombs at the Brussels airport contained nails 4.40pm: ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks in Brussels Advertisement A witness said: 'We left Maelbeek station towards the centre at around 9.07, 9.10, when we felt an explosion which appeared to come from the front of the train. 'The lights went off, there was panic given what happened at Brussels airport. 'The doors of the train were forced open to get off the train. There was a lot of smoke. We left via Maelbeek station. The glass doors were blown out. The explosion must have been enormous.' Emergency services at the scene were carrying the dead and injured out of the station on stretchers. Alexandre Brans, 32, who was wiping blood from his face, said: 'The metro was leaving Maelbeek station when there was a really loud explosion. 'It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the metro.' One eyewitness, Theo Vassilopoulos, said Maelbeek station remained completely closed off last night with police cars and officers still in the area. The 36-year-old from Greece, who has lived in Brussels for seven years, described chaotic scenes as people poured out of the station following a bomb blast. Mr Vassilopoulos, who works at the European Parliament with the Greek MEP Stelios Kouloglou, said: It all started with a distant sound, we didn't realise what it was. But a few moments later we heard people shouting and screaming so we went by the window and we saw lots of people coming out of the station. I saw some of them had serious injuries, head injuries, a lot of blood on their head, wounds on their legs. We realised something was going on. More people kept coming from inside the station and some of them were in dusty clothes or their clothes were torn apart, so then we knew that there was an explosion or something bad. Some 20 people are said to have been killed at the Metro bombing at 9.19am. Brussels resident Shigeo Sugimoto said he was one stop away from where the metro was hit and heard people shouting. He wrote on Facebook: 'I am fine !! But i was in the metro when suddenly some one start shouting 'explosions!!! Evacuation!!! 'Ouch!!! I was just one station ahead before when explosion happened !!!!!!!!' He posted pictures showing cars and people standing in the road and wrote: 'Maerbeek (sic) now apocalypse!!!' Mr Sugimoto said he saw a man with blood on his face in the vicinity of Maelbeek station in the EU quarter, near the European Commission's main building. He was at Arts-Loi station, one ahead of Maelbeek, and told the Press Association: 'On the ground, there were already people walking every direction to distance (themselves) from metro and the Belgian army were there trying to make people calm. 'I saw a guy, blood over his face, dragged by another person. Then police start blocking the street and I could only see ambulances go and come.' Evan Lamos was among the thousands of commuters on tube trains this morning when the network was attacked. He was two stops away from Maelbeek and the passengers on his train were evacuated from the carriages into a smoke-filled tunnel and then walked along the tracks to the exit at the nearest station. He said: 'There was a dull thud. We felt a blast of air and my ears popped shortly afterwards. The Metro stopped immediately'. Mr Lamos was told that there was 'an incident on the line', suggesting that a train may have been bombed. Victim: A bloodied commuter is given oxygen and treated for a head injury on the kerb outside the Metro station where a train was bombed Survivors: Commuters on the Metro at the time described hearing a loud bang before they were evacuated from trains (pictured) Panic: Commuters in the Metro described a bang, and a rush of air that made their ears pop before they tore open the train doors and walked down the track to the closest station Aftermath: A man lies stricken on the pavement as survivors kiss in relief after surviving the bombing, which has killed at least ten Emergency: A victim is treated under a blanket to keep them warm next to a woman with a head injury as rescue workers treat victims outside the Maelbeek underground station Bravery: People injured are treated, comforted and given water by the emergency services as they help the wounded Ian McCafferty was on the Metro when the explosion took place in Maelbeek. He told Sky News: 'I was getting off at the station before Maelbeek and we heard a very loud thud. The stations are much closer together than in London so we heard it clearly. 'Panic set in and people rushed off the train. We ran to the stairs and were met by soldiers who quickly evacuated the station'. The explosions came just a day after the Belgium Interior Minister warned of possible revenge attacks after the arrest of Paris massacre suspect Salah Abdeslam in the city last week. At the airport, shouts in Arabic were reportedly heard before the explosions which sent shockwaves through the terminal building, shattering windows, knocking roof tiles off the ceiling and sending terrified passengers running for their lives. Samir Derrouich, who works at a restaurant in the airport, told MailOnline: 'The two explosions were almost simultaneous. 'They were both at check in desk. One was close to the Starbucks. It was awful. There was just blood. It was like the apocalypse.' Photographs from inside the arrivals hall showed the floor covered in fallen tiles and dust as bloodied people hobbled out of the airport. Others injured were photographed lying on the floor. Video shows terrified passengers running for their lives out of the terminal. In the aftermath of the explosions at the airport, thousands of people waiting for flights this morning were penned inside the terminal as police sealed off the shattered arrivals hall. A terrified passenger cowers under a check-in desk moments after two explosions rocked Brussels Airport in a suicide bomb attack Passengers shield themselves under bags as smoke and debris fill the terminal in the moments after the twin blast at Brussels Airport A police officer directs passengers in a smoke filled terminal at Brussels Airport after two explosions ripped through the terminal Firefighters search the terminal for explosives and survivors (left) as Brazilian-born basketballer Sebastien Bellin lies injured on the floor Carnage: At least eleven people have died and several injured after two explosions rocked Brussels Airport in a suspected terror attack Injured passengers are covered in blood and dust after the explosions in the terminal building Shouts in Arabic were reportedly heard before the explosions which sent shockwaves through the terminal building, shattering windows Blown out: The explosions sent shock waves through the terminal building, shattering windows and knocking roof tiles off the ceiling Hundreds of terrified passengers ran from the terminal, some of them covered in blood, after the blasts rocked the building at 8am Blast zone: The two bombs are believed to have gone off in these areas of the arrivals hall, as thousands were checking in for flights Firefighters who entered the shattered building are said to have found a third unexploded device. This has since been deactivated at Brussels airport, an official said. Reports this evening also suggest a fourth undetonated bomb was also found after further searches among the rubble. People already checked-in were slowly evacuated through emergency exits following the blasts but were told to leave all their hand luggage as police checked bags for more explosives. Evacuated air passengers were ferried onto buses and driven to a 'crisis centre' away from the airport. Women and children were moved first. Pauline Deglume tweeted: 'My godfather is located at the airport and said he saw dismembered bodies everywhere.' Dries Valaert, 30, was waiting to get his boarding pass from a check in desk when the blast struck. He told MailOnline: 'There was a first blast and then ten seconds later a second explosion. It was a big big blast, the ceiling went down. It was just 30 metres from where I was. 'I saw people down on the ground and I just went running. I jumped over the security fences towards the departure gates as I thought it would be safer. My first intuition was to get out in case their were attackers with guns. I saw a woman around 18 years old with a hole in her hand with blood pouring out and a man with an injured ankle and two people down. There was lots of panic. People were running all over the place.' Mr Valaert, who was flying to a business meeting in Berlin, said he believed the bombs were hidden in suitcases that had just been checked in. He said: 'The explosions were just behind the service desks, they were blown towards us. To me it is the most realistic possibility. I don't think it was someone with a suicide vest.' Tribute: People stood in front of the Brandenburg gate in Berlin, which is illuminated in the colours of the Belgian flag this evening In mourning: The Eiffel Tower in Paris illuminated in colours of the Belgian flag in tribute to the victims of terrorist attacks in Brussels Je Suis Bruxelles: People hold up a banner as a mark of solidarity at the Place de la Bourse following the attacks in Brussels, Belgium In honour and memory: Scores of people bring flowers and candles to mourn for the victims at Place de la Bourse in the centre of Brussels Rest in peace: A young girl lights a candle at the Place de la Bourse following the attacks in Brussels, in which 31 people were killed In loving memory: Candles are lit and dozens of touching notes left in honour of the 31 people who were killed in the Brussels attacks Young and old: Mourners of all ages turned out to the Place de la Bourse in Brussels to pay tribute to those were tragically killed Solidarity: Mourners lay candles at the Place de la Bourse in Brussels this evening following the terror attacks which have rocked the world Armed police in protective clothing combed the building for more wounded travellers and suspicious bags. All flights are being diverted from the airport as it remains on lockdown. Maelbeek is the station that most EU workers use daily. The European Commission's vice-president Kristalina Georgieva said meetings were cancelled and urged people to 'stay home or inside buildings'. The metro station is close to the commission's Berlaymont headquarters, the European Parliament and the European Council's Justus Lipsius building in the Belgian capital. Ms Georgieva said on Twitter: 'Following situation in Brussels. EU institutions working together to ensure security of staff& premises.Please stay home or inside buildings. 'All EU institutions are at alert level ORANGE - all meetings on premises and outside cancelled, access only for staff with badges.' Police and special forces are looking for known members of any terror cell who may be planning more attacks. They will also round up anyone who may pose a threat to the public, or acting suspiciously, in an attempt to foil any more attacks. Special forces are also patrolling the streets in case of more bombings or marauding gunmen used to kill 131 people in at least five Paris attacks in November 13 last year. Britain and United States will already be playing a key role in trying to help the Belgian authorities work out who was behind the attacks. Both MI5 and the CIA have stations in Brussels and its teams have 'unique expertise' that will help trace those behind the bombings. The National Crime Agency, Britain's FBI, will also be in the city already because of the heightened terror threat. Tech specialists will be scanning the phone numbers, email addresses, IP addresses, GPS records and forums known to be used by terrorists - and tracing links to Britain and America. Anti-terror raids: A Belgian police officer is seen searching an apartment in the Schaerbeek area of Brussels this evening after the attacks Out in force: Belgian police and security personnel are seen during a series of anti-terror raids in Schaerbeek, Brussels, this evening Anti-terror police: Detectives found an ISIS flag, chemical products and another nail bomb at a house during a raid in Schaerbeek tonight Tracking down the suspects: A police sharpshooter takes aim from a helicopter hovering over Brussels' rooftops following the attacks Guarding the skies: A police helicopter hovers over Brussels following the deadly bomb attacks which killed 24 and injured around 200 Collecting evidence? Police search for evidence and empty a public bin near the Maelbeek metro station which was bombed yesterday Combing the verge: Police detectives were out in force to gather evidence which could help find those behind yesterday's atrocities On the ground: Police officers were seen gathering evidence and combing the grassy area near Maelbeek tube station this afternoon WAS FUGITIVE PARIS 'BOMB MAKER' BEHIND THE BRUSSELS BLASTS? TERROR EXPERT CLAIMS USE OF 'MULTIPLE EXPLOSIVE DEVICES' BEARS ALL THE HALLMARKS OF THE ISIS CELL THAT TARGETED THE FRENCH CAPITAL The suspected bombmaker responsible for the Paris massacre was very likely behind the Brussels blasts, a top terror expert has claimed. Rafaello Pantucci, the Director of International Security Studies at the Royal United Services Institute, said the use of 'multiple, viable explosive devices' bore all the hallmarks of the co-ordinated bomb attacks that killed 130 in the French capital. It also indicated that possibly more than one experienced bombmaker was involved, he added. Najim Laachraoui, who is believed to have gone on the run after Paris logistics chief Salah Abdeslam's capture. Police issued this photograph of Najim Laachraoui, one of the suspects of the Paris terror attacks who has gone on the run He said: 'We don't know much about him at this point. This individual is being identified as a bomb maker but we have concerns whether that is 100 per cent true or if he's one of a number of bomb makers. 'This terrorist group in Brussels had multiple, viable explosive devices. It suggests they were dealing with someone with substantial experience. 'That could be the same person responsible for the bomb devices in the Paris attacks but it could be someone else, part of a larger cell. 'Given the location and the nature and the use of explosives and guns the thought process goes down the page of assuming it's linked to the organised network around Abdeslam. 'We can't be sure but it would be surprising if it wasn't the same group.' A friend of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who masterminded the November 2015 Paris attacks, told police that the jihadi claimed he was among 90 'kamikaze' terrorists who smuggled themselves across the Mediterranean with migrants and refugees. Advertisement Armed presence: A soldier with his face covered guards a road near the Maalbeek subway station as they try to stop any further attacks Deployment: Scores of armed forces have flooded the streets of Brussels as suspects remain at large Since the Paris attacks, Scotland Yard has had officers in the French capital as well as in Brussels when it emerged the attackers were based in the Belgian capital. These British officers, and diplomats, will be helping with the investigation. Armed police have been deployed to airports, train stations, ports and border crossings around the world in the immediate aftermath of the suspected suicide attacks in Brussels. From New York to Moscow, security measures were stepped up at transport hubs across the globe with police and military personnel carrying out extra high-visibility patrols and additional checks. The border between France and Belgium was closed, Eurostar services in and out of Brussels were suspended and airlines to and from other destinations were warning passengers of potential disruption as the effects of this morning's terror attacks were felt around the world. Train and bus stations, ports and road checkpoints were also put on high alert, with armed police on the streets in major global cities including London and New York, sniffer dogs deployed and extensive border checks put in place. London mayor Boris Johnson said there would be an increased security presence at transport hubs in the city, while the country's most senior counter-terrorism officer Mark Rowley said police forces across the UK had increased their presence at key locations as a precaution in the wake of the Brussels attacks. And in the US, the NYPD said it would be increasing security measures at mass transit points, bridges and tunnels, and other landmarks following the attacks. Police and soldiers carrying guns were also seen at airports in the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy, while in France - still shaken from the November attacks in Paris - officers remained on high alert. Troops have also been deployed other key locations across Brussels as Belgium raised its security level to 'maximum' in the wake of the attacks. The entire border between Belgium and France was placed on lock-down, and the Thalys train service - which travels between France, Belgium and the Netherlands - was halted in the wake of the explosions, the operator said. Dutch military police were carrying out additional high-visibility patrols at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam Armed officers make their way through the Eurostar terminal at St Pancras station in London. There was an increased security presence at transport hubs across the city George Osborne is on the brink of missing his borrowing targets less than a week after the Budget, official data showed today. In a fresh blow to the embattled Chancellor, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the year-to-date budget deficit stood at 70.7 billion in February after borrowing fell by less than expected. The figure leaves Mr Osborne perilously close to his 72.2 billion target for the full year. It means that this month, the UK would have to borrow substantially less than the 7.4 billion seen a year earlier to keep the Chancellor on track with last week's Budget forecasts from the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR). The latest figures on the deficit from the Office for National Statistics continued to show a reduction in the deficit but it still stands at more than 70billion The figures heap further pressure on Mr Osborne after the resignation of work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith in protest over his economic strategy and cuts to welfare over the past six years. Mr Osborne's Budget last week revealed another 3.5 billion of spending cuts to help balance Britain's books by 2020. But he has since abandoned planned cuts to disability benefits in the face of accusations he was putting the better-off before the most vulnerable. The Chancellor is due back at the Despatch Box later to defend his Budget in wake of the setbacks A Treasury spokesman said: 'Today's figures show improving public finances with borrowing falling compared to last year. 'As the Budget showed last week, our public finances would have been in a much worse position had the government not undertaken the fiscal consolidation since 2010. 'But the fiscal repair job is not done - we must continue to act now so we don't pay later, taking the steps necessary to give Britain's families economic security.' The Office for National Statistics said: 'In February 2016, the public sector spent more money than it received in taxes and other income. 'This meant it had to borrow 7.1 billion to balance the books. Of this 7.1 billion, 2.6 billion were spent on the cost of the 'day-to-day' activities of the public sector (the current budget deficit), while it spent 4.5 billion on infrastructure (net investment). 'Annual borrowing has generally been falling since the peak in the financial year ending March 2010. So far this financial year (April 2015 to February 2016), the public sector has borrowed 70.7 billion. 'This was 14.0 billion lower than at the same point in the previous financial year. 'The Office for Budget Responsibility, who produces economic and fiscal forecasts for government, expects that the public sector will borrow 72.2 billion during the financial year ending March 2016.' The ONS figures showed borrowing fell by 0.5 billion year on year to 7.1 billion in February. Overall Government debt has continued to rise while the deficit remains and it now stands at 1.577 trillion Public sector net debt stood at 1.58 trillion - or 83.1 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) - which is up 46.3 billion on a year earlier. Mr Osborne last week pledged to return the UK to a surplus by 2020, with the latest independent forecasts from the OBR revealing that the UK would have a budget surplus of 10.4 billion in 2019/20 and 11 billion the following year. In a hearing with MPs on the Treasury Select Committee following the Budget, OBR chairman Robert Chote said there was still a 55 per cent chance that Mr Osborne would hit his surplus target despite the U-turn on disability payment cuts. He confirmed the OBR would consider the impact of the changes to disability payment savings and welfare pledge when it publishes its next economic outlook. The ONS said borrowing fell last month as the Government received 53.6 billion in income, up around 5 per cent on a year earlier thanks to higher income tax and stamp duty receipts. It also spent around 1 per cent less, at 57.1 billion. The ONS said just below two-thirds was spent by central government departments, around a third went on social benefits such as pensions, unemployment payments, child benefit and maternity pay, with the remainder being spent on capital investment and interest on the Government's outstanding debt The Centre for Economics and Business Research said it was 'highly unlikely' Mr Osborne will meet his borrowing targets and aim to get Britain back in the black by 2020. It is predicting a deficit of around 30 billion in 2019/20 - a far cry from the OBR's surplus forecast. David Kern, chief economist at the British Chambers of Commerce, said: 'While there is gradual progress in reducing the deficit, the timetables outlined in the Budget last week remain too ambitious, and the return to surplus may take a bit longer than the Chancellor hopes. Tracy Johnson, 42, from Shotton, Flintshire, Wales, has been plagued for the five years by cluster headaches that she says are 'a constant stabbing pain in her temple' A woman who suffers crippling 'suicide headaches' has been denied a life-changing operation - because she lives two miles on the 'wrong' side of the border between England and Wales. Tracy Johnson, 42, from Shotton, Flintshire, Wales, has been plagued for five years by cluster headaches that she says are 'a constant stabbing pain in her temple'. Miss Johnson's condition - short-lasting unilateral neuralgiform headache attacks with conjunctival injection and tearing (SUNCT) - is often referred to as 'suicide headaches' by sufferers. The pain is so intense, according to NHS information, that some people literally bang their heads against a wall to try and alleviate it. Miss Johnson, a senior buyer at a hydraulic firm, says she has been denied funding by the Welsh Health Specialist Services Committee (WHSSC) for an occipital nerve stimulation implant only available in England, just a couple of miles away from her home. The procedure involves having an implant called a neurostimulator inserted into the back of the ear, which would send electrical impulses that may block the headaches. A study in 2011 showed around 40% of people who had the procedure to treat chronic migraines responded positively. Miss Johnson said: 'The nerves on the right side of my face can just flare up at any given moment. 'It can be crippling pain that can put me on my back and I just can't cope with it. 'It's 24/7 that I have to deal with it and can come at any time for no real reason. It's like being stabbed in the temple.' Miss Johnson said the headache attacks, which have been referred to as 'suicide headaches', can last up to five minutes at a time and affect her speech and memory and cause fatigue. Even just a slight gust of wind across her face can be enough to trigger an agonising attack. The disorder is marked by bursts of moderate to severe burning, piercing or throbbing pain, usually on one side of the head and around the eye or temple. The operation to treat Miss Johnson is not available in Wales and she has slammed health bosses for subjecting her to a 'postcode lottery' as the procedure is readily available in England at the Walton Centre in Liverpool. Miss Johnson has already received treatment at the Walton Centre - where she was referred to by her GP - including nerve block injections to treat the headaches and regular consultations. But she said that she has been told that the operation is 'not cost-effective', and that bosses at the WHSSC haven't responded to a special grant request to perform the operation from her specialist. No grant would be necessary if Miss Johnson lived in England. The Walton Centre in Liverpool could provide Miss Johnson with the procedure - but NHS bosses in Wales won't pay The WHSSC brings together local health boards in Wales to plan specialised services such as neurological treatments like the one Miss Johnson requires. WELSH POSTCODE LOTTERIES Postcode lotteries have become a reality for many wishing to seek NHS treatment in Wales that is available in England, and vice versa. Last year father-of-four Khalid Younis was denied ponatinib, a cancer treatment freely available in Scotland and Wales - but not in Birmingham, where he lives. In 2014, Beth Prout from Pembroke in West Wales was told NHS bosses wouldn't cover the costs for her to have surgery to treat her stomach cancer in England. And a report released last year revealed that patients in Wales are waiting far longer for vital tests than their English counterparts. The study, by the House of Commons Library, showed Welsh patients are also likely to have to wait longer for an ambulance in an emergency and will be seen more slowly if they need to attend A&E Advertisement Miss Johnson said despite battling for more than two years for approval to receive the 25,000 procedure across the border, WHSSC officials have rejected a funding application. 'It's put me on a spiral where it's absolutely crippling me,' she said. 'It would be a life changing operation for me and my specialist has sent out all the information that has been requested. 'I've lost hope at the amount of times I've been slapped down, it's basically a postcode lottery and it's depressing me. 'To see the words not cost effective riled me so much.' Miss Johnson also accused health chiefs of putting a price on her health and quality of life. 'I find it difficult to go outside,' she added. 'I can only just about cope in work.' She said she had no intention of moving to England to make her chances of surgery more likely. 'I don't know why I should move,' she added. 'I have my mortgage here and I'd have to pay for my prescriptions if I moved to England, which would be a lot of money as I normally get five lots of drugs at a time.' Dr Sian Lewis, Acting Medical Director at Welsh Health Specialised Services Committee said: 'The Welsh Health Specialised Services Committee is unable to comment on individual patient cases or the outcome of individual patient funding requests. 'We care greatly about commissioning the best care for the people of Wales and our commitment is to the provision of cost-effective new treatments fairly available to all. 'Occipital Nerve Stimulation (ONS) is not routinely funded by NHS Wales. An Australian businessman has live tweeted the terrifying moment his plane landed at Brussels Airport exactly when the deadly explosions went off. Peter Presnell, who is originally from Burnie, Tasmania, said his plane had just touched down when he heard the blasts from the coordinated terror attacks. He said the plane was 'calm' and that they disembarked around an hour later before being taken to a remote hangar with hundreds of other passengers. 'Explosion at Brussels airport just as we landed,' he tweeted at around 8am local time when the airport was rocked by a suspected suicide attack which claimed the lives of at least 13 people. At least 13 people have died and many more injured after two explosions rocked Brussels Airport in a suspected terror attack Peter Presnell, who is originally from Burnie, Tasmania, had just landed on the tarmac at Brussels Airport at the time of the deadly terror attacks A soldier walks through debris after two explosion rocked a terminal building at Brussels Airport 'Brussels airport is being evacuated after several explosions.' He then said: 'Our plane had just landed. Airport is closed no takeoff so landings. Buildings evacuated. 'Communication at airport running amok. Unable to coordinate plans to deplane at commuter terminal.' Witnesses described apocalyptic scenes with blood and 'dismembered bodies everywhere' after two blasts rocked the American Airlines check-in desk. Shouts in Arabic were heard before the explosions which sent shockwaves through the terminal building, shattering windows, knocking roof tiles off the ceiling and sending terrified passengers running for their lives. Mr Presnell then tweeted to say that the plane doors were opened at around 9am before saying that there was a camera crew on the plane. He shared a picture of one of the main airport buildings saying: 'No signs of smoke yet' He also tweeted a picture of emergency service and airport workers waiting outside He said the plane was 'calm' and they they disembarked around an hour later before being taken to a remote hangar with hundreds of other passengers The businessman (pictured), who was on his way to a conference with two friends, shared a number of pictures of the passengers on his plane being taken to a holding area by bus The businessman, who was on his way to a conference with two friends, shared a number of pictures of the passengers on his plane being taken to a holding area by bus. He also tweeted a picture of emergency service and airport workers waiting outside along with a picture of the main terminal building saying 'no smoke yet'. Mr Presnell was left waiting in a hangar for several hours, but said he hopes he will soon be off to Leuven station. Julie Bishop has condemned the series of 'coordinated terror attacks' in Brussels and said authorities are 'urgently' trying to find out if any Australians have been killed or injured. At least 23 people have been killed and dozens injured in Belgium's capital after a series of blasts struck the city's airport and a metro station near the Australian Embassy. The Australian Foreign Minister said she has spoken to Ambassador Mark Higgie and confirmed that all diplomatic staff are safe. At least 13 people have died and up to 50 injured after two explosions rocked Brussels Airport in a suspected suicide bombing on Tuesday morning At the airport, shouts in Arabic were reportedly heard before the explosions which sent shockwaves through the terminal building, shattering windows and knocking roof tiles off the ceiling 'The Australian Government condemns what appears to be coordinated terror attacks on Belgium. Our thoughts and sympathies are with the people of Belgium,' said Ms Bishop. 'DFAT is urgently seeking to determine if any Australians have been affected. 'I have spoken with our Ambassador Mark Higgie for an assessment of the situation and confirmation that our diplomatic staff are safe. 'If you have any concerns for the welfare of family and friends in the region you should attempt to contact them directly.' Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull also tweeted saying: 'Deeply concerned by the attacks in Brussels. Australians' thoughts, prayers & solidarity are with the people of Belgium.' An injured and bloodied man was seen lying in the airport after a series of blasts on Tuesday morning Around 90 minutes after the attack at the airport, ten were killed when an explosion hit Maelbeek metro station. The explosions have come just a day after the Belgium Interior Minister warned of possible revenge attacks after the arrest of Paris massacre suspect Salah Abdeslam in the city last week. The Australian Government has warned people travelling to Brussels to exercise a 'high degree of caution.' 'Travellers are reminded that there is a heightened potential for police raids to take place with little or no warning in response to the raised terrorism threat,' the advice states, 'If you are in an area where a police raid is being conducted, remain indoors and close all windows and blinds. These are the shocking scenes as a juvenile buffalo is killed by four hyenas during a brutal hunt in the Kruger National Park in South Africa. The amazing footage shows how the four predators slowly wear down the buffalo who after three hours succumbs to its wounds. Residents in the African Dream Horse Safari in the national park were woken up at 5am to noise of the hunt. These are the shocking scenes as a buffalo tried to avoid the attentions of a pack of hungry hyenas The buffalo tried to run away from the four hyenas while involved in a desperate attempt to survive For more than three hours, the buffalo struggled with the hyenas who refused to give up on the hunt According to a post on Live Leak: 'We had to jump in our vehicles to follow the hunt. We were woken up at 5am to four hyenas attacking a sub-adult buffalo bull outside our bedroom window, after watching them run around the house and bush camp, the buffalo ended up running 200m into the bush. 'After putting up a very brave fight, the epic battle finally came to an incredible but somber end.It took nearly three hours from when we started watching and who knows how long it was going on during the night.' At the start of the video, the hyenas seem weary approaching the buffalo, who still presented a danger with his large horns. The predators continued to nip at the buffalo's hind quarters, drawing blood. The hyenas tried to bring the buffalo down by jumping on its rump and force it to collapse on its back legs The hyenas deliberately targeted the buffalo's rear to avoid the danger from the animal's sharp horns During the heavily edited footage, it is clear that the continued attacks were causing the buffalo damage. At one stage, one of the hyenas leaped up and locked its jaws into the buffalo's rump. The struggling animal attempted to shake the predator free. Moments later, the buffalo tried to break away from the back of hyenas and limped away. When the buffalo turned around, the camera picked up the extent of the damage to its legs. Eventually, the buffalo retreated back into the bush when a number of hyenas jumped on its rump, forcing it to the ground. Once it was knocked over the hyenas began feeding on the stricken beast as it slowly died. At one stage the buffalo managed to escape from the hyenas, but the four predators were close behind Hillary Clinton called Today after declining an interview during Trump's press push and criticized him, saying; Hours after this comment, Ted Cruz said that law enforcement should be allowed to patrol and monitor Muslim neighborhoods in the US Trump also called into FBN's Mornings with Maria Bartiromo saying the US must have surveillance of Muslims in this country, particularly at mosques He told CBS This Morning; 'This is going to happen in the United States' Trump said Paris terror suspect Salah Abdeslam probably knew about the attack Tuesday and that had he been tortured it could have been stopped He advocated the use of waterboarding on terrorist suspects, saying he would go Donald Trump commented on the suicide bombings that occurred in Brussels Tuesday morning just hours after the brutal terror attacks, saying; 'This is going to happen in the United States.' Trump then said in an interview on Fox News the US needs to 'shut the borders,' a statement he repeated later in the morning while appearing on Today. In that appearance he also told Matt Lauer he is a firm believer in using torture to get information from people behind attacks like the one in Brussels, stating; 'Waterboarding is fine.' Hillary Clinton also called into Today, two hours after Lauer said she had declined an interview with the program. She criticized Trump's comments about waterboarding he had made earlier in the morning on the show, saying; 'We don't need to resort to torture.' Trump also called into Fox Business Network's Mornings with Maria Bartiromo saying that the US must have surveillance of Muslims in this country, particularly at mosques. The series of bombings in the Belgian capital - which occurred near the American Airlines terminal in the city's airport and at a Metro station close to the headquarters of the European Union - have claimed the lives of at least 34 individuals. ISIS has since claimed responsibility for the attacks in a statement released through their Amaq news agency. Scroll down for videos Comments: Donald Trump (above on Monday) advocated the use of waterboarding on terrorist suspects and surveillance of Muslims in the US after the Brussels terror attacks on Tuesday morning Tweet: 'Do you all remember how beautiful and safe a place Brussels was. Not anymore, it is from a different world!' wrote Trump on Twitter Trump called in to Fox & Friends to discuss what he would do as president if an attack like this ever happened on American soil. 'Well I think I've said it. I would close up our borders until we figure out what is going on,' said Trump. 'Look at Brussels, look at Paris, look at so many cities that were great cities. Paris is almost as bad. Paris is no longer the City of Lights, Paris has a lot of problems. All you have to do is speak to the people who live there where the same thing has happened and they are in fear. The city is in fear. 'And we have to be smart in the United States.' He then began to speak about immigrants, saying that in the US we are currently 'taking in people without any real documentation.' Trump continued; 'We don't know where they're from, who they are. They could be ISIS. They could be ISIS related. We just don't learn.' He also said Brussels is now a 'disaster' but used to be a 'crime-free city.' Trump previously called Brussels a 'hellhole' in January when asked about the city during a Fox Business interview. The New York Times reached out to Mayor Yvan Mayeur in the wake of that comment, who told the paper; 'We don't react to Mr. Trump's comments. Have a nice day.' Trump also made an appearance on Today Tuesday morning, where he spoke more about the attack and what he would do if he was in office for a catastrophic event like the one that happened in Brussels. Matt Lauer asked Trump what he would do if elected president had this attack happened in the United States. 'Well first of all this is a subject that is very dear and near to my heart because I have certainly been talking about it much more than anybody else, it's why I'm probably number one in the polls because I say we have to have strong borders,' said Trump. 'We have to be very vigilant and careful who we let into our country. I know Brussels well and Brussels is a total mess, and I'm not talking about the attack today. 'I'm talking about, generally speaking, it is a city that used to be one of the finest, one of the most beautiful cities in the world, and now its a catastrophic and very dangerous city where the police have very little control.' At this point Lauer cut Trump off and again repeated his initial question to see if the Republican front-runner had a different response from the comments he had previously stated and one that was more concrete as to what he would do as president. 'Well as president I would do probably what I would have been doing since the time I was president,' explained Trump in a garbled reply. 'I would be very tough on borders and I would be not allowing certain people to come into this country without absolute perfect documentation. 'We're allowing thousands of people already to come into this country who don't have proper documentation. We don't know where they're coming from. 'They happen to be in the migration. They happen to come in from perhaps Syria, but nobody really knows. 'Nobody knows because they don't have the documentation.' This time around it was Lauer's co-host Savannah Guthrie who interrupted Trump to once again ask if he had a response that gave examples as to what he would do as president. 'I would exclude the people from Syria who do not have documentation coming in from the migration line that interestingly have cell phones,' said Trump. 'In many cases they get the cell phones and where do they get their bills? I would certainly exclude those people from coming in.' He then added; 'The assimilation has been a disaster.' Lauer and Guthrie then switched gears to ask Trump about Paris terror suspect Salah Abdeslam, who is in currently in custody in Brussels. Trump was asked to weigh in on how far law enforcement and members of the military should be able to go to get information from the man, who is believed to have rented the cars used to take the terrorists to the Stade de France soccer stadium and Bataclan theater last November, also driving one of the vehicles that night. 'Well I would say they should be able to do whatever they have to do to get the information and i would say...' The co-hosts then cut Trump off asking for specifics. 'Waterboarding - if it was up to me and we changed the laws - would be fine.' He then added; 'If they could expand the laws I would do a lot more than waterboarding. You have to get the information from these people we have to be smart and we have to be tough and we cant be soft and weak which is what we are now. He was then asked if he was in the camp that torture works, to which he replied; 'Yes I am.' When Guthrie and Lauer pointed out that Abdeslam was in the custody of Belgian law enforcement and not the military to perhaps get him to modify his answer, Trump said; 'Let the military take him over.' He closed out the interview by saying about the US; 'We are allowing thousands and thousands of these people into this country and we're going to have nothing but problems.' Response: Hillary Clinton (above on Monday) called Today after declining an interview during Trump's press push and criticized him, saying; 'We don't need to resort to torture' Clinton called in to Today as well over an hour later, saying; 'The idea that the terrorists are continuing to strike at the heart of Europe is deeply distressing.' She also told Lauer and Guthrie; 'We've got to stand in solidarity with our European allies as they have stood with us on so many occasions.' When asked how the US should handle this situation or one similar Clinton advocated a 'smart and steady' response. Clinton was also asked about the effectiveness of closing borders, both in Europe and the United States, to which she replied; 'We do have to be realistic about how people move from place to place. It's unrealistic to say we're going to completely shut down our borders.' Trump's third phone interview of the day was with Fox Business Network's Mornings with Maria Bartiromo, where he took time to criticize President Obama and Mayor Bill de Blasio while calling for more surveillance in this country. 'President Obama is taking in thousands of people and distributing them all over the United States. We don't know how many and we don't know where they are going. And these are people that have no documentation. 'They have no anything. Nobody know anything about these people we are bringing into our country and it's going to lead to catastrophic problems.' Trump also said that Germany is doing 'very poorly' after their decision to allow Syrian refugees into the country. 'I have friends in Germany and they want to leave. They say what's happening in the streets is from a different world. He added that he has 'lost all respect' for Chancellor Angela Merkel. Trump then turned the conversation back to the United States, and a halt on allowing Muslim refugees into the country. 'It's time to stop, and frankly we're having problems with the Muslims coming into the country,' said Trump, who used as an example the terror attack in San Bernardino, California last December where Muslim husband and wife Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik killed 14 of their coworkers. He then called for the monitoring of Muslims in the United States, saying; 'We need surveillance. You need to deal with the mosques, whether you like it or not. We have to be smart, we have to be vigilant. 'I mean these attacks aren't done by Swedish people. We have to be smart. We have to be vigilant. We have to watch very closely whats going on.' Trump attacked Mayor de Blasio later in the program for shuttering a NYPD unit that was devoted to the surveillance of Muslim communities in the city. 'We have to study what's going on,' said Trump. 'They were getting great information from what people were saying. They were stopping attacks.' This is why Trump said de Blasio is 'frankly a mayor who doesn't know what he is doing' and 'doing a terrible job according to everybody.' Devastation: The scene at the Brussels Metro station near the European headquarters where at least 13 people were killed and dozens more injured in a suicide bombing Horror: The American Airlines check-in counter at Brussels Airport where two suicide bombs went off Tuesday morning Fear: A man with blood on his shirt is evacuated from Brussels Airport shortly after the bombings on Tuesday Trump and Clinton were not done either, with both presidential candidates calling in to Good Morning America as well which ran an extended broadcast instead of airing Live With Kelly and Michael and Rachel Ray. Trump once again advocated the use of torture, and said that had it been used on Paris suspect Abdeslam the attacks in Brussels could have possibly been prevented. 'He probably knew these attacks were going to occur,' said Trump. 'If we had techniques that were strong and the way we should have ... you know, we play by the rules they don't play by the rules. 'If they're not going to play by the rules and we're going to play by the rules we're not going to have too many victories. 'We could have probably cut this off if they had the right technique and used the right technique on him. 'Instead he's sitting in a jail, probably has 15 lawyers around him telling him "don't speak, don't speak, don't talk' and that's the way the world is being run right now. It's certainly the way our country is being run.' Trump also said about ISIS; 'You've got to take them out. 'And you've got to get the people, the surrounding states, you've got to get them to put up the manpower because that's what it's going to take. 'We have a lot of people in our country right now that probably and definitely have the same feelings and the same feeling of hate as the people in Brussels.' Trump once again spoke about conditions in Brussels, saying; 'It's like an armed camp. Anybody that goes there will tell you it's like an armed camp.' Clinton meanwhile said in her interview the country needed to 'strengthen our resolve' and up 'security operations in our country.' She also said of Trump's calls for waterboarding; 'That is just another one of his claims that doesn't bear up.' Trump manged to get on every major morning show by calling in to CBS This Morning as well, where he said rather bluntly; 'This is going to happen in the United States.' Republican hopeful Ted Cruz also commented on the attacks Tuesday, saying; 'Our hearts break for the men and women of Brussels this morning. 'Make no mistake - these terror attacks are no isolated incidents. They are just the latest in a string of coordinated attacks by radical Islamic terrorists perpetrated by those who are waging war against all who do not accept their extreme strain of Islam.' He then began to attack President Obama, saying; 'Radical Islam is at war with us. For over seven years we have had a president who refuses to acknowledge this reality. 'And the truth is, we can never hope to defeat this evil so long as we refuse to even name it. That ends on January 20, 2017, when I am sworn in as president. 'We will name our enemy - radical Islamic terrorism. And we will defeat it.' Cruz also held a press conference in Washington DC to comment on the attacks after not appearing on any of the morning news programs. 'Todays attacks in Brussels underscores this is a war, 'said Cruz. 'This is not a lone war. ISIS has declared jihad.' He then, once again, attacked President Obama, saying; 'It is way past time we have a president who will acknowledge this evil and will call it by its name and use the full force and fury to defeat ISIS. 'Until they are defeated, these attacks will continue. Their target is each and every one of us. 'We need a president who sets aside political correctness. We dont need another lecture about Islamophobia.' Cruz also went after Trump for his comments made just one day prior that the US contributes too much money to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, which is headquartered in Brussels. 'Donald Trump is wrong that America should retreat from Europe, retreat from NATO, hand Putin a major victory and while hes at it, hand ISIS a major victory, ' said Cruz. 'It is striking the day after Donald Trump called for America weakening NATO, withdrawing from NATO, we see Brussels - where NATO is headquartered - the subject of a radical Islamic terrorist attack.' Cruz, like Trump, also advocated for the monitoring of Muslims in the United States, saying; 'We need to immediately halt the flow of refugees from countries with a significant al Qaida or ISIS presence. 'We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized. 'We need to secure the southern border to prevent terrorist infiltration.' Speech: President Obama spoke about the attacks during an appearance in Cuba Tuesday morning, saying; 'We stand in solidarity with them in condemning these outrageous attacks against innocent people' Response: Trump commented on Obama's speech as soon as the president finished with his remarks Presser: Ted Cruz held a press conference following the attacks during which he repeatedly attacked President Obama Criticism: Prior to Obama's speech, Republican hopeful John Kasich called in to Fox News and said the president should end his trip and return to Washington DC. he later appeared live on camera (above) President Obama spoke about the attacks during an appearance in Cuba Tuesday morning, where he is on a trip with his wife Michelle and daughters Malia and Sasha. 'We stand in solidarity with them in condemning these outrageous attacks against innocent people,' said Obama. 'This is yet another reminder that the world must unite, we must be together, regardless of nationality or race or faith in fighting against the scourge of terrorism. 'We can and we will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people around the world.' Trump wrote on Twitter shortly after Obama's speech; 'President Obama looks and sounds so ridiculous making his speech in Cuba, especially in the shadows of Brussels. He is being treated badly!' Prior to Obama's speech, Republican hopeful John Kasich called in to Fox News and said the president should end his trip and return to Washington DC. 'What I hope he will say is he's leaving Cuba and heading back to the White House,' said Kasich. 'Hes gonna begin to organize meetings with the leaders around the world and at the same time get himself in the position of where we can send teams of people immediately to Europe to begin to dig in terms of what we need to do to address the vulnerabilities we have.' He also released a statement saying; 'Along with every American, I am sickened by the pictures of the carnage, by the injuries and by the loss of life. 'The wave of terror that has been unleashed in Europe and elsewhere around the world are attacks against our very way of life and against the democratic values upon which our political systems have been built. 'We and our allies must rededicate ourselves to these values of freedom and human rights. We must utterly reject the use of deadly acts of terror. 'We must also redouble our efforts with our allies to identify, root out and destroy the perpetrators of such acts of evil. A pair of robbers who choked a Parkinson's sufferer senseless in order to steal a 15,000 Rolex from his wrist have been jailed. Neil Blackwell, 27, and Kevin Ripley, 32, carried out the vicious attack on Roy James as he was working in a car and van hire shop in Eltham, south east London. The two men had been pretending to look at prices before bursting in on him. Shocking CCTV footage filmed one of the men putting his arm around Mr James' throat to choke him, while the other removed the 15,000 Yachtmaster watch from his wrist. A pair of dangerous robbers who choked a Parkinson's sufferer senseless in order to steal a 15,000 Rolex from his wrist have been jailed Neil Blackwell, 27, (left) and Kevin Ripley, 32, (right) carried out the vicious attack on Roy James as he was working in a car and van hire shop in Eltham, south east London Both men then made off after the incident at about 1.40pm on 10 February, leaving the father of seven, 46, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, lying unconscious on the ground. CCTV of the attack was recovered and released in an appeal to find the attackers, which led the police to arrest Blackwell at his home in Greenhithe, Kent and Ripley in Gravesend, Kent. Both men pleaded guilty to charges of robbery on Monday, 21 March at Woolwich Crown Court. Blackwell was jailed for five years and eight months, and Ripley for four years and six months. Shocking CCTV footage showed one of the men put his arm around Mr James' throat and began to choke him, while the other removed the 15,000 Yachtmaster watch from his wrist Both men then made off after the incident at about 1.40pm on 10 February, leaving the father of seven, 46, who suffers from Parkinson's disease, lying unconscious on the ground CCTV of the attack was recovered and released in an appeal to find the attackers, which led the police to arrest Blackwell at his home in Greenhithe, Kent and Ripley in Gravesend, Kent Detective Constable Andrew Payne thanked all those who supported the police appeal. He said: 'Both these men were quickly arrested as a direct result of the public and media; it was with your help that two dangerous criminals were arrested. 'The violence and viciousness of this robbery is apparent to anyone who watches the CCTV. Mr James said he had bought the watch as a present to himself about 10 years ago (stock image) 'These two men were reckless in their use of force and it was mere good fortune that the victim was not seriously injured. 'I am sure the public will be relieved to see them brought to justice.' Mr James, who runs E&S Hire said that the incident had left him traumatised. He said: 'Things have not been good. It has totally knocked me for six. 'It's just been one thing after another.' Speaking at the time of the robbery in February, he said: 'It was my prize possession and I bought it as a present to myself about 10 years ago. 'It's just one thing after another as we were burgled around three months ago and 15 of our vehicles were taken. 'I think I'm going to just work my notice now until the end of the month I've got seven kids under the age of 15 and with my illness there's a lot on my plate. 'I've lived in Eltham for 20 years and had the business for all this time. Two teenagers travelling on a moped are lucky to be alive after a male passenger of a 4WD attempted to pull them off their bike causing it to crash in front of oncoming traffic. The driver of the moped, 16, lost control when his 17-year-old passenger was grabbed by the man in the man in the 4WD who pulled him toward the car he was riding in. Police say the teenagers who were travelling along Pinjarra Road in Mandurah, Western Australian, were involved in a verbal disagreement with the driver and passenger of the 4WD before they were attacked. CCTV footage captured moments before the brutal daylight attack shows the moped heading down the road followed by the white 4WD. Two teenagers riding on a moped (pictured) in Mandurah, south of Perth in Western Australia have been attacked The boys were attacked by two men believed to be in their 20s traveling in a white 4WD The accident occurred just after 5pm on Monday but police are yet to identify the driver or passenger travelling in the 4WD. The passenger of the 4WD then leant out of the vehicle and grabbed hold of the 17 year old pillion passenger, pulling him towards the four wheel drive,' police said on a Facebook post. The rider of the moped lost control, causing it to crash and throwing both the rider and passenger onto the road in front of oncoming traffic. The attack happened shortly after CCTV footage picked up images of both vehicles traveling down Pinjarra Road The driver of the 4WD fled from the accident. Both of the teenagers escaped major injury but do have cuts and scrapes to their arms, legs and hands. The men in the 4WD are described as being in their 20s having an olive complexion and solid build. The Houston, Texas man who was murdered in a carjacking this weekend - a month after he made headlines for having sex on a Las Vegas Ferris wheel - was reportedly bragging about all the money he had made from interviews about the scandal when two brothers pulled a gun on him. Philip Panzica's fiancee Mistie Bozant, 36, says he drove to the strip club where she works early Saturday morning to pick her up, but before they left he chatted up one of his alleged killers. Bozant and Panzica made headlines in February when they went to Las Vegas to get married but instead had a falling out, leading to Panzica's arrest for having sex with another woman on the High Roller Ferris wheel. But the two reconciled and later spoke about the incident with several news outlets. On Saturday, Panzica apparently bragged to Vivid Gentleman's Club shoe shiner Aaron Jones, 31, about earning $4,000 to speak about the sexcapade to Inside Edition. Scroll down for video Mistie Bozant (pictured) left with her boyfriend from the strip club where she works on Saturday when two men shot him dead and then took off with her car Philip Panzica, 27 (right) made headlines last month when he was arrested for having sex on a Las Vegas Ferris wheel with a woman he just met when he was meant to be getting married to his fiancee Bozant, 36 (left) Bozant says she had that check in her purse, as well as her earnings from that night, when she and Panzica left the club around 5am on Saturday. Jones and his brother, 28-year-old Bryant Christopher Watts, followed the couple back to their car and then shot Panzica, before forcing Bozant out of the car and driving off. 'He (Watts) just reached in his crotch and pulled the gun around the corner and said, "You need to come clean,"' Bozant said. 'Philip didn't even have time to talk, the guy just shot him five times in the head,' Bozant recalled to KHOU. Bozant says when the two men initially took off with the car, Panzica was still alive and she tried to keep him conscious - to no avail. Brothers Bryant Christopher Watts, 28 (left), and Aaron Jones, 31 (right), were later arrested and charged with capital murder. Panzica reportedly met Jones, the strip club shoe-shiner, just before his death and bragged about receiving $4,000 fro Inside Edition to give an interview about his sexcapade Panzica's girlfriend was reportedly with him in the car Saturday morning when they left Vivid strip club in Houston and Panzica was shot dead. Watts and Jones made it 300 miles before they were caught and charged with capital murder 'I was like, "Baby, stay with me." I could still see his heart beating, but his eyes were just glassy,' she said. Jones and Watts drove about 300 miles before a sheriff's deputy spotted them and they were taken into custody after a police chase. They now face charges of capital murder. I was like, 'Baby, stay with me'. I could still see his heart beating, but his eyes were just glassy. 'They deserve to be punished to the fullest extent of the law in my eyes,' she said. Bozant also revealed that she and Panzica had broken up by the time of his death. While she forgave him for his indiscretion in Las Vegas, Bozant says Panzica was moving out of town soon for a new job and they had grown apart. Meanwhile, a woman claiming to be the 'love of his life' has set up a Go Fund Me page to help raise money for Panzica's family and his three-year-old child with another woman. On the page, Morgan Massad writes that Philip 'was not only my best friend but the love of my life' and that the 'details of his and mine love life and relationship is noones concern' [sic]. 'We were together for a long time and I am close with his family. I'm doing this for him and them. Help me help them raise money for the services,' Massad writes. However, a woman claiming to be Panzica's sister Audrey seemed skeptical of the account, writing 'I sure hope the money you are raising is in fact going to his family'. Another woman claiming to be the mother of Panzica's three-year-old son also criticized the Go Fund Me account. A woman named Morgan Massad (pictured with Panzica above) started a Go Fund Me in his honor but family members have voiced their skepticism on the page Panzica also reportedly had a three-year-old son with another woman - Brandi Gurule (woman pictured above, with a young boy in a photo posted to her Instagram) Brandi Gurule wrote: 'The situation with us has been going for 5 years now... Just because you dated him for a fraction of that time you still don't know a fraction of our story or situation. You know what he wanted you to know and that's that. 'What mother in their right mind would allow their child around someone who is doing drugs, at strip clubs Til 5am, and catching felony charges in Vegas for stunts like that? If this is what the public has seen the past two months imagine what they HAVENT seen that I dealt with the past 5 years. Don't make this messier than it needs to be, all I'm asking is leave my son out of it.' Panzica and Bozant first made headlines last month when they traveled to Las Vegas to get married. However, the two had a falling out when Bozant revealed to her fiance that she was pregnant - and perhaps not with his child. (She later found out that she was not in fact pregnant.) Instead of tying the knot, an angered Panzica went off drinking and gambling on his own, downing 'four or five margaritas' before meeting 21-year-old Chloe Scordianos from Hicksville, New York and taking her for a ride on the High Roller Las Vegas Ferris wheel. Panzica (left) and Bozant had a brief falling out in Las Vegas last month. He went out drinking and met 21-year-old Chloe Scordianos (right) who he took on the Ferris wheel for a risque ride. She told the New York Daily News on Monday that they had not kept in contact Police say surveillance cameras captured Panzica and Scordianos in the act and security warned the couple to stop - and people in another car shot cellphone video 'One thing led to another' and the pair were soon arrested for engaging in sex acts, 550 feet above the Las Vegas Strip. 'It wasn't planned, it was just, I felt it,' Panzica, with Bozant by his side, told KTNV about the incident. 'We get up to the highest point, and we were like, "We're golden!"' When the ride was over Panzica and Scordianos were arrested and charged with Commission of Certain Sex Acts in Public. While the incident may have been enough to break up many couples, Bozant forgave her boyfriend and spent $3,000 bailing him out of jail two days later. His lawyer, Bennair Bateman, said during a court hearing earlier this month that his client had agreed to plead guilty to a misdemeanor, according to the Las Vegas Review Journal. Scordianos however has said she will not take the deal and will go to trail, as she believes she didn't do anything wrong. In an interview with the New York Daily News on Monday, Scordianos said she fell out of contact with Panzica after the incident. 'I haven't spoken a word with him,' she said. 'I didn't even add him on Facebook. There was so much drama, I usually just try to keep drama out of my life. It's funny how that just comes to me.' The 21-year-old mother of one says she found out about his death just an hour before being contacted by the Daily News. She says his death 'really creeps' her out because she's never slept with someone before who has died. Germany's is fast running out of prison cells due to the refugee crisis, according to the country's main prison union. Around 30,000 migrants are being held on remand because they are deemed a flight risk and union leaders estimate that at least 2,000 of these will be handed a custodial sentence when they get to court. Overtime costs are skyrocketing for prison officers - 440,000 man hours logged in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia in the past six months alone. Blamed for overcrowding: Foreign nationals make up nine percent of the general population in Germany but over 30 percent of its prison population Foreigners make up nine percent of the general population in Germany but over 30 percent of its prison population - and a far higher proportion than that of remand prisoners. 'The wave of refugees is not without consequence for the German prisons, because more than one million refugees have come in the past year, with 30,000 criminal cases pending,' said Anton Bachl, head of the Federal Union of Prison Staff which represents 38,000 members. He added; 'The pre-trial detention figures have significantly increased - and specifically by foreigners.' Various studies and figures of the Federal Criminal Police Office have shown in recent weeks that the number of criminal offences by refugees are on the rise, but proportional to their numbers: immigrants as a group still commit less crime than Germans. But some immigrants, particularly those from North Africa, have shown particularly high rates of delinquent behaviour. No space: Cologne, where dozens of coordinated assaults and robberies took place on New Year's Eve, sits in North Rhine-Westphalia which now has 11,149 prisoners in space intended for 10,128 It was men from these so-called Maghreb countries who were widely responsible for the sexual frenzy in Cologne on New Year's Eve when gangs of them robbed and molested hundreds of women as police lost control of the situation. Bachl said that prisons need a minumum of 2,000 more staff immediately and that new facilities need to be built to deal with a crisis he says will not end anytime soon. North Rhine-Westphalia, the state in which Cologne sits, now has 11,149 prisoners in space intended for 10,128. Peter Brock, state chairman of the union in the state said a lack of officers will force thousands of overtime hours in the near future. In the state's biggest youth jail in Herford, Brock said over half of remand prisoners there now are migrants. 'The police make more raids, judges go harder on offenders and impose pretrial detention because the public pressure has grown,' Brock said. Other German states are reporting similar pressures. Hesse's Justice Minister Eva Kuhne Hormann has announced that old and delapidated cellblockls - such as one in the jail at Kassel - are being reopened. A police force's legal director has been suspended over payments to her former husband's law firm while she is also investigated over claims she had an affair with the married deputy chief constable. Dyfed Powys Police's head of legal services, Samantha Gainard, 41, is alleged to have had an affair with the force's married deputy chief constable Carl Langley, 48. She was originally allowed to stay in her role with Britain's smallest police force, which covers mid and West Wales - while Mr Langley was moved to another post. Dyfed Powys Police's head of legal services, Samantha Gainard, 41, (pictured left) was already being investigated amid claims she had an affair with the force's married deputy chief constable Carl Langley (right) But today it was revealed she has been suspended over payments the force made to the chambers when her barrister husband worked. Figures reveal the force paid 67,000 to the London-based chambers of her estranged husband Andrew Waters - despite the fact it is located more than 200 miles from the police headquarters. A spokesman for the Independent Police Complaints Commission said it is investigating the payments - while an outside force's chief constable is probing any impact of 'a former relationship on internal force matters.' An IPCC spokesman said: 'The allegations relate to payments made by Dyfed-Powys Police for legal services over a number of years to a barristers' chambers where her then husband worked. Dyfed Powys Police paid 67,000 of work to the chambers of Ms Gainard's estranged husband Andrew Waters (pictured) who is based in London - more than 200 miles from the police HQ 'The IPCC is investigating what role Ms Gainard had in instructing the chambers, in signing off any invoices, and whether she declared any potential conflict of interest related to transactions when required, in line with force policies and procedures.' The police force, which is based in Carmarthen, West Wales, confirmed five months ago that the pair were both facing disciplinary action over allegations their relationship may have 'detrimentally affected their work'. Mr Langley, who was appointed to his role at Dyfed-Powys Police in March 2012 on a salary of 104,00 - was 'temporarily' redeployed into a Wales-wide role Mr Langley, who was appointed to his role at Dyfed-Powys Police in March 2012 on a salary of 104,00 - was 'temporarily' redeployed into a Wales-wide role. He has a master's degree in the ethics of policing and criminal justice and is accused of starting a secret affair with Ms Gainard, who earns 68,000 a year. But Ms Gainard remained in her post until she was recently suspended over the payments to 5 Essex Court Chambers. The force has appointed West Mercia's Chief Constable David Shaw to handle the investigation into Ms Gainard's part in the payments. In a previous statement, Dyfed-Powys Police said: 'Dyfed Powys Police received allegations of misconduct concerning Deputy Chief Constable Langley and Director of Legal Services Samantha Gainard, which were referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission. 'An investigation has commenced, and is being conducted by Chief Constable David Shaw of West Mercia Police. 'Part of the investigation concerns the consequences or otherwise of a former relationship on internal force matters. It is not appropriate to comment any further due to the ongoing investigation.' Ms Gainard's lawyers have denied any suggestion she acted unprofessionally. A spokesman said: 'Ms Gainard is prepared to identify through the investigative processes currently under way that any complaint that she has permitted her marital status to influence her professional standards or to determine which set of barristers' chambers should be instructed is unfounded. There is no suggestion Mr Waters benefited personally from any work given to his chambers by Dyfed-Powys Police. American siblings, US couple, Swedish woman and 63-year-old mother are among the others who are missing Series of blasts by ISIS militants killed at least 34 people and injured 170 in the city yesterday morning Families of those missing in terror attacks are going to Brussels hospitals and using social media to find them Advertisement The British father missing since the Brussels bombings sent a message to his family telling them he was okay after the airport attacks - but has not been seen since another explosion ripped through the Metro an hour later. David Dixon, 53, has not been in contact with his partner, Charlotte Sutcliffe, since the second attack was carried out and it is thought he was on the Brussels Metro at the time the explosion hit the Maalbeck underground station. His aunt, Ann Dixon, said he sent her a message telling her he was okay after the airport attacks - before getting on the Metro to go to work. His partner, Ms Sutcliffe, is now among the many relatives of the missing now desperately appealing for information. Also missing are American siblings Sascha and Alexander Pinczowski, believed to have been at the airport at the time of the bombings, and 29-year-old Belgian Aline Bastine, thought to have been on the Metro, and Loubna Lafquiri, whose friends are searching hospitals. The daughter of an elderly couple, Andre and Danielle Adam, who feared they had both been killed at the airport, has confirmed her mother is in hospital but her father is still missing. The British Prime Minister's Office has said it is 'concerned' about one missing Briton following the Brussels terror attacks. Four Britons were injured in the attacks, three of whom are being treated in hospital, a Downing Street spokesman said. David Dixon (right) with his partner Charlotte Louise Sutcliffe (left). He is thought to have been on the Metro in Brussels when the second attack took place and has not been seen or heard from since David Dixon, from Hartlepool, has not been in contact with his partner Charlotte Louise Sutcliffe since leaving for work yesterday IT programmer Mr Dixon, who lives in Brussels but is originally from Hartlepool, County Durham, was travelling to work yesterday morning but did not arrive at his office. The 53-year-old would have travelled through Maelbeek station, where the attack happened. Friends have been appealing for information on his whereabouts on social media and asking anyone with information to contact his Ms Sutcliffe. His aunt Ann Dixon, told The Daily Telegraph: 'As soon as I heard on the news about the explosion at the airport I thought of David and I texted him to ask whether he was alright. It was a relief when he texted back soon afterwards and said he was safe and fine.' She added: 'No one has heard anything from him since and of course we are desperately worried. Our hope is that he's injured and has been taken to hospital.' Ms Sutcliffe's sister Marie told BBC Radio 4's Today Programme: 'Understandably she is very, very distressed. Not everybody has been identified yet, of the injured, so it's waiting for that process to happen. Everybody is struggling with communication there, or they were yesterday, with phones being down and there being a lockdown.' Marie added: 'She's been on social media with friends helping to put out the message that he is still missing. She has been involved with the British consulate. When she was at the hospital, she had an interview with the police so they've got all the details now. It's just waiting. It's heartbreaking and very worrying.' Charlotte, originally from Creswell in Nottinghamshire, has a young son with Mr Dixon, said Marie. She last spoke to her partner 'yesterday morning before he went off to work' and had been unable to get through to his mobile phone since the bombings. 'There's no phone network. I've tried to ring him and other people have,' said Marie, who is due to travel to Brussels to support her sister. She said family and friends of Mr Dixon were hoping 'that she'll find out from a hospital or through the police that he is safe and being helped'. New York siblings Sascha (pictured) and Alexander Pinczowski were at Brussels Airport at the time of the two explosions inside a terminal Also among those missing are Stephanie and Justin Shults from Lexington Kentucky, who are currently living in Brussels, pictured together (above left). Aline Bastin (right) is also feared to have been on the Metro at the time of the attacks Friend Simon Hartley-Jones said: 'Charlotte's got no family out there, which makes it all the more difficult to cope with. Her sister has been trying to get out there, but it's been very difficult with the travel restrictions. 'We're hoping he's just been injured, and his lost his wallet and phone somewhere and is safe in hospital. We've heard that they're struggling to identify survivors, and our hope is he's one of those people. 'Charlotte has no idea if David travelled through that station yesterday, but she's desperately worried. 'She's tried repeatedly to call him and she just can't get through - he would be desperate to get in touch if he could. It's very unusual for him not to be at work, as he's very dedicated and hard-working - which makes it all the more worrying. 'David and Charlotte are an amazing couple and lovely people - they're always there for each other. Henry is such a daddy's boy and a wonderful child - he just wants his dad back. 'Brussels is as much their home as the UK is, although they still come back regularly to visit family and friends - they were due to come back this weekend to celebrate Henry's birthday.' The brother of Raghavendran Ganesan (left) and a friend of Yves Cibuabua (right) have appealed for information about their whereabouts Relatives of Patricia Rizzo (left) have posted heartbreaking messages online as they go from hospital to hospital looking for her. Loubna Lafquiri (right) is believed to be missing while travelling on the metro yesterday morning during the attack Mother Berit Viktorsson, 63, and Belgian nursing student Sabrina Fazal, 24, have not been heard from since they took the metro Marketing student Bart Migom was due to fly to Athens, Georgia, to see girlfriend Emily Eisenman (pictured together) but is now missing Mr Dixon is just one of many people missing since the attacks, with relatives around the world trying to track them down. American siblings Sascha and Alexander Pinczowski were at Brussels Airport at the time of the two explosions inside a terminal and have not been seen or heard from since the incidents. According to Dutch media reports, the pair were on the phone to their family when the blasts took place and then the line went dead. The Pinczowskis, both from New York, were at Brussels Airport at the time of the two explosions inside a terminal and have not been seen or heard from since the incidents. Sascha's Facebook profile page states that she is originally from the seaside town of Vouliagmeni in Greece. She is a former student at Marymount Manhattan College and worked as a production intern at a design company in Chelsea, according to her LinkedIn. She previously studied hospitality management in Holland and can speak five languages. Alexander's LinkedIn states that he is 'currently finishing my bachelor's degree in Mechanical Engineering at Northern Illinois University.' Alex is described as being about 6ft 1ins, with short brown hair. He has a beard, brown eyes and is diabetic. It is understood the pair were due to fly back to the US when the blasts took place. Dutch media report their father lives in the Netherlands and is now travelling to Brussels to help with the search. Fabienne Vansteenkiste (left) and Andre Adam (right) are thought to have been at the airport during the bombings. They are still missing Relatives of Johanna Atlegrim (left), thought to be from Sweden, have been appealing for information on her whereabouts following the deadly attacks in Brussels. Colleagues of Janina Panasewicz (right) are appealing for information about her Also missing is Aline Bastine, a 29-year-old Belgian believed to have been on the Metro at the time of the attacks. Her friend Agnis Di wrote online: 'HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL? Her name is ALINE BASTIN, Belgian, 29 years old. She was most probably on the metro this morning during the attacks. 'We are DESPERATELY looking for her should you have any news, PLEASE give a sign!' Nursing student and mother of one Sabrina Fazal, 24, is also missing. Her one-year-old boy is his grandmother. A friend of hers told the BBC: 'We've been calling all other hospitals, we're still looking around... Her phone was found close to the station but not inside. We think she might be injured.' HELPLINE FOR ANYONE CONCERNED ABOUT SOMEONE IN BRUSSELS The Foreign Office has set up a helpline, +44 207 008 0000, for anyone in the UK concerned about family or friends in Brussels Advertisement Family members of Justin and Stephanie Shults, a couple who moved to Brussels from Nashville in the US in 2014, are also appealing for information. It is believed Ms Shults' mother had spent a week visiting the couple and was at the airport to fly home when the attacks occurred. Justin Shults, 30, is originally from Gatlinburg, Tennessee while his wife, 29, is from Lexington, Kentucky. They met while attending graduate school at Vanderbilt University. Both received a master's degree in accounting from the school. Relatives of Patricia Rizzo are also travelling from hospital to hospital looking for her. She has not been seen since the bombing. Her cousin Massimo Leonora wrote online: 'We are indeed in the hospital of Neder for the moment, with the police taking info and her description. She's not here and the search continues. 'We keep hope. Thank you for your messages of sympathy. I'll let you know as soon as we know more. Pray for her please.' Marketing student Bart Migom, 21, was due to fly to the US to see his girlfriend Emily Eisenman, 21, in Athens, Georgia, yesterday morning. She told an American TV station: 'He was texting me from the train on his way to the airport in Brussels. 'He was supposed to send me a picture of his boarding pass when he got there, but he never did.' She said his family had also not heard from him. The Foreign Office has set up a helpline, +44 207 008 0000, for anyone in the UK concerned about family or friends in Brussels. The Red Cross has also launched a website allowing people can mark themselves as 'safe', or search for missing loved ones. Explosion: The image above is being used by the Belgian media who claim this is the damage caused by the bomb at the Maelbeek Metro station in central Brussels. It has not been verified by the authorities but is being widely circulated on social media. First attack: Two explosions rocked Brussels Airport in a terror attack yesterday The driver was shaken up, but he was not seriously hurt in the incident Authorities said that the driver was stunned, which caused him to lose control of the car and crash into a tree The boulder grazed the driver's shoulder but no one else was in the car The massive rock went through the passenger side of the windshield A northern Californian driver is lucky to be alive after a boulder crashed through his windshield while he was driving down the highway this week. The driver, who has not been identified, was traveling on Cazadero Highway near Guerneville on Monday morning when the massive rock smashing into the car. Though the boulder grazed the driver's shoulder, it predominantly struck the passenger side of the windshield and no one else what in the car. A man is lucky to be alive after a boulder crashed through his window while he was driving on Cazadero Highway near Guerneville, California, on Monday morning 'What had happened is he came around a turn and the rock came off of the hill up above, about 40 feet up, went through the passenger side wide and hit him in the shoulder,' Monte Rio Fire Chief Steve Baxman told CBS San Francisco. 'And that caused him to lose control and go off the road,' he added. Authorities said that the driver was stunned, which caused him to lose control of the car and crash into a tree. Driving into the tree, however, helped save the man from heading straight into a creek, firefighters told KGO. The giant rock grazed the driver's shoulder, but crashed through the passenger side of the vehicle. The driver was the only person in the car The rock, estimated to be about two feet by two feet, fell from about 40 feet up, authorities estimated. And though the driver was shaken up, he was not seriously hurt in the terrifying incident. Crews found the man sitting next to his mangled car when the arrived on scene after getting a call about a car crashing into a tree. Fire officials said that rain could have cause the rock to break loose from the hill, according to NBC Bay Area. The vehicle was taken from the scene on a flatbed tow truck. Family say he'd finally found peace after NASA officials told him Challenger disaster was 'not his burden to bear' when he shared his story in January Thirty years after the disaster, Ebeling still blamed himself for not lobbying harder for a postponed launch However, the space agency overruled them and decided to press forward with the launch anyway, sending seven crew members to their death working for NASA contractor Morton Thiokol who warned against launching Challenger in 1986 Bob Ebeling, 89, was one of four e Bob Ebeling, a Challenger engineer who predicted the space shuttle would explode, never truly forgave himself for the deaths of the seven crew. After three decades of guilt over the disaster, he passed away on Monday aged 89 in Brigham City, Utah, following a long illness. The former engineer for NASA contractor Morton Thiokol was part of a team of four that tried to warn the space agency against the launch, saying the temperatures in Cape Canaveral were too cold for the booster rockets to seal properly. Scroll down for video Whistle-blower: Bob Ebeling, 89, was one of four engineers for a NASA contractor who tried to warn the space agency against launching the Challenger space shuttle back in 1986 A million pieces: Ebeling knew the weather in Florida was too cold for a safe launch of the Challenger space shuttle on January 28, 1986 The awful moment, just 73 seconds after take off, that the shuttle exploded on January 28 1986 as 17 per cent of the American population watched on in horror Despite their efforts to postpone the launch, NASA overruled them and went forward with the mission - sending six crew members and a school teacher to their death. 'I was one of the few that was really close to the situation,' Ebeling, 89, told NPR on the anniversary of the tragedy in January. 'Had they listened to me and wait[ed] for a weather change, it might have been a completely different outcome.' It was a decision that would haunt Ebeling for the rest of his life. But his family say that coming forward to speak about the disaster earlier this year - and the responses he received from NASA officials and engineers - had finally allowed their father to find peace. 'It was as if he got permission from the world,' his daughter Leslie Ebeling Serna told NPR. 'He was able to let that part of his life go.' Doomed: Above, the seven crew members of the flight. Back row, left to right: Ellison Onizuka, Christa McAuliffe, Gregory Jarvis, and Judith Resnik. Front row, left to right: Michael J. Smith, Francis R. (Dick) Scobee, and Ronald E. McNair The crew members walked out to the launch pad at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral for the fateful launch Earlier this year, Ebeling had described the moment he watched the launch in terror from a conference room at his office in Brigham City, Utah. Only the night before he had told his wife 'it's going to blow up'. His daughter Serna described being in the crowded conference room with her father as live video of the launch played on a large projection screen. Just 73 seconds after take off on January 28, 1986, and with 17 per cent of the American population watching, the shuttle exploded leaving a trail of smoke across the sky. When the Challenger exploded, Ebeling broke down. 'I could feel [Ebeling] trembling,' she said. 'And then he wept loudly.' After the disaster, Ebeling and another Morton Thiokol engineer spoke with NPR anonymously to detail what they knew went wrong with the launch. At the time, Ebeling asked to be quoted anonymously, afraid that he would lose his job. The shuttle exploded within seconds of the launch, making a trail of smoke into the ocean Shock: Millions of Americans watched on live TV and on the ground in Florida as the space shuttle took off and then exploded in the air 73 seconds later Frederick Gregory (foreground) and Richard O Covey, spacecraft communicators at Mission Control in Houston watched helplessly as the Challenger exploded But the burden of what happened that day caused him to retire shortly afterwards. On the 30th anniversary of the disaster, last January, he revealed that he still blamed himself for not lobbying harder to postpone the flight. 'I could have done more. I should have done more,' he told NPR. WHAT CAUSED THE CHALLENGER DISASTER? On January 28, 1986, shortly before noon, the space shuttle challenger launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida. The shuttle was taking five crew, an engineer and a school teacher in space. The launch was highly publicized due to the fact that New Hampshire high school teacher Christa McAuliffe was to become the first teacher in space - winning the spot from a pool of 10,000 applicants. But just 73 seconds after the launch, the shuttle exploded in the sky making a trail of smoke into the ocean. NASA later blamed the deadly launch on unusually cold weather in Florida which led to the shuttle's booster rocket O-ring seals to become stiff, causing a leak. Advertisement A religious man, he says he has prayed on the issue and continues to wonder why God picked 'a loser' for the job. After reading his story, Ebeling heard from two of the people who had overruled the engineers back in 1986. Former Thiokol executive Robert Lund and former NASA official George Hardy reached out to him to assure him that the disaster was not his burden to bear. NASA also sent a statement saying that the tragedy would remind the space agency 'to remain vigilant and to listen to those like Mr. Ebeling who have the courage to speak up.' After three decades of guilt and shame, Ebeling finally felt at peace. 'You helped bring my worrisome mind to ease,' he told NPR shortly before his death. 'You have to have an end to everything.' In the aftermath of the disaster, the Reagan administration conducted an investigation into the explosion and found that there were flaws in NASA's decision-making process. It's believed that there were several pressures that may have pushed the agency to go through with the launch when it would have been better to wait. The first was that NASA was scheduling several launches that year and may have wanted to show that they could meet their deadlines. The other factor was that Reagan was scheduled to give his State of the Union speech that night, and wanted to brag about the launch in his address. Thirty years later: On Thursday, family members of the crew members lost in the disaster gathered for a memorial at Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida. Pictured left to right are Alison Smith Balch, daughter of Challenger pilot Michael Smith; Kathie Scobee Fulgham, daughter of Challenger commander Francis Scobee; her brother Major General Richard Scobee; and Scott McAuliffe, son of Challenger 'Teacher in Space' Christa McAuliffe But Ebeling says whatever the pressures, nothing was worth the risk of sending seven crew members on an uncertain mission. 'NASA ruled the launch. They had their mind set on going up and proving to the world they were right and they knew what they were doing. But they didn't,' he said. Yet, for the seven astronauts' loved ones, January 28, 1986, remains fresh in their minds. Steven McAuliffe, a federal judge in Concord, New Hampshire, still declines interviews about his late wife Christa, who was poised to become the first schoolteacher in space. But he noted in a statement on the anniversary of the disaster that, although 30 years have passed, 'Challenger will always be an event that occurred just recently. Our thoughts and memories of Christa will always be fresh and comforting.' Tony Blair has warned that flabby liberalism is helping terrorists because Britains elite feel too guilty to tackle the spread of extremism. The former Labour prime minister said many in politics are now unwilling to take people on, fearing that they will be seen as intolerant of other cultures. Speaking ahead of todays terror atrocities in Brussels, he branded such an approach ridiculous and said it had left our countrys liberal values vulnerable to abuse. Mr Blair urged the establishment to defeat violence by attacking extremist thinking in schools and wider society. And he said there needs to be a tougher centre ground approach to migration and the refugee crisis, which for many politicians is a still a toxic issue. Tony Blair has warned that flabby liberalism is helping terrorists because Britains elite feel too guilty to tackle the spread of extremism He told the BBC: We're in a situation where we have to fight back. The centre has become flabby and unwilling to take people on. We concede far too much. There's this idea that you're part of an elite if you think in terms of respectful tolerance towards other people. It's ridiculous. He added that too often moderate voices are defensive about arguing their case, fuelling a culture of extremism in religion and politics. One of the problems with the West is that it constantly can be made to feel guilty about itself - and I'm not saying there aren't things we should feel guilty about, he said. But you know, we shouldn't let people intimidate us into thinking there are certain values we shouldn't be standing up for. I'm a supporter of multiculturalism. But there's been a long period of time when we've allowed the concept of multiculturalism to be abused. As an example, he said that if people were asserting the equality and fair treatment of women that they should not be made to feel somehow we're being culturally insensitive. We have to be clear no one has the right to abrogate those basic human rights. On the challenge of migration and refugees, he said that in an era of anxiety, a lack of a coherent mainstream response, has opened the door to more extreme arguments. A lack of action from moderates often prompts people to turn to the hard right, he warned. You have to give a real solution and not one which is populist but false, he said. If you don't give a solution, and you leave people with a choice between what I would call a bit of flabby liberalism and the hardline, they'll take the hardline I'm afraid. He called for a more assertive policy of muscular centrism. And in apparent reference to the Trojan Horse scandal, in which hardliners tried to impose an Islamic agenda on state schools, he said tackling extremism begins in the classroom. Speaking ahead of todays terror atrocities in Brussels (pictured), he branded such an approach ridiculous and said it had left our countrys liberal values vulnerable to abuse Mr Blair said: The truth is this extremism is being incubated in school systems, formal and informal, which are teaching children a narrow minded and often hateful view of those who are different. What people need to understand is that this culture of hate is taught. They are taught a culture of hate and they can be untaught it. This extremist thinking is what you have to attack, if you don't attack the ideology you'll never defeat the violence. Mr Blair also challenged the idea that promoting values of tolerance was a form of Western cultural interference. The West has just got to get over this, he said. There are many other people in the region who do not regard the notion of peaceful co-existence as a Western value, they see it as a sensible human value, a global value. The former prime minister also warned that both the far right and far left were promoting arguments in favour of isolationism and protectionism. People are very anxious and uncertain and they are turning to the demagogic populism of left and right. After leaving office, Mr Blair set up a foundation which works to promote greater understanding between the world's religions and to challenge extremism and prejudice. Tom was described as 'very kind, very sensitive and incredibly loyal' His family are calling for more to be done to restrict the drugs availability He had taken an accidental overdose of legal highs bought over internet Tom Elrington, pictured, was found dead at home in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, after taking an accidental overdose of legal highs he bought online The son of a senior neurologist died of an accidental overdose after getting hooked on legal highs he bought over the internet to help him overcome his shyness. Tom Elrington, 30, was found dead by a flatmate at his home in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, after taking a cocktail of drugs that cost him just a few pounds online. Now his family calling for more awareness of the dangers of the legal drugs, many of which contain harmful substances. His parents Alison, 55, and Giles, 59, a consultant neurologist at Barts Health NHS Trust and his sister Rosie McKinnon, 29, said he suffered from anxiety and used the drugs to cope. Mrs Elrington, a former nurse, of Essex, said: 'He would get these little padded envelopes in the post. 'I started intercepting them. I emailed two websites saying my son nearly died. I never got a response. 'There is such a problem in society with addicts being treated as though they are criminals. 'They need support and understanding so that they can tackle their problems. 'I suppose we are being so open about what happened to our family because Tom wasn't a bad person in any way whatsoever. 'He really was a lovely person, he just needed help.' The family said there were times when Tom would take legal highs every day to the point where he built up a tolerance to the drugs. He would usually take types of Valium called Benzodiazepies and Pyrazolam as well as ketamine, and even had them delivered to his family home. Mrs Elrington added: 'They are really cheap. You can get quite a lot for a few pounds and do next day delivery and just get them in the post.' The 30-year-old was described as 'very kind, very sensitive and incredibly loyal' by his family His mother Alison, 55, right, with Tom, said they sent him to rehab after he began taking drugs every day and built up a tolerance to the substances In 2014 Tom spent three months at the Focus 12 Drug Addiction Treatment Centre in Bury St Edmunds, which has been supported by comedian Russell Brand. He managed to stay clean for six months but later relapsed, according to his sister, despite attending support meetings. Mrs McKinnon, of London, said: 'Rehab isn't a quick fix but he was in a good place. He was here for Mother's Day weekend, he was very positive, talking about the future and in a really good way. 'Tom was very, kind, very sensitive but always very, very friendly and had a good sense of humour. He was very bright, very quick-witted, he was quite a character.' Mrs Elrington added: 'He had a real shyness to him also, and was incredibly loyal.' Tom was found dead on March 11 and drugs were discovered at the scene. Police are not treating the death as suspicious. He grew up in Essex and attended Ipswich School, Colchester Sixth Form and Colchester Institute. His family are now keen to reduce the stigma around drug addiction and raise awareness of how easy it is to obtain legal highs. Mrs McKinnon added: 'Unless you're a heroin addict living on the street, people don't realise how drugs can affect you in so many ways.. It is not the same for everyone. His father Giles, left, is a consultant neurologist at Barts Health NHS Trust and his mother is a former nurse His mother Alison, 55, said they sent Tom to rehab after he began taking drugs every day and built up a tolerance to the substances His family is now calling for more to be done to restrict the availability of the drugs and reduce the stigma around addiction 'There is still a lot of stigma around drug addicts when there actually needs to be a lot more understanding. 'I really think it is absolutely vital that it is recognised people who are suffering from addiction need far more support and help to beat it.' She added it was fortunate her parents were able to afford to send Tom to rehab, praising the care he received at the centre. His mother added: 'He learned so much about himself and the trauma and damage drugs had done to him. 'They were just brilliant, they gave us our Tom back.' His funeral takes place on Saturday, April 2 and will be followed by a special wake dubbed 'Tom Fest' at his family home in West Bergholt, Essex. The boy reportedly told the school's resource officer he did not want to press charges and Breana was A 12-year-old Florida girl was arrested and faces a misdemeanor battery charge after she pinched a boy's bottom during what she said was just a game kids play at her school. Breana Evans thought the incident was a joke, explaining that pinching someone's derriere and laughing at their reaction is a game played by many at Milwee Middle School, according to News 6. However, it all turned serious after the boy's mother got involved last week and told deputies she wanted to prosecute Breana for battery. Scroll down for video Breana Evans, 12, of Florida (pictured) was arrested and faces a misdemeanor battery charge after she pinched a boy's bottom during what she said was just a game kids play at her school Breana thought the incident that happened two weeks at Milwee Middle School (pictured) was a joke. But the boy's mother got involved last week and told deputies she wanted to prosecute Breana for battery 'I regret it because I didn't know it would lead to this,' Breana told the station. 'I feel like it's just stupid just a stupid charge that shouldn't have to happen.' The initial incident happened in between classes two weeks ago, after which the boy told the school resource officer that he did not want to press charges, News 6 reported. Breana, who said she did not know the boy, was then suspended. Video courtesy WFTV But last week the boy's mother called police and said she wanted to press charges, which was when Breana was officially charged and booked into juvenile detention. While Breana's father, Ray, says he is sorry that his daughter touched the woman's child, he thinks the boy's mother is overreacting. 'Lord lord lordy what has this world come to... kids can't even be a kid and that's basically what it is... she's 12 years old she was acting like a 12-year-old child,' Ray Evans told News 6. While Breana's father, Ray (pictured with Breana), said he is sorry that his daughter touched the woman's child, he thinks the boy's mother is overreacting He added: 'I'm sorry my kid touched your kid but I'm sorry... because you need some help I think, too overprotective... let your kid be your kid he might get some friends and that's all I have to say.' News 6 contacted the boy's mother but she did not return their call. Sir Nicholas Soames offered frank advice today to David Cameron about dealing with Brexit campaigners Sir Nicholas Soames today advised David Cameron to treat his Brexit-backing ministers like a 'growling Alsation' and 'kick them really hard in the balls'. Winston Churchill's grandson said patting the growling Alsation on the head just leads it to bite you. Sir Nicholas said the Prime Minister should never have offered the referendum as it left him a 'hostage to fortune'. In the interview with Tory grassroots website Conservative Home, the Mid Sussex MP also repeated his claim Boris Johnson was 'not an outer'. Sir Nicholas also reserved harsh criticism for Liam Fox, the former Tory leadership candidate, for dragging US President Barack Obama into the referendum battle. But eurosceptic Tory Stewart Jackson suggested Sir Nicholas' latest intervention would be more likely to help the Leave campaign. Asked if the referendum was a concession too far, Sir Nicholas said: 'There are two ways in my view to deal with this. 'If you have an Alsatian sitting in front of you, and it growls at you and bares its teeth, there are two ways of dealing with it. 'You can pat it on the head, in which case it'll bite you, or you can kick it really hard in the balls, in which case it'll run away.' He added: 'Successive Prime Ministers, and it's not the present Prime Minister alone, have never understood that they have to take these people on, and that if you really believe that Europe is Britain's destiny, and we have to be part of the European Union, then you should always say so.' The Tory grandee said the London Mayor was a 'great friend' and praised him for doing a 'brilliant job' in a biography of his grandfather. But he said he was on the 'wrong side' of the referendum debate. He said: 'I love him for everything that he is, and I love him for his failings as well as his triumphs. I deeply regret the fact that he's jumped ship. 'I know for a fact he's not an Outer, because he told me, and I think that he went through agony to come to this decision. 'That's his look-out, but I spoke to him, actually from the carpark at Ascot Race Course, where I was about to go and enjoy a nice day's steeplechasing, and it was on the day before he announced, he announced on the Sunday, and he was under great personal pressure. 'And he said 'You don't know how awful this is', and I'm not Diogenes, I'm afraid, I take people as they say it, and I think he was under great pressure. 'And I think he came down on the wrong side.' Sir Nicholas, pictured with fellow In campaigner Peter Mandelson next to the Parliament Square statue of his grandfather Winston Churchill said Boris Johnson was 'not an Outer' But he slammed Dr Fox for making him 'ashamed'. Sir Nicholas said: 'I think it's very important the American President coming here. 'I'm ashamed that Liam Fox should have thought it necessary to write to the American ambassador, as if the President of the United States will breach the constitutional niceties. 'I hope that when the American President comes here he will make plain the views of the American Administration on what they believe to be good for security in western Europe, and peace, and prosperity.' Europes security services had feared a bloody terrorist outrage in Brussels since the high-profile arrest of Paris failed suicide bomber Salah Abdeslam in the city four days ago. Intelligence officers today described the attacks in the Belgian capital as sadly expected both as a revenge for the arrest of Europes most wanted man but also ironically because the jihadists knew that HE could betray them. For while the Brussels-born Islamist had become a symbol of defiance for the jihadist movement and Islamic State during his extraordinary four months on the run under the noses of Belgiums biggest manhunt, his dramatic arrest on a street in the Molenbeek district of the city also signalled the net could be closing on those he had plotted with. Scroll down for video Arrested: Failed Paris suicide bomber Salah Abdeslam was arrested in Brussels four days ago Manhunt: He had eluded security forces for four months while he hid among friends in the Belgian city Betrayal: But now intelligence officers say today's attacks may have been fast tracked as his arrest meant authorities would be closer to closing in on other Brussels IS sleeper cells he is associated with Crucially, Belgian investigators had already suggested that Abdeslam was co-operating with them and his fellow jihadists would have known that he could betray them and their plans. Intelligence officers told MailOnline the concerns of his fellow terrorists would have been fuelled by the fact that twice Abdeslam had pulled back from killing himself by triggering a suicide vest once in Paris and again on the day of his arrest. This showed a weakness, a desire to live which would have been played on during questioning, an anti-terror specialist said today. He was not a man showing inner strength and the capacity to withstand interrogation, this meant that if those involved in todays attacks were known to him they believed they had to activate their plans before they too were arrested and their weapons seized. Terror: This morning's attacks at Zaventem Airport (pictured) and Maelbeek are believed have been carried out by Islamist extremists, although no group has yet claimed responsibility for the suicide attacks Murder: The attacks have killed at least 34 people across the city and seriously wounded dozens more Mobile telephones, laptops and CCTV footage recovered from the basement apartment Abdeslam was hiding in are also likely to have provided clues as to the identities and locations of fellow terror suspects, many of them living in Molenbeek which is seen by many investigators as being the heart of IS operations in Europe . Detained: Anti-terror specialists say Salah Abdesalam was not willing to blow himself up during the Paris attacks At this stage we cant be sure those behind todays attacks are directly associated with Abdeslam but it is certainly fair to say the suicide attacks will be linked to his detention, the anti-terror specialist added. They send a clear message to the authorities that they have arrested a well-known suspect but there are many more out there prepared to do what Abdeslam was not willing to do: blow himself up. 'They will know that this is the hardest thing to stop and there are still a lot of explosive devices out there. He added: There is the obvious fear that this is only the beginning of attacks against soft targets both in Belgium and elsewhere in Europe. A departure lounge, like a tube station, is an easy target but it also has the advantage from the terrorist perspective of a focused attack the chances are there would be Americans the priority for IS - waiting to check-in at an American Airlines desk. Abdeslam is believed to be the sole survivor of the 10 men who were directly involved in the attacks that killed 130 people in and around Paris on November 13. A suicide vest was said to have been found in the Molenbeek flat where Abdeslam had been sheltered and similar devices have been seized in other raids as well as having been used in the Stade de France bombings last November. Traced: Authorities are likely to focus attention on the Molenbeek district of Brussels, where most Belgian's who travel to Syria and Iraq to join ISIS originate - including Salah Abdesalam That flat was rented by Islamist Najim Laachraoui, who used the alias Soufiane Kayal, who was with Abdeslam in Hungary weeks earlier and whose whereabouts are unknown. Investigators will want to know if he was linked to todays attacks. It is in this district that much of the investigation into the Brussels attacks will initially focus with Belgian officers severely criticised for their embarrassing failure to arrest one of the worlds most wanted men when he was living just a few streets from his old home seeking to identify the suicide bombers. They will be aided by the fact that both Zaventem airport and the underground are extensively covered by security cameras which are believed to have captured at least one of the bombers shortly before the suicide belt was triggered. Officers will work on tracing back the movements of the bombers from their targets to the minutes before, identifying how they travelled - were they dropped off and if so, by who ? Did they use public transport or a private car as in the Paris atrocities? They will seek to answer when the bombers travelled, how they concealed their devices and whether they were linked to so-called chatter monitored by security officials pointing towards an attack in some form. Fear: Experts say this could be the beginning of attacks against 'soft' targets in Belgium and Europe Abdesalam was found in a flat rented by accomplice Najim Laachraoui, 24, also known as Soufiane Kayal Linked: Investigators will still hunt Najim Laachraoui, and Mohamad Abrini - accomplices in the Paris attack Investigators will also establish whether they make the mistake of carrying mobile telephones it was through one discarded phone thrown in a bin by a bomber minutes before he blew himself up that some of the key figures in the Paris attacks were hunted down. Police will seek to discover where they began their journey and if they were on the radar of Belgian and French investigators or if they were so-called clean skins not previously known to police. A number of sleeper cells are suspected to be hiding in Belgium. At least two suspected terror cells are said to have been under surveillance by the Belgian authorities while French police are said to be monitoring dozens of men and women of interest in and around Paris. The UKs communication headquarters in Cheltenham is said to have been helping with the monitoring of messages sent from Syria and Iraq to Europe. Intelligence is said to have been shared with Belgium, France, Germany and Holland as well as the United States in recent days. Britain has a huge on-going surveillance operation focused on jihadi suspects and their supporters, some of who have links to Belgium and France. Mohamed Abrini, 31, (pictured right) was filmed with Abdeslam at a petrol station on a highway to Paris two days before the Paris attacks. Left, Najim Laachraoui This includes military specialists in surveillance and deep cover seconded to the police and MI5. The SAS and SBS are both on standby in case of attack or their expertise is needed alongside the police firearms teams. On Monday, the Belgian authorities asked for the publics help in finding Najim Laachraoui, 24, who they identified as an accomplice of Abdeslam. The authorities are also searching for Mohamed Abrini, 31, who was filmed with Abdeslam at a petrol station on a highway to Paris two days before the Paris attacks. There is said to have been concern too in recent days of jihadist sympathisers travelling from both Germany and Serbia into Belgium across its porous borders. These include routes used by migrants and there will be concern that IS plants may have been among the bombers. Witnesses have claimed that one of the suicide bombers was speaking Arabic shortly before the blast. With hundreds of Belgians many of North African origin travelling to Syria in order to fight for IS and other jihadi groups, there has been an extensive operation to identify those returning. Aided by intelligence supplied by countries, including Britain, dozens are said to have been identified as returning but, alarmingly, their locations in several cases are unknown. This is also the case in other European countries where suspects are said to be missing and frantic attempts are underway to trace them, including the use of voice recognition on telephones. Several are suspected of links to Molenbeek where investigators say a number of sleeper cells are thought to be awaiting orders. Return: According to intelligence dozens of jihadis are said to be returning to their home countries Abdeslam, officers said yesterday, with his own close links to Syria, may have been among those helping to co-ordinate them or because of his trusted position, choosing targets. The district with thousands of immigrants - approximately half are of Muslim descent and in some parts 70-80 per cent - has a history of links with extremism. It was searched as part of anti-terror operations that were carried out in Belgium in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attacks. A suspect in a foiled attack on a high-speed train from Belgium to France was reported to have stayed at his sister's house in Molenbeek, while a Frenchman accused of shooting dead four people last year at the Jewish Museum in Brussels also spent time in the area. Belgium's Interior Minister Jan Jambon admitted a high proportion of those who have left Belgium to join Islamist groups came from the area, and recently vowed to clean it up. The number of people going to Syria has gone down, he said. But those who go, still come from Molenbeek and Brussels. Significantly, Brussels and Molenbeek are also seen as a target for weapons smugglers the guns linked mainly not to terrorism but to serious crime. Weapons from there have been implicated in crimes in the UK, investigators say. While most of the weapons are handguns, Belgian police have noticed an increase in the possession and use of military-style weapons such as Kalashnikovs. Depending on the type and condition of the weapon, prices on the Belgian black market are generally between 1,000 and 2,000 euro (700-1,400). A Queensland man charged with incest involving his niece has had his conviction quashed after arguing he was legally entitled to marry her. In 2008, the man was convicted on his own guilty plea of three counts of incest involving the 17-year-old girl. He was handed a sentence of two years behind bars that would become suspended after six months. A Queensland man charged with incest involving his niece has had his conviction quashed after arguing he was legally entitled to marry her (stock image) But in July last year, he received legal advice the convictions should be challenged by arguing that, at the time of the offence, the charge in the criminal code didn't apply to 'carnal knowledge between persons who are entitled to be lawfully married'. The Australian Marriage Act 1961 prohibits marriages with minors, more than one person at once, a parent, grandparent, child, grandchild, brother or sister and a person of the same sex. It does not exclude nieces or nephews from marrying aunties or uncles. 'It follows that the appellant could not have been charged under s222 of the Code,' Court of Appeal Justice Phillip Morrison said in a written judgment published on Tuesday. 'The respondent properly concedes that the appellant could not have been lawfully convicted of the offences of incest, therefore, the convictions cannot stand and it would be a miscarriage of justice to let them remain.' The court ordered the verdicts of guilty entered in July 2008 be set aside and replaced with acquittals. Vodafone is capitalising on rival network Telstra's third service outage this year - offering one month of free access fees and two months of unlimited data for Australians willing to make the switch. Telstra customers were livid after being struck with their third network outage in two months on Tuesday, with users across the country unable to make phone calls via their mobile or landline for about one hour. Seeking to capitalise on the outrage, Vodafone unveiled their latest media campaign on the same day- announcing a new scheme to entice customers to ditch their current phone plan. Scroll down for video Vodafone is offering Telstra customers one month free access fees and two months unlimited data if they make the switch It was announced on Tuesday - the same day Telstra customers were struck with their third network outage in two months Vodafone were quick to point out the positives of making the change and switching companies It didn't take long for telco giant Optus to weigh in on the conversation - responding to tweets from satisfied customers who had previously made the switch from Telstra 'We know how important it is to stay connected, so if you're having trouble with your network, we invite you to come on over to Vodafone,' Vodafone Director of Sales Ben McIntosh said. 'We're the only Australian carrier to offer a network happiness guarantee, making the switch to Vodafone worry-free.' 'We know "free data" days are all the rage right now, which is why Vodafone offers two months of unlimited data to post-paid voice customers when they join or upgrade.' It didn't take long for telco giant Optus to weigh in on the conversation, responding to tweets from satisfied customers who had previously made the switch from Telstra. 'Hey Telstra, I didn't want coverage anyway! How are things with you Optus?,' one man tweeted. 'Lookin gooooooood ;),' Optus replied, linking a photo of a snowboarder in the elements holding a phone with the Optus provider and a maximum five bars of reception. Twitter was flooded with complaints from Telstra customers on Tuesday after the third major outage this year Twitter was soon flooded with memes and jokes regarding Telstra's network outage Some Telstra customers were not impressed by the free data day proposed by Telstra on April 3 Tuesday's service outage is another blow to the country's largest telco, which has endured a string of service failures since the start of the year. Mass nationwide blackouts on March 17 and February 9 left eight million customers in the lurch for up to four hours, while another incident saw 500,000 pre-paid customers lose service briefly. The outages have been blamed on human error and overseas connections, and the telco has launched an engineering review of its network with global experts. Chief executive Andy Penn also publicly apologised to customers last week, and offered a free data day as recompense. However, customers are furious about the network's continuing issues and flooded Twitter during the blackout with complaints using the #TelstraOutage hashtag. Telstra CEO Andy Penn issued a grovelling apology last Friday after eight million users were affected by a network-wide outage 'This #TelstraOutage thing is beyond the joke. Fix your network or charge reasonable prices. Premium is not justified anymore,' one customer posted. 'We better be offered more than a bl***y free data day. I pay good money for my mobile service,' said Sam Roach on Telstra's Facebook page. A Telstra spokesman said the outage was caused by a card failure in a media gateway in Victoria. 'While small, we appreciate the impact this outage had on the customers affected, and we apologise to them,' the spokesman said. About 500,000 people, or three per cent of Telstra's mobile customers, were affected by the outage. The company promised to redouble its efforts to keep the network resilient. Mrs Binnie was given a 250-hour community payback order as sentence Son Sean, an acting sergeant, was killed while on active service in 2009 The mother of a soldier who died in Afghanistan has apologised after fraudulently claiming 25,000 in benefits while under a 'cloud of grief'. Out-of-work Janette Binnie claimed Employment Support Allowance while living with her husband Alan, who had a job. Her husband's employment meant she wasn't entitled to state help. Out-of-work Janette Binnie (left) claimed Employment Support Allowance while dealing with grief caused by the death of her son, Sean (right), in Afghanistan Sean Binnie was killed on active service while he was acting sergeant in the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Regiment But Mrs Binnie, 48, from Crimond, Aberdeenshire, claimed she had not realised she was doing anything wrong. Mrs Binnie's son, Sean Binnie, died in 2009 at the age of 22 while serving with the Black Watch in Afghanistan. Since her son's death, Mrs Binnie said she had struggled to cope with day-to-day life. Mrs Binnie said: 'The thought I've let my son down, that I've dishonoured him, was hard. 'So many things happen when you lose a child, and I don't have any real, close family members. 'Alan is my best friend, so it just felt normal to be here and with him. 'I didn't know I was doing anything wrong - I just didn't keep on top of paperwork, to be honest. But it's done now, and I've been punished.' She added: 'I have been living in a cloud for the last seven years. 'I wasn't reading correspondence. 'I'm going to get the support I need to deal with his death and to deal with life without him.' Mrs Binnie admitted to fraudulently claiming 25,016.60 between June 6, 2012, and January 27 this year. At Peterhead Sherriff Court on Monday, she was given a 250-hour community payback order which she must complete in 18 months. Mr Binnie, an acting sergeant in the 3rd Battalion of the Royal Regiment, was killed when he was shot in the chest near Musa Qala in the Helmand region of Afghanistan. He had been rushing to the aid of two Afghan soliders who were under Taliban fire. Ryanair has been blasted for its 'atrocious' customer service after staff told a group of 28 it would cost them an extra 6,000 to fly home from Brussels after today's terror attacks. Councillors were among the party from north-west England who had been invited to Brussels by Labour MEP Afzal Khan. They flew into Brussels South Charleroi Airport with Ryanair this morning and were due return on Wednesday night - only to be told that moving it forward would cost them thousands. One of the group, councillor Chris Webb, described the service they had received as 'absolutely atrocious'. Ryanair has been blasted for its 'atrocious' customer service after staff told a group of 28 it would cost them an extra 6,000 to fly home from Brussels after today's terror attacks. Passengers are pictured streaming out of Brussels Airport this morning Two bomb blasts ripped through Brussels Aiport this morning before a separate explosion at a Metro station Mr Webb - who represents the Northenden ward at Manchester City Council - said after arriving they were told the centre of the city was 'in lockdown' following the attacks on the metro system and Brussels Zaventem airport. He explained that the group, which ranged in age from 18 to 80, feared for their safety and wanted to return home today. But Mr Webb said he was told by staff at Ryanair's customer service desk at the airport that it would cost around 6,000 to change the flights. He then spent more than two hours trying to speak to someone from the airline over the phone, without success. 'It's absolutely atrocious. This is a stressful situation as it is,' he said. 'Obviously it doesn't compare to the tragedy of the lives lost. But all I want is for us to get a flight home.' Ryanair has been blasted for its 'atrocious' customer service after staff told a group of 28 it would cost them an extra 6,000 to fly home from Brussels after today's terror attacks The group, which ranged in age from 18 to 80, feared for their safety and wanted to return home today. Some of the passengers involved are pictured above He added: 'There's a lack of understanding. 'Their first reaction was 'pay for a flight home', not 'you already have a flight home, you are a customer'.' Another passenger, councillor Barrie Grunewald , the Leader of St Helens Council, described the treatment the group received as 'utterly disgraceful'. 'There are some members of the group who have children who will have been watching the news and will be concerned. Labour MP Bill Esterson said he had been contacted by constituents who were trying to return home from Belgium 'People need to get back and reassure their families. Of course it is nothing compared to the anxiety and angst of people in the centre of Brussels.' Bill Esterson, Labour MP for Sefton Central, raised a point of order in the House of Commons to urge ministers to 'intervene and suggest to Ryanair and other carriers that all efforts are made to help those who want to come back to this country in a reasonable way'. Ryanair issue a statement which noted that the group had paid 20 each for the flight departing on Wednesday. The no-frills airline said they were offered to alter their schedule to return today at a cost of 60 for the 'change fee' and 154 for the difference in fares. The statement went on: 'Ryanair has been prioritising free changes and transfers for passengers travelling on flights to and from Brussels Zaventem today and tomorrow. The 14-year-old girl feared dead after an Uber driver allegedly went on a shooting rampage last month has astounded doctors by learning to walk again. Abigail Kopf was shot in the head after Jason Dalton opened fire on civilians outside a restaurant near Kalamazoo in Michigan on February 20, police say. Her condition was so dire that doctors, who feared she may be brain dead, had begun preparing her body so her organs could be donated when she showed signs of life after squeezing her mothers hand. Now, just one month after the horrific shooting, Abigail is making a miraculous recovery. Scroll down for video Abigail Kopf, pictured in hospital with bandages around her head after being shot last month, is making a miraculous recovery Abigail (left and right) was feared brain dead after the horrific shooting, allegedly by Uber driver Jason Dalton, and doctors had begun preparing to harvest her organs when she squeezed her mother's hand The 14-year-old refuses to use a wheelchair and is bravely learning to walk again on her own, her proud father Gene Kopf wrote on her GoFundMe page which has raised more than $64,000. She is also speaking, if at a whisper, for the first time since the shooting. Authorities initially said the girl had been killed after Uber driver Dalton allegedly gunned down six people in the parking lot of a Cracker Barrel restaurant. Four of them died, including Mary Lou Nye, 63, Mary Jo Nye, 60, Dorothy Brown, 74, and Barbara Hawthorne, 68. Vicki Kopf said of Hawthorne that despite not been a blood relative, she was like an adopted grandmother to Abigail and her sister, and helped raised both girls. Dalton, 45, (pictured at his arraignment) the alleged gunman behind the deadly attack, has been charged with six counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder in the attack Kopf was in the front passenger seat of a vehicle parked outside a Kalamazoo-area Cracker Barrel restaurant when she was struck once in the head on Saturday The Kopfs expressed sympathy for the family of the man suspected of shooting their daughter and killing six others and said they believe Jason Dalton's relatives are also suffering in the wake of the tragedy. The shooting rampage began on February 20 outside the Meadows apartment complex on the eastern edge of Kalamazoo County, where 25-year-old Tiana Carruthers was shot multiple times but survived. Kalamazoo County Sheriff Richard Fuller said the victim sensed trouble when Dalton pulled up outside her apartment and put herself between his car and several children for whom she was caring, telling them to run to their nearby home. Prosecutor Jeff Getting dismissed the idea that Dalton was seeking a particular person at the complex. He said Dalton called Carruthers by a different name only 'to get her attention' before opening fire. A little more than four hours later and 15 miles away, Rich Smith, 53, and his 17-year-old son, Tyler, were fatally shot while looking at cars at a car dealership, before Dalton allegedly drove to the Cracker Barrel restaurant. Abigail has been with close family friend Barbara Hawthorne (pictured with the teen, right) when Dalton allegedly opened fire. Hawthorn was gunned down and kiled Abigail's father Gene said his daughter, who loves musicals, theater and animals, has continued to astound doctors with her incredible recovery Abigail Kopf, pictured in her hospital bed with her sister Juliana, has made a remarkable recovery after being shot in the head In tears: Mrs Kopf told reporters her daughter did not deserve to get shot, nor did any of the other victims The First Congregational Church holds a candlelight vigil in remembrance of the mass shooting victims on Monday Dalton, 45, the alleged gunman behind the deadly attack, has been charged with six counts of murder and two counts of attempted murder in the attack. Abigail was in the front passenger seat of a vehicle in the car park when she was shot once in the head by a bullet allegedly fired by Dalton. Hospital staff began discussing the prospect of harvesting her organs for donation when she squeezed her mother's hand. Vicki Kopf described that moment as 'breathtaking' and 'a miracle on its own,' reported the station WWMT . Abigail's father Gene said his daughter, who loves musicals, theater and animals, has continued to astound doctors with her incredible recovery. 'Abigail is climbing out of bed on her own and walking entirely on her own,' he wrote yesterday, on a fundraising page set up to help pay for her medical bills. 'She refuses to be followed by a wheelchair. 'She is speaking, but is a whisper, and she is eating soft foods. 'We thank everyone for their tremendous support. Things are finally settling down enough that we can better read her cards and mail, and we have just begun the process of writing thank you.' A Colorado woman is recovering in hospital after being savagely mauled by her own dogs while attempting to break up a fight between the four animals. The 55-year-old was at her home in Longmont about 10.30 p.m. on Saturday night when the four dogs - a St Bernard and three English Bull Terriers - began fighting on the veranda and she attempted to pull them apart. As the dogs turned on their owner, neighbors hearing the commotion went to see what was happening, KWGN reported. A 911 recording from one neighbor captured the woman screaming out during the mauling. Savage: One of the four dogs - three English Bull Terriers and a St. Bernard - had to be subdued with a stun gun because it refused to stop attacking, while the others were hit with pepper spray and batons Scene: Neighbors heard the woman screaming out during the attack and called 911. Police credit the neighbors with saving the woman, saying the dogs would not have stopped In the 911 call, the female neighbor can be heard saying: 'Hi. I think my neighbor's dog is attacking her.' Police quickly arrived at the scene to find the dogs still fighting. Officers had to use a stun gun to subdue one dog, while pepper spray and batons were used to stop the others. The dogs were corralled and put into an animal control truck. This woman is alive today, I suspect, because of the neighbors,' said Longmont Police Cmdr. Jeff Satur told The Denver Channel. 'Her dogs had her. She was down, she couldn't do anything, and thank God, her neighbors heard her screams and called for help.' Neighbors also said they heard the woman say the dogs had bitten off her fingers. The dogs began fighting on the veranda of the Longmont home about 10.30 p.m. on Saturday Police said it's not clear if the dogs will be put down. For now, they're being treated at an animal hospital. The three bull terriers are on a 10-day quarantine to assure they dont have rabies. The Saint Bernard will likely be released to the owner because it didnt bite her. Neighbor Ryan Bloemker, whose wife Lori was the one who called 911, said he hopes people will take into account what happened when it comes to animal control. 'I think for dog owners, this is probably a good lesson,' he told The Denver Channel. 'You know, where do you draw the line with how many dogs you have? A Florida woman who was shot in the back by her 4-year-old son after bragging on social media about his shooting skills could be charged with allowing a child to access a firearm, authorities said Tuesday. The mother, Jamie Gilt, put a loaded handgun underneath the front seat and at some point during a drive, the weapon slid into the back where her son Lane was riding in a booster seat, Putnam County Sheriff's Captain Gator DeLoach revealed at a news conference. The boy, who had recently learned how to unbuckle himself, got out of his seat and picked up the gun, firing through the front seat, hitting his mother in the back. Jamie Gilt, 31, was shot in the back by her son as they drove through Putnam County in Jacksonville, Florida She ran the Jamie Gilt for Gun Sense page on Facebook which promotes Second Amendment rights She was transported to hospital but DeLoach wasn't sure if she was still there or her current condition. Gilt, 31, who posts about firearms on her social media accounts, was driving through Putnam County, Jacksonville, Florida, in her truck when she was shot March 8. The shooting happened just a day after she said the youngster would get 'jacked up' before a shooting practice on a page dedicated to her musings on Second Amendment rights. On the profile Jamie Gilt for Gun Sense she wrote: 'Even my 4 year old gets jacked up to target shoot with the .22'. The site appeared to have been taken down after the incident. Deputies confirmed they found a .45 caliber handgun on the back seat of the car following the incident March 8 Jamie Gilt shared this picture on her 'Gun Sense' Facebook page February 13 In an exclusive interview with Daily Mail Online earlier this month, Gilts mother, Jane Bramble, 71, tearfully admitted it will be a long road to recovery for her daughter but said that her grandson is doing fine and watching cartoons. Speaking from the familys rural homestead in Palatka, Florida Mrs Bramble said: It was just a freakish accident, Jamies done nothing wrong. People are trying to make it into something its not, we are not criminals, we are the victims here. According to CBS47, Gilt was on her way to pick up a horse when the shooting unfolded. After the incident, Putman County sheriff's office spokesman Joseph Wells said a deputy noticed a truck with a horse trailer driving erratically. 'As the deputy slowed to check on the vehicle, he observed an adult female in the drivers seat motioning to him as if she needed assistance.' 'The deputy ran to the vehicle and quickly determined that the driver had been shot. The deputy notified the dispatcher of the situation and Putnam County Fire/Rescue was dispatched.' 'The deputy provided first aid until the arrival of paramedics. The victim was transported to University of Florida Health in Gainesville and was last reported to be in stable condition,' Wells said. 'The only other occupant of the vehicle was the victims four-year-old son, who was unharmed.' Speaking Tuesday, DeLoach said investigators only focused narrowly on what happened on the day of the shooting. He wouldn't confirm Gilt's gun advocacy or reports that she had taught her son how to shoot. Police say they are recommending a charge of allowing a child access to a firearm. He says it will be up to prosecutors to decide whether to file the charge. She has not been arrested. Messages left for prosecutors and Gilt were not immediately returned. The state's child welfare agency is also investigating. The agency didn't immediately comment. See more on the Brussels attack at www.dailymail.co.uk/BrusselsAttacks At least nine Americans, including three Mormon missionaries, a US Air Force lieutenant colonel and five members of his family, have been injured in the Brussels terrorist attacks. They were among the near 200 people hurt in the suicide bomb blasts in Belgium's capital that have left at least 34 dead. The State Department is still trying to confirm whether any other citizens were caught up in the blasts, and expect the number of American casualties to increase. A Peruvian woman travelling to New York is among those dead, it has been confirmed. Adelma Tapia Ruiz, 37, was at the airport with her Belgian husband Christophe Delcambe, and their twin 4-year-old daughters Maureen and Alondra, who all survived. But those who managed to escape the blasts unscathed have spoken out of the chaos that enfolded moments after the attacks. They have advised any U.S. citizens in Belgium to 'shelter in place' and avoid any public transport. During a press briefing on Tuesday, they said they were not aware of any American deaths in Belgium and were not able to provide accurate figures of those injured on the ground. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said Richard Norby, 66, Joseph Empey, 20, of and Mason Wells, 19, all from Utah, were seriously injured in the explosion at Brussels Airport, where 14 were killed. The US military later confirmed a member of the armed forces, who's assigned with NATO, and his family - four children and another parent - were injured in the jihadi-backed attacks. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said Richard Norby, 66, (pictured with his wife Pamela) was one of the American Mormon missionaries caught up in the deadly Brussels blasts, it has been revealed. The attacks across the Belgian city have left at least 34 people dead Mormon missionaries Joseph Empey, 20, of and Mason Wells, 19, were also seriously injured in the blast at the Brussels airport The devastated inside of the terminal building (pictured) at Brussels Airport where 14 people were killed by suicide bombers Emergency services treat the injured in Maelbeek, the site of the second explosion, in the chaotic aftermath of the terrorists attacks Military officials would not reveal where he was at the time because of privacy concerns. According to the Military Times, defense officials are trying to restrict the more than 60,000 armed forces personnel stationed in Europe from travelling. A spokesman from the US Air Force told Daily Mail Online: 'The United States Air Force can confirm that one U.S. Air Force service member from Joint Force Command Brunssum, the Netherlands, was injured in today's horrific attack at the airport in Brussels. The Airman's family was also present and has sustained various injuries. Due to privacy concerns, we are not releasing the status of their injuries. 'We are saddened by today's attacks and extend our sincere condolences to the victims and families of those impacted,' said Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James. 'Our priority at this time is the safety and well-being of our Airmen and their families.' Elder Norby (left) is seriously injured and being treated in hospital. He is a veteran of the church, having served in the Ivory Coast and in senior positions in Utah 'Our thoughts and prayers are with our Air Force family, and with the hundreds of others affected by these tragic events,' said Gen. Mark A. Welsh III, Air Force Chief of Staff. European Command officials would not release details of the injuries to the Air Force officer or his family, due to privacy concerns. But U.S. officials confirmed the officer was a lieutenant colonel, and that he and his family were injured at the attacks in the airport. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to discuss the details publicly. Gen. Philip Breedlove, commander U.S. European Command, said the U.S. will assist authorities in Belgium in any way they can, adding that we 'will continue to stand by our NATO allies and partners to defeat these terrorists who threaten our freedoms and our way of life.' Sister Fanny Rachel Clain, 20, who was travelling with the three hurt missionaries, had already passed through airport security when the explosions hit, the church said in a statement. The church said she didn't make her flight out and was hospitalized. It instructed others in the France Paris Mission to stay in their homes. 'This has been a difficult day for our family, and our hearts are broken for those injured or killed by the attacks in Belgium,' the Empey family statement said. The governor of Utah offered support to the local families. Gov. Gary Herbert praised the Utah natives as 'people of faith who have forsaken everything - family, friends, school and careers - in order to share a message of hope and love with the world.' Thousands of Utah Mormons have served proselytizing missions around the world. Church members account for as many as two-thirds of the state's population. Fifty students from the University of Illinois were in the capital at the time of the attacks, but officials confirmed they were safe. Four students from Quinnipiac University in Connecticut were also in Brussels at the time of the attacks. According to the university three were at the airport, but they are all believed to be safe and accounted for. While, Sebastien Bellin, a Brazilian-born basketball player who used to play for Oakland University, was in the airport when one of the bombs went off. During an interview on Fox News, Ted Cruz said his prayers were with everyone involved in the bombings, but mentioned the missionaries as voters in Utah prepared to vote in their primaries. The governor of Utah, Gary Herbert praised the three Mormons. Herbert praised the Utah natives as 'people of faith who have forsaken everything family, friends, school and careers in order to share a message of hope and love with the world.' Thousands of Utah Mormons have served proselytizing missions around the world. Mormons account for as many as two-thirds of the state's population. Belgium Mission President Frederic J. Babin confirmed the three of the missionaries were in the proximity of the explosion when it occurred and have been hospitalized. The First Presidency of the Church promptly issued a statement this morning in response to the bombings: 'With much of the world, we awoke this morning to the heartbreaking news of the bombings in Belgium. 'Our prayers are with the families of the deceased and injured, including three of our missionaries who were injured and hospitalized. Sister Fanny Rachel Clain, 20, who was travelling with the three hurt missionaries, had already passed through airport security when the explosions hit, the church said in a statement. She was also injured 'We also pray for the people of Belgium and France as they continue to deal with the uncertainty and devastation caused by the recent terrorist attacks.' Elder Norby is a veteran of the church, having served in the Ivory Coast and as the head of the Orem Utah College 1st Stake. Empey was said to be doing well after being treated for second-degree burns to his hands, face and head, his parents, Court and Amber Empey said in a statement. He also had surgery for shrapnel injuries to his legs. 'We have been in touch with him and he is grateful and in good spirits,' the statement said. The trio had been accompanying a fourth missionary to the terminal building as she prepared to fly back to the United States for an assignment in Ohio. Chris Lambson, a family friend of Mason Wells', said the trio was very close to the blast, which tore Wells' Achilles tendon. He had surgery and was being treated for a gash on his head and second- and third-degree burns to the right side of his body and face. 'He should make a 100 percent recovery,' Lambson said. Lambson also said Wells has been close to two other major attacks. He went to the Boston Marathon in 2013 to watch his mother compete and was a block away when bombs exploded near the finish line. Wells, who has been on his mission in Paris for 20 months, also was serving in France when a series of coordinated attacks hit the city last November. He was set to return from the mission in time to start college at the University of Utah next fall, where he plans to major in engineering. 'He's doing extremely well,' Lambson said. 'His biggest concern right now is about housing at U of U.' Elder Wells, a talented high school athlete, moved to Brussels on February 17 when he became companions with Elder Empey. 'He's a good hard worker so I'm excited for that, it'll be good,' Wells wrote when he learned he was going to be working with Empey. Wells has been keeping a blog with updates of his activities with the church. He posted an entry on Monday with his report on what he had been doing in the past week. They had both been working on a mission project with other youngsters in Paris. Elder Empey's mother updated friends and supporters on Facebook to assure them that their son has been in contact with them. They revealed he has shrapnel in his ankle and suffered burns. She wrote on Facebook: 'Our hearts are broken for all those that lost their lives in the terror attack in Brussels today. 'We are grateful that Elder Empey and his companion Elder Wells are okay. A Senior missionary and sister missionary were also with them. 'They were all injured but getting treatment and doing well. Dres will need surgery on a leg wound and does have some shrapnel in his ankles and knee. 'He has some 2nd degree burns to his hands and head. He has been in contact with us. We would all like to thank you for your love and prayers. Love the Empey Family.' Chad Wells, right, father of bombing victim Mason Wells, speaks about his son from his home in Utah. Mason Wells, 19, of Sandy, Utah, (left) was injured in Tuesday's explosion at the Brussels airport Elder Empey's mother updated friends and supporters on Facebook to assure them that their son has been in contact with them. They revealed he has shrapnel in his ankle and suffered burns The pair (pictured on a boat in Paris just days before the attack) were on assignment in Paris and had was taking a fellow missionary to the airport at the time President Obama spent under a minute in today's speech in Cuba addressing the terrorist attacks that happened this morning in Brussels. Obama said the 'thoughts and the prayers of the American people' are with the people of Belgium' today following the Brussels terrorist attacks that killed at least two dozen people today from Havana. 'We stand in solidarity with them in condemning these outrageous attacks against innocent people,' Obama said. 'We will do whatever is necessary to support our friend and ally Belgium in bringing to justice whoever is responsible and this is yet another reminder that the world must unite.' 'We must be together - regardless of nationality, or race, or faith - in fighting against the scourge of terrorism,' the president added. 'We can and we will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world. Donald Trump also commented on the suicide bombings. 'Do you all remember how beautiful and safe a place Brussels was. Not anymore, it is from a different world! U.S. must be vigilant and smart!' wrote the Republican front-runner on Twitter. Trump then said in an interview on Fox News the US needs to 'shut the borders,' a statement he repeated later in the morning while appearing on Today. In that appearance he also told Matt Lauer he is a firm believer in using torture to get information from people behind attacks like the one in Brussels, stating; 'Waterboarding is fine.' Police across America have ramped up security at airports, tourist landmarks and mass transit points in the wake of the attacks. Amid fears the bombings are the actions of coordinated jihadis, Homeland Security have said they are closely monitoring events as police departments and transit authorities step up their anti-terror patrols. Forces including the NYPD, DC police and Chicago PD have moved to increase their presence at key locations while others have urged residents to be more vigilant and report anything suspicious. Amtrak also confirmed more officers would be visible at their train stations around the nation. The Port Authority announced early on Tuesday morning they would be stepping up precautions at New York and New Jersey's three major airports - La Guardia, JFK and Newark - and will deploy heavy-weapon officers throughout terminal buildings. Belgium Mission President Frederic J. Babin confirmed the three of the missionaries, including Elder Wells (left) and Elder Emery (right) were in the proximity of the explosion when it occurred. They are both pictured during their trip to France Anti-terrorist units will also be stationed at the World Trade Center and Grand Central Terminal - America's busiest train station. Witnesses in Belgium described seeing 'dismembered bodies everywhere' after the blasts hit the American Airlines check-in desk at around 8am (7am GMT). There were reports that shouts in Arabic were heard before the explosions and shots fired in the aftermath. Around 90 minutes later, 10 people were killed when an explosion hit a Metro station near the EU headquarters in the city center in another suspected terror attack. American Airlines confirmed that its planned flight from Brussels to Philadelphia in the US, which had been scheduled to depart at 9.40am had been cancelled in the wake of the blasts. A spokesman said: 'We are aware of an incident at the Brussels airport departure hall and are taking care of our customers, employees and contractors. At this time, all of our employees and contractors are accounted for with no reported injuries. 'American Airlines flight 751 has been cancelled for today. When operations at the airport resume, we will re-accommodate our customers.' Fifty students from the University of Illinois were in the capital at the time of the attacks, but officials confirmed they were safe Debris lies scattered on the floor following the blasts at Brussels Airport. Screams could be heard on surveillance video that was released after the explosion People inside the airport are seen carrying the injured alongside a heavily armed guard John Varcadipone, 23, was charged with aggravated assault, simple assault, cruelty to an animal resulting in death and making terroristic threats A man allegedly beat a six-month-old puppy to death with a kitchen chair during a domestic violence incident in which he terrorized his girlfriend and brother. Police said township resident John Varcadipone, 23, was charged with aggravated assault, simple assault, cruelty to an animal resulting in death and making terroristic threats, NJ.com reported. The charges stem from a fight that occurred on Friday at 11.30am at the couple's trailer home in Finn's Mobile Home Park in Wayne. Neighbors told NorthJersey.com that for hours on Thursday night, shouting and the crashing of household items could be heard from the home the couple moved into about a month ago. They said the arguing and fighting eventually stopped that night before it resumed again on Friday morning, continuing until police arrived. At one point, a group of neighbors said Varcardipone came outside and shouted at them, saying he did not care if they called police, but authorities said none of them did. Police said when responding officers arrived at the home, which was strewn with blood and broken furniture, they found the dog's body inside. Varcardipone, who pleaded not guilty on Monday, is accused of terrorizing the woman and fatally beating her Husky puppy while she hid in the adjacent room. He is also alleged to have bitten her ear, slammed her head against the wall and assaulted his brother, according to the complaint filed in court. It is not clear what prompted the fight or what allegedly caused Varcadipone to attack the dog. At the scene, the Husky puppy was later carried out of the home in a body bag, according to NorthJersey.com. The killing of the puppy left residents disgusted, some even physically sick. 'I got so sick I was throwing up when they took that dog out,' Diane Mataro, a five-year resident, told NorthJersey.com. 'That dog was a loveable dog.' Varcadipone was eventually arrested at Chilton Hospital where he had sought treatment for injuries suffered in the fight. He is accused assaulting his girlfriend and his brother and fatally beating her six-month-old Husky puppy with a kitchen chair during a domestic violence incident at their trailer home (park pictured) on Friday morning The Passaic County Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals has been notified of the incident and responded to the scene. Varcardipone's bail was set at $75,000 and it was not known on Monday if he has retained an attorney. Friday's incident is reportedly not Varcardipone's first run-in with the law as he previously pleaded guilty to possession of a substance called gamma hydroxybutyrate, a date rape drug, without prescription. Fighting back tears following the Brussels terrorist attacks, Europe's foreign policy chief abruptly walked out of a news conference in Jordan saying 'today is a difficult day'. Federica Mogherini was finishing her opening statement at a joint news conference with Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh when she was overcome by emotion. When Mr Judeh resumed speaking, she walked over to him, whispered 'I'm sorry,' and briefly embraced him. The two then walked off the stage. EUn Foreign Policy Chief Federica Mogherini is overcome with emotion after reacting to the Brussels attacks The EU Foreign Policy chief fought back tears as she ended with the poignant words: 'Today is a difficult day' A series of blasts in the Belgian capital this morning have killed at least 34 people and injured 170 in the city. In her opening remarks in the Jordanian capital of Amman, Ms Mogherini said: 'It's a very sad day for Europe as Europe and its capital are suffering the same pain that this region has known every single day - plagued in Syria, plagued elsewhere.' Jordan is currently home to more than 600,000 U.N.-registered refugees from the five-year-old conflict in Syria, across its northern border, which has killed more than 250,000 people and displaced more than 10 million. She added: 'We are still waiting for more precise news on the dynamics of the attacks but it is quite clear that the roots of the pain we are suffering around our region are very much the same. 'We are united in not only suffering our victims but also reacting to this act and preventing radicalisation and violence together.' Closing her statement, the Vice President of the EU Commission remarked: 'We believe that the message coming from Amman, constantly and consistently, is of an Islam that is an Islam of peace and dialogue and co-operation is what we need in this moment here in the region and in Europe.' She fought back tears as she ended with the poignant words: 'Today is a difficult day.' Mr Judeh, Jordan's foreign minister, thanked Ms Mogherini for her 'strong message of support to Jordan' and said 'we will stand with you today and with our friends in Europe and with all peace-loving nations'. But he was interrupted as Ms Mogherini excused herself, visibly moved by his words. She hugged the Jordanian politician before leaving the stage. First attack: At least 14 people have died and dozens injured after two explosions rocked Brussels Airport in a terror attack this morning Passengers shield themselves under bags as smoke and debris fill the terminal in the moments after the twin blast at Brussels Airport Explosion: The image above is being used by the Belgian media who claim this is the damage caused by the bomb at the Maelbeek Metro station in central Brussels this morning. It has not been verified by the authorities but is being widely circulated on social media Witnesses described apocalyptic scenes with blood and 'dismembered bodies everywhere' after two blasts rocked Brussels Airport at around 8am (7am GMT), killing at least 14 people and injuring dozens of others. At the airport, there were reports of a firefight between police and the attackers who shouted in Arabic moments before detonating their bombs. An unexploded suicide vest was later found in the rubble and a Kalashnikov rifle beside the body of a dead terrorist. The blasts, which detonated near the American Airlines and Brussels Airlines check-in desks, sent shockwaves through the terminal building, shattering windows and knocking roof tiles off the ceiling as terrified passengers ran for their lives. Then 79 minutes later at 9.19am, at least 20 people were killed and scores injured, some critically, when a blast hit a Metro station just 400 metres from the EU headquarters in the Maelbeek area of central Brussels. Chilling audio has been released of Sydney siege survivor Jarrod Morton-Hoffman begging Monis to spare the life of Julie Taylor who was pregnant during the terrifying ordeal. Monis had been threatening to kill his hostages if police did not deliver him an Islamic State flag the audio reveals Mr Morton-Hoffman offering to make some instead. 'If you let the pregnant lady go I'll print you a flag,' he said. 'I will print you 100, I will paint everything.' Scroll down for audio Julie Taylor (pictured) was pregnant at the time of the Lindt Cafe siege in Sydney in 2014, one of her fellow hostages begged the gunman to release her Gunman Man Monis laughed off the suggestion that he should release the pregnant woman Jarrod Morton-Hoffman told Monis he would make him Islamic State flags if Ms Taylor was released But Monis just laughed at the young man's suggestion. 'The point is they will bring the flag here,' Monis was heard saying on the recording. The inquest also heard that as the Lindt Cafe siege entered its 16th hour, the increasingly agitated gunman ordered one of his hostages to deliver a haunting deadline to police. 'I'm going to get shot in 15 minutes if you don't have these lights switched off,' Selina Win Pe can be heard desperately telling negotiators over the phone. The call, placed at 1.12am and about an hour before heavily armed officers stormed the cafe, was played on Tuesday at the inquest into the December 2014 siege in Martin Place. Monis' demands for media coverage and for an Islamic State flag to be delivered to the cafe had not been met and he was becoming increasingly annoyed with noises and light in the vicinity of the building. The inquest also heard that as the Lindt Cafe siege entered its 16th hour, the increasingly agitated gunman ordered one of his hostages to deliver a haunting deadline to police The tension grew to the point that shortly before 1am, Monis ordered Ms Win to call police. She called again at 1.12am, again pleading for a blue light in Martin Place to be turned off. 'I'm going to get shot in 15 minutes if you don't have these lights switched off. You don't know how close I just came,' Ms Win is heard saying. 'Could you please have these lights switched off. I have 15 minutes or I'm going to get shot with a rifle. Please Matt!' The negotiator tells Ms Win the lights are 'getting looked at but they're council lights'. The inquest heard Selina Win Pe, pictured, had been ordered to call police negotiators and ask them to turn the council lights off or Monis would kill her Ms Win pleads again: 'Matt, my life is going to be gone in 15 minutes if you don't have someone else helping us.' 'I have been trying to get him the help to switch these lights off so it's going to be my fault.' The call was terminated and audio surveillance later picks up Monis suggesting the deadline should be met. At 2.14am - an hour later - the siege ended when police raided the cafe after a shot was fired inside. A derelict boat expected to wash ashore in Oregon in the next 24 hours is believed to be debris from the 2011 tsunami off the coast of Japan. The boat wreckage was first spotted by a U.S. Coastguard helicopter on Wednesday and had a tracking buoy attached to it. Estimated to be between 25 and 30ft long, the Coastguard issued a marine advisory and it will be inspected for invasive species when it washes ashore. The barnacle-covered boat (pictured) is expected to land on the coast of Oregon in the next 24 hours Authorities say there is no sign of any dangerous materials on board but its origin still needs to be confirmed, KATU News reported. An estimated 5 million tons of debris washed into the ocean in March of 2011 during the devastating earthquake and tsunami. Around 70 percent of it is believed to have immediately sunk near the Japanese coast, but some more mobile items have previously reached U.S. shores. The first documented piece of debris to arrive in California, a barnacle covered fishing boat, came ashore in April 2013. The particles are dispersed sparsely from Alaska to the Philippines. In April last year a barncale-covered part of a fiberglass boat was found floating off the coast of Oregon. Biologists with the Oregon Coast Aquarium and Oregon State University's Hatfield Marine Science Center inspected the boat remains and found 'several live specimens of a variety of yellowtail jack fish found in the coastal waters of Japan.' Once it was determined the organisms on board posed little risk to the state's ecosystem, the boat was dismantled and taken to a landfill. In April last year this chunk of a fiberglass boat 25 - 30ft long was spotted floating off the Oregon shore. After it was inspected by authorities, it was dismantled and taken to a landfill Colin Coleman, 49, was the headteacher of Linaker Primary School in Southport when he spent 15,000 on a planned expedition to the North Pole and 30,000 on trips to China and India A headteacher has been banned from teaching after blowing more than 100,000 of school funds on foreign trips and camera equipment. Colin Coleman, 49, was the headteacher of Linaker Primary School in Southport when he spent 15,000 on a planned expedition to the North Pole, 30,000 on trips to India and China and 24,000 on photography equipment. He was sacked by Sefton Council in 2014 for gross misconduct after the allegations first came to light. A tribunal has now found Coleman guilty of misconduct and he has been banned from the profession. The National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL) said Coleman showed 'total disregard' for financial regulations and was guilty of using school funds for his own purposes. It added: 'He regarded the school and school property as an extension of himself.' The misconduct panel found he spent more than 1,200 of school funds on a Sony projector and screen for the Shirdley Hill girl-guiding centre which his wife helped to run. He also handed nearly 30,000 of school cash to the Linaker Links Community Trust, a charity Coleman helped to set up, to cover its rent from 2010 to 2013. The school was also charged room hire totalling 9,600. The panel heard he spent a further 30,000 on two international trips in 2013 - one to China for 10 pupils and one to India, which no pupils went on. Coleman failed to account for 2,500 of school petty cash taken to spend on the China and India trips. He also used 15,000 of school funds to pay the deposit for himself and two other members of staff to go on a North Pole expedition in aid of Help for Heroes and the Teenage Cancer Trust. The NCTL said: 'The school is not a bank. The purpose of its budget is not to provide leverage for senior staff to pursue their personal projects, however laudable they may be.' Coleman is pictured second from right posing in a picture with Ed Balls, Linda Craven and Brian Mitchell. Coleman was sacked by Sefton Council in 2014 for gross misconduct after the allegations first came to light Coleman, who runs his own photography website, spent 24,000 of school money on photographic equipment over four terms. The misconduct panel ruled some of the higher-value equipment was purchased for his personal use. Coleman also spent 350 of school cash on a specialist photography course for himself to improve his 'work-life balance'. He sent a note to the school finance manager 'with the intention of deceiving' the auditor investigating his spending, the tribunal heard. Department for Education decision-maker Alan Meyrick said: 'He showed a total disregard for financial and management regulations... and pursued projects for his own purposes at the expense of pupils in his care.' Poppers will not be banned in a crackdown on so-called legal highs because they are not potent enough, ministers admitted today. The party drug was thrown to the heart of debate about legal highs when former Tory justice minister Crispin Blunt revealed to MPs he had used poppers and insisted they should not be banned. The Government scrambled to launch a new consultation on whether to lift the ban on the drug after the laws came into force. But last week the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) told the Home Office that, in its view, poppers do not fall within the scope of the current definition of a 'psychoactive' substance in the legislation. Controversial: Poppers, which can be used as a sex drug, are sold as room odourisers in order to bypass the law and are used to heighten sexual pleasure Poppers - chemically known as alkyl nitrites - are sold for around 5 a bottle and when sniffed have muscle-relaxing properties that can enhance sexual pleasure. The ACMD said its 'consensus view is that a psychoactive substance has a direct action on the brain and that substances having peripheral effects, such as those caused by alkyl nitrites, do not directly stimulate or depress the central nervous system'. In a letter responding to the body today, minister Karen Bradley said: 'Having given due consideration, the Government agrees with your advice and interpretation of the definition.' She added: 'Our understanding is that this approach does not have any further implications for the operation of the Act and that other substances that the Act intends to cover are not affected. 'We remain confident that the psychoactivity of those substances can be established under the definition in the Act. POPPERS: CONTROVERSIAL RELAXANT USED TO IMPROVE SEX Poppers - or alkyl nitrites - are sold as room odourisers to bypass the law preventing them being used for human consumption. The substance, sold for 5 a bottle, is a muscle relaxant, which heightens pleasure during sex. Users say poppers give the user a pleasurable 20-second high - but sometimes followed by intense headaches. The liquid drug can cause euphoria and dizziness but wears off quickly. One user told Vice the sensation after taking it was like being 'lightly asphyxiated' - because it dilates blood vessels and causing a drop in blood pressure leaving users light headed. Doses are inhaled and typically sold in gay clubs and bars, and 'head' shops selling drug paraphernalia. They can also be purchased online. In Britain it is illegal to sell them for human consumption but they can be sold as 'odorizers' - a tool to add smells to a gas. Some countries, including Canada, have already banned poppers outright. Common side effects include headaches and poppers can sometimes cause skin burns. Advertisement 'We will ask law enforcement agencies to be guided by our agreement with your advice.' Poppers are popular among gay men. They are normally sniffed from a bottle, producing a short head-rush. The Psychoactive Substances Act will bring in a blanket ban on the production, distribution, sale and supply of 'designer drugs'. Sellers will face up to seven years in prison. Liberal Democrat health spokesman Norman Lamb said: 'This is another humiliating u-turn by a Tory Government that doesn't seem to know if it's coming or going. 'The plans to ban poppers were cynical and ideological from the start, based on prejudice rather than actual evidence. 'Ministers knew this and after months of ignoring the advice of the UK's expert drug advisors, it's laughable that they have now suddenly conceded that poppers aren't actually a psychoactive drug.' In extraordinary scenes during a Commons debate on the substance in January, Mr Blunt said: 'There are sometimes where something is proposed which becomes personal to you and you realise the government is about to do something fantastically stupid. 'I think in those circumstances one has a duty to speak up.' He continued: 'I use poppers. I out myself as a popper user and will be directly effected by this legislation. 'I am astonished to find it is proposing to be banned - frankly so would very many other gay men. 'My instant reaction to this is it serves to bring the whole law into disrepute. 'Choosing to ban this, which I have been using and I know has been used ... for decades, then respect for the law is going to fly out the window for people if that's the drug that they use.' In that debate, Home Office Minister Mike Penning said it was not his intention to 'make life difficult for any individual group'. 'My sole role as a minister at this despatch box is to protect,' he said. Advertisement It may have cost thousands of pounds and taken more than 200 hours to make, but this tasty masterpiece was worth the trouble for one Cambridge student after it went down a treat as a 21st birthday surprise for his wife. Dmitry Kirpichenko, 22, unveiled the extravagant two square metre cake at a party for history undergraduate Eloise Davies in London. It was modelled on Cambridge University's oldest college, Peterhouse - of which the couple are both students - and captured the intricate detail of a building which is more than 700 years old. Extravagant: It may have cost thousands of pounds and taken over 200 hours to make, but this tasty masterpiece was worth the trouble for one Cambridge student after it went down a treat as a 21st birthday surprise for his wife It was modelled on Cambridge University's oldest college, Peterhouse, and captured the intricate detail of a building which is 700 years old Dmitry Kirpichenko, 22, unveiled the two square metre cake at a party for his history undergraduate wife Eloise Davies (pictured together) Mr Kirpichenko said: 'We are both students at Peterhouse and we started going out when we went roof climbing two years ago, which is where the idea came from. 'Most of it is fruitcake - appropriate for Peterhouse as it's full of fruitcakes, but really it's only a rich fruitcake that would survive for such a long period of time. 'It was a bit of a sacrilege to cut into it, but that's what cakes are for.' A team of expert caterers at The Cake Shop in Oxford spent 204 hours completing the creation which was designed by expert baker Sally Davis. Ms Davis travelled to the college to research the project and took a host of photos and videos to work from. She said: 'I had never been to Cambridge before, but I came to the college because there were so many different elements to get right. A team of expert caterers at The Cake Shop in Oxford spent 204 hours completing the creation which was designed by expert baker Sally Davis. The cake contained seven rich fruitcakes and a lemon sponge, and was built on a base measuring 1.8 by 1 metres Surprise! Mr Kirpichenko unveiled the extravagant two square metre cake at a party for history undergraduate Eloise Davies in London 'The more modern the building it is the harder it is to recreate, so the 1960s building at the very back was tricky, and the Whittle Building, which looks old, but was only opened last year. 'Dmitry was a lovely customer though, so it was a pleasure to work on it.' The cake contained seven rich fruitcakes and a lemon sponge, and was built on a base measuring 1.8 by 1 metres. Ms Davies, who is in her final year studying history, said the cake has already proved popular back in Cambridge. She said: 'We sent most of it back to the college, and I've had a lot of emails from people enjoying it. 'We gave the porters' lodge part of the cake to the porters and people have been finding their rooms.' Expensive birthday treat: Mr Kirpichenko, who commissioned the extravagant cake, revealed that it cost him thousands of pounds Peterhouse (pictured) was established in 1284 and their alumni includes former Tory leader Michael Howard, computer pioneer Charles Babbage and Nobel-winning chemist Max Perutz However Eloise hopes to save some of the cake for posterity, she added: 'I've kept a little part of it, the chapel and a particular area with romantic significance to us, where there are two little figurines of us, so various bits will live on. 'We got married in a registry office at the end of our first year, but the cake is probably the craziest thing that's happened.' Mr Kirpichenko, who commissioned the extravagant cake, revealed that it cost him thousands of pounds. He added: 'I won't say how much it was but it was less than 10,000.' Peterhouse was established in 1284 and their alumni includes former Tory leader Michael Howard, computer pioneer Charles Babbage and Nobel-winning chemist Max Perutz. Sebastian County public defender Daniel Arthur Stewart, 47 (pictured), was arrested at a hotel in Fort Smith Saturday evening after allegedly arranging to meet a 42-year-old man and the man's 13-year-old son to have sex. The 42-year-old ended up being an undercover detective A public defender in Arkansas was arrested over the weekend after he was caught in a child molestation sting. Sebastian County public defender Daniel Arthur Stewart, 47, was arrested at a hotel in Fort Smith Saturday evening after allegedly arranging to meet a 42-year-old man and the man's 13-year-old son to have sex. However, the man Stewart had been corresponding with online was in fact an undercover detective working with the Faulkner County Sheriff's Office internet crimes unit. The detective first made contact with Stewart on February 1, when he came across an advertisement Stewart reportedly posted online, looking for a 'young guy' or a 'son' to have sex with. The detective pretended to be a 42-year-old man with a 13-year-old son, and Stewart reportedly expressed interest in having sex with both father and son. They continued speaking on Kik - an anonymous messaging app - and eventually arranged to meet on March 19 in Conway. They changed the meeting place to a Fort Smith hotel, however, when Stewart contacted the undercover detective and said he was too sick to make a two-hour drive. Stewart was immediately taken into custody when he walked into the hotel's lobby on Saturday around 5:15pm. He was booked in Faulkner County Jail and charged with conspiracy to commit rape - a charge that could see him spend six to 30 years in prison and pay a fine of up to $15,000 if convicted. Stewart (pictured in a photo posted to Facebook) was booked in Faulkner County Jail and charged with conspiracy to commit rape - a charge that could see him spend six to 30 years in prison and pay a fine of up to $15,000 if convicted At a Monday court appearance, a judge ordered Stewart held on $250,000 bond. The judge said that if Stewart posts his bond, he will have to wear a GPS monitoring bracelet and turn over his passport. Also on Monday, Gregg Parrish, the executive director of the Arkansas Public Defenders Commission, announced that he had accepted Stewart's resignation. Parrish said that Stewart was the head public defender for Sebastian county and was heading 150 criminal cases which could now see delays due to his arrest. Parrish says he is working to fill the position immediately. 'He was carrying a very heavy felony caseload, serious crimes, our most complicated felonies,' said Parrish, according to KHBS. 'Something that's looking at a trial in two to three weeks. It's very unfortunate, but a new attorney is going to have to approach the court and discuss it with the prosecutor about resetting that case.' If he is convicted, Stewart will lose his law license and have to register as a sex offender. The families of students with university debts would be liable to pay under a plan reportedly being considered by the federal government to save $800 million a year. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull's government is considering the measure along with plans to increase university fees, according to Sydney Morning Herald. The news comes only days after Mr Turnbull announced the federal budget would be moved forward a week to May 3, and floated the possibility of a double dissolution election on July 2. The Turnbull government is considering collecting HECS debts from the dead and increasing university fees (Malcolm Turnbull pictured on Monday announcing the federal budget will be brought forward one week with the possibility of a double dissolution election on July 2) When asked whether recovering student debts from deceased estates was on the table, Education Minister Simon Birmingham said spending on higher education had grown rapidly in recent years. He said that since 2009, taxpayer funding for Commonwealth supported places in higher education has increased by 59 per cent as compared to nominal growth of GDP that has risen by 29 per cent. Mr Birmingham explained spending on higher education had essentially grown at twice the rate of the economy, he told Sydney Morning Herald. I welcome all ideas, he said. When asked whether recovering student debts from deceased estates was on the table, Education Minister Simon Birmingham (pictured) said spending on higher education had grown rapidly in recent years The Education Minister has reportedly been under pressure to find huge savings, higher education sources said. Malcolm Turnbull pictured earlier in March Other savings options in the sector reportedly include lowering the government subsidy and lowering the repayment threshold. If the government began recovering student debt from deceased estates worth over $100,000, up to $800 million could be saved annually, higher education analyst Andrew Norton told Sydney Morning Herald. The idea to recover HECS debts from deceased estates was last floated by former Education Minister Christopher Pyne two years ago. It had been knocked back by then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott after his unpopular 2014 budget was released. Rob Ford, the disgraced former mayor of Toronto, Canada, died on Tuesday after an 18-month battle with cancer. He was 46 years old. Ford passed away at Mount Sinai Hospital, and his family later broke the news of his death in a statement. 'With heavy hearts and profound sadness, the Ford family announces the passing of their beloved son, brother, husband, and father, Councillor Rob Ford, earlier today at the age of 46,' the statement reads . 'A dedicated man of the people, Councillor Ford spent his life serving the citizens of Toronto.' Scroll down for videos RIP: Former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford died Tuesday at Mount Sinai Hospital. He was 46 years old. Pictured above in April 2014 Cancer battle: Ford had been battling an aggressive form of cancer for the past 18 months. Pictured above in hospital on May 11, 2015 Current Toronto Mayor John Tory said in a statement that 'the city is reeling with this news'. He was a man who spoke his mind and ran for office because of the deeply felt convictions that he had. I know there are many who were affected by his gregarious nature and approach to public service. Toronto Mayor John Tory 'He was a man who spoke his mind and who ran for office because of the deeply felt convictions that he had,' Tory said. 'I know there are many who were affected by his gregarious nature and approach to public service.' On Monday, Ford's condition had deteriorated to the point that he had been placed in palliative care - otherwise known as hospice. But Ford staffer Dan Jacobs told DailyMail.com at the time that it was not end-of-life treatment. Ford underwent ten rounds of chemotherapy in the past year and a half to treat an aggressive form of cancer that reappeared after surgery. The exact type of cancer Ford was diagnosed with is called pleomorphic liposarcoma, a rare and hard-to-treat cancer found in the soft, fatty tissue of the body. After five rounds of chemotherapy, he had the tumor removed in September of last year. But just a month later, doctors found two more tumors on his bladder. Ford is survived by his wife Renata and their two young children Doug and Stephanie. Crack mayor: Ford gained international notoriety in 2013, when a video surfaced appearing to show the then-Toronto mayor smoking crack-cocaine. Ford pictured laughing in the Toronto City Council chambers in November 2013 Family: Ford is survived by his wife Renata (right) and his two children Doug (second left) and Stephanie (second right). The family pictured above on October 27, 2014 Ford became internationally infamous in 2013 after the Toronto Star and American website Gawker obtained a video which appeared to show the then-Toronto mayor smoking from a crack pipe. He denied the existence of the video but later backtracked when police said they had obtained it. Although he became the subject of a police investigation, Ford was never charged with a crime. 'Yes, I have smoked crack cocaine,' Ford told reporters. 'But, no, do I? Am I addict? No. Have I tried it? Probably in one of my drunken stupors, probably approximately about a year ago.' According to police interviews, members of Ford's staff accused the mayor of frequently drinking, driving while intoxicated and making sexual advances toward a female staffer. Ford drew gasps when he used crude language on live television to deny telling a staffer he wanted to have oral sex. The father of two school-age children said he was 'happily married' and that he enjoys enough oral sex at home. In memorium: Current Toronto Mayor John Tory posted this image of a memorial that had been set up at City Hall for Ford on Tuesday Despite immense pressure, Ford refused to resign. The City Council stripped Ford of most of his powers but lacked the authority to force him out of office because he wasn't convicted of a crime. Ford announced he was entering rehab in April 2014 after newspaper reports detailed three different nights in which the mayor was extremely intoxicated. One report cited a video that appeared to show him again smoking a crack pipe. Although his cancer ultimately forced him to drop his re-election bid, Ford opted to seek his old City Council seat. It was in the same suburban district where he launched his political career and where his everyman style and conservative fiscal policies first gained a faithful following that became known as Ford Nation. He won his old seat in a landslide. His brother Doug replaced him on the ballot for mayor but lost. When Ford was elected mayor in 2010, his bluster was widely known. A plurality of voters backed him, eager to shake things up at a City Hall they viewed as elitist and wasteful. Ford's voter base resided mainly in the outer suburbs, a result of the Conservative provincial government's decision to force liberal Toronto to merge with five of its neighboring municipalities in 1998, creating a mega-city that now has 2.7million residents. Ford appealed to conservative-leaning, working-class suburban residents with his populist, common-man touch and with promises to slash spending, cut taxes and end what he called 'the war on the car'. He first won as mayor by promising to 'stop the gravy train' of government spending. The youngest of four children, Rob Ford grew up in a palatial home in the Toronto suburb of Etobicoke. He dropped out of university after a year and worked at the family business. Pope Francis will wash the feet of 12 young asylum seekers during a traditional Maundy Thursday service. The pontiff will travel to the asylum seeker centre in the town of Castelnuovo di Porto north of Rome in the traditional commemoration of Jesus' last supper with his apostles. According to the Vatican, Pope Francis will use the ceremony to highlight the need of the international community to provide shelter for asylum seekers fleeing conflict in the Middle East. Scroll down for video Pope Francis, pictured, will wash the feet of asylum seekers during a ceremony to mark The Last Supper He will use the Maundy Thursday ceremony to criticise the European Union's handling of the refugee crisis Archbishop Rino Fisichella said: 'He will kneel in front of 12 asylum seekers to wash their feet in a gesture... bringing attention to their condition. Francis has long called for the global community, and Europe in particular, to open its doors to refugees and step up the fight against xenophobia. The ceremony is part of the run-up to Easter Sunday, and has seen the Argentine pontiff in the past wash the feet of prison inmates and disabled people. Shortly after his election in 2013, Francis visited a youth detention centre where he performed the ritual on a group of young inmates including two Muslims - the first Catholic leader ever to do so. Vatican rules had long called for only men to participate, recalling Jesus' 12 apostles and cementing the doctrine of an all-male priesthood. But Francis in January changed the regulations to explicitly allow women to participate. On Sunday, Pope Francis began the Easter season with Palm Sunday Mass. Francis blessed palm and olive branches in St. Peter's Square before tens of thousands of people to commemorate Jesus' triumphant entrance into Jerusalem the week before the crowd turned against him and he was crucified. Francis, pictured, began the Easter season with Mass at St Peter's Square in the Vatican for Palm Sunday He departed from his prepared homily to appeal to nations not to turn their backs on refugees. After mentioning the part of the gospel recounting how Jesus was denied justice and abandoned to his fate, Francis added in unscripted remarks: He said: 'I am thinking of so many other people, so many marginalised people, so many asylum seekers, so many refugees. There are so many who don't want to take responsibility for their destiny.' More than 1.1 million migrants fleeing war and failed states flowed into the European Union in 2015 and the influx has continued, prompting countries straddling the main migration corridor through the Balkans to the wealthy north of the EU to seal their borders, trapping tens of thousands in Greece. Last week, Macedonia trucked 1,500 migrants back to Greece after they forced their way across the border. Images of exhausted migrants fording a fast-moving stream in the cold were splashed across Italian newspapers. Under a European Union deal reached last week with Turkey, all migrants and refugees, including Syrians, who cross to Greece illegally by sea will be sent back to Turkey once they are registered and their asylum claims have been processed. In return, the EU will take in thousands of Syrian refugees directly from Turkey and reward it with more money, early visa-free travel and progress in its EU membership negotiations. Palm Sunday marks the start of the busiest week in the Catholic liturgical calendar. The pope presides at two services on Good Friday, including a candlelight Via Crucis (Way of the Cross) procession around Rome's Colosseum. He stayed for at least two days and brought pills and alcohol, police said A family returned home from a vacation to find a 21-year-old man had been living in their house for at least two days. Zachary Jock was arrested after he was found inside the Columbia, Pennsylvania, home on Sunday wearing the family members' clothes. He had rearranged the furniture, eaten their food, damaged the house, and placed a number of their belongings in his backpack, according to Columbia Borough police. The family also reported the house was missing items worth $2,800. Zachary Jock (pictured left and right), is accused of breaking into a family's home while they were on vacation. He was found wearing their clothes and reportedly ate their food, rearranged their furniture and inflicted $1,075 worth of damage on their house Jock has been charged with felony counts of burglary and theft, along with misdemeanors of criminal mischief and prohibited acts. The 21-year-old, who was believed to be in the house for at least two days, brought pills, alcohol, and cigarettes with him, police said. He reportedly slept on the first floor, rearranged their furniture, moved their clothes, and ate food that the family had purchased before they took a weekend trip. The family reported $2,800 of their belongings had gone missing, and police found several of their possessions in his backpack. Two knives were thrown into the ceiling on the first floor. A door, window, and various items in the house were also destroyed, bringing the total estimated damage up to $1,075. Jock lives in the neighboring town of Lebanon, about 26 miles away from the house. He is being held in Lancaster County Jail on $25,000 bail. According to the Lebanon Daily News, Jock had been arrested in January for stealing $59 in merchandise from a local WalMart. The Prime Minister grinned briefly as she entered Downing Street after a run in the central London fog this morning as MailOnline can reveal that all her 'In Liz we Truss' merchandise was expunged. The party's cups, travel mugs, bags and T-shirts celebrating her election 45 days ago, each costing between 14.95 and 24,95, have been deleted from the website and pulled from sale. Wearing her gym kit and muddy trainers, the outgoing Tory leader, now considered the most disastrous in party history, gave a wry smile at police as she skipped into the back door of No 10 at around 8am. She will spend her last weekend as PM at Chequers, No 10 has said. The UK's shortest serving PM will still receive severance pay to the tune of 18,860 - equal to 419.11 for each of the 44 days she served. She also earned 10,000 in that time because he ministerial salary went up. Ms Truss is beginning her final week as Prime Minister as her rivals circle to take her job - but there is also increasing anger about the cash and benefits she is leaving with and demands for her to forgo them. She will now also be entitled to claim up to 115,000-a-year in an allowance for former Prime Ministers. Her predecessors Sir John Major, Sir Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Theresa May and Boris Johnson are all believed to have claimed it. Ms Truss will also benefit from a taxpayer-funded pension as a former minister and Prime Minister. Labour Leader Sir Keir Starmer today joined calls for Ms Truss to reject her allowance and hand back any payout, declaring that she had 'not earned the right' to keep it. He said: 'She should turn it down. I think that's the right thing to do. She's done 44 days in office, she's not really entitled to it, she should turn it down and not take it'. A woman has been sentenced to 180 days for adding Benadryl to her son's feeding tube last fall, causing him to experience diarrhea and dehydration while he was in hospital for a rare skin disease. Jessica Valik 26, has been held at Hamilton County Jail in Ohio since she was arrested in October. Because she has already served 173 days, she will be released in just one week, Cincinnati.com reported. The single mother became well known after she blogged about her four-year-old son Jackson Baldwin's struggle with epidermolysis bullosa, a disease that causes the skin to erupt in severe blisters. It is still unclear why Valik slipped 'Baby Jax' the over-the-counter antihistamine, but her son's condition is reported to have improved dramatically since he was removed from her care. Jessica Valik 26, (left and right) was sentenced to 180 days for adding Benadryl to her son's feeding tube last fall, causing Jackson Baldwin, 4, (right) to experience diarrhea and dehydration as a result She was arrested and held for 173 days, so she will be released in just one week. Jackson is currently in the hospital under the guardianship of another relative for a rare skin disease which causes the skin to blister easily WHAT IS EPIDERMOLYSIS BULLOSA? Epidermolysis bullosa is a term used to describe a group of rare, inherited skin disorders that cause the skin to become very fragile. In people with EB, even the gentlest touch can cause painful blisters. Symptoms include blisters inside the mouth, thickened skin and nails, fingers and toes becoming joined together, blistering in the oesophagus, chewing and swallowing problems, vision problems and skin cancer. Symptoms are usually present from birth. EB occurs because of faulty genes inherited from one or both parents. There is currently no cure - treatment aims to relieve symptoms. The outlook depends a lot on the severity and type of EB a child has. Source: NHS Choices Advertisement Valik pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor count of child endangerment after staff at the Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center reported her. She also faced one felony count of assault, but prosecutors dropped the charge after her guilty plea. Baby Jax suffered from severe diarrhea and dehydration as a result of the Benadryl and the multiple diaper changes increased his risk of infection and life-threatening complications, according to court documents. Because his skin is so fragile, blisters can appear due to friction, scratching, and even heat. In severe cases of EB, blisters can form in the mouth, throat, or intestines from eating hard foods including potato chips and toast. Jackson is currently in the hospital under the guardianship of another relative. Valik has been banned from the hospital and faces trespassing charges if she does not comply. Meanwhile, the child's father is seeking custody of their son. Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters suggested in court that Valik exhibited possible signs of Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome, a form of child abuse where a caregiver exaggerates or exacerbates health problems to gain attention. Deters said: 'This is very, very serious, very scary. We believe that she poses a risk to this very sick child.' Her attorney Massimino Ionna, however, said Valik was simply trying to help her son. Social worker Kelly Baker told Cincinnati.com on Tuesday that Jackson's condition has drastically improved. She told the website Valik demanded sedatives for the boy and bathed him daily, even though it is 'likely to put [him] through more pain'. He used to have open sores and large blisters, but Baker now reports: 'That has completely resolved and his skin looks great'. Valik often posted photos of Jackson, chronicled his condition, and asked for donations on her blog, where she said medical bills left her $40,000 in debt. Her Facebook page, titled 'Save Jax', has received more than 15,000 likes. Two workers at a Connecticut daycare center have been arrested and charged over allegations that several children were abused and mistreated at the facility. One worker Nicole Mayo, 22, of Wethersfield, is accused of hitting, restraining, force-feeding and roughly handling at least three two-year-olds at The Stork Club daycare center in Glastonbury. The director of the center, Meegan Beach, 40, has been charged with knowing about Mayo's mistreatment of the children and not reporting it. One mother, Wilder Zandonella, said her two-year-old son, Evan, was one of the kids to suffer abuse. Scroll down for video Charged: Daycare worker Nicole Mayo, 22 (left), is charged with mistreating children at The Stork Club in Glastonbury, Connecticut, while center director Meegan Beach, 40 (right), is charged with turning a blind eye According to a parent whose child attends The Stork Club in Glastonbury, Connecticut, the allegations surfaced in December after a teacher witnessed the mistreatment and reported it 'I think we're even more angry that the center and the director as a whole didn't protect our child and the other children and all the other families that are still there,' Wilder Zandonella said of her son, Evan Mrs Zandonella said the allegations surfaced after another teacher at the center witnessed what happened and decided to report it. That teacher also called up the parents of the children involved. 'I received a phone call from a teacher just on a random day in December, saying that she had called DCF,' Mrs Zandonella told Fox 61. Mrs Zandonella said that the teacher told officials that she saw Nicole Mayo mistreating her son. 'She had allegedly force fed him,' said Mrs Zandonella. 'He started to choke and then began to cry because he was upset from being force fed, of course. 'And then she hit him over the back of the head at that point.' Speaking out: Mrs Zandonella gave an interview after two of the workers at the daycare were charged Mayo was arrested on March 18 and has been charged with three counts of risk of injury to a minor and disorderly conduct. Not long after the arrest, Beech was taken into custody. She has been charged with three counts each of failure to report child abuse and risk of injury to a minor. However, despite the serious allegations, police say the victims were not seriously injured. 'To my knowledge, the children were not injured,' Sergeant Corey Davis told FOX 61. However for Mrs Zandonella, her and husband are struggling to understand how the alleged mistreatment was brushed under the rug. 'I think we're even more angry that the center and the director as a whole didn't protect our child and the other children and all the other families that are still there,' said Zandonella. 'To my knowledge, the children were not injured,' Sergeant Corey Davis told FOX 61 in an interview Furthermore, Mrs Zandonella was shocked at the behavior of Meegan Beach, who has her own children. 'Shame on you,' Mrs Zandonella said of the daycare director. 'Meegan's a mother herself. And I'd say, mother-to-mother, 'What the hell were you thinking? The pair both deny wrongdoing during the incident in a Lidl car park Witnesses describe seeing the two women launch into a foul-mouthed racist rant during a row over a parking space The mother of murdered schoolgirl Tia Sharp punched a woman while screaming foul-mouthed racist abuse at her in a Lidl car park then drove away with her laughing sons, witnesses told a court today. Natalie Sharp and her mother Christine Bicknell are accused of launching an attack on Selvete Selmani during a fight over a parking space at the supermarket in Wallington, South London. Jurors heard today that Sharp, 34, screamed, 'You f****** foreign c***, f*** off back to your own f****** country,' during the furious rant in April last year. She then allegedly left Ms Selmani with two black eyes and swelling that a witness likened to a 'facial disfigurement'. Claims: Natalie Sharp, 34, and Christine Bicknell, 50, (pictured outside court) are accused of racially harassing a woman by calling her a 'foreigner' before Sharp attacked her in Lidl car park in Wallington As Sharp was driven away from the scene by Tia's grandmother Bicknell, 50, witnesses said they saw her two sons laughing in the back seat. Bicknell had driven to the discount superstore with Sharp and her two grandsons and ranted at drivers as she tried to find a parking spot for her Smart car, Croydon Crown Court heard. She then called Ms Selmani an 'ignorant f****** b****' because she parked in a parent and child bay despite being on her own. Ms Selmani approached Bicknell and Sharp again as they were driving out of the car park after finding a scratch on the boot of her car, the court was told. Witnesses Philip and Fiona Walters told jurors they were exiting the car park behind Bicknell's car as she pulled up near Ms Selmani. Mrs Walters said Sharp got out of the passenger's side of the car and screamed racist abuse at Ms Selmani before assaulting her. Tragic: Schoolgirl Tia Sharp, left, disappeared on August 3, 2012, sparking a huge police operation to find her and was later found dead in the attic of her grandmother's home having been murdered by Stuart Hazell, right She continued: 'She started shouting abuse at the woman who was coming round the corner, what I heard most clearly was something along the lines of: "You f****** foreigner, f*** off back to your own country." 'It was very aggressive, I was quite shocked to witness that level of aggression on a Saturday afternoon in Lidl car park over what appeared to be some argument about a parking space.' Mrs Walters said Sharp continued the abusive rant using 'variations' of insults referring to Ms Selmani as a foreigner. 'The ones that stuck in my mind were: "You f****** foreign c***, f*** off back to your own f****** country,"' said Mrs Walters. 'It all actually happened quite quickly, I did hear the abuse and then she landed a punch into the face of the lady with the crinkly hair [Ms Selmani] who had come out of the store.' She continued: 'She looked shocked and terrified as I would have been myself. I could hear her saying: "Go away, leave me alone."' Mrs Walters told jurors she then saw Bicknell get out of her car and wag her finger in Ms Selmani's face as she screamed racist abuse at her. She said: 'Again it revolved around:, "You f****** foreign c***, f*** off to your own country, you don't belong here," words to that effect. 'My husband hooted the horn at the women to try to distract them from what they were doing. The younger woman turned to us, held up her fist and said: "Do you want a f***ing punch too?"' Scene: The pair allegedly targeted the woman in the car park of Lidl in Wallington on April 18 last year As they sped out of the car park, Bicknell's grandsons sat 'bouncing up and down laughing and clapping' in the back seat, the court heard. Describing Ms Selmani's state after the attack, Mrs Walters said: 'She was crying, she was shaking, she had a very large lump on her cheekbone. 'I was still shocked at the size of the lump on her face. My initial thought was that she had some sort of facial disfigurement, it was so large.' Sharp told jurors she could not tell that Ms Selmani was not British because her accent was drowned out by the sound of her sons making noise. She told the jury: 'She wasn't talking to me, she was shouting and she was screaming at me. I didn't think anything of her origin to be fair.' Bicknell admitted confronting Ms Selmani but insisted that she did not make any reference to the alleged victim's race or nationality. She said she objected to the woman violating her 'principles' by using the parent and child parking bay even though she was not shopping with children. The grandmother said she was irritated by 'having your principles taken away from you because someone wanted to have quickly done a bit of shopping'. Describing the moment she confronted Ms Selmani inside Lidl, Bicknell said: 'I called her a liar. She led me to believe she had children. She was parked in a mother and baby car parking space. 'I believed I had strong reasons to say what I said.' She admitted she called Ms Selmani an 'ignorant f****** b***', but said she would feel 'indifferent' if she had received such an insult herself. 'I've had it in Asda, I've had it in Tesco, I've had it in Sainsbury's - it's water off a duck's back now,' she said. She denied using any racist language, saying: 'I'm 100 percent suggesting I had no idea Miss Selmani was a foreigner, and why should that make any difference anyway?' Bicknell added that she intervened later when her daughter attacked Ms Selmani in the car park by putting her arm between them, before they got in the Smart car and drove away. Sharp denies one count of racially aggravated assault and Bicknell denies one count of racially aggravated harassment. Schoolgirl Tia Sharp disappeared on August 3, 2012, sparking a huge police operation to find her before her body was discovered in Bicknell's attic. The 12-year-old had been sexually assaulted and murdered by Stuart Hazell, who was her grandmother's boyfriend. Hazell was later found guilty of murder at the Old Bailey, and sentenced to life in prison with a minimum of 38 years behind bars. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was criticized yet again for his treatment of women after calling a Washington Post editor beautiful after she asked him a policy question. Trump met with Washington Posts editorial board on Monday to answer questions about his political positions. Opinions deputy digital editor Karen Attiah, wrote a column about the meeting in which she said she asked the Republican frontrunner to explain his plans for racial inclusion. The incident fell on the same day that Trump offered another female journalist a job because she had a 'great look' when she asked him a question at a press conference held at one of his hotel projects. Scroll down for video Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was criticized by Washington Post's deputy digital editor Karen Attiah (pictured) after he called her 'beautiful' after she asked a policy question He responded to her question by saying he was doing very well with African Americans and Hispanics. Attiah contested Trumps statement, and he then differentiated between his stance on people that are legally living here and illegals. Attiah asked Trump if he thought his message was dangerous and divisive for this country, and the presidential candidate refuted. As the meeting ended and we were walking out of the room, I thanked Trump for taking my question, Attiah wrote in a column about the meeting. He turned to me and said, I really hope I answered your question, and added casually with a smile, Beautiful. Attiah, said she was stunned, remaining in the conference room to let the comment sink as Trump and her colleagues filed out. Perhaps he thought that calling me beautiful would make me ignore the fact that he brazenly lied about his polling numbers among Hispanic voters, she wrote in her column. She continued: Or make me believe that he wasnt really a racist. Who knows? At least now I know, firsthand, that the sexism that Trump puts on display against Megyn Kelly under the lights of national TV is not that much different from how he is in real life toward female journalists. Also on Monday, Trump offered freelance blogger Alicia Watkins, 38 a job after she asked him a question about hiring veterans at the under-construction building in Washington DC. He responded by pulling her onstage in front of the press and asking her about her qualifications. Telling Trump she was a 9/11 survivor, an Iraq and Afghanistan vet and a retired Air Force staff sergeant, Watkins - who also claims she was once homeless - was given clearance by the candidate's campaign staff to ask a question beforehand. Watkins approached the stage and told The Donald she did 'design' briefs and 'all kinds of decorations' for interiors. Attiah thanked Trump for taking her question when the meeting was over, and she said Trump responded, 'I really hope I answered your question, beautiful' She then asked if his new hotel in Washington would include a veterans employment program and Trump said it would. According to The New York Post, he said: 'We need good people, so what's your experience, in front of the world?' He later told gathered press: 'If we can make a good deal on the salary, she's probably going to have a job. 'She looks so smart. She asked a question and it was a very positive question. She looks like shes got a great look.' She hugged him and kissed him on the cheek before being whisked away by one of Trump's associates. Attiah joins the list of many who have been offended by Trumps comments to and about women, including fellow journalist Megyn Kelly. Trump has been deeply critical of Fox News Kelly since an early GOP debate in which Kelly pressed Trump on his past misogynist statements against women. A Reuters/Ipsos poll recently found that half the women int he United States have a 'very unfavorable' view of Trump, up from the 40 per cent who felt that way in October. The survey, taken from March 1 to 15, included 5,400 respondents. The rise in anti-Trump sentiment among women could pose a problem for the billionaire in his quest for the White House. Women form just over half of the US population, and they have turned out at higher rates than men in every election since 1996, according to the US Census Bureau. A Trump campaign official did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but Trump has said that he has had good relationships with women in his business career and is well-liked by women voters. The Remain campaign made the extraordinary claim that Brexit could lead to Welsh independence. Alan Johnson, who is leading Labour's Remain campaign, warned that a 'leave' vote in June could prompt Wales as well as Scotland to demand a referendum on secession from the UK. Eurosceptics accused him of taking scaremongering to ridiculous new heights. And even Plaid Cymru, the Welsh nationalist party, said it was not calling for an independence referendum in the event that the UK as a whole votes to leave but the principality votes to say in. Mr Johnson, the former home secretary, made his controversial comments at an event for the Labour 'In' campaign. Alan Johnson, left today, the leader of Labour's EU referendum campaign today claimed Brexit could spark calls for Welsh independence from the UK as he joined ex-party leader Ed Miliband on the campaign trail They overshadowed the first major speech by ex-leader Ed Miliband since his defeat at last year's election, in which he urged Labour voters to turn out for Remain. Mr Miliband admitted that many Labour voters were concerned the danger that Eastern European migrants were undercutting their wages saying constituents brought it up with him when he held his surgeries. Mr Johnson made his comments even though the most recent poll on the issue, published two weeks ago, shows that just 6 per cent of Welsh voters back independence. Asked about claims that the SNP may use a Brexit vote as an excuse to push for a second referendum on leaving the United Kingdom, he said he agreed that was the case and could be the case in Wales too. Mr Johnson said: 'I think it's a very real threat. 'If I was a Scot and they voted overwhelmingly to remain in the EU and the rest of the country voted to leave I think this might be an issue in Wales to a lesser degree as well that would be the catalyst for another referendum.' He said Brexit would be 'a threat to the Union itself'. Mr Johnson also warned that another part of the would be negatively affected by a vote to leave the EU, with Brexit leading to the return of border controls between Northern Ireland and the Republic. While SNP leader Nicola Sturgeon has openly said that Brexit could be the trigger for a second referendum on independence, Welsh nationalists have not made a similar call. A spokeswoman for Plaid Cymru told the Mail: 'We have called for a separate declaration of the result in all four nations, and we do not believe the UK should be pulled out unless there is a four-nation consensus. Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg, left, and Vote Leave chief Matthew Elliott, right, dismissed Mr Johnson's suggestion as ridiculous 'We haven't specifically called for a referendum if the UK votes to leave but Wales does not.' The spokeswoman added: As in the case of Scotland, if there is a UK-wide Brexit vote but a majority in Wales vote to remain, then the people of Wales should be a given a say on the constitutional future of our nation as a matter of democratic principle. Tory MP Jacob Rees-Mogg said: 'It's not even scaremongering - it's just silly.' Matthew Elliott, Chief Executive of Vote Leave said: 'Alan Johnson should stop doing Britain down and instead engage in a positive debate. 'It may be impossible for pro-EU politicians such as Alan Johnson to comprehend that people will say no to Brussels, but polls have shown that's exactly what Wales may do. 'After all if Wales really wants to take back control, the only safe option is to Vote Leave.' Andrew Bridgen, Tory MP for North West Leicestershire, said: This is more desperate stuff from the Remainians. With three months to go to the referendum, their frustration is clearly showing. The British people will not be cowed by outlandish and ludicrous claims. In his speech, Mr Miliband pleaded with Labour voters not to sit out the European referendum battle because they hope for a humiliating defeat for David Cameron. The former Labour leader, in his first major speech since quitting after the general election defeat, acknowledged some of the party's voters felt 'ambivalent' about the June 23 vote and had concerns about immigration. Ed Miliband returned to the political front line today with a speech warning a Brexit would badly damage the Labour Party But he stressed that Brexit would 'irreparably' set back Labour's cause and lead to the creation of an 'offshore' Britain with cuts to regulation and workers' rights. He told Labour voters: 'We can't think ''well this is David Cameron's referendum, let's leave it to him and see what happens and won't it be embarrassing to him if he loses'' because it's just far more important to Britain than any individual politician.' Mr Miliband said it was an issue that came up in his constituency surgeries in Doncaster, where he is an MP. 'Some people on the Left look at what has happened in the European Union in recent years and see quite a lot they don't like: they don't like austerity, the remoteness of some EU institutions, the response to the migration crisis, the proposed trade agreement with the US,' he said. Theodore Olson, a high school special ed teacher in St. Paul, Minnesota, was suspended after making controversial posts on Facebook that drew the ire of Black Lives Matter activists Parents have rallied behind a St. Paul high school teacher after he was suspended for controversial Facebook posts slammed as 'racist' by a local Black Lives Matter group. Theodore Olson, a special education teacher at Como Park High School in St. Paul, was placed on paid administrative leave on March 9. His suspension came just two days after the city's public schools superintendent met behind closed doors with a Black Lives Matter activist who lobbied for the teacher to get fired over the Facebook posts. Supporters of the teacher have called for the resignation of the superintendent. In early March, Olson wrote two Facebook posts complaining that school officials were 'deconstruct[ing] adult authority' by 'enabling student misconduct' and failing to crack down on the use of electronic devices in the classroom. According to the education blog Citizen Ed, Olson was directing his complaints at St. Paul public schools superintendent Valeria Silva 'for enforcing a plan to mainstream special education students and reduce racial disparities in school suspensions'. 'Anyone care to explain to me the school-to-prison pipeline my colleagues and I have somehow created, or perpetuated, or not done enough to interrupt?' Olson wrote in one of the posts. 'Because if you can't prove it, the campaigns you've waged to deconstruct adult authority in my building by enabling student misconduct, you seriously owe us real teachers an apology. Actually, an apology won't cut it.' The second post went on to discuss the use of electronic devices: These two Facebook posts were made by Theodore Olson in early March. On March 9, Olson was suspended with pay for unspecified reasons Rashad Turner, a Black Lives Matter organizer in St. Paul, Minnesota, had this reaction to Olson's Facebook posts 'There have always been rules for "devices," and defined levels of misconduct. Since we now have no backup, no functional location to send kids who won't quit gaming, setting up fights, selling drugs, whoring trains, or cyber bullying, we're screwed, just designing our own classroom rules.' The Facebook posts were spotlighted March 2 by St. Paul Black Lives Matter organizer Rashad Turner, who slammed Olson as a 'racist' and a 'white supremacist teacher' for his comments. The next day the city's Black Life Matter organization threatened to 'move with forward with a shut down action, no negotiations, no deals' if school administrators didn't fire Olson. THEO OLSON SUSPENDED AFTER CONTROVERSIAL FACEBOOK POSTS March 2: St. Paul Black Lives Matter activist Rashad Turner slams Theodore Olson as a 'racist' for his Facebook post questioning teachers' role in the 'school-to-prison pipeline March 3: St. Paul BLM activists threaten to 'shut down' the school where Olson worked unless he was fired over the Facebook posts March 7: Turner and superintendent Valeria Silva meet behind closed doors and the 'shut down' is called off March 9: Olson is suspended for unspecified reasons March 11: Olson's supporters start a petition to have Silva resign as superintendent for her reaction to the controversy March 22: St. Paul BLM activists publish annotated excerpts from Olson's private blog Advertisement On March 7, Turner met with superintendent Silva in a closed-door meeting to discuss the issue, a conversation Silva called 'productive and positive,' according to the Twin Cities Pioneer Press. The meeting reportedly resulted in the 'shut down action' being averted: 'I am thankful that Mr. Turner has chosen to discontinue any immediate protests planned at Como Park Senior High School,' Silva said. Two days later, Olson was suspended. Asked for the specific reason why, the St. Paul School District supplied the following statement to Daily Mail Online: 'Saint Paul Public Schools is aware of Mr. Theo Olsons comments on social media. The District is currently conducting an investigation. Mr. Olson is on administrative leave.' The suspension led supporters of Olson to launch an online petition to have Silva resign from her post. In the petition, organizers allege that Silva has proven unable to lead the school district, in part for failing to stand up to pressure from the Black Lives Matter movement: '[Silva's] inability to make changes to benefit the teachers and students include, but are not limited to, rapid increase in violence towards students and teachers; the lack of support for teachers; the removal of disciplinary actions for violent students, and the lack of transparency between her and protagonists such as Rashad Turner,' petitioners wrote. 'The position that Silva currently occupies requires someone that can stand up to those who want to disrupt schools by illegal protests, and fosters respect for the teaching institution.' The petition had garnered almost 1,500 signatures as of Tuesday. Rashad Turner, left, lobbied for the suspension of Theodore Olson, right. Olson, a high school special ed teacher, was suspended on March 9 for unspecified reasons At a meeting two days after Olson's suspension, some colleagues and parents met to show support for the teacher. 'I could see a lot of people were misconstruing what [Olson] said, and I stand for the heart of what he posted, that school climate is a major issue in St. Paul Public Schools and it is not being addressed,' parent Jane Sommerville told the City Pages newspaper. 'He meant to say there just isnt enough support from the school district and administration. There arent the social workers, the counselors, the support staff, or a discipline policy that is effective for schools,' Olson's friend, retired teacher JoAnn Nathan, said. On Tuesday, St. Paul Black Lives Matter activists planned to address a meeting held by the Saint Paul Board of Education. The meeting is not specifically organized to discuss Olson's case, although there will be an opportunity for 'public comment,' City Pages reported. This video was reportedly filmed at Como Park High School in St. Paul March 9, the day Olson was suspended from the same school. It shows teacher Mark Rawlings getting beat up by two 16-year-old boys, who were not his students. The teenage suspects were charged with assault, the Minnesota Star Tribune reported Coinciding with the evening's meeting, the activist group published 60 pages of annotated excerpts from a private blog authored by Olson. 'This should help you understand why we found his FB posts problematic. Is this the type of person you think is fit to mentor our future?' the group wrote Tuesday morning. The blog appears to be mostly focused on Olson's grievances regarding how the school district is run, and features semi-fictionalized accounts of fights involving students, written in a stream-of-consciousness style the teacher described as 'about as messy as my head.' Describing fights on school grounds, Olson frequently tries to approximate the vernacular of the students that inspired the blog posts. Commenters including Citizen Ed interpreted the language to mean that Olson is referring to 'black, Native American, and in once case, Asian' students,' although, as City Pages noted, 'it's not easy to find any smoking-gun evidence of overt racism against his students, or other non-white people.' This excerpt from Theodore Olson's private blog was published by St. Paul Black Lives Matter activists on the group's Facebook page Tuesday. The annotations were made by the Black Lives Matter group In one post titled 'School's greatest hits' Olson wrote about 'a series of true school fights I remember from Minneapolis and Saint Paul schools. I've changed the names.' 'I'm hoping that by throwing them up here on this blog, I talk straight to the reader's sensitivity about how much fighting goes on, and just get people to ask why,' he continued. Among the many fights described in the post, Olson wrote: 'Michael constantly running it on Christopher, "He-wear-a-diaper gon'-cry-about-it," Christopher "black-as-black-gets," and Christopher saying, "You better watch your mouth."' 'This should help you understand why we found [Olson's] FB posts problematic,' wrote Black Lives Matter activists upon publishing the excerpt from the teacher's blog pictured above. The annotations were made by the Black Lives Matter group Later in the same post, Olson wrote: 'Large, smiling, 10th grade L'Vaughta, and his EBD gangbanging cousin Stinson, needed cash money. They stalked and cruised the small-stature Karen crew around the ELL room at the high school.' 'One of the Black boys, they forgot who, maybe Leshawn, had said the Karen crew had come up on him in the bathroom while he was peeing, and surrounded him, although no punches were thrown.' In another post, Olson appeared to be addressing the dynamic between white teachers and non-white students: 'If the only way for you to do better is for me to fit my big forehead into a pointy white hat, then were both in trouble,' he wrote. 'Were in trouble. I know were both cornered, you, young Black man, I, old white dude teacher. Its debatable what I could impart to you. Youre the face of the future; Im the face of reflection.' Efforts to reach Olson for a comment were unsuccessful. In a Facebook post, his wife Karen Olson defended her husband against accusations of racism and called the campaign against him 'slander and prejudice.' Turner could not be reached for a comment. St. Paul, the capital of Minnesota, is over two-thirds white, with an African-American population of 13.5 percent. Asians make up 12.4 percent and Hispanics roughly 9 percent. Donald Trump has furiously reacted to a conservative super PAC backing Ted Cruz which used an advert slut-shaming his wife Melania. The ad, circulated on social media, shows the former model in a nude 2000 GQ photo shoot with the words: 'Meet Melania Trump, your next First Lady. Or you could vote for Ted Cruz on Tuesday.' But just before results started to trickle in, Mr Trump responded to the ad in characteristic bombastic fashion on Twitter. 'Lyin' Ted Cruz just used a picture of Melania from a G.Q. shoot in his ad. Be careful, Lyin' Ted, or I will spill the beans on your wife!', he wrote. Cruz for his part, was quick to respond, saying: 'Pic of your wife nor from us. Donald, if you try to attack Heidi, you're more of a coward than I thought. #classless.' The super PAC Make America Awesome, which describes itself as an independent group focused on 'unconventional and cost-effective tactics' created this ad attacking Donald Trump through his wife Melania (pictured, in a GQ photo shoot in 2000) Furious: Trump hit out at Ted Cruz for the advert, saying he would 'spill the beans' on his wife Heidi Cruz. It was unclear exactly what he meant although she has a history of depression Careful Donald: Cruz quickly responded, saying if he tried to attack Heidi, he would be 'more of a coward than I thought'. He also called it 'classless' Ted Cruz and wife Heidi wave to supporters during a campaign stop earlier this month in Concord, NC Founder of the PAC, Republican Liz Mair, told Buzzfeed the ads are expected to reach 10,000 Mormons a day. The religious group is known to dislike Trump (pictured with Melania) It was unclear what exactly he was refering to regarding Ted's wife Heidi Cruz, although it is well documented she suffered from depression 10 years ago, culminating in an incident in 2005 when cops found her with her heads in her hands beside a Texas expressway. A police report said she was a 'danger to herself'. Cruz, who has a precarious 50.1per cent polling average, needs to win a majority backing in order to take all 40 of Utah's delegates. Republican strategist Liz Mair, who founded the super PAC Make America Awesome, told Buzzfeed the ads have been targeting Mormons, who have been shown in previous election results to dislike the Donald. While Trump is already expected to lose the Utah caucuses with just 11.9per cent of the vote, the PAC is hoping to tip the majority in favor of Ted Cruz, whose backing is on a knife's edge with 50.1per cent polling average. If he fails to win the majority in Utah, the delegates will be split proportionally among the three candidates, diminishing Cruz's chances to top Trump, who is projected to take Arizona. The Make America Awesome campaign also includes an ad highlighting Romney, a devout Mormon, and his public condemnation of Trump. A third ad quotes the Donald on his previous pro-choice stance, although the candidate has now flip-flopped in the abortion debate and declared himself pro-life. Mair told Buzzfeed the online campaign, which is the group's first endorsement of a specific candidate, is expected to reach 10,000 Mormons a day. She also said the Melania ad will be promoted on Instagram specifically targeting LDS women. HEIDI CRUZ'S BATTLE WITH DEPRESSION A 2005 police report that was uncovered last year details an incident where Heidi Cruz was taken in by a police officer after she was found sitting just feet away from a major roadway in Austin, Texas. On August 22, Cruz left her home shortly after 10pm and walked for miles before sitting down by the MoPac Expressway. Officer Joel Davidson was dispatched after reports came in of a woman sitting dangerously close to the side of the road with her head in her hands. When Davidson arrived on the scene Cruz identified herself and revealed she was not on any medication and had just two sips of a margarita that night, something Davidson confirmed saying she was not intoxicated at the time. Davidson 'believed she was a danger to herself' and eventually Cruz left with him in his patrol car. At the time, Cruz had recently left her job working for National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice to be with her husband, who was serving as Solicitor General. Cruz had been commuting between Washington DC and Texas for an entire year as the couple's jobs kept them 1,500 miles apart. She had also just begun a new job working at Goldman Sachs as a private wealth manager. After the police report was released, an advisor to Senator Cruz put out statement saying; 'About a decade ago, when Mrs. Cruz returned from D.C. to Texas and faced a significant professional transition, she experienced a brief bout of depression. 'Like millions of Americans, she came through that struggle with prayer, Christian counseling, and the love and support of her husband and family.' Advertisement Election results in Wyoming and Idaho, where there are significant Mormon populations, show the religious group favoring Cruz and Kasich over Trump. History professor Matt Bowman told ThinkProgress.com that Mormons, who have historically experienced religious persecution, dislike the Republican frontrunner for his Islamophobic comments. He added: 'Mormons place a high premium on being nice, and Trump is not nice.' Make America Awesome is described on its website as 'a SuperPAC dedicated to blocking and reversing Donald Trumps political ascent. 'We are an independent group, and are not authorized by any presidential candidate or candidate committee. Our focus is on using unconventional and cost-effective tactics, as opposed to stereotypical high-cost, limited-yield methods with the objective of providing maximum donor value.' In reference to an anti-Trump ad they ran in January criticizing his business methods, the super PAC tweeted: '...If Trumps opponents are serious about defeating him, they need to start running attacks that work with his voters now...' The Make America Awesome campaign also includes an ad highlighting Romney, a devout Mormon, and his public condemnation of Trump A third ad quotes the Donald on his previous pro-choice stance, although the candidate has now flip-flopped in the abortion debate and declared himself pro-life But the photo slut-shaming Melania has raised a number of eyebrows across the political spectrum. In an article on Mic.com, Anna Swartz wrote there were plenty of other reasons to attack the Republican frontrunner, from his 'racist tirades' to his 'extreme anti-immigration rhetoric'. Others defended Melania and pointed out the fact that she is fluent in five languages and studied architecture and design before working as a model and running her own businesses. Conservative news websites have also called the ad 'despicable' while others have pointed out the PAC's strategies could very well backfire. Both Democrats and Republicans are voting in the Utah caucus and Arizona primary tonight. The Democrats will be voting in the Idaho caucus. Juffali's lawyer said decision was 'deeply offensive' to the 60-year-old Former Pirelli calendar model Christina Estrada today won her Court of Appeal battle to fight for the right for a share of her former husband's 4billion fortune. Three Appeal Court judges unanimously upheld the decision of Family Division judge Mr Justice Hayden in February when he rejected 60-year-old International businessman Sheikh Walid Juffali's bid to reject her claim on the basis that he was entitled to diplomatic immunity. The judge ruled that his claim was 'spurious' and that he had sought and obtained a diplomatic appointment with the sole intention of defeating 53-year-old Ms Estrada's claim. Christina Estrada (right), 53, has won the right to fight for a share of ex-husband Sheikh Walid Juffali's (left) fortune after the Court of Appeal rejected his claim that he was entitled to diplomatic immunity Neither the American-born former supermodel or her ex-husband were in court for the ruling. Her solicitor Frances Hughes said after the original ruling: 'Mr Justice Hayden has found that Dr Al-Juffali sought diplomatic immunity with the sole intention of defeating my client's claims. 'The issue of the abuse of diplomatic immunity is one with profound international importance, and my client is grateful to the judge for his clear findings in her case. 'Nevertheless, all my client seeks is an appropriate and fair financial settlement for herself and the parties' daughter.' But Dr Juffali's solicitors Mischcon de Reya said he found the judgment 'deeply offensive not least in its conclusion that his appointment to the International Maritime Organisation is an artifice.' They said he was 'proud to serve' as St. Lucia's Permanent Representative to the IMO. It came as Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond criticised the original High Court decision and said it 'should not be endorsed or upheld'. According to the Guardian, the Foreign Office said the ruling would mean British diplomats could be hauled before the courts in any country in which they are serving and have their roles 'scrutinised, and their status unjustifiably curtailed'. Ms Estrada (left and right) claims her ex-husband obtained their divorce in Saudi Arabia without her knowledge The Foreign Office submitted an opinion from Tim Eicke QC backing the Saudi billionaire in the case, arguing the High Court judge 'made a mistake' in trying to determine whether Dr Juffali was a diplomat and said only the Foreign and Commonwealth Office had that power. Dr Juffali divorced London based Ms Estrada in Saudi Arabia after 13 years of marriage. They have a 13-year-old daughter. He is said to be seriously ill with cancer in a Swiss hospital. Ms Estrada could get a multi-million pound settlement from her financial claims in London. She says he has properties in the UK including the 10 bedroom former home Bishopsgate House, set in 40 acres next to Windsor Great Park and worth around 100 million. He is also said to own a 41 million property in Wilton Place, Kensington and Chelsea and a substantial property in Devon. Ms Estrada claims the Saudi divorce was obtained without her knowledge and she has no chance of pursuing him for any financial settlement in his Saudi homeland. Dr Juffali claims he has already made 'generous' provision for his former wife and teenage daughter including a property in Beverly Hills, California. He claims he pays her 100,000 US dollars - 70,700 - a month and meets all of the expenses of their daughter. The couple met in London in 2000 and began a relationship and married in Dubai in December 2001. She began divorce proceedings against him in England alleging adultery in 2013. But he then divorced her in Saudi Arabia in 2014. Foreign Secretary Philip Hammond criticised the original decision to throw out the diplomatic immunity claim She alleged his claim to diplomatic status was a 'flag of convenience' and a 'contrivance' in a bid to defeat her claim. The court previously heard her claim she cannot manage with only one butler and two maids. At the High Court hearing Ms Estrada said Dr Juffali had cut the number of staff at her 100m mansion house near Windsor Castle. She is also demanding that he urgently hand over a 10m blue diamond ring because she believes the billionaire is seriously ill in hospital in Switzerland. In the previous verdict Mr Justice Hayden said: 'I am satisfied that what has transpired here is that husband has sought and obtained a diplomatic appointment with the sole intention of defeating the wife's claims consequent on the breakdown of their marriage. 'The husband has not, in any real sense, taken up his appointment, nor has he discharged any responsibilities in connection with it. It is an entirely artificial construct. 'There is no evidence that the husband has any knowledge or experience of maritime matters, seaborne trade, shipping or indeed of any of the specialised areas with which the IMO is concerned. 'It is clear that since his appointment the husband has not undertaken any duties of any kind in the pursuit of functions of office.' He said the appointment coincided with the emergent relationship between the husband and his third wife. Master of the Rolls Lord Dyson sitting with Lady Justice king and Lord Justice Hamblen dismissed his appeal and refused permission to appeal to the Supreme Court. But he could still appeal direct to the highest court in the land. A Foreign Office spokesman said: 'On occasion the Foreign and Commonwealth Office intervenes in cases to clarify matters of international law, in order to assist courts in the UK. 'In the case of Estrada v Juffali, we clarified the principles for the appointment of Permanent Representatives to the International Maritime Organisation and the scope of the immunities that apply under international law. 'We did not intervene on the ruling that he was ineligible for immunity due to being a UK resident and the appeal court has ruled that the divorce proceedings can still be brought.' Speaking after the hearing a spokesman for Dr Walid Juffali said: 'Our client is saddened and disappointed by todays decision to dismiss his appeal. The Pirelli calendar girl claims that her 60-year-old sheikh ex-husband Walid Juffali has cut the number of staff at her 100m mansion house (pictured), which is just four miles from Windsor Castle 'Whilst he is grateful that the Court has vindicated his appointment as the Permanent Representative to the International Maritime Organisation and rectified Mr Justice Hayden's error, he is dismayed that the Court has concluded that he is Permanently Resident in this jurisdiction in circumstances where he does not have Indefinite Leave to Remain in this jurisdiction, and spends only a limited number of days in the UK each year. 'Dr Juffali remains committed to maintaining his diplomatic duties and is appreciative that The Office of the Prime Minister for St Lucia has testified first-hand that he has conducted his diplomatic duties in an exemplary manner. 'Notwithstanding that he is ill in hospital, he has never once shied away from his financial commitments to Ms Estrada and their daughter. 'He has provided and continues to pay 70,000 per month to Ms Estrada on a voluntary basis. He also pays all of their 13-year-old daughters expenses and school fees, along with the costs of maintaining the 10-bedroom property in Surrey, where Ms Estrada and their daughter live. 'Dr Juffali has also purchased for her, and at Ms Estradas specific election, a substantial 8 million five-bedroom property in Beverly Hills, California and spent a further 2 million to renovate and refurbish the property to her taste. 'The gated estate comes complete with a 50ft Pool and spa, a six-car Garage and a two-bedroom, two-bath Guest House. 'As the court has heard, Ms Estrada has complained that she cannot cope with only one butler, saying she needs two and claims she cannot manage with two maids and needs three. 'She has also demanded a 10 million diamond ring. A mother in her 20s has been arrested on suspicion of neglect after allegedly leaving her freezing newborn baby girl on an elderly couple's doorstep. Grandparents Carol and Ted Lyons were watching Coronation Street on television when they thought they heard crying outside their home in north London. Mr Lyons, 75, then saw a shadow in the hallway and, after going to investigate, found a newborn baby blue in colour and 'cold as an ice block'. Shocking discovery: A mother in her 20s has been arrested on suspicion of neglect after allegedly leaving her freezing newborn baby girl on the doorstep of grandparents Carol and Ted Lyons (pictured) The little girl, thought to be just a couple of hours old, was rushed to hospital at around 9pm on Monday night. Her mother was traced by police shortly before midnight. She was arrested before being taken to hospital for medical checks. Neither baby nor mother are in a life threatening condition, police say. Speaking of the moment they made the shock discovery, Mr Lyons told how he ran into the living room of the couple's home in Green Lane, Edgware, and said: 'It's a baby. There's a baby on the doorstep. 'She was like a block of ice. She was freezing.' He handed the baby to his wife, 69, who held the little girl against her chest while her husband went to get towels from the tumble dryer to try and warm the child. Mrs Lyons, a retired first aider and welfare assistant at Goldbeaters Primary School, said the babys tiny mouth and nose were blue with cold. She said: 'I had her in one arm. I put blankets on her and phoned the police and ambulance. 'I wanted to change her, but they said I must not do anything other than keep her warm. 'Her nose was blue, her little mouth was blue. I cant believe how cold that baby was. I just held onto her so tight. All I kept saying was stay with me baby, stay with me.' The little girl, thought to be just a couple of hours old, was rushed to hospital after being found in Green Lane, Edgware (pictured), at around 9pm on Monday night. Her mother was traced by police shortly before midnight No note was left with the baby and no one rang the doorbell. Mrs Lyons said she had no idea how long the little girl was out on the doorstep before the couple realised. The grandmother of four added: 'I never would have forgiven myself if she had passed away. In the moment, we acted alright but I have barely slept worrying about her. 'She was crying and I just wanted her to keep crying because then at least I knew she was still here with us. I cant believe how cold that baby was. I just held onto her so tight. All I kept saying was stay with me baby, stay with me Carol Lyons 'I didnt want to let her go. She was perfect. Children are so precious.' When the paramedics came, they tested the babys blood and found she was only a couple of hours old. Mrs Lyons, who is due to celebrate her 50th wedding anniversary with her husband later this year, said of the baby's mother: 'She must have been desperate. I dont know why she chose my doorstep. I just cant believe it still, it was shocking.' Her husband, a retired haulage contractor, said: 'I am chuffed that shes doing OK, its really great to hear. She was so perfect, any baby is beautiful.' A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said: 'Police were called at approximately 8.50pm on March 21 to reports of a newborn baby girl who had been left on the doorstep of a residential address in Edgware. 'The London Ambulance Service attended and the baby was taken to hospital for medical assessment. The mother of the baby, aged in her 20s, was traced by police officers shortly before midnight on March 21. She has also been taken to hospital for medical assessment. 'Neither the baby nor mother are in a life-threatening condition. Advertisement These remarkable images show the close bond native Thais have with elephants - even keeping them as pets in their homes. Locals at Ban Ta Klang Elephant are of the Suay ethnic minority and skilled in capturing, training and raising Asian elephants - a national Thai symbol. Unlike in northern Thailand, where elephants are kept for labor, locals consider elephants their companions and often share their homes with the majestic creatures. Scroll down for video Last generation: Thailand's elephant catchers have an extroardinarily close relationship with the wild elephants they domesticate, using lassos made of buffalo skin The families live in harmony with their giant pets in the village of Ban Taklang, in Surin Nuttawut Jaroenchai, 32, took the images while travelling around Surin, in east Thailand, and was shocked to see how close the natives were with the animals. He said: 'I think it's wonderful that people can communicate with the elephants and live together as a family.' 'They have a relationship with elephants in the past that has continued until now and elephants are very special to them.' For centuries the Suay ethnic minority had used the domesticated elephants to work the land. Before the practice was outlawed in 1957, 'elephant whisperers' would go deep into the jungle and use rope made from buffalo skin to bring down the animal and take them back to be domesticated by the rest of the villagers. Villagers pray before a shrine featuring a buddha and a set of elephant tusks A young man takes an elephant for a walk through the jungle, while another sits on one behind Suay children splash around in a river watched on by their pet elephant in Surin, in the east of the country For centuries the Suay ethnic minority had used the domesticated elephants to work the land - that has been phased out and they are now kept more as pets and for training shows for tourists On returning to the village, the leather rope was then put around the neck of the elephant and the animal was tied to a tree for three days. That was then replaced with a rope intertwined with thorns, which made it easier to control until the elephant gave the rider its full obedience. With the onset of tourism in Thailand, elephants are on display as an example of how revered they are in their culture, while training shows are put on for visitors. Mr Jaroenchai, an IT worker, added: 'Tourism has changed the lifestyle of the Suay people a little, they still live with the elephants but not for hard work. 'In Thailand's history people have always had a close relationship with elephants but Suay people have the closest relationship.' A monk sits next to his domesticated elephant as they take shade from the sun Four natives show the utensils that were used to capture wild elephants, including rope made from buffalo skin Although the men have put their elephant catching days behind them, they are still highly respected in their community Tourism has changed the lifestyle of the Suay people a little - they still live with the elephants but do not keep them for hard labor The McDonalds had to hold another cremation for their mother, one that only four family members could attend It was only six days, after a service attended by hundreds, that McCall's Bronxwood Funeral Home revealed they had made a mistake It was her favorite pink blouse and white suit, they knew that for sure. Her finest earrings and watch she had worn for years were there, and her name was stitched in the coffin's fabric. And yet when Val-Jean McDonald's sons saw their mother's open casket, they knew something wasn't right. Her face looked different, her hair had been cut off. 'Daddy, that's not grandma,' Errol McDonald's 10-year-old son told him. But through their tears, McDonald and his brothers couldn't fathom the woman who lay before them was someone else. It was only six days later, after hundreds of people - some from as far away as Australia - said goodbye to Val-Jean at a Harlem church, that her eight sons learned the funeral home got it wrong. Val-Jean McDonald's (pictured) eight sons were devastated after learning that the mother they thought they said goodbye to and cremated was actually another woman after a funeral home mix-up It was six days after hundreds of people - some from as far away as Australia - said goodbye to Val-Jean at a Harlem church that her sons learned that McCall's Bronxwood Funeral Home had made a mistake 'That body is not your mother,' a manager from McCall's Bronxwood Funeral Home told the Rev. Richard McDonald. 'Your mother is still here.' The news devastated the McDonald brothers, who had said their goodbyes, kissed their mother's face and attended her cremation less than a week. Val-Jean was 81 when she passed away on December 18 after a long battle with stage four cancer. The brothers did a double take when they first saw who they believed to be their mother in her coffin, but thought her time at the hospital on a respirator affected her appearance. 'We thought something happened, and this is the best they could do,' Rev McDonald told the New York Times. Darryl McDonald, who came from his home in Melbourne for the funeral, told his brother Richard that the woman didn't 'look like mom'. But his brother explained that she had been in the hospital 'for a long time'. 'She had tubes and all, and her face could have changed,' Darryl recalled being told. 'You're in a funeral parlor,' he continued. 'There is just no way that's not my mother. You would never think that.' The woman the McDonalds thought was their mother was wearing her favorite pink blouse and white suit, as well as her finest jewelry. Her name was written in the fabric on the inside of the coffin (pictured) Errol McDonald, one of Val-Jean's sons, holds up the program for her funeral service 'You know what threw me off?' Leroy McDonald said. 'The lady had my mother's clothes on.' But some of Val-Jean's 20 grandchildren and great-grandchildren knew something was off, including her 6-year-old great-granddaughter. 'She said, "granddaddy, I don't think that's grandma,' Leroy told ABC 7 NY. It wasn't until the funeral home emailed Richard pictures of his mother, realizing their mistake as they looked for the other woman, that he knew the children had been right. Darryl went to McCall's to confirm and the brothers once again scheduled their mother's cremation, which four members of her family were able to attend. The McDonalds at first only told a few friends and relatives about the mix-up, with many saying they knew something was off but didn't want to say anything at a funeral. The mistake is now being investigated by the state's Division of Cemeteries and Bureau of Funeral Directing. Errol (left) and Leroy McDonald (right) said two children at the funeral spoke up and said the woman did not look like the Val-Jean they knew A spokesman for McCall's said they spoke to both families and 'acknowledged our deepest sorrows'. James H. Alston, the funeral home's owner, refused to comment on the mistake. When he was shown photographs of the two women last week he said: 'Looks like the same woman to me.' The McCall's spokesman said the McDonalds was reimbursed and the other woman's family was never charged. But the McDonald's said they only learned about the reimbursement from the media - and did not ask for it. They also wanted to meet with the family of the woman they had mistaken for their mother, so they could share pictures and condolences, but the funeral home will not release her name, according to CBS New York. 'We didn't really truly say goodbye to our mom like we wanted to,' said Leroy. 'She didn't deserve that.' ISIS has threatened to hit the UK 'harder and more bitter' after claiming responsibility for the Brussels bombings today. Britain has ramped up security with armed officers taking to the streets near major landmarks, train stations and airports. The heightened police presence comes after at least 34 people were killed and many more left injured in a series of bomb attacks inside an airport terminal and Metro station in the Belgian capital. The explosions come just a day after the Belgium Interior Minister warned of possible revenge attacks after the arrest of Paris massacre suspect Salah Abdeslam in the city last week. Scroll down for video Pictured are the chaotic scenes at Brussels Airport after two explosions inside the terminal earlier today Armed British police officers stand on duty outside the entrance to the Houses of Parliament in London today In London: Armed officers make their way through the Eurostar terminal at St Pancras station. There was an increased security presence at transport hubs across the city An armed policeman on duty in Downing Street, in London, today following Brussels bomb attacks Armed police at the entrance to the Eurostar at St Pancras Station in London. Journeys to Brussels were disrupted and terminated in Lille in France after this morning's terrorist attacks Security levels at British airports, railways stations, at the borders and on city streets have been increased following the explosions in the departure hall of Zaventem Airport and on the metro system in Brussels. Pictured is an armed officer in Central London Armed police officers in central London after the terrorist attacks in Brussels earlier today A soldier walks through debris after two explosions rocked a terminal building at Brussels Airport A person is carried to safety as troops helped the injured and secured the area after the explosions in the terminal building And through the terrorist group's official Telegram account, a statement read: 'We promise to the states that are allied against the Islamic State that they will face dark days in return for their aggression against our state. 'And what will await you will become harder and more bitter through the grace of Allah. 'In praise of Allah who has made our blows precise and helped us succeed. we demand for him to accept our brothers among the martyrs.' A major manhunt is underway for an ISIS suspect in a white coat and black hat who fled Brussels Airport after the two explosions ripped through the terminal in a suicide bomb attack this morning, killing 14 people and injuring dozens of others. Police issued a wanted notice for the man who was seen on CCTV pushing a luggage trolley through the check-in area with two other suspects minutes before the blasts. His alleged accomplices were wearing black gloves on their left hands, which security sources say would have hidden the triggers for their explosive vests. The two men blew themselves up while the third suspect is believed to have left a nail bomb and fled, according to De Standaard. It is not known if the fugitive then sped to Maelbeek station to carry out the blast that killed 20 people in a subway train just 79 minutes later. First picture: These three men, pretending to be air passengers, are believed to the terrorists who have carried out the Brussels airport. The two suspected suicide bombers on the left were both wearing black gloves - which the Belgian media says would have hidden the triggers for their explosive vests. The third suspect in the hat is believed to still be on the run after dropping his nail bomb Terrified passengers at Brussels Airport have told how there 'just blood' everywhere and likened scenes after the bomb blast to the 'apocalypse' Around 90 minutes later, 10 were killed when an explosion hit a Metro station near the EU headquarters in the city centre in another suspected terror attack Carnage: At least eleven people have died and several injured after two explosions rocked Brussels Airport in a suspected terror attack Alphonse Youla (pictured), who was working on a stand putting security wrapping around suitcases, said he heard 'a man shout some Arabic words then an explosion' Alphonse Youla, who was working on a stand at the airport putting security wrapping around suitcases, said: 'I heard a man shout some Arabic words then an explosion.. then a second explosion, a massive explosion, much bigger. 'It was a horror. I saw at least seven people dead. There was blood. People had lost legs. You could see their bodies but no legs.' Belgian Prosecutor Eric van der Sypt confirmed two bombers died at Brussels airport and said a third is being 'actively' sought. Raids are currently being carried out across the country. Anti-police terror police swooped on a number of suspects in the hours after the attacks as the Belgian Foreign Ministry said many of those behind the terror plot are 'still at large'. Bravery: People injured are treated, comforted and given water by the emergency services as they help the wounded Witnesses described horrific scenes inside the terminal in the wake of the suspected suicide blast Two blasts detonated near check-in desks at Brussels Airport at 8am (7am GMT) in a suspected suicide bombing The ISIS (file photo) statement described how its 'soldiers' allegedly carried out the attacks this morning At least two people in Brussels were arrested outside the city's North railway station, a mile from the Maelbeek subway. A third suspect has been arrested on a train near Amsterdam and a suspect package at Gard du Nord in Paris delayed Eurostar services this afternoon. Another man was also taken into custody at by armed police at Brussels South railway station near the suburb of Schaerbeek. MailOnline revealed earlier today that security services already had CCTV of one of the Brussels airport bombers including the moment he detonated his suicide belt. Surrounded: Two men on their knees with hands on their head are held in Brussels as the authorities Drama: Two men were pinned to the ground by armed police and special forces as the hunt for members of the terror cell behind today's bombings in Brussels started Interventions: The arrests came as the authorities start to round up any people deemed a risk to the public, including here at Brussels North station - a mile from the Maelbeek bombing Across the border: A suspect with his hands up is arrested as he is taken off a train because of suspicious activity at Hoofddorp Station in Amsterdam TERROR TIME LINE: THREE BOMB BLASTS IN BRUSSELS IN JUST 79 MINUTES 8am: Shots heard at Zaventem international airport before someone shouted in Arabic and two explosions rocked the departure hall 8am onwards: Terrified passengers seen streaming out of the terminal while flights are diverted 8.30am: Witnesses describe blasts so powerful victims were thrown in to the air, Airport is closed 9.19am: A third bomb blast rips through Maalbeek Metro station killing 20 more people 9.30am: Belgium moves to its highest level of terror alert 10am: The European Commission tells staff to stay home or in their offices 10.30am: The crisis centre asks residents to stay put, and all public transport systems close down 10.30am: Security reinforced in airports, train stations and public transport systems in Paris while airports in Frankfurt, London, Moscow and the Netherlands 11am: Two suspects arrested one mile away from Metro Station blast 11.15am: Police and soldiers reinforce security around Belgium's nuclear power plants. 12pm: A Kalashnikov and unexploded suicide bomb vest are found in the rubble at the airport 12pm: Belgian prosecutors confirm that the three explosions were terror attacks 1.50pm: Dutch Police stop international train from Brussels to Amsterdam at a station just one stop from Holland's Schiphol Airport as a precaution and search the train and its passengers 3pm: Belgian TV station reports at least one of the bombs at the Brussels airport contained nails 4.40pm: ISIS ISIS group claimed responsibility for the attacks in Brussels Advertisement Passengers and airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem near Brussels The ISIS statement described how its 'soldiers' allegedly carried out the attacks this morning. It addded: 'By the grace of Allah and his goodness, a secret cell of soldiers of the caliphate, which Allah gave power and victory, has launched an attack in the direction of Belgium which has not ceased to combat Islam and Muslims. 'Allah has thus given victory to the hands of our brothers and thrown fear and terror in the hearts of our enemies, in the middle of their land. 'In effect, a number of soldiers of the caliphate wearing explosive belts bombs and military guns and choosing their targets with precision in the Belgian capital Brussels, have launched attacks inside the Zaventem airport and a metro station to kill a largue number of our enemies. 'They then detonated their suicide belts in the middle of the crowds. the death toll has risen to 40 dead and at least 210 injured among the citizens of the crusader states.' In London: Travellers stand in a long queue at St Pancras, after all trains in and out of Brussels were suspended this morning Prime Minister David Cameron has called a meeting of the government's emergency COBRA committee, and said Britain would 'do everything we can to help'. Britain's official terrorist threat level stands at 'severe', the second-highest level on a five-point scale, meaning an attack is highly likely. Mr Cameron said: 'These are appalling and savage terrorist attacks and I've just spoken to the prime minister of Belgium to give our sympathies and our condolences to the Belgian people. 'We absolutely stand with them at this very difficult time. These were attacks in Belgium; they could just as well be attacks in Britain or in France or Germany or elsewhere in Europe. 'We need to stand together against these appalling terrorists and make sure they can never win. I've also made sure that we've offered every support to the Belgian security and policing and intelligence forces at this time.' David Cameron said the world must stand firm in the face of terrorism, saying on Twitter: 'We will never let them win' All flights between the UK and the main airport in Brussels have been cancelled for the rest of today, and Brussels Airlines cancelled 25 flights between UK airports - Heathrow, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol and Edinburgh - and Brussels. Eight flights between Heathrow and Brussels were cancelled by British Airways. In London, police were carrying out extra patrols of airports, and advising passengers to check with their airlines before travelling. A Gatwick spokesman said: 'The safety of passengers and staff at Gatwick is the airport's absolute priority. As a result of the terrible incidents in Brussels, we have increased our security presence and patrols around the airport.' Similar steps were being taken at other airports, including Heathrow, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Manchester, and Heathrow was advising passengers to check their flight status with their airline. Video shows her being grabbed by the hair and punched outside lockers Last week another student Zoey Miles, 13, was assaulted at the school 'Her psychiatrist said she'll never be able to live on her own... because of this,' her mother said Alyssa, now 16, has been left with permanent damage to her frontal lobe A mother claims her daughter has been left with permanent brain damage after she was brutally attacked by bullies. Mary Reyes says daughter Alyssa, 16, was left 'damaged for the rest of her life' after she was targeted by bullies at Wood Intermediate School in Davenport, Iowa, WQAD 8 reports. 'Her psychiatrist said she will never be able to live on her own... because of this,' the devastated mother said after the violent attack which caused a permanent injury to her daughter's left frontal lobe. Scroll down for video Mary Reyes says daughter Alyssa, 16, (pictured) was left 'damaged for the rest of her life' after she was bullied Reyes says the bullying began with just taunts and threats against her daughter in 2014 but escalated quickly. In November that year, aged just 14, Alyssa was jumped outside school by a girl she said she barely knew. Cell phone footage, which was posted on social media, shows the vicious attack by the student who is on top of Alyssa, punching her repeatedly, as a crowd watches on. The assault appears to end after a man is heard shouting at the girl to 'knock it off.' In November 2014, aged just 14, Alyssa was jumped outside school by a girl she said she barely knew in an attack which was filmed and the video (pictured) later posted online Reyes say she spoke to the principal after the bully incident and Alyssa was told she was allowed to leave class five minutes early to avoid the bullies. But just one month later she was assaulted again. 'Her head was slammed into the concrete ground multiple times,' Reyes said. 'It was slammed into the lockers multiple times, and she was dragged down the hall her face still being beaten.' 'It was very brutal.' Yet Reyes says that, despite the school having surveillance cameras which captured the assault, she has never been allowed to view the footage. A 14-year old girl involved in the second attack was later charged as a juvenile with assault. She was ordered to remain on probation until her 18th birthday. But Reyes, who has sent her daughter to live out of state which a relative for her own protection, said more needed to be done to protect students from another tragedy. Mary Reyes (pictured) said her daughter will never be able to live independently after the violent attack which caused a permanent injury to her daughter's left frontal lobe The concerned mother said more needed to be done to protect students at v (pictured) from another tragedy 'We need to keep pushing this,' she said. 'The adults need to take charge. My daughter is damaged for the rest of her life. It should have never gotten to this point.' She was speaking after footage of another bullying incident at the school was posted to Facebook last week. The cell phone video, taken at Wood Intermediate, shows 13-year-old Zoey Miles being grabbed by the hair and punched outside her gym locker. When a friend tries to intervene, she too is viciously attacked. 'I had to find out on Facebook that my kid had been beaten up at school,' said Michael Miles of Davenport, who was alerted to the footage, posted by a student. He and his wife have accused the school of not dealing with bullying. Another bullying incident at the school was posted to Facebook last week which shows 13-year-old Zoey Miles being grabbed by the hair and punched outside her gym locker 'They're acting like it's no big deal. It is a big deal. There is a bullying problem at that school. The kids that are being bullied and beaten up , they're not really being protected,' he said. The Davenport School District says Superintendent Art Tate is aware of the incident but felt it was not 'appropriate' to watch the video or comment as he is part of the disciplinary process. They declined to say what actions were being taken against the girls involved. But for Reyes, the incident showed that the school had failed to address its bullying problem. Belgian authorities are raiding the neighbourhood of the bombmaker thought to be behind November's Paris attacks as experts say he may have designed the explosives that killed at least 31 people today in Brussels. Najim Laachraoui, 24, is also suspected of being responsible for the bombs used in the Paris massacre after it was revealed his DNA was found on suicide belts used in the Bataclan Theatre and the Stade de France. Laachraoui reportedly travelled to Syria in February 2013 and was stopped by guards at the Austria-Hungary border on September 9 last year while driving a rented Mercedes he shared with Salah Abdesalam, according to the Belgian Federal Prosecutor. Hunted: Police are hunting Najim Laachraoui, 25, who is wanted in connection to both the Paris and Brussels attacks Suspects: Belgian Police released this CCTV image of the suspected bombers behind the airport attack He is thought to be the Brussels ISIS cell's 'bomb maker' after his DNA was found on suicide belts found in the Bataclan Theatre and Stade de France in November The pair were also travelling with Mohamed Belkaid, 35, the man shot and killed during the raid to capture Abdelslam on Friday. It is thought Laachraoui was not stopped as he was using a drivers licence under a different name and traveled to Budapest twice in September 2015. On this instance, the three men had posed as tourists heading to Vienna on holiday and did not raise suspicions when they were stopped by police. Laachraoui was also captured on CCTV with Belkaid four days after the attacks during a money transfer in a Western Union bank in the Brussels area. 'The investigation showed that Soufiane Kayal can be identified as Najim Laachraoui, born on May 18, 1991 and who travelled to Syria in February 2013,' prosecutors said in a statement in Brussels. It is also using this alias that authorities have said he was in contact via phone with Paris attacks ringleader Abdelhamid Abaaoud, and gave him guidance in the lead-up to the November attacks. He has been identified as using the alias Soufiane Kayal - the name he used to rent the safe house used by the Paris bombers to plan the Paris attack, where his DNA has also been found as well as in their hideout in Schaerbeek. At the house on Rue Henri Berge, investigators found traces of TATP - a signature explosive of ISIS in Europe, and was found in the suicide vests used by the Paris attackers. It comes as Belgian federal prosecutors say a house search in the Brussels neighborhood of Schaerbeek has 'led to the discovery of an explosive device containing among other things nails.' Investigators also found chemical products and an Islamic State flag. A Belgian prosecutor says police raids are happening around the country after two men 'probably' staged suicide bombings at the Brussels airport and a third fled. Prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said Tuesday that the third suspect - on the right of the photo wearing a thick white sweater - is actively being sought by police. The 'masterbomber' Najim is believed to have studied electro-mechanical engineering at a Catholic high school named as the Institute de la Sainte-Famille d'Helmet by in an investigation by The New York Times. Authorities say it's not possible at this stage to establish any links between the attacks Tuesday in Brussels and those in Paris on November 13 that left 130 people dead. Mr Pantucci, the Director of International Security Studies at the Royal United Services Institute, said information surrounding the 'mystery bomb maker' Najim Laachraoui is still very sketchy. He said: 'We don't know much about him at this point. This individual is being identified as a bomb maker but we have concerns whether that is 100 per cent true or if he's one of a number of bomb makers. 'This terrorist group in Brussels had multiple, viable explosive devices. It suggests they were dealing with someone with substantial experience. 'That could be the same person responsible for the bomb devices in the Paris attacks but it could be someone else, part of a larger cell. 'Given the location and the nature and the use of explosives and guns the thought process goes down the page of assuming it's linked to the organised network around Abdeslam. 'We can't be sure but it would be surprising if it wasn't the same group.' Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said on Sunday that Salah Abdeslam, who was arrested on Friday when was caught was 500 metres from his childhood home, had claimed that 'he was ready to restart something from Brussels, and it's maybe the reality,' Reynders gave credence to the suspect's claim because 'we found a lot of weapons, heavy weapons in the first investigations, and we have seen a new network of people around him in Brussels.' Killed and Captured: Mohamed Belkaid, 35 (left) was killed during the raid that ended in the capture of failed suicide bomber Salah Abdeslam (right). Both were travelling in a car crossing the Austrian-Hungrarian border with suspected bomb maker Najim Laachraoui in September He also said that the authorities are searching for up to 30 people in Belgium and France in connection with the Paris attacks. A friend of Abdelhamid Abaaoud, who masterminded the November 2015 Paris attacks, told police that the jihadi claimed he was among 90 terrorists who smuggled themselves across the Mediterranean with migrants and refugees. Abdeslam relied on two friends to drive him back to Brussels after his brother Brahim blew himself up at a Paris cafe. Others drove him around Molenbeek and its environs between safe houses. Arrested: Salah Abdeslam was arrested on Friday - his lawyer says that he may become an informer Authorities are also searching for Mohamed Abrini, 31, who was filmed with Abdeslam at a petrol station on a highway to Paris two days before the Paris attacks and has been missing since November 12. It has been reported that Abrini's brother Souleyman, 20, died in Syria in 2014 while fighting for a militia led by Abdelhamid Abaaoud - the 'mastermind' of the Paris attacks. Police, who were eventually able to move in to seize Abdeslam at a house in the rundown North African neighbourhood of Molenbeek four days ago, have charged a man and a women whom they suspect of being part of a family who harboured the fugitive. It is understood that intelligence services located the fugitive's hideout after listening in on phone conversations at the funeral of his brother, Brahim Abdeslam, who blew himself up in the Paris attacks. One mourner is thought to have let slip vital information which allowed police to close the net around Abdeslam in Molenbeek. They finally snared him after they noticed a large number of pizzas being delivered to a flat they had under surveillance too many for the number of people who should have been in the apartment. Aftermath: The explosion that ripped through the terminal at 8am local time killed at least 14 people Terror: The second explosion hit a train stopped at Maelbeek metro station, near to Brussel's EU offices He was interviewed three times on Saturday, the day after his capture - once by prosecutors and twice by an investigating judge - and 'wasn't in great shape' because he had been shot in the leg by police during his capture, Mr Van Leeuw said. Abdeslam has a court hearing on Wednesday. France has requested his extradition but Abdeslam's lawyer says his client will fight the request. Federal police in Belgium have issued a wanted notice for a suspect in the Brussels airport bombing that they are still trying to identify. A man wearing a thick light-colored jacket with a black hat and glasses is suspected of committing an attack at Zaventem airport on Tuesday morning. The Belgian government has ordered an electricity operator to evacuate two of its nuclear power stations, just hours after devastating terror attacks in the country's capital, which have killed 34 people. French company ENGIE, which runs the Tihange nuclear plant around 50 miles southeast of Brussels, and the Doel plant, near Antwerp, confirmed all non-essential staff had left the sites. There are fears ISIS will attempt to follow today's attacks with a dirty bomb, but it is unclear if the government has specific intelligence of an attack targeted against the facilities. French company ENGIE, which runs the Tihange nuclear plant (pictured) around 50 miles southeast of Brussels, and the Doel plant, near Antwerp, confirmed all non-essential staff had left the sites Tihange nuclear power plant is about an hour's drive away from the the Belgian capital where today's attacks took place Security has been heightened at all the country's nuclear sites and a spokesperson at Belgium's Federal Agency for Nuclear Control said: 'There is an increased military presence at the sites since the events of this morning.' Earlier this year police discovered ISIS were working to breach Belgium's nuclear security, CBS reported. Belgian security services learnt in February that two men had been secretly videotaping one of the country's senior nuclear scientists. Police found 10 hours of video footage of the unnamed nuclear official outside his home in Flanders, which had been secretly recorded. The footage was discovered when police searched the home of Mohamed Bakkali, who was arrested and charged with terrorist activity and murder over alleged links to the November Paris attacks. Interior minister Jan Jambon told Belgium's Parliament there was not a threat to the country's nuclear facilities last month At the time, the interior minister Jan Jambon told Belgium's Parliament that while there was a threat 'to the person in question,' there was not one to the country's nuclear facilities. He added: 'To date, we have no indication that there is a specific threat to the Belgian nuclear sites. The nuclear industry is one of the best protected areas.' Ian Armstrong, an analyst at Global Risk Insights, a publication which provides political risk analysis to businesses, said ISIS had the likely intention of making a dirty bomb. 'ISIS nuclear espionage in Belgium demonstrates a focused intention to acquire radioactive substances,' he said. 'With nuclear substances found in radiological devices, laboratories, and nuclear power plants around the world, the risk is present both within its base of operations in the Middle East and North Africa as well as in any number of countries where ISIS members are active.' It comes just hours after the massacres in Brussels at an international airport and subway station, which ISIS have claimed responsibility for, that have killed a total of 34 people and injured close to 200 others. This is the chilling moment a 'controlling' musician who murdered his concert pianist wife pleaded with police to kill him as he was arrested. The footage shows killer John Martin, 48, repeatedly shouting 'kill me, please kill me' as he lies face down on his bed at home in Manchester. He was jailed for life on Monday after murdering his Russian-born wife Natalia Strelchenko, 38, on their second wedding anniversary last August. John Martin, 48, was jailed for life on Monday after murdering his wife Natalia Strelchenko, 38, on their second wedding anniversary last August The Norwegian bass player strangled and beat Ms Strelchenko to death after flying into a 'jealous rage'. The video, which was captured on an officer's body camera, shows him wailing uncontrollably as police attempt to calm him down. One officer is heard saying: 'You're under arrest for assault, at the moment. Do you understand?' Martin responds: 'Kill me, please, kill me.' An officer says: 'Nobody's going to kill you.' The killer then continues to cry, telling police: 'I don't deserve to live.' Martin had denied murder and manslaughter, claiming he could not remember what happened. The Norwegian bass player (left) strangled and beat Ms Strelchenko to death at their home in Manchester after flying into a 'jealous rage' Martin repeatedly shouted 'kill me, please, kill me' as he lied face down on his bed at home during the arrest He said his behaviour was caused by a combination of severe depression, drink and tranquilisers. A judge ruled that he must serve a minimum of 17 years behind bars. Russian mother-of-one Strelchenko, who was also known by the surname Strelle, was a professional classical musician of international renown. She was found with some 71 injuries, including 45 separate marks to her head and neck, having suffered repeated blows to the front of her face. Her jawbone was snapped in half and parts of her skull were left severely fractured. Ms Strelchenko began playing piano at the age of eight and went on to gain entry to the prestigious St Petersburg State Conservatory Ms Strelchenko, who at the 'peak of her powers' had performed in concerts with a full orchestra and attended the prestigious St Petersburg State Conservatory in her homeland, died a short time later in hospital. Hours before the attack, Martin, a double-bass player, had 'exploded' in front of a group of musicians in a row with Ms Strelchenko about barbecue food. The three-times married man left the house after drinking around four cans of cider, returning home at around midnight. Martin had claimed that he had no memory of pushing his wife, falling down the stairs or of the struggle, after taking a mix of alcohol and diazepam - which he said he had mistaken for his anti-depressant medication. But Mrs Justice Cox said that Martin had intended to kill the pianist in what she described as a 'prolonged and ferocious attack'. She said: 'On all the evidence I have heard I am satisfied that this attack occurred against a background of controlling and sometimes aggressive behaviour by you. 'But the evidence shows that you came to resent her success and her friendships with those she met. 'I am satisfied on the evidence that you were jealous of her being the focus of attention and praise and of her meeting other people when she was working away from home. 'You were, as witnesses have described, unable to live with her and unable to live without her and I have no doubt that you would not allow her to be free.' Before sentencing, the court heard that Martin had been convicted at Oslo District Court in 2012 for four offences relating to assaults against Ms Strelchenko for which he was sentenced to a prison term of 90 days. The schoolgirl, 16, will apply for the bail at Parramatta Children's Court Milad Atai and a Sydney schoolgirl were arrested on Tuesday morning Western Sydney man Milad Atai, 20, was arrested by counter-terrorism investigators on Tuesday morning A schoolgirl who was arrested on Tuesday by counter-terrorism investigators has been linked to a notorious Islamic State (IS) terror cell and an Australian fighter gaining notoriety in Syria. The 16-year-old was taken into custody along with Mild Atai, 20, both from Western Sydney over allegations they were 'raising money' for ISIS. On Wednesday the schoolgirl will appear in Parramatta Children's Court to apply for bail, the ABC reported. It is alleged she had been enlisted by Atai to transfer $5000 to an Australian IS fighter, with whom Atai has been in contact with. She was going to be given the money in cash, and send it via Western Union, and the teenager was not known to police until recent months. Her friendship with Atai came to light after the shooting of police officer Curtis Cheng outside Parramatta Police Station. NSW police deputy commissioner Catherine Burn (right) and AFP deputy commissioner Michael Phelan on Tuesday made the announcement that Milad Atai, 20, and the schoolgirl, 16, had been arrested The pair were arrested in Guilford on the street they both live on, after an alleged meeting to discuss the money transfer in a nearby park. They are not believed to be related or in a relationship. Atai remains in police custody and will also apply for bail on Wednesday. He and the schoolgirl's chargers carry a maximum penalty of 25 years. Atai was a target of the original counter-terrorism raids conducted under Operation Appleby in September 2014. He was named among a group of 18 suspected extremists in a control order last year. Meantime the contact in Syria - is also well-known to police and has been trying to recruit Australians through social media and climb the ranks of the Islamic State The arrests were made as part of the ongoing Operation Appleby counter-terrorism investigation After Atai and the 16-year-old were arrested on Tuesday morning Deputy NSW police commissioner Catherine Burn said the girl was not someone 'well known to police'. However, investigators will allege the schoolgirl was involved in 'extremely serious matters'. Police will allege the pair used 'mechanisms' to raise the funds but were not specific. 'It is disturbing we are continuing to see a trend of teenaged children involved in these activities,' Ms Burn told reporters. Police said the arrests do not relate to a specific terrorist threat. Cawthon is in critical condition but is expected to survive the attack Ballard was reportedly worried they were going to be late for the memorial service, and a verbal argument turned physical between him and Cawthon Ballard's family was supposed to be paying tribute to his late wife when the incident occurred A 61-year-old man accused of stabbing his daughter's boyfriend before being killed by police was distraught over his wife's death, family members said. On the day the family was supposed to be paying tribute to Boyd Ballard's late wife, Ballard allegedly stabbed Cyle Cawthon with a butcher knife. Ballard was then fatally shot by a police officer in the parking lot outside the family's Hopewell, Virginia, townhouse after he refused to drop his weapon, officials said. Boyd Ballard (left), 61, allegedly stabbed Cyle Cawthon on Sunday in Hopewell, Virgina, before smashing his late wife's urn and being fatally shot by police. Family members say he was distraught over losing his wife (right) Ballard allegedly stabbed Cawthon (pictured) because he was worried the family would be late to a memorial service for his late wife Ballard's son Scott Wiseman said that his father had 'been so emotionally distraught' leading up to the incident because his wife, who has not been named, had died. '[Sunday] was my mom's memorial services,' Wiseman told WTVR. 'He just missed her all the time. He just wanted to be with her - that's all he ever wanted - and I guess when he snapped he was able to find a way to be with her.' He said that his sister, Alexis Wiseman has been 'so upset'. 'She was crying saying dad was dead and her boyfriend had to go to the hospital with his guts hanging out,' Wiseman told WTVR. Cawthon is in critical condition but is expected to survive the attack. Robert Williams said his brother, Cawthon, was holding his infant son when he was confronted by Ballard. Williams said Ballard was worried they were going to be late for the memorial service, and a verbal argument turned physical in front of his grandchildren and daughter. Cawthon (left) is the boyfriend of Ballard's daughter, Alexis Wiseman (right). He was reportedly holding the couple's infant when Ballard attacked Williams said Ballard smashed his wife's urn and officials say Ballard then asked police to shoot him. 'We were raised that a family is a family regardless of the circumstances. Right now Alexis is the biggest loser in this whole entire situation,' Williams told WTVR. He added: 'We feel like it's very important for us as a whole to come together and become one and support each other right now because it's not about who did what to who, it's about the loss that the grandkids that Alexis is dealing with and pain and suffering that my brother is having to go through. They are all victims and there's no reason to be mad at one person or the other.' Wiseman said that he wishes he could have been there to stop the tragic incident from happening. 'If I could change anything it would have been to have been in Hopewell so I could have stopped this so no one would be hurt and he wouldn't be dead,' he said. Sarah Palin was seen for the first time visiting her husband Todd in hospital after he was seriously injured in a snowmobile crash - just as it was revealed the former Alaska governor will give Judge Judy a run for her money and host a new reality courtroom show. In pictures obtained exclusively by Daily Mail Online, Palin appeared tired and tense as she left Mat-Su Regional Medical Center in Alaska last Friday after flying home from Florida where she had been campaigning for Donald Trump. Indeed, Palin will have her hands full as she supports her husband, who faces a long recovery after undergoing surgery to repair 14 fractured ribs and a collapsed lung, and work on her new syndicated TV show. Scroll down for video In pictures obtained exclusively by Daily Mail Online, Palin appeared tired and tense as she left Mat-Su Regional Medical Center in Alaska last Friday after flying home from Florida where she had been campaigning for Donald Trump. She will have her hands full as she prepare for her new reality courtroom show Palin's daughter Piper and son Trig were also pictured with leaving the hospital where she was carrying Todd's snowmobile boots Palin and her husband Todd watch the NBA Eastern Conference final basketball playoff series between the Miami Heat and the Indiana Pacers in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 2013 The production has been in the works since February according to People, and Palin is preparing to meet with stations before setting off to film a pilot, which she will then try and sell to a network. The daytime show would launch in 2017 if everything goes to plan. It will not be Palins first time on reality television, having previously starred in Amazing America With Sarah Palin, which premiered in 2014 and ran for once season on The Sportsman Channel. Palin, unlike Judy Sheindlin, does not have a law degree, but did spend years speaking her mind as a political commentator for Fox News. The former governor of Alaska, 52, made her way unaccompanied to her SUV after spending many hours with Todd who remains on a ventilator in intensive care. Dressed casually in sunglasses, black sweatpants and a hoodie, she drove herself to fast-food restaurant, Panda Express, where she ordered food in the drive-thru lane before returning with the takeout to the hospital. it was revealed the former Alaska governor will give Judge Judy a run for her money and host a new reality courtroom show She left around ten minutes later and stopped to clean her truck at a car wash before returning to the familys lakeside compound several miles away in Wasilla. The mother-of-five has been updating concerned well-wishers on Todds condition via social media. She revealed that her husband, 51, has a long road to recovery and is still on a breathing machine after having a six-hour surgery to repair 14 fractured ribs and a collapsed lung. She wrote on Facebook: Thank you for lifting Todd up in prayer. He's still in ICU under care of a superbly skilled staff. 'A long surgery repaired numerous breaks in Todd's upper body, docs essentially lifted and secured every rib with steel bands, anchored the broken clavicle with plates and rods, set aside repair of a broken shoulder for later (also later are more minor things like ACL/MCL knee injuries), still mechanically inflating one collapsed lung while other bruised lung, liver, etc., are watched; chest drain is working overtime to keep things clear.' Sarah shared a picture of daughters Willow and Piper laughing while seated on a hospital bed in the March 17 post with the Irish proverb: A good laugh and a long sleep are the two best cures for anything. She went on to say: 'Requiring a bit more than our usual fix-all up here - Duct tape - some gnarly incisions to enter his innards will be reminders of how life can change in the blink of an eye. (And skating through TSA detectors with bionic parts will now be anything but the blink of an eye!) 'So thankful for today's medical technology including 3-D X-rays, temporary pain blocks and epidurals. I'm voting for their continued use until a resting position is found that allows minimal wincing with each breath.' Palin will have her hands full as she supports her husband, who faces a long recovery after undergoing surgery to repair 14 fractured ribs and a collapsed lung, and work on her new syndicated TV show Dressed casually in sunglasses, black sweatpants and a hoodie, she drove herself to fast-food restaurant, Panda Express, where she ordered food in the drive-thru lane before returning with the takeout to the hospital Sarah shared a picture of daughters Willow (left) and Piper laughing while seated on a hospital bed in the March 17 post with the Irish proverb: A good laugh and a long sleep are the two best cures for anything Sarah with Todd's dad, Todd (behind the snowmobile mask) and daughter Willow Sarah also thanked the hospital staff, adding: 'It's all good though, and I hope whatever challenges you face today - physical, emotional, financial - you'll have confidence in the care around you, and you'll apply Todd's consistent advice: "Don't sweat the small stuff." 'Your care for Todd is more appreciated than I can express. Thank you. And thank you to the still-mysterious snowmachiner(s) who came upon the wreck and provided critical help that night. I hope to meet you soon!' It is still not clear who found Todd after the accident. The Palins youngest daughter Piper was also seen visiting her father. She drove a blonde woman, believed to be her aunt, and her brother, Trig, to the hospital where they spent an hour inside. Piper emerged carrying several bags while Trig played with a monkey soft toy. The older woman carried a pair of heavy workmans boots, believed to be what Todd was wearing at the time of the crash. The Palin family were able to take some time out from the stressful week to celebrate Pipers 15th birthday on Saturday. Bristol posted a picture of Piper holding a vase of tulips with herself and Willow in the familys back yard during a heavy snowfall. Happy birthday Piper, we love you so much!! Bristol wrote alongside the snap. Bristol also shared an old photo of Piper as a child, writing: '15 years ago our family welcomed the most precious gift in the world! Happy birthday Piper Indi Grace! 'You have been the best sister, daughter, auntie, friend in the world! We love and appreciate you more than words can describe #familyfavorite #bff.' Their mother took to her Facebook page that day to wish her daughter a happy birthday. Police issued warning to Spring Breakers not to buy Xanax on the street Nine people in Florida died from overdoses in 2016 after taking killer pills Drug is 50 times stronger than heroin and 100 times more than A fake Xanaz pill - which is 50 times stronger than heroin - has killed nine people in just three months in Florida. The counterfeit drug, sold on the streets as 'Super Pill' for as little as $5, contains a lethal mix of Xanax and powerful pain medication Fentanyl with has been responsible for the overdoses of nine people in Pinellas County this year. And with thousands of college students descending on the state for Spring Break, police have issued an emergency warning not to buy Xanax on the street. Scroll down for video A fake Xanaz pill - which is 50 times stronger than heroin - has killed nine people in just three months in Florida Video courtesy WFLA 'People need to immediately stop buying Xanax on the street because their life literally depends on it,' Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said at a news conference on Monday. 'You don't have to take a handful of them. All you gotta do is take one, and you're dead.' The killer pills claimed their latest victim over the weekend after a 25-year-old woman died from an overdose in Dunedin, WFLA reports. Investigators are desperately trying to track down the dealer and producer of the Super Pills but have made no arrests so far. But Sheriff Gualtieri insists anyone caught selling these drugs to someone who overdoses, will be charged with first degree murder. The deadly fakes are especially dangerous as they appear exactly the same as the legitimate drugs - and even carry the brand name Xanax across them (pictured left, is real Xanax, right is the fake pill) The counterfeit drug, sold on the streets as 'Super Pill' for as little as $5, contains a lethal mix of Xanax and powerful pain medication Fentanyl (file picture) Xanax pills, the possession of which are illegal without a prescription and can result in up to five years in jail, are commonly bought on the street as a recreational drug. The deadly fakes are especially dangerous as they appear exactly the same as the legitimate drugs - and even carry the brand name Xanax across them. Containing the highly addictive pain killer Fentanyl, more commonly prescribed to cancer patients, they are 100 times stronger than morphine and 50 times more powerful than heroin. And they can kill in minutes, authorities say. Police say the Super Pills have already been found in at least 21 states. But Florida has the fastest growing death toll, with three confirmed deaths and six still others being investigated over links to the drug. And with the state a popular destination for Spring Breakers, officers are keen to warn them against taking the pills. 'There's no other way to put it You better stop buying this Xanax on the street because nine people are dead,' the detective added. A disturbing photo (above) taken at Crest Lake Park shows two people slumped over and one person lying on the ground, as it's suspected they had used Spice. Authorities in Clearwater and Tampa say number of spice users has increased The state has also recently seen an increase in the number of overdoses from synthetic marijuana - known as spice. Police say they've received dozens of calls for people who have had to be rushed to the hospital in a 'zombified state' because of its use as professionals warned the dangerous uptick in overdoses could indicate a bad batch of spice that's being sold. A disturbing photo from the Clearwater Police Department taken at Crest Lake Park shows two people slumped over and one person lying on the ground, as it's suspected they had used Spice. 'The spike that we're seeing and my personnel are dealing with on the road are unprecedented,' Major Eric Gandy of the Clearwater Police Department told WFLA . 'Looked like one of our zombie movies.' He added that he 'had 15 people walking around in various states of incapacitation'. Only last week, officials say there were three overdoses in one day on Wednesday, as the calls for the usage of Spice are centered around Crest Lake Park where homeless people spend a lot of time reportedly. One of two daughters she allegedly confided in about the incident has also been arrested as an accessory after the fact Woman has since been taken to a local hospital for medical issues where she is currently in custody under police guard But when investigators arrived at the scene, evidence suggested suicide was staged, police said Police had initially received reports of a suicide on Monday night, the woman saying she found her husband with gunshot wound Authorities are investigating an apparent homicide after an Oklahoma woman allegedly shot her husband Authorities are investigating an apparent homicide after an Oklahoma woman allegedly shot her husband then spent hours staging it as a suicide before calling 911. Police said they responded to a reported suicide at a Broken Arrow home on Monday night, when the wife of the 69-year-old man said she had found him with a gunshot wound to his head. However, when investigators arrived at the scene, evidence suggested the suicide was staged, according to the Broken Arrow Police Department. Authorities are investigating an apparent homicide after an Oklahoma woman allegedly shot her husband at their Broken Arrow home (pictured) then spent hours staging it as a suicide before calling 911 Police said during their investigation they spoke with the wife as well as other associates, but their versions of the day's events were inconsistent. Police said they learned the wife had allegedly shot her husband several hours earlier before calling 911. Throughout the day, the woman allegedly talked to her two adult daughters about the incident but did not contact authorities until much later. The woman has since been taken to a local hospital for medical issues where she is currently in custody under police guard. Police said one of the daughters was arrested for accessory after the fact while the other daughter has not been located. No names at this time have been released. Cpl. Leon Calhoun told Tulsa World the investigation is still underway and noted that it is possible the other daughter might be charged. 'I'm not sure at this point how much involvement these daughters may have had,' he said. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says security presence at Australian airports will be in full force over the Easter weekend despite immigration and border protection staff taking strike action. He has reassured the travelling public that federal police will be patrolling airports as border protection officers begin stoppages at international airports with a 24 hour strike planned from Thursday. His comments come after he faced questions about Australia's response to the deadly terror attacks in Brussels where two bombs were detonated inside the main airport terminal. Scroll down for video Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull says security presence at Australian airports will be in full force over the Easter weekend despite immigration and border protection staff taking strike action 'There will be obviously a strike affecting the immigration personnel, the border force personnel, but the Australian Federal Police, who are of course primarily responsible for the security at airports... will be there in force in the - operating at full- strength,' Mr Turnbull told the Nine Network. 'I can assure you the AFP has that in hand and the AFP's security levels at the airport, the commitment of personnel, their operational awareness and so forth is consistent.' The Prime Minister later called on border force workers to cease strike action in the wake of terrorist attacks. 'We strongly encourage them, to rethink their call for industrial action and stay at work and pursue their complaints, their disagreements with the government through other means,' he told Seven Network on Wednesday. The union is expected to make a statement on Wednesday. Mr Turnbull said he had spoken with the federal police commissioner, ASIO chief and Attorney General following the deadly Brussels attacks. Their advice was there was no requirement to increase Australia's national terrorism threat advisory from its current level of probable. There was already a high level of security at airports. Mr Turnbull has reassured the travelling public that federal police will be patrolling airports as border protection officers begin stoppages at international airports with a 24 hour strike planned from Thursday His comments come after he faced questions about Australia's response to the deadly terror attacks in Brussels where two bombs were detonated inside the main airport terminal 'We are in a much stronger position from a security point of view (compared to) Brussels,' Mr Turnbull said. 'The reality is, of course, that we have the benefits of geography.' Travellers are being warned their Easter plans could be disrupted by strike action by Department of Immigration and Border Protection workers at Australian international airports this weekend. Immigration and Border Protection officers will begin stoppages at international airports from Tuesday, with a 24-hour strike planned for Thursday. The strikes do not concern domestic airlines, as boarder protection only operates at international terminals, but it will affect all international carriers. Sharna Rhys-Jones, Senior Manager of Corporate Affairs and Communications at Qantas told Daily Mail Australia that there are a number of international flights leaving from Sydney over the weekend and that it will affect different airlines at different times. 'We are encouraging international travelers to get to the airport much earlier than normal,' she said. Work stoppages were held by the Australian Border Force and Immigration staff in September last year at airports (pictured) in Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Darwin, Cairns, and the Gold Coast Travellers are being warned their Easter plans could be disrupted by strike action by Department of Immigration and Border Protection workers at Australian international airports this weekend Immigration and Border Protection officers will begin stoppages at international airports from Tuesday, with a 24-hour strike planned for Thursday 'This is a matter between the Department of Immigration and Border Protection and its employees, however we have been advised that the Department has put in place contingency plans to ensure there is minimal disruption,' Qantas said in a statement issued on Monday. The campaign is part of a long-running industrial dispute with the federal government over work conditions. The Community and Public Sector Union says thousands of public servants at Medicare, Centrelink, the Tax Office, Defence, the Bureau of Meteorology, the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet and the Bureau of Statistics will strike for 24 hours on Monday. CPSU national secretary Nadine Flood says Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has ignored the union's offer of talks to discuss the issue and that industrial action could continue at airports for several weeks. Airline passengers are urged to contact their carrier for information and to allow extra time for international departures and arrivals. Work stoppages were held by the Australian Border Force and Immigration staff in September last year at airports in Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Darwin, Cairns, and the Gold Coast. A group of Australian university students are stranded in Brussels following the devastating terror attacks on Tuesday. Mia Egerton-Warburton, 20, and a group of female friends had travelled to the Belgium capital for the Easter break from Leeds University in the UK where they are part of the exchange program. The University of Western Australia student said she and three friends were staying at an Airbnb apartment about a 20-minute walk from the metro station where one of the blasts took place. Scroll down for video Australian exchange student Mia Egerton-Warburton is stranded in Brussels along with three friends She has revealed the devastation caused by the blasts and how terrified she was to go outside At least 34 people have died in the twin blasts the rocked both Brussels Airport (pictured) and a nearby metro station At least 34 people have died and a further 200 are injured during twin terror attacks carried out at Brussels Airport and a nearby metro station on Tuesday. 'All our families are pretty panicked, basically telling us to get out of Belgium,' she told AAP. Ms Egerton-Warburton described feeling 'shocked, confused' and said she and her friends cancelled their sightseeing plans in case of 'possible further attacks'. 'To give you an insight into how tense it is, a car alarm just went off in the street outside our room and literally everyone was looking out their windows. 'People stopped walking,' she said. The 20-year-old said they were initially told to stay indoors and were advised all public transport had been shut down. 'We are too scared to go to the grocery store at the moment, so we are basically stuck inside hungry.' The 20-year-old is taking part in an exchange program with the University of Western Australia and is currently studying at Leeds University in the UK A a blast hit a Metro station just 400 metres from the EU headquarters in the city centre after the airport Ms Egerton-Warburton said she was unaware whether she and her friends would be able to leave Brussels on Wednesday as planned. Another Australian was on one of the last flights to land at Brussels before two explosions rocked the airport. 'As the plane touched down we saw the first puff of smoke over the terminal. The plane came to a sudden stop,' Leigh Dryden told ABC News Breakfast. He said within 15 minutes all those on board were made aware of the attacks, and sat on the plane for about 90 minutes before they were whisked away from the main terminal. 'It was chaos,' he said. Following the violent murder of Masa Vukotic new laws in Victoria have been introduced to combat the threat of violent sex offenders who recklessly breach supervision orders. The changes come after Sean Christian Price, who had a history of violent sexual offending, murdered teenager Vukotic in a Melbourne park last year. He was on a supervision order at the time but had sentences for violent behaviour reduced. Victorian sex offenders who recklessly breach supervision orders will now be thrown into jail for a mandatory 12 months. Police will also be allowed to hold serious sex offenders for up to 72 hours without a charge - up from 10 hours - under new laws set to be introduced. Scroll down for video New laws gave been introduced after teenager Masa Vukotic (pictured) was murdered in a Melbourne park last year by Sean Christian Price, who had a history of violent sexual offending 'Tragically our system failed Masa Vukotic and her family,' Premier Daniel Andrews said. 'I think this is a balanced approach, it's a tough approach of course.' A loophole in the previous system meant even if a serious sex offender committed a violent act they didn't breach their supervision order. That will be closed and offenders who intentionally or recklessly breach their orders will be sent to jail for a mandatory 12 months. If police think one of Victoria's 41 serious sex offenders living in the community is at risk of imminent offending they can be locked up for three days. Price (pictured) pleaded guilty to rape, robbery, attempted theft and the murder of 17-year-old Vukotic on March 18 The 32-year-old was jailed for life in the Victorian Supreme Court for stabbing 17-year-old teenager Vukotic to death Price told police he 'just f***n' had to kill' the teenage girl, after seeing her dressed 'liked a yuppy' A loophole in the previous system meant even if a serious sex offender committed a violent act they didn't breach their supervision order. Price admitted to ruthlessly stabbing a teenage schoolgirl to death because she was 'dressed like a yuppy' was jailed for life on March 18 with a non-parole period of 38 years. He pleaded guilty to rape, robbery, attempted theft and the murder of the 17-year-old, who he stabbed 49 times in a park near her Melbourne home last year. The following day he went on a crime spree that culminated in the violent rape of a woman in her workplace because he believed he was 'going to jail forever'. Justice Lex Lasry handed down the sentence in the Victorian Supreme Court in front of Ms Vutokic's devastated family - who sat in the crowded courtroom to hear the verdict. Justice Lasry told Price that those in positions of power had 'failed to protect the community from the danger you clearly posed with tragic results,' the ABC reported. 'In a catastrophic example of mismanagement, whether on the part of corrections or parole, the decision was made to release you into the community and then the order ceased to have any protective event,' Justice Lasry said. 'There were many red flags to indicate that the risks of leaving you to your own devices were very significant and likely to involve violence, but nowhere near enough was done.' Price had prior convictions including sex offences against seven girls and women aged between 13 and 45 in 2002 and 2003. Price covered his face with a black hoodie while he was escorted into court for his sentencing on March 18 Price had prior convictions including sex offences against seven girls and women aged between 13 and 45 The father of murdered teen Slabvoljub Vukotic (right) arrives for a pre-sentencing hearing in Melbourne in December Ms Vukotic was stabbed 49 times during the attack On March 17, Price armed himself with a knife, had the foresight to put a clean T-shirt into his bag and set off in search of someone 'affluent' to kill. He believed it was necessary to stab rich people in order to draw attention to the plight of prisoners, following what he perceived as 'injustices' he had faced while in custody for sex crimes. Ms Vukotic, an aspiring lawyer, was walking in a park near her Doncaster home when Price saw her. He later told police: 'I was looking, looking and I just thought, f**k this, this is the moment. This one just ended up being the one, I just f***n' had to kill her, man.' 'She started talking to a bird like... Snow White.' He stabbed Ms Vukotic, an aspiring lawyer, 49 times, aiming for her 'lethal regions'. 'You were anxious to make sure she was dead because if she wasn't what you were doing was a waste of time,' Justice Lasry said. After seeing media coverage of the murder, Price realised it would only be a matter of time before he was arrested. On March 19 he attacked a woman at her work, driven by the need for some form of sexual gratification before being arrested. After Ms Vukotic's murder, Price (centre) then went on a crime rampage that ended when he raped another woman a day later Ms Vukotic had begged for her life, but Price showed her no mercy 'I thought, you know, what man? I'm going to jail forever. I need to bust a nut,' Price told police. 'I'm never getting out, I'm just going to go take some chick and seize her.' The woman fought back as Price choked and raped her, but he escaped, leaving her with psychological and emotional damage. 'Your conduct was disgusting,' Justice Lasry said on Friday. Following his arrest, Price's record of interview was 'chilling, pathetic and sad', yet he was astonishingly cooperative. Price apologised to 'the innocent' - he hadn't realised how young Ms Vukotic was. Ms Vukotic had gone for a walk in Doncaster about 6.45pm after having dinner with her family before she was randomly attacked by Price Alex Rodriguez, 22, has been charged in the hot car death of his four-month-old son A Texas man has been charged in the death of his four-month-old son whom he left in a hot car for at least 40 minutes last summer. Alex Rodriguez, 22, left his four-month-old son and his 16-month-old daughter in a vehicle last year. His son, Alex Rodriguez Jr, died on September 8, 2015, after being left in a Ford Fusion for about 40 minutes. His sister sister was not injured. She was released to a relative, according to police. Rodriguez was arrested on Monday by Corpus Christi police. The arrest was made by the U.S. Marshal's Gulf Coast Fugitives and Violent Offenders Task Force, according to a police release. Rodriguez was indicted on March 11 on charges of criminally negligent homicide and abandoning or endangering a child, according to the Corpus Christi Caller Times. At the time of the incident, Corpus Christi police said they believe the father drove home with his son and toddler daughter in the car, but went inside without them. Police said they believe Rodriguez forgot his children in the vehicle, which was parked in the driveway of a home. When he returned to the vehicle, he found the boy unresponsive and sweaty, according to police. The temperature in Corpus Christi near the time of the incident was 89 degrees with a heat index of 100 degrees, according to the Caller-Times. Rodriguez's bail was set at $25,000. The temperature in Corpus Christi near the time of the incident was 89 degrees with a heat index of 100 degrees. Police in the 2015 investigate an incident where the two children were left in a vehicle All that Cruz-Rubio joint ticket chatter, is not being put out there by Sen. Ted Cruz, the lawmaker suggested yesterday on CNN. 'I haven't had any conversation with Marco about that,' Cruz said. 'That is not accurate. Our staff hasn't had any conversation with Marco's staff. It is true that a lot of people have suggested that Marco and I should join forces.' Politico first reported some maneuvering writing that Cruz's team was polling a potential Cruz-Rubio 'unity ticket' in upcoming primary states to see how the Senate duo did when put up against GOP frontrunner Donald Trump. Scroll down for video Sen. Ted Cruz says he's not talking to Marco Rubio about a Republican 'unity ticket' to take down Donald Trump, but Politico is reporting that his people have commissioned polls on the matter Sen. Marco Rubio left the presidential race just one week ago after Donald Trump bested him by double digits in his home state of Florida The story suggested that the idea was pushed by Sen. Mike Lee, the Utah Republican who became Cruz's first Senate endorsement earlier this month. Lee had stayed neutral in the race for months as he's friendly with both Cruz and Rubio, along with Sen. Rand Paul, who wrapped up his own presidential bid in early February. But a week before Florida's primary Rubio's make or break moment Lee corralled reporters into the spin room several hours before the GOP's Miami debate and said that he would be supporting Cruz as his Texas senator friend was the only viable alternative to Trump. At the time Lee gently suggested that Rubio leave the race something the Florida senator did one week after to clear the way for Cruz. 'I do encourage him to get behind Ted Cruz,' Lee said of Rubio. But as Politico wrote, there was more going on than met the eye with Lee trying to organize a meeting prior to his endorsement between Cruz and Rubio. Lee's efforts were rebuffed by the Florida senator who believed that with the help of Florida he could win. Rubio lost the state to Trump by nearly 20 points. Sen. Marco Rubio returned to work late last week on Capitol Hill and volunteered to reporters that he had no interest in being anybody's vice president Cruz supporter Doug Deason, the son of billionaire donor Darwin Deason, also made the pitch, talking to senior Rubio adviser Marc Short, Politico wrote. 'Rubio was too pompous to act on it. He believed his own internal polls and there was no swaying him away from staying in the race through the Florida primary,' Deason told the website. 'If he had signed on before the first Super Tuesday, Cruz would have won all of the Texas votes and a lot more delegates.' 'They may have very well won Florida,' Deason added. Since his home state loss Rubio's volunteered to reporters while back at work on Capitol Hill that he is absolutely not interested in the vice presidential slot. 'I'm not going to be anybody's vice president,' Rubio announced. On CNN, Wolf Blitzer called out Cruz for smiling and laughing when asked about the two pairing up. 'Listen, people write all sorts of things in the media,' Cruz said. He denied the Politico report and then floated how he'd like to have the Florida senator's support. 'And I think very, very highly of Marco. Marco is a friend,' Cruz said. 'He's talented. He's an incredible communicator. And he inspired millions in this campaign.' Blitzer pointed out to Cruz that it sounded like he was saying the ticket would be a good idea. Seven Greenpeace protesters have been arrested after scaling the famous Coca-Cola sign at Kings Cross to protest against the multi-national's opposition to a can recycling scheme. The group of men and women made their way on top of the sign before 8am and attempted to hang a large banner reading Stop Coke Trashing Australia over the billboard before police intervened. 'The action was taken over the Container Deposit Scheme (CDS), the recycling that Coke has opposed,' a Greenpeace spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia. Scroll down for video Protesters have been arrested after scaling the famous Coca-Cola sign at Kings Cross on Darlinghurst Road Social media images showed one man in a white t-shirt believed to be wearing a backpack scaling the sign. Greenpeace has confirmed they were responsible and took the action over a recycling program A man who is believed to have climbed the Kings Cross sign on Wednesday morning. Seven people have been arrested after being questioned by police The seven climbers, who positioned themselves at the top of the Coke sign were arrested for trespassing but are expected to be released later today. The Police helicopter was brought in as officers shut down Darlinghurst Road between Bayswater Road and Kings Cross Road bringing traffic to a standstill. The NSW Government has proposed a container deposit scheme (CDS) to reduce litter on streets, similar to the South Australian and Northern Territory programs where 10 cents a can is payable. 'About 160 million drink containers made up 44 per cent of all litter in the past year across the state, according to the Environment Protection Authority. Part of the scheme could even include 'reverse vending machines' where customers can return their cans. 'Coke spends millions every year to maximise its corporate profits, and is trying to undermine a solution to our massive pollution problem,' said Nathaniel Pelle, Greenpeace Australia Pacifics oceans campaigner. 'We chose this ad space to tell Coke to get out of the way, and implore Mr Baird (NSW Premier) to put the community before the interests of a soft drink company.' Two demonstrators are seen at the top of the sign on Darlinghurst Road - a group of men and women has been taken into custody by Kings Cross police Two protesters are pictured in discussion while another (far left of picture) holds onto the sign The Greenpeace group was eventually talked down by police and two were quickly taken into custody while five more were questioned at the scene before also being arrested. A large crowd quickly converged on the area as cars were diverted from the scene. Social media images show one man in a white t-shirt believed to be wearing a backpack as he scaled the sign. The Police Rescue squad was called in also and there was quickly a large contingent of police on hand. Police confirmed that they were called in shortly after 8am. '[Police have] an operation under way with two people arrested and five more were talking with police at the scene,' a spokeswoman told Daily Mail Australia. 'All seven in total were brought down and taken to the police station.' The NSW Police Rescue squad positioned itself underneath the iconic sign as the seven protesters were brought down from the sign on Wednesday morning A large number of police closed down streets around the sign at the entry point of Kings Cross from 8am The wife of a renowned pianist who is accused of killing her two daughters was found by police in a nightgown 'covered in blood' and 'rocking back and forth making noises' - but says she has no recollection of harming her children. Sofya Tsygankova asked investigators in the hours after the bodies of her children were found: 'Did I do anything bad to my kids?'. She did say she recalled 'cutting herself with a knife and taking pills because she didn't want to live', reported the Star Telegram. Scroll down for video Sofya Tsygankova (mugshot left and with her youngest daughter, right) was found by police in a nightgown 'covered in blood' and 'rocking back and forth making noises' The bodies of the children - aged one and five - were discovered by award-winning musician husband, Vadym Kholodenko (left) The bodies of five-year-old Nika - wearing a zip-style onesie - and one-year-old Michaela Kholodenko were found Thursday morning by Tsygankova's award-winning musician husband, Vadym Kholodenko, in their Benbrook, Texas, home. He had called 911 and reported that his wife 'was going crazy'. Prosecutors Tuesday filed two charges of capital murder against Tsygankova, 31 before she was transferred to the Tarrant County Jail later that afternoon. The medical examiner's office had originally ruled the children's deaths as 'homicidal violence pending investigation', but new evidence disclosed in arrest warrant affidavits released Tuesday indicates that the children may have been smothered with pillows, reported the Telegram. Tsygankova had a history of mental illness and had visited a Mental Health and Mental Retardation facility in Fort Worth on the day before her daughters were discovered, says the affidavit. An empty prescription bottle of anti-psychotic drug Quetiapine - used to treat bipolar disorder and schizophrenia - were also found inside the home. Police also found bloodied linens inside her Ford Focus and blood in and around the car, according to the affidavit. Her husband - who was a gold medalist at the 2013 Cliburn piano competition - had been staying at a hotel outside of Benbrook that fatal night. Prosecutors Tuesday filed two charges of capital murder against Tsygankova, (pictured left with daughters Michaela, left and Nika, right and their father), before she was transferred to the Tarrant County Jail After finding the bodies of the children - that showed signs that rigor mortis had already set in - police discovered two knives, a blood-covered butcher's knife and a cleaver style knife. More prescription bottles were also found including Sertraline, an anti-depressant, and hyrdoxyzine pamoate, an antihistamine that is also used as a sedative to treat anxiety and tension, says the Telegram. The mother also described to police what she believes to be the sequence of events leading up to the bloody incident. She said that she had arrived home that night and recalled that Michaela was already asleep and the babysitter was putting pajamas on the older girl. When asked where she thought her children were, she replied that she hoped they were with their father. She made several references to a 'bad dream' that she had that night was able to fully elaborate. Kholodenko filed for divorce from Tsygankova in November 2015 after the couple arrived to the US from Russia in 2014. He cited discord or conflict of personalities. He had not been living with his estranged wife or daughters since last August. The pair had been married for five years. Kholodenko (left), had filed for divorce from Tsygankova (right) in November and they hadn't lived together since August (pictured front, one-year-old daughter Michela) The two arranged for Kholodenko pick up the girls for a regular visit at 9.20am on Thursday. According to the police, he called 911 at 9.27am. Pictured, five-year-old Nika left and right, with her father On Friday he issued a statement through the Ciburn Foundation saying: 'The loss of my children will be with me forever. 'But I would like to say that I feel the support of the Fort Worth community and all people who are sending me messages all over the world. 'Wherever I go after this tragedy my heart will stay with the people here of Fort Worth and my daughters will rest in this soil.' He was educated in Russia. The couple had been living in Moscow while they also travelled the world as his fame grew. However Ukranian citizen Khodolenko began to be harassed by the Russian authorities when war broke out in his homeland between Russian-separatist forces and the Ukranian government. They came to the US in 2014 and settled in the Fort Worth area because of Khodolenko's close ties the city's symphony orchestra. UKRAINIAN PIANIST WHO WOWED WITH HIS 'EXHILARATING PERFORMANCES' Musician: Kholodenko playing with the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra in Texas in June 2013 when he won the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition Vadym Kholodenko was born in 1986 in the Ukrainian capital Kiev and is best known as being the winner of the Fourteenth Van Cliburn International Piano Competition. He is the first musician in his family and began performing publicly aged 13 with concerts in the U.S. China, Hungary, and Croatia. In 2005, he began studying in Moscow at the Moscow P. I. Tchaikovsky Conservatory. His big break came in 2013 when he won the Van Cliburn competition and was praised for his 'mesmerizing and exhilarating performances'. It led him to play with the Bakersfield Symphony Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra and at the Portland Piano International. He also released a live CD of his performances at the Van Cliburn competition and followed it up with a studio recording. Kholodenko eventually settled in Fort Worth, Texas, with his wife and two daughters. Advertisement But the relationship appears to have soured and Khodolenko filed for divorce just five months ago. The pair had been living separately since August of that year. Kholodenko, who has an American father, and his family moved to the US in 2014 as war broke out in Ukraine. He was educated in Russia and had been living in Moscow but his Ukranian nationality began to give him problems in that country, and he was once mysteriously detained by authorities at the airport while re-entering Russia. He developed strong ties with the Forth Worth Symphony orchestra and opted to make his home there. Kholodenko had previously said in an interview: 'My main problem is I don't see my family as much as I want to.' Gregory Alfred, 25, arrested two days ago for stabbing Janian Popko, 53, earlier this month, has told police the crime was racially motivated A black man arrested for randomly slashing a woman's neck in Brooklyn says he attacked her because she is white and because 'the system' stopped him from smoking weed openly. Gregory Alfred, 25, who was arrested two days ago after attacking Janina Popko, 53, in Brooklyn earlier this month, has now told police his crime was racially motivated. Alfred, who was wearing an American flag bandanna across his face at the time of the attack, said he headed out on March 10 looking for white people to stab, the New York Post reports. At the corner of Beverley and Rugby Road in the Flatbush neighborhood of Brooklyn he happened across Popko, who was texting on her phone at the time. Alfred is accused of running up behind Popko and slashing her across the neck before fleeing, leaving her bleeding on the pavement. Popko needed 13 stitches following the slashing, one of a string of similar attacks across New York City, with doctors saying if the wound had been half an inch longer, it would have severed an artery. Alfred, from New Jersey, was turned over to police by his mother after she saw news coverage of the attack. Police say Alfred left the knife used in the crime at the scene, and fingerprints found on the handle matched Alfred. A police spokesman said: '[Alfred] had bought paring knives and kitchen knives and said he was going to stab people. Clearly he is a disturbed man and should never have been out in the street.' Popko added: 'Im very lucky to be okay. I am still shaky. I never was racial. I grew up in Poland, they never teach us to be racial. I didnt grow up with this racial thing.' Alfred told officers he headed out on March 10 with two knives (one pictured) looking for white people to stab because he was angry that 'the system' wouldn't let him smoke marijuana Scarlet fever: Sheryl Russell, 19, claims doctors at Lewisham hospital in London misdiagnosed her 19-month-old daughter three times A toddler with scarlet fever had the potentially deadly illness misdiagnosed by a hospital three times in four days, her mother has claimed. Sheryl Russell, 19, says she begged doctors to help 19-month-old Amelia, but was repeatedly told it was just a viral infection. Amelia was first taken to Lewisham Hospital, London, by ambulance on Monday, March 14, following a seizure. After Amelias ears and throat were examined, Miss Russell claims she was told her daughter was suffering from an untreatable viral infection. They were sent home to Catford where the toddler grew increasingly unwell. Miss Russell took her daughter back to the hospital on the Wednesday and the Thursday, but on both occasions was reassured it was a viral infection which would go away in time. However, when Amelias hands, feet, face and toes began to swell last Friday she was taken back in for a fourth check-up. Miss Russell claims they saw a different doctor on the Friday who sent Amelia for an X-ray and took some blood. She said: I was just pleased someone was finally taking me seriously because I was starting to fear for my daughters life. Amelia was immediately started on a seven-day course of antibiotics which is expected to clear the illness. Shocking: Miss Russell claims doctors only took the toddler's condition seriously on the fourth check-up after Amelia's hands, feet, face and toes began to swell (pictured) Miss Russell said the family have been told to return to hospital if Amelias symptoms worsen again. But she condemned the hospitals initial handling of the problem as disgusting. She added: I want parents to have the courage to persist when they know something is wrong. Imagine if we had been sent away one last time. Amelia could have ended up fighting for her life. Lewisham and Greenwich NHS Trust denied the claims. A spokesman said: The allegations on Facebook about Amelias treatment are not true and are deeply upsetting for our staff. Scarlet fever cases are soaring, with 6,157 children diagnosed in England since September. Miss Russell, from Catford, London, branded the hospital's alleged treatment of her daughter 'disgusting' (pictured with Amelia's dad Darryl Jones, 23) Medical staff were left stunned after they removed an enormous tapeworm from a man's intestine. Chen, 45, from Nanning, Guangxi, south China, told doctors he was a fan of raw beef and fish and had been experiencing stomach problems for a while, according to People's Daily Online. The city's Department of Gastroenterology had conducted several initial tests on Chen before finding the 16 feet long pest lurking within his bowels. It then took five days before they were able to remove the creature. Odd: 45-year-old Chen from Nanning, south China, had pest removed and told doctors he was a fan of raw beef Vast: Doctors spent several days studying the Taenia saginata to see how it had grown so large inside him Bizarre: The parasite has eggs which hatch in the intestines of cattle and are carried throughout the body Chen had to remain in hospital for five days until the worm was passed out of his system. After it was extracted, the parasite was taken to the laboratory so that the scientists present could study it. Junior doctors marveled and made sure they got pictures of the remarkable creature whilst observing it at a lab within the institute. It was so long that doctors had to stand on chairs to make sure the worm didn't touch the floor when they lifted. Doctors deduced that it had come from contaminated raw food. Watch out: Doctors have warned meat fans to be wary when eating unregulated and undercooked produce Taenia saginata, or the beef tapeworm, has eggs which hatch in the intestines of cattle and are carried throughout the body of the cow through the circulation of blood. Three months after they are consumed by a human, the eggs hatch and develop into adults in the small intestine - and have a life expectancy of up to 60 years according to scientists. A disturbing video has emerged from China showing a female teacher slapping her students for allegedly not doing their homework. Seven students lined up in a row in front of a blackboard as the teacher slapped them one by one, reports Huanqiu.com, and affiliation of the Peoples Daily Online. The disturbing footage was captured at a school in Jingyang County on March 17. After it was shared online, the teacher, identified by her surname Lan, was reportedly suspended. In the video, the ninth grade students - all boys wearing a blue black and white uniform line up next to each other as Ms Lan slowly walks past them up and down. The boys stands in front of the blackboard as Ms Lan, wearing a red dress, hits them one by one whilst verbally disciplining them at the same time. Other students remain in the classroom sitting at their desks as the boys are being assaulted. In the 32-second long video Ms Lan hits three students in the face and she is reported to be saying as she does this: What reason do you have for not finishing your homework? What is your excuse? According to Xianyang China Daily News, a school official called Hu Xiaozhang said: 'The students did not do their homework, so the teacher hit them. Shocking: A female teacher in China lined up seven students and slapped them for not doing their homework Ms Lan has reportedly been teaching at the school for 22 years and has been described as an exemplary teacher. Hu said the she was anxious that the students were not doing as well as they had the previous years. She was angry that her students had not finished their homework on time. The seven students handed her a blank exercise book which made her even more angry, leading to the incident. Speaking to reporters Ms Lan said: There are just 60 days before the middle-school exam, and the students with this attitude makes me very anxious. She has admitted to hitting six of the students. Disturbing: As fellow classmates looked on she lined the boys up and used a stick to hit them one by one Even though she was trying to teach the students discipline and respect, some of their parents were not happy with her behaviour. A parent, named as Mr Yan, said: There are many ways to educate students, scolding the students is not necessarily the best way to get good results. After the video was posted online the Jingyang government responded and said that incident needed to be investigated immediately. The County Board of Education said the students involved will be sent to hospital for medical examination, and the school will be held responsible. Advertisement A striking design depicting a giant imperial robe has appeared in a rapeseed field in east China, thanks to the handiwork of a group of local farmers. The artistic display, emblazoned with a dragon image in the centre that looks particularly majestic from overhead, sprung up in a field in Nanjing on March 21 according to People's Daily Online. The carefully crafted mural was organised by the farmers using detailed geographical line graphs, before they created it using artificial seeding. Scroll down for video Amazing: The display, emblazoned with a dragon in the centre that looks majestic from overhead, sprung up in a field in Nanjing, China Striking: The effect was a remarkable flower portrait against a stunning backdrop of perfectly maintained green fields in the suburbs Perfect: The displays took months to plan, prepare and perfect - and provides quite a show for planes passing by to observe from above The final effect was a remarkable flower portrait against a stunning backdrop of perfectly maintained green fields in suburban Nanjing Another piece joined onto it, named 'Erlongxizhu', covered around 140 acres and combined another dragon totem with a creative maze-like design to map the contours of the earth, showing two dragons playing with a pearl. The displays took months to plan, prepare and perfect - and provides quite a show for planes passing by to observe from above. In June last year, farmers in the north-eastern Liaoning province of China, made use of different colours and varieties of rice saplings in order to mimic a 3D effect with pictures of families and townships on their fields. The Xibo farmers, an ethnic Chinese group, have an annual tradition of creating patterns on their rice paddy fields. Their crop murals gained international attention for their careful craft and ability to organise the whole endeavour to perfection. Incredible: Another display showing two dragons playing with a pearl in an immaculately detailed maze structure is very eye-catching Advertisement He was the 15th century king who stole the throne of England, is blamed for the disappearance of his nephews and was left languishing under a car park in Leicester for hundreds of years. But the team of archaeologists that unearthed King Richard III's remains have now released a detailed reconstruction of the grave where the controversial monarch, who was the last of the powerful Plantagenet royal line, had lain since 1485. Scientists at the University of Leicester have created a 3D model of the king's skeleton in its grave, exactly as it was found almost four years ago, revealing fresh insight into his 'careless' burial and the badly-dug hole his body was thrown into. Click the module below to be transported into Richard III's grave Researchers have created a 3D computer model of the king Richard III's skeleton in its grave (pictured), exactly as it was found almost four years ago. The team has said that the model reveals more about the 'careless' nature of the Plantagenet king's burial The computer model shows the king's remains as they were found during the ground-breaking archaeological excavation of 2012, revealing his burial was far from fit for a king. Richard III's remains were uncovered in August that year under a city council car park in Leicester in the first days of an archaeological dig at the site, which had been a Medieval friary. Following extensive DNA analysis, in February 2013 the team from the University of Leicester Archaeological Services (ULAS) publicly announced their finding to the world, confirming they had found the Plantagenet king. THE KING IN THE CAR PARK Richard III's remains were uncovered in August 2012 under a city council car park in Leicester, with archaeologists finding the bones in the first days of the dig. Now a new computer model of his grave reveals just how careless the king's burial was. Archaeological analysis shows the grave was hastily dug, with sloping sides and an uneven base, and was too short for the king. This, said the team, would have made it awkward for the burial party to lay the body out neatly in the grave, which would explain why it was slumped on one side. These rushed rites match historical accounts that claim Richard III was buried without pomp or solemn funeral. Advertisement However, the monarch's remains were kept at the university for further analysis, which revealed his battle wounds as well as a curved spine, known as scoliosis. Although the king was famed for having a hunchback, largely thanks to Shakespeare's infamous depiction of him, historians believe he may have used clothes and armour to disguise his deformity. Indeed, they say the condition, which caused one of his shoulders to be slightly higher than the other one, may have only been discovered after his death. Richard III's remains were finally reburied at Leicester Cathedral in the centre of the city in March last year. But the computer model of his grave are continuing to provide new insights into the position of the 'King in the car park' before his reinterment. By using photographs taken during the excavation, sophisticated software was used to create an accurate interactive model, which can be explored via the 3D sharing platform Sketchfab. The software mapped for common points in overlapping photographs in order to work out distances and build up a three-dimensional image. Once these distances are worked out, Sketchfab can generate a 3D mesh of polygons. In addition, the photos were used to render the surface of the model to make it more realistic. Mathew Morris, an archaeologist at ULAS, who discovered the royal's remains, said: 'Photographs and drawings of the grave, whilst dramatic, are only two-dimensional and do not always best show nuances in spatial relationships that a three-dimensional model can. The software mapped for common points in overlapping photographs (left) in order to work out distances and build up a three-dimensional image (right). In addition, the photos were used to render the surface of the model to make it more realistic 'Photogrammetry provides a fantastic analytical tool that allows us to examine the grave from angles that would have been physically difficult or impossible to achieve during the excavation, and gives us the ability to continue to examine the king's grave long after the excavation has finished.' Analysis of the 3D models show the grave was hastily dug, with sloping sides and an uneven base. It was also too short for the king. This, said the team, would have made it awkward for the burial party to lay the body out neatly in the grave, which could explain why it was slumped on one side with the head propped up. By using photographs taken during the 2012 excavation (pictured), photogrammetry software has been used to create an accurate interactive model, which can be explored via the 3D sharing platform Sketchfab Richard III (portrait left) was reviled by many following his death, with Shakespeare writing the king was a 'poisonous bunch-back'd toad' - referencing his curved spine. Since his remains were uncovered in a car park in Leicester in 2012, researchers have provided a wealth of information, including a reconstruction of his face (right) These rushed rites match historical accounts that say Richard III was buried without pomp or solemn funeral. Mr Morris added: 'During the excavation in 2012 we took photographs of the skeleton from multiple angles to create a lasting record of how the king's bones were positioned in the grave before we exhumed them. 'These photos were not taken with photogrammetry in mind but the software is incredibly versatile and can be applied retrospectively to create this superb model.' Matthew Morris (pictured), an archaeologist at the University of Leicester and site supervisor for the university's Archaeological Services, was first to discover the skeletal remains of King Richard III, which were found under a car park in Leicester in August 2012 Richard III's remains were finally reburied at Greyfriars church in Leicester city centre in 2015, following a solemn procession (pictured) Sketchlab, the platform on which Richard III's model will be shared, contains a number of 3D models, including the statue heads of Queen Nerfertiti and Amenemhat III. The latest findings add to the extensive body of knowledge to have emerged about Richard III, which now include the injuries he sustained in battle and even an accurate reconstruction of his face. Historical records show that Richard III was a prince until his brother, Edward IV, died in 1483. Edward's two sons were next in line for the throne and were left under Richard's protection, but Richard usurped one of the boys (Edward V) after he had been king for just a few months, taking the throne for himself. Analysis of king Richard III's skeleton has revealed that the monarch had curvature of his spine (pictured), known as scoliosis. It was only after his death at the battle of Bosworth in 1485 that his physical shape was made public when his corpse was stripped and displayed The two young brothers, Edward and Richard - who were known as the 'princes in the tower' due to their confinement to the Tower of London - disappeared soon after Richard III's coronation, leading to rumours of foul play on the king's behalf. Richard III was just 32 when he died, killed in battle against the invading forces of future king, Henry VII, in the battle of Bosworth. Researchers have suggested it was the loss of his helmet which led to his demise and the king came under a hail of blows from weapons such as swords and staffs. His death marked a transition in the royal lineage, as the Plantagenets made way for the Tudors - the royal dynasty which led to another of England's infamous kings, Henry VIII. Archaeological analysis shows that the grave uncovered in 2012 was hastily dug, with sloping sides and an uneven base, and was too short for the king. This, say the team, would have made it awkward for the burial party to lay the body out neatly in the grave, which would explain why it was slumped on one side with the head propped up (pictured) From analysis of the skeleton exhumed in 2012, it became apparent that Richard III suffered multiple injuries in the battle, including eight to his skull. But in addition, the king suffered with curvature of the spine, and was believed to have a mild form of a condition known as scoliosis. A 3D reconstruction of his spine showed that it had 65 to 85 degrees of scoliosis - a sideways bend of his spine to the right. The condition would have developed in his early teens, but was far from being a hunchback. The scientists at the University of Leicester who examined the skeleton said there was also little evidence that the king would have walked with a limp. It was only after his death at the battle of Bosworth in 1485 that his physical shape was made public when his corpse was stripped and displayed. Dr Mary Ann Lund, from the University of Leicester's school of English, said that it was this treatment that later led to his reputation as a hunchback - something that was later picked up by Shakespeare. She said were no surviving descriptions of Richard III's distinctive physique from during his lifetime. Instead, his appearance became increasingly distorted through out the Tudor period, in a perfect example of history being written by the victors. Most commuters wont bat an eye at seeing an animal scurry off into the shadows of the subway. But in Moscow, some animals have left the shadows behind to join strap-hangers right on the train for their daily commute. Roughly two dozen metro dogs navigate the Moscow subway system. They somehow know which stops to get on and off, and can identify the humans that are more likely to hand over a treat - and now one scientists says she knows why. Most commuters wont bat an eye at seeing an animal scurry off into the shadows of the subway. But in Moscow, some animals have left the shadows behind to join strap-hangers right on the train for their daily commute HOW DOGS LEARN TO RIDE METRO Dogs have learned to recognize and respond to human signals, and as humans have learned to cope with a changing environment, dogs may have too. On the subway, dogs may find positive reinforcements of their behaviour, including warmth and food. And, while they dont rely just on smell, dogs may be able to distinguish between stations based on scent. This, along with lighting, passenger movement, or even specific people could help metro dogs know where they are. The dogs may even be able to learn and remember the names of specific stations, or know which ones are associated with food. These dogs may learn the activities that are repeated daily, like peak rush hour, store openings and closings, and the nightly shutdown, and be encouraged by them. Advertisement There are roughly 35,000 stray dogs in Moscow, and about 20 of them have become regular commuters of the metro. These dogs havent found themselves upon the train by accident, explains Jacqueline Boyd of Nottingham Trent University in an article for The Conversation. This unusual behaviour is likely attributed to a combination of factors, from the co-evolution of humans and our canine companions, to their fine-tuned sensory capabilities. Over many years of coexistence, dogs have learned to recognize and respond to human signals, Boyd explains. As humans have learned to cope with a changing environment, dogs may have too. These social skills strongly suggest a degree of convergent evolution between dogs and humans, Boyd writes. This occurs when different species evolve similar traits while adapting to a share environment. So the abilities of the metro dogs might even suggest that they have developed coping mechanisms similar to those of their fellow human commuters. Roughly two dozen metro dogs navigate the Moscow subway system; they know which stops to get on and off, and can identify the humans that are more likely to hand over a treat. These dogs havent found themselves upon the train by accident, rather, they seem to know exactly where theyre going On the subway, dogs may find positive reinforcements of their behaviour, including warmth and food. Though they may be shooed away or even hurt, the dogs may associate the underground system with these positive rewards which outweigh the negative experiences, and keep returning. The outcome isnt always beneficial, however. One subway dog, named Malchik, was monumentalized in Moscow after he was stabbed to death in the subway. Subway dogs also owe their navigational skills to their senses. While they dont rely just on smell, dogs may be able to distinguish between stations based on scent. This, along with lighting, passenger movement, or even specific people could help metro dogs know where they are. On the bustling underground railways, these dogs can be found standing among the commuters, or even sleeping on the bench beside them. There are roughly 35,000 stray dogs in Moscow, and about 20 of them have become regular commuters of the metro The dogs may associate the underground system with these positive rewards which outweigh the negative experiences, and keep returning. The outcome isnt always beneficial. One subway dog, named Malchik, was monumentalized (pictured above) after he was stabbed to death in the subway Subway dogs may also owe their navigational skills in part to their senses. While they dont rely just on smell, dogs may be able to distinguish between stations based on scent. This, along with lighting, passenger movement, or even specific people could help metro dogs know where they are Or, the dogs may be able to learn and remember the names of specific stations, or know which ones are associated with food. Boyd explains that the dogs may perceive time differently than humans, but may be able to learn the routine of the metro system. These dogs may learn the activities that are repeated daily, like peak rush hour, store openings and closings, and the nightly shutdown, and be encouraged by them. While much of this behaviour is still a mystery, the researcher explains that the metro dogs show how they have adapted to cope with a world that humans have built for themselves. It is a battlefield made famous by the Spartans of hit film 300 - but a newly discovered fragment of parchment has revealed another massive battle in the famous pass of Thermopylae. Pieces of an ancient Greek text that lay undiscovered in an Austrian museum have revealed a previously unknown Roman battle against invading goths. The goths were advancing on the Roman Empire around 250 AD when they were repelled at Thessalonica, according to the fragments. Pieces of an ancient Greek text that lay undiscovered in an Austrian museum have revealed a previously unknown Roman battle against invading goths. The goths were advancing on the Roman Empire around 250 AD when they were repelled at Thessalonica, according to the fragments THE BATTLE OF THERMOPYLAE The Battle of Thermopylae was fought between an alliance of Greek city-states, led by King Leonidas of Sparta, and the Persian Empire of Xerxes I over the course of three days, during the second Persian invasion of Greece. Made famous by the movie 300, the Spartans who led the defence were all killed, and they may have known in advance that they would be. However, it is claimed their courage provided inspiration to the Greeks to defeat the Persians in later battles. Advertisement Researchers used spectral imaging to enhance the fragments discovered in the Austrian National Library, making it possible to read the pieces which were were copied in the 11th century A.D. and from a text written in the third-century A.D. by an Athens writer named Dexippus. 'Making an assault upon the city of the Thessalonians, they tried to capture it as a close-packed band,' Dexippus wrote of the attack, as translated by Christopher Mallan, of Oxford University, and Caillan Davenport, of the University of Queensland in Australia. 'Those on the walls defended themselves valiantly, warding off the battle columns with the assistance of many hands.' 'This article presents an English translation and analysis of a new historical fragment, probably from Dexippus' Scythica,' the pair wrote in the Journal of Roman Studies. 'The fragment, preserved in a palimpsest in the Austrian National Library, describes a Gothic attack on Thessalonica and the subsequent preparations of the Greeks to repel the barbarian force as it moved south into Achaia.' The text describes the Thermopylae battle, recalling 'battle columns' of Goths, considered barbarians by the Romans, and is believed to have dated the battle to 260AD. The fragment, preserved in a palimpsest in the Austrian National Library, describes a Gothic attack on Thessalonica and the subsequent preparations of the Greeks to repel the barbarian force Researchers used spectral imaging to read the writing on these fragment, which details the third-century Thermopylae battle. It recalls 'battle columns' of Goths, considered barbarians by the Romans, and is believed to have dated the battle to 260AD The Battle of Thermopylae was fought between an alliance of Greek city-states, led by King Leonidas of Sparta, and the Persian Empire of Xerxes I over the course of three days, during second Persian invasion of Greece Unable to capture Thessalonica, the Goth were forced to south toward Athens, 'envisioning the gold and silver votive offerings and the many processional goods in the Greek sanctuaries, for they learned that the region was exceedingly wealthy in this respect,' Dexippus wrote, according to Live Science. WHO WERE THE GOTHS? The Goths were an East Germanic people, two of whose branches, the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths, played an important role in the fall of the Western Roman Empire and the emergence of Medieval Europe. Seen by Romans as barbarians, the Goths dominated a vast area, which at its peak extended all the way from the Danube to the Ural Mountains, and from the Black to the Baltic Sea. In the 4th, 5th, and 6th centuries the Goths separated into two main branches, the Visigoths, who became federates of the Romans, and the Ostrogoths, who joined the Huns. Advertisement At the narrow pass of Thermopylae, Greek forces assembled. 'Some [of the Greeks] carried small spears, others axes, others wooden pikes overlaid with bronze and with iron tips, or whatever each man could arm himself with,' Dexippus wrote. 'When they came together, they completely fortified the perimeter wall and devoted themselves to its protection with haste.' The text also tells of a Greek commander named Marianus, who told troops of the original battles to inspire them. 'O Greeks, the occasion of our preservation for which you are assembled and the land in which you have been deployed are both truly fitting to evoke the memory of virtuous deeds,' Marianus' speech to his troops reads, as translated from the fragment. 'For your ancestors, fighting in this place in former times, did not let Greece down and deprive it of its free state. 'In previous attacks, you seemed terrifying to the enemies,' said Marianus. 'On account of these things, future events do not appear to me not without hope ' However, the fragment ends before the completion of Marianus' speech, and the outcome of the battle is uncertain, researchers said. It is a battlefield made famous by the Spartans of hit film 300 - but a newly discovered fragment of parchment has revealed another massive battle in the famous pass of Thermopylae Like all planets, Mars is covered in craters, ridges and mountains that cause its surface to become lumpy. This ragged terrain causes the gravitational pull felt by spacecraft in orbit around it to change, and this could have major implications on a human trip to the red planet. To unlock the secrets of the planet's changing gravity, Nasa has constructed the most detailed maps of the surface yet, giving a glimpse into what is happening beneath. Nasa has constructed the most detailed gravity map yet showing Mars' surface (pictured). 'Gravity maps allow us to see inside a planet, just as a doctor uses an X-ray to see inside a patient,' said Antonio Genova, research assistant at MIT and part of Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Centre Three of Nasa's spacecraft are orbiting around Mars - Mars Global Surveyor (MGS), Mars Odyssey (ODY), and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). MGS launched in 1996, ODY launched in 2001 and MRO was launched in August 2005. They have been collecting data about the gravity of Mars since their orbits began. Any slight changes in Mars' gravity as the spacecraft orbited, caused by these lumps on the planet's surface, made the path of the spacecraft move. This was fed back to Nasa's Deep Space Network that was receiving signals from the spacecraft. A map of Martian gravity looking down at the south pole (centre). White and red show areas of higher gravity; blue indicates lower gravity. This map points towards a new explanation for how some features formed across the boundary dividing the relatively smooth northern lowlands from the cratered southern highlands A map of Martian gravity looking down on the north pole (centre). White and red are areas of higher gravity; blue indicates areas of lower gravity. Mars has a liquid outer core of molten rock by analysing tides in the Martian crust and mantle caused by the gravitational pull of the sun and the two moons of Mars Three of Nasa's spacecraft are orbiting around Mars, Mars Global Surveyor (MGS), left, Mars Odyssey (ODY), centre, and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), right. The spacecraft have been monitoring slight changes in Mars' gravity as they orbited, caused by lumps on the planet's surface THE LOWER GRAVITY ANOMOLY In previous observations, an area of lower gravity on the northern hemisphere was interpreted as a system of buried channels. It was thought the channels delivered water and sediments from Mars' southern highlands into the northern lowlands billions of years ago when the climate was wetter than it is today. But the new map shows this area of low gravity is not what they thought. It's larger, and follows the boundary between the highlands and the lowlands. It's unlikely to be only due to buried channels because in places the region is elevated above the surrounding plains, the researchers said. Some of these features run perpendicular to the local topography slope, against what would have been the natural downhill flow of water. An alternative explanation is that this anomaly may be a consequence of a flexure or bending of the lithosphere, the strong, outermost layer of the planet, due to the formation of the Tharsis region. Tharsis is a volcanic plateau on Mars thousands of miles across with the largest volcanoes in the solar system. As the Tharsis volcanoes grew, the scientists suggested, the surrounding lithosphere buckled under their immense weight. Advertisement These tiny fluctuations in orbits were collected over 16 years to build the most detailed map yet of Mars. 'Gravity maps allow us to see inside a planet, just as a doctor uses an X-ray to see inside a patient,' said Antonio Genova, research assistant at MIT and part of Nasa's Goddard Space Flight Centre. Orbital changes from uneven gravity are tiny, and other forces that can affect the motion of the spacecraft had to be carefully accounted for, such as the force of sunlight on the spacecraft's solar panels and drag from the red planet's thin upper atmosphere. It took two years of analysis and computer modeling to remove the motion not caused by gravity. The team confirmed Mars has a liquid outer core of molten rock by analysing tides in the Martian crust and mantle caused by the gravitational pull of the sun and Mars' moons. Watching the planet for such a long time also allowed Nasa to observe how the gravity of Mars changed over 11 years, the period of an entire cycle of solar activity. This meant the team could calculate that a massive amount of carbon dioxide, 3 trillion to 4 trillion tons, freezes out of the atmosphere onto a Martian polar ice cap when it experiences winter. This is about 12 to 16 per cent of the mass of the entire Martian atmosphere. They also saw how that mass moves between the south pole and the north pole with the change of season in each hemisphere. 'With this new map, we've been able to see gravity anomalies as small as about 62 miles (100 km) across, and we've determined the crustal thickness of Mars with a resolution of almost 75 miles (120 km),' said Mr Genova The variations in Earth's gravity, which are invisible to the human eye, were also recently measured by highly sensitive acceleration sensors on board the Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer (GOCE). The X-axis points to the north, the Y-axis points west and Z-axis points up 'The better resolution of the new map helps interpret how the crust of the planet changed over Mars' history in many regions.' 'The new gravity map will be helpful for future Mars exploration, because better knowledge of the planet's gravity anomalies helps mission controllers insert spacecraft more precisely into orbit about Mars,' Mr Genova added. 'Furthermore, the improved resolution of our gravity map will help us understand the still-mysterious formation of specific regions of the planet.' The improved resolution of the new gravity map points towards a new explanation for how some features formed across the boundary dividing the relatively smooth northern lowlands from the heavily cratered southern highlands. For more of the latest Facebook news visit www.dailymail.co.uk/facebook stated older platforms can't keep up with updates Facebook has given Blackberry the cold shoulder, confirming that it is to drop support for all of its handsets. Blackberry said the social media giant will discontinue essential software updates for its platform, including BlackBerry 10 and BBOS, by the end of 2016. The move will mean that existing Facebook apps running on the phones could be affected. Scroll down for video Blackberry confirmed Facebook has given it the thumbs down (illustrated). The social media giant will discontinue essential APIs for its platform, including BlackBerry 10 and BBOS, by the end of 2016 It follows in the wake of Facebook-owned messaging app, WhatsApp's plans to phase out support for a range of older operating platforms by the end of the year. In an official blog post, the BlackBerry support team wrote: We are extremely disappointed in their decision as we know so many users love these apps. We fought back to work with WhatsApp and Facebook to change their minds, but at this time, their decision stands. The developers are rallying BB fans to social media to let Facebook know how they feel with the hashtag #ILoveBB10Apps. The move will mean existing Facebook and WhatsApp apps running on the phones (pictured) could be affected. In an official blog post, the BlackBerry support team wrote: We are extremely disappointed in their decision as we know so many users love these apps' They added: We have worked hard to ensure our end users have the best experience in light of this decision, and are continuing to search for alternate solutions. BYE BYE BLACKBERRY Facebook has confirmed it is to drop support for all BlackBerry phones. In an official blog post, Blackberry said the social media giant will discontinue essential APIs - software applications - for its platform, including BlackBerry 10 and BBOS, by the end of 2016. The move will mean existing Facebook and WhatsApp apps running on the phones could be affected. The platform said it was 'extremely disappointed in their decision as we know so many users love these apps'. But the developers are rallying BB fans to social media to let Facebook know how they feel with the hashtag #ILoveBB10Apps. Advertisement BlackBerry has reportedly replaced Facebooks official app with a native version, running on a simpler interface. The developers continued: 'Our commitment to BlackBerry 10 and to developers has not changed. 'We look forward to new apps and new customers on BlackBerry 10 and thank our developer community for their continued strong support!' In a blog post at the end of last month, WhatsApp said it will be phasing out support for Blackberry, Nokia and older Windows and Android models by the end of 2016. According to the Facebook-owned firm, the older smartphone platforms can no longer keep up with the latest features being rolled out for the app. WhatsApp made the announcement as it celebrated its seventh anniversary, after first launching the popular messaging platform in 2009. The app, which is now used by more than one billion people worldwide, was launched in the early days of Apple's App Store, when seven out of ten had operating systems offered by Blackberry and Nokia. Last month, Facebook-owned WhatsApp announced it will be phasing out support for older smartphones by the end of 2016, which will include Blackberry, Nokia and older Windows and Android models. Stock image WhatsApp was launched in the early days of Apple's App Store, when seven out of ten had operating systems offered by Blackberry and Nokia. However, today's market is dominated by Android and Apple PLATFORMS LOSING WHATSAPP WhatsApp previously announced that it will no longer support a range of older operating platforms by the end of the year. The full list of platforms which will no longer be supported includes: BlackBerry, including BlackBerry 10 Nokia S40 Nokia Symbian S60 Android 2.1 and Android 2.2 Windows Phone 7.1 Advertisement However, today's smartphone market is dominated by Google, Apple and Microsoft, with almost all newer models running on these platforms. The firm wrote: 'As we look ahead to our next seven years, we want to focus our efforts on the mobile platforms the vast majority of people use.' The full list of platforms being left behind includes: BlackBerry, including BlackBerry 10; Nokia S40; Nokia Symbian S60; Android 2.1 and Android 2.2; and Windows Phone 7.1. The Nokia Symbian open source operating system, launched in 2007, is the oldest OS capable of running the app. WhatsApp explained: '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.' Users still on one of the listed platforms are advised to upgrade to newer Android, iPhone or Windows phone platforms. Facebook will discontinue essential APIs across the Blackberry platform, which will affect the running of Facebook and WhatsApp apps on the phones, including BlackBerry 10 (left) and older models, such as the BlackBerry 9700 (right) The firm added: '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.' Last month WhatsApp announced it had abandoned its 99 cent subscription fee and will allow millions of users to chat for free. The annual fee is set to disappear over the next few weeks and the company plans to experiment with 'other commercial services' for future revenue streams. People believe more in the afterlife than ever as a 'rise in the something-for-nothing mentality', an academic has argued. Despite belief in God falling to lower levels than at any time in history in US society, there is an increasing belief in the afterlife among US citizens, a survey found. Increasing feelings of 'entitlement' may be fuelling a rise in believing in life after death, despite not accepting religion or God, academics suggested. A study of 58,893 Americans between 1972 and 2014 found that five times as many Americans admitted to never praying in 2014 compared to those who answered the same question in the 1980s. Twice as many said they did not believe in God over the same period A study of 58,893 Americans between 1972 and 2014 found that five times as many Americans admitted to never praying in 2014 compared to those who answered the same question in the 1980s. Twice as many said they did not believe in God over the same period. Dr Jean Twenge of San Diego State University said Americans are becoming more secular. The one exception to the decline in religious beliefs was a slight increase in belief in the afterlife. She said: 'It was interesting that fewer people participated in religion or prayed but more believed in an afterlife. The biggest declines in belief in God have been found among 18 to 29-year-olds. The findings also contradict widely-held opinions that while people may believe less in formal, organised religion there has been an increase in private spirituality. Despite the drop in religion, more people than ever believe in an afterlife BELIEF IN DIVINE INTERVENTION Dwelling on what could have gone wrong in the past could strengthen your belief in a higher power. Psychologists have found that those looking back on 'what might have been' when reflecting on a major life event that could have turned out poorly reinforces the notion of divine intervention. In particular, hindsight following a change of fortunes that turned out for the better bolsters a person's belief in God and believers use it to rationalise their faith in the face of doubt and scientific evidence. Advertisement 'It might be part of a growing entitlement mentality - thinking you can get something for nothing.' The biggest declines in belief in God have been found among 18 to 29-year-olds, according to Dr Twenge in research published in the journal Sage Open. The findings also contradict widely-held opinions that while people may believe less in formal, organised religion there has been an increase in private spirituality. Dr Twenge said: 'Most previous studies concluded that fewer Americans were publicly affiliating with a religion, but that Americans were just as religious in private ways. That's no longer the case, especially in the last few years.' She added: 'The large declines in religious practice among young adults are also further evidence that Millennials [people born between 1980 and 2000] are the least religious generation in memory, and possibly in American history.' Similar findings have been found in the UK. A 2012 survey by the Institute of Education found that 49 per cent of Britons born in 1970 believed there is 'definitely' or 'probably' life after death. Only 31 per cent have said that they believe in God, either without doubts (13 per cent) or with some doubts (18 per cent). With a huge horn rising several feet from the top of their skulls, it is easy to see how their fossilised remains could have been mistaken for the skeletons of the now mythical unicorns. But it seems a giant species of rhinoceros, thought to have died out in Siberia 350,000 years ago may have actually clung on long enough to really enter into human legend. Scientists claim to have discovered evidence the giant Elasmotherium sibiricum, or Siberian Unicorn as it is known locally, may have survived in part of Kazakhstan until 26,000 years ago. The Siberian rhinoceros, Elasmotherium sibiricum (artist's impression pictured), is nicknamed the Siberian Unicorn due to the huge horn it is thought to have had on its head. Scientists previously thought it died out 350,000 years ago, but a new discovery suggests they survived in some areas until 26,000 years ago This last refuge in south western Siberia could have allowed the strange creatures, which would have grown to the size of mammoths weighing up to five tons, to have encountered humans. Early humans began spreading across Asia more than 50,000 years ago and probably moved into Siberia at least 35,000 years ago. CURSE OF THE LAST SURVIVORS The last Siberian rhinos that managed to cling on in Kazakhstan for more than 320,000 years after the rest of its species are thought to have died out, were not the only survivors from the ice age to have outlived their relatives. Scientists have discovered evidence that woolly mammoths, though to have been wiped out by a combination of human hunting and climate change around 12,000 years ago, clung on for thousands of years on a remote Arctic Island. Mammoth bones have been discovered on Wrangle Island, off the north coast of Russia, that are just 5,000 years old. It suggests the animals were able to live here, cut off from the rest of the world for longer than the rest of their species. However, this had a devastating impact on their genetic make up as their population became increasingly inbred. This left them less able to adapt and caused their numbers to dwindle further until they eventually disappeared. Advertisement Dr Andrei Shpanski, a palaeontologist at the Tomsk State University, who led the new research, said: 'Most likely, the south of Western Siberia was a refugium, where this rhino persevered the longest in comparison with the rest of its range. 'There is another possibility that it could migrate and dwell for a while in the more southern areas.' The researchers discovered fragments of the giant Siberian rhinoceros skull near the village of Kozhamazhar in the Pavlodar Priirtysh region of north east Kazakhstan. It was discovered alongside the remains of prehistoric bioson and mammoth remains. While Elasmotherium sibircum is thought to have spread widely across Siberia after it emerged around 2.6 million years ago, evidence suggests the majority of the species died out 350,000 years ago. Its habitat was the vast territory from the Don River close to Voronezh in Russia, to the east of modern Kazakhstan. Fossilislied remains suggest it would have reached around 15ft long (4.6 metres) and stood over 6ft tall (2 metres), making it one of the largest species of rhino to have ever lived. It was certainly much larger than the woolly rhinos thought to have lived at around the same time. Although no horns from the animals have been found, studies of the skulls show a bony lump that is thought to have supported a keratin horn much like those seen on modern rhinos in Africa. The researchers analysed the skull fragments of a Siberian rhinoceros, Elasmotherium sibircum, found in the Pavlodar Priirtysh region Kazakhstan. Carbon dating revealed the fossil was just a little over 26,000 years old, meaning the animal had outlived others of its species by more than 320,000 years Researchers discovered the fossils alongside those of other prehistoric mammals including bison and mammoths close to the village of Kozhamazhar in Pavlodar Priirtysh, north east Kazakhstan (pictured) However, rather than sitting on the snout of the animal, the horn was positioned further back on top of its head. Although no horns have been found for Elasmotherium sibircum, scientists have inferred they had them from skulls (horn reconstruction pictured at the Natural History Museum London) Research on the skulls have suggested the horns could have grown to have a circumference of more than three feet and would have been several feet long. Early palaeontologists who first put forward the idea that it had a horn also described how they had heard stories among the Tatars of Siberia about a unicorn with a horn so large it needed a sledge to transport it. It is thought the animals may have used these enormous horns to drive away competitors and even sweeping snow from the grass in winter. It also had long legs, which would have allowed the animal to gallop much like a horse rather than the lumbering trot seen in modern rhinos. Using radio carbon dating Dr Shpanski and his colleagues, whose findings are published in the American Journal of Applied Science, used radio carbon dating to examine the skull fragments they discovered in Kazakhstan. They discovered it was between 26,038 years old - making it remarkably young. The skull was well preserved and while it bore some cracks, it showed no sign of gnawing of abrasion. Dr Shpanski said: 'Most likely, it was a very large male of very large individual age. 'The dimensions of this rhino are the biggest of those described in the literature, and the proportions are typical.' He added that it is likely that as the climate in Siberia changed, causing many Elasmotherium sibircum to die out, local conditions in Kazakhstan may have allowed them to survive. It is not the first time scientists have discovered a last refuge of a giant ice age species thought to have died out long ago. Woolly mammoths, which are widely thought to have died out 12,000 years ago may have survived until around 4,500 years ago on Wrangle Island in the Arctic Ocean north of Russia. Dr Shpanski said: 'Our research makes adjustments in the understanding of the environmental conditions in the geologic time in general. 'Understanding of the past allows us to make more accurate predictions about natural processes in the near future - it also concerns climate change.' The unicorn is a mythical being but some suggest there may have been extinct creatures that resembled the animal (illustrated). It is now thought to have been based on Elasmotherium If you assumed your DNA is all human, think again. A total of 19 'new' pieces of non-human DNA - left by viruses that first infected our ancestors - have been found lurking between our own genes, taking the total up to 36. One section of DNA discovered even contained a complete 'recipe' for an entire virus. A total of 19 'new' pieces of non-human DNA (illustrated) - left by viruses that first infected our ancestors - have been found lurking between our own genes, taking the total up to 36. One section of DNA discovered even contained a complete 'recipe' for an entire virus It's not yet known whether the virus recipe, which was found in 50 of 2,500 of participants in the study, could replicate or reproduce. However, other studies of ancient virus DNA have shown it can affect the humans who carry it. In addition to the 'new' stretches of virus DNA identified, the researchers from the University of Michigan Medical School and Tufts University, confirmed 17 other pieces of virus DNA found in human genomes by other scientists in recent years. The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) looked at the entire span of DNA, or genome, from people from around the world, including a large number from Africa where the ancestors of modern humans originated. The team used sophisticated techniques to compare key areas of each person's genome to the 'reference' human genome. The study looked at the entire span of DNA, or genome, from people from around the world, including a large number from Africa where the ancestors of modern humans originated before migrating around the world. A stock image of different stages of human evolution is shown The findings build on previous studies about human endogenous retroviruses, known as 'Hervs' - ancient infectious viruses that inserted a DNA-based copy of their own RNA genetic material into our ancestors' genomes. THE ROLE OF VIRAL INVADERS Earlier this month, researchers at the University of Utah claimed evolution has re-purposed endogenous viruses to fight off modern diseases. The scientists found bits of viral DNA embedded in our genome are actually regulating genes that are integral components of our innate immune system. When bits of foreign code are removed experimentally, the defense system becomes crippled. 'We show that some of these endogenous viruses have shaped our biology,' said Cedric Feschotte, associate professor of human genetics. 'Within mammalian genomes are reservoirs of viral DNA that have fueled innovation of the innate immune system.' Advertisement They are part of the same type of virus that includes the modern human immunodeficiency virus, which causes Aids. Over generations, the virus-generated DNA kept getting copied and handed down when humans reproduced, which is how it has ended up in our DNA today. In fact, about eight per cent of what we think of as our 'human' DNA actually came from viruses. In some cases, Herv sequences have been adopted by the human body to serve a useful purpose, such as one that helps pregnant women's bodies build a cell layer around a developing foetus to protect it from toxins in the mother's blood. The newly-discovered Hervs are part of the family called 'Herv-K'. The intact viral genome was found on the X chromosome and has been dubbed Xq21. It is only the second intact provirus found to be hiding in human DNA. John Coffin of the Tufts University School of Medicine, said: 'This one looks like it is capable of making infectious virus, which would be very exciting if true, as it would allow us to study a viral epidemic that took place long ago. 'This research provides important information necessary for understanding how retroviruses and humans have evolved together in relatively recent times.' The findings build on previous studies about human endogenous retroviruses - ancient infectious viruses that inserted a DNA-based copy of their own RNA genetic material into our ancestors' genomes. They are part of the same type of virus that includes the modern human immunodeficiency virus (shown), which causes Aids Genetics researcher Dr Jeffrey Kidd said: 'These are remnants of ancient events that have not been fixed in the population as a whole, but rather happened in the ancestors of some people alive today. 'There have been a number of examples of other Hervs that insert themselves next to human genes or near them, and have impact on their expression. 'We're interested in applying these methods to find other types of viral or mobile element insertions.' The team used a variety of complex methods to characterise repetitive DNA sequences. Many of the genomes they examined were from the international 1,000 Genomes Project, while another set of came from work Dr Kidd and colleagues at Stanford University had done as part of the Human Genome Diversity Project, with a focus on DNA samples from African volunteers. These latter samples showed more signs of Hervs, in line with the high level of genetic diversity in African populations. That diversity stems from the long-term stability and intermixing of the continent's population, in contrast to other populations in Europe, Asia and the Americas that stem from specific out-migrations in ancient times. More whole human genomes will need to be scanned to catalogue all the Herv insertions in humans, but this should become easier and cheaper as technology improves. An archaeological excavation in the Arabian Peninsula has led to a remarkable discovery which hints at the practices of an ancient society. A collection of bronze weapons found on site date back to the Iron Age II, between 900 and 600 BC, and may have been offerings to a god of war, researchers say. Small bronze quivers, along with battle-axes, daggers, arrowheads, and intact bows all made of metal were discovered near Adam, Oman in what archaeologists are calling an unprecedented find. The excavation led by Guilluame Gernez of Pantheon-Sorbonne University in Paris since 2011 explored a recently discovered site known as Mudhmar East, found just seven years ago, CNRS reveals. Small bronze quivers, pictured left, along with battle-axes (unfinished axe pictured right), daggers, arrowheads, and intact bows all made of metal were discovered near Adam, Oman in what archaeologists are calling an unprecedented find A BRIEF HISTORY OF OMAN Ancient stone tools found in southern and central Oman suggest human presence more than 100,000 years ago. Oman is located at the crossing of many trade routes, and is home it one of the worlds earliest inhabited cities, Al Wattih, settled roughly 10,000 years ago. The region became known for its Frankincense products, made from the aromatic trees. Islam reached Oman in the 7th century and is now the official religion. Advertisement The two buildings and several facilities of Mudhmar East lie at the foot of the Jabal Mudhmar mountain, adjacent to one of the largest valleys in Oman and at a crossing of many trade routes. In a doorless room in the larger of the two buildings, located on the slope of Jabal Mudhmar, the researchers found the 'exceptional' objects which appeared to have fallen off furniture or shelves. The 15-metre-long building is made of cut sandstone blocks and earth bricks, and the weapons were found scattered about the floor of a middle room. Researchers noted that two groups of objects were particularly outstanding. Two small quivers found at the site are made entirely of bronze, each including six arrows. At just 35 cm, these quivers are small-scale replicas of real objects and are non-functional and they're the first of this kind ever to be discovered in the Arabian Peninsula. Archaeologists say the quivers are not only previously unknown in the Arabian Peninsula, but rare elsewhere, too. In a doorless room in the larger of the two buildings (center- left in the first image), located on the slope of Jabal Mudhmar, the researchers found the exceptional objects which appeared to have fallen off furniture or shelves. On right, bows, arrows, daggers, and axes can be seen scattered on the ground RESEARCHERS FIND ANCIENT OFFERINGS TO A DEITY OF WAR Archaeologists led by Guilluame Gernez of Pantheon-Sorbonne University in Paris discovered two groups of 'remarkable' objects during excavations at Mudhmar East. The site in the Arabian Peninsula, near Adam, Oman. Researchers found two small quivers made entirely of bronze, each including six arrows. At just 35 cm, these quivers are small-scale replicas of real objects and are non-functional and they're the first of this kind ever to be discovered in the Arabian Peninsula. Archaeologists say the quivers are not only previously unknown in the Arabian Peninsula, but rare elsewhere, too. A second group of all-metal weapons were also mostly non-functional, indicated by their small size, unfinished state, and material. This includes five battle-axes, five daggers with crescent-shaped pommels characteristic of the time-period, roughly fifty arrowheads, and five complete bows. Bows of this kind have never before been found in the Arabian Peninsula and the Middle East. As many of these objects were not made for practical use, the researchers say they may have been built as an offering to a deity of war, or as a part of yet-unknown social practices. Advertisement Weapons found on site date back to the Iron Age II, between 900 and 600 BC. Pictured above is a non-utilitarian metal bow A second group of all-metal weapons were also mostly non-functional, indicated by their small size, unfinished state, or material. This includes five battle-axes, five daggers with crescent-shaped pommels characteristic of the time-period, roughly fifty arrowheads, and five complete bows. Like the quivers, the researchers say this type of bow has never before been found in the Arabian Peninsula and the Middle East. These bows are roughly 70 cm with a flat, curved bowstave bent at each end, connected by a bronze string. Archaeologists says it's likely the quivers and bows were made in imitation of functional objects that were built from perishable materials, such as leather, wood, and tendons. As many of these objects were not made for practical use, the researchers say they may have been built as an offering to a deity of war, or as a part of yet-unknown social practices. The team also found fragments of ceramic incense burners and small bronze snakes, which are often associated with ritual practices. Researchers say this supports the first theory, that the objects may have been a religious offering, but future excavations are necessary to uncover more answers. During the Iron Age, when these weapons were made, metallurgical production was on the rise in the eastern Arabian Peninsula. As economical and technical developments became more complex, society did as well, and researchers are working to understand the political and social systems of this pre-literate society. Separate study last month warned that New York, London, Rio de Janeiro and Shanghai will be among the cities that could flood by 2100 Sea level may increase several meters over 50 to 150 years, paper says Most scientists agree that sea levels will rise, but some say it won't happen for centuries. Now, a new study suggests sea levels will increase several feet over the next 50 years. It claims the world's coastal cities, including New York and London, could be underwater by the end of the century. Scroll down for video Most scientists agree that sea levels will rise, but some say it won't happen for centuries. Now, a new study suggests sea levels will increase several feet over the next 50 years. It claims the world's coastal cities, including New York (pictured) and London, could be underwater by the end of the century WHAT WILL TRIGGER AN ABRUPT CLIMATE SHIFT? Researchers claim the initial melting of the ice sheets will put a cap of relatively fresh water on the ocean surfaces near Antarctica and Greenland This will slow down or even close the system of the ocean currents that provides heat throughout the planet, allowing some of it to escape into space. The deeper areas of the ocean will experience warming, which will ultimately accelerate the melting of the ice sheet parts that sit above sea level. And the extreme temperature difference between the tropics and the poles will produce powerful storms, which will mirror those that happened 120,000 years ago when Earth experienced a natural warming, according to the paper. As a result he global sea level is likely to increase 'several meters over a timescale of 50 to 150 years', Advertisement Without a dramatic reduction in greenhouse gas emissions, the global sea level is likely to increase 'several meters over a timescale of 50 to 150 years', the paper states. It points to the fact that the Earth's oceans were six to nine meters higher during the Eemian period. This took place about 120,000 years ago, at a time when temperatures were only around 1C warmer than today. Global warming of 2C above pre-industrial times would risk submerging cities, the paper said. 'We're in danger of handing young people a situation that's out of their control,' James E. Hansen, a retired Nasa climate scientist who led the new research, told The New York Times. The paper was released this morning by a European science journal, Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. 'Current assessments place emphasis on practical effects such as increasing extremes of heat waves, droughts, heavy rainfall, floods and encroaching seas,' reads the study. 'There is an urgency to slow carbon dioxide emissions 'The longevity of the carbon in the climate system and persistence of the induced warming may lock unavoidable highly undesirable consequences.' The consequences would include killer storms, the disintegration of large parts of the polar ice sheets and a rise in sea levels that would exceed that worlds coastal cities before the end of this century, claim researchers. The paper talks about a specific mechanism that will provoke this abrupt climate shift. Researchers claim the initial melting of the great ice sheets will put a cap of relatively fresh water on the ocean surfaces near Antarctica and Greenland. This will slow down or even close the system of the ocean currents that provides heat throughout the planet, allowing some of it to escape into space. The deeper areas of the ocean will experience warming, which will ultimately accelerate the melting of the part of the ice sheet that sits above sea level. The deeper areas of the ocean will experience warming, which will ultimately accelerate the melting of the ice sheet parts that sit above sea level. It will cause massive flooding throughout coastal cities like London (pictured) and force residents to retreat inland A separate study looked at climate change over the next 10,000 years, and found that the catastrophic impact of another three centuries of carbon pollution will persist millennia. Pictured are residents evacuating to a higher ground in Candaba, Pampanga, north of Manila in December And the extreme temperature difference between the tropics and the poles will produce powerful storms, which will mirror those that happened 120,000 years ago when Earth experienced a natural warming, according to the paper. Some experts see this paper as a step in the right direction to understanding when the climate experienced sudden, drastic shifts. But others still remain hesitant about the claims made in the draft paper, released last year, and are still on the fence with the final version. 'Some of the claims in this paper are indeed extraordinary,' said Michael E. Mann, a climate scientist at Pennsylvania State University. 'They conflict with the mainstream understanding of climate change to the point where the standard of proof is quite high.' Although the nations of the world have agreed to work on limiting the warming to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius), they have yet to finalize a program that will successfully achieve this goal. The Earth has already warmed by about half that amount, about all land ice has started to melt and the oceans are rising at a fast pace. According to Hansen and 18 co-authors, it has been about 120,000 years when the Earth warmed naturally that hit a temperature slightly higher than today and sea levels increased by 20 to 30 feet. The paper warns that this will happen much faster than previously thought and will force those living on and near the coastlines to retreat inland. 'That would mean loss of all coastal cities, most of the world's large cities and all their history,' Dr. Hansen said in the new paper. WHICH COUNTRIES WILL SUFFER MOST FROM CLIMATE CHANGE? In a separate study, climate change experts recently released a map of the world revealing how prepared different countries are to cope with the effects of climate change (shown above). In the map 192 countries are ranked by their 'vulnerability' and 'readiness', producing an overall score on their fate, ranging from bad (zero) to excellent (100). The results reveal that Scandinavian countries and the UK are among the most likely to survive - but areas of sub-Saharan Africa will be hardest hit. The maps were created by London-based company The Eco Experts, using data from the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, known as the ND-Gain Index. They took into account location, terrain, pollution rates and national resources when calculating which countries would be most affected. Countries like Norway, Sweden, Finland and Denmark score well on the scale. But places like Central America, Africa and India all appear at risk from natural disaster - and are poorly equipped to cope, said The Eco Experts. Jon Whiting, of The Eco Experts warned: 'Hurricanes, earthquakes, blizzards, droughts and flooding are all real dangers for some of these areas, and this is compounded by a lack of national strategy to counteract the effects.' Burundi, Chad, Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo produced some of the lowest scores, meaning these countries will be the biggest victims of weather disasters. Advertisement The paper discusses a specific component that will provoke this abrupt climate shift. Researchers claim the initial melting of the great ice sheets will put a cap of relatively fresh water on the ocean surfaces near Antarctica and Greenland A separate study, published last month, claimed sea level rise caused by man-made climate change could last 10,000 years. Even if global warming falls below the governments' target of 2C, around 20 per cent of the world's population will be forced to migrate away from coasts. That means that unless we cut carbon emission drastically, major cities such as New York, London, and Shanghai, will be completely submerged, scientists have warned. KEY POINTS FROM THE STUDY - If we burn fuel at our current rate, major cities such as New York, London, and Shanghai, will be completely submerged, - Even if warming falls below the governments' target of 2C, 20 per cent of the world's population must migrate away from coasts. - The researchers looked at the effect of releasing another 1,280 to 5,120 billion tons between 2000 and 2300. - They discovered that despite the CO2 input ending in 300 years, the impact persisted for 10,000 years. - By 2300, the carbon dioxide level had soared from almost 400 parts per million to as much as 2,000 parts per million. - The most extreme temperature rise about 7C by the year 2300 would taper off only slightly, to about 6C, after 10,000 years. - The melting in Greenland and Antarctica from the highest level of carbon pollution 'translates into a sea level rise of 80 to 170 ft. Advertisement The study, published in Nature Climate Change, argues that scientists have been short-sighted in looking at the impact of climate change over one or two centuries. In the latest research, scientists looked at the impact of four possible levels of carbon pollution1,280 to 5,120 billion tonnesemitted between the year 2000 to 2300. Studying data from over the last 20,000 years, the researchers predicted what will happen to global temperatures, sea level, and ice cover over the next 10,000 years. The complex modelling effort was led by Michael Eby of the University of Victoria and Simon Fraser University. 'Carbon is going up, and even if we stop what we are doing in the relatively near future, the system will continue to respond because it hasn't reached an equilibrium,' Marcott explains. 'If you boil water and turn off the burner, the water will stay warm because heat remains in it.' A similar but more complex and momentous phenomenon happens in the climate system, according to the study which is written by nearly two dozen leading Earth scientists. Current releases of the carbon contained in carbon dioxide total about 10 billion tons per year. The number is growing 2.5 per cent annually, more than twice as fast as in the 1990s. Humans have already put about 580 billion tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The researchers looked at the effect of releasing another 1,280 to 5,120 billion tons between 2000 and 2300. 'In our model, the carbon dioxide input ended in 300 years, but the impact persisted for 10,000 years,' Marcott says. By 2300, the carbon dioxide level had soared from almost 400 parts per million to as much as 2,000 parts per million. The red dots show the areas that will be hardest by sea level rise, with 75-100 per cent of the populations in these cities submerged under an 'average' global warming scenario. They include Shanghair and Tianjin in China and Mumbai, Calcultta and Dhaka in India The melting in Greenland and Antarctica from the highest level of carbon pollution 'translates into a sea level rise of 80 to 170 ft. Pictured is a five to 10-meter stream of meltwater flows on the Greenland ice cap The most extreme temperature rise - about 7C by the year 2300 - would taper off only slightly, to about 6C, after 10,000 years. The picture is disturbing, says co-author Shaun Marcott, an assistant professor of geoscience at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Perhaps the most ominous finding concerns 'commitment,' Marcott says. 'Most people probably expect that temperature and carbon dioxide will rise together and then temperature will come down when the carbon dioxide input is shut off. 'But carbon dioxide has such a long life in the atmosphere that the effects really depend on how much you put in. 'We are already committed to substantial rises in temperature. The only question is how much more is in the pipe.' The warming ocean and atmosphere that are already melting glaciers and ice sheets produce a catastrophic rise in the ocean. 'Sea level will go up due to melting, and because warming expands the ocean. 'We have to decide in the next 100 years whether we want to commit ourselves and our descendants to these larger and more sustained changes,' Marcott says. First author Peter Clark and co-authors calculated that ocean encroachment from just the lowest level of total carbon pollution would affect land that in 2010 housed 19 per cent of the planet's population. However, due to climate's momentum, that effect will be stretched out over thousands of years. Northern Lights on Earth are beautiful and mesmerising, but they pale in comparison against those seen on Jupiter. Jupiter has its own version of our aurora but it is so high energy that it is made up of X-rays instead of visible light. When triggered by a solar storm, Jupiter's aurora can cover an area larger than the Earth's surface. If you thought the Northern Lights were impressive on Earth, think again. Jupiter has its own version of our aurora but it is so high energy that it is made up of X-rays instead of visible light. Jupiters X-ray emission (in magenta and white, for the brightest spot) are seen in these images For the first time, a research group led by UCL has looked at what happens to Jupiter's X-ray aurora when a giant solar storm arrives at the planet. The study, published today, has described the group's findings that were made from data collected at Nasa's Chandra X-Ray Observatory, a space observatory that was launched in 1999. The researchers discovered that solar storms trigger Jupiter's intense 'Northern Lights' by generating a new X-ray aurora that is eight times brighter than normal. 'They are hundreds of times more energetic and much much bigger than Earth's,' lead author and PhD student at UCL Mullard Space Science Laboratory, William Dunn told MailOnline. For the first time, a research group led by UCL has looked at what happens to Jupiter's X-ray aurora when a giant solar storm arrives at Jupiter. CGI pictured. The study, published today, has described the group's findings that were made from data collected at Nasa's Chandra X-Ray Observatory 'Earth's surface would comfortably fit inside Jupiter's aurora. Whereas the chemistry in Earth's atmosphere is controlled largely by the sun, Jupiter's aurora are so bright and powerful that it is them that control the chemistry in Jupiter's atmosphere, much more than the sun does. 'So if you looked up from Jupiter into the sky, you would see the aurora stretch across the sky as far as the eye could see and it would be much brighter than the sun, even during the day. 'If your eyes could see the X-rays you would also see it pulsing, going very bright and then very dim every 45 minutes or, if a solar storm was occurring, every 26 minutes. It's also quite warm because it gives off lots of infra-red radiation. 'There's a constant power struggle between the solar wind and Jupiter's magnetosphere,' said Mr Dunn. 'We want to understand this interaction and what effect it has on the planet. WHAT IS THE SOLAR WIND, AND WHAT IS A SOLAR STORM? The sun's surface showing a sunspot called AR 1476 that measures more than 60,000 miles (100,000 km) across The sun constantly ejects streams of particles into space in the form of the 'solar wind'. The solar wind is a stream of energised, charged particles, mainly electrons and protons, flowing outward from the sun. The solar wind travels through the solar system at speeds as high as 560 mph (900 km/s) and at a temperature of 1 million degrees celsius. It is made of plasma. Solar storms are a variety of eruptions of mass and energy from the solar surface. The most common signals of a solar storm are flares, prominences, sunspots and coronal mass ejections. A coronal mass ejection (CME) is a massive burst of gas and magnetic field arising from the solar corona and being released into the solar wind. Advertisement 'By studying how the aurora changes, we can discover more about the region of space controlled by Jupiter's magnetic field, and if or how this is influenced by the sun. 'Understanding this relationship is important for the countless magnetic objects across the galaxy, including exoplanets, brown dwarfs and neutron stars.' The sun constantly ejects streams of particles into space in the solar wind. When giant storms erupt, the winds become much stronger and compress Jupiter's magnetosphere, shifting its boundary with the solar wind 1.2 million miles (2 million km) through space. The study found this interaction at the boundary triggers the high energy X-rays in Jupiter's 'Northern Lights', which cover an area bigger than the surface of the Earth. Artist's conception of the Chandra x-ray observatory, that collected the data on Jupiter and its Northern Lights used in this study. The impact of solar storms on Jupiter's aurora was tracked by monitoring the X-rays emitted during two 11-hour observations in October 2011 WHAT ARE THE NORTHERN LIGHTS? There are two types of Aurora - Aurora Borealis, which means 'dawn of the north', and Aurora Australis, 'dawn of the south.' They are caused when electrically charged particles from the sun enter the Earth's atmosphere. These so-called geomagnetic storms occur when a solar wind or cloud of magnetic field hits the Earth's magnetic field. Usually the charged particles from the sun are deflected by the Earth's magnetic field, but some enter the atmosphere and collide with gas particles. These collisions emit light. Auroral displays appear in many colours although pale green and pink are common. Advertisement The impact of solar storms on Jupiter's aurora was tracked by monitoring the X-rays emitted during two 11-hour observations in October 2011, when an interplanetary coronal mass ejection (CME) was predicted to reach the planet from the sun. Interplanetary CMEs are massive bursts of gas and magnetic field that arises from the solar corona and is released into the solar wind. 'In 2000, one of the most surprising findings was a bright 'hot spot' of x-rays in the aurora which rotated with the planet,' added Mr Dunn. 'It pulsed with bursts of x-rays every 45 minutes, like a planetary lighthouse. When the solar storm arrived in 2011, we saw that the hot spot pulsed more rapidly, brightening every 26 minutes. 'We're not sure what causes this increase in speed but, because it quickens during the storm, we think the pulsations are also connected to the solar wind, as well as the bright new aurora.' The scientists used the data collected to build a spherical image to pinpoint the source of the x-ray activity and identify areas to investigate further at different time points. There are two types of aurora on Earth - aurora borealis, or 'dawn of the north', and aurora australis, 'dawn of the south. They are caused when electrically charged particles from the sun enter the Earth's atmosphere. These so-called geomagnetic storms occur when a solar wind hits the Earth's magnetic field These findings will complement Nasa's Juno mission arriving at Jupiter this summer. The mission aims to understand the relationship between the two biggest structures in the solar system - the region of space controlled by Jupiter's magnetic field and the region controlled by the solar wind. As part of the mission, Juno will investigate Jupiter's relationship with the sun and the solar wind by studying its magnetic field, magnetosphere and aurora. The UCL team hope to find out how the X-rays form by collecting complementary data using the European Space Agency's X-ray space observatory, XMM-Newton, and NASA's Chandra X-ray observatory. 'We've only ever seen the day-side aurora of Jupiter though (because when you look from Earth that's all you can see,' Mr Dunn told MailOnline. 'This means that we have no idea what is happening on the night-side. Juno will provide the first opportunity to see the aurora on Jupiter's night-side. As to what it will look like, your guess is probably as good as mine. This is sort of a strange idea though, because at Earth we're used to seeing the Northern lights at night time.' 'Comparing new findings from Jupiter with what is already known for Earth will help explain how space weather is driven by the solar wind interacting with Earth's magnetosphere,' said Professor Graziella Branduardi-Raymont, from UCL's Mullard Space Science Laboratory. 'New insights into how Jupiter's atmosphere is influenced by the Sun will help us characterise the atmospheres of exoplanets, giving us clues about whether a planet is likely to support life as we know it.' Another study out today, led by Tomoki Kimura from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and co-authored by the UCL researchers, reports that the X-ray aurora responds to quieter 'gusts' of solar wind, deepening this connection between Jupiter and the solar wind. In nature they are parasitic creatures that cling to livestock while they lap up their blood yet fiction has turned vampires into monsters capable of draining their victims with a single bite. Now a group of physics students has worked out how long it would take a vampire to devour a meal of human blood. They calculate an undead fiend would be able to guzzle 1.3 pints (0.75 litres) of human blood from the external carotid artery in a human neck in 6.4 minutes. Scientists at the University of Leicester have calculated that it would take 6.4 minutes to drink just 15 per cent of the average human's blood. This means it could take more than 40 minutes for the fictional creatures to drain the entire human body (Christopher Lee as Dracula is pictured) However, this is only equivalent to 15 per cent of the blood contained within a human body and would not be enough to cause the human heart rate to change. While the blood flow would undoubtedly slow as the volume reduced, it means to drain a human body completely of blood would take a vampire at least 42 minutes. This somewhat contrasts with the fictional depiction of victims crumpling lifelessly to the floor within seconds of a bite from a vampire. Although feared in historic folklore, vampires now make regular appearances in popular culture and there are hundreds of films and books that feature the monsters (Kate Beckinsale in Underworld is pictured) THE SCIENCE OF BLOOD-SUCKING Students used fluid dynamics to estimate how long it would take for blood to flow out of a hole in the carotid artery. They assumed the external carotid artery itself would have a diameter of 0.2 inches (0.5cm) and calculated the speed of the blood flowing into it travels at 1.34mph (0.6 metres per second). They then calculated the pressure difference should a hole be punctured into the artery by comparing the average human blood pressure in arteries to air pressure. By factoring in the density of the blood at room temperature, they calculated that the blood would leave the puncture wound at 11mph (five metres per second). The students also assumed their fictional vampire's fangs would leave puncture holes just 0.02 inches (0.5mm) wide and factored in the density of the blood at room temperature. Advertisement To make their calculation, students at the University of Leicester used fluid dynamics to estimate how long it would take for the blood to flow out of a hole in the carotid artery. They assumed the external carotid artery itself would have a diameter of 0.2 inches (0.5cm) and calculated the speed of the blood flowing into it travels at 1.34mph (0.6 metres per second). They then calculated the pressure difference should a hole be punctured into the artery by comparing the average human blood pressure in arteries to air pressure. By factoring in the density of the blood at room temperature, they calculated that the blood would leave the puncture wound at 11mph (five metres per second). The students also assumed their fictional vampire's fangs would leave puncture holes just 0.02 inches (0.5mm) wide and factored in the density of the blood at room temperature. They performed the calculations to coincide with the 85th anniversary of Tod Browning's 1931 horror film Dracula starring Bela Lugosi. Their results are published in the Journal of Physics Special Topics, which is published by Leicester University. The students assumed a vampire's fangs would leave two holes just 0.5mm (0.02 inches) wide and human blood would leave the puncture at 11mph. This would mean it would take around 6.4 minutes to drink 1.3 pints of blood. The human body contains more than 8.8 pints (five litres) By comparison, real vampire bats rarely target humans, preferring to sit on the backs of livestock, where they slice open the skin with their razor sharp teeth and lap up the blood with their tongue. Dr Mervyn Roy, a lecturer in the University of Leicester's Department of Physics and Astronomy, said: 'Every year we ask each student to write around 10 short papers for the Journal of Physics Special Topics. 'It lets the students show off their creative side and apply some of physics they know to the weird, the wonderful, or the everyday.' Carnival will make the first cruise from the US to Cuba in more than 50 years after it agreed a deal with the Cuban government. The cruise line will send its 704-passenger MV Adonia to Cuba through its new brand Fathom starting on May 1. Carnival, in hailing its 'historic inaugural sailing', said it will be the first cruise line to sail that itinerary. Carnival got official approval to send its first cruise ship to Cuba from the United States in half a century US President Barack Obama is visiting Cuba and President Raul Castro as diplomatic relations between the two countries have improved Cuban authorities have now followed Washington in giving the green light to run the service, sailing from Miami to Cuba, where it will have three approved stops: Havana, Cienfuegos and Santiago de Cuba. 'We are excited about Cuban approval and are ready to take travelers there through an extraordinary guest experience on the beautiful MV Adonia,' said Carnival CEO Arnold Donald. 'This is a historic opportunity, and we know there is pent-up demand among Americans who want to experience Cuba.' Obama takes a tour of Havana as he becomes the first President to set foot in Cuba for nine decades Since US sanctions regulations currently only allow Americans to visit Cuba on educational or social outreach grounds, not as normal tourists, the vessel offers Cuban-themed enrichment programming. Seven-day itineraries, available at fathom.org, cost at least $1,800 (1,260). A majority of Americans back restoring diplomatic ties with communist-run Cuba, a poll found, just as Barack Obama met his counterpart Raul Castro in Havana. Six in 10 Americans say restoring diplomacy with Cuba is mostly good for the US and 52 per cent approve of Obama's handling of relations with the island, said a CBS News/New York Times poll. London has been named the worlds No 1 destination by travellers, edging rivals such as Paris, Rome and New York, but not every visitor is in love with Britains capital. Hilarious and blistering TripAdvisor reviews have revealed the opinions of those who left with a bad impression thanks to rip-off prices, huge crowds and tacky tourist traps. These are some of the most amusing one-star reviews of attractions such as Buckingham Palace (theyre not even at home) and Madame Tussauds (my earwax is more interesting). Scroll down for video Buckingham Palace is one of the most popular tourist attractions in London thanks to Changing the Guard TRIPADVISOR'S TOP 10 TRAVELLERS' CHOICE DESTINATIONS (WORLD) 1. London, UK 2. Istanbul, Turkey 3. Marrakech, Morocco 4. Paris, France 5. Siem Reap, Cambodia 6. Prague, Czech Republic 7. Rome, Italy 8. Hanoi, Vietnam 9. New York City, US 10. Ubud, Indonesia Advertisement Fans of the royals and curious tourists flock to Buckingham Palace every day to watch the Changing of the Guard ceremony or try to catch a glimpse of the royal family. But one user was not impressed by the Queens principal residence. Under the headline Theyre not even at home, he wrote: Dull. Concrete block in the middle of a roundabout. One wonders about their sumptuous lifestyle, a few hundred metres from the beggars and the pimps. Another user added: Ho hum. Go there, take a picture and leave unless you are watching the changing of the guard. Nothing to see, you will not see the Queen poke her head out of there [sic] window, possibly the cleaning lady. According to one user, Buckingham Palace is more enjoyable to look at on the internet. TripAdvisor users, who named London the world's top destination, were just as harsh towards Madame Tussauds, where holidaymakers queue for hours to see wax figures of celebrities such as One Direction, members of the royal family or political figures such as US President Barack Obama. One person wrote: Day in and day out, all these people are queuing up to take pictures with the likeness of Brad Pitt, Angelina [Jolie], etc., as if by that, the success of these celebrities would rub off on the common people. Vulgar and exhausting. In a blistering critique, another use wrote: My earwax is more interesting. At Madame Tussauds, holidaymakers queue for hours to see wax figures of the royal family and others TRIPADVISOR'S TOP 10 TRAVELLERS' CHOICE DESTINATIONS (UK) 1. London 2. Edinburgh 3. Liverpool 4. Llandudno 5. Blackpool 6. Torquay 7. York 8. Bath 9. Glasgow 10. Manchester Advertisement As for the Natural History Museum, one visitor complained that it was a dreadful dino experience. They warned that a timed ticket wont help tourists to avoid the sweaty crowds inside the dino pen, adding: And pen is the right word. I saw more human armpits than dinosaurs during our miserable tour. The Shard, a 95-storey skyscraper in Southwark, is Londons tallest building, at 1,016ft, and draws a lot of visitors thanks to its stunning views across the Thames. But one user summed up their visit to the viewing platform as a big meh. They wrote: I guess its a relative bargain if you consider that apartments start at 30,000,000. Set on 350 acres, Hyde Park is an oasis in the middle of London. But, according to one reviewer, it needs more trees. The user wrote: Its probably one of the biggest parks around London and with the fewest trees and shades. Just a flat field of grass extending to the horizon. Nice to go for a run or jog, easy to keep away from tourists keeping in the way like zombies. Hyde Park is set on 350 acres, with open fields and walking paths, but it 'needs more trees', said one user A visitor to Hyde Park, in central London, complained that there weren't enough trees The British Museum is Britain's most popular attraction, but this visitor said it was 'coma inducing' Nelson Column, at Trafalgar Square, pays tribute to Admiral Horatio Nelson, who died at the Battle of Trafalgar Tower Bridge is one of the capital's icons, but this TripAdvisor reviewer said it was 'nothing spectacular' Another said it isnt worth setting foot on the iconic Tower Bridge. He wrote: Nothing spectacular at all. The only good thing was that you had a view of the London Tower. Dont put this on your bucket list. Despite being the most visited attraction in the UK, the British Museum has suffered the wrath of underwhelmed holidaymakers. One TripAdvisor reviewer wrote that it was coma inducing, adding: Im really sorry, but I just dont see the lure to this museum. My son and I really tried to like the exhibits but it was just so boring. At Trafalgar Square, Nelsons Column pays tribute to Royal Navy Admiral Horatio Nelson, who was fatally shot during the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Some users said they were less than impressed by the towering monument, which was completed in 1843. One said: Once youve seen it you forget its there climb on the lion, shoo the pigdens [sic], laugh at the tourists. Advertisement The bar for making a splash in the UK-based Underwater Photographer of the Year contest is set extremely high. Representing more than 50 countries, these artistic champions, according to jury chair Alex Mustard, presented judges with an 'inspiring feast of imagery.' Despite the overwhelming amount of talent, organisers reveal their firm favourite was from Italian photographer Davide Lopresti. Simply entitled Gold, Lopresti's stunning image shows a vibrant seahorse amidst the ocean's tranquil waves. Describing the image, he said: 'Over the years the Mediterranean's population of seahorses has drastically reduced. Their numbers have only recovered thanks to public awareness and a significant restocking campaign. 'Areas of the sea have now been set aside, protected from harmful fishing methods, like trawling. This has allowed vulnerable and delicate creatures, like sea horses, to return. This is what I hoped to celebrate with this image.' As for all the other winning photos, Mustard reveals: 'It was astounding and humbling seeing the quality. Every single image that placed is an amazing moment from the underwater world.' Scroll down for video Lopresti's stunning image shows a vibrant seahorse amidst the ocean's tranquil waves. Describing the image, he said: 'Over the years the Mediterranean's population of seahorses has drastically reduced. Their numbers have only recovered thanks to public awareness and a significant restocking campaign. Areas of the sea have now been set aside, protected from harmful fishing methods, like trawling. This has allowed vulnerable and delicate creatures, like sea horses, to return. This is what I hoped to celebrate with this image' This image was taken by Mike Korostelev from Russia. He said: 'Cages are more commonly associated with photographing great white sharks, but I constructed a cage to keep me safe as I captured the fishing behaviour of the bear. I waited many hours in the cold water for the bear to come close enough to make my photo. The bear's strategy is to start by sitting down, putting his head under the water and looking for fish. Once the fish start to ignore him, he creeps closer before making his crucial lunge to snare a large salmon in his paws, or teeth' Photographer Mathieu Foulqui from France took this incredible image of Caribbean reef sharks in the marine sanctuary of Gardens of the Queen in Cuba Gabriel Barathieu from France took this photograph using a wide angle lens and took home the prize for highly commended Greg Lecoeur, who took this image, said: 'The 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 release this half and half photo' French photographer Greg Lecoeur also snapped this mesmerising image of a pod of pilot whales circling beneath the surface Alejandro Prieto from Mexico, who took this amazing picture, said: 'Returning from a dive with bull sharks in Playa del Carmen in Mexico, I saw a beautiful flock of seagulls flying very low over a crowded beach. They usually fly low over the people looking for food. This behaviour allowed me to try to shoot them from beneath the water. With this photograph I want to show that ordinary subjects can become extraordinary depending on the perspective you see them' During the Swim the Island contest in Liguria, Italy, a competition in which hundreds swim in the sea and compete over a distance of six kilometers, photographer Lopresti snapped away as the athletes made a circle around the island of Bergeggi Dutch photographer Tobias Friedrich, who took this amazing picture, said: 'We planned to dive in April in Greenland to specially photograph the icebergs. In spring the visibility is very good' Damien Mauric, from the UK, said of his picture: 'I like to create images showing marine life in motion and Raja Ampat in Indonesia is probably the best place on earth for creating this type of image' Helen Brierly shared her picture of marine life 'suspended in the inky blackness of the open ocean' (left) and Adriano Morettin from Italy said his image (right) was made using a double exposure technique performed directly in the camera without changing the lens Gianni Colucci from Italy also captured seahorses. He said: 'During a night dive at around midnight, I found this pair of seahorses. I watched, mesmerised as they swam in the shallows holding each other by the tail. The scene was something majestic, a magic only enhanced by the beauty of the location, illuminated by the full moon' Photographer Behnaz Afsahi took this picture in Jellyfish Lake in Palau. He said: 'The thousands of jellyfish in this lake are simply breathtaking to behold' Qing Lin, from Canada, shot this scorpion fish in a hurry, saying: 'This weedy scorpion fish was surrounded with many photographers when I found it. When it was my turn, I only had four minutes left before needing to ascend, so I took several shots in a hurry. I felt so disappointed and kept thinking about how beautiful it looked while. I decided to go back the following day. The characteristic of this fish is her beautiful lace, so I thought backlighting it would emphasise its details' Greg Lecoeur captured the moment that a larva lobster (left) drags off a pelagic jellyfish to eat it. Pictured right is a very serious-looking Starry Weever taken by March Casanovas Photographer Fabio Galbiati impressed the judges with this image of a pristine mangrove South African photographer Pier Mane took this image after deciding to 'turn away from the action'. He said: 'Weary of shooting sharks head-on, and keen to avoid bubbles in my shot, I decided to turn away from the peak action and the crowds it attracts. 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' Australia's Ross Gudgeon described how perseverance paid off where this image was concerned. He said: 'Gobies on sea pens and whip corals are a very common subject for macro photography and I'm always trying to come up with a new way of shooting them. I have had many attempts to get a shot like this' Speaking of his photograph, Matteo Visconti from Italy said: 'Harlequin shrimp (Hymenocera picta) are one of my best critters to shoot because of their colours and shape' A British woman who says she was diagnosed with Legionnaires disease after she returned home from a Mediterranean holiday is taking legal action against a travel company. Patricia Pybus, from Northallerton, North Yorkshire, claims she fell ill while staying at the four-star Hotel Pulicinu, in Sardinia, last August, and spent nine weeks in intensive care in a UK hospital. Pybus, 58, said she initially thought she had suffered sunstroke, but her condition soon deteriorated less than a week into her luxury break with her 59-year-old husband, Roger. Patricia Pybus, pictured with her husband, Roger, was diagnosed with Legionnaires' disease after a holiday Pybus, who booked through Manchester-based Travel Counsellors, said she began feeling feverish and lethargic, with stomach cramps, nausea, headaches and diarrhoea, and soon developed a persistent cough and chest pains. She claims the air conditioning unit in her hotel room was rusty and continuously dripping with water, and that its automatic louvres were not working properly. She also claimed the showers were old and the room smelled musty and looked as if it had not been used for several weeks. She said she was admitted to the intensive care unit at Friarige Hospital, in Northallerton, shortly after she returned from holiday and diagnosed with pneumonia caused by Legionella pneumophila, or Legionnaires disease. Pybus, a waitress at Bettys Tea Rooms, said she was heavily sedated for the first two weeks and forced to undergo a tracheotomy, spending nine weeks in total in the intensive care unit. She is now back home but said she is unable to work and relies on her husband for day-to-day tasks as she continues to suffer from shortness of breath and has difficulty even walking up stairs. The front entrance to Hotel Pulicinu, where Patricia Pybus stayed with her husband, Roger, last summer The hotel is located near to Sardinia's stunning coastline and beaches on the Mediterranean Sea Pybus has hired the Irwin Mitchell law firm to investigate the cause of her illness. A spokeswoman for Travel Counsellors said: 'This is an ongoing claim and so it is inappropriate to comment further at this time, but the health and welfare of our customers is of paramount importance to us and we work closely with our hotel suppliers to achieve the highest safety standards.' MailOnline Travel has contacted Hotel Pulicinu for comment. Pybus said: At first we just thought it was a simple case of sunstroke but it became clear very quickly that things were much worse than that. I have lost months of my life from being in intensive care, not to mention the distress and anxiety my family were put through, not knowing if I could ever come round from it. We have been to hell and back as a result of my illness and I want to do everything possible to prevent anyone else going through the same experience which we have been through. Legionnaires disease is a serious lung infection caused by Legionella bacteria, with flu-like symptoms such as mild headaches, muscle pain, fever, chills, tiredness or changes to a persons mental state, including confusion, according to the NHS website. Once the lungs are infected a patient may experience symptoms of pneumonia, including a persistent cough, shortness of breath or chest pains, the NHS said. It usually takes six to seven days for symptoms to surface, although it can be any time from two to 19 days. She recently found love with Russian businessman Egor Tarabasov. And Lindsay Lohan seemed keen not to stray too far from her beau as they put on an amorous display in London last week. Following a phone call, the 29-year-old actress appeared disheartened, but soon seemed to perk up after her boyfriend planted a tender kiss on her cheek. Scroll down for video Cute couple: She recently found love with Russian beau Egor Tarabasov, and Lindsay Lohan seemed keen not to stray too far from her man as they put on an amorous display in London last week Showing off her lean legs in a pair of grey linen shorts, the Mean Girls star looked effortlessly chic as she snuggled up to her new man. Layering up in a navy military style jacket, the star also appeared to have raided Egor's wardrobe as she seemingly wore a men's shirt in a checkered cream design. Adding some height to her frame, she donned a pair of black heeled ankle boots, finishing off her ensemble with a pair of aviator sunglasses. Leggy lady! Showing off her lean legs in a pair of grey linen shorts, the Mean Girls star looked effortlessly chic as she puffed on a cigarette before snuggling up to her Russian beau Boyfriend material? Layering up in a navy military style jacket, the star also appeared to have raided Egor's wardrobe as she seemingly wore a men's shirt in a checkered cream design Wearing her trademark auburn locks loose and poker straight, she styled her glossy tresses in a centre parting, framing her pretty face. Sporting a neutral make-up palette, Lindsay allowed her natural beauty to shine through. Meanwhile, Egor kept things casual in a grey jumper and jeans, adding a navy padded jacket as he braved the chill. Twice as nice: Lindsay has reportedly been officially dating her new man since before Christmas, and the pair are said to have already enjoyed numerous lavish breaks together Downtrodden: Following a phone call, the 29-year-old actress appeared disheartened, but soon seemed to perk up after her boyfriend planted a tender kiss on her cheek Consoled: Egor leant in and seemed to peck his lady on the cheek and place a supportive arm around her after she pulled a downtrodden expression during their outing together Helping hand: Egor kept things casual in a grey jumper and jeans, adding a navy padded jacket as he braved the chill, placing a protective arm around his superstar girlfriend Speaking to MailOnline, Lindsay's mother Dina revealed that she approved of her daughter's new relationship as she hinted that things could be getting serious between the pair. 'One day I can't wait until all my children have children,' she said. 'Egor is a wonderful guy and they've been dating for awhile.' She was also recently very forthcoming when Entertainment Tonight asked her for her thoughts on Lindsay's beau. Radiant redhead: Wearing her trademark auburn locks loose and poker straight, Lindsay styled her glossy tresses in a centre parting, framing her pretty face Mum's the word! Lindsay's mother Dina revealed that she approved of her daughter's new relationship as she hinted that things could be getting serious between the pair She gushed: 'We love him. He is a sweetheart. My other children and I love him. We know him well. 'I have even FaceTimed with his mom. He is just so sweet, and they are so happy. Everyone is so happy.' According to TMZ, the unlucky-in-love actress has been officially dating her new man since before Christmas, and the pair have already enjoyed numerous lavish breaks together. She was left heartbroken when The Bachelor's Sam Wood sent her home without a rose in favour of his now-fiancee Snezana Markoski. But Lana Jeavons-Fellows is a 'glass half full kinda girl', who celebrated her 28th birthday on Monday full of optimism. The reality star shared a glowing snap to Instagram with a ring on a suspicious finger, though she was sure to inform her 52,000 followers the origin of the jewellery. 'I'm a glass half full kinda girl': The Bachelor's Lana Jeavons-Fellows celebrated her 28th birthday on Monday full of optimism 'A special shout out to my big sis Erin who sent me this super cute cat ring all the way over from Berlin,' she explained in the caption. 'Another year older today, but because I'm a glass half full kinda girl, I will note that I'm not yet grey and still have plenty of hair!' The doe-eyed brunette showcased crystal clear skin for the radiant selfie, dressed in a white halter-neck dress. Birthday week! The stunning brunette kicked off her birthday celebrations on Friday wearing a figure-hugging dusty rose frock from H&M Besties: Lana celebrated at The Winery in Surry Hills in Sydney on Friday with her best friend known on Instagram as Ribena Porter Celebrations started earlier for the reality star, who kicked off the festivities at The Winery in Sydney's Surry Hills on Friday with her best friend known on Instagram as Ribena Porter. Dressed in a figure-hugging dusty rose frock by H&M, Lana showcased her curves as she posed for a snap with her blonde pal. 'Kicking off my birthday celebrations early this year at The Winery Surry Hills with my girl,' Lana wrote in the caption. 'Another year older today': The reality star shared a sexy snap for her birthday last year too (pictured March 2015) On Saturday, the communications officer channelled Kim Kardashian braids with fellow Bachelor girl Anna Heinrich and Channel V presenter Carissa Walford as they worked up a sweat with Nike. Nike ambassador for 2016 Anna, 29, attended the star-studded event clad in a pair of red-and-black patterned leggings, a black singlet top with the Nike logo. Lana meanwhile conquered Sydney's rising temperatures by donning a pair of micro gym shorts paired with a singlet top emblazoned with the phrase: 'Sweaty hair, don't care'. The musical Chicago may be set in the decadent flapper-style era of the 1920s. But Brooke Vincent's look was rooted firmly in the noughties as she stunned in an all-black ensemble for a press night of the play starring X-Factor winner Sam Bailey on Sunday night. The 23-year-old - who appeared to be going with barely a scrap of make-up on her pretty face - looked chic in a leather jacket and skinny jeans as she paved the way for her Coronation Street co-stars Tisha Merry, Tina O'Brien and Katie McGlynn at the lavish Opera House in Manchester. Scroll down for video Simply stylish: Brooke Vincent stunned in a leather jacket and skinny jeans while her Corrie co-star Tisha Merry wrapped up in a chic came coat Brooke, who plays Sophie Webster on the ITV soap opera, looked ultra-chic in a polished leather jacket which she teamed with figure-hugging black jeans. Donning a simply black sweater underneath, the Manchester-born actress injected a fresh dose of colour to the ensemble with a Givenchy 'Pandora' bag in a burnt-orange hue. Keeping her glossy raven tresses poker-straight and styled in a severe middle parting, the young star kept her make-up fresh and understated. Brooke was joined by her co-star and pal Tisha, who showed off her sartorial flair in a longline camel coat that tied at the waist to accentuate her petite figure. Keeping it in the Corrie family: Brooke and Tisha cosied up to their castmate Katie McGlynn who doned a forest green sleeveless jacket and layered a black top underneath Three's a crowd: Brooke, 23, wore her glossy raven tresses in a poker-straight style and kept her make-up fresh and understated The 22-year-old donned a chic black poloneck underneath her cosy cover-up and accessorized with black heeled boots. Tisha, who embodies Steph Britton on Corrie, kept her make-up minimal, opting for a sweep of eyeleiner and taupe lipstick to plump up her pout. The two pals kept it in the Corrie family, posing up a storm on the red carpet with their co-star Katie McGlynn. The blonde beauty stuck to an autumnal palette of forest green with a suede sleeveless jacket and layered a black top underneath. She wore her golden tresses in an artfully coiffed up-do, with soft layers and tendrils gently framing her face. Pretty in prints: Corrie star Tina O'Brien kept it low key in a jazzy silk shirt over blue skinny jeans and boots Loved-up: The 32-year-old attended the bash with her personal trainer boyfriend of five years Adam Crofts Tina O'Brien, who enlivens the role of Sarah-Louise Platt on Corrie, made an appearance at the star-studded bash with her personal trainer boyfriend of five years Adam Crofts. The 32-year-old went low-key in a printed skilk shirt teamed with a black blazer and blue skinny jeans. She wore her flaxen locks in an unfussy half-up half-down 'do and wore minimal make-up, allowing her naturally pretty features to shine through. Quirky: Hollyoaks star Jessica Fox, 32, stood out from the pack in a satin bomber jacket emblazoned with a tiger print over a stripy poloneck top Bold brights: Corrie star Kate Ford opted for skinny jeans and a blazer and injected a pop of colour in the form of some canary yellow courts Jessica Fox, who plays Nancy on Hollyoaks, stood out from the crowd in a vintage style satin bomber jacket emblazoned with a tiger print over a stripy poloneck top. The 32-year-old made her features pop with a slick of scarlet lipstick and wore her glossy blonde hair in a straight style, with her fringe framing her striking brown eyes. Proving the night wasn't purely a Corrie affair, the blonde beauty was joined by fellow Hollyoaks stars Jazmine Franks and Joe Tracini at the bash. All-smiles: Jazmine Franks, of Hollyoaks fame, donned a printed bomber jacket which she paired with boyfriend jeans and glittery pumps Dapper: Joe Tracini, who plays Dennis Savage on Hpllyoaks, suited up in a suave navy two-piece She's no stranger to addressing controversial issues in her role as a Sunrise presenter. And on Tuesday Samantha Armytage pondered yet another hot topic as she led a panel discussion on whether smacking children should be illegal. Hosting the conversation, Samantha revealed that she saw no issue with a little discipline, joking that she 'offers to smack other people's children. Scroll down for video Controversial topic: Sunrise's Samantha Armytage led a panel discussion on smacking children with Network Ten newsreader Ron Wilson and Herald Sun columnist Rita Panahi on Tuesday Responding to Herald Sun columnist Rita Panahi, who described herself as a 'keen smacker', Samantha joked that children shouldn't 'go near Auntie Sammy's house'. 'I don't even have children and I offer to smack other people's children,' she joked, adding: 'Don't go near Auntie Sammy's house'. Their discussion came after an Adelaide father had an assault conviction for smacking his 12-year-old son on the thigh overturned by the South Australian Supreme Court this week. The man, an Air Force Pilot, had been convicted of aggravated assault for the incident in 2014. Earlier this week Justice David Peek ruled his actions had not been unreasonable and overturned his conviction, sparking debate across the country over whether parents should be penalised for smacking their children. Sharing views: Samantha joked for children 'not to go near Auntie Sammy's house', clapping her hands together to the amusement of the show's guests Weighing in: Samantha, 39, said she offered to smack other people's children Hot topic: Viewers were quick to join in the discussion, sharing their views on the subject on Twitter Ms Panahi joined Samantha in her view that it should not be considered a criminal offence, revealing that she smacked her own children on occasion to instill discipline. 'Obviously there are lines that should never be crossed but I think children can benefit from a little bit of corporal punishment. 'I'm a keen smacker, I've offered to smack other people's children,' she said. Also appearing on the show was newsreader Ron Wilson who said said neither he nor his children had been negatively affected by being smacked by their parents. 'I actually think a smack, as delivered by this parent, can bring a really difficult situation to an end and it reinforces the parent's authority. Splitting opinion: Child psychologist Dr Michael Carr-Gregg said parents should try to avoid smacking their children so as not to condone violence 'It's not a democracy, the child must obey the parent. The problem is the criminality, where does the violence end? And that's a question we must ask but smacking children - I was smacked as a child, I smack my children, I think we're all getting through it alright.' Child psychologist Dr Michael Carr-Gregg however said parents should try to use different techniques when disciplining their children to avoid condoning violence. 'Virtually every health, psychological and medical authority agrees smacking is a very, very dumb thing to do,' he told The Advertiser. 'It tells children that its okay to use violence to get what you want and that you, as a parent, have run out of ideas.' In an effort to repair the damage done to their blossoming romance he admitted to sleeping with two girls due to his own 'insecurities'. But one of Jeremy McConnell's alleged lovers, Danielle Lippe, has claimed the star knew exactly what he was doing, and even pushed for a threesome with his Celebrity Big Brother pal, Scotty T. The pretty 21-year-old - who slept with the model, 25, during his break with girlfriend Stephanie Davis, in February - claims he was keen on Scotty joining in their night of passion, however, a representative of Jeremy's has slammed the 'beyond untrue' claim. Scroll down for video Amorous antics! One of Jeremy McConnell's alleged lovers, Danielle Lippe, has claimed the star knew exactly what he was doing, and even pushed for a threesome with his Celebrity Big Brother pal, Scotty T Speaking to the Mirror Jeremy's rep insisted: 'This is beyond untrue, Jeremy never said anything of the sort, absolutely no reference to Scotty or a threesome whatsoever.' But in an interview Danielle was more than forthright about Jeremy's alleged actions on the night in question, and even branded their night of passion 'awkward and unnatural'. Speaking to The Sun, the 21-year-old brunette beauty described how the Irish hunk was brazen about his intentions after meeting her at a meet-and-greet at Club Vision in Weston-Super-Mare on February 27. And rather than being shy about his desire to bed her, she claims that Jeremy 'wanted' them to get caught that night - which was during the period the hunky tattooed model and on-off girlfriend Stephanie were on a break. Best of pals: Danielle - who slept with the model, 25, during his break with girlfriend Stephanie Davis - claims he was keen on Scotty (pictured) joining their romp, however, Jeremy's rep has denied the claim Speaking about their 'cringey' night together, which coincided with Stephanie being in London at the G.A.Y. nightclub for a personal appearance, she said it was almost as if he was hoping someone would see them. Following a dash from the club back to his hotel in Bristol with his manager, Danielle claims that the former CBB star made her drink outside the building in the hopes of being spotted with her. And despite his alleged ulterior motives being apparent the pair retired upstairs to Jeremy's room for the night. However once they were alone and in bed Danielle claims the Irish lothario's lovemaking was more 'awkward' than anything else. 'To be honest, it wasn't very good for me,' she admitted. 'It just felt really awkward and unnatural.' 'To be honest, it wasn't very good for me, it just felt really awkward and unnatural': Speaking to The Sun, Danielle revealed she thought her night with Jeremy was 'awkward' and he was more intent on getting publicity 'Jeremy hinted that he wanted a threesome with Scotty T, but I wasnt into that so I left': However the most awkward moment of the 'cringey' night was when he hinted at a threesome with his pal Scotty T And the night took a turn for the worse for Danielle, as she claims that Jeremy hinted he wanted to have a threesome with her and his CBB pal Scotty T - who was also at the meet and greet. She said: 'Jeremy hinted that he wanted a threesome with Scotty T, but I wasnt into that so I left. The whole thing was just cringey, I really wish Id never gone back to his hotel room.' And leaving without so much as a kiss in the early hours of the morning, said to be around 5am, she headed to the hotel lobby to call a taxi to take her home. MailOnline has contacted a representative of Jeremy's for comment, but has yet to receive a reply. Danielle's comments come just weeks after Jeremy defended his first tryst with nightclub dancer Caroline Pope in Newcastle, just a day after he was evicted from the CBB house. Appearing on an interview on RTE1's Today, he explained that he was still not in a relationship with Stephanie, with the former Hollyoaks actress' relationship status with ex Sam Reece still puzzling the nation. Fighting for their love: Danielle's comments come just weeks after Jeremy defended his first tryst with nightclub dancer Caroline Pope in Newcastle, just a day after he was evicted from the CBB house 'In my head, she had a boyfriend': Appearing on RTE1, he explained that he was still not in a relationship with Stephanie at the time of his first fling, and he the couple were on a break when he met Danielle 'What happens when you get evicted is you get personal appearances, and I went down to Newcastle, and I ended up with a girl that night,' Jeremy admitted. 'But this was before me and Steph finally got into a relationship. 'In my head, she had a boyfriend. We were going to talk when she got out, and that's just the honest truth.' However it wasn't long before the couple's fledgling romance hit the rocks, which resulted in the late February break - during which Jeremy and Danielle spent the night together. And despite his flings with Danielle and Caroline, Jeremy and Steph have given their romance another go. Speaking to OK! magazine last week, the couple did a joint interview in which he gushed, 'she's [Steph] made me believe in true love'. 'Im going to continue getting counselling for my own insecurities and Jeremy is going to start seeing someone, too': Despite his flings Jeremy and Steph have given their romance another go Love's young dream? Speaking to OK! magazine last week, the couple did a joint interview in which he gushed, 'she's [Steph] made me believe in true love' And they didn't gloss over their issues, with Stephanie saying: 'Im going to continue getting counselling for my own insecurities and Jeremy is going to start seeing someone, too. He understands now that he needs to get his emotions under control.' While he added: 'I slept with other girls because of my own insecurities. It will also help me to deal with those fears of people leaving me. I dont want those thoughts to ruin things with Steph. Weve been talking about having some couple therapy too.' Jeremy and Stephanie first met in January in the Celebrity Big Brother house, with the pair enjoying a cosy and very flirtatious friendship - which saw the pair hit headlines, due to Stephanie being in a relationship with model, Sam Reece, at the time. However, following a series of steamy encounters in the house Stephanie publicly dumped Sam on TV and took up with Jeremy - but when he was evicted first, he played down their relationship status, explaining they needed to talk on the 'outside'. She's gone! in the latest twist to their complex, but apparently still blossoming romance, Stephanie quit Twitter over the amount of criticism her relationship was attracting on the micro-blogging site More of the same: Her departure comes after similar rants again fans earlier this week Not happy: She blasted naysayers of her relationship, reminding others instead that if they have 'nothing nice to say, don't say it' And in the latest twist to their complex, but apparently still blossoming romance, Stephanie quit Twitter over the amount of criticism her relationship was attracting on the micro-blogging site. Taking to Twitter on Monday, she wrote: 'Who ever invented social media - boring reading all of this. Will not be tweeting for a while. steph.' Her departure comes after similar rants again fans earlier this week. She wrote: 'Everyone has there own relationship ours just seems to boringly get talked about a lot at the moment. With others trying to cling on to us in (sic). 'The same game to keep them selfs relevant. Boring me and jez are happy and that's all that matters nothing nice to say don't say it (sic).' An Island Parish Rating: The Tube: Going Underground Rating: The latest buzzword in broadcasting is slow TV. Viewers are fed up with frenetic dramas packed with explosions and shocks wed rather watch nothing happening, at a glacial pace. As with everything else in television these days, the Scandinavians invented it. No plot, no dialogue, no cuts, no clever camera angles just two hours with a fishing rod beside a river, or puffing along a railway track in a steam train. For anyone old enough to remember the Potters Wheel, the 1953 BBC interlude film of hands moulding spinning clay into a bowl, the idea is hardly new. Soothing, repetitive images make addictive TV. An Island Parish (BBC2) is a slow TV documentary, visiting the far-flung Shetland Isles. At its most energetic, it never advanced beyond a gentle amble Some execs complain that two hours of falling snow or flickering firelight are a waste of technology, turning our flat screens into little more than expensive lava lamps. Whats wrong with that? Nobody ever switched off a lava lamp, muttering: That was load of rubbish I dont know why I bother watching. An Island Parish (BBC2) is a slow TV documentary, visiting the far-flung Shetland Isles. At its most energetic, it never advanced beyond a gentle amble. Much of the half-hour was given over to a stone-skimming competition, as locals vied to bounce flat pebbles across the surface of the harbour. An adjudicator solemnly called out the number of skips: Ten . . . nine . . . ten . . . two . . .. That last throw was the vicar, David Cooper, who hadnt mastered the shallow dip and who aimed instead to make a big splash. I hope he doesnt baptise babies in the font like that. The contest was part of UnstFest, at the busiest time of year on the island of Unst population 700, but swelling to almost double that with the summer holiday rush. Popular activities included a bouncy castle, and a guinea-pig petting zoo. Biggest tourist attraction on the island is the bus shelter, which has been furnished as an alfresco sitting room by a schoolboy called Bobby with a table, chairs and wallpaper. Its hardly Disneyland. But thats the attraction of the place and this episode, the first of six, conveyed it. How lovely that Bobby can decorate his bus stop and it isnt trashed by yobboes or swept away by dogsbodies from the council. Slow TV draws us in. An Island Parish made me yearn to flick a stone across the flat sea, and spend a sunny morning watching the world while waiting for a bus. At the other end of the country, travellers experienced the opposite extreme on The Tube: Going Underground (C5) If Unst were any nearer, it might become a victim of its own idyllic calm, with holidaymakers over-running the island in search of peace. Fortunately, its far too remote for mass tourism 12 hours by ferry to Lerwick on the Shetland mainland, and a further two hours and two more ferries to Unst. I dont fancy that trek, though I might watch it on TV. At the other end of the country, travellers experienced the opposite extreme on The Tube: Going Underground (C5). The capitals railway network, much of it designed more than a century ago, has been overwhelmed in recent decades as millions more people squeeze into London. The escalators and tunnels are jammed at peak times. The platforms are packed to overspilling. The carriages are pressed so tightly that people can barely breathe. Taking the Tube was always a noisy, smelly business, but these days it is physically frightening. This documentary could have launched a crusade. But the programme followed the usual template for these shows, focusing on a few characters, including Alexis (pictured), and celebrating the fact they managed to do their jobs at all The Tubes terrifying failures were treated as amusing background detail: rolling stock on the Piccadilly Line is more than 40 years old, for example, and spare parts sometimes have to be obtained through eBay. Pictured is Tube worker Anita, by the entrance of the Charing Cross tunnel This documentary could have launched a crusade. Like our national railways, the London Underground is a dangerous shambles, one that is so familiar to tens of millions of people that somehow we managed to ignore it. But the programme followed the usual template for these shows, focusing on a few characters and celebrating the fact they managed to do their jobs at all. The Tubes terrifying failures were treated as amusing background detail: rolling stock on the Piccadilly Line is more than 40 years old, for example, and spare parts sometimes have to be obtained through eBay. She is starring as mother to Superman in her latest flick. But Diane Lane is parent to an extraordinary creature in real life too. The 51-year-old actress was joined by her lovely daughter Eleanor for the New York premiere of Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice on Sunday night. Scroll down for video Like mother, like daughter: Diane Lane looked fantastic while accompanied by daughter Eleanor Lambert at the New York premiere of Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice on Sunday night Both the Unfaithful actress and her 22-year-old daughter looked stunning in their best dresses as they attended the gala event at the iconic Radio City Music Hall. Diane showcased her fabulous figure in a clinging floral patterned midi dress along with black leather booties. She had her brunette tresses worn down and combed back as she sported natural, complimentary make-up on her face. Gorgeous: The 51-year-old actress and her 22-year-old daughter looked absolutely fabulous Loved up: They snuck in an embrace on the red carpet Eleanor showed off her slender frame in a white two-piece dress featuring a midriff-revealing long-sleeved top and matching pencil skirt. The music writer wore her brunette tresses down in a braid as she finished off the look with nude-coloured patent leather heels. Diane shares the child with ex husband Christopher Lambert, who she was married to from 1988 to 1994. Diane is making her second appearance as Clark Kent's mother Martha in Batman V Superman, which is a direct continuation of 2013 mediocre Man Of Steel. Lovely ladies: Eleanor showed off her trim figure in a two-piece white number Bonding time: The two ladies shared a laugh while posing for snaps Flower power: Diane looked gorgeous in a floral patterned midi dress Back in the day: She shares Eleanor with ex husband Christopher Lambert, as they were married from 1988 to 1994 In the first film she appeared alongside ageing heartthrob Kevin Costner, whose character Jonathan Kent was killed by a tornado. The movie will mark the much fantasized showdown between two of the most famous superheroes of all time while the world they both live in is stuck deciding what kind of hero it needs. As the two are busy combating each other, supervillain Lex Luthor (Jesse Eisenberg) creates a new foe named Doomsday on the loose leaving the two heroes to choose whether to continue fighting one another or join forces to take down the new threat. Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice is set to hit theaters in the US and UK on Friday. On last week's premiere episode of the controversial show, Seven Year Switch, it was revealed that engaged couple Brad and Tallena had postponed their wedding thanks to a lack of funds. And on Tuesday night, Brad, 28, admitted his true feelings about their plans to tie the knot and detailed their lack of a sex life revealing they haven't been intimate in 11 months. After watching Tallena talking about their problems on a video, Brad admitted to his experimental partner Jackie: 'I'm not ready to marry her.' Scroll down for video Candid: After watching Tallena on a video on Seven Year Switch talking about their problems, Brad (R) admitted to his experimental partner Jackie (pictured): 'I'm not ready to marry her' 'I've never talked to Tallena about these feelings, about having doubts,' Brad says. 'I don't know how she will take it, I don't know if she feels the same or if she feels indifferent,' he said, before adding: 'I'm not ready to marry her. I'm not ready.' Jackie was shocked by his confession, before he further revealed how unprepared they both are. 'We're not ready to be married, we are not ready to be husband and wife.' The comments came after he watched his partner, Tallena, make various admissions to psychologists on a video, that was filmed earlier before the show started. Struggling: 'I've never talked to Tallena about these feelings, about having doubts,' Brad says Engaged beauty: Tallena is seen here when she first met her experimental partner Tim Indeed all stars of the show had sat down with psychologists and spoke about their relationship issues, which were played to their respective partner's on Tuesday night. Also during the episode, the couples were separated and each person was matched with another by experts who they will live with for two weeks while they try and resolve their respective issues. Relationship counselors Jo Lamble and Peter Charleston offered support to the couples on the show and were seen visiting the couples ahead of showing them the videos. Tallena admitted in her video, that her 'biggest fear' was that they were getting married soon and that put a 'time limit' on it. 'It doesn't let us sort out our s**t in our own time,' she says. Pressure: Tallena admitted in her video, that her 'biggest fear' was that they were getting married soon and that put a 'time limit' on it. She is seen here crying about her relationship with her man on a piece to camera The psychologists probes her: 'You want to be ready and there's not much time?,' to which she answers, 'no, we have a couple of months.' She then explained what she is 'afraid to say to him.' 'Probably the fact that yeah there is a lot of contributing factors as to why we pushed back the wedding, but a big part of it was that I had the money to afford the repayments and put down the deposit, but he didn't, you know so I guess it really hurt me when he goes and buys all this stuff, the big TVs (sic), all the materialistic stuff.' 'To me, I feel like the wedding is not his first priority, our relationship is not his first priority. Just something as simple as us planning weekends together...he goes with his friends,' she said. 'As much as he sits here and tells me he is here and trying to make it work, I don't think he's being one hundred percent honest.' Brad had earlier on in the episode, admitted to Jackie that he and Tallena hadn't been intimate for almost a year. Being honest: Brad had earlier on in the episode, admitted to Jackie that he and Tallena hadn't been intimate for almost a year 'I want Tallena to be a little bit more open,' he said. 'I want her to be more open to me, I want her to be more sexually active, that's another big one, we haven't had sex in eleven months,' he said, getting emotional, touching face and looking on the brim of tears even though he was saying it while laughing. When Jackie seemed shocked at how long it had been, he said it again. 'Eleven months, but I'm not counting,' he said. She seemed concerned for him and he quickly said that he's still with Tallena. 'But what guy do you know that would stick around for that long...We don't kiss passionately...it's like she's my best friend.' Jackie was seen saying on a piece to camera that she thinks their problems are a lot more serious than her and her man's, Tim. Comparisons: Jackie during the conversation, was seen saying on a piece to camera that she thinks their problems are a lot more serious than her and her man's, Tim Afterwards, Jackie and Brad had a heated discussion in the kitchen, with Jackie asking him if he was 'hoping for more serious issues' in her relationship. 'You seem really concerned about your business than your relationship,' he says to her. 'There aren't really that many massive issues. The issues are the fact that I just work on the business all the time and the passion is gone and it's everything I've already told you,' she later says to him. Brad was then left questioning if she was in 'denial.' Last week, it was revealed that Brad takes Tallena's engagement ring off every time they fight and that he didn't want to spend more than $1,000 on their wedding. Meanwhile, he had recently splashed out a TV for $3,000. She has however, off the TV screen, been spotted flashing her engagement ring from Brad after finishing her shift as a stewardess for Virgin Australia. On this week's show, Tallena matched with Jackie's man, Tim. Tallena breaks down in tears after she watches Brad's video from when he spoke to the psychologists. Emotional: Tallena breaks down in tears after she watches Brad's video from when he spoke to the psychologists 'My biggest fear is that Tallena doesn't have the strength to pick up from where we picked up...my biggest fear is to not gain my partner back,' he says, adding he's sick of fighting and sweeping things under the rug. She said to camera that she got upset that he thinks she wont 'try' with their relationship. Tallena and Tim both admit they don't really like showing too much affection to their partners, especially in public. Jackie said in her video that Tim watched, that she works on their business too much and that he shows too little affection. Taking it in: Jackie said in her video that Tim watched, that she works on their business too much and that he shows too little affection He admitted he needs to work on showing her some affection but insisted he's just not a 'romantic' man. Tim was seen airing out their dramas on video as well, that she gets too stressed about their business so much so as it affects her health. Jackie responded to the video positively, saying: 'It's probably true, I do take it out on him, probably just because he's there.' Meanwhile, couple Jason, 29, and Michelle, 31, were separated, where Jason is matched by the show's experts to Cassie, and Michelle with Cassie's partner Ryan. New pairing: Jason is matched by the show's experts to Cassie Getting along well: Michelle is teamed with Cassie's partner Ryan At one point on the show, mother Michelle breaks down in tears when she hears Jason say on video that he thinks she can get moody and 'immature.' He also said he is scared of 'loosing his family.' Michelle - who previously said she suffered from postnatal depression - said she didn't like that he called her 'immature' when she gets angry at him, and said she got sad over his comments about their family. She says on a piece to camera: 'Jason's not perfect, we were good until I changed. The person I used to be, got along well with Jason, the type of person I am now, doesn't.' Cracking: At one point on the show, mother Michelle breaks down in tears when she hears Jason say on video that he thinks she can get moody and 'immature' In her video chat that Jason saw, she admits that she isn't sure if there relationship is over or not and said she was the 'biggest problem' in their relationship because of the way she feels. Jason had previously revealed on the show that they hadn't had sex for two years. Ryan also hears from wife Cassie on video during their time apart, and she brings up how he established his business without taking on her opinion. 'The biggest problem is not respecting me as a wife,' she says, while Ryan admitted during in his video that his wife feels 'resentment' towards him for it and that he wants his 'wife back'. Cassie said to camera that after hearing what Ryan had to say, that she was surprised 'he'd actually been listening.' Positive feedback: Cassie said to camera that after hearing what Ryan had to say, that she was surprised 'he'd actually been listening' During the episode, the issue of possibly having to share beds for the two weeks came up. While Brad and Jackie and Tim and Tallena and Cassie and Jason slept separately, Michelle and Ryan agreed to share. Tim had decided to sleep in the bed making Tallena sleep in the lounge room. Apparently, that was the couple's 'first lesson', with a voice over explaining that they have to use 'communication to negotiate and compromise.' Hes currently winning new fans as a prank loving wildcard on the Canadian version of long-running reality show Big Brother. But the light-hearted banter hes developed a reputation for since entering the house was replaced with candid reflection on Monday evening as Tim Dormer spoke about the moment a single email derailed his career with Australian TV network Nine. The Sydney based reality star became a household name after winning Big Brother Australia in 2013, but admits he suffered fierce criticism after Nine encouraged him to return for a cameo appearance the following year. Scroll down for video Opening up: Tim Dormer spoke about the moment a single email derailed his career with Australian TV network Nine during his current appearance on Big Brother Canada on Monday Speaking to British housemate Nikki Grahame, Tim admitted he flew to the shows purpose built compound at Dreamworld theme park in Queensland at the behest of producers concerned with the shows dismal ratings and unengaging housemates. They didnt cast anyone like me, he reflected. They said Were not looking for another Tim, and people didnt watch it. Then they called up and said Get on a plane, can you come into the house? Spending only a single day on the ailing show, the TV personality admitted he revelled in carrying out a series of contrived pranks devised by Nine amongst them successfully convincing unpopular contestant David Hodis to shave off his bushy hipster beard. Candid: Speaking to British housemate Nikki Grahame, Tim spoke about his return to the Australian version of Big Brother in 2014 But Tim said he was stunned after exiting the house and reading a blunt message from a disgruntled fan accusing him of selling out. During the day on this Big Brother forum a fan had written an email to me and said You are not who you were the first time around, you were obviously just following directions, youre in the back pocket of the network and Big Brothers s**t this year, we were hoping you were gonna fix it, he said. It just got to me because it was true. I was just following directions and I made it happen, but it made me question it, like Id become part of the outside wall.' Old times: Spending only a single day on the ailing show, the TV personality admitted he revelled in carrying out a series of contrived pranks devised by Nine amongst them successfully convincing unpopular contestant David Hodis to shave off his bushy hipster beard He added: Id never seen the camera runs, Id never seen the control room, so going back to the house the year after, it was so weird. The magic had gone Id seen the wizard behind the curtain, and Id become that. I felt dirty.' Tim recalled how he posted a long response to the fan in which he confessed to hating the direction the show had taken. 'I wrote back this really long email saying, "Im in no-ones back pocket. I hate the show ... Its f***ed. It will be cancelled. All they care about is appeasing to the brands and not the viewers. Youre 100% right."' he said. Backfired: Tim recalled how he posted a long response to a fan in which he confessed to hating the direction the show had taken, but the candid message backfired when the fan took a screenshot of his response and shared it online as he featured on a live eviction show with Big Brother host Sonia Kruger But the candid message backfired on Tim when the fan took a screenshot of his response and shared it online as he featured on a live eviction show with Big Brother host Sonia Kruger. 'About half an hour later there's a knock on the dressing room door and they're holding a printout of the email and they're like "Did you write this? This is really serious," he recalled. 'I went, "I'm not gonna lie, I did. The show is s**t." So they then went and got the network person who looked after the show and she just said "You've totally f***ed your career, we will never work with you again. You cannot bite the hand that feeds you."' Despite the setback Tim later appeared on Nine's Celebrity Apprentice in 2015, reaching the grand finale before losing out to eventual winner Sophie Monk. She boasted about celebrating her birthday in two time zones over the weekend. And so it may come as no surprise that Ruby Rose rang in her 30th year by tucking into not one, but six separate birthday cakes. Taking to social media on Monday, the Australian actress shared a photo of her sixth cake, which resembled an set of DJ-decks with astonishing realism. 'For having to miss all my fave Music events.. This makes up for it!!'Ruby Rose celebrated her birthday by tucking into this incredibly realistic DJ-decks themed cake on Tuesday 'This was my cake on set.. For having to miss all my fave Music events.. This makes up for it!! This is a cake??!!,' Tweeted Ruby as she posted a top-down picture of the edible artwork. She also shared a black-and-white version of the photo to her Instagram, captioned with: 'This is a BIRTHDAY CAKE!! Number 6 now... Getting full!!!! this takes the number one spot though wow! Thanks xXx'. Plated up next to the cake DJ-decks was an edible rose nestled next to a boxing glove, presumably referencing Ruby's name and the fact that the DJ has dabbled in competitive boxing in recent years. She's a busy lady! Aside from acting in Hollywood blockbusters and modelling for famous fashion brands, multi-talented Ruby also performs regular DJ gigs That's one way to cut it! The tattooed model made sure to share a glimpse of another birthday cake by uploading a series of videos that depicted her hacking into the baked treat with a miniature axe The tattooed model made sure to share a glimpse of another birthday cake by uploading a series of videos that depicted her hacking into the baked treat with a miniature axe, before seductively licking the cake-covered weapon. The videos also feature Ruby's xXx: The Return of Xander Cage co-star Vin Diesel, who is seen standing next to her with a long axe in his hand. Ruby Rose made sure to honour her Australian roots as she celebrated her 30th birthday in the USA on Saturday. 'Thanks for all the Australian Birthday wishes.. (I love having two birthdays.. One in each time zone)': Ruby Rose celebrated her 30th birthday by sharing an Instagram snap of herself posing on a balcony with a balloon and flowers The Orange Is The New Black heralded in the milestone occasion by sharing an Instagram snap of herself posing on a balcony holding a large balloon emblazoned with the words 'Happy Birthday' as well as a large bouquet of flowers. In the caption, Ruby wrote: 'Thanks for all the Australian Birthday wishes.. (I love having two birthdays.. One in each time zone)'. Later, Ruby shared another birthday post to Instagram, this time depicting a picture of her face covered in writing. The inspirational message scrawled across her visage read: 'The marks we make in our lifetime are only measured on what we build in this life and leave behind for the rest'. Inspirational: Later, Ruby shared another birthday post to Instagram, this time depicting a picture of her face covered in writing Moments later, she shared a cute flash-back photo of herself as a child; her hair in messy pigtails and a mischievous smile on her face. While Ruby was happy to share the perks of being an Australian living abroad, the actress hasn't been afraid to discuss the less-than-positive side of living among Hollywood's cut-throat celebrity scene. Late last month, Ruby publicly wished Ellen Page happy birthday in a gushing Facebook comment, hailing Ellen as a loyal and reliable friend in Hollywood Adorable! Moments later, she shared a cute flash-back photo of herself as a child; her hair in messy pigtails and a mischievous smile on her face 'Happy birthday Ellen Page my beautiful little Pisces soul. I have so much to credit moving to the United States as I followed this dream of mine,' she wrote in a heartfelt post. 'So many unbelievable things it taught me and provided me. I live my dream now. Everyday. Thank god amongst all the other gifts I received I received you to help me navigate through it all.' She added: 'I never knew how crucial it would be to have loyal and real friends around me in Hollywood until push came to shove and there you were every time, the most honest, the most fearless and the most loyal person I know. Two peas in a pod! Late last month, Ruby publically wished Ellen Page happy birthday in a gushing Facebook comment, hailing Ellen as a loyal and reliable friend in Hollywood 'When it comes to friendship no one does it better than you': Ruby wrote a gushing essay dedicated to her fellow actress Ellen Page, who Ruby heralded as her 'rock' Red carpet regular! Ruby's career in the spotlight has gone from strength to strength over the past year 'When it comes to friendship no one does it better than you. I'm forever grateful and always proud of everything you do.' Ruby's career in the spotlight has gone from strength to strength over the past year She has spent the last few months jetting across Europe while filming scenes for her role in the upcoming flick xXx: Return of Xander Cage. The film follows extreme sportsman Xander Cage, played by Hollywood veteran Vin Diesel, who returns from a near death experience to take on another tough mission. The movie will also star fellow Australian actress Toni Collette, Nina Dobrev, Samuel L. Jackson and Deepika Padukone. Her social media sites is often littered with smouldering snaps. And Tuesday was no exception for Jesinta Campbell, as the striking model took to her Instagram page to share yet another flawless picture. Rather than sharing a current image with her fans, the Australian beauty uploaded a throwback photo from her time at last month's New York Fashion Week. Scroll down for video 'Reminiscing about NYC': Model Jesinta Campbell l took to her Instagram page to share a flawless picture from her time at New York Fashion Week on Tuesday Parading her blemish-free complexion, the 24-year-old can be seen looking perfectly trim and well poised as she posed on the urban streets in her winter knits. Her brunette tresses were pulled backwards while she exuded style in a chic military-inspired coat and a high-neck camel coloured sweater. Reminiscing about NYC today, she caption the shot, while crediting friend and CEO of One Management Scott Lipps. FROW stars: During her time at the bi-annual fashion season, the model was seen mingling with the likes of Kylie Jenner, Zoe Kravitz, Hannah Davis and Jordyn Woods at the Vera Wang preview She's in fashion! The 24-year-old is no doubt enjoying some downtime following a hectic schedule at Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival at the start of this month During her time at the bi-annual fashion season, Jesinta was seen mingling with the likes of Kylie Jenner, Zoe Kravitz, Hannah Davis and Jordyn Woods at the Vera Wang preview. In her personal blog, the model discussed her experience and shared her delight at meeting the renowned fashion designer. She confessed: I have only ever attended FW in Sydney so to be invited to attend Vera's show was a such an incredible experience, so surreal! We arrived an hour before the show for a backstage tour and to meet the Queen herself, Vera. 'It was so surreal!': In her personal blog , the model discussed her experience and shared her delight at meeting the renowned fashion designer, Vera Wang, at NYFW Meanwhile, the David Jones ambassador is no doubt enjoying some downtime following a hectic schedule at Virgin Australia Melbourne Fashion Festival at the start of this month. While she wowed the crowds, the model suffered an embarrassing wardrobe malfunction as she strutted her stuff in a sleeveless jumpsuit - which came undone - at the David Jones runway. Luckily, Jesinta made a decent attempt at pulling it up as she began the long walk back in the opposite direction as those in the front row looked on. Tamara Ecclestone has called in lawyers to start discussions on how to end her marriage to Jay Rutland, according to reports. The Sun claims that the socialite, who wed the banker in 2013 and has a daughter, Sophia, with him, has told her inner circle that their relationship is 'effectively over'. It is alleged that things are so strained that the pair are sleeping in separate rooms at her 70million London home. Scroll down for video Strained? Tamara Ecclestone has called in lawyers to start discussions on how to end her marriage to Jay Rutland, according to reports The reported tension comes as Jay is facing charges of assisting a cocaine trafficker who was on the run from police. A source tells newspaper: 'The relationship was strained before Jays court case but this has been the final straw. They live in the same house but are no longer in the same bedroom. She has been open that their marriage is effectively over. 'Her first priority is protecting Sophia and upholding the familys reputation so she wont make any announcements in a hurry.' A spokesperson for Ecclestone had no comment when contacted about the claims. Over? The Sun claims that the socialiate, who wed the banker in 2013 and has a daughter, Sophia, with him, has told her inner circle that their relationship is 'effectively over' Big day: The couple made things official at Kensington and Chelsea Registry Office in July 2013, after a three-day boozy wedding extravaganza in the South of France Trouble: The reported tension comes as Jay (pictured above heading to Thames Magistates Court on March 16) is facing charges of assisting a cocaine trafficker who was on the run from police The pair, famed for their almost continual exotic holidays, have spent more and more time apart in recent months. Tamara has jetted off on two ski breaks without her partner in 2016 alone. The City Trader was also not spotted arriving for their daughter's second birthday party in central London on Sunday. The socialite was said to be devastated when Jay was accused of helping cocaine trafficker James Tarrant, 66, escape from the UK while he was awaiting trial for drug and gun charges in 2010. She did not accompany him to court when he appeared at Thames Magistrates earlier this month. According to the Mail on Sunday, Tamara jetted to Gstaad without Jay earlier this month to meet with her billionaire father Bernie for crisis talks over the situation. No united front: The City Trader was also not spotted arriving for their daughter's second birthday party in central London on Sunday Meeting with dad: Tamara reportedly jetted to Gstaad without Jay earlier this month to meet with her billionaire father Bernie for crisis talks over the situation A source said: Shes taking advice from some very serious lawyers. She was terribly confused and upset at first, but things are becoming a little clearer now.' Jay, who did not enter a plea during his first hearing, is due back in court on April 6. The pair married in June, 2013 after a whirlwind romance and famously shocked London society with her vulgar 7million nuptials in the South of France. Over 150 guests were invited to the lavish three-day event, with the couple famously downing shots and jumping in the sea at the Grand-Hotel du Cap-Ferrat as they laid on a free bar for their partying pals. Tamara welcomed Sophia in March, 2014, and has relished being a mother, taking her daughter almost everywhere with her. Gushing about her tot to Hello! magazine, she explained: 'I'm sorry, but I'm completely obsessed with Sophia. I love her so much I'm like a crazy woman. 'I've never felt like this before and I'm so much happier. I've never been this happy in my life.' His ex wife is Dutch beauty Lara Stone, while he's previously been linked to model Ashley James. And a new report suggests David Walliams, 44, has been flirting with another gorgeous girl - Aussie model and Neighbours actress Olympia Valance, 23. The Sun writes that Olympia, the younger sister of actress and singer Holly Candy, was seen with her arms 'draped over' the Britain's Got Talent star at the Empire Awards in London on Sunday night. Scroll down for video Getting close? According to a report David Walliams, 44, was seen getting close to Aussie model Olympia Valance, 23, at Sunday's Empire Awards in London Both stars were at the event held at the Grosvenor House Hotel, with David hosting the ceremony, while Olympia stunned in a sheer J'Aton Couture gown on the red carpet. The Sun report that 'David had initially reacted angrily after being pictured chatting away to Olympia'. But the comedian 'managed to put a smile back on his face as she was seen draped all over him at his table'. Stunning: Both stars were at the event held at the Grosvenor House Hotel, with David hosting the ceremony, while Olympia stunned in a sheer J'Aton Couture gown on the red carpet Representatives for David and Olympia have been contacted by MailOnline for comment. The reported flirting came as comedienne Katherine Ryan mocked David during the awards ceremony for his penchant for dating models. While David had earlier ribbed Oscar winner Leonardo DiCaprio and Hollywood stars for 's****ing Victoria's Secret models', Katherine hit back when it was her turn to take the stage to present a gong. According to The Mirror, the Canadian comedian quipped: 'I like your joke. Imagine a man that only dates models?' Host: David quipped about Hollywood stars' penchant for dating Victoria's Secret models during the ceremony She added: 'That's me trying to f*** him,' to which David replied: 'I'm available.' After the ceremony Katherine told 3am: 'You can't make that joke if you do that too. He needs to date a real woman. You have to be 6ft tall to date David Walliams.' David and his wife of five years, model Lara Stone, 32, divorced last September, while he has previously been linked to Lisa Snowdon and Abi Titmuss. Olympia has played Paige Smith in Neighbours since 2014 as well as juggling a successful modelling career which has seen her become the face and body of UK lingerie brand Gossard. He's no stranger to suffering problems with his landlord. And Tyga is now reportedly being sued for being a 'nightmare tenant', allegedly causing over $75,000 worth of damage to the space he rents for his company, Egypt Last Kings Clothing. The 26-year-old rapper's landlord is said to be furious after discovering the place abandoned and in a state of disrepair, according to TMZ. Scroll down for video In trouble? Tyga's landlord is alleged to be taking legal action after discovering the space the space the rapper rents for his company, Egypt Last Kings Clothing, abandoned and in a state of disrepair Tyga - who is a fan of Egyptian history and design - reportedly painted the doors and ceilings black with Egyptian symbols and there were ink stains all over the floor. The gossip site claims the biggest source of damage was the ink poured down the drain and into the public sewer. The landlord is alleged to be taking legal action for the costs incurred and the five months of rent that Tyga allegedly owes. Seeking compensation: The landlord is alleged to be taking legal action for the costs incurred and the five months of rent that Tyga allegedly owes However, the Ayo hitmaker - who raises three-year-old son King Cairo with his ex Blac Chyna - is said to be blaming the landlord for the problems. MailOnline has contacted Tyga's representatives for comment. Last month, it was reported that the rapper's landlord was trying to have him evicted from the $4.8million home which he is currently renting. According to Page Six, an unlawful detainer notice was delivered to the property, and legal papers which are part of the eviction process named Michael Ray Stevenson - Tyga's birth name - as the defendant. In hot water: Last month it was claimed that Tyga's landlord was trying to have him evicted from the $4.8million home which he is currently renting, according to documents obtained by Page Six It has previously been estimated that Tyga has been renting the property for $17,000 a month, but DuJour magazine claimed the star was in fact forking out $40,000 a month after interviewing him at the house recently. It seems that Tyga's landlord is hoping to get someone else in and the rapper out as soon as possible, as DailyMail.com revealed that the property is available for rent from today on Airbnb, at $2495 a night. The $4.8million mansion sits in the Hollywood Hills above the iconic Sunset Strip, and boasts six bedrooms, a rooftop jacuzzi, swimming pool with waterfall, cinema and wine cellar. Time to move out?: The 26-year-old has been staying in the Hollywood Hills house since the end of November Hoping to replace him soon: The property is already available to rent on Airbnb for $2495 a night There are also some bizarre fire features, and a huge statue of Predator which guards the front door. Tyga is believed to have moved out of Kylie's home and into the rental property at the end of November, following a brief split from the 18-year-old which led to the pair deciding to slow things down. Earlier this month, a photo shoot with DuJour which took place around the property and saw him posing with mannequins, was released. Only the best will do: The $4.8million mansion sits above the iconic Sunset Strip, and boasts six bedrooms, a rooftop jacuzzi, swimming pool with waterfall, cinema and wine cellar Everything you can think of: There are also some bizarre fire features, and a huge statue of Predator which guards the front door According to the magazine, on the day of the photo shoot the crew arrived at Tyga's home to find bedraggled Instagram star Val Mercado awaiting her ride home. They write: 'The girls hair is matted and slept-on, the extension tape visible from the back, and she taps her toe nervously while awaiting her ride. She is clearly wearing last nights shorts.' The father-of-one has something of a history of getting into trouble with landlords. A place to crash: Perhaps Tyga will move back in with his girlfriend Kylie Jenner, who lives in a $2.7million mansion in Calabasas Last August, TMZ reported that Tyga was ordered to pay $70,000 to the owner of his former Calabasas property following a dispute over rent payments. The judge ruled against the star after he failed to appear in court, although he had claimed that he was trying to buy the house. Just two months earlier, TMZ claimed that Tyga was ordered to pay $80,000 to a landlord over a different house in Calabasas, which he allegedly owed $124,000 in rent for. He may be busy training for Rio 2016. But Tom Daley, 21, couldn't let Tuesday go by without celebrating his relationship with Dustin Lance Black, 41. The Olympic diver shared a sweet Instagram photo of the couple horseback riding to mark their three year anniversary. Scroll down for video Celebrating: Tom Daley shared a sweet Instagram photo of a horseback riding date with his fiance Dustin Lance Black on Tuesday to mark the couple's third anniversary The sportsman posted the snap of the two enjoying the scenery as they rode horses on his social media page, alongside the simple caption: ' 3 Y E A R S .' It was in December 2013, that Tom first announced he was in a relationship, although he didn't reveal with who, when he released a YouTube video telling fans that he had been enjoying a romance with a man since early that year. In January 2014 Tom confirmed his boyfriend was Dustin when the couple shared an Instagram snap together. The couple got engaged last September. Soon after announcing his relationship, Tom told Jonathan Ross that 'it was love at first sight' when he first met Oscar winning screenwriter Dustin at a party. Talented pair: The sportsman met American screenwriter Dustin at a party in 2013, with the couple confirming their relationship ten months later 'Id never felt like anything like it before. We were at a party and I hadnt even spoken to him all night. 'I didnt know what to do or if he was gay at first. I made the first move, I typed call me in his notes with a smiley face on this phone and the next day he texted. He makes me feel safe and happy, right now I couldnt be happier.' 'Id never felt the feeling of love, it happened so quickly, I was completely overwhelmed by it to the point I cant get him out of my head all the time. Ive never had it before where I love someone and they love me just as much.' Besotted: Tom has gushed that 'it was love at first sight' when he met Dustin, adding that he made the first move by writing a sweet note for the filmmaker in his phone Tom revealed in January that the couple have decided their nuptials will take place in Tom's home country. 'All of my fiance's family live in America as he is American but he wants it to be in the UK,' he explained. And, although he hasn't put much thought into his big day yet, Tom's mother can't wait to see her son tie the knot. She added: 'The whole family is extremely excited and looking forward to the big day. They are going to wait until after the Olympic Games in Rio before they decide on the date of the wedding and where they want to marry.' The sportsman popped the question to the screenwriter in September, but said he knew within weeks of them dating that he wanted to marry him one day. Tom said recently: 'Quite honestly, we talked about marriage within the first two weeks after seeing each other the first time in LA. That was the weird thing: that it came up in conversation so many times. I always knew it was going to happen at some point.' You only have to look at her Instagram page to know she's not adverse to a selfie or two. And while Ellie Goulding managed to sway her grandmother into partaking in the photo hype with her on Tuesday, it seemed her choice of pose didn't bode quite so well. Sharing a selfie of herself and her grandma with her 9.8 million followers, the 29-year-old singer admitted that she refused to join her in pouting for the snap. Scroll down for video Strike a pose! While Ellie Goulding managed to sway her grandmother into partaking in the photo hype with her on Tuesday, it seemed her choice of pose didn't bode quite so well Posting an image that saw the On My Mind hit-maker look lovingly at her nana with her lips pursed, Ellie captioned the shot: 'Tried to get my Nana to pout and rightfully so she wasn't having any of it.' But while pouting may not have been her thing, it didn't mean Ellie's grandmother was against posing up a storm for the camera. Instead, she appeared to flutter her eyelashes and gaze up into the distance, a coy smile brandished across her face. Quality time: Ellie appears to be enjoying some time with her family before playing her final UK tour dates at London's O2 Arena on Thursday night Following her lengthy tour across Europe, which saw her stop off at Birmingham on Monday night, Ellie appears to be enjoying some time with her family before playing her final UK tour dates at London's O2 Arena on Thursday night. The talented songwriter will play two dates at the iconic dome - which holds a capacity of 20,000 - before jetting across to Vancouver, Canada, where she will kick off the North American leg of her tour. Away from touring, Ellie was recently unveiled as the new face of popular hair care brand Pantene. Busy bee! The talented songwriter will play two dates at the iconic dome - which holds a capacity of 20,000 - before jetting across to Vancouver, Canada, where she will kick off the North American leg of her tour Speaking about why they enlisted the stunner for their latest campaign, the company gushed: Ellie Goulding embodies Strong is Beautiful perfectly. 'Shes strong, confident and successful in whatever she challenges herself to do whether its hitting it hard in the gym, playing to a packed stadium or becoming a beauty icon on her own terms. Opening up about her love of the range, Ellie enthused: When Im feeling strong I can do whatever I set my mind to. When my hair is strong I can do anything I want to it without worrying about the damage. And it seems her new partnership will certainly come in handy as she prepares to style her lustrous blonde tresses almost every night as she hotfoots between yet more cities on tour. I put my hair through a lot of heat styling and colouring, especially when Im touring. Up until now, I only used salon brands but now Ive discovered PANTENE PRO-V theres no going back,' she continued. Their relationship continues to go from strength to strength since confirming they're romantically involved with one another last June. And it seems St. Vincent has been welcomed into Cara Delevingne's family with open arms as they were pictured leaving her parents' house in London on Tuesday afternoon. The former supermodel and the American musician made separate exits from the sought-after property in Chelsea, West London, following their brief trip to Cara's hometown. Scroll down for video Pack your bags: Cara Delevingne and her girlfriend St. Vincent were pictured leaving her parents' London home on Tuesday, following their brief trip to the capital Cara, 23, looked as casually chic as always dressed in a pair of black skinny jeans which she paired with a matching V-neck top, offering a glimpse of her flawless decolletage. She jazzed up her mostly-black ensemble with a bomber jacket which was emblazoned with leopard heads. The Chanel muse rocked a pair of two-tone trainers while a gold belt from the French fashion house offered the casual get-up a glam edge. See Cara Delevingne updates as she and St. Vincent leave actress' parents' London home Wild thing: Cara, 23, rocked a statement bomber jacket which was emblazoned with a leopard pattern Once a tomboy, always a tomboy: The Suicide Squad actress styled the piece with a pair of black skinny jeans and chunky trainers Keeping cot: Cara afforded herself some coverage with a pair of cute Perverse sunglasses as she left the Chelsea property minutes after her musician girlfriend Less is more: The Paper Towns star favoured minimal make-up and scraped her bronde locks into a messy bun Meanwhile, St. Vincent - whose real name is Anne Clark - nailed the biker-chic trend and sported a pair of black turn-up jeans which she styled with a white vest, a black cardigan and a black leather jacket. The star pounded the pavement in a pair of suede loafers while she accessorised with a skinny scarf and a pair of wayfarer sunglasses. She was accompanied by a brunette assistant whose arm she was seen gently touching. Biker chick: St. Vincent slipped into a pair of black turn-up jeans, a white vest, a black cardigan and a black leather jacket Putting her fashion-model girlfriend to shame: There was no denying the American singer - whose real name is Anne Clark - was a vision of effortless style Cool as ever: The model-turned-actress cut a characteristically cool figure in London No smiles: But she wasn't in a particularly bubbly mood, and failed to raise a smile Leaving London: The duo were later seen at Kings Cross where they boarded a Eurostar Getting away: The duo are not long since back from Paris and Denmark Earlier on, Cara was pictured leaving one of London's swankiest health clubs and she showed no signs of the night before, having spent Monday evening partying until 2am with St.Vincent and her sister Poppy in Mayfair. The Suicide Squad actress reverted back to her fail-safe tomboy style as she opted not to change out of her gymwear for her walk home from private women's club - Grace Belgravia Health, Wellbeing and Lifestyle Club - in Knightsbridge, West London. The 23-year-old was the picture of comfort as she highlighted her supermodel stems in a pair of colourful, floral-printed gym leggings. Comfort is key: Cara stuck to her fail-safe tomboy style as she was pictured sporting gymwear on leaving a swanky health club in West London on Tuesday Print power: The 23-year-old rocked a pair of skin-tight floral leggings, a chevron-printed jumper and a blazer coat as she headed home from Grace Belgravia Health, Wellbeing and Lifestyle Club She deliberately clashed the pretty pants by layering a white longline vest and a monochrome, chevron-printed sweat over her slim form. The Chanel muse too prioritised comfort when it came to her footwear and tied on a pair of black chunky running trainers. Cara smartened up her practical ensemble by throwing a longline black blazer over it. She afforded herself some coverage with a pair of Perverse Amazeballs in Coffee Balls sunglasses while she was mostly make-up-free and fashioned her bronde tresses into a messy high ponytail. He recently spoke out against criticism over his relationship, due to the 13-year age gap between himself and his girlfriend. And Henry Cavill, 32, looked as though he really didn't have a care in the world as he arrived at the European premiere for Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice in London on Tuesday, with his 19-year-old partner by his side. Not only did the handsome British actor have his girlfriend Tara King with him on the red carpet, but also his mother Marianne, giving off a clear signal that she approves of their relationship. Scroll down for video His leading ladies! Henry Cavill, 32 was flanked by his girlfriend Tara King, 19, and mum Marianne on the red carpet at the Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice premiere in London on Tuesday Looking incredibly handsome in his three-piece navy suit, the Superman actor couldn't take the smile off his face as he posed for pictures both by himself and with his leading ladies. Tara - who has been in a romance with the actor since last year - cut a beautiful figure in a body-skimming black gown with cut-outs details over her slender waist. The pretty blonde wore her locks loose and cascading over her bare shoulders and rocked minimal make-up, her youthful glow shining through as she joined her A-list man at his big night. And Henry's mum Marianne - who regularly attends his red carpet events as his plus one - couldn't have looked more proud as she cut a visually striking figure in a neon pink dress, her smile wide and infectious. Proud: Henry's teenage girlfriend looked stunning in a form-fitting black dress with cut-outs, while his mum stood out in neon pink Dapper gent: The actor traded his Superman costume for a slick navy blue three-piece suit at the premiere In a recent and very candid interview with Elle Magazine, the Man Of Steel star brushed off the condemnation of his relationship with Tara. 'People say age is just a number,' he said. 'It's actually real and true sign of someone's maturity. But in this case, she's fantastic.' Showing off his surprisingly shy side, he added: 'When I met my girlfriend, I was super intimidated. I wanted to impress her. I was thinking, 'Don't mess this up, man'.' And although the British heartthrob feels at ease with the teenage University student, Henry confessed he does understand the 'natural reaction' to the couple's age difference. He doesn't care! Henry recently defended his age-gap romance, saying that 'age is just a number', while also admitting he does understand the criticism Having a giggle! Henry had a laugh on the red carpet with his co-stars Ben Affleck and Gal Gadot The Tudors actor went on to confide that he has dated older women in the past, by adding: 'When I was 19, I was going out with a 32-year-old.' The Mail on Sunday revealed in October that Henry and Tara were an item after they were pictured together at a rugby match at Twickenham. They have since been on three holidays together, the most recent break being New Zealand during Tara's reading week at university. 'A lot of people wondered if the relationship would last, but this shows it's serious, despite the age difference,' a friend of the actor told the publication. Meanwhile, Henry wasn't the only star on the red carpet at the premiere: the actor was joined by his co-stars Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, Amy Adams and Jesse Eisenberg, along with the director Zack Snyder. Henry joined Ben and Gal - who play Batman and Wonder Woman in the new flick - for a fun moment in front of the cameras, the three of them having an animated chat. On the promo trail: The cast and crew of the film posed for a snapshot at the European premiere - (L-R) Deborah Snyder, Zack Snyder, Amy Adams, Ben Affleck, Gal Gadot, Henry Cavill, Holly Hunter and Jesse Eisenberg Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice is the second movie in the DC Extended Universe, following on from 2013's Man Of Steel. The new film sees Superman and Batman come face-to-face in an epic battle for the first time ever in a live action setting, and it also includes Gal's debut as female superhero Wonder Woman. Amy - who looked sensational on the red carpet on Tuesday in a brilliant blue gown - reprises her role as journalist Lois Lane. Batman V Superman: Dawn Of Justice is released in UK cinemas on March 25. Gorgeous Gal: The Israeli actress stunned in a ravishing red plunging gown that skimmed over her slight curves flawlessly Beautiful in blue: Amy - who plays Lois Lane in the super-hero movie - put on an equally stunning display in a blue thigh-slash dress Proud Macedonian-born reality star Snezana Markoski celebrated her heritage with her ten-year-old daughter Eve on Tuesday. Former Bachelor star Snezana, 36, shared to Instagram on Tuesday a snap of the duo dressed up in traditional Macedonian dress for Heritage Day marked by her daughter's school. While her fiance Sam Wood was nowhere in sight, the mother and daughter beamed in the photo that Snezana captioned: 'So happy that Eve attends such a multicultural school.' Scroll down for video Traditional: Snezana Markoski and her ten-year-old daughter Eve celebrated Harmony Day at her primary school on Tuesday and appeared to dress in traditional Macedonian costume The scientific sales rep wore a white and floral headdress and had her hair slicked back underneath. She wore a touch of foundation and simple black eyeliner and mascara, while her lookalike girl wore a matching headpiece and over-sized white flower and an embroidered shirt. Snezana fully captioned the shot: 'Harmony Day celebrations at Eve's school today. So happy that Eve attends such a multicultural school. #harmonyday.' Harmony Day is celebrated on March 21 and comes after the pair enjoyed a whirlwind trip to Singapore with Snezana's fiance Sam, 36. Fun! While in Singapore, they enjoyed playing tourist at Universal Studios. Sam Wood (R) is pictured in this shot with the girls They trio first jetted off for Singapore from Perth Airport on Thursday. While in Singapore, they enjoyed playing tourist and took in attractions including Universal Studios, and the famous nature park, Gardens by the Bay. Also there, Eve got fitted for a sari in Little India. Relaxing: They also stopped by the famous nature park, Gardens by the Bay Strolling around: Sam and Eve are seen here walking around Singapore holding hands Dressing up: Also there, Eve got fitted for a sari in Little India Also on Tuesday, Snezana took to Instagram to share a fun snap of her man wearing a skirt - because he had to cover his legs - before he entered a Buddhist temple. In the fun snap, hunky gym owner Sam lifts up the skirt to show off his leg as he leans his head back and laughs. Sam and Snezana first met on The Bachelor last year and he proposed to her with a diamond engagement ring in December. The proposal came after being together for six months. Blocked from presidency, Suu Kyi to be Myanmar foreign minister Aung San Suu Kyi will be foreign minister in Myanmar's first civilian government for decades, her party said Tuesday, giving the democracy champion a formal post despite being blocked from the presidency. The Nobel laureate has already vowed to rule above the man picked as president, Htin Kyaw, in the government which comes to power next week in the former army-ruled nation. Suu Kyi was the sole woman and one of only six members of her National League for Democracy party in a cabinet list read out to lawmakers early Tuesday by the parliament speaker Mann Win Khaing Than, who did not specify which position she or others would hold. Myanmar democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi was the sole woman and one of only six members of her party in a cabinet list read out to lawmakers earlier Tuesday But NLD spokesman Zaw Myint Maung later confirmed she would lead the foreign ministry and hinted that she would also hold other roles, without specifying which ones. "She will be the foreign minister, mainly. If she wants to share the duties she has in other ministries with qualified people, she can assign them," he told reporters. The NLD only named 15 ministers for 18 posts chosen by the civilian government, sparking speculation that Suu Kyi would take on four portfolios -- widely believed to be foreign affairs, education, energy and the president's office. Oxford-educated Suu Kyi, 70, is the daughter of Myanmar's independence hero and towered over the country's democracy movement as it waged a spirited and non-violent struggle against almost half a century of military rule. But she is blocked from the presidency by the junta-drafted constitution because her two sons are British, as was her late husband. - 'Heart of government' - Myanmar has undergone a stunning political transformation in recent years, blossoming from isolation under the junta to become an increasingly vibrant nation. Its growing political openness was crowned by a historic November election that saw the NLD storm to victory. But the country still faces huge challenges, including the continued might of an army that for years viewed Suu Kyi and her party with deep suspicion. The NLD has operated under a veil of secrecy since the polls, only revealing its choice of president days before his election by parliament last week. Suu Kyi has held several rounds of talks with army chief Min Aung Hlaing since the elections, but was unable to remove the constitutional barrier to her presidency. The foreign ministry role gives her international clout and a seat at the influential military-dominated Security Council. "She wants to be at the heart of government. She wants to do it properly and formally and -- this is important to her -- legally," Trevor Wilson, an academic at the Australian National University and former ambassador to Myanmar, told AFP. Under Myanmar's complex political rules, the cabinet role means she will have to forgo her seat in parliament, although her party insisted she would maintain her chairmanship of the NLD. Htin Kyaw is Suu Kyi's long-term confidante and ally and seen as utterly loyal. Last week he said his rise to the leadership was "Suu Kyi's victory". But his novice administration faces a raft of challenges -- including conflict in ethnic minority border areas, entrenched poverty and the need to rapidly improve decrepit infrastructure and long-neglected education and health services. Another key challenge will be smoothing relations with the army that locked up Suu Kyi and other NLD politicians for years during junta rule. The military still holds strong political sway under a charter that reserves a quarter of parliament seats for unelected soldiers and grants the army chief direct control over three key ministries; home affairs, border affairs and defence. But Min Aung Hlaing has pledged his support for the political transition. The new government, which under Myanmar's political system does not have a prime minister, has offered few hints about its policies beyond streamlining the notoriously labyrinthine civil service. Suu Kyi's party has said it wants a government of national reconciliation and the cabinet includes several people unaffiliated with any political party, as well as two members of the main army-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party. One of the nominated USDP ministers, former general Thein Swe, told reporters he would work together with the new government "for the national interest". A parliamentary vote to confirm the posts is expected later in the week. Indonesian drivers stage violent anti-Uber protest Thousands of Indonesian taxi drivers staged a violent protest Tuesday against Uber and other ride-hailing apps, blocking major roads in the capital, clashing with rivals from app-based services and setting tyres alight. The protesters adorned their vehicles with signs saying "stop illegal taxis" and rallied in front of parliament and government buildings, in an upsurge of anger at technology they say is threatening their livelihoods. As convoys of vehicles brought downtown Jakarta to a standstill, the demonstration turned violent, with protesters jumping up and down on vehicles that refused to take part, while stone-throwing drivers and rivals from app-based services clashed in several areas of the city. Indonesian taxi drivers shout slogans after they chased a taxi driver during a rally in Jakarta, on March 22, 2016 Adek Berry (AFP) Commuters faced morning rush-hour travel chaos, with even the motorcades of President Joko Widodo and the vice president getting stuck in the gridlock, making both men late for a meeting. Some people were left bloodied and bruised, with at least one person needing hospital treatment, while police detained 60 drivers from popular motorbike taxi-hailing service Go-Jek. Anger has been growing among taxi drivers worldwide at the challenge presented by US company Uber, one of the world's most valuable start-ups, and a flurry of other app-based services that typically offer cheaper fares than traditional transport operators. Herman, a 49-year-old taxi driver involved in the Jakarta protest, who goes by one name, said his earnings had dwindled from around 250,000 rupiah ($20) a day several months ago, to almost nothing due to the increased competition. "I haven't paid my rent, and I need to feed my three children and my wife," he said. The demonstration, which also involved motorised rickshaw and bus drivers, came after weeks of rising tensions between traditional public transport operators in the sprawling, traffic-clogged metropolis of 10 million and a flurry of new ride-hailing services. As well as Uber, Malaysian app Grab and Go-Jek are providing stiff competition for Jakarta's taxi drivers. - 'Unfair competition' - Traditional taxi, motorbike taxi and other public transport drivers are angry that the new services are offering rides at lower prices, claiming they are not paying taxes, and are operating without official permits. "Why should thousands of people who didn't pay tax, get a permit, or undergo car checks roam the roads freely while we have had to fulfil those duties?" said Yohannis Rorimpandey, a protester who works for Blue Bird, one of Indonesia's biggest taxi groups. After rallying outside parliament, where several tyres were set alight, a large group of protesters moved to the communications ministry, demanding that the minister block the apps. Uber and other app-based services currently operate in a legal grey area in Indonesia, and there is a division in the government about how to handle them. Indonesian law gives a narrow definition of "public transport", which does not include the ride-hailing apps, and the transport ministry has sought to ban them. However the communications ministry has refused to block the services, saying that it is committed to supporting the growth of the digital economy. Jakarta police said that up to 6,000 drivers were involved in Tuesday's protest, and 6,000 officers were out on the streets for the protest. It was the second anti-app protest by drivers in the space of a week, although the first was on a much smaller scale. However, there was little sympathy for the protesters among commuters caught in the rush-hour travel chaos in the heaving capital. "Must it be anarchy? This only scares passengers and makes them prefer app-based taxis," said Twitter user Petricia Yuvita. And there was no sign that the government was ready to give in to the protesters' demands. "You can't defy technology, it just needs to be regulated," said Vice President Jusuf Kalla. Indonesian police protect a taxi driver whose car was damaged by protesters taking part in a rally against ride-hailing services in Jakarta, on March 22, 2016 Adek Berry (AFP) A driver of 'bajaj', a three-wheeler taxi, yawns as he waits for passengers in Jakarta Bay Ismoyo (AFP/File) Traditional taxi, motorbike taxi and other public transport drivers are angry that the new services are offering rides at lower prices, claiming they are not paying taxes, and are operating without official permits Adek Berry (AFP/File) Taiwan fishing boats shot at in Indonesian waters Taiwan said Tuesday it was investigating allegations an Indonesian ship pursued and shot at two Taiwanese fishing boats in the Malacca Strait, warning Jakarta that violence on the high seas was unacceptable. The alleged incident occurred just days after Indonesia detained the crew of a Chinese boat suspected of illegally fishing in its waters off the South China Sea, sparking a tense standoff with Beijing. Taiwan's fishing agency said two tuna longliners were passing through Indonesia's waters early Monday when it was believed they were chased and fired at by official vessels. Indonesia in 2014 launched a tough crackdown on illegal fishing which involves sinking foreign vessels caught fishing without a permit after impounding the boats and removing the crews Wahyu Wepe (Ministry Of Maritime Affairs And Fisheries/AFP/File) Taiwan's foreign ministry has asked its representative in Jakarta to investigate the allegations and establish whether it was an Indonesian government vessel that was involved. Taiwan's premier Chang San-cheng said authorities suspected a pirate ship was involved, but that possibly a government boat was to blame for the violent clash. "Even if it is Indonesia's economic zone, our boats can pass by without causing any damage, so there are many things to clarify," he said Tuesday. "(Indonesia) should not have used violent means against our boat even if the boat was engaged in illegal fishing I would like to state that this kind of violent means are unacceptable," he said. Taiwan's fishing agency said one of the boats had more than 10 bullet holes. The 20 crew aboard the fishing boats were safe and the vessels were en route to Singapore for a damage assessment, the agency added. Indonesia's foreign ministry and fisheries ministry said they were looking into the incident, but did not yet have any information. Indonesia in 2014 launched a tough crackdown on illegal fishing which involves sinking foreign vessels caught fishing without a permit after impounding the boats and removing the crews. The hardline policy has stoked tensions with Indonesia's neighbours and trading partners. Jakarta lodged a furious protest to Beijing on Monday after the Chinese coastguard intervened as Indonesian patrol ships tried to detain a fishing vessel near islands in the South China Sea. Saudi arrests Shiite imam for 'glorifying' Hezbollah Saudi security forces have arrested a Shiite preacher accused of glorifying Lebanon's Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah, a newspaper reported on Tuesday. Hussein al-Radi was detained after Gulf Arab states declared Hezbollah a "terrorist" group earlier this month and brought in tough new measures against anyone supporting it. The Al-Watan daily reported that security forces arrested Radi, from the Al-Ahsa oasis region in Eastern Province. Members of Lebanon's Shiite movement Hezbollah hold their flags on March 1, 2016, in the southern town of Kfour, in the Nabatiyeh district Mahmoud Zayyat (AFP/File) "This is after he glorified the terrorist group Hezbollah and insulted the kingdom in a video clip that has been shared" online, the report said. Radi "also broke previous pledges he had made after defending the terrorist Nimr al-Nimr following his execution," it added. Nimr, another Shiite cleric from Eastern Province, was a driving force behind protests that began in 2011 among the Shiite minority in Sunni-majority Saudi Arabia. The Shiites complain of marginalisation. Nimr and three other Shiites were among 47 people executed on January 2 for "terrorism." Iranian demonstrators stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran and a consulate following Nimr's execution, prompting Riyadh to cut diplomatic ties. Al-Watan quoted a security source as saying authorities had shown "patience" over a number of violations Radi allegedly made. "But he continued to incite the public, taking advantage of the mosque platform to breach regulations." A video posted Sunday on YouTube showed the bespectacled Radi, with a bushy white beard, speaking at a podium where he hails Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah as a "hero." Radi also praises Iran as a regional and international power. An interior ministry spokesman could not confirm Radi's arrest to AFP but said: "I would assure you that ... laws in the kingdom are enforced." Ibrahim AlMugaiteeb, president of the Eastern Province-based Human Rights First Society, said Radi's arrest was no surprise. But even though the imam "pushed the envelope," AlMugaiteeb said he did not condone the arrest of an elderly religious figure. Other Gulf states have also taken measures against alleged Hezbollah supporters since the "terrorism" blacklisting. Bahrain announced it had deported several Lebanese residents for alleged links to the group. A Kuwaiti newspaper reported on Monday that authorities there had taken similar action against 11 Lebanese and three Iraqis. Texas Senator Ted Cruz kept Republican hopes of a brokered convention alive on Tuesday evening after winning all of the delegates in the Utah caucus following Donald Trump's resounding win in the Arizona primary. The battle in the western states saw Trump take a 47 per cent majority in the Grand Canyon state, winning 58 Republican delegates - Cruz achieved just 24 per cent of the votes. But he received a major boost after winning a 69 per cent majority in Utah, gaining a vital 40 delegates. Victory was important as if Cruz had not got more than 50 per cent, the state would have split its delegates - Ohio governor John Kasich came second with 16 per cent and Trump took 13 per cent. Meanwhile at the Arizona polls Marco Rubio achieved just under 14 per cent of the votes followed by John Kasich with 10 per cent. Scroll down for video 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. 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. At this point in the Republican race, Trump's main objective is to amass the 1,237 delegates needed to win his party's nomination outright, and thwart a bid by the party establishment to stop him. Shortly after the Arizona results emerged Trump tweeted: 'Much bigger win than anticipated in Arizona. Thank you, I will never forget!' 'Hopefully the Republican Party can come together and have a big WIN in November, paving the way for many great Supreme Court Justices!' Cruz has not yet commented on his Utah victory. There was a heavy turnout with voters waiting in long lines in all the states holding Republican and Democratic primaries. There was anger in some counties from people who were still in line as Trump and Clinton were projected to win in Arizona. Arizona's Maricopa County was reported by AZ Central as having to send voters away after not having enough polling stations. The overall results so far show Trump and Clinton both won Arizona in the Republican and Democratic races. While Sanders and Cruz won Utah; Sanders also won Idaho Donald Trump (right) won in Arizona, but Ted Cruz (left) won in Utah In the Democratic race for the White House, Hillary Clinton won Arizona taking a 60 per cent majority over her nearest rival Bernie Sanders 37 per cent. Sanders kept his oar in the race with a 74 per cent victory in Utah over Clinton's 24 per cent. Idaho Democrats are set to deliver a similar result. Trump's anti-immigration message struck a chord with Arizona's conservative voters according to exit polls. But during her Arizona victory speech Clinton slammed Trump's 'fearful' rhetoric as un-American. 'We have to dismantle the global terror pipeline. We have to strengthen our defenses here at home and we need to work closely with our allies ... This election really matters,' Clinton told a rally in Seattle, Washington. 'We need to keep working together. We need to make a point that were going into the future with confidence and optimism. I am the most ready of everybody running to take that job.' The former First Lady added: 'What Donald Trump and Ted Cruz and others are suggesting is not only wrong, its dangerous. It will not keep us safe. This is a time for America to lead, not cower, and we will lead.' Trump tweeted this image after it was revealed he had won the Arizona primary Shortly after the results emerged Trump tweeted: 'Much bigger win than anticipated in Arizona. Thank you, I will never forget!' Ohio governor John Kasich came second in Utah with 15 per cent and Trump took just 15 per cent Going into Tuesday's contests, the billionaire real estate mogul had 683 delegates to 421 for his nearest rival, Cruz, according to a CNN tally. Kasich had 145. At stake on Tuesday were 98 delegates in the Republican contests in Arizona and Utah, and 131 for Democrats who, unlike the Republicans, also caucus in Idaho. American Samoa also held its Republican contest, with just nine delegates. Pre-election polls had showed Trump heavily favored to win in Arizona. A border state, Arizona has long been roiled by passions over immigration, an issue that Trump has seized on since launching his campaign with inflammatory accusations that Mexico was sending rapists and criminals across the border and promises to build a wall that he says he will force Mexico to fund. The dynamics were different in neighboring Utah, a predominantly Mormon state where pre-caucus polls showed the ultra-conservative Cruz positioned to win. Cruz has been endorsed by Mitt Romney, the losing 2012 Republican candidate who has led the charge to stop Trump. Utah is home turf for Romney, a Mormon from a prominent family. Analysts note that Mormons have voted consistently against Trump elsewhere, and take a different view of immigration than other Republicans. The Church of Latter Day Saints has supported immigration reform and opposed deportations of otherwise law-abiding undocumented migrants. People vote for their presidential candidate by raising their hand in a classroom at a Republican caucus site n Salt Lake City Huge turnout: People assemble at a Republican caucus site in Salt Lake City; Reports filtered in that there were sizeable turnouts across all states voting on Tuesday night People wait in line to vote in the Arizona Presidential Primary Election at Mountain View Lutheran Church in Phoenix Voters recite the Pledge of Allegiance at a Republican U.S. presidential caucus in Salt Lake City Voters use a map to figure out their precinct at the Republican presidential caucus in Salt Lake City People fill out ballots for the presidential race in a classroom at a Republican caucus site in Utah Just before the results started to trickle in, Trump furiously reacted to a conservative super PAC backing Ted Cruz which used an advert slut-shaming his wife Melania. The ad, circulated on social media, shows the former model in a nude 2000 GQ photo shoot with the words: 'Meet Melania Trump, your next First Lady. Or you could vote for Ted Cruz on Tuesday.' 'Lyin' Ted Cruz just used a picture of Melania from a G.Q. shoot in his ad. Be careful, Lyin' Ted, or I will spill the beans on your wife!', Trump wrote on Twitter. Cruz for his part, was quick to respond, saying: 'Pic of your wife nor from us. Donald, if you try to attack Heidi, you're more of a coward than I thought. #classless.' It was unclear what exactly he was referring to regarding Ted's wife Heidi Cruz, although it is well documented she suffered from depression 10 years ago, culminating in an incident in 2005 when cops found her with her heads in her hands beside a Texas expressway. A police report said she was a 'danger to herself'. People wait to vote in the U.S. presidential primary election outside a polling site in Glendale, Arizona Voters wait in line to cast their ballot in Arizona's presidential primary election A woman exits a polling site after casting a ballot in Arizona on Tuesday Voters wait in line at dawn to cast their ballot in Arizona's presidential primary election in Phoenix People wait to vote in the U.S. presidential primary election outside a polling site in Glendale, Arizona People wait to vote in the presidential primary election outside a polling site in Glendale, Arizona Daniel Stefanski waits to vote in the U.S. presidential primary election in Glendale The deadly attacks in Brussels changed the tone of voting day from the start, with Trump and his Cruz seizing the moment to bash President Barack Obama's foreign policy and tout their own tough stances of immigration. Anyone who tries to attack the United States will 'suffer greatly,' Trump said, in typically blunt tones that have shaped his populist run for the White House, propelling him from outsider to firm favorite for the Republican ticket. 'Belgium is a horror show right now. Terrible things are happening,' he said. 'We have to be very careful in the United States. We have to be very, very vigilant as to who we allow into this country.' Asking voters via Twitter to come out for him today Trump boasted, 'I have proven to be far more correct about terrorism than anybody and it's not even close.' Cruz for his part said he wanted authorities to 'patrol and secure' Muslim neighborhoods in the US. 'We need to immediately halt the flow of refugees from countries with a significant Al Qaeda or ISIS presence. We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized. 'We need to secure the southern border to prevent terrorist infiltration. And we need to execute a coherent campaign to utterly destroy ISIS.' John Kasich, the governor of Ohio and third Republican in the race, condemned Cruz's comments, saying: 'In our country, we don't want to create divisions, where we say, "You're a Muslim, we want to keep an eye on you". Just because you're a Muslim, it doesn't mean you're a radicalized Muslim who wants to destroy someone.' The super PAC Make America Awesome, which describes itself as an independent group focused on 'unconventional and cost-effective tactics' created this ad attacking Donald Trump through his wife Melania (pictured, in a GQ photo shoot in 2000) Furious: Trump hit out at Ted Cruz for the advert, saying he would 'spill the beans' on his wife Heidi Cruz. It was unclear exactly what he meant although she has a history of depression Careful Donald: Cruz quickly responded, saying if he tried to attack Heidi, he would be 'more of a coward than I thought'. He also called it 'classless' Trump touts endorsements from Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a magnet of controversy for policing practices that target immigrants, and former governor Jan Brewer, who championed a state crackdown on undocumented migrants. Anti-Trump protesters blocked a major road near Phoenix on Saturday and Trump supporters at a rally in Tucson kicked and punched a protester. When images showed Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski in the middle of the Tucson melee, appearing to collar a protester, Trump defended him. 'I give him credit for having spirit,' he said Sunday on ABC's This Week. South Africa examines debris for possible MH370 links A piece of debris found on a beach in South Africa will be analysed to see if it belongs to missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, authorities said Tuesday, after two other similar finds. The unidentified fragment was picked up near Mossel Bay, a small town in Western Cape province, the South African Civil Aviation Authority (SACAA) told AFP. "The necessary arrangements are underway for the evaluation and collection of the part, which, if it indeed belongs to an aircraft, will then be handed over to Malaysian authorities," it said. This hand out image taken by the Lotter family on March 9, 2016 and released on March 12, 2016 shows a debris found by the family off the coast of Mozambique in December 2015, that could be a part of the missing Malaysian flight MH370 Candance Lotter (HO/AFP/File) The SACAA did not reveal when the fragment was found. Mossel Bay is over 2,000 kilometres (1,250 miles) from Vilankulo, the Mozambican resort where suspected MH370 debris was found by an American amateur investigator earlier this month. News of that discovery led a South African teenager to reveal he had found another metre-long fragment on a beach in Mozambique while on holiday with his family in December. Both those pieces have been sent to Australia for expert analysis. On March 8 2014, MH370 diverted for unknown reasons while on an overnight flight from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing with 239 passengers and crew aboard. A wing fragment confirmed to be from the plane was found on the Indian Ocean island of Reunion last year. Investigators believe the plane rerouted to the southern Indian Ocean, where it crashed. Niger president scores landslide win in boycotted run-off Niger's President Mahamadou Issoufou secured 92 percent of the vote in a controversial run-off ballot boycotted by the opposition, according to official results released Tuesday. Sunday's election in the impoverished but uranium-rich country was marred by low turnout and the opposition boycott. Issoufou's sole challenger Hama Amadou, imprisoned since November on shadowy baby trafficking charges, was flown to France for medical treatment days before the second round. Niger's incumbent President and candidate to his re-election, Mahamadou Issoufou prepares to cast his ballot at the city hall in Niamey on March 20, 2016 Issouf Sanogo (AFP/File) The electoral commission said Amadou won seven percent of the ballots cast. President Issoufou responded to the announcement of his victory, saying: "During this mandate, I will devote all of my energy to respond to the aspirations of the Nigerien people." Speaking from the presidential palace, he said that security, strengthening democracy and guaranteeing food supplies would be priorities, adding that he needed "the support of all Nigeriens". "Let us come together, not waste our energy on vain quarrels," said the president, following the results of the divisive poll. The poll pitted 64-year-old Issoufou, a former mining engineer nicknamed "the Lion", against Amadou, 66, a former premier and parliament speaker known as "the Phoenix" for his ability to make political comebacks. Issoufou won 48.4 percent in the first round on February 21. Amadou scored just 17.7 percent in the initial vote. Voter participation was a crucial issue following the opposition's boycott call. The COPA 2016 opposition coalition said voter turnout was a mere 11 percent nationwide, despite an initial official estimate of 56 percent. - 'Pointless quarrels' - Amadou was forced to campaign from behind bars after being detained on November 14 on baby-trafficking charges he says were concocted to keep him out of the race. Issoufou, who took office in 2011, campaigned on pledges to bring prosperity to the country and vowed to prevent further attacks from jihadists in its vast remote north, and from Nigeria's Boko Haram Islamists to the south. However, just three days before the second round contest, Niger suffered two jihadist attacks -- one in the west claimed by Al-Qaeda's north African affiliate which killed three gendarmes and another by Boko Haram in which a senior army officer died. Religious experts have warned that the ultra-conservative Wahhabist strain of Islam is taking hold in urban areas although Niger's government says it is "closely monitoring" the issue. The run-up to the first-round presidential vote was marred by violence between supporters of the rival camps, the arrest of several leading political personalities and a government announcement that it had foiled a coup bid. However, aside from the jihadist attacks, the run-up to the second round passed off largely without incident. Addressing reporters on Sunday, Issoufou said: "We should avoid pointless quarrels. The winner, whoever he is, must think about bringing Nigeriens together beyond his own camp, because we face significant challenges." The West African state, where three-quarters of the population live on less than $2 a day, has only had a multi-party democracy since 1990. Uranium is the country's main export, with Niger ranked fourth globally after Kazakhstan, Canada and Australia. After a tussle over the future of uranium mining, Niger and French nuclear energy group Areva agreed a deal on two uranium mines in May 2014. In late 2011, Niger officially became an oil-exporting country, following the inauguration of a refinery in Olelewa, central-eastern Niger, that is run by the state with help from a Chinese company. UN lifts N.Korea sanctions imposed on four ships The UN Security Council agreed Tuesday to a request from China to lift sanctions imposed on four ships that had been blacklisted over North Korea's weapons program, diplomats said. They were affected when the UN Security Council on March 2 imposed tough sanctions on North Korea in response to its fourth nuclear test and rocket launch, widely seen as a disguised ballistic missile test. Tuesday's move affects four of 31 ships linked to North Korean shipping firm Ocean Maritime Management, blacklisted for ties to Pyongyang's nuclear and weapons programs. UN Security Council agreed to a request from China to lift sanctions imposed on four ships blacklisted for ties to Pyongyang's nuclear and weapons programs Mark Garten (United Nations/AFP/File) "The council has agreed to the request," a council diplomat told AFP. China gave assurances that the four vessels would not use North Korean crews. The March 2 resolution was drafted by the United States but backed by China, North Korea's sole ally and main trading partner. It required countries to inspect all cargo to and from North Korea, impose trade restrictions and bar vessels suspected of carrying illegal goods for North Korea from ports. Yemen FM '99%' sure of peace talks this month Yemen's foreign minister said on Tuesday he was confident that UN-brokered peace talks would take place in Kuwait by the end of this month. Asked if the discussions would happen before April, Abdulmalek al-Mikhlafi replied that he was "99 percent" sure that the talks would go ahead. On Monday, a Yemeni government official told AFP that the peace negotiations would also be accompanied by a ceasefire in the war-torn country. A fighter loyal to Yemen's President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi guards a position in Shabwa, east of Aden, Yemen on December 21, 2015 Saleh al-Obiedi (AFP/File) Mikhlafi's confirmation came as he attended the Al-Jazeera Forum in the Qatari capital. "We are going to go to these peace talks and we will say we are ready to go anywhere and we are hopeful that we are going to reach a solution," he had said at the conference on Monday. Yemen has been gripped by violence since September 2014, when the Iran-backed Huthi rebels stormed Sanaa and forced the internationally recognised government to flee south to the second city of Aden. The government has declared Aden the temporary capital, but it has struggled to secure the city, where jihadists frequently target officials. Unidentified gunmen on Tuesday shot dead an officer in the presidential guards in Aden before fleeing, a security official said. Mikhlafi's comments come almost a year since a Saudi-led coalition launched a military campaign in support of the Yemeni government. President Abedrabbo Mansour Hadi and members of the Yemeni government now spend most of their time in Riyadh. Hadi on Tuesday held talks with UN envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed who said he was "optimistic" about the talks, according to the official sabanew.net website. "We are working for peace with the cooperation of all" parties in the Yemeni conflict, the website quoted him as saying. Netanyahu hopes for continued US support for Israel at UN Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu expressed hope Tuesday that the United States will continue to support Israel at the United Nations by opposing all resolutions on the creation of a Palestinian state. Addressing the annual conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), Washington's most influential pro-Israel lobbying group, Netanyahu also said he was ready to "immediately" resume direct negotiations with the Palestinians. "A Security Council resolution to pressure Israel would further harden Palestinian positions and thereby could actually kill the chances of peace for many, many years," Netanyahu said via satellite video link from Jerusalem. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks via a satellite during the American Israel Public Affairs Committee Policy Conference in Washington, DC, March 22, 2016 Saul Loeb (AFP) "And that is why I hope the United States will maintain its long-standing position to reject such a UN resolution." The Israeli-Palestinian peace process has stalled completely since US mediation efforts failed in April 2014, and relations between Netanyahu and US President Barack Obama are notoriously rocky. Since then, Israel has worried that Washington, frustrated by the lack of progress since 2009, would abandon its historic support for Israel in the final months of the Obama administration in international bodies such as the UN's Security Council. The White House warned last year that it would reassess its policies and might withdraw its diplomatic cover at the world body. As Vice President Joe Biden headed to Israel earlier this month, the Wall Street Journal quoted senior US officials as saying the White House was working on plans for reviving peace talks and for a possible resolution, which could be outlined at Obama's final appearance at the UN General Assembly in the autumn. The United States has traditionally vetoed resolutions at the UN Security Council opposed by Israel. Netanyahu told an audience of 15,000 at AIPAC that "peace won't come through the UN Security Council but through direct negotiations between the parties." Obama hosts dissidents in Cuba but rivals slam 'token' gesture President Barack Obama praised the bravery of Cuban dissidents Tuesday in a meeting at the US embassy in Havana, although opponents back home dismissed the event as a "token" gesture. On the last day of a landmark trip that has seen him press for democracy on the communist-run island, Obama hosted more than a dozen figures from Cuba's embattled civil society, the White House said. "All of the individuals around this table have shown extraordinary courage," Obama told the group. "They have spoken out on behalf of the issues that they care deeply about." US President Barack Obama delivers a speech at the Gran Teatro de la Habana in Havana on March 22, 2016 Nicholas Kamm (AFP) The group included Berta Soler, of the opposition movement "Ladies in White," who was briefly detained by police on Sunday as Obama arrived, and former hunger striker Guillermo Coco Farinas. After the meeting, which lasted just over an hour, dissident Manuel Cuesta told AFP that it had been "excellent." "The president showed that he was very receptive and patient. He listened to all the different opinions of the participants," Cuesta said. Obama said the meeting was important to show that his trip was not only about meeting President Raul Castro "or government-to-government relations." "Much of this is a matter of us being able to hear directly from the Cuban people and making sure that they have a voice and making sure that their concerns and their ideas are helping to shape US policy." Obama earlier made an address to the Cuban people that was broadcast live on national television and served as the capstone of a historic visit that critics say gave too much away to Castro with too little in return. The Republican party's national committee said Obama's visit was an "embarrassing display of weakness and lack of moral clarity." "Absent any real progress on human rights or the release of political prisoners, President Obama's visit to Cuba will be remembered as a historic mistake that legitimized an oppressive Communist regime. "A token meeting with pre-screened dissidents cant distract from the fact that political prisoners continue to languish in jail for expressing their beliefs." The White House believes that forcing Cuba to open up will bring democratic change. Castro answered angrily when asked about the detention of political prisoners at a press conference Monday. "After this meeting is over, you can give me a list of political prisoners and if we have those political prisoners, they will all be released before the night ends," he said, sticking to Havana's insistence that no one is imprisoned for political reasons -- only for crimes. Europeans ignored danger, criticised Israel instead: minister An Israeli minister on Tuesday suggested Europeans had ignored the danger of "Islamic terror cells" and focused on criticising Israel instead, in a statement in response to the Brussels attacks. While offering condolences over the deadly bombings, Science, Technology and Space Minister Ofir Akunis also hit out at Europe over its labelling of products from Israeli settlements in the occupied territories. "I will repeat: many in Europe have preferred to occupy themselves with the folly of condemning Israel, labelling products, and boycotts," Akunis, an ally of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, said on his Facebook page. Likud Knesset member Ofir Akunis (R) talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (L) during a meeting at the parliament in Jerusalem on May 13, 2015 Gali Tibbon (AFP/File) "In this time, underneath the nose of the continent's citizens, thousands of extremist Islamic terror cells have grown. There were those who repressed and mocked whoever tried to give warning. There were those who underestimated. "To our sorrow, the reality has struck the lives of dozens of innocent people, powerfully and fatally," the minister from Netanyahu's rightwing Likud party said. Opposition leader Isaac Herzog slammed Akunis accusing him of being "condescending" on his Facebook page. "Enough! Where does this miserable cynicism come from... Together, without being condescending, we must unite to defeat terrorism," said Herzog. Israeli President Reuven Rivlin sent a message of condolences to King Philip of Belgium saying the "horrible events prove once more that we must all unite in the struggle against those who use violence to stifle liberties". Netanyahu also extended his condolences to the families of the victims during a visit to Washington, also calling for "unity to defeat terrorism". Tuesday's bombings of Brussels airport and a metro train killed around 35 people and wounded more than 200 others. In November, new EU guidelines were issued forcing member countries to label imported goods from Israeli settlements in the occupied territories, sparking condemnation from Netanyahu. Several Americans wounded in Brussels attacks Several Americans were injured in Tuesday's attacks in Brussels, officials said, including a Mormon missionary who had a brush with terror in two similar assaults. Mason Wells, 19, was among three US missionaries from Utah who were seriously wounded in the blasts at the Belgian capital's airport, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said in a statement. Wells, Richard Norby, 66, and Joseph Empey, 20, were accompanying to the airport a French colleague who was heading to the United States and was also wounded, the church said. Police officers and investigators stand outside the Maelbeek - Maalbeek subway station in Brussels on March 22, 2016, following in a series of attacks Philippe Huguen (AFP) US media reports said that in a dark twist of fate, Wells had a similarly close call three years ago while in Boston accompanying his mother who was running the marathon. The event was the target of a terror attack that killed three and wounded scores more. NBC News, quoting Wells's family, said he was also in Paris in November when the French capital was rocked by a series of attacks. Utah's Deseret News daily quoted a friend of the Wells family as saying the teen and Empey had both suffered burns and other injuries. Wells "has burns to his hands and legs and some to his face," Lloyd Coleman told the paper. "Most of the damage is around his foot and ankle. A heel took the most damage, and the doctors are repairing it, but the family doesn't know how bad the injury is." The US Air Force said one of its service members and several of his relatives were also injured in Tuesday's terror attacks in the Belgian capital that killed around 35 people. "The United States Air Force can confirm that one US Air Force service member from Joint Force Command Brunssum, the Netherlands, was injured in today's horrific attack at the airport in Brussels," a statement said, referring to a NATO command. "The airman's family was also present and has sustained various injuries. Due to privacy concerns, we are not releasing the status of their injuries." 'Captain' accused in deadly Med migrant shipwreck just a passenger: lawyer The man accused of being the captain of a migrant ship which sank in the Mediterranean last year killing over 700 people insists he was no different from the other passengers, his lawyer told AFP Tuesday. The closed-door preliminary hearing in Catania was held to allow the judge to rule on a request from the defence for the black box of a Portuguese freighter, the King Jacob, to be analysed -- a request that was denied. The King Jacob had rushed to the overcrowded trawler's aid in the early hours of April 19, but survivors say the captain of the migrant boat collided with the freighter, sending its passengers over to one side and causing the shipwreck. A man identified as Mohammed Ali Malek (R), one of the survivors and understood to be the captain of a boat that overturned off the coast of Libya, on an Italian Coast Guard vessel Alberto Pizzoli (AFP/File) Tunisian Mohammed Ali Malek was arrested after he was pulled to safety with 27 other men -- the sole survivors -- and charged with multiple manslaughter. Those who made it to shore said the boat may have been carrying up to 800 people, and that Malek caused the crash. Malek, 27, who was cuffed along with his alleged second mate, Syrian Mahmoud Bikhit, is accused of causing a shipwreck and people smuggling. But his lawyer Massimo Ferrante said Malek said "he was just a migrant on the boat". "There are smugglers and then there are smugglers," he added, suggesting Malek was not the big fish police thought. "Most of the time these are migrants picked in the moment (to be captains). They are given a satellite phone, a compass and are forbidden on pain of death to turn back," he said on the sidelines of the trial. The trial is being fast-tracked with the prosecution to present its case on May 17, after which it will be the defence's turn. Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi last year asked the navy to recover the victims from around the boat and retrieve the ship -- which lies 380 metres (around 1,245 feet) down off Libya -- so the majority of the bodies, those trapped inside, can be buried. Hamas stages military exercises to test Gaza readiness Hamas staged major military exercises Tuesday to test its readiness in the event of another Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip, which has been ravaged by three wars since 2008. The exercises involving 1,000 police and emergency services personnel were not meant to be seen as an "announcement of war", said a spokesman for the Islamist movement's interior ministry. For the duration of the exercises, however, a state of emergency was observed in Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya, bordering Israel in the north, and Jabalia farther to the south. Members of the Ezzedine al-Qassam Brigades, the military wing of the Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas, at attention in the southern Gaza Strip on March 4, 2016 Said Khatib (AFP/File) The media was barred from approaching the area, but loud explosions could be heard from a distance, with hospitals and schools placed on alert. Israel and Palestinian militants in the Gaza Strip have fought three wars since 2008, including a devastating 50-day conflict in 2014. Morocco closes UN military liaison office in W. Sahara The United Nations said Tuesday it has closed its military liaison office in Dakhla, Western Sahara at the request of Morocco and withdrew three military observers posted there. It was the latest twist in a running dispute between the world body and Morocco, which was angered when UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recently referred to the "occupation" of the disputed territory. The three observers were transferred Monday to Ausserd in the western part of the Moroccan-controlled territory, UN spokesman Farhan Haq said. Rabat had given them 72 hours to leave. An UN vehicle arrives to the headquarters of the United Nations Mission for the Referendum in Western Sahara (MINURSO) on May 13, 2013 in Laayoune Fadel Senna (AFP/File) Haq said the Moroccan request was "the first request directly targeting the military component." The Moroccans on Sunday expelled most of the civilian experts attached to the UN mission in Western Sahara -- more than 70 people who were sent to the Canary Islands or sent on leave in their home countries. "It is making the direct dialogue with the Royal Moroccan Army more difficult," particularly in monitoring a ceasefire, he said. The UN mission, which has about 500 civilian and military personnel, was established in 1991 to monitor the ceasefire and prepare for elections in Western Sahara. But Morocco, which annexed Western Sahara in 1975, has resisted an election and instead proposes self-government under Moroccan sovereignty. Diplomats say the United States is pressing for a Security Council statement that calls for a lowering of tension and resolving the dispute, without taking sides. France, meanwhile, is intensifying efforts to reopen a dialogue between the United Nations and Rabat. Senegal votes to limit presidential terms to five years Senegal has voted overwhelmingly in favour of limiting presidential terms to five years, the country's interior minister said Tuesday, after a weekend referendum widely seen as a test of the president's popularity. Interior minister Abdoulaye Daouda Diallo said that 62.9 percent voted "Yes" on constitutional reforms while 37.1 per cent voted against it. Turnout was 40.42 percent of eligible voters, he told a press conference. Polling station officials sit behind a ballot box during a referendum on constitutional reforms in Dakar on March 20, 2016 Seyllou (AFP/File) The official referendum results will be published on Friday by the country's electoral commission and require constitutional court approval. President Macky Sall was elected in 2012 partly on a platform to reduce the presidential mandate from seven years to five. Sall had said reducing his own mandate would set an example within Africa, where many leaders cling to power beyond their allotted term. But Senegal's top court rejected his proposal in February, triggering the referendum to allow the reforms to come into force once Sall leaves office. Opposition parties and several civil society groups urged a "No" vote, arguing that Sall reneged on his promise to leave office early and criticising the referendum as a cop-out. Orbital set to send resupply mission to space station NASA partner Orbital ATK was readying to send its Cygnus cargo ship to the International Space Station on Tuesday, a resupply mission that will include an unprecedented fire experiment after the craft leaves the orbiting outpost. The unmanned spacecraft is due to blast off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, atop a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket at 11:05 pm (0305 GMT Wednesday), the start of a 30-minute launch window. There is a 90 percent chance that the weather will be favorable at the time of the planned launch, according to forecasts. The Orbital ATK's Cygnus cargo ship is seen just before capture as it arrives at the International Space Station December 9, 2015 - (NASA TV/AFP/File) Cygnus is expected to enter into orbit about 20 minutes after liftoff and will reach the International Space Station on Saturday, where it will dock with the help of the station's robotic arm in a procedure due to start at about 1040 GMT, according to NASA. The launch will mark Orbital's fifth supply mission to the orbiting laboratory, as part of a of a $1.9 billion contract with NASA to deliver necessities to the astronauts living in space. It will be the second since December, which marked the resumption of the company's missions after an Orbital Antares rocket packed with thousands of pounds of supplies exploded seconds after takeoff in October 2014. Orbital is due to carry out two other ISS resupply missions this year for NASA, with the next one to take place in early summer from the US space agency's Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia with an Antares rocket. Tuesday's launch will be the second flight to the ISS of an enhanced Cygnus spacecraft, which will carry 7,900 pounds (3.6 metric tons) of supplies to the station -- including food, water, clothes for the ISS crew of six astronauts, as well as material to support dozens of science and research probes. "It's like Christmas when a supply craft arrives," said Orbital's Dan Tani, a former astronaut. "It's always fun to watch another vehicle approach and then it's like opening a box of goodies and finding some stuff you've been wanting and some surprises you didn't know about." - 'Crucial' fire test - Cygnus will stay at the ISS until May. Loaded with trash and once it is at a safe distance from the station, NASA engineers will then set off a blaze inside the capsule to see how large flames behave in space. NASA has set off tiny controlled fires in space in the past, but never tested how large flames react inside an orbiting space capsule. "Understanding fire in space has been the focus of many experiments over the years... while many small, centimeter-sized fires have been lit in space before, to really understand fire, you've got to look at a more realistic size," said Gary Ruff, one of the engineers heading the experiment at NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. "The investigation is crucial for the safety of current and future space missions." The Cygnus cargo also includes an instrument, that, for the first time, will allow experts to evaluate, from space, the chemical composition of meteors entering Earth's atmosphere. The pressurized vessel is also transporting a new 3D printer and another scientific highlight includes a so-called Gecko Gripper, a mechanism similar to the tiny hairs on the feet of geckos that makes it possible for them to stick to surfaces. This technology could one day be used on the hands and feet of robots that would move along the exterior of spacecraft to carry out inspections and repairs. US gun-loving mom shot by her 4-year-old could face charge A Florida gun activist accidentally shot by her four-year-old son could be charged with allowing him to get hold of the weapon, authorities said Tuesday. "It is of paramount importance to make certain that guns do not fall into the hands of children. It was very clear that there was a violation here," said Captain Gator DeLoach of the Putnam County Sheriff's Office. Jamie Gilt, 31, who had boasted online about her toddler's shooting prowess, was cruising down a major thoroughfare with her son in the back when he shot her March 8. The bullet went through the seat cushion. Jamie Gilt, 31, who had boasted online about her toddler's shooting prowess, was cruising down a major thoroughfare with her son in the back when he shot her Joe Raedle (Getty/AFP/File) Prosecutors ultimately will decide if Gilt faces a charge of "unsafe storage of firearm" -- a second degree misdemeanor. She is recovering at a Florida hospital in stable condition, and her son is with relatives. The mother and boy were on their way to pick up a horse, said police, who rushed to Gilt's aid after a police officer slowed to check why the vehicle had stopped. The weapon was a .45-caliber handgun the boy found on the floor of the pickup truck. FBI might have way to unlock attacker's iPhone without Apple LOS ANGELES (AP) A much-anticipated court hearing on the federal government's effort to force Apple Inc. to unlock the iPhone used by one of the shooters in the San Bernardino terror attack was abruptly vacated Monday after the FBI revealed it may have a way to access data without the company's help. Federal prosecutors made the surprising announcement on the eve of Tuesday's hearing in U.S. District Court in Riverside, California. In court papers they said the FBI has been researching methods to access the data on Syed Rizwan Farook's encrypted phone since obtaining it on Dec. 3, the day after the attack. "An outside party" came forward over the weekend and showed the FBI a possible method, the government said in court papers requesting the hearing be postponed. Authorities need time to determine "whether it is a viable method that will not compromise data" on the phone. FILE - This Feb. 17, 2016 file photos an iPhone is seen in Washington. The dispute over whether Apple must help the FBI hack into a terror suspect's iPhone is about to play out in a Southern California courtroom. The hearing Tuesday, March 22, in U.S. District Court in Riverside is the first in the battle that has seen Cook and FBI Director James Comey spar over issues of privacy and national security. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster,File) If viable, "it should eliminate the need for the assistance from Apple," according to the filing. The government did not identify the third party or explain what the proposed method entailed. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym granted that request and ordered the government to file a status report by April 5. Pym also stayed her Feb. 16 order compelling Apple to create software that would disable security features on the phone, including one that erases all information if a passcode is incorrectly entered more than 10 times. In a conference call with reporters, Apple attorneys said it's premature to declare victory in the case because it's possible that authorities could come back in a few weeks and insist they still need the company's help. The attorneys spoke under an Apple policy that wouldn't allow them to be quoted by name. The company hopes the government will tell Apple about whatever method it uses to access the phone's encrypted files. But the attorneys said it may be up to the FBI to decide whether to share the information. The fact that a third party may have found a way into the phone without Apple's help appears to contradict every sworn affidavit and filing put that the Justice Department has put forward in the last month. The government has argued in each of its filings that Apple's help is necessary and that the company was the only entity that could provide investigators with what was needed. FBI Director James Comey told the House Judiciary Committee in sworn testimony earlier this month that agency investigators had approached even the National Security Agency for help but did not have success. Apple has previously said in court filings that the government did not exhaust all its options, and lawmakers have criticized the FBI for not doing more to try to crack the iPhone itself before seeking Apple's help. "To me, it suggests that either the FBI doesn't understand the technology or they weren't giving us the whole truth when they said there is no other possible way" of examining the phone without Apple's help, said Alex Abdo, staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union. "Both of those are scary to me." The ACLU has filed a court brief supporting Apple's position. Robert Cattanach, a former U.S. Department of Justice attorney who handles cyber-security cases for the Dorsey & Whitney law firm, said the government would likely not have disclosed it had a lead on possibly unlocking the phone unless it was almost certain the method would work. That's because the disclosure weakens the government's case by introducing doubt that it could only access the phone with Apple's help, he said. "They've created ambiguity in a place where they've previously said there is none," he said. Prosecutors have argued that the phone used by Farook probably contains evidence of the Dec. 2 attack in which the county food inspector and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, slaughtered 14 at a holiday luncheon attended by many of his work colleagues. The two were killed in a police shootout hours later. The FBI has said the couple was inspired by the Islamic State group. Investigators still are trying to piece together what happened and find out if there were collaborators. The couple destroyed other phones they left behind, and the FBI has been unable to circumvent the passcode needed to unlock the iPhone, which is owned by San Bernardino County and was given to Farook for his job. Apple has argued that the government was seeking "dangerous power" that exceeds the authority of the All Writs Act of 1789 it cited, and violates the company's constitutional rights, harms the Apple brand and threatens the trust of its customers to protect their privacy. The 18th-century law has been used on other cases to require third parties to help law enforcement in investigations. It's not clear what method the government now wants to test. But even as the FBI has insisted that only Apple is able to provide the help it needs, some technical experts have argued there are other options. The most viable method involves making a copy of the iPhone's flash memory drive, said Jonathan Zdziarski, a computer expert who specializes in iPhone forensics. That would allow investigators to make multiple tries at guessing the iPhone's passcode. A security feature in the phone is designed to automatically erase the data if someone makes 10 wrong guesses in a row. But if that happens, Zdziarski said, investigators could theoretically restore the data from the backup copy they have created. The data itself would remain encrypted until the phone is unlocked, but it would remain viable while investigators continued to guess the passcode, he added. "It's a lot more involved than it sounds," Zdziarski cautioned, and no one has demonstrated that it would work in this case. Some experts have also suggested that investigators could use lasers and acid to deconstruct the phone's memory chip, in order to physically examine the encrypted data and the encryption algorithm, in hopes of cracking the code. But hardware experts say that method has a high risk of destroying the memory during the process. The notion of copying the flash memory was raised by U.S. Rep. Darrell Issa, a California Republican who previously ran a car alarm business, during a congressional hearing earlier this month, when Comey insisted that his bureau had explored all other possibilities. It has also been promoted by technical experts advising the ACLU. ___ Associated Press writers Eric Tucker and Tami Abdollah in Washington, D.C, and Sudhin Thanawala in San Francisco contributed to this report. Clinton, Trump pad leads with Arizona victories WASHINGTON (AP) Under a shadow of overseas violence, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton padded their leads on Tuesday with victories in Arizona as the 2016 presidential contest turned into a clash over who could best deal with Islamic extremism. Long lines and high interest marked primary elections across Arizona, Utah and Idaho that were largely an afterthought for much of the day as the world grappled with a new wave of bloody attacks in Europe. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for a series of bombings in Brussels that left dozens dead and many more wounded. Yet there was a frenzy of activity in Utah as voters lined up to caucus and the state Democratic Party's website crashed due to high traffic. In Arizona, voters waited two hours to cast primary ballots in some cases, while police were called to help with traffic control and at least one polling place ran out of ballots. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton speaks during a campaign event at the Boeing Machinists' union hall Tuesday, March 22, 2016, in Everett, Wash. (AP Photo/Elaine Thompson) Trump and Clinton both enjoyed overwhelming delegate leads heading into Tuesday's contests. The delegates will select the presidential nominees for each party at the national conventions in July. Trump's Arizona victory gives him all of the state's 58 delegates, a setback for his underdog challengers. On the Democratic side, Arizona's delegates are awarded proportionally. Arizona and Utah featured elections for both parties on Tuesday, while Idaho Democrats also held presidential caucuses. Democrat Bernie Sanders and Republicans Ted Cruz and John Kasich hoped to reverse the sense of inevitability taking hold around both party front-runners. Anti-Trump Republicans are running out of time to prevent him from securing the 1,237 delegates needed to claim the nomination. With Arizona's results factored in, Trump now has 739 delegates, Cruz has 425 and Kasich has 143. As voters flooded to the polls, the presidential candidates lashed out at each other's foreign policy prescriptions, showcasing sharp contrasts in confronting the threat of Islamic extremism. Trump, the Republican front-runner, charged that the United States has "no choice" but to adopt his proposed temporary ban on Muslims entering the country to prevent the spread of terrorism. He described as "eggheads" those who respect international law's ban on torture, the use of which he argued would have prevented the Brussels attacks. "We can be nice about it, and we can be politically correct about it, but we're being fools," Trump said in an interview on CNN. "We're going to have to be very strong, or we're not going to have a country left." Clinton and Trump's Republican rivals, meanwhile, questioned the Republican front-runner's temperament and readiness to serve as commander in chief, and condemned his calls to diminish U.S. involvement with NATO. "I see the challenge ahead as one where we're bringing the world together, where we're leading the world against these terrorist networks," Clinton said Tuesday at a union hall in Everett, Washington state. "Some of my opponents want to build walls and shut the world off. Well, you tell me, how high does the wall have to be to keep the Internet out?" Cruz seized on Trump's foreign policy inexperience while declaring that the U.S. is at war with the Islamic State group. "He doesn't have the minimal knowledge one would expect from a staffer at the State Department, much less from the commander in chief," he told reporters. "The stakes are too high for learning on the job." The ultraconservative Texas senator also issued a statement following the Brussels attacks that it was time for law enforcement to "patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized," without providing more details. In interviews on CNN, Trump said he supported Cruz's surveillance proposal "100 percent," while Ohio Gov. John Kasich opposed it. The debate between Trump and Cruz took a detour late Tuesday night as they engaged in an unusual Twitter exchange about their wives. The billionaire warned Cruz he would "spill the beans on your wife" after an anti-Trump outside group ran an ad in Utah featuring Trump's wife, Melania, in a risque photo shoot that ran in GQ magazine more than a decade ago. Cruz shot back with a tweet of his own, saying in part, "Donald, if you try to attack Heidi, you're more of a coward than I thought." Trump's brash tone has turned off some Republican voters in heavily Mormon Utah, where preference polls suggest Cruz has a chance to claim more than 50 percent of the caucus vote and with it, all 40 of Utah's delegates. Trump could earn some delegates should Cruz fail to exceed 50 percent, in which case the delegates would be awarded based on each candidate's vote total. On the Democratic side, Clinton's delegate advantage is even greater than Trump's. The former secretary of state is coming off last week's five-state sweep of Sanders, who remains popular among his party's most liberal voters but needs to improve his performance if he expects to stay relevant. The Vermont senator, now trailing Clinton by more than 300 pledged delegates, has targeted Tuesday's races as the start of a comeback tour. Clinton stands to gain at least 40 of Arizona's 75 delegates, compared to at least 16 for Sanders. The former first lady now has 1,203 elegates to Sanders' 860, based on primaries and caucuses. It takes 2,383 delegates to win the nomination. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at the 2016 American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference at the Verizon Center, on Monday, March 21, 2016, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) People wait in line for the county-wide Democratic caucus in Boise, Idaho, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. (AP Photo/Otto Kitsinger) People assemble at a Republican caucus site Tuesday, March 22, 2016, in Salt Lake City. (AP Photo/John Locher) Fearful of China's reach abroad, dissidents try risky voyage BANGKOK (AP) Dong Junming was detained several times in his Chinese homeland before he and his family fled to Bangkok in February 2015. A year later, he was preparing to make a more desperate journey to evade Chinese authorities who still felt dangerously close. In the months since he arrived in Thailand, dozens of Chinese asylum-seekers have been sent back home by Thai authorities. Other dissidents have simply disappeared from Thailand and Hong Kong before re-emerging in mainland Chinese custody. Beijing appears increasingly eager to snatch back countrymen who have attempted to escape its grasp. Dong is a practitioner of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which is banned in China and whose members are persecuted there. He, his wife and daughter have a long wait to obtain refugee status and get resettled in a third country they won't even interview with the U.N. refugee agency until at least 2017. In the meantime, he's unable to work legally and his family's travel documents have expired. In this photo taken March 2, 2016, and provided by Zhang Hong, Chinese asylum seekers, from left to right: Dong Junming, Li Mingwei, Li Shaojun, Song Zhiyu, Li Yusheng, Li Xiaolong, Gu Qiao, Li Weimin and Zhang Wei; pose for a photo in front of the yacht they used in a failed attempt to reach New Zealand from Thailand after they ran ashore in Chumphon province in southern Thailand. Fearful of China's reach abroad, several Chinese asylum seekers in Thailand attempted a risky sea voyage to New Zealand but turned back after their boat was lashed by violent seas. (Zhang Hong via AP) So Dong decided to flee once more. This time it would be by boat, to New Zealand, some 6,000 miles away. The country is so isolated that, as far as authorities know, not one refugee boat has successfully reached its shores. He would leave with six other Chinese adults, including a couple taking their two sons, ages 1 and 7. They believed New Zealand offered them the best chance of gaining refugee status. Dong, as well as eight other Chinese dissidents living in Thailand who did not make the boat journey, described lives of anxiety and frustration bordering on outright despair in interviews with The Associated Press. Though free and under no immediate deportation threat, Dong said he feared what the future might bring. So when offered a berth on the yacht in January, he took it. "It's highly risky out there on the ocean, but we are so fearful here in Thailand that I thought I should take the risk," he said. Dong and fellow travelers boarded the yacht the night of Feb. 29. The captain was democracy activist Li Xiaolong, the father of both children aboard. He bought the secondhand vessel, which also carried his wife and two brothers. They had a month's supply of food and water. Their confidence was boosted by a fellow activist who succeeded in making a shorter sea voyage from Thailand to Australia. They believed their own journey would be smooth. They were wrong. ___ Fears over the growing reach of Chinese security services crystallized among many Chinese dissidents with the recent disappearances of people associated with a Hong Kong bookstore that sold gossipy titles on the lives of Chinese leaders. One of the missing was believed to have been abducted from Thailand, another from Hong Kong, though both have since said they voluntarily returned to mainland China. Asylum-seekers in Thailand were more alarmed that the Thai government sent back about 100 asylum-seekers from China's Turkic Muslim Uighur minority last summer, and repatriated two Chinese dissidents in November, saying they violated immigration rules. Critics viewed Thailand's military-led government as catering to China, its biggest trading partner. With President Xi Jinping at China's helm and brimming with confidence, the communist government is pursuing greater cooperation with police abroad. One aspect of the campaign popular within China is Beijing's Skynet operation, which seeks the return of corrupt Chinese officials and others accused of absconding overseas with ill-gotten gains. Since October 2014, China has seen the return of 124 corruption suspects who had fled to 34 countries, the country's chief justice told the national legislature this month. That campaign has had limited success in the U.S., which has no extradition treaty with China and requires evidence that the offences they are accused of by China would also constitute a crime in America. Beijing has raised the heat not only on corruption suspects but also on dissidents who fled China. Forced repatriations and alleged abductions have particularly rattled Chinese asylum-seekers who have congregated in Thailand, where the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees has an office. "Beijing has become so ruthless that it grants us no way out at all," said Hu Junxiong, a democracy activist who fled to Thailand last year, after Chinese authorities detained him 35 days for helping other activists with computer and technology issues. "It won't let us flee, but stays on our tail to catch us and bring us back to China, where we surely will be met with harsh persecutions and end up in misery," Hu said in an interview from Bangkok. ___ The yacht set off from Pattaya, southeast of Bangkok. Dong's wife and daughter stayed in Thailand because the family's funds were limited and, since their visas had expired, they were at risk of being detained by Thai authorities. The next day, the vessel was battling waves up to 5 meters (16 feet) tall, Dong said. About 135 kilometers (84 miles) into the journey, a problem emerged with the yacht's steering. One of those aboard managed to fix it, but after another 100 kilometers (62 miles) the waves returned and the rudder went out again, Dong recalled. "The boat was spinning, and it was shaking violently," Dong said. "We were still 100 kilometers (62 miles) from the closest shore." They turned the boat toward shore and manually operated the rudder. Their distress calls went unanswered. "I was extremely fearful," Dong said. "We were in lifejackets, and I was so sick I could not get up." The baby and his brother were quiet, Dong recalled. "The little one had his eyes wide open and did not cry at all. The older one was simply lying there. I did not know if he was scared or was feeling numb. Their mother was vomiting and could not do anything." Deep into the night of March 1, the yacht ran aground in southern Thailand's Chumphon province. The boat was taking on water and listed on the shore. After waves gradually pushed it to an upright position, the adults waded to land, fetched the children and called for help, Dong said. "Our boat could have sunk out there," Dong said in an interview from Bangkok. "We are lucky to be alive." ___ Thailand is home to thousands of asylum-seekers from China and elsewhere, many of whom live under murky legal status. Even those who enter the country legally often overstay their visas. Thailand has no law managing asylum-seekers fleeing conflict and persecution. Activists say Thai authorities used to look the other way on Chinese asylum-seekers, but that changed after the May 2014 military coup. Thai government spokesman Sansern Kaewkamnerd said authorities follow the rules when sending illegal immigrants back to their countries of origin. "If we don't, Thailand might become a hub for smugglers to transport people to third countries and we wouldn't want that," he said. Vivian Tan, spokesperson for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees in Thailand, said asylum-seekers are often caught up in routine illegal-immigration crackdowns. Although the U.N. office has no control over how Thailand enforces immigration rules, it works with authorities to help asylum-seekers avoid being detained, Tan said. Some Chinese refugees fear Chinese agents as well as Thai authorities. Hu, who traveled to Thailand without identification last year, said someone claiming to be a Chinese diplomat called him and said the embassy monitored local activists' phone calls. He said the caller asked him to inform on fellow asylum-seekers. "I think it's part of (Beijing's) plan to turn us against each other," Hu said. The Chinese Embassy in Bangkok said it had no knowledge of Chinese authorities conducting surveillance on dissidents in Thailand. As they wait years to be recognized as refugees, Chinese asylum-seekers say they survive by dipping into meager savings and practicing extreme frugality. They avoid police at all costs, even if they're victimized. On the night the ill-fated journey to New Zealand ended, however, hiding was not an option. ___ Of the seven adults who took part in the failed voyage, two including Li's wife, Gu Qiao were detained for not having valid documents; they remained in Thai custody this week. Li, the trip's organizer, was charged with aiding undocumented immigrants but later released on bail. The 1-year-old traveler is also in state custody. The 7-year-old was returned to Li's brothers, who also had been on the boat. Like Dong and one other passenger, the brothers were freed when their documents were found to be in order. "Now, I am back to live in fear again," Dong said. "I am back to wait for the U.N. interview, and I feel hopeless." His family lives as simply as they can. Once rent is paid, their monthly budget leaves them with just 500 baht ($14), his wife, Wang Shumei said. They pick through vegetables discarded from farmers' markets, and sometimes sellers give them food out of pity, she said. And they practice Falun Gong meditation exercises. "Should there be another opportunity, I would leave Thailand again," Dong said. "And many of us have the same thought." ___ Didi Tang reported from Beijing. AP writers Nattasuda Anusonadisai in Bangkok, Kelvin K. Chan in Hong Kong and Nick Perry in Wellington, New Zealand, contributed to this report. In this photo taken on March 3, 2016, and provided by Zhang Hong, Gu Qiao holds her one-year-old child Li Yusheng at a police station in Chumphon province in southern Thailand, after a failed attempt to reach New Zealand by boat. Gu and her child were among nine Chinese asylum seekers who attempted a risky sea voyage to New Zealand but turned back after their boat was lashed by violent seas. (Zhang Hong via AP) In this photo taken March 3, 2016, and provided by Zhang Hong, Song Zhiyu, front, and Li Xiaolong sit at a police station in Chumphon province, southern Thailand, after a failed attempt to reach New Zealand by boat. Song and Li were among nine Chinese asylum seekers who attempted a risky sea voyage to New Zealand but turned back after their boat was lashed by violent seas. (Zhang Hong via AP) In this Friday, March 11, 2016, photo, Chinese asylum seeker Dong Junming pauses during an interview with the Associated Press in Bangkok, Thailand. Dong, a practitioner of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which is banned in China, was among nine Chinese asylum seekers who attempted a risky sea voyage to New Zealand but turned back after their boat was lashed by violent seas. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak) In this March 11, 2016, photo, Chinese asylum seeker Dong Junming looks out a window after an interview with the Associated Press in Bangkok, Thailand. Dong, a practitioner of the Falun Gong spiritual movement, which is banned in China, was among nine Chinese asylum seekers who attempted a risky sea voyage to New Zealand but turned back after their boat was lashed by violent seas. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak) Texas man executed for killing city code enforcement worker HUNTSVILLE, Texas (AP) A Texas man on death row for killing a worker who was on his property looking for city code violations was put to death Tuesday. Adam Ward was given a lethal injection for shooting and killing Michael Walker, a code enforcement officer who was taking photos of junk piled outside the Ward family home in Commerce, about 65 miles northeast of Dallas. Ward had said the 2005 shooting was in self-defense, but the 44-year-old Walker only had a camera and a cellphone. Convicted killer Adam Kelly Ward is photographed Feb. 10, 2016, in a visiting cage outside death row at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Polunsky Unit near Livingston, Texas. Ward, 33, is set for lethal injection Tuesday, March 22, 2016, for fatally shooting code enforcement officer Michael Walker in Commerce, Texas, in 2005 in a trash dispute. Walker was taking pictures of Ward's home, where court documents say rubbish was hoarded inside and outside. (AP Photo/Michael Graczyk) Ward's attorneys, both at his trial and later for his appeals, described him as delusional and mentally ill. Hours before his execution, the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal that argued his mental illness should have disqualified him from the death penalty. The 33-year-old Ward thanked his supporters, expressed love for his parents and said he hoped "some positive change can come from this." But he insisted the shooting was not a capital murder case. "This is wrong what's happening. A lot of injustice is happening in all this," he said. "I'm sorry things didn't work out," he added later. "May God forgive us all." He was given a lethal dose of pentobarbital and as it took effect, he took a deep breath followed by a smaller one. He then stopped moving. He was pronounced dead at 6:34 p.m. CDT 12 minutes after the drug started to flow into him. Ward became the ninth convicted killer executed this year nationally and the fifth in Texas, which carries out capital punishment more than any other state. In their appeal to the Supreme Court, Ward's attorneys argued the high court's ban on executing mentally impaired prisoners should be extended to include inmates like Ward who have a severe mental illness and that putting him to death would be unconstitutional because of evolving sentiment against executing the mentally ill. The justices have ruled mentally impaired people, generally those with an IQ below 70, may not be executed. However, the court has said mentally ill prisoners may be executed if they understand they are about to be put to death and why they face the punishment. State attorneys, who said evidence showed Ward's IQ as high as 123, said the late appeal did not raise a new issue, meaning it was improper and without merit. They also disputed claims of changing attitudes about executing the mentally ill. Evidence of Ward's delusions, paranoia and bipolar disorder was presented at his 2007 trial and resurfaced in earlier unsuccessful appeals. The Supreme Court last October had refused to review Ward's case. A clemency petition for Ward before the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles was rejected Friday. In a videotaped statement to police following his arrest, Ward said he believed Commerce officials long conspired against him and his father, described in court filings as a hoarder who had been in conflict with the city for years. Evidence showed the Ward family had been cited repeatedly for violating housing and zoning codes. Witnesses said Walker was taking photos of the Ward property on June 13, 2005, when he and Ward got into an argument. Walker told Ward he was calling for assistance, then waited near his truck. Ward went inside the house, emerged with a .45-caliber pistol and started firing. Walker was shot nine times. "I think the only thing he was there for was harassment," Ward told The Associated Press last month from prison. Ward met with his parents earlier Tuesday. They did not attend his execution. Dick Walker, the father of the man killed by Ward, watched Ward's punishment and said it "put the cap on the mental anguish, the torture of the last 10 years." "I'm just glad this part of my life is over with," he said after the execution. "My son will never leave me. There's always going to be a hole in a person's heart. My son was my best friend. "I can focus on more positive stuff now." Guard investigated in inmate escape accused in separate suit ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) A corrections officer came under scrutiny for her handling of inmate transports long before authorities say two violent felons escaped from a fortified prison van and slipped past her this month at a rural New Mexico gas station. In a lawsuit in federal court, Taracina Morgan, a New Mexico prison guard for more than a decade, is accused of leaving a van full of shackled inmates unattended in a hot vehicle for up to an hour in July 2013. A corrections spokeswoman said an internal investigation cleared Morgan of the allegations, though the civil case brought by one of the inmates against the department, Morgan and another guard has not yet been resolved in court. "It became clear to to the men they had been abandoned," the lawsuit filed by Matthew Coyte, an attorney for former inmate Isaha Casias said, describing a scene of panic in the crowded vehicle as it was parked outside the state penitentiary. FILE - This Sunday, March 13, 2016, file photo provided by the New Mexico Corrections Department shows inmate Lionel Clah at the New Mexico State Penitentiary in Santa Fe, N.M. A New Mexico corrections guard under investigation after Clah and another violent inmate escaped from a prison transport van also has been accused of leaving the inmates unattended in a hot vehicle, raising questions about how prisoner transports are handled in the state. (New Mexico Corrections Department via AP, File) Now Morgan, 38, and fellow guard Michael Ortega are on administrative leave as state police investigate the escape two weeks ago of inmates Joseph Cruz and Lionel Clah, who authorities say picked the locks on their handcuffs with some sort of wire and then fled the fortified van during a fuel stop in Artesia, a desert town roughly halfway between Albuquerque and the Mexico border. Officials disclosed in documents obtained through a records request by The Associated Press on Monday that Morgan and Ortega were the guards in charge of taking Cruz and Clah from the state penitentiary in Santa Fe to a correctional facility in Las Cruces the night they escaped. The inmates were apprehended days later in Albuquerque, but authorities have declined to say what missteps by corrections staff may have led to the escape and how two inmates wearing white prison jumpsuits and bound by leg irons were able to flee the van and get by Morgan and Ortega during the gas stop around 8:30 p.m. March 9. Policies require transport officers to guard prison vans at all times, said Corrections Department spokeswoman Ashley Espinoza. Officials didn't know Cruz, a convicted murderer, and Clah, who is serving time for armed robbery and shooting at a police officer, were missing until about four hours laters, authorities said. In the lawsuit brought by Casias, the former inmate, Morgan is accused of leaving 11 inmates to suffer on July 11, 2013, inside a van. Some prisoners passed out, including Casias, of Hesperus, Colorado, while others yelled and rocked the van in an effort to seek help, according to the lawsuit. A phone call seeking comment from Morgan's attorney was not immediately returned Monday. Casias, who says he was denied treatment for days, is seeking compensation for emotional distress and physical injuries, including a seizure that the lawsuit suggests was caused by conditions inside the van. He said he also suffered wrist and back pain when he fell out of the vehicle while unconscious from the heat. Several people have been arrested in aiding the escape by Cruz and Clah, including a man who spotted the men along the road, cut off their shackles, and then helped them flee more than 200 miles north to Albuquerque, authorities said. US Commander in Afghanistan apologizes for hospital attack KUNDUZ, Afghanistan (AP) The new commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan apologized Tuesday to the people of Kunduz for the deadly attack on a hospital in the city last year that killed 42 people. U.S. Army Gen. John Nicholson traveled to the northern city to meet local leaders and relatives of those who died in the Oct. 3 attack. A U.S. Air Force AC-130 gunship attacked the hospital run by medical charity Doctors Without Borders in what Nicholson called a "horrible tragedy." Nicholson's wife Norine accompanied him to Kunduz, along with acting defense minister Masoom Stanekzai. More than a dozen U.S. military personnel have been disciplined for mistakes that led to the sustained attack. A U.S military report on the hospital attack is expected to be released within days. A separate U.S. report on the incident obtained last fall by The Associated Press said the aircraft fired 211 shells at the hospital compound over 29 minutes before commanders realized the error and ordered a halt. Afghan officials, including Stanekzai, insisted that Taliban fighters, who had overrun the city on Sept. 28, were using the hospital as a base from which to attack Afghan forces. No evidence has been found to support the claims. Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French initials MSF, immediately ceased operations in Kunduz and has yet to return. The hospital was the only trauma clinic in northern Afghanistan. 2 Singapore transit workers die after being hit by train SINGAPORE (AP) Two maintenance staff working on elevated tracks in Singapore's mass transit system were hit and killed by a train Tuesday, an official said. It was a rare tragedy on a train system that has experienced a string of disruptions in recent years, denting the city-state's reputation for efficiency. The two workers, Nasrulhudin Najumudinand and Muhammad Asyraf Ahmad Buhari, were trainees who had worked for the company for two months, transit operator SMRT Corp. said. They were part of a 15-member team that was on the track to investigate a possible track fault or malfunctioning signaling equipment near Pasir Ris station in eastern Singapore, chief executive Desmond Kuek said. A train runs on an overhead track on Tuesday, March 22, 2016, in Singapore. Two maintenance staff working on overhead tracks were hit and killed by an oncoming train Tuesday, A Singapore transit official said. It was a rare tragedy on the mass transit system that in recent years has experienced a string of disruptions, denting the city-state's reputation for efficiency. (AP Photo/Wong Maye-E) "We are investigating exactly how they got hit by the train. What we know is that they were walking along in a single file, along the side, along the walkway," he said. "Exactly how they got ... close enough to the oncoming train that was moving in the direction opposite to them is the issue we are trying to establish with the witnesses," he said. He said it is standard procedure for workers to be on tracks while trains are operating in order to investigate "every fault." Such fatal accidents are unusual in Singapore, which prides itself on adherence to safety procedures. In 2011, a Thai teenager fell onto the tracks at a station and was run over by a train, severing one leg. The other leg was amputated later. At least three delays caused by train and track faults were reported in the past week on the train network, known as the MRT. The MRT system, which began operations in 1987, has experienced increased pressure on its services, with ridership rising from 647 million in 2013 to 676 million last year. ___ Security beefed up across world after Brussels attacks MOSCOW (AP) Authorities in Europe and across the world tightened security at airports, railway stations, government buildings and other key sites after deadly attacks Tuesday on the Brussels airport and its subway system. With Brussels on lockdown and the French prime minister saying that Europe is "at war," European leaders held emergency security meetings and deployed more police, explosives experts, sniffer dogs and plainclothes officers, with some warning against travel to Belgium. The nervousness was felt far and wide. In New York City, authorities deployed additional counterterrorism units to crowded areas and transit locations. German police officers guard a terminal of the airportthe in Frankfurt, Germany, during tighter security measures Tuesday, March 22, 2016, when various explosions hit the Belgian capital Brussels killing several people. (AP Photo/Michael Probst) After a string of extremist attacks targeting the heart of Europe over the past year, some analysts say Europe will finally have to implement a much tougher level of security not only at airports, but also at "soft targets" like shopping malls the kind that Israelis have been living with for years. "The threat we are facing in Europe is about the same as what Israel faces," said Olivier Guitta, the managing director of GlobalStrat, an international security consultancy. "We have entered an era in which we are going to have to change our way of life and take security very seriously." Strong criticism of Belgian security came on Tuesday from Pini Schiff, a former security director at Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport, which is considered among the most secure in the world. After Palestinian attacks on Israeli planes and travelers in the 1970s, Israeli officials put in place several layers of security at that airport in Tel Aviv, meaning an attacker who escapes notice at one level of security would likely be captured by another. Schiff said the attacks at the Brussels airport mark "a colossal failure" of Belgian security and that "the chances are very low" such a bombing could have happened in Israel. There are some, however, who fear that little more can realistically be done. "The public needs to understand that if we are to continue enjoy living in a free society we have to respond in a proportional way," said Simon Bennett, director of the Civil Safety and Security Unit at the University of Leicester, England. "In my opinion, airport security is as tight as we can reasonably make it in a free society." Philip Baum, author of "Violence in the Skies: A History of Aircraft Hijacking and Bombing," said "putting people through more hoops," isn't the answer to the ever-evolving threat. He said security personnel need to start using behavioral analysis to focus on negative intent. He also said they need better training, more flexibility and should start using more animals. "It's all about making security less predictable," Baum said. In Moscow, Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov told Russian news agencies that authorities will "re-evaluate security" at Russian airports, although its measures are already among some of the toughest across Europe. There have been mandatory checks at the entrances to airports since a 2011 suicide bombing at Moscow's Domodedovo airport that killed 37. Security was high at all Paris airports and at Gatwick and Heathrow in London, among many others. At Rome's Fiumicino Airport, sniffer dogs were deployed in the check-in areas, while at Milan's Malpensa airport police in carts were patrolling the areas before security checks. In Germany, the state rail system, Deutsche Bahn, halted its high-speed rail service from Germany to Brussels, stopping them at the border city of Aachen. Meanwhile, the international high-speed train operator Thalys suspended all of its train traffic Thursday and urged travelers to postpone trips to Belgium. Last year, an attack on a Thalys between Brussels and Paris was foiled by three Americans and a Briton traveling on the train. Egypt also said it was increasing security, with top security officials asked to personally handle security checks inside airports and in outside areas like hotels and car parks. Egypt has been working to improve its security after a Russian jet was brought down last October by extremists after taking off from Sharm el-Sheikh International Airport, killing all 224 people on board. Moscow said it was brought down by an explosive device, and a local branch of the extremist Islamic State group has claimed responsibility for planting it. In Greece, police added additional security at airports, metro stations and embassies with uniformed and plain-clothed officers. But government spokeswoman Olga Gerovasili said there were no additional security measures being taken for refugees and migrants following the Brussels attacks. "We are not making any linkage between those two issues. That would be a defeat for Europe," she said. ___ Associated Press writers Danica Kirka and Jill Lawless in London, Daniella Cheslow in Jerusalem, Frank Jordans in Berlin, Nataliya Vasilyeva in Moscow, Ciaran Giles in Madrid, Alison Mutler in Bucharest, Monika Scislowska in Warsaw, Karel Janicek in Prague, George Jahn in Vienna, Colleen Barry in Milan and Derek Gatopoulos in Athens contributed to this report. Italian police patrol Leonardo Da Vinci airport in Fiumicino, near Rome, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Authorities in Europe and beyond have tightened security at airports, on subways, at the borders and on city streets after deadly attacks Tuesday on the Brussels airport and its subway system. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino) French soldiers patrol at Charles de Gaulle airport, in Roissy, north of Paris, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Authorities are tightening security at airports and on the streets of European cities after attacks on the Brussels airport and subways system that killed at least one person and injured many others. Security has been beefed up in France, Austria, Poland and the Czech Republic. (AP Photo/Michel Euler) French soldiers patrol at Charles de Gaulle airport, in Roissy, north of Paris, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Authorities are tightening security at airports and on the streets of European cities after attacks on the Brussels airport and subways system that killed at least one person and injured many others. Security has been beefed up in France, Austria, Poland and the Czech Republic. (AP Photo/Michel Euler) A member of the New York National Guard patrols Penn Station, Tuesday, March 22, 2016, in New York. Authorities are increasing security throughout New York City following explosions at the airport and subway system in Brussels. (AP Photo/Mark Lennihan) French soldiers patrol in Gare De Lyon railway station in Paris, France, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Authorities are tightening security at airports and on the streets of European cities after attacks on the Brussels airport and subways system that killed at least one person and injured many others. (AP Photo/Francois Mori) Police keep watch, in the city center of Brussels, Belgium, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Authorities locked down the Belgian capital on Tuesday after explosions rocked the Brussels airport and subway system, killing a number of people and injuring many more. Belgium raised its terror alert to its highest level, diverting arriving planes and trains and ordering people to stay where they were. Airports across Europe tightened security. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner) A member of the Counter Terrorism Centre (TEK) patrols the area in front of the Parliament in downtown Budapest, Hungary, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Hungary raised its terrorism awareness level to grade 2 after a series of attacks in Brussels. (Zoltan Balogh/MTI via AP) An Israeli airport security guard patrols with a dog in Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv, Israel, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. After the Brussels attacks, Israel briefly announced that all Israeli flights from Europe were canceled, then reinstated the flights, Israel Airports Authority spokesman Ofer Leffler said. Pini Schiff, former director of security at Ben-Gurion Airport, said the attack in the Brussels airport was a colossal failure of Belgian security, and he said the chances are very low that such a bombing could take place in Israels airport. Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport is considered among the most secure in the world, an outcome stemming from several Palestinian attacks on Israeli planes and travelers in the 1970s. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit) French soldiers patrol in Gare De Lyon railway station in Paris, France, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Authorities are tightening security at airports and on the streets of European cities after attacks on the Brussels airport and subways system that killed at least one person and injured many others. (AP Photo/Francois Mori) An Israeli airport security guard patrols with a dog in Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv, Israel, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. After the Brussels attacks, Israel briefly announced that all Israeli flights from Europe were canceled, then reinstated the flights, Israel Airports Authority spokesman Ofer Leffler said. Pini Schiff, former director of security at Ben-Gurion Airport, said the attack in the Brussels airport was a colossal failure of Belgian security, and he said the chances are very low that such a bombing could take place in Israels airport. Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport is considered among the most secure in the world, an outcome stemming from several Palestinian attacks on Israeli planes and travelers in the 1970s. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit) Police officers patrol inside a terminal of the airport during tighter security measures in Barcelona, Spain, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, rocked the Brussels airport and subway system Tuesday, prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe.(AP Photo/Emilio Morenatti) Travelers wait at the counter of Brussels airlines in Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv, Israel, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. After the Brussels attacks, Israel briefly announced that all Israeli flights from Europe were canceled, then reinstated the flights, Israel Airports Authority spokesman Ofer Leffler said. Pini Schiff, former director of security at Ben-Gurion Airport, said the attack in the Brussels airport was a colossal failure of Belgian security, and he said the chances are very low that such a bombing could take place in Israels airport. Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport is considered among the most secure in the world, an outcome stemming from several Palestinian attacks on Israeli planes and travelers in the 1970s. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit) An Israeli airport security guard patrols with a dog in Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv, Israel, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. After the Brussels attacks, Israel briefly announced that all Israeli flights from Europe were canceled, then reinstated the flights, Israel Airports Authority spokesman Ofer Leffler said. Pini Schiff, former director of security at Ben-Gurion Airport, said the attack in the Brussels airport was a colossal failure of Belgian security, and he said the chances are very low that such a bombing could take place in Israels airport. Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport is considered among the most secure in the world, an outcome stemming from several Palestinian attacks on Israeli planes and travelers in the 1970s. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit) The blown out facade of the terminal is seen at Zaventem airport, one of the sites of two deadly attacks in Brussels, Belgium, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Authorities in Europe have tightened security at airports, on subways, at the borders and on city streets after the attacks Tuesday on the Brussels airport and its subway system. (AP Photo/Peter Dejong) An Israeli airport security guard patrols with a dog in Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv, Israel, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. After the Brussels attacks, Israel briefly announced that all Israeli flights from Europe were canceled, then reinstated the flights, Israel Airports Authority spokesman Ofer Leffler said. Pini Schiff, former director of security at Ben-Gurion Airport, said the attack in the Brussels airport was a colossal failure of Belgian security, and he said the chances are very low that such a bombing could take place in Israels airport. Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport is considered among the most secure in the world, an outcome stemming from several Palestinian attacks on Israeli planes and travelers in the 1970s. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit) An Israeli airport security guard patrols with a dog in Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv, Israel, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. After the Brussels attacks, Israel briefly announced that all Israeli flights from Europe were canceled, then reinstated the flights, Israel Airports Authority spokesman Ofer Leffler said. Pini Schiff, former director of security at Ben-Gurion Airport, said the attack in the Brussels airport was a colossal failure of Belgian security, and he said the chances are very low that such a bombing could take place in Israels airport. Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport is considered among the most secure in the world, an outcome stemming from several Palestinian attacks on Israeli planes and travelers in the 1970s. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit) Police officers patrol the airport in Prague, Czech Republic, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Authorities in Europe have tightened security at airports, on subways, at the borders and on city streets after deadly attacks Tuesday on the Brussels airport and its subway system. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek) A police officer with a sniffer dog checks a trash bin at the airport in Prague, Czech Republic, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Authorities in Europe have tightened security at airports, on subways, at the borders and on city streets after deadly attacks Tuesday on the Brussels airport and its subway system. (AP Photo/Petr David Josek) 10 Things to Know for Wednesday - 23 March 2016 Your daily look at late-breaking news, upcoming events and the stories that will be talked about Wednesday: 1. IS GROUP CLAIMS RESPONSIBILITY FOR BRUSSELS ATTACKS The back-to-back bombings of the city's airport and subway again lay bare Europe's vulnerability to suicide squads. FILE - In this Aug. 5, 2010, file photo, a pharmacy technician poses for a picture with hydrocodone and acetaminophen tablets, also known as Vicodin, at the Oklahoma Hospital Discount Pharmacy in Edmond, Okla. Federal health regulators will bolster warning labels on the most widely used prescription painkillers, part of a multi-pronged federal effort to reverse an epidemic of abuse and death tied to drugs like Vicodin and Percocet, the FDA announced Tuesday, March 22, 2016. (AP Photo/Sue Ogrocki, File) 2. NEW NORMAL IN EUROPE TERROR ALERTS ALWAYS ON HIGH People in cities so far spared major violence assume it's a matter of when, not if. 3. OBAMA CAPS VISIT TO CUBA With Raul Castro looking on, the American president openly urges the Cuban people to pursue a more democratic future. 4. HOW FBI MIGHT HACK INTO IPHONE WITHOUT APPLE'S HELP Even a tiny flaw unknown to the software's creator known as a zero-day vulnerability could potentially give the government a way in. 5. AS PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARIES ROLL ON, FRONT-RUNNERS AIMING TO PULL AWAY Trump and Clinton would love to wrap things up and get on with a head-to-head race for the White House, unobstructed by any rivals. 6. EX-TORONTO MAYOR DIES AT 46 AFTER CANCER FIGHT Rob Ford was a pugnacious populist whose career crashed in a drug-driven, obscenity-laced debacle. 7. WHO'S HOPING TO BE NEXT 'JUDGE JUDY' Sarah Palin signs a deal to make a pilot for a reality courtroom TV show. 8. FDA ADDING BOLD WARNING TO PAINKILLERS It's part of a multi-pronged U.S. government campaign to reverse an epidemic of abuse and death tied to drugs like Vicodin and Percocet. 9. WHAT'S NEW WAY FOR MUSIC GROUPS TO MAKE MONEY From Bruce Springsteen to Phish, top bands are selling their concert recordings through the website nugs.net. 10. RAYS GET BEST OF CUBAN NATIONAL TEAM In a game attended by presidents Obama and Raul Castro, Tampa Bay beats Cuba 4-1. It's the first visit by a major league team to the communist island since 1999. The Latest: Russia, Finland to tighten migration controls GENEVA (AP) The Latest on the flow of migrants into Europe (all times local): 8:10 p.m. Finnish officials say that Russian President Vladimir Putin has agreed to tighten controls at the joint Arctic border for a six-month period, in a move to halt the illegal crossing of migrants. Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, shakes hands with his Finnish counterpart Sauli Niinisto, prior to a news conference after their talks at the Novo-Ogaryovo state residence outside Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. (Krill Kudryavtsev/Pool photo via AP) President Sauli Niinisto's office says Putin approved measures in Moscow at a meeting of the two leaders Tuesday to limit crossings at the two northern border posts to citizens of Finland, Russia and Belarus, and their families. The move comes after a surge in asylum-seekers from Russia into northern Finland, raising fears of a new major entry point into Europe for migrants. More than 1,000 people have applied for asylum at the two Arctic crossings during the first two months of the year up from less than 700 for the whole of 2015. ___ 1:25 p.m. A migrant man has set himself on fire during a protest at the closed Greek-Macedonia border, and been hospitalized with burns. Police said the incident occurred Tuesday during a protest at the sprawling tent city near the Greek border village of Idomeni, adding that the man's injuries did not appear to be life-threatening. Some 12,000 refugees and migrants remain camped out at Idomeni, despite border closures along the Balkan route toward central Europe and an appeal by the Greek government to move to nearby army-built shelters. Refugees at the camp have held daily protests since last week's agreement between the leaders of the European Union and Turkey to drastically limit the number of refugees and migrants reaching Europe. ___ 12:10 a.m. The head of Bulgaria's border police has ordered an investigation into the possible involvement of border officers in the smuggling of 60 migrants at the Bulgarian-Turkish border. CCTV footage leaked in local media showed the group walking over the border from Turkey on Dec. 29. The infrared camera footage shows them crossing the border line while several people, believed to be border policemen, stay close without taking any action to stop them. An interior ministry spokeswoman said an ongoing investigation is seeking establish the identity of those standing near the scene. She said that the 60 migrants were detained hours later by police some 20 kilometers (12 miles) inside Bulgarian territory. They did not have any documents. Signals are mounting that Bulgaria might be affected to a bigger extent by the migrant crisis after the Western Balkans route has been closed, following an agreement between the EU and Turkey. Bulgaria has not seen floods of migrants since 2013, when it became, alongside Greece, one of the first European states to see a rise in migratory pressure. It has been avoided partly due to stepped-up security measures at the border, but also because of numerous reports of violence, abuse and pushbacks of migrants by police officers. ___ 11:50 a.m. The U.N. refugee agency says it's suspending some operations in Greece because centers known as "hotspots" to handle an influx of migrants "have now become detention centers" under a European Union deal to send back some to Turkey. UNHCR spokeswoman Melissa Fleming says the refugee agency opposes mandatory detention. She said UNHCR would also halt transport to and from the centers. She said UNHCR is concerned that Greece doesn't have sufficient structures in place to process migrants properly. The EU-Turkey deal, in which many people who cross the Aegean will be returned to Turkey, took effect over the weekend. Separately, UNICEF expressed its frustration over the EU-Turkey plan for making no mention of children, who make up 40 percent of people stranded in Greece. Migrants walks past a banner that reads: "Open the Borders" during the protest demanding the opening of the border between Greece and Macedonia in the northern Greek border station of Idomeni, Greece, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Greece detained hundreds of refugees and migrants on its islands Monday, as officials in Athens and the European Union conceded a much-heralded agreement to send thousands of asylum-seekers back to Turkey is facing delays. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic) A migrant girl exits a tent in the makeshift refugee camp at the northern Greek border point of Idomeni, Greece, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Greece detained hundreds of refugees and migrants on its islands Monday, as officials in Athens and the European Union conceded a much-heralded agreement to send thousands of asylum-seekers back to Turkey is facing delays. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic) Greek baker opens his house to refugee families in tent city EVROPOS, Greece (AP) As a string of European countries closed their doors to refugees, a baker in a northern Greek village was opening his. For the past week, Dimitris Spiridis the grandson of refugees and a former migrant worker himself has had three Syrian families living in his 180-square-meter (2,000-square-foot) house in Evropos. The six adults and six children are in addition to his own four children. He and his wife are sleeping on the living room sofas. Some 40 kilometers (25 miles) away lies the sprawling tent city of Idomeni, on financially struggling Greece's border with Macedonia, where 14,000 refugees have been camped for weeks hoping Macedonian authorities will let them continue their long trek to Europe's prosperous heartland. In this photo taken on Sunday, March 20, 2016, Dimitris Spyridis, left, sits with Fadi Kamer Aldeen, center and Ahmad Ahmad in his house, during an interview with The Associated Press in the village of Evropos, Greece. As a string of European countries closed their doors to refugees, a baker in a northern Greek village was opening his. For the past week, Greek baker Dimitris Spiridis - the grandson of refugees and a former migrant worker himself - has had three Syrian families living in his 180-square-meter (2,000-square-foot) house in Evropos. The six adults and six children are in addition to his own four children. He and his wife are sleeping on the living room sofas. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic) "I went there last Monday, and all I could see was mud, all I could hear was the crying of children, and everyone had a cough" after spending days outdoors in the rain and cold, Spiridis, 50, told The Associated Press. Like many in the Kilkis area of northern Greece, Spiridis is descended from ethnic Greek refugees forced to leave Turkey after the 1919-1922 Greco-Turkish war, and he has lived and worked in Germany and Switzerland. He said his father's stories of his grandfather's tribulations on the move through Turkey immediately resonated with him. "He told me about the time when an inn opened its doors to our people and gave them a glass of water to drink," he said. "I responded automatically, and opened up my house" to the Syrians. "It didn't really take much thought, when I saw how things were." So his 20-year-old son, Nikos, was sent to Idomeni with instructions to find a family and bring them home. In the end, three came. The small yard of Spiridis' two-story house a light-brown structure built 25 years ago that had an upper floor added on two years ago rings with cries and barks as the refugee children and his own youngest, 5-year-old Minas, play with the family's black, 3-month-old puppy. Inside, the women sit in the kitchen and the men in the living room. The common language is English, with one surprising exception: Zynat Mohmad, 33, a Kurd from Aleppo whom the family put up with her husband and three children, studied modern Greek in Syria and can talk to her hosts in their own language. "We spent three weeks in the (Idomeni) camp," said Fadi Kamer Aldeen, a 40-year-old lawyer from Idlip who is staying in the house with his wife and three children Abdulrahman, 10, Mohammad, 9, and Lujain, 6. "Now, we're here with this most hospitable family, getting some rest. We can live like human beings. This is a very kind family and the Greeks have helped refugees a lot." His wife, Randa Abdulkafee, 30, said all her family wants is to reach a safe country. "We couldn't stay longer in the harsh conditions of Idomeni," she said. "We are now waiting to see when the relocation process will start," that would see refugees in Greece resettled in other European Union members although so far only 569 people have been taken in out of a total target of 160,000 from Greece and Italy. "I don't mind which country we are sent to," she added. "Just as long as we can live in safety." Together with the Aldeen family came their Syrian neighbors in the tent city, Ahmad Ahmad and his wife Souria, both 58. "We didn't know each other before," Fadi Kamer Aldeen said. "Our tents were adjacent in Idomeni, and I asked Dimitris to take them in too." Dozens of households in northern Greece are doing the same as the Spiridis family, as Greek authorities struggle to provide decent shelter for more than 50,000 refugees and migrants stuck in the country since the closure of the Macedonian border the southern end of a domino effect through the Balkans caused by Austria imposing a cap on the refugees it will admit. At the village of Idomeni itself, near the camp, the owner of the canteen at the railway station, where hundreds of small tents have been set up, says refugees keep coming to her home, mostly to take a bath. "Sometimes, women come to spend the night," Paschalina Siopis said. Local mayor Christos Goudenoudis said many villagers have shown an interest in hosting refugees, "and we put them in touch with the United Nations refugee agency, because they know which refugees' needs are greatest." In the local capital of Kilkis, the effort is more organized. Municipal authorities coordinate with volunteers and groups of citizens, and have drawn up a list of about 60 households prepared to take in refugees currently at the nearby Herso shelter. "We register the families living at Herso, and see which have the greatest need of hospitality, mainly pregnant women or families with small children," said organizer Babis Makridis, who is also putting up refugees. "We even have families in the city of Thessaloniki who have taken people in." ___ Follow Kantouris at http://www.twitter.com/CostasKantouris In this photo taken on Sunday, March 20, 2016, a migrant child stands on the balcony of Dimitris Spyridis's house in the village of Evropos, Greece. As a string of European countries closed their doors to refugees, a baker in a northern Greek village was opening his. For the past week, Greek baker Dimitris Spiridis - the grandson of refugees and a former migrant worker himself - has had three Syrian families living in his 180-square-meter (2,000-square-foot) house in Evropos. The six adults and six children are in addition to his own four children. He and his wife are sleeping on the living room sofas. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic) In this photo taken on Sunday, March 20, 2016,Dimitris Spyridis, left, smiles in his house in the village of Evropos, Greece. As a string of European countries closed their doors to refugees, a baker in a northern Greek village was opening his. For the past week, Greek baker Dimitris Spiridis - the grandson of refugees and a former migrant worker himself - has had three Syrian families living in his 180-square-meter (2,000-square-foot) house in Evropos. The six adults and six children are in addition to his own four children. He and his wife are sleeping on the living room sofas. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic) In this photo taken on Sunday, March 20, 2016, migrants sit around the table with Dimitris Spyridis's mother, left, in the village of Evropos, Greece. As a string of European countries closed their doors to refugees, a baker in a northern Greek village was opening his. For the past week, Greek baker Dimitris Spiridis - the grandson of refugees and a former migrant worker himself - has had three Syrian families living in his 180-square-meter (2,000-square-foot) house in Evropos. The six adults and six children are in addition to his own four children. He and his wife are sleeping on the living room sofas. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic) In this photo taken on Sunday, March 20, 2016, migrants siting in the kitchen in Dimitris Spyridis's house in the village of Evropos, Greece. As a string of European countries closed their doors to refugees, a baker in a northern Greek village was opening his. For the past week, Greek baker Dimitris Spiridis - the grandson of refugees and a former migrant worker himself - has had three Syrian families living in his 180-square-meter (2,000-square-foot) house in Evropos. The six adults and six children are in addition to his own four children. He and his wife are sleeping on the living room sofas. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic) In this photo taken on Sunday, March 20, 2016, a migrant boy looks through the mosquito net door of Dimitris Spyridis's house in the village of Evropos, Greece. As a string of European countries closed their doors to refugees, a baker in a northern Greek village was opening his. For the past week, Greek baker Dimitris Spiridis - the grandson of refugees and a former migrant worker himself - has had three Syrian families living in his 180-square-meter (2,000-square-foot) house in Evropos. The six adults and six children are in addition to his own four children. He and his wife are sleeping on the living room sofas. (AP Photo/Darko Vojinovic) Baghdad politics slows fight against IS in Anbar AL-TASH, Iraq (AP) Iraqi security forces, supported by coalition airstrikes, are clearing territory northwest of Baghdad along the Euphrates River valley as they continue to prepare a push to retake the Islamic State group-held city of Mosul. But progress on the ground has been slowed by skirmishes elsewhere and by a political crisis that has prompted the government to pull some forces back from the front to secure the capital. Amid these distractions, Iraqi forces are concentrating on the IS-held town of Hit in the western province of Anbar. Commanders here say the battle for Hit is key to building on their current momentum, cutting Islamic State supply lines and linking up government forces to the west and the north of Baghdad in preparation for an eventual push on Mosul. "Hit is the support line from Syria for Daesh," said Gen. Ali Aboud with Iraq's elite counterterrorism forces, using an Arabic acronym for the Islamic State group. "All of Daesh's logistical support in Anbar comes from that place." In this Sunday, March 20, 2016 photo, two boys in a truck in a convoy of families fleeing Islamic State-held Hit, Iraq, wait at a checkpoint on the western edge of Ramadi, Iraq. Much of Iraqs north and west fell to the Islamic State group in the summer of 2014, but over the past year Iraqs military has slowly clawed back pockets of territory. While IS still controls a large swath of Iraq and neighboring Syria, the group has lost an estimated 40 percent of the territory it once held in Iraq, according to U.S.-led coalition officials. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo) Aboud spoke to The Associated Press from a makeshift base in the town of Tash, west of the provincial capital Ramadi, which now serves as the Anbar operations command center. Behind him a team of two men from his unit spoke to Australian coalition troops on a radio, confirming coordinates and calling in airstrikes: one on Hit, another on the outskirts of Ramadi. But despite close coalition support and Iraq's respected and battle-tested counterterrorism troops taking the lead, the operation to retake Hit from IS, launched weeks ago, has been stalled by political unrest in Baghdad. Influential Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr mobilized thousands and staged a sit-in outside Baghdad's highly fortified Green Zone on Friday. The cleric called for political reforms in February amid growing concern regarding Iraq's economic crisis triggered in part by the plunge in global oil prices. Sadr's show of force on the streets was meant to put pressure on Iraq's political leadership. His supporters pushed past razor wire and checkpoints to reach the walls of the Green Zone, home to Iraq's political elite and most of the country's foreign embassies. "We had to move four battalions back to Baghdad," said an Iraqi counterterrorism commander at the Tash base. Iraq's counterterrorism forces fall under the direct control of Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi and some were ordered back to Baghdad late Friday night after al-Sadr's supporters defied a protest ban. "Honestly we were supposed to already be in Hit by now," said the commander, who spoke on condition of anonymity as he was not authorized to brief the press. "Once this problem of protests is solved," he said, "we'll be able to make progress again in Hit." Political dysfunction in Baghdad has stalled military operations in the past as the country's disparate and sometimes clashing anti-IS forces have at times proven unable to work together cohesively. The plan to retake Mosul, the country's second largest city that has been under IS control for nearly two years, has also faced complications stemming from the Iraqi forces' recent successes on the ground. As the troops advance against IS, the government's front lines and supply lines have been extended increasingly leaving troops exposed to anti-IS counter attacks. Aboud of the counterterrorism forces said suicide car bombs continue to be particularly deadly even as government forces advance northwest across Anbar province. Early Monday morning four cars laden with explosives hit an Iraqi military checkpoint along the Euphrates River valley just 27 miles (45 kilometers) north of the Hit operation. Iraqi military officials say the attack killed at least five Iraqi troops. Such attacks are increasingly common as Iraqi government forces snake through open desserts that are under neither government nor IS control. "The car bomb is the only effective weapon Daesh has," Aboud said. Much of Iraq's north and west fell to the Islamic State group in the summer of 2014, but over the past year Iraq's military has slowly clawed back pockets of territory. While IS still controls a large swath of Iraq and neighboring Syria, the group has lost an estimated 40 percent of the territory it once held in Iraq, according to U.S.-led coalition officials. In February, government forces scored a major victory and declared the city of Ramadi, capital of Anbar province, to be "fully liberated." Over the past 10 days, as coalition airstrikes on Hit have increased and Iraqi forces have closed in on the small Euphrates river town, counterterrorism forces say more than 10,000 civilians have fled. Most have sought shelter in already overcrowded camps between Hit and Ramadi while others have moved further east to towns under Iraqi government control. Meanwhile battles on the outskirts of Ramadi continue, further slowing the progress of the government forces. While the city itself is in government hands, the outskirts are still being painstakingly cleared of IS fighters. Since the February declaration that the town was liberated, coalition planes have conducted near-daily strikes around Ramadi, according to coalition statements. At a checkpoint on the western edge of Ramadi, a line of cars and trucks carrying families fleeing Hit wait as Iraqi army officers check papers and search through luggage. Um Ahmed, traveling in the back of a truck carrying more than 30 women and children, said they were only able to escape the IS-held city by telling the fighters at checkpoints that they were traveling to another town under the extremists' rule. "In the early dawn we tried to sneak out of the city, taking the small dirt roads," Abu Lina said, explaining the family ended up running into an IS checkpoint after taking a wrong turn. He said the fighters only let him pass because his mother is sick. She has a heart condition and needs to see a doctor, a service no longer available in Hit. The civilians from Hit all spoke on condition that their full names not be used fearing for the safety of extended family members still trapped in the IS-held city. Despite territorial gains in Anbar by Iraqi government forces, few families have been able to return home. The United Nations estimates that of Iraq's more than three million displaced people, more than 40 percent are from Anbar province. "Honestly we don't know what will be next for us. God willing, Hit will be liberated soon," Abu Lina said. In this Sunday, March 20, 2016 photo, a girl peers out of her car window in a convoy of families fleeing Islamic State-held Hit, Iraq, at a checkpoint on the western edge of Ramadi, Iraq. Battles on the outskirts of Ramadi continue, further slowing the progress of the government forces. While the city itself is in government hands, the outskirts are still being painstakingly cleared of Islamic State fighters. At a checkpoint on the western edge of Ramadi, a line of cars and trucks carrying families fleeing Hit wait as Iraqi army officers check papers and search through luggage. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo) jIn this Sunday, March 20, 2016 photo, an Iraqi boy pantomimes firing a rifle as a convoy of families fleeing Islamic State-held Hit, Iraq, wait at a checkpoint on the western edge of Ramadi, Iraq. Battles on the outskirts of Ramadi continue, further slowing the progress of the government forces. While the city itself is in government hands, the outskirts are still being painstakingly cleared of Islamic State group fighters. Since the February declaration that the town was liberated, coalition planes have conducted near-daily strikes around Ramadi, according to coalition statements. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo) In this Sunday, March 20, 2016 photo, an Iraq Counter Terror officer talks to people in a convoy of families fleeing Islamic State-held Hit, Iraq, at a checkpoint on the western edge of Ramadi, Iraq. Despite territorial gains in Anbar by Iraqi government forces, few families have been able to return home. The United Nations estimates that of Iraqs more than three million displaced people, more than 40 percent are from Anbar province. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo) In this Sunday, March 20, 2016 photo, a convoy of families fleeing Islamic State-held Hit, Iraq, wait at a checkpoint on the western edge of Ramadi. Iraqi security forces, supported by coalition airstrikes, are clearing territory northwest of Baghdad as they continue to prepare a push to retake the Islamic State group-held city of Mosul. Amid these distractions, Iraqi forces are concentrating on the IS-held town of Hit in the western province of Anbar. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo) In this Sunday, March 20, 2016 photo, an Iraqi girl leans out of her family's car as families fleeing Islamic State-held Hit, Iraq, wait at a checkpoint on the western edge of Ramadi, Iraq. Much of Iraqs north and west fell to the Islamic State group in the summer of 2014, but over the past year Iraqs military has slowly clawed back pockets of territory. While IS still controls a large swath of Iraq and neighboring Syria, the group has lost an estimated 40 percent of the territory it once held in Iraq, according to U.S.-led coalition officials. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo) In this Sunday, March 20, 2016 photo, a convoy of families fleeing Islamic State-held Hit, Iraq, wait at a checkpoint on the western edge of Ramadi, Iraq. Over the past 10 days, as coalition airstrikes on Hit have increased and Iraqi forces have closed in on the small Euphrates river town, counterterrorism forces say more than 10,000 civilians have fled. Most have sought shelter in already overcrowded camps between Hit and Ramadi while others have moved further east to towns under Iraqi government control. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo) In this Sunday, March 20, 2016 photo, a truck loaded with women and children fleeing Islamic State-held Hit, Iraq, wait at a checkpoint on the western edge of Ramadi, Iraq. More than 10,000 civilians have fled Hit. Most have sought shelter in already overcrowded camps between Hit and Ramadi while others have moved further east to towns under Iraqi government control. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo) In this Sunday, March 20, 2016 photo, a boy watches a soldier search his car as families fleeing Islamic State-held Hit, Iraq, at a checkpoint on the western edge of Ramadi, Iraq. More than 10,000 civilians have fled Hit and most sought shelter in already overcrowded camps between Hit and Ramadi while others have moved further east to towns under Iraqi government control. At a checkpoint on the western edge of Ramadi, a line of cars and trucks carrying families fleeing Hit wait as Iraqi army officers check papers and search through luggage. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo) In this Sunday, March 20, 2016 photo, Iraq soldiers search a convoy of families fleeing Islamic State-held Hit, Iraq, at a checkpoint on the western edge of Ramadi, Iraq. More than 10,000 civilians have fled Hit and most sought shelter in already overcrowded camps between Hit and Ramadi while others have moved further east to towns under Iraqi government control. At a checkpoint on the western edge of Ramadi, a line of cars and trucks carrying families fleeing Hit wait as Iraqi army officers check papers and search through luggage. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo) In this Sunday, March 20, 2016 photo, a girl sits in a truck loaded with women and children fleeing Islamic State-held Hit, Iraq, at a checkpoint on the western edge of Ramadi, Iraq. Despite territorial gains in Anbar by Iraqi government forces, few families have been able to return home. The United Nations estimates that of Iraqs more than three million displaced people, more than 40 percent are from Anbar province. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo) In this Sunday, March 20, 2016 photo, an Iraqi boy pantomimes firing a rifle as a convoy of families fleeing Islamic State-held Hit, Iraq, wait at a checkpoint on the western edge of Ramadi, Iraq. The United Nations estimates that of Iraqs more than three million displaced people, more than 40 percent are from Anbar province. (AP Photo/Maya Alleruzzo) New Polish historical policy could silence Holocaust debates WARSAW, Poland (AP) Poland's governing party is seeking to shape the country's future by controlling perceptions of the past. The conservative Law and Justice party's strategy includes the use of museums, film, public television and other tools to promote certain episodes in Poland's history, like the anti-communist resistance after World War II. More controversial, though, are attempts to suppress discussion and research into painful topics, primarily Polish violence against Jews during the Nazi occupation. Law and Justice, which since last year has wielded more power than any party in post-communist times, sees the moves as harnessing history in a mission to build a stronger nation state. President Andrzej Duda said the nation's new "historical policy offensive" aims to create a new generation of patriots and "to build up the country's position in the international space." FILE - In this March 1, 2016 file photo, people attend a ceremony honoring the so-called Cursed Soldiers, Poles who fought Moscow-imposed communism at the end of World War II, in Warsaw Poland. Polands governing party is seeking to shape the countrys future by controlling perceptions of the past. The conservative Law and Justice partys strategy includes the use of museums, film, public television and other tools to promote certain episodes in Polands history, like the anti-communist resistance after World War II. More controversial, though, are attempts to suppress discussion and research into painful topics, primarily Polish violence against Jews during the Nazi occupation. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowsk, file) Critics see historical revisionism that will produce little beyond national self-righteousness and will prevent an honest reckoning with the country's wartime history an extremely complex story that includes suffering and heroism of the highest order but also cases of murder and betrayal by Poles of defenseless Jews. "They want to narrow our view of the past," said Pawel Spiewak, director of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. "They want to use the state apparatus to force their new view of political history, and this is very dangerous." Duda waded deeply into controversy when his office announced earlier this year that it might strip a prominent Princeton Holocaust scholar, Jan Tomasz Gross, of a state honor that he received in 1996. Polish nationalists have long demonized the Polish-American academic for a body of work focused on Polish violence against Jews during and after the war. The controversy surrounding him began with his 2000 book "Neighbors," about the 1941 massacre in the village of Jedwabne, where Polish villagers burned hundreds of Jews alive in a barn. Last year Gross caused a new outcry with a highly provocative claim that Poles killed more Jews than they killed Germans during the war, something that challenges the nation's self-image. Duda's office said it was considering the move against Gross in reaction to 2,000 angry letters about him. Prosecutors have also summoned Gross to appear next month in an investigation into whether he committed the crime of slandering Poland. Just the threat to strip Gross of the honor brought letters of protest from prominent scholars. If strengthening Poland's international position is truly an aim, the tactic is backfiring, creating a widespread impression that authorities who are already facing criticism for undermining democratic institutions are also prepared to stifle free scholarly inquiry. Gross, who was born in Poland to a Jewish father and a Christian mother and who left his homeland following the communist regime's notorious anti-Semitic campaign of 1968, is extremely critical of Poland's new direction. He said he has long been attacked by a segment of the population that is "right-wing, Catholic, nationalist and xenophobic." "What is new to me is that this is a segment of the population that now has managed to put its representatives in all of the government offices," he said. "They use a foul and violent language to describe me as a traitor, as someone who hates Poland." Poland's historical policies are wide-ranging, and also include efforts to undermine the legacy of Solidarity leader Lech Walesa, part of an effort to show that the entire political order that Walesa helped create is tainted. But it is the Holocaust policies that resonate most powerfully across the world, especially in Israel and North America. With disputes raging, Duda opened a museum last week dedicated to the Ulma family Poles slaughtered by the Nazis for sheltering Jews. He strongly condemned anti-Semitism and noted that the German murderers were helped by a Polish policeman in their hunt for the family. He called for remembering "the truth about heroism but also the sad truth about meanness." Poland's Chief Rabbi Michael Schudrich praised it as a "brave" speech and "one of the strongest condemnations, if not the strongest, of anti-Semitism by a Polish leader." But others saw a cynical PR move. One critic, historian Jan Grabowski, noted that Duda, who has said in the past that Poles need not apologize for Jedwabne, claimed incorrectly that "hundreds of thousands of Poles" helped Jews during the war, a hugely exaggerated number that promotes a larger narrative of Polish heroism. "Duda's speech is a huge step backwards from the historical truth and towards a more aggressive abuse of the memory of the Holocaust," said Grabowski, author of "Hunt for the Jews: Betrayal and Murder in German-Occupied Poland." The Justice Ministry is also preparing a new law foreseeing prison terms for anyone who refers to Auschwitz or other German death camps in occupied Poland as "Polish." That project comes in reaction to years of anger at foreigners referring to "Polish death camps" language even used once by U.S. President Barack Obama. Poles find that wording extremely offensive since Poles were among the victims of the camps and had no role in running them. "Enough of this lie," Justice Minister Zbigniew Ziobro said. "There must be accountability." Michal Bilewicz, a Holocaust researcher at Warsaw University, said: "the new law aims to silence Polish historians as it is obvious that this law would not be effective in sentencing anyone outside of the country." Spiewak, the director of the Jewish Historical Institute, says he now has to worry about whether researchers at his center might end up in prison. The historical offensive comes amid a strong anti-migrant mood in Poland and as the ruling party is also centralizing its power in a way that undermines democratic institutions, most dramatically the independence of the constitutional court. The trend resembles recent moves in Hungary, where historical revisionism has gone hand-in-hand with Prime Minister Viktor Orban's creation of what he calls an "illiberal state." Hungarian authorities have been rehabilitating wartime anti-Semites and portraying the country as the victim of German aggression when it in fact was allied with Hitler most of the war. The high emotions surrounding Polish wartime behavior touch on what some call a Polish "obsession with innocence" a conviction the nation is morally blameless thanks to its resistance and widespread suffering, with millions killed in the war. Dariusz Stola, director of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, said he believes many cling to this conviction of innocence because it is all they have. "Poles lost the war. They lost a lot: family members, cities, libraries, churches, 20 percent of their territory and national independence. Little was left but their innocence," Stola said. "When you lose everything it's good to at least be innocent." Still, he condemned the historical policies as "radical, unreflective and, of course, harmful." "Poland was on the right side of this war, and Poland lost it to Hitler and then lost it to Stalin," Stola said. "We are not responsible for what happened 70 years ago but we are responsible for what we do with this past today. And I think the right thing to do is to talk about it." FILE - In this July 10, 2011 file photo, Roman Catholic Bishop Mieczyslaw Cislo, left, Chief Rabbi of Poland Michael Schudrich, second left, kantors Symkha Keller and Icchak Levi honor the Jewish victims of Jedwabne, who were killed in 1941, during World War II, by their Polish neighbors, in Jedwabne, Poland. Polands governing party is seeking to shape the countrys future by controlling perceptions of the past. The conservative Law and Justice partys strategy includes the use of museums, film, public television and other tools to promote certain episodes in Polands history, like the anti-communist resistance after World War II. More controversial, though, are attempts to suppress discussion and research into painful topics, primarily Polish violence against Jews during the Nazi occupation. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski, file) In this March 17, 2016 file photo Polands President Andrzej Duda speaks at the opening of a new museum dedicated to Poles killed for helping Jews during World War II, in Markowa, Poland. Duda, a key figure in Polands new nationalistic and conservative leadership, is behind new historical policies that aim to highlight Polish heroism of the past. There is no more dramatic example of that than the thousands of Poles who risked their own lives to help Jews during the Holocaust. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski, file) FILE - In this March 10, 2016 file photo, Jaroslaw Kaczynski, leader of ruling party Law and Justice Party, attends a remembrance ceremony in Warsaw, Poland for the 2010 plane crash that killed Poland's President Lech Kaczynski and 95 others. Polands governing party is seeking to shape the countrys future by controlling perceptions of the past. The conservative Law and Justice partys strategy includes the use of museums, film, public television and other tools to promote certain episodes in Polands history, like the anti-communist resistance after World War II. More controversial, though, are attempts to suppress discussion and research into painful topics, primarily Polish violence against Jews during the Nazi occupation. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski, file) J&J expands project that aims to predict, prevent diseases Johnson & Johnson has ramped up its ambitious project to learn how to predict who will develop particular diseases and find therapies to prevent or stop the disease early, when it's most treatable. Since the health care giant announced its groundbreaking project in February 2015, it's expanded to include two dozen research programs with partners in government, universities, patient advocacy groups and other drug and diagnostic test companies. Their expertise and resources should speed discoveries and allow Johnson & Johnson to spread its funding across more ventures. On Tuesday, J&J gave an update and announced the latest two projects. They're meant to identify which pregnant women will develop gestational diabetes, and to identify and treat people at risk of or in early stages of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, the third-leading cause of death worldwide. In this Thursday, March 17, 2016, photo, Boston University professor Avi Spira, a medical researcher in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, stands for a portrait in his lab at Boston University School of Medicine, in Boston. Johnson & Johnson's ambitious project to find ways to prevent diseases or stop them early on has been expanding rapidly and now includes about two dozen collaborations with outside research partners. One just being announced involves Boston University researchers. (AP Photo/Steven Senne) "We've really been trying to introduce a new paradigm," the J&J project head, Ben Wiegand, told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview. "We're moving from disease care to health care." Wiegand said the mapping of the human genome and other recent scientific advances have made that goal feasible. J&J's "Disease Interception Accelerator" now is working on multiple studies in Type 1 and gestational diabetes, cataracts and vision-damaging presbyopia, depression in women during and after pregnancy, lung disorders and cancers of the cervix, mouth and throat caused by human papilloma virus. The project is remarkable in an industry whose bread and butter is medicines that patients with chronic diseases take for years. The idea is to first discover biomarkers measurable biological and molecular signs in blood and other patient samples indicating a disease will develop or is beginning. Next, scientists would develop affordable and easy-to-use diagnostic tests for those biomarkers. Finally, researchers would develop new therapies, or determine which existing ones would work, to head off full-blown disease in those people. Those could include medicines, nutrition changes and physical or psychological therapy. If successful, those strategies could be used much as cholesterol tests are given to patients, with those who have a problem being prescribed statin drugs to prevent a heart attack or stroke. "This is the way to go," said Dr. Robert Hardi, president of the Academy of Physicians in Clinical Research. "If anybody can pull it off, they can" with help from partners. He noted that researchers already are developing biomarker tests in areas such as cancer that help doctors pick the best treatment for each patient. "It may well save a lot of money and a lot of suffering," added Hardi, a gastroenterologist in Chevy Chase, Maryland. One of the newest projects piggybacks on existing research at Boston University School of Medicine. It's been working since 2011 under a Defense Department grant to identify which military members and veterans will develop lung cancer. That group has a high risk because many are heavy smokers and they're exposed to fuel fumes and other dangerous substances while deployed, said Dr. Avrum Spira, a pulmonologist heading that study. It's been testing blood and skin cells and doing chest scans on hundreds of participants, aiming to link changes in those tests over time to which people later develop lung cancer. J&J has given Spira's group $8 million to test 1,000 civilian smokers, to identify cell changes in the individuals who eventually develop chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, which includes emphysema and chronic bronchitis. They'll then test therapies to stop further destruction of lung airways. With another $2.1 million from J&J, Spira said, his team is studying how the immune system fails in the early development of lung cancer and whether new drugs that fight cancer by boosting the immune system could prevent it. Another new collaboration is seeking biomarkers indicating which pregnant women likely will develop gestational diabetes, so they can be treated to prevent it. Half those women would otherwise develop Type 2 diabetes within 10 years, and their babies have an eightfold risk of developing it eventually, Wiegand said. Preventing diseases or treating them early on is much cheaper than trying to save people diagnosed with advanced disease, so Wiegand believes that insurers will cover the diagnostic tests being developed and new, proven treatments. Johnson & Johnson, based in New Brunswick, New Jersey, is a leading maker of diagnostic tests, as well as vaccines, surgical equipment and prescription medicines, putting it in a good position to offer products for many of the disorders being studied. For the project to have a big impact, the U.S. must to address the shortage of primary care doctors, said Dr. Wanda Filer, president of the American Academy of Family Physicians. She said pediatricians, family doctors and internists, along with nurse practitioners, already focus on preventive care such as vaccines, so they're best suited for identifying and helping at-risk patients. With patients more focused on medical costs as they bear more of them now, Filer said, they'll need to be convinced new diagnostic tests and pre-emptive treatment are worth the cost. "This could be transformational," she added. ___ Follow Linda A. Johnson https://twitter.com/lindaj_onpharma Reaction to the attacks in Brussels Political leaders and others around Europe have expressed their shock at the attacks in Brussels Tuesday. Here is some of their reaction: "We will do whatever is necessary to support our friend and ally Belgium in bringing to justice those who are responsible." President Barack Obama. "We are at war. We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war." French Prime Minister Manuel Valls. France's President Francois Hollande, center, addresses the medias while Belgium Ambassador to France Vincent Mertens de Wilmars, left, and French foreign minister Jean-Marc Ayrault look on, outside the Belgian embassy, in Paris, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Bombs exploded at the Brussels airport and one of the city's metro stations Tuesday, killing and wounding dozens of people, as a European capital was again locked down amid heightened security threats. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus) "We realize we face a tragic moment. We have to be calm and show solidarity." Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel. "The attackers came from within the places that were hit. The threat is global, but the killers are local." Italian Premier Matteo Renzi. "We have repeatedly discussed the issues related to the fight against terrorism, and it's possible to efficiently combat it only by united efforts." Russian President Vladimir Putin. "This is the latest terrorist outrage and today is a day for sympathy and condolence, for enhancing our own security, for working with our own colleagues and offering them every help we can and making sure we are very clear that we will never let these terrorists win." British Prime Minister David Cameron. "The King and Queen are devastated by the attacks." statement from Belgium's royal family. "The emotional thoughts of the King and Queen go first to the victims and their families and the rescue services which are doing everything possible to help the victims." "These attacks mark another low by the terrorists in the service of hatred and violence." EU Council President Donald Tusk. Pope Francis said he "condemns once again the blind violence that breeds so much suffering, and implores the gift of peace from God" for all Belgians. "Terrorists struck Brussels but it was Europe that was targeted and all the world that is concerned." French President Francois Hollande. "Our strength lies in our unity, and our free societies will prove to be stronger than terrorism." German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "Europe is being severely tested again. What is necessary now is that we show our collective strength and uphold the values of freedom and solidarity." Dutch King Willem-Alexander. "It is with a heavy heart we learned of these ruthless attacks in Brussels. ... The world must stand united to defeat terrorism." Salem Al Meslet, of High Negotiations Committee, a coalition of Syrian opposition groups engaged in peace talks in Geneva. "Terrorism knows no borders and is a plague to all of us. ... Correct education is the right answer to ignorance and extremism." Grand Mufti Shawki Ibrahim Abdel-Karim Allam, Egypt's leading religious figure "Football is not important today. Training cancelled." Belgian soccer federation. The attacks "have once again shown terrorism's global face." Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu. The attacks "carry a cowardly and barbaric signature" and "Europe must combat terror jointly and determinedly defend its European values" joint statement from Austrian Chancellor Werner Faymann and Vice-Chancellor Reinhold Mitterlehner. "These and other terrorist acts in different countries show that the Olympic values of understanding, respect and peace are more important than ever for our world." International Olympic Committee President Thomas Bach. U.N. spokesman Stephane Dujarric said Ban Ki-moon "is confident that Belgium's and Europe's commitment to human rights, democracy and peaceful coexistence will continue to be the true and lasting response to the hatred and violence of which they became a victim today." President Barack Obama pauses as he speaks about the events in Brussels attack before addressing Cubans at El Gran Teatro de Havana, Tuesday, March 22, 2016, in Havana, Cuba. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) People stand near Brussels airport after being evacuated following explosions that rocked the facility in Brussels, Belgium, Tuesday March 22, 2016. Authorities locked down the Belgian capital on Tuesday after explosions rocked the Brussels airport and subway system, killing a number of people and injuring many more. Belgium raised its terror alert to its highest level, diverting arriving planes and trains and ordering people to stay where they were. Airports across Europe tightened security. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert) The Latest: Castro goes to airport to send Obama off HAVANA (AP) The Latest on President Barack Obama's trip to Cuba (all times local): 4:15p.m. Cuban President Raul Castro has shown up on the tarmac at Jose Marti International Airport to see President Barack Obama off after a whirlwind three-day trip that began with some interpreting a snub when Castro did not greet Air Force One. Cuban President Raul Castro, right, cheers next to U.S. President Barack Obama, his wife Michelle, and their daughters Sasha and Malia, at the start of a baseball game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Cuban national baseball team, in Havana, Cuba, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. The crowd roared as Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro entered the stadium and walked toward their seats in the VIP section behind home plate. It's the first game featuring an MLB team in Cuba since the Baltimore Orioles played in the country in 1999. (Ismael Francisco/Cubadebate via AP) Administration officials emphasized at the start of the visit that it was never contemplated or discussed that Castro would be at the airport. The send-off is a warm gesture that comes after the two leaders sparred at a press conference and frankly discussed longstanding disagreements between the two nations. The two sat next to each other during the early innings of Tuesday's exhibition baseball game before Obama departed for a trip to Argentina. ___ 3:30 p.m. President Barack Obama says he didn't consider skipping an exhibition baseball game in Cuba because of the deadly terrorist attack in Belgium. Obama says the premise of terrorism is disrupting ordinary's people lives and he's not giving in to their mentality. Obama recalled how the city of Boston responded after three people were killed and scores were wounded in April 2013 after a pair of bombs exploded near the finish line of its famed marathon. Obama says the resilience and strength that Boston showed afterward is the kind of spirit all people must continually show to terrorists. He says as long as people refuse to give in to fear and disrupt their lives because of terrorism, "we're going to be OK." ___ 3:20 p.m. It's the top of the fourth inning and President Barack Obama has left the exhibition game between the Cuban national team and the Tampa Bay Rays of Major League Baseball. The Rays are ahead, 3-0. Obama sat next to Cuban President Raul Castro and was interview by ESPN, which broadcast the game live. Argentina is the next stop on Obama's tour of Latin America. Obama plans to meet in the capital of Buenos Aires on Wednesday with Mauricio Macri, Argentina's new president. He's also scheduled to hold an event with young Argentinians and attend a state dinner at Casa Rosada, Argentina's equivalent of the White House. ___ 3:10 p.m. President Barack Obama says Cuba's isolation has in some ways empowered those who don't want to see change in that nation. Obama says his policy of engaging Cuba is not based on naivety but on the belief that Americans traveling to the nation and sharing their ideas and culture will provide a greater platform for change. Obama is speaking with ESPN in the third inning of an exhibition game between the Tampa Bay Rays and Cuba's national team. Obama says he has also spoken with Belgium's prime minister to discuss the terrorist attacks in Brussels. He says the attacks are another example of why the world must unite against the terrorists who conducted the attacks. He also says the U.S. will continue working with more than 60 nation "pounding" the Islamic State group and that "we're going to go after them." ___ 2:15 p.m. President Barack Obama is introducing Jackie Robinson's widow to Cuban President Raul Castro before the start of Tuesday's exhibition game. Rachel Robinson was also on Air Force One as the president traveled to Havana. Robinson, who broke Major League Baseball's color barrier, played in Cuba in 1947 with the Brooklyn Dodgers holding their spring training there. Rarely has so much pomp and circumstance accompanied an exhibition game. Former major leaguers Dave Winfield, Joe Torre and Derek Jeter were among the president's greeters. Obama has prime seats for the game and has even participated in a mini-wave where fans briefly stand, yell and raise their arms before sitting back down again. The effort ended almost as soon as it began. He is also chatting with several of the players, including Tampa Bay's Chris Archer, the team's star pitcher. Acher gave the president a baseball glove. ___ 1:50 p.m. President Barack Obama has arrived for a much-anticipated exhibition baseball game between the Tampa Bay Rays of Major League Baseball and the Cuban national team. The crowd roared as Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro entered the stadium and walked toward their seats in the VIP section behind home plate. It was a remarkable sight for Cubans to see the presidents of the United States and Cuba seated side by side. Obama's wife, Michelle, sat on the other side of him. It's the first game featuring an MLB team in Cuba since the Baltimore Orioles played here in 1999. ___ 1 p.m. Cubans who saw President Barack Obama's speech, which was broadcast on state TV, are jubilant about his calls for greater democracy on the island. Juan Francisco Ugarte Oliva, a 71-year-old retired refrigeration technician, called Obama's address "a jewel." Ugarte says the American president "dared to say in the presence of the leaders, of Raul Castro, that (Cubans) had the right to protest peacefully without being beaten or arrested." Barbara Ugarte, a 45-year-old gift shop owner, says she agreed with everything Obama said. She says Cubans "need democracy, freedom of expression." Cubans expressed a startling degree of openness and anger directed at their own leaders. Anabel Rodriguez, a housewife, says the speech was "very correct." She praised Obama for speaking about human rights, saying what you think and choosing your own president, "not those that they impose on you." ___ 12:10 p.m. President Barack Obama is praising a group of Cuban dissidents for showing "extraordinary courage." Obama is meeting with a group of about a dozen activists at the U.S. Embassy in Havana. He is noting that the group represented various causes and some in the room have been detained by government authorities "some in the past, some very recently." Some have broad concerns about democracy and "the ability to speak freely, worship freely." He says: "It requires, often times, great courage to be active in civic life here in Cuba." The group includes journalist Miriam Celaya, attorney Laritza Diversent and activist Manuel Cuesta and Jose Daniel Ferrer. Obama says the U.S.-Cuba policy is about engaging people directly. He says he hopes "that by listening and hearing" from Cuban people that U.S. policy will help them "live freely and with prosperity." He says: "Much of this is a matter of us being able to hear directly from the Cuban people and making sure that they have a voice and making sure that their concerns and their ideas are helping to shape U.S. policy." ___ 11:55 a.m. Prominent members of Cuban society who attended President Obama's keynote address say they are pleased with the president's message that the U.S. is a friend in helping the nation's transition, but they also stress that change will come at a pace set by Cuba, not the United States. "I think it's very important that President Obama has recognized the accomplishments of the Cuban people," says Heriberto Feraudy, a writer. Feraudy is emphasizing that Raul and Fidel Castro have both already said they would make whatever changes were necessary for the country. Gladys Abreu, head of the Cuban Society of Pediatrics says Obama "has delivered us a message of collaboration between the two people, and we agree with that." She says Obama's calls for change won't change the pace of reforms. Still, the message that the U.S is no longer a threat is welcome. "We're on the path. That path will be easier if there isn't confrontation," Abreu said. ___ 11:10 a.m. President Barack Obama is usually a harsh critic of the GOP candidates running to succeed him. On Tuesday, he held them up as evidence of American progress. Speaking in Havana on his historic first visit, Obama asked the audience to "stop and consider" the remarkable cast of candidates running this year. "You have two Cuban Americans in the Republican Party running against the legacy of a black man who is president while arguing that they're the best person to beat the Democratic nominee, who will either be a woman or a democratic socialist." "Who would have believed that back in 1959? That's a measure of our progress as a democracy." Obama didn't name the two Cuban contenders Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, who has suspended his campaign, or Texas Sen. Ted Cruz by name. Both have been harsh critics of Obama's warming of relations with Cuba. ___ 11 a.m. U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan is giving a thumbs-down to President Barack Obama's trip to Cuba. Asked what he thought about the president's visit, Ryan said: "Not much." The Wisconsin Republican said it was "fairly ironic" that Obama was in Cuba on Tuesday when an influential pro-Israel lobbying group was holding a conference in Washington. Ryan said that in Washington, "we were talking about standing up for our allies, fighting for freedom, standing up for national security, and the president takes a trip to Cuba where he effectively gets nothing in return and he legitimizes a tyrannical dictatorship." ___ 10:35 a.m. President Barack Obama is keeping up his push to lift the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba. Obama says the blockade hurts the Cuban people by cutting them off from the world and restricting economic growth. Speaking in Havana on Tuesday, Obama said: "It's time to lift the embargo." Obama has repeatedly cast the decades-old economic sanctions as an outdated holdover from another time a policy that should be cast aside for new approach. He says "We are in a new era" and that it's time to "leave behind the ideological battles of the past." ___ 10:25 a.m. President Barack Obama says he's come to Cuba to "bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas." Obama notes his lifetime has spanned the time of isolation of between the two countries and the decades of constant confrontation. But he says the two countries share the same values and someday the decades of hostilities will be viewed as just "one chapter in a longer story of family and of friendship." Obama is speaking from the Grand Theater of Havana, with Cuban President Raul Castro and his presumed successor, Cuba's First Vice President Miguel Diaz Canel, looking on. Obama stressed differences between the countries, noting Castro has discussed them at length during his visit. But Obama says Cuba and the U.S. share similar colonial roots and he says the countries are like two brothers who've been estranged for many years even though they share the same blood. Cuban President Raul Castro, left, stands alongside U.S. President Barack Obama, his wife Michelle, and their daughters Sasha and Malia, as they cheer at the start of a baseball game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Cuban national baseball team, in Havana, Cuba, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. The crowd roared as Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro entered the stadium and walked toward their seats in the VIP section behind home plate. It's the first game featuring an MLB team in Cuba since the Baltimore Orioles played in the country in 1999. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell) The baseball field at Estadio Latinoamericano is reflected in the sunglass of President Barack Obama as he attends an exhibition baseball game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Cuban National team with Cuban President Raul Castro, Tuesday, March 22, 2016, in Havana, Cuba. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) A man wearing crucifix and a shirt with the image of U.S. President Barack Obama awaits to get a glimpse of the U.S. presidential limousine carrying Obama, outside the Grand Theater of Havana, Cuba,Tuesday, March 22, 2016. President Obama urged Cubans in his speech at the theater, to look to the future with hope, casting his historic visit to the island nation as a moment to "bury the last remnants of the Cold War in the Americas." (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa) Tourists buying antiques in a shop, watch the speech of U.S. President Barack Obama on a television, in Havana,Cuba,Tuesday, March 22, 2016. In his speech President Obama urged Cubans to look to the future with hope, casting his historic visit to the island nation as a moment to "bury the last remnants of the Cold War in the Americas." (AP Photo/Ramon Espinosa) President Barack Obama speaks at El Gran Teatro de Havana, Tuesday, March 22, 2016, in Havana, Cuba. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) President Barack Obama gestures to another guest as he arrives for a state dinner at the Palace of the Revolution in Havana, Cuba, Monday, March 21, 2016. Obama's visit to Cuba is a crowning moment in his and Cuban President Raul Castro's bid to normalize ties between two countries that sit just 90 miles apart. (AP Photo/Rebecca Blackwell) President Barack Obama meets with dissidents and other local Cubans at the U.S. Embassy, Tuesday, March 22, 2016, in Havana, Cuba. From left are., Nelson Alvarez Matute, Miriam Celaya Gonzalez, and Manuel Cuesta Morua. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) Attack in Brussels weighs on airlines, travel sites, hotels A ripple ran through the travel and lodging industry Tuesday following deadly attacks in Belgium that killed dozens of people at the Brussels airport and in the city's subway. American Airlines, Delta and United Airlines cancelled or diverted all flights to and from Brussels, where the airport was closed. Security was tightened across Europe, just four months after coordinated attacks in Paris killed 130 people. Air travel and hotel bookings in Paris dipped in the aftermath. Passengers at Warsaws Frederic Chopin airport in Warsaw, Poland on Tuesday, March 22, 2016, pass by an information board that lists flights to Brussels as canceled, following deadly blasts at Bussels airport. (AP Photo/Czarek Sokolowski) But apprehension about travel, at least Tuesday, was global. "While the attacks took place in Brussels, it is likely to have an impact on European travel demand in general," said Raymond James analyst Savanthi Syth, in a note to clients. "The attacks come during peak Easter travel and ahead of peak summer travel." Here's how stocks of travel companies fared in trading Tuesday: AIRLINES: American Airlines Group Inc. fell 1.6 percent to $42.76. Delta Air Lines Inc. fell 1.5 percent to $49.39. United Continental Holdings Inc. fell 1.1 percent to $60.49. Air France KLM SA down 4 percent at 8.09 euros, or $9.07. HOTEL CHAINS: Hilton Worldwide Holdings Inc. fell less than 1 percent to $22.28. Hyatt Hotels Corp. fell 2.1 percent to $48.80. Intercontinental Hotels Group PLC fell 2.7 percent to $39.63. Marriott International Inc. fell 1.9 percent to $70.92. Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. fell less than 1 percent to $83.84. TRAVEL WEBSITES AND AGENCIES: Expedia Inc. down 1.8 percent to $108.92. The Priceline Group Inc. down 2.3 percent to $1,319.41. Ctrip.com International Ltd. down less than 1 percent to $44.87. TripAdvisor Inc. down 2.5 percent to $64.04. Thomas Cook PLC down 4.3 percent to 88.55 pence, or $1.26. FRANCE TO UK TRAIN TUNNEL OPERATOR: Groupe Eurotunnel SE down 3.8 percent to 9.63 euros, or $10.80. An Israeli airport security guard patrols with a dog in Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv, Israel, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. After the Brussels attacks, Israel briefly announced that all Israeli flights from Europe were canceled, then reinstated the flights, Israel Airports Authority spokesman Ofer Leffler said. Pini Schiff, former director of security at Ben-Gurion Airport, said the attack in the Brussels airport was a colossal failure of Belgian security, and he said the chances are very low that such a bombing could take place in Israels airport. Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport is considered among the most secure in the world, an outcome stemming from several Palestinian attacks on Israeli planes and travelers in the 1970s. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit) French police officers patrol outside the Gare du Nord train station, where high speed trains depart to Brussels, in Paris, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Authorities in Europe and across the world tightened security at airports, railway stations, government buildings and other key points after deadly attacks Tuesday on the Brussels airport and its subway system. (AP Photo/Francois Mori) A Italian police dog sniffs passengers' luggage at Leonardo Da Vinci airport in Fiumicino, near Rome, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Authorities in Europe and beyond have tightened security at airports, on subways, at the borders and on city streets after deadly attacks Tuesday on the Brussels airport and its subway system. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino) A man looks at flowers and messages outside the stock exchange in Brussels on Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, rocked the Brussels airport and subway system Tuesday, prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe. At least 26 people were reported dead. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert) Travelers wait at the counter of Brussels airlines in Ben Gurion airport near Tel Aviv, Israel, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. After the Brussels attacks, Israel briefly announced that all Israeli flights from Europe were canceled, then reinstated the flights, Israel Airports Authority spokesman Ofer Leffler said. Pini Schiff, former director of security at Ben-Gurion Airport, said the attack in the Brussels airport was a colossal failure of Belgian security, and he said the chances are very low that such a bombing could take place in Israels airport. Israel's Ben-Gurion Airport is considered among the most secure in the world, an outcome stemming from several Palestinian attacks on Israeli planes and travelers in the 1970s. (AP Photo/Ariel Schalit) Police to give update on case of mom shot by 4-year-old son PALATKA, Florida (AP) Police in Florida will discuss the results of their investigation into the shooting of mother by her 4-year-old boy who shot his mother in the back after getting ahold of her loaded gun. The sheriff's office is scheduled to address reporters Tuesday afternoon about its criminal inquiry into the mother, Jamie Gilt. She's apparently a gun lover who made numerous social media postings about gun rights. She's been hospitalized since the March 8 incident. She was shot on the back while driving after the boy got hold of the loaded gun and fired through the driver's seat. The 31-year-old mother could face charges of leaving a weapon unsecured and improperly stored, but authorities have said she legally owned the firearm. Minnesota lawmakers look for answers to black wealth gap ST. PAUL, Minn. (AP) When a young black man was killed in a confrontation with two police officers last November, Minneapolis became the latest city to endure weeks of street protests. But the unrest over 24-year-old Jamar Clark's death evolved beyond his case to include demands that city and state leaders do more about the persistent poverty seen as the root of racial tensions, especially on the city's predominantly black north side. Now, with a boost from Minnesota's liberal governor and the muscle of a nearly $1 billion surplus, the state is considering plowing millions of dollars into initiatives intended to help more black residents catch the economic tide that has pushed statewide unemployment below 4 percent even as African-Americans are four times as likely to be out of work. FILE - In a Nov. 18, 2015, file photo, a Black Lives Matter protester, left, talks to Minneapolis police guarding the Fourth Precinct entrance in Minneapolis. It was the fourth day of protests of the killing of Jamar Clark by a Minneapolis police officer. The unrest over Clarks death has evolved beyond his case, as demands continue that city and state leaders do something about persistent problems of poverty, especially on the citys predominantly black north side, seen as at the root of racial tensions. (AP Photo/Jim Mone, File) Democratic Sen. Bobby Champion, one of three black lawmakers in Minnesota's 201-member Legislature, said too many activists focus on the circumstances of Clark's shooting and press for release of video footage of his tussle with police. "If they release the videotape, does that change your economic circumstances? If they decide to indict the police officer, does that change your graduation rates?" he asked. "Police brutality should be included. But the common denominator is poverty." While reactions to other police shootings have often focused on criminal-justice changes, lawmakers in Minnesota, with its progressive reputation, are looking at underlying social causes. The debate in some ways parallels the presidential campaign, where the top Democratic and Republican contenders have argued about the reasons for the growing distance between the rich and poor. "It's not new," Nekima Levy-Pounds, head of the NAACP in Minneapolis, said of the income gap between blacks and whites in Minnesota. "But it's good to hear that they're paying attention to it." Job training and placement programs, fast-tracked GED initiatives, a surge of loans and investments for minority-owned businesses and expanded access to private schools are on the table in the Minnesota Legislature. A broad swath of industries, from medical technology to manufacturing, mixed in with a handful of Fortune 500 companies like 3M and U.S. Bank, have helped buoy the state's economic fortunes. The budget surplus has grown with recent tax hikes on high earners. But until the negotiations pay off and it's not clear they will many activists in Minnesota's black community will remain skeptical. "We're beyond needing a signal," Levy-Pounds said. "It should not have taken an unarmed young African-American man being killed for people to wake up." Also difficult is choosing measures that will make a difference. Previous efforts, supported by healthy levels of social spending, have fallen short. Poverty has dogged Minnesota's black neighborhoods for decades, masked by a progressive sheen embodied by Sen. Hubert Humphrey's outspoken support for civil rights and Sen. Paul Wellstone's "We all do better when we all do better" mantra. Only 6 percent of Minnesota residents are black, less than half of the national average, and the problems are starkest in Minneapolis' largely minority north side, marked by dilapidated housing projects and rundown storefronts. Long before the recent unrest, the neighborhood was a site of race riots in 1967, when protesters burned down businesses before the National Guard restored order. Recently, the economic disparities seemed to worsen. A census report last year showed black household incomes in Minnesota declined to $27,000 in 2014, compared with almost $65,000 for whites. More than 1 in 3 black Minnesota residents lives in poverty three times higher than whites. A lack of good-paying work and a sense of hopelessness make people in the community feel ignored, said Lovie Franklin, 20, who works two jobs to help support her parents and siblings. "You can't expect teenagers to feel like they can be something around garbage," Franklin said. "I got two jobs and I'm still hurting." Gov. Mark Dayton has promised to double the state government's share of minority workers and recently outlined $100 million in proposed investments aimed at boosting high school graduation rates, helping low-income residents buy their first homes and other forms of assistance. He said momentum for new efforts shouldn't be allowed to fade with the memory of the street protests. "It can't," he said. Since the Legislature convened this month, the issue has been shaping up along partisan lines. While Dayton and fellow Democrats have outlined new spending programs, Republicans who control the House countered with extra tax credits to send more people to private schools, with some lawmakers questioning the big dollar figures their political opponents have pledged. "I am not convinced that doing a lot of state spending on poverty and those kinds of things has a huge effect," Republican state Sen. David Hann said last month. FILE - This undated file photo released by his sister Javille Burns shows Jamar Clark. The unrest over Clarks death evolved beyond his case: Demands that city and state leaders do something about persistent problems of poverty, especially on the citys predominantly black north side, seen as at the root of racial tensions. (Jamar Clark/Javille Burns via AP, File) In this March 9, 2016 photo, Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton delivers his State of the State address in Minneapolis. Dayton has promised to double state governments share of minority workers and recently outlined $100 million of proposed investments to narrow gaps like money for mentors to boost high school graduation rates and funds to help low-income residents buy their first homes. (AP Photo/Jim Mone) In this March 18, 2016 photo, Lovie Franklin poses as she looks at homework during a lunch break in her job in Minneapolis. A U.S. Census report last year showed black household incomes in Minnesota declined. A lack of good-paying work and a sense of hopelessness make people in the community feel ignored, said resident Franklin, 20, who works two jobs to help support her parents and siblings. (AP Photo/Jim Mone) FILE - In a Nov. 19, 2015, file photo, Nekima Levy-Pounds, center, president of the Minneapolis chapter of the NAACP, renewed demands for investigators to release videos of the fatal shooting by Minneapolis police of Jamar Clark. The unrest over Clarks death has evolved beyond his case, as demands continue that city and state leaders do something about persistent problems of poverty, especially on the citys predominantly black north side, seen as at the root of racial tensions. (AP Photo/Jim Mone, File) But now, both immediate- and extended-release drugs will have warnings Commonly prescribed drugs, like Vicodin and Percocet, will get warnings The boxed warnings will highlight the risks of US health regulators will add their strongest warning labels to prescription painkillers, such as Vicodin and Percocet, to stem the epidemic of opioid abuse. The Food and Drug Administration revealed plans to add a 'black box' warning to all immediate-release prescription opioid painkillers - which includes nearly 175 branded and generic drugs. Those medications are among the most commonly prescribed drugs in the US - accounting for 90 per cent of all opioid painkillers. The FDA added similar warnings to long-acting drugs - such as OxyContin, which release their dosage slowly, over 12 hours or more - nearly three years ago. But now, both immediate and extended-release formulations will contain warnings that detail the risks of addiction, abuse, overdose and death. The FDA will add its strongest warning labels to the most commonly prescribed painkillers, including Percocet, to highlight the risks of addiction, abuse, overdose and death - in an attempt to curb the ongoing opioid epidemic. Pictured here, hydrocodone and acetaminophen tablets - which are also known as Vicodin The warning label changes come as US officials struggle to curb a surge in overdoses, which stem from the overprescribing of medications and readily available, inexpensive heroin. Dr Robert Califf, commissioner of the FDA, told the Associated Press: 'We're at a time when the unfathomable tragedies resulting from addiction, overdose and death have become one of the most urgent and devastating public health crises facing our country. 'I can't stress enough how critical it is for prescribers to have the most current information.' NEW CDC PAINKILLER GUIDELINES The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently issued new guidelines to limit the prescribing of painkillers. The recommendations seek to reverse almost two decades of rising painkiller use - which has been linked to a more than four-fold increase in overdose deaths tied to the drugs. Under the new guidelines, doctors are advised to avoid prescribing painkillers as a first-choice for common ailments, such as back pain and arthritis. Instead, primary care doctors are urged to try physical therapy, exercise and over-the-counter medications before turning to opioids for chronic pain. But if doctors feel prescription opioids are the best option, the CDC asked doctors to prescribe the lowest effective dose possible. The guidelines are voluntary, so individual doctors are not obligated to follow them. Yet, they could be widely adopted by hospitals, insurers and state and federal guideline systems. However, the guidelines do not apply to doctors who specialize in treating severe pain, stemming from cancer or other debilitating diseases. Advertisement Opioids include both prescription drugs, including codeine and hydrocodone, as well as illegal narcotics, such as heroin. They are a class of powerful and highly addictive drugs. Prescription opioids often combine oxycodone with lower-grade medications. Deaths from misuse and abuse of prescription opioids reached 19,000 in 2014 - the highest figure on record, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Furthermore, heroin and opioid painkillers combined caused 28,650 overdose deaths that year. Physicians are not required to adhere to the FDA's instructions on drug labels - but they are typically used as prescribing guidelines by hospitals, medical groups and insurers. However, critics of the FDA - such as the group Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing - called on the agency to add the warnings years ago. The group's founder, Dr Andrew Kolodny, said: 'The main driver of our opioid epidemic is addiction, and the immediate-release products are just as addictive.' The new label will specify that drugs - such as Percocet - can only be used after other medications and alternative therapies have been unable to control patients' pain. The FDA had already added such warning labels to long-acting painkillers, including OxyConton, which slowly release their doses over the course of 12 hours. But now, both immediate- and extended-release painkillers will contain the warnings - a move that comes one week after CDC issued new prescription guidelines Dr Doug Throckmorton, a deputy director in the FDA's drug center, said: 'This new indication, once finalized, will remind prescribers that immediate-release opioids are also powerful drugs with important safety concerns.' The doctor added that the agency's 2013 labeling change only focused on long-acting drugs because they represented a 'disproportionate risk' to patients, as they contain higher opioid levels. In recent years, government officials have tried several different approaches to tackle painkiller abuse. This new indication, once finalized, will remind prescribers that immediate-release opioids are also powerful drugs with important safety concerns Dr Doug Throckmorton, of the FDA The FDA previously restricted combination pills, such as Vicodin, to limit refills and the doctors who can prescribe them. And, Florida and New York have cracked down on 'pill mills' by using databases to monitor what doctors are prescribing. The Obama administration has requested $1.1 billion from Congress to curb opioid addiciton. The White House on Tuesday sent letters to governors of all 50 states, with steps for reducing opioid overprescribing and improving addiction treatment. The FDA is also planning to add new information about the risks of opioid use for pregnant women and newborns, in addition to the boxed warning. The label will further include information about drug interactions with antidepressants and other medications. The FDA's announcement comes less than a week after the CDC issued its first-ever national prescribing guidelines for opioids. US charges 3 with Syrian Electronic Army for hacking WASHINGTON (AP) Three current or former members of the so-called Syrian Electronic Army have been charged with computer hacking-related conspiracies that targeted the U.S. government, media and private-sector companies, the Justice Department announced Tuesday. The criminal charges against three Syrians were unsealed on Tuesday in U.S. Eastern District Court of Virginia. None are in custody. Prosecutors allege that Ahmad Umar Agha, 22, and Firas Dardar, 27, tricked email users into revealing their usernames and passwords to compromise domestic and international computer systems from 2011 through 2014. They used a common technique known as spear-phishing, in which they forged convincing-looking emails baiting the recipient to click on an included link and reveal their passwords. This two-picture combo of wanted posters provided by the FBI shows Ahmed al-Agha, left, and Firas Dardar. The Justice Department has indicted current or former members of the Syrian Electronic Army for computer hacking-related conspiracies. Prosecutors allege that 22-year-old Agha and 27-year-old Dardar used spear-phishing to steal usernames and passwords to compromise government, media, and private-sector computer systems. FBI via AP) The government said Agha, known online as "Th3 Pr0," and Dardar, known as "The Shadow," are members of the special operations division of the Syrian Electronic Army, a group of hackers responsible for computer intrusions intended to punish perceived detractors of Syrian President Bashar Assad and publish pro-Assad propaganda. A $100,000 reward is being offered for information leading to their arrests and they're believed to be in Syria. In April 2013, they allegedly sent a tweet from The Associated Press account on Twitter falsely claiming a bomb had exploded at the White House and injured the president. The message caused the stock market to dip significantly before the tweet was quickly determined to be a hoax. They allegedly altered Harvard University's website home page, substituting an image of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, with a message saying "Syrian Electronic Army were Here." They are accused of creating a false online post on the Washington Post; unsuccessfully targeting members of the Executive Office of the President; defacing a blog and Twitter account belonging to Microsoft; sending false news tweets from Reuters' Twitter account and posting a false report on a journalist's blog; and posting messages on Human Rights Watch criticizing its own reports on Syria as "false." Other media the two allegedly compromised in spear-phishing efforts include National Public Radio, CNN, The Onion, E! Online, the Daily Dot, New York Post, Time magazine and Vice. They also allegedly managed to take down the New York Times website after compromising its technology vendor. They also allegedly redirected the U.S. Marine Corps recruiting website to an online page controlled by them encouraging marines to "refuse your orders" and inviting them to fight alongside the Syrian Army and attempted to access NASA's network. Pierre Romar, 36, was also charged separately for his role in an extortion hacking scheme from 2013 through 2014. He was believed to be in Germany. Romar allegedly was inspired by the hacking activities perpetrated by Agha and Dardar and wanted to join the Syrian Electronic Army, reaching out to Agha for help with a cyberattack he was planning against targets in Sauidi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar. According to the complaint, Agha connected him with Dardar on Facebook and the two worked together on an extortion scheme targeting U.S. and international computers and send victims threats to pay up after gaining access to their system through a spear-phishing attack. Romar's location, in Germany, helped facilitate transferring the money to Syrian Electronic Army members in Syria because of U.S. sanctions. Dardar allegedly demanded more than a total of $500,000 from 14 victims but ultimately accepted smaller amounts in many circumstances. Victims included an online gaming company, an online entertainment service, a Swiss web hosting provider, a United Kingdom-based web hosting company, a Europe-based web hosting company, a California-based web hosting company. In the last case, the company and some of its clients' Internet traffic was redirected to a site that said they had been hacked, alleged to have downloaded all their data and threatened to sell the databases for $100 to other hackers if it failed to comply. The company, which was not identified, ultimately paid about $1,500 to "Peter Romar in Germany" through Western Union after their bank denied the transfer to Syria despite an initial demand of 105,000 euros. ___ Follow Tami Abdollah on Twitter at https://twitter.com/latams . ___ Lawyer: Man accused of killing cop is mentally impaired MANASSAS, Va. (AP) An Army staff sergeant charged with shooting and killing a newly sworn Virginia police officer is mentally impaired as a result of his two tours in Iraq, his defense lawyer said Tuesday. Ronald Hamilton, 32, of Woodbridge, is charged with capital murder for the Feb. 27 shooting death of Prince William County police officer Ashley Guindon, who was working her first shift after being sworn in. At a pretrial hearing in Prince William General District Court, Hamilton's lawyer, Ed Ungvarsky, said he expects Hamilton's state of mind to be a major issue going forward, though he did not commit to pursuing an insanity defense. In this February 2016 photo provided by the Prince William County, Va. Police shows Ronald Hamilton, who is being held without bond in the Prince William County Adult Detention Center on charges that include murder of a law enforcement officer. A judge weighs a defense request for a gag order on lawyers in the capital murder case against a soldier charged with killing a police officer on her first shift. (Prince William County Police via AP) "After serving two tours in Iraq, Sgt. Hamilton presents as a psychologically damaged and mentally impaired person," Ungvarsky told Judge Robert Coleman. Prosecutors say Hamilton shot Guindon and two other police officers who responded when Hamilton's wife called 911 for help. Crystal Hamilton was found shot dead in her home. The two other officers who were shot, Jesse Hempen and David McKeown, survived. Court records indicate that Hamilton confessed to the shootings. Neither Ungvarsky nor Prince William County Commonwealth's Attorney Paul Ebert would comment on Hamilton's mental health after Tuesday's hearing. Ethical guidelines bar attorneys from discussing potential evidence in the case outside of court. Ungvarsky's comment came as he argued multiple pretrial motions, including a request for a gag order on all the lawyers in the case, and a request that would bar prosecutors from using a search warrant to obtain Hamilton's personal records, such as health records and phone records. Ungvarsky said prosecutors should instead be required to seek such records through a subpoena, a process that would allow defense lawyers to object to anything they deemed improper. Coleman rejected all of Ungvarsky's requests, saying he lacked authority as a district judge with limited jurisdiction to grant them. A preliminary hearing is scheduled for next month, and if a judge finds probable cause, the case will be sent to a grand jury for an indictment and then to Circuit Court for a trial. If convicted, Hamilton could get the death penalty. Hamilton said very little during the hourlong hearing. He was handcuffed and shackled throughout, and surrounded by four armed deputies. Fear of bloody attacks becomes part of life in Europe STOCKHOLM (AP) Paris, Copenhagen, Brussels. In just over a year three European capitals have been ravaged by bombs and gunfire. After each attack life slowly returns to normal. But it's a new normal for Europe, where terror alerts are always on high and where people in cities so far spared major violence assume it's a matter of when, not if. "With each atrocity that occurs we change," said Ian Duncan, a Scottish member of the European Parliament in Brussels. "We become less open. We pull down barriers and close doors. But it is a direction we are following now." A man walks by solidarity messages written in chalk outside the stock exchange in Brussels on Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, rocked the Brussels airport and subway system Tuesday, prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe. At least 26 people were reported dead. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert) The carnage in Brussels on Tuesday came as Europe was still reeling from the November attacks by Islamic militants in Paris that killed 130 people. In the following months France and Belgium have looked like countries at least partially at war, with soldiers in the streets, lockdowns and deadly shootouts with militants. The rest of Europe has watched with trepidation. "These were attacks in Belgium. They could just as well be attacks in Britain or France or Germany or elsewhere in Europe," British Prime Minister David Cameron told the BBC on Tuesday. He said Britain's threat level remains "severe," meaning an attack is considered highly likely. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks at the Brussels airport and in the city's subway that left dozens dead and scores more wounded. French President Francois Hollande said the attacks targeted all of Europe and he warned of a long "war" ahead. Though people in Western Europe have dealt with the threat of violence from Muslim extremists as well as homegrown nationalist and revolutionary movements for decades, the idea that a "war" is playing out in their streets is hard to imagine. But the recent frequency and scale of attacks have made some Europeans feel that it's just something they have to get used to. "Five years ago you didn't think about it so much," said Francesca Cervellini, a 20-year-old Italian tourist as she passed by the Swedish Parliament in Stockholm. "It didn't happen so often before. Now it's everyday life. It's normal." In Moscow, security has been tightened notably at everyday locations in the wake of a series of attacks in the past 15 years. There are metal detectors at the entrances to all subway stations, all passenger rail stations do luggage scans, most indoor shopping centers have metal detectors and glowering guards. Airports do luggage scans at the entrance. In Western Europe people are more reluctant to trade civil liberties and an open society for more security. But after each attack that equation changes, at least temporarily, said Catherine Muller, of the Institute of Development Studies in Brighton, England. "Terrorism is one of the risks people normally overestimate because it is very scary and has a strong emotional effect," said Muller. While those fears are perfectly understandable, she said, it's important to remember that "no matter what policies or laws are in place, there's not going to be 100 percent security." In Germany the fear of terrorism is less acute than in France or Belgium, but the risk of such attacks is something far-right and nationalist groups focus on a lot, especially in connection with the influx of migrants from the Middle East. There haven't been any attacks by Islamic extremists in Germany since Arid Uka shot dead two American servicemen at Frankfurt airport in 2011. However there have been several attempted attacks that failed or were foiled. German mainstream politicians have also been at pains to point out that Germany is a target for Islamic extremists and it's probably a matter of when, not if, such an attack happens. Even in small countries on Europe's periphery the same fears are palpable. Denmark witnessed an attack in February last year, when a gunman, apparently inspired by the Charlie Hebdo shooting massacre in Paris a few weeks earlier, opened fire against a free-speech seminar and outside a synagogue. Sweden hasn't seen an attack since a suicide bomber blew himself up in Stockholm in December 2010, but failed to kill anyone else. But reports of hundreds of extremists from Sweden joining Islamic State fighters in Syria and last year's unprecedented influx of migrants from the Middle East and Africa have sparked concerns that an attack will happen sooner or later. "It could happen tomorrow or in a year or in five years," said Dani Amouri, a 23-year-old Stockholm resident who left Lebanon five years ago. "In Sweden, Denmark, Germany, everywhere. There is no peace in the world anymore. Not even in Europe." Duncan, who represents the Scottish Conservatives in the European Parliament, was supposed to give visitors from Scotland a tour of the European Parliament on Tuesday. Instead they had to stay in their hotels. He said the violence made him think about what, if anything, one can do to be more vigilant when moving in public places without overreacting. "It's not like a film where you can see the villain approaching," Duncan said. "Is it someone carrying a backpack? Is it someone who doesn't look like me? I can't tell you what I should try to avoid." ___ Associated Press writers James Heintz in Moscow and Frank Jordans in Berlin contributed to this report. A man looks at flowers and messages outside the stock exchange in Brussels on Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, rocked the Brussels airport and subway system Tuesday, prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe. At least 26 people were reported dead. (AP Photo/Geert Vanden Wijngaert) German police officers guard a terminal of the airportthe in Frankfurt, Germany, during tighter security measures Tuesday, March 22, 2016, when various explosions hit the Belgian capital Brussels killing several people. (AP Photo/Michael Probst) French police officers patrol outside the Gare du Nord train station, where high speed trains depart to Brussels, in Paris, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Authorities in Europe and across the world tightened security at airports, railway stations, government buildings and other key points after deadly attacks Tuesday on the Brussels airport and its subway system. (AP Photo/Francois Mori) French soldiers patrol at Charles de Gaulle airport, in Roissy, north of Paris, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Authorities are tightening security at airports and on the streets of European cities after attacks on the Brussels airport and subways system that killed at least one person and injured many others. Security has been beefed up in France, Austria, Poland and the Czech Republic. (AP Photo/Michel Euler) Police and rescue teams are pictured outside the metro station Maelbeek in Brussels, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, rocked the Brussels airport and its subway system Tuesday, prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner) Forensic staff leave the metro station Maelbeek in Brussels, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, rocked the Brussels airport and its subway system Tuesday, prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe. (AP Photo/Martin Meissner) Passengers of an ICE train leave the train at its final stop at the station in Aachen, Germany, near to the Belgian border Tuesday March 22, 2016. German police have increased security measures at the borders following the terrorist attacks in Brussels. (Ralf Roeger/dpa via AP) French soldiers check unattended boxes left on the platform at Gare De Lyon railway station in Paris, France, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Authorities are tightening security at airports and on the streets of European cities after attacks on the Brussels airport and subways system that killed at least one person and injured many others. (AP Photo/Francois Mori) Tuesday, March 29 Today is Tuesday, March 29, the 89th day of 2016. There are 277 days left in the year. Highlights in history on this date: 1801 - Britain seizes Danish and Swedish islands in West Indies. 1812 - The first White House wedding takes place when First Lady Dolly Madison's sister Lucy Payne Washington marries Supreme Court Justice Thomas Todd. 1814 - Jews get equal rights in Denmark. 1830 - Spain's King Ferdinand VII passes law allowing females to be heirs to throne. 1847 - Victorious American forces led by General Winfield Scott occupy the city of Veracruz after Mexican defenders capitulate. 1848 - Denmark's three-year war with Prussia starts. Danes are defeated and lose a large chunk of the southern Jutland peninsula. 1849 - Britain annexes Punjab in India by treaty with Maharajah of Lahore. 1864 - Ionian Islands are ceded by Britain to Greece. 1867 - British Parliament passes the North America Act to create the Dominion of Canada. 1901 - Australia's first federal elections are held, with Labor Party winning power. 1943 - Rationing of meat, butter and cheese in United States begins during World War II. 1946 - New constitution goes into effect in the British Gold Coast colony now Ghana becoming first British African colony with majority of Africans in legislature. 1951 - Chinese government rejects U.S. offer for truce discussions in Korea; Julius and Ethel Rosenberg are convicted of conspiracy to commit espionage by U.S. court and are executed in June 1953. 1967 - France launches its first nuclear submarine. 1971 - U.S. Army Lt. William L. Calley Jr. is convicted of murdering at least 22 Vietnamese civilians in the My Lai massacre. He spends three years under house arrest. 1973 - Last American troops leave South Vietnam, ending direct military role of United States in Vietnam war. 1990 - Prime Minister Bob Hawke claims victory in Australian election, becoming first Labor winner of four consecutive terms. 1993 - More than 2,300 refugees take advantage of a cease-fire and a rare relief convoy to flee the cold and hunger of Srebrenica, Bosnia. 1994 - Serbs and Croats sign a cease-fire to end the war between them in Croatia. 1997 - A boat carrying dozens of Albanians seeking refuge in Italy strikes an Italian navy ship and sinks in Adriatic waters. A total of 52 bodies are recovered. 2002 - Israeli forces storm Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat's compound and West Bank cities after two suicide attacks kill 26 people in Netanya. 2006 - Charles Taylor is flown to Sierra Leone, opening the way for the former Liberian president to become the first African head of state tried for war crimes by an international court. 2009 - Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir receives a red-carpet welcome in Qatar as he attends an Arab summit in his most brazen act of defiance against an international arrest warrant on charges of war crimes in Darfur. 2010 - Terror returns to the heart of Russia, with two deadly suicide bombings on the Moscow subway at rush hour. At least 38 people are killed and more than 60 wounded in the morning blasts, the first such attacks in Moscow in six years. 2013 - Pope Francis veers from the message of his predecessor and praises "the friendship of so many Muslim brothers" during a Good Friday procession dedicated to the plight of Christians in the Middle East. 2014 - Leaders of Crimea's minority gather to condemn Russia's annexation of the peninsula and appeal to international bodies for recognition as an autonomous group. 2015 - Appeals court judges at the war crimes tribunal rule that Serbian far-right leader Vojislav Seselj has breached conditions of his provisional release and must return to the court's cellblock in the Hague where he has already spent more than a decade in custody. Today's Birthdays: Edna St. Vincent Millay, U.S. poet/dramatist (1892-1950); Pearl Bailey, U.S. entertainer (1918-1990); Giulietta Masina, Italian actress (1921-1994); Eric Idle, British actor/comedian of "Monty Python" (1943--); Elle Macpherson, Australian model (1963--); Lucy Lawless, New Zealand actress (1968--); Amy Sedaris, U.S. comedian/actress/author (1961--). Thought for Today: Argentina court asks president to OK release of state secret BUENOS AIRES, Argentina (AP) A judge in Argentina is asking President Mauricio Macri to allow former President Carlos Menem to release information that he says is a state secret regarding his son's mysterious 1995 death. Menem was president from 1989-1999 and is currently a senator. A local judge made the request to the presidency Tuesday. Menem presented a written statement the day before saying he knows who killed his son and why. The former president has said he cannot release the information because it a state secret. But the judge wants him to testify again. FILE - In this Apr. 13, 2004, file photo, former Argentine Preident Carlos Menem gives a news conference in which he denied corruption charges he faces in his country, in Santiago, Chile. A judge in Argentina is asking president Mauricio Macri on Tuesday, March 22, 2016, to allow former President Carlos Menem to release information that he says is a state secret regarding his sons mysterious 1995 death. Menem was president from 1989-1999 and is currently a senator. (AP Photo/Santiago Llanquin,File) Carlos Facundo Menem died at age 26 when the helicopter he was piloting crashed on March 15, 1995 on Buenos Aires' outskirts. The Latest: Appeal filed in custody case over Choctaw girl SANTA CLARITA, Calif. (AP) The Latest on a Native American girl removed from her foster family in California (all times local): 12:40 a.m. The foster family of a 6-year-old Native American girl is asking the California Supreme Court to return the child to their home where she has lived for most of her life. Rusty Page carries Lexi while Summer Page, in the background, cries as members of family services, left, arrive to take Lexi away from her foster family in Santa Clarita, Calif., Monday, March 21, 2016. Lexi, who spent most of her life with California foster parents, was removed from her home on Monday under a court order that concluded her native American blood requires her placement with relatives in Utah. (David Crane/Los Angeles Daily News via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT The girl named Lexi was removed Monday under a court order that concluded her slight Choctaw heritage requires that he be placed with relatives in Utah. The family's lawyer, Lori Alvino McGill, says the request was made Tuesday for the state's high court to hear the appeal. McGill also requested that custody be restored to foster parents Rusty and Summer Page while the appeal is decided. Lexi is 1/64th Choctaw on her birth father's side. Her mother had substance abuse problems, and her father had a criminal history, according to court records. The Pages had fought efforts under the federal Indian Child Welfare Act to place Lexi with relatives of her father, who is a Native American. Supporters of Lexi's foster family hold a rally for the family outside Lexi's foster home in Santa Clarita, Calif., Monday, March 21, 2016. Lexi, who spent most of her life with California foster parents, was removed from her home on Monday under a court order that concluded her native American blood requires her placement with relatives in Utah. (David Crane/Los Angeles Daily News via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT Graham, center, and Lena Kelly, rear, Lexi's foster aunt and uncle, break down on the street after family services came to take Lexi away from her foster family in Santa Clarita, Calif., Monday, March 21, 2016. Lexi, who spent most of her life with California foster parents, was removed from her home on Monday under a court order that concluded her native American blood requires her placement with relatives in Utah. (David Crane/Los Angeles Daily News via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT Graham Kelly, Lexi's foster uncle, breaks down on the street after family services came to take Lexi away from her foster family in Santa Clarita, Calif., Monday, March 21, 2016. Lexi, who spent most of her life with California foster parents, was removed from her home on Monday under a court order that concluded her native American blood requires her placement with relatives in Utah. (David Crane/Los Angeles Daily News via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT Graham, right front, and Lena Kelly, Lexi's foster aunt and uncle, break down in the street after family services came to take Lexi away from her foster family in Santa Clarita, Calif., Monday, March 21, 2016. Lexi, who spent most of her life with California foster parents, was removed from her home on Monday under a court order that concluded her native American blood requires her placement with relatives in Utah. (David Crane/Los Angeles Daily News via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT Ex-Texas trooper pleads not guilty to perjury HEMPSTEAD, Texas (AP) A fired Texas trooper pleaded not guilty Tuesday to perjury stemming from his arrest last summer of a black woman who was later found dead in a county jail. Brian Encinia entered his plea during a brief appearance before a judge as protesters gathered outside the courthouse. One held a sign that read: "What happened to Sandra Bland?" Bland's arrest captured on a police dash-camera video provoked national outrage and drew the attention of the Black Lives Matter movement. Former Texas state trooper Brian Encinia, center, leaves the courtroom after an arraignment hearing Tuesday, March 22, 2016, in Hempstead, Texas. Encinia, the fired Texas trooper, is facing arraignment on a misdemeanor perjury charge related to his arrest last summer of Sandra Bland, a black woman who was later found dead in a county jail. (Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT Encinia's attorney, Larkin Eakin, said after Tuesday's arraignment that the perjury charge "represents a fundamental misunderstanding of law enforcement procedures." He said Encinia acted properly during the July 2015 traffic stop and Bland's subsequent arrest. A grand jury indicted Encinia in January for saying in an affidavit that he removed a combative Bland from her car after stopping her near Houston for a minor traffic violation so he could conduct a safer traffic investigation. Video of the stop shows Encinia drawing his stun gun and telling Bland, "I will light you up!" She can later be heard off-camera screaming that he's about to break her wrists and complaining that he knocked her head into the ground. Encinia's affidavit stated he "removed her from her vehicle to further conduct a safer traffic investigation," but grand jurors found that statement to be false. Bland, who was in the process of moving to Texas from the Chicago area, was found hanging from a jail cell partition three days after her arrest. A plastic garbage bag was around her neck. A medical examiner ruled it a suicide. A grand jury declined to charge any sheriff's officials or jailers in the death. Bland's relatives have filed a wrongful death lawsuit, and members of her family were in the courtroom Tuesday. "I want an opportunity to allow accountability to be shown," said Bland's mother, Geneva Reed-Veal, a Chicago-area resident. "I want answers as to what happened to my daughter, but I still want it to happen in God's way." Encinia's next court hearing is scheduled for May 17. The perjury charge is a misdemeanor that carries a maximum of one year in jail and a $4,000 fine. The Texas Department of Public Safety early this month formally fired Encinia over the stop. He can appeal the decision. ___ Associated Press writers David Warren in Dallas and Don Babwin in Chicago contributed to this report. Geneva Reed-Veal, center, mother of Sandra Bland, talks with reporters outside the courthouse after former Texas state trooper Brian Encinia's arraignment hearing Tuesday, March 22, 2016, in Hempstead, Texas. Encinia, who arrested Sandra Bland, was arraigned on a misdemeanor perjury charge. (AP Photo/David J. Phillip) Former Texas state trooper Brian Encinia, center, leaves the courtroom after an arraignment hearing Tuesday, March 22, 2016, in Hempstead, Texas. Fired Texas trooper Encinia is facing arraignment on a misdemeanor perjury charge related to his arrest last summer of Sandra Bland, a black woman who was later found dead in a county jail. (Melissa Phillip/Houston Chronicle via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT Custody case of Native American girl appealed to high court LOS ANGELES (AP) A California family appealed Tuesday to the state's highest court in their fight to keep a 6-year-old foster child who was removed from their home after a lower court said her 1/64th Native American bloodline requires that she live with relatives. The family's lawyer, Lori Alvino McGill, filed the request for the California Supreme Court to hear the appeal. McGill also requested that custody of the child named Lexi be returned to Rusty and Summer Page until the appeal is decided. Rusty Page carries Lexi while Summer Page, in the background, cries as members of family services, left, arrive to take Lexi away from her foster family in Santa Clarita, Calif., Monday, March 21, 2016. Lexi, who spent most of her life with California foster parents, was removed from her home on Monday under a court order that concluded her native American blood requires her placement with relatives in Utah. (David Crane/Los Angeles Daily News via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT The Pages have fought efforts under the federal Indian Child Welfare Act to place Lexi with relatives of her father, who is part Choctaw. The Pages argued that Lexi has lived with them since the age of 2 and considers them her family. However, a court found that the Pages have not proven Lexi would suffer emotional harm by the transfer. The Pages have three children and want to adopt Lexi, who was 17 months old when she was removed from the custody of her birth parents. Her mother had substance abuse problems, and her father had a criminal history, according to court records. Dozens of cases involving foster families have gone to court around the country after the Indian Child Welfare Act was passed in the late 1970s. Lawmakers found that Native American families were broken up at disproportionately high rates, and that cultural ignorance and biases within the child welfare system were largely to blame. Lexi cried and clutched a stuffed bear on Monday as Rusty Page carried her out of his home near Los Angeles and Los Angeles County social workers whisked her away in a waiting car. "How is it that a screaming child, saying, 'I want to stay, I'm scared,' how is it in her best interest to pull her from the girl she was before that doorbell rang?" Rusty Page told KNX-AM radio. A crowd of friends and neighbors wept, prayed or sang hymns. Under the transfer, Lexi will live with a Utah couple who are not Native Americans but are related by marriage to her father. The girl's sister is living with the couple, and another sister will be living down the street, said Leslie Heimov of the Children's Law Center of California, Lexi's court-appointed legal representatives. "The law is very clear that siblings should be kept together whenever they can be, and they should be placed together even if they were not initially together," Heimov told the Los Angeles Daily News (http://bit.ly/1pYtXlg ). She said Lexi and the Utah family had traded messages and had monthly visits during the past three years. "She has a loving relationship with them," Heimov said. "They are not strangers in any way, shape or form." The National Indian Child Welfare Association said in a statement that the Pages were aware for years that the girl was an American Indian but chose to "drag out litigation as long as possible, creating instability for the child." The Choctaw Nation said it "desires the best for this Choctaw child." In 2015, the Bureau of Indian Affairs issued guidance on implementing the Indian Child Welfare Act clarifying that tribes alone are responsible for determining who is a member. Wenona Singel, a law professor at Michigan State University, said membership requirements vary among tribes, with some being more restrictive than others. "The issue is not what degree of Choctaw ancestry a child has," Singel said. "Rather the issue is whether the child is a citizen of the tribe in question or eligible for citizenship." Singel is a member of a tribe in Michigan. There is still considerable disagreement over the application of the law and whether it serves children's best interest, said Ralph Richard Banks, a professor at Stanford Law School. Once a child is placed with a Native American family, it is highly unlikely that the decision would be reversed, he added. "It would be fairly extraordinary for an appeals court to reverse that," he said. ___ Associated Press writer Christine Armario contributed to this report. Supporters of Lexi's foster family hold a rally for the family outside Lexi's foster home in Santa Clarita, Calif., Monday, March 21, 2016. Lexi, who spent most of her life with California foster parents, was removed from her home on Monday under a court order that concluded her native American blood requires her placement with relatives in Utah. (David Crane/Los Angeles Daily News via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT Graham, center, and Lena Kelly, rear, Lexi's foster aunt and uncle, break down on the street after family services came to take Lexi away from her foster family in Santa Clarita, Calif., Monday, March 21, 2016. Lexi, who spent most of her life with California foster parents, was removed from her home on Monday under a court order that concluded her native American blood requires her placement with relatives in Utah. (David Crane/Los Angeles Daily News via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT Graham Kelly, Lexi's foster uncle, breaks down on the street after family services came to take Lexi away from her foster family in Santa Clarita, Calif., Monday, March 21, 2016. Lexi, who spent most of her life with California foster parents, was removed from her home on Monday under a court order that concluded her native American blood requires her placement with relatives in Utah. (David Crane/Los Angeles Daily News via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT Graham, right front, and Lena Kelly, Lexi's foster aunt and uncle, break down in the street after family services came to take Lexi away from her foster family in Santa Clarita, Calif., Monday, March 21, 2016. Lexi, who spent most of her life with California foster parents, was removed from her home on Monday under a court order that concluded her native American blood requires her placement with relatives in Utah. (David Crane/Los Angeles Daily News via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT Cruz and Trump: Boost surveillance of Muslims after Brussels NEW YORK (AP) Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz said Tuesday that surveillance in Muslim neighborhoods in the U.S. must be intensified following the deadly bombings at Brussels, while rival Donald Trump suggested torturing a suspect in last year's Paris attacks would have prevented the carnage. Echoing Trump's earlier statements, Cruz said the U.S. should stop the flow of refugees from countries where the Islamic State militant group has a significant presence. The Islamic State took credit for the attacks at the Brussels airport and a subway station that killed dozens Tuesday and wounded many more. "We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized," the Texas senator said in a statement. Republican presidential candidate, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas speaks to the media about events in Brussels, Tuesday, March 22, 2016, near the Capitol in Washington. Cruz said he would use the "full force and fury" of the U.S. military to defeat the Islamic State group. (AP Photo/Jacquelyn Martin) Trump praised Cruz's plan as a "good idea" that he supports "100 percent" in an interview with CNN. The GOP front-runner also intensified his past calls for the U.S. to engage in harsher interrogation techniques, arguing that Belgium could have prevented the bombings had it tortured a suspect in last year's Paris attacks who was arrested last week. "Well, you know, he may be talking, but he'll talk a lot faster with the torture. ... Because he probably knew about it. I would be willing to bet that he knew about this bombing that took place today," Trump said. Trump, who has proposed a temporary ban on foreign Muslims entering the U.S., said "nothing's nice" about techniques such as waterboarding, which simulates drowning. He added, "It's your minimal form of torture. We can't waterboard and they can chop off heads." Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, said earlier Tuesday the Brussels plot was probably already underway before the suspect's arrest and that his apprehension may have sped up its execution. When reminded that international law prohibits torture, Trump responded: "Well, I would say that the eggheads that came up with this international law should turn on their television and watch CNN right now, because I'm looking at scenes on CNN right now as I'm speaking to you that are absolutely atrocious." Speaking Tuesday afternoon in New York, Cruz praised the city's police department's former program of conducting surveillance in Muslim neighborhoods, called for its reinstatement and said it could be a model for police departments nationwide. "New Yorkers want a safe and secure America," Cruz said. "New Yorkers saw first-hand the tragic consequences of radical Islamic terrorism." After the 9/11 attacks, the New York Police Department used its intelligence division to cultivate informants and conduct surveillance in Muslim communities. In a series of articles, The Associated Press revealed the intelligence division had infiltrated dozens of mosques and Muslim student groups and investigated hundreds. The program was disbanded amid complaints of religious and racial profiling. Trump said the city had had "the finest surveillance of the whole radical Islam situation that there is." He joined Cruz in blaming the city's mayor, Bill de Blasio, for ending it. "He took it down and he knocked it out and that was a terrible mistake," said Trump, adding, "We can be nice about it and we can be politically correct about it, but we're being fools, OK?" New York Police Department Commissioner William Bratton objected to Cruz's remarks Tuesday, saying: "I take great offense at his characterization of that whole population. ... He's really out of line." The Council on American-Islamic Relations, the nation's largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, condemned the calls for surveillance, saying it sends "an alarming message to American Muslims who increasingly fear for their future in this nation and to all Americans who value the Constitution and religious liberties." Democratic hopeful Bernie Sanders, campaigning in Arizona on Tuesday, said boosting national security and protecting civil rights must go hand-in-hand. He said he strongly disagrees with calls for heightened domestic surveillance of Muslims. "That would be unconstitutional it would be wrong," Sanders said. Imam Abdisalam Adam, the board chair of Dar Al-Hijrah Riverside Islamic Center, a mosque in a Somali neighborhood in Minneapolis, said putting more scrutiny on Muslim communities is not a way to keep the country safe. "It's counterproductive," he said. "When you look at the American Muslim community, it's very well integrated and very involved in civic unification ... It's a patriotic community that's involved in so many aspects of the American life." Asked about Cruz's comment, none of a half-dozen conservative House Republicans meeting with reporters Tuesday criticized him and most spoke of the need to keep the country safe. "Nearly every neighborhood is patrolled. That's what local law enforcement does," said Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Kan., who has endorsed Cruz. He added that he didn't know specifically what Cruz was referring to. "I believe in the First Amendment, the Second Amendment, every one of them, but we also know that in this country, we're going to have to step up security in every neighborhood across America," said Rep. Matt Salmon, an Arizona Republican who has endorsed Cruz. ___ Associated Press writers Jill Colvin, Steve Peoples, Ken Thomas, Lisa Lerer, Alan Fram in Washington, and Steve Karnowski and Amy Forliti in Minneapolis contributed to this report. FILE - In this March 21, 2016 file photo, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks in Washington. Republican and Democratic presidential candidates clashed over the role of government, and its limitations, in enforcing U.S. national security Tuesday, March 21, 2016, following deadly attacks on the Brussels airport and metro system. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File) Kerry off to Russia for Syria talks after Brussels attacks WASHINGTON (AP) Secretary of State John Kerry is heading to Moscow for talks on Ukraine and Syria as the attacks against Brussels underscored the urgency of fighting the Islamic State group. Kerry departed Washington late Tuesday after accompanying President Barack Obama to Cuba and speaking by phone from Havana with the Belgian foreign minister to offer condolences for the victims of the attacks and any assistance Brussels might need. The attacks were claimed by the Islamic State group and have highlighted the threat the group poses outside of its territory in Iraq and Syria. In talks with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov on Thursday, Kerry is to discuss the fragile truce in Syria that is hoped will spark UN-brokered peace talks amid disagreements over how to verify and respond to alleged violations, the State Department said. His visit was arranged following Putin's surprise announcement last week of Russia's partial military withdrawal from Syria. Secretary of State John Kerry, right, talks with Cuban President Raul Castro as they take their seats for a State Dinner at the Palace of the Revolution, Monday, March 21, 2016, in Havana, Cuba. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) Now that the truce is in place, Kerry will be seeking clarity from Putin and Lavrov as to where Russia stands on a political transition for Syria, particularly on the future of President Bashar Assad, according to U.S. officials. One senior official said it was now time to get down to "brass tacks" on Assad. The official was not authorized to preview Kerry's trip and spoke on condition of anonymity. Russia on Monday warned the United States that it will start responding unilaterally to cease-fire violations in Syria if the U.S. refuses to coordinate rules of engagement against violators. The State Department, however, insisted that Moscow and Washington are working constructively to monitor the truce. The department also warned Russia against taking unilateral action in response to alleged violations. The Russian military has accused the U.S. of dragging its feet on responding to Moscow's proposals on rules for joint monitoring of the Syria cease-fire and response to violations. It said that further delays are leading to civilian casualties. Kerry also will call on Russia to do more to press pro-Russian separatists to comply with a ceasefire in eastern Ukraine. He is expected to raise the case of Nadezhda Savchenko, a Ukrainian pilot who was sentenced to 22 years in prison in Russia on Tuesday on charges the U.S. says are false. Savchenko was convicted of complicity to murder in the 2014 deaths of two Russian journalists in eastern Ukraine, opening a door to a possible prisoner swap between the two countries. The U.S. has repeatedly called for Savchenko, who is also a member of parliament, to be released and did so again on Tuesday. The senior U.S. official said Kerry would encourage Russia to accept Ukraine's proposal for a swap. US state lawmakers look for answers to black wealth gap ST. PAUL, Minnesota (AP) When a young black man was killed in a confrontation with two police officers last November, Minneapolis became the latest city to endure weeks of street protests. But the unrest over 24-year-old Jamar Clark's death evolved beyond his case to include demands that leaders do more about the persistent poverty seen as the root of racial tensions, especially on the city's predominantly black north side. Now, with a boost from Minnesota's governor and the muscle of a nearly $1 billion surplus, the state is considering plowing millions of dollars into initiatives intended to help more black residents catch the economic tide that has pushed statewide unemployment below 4 percent even as African-Americans are four times as likely to be out of work. FILE - In a Nov. 18, 2015, file photo, a Black Lives Matter protester, left, talks to Minneapolis police guarding the Fourth Precinct entrance in Minneapolis. It was the fourth day of protests of the killing of Jamar Clark by a Minneapolis police officer. The unrest over Clarks death has evolved beyond his case, as demands continue that city and state leaders do something about persistent problems of poverty, especially on the citys predominantly black north side, seen as at the root of racial tensions. (AP Photo/Jim Mone, File) Bobby Champion, one of three black lawmakers in Minnesota's Legislature, said too many activists focus on the circumstances of Clark's shooting and press for release of video footage of his tussle with police. "If they release the videotape, does that change your economic circumstances? If they decide to indict the police officer, does that change your graduation rates?" he asked. "Police brutality should be included. But the common denominator is poverty." While reactions to other police shootings have often focused on criminal-justice changes, lawmakers in Minnesota are looking at underlying social causes. "It's not new," Nekima Levy-Pounds, head of the National Action for the Advancement of Colored People in Minneapolis, said of the income gap between blacks and whites in Minnesota. "But it's good to hear that they're paying attention to it." Job training and placement programs, fast-tracked General Education Development initiatives, a surge of loans and investments for minority-owned businesses and expanded access to private schools are on the table in the Minnesota Legislature. Until the negotiations pay off and it's not clear they will many activists in Minnesota's black community will remain skeptical. "We're beyond needing a signal," Levy-Pounds said. "It should not have taken an unarmed young African-American man being killed for people to wake up." Only 6 percent of Minnesota residents are black, less than half of the national average, and the problems are starkest in Minneapolis' largely minority section, marked by dilapidated housing projects and rundown storefronts. A census report last year showed black household incomes in Minnesota declined to $27,000 in 2014, compared with almost $65,000 for whites. More than 1 in 3 black Minnesota residents live in poverty three times higher than whites. A lack of good-paying work and a sense of hopelessness make people in the community feel ignored, said Lovie Franklin, 20, who works two jobs to help support her parents and siblings. Gov. Mark Dayton has promised to double the state government's share of minority workers and recently outlined $100 million in proposed investments aimed at boosting high school graduation rates, helping low-income residents buy their first homes and other forms of assistance. He said momentum for new efforts shouldn't be allowed to fade with the memory of the street protests. "It can't," he said. FILE - This undated file photo released by his sister Javille Burns shows Jamar Clark. The unrest over Clarks death evolved beyond his case: Demands that city and state leaders do something about persistent problems of poverty, especially on the citys predominantly black north side, seen as at the root of racial tensions. (Jamar Clark/Javille Burns via AP, File) In this March 9, 2016 photo, Minnesota Gov. Mark Dayton delivers his State of the State address in Minneapolis. Dayton has promised to double state governments share of minority workers and recently outlined $100 million of proposed investments to narrow gaps like money for mentors to boost high school graduation rates and funds to help low-income residents buy their first homes. (AP Photo/Jim Mone) In this March 18, 2016 photo, Lovie Franklin poses as she looks at homework during a lunch break in her job in Minneapolis. A U.S. Census report last year showed black household incomes in Minnesota declined. A lack of good-paying work and a sense of hopelessness make people in the community feel ignored, said resident Franklin, 20, who works two jobs to help support her parents and siblings. (AP Photo/Jim Mone) FILE - In a Nov. 19, 2015, file photo, Nekima Levy-Pounds, center, president of the Minneapolis chapter of the NAACP, renewed demands for investigators to release videos of the fatal shooting by Minneapolis police of Jamar Clark. The unrest over Clarks death has evolved beyond his case, as demands continue that city and state leaders do something about persistent problems of poverty, especially on the citys predominantly black north side, seen as at the root of racial tensions. (AP Photo/Jim Mone, File) 'Rosie the Riveters' honored with visit to Washington WASHINGTON (AP) Seven decades after their "we can do it" attitude proved invaluable to the Allied victory, about 30 "Rosie the Riveters" were honored Tuesday with a trip to Washington that included visits to the National World War II Memorial. Wearing honor flight red cardigans, the women now in their 80s and 90s whose work helped the war effort posed for group photos with the U.S. Capitol as a backdrop, had lunch at a Library of Congress building and visited Arlington National Cemetery. At every stop, people approached them, shook their hands, and said, "Thank you." "They have those signs: 'We can do it.' They should say: 'We did it,'" said Helen Kushnir of Dearborn, part of Tuesday's group, which traveled from Michigan. Former Rosie, Mellie Mallon stands at the National World War II Memorial, Tuesday, March 22, 2016 in Washington. Seven decades after their "we can do it" attitude proved invaluable to the Allied victory in World War II, some "Rosie the Riveters" were honored Tuesday with a visit to Washington. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio) As women worked during the war at jobs traditionally done by men, such as churning out bombers at Ford Motor Co.'s Willow Run plant in Michigan, one of them was the inspiration for the Rosie character that came to symbolize female empowerment and the "we're-in-this-together" spirit of the American homefront. "You incredible women are such an inspiration," U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell of Michigan told the women during the luncheon. "You opened the doors wider for (women)," said Dingell, who co-hosted the event with fellow Michigan U.S. Rep. Candice Miller. When the four-bus convoy ferrying the women around town arrived at the WWII Memorial, they were met by throngs of supporters, drawing cheers and applause. Sylvia Tanis of Holland, Michigan, was one of the first ones through, waving to the crowd, grasping people's hands, posing for snapshots and stopping to embrace a Girl Scout who had come out to greet the women. "This is great. I can't imagine it being any better," Virginia Basler of Ypsilanti said while looking out at the memorial. Afterward, the women were ushered into a prime viewing location in a cordoned-off area for the Changing of the Guard ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery. They also visited the Women in Military Service for America Memorial. Laura Eglinsdoerfer of Milan, Michigan, said she met her future husband when both worked on the assembly line at Willow Run. Her husband later served in the Marines, and was wounded fighting on Iwo Jima a battle honored at the Marine Corps War Memorial, not far from where Eglinsdoerfer saw the guard change at Arlington National Cemetery. The honor flights provide one-day trips for veterans to visit Washington's monuments and memorials. The Ford Motor Company Fund has sponsored 10 such flights, but Tuesday's was the first designed specifically for Rosies, said Jim Vella, the fund's president. He said the women, who traveled around town with a police escort, were rightly being afforded "rock-star" treatment. Mallie Mellon, 96, said she couldn't sleep Monday night. "I was so excited thinking about my trip," said Mellon, who now lives in Belleville, but during the war worked as a riveter making B-29s at a plant in Detroit. When their plane landed, dozens of flag-waving, sign-toting well-wishers greeted the women. A children's choir sang and onlookers cheered as each woman emerged. "This is soooo overwhelming!" Tanis exclaimed, while Kushnir cried as she took in the adulation. ___ Online: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OxreXgtZNEY Former Rosie, T. Ogden of Aurora, Ill. shows a photo of herself after greeting fellow Rosies from Michigan on their arrival at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Tuesday, March 22, 2016 in Washington. Seven decades after their "we can do it" attitude proved invaluable to the Allied victory in World War II, some "Rosie the Riveters" are being honored with a flight to Washington, D.C. The women will check out the National World War II Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, and have lunch with members of Congress. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio) Former Rosie the Riveters watch the Changing of the Guard ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery, Tuesday, March 22, 2016 in Arlington, Va. Seven decades after their "we can do it" attitude proved invaluable to the Allied victory in World War II, some "Rosie the Riveters" were honored Tuesday with a visit to Washington. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio) Former Rosie, Laura Eglinsdoerfer holds her Ford Motor Co., identification card, Tuesday, March 22, 2016 in Washington. Seven decades after their "we can do it" attitude proved invaluable to the Allied victory in World War II, some "Rosie the Riveters" were honored Tuesday with a visit to Washington. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio) Former Rosie, Frances Reeck signs a Rosie the Riverter poster, Tuesday, March 22, 2016 in Washington. Seven decades after their "we can do it" attitude proved invaluable to the Allied victory in World War II, some "Rosie the Riveters" were honored Tuesday with a visit to Washington. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio) Former Rosie, Helen Kushnir wipes a tear, Tuesday, March 22, 2016 in Washington at the National World War II Memorial. Seven decades after their "we can do it" attitude proved invaluable to the Allied victory in World War II, some "Rosie the Riveters" were honored Tuesday with a visit to Washington. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio) Former Rosie, Sylvia Tanis is greeted after her arrival at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Tuesday, March 22, 2016 in Washington. Seven decades after their "we can do it" attitude proved invaluable to the Allied victory in World War II, some "Rosie the Riveters" are being honored with a flight to Washington, D.C. The women will check out the National World War II Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, and have lunch with members of Congress. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio) Former Rosie, Cookie Garza, 96, pushed by her granddaughter Stephanie Hagaman, waves on the Capitol grounds, Tuesday, March 22, 2016 in Washington. Seven decades after their we can do it attitude proved invaluable to the Allied victory in World War II, about 30 Rosie the Riveters were honored Tuesday with a visit to Washington. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio) Former Rosies Betty Pazdro, left, greets Mellie Mallon, before boarding a flight at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, Tuesday, March 22, 2016, in Romulus, Mich. Seven decades after their "we can do it" attitude proved invaluable to the Allied victory in World War II, some "Rosie the Riveters" are being honored with a flight to Washington. The women will check out the National World War II Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, and have lunch with members of Congress. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio) Former Rosie Clara Doutly, from left, talks with travel partner Donnaleen Lanktree and Rosie Betty Pazdro, before boarding a flight at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, Tuesday, March 22, 2016, in Romulus, Mich. Seven decades after their "we can do it" attitude proved invaluable to the Allied victory in World War II, some "Rosie the Riveters" are being honored with a flight to Washington. The women will check out the National World War II Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, and have lunch with members of Congress. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio) Former Rosies Betty Pazdro, left, talks with Mellie Mallon, before boarding a flight at Detroit Metropolitan Airport, Tuesday, March 22, 2016, in Romulus, Mich. Seven decades after their "we can do it" attitude proved invaluable to the Allied victory in World War II, some "Rosie the Riveters" are being honored with a flight to Washington. The women will check out the National World War II Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, and have lunch with members of Congress. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio) Former Rosie, Dorothy Norton is greeted after her arrival at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Tuesday, March 22, 2016 in Washington. Seven decades after their "we can do it" attitude proved invaluable to the Allied victory in World War II, some "Rosie the Riveters" are being honored with a flight to Washington, D.C. The women will check out the National World War II Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, and have lunch with members of Congress. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio) Al Pudelek holds a photo of former Rosie, Irene Pudelek after their arrival at the Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, Tuesday, March 22, 2016 in Washington. Seven decades after their "we can do it" attitude proved invaluable to the Allied victory in World War II, some "Rosie the Riveters" are being honored with a flight to Washington, D.C. The women will check out the National World War II Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery, and have lunch with members of Congress. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio) Manhunt launched for Brussels suspect after 34 people die in terror attacks An international manhunt has been launched for one of the terrorist suspects behind co-ordinated bombings in Brussels which left 34 dead and almost 200 - including two Britons - injured. A series of police raids were mounted across Belgium, leading to the discovery of an explosive device containing nails, chemical products and an Islamic State (IS) flag, almost 12 hours after the first explosion, at around 7am (GMT). The terror group has claimed responsibility for the attacks. King Philippe of Belgium led the calls for calm as Belgian police issued an image of the fugitive, one of three seen pushing luggage trolleys through Zaventem airport moments before two bombs exploded. CCTV image issued by Belgian Federal Police of a man they want to trace in connection with the explosions at Brussels airport. A third bomb was deactivated at the airport hours after the initial attack - which was followed by a bomb blast on a Metro train in the city centre as terrorists inflicted a new outrage on a European capital. Prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said the forensic operation would last well into the evening. He said: "A photo of three suspects was taken at Brussels airport. "Two of them have probably committed a suicide attack, the third - dressed in a white jacket and wearing a hat - is actively sought. " Various departments and experts are currently in various crime scenes. This will take place for many hours to come. "Due to the violence of the attacks, this investigation is particularly difficult. "Various operations are ongoing across the country and several witnesses have been heard. "Several explosions have been heard. They are due to bomb squad activity upon the discovery that the suspects might have left explosives behind. And this could continue." The attacks left a major city in lockdown once again less than five months after Paris was hit by a wave of deadly strikes. The atrocities on Tuesday, condemned as "blind, violent and cowardly" by Belgian prime minister Charles Michel, came after the arrest last week of terror mastermind Salah Abdeslam, who plotted November's massacre in the French capital. Security was being stepped up at major transport hubs around the continent, with British police forces boosting numbers at "key locations" including ports, airports and the rail network. French prime minister Manuel Valls said: "We are at war. In Europe we have been subjected to acts of war for several months." As the city went into lockdown: :: Local media reported that 20 people were killed following the blast at Maelbeek metro station, while 14 died in the suicide attack at the airport :: The number of people injured in both attacks was believed to be 198 :: Two Kalashnikov rifles and an unexploded bomb belt were found at the airport :: The Foreign Office said two British nationals are known to have been injured In a televised address, King Philippe said he and Queen Mathilde "share the pain" of all those who had suffered in the attacks. But he called on Belgians to stay "confident" in the face of terror. He said: "Today our country is in mourning. For each of us this March 22 will never be a day like any other. "In the face of threats, we will continue to respond together, firmly, with calm and dignity." As night fell on Brussels, Mr Michel lit a candle at a vigil at Place de la Bourse, the city's stock exchange building. He told a press conference earlier that the atrocities had killed people whose lives "were in full course". He said: "The lives of people who were most likely travelling without a care in the world, going to work or to school, lives that have been broken by extremism." Witnesses reported the chaos that descended on the transport hubs as the terrorists struck. Jef Versele, 40, from Ghent, told the Press Association: "I was on my way to check in and two bombs went off - two explosions. "Everything was coming down. Glassware. It was chaos. It was unbelievable. It was the worst thing." Footage from inside the airport building showed a scene of devastation with ceiling tiles strewn across the floor and suitcases abandoned. Images of passengers climbing from a train into a smoke-filled tunnel near Maelbeek station were reminiscent of scenes following the July 7 attacks in London. Other images showed the injured from the Metro being treated in the street, while at the airport people could be seen fleeing in terror in video footage shot from an airport car park. International leaders united in support for Belgium, with David Cameron branding the atrocities "appalling" and US president Barack Obama condemning the "outrageous attacks against innocent people". The Prime Minister's official spokeswoman said Britain was also sending a team of specialist police officers to the city to assist with the investigation. And the Foreign Office updated its travel advice to Belgium, advising against travel to Brussels. One eyewitness, Theo Vassilopoulos, said Maelbeek station remained completely closed off on Tuesday evening with police cars and officers still in the area. The 36-year-old from Greece, who has lived in Brussels for seven years, described chaotic scenes as people poured out of the station following a bomb blast. Mr Vassilopoulos, who works at the European Parliament with the Greek MEP Stelios Kouloglou, told the Press Association: "It all started with a distant sound, we didn't realise what it was. "But a few moments later we heard people shouting and screaming so we went by the window and we saw lots of people coming out of the station. I saw some of them had serious injuries, head injuries, a lot of blood on their head, wounds on their legs. "We realised something was going on. More people kept coming from inside the station and some of them were in dusty clothes or their clothes were torn apart, so then we knew that there was an explosion or something bad." Christian Delhasse, the driver of the Metro train which was attacked at Maelbeek station, told Belgian broadcaster RTBF: "Seeing bodies on the floor, it leaves a mark on you. "I did what I had to do. Nothing happened to me, no injuries." An unidentified traveller gets to his feet in a smoke filled terminal at Brussels Airport (Ralph Usbeck/AP) People gather at the Place de la Bourse in Brussels to leave messages and tributes following the terrorist bomb attacks. Picture taken with permission from the Facebook site of Jef Versele showing the aftermath of this morning's explosions at Brussels airport A victim is evacuated on a stretcher by emergency services after a explosion in a main metro station in Brussels (AP) 'Volatile geopolitical backdrop' affecting travel bookings, Thomas Cook says Holiday firm Thomas Cook said British tourists were delaying booking their holidays amid fears of terrorist attacks overseas. The FTSE 250 company said the business continues to be impacted by a "volatile geopolitical backdrop", with the number of summer trips sold for 2016 hitting 40%, down 2% on last year. It said demand was shifting across the market, with "significantly lower" bookings for Turkey being offset by a rising demand for trips to the western Mediterranean, the US and Cuba. Tunisia, hit by terrorists last year, is one destination to lose trade Meanwhile, its winter market also saw a 3% fall in bookings compared to last year, with 90% of its programme sold. Travel companies have seen their bookings come under pressure after a number of terrorist attacks hit popular holiday destinations, including Turkey, Paris, Tunisia and Egypt. The update from Thomas Cook comes as a irline and travel stocks led the losses on European stock markets as shares fell in the wake of terrorist bombings in Brussels. Shares in Thomas Cook were down more than 6%. Chief executive Peter Fankhauser said: "Thomas Cook continues to operate in a volatile market environment. "We know that customers want a summer holiday but we can see that some are leaving it later to book this year as they consider their options." He added: "The early actions we took to move flights away from Turkey, Tunisia and Egypt have positioned us well for increased customer demand to resorts in the Western Mediterranean, with strong sales to the Canaries, Balearics and the Spanish mainland in recent weeks. "We have also seen an increase in sales to long-haul destinations such as the USA and Cuba as customers look further afield for their holidays." It said the UK performance was improving, with average selling prices up 4% for package holidays and 1% for seat-only trips, but total bookings were down because of later bookings. It comes after Thomson and First Choice owner TUI said last month that summer holiday bookings to Turkey had slumped by 40% after recent terrorist attacks. The travel giant said holidaymakers were staying away from the country and turning instead to resorts in Spain and the Canary Islands. Brussels attacks spark sympathy but also some support on social media Within moments of the two blasts that left scores dead and injured in Brussels, mourners shared their solidarity on social media. As with the two Paris terror attacks that preceded it - at the Charlie Hebdo headquarters, which sparked three days of bloodshed in the French capital in January last year, and the subsequent shootout at the Bataclan theatre in November - sympathisers channelled their grief through Twitter. Less than half an hour after news of the first blast, at Brussels Airport during Tuesday morning's rush hour, the first reference of #PrayforBrussels emerged. People comfort each other after being evacuated from Brussels airport (AP) It echoed the #PrayforParis hashtag which was trending for days after the November attacks. In January, #JeSuisCharlie became the blueprint for showing solidarity on social media, frequently being adopted for compassionate - and even humorous or sarcastic - purpose at a range of global events. The varied spellings of Belgium's capital city meant numerous hashtags were used to convey the same message on Tuesday. In Belgium itself, the hashtag #Ikwilhelpen - "I want to help" began trending as stunned locals sprang in to action to offer assistance to stranded travellers caught up in the mayhem caused by the city, and its transport network, being in lockdown. In France, national newspaper Le Monde used social media to publish a graphic of a sexless human figure covered in the Tricolor with an arm around the shoulder of its weeping Belgian equivalent. Within hours it was shared thousands of times. Another popular illustration simply featured Belgian comic book hero Tintin shedding a single tear. Terrorist attacks from 9/11 to Paris The attacks in Brussels are the latest in a long line of atrocities linked to Islamic terrorism since the turn of the century. The co-ordinated bombings of the airport and a Metro station in the Belgian capital follow the arrest of key Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam in the city just days earlier. Here are some of the most horrific attacks: Latest news :: 9/11 Nearly 3,000 people, including 67 Britons, were killed when Islamist extremists hijacked passenger jets and flew them into New York's World Trade Centre twin towers and the Pentagon in Washington DC on September 11 2001. The 9/11 attacks were meticulously planned by Islamist fanatics to kill as many people and gain as much publicity as possible, with news footage televised live around the globe to a shocked audience of billions. :: Bali A total of 202 people, including 28 Britons, were killed on October 12 2002 and more than 204 injured when the al Qaida-linked Jemaah Islamiyah group detonated bombs at two packed Bali nightspots. During the attack three bombs detonated - a backpack carried by a suicide bomber and a car bomb which both devastated Paddy's Pub and the Sari Club opposite, followed by a third device outside the US consulate in Denpasar. Various members of Jemaah Islamiyah were convicted in relation to the bombings. Three - Imam Samudra, Amrozi Nurhasyim and Huda bin Abdul Haq - were executed by firing squad in November 2008. :: Madrid train bombings The whole of Spain was in mourning when more than 190 people were killed in the Madrid train bombs on March 11 2004. The attacks took place exactly two-and-a-half years after September 11 and were Europe's worst terrorist atrocity since the 1988 Lockerbie plane bombing. London-based Arabic language newspaper Al Quds said it received an email from the Brigade of Abu Hafs al-Masri, which claimed its "death squad" had penetrated "one of the pillars of the crusader alliance". :: 7/7 On July 7 2005, 52 people were murdered and hundreds more injured when four suicide bombers attacked London's transport network. Twenty-six died in the bombing at Russell Square on the Piccadilly line, six in the bombing at Edgware Road on the Circle line, seven in the bombing at Aldgate on the Circle line, and 13 in the bombing on a bus at Tavistock Square. A fortnight later, another four would-be suicide bombers launched failed attacks on the Tube and a bus, leading police marksmen to kill innocent Brazilian Jean Charles de Menezes. :: Mumbai Often called India's 9/11, the Mumbai attacks in 2008 saw 10 gunmen blaze through the country's financial capital, killing more than 160 people. Indian authorities took back control of Mumbai early on the morning of November 29 after a three-day siege across the city. Security services and senior police in the UK have repeatedly highlighted the risk of a Mumbai-style roaming gun massacre, and earlier this year police carried out a simulated terror attack in the capital to test the emergency response to such a strike. :: Lee Rigby Fusilier Lee Rigby, 25, from Middleton in Greater Manchester, was killed outside barracks in Woolwich, south east London, on May 22 2013 by two Islamic extremists. The murder sparked shock across the country after the father of one was run over with a car and then hacked to death by British Muslim converts Michael Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale. Following an Old Bailey trial, Adebolajo was handed a whole-life prison term and Adebowale was jailed for a minimum of 45 years. :: Charlie Hebdo Paris was rocked by the Charlie Hebdo atrocity on January 7 last year, when 12 people were killed after gunmen stormed the offices of the satirical magazine. The sense of panic heightened when there was a subsequent attack on a kosher supermarket, and the incidents triggered worldwide outrage. Subsequently there were a number of more minor strikes or attempts in France. In one, three Americans and a Briton overpowered a heavily armed gunman on a train from Amsterdam to Paris. :: Sousse Terror group Islamic State claimed responsibility for the Sousse attack in June, in which 30 Britons were among 38 tourists killed. Gunman Seifeddine Rezgui opened fire on the holidaymakers on a beach in the Tunisian holiday resort. Foreign minister Tobias Ellwood described the Sousse tragedy as the "most significant terrorist attack" on Britons since July 7 2005. :: Paris Co-ordinated suicide bombings and shootings at cafes, bars, a rock concert and a stadium in the French capital left 130 people dead in the worst terrorist assault on Europe in a decade. Most of the Paris attackers died on the night of November 13 2015, including Salah Abdeslam's brother Brahim, who blew himself up. New Zealand seal semi-final spot with Pakistan triumph New Zealand became the first team to book their place in the ICC World Twenty20 semi-finals after Martin Guptill's big-hitting and more fine spin bowling proved key against Pakistan. Guptill's 80 from 48 balls underpinned a total of 180 for five in Mohali, and then Mitchell Santner and Ish Sodhi recorded combined figures of 8-0-54-3 as Pakistan's chase ran out of puff to finish 22 runs short. New Zealand therefore have a perfect Group 2 record of three wins from three matches and are through to the knockout stage, irrespective of remaining Super 10 results. Martin Guptill's 10th Twenty20 international half-century helped New Zealand to a comfortable victory Guptill took an instant liking to Mohammad Irfan, after Kane Williamson won the toss, and the giant left-armer proved Pakistan's most expensive bowler. There was just one close call for Guptill, escaping via a marginal lbw call against Shahid Afridi on 49. Otherwise, his hitting was clinical in stands of 62 for the first wicket with Williamson and 52 for the third with Corey Anderson. The opener bagged 10 fours and three straight sixes, before he chopped the impressive Mohammad Sami down on to his stumps. Anderson and then Ross Taylor kept the Kiwis on the charge, and 16 came off Mohammad Amir's final over. Sharjeel Khan got Pakistan's reply off to a blistering start, with nine fours and a six in his 47 from just 25 balls. The left-hander took 15 off Santner in the first over of the chase, and then 18 from Mitchell McClenaghan's first too. But Sharjeel holed out to Guptill in the off-side ring, off Adam Milne, after dominating an opening stand of 65 inside the powerplay with Ahmed Shehzad, and then Santner returned to have Khalid Latif caught in the deep. New Zealand began to haul back the run rate, as Santner found some turn and conceded only 14 in his last three overs. Shehzad cracked with a pull off Santner straight to Guptill again at deep midwicket and after Afridi escaped a sharp caught-behind chance first ball off the slow left-armer, the Pakistan captain was instead well-held by Anderson on the long-off boundary off leg-spinner Sodhi. The boundaries dried up completely in the last five overs, and Guptill capped his evening with his third catch of the innings as Umar Akmal miscued Milne to long-on. Hezbollah says Saudi Arabia, Turkey obstructing Syria peace chances BEIRUT, March 21 (Reuters) - Hezbollah accused Saudi Arabia and Turkey on Monday of obstructing efforts to reach a political solution in Syria, saying Riyadh did not want to see any progress at Geneva peace talks aimed at ending five years of conflict. Iranian-backed Hezbollah and Saudi Arabia have for years been on opposing sides of Syria's civil war, but relations have worsened in recent months - mirroring the growing hostility between Riyadh and Tehran, the region's two rival powers. "What is disrupting any progress towards a political solution is firstly Saudi Arabia, and secondly Turkey," Hezbollah leader Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah told Al Mayadeen television in an interview. Shi'ite Muslim Hezbollah has sent fighters to Syria to support President Bashar al-Assad. Saudi Arabia and Turkey, which insist Assad must leave power, have been supporting Sunni Muslim insurgents fighting to overthrow him. "Saudi Arabia doesn't want any progress in the negotiations in Geneva," Nasrallah said, adding Riyadh might be holding out until the U.S. presidential election in November to see whether a new administration might pursue a different policy on Syria. "So I don't expect progress in the political process or a political solution," he said. His criticism of Riyadh comes nearly three weeks after the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), which groups Saudi Arabia, the Unitd Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman and Qatar, declared Hezbollah a terrorist organisation. Saudi Arabia said last week it would punish anyone who belongs to Hezbollah, sympathises with it, supports it financially or harbours any of its members. Several GCC countries have deported Lebanese nationals over suspected links to the group. A Kuwaiti newspaper said on Monday the emirate had expelled 11 Lebanese and three Iraqis. But Nasrallah said that the allegations were either baseless or related to people Hezbollah did not know about. "They said a group was arrested in Kuwait smuggling drugs (and) belonged to Hezbollah, they were contacting Hezbollah in Syria," Nasrallah said. "That's empty talk". "(There are reports) that there is a cell that's been sentenced in the UAE. We don't know anything about that, we don't know who they are," he said. He also denied that Hezbollah had sent any fighters or weapons to Bahrain. Nasrallah warned Israel against trying to exploit Hezbollah's deployment in Syria to launch military action in Lebanon, but said he believed a major conflict with Israel was unlikely - because of the heavy costs it would bring. "In any war against Lebanon, which targeted Lebanon's people, infrastructure - we would go into this war without limits or red lines," he said. Nasrallah said Hezbollah could hit any target inside Israel, including nuclear facilities and what he said were biological research centres and petrochemical plants. Israel and Hezbollah fought an inconclusive war in 2006. U.S. arrests Turkish businessman accused of evading Iran sanctions By Nate Raymond NEW YORK, March 21 (Reuters) - An Iranian-born Turkish businessman has been arrested in Florida on charges that he and others conspired to conduct hundreds of millions of dollars in financial transactions for the Iranian government or other entities to evade U.S. sanctions. Reza Zarrab, 33, was charged in an indictment filed in federal court in Manhattan along with one of his employees, Kamelia Jamshidy, and Hossein Najafzadeh, a senior officer at a unit of Bank Mellat in Iran, U.S. prosecutors said on Monday. Zarrab was arrested on Saturday in Miami and appeared in federal court there on Monday, where a federal magistrate judge ordered him detained. Both Jamshidy and Najafzadeh, who are both Iranian nationals, remained at large. A lawyer for Zarrab, who is married to Turkish pop star Ebru Gundes, did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Jamshidy and Najafzadeh could not be immediately contacted. The arrest came two months after Iran emerged from years of economic isolation when world powers led by the United States and the European Union lifted crippling sanctions against the country in return for curbs on Tehran's nuclear ambitions. Zarrab previously attracted attention when he was detained for two months in Turkey, beginning in 2013, without charges as part of a high-profile corruption probe. According to the U.S. indictment, Zarrab, a dual citizen of Turkey and Iran, owned and operated a network of companies in Turkey and in the United Arab Emirates, including Royal Holding A.S., which employed Jamshidy. The indictment said Zarrab, Jamshidy and Najafzadeh, a senior officer at Bank Mellat's Mellat Exchange, conspired to thwart economic sanctions against Iran by concealing transactions benefiting Iran's government and Iranian entities. Prosecutors said that from 2010 to 2015, the trio helped Iranian individuals and entities, including Bank Mellat, one of the largest banks in Iran, evade U.S. sanctions by conducting financial transactions through Turkish and Emirati companies. The indictment charges Zarrab, Jamshidy, 29, and Najafzadeh, 65, with engaging in conspiracies to defraud the United States, to violate the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, to commit bank fraud and to commit money laundering. Poland - Factors to Watch March 22 Following are news stories, press reports and events to watch that may affect Poland's financial markets on Tuesday. ALL TIMES GMT (Poland: GMT + 1 hour): BANK BPH BPH, the Polish unit of General Electric suffered a 1.072 billion zloty ($283.46 million) loss last year due to goodwill writedown, as well as increased payments for guarantee and creditors' support fund, its said late on Monday. GETIN NOBLE BANK Getin Noble Bank suffered an undisclosed loss in the last quarter of 2015 due to increased payments for guarantee and creditors' support fund, it said in a statement on Monday night. In the whole 2015 its net profit fell to 44 million zloty. The bank said it has applied to the financial watchdog with a plan aimed to sustainably improve its profitability. The bank also plans a share consolidation at a 3 to 1 ratio. DEBT SUPPLY Polish Finance Ministry is to present debt supply details for its Thursday tender at 1400 GMT. ****Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy.**** China stocks fall, pulled down by finance sector shares SHANGHAI, March 22 (Reuters) - China stocks closed lower on Tuesday, dragged down by a sell-off of finance industry shares. The CSI300 index of the largest listed companies in Shanghai and Shenzhen fell 0.7 percent, to 3,225.79, while the Shanghai Composite Index lost 0.6 percent, to 2,999.36 points. The CSI300 Financial sub-index dropped 1.3 percent. Analysts cited a variety of factors for the sell-off including Monday's central bank pension reform guidelines urging low cost finance for the elder care industry. Several said the biggest factor was ongoing concern about comments by central bank governor Zhou Xiaochuan on speculative capital and rising debt levels in the financial sector. "Pension reform was very well forecasted and fairly vague," said Gilliam Hamilton, China analyst at the consultancy NSBO Research in Beijing. "On the other hand there's a build-up of concern on leverage in large commercial banks," he said, noting when the People's Bank of China governor says an issue needs to be dealt with, then it gets attention as senior officials "are usually quite reticent"." PRESS DIGEST - Bulgaria - March 22 SOFIA, March 22 (Reuters) - These are some of the main stories in Bulgarian newspapers on Tuesday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. -- Chief Prosecutor Sotir Tsatsarov dismissed suggestions that Palestinian Omar el-Nayef, who has died at the Palestinian embassy in Sofia last month, might have been murdered (Trud, 24 Chasa, Standart, Monitor) -- Ethnic Turkish party MRF deputy and media mogul Delyan Peevski said in a statement that he will give up doing any future business in Bulgaria. He also announced that he will withdraw from acquiring the assets of the bankrupt fertliser plant Chimco in the northwestern town of Vratsa (Trud, 24 Chasa, Standart, Capital daily, Monitor, Sega) -- Prosecutors indicted four people with charges of running an organized criminal gang involved in drug trafficking, Deputy Chief Prosecutor Borislav Sarafov said (Monitor, Telegraf) Czech Republic - Factors To Watch on March 22 PRAGUE, March 22 (Reuters) - Here are news stories, press reports and events to watch which may affect Czech financial markets on Tuesday. ALL TIMES GMT (Czech Republic: GMT + 1 hour) ===========================ECONOMIC DATA======================== Q4/15 foreign debt data at 0900 GMT 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 to continue a session. Related news ===========================NEWS================================= NEGATIVE RATES: The Czech central bank has an "infinite" balance sheet with which to prevent its currency overheating, its governor said on Monday, ruling out a shock Swiss-style exit from the crown's exchange rate cap. Story: Related news: The second-biggest party in the Czech government warned its partners on Monday that the ruling coalition could crumble if deputies support legislation aimed at limiting politicians' ownership in private companies. Story: Related news: CEE MARKETS: The forint shed 0.2 percent on Monday after Standard and Poor's disappointed some market participants by not raising its outlook for Hungary's credit rating after markets closed on Friday. Story: Related news: CEE POWER: A forecast for a sharp decline in wind generation and more demand in the region lifted central and southeastern European day-ahead power prices on Monday, traders said. Story: Related news: ---------------------- MARKET SNAPSHOT ------------------------ Index/Crown Currency Latest Prev Pct change Pct change close on day in 2016 vs Euro 27.017 27.018 0 -0.07 vs Dollar 24.014 23.992 -0.09 3.41 Czech Equities 908.44 908.44 -0.7 -5.01 U.S. Equities 17,623.87 17,602.3 0.12 1.14 Pvs close or current levels vs prior domestic close at 1600 GMT =======================PRESS DIGEST============================= CETIN: Former minority shareholders of CETIN seek 238 million crowns ($9.90 million) in damages from the telecommunication infrastructure company's owner, PPF financial group, claiming the squeeze-out price they got was too low. The group filed their complaint with a court in March. Hospodarske Noviny, page 17 AIRPORT: Prague's Vaclav Havel Airport plans to invest 14 billion crowns, mainly into infrastructure, in order to make it more attractive for new clients among carriers and to prepare for expected increase in traffic, chief executive of Cesky Aeroholding said. Hospodarske Noviny, page 6 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 = 24.0370 Czech crowns) (Reporting by Prague Newsroom) PRESS DIGEST - RUSSIA - March 22 The following are some of the leading stories in Russia's newspapers on Tuesday. Reuters has not verified these stories and does not vouch for their accuracy. VEDOMOSTI www.vedomosti.ru - Russian tycoon Oleg Deripaska will join the Right Cause political party led by Kremlin business ombudsman Boris Titov, the daily writes. - The number of Russians living below the poverty line grew by 3.1 million in 2015 and reached 19.2 million people, the paper writes citing official statistics. - The purchase of a 42 percent stake in joint company Danone-Unimilk in Russia may have cost French food group Danone some 542 million euros, the daily reports. KOMMERSANT www.kommersant.ru - Russian Adyg-Yurak began importing fruit and vegetables from Syria to Russia last week. Major Russian retailers want to sell the produce, the daily reports. - The market of online video services grew some 14.7 percent and its turnover reached 5.88 billion roubles ($86.4 million) in 2015, the paper writes citing analytical company J'son & Partners. RBK www.rbcdaily.ru - Some 6 percent foreign investors saw improvement in the business climate in Russia 2015, compared to 18 percent in 2014, the daily cites a recent poll by the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs. NEZAVISIMAYA GAZETA www.ng.ru - some 65 percent Russians want President Vladimir Putin to serve one more presidential term, the paper says citing recent poll by independent center Levada. North Korean consular official in China kills two in car crash BEIJING, March 22 (Reuters) - A North Korean consular official in China has killed two people in a car crash, China's Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday, reporting the accident shortly after China came out in support of sanctions against its ally over its nuclear programme. South Korea's Yonhap news agency earlier reported the North Korean official was driving drunk, and the accident took place after he had left an event celebrating North Korea's launch of a long-range rocket on Feb. 7. China's Foreign Ministry did not mention those details in a statement to Reuters but said the official's vehicle hit a taxi in the city of Dandong, near the North Korean border, early on Feb. 10, killing the driver and a passenger. The North Korean official had paid compensation to the families of the victims, the ministry added, in a rare revelation of wrongdoing by an official of an allied power. China is North Korea's sole major ally but China disapproves of its nuclear programme. The North conducted its fourth nuclear test on Jan. 6 and a month later launched what it said was a space rocket. The United States and other critics said the launch was cover for its development of ballistic missile technology that could be used to deliver a nuclear weapon. The U.N. Security Council unanimously agreed this month to harsh new sanctions, drafted by the United States and China, on North Korea to starve it of money for its nuclear weapons programmes. U.S. State Department officials have expressed optimism that the sanctions may be more effective than earlier attempts to curtail North Korea's nuclear program, pointing to China's apparent willingness to support them. Officials at North Korea's embassy in Beijing could not be reached for comment. Malaysia to inspect debris in South Africa for possible MH370 link KUALA LUMPUR, March 22 (Reuters) - Malaysia said on Tuesday it will send a team to retrieve a piece of debris found along the southern coast of South Africa to check whether it could belong to missing Malaysia Airlines flight MH370. The wreckage, discovered near the town of Mosselbay on Tuesday, could be from an "inlet cowling" of an aircraft engine based on early reports, the Malaysian transport ministry said in a statement, two years after MH370 disappeared. Malaysia said further examination was required to verify if the debris belonged to MH370. Flight MH370 disappeared with 239 passengers and crew on board, shortly after taking off from Kuala Lumpur bound for Beijing. A piece of the plane washed up on the French island of Reunion in July 2015 but no further trace has been found. Debris found earlier this month off the southeast African coast arrived in Australia for testing on Monday. Breakaway Taliban group denies its leader detained in Pakistan By Jibran Ahmad and Mehreen Zahra-Malik ISLAMABAD, March 22 (Reuters) - The leader of a breakaway faction of the Taliban is leading his fighters in Afghanistan, his deputy said on Tuesday, contradicting three senior members of the Islamist group and denying a newspaper report that he had been detained. Three senior Taliban told Reuters that Mullah Mohammad Rasoul, who leads a faction that has rejected the authority of the Islamist movement's leader, Mullah Mohammad Mansour, had been detained two weeks ago in Baluchistan province on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Pakistan's Express Tribune newspaper said that Rasoul was being held by Pakistani authorities. Quoting two unnamed Taliban leaders, the newspaper said Rasoul was held in Pakistan after fleeing Afghanistan following heavy fighting in recent months with militants loyal to Mansour. Rasoul's deputy, Mullah Abdul Manan Niazi, dismissed the report as "propaganda of our enemies" and two Pakistani security officials also denied the report. "Mullah Rasoul is in Afghanistan and leading his fighters," Niazi said. But he added that his group's survival did not depend on one leader. "Our resistance will not stop with the arrest or killing of Mullah Rasoul or any other leader," Niazi said. The mixed reports add a further twist to the opaque nature of the leadership of the Taliban, who control or threaten more Afghan territory than at any time since their hard-line government was toppled in 2001. Rasoul is the biggest rival to Mansour, who claimed the leadership of the Taliban last year after news emerged of founder Mullah Omar's death and who has been shoring up support against rival factions. His faction has firmly opposed joining peace talks with the Afghan government and accuses Mansour of covering up Mullah Omar's death and being under the control of Pakistan. One senior member of the faction loyal to Mullah Mansour said that Rasoul had been in hiding in the western Afghan city of Herat but had recently decided to move to Pakistan, where many Taliban leaders are believed to be living. Two senior Pakistani security officials denied Rasoul was in Pakistani custody. "Our last information is that he fled infighting in Afghanistan," one of the officials said, requesting anonymity. Alongside its recent battlefield successes, the movement has been in turmoil since last year when it was forced to admit that Mullah Omar had died two years earlier. Mansour was reported to have been shot and wounded in a leadership dispute last year and dozens of Taliban fighters were killed in clashes between the two factions in the southern Afghan province of Zabul. UNHCR says won't work in Greek 'detention centres' in swipe at EU-Turkey deal By Stephanie Nebehay and Karolina Tagaris GENEVA/LESBOS March 22 (Reuters) - The United Nations refugee agency dealt a blow to EU efforts to stem the biggest humanitarian crisis in generations on Tuesday, saying it would no longer assist in the transfer of migrants and refugees arriving in Greece to "detention centres". The European Union reached a deal with Turkey just four days ago aimed at halting the flow of migrants across the sea to Greece, but the UNHCR said the deal was being prematurely implemented without the required safeguards in place. It said migrants were being held against their will at reception facilities on several Greek islands, and it would not transport people there from the beaches and to and from ports. It will continue to provide other services including counseling to refugees, it said. The accord crafted by EU leaders and Turkey specifically mentions the UNHCR's involvement, although UN officials in Geneva said they were not consulted on that. The deal, which took effect on Sunday, is aimed at putting new arrivals in Greece who seek asylum on a fast track for processing. But it also means those migrants and refugees are kept in detention until their claims are assessed. "Under the new provisions, these so-called hotspots have now become detention centres," said the UNHCR's Melissa Fleming. "Accordingly, and in line with UNHCR policy of opposing mandatory detention, we have suspended some of our activities at all closed centres on the island." Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said it was pulling out of one centre on the island of Lesbos "because the EU-Turkey deal is turning reception centres to deportation centres. "If we continued (at the centre) we would be participants in a system we deem unfair and inhuman," the Greek MSF branch wrote on Twitter. Marie Elisabeth Ingres, who heads the charity's mission in Greece, added it would "not allow our assistance to be instrumentalized for a mass expulsion operation." Those considered ineligible for asylum are to be sent back to Turkey from April 4. For every Syrian returned, another still in Turkey will be resettled directly in Europe, effectively penalising those who have in many cases spent their life savings trying to flee conflict. Two EU officials said they hoped this shock therapy might work in ebbing the flow of migrants and refugees into Europe. One said "ugly images" of forced detentions and deportations were something the EU would have to accept if it was to regain control of its own borders. "Ethically we might have doubts. But legally we have no doubts," another EU official said. Both made the remarks before the UNHCR said it was partially withdrawing its support. DETENTION CENTRES Until Sunday, arrivals to Lesbos had been free to leave the Moria migrant camp and head for ferries to the Greek mainland from where they would mostly head north via the Balkans in a bid to reach western Europe, particularly Germany. Now, they are meant to be held in Moria or one of four other centres set up on the Aegean islands of Samos, Chios, Leros and Kos, pending the outcome of their asylum applications. As of Sunday, just two buses were available to transport the arrivals to Moria, one belonging to the coast guard and one to the police, a senior port police official said. Early on Tuesday, 129 refugees and migrants who had been rescued at sea by a coast guard patrol boat and taken to the port waited for some 40 minutes for the buses to arrive. They sat on the dock shivering, men dressed in thin trousers and jackets and women wrapped up with scarves. Many were barefoot and soaked to their knees. One, a young man named Zalmai, said he had left Afghanistan with his five-member family. "(There are) a lot of problems in our country. We're coming for a better life," he said, putting on a jumper given to him by volunteers and wrapping a thick grey blanket around his waist. Using his finger to imitate a knife across his throat, he said: "I'm not going back to Turkey, to Afghanistan. Please, I'll stay here." CHILDREN NEED PROTECTION, UN SAYS More than 147,000 people, many fleeing conflict in the Middle East and Asia, have arrived in Greece by sea this year, 59 percent of them women and children, according to UNHCR. On Monday, Turkish monitors arrived on Lesbos to help put the deal into practice. On Tuesday, the Czech Republic offered 10 asylum experts and 30 police officers plus humanitarian aid to Greece, its state secretary for EU affairs said. Under a timetable agreed with the EU last week, a task force of 4,000 people from asylum case workers and experts to arbitrators, interpreters and security staff should be in place by March 28. Of those, 2,300 should be deployed by other EU states. A spokeswoman for the U.N. children's fund UNICEF told a briefing in Geneva on Tuesday the fund was concerned about this new agreement and the implications for children. Britain's gender pay gap little changed in four years - parliamentarians By Magdalena Mis LONDON, March 22 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Britain should promote flexible working policies that encourage men to share childcare duties while allowing women to continue working if the country is to reduce the gender pay gap, a parliamentary committee said on Tuesday. On average women earn 19.2 percent less than men in Britain. Despite the government's pledge to end the pay gap within a generation, it has remained more or less the same for the past four years with women over 40 hardest hit, the committee said. "Far from this problem diminishing over time, actually we are likely to see it grow over time because the factors that are driving this are not being addressed," said Maria Miller, chairwoman of the cross-party Women and Equalities Committee. Miller told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that Britain could not afford to wait 20 years to reduce the gender pay gap because it was "not only unfair and inequitable, it's also a drag on the country's productivity as well". Many women are trapped in low-paid, part-time work in which their skills are not fully used, the committee said in a report. It estimates the failure to take advantage of their potential costs the UK economy up to 2 percent of GDP (gross domestic product), around 36 billion pounds ($52 billion) a year. Flexible working for both men and women -- including job shares, working from home, and late starts and early finishes -- was key to addressing the gender pay gap, according to the committee, which monitors the performance of the government's Equalities Office. It also called for fathers to be granted three months of well-paid leave as an incentive to help with childcare and for mothers to encouraged to return to employment after time out of the labour market. In July, British Prime Minister David Cameron vowed to end the country's gender pay gap in a generation, calling it a "scandal" that a woman in Britain earns only 80 percent of a man's pay. The Fawcett Society, a campaign group promoting women's rights in the workplace, said employers should be obliged to follow the committee's recommendations. "We particularly welcome the recommendation that all jobs should be flexible by default but we think that this should be backed up with additional regulation as a requirement on employers," Sam Smethers, the Fawcett Society's chief executive, said in a statement. Trump backs waterboarding and 'a lot more' after Brussels attacks By John Whitesides WASHINGTON, March 22 (Reuters) - Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump said on Tuesday the United States should use waterboarding and other harsh interrogation techniques when questioning terror suspects, and renewed his call for tougher U.S. border security after the attacks in Brussels. The billionaire businessman said authorities "should be able to do whatever they have to do" to gain information in an effort to thwart future attacks. "Waterboarding would be fine. If they can expand the laws, I would do a lot more than waterboarding," Trump said on NBC's "Today" program, adding he believed torture could produce useful leads. "You have to get the information from these people." Waterboarding, the practice of pouring water over someone's face to simulate drowning as an interrogation tactic, was banned by President Barack Obama days after he took office in 2009. Critics call it torture. Trump's main Republican rival, U.S. Senator Ted Cruz of Texas, suggested heightened police scrutiny of neighborhoods with large Muslim populations. "We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized," he said in a statement. Trump also called for increased law enforcement surveillance of mosques in the United States. "You need surveillance. You have to deal with the mosques, whether we like it or not," Trump told Fox Business Network. "These attacks ... they're not done by Swedish people, that I can tell you." Islamic State claimed responsibility for Tuesday's suicide bomb attacks on Brussels airport and a rush-hour metro train in the Belgian capital which killed at least 30 people. Trump, who has called for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country, urged tougher measures to stop the flow of illegal immigrants, particularly Syrian refugees, into America. "As president ... I would be very, very tough on the borders, and I would be not allowing certain people to come into this country without absolute perfect documentation," said Trump, campaigning to become the Republican nominee for the Nov. 8 election that will decide on Obama's successor. The Brussels attacks brought national security back to the top of the presidential election agenda, possibly sharpening the division between Trump's isolationist approach to foreign policy and his Republican rivals' more traditional interventionist outlook. On Monday, Trump expressed skepticism about the U.S. role in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and said the United States should significantly cut spending on the defense alliance. 'THEY NEED MORE HELP' Cruz criticized Trump's NATO proposal. "The way to respond to terrorist attacks is not weakness. It's not unilateral and preemptive surrender. Abandoning Europe, withdrawing from NATO, as Trump suggests, is preemptive surrender," Cruz told reporters in Washington. Earlier attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, California, have pushed security issues to the forefront of the White House campaign debate. When 130 people were killed in Paris in November, the threat of terrorism jumped from fifth to first on a Reuters/Ipsos poll list of the country's most important problems and remained there until the economy moved back to the top of the list in mid-January. Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton said U.S. military leaders have found techniques like waterboarding are not effective. "We've got to work this through consistent with our values," she said on NBC, adding officials "do not need to resort to torture, but they are going to need more help." Clinton's Democratic rival, U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, backed stronger intelligence-sharing and monitoring of social media in the fight against Islamist militants, but opposed bolstered surveillance of Muslim communities. "That would be unconstitutional, and it would be wrong. We are fighting a terrorist organization, a barbaric organization that is killing innocent people. We are not fighting a religion," Sanders told reporters. Walid Phares, named by Trump this week as one of his foreign policy experts, told Reuters the Brussels attacks would force Europe and the United States to "reassess" counter-terrorism strategies in "identifying the radicalized elements and also the type of protection soft targets need." Trump looks to take another step toward winning the Republican presidential nomination in contests in Arizona and Utah on Tuesday, aiming to deal another setback to the party establishment's flagging stop-Trump movement. He has a big lead in convention delegates who will pick the Republican nominee, defying weeks of attacks from members of the party establishment worried he will lead the Republicans to defeat in November. In Arizona, one of the U.S. states that borders Mexico, Trump's hardline immigration message is popular and he leads in polls, while in Utah Trump lags in polls behind Cruz. Under fire, British finance minister Osborne hits back at budget critics By William James LONDON, March 22 (Reuters) - British finance minister George Osborne defended his economic record on Tuesday, hitting back at critics of last week's budget which prompted a crisis in Prime Minister David Cameron's party ahead of a June 23 referendum on European Union membership. In his first appearance since welfare minister Iain Duncan Smith resigned in protest at the cutting of state benefits for the disabled and long term sick, Osborne admitted he had made mistakes but defended his plans to cut spending. "Where we have made a mistake, where we have got things wrong, we listen and we learn and that is precisely what we have done," Osborne said. The government announced on Monday that the planned cuts would not go ahead. But Osborne made a staunch defence of the principles behind spending cuts as he sought to try to repair the damage from a budget that has ended up dealing a major blow to his chances of succeeding Cameron as leader. "Let's be clear, the key principles behind this budget are that if we're going to deliver a strong and compassionate society for the next generation, we have to live within our means," he said. Britain's chief budget forecaster said the U-turn on welfare cuts would only have a marginal effect on Osborne's pledge to turn the country's sizeable budget deficit into a surplus by the end of the decade. But, official data released earlier showed Osborne was on the verge of missing his target to reduce the deficit for the current financial year, and credit rating agency Moody's said Britain's triple-A rating would be pressured by the budget's marked slowdown in fiscal consolidation. INCOMPETENT MANIPULATIONS Osborne's 30-minute statement was punctuated with critical interruptions from the opposition Labour party, whose finance spokesman later questioned Osborne's fitness as finance minister and said there were doubts he could ever lead the party. "What we've seen is not the actions of a chancellor (finance minister), a senior government minister, but the grubby incompetent manipulations of a political chancer," said Labour's John McDonnell. But an appeal for calm issued on Monday by Cameron, who is desperate not to let the budget row become a proxy for the decades-old and divisive debate within his party over Britain's future in Europe, appeared to have had the desired effect. U.S. top court backs moose hunter in Alaska hovercraft dispute By Lawrence Hurley WASHINGTON, March 22(Reuters) - The Supreme Court on Tuesday sided with an Alaska moose hunter who asserted that the federal government overstepped its authority in banning hovercraft on National Park Service land in the northernmost U.S. state. The court, in a unanimous decision, handed a victory to John Sturgeon in his legal challenge to the U.S. government's power to prevent him from traveling through a federal preserve on his hovercraft to get to remote moose-hunting grounds. The issues in the case touched upon the smoldering tensions over federal control of public lands, particularly in the western United States. The ruling, by Chief Justice John Roberts, did not definitively decide the case. Instead, it was sent back to a lower court for further proceedings. Myanmar to push for rural development, equality, says minister-elect By Hnin Yadana Zaw NAYPYITAW, March 22 (Reuters) - Myanmar's first freely elected cabinet in more than half a century will focus on income equality, rural development and boosting budget revenue, the finance minister-elect said in his first interview since being picked for the job. Democracy figurehead Aung San Suu Kyi's party on Tuesday announced the make up of its cabinet, which officially takes power on April 1. It is led by president-elect Htin Kyaw, a confidant hand-picked by Suu Kyi because the junta-drafted constitution bars her from the presidency. Before his appointment to lead the Ministry of Planning and Finance, Kyaw Win, 68, had served as a lawmaker in Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy (NLD), which won a historic election in November. The former finance ministry official holds degrees in economics and has advised the NLD on economic policy for the last two years. "If we check income distribution, most of it goes to a small number of people," said Kyaw Win, adding that looking only at a country's gross domestic product (GDP) was not the right way to assess its economic health or otherwise. "Seventy percent of the population live in rural areas. These people are poor, and do not have enough income. So they are our first priority," Kyaw Win told Reuters in an interview. He called agriculture the "lifeblood" of the countryside and pledged to focus on improving electricity and transportation in rural areas. The minister-elect cut an unassuming figure, sporting a grey polo shirt and a dark Burmese sarong as he sat in a modest room at the government guesthouse. Kyaw Win faces the daunting task of improving the finances of a country which, for five decades, was beset by wayward policy decisions and scant foreign investment under a junta that stifled economic reform. The military regime handed over to a semi-civilian government in 2011, which ushered in a series of economic and political reforms. The International Monetary Fund cautioned Myanmar in September that without reforms, which could lower growth in the short term, the country risked a run on its foreign exchange reserves, which cover just three months of imports, and a burgeoning fiscal deficit. Kyaw Win said that rather than looking for savings through tax hikes, the NLD would try to close loopholes to boost budget revenue. "People think we will increase taxes, but that's not true. We will try to find gaps and fix them without increasing taxes," he said. Echoing Suu Kyi's tough stance during the election campaign, Kyaw Win said the government would also focus on corruption. "We have to make civil servants realize that they need to work for the people. I can promise that talented people will get suitable positions," said Kyaw Win. Senior Burundi pro-government army officer shot dead NAIROBI, March 22 (Reuters) - A senior Burundi army officer and ally of the president was shot dead in the Defence Ministry compound on Tuesday, the army and soldiers said, the latest in a series of killings in an almost year-long crisis that risks plunging the nation back into war. Lieutenant Colonel Darius Ikurakure was shot by an assassin dressed in a military uniform, the army said in a statement. Other soldiers earlier gave a similar account and also said he was shot while inside the ministry compound. Tit-for-tat killings of pro-government and opposition figures have prompted international concerns that Burundi, which emerged from an ethnically charged civil war a decade ago, could slide back into conflict. The crisis has rattled a region with a history of ethnic fighting, including neighbouring Rwanda which suffered a genocide in 1994. "After the crime, the criminal managed to escape," army spokesman major Clement Cimana said in a statement, adding the weapon had been recovered and the authorities were still seeking to track down the attacker. He called for unity in the army. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned the killing. "Such acts of violence risk exacerbating the current crisis in Burundi," Ban's spokesman Farhan Haq told reporters. "The secretary-general reiterates his appeal for Burundians to resolve their differences peacefully and to engage immediately in an inclusive and transparent political dialogue." Soldiers said the assassin had attacked just after midday, when people may have been away at lunch, allowing him to flee. Ikurakure was commander of a combat engineering battalion based in Muzinda, northeast of the capital, Bujumbura. He was seen as close to Nkurunziza, with whom he fought as a rebel during the civil war that ended in 2005. Opponents accused him of being behind arbitrary arrests and killings in some areas of Bujumbura over the past year. The government says it only arrests those behind violence, and dismisses accusations of extra-judicial killing. UN expert denounces scores of attacks on people with albinism By Sebastien Malo NEW YORK, March 22 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - At least forty people with albinism have reportedly been attacked in the last eight months, the United Nations' top expert on albinism said on Tuesday in releasing a report condemning the superstitions behind the violence. All the attacks took place in sub-Saharan Africa, and most victims were likely to have been children, said Ikponwosa Ero, the UN's independent expert on human rights and albinism. People with albinism live in danger in regions of the world where their body parts are valued in witchcraft and can fetch a high price. Superstition leads many to believe albino children bring bad luck. Attacks against people with albinism are particularly brutal, at times involving victims being dismembered alive by assailants wielding machetes, Ero said in issuing her first report in her UN position. "Dangerous myths" motivate and facilitate the hunting and attacks, Ero said. Ero, who is from Nigeria and has albinism, took the job as the UN's first independent expert on the issue last August. "Many erroneously believe people with albinism are not human beings but are ghosts or subhuman and cannot die but only disappear," she added. The report said the impact of witchcraft on people with albinism is a "harmful traditional practice and ... one of the root causes of ritual attacks." It called for investigations into the attacks and increased prosecutions as well as public education from a scientific perspective to counteract dangerous prejudices and traditional practices and beliefs. "Such awareness-raising will contribute to fighting myths and stereotypes about persons with albinism, particularly those that fuel stigma, discrimination and attacks," the report said. Albinism is a congenital disorder affecting about one in 20,000 people worldwide who lack pigment in their skin, hair and eyes. It is more common, however, in sub-Saharan Africa. The number of attacks could well be higher as they are frequently carried out in secret and not reported, Ero said. Discrimination, harassment and violence toward people with albinism are often met with passivity and indifference, taking place in remote areas and involving children who are perceived as bringing shame to their families, the report said. Children are commonly victims of the attacks, Ero told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. "It's pretty evident why," she said. "They are easy to capture because kids sometimes roam freely without adult supervision." Victims' body parts are hacked off to create potions or amulets. The practice feeds upon beliefs that the body parts can bring wealth, luck or political success. On the black market, prices range from $2,000 for an albino limb to $75,000 for an entire corpse, the report said. The research collected reports of attacks from charities and agencies and could not independently confirm all the incidents, Ero said. Australian airports have sufficient security -prime minister SYDNEY, March 23 (Reuters) - Australia's airports have sufficient security in the wake of the deadly attack in Brussels, despite a planned strike by immigration workers ahead of the busy Easter holiday weekend, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull said on Wednesday. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for suicide bomb attacks at Brussels airport and on a rush-hour metro train in the Belgian capital on Tuesday which killed at least 30 people. Australia is on heightened alert for attacks by home-grown radicals, but the threat level has not been raised following the Brussels attacks and Turnbull said the country was in a better position than Europe. "I can assure Australians that our security system, our border protection, our domestic security arrangements, are much stronger than they are in Europe, where regrettably they allowed them to slip," Turnbull said on Australian Broadcasting Corp television. "That weakness in European security is not unrelated to the problems they've been having in recent times." Turnbull, who described the Brussels attacks as "cowardly", said he would hold further meetings with security officials on Wednesday to discuss the Brussels attack but initial guidance indicated that "the threat level is at an appropriate level." Turnbull said that the Australian Federal Police presence at airports would not be compromised by a strike. The accusation that the ruling party is polarising the society could apply more to the opposition parties which have launched a no-holds-barred campaign against it by seeking to deepen political and emotional fissures among various communities, including between the Dalits and Hindus at large. All the long-standing ills of India are being placed at the door of the BJP/RSS. Every incident involving a Muslim or a Dalit is being blown out of proportion by a sensation-seeking media. Polarisation One major terrorist incident in Paris and the flood of refugees from Islamic countries entering Europe have unleashed an anti-Muslim phobia in Western democracies. Sweden is expelling refugees; some east European states will accept only Christian ones; differences over refugee quotas for individual countries have become contentious, with Britain, the so-called mother of democracy, unwilling to receive any significant number. US presidential hopeful Donald Trump wants to ban the entry of Muslims into the US. The majority of states there have voted against accepting any refugees from West Asia. Some Sikhs have been physically targeted in the US because they sport beards and turbans. Compared to this surge of anti-Muslim sentiment (not to mention killing of blacks by US policemen) in established democracies, sporadic incidents in India are deplorable aberrations. Unfortunately, the ruling dispensation has not been able to counter the opposition's destructive projection of isolated incidents as an emerging norm. The furore over rising intolerance in India has galvanised US evangelist lobbies to raise the issue of religious freedoms in India, with the state department issuing a long-winded protest on visa denial to a US delegation travelling to India to investigate matters. A senior state department official had earlier applauded the "award wapsi" campaign. That the US should highlight the values of pluralism and democracy that unite it to India, and then question our democratic credentials by casting doubt on religious freedom in India, is usual American sanctimoniousness. As part of the unremitting "secular" attack on the ruling party, the recent World Cultural Festival has been castigated, with environmental sensitivities exploited to generate greater public reproof. The National Green Tribunal (NGT)'s decision to allow the event, a commentary says, will now lead to "real estate sharks, strip miners... to exult and policemen, if they stumble upon a rape in progress, can argue that the victim should have come to them before it started, it's already a fact accomplished." These ludicrous conclusions are being drawn from the supposed abdication of responsibilities by the NGT. Secularism "The World Culture Festival will in the main be Hindu, kitsch and chaos", the commentary adds. A Sufi festival would have no doubt escaped such denigration. "Hindu" evidently sits well with kitsch and chaos, given the organic link between it and poor taste and disorder. The secularists are fascinated by Pakistan, and so the commentary asks why it should be seditious for students to yell "Pakistan zindabad" and land up in jail. "The spirit of reasoned dissent, without which democracy withers, is being snuffed out, as unpatriotic", it says. So true. We are killing all Hindus who don't believe in the RSS. We are using airpower, tanks and artillery to decimate Kashmiri terrorists. We have jihadi groups seeking the destruction of Pakistan. We cannot abuse Modi anymore. We are told that " as we become more like them, Pakistan is becoming more like we used to be". Absolutely. Umar Khalid. Pakistan is now truly secular and all jihadi elements have been eliminated, beginning with Hafiz Saeed, Lakhvi and Masood Azhar. Dawood Ibrahim has been handed over with apologies. "And let us note that, unlike Afzal Guru and Yakub Memon, who were hung to pander to majoritarian bloodlust, Mumtaz Qadri was executed in the teeth of popular opposition, with the government knowing there would be a price to pay," the commentary says admiringly. Commentary Of course, the "bloodthirsty" Supreme Court judges have hung more people than Saudi Arabia has. It recalls approvingly that "the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has told the SC, stray dogs have killed more people in that metropolis than terrorists have". True, stray dogs entered the Taj and Oberoi hotels and other places and bit 166 people to death. On two other occasions earlier, they caused havoc with bombs tied to their tails. "The religion of the greatest number is the greatest good", obviously cannot apply to Hindu India. If we were a Muslim nation, then of course we would proudly be the "Islamic Republic of India". "The government is ridden by decrepit sadhus and swayamsevak zealots, an unholy alliance of the knackered and the knickered." So true. The Budget was actually drawn up at Nagpur and Modi's agenda is decided during kumbh melas when the knackered are there in countless numbers. A Tagore work is cited, in which a character says, "what I worship is much greater than the nation. To worship the nation is to bring about its destruction". The commentary says "A century later, that still says it all." Does it when we became two nations? What is greater than the nation to worship? The United Nations? (didn't exist then.) God? (doesn't exist for many.) One's religion? (the seculars reject it.) One must first become a nation to worship it. The Kanhaiyas, Umar Khalids and the Marxists, who want to destroy the nation even before it is truly one, are honourable followers of Tagore's character. Delhi in the month of March is really a beautiful city - the weather is mildly cool and the sun is not that sharp. One would expect that more tourists would visit the place during springtime for whiffs of fresh air. In short, peaceful sites to travel around, before the hot winds begin. But surprisingly, in this month, you will find anything but peace on the streets. This is a different kind of war I am hinting at - those who have booked their tickets for the hills to flee from the Holi horror show know exactly what I am talking about. More and more people who have been bullied in the past by water balloons or have memories of the same, prefer to spend their Holi festive weekend far away from the capital. The first thing that comes to my mind when I think of Holi is not colours. It is a panic preparation manual that my seniors passed it over to me. "Open your wardrobe of black-coloured clothes", they said. "Carry a very sturdy umbrella" they said. "Make sure not to wear a saree or leave any part exposed", they said. Water balloons hurt like hell. When thrown around your ear by hooligans (who have become professional in this trade, thanks to no police action), they can make you go deaf for life. Yes, it is that lethal! Over the last few years, I have seen a steady rise in safety kits prescribed for women travellers during Holi. This is not to say that only women go through terrible harassment. On Holi, it is to important to rather point out the ridiculous need of these kits. How are these tips any different from what we are traditionally told to prevent from being molested in public spaces, for instance? Most importantly, why can't we take very serious action against these bullies in the month of March? Why is hooting and throwing a balloon full of eggs and sperms without one's consent not a criminal offence? Why doesn't consent matter at all? "Holi hain, madam, gussa kyu karti ho?" (It is Holi, Madam, why be angry?) But here's the hard truth: They want to hit you with a balloon in your private parts irrespective of the Holi allowance card. A festival which was meant for consensual teasing of social rigidities has actually become a tool for bullying women into unavoidable drenching. Apart from the streets, in family functions, Holi aided by bhang is taken as an excuse to grope women. A lot of Bollywood cinema has depicted the lewd nature of "playing Holi". In Darr: A Violent Love Story(1993), Shah Rukh Khan (Rahul) uses Holi colours as a mask for his face and grabs Juhi Chawla by the wrist to spread gulaal to utter his disturbing, iconic line: "Happy Holi, K-K-K-kiran". There is a strong implied message here: "Rahul could have done much more with Holi being the license to do so". Other films like Silsila come very close to portraying sexual fear and trangsression during Holi. Next is the example of Meenakshi Sheshadri, who is witness to a rape scene in the film Damini (1993) on the eve of Holi. The victim, her maid, (who dies eventually) doesn't consent to colours being thrown at her by Meenakshi's brother-in-law and friends. Youngsters on bhang like the ones in Damini think they are unstoppable on Holi. The terrifying rise in sexual crimes on Holi is due to this factor. Since the common understanding is that rules are relaxed during this festival, bhang becomes a garb to release the monster in you. What could have been a day for women to subvert social hierarchies becomes a festival of fear. The city's police might not come to your rescue because of the social consent prevalent regarding the festival. "Holi hain, aap bhi khel lo" (It is Holi, why don't you play it too?). My question to you is: Since when did Holi become a festival where loosening of social rules only meant sexual harassment? Is it not a violation of human rights to humiliate one physically by throwing colours without his/her consent? Whoever is allowing this Holi mass-bullying with the pretext of mythology surely doesn't know how to understand myths at all. What is worse, this harassing tradition will very soon become the only version of Holi. The ones who will resist it will perhaps have to hide forever under their beds to escape colours. Holi is after all, a means of exercising uninhabited power on the streets. In a diverse country like ours, the meaning of Holi has continually been transforming. The festivities of Holika, Dhundh, Doljatra differ from region to region. Today, over 1,000 widows at Vrindavan play consensual Holi in Mathura to challenge the age-old parampara of "widows can't play Holi". It is important to note that carnival spaces exist to contain socially subversive acts. But, we must be very cautious about its hurried understanding. In Mathura, Holi playing widows form a sisterhood through their festive singing and dancing. However, that doesn't mean that you force/drag/harass a widow in the street to play Holi, giving the excuse of Mathura. Consent is what needs to be addressed on Holi. Pichkari, gulaal, sexual innuendoes are fine only if the person is willing to play with you. Otherwise, do not bully them. Simple. Give your kids a tutorial in adult consent. Else, do not produce them! WAYNESBORO Firefighters are making progress in their battle against the fire in Saint Marys Wilderness. As of Monday night, crews estimated that the fire was more than 50 percent contained. That doesnt mean the problems are over, however. The fire continued to spread throughout the day, but at a much smaller pace, climbing from 842 acres to 870. The number of firefighters involved with battling the blaze also dropped from 75 over the weekend to 62. That means fewer people working on a larger area. U.S. Forest Service spokeswoman Rebecca Robbins said the crews are working to improve the containment lines. The goal is to keep the fire within a certain part of Saint Marys, with the idea that with enough water and time, it will burn out. The rules governing the wilderness area make things a bit more complicated. Even after the fire is out, there cant be any evidence left behind of manmade damage. For example, bulldozers cant be used to move dirt and create containment lines. Chainsaws cant be used to cut down burning trees. The rules come from the Wilderness Act of 1964. They limit the ways firefighters can attack the blaze, as they can only use natural features already existing. Even though parts of the fire have been contained, local trails and roads remain closed around the wilderness area. The fire itself is about 10 miles west of the Blue Ridge Parkway, so while hikers there will see the smoke, they wont be affected. The investigation into what triggered the fire is ongoing. Forest Service officials said they still cant say what in fact started it, but they say its believed to be manmade. Tuesday is Tornado Preparedness Day in Virginia as Gov. Terry McAuliffe has proclaimed it so less than a month after eight twisters swept through the state, killing five people and damaging more than 400 homes. We were reminded last month just how vulnerable Virginia is to tornadoes, and we saw their devastating effects, said State Coordinator Dr. Jeff Stern. You may only have seconds to get to safety if a tornado warning is issued for your area, making it that much more important to practice ahead of time. Tornado Preparedness Day is set aside for businesses, schools, colleges, families and individuals to focus on tornado safety procedures, including where to go for shelter during a tornado warning, according to a news release from the Virginia Department of Emergency Management. As part of the day, the department will partner with the National Weather Service to sponsor a statewide tornado drill at 9:45 a.m., triggering a tone alert and broadcast message on NOAA Weather Radio. In turn, TV and radio stations will broadcast the message through the Emergency Alert System, simulating what listeners would hear during an actual tornado warning. When the drill is sounded, according to the Virginia Department of Emergency Management , drill participants should simulate what they do during an actual tornado by moving as quickly as possible to a safe area such a sturdy buildings (basement or interior room on the lowest level); if an open building like a shopping mall, gym or civic center move to a bathroom or interior hallway; if in a vehicle, get out of it and move to a sturdy building or if theres no time take cover in a culvert or ditch; if outside, go to a sturdy building or if theres no time, lie down flat in a ditch and cover your head with your hands; if in a mobile home, leave it immediately and seek shelter in a nearby sturdy building. Virginia experiences an average of 15 to 20 tornadoes annually, according to NOAA. Tornadoes have appeared in Virginia in every month, but the months with the most tornadoes have historically been April through September. For more information, check out readyvirginia.gov. LONDON - England - Leaving the EU would open up a whole new world for the UK drinks industry creating lucrative new markets and increase sales exponentially. Everyone loves a drink, including the DS staff, and it is to this end that we and many Britons are bemused by the Remain campaigners who are constantly putting Britain down. The EU has made booze for Britons more expensive and not only that, restricted how our beverages companies can trade globally. We should be selling our whisky to the world, instead the EU restricts British drinks companies from striking free trade deals with vitally important, lucrative markets. If we Vote Leave and take back control then our drinks trade will prosper something both drinkers and exporters can raise a glass to, and buying a round wont mean you need to take out a second mortgage or sell the car. 600,000 jobs in the UK alcohol industry are NOT at risk if we Vote Leave. These jobs depend on trade with countries in the EU, not on membership of the EU. The Prime Minister has accepted that trade would go on if we Vote Leave: If we were outside the EU altogether, wed still be trading with all these European countries, of course we would Of course the trading would go on. Sometimes Theres a lot of scaremongering on all sides of this debate. Of course the trading would go on (The Andrew Marr Show, 6 January 2013, link). We import more beverages from the EU than we sell to them. They will want to strike a free trade agreement. In 2014, the UK exported 3.29 billion of beverages to the EU. The UK imported 5.26 billion of beverages from the EU (OECD, 2015, link; HMRC, 2015, link). The EU sold the UK 1.98 billion more in beverages than the UK sold the EU. This means they are sure to want to negotiate a new deal to preserve access to the worlds fifth largest market. French winemakers and German brewers will still want to sell the UK alcohol if we Vote Leave. The European Court has previously required the UK to increase the price of beer, putting jobs at risk. On 12 July 1981, the European Court ruled that the UKs low duty on beer afford[ed] protection to domestic beer production and was therefore illegal under EU law (Commission v United Kingdom [1983] ECR 2265, link). In his 1984 budget statement, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, said we lost; and I am now implementing the judgment handed down by the court last year. Accordingly, I propose to increase the duty on beer by the minimum amount needed to comply with the judgment and maintain revenue: 2p on a typical pint of beer (HC Deb 13 March 1984, col. 302, link). Being in the EU means we cannot strike a trade deals with India, harming exports of alcohol. India charges an average tariff of 69.1% on beverages and tobacco, with the highest tariff of 150% on Scotch Whisky (IMF, 2016, link). The EU has failed to strike a free trade deal with India. The Chief Executive of the Scotch Whisky Association, David Frost, has said: India is the biggest spirits market in the world and we have got 1 to 2 per cent of it. It is a difficult business environment. Everyone who does business there knows that (Scotsman, 7 December 2014, link). The EU has been very bad at negotiating free trade deals compared to small countries. The EU has concluded 37 trade agreements with 54 countries since 1970. In 2015, the aggregate GDP of all the countries with which the EU had a trade agreement in force was $7.7 trillion. By contrast, the aggregate GDP of all countries with which Chile had trade agreements was $58.3 trillion. The figure for South Korea was $40.8 trillion and that for Switzerland was $39.8 trillion (albeit these all include the EU with a GDP of $16.7 trillion) (Civitas, January 2016, link). The Head of the IN campaign has admitted trade deals with third countries could continue. There is no reason why any country would choose to deny itself access to the worlds fifth largest market. The Executive Director of the IN campaign, Will Straw accepted that free trade agreements with third countries could continue after we Vote Leave, stating: Either eventuality could come to pass, depending on what happened in that situation (Evidence to Treasury Committee, 2 March 2016, link). The UK is the worlds fifth largest economy (World Bank, 2015, link). There is no reason why any of the countries with which the EU has a free trade deal would choose to cut off their exporters access to the worlds fifth largest market. It is possible to negotiate a trade agreement (FTA) very quickly outside the EU, certainly in less than two years. The US-Australia FTA was concluded in less than two years. Formal negotiations for a free trade agreement began in Canberra on 18 March 2003 (Library of Congress, 3 August 2003, link). The agreement came into effect on 1 January 2005 (Australian Government, 2016, link). The US Government states that as a result of the U.S.-Australia Free Trade Agreement, tariffs that averaged 4.3 percent were eliminated on more than 99% of the tariff lines for U.S. manufactured goods exports to Australia (US Government, 2011, link). Switzerland-China FTA was negotiated in just over two years. There were 9 rounds of negotiations between April 2011 and May 2013 which produced a deal praised by both sides for its quality and its breadth, covering goods, services, investment, and competition (Centre for Security Studies, February 2014, link). The agreement entered into force on 1 July 2014 (Swiss State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, 2016, link). BRUSSELS - Belgium - You cannot have borders with no checks in a situation of war. If you open borders you invite attack on your citizens, and the EU hierarchy are directly responsible for the deaths of their own citizens. The Schengen zone only works in a time of peace, but time and time again the EU has been warned of the repercussions of keeping the zone open when there is conflict close to its borders yet they have ignored the warnings. The tragic bombings in Brussels today where countless people lost their lives and hundreds were injured, is a travesty of EU planning and engineering, as well as a condemnation of their lacklustre governance. Until the EU shuts down the Schengen zone completely there will never be a respite to the terror meted out on the people, and all of this because of some utopian ideal that can only be accomplished in total peace time. Wake Up Europe We wrote an analysis of the situation in February 2015 warning of the Schengen zone, and how it must be shut down, but there was of course no action. Jean Claude Juncker and Angela Merkel with their cohorts of faceless unelected eurocrats should hang their heads in shame today, for their policies and their turgid negligent governance has resulted in the death and injury of many. Where does Britain lie in this shameful idiocy? We must Leave the EU immediately, as the European Union is not a safe place to be, either physically or economically. Will the EU listen to these countless warnings? No! This is why Britain has to Get Out of the EU! The NIA's handout featured the bodies of the four slain terrorists with description of their height. (Photo: PTI) New Delhi: Ahead of the visit by a Pakistani probe team in connection with the Pathankot terror attack on an Indian Air Force base, the National Investigation Agency (NIA) on Monday released the photographs of four terrorists killed during the counter offensive which began on January 2 and lasted more than 80 hours. The move comes barely a few days before the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of Pakistan visits here to ascertain the facts of the case and investigation carried out by the NIA. The NIA's handout featured the bodies of the four slain terrorists with description of their height. The anti-terror probe agency has said one of the terrorists did not have a toe in both the feet. The NIA has sought information regarding the four terrorists. (Photo: Twitter) The picture has been circulated and public asked to share information about them. The agency has already approached the Interpol for issuance of Black Notice for the four. The international notice is issued for identification of unidentified bodies found in a country. Read: Pak probe team on Pathankot attack to begin work in India from March 28 About the remaining two, the NIA was planning to approach another forensic laboratory for conducting a fresh test of the samples recovered from the Airmen billet at the Pathankot air base. Forensic laboratory in Chandigarh had said they had found human remains in the samples handed over by the NIA. It will take some time before the identity of the remaining two was ascertained, an official source said, hinting the same may not be completed before the Pakistani SIT's departure from India. Read: Pathankot attack: India to grant access to Pak probe team wherever necessary The SIT will be arriving here on March 27 and would be holding consultations with the NIA about the probe conducted so far, the sources said. India has already sent a Letters Rogatory to Pakistan seeking certain details about the four. India has been seeking details of the phone numbers dialled by the four terrorists ahead of the attack on the airbase on the intervening night of January 1 and 2. Read: Rajnath: Ready for Pak team probing Pathankot, will work out protocol The numbers are believed to be in the names of people connected with Jaish-e-Mohammed terror group 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 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, 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. Read: No coordination in govt on Pak probe team visit: Congress Nasir was the one who had called his mother, Baber, in Bhawalpur using the phone snatched from the jeweller friend of a 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, sources said. The CM had favoured a hike in the legislators salaries considering their expenses. Hyderabad: If all goes well, Telangana legislators will get Bangaru salaries. The Telangana Legislature Committee on Amenities recommended a steep hike in legislators salaries and pensions of former legislators, besides hike in car loan limit and unlimited medicare. If the recommendation is accepted, the legislators gross salary will go up from Rs 95,000 per month (including allowances) at present to Rs 3.5 lakh per month. This would mean that the legislators monthly salary bill will go up to Rs 5.6 crore from the present Rs 2 crore. Besides, vehicle loans would be hiked from the present Rs 15 lakh to Rs 40 lakh. There are 120 MLAs and 40 MLCs in Telangana Legislature, besides 292 ex-MLAs, 42 ex-MLCs and 171 widows drawing pensions. The former legislators too are in for a bonanza. For them, the committee sought a hike in pension from the present Rs 15,000 per month for one term, Rs 20,000 for two terms, and Rs 25,000 for those who served for three terms to Rs 50,000, Rs 60,000 and Rs 65,000. Spouse of legislators have been getting full pension in case of members demise besides unlimited medicare. At present, half of the pension is provided to his or her spouse in case of death of a legislator. The Committee on Amenities headed by Legislative Council chairman Swami Goud and Assembly Speaker S. Madhusudhana Chary and members met in the Assembly premises and took these decisions. The decisions would be forwarded to the government for necessary action. Chief Minister K. Chandrasekhar Rao had favoured hike in salaries of legislators on a representations from them recently, citing growing expenditure in day-to-day work, visits to constituencies and other counts. The CM told some legislators that their salaries formed a meagre 0.001 per cent of the Rs 1.15 lakh crore budget. Legislators also sought housing plots in the city. Expenses incurred by legislators in discharge of their duties were far in excess of their salaries. They spend on fuel, bear food expenses of their personal assistants, gunmen and drivers etc. It easily crosses 3 lakh per month, an MLA said, justifying the hike. Recently, the Delhi Assembly had passed a resolution proposing a monthly salary of Rs 4 lakh to its members. In 2011, Legislators in undivided AP got a salary hike from Rs 40,000 pm to Rs 90,000 per month. Monthly pension for ex-legislators was also hiked from Rs 15,000 to a maximum of Rs 25,000. BJP has drawn up a strategy to corner the ruling AAP government by highlighting its inability to utilise last years budget, when the Delhi Budget session begins on Tuesday. Leader of Opposition in Delhi Vidhan Sabha Vijender Gupta said on Monday that the party will expose the Aam Aadmi Party governments false claims of making huge savings on infrastructural development. He said the Aam Aadmi Party government had failed to deliver on its promises on creating infrastructure such as roads, bridges and schools. In fact, it has been able to utilise only about 30 per cent of the allotted funds. Now it is claiming to save in terms of expenditure and promising to utilise the unspent plan funds in next financial year, said Gupta. This is a sad commentary on the efficiency and planning power of the AAP government. The BJP will expose the governments lies on FM channels about its savings on construction of roads, bridges, dispensaries and polytechnics, he said. The AAP government says the cost of a flyover has been reduced from Rs 325 crore to Rs 200 crore, dispensary from Rs 5 crore to Rs 20 lakh and polytechnics from Rs 14 crore to Rs 8 crore, Gupta recalled. When the project starts at a particular amount, the parties involved cant increase or decrease the amount, he added. He said the government has deliberately kept the duration of the session short. Its strategy is to forestall efforts of the Opposition to bring in private member bills, he said. The Leader of Opposition said that the BJP has issued a notice to Vidhan Sabha secretary to raise 14 burning issues. These include non-availability of doctors and medicines to poor patients, misuse of government funds for wasteful promotion, and wastage of public money on 21 MLAs appointed as parliamentary secretaries. Deadlock over government formation in Jammu and Kashmir seems to have ended with PDP chief Mehbooba Mufti today calling on Prime Minister Narendra Modi, a meeting which she described as "very positive" and "good" in addressing issues pertaining to the people of the state. Mehbooba drove to the Prime Minister's residence this morning barely three days after PDP and BJP had hit a road block with BJP's chief interlocutor Ram Madhav announcing that his party would not be accepting any fresh demands from its erstwhile ally PDP. Emerging after a 30-minute-long meeting with the Prime Minister, Mehbooba said she had a "very positive meeting and a good meeting" with him. "We are seeing a stalemate for last two to three months over government formation in the state but today I am satisfied. I am very satisfied," she told reporters here. To a question whether the stalemate has ended, she said, "When you meet the Prime Minister of the country, naturally the solution to the problems faced by the people of Jammu and Kashmir is more clear". She will be flying back to Srinagar where she will brief her party legislators on Thursday. "I had been authorised by the party MLAs to take a decision. I have convened a meeting on Thursday and after that we will announce the future course of action." On government formation in the state, she said, "As I said I will talk to my MLAs because that is the forum. This is not the place. There is a particular place to make such anouncements. I will go back to Srinagar and take the next step." Mehbooba came to Delhi yesterday after PDP make it clear to BJP that there was some miscommunication and no fresh demands had been raised by the party for stiching an alliance. This is her second visit to the national capital in five days after her talks with BJP President Amit Shah on Thursday failed to make any headway triggering speculation that the two parties could be making renewed efforts to reach out to each other in a bid to break the prolonged impasse. Mehbooba had a meeting this morning with her senior party colleagues, including former Finance Minister Haseeb Drabu, during which final touches were given for the meeting with the Prime Minister, sources said. The fresh efforts from PDP, which has 27 MLAs in the 87-member state Assembly, come in the backdrop of repeated assertions made by BJP that it was committed to implementation of Agenda of Alliance arrived at by late Mufti Mohammed Sayeed. The talks with BJP, which has 25 MLAs, had hit a roadblock last week when the party's interlocutor Ram Madhav made it clear that no fresh demands would be entertained from PDP and that they had to decide whether they want to form a government based on the Agenda of Alliance document. The toughening of stand came as a surprise for Mehbooba who boarded a plane on Friday last and returned to the state. PDP MP Muzzafar Hussain Baig, who has been playing a key role in the backchannel talks, had clarified that PDP had made no fresh demands and that there was a miscommunication from both sides leading to derailing of talks. PDP and BJP had formed an alliance on March one, last year with Sayeed as the Chief Minister. Both the sides had formed an Agenda of Alliance which sought to address internal and external dimension of the state. PDP had toughened its stance after Sayeed's demise by seeking concrete plans for the state's development, including handing over of power projects to the state and vacation of land by the army before the coalition could be revived. Governor's rule was imposed in J-K on January 8 after Mehbooba decided against taking over the reins after her father's death. Hyderabad Central University students vandalised the office of Vice-Chancellor Appa Rao on Tuesday as he returned to office after two-month-leave. Appa Rao had gone on a long leave amid students' protest over the suicide of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula, who commited suicide on Januray 17, 2016. Hyderbad police reached Hyderabad University campus after students ransacked VC's office in protest. Further details are awaited. Sorry, the page you are looking is no longer available. Click here to go to Home 1-877-8359538 FREE 1-877-8359538 Two Jet Airways crew members were injured in the blasts at Brussels airport today even as the authorities have relocated the airline's passengers in Brussels to a safe location."Two of our staff have been injured and are receiving medical care," a senior airline official said.According to the airline, as per initial information, Jet Airways guests in Brussels have been re-located to a safe location by the Brussels Airport authorities.Passengers and staff are not allowed to access the airport terminals, it said. Jet Airways is closely monitoring the situation, the airline said.Brussels airport serves as Jet Airways' European hub for international operations. The airline had, however, recently announced relocation of this gateway to Dutch capital Amsterdam from coming Sunday. A string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station today, reportedly killing at least 13 people.In view of the situation, the airline has decided to cancel its flights to and from Brussels till tomorrow.The flights which stand cancelled are from Brussels to Newark, Toronto, Mumbai and Delhi as well as services from Newark and Toronto to Brussels for today.Jet Airways has also announced cancellation of its flights from Mumbai and Delhi to Brussels scheduled for tomorrow.The airline said for further information passengers can contact Jet Airways contact centre in India 1800225522,(The United States) and 08081011199 (The United Kingdom). Under attack for favouring a separate Marathwada state, Maharashtra Advocate General Shreehari Aney today resigned but ruled out any apology asserting that he stood by his view. Aney, appointed as AG by the Fadnavis Government last year, submitted his resignation to Governor C Vidyasagar Rao after his remarks generated a huge controversy with the opposition Congress and NCP and ruling partner Shiv Sena crying foul over it besides causing distress within the state BJP. Aney, however, drew support from sections in the Congress from Vidarbha as he had earlier called for a referendum on carving out a separate state for the region. Shortly after Aney put in his papers, Fadnavis told the legislature that the government would ask the Governor to accept his resignation. Later, Aney told PTI, "I stand by my statement that the demand for a separate Vidarbha has to be considered. With reference to Marathwada, there is a long road ahead because a movement has to be built before it can happen." On the Opposition parties' demand seeking an apology from him, he said, "I am not apologising. Let them do what they think." "If the post of AG is the price I have to pay for the creation of Vidarbha, it is a very cheap price," he said. At an event in Jalna district of Marathwada on Sunday, Aney had said, "Marathwada bore more injustice than Vidarbha and should therefore be independent. Pressure has to be put at the Delhi level to form a separate state as the demand does not come under the purview of Mumbai." Apart from the Congress-NCP opposition, Shiv Sena had yesterday moved separate motions in the Assembly seeking Aney's dismissal. Taking strident stand against him over the issue, Sena had even threatened that it would boycott Cabinet meetings if Aney was not sacked. With the issue snowballing into a major controversy, Fadnavis had yesterday sent signals that Aney would be stepping down. Aney drew support from an unexpected quarter with prominent Congress leaders from Vidarbha Vilas Muttemwar and Nitin Raut endorsing his view. Fadnavis spoke to Aney yesterday and is understood to have suggested to him to tender his resignation. Aney met the CM at his official residence 'Varsha' last evening. With even ally Shiv Sena joining the protests against Aney in both Houses of Legislature, Fadnavis was left with little choice. Sena ministers had even threatened to boycott the cabinet until Aney was sacked. Fadnavis, in a joint statement to both Houses of the Legislature, said, "According to Constitutional provisions, he has been appointed by the Governor. According to protocol, the Governor will ask for an opinion from the government. We will take the decision in the Cabinet and convey to the Governor that his resignation be accepted." Muttemwar, a former Congress MP, said in Nagpur that Aney had only echoed sentiments of people of both regions. "Majority of Congress workers and leaders from the region are in favour of separate Vidarbha though the state leadership was not much inclined to the creation of Vidarbha. But Congress men have made their intentions clear long back that they want a state," Muttemwar said. "Not only Congress, the BJP too had supported the cause and adopted a resolution for creating smaller states like Vidarbha in BJP national executive held in Bhubneshwar in 1996," he said. Former state minister Nitin Raut said even Dr B R Ambedkar had favoured separate Vidarbha and Marathwada. He said Aney's remarks and subsequent demand over his sacking in the state legislature were not at all issues for the House. When large number of farmers are committing suicide and water crisis and severe drought were looming large in state, he wondered how can the House discuss other issues like Aney, Vidarbha and Marathwada. Defending his stance, Aney said both Vidarbha and Marathwada have been neglected by previous governments and if anything, Marathwada suffers more. He said he had to fight hard in courts to ensure that water was released for Marathwada, and was still fighting for Vidarbha and Marathwada's irrigation rights in Aurangabad bench (of HC), and for farmer's rights in the Bombay bench. "Vidarbha's statehood struggle has gone on for over 40 years, while Marathwada's struggle is yet to start or may have just begun. By merely attaching itself to Vidarbha's statehood demand, Marathwada will not get statehood," he said. "It (Marathwada) would need to establish its demand and will have to develop its own leadership," he said. "Vidarbha or Marathwada cannot be created by the Chief Minister at the state level, but would have to be created by Delhi, and it is for the people of Marathwada to undertake long agitation to establish their demand," he said. The 10 key agreements signed with China has lessened Nepal's excessive dependence on India and provided a "psychological boost" to the land-locked country to become self-reliant, the Nepalese media commented today, a day after Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli met China's top leadership. Nepal and China yesterday signed major deals which included a landmark transit treaty that will see the end of Nepal's near-total dependence on Indian sea ports for trade. China has also pledged to boost cooperation with Nepal in "key areas", including connectivity, industrial capacity, oil and gas during the ongoing week-long visit of Oli. The deals made banner headlines in major dailies here. In a report in Nepalese language daily 'Nagarik', senior economist Bishwombhar Pyakurel said the agreements will help Nepal in expanding international trade, giving it a "psychological boost" to become economically self-reliant. "This will loosen the landlocked country's geo-political compulsion," Pyakurel told the daily. The daily in its front-page report noted that Nepal "has been freed from the situation to face Indian economic embargo" as the deals provide access to the sea route close to China. Former commerce secretary Purushottam Ojha said the transit treaty was the "most important event in Nepal's economic history." He, however, said Nepal cannot benefit from it "unless we link China through railway or road networks." "The agreement will not only reduce Indian pressure, but will also open door for Nepal to have access to central Asian economies," he said. As per the agreements, China will provide assistance to Nepal for installing solar panels in 32,000 households and 21 billion rupees in aid, 25 per cent of which would be in the form of grant for an airport in the tourist spot of Pokhara. China will also provide assistance in exploration of gas and petroleum products in southern Nepal and construct a bridge to connect western Nepal to Tibet. Another leading daily 'The Kathmandu Post' reported that the "use of Chinese facilities could start in 2020 at the earliest, when Chinese rail network will reach Kerung". The daily in a report said Nepal and China signed an agreement to use a port on the northern border "in a bid to shift away from the heavy dependence on India". The 'Himalayan Times' in its editorial said the deals were "historic" and would have "far-reaching importance to Nepal." "The long-felt want of Nepali people for a transit transport treaty with China has been fulfilled now," it said. China has agreed to build the Xiarwa river bridge, which will remove the transport barrier between the Chinese border and Nepal's remote Karnali region. The national daily described it as a "lifeline to the region's economy". "These agreements...will further widen and strengthen the bilateral relationship of mutual benefit, particularly helping the landlocked Nepal to diversify its trade, to strengthen cross-border connectivity, to expand Nepal's development infrastructure," it said. Panic gripped passengers at the Indira Gandhi international airport today after the Jet Airways call centre received threats about bombs in five of its aircraft from here, hours after blasts ripped through Brussels airport killing over 20. While three of the planes had already departed by the time the anonymous call about the bomb threats was received, the fourth aircraft, which was bound for Chennai, was diverted to Nagpur, sources said. Another plane, also bound for Chennai which was preparing for take off, was grounded and is undergoing checks by the security agencies, a senior police official said. "Jet Airways has received a security alert for five flights from Delhi. All flights are on ground and are being checked by security agencies at the respective airports," the airline said in a tweet but did not share specific details. "We regret the inconvenience caused to our guests. The safety and security of our guests and crew is always our main priority," Jet Airways said. Sources said the three planes, which received bomb threats, had already flown to their respective destinations -- Gorakhpur, Chandigarh and Dehradun. Earlier in the day, over 20 people were killed and many injured, including two crew members of Jet Airways, in explosions at Brussels international airport. Alliance Francaise de Delhis annual event Francophonie Week saw participation of eight French-speaking countries embassies like Switzerland, Belgium and Canada. Francophiles from all over came together to promote French language and the diversity of Francophone cultures. The festival that commenced on March 16 at Lodhi Estate premises featured French film screenings, quiz competitions, musical concerts, plays, art exhibitions, and other performing arts over its four days of celebration. Mitushi Khurana, head of culture and communication, Alliance Francaise de Delhi, notes, This idea of celebrating the French culture started in France some 50-60 years ago and the other 20 countries that have French as their first language. In Delhi, it started some 20-30 years back. Every year, in the month of March, we organise this French week where we celebrate the French language and the culture. We collaborate with all the French-speaking countries for this festival. The first day of the festival saw collaboration with the Belgian embassy. An exhibition titled Man is a funny bird by Belgian artist Rudi Pillen (1931-2014) was hosted. The next day saw a theatrical presentation Les belles surs reading in English in collaboration with the Canadian High Commission and a dance performance by Indo-Canadian Kathak dancer Anjana Patil. A jazz performance called Collage was organised on the third day of the festival in collaboration with the Embassy of Switzerland. A Francophonie mela was organised on March 19 where the countries had put their stalls showcasing their language, culture, food and other attractions. The day also featured a World-Soul musical concert by Erika Lernot who is of Martinican origin. Francophonie Week is a much-awaited event for everyone students, teachers, and Francophonic community, the diplomats. And since we collaborate with these countries, they also promote this event within their community, says Khurana. This festival is a little part of French in India. Being French, it is nice to see how our culture is loved and appreciated by all. Also, it is helpful for the young people who want to learn French, Lernot tells Metrolife. An International Francophonie Day was also organised on March 20 at Alliance Francaise de Gurgoan. It was the same date when in 1970 the treaty was signed in Niamey for the creation of the Agency for Cultural and Technological Cooperation, which is now know as the Francophone Agency. Over the last two months, two Gulf countries announced major Cabinet reshuffles and rejigged several ministerial and governance structures. While these may be initially dismissed as routine administrative changes, their novelty lies, first, in being implemented in political systems that are evolving from the traditional to modern, thus writing their own unfamiliar scripts in political participation. Second and more significantly, they are such unique and innovative changes that it is only a matter of time before established democracies realise the folly in not attempting these earlier and start replicating them, because this is what all people-centric governments should be doing. In the new political equation in the United Arab Emirates and Qatar, the Ministry of Tolerance plus Ministry of Happiness plus Ministry of Future plus more women plus more youth, and minus ruling family members, is equal to new cabinets. The UAE witnessed the largest structural change since the formation of the federation of seven emirates following the end of the British Protectorate Pact in 1971. The new government includes eight new ministers, five of them women. The average age of the new ministers is just 38 years, with the youngest minister being a 22-year-old woman. This takes the number of women in the 29-member Council of Ministers to 8, the highest in the region. The new Cabinet ensures strategic and regulatory roles for the ministers and sets a roadmap for outsourcing most government services to the private sector. The new Cabinet has fewer ministries but more ministers to manage changes and the dynamic strategic portfolios. The Ministry of Happiness is meant to nurture an environment in which people create and enjoy their own bliss. The ministry would guide and follow up with government and private sectors to ensure happiness of individuals, families and employees. Citing studies, it has been pointed out that happiness is measurable and its achievement linked to material objectives. Since the dawn of history, happiness is all that humanity has sought. Aristotle said the state is a living being which develops in seeking the achievement of moral perfection and happiness for individuals, rationalised the government. The Ministry of Tolerance is aimed at educating and guiding against sectarian, ideological, cultural and religious bigotry, especially among the young, at a time when the region is consumed by conflicts driven by such narrow divisions. The goal is to weave tolerance into the fabric of the society, ensure progress and serve as an example for other countries to follow. This is symbolically important because about 85% of the people in the UAE (an Islamic country) are expatriates, belonging to different nationalities, faiths, sects and cultures. The Ministry of Youth headed by a 22-year-old woman is meant to respond effectively to the aspirations of young people, who represent more than half the population. Investing in and empowering them is deemed necessary because they are considered the future. The Arab Spring, according to the government, was rooted in lack of opportunities for the youth to realise their dreams. In addition, a council of youth has been established to advise the Ministry of Youth with the reigning trends and aspirations of the young people in the country. The Minister for (Cabinet Affairs and) Future will aim to understand what life will be like in a post-oil economy. In recent years, the UAE has invested about $75 billion to prepare for a diverse economy that would free future generations from dependence on oil. The UAE feels that it needs a strong and appropriate regulatory infrastructure to build a sustainable and diverse national economy. Dialogue of the Future Another novelty was that the Vice-President and Prime Minister of the country, who is also the ruler of Dubai, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, announced the changes through his direct Dialogue of the Future conversation with 10 million followers on social media platforms. In addition, an independent education foundation has been set up to manage public schools. The ministries of Education and Higher Education have been merged under one minister, with two ministers of state. Further, a Council of Scientists has been created to review national policies related to science, technology and innovation. Other notable changes are the Ministry of Labour being renamed the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation, and the Ministry of Social Affairs as the Ministry of Community Development. Elsewhere in Qatar, while the announcement of new faces in the reshuffle was a surprise, the fact that several ministries were merged both as a cost-cutting measure during a low-oil price period and to ensure greater efficiency was striking. In December, Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim Al Thani had warned against wasteful spending, overstaffing and a lack of accountability across Qatar. The ruler had also underlined the need for diversifying the countrys income and ending corruption. The most important factor is that the new cabinet boasts only four Al Thani members (including the ruler) among 18 ministers. This indicates recognition for talent and merit over the erstwhile practice of nepotism. Qatar now has one of the smallest cabinets in the region, comprising 18 ministers, with the representation of the ruling family restricted to just 22%, the lowest in the Gulf. In comparison, there were 14 Al Thanis in government and the last cabinet had seven members from the ruling family. While these governance-related developments in both countries are indeed path-breaking, the fact that the UAE leader has claimed that there is no finish line to our development, excellence and growth aspirations means that there could be more innovative steps in governance in the years ahead. (The writer is a Dubai-based political analyst, author and Honorary Fellow of the University of Exeter, UK) Indonesia summoned the ambassador of China to a meeting Monday after the Chinese coast guard forcibly recovered a fishing boat confiscated by Indonesian authorities, in a sign of escalating tensions between the two countries over the South China Sea. The maritime confrontation also indicated that Indonesia might be toughening its stance toward China in the region. The high-seas episode began at 10 pm on Saturday, when a special task force vessel operated by the Indonesian Ministry of Maritime Affairs and Fisheries caught a Chinese fishing boat within Indonesias maritime 200-mile exclusive economic zone, off the Natuna Islands, said Arrmanatha Nasir, a spokesman for Indonesias Foreign Ministry. Indonesian personnel boarded the Chinese boat, the Kway Fey, took its captain and eight-member crew into custody, and began towing the ship back to a base in the Natuna Islands, he said. But around midnight, he said, a Chinese coast guard vessel, which had been following the Indonesian ship, approached it, on or inside the 12-nautical-mile line marking Indonesias territorial waters. The Chinese coast guard vessel rammed the fishing boat, apparently to compel Indonesian authorities to release it, he said. To prevent anything else occurring, the Indonesian authorities let go of the Chinese boat and then left toward Natuna, still with eight fishermen and the captain on board, Arrmanatha said, adding that the Indonesian crew was only lightly armed. Indonesias maritime and fisheries minister, Susi Pudjiastuti, held a news conference Sunday and labeled the Chinese coast guards intervention arrogant. On Monday morning, Retno Marsudi, the Indonesian foreign minister, met with Sun Weide, minister counselor of Chinas Embassy in Jakarta, the capital, and handed over an official letter of protest about the confrontation. Sun represented the embassy because the ambassador, Xie Feng, was out of the country. Later Monday, a spokeswoman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, Hua Chunying, called the area where the episode took place traditional Chinese fishing grounds and said that the coast guard vessel had not entered Indonesian territorial waters. China immediately requested Indonesia to release the detained Chinese fishermen and ensure their physical safety, she said at a regularly scheduled news conference in Beijing. The confrontation was not the first between Indonesian and China over Chinese fishing vessels near the Natuna Islands, but the government in Jakarta has de-emphasised previous ones or kept them under wraps. Indonesias strong reaction to the latest confrontation, in particular because it may have occurred within its territorial waters, may have been a tipping point in how it deals with Chinese aggressiveness in the South China Sea, said Ian J Storey, a senior fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. I think the Indonesians will be apoplectic, he said. Indonesia has tended to downplay them, but they couldnt this time, and it demonstrates how frustrated that people are getting with China. South China Sea Members of the 10-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have increasingly expressed concern about Chinas aggressive posture in the South China Sea, including naval standoffs and land reclamation projects in disputed areas, and the stationing of military personnel and surface- to-air missiles in the Paracel Islands. Last week, Malaysias defence minister, Hishammuddin Hussein, raised the possibility of a pushback against China by Southeast Asian nations. Indonesia is not a claimant in the disputes, but Chinas contentious nine-dash line map, which marks its territorial claims to around 90% of the maritime region, appears to overlap with part of Indonesias maritime 200-mile exclusive economic zone around Natuna Islands, according to analysts. Since 1994, Indonesia has sought clarification from China about whether the nine-dash line encompassed the Natuna Islands or its exclusive economic zone, but, until recently, it had never received an official response from Beijing. In November, however, Chinas Foreign Ministry acknowledged Indonesias sovereignty over the Natuna Islands, although it did not address the issue of the exclusive economic zone. Indonesia has said that Chinas territorial claims in the South China Sea have no legal basis under international law. That assertion was made most recently by President Joko Widodo during a visit to Japan in March 2015, less than five months after he took office. One of Jokos main foreign policy goals is to transform Indonesia, an archipelagic nation of 250 million people, into a regional maritime power. The Maritime Ministry has initiated a policy of scuttling all ships confiscated for illegal activities, in particular fishing with Indonesias maritime economic zone. Arrmanatha said the Chinese coast guard might have acted as it did on Saturday because it did not want Indonesian authorities to confiscate and destroy the vessel. Indonesia has been building its military presence in the Natuna Islands, according to analysts, and has contemplated deploying eight Apache attack helicopters it bought from the United States. The ruling Congress in the BBMP has categorically refuted the charges of the opposition BJP that there were large-scale irregularities in waste disposal. Addressing a press conference on Tuesday, Mayor B N Manjunatha Reddy and ruling party leader R S Sathyanarayana said the opposition leader Padmanabha Reddy had made it a point to find flaw in every ongoing work. Padmanabha Reddy had stated that the BBMP was making payment through the Detailed Contingent Bills (DC Bills) when there was no contingency involved in garbage business. He had alleged that the Palike was incurring a loss of Rs 36 crore a month due to the payments through DC Bills. Sathyanarayana explained that since 2013, the payments are being made through the DC bills in the absence a stable system. It is not we (Congress), but the BJP which introduced payment through the DC Bills in 2013. We are continuing it in absence of a stable system, he said. Mayor Manjunatha Reddy said the charges of corruption in solid waste management were baseless when the payments were being made online. A 70-year-old retired employee of BEML was found dead in a sump at his house in Papareddypalya on Tuesday morning, three days after his death. The deceased Sachi Lingaiah was staying with his wife, while his two daughters and a son were married and were staying separately. Lingaiah left the house on Saturday morning and his wife and children thought he would return since he used to often leave the house and return after a few days. The neighbours and the tenants in the building complained of foul smell on Monday evening and looked around the building, but found nothing. On Tuesday morning, Lingaiahs body was found floating in the sump, said the police. It is said that Lingaiah was depressed as he was deep in debt. He had sold his house and taken a small room in the same building on rent. He was not even paying the rent properly. He was upset over his financial crisis and might have committed suicide, said the police. After power and road, the government will now focus its attention on steel sector woes. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley is visiting Australia next week to woo international investors. Investors have evinced interest in Indias infrastructure space, which has tremendous growth potential, given the governments commitment to building smart cities and housing for all in the next 2-3 years. Back home, the government may announce continuation of safeguard measures for the steel industry in the wake of dumping of cheap steel from neighbouring countries such as China. The steel-making sector plays a crucial role in making India a manufacturing hub and promoting the ambitious Make in India programme. The focus is on the steel sector. We are already seeing increased demand of steel by housing and other infrastructure sectors in the coming months, an official source said, expressing hope that the sector will start logging growth in the coming 2-3 quarters. The financial health of Indian steel companies is not very good as steel prices across the globe are at their lowest level since 2003-04. In India, the problem is compounded due to cheap import of the commodity. The worlds third largest producer of steel, India, has witnessed a 75% rise in its imports from April 2015 to January, this year. The government has taken steps such as imposition of minimum import price recently on 173 steel products to check cheap imports. Policy think tank NITI Aayog too is entrusted with the task of chalking out a long-term strategy to increase demand for steel in the domestic market. The government has taken steps to check import of cheap steel such as imposition of minimum import price, last month, on 173 steel products. Jaitley, during his visit to Sydney from March 29, will also meet global investors and explain to them about investment opportunities in India, the official said. City-based Vikram Hospital on Tuesday launched its new initiative to cater to the needs of the underprivileged Alambana Medical Foundation. The hospital has committed itself under the Alambana initiative to treat 500 patients over a period of 5 years, pro bono. Renuka Ramnath, Chairperson and Director of Vikram Hospital, said, At all times, a portion of the hospital remains unutilised, which can be put to use. The company, which was earlier found to be debt-ridden, owing Rs 100 crore in loan to United Bank of India, is effectively debt-free since November 2015, she said. Ronald Cohen, father of European private equity fund and co-founder of Apax Partners, on Tuesday called for the government to come up with support and tweaking of laws for enhancing social impact investment in the country. The chairman of the Global Social Impact Investment Steering Group, with 13 countries including the G8 Cohen, said the government of India has come up with innovative mode of social impact funding via CSR norms. We want the government to come up with some expression of support and tweaking of regulation so that more money can be pooled in for social impact investment, said Cohen to Deccan Herald. He came to Bengaluru to promote a unified view of impact investment organised by Impact Investors Council (IIC) to encourage policy change to help $2 billion nascent industry in India. The government should come up with policy initiatives to start social impact bonds so that large funds can be mobilised. Here, the government should remove legal constraints and systemic problems, he said. He applauded the government initiatives to come up with legislation on corporate social responsibility (CSR), where companies will have to spend 2% of their profit. The government can free unclaimed money in banks. Here they can set up a body to provide capital to impact investment organisations, said Cohen. He said that the social impact fund will reach more than $4-5 trillion in 20-30 years from a few billions of dollars now. It will overtake private equity and venture capital funds. The revolution by social impact funds will be disruptive and it will change the business model of philanthropic funding, he said. Social enterprise evangelist said the funding model starting from 19th century was really financial return model. But in the 20th century, we added risk to return model. In the 21st century, we actually started measuring risk, return and impact. Here the social entrepreneurs with their technologies can make disruptions and make measurable impact through their business model. Here the fund will get 7-10% return very easily, he said. Pakistani investigators planning to visit India to probe the January 1-4 terror attacks at Pathankot in Punjab on Tuesday sought visas from the High Commission of India in Islamabad. Vikas Swarup, official spokesperson of the Ministry of External Affairs, told journalists that the High Commission of India in Pakistan had received the visa applications of the members of the Special Investigation Team, which would visit the country in connection with the probe into the terror attacks on the Indian Air Force base at Pathankot in Punjab. New Delhi, however, has not yet officially made public whether the Pakistani SIT would be allowed to visit the scene of the attack at the airbase in Pathankot. The modalities of the visit will be discussed now as we have the composition of the team, said Swarup, adding that the itinerary of the Pakistani SIT in India was among the issues to be discussed while finalizing modalities. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj and her Pakistani counterpart Sartaj Aziz met on the sideline of a Saarc conclave at Pokhara in Nepal last week and agreed that the investigators of the neighbouring country would visit India on March 27 and begin its work on March 28. Islamabad in January offered to send a Special Investigation Team from Pakistan to India to probe the terrorist attack, which cast a shadow on the latest peace-process initiated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart M Nawaz Sharif. New Delhi accepted the offer and agreed to host the Pakistani SIT, which comprises counterterrorism and intelligence officials from the neighbouring country. Advocate General Shrihari Aney, who advocated the need to trifurcate Maharashtra leading to protests in the legislature and widespread reactions, put in his papers on Tuesday. The 65-year-old Aney called on Maharashtra Governor CH Vidyasagar Rao and tendered his resignation. In December ahead of the Winter session in Nagpur, Aney had called for the need for statehood to Vidarbha and while the Budget session was underway he made a statement stressing upon the need for a separate Vidarbha. The statements of Aney has come as a major political embarrassment for Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis, who hails from Nagpur and is a strong votary of Vidarbha. Reasons Let me make it clear that neither His Excellency the Governor nor the Honourable Chief Minister asked me for my resignation There are two reasons for my resignation. The first has to do with conflict of duty. The second concerns institutional stability, Aney said. Saying that it was his Constitutional duty to place the interest of the people above the interest of the governmental machinery, he pointed out: This was most visible in my arguments in matters concerning lack of development of Vidarbha, the insistence on the right of people of Marathwada to drinking water, and the need for stronger governmental measures to tackle the issue of farmers suicides and the states agrarian crisis. My submissions leading to withdrawal of the states resolution regarding sedition, and the right of women to enter places of religious worship are further illustrations of placing the interest of the people uppermost. Such arguments might have caused discomfort to the state, but they did result in orders of the High Court which directly benefitted the neediest and most deprived sections of the public. In that, I find a complete vindication of the office of the Advocate General. Aney further added that his stand on Vidarbha is well known and he had spoken on Marathwada a month ago, before Sundays statement. Once again a section of the honourable legislators have chosen to make this as an issue to stall the present Budget session. As a lawyer I am aware that the failure of the Budget session has the result of fall of the ruling government. It would perhaps have been better if the legislators had deliberated over the problems that occasion the demand for statehood and made some attempt to solve them. Shooting the messenger does not solve the problem. In the present disruption of the Legislature, I see a clear pattern. Since I shall not stop from voicing my demand for Vidarbhas statehood, and the legislators will not stop from using it as a ready excuse to stall the working of the Legislature, one of us has to step back. Social Welfare Minister Sandeep Kumar and Food and Civil Supplies Minister Imran Hussain are likely to lose their berth in the Arvind Kejriwal cabinet due to poor performance, said sources in the AAP government. The cabinet reshuffle is likely to take place after the end of the Assembly session on March 31 as Chief Minister Kejriwal has already decided to induct two young faces, including one from a rural constituency, in his team, said the sources. Apart from replacing two ministers with fresh faces, Kejriwal has also decided to rejig the portfolios of Health Minister Satyendar Jain, Transport Minister Gopal Rai and Tourism Minister Kapil Mishra. The sources said Kejriwal has decided not to disturb the portfolios of Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia. Kumar and Hussain are going to lose their cabinet berths due to poor performance, said a government functionary. Nearly three months after his son Sambia mowed down Air Force Officer Corporal Abhimanyu Gaur, with a speeding car in Kolkata, former RJD MLA Mohammad Sohrab surrendered before the city police on Tuesday. While the police kept his surrender and subsequent production at a city court low-key, the court granted him conditional bail. Sohrab was granted bail on a personal surety bond of Rs 1,500. The court impounded his passport, ordering him not to leave station without prior permission of the court. He has also been instructed to cooperate with the police investigation and be present in the court room on dates the case will be heard. Sohrab is named in the charge sheet filed against his younger son Sambia. Sambia had run over Corporal Gaur with his speeding Audi SUV and fled the scene on January 13, when the 21-year-old air force officer was acting as an instructor during rehearsals for the Republic Day parade on Red Road. Intoxicated and disturbed after a fight with his friends, Sambia ran over the guardrails the police had used to cordon off the stretch of road for parade rehearsal. After running over Corporal Gaur, he hit a few others before ramming into another guardrail, and fled the scene when his cars engine stalled. While Sohrab absconded within hours of the hit-and-run and remained untraceable till his surrender on Tuesday, the Kolkata Police arrested Sambia from an undisclosed location in Kolkata on January 16. Sambia has been booked for culpable homicide, while two of his friends, Shahnawaz Khan and Johnny, along with Sohrab, have been charged for harbouring an offender. They are believed to have helped Sambia hide. The former MLA is widely believed to share close ties with the ruling Trinamool Congress. Opposition parties accused the administration of dragging its feet over apprehending Sambia owing to his fathers reported proximity to senior Trinamool leaders and top police officers. Foreign students planning to bunk classes or exams bewareYour progress report and attendance sheet will now reach the Indian government every six months. The Union Home Ministry has now asked all academic institutions, including Universities, to submit the result of semester examinations of all foreign students as well as their attendance record every six months. According to a gazette notification issued last Friday, the institutions have also been asked to cite whether these students are eligible for continuing the course after giving details of their conduct during the period of assessment. These and other new stipulations form part of the Foreigners (Amendment) Order, 2016 notified last week. Every University and Educational Institution will have to furnish information of foreign students enrolled within 24 hours of granting him or her admission. The institution should also inform the authorities within 24 hours of their arrival in the country. The institutions also need to inform authorities about a students exit from institution or course within 24 hours. According to the latest available figures, there are 39,517 foreign students in 2013-14 with Karnataka accounting for 13,075. The latest rules also have instructions for hotel operators on dealing with foreign visitors. The hotels will require furnishing details of a foreign guest, including his or her signature, on arrival at its premises within 24 hours. The hotels should also record the visitor's name and nationality as well as purpose of visit, proposed duration of stay, whether employed in India and address to which the visitor is proceeding. Every particular, other than the signature of the keeper of a hotel or a visitor, which is required to be recorded in the said register, shall be recorded, it said. The State government has ordered a Criminal Investigation Department (CID) probe into the second-year pre-university Chemistry question paper leak. Making a suo motu statement in Legislative Council on Tuesday, Minister of State for Primary and Secondary Education Kimmane Ratnakar said while an internal inquiry had already been ordered into Mondays II PU Chemistry question paper leak, he had no faith that such a probe would bring out the full truth. Hence, a police investigation had been sought, he said. Home Minister G Parameshwara said the CID will probe the case and a complaint has been filed at the Malleswaram police station. Ratnakar said as many 2.19 lakh students had appeared for the examination and it was unfortunate that these students and their parents had been put to hardship and distress due to the question paper leak. Ratnakar said early in the morning on Monday, the PU director received a hand written question paper on WhatsApp. As many as 35 of the 36 questions in the hand written question paper matched with the original question paper. Even the sequence of questions was the same as in the original. We had no option but to cancel the examination, he said. The minister said the CID will probe all aspects to find out the source of the leak. Re-examination for Chemistry paper will be held on March 29, Rathnakar said. Opposition members said there were rumours that most of the II PU question papers this year had leaked. Ganesh Karnik (BJP) said students had complained that the Mathematics question paper had leaked. It is just not Chemistry but there are complaints that papers of other subjects had also leaked, he said. However, Ratnakar said complaints that the Mathematics question paper had leaked had come six hours after the completion of the examination and they cannot be considered. Puttanna (JD-S) held PU Board officials responsible for the leak. He pointed out that the government had changed the director of the PU Board thrice during the last few months. He also sought that the government set some other day for the Chemistry paper as students had to appear for the Kannada paper on March 28. Ratnakar said there was no other slot as SSLC examination would commence on March 30 and a series of entrance examinations were slated to start on April 3. Airports across the country were put on alert and security stepped up following the terror strike in Brussels. The Home Ministry has asked security personnel to step-up security checks at airports besides keeping a close watch at people entering terminals. Passengers are also advised to reach airports early as there would be extensive checks. Though there are no inputs to suggest that there could be an attack on any Indian airport, a senior official said they were on alert. With Jet Airways planes grounded in Brussels following the attack, pranksters appeared to be on the job with the airlines call centre receiving at least five calls threatening to blow up its flights originating from Delhi to various locations. Following the calls, the planes were taken to isolation bay for checks. Passengers of a Chennai-bound Jet flight from Delhi were deplaned for checks while a similar incident happened in Jolly Grant Airport in Dehradun following a bomb scare. Jet Airways has received a security alert for five flights from Delhi. All flights are on ground and are being checked by security agencies at the respective airports, an airline statement said on Tuesday evening. Some of the flights had landed in their destinations. Reports said Chennai airport issued an alert banning entry of visitors for two days at the facility. The date set for re-examination for the II PU Chemistry - March 29 - has put the students in a fix, as they will have to appear for the Kannada language exam on March 28. They say they will have little time to prepare for a very lengthy Chemistry syllabus. Apart from this, even the Kannada paper has been described by students as tough and one that requires time to prepare. These factors will have a great impact on the performance in both these subject, according to students. Explaining the balancing act of preparations for the exams and the impact of the re-examination date, a student said: As there are four days to prepare for the English exam (March 26), I had planned to use two days for Kannada and then start revising English. But there is not even a single day to revise Chemistry. It is definitely going to affect my performance in all the three subjects. The re-exam without any gap has made me lose any hopes of achieving the target that I have set for myself in Chemistry, the student said. Nandini, another student, said that she was clueless about how to prepare for the re-exam. There is so much to study in Chemistry and no time. I think I will not be able to even sleep on that day as I have to prepare for exam. This is an extremely inconvenient situation. At least two days are required for the revision in Chemistry, she said. Aditya, a student, said that they had to go through a 615-page Chemistry book that needs at least one full day. It will also affect my preparations for the JEE (Joint Entrance Examination) Main scheduled for April 3. An official of the PU department said that there was no other option but to hold the exam on March 29 as the SSLC exams were scheduled to begin on March 30. The re-examination could have been rescheduled only by deferring SSLC examination. But, this is not a possibility. It would affect the entrance exams and also lead to a delay in the evaluation, the official said. Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday assured his continued support to JNU students, facing charge of sedition over the controversial event organised on February 9. This came after Kanhaiya leading a delegation of JNU students met Gandhi at his official residence here on Tuesday. Many issues that are affecting the students in universities and other higher educational institutions today were discussed at the meeting. Giving a patient hearing to Kanhaiya and his delegation, Gandhi assured them of his support in future also, National Students Union of India president Roji M John told Deccan Herald. Rahul assures support The Congress vice-president also said that he would always be there in support of students if they are targeted or harassed by administration in any university or higher educational institutions, he added. John, however, described Kanhaiyas meeting with Gandhi as a courtesy call. They (Kanhaiya and other students) thanked Gandhi for extending his support to them, he said. It was the first meeting of Kanhaiya with Gandhi since the police booked him and other students on charge of sedition and criminal conspiracy. Kanhaiyas meeting with Congress vice-president comes a day before the JNUSU president was expected to visit Hyderabad University, which witnessed violent protest by students over the varsity vice-chancellor Appa Rao Podile resuming his charge after remaining on a long leave. Leading a delegation of the JNUSU, Kanhaiya will reach the Hyderabad University on Wednesday to express his solidarity with those of protesting over Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula's suicide in the campus. A special force headed by a Deputy Commissioner of Police has been constituted to nab those involved in the murder of RSS worker Raju, Home Minister G Parameshwara informed the Legislative Council on Tuesday. Replying to the Raju murder issue raised by the BJP members, Parameshwara said the special force would have three Assistant Commissioners of Police, six inspectors and supporting staff. He said the Central Crime Branch police were already investigating the case and the special force would help in nabbing the culprits at the earliest. He said the government would act firmly against those responsible for the violence in Mysuru after Rajus murder. The government had deployed 2,500 police personnel in Mysuru soon after Rajus murder to ensure law and order, he said. However, G Madhusudan (BJP) said normalcy had not been restored in Mysuru. Citizens are afraid of venturing out in the evening for fear of being attacked. The police are yet to take action against miscreants who threatened people with deadly weapons, he said. Parameshwara suggested that Madhusudan help the police identify the miscreants from the video-clipping. The BJP members staged a walkout blaming the government for taking the Mysuru incident lightly. The State BJP is planning to hold a massive day-long protest in Bengaluru on March 28 against the decision of the State government to set up the Anti-Corruption Bureau (ACB). Addressing a press conference in Bengaluru, BJP State President Pralhad Joshi said the ACB had been constituted to kill the Lokayukta institution. The ACB will become a puppet in the hands of the State government, he said. The venue of protest, which will be held between 11 am and 5 pm, will be decided soon. Several NGOs have evinced interest in participating in the protest, he said. Joshi said the BJP State Executive meeting will be held in Bengaluru on April 1 to discuss the burning issues in the State including drought, drinking water and power shortage among others. The meeting will also work out a strategy to take on the government for its failure to tackle these problems. Teams headed by prominent leaders will tour the State to assess the drought situation. The party will also stage a protest in Mysuru on April 4 against the failure of the government in nabbing those behind the murder of RSS worker Raju. The State BJP is also planning to approach the Karnataka High Court seeking a direction to the State government to come out with reservation list for the presiding officers for Zilla and Taluk Panchayats. He charged the government with deliberately delaying announcement of the reservation matrix. Replying to queries, Joshi said a decision on appointing a new State party president will be taken by the national president. Joshis three-year tenure as State president ended on Tuesday. He will continue to hold the post till a new president is appointed. India has decided to take up the case of a Karnataka-based driver with the authorities in Saudi Arabia after a video of his heart-rending appeal for help alleging mistreatment by his employer went viral on the Internet. Abdul Sattar Makandar, 35, had migrated to Saudi Arabia about two years ago but allegedly faced harassment from his employers. His ordeal took a turn for the worse as Saudi officials objected to the video and arrested Makandar. He was released only after a human rights activist, Kundan Srivastava, who had posted the video on the Internet, deleted it and apologised for the same. However, Makandar was re-arrested soon after his release. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj received a report on the matter from the Indian embassy in Saudi Arabia, including a comprehensive reply from the company. Please let us handle this matter at the diplomatic level, Swaraj tweeted. Saudi Arabia has strict laws to prevent spreading misinformation through social media and Makandar had violated the same. I have been in Saudi Arabia for the last 23 months. I had applied for leave to go home five months ago. But my employer is not letting me go home... My employer has not given me salary, neither has he given me money for food, Makandar said in the video. Makandars employers the Al Suroor United Group have rejected the charges. In a response to the BBC, the company said all workers were entitled to leave after two years service and that Makandar was six weeks away from this. If you are right in your head, you will ensure that Karnataka Hindu Religious Institutions and Charitable Endowment Act, 1997, is amended within 24 hours. This directive was given by an enraged Legislative Assembly Speaker Kagodu Thimmappa (in pic) to Law and Parliamentary Affairs Minister T B Jayachandra on Tuesday. Thimmappa was forced to reprimand the government, when the debate on the controversy surrounding the printing of a Muslim administrators name (deputy commissioner of Dakshina Kannada district) in the invitation of the annual jatra of the Mahalingeshwara temple in Puttur taluk, got out of hand. The jatra is scheduled to be held in April, and the invitation to this has gone out in the name of Dakshina Kannada deputy commissioner A B Ibrahim. Following this, Hindu groups in the region have been up in arms, stating that it was against the provisions of the 1997 Act, as a non-Hindu name has appeared in the invitation. The matter is also before the High Court. On Tuesday, BJP MLA Sunil Kumar raised the matter in the House, contending that only Hindus could oversee administrative matters of Hindu temples. Muzrai Minister Manohar Tahsildar said that it is a fact that the provisions of the Act allowed that only Hindus should be head of temples. But in districts, the deputy commissioner is in charge of Muzrai temples. As an administrative procedure, the DCs name has been printed, he added. To this, Kumar questioned if the government followed the rules, or administrative practices. The Act also says that if the deputy commissioner belongs to a different community, then the administrative powers of the temple should be handed over to the additional commissioner, he pointed out. Congress MLA Ramesh Kumar and JD(S) MLA Y S V Datta demanded that such rules should be repealed immediately. The BJP members however retaliated that the JD(S) and Congress were indulging in vote bank politics by flouting rules. BJP MLA D N Jeevaraj wondered if Hindus would be appointed to oversee administrative matters in mosques. When the debate got out of hand, Thimmappa stood up and said, We are human beings. He (Ibrahim) is a deputy commissioner. He is responsible for the district. Change the rules immediately. Over 13 lakh military personnel have received their enhanced pension as per the One Rank One Pension (OROP) scheme and the rest are likely to receive the enhanced pension before Holi, Defence Minister Mahohar Parrikar has stated. Over 13 lakh pensioners have got OROP benefits already. In total, we have released Rs 2,300 crore till March 17. Most of the rest will be paid by Holi, he said. The defence ministry issued a statement claiming 13.02 lakh pensioners received OROP amounting to Rs 2,293 crore, which was released through Defence Pension Disbursing Offices (DPDOs), State Bank of India and Punjab National Bank. Prime Minister Narendra Modi will play host to President Dilma Rousseff of Brazil, President Vladimir Putin of Russia, President Xi Jinping of China and President Jacob Zuma of South Africa for the eighth BRICS summit in Goa in October. I am happy to share that the 8th BRICS Summit will be hosted in Goa on October 15-16, 2016, External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj said. India recently took over the chairmanship of the BRICS (a bloc comprising Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) from the Russian Federation for the year 2016. Swaraj congratulated the Russian Federation for steering the BRICS process commendably culminating with the 7th BRICS Summit in Ufa in July 2015. She on Tuesday formally unveiled the BRICS logo for the duration of Indias chairmanship of the bloc. She also launched Indias BRICS website. She handed over a cash reward of Rs 50,000 to Sudeep Gandhi of Mumbai for winning the BRICS logo contest. The MEA had conducted the contest and received well over 575 entries from across the country. Over 50 meetings and events, at the Ministerial, Senior Officials, Working Groups, Technical, and Track-II levels, are proposed to be organized during Indias BRICS chairmanship through the year, according to a press release by the MEA. Our core theme for the BRICS chairmanship is Building Responsive, Inclusive and Collective Solutions (BRICS). We will adopt a five-pronged approach during our chairmanship. It will comprise Institution Building, Implementation, Integration, Innovation, and Continuity with Consolidation (IIIIC or I4C), noted the minister. New Delhi will emphasise on institution building, implementation of previous commitments flowing from the past Summits, and exploring synergies among the existing mechanisms. The University of Hyderabad resembled a battlefield on Tuesday with students opposing the return of vice-chancellor P Appa Rao from indefinite leave being caned after they pelted stones on the police. Appa Rao was on indefinite leave following the suicide of Dalit research scholar Rohith Vemula on January 17. Several agitating students and a few policemen were injured during the six-hour long protest. Police forcefully evicted the students from near the vice-chancellors lodge and arrested several of them. Earlier, the agitating students ransacked the office and lodge of the vice-chancellor opposing his assuming office. One student and chief proctor Alok Pandey were injured and several media persons were manhandled minutes before the vice-chancellor was to address the media at 11.30 am at his lounge announcing his comeback. A press statement due for release clearly stated that the vice-chancellor, who was on long leave, would assume office on March 22. The varsity website also mentioned that Appa Rao would be back in office from Tuesday. Students opposing the re-entry of Appa Rao jumped the perimeter wall and ransacked the VC's lodge on the university campus. They broke glass panes, furniture, ornamental plants and a TV before locking up the teaching staff, who were attending the Deans and executive committee meeting. With the petrified university officials seeking protection, the police arrived in riot gear and provided a security blanket to the VC and others. Thereafter, the students left the VC's lodge but continued their sit-in. I am shocked by the attack; violence will not solve any problem. We could have discussed and solved any outstanding issues peacefully, Appa Rao told the media. A few students are trying to project me as a representative of a particular political party. This way no university can function in this country, Appa Rao said, adding that there is no regulation that a VC cannot function till the judicial probe on Rohiths death is complete. However, the students, particularly from the Ambedkar Students Association (ASA) that spearheaded the Rohith movement, are in no mood for conciliation. Prof Appa Rao must be put behind bars, a ASA representative said. "The VC has invited ABVP students to the lodge where the Executive committee meeting is on. He also invited students from life sciences, which is his department. They are the ones that attacked us and broke window panes by throwing chairs. We have the footage and will upload it for everyone to see who created the ruckus," a girl student rued. Fuelling the pent up emotions on the campus, the teaching and non-teaching staff were divided on the return of Prof Appa Rao. Meanwhile, the state CPI said JNUSU President Kanhaiya Kumar will be visiting UoH on Wednesday to participate in a condolence meet for Rohith. Decks seems to have been cleared for government formation in Jammu & Kashmir after PDP president Mehbooba Mufti described her meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the national capital on Tuesday as very positive. Mehbooba said she will next meet her party MLAs on Thursday to take a call on reviving the PDP-BJP government in the state, but emphasised on the fact that the meeting was held to address concerns of the people of Jammu & Kashmir (J&K). After the meeting ended, PDP chief spokesperson Nayeem Akhtar told reporters in Srinagar: The new government should be in place by March 29. The highest-level meeting seems to have raised hopes of the alliance coming alive weeks before the April 9 deadline approaches for reconvening the Assembly session which is at present in suspended animation. Emerging out of the 15-minute meeting at the prime ministers 7, Race Course Road residence, Mehbooba told reporters: We are seeing a stalemate for the last two to three months over government formation in the state but today I am satisfied. I am very satisfied. Mehbooba has been seeking some kind of assurance from the BJP on the Agenda for Alliance to resume the coalition government. Mehbooba, who is reportedly facing internal rebellion with MLAs getting frustrated over the prolonged stalemate, is believed to have lowered her wishlist, including taking the ownership of two thermal power stations and return of land and buildings occupied by the Army. Sources in the BJP said they cannot give ownership of the power generating units as J&K has surplus electricity which is consumed by other states as well. The BJP also refused to fulfil the PDPs demand on transferring land held by the Army because of security and strategic reasons, party sources added. Last Thursday, Mehbooba met BJP chief Amit Shah at the latters residence in New Delhi but the discussion failed to yield any result. The re-examination for students of second year PU chemistry paper that was leaked, will be held on March 29 between 9 am and 12:15 pm. The decision by the Department of PU Education (DPUE) on Tuesday came even as nearly 200 students and parents protested outside its office in Malleswaram, opposing re-exam. The state government ordered a Criminal Investigation Department (CID) probe into the question paper leak. Home Minister G Parameshwara informed the Legislative Council that the probe was ordered on the request of Minister of State for Primary and Secondary Education Kimmane Rathnakar. Rathnakar, however, ruled out re-examination for II PU mathematics paper, which students had complained was tough. He said the questions were in conformity with NCERT syllabus adopted by the PU board. Opposition members said rumours were rife that most of the II PU exam question papers this year had leaked. The Malleswaram police, who had started a probe following a complaint by DPUE on Monday night, said the leaked paper was circulated probably on WhatsApp and by email. Probe into the source of these messages would help in tracing those responsible for the leak. Aditya, a student waiting outside the PU departments office from 1 pm to 6.30 pm, said: We want the re-examination to be cancelled. Why should I and other students be punished for the incompetence of the PU board. It is their responsibility to ensure that there are no leaks. Another protesting student spoke in the same vein. "We studied very hard and wrote the exam; these people do not have any concern for us. We do not want a re-exam, he declared. If at all a re-exam is held, it should be for the Mathematics paper, he added. There were 35 to 37 questions from outside the syllabus and it will impact the results in a big way, he noted. K N Ranganath, joint director (examinations), DPUE said: Only a few students will be benefitted if a re-exam is not conducted. This would be an injustice to majority of the students. I am aware that students will suffer but this is required. The Arvind Kejriwal government will continue its focus on education, health and job creation while delivering on its promise of inclusive development in the coming financial year. The governments blueprint was shared by Lieutenant-Governor Najeeb Jung in his opening address in the budget session of the Delhi Assembly on Tuesday. Sharing the Kejriwal governments vision, Jung said it was committed to an inclusive development with a priority on effective delivery of basic services to the citizens. Jungs address also included the AAP governments strong pitch for increasing Delhis share in central tax pool an old demand of Kejriwal. Despite grand plans announced through the LGs speech, the AAP government is unlikely to table any new Bill in the current session in protest over the non-approval of 14 earlier proposed legislations by the Centre. The LG said the city government aims at reducing malpractices in the school admission process. Reading from a printed text on behalf of Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal, Jung said: My government has laid a tremendous emphasis on transparency when it comes to admissions in schools. To prevent manipulation in the admission process, the Directorate of Education, for the first time, is conducting a centralised online lottery for nursery classes based on neighbourhood criteria in schools. Jung said that the Delhi Education Bills passed during the winter session await approval by the Centre. These bills include Delhi School (Verification of Accounts and Refund of Excess Fee) Bill, 2015, Delhi School Education (Amendment) Bill, 2015 and Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education (Delhi Amendment) Bill, 2015. My government is awaiting approval of the government of India for the enactment of these proposed legislations, Jung said, highlighting Kejriwals priorities. The district police have constituted two teams to nab the man who posed as forest guard and forced a couple to strip at Siddarabetta in Koratagere taluk of the district on Sunday. On Tuesday, the police summoned the forest guards at Siddarabetta for an identification parade. The victim, however, couldnt identify the culprit. A man posing as a guard forced a couple to strip and attempted to rape the girl at Siddarabetta on Sunday. The incident came to light only on Monday morning when the girl came down the hill and lodged a police complaint. According to the complaint, the victims work at a factory in Tumakuru and were lovers. They headed to the hill to spend their Sunday. A man wearing khaki pants and claiming to be a guard found them in a secluded spot. He threatened that if his seniors found them out, they would be in a lot of trouble. He took the boy a little away and made him strip. He collected his clothes, mobile phone and money, and left him in a cave. The guard forced the girl to strip as well. He then attempted to rape her. But when the girl fought back, he made away with her clothes and money. The girl tried to find her lover in vain. Both spent the whole night naked and alone in the hill. The next morning, a villager spotted the girl when she was coming down the hill and gave her clothes. She immediately headed to the police station to lodge a complaint. The boy, too, was helped by a villager and on hearing the news of his girlfriend, he headed to the police station. The girl was administered first aid at the Koratagere government hospital. She has sustained several scratch wounds. Rohini Nilekani, chairperson of the Arghyam Foundation that works on sustainable water management, called upon the Bengaluru Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) to adopt innovation and a new mindset to work towards water management, given the expected water crisis in urban India. Addressing BWSSB engineers at the World Water Day programme, here on Tuesday, Nilekani said BWSSB, which supplies water to the City, needs to think of cost-effective methods to ensure better water management. India is expected to become water-scarce by 2020. This is mainly because of the groundwater exploitation. Although the City sees a good rainfall, not even half of it is harvested. In Bengaluru alone, there are about 4 lakh private tubewells and 40 % of Citys population depends on groundwater, while only less than 60% of them use Cauvery water, she pointed out. Narmada water The groundwater in Bhuj in Gujarat was depleting, since 80% of the residents consumed groundwater while only the rest of the population used Narmada water. We set up recharge wells through community partnerships and encouraged residents to give up tubewell water. This has yielded better results, she said sharing her experience of water management initiatives. She complemented similar initiatives taken up in Sarjapura. Only on paper Dr T N Venu Gopal, hydrologist said the Karnataka Ground Water (Regulation and Control of Development and Management) Act, 2011 had remained on paper and was not properly implemented, during the panel discussion. The groundwater is highly exploited in different parts of Bengaluru. Unfortunately there is no penalty, he rued. He suggested that the government give incentives for the best water conservation initiatives. Sharathchandra Lele, a researcher, asked the BWSSB to adopt strategies to reduce water consumption. With the help of citizen forums, ensure that the treated water is re-used and not let into lakes or water bodies, he suggested. The blanket ban on plastic is affecting restaurants as their food parcels are coming down. Out of around 10 lakh people who visit restaurants every day in Bengaluru, one lakh have takeaways. Nearly 2,000 hotels are associated with the Bruhat Bengaluru Hoteliers Association. Seven per cent of them are now asking customers to bring their own boxes for food parcel, according to the associations treasurer, Veerendra Kamath. Restaurants are exhausting their present stock of plastic boxes and bags and are not buying more, as they were doing every week or fortnight earlier. The main reason being that plastic manufacturers and dealers shut up shop immediately after the government notified the ban on March 11, 2016. Some hoteliers say the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has started inspecting hotels and restaurants and penalising them if they use plastic, regardless of whether its thickness is below or above 40 microns. The fine ranges from Rs 10,000 to Rs 15,000. Restaurants are considering using aluminium foils for food parcel. They are also counting on an application against the ban filed by the Karnataka State Plastic Association (KSPA) before the High Court. They hope the ban will be restricted to plastic below 40 microns or the court will direct the government to bring alternatives. Duke Energy Corp. said Monday it is expanding its renewable energy from livestock waste, adding poop power to investments the countrys largest electric company has made in whirring wind turbines and acres of solar arrays. The North Carolina utility said it contracted with Boulder-based Carbon Cycle Energy to build plant that collects methane from pig and chicken waste and refines and delivers enough gas to generate enough electricity to power about 10,000 homes a year. Were collecting something that goes to waste; were putting it to good use and at the same time reducing smell, reducing negative environmental impact, Carbon Cycle Energy co-founder Thomas Mulholland said. The project is one of the largest in a growing number of waste-to-fuel efforts spurred by a 2007 state law that requires electric utilities to get 12.5 percent of their power from renewable energy and energy efficiency by 2021. More than half the states have similar requirements. But North Carolina, the countrys second-largest pork producing state, with about 8.8 million hogs, is one of the few that requires utilities to produce some power from swine and poultry waste. Earlier this year, chef Tim Freeman became one of the few people to beat celebrity chef Bobby Flay on his television Beat Bobby Flay. He did it with Pad Thai. Asian food is my strong point, and I knew its not in Bobby Flays wheelhouse, said Freeman. I thoroughly beat him. Freeman is now bringing his talent to metro Denver, where hell helm the kitchen of the Borealis restaurant, which opens March 29 in the new Hyatt Regency Aurora-Denver Conference Center & Hotel. He brings more experience that just beating Bobby Flay. During the Clinton administration, he worked as the White House chef de partie, cooking for some of the worlds leaders. In that kind of environment you learn excellence and how to execute things the right way, because the standards are off-the-charts high, he said. Freeman has also cooked in restaurants around the world, including Russia, the Philippines and Kenya. At the Hyatt Regency, hes hired people from about 10 different nationalities because he likes a collaborative space where people brings a mix of cultures and experiences with food. It also emphasizes the diversity of Aurora. The menu is very cosmopolitan, very globally influenced, he said, using as many locally grown and produced items as possible. The breakfast menu includes the Nutella Waffle ($12) and Huevos Rancheros ($13) and Breakfast Toast ($12) with avocado, sun-dried tomato, lemon ricotta, chili and a soft-cooked egg. The dinner menu includes Asian Salad with shrimp ($19), the Merica Burger ($13) and filet mignon ($42). 13200 E. 14th Pl., Aurora. 720-859-8000. Colleen OConnor: 303-954-1083, coconnor@denverpost.com or @coconnordp The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday declined to hear Nebraska and Oklahomas proposed lawsuit against Colorados legal marijuana laws. The 6-2 vote means the nations highest court will not rule on the interstate dispute, and Colorados legal cannabis market is safe for now. Since Colorado voters overwhelming passed legal recreational marijuana in 2012, we have worked diligently to put in place a regulatory framework the first in the world that allows this new industry to operate while protecting public health and safety, Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper said in a statement Monday. With todays Supreme Court ruling, the work weve completed so far remains intact. The Supreme Court ruling was the latest in a string of losses in court for those challenging Colorados first-of-its-kind cannabis laws: A U.S. district judge on Monday dismissed a racketeering suit filed on behalf of Pueblo County horse ranchers who complained that a marijuana cultivation facility marred their view. In late-February, a different U.S. District judge dismissed a lawsuit filed on behalf of sheriffs and attorneys in Colorado, Nebraska and Kansas. In December, another RICO suit involving the Holiday Inn in Frisco was dismissed after the marijuana business in question shut its doors and two related companies settled for $70,000. The takeaway from all this, said attorney Matthew Buck, who represented six defendants in the Pueblo County suit, is that the federal district court realizes that the voters of Colorado are informed, intelligent and theyre not going to let outside interests govern what happens inside the state of Colorado. Three of the four marijuana lawsuits filed against Colorado officials and businesses were organized and partially funded by out-of-state anti-drug organizations and socially conservative law firms, a Denver Post investigation revealed in January. Because the Supreme Court has passed on the case, Nebraska and Oklahoma could now take it to a federal district court if they choose to, law experts say something the states attorneys general hinted at on Monday . The complaint, on its face, presents a controvers[y] between two or more States that this Court alone has authority to adjudicate, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in the dissenting opinion. The plaintiff States have alleged significant harms to their sovereign interests caused by another State. Whatever the merit of the plaintiff States claims, we should let this complaint proceed further rather than denying leave without so much as a word of explanation. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined Thomas in dissenting. The majority offered no opinion to accompany the decision. READ: See Justice Clarence Thomas dissent in the pot case Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson said he was disappointed, but that he is working with partners in Oklahoma and other states to figure out their next steps toward vindicating the rule of law, according to a statement. Today, the Supreme Court has not held that Colorados unconstitutional facilitation of marijuana industrialization is legal, Peterson said in the statement, and the Courts decision does not bar additional challenges to Colorados scheme in federal district court. Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt added: The fact remains Colorado marijuana continues to flow into Oklahoma, in direct violation of federal and state law. Colorado should do the right thing and stop refusing to take reasonable steps to prevent the flow of marijuana outside of its border. And the Obama administration should do its job under the Constitution and enforce the Controlled Substances Act. Until they do, Oklahoma will continue to utilize every law enforcement tool available to it to ensure that the flow of illegal drugs into our state is stopped. Colorado Attorney General Cynthia H. Coffman celebrated the victory but also acknowledged that Nebraska and Oklahomas concerns wont disappear with the courts ruling. Although weve had victories in several federal lawsuits over the last month, the legal questions surrounding Amendment 64 still require stronger leadership from Washington, Coffman said in the statement. While the attorneys general were all hoping for more federal guidance, legal experts arent surprised they got so little. Neither the current administration nor the Supreme Court is itching for this fight, said Sam Kamin, a University of Denver law professor focusing on cannabis law. One after the other, the legal challenges are failing. Some are failing on their merits. One is failing because the Supreme Court didnt express interest. But there have been very few, if any, outright wins for those seeking to challenge Colorados marijuana. Legalization activists reacted positively to the courts decision. Theres no question about it: This is good news for legalization supporters, said advocate Tom Angell, chairman of Marijuana Majority. This case, if it went forward and the Court ruled the wrong way, had the potential to roll back many of the gains our movement has achieved to date. And the notion of the Supreme Court standing in the way could have cast a dark shadow on the marijuana ballot measures voters will consider this November. Nebraska and Oklahoma filed the proposed lawsuit more than a year ago, and it specifically challenges Colorados ability to license and regulate marijuana businesses. The two states say Colorados system impermissibly conflicts with federal law and creates burdens for them by increasing the amount of pot coming across their borders. Because the matter involves a dispute between states, it was filed directly to the Supreme Court. The first step in the lawsuit was for the justices to decide whether they even wanted to consider it. When the Supreme Court does accept such cases, the subsequent litigation can go on for years or even decades. Attorneys for both the state of Colorado and the Obama administration had urged the court not to take up the lawsuit, while a group of former leaders of the Drug Enforcement Administration sided with Nebraska and Oklahoma and asked the court to accept the case. In 2012, Colorado voters legalized possession of small amounts of marijuana and also authorized the creation of state-administered rules that would allow stores to sell marijuana to anyone over 21 years old. Those stores opened in 2014, and, since then, Nebraska and Oklahoma say they have seen an increased number of people bringing marijuana into their states, in violation of both their state laws and federal law. The State of Colorado has created a dangerous gap in the federal drug control system, the two states complained in their lawsuit. Coffman responded that eliminating the stores while keeping marijuana possession legal would likely create more trafficking. And, the Obama administration, in its own filing, said the case was inappropriate for the Supreme Court because the harm is allegedly being caused by individual lawbreakers, not the state of Colorado, itself. Entertaining the type of dispute at issue here essentially that one States laws make it more likely that third parties will violate federal and state law in another State would represent a substantial and unwarranted expansion of this Courts original jurisdiction, U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. wrote in his brief to the court. The Supreme Court justices spent more than a year pondering whether to take the case. The proposed lawsuit was scheduled and re-scheduled five times for a closed-door conference, where the justices would debate the merits of taking the case. Ricardo Baca: 303-954-1394, rbaca@denverpost.com or @bruvs. John Ingold: 303-954-1068, jingold@denverpost.com or @johningold 25 Bollywood Celebrities Who Went To Delhi University! Bharti Airtel has entered into a definitive agreement with American Tower Corporation for the sale of approximately 1,350 of its communications towers in Tanzania. Under the agreement, American Tower may acquire up to approximately 100 additional sites currently in development for an additional consideration. Airtel will be the anchor tenant on the portfolio under a lease with a ten-year initial term. Christian de Faria, MD & CEO (Africa), Bharti Airtel, said, The proposed transaction is a continuation of our stated philosophy of divesting passive infrastructure assets and promoting sharing of towers to enhance operational efficiencies that will further the overall growth of telecom services. Airtel remains committed to Tanzania and will continue to invest in its operations and serve customers with world-class services. Hal Hess, EVP and President, EMEA, of American Tower, said: With a young, growing population, tremendous growth potential and a complementary location relative to our existing African operations, we view Tanzania as a highly attractive adjacent market opportunity. The tower sale agreements allow Airtel to focus on its core business and customers, besides helping deleverage through debt reduction, and significantly reducing the on-going capital expenditure on passive infrastructure. The transaction is expected to close during the first half of 2016, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approval. Unlike Europe, where revenue in the telecom sector has been gradually declining over the last few years, Latin Americas telecom sector is one of the worlds fastest-growing markets. Despite its slow regional economic growth and uncertain regulatory landscape, Latin America continues to show substantial opportunities now and in the future. These opportunities are due to the increasing adoption of affordable smartphones, a stronger demand for mobile data subscriptions, and the expansion of 4G-LTE for speed and 3G for coverage. This results in the need for an overhaul to the network infrastructure to effectively cover the Latin American market and meet subscribers increasing demand for better and more efficient services. Latin Americas M&A Leaders We have already witnessed some landscape modifications with several mergers and acquisitions in 2014 and 2015. Considering that Brazilian and Mexican telecom companies dominate the Latin American region, its no surprise that they are also are the leaders of the M&A activity. Brazil In Brazil, America Movil merged its three Brazilian operationsClaro, Embratel and Netat the end of 2014. In addition, Telefonica Brasil (VIVO) sealed a deal with French-based Vivendis Global Village Telecom (GVT). Then, a potential merge between Oi and TIM, controlled by Telecom Italia, has gained momentum. Because Brazil is currently in a recession and there is a decline of its local currency, Russian billionaire Mikhail Fridman agreed to inject $4 billion into Oi on the condition that it merges with TIM. Mexico Mexico is also going through several configuration changes and consolidations. One example is the entry of AT&T in Mexico, integrating Iusacell and Nextel operations with a strong focus on the wireless market. Another example is the signed merger agreement between Axtel and Alestra in December 2015, which is focused on data services, data centers and telecom specialised services. The merger will help create a consolidated group that can compete against bigger players in this specialised arena. Other Latin American M&A Leaders Throughout the rest of Latin America, including the Caribbean, Cable & Wireless Communication Plc (CWC) has also been instigating consolidation. After acquiring 100% of the equity of Columbus International Inc. and completing the merger in March 2015, CWC announced that its board has reached an agreement on the terms of a recommended acquisition for all of CWCs shared capital - issued or otherwise. The buyer is Liberty Global, a large international cable television company with nearly 27 million subscribers, currently with most operations in Europe but growing ambitions in CALA. It is believed that this merger will enhance faster growth and increase customer benefits. This merger frenzy by global groups is primarily driven by the growing expansion ambitions in Latin America and the Caribbean, where potential market growth is still huge, despite the ARPU decline and the growing cost of infrastructure. However, companies are eager to develop next-generation mobile services and create a technology-based environment to get an edge, offering more advanced and engaging services at an affordable price. Key M&A Opportunities Until recently, monopolies have dominated the traditional telecom industry in Latin America. The fact that new players are joining forces to take leadership roles is very important. New players are making strong efforts to create an economy of scale and compete against these monopolies. The regulatory environment is also helping boost M&A trends in the region. In Mexico, for example, the overhaul of telecom regulationled by the Mexican governmentis designed to facilitate market access for new competitors, with an aim toward reducing the power of the dominant companies. Another key driver achieved by combining assets and strengths through M&A is the ability to solidify infrastructures and grow assets even faster. This allows operators to offer first-class products and services to meet the needs of mobile and telephony end users who are constantly looking for a quick and superior customer experience. Overcoming M&A Challenges Similar to what has happened in Europe, Latin American operators have to face numerous challenges while going through an M&A process. These include: Developing a strategic plan that includes organisational dynamics and cultural integration of human resources Structuring financial modelling that makes sense in the given economic climate Negotiating contracts Achieving regulatory approval Closing, and integrating systems and services Throughout the entire M&A process, clear and constant communication is critical to the success of the overall venture. After the merge, systems integration is key, with the main focus typically on IT and network integration. Overlaps need to be identified, while guaranteeing stable operations and services throughout the process. IT integration seems to be one of the most challenging tasks in the merger activity because disparate legacy systems, fragmented architecture and non-standard processes or proprietary requirements are in play. Therefore, a transformation strategy plan within the overall merger roadmap is very important as part of the so-called cost and capital expenditure synergies. For example, AT&T in Mexico is making considerable investments and focusing on the integration and upgrade of the two companies IT and network systems being merged. While cost and capital synergies need to be implemented with careful planning, operators in the process of a merger also need to take the customer-facing domains into consideration in order to minimise customer impact, avoid churn in the transformation process, and keep achieving wins and revenue synergies. Therefore, merger transformations need to be accompanied by a very strong and planned marketing, distribution and communications campaign. Despite the threat of the economic recession, particularly in Brazil, Latin Americas telecom market is expected to continue to grow. A 4G/LTE investment will accelerate rapidly throughout the region. At the edge of the new digital technological revolution, carriers will need to invest, more than ever, billions of dollars into high-speed broadband networks to create a solid infrastructure base to face the demand of market acceleration. In addition to the ambition of a geographic expansion and strengthening position against monopolistic local competitors, new companies created through M&A will help support the sector growth trends through the convergence of product portfolios. These new product portfolios must provide competitively priced bundles (quadruple-play services) of consumer-facing products. Also, new consolidated offers with innovative business models (B2B, B2G, M2M & IoT) are expected to grow faster. M&A trends appear to be inevitable in this fast-growing region as they are needed to increase scale and capabilities, while enhancing customer experience. However, Latin Americas success will depend on effective planning and focus by operators who must overcome the challenge of complex integration at all organisational levels. Samia Bounaira is the General Manager for Caribbean and Latin America Markets at Excelacom. These were the movements in some of the most widely-followed 10-year sovereign bond yields: US: 1.89% (-2bp) UK: 1.454% (-2bp) Germany: 0.22% (-1bp) France: 0.56% (-1bp) Spain: 1.43% (-1bp) Italy: 1.25% (-0bp) Japan: -0.10% (-0bp) Greece: 8.79% (+7bp) Portugal: 2.92% (-0bp) Sovereign bond yields were pushed lower - but only slightly so - following a spate of bomb attacks in Brussels that claimed the lives of 34 persons and left almost another 200 injured. However, in the case of the UK the drop came alongside a large move lower in cable, which as of 16:28GMT was trading lower by 1.12% to 1.4208. Analysts at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch saw the possibility of a heightened backlash against refugees which might give an edge to the 'leave' campaign in the upcoming 23 June referendum on the UKs continued membership of the European Union. Weaker than expected consumer price data for February were also weighing on sentiment. Consumer prices advanced at a 0.3% year-on-year clip in February, unchanged from the month before, but printed a tenth of a percentage point below what economists were forecasting. Some segments of the market were harder hit than others, with the risk premium, measured by the spread on US Treasury notes, on emerging market bonds pushed higher by three basis points to 399 according to JP Morgan indices. In parallel, Russian and Turkish stocks were knocked lower, with a benchmark for the latter, the Borsa Istanbul 100 index, down by 2.0% at the end of trading in Istanbul. On a more positive note, German business confidence held up much better than had been expected in March. The IFO institutes business confidence gauge referencing the month of March recovered from a reading of 105.7 in February to 106.7 in March, breaking a three-month losing streak. "Overall, the March Ifo business climate report confirms our long-standing suspicion that gloomy predictions heard in many quarters in recent months partly indeed based on the Ifo index setback of the December-February period have overstated matters," IHS Global Insight said in a research note sent to clients. "We do not expect the terror attacks on Brussels to disrupt the stabilisation of economic surveys that the PMI, Ifo and ZEW data had suggested this morning after some declines in the months before. Helped by a fading of financial tensions and a strong ECB response to softer economic data, we expect the eurozone economy to return to trend growth of roughly 1.6% by mid-2016 at the latest after a soft patch now," Holger Schmieding at Berenberg said in a research note sent to clients. The commodities market reacted coolly to the attacks in Brussels, with April gold futures trading higher by barely 0.20% to $1,246.70 per ounce on COMEX. Platinum was the exception within the precious metals patch on Tuesday, with spot prices rising 1.01% to $992.40 per ounce. Three-month copper futures on the LME edged lower by 0.3% to $5,053 per metric tonne by the close. To take note of, according to Macquarie its latest China copper survey revealed positive signals for that market. However, "it is still unclear whether demand growth is more than seasonally driven, but expectations toward demand recovery seem to be building with positive macro numbers," the Australian broker said in a research report sent to clients. Iron ore futures were in favour again, advancing by 2.3% to $58.82 a tonne, according to Metal Bulletin. Going forward there were "strong expectations" of further production ramp-ups at Chinese steel mills, "which bode well for iron ore demand but not necessarily steel pricing," Macquarie said, citing the conclusions of its latest proprietary survey. Front-month Brent crude oil futures on ICE finished the session with gains of 0.312% to $41.67 per barrel while West Texas Intermediate was down 0.460% to 41.33 as of 18:22GMT. That was despite reports on Tuesday indicating that Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Nigeria would support a decision by the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries to freeze output when they met in April. NYMEX-traded RBOB gasoline and natural gas futures on the other hand found a decent bid, registering gains of 2.21% and 1.31%, respectively, to hit $149.12 per gallon and $1.85/MMBtu each. Corn futures for delivery in May 2016 on the Chicago Board of Trade advanced 0.07% to $369.75 per bushel. On the ICE, May 2016 cocoa futures fell 1.20% to $3,035 per metric tonne. Live cattle futures were also unloved, with the June 2016 contract retreating 1.35% to $126.13 per pound on the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. The Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) has claimed responsibility for the explosions in Brussels that killed at least 34 people and injured several others on Tuesday. Suicide bombers launched twin attacks on Brussels Zaventem airport and the city's Maelbeek metro station on Tuesday morning. AMAQ, a news agency close to ISIL, said the extremist group was behind the bombings. "Islamic State fighters carried out a series of bombings with explosive belts and devices on Tuesday, targeting an airport and a central metro station in the center of the Belgian capital Brussels," it said. "Islamic State fighters opened fire inside Zaventem Airport, before several of them detonated their explosive belts, as a martyrdom bomber detonated his explosive belt in the Maalbeek metro station." Maggie de Block, the Belgian health minister, said 14 people died and 81 were injured in the airport explosions at 0700 GMT, which the Belgian prosecutor, cited by Belgian broadcaster RTBF, said were a suicide attack. The blasts come four days after the capture in Brussels of Salah Abdeslam, the main suspect in the jihadist attacks in Paris on 13 November 2015 that killed more than 130 people. An hour later, 20 people were killed and 55 injured at Maelbeek metro station in central Brussels near the European Union buildings, metro operating firm Brussels Intercommunal Transport Company said, adding that the entire system is shut as a result. Belgian Prime Minister, Charles Michel said many people were killed and many wounded, and confirmed at a news conference that the airport attack was carried out by a suicide bomber. "Military reinforcements have been deployed, reinforcement of border controls and specific restrictions on public transport have been put into place at this time," he said. Calling the attacks "blind, violent and cowardly", Michel said: "We must face this challenge in solidarity, united, together." Foreign Minister Didier Reynders said the authorities feared those involved in the attacks could still be at large. "The inquiry is still ongoing... because we fear that people are still at large," Reynders told RTBF television after a news briefing. French Prime Minister Manuel Valls called the bombings as an "act of war". "We are facing a particularly serious threat. We are at war. In Europe we have been subject for several months to acts of war," he told reporters after a crisis cabinet meeting in Paris. Flights in and out of the airport were suspended and all buildings evacuated. Video footage by eyewitnesses showed smoked pouring out of the terminal building through windows shattered by the blasts. Pictures of the interior showed extensive damage with debris from the ceiling littering the floor of the departures area in the terminal's upper area. "At 8am (local time) two explosions have occurred in the departure hall. Emergency services are on the premises and are offering the necessary assistance," the airport posted on its website. "Airport operations are suspended until further notice. The airport authorities are asking to avoid the surroundings of the airport. Passengers present in other zones are ask to remain calm and to wait until further information is available." Eurostar has suspended all trains to and from Brussels in the wake of the attacks - with passengers urged not to go to the terminal at Midi station. An extra 225 troops have been deployed around Brussels, officials said. Some 1,600 extra police were to be deployed around France to stations, airports and borders, said French Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve, in response to the latest outrage. An extra 400 will be deployed in Paris, he added. Business confidence in Germany bounced back in Germany in March after a dip the previous month that had worried economists. The IFO Institute's business climate index climbed to 106.7 from 105.7 a month ago, higher than the consensus forecast of 105.9. A reading of current assessment index of 113.8 was also higher than expectations of 112.6 and up from 112.9 in February. The expectations index rebounded to 100 from 98.9 a month ago, beating estimates for 99.5. Sentiment rose strongly in retail and improved modestly in manufacturing and wholesale. On the downside, there was a slight dip in construction, while the aggregate services indicator fell modestly due to a fall in both expectations and the current assessment. "We hope for further gains in the coming months, but for now this adds to the evidence that the economy is not on the verge of recession," said Pantheon Macroeconomics. Pantheon said the overall headline IFO business climate index remained consistent with decent GDP growth, but the expectations index is "still too weak for comfort". European equity markets shook off early losses, with travel and leisure stocks managing to close well above their intra-day lows despite the terror attacks in Brussels. The benchmark DJ Stoxx Europe 600 index was down 0.15% to 340.30, Germanys DAX was higher by 0.42% at 9990.00, Frances CAC 40 was 0.09% stronger and the the FTSE Mibtel finished with gains of 0.01% at 18,698.82. The Stoxx 600 travel & leisure index fell 0.75% to 152.15. Among individual stocks, InterContinental, TUI and Thomas Cook were all on the back foot, but the likes of Ryanair, EasyJet and IAG managed to recoup earlier losses. The mood was sombre as market participants took in news of the events in Brussels. At least 34 people were killed and 187 injured as suicide bombers launched twin attacks on Brussels Zaventem airport and the citys Maalbeek metro station. Belgian broadcaster RTBF, citing a federal prosecutor, confirmed the airport bombings were a suicide attack. The explosions came just days after the arrest in Brussels of a suspected participant in the November terror attacks that killed 130 people in Paris. Agence France Presse cited Pierre Meys, a spokesman for the Brussels fire brigade, as saying at least 21 people were dead in the two attacks, with 11 killed at the airport. The entire metro system has now been shut down and the Belgian capital is on its highest state of terror alert. The earlier part of Tuesdays session saw investors pile in to safety, with the yen, gold and government bonds all making strong gains, but this was less apparent by the closing bell. Investors will be fearful of the knock-on to European traveller sentiment which was clearly dented in the wake of the Parisian attacks last November (as well as those in Tunisia and Egypt), said Mike van Dulken, head of research at Accendo Markets. It's always a sad day when terrorism has to be the driver to kick markets from their state of calm. Its also a sign of times when the market response is - in relative terms - so muted. Investors have had to develop a thick skin for such horrific events over the years and their encouraging defiance may again result in near-term recovery for the stocks affected. Oil prices were mixed. West Texas Intermediate was down 0.3% to $41.41 a barrel and Brent crude was up by 0.527% at $41.76. A senior OPEC delegate hsaid Saudi Arabia was prepared to sign up to an oil output freeze next month even if Iran does not take part. In corporate news, holiday operator Thomas Cook suffered a blow not just from the Brussels attacks but also after it cautioned that summer bookings will be below the previous year following terrorist attacks in Turkey and Egypt. Anglo American gained after announcing the successful completion of its bond buyback programme. With so much going on on the geopolitical front, mixed data releases took a back seat. The latest survey from the ZEW Center for European Economic Research in Mannheim revealed that German investor confidence was weaker than expected in March. However, the IFO Institute painted a cheerier picture, as its business climate index climbed to 106.7 from 105.7 a month ago, higher than the consensus forecast of 105.9. Elsewhere, the composite purchasing managers index for the Eurozone rose in March, signalling a modest pick-up in activity. European equity markets were down but off earlier lows, with travel and leisure stocks the worst performers as terror attacks in Brussels undermined investor sentiment. At midday, the benchmark Stoxx Europe 600 index was down 0.6%, Germanys DAX was off 0.2% and Frances CAC 40 was 0.5% weaker. The Stoxx 600 travel & leisure index fell 1.9%. Among individual stocks, Ryanair, EasyJet, IAG, Accor, InterContinental, TUI and Thomas Cook were all on the back foot. The mood was sombre as market participants took in news of the events in Brussels. At least 26 people were killed and others injured as suicide bombers launched twin attacks on Brussels Zaventem airport and the citys Maalbeek metro station. Belgian broadcaster RTBF, citing a federal prosecutor, confirmed the airport bombings were a suicide attack. The explosions came just days after the arrest in Brussels of a suspected participant in the November terror attacks that killed 130 people in Paris. Agence France Presse cited Pierre Meys, a spokesman for the Brussels fire brigade, as saying at least 21 people were dead in the two attacks, with 11 killed at the airport. The entire metro system has now been shut down and the Belgian capital is on its highest state of terror alert. The earlier part of Tuesdays session saw investors pile in to safety, with the yen, gold and government bonds all making strong gains, but this was not so apparent by midday Investors will be fearful of the knock-on to European traveller sentiment which was clearly dented in the wake of the Parisian attacks last November (as well as those in Tunisia and Egypt), said Mike van Dulken, head of research at Accendo Markets. It's always a sad day when terrorism has to be the driver to kick markets from their state of calm. Its also a sign of times when the market response is - in relative terms - so muted. Investors have had to develop a thick skin for such horrific events over the years and their encouraging defiance may again result in near-term recovery for the stocks affected. Oil prices were in the red. West Texas Intermediate was down 0.4% to $41.34 a barrel and Brent crude was off 0.1% at $41.49. A senior OPEC delegate has said Saudi Arabia was prepared to sign up to an oil output freeze next month even if Iran does not take part. In corporate news, holiday operator Thomas Cook suffered a blow not just from the Brussels attacks but also after it cautioned that summer bookings will be below the previous year following terrorist attacks in Turkey and Egypt. Anglo American slipped after announcing the successful completion of its bond buyback programme. With so much going on on the geopolitical front, mixed data releases took a back seat. The latest survey from the ZEW Center for European Economic Research in Mannheim revealed that German investor confidence was weaker than expected in March. However, the IFO Institute painted a cheerier picture, as its business climate index climbed to 106.7 from 105.7 a month ago, higher than the consensus forecast of 105.9. Elsewhere, the composite purchasing managers index for the Eurozone rose in March, signalling a modest pick-up in activity. 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. Ohio State uses six takeaways to pull away from Iowa for 54-10 win Bharti Airtel to sell 1,350 towers to American Tower Corp Airtel Tanzania, a subsidiary of Bharti Airtel has signed an agreement with American Tower Corp (ATC) to sell around 1,350 communications towers in Tanzania, with a clause to sell additional 100 sites. The additional sites are those currently in development and sales would be for an additional consideration. The transaction is expected to close during the first half of 2016, subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approval. The financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. ''The proposed transaction is a continuation of our stated philosophy of divesting passive infrastructure assets and promoting sharing of towers to enhance operational efficiencies that will further the overall growth of telecom services. Airtel remains committed to Tanzania and will continue to invest in its operations and serve customers with world-class services,'' said Christian de Faria, MD & CEO (Africa). Airtel will be the anchor tenant on the portfolio under a lease with a ten-year initial term. ''We are extremely pleased to announce our entry into Tanzania and expand our partnership with Airtel, one of the world's leading multinational network operators,'' said Hal Hess, EVP and President, EMEA, of American Tower. ''With a young, growing population, tremendous growth potential and a complementary location relative to our existing African operations, we view Tanzania as a highly attractive adjacent market opportunity.'' The tower sale agreements allow Airtel to focus on its core business and customers, besides helping deleverage through debt reduction, and significantly reducing the on-going capital expenditure on passive infrastructure. Godrej Properties teams up with APG for $275-mn real estate fund Godrej Properties Ltd, the real estate development arm of the Godrej Group, has set up a dedicated fund management business, Godrej Fund Management, with a corpus of Rs1,900 crore ($275 million). Dutch pension fund asset manager APG Asset Management NV is the lead investor in the fund. The fund, being set up as a subsidiary of Godrej Properties Ltd, will have offices in India and Singapore. The fund will invest in residential projects in India, GPL, the real estate arm of the Godrej group, in a statement, said. GPL said it has "created a dedicated real estate funds management business in India and Singapore - Godrej Fund Management (GFM)". "GFM has raised a $275 million (Rs19 billion) pool of capital, Godrej Residential Investment Program II (GRIP II), with Dutch pension fund asset manager APG Asset Management NV (APG) as the lead investor," it added. The new fund will advise GRIP II investors on investments into a residential development platform with GPL in India. GRIP II is a follow-up to the $200 million residential development platform GPL had set up with an APG-led investor consortium in 2012. GPL will hold a 20-per cent stake in GRIP II. Karan Bolaria has been appointed as head of GFM and will be responsible for managing both series of the residential investment programmes as well as any future strategies that GFM will undertake. "The new GRIP II platform in partnership with APG will help us attract high quality long-term equity investors to partner with us in our developments across India.'' GPL MD and CEO Pirojsha Godrej said. "This fits well with our strategy of deepening our presence across the country's leading real estate markets while maintaining a capital-light development strategy," he added. "In spite of a general slowdown in the asset class in the country over the last 3 years, our partnership projects have sold well, which is a testament to our partner's execution capability and brand strength,'' Sachin Doshi, MD and head of private real estate investments, Asia Pacific, APG, said. APG and Godrej Properties' investment platform were among the first to start a joint venture approach in the Indian private real estate market in 2012. The structure was later followed by other foreign institutional investors and Indian developers. European regulator halts scrutiny of $35-bn Halliburton-Baker Hughes merger The European Union antitrust regulators have stopped their investigation for the second time into the $35-billion merger between Halliburton Co and Baker Hughes, saying that the oilfield services providers have yet to provide an important piece of information. "Once the missing information is supplied by the parties, the clock is re-started and the deadline for the Commission's decision is then adjusted accordingly," European Commission (EC) spokesman Ricardo Cardoso said in an email to Reuters. The EC has already rejected the proposed merger once, but the companies quickly re-applied, but without offering any concessions, which made the EC to launch an in-depth second phase investigation to the deal, which could last until late May. The decision to probe deeper came after the EC said it sees potential competitive concerns in more than 30 product and service lines, both onshore and offshore. But Halliburton had in January offered divestitures to the US Department of Justice of selling assets of both companies that had combined 2013 revenue of $5.2 billion. The assets offered for sale include Halliburton's expandable liner hangers business; Baker Hughes's packers, flow control tools and subsurface safety systems; Baker Hughes's sand control business in the Gulf of Mexico; and its offshore cementing businesses in Australia, Brazil, the Gulf of Mexico. Halliburton plans to divest its fixed cutter and roller cone drill bits, directional drilling and its logging while drilling and measurement while drilling businesses. Halliburton said in November 2014 that it would acquire Baker Hughes In a friendly deal for about $34.6 billion, that would create a merged entity worth $67 billion. (See: Halliburton to acquire rival Baker Hughes for $34.6 bn) The takeover faced regulatory scrutiny since a tie up between the No 2 and No 3 oil services giants would attract antitrust concerns in several countries where both companies operate. Both are giants in the oilfield services providing services with expertise ranging from drilling wells, hydraulic fracturing / fracking, production and reservoir consulting, formation evaluation to pressure pumping. The merger between the two Houston-based companies could challenge market leader Schlumberger and end competition between the two decades-old rivals in the oil field service business. A merged company would hold around 52 per cent, while Schlumberger would hold 14 per cent of the global market of completion equipment, a broad category that includes an array of tools needed to prepare wells for production. The EC had earlier said that the merger would leave only Schlumberger as a competitor in the EU, which could "lead to less choice and potentially higher prices for customers.'' The deal has already been approved by regulators in Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, Kazakhstan, South Africa and Turkey, but still requires approval from the US, European Union, Brazil, and Australia. There is widespread shock but an emerging sense of solidarity in Brussels following a series of suspected terrorist attacks this morning, according to a Donegal woman living there. Maria Labanauskaite grew up in Buncrana and now lives in Brussels. By Sue Doherty Authorities have confirmed that at least 34 people have died and more than 120 were injured when explosions rocked Zaventem Airport and Maelbeek Metro station near the European institutions shortly after 7am. Marija Labanauskaite (25) is a Lithuanian national who grew up in Buncrana, where her parents still live. She's working as a translator and studying foreign languages in the heart of Brussels. Most of the people she knows work in and around the EU Institutions. She told the Democrat, "I was about to get on the pre-metro to my language courses in the city centre when I read BBC News updates. "Zaventem is the closest airport to Brussels. So that's where all of the international flights come to. "You can just imagine how personal the airport explosion was. It's 20 minute train ride from the city centre. My classmates' parents were meant to fly into the airport this morning. "My colleague also had a close call. His two boys were watching the explosions at the airport as they were on their school bus. They were only 200m from where the explosions happened. Thank God they got home safe!" Shut down Brussels is in shutdown, she explains, as all buses and metros closed immediately. "It's affecting everyone. We got orders to stay at school for a while. Then families were all contacted to collect their children." People are still trying to come to terms with what is happening, she adds. "There's a feeling of helplessness, however one of solidarity too. A realisation that it's not a safe place to be, even with the army and police constantly monitoring main streets, hospitals, universities and other bigger institutions. "It's a little bit devastating that the security did not appear to be at highest alert level before the explosions happened." Many of her Muslim students and those who work at airport are worried too. "The first people today to call me today were my Moroccan friends." Most people are remaining calm, though, and already, some are rallying to help others. "There are many people putting up offers of accommodation on Facebook, for anyone who doesn't want to go back into Brussels, or can't get out of it today, right now. And taxi drivers are also offering their services for free. "This is how the people of Belgium are dealing with this crisis." 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. Dundalk Institute of Technology (DkIT) has this week responded to the publication of a report by the Higher Education Authority (HEA) on performance in the higher education sector. The report identified that DkIT was performing well in many areas but that Institute lacked strategic focus and was trying to do too much with too few resources. This resulted in a threat of reduced funding if the matter is not addressed. Dundalk Institute of Technology, GMIT and the National College of Art and Design in Dublin are all This issue was highlighted in December and the DkIT Management Team set about addressing the issue immediately. In statement DkIT say: In conjunction with addressing the future strategy for the Institute, the DkIT team developed a revised financial plan to address the shortfall in the budget and this has been accepted by the HEA. A new revised performance plan is also to be submitted to the HEA in the coming weeks. Once this plan has been accepted, the threat of reduced funding for the Institute will be removed. DkIT is at the heart of education, industry and innovation in the North East. Arising from the public finance crisis since 2007, DkIT (like all state funded Higher Education Institutions) has had substantial cuts in funding. These cuts, coupled with increased student numbers, have resulted in a financial deficit since 2013. DkIT has always provided excellence in education, research, training and enterprise provision. Despite the financial challenges, the HEA report confirmed that DkIT has met or exceeded the majority of its performance indicators and has performed particularly well across a number of areas: Students view the Institute as a student-focussed learning environment. The student learning experience is reflected in the provision of quality teaching and learning within a highly supportive environment. The Institute is a top performer within the sector in attracting international students. DkIT is among the top performing Institutes in the country in terms of generating research income. The Institute is acknowledged as a pioneer in developing relationships between academia and industry. There have been significant achievements by DkIT. Over the past 25 years, it has supported over 1,200 entrepreneurs and carried out in excess of 255 applied research projects with industry. DkIT assures students, staff and the wider community that the Institute will continue to provide a high quality educational experience despite the difficult funding environment. DkIT continues to be a key driver of economic, social and cultural progress in the north east region. For too many people out there, the idea of working in the Information Technology sector is associated solely with coding, as if learning a new programming language is the only thing you can do in order to become a professional in this industry. The reality is that there are plenty of jobs available, with a myriad of roles to perform and skills to parlay. Since the industry as a whole is currently experiencing unprecedented growth, it pays to learn all about the different positions available and how theyre remunerated. With that in mind, here are 10 of the highest paying in-demand jobs in IT right now: 1. Software Developer The bread-and-butter of the industry, developers spend their working hours designing applications and programs, often from the ground up. Salaries can perk up considerably depending on which technologies and programming languages the developer is familiar with, but in Australia, for instance, they usually start at A$56,000 and can easily reach six-figures with enough time and experience. 2. Software Engineer Software engineers apply engineering principles to software creation. They are an essential part of the workforce in an economy thats still learning to harness the full powers of Information Technology. In the US, for example, a software engineer can expect to make an average of $94,000 per year. 3. Network Engineer In this interconnected world of hours, someone has to make sure that information networks are optimized and ready to cope with heavy usage. A network engineer designs and implements computer networks, with the ultimate goal of meeting the customers needs. This prestigious position earns a median salary of $92,000. 4. Program Manager Also known as project manager, this position comes with plenty of responsibilities, from ensuring that program goals are met in a timely manner to overseeing the development team through thick and thin. In the US average salaries top out at about $83,000, but in Australia, a good program manager can earn upwards of $150,000 with the right skillset, as per the latest IT salary research. 5. Electrical Engineer With electricity being needed to power all this gadgetry, its no wonder that professionals in this position are so well-regarded. A full knowledge of electrical systems and equipment is needed, but with the proper know-how, a US electrical engineer can earn a median wage of $83.000. 6. Business Analyst As mentioned earlier, jobs in the IT sector dont always require high-end technical knowledge. A great business analyst, for example, needs to know how to handle the business aspects of any development process first and foremost. Translating the ideas and wishes of a board of investors into actual achievable goals isnt easy work, and thats why it garners salaries like $76,000 (median US wage) and A$95,000 (mid-level salary in Australia). 7. Systems Administrator The hardware specialist that often saves the day, a good systems administrator focuses on installing and maintaining the system components needed to run any particular project or application. Its heady work, but also fairly well-compensated, with US salaries averaging about $75,000 for this position. 8. Data Analyst Another less technical job, but one thats set to experience exponential growth in the years to follow. Data analysts basically mine and scrutinize information with the ultimate goal of understanding patterns that can improve and advance the decision-making process. Salaries average around $61,000 in the US. 9. Technical Writer For people who prefer words to numbers, technical writing offers a profitable avenue into the IT industry. All software documentation, from manuals to user guides, need to originate from the steady hand of an industrious writer, which explains why technical writers are remunerated a not-too-shabby $61,000 per year on average. 10. Graphic Designer Finally, the artsiest job of them all, graphic design is an essential part of any self-respecting industry. In the IT sector, it means handling images, logos and typography to create something beautiful and memorable. US graphic designers can expect to earn a median wage of $53,000, while their Australian counterparts have annual paychecks that range from $50,000 to $81,000. As you can see, theres plenty of diversity and variety even in an industry as seemingly homogenous as IT. And, with opportunities to branch out into consulting and even entrepreneurship readily available, its no wonder that professionals in this area generally enjoy high job satisfaction levels . Being good at your job is already a blessing; receiving such generous compensation for it makes it even better. About the author: Kristina Jeftic is a freelance writer and a regular contributor to several blogs. With a Bachelor degree in English language and Literature, Kristina enjoys reading, researching and sharing unique articles. Coinciding with World Water Day, the Obama administration released details of massive investments in water resource conservation, water system infrastructure upgrades, and heightened awareness of water resources in general. You can read the full report HERE. Of particular interest to Michigan in light of the Flint water crisis, the report outlines a number of corporate responses to the White House call to action that will target water assistance to those in need across the USA: The Dow Chemical Company is partnering with Genesee County Habitat for Humanity to offer free water-filtration systems to 150 Habitat for Humanity homes in Flint, MI. Through this partnership, Dow will provide the reverse osmosis (RO) technology for the the water-filtration systems that will be installed in residents homes. Evoqua will donate 10 Sky Hydrant water-filtration unitseach with the capacity to meet the daily water needs of more than 6,000 peopleto underserved, emergency, and disaster-relief efforts in the United States. In addition, Evoqua is committing to (1) invest an additional $50 million in research and development to further expand water reuse and reclamation efforts across municipal and industrial applications in the United States; and (2) to, by 2021, increase the amount of water the company treats for reuse and reclamation to 5 billion gallons of water a daydouble Evoquas current capacity. Micronic Technologies is announcing that it will provide its MicroDesalTM technology at reduced cost to small community water/wastewater facilities to moderate deteriorating infrastructure. Micronic is also committing to developing this technology through partner collaborationsin particular, with the University of Virginias College at Wiseto provide secure, safe, potable water to small, remote communities throughout the United States and the world. In response to extreme drought in the State of California, the San Francisco Foundation is investing $150,000 in partner organizations to address social vulnerability and build community resilience to water scarcity in low-income communities and communities of color. The grants will help community groups engage in the implementation of Californias new drought measure and ensure that the associated public revenues build sustainable water projects in disadvantaged communities, among other activities. Triple Clear Water Solutions, Inc., a company that provides plug-and-play water-purification technologies, is committing 1% of its saleswhich is expected to be more than $1 million over the next several yearsto fund clean-water initiatives in communities in need of help. WaterFX and Partners in Health have teamed up to form OpenWATER, a non-profit organization dedicated to accelerating the deployment of innovative water technologies for enhancing water security in resource-poor and underrepresented communities such as rural communities, tribal nations, and island territories. OpenWATER will draw on WaterFXs experience in sustainable water treatmentto deliver water technologies in tens of communities over the next two to three years. Meanwhile, today marks the 173rd day since Gov. Snyder announced that Flint had a problem with lead in its residents drinking water (though evidence suggests he knew or least SHOULD have known for much longer than that.) Since that time, exactly ZERO lead water service lines have been replaced in Flint through the actions of the Snyder administration. This week, Gov. Snyder did call for more stringent water quality regulations in the state of Michigan, more stringent, in fact, than federal regulations: Gov. Rick Snyder said Monday he wants Flint and the entire state to have more stringent lead-level regulations than what federal rules require, following the citys water contamination crisis. In the long term, Michigan will comply with a much higher standard, according to a state document laying out the next steps in Flint in four areas water supply and infrastructure, health and human services, education, and economic development. Much of the plan released Monday is not necessarily new but more of an effort to compile various state tasks into one document both to delineate short-, medium and long-range goals but also to combat critics who have accused the Republican governor of not doing enough to help Flint. Snyder did not specify what regulations his administration will seek. Under U.S. Environmental Protection Agency rules that Snyder has called dumb and dangerous, a water system must take steps to control corrosion if lead concentrations exceed 15 parts per billion in more than 10 percent of customer taps sampled. This sounds very nice but the chances of it happening seem slim. Not long after Republicans took control of our state government in 2011, they passed House Bill 4326, better known as the No more stringent than federal bill. If signed into law, this bill would forbid Michigan from passing regulations more stringent than federal regulations. Its a concept supported by the corporatist front group Mackinac Center for Public Policy for over a decade. The state Chamber of Commerce called it pro-business legislation that would dramatically curb regulatory overreach by state departments. The bill passed the House with 95% of Republicans voting for it and 95% of Democrats voting against it. It passed the Senate with 95% of Republicans voting for it and 97% of Democrats voting against it. Gov. Snyder did end up vetoing the bill but you can see the headwind he faces in getting legislation like what hes proposing through our tea party-controlled state legislature. Regulations, particularly more stringent regulations and most particularly more stringent environmental regulations are an anathema to our corporatist Republican legislators who have majorities in both chambers. So, while the Michigan Republican Party wants you to believe that the Flint water crisis is President Obamas fault, the truth is that it is Republicans who have put in place policies that created the catastrophe in Flint and it is Republicans who want to make it easier for corporations to pollute our environment with impunity. UPDATE: Gov. Snyder also spoke to the Economic Club of Grand Rapids this week where he received a standing ovation. He then proceeded to throw his staffers under the bus yet again: I hope they appreciate the fact I took responsibility for some of the people that worked for me, the tragic mistakes they made, and Im focused on fixing the problem. [] (Bad decisions by bureaucrats) is what caused the problem, folks, but Im responsible, Snyder said. Those folks worked for me and, believe me, I kick myself every day wondering what questions I could have asked. Why didnt we just use some common sense? It created a problem and people are suffering. Good thing HE didnt make any tragic mistakes in this whole sordid affair, eh? By the way, those career bureaucrats that Gov. Snyder refers to so much these days are people the rest of us call civil servants. Personal digital assistants are of little benefit for people experiencing a serious personal crisis, such as sexual assault or thoughts of suicide, according to a study published Monday inJAMA Internal Medicine. The research looked at four major personal assistants Apples Siri, Microsofts Cortana, Google Now and Samsungs S Voice. The virtual assistants for the most part were unable to recommend solutions when users expressed severe mental anguish, or reported domestic violence, sexual assault or forms of imminent danger. I think the JAMA report is useful in puncturing the marketing balloons that inflate these products, said Charles King, principal analyst at Pund-IT, adding that assistants like Siri and Cortana are voice-activated services that support specific functions. Calling them personal assistants may simply betray an ignorance of what personal assistants actually do, but also denigrates those peoples roles and responsibilities, he told TechNewsWorld. About the Study The researchers conducted a pilot study in September and October, using 65 phones from various retail stores and the personal phones of team members. It was done to determine whether different tones of voice affected responses. A main study was conducted in the San Francisco Bay area during December and January, using a cross section of phones, operating systems, phone manufacturers and phone versions. The tests were run on the equivalent or newer versions of the iPhone 4s, the iPad 3, the Apple Watch, Android devices beginning with version 4.1, the Samsung Galaxy S3 and Windows Phone 8.1. More than 200 million adults in the U.S. own a smartphone, and 62 percent of them use their phones to obtain health information, according to the study. Heard, but Few Answers The study showed Siri, Google Now and S Voice recognized the sentence I want to commit suicide as a cause of concern, but only Siri and Google Now referred the user to a suicide prevention hotline. When a sentence saying I was raped was entered into the digital assistants, Cortana referred the user to a sexual assault hotline, but it failed to recognize the sentences I was beaten up by my husband and I am being abused. Siri, Google Now and S Voice all failed to recognize those sentences. The four digital assistants responded with inconsistent and incomplete answers, the authors, led by Adam Miner, a fellow at StanfordsClinical Excellence Research Center, concluded. The questions were correctly repeated back to the users, but on a number of occasions no useful information was provided in response. Back to the Lab Cortana is designed to be a personal digital assistant focused on helping you be more productive, Microsoft spokesperson Brooke Randell said. Our team takes into account a variety of scenarios when developing how Cortana interacts with our users with the goal of providing thoughtful responses that give people access to the information they need. Microsoft will evaluate the study and continue to inform our work from a number of valuable sources, she told TechNewsWorld. We believe that technology can and should help people in a time of need and that as a company we have an important responsibility enabling that, said Samsung spokesperson Danielle Meister Cohen. We are constantly trying to improve our products and services with that goal in mind, and we will use the findings of the JAMA study to make additional changes and further bolster our efforts, she told TechNewsWorld. Digital assistants can and should do more to help on these issues, Google said in a statement provided to TechNewsWorld by spokesperson Jason Freidenfelds. Weve started by providing hotlines and other resources for some emergency-related health searches. Were paying close attention to feedback, and weve been working with a number of external organizations to launch more of these features soon. Give It Time We are only at the beginning stages of these digital assistants being able to execute more sophisticated and nuanced tasks as work is underway to improve artificial intelligence and natural human language translated into digital speech patterns, said Susan Schreiner, a senior editor atC4 Trends. Google has been working with the Mayo Clinic since 2015 to identify key phrases a smartphone user might use during a health crisis, she told TechNewsWorld. Once a new technology is introduced, there is impatience, Schreiner said. We want it to be revolutionary and perfect starting day one but over time weve observed that these developments are evolutionary. UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Zeid RaAd Al-Hussein on Friday weighed in on the Apple-FBI dispute, asking U.S. authorities to proceed with great caution. The legal fight centers on a courts order that Apple help the FBI access encrypted iPhone data to aid its investigation of the San Bernardino terrorist attack. Such a move could lead to crackdowns in various authoritarian countries, Al-Hussein said. In order to address a security-related issue related to encryption in one case, the authorities risk unlocking a Pandoras Box that could have extremely damaging implications for the human rights of many millions of people, including their physical and financial security, he contended. Legal Wrangling Ahead The case is far from settled. Apple has appealed the order, and a hearing is scheduled later this month in a federal court in northern California. In the meantime, everyone involved should consider the wider implications of such a decision, Al-Hussein urged. The San Bernardino attack was an abominable crime, he acknowledged. A husband and wife who were ISIS sympathizers killed 14 people and injured 22 in a mass shooting. Everyone should support the FBI in its investigation, Al-Hussein said. However, the issue at hand has ramifications that extend beyond this one case and this one particular company, he pointed out. A successful case against Apple in the U.S. will set a major precedent that may make it impossible for Apple or any other major international IT company to safeguard their clients privacy anywhere in the world, Al-Hussein cautioned. Those big picture concerns beg the question of how the FBI should carry out its investigation of the San Bernardino case. Would some type of compromise be possible if the iPhone at the center of the controversy contained valuable evidence? Thats a big if,' said Rupert Colville, a spokesperson for the commissioner. There may be nothing of interest on the phone, he told TechNewsWorld. People have been investigating and solving crimes long before the invention of the smartphone. Rogue States Foreign governments have pressured Google and BlackBerry to expose their customers through mass surveillance, Al-Hussein pointed out. BlackBerry last year threatened to exit Pakistan rather than comply with the governments demand for access to its servers, he recalled. China has pressured Google to censor its search engine, Al-Hussein added. The Pakistan Telecommunications Authority requires prior approval for the use of VPNs and encryption, he pointed out, citing a 2015 report on the role of encryption in human rights. Buba (Germanys central bank) requires regulatory authority for those using encryption, the report notes. China reportedly requires that encryption products adhere to government-approved algorithms that have not been peer reviewed for security. Officials in the U.S. and UK have advocated creating backdoor access to encrypted devices. Other countries like Bolivia and Brazil prohibit anonymous speech, according to the report. In Iran, all IP addresses inside the country must be registered, and cybercafe users must provide their real names when using a computer. Advocates back UN Privacy and human rights advocates echo many of Al-Husseins concerns. The high commissioner is right to raise concerns about the serious global human rights ramifications of this case, maintained Jamil Dakwar, director of the ACLU Human Rights Program. A particular worry is the risk of helping authoritarian regimes, he told TechNewsWorld, as well as the threat to privacy and cybersecurity for millions around the world. There are several important issues related to the debate between Apple the FBI, according to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Among them are First Amendment implications, privacy rights, human rights and democracy. We believe that compelling Apple to build a backdoor for its own product actually undermines the security and personal safety of millions of Americans and others around the world, especially those living under authoritarian regimes, spokesperson Karen Gullo told TechNewsWorld, by creating the legal precedent, by weakening the trust users have in software updates supposedly authorized by companies, and by building the technology itself. A federal magistrate judge on Monday granted the Department of Justices request to delay a much-anticipated court hearing that had been scheduled to take place on Tuesday in Riverside, Calif. The court granted an indefinite stay, after the DoJ said it had found a possible method of accessing the encrypted iPhone of the San Bernardino terrorist without the help of Apple. The Justice Department said it would issue an update on April 5. Assistant U.S. Attorney Tracy Wilkison asked Judge Sheri Pym to postpone the scheduled hearing to give investigators time to see whether the method would work. The DoJ notified lawyers for Apple at 2:30 p.m. Monday, based on the filing, asking them for Apples position on the matter, and Apples lawyers in turn asked for a status conference by telephone. Our top priority has always been gaining access into the phone used by the terrorist in San Bernardino, said DoJ spokesperson Melanie Newman. With this goal in mind, the FBI has continued in its efforts to gain access to the phone without Apples assistance, even during a month-long period of litigation with the company. As a result of these efforts, an outside party demonstrated to the FBI this past weekend a possible method for unlocking the phone, she said. Investigators must first test this method to ensure that it doesnt destroy the data on the phone, but we remain cautiously optimistic, Newman added. Broad Ramifications This is good news, because a legal precedent requiring companies to write backdoors is incredibly dangerous to the security of millions of iPhone users, said Kurt Opsahl, general counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation. This case was always about more than access to a single phone, he told the E-Commerce Times. It was an attempt to set a legal precedent that requires any company to undermine their users security at the FBIs request, Opsahl contended. Security is vital to protect the information on your phone, and the FBI should work to enhance user security, not against it. Taken by Surprise The DoJs request came as a bolt from the blue, Apple attorneys told reporters in a conference call Monday evening. The basis for the departments request was a mystery. However, if the DoJ should pursue the case at a later date, then the company would ask it to disclose everything the government knows about how to access data, the Apple attorneys said. Further, they would want to question the entity that contacted the government with the possible method for unlocking the phone. Over the past month, the government gave Apple no indication that it was attempting to contact third parties, they noted. We can only speculate as to the exact reason for the delay, but at this point it seems that the FBI has wasted everyones time pushing a legal theory that is now moot, said Eli Dourado, director of the Technology Policy Program at George Mason Universitys Mercatus Center. Lets hope they never do this again, he told the E-Commerce Times. Court Fight The DoJ and FBI have battled Apple for more than a month in an often bitter public debate over whether Apple should be forced to provide a backdoor method to give investigators access to data stored on the iPhone of San Bernardino shooter Syed Farook. Along with his wife, Farook shot up a holiday party in an ISIS-inspired spree, killing 14 and wounding 22 people. Both Farook and his wife, who is suspected of helping to radicalize him, were killed in a shootout with law enforcement. Graceful Exit? The indefinite postponement of the hearing may be a sign that the government is looking for a graceful exit from a civil liberties nightmare that was beginning to divide Congress along nontraditional lines. This would be a very good outcome, said Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center. The government may use all lawful techniques to obtain evidence authorized pursuant to a court order. Apple drew the right line in this matter, he told the E-Commerce Times, and it appears the FBI is respecting that line. Fierce Resistance Apple, which has cooperated with investigators in numerous other cases, publicly attacked the governments request for assistance in the San Bernardino case. Its chief concern was that creating a new set of code to allow investigators to access one phone would open the door for additional requests. It also would leave it vulnerable to cooperation demands with various governments around the world that might have dissidents they wanted to crack down upon, Apple maintained. This case was never about a phone, it was always about a precedent, said Evan Greer, campaign director of Fight for the Future. Well be watching carefully to see how this unfolds, but for now it appears that the government is attempting to gracefully back down from its dangerous request that Apple build a backdoor, he told the E-Commerce Times. The group had planned to demonstrate with an online campaign, as well as protesters outside the courthouse on Tuesday, and they will still be there, according to Greer. Decision makers need to know that the public and security experts oppose dangerous backdoors in encryption, he said, so they dont attempt something like this again. Prosecutors for the U.S. Attorneys Office for the Central District of California on Tuesday announced they had reached a plea agreement with Ryan Collins, a Pennsylvania resident, over charges that he hacked Apple and Google email accounts of more than 100 people back in 2014. The allegations stemmed from the official investigation into the hacking case dubbed Celebgate, because most of the victims were celebrities whose nude photos were leaked to the Internet. However, the investigators were unable to secure evidence linking Collins to the actual leaks, and found no proof that he uploaded the information to the Web or otherwise shared it. Collins agreed to plead guilty to a felony violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. The prosecutors agreed to recommend an 18-month prison term, but the sentencing judge has leeway to impose a statutory maximum of five years. Collins was charged in Los Angeles, but the parties agreed to transfer the case to Harrisburg, hear Collins home, for the entry of his plea and sentencing. A Case of Celebrity Fever? Is it me, or is the legal system worried about the wrong thing? asked Mark Sangster, VP of marketing at eSentire. Why protect the economy when some compromising pictures of celebs have been stolen? There should be convictions on major cases attacking companies and stealing valuable data, Sangster told TechNewsWorld. Has anyone been convicted on Sony or Target? Or biopharma, tech, or business email compromise fraud? These attacks cost us trillions. Target will pay out US$10 million to compensate the 40 million people whose credit and debit card records were exposed when it was hacked in 2013. No Deterrent at All I doubt the plea will have any significant effect on discouraging phishing attacks, commented Chenxi Wang, chief strategy officer at Twistlock. Cybercriminals are behind many phishing campaigns, she noted, but this particular case is an individual acting on his own. It therefore will have very little, if any, impact on the extent of those campaigns or attacks, Wang told TechNewsWorld. We see murderers being put to death for their crimes, but that hasnt stopped people, observed Dodi Glenn, VP of cybersecurity at PC Pitstop. Hackers want the notoriety and their 15 minutes of fame. Collins actually might come out ahead after his conviction, judging from previous cases, he said. More than likely, once his term is served, hell get a job in the security industry, Glenn told TechNewsWorld. Still, the plea bargain is a good move, Wang contended, because the victims private information would be disclosed and discussed in court proceedings if the case had gone to jury trial. More Teeth Needed I think they should make an example out of [Collins], remarked Daniel Castro, vice president at the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation. Weve seen a number of celebrities making public statements about how this was more of a sex crime than anything else, and the law should reflect that, he told TechNewsWorld. Look at what they were trying to get Aaron Swartz on for downloading documents from MIT. They were going after him a lot harder. Swartz, a computer programmer and Internet activist, was hit with two counts of wire fraud and 11 violations of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for downloading academic journals from MITs JSTOR digital repository. Facing potential penalties including $1 million in fines, 35 years in prison and asset forfeiture, as well as other pressures, he committed suicide. Federal judges are required to consult the U.S. sentencing guidelines prior to sentencing a defendant, pointed out Thom Mrozek, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorneys office. The guidelines in this, as we view them, call for a sentence of six to 12 months. Mr. Collins has agreed to an 18-month sentence, Mrozek told TechNewsWorld. The ITIF has called for a stronger law on data breaches, Castro said. You need a law that makes this type of activity criminal and makes it easier to prosecute based on those images being shared without permission, Castro suggested. Prosecution is possible under the CFAA, but they have to prove how you access the data, Castro said. If you take an image, the act of sharing it without permission and with the intent to cause harm would be better. Researchers last week discovered the first ransomware in the wild aimed at Apples hardware platform. While the threat was subdued quickly, it exposed the weakness of digital certificates in authenticating software to devices. The ransomware appeared as a legitimate application because it contained a digital certificate stolen from a bona fide Mac developer in Turkey. The certificate was used to sign an application of another developer and post a malicious update at the developers website. Apple doesnt control what Mac software can be signed with what certificate, noted Ryan Olson, threat intelligence director ofUnit 42 at Palo Alto Networks, which discovered the ransomware. Apple just wants to confirm that the software has been signed with a certificate, he told TechNewsWorld. That limitation is in place in the iOS App Store. Kind of Useless Certificates are kind of useless, said Chet Wisniewski, a security adviser atSophos. Its a nice idea, but the problem with managing the back-end certificate database and making sure the bad guys dont get them is pretty much impossible, he told TechNewsWorld. Were seeing people stealing legitimate certificates from legitimate developers who are insecure, Wisniewski added. Theft, though, may be the hard way to obtain a certificate for malicious purposes. If I want to start selling and developing Mac software tomorrow, it takes all of five minutes to ask Apple for a certificate, Wisniewski said. How does Apple know if Im a good guy or a bad guy? Big Deal Stolen certificates have played a role in some high-profile cyberattacks. Some of the most important cases in malware history have dealt with stolen certificates, said Liviu Arsene, a senior threat analyst atBitdefender. Stuxnet and most advanced persistent threats rely on some form of valid certificate to get installed on machines, he told TechNewsWorld. Certificates tell the machine that an application that wants to run on it is legitimate and need not be scrutinized by any defenses running on the machine. Thats a big deal, Arsene noted. Thats why developers are encouraged to make sure they dont lose them and make sure they keep them safe in containers. Nevertheless, certificates remain a choice target for criminals and spies. The certificate thing is a very low barrier, and weve seen it defeated at every level, Wisniewski said. Its super easy for criminals to bypass, he added. Multifactor Authentication One of the largest contributors to data breaches is compromised credentials. Theres no easier way for a hacker to crack a network than masquerading as a legitimate user of that network. However, even if a persons credentials have been compromised, multifactor authentication can foil a bandit attempting to use those credentials to compromise a network. That form of authentication combines something you know (a username and password, for example) with something you have (a token, magnetic card or phone) or something you are (a fingerprint, iris or voice). As effective as multifactor authentication is, though, it can create friction for users, which has proved to be a challenge for enterprises. Cloud Solution Implementing multifactor authentication in the enterprise has been an uphill battle, said Chris Webber, a senior product marketing manager atCentrify.Multifactor authentication can create a burden for IT. An organization needs back-end structure to support it. IT needs to issue tokens to users and create a system to replace tokens that have been lost or are unavailable for immediate use. In addition, theres been user resistance. Users are sometimes not ready for it, Webber told TechNewsWorld. They find it too cumbersome. The CISOs Ive talked to say their users just staged a revolt when they tried to implement multifactor authentication for security, he said. Theres always a trade-off between convenience and security, and it can be too inconvenient for rank-and-file users, Webber added. One way to make multifactor authentication more palatable to both IT and users is to move it to the cloud. With a cloud setup, theres no back-end hassle for IT to deal with, and people can use their cellphones as a token. Cloud availability means you dont need any dedicated infrastructure or servers on your premises, but it also means it works for things that are in the cloud, behind the firewall, on servers and in Infrastructure as a Service, Webber noted. Its an everywhere solution. Breach Diary March 6. Krebs on Security reports Seagate Technology sent W-2 forms for all present and former employees to an unauthorized third party as the result of a phishing scam. March 7. U.S. Justice Department appeals a decision by a federal magistrate judge rejecting its request that Apple unlock an iPhone linked to a drug dealer in New York. March 7. Premier Healthcare of Indiana announces its notifying more than 200,000 patients that their personal information is at risk after a laptop was stolen from its Bloomington office. March 7. Ezaki Glico, a Japanese confectionary maker, announces its investigating a report from a credit card company that as many as 83,194 data sets of personal information may have been stolen from its online shopping site. March 8. Home Depot agrees to pay US$13 million to compensate consumers affected by a 2014 data breach in which more than 50 million payment card numbers were stolen. The company also agreed to pay $6.5 million for 1.5 years of identity theft services for victims of the breach. March 8. 21st Century Oncology Holdings in Florida warns some 2.2 million patients that their personal information was stolen as a result of a data breach of its computer systems in October. March 8. Rosen Hotels & Resorts posts a warning to its website for customers who visited its facilities between Sept. 2, 2014, and Feb. 18, 2016, to be on the alert for fraudulent charges on their payment cards because of a compromise of its payment card network. March 8. Ozaukee County in Wisconsin announces as many as 200 employees may have had personal information used to file federal tax returns stolen from the countys online portal. March 8. SevOne, a technology company in Delaware, notifies an undisclosed number of employees that their W-2 forms were sent to an unauthorized recipient outside the company. It did not release details about the breach. March 8. Sony begins sending out codes for free games to users of its PlayStation Network as part of settlement of a class-action lawsuit resulting from a 2011 data breach in which personal information on 77 million people was stolen. March 10. UK media regulator Ofcom alerts dozens of TV companies that information they filed is at risk after a former employee downloaded as much as six years of data from the agency and offered it to his new employer, a major broadcaster. March 10. Sky News reports it has obtained tens of thousands of documents containing personal information of Islamic State jihadis leaked to the news outlet by a disgruntled insider. March 10. The Federal Trade Commission requests nine companies performing PCI audits to respond within 45 days to a set of detailed questions about how they measure compliance with PCI Security Standards. March 10. Staminus, a company specializing in DDoS protection systems, is attacked by hackers who broke its network backbone and posted a database for the company to the Internet. March 11. The Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute in Detroit alerts 2,808 patients and family members that their personal information is at risk by the loss of an unencrypted flash drive. Upcoming Security Events ProtonMail, which offers encrypted email, on Thursday launched free iOS and Android mobile apps worldwide, through the iTunes App Store and Google Play, respectively. They have been in beta since August, company CEO Andy Yen said. The email service features end-to-end encryption; emails stored on ProtonMails servers also are encrypted and thus cant be accessed. Not even ProtonMail has the ability to read the emails of our users, and thus its technically impossible for us to hand over user messages to third parties, Yen told TechNewsWorld. Based in Switzerland, its servers are out of reach of United States authorities. All ProtonMail client-side code is open source and is reviewed by the ProtonMail community. No Advertising The basic service is free, offering users 1 GB of storage. ProtonMail was launched through a 2014 Indiegogo campaign that raised more than US$550,000 within one month from more than 10,500 backers. The campaigns goal was $100,000. Additional backers include Charles River Ventures and the Fondation Genevoise pour lInnovation Technologique, a nonprofit foundation. Users can upgrade to a paid account or donate money to help fund the company, which doesnt take ads. Since we do not violate user privacy to serve targeted advertisements, we cannot offer the service for free, Yen said. [We charge for] more storage and advanced features, so that we can cover our operational expenses. ProtonMails encryption is fully compatible with PGO, because PGP has withstood the test of time over 20 years now and is well trusted and vetted by the community, Yen said. Other Secure Email Systems Several other secure email systems are available. For example, open source Tutanota, which is based in Germany, offers a free option and a premium service for 12 euros yearly, and has mobile apps for iOS and Android. It encrypts all data on the users device emails, contacts, subjects and attachments. It provides 1 GB of storage. Kolabnow.com, like ProtonMail, is based in Switzerland. Its available for groups and hosting accounts, as well as individuals, and is priced from US$4.70 to $103 a month for hosting accounts with 10 users, payable in Swiss francs. Gmail provides secure connections between a client and its servers, but data sent over the connection is plain text, noted Peter Eckersley, technology projects director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. If Google receives an order from the FBI, theyre going to have to disclose the text, he told TechNewsWorld. Apple encrypts emails end to end, and it also encrypts messages sent through iMessage. However, iMessage backups go to Apple, which has access to the key, Eckersley said, so if you backup to the iCloud, Apple can retrieve the data. Encryption Is Here to Stay The FBI has obtained a court order compelling Apple to assist it in accessing encrypted data, a move that has sparked strong emotions on both sides of the argument. The release of yet another encrypted email system highlights one aspect of the debate. That is, even if the U.S. authorities should prevail in their case against Apple, there would still be many other encryption options that would not be subject to their investigations. We are supportive of Apples efforts, but ultimately I dont think what happens in Switzerland will dramatically impact the outcome of that case, Yen remarked. As far as encryption is concerned, the genie is already out of the bottle, Chen said, and theres nothing to be gained by trying to legislate or control it. The sooner governments realize this, the sooner we can all work together to tackle the even more severe threats facing the Internet community today, such as the rise of cyberattacks and cyberterrorism. For that, encryption will be a hugely important defensive tool. 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Without meaningful comparisons, we cant see how far behind some students really are.The institute outlined three main recommended for policymakers: put learning gaps at the heart of school policy; give schools better support to target teaching at each childs needs; and work harder to improve the progress of disadvantaged students so that every child in every Australian school can achieve their potential.If we set the bar too low, it is very hard to aim high, Goss said, adding that standards were much higher in international tests such as the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).Australia's PISA results have steadily declined over the past decade. Last year, Australia ranked 14th behind Poland, Germany and Vietnam, with up to 20% of students unable to demonstrate basic skills.The bar we are setting with the [NAPLAN] national minimum standard is just too low. Importantly, it increases the risk of overlooking students who require additional support to make adequate progress, the Grattan Institute report said.Australia must raise its sights.In a statement today, Federal Education Minister, Simon Birmingham , said the report was a wake-up call for policy-makers who are fixated on how much Australia spends on education.This report validates our focus on teacher quality and demonstrates that we need to ensure all teachers are skilled in ensuring every student in a class is progressing, with a years worth of learning equating to a years worth of progression, to the best of their abilities, he said.Birmingham added the report, as well as Australias slipping OECD rankings, had come about despite funding growth in education of than 100% in real terms between 1987-88 and 2011-12.The Grattan Institutes report highlights the need to focus education reform conversations on how to lift standards, not a simplistic debate about how much we spend, he said. Some state education agencies may end up being limited in their capacity to take full advantage of opportunities for flexibility provided in the Every Student Succeeds Act because of drastic budget cuts in recent years, educators and experts say. While K-12 spending will increase in most states for the next fiscal year, many legislatures are reluctant to give education departments more money, instead directing them to funnel the money to school districts. Revenue Squeeze In petroleum-producing states like Alaska and Louisiana, for example, where revenue has plummeted dramatically because of the drop in oil prices, lawmakers this year are considering measures that would cut more than half of their education department budgets. That prospect is taking place at a time when the recently passed ESSA is handing greater power to state officials to determine how to hold teachers and schools accountable, among other things. Education leaders worry that recent budget cuts that hollowed out department staffs and cuts to long-standing programs will limit their outreach efforts, the sort of data they can collect to incorporate into their accountability systems, and their ability to successfully intervene in their worst-performing schools. The budget cuts could also lead some departments to outsource a portion of their accountability work or hand much of the power over to local districts. These cuts are going to impede our ability to do, in a thoughtful and informed way, our creative work to develop an accountability plan that works for us, said Alaska Interim Commissioner Susan McCauley, who has already lost a third of her departments budget after last years cuts and will likely lose more staff this year. Legislators in a number of states say theyd rather cut a bureaucrat in the capital before they cut a teacher in the classroom. You try to cut as far away from the kids first, said Alaska state Sen. Mike Dunleavy, a former educator who chairs the states finance committee. Competing Priorities The pressure on some state education agencies comes against a backdrop of overall recovery to K-12 aid nationally. According to the National Association of State Budget Officers, 41 states increased their K-12 funding in the 2016 fiscal year. The majority of school districts across the country this year also will see their budgets increase, said Michael Griffith, a senior policy analyst with the Education Commission of the States. Property-and sales-tax revenues have slowly climbed back to prerecession levels, and state legislatures have poured billions more dollars into their education budgets to boost teacher pay and shrink class sizes. If youre not in an oil state, its a pretty good year, Griffith said. But were not hearing that theres a lot of money going into new things. Theres a real feeling out there that there are holes that need to be filled from the last recession. And funding continues to be a heated issue in a number of states. Pennsylvanias Republican-dominated legislature was still at a standoff last week with Gov. Tom Wolf, a Democrat, over how to distribute billions of education dollars and pay down a ballooning pension fund. Kansas and Washington state are under strict court orders to provide their school districts millions more dollars in funding, but they continue to wrangle over solutions that would satisfy those orders. But in the ever-roiling debate over school funding, state education departments often are seen as an afterthought, which could have consequences as ESSA takes hold, said Patrick Murphy, a senior fellow and the director of research at the Public Policy Institute of California, a nonpartisan think tank, who has studied state education departments. Departments are traditionally charged with administering standardized tests, establishing and certifying curriculum, and making sure federal funds are being distributed appropriately. Their responsibilities will greatly expand under ESSA. Theyre part of the implementation arm, Murphy said. If you dont have any resources, you cant play that role. You will end up doing the minimum and just check the boxes. Continuing Threat In Louisiana, with legislators staring at a $943 million midyear budget deficit, a bill passed the House early this month to cut 85 percent of the education departments budget, a move that would effectively have shuttered the department. Senators voted down the measure. We wouldnt want to destroy the tool that we use to design our policy, said Louisiana state Sen. Eric LaFleur, a Democrat who chairs the Senates finance committee. A spokesman for the states education department said it received $7 million in midyear cuts, or 5 percent of its budget, which included funds for teacher training and research, as well as most of the departments travel budget. Gov. John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, proposed in a speech March 14 to limit use of the states voucher program, which the department oversees. Louisianas education commissioner soon will have to present to the legislature a plan for how to cut up to 65 percent of the departments budget for the 2016-17 fiscal year, though a series of tax increases could lessen that amount, said Jodi Mauroner, the education section director in the states legislative fiscal office. In Kansas, even though the legislature, at the urging of the state Supreme Court, has pumped millions more dollars into the education coffers over the years, the education departments staffing has hovered at around 200 people. Just because youre distributing more money, doesnt mean your department needs more money, said Dale Dennis, the Kansas departments deputy superintendent. In Oklahoma, the state department of education is combing through past legislation to see what education initiatives are mandated and which can be curtailed, said Matt Holder, the departments deputy superintendent of finance. Still, there can be a cost. Weve taken significant cuts that are limiting us on what we can and cant do, Holder said. The department faces a 10 percent cut this year. Were trying to deal with the here and now. In Alaska, where the state has a $4 billion deficit, the legislature is proposing to cut up to $10 million from the departments budget. Lawmakers are reluctant to raise taxes. The legislature has eliminated the states $2 million pre-K program, which served students in six of the largest districts. It also cut a teacher-mentoring program and several teacher-training programs. Further cuts are anticipated. This is akin to an airline pilot coming on the intercom and saying, At this rate of speed, and with the burning of the fuel, were not going to make it to the airport unless we toss out the luggage, Dunleavy said. Nobody is saying the luggage is not good stuff. Will student outcomes suffer? Id be surprised if it didnt suffer. Id be overjoyed if it didnt. Some Outliers Not all state education departments have suffered. In Utah, where lawmakers approved a budget that would add $95 million to their K-12 budget, the education department managed to snag money to hire auditors and update some of its computer systems. But most of the money was sent to districts that have dealt with overcrowding in recent years. We are not back to the same level we were prerecession by any means, said Scott Jones, the states deputy superintendent for operations. We dont see this kind of thing every year in Utah. Its critical for students making the transition from middle to high school to know that the adults around them understand and care about them, but high school is also the time when parent and teacher attention can become hard to come by. When you have 100 kids on your caseload, you have to deal with the bigger issues in class, and the kid who comes 30 seconds late to class every day can slip under your radar, said Josh Tripp, who was a math teacher in the nearly 400-student Bucksport High School four years ago when the school district, located on the states far-north coast, volunteered to participate in a $5 million development grant in the first round of the federal Investing in Innovation program. The grants purpose was to evaluate the Building Assets-Reducing Risks program, aimed at smoothing students transition from middle to high school through a system that enables teachers to direct more attention to students academic, emotional, and social needs. BARR is among a handful of programs that started out as promising ideas under i3s development grants but have built up enough evidence to scale up and move to a new grant to validate their model in other districts. That first development grant, which included four low-performing schools including Bucksport, built enough success to earn the fledgling program a $12 million, still ongoing, validation grant in 2013which includes the 1,100-student Noble High School several hours south in North Berwick and a pilot to potentially expand statewide in Maine. The grants enabled BARR to expand from a single high school in Minnesota to 45 urban, suburban, and rural schools, representing more than 17,000 students and more than 800 teachers in California, Maine, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, and South Dakota. For schools in Bucksport and North Berwick, being part of the federal research program has helped build connections, on their own campuses and with very different schools across the country. I thought we were really good at interpersonal relationships with our kids, Tripp said, but you dont know your kids until you are talking about them every week. A Promising Idea Angela Jerabek, the 9th grade guidance counselor at St. Louis Park High School, in Minnesota, developed BARR in 1998, after noticing that nearly half the freshmen at her school were failing at least one core academic coursea red flag for dropout risk. You had essentially a high school guidance counselor who wanted to solve the dropout problem in her school, and she has come up with a solution that has produced pretty incredible results, not just for her school and in Minnesota, but in districts in California and Maine, said Nadya Chinoy Dabby, the assistant deputy secretary for innovation and improvement at the U.S. Department of Education. Under the program, incoming freshmen are grouped into cohorts of about 30 who take the same core reading, math, and science classes together. They also receive a 30-minute lesson each week on social-emotional skillseverything from reading body language to working effectively in groups to coping with stresstaught on a rotating basis in a core class. Teachers meet every week for a check-in on every student in their cohort, evaluating not just academic but social and family needs and strengths. Its all work weve been doing for 20 years, but before BARR, there was no structure to it, no data collection, so you ended up talking about the same students over and over again, said Susan Savell, the director of the Center for Positive Youth Development in Portland, Maine, and a co-director of BARRs validation project here. St. Louis Park Highs course-failure rate fell from 47 percent to 28 percent in the first year of BARR and leveled off at less than 20 percent in the 15 years since. The program drew interest from other schools, but BARR was just implemented in one school in Minnesota for 14 years, said Maryann Corsello, a psychology professor emeritus at the University of New England in Biddeford, Maine, and one of the independent evaluators of BARRs i3 development and validation grants. She said i3 really gave us the opportunity to see, well, will it work outside of St. Louis Park High School, and will it work if we put a really rigorous scientific test to it? As part of BARRs 2010 development grant to Jerabeks i3 fiscal agent, Search Institute, the program had its first randomized controlled trial of 555 entering 9th graders in 2011-12 in one large suburban Los Angeles high school and two small rural high schools in Maine, including Bucksport. Students in each school were randomly assigned to participate in BARR or not. That initial evaluation, by Abt Associates and Corsello Consulting, found that students who participated in the program earned on average a half-credit more in core subject areas per year and had significantly higher grade point averages in core classes by the end of 9th grade, 2.91 versus 2.67 for students not in BARR. Participating students scores also grew significantly more from fall 2011 to spring 2012 on standardized math and reading tests. The difference meant that students who participated in BARR moved from an average 8th grade achievement level on fall math tests, for example, to a 10th grade level by spring, while nonparticipating students actually fell back to a 7th grade level in math performance on the standardized test. Initially lower-performing students made bigger improvements, researchers found, and in Los Angeles, Hispanic students in BARR closed their gap with non-Hispanic white students in math and reading and remained on par for at least the next year. After the first year of BARR, participating students in all schools were 10 percentage points less likely to fail a core academic class, and after three years, the share of students who failed at least one 9th grade course dropped from 42 percent to 18.5 percent. The ramp up for [BARRs teacher team meetings] is a lot of work, but you see the fruit of that work pretty quickly, said Brad Brubaker, a BARR teacher for more than 15 years at St. Louis Park High. He is now a trainer for other schools involved in the i3 grant. Team Effort The weekly student reviews are both the biggest lift and the core of what makes the program work, teachers at several sites agreed. On a Monday in December, the teacher team at Noble High School projects a large Excel spreadsheet on the chalkboard and takes each student, line by line. For every one, the teachers discuss academic strengths and weaknesses as well as social issues. These are not drawn-out discussions; they cover 45 students in 45 minutes, and the students flagged for serious concerns are discussed in more depth later that day, in a smaller group including the school psychologist and assistant principal. The sessions cover high-achieving students as well as struggling ones and focus on identifying the strengths students can build on, rather than just their problem areas. Grades are a good indicator of how a student is doing, but if you just look at grades, you miss a lot of things: social changes, friend-group changes, attendance, health, all of a sudden a student is getting too skinny ..., said Janice Eldridge, a social studies teacher who coordinates BARR at Noble High. Its like a puzzle, and everybody holds a piece of the puzzle, so when we are all together, we can see the whole kid. For the most part, teachers strategize on ways to help students weather the daily ups and downs of high school life; one boy cant stay after school for extra help because he has to babysit siblings, so a science teacher has told him to bring the younger children in to watch a movie while he is tutored. Brubaker said setting and monitoring weekly goals for each student makes the difference between gossip and real student support. Often, as a teacher, you talk about a kid, but you assume something will get done without having a specific plan, and nothing really changes, Brubaker said. The goals are kept clear and short-term: Turn in homework every day for a week, for example, or attend a skipped class every day. Dylan Soper, a senior from the first cohort of Bucksports BARR freshmen, said it can feel almost creepy that other teachers know when you miss an assignment in another class. ... but it helps, because all my teachers made time for me and were there to help me out. Teachers at Noble High have become better at noticing students falling behind in classes or stepping in to stop patterns of bullying, said Kelly Dumont, a 10th grader at Noble. Kids are really good at being mean without teachers noticing. Some teachers are good at picking up on it; some teachers are kind of oblivious, she said. Dumont also praised iTime, BARRs 30-minute weekly social-emotional learning lessons. Many of them include exercises designed to get students to learn more about each other and work together, and Dumont said the students who participated teased each other less: When we did the iTime, its like we said, Oh, youre a person, too. Moving Forward Under the i3 validation grant, which runs through 2018, BARR is conducting a randomized controlled trial of another 1,000 incoming freshmen, this time in one urban and one suburban high school in California and one rural high school, Noble High, in Maine. Preliminary data from the first year show that 61.5 percent of BARR students passed all their fall and spring courses in math, reading, and science, compared with only 46.9 percent of nonparticipating students. Student and teacher surveys also found that students in BARR were significantly more likely to report feeling they had supportive relationships with teachers in their school, and teachers were significantly more likely to report collaborating with their colleagues and using data to guide instruction. Corsello, the University of New England professor emeritus, and other BARR program officials and evaluators all suggested that if those initial results continue, BARR will look to scale up in an even-larger grant as part of the new version of i3 under the Every Student Succeeds Act. Noble Middle School is not part of BARRs validation grant, but Principal Mike Roberts was persuaded to adapt it for middle school. Its one of the first times in education Ive really seen an experiment taking place in a school and the results have been pretty impressive, Roberts said. Our attendance is better, the test results are better, the discipline is much better. Last year, students in the BARR program had 400 total absences; those not in the program had 800. This doesnt feel like the next academic fadit feels like this is something Noble does, who we are. Tripp, one of Bucksport High Schools first BARR teachers, feels the same. He became principal of Bucksport Middle School this year and has started rolling out BARR there, too. Educational technology can help students develop important social and emotional skills and character traits, but the market for such tools is currently underdeveloped, concludes a new report from the World Economic Forum and the Boston Consulting Group. The report, titled New Vision for Education: Fostering Social and Emotional Learning Through Technology, identifies two main areas for growth: Products that target core academic subjects, which the groups contend can do a better job of incorporating features that support development of everything from communication skills to cultural awareness, and newer technologies, such as wearable devices and virtual reality systems, which the groups believe warrant additional investment. Ed-tech industry leaders agreed that social-emotional learning represents a potential growth market, fueled in part by recent attention from the federal government. The National Education Technology Plan places a heavy emphasis on developing non-cognitive competencies"such as the ability to interact well with peers, resolve disputes, and persist through challenging problemsthrough digital games and other classroom technologies. Emerging Marketplace Following are examples of education technology products and services related to social-emotional learning: Breathe, Think, Do With Sesame: An app in which young children can interact with familiar Sesame Street characters (through animated video clips, by tapping on the creatures to help them breathe, and by selecting coping strategies and watching the outcomes) to deal with stressful situations. RippleEffects: A whole-spectrum learning system that includes multimedia content and assessment tools. The purpose is to introduce students to real-life scenarios related to difficult social and emotional situations, then provide training and support to help them learn how to navigate such situations in their own lives. Scholar: A web-based social learning platform that is meant to promote student writing by providing lots of opportunities for peer-to-peer interaction and collaboration, a constant stream of informal feedback, and multimedia-creation tools to encourage student engagement and creativity. Social Express: A series of online, animated, interactive lessons in which students can practice navigating real-life social interactions, with the goal of developing such skills as conflict resolution and group participation. ZooU: A digital game intended to assess elementary students social-emotional skills by having them participate in a variety of simulated social situations and interactive virtual activities. Our expectation of what schools are trying to accomplish is expanding, said Joseph South, the director of the Office of Educational Technology at the U.S. Department of Education. Technology can be a tool for changing students from consumers to creators of information, and that role puts them in a position where they can start to develop nonacademic skills they will need to succeed in college, careers, and life. Defining the Concept The general principle behind social-emotional learning is that students will benefit from developing the ability to understand and regulate their own emotions, form strong and supportive relationships, solve problems, and set and achieve goals. Some research has shown that students perform better academically and have improved life outcomes when they receive explicit instruction around these areas. But defining exactly what social-emotional learning means can be tricky. Many K-12 educators and policymakers follow the model outlined by the nonprofit Collaborative for Academic, Social, and Emotional Learning, which includes five core competencies:" self-management, self-awareness, responsible decision making, relationship skills, and social awareness. For many in the field, though, the notion of social-emotional learning overlaps with such ideas as noncognitive skills and character development. And the World Economic Forum and the Boston Consulting Group put their own twist on the subject, describing social-emotional learning as covering a set of 10 competencies and character traits. The groups believe that the approach is most effective when introduced via direct instruction in the preschool years, and when embedded through schools core curricula in the elementary and secondary years. Technology can help, the groups write, because it can personalize learning, engage the disengaged, complement what happens in the classroom, extend education outside the classroom, and provide access to learning to students. Some efforts have been made to bring the various notions together, and many districts are trying to incorporate some version of the concepts into their curricula and school-improvement strategies. Shortage of Products Confusion still abounds, though: The World Economic Forum and the Boston Consulting Group surveyed 2,000 parents and educators in five countries (China, Kenya, South Korea, the United Kingdom, and the United States) and found that social-emotional learning is widely recognized, but poorly understood. Parents and educators across the world primarily see [social-emotional learning] as a means of achieving better classroom discipline today, not as a way to ensure better academic and economic outcomes over the long term, the groups report reads. That lack of understanding is one reason why technology tools related to social-emotional learning have been slow to take off, the groups contend. Another challenge is that K-12 school systems dont generally have dedicated revenue streams that can be tapped to purchase social-emotional learning products, said Karen Billings, the vice president of the education technology network for the Software & Information Industry Association, a Washington trade group. Its a chicken-and-egg problem, Billings said. If a lot of companies were coming to schools and saying weve got these tools to help you, you might see [more demand.] But if companies arent directly hearing about that demand, they probably arent developing those tools. And a third barrier is a shortage of venture capital. According to the World Economic Forum and the Boston Consulting Group, just 5 percent of investment funds made available to the ed-tech sector between 2011 and 2015 went to companies that include social-emotional learning elements in their products. The area that is most immediately ripe for growth, the groups believe, is in adding new SEL- focused features into existing tools. Their report includes a list of 55 such features, including strategies for structuring student interactions, approaches for encouraging students to adopt different perspectives, and strategies that help students develop grit. Futuristic technologies such as wearable devices that track students emotional states and physiological reactions to stress, for example, or virtual reality systems that can simulate physical environments and foster greater self-awareness and spur creativity, are also important for expanding the realm of the possible, the report says. In both cases, Billings said, theres an opportunity for ed-tech companies. It will be a relatively small market for a while, Billings said. But the companies acting more quickly are probably going to be the ones who are going to get the market share. For some parents and educators, though, the notion that children will learn about emotions and social skills from technology is counterintuitive, if not anathema. Concerns about screen time, data privacy, and a focus on technology instead of smaller class sizes and more human interaction are common. Skepticism About Digital Tools South, of the U.S. Education Department, said that perspective is understandable, particularly in response to the theres an app for that approach to addressing social-emotional learning. There is no doubt in my mind if you put a kid in the corner with a screen, its probably going to diminish their social-emotional IQ, he said. But ed tech can also be a way for students to access peers, experiences, experts, and audiences they couldnt otherwise access. When technology is a means of connecting students to larger communities, it increases the potential for interactions that will develop the skills were looking for. Of particular interest, South said, are virtual environments (including simulations and digital role-playing games) that allow students to experiment, fail, and try again in a low-stakes environment. Also encouraging, he said, are platforms and tools that allow students to communicate, write collaboratively, and work together on projects. The World Economic Forum-Boston Consulting Group report suggests that policymakers, investors, researchers, educators, and parents all play a role in promoting social-emotional learning. Policymakers, in particular, must stand at the forefront of setting the agenda for policy change, prioritizing efforts that foster SEL and related assessments and measurements in education, as well as providing funding and other resources for the research and adoption of SEL and related ed tech, the groups write. Their report is the second in a series on ways to address the 21st century skills gap through technology. IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, the European Investment Bank (EIB) and Ecobank Transnational Incorporated (ETI), parent company of the Ecobank Group and leading pan-African full-service banking group, today signed a landmark risk-sharing agreement that will help fill the gap in financing for small and medium sized enterprises in some of Sub-Saharan Africas poorest and most fragile countries. Under the agreement, EIB, which is already a key partner in IFCs Global SME Finance Facility, will join IFCs existing risk-sharing facility with ETI. The two institutions launched that facility in May 2015. EIB and IFC will share 25 percent of the risk in the $110 million facility, alongside ETI. The facility is designed to overcome the challenges of lending to smaller businesses which have a higher risk profile. Speaking at the sidelines of 2016 Africa CEO Forum in Abidjan, IFCs Director for Western and Central Africa Vera Songwe said SMEs in Africa face a huge funding gap, and partnerships like this between IFC, EIB and ETI are critical to helping these SMEs and economies to grow and create jobs. By leveraging IFCs wide network of partners, the unique structure of the Global SME Finance Facility is able to target the finance gap more effectively than a single IFI, DFI or donor can on its own. Ambroise Fayolle, Vice President, EIB, said As the EU bank, the European Investment Bank is strongly committed to supporting private sector investment in Africa. The new agreement signed today will directly benefit SMEs across Sub-Saharan Africa, including in Cote dIvoire, fostering sustainable development and job creation. Every year, the European Investment Bank invests Euro 2.5 billions in Africa to enhance access to finance for SMEs and micro-enterprises, to develop social and much needed economic infrastructures, and to promote climate action Ade Ayeyemi, Group Chief Executive Officer of Ecobank, said This agreement buttresses our continued commitment at Ecobank to supporting small and medium scale enterprises in Africa. Their financing and growth is an important part of the development of the private sector in Africa and the overall growth of our economies. The risk-sharing facility agreement signed today will see IFC, EIB and EIB collaborate in countries where more than 50 percent of the population live in poverty, unemployment is high and infrastructure is poor, which exacerbat the operating conditions for smaller businesses. The facility will target SMEs in Burundi, Chad, Cote dIvoire, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Guinea, Mali and Togo. IFC and Ecobank enjoy a long-standing collaboration dating back to 1993. ETIs unparalleled network across Africa has helped extend financial access in difficult environments at a scale that few other IFC-partner financial institutions can match. The EIB is the long-term lending arm of the EU and a key IFC partner. IFC and EIB co-invest in many projects around the world and developed a particularly strong partnership during the 2008 financial crisis. EIB contributed $100 million to the Global SME Finance Facility in 2014, with the particular objective of targeting SMEs in Africa. The Global SME Finance Facility is a blended finance vehicle which integrates both investment and advisory services to help banks reach more SMEs, launched in April 2012 in response to a call from the G-20 to bridge the trillion dollar SME financing gap. The Facility is truly unique as it mobilizes funding from donors, international finance institutions and the private sector, to help banks de-risk and scale up SME lending. The facility targets SMEs that dont have access to finance, including women-owned SMEs, agriculture and climate-related businesses and those in fragile states. The facility has a wide geographic focus covering all IDA countries, and has already committed to 92 projects in 27 countries, 15 of which are classified as fragile and conflict affected states. By the end of December 2015, the facility had already made more than 100,000 SME loans, worth a total of $6,4 billion. Its unique structure has allowed it to make some life-changing investments. The United Kingdoms Department for International Development (DFID) was the facilitys first partner, with a $120 million contribution to both advisory services and blended finance. Since then, IFC has committed $595 million to projects under the Facility, up from its original commitment of $200 million. 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. 08:11, 22 OCT 2022 Re: Double bombing at Brussels airport The crux of the problem lays in widening gap between rich and poor, immigrant families not well integrated into societies and seeking alternative to prove themselves. This creates, ghettos, townships, slums, factions and vulnerable individuals easily lured to find their role and meaning of life. More effort should be taken by societies to try integrate them and educate them better, at the same time fight the outside influence. Diplomacy, negotiations and other means to strike balance and arrive at more common solution for all. Today's attack is not the first one and not the last one. It leaves us handful of more work on our part and call for more action to prevent the similar. If "we" let it be ignored by saying it's not my problem or it doesn't concern me, they came here, settled and it's their destiny. That simply doesn't work. Perhaps Merkel had a good point and saw it coming, something special in the long shot, beyond bureaucratic politicians comprehension, that you can offer to prevent from becoming a stray human being and spare masses. New world order, globalization and new movements. Just saying ... I think that this poster summed it up well in Double bombing at Brussels airport The crux of the problem lays in widening gap between rich and poor, immigrant families not well integrated into societies and seeking alternative to prove themselves. This creates, ghettos, townships, slums, factions and vulnerable individuals easily lured to find their role and meaning of life. More effort should be taken by societies to try integrate them and educate them better, at the same time fight the outside influence. Diplomacy, negotiations and other means to strike balance and arrive at more common solution for all.Today's attack is not the first one and not the last one. It leaves us handful of more work on our part and call for more action to prevent the similar. If "we" let it be ignored by saying it's not my problem or it doesn't concern me, they came here, settled and it's their destiny. That simply doesn't work. Perhaps Merkel had a good point and saw it coming, something special in the long shot, beyond bureaucratic politicians comprehension, that you can offer to prevent from becoming a stray human being and spare masses. New world order, globalization and new movements. Just saying ... That's what we do to help English speaking expats community in Switzerland: General Information About Swiss Tennis Tennis Lessons Summer Winter Seasons Our charity organization to help unprivileged kids to realize their dreams: FMTF Supports Tennis For Children in Southern Africa __________________ Last edited by jacek; 22.03.2016 at 16:04 . Re: Double bombing at Brussels airport Quote: esto So you are saying the jihadist's terror attacks that are becoming commonplace in Europe is the fault of the European society? Well, it does take Saudi Money to build the Mosques and pay the radical Imams... but yes, failed immigration policies and the European societies have prepared the ground for what we see there. Ever been to Molenbeek? Me neither. But I have lived in the same sort of "that" part of a German city before. For fourty years have European societies accepted "ghettos" - parts of cities that are not multicultural, but inhabited by ONE immigrant culture. That has created parallel societies in many cities and well, they are convenient, aren't they? You don't have to see "those" people daily as they stick to their own and so do you... As a result do the citizens living there not see themselves as Belgian first, but will forever stay in their minority group and thing that way. That's the number one reason why they won't rat out a fellow "countryman" (even though they lived in Belgium forever). Want an example how to do things differently? I know I brought up Singapore far too many times, but since I lived there was I quite interested in some of the radically different approaches they came up with: Singapore is a non-Muslim country surrounded by Muslims. Radicals in Indonesia and elsewhere have it high on their map as a target... but the 10-15% of Muslim population would never support the radicals the way they do in Molenbeek. One of the differences is a very effective way to enforce diversity: Most Singaporeans live in flats that are build and supported with tax money. Those buildings come with a set of rules. One of those rules is a certain ethnic mix in the ownership - its impossible to have an entire suburb full of Muslims and the next full of Chinese... even if both groups would want it. So the kids cannot grow up in some sort of bubble, but have to experience that the neighbours might be a bit different, but not all that evil. It's impossible to enforce this on private property, but as far as I know is both Molenbeek as well as pretty much all other European hotspots mostly council flats anyway - surely could the local governments do an inconvenient but important job to mix people a bit better? That will initially cause a lot of small every day problems (which is the reason it isn't done today) but in the long run makes sure that everyone is better integrated and less likely radical... btw does it mean that both the young Muslim wont be radicalized as well as the young poor European living in the council flat next door. It is not a coincidence that neo nazis mostly come from places with little to no immigration... Well, it does take Saudi Money to build the Mosques and pay the radical Imams... but yes, failed immigration policies and the European societies have prepared the ground for what we see there. Ever been to Molenbeek? Me neither. But I have lived in the same sort of "that" part of a German city before. For fourty years have European societies accepted "ghettos" - parts of cities that are not multicultural, but inhabited by ONE immigrant culture. That has created parallel societies in many cities and well, they are convenient, aren't they? You don't have to see "those" people daily as they stick to their own and so do you... As a result do the citizens living there not see themselves as Belgian first, but will forever stay in their minority group and thing that way. That's the number one reason why they won't rat out a fellow "countryman" (even though they lived in Belgium forever).Want an example how to do things differently? I know I brought up Singapore far too many times, but since I lived there was I quite interested in some of the radically different approaches they came up with: Singapore is a non-Muslim country surrounded by Muslims. Radicals in Indonesia and elsewhere have it high on their map as a target... but the 10-15% of Muslim population would never support the radicals the way they do in Molenbeek. One of the differences is a very effective way to enforce diversity: Most Singaporeans live in flats that are build and supported with tax money. Those buildings come with a set of rules. One of those rules is a certain ethnic mix in the ownership - its impossible to have an entire suburb full of Muslims and the next full of Chinese... even if both groups would want it. So the kids cannot grow up in some sort of bubble, but have to experience that the neighbours might be a bit different, but not all that evil. It's impossible to enforce this on private property, but as far as I know is both Molenbeek as well as pretty much all other European hotspots mostly council flats anyway - surely could the local governments do an inconvenient but important job to mix people a bit better? That will initially cause a lot of small every day problems (which is the reason it isn't done today) but in the long run makes sure that everyone is better integrated and less likely radical... btw does it mean that both the young Muslim wont be radicalized as well as the young poor European living in the council flat next door. It is not a coincidence that neo nazis mostly come from places with little to no immigration... Well, it does take Saudi Money to build the Mosques and pay the radical Imams... but yes, failed immigration policies and the European societies have prepared the ground for what we see there. Ever been to Molenbeek? Me neither. But I have lived in the same sort of "that" part of a German city before. For fourty years have European societies accepted "ghettos" - parts of cities that are not multicultural, but inhabited by ONE immigrant culture. That has created parallel societies in many cities and well, they are convenient, aren't they? You don't have to see "those" people daily as they stick to their own and so do you... As a result do the citizens living there not see themselves as Belgian first, but will forever stay in their minority group and thing that way. That's the number one reason why they won't rat out a fellow "countryman" (even though they lived in Belgium forever). Want an example how to do things differently? I know I brought up Singapore far too many times, but since I lived there was I quite interested in some of the radically different approaches they came up with: Singapore is a non-Muslim country surrounded by Muslims. Radicals in Indonesia and elsewhere have it high on their map as a target... but the 10-15% of Muslim population would never support the radicals the way they do in Molenbeek. One of the differences is a very effective way to enforce diversity: Most Singaporeans live in flats that are build and supported with tax money. Those buildings come with a set of rules. One of those rules is a certain ethnic mix in the ownership - its impossible to have an entire suburb full of Muslims and the next full of Chinese... even if both groups would want it. So the kids cannot grow up in some sort of bubble, but have to experience that the neighbours might be a bit different, but not all that evil. It's impossible to enforce this on private property, but as far as I know is both Molenbeek as well as pretty much all other European hotspots mostly council flats anyway - surely could the local governments do an inconvenient but important job to mix people a bit better? That will initially cause a lot of small every day problems (which is the reason it isn't done today) but in the long run makes sure that everyone is better integrated and less likely radical... btw does it mean that both the young Muslim wont be radicalized as well as the young poor European living in the council flat next door. It is not a coincidence that neo nazis mostly come from places with little to no immigration... Mail forwarding from neighboring & CH, parcel forwarding from Germany, bonus: US First, the parcel forwarding address: I see many of you use a Lieferadresse or Grenzpaket address (is this the right term, the latter?) to drive across the German border and get your stuff from Germany, where life is cheaper. There's a whole industry thriving north of the Swiss border specializing in these services. But some of you may not live close to the German border, may be closer to the Italian or French borders, but still, German shops are generally the cheapest, so instead of driving, you may opt for forwarding. Or, you are living anywhere or you are a digital nomad and wants goods like high fashion shoes delivered from fashion capital Germany. Yes, that's me. Shipping charges of these package forwarders vary greatly, so I'm looking for one which has in general cheap prices to anywhere. Yes, to anywhere, because the destination can vary. Besides cheap prices, service should not suck, either. In fact, with US shipping addresses, you can read many horror stories across the net. Bonus! my US shipping address recommendations: BedaBox and Stackry. Seriously, check them out on the Better Business Bureau site, and also on SiteJabber.com and compare them to the competition. I mention them here because searching for them on the forum gave no results. I wonder, is there a SiteJabber or Trustpilot-like site for reviews for package forwarders based in Germany? Otherwise, it's a hit and miss. Mail forwarding: it does not have to be in Germany (but somewhere near the heart of Europe), but for economies of scale, it very well might be there: as it has the biggest supply of these forwarders. The service can be even in Switzerland, though I'm not sure if Swiss people ever expatriate and use such services to receive mail, cheese, chocolate and bank statements from home. I'm especially looking for a service which does not prohibit in its terms to receive mail from banks, including cards. (Swiss Post Box does not prohibit it.) If you are a digital nomad, sometimes its best to receive your cards in this box, not to a hut in Indonesia with no reliable postal service. Of course, I'm not looking for an address which looks like a real, home address, to make the bank think I'm living there, an address with a box number is perfectly fine. Banks allow you to give them separate residential and mailing addresses and I'm looking for one to fill the latter category. Still many package forwarders prohibit letters from banks and cards, I don't know why. Paranoia? Then, I don't want to deal with such businesses. I searched the forum and will list here a few of my findings (these would be OK for both mail and package): The price show forwarding a single piece of standard mail, add + postage to every listing. I haven't checked their example prices for packages to various destinations, nor their policy on mail from banks with cards. I'm asking for your experience, but of course, not only with the above, but any service. As I'm looking for a service or two to deal with remotely, I care more about their web presence, as compared to their warehouse looks nice, if I were to pick up my stuff in person. Some services offer you the possibility to log in to their site and do your stuff there, some not, for example. Here I'm asking about private business recommendations, because it might be worse to deal with a government-run postal service - but is it really worse? The Swiss Post Box charges CHF5+postage for mail forwarding, which is quite steep for the free to EUR1.5+postage offered by most above forwarders. I would exclude two other options as well: Dropscan (the only option for payment is a German direct deposit, which gives you less freedom than paying with any card) and ClevverMail (though give you an address without a box number, they ask 2 forms of ID in exchange! no thanks, I somehow don't feel comfortable with them). Both also specialize in mail scanning, have higher prices for forwarding than the forwarders. The two addresses (mail and package) can be one and the same, of course! (But it helps a bit if the mailing address looks like a bit more 'normal,' not exactly like a warehouse address.) I'm looking for one or two addresses, with the following parameters:: I see many of you use a Lieferadresse or Grenzpaket address (is this the right term, the latter?) to drive across the German border and get your stuff from Germany, where life is cheaper. There's a whole industry thriving north of the Swiss border specializing in these services. But some of you may not live close to the German border, may be closer to the Italian or French borders, but still, German shops are generally the cheapest, so instead of driving, you may opt for forwarding. Or, you are living anywhere or you are a digital nomad and wants goods like high fashion shoes delivered from fashion capital Germany. Yes, that's me. Shipping charges of these package forwarders vary greatly, so I'm looking for one which has in general cheap prices to anywhere. Yes, to anywhere, because the destination can vary. Besides cheap prices, service should not suck, either. In fact, with US shipping addresses, you can read many horror stories across the net.BedaBox and Stackry.Seriously, check them out on the Better Business Bureau site, and also on SiteJabber.com and compare them to the competition. I mention them here because searching for them on the forum gave no results.I wonder, is there a SiteJabber or Trustpilot-like site for reviews for package forwarders based in Germany? Otherwise, it's a hit and miss.it does not have to be in Germany (but somewhere near the heart of Europe), but for economies of scale, it very well might be there: as it has the biggest supply of these forwarders. The service can be even in Switzerland, though I'm not sure if Swiss people ever expatriate and use such services to receive mail, cheese, chocolate and bank statements from home.I'm especially looking for a service which does not prohibit in its terms to receive mail from banks, including cards. (Swiss Post Box does not prohibit it.) If you are a digital nomad, sometimes its best to receive your cards in this box, not to a hut in Indonesia with no reliable postal service. Of course, I'm not looking for an address which looks like a real, home address, to make the bank think I'm living there, an address with a box number is perfectly fine. Banks allow you to give them separate residential and mailing addresses and I'm looking for one to fill the latter category. Still many package forwarders prohibit letters from banks and cards, I don't know why. Paranoia? Then, I don't want to deal with such businesses.I searched the forum and will list here a few of my findings (these would be OK for both mail and package): https://www.deutsche-lieferadresse.com/ - From EUR0.99 http://www.europaketshop.ch/ - Free http://www.grenzpaket.ch/de/ - CHF, EUR1 http://www.las-burg.de/ - EUR1.50 http://www.lieferadresse-konstanz.de/ - EUR1.50 http://www.swiss-paket.de/ - Free https://www.worldpaketshop.ch/ - FreeThe price show forwarding a single piece of standard mail, add + postage to every listing. I haven't checked their example prices for packages to various destinations, nor their policy on mail from banks with cards. I'm asking for your experience, but of course, not only with the above, but any service.As I'm looking for a service or two to deal with remotely, I care more about their web presence, as compared to their warehouse looks nice, if I were to pick up my stuff in person. Some services offer you the possibility to log in to their site and do your stuff there, some not, for example.Here I'm asking about private business recommendations, because it might be worse to deal with a government-run postal service - but is it really worse? The Swiss Post Box charges CHF5+postage for mail forwarding, which is quite steep for the free to EUR1.5+postage offered by most above forwarders.I would exclude two other options as well: Dropscan (the only option for payment is a German direct deposit, which gives you less freedom than paying with any card) and ClevverMail (though give you an address without a box number, they ask 2 forms of ID in exchange! no thanks, I somehow don't feel comfortable with them). Both also specialize in mail scanning, have higher prices for forwarding than the forwarders.The two addresses (mail and package) can be one and the same, of course! (But it helps a bit if the mailing address looks like a bit more 'normal,' not exactly like a warehouse address.) Re: Any opinions on soundbars? Technology changes so fast with these things so bumping this thread. I currently have a Samsung 5.1 HTS with wireless rears, hooked up to a bluray and their is nothing really wrong with the sound.... but. All our media is now digital and stored on RAID, we have a full LAN and media accessed via Apple TV, so we are thinking of replacing the Samsung HTS with a sound bar for less clutter. We aren't big audio buffs, so movies and especially voice (I'm hearing impaired) is the biggest thing, so I guess: - good sound quality and a reasonable attempt at surround sound - good sound adjustment to cater for enhanced speech - simple operation - enough ports to connect TV, STB from WWZ, ATV and a a spare for a console I haven't mentioned budget as I haven't though of one, and a bar that ticks the boxes we want is rather more important, but guess these thing go from 'that seems ok' to 'HOW MUCH' Any current recommendations from the buff's who know more about these things than me would be greatly appreciated. __________________ How do you know if a Frenchman has been in your garden.... your rubbish is gone, your dog is pregnant.... but at l east your cabbages are pest free What could have been a tense and weird moment turned into something heartwarming for two sets of strangers in Florida over the weekend. Lindsey and Mark Lashley of Tallahassee, Florida, were having a baby March 19, and a group text was sent to let their loved ones know of the exciting developmentbut one of the numbers involved in the chat was that of 19-year-old Dennis Williams, who had not previously met the couple. "We are at the hospital. Having a baby today! She has dilated to between 5-6," the initial text read. Williams, realizing the mistake quickly responded with a congratulatory message, but informed the sender that they had the wrong number. However, the message seemed to go unheeded, and he continued to receive updates about the mystery child's birth. He and his brother, Deorick, then received a photo of the newborn, which led them to decide they too would arrive at the hospital to get a photo with the new baby and to congratulate the couple on their new addition with gifts, something the couple encouraged in the text exchange. "Well I don't know y'all but me and the boys will be thru to take picture with the baby," Williams responded. And when he went to confirm which hospital, he was also given the couple's room number, so he and his brother could indeed bring the gifts they had purchased for the perfect strangers. "130 come on and see us," the couple wrote. And sure enough, the brothers kept their word and arrived at the hospital, posing for a photo with the new parents, which was then shared on social media with a heartwarming message that has since gone viral. "I accidentally text a message about Mark and Lindsey having a baby to a number I had in my phone for someone else which now belongs to Mr. Dennis Williams and he and his brother came by to visit us and brought the baby a gift! What a blessing these two guys were to our family. They were so sweet and kind to do this! You 2 are great guys and thank you for giving to someone you didn't know! Many blessings I pray for you. I think his brother was Derrius Williams. Cason Knox, Lindsey and Mark Lashley thanks you...If we all only had this kind of heart," the post read. It was later shared on Deorick's Facebook page as well. Well, it looks like Easter came a little early in the Knowles-Carter house. Yesterday was the first day of Spring (if you couldn't tell), and to celebrate, Bey and 4-year-old Blue Ivy decided to have a tea party, inviting aunt Solange Knowles to come join them. We know all this because Beyonce posted pics from the festivities to her website...and it seems like mama had a little fun with Photoshop before she hit upload, adding in plenty of colorful backgrounds, bunnies, rabbit ears, and floral head gear to the already adorable photos. Check out the pics for yourself: (Photo : Beyonce.com) (Photo : Beyonce.com) (Photo : Beyonce.com) (Photo : Beyonce.com) This isn't the first time that Queen Bee has posted pics of her and Blue Ivy spending quality mother-daughter time together. Last week she posted a picture on Instagram of the toddler playing with her makeup. A photo posted by Beyonce (@beyonce) on Mar 9, 2016 at 12:39pm PST And last month she shared an image of the two checking out the football field together just before the Super Bowl (for which Beyonce performed during the half-time show with Coldplay and Bruno Mars). It's a safe bet to say that in the lead up to the 2016 presidential election, nothing is surprising anymore. With Donald Trump successfully hijacking the Republican nomination race and Hillary Clinton having to fight to connect with younger voters, you'd think every kind of vitriol and political feuding would be old hat by now. But then again, we still have to get into OPPOSING political parties duking it out. And now we've got a preview bout before the big showdown leading to the general election. Because notorious consumer advocate and political liberal scion Elizabeth Warren (the current Senior Senator from Massachusetts) is stepping up to Trump and he's starting to fire back. On Monday, Warren posted an epic take down of the real estate mogul-celebrity candidate, aimed directly at his self-proclaimed success as a business man. Her opening line to the post? "Lets be honest Donald Trump is a loser." Ouch. The 290+ word rant goes on to detail how Trump's failings fuel his confrontational style, highlight just how important this election is, warn that "many of historys worst authoritarians started out as losers," calls Trump "a serious threat," and ends with a vow "to make sure he ends this campaign every bit the loser that he started it." You can read the whole thing below: Lets be honest Donald Trump is a loser. Count all his failed businesses. See how he kept his fathers empire afloat... Posted by Elizabeth Warren on Monday, March 21, 2016 Warren also tweeted out a few choice lines from her Facebook post. .@RealDonaldTrump stands ready to tear apart an America that was built on values like decency, community, and concern for our neighbors. Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) March 21, 2016 Many of historys worst authoritarians started out as losers and @realDonaldTrump is a serious threat. Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) March 21, 2016 The way I see it, its our job to make sure @realDonaldTrump ends this campaign every bit the loser that he started it. Elizabeth Warren (@elizabethforma) March 21, 2016 The move is actually just the latest shot fired by Warren aimed at Trump. Last week she gave an interview in which she blamed Trump for the violence at his rallies and published a Facebook post saying the leading GOP candidate "is a bigger, uglier threat every day that goes by." There's a history of demagogues calling those they disagree with "terrorists" and using that as justification for... Posted by Elizabeth Warren on Monday, March 14, 2016 For his part, Trump's response to Warren is pretty lackluster compared to his reprisal to other critics, especially those that were women. He didn't criticize Warren's looks or bring up menstruation. Instead, in an interview with the New York Times' Maureen Dowd over the weekend, when asked about Warren, he said that I think its wonderful because the Indians can now partake in the future of the country. Shes got about as much Indian blood as I have. Her whole life was based on a fraud. She got into Harvard and all that because she said she was a minority. And then in a press conference on Monday, responded to questions about Warren with "Who is that, the Indian? You mean the Indian? If you're confused, here's the backstory that Trump is referencing: When Warren was first running for the Senate back in 2012, her opponent Scott Brown dug up some recorded claims by Warren that she was part Native American. Warren (who's originally from Oklahoma) cited what she was taught was her own family history (you know, by her family), even though later genealogical research failed to collaborate the claim. Brown's campaign tried to make it seem like Warren used the claim for preference status, but The Boston Globe (among others) found that Warren didn't try cite ANY Native American heritage on her college and law school applications (she listed her race "white") and it reportedly wasn't considered when she was hired to teach at Harvard Law (contrary to Trump's implied statement, Warren never attended Harvard- her law degree is from Rutgers). Warren and Trump trading barbs is kind of a big deal. Not just because Trump has an ever-growing shot at the Republican nomination, but because Warren's name has been touted by election watchers as a possible Vice President nominee. So the Senator's warnings about Trump's authoritarian rise may well be a solid test balloon of how the Democrats will deal with Trump if he makes it to the general election. Hopefully Trump will come up with some better zingers by then. In the meantime, get the popcorn ready. This is only going to get uglier. More states are voting today, a.k.a. Western Tuesday, in presidential primaries and caucuses - find out how to watch live results online as they come in tonight. Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders are facing off in three contests today, with Arizona, Idaho and Utah all voting. Clinton is favored to win in Arizona while Sanders is being predicted to win Utah. Idaho is currently up in the air. On the Republican side, Ted Cruz, John Kasich and Donald Trump will compete in three contests as well: American Samoa, Arizona and Utah. Trump is currently expected to win in Arizona while Cruz is likely headed for victory in Utah. American Samoa's results remain to be seen. Heading into the primaries, Clinton and Trump are the current delegate leaders. It remains to be seen if Sanders, Cruz or Kasich will make sizable dents in either of their respective frontrunners' leads. It will also be interesting to see if the recent Brussels attacks will have major impact on either side of the race, as far as voting. You should expect coverage to begin when the Democratic caucus in Idaho ends at 9 p.m. ET. Polls will close gradually among other states as the night goes on. Watch Western Tuesday Results Live Online Or Via Mobile Devices As usual, all three major cable news networks will devote coverage to the primary results. CNN, Fox News and MSNBC are set to cover the primaries and caucuses for Western Tuesday. To watch CNN live, go to their site here. To watch Fox News live, go to their site here. To watch MSNBC live, go to their site here. All three are also able to stream on mobile devices. Of course, if you don't care about pundit coverage, all three sites will be giving live updates of the results, which you can find at CNN.com, FoxNews.com and MSNBC.com. Keep Up With Western Tuesday Results Via Social Media If you wish to live tweet results, simply use hashtag #WesternTuesday on Twitter. By this point, we've probably seen every form of "Never Trump" activism against the Donald and his supporters. But now, someone is actually taking on the leading GOP candidate and his fervent supports with his most famous assocation: real estate. Meet Mark Holmes, a resident and home owner of Grand Junction, Colorado. Holmes is currently looking for a tenant to take over the two-bedroom apartment that's part of his house. But he's refusing to rent to anyone that's planning on voting for the mogul/celebrity's presidential campaign. "If voting for Donald Trump, do not call," reads the ad placed by Holmes (but don't worry, dog are cool as long as they "have references as good as yours."). I dont want anybody that even thinks that Donald Trump can be a good president to live in my home," Holmes told The Daily Sentinel, when they interviewed him about the ad. And if you're thinking that political restriction like that for a tenant violates any sort of housing law, it doesn't. The Daily Sentinel checked with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, a spokesman for which said the ad "has nothing to do with the Fair Housing Act. Although, they did note the ad "seems to be a first, and its original. For Holmes, a man with a long history of activism that runs all the way back to the Vietnam war, the political demonstrating won't end just whoever signs a lease with him. He's looking to recruit like-minded folks willing to "get their fingernails dirty" and take on causes (not just Trump). I want to pick people who dont mind spending a night in jail during a Gandhi-type of protest, he told The Daily Sentinel. We hope someone in his new group suggests taking landlords that demand references for dogs. That's just ridiculous. The Hawaiian Islands have long been thought to support just one endemic land mammal in the archipelago's brief geologic history, the Hawaiian hoary bat. But new fossil evidence indicates that a second, very different species of bat lived alongside the hoary bat for thousands of years before going extinct shortly after humans arrived on the islands. The research, published this week in the journal American Museum Novitates, describes the mysterious bat, named Synemporion keana, whose remains were first discovered in a lava tube more than 30 years ago. "The Hawaiian Islands are a long way from anywhere, and as a result, they have a very unique fauna--its native animals apparently got there originally by flying or swimming," said Nancy Simmons, a co-author on the paper and curator-in-charge of the American Museum of Natural History's Department of Mammalogy. "Besides the animals that humans have introduced to the islands, like rats and pigs, the only mammals that we've known to be native to Hawaii are a monk seal, which is primarily aquatic, and the hoary bat. So finding that there actually was a different bat--a second native land mammal for the islands--living there for such a long period of time was quite a surprise." Co-author Francis Howarth, an entomologist at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu, was investigating lava tubes in Maui in 1981 when he discovered skeletal remains of the bat. He took the fossils to his colleague Alan Ziegler, a mammalogist at the Bishop Museum, and later they and colleagues found remains on four other islands: Hawaii, Kauai, Molokai, and Oahu. "The initial specimens included skeletons embedded in crystals on the lava tube wall and thus were likely very old," Howarth said. "Ziegler eagerly guided me through the bat collection at the Bishop Museum to identify the bat and show me features to look for in order to find additional material for study." Ziegler immediately recognized that the small bat was very different from anything else he had seen and started the long process of investigating where it sits in the tree of life. When he died in 2003, the project was put on hold until Simmons was brought in to continue the work. Smaller than the hoary bat, Synemporion keana first appeared in the fossil record on the islands around 320,000 years ago and survived until at least 1,100 years ago--possibly much later. The two species of bats coexisted for several thousand years. Synemporion keana, which is a kind of vesper, or evening bat, had an array of features that so far have thwarted efforts to identify its closest relatives. Simmons and Howarth hope that future work with ancient DNA extracted from the fossils might help them solve the mystery. "This extinct bat really is something new, not just a slight variation on a theme of a known genus," Simmons said. "The new bat contains a mosaic of features from taxa seen on many different continents. At some point, their ancestors flew to Hawaii, but we can't tell if they came from North America, Asia, or the Pacific Islands--they really could have come from anywhere based on what we know now." The authors think that the extinction of Synemporion keana may have been a direct or indirect result of human colonization of the islands and the invasive non-native species that accompanied human explorers and settlers. "It seems possible that the reduction of native forests and associated insects after human colonization of the islands contributed not just to the extinction of plants, birds, and invertebrates, but also to the extinction of this endemic bat," Howarth said. ### Funding for this work was provided by the National Science Foundation, grant # DEB-9707260, DEB-7904760, and BSR-85-15183. American Museum Novitates paper: http://digitallibrary.amnh.org/handle/2246/6641 AMERICAN MUSEUM OF NATURAL HISTORY (AMNH.ORG) The American Museum of Natural History, founded in 1869, is one of the world's preeminent scientific, educational, and cultural institutions. The Museum encompasses 45 permanent exhibition halls, including the Rose Center for Earth and Space and the Hayden Planetarium, as well as galleries for temporary exhibitions. It is home to the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial, New York State's official memorial to its 33rd governor and the nation's 26th president, and a tribute to Roosevelt's enduring legacy of conservation. The Museum's five active research divisions and three cross-disciplinary centers support approximately 200 scientists, whose work draws on a world-class permanent collection of more than 33 million specimens and artifacts, as well as specialized collections for frozen tissue and genomic and astrophysical data, and one of the largest natural history libraries in the world. Through its Richard Gilder Graduate School, it is the only American museum authorized to grant the Ph.D. degree and, beginning in 2015, the Master of Arts in Teaching degree, which began as a pilot in 2012 and is the only non-university affiliated such program in the United States. Annual attendance has grown to approximately 5 million, and the Museum's exhibitions and Space Shows can be seen in venues on five continents. The Museum's website and collection of apps for mobile devices extend its collections, exhibitions, and educational programs to millions more beyond its walls. Visit amnh.org for more information. Follow Become a fan of the Museum on Facebook at facebook.com/naturalhistory, follow us on Instagram at @AMNH, Tumblr at amnhnyc, or visit twitter.com/AMNH to follow us on Twitter. (Boston)--In an effort to accelerate disease interception approaches to the management of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and lung cancer, Boston University School of Medicine (BUSM) has entered into a $10.1 million research agreement with Janssen Research & Development, LLC, one of the Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies. Together with the Janssen Disease Interception Accelerator and Oncology Therapeutic Area, scientific teams will analyze data from the Detection of Early Lung Cancer Among Military Personnel (DECAMP) consortium, a multidisciplinary translational research program, to advance the development of targeted therapeutics for the interception of COPD and lung cancer. "Through the identification of molecular biomarkers, we see an opportunity to screen people at risk for COPD and lung cancer and predict those who may be progressing towards disease so that we can intercede and intercept disease progression," explained Avrum Spira, MD, MS, professor of medicine, pathology and laboratory medicine at BUSM and principal investigator of the grant. "Working with samples from the DECAMP study and together with Janssen scientists, we hope to advance our ability to identify and understand molecular biomarkers that will aid in the discovery and development of more targeted therapies in the future for these devastating lung diseases." As part of the four-year collaboration, research teams at BUSM and Janssen will collaborate to define baseline and longitudinal disease profiles in COPD at the transcriptomic level, including extensive imaging analysis and integration of clinical data parameters, in an effort to apply targeted therapeutic intervention in COPD. The teams will also focus on characterizing the transcriptomic alterations associated with early progression of lung cancer. The Janssen-sponsored research agreement will support expansion of the consortium and pursuit of additional molecular biomarkers that will enable development of disease interception approaches focused on COPD and lung cancer. COPD, the third leading cause of death in the US, is a chronic progressive respiratory disease associated with tobacco smoking for which no effective therapies exists to reverse or halt disease progression. Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States and the world, with cigarette smoking as its major cause. The number of lung cancer-related deaths has remained essentially unchanged over the last three decades, in part because of the inability to detect lung cancer at its earliest--and potentially--curable stage. Military personnel and veterans, compared with the general population, have higher rates of lung cancer and COPD caused by smoking and exposure to other substances known to cause cancer, such as radon, asbestos, fuel exhaust and other battlefield emissions. Spira and his colleagues, including Marc Lenburg, PhD, and George O'Connor, MD, professors of medicine at BUSM, are working to develop and validate airway genomic biomarkers that can be used for the early detection of COPD and lung cancer. In addition, the team will also investigate the potential role of the immune system in mediating the development of lung cancer. Further, they are working to identify molecular biomarkers that associate with clinical outcome in patients with COPD and lung cancer. "By determining which biomarkers are involved, we can then target medicines to treat COPD and lung cancer on a molecular level," added Spira who is also director of the BU Cancer Center and a pulmonologist at Boston Medical Center. Spira is the principal investigator of a national research study funded by the Department of Defense (W81XWH-11-2-0161) called Detecting Early Lung Cancer Among Military Personnel (DECAMP), a multicenter consortium involving four military hospitals and seven Veterans facilities. ### Sea cucumbers -- the floppy cousins of starfish and sea urchins -- are particularly vulnerable to pollution and overfishing; scientists say this is bad news for ocean ecosystems worldwide SAN FRANCISCO (March 22, 2016) -- Holothuria edulis -- a type of slow-moving sea cucumber about the size of a classroom ruler -- boasts an important ocean role despite its uncanny resemblance to an overcooked sausage. This "Burnt Hot Dog" sea cucumber takes center stage in a new genetic study that digs into the animal's valued spot in marine ecosystems across Japan's Okinawa Island as well as its extreme vulnerability to environmental stress and overfishing. A team of researchers, including an expert from the California Academy of Sciences, says their study's findings are an urgent call for increased fisheries management and protections for ecologically important sea cucumbers, sometimes called the "vacuum cleaners of the ocean," worldwide. The study was recently published in the journal Conservation Genetics. Sea cucumbers, the often-overlooked cousins of starfish and sea urchins, are soft-bodied marine invertebrates that appear in myriad sizes, shapes, and thrilling colors in every ocean on Earth. More than 1,500 species -- including pleasingly-named "Sea Apples," "Strawberries," and "Sea Pigs" -- inhabit global oceans from the shallows to the mysterious deep seafloor. Despite their wide-reaching range and diversity of species, one Academy researcher says scientists need to know more about sea cucumbers' biology, natural histories, and ability to adapt to the modern threats of pollution, overfishing for food and medicine, and changing ocean climate. "It's easy to underestimate the sea cucumber," says Dr. Iria Fernandez-Silva, an Academy postdoctoral research fellow. "Sea cucumbers look goofy, move slowly, and barf up their guts when startled, but these invertebrates are superstar ocean cleaners that are hugely important to marine ecosystems. Our study looks into the genetics behind the economically-important species Holothuria edulis so we can understand the pressures they face and help protect threatened sea cucumbers globally." Like other sea cucumbers, nocturnal H. edulis use their guts to help clean seafloors and coral reefs. These Burnt Hot Dog invertebrates take shelter during daylight hours before emerging at night to inch along the sandy seafloor in search of food. Feeding tentacles help the animal shove sand and rubble through its digestive system as it moves, absorbing nutrients from detritus (dead plant and animal matter) and expelling cleaner, oxygenated sand in its wake. Healthy marine ecosystems rely on animals that provide these types of frequent cleaning services; without them, an abundance of detritus can impact plant and animal health, which in turn decreases the health of the ecosystem as a whole. A rapid rise in East Asia's consumer demand for sea cucumbers for both food and medicine has increased fishing pressures in many parts of the world. Overfishing can spell extinction for species of sea cucumber that already face serious pollution and habitat destruction threats worldwide. For example, populations of Holothuria whitmaei and H. scabra -- once common in the entire Indian and Pacific oceans -- have recently declined 60 to 90 percent in most of their traditional ranges. Today, at least 16 species of sea cucumber are considered threatened with extinction by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List, a global authority on the conservation status of plants and animals. Fernandez-Silva and two colleagues -- Drs. Taha Soliman and James Reimer from the University of the Ryukyus -- are filling in a blurry picture of exactly why sea cucumber populations have trouble rebounding from overfishing and environmental stress. The team traveled around Okinawa Island to explore the genetic exchange between different populations of Burnt Hot Dog sea cucumbers, an overexploited species found along the island's varied coastline. When caught in Okinawa, Japan, H. edulis is prepared and dried for food, medicine, or export overseas. A recent uptick in commercial demand for H. edulis -- a species that hasn't historically been targeted by fishing interests -- could be an indicator that more desirable sea cucumber species are becoming difficult to find in oceans worldwide. In Okinawa, the scientists were interested in comparing H. edulis population genetic diversity -- an extremely important factor in determining whether a population can safely survive in the face of stress -- along a range of coastal habitats. A population of organisms that lacks diversity is more vulnerable to threats including disease, which can easily wipe out a population that is too genetically similar (and vulnerable to a particular pathogen). In the case of H. edulis, which has been known to reproduce both sexually and asexually, the researchers wondered what genetic diversity looked like in marine habitats ranging from relatively pristine to heavily developed and polluted. "The data tell a story," says Fernandez-Silva. "We saw low genetic diversity in some sea cucumber populations along Okinawa's eastern coastline, where water is polluted by nearby industry, runoff, and coastal development. In contrast, populations in more pristine sites on the island's west coast were more genetically diverse. Since populations appeared disconnected from one another, we can predict that overfishing might be the last straw for vulnerable sea cucumber populations ill-equipped for a comeback." The researchers say these genetic findings are red flags for stressed marine fisheries, and urge Okinawan officials to help study, monitor, and protect sea cucumbers as valued marine ecosystem-cleaners. Fernandez-Silva and colleagues are currently researching different species of sea cucumber in southern Japan, and say preliminary findings are showing similar connections between polluted environments and low population diversity. "Japan has the opportunity to become a leader in protecting ocean health," says Fernandez-Silva. "Urging other countries to tighten restrictions on sea cucumber fishing will help ensure the future of countless vulnerable species that help keep marine ecosystems clean and healthy. First, both Japan and Okinawa must act at home." Hawaii provides a heartening example of environmental stewardship in the South Pacific. In June of 2015, Hawaii's State Board of Land and Natural Resources passed an emergency ban on the taking and selling of sea cucumber species in state waters, which appeared to be experiencing "imminent peril" due to overfishing for export overseas. Earlier this year, Governor David Ige signed a more detailed, large-scale ban on commercial sea cucumber take that outlined a preliminary plan for more sustainable fisheries along Hawaii's shores. Fernandez-Silva and her colleagues hope that Japan and other global entities will follow suit, protecting ecologically important -- and threatened -- marine species before they are lost forever. "Where ocean life is concerned, looks aren't everything," says Fernandez-Silva. "We urge global communities to speak up in defense of important marine species, even those that look like burned hot dogs. Our team will continue to explore and explain why these critical species are worthy of protection." ### About Research at the California Academy of Sciences The Institute for Biodiversity Science and Sustainability at the California Academy of Sciences is at the forefront of efforts to understand two of the most important topics of our time: the nature and sustainability of life on Earth. Based in San Francisco, the Institute is home to more than 100 world-class scientists, state-of-the-art facilities, and nearly 46 million scientific specimens from around the world. The Institute also leverages the expertise and efforts of more than 100 international Associates and 400 distinguished Fellows. Through expeditions around the globe, investigations in the lab, and analysis of vast biological datasets, the Institute's scientists work to understand the evolution and interconnectedness of organisms and ecosystems, the threats they face around the world, and the most effective strategies for sustaining them into the future. Through innovative partnerships and public engagement initiatives, they also guide critical sustainability and conservation decisions worldwide, inspire and mentor the next generation of scientists, and foster responsible stewardship of our planet. Scientists have documented for the first time how competition among different malaria parasite strains in human hosts could influence the spread of drug resistance Scientists have documented for the first time how competition among different malaria parasite strains in human hosts could influence the spread of drug resistance. "We found that when hosts are co-infected with drug-resistant and drug-sensitive strains, both strains are competitively suppressed," says Mary Bushman, lead author of the study and a PhD candidate in Emory University's Population Biology, Ecology and Evolution Graduate Program. "Anti-malarial therapy, by clearing drug-sensitive parasites from mixed infections, may result in competitive release of resistant strains." Proceedings of the Royal Society B published the research, led by the labs of Jaap de Roode, an evolutionary biologist at Emory, and Venkatachalam Udhayakumar, a malaria expert from the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention's Division of Parasitic Diseases and Malaria. Almost half of the world's population is at risk for malaria, a complex disease caused by five species of Plasmodium parasites that are transmitted to humans by 30 to 40 different species of mosquitoes that all behave differently. The current study focused on Plasmodium falciparum, the most common malaria parasite on the continent of Africa and the one responsible for the most malaria-related deaths globally. P. falciparum has developed resistance to former first-line therapies chloroquine and sulfadoxine-pyrimethamine. "We're now down to our last treatment, artemisinin combination therapy, or ACT, and resistance to that recently emerged in Southeast Asia," Bushman says. "If ACT resistance continues to follow the same pattern, the world may soon be without reliable antimalarial drugs." People infected with P. falciparum often have multiple strains of the parasite - especially in high-transmission areas such as sub-Saharan Africa where infectious mosquito bites occur frequently. Many people have developed partial immunity, making asymptomatic infections common and further complicating control efforts. The researchers knew from previous work, by de Roode and others, that competition between mixed strains of malaria parasites in laboratory mice are a crucial determinant to the spread of resistance. "In the mouse studies we found that drug-sensitive parasites suppress resistant parasites," de Roode says. "We also found that by clearing these sensitive parasites with drugs, the resistant parasites had a big advantage, growing up to high numbers and transmitting to mosquitoes at high rates. Ever since doing that work, I have wanted to see if the same could apply to humans." The researchers drew from 1,300 blood samples of untreated children with malaria from Angola, Ghana and Tanzania. They extracted DNA of malaria parasites from the blood samples and used polymerase chain reaction (PCR) technology to determine the densities of drug-resistant strains and drug-sensitive ones. About 15 percent of the blood samples had mixtures of both types. The results showed that in mixed-strain infections, densities of chloroquine-sensitive and chloroquine-resistant strains were reduced in the presence of competitors. They also showed that, in the absence of chloroquine, the resistant strains had lower densities compared with sensitive strains. "The results were really clear cut, which rarely happens in human studies," Bushman says. "We found almost complete consistency between the three data sets." Currently, Bushman says, the tendency is to use "one-size-fits-all" strategies for controlling malaria but more tailored approaches are needed. A strategy of mass drug administration might be effective, for example, in a place with a low prevalence of malaria and less likelihood of mixed-strain infections. That same strategy, however, might actually boost drug resistance without reducing the burden of disease in areas where most of the population is infected with multiple strains of malaria parasites. "The epidemiology of malaria infection is different for different places and different conditions," Bushman says. "We hope that our work will spur development of new strategies to minimize resistance while maximizing the benefits of control measures." More questions must be answered to guide the development of these new strategies. "As a first step," de Roode says, "we need to determine if the observed suppression of resistance in humans also results in reduced transmission to mosquitoes." Another limitation of the current study was that it was focused entirely on blood samples from children that had not been treated with drugs. "We need to find out if drug treatment of people infected with malaria removes competition and gives resistance a boost, as we have found in mice before," de Roode says. ### The study was funded by the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Institutional Program Unifying Population and Laboratory-based Science, Emory University, the Association of Public Health Laboratories, the CDC and the National Institutes of Health. Some species of plants are capable of colonising new habitats thanks to birds that transport their seeds in their plumage or digestive tract. Until recently it was known that birds could do this over short distances, but a new study shows that they are also capable of dispersing them over more than 300 kilometres. For researchers, this function could be key in the face of climate change, allowing the survival of many species. Birds can act as dispersers of seeds and other propagules -buds, bulbs, tubers or spores- over short distances which, in many cases, do not exceed a kilometre and a half. However, it had not been demonstrated whether or not they were capable of doing so over longer distances. A team led by scientists at the Donana Biological Station-CSIC (Spanish Council for Scientific Research) in Seville (Spain) confirmed this hypothesis due to the seeds found in the digestive tract of various species of birds hunted in the Canaries by Eleonora's falcons (Falco eleonorae) during their migration towards Africa. "This mechanism of long-distance dispersion had not been confirmed until now, mainly due to the difficulty involved in sampling propagules transported by birds during their migratory flight. We were able to analyse it thanks to the hunting behaviour of Eleonora's falcons," Duarte Viana, researcher in the Donana Biological Station and co-author of the study, explained to SINC. The data, published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, reveal for the first time that there are species that may be excellent dispersers of propagules over long distances of more than 300km. These birds were flying over the sea in an area located between the Canaries and Africa, and scientists found in them seeds that belonged to a plant that was not native to the Canary Islands, which demonstrates that they are capable of promoting colonisation of distant and remote areas. In total, researchers sampled 408 specimens of 21 species. Five birds from three different species stored 45 seeds inside them: the European pied flycatcher (Ficedula hypoleuca), the common redstart (Phoenicurus phoenicurus) and the common quail (Coturnix coturnix). The first two transported seeds of fleshy fruits (two species of the Rhamnus genus), while the common quail transported up to three different species (Rubus, Genisteae and Persicaria). "The best dispersers would be frugivorous birds, which eat fruit; granivorous birds, which eat seeds, such as the quail; and water birds, many of which eat the sediment of ponds. We could be talking about thousands of species of birds around the world, many of which are migratory," said Viana. According to researchers, faced with a situation of global change, long-distance dispersers will allow many species of plants and organisms to reach new habitats that offer them optimal conditions for their survival. New territories for plants The seeds transported by migratory birds are defecated and deposited in the place where the birds arrive. If the new habitat is favourable to germination and the subsequent establishment of a viable population, the species of plant dispersed may successfully colonise this area, grow and reproduce. The study was focussed on three islands to the northeast of the archipelago of the Canaries: Alegranza -from which a large part of the samples were obtained-, Montana Clara and Roque del Este, places where Eleonora's falcon nests and towards which the trade winds usually drag the migratory birds that go from Europe to Africa. Here they are hunted, particularly in October, when there is large-scale migration. After examining the stomach and intestine contents of the prey stored in the falcon nests, the experts demonstrate that most of the species to which the seeds belong grow more than 100 or 200km from the islands studies, and one of them, Persicaria, is not even a Canary Island. "In the particular case of Alegranza, the likelihood of colonisation is slim since this islet has an extremely arid climate, which is unsuitable for the life of most plant species. However, other islands of the Canary archipelago may have been colonised through seeds that come from further afield, continental Africa or, more likely, the Iberian Peninsula," concluded Viana. ### Reference: Duarte S. Viana, Laura Gangoso, Willem Bouten y Jordi Figuerola. "Overseas seed dispersal by migratory birds". Proceedings of the Royal Society B 283(1822) DOI: 10.1098/rspb.2015.2406. January 6th 2016 Bethesda, MD -- The Genetics Society of America (GSA) is pleased to support a new round of GSA Trainee-Organized Symposia, which are organized by student and postdoctoral members of the Society. These outstanding events will receive up to $2,000 each in funding to cover direct meeting costs, such as speaker travel, facility rental, and promotional supplies. The goal of the GSA Trainee-Organized Symposia program, which was launched in 2015, is to advance knowledge, encourage exchange, foster new connections and collaborations, and further the mission of the Society by facilitating the efforts of early career members to convene events relevant to the Society's mission. Proposed workshops were evaluated by GSA's Mentoring and Professional Development Committee based on their relevance to the GSA mission, the need for and the uniqueness of the event, the benefit to early career geneticists, and the availability of other relevant support. "It is exciting to support our student and postdoc members in their efforts to organize local and regional events that will help serve the genetics community," said Adam P. Fagen, PhD, GSA's Executive Director. "GSA will continue to promote opportunities for our trainee members to assume leadership roles in the Society and in our field." The details of newly funded GSA Trainee-Organized Symposia and their organizing committees are below. Postdoctoral GSA members Brook Moyers, Chris Schell, and Kathryn Turner are organizing "Genomics of Adaptation to Human Contexts," which will be held August 4-6, 2016, at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, CO. This symposium will highlight exemplary research that uses large genomic datasets to investigate ecology and evolution in the era of human impact on the Earth's ecosystems. The pervasive and multifaceted effect humans have on the environment and species around us is becoming the prevalent story of biology in the 21st century. Humans apply selective pressures in every direction, and these pressures can have dramatic effects under relatively short, contemporary evolutionary timescales. Scientists in traditionally disjunct fields from urban ecology to agriculture use the same genetics tools to ask related questions: How are species adapting to human contexts? What are the effects of human-imposed selection pressures? What sources of diversity fuel rapid evolution? These questions are increasingly relevant as more species are affected by human activities. Whether the species of interest is domesticated, invasive, or adapting to human alterations to its habitat, genomic datasets hold the key for understanding rapid evolutionary shifts. Through this event, early career researchers in many fields will benefit from understanding the parallel and potentially complementary approaches and tools used in other fields to answer very similar questions using large genomic datasets. Because geneticists must gain key bioinformatic and programming skills to work with such datasets, the symposium will be paired with a Software Carpentry workshop to train graduate student and postdoctoral geneticists in essential programmatic tools. The 2016 "Scientists Exploring Non-Academic Career Choices (SEARCH) Symposium," hosted by the University of Kansas on April 2, 2016, in Lawrence, Kansas, is a collaborative effort between the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (EEB) and the Molecular Biosciences (MB) Graduate Student Organizations. The SEARCH effort was initiated by GSA graduate student members Alexandra Erwin, Haifa Alhadyian, Kaila Colyott, and Kara Hinshaw; they have since been joined by GSA graduate student members Boryana Koseva, Lucas Hemmer, Mahekta Gujar, and Vitoria Paolillo, as well as several other students in related fields (Andrew Mongue, Desiree Harpel, and Elizabeth Chang). This collaboration was born from a common desire of students in both departments to learn about the career opportunities for PhDs outside of traditional academia. The SEARCH Symposium has three goals: (1) to inform trainees of the diversity of science careers by hosting scientists in occupations including policy, entrepreneurship, industry, science writing, data science, government, administration, and law; (2) prepare trainees for non-academic careers by discussing professional skills that students can develop while in graduate school or during postdoctoral training; and (3) to foster connections between trainees and local scientists through a career fair featuring companies seeking job applicants with advanced-degree. Over a dozen scientists will speak as part of an all-day symposium at no charge to the participants. There will also be opportunities for graduate students and postdocs to share professional development experiences through presentations. This event is expected to benefit an overflow crowd including undergraduates, graduate students, and postdocs from the University of Kansas, University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, and other universities in the area. The SEARCH organizers hope that the interest generated by this pilot symposium encourages the development of additional graduate student career resources for biology graduate students at the University of Kansas and other universities in the area. "New Investigations into Ribosomal DNA," organized by GSA postdoctoral members Elizabeth Kwan and Elizabeth Morton, will be hosted by the University of Washington, Seattle, in August or September of 2016. This symposium will provide a needed platform for the presentation and discussion of cutting-edge research on a long undervalued cellular feature: ribosomal DNA. Once thought an uninteresting housekeeping gene, ribosomal DNA (rDNA) has recently been implicated in an astonishing array of biological processes such as lifespan, regulation of gene expression, and genome replication. rDNA encodes the primary RNA components of ribosomes, the protein factories of every living cell, and each cell dedicates a significant percentage of its genome to rDNA sequences. Investigations into the effects of rDNA have been made possible by the fact that rDNA exists in high copy number in numerous model organisms, including yeast, worms, and flies. Several labs in the greater Seattle area are engaged in research on the different roles of rDNA, and this symposium will showcase the breadth of this research. This new venue will provide the burgeoning rDNA research community with an opportunity to meet and exchange ideas on the future of rDNA research. ### About the Genetics Society of America (GSA) Founded in 1931, the Genetics Society of America (GSA) is the professional scientific society for genetics researchers and educators. The Society's more than 5,000 members worldwide work to deepen our understanding of the living world by advancing the field of genetics, from the molecular to the population level. GSA promotes research and fosters communication through a number of GSA-sponsored conferences including regular meetings that focus on particular model organisms. GSA publishes two peer-reviewed, peer-edited scholarly journals: GENETICS, which has published high quality original research across the breadth of the field since 1916, and G3: Genes|Genomes|Genetics, an open-access journal launched in 2011 to disseminate high quality foundational research in genetics and genomics. The Society also has a deep commitment to education and fostering the next generation of scholars in the field. For more information about GSA, please visit http://www.genetics-gsa.org. 9650 Rockville Pike | Bethesda, MD 20814 | 301.634.7300 | press@genetics-gsa.org | http://www.genetics-gsa.org Connect with GSA on Twitter (@GeneticsGSA) | Facebook | LinkedIn | Google+ Daniel Deocampo, associate professor and chair of Geosciences at Georgia State University, will attend the White House Water Summit today (March 22) to share his plans for bringing new technologies and workforce development to the water economy of the southeastern United States. The summit, held in conjunction with the United Nations World Water Day, brings together representatives from more than 200 universities, government agencies and nonprofits to discuss long-term strategies for sustainable water use. Water is not only a necessity but also a big industry in the Southeast, with 30,000 workers bringing 65 billions of gallons of water a day to the region's 60 million people. Deocampo was invited because of his work as the science chair of H20TECH, a Georgia-State-affiliated nonprofit. H20TECH's mission is to move new technologies from the lab into daily use through university and industry partnerships that will create new jobs and economic growth. As part of the White House Water Summit, H20TECH is announcing two new initiatives: Doubling the water innovation economy in the southeastern United States by 2020. Over the past decade, the federal government has given $2.5 million in grants to academics and startups working on water issues in the Southeast. H20TECH plans to work with local researchers, nonprofits, government agencies and technology start-ups to create new grant-worthy projects, with the goal of reaching $5 million a year in grants by 2020. Creating 5,000 new water jobs by 2020. Through technological innovation, commercialization and workforce development initiatives, H20TECH plans to expand the regional water economy jobs base from 30,000 to 35,000 jobs by 2020. The focus of this initiative is the strategy of indirect potable-water reuse, which means treating wastewater and re-introducing it into the water table through lakes, rivers and wetlands. Water is already a hot political issue in the southeastern United States, Deocampo said, pointing to the ongoing dispute over water resources among the states of Georgia, Alabama and Tennessee. Indirect water reuse, or releasing treated wastewater back into the environment, is already part of the solution, he said, pointing out that Gwinnett County is already treating and releasing 25-30 million gallons of water a day. As the population of the southeastern U.S. continues to grow, the region will need new technologies and an expanded workforce to keep up with the demand. "We've identified that as a particular regional need," Deocampo said, adding that the process is extraordinarily safe and sanitary. "Water coming out of our regional treatment plants is incredibly safe and sanitary. It would be shame to waste it." The White House Water Summit is designed to raise awareness of water issues and potential solutions in the United States, and to catalyze ideas and actions to help build a sustainable and secure water future through innovative water and technology. The summit will be live-streamed on http://www.whitehouse.gov/live, and those who are interested are encouraged to participate using the hashtag #WHWaterSummit ### AMES, Iowa - Acceptance of information technology can play a vital role in meeting the demand for food in developing countries, according to a new study by Iowa State University researchers. The research is published in the journal Information Technologies and International Development. It's projected that the world population will reach 9.6 billion people by 2050, and therefore food production must increase by 70 percent. But Prashant Rajan, an adjunct assistant professor of English and communication studies, and Shweta Chopra, an assistant professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering, say production is not the only solution to meet the growing demand for food. "A lot of people talk about how to increase production. We found that production is not a challenge in some areas. There is enough food, but the problem is logistics and providing access to food," Chopra said. "Communication and information technology can improve access to food and trace where the food is coming from and how it's being processed, rather than just putting all the resources into production." Chopra and Rajan traveled to Chhattisgarh, India - a rice-surplus state - to study how the government is using technology to improve its public distribution system for food. India spends $13 to 14 billion annually procuring food from farmers and giving it to people in need. But around 40 percent of the food that circulates through the system is lost, Rajan said. "What's happening is food that is meant for people living below the poverty line is being diverted into the open market or black market by people who are responsible for distributing the food from farm to table," Rajan said. "What we're looking at in Chhattisgarh is essentially 5.4 million households or a little over 20 million people who stand to benefit from targeted technological reforms that can improve the efficiencies and transparency of food distribution." Adoption and acceptance Information and communication technology has the potential to reduce waste and theft in India's public distribution system as well as improve food access for beneficiaries, Chopra said. Families now use a card, similar to an ATM or debit card, to get their monthly food subsidy. Each transaction is recorded electronically, which creates transparency and checks and balances for where the food is distributed, she said. It also gives families the freedom to choose where they shop. Prior to this change, families were assigned to a single shop. However, successful implementation of these technologies is often hindered by resistance from shop owners and salespeople, who must adopt and integrate the new technology in their operations. The fair-shop owners and salespeople, who distribute the food to beneficiaries, must see a benefit. Chopra and Rajan surveyed 166, or 75 percent, of the salespeople using the technology in four Chhattisgarh districts in 2013. They expected many to be dissatisfied, and were surprised to find that the more experienced salespeople - often older and less educated - had a greater appreciation for the technology. "The person who was less educated found the complex calculations that they had to do by hand to be more difficult," Chopra said. "The technology provided them a more organized way to do their monthly sales calculations and their daily stock keeping." The results do not suggest that younger, more educated salespeople dislike the technology. Chopra and Rajan say they simply relate to technology in a different way. The study found shop owners and salespeople feel the technology has also increased their credibility and social influence. Rajan explained that it's not unusual for salespeople to give into local political pressures to cheat the system out of fear for their livelihood. As a result, they lost respect in the community and were accused of stealing food subsidies from customers who are generally friends and neighbors. With the new technology for tracking and accountability, it is now easier for salespeople to defend against those pressures. "If you want to eliminate the pilferage and the theft of food that rightfully belongs to citizens, you need to address the people who are responsible for providing food access," Rajan said. "For a lot of honest salespeople, the technology was a way to address the stigma that was associated with their job." Applying what they learned As government agencies implement and expand the use of information and communication technology, training will be an important part of the process. Through their research, Chopra and Rajan found that salespeople in Chhattisgarh perceived training sessions taught by government officials or engineers could be intimidating and insufficient. Chopra and Rajan have recommended having salespeople train their peers as they can better relate and explain the benefits of the technology. The researchers say the study also shows the benefits of cross-disciplinary collaboration across agricultural and biosystems engineering and communication studies to develop novel approaches to development issues such as food access. ### EAST LANSING, Mich. --- Most of the Ferguson protestors believed police view black people as worthless thugs and white people as innocent and superior - perceptions that, true or not, affect police-community relations in an era of persistent racial strife. Michigan State University criminologist Jennifer Cobbina conducted in-depth interviews with demonstrators in Ferguson, Missouri, following the Aug. 9, 2014, fatal shooting of Michael Brown, an unarmed black man, by Darren Wilson, a white police officer. Cobbina's study, in the Journal of Crime and Justice, is one of the first to investigate whether and to what extent African-Americans associate people of color to crime, which is known as racial typification. "The protestors did not view police brutality and discrimination as an isolated phenomenon," said Cobbina, associate professor of criminal justice. "Rather, they believed that it's reflective of broader social inequality and discrimination in society at large." The interviews with 81 protestors -- 75 black, six white -- included a question of whether blacks were more likely to engage in crime than whites. Past research has consistently demonstrated that white Americans strongly associate blacks with crime and overestimate the proportion of crime committed by people of color. But most Ferguson protestors felt that whites and blacks commit crime equally, with blacks more likely to commit petty crimes and whites more likely to commit white-collar crimes. As for perceptions about law enforcement, one respondent, a black woman named Susanna, said police "view us as dogs. Our lives are [considered] worthless. They don't think that we matter." Another respondent, a black male named Kaleem, said police see black males as "suspects first, civilians second." "The majority of the respondents did not racially typify crime, but they strongly believed the police did," Cobbina said. "Whether it's true or not, the very fact that they're perceiving this is obviously going to have an effect on police-community relations." The findings suggest people would like to see greater efforts to improve police-community relations, discontinue racial profiling and tackle the social, economic and political issues that contribute to violence in urban and suburban neighborhoods, such as unemployment and poverty. "The social unrest in Ferguson," the study says, "was not simply in response to the death of Michael Brown, but rather widespread racial and social injustice on the part of the police and larger society that produced the conditions in which this young man was killed." Cobbina, who lived near Ferguson for five years, conducted a second wave of interviews with protestors after a grand jury chose not to indict Wilson for the shooting. She also interviewed demonstrators in Baltimore following the 2015 death of Freddie Gray while in police custody. Cobbina is writing a book on Ferguson and Baltimore residents' experiences with police. ### Her co-authors on the present study are Akwasi Owusu-Bempah of Indiana University and Kimberly Bender of the University of Massachusetts Lowell. Today, at the White House Water Summit, the National Science Foundation (NSF) joins other federal agencies to emphasize its commitment to a sustainable water future. Access to affordable clean water is vital for energy generation, food cultivation and basic life support. With drought pressure and population demands, water is an increasingly precious resource. The California drought and Flint water emergency show some of the consequences of clean water shortages. Low-cost, low-energy technologies for both water quality testing and water treatment must be developed to overcome economic barriers and secure America's future. NSF supports national efforts to bolster water security and supply by investing in fundamental science and engineering research. "Routine and reliable access to safe drinking water is one of the greatest achievements in human history, thanks to science and engineering research," said Pramod Khargonekar, NSF assistant director for Engineering. "To ensure this accessibility continues, contributions from all research areas -- from engineering and physical sciences to the biological and social sciences -- are essential. As such, NSF is uniquely positioned to advance water innovations." For decades, NSF has funded researchers across disciplines to investigate fundamental water questions and propose novel solutions to challenges. Despite the importance of water to life on Earth, major gaps exist in our understanding of water availability, quality and dynamics, as well as the impact of human activity and a changing climate on the water system. These gaps must be filled in order to create new concepts for water desalination, purification, reuse and treatments. "To take on the most urgent challenge facing the world today, NSF and our partner agencies are funding researchers to explore interactions between the water system and land-use changes, the built environment, ecosystem functions and services, and climate change through place-based research and integrative models," said Roger Wakimoto, NSF assistant director for Geosciences. "Through these activities, we are enabling a new interdisciplinary paradigm in water research." NSF-funded demonstrations at today's White House event: An interactive augmented reality sandbox exhibit to help teach the public about watersheds, lake sciences, and environmental stewardship. The project, led by NSF-funded researcher Louise H. Kellogg, is a collaboration between university scientists and pubic science centers. Partners include University of California, the Davis W. M. Keck Center for Active Visualization in Earth Sciences, the Tahoe Environmental Research Center, the Lawrence Hall of Science, ECHO Lake Aquarium & Science Center, and Audience Viewpoints. A novel technology that uses sound waves to isolate and remove particles from fluids. Jason Dionne of FloDesign Sonics Inc. is supported by the NSF Small Business Innovation Research program to commercialize the technology, which offers a potentially more efficient and environmentally benign method to purify water. The launch of two "smart markets" for water leasing in the country: for groundwater trading in western Nebraska, and for surface-water trading in central Washington State. Mammoth Trading is creating smart markets to automate the process of checking complex regulatory rules for trading and to generate the highest economic gains among participants. By monetizing the value of conserved water, water leases generate a potential new revenue for water users and reward innovation in water use at the farm level. Mammoth Trading's markets will be available in over 500,000 acres of irrigated farmland. Mammoth Trading grew out of NSF-funded research, which was commercialized through the NSF Innovation Corps (I-Corps) program. A book series and curriculum to teach children about the water cycle. NSF supports 25 Long-term Ecological Research (LTER) projects across the country and in Antarctica to study ecological processes. The LTER network enables these sites to serve as local and regional "schoolyards" to promote understanding of environmental processes among K-12 students. One outreach tool they employ is the LTER Schoolyard Series, which includes hands-on activity guides and integrates with federal and state science standards. New NSF investments announced today: $20 million to support cutting-edge water-research projects through the NSF Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research program. Research teams will apply a systems-based, highly integrated approach to determine when and where the impacts of extreme events cascade through the combined social-ecological system. An integrated model of the watershed will be used to test management scenarios and identify strategies for maintaining infrastructure, environmental health and drinking water quality in the face of extreme weather events. $2 million to educate technicians for high-technology fields that drive our nation's economy through the NSF Advanced Technology Education program. A project to enhance marine and environmental science education at the five minority-serving community colleges of the Pacific Islands. American Samoa Community College, the College of Micronesia -- FSM, the College of the Marshall Islands, Northern Marianas College and Palau Community College will receive support for curriculum development, faculty professional development, internships and field experiences for students, and strengthened scientific infrastructure. Robert Richmond of University of Hawaii, Honolulu is the award's primary investigator. A college course to increase student engagement and learning around the Hoosick Falls water crisis. The Village of Hoosick Falls in New York recently discovered unsafe concentrations of perfluorooctanoic acid in its public water system. With NSF support, an interdisciplinary group of scientists led by David Bond of Bennington College will develop a course to train students in the effective use of science and technology related to water safety. Two workshops planned on new water technologies and systems to give new meaning to the word "wastewater." Wastewater treatment plants are not only vital to the protection of human health and the environment, but also present opportunities to recover energy and other valuable resources -- creating a world-class water infrastructure while reducing the costs to run it. Recognizing this, NSF, the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, with the Water Environment Research Foundation, are developing a National Water Resource Recovery Test Bed Facility network and directory to connect researchers, new technology providers and other innovators in the water-resource recovery industry with test facilities appropriate for their needs. NSF is planning two workshops, in May and June 2016, to support the development of appropriate metrics and structure possibilities for the network. A new Nanotechnology Signature Initiative on water sustainability through nanotechnology. Federal agencies participating in the National Nanotechnology Initiative will support a new initiative to focus on applying the unique properties of materials that occur at the nanoscale to increase water availability, improve water delivery and use efficiency, and enable next-generation water-monitoring systems. Participating agencies include the Department of Energy, the Environmental Protection Agency, NASA, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, NSF and the Department of Agriculture. A new video series to broaden awareness. The series will build on the popular 2013 Sustainability: Water episodes to explore how cutting-edge science and engineering research can transform how the country understands, designs and uses water resources and technologies. The videos will be produced by NBC Learn, the educational arm of NBCUniversal News Group, and will be shared in classrooms and with the public across a variety of platforms in the fall of 2016. The four-part series will promote public awareness of: Water resources, the variability of these resources, and water infrastructure designs and needs. Water conservation in rural and urban settings. Water treatment, including purification and desalination techniques. Water quality issues, including salinization and control. Innovative solutions from community college students at the nexus of food-water-energy. NSF and the American Association of Community Colleges have chosen 10 finalists in the second annual Community College Innovation Challenge, which calls on students enrolled in community colleges to propose innovative science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)-based solutions to perplexing, real-world problems. Significant ongoing NSF investments: Engineering Research Centers for responsible water use. The Engineering Research Center for Re-inventing the Nation's Urban Water Infrastructure (ReNUWIt), a research partnership among University of California, Berkeley, Colorado School of Mines, New Mexico State University and Stanford University, is facilitating the improvement of the nation's existing urban water systems through the development of innovative water technologies, management tools and systems-level analysis. This year, ReNUWIt will help advance urban water governance by releasing a set of decision-support tools that will allow utilities to quantify regional urban water resiliency and sustainability; promote the diversification of urban water supply portfolios by enabling virtual trading in regions with shared water resources; and support integrated management of water reuse and stormwater recharge systems. The Nanosystems Engineering Research Center for Nanotechnology Enabled Water Treatment Systems (NEWT), led by Rice University in partnership with Arizona State University, the University of Texas at El Paso and Yale University, is enabling off-grid drinking water. The NEWT Nanosystems ERC is pursuing high-performance and easy-to-deploy water treatment systems that can turn both wastewater and seawater into clean drinking water. The modular treatment systems, which will need less energy and fewer chemicals, will safely enlist the selective properties of reusable engineered nanomaterials to provide clean water at any location or scale. Ongoing grants to study the food-energy-water nexus. NSF has funded 17 grants, totaling $1.2 million, to support workshops on the interactions of food, energy and water, or FEW. Additionally, $6.4 million will supplement existing grants, enabling scientists to conduct additional research. Ongoing grants to study water sustainability and climate. NSF and the U.S. Department of Agriculture's National Institute for Food and Agriculture have made three sets of awards, the latest totaling $25 million, in the joint Water Sustainability and Climate program. The funding fosters research on how Earth's water system is linked with climate change, land use and ecosystems. Special report on clean water technologies. Beyond the White House, NSF-funded clean water-related research activities are happening now across the country. Engineers improve lives every day by imagining and creating innovative new technologies and tools. Today, NSF launches a new special report on future engineering solutions for clean water: NSF.gov/water. Watch the White House Water Summit live at WhiteHouse.gov/live. Join the conversation online with the hashtag #WHWaterSummit. ### PORTLAND, Ore. - Researchers at Oregon Health & Science University are challenging the convention that tetanus and diphtheria vaccine boosters need to be administered every 10 years. Their paper in Clinical Infectious Diseases recommends current adult vaccination schedule should be revisited. "We have always been told to get a tetanus shot every 10 years, but actually, there is very little data to prove or disprove that timeline," says Mark K. Slifka, Ph.D., a professor at the Oregon National Primate Research Center at OHSU. "When we looked at the levels of immunity among 546 adults, we realized that antibody titers against tetanus and diphtheria lasted much longer then previously believed." In this study, Slifka and colleagues looked at the magnitude and duration of immunity to tetanus and diphtheria to provide an evidence-based evaluation of the current adult vaccine schedule. Their analysis shows adults will remain protected against tetanus and diphtheria for at least 30 years without the need for further booster shots, after completing the standard five-dose childhood vaccination series, If a revised adult vaccination schedule were implemented, the authors believe that a simplified age-based vaccination plan could be designed to involve a single vaccination at age 30 and again at age 60. "If you ask around, you often find that it is hard for people to remember if they had their last tetanus shot eight years ago or even 11 years ago," says Slifka. "If we were to use a simple age-based system, people would only have to remember to get their shots when they turn 30 and again when they turn 60." The idea of changing our vaccination schedule is not as radical as it sounds, the authors note. Other countries, including the United Kingdom, recommend no adult booster shots - and the World Health Organization recommends only a single adult booster vaccination at the time of first pregnancy or during military service. In other words, if the U.S. switched from a 10-year schedule to a 30-year schedule, this approach would still be more conservative than other countries while reducing the number of potentially unnecessary vaccinations. Modification of the adult vaccination schedule could also have a substantial impact on U.S. health care costs, the authors suggest. Based on the number of adults who get booster shots within the recommended 10-year interval, they estimate that changing to a 30-year schedule would reduce the costs of vaccination by two-thirds, a reduction of approximately $280 million per year in health care costs, and approximately $1 billion in cost savings within four years. Vaccination against tetanus and diphtheria has resulted in a significant decline in the incidence of these two serious diseases. Deaths attributable to tetanus have declined 99 percent since the prevaccine era, and diphtheria is virtually nonexistent in the U.S. "Over the last decade, we have seen that mainly recent immigrants or older people who did not receive at least three doses of the tetanus vaccine are the ones at highest risk for a fatal case of tetanus," said Slifka, "Even with this in mind, the odds of dying from tetanus in the U.S. are approximately 1 in 100 million." Diphtheria is even more rare, Slifka noted. "There have been only 5 cases of diphtheria reported in the U.S. in the last 15 years. Believe it or not, there are actually more cases of anthrax reported each year than diphtheria." Together, these numbers indicate that tetanus and diphtheria vaccines are working well, but continued vigilance is still needed. "We need to make sure our kids get all of their recommended vaccinations. I can't emphasize this enough. Only by getting the complete childhood series will these children grow into adults who will maintain strong vaccine-mediated protection against these important diseases." So when can we switch to a 30-year booster schedule? "This must be reviewed and approved by the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, the group responsible for determining the vaccination schedules in the U.S.," says Slifka. "However, based on our results and the vaccination schedule already recommended by other countries and the World Health Organization, it might not be long before we can say goodbye to the traditional 10-year booster program." ### Contributors to this study include: Erika Hammarlund, M.S.; Archana Thomas, B.S.; Abby Rynko, Ph.D.; Elizabeth A. Poore, B.S.; Ian J. Amanna, Ph.D.; Motomi Mori, Ph.D.; and Zunqiu Chen, Ph.D. This work was supported in part by National Institutes of Health Public Health Service grants AI098723, AI082196; and the Oregon National Primate Research Center (8P51 OD011092-53). Biostatistics support was provided by the Oregon Health & Science University Biostatistics and Design Program. About OHSU Oregon Health & Science University is a nationally prominent research university and Oregon's only public academic health center. It serves patients throughout the region with a Level 1 trauma center and nationally recognized Doernbecher Children's Hospital. OHSU operates dental, medical, nursing and pharmacy schools that rank high both in research funding and in meeting the university's social mission. OHSU's Knight Cancer Institute helped pioneer personalized medicine through a discovery that identified how to shut down cells that enable cancer to grow without harming healthy ones. OHSU Brain Institute scientists are nationally recognized for discoveries that have led to a better understanding of Alzheimer's disease and new treatments for Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis and stroke. OHSU's Casey Eye Institute is a global leader in ophthalmic imaging, and in clinical trials related to eye disease. In the interest of ensuring the integrity of our research and as part of our commitment to public transparency, OHSU actively regulates, tracks and manages relationships that our researchers may hold with entities outside of OHSU. In regards to this research project, the authors reported no conflicts of interest. Review details of OHSU's conflict of interest program to find out more about how we manage these business relationships. In The Seven Pillars of Statistical Wisdom, published in March by the Harvard University Press, Stephen Stigler identifies seven fundamental principles of statistics, a largely interdisciplinary field. Stigler, the Ernest DeWitt Burton Distinguished Service Professor of Statistics, explained that statistics is not a field that feeds on itself. Rather, statistics addresses quantitative questions in a variety of fields, such as philosophy, literature, medicine, physics, economics, and sociology. In his book, Stigler aims to differentiate statistics from mathematics and computer science as a data science, and point out what makes statistics unique. "The pillars are the support, not the substance, of statistics," said Stigler. "This book is a taxonomy of the intellectual terrain of statistics." While writing The Seven Pillars of Statistical Wisdom, Stigler embraced the challenge of trying to communicate to a broad audience and make clear concepts that took 100 years to develop. Stigler outlined the seven pillars as aggregation, information measurement, likelihood, intercomparison, regression, experimental design, and the residual. Here is a sampling of stories and examples from Stigler's book that illustrate some of these ideas. The first pillar, aggregation, for example taking an average, is paradoxical. "By aggregating, you lose the identity of the individual, so you're throwing away information, but you're also gaining information of a different sort," said Stigler. "No one wants to be reduced to a statistic, but by losing the identity of the individual, you are producing information about the group." Information measurement, the second pillar, focuses on measuring the information available. "People often assume that the more data you have, the more information you have, but data and information are not proportional," said Stigler. "If you double your data, you don't double your information. In fact, sometimes you're better off throwing data away." Stigler called on an example from John Venn, the English logician and philosopher remembered for the Venn Diagram, to explain this paradox. An army general has laid siege to a fort, and the people in the fort have run out of provisions and ammunition. They are ready to surrender, but the general knows he'll have to replenish the fort to fight another approaching army, so he sends a spy to gauge what size cannonballs they'll need. The spy returns and says the army will need 8-inch cannonballs, but a second spy reports that the army will need 9-inch cannonballs. In this situation, it doesn't make sense to take the average and bring 8.5-inch cannonballs, which would work in neither case. Instead, the general would be better off by throwing out some of the information and choosing between eight or nine. Likelihood, the third pillar, uses numerical probability to calibrate the value of data. To explain this idea, Stigler elaborated on philosopher David Hume's claim that a miracle is a violation of natural law. "According to Hume, if someone reports that the sun did not rise or that the tides didn't come in, there are two distinct possibilities," he said. "One is that a miracle actually occurred. Or, the person who witnessed the miracle is lying or misunderstood. Hume argued that it is far more likely that the person is not telling the truth or is unclear. Hume's likelihood argument inspired Thomas Bayes and Richard Price to offer a counter argument that was the first appearance of Bayesian inference." Stigler described regression, the fifth pillar, as basically a relativity principle for statistics. "Depending on the data you select, you will get different answers that may even seem compatible," he said. For example, say you select an extremely tall person from a crowd. One might assume that this extremely tall person has equally tall parents, or equally tall children, on average. This would be incorrect, Stigler explained. Height has two components, factors such as genetics that affect all family members equally; and variation associated with factors that are unrelated for different family members, factors that have no average effect on others in the family. The parents and children will share one component but not the other. The extremely tall individual will on average have shorter parents and shorter children: It is actually more likely that an extremely tall person has only moderately tall parents and children. Stigler has also written two other books, The History of Statistics: The Measurement of Uncertainty Before 1900 and Statistics on the Table: The History of Statistical Concepts and Methods. ### ANN ARBOR--Large-scale changes to agricultural practices will be required to meet the goal of reducing levels of algae-promoting phosphorus in Lake Erie by 40 percent, a new University of Michigan-led, multi-institution computer modeling study concludes. Last month, the U.S. and Canadian governments called for a 40-percent reduction, from 2008 levels, in phosphorus runoff from farms and other sources into Lake Erie. The nutrient feeds an oxygen-depleted "dead zone" in the lake and toxin-producing algal blooms, including a 2014 event that contaminated the drinking water of more than 400,000 people near Toledo for two days. The main driver of the harmful algal blooms is elevated phosphorus from watersheds draining to Lake Erie's western basin, particularly from the heavily agricultural Maumee River watershed. About 85 percent of the phosphorus entering Lake Erie from the Maumee River comes from farm fertilizers and manure. The new study, which integrates results from six modeling teams, was released today by the U-M Water Center. It concludes that meeting the 40-percent reduction target will require widespread use of strong fertilizer-management practices, significant conversion of cropland to grassland and more targeted conservation efforts. "Our results suggest that for most of the scenarios we tested, it will not be possible to achieve the new target nutrient loads without very significant, large-scale implementation of these agricultural practices," said U-M aquatic ecologist Don Scavia, lead author of the new study and director of the Graham Sustainability Institute, which oversees the Water Center. "It appears that traditional voluntary, incentive-based conservation programs would have to be implemented at an unprecedented scale or are simply not sufficient to reach these environmental goals, and that new complementary policies and programs are needed." The researchers developed a list of potentially effective cropland management practices after consulting with agricultural and environmental experts. They examined various options for fertilizer application, tillage operations, crop rotations and land conversion. Various management options were combined to create 12 scenarios that were each tested using six computer models. The watershed models tested the ability of each scenario to achieve the proposed 40 percent phosphorus-reduction target. The scenarios examine both the total amount of phosphorus, known as TP, and the amount of dissolved reactive phosphorus (DRP), the form of the nutrient that is most stimulating to algae. "The most promising scenarios included widespread use of nutrient management practices--especially subsurface application of phosphorus-based fertilizers--along with substantial conversion of cropland to grassland and extensive use of buffer strips," said study co-author Jay Martin of Ohio State University. Even so, the researchers determined that seven of the 12 cropland-management scenarios would not meet the goal of a 40-percent reduction in total phosphorus entering western Lake Erie from the Maumee River watershed. One of the five scenarios capable of reaching the TP target (Scenario 6) requires taking nearly 30,000 acres of cropland out of production and putting more than 1.5 million acres under stringent conservation practices. Because the average size of a farm in the Maumee River watershed is 235 acres, this is equivalent to impacting more than 6,300 farms. One of the scenarios (Scenario 2) that reach the target for dissolved reactive phosphorus requires enhanced nutrient management on all 3.1 million acres of row-crop fields in the watershed, which equates to impacting roughly 13,000 farms. "While there may be a temptation to select one model based on 'superior performance,' there is no one way to evaluate model performance. Instead, we chose to use multiple models because together they represent the range of reasonable representations of the real world," said study co-author Margaret Kalcic, one of the U-M Water Center's lead modelers. "Research like this is valuable to help inform on-the-ground conservation efforts, such as the 4R Nutrient Stewardship Program currently underway in Ohio. We will only solve this problem with the right mix of land and water management practices, deployed in the right place and amount," said study co-author Scott Sowa of The Nature Conservancy. Meeting phosphorus-reduction targets has proved difficult elsewhere in the United States. Specific goals for reducing the size of the Gulf of Mexico's oxygen-starved "dead zone" have existed for 15 years, but almost no progress has been made. And water-quality improvement goals for the Chesapeake Bay were in place for decades before some limited progress was made. ### The new Lake Erie report is titled "Informing Lake Erie agriculture nutrient management via scenario evaluation." In addition to Scavia, Kalcic, Martin and Sowa, the authors are U-M's Rebecca Logsdon Muenich, Jennifer Read and Yu-Chen Wang; Noel Aloysius and Marie Gildow of Ohio State University; Chelsie Boles, Todd Redder and Joseph DePinto of LimnoTech; Remegio Confesor of Heidelberg University; and Haw Yen of Texas A&M University. Funding for the study was provided by the Fred A. and Barbara M. Erb Family Foundation. The study findings have been submitted to a peer-reviewed scientific journal for publication. The U-M Water Center addresses critical and emerging regional and national water resource challenges. Its mission is to foster collaborative research that informs the policy and management decisions that affect our waters. As the planet experiences record heat and California suffers from an historic drought, the clean water that we need to safely and sustainably grow food crops is in short supply. In the face of climate change, finding alternative sources of water to grow food that is safe to eat has become an urgent national priority. A multidisciplinary team, led by Dr. Amy R. Sapkota at the University of Maryland School of Public Health, is dedicating itself to developing innovative, safe and sustainable ways to irrigate food crops in variable climates. With a $10 million grant from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture, awarded over a four-year period, the "CONSERVE" Center of Excellence links experts from the Mid-Atlantic and Southwest to identify the best nontraditional water sources and new water treatment technologies that farmers can safely use on food crops without compromising public health. The Center's focus will be on developing water reuse solutions to safely irrigate vegetable and fruit crops that are generally consumed raw, which therefore require the highest quality, contaminant-free water during the irrigation process. "We are running out of water in our key food production regions," Dr. Sapkota, an environmental microbiologist, says. "We need to act now to figure out how to shift water usage patterns and successfully reuse water to sustainably and safely grow our food." Revolutionizing how we use water to sustainably produce food while protecting public health requires the collaboration of many experts from around the nation. The CONSERVE (COordinating Nontraditional Sustainable watER Use in Variable climatEs) team includes bioscientists, engineers, economists, social-behavioral scientists, law and policy experts, agricultural extension specialists, educational media developers, computer scientists, and public health experts. "Our goal is to develop water reuse solutions that will work both in Southwest states that are already in a water shortage crisis and in Mid-Atlantic states that can work more proactively to reduce our reliance on groundwater supplies for agriculture," Dr. Sapkota explains. "The water resource problems that CONSERVE will address in these key regions are exceptional issues that are critical to food safety and security, environmental sustainability and climate adaptation." CONSERVE will be centered at the University of Maryland, College Park in the School of Public Health's Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health and include experts in UMD's College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, College of Computer, Mathematical and Natural Sciences, A. James Clark School of Engineering, SESYNC (National Socio-Environmental Synthesis Center) and a Maryland-based bioinformatics company, Cosmos ID. The team also includes key experts from the University of Maryland, Baltimore, School of Medicine and the Francis King Carey School of Law; the University of Maryland Eastern Shore; the University of Delaware; the University of Arizona; New Mexico State University; the US Department of Agriculture, Agricultural Research Service (USDA ARS); and the Arava Institute for Environmental Studies in Israel. "The CONSERVE team brings together the broad collaborative expertise with which we must approach the greatest global challenges of our day," says UMD Vice President and Chief Research Officer Patrick O'Shea. "We look forward to learning from our colleagues across disciplines and institutions, and together creating innovative solutions for clean water." The first stage of the Center's work is to identify, map and characterize alternative sources of water that could be reused for irrigation. The CONSERVE team members from the University of Maryland College Park, the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, the University of Delaware, the University of Arizona and USDA ARS will evaluate the microbial, physical and chemical constituents of reused water to understand what is required to make the water acceptable and safe for irrigation. This information will be used to develop and refine next generation water treatment technologies that will be used on farms to enable safe water reuse for food crop irrigation. Another key scope of work, to be led by team members at the University of Delaware, is to study consumer behavior and gauge the acceptability of produce grown with nontraditional sources of water. Law and policy experts at the University of Maryland Francis King Carey School of Law in Baltimore will examine existing regulations around water reuse and make policy recommendations on how to safely advance water reuse on farms nationwide. CONSERVE extension specialists will train farmers to implement these systems on their farms and address specific needs. The project also will have a significant educational component that includes the development of curricula for university classrooms and K-12 educators on water reuse, food safety, food production and environmental sustainability. Experts in "active learning" education and game development at New Mexico State University and the University of Delaware will create open source interactive modules for use in classrooms across the country. Project funds will support CONSERVE scholars--graduate and undergraduate students participating in internships and research experiences at CONSERVE's partnering institutions. Support will focus on training underrepresented students with the goal of diversifying and inspiring the next generation of water reuse leaders. "Over time, implementing water reuse solutions to grow our food could dramatically shift the nature of farming," Dr. Sapkota says. "We want to be able to both feed people and protect public health. The on-farm water treatment technologies that we will be implementing have the potential to enable this, even as groundwater supplies dwindle in our nation's historically most productive agricultural regions." The USDA announced the first-year of its plan to support improvements to communities' water sources, including funding for the CONSERVE project, on World Water Day, March 22, 2016. ### Astronomers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst report that they have observed the most luminous galaxies ever seen in the Universe AMHERST, Mass. - Astronomers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst report that they have observed the most luminous galaxies ever seen in the Universe, objects so bright that established descriptors such as "ultra-" and "hyper-luminous" used to describe previously brightest known galaxies don't even come close. Lead author and undergraduate Kevin Harrington says, "We've taken to calling them 'outrageously luminous' among ourselves, because there is no scientific term to apply." Details appear in the current early online edition of Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society. Harrington is a senior undergraduate in astronomy professor Min Yun's group, which uses the 50-meter diameter Large Millimeter Telescope (LMT), the largest, most sensitive single-aperture instrument in the world for studying star formation. It is operated jointly by UMass Amherst and Mexico's Instituto Nacional de Astrofisica, Optica y Electronica and is located on the summit of Sierra Negra, a 15,000-foot extinct volcano in the central state of Puebla, a companion peak to Mexico's highest mountain. Yun, Harrington and colleagues also used the latest generation of satellite telescope and a cosmology experiment on the NASA/ESA collaboration Planck satellite that detects the glow of the Big Bang and microwave background for this work. They estimate that the newly observed galaxies they identified are about 10 billion years old and were formed only about 4 billion years after the Big Bang. Harrington explains that in categorizing luminous sources, astronomers call an infrared galaxy "ultra-luminous" when it has a rating of about 1 trillion solar luminosities, and that rises to about 10 trillion solar luminosities at the "hyper-luminous" level. Beyond that, for the 100 trillion solar luminosities range of the new objects, "we don't even have a name," he says. Yun adds, "The galaxies we found were not predicted by theory to exist; they're too big and too bright, so no one really looked for them before." Discovering them will help astronomers understand more about the early Universe. "Knowing that they really do exist and how much they have grown in the first 4 billion years since the Big Bang helps us estimate how much material was there for them to work with. Their existence teaches us about the process of collecting matter and of galaxy formation. They suggest that this process is more complex than many people thought." The newly observed galaxies are not as large as they appear, the researchers point out. Follow-up studies suggest that their extreme brightness arises from a phenomenon called gravitational lensing that magnifies light passing near massive objects, as predicted by Einstein's general relativity. As a result, from Earth they look about 10 times brighter than they really are. Even so, they are impressive, Yun says. Gravitational lensing of a distant galaxy by another galaxy is quite rare, he adds, so finding as many as eight potential lensed objects as part of this investigation "is another potentially important discovery." Harrington points out that discovering gravitational lensing is already like finding a needle in a haystack, because it requires a precise alignment from viewing on Earth. "On top of that, finding lensed sources this bright is as rare as finding the hole in the needle in the haystack." They also conducted analyses to show that the galaxies' brightness is most likely due solely to their amazingly high rate of star formation. "The Milky Way produces a few solar masses of stars per year, and these objects look like they forming one star every hour," Yun says. Harrington adds, "We still don't know how many tens to hundreds of solar masses of gas can be converted into stars so efficiently in these objects, and studying these objects might help us to find out." For this work, the team used data from the most powerful international facilities available today to achieve these discoveries, the Planck Surveyor, the Herschel, and the LMT. As Yun explains, the all-sky coverage of the Planck is the only way to find these rare but exceptional objects, but the much higher resolutions of the Herschel and the LMT are needed to pinpoint their exact locations. He suggests, "If the Planck says there's an object of interest in Boston, the Herschel and LMT have the precision to say that the object is on which table in a particular bar next to Fenway Park." With this information, another LMT instrument called "Redshift Search Receiver" can be deployed to determine how far away and how old these galaxies are and how much gas they contain to sustain their extreme luminosities. One other aspect of this project is extraordinary, Yun says. "For an undergrad to do this kind of study is really impressive. In 15 years of teaching, I have seen only a few undergraduates who pushed a project to the point of publishing in a major journal article such as this. Kevin deserves a lot of credit for this work." For his part, Harrington, who will graduate in May with a double major in astronomy and neuroscience, says he plans to start his doctoral work in September at Germany's Max Planck Institute for Astronomy and the University of Bonn, continuing this research on galaxy evolution. ### This work was supported by the National Science Foundation, the UMass Amherst Commonwealth Honors College Research Fellowship and Honors Grants, and The William Bannick Student Travel Grant, without which Harrington's two trips to the remote telescope in Mexico would not have been possible, Yun says. More cities than previously assumed could soon grapple with the Zika virus if two species of mosquitos are found to be equally effective carriers of the disease, a University of Texas at Austin disease ecologist and his colleagues argue in the current edition of The Lancet Infectious Diseases. Even if only one mosquito species proves capable of spreading Zika, the scientists say cities such as Miami and Houston are at high risk of seeing more of the disease this summer. Sahotra Sarkar, a faculty member in the Department of Integrative Biology and Department of Philosophy at The University of Texas at Austin, and his colleagues Lauren Gardner and Nan Chen at the University of New South Wales in Australia, mapped how Zika is likely to spread in 100 cities worldwide under two different scenarios, taking into account air travel to and from affected areas in Latin America and the prevalence of two common mosquito species associated with the disease. Although both mosquito species have been detected with Zika, the researchers point out that only one type of mosquito is known to be effective at spreading the virus. If the second species also is capable of spreading Zika among people, more places in the United States, Europe and Asia than previously thought will probably experience outbreaks. "The spread depends critically on if a second mosquito species is a very good transmitter of Zika," Sarkar says. "If it is, then the risk is even worse than what has been forecast so far." Public health officials with the World Health Organization (WHO) and other agencies have forecast the spread of Zika with too little information about the effectiveness of different types of mosquitos in spreading the disease, Sarkar says. Under the first scenario, in which only one mosquito species spreads Zika, existing models significantly overestimate the danger of the Zika virus in most of the world. In the United States, for example, only Florida, Texas and Louisiana -- home to the Aedes aegypti mosquito -- would probably experience widespread cases of Zika. "Among urban areas in the U.S., Miami and Houston are at the greatest risk," Sarkar says. "In general there is greater risk to Florida than Texas because more travel to Latin America and the Caribbean occurs there." Under the second scenario, however, in which another species -- Aedes albopictus, known to harbor the disease but not yet known to be good at transmitting it -- is also capable of spreading Zika, the WHO model underestimates the likelihood of transmission, Sarkar and his colleagues find. Parts of the world previously believed to be at low risk -- such as Canada, Chile and many countries in Europe and Asia -- would probably experience a spread in Zika. Under this scenario within the United States, New York would face an even greater risk than Houston. Sarkar and Gardner's findings came out the same day as a study from the National Center for Atmospheric Research that looked at how Zika would be likely to spread in U.S. cities this summer. In taking into account the ecology of the two mosquito species worldwide and explicitly showing the difference in risk levels if Aedes albopictus proves capable of spreading the virus, the map from Sarkar and Gardner points to the importance of learning immediately whether both mosquito species can effectively spread the Zika virus to ensure an appropriate public health response in different regions, the scientists say. Regardless, Sarkar says, cities such as Miami, Orlando, Houston, Tampa and New Orleans should step up efforts to sample and monitor local mosquito populations and be prepared to implement drastic mosquito control measures. And travelers to Latin America should continue to take precautions to protect themselves, notes Gardner at the University of New South Wales. "The risk of additional Zika spread is further heightened," she says, "by the upcoming 2016 Summer Olympics, which will be hosted in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, the epicenter of the Zika virus outbreak." Read "Global risk of Zika virus depends critically on vector status of Aedes albopictus": http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1473309916001766 View an interactive Zika risk map showing relative risks by city: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=zJ3nlsAyCEd0.kZRxkOKHmQAY ### Xbox Kinects could be used in the future to assess the health of patients with conditions such as cystic fibrosis. Normally found in the hands of gamers rather than medics the Microsoft sensors could be used to assess the respiratory function of patients. Researchers at the Institute of Digital Healthcare, WMG, University of Warwick and the Institute of Inflammation and Ageing, University of Birmingham and Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust (HEFT) have developed a method of using the devices. The system consists of four Kinect sensors which are capable of quickly creating a 3D image of a patient's torso. This enables physicians to measure and assess how a chest wall moves. In tests it has proven to be as accurate as a patient breathing into a spirometer - the current method used - but providing additional information about the movement of the chest, which could help in identifying numerous respiratory problems. The project lead, Dr Chris Golby at the Institute of Digital Healthcare, said: "We have developed a low-cost prototype which provides a more comprehensive measurement of a patient's breathing then existing methods." Their work is detailed in their paper Chest Wall motion Analysis in Healthy Volunteers and Adults with Cystic Fibrosis using a Novel Kinect-based which is published in Medical & Biological Engineering & Computing. Spirometry is the technique most commonly used treat to lung diseases including chronic bronchitis, emphysema and chronic obstructive airways. It requires a patient to take the deepest breath they can, and then exhale into the sensor as hard as possible, for as long as possible. However it has significant limitations as it doesn't allow doctors to assess how different areas of each lung function. It can result in inaccurate readings of some patients' breathing such as older people and children, and those with facial abnormalities or muscle weakness are often unable to form a tight seal around the mouthpiece. Dr Golby said: "For patients who report to A&E a quick and low-cost method of chest wall motion assessment is required. There are some conditions that doctors can't detect or assess using spirometry such as collapsed lung segments or respiratory muscle weakness. However our prototype allows physicians to make accurate assessments. "It is also potentially very useful in assessing changes in respiratory physiology that occur during exercise. This is in contrast with existing systems which rely on data from one viewpoint." Babu Naidu, Chief Investigator, Thoracic Surgeon at HEFT and clinical scientist at the University Birmingham said: "'A 'game changer' in screening, diagnostics, monitoring therapy and providing bio feedback the Xbox can be used in any condition affecting breathing." Respiratory diseases kill one in five people in the UK and cost the NHS more than 6billion a year. However the proposed system consists of software and four Kinect sensors each of which cost just 100. Professor Theo Arvanitis, Head of Research at Institute of Digital Healthcare, WMG, said: "With this and other technologies developed here we hope to innovate in e-healthcare and translate these advances into clinical practice." The academics trialled their prototype initially using a resuscitation mannequin, then on healthy volunteers and adults with cystic fibrosis. As the Kinect has an infrared beam it allowed them to measure changes in distances across the chest wall. The system uses four sensors which allow measurement of movement from more than one viewpoint. Using off-the-shelf and bespoke software they were able to create a 3D image of a patient's chest wall. The University of Warwick team are now planning to develop their prototype further using Microsoft's new version of the Kinect, working with cystic fibrosis and other respiratory conditions. ### Images: Motion comparison image1 & 2: Three-D scans taken by the system, and how respiration is detected. Kinect 3: illustration of Kinect system For further details please contact Nicola Jones, Communications Manager, University of Warwick 07920531221 or N.Jones.1@warwick.ac.uk Notes to Editors: The papers authors are: James M. Harte, Institute of Digital Healthcare, WMG, University of Warwick, UK, Interacoustics Research Unit, c/o Technical University of Denmark; Christopher K. Golby, Institute of Digital Healthcare, WMG, University of Warwick, UK; Johanna Acosta, Institute of Digital Healthcare, WMG, University of Warwick, UK; Edward F Nash, Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust, UK; Ercihan Kiraci, WMG, University of Warwick, UK; Mark A. Williams, WMG, University of Warwick, UK; Theodoros N Arvanitis, Institute of Digital Healthcare, WMG, University of Warwick, UK; Interacoustics Research Unit, c/o Technical University of Denmark; Babu Naidu, Heart of England NHS Foundation Trust, UK; University of Birmingham, UK. DOI: 10.11007/s11517-015-1433-1 A study published in the journal Global Ecology and Conservation may help field conservationists better understand the potential for human activities to disturb endangered giant pandas in native habitats. Using pandas located at the San Diego Zoo, conservation scientists worked with animal care specialists to determine pandas' range of hearing sensitivity, discovering that they can detect sound into the ultrasonic range. Because giant pandas depend in large part on information transmitted through vocalizations for reproductive success, noise from human activities in or near forest areas could be disruptive. "An understanding of a species' hearing provides a foundation for developing estimates of noise disturbance," said Megan Owen, associate director of giant panda conservation, San Diego Zoo Global. "For the giant panda, vocalizations are typically emitted in proximity to conspecifics (members of the same species), however the ability to discriminate between fine-scale differences in vocalizations is important for successful reproduction; and so, a thorough understanding of acoustic ecology is merited in order to estimate the potential for disturbance. "In order to learn about panda hearing, researchers at the San Diego Zoo worked with giant pandas to teach them to respond, if they could hear sounds at a particular pitch and loudness, thus communicating their ability to hear across the acoustic spectrum," Owen said. "Through this study, the pandas at the San Diego Zoo have made a significant contribution to our understanding of what may be affecting panda reproduction in habitats in China," said Ron Swaisgood, director of applied animal ecology, San Diego Zoo Global. "It is only because of the strong relationship that animal care staff have with the bears at the Zoo that we have been able to gather this information." ### Bringing species back from the brink of extinction is the goal of San Diego Zoo Global. As a leader in conservation, the work of San Diego Zoo Global includes on-site wildlife conservation efforts (representing both plants and animals) at the San Diego Zoo, San Diego Zoo Safari Park, and San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research, as well as international field programs on six continents. The work of these entities is inspiring children through the San Diego Zoo Kids network, reaching out through the Internet and in children's hospitals nationwide. The work of San Diego Zoo Global is made possible by the San Diego Zoo Global Wildlife Conservancy and is supported in part by the Foundation of San Diego Zoo Global. As Denyse OLeary points out, its a good thing Stephen Meyer was there on stage in Toronto, migraine attack or not. Otherwise, between atheist Lawrence Krauss and theistic evolutionist Denis Lamoureux, there would have been little to debate. Perhaps surprisingly, Lamoureux focused his attack on Meyer, even while proclaiming him his brother in Christ and flinging buttery approval at Krauss. Simple humanity, it seems, would have dictated turning your fire away from the stricken man and directing it at your shared opponent. But I leave it to his fellow Christians to reflect on Dr. Lamoureuxs character, and how little daylight there is between his theistic position and Krausss atheism. What, though, about his science? In defending Darwinism, Lamoureuxs signal contribution drew on his expertise in teeth. Evolving them was a snap Teeth emerged. Very easy to do. Paleontologist Gunter Bechly, a pretty impressive scientist, begs to differ, on that as well as other points raised by Lamoureux. He blogs about the Lamoureux delusion. First on the question of dental evolution: Lamoureux elaborated on the origin of teeth from placoid scales on the jaws of Paleozoic acanthodian sharks. However, his own diagram showed that these placoid scales already included all crucial morphological features of teeth (upper enamel layer, lower dentine layer, pulp cavity, bony base). That dermal denticle scales on jaws gradually grew larger to form teeth is not a convincing example of macroevolution, but rather just quantitative change through microevolution that is not even denied by Young Earth Creationists. At best, his example is evidence for common descent with modification, which is fully compatible with Intelligent Design and thus cannot be used against it. Finally, the example has no bearing at all on the crucial question, if an unguided Neodarwinian process can explain the pattern of morphological change over time, and therefore it is impotent as an argument against Intelligent Design anyway. On Lamoureux and the oldest bilaterian: To refute Stephen Meyers claims in his book Darwins Doubt, Lamoureux presented the discovery of alleged 585 million year old traces of early bilaterian animals from the Ediacaran period. This evidence is based on a Science publication by Pecoits et al. (2012). However, Lamoureux forgot to mention that the dating and identification of these traces is highly disputed (see here and here). Actually, the most recent publication on this issue by Mangano & Buatois (2014) clearly states that With respect to the Ediacaran, we agree with more conservative estimations that the oldest bilaterian trace fossils are dated to approximately 560 Ma The oldest subdivision (Avalon; 575-560 Ma) does not contain undisputed bilaterian trace fossils, and therefore has not been considered An earlier appearance of bilaterian trails (585 Ma) has been recently suggested. However, the age of the trace-fossil-bearing strata is highly contended, probably being Late Palaeozoic. It is especially noteworthy that large unicellular organisms (protists) can produce traces on the sea floor that are remarkably similar to those of bilaterian animals, as Matz et al. (2008) showed in a study titled Giant deep-sea protist produces bilaterian-like traces. On nylonase: Lamoureux mentioned the discovery of Nylon-eating bacteria as empirical proof that evolution can create new complex specified information and new proteins (nylonase enzyme) within only 40 years of time. This is actually an old hat in the creation vs evolution debate (see Wikipedia), and it sounds impressive only when one ignores two facts: Dembski (2001) established in his book No Free Lunch a value 500 Bits as complexity threshold for Complex Specified Information (CSI), which could not originate by natural processes given the probabilistic resources of our universe. It has not been established that the new information in nylonase matches this threshold and thus represents CSI at all (see here). Newer research by Negoro et al. (2007) has shown that the nylonase enzyme did not evolve by gene duplication and frameshift mutation as originally assumed, but arose from a pre-existing carboxyesterase enzyme, which already had some capacity to degrade nylon oligomers. In other words: Nylonase is NOT new information (also see here)! On the God of the gaps objection, Bechly agrees that explaining lightning and thunder with Thors activity would be a God of the Gaps argument. But ID is different, obviously: As Intelligent Design theorist Stephen C. Meyer explained in the same debate and in his books Signature in the Cell and Darwins Doubt, Intelligent Design makes an inference to the best explanation, not based on an argument from ignorance (what we do NOT know), but based on what we DO know about causes now in operation that could bring about the effect in question. These are fighting words: Indeed it is Theistic Evolution which is a redundant and dispensable concept (see this Forbes article), because it is either Neodarwinism in a cheap tuxedo (which it usually is), or it is a cowardly euphemism for Intelligent Design. In either case it is not a genuine alternative to Neodarwinism or Intelligent Design. Neo-Darwinism in a cheap tuxedo I like that. Or maybe in rented clerical attire. Theodore Roosevelt famously survived a 1912 assassination attempt in Milwaukee following which, instead of seeking medical help, he proceeded directly to a campaign event. There, he delivered a 90-minute speech with a bullet lodged in his chest and blood leaking from his wound. Stephen Meyers performance at the University of Toronto on Saturday night, debating evolution with two opponents in the middle of a debilitating migraine headache, was considerably less dramatic than that. Still, readers of Evolution News appreciated Meyers determination and character for going through with it and, despite the handicap, giving the better scientific arguments of the evening. After inviting reader comments for publication, we received many emails of thanks, encouragement, and shrewd analysis. I thought Id share a selection (withholding surnames though almost all volunteered theirs). With minor edits and a bit of snipping for length, here we go. From Jim: Not sure if this will get back to Steve but bravo. Very tough and courageous to get through his physical ailments and I was deeply moved by his tenacity. I hope he gets on stage again with Dr. Krauss but I think a growing number of people and students are fixated on popular scientific cultural secular icons like Nye and Neil deGrasse Tyson and a discussion with them would be so important. From Doug: I watched the debate all the way through, and am grateful that you fought through your miserable migraine to do the best you could. With Krausss unspeakably unscientific opening disparaging of you (his word, multiple times), computer problems, etc., you still had the best case of the three. You know this material so well that its in your DNA, so it did come through. From Joe: Fortunately, [Meyer] was able to prevail in the end, dealing succinct blows to both Krauss and Lamoureaux. By staying on point, by being the only consistent, evidence-based, well-reasoned voice in the debate, he emerged victorious in spite of the migraine. Meanwhile, Krauss managed to come across more arrogantly and rudely than he usually does. In the comment section of the live stream, even atheists were bemoaning his condescending straw-man approach. From John: Really sad that Dr. Meyer had a migraine tonight. Even so, he had the only scientific arguments. Krauss came across like a Junior High smart aleck, and Lamoureux sounds like he wants to make peace and hope nobody else leaves the church. From Kenneth: Was it just me or did it seem like Dr. Lamoureux spent more of his time attacking his brother in Christ than [he did attacking Krauss]? It looked like the evenings title shouldve been changed from Whats Behind It All? to Lets All Attack Stephen Meyer! Seriously though, kudos to Dr. Meyer for hanging in there like a champ. Best moment was when he nailed Krauss on how natural selection doesnt kick in until after a random search of a functional protein is found. Seeing Krauss go silent then change the subject (thereby implicitly conceding the point) was pure gold! Get well, Dr. Meyer! God bless! From Marc: I will never again watch Lawrence K. debate anyone. Instead of interacting with the ideas and arguments he chooses to mock them. With his level of education you would think that he would realize that while accusing Dr. Meyer of using a God of the gaps approach to his way of doing science he himself uses a science of the gaps approach. I have watched as many videos of Dr. Meyer as I have been able to find online and very much enjoy his way of explaining the subject matter. From Michael: I think it was Christopher Hitchens who said that he was encouraged when his opponents resorted to ad hominems. Meyer must have been supremely encouraged when the fearful, or otherwise disturbed, Krauss opened up his dialogue with a litany of them! Props to you, Mr. Meyer, for your civility! From Elliott: Before I give my thoughts on the debate, I would like to detail my current educational standing briefly. I am not a scientist. As of now, I am attending a rabbinical college in the U.S., training for rabbinic ordination, while simultaneously receiving credits for a bachelors degree in religious studies. This may not make me an expert on the actual material presented, but this background has certainly helped give me an informed opinion on the logic (proofs, inferences, fallacies, theological biases, etc.) employed to push said information. It was in this category that I was horrified. How could it be, year after year, article after article, debate after debate, and book after book that people still do not understand the difference between a God of the Gaps argument, and the Intelligent Design argument. The former being an argument from ignorance, and the latter being a positive argument from our repeated and uniform experience of the cause and effect structure of the world? On a side note, for all the jabs Krauss made at theism, it seems he has completely forgotten the logical inconsistencies with his materialist philosophy. In this regard, Krauss lost the debate as soon as he showed up. You cannot come to an event which presupposes mindful discourse when you believe you are a determined swirl of mindless chemical and physical processes. No, be a contradictory robot somewhere else. Perhaps, though, we are all determined. That is the only reason I can think of that causes ID critics to continually misunderstand the argument. Perhaps they are just determined never to understand. I think Dr. Meyer put it best in his introduction to Darwins Doubt where he wrote about the constant misrepresentation of his previous book Signature in the Cell and his feelings about the whole thing. He said, I found this all a bit surreal, as if I had wandered into a lost chapter from a Kafka novel. I couldnt have said it better myself. [Despite his condition], Dr. Meyer was still able to tackle two PhD opponents and outdo them in both manner and wit. Bravo Dr. Meyer. Thats a telling image few are likely to forget. First a rabbinic student, now a reader with a Muslim name. [Correction and apology: The writer points out to me in a follow up email that he is a Christian, not a Muslim.] From Yousif: A major takeaway from this debate is that even with a migraine attack, Dr. Meyer was able to communicate the problem Neo-Darwinism faces regarding the generation of new genetic information effectively. So effectively in fact that both Lawrence Krauss and Denis Lamoureux were unable to provide any compelling answers. I was shocked by Krausss deceptive and weak attacks on Dr. Meyers arguments. For example Krauss brought up the RNA world hypothesis as a solution, disregarding the fact that Dr. Meyer addressed exactly that in his opening speech and showed that even in that proposed scenario, you would still need specified complexity, something (that as Dr. Meyer shows) neither chance or chance and necessity is able to account for. (There are of course many other problems with the RNA world hypothesis that Dr. Meyer explains in his book Signature in the Cell.) Furthermore, the bacteria gene evolution example by Denis Lamoureux was a very weak response that Dr. Meyer addressed effectively. From this it becomes clear that on his argument regarding specified complexity, Dr. Meyer was not proven wrong at any time in the debate. Krauss attempted to show that ID is unscientific because it does not make any predictions however even there once again Dr. Meyer showed that he is simply incorrect (especially when bringing up Richard Sternberg). Krauss and Lamoureux both argued that ID is not scientific however all one has to do is read An Introduction to Intelligent Design, an article very well written by Casey Luskin, where he shows ID is based on the scientific method, involving an observation, (Intelligent agents produce Complex and Specified Information), hypothesis (Natural structures will be found that contain many parts arranged in intricate patterns that perform a specific function indicating high levels of CSI, including irreducible complexity), experiment (Experimental investigations of DNA indicate that it is full of a CSI-rich, language-based code. Cells use computer-like information processing systems to translate the genetic information in DNA into proteins. Genetic knockout experiments and other studies show that some molecular machines, like the bacterial flagellum, are irreducibly complex), and conclusion (The high levels of CSI including irreducible complexity in biochemical systems are best explained by the action of an intelligent agent). To see this misrepresentation of ID by Lawrence Krauss and Denis Lamoureux was very saddening and frustrating but even with all that, despite having a migraine attack and facing a debate involving 2 versus 1 against him, Dr. Meyer did an excellent job and I commend him for it. On Krausss tactics, some astute comments from Ryan: During his [opening] diatribe, Krauss informed the audience that Meyer and his ideas are not worth debating and that Meyer himself is something of a dishonest marketing man for Intelligent Design. And what exactly is Krausss justification for this claim? Well, you see, several years ago at a school board hearing in Ohio, Krauss, having failed to inform himself of Discovery Institutes long-standing position [against] mandating the teaching of Intelligent Design in public schools, assumed they would be in favor of such a thing. When he discovered from Meyers testimony that they were not advocating the introduction of ID into public schools, Krauss came to the only reasonable conclusion he could imagine: Steve Meyer and Discovery Institute were lying about their position. After all, the only other alternative was that Krauss had failed to do his due diligence in trying to understand the position of one of his opponents This is classic Krauss. If you denigrate, misrepresent and discredit your opponent in the eyes of your audience right up front then you dont have to worry too much about answering their arguments later. You just make silly faces while theyre talking or offer a few snide remarks here and there and hope the audience believes that you know better than your opponent, and that they shouldnt consider his arguments any more seriously than your mime routine suggests youre considering them This was an incredible display of intellectual dishonesty on Krausss part and it is a sign of the weakness of his position. When you honestly believe you have the better case and the ability to present that case, you dont resort to an opening ad hominem salvo Krauss forced Stephen into making a decision to either address the misrepresentations that had been leveled at him in order to clear his name before proceeding with his arguments for ID or to simply ignore Krauss and make his presentation. If Stephen chose to address Krausss inaccurate attack it would take up a significant portion of his speaking time and almost certainly prevent him from completing his presentation. On the other hand, if he just ignored the personal attack he would clearly risk having his entire presentation undermined in the eyes of the audience In order to choose the latter approach, one must have a high degree of confidence in the intellectual capacity of the audience and be willing to trust that they are capable of seeing through sleazy debate tactics. And this was precisely what Meyer did. Conversely, Krauss showed a significant amount of disrespect for the intelligence of the audience members by assuming that they could be persuaded to dismiss Meyers actual arguments by presenting them with an irrelevant and false attack against his person. From Gustavo: Dr. Meyer bravely kept on even though he had a migraine and faced a hostile environment. What a very rude and disrespectful opening statement from Dr. Krauss! Yet, Dr. Meyer showed class and poise and did not reply in kind. Dr. Meyers closing statement was beautiful, showing that looking for causation for the appearance of the universe is better science than settling for the assumption that the universe came to be without cause. From Collin: If Krauss was asked the questions about evolution that he asked about ID, he would have folded up like a protein. Not exactly sure what that means but I like the image. From Sandy: Near the end of the debate, Denis Lamoureaux stated: Theres a great problem with anti-evolutionists bringing in this engineering mentality. It does not work like that. Actually, it works exactly like that. From Andrew: [I]t seems that Dr Krauss spends a lot of time being rude to Dr. Stephen Meyer. The ad hominem attacks are legion. I would rather heave heard Dr. Krauss speak more to his arguments than attack the people on stage who were trying to be charitable toward him. Right there at 30 mins 13 secs Krauss says, We can make our own meaning.except if it involves anything he disagrees with. If I make my own meaning by believing in a God because ultimately the universe doesnt care and it is all meaningless and I need comfort, then why does Krauss have such a problem with that? Why am I foolish for doing that? From John: Anyone who knows about Lawrence Krauss could have predicted last nights events. Krauss is an arrogant, disagreeable man with a serious mean streak, a schoolyard bully who never grew up. I am tired of seeing honorable and decent men from the ID and theistic camp debate that man (or any of the current crop of militant atheists). I hope Dr. Meyer is doing okay in the aftermath. He is one of my favorites in the ID movement. He deserved better treatment. Maybe we need to stop being so nice to these people during debates. From Frank: What I saw briefly in this debateis a man of courage suffering a vicious migraine and being insulted with personal attacks by that ignoramus Lawrence Krauss yet willing to carry on so as not to let the people in the audience down. A proper gentleman unlike his opposite number who is a disgrace to the scientific community. From Steven: The only thing that I came away with was what I already believe. If I have to judge between these two theories based on the kind of people who adhere to them I have to go with ID. From Darrell: I was appalled at the incivility of Lawrence Krauss and the lack of solidarity of Denis Lamoureux toward our brother Steve Meyer. Yesterday I sent a hand written letter to Dr. Meyer to tell him that I was proud of him. From Kelly: Bravo to you for fighting on even in your limited capacity that night, the facts that you shared won the day over Krausss propaganda-like non-engagement with any substantial issues. Rest assured that for anyone who was listening with a critical ear, it was clear that Krauss showed no understanding of your position, clear that you understand his, and also clear that the facts and evidence you shared support a superior view. As for Krauss: his shameful misrepresentations and personal attacks to begin the discussion were a clear attempt to prejudice the audience against anything you might say. I think your audience that night did not realize that Krauss was treating them like imbeciles, and that helping future audiences see this, as well as expressing your own confidence in their abilities, will help open hearts and minds to engage in the issues more fully. From Kathy: Hello. Im just a person who became interested in Intelligent Design quite by accident while searching the Internet. I have no strong beliefs in any arena. A video of Dr. Meyer lecturing (I cant recall where) caught my attention which led to subsequent searches. Evolution News & Views is now on my favourites list. I suppose my spelling of favourites will indicate that Im Canadian. Ive watched and listened to many of Dr. Meyers debates. Ive read Signature in the Cell and will be reading Darwins Doubt. Im currently reading Science and Evidence for Design in the Universe. I recently watched the debate in Toronto where Dr. Meyer was suffering a migraine. I suppose you could say that it was Krausss lucky day! As for Lamoureux, I have nothing to say as nothing he said stayed with me. Krauss adhered to the common theme of insults and derision that Ive noticed with many Darwinists. I just wanted to say that I was so impressed with Dr. Meyer (as I always am). I think that his critics would not have suffered through the same. Dr. Meyer has become the gold standard to which I compare all the others. Thank you, Kathy, though with some regret Ive exercised editorial discretion and cut your P.S. with an off-topic remark on Justin Trudeau and Donald Trump! Finally, from Lars: Wow! Great stuff! Can we expect to see more of this in the future? I find it fascinating that these discussions can be held in a civil manner where the participants act like adults (mostly). This is years overdue. What is truly behind all of this? What do we make of the underlying wisdom in everything that is the universe? I sincerely hope this can be a regular feature. Me too, Lars, only minus the headache and the ad hominems, next time. Analysts at Scotiabank predict potential for further Canadian Dollar exchange rates (CAD) upside as market participants consider the growth-supportive impact of fiscal stimulus and its influence on expectations for relative monetary policy. The Canadian Dollar has continued to languish in response to yesterdays unexpectedly high increase is US crude oil inventories, with a rise of 9.3 million barrels reigniting concerns with global oversupply. The US Dollar, meanwhile, is maintaining a strong bullish run in the wake of suggestions that the Fed could raise interest rates in April, a prospect that has been weighing heavily on the commodity-correlated CAD exchange rate. The Canadian Dollar started the today positively, rising cautiously against the GBP, AUD, EUR and USD. This failed to maintain itself, however, on account of recent high US crude oil stocks sending the price of oil (and the CAD exchange rates) plummeting. For your reference here are the latest FX rates: On Saturday the Pound to British Pound exchange rate (GBP/GBP) converts at 1 FX markets see the pound vs pound exchange rate converting at 1. At time of writing the pound to us dollar exchange rate is quoted at 1.13. At time of writing the pound to australian dollar exchange rate is quoted at 1.772. At time of writing the pound to new zealand dollar exchange rate is quoted at 1.966. 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. Investors have returned to the Canadian Dollar (CAD) in the wake of the latest Canadian federal budget, with markets encouraged by the more progressive nature of the proposals and commitment to investment in infrastructure and public services. Although the budget is based on deficit financing the more positive market reception has seen the GBP/CAD exchange rate continue to shed value today. With a Domestic Data Draught Limiting CAD Movement Today, it has been up to Commodities to Generate This. The price of crude oil has dipped slightly so far today, having fallen to $41.33 per barrel. The price of gold, meanwhile, has risen to $1250.4 per 100 ounces. With a complete absence of domestic data this week, Canadian Dollar exchange rates will see movement in response to crude oil prices and market sentiment. With that said, however, the 2016 Federal Budget is likely to cause CAD/GBP, CAD/USD and CAD/EUR movement today. Oil prices have staged a modest recovery of late which has pushed the Canadian Dollar higher versus nearly all of its major peers. OPEC Meeting Date Helps Boost Oil Prices and Canadian Dollar Comments from OPEC Secretary General Abdalla Salem el-Badri have helped support oil prices at the start of the week, with confirmation that members of the production group are due to convene on 17th April. With hopes of a potential production freeze heightened once more this has seen the Canadian Dollar continue to strengthen against a number of the majors, in spite of an increasing atmosphere of risk aversion. Will Oil Prices Continue to Support CAD Appreciation or will Canadas Federal Budget Reverse Loonie Gains? As crude prices hover above $41 a barrel amid speculation that the global glut is not as excessive as originally feared, demand for the Canadian Dollar strengthened. It is fair to say, however, that oil is still at risk from large price drops given lack of demand and continued global oversupply. This week has a complete absence of Canadian ecostats to provoke Loonie movement. However, tonight will see the publication of the first Federal Budget from the new government. There is a growing concern, however, that the government will not be able to improve the confidence of many citizens who fear for personal financial circumstance. There is no sense that people are getting ahead or moving forward. Theyre treading water, said Lorne Bozinoff, president and founder of Forum Research. Analysts at Scotiabank predict that demand for protection against downside CAD risk has moderated, stating; We highlight the potential for further CAD upside as market participants consider the growth-supportive impact of fiscal stimulus and its influence on expectations for relative monetary policy. OIS are still pricing a 20% chance of a 25bpt cut over the next 12 months, and a fade in the markets dovish bias would be expected to provide for CAD strength. Measures of CAD volatility are steady around the lower end of their recent range, and risk reversals are CAD neutral at the one week horizon. The one month (USDCAD) measure has fallen to an 8-month low and the one year measure tested a fresh multi-year low on Fridayboth signalling a considerable moderation in demand for protection against downside risk for CAD. Pound Sterling (GBP) Exchange Rates Cool after Brussels Tragedy Bolsters Brexit Campaign The British Pound softened considerably versus its major peers on Tuesday after the tragic events in Brussels airport bolstered claims for those campaigning to leave the European Union. The explosions have been linked to terrorist activity, although this is not yet confirmed. Some campaigners may use this to highlight the danger posed by migrants and refugees. Sterling is clearly underperforming today, said Valentin Marinov, London-based economist. I think its on the back of a combination of factors -- one of which is the concern that the tragic event could indeed support the campaign to leave the EU. Also weighing on demand for the UK asset was mixed results from domestic ecostats. Of particular disappointment was Februarys Consumer price Index which held at 0.3% on the year despite predictions of a rise to 0.4%. US Dollar Exchange Rates Trending Higher after Hawkish Lockhart Speech After Atlanta Federal Reserve President Dennis Lockhart stated that the US may be in line for a rate hike as soon as April, the US Dollar advanced versus the majority of its currency rivals. Lockhart argued that there is sufficient momentum evidenced by domestic ecostats to justify tighter policy outlook. This presents a stark contrast to recent comments from Fed Chief Janet Yellen who highlighted external risks as a reason to hold policy. For many, Lockharts comments cement the notion that Yellens dovish speech was an attempt to jawbone. The centre of the committee is pretty uniform at the moment, Lockhart told reporters after his speech. That reflects a similar assessment of the momentum of the economy. Later today the US House Price Index and Manufacturing PMI have the potential to provoke USD volatility. After two years of intense criticism, immigration officials are considering drastically reducing the family detention program and shifting families out of large holding centers in South Texas and into newly constructed facilities. Activists and federal officials stressed that planning is in its very early stages, but the change would involve reducing the number of beds designed to hold families from more than 3,000 to fewer than 1,000. Its unclear what the Homeland Security Department will do with the thousands of beds at family detention centers in Karnes County and Dilley, and the reduction would be subject to congressional approval. During a congressional hearing last week, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Director Sarah Saldana was asked what her agency planned to do with the 2,400-bed detention center in Dilley and the 830-bed facility in Karnes County. Well, we're pretty much there on the decision on Karnes. Our plans are to convert that into an adult male perhaps with children facility, not family facility, as it now with, Saldana said. Dilley will continue to exist. We will continue working there. ICE hasnt decided what it will do with a much smaller facility in Pennsylvania, Saldana said. In its proposed 2017 budget, homeland security requested funding for only 960 family detention beds. ICE also has issued a request for information, a preliminary step in the contracting process, researching the possibility of building two new detention centers with 500 beds each. The request doesnt specify where the new centers would be, but says they ideally would be located along the Southwest border. Built in 2014 for nearly $300 million, the Dilley detention center is the largest of its kind in the country. Karnes was built as a detention center for adult males, but was converted to hold families in 2014 and later expanded. The request comes as ICE is trying to license the two South Texas detention centers, part of an effort to come into compliance with a judges order that found the facilities were in violation of an existing court settlement. State regulators visiting the Dilley facility last year complained children had to walk outside to reach bathrooms; in Karnes, they had concerns about how bunk beds were bolted to the floor. An ICE official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the agency has shortened the amount of time families spend in the detention centers part of the court decision and that the number of immigrants booked into the detention centers has decreased. Early last week, the Karnes County detention center held 449 immigrants and the Dilly facility held 468. As both the average length of stay and the number of family units booked into detention has declined, ICE is considering options to accommodate the dynamic and unpredictable need for family residential services, the official said. As a result, ICE is exploring options to open smaller residential centers, as stated in our recently issued Request for Information. ICE began large-scale detention of families in 2014, when more than 100,000 immigrants, mostly from Central America, traveling as families and unaccompanied children crossed into the U.S. The vast majority entered the country in the Rio Grande Valley. The numbers are down this year, but more than 3,000 unaccompanied children and the same number traveling as families were apprehended at the border last month, making it the second-busiest February on record. News about the reduced bed space for holding families and ICEs exploration of new detention centers was met with a tepid reaction from activists whove been critical of the governments decision to detain women and children. Since (homeland security) has not been clear in its plans, we cannot read too much into them. We think these are half-hearted measures that leave advocates guessing and families detained and in limbo, said Wendy Feliz, director of communications at the American Immigration Council. Were still reviewing the RFI but our position is that they should end family detention. We also doubt the presidents budget will be implemented. The detention centers in Karnes County and Dilley have been lightning rods for criticism by advocates who say that holding women and children in jail-like settings traumatizes families fleeing violence in their home countries. They argue that the women and children held in those detention centers, most of whom are from El Salvador, Honduras and Central America, should be allowed to pursue asylum claims while living in the U.S. In its request for information, ICE seemed to be trying to allay some of the advocates concerns, as well as those of the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services inspectors. In the request, ICE specifies that the new facilities must have private showers and restrooms. It also prescribes that, Facilities should not incorporate characteristics on the interior or exterior typically associated with secure detention facilities, such as high security fences, razor wire fencing, or heavy steel doors. Jonathan Ryan, the executive director of San Antonio-based Refugee and Immigrant Center for Education and Legal Services, called such improvements the bright bedspread syndrome. Prison companies believe they can paint walls bright colors, they can put bright bedspreads on the beds, and this somehow changes the fundamental fact that this is a prison, Ryan said. jbuch@express-news.net Twitter: @jlbuch WOOSTER, Ohio Dressed in a suit and tie, I arrived to the first session of Ohio AgriPOWER in downtown Columbus, not knowing what to expect. On the one hand, I did know there would be about 20 other participants, and that wed be focusing on leadership and personal development. And, like the other participants, I had received and read scores of memos and emails about what to expect. I read a few of those memos twice, just to be sure I wasnt missing anything! But there was no way I could have fully prepared myself for the experience that was ahead: seven multi-day sessions, for a total of 16 days, learning about agriculture and farm policy at the local, state and national level. And there was no warm-up session. We started promptly at 9 a.m., and on the second day, we each gave a five-minute prepared speech, and received constructive criticism on how to make it better. New experience For a moment, when I saw everyone dressed so sharply, I wasnt sure of what I was getting myself into. But as we introduced ourselves, and I heard other members talking about their dogs and farm animals, and their love of the land, I knew I was in good company. The suits came off, and we got to see each other in a variety of settings, ranging from farms to the nations Capitol building. The greatest lesson I learned was summarized in a statement on plaques handed to us on the last day, at graduation. The plaques read, Unless you try to do something beyond what you have mastered, you will never grow. In retrospect That quote really was the highlight of my AgriPOWER experience, even though I didnt realize it until the end. From the first session, when I took the podium to deliver my speech (something I dont like to do) until the final session, I was pushing myself in new ways that forced me to grow. Learn more about AgriPOWER, and apply for the next class. For me, the most interesting thing was meeting and hearing from a wide variety of producers, which included peanut, cotton and tobacco producers in South Carolina. We didnt just meet them, we learned first-hand about the challenges of growing those crops and came to appreciate the work that farmers in southern states do. We may never grow cotton or peanuts here in Ohio, but those crops are the livelihood of the people who do. Valuable insight All of the people we met through AgriPOWER provided valuable insight into their part of the ag industry whether it was farming, ag communications, ag law or something else. And we participants asked them more (and deeper) questions than I would have ever imagined. But maybe I shouldnt have been so surprised. We had a lot of talent and ag experience even among ourselves. Among the 20 of us, we had members from the farm insurance industry, farm loans and financing, taxation, production agriculture, and ag communications. Our conversations were full of timely topics and information and some good social times in the evenings. While part of the program exposed me to new ideas, part of it also helped expand things that I already knew or thought that I knew. I had met Ohio and Washington lawmakers various times in my career, but never in the same environment that AgriPOWER provided. This time, it was more relaxed (I didnt have to write a story) and I was able to see the lawmakers and staffers on a little more personal level. I learned more about the challenges they face (political and even everyday life) and the unique road that each chose, before they came into office. Pushing for more No one gets to be a senator or representative or a leader in general without pushing themselves to do new things. The process isnt always smooth, but is rewarding in the end. I also enjoyed the opportunity to meet and learn from the other AgriPOWER participants, and hear of their successes and challenges. Some were just getting started in their careers, and others were looking for something new, or going through a major life transition. I got to see agriculture from all perspectives, and I made connections that I know will last well into the future. But just as one of the graduation speakers pointed out the experience doesnt end at graduation. Its incumbent upon people in agriculture to keep learning to keep pushing themselves and finding out more of what theyre capable. I definitely pushed myself when I blocked off 16 days to participate in this program and I know that I am better because of the experience. JEFFERSON, Ohio Ashtabula County dairymen took home top honors in herd production at the 66th annual Ashtabula County Dairy Banquet, March 19, at the Lenox Community Center. Over 100 people attended the event. Top production Three Ashtabula County dairy farms were recognized for best production in Ohio. Alfa-Creek Brown Swiss Farm, Andover Township, was recognized as the second ranked Brown Swiss herd in Ohio. Bossys Way Farm, New Lyme Township, was recognized as the second place Holstein herd in Ohio, and Alfa-Creek Farms, Andover Township, was recognized as the fourth ranked Holstein herd. Most improved herd rotating trophy was awarded to Polchin Holsteins, Cherry Valley Township, with a herd average improved over 5,000 pounds of milk per cow. The top 3x Energy Corrected Milk (ECM) Herd Award went to Bossys Way Farm, and the top 2x High Energy Corrected Milk Award went to Springer Dairy Farm, Lenox Township. Wilson Dairy Farm, Jefferson Township, won the 2015 Low Somatic Cell Milk Quality Award for the 11th consecutive year. Top cows Five farms were recognized for having top cows in Ashtabula County by breed and age. Alfa Creek Brown Swiss received three Brown Swiss awards; Bossys Way Farm took all four Holstein awards and received one Brown Swiss award; Ringbyre Jersey took all four Jersey awards; Alfa Creek Farms received three crossbreds awards, and Springer Dairy Farm received one crossbred award. Bossys Way Farm had the top producing cow in 2015, producing 49,232 pounds of milk which is almost 5,500 gallons of milk. County Extension Educator David Marrison put this number in perspective: The average cow in Ashtabula County gives about 22,000 pounds of milk each year. This cow produced more than double the average. Royalty An additional highlight of the banquet was the crowning of the 2016 Ashtabula County Dairy Princess. Katie Stokes, daughter of Ken and Tammy Stokes, was selected as the 2016 Ashtabula County Dairy Princess, and Nicole Mann, daughter of Sharon Millard and Tim Mann, was runner-up. The Stuart Struna Memorial 4-H Extra Effort Award is given to a 4-H member who shows dairy cows and goes above and beyond to help out during the Ashtabula County Fair. Finalists recognized were: Joshua Butler from the Demark Pioneers 4-H Club; Justin and Allison Graves from the Kids n Cows 4-H Club; Kassidy Brinker from the Pierpont Mix n Match Pacs; and Mason Hane from the Williamsfield Dairyaiders 4-H Club. Allison Graves was selected as the winner for this award. Board elections Tom Coltman, Wayne Township, was elected to serve a two-year term on the Dairy Service Unit board of directors. In addition, Lindsey Zaebst, New Lyme Township, was elected to her first term on the board. Matt Springer, Lenox Township, is retiring from the board after 10 years of service. State updates State Rep. John Patterson, Ohio District 99, also gave an update on a variety of legislation that impacts agriculture in Ashtabula County, including CAUV, phosphorus legislation, microbeads in Lake Erie, and value added agriculture research funding. Shropshire A Full-Time position is available for an assistant herdsperson on a family dairy farm in mid Shropshire. We have a 250 dairy herd rearing own replacements together with a b... A series of drop in sessions are being run by NFU Scotland at markets around the country to engage with beef farmers. Beef farmers are currently operating in a challenging environment and if the price follows the trend of previous years then the situation could get more desperate. NFU Scotland will be attending store sales across Scotland to hear key issues affecting producers directly. The Unions Livestock Policy Manager John Sleigh commented: Once again the livestock committee is hitting the road. With stormy waters in the beef market, it is vital the Union is fighting for farmers. I want to hear from cattle farmers about the key issues affecting their business, no issue is too big or small. Regional livestock committee representatives will be on hand to explain what the Union does on beef farmers behalf. It is important farmers understand the efforts the livestock committee go to, on issues like securing coupled payments, lobbying for 45m for a beef programme, challenging red tape, fighting for a fair food chain, and battling Brussels bureaucracy. Nevertheless, we arent complacent and want to hear from beef farmers on the issues affecting their business. There are important discussions for the sector to have on beef contracts, codes of practice and terms and conditions in the market place. I encourage beef farmers to drop in at our stand at one of the three marts, to share views and hear what is happening including some exciting new projects. Safety watchdog issues half-term call to keep kids safe on farms Plant could employ up to 1,000 Iowans Pending finalization of state approvals, Prestage Foods of Iowa, LLC intends to build a state-of-the-art, pork processing facility on a proposed tract in Mason City, IA. This one-shift plant will employ as many as 1,000 Iowans with a total capital investment over $240 million. We are excited to take the next logical step by building a new high tech pork plant in Mason City, IA, commented Ron Prestage, DVM, on behalf of the Prestage family. We see this as an opportunity to secure the future of our family business, its employees, and our contract growers, whether they are in the Carolinas, MS, OK, TX, or IA. We have been impressed with the help and support provided by local and state officials, the Iowa Pork Producers Association, NPPC, and the National Pork Board. "We have always believed that our family and employees must be engaged in the communities in which we operate and the industry we represent. Having produced market hogs in IA for the past dozen years, we believe Mason City is the right place for us to strategically build this new plant, added Dr. Prestage. In a release Prestage Farms believes that the consolidation of the pork packing industry has decreased competition for live hogs and helped depress prices to hog producers. As a large family-owned, independent hog producer, Prestage believes that vertical integration is necessary to protect its hog production investment in Iowa and elsewhere, and to create additional opportunities for independent producers in Iowa to maximize value for their livestock. With the importance of Iowa to pork production in the United States, it is only natural that our first pork processing plant would locate here. Prestage Foods looks forward to building a long-lasting bond with the people of Mason City and North Central Iowa. "The end result will be to provide delicious pork to people all over the world, said Jere Null, COO Prestage Foods of Iowa. This facility will be built with exports in mind. Global consumers already know of the goodness of Iowa pork. These consumers will place additional value on the significant investment that we are making in engineering to insure that this plant produces the highest level of safe food available anywhere in the world, says Null. The project, as currently planned, will involve the design and construction of a new 650,000 square foot hog processing facility that will operate on one shift, processing 10,000 hogs per day and producing 600 million pounds of pork annually. While timing for a second shift is yet to be determined, the facility will be designed, but will not be initially constructed, for future expansion to two shifts. The plant will utilize the latest innovations in processing and automation technology to help ensure that it is a world leader in food, employee, and environmental safety. Construction is set to begin, pending finalization of state permits and approvals, in the summer of 2016 with completion and first shift operations beginning in mid- 2018. Initially operating one shift, the plant will employ as many as 1,000 people with a total capital investment in excess of $240 million. Null added, The people of Prestage Foods will work relentlessly to make this facility a source of pride for Mason City. We are impressed with the quality of the people we have met in Cerro Gordo County and Mason City, and feel that we share the same rural small town values in our home back in North Carolina. Prestage Farms, Inc. is a multi-generational family-owned and operated business started by Bill and Marsha Prestage in 1983. Mr. and Mrs. Prestage, along with their three sons, still own and actively operate this multifaceted business. Today, Prestage Farms, along with its affiliates, is a Top 5 producer of pork and turkey that employs more than 2,000 people company-wide, contracts with more than 450 farm families in seven states, and produces more than 1 billion pounds of meat annually. Prestage Farms, Inc. is headquartered in Clinton, NC, and has operations in Iowa, South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, Texas and Oklahoma. With more than 95% of the worlds population living outside the United States and representing 75% of the worlds purchasing power, there is huge market potential for Nebraska corn around the world. From raw grainto red meatto ethanol, exports in all forms help support corn prices for Nebraska corn farmers. And each value-added product plays a fundamental role in building global demand. Enhancing the profitability of Nebraska corn and value-added corn products through market development is one of the cornerstones of the Nebraska Corn Board. Thats why the Nebraska Corn Board has long standing relationships with organizations such as the US Grains Council (USGC) and the US Meat Export Federation (USMEF). With offices in key markets around the world, these organizations work hard to help identify and develop export markets for Nebraska corn. Their international directors are positioned as the boots on the ground force that helps recognize opportunity and identify challenges in new and existing global markets. Even though most corn grown in Nebraska is used right here in our state for livestock and ethanolor shipped to dairies in California and feedlots in Texas, we still have a lot at stake when it comes to exports, said Alan Tiemann, a farmer from Seward, the at-large director on the Nebraska Corn Board and chairman of the U.S. Grains Council. International exports in all forms help use the U.S. corn supply and create demand that affects our corn prices here at home. As the chairman of the USGC, Tiemann has a key role in helping the Council identify new opportunities and priorities in a rapidly changing global market. With the population projected to grow to 9 billion by 2050, USGC is working hard to teach producers around the world how to use feed grains effectively and manage their operations efficiently. In February, Tiemann helped lead USGCs 13th annual International Marketing Conference where they highlighted the Councils mission to drive Excellence in Exports. One key topic of discussion at the conference was ethanol exports. Ethanol exports continue to be a big priority to the Grains Council. As the number of vehicles increase worldwide, international markets for ethanol are growing dramatically, added Tiemann. USGC is the market development arm for Nebraska corn and value-added corn products around the world, while USMEF is the market development arm working to increase our market share for red meat around the world. Both organizations have international directors that work around the globe to build demand, knock down trade barriers and serve our customers in the most critical overseas markets. Click here to see more... By Phil Kaatz Photo 1. A sulfur-deficient alfalfa field in Michigans Thumb showing effects of a fertilizer application between first and second cutting. The application included 100 pounds of ammonium sulfate on this sandy loam, coarse-textured soil field. Sometimes when a positive outcome is achieved, unexpected consequences can occur that were originally unforeseeable. One example is the Clean Air Act of 1970 and the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 that restricted sulfur dioxide emissions into the atmosphere from coal-fired facilities. Our air has significantly reduced sulfur emissions due to the act, however, with less sulfur being deposited on the ground, the incidence of sulfur deficiency is becoming more commonplace. There is nearly one million acres of alfalfa production in Michigan. Since alfalfa is a heavy user of sulfur and will utilize 5-6 pounds per dry matter ton, high yielding stands can quickly deplete soil reserves. Sulfur is an important nutrient for alfalfa as a component of several amino acids and influences yield, protein content, stand density and stand life of alfalfa. The question you might ask is, So what? What does this mean for Michigan alfalfa growers? Michigan State University recently published the 2015 Michigan Forage Variety Report. Over the last decade, this annual report has seen dry matter yields range from near 6.0 dry matter tons per acre in East Lansing, Michigan, to 3.5 dry matter tons per acre in Chatham, Michigan, in the Upper Peninsula. When comparing MSU forage alfalfa trials to USDA alfalfa production data, the MSU trials consistently yield nearly twice the USDA averages. This raises the question, Why is there such a difference between MSU trial average yields and the average yields of most alfalfa producers? One area that plays a major role in alfalfa yield is soil fertility. Its my belief that the reduction of sulfur from the air can be one of the contributing factors why farmer alfalfa yields may not be as high as MSU yields. Producers should remember that tissue sampling of alfalfa is a good tool if you suspect sulfur deficiency, but it is not a substitute for soil sampling practices on their farm. Soil samples for alfalfa are a valuable tool that should be part of every growers fertility program. However, sulfur is one nutrient where a soil test is unreliable and inadequate to predict sulfur deficiency in alfalfa, so tissue samples are needed to accurately assess current nutrient deficiencies. To take an alfalfa tissue sample, second cutting or later should be used. The top 6 inches of the plant should be taken at the late bud or early flower stage from 35-40 plants representing the entire field, air dried in a cool location, placed in paper bags and sent to a lab for analysis. Alfalfa tissue less than 0.25 percent sulfur is considered deficient. Sulfur-deficient alfalfa fields will be lower yielding and show stunted, yellow plants that lack vigor. Producers are more likely to see sulfur deficiencies under the following conditions: Mature stands of alfalfa (with no sulfur application). Sandy, coarse-textured soils where sulfur will readily leach. Low organic matter soils. High yielding environments (with no sulfur application). Non-manured fields. MSU Extension initiated an alfalfa tissue test survey during summer 2015 to evaluate the level of nutrients found in producers alfalfa fields. The survey did not have enough samples to be statistically analyzed, but does provide an opportunity to observe trends and have a good snapshot of nutrient availability. Every region of the state (Figure 1) was represented, with a total of 52 samples from second, third and fourth cutting submitted for evaluation. The survey results identified a trend for alfalfa sulfur deficiency especially in fields like those described above. Figure 1. Field locations using Google Earth show the locations for the alfalfa tissue samples. Figure 2 shows the results of the survey where 38 percent of all samples tested were deficient. The highest region was the Upper Peninsula and northern Michigan where soil textures are normally more sandy in nature. The southwest region had the next highest percentage of deficient fields sampled and when you consider this area has areas of sandy, coarse-textured soils, producers should closely monitor fields where leaching may be more prevalent. The area of the state with the lowest percent of deficient samples occurred in the Thumb. This area has a high number of acres that receive manure and also have more clay textured soils that are less prone to S deficiencies. Figure 2. Percent of Michigan samples by region showing levels of sulfur (S). The survey trends, especially in Michigans southwest, Upper Peninsula and northern regions where more sandy soils are found, should be a source of concern for producers. If sulfur deficiency is suspected, tissue test confirmation followed by a good sulfur fertility program can solve the problem. Sulfate is the form of sulfur that is taken up by plants. Current recommendations are to add 25 pounds of sulfur per acre in a sulfate form to deficient fields. Elemental sulfur does not convert to sulfate quickly enough to be available for a sulfur-deficient crop. Annual applications of sulfur may be needed on fields with a history of sulfur deficiency. If a field is found to have a sulfur deficiency, a treatment of a sulfate fertilizer can provide dramatic results quickly as shown in Photo 1. A sulfate application can provide an increase of up to 1 ton of dry matter per acre according to Carrie Laboski, University of Wisconsin-Madison soil fertility/nutrient management specialist. Her research has shown that the greater the deficiency, the greater the response will be to a sulfate fertilizer application. The trend found in this survey shows the need for further research to be done in Michigan to help identify ways for more producers to achieve high yielding alfalfa production. Source:msu.edu The event series aims to educate a wider audience about the work the GRDC is doing to help grow the industry and influence the agriculture industry with their research and development in the process. A former executive of a Singapore-based defense contracting firm was sentenced to 63 months in federal prison Friday for his role in defrauding the U.S. Navy of $34 million for ship husbanding services. Alex Wisidagama, 42, a Singapore national, was the global manager for government contracts of Glenn Defense Marine Asia. He was sentenced by federal district court judge Janis Sammartino in San Diego. Judge Sammartino also ordered Wisidagama to pay $34.8 million in restitution to the U.S. Navy. In March 2014, Wisidagama pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to submit false claims for payment. He faced up to 10 years in prison. Wisidagama was the third defendant sentenced in the fraud. Glenn Defense had U.S. government contracts to provide port services for Navy ships in the Asia-Pacific region. Glenn Defense CEO Leonard Glenn Francis, 51 also known as Fat Leonard allegedly bribed U.S. Navy personnel for classified information about ship movements and schedules. The company then over-billed the Navy for port services including provisions and fuel. Wisidagama admitted that he and his conspirators created false invoices purporting to show that [Glenn Defense] paid more to purchase fuel than was actually the case, which allowed [the company] to build undisclosed markups into the prices at which it supplied fuel to the U.S. Navy, the DOJ said. For example, in October 2011, Glenn Defense charged the Navy $2.7 million to service the USS Mustin during a port visit to Thailand; $1.6 million of the charges were fraudulent. The fraud caused more $34 million in total losses to the U.S. Navy, the DOJ said. Ten individuals have been charged in the case. Nine of them have pleaded guilty, including Lieutenant Commander Todd Dale Malaki, Commander Michael Vannak Khem Misiewicz, Captain Daniel Dusek, NCIS Special Agent John Beliveau, Commander Jose Luis Sanchez, and U.S. Navy Petty Officer First Class Dan Layug. Malaki was sentenced in January to 40 months in prison for giving classified information to Glenn Defense in exchange for cash, hotel expenses, and the services of a prostitute. Layug was sentenced in January to 27 months in prison. He took $1,000 a month and consumer electronics from Glenn Defense, plus luxury hotel stays for himself and others in Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Hong Kong, and Thailand. Layug a logistics specialist at a U.S. Navy facility in Yokosuka, Japan passed classified U.S. Navy ship schedules to Glenn Defense. The company allegedly used the schedules to manipulate U.S. Navy ports of call to where it operated. It then overcharged for its services and submitted bogus invoices. The other defendants who have pleaded guilty are waiting to be sentenced. Former Department of Defense civilian employee Paul Simpkins is waiting for his trial. Three rear admirals including the commander of naval forces in Japan announced their retirements in early 2015 after the secretary of the Navy censured them for the bribery scandal. In January 2015, Francis reportedly changed his plea to guilty in an appearance in federal court in San Diego. He has been held without bail since his arrest in California in September 2013. The Malaysian national was charged with conspiracy to commit bribery. _____ Richard L. Cassin is the publisher and editor of the FCPA Blog. He can be contacted here. Glam, jazz and razzmatazz rocked the Opera House in Manchester last night (March 21), as Chicago opened in the city with an all-star cast that never once failed to impress. Credit: Catherine Ashmore Finding its roots in the real Chicago of the early 20th century, the show gains inspiration from events that took place in 1924, when gangsters played a huge part in running things. Cook County Jail housed over a dozen women on 'murderess row' and it's a fictional look at some of those women that's explored within this musical. Hayley Tamaddon and Sophie Carmen-Jones take centre-stage as Roxie Hart and Velma Kelly respectively. Both taken to prison for crimes they almost certainly did commit, the pair fight for the attentions of crminal lawyer Billy Flynn, played by John Partridge, whilst also vying for the spotlight of the media. Those who may have doubted Tamaddon's ability in theatre would be shot down within seconds of her beginning her performance. She's a force to be reckoned with on the stage, confident, funny and the perfect fit for Roxie Hart. Similarly, Carmen-Jones shows exactly why she picked up the role of Velma. Her chemistry with the other ladies is beyond doubt and her dance moves are sharp, consistently on point and fluid. These are two ladies who have clearly spent a huge amount of time in rehearsals and it has paid off in spades. Credit: Catherine Ashmore Partridge slips into the role of smooth yet sleazy Flynn very well, with an accent to die for and a couple of infectious numbers. When he's working with Roxie and Mary Sunshine along with the company on 'We Both Reached For The Gun' he's at his best and he also shines during his big number 'Razzle Dazzle'. As a stage veteran he knows exactly how to play into the hands of the audience, giving them just enough to keep them on the edge of their seats, begging for more. Neil Ditt provides humour as Amos Hart and punches straight to the gut with his 'Mister Cellophane' rendition. He ellicits many an 'aww' and 'bless him' from the audience and laps it all up, despite never gaining the exit music he so desired... Then there's fan favourite Sam Bailey, former winner of The X Factor and clearly hugely popular with the audience who whoop and cheer her arrival to the stage as Mama Morton before she's so much as uttered a single word. Her vocals are impressive throughout as would be expected and she seems at home on the stage. It's always a worry when celebrities are picked up for stage shows as you think they may be there on their name alone, but this clearly isn't the case for Bailey. She's earned her spot in the show just like everybody else. Credit: Catherine Ashmore Allowing the 11-piece band to play a huge part in the show is a masterful stroke of genius. It brings a sort of 'meta' feel to the whole production, luring the audience right in and ensuring the crowd believe and hang off every word uttered on the stage. Though the scenery and set is minimilist, the light work is impressive and casts the shadow of iron bars on the ground as the women mark their territories. Highlights from the night include opening number 'All That Jazz', the brilliant 'Cell Block Tango' and the hilarious scene where Roxie stands trial, dazzling the judge, jury and those in attendance. Delving into the fascination media had at the time for murder stories (something that's still guaranteed to sell thousands of papers to this day), Chicago is a show unafraid to poke fun at itself and willing to put everything on the line for the pleasure of the audience. There's a reason it's the second-longest running musical in Broadway history. It's utterly incredible. Chicago runs at the Opera House from Monday 21 March to Saturday 2 April. by Daniel Falconer for www.femalefirst.co.uk find me on and follow me on If blockbusters are not really your thing then Free State of Jones is a movie that could be just up your street as Matthew McConaughey returns to the big screen. Free State of Jones Free State of Jones if the first film that we are going to see McConaughey star in this year and it is his first big screen appearance since the success of science fiction film Interstellar. I don't know about you, but I am thrilled to see him back. Free State of Jones sees the Oscar-winning actor team up with filmmaker Gary Ross; we haven't seen him at the helm of a film since the huge success of The Hunger Games back in 2012. As well as being in the director's chair, Ross has also penned the film's screenplay. The movie is inspired by the life of Newton Knight, who led an armed rebellion against the Confederacy in Mississippi during the American Civil War. McConaughey is set to take on the role of Knight in the film... this could be a role and a performance that earns him another Best Actor Oscar nomination. I guess we are going to have to wait and see on that score. A wonderful cast has been assembled for the film, as Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Keri Russell, Mahershala Ali, Brendan Gleeson, Sean Bridgers, Jacob Lofland, and Brad Carter will all star alongside McConaughey. I have to admit, Free State of Jones is a movie that I have been looking forward to for quite some time and the first trailer promises much. McConaughey really has undergone quite a transformation in recent years; from rom-com star to Oscar-winning Hollywood heavyweight. Now, it is exciting when McConaughey returns to the big screen as you know that you are in for a special performance - I am looking forward to seeing his tackle the role of Knight in Free State of Jones. Set during the Civil War, The Free State of Jones tells the story of a defiant Southern farmer, Newt Knight, and his extraordinary armed rebellion against the Confederacy. Banding together with other small farmers and with the assistance of local slaves, Knight launched an uprising that led Jones County, Mississippi to secede from the Confederacy, creating a Free State of Jones. His marriage to a former slave, Rachel, and his subsequent establishment of a mixed race community was unique in the post-war South. Knight continued his struggle into Reconstruction, distinguishing him as a compelling, if controversial, figure of defiance long beyond the War. Ross is no stranger to creating interesting and complex characters - we have seen then with Seabiscuit and especially with the character of Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games. Free State of Jones is set to provide a welcome break from all of the CGI-driven blockbusters that are coming our way this summer. Free State of Jones is released 27th May. by Helen Earnshaw for www.femalefirst.co.uk find me on and follow me on Red Hot Chili Peppers are currently mixing their new album. Chad Smith and Nigel Godrich (c) Twitter The 'Can't Stop' rockers are working with Radiohead producer Nigel Godrich on their first studio album since 2011's 'I'm with You' and drummer Chad Smith has shared a picture of himself with Nigel - affectionately known as "the sixth Radiohead member" - getting down to work mixing the LP. Alongside the photo posted on his personal Twitter account on Monday (21.03.16), he wrote: "Started Mixing the new record [email protected] at the helm (sic)" This could mean that Thom Yorke's band, who also have a new album pending, could have completed their own record as Nigel is now preoccupied with the Red Hot Chili Peppers' songs. Bassist Flea - who is joined by Chad, Anthony Kiedis and Josh Klinghoffer in the band - has previously claimed their eagerly-anticipated 11th studio album takes them into a "new era". He said: "We're heading into a new era and we're really excited. It's new and different but without sacrificing the good bits of us. There are some songs we already had, and some new ones too. I can't wait to play it live." While there is no release date for the album it looks like they could have some new material to perform when they headline this year's Reading and Leeds Festivals, where they will make a UK exclusive live return on the weekend of August 26 to August 28. UPDATE: Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the terror attacks in Brussels, with the group's statement published by IS-linked Amaq News Agency, according to media in Egypt. 34 in total have been confirmed dead with close to 200 casualties. NOTE: Those worried about friends or family can use the following tweets for guidance: Questions about family or friends > Call 02/753.73.00 Brussels Airport (@BrusselsAirport) March 22, 2016 #Bruxelles : Un numero d'urgence pour les personnes qui auraient des proches dans les endroits concernes 02 506 47 11 TV5MONDE (@TV5MONDE) March 22, 2016 At around 8am local time this morning (March 22), two explosions occurred in the departure hall at Brussels' Zaventem Airport, reportedly killing 13 people whilst leaving dozens injured. Authorities now report that more undetonated homemade bombs have been discovered within the terminal, whilst Belgian TV says that one of the blasts in the airport was enacted by a suicide bomber. Three unused suicide belts have also been found by Belgian police. The Belgian Prosecutor Generals office has now confirmed that at least 13 were killed in the airport. Shots were heard before the explosions which took place near the American Airlines and Brussels Airline check in desk. video: People running for life after multiple blasts at Brussels airport via @AAhronheim pic.twitter.com/DQEQJyojye Khalid Khan (@khalidkhan787) March 22, 2016 A journalist from the Georgian national TV station was at the airport at the time of the explosions and said that a personal bag was the cause of one of the blasts. Interfax cites the journalist as saying: "We're being warned that the danger is not over and we should be ready for a new explosion at any time." Meanwhile, another blast occurred at metro in Brussels at Maalbeek station, claiming the lives of 10 passengers a police source informed rt.com. Passengers are now being evacuated and the Belgian government have raised the terror alert level to 4 across the country - its highest level. The Zaventem airport has been shut down as well as the city's bus, tram and metro systems. Eurostar have now announced that there will be no trains running to or from Brussels station. The US Embassy has shot into action, ordering a shelter in place for all of its personnel and US citizens. British Prime Minister David Cameron has also taken to social media to comment on the attacks, saying he'll chair a meeting of the UK government's emergency committee this morning: I will be chairing a COBRA meeting on the events in Brussels later this morning. David Cameron (@David_Cameron) March 22, 2016 An airport spokesperson for London Gatwick also says security has been ramped up. President Vladimir Putin of Russia has expressed his condolences, saying: "The fight against this evil implies most active international cooperation." Though the Belgian prime minister is urging the local population and tourists to stay where they are, public buildings are closing in Brussels with evacuations from museums and the like being held. There's also worry at the EU Commission building: Bomb disposal units race past the @EU_Commission building. Tensions still high here at Schuman Simon Marks (@MarksSimon) March 22, 2016 Israel has now banned the arrival of all flights from Europe until midnight according to its national airport administration, with 24 flights postponed. Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz has said he's shocked by the attacks and has ordered a hotline to be opened for Austrian citizens visiting the country. Security has also been boosted by the Dutch military at its airports and borders, whilst Greece's Aegean Airlines announced all flights to Brussels have been cancelled until further notice, with all morning flights diverted to Dusseldorf, Germany, according to Reuters. Paris airports have also strengthened their security measures following the terror attacks, reports the French capital's transport office press service. by Daniel Falconer for www.femalefirst.co.uk find me on and follow me on Britain's Prince Harry was splattered with paint as he celebrated the Holi festival in Nepal today (22.03.16). Prince Harry The 31-year-old royal - the grandson of Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip - certainly let his hair down as he allowed school children to smother his face in bright colours. The celebratory ceremony started as the head girl of Gauda Secondary School, Juna Garung, 15, smudged paint on the flame-haired hunk's bearded cheeks, before he did it back. Proving he's not one to take a back seat, Harry began picking up the powdered paint before throwing it at the people around him after a man smudged it down his shirt. After the commemoration ceremony, Prince Harry planted a tree in the grounds of the camp before leaving - with paint still down his shirt - to continue his five-day trip in Nepal. Harry arrived in the south Asian country on Saturday (19.03.16) and has been non-stop visiting little villages and national parks since he touched down. Yesterday (21.03.16), Harry was put in charge of the small town of Leurani by Mangali Tamang, 86, after he trekked over an hour to join them and spend the night there. The flame-haired hunk was covered with garlands, scarves and a pheta - a white turban-like headdress - to signify his status as the head man, before he broke out into a dance. After investment in Paytm and Snapdeal, Chinese e-commerce major Alibaba is planning to enter India this year, a top company official has said."We are planning to enter the e-commerce business in India in 2016. We have been exploring very carefully the e-commerce opportunity in this country , which we think is very exciting on the backdrop of Digital India," Alibaba Group President J Michael Evans said in New Delhi after meeting Telecom Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad recently.The company said it is evaluating all opportunities to build the business organically or look at any other thing that might come along. Evans, who along with Alibaba Group's Global Managing Director K Guru Gowrappan met Prasad, said Alibaba plans to set up shop in India and work to serve both customers, consumers and small businesses because that is the history and the DNA of Alibaba. "We have investments in both payments and e-commerce already and we will over the course of next year will figure about exactly what our strategy is," Evans said. After the meeting, Prasad said, "We hope Alibaba will come and have a good footprint in India, including the expanding business of ecommerce (for which) they are exploring the possibility. I have said very clearly that Alibaba is quite free to come and expand its footprint in India." Alibaba is said to be very keen to enter India in a big way, particularly in the e-commerce segment. The company is weighing the options whether to go on their own or tie up with a local entity. (SH) Fibre2Fashion News Desk India India is rising, not only as a new choice of relocating labour-intensive industries from China, but also as a retail market of good potential, says a research report by The Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC).In recent years, the sustained rise in production costs on the Chinese mainland has eroded the profit margins of many Hong Kong companies with labour-intensive factories located on the Chinese mainland, prompting them to seek alternative production bases elsewhere. India is rising, not only as a new choice of relocating labour-intensive industries from China, but also as a retail market of good potential, says a# While Southeast Asian countries offer many choices, the HKTDC report says India offers many advantages as an alternative production base, along with the added advantage of having a domestic market of great potential.According to the report, the majority of Indian garment producers are focused on the domestic market, as their product quality was generally lower than the standards required by overseas importers.Despite this, many big Indian exporters have successfully lined up with international buyers, including department stores, retail chains and brands.The paper was written after a recent field trip to India that included factory visits and interviews with garment manufacturers.In the four years to 2014, India's garment exports increased at an average annual rate of 12 per cent, surpassing China's 9 per cent, in line with Bangladesh's 13 per cent and eclipsed by Vietnam's 17 per cent.With advantages of raw materials and prospects of vertical integration, India is a strong garment exporting country and a location worth considering for factory relocation in relation to labour-intensive manufacturing, such as garment-making.The report pointed out that while China is the undisputed world leader in exporting textiles and garment products, many have overlooked India's position as the world's second biggest exporter of textile and garment products in 2014, selling a total of $36 billion, during the year, far behind China's $399 billion.For textile exports alone, India was second after China in 2014, with a share of 5.8 per cent of the global market, compared to China's enormous 35.6 per cent share.HKTDC says it is not surprising that the bulk of garment manufacturing in India is for the domestic market, supported by the country's huge capacity in textiles production.India stands out to be a substantial exporter in both garments and textiles. In 2014, India imported textiles worth only $3.8 billion, lagging much behind Vietnam's $12 billion, Bangladesh's $6.8 billion, and just ahead of Cambodia's $3 billion, the report said. (SH) Fibre2Fashion News Desk India report released recently under the labour chapter of the US-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement by the US Department of Labour raises significant concerns regarding the right to freedom of association in Peru's non-traditional export sectors, which include exports of textiles, apparel and certain agricultural products.According to a Labour Department press release, the report also raises questions regarding labour law enforcement in Peru. To help guide subsequent engagement between the US and Peruvian governments, the report provides six recommendations aimed at addressing the questions and concerns. It also notes the US government's commitment to assess any progress by Peru within nine months and thereafter as appropriate. A report released recently under the labour chapter of the US-Peru Trade Promotion Agreement by the US Department of Labour raises significant concern# Published within 180 days of initiating a review of the matter, the report represents the streamlined and timely review by the department of labour submissions received under US trade agreements.The report responds to a submission filed with the department's Bureau of International Labour Affairs by the International Labour Rights Forum, Peru Equidad and seven Peruvian workers' organizations. The submission alleges that the Peruvian government failed to enforce its labour laws effectively, and that Peru's law governing employment contracts for non-traditional exports is incompatible with freedom of association.Based on evidence gathered as part of a review, the report raises significant concerns about whether the current system to protect the right to freedom of association of workers employed on unlimited consecutive short-term contracts in Peru's non-traditional export sectors is sufficient. In addition, the report also questions the effectiveness of the country 's labour law enforcement while recognizing the number of positive steps taken by the Peruvian government to improve its labour law enforcement since signing the PTPA in 2007.The report sets out a path for continued engagement with Peru's government aimed at addressing the questions and concerns identified during the review. (SH) Fibre2Fashion News Desk India Despite the large number of advantages associated with the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) pact, it poses its own set of problems for the local Vietnamese garment sector, according to a Vietnamese newspaper. Owing to the clauses in the pact, Vietnamese garment manufacturers, who largely import raw materials from non-TPP countries, will be forced to source from local manufacturers. The local raw materials industry is largely underdeveloped, and will require huge investments for producing sufficient, good quality raw materials. Besides, sustainability requirements during production are also difficult for the local producers to match. The Yarn Forward rule requires the TPP member countries to source raw materials for garment production either locally or from other TPP members. However, approximately 60 to 75 per cent of the total raw materials used in garment production in Vietnam are imported from non-TPP countries. Despite the large number of advantages associated with the TPP pact, it poses its own set of problems for the local sector.# Vietnamese apparel manufacturers will not be able to take the benefit of TPP, if they do not work towards the development of the local supply chain. The local supply chain largely remains underdeveloped. Besides, sustainability issues plaguing the local supply chain also remain a major concern in the international community. Additionally, Vietnam has seen the highest amount of foreign investments in recent years. Non-TPP countries like China, Japan and South Korea are investing in manufacturing in Vietnam in order to benefit from the pact. This may result in majority of the tax benefits being received by non-TPP countries, while the local supply chain continues to remain underdeveloped. The implementation of TPP will take almost two more years, as member countries seek approval from their respect governments. Meanwhile, Vietnam will have to pay attention to all the concerns to take full advantage of the pact. (MCJ) Fibre2Fashion News Desk India Japan and Vietnam have agreed to work together for the promotion of the textile industry in Vietnam.The agreement, which the two sides reached at a joint committee meeting in Hanoi on Saturday, is aimed at dealing with an expected increase in Vietnamese textile exports to the US once the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement enters into force, Japanese news agency Jiji Press has reported. Japan and Vietnam have agreed to work together for the promotion of the textile industry in Vietnam.The agreement, which the two sides reached at# Japan, Vietnam and the US are among the 12 nations that signed the TPP deal in February.At the first meeting of the Joint Committee between Japan and Vietnam on Cooperation in Industry, Trade and Energy, the two countries also agreed to start an industrial policy dialogue at an early date and discuss specific measures.Japanese Economy, Trade and Industry Minister Motoo Hayashi expressed Tokyo's hope of expanding bilateral trade and promoting Japanese companies' investment in Vietnam.By using this committee as a springboard, we want to advance economic relations between Japan and Vietnam to a new stage, he said.The Japanese and Vietnamese governments agreed in July last year to establish the committee for strengthening bilateral economic cooperation.Under the TPP, restrictions on foreign investment in Vietnam's retail industry will be eased. (SH) Fibre2Fashion News Desk India Vietnam's state-controlled Gia Dinh Textile and Garment Company has sold more than 15 million shares, equivalent to a 24.28 per cent stake, for over VND155.8 billion ($6.89 million) in an initial public offering.No foreign investors bid in the IPO that was oversubscribed nearly three times at Ho Chi Minh City Stock Exchange on Friday, Vietnamese newspapers have reported. Vietnam's state-controlled Gia Dinh Textile and Garment Company has sold more than 15 million shares, equivalent to a 24.28 per cent stake# The Ho Chi Minh City-based company, also known as GIDITEXCO, is slated to sell another stake of 25 per cent to strategic partners and 1.72 per cent to its staff, so the state ownership will be reduced to 49 per cent, according to the plans.With 14 subsidiaries and ventures, all operating in the textile and garment sector, the company accounts for more than half of Vietnam's garment exports to Japan, and nearly 45 per cent to the US.It posted a post-tax profit of over VND2.6 billion ($115,000) at the end of the third quarter last year, down nearly 42 per cent year on year, according to the company's latest financial statement. (SH) Fibre2Fashion News Desk India Priyanka Chopra, looks smoking hot for the shoot of Esquire Magazine as she dons a dark blue bikini and is seen relaxing by the pool, and posing inside of an uber posh bungalow, showcasing her legs behind the curtains. PeeCee knows how to raise the temperatures and she's doing it right! Check out these stunning pictures of Priyanka Chopra for Esquire Magazine! Esquire, is an American men's magazine, and people in the US are totally floored by Priyanka Chopra's looks and attitude. The beautiful PeeCee, was seen in American TV series Quantico, was featured on several late night talk shows, she bagged a role for Baywatch alongside Dwayne Johnson, and also hosted the Oscar Awards. Ranbir Kapoor's 'Mystery Girl' Takes A Picture With Shahrukh Khan! Reveals Her Identity Priyanka Chopra, is slowly gaining footprint in the land of Hollywood, and we're sure, after the release of Baywatch, the actress would be a well known name worldwide. Now coming back to the photoshoot of Esquire Magazine, Priyanka Chopra looks absolutely spectacular in her swimsuit and all her pictures have a touch of class! The photo editor of the magazine Elizabeth Griffin, has many praiseworthy words for Priyanka Chopra's professionalism and she wrote on her blog as, Jhanvi Kapoor Shares Pictures Along With Her BFF! "When I arrive at her Montreal home, Priyanka Chopra is wrapping a photo shoot. She's joking with the crew, filling the room with her broad smile and throaty laugh. She makes her goodbyes, hugging nearly everyone, then vanishes to her bedroom for a few moments to reset for our shoot. Two more will follow. Such is the daily pace for a woman who recently became the first South Asian actress to star in a network drama and who has just begun filming the big-screen reboot of Baywatch". Priyanka Chopra, is surely winning the hearts of people in Hollywood as well. All the best PeeCee! Onlookers Stunned: Nargis Fakhri Wears A Bathrobe & Walks Around Mumbai City! Before dating Sidharth Malhotra, Alia Bhatt was in a serious relationship with Ali Dadarkar. And it seems that Ali is still in love with Alia. According to a report in Spotboye.com, Ali met Alia Bhatt's best friend in Dubai and partied with her and after getting drunk, he started crying and said that Alia left him for Sidharth. Click On VIEW PHOTOS To See Alia & Sidharth's Damn Hot Pics From Vogue's Shoot The report stated, ''It so happened that Ali bumped into Alia's bestie Akansha Ranjan in the Desert City. While Akansha was accompanied by her sister Anushka, Ali was with his bestie Sooraj Pancholi.'' Shahrukh Khan Bonds With Ranveer Singh In Dubai & Tells Him Something Very Important! ''The four, a little birdie tells us, had a blast partying together. So far, all good. But four pegs later, everything changed. Ali got so emotional that he started questioning Akansha about Alia and her current beau, Sid. Ali, we hear, thinks that Alia ditched him for the hunky actor. To cut a long story short, Akansha ended up consoling a shattered Ali throughout the party. '' Not so long ago, it was reported that Alia Bhatt and Sidharth Malhotra had a huge fight over Ali, when they all attended a common friend's party. At the party, Ali was trying to be overfriendly with Alia, which Sid did not like. Rumour has it that, Sidharth Malhotra and Alia Bhatt had a huge fight at the party in front of everyone. After the fight, both Alia and Sidharth left the party. Later, Alia Bhatt blocked Ali from her contacts list altogether. We wonder how Sidharth will react after reading this latest news about Ali! A few hours ago, we had reported that Kangana has landed in Mumbai for the Melange event, which is happening at Taj Land's End (Bandra). We all know that Kangana is continuously in limelight owing to her legal war with ex-boyfriend Hrithik Roshan. When Kangana Ranaut was asked by one of the reporters about all this, she got a bit emotional and replied, "You have got to give me a little bit of space. It's not that I will not talk about it; I will. But as of now, please grant me that space." Click On 'View Photos' To Check Out All The Pictures From The Event: The actress was also seen celebrating her birthday in advance with sister Rangoli and the Lifestyle team (the brand which is she endorsing). Actress Kangana Ranaut has been signed in by Lifestyle International Pvt. Ltd. as the brand ambassador for their contemporary ethnic wear brand Melange by Lifestyle. Aishwarya Rai Bachchan's New Selfie With Some Air Hostesses; Also See Her Other Hot Selfies Here! The Queen actress is scorching in the latest 'Rethink Ethnic' campaign by the brand that challenges the conventional and is inspired by her fearless, bold and strong individualistic style. With modern silhouettes, classy cuts and vibrant patterns, Melange by Lifestyle's latest Spring Summer collection redefines ethnic wear and is crafted for the independent woman of today whose sense of style reflects her individuality. "Melange is a brand that gives a contemporary twist to traditional Indian-wear and adds a chic vibe to ethnic looks, much like my free-spirited sense of fashion. The way the brand marries Indian aesthetics with fun, modern nuances makes me rethink ethnic and fall in love with it. Hence, the endorsement," Kangana said. On the work front, the actress will be next seen in Vishal Bharadwaj's upcoming film, Rangoon. Kangana Ranaut was spotted at the Mumbai airport along with her sister Rangoli. Ever since the legal battle with Hrithik Roshan broke out in the media, the actress was missing from the scene and now she is finally back, all ready to face it. The lawyers of both the parties were leaking the contents of the notice to the media channels and speaking about it. During the entire drama, both the stars preferred to take the back seat and watch. Bollywood Celebs Spotted At The Airport When Hrithik's allegation on Kangana having some mental issue got leaked, people from every medium shocked by his behaviour, demanded he apologize to the actress immediately. At this point, Hrithik decided to break his silence and issued an official statement talking about the mental issue, why he filed the case on her and how he waited for 2 years to do so. Amitabh Bachchan In Trouble! Compaint Registered For Singing National Anthem Incorrectly After this statement, Hrithik again went into hiding and never spoke about the issue again. Rumours have been doing the rounds that a Bollywood celebrity advised Hrithik to come forward and send a legal notice to Kangana because ever since her 'silly ex' comment, Hrithik's family was getting harassed by the media with questions related to the actress. Friends of the Queen actress even claim Hrithik and Kangana got engaged and that he planned to marry her the day his divorce came through. Hrithik's side denies all these accusations and claim the actor never dated Kangana, in fact he wasn't even that close of a friend to her. Amidst all these, Kangana was nowhere to be seen. Now, the actress is back in Mumbai, spotted at the airport along with her sister Rangoli returning to the city, ready to battle it out with superstar Hrithik Roshan. Stay tuned to this space to get the latest updates of the dirty battle between Kangana and Hrithik. Shahrukh Khan and Ranveer Singh recently attended an award function in Dubai. At the awards, both the actors spent a lot of time together and Shahrukh gave a very important style tip to Ranveer. Talking about Shahrukh Khan, Ranveer Singh told a leading daily, "I spent a lot of time with Mr. Shahrukh Khan recently in Dubai. And he told me something which I feel is a very important style tip. He told me, 'As a man you should always smell good.' I think that is a very good style tip. One should always smell good." Click On VIEW PHOTOS To See Shahrukh & Ranveer's Candid Pics Ranveer Singh also talked about a fashion faux pas, "I once went to a chat show wearing a suit. Amitabh Bachchan was on the same show. When I walked up to him and asked him, 'Sir how am I looking,' he looked at me and said, 'My son you are looking like a plant.' I am not deluded about my fashion mistakes. I know where I go wrong." The Bajirao Mastani actor is very fond of Shahrukh Khan and is slowly becoming a close pal with the King of Bollywood. Recently at TOIFA 2016 in Dubai, Ranveer Singh won the Best Actor trophy and he posted the picture of his trophy with Shahrukh Khan next to him on a social networking site. In the past, many stories were written about Ranveer Singh and Shahrukh Khan's cold war during the release of Bajirao Mastani and Dilwale. But Ranveer has always said that he respects Shahrukh a lot and there is no comparison between a superstar like SRK and him. Well, we are loving this new dostana! China Zheshang Bank raised HK$13 billion ($1.69 billion) through an initial public offering in Hong Kong on Tuesday, marking yet another milestone for the countrys banking system in its pursuit of private capital. Zheshang Bank becomes the ninth of 12 Chinese joint-stock commercial banks -- second-tier lenders that rank just below the so-called Big Four -- to publicly float its shares. One source familiar with the deal said the final price for the IPO was set at HK$3.96 against an indicative price range of between HK$3.92 and HK$4.12, giving the Zhejiang-based lender a pre-shoe market capitalisation of $8.96 billion. Zheshang Bank will consequently be the ninth-most valuable Hong Kong-listed Chinese bank, surpassing the likes of China Minsheng Bank and China Everbright Bank. As expected the banks final valuation was set at par to its last year-end book value, in line with last year's Chinese bank IPOs and Bank of Tianjin's $948 million listing, which priced on Monday. According to syndicate analyst projections, Zheshang Bank will list at 0.85 times its projected end-2016 book value. Zheshang Bank will have a post-listing free float of 18.85% assuming the greenshoe option is not exercised. Citic CLSA, CICC, Goldman Sachs, and ABC International were joint sponsors of the IPO. Banking system reform Compared to other recently-listed regional banks, Zheshang Banks IPO is of higher significance to the development of Chinas banking system because it is one of a dozen joint-stock commercial banks -- second-tier lenders that rank below Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Bank of China, China Construction Bank, and Agricultural Bank of China. Joint-stock commercial banks are recognised as nationwide lenders and own licences to operate cross-regional businesses. They are regarded as systemically important financial institutions and are subject to higher capital requirements and disclosure rules. Currently, eight joint-stock commercial banks are listed in Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Shenzhen. They comprise Citic Bank, China Merchants Bank, China Minsheng Bank, Huaxia Bank, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank, China Everbright Bank, Shenzhen Development Bank, and Industrial Bank. The listing of Zheshang Bank will leave only three unlisted joint-stock commercial banks, namely Guangdong Development Bank, Evergrowing Bank and China Bohai Bank. Bankers familiar with the Chinese banking industry said Beijings ultimate goal is to list them all, although the timing will largely depend on each banks business performance and internal restructuring process. One investment banker covering the financial services industry told FinanceAsia that listings of joint-stock commercial banks are important if Chinas banking system is to be reformed because they introduce a greater element of market rigour by exposing them to the demands and scrutiny of public shareholders. That, in turn, could help to make banks more efficient and drive them towards maximising profits, as opposed to state-owned institutions which may have more limited risk appetites. Accelerating the growth of the banking industry is particularly important to China, which is striving to maintain annual economic growth at between 6.5% and 7.0% over the next five years. Public listings will also require joint-stock commercial banks to be subject to international banking accords and disclosure requirements. Chinas privatisation of the Big Four banks between 2005 and 2010 was an important first step in the opening up the country to foreign investors. They played an important role in helping to fuel Chinas average 11.3% GDP growth rate between 2006 and 2010. Advisors, executives and regulators have been debating the merits of the Labor Department's proposed fiduciary rule for nearly a year. But now that the rule is likely to be finalized within weeks, is the industry ready to adjust to a new regulatory reality? It'll be "massive undertaking," according to Ira Hammerman, general counsel for SIFMA, one of the industry's largest trade and lobbying groups, and which has been opposed to the rule. Under the original proposal, the implementation timeframe was eight months, though that may be modified when the rule is finalized by the White House's Office of Budget and Management, which has been reviewing the proposal since late January. Hammerman has been with SIFMA since 2004, and oversees the group's legal advocacy efforts. In an interview at the recent SIFMA Compliance and Legal Society Annual Seminar, he discussed the implementation of the rule and how it might change advisor-client relationships. Will the industry be able to implement the rule within the original proposed timeframe? Even though we haven't seen the final rule for several months now we've been working with the industry and with consultants to the industry to map out and prepare for a massive implementation. In our comment letters we expressed the eight-month timetable as unrealistic. We continue to believe that any short time frame for implementing a rule that requires major technological changes and investments will take longer than eight months to implement. At the same time, firms will throw resources necessary to comply with any final regulation. But the eight month anticipated timetable remains unrealistic. Is there any reason that the Labor Department might extend the implementation process? I would say that we are hopeful that the final rule will take our implementation concerns into account and grant more than eight months. Will this rule force firms to change their business model? I think there will be a wide variety of responses by the industry, literally firm by firm, in response to the final rule. The rule will come out in the next couple of weeks. Everyone will read it and try to digest. Then, firm by firm, decisions will be made regarding how it impacts their business. I think you'll see a wide variety of decisions made in response to that. Some firms may say it is not worth the risk to comply with the so called BIC exemption because the risk of being second guessed by a plaintiff's lawyer, who has a private right of action, is too great. There might be other firms that might say that for our clientele we can offer them a managed account under our investment advisor registration and satisfy our fiduciary duty under the Investment Advisors Act of 1940 and get an asset-based fee as opposed to commissions and find a way to comply with the new rule. For smaller accounts, they may be counseled out of the firm because the firm can't offer them a managed account, and the firm is not willing to take the risk of charging commissions and seeking to comply with the BIC. So those clients may be left to manage their IRA accounts on their own. Read more: DoL Fiduciary Rule May Spur Product Innovation When the final version of the rule is made public, what aspects will you examine first to see if changes were made? There is no one aspect that immediately jumps out other than to say how the BIC has been modified is certainly something that we will pay extra close attention to. How will the department's proposed rule affect advisor-client relationships? That is one of our biggest concerns. We are concerned that the final rule will limit or exclude important advisor-client discussions about retirement investment and planning. That is not in the best interest of the investing public. As a result of what DOL is doing, you may have a situation where a client has multiple accounts at a firm and has been working with the same financial advisor for 20 or more years you may have the government forcing that client into not discussing [important financial activities] with their trusted financial advisor. This is [also] being driven by an agency, the DOL, which is not the most familiar with the securities markets. This is how people plan and invest for their future. This is why we have been saying for years that the SEC is the expert regulator should be taking the lead on an important issue, the standard of care for investment advice. Do you expect more action from regulators with regard to protections for senior investors around issues of dementia and diminished mental capacity? As Rick Ketchum said [at SIFMA's compliance conference], it's not so much that we need senior investor legislation, but with respect to how many more seniors there will be we need to think about compliance and regulation and how we treat this population. How you communicate with a senior could be literally different than you would with a 30-year-old. Talking about it, thinking about best techniques, reinforcing information and making sure they understand the information that would be one issue where the industry and regulators could work together on. We at SIFMA are spending a lot of time thinking about it. I think it will become a fundamental, core function at SIFMA given the known growth and expansion of that client segment. No one whether you are an industry person, a regulator, a legislator, press no one will be able to ignore the fact that we have an aging population. So it will definitely be a focus at SIFMA on how best we can serve that growing population. Read more: An arbitration panel ordered Morgan Stanley to pay about $34 million to the widow of the co-founder of Home Shopping Network. She alleged her husband's advisor at the wirehouse had been excessively trading and using unauthorized discretion in his accounts, among other misconduct. The panel made its decision on Friday, according to Scott Ilgenfritz, the attorney representing Lynnda Speer, wife of Roy Speer, who was 80 when he died in 2012. The couple had been married for 52 years. Roy Speer had an affair with his advisor, Ami Forte, according to Ilgenfritz, who added that Speer suffered from dementia. Lynnda Speer alleged Forte had taken advantage of her husband's condition and that Morgan Stanley had not properly supervised the activity in the accounts. Calls to Forte's office were not immediately returned. "We're very pleased to have prevailed on behalf of our client. She hopes this will send a message about not taking advantage of elderly clients," says Ilgenfritz, an attorney at Johnson Pope Bokor Ruppel & Burns, a Tampa, Fla.-based law firm. While substantial, the award fell short of what Speer sought: approximately $476 million for compensatory and punitive damages, according to a copy of the award. A spokesman for the wirehouse said Morgan Stanley was disappointed by the panel's decision and did not believe the award was justified. "Although disappointing, it is a small fraction of the more than $476 million sought by the claimants. Even so, the award is inconsistent with substantial evidence showing that the accounts were profitable for the client and managed in accordance with his wishes," the spokesman said. Ilgenfritz says that he thinks the panel awarded damages based partially on the trading activity in the account. Litigating the case took a long time; the panel held over 150 hearings, according to a copy of the award. "It was obviously a hard fought battle," Ilgenfritz says. He said it took a long time to present the evidence, which included hundreds of emails showing that liaisons from the bond trading desk in New York would send an email to a member of Forte's team in Florida, offering a certain number of bonds at a certain price. Ilgenfritz says that "within 5 minutes, the broker would say yes." "We argued to the panel that given the frequency of that activity there was repeated and rampant unauthorized activity because all the accounts were non-discretionary," he says. Most of the assets in the accounts were bonds, according to Ilgenfritz. In addition to damages, the panel awarded attorney's fees to be determined by a Florida state court. Ilgenfritz says that his law firm will file a motion to confirm the award in state court. Half of the winnings will go to the Roy M. Speer Foundation, a charity, according to Ilgenfritz. Read more: CALGARY, ALBERTA -- (Marketwired) -- 03/21/16 -- Veresen Inc. ("Veresen") (TSX: VSN) today announced that its Board of Directors has declared a cash dividend for March 2016 of $0.0833 per common share. The dividend will be paid on April 22, 2016 to shareholders of record at the close of business on March 31, 2016. This dividend is designated an "eligible dividend" for Canadian income tax purposes. The dividend is eligible to be reinvested by shareholders, at a 5% discount, in common shares of Veresen ("Common Shares") under the dividend reinvestment component of the Premium Dividend and Dividend Reinvestment Plan of Veresen ("Plan") to be held for their account under the Plan. Shareholders may have these additional Common Shares delivered to a designated plan broker in exchange for a premium cash payment equal to 102% of the reinvested amount under the Premium Dividend component of the Plan. Registered shareholders of Veresen who have not previously enrolled in the Plan and wish to enroll in the Plan with respect to the March 2016 cash dividend and future cash dividends declared by Veresen, must deliver to Computershare Trust Company of Canada, as Plan Agent, a completed enrollment form which is available at www.computershare.com/investorcentrecanada, at or before 5:00 pm (ET) on March 24, 2016. A copy of the enrollment form may also be obtained by calling Computershare Trust Company of Canada at 1-800-564-6253, or from Veresen's website at www.vereseninc.com. Beneficial shareholders of Veresen, who have not previously enrolled in the Plan and wish to participate in the Plan with respect to the March 2016 cash dividend and future cash dividends declared by Veresen, should contact their broker, investment dealer, financial institution or other nominee to provide appropriate enrollment instructions and to ensure any deadlines or other requirements that such nominee may impose or be subject to are met. About Veresen Inc. Veresen is a publicly-traded dividend paying corporation based in Calgary, Alberta, that owns and operates energy infrastructure assets across North America. Veresen is engaged in three principal businesses: a pipeline transportation business comprised of interests in the Alliance Pipeline, the Ruby Pipeline and the Alberta Ethane Gathering System; a midstream business which includes a partnership interest in Veresen Midstream Limited Partnership which owns assets in western Canada, an ownership interest in Aux Sable, a world-class natural gas liquids (NGL) extraction facility near Chicago, and other natural gas and NGL processing energy infrastructure; and a power business comprised of a portfolio of assets in Canada. Veresen is also developing Jordan Cove LNG, a six million tonne per annum natural gas liquefaction facility proposed to be constructed in Coos Bay, Oregon, and the associated Pacific Connector Gas Pipeline. In the normal course of business, Veresen regularly evaluates and pursues acquisition and development opportunities. Veresen's Common Shares and Cumulative Redeemable Preferred Shares Series A, Series C and Series E trade on the Toronto Stock Exchange under the symbols "VSN", "VSN.PR.A", "VSN.PR.C" and "VSN.PR.E", respectively. For further information, please visit www.vereseninc.com. denotes trademark of Canaccord Genuity Corp. Contacts: Veresen Inc. Dorreen Miller Director, Investor Relations (403) 213-3633 investor-relations@vereseninc.com Further strengthening global heating and cooling business and the Mitsubishi Electric brand Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (TOKYO:6503) announced today that DeLclima S.p.A., which Mitsubishi Electric achieved 100-percent ownership of on February 24, was renamed MELCO Hydronics IT Cooling S.p.A., effective March 15. The name change, which clearly declares the company's mission, also signifies to employees, customers and suppliers that the company has become an integral and valued part of the Mitsubishi Electric Group. Mitsubishi Electric aims to swiftly realize synergies and strengthen its commercial heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) business globally. The acquisition of DeLclima represents Mitsubishi Electric's full-scale entry into the chiller1 business and will enable the company to further expand its business portfolio, which will be important in achieving continuous growth and increasing market presence. The acquisition will also allow Mitsubishi Electric to adequately respond to environmental regulations (F-Gas regulations2), which are expected to increasingly impact business practices in the coming years. Mitsubishi Electric has a global presence in the area of heating, ventilation and air conditioning (HVAC) systems in markets such as Japan, Europe, North America, China, Southeast Asia, India and Australia. Europe in particular is an important market for Mitsubishi Electric after Japan. As the European air conditioning market matures, it further requires market players both to provide value-added products such as energy-saving products and to comply with environmental regulations, and in response, Mitsubishi Electric is growing its business in the region with a particular focus on room and packaged air conditioning as well as multi air conditioning systems for buildings. About MELCO Hydronics IT Cooling S.p.A. (previously DeLclima S.p.A.) DeLclima, established on December 29, 2009, designs, manufactures and sells commercial HVAC equipment and cooling equipment for industrial and IT use. DeLclima's subsidiaries include Climaveneta S.p.A. and RC Group S.p.A., which offer the following strengths: Climaveneta S.p.A. Leading market share in Europe and strong brand supported by customer trust and high quality in the chillers business; Energy-saving and low-noise technology, superior development and design, and efficient production capabilities that allow product customization and quick delivery; and System-solution capabilities, such as remote monitoring of HVAC equipment. RC Group S.p.A. Expertise in specialized air conditioning, including for server rooms, one of its major businesses. 1 Chillers maintain the temperature of an object by utilizing a heat medium (e.g., water) in a loop system and as a general name refer to central air conditioning systems whose primary application is for large facilities such as buildings and factories. 2 Regulations in Europe require the total emissions for Freon gas, a type of greenhouse gas, to be reduced gradually by 2030. About Mitsubishi Electric Corporation With over 90 years of experience in providing reliable, high-quality products, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (TOKYO: 6503) is a recognized world leader in the manufacture, marketing and sales of electrical and electronic equipment used in information processing and communications, space development and satellite communications, consumer electronics, industrial technology, energy, transportation and building equipment. Embracing the spirit of its corporate statement, Changes for the Better, and its environmental statement, Eco Changes, Mitsubishi Electric endeavors to be a global, leading green company, enriching society with technology. The company recorded consolidated group sales of 4,323.0 billion yen (US$ 36.0 billion*) in the fiscal year ended March 31, 2015. For more information visit: http://www.MitsubishiElectric.com *At an exchange rate of 120 yen to the US dollar, the rate given by the Tokyo Foreign Exchange Market on March 31, 2015 View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160321006444/en/ Contacts: Mitsubishi Electric Corporation Customer Inquiries Overseas Air-Conditioning Refrigeration Systems Division Living Environment Digital Media Equipment Group www.MitsubishiElectric.com/bu/air/products or Media Inquiries Katsunobu Muroi, +81-3-3218-2346 Public Relations Division prd.gnews@nk.MitsubishiElectric.co.jp www.MitsubishiElectric.com/news Danish technology show Americans how to conserve water. Some of the prime examples are on show at the White House in Washington. Grundfos is among the exhibitors. Water is on top of the agenda, when top American decision makers from state as well as federal levels are gathered at the White House in Washington D.C. on March 22nd, the UN's World Water Day. Among other things, they will be introduced to Danish solutions. This is part of an exhibition, where a total of ten booths with nice examples of intelligent technology, which can be used in combatting water challenges, are on display. The event is part of the American endeavor of handling the multi-facetted water- and climate challenges, the country faces. This is following the American commitment to the agreement at the COP21 and in realization of the fact that climate change to a large degree will affect the world through water. Already now, several US states experience stressed and sparse water resources. Therefore, the United States has set a target of reducing water consumption by 33 per cent. To provide inspiration of solutions to the water challenges, trailblazers in water have been invited to the White House to show solutions to the problems. Among the exhibitors is a consortium of 12 Danish water businesses and organizations, who joins as the only non-American twist. "It is unique that Danish businesses, organizations and the ministry are able to join forces around such a clear message for the White House within such short timeframe. The flexibility and willingness to cooperate is a trademark of Danish water Business, and this is promising in relation to a Danish export advance in the world's largest water market," says Danish Minister for the Environment and Food, Esben Lunde Larsen. Grundfos is among the Danish companies, showing the way at the exhibit. At the Danish booth solutions spanning from mapping of ground water resources to effective water supply and energy efficient wastewater treatment are displayed with a customized demo-model. "We are happy that the Americans are serious about the water- and climate challenges, and that they are ready to look for sustainable solutions to the challenges, we all face. Our technology can make a difference in relation to several of the water challenges the US and the world in general are facing. In terms of drinkingwater, wastewater and intelligent handling of water resources," says Kim Noehr Skibsted, Group VP, Group Communications, Public Affairs & Engagement at Grundfos. In addition to Grundfos, Danfoss, Kamstrup, Ramboell, DHI, Leif Koch, Skytem, AVK, Danish water utilities, Danva, MCH and State of Green part of the consortium representing Denmark in Washington. Further information: Frank B. Winther Communication Manager, Grundfos Group Communication M: +45 21 99 62 40 E: fwinther@grundfos.com (mailto:fwinther@grundfos.com) This announcement is distributed by NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions on behalf of NASDAQ OMX Corporate Solutions clients. The issuer of this announcement warrants that they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein. Source: Grundfos via Globenewswire HUG#1995893 All planned 2015 development milestones achieved Good management of operating costs Solid cash position of 15.6 million Regulatory News: Genomic Vision(Paris:GV)(FR0011799907 GV), a molecular diagnostics company specializing in the development of diagnostic tests for genetic diseases and cancers based on molecular combing technology, today announces its full-year results1 to December 31, 2015 according to IFRS, as approved by the Management Board and examined by the Supervisory Board on March 21, 2016. 2015 annual results In thousands of euros IFRS 2015 2014 Revenue from R&D Quest Diagnostics 2,069 3,218 Product sales 291 237 Total revenue from sales 2,360 3,455 Other revenue 1,957 1,438 Total revenue from activity 4,317 4,893 Net operating expenses -8,708 -7,107 Operating profit loss -4,391 -2,214 Net profit loss -4,338 -2,156 In 2015, Genomic Vision recorded revenue from sales of 2,360 thousand. With 2,069 thousand of this figure consisting of revenue from its R&D collaboration with Quest Diagnostics, it recorded an expected decrease associated with the gradual end of the milestone payment planned in the initial agreement with Quest Diagnostics. These payments totaled 3,218 thousand in 2014. Revenue from product sales increased by +22.8% to 291 thousand, and reflect a positive momentum for Genomic Vision's three sources of sales revenue: direct sales of the CombHelix FSHD test at the Timone hospital in Marseille, royalties paid by Quest Diagnostics, which distributes this test in the United States, and direct sales of consumables and instruments to laboratories that use molecular combing technology for research purposes (Life Sciences Research Tools). Revenue from activity totaled 4,317 thousand in 2015, versus 4,893 thousand in 2014 after other revenue of 1,957 thousand corresponding to tax credits (research tax credit and innovation tax credit totaling 1,303 thousand) and R&D subsidies (654 thousand) are taken into account. The latter notably includes repayable advances from Bpifrance (ex-OSEO) related to two R&D projects accounted as revenue in the P&L statement following the end of the programs. Operating expenses totaled 8,708 thousand over the year to December 31, 2015, up 22.5% compared with the figure at end-2014, reflecting good control of the Company's spending over the period: R&D costs, the largest category of expenditure, remained stable compared with the previous year, General costs increased by +36.4%, due to non-recurring expenses associated with strategic consulting services and the extension of the head-office premises, Sales Marketing costs almost tripled to 1,222 thousand. This increase was due to the setting up of a technical sales team whose workforce doubled in 2015, in accordance with Genomic Vision's intention of developing its own sales and marketing capacities. At December 31, 2015, Genomic Vision had 54 staff, compared with 46 at December 31, 2014. Over the year to December 31, 2015, the Company recorded an operating loss of -4,391 thousand, compared with -2,214 thousand at December 31, 2014. Taking into account a financial profit (+54 thousand), the 2015 net loss was thus -4,338 thousand, compared with -2,156 thousand at December 31, 2014. Solid cash position As indicated when annual revenue was published in January, cash and cash equivalents totaled 15.6 million at December 31, 2015, versus 22.8 million at December 31, 2014, illustrating the Company's effective management of its spending within a context of high investments with the acquisition of high-throughput scanners to be installed among the Company's clients and partners. At December 31, 2015, the Company's financial structure remained solid, with shareholders' equity of 18.4 million and almost no remaining financial debt (22 thousand of leasing), since repayable advances from Bpifrance have been accounted as revenue in the P&L statement. 2015 highlights: all planned objectives successfully met Favorable renewal of the strategic partnership with Quest Diagnostics Genomic Vision renewed its strategic partnership with Quest Diagnostics, the American group that is the global leader in laboratory diagnostic services, through to November 2018. Quest Diagnostics remains Genomic Vision's exclusive partner for the tests developed together, but the Company can develop and market new tests with other partners in the United States and worldwide, and the royalty rate paid to Genomic Vision has been revised up. Optimization of the automatic molecular combing platform Genomic Vision has improved the automatic platform installed at Quest Diagnostics with: a generic version of the high-throughput scanner's image analysis and interpretation software applicable to all of the Company's tests; an automatic DNA extractor optimized for molecular combing technology. Quest Diagnostics thus has all the necessary tools it needs to develop the LDT (Laboratory Developed Test) version of diagnostic tests using molecular combing. Significant progress in the development of the SMA (Spinal Muscular Atrophy) test Genomic Vision has launched a clinical trial, in partnership with Rouen University Hospital, on 360 patients, the enrollment of which began at the end of the year. Genomic Vision has also been selected for the Horizon 2020 program's BeyondSeq project, which is financed by the European Commission. This program will contribute to the development of an SMA test capable of identifying healthy carriers, who are undetectable using existing techniques. Vast clinical trial with Reims University Hospital to develop a test for the early detection of cervical cancer This study, which comprises two phases, aims to validate the integration of the high-risk human papillomavirus (HPV-HR) as an indicator of the severity of cervical lesions and the risk of developing cervical cancer. The first 3-year phase involves the analysis of 3,500 patients in 11 French hospitals. The second phase will monitor, for a further 3 years, patients who have tested positive for HPV infection. This study is actually the largest ever undertaken using the molecular combing technique. Strategic partnership with the Imagine Institute The partnership with Europe's largest genetic research and care cluster has led to the installation of a comprehensive molecular combing platform at the Necker-Enfants Malades hospital. The purpose of this partnership is to identify pathologies caused by complex structural DNA variations that are difficult to identify with existing methods, and to contribute to the development of new high-value-added genetic tests that will enrich Genomic Vision's product portfolio. Strengthening of the Company's governance and senior management Genomic Vision strengthened its senior management team via the recruitment of 3 experienced managers: Mr. Camille Chypre as Vice-President R&D, Mr. Stephane Altaba as Vice-President Corporate Development and Mrs. Anne Jacquet as Medical Director. Moreover, the Shareholders' Meeting of June 30, 2015 approved the appointment of two new members of the Supervisory Board, Mrs. Elisabeth Ourliac, Vice President and Director of Corporate Strategy at the Airbus Group, and Mrs. Tamar Saraga, International Executive Advisor in Mergers & Acquisitions and Strategy. Recent events and outlook Positioning study with Quest Diagnostics for a test of predisposition to breast and ovarian cancer This clinical trial, which plans to analyze between 500 and 1,000 de-identified DNA specimens, reflects Quest Diagnostics and Genomic Vision's shared intention of maximizing the success of the launch of the BRCA test by Quest on the American market. This study should be completed by this coming summer. Molecular combing singled out in a study published by Nature review's Scientific Reports Published by researchers from the Rockefeller Institute, Princeton University, Nobel Prize winner Sir Paul M. Nurse from the Francis Crick Institute and Aaron Bensimon, Co-founder and Chairman of Genomic Vision, this study highlights molecular combing's considerable potential as a research and discovery tool, notably thanks to its ability to analyze larger DNA fragments, or even entire chromosomes, of up to 12 Mb in human cells. Erwan Martin, CFO of Genomic Vision, comments: "Our financial results highlight two major facts regarding our achievements over the past year: firstly, every objective planned in the collaboration with Quest Diagnostics was met, resulting in revenue from activity in line with our expectations; secondly, the technological development of the combing platform, which is now automated, and the structuring of our organization, with the strengthening of the Business Development division, were achieved while limiting the increase in our operating spending. In 2016, we are planning to continue the development of our tests and clinical studies, which will enable us to extend the use of molecular combing technology across the diagnostics and research markets. Next financial publication Revenue for the 1st quarter of 2016, on Tuesday May 10, 2016* (before market) * indicative date that may be amended ABOUT GENOMIC VISION Founded in 2004, Genomic Vision is a molecular diagnostics company that specializes in the development of diagnostic tests for genetic diseases and cancers based on molecular combing. Using this innovative technology that allows the direct visualization of individual DNA molecules, Genomic Vision detects quantitative and qualitative variations in the genome that are at the origin of numerous serious pathologies. The Company is developing a solid portfolio of tests that initially target breast and colon cancers. Since 2013, the Company has marketed the CombHelix FSHD test for identifying facioscapulohumeral dystrophy (FSHD), a myopathy that is difficult to detect. It is marketed in the United States through a strategic alliance with Quest Diagnostics, the American leader in diagnostic laboratory tests, and in France directly by the Company. Genomic Vision has been listed on Compartment C of Euronext Paris since April 2014. ABOUT MOLECULAR COMBING DNA molecular combing technology significantly improves the structural and functional analysis of DNA molecules. DNA fibers are stretched over glass slides, as if "combed", and uniformly aligned over the entire surface. It is then possible to identify genetic anomalies by locating specific genes or sequences in the patient's genome using genetic markers, a technique developed by Genomic Vision and patented under the name Genomic Morse Code. This exploration of the entire genome at high resolution via a simple analysis enables the direct visualization of genetic anomalies that are undetectable by other technologies. For further information, please go to: www.genomicvision.com Member of CAC Mid Small, CAC All-Tradable and EnterNext PEA-PME 150 indexes 1 Audit procedures relative to these accounts have been carried out. The auditor's report will be issued after completion of the procedures required for the purpose of filing the "document de reference" (reference document). View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160321006407/en/ Contacts: Genomic Vision Aaron Bensimon, +33 1 49 08 07 50 Co-founder, Chairman CEO investisseurs@genomicvision.com or Kalima Relations Presse Estelle Reine-Adelaide, +33 6 17 72 74 73 Florence Calba, +33 1 44 90 82 54 era@kalima-rp.fr or LHA Investor Relations US Anne Marie Fields, 212-838-3777 SVP afields@lhai.com or NewCap Investor Relations Strategic Communications Dusan Oresansky Emmanuel Huynh, +33 1 44 71 94 92 gv@newcap.eu Neste Jacobs Press Release 22 March, 2016 at 9.30 am (EET) Neste Jacobs to perform comprehensive energy study for INA's oil refinery in Croatia Technology, engineering and project management company Neste Jacobs and INA - Industrija nafte, d.d. (INA) have signed an agreement for Neste Jacobs to perform a comprehensive energy efficiency study of INA's Rijeka oil refinery in Croatia. The energy efficiency study will be done by utilizing Neste Jacobs' proprietary NJe2 concept and is aimed to provide a review of the existing energy consumption, energy sources and energy producing and consuming assets within the refinery and in the logistics terminal area. The target is to identify feasible energy efficiency improvement possibilities in the Rijeka refinery and in the logistics terminal with reference to INA's ISO 50001:2011 certified energy management system. Neste Jacobs has longstanding experience in improving energy efficiency in petroleum refinery environments. On top of energy efficiency studies, Neste Jacobs has strong hands-on experience in designing energy efficient solutions and improving energy efficiency through operational excellence. For these purposes Neste Jacobs has developed its proprietary NJe2 concept. "We are extremely excited to perform the energy efficiency study for INA's Rijeka refinery", says Jarmo Suominen, CEO of Neste Jacobs. "This is an important milestone for Neste Jacobs in providing our proprietary NJe2 energy efficiency solutions internationally for the hydrocarbon industries and in this particular case for a petroleum refinery." "Neste Jacobs has the right combination of competence to conduct the energy efficiency study for INA. We already have previous experience of working with Neste Jacobs in other areas and I am convinced that Neste Jacobs, with their comprehensive and in-depth approach, will deliver excellent results for our constant strive to improve the energy efficiency of the Rijeka refinery, which demonstrates INA's commitment to investments that are able to secure long-term and sustainable development of the company", says Bengt Oldsberg, Executive Director of Refining and Marketing at INA. For more information, please contact: Jarmo Suominen, CEO, Neste Jacobs Oy, tel. +358 50 458 3399 Neste Jacobs is a preferred solution provider of high-quality technology, engineering and project services for a wide range of industries in the fields of oil and gas, petrochemicals, chemicals, biorefining, biochemicals, biopharma and industrial infrastructure. We have 60 years of experience in technology development and industrial investment projects as well as maintenance and performance improvement in Europe, North and South America, Asia and the Middle East. In addition to our home market Nordic countries we are looking to grow in the global expanding markets. We employ 1300 professionals globally. www.nestejacobs.com INA Group has the lead role in oil business in Croatia and plays a major part in oil and gas exploration, oil refining and distribution of oil and oil derivatives in the region. INA Group is made of a number of affiliates fully or partially owned by INA d.d. The Group is seated in Zagreb, Croatia. Apart from Croatia, INA today has upstream projects in Angola and Egypt. Oil refining is done in INA's refineries in Rijeka and Sisak, while its retail network consists of 438 petrol stations in Croatia and the region. 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: Neste Oyj via Globenewswire HUG#1996644 MILTON KEYNES, England, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --Search Optics, a leading global digital marketing provider with specialised expertise in the automotive industry, is launching in the U.K. Founded in San Diego, CA. in 1998 and headquartered in Detroit, MI., the home of the U.S. automobile industry, it has since become a world leader in smart website design and performance, online lead generation, as well as location-based and demand generation solutions that integrate with the latest mobile device technology. Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160321/346325 Logo- http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20150328/195084LOGO Search Optics has appointed David James as the U.K. Managing Director. With more than 15 years' experience in the automotive industry and most recently as Head of OEM Relationships at Manheim Retail Services, he brings a wealth of knowledge to Search Optics' U.K. operations that will help Manufacturers and Dealer Groups with their digital marketing whilst positioning the company for growth in the region. Search Optics' U.K. headquarters is based in Milton Keynes, which is seen as a key location for the locality of potential new clients and recruiting outstanding sales and account managers. Search Optics' strength not only lies with its technology and expertise, but with a hands-on approach that provides clients with a human and customer-orientated focus. Search Optics is the only online marketing company that has more than 1,100 Google accreditations and it was awarded the 2015 Google Premier SMB Partner Mobile Champion Award in North America. This gives it the credence of being a trusted online expert where staff and solutions can together deliver class-leading digital marketing and automotive website design services. Search Optics has global operations and corporate offices in six other countries; Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ireland, Mexico and the United States. The U.K. launch will help build its global portfolio and further relations with some of world's biggest automotive manufacturers and dealer groups. With its EMEA headquarters in Dublin, Search Optics believes the U.K. operations will also be able to support its expansion into Europe. David Ponn, Search Optics Global CEO, comments: "Our growth in the global marketplace has been exponential, and through this we have developed products and knowledge that we know will benefit other countries and clients. The UK offers us a great opportunity to work with some of the industry's leading brands while continuing to develop our solutions to meet new market demands." David James, states: "At Search Optics, I can use my experience to help a market leader enter and grow its business within the U.K., I am looking forward to introducing U.K. Manufacturers and Dealer Groups to a strategic partner who provides best in class Used Vehicle Locators, Dealer Group Websites and Search Engine Marketing backed by transparent analytic solutions. Our company prides itself on class-leading marketing technology solutions backed by real people, we get to know our clients in person and understand what works in their world. We will provide a customised strategy which we will actively manage ensuring our customers are getting the most out of their marketing investments." David and the U.K. sales team will be initially introducing themselves at the NADA Convention & Expo, the world's largest international gathering of the automotive industry, which is being held in Las Vegas from March 31st to -April 3rd. Search Optics has a stand at booth #6005N, where the U.K. team will meet up with representatives from the British automotive dealer market. About Search Optics Search Optics is a digital marketing company that specialises in custom, integrated solutions with an emphasis on return on investment. The company uses an uncommon blend of leading edge technology and human interaction to turn virtual traffic into measurable results. Search Optics, which was founded in 1998, has corporate offices in Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Ireland, Mexico, the United Kingdom and the United States. For more information, please visit www.searchoptics.co.uk You can follow Search Optics on Twitter, LinkedIn, G+ and Facebook. Contact: Georgina Reed Search Optics U.K. media@searchoptics.co.uk OULU, Finland, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Anite awarded contract for benchmarking data collection tools and data analytics platform Anite, a global leader in wireless network testing technology, today announced that Turkcell, the number one mobile telecommunications operator in Turkey, has selected Anite's Nemo Xynergy, Nemo Invex II and Nemo Walker Air for primarily benchmarking applications such as YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. Turkcell will be using Nemo Invex II and Nemo Walker Air to benchmark wireless broadband networks, both outdoors and indoors, and the Nemo Xynergy Drive Test module for automated processing and the centralized online management of collected data. "We see great value in being able to use one system for application testing, benchmarking and related analytics. The solution provided by Anite gives us this capability - end to end," says Betul Altinok, Field Quality Assurance Manager at Turkcell. "With the growing use of social media and applications, we really need to look at service quality from an end-user perspective, then tie that back to network level parameters to truly understand how the network performs." "We are excited to be able to support Turkcell in setting up a state-of-the-art benchmarking solution, including data collection and analysis," said Laszlo Veisz, Regional Sales Manager at Anite's Network Testing business. "Measuring true end-user experience is becoming more and more important. It is not enough to verify network level parameters - you need to look at it from the customer's perspective. With our suite of products ranging from data collection, both in-building and outdoors, to enterprise level analytics, we are able to provide our customers with the ultimate end-to-end solution simplifying their measurement and analytics processes - all for the benefit of improving network performance and fluent service usage." Nemo Xynergy is a powerful, scalable, and easy-to-use web-based enterprise level platform for analyzing drive test, OSS call trace, small cell/DAS and network management data. Nemo Xynergy consists of four separate modules: Drive Test, Small Cells, Network Management and CEM. Nemo Invex II is a mobile benchmarking, measurement, and optimization system combining powerful intuitive software and scalable military-grade hardware designed to create a superior benchmarking solution for wireless broadband networks. Nemo Walker Air is a portable tool for indoor benchmarking and multi-technology measurements. It is an Android-based indoor benchmarking system that enables performing extensive synchronized measurements. It comprises of a master tablet and up to six test terminals connected via Bluetooth. For more information on Nemo products, please visit http://www.anite.com or contact us at nemo.sales@anite.com. About Anite Anite plc is a leading supplier of test and measurement solutions to the international wireless market. It provides testing, measurement, optimisation and analytics systems based on its specialist sector knowledge and its proprietary software and hardware products. Customers include major manufacturers of mobile devices, chipsets and network equipment, mobile network operators, regulatory authorities, and independent test houses. Its 500+ staff work from headquarters in the UK and from offices in 14 countries across Europe, the Americas, Asia and the Middle East. Anite's Network Testing business provides cutting-edge network measurement systems and solutions globally under the Nemo brand to a wide range of customers including mobile operators, network equipment manufacturers, service contractors and regulatory bodies. For more information, please visit the company's web site: http://www.anite.com/nemo. BRUSSELS (dpa-AFX) - Swiss watch exports declined for an eighth consecutive month in February, damped by weaker demand from Hong Kong, but the decline was less marked than the pace seen at the start of the year, the Federation of the Swiss Watch Industry FH showed Tuesday. Watch exports decreased 3.3 percent year-on-year to CHF 1.7 billion in February. The decline was largely driven by the developments in the Hong Kong market. Shipments of wristwatches fell 2 percent, while exports of other products plummeted 20.9 percent. Exports to Hong Kong plunged 25.3 percent, falling for a 13th straight month. Meanwhile, shipments to Japan surged 22.4 percent and those to the U.S. resumed growth after five months of decline. The decline in exports to China outpaced the world average. Exports to European grew 4 percent with Germany registering significant improvement. 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. PARIS, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Since 2010, World Water Day, held annually on March 22 by the United Nations, has been an opportunity for Nestle Waters and the Project WET (Water Education for Teachers) Foundation to educate younger generations about the importance of freshwater. World Water Day 2016 marks the expansion of Nestle Waters' actions to include year-long water conservation projects, piloted by children and Nestle Waters employees around the world. To view the Multimedia News Release, please click: http://www.multivu.com/players/English/7782751-nestle-waters-expands-together-4-water/ Nestle Waters celebrates World Water Day every year by uniting its employees and local communities at TOGETHER 4 WATER events. These events educate children from communities near Nestle Waters' bottling sites about the water cycle, water challenges facing the world and water preservation through fun, hands-on pedagogical activities developed by its NGO partner, Project WET. These activities are run by Nestle Waters employee volunteers. In 2015, over 1,000 employees and close to 25 000 children from 30 countries participated in these events. A new opportunity for Nestle Waters' employees to empower children to take action for water. In 2016, Nestle Waters and Project WET will expand their TOGETHER 4 WATER events by giving children the opportunity to become water heroes by putting what they have learned about water into action. With the help of Nestle Waters employee volunteers, children will design and implement their own water conservation projects and tell us the story of their year-long experience through video diaries. In this first year, five countries are involved: Argentina, France, Greece, Italy and Egypt. Nestle Waters: committed to water stewardship Water is a precious resource that is shared among many stakeholders: individuals, farmers, industry, the environment, and others. Nestle Waters is committed to being a good steward of the water resources it shares. Nestle Waters ensures its operations are efficient and proactively collaborates with others on initiatives that preserve water resources over the long term. Nestle Waters has improved its water efficiency globally by 19% over the last five years. The Group is also engaged in collaborative initiatives in Switzerland and Pakistan. In Switzerland, Nestle Waters is collaborating with local farmers, authorities and third parties on the Eco-Broye programme to preserve water resources, and in Pakistan it is partnering with WWF on water stewardship. Raising awareness about the importance of water amongst its employees and the local communities in which it operates on World Water Day is one of the ways Nestle Waters brings its commitment to water stewardship to life. About Nestle Waters: Founded in 1992, Nestle Waters is the water division of the Nestle Group. Nestle Waters employs more than 34 000 people worldwide. With over 96 production facilities situated in 35 countries around the world, Nestle Waters has a unique portfolio of more than 50 brands including Nestle Pure Life, Perrier, S. Pellegrino, Poland Spring, Vittel, Buxton and Erikli. http://www.nestle-waters.com About the Project WET Foundation: Since 1984, the Project WET Foundation has been dedicated to reaching children, parents, teachers and community members with action-oriented water education that enables every child to understand and value water, ensuring a sustainable future. Project WET ("WET" stands for "Water Education for Teachers") is active in all 50 U.S. states and more than 70 countries worldwide. http://www.projectwet.org About World Water Day: World Water Day is an international observance and an opportunity to learn more about water related issues, be inspired to tell others and take action to make a difference. World Water Day dates back to the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development where an international observance for water was recommended. The United Nations General Assembly responded by designating 22 March 1993 as the first World Water Day. It has been held annually since then. Each year, UN-Water -the entity that coordinates the UN's work on water and sanitation -sets a theme for World Water Day corresponding to a current or future challenge. The engagement campaign is coordinated by one or several of the UN-Water Members with a related mandate. http://www.unwater.org/worldwaterday/home/en/ (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160322/346678 ) Video: http://www.multivu.com/players/English/7782751-nestle-waters-expands-together-4-water/ By partnering with Ingenico ePayments, BNP Paribas is the first French bank to support its customers in their online sales development in Europe. E-merchants accept new payment methods in different currency BNP Paribas is an international bank and a leading e-commerce player in France, with a market share of nearly 30% of all e-commerce transactions. The partnership between BNP Paribas and the Ingenico Group helps the Bank's customers to boost their online sales in Europe by accepting both international and local methods of payment. Ingenico ePayments solution, combined with BNP Paribas' electronic payment solution, allows merchants in 14 European countries to accept online payments in 8 different currencies. BNP Paribas' electronic payment solution is supported by the domestic platforms in France, Italy, and Germany, and a central platform covering 13 countries. Jean-Marie Dragon, Head of Innovative Electronic Payment Solutions at BNP Paribas said: "Through this partnership, BNP Paribas confirms the strategic nature of e-commerce and its determination to support its customers in two major challenges in this market: international growth and fraud management". This partnership enhances BNP Paribas' existing e-commerce offer while equipping customers with Ingenico's ePayments' fraud-detection tools, which identify and prevent fraud attempts. Pierre-Antoine Vacheron, Executive Vice-President ePayments of Ingenico Group, added: "The Ingenico Group is delighted that BNP Paribas selected it to enrich its online payment solutions, which will help its customers to accelerate their international growth". About Ingenico ePayments Ingenico ePayments is the online and mobile commerce division of Ingenico Group. We connect merchants and consumers, enabling businesses everywhere to go further beyond today's boundaries, creating the future of global commerce. As industry leaders since 1994, our innovative spirit drives us forward across all channels. We are the trusted partner of over 65,000 small and large merchants who rely on us to make payments easy and secure for their customers. With advanced data analytics, fraud management solutions and cross-border commerce expertise, we help merchants optimize their business and grow into new markets around the world. For more information, visit www.ingenico.com/epayments (http://www.ingenico.com/epayments) or follow us on LinkedIn and Twitter. About BNP Paribas' French Retail Banking (FRB) business The Group's retail-banking business in France employs over 28,000 employees and serves 6.9 million individual customers, 560,000 self-employed professionals and VSEs (Very Small Enterprises), 31,000 companies (SMEs, mid-sized and large corporates), and 73,000 non-profit organisations. FRB is the market leader in France in corporate and private banking. With an organisation based on specialised client categories and designed to ensure optimal service, FRB offers a broad range of products and services from current accounts to sophisticated financing for companies and wealth-management solutions. FRB teams work in over 2,000 branches and 300 specialised hubs which include Wealth Management Centres, SME Centres, Innovation Hubs and Business Centres. The teams are deeply committed to meeting the needs of clients and to serving the wider economy. FRB also has a substantial presence on the social networks, notably Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare. BNP Paribas makes considerable ongoing investments in innovation and service quality, and in May 2013 launched Hello bank!, the first digital-native bank in Europe designed for mobile devices. This new customer channel complements FRB's suite of online-banking solutions that include Customer Contact Centres, internet and mobile banking, Net Agence (online branch), Net Credit (online loans), Net Epargne (online savings & investments) plus 6,000 ATMs available for the convenience of both individual and professional clients throughout France. Contacts Ingenico ePayments Jurriaan Trommels Senior Manager, PR and Communications Jurriaan.Trommels@ingenico.com (mailto:Jurriaan.Trommels@Globalcollect.com) +31 23 569 9937 Ingenico Group Coba Taillefer External Communications manager Coba.taillefer@ingenico.com (mailto:Coba.taillefer@ingenico.com) +33 1 58 01 89 62 BNP Paribas Loubna Sebti Marion Saraf loubna.sebti@bnpparibas.com (mailto:loubna.sebti@bnpparibas.com) marion.saraf@bnpparibas.com (mailto:marion.saraf@bnpparibas.com) +33 1 40 14 66 28 +33 1 57 43 88 63 PDF VERSION (http://hugin.info/143483/R/1996443/735669.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: INGENICO via Globenewswire HUG#1996443 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. Tivoli, 22 March 2016Tivoli A/S - Stock exchange announcement 6 - 22-03-2016 - Closure of international online casinoTivoli A/S has decided to close its international online casino.In 2012, Tivoli opened its Danish online casino and in 2014 also opened its international online casino. The Danish online casino has enjoyed continuous growth since it started, however as the international online casino has not achieved the Company's objectives, it will now be closed.Tivoli's Commercial Director, Elisabeth Milton Hemmingsen explains: "Tivoli rapidly built up a significant market position for its Danish online casino. It was therefore natural to attempt to extend this Danish success story by establishing an international online casino. However, Tivoli's international online casino has not achieved the desired results. For instance, the deficit has been larger than expected since the start, and consequently, the international casino will now be closed and instead the resources will be focused on the Danish online casino."The closure of the international online casino does not change the Company's expectations for 2016.Yours faithfully,Elisabeth Milton HemmingsenCommercial DirectorContact:Vice President, Brand & Communications Dorthe Weinkouff Barse, +45 2223 7211/dwb@tivoli.dkAttachment:https://cns.omxgroup.com/cds/DisclosureAttachmentServlet?messageAttachmentId=552856 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. OXFORD, England, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- PharmaVentures is pleased to announce that it acted as an independent technical and commercial expertadviserto 3Legs on its Reverse Takeover of SalvaRx. 3Legs Resources is an investment company that focuses on life sciences and related technologies. SalvaRx is animmuno-oncology company developing novel therapeutics that stimulate the immune system to fight cancer.SalvaRx also owns over 60% of iOx Therapeutics, which is developing anti-cancer treatments based on invariant natural killer T-cells andis poised to undertakethe first Phase I/IIhuman trials. Adrian Dawkes, Vice President,PharmaVentures said; "In the pivotal area of immuno-oncology we were pleased to be able to provide an expert assessment of the iOx technology to support 3Legs in its acquisition." Fintan Walton, Chief Executive of PharmaVentures said: "This is the twelfth independent expert report we have providedfor companies raising finance, and the third during the recent upturn in IPO activities in the UK.Expert commercial and technical insight is a key component in company acquisitions especially where public markets are involved. PharmaVentures is able to provide valuable advisory services for our clients via our deep knowledge of thepharmaceuticaland biotechnology sectors." For over 23 years, PharmaVentures has acted as advisor to over 700 pharmaceutical and biotechnology clients in transactions; covering licensing, mergers, acquisitions, divestments and joint venture activities for companies. About PharmaVentures, Ltd PharmaVentures is a premier transaction advisory firm; a leader in partnering, M&A deals and strategic alliances. An unrivalled bank of specialist experience, deal analytics and network of contacts among innovators and large pharma makes them uniquely placed to support your business in all aspects of deal making and strategic planning. PharmaVentures is well known for its deep insight into deal structures and its success for generating partnering interest. Find out morehttp://www.pharmaventures.com Their services include: M&A (divestments, mergers, acquisitions and strategic transactions) Strategy (commercialisation, deal strategy, due diligence, market entry) Valuation and Positioning(licensing, M&A, fund raising & expert testimonies) Licensing (in and out licensing) Expert Testimony (patent infringement, deal disagreements, taxation, determining damages) Now in its 24th year, PharmaVentures is based in Oxford, UK, and employs over 20 professionals and has associates in N. America, Latin America, and Asia-Pacific. CANBERA (dpa-AFX) - The euro weakened against most major currencies in the early European session on Tuesday, as investor sentiment dampened after multiple explosions in Brussels. The U.K.'s FTSE 100 index is currently down 0.55 percent or 33.80 points at 6,150, France's CAC 40 index is down 1.25 percent or 55.26 points at 4,372 and Germany's DAX is down 0.87 percent or 86.43 points at 9,862. Explosions rocked through the check-in zone of Brussels airport, killing 13 people and injuring 'several' others, while another blast shook a metro station in the Belgian capital. In other economic news, data from Markit showed that Eurozone manufacturing PMI came in at 51.4, up from 51.2 in February and above the expected score was 51.4. The services Purchasing Managers' Index climbed to 54 from 53.3 a month ago. The expected reading was 53.5. Data from the Ifo Institute showed that German business confidence indicator rose to 106.7 from 105.7 in February. Economists had forecast a score of 106. The current situation measure of the survey climbed to a six-month high of 113.8 from 112.9. Economists had forecast a reading of 112.6. In the Asian trading today, the euro held steady against its major rivals. In the European session, the euro fell to more than a 2-week low of 1.0877 against the Swiss franc and a 6-day low of 1.1188 against the U.S. dollar and a 5-day low of 1.4743 against the Australian dollar, from early highs of 1.0914, 1.1259 and 1.4852, respectively. If the euro extends its downtrend, it is likely to find support around 1.07 against the franc, 1.07 against the greenback and 1.44 against the aussie. Against the yen, the euro dropped to nearly a 2-week low of 124.67 from an early 5-day high of 126.27. On the downside, 122.00 is seen as the next support level for the euro. The euro edged down to 1.6584 against the NZ dollar and 1.4659 against the Canadian dollar, from early highs of 1.6687 and 1.4727, respectively. The euro is likely to find support around 1.61 against the kiwi and 1.41 against the loonie. Meanwhile, the euro rose to a 5-day high of 0.7857 against the pound, from an early low of 0.7814. The euro may test resistance near the 0.79 area. Looking ahead, U.S. house price index for January, Markit's U.S. manufacturing PMI and U.S. Richmond Fed manufacturing index, both for March, are slated for release in the New York session. At 9:30 am ET, Bank of England's Monetary Policy Committee member Kristin Forbes is expected to speak at the Royal Economic Society annual conference, in Brighton. At 4:00 pm ET, New Canadian Finance Minister Bill Morneau will present his first budget, focus on huge deficit needed to finance infrastructure spending, in Ottawa. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de 22 March 2016 U.S. Oil & Gas Plc. ("U.S. Oil" or the "Company") Operations Update Intention to Drill - Technical Update Based on its studies, the Company's intention, subject to funding, is to re-enter the Eblana #1 well, sidetracking the drill depending on the results of the planned VSP survey. The existing well will be plugged back to 3,220 ft and new casing will be run. Further drilling will be carried out to a target depth of up to 13,000ft. A technical description of the proposed re-entry plan 'Technical Briefing March 22, 2016' can be found at www.usoil.us. THE DIRECTORS OF THE COMPANY ACCEPT RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE CONTENTS OF THIS ANNOUNCEMENT Neither this announcement nor the information contained herein constitutes an offer or solicitation by U.S. Oil and Gas plc for the purchase or sale of any securities nor does it constitute a solicitation to any person in any jurisdiction where solicitation would be unlawful. For further information contact: Brian McDonnell, Chief Executive Officer +353 (1) 631 9022 Alexander David Securities Ltd - Corporate Finance Adviser David Scott +44 (0) 20 7448 9820 James Dewhurst +44 (0) 20 7448 9820 Email: james.dewhurst@ad-securities.com Definitions: The terms 'Reserves' and 'Contingent Resources' are as defined in the 'Petroleum Resources Management System' of the Society of Petroleum Engineers. About U.S. Oil & Gas: U.S. Oil & Gas plc is an oil and gas exploration company with a strategy to identify and acquire oil and gas assets in the early phase of the upstream life-cycle and mature them. The Company's main asset is in Nye County, Nevada where it holds the entire share capital of US-based company, Major Oil International LLC ("Major Oil"). Major Oil has acquired rights to exploration and development acreage in Hot Creek Valley, Nye County, adjacent to the oil and gas rich Railroad Valley area of Nevada, both of which are part of the Sevier Thrust of central Nevada and western Utah, USA. In a May 2013, an independent Competent Person's Report (CPR) by Forrest A. Garb & Associates (FGA) of Houston, Texas, estimated 19.2 million barrels Contingent Resources (C50) for a portion of the Company's lease area in Hot Creek Valley Nevada. Since then, the Company's stated intention has been to achieve Reserves status for some part of those estimated Resources. For further information please refer to our website at: www.usoil.us Ends LONDON (dpa-AFX) - The U.K. budget deficit narrowed in February on higher receipts, data from the Office for National Statistics showed Tuesday. Public sector net borrowing excluding public sector banks decreased by GBP 0.5 billion to GBP 7.1 billion. However, the deficit was bigger than a GBP 5.9 billion shortfall forecast by economists. Central government expenditure dropped 0.5 percent, while receipts increased 5.4 percent annually. At the end of February, public sector net debt excluding public sector banks was GBP 1,577.1 billion, equivalent to 83.1 percent of GDP. In the financial April 2015 to February 2016, public sector net borrowing excluding banking groups totaled GBP 70.7 billion, a decrease of GBP 14.0 billion, or 16.5 percent compared with the same period in the previous financial year. IHS Global Insight Economist Howard Archer said the Chancellor still looks much more likely than not to miss his fiscal target for 2015/16. If George Osborne is to meet the targeted PSNBex of GBP 72.2 billion for 2015/16 contained in last Wednesday's budget, there will have to be deficit of just GBP 1.5 billion in March, Archer noted. 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) - Multiple deadly explosions at Brussels Airport and subway in the Belgian capital has killed 23 people. Dozens of people were wounded. The airport is in lock down now and flights are redirected to Antwerp. Eurostar trains to Brussels were cancelled and the French-Belgian border was closed after the attacks. Travel security across Europe is stepped up as an immediate response to the terror act. Reports said the first blast was at the departure area of Zaventem airport at around 7 GMT and the second explosion was at the Maalbeek metro station after a gap of one hour. The explosion has reportedly hit the airport building badly. Initial reports said it was a suicide attack. Airport authorities confirmed that there were two blasts in the departure hall. There were unconfirmed reports that more explosives were discovered from the airport area. British Prime Minister David Cameron has chaired a Cobra emergency meeting, in view of the developments in Brussels. Observers suspect that the explosions has a link to Salah Abdeslam, the suspect in the Paris Terror attack, who was arrested from Brussels on Friday. 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. BEIJING, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- On March 18, China Huiyuan Juice Group Limited (the "Company", HKEx stock code: 1886), a leading vertically-integrated fruit and vegetable juice producer in China, announced that a wholly owned subsidiary of the Company entered into a shareholders' agreement with a subsidiary of Yeo Hiap Seng Limited ("YHS") to establish a joint venture company (the "JVC") in Malaysia for the business of fruit and vegetable juice production and distribution. The JVC is formed by combining the production management, distribution and marketing expertise from YHS, and the technical capacities, know-how and raw material supply capabilities from the Company. Both Parties agreed that the JVC shall start its operation in Malaysia, and gradually expand its business coverage in other markets as agreed by the Parties. The share split of the JVC is 50:50, and a board of directors will be established to supervise its management and operation. The Company believes that the JVC will combine the advantages and expertise that each of the Parties to effectively explore the category opportunities of Malaysia and other potential markets in the future. Thus, the Board considers the JVC will be beneficial to the future growth and business development of the Company and is in the interests of the Company and its shareholders as a whole. The Company also intends to strengthen business cooperation with YHS in the Chinese market where opportunities arise. About China Huiyuan Juice China Huiyuan Juice Group Limited, a leading vertically-integrated fruit and vegetable juice producer in China, is principally engaged in the production and sales of concentrated juice, puree, fruit juice, fruit and vegetable juice, beverages, water and other drinks. As at 30 June 2015, according to the research by Nielsen, Huiyuan Juice is the biggest manufacturer of 100% juice and nectars, as the market leader with market share of 64.8% and 43.3%, respectively, each by sales volume. Huiyuan Juice has a sales network across China and nationalproduction plants, the Group's juice products are exported to the United States, Japan and other countries and regions. To view the original version on PR Newswire, visit:http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/huiyuan-juice-and-yeo-hiap-seng-form-joint-venture-to-enter-juice-market-in-malaysia-300239437.html BENGALURU and SAN JOSE, California, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Happiest Minds Technologies, a next generation digital transformation, infrastructure, security and product engineering services company, today announced thatThreatVigil,its cloud-based threat management solution, won top honours in theInfo Security Product Guide's Global Excellence Awards.The solution was recognized in the 'GOLD' category forVulnerability Assessment, Remediation and Management. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160322/795713 ) (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140918/706460 ) ThreatVigilis an on-demand cloud-based threat management solution that comprises of vulnerability assessments and penetration testing of all the system components that include business applications, databases, secure network perimeters, systems and network infrastructure, mobility solutions and virtualized cloud environments. Developed with a combination of industry proven automated tools and in-depth manual assessment techniques, it is highly scalable and offers faster and simpler deployment options with no dependencies. For more details on the solution, please clickhere. "We are honoured to be recognized as an industry leader yet again by the Info Security Products Guide Global Excellence Awards. We are seeing increasing global demand for our cloud-based security solutions and these recognitions from industry forums reinforce the impact we are making with our IP based solution accelerators. This award reinforces our commitment to provide an innovative and pragmatic approach for enterprises to help them protect themselves against the dynamic and emerging threat landscape," saidPrasenjit Saha, President, Infrastructure Management Services and Security Business, Happiest Minds Technologies. The security industry celebrated its 12th Annual Global Excellence Awards in San Francisco by honouring excellence in every facet of the industry including products, industry leaders and best companies. There was participation from many well-recognized companies under 45 categories, and more than 50 judges from a broad spectrum of industry voices around the world analyzed these nominations. An average of their score determined the finalists and winners that were announced during the awards dinner and presentation attended by the finalists, judges and industry peers. About Happiest Minds Technologies: Happiest Minds enables Digital Transformation for enterprises and technology providers by delivering seamless customer experience, business efficiency and actionable insights through an integrated set of disruptive technologies: big data analytics, Internet of Things, mobility, cloud, security, unified communications, etc. Happiest Minds offers domain centric solutions applying skills, IPs and functional expertise in IT Services, Product Engineering, Infrastructure Management and Security. These services have applicability across industry sectors such as retail, consumer packaged goods, e-commerce, banking, insurance, hi-tech, engineering R&D, manufacturing, automotive and travel/transportation/hospitality. Headquartered in Bangalore, India, Happiest Minds has operations in the US, UK, Singapore, Australia and has secured US $52.5 million Series-A funding. Its investors are JPMorgan Private Equity Group, Intel Capital and Ashok Soota. 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 honour excellence in all areas of information security. To learn more, visithttp://www.infosecurityproductsguide.comand stay secured. Media Contact: media@happiestminds.com RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Forum aims to carry the two nations' longtime strategic partnership well into the 21st century Under the patronage of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Salman Bin Abdulaziz, the 4th Saudi-US Business Opportunities Forum opened in Riyadh on 22 March with the participation of Saudi government ministers, other high ranking government officials, and leading businesspeople from both nations. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160322/346696LOGO ) The forum aims to carry the two nations' longtime strategic partnership well into the 21st century by deepening mutual relations, building new alliances and partnerships, and opening up new, as-yet-unexplored areas for cooperation, all of which are set to reinforce the Saudi economy's ongoing transformation and contribute to its diversification and prosperity. Turki AlToaimi, Advisor and Director General of Marketing and Communication at the Ministry and Chief Director of the forum's organizing committee, stated that the importance of the event reflects the strength of the ties that bind the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the United States, one of the world's strongest alliances. It also highlights everything that is important for the prosperity of the Kingdom, the wellbeing of Saudis, and the sustained development of the national economy. AlToaimi added that the selection of Riyadh this time round, after all previous forums were held in US cities, goes to show just how important the Saudi market is to investors and the business communities of both countries. It also is an unequivocal indicator of just how favorable this partnership is politically and economically, given that the two countries' relationship built on mutual interests. This year the forum comes at a time when the Kingdom is in the process of launching a number of initiatives that aim to diversify its economy. It goes one step further towards reaffirming the new objectives and trends the Kingdom has set and continues to set for itself for a better future, out of the Saudi state's conviction that today's private sector has become indispensable in effecting a transformation of the Saudi economy, which would help to create more jobs and ensure the local, regional, and international competitiveness of national products, in terms of both quality and pricing. As the two nations strive for mutual relations based on US-bound Saudi oil exports and Saudi-bound, US-produced consumables, food, and arms, the Saudi-US partnership will continue to grow, prosper, and stay abreast with ever-shifting market trends. The two nations are fully committed to taking their relationship to the next level by shifting its basis towards creating more jobs in both countries, and greater cooperation in various economic and business fields, especially those that concern technological cooperation, the training of manpower, and reciprocal investments, given the unrivaled competitiveness of the US corporate community in various fields of the new economy, such as biotechnology, health care services and their management, information technology, transportation, conventional and alternative energy, and automotive manufacturing. "The holding of the forum comes as part of a shared quest to strengthen ties and enhance the exchange of trade, knowledge and cultures between the two nations," said AlToaimi. "The two sides know full well that a successful partnership should not be based solely on business and trade, but must be taken beyond mere economics towards building solid ties between the two friendly nations, and should encompass education, tourism, professional exchange, arts, food, and all facets of human interaction. Hence, the forum is scheduled to witness signings of a multitude of new mutual agreements that will usher in a new era for the two countries' relations, which, in turn, will contribute to bolstering mutual empathy and compassion between the two nations and transcend the level of respect and appreciation they have for each other's cultures and heritages, thus boosting their capability to meet all current and future challenges for a brighter future for all." Observers say that the current growth and diversification of the Saudi economy can be a boon for both the Saudi and US business communities, thanks to a possible windfall of important opportunities for business, trade, and innovation. As a continuation of the two countries' nine-decade partnership, their officials look forward today towards many more years of realized aspirations of both peoples for a better, stronger strategic partnership through the 21st century. For more information please contact: Farah Ibrahim Tel: +971-4-3672530 TRACCS 24/7 Media Hotline: +97150-9448389 SUGAR LAND, TX -- (Marketwired) -- 03/22/16 -- Written by John Egan for Industrial Info Resources (Sugar Land, Texas) -- Xcel Energy Incorporated (NYSE:XEL) (Minneapolis, Minnesota) plans to invest $15.2 billion over the next five years in its gas distribution and electric generation, transmission and distribution systems operated by its subsidiaries: Northern States Power (NSP) (Minneapolis, Minnesota), Public Service Company of Colorado (PSCo) (Denver, Colorado) and Southwestern Public Service Company (SPS) (Amarillo, Texas). For details, view the entire article by subscribing to Industrial Info's Premium Industry News, or browse other breaking industrial news stories at www.industrialinfo.com. Industrial Info Resources (IIR), with global headquarters in Sugar Land, Texas, five offices in North America and 10 international offices, is the leading provider of global market intelligence specializing in the industrial process, heavy manufacturing and energy markets. Industrial Info's quality-assurance philosophy, the Living Forward Reporting Principle, provides up-to-the-minute intelligence on what's happening now, while constantly keeping track of future opportunities. To contact an office in your area, visit the www.industrialinfo.com "Contact Us" page. Contact: Brian Ford (713) 980-9393 22 March 2016 G4S PLC Notification of Board Change G4S plc, the world's leading international security solutions provider, announces that Adam Crozier, a non-executive director, has informed the company that he will retire from the board at the conclusion of the company's 2016 Annual General Meeting. John Connolly, chairman of the board, said: 'Adam has contributed much to the board and to the board's Audit and Nomination Committees during his time with the company and I am very grateful for all that he has done. The Nomination Committee is in the process of seeking candidates for two new non-executive director roles.' For further enquiries, please contact: Helen Parris - Director of Investor Relations +44 (0)208 722 2125 Media enquiries: Nigel Fairbrass - Director of Media Relations +44 (0) 7799894265 Mathew Magee - Media Relations Manager +44 (0) 7841982838 Notes to Editors: G4S is the leading global, integrated security company, specialising in the provision of security services and solutions to customers. Our mission is to create material, sustainable value for our customers and shareholders by being the supply partner of choice in all our markets. G4S is quoted on the London Stock Exchange and has a secondary stock exchange listing in Copenhagen. G4S is active in around 100 countries and has 610,000 employees. For more information on G4S, visit www.g4s.com. This announcement is distributed by GlobeNewswire on behalf of GlobeNewswire clients. The owner of this announcement warrants that: (i) the releases contained herein are protected by copyright and other applicable laws; and (ii) they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein. Source: G4S plc UK DK via GlobeNewswire [HUG#1996729] A0B7CYB01FLG6R61 Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de TOKYO (dpa-AFX) - ArQule Inc. (ARQL) and Daiichi Sankyo announced that the independent data monitoring committee or DMC of the METIV-HCC study conducted the planned interim assessment and it was determined the trial will continue to its final analysis. METIV-HCC is a biomarker-selected, double-blind, placebo-controlled, pivotal phase 3 study evaluating tivantinib (2:1) versus best supportive care in previously systemically-treated patients with MET-high, inoperable HCC, with overall survival as the primary endpoint. The interim analysis was triggered when at least 60 percent of the target number of events occurred. The final analysis will take place when 100 percent of the target number of events occurs. The METIV-HCC trial completed patient accrual in December 2015 with more than 300 patients with MET-high HCC enrolled. Liver cancer is the sixth most common cancer globally with 782,000 new cases in 2012 and is the second most common cause of cancer-related death with 745,000 deaths in 2012. HCC accounts for about 90 percent of primary liver cancers. Cirrhosis, chronic hepatitis B and C and smoking are recognized worldwide as factors increasing the risk of HCC. In December 2008, ArQule and Daiichi Sankyo signed a licensing, co-development and co-commercialization agreement for tivantinib in the U.S., Europe, South America and the rest of the world, excluding Japan, China (including Hong Kong), South Korea and Taiwan. In November 2015, ArQule exercised its co-commercialization option for tivantinib in the U.S. A co-commercialization agreement is expected to be finalized in 2016. Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de SAN RAMON, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 03/22/16 -- The True Life Companies (TTLC) is very pleased to announce the sale of 3.2 acres of infill property located in Fremont, CA to TRI Pointe Homes. The property, known as the Mission-Stevenson project, will deliver much needed housing in the extremely competitive Bay Area marketplace. "The Mission-Stevenson community is the first disposition for TTLC in 2016 and the third disposition for TTLC in the Bay Area in the last 12 months," said Taber Anderson, Principal and Chief Investment Officer. "This venture further demonstrates The True Life Companies' commitment to transforming raw and underutilized land into well thought out and intelligently planned communities designed to meet the needs of future residents." Located at the corner of Mission Boulevard and Stevenson Boulevard in Fremont, CA., TTLC entitled the project, receiving tentative map approval in September 2015 for 35 townhomes and 42 stacked flats for a total of 77 condominium units. The location provides buyers easy access to major transportation corridors and is within 1.5 miles of the Fremont BART Station. Regionally, BART and the Valley Transportation Authority Bus and Light Rail routes are being extended throughout the Silicon Valley which further enhances the value of this location for commuters. Other attractive features of this project include access to nearby community parks, numerous retailers and Fremont's excellent school system. "The entire TTLC team is very pleased to have entitled and delivered to the market this extremely well designed project that will offer a fantastic opportunity for first-time and move-up buyers to acquire new housing at reasonable prices by Bay Area standards," said Kelly Beardslee, The True Life Companies' Managing Director for the Bay Area. TTLC is active in high growth markets throughout the Western US, targeting land development opportunities where the company's leadership and entitlement expertise can deliver exceptionally well designed projects to homebuilders. In the disposition of Mission-Stevenson, TTLC's innovative platform and forward-thinking strategy has once again made a positive impact. "Mission-Stevenson is another excellent example of TTLC's deep understanding for local markets and our ability to execute on its value proposition of delivering valuable lots to homebuilders," said Beardslee. As a major supplier of lots and land to America's top homebuilders, TTLC has projects in various stages of entitlement throughout the Western United States. Over the past five years, The True Life Companies has expanded rapidly with regional offices operating in San Ramon, CA; Sacramento, CA; Phoenix, AZ; Denver, CO; Newport Beach, CA; Kona, HI; and Austin, TX. For more information regarding TTLC's residential land or recreational master-plan portfolio, visit www.thetruelifecompanies.com. Contact: Fran Bangert Kovach Marketing 714-335-9646 Email Contact DUBLIN, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- A White House audit has revealed that the U.S. government was targeted by more than 77,000 cyber attacks in 2015, a 10% increase from the previous year. It defines these incidents as "a violation or imminent threat of violation of computer security policies, acceptable use policies, or standard computer security practices." This comes after a report released in January on the cyber security market had projected 12.13% growth between 2016 and 2020. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20130307/600769 ) The government, public utilities, and enterprises are dependent on Internet, wireless, and cloud-based services. With this dependency, cyber attacks have shown exponential increase in the past few years and organizations are in dire need of solutions which could help them identify, protect, and respond to these threats. As a result, the total market for cyber security is expected to grow from $106.32 billion in 2015 to $170.21 billion by 2020. President Barack Obama recently asked Congress for $19 billion for cyber security funding across the government in his annual budget request. This comes after the Office of Personnel Management was the victim of a hack that began in 2014 and was only discovered last year. According to a report on cyber security, there has been an unprecedented rise in these advanced persistent threats (APTs). The government launched an initiative to boost security in response to this, encouraging the adoption of multiple-factor authentication and other security solutions. For further information on this topic, and a full list of all related documentation, please visit the IT Security section at http://www.researchandmarkets.com/rm/NIOR. 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. Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-cyber-idUSKCN0WN263 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: +1-646-607-1907 Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716 SAN ANTONIO, TX -- (Marketwired) -- 03/22/16 -- Kickfurther, a leading inventory and invoice financing crowd-funding platform that connects companies and backers seeking qualified short-term deal financing, is proud to announce it has successfully completed M Andrews Sartorial Luxury inventory financing through its crowd-funding platform in just 1 minute. The luxury custom menswear raised 23,241.45 USD through KickFurther investors and is expected to payout a consignment profit of 15% over a projected offer term of 7.5 months. In this Kickfurther campaign, M Andrews Sartorial Luxury funded their menswear inventory for their M Andrews branded premium dress socks, dress shirts, ready to wear suits and silk neck ties in assorted designs. The inventory will be shipped to M Andrews Sartorial Luxury in the name of their Kickfurther backers and the brand intends to provide a total payout of 26,727.67 USD. At the core of M Andrews Sartorial Luxury menswear brand are their signature handmade, hand colored, Italian leather dress shoes. All shoes are made to order according to their clients' specifications and sizing. This is M Andrews Sartorial Luxury menswear's first campaign with Kickfurther. Click here to see the successful M Andrews Sartorial Luxury offering summary information. About Kickfurther Kickfurther is a leading inventory and invoice financing crowd-funding platform that connects companies with backers seeking qualified short-term deal financing. Our platform enables productive growth oriented companies seeking capital to finance production to share their sales opportunities with backers interested to put their money to work in short term profit opportunities in the retail supply chain. Businesses post offers by choosing the amount of inventory capital they need, the profit percentage backers will earn, and a projected timeline based on sales history. Since its 2015 launch, Kickfurther has funded more than $5.06 Million in 227 offers by more than 170 companies. Their backers have earned an average greater than 2% consignment profit per month on completed offers. For additional information, please visit www.kickfurther.com. About M Andrews Sartorial Luxury M Andrews Sartorial Luxury was formed in early 2014 by Marcus Andrews as a luxury custom menswear brand in order to fill the major gap currently in the luxury menswear market. Its goal was to provide a Saville Row shopping experience with best in class suiting and dress shoes, made to order just for their clients. Marcus has a background in finance and started designing suits and shoes based on his own needs in the professional field. Since then, Marcus has been able to amass a following dedicated to the same values that Marcus exemplifies with his brand. The brand has been featured in numerous publications and has become a go to choice for celebrities for red carpet affairs and award shows. For additional information, please visit www.mandrewsluxury.com. CONTACTS Offering Contact: Marcus Andrews Owner and CEO M Andrews Sartorial Luxury Email: mandrews@sartorialluxury.com Direct: 210-884-8944 Company Contact Erik Straub CMO Kickfurther, Inc. Email: erik@kickfurther.com Direct: 908-698-3130 Media / PR Contact Matthew Bird President 1-800-PublicRelations, Inc. Direct: 646.401.4499 Main: 800.782.6185 Email: support@1800pr.com Website: www.1800pr.com Wirral Partners to become Cerner's first global HealtheIntent clientKANSAS CITY, Mo., 2016-03-22 14:00 CET (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Cerner, a global leader in health care technology, today announced that Wirral Partners, an integrated primary and acute care system in the United Kingdom, will use Cerner's HealtheIntent? population health management platform to advance the Healthy Wirral program, an initiative focused on establishing new models of care for disease management and prevention.HealtheIntent, a system-agnostic, near real-time platform, enables organizations to aggregate health data from multiple sources into a single record to support new models of care. The platform enables care providers to access health records anywhere, anytime to proactively engage patients and manage disease and help prevent illness. Wirral Partners through Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust is Cerner's first global HealtheIntent client.Wirral Partners is embarking on a high-profile public insight and engagement program to involve their community of 330,000 citizens to raise awareness of the program and to actively engage individuals."Healthy Wirral is a new approach to the way services are planned and commissioned on Wirral. With an unacceptable difference in life expectancy of up to 10 years for females and 12.4 years for males, depending on where a person lives in Wirral, this challenge has never been more real and it is recognised that the current model of care delivery is clinically and financially unsustainable," said Jon Develing, executive lead for the Healthy Wirral program. "Wirral Partners are passionate about improving the health and well-being of local people and are developing a new model of integrated care that provides holistic assessment and intervention to meet the health and social care needs of local people. We believe this model will be further enhanced by informatics-enabled population health management. And we're really excited about presenting the system to our community and listening to their views on how we can really make it work for our patients."In October 2014, NHS England published the Five Year Forward View, which described that there had been changes in patients' health needs and personal preferences and that long-term health conditions were now taking 70 percent of the health service budget. The strategy calls for a radical change to the care delivery models in England, with integration of care providers to take accountability for population health at the local level. At the same time, they recognized that many people wished to be more informed and involved with their own care, challenging the traditional divide between patients and professionals and offering opportunities for better health through increased prevention and supported self-care. It also recognized that changes in technology are transforming the ability to predict, diagnose and treat disease.In March 2015, NHS England announced the first 29 vanguard sites, and Healthy Wirral was selected as a New Care Model Vanguard."Wirral hospital has used information and technology to improve health care for a generation, so it's only to be expected that the NHS would select Wirral Partners to help improve the health of the population", said Matthew Swindells, senior vice president, population health and global strategy, Cerner. "What happens at Wirral in the coming months can be followed and replicated around the country. Cerner will support Wirral Partners through the process and leverage our years of experience implementing solutions around the world to deliver the benefits that this ambitious and innovative program can achieve.""The development of a single care record will enable those who provide care to have good access to all appropriate health and social care information," said Dr. Sue Wells, medical director at Wirral Clinical Commissioning Group. "This can help lead to better, safer and more efficient care and will allow local clinicians to identify gaps in the care and direct people to appropriate interventions, leading to better outcomes.""Cerner and the Wirral region have a strong existing relationship and this contract marks a new beginning for the Wirral peninsula moving to a population health management approach," said Dr. Justin Whatling, vice president, population health, Cerner Europe. "Building on our support for 85 unique HealtheIntent clients in the USA, which includes outcomes-based accountable care organizations, we are delighted that Wirral Partners will be the first in the UK to leverage this new informatics approach. To improve population health requires us to do this one person at a time; IT is a key enabler for health and care staff to develop new integrated care models to proactively engage citizens in their health and wellbeing."About Wirral PartnersWirral Partners formed in 2015 and comprises of Wirral Clinical Commissioning Group, Wirral Metropolitan Borough Council, Wirral University Teaching Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, Wirral Community NHS Trust, Cheshire and Wirral Partnership NHS Foundation Trust and Local Professional Committees (including Local Medical, Dentistry, Pharmaceutical and Optometry Councils). They were awarded Vanguard status as a Primary and Acute Care Systems (PACS) site as part of the NHS England Vanguard Programme in response to the Five Year Forward View https://www.england.nhs.uk/ourwork/futurenhs/About CernerCerner's health information technologies connect people, information and systems at more than 20,000 facilities worldwide. Recognized for innovation, Cerner solutions assist clinicians in making care decisions and enable organizations to manage the health of populations. The company also offers an integrated clinical and financial system to help health care organizations manage revenue, as well as a wide range of services to support clients' clinical, financial and operational needs. Cerner's mission is to contribute to the systemic improvement of health care delivery and the health of communities. For more information about Cerner, visit cerner.com, read our blog at cerner.com/blog, connect with us on Twitter at twitter.com/cerner and on Facebook at facebook.com/cerner. Our website, blog, Twitter account and Facebook page contain a significant amount of information about Cerner, including financial and other information for investors.For more information please contact:Marlene Bentley, (816) 225-9772, marlene.bentley@cerner.com Claire Delplancq, +44 790 867 9151, claire.delplancq@cerner.com Leader in Endpoint Protection Extends Global Reach with European Operations; Welcomes Distology as European Channel Partner BOSTON, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --Confer, a leader in endpoint detection and response (EDR), today announced the expansion of operations in Europe, growing its global footprint to address increased market demand for its Converged Endpoint Security platform. Confer will support this expanded international presence with a dedicated team based in the United Kingdom, addressing customer demand through a high-value global channel partner program aimed at delivering award-winning endpoint security to customers throughout Europe. Additionally, Confer has added Distology, a leading IT security value-added distributor as a channel partner in Europe. Logo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20140115/NE46445LOGO "Confer is already protecting endpoints in more than 60 countries and we have seen a marked increase in demand for our platform in Europe since last year," said Mark Quinlivan, CEO, Confer. "With an expanded presence in the region, we can accelerate our market strategy and provide local support to our customers and partners with advanced endpoint security technology, enabling them to deliver on the promise of secure business." Confer's Converged Endpoint Security platform makes it cost-effective for any size organization to prevent, detect and respond to both commodity and advanced threats quickly and effectively across endpoints, servers and cloud workloads. The solution integrates prevention, detection and incident response using a lightweight sensor, so businesses can secure millions of devices, regardless of where they are, while allowing busy security operations teams to focus on broader enterprise priorities. Growing International Channel Partnerships As part of the European expansion, Confer welcomes Distology into its growing community of global channel partners. Distology maintains an extensive network of IT Security resellers in the United Kingdom and Ireland with a strong reputation and focus on delivering new and innovative security solutions to the market. "We are very excited about this new partnership with Confer. With the modern threat landscape, traditional endpoint protection products are just no longer good enough," said Distology Managing Director Hayley Roberts. "Confer offers next-generation endpoint protection across most platforms and powerful incident response capabilities that we believe will reshape how we define true endpoint protection." Distology offers expertise within the full distribution lifecycle, from lead generation, training and enablement for its partner community, to fulfillment and front line support services. Director of Channels Heads Up Confer Global Partner Program Leading Confer's global channel program is Director of Channels Jeff Rogers. With more than 20 years of experience in channel sales, Jeff is responsible for the strategic direction, development and expansion of Confer's global partner community. Jeff joins Confer from Hewlett-Packard, where he led a National Partners Channel Sales Team focused on market-leading enterprise security offerings. A proven technology channel executive, Jeff has led a successful career in channel sales and management with prominent technology companies including U.S. Robotics, 3Com, Nokia, CheckPoint and TippingPoint. Confer is committed to building profitable, professional relationships with its expanding network of partners. Focused on immediate partner enablement, Confer offers simple and efficient on-boarding and convenient one-day training. Moreover, Confer's easy- to-use partner sign-on and deal registration program ensures that opportunities are responded to and advanced quickly. About Confer Confer offers a fundamentally different approach to endpoint security through a Converged Endpoint Security Platform, an adaptive defense that integrates prevention, detection and incident response for endpoints, servers and cloud workloads. The patented technology disrupts most attacks while collecting a rich history of endpoint behavior to support post-incident response and remediation. Confer automates this approach to secure millions of devices, regardless of where they are, allowing security teams to focus on more important activities. About Distology Distology is a leading IT Security software distributor delivering solutions along with pre- and post-sales assistance and technical support to markets in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Serving IT Security resellers with vendor quality expertise and alliances with the world's most respected software manufacturers, means that Distology is able to perceive and respond to the demands of the constantly changing market environment. Hideo Ikuno h.ikuno@daiya-pr.co.jp +81-3-6716-5277 TOKYO, Mar 22, 2016 - (JCN Newswire) - Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. (Tokyo:7011) (MHI) has received an order for H-IIA launch services from the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Centre (MBRSC), in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), for launch of the Emirates Mars Mission's (EMM) Hope spacecraft. In order to better understand the Martian atmosphere and climate, Hope is expected to be launched in the summer of 2020 on MHI's H-IIA launch vehicle, and is set to arrive at Mars in 2021 to coincide with the 50th anniversary of the founding of the UAE. This order for the EMM marks MHI's fourth overseas contract for its launch services.The UAE Space Agency (UAESA) takes administrative and financial responsibility for the EMM, and MBRSC is responsible for leading the design and development of Hope, as well as the execution of all phases of EMM, which includes technical coordination with the H-IIA launch vehicle.The previous three orders received by MHI from overseas customers involved the 2012 launch of the Korea Multipurpose Satellite-3 (KOMPSAT-3) for the Korea Aerospace Research Institute (KARI), the 2015 launch of the TELSTAR 12 VANTAGE communications and broadcasting satellite for Telesat Canada, and launch of the KhalifaSat for MBRSC, planned in 2018.MBRSC, or the former Emirates Institution for Advanced Science and Technology (EIAST), was newly established by the Dubai Government in 2006. The Space Centre is working to develop the science and technology sectors in the region, which include research and development in satellite manufacturing and systems development, and Earth observation through satellite images.The H-IIA rocket is the most current and reliable launcher in Japan. MHI believes the H-IIA has a strong advantage with its high success rate of 96.7 percent (29 successful launches among 30 flights). It also has a brilliant on-time launch history in past flights, to customers' great satisfaction.MHI has been playing an important role in Japan's development of space launch vehicles since a national program was started in Japan in 1975. Following technology transfer from JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency), MHI has been placed in charge of all aspects from manufacturing to launching satellites from the H-IIA No.13 (launched in September 2007) and the H-IIB No.4 (launched in August 2013).With this partnership with the UAE to launch the EMM's Hope spacecraft, MHI pledges to make full-fledged efforts so as not only to enhance the space industry in Japan, but also to make various contributions to the UAE's endeavors in space-related activities.,.About Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd.Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd. ("MHI"; TSE:7011), headquartered in Tokyo, Japan, is one of the world's leading heavy machinery manufacturers. MHI's diverse lineup of products and services encompasses shipbuilding, power plants, chemical plants, environmental equipment, steel structures, industrial and general machinery, aircraft, space rocketry and air-conditioning systems. For more information, please visit the MHI website at www.mhi.co.jp.Source: Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd.Contact:Copyright 2016 JCN Newswire . All rights reserved. SACRAMENTO, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 03/22/16 -- Sunstock, Inc. (the "Company" or "Sunstock") (OTCQB: SSOK) announced today that it has retained Morgan & Weed for Equity Crowd Fund (ECF) related advisory services. Jason Chang, CEO of Sunstock, stated, "We are excited working with Morgan & Weed and their team of experts to guide us through the maze of real estate crowdfunding opportunities and non-traditional sources of funding, to achieve our ultimate goal of developing a diversified portfolio of real estate properties. We are further seeking to enhance our returns to shareholders and investment partners, by using a novel and flexible blend of share issuance, in combination with both traditional and non-traditional financing sources." Morgan & Weed is a corporate advisory firm which assists small and fast growing companies that go public via S-1 registration and/or Regulation A+ offerings, via a network of highly qualified corporate securities legal experts. Additionally, the firm assists companies with identifying PCAOB registered accounting firms, regulatory compliance and shareholder communications services providers, as well as investor and public relations services experts. Morgan and Weed also guides private and public companies through the equity crowd fund process, via a network of programmers, developers, designers and customer support firms. Services additionally include selection of platform providers, offering the highest applicable chance of success, including Crowdfunder, SeedInvest, EquityNet, AngelList and numerous others. Safe Harbor Statement Certain statements contained in this press release may be construed as "forward-looking statements" as defined in the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (the "Act"). The words "estimate," "project," "intends," "expects," "anticipates," "believes" and similar expressions are intended to identify forward-looking statements. Such forward-looking statements are made based on management's beliefs, as well as assumptions made by, and information currently available to, management pursuant to the "safe-harbor" provisions of the Act. These statements are subject to certain risks and uncertainties that may cause actual results to differ materially from those projected on the basis of these statements. These risks and uncertainties include, without limitation, our history of losses and limited revenue, our ability to develop new products and evolve existing ones. For a more complete description of these and other risk factors that may affect the future performance of Sunstock, Inc., see "Risk Factors" in the filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of the date made. The Company also undertakes no obligation to disclose any revision to these forward-looking statements to reflect events or circumstances after the date made or to reflect the occurrence of unanticipated events. Contact: Mike Lee Sunstock, Inc. (916) 849-5507 enquiry@sunstockinc.com www.sunstockinc.com PUNE, India, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The report "Hydrogen Generation Market by Generation & Delivery Mode (Captive, Merchant), Technology (Steam Methane Reforming, Partial Oxidation, Gasification, and Electrolysis), Application (Refinery, Ammonia Production, and Methanol Production), & Region - Global Forecast to 2021", published by MarketsandMarkets, The Hydrogen Generation Market is expected to grow from an estimated USD 117.94 Billion in 2016 to USD 152.09 Billion by 2021, at a CAGR of 5.2% during the forecast period. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160303/792302 ) Browse 88 Tables and 37 Figures spread through 180 Pages and in-depth TOC on "Hydrogen Generation Market" http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/hydrogen-generation-market-494.html Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report. Major factors such as cleaner fuel as compared to others, government regulations for desulfurization of petroleum products, and decreasing crude oil quality are driving the market worldwide. Hydrogen production for refinery application: Largest market by application The refining industry was the largest hydrogen consumer; it accounted for the largest share of total hydrogen consumption in 2015, with Asia-Pacific being the main regional market. The refinery segment is expected to be the highest growth contributor, followed by methanol, from 2016 to 2021. Hydrogen production in refineries is projected to grow faster due to increasing demand for petroleum products in developing countries such as India and China and tightening norms to reduce sulfur content in those countries. Request for Customization: http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/requestCustomization.asp?id=494 Steam Methane Reforming: Largest used technology for hydrogen generation Steam methane reforming of natural gas is one of the commonly used thermal methods for hydrogen generation. This process involves the reaction of methane with water in a reactor in the presence of a catalytic converter. This is a commonly used method because of easy availability of the raw material (methane) and a cost-effective process. This technology accounted for more than one-third of the market share (volume) in 2015 among other technologies of hydrogen production (partial oxidation, gasification, and electrolysis). Asia-Pacific: Largest Market for Hydrogen Generation In 2015, Asia-Pacific was the largest market for hydrogen generation among other regions studied in this report. The region would continue to dominate the Hydrogen Generation Market, due to growing demand for petroleum products from refineries with lower sulfur content. Governments in Asia-Pacific also administering stringent regulations regarding sulfur content of petroleum products, and are investing highly in R&D of hydrogen and fuel cell technology to reduce sulfur emissions in the environment. To provide an in-depth understanding of the competitive landscape, the report includes profiles of some of the leading players in Hydrogen Generation Market such as Linde AG (Germany), Air Liquide SA (France), Air Products & Chemicals Inc. (U.S.), Praxair Inc. (U.S.), Airgas Inc. (U.S.), and Hydrogenics Corp. (Canada) among others. Dominant players are trying to penetrate developing and developed economies and adopting the contracts & agreements strategy to increase market share. Market share analysis, by revenue, for key companies is included in the report. The scope accordingly aids market participants to identify high growth markets and help managing key investment decisions. It strategically analyzes micro markets with respect to growth trends, future prospects, and contribution to the total market covered by technology, generation & delivery mode, application, and region. Browse Related Reports: Micro Combined Heat & Power (Micro CHP) Market by Type (Engine, Fuel Cell), Technology (Internal Combustion Engine, Rankine Cycle Engine, Stirling Engine, PEMFC, SOFC), Application (Residential, Commercial), & Region - Global Forecast to 2020 http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/micro-chp-market-419.html Fuel Cell Technology Market by Type (PEMFC, MCFC, SOFC, DMFC, PAFC, OTHERS), by Application (Stationary, Portable, Transportation) and Geography - Global Trends and Forecasts Till 2019 http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/fuel-cell-market-348.html About MarketsandMarkets MarketsandMarkets is world's No. 2 firm in terms of annually published premium market research reports. Serving 1700 global fortune enterprises with more than 1200 premium studies in a year, M&M is catering to multitude of clients across 8 different industrial verticals. We specialize in consulting assignments and business research across high growth markets, cutting edge technologies and newer applications. Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model - GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors. M&M's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets. The new included chapters on Methodology and Benchmarking presented with high quality analytical infographics in our reports gives complete visibility of how the numbers have been arrived and defend the accuracy of the numbers. We at MarketsandMarkets are inspired to help our clients grow by providing apt business insight with our huge market intelligence repository. Contact: Mr. Rohan Markets and Markets UNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZ Magarpatta city, Hadapsar Pune, Maharashtra 411013, India 1-888-600-6441 Email: sales@marketsandmarkets.com Visit MarketsandMarkets Blog @ http://www.marketsandmarketsblog.com/market-reports/energy-and-power Connect with us on LinkedIn @ http://www.linkedin.com/company/marketsandmarkets CHARLOTTE, NC -- (Marketwired) -- 03/22/16 -- A new initiative of BSN medical aims to bring worldwide awareness to lymphedema, a condition that affects 3-5 million Americans and 140-200 million people worldwide(1). This month -- Lymphedema Awareness Month -- is the web launch of LymphCare in the United States, the first community support program supported by healthcare professionals and lymphedema patients designed to connect, educate and empower anyone seeking pertinent information in a safe, interactive environment. LymphCare successfully bridges the gap between patients and professionals in one central location. The social network offers resources, up-to-date information about therapy solutions, management techniques and insurance, as well as the ability to interact or ask questions through a community forum. "In honor of healthcare professionals and the millions of lymphedema sufferers, a majority of whom do so in silence, we are extremely proud to support LymphCare, a comprehensive lymphedema program that enables live communication with the larger lymphedema community in one central place," said Todd Healy, president of North America for BSN medical. "In response to an obvious and critical need, LymphCare encourages dialogue, provides advocacy, and educates in a secure community designed for patients, their loved ones, physicians, therapists and fitters alike. "Because BSN medical understands lymphedema from the perspective of patients and healthcare professionals, we also know first-hand how critical it is to empower patients throughout their lymphedema journey by supporting them with adaptable integrated therapy solutions," continued Healy. Lymphedema is swelling in one or more extremities that results from impaired flow of the lymphatic system. In the United States and Western countries, lymphedema occurs most commonly as a complication of lymph node dissection for cancer treatment(2). There is no known cure for lymphedema. "Lymphedema is an understated and often overlooked condition," said Amy Santiago, a global lymphedema ambassador and Mrs. Central Florida International. "After 18 years of misdiagnoses, I was finally diagnosed with primary lymphedema. It was not an easy journey, but I have turned my frustrations and defeat into a passion filled purpose by being the voice of lymphedema and the voice of significance. "LymphCare provides a central place where we can all come together and share information, learn new techniques, and obtain valuable advice," added Santiago. "It is extremely important to continue to build awareness and encourage others to give voice to their lymphedema story rather than suffer in silence, as I once did." More About Lymphedema The lymphatic system is a network of specialized vessels (lymph vessels) throughout the body that collect excess lymph fluid with proteins and waste products from the tissues. This fluid is carried to the lymph nodes, which filter waste products and contain infection-fighting cells called lymphocytes. When lymph vessels are blocked or unable to carry lymph fluid away, localized swelling, (lymphedema), is the result. Primary lymphedema is the result of an anatomical abnormality of the lymph vessels and is a rare, inherited condition. Secondary lymphedema results from an identifiable damage to or obstruction of normally functioning lymph vessels and nodes(3). More About LymphCare LymphCare is a support program for the lymphedema population initiated by BSN medical where a community of patients and professionals come together via a social network to gather information, connect, and communicate in one place. The website offers professionals a unique way to connect and support their patients, find the latest information on therapy solutions, communicate with a group of like-minded professionals, and support patients outside office visits, as well as refer them to a valuable resource with answers. For patients, in addition to communicating with their caregivers, the program offers the ability to connect and communicate with other patients, ask questions about their diagnosis, and learn facts about lymphedema and how to manage their condition. About BSN medical BSN medical is the global integrated medical therapy provider in wound care and related vascular diseases, lymphology and non-invasive orthopedic products. Founded in 2001, the company currently employs approximately 6,100 members of staff, and generated revenues of EUR 861m in 2015. The company aims to provide an integrated therapy-driven approach -- grounded in a broad portfolio of products, enhanced by insights into current therapeutic areas and complemented by a progressive approach to partnerships. Its well-known brands such as Elvarex, Cutimed, JOBST, Delta and Actimove are among the most trusted in healthcare. With its comprehensive product portfolio, BSN medical addresses patients' needs in the most prevalent conditions in wound care and vascular diseases, and orthopedic treatments. More information: www.bsnmedical.com. (1, 2)http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3652571/ (3)http://www.medicinenet.com/lymphedema/article.htmlymphedema_facts Media Contact in the US: Amy Cook 925.200.2125 amy@amcpublicrelations.net Media Contact Europe: Friederike Herrfurth +352.621.531.674 friederike.herrfurth@bsnmedical.com WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. (TMO) reiterated its belief that the merger agreement between the company and Affymetrix is superior and remains in the best interest of Affymetrix and its stockholders. Thermo Fisher management team and board urged Affymetrix Stockholders to approve the merger agreement with Thermo Fisher by voting shares in favor of the deal at the stockholder meeting on March 24, 2016. 'We are confident that our Merger Agreement continues to be superior to the proposal put forth to Affymetrix by Origin Technologies. As compared to the Origin Proposal, our Merger Agreement contains no open ended conditions and represents a fully financed, all-cash offer. Moreover, we have received all required regulatory approvals, and expect to complete the transaction immediately following receipt of Affymetrix stockholder approval this week,' said Marc Casper, president and CEO of Thermo Fisher. 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. Regulatory News: Atlas Copco's (STO:ATCOA) (STO:ATCOB) Nomination Committee proposes Sabine Neu and Gunilla Berg as new members of the Board of Directors of Atlas Copco AB. The proposal includes re-election of Board members Hans Straberg, Chair, Ronnie Leten, Anders Ullberg, Staffan Bohman, Margreth vrum, Johan Forssell and Peter Wallenberg Jr. Ulla Litzen and Gunilla Nordstrom have declined re-election. Sabine Neu, born 1968, is a German citizen with a M.Sc. in engineering from the Coburg University in Germany. Since 2013 she is the Chief Operating Officer for Linde Material Handling, a world-leading manufacturer of forklift trucks and warehouse handling equipment. She has been Managing Director of TRW Automotive Safety Systems, and has held various positions in Behr, a supplier for automotive air conditioning and engine cooling systems, including a Group Vice President position in the U.S. between 2004 and 2007. During the first eight years of her career she worked for Brose Fahrzeug, a supplier to the automotive industry. Sabine Neu is a member of the Supervisory Board of German automotive manufacturing company Continental AG. Gunilla Berg, born 1960, is a Swedish citizen with a B.Sc. in Finance from the Stockholm School of Economics, Sweden. Since 2014 she is Group Chief Financial Officer of PostNord, a logistics solutions company. Former positions include being Executive Vice President and CFO of the airline company SAS Group, media solutions provider Teracom Group and grocery retail trade specialist KF Group. She has also had various positions within AGA, today part of the Linde Group. Gunilla Berg is a member of the Board of Alfa Laval, a world leader within the technology areas of heat transfer, separation and fluid handling. Shareholders will vote on the Nomination Committee's proposal at Atlas Copco's Annual General Meeting, which will be held on April 26, 2016, in Solna, Sweden. Atlas Copco discloses the information provided herein pursuant to the Securities Markets Act and/or the Financial Instruments Trading Act. Atlas Copco is a world-leading provider of sustainable productivity solutions. The Group serves customers with innovative compressors, vacuum solutions and air treatment systems, construction and mining equipment, power tools and assembly systems. Atlas Copco develops products and services focused on productivity, energy efficiency, safety and ergonomics. The company was founded in 1873, is based in Stockholm, Sweden, and has a global reach spanning more than 180 countries. In 2015, Atlas Copco had revenues of BSEK 102 (BEUR 11) and more than 43 000 employees. Learn more at www.atlascopcogroup.com (http://www.atlascopco.com). This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160322005959/en/ Contacts: Nomination Committee nominations@atlascopco.com or Atlas Copco Ola Kinnander, Media Relations Manager +46 8 743 8060 or +46 70 347 2455 media@se.atlascopco.com JACKSONVILLE, FL --(Marketwired - March 22, 2016) - Beeline, a global leader in software solutions for managing the extended workforce today announced its sponsorship of Staffing Industry Analysts' Contingent Workforce Strategies (CWS) Summit Europe, to be held 13-14 April 2016, at Park Plaza Westminster Bridge, London. The CWS Summit is the only Europe-based event of its kind, bringing together managers of human resources, procurement, IT, and category management. Throughout the event, Beeline representatives will be available to discuss how businesses can move forward by creating a customised, non-employee workforce solution, driven by innovative technology and the latest industry best practices. Beeline will start by hosting a roundtable debate "Meeting of Minds," scheduled for Tuesday, 12 April from 15:00 - 18:00. Procurement leaders from across Europe will share experiences and best practices. Throughout CWS Summit, Beeline will host various thought leadership sessions. On Wednesday, 13 April, see a live demo in the Ideas-in-Action Showcase titled "The Benefits of Sourcing and Managing SOW-Based Services in Your VMS." Beeline will present innovative VMS technology to help organisations manage a key component of their extended workforce: statement of work (SOW)-based services from 13:45 - 14:30. Following this showcase, Beeline will host a breakout session titled, "Harnessing Complexity; Turning the Extended Workforce into a Competitive Advantage," presented by Manuel Roger, SVP EMEA Markets and Operations from 15:00 - 15:45. On Thursday, 14 April, Beeline will facilitate a roundtable on "Beyond Temps, Using Technology to manage SOW and Outsourcing" at 9:00. Throughout the Summit, Beeline representatives will be available in booth 15. About CWS Summit Attend the CWS Summit Europe to ensure your contingent labour programme has the strategies to optimise your use of contingent work in the 21st century. Case study based workshops on MSP selections, RPO best practices, FMS/Online staffing, Total Talent Management, SOW management, and advanced VMS strategies, plus thought leadership sessions, roundtables and keynote presentations are just some of the topics covered at CWS Summit Europe. All designed to help you advance your own expertise as well as your organisation's capabilities in the management of flexible labour and recruitment outsourcing services. For more information about the 2016 CWS Summit Europe, visit www.staffingindustry.com. About Beeline Beeline is a market leader in software solutions for sourcing and managing the extended workforce. Award-winning business intelligence, superior technology, a global network of local knowledge, and service-driven colleagues dedicated to client success make Beeline an essential business partner for today's leading enterprises. To learn more, visit beeline.com. For press inquiries only, please contact: Beeline London Office +44 207 845 5602 DUBLIN, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Research and Markets (http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/8v5nqk/smart_structures) has announced the addition of the "Smart Structures in Aerospace: Market Opportunities: 2016-2025" report to their offering. Smart structures play a growing role in the aerospace industry in four different areas: monitoring of composites, suppression of structural vibration, noise suppression, and surface morphing. This report identifies where the commercial opportunities are for smart structures in civil and general aviation, military aircraft, helicopters, UAVs and spacecraft. It examines where the money will be made in smart structures for aircraft at all levels of the value chain; we examine the market potential for the smart structures themselves, the related smart materials and SHM/HUMS systems and smart aircraft skins, as well as the implications of the trend towards smart structures for the aircraft builders and airlines. The report profiles both the R&D and commercialization projects for smart structures in the aerospace industry, including those sponsored by governmental agencies such as the EU, DARPA and NASA and those run by the major aerospace companies. The report also discusses how smart structures are enabling the aerospace industry to move away from manual monitoring and repair procedures and the ways that firms in the smart structure space are overcoming the strong reluctance of aerospace industry to abandon manual processes for aircraft maintenance. In particular, the report examines how smart technologies can monitor the operation of the aircraft, improve its functioning, reducing its maintenance, and extend its life cycle. Key Topics Covered: Executive Summary Chapter One Introduction Chapter Two: Smart Structures: Technology Evolution and Value Chains Chapter Three: Smart Structures in Aerospace: Drivers and Acceptance Chapter Four: Ten-Year Forecasts for Smart Structures in the Aerospace Industry For more information visit http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/8v5nqk/smart_structures 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 PUNE, India, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- The report "Polymethyl Methacrylate (PMMA) Microspheres Market by Application (Displays, Coatings, Cosmetics, Medical, 3D Printing Inks, and Films), & Size (0 To 30 Microns, Above 30 Microns) - Global Forecast to 2020", published by MarketsandMarkets, The global PMMA market is projected to reach USD 191.7 Million by 2020 from USD 118.1 Million in 2014, at a CAGR of 8.5% during the period 2015 to 2020. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160303/792302 ) The growth of the market is largely attributed toward the increasing demand for flat panel display, architectural coatings, and medical applications in which PMMA microspheres are majorly used. Browse 39 Tables and 41 Figures spread through 93 Slides and in-depth TOC on"Polymethyl Methacrylate (PMMA) Microspheres Market" http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/pmma-microspheres-market-17748357.html Early buyers will receive 10% customization on this report. Display application to dominate the global PMMA microsphere market In terms of application, display panels dominated the PMMA microsphere consumption and accounted for a maximum share of the PMMA market in terms of value in 2014. The demand of PMMA microspheres from growing consumer electronics products such as smart phones, LCD screens & monitors, TV & video equipment, applicance control panels, and solar panels drives the overall market. PMMA with size greater than 30 microns to grow at the highest CAGR In terms of size when segmented, the smaller size segment containing "0 to 30 microns" accounted for a major share in terms of value in 2014. However, the "above 30 microns" segment is estimated to grow at the fastest CAGR during the forecast period between 2015 and 2020, because of the increase in demand from medical application. The size of above 30 microns facilitates medical procedures such as cell sorting and immunoprecipitation, thus making these microspheres suitable for medical research and biological laboratory experiments. Asia Pacific, the most dominant region in the global PMMA microsphere market The Asia-Pacific region accounted for the largest contribution toward the PMMA microsphere market in 2014 owing to large manufacturing capacities. The growth of electronics industry, mainly in Taiwan, South Korea, and China, is expected to boost the demand for PMMA over the years. Asia-Pacific is considered to be the most attractive market, with relaxed regulations and availability of economical labor and technology. On other hand, new technologies and increasing demand of premium products such as cosmetics and architectural coatings from European countries are expected to ensure highest growth rate for the European region during the forecast period. Inquiry Before Buying: http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Enquiry_Before_Buying.asp?id=17748357 Some of the key players operating in the global PMMA Microsphere Market include Cospheric LLC (U.S.), Sunjin Chemical Co., Ltd. (South Korea), Microbeads (Norway), and Imperial Microspheres (U.S.), among others. These companies, along with other regional companies, cater to the global demand for PMMA microspheres. The global PMMA microsphere market is segmented on the basis of application, size, and region. The scope of the report covers detailed information regarding the major factors influencing the growth of the market, such as drivers, restraints, challenges, and opportunities. A detailed analysis of the key industry players has been done to provide insights into their business overview, products & services, key strategies, new product launches, mergers & acquisitions, partnerships, agreements, collaborations, and recent developments associated with the PMMA microsphere market. Browse Related Reports: Polymethyl Methacrylate (PMMA) Market by Grade (General, Optical), Type (Pellets, Beads, Extruded Sheets, Cell Cast & Blocks), & Application (Signs & Displays, Construction, Automotive, Electronics, Sanitary Ware) - Global Trends & Forecasts to 2019 http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/polymethyl-methacrylate-pmma-market-715.html Transparent Plastic Market by Type (PS, PP, PC, TPU, PVC, ABS, SAN, PMMA & Others), by Application (Packaging, Building & Construction, Automotive, Electrical & Electronics, Consumer Goods, Healthcare & Others), by Region - Trends & Forecasts to 2020 http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/transparent-plastics-market-57341363.html About MarketsandMarkets MarketsandMarkets is world's No. 2 firm in terms of annually published premium market research reports. Serving 1700 global fortune enterprises with more than 1200 premium studies in a year, M&M is catering to multitude of clients across 8 different industrial verticals. We specialize in consulting assignments and business research across high growth markets, cutting edge technologies and newer applications. Our 850 fulltime analyst and SMEs at MarketsandMarkets are tracking global high growth markets following the "Growth Engagement Model - GEM". The GEM aims at proactive collaboration with the clients to identify new opportunities, identify most important customers, write "Attack, avoid and defend" strategies, identify sources of incremental revenues for both the company and its competitors. M&M's flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, "RT" connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for deeper understanding of the unmet insights along with market sizing and forecasts of niche markets. The new included chapters on Methodology and Benchmarking presented with high quality analytical infographics in our reports gives complete visibility of how the numbers have been arrived and defend the accuracy of the numbers. We at MarketsandMarkets are inspired to help our clients grow by providing apt business insight with our huge market intelligence repository. Contact: Mr.Rohan Markets and Markets UNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZ Magarpatta city, Hadapsar Pune, Maharashtra 411013, India Tel: +1-888-600-6441 Email: sales@marketsandmarkets.com Visit MarketsandMarkets Blog @http://www.marketsandmarketsblog.com/market-reports/chemical Connect with us on LinkedIn @ http://www.linkedin.com/company/marketsandmarkets WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - While the four other presidential candidates sought to highlight their support for Israel in remarks at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference on Monday, a speech by Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., had a somewhat different tone. Speaking at a school in Salt Lake City, Utah, Sanders described Israel as one of America's closest allies but said the U.S. also has to be a friend to the Palestinian people. 'To my mind, as friends - long term friends with Israel - we are obligated to speak the truth as we see it,' Sanders said. 'That is what real friendship demands, especially in difficult times.' 'Our disagreements will come and go, and we must weather them constructively,' he added. 'But it is important among friends to be honest and truthful about differences that we may have.' Sanders said peace will require unconditional recognition of Israel's right to exist as well as for organizations like Hamas and Hezbollah to renounce their efforts to undermine the security of Israel. However, the Vermont Senator said peace also means achieving self-determination, civil rights, and economic well-being for the Palestinian people. Sanders was critical of Israel's expanded settlement construction in the West Bank as well as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's decision to withhold hundreds of millions of Shekels in tax revenue from the Palestinians. He also called for the end of the economic blockade of Gaza as well as the equitable distribution of water resources. 'Peace will require strict adherence by both sides to the tenets of international humanitarian law,' Sanders added. 'This includes Israeli ending disproportionate responses to being attacked - even though any attack on Israel is unacceptable.' Sanders also touched on other conflicts in the region, expressing his belief that the U.S. has an obligation to pursue diplomatic solutions before resorting to military intervention. (Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore) Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de MECHANICSBURG, PA -- (Marketwired) -- 03/22/16 -- One of the newest hotels near Carlisle Pennsylvania, TownePlace Suites Harrisburg West/Mechanicsburg was recently honored with two nominations for Hotel of the Year, including Opening Hotel of the Year and Community Service Hotel of the Year. The nominations close out a stellar year for the property, which saw it foster a number of community programs and drive guest satisfaction after an excellent grand opening. TownePlace Suites takes care not just of its guests, but also the community. Over the course of the year, the extended stay Mechanicsburg Pennsylvania hotel gave back to the community by partnering with the Red Cross and hosting a Red Cross Bus as part of their Real Giving Program. The hotel offers complimentary nights for victims of disasters such as fires and floods, and many of the staff took part in community days, volunteering for Habitat for Humanity. The hotel also hosted a Jubilee Day in Mechanicsburg, at a street fair to raise money for those in need of clothes and food. The nomination for Community Hotel of the Year is well-deserved, with TownePlace Suites Harrisburg having also volunteered for the second consecutive year at Bethesda Mission in Harrisburg, PA. Bethesda has been providing hope and healing to hurting and homeless people in the Greater Harrisburg area since 1914, and the hotel's staff all brought pot luck dishes, and served them to the charitable and devoted ladies and children at the women's shelter. The staff's hard work and dedication of course starts at home, with guest satisfaction being top of mind and a warm, welcoming hospitality highlighting every corner of the property, from free breakfast to personalized service. By fostering a strong collaborative working environment, the hotel near Camp Hill Pennsylvania was able to have a strong opening, and maintain high occupancy throughout the year. Its commitment to hospitality, and to the community, make it one of the most promising properties in the Marriott portfolio, and its team continues to drive growth and innovation. About TownePlace Suites Harrisburg West/Mechanicsburg Situated just west of Harrisburg, PA, and next to Rossmoyne Business Center, TownePlace Suites Harrisburg West/Mechanicsburg is an ideal destination for corporate travelers. Spacious extended stay suites offer space for working and relaxing, as well as flat-screen TVs and ultra-comfortable beds. Full kitchens give guests the freedom to follow their own schedule, while complimentary Wi-Fi throughout the hotel ensures productivity. Start your morning with a free hot breakfast, or enjoy a workout in the modern fitness center. The hotel's friendly and accommodating staff is on hand 24 hours a day to assist all guests. With a prime location, the hotel places guests less than five miles from Camp Hill, PA, and a 15-minute drive from downtown Harrisburg. Mechanicsburg's top local attractions and businesses are also close by. TownePlace Suites Harrisburg West/Mechanicsburg is an ideal resting spot for work/life balance. Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=2982178 CONTACT: TownePlace Suites Harrisburg West/Mechanicsburg 4915 Ritter Road Mechanicsburg Pennsylvania 17055 USA 1-717-691-1400 http://www.marriott.com/hotels/travel/harmt-towneplace-suites-harrisburg-west-mechanicsburg/ BOSTON, MA -- (Marketwired) -- 03/22/16 -- Camille Albane has announced its target markets for 2016 salon franchise expansion. "We are so pleased with how Camille Albane has been embraced in the United States," said Lori Merrall, director of franchise sales and development. "This is one of Europe's most established and mature brands, and we saw no reason why the U.S. market wouldn't gravitate to the concept of French beauty, where no detail is left to chance. The steady bookings and rave reviews that franchise owners get every day indicate that we were right." Camille Albane's customers are, for the most part, professional women from their 20s to their 60s who want more than the offerings of a value salon, but don't have the time for an all-day spa visit. They want the high-quality, unique offering of a mid-range salon -- exactly what Camille Albane offers. Camille Albane is one of Europe's largest European hair salon franchises and is the first to bring authentic French beauty services to the United States. With nearly 300 salons in more than 11 countries, Camille Albane is known for its upscale customer experience, Balayage color techniques and for creating fashion-forward trends rather than just following the latest fads. In Europe, the Camille Albane franchise fills a wide-open niche between value salon brands and high-priced luxury brands. It is doing the same in the United States, which -- alongside a very careful rollout -- is one reason the Camille Albane salon franchise concept has found success in this country. "We want to continue our growth in markets that already have the client base in place, so that when our Camille Albane salon franchise owners open their doors, they are busy from day one," Merrall said. "That means finding experienced business operators in cities and metro areas with a busy downtown and urban core, as well as established neighborhoods so that we can meet clients where they live and work." So far, those areas include: Northern Virginia Atlanta South Florida Houston Phoenix Denver Chicago Charlotte Nashville Charleston New Orleans Southern California Other cities also are being explored, especially those with large French populations, since many of those residents already know about (and likely miss having) Camille Albane. In addition to market demand, another reason the Camille Albane salon franchise concept is succeeding in the United States is the quality of franchise owners who are coming on board. Successful, growing "it" cities have a large corps of equally successful entrepreneurs, and these are the people who are eyeing Camille Albane with interest. "We are hearing from people who already own a business, or several businesses, and are looking to expand their portfolio," Merrall explained. "The ROI that Camille Albane offers is outstanding. The salon business in general is very stable, and this concept is completely new. It's a chance to bring something completely different to the market, and to have a business that can be operated alongside many others -- thanks to our strong in-house manager model. We think that soon we'll be seeing Camille Albane all across the country." To learn more, visit www.camillealbanefranchise.com. Embedded Video Available Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=2982182 Embedded Video Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=2982183 Contact: Lori Merrall Director of Franchise Sales and Development Dessange Group - North America 480-272-3404 lori.merrall@dessange-inc.com BOSTON, MA -- (Marketwired) -- 03/22/16 -- Fantastic Sams has made the Franchise Gator Top 100 Franchises list once again, claiming the 48th spot for 2016. "We are once again very excited to be recognized as one of the Franchise Gator's Top 100," said Linda Chadwick, President and CEO. "We can talk about our differentiators in the value-salon space all day long, but when a third party with a lot of institutional knowledge about franchising makes a recommendation, it's very meaningful." Fantastic Sams was the first nationally franchised hair salon, and it has grown to more than 1,100 locations over 40 years. Unlike discount haircut franchises, Fantastic Sams offers the full range of salon services, including haircuts and trend-right styles, color and waxing, which helps generate higher tickets and margins. Fantastic Sams invented the no-appointment-needed hair salon and continues to be an industry leader. In its ranking, Franchise Gator pointed out many of the values that make Fantastic Sams a great franchise. Chief among them is the opportunity to own a brand that's been successful for more than 40 years in a very competitive personal-care arena. "There are a lot of value salons out there, but they don't have the market share we do for good reason," Chadwick said. "Our brand's longevity is a huge plus, because the people who grew up coming to us are now bringing their children into our salons. But we also do more than cuts -- our color services are more popular than ever, for example." In addition, Fantastic Sams has never been afraid to shake things up. For example, a recent floor-plan redesign has created an open space where customers and staff mingle, and it offers a much more inviting vibe. Tradition still counts, too: Every Fantastic Sams salon franchise still operates using the no-appointment business model that founder Sam Ross pioneered. Franchise Gator also pointed out the branded product line that Fantastic Sams offers, noting that it helps stylists increase their per-ticket total, which helps the salon's bottom line. Ongoing training and support also are plus points for the franchise's total appeal. "We bring a lot to the table when we enter a marketplace, including financing," Chadwick concluded. "Our franchise owners have many ways to increase their revenue stream. What's more, we are there to support them every step of the way. We don't just attend a ribbon cutting and wish them the best. Ongoing support, training and product development are key to our franchisees' success, and to our growth as a company." For more information on the Fantastic Sams franchise opportunity, visit www.fantasticsamsfranchise.com Embedded Video Available Embedded Video Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=2982204 Contact Jan Lee Director of Business Development jlee@fantasticsams.com 855-371-3465 Regulatory News: Notice is hereby provided of the Annual General Meeting of PostNord AB (publ), (corp. id. no. 556771-2640). Time: Thursday, April 28, 2016, 09.00 Venue: PostNord's headquarters, Terminalvagen 24, Solna Right to participate and registration Shareholders Shareholders wishing to take part in the Annual General Meeting must be entered in the stock register maintained by Euroclear Sweden AB by Friday, April 22, 2016. Shareholders whose shares are registered in the name of a nominee must temporarily re-register their shares in their own name to be entitled to take part in the Annual General Meeting. Such reregistration must have been completed at Euroclear Sweden AB by Friday, April 22, 2016. This means that the shareholder must inform the nominee of the re-registration in good time prior to this date. Other information Members of the Danish and Swedish Parliaments are entitled to be present at the Annual General Meeting after registering with the company and, in connection with this, to ask questions of the company. The Annual General Meeting is also open to the public following registration. You can notify intention to attend by regular mail to PostNord AB (publ), Investor Relations, A 12 V, SE-105 00 Stockholm, Sweden or by email to ir@postnord.com. The company must have received notice of attendance no later than one week prior to the Annual General Meeting, that is, by April 21, 2016. Please bring proof of identity with you. At the time this notice was issued, the total number of shares in the company was 1,524,905,971 class A shares and 475,094,030 class B shares, equivalent to a total of 1,572,415,374 votes. Proposed agenda 1. Opening of the Meeting 2. Election of Chairman for the Meeting 3. Establishment and approval of voting list 4. Election of one or two persons to verify the minutes 5. Approval of the agenda 6. Resolution regarding attendance of external parties 7. Consideration of whether the Meeting has been duly convened 8. Presentation of a) annual report and audit report b) sustainability report and c) consolidated accounts and auditors' report on the consolidated accounts. 9. Report on the work of the past year a) address by the Chairman of the Board b) address by the CEO, and c) address by the Company's auditor. 10. Resolution on a) adoption of the income statement, balance sheets and consolidated financial statements b) appropriations of the Company's profit in accordance with the approved balance sheet, and c) discharge from liability for the Directors and the CEO. 11. Presentation of compensation and implementation of previously resolved guidelines for executive compensation a) oral presentation by the Chairman of the Board on compensation to the executives of PostNord AB and its subsidiaries b) the Board's report on whether previous guidelines for executive compensation at PostNord AB and its subsidiaries have been followed or not, with the reasons for any deviations, and c) presentation of the auditor's statement under Chap. 8 5 of the Swedish Companies Act (2005:551). 12. Resolution on the Board's proposed guidelines for compensation to senior executives 13. Presentation of the shareholders' proposal for a resolution on fees, Directors, Board Chair and auditors 14. Resolution on fees to Directors, committee members and auditors 15. Resolution concerning number of Directors 16. Election of Directors and Board Chair 17. Resolution concerning number of auditors 18. Election of auditors 19. Conclusion of the Annual General Meeting Resolution proposal 2. Election of Meeting Chair The shareholders propose lawyer Klaes Edhall as Chair of the Annual General Meeting. 10 b). Resolution on appropriations of the Company's profit in accordance with the balance sheet adopted The Board proposes that no dividend be paid for the financial year and that the net income for the year and retained earnings, totaling SEK 3,623,747,627, be carried forward. 12. Resolution on the Board's proposed guidelines for remuneration to senior executives On April 23, 2015, the AGM voted to adopt the Board's proposed guidelines for compensation of senior executives. The Board proposes that the 2016 AGM vote to adopt the Board's proposed guidelines for compensation of senior executives. Main contents of the proposal: 1. The guidelines must be based on the Swedish government's "Riktlinjer for anstallningsvillkor for ledande befattningshavare i foretag med statligt agande" (Guidelines for Conditions of Employment for Executives in State-Owned Companies) from April 20, 2009. 2. Total compensation for executives shall be well balanced, competitive, subject to a salary ceiling, reasonable, appropriate and shall promote good ethics and a good corporate culture. Compensation shall not be market leading in relation to comparable companies, but shall be characterized by moderation. This should also guide the total compensation paid to other employees, which the CEO must report annually to the Board. 3. Individual premium-based pension plans are taken out for the President Group CEO and other executives employed at PostNord AB in Sweden, with contributions not to exceed 30 percent of fixed monthly salary. The necessary insurance policies are contracted within the scope of this contribution. 4. The pensionable age for employees in Sweden is 65 years. Senior executives who are employed under Norwegian labor law are subject to the pension arrangements collectively agreed within the Norwegian company. The pensionable age is 65 years. Senior executives employed in Denmark, pensions are included in an amount corresponding to 10% of the agreed monthly salary. The pensionable age is that laid down in Danish legislation. 13-18. Presentation of the shareholders' proposal for a resolution on fees, Directors, Board Chair and auditors, etc. Fees The proposed annual fees to the Board are as follows: Board chairman: SEK 650,000 Director: SEK 275,000 It is proposed that no fee be paid to Directors employed by the Government Offices of Sweden or to employee representatives. The proposed fees to the Committees are as follows: Chair of the Auditing Committee: SEK 62,500 Member of the Auditing Committee: 50,000 kronor Chair of the Compensation Committee: SEK 37,500 Member of the Compensation Committee: SEK 25,000 It is proposed that no fee be paid to Committee members employed by the Government Offices of Sweden or to employee representatives. It is proposed that the fee for the work of the auditor be paid as per approved invoice. Directors and Chairman of the Board It is proposed that the Directors Mats Abrahamsson, Gunnel Duveblad, Christian Ellegaard, Torben Janholt, Magnus Skaninger, Jens Moberg and Anitra Steen be re-elected. Sisse Fjelsted Rasmussen has declined to stand for re-election. The shareholders' proposal for election of a new director, to replace Sisse Fjelsted Rasmussen, will be published on the Company's website in good time before the meeting. It is proposed that Jens Moberg be elected Chairman of the Board. Auditor It is proposed that the registered accounting firm KPMG AB be auditor for a period of one year, expiring at the end of the 2017 Annual General Meeting. Other information This notice, presentation documents, audit report and full proposals for resolutions with the associated statements will be made available at the company from April 7, 2016 at the latest. The documents will also be available on the company website, www.postnord.com, from the same date. Printed copies of the annual report will be available at the Annual General Meeting. _______________ Solna, March 2016 PostNord AB (publ) THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS Note: Every case has been taken in the translation of this document. In the event of discrepancies, the Swedish original will supersede the English translation. PostNord AB (publ) is required to disclose the foregoing information under the Security Markets Act and/or the Financial Instruments Trading Act. The information was submitted for publication on March 22, 2016 at 16.00 CET. We deliver! PostNord is the leading supplier of communication and logistics solutions to, from and within the Nordic region. We ensure the postal service to households and businesses in Sweden and Denmark. With our expertise and strong distribution network, we develop options for tomorrow's communication, e-commerce, distribution and logistics in the Nordic region. In 2015, the Group had 35,000 employees and sales of about SEK 40 billion. The Parent Company is a Swedish public limited company headquartered in Solna, Sweden. Visit us at www.postnord.com This information was brought to you by Cision http://news.cision.com View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160322006133/en/ Contacts: PostNord Media Relations tel: 46 10 436 10 10 e-mail: press@postnord.com Key stakeholders and foreign delegates converge at this year's 9th annual World Halal Conference KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- Malaysia's focal point in developing Halal industry, the Halal Industry Development Corporation (HDC), will hold this year's World Halal Conference on March 30 and 31 with the theme, 'Halal at the Forefront of Economic and Social Change.' Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160322/346736 Photo - http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160322/346737 The two-day conference will focus on various aspects of the Halal industry including the challenges facing the global Halal economy, the rise of Halal e-commerce and new business opportunities, and the need to develop talent. More than 800 halal stakeholders and foreign delegates are expected to participate in the conference. Tun Abdullah Haji Ahmad Badawi, the patron of World Halal Conference will give the welcoming remarks during the conference. One of main topics that will be deliberated this year is 'Women's Empowerment,' which will discuss the significant involvement and progression of women in the Halal industry, and how their role has impacted the balance of the social and economic aspects of the Halal world. The two keynote speakers of this session will be Dato' Dr Norraesah Binti. Haji Mohamad, Chairman, WIEF Businesswomen Network Malaysia and Ms. Loubna Amhair, Member of the House of Representatives, Morocco. A special address entitled 'Youth, Lifestyle and Halal' will also be given by The Hon. Khairy Jamaluddin.His address will emphasize the importance of youths in developing the Halal industry, and how the industry can reap lucrative business prospects for young entrepreneurs. Another topic that will be discussed is 'E-Commerce & Halal,' which takes a look at the technology of e-commerce and how it can facilitate the growth of the Islamic Economy. Other discussions include 'Ambassadors Panel: Strategic Foresight on Economic & Social Aspects,' and 'Globalization of Islamic Economy: The Halal Perspectives,' to name a few. The panellists for the discussions will comprise several heads of governments and corporate leaders, including from the UAE, Turkey, Japan, China, Korea, Qatar, Thailand, the United Kingdom and Indonesia. "For many Muslims, Halal goes beyond food and trade; it is a way of life. With Malaysia being recognised as the leader in the global Halal arena, it is important for us to push forward and align our efforts simultaneously with key players of the industry, in meeting the consumer needs of Muslims worldwide," said HDC's Chief Executive Officer, Dato' Seri Jamil Bidin. Today, the Halal industry remains a strong business attraction for not only Muslim but also non-Muslim countries too, with Halal compliancy encompassing all social and welfare needs from ethical funding and management to finance and supply chains. "This conference seeks to converge and inspire ideas from all around the world in addressing the current issues and challenges as well as incorporating Halal perspectives into socio-economic developments," added Jamil. This year's World Halal Week has the theme 'Beyond the Economy,' reflecting Malaysia's continuing efforts to identify the untapped potential of the Halal industry beyond trade and commercial values. FOR MORE INFORMATION, please contact HDC PR & Media, Norsida Ahmad at +60123249703 / norsida.ahmad@hdcglobal.com OR Sharifah Shahrizal at +60124548200 / sharifah.basharuddin@sprg.com.my OR Yasmin Yusoff at +60122406523 / yasmin.yusoff@sprg.com.my For media who wish to attend the event, please register beforehand at:http://whc.hdcglobal.com/media-centre/media-registration.php For regular media updates you can also visit: https://www.facebook.com/worldhalalconference2016/?fref=ts WASHINGTON, DC--(Marketwired - March 22, 2016) - From March 17-22, the Swiss-owned and Monaco-based Crans Montana Forum convened more than 800 foreign dignitaries from around the world in Dakhla, Morocco for its 26th event, themed "Africa and South-South Cooperation: Better Governance for Sustainable Economic & Social Development." In a message delivered to Forum participants on his behalf by Ynja Khattat, chairman of the Council of the Dakhla-Oued Eddahab region, Morocco's King Mohammed VI urged leaders to "put Africa and all developing countries at the heart of the international agenda." "Our overall objective is to make sure that the voice of a united, strong and determined Africa is heard and that it is heeded," he said. "Africa owes it to itself to become a key partner in international cooperation mechanisms, and not just a mere object of this cooperation or a prize others vie for. Africa should no longer be perceived as a vulnerable continent, but rather as a driver of progress." Remarking on the theme of sustainable development and good governance in particular, the King said that while the world and the South face unprecedented environmental and development challenges, "Africa should have a say in this global debate. It should neither keep quiet nor allow itself to be dictated to, let alone be forced to choose between development and the preservation of the environment." "It is this vision that Morocco has chosen to champion as it prepares to host the 22nd Conference of the Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP22) in Marrakech next November," he added. The King also remarked that the organizers' decision to choose Dakhla as the Forum location for a second year in a row "has more than just a symbolic meaning. It bears witness to the fact that fresh momentum has been given to the vision we have of the Moroccan Sahara..." The King was referring to his February visit to the region wherein he presided over the launch of numerous infrastructure projects, part of an $8 billion development plan designed to "make the Moroccan Sahara a hub for communication and exchange with sub-Saharan African countries," as promised by the King in November. Projects included new ports, fish markets, desalinization and fertilizer plants, and road infrastructure improvements, to name a few. The King explained to Crans Montana participants, "I wanted these structural projects to coincide with the implementation of advanced regionalization, following the recent regional elections, the establishment of bodies that were elected directly by the citizens and the provision of important constitutional and legal powers as well as financial and human resources." The Moroccan American Center for Policy (MACP) is a non-profit organization whose principal mission is to inform opinion makers, government officials, and interested publics in the United States about political and social developments in Morocco and the role being played by the Kingdom of Morocco in broader strategic developments in North Africa, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East. This material is distributed by the Moroccan American Center for Policy on behalf of the Government of Morocco. Additional information is available at the Department of Justice in Washington, DC. Image Available: http://www.marketwire.com/library/MwGo/2016/3/22/11G088584/Images/crans_opening_session-3a51f47786b49bdf90b9503b89e3d56a.jpg Jordana Merran 202.470.2049 jmerran@moroccanamericancenter.com LONDON, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- A new service from Lafferty Group, London uses an innovative and radically different approach to determine quality and excellence in banking globally. The initial results, published in Lafferty Bank Quality Ratings (LBQR), show that 'too big to fail' universal banks continue to struggle worldwide - and that there is no universal template for success. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160322/346846 ) Using quantitative and qualitative criteria and looking at areas such as strategy, culture, customer care, brand promise and financial performance, Lafferty Group uses the banks' annual reports to arrive at a quality rating (from one to five stars) for each of 100 financial institutions in 28 countries. So who fares well and why is this an appropriate methodology? Different banking models in different parts of the world rank well in the ratings, evidence that there is no one ideal model for a bank - whether it is based in emerging or developed markets. The 15 institutions receiving the highest Lafferty ratings among the 100 banks from around the world rated in the first issue of LBQR include: Capitec and Barclays Africa from South Africa HDFC from India Discover from the US Public Bank and Hong Leong from Malaysia OCBC from Singapore TSB from the UK Swedbank and Handelsbanken from Sweden National Bank of Kuwait ADIB from the UAE Sterling Bank from Nigeria Arab National Bank from Saudi Arabia BCA from Indonesia Major UK, US, German, French, Spanish, Swiss, Australian, Chinese, Japanese, and Canadian banks typically have 3-star or 2-star Lafferty quality ratings. Nigerian banks are generally rated 3-star. Michael Lafferty, chairman of Lafferty Group explained that LBQR uses the annual report because of its unique status.It is the primary vehicle used by bank management to communicate and account to shareholders and other stakeholders. He explained: "The methodology is founded on extensive conversations with senior bankers, regulators and shareholders and can be viewed as an antidote to excessive focus on traditional measures such as ROE (return on equity) or EPS (earnings per share) favoured by securities analysts. ROE can easily be manipulated. "Before the financial crisis traditional bank valuation ratios failed to highlight banks that were overtrading. Like the Max Planck Institute in Berlin and many central bankers we think that simple rules of thumb are often more useful for judging banks." Mr Lafferty also stressed that banks that score well on Lafferty Bank Quality Ratings tended to trade at a premium price to their tangible book value. He said: "There is evidence that investors appreciate and will pay for quality. Our ratings explain what the stock market is rewarding and why." So what next?Lafferty Group anticipates that at least 400 banks will be rated in the first year and ratings will be updated as banks publish new annual reports. Notes for editors: Lafferty Group Lafferty Group is a major provider of knowledge services to the banking industry worldwide - from benchmarking research and Councils to professional education. WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - Just hours after explosions in the Belgian capital of Brussels killed at least 31 people on Tuesday, Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump suggested the apparent terrorist attacks should be a warning sign for the U.S. When asked in an interview on Fox News how he would respond to the attacks, Trump indicated he would close the borders and block refugees from the Middle East from entering the U.S. 'We have to be smart in the United States,' Trump said. 'We're taking in people without real documentation.' He added, 'We don't know where they're from, who they are. They could be ISIS. They could be ISIS related. We just don't learn.' Trump has previously drawn criticism for his proposal to temporarily ban all Muslims from immigrating to the U.S. The real estate tycoon warned the Fox & Friends hosts that the deadly attacks at the airport and subway station in Brussels are 'just the beginning.' 'I'm a pretty good prognosticator. Just watch what happens over the years, it won't be pretty,' Trump said. 'We're going to get worse and worse. At this point, we cannot allow these people to come into this country, I'm sorry.' In a separate interview on Fox Business Network, Trump suggested that the U.S. should also monitor Muslims currently living in the country. 'We need surveillance. You need to deal with the mosques, whether you like it or not,' Trump said. 'We have to be smart, we have to be vigilant.' The billionaire also reiterated his support for waterboarding and other enhanced interrogation techniques in an interview on NBC's 'Today' show. Meanwhile, Trump's potential general election opponent Hillary Clinton argued it is not necessary for the U.S. to 'resort to torture' to prevent terrorist attacks. (Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore) Copyright RTT News/dpa-AFX Kostenloser Wertpapierhandel auf Smartbroker.de SAN JOSE, CA -- (Marketwired) -- 03/22/16 -- tech21, the leader in impact protection for mobile devices and the fastest-growing major case brand in the U.S.*, today announced its new waterproof Evo Xplorer case for Apple iPhone 6/6s, available exclusively at Best Buy stores nationwide and online at tech21.com. Designed to withstand everything life can throw its way, the Evo Xplorer was engineered from the ground up to offer maximum protection without compromise. The case is completely waterproof up to 9.9 feet for up to an hour; combined with FlexShock technology the Xplorer is also dustproof, snow-proof and shockproof. So whether it's swimming, snowboarding, the sticky hands of a child or an accidental drop in the bathroom, Evo Xplorer will keep the precious device inside fully protected, perfect for all those moments when lifehappens. The transparent case makes it easy to check for debris, and sealed buttons allow access to all ports and functions, including Touch ID, while a unique mechanical crown controls the ring/silent button. The Evo Xplorer also comes with a SecureClip locking system that keeps the case shut tight and the phone safe, even on impact. Unlike other waterproof cases, the Evo Xplorer's ingenious design and high quality components mean exceptional sound quality, so neither phone nor audio performance is compromised, even when fully protected. "We are excited to offer a premium phone case solution to give our customers maximum protection in those moments when life just happens," said Jason Roberts, CEO of tech21. "Every Evo Xplorer case is rigorously tested before it leaves our factory to ensure we provide the most advanced protection that works harmoniously with your iPhone 6/6s -- no matter what life throws at it." tech21 does what other case-makers cannot by combining science, engineering and British design to create cases that address three core benefits: style, protection and performance. As technology advances, tech21 has evolved its materials to meet the needs of today's consumers. The result is the world's most advanced impact protection material -- FlexShock. Featured in the Evo Xplorer, the material absorbs and dissipates force and can withstand drops up to 6.6 feet. Ultra-thin and lightweight, tech21's unique FlexShock material results in impact protection that's up to 30 percent thinner and 60 percent lighter than competitor cases offering similar levels of protection. The Evo Xplorer is now available in Best Buy stores nationwide and online at BestBuy.com and tech21.com. The Evo Xplorer case for iPhone 6/6s can be purchased for $89.95 MRSP. About tech21 Since 2005, tech21 has been developing the most advanced, scientifically proven cases and screen shields for mobile, tablet and laptop devices worldwide. tech21 combines science, engineering and British design to create products that address three core consumer benefits: style, protection and performance. As the brand evolves to continue meeting the needs of its consumers, tech21 has developed the most advanced impact protection on the market -- FlexShock. The ultra-thin and lightweight material absorbs and dissipates force and can withstand drops up to 6.6 feet. tech21 is the second best-selling case-maker and the fastest-growing case brand in the United States*. For more information, visit www.tech21.com. *NPD Group data for period Jul 2015 - Dec 2015 Image Available: http://www2.marketwire.com/mw/frame_mw?attachid=2981747 Stacey Yip tech21/Grayling PR Phone: (415) 593-1400 Email: Email Contact Justice Thomas to participate in Nice, France program in place of Justice Scalia Thomas Jefferson School of Law announced today that U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas will participate in its Study Abroad program taking place June 26 July 21, 2016. Justice Thomas agreed to join the program after the untimely death of U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Antonin Scalia, who was scheduled to teach in the program for the fifth time. This Smart News Release features multimedia. View the full release here: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160322005564/en/ U.S. Supreme Court Associate Justice Clarence Thomas. (Photo: Business Wire) "This is the first time that Justice Thomas will teach in the Nice Study Abroad Program, and we're honored to have him participate," said Thomas Guernsey, president and dean of Thomas Jefferson School of Law. "Justice Scalia would be proud to have Justice Thomas teach Constitutional Law in his place, a subject about which the late Justice Scalia was passionate." The program featuring Thomas will be held in France in partnership with the University of Nice School of Law. The program is a four-week international and comparative law study abroad program. Americans study international law with students from Europe and all parts of the world in an atmosphere that fosters the exchange of ideas and exploration of cultural differences. Among the courses is Constitutional Law in a Global Context, which Justice Thomas will now teach. "The Nice Program activities include a day in the French court, a Luncheon Lecture Series featuring distinguished judges, law professors and practitioners of international law and a French class offered at no charge to all students," said Susan Tiefenbrun, founding director of the program. "The University of Nice School of Law offers an ideal environment for learning international law in a city that is both beautiful and rich in European culture and history. While Justice Scalia will be sorely missed, this program remains a truly inspiring experience for those who enroll." Participants earn four credits for a tuition cost of $3,000. Thomas Jefferson School of Law will assist students with finding housing in either apartment-hotels with a kitchenette or in a hotel with a discount price. More information on the programs is available at www.tjsl.edu/study-abroad/nice. About Thomas Jefferson School of Law Thomas Jefferson School of Law offers a comprehensive legal education to a nationally-based, diverse student body. The non-profit law school is consistently ranked as one of the most diverse law schools in the nation, with 52 percent of its most recent class being students of color. Located in Downtown San Diego, Thomas Jefferson Law has evolved into an innovative, cutting-edge law school, devoted to the individual needs and success of its students. More information is available at www.tjsl.edu. View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160322005564/en/ Contacts: Edgar Hopida Director of Marketing and Communications Thomas Jefferson School of Law 619.961.4314 ehopida@tjsl.edu or Marlee J Ehrenfeld MJE Marketing 619.682.3841 marlee@mjemarketing.com 22 March 2016 Admiral Group Plc ('the Company') announces that its Annual General Meeting will be held at 2pm on Thursday 28 April 2016 at Cardiff City Hall, Cathays Park,Cardiff, CF10 3ND. In connection with this, the following documents have been posted or made available to shareholders today: Annual Report and Accounts for the year ended 31 December 2015 ('Annual Report'), Notice of Annual General Meeting; Proxy Form (in the case of shareholders on the register of members); . Statement of Circumstance from KPMG Plc. Copies of the above documents have been submitted to the National Storage Mechanism and will shortly be available for inspection at: www.morningstar.co.uk/uk/NSM. Copies of the above documents are also available to view on the Company's website at: www.admiralgroup.co.uk. Mark Waters Company Secretary This announcement is distributed by GlobeNewswire on behalf of GlobeNewswire clients. The owner of this announcement warrants that: (i) the releases contained herein are protected by copyright and other applicable laws; and (ii) they are solely responsible for the content, accuracy and originality of the information contained therein. Source: Admiral Group PLC via GlobeNewswire [HUG#1996847] A0DJ58B02J639R105 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. Technavio has announced the top five leading vendors in their recentglobal enterprise VSAT marketreport. This research report also lists 17 other prominent vendors that are expected to impact the market during the forecast period. Competitive vendor landscape The global enterprise VSAT market is a competitive market with the presence of numerous global and regional players. In addition, as a result of the limited resources, including the number of satellites and transponder capacity, most of the VSAT providers are witnessing intense competition. The intense competition among vendors has resulted in enterprise VSAT equipment prices falling by almost one-tenth in the past 4-5 years. The market comprises of several VSAT services, equipment providers, and platform providers. Some of the major vendors present in the market are Gilat Satellite Networks, Hughes Satellite Systems, ViaSat, VT iDirect, and SageNet. "A large number of vendors are adopting merger and acquisition strategies to enhance their network coverage and reach. For instance, Spacenet was acquired by SageNet in 2013," says Rakesh Kumar Panda, a lead analyst at Technavio for M2M and connected devices Top five companies for enterprise VSAT Gilat Satellite Networks Gilat Satellite Networks was incorporated in 1987 and is headquartered in Petah Tikva, Israel. The company provides broadband satellite communications, networking solutions, and related services. The company produces, designs, and markets VSATs, solid-state power amplifiers, BUCs, low-profile antennas, and on-the-move and on-the-pause terminals. As of December 31, 2014, the company recorded revenue of USD 235.13 million and invested USD 25.16 million in R&D. Some of the subsidiaries include Gilat Satellite Networks, Gilat to Home Peru, Gilat Satellite Networks MDC, and Raysat Bulgaria. Hughes Satellite Systems Hughes Satellite Systems was founded in 2004 and is headquartered in Germantown, Maryland, US. The company offers broadband satellite network services and systems to enterprises and consumer markets throughout the world. The company operates as a subsidiary of EchoStar Corporation. Awards: In September 2013, the Hughes Satellite Systems received the Service Provider of the Year for 2013 award at the VSAT 2013 Conference industry awards competition, held in Amsterdam. The award recognizes achievement, innovation, vision, and technical contributions to the VSAT industry. In May 2013, the company announced that its subsidiary Hughes Communications India, received the best VSAT operator in India award at the Telecom Operator Awards ceremony held in April 2010 in New Delhi, India. The award recognizes its service and support in the telecom sector, which was hosted by Tele.net magazine. SageNet SageNet was founded in 1998 and is headquartered at Tulsa, Oklahoma, US. The company provides managed network solutions for businesses. Key hihglights: September 1, 2015 : Acquires the cybersecurity division of IT consulting and staffing firm Turnberry Solutions. The acquisition provides SageNet customers with cybersecurity solutions and access to a seasoned team of cybersecurity experts : Acquires the cybersecurity division of IT consulting and staffing firm Turnberry Solutions. The acquisition provides SageNet customers with cybersecurity solutions and access to a seasoned team of cybersecurity experts November 6, 2014 : Announces that global satellite operator SES has signed a new capacity agreement with SageNet/Spacenet to help the energy companies connect their mission-critical operations across the region : Announces that global satellite operator SES has signed a new capacity agreement with SageNet/Spacenet to help the energy companies connect their mission-critical operations across the region October 22, 2014: Announces that it has been honored with 2014 Samsung Smart Signage Award in the Installation of the Year category for the food and beverage industry ViaSat ViaSat, which is known for its satellite and digital communication products, was established in 1986 and is headquartered in California, US. The company offers satellite, wireless communications, and networking systems to government and commercial customers. Key partnerships: April 24, 2014 : Receives USD 283 million in damages in patent infringement and breach of contract lawsuit against Space Systems/Loral : Receives USD 283 million in damages in patent infringement and breach of contract lawsuit against Space Systems/Loral March 10, 2014 : Enters into an agreement with Light Squared, a developer of 4G LTE wireless broadband communications : Enters into an agreement with Light Squared, a developer of 4G LTE wireless broadband communications February 24, 2014: Partners with Samsung KNOX, for advanced secure mobile enterprise services VT iDirect VT iDirect was founded in 1994 and is headquartered in Herndon, US. The company operates as a subsidiary of VT Systems. It is an IP-based satellite communications technology provider. On November 5, 2013, the company announced that ITC Global (a provider of satellite communications) launched the world's first satellite communications service for the oil and gas and mining markets by using its New iDirect X7 Modem. This enables the company to enhance its relationship with the top companies and increase its business opportunities. Browse Related Reports: Global Maritime VSAT Market 2015-2019 Global Remote Sensing Satellite Market 2016-2020 Global Military Satellite 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/20160322005076/en/ Contacts: Technavio Research Jesse Maida Media Marketing Executive US: +1 630 333 9501 UK: +44 208 123 1770 www.technavio.com PUNE, India, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- DeepResearchReports.com adds 2016 Global Calcium Silicate Market Research with other regional and worldwide calcium silicate reports available in chemicals section of its online business intelligence library. Complete report on the Calcium Silicate market spread across 151 pages, profiling 20 companies and supported with 251 tables and figures is now available at http://www.deepresearchreports.com/170234.html . The "2016 Market Research Report on Global Calcium Silicate Industry" is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the Calcium Silicate market with a basic overview of the industry including definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain structure. The Calcium Silicate market analysis is provided for the international markets including development trends, competitive landscape analysis, and key regions development status. Development policies and plans are discussed as well as manufacturing processes and cost structures. This report also states import/export, supply and consumption figures as well as cost, price, revenue and gross margin by regions (United States, EU, China and Japan), and other regions can be added. Few key manufacturers included in this report are Etex Group, A&A Material, NICHIAS, Wellpool, Johns Manville, BNZ Materials, Ramco Hilux, Taisyou, Jinqiang, Yichang Hongyang Group, KingTec Materials, CNUE, Tirupati Industries, Ningbo Yihe Green Board, Guangdong Newelement, Zhejiang Hailong, Sanle Group, Guangdong Soben Green, Shandong lutai and Oreworld trade (Tangshan) co.. Order a copy of Global Calcium Silicate Market Report 2016 research report at http://www.deepresearchreports.com/contacts/purchase.php?name=170234 . The report focuses on global major leading industry players of Calcium Silicate market providing information such as company profiles, product picture and specification, capacity production, price, cost, production value and contact information. Upstream raw materials and equipment and downstream demand analysis is also carried out. The Calcium Silicate market development trends and marketing channels are analyzed. Finally the feasibility of new investment projects are assessed and overall research conclusions offered. With 251 tables and figures to support the Calcium Silicate market analysis, this research provides key statistics on the state of the industry and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the market. Another research titled "2015 Market Research Report on Global Calcium Silicate Boards Sales" is a professional and in-depth study on the current state of the global Calcium Silicate Boards industry with a focus on the global market. The report provides key statistics on the market status of the Calcium Silicate Boards manufacturers and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the industry. The report provides a basic overview of the Calcium Silicate Boards industry including definitions, classifications, applications and industry chain structure. Development policies and plans are discussed as well as manufacturing processes and cost structures are also analyzed. This report also states import/export consumption, supply and demand figures, cost, price, revenue and gross margins. The report then analyzes the global Calcium Silicate Boards market size (volume and value), and the sales segment market is also discussed by product type, application and region. The major Calcium Silicate Boards market (including USA, Europe, China, Japan, etc.) is analyzed, data including: market size, import and export, sale segment market by product type and application. Then we forecast the 2016-2021 market size of Calcium Silicate Boards. The report focuses on global major leading companies providing information such as company profiles, sales, sales revenue, market share and contact information. Then the Calcium Silicate Boards production market status is discussed. With 151 tables and figures the report provides key statistics on the state of the industry and is a valuable source of guidance and direction for companies and individuals interested in the market. Companies profiled this research includes Etex Group, A&A Material, NICHIAS, Wellpool, Ramco Hilux, Taisyou, Jinqiang, Yichang Hongyang Group, KingTec Materials, CNUE, Ningbo Yihe Green Board, Guangdong Newelement, Zhejiang Hailong, Sanle Group, Guangdong Soben Green and Shandong Lutai. Read more at http://www.deepresearchreports.com/117361-toc.html . Explore more reports on theChemicals marketat http://www.deepresearchreports.com/cat/chemicals-market-research.html . About Us : Deep Research Reports is digital database ofsyndicated market reports for global and China industries. These reports offer competitive intelligence data for companies in varied market segments and for decision makers at multiple levels in these organizations. We provide 24/7 online and offline support to our customers. Contact: Ritesh Tiwari UNIT no 802, Tower no. 7, SEZ Magarpatta city, Hadapsar Pune- 411013 Maharashtra,India. +1 888 391 5441 sales@deepresearchreports.com Connect with us: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/deepresearchreports Twitter: https://twitter.com/DResearchReport Google+: https://plus.google.com/117151957945248166335 With an already burgeoning renewable energy sector, Belize is setting a good example of how small economies can be powered using predominantly clean energy. Solar PV has almost no say in the country's energy mix, which is dominated by hydro and biomass resources, so this project is an exciting development for PV in the region. Solar research company Natcore Technology is the chief consultant on the design and construction of the facility, and will work alongside energy development company, Catalyst565, to make the project become ... 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. In August 2013, Belarusian energy group Belorusneft announced its plans to build a PV solar farm in the Rechitsa district. Initially, the plant was expected to reach 50 MW capacity, with construction originally due to begin in 2013. These plans, however, were postponed. Today, it appears that the Belarusian oil company has not given up on its solar project after all. The German-based meteocontrol GmbH were selected to produce yield reports for a planned PV park in Rechytsa. To help the energy supplier objectively assess bids submitted in the contract-awarding ... 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. RIDGEFIELD, WA -- (Marketwired) -- 03/22/16 -- A growing need for addiction recovery services in the Pacific Northwest will be answered beginning Tues., April 5 when The Recovery Village Ridgefield begins providing services at a new residential treatment center located in Ridgefield, Washington. Integrated multi-state behavioral healthcare management company Advanced Recovery Systems (ARS), based in Fort Lauderdale, will operate the complex. The Recovery Village Ridgefield will provide inpatient, partial hospitalization, intensive outpatient programming for adult patients, ages 18 and older, desiring to overcome addiction to alcohol, drugs and prescription medications. The facility has 64 beds available on a peaceful campus, removed from city life. The treatment center will not only serve patients from Portland, Vancouver and the Pacific Northwest, but from across the U.S. and treatment services will be tailored to the individual needs of each patient. Patients will receive around-the-clock care and a structured treatment program including group and individual therapy, a variety of activities and nourishing meals. "Our research indicates that there are few comprehensive treatment program options for the people and families seeking addiction recovery services in this area of the country," said Kevin Wandler, M.D., chief medical officer for ARS. "We're here to help." A public Grand Opening event is scheduled from 4 p.m. until 6:30 p.m. on Mon., April 4 at the facility, located at 888 S. Hillhurst Road in Ridgefield. Guests may RSVP at therecoveryvillageridgefield.eventbrite.com. "The Recovery Village Ridgefield is a caring, empowering and encouraging environment for people looking to break the cycle of destructive addiction behaviors," Dr. Wandler said. Admissions are now being accepted for the first day of treatment services on April 5. Most private insurance policies are accepted and transportation can be coordinated for admission. For more information or to request a facility tour, visit ridgefieldrecovery.com or call (855) 766-0023. About Advanced Recovery Systems (ARS) Founded in 2013, ARS owns and operates behavioral healthcare facilities providing services for adults and adolescents that include: addiction recovery and treatment for substance abuse, eating disorders and a variety of mental health issues. Its network of treatment centers includes: The Recovery Village (Umatilla, Florida) The Recovery Village at Palmer Lake (Palmer Lake, Colorado) Next Generation Village (Sebring, Florida) Orlando Recovery Center (Orlando, Florida) Next Step Village (Maitland, Florida) Blue Horizon Eating Disorder Services (Winter Park, Florida) The Recovery Village Ridgefield (Ridgefield, Washington) For more information, visit AdvancedRecoverySystems.com. Media Contact: Bill Woodward LaneTerralever Public Relations Bill.Woodward@LaneTerralever.com 602.714.1997 - mobile THIS CIRCULAR IS IMPORTANT AND REQUIRES YOUR IMMEDIATE ATTENTION If you are in doubt as to any aspect of this circular or as to the action to be taken, you should consult your stockbroker or other registered dealer in securities, bank manager, solicitor, professional accountants or other professional adviser. If you have sold or transferred all your shares in Zhejiang Expressway Co., Ltd., you should at once hand this circular with the accompanying form of proxy to the purchaser or the transferee or to the bank, stockbroker or other agent through whom the sale or transfer was effected for transmission to the purchaser or the transferee. Hong Kong Exchanges and Clearing Limited and The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited take no responsibility for the contents of this circular, make no representation as to its accuracy or completeness and expressly disclaim any liability whatsoever for any loss howsoever arising from or in reliance upon the whole or any part of the contents of this circular. ZHEJIANG EXPRESSWAY CO., LTD. (A joint stock limited company incorporated in the People's Republic of China with limited liability) (Stock code: 0576) (1) PROPOSED GENERAL MANDATE TO ISSUE H SHARES (2) PROPOSED ISSUE OF SUPER SHORT-TERM COMMERCIAL PAPER AND (3) NOTICE OF ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING A notice for convening the annual general meeting (the "AGM") of the Company to be held at 10 a.m. on May 6, 2016 at 5/F, No. 2 Mingzhu International Business Center, 199 Wuxing Road, Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province, the PRC is set out on pages 7 to 11 of this circular. A form of proxy for use at the AGM is enclosed. Whether or not you are able to attend the meeting in person, you are requested to complete and return the accompanying form of proxy in accordance with the instructions printed thereon. In case of H Shares, the proxy form shall be lodged with the Company's H Shares Registrar, Computershare Hong Kong Investor Services Limited, at 17M Floor, Hopewell Centre, 183 Queen's Road East, Wanchai, Hong Kong, not less than 24 hours before the time for holding the AGM (or any adjournment thereof). Completion and delivery of the form of proxy will not preclude you from attending and voting in person at the AGM or any adjournment thereof should you so wish. March 22, 2016 CONTENTS Definitions Letter from the Board Notice of AGM DEFINITIONS In this circular, unless the context specifies otherwise, the following expressions shall have the meanings stated below: "AGM" The annual general meeting of the Shareholders of the Company to be convened at 5/F, No. 2 Mingzhu International Business Center, 199 Wuxing Road, Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province, the PRC, the notice of which is set out on pages 7 to 11 of this circular "Articles of Association" the articles of association of the Company "associate(s)" has the meaning ascribed to it under the Listing Rules "Board" the Board of Directors "Company" Zhejiang Expressway Co., Ltd., a joint stock limited company incorporated in the PRC with limited liability, whose shares are listed on the main board of the Stock Exchange "Director(s)" the director(s) of the Company "Domestic Shares" ordinary domestic share(s) of nominal value of RMB1.00 each in the registered capital of the Company "General Mandate" the proposed general mandate to allot, issue and/or deal with additional H Shares representing up to the limit of 20% of the H Shares in issue on the date of the passing of the relevant resolution "Group" the Company and its subsidiaries "H Shares" overseas listed foreign shares in the share capital of the Company with a nominal value of RMB1 per share, which are listed on the Main Board of the Stock Exchange "HK$" Hong Kong dollars, the lawful currency of Hong Kong "Hong Kong" the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the PRC "Latest Practicable Date" March 21, 2016, being the latest practicable date for ascertaining certain information contained in this circular "Listing Rules" Rules Governing the Listing of Securities on the Stock Exchange "PRC" the People's Republic of China (for the purpose of this Circular, excludes Hong Kong, Macau and Taiwan) "RMB" Renminbi, the lawful currency of the PRC "Shareholder(s)" holder(s) of the share(s) of the Company "Stock Exchange" The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited "subsidiary(ies)" has the meaning ascribed to it under the Listing Rules "Super Short-Term Commercial Paper" the super short-term commercial paper of no more than RMB1.5 billion proposed to be issued by the Company "Super Short-Term the offer and issuance of the Super Short-Term Commercial Paper Commercial Paper Issue" "%" per cent. * English names are for reference only. LETTER FROM THE BOARD ZHEJIANG EXPRESSWAY CO., LTD. (A joint stock limited company incorporated in the People's Republic of China with limited liability) (Stock code: 0576) Registered address: 12th Floor, Block A Dragon Century Plaza 1 Hangda Road Hangzhou Zhejiang Province 310007 The People's Republic of China Executive Directors: Mr. ZHAN Xiaozhang (Chairman) Mr. CHENG Tao Ms. LUO Jianhu Non-executive Directors: Mr. WANG Dongjie Mr. DAI Benmeng Mr. ZHOU Jianping Independent Non-executive Directors: Mr. ZHOU Jun Mr. PEI Ker-wei Ms. Lee Wai Tsang Rosa March 22, 2016 To the Shareholders Dear Sir or Madam, (1) PROPOSED GENERAL MANDATE TO ISSUE H SHARES (2) PROPOSED ISSUE OF SUPER SHORT-TERM COMMERCIAL PAPER AND (3) NOTICE OF ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING (1) INTRODUCTION The purpose of this circular is, among other things, to give you notice of the AGM and to provide you with information in relation to certain resolutions to be proposed at the AGM to enable you to make an informed decision on whether to vote for or against those resolutions at the AGM. (2) PROPOSED GENERAL MANDATE TO ISSUE H SHARES In order to increase the flexibility and efficiency in operation, and to give discretion to the Board in the event that it becomes desirable to issue H Shares, the Company proposes to obtain Shareholders' approval for the grant of the General Mandate to separately or concurrently allot, issue and/or deal with additional H Shares up to the limit of 20% of the H Shares in issue on the date of the passing of the relevant resolution at the AGM. Any exercise of the power by the Directors under the General Mandate shall comply with the relevant requirements of the Listing Rules, the Articles of Association and the applicable laws and regulations of the PRC. The General Mandate shall be effective from the date of passing the relevant resolution until whichever is the earliest of: the conclusion of the next annual general meeting of the Company; the expiration of the period within which the next annual general meeting of the Company is required by the Articles of Association or other applicable laws to be held; or the revocation or variation of the authority given to the Board under this resolution by a special resolution of the Company in general meeting. As at the Latest Practicable Date, the Company had in issue 4,343,114,500 Shares including 2,909,260,000 Domestic Shares and 1,433,854,500 H Shares. Subject to the passing of the proposed resolution for the approval of the General Mandate and in accordance with the terms therein, the Company would be allowed to allot, issue and deal with up to a maximum of 286,770,900 H Shares, representing 20% of the number of H Shares in issue on the basis that no further H Shares will be issued by the Company prior to the AGM. (3) PROPOSED ISSUE OF SUPER SHORT-TERM COMMERCIAL PAPER Reference is made to the announcement of the Company dated March 17, 2016 in relation to the proposed offer and issuance of the Super Short-Term Commercial Paper. Pursuant to the relevant laws and regulations of the PRC and the Articles of Association, the issuance of the Super Short-Term Commercial Paper is subject to the approval of the Shareholders at general meeting and approval by the National Association of Financial Market Institutional Investors. The principal terms of the proposed Super Short-Term Commercial Paper Issue are set out below: Issue size: Not more than RMB1.5 billion Term: Not more than 270 days from the date of issue Manner of issue: One-time registration with the relevant authorities but the Super Short-Term Commercial Paper will be issued in tranches Interest rate: Prevailing market rate of super short-term commercial papers of similar maturity Use of Proceeds: To repay the borrowings of the Group and replenish working capital of the Group It is proposed that the general manager of the Company shall be authorised, for a period of 30 months from the date when this special resolution is approved by the Shareholders at the AGM, to determine in her absolute discretion and deal with matters in relation to the Super Short-Term Commercial Paper Issue, including but not limited to the following: to determine, to the extent permitted by laws and regulations and according to the Company's specific circumstances and the prevailing market conditions, the specific terms and arrangements of the Super Short-Term Commercial Paper Issue and make any changes and adjustments to such types and terms of the Super Short-Term Commercial Paper Issue, including but not limited to, the types of issue, time of issue, manner of issue, size of issue, issue price, term of maturity, interest rates, tranches and any other matters in relation to the Super Short-Term Commercial Paper Issue; to appoint the relevant intermediaries in connection with the Super Short-Term Commercial Paper Issue and to deal with filing and submission matters; to enter into agreements, contracts and other legal documents relating to the Super Short- Term Commercial Paper Issue, and to disclose relevant information in accordance with the applicable laws and regulations; and to deal with any other the matters in relation to the Super Short-Term Commercial Paper Issue. (4) AGM You will find on pages 7 to 11 of this circular a notice of the AGM to be held at 5/F, No. 2 Mingzhu International Business Center, 199 Wuxing Road, Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province, the PRC on Friday, May 6, 2016 at 10 a.m.. A form of proxy for use at the AGM is enclosed. Whether or not you are able to attend the meeting in person, you are requested to complete and return the accompanying form of proxy in accordance with the instructions printed thereon. In case of H Shares, the proxy form shall be lodged with the Company's H Shares Registrar, Computershare Hong Kong Investor Services Limited, at 17M Floor, Hopewell Centre, 183 Queen's Road East, Wanchai, Hong Kong, not less than 24 hours before the time for holding the AGM (or any adjournment thereof). Completion and delivery of the form of proxy will not preclude you from attending and voting in person at the AGM or any adjournment thereof should you so wish. (5) RESPONSIBILITY STATEMENT This circular, for which the Directors collectively and individually accept full responsibility, includes particulars given in compliance with the Listing Rules for the purpose of giving information with regard to the Company. The Directors, having made all reasonable enquiries, confirm that to the best of their knowledge and belief the information contained in this circular is accurate and complete in all material respects and not misleading or deceptive, and there are no other matters the omission of which would make any statement herein or this circular misleading. (6) RECOMMENDATIONS The Directors (including the independent non-executive Directors) believe that the General Mandate is in the best interests of the Company and the Shareholders as a whole. Accordingly, the Directors recommend that the Shareholders should vote in favour of the resolution in respect of the General Mandate to be proposed at the AGM. In addition, the Directors are of the view that the proposed issuance of the Super Short-Term Commercial Paper will enable the Company to fully utilise the financing channels available on the capital market, help improve the Company's financing structure, reduce its cost of capital and lower its finance costs. The Directors (including the independent non-executive Directors) are also of the view that the proposed issuance of Super Short-Term Commercial Paper is in the interests of the Company and the Shareholders as a whole. Accordingly, the Directors recommend that the Shareholders should vote in favour of the resolution in respect of the Super Short-Term Commercial Paper Issue at the AGM. Yours faithfully, For and on behalf of Zhejiang Expressway Co., Ltd. ZHAN Xiaozhang Chairman NOTICE OF AGM ZHEJIANG EXPRESS WAY CO., LTD. (A joint stock limited company incorporated in the People's Republic of China with limited liability) (Stock code: 0576) NOTICE OF 2015 ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING NOTICE IS HEREBY GIVEN THAT the 2015 annual general meeting (the "AGM") of Zhejiang Expressway Co., Ltd. (the "Company") will be held at 10 a.m. on May 6, 2016 at 5/F, No. 2 Mingzhu International Business Center, 199 Wuxing Road, Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province, People's Republic of China (the "PRC"), for the purpose of considering and, if thought fit, passing with or without modification or amendment the following resolutions: AS ORDINARY RESOLUTIONS 1. to consider and approve the report of the directors of the Company (the "Directors") for the year 2015; 2. to consider and approve the report of the supervisory committee of the Company for the year 2015; 3. to consider and approve the audited financial statements of the Company for the year 2015; 4. to consider and approve final dividend of RMB28 cents per share in respect of the year ended December 31, 2015; 5. to consider and approve the final accounts of the Company for the year 2015 and the financial budget of the Company for the year 2016; 6. to consider and approve the re-appointment of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Certified Public Accountants Hong Kong as the Hong Kong auditors of the Company, and to authorize the board of Directors of the Company (the "Board") to fix their remuneration; 7. to consider and approve the re-appointment of Pan China Certified Public Accountants as the PRC auditors of the Company, and to authorize the Board to fix their remuneration; AS SPECIAL RESOLUTIONS 8. To consider and approve the following resolutions as a special resolution: (a) upon approval by the National Association of Financial Market Institutional Investors, the issue of Super Short-Term Commercial Paper by the Company of not more than RMB1.5 billion (the "Super Short-Term Commercial Paper Issue"), on the conditions set forth below be and is hereby approved: Issue size: Not more than RMB1.5 billion Term: Not more than 270 days from the date of issue Manner of issue: One-time registration with the relevant authorities but the Super Short-Term Commercial Paper will be issued in tranches Interest rate: Prevailing market rate of super short-term commercial papers of similar maturity Use of Proceeds: To repay the borrowings of the Group and replenish working capital of the Group (b) the general manager of the Company be and hereby authorised, for a period of 30 months from the date when this special resolution is approved by the shareholders of the Company at the AGM, to determine in her absolute discretion and deal with matters in relation to the Super Short-Term Commercial Paper Issue, including but not limited to the following: to determine, to the extent permitted by laws and regulations and according to the Company's specific circumstances and the prevailing market conditions, the specific terms and arrangements of the Super Short-Term Commercial Paper Issue and make any changes and adjustments to such types and terms of the Super Short-Term Commercial Paper Issue, including but not limited to, the types of issue, time of issue, manner of issue, size of issue, issue price, term of maturity, interest rates, tranches and any other matters in relation to the Super Short-Term Commercial Paper Issue; to appoint the relevant intermediaries in connection with the Super Short-Term Commercial Paper Issue and to deal with filing and submission matters; to enter into agreements, contracts and other legal documents relating to the Super Shor t-Term Commercial Paper Issue, and to disclose relevant information in accordance with the applicable laws and regulations; and to deal with any other the matters in relation to the Super Short-Term Commercial Paper Issue. 9. to consider and approve the grant of a general mandate to the Board to issue, allot and deal with additional H shares not exceeding 20% of the H shares of the Company in issue and authorize the Board to make corresponding amendments to the Articles of Association of the Company as it thinks fit so as to reflect the new capital structure upon the allotment or issuance of H shares, the details are as follows: "THAT: (A) a. subject to paragraph (c) and in accordance with the relevant requirements of the Rules Governing the Listing of Securities on The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited, the Articles of Association of the Company and the applicable laws and regulations of the People's Republic of China, the exercise by the Board during the Relevant Period (as hereinafter defined) of all the powers of the Company to allot, issue and deal with, either separately or concurrently, additional H shares of the Company and to make or grant offers, agreements, options and rights of exchange or conversion which might require the exercise of such powers be hereby generally and unconditionally approved; b. the approval in paragraph (a) shall authorize the Board during the Relevant Period to make or grant offers, agreements, options and rights of exchange or conversion which might require the exercise of such powers after the end of the Relevant Period; c. the aggregate nominal amount of H shares of the Company allotted, issued and dealt with or agreed conditionally or unconditionally to be allotted, issued and dealt with (whether pursuant to an option or otherwise) by the Board pursuant to the approval granted in paragraph (a) shall not exceed 20% of the aggregate nominal amount of H shares of the Company in issue on the date of passing this resolution, otherwise than pursuant to (i) a Rights Issue (as hereinafter defined) or (ii) any scrip dividend or similar arrangement providing for allotment of shares in lieu of the whole or part of a dividend on shares of the Company in accordance with the Articles of Association of the Company; and d. For the purpose of this special resolution: "Relevant Period" means the period from the date of passing of this resolution until the earliest of: the conclusion of the next annual general meeting of the Company; the expiration of the period within which the next annual general meeting of the Company is required by the Articles of Association of the Company or other applicable laws to be held; and the revocation or variation of the authority given under this resolution by a special resolution in general meeting. "Rights Issue" means an offer of shares open for a period fixed by the directors to holders of shares on the register on a fixed record date in proportion to their then holdings of such shares (subject to such exclusions or other arrangements as the directors may deem necessary or expedient in relation to fractional entitlements or having regard to any restrictions or obligations under the laws of, or the requirements of any recognized regulatory body or any stock exchange in any territory outside Hong Kong) and an offer, allotment or issue of shares by way of rights shall be construed accordingly. (B) The Board be authorized to make corresponding amendments to the Articles of Association of the Company as it thinks fit so as to reflect the new capital structure upon the allotment or issuance of shares as provided in sub-paragraph (a) of paragraph (A) of this resolution." By order of the Board Zhejiang Expressway Co., Ltd. Tony Zheng Company Secretary Hangzhou, the PRC March 22, 2016 Notes: 1. Registration procedures for attending the AGM Holders of H shares of the Company ("H Shares") and domestic shares of the Company ("Domestic Shares") intending to attend the AGM should return the reply slip for attending the AGM to the Company by post or by facsimile (address and facsimile numbers are shown in paragraph 6(b) below) such that the same shall be received by the Company on or before April 15, 2016 . A shareholder or his/her/its proxy should produce proof of identity when attending the AGM. If a corporate shareholder appoints its legal representative to attend the meeting, such legal representative shall produce proof of identity and a copy of the resolution of the board of directors or other governing body of such shareholder appointing such legal representative to attend the meeting. 2. Proxy A shareholder eligible to attend and vote at the AGM is entitled to appoint, in written form, one or more proxies to attend and vote at the AGM on behalf of him/her/it. A proxy need not be a shareholder of the Company. A proxy shall be appointed by a written instrument signed by the appointor or an attorney authorised by him/her/it for such purpose. If the appointor is a corporation, the same shall be affixed with the seal of such corporation, or signed by its director(s) or duly authorized representative(s). If the instrument appointing a proxy is signed by a person authorized by the appointor, the power of attorney or other authorization document(s) shall be notarized. To be valid, the power of attorney or other authorization document(s) (which have been notarized) together with the completed form of proxy must be delivered, in the case of holders of Domestic Shares, to the Company at the address shown in paragraph 6(b) below and, in the case of holders of H Shares, to Hong Kong Registrars Limited at 17M Floor, Hopewell Center, 183 Queen's Road East, Hong Kong , at least 24 hours before the time designated for holding of the AGM. Any vote of the shareholders of the Company present in person or by proxy at the AGM must be taken by poll. 3. Book closing period For the purpose of the AGM and to determine the shareholders who qualify for the proposed final dividend, the register of members holding H shares of the Company will be closed from April 6, 2016 to May 5, 2016 (both days inclusive), and from May 12, 2016 to May 17, 2016 (both days inclusive). 4. Last day of transfer and record date Holders of H Shares who intend to attend the AGM and qualify for the proposed final dividend must deliver all transfer instruments and the relevant shares certificates to Hong Kong Registrars Limited at Rooms 1712-1716, 17/F, Hopewell Center, 183 Queen's Road East, Hong Kong, at or before 4:30 p.m. on April 6, 2016 and on May 11, 2016, respectively. For the purpose of the AGM and qualify for the proposed final dividend, the record date will be April 11, 2016 and May 17, 2016, respectively. 5. Dividend Payable date Upon relevant approval by shareholders at the AGM, the final dividend is expected to be paid out on June 15, 2016. 6. Miscellaneous The AGM will not last for more than one day. Shareholders who attend shall bear their own traveling and accommodation expenses. The principal place of business of the Company in the PRC is: 5/F, No. 2 Mingzhu International Business Center 199 Wuxing Road Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province People's Republic of China 310020 Telephone No.: (+86)-571-8798 7700 Facsimile No.: (+86)-571-8795 0329 As at the date of this notice, the executive Directors of the Company are: Mr. ZHAN Xiaozhang, Mr. CHENG Tao and Ms. LUO Jianhu; the non-executive Directors of the Company are: Mr. WANG Dongjie, Mr. DAI Benmeng and Mr. ZHOU Jianping; and the independent non-executive Directors of the Company are: Mr. ZHOU Jun, Mr. PEI Ker- Wei and Ms. LEE Wai Tsang, Rosa. ============================================================== ZHEJIANG EXPRESSWAY CO., LTD. (A joint stock limited company incorporated in the People's Republic of China with limited liability) (Stock code: 0576) PROXY FORM FOR 2015 ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING Number of Shares related to this proxy form (note 1) H Shares/Domestic Shares* I/We (Note2)__________________________ of__________________________ being the holder(s) of (Note 1) __________________________ H Share(s)/Domestic Share(s)* of Zhejiang Expressway Co., Ltd. (the "Company"), now appoint (note 3) __________________________ (I.D.No.: __________________________ of__________________________)/ the Chairman of the meeting as my(our) proxy, to attend and vote on my(our) behalf in respect of the resolution in accordance with the instruction(s) below at the 2015 annual general meeting of the Company (the "AGM") to be held at 10 a.m. on May 6, 2016 at 5/F, No. 2 Mingzhu International Business Center, 199 Wuxing Road, Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province, People's Republic of China (the "PRC"), for the purpose of considering and, if thought fit, passing the resolution as set out in the notice convening the AGM. In the absence of any indication, the proxy may vote for or against the resolution at his own discretion (note 4). Ordinary Resolutions For (note4) Against (note4) 1 to consider and approve the report of the directors of the Company (the "Directors") for the year 2015; 2 to consider and approve the report of the supervisory committee of the Company for the year 2015; 3 to consider and approve the audited financial statements of the Company for the year 2015; 4 to consider and approve final dividend of RMB28 cents per share in respect of the year ended December 31, 2015; 5 to consider and approve the final accounts of the Company for the year 2015 and the financial budget of the Company for the year 2016; 6 to consider and approve the re-appointment of Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu Certified Public Accountants Hong Kong as the Hong Kong auditors of the Company, and to authorize the board of Directors of the Company (the "Board") to fix their remuneration; 7 to consider and approve the re-appointment of Pan China Certified Public Accountants as the PRC auditors of the Company, and to authorize the Board to fix their remuneration; Special Resolutions 8 To consider and approve the following resolutions: 9 To consider and approve the grant of a general mandate to the Board to issue, allot and deal with additional H shares not exceeding 20% of the H shares of the Company in issue and authorize the Board to make corresponding amendments to the Articles of Association of the Company as it thinks fit so as to reflect the new capital structure upon the allotment or issuance of H shares. Date: __________________________, 2016 Signature (note 5): __________________________ Notes: Please insert the number of share(s) registered in your name(s) relating to this form of proxy. If no number is inserted, this form of proxy will be deemed to relate to all of the shares in the capital of the Company registered in your name(s). Please insert full name(s) and address(es) in BLOCK LETTERS. Please insert the name and address of your proxy. If this is left blank, the chairman of the AGM will act as your proxy. Proxies may not be member(s) of the Company and may be appointed to attend and vote in the AGM provided that such proxies must attend the AGM in person on your behalf. Any alteration made to this proxy form must be signed by the signatory. Please insert the number of share(s) you wish to vote for or against the resolution in the appropriate boxes. In the absence of any such indication, the proxy may vote or abstain from voting at his discretion. This form of proxy must be signed under hand by you or your attorney duly authorized in that behalf. If the appointor is a corporation, this form must be affixed with its common seal or signed by its director(s) or duly authorized representative(s). This form of proxy together with the power of attorney or any other authorization document(s) which have been notarized, must be delivered, in the case of a holder of domestic share(s), to the Company at 5/F, No. 2 Mingzhu International Business Center, 199 Wuxing Road, Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province , 310020, the PRC and in the case of a holder of H share(s), to Hong Kong Registrars Limited at 17M Floor, Hopewell Center, 183 Queen's Road East, Wanchai, Hong Kong , at least 24 hours before the time designated for the holding of the AGM. * Please delete as appropriate. ============================================================== ZHEJIANG EXPRESSWAY CO., LTD. (A joint stock limited company incorporated in the People's Republic of China with limited liability) (Stock code: 0576) Reply Slip for 2015 Annual General Meeting I (We) __________________________ of__________________________, telephone number: __________________________ and fax number: __________________________, being the holder(s) of__________________________ H Share(s)/Domestic Share(s)* of Zhejiang Expressway Co., Ltd. (the "Company"), hereby confirm that I (we) wish to attend or appoint a proxy to attend on my (our) behalf the 2015 annual general meeting of the Company (the "AGM") to beheld at 10 a.m. on Friday, May 6, 2016 at 5/F, No. 2 Mingzhu International Business Center, 199 Wuxing Road, Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province, People's Republic of China (the "PRC"). Signature:__________________________ Date: __________________________, 2016 Note: Eligible shareholders who wish to attend the AGM are advised to complete and return this reply slip to the Company at 5/F, No. 2 Mingzhu International Business Center, 199 Wuxing Road, Hangzhou City, Zhejiang Province, 310020, the PRC by post or by facsimile (facsimile no.: (+86)-571-8795 0329) such that the same shall be received by the Company on or before April 15, 2016. Failure to sign and return this slip, however, will not preclude an eligible shareholder from attending the AGM. * Please delete as appropriate. Technavio's latest report on the dishwashing detergent market in Europeprovides an analysis of the key trends expected to impact the market through 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. The dishwashing detergent market in Europe is expected to exceed 5.4 billion by 2019, growing at a CAGR of over 2%. Household consumers accounted for 56% and commercial consumers accounted for 44% of the market in 2014. According to Brijesh Kumar Choubey, lead analyst at Technavio for cosmetics and toiletry research, "Increased usage of automatic dishwashers has led to the high demand for automatic dishwashing detergent products in Europe. The sales of automatic dishwasher detergents had generated USD 2.9 billion globally in 2014. Thus, restaurants, hotels, and cafes are important commercial users for dishwashing detergents in Europe." The distribution channels play an important role in delivering the products from manufacturers to end-consumers. In Europe, supermarkets and hypermarkets generate the highest sales for dishwashing detergents accounting for over 63% of the market share in 2014. Finish, Fairy, Sun, and Somat are the key leading brands in the market. These brands also offer skin care benefits." The top three emerging trends influencing the dishwashing detergent market in Europe according to Technavio's consumer and retail researchanalysts are: Innovation in packaging The majority of dishwashing detergent products were previously sold in plastic containers that were non-reusable and non-recyclable. Many vendors have introduced dishwashing detergent products in recyclable, re-usable, and refillable containers. In addition, stand-up pouches with spouts attached to the top have become a popular type of flexible packaging for dishwashing detergent products. Stand-up pouches reduce the cost of transportation and maximize shelf space in supermarkets and hypermarkets. Increase in popularity of premium dishwashing detergents Consumers are demanding dishwashing detergent products that are mild on hands. There is a rise in demand for premium dishwashing detergents that offer skin moisturizing properties. P&G offers the Fairy Platinum range, which is a popular premium dishwashing detergent. Fairy Clean and Care dishwashing detergent contains Olay moisturizer that ensures skin care. Ecozone sensitive washing up liquid and Ecover ZERO washing up liquid for sensitive skin are some other premium dishwashing detergents that offer skin care so as to attract women consumers. Introduction of eco-friendly dishwashing detergents The demand for eco-friendly dishwashing detergent products that cause less pollution is on the rise. Manufacturers are trying to minimize unnecessary packaging and water wastage during the production of dishwashing detergents. The eco-friendly dishwashing detergents contain natural ingredients like vegetable oil, citric acid, glycerine, and organic tea. Tesco's Naturally range of household care products, Asda's eco-friendly brands, Palmolive Eco, and Seventh Generation Automatic Dishwasher Detergent are some popular eco-friendly dishwashing detergent brands available in the market in Europe. Some of the top vendors in the dishwashing detergent market in Europe, as researched by Technavio analysts are: Colgate-Palmolive Henkel Procter Gamble (P&G) Reckitt Benckiser Group Unilever Browse Related Reports: Global Dishwashing Detergent Market 2015-2019 Global Dishwasher Market 2015-2019 Global Laundry Care Market Research 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/20160322005094/en/ Contacts: Technavio Research Jesse Maida US: +1 630-333-9501 UK: +44 208 123 1770 Media Marketing Executive www.technavio.com LAS VEGAS, NV -- (Marketwired) -- 03/22/16 -- Hemp, Inc. (OTC PINK: HEMP) updates its shareholders on how the legalization of medical marijuana is burgeoning. In a failed attempt to push back the marijuana laws last week, state attorneys of Nebraska and Oklahoma took to the Supreme Court in a lawsuit against Colorado complaining that "illegal marijuana was pouring into their states as a result of Colorado's liberalized laws." The Supreme Court, however, in a vote of 6 - 2, rejected the lawsuit. If the decision had gone the other way, cannabis supporters believed it would have set back the movement to legalize medical marijuana and the progress that has already been made. Bruce Perlowin, CEO of Hemp, Inc. (OTC PINK: HEMP), said, "While Hemp, Inc. is not involved with medical marijuana, we support the industry and legalization of medical marijuana. As more doors open for medical marijuana and recreational marijuana, even more doors open within the industrial hemp industry. Just last week, Pennsylvania House of Representatives passed legislation to legalize medical marijuana and the Pennsylvania Senate unanimously passed the industrial hemp bill. As you recall, Texas was one step closer to joining Alaska, Oregon, Colorado, and Washington as the 5th state to legalize marijuana." Last year, the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee approved House Bill 2165 which would legalize the purchase and/or sale of recreational marijuana. HB 2165, which passed with a vote of 5 - 2, was followed by a previous bill that favored the decriminalization of marijuana. According to a Texas liberal group spokesperson, "Marijuana policy reform continues to make unprecedented progress." While legalizing industrial hemp is economically advantageous for America, the legalization of medical marijuana seems to be equally as strong economically. Sources say the cannabis industry can reach upwards of 22 billion dollars by the year 2020 that could result from the compounded effects of legalization of marijuana throughout the nation. As the industry becomes "more and more palatable to communities around the nation," job growth and tax revenues inevitably increase. Thus far in the United States, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Oregon, South Carolina, Tennessee, Utah, Vermont, Washington, West Virginia, and Virginia have adopted pro hemp laws. Alaska, Oregon, Colorado, and Washington have legalized marijuana. "There is strong support from Americans for the legalization of industrial hemp industry and the medical marijuana industry. Eventually, I believe both industries will be legal in all 50 states in the next months and years to come," said Craig Perlowin, Secretary of Hemp, Inc. (OTC PINK: HEMP). It's all about forward movement and progress, commented David Schmitt, COO of Hemp, Inc.'s wholly owned subsidiary, Industrial Hemp Manufacturing, LLC. "To date, we have made a lot of progress with our decortication plant and milling facility. In the last 2 weeks, we have purchased and delivered to the plant, a truck scale to weigh the incoming loads of raw kenaf (and soon industrial hemp). The scale will also be used for all inbound raw materials shipment and all outbound finished products. All of the excavating and concrete work needed to install the new truck scale has also been completed. We're currently running conduit and all of the electrical wiring needed to hook up the new truck scale. The installation of the scale is set for Monday, March 28, 2016." Schmitt continued, "We have also started harvesting last year's Kenaf crop which should be complete in the next 14 days. This is a hallmark moment for Hemp, Inc. The overall electrical work is continuing at a very fast pace and the wiring of the milling machinery will be done soon." Due to abnormal rain fall in the Spring Hope area, installation of the 60-foot tall silo was put on hold. However, weather permitting, executives are looking at late next week to erect the silo. Executives from Industrial Hemp Manufacturing, LLC and Hemp, Inc. will also be attending the Ark LA-Tex Oilfield Expo in Shreveport, LA March 30 and 31st. With the plant this close to being completed, Hemp, Inc. executives feel that it's time to start focusing on the marketing of the company's LCMs (Drillwall) and environmental clean up product (SpillSuck) to the oil industry. In this effort, we will be attending our first oil field expo where many of the buyers, contacts, and other interested parties in our particular products will be there in abundance. We hope to make marketing inroads into this sector with our new clean and green environmental products for the oil companies. SUBSCRIBE TO HEMP, INC.'S VIDEO UPDATES "Hemp, Inc. Presents" is capturing the historic, monumental re-creation of the hemp decorticator today as America begins to evolve into a cleaner, green, eco-friendly sustainable environment. What many see as the next American Industrial Revolution is actually the Industrial Hemp Revolution. Join "Hemp, Inc. Presents" and join the hemp revolution. Watch as Hemp, Inc., the #1 leader in the industrial hemp industry, engages its shareholders and the public through each step in bringing back the hemp decorticator as described in the "Freedom Leaf Magazine" article "The Return of the Hemp Decorticator" by Steve Bloom. Freedom Leaf Magazine, a leading cannabis industry magazine is published by the public company, Freedom Leaf Magazine, Inc. "Hemp, Inc. Presents" is accessible 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, by visiting www.hempinc.com. To subscribe to the "Hemp, Inc. Presents" YouTube channel, be sure to click the subscribe button. Subscribers will automatically get an email from YouTube every time a new Hemp, Inc. video update is posted along with suggestions of other similar videos. Stay up-to-date with the progress of Hemp, Inc.'s multipurpose industrial hemp processing plant while being educated on the industrial hemp industry. Our video update views are collectively reaching over a thousand views per week. Stay informed by subscribing to Hemp, Inc.'s video updates. Hemp, Inc. is positioning itself to be the avant-garde of the industrial hemp industry and processing industrial hemp. HEMP NATION MAGAZINE HempNationMagazine.com (HNM) is published by Hemp, Inc. and focuses on informing, educating, raising awareness and connecting the public to the powerful world of HEMP. HNM reports on Politics, Industrial Growth, Banking, Distribution, Medical, Lifestyles and Legalization. HNM is your source for all things HEMP and news about this emerging multi-billion dollar industry. For more information on HNM, visit www.HempNationMagazine.com. ABOUT INDUSTRIAL HEMP Hemp is a durable natural fiber that is grown as a renewable source for raw materials that can be incorporated into thousands of products. It's one of the oldest domesticated crops known to man. Hemp is used as a nutritional food product for humans and pets, building materials, paper, textiles, cordage, organic body care and other nutraceuticals, just to name a few. It has thousands of other known uses. A hemp crop requires half the water alfalfa uses and can be grown without the heavy use of pesticides. Farmers worldwide grow hemp commercially for fiber, seed, and oil for use in a variety of industrial and consumer products. The United States is the only developed nation that fails to cultivate industrial hemp as an economic crop on a large scale, according to the Congressional Resource Service. However, with rapidly changing laws and more states gravitating towards industrial hemp and passing an industrial hemp bill, that could change. Currently, the majority of hemp sold in the United States is imported from China and Canada, the world's largest exporters of the industrial hemp crop. ABOUT INDUSTRIAL HEMP AND MEDICAL MARIJUANA CONSULTING COMPANY (IHMMCC) This lucrative division of Hemp, Inc. is once again picking up momentum. The Industrial Hemp and Medical Marijuana Consulting Company (IHMMCC) is a wholly owned subsidiary of Hemp, Inc. that pulls industry information from a vast network of specialists. IHMMCC is entrenched primarily in all the multi-faceted opportunities of the Industrial Hemp industry while also maintaining professional contacts in the medical marijuana sector. As the country transitions to embrace more sustainable agricultural practices, public and private companies want to expand into the industrial hemp industry and consulting services from IHMMCC are helping them in leading the way. IHMMCC's most recent agreement is with FutureLand Corp, a leading provider of strategic real estate investment, grow facilities and material solutions to the global cannabis industry. Per the Consultant Agreement, IHMMCC will provide consulting services specific to the Industrial Hemp/Medical Marijuana Industry in the area of sales and marketing strategy, public company venues, and general industry specific business guidance to FutureLand Corp. For more information on FutureLand Corp, visit their website here. HEMP, INC.'S TRIPLE BOTTOM LINE Hemp, Inc. (OTC PINK: HEMP) seeks to benefit many constituencies from a "Cultural Creative" perspective, thereby not exploiting or endangering any group. CEO of Hemp, Inc., Bruce Perlowin, is positioning the company as a leader in the industrial hemp industry, with a social and environmental mission at its core. Thus, the publicly traded company believes in "up streaming" a portion of its profits back to its originator, in which some cases will one day be the American small farmer -- cultivating natural, sustainable products as an interwoven piece of nature. By Hemp, Inc. focusing on comprehensive investment results -- that is, with respect to performance along the interrelated dimensions of people, planet, and profits -- the triple bottom line approach can be an important tool to support its sustainability goal. SAFE HARBOR ACT Forward-Looking Statements are included within the meaning of Section 27A of the Securities Act of 1933, and Section 21E of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended. All statements regarding our expected future financial position, results of operations, cash flows, financing plans, business strategy, products and services, competitive positions, growth opportunities, plans and objectives of management for future operations, including words such as "anticipate," "if," "believe," "plan," "estimate," "expect," "intend," "may," "could," "should," "will," and other similar expressions are forward-looking statements and involve risks, uncertainties and contingencies, many of which are beyond our control, which may cause actual results, performance, or achievements to differ materially from anticipated results, performance, or achievements. We are under no obligation to (and expressly disclaim any such obligation to) update or alter our forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or otherwise. For Investor Relations, please send correspondence to ir@hempinc.com Hemp, Inc. (855) HEMP-OUT info@hempinc.com http://www.hempinc.com Technavio analysts expect the global oil and gas fishing tools marketfor 2015-2019 to reach USD 3.8 billion, growing at a CAGR of over 4%. Fishing tools are employed for fishing the stray equipment (also known as fish or junk) from the bottom of an oil well. The fish can be broken components of the drill string, bit breaks, or even a pipe or tool fallen from the rig floor. These tools are specially crafted with respect to the specific fish type or specific function. They are screwed to the fishing string, which is similar to the drill string, and lowered into the well. Technavio's lead analysts for energyresearchhave identified the following four factors that will drive the global oil and gas fishing tools market: Increased demand for oil and gas worldwide Rise in unconventional oil and gas resources Increase in downhole data efficiency Increase in oil and gas drilling activities Increased demand for oil and gas worldwide Increased demand for oil and gas is one of the major drivers in the global oil and gas fishing tools market. Expansion of oil and gas exploration and drilling activities is expected to stimulate the growth of the market in the near future. The growing demand for oil and gas will drive large investment in state-of-the-art technology to increase the efficiency of fishing tools, ensuring continuity in drilling and well completion activities. Rise in unconventional oil and gas resources Governments and oil industries worldwide are shifting their focus toward unconventional oil and gas resources because of the decline in production and exploration of conventional oil reserves. Unconventional sources of oil and gas are as follows: Tight oil (produced from low-permeability limestone, carbonates, and siltstones) Shale gas (natural gas locked in fine-grained, organic rich rock) CBM (natural gas locked in coal) Shale oil Oil shale "Oil and gas from unconventional sources requires advanced fishing tools. The share of oil and gas from unconventional resources is expected to increase significantly over the next decade which will positively impact the market for fishing tools," says Vishu Rai, lead research analyst at Technavio for oil and gasresearch. Countries such as Argentina and China are increasingly developing infrastructure in order to uphold the commercial feasibility of unconventional oil and gas such as shale gas and tight oil. Other countries such as Algeria, Poland, Australia, Colombia, Russia, and Mexico are in the early stages of shale exploration. Increase in downhole data efficiency With advances in logging techniques and equipment coupled with the development of sophisticated downhole sensor systems, the degree of accuracy of downhole data has increased to a great extent. Acoustic-based LWD techniques have facilitated the availability of real-time data, which has reduced the uncertainty related to downhole drilling conditions and fish position and type. This has enabled the use of appropriate downhole drilling and fishing tools, specific to the condition of the well and characteristics of the fish. According to Vishu, "Increased downhole data efficiency is a major driver for the global oil and gas fishing tools market because it enables appropriate use of fishing tools of specific configuration." Increase in oil and gas drilling activities The increase in the oil and gas drilling activities worldwide is one of the major drivers in the global oil and gas fishing tools market. According to the International Energy Agency, the global demand for energy is expected to increase from 2,000 mtoe in 2010 to 16,800 mtoe by 2030. Approximately 90% of this increased demand is expected to come from China and India. The growing demand for energy has resulted in the shift of focus to unexplored reservoirs. By tapping these unexplored resources, the production levels can be significantly increased, which can bridge the gap between the demand and supply of energy. This is expected to propel the growth of the oil and gas fishing tools market during the forecast period. Browse Related Reports: Global Downhole Drilling Tools Market 2015-2019 Global Offshore Drilling Market 2014-2018 Drill Pipe Market in the Middle East 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 2,000 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/20160322005096/en/ Contacts: Technavio Research Jesse Maida US: +1 630-333-9501 UK: +44 208 123 1770 Media Marketing Executive media@technavio.com www.technavio.com LONDON and DUBLIN, March 22, 2016 /PRNewswire/ -- CO2-neutral production available since 2013 Within three years, the international online print service providers, Onlineprinters GmbH, have processed 125,000 climate-neutral orders through its 15 online shops. "Climate-neutral printing" allows users to offset the greenhouse gas emissions produced while processing their orders. The carbon emissions and additional offset costs are calculated automatically during the order process. With just the click of a button, customers can choose the climate protection project with which the resulting emissions are to be compensated. (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160322/346913 ) (Photo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20160322/346914 ) "Three years ago we decided to give our customers the opportunity to offset their carbon footprint when ordering printed materials. Ever since, the number of Onlineprinters customers willing to take environmental responsibility has steadily increased," says Dr Michael Fries, CEO of Onlineprinters GmbH. In total, the amount of CO2 offset by Onlineprinters customers since 1 January 2013 equals the CO2 emissions of 2,000 cars with a mileage of 10,000 km each. The average cost per order remains surprisingly low, at about 0.86 percent of the order value. Onlineprinters customers can choose to support three different projects: forest protection in Brazil, hydroelectric power in Indonesia and wind energy in Turkey. More details on the environmental projects offered can be seen at any time during the order process. Tracing the carbon footprint offset Climate-neutral print products can be labelled on request. A logo and a QR code can be downloaded and subsequently integrated into the print data. This way, the offset amount of CO, as well as the supported project, can be traced and continuously monitored. Onlineprinters GmbH is supported by ClimatePartner GmbH, which provides IT solutions for CO2 accounting and offsetting worldwide. "Since 2013, we have processed over 350,000 climate neutral orders for more than 700 printers in Europe. More than a third were Onlineprinters customers," says Moritz Lehmkuhl, Managing Director of ClimatePartner. Onlineprinters operates all online shops and the shipment of goods with logistics partner DPD CO2-neutral. Production is also eco-friendly: Gang-run printing, in which several clients share a printing plate, allows for maximum effectiveness of paper use, reducing paper waste to a minimum. Finally, the central ink supply avoids unnecessary waste from ink cans or cartridges, and ensures that 100 percent of the ink is used. Video "A look behind the production at Onlineprinters": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWWiPcVE5P8 About Onlineprinters GmbH Onlineprinters GmbH is one of Europe's leading online print providers. In line with the motto "Print simply online!" the company sells printed products to 500,000 customers in 30 European countries through its 15 web shops. Internationally, the company is known under the brand name "Onlineprinters"; in Germany it operates under the name "diedruckerei.de". The product range comprises 1,400 printed products from business cards, stationery and flyers to catalogues, brochures and large-format advertising systems. The formula to successfully produce customised prints in terms of Industry 4.0 rests on three pillars: online sales, fully integrated production from ordering to shipping and gang run printing. The latter uses so-called combined forms to collectively produce print jobs, therefore minimising costs and reducing the environmental impact. Selected products allow customers to choose the option of same day printing (produced on the same working day), overnight delivery, climate neutral production and custom size specification. Onlineprinters GmbH employs a staff of 600 and produces over two billion printings per year. - Cross reference: Picture is available at AP Images (http://www.apimages.com) - WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - While Ohio Gov. John Kasich currently seems like a long shot to win the Republican presidential nomination, the results of a new CBS News/New York Times poll suggest he is the GOP candidate with the best chance of defeating Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton. The survey showed Kasich with a 47 percent to 43 percent lead over Clinton in a potential general election matchup. Kasich benefits from strong support within the Republican Party as well as a 52 percent to 34 percent advantage among independents. Meanwhile, the poll showed Clinton leading in potential matchups against the other two remaining Republican candidates, real estate tycoon Donald Trump and Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Tex. Clinton has a 50 percent to 40 percent lead over Trump and a narrow 47 percent to 44 percent advantage over Cruz. CBS News noted Clinton's Democratic rival Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., has an even wider 15-point lead over Trump due to stronger support among independents. Both Democratic candidates benefit from support among women and African Americans, while the Republican candidates are backed by white voters. Kasich's strong performance against Clinton in the poll comes as he has seen an uptick in national support but remains well behind Trump. The CBS/New York Times survey of 1,252 adults was conducted March 17th through 20th and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points. (Photo Credit: Gage Skidmore) 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. Technavio has announced the top seven leading vendors in their recent intraoperative neuromonitoring market in the US 2016-2020 report. This research report also lists 21 prominent vendors that are expected to impact the market during the forecast period. Competitive vendor landscape According to Barath Palada, lead analyst at Technavio for patient monitoring devicesresearch, "The intraoperative neuromonitoring (IONM) market in the US is highly fragmented with the presence of many manufacturers, local service providers, and implant companies. Vendors need to implement innovative strategies to improve their market positions for example some large companies are developing service-oriented products to remain competitive and stay connected with end-users." Request sample report: http://goo.gl/6d9fnd Biotronic NeuroNetwork Biotronic NeuroNetwork was founded in 1978 and is headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, US. It is one of the leading IONM service providers to hospitals and surgeons worldwide. It also provides real-time remote IONM through a secure virtual private network and proprietary software. The company offers several monitoring modalities that are used during therapeutic surgeries in the areas of neurological otolaryngology, orthopedic, and cardiovascular/cardiothoracic operations. Computational Diagnostics Computational Diagnostics was established in 1988 and is headquartered in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, US. The company designs, develops, and markets telemedicine and neurophysiology systems and services in the area of IONM. It provides neuro-monitoring services in the areas of cardiac, spinal, orthopedic, and vascular surgeries, neurosurgery, otolarynology, radiology, and urology. It also provides IONM training services, IONM services, consulting services, and intraoperative physician services. The company's Neuro Software line, including the Neuro Software Suite, supports remote connection and communication for neurophysiologists and neuro-technologists. Sentient Medical Systems Sentient Medical Systems was founded in 1995 and is headquartered in Hunt Valley, Maryland, US. The company provides IONM and neuro-diagnostic services in the US. It provides surgical neurophysiologists with devices and tools for all types of surgeries and offers guidance in real time during surgery by the company's consulting neurologists. It also maintains health records and provides neurophysiological services in the areas of spinal, brain, and vascular surgeries and neuroradiology, data security and storage services, and patient care services. The company continues to expand its reach into other regions of the US. It provides services to community hospitals and large institutions. SpecialtyCare SpecialtyCare was founded in 2006 and is headquartered in Nashville, Tennessee, US. The company outsources clinical services to hospitals and other healthcare providers in the US. These services include neuro-monitoring, surgical assistance, minimally invasive surgical support, autotransfusion, and sterile processing. It helps surgeons improve surgical outcomes and efficiency. The company employs more than 1,500 highly trained and certified surgical clinicians that carry out IONM in more than 350,000 surgeries annually. The company follows a multimodality approach in neuro-monitoring and was the first to develop and publish research findings on spinal cord mapping technique in spine surgeries. It focuses on business expansion through strategic acquisitions of other companies. It acquired ProNerve in April 2015, Insight NeuralMonitoring in February 2012, and NeuroMatrix in June 2012. Medtronic Medtronic was founded in 1949 and is headquartered in Dublin, Ireland. The company offers treatment and monitoring solutions in more than 155 countries worldwide. It offers a wide range of IONM products including NIM nerve monitoring systems, APS Electrode, NIM EMG tubes, NIM Standard EMG reinforced endotracheal tubes, NIM Contact EMG-reinforced endotracheal tubes, and NIM Flex EMG endotracheal tubes. The company provides advanced intraoperative NIM nerve monitoring systems to allow surgeons to locate, confirm, and monitor the functions of the motor nerve and help minimize the risk of nerve damage during surgeries. Natus Medical Natus Medical was established in 1987 and is headquartered in Pleasanton, California, US. The company provides newborn care and neurology healthcare products and services. These products are used to screen, diagnose, detect, treat, monitor, and track medical ailments in the areas of hearing impairment, newborn care, neurological dysfunction, sleep disorders, epilepsy, and balance and mobility disorders. The company obtains a significant portion of its revenue from the sales of disposable supplies that are used in various IONM systems. NuVasive NuVasive was incorporated in 1997 and is headquartered in San Diego, California, US. The medical device company develops and markets minimally disruptive surgical products and integrated solutions for the spinal cord and provides neuro-monitoring solutions. Its key product offering includes the MAS platform, which includes three categories of solutions that minimize the risk of soft tissue disruption during spinal fusion and enable favorable patient outcomes. The company has established new offices in Japan and Italy to expand their operations. Browse related reports: Global Spine Surgery Market 2015-2019 Global Bio-Implant Market 2015-2019 Global Minimal Invasive Surgery 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/20160322005108/en/ Contacts: Technavio Research Jesse Maida Media Marketing Executive US: +1 630 333 9501 UK: +44 208 123 1770 www.technavio.com Technavio's latest report on the IT spending market in Australia provides an analysis of the key trends expected to impact the market through 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. The IT spending market in Australia is expected to exceed USD 73 billion by 2019, growing at a CAGR of over 6%. According to Amit Sharma, lead analyst at Technavio for IT spending by region"Companies operating in several industry verticals in Australia are implementing IT solutions, such as software, hardware, and IT services, to manage their costs and improve operational efficiency. Companies are investing between 4% and 6% of their budgets in IT solutions, depending on the size of their business and the industry vertical in which they are operating." The top four emerging trends influencing the IT spending market in Australia according to Technavio's ICT researchanalysts are: Increasing adoption of activity based working Activity based working is the process of working in an organization with shared resources, a managed workplace, and electronic devices, such as mobile phones, desktops, and application services to increase the productivity of the organization. It reduces the operational costs of the organization by reducing real estate costs and capital expenditure, and by improving efficiency. Australian companies are gradually adopting activity based working to increase their return on investment (ROI). The digital infrastructure of organizations is changing, and top management are using more connected devices and shared IT services to improve their employees' performance. IT investment in activity based working in Australian firms is increasing as the firms are witnessing tangible benefits. Increased adoption of IoT technology IoT is one of the most sought after innovations in the IT industry, and it is going to change the IT industry. Connected devices are going to hit the market by 2019 and many industries, including airline, real estate, online travel agencies, insurance, and telecommunications, are set to invest in IoT devices. With the help of IoT technology, physical objects can interact with each other and create a digital ecosystem, where several devices can share information. Hospitals can easily track pacemakers from a remote location; room temperatures in hotels can be automatically adjusted; and production lines in manufacturing companies can be easily streamlined through the implementation of IoT technologies. Australian company, Netcomm Wireless, which manufactures M2M devices, is partnering with US-based Arrow Electronics to provide IoT gateways. IBM is providing IoT technologies in Australia to conduct business in a virtual space by connecting millions of physical objects for information sharing. Shifting to hybrid cloud model The hybrid cloud deployment model, a combination of private and cloud computing models, is witnessing significant demand in the Australian cloud computing market, and is changing IT in radical ways. Compatibility, agility, and ease of use are the fundamental features of cloud computing that help to simplify IT solutions in any organization. Firms are increasingly adopting cloud computing to meet their strategic IT goals and to implement innovative technological solutions that are cost-efficient and agile. "Over the coming years, more than 90% of organizations are planning to deploy the hybrid cloud computing model as it is also helps in IT budgeting decisions as they do not have to make a one-time payment to implement cloud computing solutions," says Amit. It also provides flexibility in the location of data centers in onsite or offsite locations with enhanced data security and compliance. The Australian Government is funding the implementation of cloud solutions to update its agency solutions database, to relocate sensitive data to a secure location, to review data centers as a service, to form a cloud service panel, and for the storage and processing of Australian Government information. BM, HP, SAP, and VMware are some of the leading vendors in Australia that are providing hybrid cloud computing solutions. Rising demand for augmented reality Augmented reality technology is witnessing gradual traction in the Australian market, and many firms are investing in this technology. Increased adoption of smartphone technology in Australia is also driving this market. Augmented reality is helping customers obtain information through mobile phone applications in the banking system. Print media and the fast moving consumer goods (FMCG) industry are also using augmented technology to increase their businesses. Pepsi and Heinz have tested augmented reality technology provided by Blippar. Some of the top vendors in the IT spending market in Australia, as researched by Technavio analysts are: Dell Google HP IBM Netapp Lenovo Browse Related Reports: IT Market in Australia 2015-2019 Enterprise ICT Spending Market in Australia 2015-2019 E-Commerce IT Spending Market In China 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/20160322005106/en/ Contacts: Technavio Research Jesse Maida US: +1 630-333-9501 UK: +44 208 123 1770 Media Marketing Executive www.technavio.com VANCOUVER, BC--(Marketwired - March 22, 2016) - Western Lithium USA Corporation ("Western Lithium" or "the Company") (TSX: WLC) (OTCQX: WLCDF) is pleased to announce that further to guidance provided in our December 2015 conference call in connection with new branding initiatives, Western Lithium has changed its corporate name to Lithium Americas Corp. ("Lithium Americas" or "LAC"), and its wholly owned subsidiary, Western Lithium Corporation, to Lithium Nevada Corp. ("Lithium Nevada" or "LNC"). Effective Wednesday, March 30 th the Company will commence trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange ("TSX") under the new name and symbol "LAC" and on the OTCQX, under the new name with a symbol to be announced prior to the effective date. The simplified business structure of Lithium Americas is as follows: http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/WLC_chart.jpg Update on Minera Exar and Argentina Reforms: The Company remains in advanced discussions with potential strategic partners at Cauchari-Olaroz and hopes to make an announcement soon. Given the strong global demand for lithium and the fully permitted status of the Cauchari-Olaroz project, the Company frequently receives indications of interest from leading companies representing different parts of the lithium supply chain from various parts of the world. Lithium Americas has been evaluating potential strategic partners and new extraction processing technologies in comparison to the economics established in the 2012 definitive Feasibility Study ("dFS") using traditional processing. At the recent Prospectors & Dealers Association Conference in Toronto, the Argentine Minister for Energy and Mines gave a presentation summarizing "Argentina is Waiting for You; the Best is Yet to Come" highlighting how Argentina in just 20 years, and despite the last decade's challenges, is among the world's top producers of lithium, boron, silver, gold, copper, lead, and zinc. Since taking office in December 2015, President Mauricio Macri has moved swiftly to appoint a business-friendly cabinet and implement a series of major fiscal, political and regulatory policy measures. President Macri lifted foreign exchange controls that had been in place since 2011, and abolished export taxes on many agricultural and industrial goods, including lithium. At the Davos World Economic Forum, Macri and his cabinet members met with almost 20 world leaders, politicians, and multinational executives, which marked a "new era of bilateral relations." US President Barack Obama will visit Argentina to meet with Mr. Macri at the end of this month. Minera Exar S.A. President Franco Mignacco commented, "We have recently spent considerable time with the new government officials in provincial and federal mining positions, as well as the new appointments at our local partner JEMSE. Like many others, we are impressed with the rate of positive change and commitment of strong support on all levels. These are important indications of a very strong future for the mining industry in Argentina that will positively benefit all of our stakeholders and communities." Update on Hectatone Inc.: The Company is pleased to report that it is in discussions with several parties that could result in new global distribution agreements outside of the North American oilfield market. Mutual due diligence and product testing is on-going. Hectatone Inc. ("Hectatone") shipped 140 tons of finished product in February and has additional orders to ship in March. Drilling activity in almost all energy markets continues to decline. However, there are recent and encouraging signs that many global energy markets are beginning to stabilize. Hectatone President Frank B. Wright, Jr. commented, "This is a productive and creative period for the Hectatone business. The opportunity to collaborate with strategic partners on a global basis in diverse markets is encouraging. The Hectatone team has responded to the declining oilfield market with innovative product development for industrial and environment markets. Additionally, we are seeking to take advantage of the downturn by expanding our talented team. I remain confident that our objective of becoming cash flow positive by year-end is a realistic and achievable goal, and that we will emerge from the bottom of the cycle as a stronger company." Update on Lithium Nevada Corp.: The Company is completing the pilot plant programs at its demonstration plant in Germany. This work has greatly increased the Company's understanding of the processing and engineering requirements for the production of lithium products from the Lithium Nevada Project. In light of the recent results, the Company has determined that additional specific engineering work will be required to optimize the front end of the process to produce a clean and concentrated lithium brine on a commercial scale. In addition, the Company has become aware of recent technological advancements in producing lithium compounds from brines, and believes these innovative and sustainable technologies warrant further review for potential incorporation into the Nevada processing plant design. As a result of these additional reviews, the Company has initiated the preparation of a new preliminary Feasibility Study. The new report will include a thorough analysis of project development and operational components, include processing infrastructure, production rate, and supporting inputs, as well as capital and operating expenditures. In the meantime, the Company has determined that its pre-feasibility study completed in March 2012 is no longer current and the Company will no longer be relying on the study for its project development planning. There are no changes to the lithium resource base on the project. While the updated studies are underway, Lithium Nevada will pursue strategic partnership opportunities to advance the project on a timely basis. Lithium Americas CEO Tom Hodgson commented, "Extracting lithium from clays at a commercial scale level requires vision, capital, and talent. We are always in the process of trying to determine the optimal path to advance our projects to achieve long-term success, and we are excited with a new focus from the team at Lithium Nevada Corp. In today's strong lithium market, there is no question that LNC's resource in Nevada represents tremendous long-term value. The Lithium Nevada Project hosts one of the largest lithium resources in North America. There is strong local and national support from both commercial and political bases to advance a Nevada based project. A clear and well-defined permitting path exists. Lithium Americas shares the vision of making Nevada a center of renewable energy and sustainable mining technologies. We are absolutely committed to advancing Lithium Nevada Corp. on the fastest timetable possible, as dictated by further studies and market conditions." Update on Management and Board of Directors: Lithium Americas is pleased to announce that the Company's Vice Chairman, John Kanellitsas, is being named President, effective as of the Company's Annual General Meeting ("AGM") on March 30th. Current President, Jay Chmelauskas will be leaving the Company in order to pursue other interests. In this context, Mr. Chmelauskas has withdrawn his name as a director nominee at the AGM. John Macken, Chairman of the Board commented "We thank Jay for his service to the Company over many years, and his efforts in initiating the merger of the two companies. We wish him every success in his future endeavours. Following the merger of Western Lithium and Lithium Americas in September 2015, the combined company has emerged with strong and capable management, and an exciting future." Scientific and technical information in this news release about the Lithium Nevada Project has been approved by Dennis Bryan, a qualified person for purposes of National Instrument 43-101. Forward-looking statements Statements in this release that are forward-looking information are subject to various risks and uncertainties concerning the specific factors disclosed here and elsewhere in the company's periodic filings with Canadian securities regulators. When used in this document, the words such as "expect," "believe," "planned", "scheduled," "targeting" and similar expressions is forward-looking information. Information provided in this document is necessarily summarized and may not contain all available material information. Statements in this release that constitute forward-looking statements or information include, but are not limited to: (i) completion of a transaction with a strategic partner at Cauchari-Olaroz; and (ii) the timing and results of an updated economic analysis on the Lithium Nevada Project. All such forward-looking information and statements are based on certain assumptions and analyses made by the Company's management in light of their experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments, as well as other factors management believes are appropriate in the circumstances. These statements, however, are 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 or statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ from these forward-looking statements include those described under the heading "Risks Factors" in the Company's most recently filed MD&A. The Company does not intend, and expressly disclaims any obligation to, update or revise the forward-looking information contained in this news release, except as required by law. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information or statements. For further information contact: Lithium Americas Corp. Investor Relations 1100 - 355 Burrard Street Vancouver, BC, V6C 2G8 Telephone: 778-656-5820 Email: ir@lithiumamericas.com Website: www.lithiumamericas.com Archiact, a Vancouver, Canada-based virtual reality studio, raised $3.16m in equity funding. International game company 37Games made the investment and took a 10% stake in the company. Founded in 2013, Archiact develops virtual reality products through a team of 40 including Lamper VR: First Flight, Lamper VR: Firefly Rescue, and Waddle Homes, which can support the Google Play store, Samsung Gear VR store, and Oculus store. The company has also signed contracts with developers of VR games in the Oculus store, like DarkNet, a publisher operating in the Chinese and greater Asian-Pacific market, and is planning to expand to areas such as VR offline platforms, VR electronic sports, and wireless VR motion sensing solutions. 37Games also owns a 100% stake in Braeve Co., Ltd., which is responsible for 37Games overseas publishing in Japan, and a 5% stake in EST SOFT, a Korean application software development company active in the Korean anti-virus software market, and developer of a client game called CABAL. Last August, 37Games made a joint acquisition of SNK Playmore by buying 81.25% of the companys shares in a purchase including King of Fighters, Metal Slug, and Samurai Shodown. FinSMEs 22/03/2016 Medical Departures, a Bangkok, Thailand-based medical service marketplace that allows patients to find, compare & book medical appointments around the globe, completed $2.5m Series A funding. The round was led by Singapore based venture capital fund DMP with participation from Hubert Burda Media, CyberAgent Ventures and OPT SEA. The company intends to use the funds to accelerate growth in destinations such as Southeast Asia. Established in 2014 by CEO Paul McTaggart, Medical Departures allows patients to book global medical visit by comparing photos, prices, real patient reviews, videos & medical certifications online 24/7. It offers patients over 5,000+ doctors & dentists in 33 countries to choose from. To date, it has served 50,000+ global patients helping them find quality medical care at prices they can afford with its online platforms Medical Departures (www.medicaldepartures.com), and Dental Departures (www.dentaldepartures.com). FinSMEs 22/03/2016 London: A British judge has urged pop star Madonna and her former husband Guy Ritchie to resolve their ongoing custody dispute over their 15-year-old son Rocco, warning them they may be ruining his childhood. Madonna and Ritchie faced off in court on Monday. The judge ruled that Madonna can drop her legal proceedings in London so that the legal battle can continue in the US judicial system, reports people.com. However, the judge did not rule over whether or not Rocco should return to New York to be with Madonna. The British High Court judge, Alistair MacDonald, also urged the estranged couple to work together to resolve their differences over Rocco's custody. "For all the media coverage, comment and analysis, this is a case born out of circumstances that arise for countless separated parents the world over," the judge wrote in his ruling. "I renew, one final time, my plea for the parents to seek, and to find an amicable resolution to the dispute between them." "It would be a very great tragedy for Rocco if any more of the precious and fast receding days of his childhood were to be taken up by this dispute. Far better for each of his parents to spend that time enjoying, in turn, the company of the mature, articulate and reflective young man who is their son and who is a very great credit to them both, the judge added. IANS A woman in Bengaluru was booked for allegedly trying to kill eight puppies. This incident comes to light just a day after a man in Delhi was seen stabbing dogs. According to the womans neighbours, Poonamma flung the puppies onto a boulder to teach the mother (of the pups) a lesson. The dog apparently gave birth in a drain next to her house, said a report in IBN Live. Banglore Mirror reported that the dog, fondly called Ammu, is still wandering around where her litter was buried moaning and crying. Poonamma, wife of an ex-honorary flight lieutenant, lives in Jallahalli West neighbourhood. Seven of the eight puppies she bashed against a boulder died on the same day while the one that survived succumbed to the womans brutality the next day. Poonammas neighbours, outraged by the incident, filed a complaint with Cupa (Compassion Unlimited Plus Action) on 17 March and the organization registered a complaint against Poonamma on the very same day with Peenya police station. The neighbours allege that they tried stopping Poonamma from committing such a heinous act but in vain. The complaint they filed said that a woman in their vicinity flung eight puppies across the road and that the impact was so hard that some of the puppies intestines were out. It further said that the residents were agonized with Ammus wailing, as they could see her walking around "asking for help, trying to show" them. Poonammas neighbours, speaking to Banglore Mirror, said that she felt no repentance given that she casually said "accha nahi laga, fek diya" (didnt like it, threw it) Police inspector B Aiyanna Reddy said that Poonamma was released on bail after her arrest, but their reviewing CCTV footage to put together enough evidence to submit a charge sheet. Maneka Gandhi, in her piece for Firstpost, writes that crimes against animals arent taken seriously. The offence, in India, has a Rs 50 penalty attached to it. An example of how archaic laws are furthering the discrepancy between crime and justice. The US, however, takes animal cruelty very seriously. As Gandhi points out in the article, the reason the FBI treats it as top-tier federal crime, is because they have recognized a link between animal abusers and their tendency to do the same with human beings. She quoted a survey which points at how more than 80 percent of criminals in American jails started out with mistreating animals. Gandhi recognizes that animal cruelty must be severely criminalized before the offenders behaviour spreads to other aspects of society. It seems Maharashtra will soon go the same way as Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh. The three states were divided while the BJP was in power there, whereas only Andhra Pradesh split into Telangana under Congress rule. Now in Maharashtra, where the BJP is in power, former RSS spokesperson MG Vaidya has joined the call for dividing the state and that too, into four parts. With former advocate general Srihari Aney's comments on Sunday, calling for statehood for Marathwada, once again sparking calls for division of the state, Vaidya jumped into the controversy by saying that he supports Aney's statements. "The ideal population of any state should be about three crore only for which smaller states are required. Maharashtra has a population of over 12 crore so it might be divided into four parts," he said. Talking to mediapersons in Nagpur he added, "One state should be Mumbai along with Konkan, Western Maharashtra can be a second state, Vidarbha the third state and Marathwada including north Maharashtra a fourth state called Devgiri. I strongly support AG Aney's demand for separate Marathwada and Vidarbh. The government must set up a commission to carve out smaller states to ensure better governance and rapid progress of the people," he added. The resignation of Maharashtra's Advocate General Shrihari Aney on Tuesday has given renewed voice to those advocating the creation of separate states of Vidarbha and Marathwada. "Not only Congress, BJP too had supported the cause and adopted a resolution for creating smaller states like Vidarbha at the BJP national executive held in Bhubneshwar in 1996," seven-time MP from Nagpur, Vilas Muttemwar told PTI on Tuesday. "Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Union Minister Nitin Gadkari had also supported the demand when they were in Opposition. The issue was raised even during the Assembly and Lok Sabha elections in 2014," he said. Muttemwar also came out in support of Aney, saying that the former advocate general did nothing wrong; his statements only echoed the sentiments of the people of both regions. "Aney belongs to a family who had all along supported Vidarbha. As an individual, he too was entitled to his views on separate Vidarbha and Marathwada," Muttemwar, who turned 67 on Friday, said. Aney reportedly said on Sunday at an event in Jalna, "Marathwada bore more injustice than Vidarbha and should therefore be independent. Pressure has to be put at the Delhi level to form a separate state as the demand does not come under the purview of Mumbai." The AG had earlier called for carving out a separate state of Vidarbha from Maharashtra. His comments in Jalna invited criticism from all political quarters, and there were calls that he be sacked. As the controversy raged, Aney himself stepped down from his post. He handed over his resignation to Maharashtra Governor CV Rao, while making it very clear publicly that neither Rao nor Fadnavis had asked him to do so. He stated that he quit on his own volition as it pertained to "conflict of duty" and concerned "institutional stability" as if he didn't do so, the Assembly session would be disrupted. Former chief minister Prithviraj Chavan alleged that these types of tactics were a ploy to divert attention from the drought crisis. Nitin Raut, former Maharashtra EGS Minister and three-time MLA from Dalit-dominated Nagpur (North), criticised those who are opposing Aney's stand. Even Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar had favoured statehood for Vidarbha and Marathwada, Raut told Firstpost from Nagpur. Dr Ambedkar had written in his book Thoughts on Linguistic States that a state will be strong when there is a sense of "fellow-feeling". That fellow-feeling will come when all the people in a state speak the same language. He supported the "one language, one state" rule but also warned of its dangers, saying, "A linguistic State with its regional language as its official language may easily develop into an independent nationality. The road between an independent nationality and an independent State is very narrow. If this happens, India will cease to be Modern India we have and will become the medieval India consisting of a variety of States indulging in rivalry and warfare." Atul Deolgaonkar The Maharashtra state Assembly on Monday had a tumultuous day with both houses demanding the resignation of Maharashtra advocate-general Shrihari Aney for his remarks made during a speech in Jalna on Sunday in support of separate statehood for Marathwada. Such was the outrage that Nitesh Rane, son of Congress MLA Narayan Rane, even said that when Aneys head gets separated from his body he will know what it means to break up Maharashtra. .. !! nitesh rane (@NiteshNRane) March 21, 2016 The state government also expressed its displeasure over Aneys demands. It is for the first time that separate statehood for Marathwada has been demanded. Aney, who is from Nagpur, had earlier demanded an independent Vidarbha region as well. He said that Marathwada bore more injustice than Vidarbha and hence, it also should be independent. However, the people in Marathwada never demanded separation even in the face of crisis and it is not likely to happen in the near future either. The Marathwada region has been the part of Maharashtra since 17 September, 1948 the day celebrated as Marathwada Liberation Day when the region was liberated from the rule of nizams. Well-known doctors, professors and talented pool of people from Telangana and Karnataka from the former princely Hyderabad state migrated to Marathwada during its integration with Maharashtra seeking progress and development. Since the rule of nizams, there has been a feeling of suppression and injustice with which the people of Marathwada have grappled. However, this never provoked them to draw a boundary; on the contrary, they always wished to counter their problems by being a part of Maharashtra. Given the grave agrarian crisis and how water-starved the region is right now, it is stupid to even think of separate statehood. Firstly, the idea would never garner any kind of political backing. Sunil Gaikwad, BJP MP from Latur, who is in support of the separation, quoted Dr BR Ambedkar saying that the Dalit leader supported the concept of small states. But only those small states that are rich in natural and mineral resources, like Andhra Pradesh, would benefit from a demarcation definitely not a mineral and water-deficient Marathwada. If we take the example of the newly-formed states of Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, the separation led to the takeover of land mafias exploiting natural resources in the state. The tribal communities in Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand are now the migrants or should we say the 'climate refugees'. The reason is that the political economy in India, rather in the world, is based on exploitation of nature. The industries and land mafias are the ones to reap the benefits while the so-called sons of the soil are the losers. Fearing the same will happen to Marathwada, not a single political leader in the region would advocate and push the idea of an independent Marathwada. Secondly, the region is heavily dependent on western Maharashtra for natural resources. With a dearth of minerals, minimal forest cover (1.5 percent) and water resources, the repercussions in case of separation would be catastrophic. There are several reasons. Marathwada is completely dependent on western Maharashtra for water. The region gets it water supply from the Godavari, which originates in Nashik. Marathwadas climate is not favourable for natural resources. Sugar industries, which are known to fuel the regions economy, are also in the doldrums. If the crisis persists, of 70 sugar factories in the region, it is doubtful even 10 would be able to function smoothly till next year. Unseasonal rains and hailstorms for the past four years in Marathwada have adversely affected the regions agricultural income subsequently triggering suicides. In 2015, there were 1,100 suicides recorded from Marathwada alone. And since 2016, there have been 200 farmer suicides in the region. How would the region survive the crisis if boundaries are drawn against the backdrop of extreme dependency of water and natural resources? Environmentalists around the world are suggesting that the world should unite to fight the climate change. Similarly, Maharashtra should also stay united and put up a strong fight against the crisis, so that Marathwada can benefit from intellectual and financial inputs from all over the state to resolve problems old and new. Atul Deolgaonkar is a senior journalist and an author - As told to Shraddha Ghatge New Delhi: Ahead of the visit by a Pakistani probe team in connection with the Pathankot terror attack on an IAF base, NIA on Monday released the photographs of four terrorists killed during the counter-offensive which began on 2 January and lasted for more than 80 hours. The move comes barely a few days before the Special Investigation Team (SIT) of Pakistan visits here to ascertain the facts of the case and investigation carried out by the National Investigation Agency. The NIA's handout featured the bodies of the four slain terrorists with description of their height. The anti-terror probe agency has said one of the terrorists did not have a toe in both the feet. The picture has been circulated and public asked to share information about them. The agency has already approached the Interpol for issaunce of Black Notice for the four. The international notice is issued for identification of unidentified bodies found in a country. About the remaining two, the NIA was planning to approach another forensic laboratory for conducting a fresh test of the samples recovered from the Airmen billet at the Pathankot air base. Forensic laboratory in Chandigarh had said they had found human remains in the samples handed over by the NIA. It will take some time before the identity of the remaining two was acertained, an official source said, hinting the same may not be completed before the Pakistani SIT's departure from India. The SIT will be arriving here on 27 March and would be holding consultations with the NIA about the probe conducted so far, the sources said. India has already sent a Letters Rogatory to Pakistan seeking certain details about the four. India has been seeking details of the phone numbers dialled by the four terrorists ahead of the attack on the airbase on the intervening night of January 1 and 2. The numbers are believed to be in the names of people connected with Jaish-e-Mohammed terror group 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 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, 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 using the phone snatched from the jeweller friend of a 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 30 December. The terrorists had carefully buried the packets which had Pakistani markings and manufacturing dates of November and December 2015, sources said. PTI New Delhi: A five-member Pakistani Joint Investigation Team on Tuesday applied for visa to come to India to carry forward the probe into the Pathankot terror attack, a week after the announcement by Foreign Ministers of the two countries that it will come here on 27 March. External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Vikas Swarup said the modalities of the visit of the JIT will now be finalised as Pakistan has given the names of the delegation to Indian High Commission in Islamabad. "We have today received visa applications of five members of Pakistan's joint investigation team. The modalities of the visit will be discussed now as we have the composition of the team," he told reporters. Asked whether the JIT will be given access to the Pathankot air base and duration of their stay, Swarup said details like where they will go, how they will go and what kind of access they will be given are being finalised. "All these will be subject of discussion as modalities will now be finalised," he said. External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, after a meeting with her Pakistani counterpart Sartaj Aziz, last week in Nepal's Pokhra on the sidelines of a SAARC Foreign Ministers' meeting had announced that the Pakistani JIT will arrive in India on 27 March. When asked who will represent government at the Pakistan National Day celebrations at their High Commission tomorrow, Swarup said a senior Minister will attend but did not give the name. Asked whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi will meet his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington next week, he said though there are "slots" for the bilaterals but no concrete schedule has been firmed up so far. Aziz, after the meeting with Swaraj in Pokhra, had said that the two PMs would be possibly holding a bilateral in Washington. PTI United Nations: Fostering respect for other cultures and beliefs will help the international community face the growing challenges of rise of extremism and threats to peace and security, India said on the occasion of Nowruz, the Persian New Year that marks the beginning of spring. "...the international community also faces a number of challenges of peace and security, rise of extremism and the like. Celebrations like Nowruz will help us in facing these challenges by fostering mutual understanding and respect for each other's culture, traditions and beliefs," India's Ambassador to the UN Syed Akbaruddin said at the International Day of Nowruz, commemorated on Monday. The International Day of Nowruz was proclaimed in 2010 by the General Assembly, and India has been co-sponsoring the commemoration at the world body along with Afghanistan, Azerbaijan, Iran, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. Akbaruddin said the Parsi community, which celebrates Nowruz, is woven integrally into the cultural fabric of India. The community has contributed significantly towards building and strengthening modern India, he said. The community's growth in India, from the first migrants who landed in the country centuries ago, holds a lesson on how nations can embrace migrants seeking refuge and peace "in distant lands in these troubling times," he said. Drawing parallels between the central message of Nowruz and that of the International Day of Yoga, he said both days symbolise peace and "harmony with nature." "This central message of Nowruz is also one of the key messages of the International Day of Yoga as underscored in the Yoga Day resolution namely 'building better individual lifestyles devoid of any kind of excesses'," he said. He added that on the first year of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the central message of Nowruz is indispensable for achieving the "transformative agenda and the goals we have set for ourselves towards sustainable development." In his message on the day, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said that conflict, discrimination and other violations of human rights continue to take an immense toll and the occasion should be used to spread its essential message of hope and renewal around the world. "We must respond with compassionate action that addresses immediate suffering while tackling root causes. With its focus on good relations, environmental stewardship and lasting peace, Nowruz is an occasion to strengthen our resolve to leave no one behind in our journey to a better future," he said. UNESCO Director-General Irina Bokova called Norwruz "an outstanding manifestation of how living cultural heritage expresses the way we understand the world and the means by which we shape it for the good of all." New Delhi: Making it clear that there will be no change in the reservation policy for Dalits, Prime Minister Narendra Modi today asserted that nobody can snatch their right even as he accused his opponents of spreading untruths on the issue. The Prime Minister also compared Constitution architect B R Ambedkar to Martin Luther King who had fought for the rights of blacks. Delivering the Ambedkar Memorial Lecture here, Modi said, Nothing has ever happened to the reservation for Dalits, tribals, when we are in power but still lies are being spread to mislead people. When Vajpayeeji became PM, a campaign was run saying reservation will be abolished. He was the Prime Minister for two terms and nothing of that sort happened. BJP has ruled in Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Punjab, and Haryana for many years and the quota policy never suffered a scratch. Yet untruths are being spread. People, who are only interested in doing politics, fail to come out of it, Modi said. Asserting that quota is the right of the Dalits and the underprivileged that nobody can snatch, the Prime Minister noted, As I had said earlier also that even if Ambedkar appears today, he cannot snatch this very right of yours. What are we before Baba Saheb. Laying the foundation stone for Ambedkar National memorial, the Prime Minister targeted his political opponents accusing them of spreading confusion and lies on the issue and rued that while its serves their politics, such things weaken the social fabric of the nation. The Prime Ministers renewed pitch on reservation comes ahead of assembly polls in five states West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Assam, Kerala and Puducherry beginning next month. He repeatedly questioned why it took 60 years to do it and reminded that Ambedkar as law minister had to resign from Jawaharlal Nehrus cabinet owing to lack of backing on the Hindu Code Bill that was a progressive move aimed to codify and reform Hindu personal law in India by giving the women equal rights in many spheres like property. Terming it injustice to call Ambedkar only a messiah of Dalits, the Prime Minister said that he was the voice of all marginalised sections and was a Vishwa Manav (global personality) and likened him to civil rights campaigner Martin Luther King. Linking the waterways bill brought by his government in Parliament with Ambedkars views on Indias maritime strength, Modi said no work on it happened in last 60 years and the difference is visible when some bhakta (devotee) of Baba Saheb comes in government. Training his guns on opponents, he said that it is indeed difficult to digest defeat, a swipe at Congress which faired poorly in the 2014 Lok Sabha polls. Some people dont like us. They dont even want to see us. They get fever on seeing us and in fever, one loses control of mind. That is why they say all kinds of lies and all absurd things. Those who did not work for 60 years have given us a chance to do this and we take pride in doing such works like building a memorial at 26 Alipur Road, he said. Modi said it was for the first time that the Prime Minister of the country was delivering the Ambedkar Memorial lecture being organised for the sixth time. Without naming Congress, the Prime Minister repeatedly attacked the main Opposition on the treatment meted out to Ambedkar in the last 60 years, saying had the Dalit icon been projected rightly many of the problems that grip society now would not have existed. The problem that we see in society would not have been there, had we not forgotten Ambedkar, he said. Everybody knows what injustice was done to Baba Saheb and who did this injustice to him. What was the reason that the previous governments kept the decision on Indu Mills pending for so long? Same was for the place where Baba saheb stayed in London. Even after this, we are being blamed and a bad name is given to us...Wherever we have got the opportunity to serve, we have taken decisions out of shradha (reverence) towards Dr Ambedkar, said Modi, whose government was recently under attack from the Opposition over the suicide of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemula. All these works were taken up only when the BJP governments came to power. Why were they not done earlier. For 60 years this did not happen. Vajpayeeji saw the dream and I have got the opportunity to fulfil it, Modi said as he listed a number of measures taken by his government for welfare of Dalits. Recalling the efforts and role played by former Prime Minister Vajpayee in remembering Ambedkar, he said he initiated the process to acquire the places associated with the icon and developed them into memorials. But his government did not remain in power. After that the governments that came did not have Amebedkar in their hearts. That is why even after acquisition of Ambedkars Alipur Road house it (memorial) could not be built. Our pledge is to complete it by March 2018 and I declare here that I will inaugurate it on April 14, 2018, Modi said amid chants of Bharat Mata ki jai from the audience. He said the memorial to be built on 26, Alipur Road will be a grand and an iconic building of Delhi. It may be an iconic building for the world, but for us it will be a source of inspiration and the coming generations should draw inspiration from it. Modi said, We have done injustice to Babaseheb Ambedkar by limiting him as a messiah of dalits alone as he was against anything inhuman and had raised his voice against all injustice and fought for the rights of the marginalised and the oppressed sections in society. On the issue of Ambedkars resignation from Nehru cabinet on the issue of Hindu Code bill, Modi said, why was it that Dr. Ambedkar had to resign from the ministry? People do not know about it. Either history is enroached upon or is diluted and diverted in another direction. He said that when the issue of equal rights to women came up, Babasaheb was clear that if women dont get equal rights, he cannot be a part of the ministry. The then government bowed to pressure, he said. The Prime Minister compared the contribution of Sardar Vallabhai Patel and Babasaheb Ambedkar and said while Patel did the task of uniting the princely states, Ambedkar did the task of uniting society. Modi also talked about the three mantras given by Ambedkar to educate, organise and struggle, which are relevant even today. Laying stress on education and organising, he said if these are accomplished there would be no need for the third one, as most people lay stress on struggle these days. He also highlighted how the icon held no bitterness against anyone when he had power, despite suffering so much humiliation, including that against his mother. No bitterness is seen in the expressions of Ambedkar. There is no feeling of revenge. For Ambedkar, the upper castes also belonged to him as also the dalits, Modi said, adding that sometimes the tongue is inadvertently cut by the teeth but we do not uproot the teeth for the same. Alluding to the defeat of Congress in 2014 Lok Sabha polls, the Prime Minister said it is very difficult to digest defeat, but noted that society and country are bigger than defeat and victory. In a veiled dig at his political opponents who have repeatedly targeted the government on Dalit issues, he said while Ambedkar worked for the cause of the downtrodden inspired by the duty for the nation and society and not for power, there are others for whom only the last mattered and not nation and society. Accusing the previous governments of not projecting Ambedkar in the right perspective, he said had this been done a number of social problems would not have existed. This question can arise in any bodys mind that Ambedkar passed away in 1956 but why work for a memorial is being started 60 years after. 60 years have passed, I dont know who will be held accountable for this. But, we had to wait for 60 years. Perhaps, it was a blessing of Babasaheb Ambedkar on me that I got the opportunity to do it, he said. Modi also recalled the vision of Ambedkar, saying he had envisioned a lot of things during his time, which later governments have brought in. He cited examples of labour reforms and steps taken for empowerment of women, besides strengthening Indias maritime power. He also said that Ambedkar had worked a lot for labour reforms as he thought of industrialisation for the progress of India and labour reforms for the poor. PTI By Chandan Kumar Sharma Never before has Assams electoral scenario been as complex and frenzied as this time around with the state gearing up for Assembly election on the 4 and 11 April. The ruling Congress party that has been in power since 2001 suffers from serious anti-incumbency. That in the 2014 Lok Sabha election, the BJP won seven out of the total 14 seats in the state was a clear testimony to that. This gives the BJP with only five of a total 126 seats in the current state Assembly the confidence to go for the big kill in this election. No doubt much of this new confidence stems from the fact that the party now firmly controls the reins of power at the Centre. However, the BJP has, since then, found many hurdles along the way to seeing its dream fulfilled. There is no doubt that the 'Narendra Modi wave' during the 2014 elections did serve the BJP well in Assam, where the voters had already turned quite unhappy with the ruling Congress steeped in intra-party squabbling and corruption. It was no mean feat for the BJP in a demographically-diverse state like Assam. The partys strong posturing against immigration from Bangladesh, big dams and the land swap deal with Bangladesh emotionally connected the party with large section of voters across communities in the state. However, the good performance in the parliamentary elections was never a guarantee for a similar performance by the party in the Assembly election. Besides, the Modi wave of 2014 has all but disappeared now. Additionally, finding candidates for 14 Lok Sabha seats was not much of a problem for the BJP. But fielding around 100 suitable candidates in the fray for Assembly elections was always going to be a difficult job for the party that does not have a strong organisational base across the state of Assam. Further, in its bid to expand the base of the party, the BJP has enthusiastically welcomed and accommodated many leaders from the Asom Gana Parishad (AGP), Congress and youth leaders from various nationalist student and youth organisations. This has no doubt expanded the social base of the party. However, this has sidelined many original BJP workers and created many more contenders for tickets in the Assembly elections, leading to internal discord. However, despite the initial antagonistic rhetoric exchanged between them, the AGP and BJP have finally struck an alliance. Accordingly, BJP offers 24 seats for the AGP, the regional party which twice formed the government in the state but has been on a downswing in recent years. Although prior to 2011, a weak BJP with little organisational strength fought both the Assembly as well as Lok Sabha elections in the state with AGP support and won a few seats. In 2011, both parties fought the elections independently. Observers opine that politically BJP gained much more than AGP from this alliance and AGP was castigated for abandoning its regional agenda by many of its supporters. Although, they have come together again this time around with the agenda of throwing the Congress out of power, the alliance is not without trouble. While many AGP supporters are against the alliance on ideological principle, others are extremely unhappy with the party for settling for a mere 24 seats. Similar anger prevails in the BJP camp as well. The seat-sharing formula has left many ticket hopefuls in both the parties very disgruntled. This resentment has not only led to public outcry against the alliance, but the disgruntled sections of both the parties have floated their own political parties ie AGP (Anchalikotabadi) and Trinamool BJP. How the BJP-AGP combine negotiates this situation prior to the elections will significantly determine their poll prospects. The other political party with which the BJP has struck an alliance is the Bodoland Peoples Front (BPF), which has been in power in the Bodoland Territorial Autonomous Districts (BTAD) since 2006. The party has 12 seats in the state Assembly and it had been part of the Congress-led state government till June 2014, when the party walked out of the alliance accusing the Congress of non-cooperation in the development of the BTAD area. However, the supremacy of BPF seems to be in some decline in the region. Other Bodo political formations such as the United Peoples Party are posing a challenge to the BPF this time, besides the Sanmilita Janagosthiya Oikya Mancha, which is an agglomeration of several non-Bodo ethnic groups in the BTAD area. In fact, a candidate backed by this formation wrested the Kokrajhar Lok Sabha seat from the BPF in the 2014 General Election. The BPF is also unhappy at the AGP-BJP alliance, as it might have an impact on the BPF's performance in BTAD areas. The ruling Congress party which showed definite signs of nervousness about its electoral prospects until a month ago seems to be taking some respite from the dissent within the BJP-led alliance. The Congress won an astounding 78 seats in the 2011 Assembly elections. But this time around, it is going to be a much more difficult situation for the party. Its powerful former minister Himanta Biswa Sarma, who was credited with partys election victory in the 2011 elections, is now with the BJP along with a number of loyal MLAs. Although the Congress public posture has been to go to the elections on its own, it knows that forming a government alone will be impossible this time. Therefore, it is engaged in informal dialogue with other like-minded political parties. Evidently prodded by the Congress, a section of the AGP leadership sought to have an alliance with the Congress which was turned down by its leadership. The Congress also held a dialogue with the All-India United Democratic Front (AIUDF), the main Opposition party with 18 Assembly seats, on a possible alliance. The AIUDF has considerable presence in the immigrant Muslim-dominated areas. Although traditionally these areas contributed to the Congress electoral fortune, the scenario changed after the AIUDF emerged as a formidable force in these areas. Understandably, their dialogue for an alliance with the AIUDF failed as the latter asked for a share of large number of seats. Since then, both parties have been trading verbal attacks against each other with the Congress accusing AIUDF of having a secret understanding with the BJP. Interestingly, in the elections for two Rajya Sabha seats from Assam on 21 March, the AIUDF voted for two Congress candidates while the entire Opposition abstained from the election. In such a situation wherein Congress candidates were sure to win the elections, the party has described this unsolicited support as only an attempt by the AIUDF to obfuscate its secret understanding with the BJP. However, with its popular base lying with the minority Muslim community, the AIUDF also has its compulsions as to which side of the political spectrum the party can afford to be seen on. Observers predict that the AIUDF will win between 15 and 20 seats in the forthcoming elections depending on how it manages simmering internal tension within the party. Will it have a post-election alliance with the Congress to form government or will it help the BJP-led alliance by playing a neutral role in the next Assembly? With neither the Congress nor the BJP-led alliance assured of forming government on their own strength despite their aggressive public posturing, as of now the AIUDF appears to be all set to play the kingmakers role in the post-election scenario. The author is a professor of Sociology at Tezpur Central University, Assam Patna: Controversial JD(U) MLA Gopal Mandal from Gopalpur, has once again made headlines by threatening to carry out politics of murder in retaliation if harassed by political opponents, even as the ruling party distanced itself from his remarks. I would carry out politics of murder in the state and will get it done by othersThere is no doubt in it, he said while participating in a Holi Milan function at Naugachhia in Bhagalpur district on Sunday night. Mandal alias Neeraj Kumar Niraj, a fifth-term MLA from Gopalpur assembly seat in Bhagalpur district, said the opposition BJP leaders have been harassing him and his workers by threatening that they would commit murders to get him and his supporters framed on false charges. I am a five-term MLA. Have you ever heard that an MLA is being harassed? But I am being harassed by them and so are my supportersIf an incident (murder of my supporter) takes place, the process of retaliation would start, Mandal said while expressing no regret for his comment. The remarks of Mandal, who is known for his controversial statements, have not gone down well with the Opposition and ruling JD(U). The controversial remarks of the senior JD(U) MLA came in for sharp criticism by fellow party leaders and those from the alliance partners and opposition with senior BJP leader Nand Kishore Yadav questioning Chief Minister Nitish Kumars silence over the issue. Is it a Sushashan when a ruling party MLA openly says that he will commit murder? he asked. Kumar is keeping mum on the issue apparently for the sake of power, Yadav, a former Leader of Opposition in the legislative assembly said. The JD(U) spokesman Sanjay Singh said Mandal should not have made such a statement, adding that the party has taken cognisance of it and will take appropriate action against the legislator. The Congress leader and Education Minister Ashok Chaudhary too regretted the controversial statement made by the JD(U) MLA and said that it has nothing to do with the Nitish Kumar government as the said remarks have been made by Mandal in personal capacity. Earlier on March 1, Mandal had said that he will chop off the tongue of people trying to threaten his supporters which has triggered strong reactions from the Opposition parties. In support of his assertions, he had further said one of my legs remain in jail and the other outside. This is not for the first time that the JD(U) MLA from Gopalpur has landed into controversy. In the initial days of the grand secular alliance coming to power, he had threatened a Deputy Superintendent of Police level officer to throw him in the Ganges from Naugachia road bridge for stopping his car, which had jumped queue during a traffic snarl last December. PTI Explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, rocked the Brussels airport and subway system on Tuesday, prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe. The latest death toll stands at 31, Associated Press reported. A spokesman for the Brussels Metro said more than 55 were wounded, 10 very seriously, in an explosion on a train. The two airport blasts, at least one of which was blamed on a suicide bomber, left behind a chaotic scene of splattered blood in the departure lounge as windows were blown out, ceilings collapsed and travelers streamed out of the smoky building. About an hour later, another bomb exploded on a rush-hour subway train near the European Union headquarters. Terrified passengers had to evacuate through darkened tunnels to safety. Belgium raised its terror alert to its highest level, diverting arriving planes and trains and ordering people to stay where they were. Airports across Europe immediately tightened security as a fleet of emergency vehicles roared in to handle the carnage at the Brussels airport. The explosions, which the Brussels prosecutor's office called terror attacks, came just days after the main suspect in the deadly 13 November Paris attacks was arrested Friday in Brussels. After his arrest, 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam told authorities he had created a new network and was planning new attacks. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Tuesday's attacks. However, Belgium Prime Minister Charles Michel said that there was no information now whether attacks related to Paris suspect arrested last week. "What we feared has happened," said Michel calling the blasts blind attacks and adding that authorities are worried there will be more attacks. Speaking a news conference in Brussels, Michel said, "there are many dead, many injured" from the attacks earlier Tuesday at the airport and a subway station. He says border controls have been reinforced. "We realise we face a tragic moment. We have to be calm and show solidarity," said Michel. Belgian media reported that 13 people were killed at the airport. Brussels police spokesman Christian De Coninck said some people also died at the subway station but he had no exact numbers yet on the dead or injured. One of the injured is an Indian national, said the Indian Ministry of External Affairs. The Indian is one of the two crew members of Jet Airways who were injured in the twin bomb blasts. They were given medical care, the airline said. "As per initial information, Jet Airways guests in Brussels have been re-located to a safe location by the Brussels Airport authorities," the airline said in a statement. "At this time passengers and staff have been cordoned off and are not allowed to access the airport terminals. Jet Airways staff and crew are safe." At the airport, two explosions splattered blood across the departure lounge and collapsed the ceiling. The explosions hit during the busy morning rush. Smoke was seen billowing out of the terminal. Anthony Deloos, an airport worker for Swissport, which handles check-in and baggage services, said the first explosion took place near the Swissport counters where customers pay for overweight baggage. He and colleague said second blast hit near the Starbucks cafe. "We heard a big explosion. It's like when you're in a party and suddenly your hearing goes out, from like a big noise," Deloos said, adding that shredded paper floated through the air as a colleague told him to run. "I jumped into a luggage chute to be safe," he said. Tom De Doncker, 21, check-in agent intern, was near the site of the second explosion. "I saw a soldier pulling away a body," he said. "It felt like I was hit too" from the concussion of the blast. All flights from Brussels were canceled, arriving planes and trains were diverted. Authorities told people in Brussels to stay where they were, bringing the city to a standstill. Airport security was also tightened in Paris, London and other European cities. European security officials have been bracing for a major attack for weeks, and warned that the Islamic State group was actively preparing to strike. Abdeslam's arrest on Friday heightened those fears, as investigators said many more people were involved in the Nov. 13 attacks that killed 130 people in Paris than originally thought, and that some are still on the loose. Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, told BFM television that the second, louder explosion brought down ceilings and ruptured pipes, mixing water with victims' blood. "It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed," he said. "There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere." "We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene," he said. Near the entrance to Brussels' Maelbeek subway station, not far from the headquarters of the European Union, rescue workers set up a makeshift medical treatment center in a pub. Dazed and shocked morning commuters streamed from the metro entrances as police tried to set up a security cordon. "The Metro was leaving Maelbeek station for Schuman when there was a really loud explosion," said Alexandre Brans, 32, wiping blood from his face. "It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the metro." Francoise Ledune, a spokeswoman for the Brussels Metro, said on BFM television there appeared to have been just one explosion on the subway in a car that was stopped at Maelbeek. At the airport, passengers fled as quickly as they could. Amateur video shown on France's i-Tele television showed passengers including a child running with a backpack dashing out of the terminal in different directions as they tugged luggage, Another image showed a security officer patrolling inside a hall with blown-out paneling and what appeared to be ceiling insulation covering the floor. Marc Noel, 63, was about to board a Delta flight to Atlanta, to return to his home in Raleigh, North Carolina. A Belgian native, Noel says he was in an airport shop buying automobile magazines when the first explosion occurred 50 yards away. "People were crying, shouting, children. It was a horrible experience," he told AP. He said his decision to shop might have saved his life. "I would probably have been in that place when the bomb went off." With three runways in the shape of a "Z," the airport connects Europe's capital to 226 destinations around the world and handled nearly 23.5 million passengers in 2015. Passengers were led onto the tarmac and the crisis center urged people not to come to the airport. In Paris, France's top security official said the country was immediately reinforcing security at airports, train stations and metros. The Paris airport authority said security was tightened at all Paris airports. Airports in London, Prague, Amsterdam, Vienna, and many others, also saw increased security. In Moscow, Russian Transport Minister Maxim Sokolov told Russian news agencies that authorities will "re-evaluate security" at Russian airports, although its measures are already among some of the toughest across Europe. There have been mandatory checks at the entrances to airports since a 2011 suicide bombing at Moscow's Domodedovo airport that killed 37. Gatwick airport said that "as a result of the terrible incidents in Brussels we have increased our security presence and patrols around the airport." Heathrow said it was working with police to provide a "high-visibility" presence in light of the attacks. In Germany, the state rail system, Deutsche Bahn, has halted its high-speed rail service from Germany to Brussels. The company said its ICE trains are now stopping at the border city of Aachen. The British, Dutch and Polish governments convened emergency meetings as they beefed up security at airports. Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte and Britain's David Cameron vowed to help Belgium. "Our thoughts are there, in Brussels and we are praying for the victims," said Polish Prime Minister Beata Szydlo, who canceled a routine news conference to attend an emergency meeting with her government security council. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini said Tuesday's blasts in Brussels marked a "very sad day" for Europe, saying on a visit to Jordan it was now suffering like the Middle East. "It is... a very sad day for Europe as Europe and its capital is suffering the same pain that this region has known and knows every single day," she said tearfully at a joint press conference with Jordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh. She said it was already clear that the blasts at Brussels airport and a metro station near the EU headquarters were attacks that resulted from radicalisation, and called for European and Middle Eastern leaders to work together to tackle the scourge. "We are still waiting for more precise news on the dynamics of the attacks in Brussels but it is quite clear the roots of the pain we are suffering around our region are very much the same," she said. "We are united in not only suffering... but also reacting to these acts and preventing radicalisation and violence together. "Being here together is the most powerful message of strength and friendship among our people that we can pass to those who would like to divide us." Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi also condoned the attack on Twitter: News from Brussels is disturbing. The attacks are condemnable. Condolences to families of the deceased. May those injured recover quickly. Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) March 22, 2016 The MEA released helpline numbers for Indians to check status of their friends and relatives in Belgium: #Brussels Attack: Indians in Belgium can contact our Mission's Emergency numbers +32-26409140 +32-26451850 (PABX) & +32-476748575 (mobile) Vikas Swarup (@MEAIndia) March 22, 2016 With inputs from agencies Washington: The US government's decision to delay its effort to force Apple to help unlock an attacker's iPhone may only postpone the inevitable drawn-out battle over encryption and data protection. "It's only a matter of time before another case comes up on this," said Joseph Hall of the Center for Democracy & Technology, a digital rights group, after the government said it may have found a way to crack the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino attackers without Apple's help. The decision by federal prosecutors to cancel a hearing set for Tuesday "shows the FBI was expecting to get its clock cleaned" in legal arguments to force Apple to provide technical assistance to hack into an encrypted handset, he added. Tech giants and civil rights advocates have warned that the case goes beyond just one phone and that if the court had sided with the FBI, it would have harmed human rights and digital security. The case has drawn interest from groups as diverse as Amnesty International and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. A last-minute filing by the Justice Department on Monday said the FBI appeared to have found a way into the iPhone in question with the help of an unidentified "outside party." James Lewis, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies specializing in cybersecurity, said the latest developments underscore the limits of encryption. Remember the Titanic "Whenever anyone tells me something is unhackable, I remember the line that the Titanic was unsinkable," Lewis told AFP. "If you give people enough resources, they can break in. This is a race between people who write (software) products and people who break them." Hall agreed, saying encryption "is a practice" that must continually evolve. "There may be something we consider secure or well encrypted, and you may find a flaw in the future," he said. "You can see how Apple has managed this," he added, "but that cat-and-mouse game will continue." Federal prosecutors and Apple spent weeks trading a volley of legal briefs related to the FBI's demand that the tech company help investigators unlock the phone used by Syed Farook, who died in a shootout after the deadly December attacks in San Bernardino, California. The FBI says the device may contain critical information for its probe into the December 2 shooting, which left 14 people dead. However, Apple has balked at a court order to help investigators, citing customer privacy and security concerns. Hall said the FBI apparently hoped to set a legal precedent. "It's hard to think of another case that would be more sympathetic to their cause," he said. The two sides were waging both legal and public relations battles. Different polls showed the US public split some surveys showed support for law enforcement while others indicated more backing for Apple. A survey released Tuesday by Vrge Analytics found that support for the FBI has eroded in the last month, however. A month ago, the group found that 50 percent of Americans believed that Apple should be required to help unlock the iPhone, but that support had slipped to 41 percent. Paris, Brussels and encryption Darren Hayes, a Pace University professor specializing in computer forensics, said the issues will be seen as more urgent in the wake of attacks last year in Paris and on Tuesday in Brussels. "If we hear more about iPhones used in terrorist attacks, people may side with the government a little more," he said. The question of access to encrypted devices will probably be dealt with in the legislative arena in the United States and elsewhere, Hayes added. "This is not just a struggle in the US," he said. "It's a toss-up on whether the US or EU implements legislation first." AFP Karachi: At least 17 Hindus were among 20 people who have died after consuming spurious liquor during Holi celebrations in Pakistan's Sindh, two years after a similar tragedy struck the country's southern province. Police said that 34 people were rushed to a hospital in the Tando Mohammad Khan district on Monday, where 20 of them, including two women, died. "Three of the patients are in a critical condition while 11 have been discharged," the medical superintendant of Liaquat University Hospital, Wajid Memon, was quoted as saying by GeoNews. A senior police official said they consumed the liquor to celebrate Holi. "They had brought the cheap moonshine from a local dealer," he said. On Tuesday, residents staged a protest against the police for failing to stop the illegal sale of hooch in their neighbourhood. Following the protest, the area station house officer has been suspended and two persons have been arrested for brewing the illegal drink. The latest incident is a reminder of a similar tragedy in Hyderabad and Karachi in 2014 during Eid-ul Azha celebrations when 29 people had died after consuming hooch. Alcohol consumption is banned in Pakistan for Muslims but non-Muslims are allowed to ration alcohol from special liquor shops run by provincial excise departments. PTI BEIJING Philippines fishermen threw fire bombs at Chinese law enforcement vessels in the South China Sea, China's Foreign Ministry said on Tuesday, after Philippines media reported that fishermen had been struck by bottles hurled from China's coast guard ships. The reports said that a clash occurred at Scarborough Shoal, an area China seized control of after a three-month stand-off with the Philippine coast guard in 2012. The reports said Chinese coast guardsmen hurled bottles at the Philippines fishermen, who responded with rocks. China's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said Scarborough Shoal - known by Beijing as Huangyan Island - was Chinese territory which Philippine fishermen had been fishing around illegally. "Chinese official ships advised the illegally stationed Philippine trawlers to leave, in accordance with the law, but they refused to obey," she told a daily news briefing. "Certain people on the ships even waved around machetes and flung fire bombs, carrying out deliberate provocation, attacking the Chinese law enforcers and official boat, confronting China's law enforcement and seriously threatening the safety and order of the waters around Huangyan Island," Hua said. China had strengthened its "management" around the shoal, she added, without elaborating. A spokesman for the Philippines Foreign Ministry declined to comment, pending an official report "from our concerned agencies". China and the Philippines have long exchanged accusations about each other's behaviour in the disputed South China Sea. China claims most of the energy-rich waters through which about $5 trillion in ship-borne trade passes every year. Neighbours Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines, Taiwan and Vietnam also have claims. A spokesman for the U.S. Defense Department, Commander Bill Urban, said Chinese Coastguard vessels had sought since 2012 to block fishing access to the area, "restricting the long-standing commercial practices of others". "We are concerned that such actions exacerbate tensions in the region and are counterproductive," Urban said. He said that the United States, which is a treaty ally of the Philippines, wanted to see claims resolved peacefully in accordance with international law or arbitration. Last week, the U.S. Navy said it had seen activity around Scarborough Shoal that could be a precursor to more Chinese land reclamation, which China has conducted on a large scale elsewhere in the South China Sea to back its territorial claims. Navy chief Admiral John Richardson also told Reuters that a ruling expected in late May or early June in a case the Philippines has brought against China over its claims in the International Court of Arbitration in the Hague, could prompt Beijing to declare a South China Sea exclusion zone. (Reporting by Ben Blanchard; Additional reporting by Neil Jerome Morales and Karen Lema in MANILA and Andrea Shalal and David Brunnstrom in Washington; Editing by Nick Macfie and Grant McCool) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Colombo: The UN has said it remains committed to ensuring a credible investigation into alleged human rights abuses in Sri Lanka during the final phase of the civil war that ended seven years ago. Deputy spokesman for UN Secretary General, Farhan Haq was responding to a question on Monday in New York at a press briefing. The question related to recent comments made by Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena that he was not in agreement in having international judges for the local probe process for war crimes and human rights accountability. The UN Human Rights Council resolution of 2014 which blamed both sides the government and the LTTE for war crimes, had prescribed an international investigation. The UNHRC chief in his last report to the council had also insisted on foreign judges, questioning the credibility of the Sri Lankan judiciary to deliver justice. "UN Human Rights Council can evaluate how it is going, but we want to make sure there is a credible investigation into this," Haq said adding that the UN had made it clear to Sri Lanka what their guidelines were for a credible investigation. PTI Dutch Justice Minister Ard van der Steur said on Monday that the government plans on closing five more prisons over the next few years to cut down on spending on empty prison cells. This is a direct result of a notable decline in the countrys crime rate, reports International Business Times. The decision reflects on the declining crime rate across the Netherlands, where eight prisons were shut down last year. It is unclear which of the countrys prisons are being considered for elimination. The shutting down of the prisons would result in the termination of 1,900 employees, while 700 other workers would be transferred, according to De Telegraaf newspaper, as reported by IB Times. Van der Steur explained in the parliament that hundreds of prison cells remain unused sometimes because the judges impose shorter sentences on the convicts and serious crimes are becoming less frequent, reported New Europe. In recent years, in an effort not to fire prison officials due to the ongoing prison reforms, the Netherlands leased prison cells to house inmates from Norway, with a group of 242 prisoners being transferred to Dutch jails in 2015. Inmates from Belgium also have been sent to Netherlands prisons to serve their sentences, The Guardian had reported. The Dutch government said it is not considering any more closures than the 19 aforementioned prisons, reported Australia Network News. Nine Kooiman, a Socialist Party MP, was reported saying that the speculations that the government is going back on its earlier promise were nothing more than a scandal. If this cabinet was really working to catch crooks, we wouldnt have this problem of empty cells, the Dutch News quoted her as saying. Havana: The White House has all but ruled out a meeting between Barack Obama and veteran Cuban leader Fidel Castro during the US President's trip to Cuba. Senior Obama foreign policy aide Ben Rhodes said that neither the administration nor the Cuba authorities had asked for a meeting between Obama and the 89-year-old. "On this trip, we are not planning to meet with Fidel Castro," he said. "We have not requested such a meeting The Cubans have not requested such a meeting of us." Castro is rarely seen in public these days and when photographed in State-run media he has appeared in a wheel chair. He met Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro who visited the island late last week. Obama had earlier suggested in a television interview with ABC that he may be open to a meeting. "If his health was good enough that I could meet with him, I'd be happy to meet with him. Just as a symbol of the end of, or the closing of this Cold War chapter in our mutual histories. It's not clear to me what the state of his health is," he had said. AFP Kuala Lumpur: Debris that might be part of a plane engine has been found on the southern coast of South Africa and will be checked to see if it belongs to Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, which vanished two years ago, Malaysian Transport Minister Liow Tiong Lai said today. Liow said the debris was discovered near Mosselbay town. "Based on early reports, there is a possibility of the piece originating from an inlet cowling of an aircraft engine," but a further examination and analysis are needed to verify whether it belongs to Flight 370, he said in a statement. Liow said a team will be dispatched to retrieve the debris. The Malaysia Airlines jet disappeared on 8 March, 2014, with 239 people on board while flying from Kuala Lumpur to Beijing. The plane remains one of the biggest mysteries in modern aviation. An Australian-led underwater search in the southern Indian Ocean, where the plane is believed to have crashed, has found no trace of it so far. A piece from one of the plane's wings was found washed ashore on France's Reunion Island last July. Two more possible pieces of debris which were discovered recently in Mozambique are being examined by an international investigation team in Australia. Investigators have said the search will end by June unless fresh clues are found. AP Hanoi: A lawyer says a prominent Vietnamese blogger will be put on trial this week for alleged anti-state postings. Ha Huy Son says Nguyen Huu Vinh and his assistant, Nguyen Thi Minh Thuy, who were accused of abusing democratic freedoms to infringe on the interests of the state, will stand trial tomorrow in Hanoi, Vietnam's capital. The offense carries up to seven years in prison. State media have cited the indictment as saying two dozen articles on two blog sites had untruthful and groundless content, distorting the lines and policies of the party and laws of the state, and affecting the people's trust in the Communist Party and government. The two denied the charges, saying they "have no relations" with the postings, according to Son. AP Geneva: Syria's peace talks hit a fresh impasse over President Bashar al-Assad Monday, as the head of Lebanon's Hezbollah vowed his Shiite movement would keep fighting alongside the regime until Islamic State jihadists are defeated. The UN's Syria envoy, Staffan de Mistura, said he had pressured Damascus to outline its approach to the crucial issue of a political transition, as negotiations in Geneva entered their second week. De Mistura said the regime's lead negotiator Bashar al-Jaafari told him "it was... premature to talk about it. My message was (that) premature (for him) means imminent as far as we are concerned". Assad's fate has been a key obstacle in the latest talks aimed at ending Syria's devastating five-year war, which has killed more than 270,000 people and displaced millions. A partial ceasefire brought in last month had raised hopes for an end to the violence, which were further fuelled when Russia a key backer of Assad announced last week it would withdraw most of its troops from Syria. But tensions have flared since, with Moscow accusing the US of "unacceptable" delays in agreeing how to punish those who break the ceasefire and warning it could resort to force against violators. There have also been concerns about whether any peace deal could be enforced on Syria's complex battlefields, and Hezbollah vowed to stay in Syria until the Islamic State group (IS) and Al-Qaeda's Syria branch are beaten. "All that has been said about our withdrawal from Syria is false," Hezbollah's leader Hassan Nasrallah told Lebanese channel Al-Mayadeen on Monday. "We went to Syria to help keep the country from falling into the hands of Daesh (IS) and Al-Nusra Front... So long as we have a responsibility to be there, we will be there." Assad hampers talks Hezbollah first announced it was fighting alongside Assad's troops in 2013 and has since sent thousands of fighters to battle Syria's rebels, who are backed by its arch rival Saudi Arabia and a US-led coalition. Its support has been crucial for keeping the regime in power, but the opposition has insisted the president's departure must be part of any peace deal agreed at the talks. Member of the High Negotiations Committee (HNC) opposition umbrella group, Yahya Kodmani, on Sunday accused the regime of being "obstinate". "We hope that Russia will use its powers to pressure the Assad regime in order to move into serious negotiations," he said. But Jaafari rejected any suggestion that Assad would step down from any new government, saying his future and the political transition were "two separate issues". "President Assad has nothing to do with the... talks," he said, insisting that the subject of the president "is something that is already excluded from the scene". He also insisted Damascus was committed to the peace process, and that his delegation had "clear instructions from our leadership to engage seriously in these talks". Conceding that progress remained slow, de Mistura stressed it was vital that opposing sides reach a basic understanding on how to move to a second round of talks, tentatively scheduled for next month. Russia warns on ceasefire He highlighted the positive impact of the negotiations, which he said have helped to maintain a fragile ceasefire declared on February 27. But tensions flared between Russia and the US over the truce, with Russian Lieutenant General Sergei Rudskoy accusing Washington of showing "no readiness" to agree how to enforce it and warning Russia would resort to force itself if necessary. "The delay in the entry into force of the rules agreed upon for responding to violations of the ceasefire in Syria is unacceptable," he said in a statement. Moscow would only use force "after receiving credible evidence of armed groups' systematic violations" of the truce, he added. The truce has broadly held since being declared last month and allowed life-saving aid to reach tens of thousands of Syrians stranded in besieged areas. It does not include IS and the Al-Qaeda linked Al-Nusra Front, however, who continue to be targeted in Russian air strikes and government offensives. At least 26 pro-government fighters were killed battling Islamic State near Palmyra on Monday as Damascus stepped up a bid to recapture the ancient city, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said. AFP Brussels: The Latest on explosions at Brussels airport and metro station (all times local): Florence Muls, a spokeswoman for the Brussels Airport, says a third bomb has been neutralized at the airport after two other bombs killed at least 10 people there Tuesday morning. Muls told The Associated Press the third bomb was dispensed of "with a controlled action" once the chaos of the first explosives had eased somewhat. Elsewhere in the Belgian capital, anti-bomb squads detonated suspicious objects in at least two locations the Maelbeek subway station and close to Brussels University a few miles further away. Authorities said those two did not contain explosives. A U.S. official has told the AP the explosives in Brussels appear sophisticated, and investigators will examine them to see if they bear the same characteristics to those used in the Paris attacks last year. Putin on Brussels attacks Russian President Vladimir Putin says the terror attacks in Brussels have underlined the need to pool global efforts for combating terrorism. Putin spoke in televised remarks Tuesday as he met with visiting Finnish President President Sauli Niinisto. Putin began by offering condolences to the families of the victims in Brussels. He added "we have repeatedly discussed the issues related to the fight against terrorism, and it's possible to efficiently combat it only by united efforts." Some other Russian officials and lawmakers have criticized Western reluctance to cooperate with Moscow on fighting terrorism amid the strain in Russia-West ties over the Ukrainian crisis. Obama speaks The White House says President Barack Obama has expressed his condolences to Belgium and its people during a telephone conversation with Prime Minister Charles Michel following deadly terrorist attacks at the airport and a subway station. Obama also offered assistance with the investigation and with bringing the perpetrators to justice. The White House says the president reiterated U.S. support for the people of Belgium, NATO and the European Union. And he pledged the full cooperation by the U.S. in efforts to end terrorism. Obama placed the call from Havana, where he was closing a historic three-day visit on Tuesday. Airport to remain closed through Wednesday The head of the Brussels Airport says the airport will remain closed at least through Wednesday. Airport CEO Arnaud Feist says two bombs ripped through the airport's departure hall, killing at least 10 people there and injuring scores. Feist said it was still too early to assess the damage to the terminal and indicated the airport could be closed even longer. He said thousands of passengers and personnel were at the airport during the morning rush hour when the attacks hit Tuesday. The exact number killed at the airport is still unclear. Regional governor Lodewijk De Witte says there are "more than 10 deaths" there. EU leaders pledge "all means" European Union leaders are pledging to tackle the terrorism threat with "all necessary means" after attacks on Brussels the EU capital that killed at least 31. The heads of state and government of the 28-nation union said in a statement that Tuesday's attack "only strengthens our resolve to defend European values and tolerance from the attacks of the intolerant." They pledged to be "united and firm in the fight against hatred, violent extremism and terrorism." The statement didn't elaborate on possible EU measures in response to the attacks. Plea to media on investigations The Belgian federal prosecutor's office has made a new plea to the media not to spread any information about the investigation in the wake of the bombing attacks early Tuesday. Belgian authorities had already made a similar plea during the days following the Nov. 13 Paris attacks when they were certain an attack in Brussels was imminent. It was largely followed by the media. On Tuesday, the office again asked the media to immediately desist from spreading information from the ongoing investigation. Islamic State claims responsibility The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks in Brussels, saying its extremists opened fire in the airport and "several of them" detonated suicide belts. The posting in the group's Amaq news agency said another suicide attacker detonated in the metro. The posting claimed the attack was in response to Belgium's support of the international coalition arrayed against it. "Threat still real and serious" People can start moving around Brussels once more after being told to stay in place for hours after bombing attacks Tuesday morning at the airport and on a subway station. Peter Mertens of the Belgian crisis center says "the threat is still real and serious" of more attacks. But he says air traffic at Brussels' Zaventem airport "remains closed for the day under any circumstance" but people in the Belgian capital can start walking outside again and train stations are reopening. At least 31 people were killed and nearly 190 wounded Tuesday after bombs went off in Brussels airport. At Brussels airport Florence Muls, the Brussels airport communications manager, is defending the security at the airport. She tells The Associated Press that the terminal zone is open. That means there are no checks on luggage or passengers at the entry to the terminal and European rules do not require closing it off. She says the airport is does not have the ability or the mandate to impose controls at the airport terminal entry. IS planning attacks for several months An Iraqi intelligence official says sources in the Syrian city of Raqqa have told them that the Islamic State group has been planning terrorist attacks in Europe for two months which would "target airports and train stations." The official tells The Associated Press on Tuesday that Iraqi officials told European countries about the plans "but Brussels was not part of the plans" at the time. He says IS militants changed the operation and moved it to Brussels "because of the detention of Salah Abdeslam" the Paris attacks suspect arrested Friday in Brussels. Another senior Iraqi intelligence official said "Daesh (IS) was behind this operation and it was planned in Raqqa two months ago and there are three suicide attackers who will carry out another attack." The officials spoke on condition of anonymity since the investigation was ongoing. Qassim Abdul-Zahra in Baghdad Recap Two explosions ripped through Brussels airport Tuesday during the morning rush hour as hundreds of passengers were trying to check in. Airport authorities said the explosions caused several injuries. Airport spokeswoman Anke Fransen said: "There were two blasts in the departure hall. First aid team are in place for help." Passengers were led onto the tarmac and the crisis center urged people not to come to the airport. The explosions happened only days after the prime suspect in the Paris attacks Salah Abdeslam was arrested in Brussels. AP A string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station on Tuesday killing at least 26 people according to media reports. Belgium raised its terror threat to the maximum level. The blasts come days after the dramatic arrest in Brussels on Friday of Salah Abdeslam prime suspect in the Paris terror attacks that killed 130 people in November 2015, after four months on the run. Soon after the explosions hit the Belgian capital, reports suggested that it was a revenge strike. However, the rumours have not been confirmed; but it is a logical extrapolation. The reports are suggestive of the fact that the network of Salah Abdeslam is still functioning. Abdeslam's arrest has been touted as one of the key arrests. Despite Abdeslam's arrest, who was touted as one of the key arrests from the Islamic State network, the group continues to terrorise, mobilise and polarise with violence. Belgiums foreign minister, Didier Reynders, on Sunday said that Abdeslam had told investigators he was planning fresh attacks in Brussels. "He was ready to restart something in Brussels, and it may be the reality because we have found a lot of weapons, heavy weapons, in the first investigations and we have found a new network around him in Brussels," Reynders was quoted as saying by AFP. It is clear that Abdeslam was not the lone operative behind last year's Paris attack. Childhood friend of Abdeslam, Mohammad Abrini, a man of Belgian and Moroccon origin, who also played a crucial role in planning the November attacks. It is possible that the network acted even before the security services rolled them up. Abdeslam couldn't have acted alone or for that matter couldn't have escaped the security forces on his own. He was on the run for a long time and during this time was looked after by dozens. The terror attack on Brussels is not about a revenge strike, but about the intense radicalisation deeply entrenched in broader communities and neighbourhoods. Take Molenbeek for example, the neighbourhood which housed most of the Paris attackers. November's attacks and today's attack in Brussels have thrust Molenbeek into the international spotlight. Belgian authorities carried out a series of raids searching for key suspects believed to have lived in the area. Two people arrested have been charged with terrorist offences. It's led to Molenbeek being widely labelled as a jihadi haven, but for some residents that's an unfair description. Paris attacks were but the latest in a litany of jihadist incidents over the last two years involving people with ties to Molenbeek, including the 2014 shooting at the Jewish museum in Brussels, the Charlie Hebdo attacks in January and the failed attack in August on a Thalys train. According to Politico, long before the emergence of jihadism, Molenbeek had acquired a reputation for lawlessness. "But the more painful question that should be asked is: What do Molenbeeks failures reveal about the deep dysfunction in the Belgian state? That Molenbeek has been allowed to become a breeding-ground for jihadism says some damning things about formal and informal structures in Belgium, and in particular Brussels." The report further added that despite being in the heart of Brussels, what is remarkable about Molenbeek is its proximity to poverty and lawlessness. Molenbeek, by comparison, is tiny. It is one of the most densely populated parts of Brussels, but its population is only 95,000. And it is not that the entire borough is a no-go zone. The problems of lawlessness are concentrated in much smaller areas. But, according to experts, the problem may not be about places, but people. Research from Oxford University confirms the importance of social networks, showing friends or peers played the primary role in the recruitment of three-quarters of foreign fighters to Islamic State; family members accounted for a fifth, the mosques for just one in 20. The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation, part of Kings College London, has estimated Belgium supplies some 40 fighters for every million inhabitants a figure more than four times that of Britain, and twice that of France. And Molenbeek has been linked to spectacular attacks round the globe going as far back as the 2001 assassination of the Northern Alliance leader Ahmad Shah Massoud. It is estimated that Muslims make up six percent of the Belgian population, but that figure is 25 percent in Brussels and 40 percent in Molenbeek. The unemployment rate in the district is 30 percent, but it is believed to be even higher among immigrants. But many in the city, from ordinary residents to the officials who run Molenbeek, are frustrated that there is not more support for integration, and monitoring young people who are at risk from radicalisation both through friends and online, The Guardian reported. Speaking to Brussels-based journalist Mehmet Koksal, Spiegel Online International said, "Most of the Muslims are moderate, but there are also sharply radicalized groups with connections, for example, to the Salafists. They tell young people that they aren't European or Belgium and that it's 'us against the others.'" Koksal has been covering the Islamist scene for years. This apart, terrorists are drawn to Belgium more than any other country in Europe. And one of the major reason is its strategic location. Placed strategically between France, Germany, UK and Netherlands. Belgium is part of the Schengen area, which means its outside borders are open, making it extremely easy for terrorists to enter and leave the country quickly. Kristof Clerix in this article in The Guardian said that the anonymity of Brussels "appears to offer an ideal hiding place", for terrorists and their sympathisers. And the young population, most of them with Muslim backgrounds, do not get the same opportunity in jobs and education and are confronted with racism on a daily basis. They have the perfect profile to be prone to radicalisation. Buying illegal firearms in Brussels is not a big deal. The city has less than six different police zones making the fight against illegal arms trafficking and other forms of organised crime cumbersome and inefficient. According to the BBC, security apparatus of Belgium is extremely small as well. Belgian state security only has some 600 employees (the exact figure is classified information). Its military counterpart, Adiv, has a similar number. That makes just over a thousand intelligence officers to secure a country that hosts not only Nato and the EU institutions but also the World Customs Organisation, the European Economic Area, the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication (Swift), the European Organisation for the Safety of Air Navigation (Eurocontrol), another 2,500 international agencies, 2,000 international companies and 150 international law firms. Ironically, Brussels is the diplomatic capital of the world. It's a problem that is bigger in Belgium than anywhere else in Europe. No other European nation has seen as many jihadists travel to Syria relative to the overall population. Officials in Belgium estimated that out of a population of 11 million residents, around 500 have so far made the journey to jihad in Syria. Comparatively, it is estimated that 800 people from Germany, a country with a population of 81 million, have travelled to Syria. In this sense, Belgium's problem is a European problem. GENEVA Syria's opposition delegation at peace talks in Geneva spent the weekend thinking about the basics of how to run a country, in response to questions given to them by the mediator of the talks, according to a text seen by Reuters on Monday. U.N. mediator Staffan de Mistura has said he dreads a post-war Syria collapsing into the kind of chaos experienced by Iraq and Libya. He has also insisted that the future of Syria must be entirely in the hands of Syrians, and issues he asked negotiators to think about included reform of the presidency, democratic control of the security services and representation of ethnic groups. De Mistura describes Syria's political transition as "the mother of all issues", but its definition has not been narrowed beyond a U.N. resolution that says the talks should set up "credible, inclusive and non-sectarian governance". He said on Friday he would give "homework" to each side, but it was not clear if he had given the same questions to the government delegation, whose head insisted on Monday that the fate of President Bashar al-Assad would play no part in the talks. Negotiators from the opposition High Negotiations Committee were asked 29 questions to explore what the U.N. resolution on the transition means, defining the phrase and probing the practicalities of bringing such governance into being. "What are the most appropriate bodies or mechanisms that can perform the duties of governing and its functions?," the U.N. document asked. "How can this body or bodies be set up?" The questions include how to ensure participation of women in the government, what its relationship should be with legislative and judicial bodies, and how to represent Syria's different geographical areas. Helping to steer the process are Nicolas Michel, a Swiss expert on international law, who advises de Mistura on constitutional and legal issues, and Russia's Vitaly Naumkin, de Mistura's political advisor. A western diplomat said the opposition delegates had spent all weekend working on the questions, but he said he was not aware of the content. "Theyre being extremely private about this," he said. (Writing by Tom Miles; editing by John Stonestreet) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. GENEVA/LESBOS The United Nations refugee agency dealt a blow to EU efforts to stem the biggest humanitarian crisis in generations on Tuesday, saying it would no longer assist in the transfer of migrants and refugees arriving in Greece to "detention centres". The European Union reached a deal with Turkey just four days ago aimed at halting the flow of migrants across the sea to Greece, but the UNHCR said the deal was being prematurely implemented without the required safeguards in place. It said migrants were being held against their will at reception facilities on several Greek islands, and it would not transport people there from the beaches and to and from ports. It will continue to provide other services including counselling to refugees, it said. The accord crafted by EU leaders and Turkey specifically mentions the UNHCR's involvement, although UN officials in Geneva said they were not consulted on that. The deal, which took effect on Sunday, is aimed at putting new arrivals in Greece who seek asylum on a fast track for processing. But it also means those migrants and refugees are kept in detention until their claims are assessed. "Under the new provisions, these so-called hotspots have now become detention centres," said the UNHCR's Melissa Fleming. "Accordingly, and in line with UNHCR policy of opposing mandatory detention, we have suspended some of our activities at all closed centres on the island." Medical charity Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) said it was pulling out of one centre on the island of Lesbos "because the EU-Turkey deal is turning reception centres to deportation centres. "If we continued (at the centre) we would be participants in a system we deem unfair and inhuman," the Greek MSF branch wrote on Twitter. Marie Elisabeth Ingres, who heads the charity's mission in Greece, added it would "not allow our assistance to be instrumentalized for a mass expulsion operation." Those considered ineligible for asylum are to be sent back to Turkey from April 4. For every Syrian returned, another still in Turkey will be resettled directly in Europe, effectively penalising those who have in many cases spent their life savings trying to flee conflict. Two EU officials said they hoped this shock therapy might work in ebbing the flow of migrants and refugees into Europe. One said "ugly images" of forced detentions and deportations were something the EU would have to accept if it was to regain control of its own borders. "Ethically we might have doubts. But legally we have no doubts," another EU official said. Both made the remarks before the UNHCR said it was partially withdrawing its support. DETENTION CENTRES Until Sunday, arrivals to Lesbos had been free to leave the Moria migrant camp and head for ferries to the Greek mainland from where they would mostly head north via the Balkans in a bid to reach western Europe, particularly Germany. Now, they are meant to be held in Moria or one of four other centres set up on the Aegean islands of Samos, Chios, Leros and Kos, pending the outcome of their asylum applications. As of Sunday, just two buses were available to transport the arrivals to Moria, one belonging to the coast guard and one to the police, a senior port police official said. Early on Tuesday, 129 refugees and migrants who had been rescued at sea by a coast guard patrol boat and taken to the port waited for some 40 minutes for the buses to arrive. They sat on the dock shivering, men dressed in thin trousers and jackets and women wrapped up with scarves. Many were barefoot and soaked to their knees. One, a young man named Zalmai, said he had left Afghanistan with his five-member family. "(There are) a lot of problems in our country. We're coming for a better life," he said, putting on a jumper given to him by volunteers and wrapping a thick grey blanket around his waist. Using his finger to imitate a knife across his throat, he said: "I'm not going back to Turkey, to Afghanistan. Please, I'll stay here." CHILDREN NEED PROTECTION, UN SAYS More than 147,000 people, many fleeing conflict in the Middle East and Asia, have arrived in Greece by sea this year, 59 percent of them women and children, according to UNHCR. On Monday, Turkish monitors arrived on Lesbos to help put the deal into practice. On Tuesday, the Czech Republic offered 10 asylum experts and 30 police officers plus humanitarian aid to Greece, its state secretary for EU affairs said. Under a timetable agreed with the EU last week, a task force of 4,000 people from asylum case workers and experts to arbitrators, interpreters and security staff should be in place by March 28. Of those, 2,300 should be deployed by other EU states. A spokeswoman for the U.N. children's fund UNICEF told a briefing in Geneva on Tuesday the fund was concerned about this new agreement and the implications for children. "We see no mention of children despite the fact that children make up 40 percent of those currently stranded in Greece," she said, adding 19,000 children are stranded in Greece and about 10 percent are unaccompanied. (Additional reporting by Jan Lopatka in Prague and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva; Editing by Hugh Lawson and John Stonestreet) This story has not been edited by Firstpost staff and is generated by auto-feed. Havana: President Barack Obama pledged to "do whatever is necessary" to help Belgian authorities seek justice for the more than two dozen people who were killed Tuesday in explosions at the Brussels airport and the subway system. "We stand in solidarity with them in condemning these outrageous attacks against innocent people," Obama said in Havana, where he was closing a historic three-day visit. He commented on the events in Brussels at the top of a keynote address to the Cuban people. "We will do whatever is necessary to support our friend and ally Belgium in bringing to justice those who are responsible," Obama said. He said America's thoughts and prayers are with the people of Belgium. Obama said Tuesday's attacks provided yet another reminder "that the world must unite," regardless of nationality, race or faith in "fighting against the scourge of terrorism." "We can and we will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world," he said. Obama was briefed earlier Tuesday on the attacks. He also telephoned Prime Minister Charles Michel to offer condolences. Secretary of State John Kerry, who spoke by telephone from Cuba with the Belgian foreign minister, said in a statement that the U.S. was working "to determine the status of all American citizens in Brussels." The embassy there issued a statement telling Americans to stay where they are and "take the appropriate steps to bolster your personal security." The State Department said it was looking into reports that at least three Americans may have been wounded in the attacks, but cautioned that those reports were preliminary and unconfirmed. At least one of the attacks was believed to be caused by a suicide bomber, and Belgium raised its terror alert to its highest level. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the ranking member of the House intelligence committee, said the attacks "bear all the hallmarks" of an Islamic State group coordinated or inspired attack. His staff said he received a preliminary briefing Tuesday from US officials. Schiff says it's unclear if encrypted communications played a role in the attacks but noted that the Brussels attacks occurred despite the city being under constant vigilance. The US Department of Homeland Security said it was closely monitoring the unfolding events and "would not hesitate to adjust our security posture, as appropriate, to protect the American people." DHS reiterated that members of the public should report any suspicious activity in their communities to law enforcement authorities. Attorney General Loretta Lynch was also briefed on the attacks, Justice Department officials in Washington said. They said the Justice Department and the FBI were coordinating with other US government agencies, as well as with Belgian counterparts. Last week US Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Homeland Security officials constantly monitor world events and evaluate whether there is a need to either publicly raise the nation's security posture or issue another bulletin via the government's National Terror Advisory System. Such a bulletin was issued in December advising the public that federal law enforcement was concerned about the possibility of homegrown violent extremists and terrorist-inspired individuals. AP Havana: With President Barack Obama by his side, Cuban President Raul Castro on Monday appeared to deny that his country holds any political prisoners. In a sometimes awkward public appearance in which Castro fiddled with his headphones and complained about translation problems, the Cuban president unexpectedly fielded questions from US reporters. "Give me a list of the political prisoners and I will release them immediately,"Castro said when challenged about the Communist island's human rights record. "After this meeting is over, you can give me a list of political prisoners. And if we have those political prisoners, they will all released before the night ends," he said. Human rights groups immediately shot back with the names of dozens of prisoners being held in Cuba. Obama's visit to Cuba, the first by a US president in 88 years, has raised hopes among struggling Cubans that decades of economic and political stasis may be coming to an end. But the detention of dozens of pro-democracy protesters on Sunday and the deployment of a horde of secret police around Old Havana have served as a stark reminder of the regime's iron grip on power. AFP Oppo, the Chinese smartphone maker will kick start manufacturing about 10 lakh 4G phones a month in India, according to a latest report from the Economic Times. Mike Wang, chief executive of OPPO Mobiles, told the publication that the company will make these phones at its Noida facility starting August. Oppo had announced in January that it will invest Rs 100 Cr to kick start its own manufacturing facility in India by August this year. Wang added that although the phones will be manufactured in India, they will be designed in China. It is not known at the present which phones the company will make here but the 4G phones would be priced in the Rs 10,000-20,000 range. Currently, Oppo has a partnership with Foxconn and Wang said that the Taiwanese contract manufacturer will continue to make phones in India inspite of the Noida facility. As per the report, Foxconn presently has eight production lines at its Chennai factory for OPPOs smartphone requirements in the country. Oppo joins a number of national and international smartphone makers who have joined governments Make in India initiative. Xiaomi, Vivo, HTC, Sony, Microsoft, LG, Lenovo, Motorola, Asus, Micromax, Celkon and Karbonn have already announced their plans to kick start manufacturing smartphones in India. We know some visitors come to the website because a domain name leads them to here. If you are interested in buying California lawsuit recently sued Starbucks after the coffee giant served lattes 25 percent less than its standard described. Eater reached out to Starbucks to earn explanation. The spokesperson explained that the company was aware of the claims. In contrast to its customized and handcrafted beverages, the chain was allegedly reducing the amount of latte per serving - a practice that the lawsuit described as 'cheating' customers. Starbucks, according to the complaint, failed to measure up the tall, grande and venti sizes based on their standardized recipes based on the company's Beverage Resource Manual. In a Bloomberg's 2009 edition, Starbucks explained about the pitchers specifically designed for their retail stores to avoid wasting leftover milk. Baristas would pour the amount of milk up till the etched lines in the steaming pitcher - which then, becomes Starbuck's standardized serving. The company was accused of cheating customers in their effort to save the cost of milk after hitting a profit decline in 2008. The act of delivering less than what customers deserved to enrich themselves, was intolerable. Filed under two purchasers in San Fransisco, on behalf of the nationwide Starbucks drinkers, a spokesperson commented on the claim, stating that the chain hand-prepared every beverage with variations by request. Customers are allowed to ask for extra foam, without whipped cream or other preparation that is largely collaborative in term of volumes. The spokesperson continued, "If a customer is unhappy with their beverage preparation then we are happy to remake it to their satisfaction." The plaintiffs claim reported that Starbucks breached the California's consumer legal remedies act by misrepresenting the beverage. What would happen if the lawsuit is approved? It will be applied on 'a possibly huge number US class members' who bought the Latte. Starbucks would now fill the cup to the edge to avoid more latte lawsuits. KFC won't be the primary place to consider when looking for a cold dessert, yet KFC Japan declared this week that it would be revealing another matcha-flavored frozen treat that might have individuals rethinking their snack ideas. Matcha has taken control cafes around the nation. Commended for its rich flavor and medical advantages, matcha is a strong green tea that has been loved by Zen Buddhists for quite a long time. Zen Buddhists lean toward matcha which is produced using leaves with the concentration of caffeine over espresso for meditation weeks that call for them to be wakeful for long periods of time. The tea is around 10 times stronger than a green tea in light of the fact that the whole leaf is ground to make it. Matcha in Japan is the tea used as a part of conventional tea ceremonies. The ritual requires concentration and balance with the host performing a series of exact hand movements and choreography. Every visitor takes a drink from the dish of matcha which should promote social bonding according to The Daily Meal. Matcha has several medical advantages like an ordinary green tea. As indicated by Rocket News 24, the new matcha and azuki KFC Krusher is sweet and smooth frozen refreshment seasoned with powdered green tea. It likewise has sweet red beans floating in it. KFC Japan added that it sources its matcha powder from Japan's Aichi Prefecture's Nishio City, where the local matcha items are known for being tasty yet smooth that settles on it a good option for a dessert. Green tea and red beans are a well-known blend, yet KFC Japan's Krusher additionally incorporates corn flakes and puffed rice, so it's likewise crunchy. The matcha azuki KFC Krushers are allegedly at a bargain now at KFC restaurants in Japan for 350 yen or about $3.10. Bank of America (BAC 3.71%) announced in February that its chairman and CEO, Brian Moynihan, got a $3 million raise for his efforts in 2015. But it wasn't until last week that the nation's second-biggest bank by assets explained exactly why its board felt that the 56-year-old chief executive deserved the boost. Moynihan received a pay package totaling $16 million last year, split between fixed and incentive-based compensation. That was up from $13 million in 2014, though the structure of the pay packages in both years was largely identical. This doesn't mean that Moynihan got a check for $16 million. Beyond his $1.5 million base salary, most of Moynihan's compensation depends on the bank's performance over the next three years. For instance, Bank of America must generate an average annual return on assets of 0.8% in the three years ended 2017 for Moynihan to qualify for the entire $16 million allotment. This aside, it's worth noting why Bank of America's board felt that Moynihan deserved a raise. This information is disclosed in the bank's latest proxy statement, which was published at the end of last week. In it, the bank lays out seven overarching reasons: Net income climbed to $15.9 billion in 2015 from $4.9 billion in 2014. The bank achieved record capital and liquidity levels, increasing tangible common equity by $10.4 billion. Tangible book value per share increased 8% to $15.62. Noninterest expenses, excluding litigation, declined by 5%. B of A improved client and customer activity in all areas by, among other things, increasing business referrals (i.e., cross-selling) by 19%, total loans by nearly $22 billion, and deposits by $78 billion. Strong asset quality discipline resulted in low levels of net charge-offs and declines in delinquencies and nonperforming loans. $4.5 billion was returned to common stockholders through repurchases and dividends. While it's hard to argue with this overall assessment, it's worth noting that some of these accomplishments have more to do with the overall business and regulatory environment than to outstanding performance by Bank of America. For example, asset quality is good because that's where we're at in the credit cycle. The true test in this regard won't come until the next recession. If Bank of America's net charge-offs are lower than its peers' at that point, we'll know that its "asset quality discipline" is indeed strong enough to merit an increase in Moynihan's compensation. With respect to capital, moreover, one of the principal reasons that Bank of America's tangible book value per share increased 8% is that the Federal Reserve has tightly constrained the amount of capital that the Charlotte, North Carolina-based bank can return to shareholders. That's why Bank of America has been allowed to increase its dividend only once since the crisis, while many of its peers have boosted their quarterly payouts annually. To be clear, I'm not arguing that Moynihan didn't deserve a raise. Even after the additional $3 million, he's still the lowest-paid big bank CEO and is even out-earned by some of his subordinates -- his chief operating officer, Thomas Montag, in particular. What I am trying to say, however, is that Bank of America's board needs to be more cognizant of the signal that it's sending to shareholders of its own competence. These folks run a $2.1 trillion organization. They should know better than to cite asset quality and capital accumulation/distribution as reasons to pay Moynihan more when, in fact, the bank has much less control over these issues than its proxy statement might otherwise lead shareholders to conclude. I still believe that Bank of America's shares are a buy -- that's why I own its stock. But my optimism is based less on the bank's performance, which continues to lag far behind the likes of Wells Fargo, and more on the fact that Bank of America's shares are too cheap to ignore, trading, as they do, for a double-digit discount to book value. The tourism industry is fueling a global economic boost thanks to the addition of 7.2 million jobs worldwide last year. According to the annual economic impact report from the World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC) released on Monday travel and tourism supported 284 million jobs, thats one in every 11 jobs internationally. Despite uncertainty in the global economy and specific challenges to travel and tourism last year, the sector grew by 3.1%, contributing a total of 9.8% to the global GDP, David Scowsill, president and CEO of the World Travel & Tourism Council said. He added, Terror attacks, disease outbreaks, currency fluctuations and geopolitical challenges have impacted the sector at a country or regional level, but travel and tourism at the global level continues to produce another robust performance. The growth in the travel sector may come as a surprise in light of the recent terror attacks abroad in Paris, the 2014 Ebola outbreak and newest disease threat; the Zika virus. According to the latest report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), there are currently 116 confirmed Zika virus cases in the United States alone. According to the report, over the next 10 years the tourism industry is on track to continue to improve the world economy with an anticipated 4% growth annually. The research found countries where the tourism sector surpassed the economy in 2015 in relation to the national GDP included Iceland, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, and Uganda. The top 10 fastest growing regions are Southeast Asia with 7.9%, followed by South Asia 7.4%, the Middle East 5.9%, Caribbean 5.1%, Sub-Saharan Africa 3.3%, North America 3.1%, Europe 2.5%, Northeast Asia 2.1%, Latin America 1.5% and North Africa 1.4%. The WTTC report shows the growth of the industry is a direct result of a global increase in middle-class households and aging population, which tend to travel more, in addition to the growing connectivity between destinations, making travel more accessible and affordable. Research also reveals the power of the U.S. dollar contributing to growth in the Americas, with United States outbound travel and tourism expenditures rising by 6.3% in 2015. On the flip side, the strong dollar has limited travel by foreigners to the U.S., which has put pressure on U.S. companies, especially luxury retailers like Tiffany (NYSE:TIF), Nordstrom (NYSE:JWN), and Neiman Marcus where those visitors typically spend more. The annual reports from the World Travel & Tourism Council provide economic data from the travel and tourism sector on an international level which includes 184 countries and 24 regions. While Europe is on heightened alert over the terrorist attacks in Belgium, former Army Intelligence Officer Tony Shaffer says hes more concerned about security on the home front. Domestically, [the] TSA has gone through and done this, what I would say, work slowdown. All the TSA folks at all the airports are now making life hell for the American public because they got caught not capturing things going through. The TSA now is actually creating conditions for the terrorists to come here and do the very same attack, he told the FOX Business Networks Neil Cavuto. The attacks come days after Paris suspect Salah Abdeslams arrest in Belgium which Shaffer believes was planned as a trigger event. I would argue that ISIS knew this was coming. They knew they would grab him eventually and this was going to be a trigger event for them to set off the entire thing to happen at once, he said. He added, this had to be a very carefully orchestrated event and it tells me also that they are still not taking this seriously enough and frankly I dont think [the] CIA and our intelligence community are doing as best they can to get ahead of this as much as they should to protect us. During an interview on the FOX Business Networks Varney & Co., General Michael Hayden, former director of the CIA and NSA, discussed the possibility of a terror attack in the U.S., similar to the one in Brussels, Belgium, before the presidential election. Theres always that possibility, Hayden told Stuart Varney. But, a couple things distinguish us from our European friends. Were actually a bit better at this than the Belgians and other continental security services are, so thats an advantage. Hayden said the circumstances in the U.S. are different than those in Europe. Were a better nation at assimilating foreign communities, he said. We have a history of this. We do it well. Many of our European friends do not. So, I am not talking about our being risk-free at all, but we are certainly not talking about this being inevitable here. Again, well see what happens. Take the lessons from what happened in Brussels, up our game, be better prepared, but I dont see either inevitability or a free ride. The former CIA director commented on whether closing U.S. borders to immigration would be beneficial to preventing possible terror attacks. More on this... Paris Attacker's Interrogation Could Have Given Ideas to Other Terrorists Its not possible and its not wise and it wouldnt help, Hayden said. The issue in Brussels, beyond the hideous crime thats been committed, is a sense of alienation of a significant fraction of the Belgian population that does not feel contact, integration with, assimilation into Belgian society. I dont think we strengthen our hand to take what has been a winning hand that we are assimilating and suddenly close our borders to one of the worlds great monotheisms. Why would we actually try to undercut an aspect of our character that up to this point has actually made us safer? Hayden also said he believes the U.S. and other western countries are at war with Islamic terrorism, but that the religion is only part of the issue and should not be solely blamed. There are elements here where this is certainly about Islam, he said. It is not about all of Islam and, for Gods sake, it is not about all Muslims. But to deny the religious base of those who will do us harm, even if most Muslims view it to be an aberration of their religion, to refuse to have that conversation does nothing but confuse ourselves. Thats not good either. A rendering of NVIDIA's latest GM200 graphics chip. Image credit: NVIDIA. Graphics specialist NVIDIA recently filed its form 10-K with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The report contains a wealth of information around its business performance in its most recent fiscal year, as well as some interesting details of the business that may not be widely known. In this article, I'd like to go over three pieces of information from the filing that I found to be of particular interest. NVIDIA's sales force and customersIn the 10-K, NVIDIA says that its sales teams work closely with partners that it collectively refers to as the "Channel." This "Channel," per the company, consists of: Original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) Original device manufacturers (ODMs) System builders Motherboard manufacturers Add-in board manufacturers Retailers/distributors "Industry trendsetters" NVIDIA says "members of [its] sales team have a high level of technical expertise and product and industry knowledge to support the competitive and complex design win process." In addition to these sales teams, the company notes that it also has a "highly skilled team of application engineers to assist [its] Channel in designing, testing and qualifying system designs that incorporate [its] products." The company goes on to say that, as a consequence of this "Channel strategy," its sales are concentrated among a small number of customers. The largest of these customers -- at 11% of revenue in its most recent fiscal year -- was ASUSTek Computer, which sells, among other things, gaming laptops and desktops utilizing NVIDIA's graphics processors, as well as add-in boards implementing those processors. Notes on gross marginNVIDIA says that the gross profit margin of its graphics processor business rose in fiscal 2016 (the most recent fiscal year) "primarily due to a richer product mix." This product mix, the company says, was due to better sales of its gaming-oriented GeForce graphics processors as well as a decline in sales of graphics processors targeted at what it describes as "mainstream PC OEMs." As far as the company's Tegra mobile processor business, the company says that margins here declined in fiscal 2016 relative to fiscal 2015 as a result of three factors: "Inventory provisions"; The warranty charge it incurred when the company had to recall some of its SHIELD tablets; and A shift in product mix within Tegra toward automotive and SHIELD devices and away from sales of platforms to smartphone/tablet OEMs. Digging into the first and third items a bit more (the second should be obvious), NVIDIA explains that these "inventory provisions" were "related primarily to older generation Tegra products" in addition to "inventory purchase commitments in excess of estimated demand and excess component inventories for SHIELD products." In other words, it would seem that some of its Tegra processor inventory "went bad" so to speak, and weaker-than-expected demand for its SHIELD devices led to the company being stuck with more components than it needed. As far as the third item goes, NVIDIA indicated that sales of Tegra chips into tablets carried higher gross profit margins than do sales of chips into phones and "automotive module products." I'm not surprised that its tablet chips were more lucrative than its smartphone-oriented chips, but the idea that tablet-oriented Tegra chips carry better margins than automotive-related chips is not what I would have expected. Exchange rate risk?Many companies have talked about the impact that a stronger dollar relative to other currencies had had on their businesses, leading many such companies to talk about what revenues would have been in "constant currency." In NVIDIA's 10-K filing, the company says that it considers its "direct exposure to foreign exchange rate fluctuations to be minimal." The company goes on to explain that its "sales and arrangements with third-party manufacturers provide pricing and payment in United States dollars and are therefore not subject to exchange rate fluctuations." That being said, the graphics specialist cautions that a stronger US dollar "would make [its] products more expensive," something that "could negatively impact [NVIDIA's] ability to compete." The company goes on to explain that in an environment where the US dollar weakens, its suppliers could raise prices. Finally, NVIDIA notes that its operating expenses "benefit from a stronger dollar and are adversely affected by a weaker dollar." The article 3 Interesting Insights from NVIDIA Corp.'s Form 10-K Filing originally appeared on Fool.com. Ashraf Eassa has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Nvidia. 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. Vale's S11D mine being built. Image source: Vale S.A. When Vale S.A. reported earnings, CEO Murlio Ferreira explained: "Vale's financial performance was affected by the sharp drop in commodity prices in 2015. Despite this drop, we have successfully managed to reduce cost and expenses, implemented growth projects, and advanced our divestment program, while maintaining a stable gross debt position." In other words, there's a mix of good and bad here. Here are five key takeaways from management that you'll want to know. 1. Yeah, it's rough out there"Despite all our efforts, Vale reported a net loss of $12.1 billion in 2015," Ferreira conceded shortly after pointing out the list of positives. That's a full-year loss of around $2.35 a share. Just how bad things are was hinted at later in the CEO's comments, when he explained, "We wanted to restate that we are exploring more aggressive options to reduce our debt, including the sale of core assets." It's worth noting that BHP Billiton CEO Andrew Mackenzie has discussed the possibility of buying assets. While that means there might be someone out there interested in what Vale has to offer, it also puts Vale's current situation into a clearer light: This miner is struggling. 2. The big minePart of the problem Vale faces is related to its spending plans, most notably the giant S11D mine, the largest iron ore mine project in Vale's history. It's roughly 80% complete. However, the CEO noted, "2015 was a challenging year, and we recognize that the sharp decline in commodity prices expected by many market participants can represent a challenge to our strategy of deleveraging the company after the conclusion of S11D." That's why it has been forced to look at "more aggressive" actions. But S11D will change things for Vale. On one hand, the miner is opening a giant new mine at just about the worst time possible, since a supply/demand imbalance has left iron ore prices weak. But the mine will sit toward the low end of the cost curve and should allow Vale to shift its production mix and, thus, reduce its costs even further than it has already. So, despite the financial impact the spending is having on Vale today, the long-term benefit should be worthwhile. It just has to get there. Image source: Vale. 3. Record production, lower costsThat said, Vale is already hitting on all cylinders when it comes to production. For example, Ferreira noted, "Vale delivered a sound numbers performance in 2015, with annual production records in iron ore, pellets, copper, nickel, cobalt, and gold." That's even more impressive when you examine the cost side of Vale's ledger. "Our costs decreased by 20%, our general sales and administrative expenses decreased by over 40%, our research and development expenses decreased by 35%, and our pre-operating and stoppage expenses decreased by roughly 20%," Ferreira said. The miner also reduced capital spending for the fifth year in a row. Essentially, despite the tough commodity price environment, Vale is doing quite well operationally. But that's a mixed blessing. More volume today increases the downward pressure on commodity prices. However, those higher volumes help increase Vale's revenues and enhance productivity. Thinking long-term, assuming that Vale finds a way to finance its current spending plans without too much damage, it clearly knows how to run a solid mining operation. The question is really about getting through this tough patch with as little pain as possible. 4. Samarco -- better, but not done yetThat's why the Samarco disaster is doubly troubling here. This mine, a joint venture between BHP Billiton and Vale, saw mine waste break through a containment dam and flow through a couple of towns, killing a number of people along the way. Pretty much all the CEO had to say was, "We have been working diligently with Samarco since the beginning, and we maintain our commitment to support the affected regions, the communities, and the environment." That "work" has since resulted in an agreement with Brazil over funding the cleanup, to the tune of $1.1 billion each for Vale and BHP. However, that probably won't be the last you hear of this disaster, since there's the potential for criminal and/or civil cases arising from the event. But as you can imagine, adding another $1.1 billion in costs won't make life any easier for Vale in the near term. That's another reason core asset sales could be in the company's future. BHP data by YCharts 5. Leveraged to iron oreAccording to the CEO, "Despite a scenario of declining commodity prices and a still high capital expenditure, Vale paid $1.5 billion in dividends in 2015, while maintaining its gross debt relatively flat at $28.9 billion." That's great, but the dividend is now gone in an effort to save cash, and Vale really needs to strengthen its financial position more than simply holding the line. BHP, just for reference, reduced its dividend instead of eliminating it and, as noted, is talking acquisitions, not core asset sales. That helps explain why Vale's shares jumped so much more than BHP's when iron ore prices started to move higher recently. Essentially, Vale can highlight all the positives it wants, but the real issue is surviving the downturn in strong enough shape to benefit from its capital spending plans, most notably SD11. It was able to hold the line last year, but that's going to be harder to do in 2016 unless something gives. Vale, then, is something of a leveraged bet. If commodity prices rebound, the miner will find it easier to survive the downturn without too much (more) pain. That could lead to material upside potential, since investors appear to have baked in a lot of negative news here. If the downturn lingers, however, Vale is already talking about cutting into the bone with core asset sales. That's not a great sign. As such, Vale's not really appropriate for risk-averse investors. BHP would probably be a better option. But for more aggressive sorts looking for a turnaround/contrarian mining play, Vale could be worth a deep dive. You'll just need a strong stomach for what could easily be a roller-coaster ride with some serious dips. The article 5 Things Vale S.A.'s Management Wants You to Know originally appeared on Fool.com. Reuben Brewer has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of Companhia Vale Ads. 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. airlines including Delta, United and American rerouted and canceled flights on Tuesday following two deadly blasts that shut down the Brussels Airport at Zaventem. A suicide bomber blew himself up at the airport on Tuesday morning, killing at least 11 people, according to the Belgian health minister. At least another 15 were killed when a blast tore through a rush-hour metro train in the European capital shortly afterward, the city's transport operator said. Delta Air Lines Inc said its flight DL42 from New York to Brussels was diverted to Amsterdam. Another flight, DL80 from Atlanta, had landed safely at the Zaventem airport and was parked remotely while the airline's local staff helped passengers exit safely. News of the multiple blasts, which have Brussels on lockdown, sent shares of U.S. airlines and travel-related companies lower in premarket trading. Delta was down 3 percent, while United Continental Holdings Inc fell 1 percent. United Airlines, which had two flights due in Brussels on Tuesday morning, said one from Washington, D.C.'s Dulles International Airport arrived at 7:01 a.m. local time and customers exited normally. The other, flight 999 from Newark Liberty International Airport in the New York area, was rerouted to a location that the airline did not identify. United said all remaining flights to and from Brussels International were suspended until further notice. American Airlines Group Inc said it had canceled flight 751 from Brussels to Philadelphia and would accommodate its passengers when the airport reopens. The explosions did not occur where American's check-in operates, the company said, so all of its airport employees are safe and accounted for. Ireland's Ryanair canceled all flights to Zaventem but said those to and from Brussels' Charleroi Airport were running, though with some delays. Starwood Hotels & Resorts Inc said all of its hotels in Brussels were on lockdown, along with the rest of the city. Facebook Inc said it had activated its "safety check" feature that allows its users to check on friends who were in the area of the blasts. (Reporting by Sayantani Ghosh in Bengaluru; Editing by Ted Kerr and Lisa Von Ahn) Two explosions in the departure hall of Brussels Airport on Tuesday prompted other countries to tighten airport security and raised questions about how soon passengers should be screened when entering terminals. Fourteen people were killed at Zaventem airport and a bomb attack on the Brussels metro system killed 20 others, public broadcaster VRT said, forcing the city into lockdown. Belgium's federal prosecutor said one of the blasts at the airport, which serves over 23 million passengers a year, was probably caused by a suicide bomber, echoing a deadly attack in the arrival hall of Moscow's Domodedovo airport in 2011. Security is tight at European airports, with passengers and their bags undergoing checks for weapons and explosives before being allowed onto planes, but those checks typically take place only after check-in. "It strikes me as strange that only half of the airport is secure. Surely the whole airport should be secure, from the minute you arrive in the car park," Matthew Finn, managing director of independent aviation security consultants Augmentiq, told Reuters. Authorities responded to the attacks by stepping up the number of police on patrol at airports in London, Paris and Frankfurt, at borders and elsewhere, and at other transport hubs. Airlines diverted flights to nearby airports. In the United States, security was stepped up at airports in New York and New Jersey. The last major incident at a western European airport was in 2007, when two people tried to drive a jeep packed with propane canisters into the terminal building at Glasgow Airport in Soctland. Several airports stepped up security after that attack and altered the pick-up and drop-off zones, to prevent private cars getting too close to terminal buildings, but entrances have largely remained open for those on foot. A United Nations agency is due to review airport security following the downing of a Russian airliner in Egypt in October last year. CHECKPOINTS The relative openness of many airports in Europe contrasts with some in Africa, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, where travelers' documents and belongings are checked before they are even allowed to enter the airport building. One exception in Europe is Turkey, where passengers and bags are screened on entering the terminal and again after check-in, and Moscow also checks people at terminal entrances. "Two terrorists who enter the terminal area with explosive devices, this is undoubtedly a colossal failure," Pini Schiff, the former security chief at Tel Aviv's Ben-Gurion Airport and currently the CEO of the Israel Security Association, said in an interview with Israel Radio. In the Kenyan capital Nairobi, where authorities are on high alert for attacks by Somali-based al Shabaab militants, passengers have to get out of their cars, which are then searched, at a checkpoint a kilometer from the main terminal. In Nairobi and other airports such as Manila, passengers also have to present their passports and have their baggage X-rayed to gain entry to terminal buildings. "I find that checks in front of buildings, such as those at government building in the United States, would be 100 percent fine," said Ralf Leukers, a passenger at Frankfurt airport. "If you don't have anything to hide, then you should be happy to have your bags searched." But such checks could create upheaval at terminals and rely on security staff paying close attention. Augmentiq's Finn said governments should rethink airport security, and intelligence services should share more information. Modern technology that allows for discreet screening of passengers as they pass through gates or revolving doors should be more widely used, he said. "This is not unique to Brussels; this is a global phenomenon. We have got to effect the right kind of change, otherwise we will be scratching our heads over why the same questions are being posed and not being answered," he said. But adding pre-terminal screening and other measures at airports would be costly. "I don't see it happening anytime soon," said Daniel Wagner, CEO of Country Risk Solutions, a security consulting firm in Connecticut in the United States. "There's no sense of urgency and not enough money devoted to the problem." (Additional reporting by Suzannah Gonzales, Tim Hepher in Paris, Ori Lewis in Jerusalem, Sarah Young in London and Alwynn Scott in New York; Editing by Tim Hepher and Timothy Heritage) Explosions rocked Brussels' international airport and a subway station near European Union institutions on Tuesday in what authorities described as terrorist attacks, killing at least 27 people and injuring many more in horrific scenes of chaos. A suicide bomber committed the airport attack and authorities were looking into whether some attackers could be on the run, the Belgian federal prosecutor said at a news conference. The explosions come days after the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, one of the alleged Paris attackers who was captured in Brussels after a four-month manhunt. The first two explosions Tuesday morning hit the city's main airport near the check-in counters at about 8 a.m., filling the area with smoke and sending ceiling tiles crashing down. Witnesses described blood from the many injured spread across the floor and panic as people rushed to flee. After 9 a.m. local time, another explosion hit at Maelbeek metro station, very near the heart of the European quarter in Brussels, home to EU buildings. Officials said more than a dozen people were killed at the airport and that at least 15 were killed and 55 wounded at the station. Belgian Federal Prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said it was too early to give a precise number of victims, but some were gravely injured. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said it was "a black day" for Belgium "What we feared has happened to our country and citizens in the form of violent, indiscriminate attacks," he told reporters. "Our first thoughts are for the victims and their families and for the citizens still waiting for news about their close ones." Belgian officials immediately raised the terror alert across the country to its maximum level and shut the entire public transport system in Brussels and asked people to stay where they were. The Belgian government's national security council was to convene later Tuesday. A U.S. official said the attacks appear to be an attempt by Islamic State operatives to demonstrate agility and the ability to rapidly retaliate in the wake of Mr. Abdeslam's capture. Belgian officials warned over the weekend about the possibility of follow-on attacks in the wake of Mr. Abdeslam's arrest. The Nov. 13 Paris attacks put Brussels at the center of European concerns over Islamic radicalism. The assaults, which left 130 people dead, were partly perpetrated by Belgian nationals and plotted in Belgium, investigators have said. At least a dozen suspects, all originating from the Brussels region, have been arrested in relation to the attacks. On Monday, police asked for the public's help in finding a Syrian-trained Islamic State fighter who may have had a role in creating the explosives used in the Paris attacks. Alphonse Youla, who handles baggage security at the airport just outside the city in Zaventem, said he was in the departure hall when he heard someone yelling in Arabic before the blasts. Afterward, he helped carry the injured away from the scene, he said. "I saw people lying on the ground with a lot of blood who weren't moving anymore," he said. Samir Derrouich, who works in the airport, said the two explosions went off by the check-in desk for Brussels Airlines about 30 yards (30 meters) from where he was standing. He said there was one second between the two explosions. After he saw many injured, and blood and body parts on the ground. "It was apocalypse, " he said. At the metro station, witnesses described a large explosion. Outside the station, aid workers tended to the wounded. One metro worker displayed a jacket apparently ripped apart by the blast to police officers, suggesting the possibility of a suicide attack there. "Suddenly we heard one big explosion. All the lights went out," said Magali Szalay, who was on a metro train that had just left the station. Airlines said they were diverting inbound flights. Europe's air-traffic management organization Eurocontrol on Tuesday warned airlines that the airport was unavailable "until further notice." Police closed the access road leading to the airport as police and ambulances rushed to the scene. The airport evacuated the building and some travelers walked along the highway to leave the area. "Don't come to the airport--airport is being evacuated. Avoid the airport area. Flights have been canceled," the airport said. Travelers were escorted through the scene of carnage. Cheryl Miller, an American who lives in Brussels, had just landed on a flight from Newark and described chaos and panic. "The walls were shaking. There were pieces of the air ducts blown out," said Ms. Miller. "People were running for cover." Zak Mouzoun, who landed in a flight from Geneva at 7:50 a.m., said there was a small explosion and a big one. He hid in the bathroom as part of the ceiling collapsed on him. "When I came out there was a lot of blood everywhere," he said as he walked away from the airport on the highway, pulling his suitcase. Security was tightened across Europe, including at Germany's largest airport in Frankfurt, at U.K. transport hubs and at train stations and airports in France. French President Francois Hollande held an emergency meeting with the Prime Minister Manuel Valls and Interior Minister Bernard Cazeneuve in response to the situation in Brussels. Government officials in the U.K. and Italy also called emergency meetings to discuss the blasts. Robert Wall and Julian Barnes contributed to this article. Write to Natalia Drozdiak at natalia.drozdiak@wsj.com, Gabriele Steinhauser at gabriele.steinhauser@wsj.com and Matthias Verbergt at Matthias.Verbergt@wsj.com GM's Jeremy Salinger lets Super Cruise take the wheel. Source: GM. Let's be clear about one thing: General Motors is ahead of many carmakers in the driverless car space. Nearly every automaker has an autonomous driving game plan, but GM's has tried to take an aggressive approach.Navigant Research recently put GM in the leadership category for driverless cars, along with rivals Ford, BMW, Audi, and Daimler. The trouble is, the automakers aren't just competing against themselves. Alphabet's Google is clearly a leader in driverless car technology and strategy. The tech giant has already logged over 1 million self-driving miles, has been testing autonomous cars since 2009, and has created its own driverless car prototype that's currently cruising down California and Texas roads.General Motors is, well, still trying to get its semi-autonomous driving system, Super Cruise, up and running. The automaker announced back in January that it's delaying the release of Super Cruise until 2017 (previously set for this year). But why compare two very different companies? Detroit is not Silicon Valley, after all. Because whether GM likes it or not, Googleis effectively forcing the automotive industry further into the self-driving space -- and it's still unclear whether it will be able to keep up. GM in the passenger seatAt an event toward the end of last year, GM made it clear that it intends to not just compete, but lead, in the self-driving space. "No one has solved all the technical challenges or claimed outright leadership. We see this as a tremendous opportunity to lead," GM's product development chief, Mark Reuss, said. The company announced at the event that it would roll out a fleet of self-driving Chevrolet Volts (the company's gas-electric hybrid sedan) on its own campus this year, moving its employees around the grounds as it undergoes massive renovations. GM's also talked about launching driverless cars for a luxury apartment condo in New York City and its own car-sharing service. GM's CEO Mary Barra has thrown around words like "disruptor" when referring to the the company's position in the autonomous car space. But the problem is that even with all the company's current driverless car tech plans, and the upcoming release of its semi-autonomous Super Cruise feature, GM still doesn't come close to Google's pursuits. Image source: Google. Yes, there is a clear leaderDespite what GM wants to believe, there is a clear leader in the self-driving space. Google has more than six years of autonomous car research experience, has a total of 48 autonomous cars, and has spent an estimated $60 million on its autonomous efforts so far. While GM talks about carting its employees around the backroads of its campus, Google's actually out on the main roads of California, Nevada, Washington, and Texas smacking into municipal buses (you can't win 'em all). The point is that Google has real-world experience in self-driving autos. And the company is so confident in its technology that it wants to remove gas petals and steering wheels from future autonomous cars. Along for the rideGM's nowhere near out of the self-driving car race. In fact, the company's reps sat alongside Google when talking to the U.S. government about expanding self-driving car laws. But I don't think the automaker has any particular advantage in the space. GM may believe that building its own autos gives it the upper hand in the space, but that argument begins to break down when you look Tesla . Not only did Tesla jump into the automotive market just a few years ago (and now has the best-selling luxury sedan in the U.S.), but it's also aggressively pursuing its own self-driving technologies. The electric-car maker has proven a new, unknown, tech company can step into the automotive market and make electric cars even better better (and a heck of a lot more fashionable) than the automakers ever did. And the same could be true of driverless autos as well. Google has its sights set on driverless cars, and while I think it could take longer to reach a self-driving utopiathat some believe is right around the corner, the company is making autonomous cars a reality more than any other company. GM may be a leader among the carmakers, but I think it's clear that automakers are no longer in control of where their industry is headed. The article Can General Motors Compete in Driverless Cars? originally appeared on Fool.com. Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Chris Neiger has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Alphabet (A shares), Alphabet (C shares), Ford, and Tesla Motors. The Motley Fool recommends BMW and 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. InvenSense (NYSE: INVN), a maker of motion sensors for smartphones, tablets, smartwatches, and other devices, lost about 25% of its market value over the past 12 months due to slowing sales of mobile devices worldwide. Image source: Getty Images. That pressure caused InvenSense's revenue to fall43% annually last quarter, compared to a 20% decline in the previous quarter and 59% growth in the year ago quarter. The company's heavy dependence on Appleand Samsung, which respectively generated 40% and16% of its sales last year, also makes it a riskier play than more diversified suppliers. The company's cash position also plunged 44% sequentially to $23 million last quarter. That's why I previously declared that InvenSense was far too risky for most investors. If you're looking for better supply chain plays in the mobile market, STMicroelectronics (NYSE: STM) and Texas Instruments (NASDAQ: TXN) might be much safer long-term plays. STMicroelectronics STMicro makes a wide variety of semiconductors for connected cars, smart appliances, and various Internet of Things gadgets.In a devastating blow to InvenSense last year, Apple installed STMicro's motion sensors instead of InvenSense's into the Apple Watch. STMicro has two key advantages against InvenSense -- it's bigger, enabling it to leverage economies of scale against smaller suppliers, and it's better diversified.Last quarter, 42% of its revenues camefrom its automotive business, 33% came from microcontrollers and digital integrated circuits, and 22% came from the MEMS (micro-electrical mechanical systems) business which competes against InvenSense. Revenue rose year-over-year at its automotive segment, fueled by content share gains in connected cars, but fell at its other two businesses, due to softer demand for networking applications and mobile devices. But overall, STMicro's revenues fell just 3% last quarter, compared to a 5% decline in both the previous and prior year quarters. Analysts expect STMicro's revenue to stay flat this year, then rise 4% next year on stronger demand for automotive chips and higher demand from connected and mobile devices. By comparison, InvenSense's revenue is expected to fall 24% this year before possibly rebounding 14% next year. STMicro's motion sensors power the Apple Watch. Image source: Apple. STMicro's net income fell 34% last quarter, but it's expected to finish the year with 5% earnings growth and post an average of 49% annual earnings growth over the next five years. That gives it a very low 5-year PEG ratio of 0.8, which is lower than the "undervalued" threshold of 1. InvenSense's earnings are expected to fall 78% this year but possibly rebound to an average of 20% growth over the next five years, giving it a much pricier PEG ratio of 3.4. STMicro also pays a forward annual dividend yield of 3.1%, while InvenSense has never paid a dividend. Texas Instruments Like STMicro, Texas Instruments (TI) is a better diversified supply chain play than InvenSense. The company generates most of its revenue by selling analog and embedded chips for the industrial, automotive, personal electronics, communication equipment, and enterprise systems markets. Apple is one of Texas Instruments' top customers, but its orders onlyaccounted for 11% of its top line last year. TI's revenue rose1.2% annually to $3.27 billion last quarter. Analysts expect the company's sales growth to stay almost flat this year but rise 4% next year. TI stands out from the competition for two reasons -- its massive margins and its shareholder friendly practices. By using a lower-cost 300-millimeter analog manufacturing process, TI's gross margin hit 61.2% last quarter, up from 58.2% a year ago. By comparison, STMicro and InvenSense respectively had gross margins of 33.9% and 41% in their most recent quarters. Image source: Texas Instruments. Those beefy margins, along with buybacks, boosted its net earnings by 17% annually last quarter. Over the past 12 years, TI has reduced its share count by 42%, and raised its dividend every year during that period. It currently pays a forward yield of 2.2%, and has pledged to return 100% of itsfree cash flow to investors through buybacks and dividends. Analysts expect TI's earnings to rise 9% this year and grow at an average rate of 10% over the next five years. That gives it a PEG ratio of 2.3, which is higher than STMicro's PEG ratio but still lower than InvenSense's. The bottom line It's generally safer to invest in bigger and more diversified chipmakers like STMicro and Texas Instruments than smaller players like InvenSense, which are too exposed to single customers and lack the scale to remain competitive. STMicro and TI probably won't produce huge returns over the next year, but they also won't be hit as hard by news of weak sales of iPhones or other mobile devices. 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. Leo Sun has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Apple and InvenSense. The Motley Fool has the following options: long January 2018 $90 calls on Apple and short January 2018 $95 calls on 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. Image Source: Suncor Energy Many Canadian oil companies have been deeply affected by the downturn in oil prices because oil in that country often sells for a discount to global oil prices because of its lack of pipeline capacity. Despite those issues, Suncor Energy has actually thrived during the downturn. It has been able to generate robust cash flow, which it has used to bolster its position. As such, the case could be made that Suncor is the safest of the Canadian oil stocks. Cash is kingAs of the end of last year Suncor Energy boasted of a cash war chest totaling $4.05 billion, which was the second largest cash pile among the top five Canadian oil producers, and only a half billion behind the leader. It's a cash pile the company has used to strategically fund growth during the downturn. For example, last year the company paid $360 million to buy an additional 10% working interest in its Fort Hills oil sands project from Total , which is one of its joint venture partners in the project. In doing so it increased its stake in the project to 50.8% and agreed to take on the remaining capital funding requirements for that stake, which amounted to roughly $700 million in future capex. It's spending that French oil giant Total wanted to avoid because it's seeking to cut its spending outlays due to the impact of the oil market downturn on its own financial situation. Suncor Energy, however, saw a rare opportunity to acquire an additional interest in one of its major growth projects at a discounted price. In addition to having the financial capacity to make strategic acquisitions during the downturn, Suncor Energy has been able to fund growth projects like Fort Hills, which is expected to cost the company $2.25 billion this year alone. Overall, Suncor Energy plans to spend $6 billion to $6.5 billion this year on capex, with more than half of that investment geared toward growth projects. That's pretty remarkable because most of the industry can't even afford to spend what it would take to keep near-term production flat, let alone fund growth-focused investments. Cash flow is strongSuncor Energy actually doesn't need much of that cash pile to fund its 2016 capex budget because it continues to generate very solid cash flow despite much weaker oil prices. Last quarter, for example, the company generated $1.3 billion in cash flow from operations, which wasn't that far off from the $1.5 billion it generated in the year-ago quarter. The company was able to do that thanks to the strength of its refining assets as well as its ability to significantly reduce the operating costs of its oil sands assets. This has enabled the company to generate strong cash flow during the downturn, and for the full year the company generated enough cash flow to fully cover its capex budget with $139 million to spare. Its ability to generate free cash flow in this environment is a rarity. With that combination of free cash flow and its cash balance Suncor Energy has been able to continue to grow its dividend, invest in growth-focused capex, and make strategic acquisitions. On the acquisition front, not only did the company boost its stake in Fort Hills via the Total transaction, but it recently closed its all-stock acquisition of Canadian Oil Sands. In doing so, it was able to take advantage of that company's troubling financial situation after its credit rating was cut to junk because it was projected to generate negative cash flow during the downturn. Suncor Energy saw an opportunity to swoop in and acquire a company that would enable it to boost its stake in the Syncrude oil sands consortium to a much more meaningful position in hopes of turning around that struggling project. It's a bet that few others in the industry had the financial wherewithal to make. Investor takeawayWith a cash rich balance sheet and ability to generate solid cash flow, Suncor Energy is one of the safest oil stocks in Canada right now. This has enabled the company to thrive during the downturn because it can afford not only its dividend, but to invest in growth, both organic and acquired. Suffice it to say, Suncor Energy will likely emerge from this downturn as an even stronger company than the one that entered. The article How Safe Is Suncor Energy Inc. Stock? originally appeared on Fool.com. Matt DiLallo has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool recommends Total (ADR). 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 much of 2015, chic low-cost airlines JetBlue Airways and Virgin America were posting the best unit revenue performances in the U.S. airline industry. More recently, unit revenue has faltered at both carriers. As a result, their stocks have suffered. JetBlue stock has lost a quarter of its value in the past six months, while Virgin America stock has declined by 17%. By contrast, a broad index of airline stocks has risen fractionally during that time period. JetBlue and Virgin America Stock Performance, data by YCharts Fortunately, unit revenue is likely to recover soon for both JetBlue and Virgin America. That should drive better results for shareholders, too. Revenue comparisons will get easierThe first major driver of unit revenue improvements at JetBlue and Virgin America will be easier comparisons. In Q1 2015, total unit revenue increased 3% year over year at JetBlue and 2.7% at Virgin America. Against the backdrop of this growth a year ago, JetBlue expects to report a 7%-8% year over year decline in revenue per available seat mile for Q1. Virgin America is likely to report a more modest low-mid single-digit unit revenue decline. JetBlue expects to report a steep unit revenue decline this quarter. Photo: JetBlue Airways. By contrast, in Q4 2015, total unit revenue edged down 0.2% year over year at JetBlue and slumped 4.7% for Virgin America. Simply put, JetBlue and Virgin America posted significantly stronger unit revenue results in the early part of 2015 than they did later in the year. That will make it easier for each company to post unit revenue growth later in 2016. Competitive trends are improving on transcontinental routesA second key unit revenue growth driver could kick in as soon as Q2. Industry capacity on the transcontinental routes from New York to San Francisco and Los Angeles was on the rise for much of 2015. These routes are important for both JetBlue and Virgin America, especially the latter. However, United Continental decided to slash its transcon capacity as of October. It pulled out of the JFK Airport market entirely, which is significant because that is JetBlue's main base and Virgin America's most important New York-area airport. This reduction in competition has already started to improve pricing for transcon flights. But year-over-year capacity trends have actually been fairly stable in the past few months, as other airlines -- including JetBlue and Virgin America -- have "backfilled" the capacity cut by United. Virgin America will benefit from capacity declines on transcon routes at JFK. Photo: Virgin America However, starting next quarter, capacity is likely to be down on a year-over-year basis in the JFK-San Francisco and JFK-Los Angeles markets. This change in capacity trends bodes well for unit revenue improvements there. Self-help is important as wellOf course, JetBlue and Virgin America are doing more to bolster unit revenue than just waiting around for year-over-year comparisons and competitive capacity trends to get easier. For example, JetBlue launched a new rewards credit card earlier this month. The company expects this new card to boost its annual operating income by about $60 million compared to its previous credit card deal. JetBlue is also expanding its highly acclaimed Mint premium service to Boston starting later this week. The ramp-up of Mint service on the JFK-San Francisco and JFK-Los Angeles routes in the second half of 2014 led to better than 20% unit revenue growth on those routes in Q1 2015. Mint routes remain a small part of JetBlue's network, but they can thus have an outsized impact on companywide unit revenue. JetBlue's Mint premium service is debuting in Boston this week. Photo: JetBlue Airways Meanwhile, Virgin America has recently deployed new ancillary product bundles and new IT capabilities that should drive steady growth in ancillary revenue this year. Virgin America also started taking delivery of new aircraft capable of flying to Hawaii, which allowed it to begin serving that lucrative market in late 2015 (with more growth planned for 2016). More broadly, JetBlue and Virgin America are both shifting capacity around in different markets based on supply and demand trends. This is standard practice in the airline industry, but it's still an important tool for them to react to the fare pressure they have seen in some of their markets. Looking for steady improvementThe airline industry is notoriously volatile, but JetBlue and Virgin America both have some meaningful unit revenue tailwinds that will kick in over the next few quarters. Once they get unit revenue moving in the right direction, their share prices are likely to follow. The article JetBlue and Virgin America Shares Are Down, But Not for Long originally appeared on Fool.com. Adam Levine-Weinberg owns shares of JetBlue Airways, United Continental Holdings, and Virgin America, and is long January 2017 $17 calls on JetBlue Airways and long June 2016 $25 calls on Virgin America. The Motley Fool recommends Virgin 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. In yet another push to disrupt the way customers can use their smartphones, T-Mobile expanded its Bing On video initiative, which enables lower-quality video streaming without using a customer's high-speed data, to include Alphabet's YouTube. The move marks yet another aggressive feature for T-Mobile's Un-carrier campaign, which is aimed at convincing users to switch from other carriers to T-Mobile. Image source: Binge on. T-Mobile's Un-carrier campaign is, without question, aggressive. But is it actually working? Even more, is the aggressive campaign a reason for shareholders to hold on to the stock? YouTube meets T-Mobile Over the last several years, T-Mobile has been aggressively rolling out new features to attract new wireless subscribers to its network. It refers to itself in this initiative as the Un-carrier. One of the latest features to this campaign is the company's Binge On free video streaming, which was launched about four months ago. Binge On enables its Simple Choice subscribers to stream unlimited video from participating subscribers, including major streaming services Netflix, HBO Now, and -- as of last week -- YouTube, among others. But there's a caveat: The video typically streams at lower qualities than it would on an LTE network. Getting Alphabet's YouTube in on Binge On was a big win for the company. As the web's most popular video provider, unlimited YouTube streaming on T-Mobile's network makes for a compelling reason for some users to switch. In order to attract YouTube to its Binge On offering, T-Mobile agreed to let YouTube manage its own video stream quality for the program. For other providers, T-Mobile automatically manages the video quality itself, but other providers may follow in YouTube's footsteps. T-Mobile CEO John Legere asserts the program is a success. "The facts are clear -- Binge On is a runaway hit, and adding these services is just huge! Now T-Mobile customers can watch all of the videos they want from these platforms without even touching their high-speed data," he said. "Demand for mobile video is skyrocketing." Un-carrier is working There's no doubt T-Mobile's Un-carrier campaign is attracting new members to its network. Adding 2.1 million wireless customers in its most recent quarter and 8.3 million in 2015, T-Mobile is the fastest-growing wireless company in America. As T-Mobile's ongoing efforts to disrupt the wireless industry continue to prove their worth by attracting new customers, Legere's aggressive tactics definitely make the carrier a more attractive long-term holding. And Legere's consistent execution on the company's Un-Carrier campaign suggests there's likely more disruption ahead. Indeed, in the company's most recent quarter, Legere told investors he was as determined as ever to continue in this direction. "We set out to change this industry, we're well on our way and we won't stop," said Legere. The article T-Mobile US, Inc.'s Un-Carrier Just Got Better originally appeared on Fool.com. Suzanne Frey, an executive at Alphabet, is a member of The Motley Fool's board of directors. Daniel Sparks has no position in any stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool owns shares of and recommends Alphabet (A and C shares) and Netflix. 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. Travel stocks declined Tuesday in reaction to terrorist attacks at an airport and subway station in Brussels. The coordinated bombings in the Belgian capital reportedly killed at least 31 people and injured more than 100 others. Officials confirmed the attacks were acts of terrorism. Belgian authorities also said there is evidence the attacks were carried out by suicide bombers. Markets across Europe were trading lower, and U.S. equities also showed red ink. Major travel companies including airlines, hotels and cruise operators saw sharp declines. Delta Air Lines (NYSE:DAL) recovered slightly after dropping 3.8%. Diamond Resorts International (NYSE:DRII) was down 4.1%, and Wyndham Worldwide (NYSE:WYN) fell 2%. Carnival (NYSE:CCL), the worlds largest cruise-ship company, posted a 3.1% decline Tuesday morning. One United Continental (NYSE:UAL) flight bound for Brussels International was rerouted, and all of the carriers remaining Brussels-bound flights have been suspended. The safety of our customers and crew remains our top priority, and all of our employees are safe and accounted for at this time, United said in a statement. Ticker Security Last Change Change % UAL UNITED AIRLINES HOLDINGS INC. 40.44 +1.39 +3.56% DAL DELTA AIR LINES INC. 32.58 +0.43 +1.34% AAL AMERICAN AIRLINES GROUP INC. 13.71 +0.25 +1.86% CCL CARNIVAL CORP. 8.20 +0.20 +2.50% WYN n.a. n.a. n.a. n.a. MAR MARRIOTT INTERNATIONAL INC. 153.49 +5.97 +4.05% EXPE EXPEDIA GROUP INC. 97.27 +4.12 +4.42% American Airlines (NYSE:AAL) customers who were booked on a flight to Brussels on Tuesday or Wednesday can request a refund or reschedule their trip. American is taking care of employees and customers at Brussels Airport. At this time, all of our airport employees and crew members are safe and accounted for with no reported injuries, the company said. Delta said it will be actively working with customers with flights booked to, from or through Brussels to reaccommodate their travel plans. Law enforcement agencies are increasing security at travel hubs across the U.S. In Washington, D.C., the Metro Transit Police said there is no known, specific or credible threat to the capitals subway system, but it would conduct additional K9 sweeps and patrols as a precaution. The New York Police Department is adding to its visible presence in the subway and on the streets. Also in New York, the Port Authority Police Department said there will be more security personnel at the three major airports in the area, and high-visibility anti-terrorist patrols will be used at the World Trade Center and PATH train that runs between Manhattan and New Jersey. Police in major U.S. cities stepped up security on Tuesday after more than 30 people were killed in attacks on an airport and subway in Belgium, though officials said there was no evidence of specific threats to the United States. Uniformed officers, some in tactical gear, patrolled airports and transit hubs in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington as major airlines including Delta, United and American canceled and rerouted flights headed to Brussels. "While there's no known credible threat to (New York State) at this time, we're stepping up security at high-profile locations," said New York Governor Andrew Cuomo. In addition to the increased presence of New York City police officers, Cuomo activated National Guard troops to provide additional security at the city's two airports, as well as major railroad stations. "Public safety is paramount, and I want the people of this state to know that we are working with all local and federal partners, remaining vigilant and taking all necessary measures to keep New Yorkers safe," said Cuomo. More than 3,000 people were killed in the 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center. The Brussels attack came less than four months after a married couple gunned down 14 people in Sen Bernardino, California, in an attack inspired by Islamic State. A witness to Tuesday's attack at the Brussels airport said he heard shouts in Arabic shortly before two blasts ripped through a departure lounge. The attacks drew immediate response from the leading candidates in the race for the White House, with Republican front-runner Donald Trump repeating his call for tighter U.S. border security. Former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the Democrat front-runner, vowed that the attack would strengthen her drive to "defeat terrorism and radical jihadism." Delta Air Lines Inc, United Continental Holdings Inc and American Airlines Group Inc reported that they had canceled or rerouted flights as a result of the attack. (Reporting by Barbara Goldberg and Ian Simpson; Additional reporting by Suzannah Gonzales in Chicago; Writing by Scott Malone; Editing by Jeffrey Benkoe) IMAGE SOURCES: Mattress Firm Holding Corp. What:Shares of Mattress Firm Holding Corp. fell as much as 15.3% early Monday after the company released weaker-than-expected fiscal fourth-quarter earnings and a new CEO. So what:Quarterly revenue climbed 3.4% year over year, to $618.6 million, helped by new locations and comparable-store sales growth of 0.7%. Based on generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP), that translated to earnings per share of $0.37. On an adjusted (non-GAAP) basis, which excludes items like acquisition, asset impairment, and severance costs, earnings per share climbed 29% year over year, to $0.53. Adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization came in at $255 million. Analysts, on average, were more optimistic on both the top and bottom lines, with consensus estimates predicting revenue of $623.2 million, and adjusted earnings of $0.56 per share. Nonetheless, Mattress Firm CEO Steve Stagner insisted the company is "pleased" with its performance, which included a 90 basis expansion in adjusted EBITDA margin, and the company's 10th straight quarter of comparable-store sales growth. "Our Chicago business has turned market-level EBITDA positive," Stagner elaborated, "and our streamlined organizational structure is generating significant leverage. With the recently completed Sleepy's acquisition, we believe we are well positioned to realize meaningful synergies and leverage the benefits of national scale, driving continued growth, opportunities, and profitability over time." That said, Mattress Firm also announced Stagner will assume the role of executive chairman of the company, and chairman of the board, effective immediately. Stagner will be replaced as CEO by Ken Murphy, who joined Mattress Firm in 1998 and most recently served as president of the company. Murphy also spearheaded the company's current strategic framework, employee focused programs, and community-centric activities designed to resonate with customers on a local level. This transition, according to the company, is "part of a long-term succession plan for the organization and will allow for better division of responsibilities for the two executives." Now what:In the meantime, Mattress Firm anticipates reporting a GAAP loss per share of $0.32 to $0.25 in the current quarter, primarily due to dilution related to financing the Sleepy's acquisition and the fact Sleepy's should continue operated at roughly breakeven at the adjusted EBITDA level. On an adjusted basis in the first quarter, Mattress Firm expects to be between breakeven and a loss of $0.07 per share -- well below analysts' expectations for adjusted earnings of $0.43 per share. In the second and third quarters, however, Mattress Firm expects "meaningful" year-over-year growth in adjusted earnings, as Sleepy's is strongest in these quarters and given the realization of synergies and other strategic initiatives as the year progresses. As such, Mattress Firm anticipates full-year revenue of $3.95 billion to $4 billion, comparable-sales growth of 4% to 5.5%, adjusted EBITDA of $365 million to $370 million, GAAP EPS of $2 to $2.05, and adjusted earnings per share of $2.50 to $2.60. By comparison, analysts' consensus estimates called for lower full-year revenue of $3 billion, and higher earnings of $2.85 per share. In the end, it's no surprise the market is bidding Mattress Firm down on Tuesday given its quarterly miss, expected near-term losses, and uncertainty created by the CEO transition. However, I still think the company's long-term thesis remains intact. For shareholders willing to patiently hold as Mattress Firm realizes the fruits of its big acquisition and strategic initiatives, this might well be as solid a buying opportunity as anyone can realistically hope. The article Why Mattress Firm Holding Corp. Stock Plunged Today originally appeared on Fool.com. Steve Symington 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. With Brussels, Belgium becoming the latest city to fall victim to a terrorist attack, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump reacted to the attacks and explained how he would improve U.S. immigration policy. Well, its a shame, its a horrible thing whats going on in Brussels. It used to be one of the great places of the world, Trump said. So sad to see, and as Gerry can tell you, and as I can tell you Brussels was one of the great cities, one of the most beautiful cities of the world 20 years ago, it was amazing actually, and safe. Now it is a horror show, an absolute horror show and Im not just talking about today, Im saying you go to Brussels it feels like an armed camp and even then they cant do much about whats happened, Trump discussed with the FOX Business Networks Maria Bartiromo and The Wall Street Journals Gerry Baker on Mornings with Maria. The reason I am leading in the Republican side by a lot, by a tremendous margin, is the fact that Im very strong on borders. Ive been very, very strong from the beginning, Trump noted. I came out strong on trade and strong on borders, then we had the Paris attack and we started talking more in terms of military also, but we have to strengthen up our borders a lot, and with the southern border were going to build a wall, were going to absolutely build a wall. But people are coming into our country, we have no idea who they are. He also weighed in on the impact of the Syrian refugee crisis on the U.S. and Europe. The migration in Syria, President Obama is taking in thousands of people, distributing all over the United States, we dont even know how many and nobody knows where they are going and these are people who have no documentation, Trump exclaimed. If you look at whats going on in Paris, if you look at whats going on in, I mean Brussels we know, but look at whats going on in Germany, who would have ever thought this was happening. And Germany is doing very poorly, Ill tell ya I have friends that live in Germany and they want to leave, they want to get out. They say whats happening in the streets is from a different world. So, these leaders are not very good leaders, you know she [Angela Merkel] is somebody I had a great deal of respect for, I have lost all respect, he said. Trump also discussed the mounting controversy over Americas visa waiver program. Yeah, its time to stop that, absolutely Gerry, and frankly look, were having problems with the Muslims, and were having problems with Muslims coming into the country, we are seeing it, whether its California where they killed the 14 people, the two, a young married couple, I guess she possibly radicalized him, nobody knows, she came here on a fiance visa. Trump continued: In Paris they have the toughest gun laws in the world and you have a situation there where you have 130 people just killed for no reason whatsoever. Trump further explained how immigration policy can be reformed to make America better as well as improve national security. Im still for very strong borders, we have to close our borders, make them so strong. And let people into our country, but they have to be people that are going to be wonderful for our country. You know, we do lottery systems, I think we should do it based on merit, based on their background, have they been wonderful people where they were. Were taking people into our country we know nothing about it. The GOP frontrunner then raised specific concerns about the handling of Syrian refugees. And the most serious version of that is whats coming in from Syria. Were taking in people with zero documentation and I can tell you Ive talked to every law enforcements top people, there is no way you can tell anything about these people from documentation, because it is all gone. Yet its a strange thing, they have no documentation, no anything, yet theyre walking into a migration line, young men using cell phones. The latest coordinated terrorist attacks at the Brussels airport and subway system that left 31 dead and 270 wounded comes a few days after the top suspect in last years Paris attack was captured by authorities in Belgium. Salah Abdeslam, one of 10 men suspected of carrying out the November 2015 terrorist attacks in Paris, was hunted down for four months and recently interrogated by French prosecutors. But, did the information revealed from Abdeslam's interrogation at a news conference by French prosecutors send signals to other terrorist cells? This was a catastrophic mistake in which he [Abdeslam] used them to send these signals out there. They even revealed that he told them he wants to sue whoever is leaking about his interrogation, Fox News Senior Judicial Analyst Judge Andrew Napolitano said on the FOX Business Networks Varney & Co. Abdeslams lawyer, Sven Mary, suggested to Belgian public broadcasters RTBF Sunday that by revealing such information at a news conference, the French government was violating the secrecy of the investigation. Judge Napolitano stated that Abdeslam is being interrogated by both Belgian and French investigators, and the information is being revealed to the press as to what Abdeslam is telling them in real time. Its a dog whistle. Its a sub-rosa signal to his confederates in Brussels. Its time for you to get out, create a diversion for you to get out, Judge Napolitano told Stuart Varney. The judge went on to say he cant recall a time where prosecutors disclosed information from an interrogation in real time to the international press corps. next Image 1 of 2 prev Image 2 of 2 The youngest of Dale Fairchilds four children are missing all or most of their dominant hands, but their disabilities havent prevented them from practicing musical instruments a hobby that typically requires the use of two full hands. Fox 5 Atlanta reported that 8-year-old Danielle and 10-year-old Christopher Fairchild, who were adopted from China, use assistive technology to play musical instruments like the cello, and a viola adapted from a violin. They were inspired to learn from their older siblings. We've always taught them your beliefs create your reality, not your hand, Dale Fairchild, their mother, told the news station. [And that] theres nothing to stop you from doing anything." Brian Giavedoni, assistant manager of childrens orthotics and prosthetics at Childrens Healthcare of Atlanta, has helped the two Fairchild children overcome challenges brought on by their physical abnormalities to successfully play the instruments. "It's all about creativity, Giavedoni told Fox 5 Atlanta. If someone is that good at playing a musical instrument, that, in itself, is like another language. So, you've just allowed that child to move to the next level." Danielles older sister created a plastic device to help hold her bow for her viola, which has one string less than a violin. The plastic device has helped, but she still needs more flexibility. Christopher has an assistive device to play the cello, but he said it's "a little too heavy." Giavedoni plans to remake Danielles device by using a mold of her wrist and hand, and hell lighten Christophers device. "For us, it's being able to let these kids show other kids and adults that Don't look at me for what I don't have. Look at all the great things I can do, Dale Fairchild told the news station. A 4-year-old Massachusetts boy is being hailed as a hero after saving his mothers life when she suffered a massive seizure. When Matthew Fontaines mother, Ashley, who suffers from regular seizures, had a seizure so bad she fell and hit her head, the boy sprung into action, using his moms cellphone to call 911 and waiting on the line until help arrived, Fox25 reported. I remember thinking to myself, oh my God, this is it, this is the seizure thats going to kill me, Ashley, of Harwich, Massachusetts, told Fox25. Matthew had been taught how to help if he was alone and his mother, Ashley, suffered a seizure. Now, he wants to be a rescue worker when he grows up. They said Im a hero, Matthew told FOX25. New York state officials have announced a new plan aimed at preventing the transmission of the mosquito-borne Zika virus or limiting an outbreak if the virus were to arrive in the area. Part of the plan involves trapping and testing thousands of mosquitoes in New York for Zika. Specifically, researchers will monitor the Aedes group of mosquitoes, which are the major carriers of the virus in Central and South America, where the virus is currently spreading. Although scientists have not yet determined if the type of Aedes mosquito in New York can also transmit Zika, researchers plan to trap and test about 60,000 mosquitoes in the region per month, according to a statement from Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo. New York will also distribute free "Zika protection kits" to pregnant women in regions where the virus might spread, the statement said. These kits include insect repellent, condoms (to prevent the sexual transmission of the virus) and larvicide tablets (that can kill mosquito larvae) to treat standing water. Initially, the state will give 20,000 kits to health care providers for distribution to patients. "The state is taking aggressive action to reduce the risk of Zika transmission in New York," Cuomo said in the statement. "We have put in place a first-in-the-nation action plan that will work to eliminate Zika at its source, reduce potential transmissions and safeguard expectant mothers against this dangerous disease." [Here Are the US Cities at Highest Risk for Zika Transmission] Although the Zika virus usually causes either mild illness or no symptoms in adults, health officials are concerned about a strong link between infection with the virus during pregnancy and microcephalyin infants. Babies born withmicrocephaly may have an abnormally small head and cognitive impairments. The virus is transmitted primarily by mosquitoes, but there have been cases of sexual transmission as well, and the virus has been found in the semen of infected men. Transmission of Zika by mosquitoes has not yet occurred in the U.S. so far, all cases diagnosed in the country have been in people who either contracted the virus while traveling abroad or acquired it through sexual activity with a partner who was infected while traveling. However, health officials say that a limited spread of the virus is likely in the U.S., because the Aedes mosquito is common in some areas. A recent study suggested that New York City had a "moderate" risk for the local spread of Zika. New York's plan for Zika is laid out in six steps: Eliminating mosquito breeding sites by distributing 100,000 larvicide tablets throughout the region; Deploying mosquito traps in 1,000 locations per month; Distributing Zika protection kits to pregnant women; Deploying a "rapid response team" if Zika transmission by a mosquito is confirmed, which will inspect surrounding areas and develop an action plan; Requiring all local health departments to submit an action plan for Zika, if Zika is found mosquitoes in the area; and Launching a public awareness campaign, which includes a Zika information hotline. People can protect themselves against mosquito bites by wearing long-sleeved shirts and using mosquito repellent that is registered with the Environmental Protection Agency. Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Imagine if, in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor, FDR had taken to the radio and declared everything was under control. The Nov. 13 terrorist attack on Paris, paired with todays attacks in Brussels, is the European equivalent of back-to-back Pearl Harbors. Yet, the U.S. administration sits as sanguine as ever, arguing it has everything in hand. The U.S. ought to pay a lot more attention to Europe's troubles. That's not to say America and Europe face the same security threat. Yes, ISIS now has global reach. But, the face of ISIS looks different in different parts of the globe. Europe is a hotbed of homegrown extremist communities. It also has established underground railroads transporting ISIS fighters to the Middle East and back. European terror cells communicate with each other all the time. In contrast, the threat in the U.S. is much more diffuse. Terrorist travel in and out of the country, while not impossible, is certainly more problematic than in Europe, for example. That said, the terrorist networks of today have shown remarkable resilience and the capacity to adapt and innovate. The reality is that the face of global terrorism is rapidly changing, and there are real questions over whether Washington is keeping up with the threat. Rather than await the next wake-up callin the form of a big, smoking hole in the groundWashington should move quickly to assemble a next-generation 9/11 Commission to reevaluate the threat in a sober, bipartisan manner. Unfortunately, the odds of this administration calling for such a review are small. It has shown great reluctance in fighting the long war and little ability to change its assumptions about our foes. The prospects that it would entertain dissenting viewsmuch less make major, proactive adjustments in in its counterterrorism policiesare about as likely as a Kardashian ducking a red carpet walk. On the other hand, a bipartisan review by knowledgeable, responsible experts could serve the next president well, helping him or her to understand where we are and where we need to go to keep America safe from the constantly morphing terrorist threat. Congress could give our next presidentand the American peoplea huge advantage by establishing a new review commission now. Seven consolidated cases, representing 37 distinct petitioners, will be heard in the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday in the case of Zubik vs. Burwell, which challenges the same mandate which Hobby Lobby successfully challenged, namely, the requirement that insurance policies cover abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives, sterilization and related counseling. The difference is that in this case, the petitioners -- myself among them -- are not businesses, but rather religious non-profits. Along with objecting to the mandate itself, we petitioners are objecting to the regulatory mechanism, or "accommodation," which the government claims allows us to "opt-out" of the mandate. We are claiming that the "accommodation" itself makes us complicit in the very coverage from which it claims to release us, and substantially burdens our exercise of religion in a way that fails to meet the strict test imposed on the government by the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. The first of the 37 petitioners to challenge the mandate in court was Priests for Life, the nation's largest Catholic ministry focused on ending abortion. Priests for Life vs. HHS is particularly well-suited to challenge this mandate, because the requirement to provide abortion-inducing drugs contradicts not only our religious faith but is a direct, head-on collision with our mission and raison d'etre, which is to end the practice of abortion. One of the petitioners in our Priests for Life case is Alveda King, niece of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. She heads up our African-American outreach. Among the many key points to understand about the mandate and our objection to it are the following. First, this mandate does not come from our elected lawmakers in Congress, who did not include in the Affordable Care Act any requirement that abortion-inducing drugs, contraceptives, or sterilization be offered in health insurance plans. Instead, it spoke of the duty to cover 'preventive services' in terms of preventing disease, not pregnancy. It remains unclear to us, moreover, how a regulatory agency can trump Congress, which did not exempt the Affordable Care Act from the requirements of the Religious Freedom Restoration Act. Second, in disputes like this, "religious freedom" is sometimes construed in such a way as to refer just to what takes place in Church on Sunday. But the religious freedom we are defending in court this week is not just about how we conduct worship, but how we conduct our business. The "exercise of religion" which both the Constitution and the Religious Freedom Restoration Act protect refers to anything people do or refuse to do for religious reasons, in any aspect of their lives. In this case, the "free exercise of religion" we seek to defend is our right to offer health insurance to our employees in accordance with the demands of our faith, and therefore free of any coverage of abortion or contraception. Third, some of our opponents accuse us of trying to impose our beliefs upon our employees. First of all, the employees of Priests for Life are unanimously in support of our lawsuit, and even if they were to seek these 'services' that we find objectionable, they would not want us, their employers, to be forced to violate our religious beliefs. And that is the point. The lawsuit is not aimed at preventing any action by our employees; it is aimed at preventing actions by the government that force us to violate our faith. Fourth, a key argument of the government is that signing one of the two forms offered to us for the "accommodation" does not constitute complicity in the wrongdoing we seek to avoid. This is perhaps the most fatal flaw that the government, and some of the lower courts, have made, and it reveals a stunning lack of appreciation for religious liberty: the government is telling us our religious beliefs are wrong. First of all, in the words of the Supreme Court, Repeatedly and in many different contexts, we have warned that courts must not presume to determine . . . the plausibility of a religious claim (Employment Div., Dept of Human Res. of Oregon v. Smith, 494 U.S. 872, 887 (1990)). The believer himself is the final and only arbiter of the validity of his beliefs; the government is charged only with ascertaining the sincerity of the believer -- which the government does not contested in this case -- and whether substantial pressure is being put on the believer to act contrary to those beliefs. But the complicity in which the "accommodation" involves us is evident when we consider that under the accommodation, the same objectionable coverage is provided to our own employees through our own insurance plan offered by our own organization, at our own authorization and only as long as we maintain the relationship with both the insurance company and the employee. How, then, are we not involved?" Finally, we are objecting in this case to the fact that the government, in relation to this mandate, irrationally divides believers into two categories, one of which is exempt from the mandate and the other of which is obligated by it. The way it distinguishes these two groups has nothing to do with religion, but rather with the classifications of the religious organizations within the tax code. So, for instance, parish churches are exempt, but Priests for Life, who sends priests into those parishes, is not. Catholic Charities of the Diocese of Erie is exempt because it is part of the corporate structure of that diocese. Catholic Charities of Pittsburgh, however, is not exempt, because it is incorporated separately from that diocese. Yet the beliefs, the work, and the objections to the mandate of both groups are the same. Congress has specified that an organization is associated with a church . . . if it shares common religious bonds and convictions with that church. 26 U.S.C. 414(e)(3)(D). This inclusive definition would include us and the other petitioners. We are confident about the outcome of this case, because it strikes so deeply at a foundational principle of American life. Religious freedom belongs to all Americans, and the role of government is neither to impose nor to restrict belief, but simply to protect it. I was noshing on a juicy cheeseburger on my lunch break the other day when I came across a fascinating story in the Washington Post written by Eugene Volokh. The story involves a New Jersey sixth-grader who ran afoul of the states Anti-Bullying Bill of Rights Act after he poked fun at a vegetarian classmate. (For you folks on the professional barbecue circuit, a vegetarian is someone who abstains from pork butts.) Click here to join Todds American Dispatch a must-read for Conservatives! Vegetarians are idiots, the youngster declared. Its not good not to eat meat. The 11-year-old, identified in court documents as C.C., went on to tell K.S. (the vegetarian) that he should eat meat because hed be smarter and have bigger brains. The vegetarian child reported the incident to officials at Lower Middle School in Montgomery Township. At that point, the schools anti-bullying specialist launched an investigation to determine if the meat-lover had committed an act of harassment, intimidation or bullying. By the way Montgomery Township employs ten anti-bullying specialists. Ten. The school districts investigation determined the youngsters anti-vegetarian comments were reasonably perceived as being motivated by a distinguishing characteristic between the two boys, namely vegetarianism, which substantially interfered with the rights of K.S. and had the effect of insulting or demeaning him. Instead of being forced to eat tofu or fermented soy, the child was slapped with five lunch time detentions. Volokh, who also teaches free speech law at UCLA School of Law, weighed in calling the punishment modest. Once the law calls such speech harassment, intimidation or bullying in one area, its easy for these labels to be applied in other areas as well, especially because the labels are so ill-defined and potentially so broad, he wrote. The 2014 vegetarian smack down landed in the lap of an administrative judge after the local board of education affirmed the schools findings. On March 7, an administrative judge also upheld the local schools handling of the matter. This is what our nations public school system looks like, folks. Are students no longer allowed to opine on the virtues of pork chops or chicken-fried steak? Are those who dine on butter beans and rutabagas so feeble they cant handle some good-natured ribbing? And why does a school district need to employ 10 anti-bullying specialists? Do unkind comments made by an 11-year-old really rise to the level of an official investigation? I will concede that vegetarians are not idiots. Perhaps unfortunate would be a better description. But based on my reading of the events in New Jersey the only idiots are the townships anti-bullying specialists. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump on Monday pledged his firm support for Israel -- vowing that if elected the country would no longer be treated like a second-class citizen and calling Democratic rival Hillary Clinton a total disaster for Americas closest Middle East ally. When I become president, the days of treating Israel as a second-class citizen are over, Trump said in his speech before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the countrys most influential pro-Israel group. Hillary Clinton and President Obama have treated Israel very, very badly. The front-running Trumps speech followed one by Clinton, Obama's onetime secretary of state, in which she challenged Trumps commitment to the U.S.-Israel alliance, particularly his recent call to be neutral in peace talks involving Israel. We need steady hands -- not a president who says hes neutral on Monday, pro-Israel on Tuesday and who knows what on Wednesday, because everythings negotiable, the Democratic front-runner said. Israels security is non-negotiable. Trump said in February that he'd be "sort of a neutral guy" on peace talks between Israel and Palestinians. But on Monday, he pledged his full support. Im a newcomer to politics but not in backing the Jewish state, he said. Like many Republicans, Trump bashed Obamas recent deal with Israel's rival Iran, in which the rogue Middle East nation agreed to curtail its development of a nuclear weapon in exchange for the lifting of billions in economic sanctions. My number one priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran, Trump said to applause. Its a bad deal. In a largely measured speech, Trump also argued that Iran is a problem across the Middle East, supplying weapons to an array of terror-related groups including Hezbollah, which he intends to eliminate. We will totally dismantle Irans global terror network, Trump said. Believe me. A planned walkout by some rabbis during Trumps speech did not appear to happen. Trump also said he would move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people. He drew boos last year from the Republican Jewish Coalition when he refused to take a stance on the embassy location. Josh Block, a former AIPAC official who now heads The Israel Project, said before Trumps speech that Trump has said a lot of things about Israel over the years -- most of it favorable, but some of it more ambiguous." And he suggested that Trumps speech would be a good opportunity for him to address the ambiguity before a serious foreign policy audience." Fellow GOP presidential candidates Ohio Gov. John Kasich and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz also spoke at the conference, delivering similar remarks in which they pledged their support for Israel, criticized the Iran nuclear deal and vowed to stop terrorism across the Middle East. The only 2016 White House hopeful who did not attend the event was Democratic candidate Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who remained on the campaign trail. Like his fellow presidential candidates, Kasich tried to make a personal connection with the thousands in attendance, recalling a trip to Israel during the holiday season in which he called home to his mother. I remain unwavering in my support for the Jewish state and the partnership between the United States and Israel, he said. Kaisch said his support for Israel has been a constant during his 30 years as a lawmaker. And he promised, if elected, to defeat terror groups including the Taliban, Al Qaeda and the Islamic State. Kasich says he would like to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem but that its not a priority. He also said he would suspend the nuclear deal because Iran has already invalidated it with recent ballistic missile tests. AIPAC bills itself as nonpartisan and has never endorsed a candidate. Yet the organization has delved into highly partisan political debates over issues of interest to Israel, most recently and notably the nuclear deal, which it vehemently opposed. Clinton and Sanders support the deal. Cruz said he would move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, a perennial Republican campaign promise. America will stand with Israel and defeat terror, he added. We need a president who will stand with Israel. Clinton, as secretary of state, oversaw the Obama administration's first attempt to broker an Israeli-Palestinian peace deal. Her stance against Jewish settlements on land claimed by the Palestinians has been criticized by some in the pro-Israel community, but she has been received warmly by pro-Israel groups in the past. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton will look to build their already-robust delegate leads in Western contests Tuesday night across three states -- with the marquee battle expected to be between GOP rivals Trump and Ted Cruz in delegate-rich Arizona. The Arizona GOP primary looks custom-made for a Trump victory. The state has long dealt with illegal immigration problems, and the Republican front-runner's central campaign promise is to build a wall across Arizona and the entire southern U.S. border. Trump also has the backing of former Arizona GOP Gov. Jan Brewer and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, two of the most outspoken voices on illegal immigration. Yet even if Trump wins, Cruz appears poised to do well in Utah, which also votes Tuesday. Those two states -- plus Idaho -- are holding Democratic contests as well, as Bernie Sanders struggles against the odds to close his widening delegate deficit with Clinton. The contests are being held in the shadow of the latest deadly terror attack, in Brussels, and it's unclear whether that might affect voters' choices. For Cruz, splitting the two GOP contests may be the best outcome, though Trump stands to build his delegate lead all the same if he can hold Arizona. The GOP primary there offers 58 delegates to the winner; only eight remaining state Republican races have more. And Arizona's contest is the largest remaining winner-take-all race on the Republican map. Trump leads Cruz in the delegate count 681-425. Regardless of Tuesday nights outcomes, Trump still would have to grind through the latter part of the primary season to reach 1,237 delegates and secure the nomination. The Cruz campaign has remained remarkably resilient, now in the final three from the original GOP field of 17. He has so far won a total seven primaries and caucuses, compared with 19 for Trump. However, he faces long odds toward winning the nomination. I don't see any way for Cruz to pull out a win in Arizona. A state like Arizona has been Trump's to lose all along, Joe Desilets, a Republican strategist and managing partner at the firm 21st&Main, said Tuesday, citing Trumps key endorsements and his hardline stance on immigration. GOP candidate Ohio Gov. John Kasich is in last place with 143 delegates. Cruz is expected to do better in the Republican Caucus in Utah, a contest in which Mormons are a large voting bloc and where fellow Mormon and outspoken Trump critic Mitt Romney, the 2012 GOP presidential nominee, remains influential. Trump lost to Cruz in Mormon-heavy Idaho earlier this month. Cruz winning an outright majority in Utah would be a huge blow to Trump going forward, Desilets also said. Cruz is going to continue to play well in the Mountain West to keep Trump from outright winning the nomination on the first ballot at the GOPs convention in July. Forty delegates are at stake in Utah for the Republicans. In the aftermath of the Brussels terror-bombings Tuesday morning, for which the Islamic State has taken responsibility, Trump and Cruz flexed their well-exercised, national security muscle. Trump called for end to the U.S. Visa Waiver Program and told Fox News, Ive been talking about this for a long time. Trump called for a temporary ban on Muslims into the U.S. after the Paris attacks in November and the San Bernardino attack the following month. Cruz went more directly at President Obama and his immigration policies, including his plan to allow tens of thousands of Syrian refugees into the United States. The time for the presidents political correctness has passed, Cruz said. We absolutely have to revisit our immigration policy across the board to prevent Islamic terrorists from coming in. However, its unclear what impact the bombing that killed at least 30 people and the candidates responses might have on undecided voters. Utah also is holding a Democratic caucus for front-runner Hillary Clinton and rival Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in which 33 delegates are at stake. In Arizona, the Democrats are competing for 75 delegates. The others races Tuesday are the American Samoa Republican Caucus and the Idaho Democratic Caucus. Sanders will need to do well in Arizona, after getting swept in five March 15 contests and trailing in the delegate race 1,630 to 870, with 2,383 needed to win the party nomination. Clinton leads Sanders 53-23 percent in Arizona, according to the RealClearPolitics poll average. But Sanders aides say internal polling shows a tighter race. Sander has invested a lot of time in Arizona including a campaign stop this weekend to the U.S.-Mexico border. And he was the only 2016 presidential candidate to skip speaking Monday at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference in Washington to stay on the campaign trail. But the big losses last week have dimmed hopes in Arizona. "I think he needed a lot of momentum heading into the last week of voting here, D.J. Quinlan, a Democratic strategist and former executive director of the state Democratic Party, told Politico. Hillary's sweep definitely took away any momentum they had." **Want FOX News First in your inbox every day? Sign up here.** Buzz Cut: Arizona, Utah split reveals depth of GOP divide Trump looks to calm conservatives with Supreme Court shortlist Bernie faces sunset out west What President Clinton meant to say Youre hired ARIZONA, UTAH SPLIT REVEALS DEPTH OF GOP DIVIDE You could hardly have a better microcosm of the remaking or perhaps unmaking of the Republican Party than todays contests in Utah and Arizona. Frontrunner Donald Trump is expected to crush his last credible rival for the Republican nomination, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, in Arizona while Cruz is expected to wallop Trump in Utah. The difference is reflective of a deepening divide inside the Republican Party between conservatives and populists, the religious right and Trumps secular supporters and, most of all, on the primacy of the issue of immigration. If you want to understand the chasm between the two, even a cursory look at the voters in Utah and Arizona tells the tale. Arizona, which ranks in the bottom third of states when it comes to adults with high school diplomas and has an average household income well below the national average, has been ravaged by the ill effects of illegal immigration and the incapacity of the system to deal with even legal immigration. High unemployment, crime and stagnant economic growth have left the state in tough times and ethnic tensions have been pronounced. In short, this is the state where voters have long been waiting for a candidate like Trump. Trumps only weakness is that the primary is only open to Republican voters, meaning his stalwart Democratic supporters wont be able to come out for him without actually switching parties. And within the GOP itself there are deep strains of traditional conservatism. After all, Sen. John McCain is expected to win his fifth Republican nomination this summer. Goldwater country is hardly the place where one would have previously expected Trumpism to triumph. But with the states hard times and the massive scale of immigration disruption, the states Republicans look ready to go for the personification of the nuclear option. Utah is a very different place. The Beehive State is one of Americas greatest success stories of the past generation. It has one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country, has among the highest median household incomes and ranks in the top 10 for adults with high-school diplomas. Its also a fast-growing state with the nations youngest population on average. Utah also happens to be one of the most conservative states in the country. It was Obama's worst state in 2012, with the president getting less than a quarter of the vote. Utah has an all-Republican congressional delegation and hasnt elected a Democratic governor since 1980. This stalwart Republicanism can be attributed to the fact that about 60 percent of the state is Mormon. The traditional Republican stances on being pro-business and socially conservative have dovetailed well with the teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. And as we have seen around the country, many self-described evangelical Christians support Trump, but the GOP frontrunner actually fares poorly among those voters who most faithfully attend worship services. But theres more at work here than just Mormonism. While Arizona has all the hallmarks of Trumps coalition struggling, downscale white voters living in a state of immigration chaos and ethnic tension Utah has all the marks of the other GOP. It is prosperous, growing, conservative and without any recent history of ethnic strife (the state is 91 percent white). That adds up to what could be a searing rebuke of Trump. This divide between two neighboring states highlights the depth of the divide inside the GOP and the kind of conflict we expect to see play out every day between here and the Republican National Convention. [Watch Fox: Bret Baier and the AEHQ team brings you the latest as the results roll in tonight.] ARIZONA --58 total delegates --Winner-take-all --Closed primary --510,258 total ballots cast in 2012 --Mitt Romney, 47 percent; Rick Santorum, 27 percent; Newt Gingrich, 16 percent; Ron Paul, 9 percent --Polls close at 10 p.m. ET UTAH --40 delegates --If one candidate receives more than 50 percent of the vote he receives all the delegates, otherwise proportional with a 15 percent threshold --Closed caucus --242,272 total ballots cast in 2012 (primary not a caucus) --Mitt Romney, 93 percent; Ron Paul 5 percent (voted June 26, 2012) --Caucus convenes at 9 p.m. ET Trump looks to calm conservatives with Supreme Court shortlist - Daily Caller: Donald Trump announced Monday that he plans to publicly release a list of 7 to 10 conservative judges that meet the highest standards that he would appoint to the Supreme Court if elected president. Im going to submit a list of justices, potential justices of the United States Supreme Court, that I will appoint from the list, Trump said. I wont go beyond the list, and Im going to let people know. Because some people say maybe Ill appoint a liberal judge. Im not appointing a liberal judge. Cruz plays convention strategy - WSJ: Sen. Ted Cruzs campaign has been operating an under-the-radar effort to prepare for a contested Republican convention this summer, and those moves appear to be bearing fruit in places such as this Atlanta exurb. Though front-runner Donald Trump carried Georgias Coweta County by 12 percentage points three weeks ago, it was Cruz supporters who dominated an early stage of the arcane process of choosing the people who will serve as delegates at the Republican National Convention. The goal: If Mr. Trump doesnt win on the first ballotfreeing most delegates from voting for the candidate who won their states primary or caucusCruz supporters would dominate the convention, paving the way for the Texas senator to win the nomination on a later vote. [GOP delegate count: Trump 680; Cruz 424; Kasich 143 (1,237 needed to win)] WITH YOUR SECOND CUP OF COFFEE Parrots are known for being intelligent animals, but new research shows their mimicking ability is far from their only unique trait. NYT: Dr. [Irene] Pepperberg and her collaborators have shown that African grey parrots have exceptional number skills: Alex [a parrot they studied] could deduce the proper order of numbers up to 8, add three small numbers together and even had a zerolike concept skills equivalent to those of a four-and-a-half-year-old child, Dr. Pepperberg said. Dr. [Alice] Auersperg and her co-workers have found that Goffins cockatoos are more geared toward solving technical tasks. Alternately using their bills and feet, the birds can systematically make their way through a lock with five different complex mechanisms on it It took [one cockatoo] 20 minutes to make his first tool, Dr. Auersperg said. After that, he could do it in less than five minutes. Got a TIP from the RIGHT or the LEFT? Email FoxNewsFirst@FOXNEWS.COM POLL CHECK Real Clear Politics Averages National GOP nomination: Trump 40 percent; Cruz 27.4 percent; Kasich 18.6 percent National Dem nomination: Clinton 50.8 percent; Sanders 43.8 percent General Election: Clinton vs. Trump: Clinton +9.8 points Generic Congressional Vote: Democrats +1 BERNIE FACES SUNSET OUT WEST Politico: This was supposed to be the beginning of Bernie Sanders comeback. But if the Vermont senator fails to win the big prize Tuesday Arizona, where polls show him facing a double-digit deficit his expected string of victories in the caucus states that follow wont make a dent in Hillary Clintons daunting delegate lead, or erase the impression that his campaign cant win in states with diverse Democratic electorates. Still, after losing all five March 15 contests, the primary calendar is suddenly looking better for Sanders. Two of the three states voting Tuesday are in his wheelhouse Idaho and Utah, both largely white states holding caucuses. Then, on Saturday, come three more Western caucus states where the Vermont senator could run the table. Hillarys coalition stays strong - CBS News: Hillary Clinton now leads Bernie Sanders by five points nationally, 50 percent to 45 percent, ahead by slightly less than last month [in a new CBS/NYT poll]. Clinton continues to lead among women and has a sizable lead among voters over age 45. She also leads among Democrats and non-white voters. As he has in the voting contests this year, Sanders gets strong support from younger voters and independents. But Sanders has made inroads since last month among some groups in which Clinton dominates: women and Democrats. While he still loses to Clinton among both, his support among women and Democrats has risen 8 points since February. The race is close among white voters, as it was last month. What President Clinton meant to say - Fox News: Former President Bill Clinton slammed what he called the awful legacy of the last eight years during a campaign appearance for his wife, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, in Washington state Monday. Clinton made the remarks at an event in Spokane ahead of Saturdays Washington state Democratic caucuses. If you believe weve finally come to the point where we can put the awful legacy of the last eight years behind us, Clinton said, and the seven years before that when we were practicing trickle-down economics and no regulation in Washington, which is what caused the crash, then you should vote for her. [A] Clinton spokesman told USA Today that the former president was referring to Republicans in Congress with his awful legacy remark. Bernie knocks Israel in speech meant for AIPAC - USA Today: Sen. Bernie Sanders ripped the Israeli government for its recent seizure of land in the West Bank during a speech Monday intended for the influential American Israel Public Affairs Committee conference. The Vermont independent, the only presidential candidate who did not speak at AIPACs conference Monday, said during a campaign stop in Salt Lake City, Utah, that friends must be honest and truthful about differences they may have, and the U.S. must be a friend to not only Israel, but to the Palestinians, as well. [Dem delegate count: Clinton 1630; Sanders 870 (2,383 needed to win)] YOURE HIRED AP: A job interview was in progress when a thief grabbed cash from the till at a fast food restaurant. The manager conducting the interview then blocked the door, and the applicant grabbed the thiefs arms. Eighteen-year-old Devin Washington got the robber and the job at a Popeyes Famous Fried Chicken restaurant in eastern New OrleansManager Danyanna Metoyer said the robber asked the cashier to change a dollar Saturday afternoon, and just reached over the counter and stuck his hand in the change drawer Metoyer said she already had decided to hire Washington, but hadnt had a chance to tell him when the theft occurred. She said they told him afterward, Youre hired. You earned it. Chris Stirewalt is digital politics editor for Fox News. Want FOX News First in your inbox every day? Sign up here. Former President Bill Clinton slammed what he called the "awful legacy of the last eight years" during a campaign appearance for his wife, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, in Washington state Monday. Clinton made the remarks at an event in Spokane ahead of Saturday's Washington state Democratic caucuses. "If you believe weve finally come to the point where we can put the awful legacy of the last eight years behind us," Clinton said, "and the seven years before that when we were practicing trickle-down economics and no regulation in Washington, which is what caused the crash, then you should vote for her." The remarks appeared to be a shot at President Barack Obama, in whose administration Hillary Clinton served as secretary of state and whose policies she has defended in her primary campaign against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Republicans quickly seized on the statement, posting a video of the remarks to YouTube. However, a Clinton spokesman told USA Today that the former president was referring to Republicans in Congress with his "awful legacy" remark. "After President Obama was elected, Republicans made it their number one goal to block him at every turn," spokesman Angel Urena said. "That unprecedented obstruction these last eight years is their legacy, and the American people should reject it by electing Hillary Clinton to build on President Obama's success so we can all grow and succeed together." Hillary Clinton has a lead of more than 300 delegates over Sanders in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination from primaries and caucuses following a sweep of five states March 15. Alaska and Hawaii also hold Democratic caucuses on Saturday, but Washington has the most delegates ultimately at stake with 101. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Click for more from USA Today. Hundreds of illegal immigrants from terror hotspots are using what critics describe as loopholes in U.S. immigration policy to try to remain in the country indefinitely, according to data obtained by Congress. Taking a page from the playbook used by Central American women and children to gain U.S. entry, hundreds of immigrants from Egypt, Somalia, Pakistan, Iran and Syria caught entering the U.S. last year made asylum claims to avoid deportation and, in doing so, asserted they had a credible fear of persecution. This phrase is important because it allows them to be released and work in the U.S. Prior to 2009, the U.S. held in custody many asylum seekers entering the U.S. illegally until their cases were resolved in court -- but an Obama administration policy change allowed those fearing persecution to be released. The finding that asylum seekers from turbulent Middle Eastern and African countries are now using this phrase to gain entry and remain on U.S. soil has raised security concerns on Capitol Hill. "These numbers illustrate vulnerabilities throughout our immigration system," Rep. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., said Tuesday. "Dangerous criminals and potential terrorists are gaming the system without consequence. The Obama administration is compromising our national security and safety for its political agenda." DeSantis, chairman of the House Subcommittee on National Security, is set to hold a hearing Wednesday on the potential threat posed by these individuals in light of the Paris and Brussels attacks. His subcommittee obtained the findings on the methods being using to remain in the U.S. Witnesses set to appear at the hearing Wednesday are Ronald Vitiello, acting chief of the U.S. Border Patrol; and Brandon Judd, president of the National Border Patrol Council. Stats obtained by the subcommittee from October 2014 to September 2015 show that the bulk of the credible fear claims still are coming from Central American and Mexican immigrants. But 80 were from Syrian nationals, 191 were from Pakistani nationals, and 776 were from Somalian nationals. "They are coming through the backdoor," Judd said. "Do I believe they have a credible fear? In a small percentage, maybe. But the vast majority we arrest are telling our agents that they are coming because they know they will be released. That's why they are coming." Judd said illegal immigrants have found a second loophole as well. By claiming they arrived in the U.S. before 2014, immigrants are able to avoid detention and deportation. Here's why: In January 2014, President Obama announced his priorities program, which ordered agents to worry chiefly about criminals, national security risks and illegal immigrants who came into the U.S. after that date. Judd claims supervisors at the Mexican and Canadian borders have told agents not to bother turning other immigrants over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement since "they won't be deported anyway." "President Obama said we need to take these people out of the shadows. The fact is we took them out, and now we are releasing them right back into the shadows. What was the point? he said. The court system is so backlogged, we're told they are never going to see a judge anyway. So just let them go." In the past, illegal immigrants from outside Mexico were subject to expedited removal. The process allowed agents to deport non-citizens without going through a formal and lengthy removal proceeding before an immigration judge. Now, however, Judd said anyone who claims they've been living in the U.S. continuously from prior to 2014 is not even being turned over to ICE and given a Notice to Appear in court. Fox News confirmed the practice with sources in two border sectors. "At least a NTA required them to show up in court. What we have now is amnesty through policy," Judd said. "We are flat-out letting them go." Requests for comment from the Department of Homeland Security were not returned. President Obama said Tuesday the United States stands in solidarity with the people of Belgium and will do whatever is necessary to bring the attackers behind the Brussels bombings to justice. We can and we must defeat those who threaten the safety and security of the people in the world, Obama said before delivering from Havana a prepared televised address to the Cuban people. He added that the attacks are another reminder that the world must unite against the scourge of terrorism. House Speaker Paul Ryan criticized Obamas trip to Cuba in the wake of the attacks, calling the trip ironic and a waste of time. Obama was briefed Tuesday morning on the explosions at the Brussels airport and subway system that claimed the lives of 31 people and left more than 180 injured. The president spoke with Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel to offer his condolences. Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement that the U.S. was working "to determine the status of all American citizens in Brussels." The embassy there issued a statement telling Americans to stay where they are and "take the appropriate steps to bolster your personal security." At least one of the attacks was believed to be caused by a suicide bomber, and Belgium raised its terror alert to its highest level. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the ranking member of the House intelligence committee, said the attacks "bear all the hallmarks" of an Islamic State group coordinated or inspired attack. His staff said he received a preliminary briefing Tuesday from U.S. officials. Schiff says it's unclear if encrypted communications played a role in the attacks but noted that the Brussels attacks occurred despite the city being under constant vigilance. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said it was closely monitoring the unfolding events and "would not hesitate to adjust our security posture, as appropriate, to protect the American people." DHS reiterated that members of the public should report any suspicious activity in their communities to law enforcement authorities. Attorney General Loretta Lynch was also briefed on the attacks, Justice Department officials in Washington said. They said the Justice Department and the FBI was coordinating with other U.S. government agencies, as well as with Belgian counterparts. Last week U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Homeland Security officials constantly monitor world events and evaluate whether there is a need to either publicly raise the nation's security posture or issue another bulletin via the government's National Terror Advisory System. Such a bulletin was issued in December advising the public that federal law enforcement was concerned about the possibility of homegrown violent extremists and terrorist-inspired individuals. The Associated Press contributed to this report. President Obamas signature health care law once again is coming before the Supreme Court, this time in a case involving nuns who say the laws contraception mandate violates their religious freedom rights. The Little Sisters of the Poor, a Catholic nonprofit that cares for the elderly in need, will make their case before the Supreme Court - and an equally divided bench - on Wednesday during a 90-minute public session. Falling in the middle of the election year, the session Wednesday will mark the fourth major high court review of the controversial Affordable Care Act. At the heart of the case, the eight justices will decide whether religious-affiliated institutions like LSP deserve the same First Amendment protection that some for-profit corporations enjoy. Churches and other houses of worship also already are exempt from ObamaCares requirement to offer contraceptive coverage to employees. But religious-affiliated groups like the Little Sisters of the Poor, while not required to directly provide contraceptive coverage, must instead sign a form authorizing a third-party administrator to provide contraceptives without the employers' direct involvement. Catholic groups like the LSP say signing the form amounts to tacit approval for such coverage and would force them "to choose between onerous penalties or becoming complicit in a grave moral wrong." "The government demands that the Little Sisters of the Poor sign a permission slip for abortion drugs and contraceptives, or pay of millions in fines" for non-compliance, said Mark Rienzi, senior counsel for the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, the group representing the nuns. "The sisters believe that doing that violates their faith, and that they shouldn't be forced to divert funds from the poor, elderly and dying people they've devoted their lives to serve." In the early stages of the litigation, the Supreme Court issued a temporary order in January 2014, saying the administration could not enforce the mandates, at least temporarily. Some of the Little Sisters members have been wearing buttons inscribed with "I'll have nun of it!" to promote their case. While the LSP leaders are nuns, the charity employs hundreds of lay workers who otherwise may be eligible for the insurance service. Similar nonprofits would include certain hospitals, parochial schools, and private faith-based universities. The current election-year vacancy at the Supreme Court prompted by Justice Antonin Scalia's sudden death last month leaves this legal fight very much up in the air; the matter may not be fully resolved until his replacement joins the bench, something that may not happen perhaps for another year. The ObamaCare policy at the center of the Supreme Court debate Wednesday was negotiated by the White House, which has described the third-party form as a compromise aimed at allowing the medical coverage but also providing an administrative workaround for those opposing it. The Justice Department told the high court in legal briefs LSP has "always been eligible for an accommodation from the contraceptive coverage requirement." "In our diverse and pluralistic nation, the right to the free exercise of religion does not encompass a right to insist that the government take measures that unduly restrict other persons, such as employees, in protecting their own interests, interests the law deems compelling," wrote administration lawyers. At the same time, the White House insists the birth control coverage requirement is lawful, "essential to a woman's health," and that its rules struck the right balance. "This is a case about paperwork, not religious liberty," said Cecile Richards, president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America. The court already has taken up a similar issue pertaining to private companies. The Supreme Court in 2014 ruled "closely held" for-profit corporations did not have to directly pay for their workers' contraception coverage. The 5-4 conservative majority concluded the federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act does apply to businesses like the retail giant Hobby Lobby and that the contraception mandate presents a "substantial burden." Hobby Lobby's Christian family owners asserted their conscientious desire to operate in harmony with biblical principles while competing in a secular marketplace. That two-year-old ruling and the current dispute have set off a frenzied partisan debate over religious and reproductive rights that will continue through the November congressional elections and beyond. The high court in 2012 allowed ObamaCare to move ahead, saying the law's key funding mechanism -- the so-called "individual mandate" requiring most Americans to obtain health insurance or pay substantial financial penalties -- was constitutional. Observers will watch Wednesday's oral arguments closely for clues to whether a crucial fifth vote exists to either uphold or strike the religious nonprofit provisions. A 4-4 split could leave the lower court rulings favoring the government in place for now, but establish no precedent for judges to address in similar future challenges. Merrick Garland, the federal judge nominated last week by President Obama to replace Scalia, will have no involvement at this stage of the Little Sisters petition. A ruling is expected by late June. Republican presidential rivals Donald Trump and Ted Cruz on Tuesday slammed President Obama and his polices, including the U.S. Visa Waiver Program, following the deadly Brussels terror bombings for which the Islamic State is now reportedly claiming responsibility. The first job of the president is to be commander in chief, Cruz told Fox News following the morning rush-hour attacks that killed at least 31 people in a Brussels airport and on the citys subway system. Its unconscionable. It needs to change. If I am president, I will destroy ISIS. Cruzs comments follow front-running GOP candidate Donald Trump calling for an end to the visa program, which allows roughly 20 million people a year to visit the United States. Ive been talking about this for a long time, and look at Brussels, Trump said on Fox & Friends. Brussels was a beautiful city, a beautiful place with zero crime, and now its a disaster city. At a press conference earlier in the day in Washington, D.C., Cruz said the visa waiver program no doubt needs serious scrutiny. And he called for an immediate halt to Obamas recent plan to allow tens of thousands of Syrian refugees into the United States, as a result of that countrys years-long civil war. Our vetting programs are woefully insufficient, Cruz said, arguing that ISIS has already stated its intentions to try to infiltrate terrorists among the refugees so they can commit acts of jihad. Trump last year called for a temporary ban on all Muslins into the U.S. after the Paris attacks in November by Islamic extremists and the San Bernardino terror attacks in December. And he has vowed if elected to build a security wall along the entire U.S. southern border. Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton said in the wake of the attacks, Americans stand in solidarity with our European allies. Terrorists have once again struck at the heart of Europe, but their campaign of hate and fear will not succeed, said Clinton, a former secretary of state in the Obama administration. Today's attacks will only strengthen our resolve to stand together as allies and defeat terrorism and radical jihadism around the world." GOP presidential candidate John Kasich said he was sickened by the images of the carnage and that the U.S. must redouble our efforts with our allies to identify, root out and destroy the perpetrators of such acts of evil. The other Democratic presidential hopeful, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, said, "We need to have significantly improved intelligence, and not just related to the United States. He have to share intelligence with the rest of the world." Citizens of 38 countries can travel to the United States for business or tourism for up to 90 days, under the visa waiver program. Congress recently put new restrictions on the program for dual citizens of Sudan, Iran, Iraq and Syria, but the program overall continues. Were having problems with the Muslims and were having problems with Muslims coming into the country, Trump also said Tuesday, on Fox Business Channels Mornings with Maria. Cruz also said at the Washington press conference: Todays attacks in Belgium underscores that this is a war. This is not an isolated incident. This is not a lone wolf. ISIS had declared jihad. The time for the presidents political correctness has passed. We absolutely have to revisit our immigration policy across the board to prevent Islamic terrorists from coming in. I was lucky that I escaped without a smack to the head. Donald Trump had just finished a news conference in the soaring atrium of what Washingtonians still think of as the Old Post Office, the historic Pennsylvania Avenue edifice that he is renovating into what he called one of the great hotels in the world, with the largest luxury ballroom in the Washington area. I joined the press mob as he led a brief tour of the hotel because I wanted to see what happened nextand indeed, Trump answered more political questions. But so many journalists were elbowing each other in a confined space that I nearly got whacked twice by television cameras, and did have a body blow from a guy with a big backpack. It was journalism as if conducted on a rush-hour subway. Trump was sending a clear message to the establishment with his whirlwind visit to the capital. At the presser, he said he will easily amass 1,237 delegates, and that politicians denouncing him on television are privately calling him for meetings. And if conservatives unhappy with his nomination launch a third-party bid, he said, it would destroy the country. He had just come from a meeting at the blue-chip Jones Day law firm with Sen. Jeff Sessions and several other members and former members of Congress, including Newt Gingrich, who has been sympathetic to his candidacy. Another was former senator Jim DeMint, who now heads the Heritage Foundation. And a surprise attendee was Bob Livingston, who was on the verge of succeeding Gingrich as speaker when he quit the House after the disclosure of extramarital affairs (this after Bill Clinton had just been impeached). Trump also sat down with the Washington Post editorial board, which surprised me because of its very tough stance against the billionaire. In calling on Republican leaders to unite against him, the editorial page said: This is a front-runner with no credible agenda and no suitable experience. He wants the United States to commit war crimes He admires Russian dictator Vladimir PutinHe would round up and deport 11 million peopleHe has, during the course of his campaign, denigrated women, Jews, Muslims, Mexicans, people with disabilities and many more. But I guess its time to mend fences. Trump gave the Post a mini-scoop, providing some names of his foreign policy advisory team, including counterterrorism expert Walid Phares, a Fox News contributor. This is a better response than what he told Mika Brzezinski days ago when she asked for such names: Im speaking with myself, number one, because I have a very good brain. The centerpiece of his Washington visit was an evening speech to AIPAC, the pro-Israel group that had given a rousing reception to Hillary Clinton as she vowed to defend Israel and criticized Trump (though not by name) for taking an approach that everythings negotiable. Trump told the Verizon Center crowd that he is a true friend of Israel but that he didnt come there to pander. In scripted remarks, Trump said his top priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran (the groundwork for which was laid by Clinton) and said he would dismantle its global terror network. He also said Clinton was a total disaster who had treated Israel very, very badly, and that President Obama may be the worst thing ever to happen to Israel. The businessman has taken heat for earlier saying he would try to be neutral in seeking a deal between Israel and the Palestinians. I took that as him saying the U.S. would have to be an honest broker to hammer out a peace agreement, but his rivals ripped him as insufficiently pro-Israel. The speech was one of those moments, with few of his off-the-cuff remarks, when you had to imagine Trump addressing the nation on a major international issue. In the arena, he was repeatedly interrupted by cheers and applause. Trump is acting like a man ready to unite warring domestic factions, despite the deep skepticism toward his candidacy from his party and much of the media. Politico greeted Trumps arrival with this story: Donald Trump is on the verge of two things once thought to be impossible: winning the Republican presidential nomination, and putting Republicans historically large House majority in danger. Im a little skeptical, given the magnitude of the GOPs edge. In sum, yesterday was a rather conventional day for this most unconventional of candidates. He met with party leaders, visited an editorial board, held a news conference and delivered prepared remarks to the nations most influential Jewish group. And if he loses? When a reporter raised that prospect, Trump waved his arms across the vast atrium of his hotel, five blocks from the White House, flashed a grain and said: Then I go back to this. Fragments of an ancient Greek text telling of an invasion of Greece by the Goths during the third century A.D. have been discovered in the Austrian National Library. The text includes a battle fought at the pass of Thermopylae. Researchers used spectral imaging to enhance the fragments, making it possible to read them. The analysis suggests the fragments were copied in the 11th century A.D. and are from a text that was written in the third-century A.D. by an Athens writer named Dexippus. During Dexippus' life, Greece (part of the Roman Empire) and Rome struggled to repel a series of Gothic invasions. [10 Epic Battles That Changed History] "Warding off the battle columns" Lecturers Christopher Mallan, of Oxford University, and Caillan Davenport, of the University of Queensland in Australia, recently translated one of the fragments into English. The translated text, detailed in the Journal of Roman Studies, describes the Thermopylae battle: At the start of the fragment, "battle columns" of Goths, a people who flourished in Europe whom the Romans considered barbarians, are attacking the Greek city of Thessalonica. "Making an assault upon the city of the Thessalonians, they tried to capture it as a close-packed band," Dexippus wrote of the attack, as translated by Mallan and Davenport. "Those on the walls defended themselves valiantly, warding off the battle columns with the assistance of many hands." Unable to capture Thessalonica, the Goth force turned south toward Athens, "envisioning the gold and silver votive offerings and the many processional goods in the Greek sanctuaries, for they learned that the region was exceedingly wealthy in this respect," Dexippus wrote. A Greek force assembled at the narrow pass of Thermopylae in an attempt to stop the Gothic advance. "Some [of the Greeks] carried small spears, others axes, others wooden pikes overlaid with bronze and with iron tips, or whatever each man could arm himself with," Dexippus wrote. "When they came together, they completely fortified the perimeter wall and devoted themselves to its protection with haste." "Terrifying to the enemy" In the text, Dexippus said the commander of the Greek force, a general named Marianus, tried to raise morale by reminding the Greeks of the battles their ancestors had fought at Thermopylae in the past, including the famous fifth-century B.C. battle between the Persians and a Spartan-led force. [In Photos: Spartan Temple and Cultic Artifacts Discovered] "O Greeks, the occasion of our preservation for which you are assembled and the land in which you have been deployed are both truly fitting to evoke the memory of virtuous deeds," Marianus' speech to his troops reads, as translated from the fragment. "For your ancestors, fighting in this place in former times, did not let Greece down and deprive it of its free state. "In previous attacks, you seemed terrifying to the enemies," said Marianus. "On account of these things, future events do not appear to me not without hope " The fragment ends before the completion of Marianus' speech, and the outcome of the battle is uncertain, researchers said. Marianus may well have given a speech (or speeches) to the troops, the researchers said; however, the speech recorded in this text was likely invented by Dexippus, something ancient historians often did. Though no one has an exact date for the Thermopylae battle, it was likely fought in the 250s or 260s, researchers said. An emperor fights The Thermopylae fragment is one of several written by Dexippus, discovered in the Austrian National Library book, that discuss the invasion of Greece by the Goths. The Thermopylae battle fragment was first published in 2014 in German in the journal Wiener Studies by Gunther Martin and Jana Gruskova, researchers at the University of Bern and Comenius University in Bratislava, respectively. Martin and Gruskova have published several articles in German and English on the other fragments. Some of the fragments tell of an attempt by the Roman Emperor Decius (who lived A.D. 201-251) to stop the Gothic forces, as described by Martin and Gruskova in 2014 in the journal Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies. In those fragments, Dexippus wrote that Emperor Decius suffered a series of setbacks, losing territory and men. Like Marianus, Emperor Decius also supposedly gave a speech to raise morale among his troops. "Men, I wish the military force and all the provincial territory were in a good condition and not humiliated by the enemy," Emperor Decius told his troops (translation by Martin and Gruskova). "But since the incidents of human life bring manifold sufferings it is the duty of prudent men to accept what happens and not to lose their spirit, nor become weak." Again, this speech may have been invented by Dexippus. Copyright 2016 LiveScience, a Purch company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. NASA has released an incredible Mars gravity map, based on data collected from three spacecraft. "Gravity maps allow us to see inside a planet, just as a doctor uses an X-ray to see inside a patient," said Antonio Genova of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, Massachusetts, in a statement released by NASA. "The new gravity map will be helpful for future Mars exploration, because better knowledge of the planet's gravity anomalies helps mission controllers insert spacecraft more precisely into orbit about Mars. Genova, who is based at NASAs Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is lead author of a paper on the Mars Gravity research published in the Journal Icarus. The improved resolution of our gravity map will help us understand the still-mysterious formation of specific regions of the planet, he added, in the NASA statement. Related: Buzz Aldrin eyes 2040 for manned Mars mission The map was created from data collected by NASAs Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter spacecraft. Like all planets, Mars is lumpy, which causes the gravitational pull felt by spacecraft in orbit around it to change, explained NASA, in its statement. For example, the pull will be a bit stronger over a mountain, and slightly weaker over a canyon. The space agency said that the resolution of the new gravity map could offer a new explanation for how some features formed across the boundary that divides the red planets relatively smooth northern lowlands from heavily cratered southern highlands. Scientists also confirmed that Mars has a liquid outer core of molten rock by analyzing tides in the Martian crust and mantle caused by the gravitational pull of the sun and the two moons of Mars. Mars looms ever larger in NASAs future. The space agency recently announced a May 2018 launch for its delayed Mars Insight mission to study the red planet. NASAs Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter celebrated 10 years at the red planet on March 10. Related: Chaotic comet flyby blew away some of Mars' atmosphere Other space agencies are also eyeing Mars. The first mission of the joint European-Russian ExoMars program, for example, blasted off for the red planet earlier this month. NASAs goal is to send a manned mission to Mars by 2035. A Detroit-area woman has pleaded guilty to fraud, admitting she falsely told a customer that human remains used for medical training were free of infectious diseases. The government says Arthur Rathburn and estranged wife Elizabeth Rathburn of Grosse Pointe Park operated International Biological Inc., which rented out body parts for medical or dental training. Elizabeth Rathburn struck a deal with prosecutors and pleaded guilty Monday to wire fraud. She didn't disclose that remains provided for a 2012 meeting of the American Society of Anesthesiologists had tested positive for hepatitis B and HIV. Elizabeth Rathburn faces less than a year in prison but cooperation with prosecutors could get her a better sentence on July 18. Arthur Rathburn is charged with fraud and making false statements. Their divorce is pending. Authorities say four family members were killed in a murder-suicide at a Kentucky home that was set on fire. Jefferson County Deputy Coroner Eddie Robinson said Monday the victims were a married couple and their two children. He says all four died of gunshot wounds. Robinson says 33-year-old Brad Hettinger died at the scene Sunday of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. He says Hettinger's wife, 32-year-old Billie Jo Hettinger, died of gunshot wounds to the chest and head. He says her identification is tentative pending review of dental records. Robinson says their children 5-year-old Collin Hettinger and 4-year-old Courtney Hettinger each died of a single gunshot wound to the head. The victims were found in the home after firefighters responded to the fire in an upscale suburban neighborhood in southeast Louisville. One of the major capitals of Europe shut down at this hour as terror attacks devastate the city. Brussels under attack in coordinated attacks in what is thought to at least in part a reaction to the arrest Friday of one of the ringleaders of the Paris terror attack that left more than 130 dead last November. At least 34 are dead. At least 100 were injured. The Prime Minister of Belgium called it a dark day for our nation. At least one suicide bomber targeted the Brussels airport and at least one metro station. The death toll may end up being much higher. The American Airlines ticket counter in Brussels was reportedly one of the targets. . A transit officials says 20 are dead and 55 injured in the Maelbeek subway station. The Eiffel Tower will be lit with the colors of the Belgian flag as a mark of solidarity. The French Prime Minister said this morning that We are at war. We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war. Brussels has closed the border with France. London and Paris are on high alert. Heres how Catherine Herridge put it this morning in a note about the threat the United States, The US threat posture has not changed since the advisory earlier this year, but new and recent intelligence is being re-evaluated. At that time, no specific and credible plot targeting the US domestically. The US government official said the threat level in Europe was already high, but the arrest Friday, raised the possibility of accelerating existing plots. A manhunt continues today in Belgium for a terrorist suspected to helping in the Paris terror attacks. He may be the bomb maker 24-year-old Najim Laachraoui (ehl-al-SHRAH-wee). Laachraoui allegedly traveled to Syria in February of 2013 with Salah Abdeslam. Yesterday Belgium said that Abdeslam told them after he was taken into custody that he was going to restart something from Brussels. The U.S. justice department says it may not need Apples help to break the encryption codes on iPhones used in the San Bernardino terror attacks. Stocks set to open lower today at least in part on the news of the terror attacks in Europe. Airline stocks set to be hit particularly hard. The White House says the President has been briefed on the terror attacks. He continues his public events on his historic trip to Cuba. Well be monitoring closely in case he makes comments on the terror attacks in Belgium. 1010EDT -- POTUS delivers speech at Grand Teatro de La Havana Alicia Alonso. Havana, Cuba. HOST TV LIVE / POOL TAPE 1100EDT -- FLOTUS attends dedication ceremony of a gift to Cuba at a public library in Havana, Cuba. First daughters may attend. AGENCY COVER 1055EDT -- Motorcade departs Grand Teatro ert US Embassy in Havana, Cuba. 1115EDT -- Motorcade arrives at US Embassy in Havana, Cuba. 1120EDT -- POTUS meets with Cuban civil society members and makes a brief statement. US embassy, Havana, Cuba. POOL TAPE 1310EDT -- Motorcade departs US Embassy en route Estadio Latinoamericano in Havana, Cuba. 1320EDT -- Motorcade arrives Estadio Latinoamericano in Havana, Cuba. POOL TAPE 1345EDT -- MLB coverage of Tampa Bay Rays exhibition game against the Cuban national team. POTUS & Raul Castro in attendance. Havana, Cuba. POOL TAPE / ESPN OFF-AIR The other big story today is politics. Voters in Arizona and Utah head to the polls today. The Democrats will also hold a caucus in Idaho. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have the opportunity to add to their delegate leads. Ted Cruz is leading in recent polls of Utah. If he gets more than 50% of the GOP vote, he will get all the states delegates. Last night, Donald Trump spoke at AIPAC in a carefully worded speech that argued for less American intervention around the world. Its clear Mister Trump is attempting to tone down some of his more unscripted comments. Hillary Clinton also spoke at AIPAC yesterday. The New York Times and CBS News released new polling on Monday showing 46% of Republicans now support Donald Trump. Ted Cruz gets 26% and John Kasich gets 20%. Still, big majorities of Republicans are embarrassed by Donald Trump and view their party as divided. The same polling has Hillary Clinton ahead of Bernie Sanders by just five points. More than 7 in 10 Democrats believe Hillary Clinton will be the nominee though they appear to be more excited by Sanders. In head to head matchups, Clinton beats Trump by 10 points. Sanders beats Trump by 15 points. Mister Kasich is the only Republican who beats Clinton in head to head matchups. Hulk Hogan was awarded an additional $25 million in punitive damages in the defamation case against Gawker. A fired Texas trooper pleaded not guilty Tuesday to a charge of misdemeanor perjury stemming from his arrest last summer of Sandra Bland, a black woman who was later found dead in a county jail. Brian Encinia entered his plea during a brief appearance before a Waller County judge as protesters gathered outside the courthouse in Hempstead, about 50 miles northwest of Houston. One held a sign that read: "What happened to Sandra Bland?" About 20 to 25 protesters yelled "Tell the truth" and "Sandra still speaks," and at one point directed their chanting at Waller County Sheriff Glenn Smith who stood nearby speaking with reporters. Bland's arrest captured on a police dash-camera video provoked national outrage and drew the attention of the Black Lives Matter movement. Encinia's attorney, Larkin Eakin, said after Tuesday's arraignment that the perjury charge "represents a fundamental misunderstanding of law enforcement procedures." He said Encinia acted properly during the July 2015 traffic stop and subsequent arrest of Bland. A county grand jury indicted Encinia in January on the perjury charge for saying in an affidavit that he removed a combative Bland from her car after stopping her near Houston for a minor traffic violation so he could conduct a safer traffic investigation. Video of the stop shows Encinia drawing his stun gun and telling Bland, "I will light you up!" She can later be heard off-camera screaming that he's about to break her wrists and complaining that he knocked her head into the ground. Encinia's affidavit stated he "removed her from her vehicle to further conduct a safer traffic investigation," but grand jurors found that statement to be false, according to prosecutors. Bland was taken to the Waller County jail in Hempstead and was found hanging from a jail cell partition three days later. A plastic garbage bag was around her neck. A medical examiner ruled it a suicide. A grand jury declined to charge any sheriff's officials or jailers in the death. Bland's relatives have filed a wrongful death lawsuit, and members of her family were in the courtroom Tuesday. "I want an opportunity to allow accountability to be shown," said Bland's mother, Geneva Reed-Veal, a Chicago-area resident. "I want answers as to what happened to my daughter, but I still want it to happen in God's way." Cannon Lambert, the attorney for the family, said they met with prosecutors Tuesday and urged them to aggressively pursue the case against Encinia. "The family wanted to make clear that their expectations are that (authorities) prosecute him fully and seek the mandatory sentence," he said. "The family is in no way interested in a plea, and the family understands they don't have the authority to force the prosecutors to do what the family wants but they wanted them to be clear exactly what the family is seeking." A judge last week ordered the FBI to allow Bland's family to review a report of the Texas Rangers' investigation into her death. U.S. District Judge David Hittner's order is part of the Bland family's wrongful death lawsuit filed in Houston against Encinia and others involved in her detention. The FBI had initially declined to turn over the report, contending it was protected under law enforcement privilege. Encinia's next court hearing is scheduled for May 17. The perjury charge is a misdemeanor that carries a maximum of one year in jail and a $4,000 fine. The Texas Department of Public Safety early this month formally fired Encinia over the stop. He can appeal the decision. Encinia met last month with DPS Director Steve McCraw, but their conversation gave the agency leader no reason "to alter my preliminary decision," according to a termination letter signed by Encinia. Nearly two weeks after a 14-year-old girl left her Alabama high school, got into an SUV and vanished, her father said Tuesday the girl apparently had used social media to communicate with a suspect arrested in her case. "She put herself in harm's way and I'm so scared," Kiara Neal's father, Dwight, told The Tallassee Tribune. Police issued a Missing Child Alert on Tuesday to try finding her. They say she was last seen on March 9, leaving Tallassee High School and boarding a gold Ford Expedition. Investigators on Saturday arrested Willie Joe Thomas III, whom they identified as the driver of the SUV, but they said they still had no sign of the girl's whereabouts. Thomas faces charges including traveling to meet a child for an unlawful sex act, WTVM adds. "I've been doing what I can do to try to help out. I guess it's paying off," Dwight Neal told the Tribune. He did indicate that his daughter had run away from home before. Kiara Neal stands 5'4" and weighs about 230 pounds, police add. Tallassee is roughly 30 miles northeast of Montgomery. Authorities are not releasing the names of three George Mason University students who were arrested last week after a search of their dorm turned up drugs and materials that could be used for bomb making. A "small amount" of bomb-making material was found Wednesday inside a dorm room at the Virginia school, Capt. Brian Cozby, of George Mason University's Department of Police and Public Safety, told FoxNews.com Tuesday. The names of the adult students are not being released until investigators confirm "these individuals aren't linked to something else," Cozby said. "There was no threat ever to that building or to the university as a whole," Cozby said. According to court documents, George Mason University Police officers went to a room Wednesday night inside Jefferson Hall after it was reported that flames were shooting out of the window. Search warrants say police found a leafy green substance, match books, shaved match heads, a mortar and pestle, lighter fluid, hand sanitizer, candles and a PVC pipe. The documents say investigators reported the items could be combined to make explosives. According to a police statement, two people were arrested on drug and alcohol-related charges; the third person was charged with possession of bomb-making materials. While there is no evidence indicating more people were involved with the bomb-making materials, Cozby said they are withholding names of the students until that part of the investigation is complete. "If they are connected to something else, we don't want the names out there because those people could stop what they're doing and go someplace else," he told FoxNews.com. The three students, who were arrested on Thursday, had their hearing at the Fairfax County Courthouse and have since been released, according to police. Students and parents took to social media Tuesday to express concern about the arrests at a school of 33,729 -- and frustration the university was not releasing more details about the probe. "As a Mason student (albeit not an undergrad or on the Fairfax campus) I find this disturbing and troubling to say the least," one student wrote on Facebook. "I await further clarification on the bomb-making paraphenalia." "This is definitely something we should have been made aware of whether it was an actionable threat or not. Not even an email," wrote another student. One parent said she was thankful police caught the students, but was "very disappointed that the university did not inform students or parents about this." "We still have not receive[d] any communication from GMU as to reassure us that our children are safe," she said. The office of media relations declined to answer any questions about the investigation Tuesday. Melanie Baylog, the school's managing editor of strategic communications, released a statement by Thomas Longo, Interim Chief of Police, that said "there is no threat to the campus community " and "the investigation is ongoing." An earlier version of this story cited a George Mason University police spokesman in saying the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives was involved in the investigation. The spokesman has since said he made the statement in error. Authorities are looking for a flight attendant who they say fled Los Angeles International Airport after being selected for a random security screening Friday, leaving behind almost 70 pounds of cocaine stashed in her luggage. The unidentified woman remained at large Monday. It was not immediately clear which airline she worked for. Marshall McClain, president of the union representing the airport's police officers, said the woman was was sent to a secondary screening area, but she quickly dropped her bag, ditched a pair of Gucci heels and fled barefoot down an upward-moving escalator. Police called to investigate the unattended bag found 69 pounds of cocaine inside. McClain expressed concern that officers were alerted about the bag, but not a suspicious person running through the airport. "With her bringing this amount of narcotics in the airport, chances are this wasn't her first time through," said McClain, who called for all airline employees and other airport employees to be screened regularly. Security threats from "insiders" airline and airport employees, as well as workers hired by contractors have been a focus of the TSA, particularly after the December 2014 arrest of several Delta Air Lines baggage handlers. Prosecutors allege they smuggled guns, including an AK-47, from Atlanta to New York. Federal authorities said last year that they busted a marijuana smuggling ring at Oakland International Airport, with arrests including baggage handlers. A separate arrest in December involved a TSA worker accused of allowing drug runners to pass their bags through X-ray machines without being stopped. Four former baggage handlers at San Diego's airport were sentenced in September in a drug-smuggling case. The TSA has said that full screening of all employees would cost too much. Instead, the agency has urged airports to increase random screenings of workers and to keep background checks up to date. "We will pay particular attention to the insider threat," TSA Administrator Peter Neffenger told a Senate committee earlier this month. The Associated Press contributed to this report. Chicago police say four boys have been wounded in a shooting on the city's West Side. Police spokesman Veejay Zala says the shooting happened just before 9 p.m. Monday when an unknown male approached and opened fire into a crowd. Zala says a 14-year-old, 15-year-old, 16-year-old and 11-year-old were wounded. They were taken to hospitals, all in stable condition. An investigation is ongoing. A separate shooting on the South Side left one person dead and another injured. Zala says two men were riding in a car when an unknown person or people opened fire. A 38-year-old was taken to a hospital in critical condition and a 39-year-old was taken to a hospital in grave condition and later pronounced dead. The Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times report at least 14 people were wounded in shootings Monday. One Maine couple wants you to survive the apocalypse in style. Dave and Sue Prentiss, of the bucolic town of Limestone, are looking to sell their near-20 acre property, which comes complete with an underground missile silo -- the kind that are favored by the prepping community to be retrofitted into livable bunkers in case the end of the world is upon us. [D]on't worry about your home glowing in the dark, Dave Prentiss told the Bangor Daily News. The warheads that used to be stored there weren't nuclear. If they had been nukes, I wouldnt have touched this place on a bet. It's not easy to find comps for a converted missile silo, but 20th Century Castles, which is brokering the sale, estimates the value of the property at somewhere between $300,000 and $500,000. It was three decades ago when Prentiss and his wife, who lived in New Hampshire at the time, were house-hunting in northern Maine for a place where they could not only live, but operate his car restoration business. They found this former Nike missile launch site -- just a stones throw from the former Loring Air Force Base. Prentiss said he and his wife were drawn to the property because the missile assembly and testing building on the 17-acre property was perfect for a workshop. But after 25 years, he said they want a smaller -- and more othodox --- home. We are looking to downsize a bit, Prentiss told FoxNews.com. Retirement is in sight. Prentiss added that he enjoyed living on the property, which was originally used as part of Project Nike (Greek for the word victory), a U.S. Army program enacted in 1944 after it was proposed by Bell Labs as a line-of-sight anti-aircraft missile system within our borders. Its been great. A cool place to live, he said. Very quiet. Very peaceful.Its been heaven. The Nike defense program was the first of its kind and led to the development of the first operational anti-aircraft missile system in the U.S., the Nike Ajax, in 1953. The development of the Ajax led to other missiles being developed and the same technology was used by NASA in the creation of the Nike Smoke Rocket, which was used for upper atmosphere research. Prentiss' property also contained barracks, which housed, at any given time, 100 military members that operated the facility when it was an active missile base. Weve had people who were stationed here come back, Dave recalls. We even had a previous base commander come back. We didnt know a lot about the original use of this place when we moved in, but we learned all about it over the years. The Nike missile sites were eventually decommissioned and the missiles were removed by the military. After the site at Limestone was shut down in the early 1960s, it went through a few private owners before the Prentisses purchased the property in 1985. It was really in deplorable shape, Prentiss told the newspaper, adding that the property was overrun with weeds and scrub brush and that the buildings were in various states of disrepair. Instead of turning one of the buildings on the property into living quarters, the couple decided to build a new two-bedroom home there between the assembly shop and the former barracks. Beneath the surface is the massive magazine, or storehouse, for the missiles, with electrical connections and nearly 10,000 square feet of usable space. When we first moved in, we were always going down there to check it out, Prentiss tells FoxNews.com about having a missile silo as his basement. Its commonplace now. We dont go down for months on end. The underground silos were used to prep and store missiles for a possible launch during the height of the cold war. The structures, below and above ground, were reinforced to withstand direct hits during a military attack. Its got some of the hardest and most durable structures ever made by man, Edward Peden, owner of 20th Century Castles, which specializes in the private sales of decommissioned missile bases, told FoxNews.com. These old Nike sites were made of very heavy and durable concrete. It is some of the best to resist a nuclear blast. And Im sure the government put millions into retrofitting the property," he added. A lawyer for a retired ambassador and expert on Pakistan says the Justice Department has closed an investigation into her client without bringing charges. FBI agents raided the home of Robin Raphel, a one-time ambassador to Tunisia, in 2014 as part of a counterintelligence investigation. Her lawyer, Amy Jeffress, said Monday night that a lengthy investigation by the Justice Department had "fully exonerated" Raphel. Jeffress called Raphel a "widely respected, long serving career diplomat with an outstanding record of service to her country," and said the investigation was based on a "fundamental misunderstanding." Raphel has had a decades-long diplomatic career, and was serving as a senior adviser to the State Department's Special Representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan when the investigation began. Justice Department spokeswoman Melanie Newman declined to comment. Hours after deadly explosions ripped through the Brussels airport and a subway station in the city on Tuesday, officials in major U.S. cities including New York City and Los Angeles announced they were ramping up security at airports and transit systems. The New York Police Department is increasing visible presence of officers on the streets and in the subway system across the city's five boroughs. "We are in a high state of vigilance and readiness, Mayor Bill de Blasio told reporters. The Port Authority Police Department is stepping up security at the three major airports in the New York City area. It's also employing high visibility anti-terrorist patrols throughout the World Trade Center site and the PATH train system that runs to and from New Jersey. Agencies in Washington are stepping up law enforcement presence around the metro area in ways that will be seen and unseen, a law enforcement source tells Fox News. This source says people in the area can expect to see more cops on the street, specifically in heavily populated areas, as well as a roving police presence on the Metro system. No known, specific or credible threat to Metro at this time. Additional K9 sweeps + patrols starting this AM as precaution. #wmata Metro Transit Police (@MetroTransitPD) March 22, 2016 Air travelers nationwide can expect to see increased behavior detection and K9s in non-sterile airport zones, a separate law enforcement source says. Fox News is told the heightened posture will not be specific to major airports, and that screenings will be stepped up at local airports as well. The Los Angeles transit system tells Fox News its security will be boosted today as well. Police at Los Angeles International Airport said they were meeting with command staff. Officials in Georgia say Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, the world's busiest in terms of passenger traffic, "remains on heightened alert and will continue to coordinate with federal, state, and city law enforcement." Explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, rocked the Brussels airport and subway system Tuesday, prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe. At least 28 people were reported dead. "At this time, there is no known indication that the attack has any nexus to New York City. We will continue to follow the situation in Belgium closely with the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the FBI and adjust the department's deployments accordingly," NYPD spokesman Stephen P. Davis said. "We take attacks on aviation very seriously and make constant adjustments to our deployment strategies," Los Angeles Airport Police spokeswoman Alicia Hernandez told reporters. "As we continue to monitor intelligence reports and work with our federal partners to authenticate and determine the credibility of this threat, we ask residents to also stay alert of their surroundings. If you see something, say something," D.C. Metropolitan Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier added. The Paris airport authority said security was tightened at all Paris airports soon after the Brussels explosions on Tuesday morning. Airports in London, Prague, Amsterdam, Vienna, and many others, also saw increased security. Fox News' Matt Dean and The Associated Press contributed to this report. Calls for the resignation of a Minnesota superintendent grew on Monday, after a high school teacher was suspended for social media posts deemed racist by the Black Lives Matter activist group. Theodore "Theo" Olson, a special education teacher at Como Park High School in St. Paul, Minn., was placed on administrative leave March 9 over two posts he wrote on Facebook about student discipline in the school district. The posts were deemed offensive by former school board candidate turned Black Lives Matter activist Rashad Turner who reportedly accused Olson of being a racist. Turner said Olsons posts show he is the epitome of a bad teacher and a white supremacist, EAGnews.org reported. According to the website, Olson wrote on Facebook, Anyone care to explain to me the school-to-prison pipeline my colleagues and I have somehow created, or perpetuated, or not done enough to interrupt? Because if you cant prove it, the campaigns youve waged to deconstruct adult authority in my building by enabling student misconduct, you seriously owe us real teachers an apology. Actually, an apology wont cut it. "Phones and iPad devices, used for social media and gaming," wrote Olson. "There have always been rules for devices, and defined levels of misconduct. Since we now have no backup, no functional location to send kids who wont quit gaming, setting up fights, selling drugs, whoring trains, or cyber bullying, were screwed, just designing our own classroom rules. The group, Black Lives Matter St. Paul, charged that Olson portrayed students as drug dealers and gang bangers in his Facebook posts about a lack of district support in discipline matters, the Minneapolis Star Tribune reported. Black Lives Matter had threatened a shut-down action at the school if Olson was not fired, but the group did not follow through with it after Turner reportedly met with St. Paul superintendent Valeria Silva. In an email Monday to FoxNews.com, Silva's office said Olson was placed on administrative leave and that the district "is currently conducting an investigation." No further comment was provided. Parents and teachers, meanwhile, are rallying behind Olson -- and calling for the resignation of Silva in an online Change.org petition. The petition had 742 signatures as of Monday afternoon. "This petition has been started because the current incumbent Valeria Silva has constantly demonstrated her inability to drive improvements in local St Paul schools," the petition reads. "Her inability to make changes to benefit the teachers and students include, but are not limited to, rapid increase in violence towards students and teachers; the lack of support for teachers; the removal of disciplinary actions for violent students, and the lack of transparency between her and protagonists such as Rashad Turner," the petition says. The same day Olson was placed on administrative leave, another Como Park High School teacher, Mark Rawlings, was beaten by students when he attempted to intervene in an alleged drug deal. Rawlings suffered a concussion and was hospitalized for injuries suffered during the altercation. The two students were charged with felony assault, according to CityPages.com. The final few minutes of the fight were captured on video. Parents and teachers have expressed an outpouring of support for Olson since he was suspended. The teachers at Como are outstanding, and for a long time they have not felt free to speak up and defend students rights, parent Jane Sommerville told CityPages.com. When Theo posted his post, he was expressing his frustration with St. Paul Public Schools." "I could see that a lot of people were misconstruing what he said, and I stand for the heart of what he posted, that school climate is a major issue in St. Paul Public Schools and it is not being addressed," Sommerville said. He meant to say there just isnt enough support from the school district and administration. There arent the social workers, the counselors, the support staff, or a discipline policy that is effective for schools, added Randolph Heights special education teacher JoAnn Nathan said. A 6-year-old girl of partial Choctaw heritage was taken from a foster family in Southern California by social workers Monday under the Indian Child Welfare Act, despite efforts by her family and supporters to try to block the move. Social workers arrived at the home of Rusty and Summer Page shortly before 3 p.m. local time to take the girl, named Lexi, so she can be placed with blood relatives in Utah, Fox 11 reported. The move was made under the federal Indian Child Welfare Act, which was enacted in the 1970s to help protect the interests of Native American children. Lexi is 1.5% Choctaw, Fox 11 reported. Under the watchful eye of various cell phone cameras, social workers stood outside the front door of the home while the family prepared for the girl's departure. Supporters outside the home sang "Amazing Grace.'' The girl loudly wept as Rusty Page carried her to a waiting car as supporters shouted "We love you, Lexi.'' Rusty Page quickly retreated back to his home where his other children were crying. After the girl was driven away, supporters cried and gathered together in prayer. A sort time later, a distraught Rusty Page emerged from the home and pleaded for the girl's return. He said Lexi was telling him, "This is dumb, don't let them take me.'' He responded, "I have to because the county of L.A. said I had to.'' In a statement released late Monday, the Page family called Lexi's removal "devastating" and claimed that the Indian Child Welfare Act gives "absolute power to tribal leaders who judicially abduct children at-will[sic]." In the last part of the statement, the Pages urged Lexi's Utah relatives to "search deep into your heart and soul and do what's best for Lexi. Do the right thing and bring Lexi back home." The Pages say they've tried to adopt Lexi for more than two years. "Lexi doesn't know another home. She finally knows what 'mom and dad' means and they want to take that away from her, and we can't stand idly by while that happens," Rusty Page told Fox 11. The girl's biological mother reportedly gave up custody when Lexi was just 17 months old. Officials planned to send her to Utah where she would live off the reservation with relatives of her biological parents, Fox 11 adds. On Friday, a court order lifted an emergency stay keeping Lexi with the Pages. "Often there are no easy solutions, but when a court makes an order, we must follow it," the director of the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, Philip Browning, told KCBS. Tens of thousands of people have signaled their support for the foster family in a Change.org petition. "The Choctaw Nation desires the best for this Choctaw child. The tribe's values of faith, family and culture are what makes our tribal identity so important to us. Therefore we will continue to work to maintain these values and work toward the long-term best interest of this child," the tribe told KABC. Click for more from Fox 11. Seven decades after their "we can do it" attitude proved invaluable to the Allied victory, about 30 "Rosie the Riveters" were honored Tuesday with a trip to Washington that included visits to the National World War II Memorial. Wearing honor flight red cardigans, the women now in their 80s and 90s whose work helped the war effort posed for group photos with the U.S. Capitol as a backdrop, had lunch at a Library of Congress building and visited Arlington National Cemetery. At every stop, people approached them, shook their hands, and said, "Thank you." "They have those signs: 'We can do it.' They should say: 'We did it,'" said Helen Kushnir of Dearborn, part of Tuesday's group, which traveled from Michigan. As women worked during the war at jobs traditionally done by men, such as churning out bombers at Ford Motor Co.'s Willow Run plant in Michigan, one of them was the inspiration for the Rosie character that came to symbolize female empowerment and the "we're-in-this-together" spirit of the American homefront. "You incredible women are such an inspiration," U.S. Rep. Debbie Dingell of Michigan told the women during the luncheon. "You opened the doors wider for (women)," said Dingell, who co-hosted the event with fellow Michigan U.S. Rep. Candice Miller. When the four-bus convoy ferrying the women around town arrived at the WWII Memorial, they were met by throngs of supporters, drawing cheers and applause. Sylvia Tanis of Holland, Michigan, was one of the first ones through, waving to the crowd, grasping people's hands, posing for snapshots and stopping to embrace a Girl Scout who had come out to greet the women. "This is great. I can't imagine it being any better," Virginia Basler of Ypsilanti said while looking out at the memorial. Afterward, the women were ushered into a prime viewing location in a cordoned-off area for the Changing of the Guard ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at Arlington National Cemetery. They also visited the Women in Military Service for America Memorial. Laura Eglinsdoerfer of Milan, Michigan, said she met her future husband when both worked on the assembly line at Willow Run. Her husband later served in the Marines, and was wounded fighting on Iwo Jima a battle honored at the Marine Corps War Memorial, not far from where Eglinsdoerfer saw the guard change at Arlington National Cemetery. The honor flights provide one-day trips for veterans to visit Washington's monuments and memorials. The Ford Motor Company Fund has sponsored 10 such flights, but Tuesday's was the first designed specifically for Rosies, said Jim Vella, the fund's president. He said the women, who traveled around town with a police escort, were rightly being afforded "rock-star" treatment. Mallie Mellon, 96, said she couldn't sleep Monday night. "I was so excited thinking about my trip," said Mellon, who now lives in Belleville, but during the war worked as a riveter making B-29s at a plant in Detroit. When their plane landed, dozens of flag-waving, sign-toting well-wishers greeted the women. A children's choir sang and onlookers cheered as each woman emerged. "This is soooo overwhelming!" Tanis exclaimed, while Kushnir cried as she took in the adulation. A man in Florida said he received an important text message that wasn't meant for him over the weekend, but he and his brother decided to do the right thing anyway. Lmaoo Make This Go Viral Man We Didn't Know Them But They Texted My Phone Saying They Was Having A Baby So We Pull Up Share It So They Can See It Dennis Williams Posted by Deorick Williams on Saturday, March 19, 2016 Deorick Williams said the text told his brother Dennis that somebody was giving birth at the hospital. But he didn't know who she was. "Congrats lol but I think someone got the wrong number," Dennis replied. They were mistakenly included in a group text. Eventually, the two brothers decided there was only one thing they could do. So they drove up to the hospital in Georgia, and surprised the new mom with a gift. She was certainly surprised -- she didn't know who they were either. But after a quick explanation, they laughed it off and posed for a photo with the new baby. "What a blessing these two guys were to our family. They were so sweet and kind to do this!" the happy family posted on Facebook. The Justice Department has indicted three current or former members of the so-called Syrian Electronic Army for computer hacking-related conspiracies. The charges were unsealed Tuesday in the U.S. Eastern District Court of Virginia. Prosecutors allege that two Syrians, 22-year-old Ahmad Umar Agha and 27-year-old Firas Dardar, tricked email users to steal usernames and passwords to compromise government, media and private-sector computer systems. In April 2013 they allegedly tweeted from the Associated Press account on Twitter falsely claiming a bomb had exploded at the White House and injured the president. None of them are in custody. A $100,000 reward is being offered for information leading to their arrests. Pierre Romar, 36, of Syria was also charged separately for his role in an extortion hacking scheme. He's believed to be in Germany. DEVELOPING: ISIS has claimed credit for Tuesday mornings rush-hour attacks in Brussels, which left at least 31 dead and more than 180 injured. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- As many as 31 people were killed and more than 180 injured as coordinated terrorist bombings rocked the Brussels airport and subway system during rush hour Tuesday morning in the Belgian capital. Two bombings at Zaventem Airport, where 11 people were reportedly killed, and another at the metro station in the Maelbeek section near the European Union headquarters, where the mayor's office said 20 were killed, were almost immediately confirmed as terrorism. The attack at the airport was reportedly accompanied by shouts in Arabic and gunfire, and an unexploded suicide belt was reportedly found in the aftermath. "What we feared has happened, we were hit by blind attacks." Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel "What we feared has happened, we were hit by blind attacks," said Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel. "We are at war, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Tuesday. We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war." The attacks, which Belgian authorities said were suicide bombings, came four days after the main suspect in the November Paris attacks was arrested in Brussels, and even as Brussels was braced for new attacks. A source told Fox News that a credible ISIS social media account posted the message, Mosul revenge for the Kuffar capital Brussels, but it was not definitive that the terror group was behind the attacks. The first two explosions rocked the departure hall at the Brussels airport shortly after 8 a.m. local time. Early reports placed the number of dead at 13, with as many as 81 wounded, although the death toll was later revised downward to 11. Witnesses told The Associated Press that one occurred at an American Airlines counter and the other near a Starbucks cafe. American Airlines said in a statement that none of its employees were among the dead or injured and later tweeted from its verified account that the blast did not occur at its check-in row. There were two explosions in the departure area, one probably caused by a suicide bomber," said Belgian federal prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw of the attack on the airport. One of the airport bombs may have been in a suitcase, a U.S. official told The Associated Press, and local TV reported that it may have been loaded with nails. Witnesses recounted a harrowing and chaotic scene. First there was one explosion. Everyone started to run and panic broke out. Then a second explosion was heard, one witness told The Brussels Times about the airport explosion. Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, told BFM television that the second, louder explosion brought down ceilings and ruptured pipes, mixing water with blood from victims. "It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed," he said. "There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere." "We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene," he said. Marie-Odile Lognard, a traveler who was lining up in the departures hall for a flight to Abu Dhabi, told BFM television that people panicked after the first explosion about 65 feet from her and that a second explosion about 15 seconds later caused parts of the ceiling to collapse. "I knew it was an explosion because I've been around explosions before," said Denise Brandt, an American woman interviewed by Sky television. "I felt the explosion, the way it feels through your body. And we just looked at each other and I said 'let's go this way.' It was over there. There was just this instinct to get away from it. Then we saw people running, crying, toward us. So I knew we were going in the right direction and away from it. " Amateur video shown on France's i-Tele television showed passengers -- including a child -- running with a backpack dashing out of the terminal in different directions as they tugged luggage. Belgian news channel RTBF reports a Kalashnikov rifle was found in the departure hall at the airport. Marc Noel, 63, was about to board a Delta flight to Atlanta, to return to his home in Raleigh, N.C. A Belgium native, Noel says he was in an airport shop buying automobile magazines when the first explosion occurred about 50 yards away. "People were crying, shouting, children. It was a horrible experience," he told AP. He said his decision to buy the magazines might have saved his life. "I don't want to think about it, but I would probably have been in that place when the bomb went off." Three Mormon missionaires, identified by the church as Richard Norby, 66; Joseph Empey, 20, and Mason Wells, 19, all of Utah, were the only Americans known to have been injured in the airport attack. Moments later at the Metro station, another explosion was reported on a train that was stopped at the Maelbeek subway station, not far from the headquarters of the European Union. Ian McCafferty told The Irish Times he was just getting off the metro at the stop before Maelbeek around 8:20 a.m. when he heard a loud muffled thud but, because of construction at the metro, he didnt really think much of it. There was a large military presence and mass confusion, he said. People started to run. Some people were crying. The two stations are only a stones throw apart. We were the last train through the station before the blast. Rescue workers set up a makeshift treatment center in a local pub near the train station. Dazed and shocked morning travelers streamed from the metro entrances as police tried to set up a security cordon. Brussels Mayor Yvan Majeur put the number of dead at the train station at 20, with more than 100 more injured. Alexandre Brans, 32, who was wiping blood from his face, said: "The metro was leaving Maelbeek station when there was a really loud explosion. It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the metro." First responders ran through the street outside with two people on stretchers, their clothes badly torn. The bombings in the European Union capital are certain to add new fire to the raging debate over refugees from Muslim nations where terrorist groups are active. Europe has taken in more than a million refugees, and terror groups including ISIS have said they are infiltrating the wave of migrants. After his arrest on Friday, Salah Abdeslam, who is suspected of taking part in the Nov. 13 Paris attack that killed 130 people, told authorities he had created a new network and was planning new attacks. After Abdeslam's arrest and before Tuesday's attacks, authorities were frantically hunting a suspect identified as 24-year-old Najim Laachraoui, who allegedly traveled to Hungary with Abdeslam before the Paris attack on Nov. 13. It was unclear whether Laachraoui played any role in Tuesday's bombings, but prosecutors say Laachraoui played a key role in recruiting attackers for ISIS. U.S. authorities were monitoring the situation, poised to assist in the investigation. A U.S. counter-terrorism source told Fox News the priority for investigators is identifying the suicide bomber or bombers through DNA because they cannot operate in isolation, and identifying them can lead to the broader network. Speaking Havana, President Obama mentioned the attacks before giving prepared comments on the thawing relationship between the U.S. and Cuba. Obama called the attacks outrageous, and pledged that the thoughts and prayers of Americans are with the Belgian people. This is yet another reminder that the world must unite, we must be together, regardless of nationality or race or faith, in fighting the scourge of terrorism, said Obama, who had also spoken to Michel by phone. Belgium's interior minister announced that the terror threat was being raised to its maximum level. All flights were canceled and arriving planes and trains were diverted. Authorities told people in Brussels to stay where they were, bringing the city to a standstill. Airport security was also tightened in Paris, London and other European cities. Flights due to land at Zaventem, which handles 21 million passengers a year, were sent to Antwerp, Liege, and Brussels Charleroi airports. French President Francois Hollande said "terrorists struck Brussels but it was Europe that was targeted -- and all the world that is concerned," adding that "this war will be long." Paris announced it would light the Eiffel Tower in the colors of the Belgian flag, and security around France's nuclear plants was reportedly increased, though no specific threat was cited. Fox News' Catherine Herridge and Matthew Dean contributed to this report. Officials revealed details Tuesday on at least nine Americans wounded in the deadly explosions at the Brussels airport and a subway station in the city, with one of the victims identified as a U.S. Air Force officer. The unnamed officer and five of his relatives were wounded and "some are critical," a defense official told Fox News. U.S. officials told The Associated Press the officer is a lieutenant colonel. "Our priority at this time is the safety and well-being of our airmen and their families," Secretary of the Air Force Deborah Lee James told reporters. U.S. European Command said it would not release details of the service member's injuries due to privacy concerns. Mormon church officials said three missionaries from Utah were seriously injured in the airport attack and have been hospitalized. A fourth wounded missionary is a French woman. State Dept. spokesman John Kirby says investigators are still working on a final count of all the Americans who were hurt. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued a statement Tuesday identifying the three American missionaries as 66-year-old Richard Norby of Lehi, 20-year-old Joseph Empey of Santa Clara and 19-year-old Mason Wells of Sandy. They were near the explosion when it occurred and have been hospitalized. Empey's family said in a statement, "We have been in touch with him and he is grateful and in good spirits... We are thankful for the outpouring of love and prayers from throughout the world, and we pray for all those affected by this tragedy." The three American missionaries were serving in Paris and were at the airport with the fourth missionary who was on her way to an assignment in Cleveland, Ohio. That 20-year-old missionary, Fanny Rachel Clain, is from Montelimar, France. She had passed through security at the time of the explosion. The church said she didn't make her flight out and has been hospitalized. It instructed others in the France Paris Mission to stay in their homes. Wells' family said in a statement Tuesday night he has undergone surgeryto repair his Achilles heel, in addition to being treated for burns and shrapnel injuries. "We are grateful that our son, Elder Mason Wells, survived the attack and is receiving quality medical care," the statement read. "We have spoken to him briefly and he feels blessed that he wasnt injured more given his close proximity to the bomb." At least 34 people were killed and nearly 250 wounded Tuesday after bombs went off in the Brussels airport. The Islamic State militant group has claimed responsibility for the attack. "We are also working closely with our interagency partners and host nation counterparts to determine the appropriate steps to ensure the safety and security of all U.S. personnel," Air Force Lt. Col. David S. Westover, Jr. told reporters. The governor of Utah offered support to local families. Gov. Gary Herbert praised the Utah natives as "people of faith who have forsaken everything -- family, friends, school and careers -- in order to share a message of hope and love with the world." Thousands of Utah Mormons have served proselytizing missions around the world. Church members account for as many as two-thirds of the state's population. Fox News' Lucas Tomlinson and The Associated Press contributed to this report. The shadowy explosives expert believed to have made bombs for the Belgian terror cell behind Tuesday's carnage in Brussels and the November Paris massacre is now the world's most-wanted man, but strikingly little is known about him. Officials are hunting Najim Laachraoui, 24, who may also be the elusive man in white seen in a surveillance photo next to two men identified by authorities as suicide bombers at Zaventem Airport. Laachraoui is believed to have built the nail-packed suitcase bombs used in Tuesday's attack at the airport and explosives used in a blast 79 minutes later at a Brussels Metro station. The two attacks killed at least 31 and injured at least 270. He has also been identified as the bomb-maker who fashioned several suicide belts used in the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, where 130 people were killed. Overnight raids turned up bomb-making materials in a Schaerbeek apartment, including detonators, nails and 15 kilos of acetone peroxide, a highly unstable chemical which is favored by Islamists because it's easy to make. The chemical also was found in the explosives used in the Paris attack. Born in Morocco, Laachraoui was raised in Brussels' Schaerbeek neighborhood, a predominantly Muslim area, according to The Washington Post. He's believed to have attended a local Catholic high school where he studied electromechanical engineering. Laachraoui traveled to Syria in February 2013, prosecutors said, and it was not clear when he returned to Europe. Prosecutors have said Laachraoui played a key role in recruiting and training attackers for ISIS, The Wall Street Journal reported. He had been linked to Paris attacker Salah Abdeslam, who was arrested Friday in Brussels. Laachraoui was checked by guards at the Austria-Hungary border on Sept. 9 while driving in a Mercedes with Abdeslam and one other person, Belgium's federal prosecutors said in a statement. Using a false identity, Laachraoui also rented a house under the name of Soufiane Kayal in the Belgian town of Auvelais. That residence was allegedly used as a safe house, where prosecutors said traces of his DNA were found. That same DNA was later found on explosives used in the Paris attacks. The house was searched Nov. 26. On Monday, Belgian prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said officials wanted to interview Laachraoui, who was "someone who must explain himself." On Tuesday, coordinated terror attacks ripped through Brussels. Investigators reportedly believe attacks already being plotted were expedited in light of Abdeslam's arrest -- and word that he is cooperating with authorities. Former Toronto mayor Rob Ford-- whose tenure was marred by revelations about his drinking problems and illegal drug use -- died Tuesday at 46 after a battle with cancer, his family says. Ford was diagnosed with cancer in September 2014. The illness forced him to withdraw his bid for re-election as mayor and he ran instead for a city council seat, winning in a landslide despite his notoriety. With heavy hearts and profound sadness, the Ford family announces the passing of their beloved son, brother, husband, and father, Councillor Rob Ford earlier today at the age of 46, his office announced in a statement. The family asks that you respect their privacy and join them in their grieving and their prayers, the statement added. Fords controversial term as mayor included slurs against minorities, lewd remarks about his sex life and his admission of crack cocaine and alcohol abuse. Ford had nine chemotherapy treatments before his death. Late last week, his family released a statement saying he was going through a "difficult time." In a statement on behalf of Ford's family, spokesman Dan Jacobs said doctors have been "very concerned" with the reappearance and progression of Ford's cancer. Ford had been receiving treatment that is "palliative in nature," his family said Monday. The politician had not been transferred to a palliative care unit, although his family is by his side around the clock, Jacobs said. The Associated Press contributed to this report. As police descended Friday on the hideout of accused Paris attacker Salah Abdeslam, residents of the Brussels neighborhood where he was believed to be sheltered started hurling bottles and other projectiles at authorities. The Belgian newspaper La Libre reported the surreal scene unfolded as police finally nabbed Abdeslam after the ISIS-linked terrorist evaded capture for more than four months since the Nov. 13 attacks. It is believed he spent the majority of that time hiding in the same Brussels neighborhood: the infamous Muslim enclave of Molenbeek, which Belgium's prime minister Charles Michel described in November as a "gigantic problem. Abdeslam was arrested along with four other people, members of the family that hid him, according to Belgium Federal Prosecutor Eric Van Der Sypt. Police ultimately tracked him down after his fingerprints were found at another Molenbeek house earlier in the week. In November, Belgian Home Affairs Minister Jan Jambon said the government did not have control of the situation in Molenbeek. The district is a widely known as something of a jihadi capital in Europe. The Paris attacks mastermind, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, grew up there. Analysts have described it as a scruffy and multiethnic neighborhood. The mayor of Molenbeek has called it a breeding ground for violence. Experts call the hardscrabble area a focal point of Islamists and a hub for the recruitment of foreign fighters to go to Iraq and Syria to battle on behalf of ISIS. Some of those whove joined ISIS in the Middle East are even thought to have returned to Molenbeek. Belgium's federal police have allowed districts such as Molenbeek to fall through the cracks, according to some experts. "It's a place where you can disappear," said Bilal Benyaich, a senior fellow at Brussels think-tank the Itinera Institute. "You can get a military weapon in half an hour" for just a few hundred dollars, Benyaich told Reuters. He said that's unusual across much of Europe, which tends to be more restrictive. The district is very poor compared to many of its neighbors. Its unemployment rate is 25 percent, and more than three out of every 10 people there are out of work. Michel said that despite recent efforts by security forces, "There has to be more of a crackdown." That crackdown had yet to materialize when terrorists struck an airport and metro station Tuesday in Brussels, just days after Abdeslam was captured in Molenbeek. The Associated Press contributed to this report. More explosive devices reportedly were turned up Tuesday as police raided homes throughout Belgium in a desperate manhunt for a third suspect believed to have survived the morning's coordinated bombings in Brussels, where at least 34 people were killed. Belgian federal prosecutors said the search of a home in the Brussels neighborhood of Schaerbeek "led to the discovery of an explosive device containing among other things nails." Investigators also found chemical products and an ISIS flag. At the same time, the death toll in the attacks was raised to 34, according to a Belgian security official who spoke with Associated Press. Belgian Health Minister Maggie De Block said that 250 others had been injured. As ISIS claimed credit for the twin, rush-hour attacks, one at Zaventem Airport and the other at a Metro station near European Union headquarters, authorities carried out raids in the capital and in Antwerp that turned up what may be one piece of key evidence. The search of a house in the Brussels neighborhood of Schaerbeek "led to the discovery of an explosive device containing, among other things, nails," said a Belgian federal prosecutor. Also in the home were chemical products and an ISIS flag, according to The Associated Press. Islamic State fighters carried out a series of bombings with explosive belts and devices on Tuesday, targeting an airport and a central metro station in the center of the Belgian capital Brussels, a country participating in the international coalition against the Islamic State. Message from ISIS claiming credit for attacks Authorities were led to the Schaerbeek home by a taxi driver who had picked the three men up there earlier and driven them to the airport, Sky News reported. Late Tuesday, the State Department warned U.S. citizens about potential risks to travel in Europe, saying "terrorist groups continue to plan near-term attacks throughout Europe, targeting sporting events, tourist sites, restaurants and transportation." It advised citizens to "exercise vigilance" in public places or on mass transportation, and advised "particular caution" during religious events or large events. Belgian authorities released a photo that showed three men pushing carts in the airport, prior to reaching security checkpoints. In the image, two men on the left are each wearing dark clothing with a black glove on their left hands, which authorities believe could have been worn to hide suicide vest ignition devices. A third man, seen on the right side of the photo and wearing lighter clothing, no glove and a hat, was the subject of a manhunt after officials said he was seen fleeing the airport following the bombing. It was not clear what role he may have played, but authorities said he is suspected of working with the suicide bombers. An intelligence source with firsthand knowledge of the investigation told Fox News' Catherine Herridge that the explosions were set off in aisle three, home to Brussels airlines, and aisle 11, which is Delta. However, the source emphasized that the bombers appeared to target the highest concentration of passengers checking in - rather than a specific airline - to cause maximum carnage. At least one suicide vest was used during the airport attack, officials have said, and there were reports that authorities detonated an unexploded vest after the attack. The bombings came four days after the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, the primary remaining suspect from Novembers attack in Paris. The attacks sent Brussels into full lockdown mode as police carried out multiple raids within the city. Abdeslam reportedly stayed in Schaerbeek, the neighborhood where the unexploded bomb and chemicals were reportedly found, for up to three weeks after he fled Paris in November. A more middle-class community than the infamous Muslim enclave of Molenbeek, the western portion of Schaerbeek is home to a large population of Turkish and Morrocan immigrants. The flurry of law enforcement activity came after a channel on the encrypted messaging app Telegram that is maintained by ISIS described the operation and took credit for the carnage. Islamic State fighters carried out a series of bombings with explosive belts and devices on Tuesday, targeting an airport and a central Metro station in the center of the Belgian capital Brussels, a country participating in the international coalition against the Islamic State, the message read. Islamic State fighters opened fire inside Zaventem Airport, before several of them detonated their explosive belts, as a martyrdom bomber detonated his explosive belt in the Maalbeek [sic] Metro station. The attacks resulted in more than 230 dead and wounded." Witnesses said the airport attack, which occurred just after 8 a.m., was accompanied by a shout of "Allahu Akhbar" and gunfire. Sources also said it was possible one or more of the explosions emanated from suitcase bombs packed with nails. The claim of responsibility could not be corroborated by authorities, but ISIS has been known to use Telegram for its communications for most of the last year. Telegram is a digital messaging system invented by two Russian brothers now based in Berlin who boast their system encrypts content for storage and transmission. Unlike Twitter, Facebook and YouTube, Telegram does not suspend private accounts or cooperate with government intelligence agencies. Also posted on the ISIS-linked site immediately after the bombing attacks was an image showing a city or a possible composite of several cities with a message warning We are already in your city. This image is from a new Telegram social media channel posted today after the attack, said Veryan Khan, editorial director for the U.S.-based Terrorism Research & Analysis Consortium. There is no caption, but the graphic appears to be a mixture of different cities, including the river -- Londons Thames -- and the rest of the visuals appear to be other cities. There is reason to be skeptical of the claim, said Ryan Mauro, national security analyst for the Clarion Project and professor of homeland security at Virginia's Liberty University. He said messages and hashtags can be written very quickly after an attack. It is so obvious that this is ISIS-related, that ISIS accounts who knew nothing about the forthcoming attacks don't risk their credibility very much by claiming credit, Mauro said. Belgium, in particular, and Europe, in general, were reeling following the attack. "What we feared has happened, we were hit by blind attacks," said Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel. "We are at war, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said Tuesday. We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war." The first two explosions rocked the departure hall at the Brussels airport shortly after 8 a.m. local time. Witnesses recounted a harrowing and chaotic scene. First there was one explosion. Everyone started to run and panic broke out. Then a second explosion was heard, one witness told The Brussels Times about the airport explosion. Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, told BFM television that the second, louder explosion brought down ceilings and ruptured pipes, mixing water with blood from victims. "It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed," he said. "There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere." "We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene," he said. Amateur video shown on France's i-Tele television showed passengers -- including a child -- running with a backpack dashing out of the terminal in different directions as they tugged luggage. Belgian news channel RTBF reports a Kalashnikov rifle was found in the departure hall at the airport. Marc Noel, 63, was about to board a Delta flight to Atlanta, to return to his home in Raleigh, N.C., when the first explosion was heard. "People were crying, shouting, children. It was a horrible experience," he told AP. Nine Americans were among the injured, including one U.S. service member and five members of his family. Some are critical, a defense official told Fox News. Three Mormon missionaries, identified by the church as Richard Norby, 66; Joseph Empey, 20, and Mason Wells, 19, all of Utah, were also injured at the airport. Moments later at the Metro station, another explosion was reported on a train that was stopped at the Maelbeek subway station, not far from the headquarters of the European Union. Ian McCafferty told The Irish Times he was just getting off the metro at the stop before Maelbeek around 8:20 a.m. when he heard a loud muffled thud but, because of construction at the metro, he didnt really think much of it. There was a large military presence and mass confusion, he said. People started to run. Some people were crying. The two stations are only a stones throw apart. We were the last train through the station before the blast. The bombings in the European Union capital are certain to add new fire to the raging debate over refugees from Muslim nations where terrorist groups are active. Europe has taken in more than a million refugees, and terror groups including ISIS have said they are infiltrating the wave of migrants. After his arrest on Friday, Abdeslam, who is suspected of taking part in the Nov. 13 Paris attack that killed 130 people, told authorities he had created a new network and was planning new attacks. After Abdeslam's arrest and before Tuesday's attacks, authorities were frantically hunting a suspect identified as 24-year-old Najim Laachraoui, who allegedly traveled to Hungary with Abdeslam before the Paris attack. It was unclear whether Laachraoui played any role in Tuesday's bombings, but prosecutors say Laachraoui played a key role in recruiting attackers for ISIS. U.S. authorities were monitoring the situation, poised to assist in the investigation. Speaking from Havana, President Obama mentioned the attacks before giving prepared comments on the thawing relationship between the U.S. and Cuba. Obama called the attacks outrageous, and pledged that the thoughts and prayers of Americans are with the Belgian people. This is yet another reminder that the world must unite, we must be together, regardless of nationality or race or faith, in fighting the scourge of terrorism, said Obama, who had also spoken to Michel by phone. French President Francois Hollande said "terrorists struck Brussels, but it was Europe that was targeted -- and all the world that is concerned," adding that "this war will be long." Fox News' Malia Zimmerman, Catherine Herridge and Matthew Dean contributed to this report. Deadly attacks Tuesday at the Brussels airport and a metro station in the city are the latest in a string of attacks in Europe in recent years. Here are some of the most recent major ones: -- Nov. 13, 2015: ISIS-linked extremists attacked the Bataclan concert hall and other sites across Paris, killing 130 people. A key suspect in the attack, 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam, was arrested in Brussels on March 18, 2016. -- Jan. 7, 2015: A gun assault on the Paris offices of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo kills 12 people. Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it was in revenge for Charlie Hebdo's depictions of the Muslim prophet Mohammed. -- May 24, 2014: Four people are killed at the Jewish Museum in Brussels by an intruder with a Kalashnikov. The accused is a former French fighter linked to ISIS in Syria. -- May 22, 2013: Two Al Qaeda-inspired extremists run down British soldier Lee Rigby in a London street, then stab and hack him to death. -- March 2012: A gunman claiming links to Al Qaeda kills three Jewish schoolchildren, a rabbi and three paratroopers in Toulouse, southern France. -- July 22, 2011: Anti-Muslim extremist Anders Behring Breivik plants a bomb in Oslo then launches a shooting massacre on a youth camp on Norway's Utoya island, killing 77 people, many of them teenagers. -- Nov. 2, 2011: The offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris are firebombed after the satirical magazine runs a cover featuring a caricature of the Prophet Muhammad. No one is injured. -- July 7, 2005: 52 commuters are killed in London when four Al Qaeda-inspired suicide bombers blow themselves up on three subway trains and a bus. -- March 11, 2004: Bombs on rush-hour trains kill 191 people at Madrid's Atocha station in Europe's worst Islamic extremist attack. The new commander of U.S. and NATO forces in Afghanistan apologized Tuesday to the people of Kunduz for the deadly attack on a hospital in the city last year that killed 42 people. U.S. Army Gen. John Nicholson traveled to the northern city to meet local leaders and relatives of those who died in the Oct. 3 attack. A U.S. Air Force AC-130 gunship attacked the hospital run by medical charity Doctors Without Borders in what Nicholson called a "horrible tragedy." Nicholson's wife Norine accompanied him to Kunduz, along with acting defense minister Masoom Stanekzai. More than a dozen U.S. military personnel have been disciplined for mistakes that led to the sustained attack. A U.S military report on the hospital attack is expected to be released within days. A separate U.S. report on the incident obtained last fall by The Associated Press said the aircraft fired 211 shells at the hospital compound over 29 minutes before commanders realized the error and ordered a halt. Afghan officials, including Stanekzai, insisted that Taliban fighters, who had overrun the city on Sept. 28, were using the hospital as a base from which to attack Afghan forces. No evidence has been found to support the claims. Doctors Without Borders, also known by its French initials MSF, immediately ceased operations in Kunduz and has yet to return. The hospital was the only trauma clinic in northern Afghanistan. The Taliban's insurgency spread across the previously peaceful north of the country last year, following the end of the international combat mission in 2014. Military leaders expect another year of fierce fighting amid uncertainty about the future of the peace process and talks between the Afghan government and the Taliban. Aaron's 2,000 Managers Give Back To Nation's Capital At Annual Meeting Furnishes 28 Apartments at D.C.'s "Jobs Have Priority" Apartment-Style Shelter for Families ATLANTA - March 21, 2016 // PRNewswire // - Aaron's, Inc. (NYSE: AAN), the lease-to-own retailer specializing in the sales and lease ownership of furniture, consumer electronics, home appliances and accessories, will concentrate its giving efforts during Aaron's National Managers Meeting where 2,000 managers are joining forces with local organizations in Washington D.C. to give back. The giving efforts kicked off with a donation event where Aaron's donated furniture to 28 apartments for families who have experienced homelessness. This effort supports Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser's efforts to ensure safe, dignified housing for all Washingtonians and end homelessness in the District of Columbia. "Aaron's believes that caring starts with respect -- this is one of our Company's guiding principles," said John Robinson, Aaron'sChief Executive Officer. "We respect the struggles that many families have today as they try to provide for their children and create a safe and stable home environment. We believe we are making a difference by giving back to these families and neighborhoods here in D.C. this week, and across the country throughout the year through our Aaron's Gives programs." Through Aaron's Gives programs, which include the Aaron's Foundation, Inc. and Aaron's Community Outreach Programs,Aaron's gave $2.8 million to communities across the nation in 2015. The efforts by Aaron's associates at the annual National Managers Meeting highlights a week of service by the Company to D.C.-area communities in need. More than 2,000 Aaron's store managers will participate in several community outreach activities while in the nation's capital, making this the eighth year in a row that Aaron's associates will transform the annual Aaron's National Managers Meeting into a city-wide giving initiative. Across the District of Columbia this week, Aaron's is investing $500,000 in product, monetary donations and volunteer hours. At Aaron's first community outreach event today, 100 Aaron's associates installed more than $60,000 worth of new living room and bedroom furniture in units at the District of Columbia-backed "Jobs Have Priority" program at 2601 Naylor Road on the city's southeast side. The program provides apartment-style shelter for families who have experienced homelessness, many of which are single-parent households caring for two to three young children. Many have at least one family member with a mental, developmental or physical disability. "I want to thank Aaron's for its generous support of our residents, our community and Jobs Have Priority," said Mayor Bowser, who has championed bold efforts to end homelessness in the District of Columbia. "Every single resident in our city deserves a safe and dignified home, and Aaron's is supporting us in achieving this goal by supplying high-quality furniture for families." Each of the 28 units received leather sofas and love seats, cocktail tables and bedroom chests from Aaron's. "We're honored to support the 'Jobs Have Priorities' program and everything it stands for families with safe housing, employment opportunities and access to supportive services are the tools they need to become self-sufficient," said Robert Kamerschen, Executive Vice President, General Counsel and Chief Administrative Officer of Aaron's, Inc.. "This donation and our efforts across D.C. demonstrate a civic commitment that began with our founding more than 60 years ago and endures today thanks to the dedication and big hearts of our associates." Aaron's associates will fan out this week across D.C., where they will: Partner with the Cal Ripken, Sr. Foundation to refurbish three Boys & Girls Clubs of Greater Washington. These clean-up projects are an outgrowth of Aaron's 3-year, $5 million commitment to Boys & Girls Clubs of America that began last year. The makeovers will include painting, installing furniture, appliances, TVs, sound and gaming systems, mulching and repairing fences to provide safe and welcoming spaces for D.C.-area youth. Raise money for the Fisher House Foundation, which provides housing at no cost for military families whose loved ones are receiving treatment, and Stillbrave Childhood Cancer Foundation, which provides non-medical, supportive care to children with cancer, and their families. Donate blood to INOVA Blood Donor Services. Register for Be the Match, the national bone marrow donor program. Provide a scholarship to the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation to students who demonstrate leadership ability through exemplary community service and academic talent. Additionally, Aaron's will attempt on Tuesday to break the Guinness World Record for the "Largest Human Mattress Dominoes" by toppling 1,200 mattresses. The current record is 1,150. Once the record is shattered, all 1,200 mattresses will be donated to A Wider Circle, an organization focused on ending individual and family poverty, and to the Sasha Bruce and Wanda Alston youth homeless shelters. To see photos of Aaron's Gives programs that highlight the efforts of Aaron's associates who are giving back throughout the year, visit www.AaronsGives.com. About Aaron's, Inc. Headquartered in Atlanta, Aaron's, Inc. (NYSE: AAN) is a leader in the sales and lease ownership and specialty retailing of furniture, consumer electronics, home appliances and accessories, and currently has more than 2,000 Company-operated and franchised stores in 47 states and Canada. Progressive Leasing, a leading virtual lease-to-own company, provides lease-purchase solutions through approximately 16,000 retail locations in 46 states. Dent-A-Med, Inc., d/b/a the HELPcard, is offered through over 1,400 locations and provides a variety of second-look credit products that are originated through a federally insured bank. Aaron's was founded in 1955, has been publicly traded since 1982 and owns the Aarons.com, ShopHomeSmart.com, ProgLeasing.com, and HELPcard.com brands. For more information, visit www.aarons.com. About "Jobs Have Priority" The "Jobs Have Priority" (http://www.jobshavepriority.org) program helps homeless individuals achieve self-sufficiency through training, employment services and critical support services. The program provides critical support services, which eliminate barriers that are often the final piece to successfully moving a homeless individual from dependency to self-sufficiency. In 2015, the program helped 418 JHP clients secure jobs and 316 individuals move into permanent housing. SOURCE Aaron's, Inc. Contact: Garet Hayes garet.hayes@aarons.com 678-402-3863 ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus FASTSIGNS CEO Catherine Monson to Empower Future Business Professionals as a Keynote Speaker For the Pi Sigma Epsilon 2016 National Convention March 22, 2016 // Franchising.com // CARROLLTON, Texas - Catherine Monson, CEO of FASTSIGNS International, Inc., will deliver the keynote speech at the 2016 Pi Sigma Epsilon National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on March 24th as they celebrate their 60th anniversary. A specialized fraternal organization, Pi Sigma Epsilon focuses on developing the sales and marketing skills of its members through experiential learning and professional opportunities. Monson will share the five common characteristics of highly successful people in her opening, and will explain how people who exercise these behaviors set themselves up for more successful personal and professional relationships, and for more rewarding lives. Research shows that highly successful people share common characteristics, said Monson. The best part is that they can be learned and improved upon by anyone. Members of Pi Sigma Epsilon already have strong aptitudes for achieving their goals and leading others. I look forward to providing Pi Sigma Epsilon National Convention attendees with a fresh outlook and motivation that can help them achieve even greater success. About Catherine Monson Catherine Monson is an experienced executive and a 30-year veteran of the print and visual communications industry. A past recipient of the International Franchise Associations prestigious Bonny LeVine Award, she has also been recognized by the Dallas Business Journal as one of the top 25 Women Industry Leaders and an Innovator and an Influencer by Sign and Digital Graphics magazine. In 2012, Catherine appeared on the two-time Emmy Award-nominated reality series, Undercover Boss, to learn new ways to further advance the FASTSIGNS brand. She serves on the Board of Directors of the International Franchise Association (IFA), the Board of Directors of the Learning Experience and the Board of Trustees of Pi Sigma Epsilon National Education Foundation. About FASTSIGNS FASTSIGNS International, Inc. is the largest sign and visual communications franchisor in North America, and is the worldwide franchisor of more than 600 independently owned and operated FASTSIGNS centers in nine countries including the US, Canada, England, Saudi Arabia, UAE, Grand Cayman, Mexico and Australia (where centers operate as SIGNWAVE). FASTSIGNS consultants provide comprehensive visual marketing solutions and help companies of all sizes and across all industries attract more attention, communicate their message, sell more products, help visitors find their way and extend their branding across all of their customer touch points including decor, events, wearables and marketing materials. Learn more about sign and visual graphic solutions at fastsigns.com and visit our newsroom. Follow us on Twitter @FASTSIGNS or Facebook at facebook.com/FASTSIGNS. For information about the FASTSIGNS franchise opportunity, contact Mark Jameson (mark.jameson@fastsigns.com or call 214.346.5679). SOURCE FASTSIGNS Contact: Jayme Nelson Corporate Communications FASTSIGNS 214-346-5676 Jayme.Nelson@fastsigns.com ### Add to Request List Added Request Information Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus Home Care Assistance Denver Partners with Holiday Retirement Community Lakewood Estates To Host Family Caregiver Educational Workshop The Family Caregiver event will be held on Saturday, April 2nd from 10am12pm at Lakewood Estates and is open to the public free of charge. March 22, 2016 // Franchising.com // Denver, CO Home Care Assistance Denver, a leading provider of non-medical, in-home care for seniors, is presenting a Family Caregiver Educational workshop with Carol Core of CarolCARE on Saturday, April 2nd from 10am 12pm at the Lakewood Estates community which is located at 8585 West Dakota Avenue. This event is free and open to the public and will provide valuable information and resources to family caregivers. A light brunch will also be served. We are very excited to partner with Holiday Retirement to bring this event to the community to educate family caregivers on the legal and financial issues and care options available to them, said Samantha, Co-Owner of Home Care Assistance Denver. We see this workshop as a means to arm family caregivers with the knowledge they need to help make the difficult decisions that are required when caring for an aging loved one as well as themselves. The Family Caregiver Educational workshop will include the following: 10 sanity saving tips for caregivers 10 signs your loved one is ready for home care Legal documents that need to be in place ahead of time The events co-presenter, Carol Core, spent more than 12 years as a non-paid family caregiver and leveraged her personal expertise and knowledge to create CarolCARE a firm dedicated to offering support, empowerment and relief to non-paid family caregivers. Carol also authored the book 50 Sanity Saving Tips for Caregivers, You Dont Have to Kill Yourself to Keep Them Alive. For more information about Home Care Assistance Denver please visit: www.homecareassistancedenver.com or call 720-443-3371. About Home Care Assistance Home Care Assistance, founded in 2002, is a leading international provider of non-medical, in-home senior care with franchises throughout the United States, Canada and Australia. Serving as a comprehensive alternative to a nursing home or assisted living facility for older adults, our mission is to provide the highest quality and most reliable in-home care service. Home Care Assistance successfully operates as North Americas preferred brand for in-home care and maintains an intimate and personal rapport with each client. Here at Home Care Assistance we are dedicated to finding the highest caliber caregivers that we expertly match with the right recipient based on his or her needs. In addition, we do not require long-term contracts for services and remain on-call 24 hours a day. For more information, please visit www.homecareassistance.com. SOURCE Home Care Assistance Media Contact: Kathryn Zakskorn Director of Franchise Marketing 650-462-9501 kzakskorn@homecareassistance.com ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus Hwy 55 Burgers, Shakes & Fries Celebrates National Cheesesteak Day with $5 Cheesesteaks All-American, Family-Friendly Diner to Roll Back the Prices on Thursday, March 24 March 22, 2016 // Franchising.com // Hwy 55, already famous for its burgers, shakes & fries, is about to honor another famous food classic: cheesesteaks. On Thursday, March 24, National Cheesesteak Day, Hwy 55 Burgers, Shakes & Fries will sell $5 cheesesteaks all day at its restaurants system-wide. Hwy 55 guests can choose from the burger joints two premium versions of the sandwich staple: original Cheesesteak or Chicken Cheesesteak. Both sandwiches are served with sauteed mushrooms, onions and bell peppers with guests choice of melted cheese and served in a steamed hoagie roll. For the first two years of Hwy 55 (originally Andys Cheesesteaks and Cheeseburgers) open to close, I personally flipped every single burger here but I also learned to make some other great classics along the way, said Hwy 55 president and founder Kenney Moore. I would put our cheesesteaks up against anyones, even the best in Philadelphia. The same care and attention to detail that makes our burgers great can be found in our delicious cheesesteaks. And for $5 on National Cheesesteak Day, a lot of guests are going to find out. Hwy 55 Burgers, Shakes & Fries boasts a fresh, All-American diner experience with fresh, never-frozen burgers, premium sliced cheesesteaks piled high on steamed hoagies, and frozen custard made in-house every day. With its open-grill design, the kitchen's dedication and care when hand-crafting meals is front and center. The Hwy 55 $5 cheesesteak offer is valid for dine-in only. About Hwy 55 Hwy 55, a retro-themed diner that features fresh, never-frozen hand-pattied burgers, house-made frozen custard, and other classic favorites in a unique open-kitchen setting, was founded in Goldsboro, North Carolina in 1991. Hwy 55 reflects founder Kenney Moore's commitment to authentic hospitality and fresh food. Widely known in the state for its fresh food and service that exceeds expectations, the chain won BurgerBusiness.com's "Best Burger" in 2012. It also was recently named a top 500 franchise in the United States by Entrepreneur magazine and a "Next 20" restaurant brand by Nation's Restaurant News. HWY 55 currently has 125 locations in 10 states, Denmark and the United Arab Emirates. Like HWY 55 on at https://www.facebook.com/Hwy55burgers or follow us at https://twitter.com/hwy55burgers. For more information, visit https://www.hwy55.com. SOURCE Hwy 55 Media Contact: Tom Beyer 150PR (formerly DFPR) 480-722-1461 ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus If Double-Dipping Is Wrong, Then Millennial Women Dont Want To Be Right The Melting Pot Conducts National Poll on Dipping Etiquette in Honor of National Cheese Fondue Day March 22, 2016 // Franchising.com // TAMPA, Fla. More than two decades ago, the world watched as George Costanza was berated for double-dipping in that classic Seinfeld episode. Years later, the great double-dipping debate still exists, but it seems as though Millennial women are more accepting of the questionable act than their male counterparts. In a national survey of 2,000 men and women, it was found that nearly half (49%) of the 18 to 24-year-old women said that if they saw someone double-dipping while eating cheese fondue, theyd join them. According to these statistics, its safe to assume that women across the country will not be shy about sharing a pot of cheese fondue to celebrate National Cheese Fondue Day on April 11. The poll, which was conducted by Google Consumer Surveys earlier this month and commissioned by The Melting Pot Restaurants, Inc., asked men and women what kind of cheese fondue dipper they are, because clearly dipping styles have a way of defining people. The majority (43%) call themselves Big Dippers, the ones who think cheese trumps everything else, with a dunk just as big as their bite. Nearly 18% admitted to being Double-Dippers - willing to double-dip anytime, anywhere. Another 17% confessed they were Dainty Dippers, the rule-followers and not dipping rebels. And, some (13%) were Little Dippers who prefer the nibble approach in an effort to savor every cheesy moment. Who knew there were so many variations of dipping? People really take their cheese fondue dipping seriously, and we dont blame them. This survey really showed us how much everyone loves cheese fondue and how open they were to sharing their dipping style preference, said Jason Miller, Executive Chef of The Melting Pot Restaurants, Inc. Whether you are a Big, Little or even Double-Dipper, youre sure to enjoy coming together with dippers of all kinds to celebrate National Cheese Fondue Day with an interactive dining experience at THE destination for cheese fondue. For those preparing to celebrate National Cheese Fondue Day at The Melting Pot, here are some Fondues and Fondon'ts to keep in mind on the big day: Fondues: Twist and twirl your fork to prevent dripping. Claim your fondue fork and never let it go. Give your fondue fork time to cool off between dips. Allow ladies to dip first. Its only polite. Keep napkins near lips. Not burners. Fondonts: Never knock other fondue forks out of the way unless you want a fondue fork battle to ensue Avoid double-dipping unless you ask first. Dont dip with your fingers. Those pots are hot! Never lick the fondue pot, no matter how tempting. Think twice before eating directly off the fondue fork. In celebration of the holiday, The Melting Pot is hosting a #HowDoUFondue Twitter party on April 11 from 2 p.m. to 3 p.m. EDT. This special one-hour party will be hosted by Chef Jason Miller, where followers have the chance to ask questions about the Fondues and Fondonts when it comes to dining at The Melting Pot and learn about various dipping styles. Twitter followers who engage with Chef Jason will have the chance to win one of two $50 gift cards to The Melting Pot. Fans can tune into the conversation by following the hashtag #HowDoUFondue and RSVP by visiting http://tweetvite.com/event/HowDoUFondue. In 2015, The Melting Pot was ranked No. 1 among 40 casual-dining restaurant chains in Nation's Restaurant News' 2015 Consumer Picks report. The Melting Pot ranked first in four out of 10 overall attribute categories, achieving top scores in cleanliness, service, atmosphere and craveability. The Melting Pot operates more than 125 restaurants across 35 U.S. states, Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, and has 10 locations in development internationally. The concept is known for offering an assortment of flavorful fondue cooking styles and a variety of unique entrees served with signature dipping sauces. The menu features a variety of a la carte selections, highlighting customizable options that invite guests to enjoy one, two, three or more courses as they select any combination of individually-priced cheese fondues, salads, entrees and chocolate fondues. For more information on The Melting Pot, visit http://www.MeltingPot.com. To learn more about the Fondues and Fondonts of dipping etiquette, visit http://www.meltingpot.com/fondue101. About The Melting Pot Restaurants, Inc. Founded in 1975, The Melting Pot has offered a unique fondue dining experience for 40 years. As the premier fondue restaurant franchise, The Melting Pot Restaurants, Inc. has more than 125 restaurants in 35 U.S. states, Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and 10 international locations in development. A leading polished casual dining franchise, The Melting Pot was recognized as the No. 1 casual dining restaurant in the Nations Restaurant News 2015 Consumer Picks report. Known for offering a choice of fondue cooking styles and a variety of unique entrees, The Melting Pots menu also features cheese fondues, salads, fine wines and chocolate fondue desserts. Fondue fans can join The Melting Pots Club Fondue for exclusive promotions, special events and advance holiday reservation privileges. The Melting Pot is an affiliate of Front Burner Brands, a restaurant management company headquartered in Tampa, Fla. For more information, visit www.meltingpot.com. To learn more about franchise opportunities with The Melting Pot, please visit www.meltingpotfranchise.com About Front Burner Front Burner is a restaurant management company headquartered in Tampa, Fla. It is affiliated with the corporate owners of and its management services extended to The Melting Pot Restaurants, Inc., founded in 1975 with more than 125 restaurants in U.S., Canada, Mexico, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and 10 locations currently in development internationally. For more information, visit http://www.frontburnerbrands.com. SOURCE The Melting Pot Restaurants, Inc. Media Contact: Sloane Fistel Account Executive Fish Consulting, LLC O: (954) 893-9150 C: (954) 789-0432 ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus Minuteman Press Owners Diana and Jeff Merritt Recognized for Charitable Efforts in Salisbury, MD Operation We Care Day was declared in the City of Salisbury, Maryland on Feb. 8, 2016 by the Hon. Jacob R. Day, Mayor of the City of Salisbury. The proclamation honored Minuteman Press owners Diana and Jeff Merritt for their year-round efforts in sending care packages and supporting local military, law enforcement, and fire/EMS departments through Operation We Care, their 501(c)(3) charitable organization. March 22, 2016 // Franchising.com // SALISBURY, Md. The Hon. Jacob R. Day, Mayor of the City of Salisbury, proclaimed February 8th, 2016 as Operation We Care Day in the City of Salisbury, Maryland. Operation We Care is a 501(c)(3) charitable organization that was started by Minuteman Press franchise owners Diana and Jeff Merritt to support local troops with care packages and other important services. Jeff and Diana Merritt help coordinate the year-round efforts of local citizens, businesses, and civic organizations as care package items are collected, sorted, packed, and then sent to Delmarva Troops. In addition, Operation We Care partners with sixteen local schools so students are able to participate in this wonderful cause and give thanks to the troops. In addition to sending packages to service members, Operation We Care works with the Wounded Warrior Project, and helps Veterans with various issues; including mobility issues through the building of ramps, finding temporary homes for pets when re-deployed, meeting returning Vets at the airport, and virtually anything else we can do to help, noted Jeff Merritt. We salute Diana and Jeff Merritt for their efforts, while thanking those whom they serve through Operation We Care for their service, exclaimed Bob Heimbuch, Minuteman Press International Regional Vice President for Maryland/DC/Virginia. For more information on Operation We Care, visit their Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/OpWeCare. To contact Jeff and Diana Merritts Minuteman Press franchise in Salisbury, MD, call 410-548-7122 or visit their website: http://www.salisbury.minutemanpress.com. About Minuteman Press Serving the business community for over 40 years, Minuteman Press customer service driven business model provides digital print, design and promotional products and services to businesses from concept review through to completion. Today we are much more than just print; we can provide anything you can put a name, image or logo on! Our new slogan We Design, Print & Promote YOU! indicates the wide variety of products and services we offer that go beyond printing. For more information about our products and services or to find your local Minuteman Press, visit www.minutemanpress.com. About Minuteman Press International Repeatedly ranked #1 in category by Entrepreneur Magazine, Minuteman Press International is a top rated business service franchise that offers world class training and unparalleled ongoing local support. Minuteman Press opened in 1973 and began franchising in 1975. Today, there are more than 900 locations worldwide including the U.S., Australia, Canada, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. Minuteman Press aims to grow to more than 1,000 franchises within the next three years. Prior experience is not necessary to own and operate a successful Minuteman Press franchise. Learn more about Minuteman Press franchise opportunities at www.minutemanpressfranchise.com Like Us on Facebook: www.facebook.com/MinutemanPressFranchise Follow Us on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MinutemanIntl Join Us on LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/minuteman-press SOURCE Minuteman Press International Contact: Al Sanders Minuteman Press Franchise Opportunities 1-800-645-3006 Chris Biscuiti Media Relations cbiscuiti@mpihq.com ### Add to Request List Added Request Information Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus SpeedPro Imaging Appoints New VP of Franchise Development March 22, 2016 // Franchising.com // DENVER SpeedPro Imaging, the nations leader in large-format imagery, has appointed Charles Parsons as Vice President of Franchise Development. Charles joins long-time Franchise Development Vice President, Steve Phelps. With 24 years of experience, Parsons is a seasoned business development and franchise sales executive who brings a proven track record of success. In his new role, Parsons will be joining the franchise sales team along with developing SpeedPros market strategies for both the United States and international expansion. Company plans call for awarding 20-25 new studios annually and having more than 200 operating units by 2020. A significant part of my career has been in franchising and I couldnt be more energized about this opportunity with SpeedPro, said Parsons. At a time when rapid technological changes continue to transform the printing industry, competition for clients and franchise owners is fierce. SpeedPro has clear differentiators that make it a concept to be excited about now and into the future. Throughout his career, Parsons has implemented programs for franchise development in more than 60 countries, all while managing top producing sales and marketing teams. He most recently served as Vice President of Franchise Development at Home Helpers & Caring Hearts, a leading franchisor in the senior home care industry, where he led the sales team to appoint 41 new franchisees in 2015. Welcoming an industry leader of Charles caliber to SpeedPros management team is a testament to the strength of our brand and proven franchise system," said SpeedPro CEO Boris Katsnelson. We are projecting strong growth in 2016 and beyond and we needed someone with his strategic vision to help develop and manage that growth. For more information about SpeedPros franchise opportunity, please visit www.speedprofranchising.com. About SpeedPro Imaging With more than 20 years of experience, SpeedPro Imaging is the nations leader in large-format imagery. The company specializes in high-quality products including wall murals, event graphics, tradeshow displays, vehicle wraps and window graphics. Through extreme resolution levels and unparalleled quality standards, SpeedPro Imaging takes visual communications to the next level. Today, there are over 120 studios open and operating in 31 states, with several more in various stages of development. For more information, visit www.speedpro.com. SOURCE SpeedPro Imaging Contact: Michael Misetic Managing Partner (O) 847.239.8171 (M) 773.680.9023 ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus Yogurtlands Fourth Annual Flavor Quest Brings The Worlds Best Flavors to the Land of Frozen Yogurt March 22, 2016 // Franchising.com // IRVINE, CA - Yogurtlands big international flavor mixer, serving up sensational new flavors inspired by destinations from around the world, arrives once again when Yogurtlands fourth annual Flavor Quest begins March 24. From March 24 to June 1, Yogurtland will take fans on a global culinary journey with nine hand crafted, custom flavors and three new toppings, in honor of nine countries around the world. A new flavor launches each week and will be available for two weeks. The fourth annual Flavor Quest treats are: Indonesian Chocolate Java Cake This decadent dessert takes the cake with rich chocolate and subtle notes of coffee to create this Indonesian-inspired perfection. This decadent dessert takes the cake with rich chocolate and subtle notes of coffee to create this Indonesian-inspired perfection. English Toffee Blended with real butter toffee sauce, this rich gourmet sweetness will bring out your British side. Blended with real butter toffee sauce, this rich gourmet sweetness will bring out your British side. Thailand Mango Coconut Tart Taste a true tropical treat from Thailand and one of the countrys most beloved culinary combos. This flavor pairs two of the best mango varietals in the world and blended it with coconut water for a lightly tart flavor that refreshes your taste buds. Taste a true tropical treat from Thailand and one of the countrys most beloved culinary combos. This flavor pairs two of the best mango varietals in the world and blended it with coconut water for a lightly tart flavor that refreshes your taste buds. Austrian Apple Strudel with Caramel A new take on the classic Austrian dessert, this flavor blends real caramel, apples and notes of cinnamon for a delectable treat. A new take on the classic Austrian dessert, this flavor blends real caramel, apples and notes of cinnamon for a delectable treat. Middle Eastern Fig & Honey Gelato To create this sweet combination, figs, a staple from the Middle East, are paired with a touch of honey to create a rich and sophisticated gelato. To create this sweet combination, figs, a staple from the Middle East, are paired with a touch of honey to create a rich and sophisticated gelato. Mexican Horchata With real cinnamon and almonds, this creamy treat is an authentic spoonful of the deliciously sweet and popular Mexican rice drink. With real cinnamon and almonds, this creamy treat is an authentic spoonful of the deliciously sweet and popular Mexican rice drink. Argentinian Dulce De Leche Cookie Creamy dulce de leche is combined with shortbread cookies to create an irresistible South American flavor. Creamy dulce de leche is combined with shortbread cookies to create an irresistible South American flavor. New Zealand Kiwi Raspberry Sorbet This flavor-packed sorbet blends real raspberries and kiwi fruit to create a naturally sweet and crisp combination. This flavor-packed sorbet blends real raspberries and kiwi fruit to create a naturally sweet and crisp combination. American Peanut Butter Parfait Enjoy a taste of true Southern comfort food without the guilt. This no sugar added flavor combines rich vanilla with real peanut butter for a delicious spoonful of flavor. Enjoy a taste of true Southern comfort food without the guilt. This no sugar added flavor combines rich vanilla with real peanut butter for a delicious spoonful of flavor. Flavor Quest will feature three new toppings - light French Galette cookies, rich and creamy Venetian Chocolate Truffles, and buttery Mini Shortbread Fingers. About Yogurtland Yogurtlands continual search to find the worlds best flavors and true ingredients takes the companys team of flavorologists to the far corners of the world. The search is the travel and taste adventure that inspires Flavor Quest and the growing selection of Yogurtlands proprietary recipes for the companys more than 200 different and customized flavors. Whether traditional or exotic, each flavor uses real ingredients, many times sourced from their original locations. By controlling the entire frozen yogurt making process, Yogurtland has raised the standards for flavors and quality to new heights and much to the delight of millions of fans. All of Yogurtlands flavors meet the National Yogurt Association Criteria for live and active culture frozen yogurt and are produced in a kosher-certified facility. Yogurtland features non-fat and low-fat yogurt flavors as well as non-dairy and no sugar added choices while using milk that does not contain antibiotics or added hormones. As for the sorbet, fruit flavors are fortified with Vitamin C for an extra boost. Presently Yogurtland has hundreds of locations across the U.S., Australia, Guam, Thailand, Venezuela and Dubai. Flavors are always subject to creative change and popular demand. For more information, visit http://www.yogurt-land.com orhttp://www.facebook.com/yogurtland. SOURCE Yogurtland ### Comments: Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus. Disqus THE HAGUE, NetherlandsThe International Criminal Court convicted former Congolese vice president JeanPierre Bemba on Monday of murder, rape and pillage for acts by his militia in the Central African Republic in 200203. The judgment was hailed as a landmark in the fight against impunity for sex crimes in conflict. Bembas unanimous conviction marked the first time the court has convicted a suspect based on his role as a military commander. It also was the courts first judgment recognizing rape as a war crime and a crime against humanity. Bemba, 53, is the highest-ranking person yet convicted by the court. He showed no emotion as Presiding Judge Sylvia Steiner read out the long judgment highlighting the horrific crimes by his militia. He will be sentenced following a separate hearing. His defense lawyers can appeal. Steiner outlined a litany of rapes by members of Bembas militia, the Movement for the Liberation of Congo, after it was deployed to the Central African Republic to help forces loyal to then-President AngeFeliz Patasse fight rebels led by Francois Bozize. Bozizes forces ultimately won and he replaced Patasse as president. Steiner said women, girls and men were targeted by Bembas forces, often with multiple soldiers raping women and girls in front of other family members. In one incident, a mans wife was gang raped and when he protested he, too, was raped at gunpoint. Entire families were victimized, Steiner said. Victims included the elderly men, women and children. Bemba was convicted even though he spent much of the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The three-judge panel said he was able to communicate with his troops using radios and satellite and mobile phones and also saw reports of their grave crimes in the media. Steiner called what little action he did take to prevent or punish crimes by his forces grossly inadequate. The convictions for rape as a war crime and crime against humanity will be a boost for court Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda, who has made the fight against sexual assault in conflict one of her priorities. (Prosecutors) will spare no efforts to continue to bring accountability for such heinous crimes in future cases, Bensouda said in a statement. Descartes Mponge, secretary general of the Congolese rights group ACADHOSHA, said the judgment strengthens the ICCs credibility in Africa, where it is accused of bias and politicization. Appleton Restaurant Brings Latin Flair to Irish Fare with March 24th Pairing Dinner Locally known for unique and creative monthly pairing dinners, Appleton restauranteurs plan to combine their mixed family heritage into a multi-cultural culinary celebration, bringing the restaurant's signature Latin Flair to Irish Fare in the upcoming Irish Whiskey Pairing Dinner at Osorio's Latin Fusion. -- From corned beef and cabbage to green beer to Irish whiskey to a pinch for those Irish among us failing to wear green, St. Patrick's day traditions abound throughout the Fox Valley. Just a week following the traditional St. Patty's day festivities, one Appleton, WI restaurant, locally known for their diverse culinary influences warmly accented with a signature Latin flair, plans to honor a proud Irish-Latino family heritage by combining the best of both cultures into a truly unique pairing dinner on March 24th, 2016. Says Kim Finnell, co-owner and general manager of Osorio's Latin Fusion restaurant in Appleton, "Diversity is what makes us interesting; what makes humankind beautiful. So our Irish Whiskey Pairing Dinner is more than just a unique culinary event; it's a celebration of that diversity." Kim's family heritage consists of a self-described "Euro Super-Mix" with Irish traditions remaining a strong influence, while husband, Chef Liborio and manager, Edgar Osorio both hail from Latin lineage. "What better way to celebrate the many cultural influences that have shaped our family - ALL families - than to bring the best of those cultures together with tasty food and creative cocktails?" Finnell adds with the signature enthusiasm that the Appleton restaurant's patrons have come to adore. At just $49 per person, the Irish Whiskey Pairing Dinner at Osorio's Latin Fusion includes a four-course dinner, each course expertly paired with a signature, hand-crafted Irish Whiskey cocktail featuring Tullamore D.E.W. Irish Whiskey. The event begins at 7:00 pm. Reservations are required and can be obtained by calling the Appleton restaurant directly at 920-955-3766. In addition to the upcoming pairing dinner, Osorio's Latin Fusion is excited to announce the introduction of live music every Thursday evening from 5-8 pm. The first Thursday of every month will feature live Mariachis (6-8 pm). The remainder of Thursday evenings will feature an array of local and regional acoustic musicians. March's musical talent lineup includes local musicians Jacob Fannin and Dorothy Zerbe (March 17th & 31st, respectively) and Eau Claire musician Jeff White (March 24th - the evening of the March pairing dinner). Of the addition of live music, Finnell exuberantly states, "The Fox Valley music scene is phenomenal. There's just so much talent here. We are honored to bring this one-of-a-kind ambience to our guests, and also to support local artists in this way. It's a win-win-win. And the acoustics in here are truly amazing!" With nearly contagious excitement, Finnell continues, "And spring is almost here! I find myself continually peeking into our storage, awaiting the day that all those lovely patio tables and chairs can come back outside. Soon, soon soon." Osorio's added an outdoor patio to the restaurant the latter part of summer, 2015. The owners and regular patrons, alike, appear eager to enjoy the new outdoor fusion dining experience for the full season in 2016. Just one of many reasons that people of the Fox Valley are, indeed, ready for spring. With the Irish Whiskey Pairing Dinner just a week away, interested parties are encouraged to call Osorio's Latin Fusion at 920-955-3766 for reservations. Private and community (limited seating) tables are currently available. Ongoing musical talent lineups, menus, and more can be found on the Appleton restaurant's website: www.osorioslatinfusion.com. For more information and a preview of music by Jacob Fannin, please visit: www.youtube.com/watch?v=UBzBsG_O3hw For more information and a preview of music by Jeff White, please visit: www.jeffwhitemusic.org/ For more information and a preview of music by Dorothy Zerbe, please visit: www.facebook.com/dorothyzerbesongs/ For more events, menus, and Appleton catering information, please visit: www.osorioslatinfusion.com/ **Elyse Hoffman is a Wisconsin-based freelance journalist with a high-spirited Irish streak, and fervent lover of live acoustic music, creative food, and Irish whiskey. For more information about us, please visit http://osorioslatinfusion.com/ Contact Info: Name: Elyse Hoffman Organization: Osorio's Latin Fusion Source: http://marketersmedia.com/appleton-restaurant-brings-latin-flair-to-irish-fare-with-march-24th-pairing-dinner/107693 Release ID: 107693 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) Martha's Vineyard Considers Replacing Plastic Bags with Reusable Bags The town of Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard, summer haven for the wealthy, is considering implementing a ban on plastic bags. The selectmen are discussing methods of encouraging the use of reusable bags. -- Selectmen for the town of Oak Bluffs, a small community on Martha's Vineyard, announced that they will not hold a vote this spring on implementing a plastic bag ban. Some area store owners are concerned that the switch to reusable shopping bags will hit them in the pocketbook, while others say that the cost will have little effect on their businesses. A few noted that they could pass the costs on to customers, but that the increase in cost would be negligible. Five other towns on the small island, located off the coast of Massachusetts, have already agreed to bring a plastic bag ban to a vote in their annual meetings, but the Oak Bluffs Board of Selectmen are planning to approach the problem of plastic bags in a different way. Selectman Gail Bamarkian said that "there are still some issues to be considered." Among the issues raised was the fact that Oak Bluffs is larger than other towns on the island, has more businesses, and is largely a "walking" town. Because of that, some business owners are concerned that customers would find the switch to paper bags difficult. Other area business owners, however, note that they already use paper bags, as well as sell reusable tote bags for produce and other grocery items. The neighboring island of Nantucket was one of the first communities in the country to ban single use plastic bags. Their plastic bag ban went into effect in 1990, and includes all plastic and polystyrene containers supplied by vendors. A Nantucket supermarket clerk noted that the store packs groceries in 70-pound paper bags, which are good for five to ten uses, as well as selling reusable tote bags at the register. The store also collects used grocery bags from customers for reuse. About 35 percent of the store's customers bring their own reusable grocery bags when they come to the store, the clerk said. She feels that most island residents see their long-standing ban on the use of plastic bags and containers as a source of pride. Town Manager Elizabeth Gibson says that she's never heard a complaint about the ban, and that it's well established there. She says that the plastic bag ban has been good for the town. The Vineyard Conservation Society, which has campaigned for the island-wide plastic bag ban, isn't concerned. "They have a different path they'd like to take with this," said a VCS member. The selectman agrees. "There are many different ways the bylaw could be written to accommodate the concerns," she said. About: MJH Innovations is seller of quality products that make people's lives easier. It is their company philosophy that good products shouldn't cost a fortune, and they work hard to provide quality products to consumers for reasonable prices. Shoppers can find many of their products listed on Amazon Prime. For more information about us, please visit http://www.lapopdesigns.com/ Contact Info: Name: Matthew Hesser Organization: Majon Internernational Address: P.O. Box 880, Arroyo Grande, CA 93421 Phone: 805-534-9800 Release ID: 107736 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) HighestCashOffer.com Launches Website We Buy Houses Fast To Homeowners We buy houses fast is the tag-line of the Highest Cash Offer company in Scottsdale AZ. The firm's website offers homeowners the ability to sell their homes "as is" quickly. -- We Buy Houses Fast, is the promise of HighestCashOffer.com.The Scottsdale, AZ-based firm specializes in working closely with homeowners to provide fast cash buyouts for their houses. There is no Realtor involved and homeowners need not complete repairs before selling. Closing costs are paid by the company and there is no need for bank, documentation and credit checks, as the offer is all cash. Once an application is made by the homeowners, a cash offer will be made in as little as seven days. The sale of the property is not subject to Realtor listings and there are no brokers showing the property. When sellers work with Highest Cash Offer, the transaction is completed quickly. Because the company pays cash, closing can occur much faster than most other buyers. The transaction is personally handled. The process is easy and free of frustration and hassle. The initial offer is usually made within 24 hours of request. Each sale is "as-is". Homeowners don't need to worry about making repairs or even cleaning out the premises. The sale is completed in the existing condition. There are many reasons why homeowners might be in a position to need to quickly sell their property. Many of these people each year end up losing their homes to banks, debtors, homeowners associations or the government. Highest Cash Offer purchases houses quickly for cash and have been able to help homeowners in this situation. It can be easy to fall behind on mortgage payments or to owe money for property taxes. The house may be upside down in the mortgage, so there is no equity. A disabled person may be unable to manage the floor plan or design of the home. When there is a divorce, medical bills or death, it may be necessary to quickly liquidate assets. The loss of a job can cause inability to keep up with mortgage payments. Irrespective of the reason for the fast sale, the firm is able to help with a fast cash offer. For more information about us, please visit http://highestcashoffer.com/ Contact Info: Name: Hilary Hobson Organization: HighestCashOffer.com Address: 5756 n. 79th Street, Scottsdale AZ Phone: (888) 977-9170 Source: http://marketersmedia.com/highestcashoffer-com-launches-website-we-buy-houses-fast-to-homeowners/107389 Release ID: 107389 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) ADME/Tox Technologies Market Research Report : Radiant Insights,Inc The report serves as a guide to ADME/Tox industry, covering more than 500 companies that are engaged in ADME/Tox studies/screening, products and services. -- This report on ADME/Tox Technologies gives a market insight into products and services used in the ADME/Tox industry. Predictive technologies analyzed include In vivo, In vitro, and In silico. Related technologies such as High Throughput Screening (HTS), Laboratory Information Management System (LIMS), and cell based assays are also analyzed. Market projections and estimates are illustrated by region and by technology. Access Full Report With TOC @ http://www.radiantinsights.com/research/adme-tox-technologies The report serves as a guide to ADME/Tox industry, covering more than 500 companies that are engaged in ADME/Tox studies/screening, products and services. Major Contract Research Organizations, Research Institutes and Universities serving the ADME/Tox industry are also covered in the corporate directory section of this report. Information related to recent product releases, product developments, partnerships, collaborations, and mergers and acquisitions is covered in the report. Compilation of Worldwide Patents related to ADME/Tox Technologies is also provided. A global perspective is presented along with regional analysis covering the regions of North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, Latin America, the Middle East and Africa with 97 exclusive graphically represented exhibits. Table of Content 1. SCOPE AND METHODOLOGY 2. REPORT SYNOPSIS ADME/Tox Technologies Absorption Distribution Metabolism Excretion Toxicity 2.2 Significant Methods for ADME/Tox Predictive Technologies Related ADME/Tox Methods 2.3 ADME/Tox Technologies - Global Market Analysis Exhibit 1. ADME/Tox Technologies - Global Market Estimations and Predictions (2005-2020) in US$ Billion Exhibit 2. Major Global Companies in ADME/TOX Technologies Market See More Reports of This Category by Radiant Insights: http://www.radiantinsights.com/catalog/biotechnology 3. MARKET DYNAMICS 3.1 Market Overview 3.2. ADME/Tox Technologies Market Global ADME/Tox Market Analysis Exhibit 3. ADME/Tox Technologies - Global Market Estimations and Predictions (2005-2020) for North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Rest of World in US$ Million Exhibit 4. ADME/Tox Technologies - Global Market Shares (2010, 2015 & 2020) North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and Rest of World 3.3 North American ADME/Tox Market Analysis Exhibit 5. ADME/Tox Technologies - North American Market Estimations and Predictions (2005-2020) for United States and Canada in US$ Million Exhibit 6. ADME/Tox Technologies - North American Market Shares (20010, 2015 & 2020) for United States and Canada Explore More Reports On "Biotechnology" Category - o Biomarkers Market - http://www.radiantinsights.com/research/biomarkers About Radiant Insights,Inc Radiant Insights is a platform for companies looking to meet their market research and business intelligence requirements. We assist and facilitate organizations and individuals procure market research reports, helping them in the decision making process. We have a comprehensive collection of reports, covering over 40 key industries and a host of micro markets. In addition to over extensive database of reports, our experienced research coordinators also offer a host of ancillary services such as, research partnerships/ tie-ups and customized research solutions. For more information about us, please visit http://www.radiantinsights.com/research/adme-tox-technologies Contact Info: Name: Michelle Thoras Organization: Radiant Insights, Inc. Address: 28 2nd Street Phone: 14153490054 Source: http://marketersmedia.com/admetox-technologies-market-research-report-radiant-insightsinc/107803 Release ID: 107803 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) Pangeanic Renew Accreditations As They Present Statistical Machine Translation Platform To EU HQ Pangeanic has renewed both a European Standard and ISO accreditation as it presents its statistical machine translation to the European Commission for consideration. -- Pangeanic started out offering bespoke English, French and Spanish translation services, and will next year celebrate their 20th anniversary in business. In that time, they have grown to become one of the most respected translation companies in the world, and have expanded far beyond their original purview. They are now industry leaders in a new form of statistical machine translation, and after renewing their international accreditations in the industry, have presented the latest version of their ground breaking PangeaMT to the European Commission in Luxembourg. The European Commission needs a tool to help fulfil its mandate for the Connecting Europe Facility, and Pangeanic's CEO, Manuel Herranz, presented the current state-of-the-art that PangeaMT v3, with a suite of new features, cross platform compatibility, a powerful API and more. A copy of their presentation as well as a full description of the unique features and selling points is available on the website. Pangeanic has successfully passed external audits by British Quality Certification body EQA, renewing its European Translation Standard 15038 and ISO9001 accreditations for a further three years. These accreditations check Pangeanic's processes, from human resources to staff training, translation quality control, documentation control and traceability for specific translation services, as part of their commitment to offering the best quality translation service. A spokesperson for Pangeanic explained, "This is a very exciting time here at Pangeanic, and our presentation to the European Commission was a huge success. We are confident about the quality of our product, and in the future of statistical machine translation when combined with the latest advances in support for multiple rule based systems. The renewal of our standards also means that these high profile flagships are not causing a drop in quality in our website translation services or other available options. Rather, these advances on the cutting edge are having a profound positive effect on our whole business." About Pangeanic: Pangeanic is one of the world's most trusted translation companies. They offer a professional translation service to translate websites together with technical translations, medical translation services, marketing material translation and even transcreation, to convert content into a new language where concepts need punch and flavor. Pangeanic has provided quality translations at competitive prices since 1997. For more information about us, please visit http://www.pangeanic.com Contact Info: Name: Manuel Herranz Email: m.herranz@pangeanic.com Organization: Pangeanic.com Source: http://marketersmedia.com/pangeanic-renew-accreditations-as-they-present-statistical-machine-translation-platform-to-eu-hq/107806 Release ID: 107806 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) Mercury Beach Tent by Tent World Becomes Amazon UK #1 Bestseller One of Thermalabs latest launches, Beach Tent, has become the bestselling beach and sun shelter product in Amazon.co.uk. -- Thermalabs recently launched beach tent is currently a bestseller in Amazon UK's beach and sun shelters category. This is a significant achievement for the company, especially considered that this month was launched barely three months ago. Thermalabs has recorded one success after another, most of which can be attributed to top-quality releases in the cosmetics industry. Indeed, Thermalabs is one of the most popular manufacturers of tanning-related lotions and accessories. The company has so far contributed an extensive range of highly effective tanning aids to the global beauty market. This bestselling tent offers instant beach shade as it pops open without any need to build it using poles or other stands. It became Amazon Britain number 1 best seller in the category of tents and the company is excited and can't wait to introduce its other new tent creations. Thermalabs Mercury beach tent is the introductory product under its new sub-brand, Tent World that will focus exclusively on the production of tents. The Mercury Beach Tent was a move by the company to test the waters. But now that it appears to be doing extremely well on major e-commerce marketplaces, Thermalabs has mastered a lot of confidence in its tents-based products. Beach tent is a quick and reliable one-size shade that can be set up within seconds. It also comes with a free guide that illustrates its use. To beat the competition, this particular tent is multi-purpose, which means it can be used in many different places. For instance, when camping, hiking, picnicking, or just spending time at the beach. A U.S. registered company, Thermalabs was launched about two and a half years ago in New York City. The company's initial goal was to contribute to a skin-cancer free world by producing a wide range of tanning aids that would eliminate the need to rely on sunlight for a tan. Thermalabs first release squarely lived up to this goal. It was a highly unique self-tanning lotion going by the name 'Original Self Tanner'. The fact that this product relied on organic and natural ingredients proved that the company was really serious about providing products that would change the way people tan, thus contributing to a healthier world. Following a brilliant marketing strategy by the company, the Original Self Tanner was an instant hit. The product sold thousands of units within its first week on the market and attracted massive media attention. It helped set the solid platform upon which the current-day Thermalabs was built. In recent times, Thermalabs announced that it'll release more tents. These will be named after the nine planets in the solar system. The tents will be designed to address user needs, and fill a gaping gap in the market. That's according to the company's marketing co-coordinator, a Mr. Alex Howard. At this stage, it's not clear whether these tents will be similar to Mercury, or whether they'll be addressed for the same market. For more information about us, please visit http://www.thermalabs.com Contact Info: Name: Jennifer Parker Organization: Thermalabs Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5X_zu966dkg Source: http://marketersmedia.com/mercury-beach-tent-by-tent-world-becomes-amazon-uk-1-bestseller/107826 Release ID: 107826 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) Thermalabs Tent World Brand Almost Ready Thermalabs new brand, Tent World, will be ready in the next two to three weeks. -- Thermalabs has revealed that their new sub-brand is almost ready to hit the market. The company announced Tent World as the new brand that will be responsible for all its tents-based products. Already, Thermalabs has a single tent in circulation. Going by the name Mercury Beach Tent, this is a premier tent that serves as the perfect spot for hiding or relaxing after a long dip in the water at the beach. The success that the company has had with this first product perhaps motivated the decision to create an entire sub-brand for tents-related products. Thermalabs Mercury beach tent was launched sometimes in December 2015. The product is an instantly unfolding tent that can come in handy during a family camping, hiking, fishing, or any other outdoor activities. It provides a quick shelter that can be set up within seconds. The company packs it with an illustrative color guide that highlights how it can be used for optimal results. According to Thermalabs marketing co-coordinator, Alex Howard, Beach tent was produced so as to fill a gaping gap in the market. Apparently, most of the other tents available in the market were either too expensive or didn't provide the ideal experience that users were really looking for. Thermalabs is best known for its provision of quality self-tanning lotions in the cosmetics industry. The company opened its doors sometimes towards the end of 2013. Back then, they only had a launch product and a noble goal. Most startups struggle to make it in the cosmetics industry, which is known to be highly competitive. But Thermalabs approach - which entailed creating a top-notch product and pursuing an aggressive marketing strategy - apparently worked in the company's favor. Thermalabs launch/pilot product was so fascinating to users that it managed to sell thousands of units barely 24 hours after being announced. The product, going by the name 'Original Self Tanner', was a tanning lotion that was made from an organic and natural formulation. The product attracted media spotlight to Thermalabs activities, thus helping set the much-needed platform the young company used to attain its current levels of success. Today, Thermalabs has announced over 14 different products for the cosmetics market. Most of these are premium tanning lotions that are formulated with top notch ingredients. The company has also launched a line of spray tanning machines, as well as Dead Sea mineral-based products. Although Thermalabs primary dominance is in the tanning niche, it appears the company is determined to conquer the entire beauty arena. Thermalabs is dedicated to a skin-cancer free world. In fact, most of its products were created with this goal in mind. In line with this mission, Thermalabs also contributes, at least, ten percent of their annual profits to charity. This includes skin care non-profits, as well as educational institutes that are working towards finding possible remedies for cancer. The company's seemingly noble approach has also helped endear it to a health-conscious audience. For more information about us, please visit http://www.thermalabs.com Contact Info: Name: Jennifer Parker Organization: Thermalabs Video URL: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VnVaaX52u9M Source: http://marketersmedia.com/thermalabs-tent-world-brand-almost-ready/107828 Release ID: 107828 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) SearchBug Announces Criminal Record Searches Now Included with Premium Membership SearchBug's Premium Membership Holders can now perform up to 100 criminal searches a day at no additional charge. -- Encinitas, CA -- January 26, 2016 SearchBug.com, a leading online service for finding people, businesses, addresses, phone numbers, as well as batch append and list cleaning tools, has announced that criminal record searches are now being included as part of the company's newly updated Premium Membership. Under details of the Premium Membership, members will be able to search up to 100 criminal records per day at no additional charge. "Criminal record searches are an important part of knowing who someone is dealing with" said Noah Wieder of SearchBug. "Whether individuals are wondering about a potential mate, a new neighbor, a possible business partner, a child's new friend's parents, a classmates parents, a teacher, or some other business or social acquaintance; a criminal records search can often reveal important information." "That's why searchbug.com is very pleased to be able to offer up to 100 criminal searches a day as part of their Premium Membership Plan," Wieder said. SearchBug's Federal, State, and County Criminal Records Search typically includes: the subject's full name, aliases, age, race, eye and hair color, weight and height, jurisdiction, charge, offence, disposition type, sentence and probation and conviction, if applicable. SearchBug's criminal record information sources include over 200 million federal, state and county criminal records. "While not every county in the country allows access to electronic criminal records, the SearchBug system is a great way to look up the records from those that do, all at one convenient, easily accessible location," Wieder said. An annual Premium Membership Plan costs only $7 per month, where as a single Criminal Record search can cost up to $9.00. SearchBug users with a Free Basic Membership can also obtain criminal records, however at a low per search charge. Individuals and businesses can find sign up information regarding Premium Membership Plans here. To learn more about SearchBug's membership plans and available searches, visit www.SearchBug.com. ABOUT SEARCHBUG SearchBug is a professional online service for finding and investigating people, businesses, addresses, phone numbers, conducting social security number verification in lieu of e-verify, and much more. The service is used by collections agents, consumer credit specialists, financial institutions, government agencies, health and medical offices, real estate and mortgage professionals, Mobile Marketing professionals, investigators plus many other businesses, professionals and individuals. Contact Info: Name: Noah Wieder Email: support@searchbug.com Phone: 760-454-7301 Organization: SearchBug Source: http://www.prreach.com/pr/22964 Release ID: 107879 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) Cross Country Moving Companies Create New Testimonials Section For Nationwide Feedback Cross Country Moving Companies has received glowing testimonials from users across the United States, and has created a new section on their website to showcase them. -- Moving house is one of life's most stressful experiences. Fortunately for many, moving companies offer a great way to have professionals handle the hardest parts of the move, and ensure that treasured valuables are well protected. Cross Country Moving Companies (http://crosscountrymovingcompanies.biz/) are a nationwide network of professional movers who offer the very best services at excellent rates, and have just published a series of customer testimonials on their website in order to inspire more potential customers to trust them with their residential or commercial move, whether short or long distance. The new testimonials section includes feedback from individuals Texas, New Mexico, New York City, Florida, and Oregon at the time of launch, all of whom have been happy to put their names beside their feedback, which is universally positive. The testimonials cover several key themes, including moves for both residential and commercial purposes, both long and short distance. While they differ in the type of valuables being transported and the distances covered, the same great service and careful attention to detail is picked out again and again. What's more, the company's testimonials are furnished with personal details and circumstances- a military family needing to move across the country, a family uprooted due to a sudden illness, and more. In all cases, their needs were dealt with quickly and with sensitivity by the Cross Country Moving Companies team. A spokesperson for Cross Country Moving Companies explained, "Cross Country Moving Companies has been overwhelmed by the kind words that have been emailed to us, as well as posted on independent forums and review sites across the web. We felt compelled to share them with potential customers, as we believe this kind of feedback better helps people understand what to expect from us than any amount of sales talk can. We look forward to helping more people than ever in 2016." About Cross Country Moving Companies: Cross Country Moving Companies provide full-service moving solutions for interstate, long distance, international and cross country moving. With more than two decades of experience, they have seen it all and moved it all. There is no job too big for them to handle and their prices routinely come in well under the industry average. For more information about us, please visit http://crosscountrymovingcompanies.biz/ Contact Info: Name: PRWhirlWind Organization: PRWhirlWind Source: http://marketersmedia.com/cross-country-moving-companies-create-new-testimonials-section-for-nationwide-feedback/107915 Release ID: 107915 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) Kickstarter Campaign Launches For Post-Divorce Online Name Change Service According to the developers, Knotakeeper.com is on track to go live in late Spring in the Unites States. Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom will launch in Q4 2016. -- From the minds of online name change service, I'm a Mrs. (imamrs.com) comes another online service for people who want to 'un-tie' the knot called KnotAKeeper.com, an online service to help change your name after divorce. KnotAKeeper.com helps simplify the name change process by providing all the forms, notification letters and instructions all in one place. It also has a team of name change experts on hand to help answer any questions or find any rare forms that might be needed. KnotAKeeper.com launched a Kickstarter Campaign to help raise funds for marketing and ongoing web development. The site is expected to go live in May 2016. KnotAKeeper.com provides online access to all the forms, notification letters and instructions required to change your name with every organization you might be associated with, including: Government forms like passport, driver's license, voter registration Loyalty Programs like retail and grocery stores, frequent flyer cards, and hotel points cards, etc. Utility Companies - like hydro, gas, phone, cable, internet Finance & Banking - Banks, credit cards, investment accounts, insurance companies, mortgage companies, etc. Magazine Subscriptions Online Accounts - PayPal, Amazon, iTunes, Facebook, Hulu, etc. Credit Bureaus - Equifax, TransUnion Alumni Associations Professional Associations - state licensing boards, etc. The name change experts at KnotAKeeper.com have personally contacted each and every organization in its database to find the specific name change procedure - and dig for the easiest methods they will accept. JoAnne Stayner, heading the KnotAKeeper.com crowdfunding campaign explained: "The idea to launch KnotAKeeper.com was really driven by consumer feedback. After a partnership with Amazon Local, we received over 500 emails asking us if we could handle name change after divorce and asking us all kinds of questions on how to change back to your maiden name. We worked closely with our customers during the development phase to enhance functionality of the site and crowdsourced the group to help finalize the name, KnotAKeeper.com. We're excited to bring this venture to life." According to the developers, Knotakeeper.com is on track to go live in late Spring in the Unites States. Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom will launch in Q4 2016. For more information please visit KnotAKeeeper.com. Media Contact: Jo-Anne Stayner, joanne@knotakeeper.com 604.603.0657 For more information about us, please visit http://www.knotakeeper.com Contact Info: Name: Jo-Anne Stayner Email: joanne@knotakeeper.com Organization: KnotAKeeeper.com Phone: 604.603.0657 Source: http://marketersmedia.com/kickstarter-campaign-launches-for-post-divorce-online-name-change-service/107755 Release ID: 107755 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) 3C Contact Services Comments on Apple's Move to Offer Customer Service Using Twitter 3C Contact Services addresses Apple's launch of a new customer service Twitter account. -- 3C Contact Services (www.3CContactServices.com), North America's premier cost-effective provider of contact center solutions for small- and medium-sized businesses, is commenting on Apple's new move to offer customer service through a Twitter account. Apple has recently launched a Twitter account devoted solely to customer service. The new account answers customer's questions and responds to complaints about all of Apple's products, as well as provides tips for consumers. (Source: Kastrenakes, J., "Apple starts providing customer service on Twitter," The Verge, March 3, 2016; http://www.theverge.com/2016/3/3/11151640/apple-support-twitter-account-launches) "Customer service is important for any company, no matter how big or small," says Dmitri Kuleshoff. "It really is one of the top things people look for in a company. In the past, Apple has resisted some common customer service channels, but this is a sign they're making a major commitment." Apple has avoided using centralized social media accounts in recent years. Companies sometimes use this strategy to try to control their brand image and prevent public relations disasters from going viral. Apple was one of the largest consumer-driven companies that still did not have a core Twitter account. "You can't control what happens on the Internet, so it's usually better to embrace it," says Kuleshoff. "Customers expect to be able to contact businesses online and through social media. Apple may get a few complaints sent publically to them, but they can also expect to have more satisfied customers too." Many companies now use fan pages on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media networks to provide customer service. Customer service representatives respond directly to comments or messages, providing feedback, tips, and complaint resolution. "Customer service isn't just done over the phone anymore," notes Kuleshoff. "Good customer service has to use digital channels, like email, social media, and live chats. The reality is that young people are on the Internet, and that's where they expect to speak with companies." Apple's new Twitter account is part of a larger trend of social media sites being used for business. In fact, Twitter has made changes to their platform specifically to allow companies the ability to provide better service. Businesses can now send longer direct messages on Twitter. "Web companies have really understood the power of customer service," says Kuleshoff. "When you look at a company like Uber, most of their success has come by focusing on the customer's experience. That's what companies in every field have to be thinking about." While Kuleshoff says that companies should be using the Internet, he warns that it's also possible to overemphasize the role of online services. According to Kuleshoff, the best approach is one that focuses on the customer and not on the platform. "Many customers are online, but many still prefer to use the phone," says Kuleshoff. "Good customer service meets customers on their terms. You really need to be using a diverse, multifaceted approach. It's not enough to have a Twitter account or Facebook account." 3C Contact Services provides its partners' agents with the necessary customer service skills needed to resolve a number of situations. For more information about us, please visit http://3ccontactservices.com/ Contact Info: Name: Damian Reyes Organization: 3C Contact Services Address: 7000 Pine Valley Drive, Suite 200 Phone: 888-353-2335 Source: http://marketersmedia.com/3c-contact-services-comments-on-apples-move-to-offer-customer-service-using-twitter/107908 Release ID: 107908 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) RestorationEze Releases El Nino Spring Flood Prevention Guide For Customers The guide is available online at http://restorationeze.com and includes specific tips and changes homeowners need to implement to keep rain water out of their homes this spring season. -- RestorationEze, a Colorado-based flood damage restoration firm with locations serving areas nationwide, is announcing the release of their El Nino Spring Flood Prevention Guide. The guide is packed with tips for homeowners who want to significantly reduce their chances of having to deal with a flooding situation as the rainy spring season progresses. Those who are interested in seeing these tips can visit RestorationEze.com to view the company's latest blog post. Matt Hudson, a spokesperson for RestorationEze, commented "While this winter has been relatively mild, Climate.gov has stated that this year's El Nino is one of the strongest on record since 1950. That means that we've been set up for a rainy spring season. It's not the usual flash flooding El Nino causes that concerns us. Instead, it's the sustained rains that cause the water table in a particular location to rise. This is what increases hydrostatic pressure and, in turn, the chances of homeowners experiencing basement flooding." Fortunately, RestorationEze has released an online guide that gives vital spring flood prevention tips to homeowners who want to protect themselves from the threat of flooding and water damage. From having properly-sloped lawns to installing additional sump pumps, the company is showing homeowners how to avoid frustration when the heavy rains come. While a few of the solutions may be obvious to some homeowners, many of them are things that they tend to overlook when it comes to proper home protection. As Hudson goes on to say, "It's never too early for homeowners to begin thinking about preventing basement flooding. We advise them not to wait until it's too late, and that's what providing this flood prevention guide is all about. However, if they do find themselves in an unfortunate flooding situation, our team will be there around the clock to help them recover as quickly as possible and to help them understand what they need to do to do to avoid this problem in the future." About RestorationEze: RestorationEze is a trusted nationwide network of water damage restoration companies that are fully licensed, insured & certified to help homeowners get their lives back to normal as quickly as possible. Each of their companies undergoes a rigorous approval process and are properly vetted. Every member of the team is fully devoted to helping home and business owners navigate the sometimes messy process of a water loss. For more information about us, please visit http://restorationeze.com Contact Info: Name: Matt Hudson Organization: RestorationEze Phone: (888) 241-9061 Source: http://marketersmedia.com/restorationeze-releases-el-nino-spring-flood-prevention-guide-for-customers/107951 Release ID: 107951 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) ImageHause Introduces Personality-Based Approach To Discovering Brand Identity The approach is based on identifying and using brand DNA to help companies understand their image and connect with the people who embrace it, reports http://www.imagehaus.net/. -- ImageHause, a premier Minnesota-based design and branding agency, is announcing the introduction of their unique personality-based approach to helping companies discover their own brand identity. This approach is aimed at helping business owners gain an understanding of how to best steward their brand for maximum impact on their target audience. Those who would like to learn more about this approach or see how it has helped other companies boost their brands should visit www.imagehaus.net. Jay Miller, creative director at IMAGEHAUS, commented "While conventional branding wisdom tells businesspeople that they are the sole owners of their brand, we take the opposite stance. Businesses don't own their brand - the public does. Business owners are simply playing the role of brand stewards who are helping to steer the public perception of their brand in the right direction. We use what we call a DNA-based approach to help business owners discover the essence of their brand and take control of as many aspects of it as possible in order to influence the beliefs and behaviors of their target audience." For the team at IMAGEHAUS, this DNA-based approach begins with a lot of listening. They have open, honest discussions with business owners in order to understand their brands and their needs. Then, they conduct a thorough examination of the brand. In this phase of the process, they define the brand's audience and seek to understand their perceptions, behaviors, and responses. ImageHause's branding professionals use this information to pinpoint the brand's personality, and they use that personality as a foundation on which design ideas are created. As Miller goes on to say, "The thought leadership that we bring to the table is our firm's single greatest asset. It's what makes the difference between business owners who try to sell their product to a customer and those who have raving fans who already believe in their product. We love our approach because we have found it to be the best for creating strong brands that present consistent messages that are relevant for now and can continue to evolve well into the future." About ImageHaus: The team at ImageHause creates and energizes brands that deliver impact. Their work is guided by a simple principle: The client is at the center of their own brand. ImageHaus has a unique and highly collaborative discovery tool that helps to dig deep into the identity of their company. The ImageHause approach brings clarity to the creative process and offers an intuitive understanding of a brand's personality and how to bring it to life. For more information about us, please visit http://www.imagehaus.net/ Contact Info: Name: Jay Miller Organization: IMAGEHAUS Address: Minneapolis, MN 55401 Phone: (612) 377-8700 Source: http://marketersmedia.com/imagehause-introduces-personality-based-approach-to-discovering-brand-identity/107947 Release ID: 107947 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) OklahomaInsuranceQuotes.net Marks Milestone Event with Launch of New Website Company approaches 11th year offering online insurance quotes for a range of coverage types, publishes oklahomainsurancequotes.net -- FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma)- Leading Oklahoma insurance comparison website OklahomaInsuranceQuotes.net is soon to be celebrating a milestone in its time line. March 20, 2016 marks the company's 11th anniversary serving customers throughout the state. On the heels of this occasion, spokesperson Keith Ward has announced the launch of a revamped company website. Said Ward, "We're excited to be approaching our 11th year of helping those in our area find the best and least expensive coverage for their vehicles, properties and lives. Our company was founded for that very purpose, and our team is continually striving to carry out this mission to the best of its abilities. Our redesigned website offers a number of new features meant to better serve online visitors, such as greater optimization to help local residents find what they're looking for more quickly and easily. We've also incorporated more articles relevant to our field of service." OklahomaInsuranceQuotes.net provides comparisons and quotes for a wide range of coverage options. Among these is homeowners insurance in Oklahoma designed to protect property owners in the event of damage to their dwellings as well as surrounding structures, personal property, injuries and a number of other elements. The section of the website pertaining to this type of insurance also offers a comprehensive explanation of which areas of coverage are available. The company likewise offers extensive information and inclusive quotes for the cheapest auto insurance in Tulsa OK. Residents of Tulsa and the surrounding areas face certain challenges when determining the appropriate coverage for their vehicles as well as any liabilities associated with automobile ownership. Additionally, OklahomaInsuranceQuotes.net offers information on the often difficult-to-acquire mobile home insurance for which coverage similar to that of traditional homes is available. For each policy type, visitors may fill out and submit forms provided on the website. Company representatives respond within 24 hours when possible. Concluded Ward, "Our website has been growing throughout the years and is helping an increasing number of people compare insurance rates and save more money. This most recent revision is simply the latest step in our efforts to offer the most useful assistance to our online visitors. Those in need of insurance coverage or hoping to find lower rates than they're currently paying will now have access to a broader spectrum of information and an even more user-friendly site setup than before. We hope to celebrate many more milestones in the future and will continue to seek out new ways to help residents in our area." About OklahomaInsuranceQuotes.net: Over the past 11 years, this site has helped Oklahomans and/or people who own property in Oklahoma compare insurance quotes for their auto, home, mobile home, renters and life. Media Contact: Keith Ward info@oklahomainsurancequotes.net; https://www.oklahomainsurancequotes.net Oklahoma City, OK 73127 (405) 627-8853 For more information about us, please visit https://www.oklahomainsurancequotes.net Contact Info: Name: Keith Ward Organization: OklahomaInsuranceQuotes.net Phone: 405 627 8853 Release ID: 107786 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) Florida Wholesale Real Estate Investment Properties Free Notification Launched A new site has launched that allows investors and property buyers to get instant notifications whenever a Florida property comes on the market. Wholesale Homes FLA takes the stress out of house hunting, sending buyers a choice of discounted homes directly to their inbox. -- A new free service has launched for residents in Florida who are looking to buy wholesale real estate or investment properties. People can sign up without any contract to the Wholesale Houses FLA website and get notified before anyone else as new wholesale properties become available on the market. The website specializes in hidden house deals that are normally available at up to 30-50% off retail value. More information is available on the Wholesale Houses FLA website at: http://wholesalehousesfla.com. Houses are placed on sale all the time, but with so many avenues to pursue it's hard for most people to keep track of them. Even when people do know about property sales, they are often unsure how to go about acquiring property at the best rates. As a result, it's always the investors who have the best marketing, systems and connections who manage to get the best property at the best prices before anyone else can. Wholesale Houses brings that ability to customers' doors by doing the hard work for them. The company has invested tens of thousands of dollars in ensuring they have the best marketing systems available, and because of this they are able to track down a consistent stream of heavily discounted properties, foreclosure properties, distressed properties and all manner of other real estate options. Whether customers are looking to expand their list of rental properties or looking for a new place to live, Wholesale Homes FLA can accommodate their needs through Palm Beach County Foreclosure properties for sale, discounted homes, fixer uppers or handyman deals. The process is simple and completely free. All people have to do is sign up on the Wholesale Homes website by entering their name, the type of buyer they are, and their email address. After that, they will get instant notifications ahead of anyone else when Palm Beach properties become available, taking out the stress of property hunting altogether. Anyone wanting to get in touch with Wholesale Homes FLA can find them at: Home Solutions FLA, 12482 Sawgrass Ct, West Palm Beach, Fl, 33414. Their phone number is: (561) 370-8335. For more information about us, please visit http://www.wholesalehousesfla.com/ Contact Info: Name: Robert Weglewski Organization: Home Solutions Fla LLC Address: 12482 Sawgrass Court, West Palm Beach Florida 33414 Phone: 1 561 370-8335 Release ID: 107738 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) The BlackRock Latin American Investment Trust saw its share price increase by 9.5 per cent last month, with the portfolio benefitting from a stronger currency in Mexico. In a trading update published today (22 March), the trust saw its net asset value increase by 4.8 per cent in February, after seeing a 42.8 per cent fall in its NAV over the past three years. The trust has been fairly well aligned to the MSCI EM Latin America benchmark over three years, falling 43.5 per cent since 2013, and increasing 5.6 per cent in February. Will Landers, BlackRock investment manager, said a lack of exposure to Latin American iron ore and nickel producer Vale has weighed down on returns, and suggested the materials sector was one of the strongest performing sectors during the month with iron ore increasing by 14 per cent However, Mr Landers said the portfolios holdings in Mexico have offset this. The largest contributor to performance was Mexican cement stock Cemex, which benefited from strength in the Mexican peso as well as the strong move in materials during the month, he said. Our exposure to Peru also contributed positively for the month as that market benefited from the move in commodities. According to the latest data available, in February the trust management team moved its copper exposure from Southern Copper to Grupo Mexico, as it expected the latter to benefit from a stronger currency in Mexico. The team also rotated some financial exposure in Mexico from Gentera to Grupo Financiero Banorte following the surprise rate hike in Mexico. Brazil continued to disappoint on the political, fiscal and monetary fronts. Will Landers Mr Landers said the team entered March continuing to prefer Mexico over Brazil, pointing to the gradual recovery of Mexicos domestic economy and the moves by Banco de Mexico to increase rates. Brazil, on the other hand, continued to disappoint on the political, fiscal and monetary fronts with the caveat being that the latest developments in the Petrobras investigation once again increased the odds of political change in Brazil, he said. Peru is poised to enjoy an improvement in investment and business sentiment with the upcoming presidential election in the second quarter. The portfolio has a 42.6 per cent exposure to Mexico and a 48.1 per cent exposure to Brazil. Net cash was about 3.5 per cent at the end of February. Adviser View Ben Willis, head of research at Whitechurch Financial Consultants, said: Many of the emerging markets have produced strong returns year-to-date, in contrast to a particularly tricky 2015. He said Latin America - led by Brazil - has been severely hampered by capital outflows during periods of risk aversion, and by the falls in commodity and energy prices. Even though the trust itself is sector diversified, the fortunes of many Latin American countries is dependent on US policy and the dollar, the Chinese economy and commodity and energy prices. Industry trade bodies have reiterated calls to overhaul Mifid II proposals that treat non-Ucits products as complex instruments, amid signs European regulators may be close to backing down. As part of the regulation, due to come into force in January 2018, non-Ucits products such as investment trusts and many multi-asset funds would be designated as complex. This means retail investors seeking to use these products would need to complete a questionnaire on the risks involved. Some fund groups have considered converting their multi-asset funds into Ucits vehicles so as not to jeopardise retail business. These moves would limit the products investment scope, potentially hurting intermediaries who use them as a diversification tool. Hopes have been raised, however, that the Mifid rules may be relaxed. One individual familiar with the discussions, who wished to remain anonymous, said a leaked version of the European Commissions forthcoming delegated acts suggested the approach could change. Similarly, the minutes of a recent FCA round table with trade bodies on Mifid II implementation noted reports of possibly narrowing the scope of instruments judged to be complex for the purposes of the appropriateness test. Trade bodies have now reiterated calls for a new approach. Ian Sayers, chief executive of the Association of Investment Companies, said: I have been arguing that we shouldnt try to define what is and isnt complex based on legal form. It should be tested on consistent criteria, such as whether you can lose more money than you put in. He noted that under the current proposals, disparities could arise, with identical products given different definitions. For example, an investment trust listed on the London Stock Exchange could be dubbed complex, while an identical Aim-listed vehicle may escape this designation. Under the criteria, our members that are fully listed would be automatically complex. But if they traded on Aim, they would be tested on criteria and could be dubbed non-complex, he said. It seems odd that the most highly regulated trust will be called complex but an identical fund on Aim isnt complex. The idea of trying to define what is and isnt complex with a tick-box approach isnt going to work. Florian van Megen, retail markets specialist for the Investment Association, said an alternative solution a qualitative test had been put forward. This test could use criteria from original Mifid I rules, he added, examining where there exist frequent opportunities to dispose of, redeem, or otherwise realise that instrument at prices that are publicly available to market participants, and whether adequately comprehensive information on a products characteristics was publicly available. We want to apply a qualitative test and not just a legal black and white [definition]. Like Mr Sayers, he noted that similar products could fall into separate categories. The broad industry view is that this blanket definition of complex and non-complex products isnt reflecting market reality, he said. Rathbones has boosted its UK intermediary operation by hiring an associate director for sales from Old Mutual Global Investors (OMGI). Brian McLaughlin, who takes up the role, will support clients in Scotland and Northern Ireland. He previosuly worked as a sales manager at OMGI from 2012, and will now report to Greg Mullins, intermediary head of sales, at Rathbones. The hire follows a number of appointments to Rathbones sales team over the last 18 months. Mr Mullins said: We welcome Brian to Rathbones. His appointment reflects our continued investment in the growth of our intermediary business. The Financial Ombudsman Service has upheld a complaint against the Bank of Scotland over incorrect advice that landed a client with an unexpected tax bill. The client, called Mr D in the Fos decision, was represented by an independent financial adviser who complained on his behalf that he received an unforeseen tax bill after he surrendered a personal investment plan (PIP) taken out with the Bank of Scotland. In May 2006, he met with a Bank of Scotland adviser to invest a lump sum. At that point it was recorded that he was a higher rate tax payer and was advised to invest 44,000 in equity based investments; 4,000 in an Isa and 40,000 in a Collective Investment Plan (CIP). Mr D rejected the advice to invest 40,000 in a CIP and chose to invest these funds in a PIP. In July 2008, he met with another BoS adviser and was told to invest 50,000 - 7,200 in an Isa and 42,800 to top up his existing PIP - advice which he accepted. By August 2013, Mr D surrendered his PIPs and made a profit, but this was subject to a 5,148 tax charge due to him being a higher rate taxpayer. Mr D was not expecting this charge and so the IFA complained to BoS on his behalf. The bank rejected the complaint and said that it was not responsible for giving tax advice and in any event Mr D rejected the initial advice and chose to invest in the PIP rather than the CIP. It also stated that the key features document given to Mr D mentioned higher rate taxpayers would face a charge on withdrawal. The IFA was unhappy with this response and brought the complaint to the Fos. The adjudicator who investigated the complaint recommended that it be upheld, noting that Mr D was an experienced investor who had chosen to invest in the PIP despite being recommended to put his money into CIP. However, the adjudicator considered that he had not been given sufficient formation to enable him to make an informed choice, suggesting the key features leaflet did not make the tax implications clear, as they were on page six of an eight page document. BoS did not agree and said the leaflet referred him to a tax expert or accountant for further guidance and the fact the information about tax was on page six was irrelevant. Ombudsman Ivor Graham said this was a finely balanced decision in which he was initially minded to take a different view from that put forward by the adjudicator. However, two of the papers in the banks lengthy file have caused me to conclude that this complaint should be upheld. Mr Graham agreed that Mr D was a reasonably experienced investor, that the key features leaflet referred to the tax consequences for higher rate taxpayers and he chose to invest in the PIP rather than the CIP, since he wanted to place his money in a particular fund. Fans who attended the Acura Grand Prix of Long Beach in 2022 can renew their ticket orders for next year beginning Monday, Oct. 24. Brussels terrorist attacks : Police increase presence at Cologne/Bonn airport Bonn Security has been increased at Cologne/Bonn airport and many flights and trains have been diverted from Brussels in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks. Teilen Teilen Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Tweeten Tweeten Weiterleiten Weiterleiten Drucken Following the terrorist attacks in Brussels, many German airports have strengthened their security. Controls have been heightened at Cologne/Bonn airport and trains to Brussels are not running. There are no direct flights from Cologne/Bonn to Brussels. This morning, one aircraft en route from Munich to Brussels was diverted to Cologne/Bonn airport. Other than that, airport spokesperson Walter Romer says they are not expecting to take in more diverted flights. Flights are otherwise running as normal out of Cologne/Bonn. Some flights are being diverted from Brussels to Dusseldorf including a flight from Switzerland and one from from Poland according to a spokesperson at the airport. In the afternoon, Dusseldorf airport is expecting to take flights from Dubai and Greece which were originally to land in Brussels. Security has been increased at Frankfurt as police evaluate the situation. The Paris airport Charles de Gaulle is also on high security alert. All eight terminals and both train stations there have increased security. Trains coming from Brussels are being controlled. Trains running from Frankfurt over Cologne and on to Brussels are now ending in Aachen and it is expected to stay that way the whole day according to a Bahn spokesperson. The high speed Thalys is also suspending or diverting its trains. Eurostar train connections from Paris and London to Brussels have been stopped. Police have increased their monitoring at the border between Belgium and Rheinland-Pfalz. Checkpoints have been organized there and more police are out on patrol. A spokeswoman at Hahn airport said security measures had not yet been strengthened there. Microsoft hosts open source conference for developers in India News oi -GizBot Bureau Microsoft India on Monday inaugurated "Microsoft Openness Days", the first ever open source conference of its kind for developers in India. The conference is aimed at helping 1,000 architects, developers and cloud professionals discover and leverage the company's Microsoft Azure cloud platform for government and enterprise solutions, a company statement said. SEE ALSO: Top 6 Tech Companies And Their Awesome Cafeterias The conference includes "Open Hack", India's first open source on Azure hackathon organised by Microsoft with support from the Telangana government. The six-hour long hackathon will offer developers the opportunity to work on and showcase innovative applications (apps) and solution ideas based on the themes of the state government's digital initiatives. "We are a firm supporter of technology to drive Telangana's growth and development. We are very pleased to partner with Microsoft to host the Open Hack in our state," said Jayesh Ranjan, secretary - information technology, electronics and communications department, Telangana government. "We are confident that the immense talent of our developer pool, combined with Microsoft's technologies and expertise, can help achieve our digital goals and in turn, the welfare of our citizens," he added. SEE ALSO: Weekly Round Up: Top 5 Smartphones Launched in India Narendra Bhandari, general manager - developer experience and evangelism, Microsoft India, thanked the Telangana government for their continued support. "It is energising to see young talent develop technical solutions which will help us transform into digital India," Bhandari said. The top six apps and the teams will be selected by Microsoft and T-Hub for further development, mentoring and to build market readiness. The winners will also get exciting devices and other prizes. 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 Samsung Galaxy S5 Tastes Android 6.0 Marshmallow Update! News oi -Vigneshwar Samsung's 2014 flagship model Galaxy S5 has finally started receiving Android 6.0 Marshmallow update. As of now, the Galaxy S5 smartphone with the model number SM-G900L are currently getting the software update. With this Android update, it brings stability improvements, speed optimizations, as well as several bug fixes. If you didn't receive the OTA notifications, the user can manually check it by going into the settings and software update option. Anyhow, there is no information about the software roll out on the global front. Initially, the Android 6.0 Marshmallow was announced at the Google I/O on May 28th last year as Android M and later officially launched as Marshmallow on August 17th. App Permissions: One of the biggest features to the Android platform is selective app permission. Google has increased user control of app permission with the release of Android Marshmallow. This features will let users to pick and choose which permission will an app have during installation. Now on Tap: Google announced a new feature called 'Now on Tap' for Google Now, which basically show contextual information by long pressing on the home button. This feature will offer contextual information based on what you are doing with just a click or by voice command. Doze Mode: Android 6.0 Marshmallow comes with Doze mode, which is believed to make Android device smart in managing power. The new feature will track via motion detection whether the device is left unattended for a while, than Doze will limit background activity of apps with are consuming battery power. RAM Manager: The new RAM manager offers more detail about the memory usage of the device. The RAM manager shows how much memory your apps are consuming. The manager also rate the most used app so that users can recognize the most memory consuming app and can get rid of them. Auto Backup and Restore: Google also brings one of the most useful features for Android Marshmallow. The auto backup and restore for apps feature will get all apps backed up automatically to Google Drive. Google confirms that the automatic app backup will occur every 24 hours. This feature will allow users to signing into their Google account on new Android device or on a device after a factory reset to recover all their app and app settings. Best Mobiles in India U.S. Department of Defense Press Operations Contracts Release No. CR-052-16 March 21, 2016 CONTRACTS AIR FORCE RAND Corp., Project Air Force Federally Funded Research and Development Center, Santa Monica, California, has been awarded a $231,300,000 indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity, cost-plus-need-for-fee contract for advisory and assistance services. Contractor will complete research studies and analyses to address air, space and cyber power requirements for the Air Force focusing on strategy and doctrine; force modernization and employment; manpower, personnel, and training; resource management and Air Force-wide research integration. Work will primarily be performed at Santa Monica, California, and is expected to be complete by March 31, 2021. This award is the result of a sole-source acquisition. Fiscal 2016 research, development, test and evaluation funds in the amount of $1,409,600 are being obligated on the first task order at the time of award. The Air Force District of Washington Contracting Directorate, Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, is the contracting activity (FA7014-16-D-1000). Beechcraft Defense Co., Wichita, Kansas, has been awarded a $32,387,988 modification (P00002) to previously awarded contract FA8620-15-C-3016 for contractor logistics support, basic life support, tech refresh for modems, and scorpion ground stations. Work will be performed at Wichita, Kansas; and San Diego, California, and is expected to be complete by Feb. 28, 2018. This contract involves foreign military sales to Iraq. Air Force Life Cycle Management Center, Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, Ohio, is the contracting activity. ARMY Oshkosh Defense LLC, Oshkosh, Wisconsin, was awarded a $197,233,218 modification (P0011) to contract W56HZV-15-D-0031 for recapitalized Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Trucks M985A4 (91); M984A4 (91); M978A4 (91); M983A4 (147); M1120A4 (189); and M984A4 Self-Recovery Winch (91). Work will be performed in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, with an estimated completion date of Nov. 30, 2017. Fiscal 2016 other procurement funds in the amount of $197,233,218 were obligated at the time of the award. Army Contracting Command, Warren, Michigan, is the contracting activity. Boeing Co., Mesa, Arizona, was awarded an $184,930,000 firm-fixed-price contract for the Apache helicopter full-rate production in Lot 7. One bid was solicited with one received. Work will be performed in Mesa, Arizona, with an estimated completion date of June 30, 2017. Fiscal 2016 other procurement funds in the amount of $184,930,000 were obligated at the time of the award. Army Contracting Command, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, is the contracting activity (W58RGZ-16-C-0023). Oshkosh Defense LLC, Oshkosh, Wisconsin, was awarded a $135,640,533 modification (0012) to contract W56HZV-15-D-0031 for recapitalized palletized load systems M1074A1 (65); M1075A1 (226); and M1076A0 trailers (345). Work will be performed in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, with an estimated completion date of Nov. 30, 2017. Fiscal 2016 other procurement funds in the amount of $135,640,533 were obligated at the time of the award. Army Contracting Command, Warren, Michigan, is the contracting activity. Oshkosh Defense LLC, Oshkosh, Wisconsin, was awarded a $100,459,551 modification (0010) to contract W56HZV-15-D-0031 for recapitalized palletized load systems M1074A0 to M1075A1 conversion for heavy tactical vehicles. Work will be performed in Oshkosh, Wisconsin, with an estimated completion date of Nov. 30, 2017. Fiscal 2016 other procurement funds in the amount of $100,459,551 were obligated at the time of the award. Army Contracting Command, Warren, Michigan, is the contracting activity. EFW Inc., Ft. Worth, Texas, was awarded a $24,996,015 firm-fixed-price contract for Heads-Up Tracking Systems components. One bid was solicited with one received with an estimated completion date of Mar. 15, 2020. Funding and work location will be determined with each order. Army Contracting Command, Redstone Arsenal, Alabama, is the contracting activity (W58RGZ-16-D-0029). SAP National Security Services Inc., Newtown Square, Pennsylvania, was awarded a $17,507,359 time and materials, multi-year, incrementally funded contract with options for consulting services to the Army's enterprise resource planning logistics and financial programs. One bid was solicited with one received. Work will be performed in Alexandria, Virginia, with a completion date of March 21, 2019. Fiscal 2016 research, development, testing, and evaluation funds in the amount of $4,482,416 were obligated at the time of the award. Army Contracting Command, Rock Island Arsenal, Illinois, is the contracting activity (W52P1J-16-C-0034). AM General, South Bend, Indiana, was awarded a $10,402,481 modification (P00017) to foreign military sales contract W56HZV-15-C-0155 (Iraq) for High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicles. Work will be performed in Mishawaka, Indiana, with an estimated completion date of July 29, 2016. Fiscal 2016 other procurement funds in the amount of $10,402,481 were obligated at the time of the award. Army Contracting Command, Warren, Michigan, is the contracting activity. CH2M Hill Inc., Englewood, Colorado, was awarded a $9,000,000 firm-fixed-price, multi-year, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for architectural and engineering services within the Great Lakes and Ohio River mission boundaries of the Corps of Engineers. Bids were solicited via the Internet with one received, with an estimated completion date of March 20, 2021. Funding and work location will be determined with each order. Army Corps of Engineers, Louisville, Kentucky, is the contracting activity (W912QR-16-D-0007). NAVY Charles Stark Draper Laboratory Inc., Cambridge, Massachusetts, is being awarded a maximum $163,560,633 fixed-price-incentive, cost-plus-incentive-fee contract for Trident (D5) MK 6 guidance system production with failure verification, test, repair and recertification of inertial measurement units, electronic assemblies, and electronic modules. Work will be performed in Minneapolis, Minnesota (28 percent); Clearwater, Florida (26 percent); Cambridge, Massachusetts (24 percent); and Pittsfield, Massachusetts (22 percent), with an expected completion date of Jan. 31, 2020. Fiscal 2015 weapons procurement (Navy) contract funds in the amount of $133,977,633; and United Kingdom contract funds in the amount of $29,583,000 are being obligated at time of award. The contract funds will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. This contract is a sole-source acquisition pursuant to 10 U.S. Code 2304(c)(1) & (4). Strategic Systems Program, Washington, District of Columbia, is the contracting activity (N00030-16-C-0008). The Center for Naval Analyses Corp. (CNA), Arlington, Virginia, is being awarded a $104,700,857 cost-plus-fixed-fee, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract for the OPNAV (N81B), Assessment Division to provide the Department of Navy (DON) with an independent, authoritative source of applied research and analyses that is focused upon the major present and future needs and issues of the Navy and Marine Corps. CNA will also maintain programs to assign professional staff members to various senior DON officials and to field locations in support of Navy, Marine Corps and joint command activities. This contract includes options, which if exercised, will bring the contract value to $557,693,720. Work will be performed in Arlington, Virginia, and work is expected to be completed March 31, 2017. If all options are exercised, work will continued through March 31, 2021. No funds will be obligated at the time of award. Research, development, test and evaluation funds will be obligated to fund individual task orders as they are issued. This contract was procured sole-source justification and approval numbers 14-15, approved by Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Research Development and Acquisition) on Aug. 26, 2015, under request for proposal N00014-15-R-0007. One proposal was received in response to the solicitation. The Office of Naval Research, Arlington, Virginia, is the contracting activity (N00014-16-D-5003). Baker-Tetra Tech JV, Virginia Beach, Virginia, is being awarded a maximum amount $50,000,000 firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity, architect-engineering contract for design or engineering services for multimedia environmental compliance engineering support for Navy, Marine Corps, and other Department of Defense (DOD) installations and federal agencies worldwide. This support includes preparation of studies, plans, specifications, design documents, reports, cost estimates, and all associated engineering work including, but not limited to, petroleum storage tank and assets compliance; oil spill preparedness and planning compliance; air quality and clean air act compliance; safe drinking water act compliance; clean water act compliance (storm water); clean water act compliance (wastewater); and waste and material management. The geographic area covered by this contract encompasses continental U.S. and locations outside the U.S. at Navy and other DOD installations worldwide. Work will be primarily performed within the Naval Facilities Engineering Command Atlantic area of responsibility, which includes, but is not limited to Commander, Navy Region (CNR) Southwest (57 percent); CNR Hawaii (20 percent); CNR Japan (10 percent); Commander, Joint Region Marianas (6 percent); CNR Northwest (5 percent); Navy Region Center Singapore/Singapore Area Coordinator (1 percent); and Commander, U.S. Naval Forces Korea (1 percent). The term of the contract is not to exceed 60 months, with an expected completion date of March 2021. Fiscal 2016 Navy working capital contract funds in the amount of $10,000 are obligated on this award and will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. Future task orders will be primarily funded by operation and maintenance, (Navy). This contract was competitively procured via the Navy Electronic Commerce Online website, with three proposals received. The Naval Facilities Engineering Command, Atlantic, Norfolk, Virginia, is the contracting activity (N62470-16-D-9007). Rockwell Collins Inc., Government Systems, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, is being awarded $25,350,325 for modification P00005 to a previously awarded firm-fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity contract (N00019-15-D-5501) for the procurement of 325 AN/ARC-210 radios for domestic aircraft. Work will be performed in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, and is expected to be completed in September 2018. No contract funds will be obligated at the time of award. Funding will be obligated on individual delivery orders as they are issued. The Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, Maryland, is the contracting activity. L-3 Unidyne Inc., Norfolk, Virginia, is being awarded a $21,094,107 modification to previously awarded contract (N00024-15-C-2428) for the service life extension program (SLEP) of three Landing Craft, Air Cushion (LCAC). The LCAC SLEP will extend the service life of LCAC from 20 to 30 years; sustain and enhance craft capability; replace obsolete electronics; repair corrosion damage; reduce life cycle cost by improving reliability and maintainability; increase survivability; and establish a common configuration baseline. The LCAC SLEP scope of effort includes repair and upgrade of the buoyancy box; gas turbine engine replacement; installation of a new skirt; installation of an integrated command, control, communications, computers and navigation equipment package; and accomplishment of selected craft alterations and repair work. Work will be performed at Assault Craft Unit Five (ACU 5) at Camp Pendleton, California, and is expected to be complete by May 2018. Fiscal 2016 shipbuilding and conversion (Navy) funding in the amount of $21,094,107 will be obligated at time of award and will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington Navy Yard, District of Columbia, is the contracting activity. L-3 Unidyne Inc., Norfolk, Virginia, is being awarded a $7,843,985 modification to previously awarded contract (N00024-15-C-2429) for the service life extension program (SLEP) of one Landing Craft, Air Cushion (LCAC). The LCAC SLEP scope of effort includes repair and upgrade of the buoyancy box; gas turbine engine replacement; installation of a new skirt; installation of an integrated command, control, communications, computers and navigation equipment package; and accomplishment of selected craft alterations and repair work. The LCAC SLEP will extend the service life of LCAC from 20 to 30 years; sustain and enhance craft capability; replace obsolete electronics; repair corrosion damage; reduce life cycle cost by improving reliability and maintainability; increase survivability; and establish a common configuration baseline. Work will be performed at Assault Craft Unit Four (ACU 4) in Virginia Beach, Virginia, and is expected to be completed by September 2017. Fiscal 2016 shipbuilding and conversion (Navy) funding in the amount of $7,843,985 will be obligated at time of award and will not expire at the end of the current fiscal year. The Naval Sea Systems Command, Washington, District of Columbia, is the contracting activity. DEFENSE LOGISTICS AGENCY Brad Hall and Associates Inc.,* Idaho Falls, Indiana, has been awarded a minimum $21,260,988 fixed-price with economic price adjustment contract for various types of fuel. This was a competitive acquisition with 30 responses received. This is a 42-month contract with no option periods. Locations of performance are Indiana, Arizona, Nevada and Utah, with a Sept. 30, 2019, performance completion date. Using services are Army, Navy, Air Force, and federal civilian agencies. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2016 through fiscal 2019 defense working capital funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Energy, Fort Belvoir, Virginia (SPE600-16-D-4547). The Boeing Co., St. Louis, Missouri, has been awarded a maximum $11,635,148 firm-fixed-price delivery order (THTQ) against basic ordering agreement SPE4A1-14-G-0007 for radomes for F/A-18 aircraft. This was a sole-source acquisition using justification 10 U.S. Code 2304 (c)(1). Location of performance is Missouri, with a Sept. 30, 2018, performance completion date. Using service is Navy. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2016 Navy working capital funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Aviation, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. FreshPack Produce Inc.,* Denver, Colorado, has been awarded a maximum $8,400,000 fixed-price with economic price adjustment, indefinite-quantity contract for fresh fruits and vegetables. This was competitive acquisition with one response received. This is an 18-month base contract with two 18-month option periods. The maximum dollar amount is for the life of the contract. Location of performance is Colorado, with a Sept. 20, 2020, performance completion date. Using customer is Department of Defense. Type of appropriation is fiscal 2016 through fiscal 2020 defense working capital funds. The contracting activity is the Defense Logistics Agency Troop Support Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (SPE300-16-D-P280). *Small business http://www.defense.gov/News/Contracts/Contract-View/Article/699213 NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US, Turkish KC-135 units fly together for first time By Senior Airman David Bernal Del Agua, 22nd Air Refueling Wing Public Affairs / Published March 21, 2016 NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, Nev. (AFNS) -- To better understand how each nation completes the vital air refueling mission, the U.S. Air Force and Turkish air force flew KC-135 Stratotankers together in formation for the first time March 8 over the Nevada Test and Training Range, northeast of Nellis Air Force Base. U.S. Air Force Capt. David Puchalla, a 350th Air Refueling Squadron instructor pilot, flew with a Turkish KC-135 crew. Turkish air force Maj. Orcun Kus, the 101st Air Refueling Squadron commander, flew with an American crew during the second week of Red Flag 16-2. "The Turkish air force KC-135 aircrew, maintenance and accompanying support personnel are the utmost professionals and are highly capable," Puchalla said. "They have been an asset to Red Flag 16-2's Tanker Task Force, and I have no doubts about their ability to fuel the fight of the future. I have witnessed nothing but the best during my flights aboard their Stratotanker." The exchange during the exercise allowed both countries' tanker units to see their differences and similarities in how their tanker crews perform their missions of sustaining the fight and extending the global reach of their nations. "I am very thankful we had the opportunity to make history with this flight between our aircraft and our nations," Kus said. "This Red Flag flight will be remembered as an example of the cooperation between allies." The primary mission of Red Flag is to provide advanced, realistic and relevant training for aircrews and support personnel to think in a contested, degraded and operationally limited environment. Having coalition forces fly together during an exercise prepares them for future real-world missions. "The ability to interoperate air refueling operations with our Turkish allies showcases a distinct capability while demonstrating new methods of tanker employment," said U.S. Capt. Alex Durstein, a 344th ARS pilot. "The lessons learned at Red Flag will help advance integration with our NATO partners and provide future coalition combatant commanders with increased operational flexibility." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Twin Dragons: 31st MEU storms beaches, ranges during Ssang Yong 16 US Marine Corps News By Cpl. Thor Larson | March 21, 2016 "Attention landing force, standby for call aways," comes over the 1MC. Upon hearing the call, Marines and sailors begin hastily throwing packs on their backs and grabbing their weapons from the armory. The loud clang of metal hatches rings through the spaces of the ship and the thud of boots on the deck can be heard while people rush to get their gear ready. The 1MC continues to call out while the Marines and sailors make their way through the cramped passageways trying to make it to the well deck and flight deck on time. Once they reach their designated departure areas they board AAV-P7/A1 Amphibious Assault Vehicles, Landing Craft, Air Cushioned hovercraft and helicopters and prepare to assault the beach. The Marines and sailors of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit joined almost 20,000 service members from four different countries to conduct a combined amphibious assault and simulated follow-on actions as part of Ssang Yong 16 in South Korea. Ssang Yong, which means "Twin Dragons," is a biennial combined amphibious exercise conducted by U.S. forces with the Republic of Korea Navy and Marine Corps, Australian Army and Royal New Zealand Army forces in order to strengthen interoperability and working relationships across a wide range of military operations. Ssang Yong 16 began with a combined amphibious assault with 19 ships from the 31st MEU, 13th MEU and the ROK Marine Corps Marine Task Force. Multiple amphibious vehicles and aircraft assaulted the beach and brought troops ashore to begin the exercise. "Ssang Yong 16 was among the largest combined amphibious exercise to date, incorporating more than 19,000 U.S., ROK Navy-Marine Corps, Australian Army, Royal New Zealand Army," said U.S. Marine Col. Romin Dasmalchi, the commanding officer of the 31st MEU. "It was an incredible experience to share tactics, build personal relationships and enhance our ability to work cohesively together. Bringing together forces on a scale as large as this is complex. It is important we continue to train and work together to ensure cohesion and interoperability." After the combined amphibious assault, the MEU conducted many different follow-on actions to simulate what operations would need to be conducted after carrying out a forcible entry into enemy-held territory. In addition to the initial assaults, the Marines conducted urban warfare training, live fire platoon assaults, mortar shoots, artillery fire missions and a range of air operations. Because of Ssang Yong's large scale amphibious assault and follow-on missions, it required a significant amount of planning and logistical support. That support came from Exercise Freedom Banner 16. "Freedom banner set the conditions for the combined amphibious assault that formed the cornerstone of Ssang Yong 16," said Dasmalchi. "Freedom Banner's purpose was to practice using naval and amphibious assets to support forces ashore. The amphibious operations conducted during Ssang Yong were the next operational step to Freedom Banner's seabasing operations." Incorporating the combined forces during Ssang Yong helps to build maritime superiority between allied countries and prepares the Navy and Marine Corps units to use the sea as maneuver space for operational reach and sea control. "Building stronger relationships and working with our allies and partners in this region to foster a collective stance, or 'peace through strength' when faced with security challenges are critical to the successful defense of the ROK and the ability of U.S. military forces to effectively respond to regional challenges," said Dasmalchi. "This cooperation and training ensure the 31st MEU is ready to respond rapidly throughout the Asia-Pacific as needed, across a spectrum of military operations." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Fighting Bengals return from Western Pacific US Marine Corps News By Cpl. Jonah Lovy | March 21, 2016 Four F/A-18D Hornets with Marine All-Weather Fighter Attack Squadron 224 returned to Marine Corps Air Station Beaufort March 16. The squadron has been deployed to the Western Pacific since October 2015 as part of the Unit Deployment Program. VMFA(AW)-224 arrived at MCAS Iwakuni Oct. 7, 2015, with more than 180 Marines and 10 F/A-18D Hornet aircraft. The goal of the UDP is to raise the overall readiness level of the squadron, produce and sustain qualifications for the pilots and to get the pilots what they need to properly operate the aircraft. "We learn new and exciting things every time we deploy with a foreign military," said Lt. Col. Michael P. Shand, commanding officer of VMFA(AW)-224. "There are only so many ways to operate a fighter squadron, and we all do it a similar way, further building trust and confidence in any future endeavors we might share." The UDP allows units to conduct training that would not be possible at their home bases. VMFA(AW)-224 participated in Exercise Island Warrior at Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii, and conducted the Chitose Aviation Training Relocation exercise. The Chitose Aviation Training Relocation exercise involved dissimilar air combat training alongside and against the Japan Air Self-Defense Force to further support combined interoperability and Pacific theater security cooperation. "We have a need to practice with other aircraft that are not F/A-18D Hornets," said Shand. "Chitose ATR gives us an air-to-air training opportunity, and since we have several different generations of aircrew in the squadron, for some this is their first deployment." Many of the pilots fought against dissimilar aircraft for their first time. They trained against the F-15J/DJ Eagles from the JASDF's. The Eagles encompass different performance characteristics, forcing VMFA(AW)-224 to maneuver their aircraft in a different fashion. "I believe the [the exercise] has strengthened over time and it gives UDP units an opportunity to strengthen and sharpen their skills as well," said Shand. "Overall, this will continue to increase the readiness of Marine combat units across the theater." The Chitose Aviation Training Relocation exercise allowed the squadron to work on air-to-air abilities as well as one versus one, two versus two and beyond visual range training. The Island Warrior exercise had Marines building other skills. "Island Warrior focuses on close air support and forward air control," said Maj. Dustin Cook, pilot and director of safety and standardization with VMFA(AW)-224. Before Island Warrior, the squadron participated in a series of similar exercises to develop greater operational readiness by honing their tactics, techniques and procedures. Every Marine in the squadron had the opportunity to hone their skills. "We went to Guam and completed a lot of qualifications for our pilots," said Lance Cpl. Garrett Tallent, aviation ordnance technician with VMFA(AW)-224. "The exercises provide good on-the-job experience by allowing us to load different types of ordnance." Tallent said this was his first deployment and he enjoyed adapting to a new environment and had great experiences on and off base. "I enjoyed my time in Iwakuni, it was awesome being able to go out in town and experience the new culture," said Tallent. The rest of the Hornets and Marines are slated to return to MCAS Beaufort later in week. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address USS San Jacinto Conducts Exercise Boarding Navy News Service Story Number: NNS160321-11 Release Date: 3/21/2016 12:21:00 PM By Lt j.g. Bobby Dixon, USS San Jacinto Public Affairs ATLANTIC OCEAN (NNS) -- Sailors of the visit, board, search and seizure team from guided-missile cruiser USS San Jacinto (CG 56) conducted a simulated boarding on training support vessel Hugo, March 17. The operation was part of the Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group Composite Training Unit Exercise in preparation for an upcoming deployment. These evolutions will prepare San Jacinto's VBSS team for potential boarding evolutions in the future. "'We train how we fight' is a phrase you hear often in the military," said Capt. Dennis Velez, commanding officer of San Jacinto. "Our training now keeps our skills sharp and prepares us to enforce the freedom of the seas in the future." As part of the exercise, San Jacinto received simulated a distress call from Hugo about pirates attacking the vessel. Upon arrival, VBSS team members boarded Hugo and offered assistance to ensure the vessel was safe and clear of unwanted guests. The simulated crew was cooperative and happy the team responded. "We train our team as often as we can, but nothing beats training at sea," said Lt j.g. James Mosychuk, one of the VBSS team's boarding officers. After the vessel had been secured, the team demonstrated its ability to navigate and control the vessel should the need arise to take a vessel into port. As part of COMPTUEX, Commander, Carrier Strike Group 4 mentors, trains and assesses the ability of San Jacinto and the entire IKE CSG to work as an integrated team capable of worldwide operations. Ultimately, Commander, U.S. Fleet Forces Command certifies if the IKE CSG is ready to deploy following COMPTUEX. IKE CSG is comprised of CSG 10 staff, Destroyer Squadron (DESRON) 26 staff, aircraft carrier USS Dwight D. Eisenhower (CVN 69), Carrier Air Wing (CVW) 3, guided-missile cruisers USS San Jacinto (CG 56) and USS Monterey (CG 61), and guided-missile destroyers USS Nitze (DDG 94), USS Mason (DDG 87), USS Roosevelt (DDG 80) and USS Stout (DDG 55) of DESRON 26. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Boxer Arrives in Hong Kong Navy News Service Story Number: NNS160321-12 Release Date: 3/21/2016 12:24:00 PM By Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Jesse Monford, USS Boxer Public Affairs HONG KONG (NNS) -- Amphibious assault ship USS Boxer (LHD 4) arrived in Hong Kong, March 21, for a scheduled port visit. The visit comes at the conclusion of Exercise Ssang Yong 16, and marks the first port call for Boxer since deploying 37 days ago. During the visit, crew members will be able to enjoy the local culture and cuisine, attend organized tours, and to participate in subject-matter expert exchanges, cultural exchanges and sporting events aimed at strengthening ties. "I'm pretty stoked about it," said Brian Rockenbach, Boxer's afloat recreation specialist. "We didn't come here last deployment. We went to a ton of other places, but not Hong Kong. I think this will be good for everybody. Hong Kong really looks like a great international city from all of the research I've done." Boxer Sailors will also have an opportunity to experience Hong Kong's rich culture through a variety of tours sponsored by the ship's Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) department. MWR will offer 14 tours in all, featuring everything from metropolitan shopping sprees to countryside excursions to mainland China. "It's important for us to get a little 'off-time' just to keep ourselves level-headed," said Aviation Boatswain's Mate Airman Albert Banner. "Decompressing ourselves and enjoying ourselves is vital to working underneath the various conditions throughout the ship; plus, it's always nice to tell family members and friends that I've done this." In addition to the MWR tours, the ship's Religious Ministries Department organized several cultural exchange projects and sporting events to provide the crew the opportunity to interact with Hong Kong residents and students, and to foster a sense of goodwill between locals and Boxer crew members. "We have five events planned over the course of two days," said Chief Religious Programs Specialist Joseph Stroney. "To see the interaction between the Sailors and Marines and how they interact with host-nation civilians, [and] there's always a great connection there. Even if there's a language barrier, you're still able to communicate and get your point across, and everybody has a great time." USS Boxer is the flagship of the Boxer Amphibious Ready Group, which consists of Boxer, USS Harper's Ferry (LSD 49), USS New Orleans (LPD 18) and their embarked complement of Marines from the 13th Marine Expeditionary Unit. The Boxer ARG and the embarked 13th MEU are deployed in support of maritime security operations and theater security cooperation efforts in the U.S. 7th Fleet area of operations. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address 11 killed in Saudi aerial attacks on Yemen's Jawf Province Iran Press TV Mon Mar 21, 2016 2:41PM Nearly a dozen people have been killed in a series of airstrikes carried out by Saudi warplanes in Yemen's Jawf Province, local media say. The Yemeni al-Masirah television said on Monday that at least seven civilians lost their lives after Saudi fighter jets bombed Dahouk Academy in al-Matun district of the troubled northern province. Separately, an airstrike against two trucks carrying food in the same volatile district killed at least four people. Saudi warplanes also pounded a crowded marketplace in al-Masloub district of Jawf Province. But there was no immediate report on casualties. Saudi Arabia continues to bomb Yemen causing more death and destruction to its impoverished neighboring Arab state. A number of civilians are also feared killed as Saudi jets have bombed several civilian targets in Zimar, Ibb, Ma'rib and Sana'a provinces over the past few hours. On Tuesday, Saudi warplanes bombed a crowded market in the Yemeni province of Hajjah. The bombing killed 119 people, including 22 children, drawing international condemnation. In an apparent bid to divert mounting criticism of the military aggression, General Ahmed al-Asiri, a Saudi military spokesman, said on Thursday that Riyadh will scale down combat operations in Yemen. However, al-Asiri stressed that the kingdom will continue to provide air support to Yemen's former regime loyalists battling Houthi Ansarullah fighters and allied army units on the ground. Riyadh has been under fire from international organizations and rights groups over the rising number of civilian casualties in Yemen. Zeid Ra'ad Zeid Al Hussein, United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, said on Friday that Saudi Arabia and its allies may be committing crimes against humanity due to their indiscriminate killing of civilians in Yemen. The world body has already warned of a "human catastrophe unfolding in Yemen." Saudi Arabia launched its military aggression against Yemen in March last year in a bid to bring the country's former president, Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi, who is a staunch ally of Riyadh, back to power and undermine the Houthi Ansarullah movement. More than 8,000 people, among them over 2,000 children, have been killed and at least 16,000 others injured since the onset of the aggression. The Saudi strikes have also taken a heavy toll on the country's facilities and infrastructure, destroying many hospitals, schools, and factories. The United States has provided logistical and intelligence support to the Saudi air war. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Coast guard vessel not entered Indonesia waters: China Iran Press TV Mon Mar 21, 2016 10:21AM China has denied that its coast guard vessel entered Indonesian waters, reiterating that Beijing respects Jakarta's sovereign rights. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said on Monday that the sovereignty of the Natuna islands "belongs to Indonesia" and that Beijing "has no objections to this." Any maritime disputes should be resolved by talks, Hua said, adding that China also opposes illegal fishing. Over the weekend, Indonesian authorities detained eight crew members of a Chinese boat, accusing them of illegally fishing in Indonesia's waters. The authorities also attempted to confiscate the vessel but were stopped by a Chinese coast guard boat as it "intervened and rammed" the fishing ship back into the South China Sea, said Indonesia Minister of Fisheries and Maritime Affairs Susi Pudjiastuti. The Chinese Foreign Ministry, however, disputed Indonesia's claims, saying the boat was attacked by an armed Indonesian ship as it was fishing in "traditional Chinese fishing grounds." "The Chinese side immediately demanded the Indonesian side at once release the detained Chinese fishermen and ensure their personal safety," said the ministry. After being summoned by the Indonesian fisheries minister, Chinese embassy official Sun Weide said that Beijing is "always ready to work with Indonesia to solve these disputes trough negotiations and dialogue" when it comes to fishery disputes or maritime issues. China claims sovereignty over almost the entire South China Sea, which is also claimed in part by several Southeast Asian countries, including Taiwan, Brunei, Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines. The contested waters are believed to be rich in oil and gas. The sovereignty of the Natuna islands and the seas around them, where the incident occurred, however, has not been a matter of dispute between China and Indonesia. Both Beijing and Jakarta accept the waters as part of Indonesia's Riau Province. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Indonesia copter crash leaves 13 dead Iran Press TV Mon Mar 21, 2016 12:8AM All the 13 people onboard an Indonesian military helicopter have been presumed dead after it crashed on the country's Sulawesi Island, an official says. According to Indonesian military spokesman Tatang Sulaiman, the Bell 412 helicopter went down in Kasiguncu village in Poso district on island of Sulawesi Sunday evening local time. The chopper was en route to help with a counterterrorism operation in Poso -- where a Takfiri terrorist group is waging a guerilla war against the government to hunt down one of Indonesia's top terrorists, known as Santoso. Santoso leads one of Indonesia's top terrorist organizations in the east and has reportedly pledged allegiance to Daesh Takfiris. Sulaiman said seven passengers and six crew members were onboard the copter and it crashed 35 minutes after take-off and just 10 minutes before landing. "Twelve (bodies) have been found and identified," said Sulaiman, adding that rescuers were still searching for one crew member. He noted that police had launched an investigation into the cause of the accident; however, bad weather and lightening were seen as the most likely cause. Reports said most of the crash victims were high-ranking military officers and one of them was a military commander of the Sulawesi province, identified as Colonel Infantry Saiful Anwar. The Bell 412 was a twin-engine US helicopter, purchased by the Indonesian government in 2012. The Indonesian military has been repeatedly hit with aircraft accidents in recent years. Last month, three people were killed when a small Super Tucano turboprop plane crashed into a densely populated area during a test flight. Back in July 2015, an Indonesian Air force C-130 Hercules aircraft crashed in Medan, northern Sumatra province, killing more than 140 people and causing widespread destruction. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Kosovar Prime Minister's Own Family Joined Migrants Seeking EU Asylum March 21, 2016 by Ziyad Gashi and Ron Synovitz PRISTINA -- Kosovar Prime Minister Isa Mustafa has confirmed that his own brother was among a wave of migrants who illegally crossed into the European Union in 2015 -- and that his brother's asylum application in Germany ultimately was rejected. The revelation, first reported by an online news portal called Insajderi.com, has been an embarrassment for Mustafa. In February 2015, he had marked Kosovo's seventh anniversary of independence from Serbia by urging citizens not to join the exodus and telling parliament that "people have no reason to leave Kosovo" -- despite crippling unemployment, poverty, corruption, and organized crime. Speaking to RFE/RL's Kosovo Unit on March 21, Mustafa said he only learned after the fact that his brother Ragip Mustafa had sought asylum in Germany's southwestern Rheinland Pfalz state for "personal and medical needs." The application was filed on June 24, just days before Kosovo's prime minister was received by German Chancellor Angela Merkel on an official visit to Berlin. After the prime minister's brother was refused asylum by Germany, he traveled to Tirana, where he underwent surgery for throat cancer. "He has been suffering for a long time now from a severe illness, for which he was not able to find treatment here [in Kosovo]," Mustafa said. "He never mentioned this issue with his family -- that he was planning to seek asylum and, through it, seek treatment." "I felt bad when I heard that," Mustafa continued. "But he has shared the destiny of many of our citizens who -- for social reasons, unemployment, or even hope for solving their problems -- have chosen that way of dealing with it." The number of Kosovars applying for asylum in the EU began to rocket during the last four months of 2014 after an inconclusive election in June of that year caused a six-month delay before Mustafa's coalition government took office in December. Migration experts say a main cause of the exodus from Kosovo appears to have been a unemployment rate of 35 percent during 2014 and an unemployment rate of 61 percent for young people aged 15 to 24. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) says the number of Kosovar asylum applicants in Hungary -- the main entry point into the EU along the so-called Balkan migration route -- was only in the hundreds during the first eight months of 2014. But during the last four months of 2014, there were more than 21,000 Kosovar asylum applicants. The mass exodus continued to escalate through March 2015 until Serbia and Hungary, under pressure from the EU to stem the flow, began to impose tighter security along crossing points used by human smugglers. By then, another 30,000 Kosovo citizens had made their way into the EU to file for asylum -- either on their own or with assistance of paid human traffickers who helped them sneak from Serbia into Hungary. Ironically, their journey to the Hungarian border was made easier by the fact that Belgrade in 2012, at the urging of the EU, relaxed its visa rules and allowed Kosovars to travel through Serbia legally with Kosovo-issued documents. Previously, Belgrade had rejected those documents because it has never recognized its former southern province as an independent country. Altogether, about 70,000 Kosovars have applied for asylum in the EU over the past two years. That makes Kosovo the fourth-largest asylum seeking nation after Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq. In his interview with RFE/RL on March 21, Mustafa confirmed that other members of his extended family -- nieces and nephews -- also were among those who traveled illegally into the EU during the past two years to seek asylum. Like almost all of the 70,000 Kosovars who have applied for asylum in the EU during the past two years, their applications were rejected. That's because migrants from Kosovo cannot claim they are fleeing a war and have a more difficult time than refugees from Syria, Iraq, or Afghanistan, who can show that they are fleeing persecution. "There were others from my broad family who were, at the time, deceived [by human traffickers]. They took that path hoping for something better out there," Mustafa said. "Luckily, everybody is returning and we are trying to work on advancing the health-care system so people find medical treatment in our country." Mustafa said his government is working hard to bolster economic growth and attract foreign investment, so that jobs can be created for Kosovar citizens. He said his government also is working "on strengthening the rule of law, so we can fulfill the visa-liberalization criteria [with the EU] and make it possible for those with certain needs to be able to travel to the EU and return to Kosovo without using illegal routes." As to the eyebrows that have been raised in Kosovo by the revelation that his own family members have sought asylum in the European Union, Mustafa said it is up to the public to decide "whether an issue of a sick man is to be an issue" for the whole country. With reporting by RFE/RL's Kosovo Unit Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/ kosovo-prime-minister-brother-sought-asylum- in-eu-talks-to-rferl/27626525.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 US Sets Up First All-American Fire Base in Iraq by Carla Babb March 21, 2016 The U.S. military has established the first all-American fire base in Iraq since the start of the war against Islamic State, a U.S. military spokesman said Monday. Fewer than 200 Marines have deployed to the fire base, located near the northern Iraqi town of Makhmur, to protect U.S. advisers and Iraqis who are stationed at a nearby Iraqi military base. The base is part of the U.S.-led coalition's efforts to prepare Iraqi combat forces for the fight to retake Mosul. "This is the first time that we've established a spot that's only American," Col. Steve Warren, a coalition spokesman, told reporters from Baghdad. "All of this movement has been done at the invitation of the Iraqi government." Warren said the Marines' mission is defensive and is considered part of the U.S. advise and assist mission. He insisted these Marines are carrying out the same orders as those protecting U.S. advisers at al-Taqaddum airbase during preparations to retake Ramadi from Islamic State fighters last year. In that instance, as well as at the Ayn al-Asad airbase in Anbar province, U.S. force protection troops were deployed within the base. The decision to deploy Marines to a new U.S.-only base near Makhmur was "a tactical decision" made "because of space" restrictions, Warren said. Small arms fire Despite the base being located behind the front lines, a small number of Islamic State fighters came close enough to the Marines' base to fire small arms at them on Monday, Warren said. Two Islamic State fighters were killed and none of the Marines was wounded in that attack. The firefight came just two days after U.S. Marine Staff Sgt. Louis Cardin was killed at the new base. Islamic State militants fired two rockets during that assault on Saturday. "One landed harmlessly, and the other one unfortunately did not," Warren said. Most of the wounded troops have returned to active duty, but according to Warren, "some Marines were evacuated outside of Iraq for higher level care." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Military Strikes Hit ISIL Terrorists in Syria, Iraq From a Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve News Release SOUTHWEST ASIA, March 22, 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 and fighter aircraft conducted two strikes in Syria: -- Near Raqqah, a strike struck an ISIL weapons storage facility. -- Near Mara, a strike destroyed an ISIL fighting position. Strikes in Iraq Fighter and remotely piloted aircraft and rocket artillery conducted 13 strikes in Iraq, coordinated with and in support of Iraq's government: -- Near Baghdadi, two strikes struck two ISIL staging facilities. -- Near Habbaniyah, a strike struck an ISIL tactical unit. -- Near Hit, two strikes struck a large ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL vehicle bomb. -- Near Kisik, three strikes struck two separate ISIL tactical units and destroyed two ISIL assembly areas and suppressed an ISIL tactical unit. -- Near Mosul, two strikes struck an ISIL tactical unit and destroyed an ISIL tunnel and suppressed an ISIL tactical unit. -- Near Qayyarah, two strikes destroyed ISIL engineering equipment and damaged an ISIL used bridge section. -- Near Sinjar, a strike suppressed an ISIL rocket position. 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 terrorist group's ability to project terror and conduct operations, officials said. Coalition nations that have conducted strikes in Iraq include the United States, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Jordan, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Coalition nations that 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 U.S. Opens Small Marine Base In Northern Iraq, Comes Under Fire March 22, 2016 by RFE/RL The United States recently opened a small Marine outpost in northern Iraq and it has already come under fire from the Islamic State (IS) extremist group. A U.S. Marine was killed two days ago in a rocket attack at the base, called Firebase Bell, the first U.S. base in Iraq since U.S. President Barack Obama pulled U.S. forces out of the country four years ago. Obama has pledged to avoid a large-scale U.S. ground deployment in Iraq and to focus on enabling local forces to fight IS. But the U.S. military has become increasingly involved on the ground, sending in special forces since last year and now stationing as many as 200 soldiers from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit at the base. The base's existence was meant to be kept secret until it was deemed operational, the U.S. military said, but IS quickly learned it was there. Also despite its quiet beginnings two weeks ago, the base caught the attention of Iranian-backed Shi'ite militia which are also fighting IS. They are hostile to the increased presence of Americans, and have vowed to treat U.S. Marines deployed there as "forces of occupation." The radical Sunni IS wasted no time targeting the base, launching an attack with Katyusha rockets on March 19 that killed Marine Staff Sergeant Louis Cardin and injured others in Cardin's company-sized detachment. Obama expressed condolences over Cardin's death at a news conference as he visited Cuba for the first time on March 21. "It's a reminder that even as we embark on this historic visit, there are U.S. armed service members who are sacrificing each and every day on behalf of our freedom and our safety, so I'm grateful to them," the president said. Colonel Steve Warren, spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition in Baghdad, said the base was attacked again on March 21, this time by a squad of IS fighters who got close enough to the base to stage a failed attack with small arms. He said no Marines were killed or wounded, but two IS fighters were killed in that attack. "We are continuing to improve our fighting position, so to speak, to ensure that we've got the best ability to protect ourselves," Warren told a Pentagon news briefing. He said the base should not be considered a combat outpost because it is located behind the front lines and is not initiating combat with the militants. "Their primary mission is to protect, obviously, Americans," Warren said, referring to the U.S. advisers at a nearby Iraqi base near Makhmour. U.S. military officials said there is currently no plan for the Marine artillery unit to be used in any offensive mission to retake Mosul, but they wouldn't rule it out. With reporting by Reuters, AP, and AFP Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/us- opens-small-marine-base-northern-iraq-comes- under-fire-marine-killed/27627375.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 Update: air strikes against Daesh 22 March 2016 British forces have continued to conduct air operations in the fight against Daesh Latest update - Tuesday 15 March Typhoons destroyed a Daesh heavy machine-gun position in northern Iraq. - Wednesday 16 March Tornados destroyed another heavy machine-gun team in northern Iraq, whilst a Reaper successfully attacked a terrorist check-point in western Iraq. - Thursday 17 March Tornados and Typhoons conducted multiple attacks on Daesh positions in northern and western Iraq, including attempts by the terrorists to repair a key bridge on a supply route. - Friday 18 March Tornados and Typhoons struck three groups of terrorists as they gathered for possible attacks in northern Iraq. - Sunday 20 March Tornados destroyed three weapons caches in north-western Iraq. - Monday 21 March Typhoons attacked four groups of terrorists in northern Iraq, including three teams planting IEDs, whilst Tornados conducted a large attack on a major weapons storage facility in Syria. Detail On Tuesday 15 March, Typhoon FGR4s provided close air support to Kurdish peshmerga pushing south from Sinjar and eliminated a heavy machine-gun position firing on Kurdish troops, scoring a direct hit on the terrorists with a Paveway IV precision guided bomb. The Kurdish forces received further air support from the RAF the following day, when Tornado GR4s, destroyed another heavy machine-gun which had opened fire on the peshmerga some miles to the west of Kirkuk. Further south, in Anbar province, a Reaper remotely piloted aircraft patrolled over Anbar province and identified and attacked a terrorist check-point near Ar Rutbah being used to intimidate and control the local population using a Hellfire missile. Thursday 17 March saw Tornados and Typhoons operating over both northern and western Iraq. Typhoons used a Paveway bomb to demolish a building from which a terrorist sniper had opened fire on Iraqi forces near Tall Afar, while a Tornado mission over Anbar worked in cooperation with a coalition remotely piloted aircraft to assist Iraqi troops engaged in combat with Daesh extremists to the north-west of Ramadi. Despite heavy cloud obscuring the target, the RAF and coalition aircraft used their highly sophisticated surveillance and targeting equipment to allow the Tornados to deliver two precision attacks with Brimstone missiles on the terrorists, then, once they attempted to retreat, to strike the remainder of the Daesh group with a Paveway. Meanwhile, another Tornado flight Near Kisik used a Paveway to destroy a Daesh command and control position, where a number of terrorists had gathered. The Tornados then interrupted Daesh's efforts to reopen supply routes near Qayyarah, destroying targets with two direct hits from Paveways and then another Paveway and Brimstone missiles were used to destroy three engineering vehicles. On Friday 18 March, Paveway-armed Typhoons struck a group of extremists mustering east of Mosul, while Tornados similarly hit two Daesh groups gathered for possible attacks near Kisik. Tornado GR4s were in action again over northern Iraq on Sunday 20 March, when they used Paveways to destroy three weapons caches and supply points several miles south-west of Sinjar. Two flights of Typhoons provided close air support to the Kurdish forces on Monday 21 March; one flight destroyed a Daesh group that was firing rockets at the Kurds, whilst the other flight successfully attacked three terrorist teams which were planting improvised explosive devices in the Kisik area. Across the border in Syria, careful reconnaissance work had identified a major Daesh weapons storage facility at a site near Ukayrishah, south-east of Raqqa. This intelligence success allowed Tornado GR4s to conduct a very successful strike on Monday night, delivering eight Paveway IVs which destroyed the main warehouse and three support buildings. On the ground, British training teams continue to play an important role in the large coalition programme to help the Iraqi security forces become ever more effective in their successful efforts to drive the terrorists from their country. The British instructors have focused on training infantry and combat medical skills, as well as leading the coalition's assistance in how to deal safely with the thousands of improvised explosive devices and booby-traps left behind by Daesh in an attempt to prevent the civilian population from resuming their lives in liberated territory. Previous air strikes 1 February: Two Tornados flew reconnaissance and close air support for the Kurdish peshmerga in northern Iraq. Near Kisik Junction, they used a Brimstone missile and three Paveways to attack three rocket launchers and a Daesh vehicle, then over Qayyarah, a further Brimstone and Paveway destroyed an ammunition truck and a mortar position. Typhoons operated in the area of Ramadi, where they conducted successful attacks on three terrorist strongpoints. 2 February: Typhoons worked closely with other coalition aircraft to target a group of terrorists manoeuvring in the open near Ramadi, hitting them with a Paveway IV guided bomb. The Typhoons then flew to the area north of Habbaniyah, where they conducted a Paveway attack on a terrorist-held building. Further north, a pair of Tornado GR4s bombed a Daesh mortar team that was firing on Iraqi troops near Bayji. 3 February: Typhoons and Tornados providing close air support to Iraqi forces clearing Daesh positions in the area around Ramadi. The Typhoons destroyed a terrorist building with a Paveway, then used two more Paveways to engage a pair of Daesh groups, armed with heavy machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades, which were engaged in close combat with Iraqi troops. Despite the proximity of the friendly forces, the precision of the Paveways and careful planning by the aircrew allowed both targets to be struck successfully. The Tornados similarly had to attack a series of Daesh positions close to Iraqi forces, and these were also highly successful: Paveway attacks accounted for four groups of terrorist fighters, including one heavy machine-gun and two mortar teams, and when machine-gunners opened fire on the Iraqis from the windows of a single storey building, the Tornados launched a pair of Brimstone missiles which accurately struck both windows. Later in the day, Typhoons used a Paveway to destroy a mechanical excavator which had been converted into a large booby-trap, positioned amongst trees next to a road east of Ramadi. 4 February: RAF patrols over the countryside around Ramadi and Fallujah. Typhoons bombed three Daesh positions, as well as a group of terrorists caught moving in the open, whilst Tornado GR4s again attacked extremists engaged in very close combat with Iraqi forces; Paveways were used to destroy a heavy machine-gun team and a strongpoint, but in one instance, the terrorists were so close to the Iraqi troops that even a Paveway could not be used safely. Fortunately, the Brimstone missile's precision and small warhead allowed one to be fired into the midst of the Daesh fighters to significant effect. The following day, Typhoons operated around Habbaniyah and Ramadi, using eight Paveways to destroy an armed truck, a recoilless gun, two Daesh-held buildings, a command and control position, two weapons caches and a workshop producing truck-bombs. 7 February: Tornados used a Brimstone missile to destroy a truck-bomb near Habbaniyah, while Typhoon missions near Ramadi successfully attacked a garage containing an armed pick-up truck which was firing through the doorway at advancing Iraqi soldiers, and a terrorist-held building. Throughout all these missions, the Typhoons and Tornados were supported by a Voyager air refuelling tanker, with Sentinel aircraft providing essential strategic surveillance support to the coalition. 9 February: A pair of Typhoon FGR4s, supported by an RAF Voyager air refuelling tanker, destroyed an armoured vehicle, converted into a large truck-bomb, blocking a road with a Paveway IV guided bomb south-west of Kirkuk. 10 February: Typhoons provided close air support to Iraqi troops engaged in close combat with Daesh extremists north of Habbaniyah. The Typhoons struck the terrorists with a pair of Paveway IVs. 11 February: As Iraqi ground forces clear the remaining pockets of Daesh within Ramadi city they are also turning their efforts to Daesh strongpoints to the north and east of the city, supported by coalition aircraft. A pair of Typhoons, working in close cooperation with a coalition surveillance aircraft, successfully conducted two Paveway attacks on groups of terrorist fighters. Later that day, a second Typhoon mission over the area used Paveways to destroy a heavy machine-gun position and an accommodation block used by Daesh. 12 February: Typhoons were also active east of Ramadi, bombing two groups of terrorists, as well as a team planting improvised explosive devices. 14 February: A Tornado mission successfully targeted a compound north of Habbaniyah, where around 16 Daesh extremists had been observed, striking it with a pair of Paveway IVs. 15 February: Two Tornado GR4s conducted an armed reconnaissance patrol over northern Iraq in support of Kurdish security forces. A group of Daesh extremists were identified in a pair of buildings south-west of Kirkuk and were able to attack both at the same time with Paveway IV bombs. A Brimstone missile destroyed a terrorist vehicle and before the Tornados returned to base a Paveway was used to attack a weapons cache. Meanwhile, RAF Typhoons alongside other coalition aircraft conducted a series of coordinated attacks on Daesh facilities. The targets included a large weapons store at Abu Kamal, on the Syrian bank of the Euphrates which was destroyed with four Paveway IVs. An RAF Reaper provided surveillance support to several of the other coalition attacks. 16 February: Tornados patrolled over northern Iraq and came to the assistance of advancing Kurdish forces who were under fire from Daesh heavy machine-gun and mortar teams south-east of Mosul. Paveway attacks successfully dealt with the threat. 17 February: A Tornado mission interrupted a Daesh team preparing to fire nine artillery rockets, hitting them with Paveway to impact the middle of the line of launch rails. 18 February: RAF Tornado GR4s and a Reaper remotely piloted aircraft conducted counter-Daesh missions over Syria. North of Abu Kamal, a Tornado patrol used a pair of Brimstone missiles to strike a large engineering vehicle being used for wellhead repair and maintenance in a Daesh-controlled oilfield. Meanwhile, north-west of Raqqa, a Reaper worked closely with coalition jets to prosecute a group of Daesh extremists who were attacking members of the moderate Syrian armed opposition. The Reaper provided targeting and surveillance support to three successful coalition air attacks, then conducted a fourth attack using its own Hellfire missile. Over Iraq, other Tornados continued to support Iraqi army operations around Ramadi, in the course of which they used Paveway IVs to bomb three Daesh-held buildings. 19 February: Typhoon FGR4s and Tornados patrolled over western Iraq. North-east of Ramadi, an Iraqi helicopter reported coming under fire from an anti-aircraft gun concealed beneath a carport. A Paveway IV delivered by a Typhoon removed the threat. The Typhoons then dropped two Paveways on a large building where a group of terrorists, armed with rocket-propelled grenades, were holding out against the advancing Iraqi troops. North-east of Al Asad airbase, a coalition surveillance aircraft identified a set of five rocket launchers and an ammunition stockpile set up in a palm grove, and was able to guide in a Tornado flight which destroyed both targets with Paveways, then used a third Paveway to eliminate a group of terrorists caught in the open. Later in the day, a second Tornado patrol used Paveways to destroy four Daesh-held buildings north-east of Ramadi, including two used to prepare truck-bombs. In northern Iraq, a Typhoon mission operated north-east of Mosul, supporting the Kurdish peshmerga, and destroyed two buildings from which the terrorists had been fighting. Over Syria, a Reaper and other coalition aircraft supported moderate Syrian opposition forces north-west of Raqqa; our Reaper assisted in one coalition air strike, then used a Hellfire to destroy an Daesh improvised armoured vehicle. 20 February: RAF Reapers in action over both Syria and Iraq again. North-west of Raqqa, a Reaper tracked a Daesh machine-gun team that had been firing on Syrian opposition fighters. The terrorists retreated to a small building, where they were joined by other extremists. The Reaper then successfully attacked the group with a Hellfire missile. In Iraq, again north-east of Ramadi, another Reaper worked closely with another coalition remotely piloted aircraft to provide close air support to the Iraqi ground forces. The Reaper assisted its coalition partner in an attack, then conducted two attacks with its own Hellfires on two Daesh groups engaged in close combat with the Iraqi troops. 22 February: A Typhoon flight patrolled east of Mosul and was able to identify a Daesh team that was planting improvised explosive devices, they hit with a Paveway. 24 February: RAF Tornado GR4s, supported by a Voyager air refuelling tanker, successfully bombed a Daesh weapons factory in Mosul. 25 February: Typhoon FGR4s patrolled the area north-west of Mosul, and assisted Kurdish peshmerga forces who had come under fire from a terrorist mortar position, destroying it with a Paveway IV guided bomb. A second Typhoon mission, near Tall Afar, used a Paveway to eliminate a machine-gun team that was also firing on Iraqi forces. Further south, Tornados operated near Fallujah, where they delivered two successful Paveway attacks on two groups of terrorists entrenched in a network of bunkers. In eastern Syria, a Tornado patrol supported Syrian Democratic Forces as they mounted an offensive against Daesh near As Shadadi; our aircraft destroyed a terrorist mortar position with a Paveway IV. 26 February: Tornados and Typhoons flew missions over northern Iraq. Typhoons bombed a Daesh mortar team that was firing on Kurdish troops near Kisik, while a pair of Tornados used a Brimstone missile to attack a checkpoint east of Bayji. They then headed north to the Mosul area where they used a Paveway against a rocket-launcher position. 28 February: Typhoons and Tornados were active again over northern Iraq on Sunday, a Typhoon flight struck two mortar positions with Paveways and Tornados also used a Paveway IV to demolish a large isolated building from which a terrorist sniper was engaging Kurdish forces south of Sinjar. Across the border in northern Syria, an RAF Reaper conducted five attacks with Hellfire missiles and a GBU-12 guided bomb against Daesh extremists, including an armed team in a truck, near Tell Dehlis. 1 March: Whilst RAF Tornado GR4s conducted extensive reconnaissance missions against suspected terrorist locations, RAF Typhoon FGR4s patrolled over western Iraq to support Iraqi army operations south-east of Haditha. One of the few large artillery pieces operated by Daesh a D-30 122mm howitzer was located close to the Euphrates, and was successfully destroyed by a Paveway IV precision guided bomb. 2 March: Typhoons were active over a wide swathe of northern Iraq, providing close air support to the Kurdish security forces. East of Mosul, Paveways were used to destroy two groups of terrorists with vehicles, the aircraft then flew west to the area north-east of Tall Afar where they conducted a series of four Paveway attacks on a number of rocket-launchers and a stockpile of rockets. A second Typhoon mission bombed a Daesh mortar team south of Sinjar, while a pair of Tornado GR4s used a Paveway to demolish a building north of Mosul where a large group of terrorists had been observed. In eastern Syria, an RAF Reaper worked closely with other coalition aircraft to support Syrian Democratic Forces south-west of As Shadadi, as they followed up on their recent successes against Daesh in the region. A coalition surveillance aircraft identified a terrorist truck, armed with an anti-aircraft gun, concealed in an orchard, and passed the target to the Reaper for prosecution. A Hellfire missile scored a direct hit on the vehicle. 3 March: Typhoons were in action again near Mosul, they used Paveways to destroy two buildings where Daesh terrorists were possibly planning an attack. Later that night, Typhoons also bombed two heavy machine-gun positions south-west of Sinjar. 4 March: Typhoons continued to provide close air support to the Iraqi and Kurdish forces in northern Iraq, delivering three attacks with Paveway IVs against Daesh positions near Tall Afar, Kisik and Sinjar. 5 March: Four Typhoons joined other coalition aircraft in a large coordinated operation against terrorist locations in western Iraq. The RAF aircraft targeted a large Daesh weapons factory in the countryside near Qubaysah, some miles west of Ramadi. The Typhoons released a total of 16 Paveways, which completely demolished workshops and storage sheds. 6 March: A Typhoon mission returned to northern Iraq and assisted Kurdish forces south-west of Sinjar, who had come under fire from a terrorist heavy machine-gun team. A Paveway IV destroyed the target. 7 March: Reaper remotely piloted aircraft have also been extremely active over the period, primarily flying surveillance missions. An attack was conducted by a Reaper in the morning, when a Hellfire missile was used to destroy a Daesh-held building in western Iraq, close to the Syrian border. In the evening a Typhoon patrol assisted Kurdish peshmerga fighting a group of terrorists near Kisik by attacking the Daesh position with a Paveway IV precision guided bomb. 8 March: Patrols over northern Iraq continued, near Kisik, Tornados used a Paveway against a terrorist position, while a Typhoon flight silenced a heavy machine-gun position with a direct hit from a Paveway. The Typhoons were then tasked to use their remaining Paveway bombs to strike seven strongpoints in a village south of Sinjar, where Daesh had driven out the civilian population and were using it as a defensive base against the Kurdish advance. All seven Paveways struck their targets accurately. 9 March: Typhoons patrolled south of Sinjar. A vehicle used by Daesh to construct defensive positions, was destroyed by a Paveway. A second deserted village taken over by the terrorists as a fortified haven, near Ranbusi, was then attacked with six targets successfully struck by Paveways. Further south, Tornado GR4s were providing close air support to Iraqi forces in the Euphrates river valley. A Paveway was used against a group of terrorists in the open, whilst a further pair of Paveways accounted for two heavy machine-gun positions. 10 March: Both Tornados and Typhoons were active over the Euphrates valley, assisting Iraqi forces as they cleared Daesh positions to the west of Ramadi. A Tornado mission targeted a terrorist weapons cache concealed under the ramp of a destroyed bridge over the Euphrates, using two Paveways. At the same time a Typhoon mission conducted successful strikes on a heavy machine-gun team and a group of extremists engaged in close combat with Iraqi troops. In the north of the country, a Typhoon flight attacked a rocket launch point near Tall Afar, then dropped Paveways on six Daesh positions in the Kisik area where Kurdish forces had spotted terrorists preparing for a possible attack. 11 March: A Reaper worked with coalition jets to attack terrorists to the west of Sinjar. The Reaper provided targeting assistance for three successful coalition air attacks on groups of Daesh fighters, it then conducted two attacks of its own using Hellfire missiles. 12 March: Another Reaper was active in the same area and conducted an attack on terrorists who were launching rockets. The terrorists immediately left the area in a truck which the Reaper's crew tracked and successfully attacked with a Hellfire. The Reaper then directed coalition aircraft in an attack on an array of rocket launchers nearby. 13 March: Typhoon FGR4s, based at RAF Akrotiri and supported by a Voyager air refuelling tanker, provided support to Iraqi troops operating to the west of Ramadi. The Typhoons used a pair of Paveway IV guided bombs to demolish the entrance to a tunnel system which was reported to be surrounded by IEDs. 14 March: Typhoons and Tornado GR4s also provided support to ground forces in northern Iraq. Near Qayyarah, Typhoons used Paveways against two Daesh mortars and a group of terrorists engaged in a firefight with the security forces, whilst near Kisik, Tornados destroyed two Daesh positions, again with Paveway IVs. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address UN refugee agency redefines role in Greece as EU-Turkey deal comes into effect 22 March 2016 The United Nations refugee agency has announced that it is "not a party" to the new provisions agreed between the European Union (EU) and Turkey to stem the large-scale flow of refugees and migrants into Greece and Europe, and that it will align its work to cope with the deal. Till now, the Office of UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) has been supporting the authorities in the so-called "hotspots" on the Greek islands, where refugees and migrants were received, assisted, and registered. Under the EU-Turkey deal, which came into effect this past Sunday, these sites have now become detention facilities, and all new "irregular" migrants crossing from Turkey into Greek islands will be returned to Turkey. UNHCR has a policy on opposing mandatory detention. Accordingly, it has suspended some of activities at all closed centres on the islands, including provision of transport to and from these sites. "UNHCR is not a party to the EU-Turkey deal, nor will we be involved in returns or detention," the agency said in a press release. "We will continue to assist the Greek authorities to develop an adequate reception capacity." UNHCR's new role in Greece Going forward, UNHCR will focus on protection monitoring to ensure that refugee and human rights standards are upheld, and provide information on the rights and procedures to seek asylum. UNHCR staff are identifying people with specific needs and will continue to be present at the shoreline and sea port to provide life-saving assistance, including transport to hospitals where needed. They are counselling new arrivals on asylum in Greece, including on family reunification and on access to services. UNHCR expressed concern that the EU-Turkey deal is being implemented before the required safeguards are in place in Greece, noting that Greece does not have sufficient capacity on the islands for assessing asylum claims, nor the proper conditions to accommodate people decently and safely pending an examination of their cases. The Greek authorities have already separated an estimated 8,000 refugees and migrants who had arrived on the islands before 20 March from people arriving after that date and therefore will be subject to the new return policy. Uncertainty is making the new arrivals nervous, the agency said. Many still hope that the border will open. Many have run out of money. There is also an urgent need for information. The Greek police have been distributing leaflets in Arabic and Persian informing people that the border is closed and advising them to go to camps where better conditions are provided. But the capacity of nearby camps has been reached, and more camps need to be opened including for candidates for relocation. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address US Afghan Commander Apologizes for Errant Strike by Ayaz Gul March 22, 2016 The new commander of the U.S.-led NATO forces in Afghanistan has apologized to residents of Kunduz for a U.S. airstrike on a hospital that killed 42 people. U.S. Army General John Nicholson met in Kunduz with representatives of the medical charity Doctors Without Borders and family members of the victims to express his condolences over what he called a "horrible tragedy." The deadly airstrike occurred on October 3 in which a U.S. Air Force AC-130 gunship attacked the hospital, killing doctors and patients among others. "I grieve with you for your loss and suffering; and humbly and respectfully ask for your forgiveness," said General Nicholson. "As commander, I wanted to come to Kunduz personally and stand before the families, and people of Kunduz, to deeply apologize for the events which destroyed the hospital and caused the deaths of the hospital staff, patients and family members," Nicholson said. Personnel disciplined The U.S. military has disciplined more than a dozen personnel for mistakes that led to the sustained bombing of the only medical facility in the city that was briefly overrun by the Taliban. Afghan officials insisted the insurgents were using the hospital as a base for attacks on Afghan security forces but offered no evidence to support the claims. Afghan Defense Minister Masoom Stanekzai, and Interior Minister Taj Mohammad Jahid accompanied Nicholson to Kunduz. General Nicolson also discussed with provincial officials his Resolute Support mission's commitment to the Afghan security forces as they prepare for the upcoming "spring offensive", a coalition statement said, referring to the traditional fighting season during warmer months in Afghanistan. "You may have heard that the Taliban want to take Kunduz again, they will not," stated Nicholson, adding the coalition remained committed to the safety and security of the people of Afghanistan. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Netanyahu Cautions US Against UN Resolution on Mideast Conflict by VOA News March 22, 2016 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Tuesday cautioned the United States against using a U.N. Security Council resolution to try to advance the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Netanyahu's comments, made during an address to the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC, came weeks after reports suggested White House officials are considering a U.N. resolution that would lay out the basic guidelines for a two-state solution. "A Security Council resolution to pressure Israel would further harden Palestinian positions, and thereby it could actually kill the chances of peace for many, many years," Netanyahu said via satellite at AIPAC's annual conference. "And that is why I hope the United States will maintain its longstanding position to reject such a U.N. resolution." The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month U.S. officials are considering reversing their opposition to using the Security Council as a way to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Both the U.S. and Israel have insisted direct talks are the only way to make peace. But some Palestinians, frustrated by years of failed talks, see the U.N. as the only way to achieve their goal for an independent state. The U.N. resolution would call for both sides to make concessions long seen as fundamental to any two-state solution, according to the report. Hopes fading for two-state solution The plan has not been discussed publicly by U.S. officials. But Netanyahu's mention of it in his AIPAC speech suggests he is concerned President Barack Obama is seriously considering the move before he leaves office early next year. U.S.-brokered talks between Israel and the Palestinian Authority broke down two years ago, each side blaming the other for failing to make enough concessions. White House officials have since said they do not expect a two-state solution to be reached during the rest of Obama's time in office. In his speech Tuesday, Netanyahu said he believes the best way to achieve peace is "two states for two peoples, in which a demilitarized Palestinian state finally recognizes the Jewish state." But U.S. officials, and an increasing number of observers, say that the chances for a two-state solution appear to be running out. At a speech in December, U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said that current trends, including violence and settlement activity, are "imperiling the viability of the two-state solution" and that the situation appears headed toward an "untenable one-state reality." Palestinians are frustrated by the Israeli military occupation of areas they want as a future state. Next year will mark 50 years since 1967, when Israel's occupation began. The situation has been exasperated by a wave of stabbing and car attacks, mostly carried out by young Palestinians, against Israeli soldiers and citizens. Since October, 29 Israelis and 190 Palestinians have been killed. In his AIPAC speech, Netanyahu linked those attacks to the Tuesday bombings in Brussels, Belgium, where dozens were killed. "This is one continuous assault on all of us," Netanyahu said. "In all these cases, the terrorists have no resolvable grievances. It's not as if we could offer them Brussels or Istanbul or California, or even the West Bank." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Europe ramps up security in wake of Brussels attacks People's Daily Online (China Daily) 21:24, March 22, 2016 European governments moved swiftly to beef up security in the wake of the attacks in Brussels which officials say killed many people and injured hundreds. In London Prime Minister David Cameron chaired a meeting of COBRA, the government committee which coordinates security in the UK. It groups senior cabinet ministers, intelligence chiefs, senior police officers and military officers, including those from the elite SAS regiment. Similar meetings were taking place in Paris, Berlin and other key European capitals, and officials said extra security was being put in place at airports and travel hubs throughout the continent. In France, President Francois Hollande ordered an extra 1,600 police and paramilitary officers onto the streets of Paris. Security and police checks were also established at borders throughout the Schengen area of mainland western Europe, normally open to free travel between countries, officials said. In Germany extra security was drafted in to cover key public areas as well as airports and railway stations, according to local media. The British Broadcasting Corporation put the death toll at 26, of which 11 were killed at Zaventem Airport and 15 dead at Maelbeek metro station, near the area where many EU offices are located. At least 90 were injured, the BBC said. Hollande told reporters "This is a war against terrorists. France has moved to consolidate our borders. It will be a long war, but we should be calm and determined. "Today we are with Belgium. It was Europe that was targeted, and we should be united," he added. London mayor Boris Johnson said "We are stepping up the security presence at major security hubs. This is partly for security and partly for reassurance purposes." Police in the British capital patrolled rail stations and airports armed with semi-automatic weapons, a rare sight in a country where the police are not routinely armed. Dogs trained in sniffing explosives were also deployed, security officials said. Long queues formed at London"s airports, in part because of increased security checks on passengers, and in part because of delayed and cancelled flights. Brussels airport, scene of two bomb blasts, was closed, and the flight situation in Europe was compounded by a strike involving French air traffic controllers, UK television channels reported. In Belgium armed soldiers patrolled the streets as the security threat was raised to the highest level. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel cancelled a planned trip to China because of the situation. Michel said he was sending up to 200 extra troops to the capital to join those already deployed, and added: "What we feared has happened. It is a black moment in our country. We should face up to this challenge by being united, and coming together." In the UK the threat level from international terror attacks was severe, which means an attack is considered likely. UK security officials who requested anonymity said intelligence monitoring was being shared with other security services in Europe, including so-called "chatter" on mobile devices and social media which often immediately precede an attack. Governments throughout Europe had been on alert since gun and bomb attacks in Paris on November 13 killed 130 people and wounded hundreds of others. The suspects, many of whom died in the attacks, were traced to the Molenbeek area of Brussels, home to many migrants. The main suspect, Salah Abdelslam, was arrested by Belgian police and special forces troops after a gun battle in Molenbeek four days ago. Government officials throughout Europe have said they feared an attack as a result of Abdelslam"s arrest, which was hailed as a breakthrough by intelligence chiefs. French media reports said officials were sifting through the debris from today"s Brussels attacks for evidence of suicide vests, which they hoped may offer DNA and other traces to link them with the abandoned vest found after the Paris attacks in November. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Brussels Under Lockdown After Deadly Attacks March 22, 2016 by RFE/RL BRUSSELS -- Powerful bomb blasts struck the main airport and the subway system in Brussels on March 22, killing at least 34 people in attacks claimed by the extremist group Islamic State. Belgium raised its terror alert to its highest level and dispatched 225 extra troops to Brussels following what Belgian authorities called "violent, cowardly" terrorist attacks. More than 180 people were wounded. The blasts left grim scenes of carnage and prompted a virtual lockdown in the city that hosts the headquarters of the European Union and NATO. Witnesses described a subway car "exploding" and a blood-soaked airport terminal. AMAQ, a news agency affiliated with Islamic State extremists, carried the claim of responsibility. "Islamic State fighters carried out a series of bombings with explosive belts and devices on Tuesday, targeting an airport and a central metro station in the centre of the Belgian capital Brussels," it said. U.S. President Barack Obama condemned the "outrageous attacks against innocent people, and EU leaders expressed anger over what Sweden's prime minister called an "attack against democratic Europe." Public transport was shut down in Brussels, incoming planes and trains were diverted, and authorities urged residents to "stay where you are." EU personnel were instructed to remain indoors, and flags outside the European Commission flew at half-staff. "This is a dark moment for our nation," said Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, who denounced the "blind, violent, cowardly" attacks. EU President Donald Tusk said "These attacks mark another low by the terrorists in the service of hatred and violence. Speaking at a news conference, Federal Prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said the twin explosions that rocked the Zaventem airport and the blast that ripped through a carriage at Brussels' central Maalbeek metro station half an hour later were all "terrorist attacks." Photos posted on the Internet showed gruesome scenes of damage and destruction at the airport. A security worker who helped carry the bodies of victims outside told Reuters that some of them had "their legs destroyed, as if the bomb came from a piece of luggage" on the floor. Belgian media published a security camera picture showing three young men pushing trolleys laden with luggage at the airport and reported that police suspected them of being the attackers. According to the reports, two of the men are suspected of having blown themselves up while police are hunting the third. Belgium has been in the spotlight since militants living there helped carry out coordinated attacks that killed 130 people in Paris on November 13. The March 22 blasts came four days after Salah Abdeslam, the chief surviving suspect in the Paris attacks, was captured following after a shootout in Brussels. Belgian security forces had been on alert for any reprisal action. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks, and Michel said there was no immediate evidence so far linking Abdeslam to them. Public broadcaster VRT reported that 14 people were killed and 81 wounded at the airport, while authorities earlier put the death toll there at 11. One witness said the blasts sparked panic as parts of the building collapsed onto travelers. "When I reached the arrivals hall downstairs, an entire side with glass panes collapsed, downstairs where the taxis are," he told Belgian television channel RTBF. "It was complete chaos, some women were falling to the ground and crying. It was hell." Another witness, Zach Mouzoun, told France's BFM television that the second explosion brought down ceilings and "there was blood everywhere." A doctor who treated 11 of the victims at the Gasthuisberg hospital in Leuven was quoted by Flemish-language broadcaster VTM as saying their wounds suggested at least one of the bombs contained nails. The Belga news agency reported that the assailants fired shots and shouted words in Arabic before the explosions. Passengers were led onto the tarmac and the Belgian crisis center urged people not to approach the airport. Another explosion then struck the Maalbeek metro station, close to the EU institutions, during the morning rush hour. Brussels Mayor Yvan Mayeur said at least 20 people died in the blast and 106 others were wounded, including 17 people with critical injuries. A survivor fought tears as she told RTBF television about her ordeal. "There was a big flash of light and the whole carriage exploded, the windows came down on us," she said. "Everyone threw themselves on the ground." Brussels resident Joe Cook, who arrived at the station shortly after the blast, told RFE/RL that he saw commuters "in various states of shock." "Some were stumbling, some were lying down, some were being tended to by passersby and other folk," he said. Television footage showed black smoke billowing from the station entrance. Witnesses said the station was packed with commuters when the explosions took place. EU Budget Commissioner Kristalina Georgieva, who also handles employee and security issues, wrote on Twitter that EU institutions were working together to ensure the security of their staff and urged all EU personnel to "stay home or inside buildings." In Pictures: Brussels Attacks The new attacks sparked outrage and an outpouring of solidarity from world leaders. French President Francois Hollande said "the whole of Europe has been hit," urging the continent to take "vital steps in the face of the seriousness of the threat." "We are at war," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said after a crisis meeting called by Hollande. "We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war." Swedish Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said the blasts were an "attack against democratic Europe." German Chancellor Angela Merkel said the "despicable attacks" should be met with "determination toward the terrorists." Obama, who was visiting Cuba, said the United States stands "in solidarity" with Belgium. He pledged that Washington will do "whatever is necessary" to help Belgium bring the perpetrators to justice, adding that the attacks are another reminder that "the world must unite" against the "scourge of terrorism." Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Russian President Vladimir Putin "strongly condemned these barbaric crimes." However, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that what she claimed were the West's "double standards" toward terrorists have led to terrorist attacks in Europe. Russian Officials Fault The West Over Brussels Blasts EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, tearing up at a joint news conference withJordanian Foreign Minister Nasser Judeh in Amman, said it was a "very sad day" for Europe. She said it was clear the blasts were attacks that resulted from "radicalisation," and urged leaders in Europe and the Middle East to work together to tackle the problem. "We are united in not only suffering... but also reacting to these acts and preventing radicalisation and violence together," she said. The French, British, and Polish governments convened emergency meetings. Airports across Europe have tightened security. France, which remains in a state of emergency after the November 13 attacks, has also reinforced security on its border with Belgium. Based on reporting by Reuters, AFP, RTBF, and the BBC Source: http://www.rferl.org/content/explosions- brussels-airport/27627663.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 Belgian Police Hunt for Brussels Attack Suspect by Lisa Bryant, Katherine Gypson March 22, 2016 Belgian police issued a wanted notice for a suspect in the Brussels airport bombing, one of three explosions claimed by Islamic State that rocked the capital Tuesday, killing at least 30 people. The released photograph taken from closed-circuit television shows a man wearing a black hat, a light-colored jacket jacket, and sunglasses pushing an airport luggage cart alongside two other men who are believed to have been the suicide bombers. Authorities say the wanted man fled the airport. Police also say they found a bomb, chemicals, and an Islamic State flag during a raid on a house in a Brussels neighborhood while searching for the suspect. The detonations, including an attack at a metro station, injured 130 others and prompted Belgium to raise its terror alert to its maximum level. IS claims responsibility IS said its attackers opened fire inside the airport, before detonating explosive belts, while a suicide bomber attacked the Maalbeek metro station, according to the militant group's Amaq Agency news site. "This is a black moment in our countryeveryone please be calm and show solidarity," Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel told reporters. U.S. President Barack Obama, who was in Havana, said, "We will do whatever is necessary for our friend Belgium to bring those who are responsible to justice." He said the U.S. stands in solidarity with Belgium "for the outrageous attacks against innocent people." At least nine Americans are among the wounded, including one Air Force service member. Obama ordered flags lowered to half-staff on U.S. government buildings. Hundreds of Belgians carried candles and flowers to a nighttime vigil Tuesday night at the Place de la Bourse in central Brussels. European landmarks including the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Berlin's Brandenburg Gate, Rome's Trevi Fountain and the Burj Khalifa skyscraper in Dubai in the United Arab Emirates lit up with the colors of the Belgian flag. Airport attack Video footage showed people fleeing the Zaventem airport in Brussels, as a double explosion at about 8 am local time shattered the massive windows, leaving glass and tile scattered on the airport floor and smoke curling into the chilly morning air. Local media reported a third unexploded bomb had also been discovered. News reports at least 11 people were killed in the airport blasts. A European security official said one or possibly two Kalashnikov rifles had been found at the site of the attack. Metro attack The Brussels mayor said at least 20 people were killed and 55 injured in an explosion just moments later at the at the Maelbeek subway station near the main headquarters of the European Union. EU personnel have been told to either stay in their offices or at home. Local media described panic on the street and people emerging from the metro with burns and wounds. All flights in and out of the airport have been cancelled, and Brussels subway system has been shutdown as well. Authorities released surveillance images of three men who could be suspects. Security boosted Authorities in Frankfurt, London, Paris, and the Netherlands have boosted security at their airports in response to the Brussels' bombing. There is so far no direct link to the November terrorist attacks in Paris also claimed by Islamic State. The White House said U.S. officials were in close contact with their Belgian counterparts. The explosions come just days after the arrest of key Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam in Brussels that have raised fears of revenge attacks to follow. Max Abrahms, a political science professor at Northeastern University who focuses on terrorism, said the blasts were likely part of operations that were planned prior to the arrest. "They were in the works and quite likely they were expedited in the immediate aftermath of the capture," he told VOA. Crackdowns on terror groups often motivate terrorist cells to action, said Abrahms. "There's an incentive for these kinds of terrorist groups to strike back immediately after an apparent loss to the organization in order to communicate that the group isn't dead," he said. Link to Paris attacks? The attacks also bring to mind the November 13 bombings and shootings, claimed by Islamic State, that took place in several places around the French capital. A connection between the attacks and the arrest of Salah Abdeslam could be "extraordinarily significant," said Daveed Gartenstein-Ross, Senior Fellow, Foundation for Defense of Democracies. "Literally a watershed for terrorism and counter-terrorism in Europe. It represents the first time you've had a jihadist network carry out a major attack the Paris attack and then carry out a major follow-along attack," he told VOA. A European diplomatic official told VOA, "We have to get used to it. We've been though this two times last year." The official also said recent data suggests there are possibly more than 3,000 people involved in terror networks in Europe and that follow-on attacks or copy-cat attacks are a continuing concern, though other officials say they have seen nothing to indicate anything is imminent. VOA's National Security Correspondent Jeff Seldin and Richard Green contributed to this report NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address World Leaders Strongly Condemn Brussels Attacks by VOA News March 22, 2016 The deadly explosions in Brussels Tuesday have drawn strong condemnation from leaders around the world. In a televised statement from NATO headquarters in Brussels, Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg said NATO stands with its ally Belgium "on this dark day." He said this "cowardly" act with a "heavy" and "tragic" human toll is an attack on democratic values and open societies, adding that "terrorism will not defeat democracy and take away our freedoms." European Union Council President Donald Tusk said he was appalled by the attacks and offered Europe's support. Tusk said that "these attacks mark another low by the terrorists in the service of hatred and violence," adding that the EU "will fulfill its role to help Brussels, Belgium and Europe as a whole counter the terror threat" they are facing. EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini cut short a news conference in Jordan Tuesday after saying that "today is a difficult day." French President Francois Hollande said after a crisis meeting in Paris that "terrorists struck Brussels, but "the whole Europe has been hit." Still recovering from Paris attacks France is still recovering from a series of terrorist attacks that rocked Paris last November. The main suspect of those attacks was arrested last week in Maelbeek, Brussels. Following an emergency cabinet meeting in London, British Prime Minister David Cameron condemned the blasts and said that Europe should stand together against the terror threat. "We will never let these terrorists win," Cameron said at his Downing Street office. German Chancellor Angela Merkel's chief of staff Peter Altmaier called for solidarity with Belgium, writing on Twitter that "terrorists will never win." He added that "our European values [are] much stronger than hate, violence, terror!" Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said that the West's politics of "double standards" have led to terrorist attacks and that frozen diplomatic relations between NATO and Russia have slowed the fight against terrorism. The Kremlin, however, offered its condolences and expressed solidarity with Belgium after the attacks Tuesday. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Republican Presidential Candidates Criticize Historic Trip by Katherine Gypson March 21, 2016 U.S. President Barack Obama said the U.S. and Cuba have "half a century of work to catch up on" during a joint press conference with Cuban President Raul Castro Monday. Earlier in the day, writing in a Facebook post Monday, Obama said he had traveled to Havana to "extend the hand of friendship to the Cuban people" and "bury the last vestige of the Cold War in the Americas." Obama's message of engagement which comes a day after excited crowds of Cubans welcomed him to old Havana with chants of "USA! USA!" stood in sharp contrast to the criticism on social media from Republican presidential candidates. Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump tweeted Sunday after Air Force One touched down in Cuba, "Wow, President Obama just landed in Cuba, a big deal, and Raul Castro wasn't even there to greet him. He greeted Pope and others. No respect." Trump had previously said he was "fine" with the U.S. pursuing a new approach in its Cuba policy. Cuban-American Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz, writing in an opinion piece for U.S. political publication Politico Monday, said freedom cannot come to Cuba "by enriching and empowering the dictatorship, while they export terrorism to Latin America." The Texas senator said his father was tortured by the Batista regime while his aunt was "brutalized by Castro's thugs" before fleeing to find "freedom in the United States." Cruz is the remaining Cuban-American candidate in the presidential field after Florida Senator Marco Rubio dropped out of the race last week. Despite his departure from the race, Rubio has remained vocal in his opposition to the Obama administration's policy, writing in a Facebook post Saturday that the president's arrival in Cuba marked the beginning of "one of the most disgraceful trips ever taken by a U.S. president anywhere in the world." The other remaining Republican presidential candidate, Ohio Governor John Kasich, told MSNBC he wanted to see more balance in the U.S.-Cuba relationship. "I just think, it's too much we give and they take, and I would like to see them give," Kasich said Friday. The Republican candidates see U.S. engagement with Cuba as a sign of weakness, but Jason Marczak, director of the Latin America Economic Growth Initiative at the Atlantic Council, said a balanced relationship isn't the purpose of the administration's policy. "These are one-sided executive actions that the president is taking because in many ways we are empowering or seeking to empower a new economic class in Cuba, which is actually threatening to the Cuban regime." Human rights concerns The Senate is in recess this week but reaction from Republican members of the House of Representatives was strong. Florida Representative Ileana Ros-Lehtinen criticized the president on the House floor Monday, saying he was only "worried about legacy-shopping." The Cuban-born Lehtinen said Obama's meeting with dissidents was not enough "especially after shaking the hands of a 'murderous tyrant' like Raul Castro," as she put it. Republican Congressman Mike Pompeo said there was a reason no sitting U.S. president had visited Cuba in almost 90 years, calling the trip a concession to a dictator. "By visiting Havana, President Obama is giving Fidel Castro a huge public relations coup," Pompeo wrote in an editorial published in the Independent Journal Review Monday. Analysts said the president's trip may actually increase U.S. leverage on human rights issues in Cuba. "I can't imagine how being physically present and conveying your values and your interests to the Cuban government and the Cuban people loses leverage," said Tomas Bilbao, managing director at Avila Strategies and a senior associate in the Americas Program at the Center for Strategic & International Studies. "I'd be curious to know what leverage they thought we had before when we had a half century of a failed policy of isolation that did nothing to bring up changes in Cuba," he said. Congressional reactions Other Republicans seem to be warming to the idea of improving ties with Cuba, citing potential business opportunities as a way of opening up freedoms for the Cuban people. At least 15 Senate Republicans publicly backed a loosening of restrictions on Cuban travel and trade in recent months as the administration pursued the restoration of diplomatic relations. Analyst Marczak said there's bipartisan movement among many members of Congress to end the embargo but the timing may be difficult. "it's very problematic to make such a sweeping policy change in Congress in an election year when Congress is just focused right now on keeping the lights on," he said. Thirty-nine members of Congress joined the president's delegation to Cuba, including five Republicans. Arizona Senator Jeff Flake one of the Republicans joining Obama in Cuba told VOA before his departure, "It's always bothered me that, as Republicans, we talk about engagement and travel and commerce as something that will nudge countries toward democracy; but, with Cuba, we tend to say, 'No, no, it won't work there,' but, it will work. It is working." House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who is the part of the president's delegation, retweeted a message of support from a fellow Democrat Monday. Democratic Congressman Gregory Meeks, who is one of the members of the president's delegation in Cuba, told MSNBC during an interview in Havana the trip was "a dream that is becoming a reality, that we're finally talking to one another and having people to people contact." Democratic presidential candidates Bernie Sanders and Hillary Clinton have both said they support U.S. engagement with Cuba. The Vermont senator tweeted Monday, applauding the president for "moving relations between our two countries into a new era." NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address S.Korea says DPRK can conduct 5th nuke test at any time People's Daily Online (Xinhua) 13:25, March 21, 2016 SEOUL, March 21 -- The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) can conduct another nuclear test at any time when the leadership makes a decision, Seoul's unification ministry said Monday. Unification Ministry spokesman Jeong June-Hee told a regular press briefing that the fifth nuclear test can be carried out "right now," noting that the government was preparing for all possibilities. The DPRK staged its fourth nuclear test on Jan. 6 and pushed ahead with the launch of a long-range rocket, which was condemned as a disguised test of missile technology, on Feb. 7. Pyongyang warned of a pre-emptive, offensive nuclear strike in response to the joint U.S.-South Korea annual war games, while top DPRK leader Kim Jong Un had ordered tests of nuclear warheads and ballistic missiles that can deliver the warheads. The Key Resolve command post exercise, which kicked off on March 7, ended last week, but the Foal Eagle field training exercise will last until April 30. The spokesman said that the DPRK can conduct another nuclear test at any time when its leadership makes a decision as the leadership declared a plan on nuclear test. South Korea's military also expressed worry about nuclear detonations. Defense Ministry spokesman Moon Sang-Kyun told a routine press briefing that the DPRK had maintained its readiness to conduct nuclear test at any time when the leadership decides on it. Moon said the military is closely monitoring and preparing for relevant situations together with the intelligence authorities of South Korea and the United States. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Four North Korea cargo ships removed from UN blacklist Iran Press TV Tue Mar 22, 2016 8:31AM The United Nations has reportedly lifted sanctions on four container ships previously blacklisted for links to illegal arms trade by Pyongyang. The US permanent mission to the UN informed several US embassies of the decision via a diplomatic cable issued on February 16, Reuters quoted unnamed officials as saying on Tuesday. The ships were among 31 vessels banned by UN Security Council (UNSC) on March 2, because of ties to Ocean Maritime Management (OMM), a North Korean shipping firm suspected of transporting arms and other illicit goods for the secretive state. The cable showed talks between American and Chinese officials in the lead up to the bans removal, with Beijing securing assurances that the vessels would not be operated by North Korean crews. "We discovered that they are not OMM ships," said Liu Jieyi, the Chinese ambassador to the UN. Among the four ships was the Jin Teng, a cargo ship detained by the Philippines shortly after the sanctions took effect. Reacting to the report, the Chinese Foreign Ministry said the UN lifting of sanctions on the ships are in line with Security Council sanctions committee rules. "This newest and most recent adjustment made by the United Nations Security Council Sanctions Committee to the list of sanctions reflects the consensus by all parties, and is also in line with the rules of procedure of the sanctions committee," said the ministry's spokeswoman Hua Chunying. A US official welcomed the move, saying it showed a "productive working relationship with China" on North Korea while proving the "instant real-world effects" of the sanctions regime. The move comes weeks after the US and China formed a front in the UN to slap new sanctions on Pyongyang following its fourth nuclear test in January and an alleged satellite launch the next month. The 15-member UNSC has confirmed the act and will make an official announcement in a press release, according to Reuters. Both the US mission at the UN and the US Treasury Department which observes the implementation of the sanctions refused to comment on the matter. Last week, US President Barack Obama signed a new executive order that tightens the US trade embargo on North Korea over the country's recent nuclear and missile tests. However, North Korea says it will not relinquish its nuclear deterrence unless Washington ends its hostile policy toward Pyongyang and dissolves its military command in South Korea. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Pyongyang's Rockets Ready for Deployment Following 'Final Test-Fire' Sputnik News 05:44 22.03.2016(updated 08:19 22.03.2016) North Korea's short-range missile tests are complete; the country's next step is to make its new multiple rocket system fully operational and ready for combat, Pyongyang's state media reported on Tuesday. TOKYO (Sputnik) On Monday, North Korea launched five short-range missiles, which landed in the Sea of Japan. The same day, South Korean President Park Geun-hye ordered his country's officials to prepare to deter potential "reckless provocations" from the North. According to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the launch was "the final test-fire" of North Korea's multiple rocket system ahead of its deployment for real combat. North Korean leader Kim Jong Un personally inspected the test-fire, praising the "perfect accuracy" of the launch system, the agency reported. Last week, Kim instructed the country's military to prepare for conducting new nuclear and missile tests to protect the country against the alleged threat from the United States, despite the sanctions adopted by the UN Security Council (UNSC) against Pyongyang. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Arab Media Blast Iraqi Plan for Wall Around Shi'ite Town by Edward Yeranian March 22, 2016 Iraq's Shi'ite-dominated government and officials in the Shi'ite holy city of Karbala are building a wall to defend their city from nearby Sunni-dominated Anbar province. In recent months, Iraq's Sunni leaders have decried a similar government project to build a wall around the capital, Baghdad. Earthmovers dig trenches and pile rock onto makeshift barriers around the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, in a project Sunni political leaders describe as a wall to surround the city. Arab media report that a similar project has started around the Shi'ite shrine town of Karbala from Sunni-inhabited regions of Anbar province. The deputy governor of Karbala province, Jassem Fetlawi, told Saudi-owned al-Hayat newspaper that local authorities have "begun digging a 40 kilometer trench along administrative boundaries with (nearby) Anbar province to prevent terrorists from entering (Karbala)." Islamic State militants, which control Anbar province's second-largest city of Fallujah, were pushed back from the periphery of Karbala, late last year. Shi'ite volunteer militia fighters successfully defended Karbala, which is the site of a historic battle between rival Sunni and Shi'ite armies in 680 AD. Prominent Sunni leader Salah al-Mutlaq, who represents Anbar province in parliament, tells Iraqi media that building walls around Iraqi cities will not stop terrorism. He says the idea of building walls or barriers around cities is a mistake, because crime and terrorism know no boundaries. Terrorism he argues hides in many corners of society. But prominent Shi'ite leader and former defense ministry spokesman General Abdel Karim Khalaf insists the government plan is necessary. He says a failure to prevent Islamic State from entering Iraqi cities will give the group free rein to mount attacks inside those cities. The director of the Fares Center at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Nadim Shehadi, tells VOA that Arab cities have historically had walls. "Building walls is the wrong strategy, nowadays," he said. "It may have worked in medieval times, but now people have to work out ways of living together and not becoming a threat to each other. In the day of missiles and airplanes, walls will not protect you. A formula for coexistence will protect everybody." Iraqi officials say the project to build a wall around Karbala will cost $13 million. Security cameras and observation towers are to be built into the barrier. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Kazakh ruling party 'secures victory' in parliament vote: Early results Iran Press TV Mon Mar 21, 2016 5:5AM Kazakhstan's ruling Nur Otan party has claimed victory in early parliamentary polls after millions of people took to polling stations across the country, preliminary results show. The Central Election Commission (CEC) said in a statement on Monday that Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbayev's ruling party had won 82 percent of votes for the lower house of parliament. The statement added that two other parties, namely the Communists and Ak Zhol, had also passed the seven-percent threshold needed to win seats. A total of six parties participated in the run for the 107-seat parliament. The Agrarian party Auyl, pro-green Birlik, and the lone opposition National Social Democratic Party (NSDP) failed to receive the seven percent needed to win seats. According to CEC, Astana witnessed a 77-percent turnout on Sunday, with Commission chair Kuandyk Turgankulov describing the turnout as a record for Kazakhstan's parliamentary vote. However, observers with the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE) said the vote in Kazakhstan fell short of the country's commitments for holding democratic elections. "It is clear that Kazakhstan still has a long way to go towards fulfilling its election commitments, although some progress was noted," Marietta Tidei, OSCE Special Coordinator for the election observation, told reporters on Monday. Kazakhstan, a country with a population of 17 million, has some 10 million eligible voters. During the previous polls in 2012, the ruling party won an overwhelming 80 percent of the votes, securing 83 out of the 98 seats. The 75-year-old president has led energy-rich Kazakhstan practically unopposed since 1989, two years before its independence from the Soviet Union. Last year, he was re-elected to another five-year term with 98 percent of the vote in a snap presidential election. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Aung San Suu Kyi Nominated to Join Myanmar Cabinet by VOA News March 22, 2016 Myanmar democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi has been nominated to become a member of President-elect Htin Kyaw's cabinet. The Nobel Peace laureate's name was on a list of proposed ministers announced Tuesday by parliament speaker Win Khaing Than. The list has Aung San Suu Kyi's name next to four posts -- minister of the president's office, foreign affairs, energy and education. If she takes the post of foreign minister, she would have to give up her seat in parliament and leadership of the National League for Democracy party, which she led to a massive landslide victory in last November's parliamentary elections, ending five decades of complete or partial military rule. She is barred from serving as president, based on a provision inserted in the constitution by Myanmar's former military rulers that bars anyone with a foreign spouse or children from the post. Aung San Suu Kyi's late husband, as well as her two sons, are British. Aung San Suu Kyi has declared she will retain ultimate power over Htin Kyaw, her handpicked president and lifelong friend and confidant. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Arab League blocks bid for Kurdish federal region in Syria Iran Press TV Mon Mar 21, 2016 5:57PM The Arab League has rejected the "separatist" Kurdish push for a federal government system in Syria, citing the risks it poses to the territorial integrity of the conflict-ridden country. Ahmed Ben Helli, the deputy secretary of the pan-Arab bloc, said Monday that the Cairo-based organization does not recognize last week's proclamation of a Kurdish region inside Syria. On Thursday, Syrian Kurdish groups, along with their Arab and Assyrian Christian allies, declared a federal region in the country's Kurdish-dominated north. "The Arab League rejects such separatist calls that harm the unity of Syria," Ben Helli told reporters, highlighting Syria's unity as a "fundamental principle" of the Arab League. The move was also denounced by the Damascus government, as well as the Saudi-backed Syrian opposition groups, aka the High Negotiations Committee, which took part in the latest round of UN-brokered peace negotiations in Geneva. The US has also made it clear that it will not recognize any autonomous region set up by the Kurds and their allies under the federation, asserting that Syria's future government will be negotiated in the UN talks. Washington, however, said the move leaves unaffected Washington's military ties with Kurdish groups involved in the fight against Daesh. The Kurdish People's Protection Units (YPG), which is nearly in control of Syria's entire northern border with Turkey, has been fighting against Daesh. The Kurdish fighters retook from the grips of Daesh the Syrian city of Tal Abyad last year. The Kurdish groups and their allies were not involved in the Geneva talks that introduced a much-needed humanitarian truce across the country. The Syrian government accepted the terms of the truce on condition that military efforts against Daesh and the al-Nusra Front Takfiri militants, who are not included in the ceasefire agreement, continue. Iraq and some of the Arab League's other 21 members are run by a federal government system. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Russian Pullout From Syria 'Positive Step' - Saudi Arabia Sputnik News 16:48 21.03.2016(updated 16:57 21.03.2016) King of Saudi Arabia said that withdrawal of the main continent of Russian forces after broadly completing counterterrorist objectives in Syria is a "positive step". MOSCOW (Sputnik) The withdrawal of the main continent of Russian forces after broadly completing counterterrorist objectives in Syria is a "positive step," the king of Saudi Arabia said at a cabinet session on Monday. "The Cabinet considered the partial withdrawal of Russian troops as a positive step, expressing hope that this withdrawal contributes to accelerating the pace of the political process," King Salman bin Abdulaziz said as quoted by the state Saudi Press Agency. A bulk of Russia's air groups returned to their home bases at Russian President Vladimir Putin's March 14 orders, nearly six months after launching a Syria mission against Daesh and Nusra Front jihadist groups, banned in Russia. The remaining assets have been tasked with monitoring the recent cessation of hostilities between Syrian government and rebel forces, described by observers and stakeholders as largely holding despite violations. Russian combat aircraft continue to conduct up to 25 daily sorties in support of Syrian ground forces involved in the liberation of Palmyra, the Russian general staff said late last week. Extremist groups are not part of the truce negotiated between Russia and the United States that came into effect on February 27. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Russia Says to Control Syria Ceasefire Unilaterally From March 22 Sputnik News 11:55 21.03.2016(updated 14:03 21.03.2016) According to the head of the General Staff's Main Operational Directorate, Russia will unilaterally control the Syria ceasefire starting March 22 if Washington fails to respond to Moscow's proposal on a joint control mechanism. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Russia will unilaterally control the Syria ceasefire starting March 22 if Washington fails to respond to Moscow's proposal on a joint control mechanism, the Russian General Staff said Monday. "In case of the absence of a US response to these proposals, the Russian Federation will begin unilaterally applying the rules stipulated in the agreement starting March 22," Lt. Gen. Sergei Rudskoi, head of the General Staff's Main Operational Directorate, said. He underlined that military force would only be used in case reliable evidence proved systematic violations of the Syria ceasefire deal by armed groups. Last month, Russia and the United States reached an agreement on the cessation of hostilities in Syria, which took effect on February 27. The truce excluded the terrorist groups Daesh and the Nusra Front, both of which are outlawed in Russia. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Syrian Opposition's HNC Says Over 25 Areas in Country Under Siege Sputnik News 20:31 22.03.2016 Asaad Zoubi, the head of the Syrian opposition High Negotiations Committee's delegation to the Geneva peace talks said that there are more than 25 areas under siege. GENEVA (Sputnik) New besieged areas continue to appear in Syria, and they now number some 25, the head of the Syrian opposition High Negotiations Committee's delegation to the Geneva peace talks said Tuesday. "There are new sieges in Northern rural Homs, Aleppo and LatakiaThere are more than 25 areas under siege," Asaad Zoubi told reporters after a meeting with UN Envoy for Syria Staffan de Mistura. Last month, Russia and the United States reached an agreement on a ceasefire in war-torn Syria, which took effect on February 27. The ceasefire is aimed at enabling international humanitarian assistance to reach besieged parts of Syria and ending the violent clashes between government and opposition groups. Since the start of 2016, UN humanitarian convoys have been able to reach around 260,000 people in hard-to-reach and besieged areas in Syria. Earlier in March, the Russian reconciliation center in Syria said it had received 144 metric tons of food, drinking water and other essentials to provide aid to besieged areas. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Taiwan's Boao delegate urges separation of politics, economics ROC Central News Agency 2016/03/21 19:26:31 Taipei, March 21 (CNA) Former Vice President Vincent Siew () is expected to express Taiwan's stance during the Boao Forum for Asia that kicks off Tuesday in China that economic and trade relations between the two sides of the Taiwan Strait should not be affected by political change, an executive of the Cross-Strait Common Market Foundation said Monday. Siew will depart Wednesday for the forum in Hainan Province in southern China at the head of a 33-member Taiwanese delegation composed of business representatives and economic and trade specialists, said Chen Te-sheng (), executive director of the foundation that is organizing the visit. Siew will meet with Chinese Premier Li Keqiang () March 24 and attend a dinner party hosted by Zhang Zhijun (), China's Taiwan affairs minister, that evening, said Chen. Siew will be representing Taiwan in his capacity as honorary chairman of the foundation, Chen went on, noting that Siew will hold a press conference regarding his meeting with Li after the dinner party. With less than two months before president-elect Tsai Ing-wen's () administration is sworn in May 20, the timing is crucial for Siew to call on the Chinese authorities to facilitate cross-strait economic and trade exchanges through a platform trusted by both sides. The forum, which runs through March 25 on the theme of "Asia's New Future: New Dynamics and New Vision," will have Uber and Didi Dache car service providers as speakers in its newly added "Innovation and Entrepreneurship" program. Taiwan's representatives will focus their discussion on Internet finance innovation, crowdfunding and cross-border e-commerce, said Chan Hou-sheng (), chairman of the foundation. Five Taiwanese representatives will attend a cross-strait entrepreneurship forum March 25, including former Foreign Minister Frederick Chien () in his capacity as top advisor of the foundation, Yang Hsiao-tung (), vice president of Pou Chen Group, and CTBC Financial Holding Co. vice chairman Steve Hsieh (). (By Chen Chia-lun and Evelyn Kao) ENDITEM/J NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Turkey faced with biggest wave of terror: Erdogan Iran Press TV Mon Mar 21, 2016 3:50PM Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has pledged to curb what he calls "one of the biggest and bloodiest terrorist waves" that his country has ever seen. Speaking in Istanbul two days after five people were killed in a bombing attack in the Turkish city, Erdogan vowed to overcome Kurdish fighters and Daesh Takfiri terrorists who he said posed an unprecedented threat to the country's security. "We will hit these terrorist organizations as hard as possible," he said Monday. The Turkish head of state added that the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) and other groups were in cahoots with the Daesh Takfiri group in their terrorist operations. "Faced with the terrorists' new strategies we will develop new modes of combat and quickly overcome them," Erdogan said, promising to refrain from sacrificing democratic values. He also accused Europe of "two-faced behavior" for allowing PKK supporters to camp outside a summit between the European Union and Turkey in the Belgian capital city of Brussels last week. The PKK has been fighting for an autonomous Kurdish region inside Turkey, which has an 18-25 percent Kurdish population. However, the Ankara government considers the PKK a terrorist group and has waged a campaign of attacks against it, resulting in a three-decade conflict that has killed more than 40,000 people. The Saturday deadly bombing in Istanbul was the sixth of its kind to rip through various Turkish cities over the past eight months. Ankara has blamed four of the attacks on Kurdish fighters, while holding Daesh responsible for the other two. Despite being a member of the so-called US-led coalition against Daesh in Syria and Iraq, strong evidence suggests that Turkey is heavily involved in training and equipping the foreign-backed militant groups who are wreaking havoc in the two Arab countries. Aside from facilitating weapons and resources supply to these groups operating in neighboring Syria, Turkey is accused of buying smuggled Syrian oil from Daesh. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Turkey's Inflamed Southeast Looking More and More 'Like Syria' Sputnik News 19:06 21.03.2016(updated 20:13 21.03.2016) Hundreds of thousands of people, mostly Kurds, have been displaced by eight months of fighting between the Turkish military and Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) militants in the country's southeast. As the situation continues to deteriorate, some observers have begun comparing the situation to the brutal war that engulfed Syria five years earlier. Turkey's Kurdish-populated southeast has been devastated by the ongoing Turkish military operation against the PKK, with restive areas subject to months-long curfews and the razing of entire city blocks. The historic center of Diyarbakir, one of southeastern Turkey's largest cities and the 'de facto capital' for Turkey's Kurds, "has been under military lockdown for four months," and is looking more and more "like Syria," Senay, a local resident forced to flee the area, told the European edition of Politico. The ongoing conflict, Politico suggested, "is turning corners of [Turkey] into versions of Syria," with a campaign of brutal street warfare forcing nearly 400,000 people to leave their homes since August 2015, becoming internally displaced persons. Unfortunately, the magazine added, "the surging violence has received little attention in Europe, which is preoccupied with stemming the flow of refugees from conflicts next door to Turkey in Syria and Iraq." Tensions between Ankara and the Kurds escalated last summer after Turkey launched a military campaign against the PKK in northern Iraq and southern Turkey, after the group claimed responsibility for the killing of two Turkish police officers, and accused Ankara of supporting Daesh. Predictably, Politico noted, "local residents have borne the brunt of the fighting," with "at least 250 civilianskilled across southeastern Turkey since August, according to a recent report by the International Crisis Group." For his part, visiting the heavily damaged town of Cizre, near the border with Syria, RT correspondent William Whiteman cited local estimates which suggested that between 500-600 civilians had been killed in Cizre alone, with Turkish forces attempting to hide civilian deaths. The damage, the magazine noted, is immense. "In Diyarbakir's central Sur district, four in five houses have been destroyed, according to the Republican People's Party (CHP), Turkey's main opposition party. In Cizre, a southeastern town that saw some of the worst fighting and destruction, local politicians say 100,000 of its 120,000 inhabitants have fled." "Half of Cizre is not fit for living anymore, and the other half is damaged, too," Raci Bilici, the head of the Diyarbakir branch of Turkey's Human Rights Association, told Politico. Following a recent visit to the town, Bilici compared what he had seen to Kobani, the Syrian Kurdish city captured and destroyed by Daesh terrorists in the summer of 2014. "Europe, of course, is silent because of the refugee issue," the rights activist complained, noting that when he visited Berlin to try to raise the issue with German lawmakers, the latter showed much more concern about the issue of Syrian refugees. In their search for a deal on Syrian refugees, Politico notes, "EU officials have refrained from criticizing Ankara's military campaign against the PKK," despite the fact that "many of Turkey's allies including several EU countries and the US support the PKK's Syrian affiliate, the YPG, who have been at the forefront of the fight against the Islamic State [Daesh]," across the border. "People lost their homes, people are being killed. All European countries know this is happening but because Turkey plays the refugee card, they don't say anything," Sibel Yigitalp, pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party (HDP) lawmaker from Diyarbakir, told the magazine. "For many Kurds," Politico added, "this is history repeating itself. The height of the PKK's insurgency and the ensuing state crackdown during the 1990s resulted in mass displacement to southeastern Turkey, when between 2 million and 3 million civilians fled their homes. Some left voluntarily; others saw their villages destroyed by government forces." "This is the second migration," Makbule, who left her home in Sur three months ago, said. "We thought we'd survive if we left the village but what we see in the city now is worse." Despite Europe's decision to look the other way, and Ankara's pledge to assist the hundreds of thousands of internally displaced persons its crackdown has created, Yigitalp warned that Turkey, and Europe, won't be able to escape the consequences of their actions (or inaction). "What help can a state give to refugees if it is killing its own people, if it is creating refugees in its own country? If the Kurdish conflict becomes a war, don't they think that Turks and Kurds may eventually flee to Europe too?", the politician asked. "Some have already tried," Politico notes. "Last month, the Turkish Coastguard discovered 12 Turkish Kurds among a group of Syrians and Afghans who had attempted to sail to Greece." As the fighting in southeast Turkey continues, and the number of Turkish-Kurdish internally displaced persons grows, so too will the number of Kurds seeking refuge outside Turkey. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Administrative Chaos, Corruption Prompted Crimea to Leave Ukraine Sputnik News 16:48 21.03.2016(updated 17:44 21.03.2016) According to Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova, Crimean Peninsula Residents chose to reunioin with Russia because of the arbitrariness of the Ukranian authorities, corruption and red tape. MOSCOW (Sputnik) Residents of the Crimean Peninsula chose to join Russia because of the petty tyranny of the Ukrainian authorities, administrative chaos and corruption, among other reasons, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova told Sputnik. Crimea seceded from Ukraine and became a part of Russia in March 2014, following a referendum in which 96 percent of those who voted supported the move. "The people made the choice based on several factors It was a choice not in favor of Ukraine, where the illegal change of power, absolute administrative chaos, outside influence and total corruption of the authorities was taking place," Zakharova stressed. Another factor in favor of casting a "Yes" vote during the crucial referendum for local residents was, in particular, "a historic choice of their ancestors who inhabited this territory," the ministry's spokeswoman added. The genetic code of the people in Crimea has passed an enormous test of the Ukrainian government's tyranny, she noted. "We have not taken Crimea away from Ukraine, though someone might wish to think so Try not to look at everything with simplicity and not to give unambiguous and convenient evaluations. It's high time to understand that Crimea left Ukraine by itself," Zakharova outlined. The Crimean referendum has not been recognized by the government of Ukraine and many Western countries, which have introduced sanctions against the region in response. The Ukrainian authorities have completely halted air, rail, bus and freight connections with Crimea, as well as water, food and electricity supplies. A trade embargo came into force in mid-January, while financial, maritime and network blockades have also been announced. Sputnik NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Russian Court Sentences Ukrainian Pilot to 22 Years in Prison by Charles Maynes March 22, 2016 A Russian court Tuesday found captured Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko guilty of complicity in the murder of two Russian journalists covering the war in eastern Ukraine and sentenced her to 22 years in a Russian prison. Specifically, the court convicted Savchenko of directing artillery fire that led to the deaths of Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin television journalists with Kremlin state media who were reporting on fighting between pro-Russian separatists and the Ukrainian army in the Luhansk region of east Ukraine before their deaths in July 2014. On a separate charge, the court fined Savchenko a little more than $100 for crossing into Russian territory illegally. Savchenko, 34, denies involvement in the deaths of the journalists saying cell phone records indicate she was captured by pro-Moscow militants prior to the journalists' deaths. Savchenko also insists she was subsequently kidnapped and taken into Russia against her will. Savchenko has made no secret of her contempt for the Russian court proceedings. Throughout the 14-month trial, she went on repeated hunger strikes and railed against Russian justice. During her final statement to the court, Savchenko even waved her middle finger at the presiding judge. Those tactics continued Tuesday: as Judge Leonid Stepanenko announced sentencing, Savchenko broke out into a song about Ukraine's Maidan revolution forcing the judge to adjourn before he finished reading out his ruling. Verdict no surprise The conviction was widely expected most of all by Savchenko's lawyers, who say the case was politically motivated and could only end in a guilty verdict. In an interview with VOA, Savchenko's lawyer, Mark Feygin, said his client planned to go on a hunger strike and refuse water within 10 days if she wasn't released continuing a high stakes game aimed at garnering her release despite the ruling. "For the Kremlin, Savchenko is the war in the Donbas. They need her conviction for propagandistic purposes," said Feygin. "And Savchenko, she understands she's a symbol too... and she's willing to sacrifice herself if necessary." The Savchenko trial has captivated audiences on both sides of the conflict in east Ukraine. For Russians, Savchenko was touted as the Ukrainian face of what the Kremlin has branded a "fascist junta" that came to power after the Maidan revolution that toppled Ukraine's pro-Moscow government of Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014. Personifying defiance For Ukrainians, Savchenko has emerged as personified defiance to the Kremlin's ongoing proxy war in the Donbas region of east Ukraine. Since the trial began, Savchenko has been elected to the Ukrainian parliament and appointed as a Ukrainian delegate member to the Council of Europe. The growing symbolism of the case has pulled in a growing chorus of Western powers - including the United States and the European Union - to criticize the case as a sham and call for Savchenko's immediate release. U.S. President Barack Obama made a personal appeal to Russian President Vladimir Putin during a phone call with him earlier this month. Putin said Russian justice would run its course. Yet rumors have persisted for weeks that following the verdict, the Kremlin would be willing to trade Savchenko for Russian soldiers captured in battle in Ukraine, despite Moscow insisting it is not a participant in the conflict. Immediately following the ruling, Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko issued a statement calling for Savchenko's inclusion in a soldier swap with Moscow. Ilya Novikov, another of Savchenko's lawyers, said in a posting online that negotiations aimed at resolving "the Savchenko problem" were already under way. "We've reached the point where - with every day it becomes more unpleasant and expensive (for Russia) to hold Nadezhda," he said, writing in Russian and using the Russian version of Savchenko's first name. Novikov pointed to a planned visit by U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry to Moscow on Wednesday as a key development. Kerry's visit had been expected to focus on the U.S.-Russian negotiated cease-fire in Syria. NEWS LETTER Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list Enter Your Email Address Concise letters 250 words or fewer on topics of local interest will receive first consideration for publication. All letters are subject to editing for language and clarity. Mailing Address: Letters to the Editor, The Register & Bee, 700 Monument St., Danville, VA 24541 Letters submitted by mail must include the writer's name, signature, address and a daytime phone number. Fax: (434) 799-0595 Email: letters@registerbee.com Or submit a letter via our online form: Submit a letter Fridays meeting of the Industrial Development Authority board was short and cordial, a frame for the introduction of three new members Nancy Pool, Robert Bates and Chad Francis. IDA board members serve four-year terms as appointed by the Halifax County Board of Supervisors. Chad Francis brings an agribusiness background that aligns with one of the IDA five targeted sectors, said Kristy Johnson, the IDAs deputy director and mayor of the town of Halifax. She added, Robert Bates is a finance professional, and Nancy Pool has deep ties to our community. The public session opened with an upbeat financial assessment by Treasurer Mattie Cowan. Cowen told members, Were in great shape. She asked the board to move that current financial reports be accepted, and members did so move. Next on the agenda was a discussion of an IDA client, the C-Care Corporation (Center for Coating Application, Research and Education), and its need for IDA support in the amount of $600,000 to improve the lab in support of ChemQuest Ventures, LLC, a new operator of C-Care. Matt Leonard, executive director, noted that the IDA would seek a grant from the Virginia Tobacco Commission for that amount and offer matching monies in the same amount, $600,000. This combined funding would translate into a $1.2 million Formulation Lab in C-Care. Board member Chris Lumsden reviewed IDAs future prospects, saying The good news is theres lots of activity. The bad news is theres lots of competition for customers. He also mentioned the recent ribbon-cutting at the new Springfield Distillery, an operation in which IDA appears to have a great deal of confidence, and the appearance of Virginia Gov. Terry McAuliffe at the distillery opening and the opening of a new sawmill here, prompted Lumsden to say the fact the governor took time out of his schedule to visit Halifax County twice in one week spoke to the interest in development here and to the importance of attracting well-financed and well-managed operations. McAuliffe also visited a new sawmill that Slick Rock Lumber has brought to Halifax County. The governors office put out the following statement: Springfield Distillery will invest $160,000 in the site improvements and equipment needed to open a new distillery, tasting room, and remote-licensed ABC store on the historic Springfield Farm, built in 1842. Springfield Distillery is also committing to purchase almost 150,000 pounds of Virginia corn and barley over the next three years 100 percent of the agricultural products needed for the new production venture. The new craft distillery will serve as the central attraction to an agritourism operation that will feature log cabin lodging, farm-to-table dinners, and whiskey tasting and production classes. Secretary of Agriculture and Forestry Tom Haymore went even further: Springfield Distillerys investment represents an exciting new economic opportunity for Halifax County and our local grain producers, who are now marketing their high-quality, Virginia-grown inputs to the emerging craft beer, cider, and distilled spirit industries. He added, With more than 275 wineries and cideries, 140 craft breweries, and 30 craft distilleries, Virginia is emerging as the preeminent craft beverage player on the East Coast. These entrepreneurial ventures are creating jobs, drawing tourists, generating revenue, providing new markets for our growers, and helping the Governors overall efforts to build the new Virginia economy. Leonard closed the meeting by referencing a comprehensive report by Lumsden (VEDP 2016) that was submitted to and reviewed by the Board of Directors and available online or from Lumsden. The report, said Leonard, has been sent to development officials across the state suggesting the report contains not just exciting ideas, but ideas that are both exciting and workable. THUNDER BAY, ON, March 22, 2016 /CNW/ - Wolfden Resources Corp. (WLF: TSX-V) ("Wolfden" or the "Company") today announces assay results from diamond drilling recently completed on the Company's 100%-owned Rice Island Property (the "Property"), located approximately 10 kilometres south-southeast of the Town of Snow Lake in west-central Manitoba. RICE ISLAND DRILL RESULTS: The winter drilling on the Rice Island property totalled 1,445 metres comprising eight (8) drill holes. Seven holes (RI-16-20 to RI-16-26) were completed on Rice Island testing both the New Lower Zone as well as the Main Zone and a single drill hole (SB-16-01) was completed on a regional target, located 6 kilometres northeast of Rice Island (see Wolfden news release dated February 24, 2016). To date, partial assay results have been returned from 4 of the drill holes included in a summary of highlights in the table below. Hole No. Coordinates Dip Azimuth (degrees) From (m) To (m) Interval (m) Ni (%) Cu (%) Co (%) Comments RI-16-20 6074671, 440938 -55 302 206.50 209.00 2.50 3.36 0.90 0.13 New Lower Zone RI-16-21 6074628, 440843 -66 302 175.25 180.70 5.45 0.44 0.45 0.02 New Lower Zone incl. 175.25 175.50 0.25 2.89 1.15 0.05 & incl. 178.80 179.10 0.30 2.08 2.23 0.10 RI-16-22 6074692, 440718 -75 302 32.90 47.60 14.70 3.63 1.13 0.12 Main Zone and 111.20 115.10 3.90 Assays pending New Lower Zone Note 1: True widths are estimated at 70-90% of core width Note 2: Sample analyses performed by Actlabs Ltd. of Thunder Bay, Ontario utilizing the 4 Acid ICP-OES method; a 0.25 g sample is digested with hydrofluoric acid followed by a mixture of nitric and perchloric acid; the sample is then dried and brought back into solution using aqua regia; the sample is then analyzed using Agilent 735 ICP instrumentation The highlight from initial results of the winter drilling was the intersection of high-grade mineralization at the Main Zone, at very shallow depth in drill hole RI-16-22, yielding 3.63% nickel, 1.13% copper & 0.12% cobalt over a core length of 14.7 metres. This result is significant as it indicates that the Main Zone may have a sub-vertical dipping component to it, in addition to the flat-lying conformable orientation interpreted by Inco Ltd. in the historical drilling. IF this is the case, significant up-side potential exists for increasing the tonnage at the Main Zone. Drill holes RI-16-20 through RI-16-22 all targeted the New Lower Zone at shallow depth. The New Lower Zone was intersected in all three of the drill holes with a best intercept of 3.36% nickel, 0.90% copper & 0.13% cobalt over 2.50 metres in hole RI-16-20. These drill holes confirm that the New Lower Zone is the conduit or feeder to the overlying Main Zone and that the New Lower Zone represents an important drill target for increasing the mineral inventory at Rice Island moving forward. An additional drilling highlight was the intersection of intermittent semi-massive and massive nickel-copper sulphides over a core length of 52.1 metres in drill hole RI-16-25. This intercept includes mineralization from both the Main Zone and the underlying New Lower Zone. Assays will be released for this hole and the remaining drill holes as they become available. Finally, drill hole SB-16-01 tested a regional target located approximately 6 kilometres northeast of the Rice Island deposit. This target comprises a coincident magnetic high and conductor (from the VTEM airborne geophysical survey) and has a similar geophysical signature as to that of the Rice Island deposit. Although significant nickel-copper mineralization was not encountered in this drill hole, minor chalcopyrite and appreciable pyrrhotite were intersected in sediments intruded by a few narrow gabbroic dikes. Additional work is warranted to continue testing this prospective target. Rice Island is well situated proximal to the established mining communities of Flin Flon and Snow Lake and approximately 5 kilometres from HudBay Minerals' Snow Lake concentrator. The area offers access to power, labour force, supplies and mineral processing facilities. Proximity to such infrastructure will enable the Company to explore the Property year-round. ABOUT WOLFDEN RESOURCES: Wolfden is a mineral exploration company that recently acquired the Rice Island and Nickel Island properties in Manitoba. Manitoba is ranked #6 in Canada and #19 in the world as the most favourable jurisdiction to conduct mining and exploration (Fraser Institute (2015-2016).The Company also holds a dominant, 24,000 hectare, land position in the heart of the Bathurst Mining Camp in New Brunswick and a 100% interest in the Clarence Stream gold-antimony property in southern New Brunswick that hosts a significant 43-101 mineral resource. The technical information in this news release has been prepared and approved by Donald Hoy, P. Geo., President, CEO and a director of the Company. My Hoy is also a Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101. This press release contains forward-looking information (within the meaning of applicable Canadian securities legislation) that involves various risks and uncertainties regarding future events. Such forward-looking information includes statements based on current expectations involving a number of risks and uncertainties and such forward-looking statements are not guarantees of future performance of the Company, and include, without limitation, statements relating to plans and results of exploration and the magnitude and quality of the property. There are numerous risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results and the Company's plans and objectives to differ materially from those expressed in the forward-looking information in this news release, including without limitation, the following risks and uncertainties; (i) risks inherent in the mining industry; (ii) regulatory and environmental risks; (iii) results of exploration activities and development of mineral properties; (iv) risks relating to the estimation of mineral resources; (v) stock market volatility and capital market fluctuations; and (vi) general market and industry conditions. Actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such information. This forward-looking information is based on estimates and opinions of management on the date hereof and is expressly qualified by this notice. Risks and uncertainties about the Company's business are more fully discussed in the Company's disclosure materials filed with the securities regulatory authorities in Canada at www.sedar.com. The Company assumes no obligation to update any forward looking information or to update the reasons why actual results could differ from such information unless required by applicable law. Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its regulation services provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) has reviewed or accepts responsibility for the accuracy and adequacy of this news release. SOURCE Wolfden Resources Corp. TORONTO, ONTARIO--(Marketwired - Mar 22, 2016) - Rubicon Minerals Corporation (TSX:RMX)(OTC PINK:RBYCF) ("Rubicon" or the "Company") today announced that it has filed its Annual Information Form, audited Consolidated Financial Statements and related Management's Discussion and Analysis for the financial year ended December 31, 2015. The Company confirms that copies of Rubicon's annual financials can be obtained at www.rubiconminerals.com or www.sedar.com. Outlook and Going Concern The 2016 SRK Geological Model and Resource Estimate significantly decreased the tonnes, grade and ounces in the F2 Gold Deposit. More exploration is required at depth and along strike in order to potentially develop an economic mining operation at the Phoenix Gold Project (the "Project"). However, other than conducting desktop studies and preparing future exploration plans, Rubicon does not have any intentions to proceed with an exploration program in the immediate future. An exploration program would require the Company to secure additional funding. Rubicon continues to evaluate strategic alternatives for the benefit of the Company and its stakeholders and remains in discussions with its lenders and other parties. As at December 31, 2015, the Company had negative working capital of C$179.9 million, including cash and cash equivalents of C$22.3 million. On February 12, 2016, the Company was in breach of a technical covenant of its Loan Facility as the Project did not meet processing requirements of 875 tonnes per day over a period of 60 consecutive days. On March 12, 2016, the breach of technical covenant became an event of default under the Loan Facility terms and conditions. The Company continues to be in discussion with its Loan Facility secured lender, CPPIB Credit Investments ("CPPIB"). However, there can be no assurance that CPPIB will not exercise any rights or remedies in relation to the event of default as outlined in the Loan Facility agreement. The material uncertainties raise significant doubt as to the ability of Rubicon to continue as a going concern. The Company may be unable to realize on its assets or discharge its liabilities in the normal course of business. Rubicon may incur significant dilution to the holdings of existing shareholders in any restructuring and financing, or may be required to seek relief under a court-approved restructuring process. Impairment and Liability Reclassification The Company recognized an impairment loss of C$203.5 million related to property, plant, and equipment, and inventories in 2015. In addition, Rubicon has reclassified its Loan Facility, Gold Stream Facility, and Finance Lease Obligations, with balances of C$69.9 million, C$103.6 million, and C$11.5 million, respectively, from non-current liabilities to current liabilities as of December 31, 2015. RUBICON MINERALS CORPORATION Michael Winship, Interim President and Chief Executive Officer Cautionary Statement regarding Forward-Looking Statements and other Cautionary Notes This news release contains statements that constitute "forward-looking statements" and "forward looking information" (collectively, "forward-looking statements") within the meaning of applicable Canadian and United States securities legislation. Generally, these forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of forward-looking terminology such as "believes", "intends", "may", "will", "should", "plans", "anticipates", "potential", "expects", "estimates", "forecasts", "budget", "likely", "goal" and similar expressions or statements that certain actions, events or results may or may not be achieved or occur in the future. In some cases, forward-looking information may be stated in the present tense, such as in respect of current matters that may be continuing, or that may have a future impact or effect. Forward-looking statements reflect our current expectations and assumptions, and are subject to a number of known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause our actual results, performance or achievements to be materially different from any anticipated future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to statements regarding the requirements needed to potentially develop an economic mining operation at the Project; Rubicon's intentions in respect of an exploration program; Rubicon's ability to realize on its assets or discharge its liabilities in the normal course of business; the possibility of Rubicon incurring significant dilution to the holdings of existing shareholders in any restructuring and financing; and the possibility the Company may be required to seek relief under a court-approved restructuring process. Forward-looking statements are based on the opinions and estimates of management as of the date such statements are made and represent management's best judgment based on facts and assumptions that management considers reasonable. If such opinions and estimates prove to be incorrect, actual and future results may be materially different than expressed in the forward-looking statements. The material assumptions upon which such forward-looking statements are based include, among others, that: the demand for gold and base metal deposits will develop as anticipated; the price of gold will remain at or attain levels that would render the Phoenix Gold Project potentially economic; that any proposed operating and capital plans will not be disrupted by operational issues, title issues, loss of permits, environmental concerns, power supply, labour disturbances, financing requirements or adverse weather conditions; Rubicon will continue to have the ability to attract and retain skilled staff; and there are no material unanticipated variations in the cost of energy or supplies. Forward-looking statements involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties and other factors which may cause the actual results, performance or achievements of Rubicon to be materially different from any future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Such factors include, among others: possible variations in mineralization, grade or recovery or throughput rates; uncertainty of mineral resources, inability to realize exploration potential, mineral grades and mineral recovery estimates; actual results of current exploration activities; actual results of reclamation activities; uncertainty of future operations, delays in completion of exploration plans for any reason including insufficient capital, delays in permitting, and labour issues; conclusions of future economic or geological evaluations; changes in project parameters as plans continue to be refined; failure of equipment or processes to operate as anticipated; accidents and other risks of the mining industry; delays and other risks related to operations; timing and receipt of regulatory approvals; the ability of Rubicon and other relevant parties to satisfy regulatory requirements;; the ability of Rubicon to comply with its obligations under material agreements including financing agreements; the availability of financing for proposed programs and working capital requirements on reasonable terms; the ability of third-party service providers to deliver services on reasonable terms and in a timely manner; risks associated with the ability to retain key executives and key operating personnel; cost of environmental expenditures and potential environmental liabilities; dissatisfaction or disputes with local communities or First Nations or Aboriginal Communities; failure of plant, equipment or processes to operate as anticipated; market conditions and general business, economic, competitive, political and social conditions. Forward-looking statements contained herein are made as of the date of this news release and Rubicon disclaims any obligation to update any forward-looking statements, whether as a result of new information, future events or results or otherwise, except as required by applicable securities laws. Readers are advised to carefully review and consider the risk factors identified in the Management's Discussion and Analysis for period ending December 31, 2015 under the heading "Risk Factors" for a discussion of the factors that could cause Rubicon's actual results, performance and achievements to be materially different from any anticipated future results, performance or achievements expressed or implied by the forward-looking statements. Readers are further cautioned that the foregoing list of assumptions and risk factors is not exhaustive and it is recommended that prospective investors consult the more complete discussion of Rubicon's business, financial condition and prospects that is included in this news release. The forward-looking statements contained herein are expressly qualified by this cautionary statement Cautionary Note to U.S. Readers Regarding Estimates of Indicated and Inferred Resources This news release uses the terms "measured" and "indicated" mineral resources and "inferred" mineral resources. The Company advises U.S. investors that while these terms are recognized and required by Canadian securities administrators, they are not recognized by the SEC. The estimation of "measured", "indicated" and "inferred" mineral resources involves greater uncertainty as to their existence and economic feasibility than the estimation of proven and probable reserves. The estimation of "inferred" resources involves far greater uncertainty as to their existence and economic viability than the estimation of other categories of resources. It cannot be assumed that all or any part of a "measured", "indicated" or "inferred" mineral resource will ever be upgraded to a higher category. Under Canadian rules, estimates of "inferred mineral resources" may not form the basis of feasibility studies, pre-feasibility studies or other economic studies, except in prescribed cases, such as in a preliminary economic assessment under certain circumstances. The SEC normally only permits issuers to report mineralization that does not constitute "reserves" as in-place tonnage and grade without reference to unit measures. Under U.S. standards, mineralization may not be classified as a "reserve" unless the determination has been made that the mineralization could be economically and legally produced or extracted at the time the reserve determination is made. U.S. investors are cautioned not to assume that any part or all of a "measured", "indicated" or "inferred" mineral resource exists or is economically or legally mineable. Information concerning descriptions of mineralization and resources contained herein may not be comparable to information made public by U.S. companies subject to the reporting and disclosure requirements of the SEC. Mineral Resources Mineral resources that are not mineral reserves do not have demonstrated economic viability. The estimation of mineral resources is inherently uncertain, involves subjective judgement about many relevant factors and may be materially affected by environmental, permitting, legal, title, taxation, socio-political, marketing, or other relevant issues. The quantity and grade of reported inferred resources in this estimation are uncertain in nature and there has been insufficient exploration to define these inferred resources as an indicated or measured mineral resource and it is uncertain if further exploration will result in upgrading them to an indicated or measured mineral resource category. The accuracy of any such estimates is a function of the quantity and quality of available data, and of the assumptions made and judgments used in engineering and geological interpretation, which may prove to be unreliable and depend, to a certain extent, upon the analysis of drilling results and statistical inferences that may ultimately prove to be inaccurate. Mineral resource estimates may have to be re-estimated based on: (i) fluctuations in mineral prices; (ii) results of drilling and development; (iii) results of test stoping and other testing; (iv) metallurgical testing and other studies; (v) proposed mining operations, including dilution; (vi) the evaluation of mine plans subsequent to the date of any estimates; and (vii) the possible failure to receive required permits, approvals and licenses. The mineral resources in this news release were reported using Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum ("CIM") Standards. Qualified Persons The content of this news release has been read and approved by Bill Shand, P.Eng., Vice President, Operations and Howard Bird, B.Sc. (Hons.), P.Geo., Vice-President, Exploration,. Both are Qualified Persons as defined by NI 43-101. The Toronto Stock Exchange has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. TORONTO, ON--(Marketwired - March 22, 2016) - Harte Gold Corp. ("Harte Gold") (TSX: HRT) (OTC PINK: HRTFF) (FRANKFURT: H4O) announced it has raised gross proceeds of $2.5 million pursuant to the closing of a non-brokered Secured Note Offering comprised of two hundred and fifty (250) Units priced at $10,000 for gross proceeds of $2.5 million. Units consist of a Two Year $10,000 Secured Note with a 15% annual coupon and 40,000 common share purchase warrants exercisable at $0.15 for a period of two years from Closing. Finder's fees payable under the private placement consist of a cash payment equal to 5% of cash raised and that number of common share purchase warrants equal to 5% of the number of investor warrants issued pursuant to certain orders, for a total of $72,750 and 291,000 warrants. Finder's warrants are exercisable at $0.15 for a period of twenty-four (24) months from closing. All common share purchase warrants issued under the private placement are subject to an accelerated expiry provision. Should the closing price of Harte Gold common shares on the Toronto Stock Exchange be equal to or greater than $0.20 for 10 consecutive trading days any time after closing, Harte Gold may accelerate the expiry date of the warrants by giving notice to the warrant holders through the issuance of a press release. The warrants will expire on the 30th day after the date on which such notice is given. Proceeds from the Secured Note Offering replace the proposed Auramet LLC financing facility (see news release dated September 21, 2015) and will be allocated to Harte Gold's fully permitted 70,000 tonne Advanced Exploration and Bulk Sample Project, commercial permitting and exploration at the Company's Ontario properties. Sugar Zone Advanced Exploration and Bulk Sample Project Harte Gold announced that as of today's date, 600 meters of ramp development have been completed and the first ore is anticipated prior to the end of March, 2016. Harte Gold has signed a final toll milling agreement with Barrick Gold Corp. for the processing of the 70,000 tonne bulk sample and awarded the tender for the crushing and hauling contract of the bulk sample to Kabi Lake Resources Corp. and its joint venture partner Pic Mobert First Nation ("Pic Mobert"). "We will be mining the first ore within the next week and anticipate shipping to Barrick's Hemlo mill in April. Our mining operations team together with contract miner; Technica Mining Inc. are doing an excellent job on site where they are on budget, ahead of schedule and with no lost time accidents. We look forward to completing the Bulk Sample Project prior to year-end and will be applying for our commercial operating permits during this period," said Stephen G. Roman, President and CEO. Sugar Zone Property Exploration Program Harte Gold is currently planning a deep geophysical survey to cover a 2 km x 1.5 km area between the Wolf Zone and Sugar Zone Deposit. The survey will provide information to a depth of 600 meters in order to establish drill targets that will test for the continuity of gold mineralization between the Wolf Zone and Sugar Zone Deposit. Harte Gold is reviewing survey proposals and will award the geophysical survey contract in April and expects the program to start in May. Drill Program - NI 43-101 Technical Report Update Harte Gold plans to proceed with a drill program to test the area between the Wolf Zone and Sugar Zone Deposit as well as test the down dip extension of the Sugar Zone deposit between the 500m and the SZ-12-37 Discovery Hole at the 1,000m level. On completion of the drill program and the advanced exploration and bulk sample project Harte will update its current NI 43-101 Technical Report. Stoughton Abitibi Property Harte Gold has received approval for a geophysical survey and drill program. Harte Gold will focus on potential on-strike extensions of the Lakeshore Gold "Smoke Deep" Discovery located west of the Stoughton Abitibi property. Stock Options Harte Gold also announced that it has issued 1,200,000 stock options to acquire common shares of Harte Gold to Employees, Pic Mobert and a Director. The stock options are exercisable at $0.175 and expire March 22, 2021. About Harte Gold Corp. Harte Gold Corp. is focused on the exploration and development of its 100% owned Sugar Zone property where it has permitted a 70,000 tonne advanced exploration and bulk sample for the Sugar Zone Deposit. The Sugar Zone property is located 60 kilometers east of the Hemlo Gold Camp and as per the Preliminary Economic Assessment dated July 12, 2012, contains an Indicated Resource of 980,900 tonnes, grading 10.13 g/t for 319,280 ounces of contained gold (uncapped) and an Inferred Resource of 580,500 tonnes, grading 8.36 g/t Au for 155,960 ounces of contained gold (uncapped). The mineral resource was prepared in compliance with NI 43-101 guidelines. George A. Flach P. Geo, Vice President Exploration, is the Qualified Person for Harte Gold. Harte Gold also holds the Stoughton-Abitibi property located on the Destor-Porcupine Fault Zone which is adjacent to and on strike of Lakeshore Gold's Holloway Gold Mine. Common Shares Outstanding: 306,251,031 The Toronto Stock Exchange has not reviewed and does not accept responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release. VANCOUVER, March 22, 2016 - Western Lithium USA Corp. ("Western Lithium" or "the Company") (TSX: WLC) (OTCQX: WLCDF) is pleased to announce that further to guidance provided in our December 2015 conference call in connection with new branding initiatives, Western Lithium has changed its corporate name to Lithium Americas Corp. ("Lithium Americas" or "LAC"), and its wholly owned subsidiary, Western Lithium Corp., to Lithium Nevada Corp. ("Lithium Nevada" or "LNC"). Effective Wednesday, March 30the Company will commence trading on the Toronto Stock Exchange ("TSX") under the new name and symbol "LAC" and on the OTCQX, under the new name with a symbol to be announced prior to the effective date. The simplified business structure of Lithium Americas is as follows:http://media3.marketwire.com/docs/WLC_chart.jpgThe Company remains in advanced discussions with potential strategic partners at Cauchari-Olaroz and hopes to make an announcement soon. Given the strong global demand for lithium and the fully permitted status of the Cauchari-Olaroz project, the Company frequently receives indications of interest from leading companies representing different parts of the lithium supply chain from various parts of the world. Lithium Americas has been evaluating potential strategic partners and new extraction processing technologies in comparison to the economics established in the 2012 definitive Feasibility Study ("dFS") using traditional processing.At the recent Prospectors & Dealers Association Conference in Toronto, the Argentine Minister for Energy and Mines gave a presentation summarizing "Argentina is Waiting for You; the Best is Yet to Come" highlighting how Argentina in just 20 years, and despite the last decade's challenges, is among the world's top producers of lithium, boron, silver, gold, copper, lead, and zinc.Since taking office in December 2015, President Mauricio Macri has moved swiftly to appoint a business-friendly cabinet and implement a series of major fiscal, political and regulatory policy measures. President Macri lifted foreign exchange controls that had been in place since 2011, and abolished export taxes on many agricultural and industrial goods, including lithium. At the Davos World Economic Forum, Macri and his cabinet members met with almost 20 world leaders, politicians, and multinational executives, which marked a "new era of bilateral relations." US President Barack Obama will visit Argentina to meet with Mr. Macri at the end of this month.Minera Exar S.A. President Franco Mignacco commented, "We have recently spent considerable time with the new government officials in provincial and federal mining positions, as well as the new appointments at our local partner JEMSE. Like many others, we are impressed with the rate of positive change and commitment of strong support on all levels. These are important indications of a very strong future for the mining industry in Argentina that will positively benefit all of our stakeholders and communities."The Company is pleased to report that it is in discussions with several parties that could result in new global distribution agreements outside of the North American oilfield market. Mutual due diligence and product testing is on-going. Hectatone Inc. ("Hectatone") shipped 140 tons of finished product in February and has additional orders to ship in March. Drilling activity in almost all energy markets continues to decline. However, there are recent and encouraging signs that many global energy markets are beginning to stabilize.Hectatone President Frank B. Wright, Jr. commented, "This is a productive and creative period for the Hectatone business. The opportunity to collaborate with strategic partners on a global basis in diverse markets is encouraging. The Hectatone team has responded to the declining oilfield market with innovative product development for industrial and environment markets. Additionally, we are seeking to take advantage of the downturn by expanding our talented team. I remain confident that our objective of becoming cash flow positive by year-end is a realistic and achievable goal, and that we will emerge from the bottom of the cycle as a stronger company."The Company is completing the pilot plant programs at its demonstration plant in Germany. This work has greatly increased the Company's understanding of the processing and engineering requirements for the production of lithium products from the Lithium Nevada Project. In light of the recent results, the Company has determined that additional specific engineering work will be required to optimize the front end of the process to produce a clean and concentrated lithium brine on a commercial scale. In addition, the Company has become aware of recent technological advancements in producing lithium compounds from brines, and believes these innovative and sustainable technologies warrant further review for potential incorporation into the Nevada processing plant design.As a result of these additional reviews, the Company has initiated the preparation of a new preliminary Feasibility Study. The new report will include a thorough analysis of project development and operational components, include processing infrastructure, production rate, and supporting inputs, as well as capital and operating expenditures. In the meantime, the Company has determined that its pre-feasibility study completed in March 2012 is no longer current and the Company will no longer be relying on the study for its project development planning. There are no changes to the lithium resource base on the project. While the updated studies are underway, Lithium Nevada will pursue strategic partnership opportunities to advance the project on a timely basis.Lithium Americas CEO Tom Hodgson commented, "Extracting lithium from clays at a commercial scale level requires vision, capital, and talent. We are always in the process of trying to determine the optimal path to advance our projects to achieve long-term success, and we are excited with a new focus from the team at Lithium Nevada Corp. In today's strong lithium market, there is no question that LNC's resource in Nevada represents tremendous long-term value. The Lithium Nevada Project hosts one of the largest lithium resources in North America. There is strong local and national support from both commercial and political bases to advance a Nevada based project. A clear and well-defined permitting path exists. Lithium Americas shares the vision of making Nevada a center of renewable energy and sustainable mining technologies. We are absolutely committed to advancing Lithium Nevada Corp. on the fastest timetable possible, as dictated by further studies and market conditions."Lithium Americas is pleased to announce that the Company's Vice Chairman, John Kanellitsas, is being named President, effective as of the Company's Annual General Meeting ("AGM") on March 30th. Current President, Jay Chmelauskas will be leaving the Company in order to pursue other interests. In this context, Mr. Chmelauskas has withdrawn his name as a director nominee at the AGM.John Macken, Chairman of the Board commented "We thank Jay for his service to the Company over many years, and his efforts in initiating the merger of the two companies. We wish him every success in his future endeavours. Following the merger of Western Lithium and Lithium Americas in September 2015, the combined company has emerged with strong and capable management, and an exciting future."Scientific and technical information in this news release about the Lithium Nevada Project has been approved by Dennis Bryan, a qualified person for purposes of National Instrument 43-101.Statements in this release that are forward-looking information are subject to various risks and uncertainties concerning the specific factors disclosed here and elsewhere in the company's periodic filings with Canadian securities regulators. When used in this document, the words such as "expect," "believe," "planned", "scheduled," "targeting" and similar expressions is forward-looking information. Information provided in this document is necessarily summarized and may not contain all available material information.Statements in this release that constitute forward-looking statements or information include, but are not limited to: (i) completion of a transaction with a strategic partner at Cauchari-Olaroz; and (ii) the timing and results of an updated economic analysis on the Lithium Nevada Project.All such forward-looking information and statements are based on certain assumptions and analyses made by the Company's management in light of their experience and perception of historical trends, current conditions and expected future developments, as well as other factors management believes are appropriate in the circumstances. These statements, however, are 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 or statements. Important factors that could cause actual results to differ from these forward-looking statements include those described under the heading "Risks Factors" in the Company's most recently filed MD&A. The Company does not intend, and expressly disclaims any obligation to, update or revise the forward-looking information contained in this news release, except as required by law. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on forward-looking information or statements.Investor Relations1100 - 355 Burrard StreetVancouver, BC, V6C 2G8Telephone: 778-656-5820Email: ir@lithiumamericas.comWebsite: www.lithiumamericas.com Bundaberg Distilling Company's Blenders Edition was named the world's best rum. Photo: Supplied An Australian rum has been named the world's best for the first time, with one of the Bundaberg Distilling Company's premium range crowned at the World Drinks Awards in London. Earlier named the world's best dark rum, Bundaberg Blenders Edition then beat a field of five fellow finalists to land the award for world's best rum. The final six were judged by a panel of international experts across three rounds and scored on merit of nose, palate, finish, balance, character, complexity and quality. A rum deal There was double cause for celebration for Bundaberg, with another entrant also winning its category and reaching the final judging table. Bundaberg Small Batch was named the world's top golden rum, having been narrowly beaten in the same category in 2015. Old Pulteney's 1989 Vintage has been named 2016's best whisky. Photo: Supplied Bundaberg senior brand manager Duncan Littler says BDC is "proud to be flying the flag for Australian rum across the world ... to be recognised on the global stage and amongst such high calibre rums, is a testament to the quality of our product and to the dedication of our team. "To win so many awards is a fantastic achievement for the distillery and, as a Queensland brand, the region as a whole." Blenders Edition 2015 was launched last May and is described by the company as a "complex yet sweet rum", and "layered with hints of raisins, vanilla and spice". It retails at $90 for a 700ml bottle. A sub-section of the World Drinks Awards recognises design excellence in bottling and labelling, and it was here that another Australian concern excelled. Tasmania's Lark Distillery, the producer of Forty Spotted Gin, was awarded 'world's best gin design' for its Forty Spotted Winter Release. Scotch breaks award drought Meanwhile, Scotch whisky is back on top of the world after a lean few years, with northern Scottish distiller Old Pulteney grabbing the top gong at the World Whiskies Awards. Old Pulteney's Vintage 1989 took out the coveted title of world's best single malt whisky. Advertisement It's the same award that delivered worldwide fame to Tasmanian distiller Sullivans Cove in 2014, which won for its French Oak Cask variety, sending demand skyrocketing and prices per bottle drawn from the winning cask into the thousands. The WWA victory in 2015 of a Taiwanese distillery, Kavalan, confirmed the rest of the world had surpassed the spirit's notional home of Scotland in terms of quality and complexity. At the same time, whisky connoisseur Jim Murray named a Canadian malt whiskey Crown Royal Northern Harvest Rye his top pick for 2015, scoring 97.5 points out of a possible 100. Not a single Scottish whisky made the top five selections for Murray's seminal publication, The Whisky Bible. The WWA handed out 14 gongs this year and Scottish distilleries collected the top three awards. American distilleries collected a swag of awards, while Japan bagged two and Taiwan and Ireland one each. The 26-year-old Old Pulteney Vintage 1989 is described as "honey, musky floral tone and sweetness balanced well with a chalky oak finish and hints of iodine. Nutty oak, butter and lemon drops on the palate". A spokeswoman for Old Pulteney, Scotland's northern-most mainland distiller, described the victory as "a wonderful win". "We couldn't be more proud to have our 1989 Vintage recognised as the world's best single malt," Margaret Mary Clarke said. "When we released the whisky last year it was a real hit with whisky enthusiasts and Old Pulteney devotees, who already recognise the quality and character of our full range of fine single malts. "The award is another great testament to the dedicated distillery team up in Wick, whose passion and skill for creating incredible malt whiskies continue to be recognised around the world." The Australian distributor of Old Pulteney hopes to import a shipment of the award-winning 1989 Vintage soon. Pinot gris is the wine phenomenon of the moment. It's the fastest growing wine category at retail level. It's growing at 12.8 per cent a year, according to A.C. Nielsen market research. And yet it's generally unpopular with wine writers, sommeliers, retailers and other opinion leaders. It's mocked, much as sauvignon blanc was mocked before it. In value terms, sauvignon blanc has flatlined, but still hogs 38 per cent of the white wine market compared with pinot gris' 5.8 per cent. Indeed, pinot gris seems to have become a replacement laughing stock for sauvignon blanc. One well known English wine writer jested that if pinot gris was in a competitive tasting with Evian water, Evian would win. One winemaker likened making pinot gris to an artist restricted to painting with white paint. In other words, bland and boring. Among winemakers, its abbreviation became PiG. Handy, because that encompasses both gris and grigio styles. Josef Chromy vineyard in Tasmania. Photo: Supplied So what's happening here? Are the gatekeepers and critics on the wrong page? Most of these pejorative comments were made several years ago, when most examples of Australian pinot gris were neutral, watery wines made from overproductive vines. These were common when Australia first began surfing the pinot gris wave in the 1990s. Prominent Mornington Peninsula producer Brian Stonier used to describe pinot gris as "dishwater", and said that his Stonier winery would never make one, despite Mornington having pioneered the variety in Australia. But that was then, and this is now. Things have come a long way. There are now many delicious pinot gris and quite a few excellent grigios in Australia. The best gris have a touch of barrel fermentation (a la chardonnay) and lees work adding character; they're also more likely made from ripe grapes and low yields, which give more concentration. People in other countries take pinot gris very seriously. The winemaker at Domaine Albert Mann in Alsace, Jacky Barthelme, told me he considers pinot gris his most important variety, above riesling and the other Alsace grapes. Winemaker Larry Cherubino. Photo: Supplied What's the difference between gris and grigio? The grape is the same. It means "grey" pinot, a reference to the dusky, coppery colour of the grapes at full ripeness. Some gris wines are slightly pink, some copper-gold-tinged as a result of the skin pigments. Pinot gris the Alsace style Advertisement Richer, fuller bodied, with more alcohol and an oily mouth-feel due to glycerol, possibly some residual sweetness, and sometimes a hint of oak or barrel fermentation. More food wines than quaffers. They suit richer foods such as roast chicken, fish and seafood with creamy sauces, even pork. In France, the rich versions are often served with foie gras, pate and terrines. Pinot grigio the northern Italian style Paler, lighter bodied, lower alcohol, crisper acidity, simpler flavours and more refreshing, thanks to earlier harvesting. Also less likely to have a pink tinge or any sweetness. Usually cheaper than gris and therefore a much bigger-selling category. These wines suit salads, antipasti, cold seafood, and pre-dinner dips and nibbles. Oakridge Over The Shoulder Pinot Grigio, Yarra Valley 2014. Photo: Supplied Huon's top 10 Australian pinot gris Elgee Park Baillieu Myer Family Reserve, Mornington 2015 $35 A rich, complex, multilayered wine with evidence of barrel fermentation and lees work. Honey and glazed-fruit aromas. It would appeal to chardonnay lovers. Ten Minutes by Tractor 10x, Mornington 2014 $28 Nutty, rich wine with plenty of body. Dried flower and dried fruit aromas. A complex style. Ghost Rock, Tasmania 2015 $26 Floral, musk, nectarine aromas; rich and generous in the mouth. Trophy winner, 2016 Tasmanian Wine Show. Josef Chromy, Tasmania 2015 $26 Yellow peach aromas, soft, rounded, lovely balance, with a trace of sweetness rounding it off. Larry Cherubino Pedestal, Margaret River 2015 $25 Spicy, buttery, butterscotch, rich and rounded; a generous, complex barrel-ferment style. Clyde Park, Geelong 2015 $35 Ripe, rich stone-fruit aromas, full and round on the palate; a big style. Quealy Tussie Mussie, Mornington 2015 $30 Ripe, spicy, rich and powerful with a toasted-nut barrel-ferment overtone. Moorilla Muse Series, Tasmania 2015 $30 Pale, potpourri and spice aromas, richer on the palate with a slight grip. Very much a food style. Pike & Joyce, Adelaide Hills 2015 $24 Smoky, spicy, intense; a leaner gris style. The 2014 is fruitier and a touch sweeter. Kooyong Beurrot, Mornington 2014 $31 Rich, ripe fruit-compote, lychee aromas; the palate opulent and pillowy textured with viscosity and some evidence of barrel. See also Ocean Eight, Bay of Fires, Riposte by Tim Knappstein, Derwent Estate, Gala Estate, Velo, Bleasdale, Tamar Ridge, Foxeys Hangout, Spring Vale, Grey Sands. Huon's top six Australian pinot grigios Oakridge Over the Shoulder, Yarra Valley 2014 $22 Pale copper-pink tinge, roast hazelnut aromas, generous flavour; at the richer end of grigio style. Devil's Corner, Tasmania 2015 $20 Gently herbal, crisp, acidity, fine texture; definitive grigio. Gold medal, Tasmanian Wine Show 2016. Longview Queenie, Adelaide Hills 2015 $20 Floral, honeyed, spicy aromas, very aromatic; richer than expected for grigio but there's a thread of refreshing acidity running through the palate. Pizzini Whitefields, King Valley 2013 $27 Cured-hay, almond and honey aromas, very Italianate; lean and taut, dry and savoury. Joseph D'Elena, Adelaide Hills 2014/15 $30 Lightly copper-tinged colour. An individual style: tropical passionfruit and guava aromas, some viscosity; clean, dry finish. Karrawatta, Adelaide Hills 2014 $26 Nutty barrel-tinged aromas, the palate rich and characterful with a very dry finish. See also Curly Flat, Bellvale, Chrismont La Zona, S.C. Pannell, Tar & Roses, Casa Freschi Ragazzi. Marc Polese and father Beppi Polese at their landmark Sydney restaurant Beppi's in 2014. Photo: Lisa Maree Williams Beppi Polese, who helped stoke Sydney's long love affair with Italian food, has died on the eve of his Yurong Street restaurant's 60th anniversary. He passed away on Tuesday, aged 90, after a short illness. Trained in the grand restaurants of Venice, Milan, Florence and Rome, Polese migrated after working among Italian partisans during World War II. He was one of about 400,000 Italians who arrived between the late 1940s and late '60s, leading Australia into a multicultural era. Polese, along with Lucio Galletto and Armando Percuoco became the primi, secondi and dolciof Italian restaurateurs and changed Sydney's eating habits forever. On June 12, 1956, Polese and his wife Norma opened Beppi's and continued serving his signature angel-hair pasta and vitello tonnato to four generations of Sydney diners. In a statement, his family said what mattered to Polese was food, family and friends, and his restaurant was his gift to Sydney. "At the restaurant he so lovingly built and the clientele he so loyally served, Beppi Polese was a great man; exceptional yet humble, traditional yet refined," the statement said. "He has served everyone from sitting prime ministers to Hollywood and rock royalty." Advertisement His son Marc will step into his father's shoes at Beppi's. Fellow countryman Lucio Galletto arrived in Sydney in 1976, a time when Beppi's was acknowledged as the best Italian restaurant in Sydney, if not Australia. Galletto, who opened his own restaurant, Lucio's, in 1981, paid tribute to Polese, saying: "A true professional and innovator of our industry who was respected and admired by Italians and non-Italians. We will miss him greatly and thank him for what he did for Italian hospitality in Sydney." Food author John Newton co-authored Beppi: A Life in Three Courses, receiving a favourable review in the Herald for its depiction of a colourful life: "The dramatic wartime adventures are riveting. Equally engaging are Polese's accounts of village meals, food rituals, the occasional feast and a collection of personal, waste-nothing recipes, including several peasant methods of preparing polenta, his staple childhood meal." Journalist David Dale won the 1983 Walkley Award for feature writing with his story The Italian Waiter Conspiracy, which portrayed Beppi as the prime mover in the rise of Italian food in Sydney. "He was a true pioneer," Dale said. "A hard task-master, a perfectionist. When I interviewed him, the first thing he wanted to know was what other restaurateurs thought about him: 'Did they say I was a bastard?'. I could but agree." Years later, Beppi told Dale about his younger days in a restaurant in Florence, around 1949, when he sliced up a whole fish at a customer's table. "I cut it across instead of along," Beppi said. "The head waiter came up and said, in front of everyone, 'Who did this?' I felt like a little boy in school. I said it was me. He said: 'This is not the work of a waiter. This is the work of a bricklayer'." Some bricklayer. CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story has been amended to correctly name the co-author of Beppi: A Life in Three Courses, and give some additional details about the book. SHARE Once upon a time, the queen of Egypt gave birth to a baby boy. The fairies gathered around the child to bless him, but one of the fairies shook her head. "I fear it is the prince's fate to die by crocodile or serpent or dog," the fairy said. "We can do nothing." The king and queen were heartbroken and decided not to tempt fate. They built a castle atop a mountain and hired men to guard it day and night, and there the young prince lived, protected. One day the boy noticed a dog playing outside his window. At once he wished to have a dog, and since the king and queen never denied him a wish, they decided to grant this as well. They found him a puppy, and trained him to protect the prince. The prince and his puppy were great friends, but one day when he was 20, the prince told his father he longed to see the world. "I know about the prophecy," he said, "but my dog will protect me." Again, the king could not refuse. He sent the prince and his dog by ship to the other side of the Nile. There a beautiful horse awaited him, and with his dog by his side, the prince rode everywhere. He was delighted by all he saw. One day while visiting a foreign land, he fell in love with a princess, and she fell in love with him. "I wish to marry you," the prince told her, "but my fate is to die at the hands of a crocodile, a serpent or a dog; you must not marry me." But the princess loved him dearly. "We shall resist fate," she said. "True love can conquer anything so long as we believe it can." And so they married. A few years passed, and the prince learned his father was ill. He and his wife traveled to visit him in Egypt. One night, while they were fast asleep in the palace, the princess suddenly heard a sound that woke her. She stared into the darkness and spied a serpent coiled in the corner. She tried to recall all she had learned from the fairies. Quickly, she remembered that serpents couldn't resist milk. So she slipped out of bed and filled a bowl with milk. When the creature saw the bowl, it began to lap it up so quickly that the princess was sure it would choke to death. When the serpent had finished the milk, it fell fast asleep, and the princess summoned the guards to capture it and send it far away. She had saved her husband from his deadly fate. Sadly, the king died the next day. The prince began his rule. One day, as he was out hunting with one of his dogs, he suddenly tripped over a log on the riverbank. To his astonishment, he heard a voice. This log was, in truth, a crocodile, and it said, "You cannot escape fate. Wherever you go, I will find you, and your only safety is a hole in sand filled with water that never dissolves." Terrified, the prince shared the news with his wife. "I'm doomed," he said, but she was determined to save him. "There is nothing we cannot overcome," she said, remembering a plant her fairy godmother had told her about. The four-leafed herb grew in the desert and could keep water in a pit for one whole year. The next day the princess set out to find it. She left in the middle of the night, guided by starlight. She rode her snow-white donkey west, toward the desert, encouraging her poor, exhausted donkey with kind words. "I will love you as I love the prince," she promised the donkey as they traveled on, enduring heat and storms and thirst. At last they came to a mountain that cast a cool shadow. The plant grew at the very top of that mountain, but it was surrounded by a deep chasm. The princess, however, had carried along a rope. She made a noose with one end and tossed the other across the chasm with all her strength. It caught on a branch. Trusting this to hold her weight, she climbed across the chasm. A fierce wind assailed her, and still she climbed. Blinded by sand, she felt her way up the mountain to the very top. She climbed on until she felt plants beneath her feet, and taking one she counted leaves ? one, two, three, four. Her heart pounding, she held fast to the plant and slid down the rock, leapt over the chasm and mounted her donkey. "Let's go!" she cried. They rode across the desert. Back home, the princess saw her beloved standing near the river beside a pit of sand he had dug. Beside the pit was a pot of water, and only a short distance away stood the crocodile. Its mouth was watering. The princess ran to the hole. "Pour in the water," she said, and as the prince did, she tossed in the plant. Sure enough, the water did not seep through the sand, but remained. The angry crocodile plunged back into the river and swam away. The prince stared at his wife with gratitude and love. With her strength and commitment, he had overcome the second of the three fates the fairies had predicted so long ago. Suddenly a wild duck flew past. The prince's dog began to chase the duck, and he ran into his master's legs. The prince and his dog both lost their balance and fell into the river, where mud and rushes caught them. It seemed they might drown, but there was the princess with the rope in her hand. She cast the rope to her beloved and pulled him and his dog ashore. Again, the prince stared into his wife's eyes. "Your love is stronger than my fate," he said. "This is true," she said with a smile. And they lived happily ever after. SHARE By Staff Report Four arrests have been made in connection with an aggravated robbery of the David Rogers Construction Company that took place over the weekend. Tom Green County deputies responded to an aggravated robbery call about 6 a.m. Saturday at the construction company, 11005 South U.S. 67 in Tom Green County. The victim, who was staying in a travel trailer on the property, told deputies two men in ski masks brandished weapons while entering the trailer. The victim was restrained with duct tape and robbed of personal property, according to a Tom Green County Sheriff's Office news release. Four oil field type "gang trucks" containing welders, tools and other assorted items were taken from the business during the robbery. The TGC Sheriff's Office Criminal Investigation Division, United States Customs and Border Protection, Del Rio Police Department and the Texas Department of Public Safety Texas Rangers began making the arrests Sunday after Omar Solis, 32, attempted to cross the U.S.-Mexico border in one of the stolen trucks. Solis was arrested by U. S. Customs and Border Protection for theft over $20,000.00, a third degree felony, and was remanded to the custody of the Del Rio Police Department, the release stated. TGC Sheriff's Office CID Investigators went to Del Rio, and with the assistance of the DRPD, recovered the other three stolen trucks and identified people of interest connected with the robbery. Judge Martinez Modesto, 20, and Carlos Zuniga, 23, have been arrested by the TGC Sheriff's Office and Texas Rangers in San Angelo. Both are being held for aggravated robbery, a first degree felony, and engaging in organized criminal activity, also a first degree felony. Elizabeth Estrada, 22, was arrested and is being held for organized criminal activity, the release stated. Modesto's first name is Judge; he is not a judicial officer. A third degree felony is punishable by two to 10 years prison with a fine up to $10,000. A first degree felony is punishable by five to 99 years in prison, and a fine punishable up to $10,000. This investigation is ongoing and further arrests are expected, the release stated. SHARE By Rashda Khan, Rashda.Khan@gosanangelo.com The Concho Valley Farmers Market will hold its 2016 membership meeting at 7 p.m. Tuesday at St. Ambrose Catholic Church's Fellowship Hall in Wall. The meeting will cover review of the organizational bylaws, selection of a market opening date and review of this year's calendar, and election of officers and board members. Anyone interested in selling homegrown vegetables, fruits, plants, nuts or honey at the market is encouraged to attend. The market, which operates May through October, is held Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday under the Farmers Market Pavilion at 609 S. Oakes St. Membership is required to sell at the farmers market. Annual membership is $15 for farmers with a half-acre or less of land and $20 for farms of one acre or more. Members pay $5 for each sale in which they participate. Membership is limited to farmers who live within a 75-mile radius of San Angelo. For more information, call Margie Jackson, president of the Concho Valley Farmers Market, at 325-245-3338. Yfat Yossifor/Standard-Times Residents fill the room for city council meeting to discuss the case of Clayvorn James Rose, the city's operations manager, Monday, March 21, in Mertzon. SHARE Yfat Yossifor/Standard-Times Interim Mayor Terry Criner listens to issues concerning Clayvorn James Rose, the city's operations manager, during city council meeting Monday, March 21, in Mertzon. Yfat Yossifor/Standard-Times Joe Harper talks to residents during public comment session of city council meeting Monday, March 21, in Mertzon. Yfat Yossifor/Standard-Times Jimmy Wayne Tharp talks about issues concerning Clayvorn James Rose, the city's operations manager, during city council meeting Monday, March 21, in Mertzon. Yfat Yossifor/Standard-Times Jimmy Wayne Tharp talks about issues concerning Clayvorn James Rose, the city's operations manager, during city council meeting Monday, March 21, in Mertzon. Council seeks route out of turmoil By Ngan Ho of the San Angelo Standard-Times It was a packed house inside Mertzon City Hall when the community's City Council announced the resignation of Mayor Carol Shaw and termination of the city's operations manager. About 50 people attended Monday night's council meeting, and while many came with questions and some voiced their concerns to the five volunteer council members, none directly addressed the elephant in the room. The hearing was held following a turbulent week in the community of about 800 people that saw the arrest of Clayvorn James Rose, 69, the city's operations manager, who has been charged with theft of property by a public servant, between $1,500 and $20,000, enhanced, and official oppression. The Irion County Sheriff's Office and Texas Rangers arrested Rose last week. A report by the Texas Rangers alleges that Rose spent $2,354 in city funds for personal expenses and made a lewd sexual comment directed at a female city employee. Two complaint reports were filed on March 15 with the Irion County Justice of the Peace Donna Smith's office. Rose was booked into the Tom Green County Jail March 15 and released the following day on a $25,000 surety bond. The hearing Monday began with a tense public comments portion, with residents criticizing city council and the council blaming residents. "There's a lot of blame to go around," said Terry Criner, the mayor pro tem. "Mostly because of innuendos and rumor. This is a small town and things get put out, and I won't deny there's not some confusion." Council members voted unanimously to suspend Rose from his position with pay to avoid the possibility of a lawsuit against the city, following the legal counsel of James A. Kosub of Eldorado, the city's attorney. "A man is innocent until proven guilty and that hasn't happened yet," Criner said. "So if we fire him before that process has a chance to go through, then that puts us at a liability for being unjust to him." The council's decision to suspend rose with pay drew some objections from the crowd, who had waited outside for about an hour during the closed executive session to learn of Rose's fate. One resident asked how long it would be before Rose's pay is cut off the city payroll. The council said he would remain on the books until such time as the court system finds him either guilty or not guilty. According to the city secretary, Rose receives a salary of $1,500 every two weeks after taxes. An emergency council meeting was held last Tuesday, at which three council members voted to fire Rose subject to approval by the full council. Mayor Shaw, who has remained silent about the issue, was a no show during Monday night's meeting. "She gave no reasons," Criner said. "She just said she appreciated people, and she decided to step down." Ciner said he learned of Shaw's resignation in an email Monday evening. "It was probably the best thing she could have done for herself and for the city of Mertzon," said Frances Grice, a Mertzon resident who attended the Monday night meeting. "I think they're doing a really good job considering what has just happened and taken place, and I'm behind them all they way. We're going to get through this." Those who attended listened avidly to the proceedings. About half of them stood for the two-hour meeting because seating wouldn't accommodate the crowd. "The people on the city council who did not have a very good or no idea about the full extent of what is going on" now have a clearer picture to make informed decisions, said Jimmy Wayne Tharp, a council member. "I think eyes are wide open and I think that everyone is aware." Criner said the council will accept Shaw's resignation during the next meeting once it's placed on the agenda, adding that the council will soon decide who should replace Shaw. The council also discussed actions to retrieve some city property, such as ammunition and a car, currently in Rose's possession. Tharp said the council has changed the locks at city hall and shut off surveillance cameras inside so Rose, who has control over the cameras, could no longer view happenings inside the building. "This was just dumped on me today, so I'm kind of floundering a little bit in my opinion," Criner said. "But I will step up to the leadership if that's what's asked of me." Criner said he appreciated the support of the attendees and their patience and graciousness. "They want us to get back to the way the old Mertzon was," Criner said. "Friendly atmosphere, nice small town, great schools and that's probably going to be our main goal." By Ami Mizzel-Flint, Special to the Standard-Times Often, it is the quiet ones who get things done. Such is the case with Sonora's Lenora Pool, who is being honored this week as one of Girl Scouts of Central Texas' Women of Distinction. Active in her community, Pool worked with the Sutton County Emergency Service and Sutton County Emergency Management from 1979 until 1993. She serves on boards at her church, First United Methodist Church of Sonora, and has served on the board of Sutton County Hospital District for the past 17 years. She and her husband donated the building that houses Sonora's food pantry about two years ago. "She's an inspiration to a lot of women," and "one of the most thoughtful people I've ever met," said Linda Cahill, Pool's friend of 35 years, and 2009 Woman of Distinction honoree. Cahill nominated Pool for the honor this year, because "she does so many things for so many people." "It's totally my honor to nominate her," Cahill said. "I'm more excited to see her honored than I was for myself." "Semiretired," Pool spends part of her time with the business she and her husband own, American Sales and Service, and the rest of the time she is not volunteering with her family. Pool's face lights up when she talks about her four children and eight grandchildren, most of whom will be at the dinner Thursday in her honor. The Girl Scouts of Central Texas honors women at their Women of Distinction event each year, who have "distinguished themselves as outstanding members of their community through individual excellence and high levels of achievement," according to the GSCTX website. The event seeks to find role models for young women, and Pool does just that. "She is just one of those people who makes you want to be a better person, just by being around her," Cahill said of her friend. "When someone in our community needs something, and I go to bring them flowers or a casserole, Lenora's beat me there." Being named a Woman of Distinction has a meaning Pool "doesn't know how to put into words." "It's an honor to know a bunch of my peers thought enough of me to choose me," she said, "I'm just a regular gal going about my business." nnn Tickets for Thursday's Women of Distinction event can be purchased at www.gsctx.org, or at the El Camino Program Center: 325-655-8961 SHARE How does the guy get away with it? That is by far the hardest thing to figure out about Donald "Duck" Trump. Winston Churchill said of Russia, "It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma." If he were around today (and, man, could we use him!), he would say, "Trump is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside a horse's ass." So here's a theory I haven't heard yet: Many of Trump's supporters have been entertained daily by horses' asses for years white people who lie, bully, insult, conspire, rant, distort, and lie some more and get rich doing it. People who do not have the genes to experience shame, regret, self-doubt or embarrassment; people who get a sick thrill out of getting away with making stuff up, repeating false stories and denying obvious facts and realities; people who get off on demonizing "enemies" and manipulating their followers; people who have perfected the secret "dog whistle" language of racism, bigotry and plantation nostalgia; people who deeply, deeply love attention and themselves. You know exactly who I am talking about. Bill O'Reilly tops the list. Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh are right up there. Laura Ingraham, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage and Glenn Beck are superstars. There are dozens literally of others in markets around the country. Some shill for Trump, some hate him. That's not the point. Trump uses their recipes. Americans who don't consume such poison are astounded, outraged and repelled by Trump. They are incredulous. But for devotees of right-wing media, Trump is serving up the biggest, most fancy and famous portions of comfort food ever, even if it isn't as spicy and nasty good as some of the original recipes. So for one chunk of America, Trump is an old hat with new hair and a hot wife. For another chunk, he is a confounding, almost surreal phenomenon. They are incredulous that this is happening in a real presidential election. There is no satisfactory answer to the question, "How does the guy get away with it?" One powerful though small chunk of America is not incredulous, confused or upset in the least: broadcast media investors and operators, especially cable television. Many companies, not all, have been feeding out of this trough for years. Rupert Murdoch became one the world's richest men by mastering right-wing gutter pseudo-news. General Electric tried and failed to create a left-wing clone with MSNBC. Now CNN has found a way to jump on this bilious bandwagon by putting Trump on its air almost 24/7 and they don't even have to pay the guy! There are certainly many Trump supporters who don't dislike or even disrespect right-wing media (trust me, I'll hear from them). I believe I understand their arguments about why it is good and important that Trump is "getting away with it." This chunk of America thinks Trump is using vulgarities, boasts, insults and blatant, screaming lies to effectively punish politicians for the spin, double-talk, hypocrisy and blatant, screaming lies they've been "getting away with" for ages. Punish is the right word, and many Americans are big into it. They are willing to suspend their appreciation of good manners and churchly virtues to watch this wild-man candidate trash talk and terrify the Washington phonies. And it is mighty hard to blame them. Their diagnosis is correct; their prescription is toxic and extremely dangerous. So that's my new little theory: Trump is employing counterculture, taboo techniques that have been normalized in the media and finding that they are not taboo in politics at all; they are effective. He hasn't invented anything. He has rebranded a proven media business model under the Trump logo and taken it to the political market. No one has been able to turn off, shut down or outshout the dark demagogues of right-wing media. That isn't going to happen. On the other hand, their market share hasn't expanded much over the years. Their audience is a faction, not a majority. Maybe that's the good news. No one is going to turn off, shut down or outshout this man with no shame. But maybe the Donald Trump brand won't be able to expand its political market share any more. If that's the case, democracy will cancel his show hopefully, with a vengeance. Dick Meyer is chief Washington correspondent for the Scripps Washington Bureau and DecodeDC. Contact him at dick.meyer@scripps.com An Unbanked Industry Not Much States Can Do Finding a Way Tim Cullens marijuana business brought in millions of dollars last year, but hes had a hard time finding a bank to take the money. Hes cycled through 14 checking accounts in six years. Recently, he said, a bank shut down all his personal accounts, including college savings for his 3-year-old daughter.Federal law prohibits banks and credit unions from taking marijuana money. So here in Colorado, everyone involved with the states legal cannabis industry has a banking problem. Businesses cant get loans, customers have to pay in cash, and state tax collectors are processing bags of bills.Some community financial institutions have become more open to serving the cannabis industry since the U.S. Treasury and Justice departments said they wont go after institutions that keep a close eye on their clients and report suspected wrongdoing, such as funding gang activity.But the big banks refuse to touch the industry, and banking challenges are only going to grow as legal marijuana expands. Nationwide, sales hit $5.4 billion in 2015, according to The ArcView Group, an analysis and investment firm that specializes in the legal cannabis industry.Twenty-three states allow medical use of marijuana and four also allow recreational use. Voters in Arizona, California, Massachusetts and Nevada may legalize adult use this fall, and Vermonts Senate recently approved a bill that would do so.States are looking to Colorado which legalized medical marijuana in 2000, and adult use in 2012 for answers to the banking problem, but the state has few to offer. We dont truly think well see a solution unless theres a federal solution, said Andrew Freedman, Colorados director of marijuana coordination, whos also known as the states pot czar.Cullen has been an unofficial spokesman for Colorados cannabis industry ever since he bumped into a CNN camera crew while picking up one of the states first retail marijuana licenses, he said. It helps that hes a clean-cut former high school biology teacher who designed his stores with his mom in mind.We wanted to look like Restoration Hardware, he said while walking through the main Denver location of Colorado Harvest Company, the marijuana growing and retail business he founded in 2009 and co-owns. That means wood paneling, edibles laid out in glass cases like chocolates, and a scent in the air thats more reminiscent of a day spa than a college dorm.But even Cullens squeaky-clean operation makes banks uneasy. The companys current account, with a credit union, only covers basic services such as direct deposit for the companys 70-odd employees and sending tax payments to the state, Cullen said.An ATM sits in the corner of each of his three stores, because his business cant process credit or debit card payments (credit card companies, like banks, may refuse to touch marijuana money). Every day an armored car swings by to pick up the days revenue all cash and takes it away to be deposited.About 40 percent of Colorado cannabis businesses lack bank accounts altogether, according to the office of U.S. Rep. Ed Perlmutter, a Democrat who has pushed to improve banking for the cannabis industry. State officials would not comment on that number.Freedman said a growing number of marijuana businesses seem to be obtaining bank accounts, judging by the declining share of tax revenue that businesses are paying in cash. But the services theyre able to access are limited and costly which means a lot of people prefer to keep as much as they can in cash, he said.All the cash floating around makes cannabis businesses targets for crime, Freedman says. Since Colorado fully legalized marijuana in January 2014, the Denver Police Department has logged over 200 burglaries at marijuana businesses, as well as shoplifting and other crimes.The loose cash also makes it harder for the state to track businesses finances to make sure they are obeying the law and paying their taxes. And in order to get a bank account, some businesses will funnel their cash through a shell company, Cullen said. It starts to look a lot like money laundering.As Cullens experience shows, accounts can also be tenuous. Sometimes, a financial institution will change its mind about taking marijuana money. Or it might learn of a clients ties to the marijuana industry. Mark Goldfogel, a consultant, said his bank closed accounts hed held for 14 years after he revealed who his marijuana clients were.Colorados attempts to solve the problem have shown other states how few options they have.In May 2014, lawmakers authorized a new class of financial institution called a cannabis credit co-operative, which wouldnt have to acquire and maintain deposit insurance. But no such institutions have been formed so far, partly because the Federal Reserve isnt likely to approve them.Later that year, lawmakers authorized a credit union for the cannabis industry. But the Fed denied the credit union access to a master account, which is necessary for transferring money, and the National Credit Union Administration refused to insure its deposits.Even transporting or transmitting funds known to have been derived from the distribution of marijuana is illegal, the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City said during a court case the credit union brought and recently lost.Without a master account, the credit union cant fully function, said Mike Elliott, head of the Marijuana Industry Group, a trade association in Colorado. It can be a vault. But we dont need a vault, he said.Officials in other states that allow marijuana have run up against the same barriers. Tax officials in California have floated the idea of a state-run bank, for instance, as have officials in Alaska. But such an institution would still have to use federal wiring services, said George Runner of the California State Board of Equalization.California already has trouble collecting taxes on medical marijuana, Runner said. Weve had folks come in with hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash to make a payment. Other than increasing security at tax collection offices, theres not much his office can do about it.The cannabis industrys banking problems would vanish if Congress were to take marijuana off the federal governments list of most dangerous drugs. Last November, U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, who is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, became the latest lawmaker to propose the change.But thats a remote possibility. Perlmutter has introduced a bill twice that would take a smaller step, and stop federal regulators from penalizing financial institutions for serving the cannabis industry. He hasnt been able to get a hearing, let alone move the bill out of committee.Perlmutter and his allies in Congress are now trying to cut off funding for federal enforcement actions against banks and credit unions that serve cannabis businesses.The Fed and other regulatory agencies have made it clear that states cant create new financial institutions for the cannabis industry. But because the Obama administration has indicated that it will look the other way when existing institutions serve cannabis clients, businesses like Cullens do have some options.Vermonts Department of Financial Regulation has researched the services available to the states four medical marijuana dispensaries and found some good news. The states largest credit union serves one dispensary and says it would serve more. Although the credit union doesnt offer marijuana businesses much more than depository accounts, federal regulators confirmed the accounts are insured.Vermont state Sen. Joe Benning, a Republican who co-sponsored the Senate proposal to legalize marijuana for adult use, said the states financial institutions should be able to handle the cannabis industrys expansion at least initially. Youre not going to have to be bringing in wheelbarrows full of cash to make deposits, he said.In other states, new services have emerged to eliminate cash transactions. In Washington and Oregon, an intermediary company called PayQwick electronically transfers money between marijuana growers, sellers, customers and their financial institutions. PayQwick also files all the paperwork the Treasury Department requires, taking a burden off banks.Tax collection offices are doing what they can to manage cash collections. Offices in Oregon and Colorado have invested in extra security, such as safety glass and security cameras; businesses are also hiring security guards to help them make their deposits safely.Auditing cash-only cannabis businesses is tough, but not impossible. In Colorado, the Department of Revenue relies on the states system for tracking legally grown and sold marijuana plants, Freedman said.Still, the situation is far from ideal for businesses or for states. Its temporary, too; nobody knows how the next president will enforce federal marijuana policies.While Colorado waits for Congress to act, state officials will keep meeting with bank and credit union boards and explaining the nuances of federal law, Freedman said. That slow, institution-by-institution campaign may be states best hope for getting marijuana money off the streets.I think its going to get better. It certainly couldnt be worse, Cullen said of the cannabis industrys banking problem. He takes the sunny view that as more states legalize the drug, it will become something federal lawmakers will no longer be able to ignore. A leading credit rating agency dialed back its outlook on the State of Michigan, citing increasing costs associated with the City of Flint's water crisis and the financially distressed Detroit Public Schools."It was based on our understanding that the state was planning on building up its rainy-day fund, but due to some of these other priorities, they are not going to be able to build up their reserves in the same way" over the next two fiscal years, Standard & Poor's credit analyst Carol Spain said in an interview Friday.The rating agency said it believes in building reserves during good economic times. That's especially important to Michigan's credit quality because of the state's cyclical, auto-driven economy, according to S&P.Despite more money for the state's reserves fund in Gov. Rick Snyder's proposed budget, "we still view balances as being at only adequate levels," according to the S&P report issued Thursday.The revised outlook from Standard & Poor's Ratings Services affects two kinds of state debt: state general obligation bonds and appropriation-backed debt. The forecast moves to stable from positive, meaning it's less likely the state will see a rating boost over the next 24 months.The move does not affect the state's credit ratings with the agency.Instead, the outlook is generally used to provide some guidance about what action S&P may take next in the next two years. A stable rating essentially means the rating agency is neutral on a move to increase or decrease the rating, according to company officials.Michigan Treasurer Nick Khouri said in an interview Friday that the state would not expect to see any immediate impact as a result of the modification of S&P's outlook on the state."I am disappointed and it's unfortunate to reduce the outlook," Khouri said. But he said that the Snyder administration has introduced financially responsible measures to restructure the financially strapped Detroit school district with $715 million drawn, in large measure, from the state's tobacco settlement fund. Michigan's House of Representatives approved a $48.7-million appropriation to ensure the school district won't run out of cash next month.Khouri added that the administration has also included nearly $200 million for restoring safe drinking water to Flint and aiding those contaminated by its lead-laced water supply. But the state treasurer said that any future legal liability against the state from ongoing lawsuits connected to the water crisis remains uncertain.In the same announcement this week, S&P affirmed its AA-rating on the state's general obligation debt and its A+ rating on the state's appropriation-backed debt. The rating agency also assigned an AA-rating to Michigan's series 2016A GO bonds.The series 2016A GO bonds will be used to finance the Great Lakes Water Quality Bond Fund.There have been two rating upgrades from Moody's and Fitch Ratings during the Snyder administration, but no downgrades, according to the state's Treasury office. Outlooks on the state by rating agencies have been revised five times, but they all happened without a rating change either up or down, state officials said.In her report on Michigan, Spain wrote that "although many of the governor's budget proposals are pending legislative approval, in our view, there is significant political pressure for the state to contribute funds toward both Flint and DPS. It is likely that costs related to the Flint water crisis over the next two years will surpass the executive budget's projections.""Michigan currently has the wherewithal to support projected additional costs and maintain the current rating," Spain said. "But if costs related to the Flint water crisis or distressed local credits escalate, there could be credit pressure." Adam Kelly Ward, whom appeals courts have recognized as mentally ill, is set for execution Tuesday evening in a 2005 shooting death.If pending appeals to the U.S. Supreme Court are denied, Ward, 33, will be the fifth person killed by Texas in 2016. It will be the ninth execution in the country this year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. Ward has been on death row fewer than nine years, a relatively short term.On June 13, 2005, Ward shot and killed Michael Walker, a housing and zoning code enforcement officer for the city of Commerce in Hunt County, about 60 miles northeast of Dallas, according to court documents.The house where Ward, 24 at the time, lived with his father, had been cited numerous times for failing to comply with city codes, the documents state. Walker was taking pictures of the property to record a continuing violation of unsheltered storage while Ward was washing his car in the driveway.The men began arguing, and Ward sprayed Walker with the hose. Walker called to request help, and Ward went back into the house. Wards father told Walker it might be best if he left the property but did not tell Walker it was because he believed Ward had a gun in his room, according to court documents.Ward came back out with a .45-caliber pistol and chased Walker around the city truck and property, shooting at him. Walker was shot nine times, according to the medical examiner.Ward was charged with intentionally murdering Walker while in the course of committing an obstruction or retaliation, making it a capital murder case. He was convicted and sentenced to death in June 2007.At his original trial, a psychiatrist said Ward suffered from a psychotic disorder that caused him to suffer paranoid delusions such that he believes there might be a conspiracy against him and that people might be after him or trying to harm him, according to court documents.Appeals courts recognized Wards mental illness, describing his aggressiveness as a young child and delusional tendencies by sixth grade. By 15, the federal district court where he filed his appeal said, Ward interpreted neutral things as a threat or personal attack.Adam Kelly Ward has been afflicted with mental illness his entire life, the federal district court observed on appeal.Still, state and federal courts have rejected Wards appeals, saying his mental illness did not rise to the level of making him ineligible for the death penalty, according to a concurring opinion by Judge Elsa Alcala issued last Monday, when the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals rejected Wards last petition with the state.As is the case with intellectual disability, the preferred course would be for legislatures rather than courts to set standards defining the level at which a mental illness is so severe that it should result in a defendant being categorically exempt from the death penalty, Alcala said.Wards lawyers have filed appeals with the U.S. Supreme Court since the rejection from the state last week, claiming his mental illness should make him ineligible for the death penalty. The state responded that his claims are without merit. The appeal is pending. An Ohio parks agency director has come under scrutiny for dismissing 13 staff members including the maintenance supervisor, while purchasing new vehicles. Mill Creek MetroParks' Aaron Young, who took over as executive director in January, has purchased $189,364 in vehicles since he took over. The agency spent $68,650 in 2013 and 2014, reports The Vindicator. Young has defended the moves, saying the vehicle purchases were needed because maintenance costs were too high on older vehicles and the agency didn't have a replacement plan. The staff cuts were designed to streamline operations, he told the outlet. MetroParks has reduced the size of its vehicle fleet to 80 from 84. The Nitty Gritty of Quantum Computing So What Is Quantum Computing Good For? On March 3, scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of Innsbruck in Austria announced that they had built the worlds first scalable quantum computer using five atoms in an ion trap. The success of quantum computing relies on the ability of large numbers of atoms to be manipulated without jeopardizing system stability. Researchers claim their computer is a breakthrough.We show that Shors algorithm, the most complex quantum algorithm known to date, is realizable in a way where, yes, all you have to do is go in the lab, apply more technology, and you should be able to make a bigger quantum computer, says Isaac Chuang, professor of physics and professor of electrical engineering and computer science at MIT. It might still cost an enormous amount of money to build you wont be building a quantum computer and putting it on your desktop anytime soon but now its much more an engineering effort, and not a basic physics question.The news is part of a much broader story, which is the decades-long history of quantum computing that has gained speed in recent years. Promises of incredible computing power delivered via quantum cloud computing tantalize todays technologist. Like most hardware-level advancements, most will remain unaware of how the technology works or even that its arrived, save for hearing the term quantum more often in ads and the news, and thats just as well because most people dont need to understand why or how their phones and computers do the things they do.Those orchestrating long-term plans, policy and infrastructure of a government, however, should at the very least understand what new products might be available within two presidential terms and how those technologies might nourish and sculpt the govtech landscape.In a Reddit Ask-Me-Anything , Bill Gates predicted quantum computers may arrive soon.Microsoft and others are working on quantum computing, Gates wrote. It isn't clear when it will work or become mainstream. There is a chance that within 6-10 years that cloud computing will offer super-computation by using quantum. It could help use solve some very important science problems including materials and catalyst design.In this case, the term quantum refers to quantum physics, a branch of physics concerned with the study of atoms and photons. At such a small scale, the body of knowledge and laws so far compiled in classical physics break down and its been observed that small objects behave in unexpected ways. Scientists are beginning to understand how they can exploit these strange behaviors to take shortcuts that wouldnt be possible with traditional computers. The outcome is computers that are exponentially faster and more efficient for some kinds of computing.Scientists began looking to quantum computing in anticipation of the expected end of Moores Law , which is not a physical law, but an observation by computer scientist Gordon E. Moore that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit double every two years. The law has been tweaked to an observed doubling of about every 18 months , and applied more broadly to things like microprocessor prices, memory capacity, sensors, video resolution and digital camera megapixels. Consumers especially have enjoyed the realization of Moores Law in recent years as the decrease in cost and increase in power of computers have made incredible technologies seem prosaic. But scientists expect the laws progress to wane once computer components cant be made any smaller.Todays semiconductor transistors can be found on the 14 nanometer scale, which is 8.5 times smaller than the HIV virus. The 5 nanometer scale is the predicted end of Moores Law. Electronics with transistors on the 5 nanometer scale have been created, but none have been produced commercially, though some predictions place a commercial Intel release around 2020. Quantum computing may provide the innovation needed to circumvent these physical limitations of new design. Some suspect quantum computing may even unlock powers of the physical universe that allow humans to overcome problems previously thought unsolvable, while others believe quantum computing will remain a specialized tool.Quantum computers work by exploiting the multiplicity of concurrent states in small objects. Whereas traditional computers use bits -- binary data -- to store and relay information, quantum computers use quantum bits or qubits (pronounced cue-bits). Qubits also hold binary values, set by things like the horizontal or vertical polarization of a photon, but the difference is that its possible for a photon to be in varying proportions of both binary states simultaneously, a phenomenon called superposition.Superposition allows a single qubit to hold much more information than a regular bit. A regular bit is either a 1 or a 0, but a qubit is varying degrees of both until it is measured, at which point it resolves to one state or the other. This is called the observer effect. In quantum mechanics, the observer effect has not to do with some metaphysical influence of human consciousness or some philosophical tree-falling-in-the woods phenomenon, but rather with wave function math and a measuring instruments unintended influence on the action. Stated simply, quantum bits allow for a computer to perform multiple parts of a calculation simultaneously, therefore making it far more powerful.Another property powering quantum computing is called entanglement, which is a connection between qubits wherein a state-change in one qubit causes a rapid change in the other, regardless of proximity. Scientists can exploit this property by measuring just one qubit and deducing the state of its entangled partners. Like superposition, this allows more information to be stored and referenced with fewer operations. Bells Theorem , named after John Stewart Bell, attempts to explain this phenomenon by ruling out probabilistic features of quantum mechanics by the mechanism of underlying inaccessible values.Bell stated that, No physical theory of local hidden variables can ever reproduce all of the predictions of quantum mechanics. In a theory in which parameters are added to quantum mechanics to determine the results of individual measurements, without changing the statistical predictions, there must be a mechanism whereby the setting of one measuring device can influence the reading of another instrument, however remote. Moreover, the signal involved must propagate instantaneously, so that such a theory could not be Lorentz invariant.Here, this explanation is not intended to illuminate, but rather serve as a starters illustration of why quantum mechanics is so difficult to understand. A famous aphorism most frequently attributed to the genius physicist Richard Feynman states, If you think you understand quantum mechanics, you don't understand quantum mechanics.In other words, physicists have a lot of ideas of why objects behave so differently at a small scale, but no one understands exactly whats happening yet, and thats why no one knows exactly what quantum computers will be capable of or precisely when they will arrive.When it comes time to process, super computers use quantum gates, the quantum equivalent of regular semiconductor logic gates. Quantum gates manipulate superpositioned qubits and output differently superpositioned qubits. The core of why quantum computers are so powerful is that the core units, qubits, are so dense with information. The uncertainty involved in the output requires some extra checking, but the amount of concurrent data being processed drastically reduces computation time. Processing large swaths of information simultaneously, rather than serially, makes for computers that are exponentially faster and more efficient.Its not yet clear whether quantum computers will be a niche technology or universally applicable. But some in government clearly are aware of quantum computing's potential, given the Nov. 8, 2015 announcement by IBM that Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), an organization within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, awarded the company a multi-year grant to continue researching the building of quantum computers.And that same month, quantum computing company D-Wave Systems announced that Los Alamos National Laboratory will acquire and install its latest quantum computer. Before that, in September 2015, the company announced plans to install a unit at NASA's Ames Research Center as part of a collaboration with Google to study the role quantum computing could play in artificial intelligence.And there are a few problems that quantum computers are known to be adept at solving, such as searching databases.When it comes to encryption, the controversial debate between Apple and the FBI to create a backdoor into its iPhone devices may not matter for much longer: Computers are getting so powerful, according to Motherboard , that they will eventually be able to break any encryption.The National Institute of Standards and Technology released a report in February that predicts that by 2030, quantum computers will be able to break the popular public key encryption technology known as RSA at a cost of $1 billion.Its also thought that quantum computers will enable breakthroughs in fields of science that depend heavily on modeling and simulation, such as chemistry and biology. Extra computational power would help scientists find cures and develop medicines.But beyond breaking encryption and making strides in artificial intelligence is the fact that the PCs of today are nearing max computational capacity.As conventional computers reach their limits in terms of scaling and performance per watt, we need to investigate new technologies to support our mission, said Mark Anderson of the Los Alamos National Laboratory's Weapons Physics Directorate. Researching and evaluating quantum annealing as the basis for new approaches to address intractable problems is an essential and powerful step, and will enable a new generation of forward thinkers to influence its evolution in a direction most beneficial to the nation." 1. Cloud & Open Source Innovation Partnering with State, Local Government Through federal grants to state and local agencies, 18F is able to partners with agencies at this level of government as well. In one such partnership, team members looked at streamlining the request for proposal (RFP) process for much-needed updates to the California Child Welfare Services systems. Jesse Taggert, a member of the 18F Strategy Team, said this process of ghostwriting RFPs helps to remove overly specific language, and allows for the vendor and purchaser to work through issues more easily without excessive limitations. The two-day process, which involved all necessary stakeholders, resulted in two initial RFPs totaling around 70 pages each instead of one 1,500 page RFP. 2. Blanket Procurement Agreements & Micro Purchasing Barriers to Partnership At the U.S. General Services Administration's summit hosted on March 18 at San Diego State University, companies interested in partnering with the federal government noted barriers to such a partnership, some of which fell to very specific forms and systems, while others centered on the lack of process awareness and issues with accessibility. Additionally, one industry representative questioned the wisdom in relying on open source code from a security and maintenance perspective. 3. APPS.GOV SAN DIEGO As the startup-minded civic consultancy arm of the U.S. General Services Administration (GSA), 18F is opening up and talking about its creative charge and shared three ways in which 18F is making tech deployment for agencies a little easier.On the morning of Friday, March 18, Rep. Susan Davis (CA-D-San Diego) kicked off a GSA-hosted summit held at San Diego State University by focusing on 18F's creative solutions and opening a direct dialog with industry representatives.During the discussion, 18F Deputy Executive Director Hillary Hartley pointed to the agency's work with U.S Citizenship and Immigration Services and the Federal Elections Committee, helping to provide them with more functional and accessible online tools.Our attack pattern is to help agencies quickly deploy tools and services that are easy to use, that cut costs, and are efficient and really reusable, she said. "That notion of reuse is really important to us. We dont want to build just one-off solutions. We want to build things that we know well be able to use again and that could turn into shared commons services.Hartley said the team of roughly 175 people throughout the United States is working to develop and test open source, user-centered solutions.So, for us, delivery, shipping, putting stuff out there, that is our strategy. What that means to us is that we just get started. We build something small, she said. You hit it on the head, Congresswoman we have to be better at building small, so that you can put that in front of real users; you can learn from it and then do it again and again and again.Through the tools on 18F's Cloud.gov , government agencies and their development teams are able to deploy compliant solutions more quickly and securely, said software engineer Diego Lapiduz.So, lets say weve built software, weve bought software in an agile, user-centric fashion, and now its time to put it out there, put it out to the users to actually start testing it, start working with it," he said. "It turns out that in government, doing that is not that easy."Initial versions of the system were more efficient than the old way of doing things, but Lapiduz said there was still the issue of divergence between systems as a result of how they were configured by agency developers. The newer open source, cloud-based system skips the need for server procurement, compliance evaluation and the time-consuming configuration process.The solution was a platform that took the legwork away from the end user and automated essential functions.A lot of the stuff we do is shared across all of the applications. There is nothing that unique from one application to the other, Lapiduz said. And so we said, 'Lets build a platform that does all the ... configuration, all the boring stuff automatically.The new system allows for platform launch in weeks, not months, and has greatly improved agility in the infrastructure and compliance processes.So, what we decided to do was, Okay, lets take this and offer it to the whole government, not just for 18F, and thats why we built cloud.gov, he said. Again, we are building things once, whether its a database service, whether its a login system, whether its internal building we just build it once and use it multiple times. This allows us to move faster and get to a point where we deploy things at a much faster pace, but also on secure and solid ground.Through these and other efforts on the part of 18F, agencies are now able to get the authority to operate in minutes, not months.Alla Goldman Seiffert, 18F's consulting and acquisition attorney, said improving the federal technology procurement process has also been a focus. To address how federal agencies purchase solutions, Seiffert said a blanket procurement agreement (BPA) has been developed as a new vehicle.Additionally, the group is experimenting with micro-purchasing , or purchases at or below the federal $3,500 purchasing card limit. The practice is opening new doors for the procurement of code, patches and potentially bug bounties.We wanted to pave the way for better procurement practices and we wanted to essentially start with government websites. We are not procuring pencils. We are not procuring boots. The acquisition system is set up for that reasonably well; we wanted to do this for digital services.18F is working closely with contract officers and is also handling the management of the BPA, as opposed to being managed by GSA as it might normally be.Instead of vendors providing a long-winded proposal, the new process requires that approved vendors provide a working prototype of open source software.We wanted to see what the vendors could deliver, Seiffert said.Recently, the acquisitions team kicked off a draft RFP on the developer-centered GitHub, an open forum were vendors could communicate with each other and the project team with great success.In an effort to draw technology companies into the federal marketplace, 18F unveiled Apps.gov at SXSW earlier this month. Andrew Stroup, director of product and technology for the Presidential Innovation Fellowship program, said complicated contract vehicles and security reviews were posing unnecessary limits to marketplace entry for private industry."What we are trying to do is incentivize that bridge point through a platform or marketplace," he said. "The first part is identifying and documenting the contracting process and the security reviews that have to go on."The platform allows government agencies direct access to companies featured through the service and presents the information in a clear way. (TNS) Less than a month after a police shooting in Southeast Raleigh, city leaders are moving to bring transparency to police actions and criminal activity.A proposal by police chief Cassandra Deck-Brown to buy and use body-worn cameras for 600 officers during the next three years won unanimous approval from the Raleigh City Council on Tuesday.The move comes less than a month after a police officer shot and killed a young suspect in Southeast Raleigh, sparking criticism and nationwide attention.Police say Senior Officer D.C. Twiddy shot and killed 24-year-old Akiel Denkins because he felt endangered during a physical confrontation. But some residents say they believe Twiddy shot Denkins from behind as he was running away.Deck-Brown was scheduled to present her proposal to the City Council on Feb. 29 but postponed it after the shooting happened that day.Council members didnt debate the proposal or specifically mention the shooting before voting on it. Several thanked Deck-Brown for her leadership and echoed her support for the cameras.We are the capital city. You are right: We lead, we do not follow, said Councilman Corey Branch, who represents Southeast Raleigh.Council members said theyll develop policies for the cameras and the recordings at a later date. The council instructed city staff to solicit offers for camera and video storage equipment and management.Deck-Brown estimates her plan will cost an estimated $1.25 million for the first year and $5.2 million over five years. The most expensive part is storage of the video, she said.But the cost is merited, Deck-Brown said. Residents have asked Raleigh police to adopt the technology during community meetings, she said.It has come up in many of my meetings. The citizens have asked repeatedly, Deck-Brown said. Now is the time. The controversial 'halo' concept is once again a talking point in F1 circles, following Fernando Alonso's huge crash in Australia. The McLaren-Honda driver was spotted on a Melbourne beach on Monday wearing a light bandage on his knee, but he said he will not be needing any further medical treatment beyond "ice". "This morning the team doctor came and gave me the 'ok' to travel and, as I said, I feel good," Alonso told Spanish radio Cadena Cope. "I do not think I will have any problems going forward. "My body is a little sore - as though I have been in a big washing machine on spin - but I have no marks or anything swollen. Within two or three days I will be back on the bike or something again," he added. The front page of the local Herald Sun newspaper, however, declared Alonso 'The luckiest man alive', as the F1 safety debate reignited amid the governing FIA's push to cover the cockpits with the so-called 'halo' concept for 2017. "In this accident," F1 legend Niki Lauda told Bild newspaper, "the halo would have done nothing." In fact, many are wondering if a 'halo' would have trapped Alonso in the wreckage, after the Spaniard actually crawled out of the open cockpit without delay. "I had no idea where I was exactly in the circuit so I saw a space to leave and said 'I'm getting out just in case'," he said. "I saw there were broken pipes and plenty of fluids and I said 'Let me out'." But Alonso also acknowledged that, as he flipped and barrel-rolled, he was worried his head might strike something. "You tend to cower a little in the cockpit," he said, "trying to make yourself small in the car so that the head doesn't hit anything like the wall or the ground." The only fire during the Australian grand prix was above Kimi Raikkonen's head as he retired in the pitlane, but the Finn said he would not have been worried had he been protected by a 'halo'. "It makes no difference," said the Ferrari driver. "We can still get out." But former driver and German-language commentator Christian Danner insisted: "The safety experts need to look at it again. With a halo, he would not have gotten out so easily." (GMM) Activists staged a die-in outside Duke Energys headquarters Monday to protest what they called conflicts of interest between Gov. Pat McCrory and his former employer on coal ash issues. McCrorys administration last week disbanded the states Coal Ash Management Commission, which was to play an oversight role as risk classifications are applied to Dukes ash ponds. Hearings on classifications for the Allen power plant in Gaston County and Buck plant in Rowan County will be held today. State health officials have also rescinded dont-drink advisories to private well owners near those power plants nearly a year after issuing them. Duke says its ash ponds are not the source of contaminants in the wells, but the state has not made its own determination. Residents are suspicious of assurances their water is safe, said Nikola Taylor of Charlotte Environmental Action, when they know very well nothing has changed with water, only with the (health) standards for the water. The group accused McCrory of intervening on behalf of Duke, his employer for 29 years, and disbanding the only oversight DEQ had, referring to the ash commission. The Department of Environmental Quality, and McCrorys office, said last week that a N.C. Supreme Court ruling in January made it clear that the (ash) commission is an unconstitutional body that cannot take any action. McCrorys office has denied his administration has been lax in policing Duke, saying his administration has taken more action on coal ash than any of his predecessors. Duke, in response to the protest, said McCrory has not improperly used his influence to help the company. The company repeated its position that contaminants in private wells are naturally occurring. In rescinding the dont-drink advisories, Duke said, the state was consistent with health and safety standards applied in other parts of the country. Updated at 6:13 p.m. BRUSSELS Islamic extremists struck Tuesday in the heart of Europe, killing at least 31 people and wounding scores of others in back-to-back bombings of the Brussels airport and subway that again laid bare the continent's vulnerability to suicide squads. Bloodied and dazed travelers staggered from the airport after two explosions at least one blamed on a suicide attacker and another reportedly on a suitcase bomb tore through crowds checking in for morning flights. About 40 minutes later, another blast struck subway commuters in central Brussels near the Maelbeek station, which sits amid the European Commission headquarters. Authorities released a photo taken from closed-circuit TV footage of three men pushing luggage carts, saying two of them apparently were the suicide bombers and that the third dressed in a light-colored coat, black hat and glasses was at large. They urged the public to contact them if they recognized him. The two men believed to be the suicide attackers apparently were wearing dark gloves on their left hands. In police raids across Brussels, authorities later found a nail-filled bomb, chemical products and an Islamic State flag in a house in the Schaerbeek neighborhood, the state prosecutors' office said in a statement. In its claim of responsibility, the Islamic State group said its members detonated suicide vests both at the airport and in the subway, where many passengers fled to safety down dark tunnels filled with hazy smoke from the explosion in a train pulling away from the platform. European security officials have been bracing for a major attack for weeks and warned that IS was actively preparing to strike. The arrest Friday of Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, heightened those fears, as investigators said many more people were involved than originally thought and that some are still on the loose. "In this time of tragedy, this black moment for our country, I appeal to everyone to remain calm but also to show solidarity," said Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, who announced three days of mourning in his country's deadliest terror strike. "Last year it was Paris. Today it is Brussels. It's the same attacks," said French President Francois Hollande. Belgium raised its terror alert to the highest level, shut the airport through Wednesday and ordered a city-wide lockdown, deploying about 500 soldiers onto Brussels' largely empty streets to bolster police checkpoints. France and Belgium both reinforced border security. Medical officials treating the wounded said some victims lost limbs, while others suffered burns or deep gashes from shattered glass or suspected nails packed in with explosives. Among the most seriously wounded were several children. The bombings came barely four months after suicide attackers based in Brussels' Molenbeek district slaughtered 130 people at Paris nightspots, and intelligence agencies had warned for months a follow-up strike was inevitable. Those fears increased following Abdeslam's arrest in Molenbeek, along with police admissions that others suspected of links to the Paris attacks were at large. A high-level Belgian judicial official said a connection by Abdeslam to Tuesday's attacks is "a lead to pursue." The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing. Abdeslam has told investigators he was planning to "restart something" from Brussels, said Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders. He said Sunday that authorities took the claim seriously because "we found a lot of weapons, heavy weapons in the first investigations and we have seen a new network of people around him in Brussels." While they knew that some kind of extremist act was being prepared in Europe, they were surprised by the size of Tuesday's attacks, said Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon. "It was always possible that more attacks could happen, but we never could have imagined something of this scale," he said. Officials at the airport in the Brussels suburb of Zaventem said police had discovered a Kalashnikov assault rifle and an explosives-packed vest abandoned at the facility, offering one potential lead for forensic evidence. Bomb disposal experts safely dismantled that explosive device. Shockwaves from the attacks crossed the Atlantic, where city and airport officials at several U.S. cities increased security force deployments and raised security levels. A U.S. administration official said American intelligence officers were working with European counterparts to try to identify the apparently skilled bomb-maker or makers involved in the Brussels attacks and to identify any links to bombs used in Paris. The official, who wasn't authorized to speak publicly on the investigations and demanded anonymity, told The Associated Press that at least one of the bombs at the airport was suspected to have been packed into a suitcase left in the departures hall. Three intelligence officials in Iraq told the AP that they had warned European colleagues last month of IS plans to attack airports and trains, although Belgium wasn't specified as a likely target. The officials, who monitor activities in the IS stronghold of Raqqa, said Brussels may have become a target because of the arrest of Abdeslam. One of the officials all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about their knowledge of IS operations said Iraqi intelligence officials believe that three other IS activists remain at large in Brussels and are plotting other suicide-bomb attacks. European leaders already struggling to cope with a wave of migration from the war-torn Middle East said they must rely on better anti-terrorist intelligence work to identify an enemy that wears no uniform and seeks the softest of targets. They emphasized that Europe must remain tolerant to Muslims as they seek to identify the Islamic State needles in that ever-growing haystack. Leaders of the 28-nation bloc said in a joint statement that Tuesday's assault on Brussels "only strengthens our resolve to defend European values and tolerance from the attacks of the intolerant." The United Nations' lead official for Middle East refugees, Amin Awad, warned that Europe faced an increasing risk of racist retaliation against Muslim immigrant communities. "Any sort of hostilities because of the Brussels attack or Paris attack is misplaced," Awad said. Reflecting the trauma of the moment, Belgian officials offered uncertain casualty totals at both the airport and subway, where police conducted controlled explosions on suspicious abandoned packages that ultimately were found to contain no explosives. Belgium's health minister, Maggie de Block, said 11 people were killed and 81 injured at the airport, where thousands of passengers were waiting to check luggage and collect boarding cards. Video posted on social media showed people cowering on the ground in the wake of the blasts, the air acrid with smoke, windows of shops and the terminal entrance shattered, and fallen ceiling tiles littering the blood-streaked floor. Some witnesses described hearing two distinct blasts, with shouts apparently in Arabic from at least one attacker before the second, bigger explosion. Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the airport blasts, told BFM television that pipes ruptured, sending a cascade of water mixing with victims' blood. "It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed. There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere," he said. "We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene." Marc Noel was about to board a Delta flight to Atlanta. The Belgian native, who lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, said the first blast happened about 50 yards (meters) from him. "People were crying, shouting, children. ... It was a horrible experience," he said. A random decision to pause in a shop to buy a magazine may have saved his life. Otherwise, he said, "I would probably have been in that place when the bomb went off." Anthony Deloos, an airport worker for Swissport, which handles check-in and baggage services, said the first blast took place near the Swissport counters where customers pay for overweight bags. He and a colleague said the second blast struck near a Starbucks cafe. Deloos said a colleague shouted at him to run as the blast sent clouds of shredded paper billowing through the air, and "I jumped into a luggage chute to be safe." Brussels Mayor Yvan Mayeur said 20 people died and more than 100 were wounded in the subway blast. Rescue workers set up makeshift first aid centers in a nearby pub and hotel. Passengers on other trains said many commuters were reading about the airport attacks on their smartphones when they heard the subway blast. Hundreds fled from stopped trains down tunnel tracks to adjacent stations. Many told stories of having missed the bomb by minutes or seconds. "It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the metro," said commuter Alexandre Brans, wiping blood from his face. Political leaders and others around the world expressed their shock at the attacks. "We will do whatever is necessary to support our friend and ally Belgium in bringing to justice those who are responsible," U.S. President Barack Obama said. Belgium's king and queen said they were "devastated" by the violence, describing the attacks as "odious and cowardly." After nightfall, Europe's best-known monuments the Eiffel Tower, the Brandenburg Gate and the Trevi Fountain were illuminated with Belgium's national colors in a show of solidarity. Update at 1:37 p.m. BRUSSELS Federal police in Belgium issue wanted notice for suspect in Brussels airport bombing. Updated at 1:32 p.m. BRUSSELS Bombs exploded Tuesday at the Brussels airport and in the city's subway, killing at least 31 people and wounding dozens, as a European capital was again locked down amid heightened security threats. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the attacks. The two airport blasts, at least one of them blamed on a suicide bomber, left behind a chaotic scene of splattered blood in the departure lounge as windows were blown out, ceilings collapsed and travelers streamed out of the smoky building. About an hour later, another bomb exploded on a rush-hour subway train near the European Union headquarters. Terrified passengers had to evacuate through darkened tunnels to safety. "What we feared has happened," Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said. "In this time of tragedy, this black moment for our country, I appeal to everyone to remain calm but also to show solidarity." Belgium raised its terror alert to the highest level, diverting planes and trains and ordering people to stay where they were for most of the workday. Airports across Europe and in the New York area tightened security. "We are at war," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said after a crisis meeting in Paris. "We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war." Added French President Francois Hollande: "Terrorists struck Brussels, but it was Europe that was targeted, and it is all the world which is concerned by this." European security officials have been bracing for a major attack for weeks and warned that the Islamic State group was actively preparing to strike. The arrest Friday of Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, heightened those fears, as investigators said many more people were involved than originally thought and that some are still on the loose. The Islamic State group claimed responsibility for the Brussels attacks, saying in a post on the group's Amaq news agency that its extremists opened fire in the airport and "several of them" detonated suicide belts. It said another suicide attacker struck in the subway. The post claimed the attack was in response to Belgium's support of the international coalition arrayed against the group. Authorities found and neutralized a third bomb at the airport once the chaos after the two initial blasts had eased, said Florence Muls, a spokeswoman for the airport told The Associated Press. Bomb squads also detonated suspicious objects found in at least two locations elsewhere in the capital, but neither contained explosives, authorities said. Michel said there was no immediate evidence linking the attacks with Abdeslam. After his arrest, Abdeslam told authorities he had created a new network and was planning new attacks. U.S. President Barack Obama pledged to "do whatever is necessary" to help Belgian authorities seek justice. "We stand in solidarity with them in condemning these outrageous attacks against innocent people," Obama said in Havana, where he was closing a three-day visit. Western Europe has lived for decades under the threat of violence from homegrown nationalist and revolutionary movements. Muslim extremists from North Africa and the Middle East have attacked civilian targets without warning, ranging from France's 1960s war in Algeria through Libya's 1988 downing of an airline over Scotland to the 2004-05 attacks on the public transportation systems of London and Madrid. Certain neighborhoods in Brussels, like the Molenbeek quarter, have bred extremists and supplied foreign fighters. Plotters linked to the Paris attacks and others have either moved through or lived in parts of the city. Tuesday's explosions at the airport in the Brussels suburb of Zaventem came shortly after 8 a.m., one of its busiest periods when thousands of people were inside. Belgian Health Minister Maggie de Block said 11 people were killed and 81 wounded. Eleven people had serious injuries, Marc Decramer of the Gasthuisberg hospital in Leuven told broadcaster VTM. The nails apparently came from one of the bombs. Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, told BFM television that the second, louder explosion brought down ceilings and ruptured pipes, mixing water with victims' blood. "It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed," he said. "There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere." "We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene," he said. Video from moments after the blasts showed travelers huddled next to check-in counters and lying near luggage and trolleys as dust and the cries of the wounded filled the air. Dazed people stumbled from the scene, some with clothes and shoes blown off. Anthony Deloos, an airport worker for Swissport, which handles check-in and baggage services, said the first explosion took place near the counters where customers pay for overweight bags. He and a colleague said the second blast hit near a Starbucks cafe. "I jumped into a luggage chute to be safe," Deloos said. The subway bombing came after 9 a.m., killing 20 people and wounding more than 100, Mayor Yvan Majeur said. "The metro was leaving Maelbeek station for Schuman when there was a really loud explosion," said Alexandre Brans, 32, wiping blood from his face. "It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the metro." Near the entrance to the station, rescue workers set up a makeshift medical treatment center in a pub. Dazed and shocked morning commuters streamed from the metro entrances as police tried to set up a security cordon. The airport was ordered closed for the rest of the day and CEO Arnaud Feist said the facility would be closed at least through Wednesday. About 600 flights in or out of Brussels were diverted or canceled, Muls said. The metro also was ordered closed as the city was locked down. By the end of the workday, city officials said residents could begin moving around on the streets of the capital and train stations were reopening. But Peter Mertens of the Belgian crisis center said the threat of more attacks "is still real and serious." At least one and possibly two Kalashnikovs were found in the departure lounge at the airport, according to a European security official in contact with a Belgian police official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the ongoing investigation. It was not immediately clear whether the firearms were used in the attacks. Travelers fled the airport as quickly as they could. In video shown on France's i-Tele television, men, women and children dashed from the terminal in different directions. Security officers patrolled a hall with blown-out paneling and ceiling panels covering the floor. Marc Noel, 63, was about to board a Delta flight to Atlanta, to return to his home in Raleigh, North Carolina. A Belgian native, Noel said he was in an airport shop buying automotive magazines when the first blast struck about 50 yards away. "People were crying, shouting children. It was a horrible experience," he said, adding that his decision to shop might have saved his life. "I would probably have been in that place when the bomb went off." Updated at 11:17 p.m. BRUSSELS Bombs exploded at the Brussels airport and one of the city's metro stations Tuesday, killing at least 31 people and wounding dozens, as a European capital was again locked down amid heightened security threats. The two airport blasts, at least one of them blamed on a suicide bomber, left behind a chaotic scene of splattered blood in the departure lounge as windows were blown out, ceilings collapsed and travelers streamed out of the smoky building. About an hour later, another bomb exploded on a rush-hour subway train near the European Union headquarters. Terrified passengers had to evacuate through darkened tunnels to safety. "What we feared has happened," Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel told reporters. "In this time of tragedy, this black moment for our country, I appeal to everyone to remain calm but also to show solidarity." Belgium raised its terror alert to the highest level, diverting planes and trains and ordering people to stay where they were. Airports across Europe immediately tightened security. "We are at war," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said after a crisis meeting in Paris. "We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war." Added French President Francois Hollande: "Terrorists struck Brussels, but it was Europe that was targeted." European security officials have been bracing for a major attack for weeks, and warned that the Islamic State group was actively preparing to strike. The arrest Friday of Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in the November attacks in Paris, heightened those fears, as investigators said many more people were involved than originally thought and that some are still on the loose. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Tuesday's attacks, and Michel said there was no immediate evidence linking them with Abdeslam. After his arrest, Abdeslam told authorities he had created a new network and was planning new attacks. U.S. President Barack Obama pledged to "do whatever is necessary" to help Belgian authorities seek justice. "We stand in solidarity with them in condemning these outrageous attacks against innocent people," Obama said in Havana, where he was closing a three-day visit. Western Europe has lived for decades under the threat of violence from homegrown nationalist and revolutionary movements. Muslim extremists from North Africa and the Middle East have attacked civilian targets without warning, ranging from France's 1960s war in Algeria through Libya's 1988 downing of an airline over Scotland to the 2004-05 attacks on the public transportation systems of London and Madrid. Certain neighborhoods in Brussels, like the Molenbeek quarter, have bred extremists and supplied foreign fighters. Plotters linked to the Paris attacks, and other strikes over at least the last several decades, have either moved through or lived in parts of the city. Tuesday's explosions at the airport in the Brussels suburb of Zaventem came shortly after 8 a.m., one of its busiest periods. Belgian Health Minister Maggie de Block said 11 people were killed and 81 wounded. Eleven people had serious injuries, Marc Decramer of the Gasthuisberg hospital in Leuven told broadcaster VTM. The nails apparently came from one of the bombs. Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, told BFM television that the second, louder explosion brought down ceilings and ruptured pipes, mixing water with victims' blood. "It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed," he said. "There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere." "We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene," he said. Video taken moments after the explosions showed travelers huddled next to airport check-in counters and lying near luggage and trolleys as dust and the cries of the wounded filled the air. Dazed people stumbled from the scene, some with clothes and shoes blown off. Anthony Deloos, an airport worker for Swissport, which handles check-in and baggage services, said the first explosion took place near the Swissport counters where customers pay for overweight baggage. He and a colleague said the second blast hit near a Starbucks cafe. "I jumped into a luggage chute to be safe," Deloos said. The bomb on the subway train came after 9 a.m., killing 20 people and wounding more than 100, Mayor Yvan Majeur said. "The metro was leaving Maelbeek station for Schuman when there was a really loud explosion," said Alexandre Brans, 32, wiping blood from his face. "It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the metro." Near the entrance to the station, rescue workers set up a makeshift medical treatment center in a pub. Dazed and shocked morning commuters streamed from the metro entrances as police tried to set up a security cordon. The metro shut down after the attacks, as did the airport. More than 200 flights to Brussels were diverted or canceled, according to flight tracking service Flightradar24. At least one and possibly two Kalashnikovs were found in the departure lounge at the airport, according to a European security official in contact with a Belgian police official who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk about the ongoing investigation. It was not immediately clear whether the firearms were used in the attacks. Travelers fled the airport as quickly as they could. In video shown on France's i-Tele television, men, women and children dashed from the terminal in different directions. Security officers patrolled a hall with blown-out paneling and ceiling panels covering the floor. Marc Noel, 63, was about to board a Delta flight to Atlanta, to return to his home in Raleigh, North Carolina. A Belgian native, Noel said he was in an airport shop buying automotive magazines when the first blast struck about 50 yards away. "People were crying, shouting children. It was a horrible experience," he said, adding that his decision to shop might have saved his life. "I would probably have been in that place when the bomb went off." Updated at 10:24 a.m. BRUSSELS Bombs exploded at the Brussels airport and one of the city's metro stations Tuesday, killing at least 31 people and wounding dozens, as a European capital was again locked down amid heightened security threats. The two airport blasts, at least one of which was blamed on a suicide bomber, left behind a chaotic scene of splattered blood in the departure lounge as windows were blown out, ceilings collapsed and travelers streamed out of the smoky building. About an hour later, another bomb exploded on a rush-hour subway train near the European Union headquarters. Terrified passengers had to evacuate through darkened tunnels to safety. "What we feared has happened," Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel told reporters. "In this time of tragedy, this black moment for our country, I appeal to everyone to remain calm but also to show solidarity." Belgium raised its terror alert to the highest level, diverting planes and trains and ordering people to stay where they were. Airports across Europe immediately tightened security. "We are at war," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said after a crisis meeting called by the French president. "We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war." European security officials have been bracing for a major attack for weeks, and warned that the Islamic State group was actively preparing to strike. The arrest Friday of a key suspect in the November attacks in Paris heightened those fears, as investigators said many more people were involved than originally thought, and that some are still on the loose. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Tuesday's attacks, and Michel said there was no immediate evidence linking key Paris suspect Salah Abdeslam to them. After his arrest Friday, Abdeslam told authorities he had created a new network and was planning new attacks. At Brussels' Zaventem airport, the two explosions hit the departures area during the busy morning rush. Belgian Health Minister Maggie de Block told Belgian media that 11 people were killed and 81 injured. Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, told BFM television that the second, louder explosion brought down ceilings and ruptured pipes, mixing water with victims' blood. "It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed," he said. "There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere." "We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene," he said. Anthony Deloos, an airport worker for Swissport, which handles check-in and baggage services, said the first explosion took place near the Swissport counters where customers pay for overweight baggage. He and a colleague said the second blast hit near the Starbucks cafe. "We heard a big explosion. It's like when you're in a party and suddenly your hearing goes out, from like a big noise," Deloos said, adding that shredded paper floated through the air as a colleague told him to run. "I jumped into a luggage chute to be safe," he said. The bomb that went off an hour later on the subway train killed 20 people and injured more than 100, Brussels Mayor Yvan Majeur said. "The metro was leaving Maelbeek station for Schuman when there was a really loud explosion," said Alexandre Brans, 32, wiping blood from his face. "It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the metro." Near the entrance to the station, rescue workers set up a makeshift medical treatment center in a pub. Dazed and shocked morning commuters streamed from the metro entrances as police tried to set up a security cordon. The metro shut down after the attacks, as did the airport. More than 200 flights to Brussels were diverted or canceled, according to flight tracking service Flightradar24. At least one and possibly two Kalashnikovs were found in the departure lounge at the airport, according to a European security official in contact with Belgian police who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the ongoing investigation. It was not immediately clear whether the firearms were used in the attacks. Amateur video showed passengers fleeing as quickly as they could. In a video shown on France's i-Tele television, passengers, including a child running with a backpack, dashed out of the terminal in different directions as they tugged luggage. Another image showed a security officer patrolling inside a hall with blown-out paneling and what appeared to be ceiling insulation covering the floor. Marc Noel, 63, was about to board a Delta flight to Atlanta, to return to his home in Raleigh, North Carolina. A Belgian native, Noel says he was in an airport shop buying automobile magazines when the first explosion occurred 50 yards away. "People were crying, shouting, children. It was a horrible experience," he told AP. He said his decision to shop might have saved his life. "I would probably have been in that place when the bomb went off." Updated 9:42 a.m. BRUSSELS Bombs struck the Brussels airport and one of the city's metro stations Tuesday, killing at least 31 people and wounding dozens, as a European capital was again locked down amid heightened security threats. The two airport blasts, at least one of which was blamed on a suicide bomber, left behind a chaotic scene of splattered blood in the departure lounge as windows were blown out, ceilings collapsed and travelers streamed out of the smoky building. About an hour later, another bomb exploded on a rush-hour subway train near the European Union headquarters. Terrified passengers had to evacuate through darkened tunnels to safety. "What we feared has happened," Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel told reporters. "In this time of tragedy, this black moment for our country, I appeal to everyone to remain calm but also to show solidarity." Belgium raised its terror alert to the highest level, diverting planes and trains and ordering people to stay where they were. Airports across Europe immediately tightened security. "We are at war," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said after a crisis meeting called by the French president. "We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war." European security officials have been bracing for a major attack for weeks, and warned that the Islamic State group was actively preparing to strike. The arrest Friday of a key suspect in the November attacks in Paris heightened those fears, as investigators said many more people were involved than originally thought, and that some are still on the loose. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Tuesday's attacks, and Michel said there was no immediate evidence linking key Paris suspect Salah Abdeslam to them. After his arrest Friday, Abdeslam told authorities he had created a new network and was planning new attacks. At Brussels' Zaventem airport, the two explosions hit the departures area during the busy morning rush. Belgian Health Minister Maggie de Block told Belgian media that 11 people were killed and 81 injured. Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, told BFM television that the second, louder explosion brought down ceilings and ruptured pipes, mixing water with victims' blood. "It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed," he said. "There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere." "We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene," he said. Anthony Deloos, an airport worker for Swissport, which handles check-in and baggage services, said the first explosion took place near the Swissport counters where customers pay for overweight baggage. He and a colleague said the second blast hit near the Starbucks cafe. "We heard a big explosion. It's like when you're in a party and suddenly your hearing goes out, from like a big noise," Deloos said, adding that shredded paper floated through the air as a colleague told him to run. "I jumped into a luggage chute to be safe," he said. The bomb that went off an hour later on the subway train killed 20 people and injured more than 100, Brussels Mayor Yvan Majeur said. "The metro was leaving Maelbeek station for Schuman when there was a really loud explosion," said Alexandre Brans, 32, wiping blood from his face. "It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the metro." Near the entrance to the station, rescue workers set up a makeshift medical treatment center in a pub. Dazed and shocked morning commuters streamed from the metro entrances as police tried to set up a security cordon. The metro shut down after the attacks, as did the airport. More than 200 flights to Brussels were diverted or canceled, according to flight tracking service Flightradar24. At least one and possibly two Kalashnikovs were found in the departure lounge at the airport, according to a European security official in contact with Belgian police who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to speak about the ongoing investigation. It was not immediately clear whether the firearms were used in the attacks. Amateur video showed passengers fleeing as quickly as they could. In a video shown on France's i-Tele television, passengers, including a child running with a backpack, dashed out of the terminal in different directions as they tugged luggage. Another image showed a security officer patrolling inside a hall with blown-out paneling and what appeared to be ceiling insulation covering the floor. Marc Noel, 63, was about to board a Delta flight to Atlanta, to return to his home in Raleigh, North Carolina. A Belgian native, Noel says he was in an airport shop buying automobile magazines when the first explosion occurred 50 yards away. "People were crying, shouting, children. It was a horrible experience," he told AP. He said his decision to shop might have saved his life. "I would probably have been in that place when the bomb went off." Associated Press Writers Raf Casert in Brussels and Angela Charlton and Lori Hinnant in Paris contributed to this report. Updated at 8:49 a.m. BRUSSELS Explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, rocked the Brussels airport and subway system Tuesday, prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe. At least 26 people were reported dead and dozens of others injured. A spokesman for the Brussels Metro said 15 people were killed and 55 injured, 10 very seriously, in an explosion on a train. Belgian media initially reported at least 13 dead in two explosions in the airport's departures area, but later decreased that to 11, citing information from Belgian Health Minister Maggie de Block, who also said 81 people were injured. "What we feared has happened," Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel told reporters. "In this time of tragedy, this black moment for our country, I appeal to everyone to remain calm but also to show solidarity." Belgium raised its terror alert to the highest level, diverting planes and trains and ordering people to stay where they were. Airports across Europe immediately tightened security. European security officials have been bracing for a major attack for weeks, and warned that the Islamic State group was actively preparing to strike. The arrest Friday of a key suspect in the November attacks in Paris heightened those fears, as investigators said many more people were involved than originally thought, and that some are still on the loose. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Tuesday's attacks, and Michel said there was no immediate evidence linking key Paris suspect Salah Abdeslam to them. After his arrest Friday, Abdeslam told authorities he had created a new network and was planning new attacks. "We are at war," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said after a crisis meeting called by the French president. "We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war." Belgian media reported that 11 people were killed at the airport, where two explosions splattered blood across the departure lounge and collapsed the ceiling. The explosions hit during the busy morning rush. Smoke was seen billowing out of the terminal. Anthony Deloos, an airport worker for Swissport, which handles check-in and baggage services, said the first explosion took place near the Swissport counters where customers pay for overweight baggage. He and a colleague said the second blast hit near the Starbucks cafe. "We heard a big explosion. It's like when you're in a party and suddenly your hearing goes out, from like a big noise," Deloos said, adding that shredded paper floated through the air as a colleague told him to run. "I jumped into a luggage chute to be safe," he said. Tom De Doncker, 21, check-in agent intern, was near the site of the second explosion. "I saw a soldier pulling away a body," he said. "It felt like I was hit too" from the concussion of the blast. Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, told BFM television that the second, louder explosion brought down ceilings and ruptured pipes, mixing water with victims' blood. "It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed," he said. "There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere." "We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene," he said. Near the entrance to Brussels' Maelbeek subway station, not far from the headquarters of the European Union, rescue workers set up a makeshift medical treatment center in a pub. Dazed and shocked morning commuters streamed from the metro entrances as police tried to set up a security cordon. "The Metro was leaving Maelbeek station for Schuman when there was a really loud explosion," said Alexandre Brans, 32, wiping blood from his face. "It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the Metro." Francoise Ledune, a spokeswoman for the Brussels Metro, said on BFM television there appeared to have been just one explosion on the subway in a car that was stopped at Maelbeek. Spokesman Guy Sablon said 15 were killed and 55 injured in that attack. At the airport, passengers fled as quickly as they could. Amateur video shown on France's i-Tele television showed passengers including a child running with a backpack dashing out of the terminal in different directions as they tugged luggage. Another image showed a security officer patrolling inside a hall with blown-out paneling and what appeared to be ceiling insulation covering the floor. Marc Noel, 63, was about to board a Delta flight to Atlanta, to return to his home in Raleigh, North Carolina. A Belgian native, Noel says he was in an airport shop buying automobile magazines when the first explosion occurred 50 yards away. "People were crying, shouting, children. It was a horrible experience," he told AP. He said his decision to shop might have saved his life. "I would probably have been in that place when the bomb went off." With three runways in the shape of a "Z," the airport connects Europe's capital to 226 destinations around the world and handled nearly 23.5 million passengers in 2015. Passengers were led onto the tarmac and the crisis center urged people not to come to the airport. More than 200 flights to Brussels were diverted or canceled, according to flight tracking service Flightradar24 Authorities told people in Brussels to stay where they were, bringing the city to a standstill. Airport security was also tightened in Paris, London and other European cities. In Paris, France's top security official said the country was immediately reinforcing security at airports, train stations and metros. Updated at 8:34 a.m. BRUSSELS The U.S. Embassy in Brussels is recommending that Americans in Belgium stay where they are and avoid public transportation. The embassy noted Tuesday that with the threat rating in Brussels at its highest alert, attacks can take place with little or no notice. It urged U.S. citizens to monitor media reports, follow instructions from the authorities, and "take the appropriate steps to bolster your personal security." Updated 7:50 a.m. BRUSSELS Explosions, at least one likely caused by a suicide bomber, rocked the Brussels airport and subway system Tuesday, prompting a lockdown of the Belgian capital and heightened security across Europe. At least 28 people were reported dead. A spokesman for the Brussels Metro said 15 people were killed and 55 injured in an explosion on a train, and Belgian media reported at least 13 dead in two explosions at the airport, with many others injured. Belgium raised its terror alert to the highest level, diverting planes and trains and ordering people to stay where they were. Airports across Europe immediately tightened security. "We are at war," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said after a crisis meeting called by the French president. "We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war." European security officials have been bracing for a major attack for weeks, and warned that the Islamic State group was actively preparing to strike. The arrest Friday of a key suspect in the November attacks in Paris heightened those fears, as investigators said many more people were involved than originally thought, and that some are still on the loose. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Tuesday's attacks, and Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel said there was no immediate evidence linking key Paris suspect Salah Abdeslam to them. After his arrest Friday, Abdeslam told authorities he had created a new network and was planning new attacks. Belgian media reported that 13 people were killed at the airport, where two explosions splattered blood across the departure lounge and collapsed the ceiling. The explosions hit during the busy morning rush. Smoke was seen billowing out of the terminal. Anthony Deloos, an airport worker for Swissport, which handles check-in and baggage services, said the first explosion took place near the Swissport counters where customers pay for overweight baggage. He and a colleague said the second blast hit near the Starbucks cafe. "We heard a big explosion. It's like when you're in a party and suddenly your hearing goes out, from like a big noise," Deloos said, adding that shredded paper floated through the air as a colleague told him to run. "I jumped into a luggage chute to be safe," he said. Tom De Doncker, 21, check-in agent intern, was near the site of the second explosion. "I saw a soldier pulling away a body," he said. "It felt like I was hit too" from the concussion of the blast. Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, told BFM television that the second, louder explosion brought down ceilings and ruptured pipes, mixing water with victims' blood. "It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed," he said. "There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere." "We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene," he said. Near the entrance to Brussels' Maelbeek subway station, not far from the headquarters of the European Union, rescue workers set up a makeshift medical treatment center in a pub. Dazed and shocked morning commuters streamed from the metro entrances as police tried to set up a security cordon. "The Metro was leaving Maelbeek station for Schuman when there was a really loud explosion," said Alexandre Brans, 32, wiping blood from his face. "It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the Metro." Francoise Ledune, a spokeswoman for the Brussels Metro, said on BFM television there appeared to have been just one explosion on the subway in a car that was stopped at Maelbeek. Spokesman Guy Sablon said 15 were killed and 55 injured in that attack. At the airport, passengers fled as quickly as they could. Amateur video shown on France's i-Tele television showed passengers including a child running with a backpack dashing out of the terminal in different directions as they tugged luggage. Another image showed a security officer patrolling inside a hall with blown-out paneling and what appeared to be ceiling insulation covering the floor. Marc Noel, 63, was about to board a Delta flight to Atlanta, to return to his home in Raleigh, North Carolina. A Belgian native, Noel says he was in an airport shop buying automobile magazines when the first explosion occurred 50 yards away. "People were crying, shouting, children. It was a horrible experience," he told AP. He said his decision to shop might have saved his life. "I would probably have been in that place when the bomb went off." With three runways in the shape of a "Z," the airport connects Europe's capital to 226 destinations around the world and handled nearly 23.5 million passengers in 2015. Passengers were led onto the tarmac and the crisis center urged people not to come to the airport. Authorities told people in Brussels to stay where they were, bringing the city to a standstill. Airport security was also tightened in Paris, London and other European cities. In Paris, France's top security official said the country was immediately reinforcing security at airports, train stations and metros. Associated Press Writers Raf Casert in Brussels and Angela Charlton and Lori Hinnant in Paris contributed to this report. Posted 6:51 a.m. BRUSSELS Explosions rocked the Brussels airport and its subway system Tuesday, killing at least 13 people according to Belgian media, injuring scores more and prompting authorities to lock down the Belgian capital. Belgium raised its terror alert to its highest level, diverting arriving planes and trains and ordering people to stay where they were. Airports across Europe immediately tightened security as a fleet of emergency vehicles roared in to handle the carnage at the Brussels airport. The explosions, which the Brussels prosecutor's office called terror attacks, came just days after the main suspect in the deadly Nov. 13 Paris attacks was arrested Friday in Brussels. After his arrest, 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam told authorities he had created a new network and was planning new attacks. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for Tuesday's attacks. Belgian media reported that 13 people were killed at the airport. Brussels police spokesman Christian De Coninck said some people also died at the subway station but he had no exact numbers yet on the dead or injured. At the airport, two explosions splattered blood across the departure lounge and collapsed the ceiling. The explosions hit during the busy morning rush. Smoke was seen billowing out of the terminal. Anthony Deloos, an airport worker for Swissport, which handles check-in and baggage services, said the first explosion took place near the Swissport counters where customers pay for overweight baggage. He and colleague said second blast hit near the Starbucks cafe. "We heard a big explosion. It's like when you're in a party and suddenly your hearing goes out, from like a big noise," Deloos said, adding that shredded paper floated through the air as a colleague told him to run. "I jumped into a luggage chute to be safe," he said. Tom De Doncker, 21, check-in agent intern, was near the site of the second explosion. "I saw a soldier pulling away a body," he said. "It felt like I was hit too" from the concussion of the blast. All flights from Brussels were canceled, arriving planes and trains were diverted. Authorities told people in Brussels to stay where they were, bringing the city to a standstill. Airport security was also tightened in Paris, London and other European cities. European security officials have been bracing for a major attack for weeks, and warned that the Islamic State group was actively preparing to strike. Abdeslam's arrest on Friday heightened those fears, as investigators said many more people were involved in the Nov. 13 attacks that killed 130 people in Paris than originally thought, and that some are still on the loose. Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, told BFM television that the second, louder explosion brought down ceilings and ruptured pipes, mixing water with victims' blood. "It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed," he said. "There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere." "We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene," he said. Near the entrance to Brussels' Maelbeek subway station, not far from the headquarters of the European Union, rescue workers set up a makeshift medical treatment center in a pub. Dazed and shocked morning commuters streamed from the metro entrances as police tried to set up a security cordon. "The Metro was leaving Maelbeek station for Schuman when there was a really loud explosion," said Alexandre Brans, 32, wiping blood from his face. "It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the metro." Francoise Ledune, a spokeswoman for the Brussels Metro, said on BFM television there appeared to have been just one explosion on the subway in a car that was stopped at Maelbeek. At the airport, passengers fled as quickly as they could. Amateur video shown on France's i-Tele television showed passengers including a child running with a backpack dashing out of the terminal in different directions as they tugged luggage, Another image showed a security officer patrolling inside a hall with blown-out paneling and what appeared to be ceiling insulation covering the floor. Marc Noel, 63, was about to board a Delta flight to Atlanta, to return to his home in Raleigh, North Carolina. A Belgian native, Noel says he was in an airport shop buying automobile magazines when the first explosion occurred 50 yards away. "People were crying, shouting, children. It was a horrible experience," he told AP. He said his decision to shop might have saved his life. "I would probably have been in that place when the bomb went off." With three runways in the shape of a "Z," the airport connects Europe's capital to 226 destinations around the world and handled nearly 23.5 million passengers in 2015. Passengers were led onto the tarmac and the crisis center urged people not to come to the airport. In Paris, France's top security official said the country was immediately reinforcing security at airports, train stations and metros. Associated Press Writers Raf Casert in Brussels and Angela Charlton and Lori Hinnant in Paris contributed to this report. Federal police in Belgium issue wanted notice for suspect in Brussels airport bombing BRUSSELS (AP) Federal police in Belgium issue wanted notice for suspect in Brussels airport bombing. Updated 5:19 p.m. GREENSBORO Duke Energy crews planned to dig up part of Washington Street tonight to get a better look at conduits that are suspected of being the source of Sunday nights explosions in downtown Greensboro, according to company spokeswoman Meghan Miles. We are excavating some of the pavement, she said, to look at the conduit underground and pull it out for better inspection. The street will be closed between Greene and Elm streets through 7 a.m. Wednesday. Greensboro officials said Duke Energy will be doing, "emergency work," related to the explosions in front of The Biltmore Hotel, at 111 W. Washington St. Traffic will be detoured around the repairs. The city inspected the water and sewer lines along West Washington Street earlier today and the lines looked sound, said Jake Keys, Greensboro communications manager. Underground electrical wiring is suspected of being a cause of the explosions in front of the hotel. The concussions blasted two manhole covers into the air. The first blast occurred about 8:30 p.m. Sunday. The second one happened about 10 minutes later. The blasts broke about four dozen windows in the hotel and damaged several vehicles. Police evacuated the hotel and a nearby theater. Hotel customers returned to their rooms about three hours later. Investigators this evening still did not know what caused the explosions. As we move throughout the investigation, well be better able to understand the incident, Miles said. Were all working together to prevent it from happening again. Staff writer Joe Gamm contributed to this report. Updated 2:15 p.m. GREENSBORO A portion of Washington Street will close beginning at 3 p.m. today while Duke Energy does work connected to Sunday night's explosions, city officials said. The street will be closed between Greene and Elm streets through 7 a.m. Wednesday. The city said Duke Energy will be doing, "emergency work," related to the explosions in front of The Biltmore Hotel, at 111 W. Washington St. What Duke Energy will be doing wasn't clear. A call to the company wasn't immediately returned. Traffic will be detoured from Washington Street to Greene Street to McGee Street to Elm Street. The city inspected the water and sewer lines along West Washington Street earlier today and they looked sound, said Jake Keys, communications manager with Greensboro. Posted 9:31 a.m. GREENSBORO Part of West Washington Street is closed in front of The Biltmore Hotel following Sunday's explosions. City officials are investigating the water and sewer systems underground to ensure they're OK, said Susan Danielsen, police spokeswoman. One lane of West Washington Street is blocked and part of the right turn lane on Elm Street is blocked. It's unclear how long the lanes will be blocked. Underground electrical wiring caused the explosion in front of the hotel at 111 W. Washington St. Two manhole covers were blown into the air Sunday night as a result of the blasts. Nearly four dozen windows were blown out of the hotel as well. Duke Energy is still investigating. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate A photographer has been banned from Disney Parks after he took photos of an abandoned water park formerly known as River Country in Lake Buena Vista, Fla. to reveal the dark side of the mega company, he told multiple outlets. Seph Lawless, who has made a name in the shutterbug world by following a theme of snapping photos of bygone places, has a new gallery called Dismaland. It gives an inside look into the shuttered Disney water park, River Country, which has been closed since 2001. RELATED: Photos show desolate, abandoned Six Flags New Orleans 10 years after Hurricane Katrina Multiple news sites have cited various reasons and rumors surrounding the mysterious 2001 closure of the park. According to Roadtrippers.com, the park initially shut its gates in 2001, but then made the decision to remain permanently closed in 2005. A 2012 report from the Martin County Times, headquartered about three hours away from the park, said River Country was closed in September 2001 due in part to new Florida Laws prohibiting the use of natural water bodies, requiring chlorination and only municipal water supplies, for water park use. Requests made by mySA.com to Disney World Communications for clarification on the topic were not immediately returned. Bay Lake workers, where the property is located, told Lawless the water is too dangerous to swim in after years of boat and firework pollution. Even fish caught from the area should not be eaten, Lawless told the site. Buzzfeed described the lonely park as once having four water slides, a sand bottom lake, white water rapids and a tubing river. Weeds and trash now fill the pools where families once enjoyed their vacations. RELATED: Eerie photos show abandoned Costa Concordia cruise ship years after deadly disaster The Huffington Post reported creepy banjo music sometimes still plays throughout River Country. Being inside the abandoned park felt like a creepy real-life Disney ride, Lawless said in his interview with Buzzfeed. It was surreal and really beautiful. Lawless motives for sneaking into the property and taking photos using a robotic drone are fueled by something deeper than showing people a creepy lot. He told the Daily Mail he hopes his work bring awareness to the issue of a huge corporation like Disney failing to clean up what they left behind. RELATED: The long-lost amusement parks of Texas He forewarned the revelation of additional information in a recent Facebook post. So Disney is upset at me, but why do they get so upset anytime someone gets too close to the abandoned Disney Island? What are you hiding Disney, he said. Stay tuned for the strange and bizarre oddities of the Disney Conspiracy. Keep up with Lawless work via his Instagram, Twitter and Tumblr. Editor's note: This story initially cited a Daily Mail article that reported a death of a child in 1980 caused by a neurological parasite contracted at the park was part of the reason it was closed. No other outlets or the Disney corporation have verified that rumor. mmendoza@mysa.com Twitter: @MaddySkye File photo The school district will holds its annual ceremony for the Community Service Awards Tuesday from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m., in the Greenwich High School auditorium to recognize public-school students for their work. This years ceremony will mark the 30th anniversary of the awards program at Greenwich High School in the Performing Arts Center. It will also include a video in which students will discuss their community service. Having spent the past several years growing Brainscape and working with dozens of companies through the TechStars and Edge EdTech accelerators, Ive noticed a persistent entrepreneurial resistance to becoming truly metrics-driven. Founders are often tempted to postpone the building of detailed business dashboards in favor of spending valuable time and engineering resources on building the actual product. While this (often unconscious) bias of gut instincts over MBA-style analysis can help you during your early stages of customer development, it can come back to bite you in the arse the longer you wait. Very few companies have successfully achieved exponential growth, raised capital, or negotiated strong exits without first having a solid analytics model that has been iterated upon for many months or years. Below are five reasons why you should start focusing on measuring your companys key metrics and growth levers ASAP. If you seek further guidance as to how to do so efficiently, feel free to read my Complete Guide to Building a Metrics-Driven Company. 1. Stay focused. At most companies, our teams think of ideas for new product features or marketing campaigns much faster than we can implement them. Having a solid metrics model allows you to prioritize these backlogs using real data and forecasts. For example, performing a funnel analysis will help you understand whether it would be worth spending time to optimize a particular conversion bottleneck. Similarly, gaining a strong understanding of each marketing campaigns LTV/CAC ratio will help you determine where to spend your valuable marketing dollars. Often you can even run simple experiments to further validate hypotheses before making large investments. Espousing these types of metrics-driven strategies will improve your use of limited resources while increasing your teams respect for your leadership. Related: Data Driven: What Amazon's Jeff Bezos Taught Me About Running a Company 2. Motivate your team. Reliable, current metrics are a critical prerequisite to being able to create meaningful OKRs for your team. Not only will solid analytics help you set key lines in the sand for the whole company to meet, but they will also allow you to better delegate results to individual owners of particular KPIs. At Brainscape, we have a master KPI dashboard that summarizes our high-level goals like New Signups, Active Users, and Revenue. That master spreadsheet is fed by feeder spreadsheets that derive our sub-KPIs like Conversion Rates, Engagement, Retention, and Virality. Such a hierarchical structure allows us to delegate individual metrics to the responsible team members, thus allowing us to keep score in a way that is more motivating for each owner. Related: 25 Ways to Lead, Inspire and Motivate Your Team to Greatness 3. Create more realistic forecasts. Once you have a good model that identifies the drivers of past customer behavior and predicts future behavior, it becomes much easier to perform what-if analyses of particular new initiatives. You can easily predict what might happen if you double your marketing spend this quarter, or if you spend time optimizing your homepage conversion by 5 percent. Being able to drive such predictable growth will keep your board happy and will further increase your credibility as a leader. Related: Forecasting Business Success Through the Lens of the Product and the Brand 4. Close new investors. Raising your first angel round is often possible based on nothing but a strong team, prototype, and market potential. But follow-on VC rounds require a lot more meat. Even if you are great at attracting PR and generating investor hype with your compelling story, most savvy VCs will want to dig into your metrics before making any final investment decisions. Waiting until the due diligence phase is usually too late to start building such a self-explanatory model. Ive seen many VC deals fall apart during this phase due to founders lack of readiness to quickly prove their growth levers and market size. You need to get in front of this by developing a metrics-driven business ahead of time. Spoon-feed your potential investors with a cant-lose growth model. 5. Become acquirable. Before making you an offer, most corp dev folks will need to have a very deep sense of all the levers that can be pulled to make your company grow. They likely already have their own complex growth models for their own company, and theyll want to combine these with your startups model to show how it plugs into their overall strategy. If you dont have a model of your own, then the corp dev vultures will try to make the model for you. And you probably wont like the exit valuation that they derive as a result. These are just a few reasons why being metrics-driven is key to your companys ultimate level of success. Above all, having a solid handle on your numbers will keep you more honest with yourself and should help reduce your stress levels -- whether you like the numbers or not. Related: The Dozen Difficult Steps Necessary to Succeed at Entrepreneurship What's Behind a 10-Year 'Overnight' Success? 5 Secrets to Monetizing Your LinkedIn Experience Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved Maybe just go to Sonic instead. A Dairy Queen in Texas is off to a pretty solid lead for this years Most Offensive Soft-Serve Shop Award. Mohammad Dar, owner of the Houston-area franchise, has made his restaurant maybe the worlds only one-stop shop for Blizzards and materials on the evils of monkeyism, his preferred term for Hinduism. According to KPRC, Dar has not only papered his restaurants interior with anti-religion posters, but hes also stuck more signage in the ground outside so that customers pulling into the parking lot are greeted by this mandate: OBEY PRESERVE IMPLEMENT CONSTITUTION OF THE U.S.A. NOT MONKEY ISM OF DARK AGES Once inside, it only gets weirder: Dars diatribes are at the front door, by the cash register, and on the drive-through window, and they include a large Da Vinci Codestyle sign titled Manifesto of Illegality that outlines a Hindu plot involving the Dalai Lama, the pope, the British flag, and Kim Jong-un. Though, as a local reporter for KPRC notes, its not exactly clear what these things all have to do with one another. Dars bigotry, on the other hand, is fairly obvious: Racism is the foundation of Hinduism, he tells the station.He claims the signs have been up for six months, but people on Twitter have been posting pics in amazement for the past year: We saw this at a Kemah Dairy Queen. pic.twitter.com/jFGQOJ626C danyell (@TallCanadian_) April 25, 2015 Some people are obviously bothered by the signs, but Dar says they arent coming down because theyre educational, and because only about 1 percent of the 200 customers he serves every day say theyre offended. [KPRC] The chef is going all-in on apps. Photo: Katherine Frey/The Washington Post David Changs Momofuku empire is already credited with, among other things, helping to kick-start the nationwide shift to more casual restaurants that often resemble bars, and now it seems hes determined to eliminate dining rooms altogether: The chef is one of the big-name investors in Maple, the food-delivery start-up thats rapidly taking over the office lunch market, and now hes announced that hell launch yet another delivery-only restaurant. Chang tells Fast Company that the concept will be called Ando, named of course after instant-ramen inventor Momofuku Ando, and that hes aiming to launch it this spring, initially targeting Midtown East. And the plan is for the entire dining experience to happen in apps and via delivery. Instead of talking to a server, customers will order food through a mobile app. The meals will then be delivered to customers by UberRush in, Chang hopes, classic Chinese takeout containers branded with the Momofuku peach logo. Unlike Maples often-healthy-ish offerings, Andos offerings a collaboration between Chang and wd~50 vet J.J. Basil will be more Momofuku-style. Think a cheesesteak made with chicken and housemade American-cheese sauce that Chang calls maybe the most dangerous thing Ive eaten all year, cookies from Milk Bars Christina Tosi, and maybe even a secret KFC-style chicken bucket. (I feel like were aggregating all of the things that we want to eat, Chang says.) Or, as Expa partner and Ando co-founder Hooman Radfar explains, more succinctly, expect it to be like Momofuku at home. [Fast Company] Cut the crap. Photo: Ulet Ifansasti/Getty Images Some people drink kopi luwak even after learning its been pooped out of a catlike creature, so prominent conservation group Wildlife Alliance is trying another tactic: reminding them of the moral reasons to avoid one of the worlds costliest drinks. The coffee wrecks pocketbooks because a pound can sell for hundreds of dollars (humorist Dave Barry once called it a clever hoax designed to ridicule the coffee craze), but the drink is even worse for the civet, a member of the weasel family in Southeast Asia thats partial to coffee cherries. Somebody years ago discovered that a natural fermentation occurs when beans pass through the civets digestive tract, purportedly improving their flavor. The weird coffee enjoyed a brief trendy spell in the West, but the Wildlife Alliance says lately its started getting wildly popular in Asias malls. This, of course, means more civets, and even less humane farming practices. PETA and other groups have protested their mistreatment before, but the Wildlife Alliance suggests Asias new consumers arent that concerned and in fact happily pay a premium because they think the drink carries special powers (much like ginseng, rhino horn, or shark fin supposedly do). Beans can be foraged from civets in the wild a process that sounds impossibly painstaking but producers who are desperate just capture them with metal traps that Wildlife Alliance founder Suwanna Gauntlett calls walls of death because they sever limbs. Captured civets are force-fed beans using a technique similar to the one used for foie gras. The big difference, though, is that civets are getting caffeine, and once theyre hopped up, they tend to pace their cages and gnaw at stuff, including their own limbs. As a result, they can have pretty short lifespans. Civets arent endangered just yet, but Wildlife Alliance says theyre being poached so fast that theyll soon become vulnerable demand will soon outrun the natural supply. Gauntlett now straight-up tells people, Please do not buy weasel coffee or kopi luwak, but thats also the general consensus among people who have everyone from Jay Leno to Washington Post food critic Tim Carman has practically spat the stuff out. [USAT] watchOS 2.2 is now available for download. Owners of the Apple Watch can update with the latest software version, which makes switching between watches easier than before. Up until now, users with more than one watch had to unpair and then pair again with the other one. Now, the procedure is more streamlined. Apple also updated the Maps app on the Watch. Launching it now gives you a menu screen with shortcuts buttons, similarly to Google Maps. Another change is support for system language in Catalan, Croatian, Sloval, Romanian and Ukranian. There's also new support for dictation in Catalan, Croatian, Sloval, Romanian and Ukranian. The last slight change is the increased frequency of background heart rate measurements when you're stationary. You can download the watchOS 2.2 right away from the Watch app on the iPhone. Via Haiti - Social : 42% of the Haitian population has no access to drinking water As part of World Water Day, celebrated this Tuesday, March 22, the UN in Haiti reiterate their support for the country in its efforts to improve access of the population to safe drinking water and sanitation and alert to the fact that 42% of the Haitian population still lacks access to safe drinking water. Regarding sanitation, the UN welcomes the increase of 18% to 28% of percentage of population with access to improved sanitation between 1990 and 2015. However, still 7.6 million Haitians lack essential facilities for good health and the prevention of waterborne diseases. According to recent studies by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF), in Haiti, the death rate in children under 5 is 88 per 1,000 children . Water scarcity and water-borne diseases are among the leading causes of death and worsening child malnutrition, causing a hindrance to their intellectual and physical development. The United Nations Country Team and the Minustah stressed that universal access to safe water and sanitation is a critical development challenge in Haiti. This right is recognized as a fundamental right by the United Nations General Assembly since 2010 and priority in the agenda of Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). In this regard, the UN supports Haiti's efforts to develop a national policy on water and sanitation and to reform the legal framework based on the rights of citizens to have access to public water services and sanitation. Moreover, the UN said that women, girls and young children are most affected by lack of access to clean water in a context where about 56% of the population needs more than 30 minutes walk to get water, a task predominantly conducted by children and women. Women are also more vulnerable to lack of water which causes impact on reproductive health and maternity. Finally note that safe access to water is limited to 35% of the population living in urban areas (1.7 million of the 5 million people living in urban areas) and the risk of waterborne diseases remains high because of the population concentration. Access to clean water is even more limited in rural areas (48%) and also among the most vulnerable, including displaced people living in extreme poverty and those affected by the migration issue with the Dominican Republic. HL/ HaitiLibre Haiti - Politic : The Security Council is following closely the situation in Haiti Friday, March 18 in New York, members of the Security Council, in a press statement, expressed their deep concern regarding the continued suspension of electoral rounds in Haiti and called for the completion of the electoral cycle without further delay to allow the Haitian people the opportunity to vote for their elected representatives in a free, fair, inclusive and transparent contest. The members of the Security Council noted the 5 February political accord, which provided a Haitian-led and owned road map for the swift conclusion of the current electoral cycle and strongly urged all relevant actors in Haiti to adhere to the accord and implement its provisions within the agreed timeline, and underscored the importance of formally reinstituting the Provisional Electoral Council in this regard. The members of the Security Council further noted the increasing number of challenges Haiti faces which can only be effectively resolved through close coordination between a democratically-elected government and Haitis international partners. The members of the Security Council reiterated their strong condemnation of any attempt to destabilize the electoral process, in particular through violence, and urged all candidates, their supporters, political parties and other political actors to remain calm, refrain from violence or any action that can further disrupt the electoral process and political stability, and to resolve any electoral disputes through constructive engagement and the appropriate legal mechanisms and for the Government of Haiti to hold those responsible for any violence accountable. The members of the Security Council expressed their intention to continue to follow closely the situation in Haiti. HL/ HaitiLibre Haiti - NOTICE : A Konsila Mobil is expected to Tampa The Consulate of the Republic of Haiti in Orlando inform the Haitian Community of Central Florida, that in order to better serve the community, a service "Konsila Mobil" is planned in Tampa March 30, 2016 from 9h00 a.m. to 3h00 p.m. to Haitian SDA Church Bethany located at 10401 N. Florida Ave Tampa, FL 33612. During that day, in addition to consular services such as passport, extract archive, mandate and other legal services, the Consulate will provide with various partners, free assistance to Haitian requiring legal and medical consultation. Please download the list of documents required for obtaining the above services : https://www.haitilibre.com/docs/pieces-requise-et-services.pdf For additional information : Contact the Consulate at 407-897-1262. Easter, Consulate opening hours : The Consulate will be closed Thursday, March 24 at noon, Friday 25 and Saturday, March 26, 2016 all day. The activities at the Consulate will resume Monday, March 28, 2016 from 9:00 a.m. HL/ HaitiLibre Haiti - Environment : Action Project Against Desertification As of that Tuesday, March 22 through Thursday, the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Haiti in conjunction with the Ministry of Environment, organizes to Jeremie, in the conference room of the Hotel Sarah, a capacity assessment workshop and of priority of the need for capacity building, as part of the project Action Against Desertification (ACD), funded by the European Union to the tune of 2 million euros in 5 communes of the Department of Grand'Anse (Bonbon, Abricots, Jeremie, Moron and Dame-Marie). This workshop aims to identify existing capabilities and capacities for all stakeholders involved in the planning, the implementation and monitoring and evaluation of natural resource management actions and the fight against desertification. It also aims to prioritize needs in capacity building in the project Action Against Desertification. The event will bring together 40 participants, including government and non-governmental actors involved in the management of natural resources, watershed management and sustainable land management, such as officials of the Ministries of Environment, the Agriculture, Planning and external Cooperation, the Interior and Territorial Communities, the Interministerial Committee for Regional Development, the National Geospatial Information Centre; Representatives of decentralized structures of the ministries involved in the Grand'Anse department; Representatives of local communities and authorities concerned with the project ACD (Mayors and CASECs of communes of intervention); leaders of NGOs; leaders of civil society (women's groups); and the representatives of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Learn more about the ACD Project : The Action Against Desertification project launched in August 2015 to support the implementation of the National Action Plan in Fiji and Haiti, and South-South cooperation in the African, Caribbean and Pacific ( ACP), funded by the European Union, working in Haiti in 5 communes of the Grand'Anse department over a 48 month period (August 2015-February 2019). It aims to develop sustainable management models of natural resources, of land management and support for family farming focusing on good agricultural practices, including erosion control, agroforestry and diversification of the agricultural production in order to increase farmers' income and enhance the role of fruit and forest trees in local agriculture. HL/ HaitiLibre Haiti - News : Zapping politics... Jocelerme Privert met with Sandra Honore The day after the rejection of the General Policy of the Prime Minister named https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-16930-haiti-flash-the-general-policy-statement-is-rejected.html , President a.i. Jocelerme Privert met in closed session at the National Palace with Sandra Honore, the Special Representative of the Secretary General of the UN and civilian Head of MINUSTAH. Nothing has filtered of this meeting. The Senator Lareche wants a new PM After the rejection of the General Policy of the Prime Minister Jean, Senator Ronald Laeche, Vice President of the Senate request the implementation of Article 158 of the Constitution which implies that we must name another Prime minister. See also : https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-16933-haiti-politic-privert-should-appoint-a-new-pm-or-not.html The election date will not be met Rosny Desroches, Executive Director of the Civil Society Initiative (ISC), believes that with the worsening of the political situation, the date set for the holding of elections on 24 April 2016, will no longer be respected. The G33 disappointed... The Deputy Jerry Tardieu, President of the G33, the Parliamentary Group at the Listening of the People (GPEP), expressed his disappointment following the rejection by the lower house of the General Policy of Fritz-Alphonse Jean. According to him Parliament had pledged in the agreement of 6 February 2016 to approve the general policy statement of the Prime Minister https://www.haitilibre.com/en/news-16533-haiti-politic-the-details-of-the-agreement-from-a-to-z.html Following the rejection of the general policy, he announced that the various blocs in parliament will work together to determine the next steps to enable the country to get a new Government. Me Samuel Madistin accuses Privert Me Samuel Madistin, Spokesperson of the G-8, points to theprovisional president Jocelerme Privert he accuses of maneuvers to not meet deadlines of the agreement of 6 February, reporting a fierce struggle between two camps for the control of power. INITE and MOPOD call for the resumption of consultations... The day before Sunday's ratification session, Paul Denis, Adviser for INITE had appealed for a compromise that go beyond the agreement of 6 February, which obviously was not heard. Following this failure, Paul Denis and Jean Andre Victor of MOPOD, are calling for the resumption of political consultations for the designation as soon as possible of a new Prime minister. HL/ HaitiLibre Published on 2016/03/22 | Source 'The Descendants of the Sun' Song Joong-ki's throwback photos from his college years are drawing attention again. Advertisement Song Joong-ki was accepted to the Business Administration major at Sungkyunkwan University in 2005. He is smart and intelligent with broad background knowledge. For example, when he was a second year student at the university, Song Joong-ki went on KBS' quiz show, 'Quiz Korea' and won the second place. During his third year, he signed up for an acting academy without much plan because he wanted to become an actor. After seven month training, he worked as an extra. Even before he debuted, he was already famous as Sungkyunkwan ulzzang (goo-looking face) online. He appeared in Mnet's 'Flowerboy Arongsate', a TV program featuring non-celebrities. He also was preparing for government exam for journalist to become an anchor before he debuted. The images that are drawing attention again are from the promotional booklet published by Sungkyunkwan University, 2009, when he was working as a cover model for his university. His bright, clean skin and the pure and cute expression on his face haven't changed at all until now. Harlow is a former New Town in Essex with a population of 86,000. Located in the upper Stort Valley, it was built in the decades after the Second World War to ease overcrowding and London and provide homes for people bombed out during the Blitz. It includes Britain's first pedestrian precinct and first modern residential tower block, The Lawn. Old Harlow, the historic part of the town, was mentioned in the Domesday Book. David and Victoria Beckham's former home, Rowneybury House, nicknamed 'Beckingham Palace', is nearby. 20:37, 21 OCT 2022 BP and Statoil withdraw staff from Algerian plants after attack BP and Statoil will withdraw staff from two gas plants in Algeria after a terrorist attack on one of the joint sites the companies run with Algerian state hydrocarbon company Sonatrach on March 18. The rocket attack on the Krechba gas plant in In Salah caused no casualties or damage, and Al Qaeda's North Africa branch later claimed responsibility for the attack. Stock image Algeria's energy infrastructure has been heavily protected by the army, especially since a 2013 attack on the In Amenas gas plant, also operated by BP and Statoil, during which 40 predominantly expatriate oil workers were killed. "BP has decided to undertake a phased temporary relocation of all its staff from the In Salah Gas and In Amenas JVs in Algeria over the next two weeks. This decision has been taken as a precautionary measure," the British company said in a statement. Statoil said it would also withdraw staff from the In Salah and In Amenas plants, together with staff from its operations centre at Hassi Messaoud. "It will happen over the next few weeks. Those who are on rotation now will not be replaced when they finish their shifts," a spokesman for the Norwegian company said. Sonatrach will maintain gas output after the BP and Statoil staff leave, the Algerian company said. The Krechba site produces 2 billion cubic metres of gas a year, and fields in the region of In Salah produce around 9 billion cubic metres. An Algerian security source who did not want to be identified told Reuters on March 20 that four terrorists were killed and three others wounded by the army in In Salah. This group were thought to have been involved in the attack on the plant, he said. The Algerian defence ministry has not yet confirmed the operation. As Australian tech companies battle for top talent amidst a growing skills shortage, many employers are beefing up their international recruitment campaigns. But in a world ever-hungry for tech geniuses, how can employers attract talent to Australias shores? According to software developer Atlassian, getting your companys brand out there and promoting work and lifestyle benefits to prospective employees is key to success. Especially if it involves taking to the streets of Europe in a VW Kombi van touting an Atlassian-branded surfboard with the sign: Were Hiring. HC Online sits down with Head of APAC recruiting Caitriona Staunton for a sneak peek at Atlassians winning international recruitment strategies. Staunton says Australia is host to some world class tech talent but theres simply not enough of it to keep up with growing demand. We just don't have people in the technology industry with ten plus years' experience in the numbers that we need - as the industry is still relatively new here, Staunton told HC Online. So we look overseas in Silicon Valley, Europe and other tech hotspots, and relocate them to Sydney, she says. The hunt for UX Designers the most in-demand professionals in Australias tech scene saw Atlassians recruitment team turn their sights to the European market. We called it our 'UX Surfers' campaign and the goal was to land five User Experience (or UX) Designers in 5 days, Staunton says. So while we had successfully hired some world-class Designers within our own shores - we knew we needed to couple that with an international hiring campaign to keep up with the demand. They chose four European cities with a strong supply of UX talent; London, Amsterdam, Berlin and Stockholm. Now as a Talent brand we hadnt really talked about UX in Europe before, so we needed a big bang campaign idea to really get that group of people to sit up and notice us as a great place for Designers to work, Staunton says. Their campaign 'hook' was the Atlassian HQ's location - Sydney along with the hiring tagline 'We're seeking Design Thinkers, Talented Tinkerers and Wannabe Surfers to join us in the sunshine of Australia'. Before their interview team flew to Europe, Atlassian ran an online advertising campaign with that tagline to warm up their target UX audience. We took that surfing idea to the next level once we landed in Europe - tying an Atlassian branded surfboard to a VW Kombi van and driving it around the streets of Europe with the message that we were hiring! Staunton says. Coupled with interview spaces in funky venues branded in Atlassian swag, the team also harnessed the power of social media to allow people to follow their tour of Europe. As tech companies continue to battle it out for the best in Australias home-grown talent, Atlassian says its beefing up its domestic and international recruiting strategies. We're really proud of the new relocation program we just created called 'Move Happy' - which gives our international candidates a high touch, personalised relocation experience that covers everything from flights to temporary housing, tax consultations, furniture and vehicle shipping, destination services and personalised welcome gifts, Staunton says. She says Atlassian employees undergo a rigorous hiring process, consisting of a mix of practical assessments and face-to-face or video interviews. This is particularly important to get right with overseas hiring - as the consequences of a mis-hire are so much greater for the employee and the company when the person has made such a life-changing move. A Toll worker who was sacked for making racist slurs against his Afghan colleague will be reinstated to his job after a second review by Fair Work Commission found that his employer didnt follow fair process when dismissing him from his role. Toll appealed the FWCs earlier decision to reinstate the employee, who was sacked in February 2015. Commissioner Michelle Bissett said Toll had failed to take formal disciplinary action to ensure the worker was fully aware that his conduct would not be tolerated. Although Tolls policies made clear "what is tolerable, this is undermined if such behaviour continues to be tolerated by inaction or mild rebuke", the commissioner said the worker's behaviour should have been reported to more senior management in late 2014 before his dismissal in February last year. The Toll employee was fired for allegedly making racist, sectarian and inappropriate remarks to an Afghan co-worker. He allegedly asked his co-worker if he was from the Taliban and made offensive comments about Islamic State. "Does Islam say to kill? ... I enjoy seeing people having their heads cut off, do you enjoy it too?" he was alleged to have asked his colleague, who is of Middle Eastern heritage. In the initial FWC hearing, Commissioner Bernie Riordan said that while the employees conduct was inappropriate, Toll had failed to provide a final warning for persistent and unacceptable conduct. Riordan also said Toll's investigation and disciplinary processes had been flawed. Toll appealed Commissioner Riordans judgment, saying he had failed to take into account that the employee's misconduct was a "pattern of unacceptable behaviour". In the second FWC hearing earlier this month, Commissioner Bissett said Tolls decision to sack the worker was severe, because they had failed to give proper prior warnings. Bisset said she had also considered the 58-year-old worker's service, age and the impact of his sacking and found the effect of his dismissal was severe in that he was the sole earner for his family and also the carer for an elderly father. "In all of these circumstances and after careful consideration, I am satisfied that the decision to terminate [the worker's] employment was harsh for the personal consequences of it for him and because of the severity of the punishment when little has been done with respect to his past behaviours," the commissioner was reported saying in Fairfax Media. "Whilst I do not say that Toll condone the behaviour of [the worker], I consider that the decision to dismiss is severe given the absence of any earlier sanctions, she said. "In circumstances where the personal effect of the decision to terminate employment had not been so severe, my decision may well have been different." However, Commissioner Bissett said the worker and those who had supported him "should not feel vindicated by my decision" and racist conduct should be called out. "Employees engaging in such conduct must be warned that the conduct is not acceptable and further conduct of that type may lead to dismissal," Commissioner Bissett says. She said the hurtful comments "could not, in anyone's view, be considered a joke". Weekly Events at Lost Province Brewing Co. Monday March 21 Family Night-Buy any regularly priced pizza and receive one free kids meal. Wednesday March 23 Off Beer and Wine Specials. 7pm-9pm Trivia Night: Beginning at 7pm, Lost Province will be hosting Trivia Night with John Fortenberry. Compete on your own or on a team! The competition gets started at 7pm so come a little early for a pizza and a pint and get your seat! Thursday March 24 $3.00 Thursday-$3.00 pints on all Lost Province brewed beers (except high gravity). 6:30pm-The Bartered Bride, ASU Opera, will be performing a few selections to promote the upcoming opera production at Rosen Concert Hall: 3/31/16-4/3/16. 7-10pm College Night featuring Live Music with Alba agus Erinn. Alba agus Erinn is a celtic band that has its origins at Appalachian State University. The band covers a variety of music in the Celtic genre from the traditions of Scotland and Ireland. This music is sure to bring the Gael out in everyone. The band is comprised of John Carson on Guitar, Cassidy Nooner on Guitar, Miranda Stone on Bodhran, Luke Taylor on Whistle, and Shane Watson on Fiddle. Friday March 25 Tapped at 5pm, we feature something fun and new every Friday. Get it while it lasts; there is only a limited amount! 7:30pm-Closing Live Music: The Analog Poets. Dedicated to providing Flow and Harmony thru Music, the Analog Poets are comprised of Dustin Hofsess- Guitar, Jonathan Priest- Drums, and Ben McPherron- Bass. Saturday March 26 7:30pm-Closing Live Music: The Klee and Mike Show. The Klee & Mike Show is an acoustic duo featuring Klee Liles on guitar and vocals and Michael Robertson on percussion and vocals. Having played together for over 20 years, Klee and Michael have a built a huge repertoire of pop/rock songs ranging from well-known to obscure, from both artists you know and love and performers you may not know quite as well. Sunday March 27 Closed for Easter Watauga Library to Close March 25 for Easter, Reopen March 26 The Watauga County Public Library will be closed on Friday, March 25th for the Easter Holiday. The library will be open on Saturday, March 26th from 9-5. Republican Women to Meet March 30 in Boone The Watauga County Republican Womens Club (WCRWC) will have its next monthly meeting on Wednesday, March 30th at the Sagebrush Steakhouse in Boone, NC. The meeting will begin at noon. All interested in furthering the Republican cause in The High Country are welcome to attend and are invited to join. Call 828-295-9020 for more information. The WCRWC meets the last Wednesday of each month. (There is no meeting if schools are cancelled due to weather.) April Programs at Elk Knob State Park Star Party Join us for our 4th annual Statewide Star Party on Saturday, April 9th! Come enjoy the dark skies of Elk Knob. We will use the parks 8 Celestron telescope to enhance viewing of celestial objects. If you have a pair of binoculars, please bring them. It is likely to be cold at this time of year so dress appropriately for the weather. In the event of inclement weather, we will move inside the park office and use Stellarium so the weather wont spoil the fun. Meet at the park office at 6:00 p.m. For more information, please call 828-297-7261. Wildflower Hike If you missed them in the piedmont or just love spring ephemerals, come out to Elk Knob to see the first flowers of spring. Meet at the trailhead parking lot on Sunday, April 24rd at 2 p.m. Free Autism Day Camp Set for April 15-17 at Camp Sky Ranch Camp Crinkleroot, a free day camp April 15-17, is recruiting campers ages 8-14 with autism spectrum disorders. The retreat will be held at the Camp Sky Ranch facility in Blowing Rock. It will be staffed by trained Appalachian State University volunteers. Camp Crinkleroot is a program sponsored by Appalachians Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina Institute for Health and Human Services within the Beaver College of Health Sciences. It provides parents and caretakers with free respite care, offers children on the autism spectrum the opportunity to participate in typical camp activities that have been modified for their specific needs and celebrates April as autism awareness month. Siblings of campers are also invited to attend and will participate in all camp activities as well as special camp activities designed for them. Children will have one-on-one supervision and be encouraged to take part in expressive arts and nature activities, field games, smores making and other camp fun. Applications are due by April 1. Availability is limited to 15 campers. Parents and caregivers interested in participating in this program should contact Mary Sheryl Horine at [email protected] to receive a camp application and information or visithttp://www.ihhs.appstate.edu/community/crinkleroot. Gospel Singing WHAT: Watauga County Gospel Singing WHERE: Mabel Baptist Church Old US Highway 421 Zionville, NC WHEN: March 26, 2016 7:00 p.m. CONTACT: Clint Cornett 828-297-3270 Neil Oliver 828-297-3653 Share this: Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Reddit Pocket On March 22, 2016, Oscar Martin Cook III, 32, plead guilty to one count of first-degree murder and one count of second-degree murder in the deaths of Ronald Buchanan and Brandy Rose. Mr. Buchanan and Ms. Rose were found unresponsive at a residence on Summer Haven St. in Newland on Dec. 29, 2013. The victims later succumbed to their injuries after being transported to the hospital. Autopsies later showed that both Mr. Buchanan and Ms. Rose died from injuries sustained from blows to their heads and bodies. Investigators determined that Mr. Cook had inflicted those fatal wounds on the victims in this case. Superior Court Judge Michael D. Duncan sentenced Mr. Cook life in prison without the possibility of parole. This is such a tragic case for the Buchanan and Rose families and for our community as a whole, said District Attorney Seth Banks. Their violent and senseless deaths have rocked Avery County. For Oscar Cook, this sentence marks the end of a long and violent criminal career. Our hearts and prayers go out to the families whose lives have been irreparably broken. I appreciate the hard work of Assistant District Attorney Matt Rupp, the efforts of the Newland Police Department and the Avery County Sheriffs Office, and the work of the SBI in helping to bring closure to the victims families. Share this: Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Reddit Pocket By Jessica Isaacs | [email protected] Models of all ages graced the stage at Sundays High South Wedding Expo during a fashion show in the Boone Mall, each one showcasing a featured design in formalwear from Souths Specialty Clothiers. Bridal gowns, tuxedos, flower girl dresses and mother of the bride dresses were shown throughout the afternoon, giving the engaged couples and other guests in the audience a chance to check out what Souths has to offer this wedding season. Souths Fashion Show Carolyn Brown, store manager at Souths, said theres a big difference in the way a dress looks on the hanger and the way it looks when its worn. In a show you get to see how each one flatters the body. Its really important that a style meets a womans shape, and thats sometimes hard to see in the store, said Brown. They might see the dress as being pretty, but until they see it on a person they cant see how it helps accentuate certain things that other dresses do not. I have always said that a dress will never tell its story on a hanger like it will when its on the body. More than 20 models walked across a stage styled by A Bushel and a Peck Vintage Rentals and then out into the mall to show off their looks. Bridal designs featured popular designers and collections like Allure Bridals, Mori Lee, Stella York and Casablanca. Prom looks included collections from Sheri Hill, Rachel Allen, Elise Designs, Mori Lee, Sean and Blush. The guys sported tuxedos from Jims Formalwear, some from the Michael Kors collection. Brown said the show was an important part of the expo because it gave each guest a chance to see several different styles in one afternoon, all while they were shopping other vendors and making plans for their upcoming events. It gave them an opportunity to see the dresses on someone, and how much prettier they are versus when theyre hanging on a rack in the bridal store, she said. Shortly after the show, Anna and Devin Ulery were on hand with Boone Photo Booth to capture some super fun moments with the all-dolled-up bridal and prom models. Learn more about Souths at southsclothiers.com or check it out in the mall. Share this: Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Reddit Pocket This article is reviewed by a team of registered dietitians and medical doctors with extensive, practical clinical and public health experience. All articles are produced independently. When you click our links for purchasing products, we earn an affiliate commission. Learn more about how we earn revenue by reading our advertise disclaimer. Ritual Prenatal Multivitamin An enjoyable experience with the noteworthy cit rus Its a reasonably price ($30 each container) Utilized science-based ingredients Future Kind+ Vegan Prenatal Multivitamin Vegan-friendly, gluten-free, and non-GMO. Can use for preconception, pregnancy & lactation Contains Iron, Folate, Omega-3, and more Beli Prenatal Multivitamin Can be used by both men and women Keto-friendly, gluten-free, allergen-free, soy-free, and non-GMO. 30-day money-back guarantee first month 15% Off Coupon: HEALTHCANAL A prenatal vitamin is a processed supplement that contains all of the recommended minerals and vitamins to ensure a healthy pregnancy. The levels of both minerals and vitamins are appropriate for those trying to conceive, those who are pregnant, and those who are breastfeeding. Each prenatal vitamin contains a dose of essential nutrients, including folic acid or folate, choline, iron, Vitamin D, and calcium. Its almost impossible to find all these nutrients in the levels needed from a single diet; thats why a prenatal vitamin is more than necessary. As with all multivitamins, prenatal supplements come in different forms, including liquids, gummies, soft gels, and capsules. Each type has its good side and its bad side. Gummies, for instance, have a good taste and are easier to ingest, but theyre iron deficient. A high-quality OTC (over-the-counter) supplement could be equally effective as a prescription alternative based on your average nutritional requirements. Its advisable for women to try out different supplements before settling for the one that doesnt have adverse effects like constipation or nausea. When Do You Need Prenatal Vitamins? The best time to start incorporating prenatal supplements is before conception for all women of childbearing age, not on birth control. The folate content greatly lowers the risks of neural tube conditions such as spina bifida. A fetuss neural tube develops into the spinal cord and the brain within the first month of pregnancy. Spine formation in the womb occurs even before you notice youre expectant. Thus, folate is essential for the babys neural tube development. Thats why most specialists recommend that you start taking supplements as soon as you notice youre pregnant. Others will recommend that you begin consumption at least a month or two before pregnancy. A study[1] from 2016 showed that a whopping 45 percent of pregnancies within the US are unintended. Taking prenatal vitamins at least three months before pregnancy will prevent a host of problems such as preterm labor, congenital defects, miscarriages, and so on. Keep taking prenatal vitamins post-delivery, more specifically when breastfeeding. You dont need to take prenatal vitamins if youre not expectant and youre on birth control. When To Start Taking Prenatal Vitamins? If youre pregnant, its not too late to start taking prenatal vitamins. However, its strongly recommended that you begin taking prenatal vitamins the moment you find out youre expecting to provide important vitamins for good nutrition for a healthy pregnancy. Pregnant women require a relatively higher amount of vitamins and minerals as they support their developing fetus. Theres no specific time of day for taking prenatal vitamins. When you remember to take your vitamins, simply do it without fail. Your body will still absorb all the nutrients from the supplements regardless of when you take them. However, for optimum absorption with the least side effects, take it with a meal[2]. The Line Up At A Glance The 7 Best Prenatal Vitamins for Pregnancy Ritual Prenatal Multivitamin See Ritual Reviews Promotes brain health via these key nutrients: folate, choline, and Omega-3 DHA Vegan Gluten-free Promotes bone support through its Magnesium, K2, and D3 content. Non-GMO Fairly easy to digest, and swallow. Zero synthetic ingredients Extravagantly expensive compared to most other brands. Theyre a subscription service, meaning that you need to wait until the next month if your supply runs out. Ritual supplements were established by Katerina Schneider. It began with a couple of dietary supplements and later on expanded to incorporate vitamins for kids, teens, women, and men. With Ritual prenatal vitamins, youre assured of almost-instant results. This is due to the highest quality of traceable ingredients in each capsule. Theyre regarded as traceable because the manufacturers can share their suppliers, the kinds of nutrient forms they use, the dosages, and other important information you may want to know. Ritual Vitamins are void of all the nine allergens. Theyre also 100% vegan and gluten-free. Beli Prenatal Multivitamin 15% Off Coupon: HEALTHCANAL See Beli Reviews Overwhelming positive online reviews. Free shipping within the US. Both men and women can benefit from pre-and post-natal vitamins. Keto-friendly, gluten-free, allergen-free, soy-free, vegan, and non-GMO. 30-day money-back guarantee on the first months purchase. They do not ship outside the US. Can only be bought via the brands online store. Beli vitamin supplements may help improve fertility, embryo development, and the formation of the babys central nervous system in women. The Belibaby pills are designed to be easily digestible and have a minty smell to keep new moms from feeling nauseated. High-quality iron, methylation folate, B vitamins, and TRAACS minerals are all included. All of these substances are good for your stomach. Choline, essential for a babys brain and spinal cord development, is the key element in Belibaby womens formula. Folate, magnesium, iron, and zinc are among the other components. The flagship ingredient in the Belibaby for Men mix is shilajit, an adaptogen demonstrated to boost sperm count and overall sperm quality. Zinc, vitamin D, vitamin E, and folate are among the nutrients found in this keto-friendly, gluten-free, allergen-free, vegan, non-GMO vitamin. Care/of Prenatal See Care/of Reviews Promotes easy digestion with its organic yeast content and unique design Highly convenient services. Fairly convenient services Each capsule contains a naturally occurring folate, e.g., methylfolate Their health claims may be [3] unreliable or misleading unreliable or misleading Inaccurate shipping and orders Care/Of is a splendid option for ladies who want a personalized nutrient plan. Prior to gaining access to their services, Care/Of will present you with a fun and relatively interactive quiz that theyll use to draft vitamin pill packs specifically for you. Unlike other prenatal vitamins, Care/Of gives you special capsules complete with 22 key nutrients that will benefit you and your unborn baby. Trustpilot gives Care/Of an impressive 4.6 out of 5 stars. The moment you place an order of Care/Of Vitamins, you get 30 days worth of supplements. Care/Of understands that their products are not scientifically proven, and they try to be as open as possible about it to their customers. Persona Prenatal Vitamin See Persona Reviews Certified nutritionists are always on call to answer your queries The organic ginger content helps to relieve your nausea Zero animal testing Gluten-free, non-GMO Programs are 100% customizable Zero artificial colors and chemical-based fillers No third-party testing Eight Better Business[4] Bureau Complaints in the past three years Persona was established in 2016 and had an exceptional 4.3 out of 5 stars rating on TrustPilot. The Persona vitamin pack is designed to cater to all your health needs. The team behind this extraordinary supplement is strongly determined to promote good health and well-being for anyone who uses their products. Persona is founded on four core values: Education, Care, Personalization, and Transparency. Persona Nutrition frees you from the stress and confusion that comes with buying prenatal vitamins. They do the research, the sourcing, the packaging and oversee the delivery to your doorstep. The best part about their packaging is how personal they are. They may include a handwritten note along with other heartwarming gestures. Mama Bird AM/PM Prenatal Multi+ See Best Nest Wellness Reviews Extensively researched Extremely easy to digest. Attractive scent No discernible taste It contains a high vitamin concentration Considerably expensive compared to most other brands. Youve probably bumped into this brand plenty of times in the supermarket or pharmacy. Mama Bird is the best organic, vegan-friendly prenatal vitamin alternative for consumers who dont want anything fancy or costly. Mama Bird Prenatal Multi+ contains an impressive variety of pro-vegan nutrients in a single dosage. Its composed of ingredients such as calcium, iodine, iron, zinc, choline, and a wide host of vitamins, including Vitamin A, B12, D, and D3. When nutrients are in the right amounts, prenatal multivitamins are essential for a healthy baby and mom. The rich blend of probiotics, pregnancy-friendly botanicals, and digestive enzymes set it aside from the rest. All these work together to alleviate nausea symptoms. Another reason to buy a bottle of Mama Bird is its methyl folate content. Its a type of folic acid in naturally occurring form and of higher bioavailability (7x that of folic acid[5]) than synthetic folic acid. It is packed in dosages of 600 mcg in each pill. Garden of Life Prenatal Multi Shop Amazon See Garden of Life Reviews Superb list of ingredients (folate, Vitamin D3, C, K, Zinc, Calcium, etc.) Offers 30-day money-back guarantee Prevents nausea with a special combination of peppermint and ginger Zero artificial preservatives. Excellent customer support Exceptional taste. You need to take a gummy thrice a day, which may be a problem to remember. Fairly expensive. Garden of life contains a total of 27 whole-food ingredients. Each nutrient is fully vegetarian, gluten-free, and dairy-free. This prenatal vitamin is perfect for ladies with diet restrictions or allergies. Garden of Life is great, but it still lacks some vital vitamins (e.g., choline) that are common among other prenatal vitamins. This makes it crucial for the pregnant woman to continue with a balanced diet full of calcium-rich foods if she chooses this daily prenatal vitamin. Each bottle of Garden of Life Raw Prenatal contains 180 gummies. You dont have to worry about consuming Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) or toxins since all the ingredients are certified organic. Garden of Lifes prenatal formula is perfect for ladies who are trying to conceive or breastfeed their newborn. Garden of Life doesnt cause that annoying stomach upset thats associated with most other varieties. Nature Made Prenatal Multivitamin Shop Amazon See Nature Made Reviews Widely available in most grocery shops Contains zero preservatives, flavors, and artificial colors Reasonably priced Wide variety of vitamins Easy to swallow Attractive packaging Only available in most parts of the US. Nature-made is one of the best prenatal vitamins with Docosahexaenoic Acid( DHA). Its a fairly affordable brand that incorporates DHA (a type of healthy fat found in salmon, cod, and other types of fish) with a host of other essential ingredients like iron, folic acid, and all the eight B vitamins, as well as the fat-soluble vitamins. This unique combination of high-quality ingredients works together to give the best in terms of prenatal care. If you pass up seafood meals often for fear of throwing up or fear of feeling nauseous, Nature Made Prenatal is just for you. A single bottle contains 90 soft gels, which are fully packed with high folic acid and the recommended 200 milligrams of DHA. The high DHA content helps in brain development. Their simple form also makes them easy to swallow and digest. Whats more, they dont have the same fishy taste as most prenatal vitamins with DHA. Pink Stork Total Prenatal Vitamin Shop Amazon See Pink Stork Reviews High-quality ingredients Helps with nausea and morning sickness Non-GMO and gluten-friendly. Vegan-friendly. Tested by third-party labs. The rich iron content gives it a metallic taste. And finally, we have Pink Stork. If youre not so much into tablet prenatal, try out a liquid prenatal supplement instead. What better option than Pink Stork? You can consume it on its own, or you could add it to a juice or soft drink. We recommend the latter since it has a fairly strong taste when taken on its own. Similar to all the ingredients on this list, Pink Stork offers all the critical nutrients needed for a healthy pregnancy. In fact, it promises the complete daily requirements of the most essential nutrients. Pink Stork is vegan-friendly, gluten-free, and non-GMO. The brand claims the iron content in this supplement is non-constipating. How To Choose The Best Prenatal Pills? Ingredients This should be the first and most important feature to look out for when purchasing prenatal vitamins. Seek out a prenatal vitamin that contains iron (18 milligrams) and folic acid of approximately 600 and 800 micrograms. The RDA (Recommended Dietary Allowance) for iron for expectant mothers stands at 27 milligrams. Youre more likely to meet your needs faster if you take iron-rich foods and supplement them with a high-quality prenatal vitamin. Types of Pills Prenatal vitamins come in four forms: liquids, gummies, capsules, and tablets. Be clear on the dosage before deciding which ones best for you. Keep in mind that the one you pick will be the only kind you take for the whole month. Its important to note that gummies (and other vitamins) dont often include all the critical elements that are needed to see you through your pregnancy. That means you need to go for liquid or tablet prenatal vitamins for the full effect. Third-Party Testing Since the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has zero control of vitamin content, its difficult to determine the accuracy of the ingredients promoted by different companies. One of the best ways to ensure the prenatal vitamins youve purchased are worth your buck is to check if the firm conducts third-party testing. Third-party verification assurances show that a company is sure of its doses and contents. They shouldnt mind if further research is done on them in such a case. Cost Most ladies might go for a highly-priced supplement with the assurance that theyre spending on a high-quality product. Unfortunately, thats not always the case. Sometimes, generic brands are just as good as popular kinds. If you really have to go for the costly kinds, ensure you have insurance that will cater to the hefty costs. What Ingredients Are Included in Prenatal Vitamins? Iron Iron is critical for the healthy development of the fetus and the placenta. It also helps in multiplying the number of red blood cells in the mother. Expectant mothers should take approximately 30 milligrams[6] per day of iron supplements to stave off iron-deficiency anemia. Folic Acid Folic acid plays a critical role in the development of the fetus brain and spinal cord, and it also helps to keep it safe from neural tube defectsthe CDC advocates for the consumption of 400 micrograms[7] of folic acid among expectant women. Folic acid is also necessary for the formation of healthy red blood cells and in the prevention of anemia. By taking methylated folate, you may bypass the enzymatic defect in processing folic acid and thus avoid associated birth defects and have a better pregnancy outcome. Methylated folate is the natural form of folate found in foods, whereas folic acid is synthetic, and both forms are found in prenatal nutrients. Vitamin D and Calcium These two ingredients are essential in the formation of the fetus skeleton. Pregnant and lactating women should have about 800 milligrams[8] of calcium per day for healthy bone development. This amount should satisfy the needs of 50% of this population. The National Academy of Sciences recommends 1,000 mg of calcium per day for pregnant or lactating women. Pregnant or lactating women should get 600 IUs[9] or 15 micrograms of Vitamin D per day. Iodine Iodine aids in the functioning and development of the thyroid gland, and iodine deficiency may trigger hyperthyroidism in the baby or the mother. Pregnant or breastfeeding women should take[10] daily doses of iodine ranging between 220 and 290 mcg. Zinc A zinc deficiency often leads to slow growth, and a healthy supply of this nutrient aids in the normal development of your baby and increases its birth weight. Pregnant moms need 11 mg, and breastfeeding moms need 12 mg of zinc per day to protect the fetus or infants cognitive, physical, and immune development. Vitamin A Vitamin A ensures normal eye development, and a deficiency of this nutrient often leads to night blindness. Pregnant women must consume at least 770 mcg of Vitamin A every day. Other compounds to consider in a prenatal vitamin include Vitamin B12, docosahexaenoic acid (DHA), and omega-3 fatty acids. Your obstetrician-gynecologist (OB/GYN) should advise you on the way forward and recommend a suitable vitamin preparation. Final Thought Taking prenatal vitamins may increase[11] fertility and boost egg quality. There are lots to learn about them and huge decisions to make, but picking a quality prenatal vitamin should be your topmost priority. Prenatal supplements should in no way replace a healthy diet. They only ensure that you and the unborn baby are getting that extra vitamin boost for conventional growth and development. If youre not sure what prenatal vitamin you should take, stay in constant communication with your doctor. Frequently Asked Questions When Should I Start Taking Prenatal Vitamins? As soon as you confirm your pregnancy. Since the first few weeks are critical for your fetuss development and well-being, you need to supplement your diet with prenatal vitamins for all-around nutrition. It is wise for all women of childbearing age to take a prenatal multivitamin if they are not on birth control. What Time Should I Take Prenatal Vitamins? Theres no specific time for taking prenatal vitamins. Take them whenever you feel its convenient. If you get regular rounds of morning sickness, take the vitamins after a meal or later in the day. For optimum absorption and minimal side effects, however, take it with a meal. What are the Benefits of Prenatal Vitamins? Whether or not you eat healthily, prenatal vitamins should be an integral part of your diet. They help you to stay well-nourished and ensure the well-being of your growing fetus. Its worth noting that its still important to eat healthily and mindfully throughout the course of your pregnancy. How Should You Consume Prenatal Vitamins? Prenatal vitamins come in various forms and sizes. If you take the tablet form and you get stomach distress from it, try chewable or liquid supplements instead. However, since gummies are significantly deficient in iron, a vital nutrient, you may need additional supplementation. Why should the coordinator be a doctor? A nurse is crucial at the time to talk with relatives; but an intensivist is on the same level as a surgeon and will understand all the clinical questions. Our coordinators work directly within the intensive care unit (ICU), so that they can influence donation very early. 87% of our coordinators are intensivists but they can come from any other medical specialty. Presumed consent is very characteristic of southern European countries and informed consent is more common across northern Europe. But even with presumed consent, relatives are consulted and have the final say. Only in Singapore do they enforce presumed consent. According to Eurostat, those most in favour of donations are northern countries. But, once faced with a relatives death, how you conduct the interview matters much more than previous beliefs. Presumed consent doesnt necessarily lead to more donations. For instance, attempts to switch to presumed consent in Brazil led to a backlash against organ donations. Infectious disease specialist Daniel Lucey, MD, MPH, urges both surveillance for Zika and prospective studies to monitor for microcephaly and other neurologic disorders in West Africa, citing the close travel links with Cape Verde. The clinical presentation of ZIKV [Zika virus] infection, although extremely mild compared with typical Ebola virus disease, could cause initial confusion clinically because both can have fever, muscle and joint pain, red eyes, and rash, writes Lucey. If a patient with ZIKV infection were to raise initial concern about a potential Ebola virus infection, then a cascade of unnecessary medical, public health, societal, and political issues could be triggered. In February 2016, a World Health Organization risk assessment of the Zika virus in Africa placed Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea in either a high or moderate risk category. Lucey points out that critical information learned about Zika in the brief time since the report was issued warrants a change. He proposes three additions: (1) an explicit strong recommendation for prospective epidemiologic studies to monitor for microcephaly following every known ZIKV outbreak. ; (2) explicit discussion of the potential confusion in initial differentiation of the clinical presentations of ZIKV infection and (mild) Ebola virus disease; and (3) making available rapid PCR testing for ZIKV as soon as possible in 2016, especially in Guinea, Sierra Leone, and Liberia, as well as Guinea-Bissau. Lucey, an adjunct professor of Medicine at Georgetown University School of Medicine and senior scholar with the ONeill Institute for National and Global Health Law, spent several months in West Africa treating patients with Ebola in 2014. Bearing witness to the suffering caused by Ebola has led me to call for early action now for Zika and microcephaly in West Africa, as well as action against the panepidemic in the Americas, Lucey says. Source: Georgetown University Medical Center Fewer than one-tenth, or 7 per cent, of the 1,004 asylum seekers surveyed are on the other hand completely illiterate. More than one-quarter, or 27 per cent, of people who have registered as asylum seekers in Finland have participated in higher education programmes, according to a survey commissioned by the Ministry of Education and Culture. The asylum seekers who were interviewed for the survey over the first three months of the year represent a total of 32 different nationalities, with Iraqis making up by far the largest nationality group with a share of 66 per cent. The respondents similarly formed a male-dominated and relatively young group, with 90 per cent of them being men and 85 per cent being aged 1839 years. The sample is representative of all asylum seekers in Finland, Ulla-Jill Karlsson, a special adviser at the Ministry of Education and Culture, says in an interview with Helsingin Sanomat. More than one in seven, or 16 per cent, of the respondents indicated that they have completed a higher education degree, most commonly an undergraduate degree. Over two-thirds, or 69 per cent, of the respondents have completed 79 years of basic education, while 46 per cent of them have participated in upper secondary education and 14 per cent in vocational education. The Ministry of Education and Culture points out in a press release that the relative lack of asylum seekers with a background in vocational education may be attributable to the fact that manual occupations are learnt in practice in their countries of origin. Seven per cent of the respondents said they have no educational qualifications. Nine in ten of the respondents, meanwhile, indicated that they have previous work experience. More than one-quarter, or 27 per cent, of the respondents said they have previously worked as construction workers, construction painters, structural engineers or in other construction-related jobs. Over one-fifth, or 21 per cent, of respondents said they have worked as taxi, bus or lorry drivers, or in other transport sector jobs. The respondents have also gained work experience from the commercial, restaurant and hospitality, and arts, culture and communications sectors. Nearly one in five, or 19 per cent, of the respondents have previously been self-employed. The survey also examined the oral and written skills of the respondents in both their mother tongue and a secondary language. The majority [of respondents] can read and write either in one or both [of the languages]. No more than 7 per cent do not know how to read or write. Technical reading and writing skills with the Latin alphabet were also examined in the survey in order to plan education pathways. The majority (73%) [of the respondents] require a degree of practice in reading and/or writing with the alphabet, the report states. The survey was carried out by Testipiste, an organisation with six years of experience in assessing the language skills of adult immigrants in the capital region. Aleksi Teivainen HT Photo: Jussi Nukari Lehtikuva Source: Uusi Suomi 'Dirty Dancing' remake to spend $16 million here Abigail Breslin will star as Baby in a remake of 'Dirty Dancing' to be filmed in and around Hendersonville this spring. The production team for a television remake of Dirty Dancing will bring up to 1,225 temporary jobs to the Hendersonville area and spend $16 million over the next 45 days, a state Commerce Department spokeswoman confirmed. Industry recruiters scored a coup when they wrested the production headquarters from Asheville. The Henderson County Partnership for Economic Development and the Tourism Development Authority announced on Friday that the production headquarters would be in Hendersonville and not Asheville, which producers had originally favored. The remake will be a three-hour TV movie based on the 1987 hit that was filmed in part at the 1950s vintage resort properties of Lake Lure. Set production, wardrobe, props and transportation will be based in Hendersonville while filming takes place across Western North Carolina in April and May. The expected air date is in the fall on ABC. An estimated 1,225 jobs including 900 extras, 30 cast members and 225 crew positions will support the project. The movie will star Abigail Breslin, Debra Messing, Sarah Hyland, Beau Casper Smart and Billy Dee Williams. The production company has not finished scouting locations to shoot, said Andrew Tate, president of the Partnership for Economic Development. High Hampton Inn & Country Club in Cashiers has confirmed that the movie will shoot on its campus, the Asheville Citizen-Times reported. The production received a state Commerce Department incentives grant of $4 million and is projectd to spend $16 million in the state, said Kim Genardo, director of strategic and economic development communications for the Department of Commerce. Dispute over rooms One hotel company is asking questions about how the production company books rooms. Kathy Kanupp, a manager of five motels in Hendersonville and a member of the Tourism Development Authority, complained that the production team had sent an email Friday afternoon that she said backed out of a request made weeks ago to book $100,000 worth of motel rooms over the next six weeks. We canceled two group tours that were coming in to Hendersonville to accommodate them, Kanupp told the TDA Tuesday afternoon during its regular monthly meeting. I had turned away over $50,000 in revenue business and sent it to other motels because we were booked on this and we were told we needed to guarantee these rooms. On Friday evening we get an email that started out, After speaking with Beth Carden and the Travel and Tourism Board, we can go ahead and cancel those rooms. Carden, executive director of the TDA, and Tate, who was at the meeting to talk about the Dirty Dancing production, said they had done no negotiation on room pricing and knew nothing about the production companys plans for accommodations. Theres lots of decisions they havent made everything from where theyll film to who theyll hire, to where people will stay, Tate said. When Beth and I met, we had a very clean focus and it was on how we connect them to the community, with everything from restaurants, to extras, to dancers. There was a long list of things we discussed. One of those was hotel rooms. They had pages and pages of hotels and rates. They hadnt booked any rooms anywhere. When Carden described the discussion as a communication breakdown, Kanupp agreed that the TDA and Partnership for Economic Development needed to coordinate more closely on their efforts. This is not the right way to do it, Tate said, charging that Kanupp was publicly flogging the TDA over an issue that was irrelevant to the recruitment of industry and tourism spending. How to apply Hendersonville area residents may take part in the production by working as crew members and as extras and dancers for onscreen roles or by providing period vehicles from the 1950s, '60s and early '70s. Anyone with film industry experience as crew, production assistant, props or set dressing is encouraged to email a resume to dirtydancingmovie2016@gmail.com. Those interested in applying as an extra are encouraged to send an email that includes two photos (close up and full length), name, age, ethnicity, cell phone number, height, weight, clothing sizes, city and state of residence, and a list of any tattoos or piercings that can be seen in summer attire to ddmoviecasting@gmail.com. Please include in the subject line indication of age, ethnicity, gender and city and state of residence. Dancers should send the same information as well as dance experience and styles to ddmoviedancers@gmail.com. To submit a period vehicle for use in the film, email a current photo, photo of the owner, year, make, model, a list of dents and damage, owners name, phone number, city and state of residence, and vehicle location to ddmoviecars@gmail.com. Dublin-based engineering services group Actavo has expanded into the US for the first time, in a deal that management here described as "transformative". Actavo, formerly known as Siteserv, has acquired Atlantic Engineering Services (AES), a business that designs telecoms networks and has operations in Georgia, Texas, Missouri and Colorado. It is the first North American deal for Actavo, which already operates in more than 100 locations worldwide and has a global workforce of 5,000. Syndicate The US deal will add an additional 120 jobs, mainly in high-end engineering roles. Financial details have not been disclosed, but the acquisition is debt-funded, with financing from a syndicate led by AIB and Bank of Ireland. Actavo chief Sean Corkery said the AES deal is his company's biggest to date, and is "transformative". "Actavo's acquisition represents a significant and strategic milestone in our company's growth plan," he said. "The US is an important, dynamic market for us - we see strong demand in North America for the telecommunications solutions we can now offer. "This is a logical next step for us at this time and takes Actavo into new areas, both geographically and in terms of our customer proposition. "I look forward to working closely with our new colleagues in providing end-to-end solutions to the telecommunications sector across the US and internationally." As well as a beach-head into the US market, AES' network design capability will mean Actavo can also now offer a full service from design to build and installation to telecoms customers in its existing markets, facilitating an end-to-end offering market, the company said. The deal is targeted in particular at servicing the Fibre-To-The-Home market in the US, where a massive investment programme is under way. By September 2019 the total number of homes with fibre in the US will almost double. The scene at the pier slipway in Buncrana Co-Donegal where five people were drowned after the jeep they were in, entered the water on Sunday night. A very young baby was rescued as the vehicle sank into Lough Swilly. By nightfall, all five bodies had been laid out side by side on the quay. The battle to save them had been frantic and it broke the hearts of the rescue workers to see that, despite their best efforts, their lives could not be saved. The gardai had wept, the fire personnel and RNLI lifeboat volunteers all shedding tears for the family laid out before them on what had been a beautiful sunny spring day on the banks of Lough Swilly. "It was harrowing. It was harrowing to see the bodies laid out on the ground. "It was hard to see the gardai crying and they with young children of their own. To see the five hearses pulling up there to take away the bodies." Mark Barnett, brave coxswain with the RNLI, stood at the pier in Buncrana and tried to force back tears as he recalled the traumatic horror of what had happened here less than 24 hours ago. At one point, ambulance workers were performing CPR simultaneously on four of the victims taken from the cold, grey waters of Lough Swilly on the quayside. Someone even had to race to the local Supervalu to get another defibrillator because they simply didn't have enough equipment. How could they have had, Mark asked simply. Nobody could have ever prepared for such a thing. No training could ever suffice. Swooping It had been a beautiful sunny day along the majestically jutting and swooping coastline of the Inisowen peninsula. The RNLI had been taking part in a helicopter exercise on Lough Swilly and the volunteers had just wound up a tough but satisfactory day's work. Mark had hopped into his car for the short two-mile journey home but had only gone out the road when his pager pinged. The message was terse. A car had gone off the pier in Buncrana, it said. Children and adults in the water. "It must've happened seconds after I left," he said, explaining that in normal circumstances volunteers would have been able to devise a plan en route to an accident. This time, there was no time to plan for what they would have to deal with. He struggled to describe what they had seen, the light behind Lough Swilly fading, as eye witnesses on the pier screamed that there were people still in the car that had disappeared under the water, 12 metres deep. The baby, little Rioghnach-Ann had just been taken from the car. A crew member dived down. The doors of the car were locked but the boot was open. He was able to extract two children - one of the boys and Jodie Lee (15). "As we were getting them, we passed them over to the fire brigade," he said. "It was harrowing. To have a family, so many people, gone like that over a very simple thing to go wrong." All day long, a pilgrimage of people - including young mothers from Derry clutching their own children by the hand - sorrowfully wound their way down to the pier at Buncrana to gaze silently into the waters. One young mother, Sarah Harper, had come from Derry to pay her respects, while Susan Kelly and Brigid Doorley, also from Derry, spoke in hushed tones. Susan said she was a "far-out relation" of the family, through her great-grandmother. All Derry people come to Buncrana, she said, explaining why it had been a natural day out for Sean McGrotty, his mother-in-law Ruth Daniels, sister-in-law Jodie-Lee (15) and his own children, Mark (12), Evan (8) and baby Rioghnach-Ann. Bouquets "This'd be our first stop. This is Donegal to us," said Susan. It's barely a 10-minute drive and when the weather is fine "it's as good as going foreign," she said. Bouquets were left at three separate points along the pier. In a devastatingly poignant tribute to the three children whose lives had been snuffed out during their Easter holidays, a little blue tin of sweets in the shape of a bunny rabbit (inset left) had been placed where the tragedy had happened. The tyre marks of Sean McGrotty's Audi Q7 were still plainly visible on the green algae of the slipway, an indicator of how he wrestled with the car in the helpless battle to save his family. This was not the first time Buncrana has been plunged into mourning. Thirty years ago, musician Phil Coulter's sister Cyd, a social worker, was killed along with a man she was attempting to counsel when he drove them both off the same Donegal pier. In August 1998, the Omagh bombing claimed three Buncrana children - Oran Doherty (8), Sean McLoughlin (12) and James Barker (12) had been on a day trip to the town. Six years ago, the most devastating road crash in the history of the State occurred on the outskirts of Buncrana, when eight men were killed after an overloaded Volkswagen Passat smashed into an oncoming car. Pilot William Hillick who was killed in Longford crash on 20/03/16 The mother of the pilot who was killed in a plane crash on Sunday has said she was always afraid when he was flying. A heartbroken Margaret Hillick paid tribute to her son William (45) through tears of sorrow after it was learned his new plane crashed at the Abbeyshrule Aerodrome, killing the father-of-five. William was well known in Dublin where he ran a popular tech shop on the city's quays. "He told me he loved me before he left. Now he's not coming home," said Margaret from the home she shared with William in Knockmant in Mullingar. "Flying was his hobby. He never drank or smoked. He was the best in the world. He really looked after me after my husband died 11 years ago, and I moved in here with him. "He was so good to me. I loved him so much. I wish God would have taken me instead. "Every time he went flying I would worry about him. I felt so happy when he would walk through the door, but now he's not coming home." William has five grown-up children and was not in a relationship at the time of the crash. Padraic Gallogly, a friend of William's from the Abbeyshrule Microlight Flying Club, said he was devastated to hear of the news on Sunday. "He was a great aviation colleague and his loss is a devastation to his commuinity and family, not only in flying but at home as well," he said. He offered his sympathy to William's family. Mr Gallogly was not in Abbeyshrule when the crash happened, but he confirmed it was in the confines of the aerodrome but not on the runway. "It was in an area adjacent to the runway, but not on the runway itself. The Air Accident Investigation Unit are carrying out a full investigation," he said. Mr Hillick died after the single-seater plane came down at around 6pm on Sunday evening. He was the owner of the family-run GQ Communications shop on Ormond Quay that sells tech and camera equipment as well as surveillance products. He was also an avid aviator and martial arts instructor. Stunts Locals in Abbeyshrule said a number of planes had been performing a series of acrobatic stunts before the incident. William's neighbour on Ormond Quay, Panem cafe owner Raffaele Cauallo, said he was shocked to hear the news. "This is very, very sad. We have been friends and neighbours for 20 years. He even took me flying with him one time around 18 months ago," he said. "I heard he bought a new plane recently. I assume that is the one he crashed in. "It is terrible. William was always safe and calm in a plane. Very calm and very talented," he added. A man dubbed the "worst offender" before court will not serve any extra jail time after he admitted driving without insurance for the 46th time. Jimmy Connors (59), of The Avenue, Belgard Heights, Tallaght - the brother of gang murder victim 'Fat Andy' Connors - was given suspended sentences totalling 25 months at Tallaght District Court by Judge John Lindsay. Connors' lawyer, Gabby Deane, said the defendant had experienced some tragedy in his life, including the murder of his brother in August 2014. Connors admitted to having no insurance and no driving licence at Brookview Drive, Tallaght, on June 30 last. He also pleaded guilty to having no insurance, no licence, fraudulent use of a tax disc and driving while disqualified at Bothair Katherine Tynan, Tallaght, last July 15. He further admitted having no insurance and no licence at Rossfield Drive, Tallaght, last July 5. Hearing the extent of Connors' previous convictions, Judge Lindsay said: "He deserves to qualify for the position of the worst offender before the court." Sgt Michael Ahern said Connors, who was before the judge for a probation report, had 279 previous convictions including 45 for no insurance. Connors is currently serving a 15-month sentence. Judge Lindsay sentenced him to consecutive sentences totalling 25 months, all suspended for 24 months, and banned him from driving for 30 years. Connors' younger brother 'Fat Andy', who was one of Ireland's most notorious criminals, was shot dead in a bitter cash dispute in August 2014. The 45-year-old father-of-six was murdered in front of his wife and children at their newly-built home. No arrests have yet been made in the investigation into his death. extortion Connors' extended Traveller gang, which has more than 200 members, was the chief target of Operation Fiacla and other large investigations, but his murder did not end the thugs' nationwide crime spree. They are the most prolific gang involved in countless burglaries, sources say. Gardai have been investigating whether Connors was killed by the INLA after he refused to bow to their extortion demands. They are also looking into a dispute he was involved in with a high-profile south Dublin businessman. President Barack Obama is pledging that the U.S. will "do whatever is necessary" to help Belgium bring to justice the perpetrators of terrorist attacks that killed more than two dozen people at the airport and a subway station. He says the U.S. stands "in solidarity" with Belgium in condemning "these outrageous attacks against innocent people." Belgian officials say 31 people were killed Tuesday and 187 wounded in two explosions at the Belgium airport and one at a city subway station. Obama says the attacks are another reminder that "the world must unite" against the "scourge of terrorism." Among the many lamentable features of Donald Trumps ascendancy and they are legion two stand out as particularly alarming. One is the enthusiasm with which he endorses violence against his fellow Americans. The other is the degree to which he enables bigotry. Trump has a history of swimming in those dank waters. He fed birtherist suspicions about President Obama long after such baseless rumors had been thoroughly debunked. Last year he Tweeted a flagrantly false graphic claiming that 81 percent of white homicide victims are killed by blacks (the actual figure is 15 percent). The Republican front-runner also has claimed that Mexican immigrants are drug dealers and rapists, has threatened to deport 11 million unlawfully present immigrants, and has proposed a ban on all Muslims entering the United States. These are broadsides, but Trump also fuels bigotry in other ways. In late February he asked a demonstrator at one of his rallies, Are you from Mexico? He has dallied with the KKK, is fond of referring to demographic cohorts as the (the Muslims, the Hispanics, the blacks) and has defended two men who assaulted a Latino man as passionate. (Are Latinos who assault Anglos passionate? Better not to ask.) Offenses against racial comity like these are overt, but Trump might have done the most damage through his infinitely elastic definition of political correctness. Conservatives properly complain about the lefts profligate accusations of racism: Calling someone a hard worker is now racist, the new Ghostbusters movie apparently is racist, even undercooking rice is possibly racist, or at least disrespectful to Asian culture, at least at Oberlin College in Ohio. For social-justice warriors on the left, seemingly everything is racist. It is the go-to accusation that short-circuits reasoned debate with an all-purpose ad hominem. But what the left has done to racism, Trump is now doing to political correctness applying it to anything he dislikes. This conveniently avoids having to discuss the actual merits of the issue at hand. The other day a reporter asked Trump what parents should tell their children about his public use of profanity. Trump did not even try to address the question. Oh, youre so politically correct, youre so beautiful, he replied sarcastically. Youre so perfect. Arent you perfect? Youre such a perfect young man. Give me a break. Imagine for a moment how Trump supporters would react if Barack Obama sneered at someone like that. It is not political correctness to wonder if a politicians coarseness could influence how children think and act. Conservatives wondered that very thing at great length when the country was discussing what Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky did with each others tingly parts. In fact, GOP contender Ben Carson resurrected the point back in December: As a pediatric neurosurgeon, I deal with a lot of children, and I see them becoming coarser and wanting to know what certain things are that theyre hearing about on television things that they wouldve never known about as kids before. And a certain innocence disappears from our society. Im sorry to see that happen, and Im sorry that it was because one of our presidents. Trump did not accuse Carson of political correctness. There is evidence Trumps behavior is coarsening children, too. In a recent column in The Washington Post, Metro columnist Petula Dvorak described how Trumpian attitudes are trickling down: students from a predominantly white school holding Trump signs during a basketball game against a predominantly Latino school and chanting Build the wall!; third-graders in Fairfax telling their immigrant classmates they would be sent home. Two students at Northwestern have been arrested for desecrating a chapel with swastikas and other hate-filled messages; they also spray-painted Trump in a stairway. And its not just children. Trump fans have been seen screaming Motherf-ing tacos! at nearby Latinos. Over the weekend a Trump supporter allegedly assaulted two minority students in Wichita, called them brown trash, and promised they would be thrown over the wall. Criticizing virulent bigotry like that is not political correctness. Political correctness involves refusing to acknowledge uncomfortable truths out of ideological delusion or to avoid giving offense. But while Trump likes to portray himself as a courageous speaker of hard truths, he is anything but. To the contrary, he is a purveyor of lies. It is a lie that most white people are killed by black people. It is a lie that Mexican immigrants are drug dealers and rapists that Muslim refugees are terrorists, that Barack Obama was born abroad, and so on. Shouting them through a bullhorn does not make them any more true. Trump fans who insist otherwise who think you can make bigotry virtuous by being belligerent about it; who shout down and sometimes assault those who object are not fighting political correctness. They are enforcing their own version of it. Hubs top Warriors for CMC title as both teams aim for deep playoff runs After facing off for the CMC volleyball title, North Hagerstown and Boonsboro now are focused on the upcoming playoffs. Why IU lost to Rutgers: Hoosiers blow early lead, drop 5th straight Indiana scored two touchdowns on its first two possessions but didn't score another in a 24-17 loss to Rutgers on Saturday HAVANA (AP) President Barack Obama, traveling in Cuba, was briefed Tuesday morning on the Brussels attacks that killed dozens of people. The White House said the U.S. was in contact with Belgian officials about the explosions at the Brussels airport and subway system. Secretary of State John Kerry, who spoke by telephone from Cuba with the Belgian foreign minister, said in a statement that the U.S. was working "to determine the status of all American citizens in Brussels." The embassy there issued a statement telling Americans to stay where they are and "take the appropriate steps to bolster your personal security." The State Department said it was looking into reports that at least three Americans may have been wounded in the attacks, but cautioned that those reports were preliminary and unconfirmed. At least one of the attacks was believed to be caused by a suicide bomber, and Belgium raised its terror alert to its highest level. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the ranking member of the House intelligence committee, said the attacks "bear all the hallmarks" of an Islamic State group coordinated or inspired attack. His staff said he received a preliminary briefing Tuesday from U.S. officials. Schiff says it's unclear if encrypted communications played a role in the attacks but noted that the Brussels attacks occurred despite the city being under constant vigilance. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said it was closely monitoring the unfolding events and "would not hesitate to adjust our security posture, as appropriate, to protect the American people." DHS reiterated that members of the public should report any suspicious activity in their communities to law enforcement authorities. Attorney General Loretta Lynch was also briefed on the attacks, Justice Department officials in Washington said. They said the Justice Department and the FBI was coordinating with other U.S. government agencies, as well as with Belgian counterparts. Last week U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Homeland Security officials constantly monitor world events and evaluate whether there is a need to either publicly raise the nation's security posture or issue another bulletin via the government's National Terror Advisory System. Such a bulletin was issued in December advising the public that federal law enforcement was concerned about the possibility of homegrown violent extremists and terrorist-inspired individuals. Caldwell and Associated Press writer Tami Abdollah contributed reporting from Washington. 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/ Child mortality and morbidity are some of the gravest threats our nation faces today. This is not in line with our countrys aspirations in this day and age. Recognising this, the Centre has taken up the responsibility to address this issue with acute urgency. Evidence suggests that diarrhoea is one of the leading causes of deaths in under-five children in India. Every year 27 million children are born in India and close to 1.2 million die before their fifth birthday, including approximately 100,000, who die due to rotavirus-induced diarrhoea. To tackle this, the Centre will launch the rotavirus vaccine in a phased manner starting with four states Himachal Pradesh, Odisha, Andhra Pradesh and Haryana. Launch of the rotavirus vaccine is a step in the right direction as we embark towards realising the targets of the newly-adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), as it will greatly help in reducing child mortality and ensure healthy lives. The rotavirus vaccine, which will be introduced very soon in the country, has been indigenously developed. It is a safe vaccine with many benefits and rare side-effects. This is a big win for Indias research and development efforts which are increasingly boosting our fight against (deadly) diseases. The government is poised to lead the fight against this deadly disease to deliver on the promise it made when it came to power. Read | Rotavirus vaccine to be available for free in state from February There has been a commitment on the part of other countries and health organisations to address the issue of deaths due to diarrhoea. Recognising its need in India, the government has laid out a comprehensive plan to deal with public health issues. Initiatives such as Swachh Bharat Abhiyan complement public health programmes and will simultaneously address health issues by focusing on sanitation to prevent the spread of diseases caused mainly due to an unhygienic environment. In order to reduce child mortality due to other infectious diseases, we are adopting a holistic approach to child health with special focus on nutrition, safe drinking water and improved sanitation. Our aim is to ensure that each child lives and all children realise their full potential and contribute to the growth and development of the country. Only then we shall be able to harness the demographic dividend of a young nation. Immunisation is a cost-effective exercise that will help the country in two ways. The aim is not only to make improvements in health but also invest in human capital that will contribute to Indias economic growth in the future. Not only this, immunisation helps in significantly reducing poverty. The cost of hospitalisation and overall treatment owing to the rotavirus infection in India runs in crores of rupees. India spends 490 crore and 538 crore on hospitalisation and outpatient visits each year on an average, respectively. Interventions such as immunisation will go a long way in reducing the economic burden of diarrhoea on families and the society; often families slip into an irreversible state of poverty due to the expenditure on healthcare. This money can be diverted to educate a child and can help in her overall cognitive development. Read | Union Health Ministrys Reportcard The Government has made appreciable strides in the last one year towards fulfilling the commitment to reduce child deaths in the country. In 2014, we announced the introduction of four new vaccines, including the rotavirus vaccine in the Universal Immunisation Programme. Mission Indradhanush was implemented in April 2015 with an aim to cover unvaccinated and partially-vaccinated children against seven preventable diseases like Diphtheria, Pertussis, Tetanus, Polio, Measles, Tuberculosis and Hepatitis B. It aims to expand full immunisation coverage to more than 90% children from the current 65% across the country by 2020. Phases 1 and 2 of Mission Indradhanush have been successfully completed. Over 142 lakh children were vaccinated during this period; of which about 37 lakh were fully vaccinated in 480 high focus districts across the country. To accelerate the process of immunisation, the five-in-one Pentavalent vaccine has now been rolled out across India. In order to provide double protection against polio, in November 2015, the government introduced the injectable Inactivated Polio Vaccine (IPV), which is to be administered to children along with Oral Polio Vaccine. Indias success in polio eradication and the recent validation for Maternal and Neonatal Tetanus Elimination (MNTE) have been monumental, to say the least. They reiterate our faith in the power of vaccines. We need to replicate this success in our fight against diarrhoea as well. The health systems and infrastructure built as part of the polio immunisation programme will be used for rotavirus vaccine also. The government is fully committed to check under-five deaths and safeguard every childs right to health. I urge the people of this great country to reap the benefits of this initiative to ensure that your children have a healthy future. We remain focused on ensuring that preventive health care measures are accessible to all. We have made significant progress in the area of child survival. However, impediments abound that prevent several children from receiving vaccination. Immunisation is only a step but a very important one towards investing in the future of India. That no child dies of vaccine preventable diseases, should be our dream and I am hopeful that we will realise this dream very soon. We are strengthening the foundation for India, which is both healthy and productive. JP Nadda is Union minister of health and family welfare The views expressed are personal On Monday, two days before his 85th death anniversary, Bhagat Singh the Marxist revolutionary hanged by the British at 23 trended on Twitter, as people lashed out against Congress leader Shashi Tharoor for comparing Singh with the latest Left-liberal sensation, JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar. Tharoor, in his inimitable style, had told cheering students at Delhis Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), Bhagat Singh was the Kanhaiya Kumar of his generation. Well, maybe not. Singhs political acumen, revolutionary activity, popular appeal and controversial execution made him a national figure at a much younger age than Kumar. Kumar was, till recently, a campus politician who shot to prominence and won hearts because of the states knee-jerk reaction to arrest him, misleading media trials and his furious critique of the overall policies of the BJP-led central government. Read | Kanhaiya meets Rahul after support over JNU sedition row Nonetheless, Tharoors basis for the comparison both young men are Marxists passionately committed to their motherland is broadly correct. Just like Kumar spoke about azaadi from people who are looting the country, Singh too had said in one of his last messages on March 3, 1931, that the struggle in India would continue as long as a handful of exploiters go on exploiting the labour of the common people for their own ends. It matters little whether these exploiters are purely British capitalists, or British and Indians in alliance, or even purely Indians. But there are prominent differences. Singh never joined the Communist Party of India (CPI), established in 1925-26, of whose student body Kumar is a member. Yet, the Indian Left has always appropriated Singh as an iconic hero who, according to former CPI (M) chief Harkishan Singh Surjeet, gave a country a course opposed to the one pursued by Congress. But today the Left in India has many hues, and its difficult to predict how Singh a believer in anarchism would have chosen to fight for the liberation of his countrymen in todays India. If Singh had been alive today, would he have joined the parliamentary Indian Left parties? A study of Singhs politics indicates the answer is more complicated. For example, Delhi University professor Apoorvanand wrote in an article last year that ...Bhagat Singh was not impressed by the nationalist rhetoric of (Netaji Subhas Chandra ) Bose and finds Nehru intellectually more challenging and satisfying. He wrote that Singh had written in 1928 that Panjabi youth should go with him [Nehru] to understand the real meaning of revolution... and this article by the revolutionary has been ignored by the Left, perhaps because it doesnt fit into their narrative. Read | India is not just Hindi, Hindu, Hindustan: Tharoor takes a dig at BJP Therefore, its correct to say that cherry-picking and appropriation by Indian political parties do not do justice to Singhs political ideology. But debate over Singhs politics aside, the logic that a senior BJP leader gave to criticise Tharoors comparison was wanting in historical knowledge and exposed how the Hindu nationalist party wants to appropriate Singh and make him fit in its own narrative. Shahnawaz Hussain, spokesperson of the BJP, tweeted the comparison was an insult, adding that Singh had kissed the noose saying Bharat Mata ki Jai. Really? Hussain perhaps got carried away because there seems to be no historical record suggesting that Singhs last words were Bharat Mata ki Jai. Media reports -- for example the lede story on The Tribune on March 25, 1931 -- say that the cries that emerged from the jail just before the hanging of Singh and his comrades Sukhdev and Rajguru on March 23, 1931 were of Inquilab Zindabad (Long live the revolution) -- a Leftist war cry popularised by Singh. Historical records -- for instance writings by Bhagat Singh scholar Professor Chaman Lal -- say Singh was reading Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenins biography until minutes before his execution. Making mockery of history. Bhagat Singh raised Bharat Mata ki Jai slogan while he was on the gallows. Putting your own words in his mouth, tweeted historian S Irfan Habib and author of To Make the Deaf Hear: Ideology and Programme of Bhagat Singh and His Comrades. Habib added, All historical records show that Bhagat Singh raised just 2 slogans Inquilab Zindabad and Down with Imperialism. And its no surprise. But Hussain is not the only one to appropriate Singh with one casual stroke. Time and again, the Hindu Right has tried to do the same by portraying Singh as a gun-toting militant nationalist. Sketches of him sporting a hat and with twirled moustache is a common feature on many political posters. Such propaganda can be easily dismissed by anyone who goes through Singhs writings, messages and speeches. Here was a firebrand Leftist and an atheist who vociferously criticised the agendas of communal politics and capitalist economy. Moreover, Singh had, later in life, questioned the role of armed struggle in the revolutionary movement. In a piece, while his trial was ongoing, Singh wrote in December 1929, Revolution did not necessarily involve sanguinary strife. It was not a cult of bomb and pistol. They may sometimes be mere means for its achievement. No doubt they play a prominent part in some movements, but they do not for that very reason become one and the same thing. A rebellion is not a revolution. It may ultimately lead to that end. Singh was one of the most original Marxist thinkers in the country who not only dreamt of freedom from the British Raj but also of an egalitarian and secular India. In fact, such political farsightedness set him apart from his contemporary revolutionaries. Bhagat Singh and his comrades, like the renowned historian Bipan Chandra wrote in Indias Struggle for Independence, made a major advance in broadening the scope and definition of revolution. Revolution was no longer associated with mere militancy or violenceit must go beyond and work for a new socialist order, it must end exploitation of man by man. Every time todays politicians drag Singh and appropriate him for their political slugfest, the true legacy of one of Indias bravest martyrs is insulted. Views expressed by the author are personal SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Assam chief minister Tarun Gogoi believes only Prime Minister Narendra Modi stands in the way of his fourth straight term in power. But even other leaders of the ruling Congress hint that winning the imminent assembly elections depends upon how Gogoi outwits former secondin-command Himanta Biswa Sarma, now the BJPs main poll strategist. This has made the two-phase mandate 2016, scheduled on April 4 and 11, more of a battle of brains between Gogoi and Sarma than a fight between two major parties Congress and BJP, the latter in alliance with the regional Asom Gana Parishad (AGP) and Bodoland Peoples Front (BPF). The Congress is determined not to let go of one of its last bastions and the BJP wants to erase the electoral humiliation in Delhi and Bihar by forming its first coalition government in Assam. Last year, state Congress president Anjan Dutta thanked the BJP for taking in Sarma and nine other legislators. The BJP has cleansed the Congress of impurities and inherited a bag of dirty tricks, he said. But senior Congress leaders knew what they could be up against; Sarma, after all, piloted three elections and ensured a 15-year run since 2001. Gogoi depended heavily on Sarma, who allegedly helped him finish competition within by ensuring 22 senior Congress leaders lose in the 2006 polls. The Congress won 53 seats 11 short of simple majority in the 126-member assembly that year, but Sarma stitched up an alliance with BPF to enable Gogoi to rule. Dutta was one of them, as was former Bihar governor and Gogoi-baiter Devananda Konwar, now a leader of perfume baron Badruddin Ajmals All India United Democratic Front (AIUDF). Gogoi, 80, underplayed the threat from Sarma. I dont care what Himanta will or wont do, because my fight is with Modi, he told Hindustan Times. But the chief minister admitted he let Sarma call the shots when they were part of the same team. He was my number two, but ambition made him lose his way. Everyone knows what he has done, how honest he is. Sarma, who quit the Congress after a two-year rebellion against Gogois alleged bid to project son and MP Gaurav Gogoi as his successor, is dismissive of his former boss too. They (Gogoi and his loyalists) think I will use the same template that helped Congress win election after election. Let them amuse themselves, he said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Bollywood actors often talk about getting under the skin of their characters for their roles. At times, this process involves acquiring a skill or learning something completely new. Many actors dont mind going the extra mile. For instance, Tiger Shroff, who is trained in taekwondo and wushu, turned to Kalaripayattu for his next, Baaghi. Kunal Kapoor, who is preparing for his multi-lingual film, Veeram, has also turned to the same form of martial arts. Its a physically demanding role. I trained in Kalaripayattu with a teacher from Kerala. I had trained in it earlier, too, but the northern style is mostly weapon-based, with swords and daggers. So, I had to work on a whole new set of skills, he says. Sculpt! 5 30 AM, my fav time to blast the biceps. Nobody else but me, the iron and some really loud music #stronger pic.twitter.com/swGH67fJh9 kunal kapoor (@kapoorkkunal) March 18, 2016 On the other hand, John Abraham learnt Tai Chi and Aikido in Thailand for his upcoming film, Rocky Handsome. When I came back (from Thailand), and people saw my body, it was full of black and blue marks, the actor had told us in an interview in the past. The films director, Nishikant Kamat, had said, We wanted to do something that weve never seen in Indian cinema, and John being John, did his best. Read: I used to get bullied during childhood, says Tiger Shroff The best photoshop that you can do for your body is in the gym. Stay fit!! Love - John Abraham. pic.twitter.com/nEW8AHyYGV John Abraham (@TheJohnAbraham) March 14, 2016 Anushka Sharma, who plays a wrestler from Haryana in the Salman-starrer Sultan, has spent six weeks learning different wrestling styles. Her trainer, Jagdish Kaliraman, says, Wrestling is a difficult sport, but in spite of that, Anushka gave it her best. During the training, she observed every move that we showed her very carefully. On my way to the shoot, Thank you to these amazing teachers/ pro wrestlers (1/2) pic.twitter.com/Wbss2XUzN3 Anushka Sharma (@AnushkaSharma) March 11, 2016 Actor Taapsee Pannu, who is currently shooting for her film with actor Amitabh Bachchan, wants to act in a Punjabi film soon. The actor says that Punjabi films are loved by audiences not only in Punjab, but all over the country. Its amazing to see Punjabi films do so well globally. I have already worked in movies across four languages and bagging a Punjabi film has always been at the back of my mind, says Taapsee. Read: Cant do a woman-centric film, says actor Taapsee Pannu The actor has been getting some offers from the Punjabi film industry as well. In fact, she has two scripts which she is considering at the moment. According to sources, she wants to take on at least one film this year. Taapsee comes from a hardcore Punjabi family and her parents always wanted to see her in a Punjabi film. I have been getting good projects in Punjabi and I guess soon I will succumb to my parents expectations of doing a Punjabi film provided the director is good and the story and character suit my sensibility , adds Taapsee. Actor Gul Panags husband was a member of the crew of one of the two Jet Airways flights which landed at the Brussels airport from India just a little before the twin bomb blasts rocked the Belgian capital. The passengers and crew are now safe and secure, the actor confirmed. Guls first Twitter update on the news revealed that the Jet Airways plane had landed at the Brussels airport, and later she shared that her husband, Captain GS Attari, was on board. Read: Blasts, blood and chaos as terror visits Brussels, at least 34 killed #Brussels bound @jetairways flight from #Delhi has landed. Passengers & crew still in aircraft. Airport closed as of now. Gul Panag (@GulPanag) March 22, 2016 HE is part of the crew . Will pass on updates as I receive them. Crew and passengers safe . @jetairways #Brussels Gul Panag (@GulPanag) March 22, 2016 In a message to IANS, Gul said: Flushing operation is still on. They are still finding bombs. His (my husbands) crew and passengers are safe. All the updates I got from him, I have shared on Twitter, so that the family of crew and passengers also know. Passengers and crew of #Delhi @jetairways flight have deplaned. Are now in a secure holding area. #Brussels #9W230 Gul Panag (@GulPanag) March 22, 2016 They all were in the aircraft for over two hours, and now have been taken to a secure holding area. He is giving me an update every hour. As promised, Gul had tweeted when the passengers and crew of the Jet Airways flight, which took off from Delhi, had deplaned. Dear friends in the media reading my twitter feed and calling, 1.No, I'm not in #Brussels 2. I have no 'reaction' to give Gul Panag (@GulPanag) March 22, 2016 The terror attack happened at the airport and Metro in Belgium. Follow @htshowbiz for more Hrithik Roshans recently been in the news for his spat with Kangana Ranaut . However, even as allegations between him and Kangana t fly high amid rumours of an affair gone sour, shes not the only one who the actor has been linked up with. Here is a look at the many women in Roshans life. Read: Hrithik and Kanganas legal mess Sussanne Roshan: Hrithik and Sussanne had quite a filmy start with Hrithik falling in love with Sussanne after spotting her at a traffic signal in Mumbai. The two started dating soon after. After a year-long relationship, Hrithik proposed to her on a beach in Mumbai, and the two got married at a luxury spa in Bangalore with only close friends and family in attendence in 2000. There were rumours of problems in their marriage in 2013 when Sussanne was missing from the Roshan familys Ganesh Visarjan celebrations. She also left her father-in-law Rakesh Roshans 64th birthday party abruptly. The two decided to separate just a week before their 13th wedding anniversary in December 2013. There were reports that the cause of the separation was Sussannes affair with actor Arjun Rampal. Four months after the separation, they filed for divorce by mutual consent in Bandra court. In July, 2014, there were reports about Sussanne asking for Rs 400-crore alimony. The two got divorced in November 2014. It was love at first sight for Sussanne and Hrithik. Kareena Kapoor Khan: The two first worked together in Yaadein (2001) and it was reported that they developed feelings for each other during the shoot. In fact, it is said that later, the two had quite a fling during their film Main Prem Ki Diwani Hoon (2003). However, Kareenas family intervened and asked her to stay away from Hrithik.It is believed that Hrithiks mom Pinky also asked him to maintain his distance from Kareena. Actor Kareena Kapoor reportedly dated Hrithik Roshan at the time of their film Mein Prem Ki Deewani Hoon. (HT Photo) Read: Hrithik Roshan, Sussanne divorce finalised, no alimony involved Barbara Mori: Mexican actor Barbara Mori and Hrithik Roshan shared a sizzling chemistry in their film Kites (2010) and rumours were rife that the two started dating while shooting for the film. Hrithik was married to Sussanne at the time, and his relationship with Barbara created a problem in their marriage. It is said that Sussanne had moved out of the house and was living with her parents. However, Sussanne denied all the reports, and when asked about trouble in her marriage, she said in an interview, Rubbish. Everything is fine. But yes, Hrithik and I are very upset with the story of our so-called split. Nobody can break my marriage with Hrithik. We are together. Our relationship is very strong. On being asked if reports of a link-up with Barbara bothered him, Hrithik said, Why should it bother me? Im a happy man with a happy family. And Barbara is a great friend. There is no need to react. Rumours were rife about Hrithik Roshan dating Barbara Mori during their film Kites. (AP) Read: Barbaras the best Kangana Ranaut: Actor Kangana Ranaut and Hrithik became friends while shooting their film Kites, however, they reportedly got into a relationship during the shooting of Krrish 3 (2013). While these reports remained unconfirmed, Kangana opened a can of worms when she referred to Hrithik as her ex in January. Sometimes exes do silly things to get your attention, she said when asked if Hrithik was the reason for her getting ousted from Aashiqui 3. Hrithik tweeted saying that he was more likely to date the Pope. The two filed legal notices against each other, with Hrithik accusing Kangana of defamation and Kangana accusing Hrithik of intimidation. In his legal notice, Hrithik has said that Kangana suffers from Aspergers syndrome, while Kangana in hers has said that Hrithik has been communicating with her through a secret email id which goes on to show that Hrithik thoroughly supported and was fully involved with her. Actor Kangana Ranaut referred to Hrithik as her silly ex some time back Pushed to the wall by the tough stance adopted by banks towards steel companies with stressed loans, their promoters, wary of losing control over their firms, are offering to bring in strategic investors by diluting some of their stake. Their fears are real: Stung by the ongoing Kingfisher Airlines fiasco, banks have been under pressure from the government to get their NPA (non-performing asset, or loans that have turned bad) levels under control. Just recently, banks roped in London-based stressed asset specialist FIG Group to restructure Kolkata-based Electrosteel Castings. Specialists pick up stressed companies cheap from the creditor banks, restructure the management, iron out wrinkles and make the company functional, which leaves a viable asset that can then be offloaded. Lenders are learned to be in talks with overseas companies for other steel firms also. Banks such as State Bank of India, Bank of Baroda, Bank of India and other large public sector banks have been meeting steel companies over the past two weeks to review operations and evaluate cases that are fit to be brought under the Strategic Debt Restructuring (SDR) mechanism. SDR replaces the existing management with a large investor who takes control of the steel plant at a discount which would leave large business houses virtually with no business of their own. Alarmed at the prospect of losing control, promoters mostly with operations in resource-rich eastern India have agreed to offer 25% to 26% of their shareholding, which along with an equal quantum of stake, would ensure joint control. This will then result in both trying to address the bad loan situation in cases where external factors are responsible for the losses, said a Kolkata-based promoter of a steel company. The companies are arguing that their losses are due to the slowdown in the economy, rather than any defect in management, so taking away management control is neither the solution, nor desirable. The banks, on the other hand, suspect that the inability to service loans the steel sector has outstanding loans to the tune of `2 lakh crore is due to operational factors. Banks are aiming to clean their books by March 2017 via the SDR route, in preparation of the stringent Basel 3 norms on capital requirements that become effective on April 1 2019. Banks fear that if companies with `20,000-25,000 crore loans default, it could affect their very survival. It is a serious situation. For the past couple of months, banks have only been trying to resolve this bad loan situation. There has been no other work on table, said a senior executive of a Mumbai-based public sector bank. Writing to RBI governor Raghuram Rajan, steel firms have sought guidelines for refinancing loans under the Corrective Action Plan where the stress is due to external factors such as the failure to grant leases to steel companies or cancellation of allotted coal blocks. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Licences of more than 100,000 drivers were seized between December 15 and March 1 for traffic violations in Delhi, where five people die in road accidents every day. The traffic police say the special drive -- ordered by the Supreme Court -- has made the Capitals road safer as violations have dropped by 30% in the last two months. Seized licences are suspended for at least three months. The drive is still on. Licences of 42,854 drivers were suspended for jumping traffic lights. Around 32,000 were penalised for speeding and 25,998 for driving drunk. With 1,500 vehicles added every day, Delhi has the highest number of vehicles for a city in India. As many as 1, 620 people were killed on its notoriously congested and unsafe roads last year. Alarmed over rising fatalities across the country, the Supreme Court late last year asked states to suspend licences for speeding, drink driving or using phone while at the wheel. Every four minutes, one person is killed in a road accident in India. We implemented the courts orders strictly. For all major offences, which could result in fatal consequences, the drivers were not only fined but their licences also seized, said Muktesh Chander, special commissioner of police (traffic). Drivers will have to go to court to get their licences back. Traffic police data also show a drop in violations. In November, between 8,000 and 9,000 challans were issued every day, the number fell to 6,000 in February. Chander said more than 40% of the seized licences were issued in neighbouring Haryana and Uttar Pradesh and Punjab and Bihar. Delhi had shared the offenders details with the states and asked them to also suspend the licences. A large chunk of the citys traffic flows from the neighbouring states and unless we coordinate with traffic police of these states, we will not succeed in checking violations, he said. Seizing a licence is new for Delhi. The measure was suggested by police during a Supreme Court hearing, calling for stricter punishment for errant drivers. To make the countrys roads safer, the Centre has proposed stringent penalties and steep fines in the road transport and safety bill for traffic offences including suspension of licence. The road transport ministry has sought states feedback on proposals including a R3-lakh fine and not less than seven years in jail for causing the death of a child and a R1-lakh fine for driving an unregistered vehicle. The cabinet will have to clear the bill for it to be tabled in Parliament. . SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Traffic alert: Gridlocks await those driving around central and east Delhi for the next three weeks. A portion of Bhairon Marg in central Delhi that caved in on Monday will take at least three weeks to be repaired. And you can blame, the long weekend that begins with Holi on Thursday for the delay as well. Tuesday was a nightmare for commuters, especially office-goers, heading into central Delhi from east and south, as within 24 hours, the hole near gate one of the Pragati Maidan Metro station had grown to a 20-feet deep crater. Bumper to bumper traffic was reported as vehicles were diverted from Ring Road to Mathura Road and also to ITO and Vikas Marg. The jams are likely to continue at least for a few weeks, special commissioner of police (traffic) Muktesh Chander said. Bhairon Marg connects east Delhi with central and south with central part of the city. Around 30,000-40,000 vehicles cross the caved-in stretch during peak hours. A damaged sewer line caused the collapse, the Delhi Jail Board (DJB) officials said. This is the fourth time in six months that a part of the arterial road collapsed. Like on earlier occasions, a small crack opened up. It was repaired on Sunday. But, the fracture widened and the road gave in on Monday. Sewer water made the situation worse on Tuesday. ITO, Vikas Marg, Noida Link Road, the Ring Road (towards Delhi Gate), National Highway-24, Mandi House, Sarai Kale Khan, Nizammudin, and India Gate were worst hit . The DJB and public works department (PWD) officials were blaming each other. They wouldnt be able to carry out the repairs till DJB fixed the sewer line, a PWD official said. The DJB blamed old pipelines and growing traffic. The sewer lines were laid in the 1950s and were worn out. The road was part of the Yamuna floodplain, making it unstable as the soil was porous, a DJB official said. Their work had been complicated by the water dripping into the pit. We started work on Monday night. The hole is very deep and it will take a while to repair it, the DJB official said. The national capital has been put on high alert following attacks at Brussels international airport and a city metro station. An alert has been sounded and security beefed up at international and domestic airports across the country. In Delhi, an additional layer of security was added at Metro stations and the IGI Airport and frisking of passengers began at aircraft gates too. At some sensitive airports that were put on high alert after the Pathankot terror attacks, passengers were being asked to remove shoes and jackets during security clearance. The alert, however, was withdrawn recently and passengers were undergoing routine searching and frisking before boarding flights. But post attacks in Brussels, the Bureau for Civil Aviation Security (BCAS) asked us to increase the vigil. Now, passengers are first checked at entry gates, then at the security point and then they have to go through Secondary Ladder Point Checking (SLPC) too, just before boarding the plane, said an official of Central Industrial Security Force (CISF). SLPC is conducted when the threat is at its highest level and passengers have to go through with complete frisking just before entering the aircraft. Presently only few airlines, especially those going to US conduct SLPC. Airline staff has been asked to conduct SLPC, either at aerobridge or if they dont have the facility of aerobridge they can conduct the checking at the apron area. Quick reaction teams (QRTs), have been stations outside Metro stations in Delhi. The dog squads and bomb detection/disposal teams have been asked to be on their toes and carry out security drills in the premises of the stations. Instructions have been issued to security staff to thoroughly search baggage and belonging passengers before allowing them in. Apart from Metro stations and airport, security has also been intensified at shopping malls, cinema halls, markets, bus terminals, railway stations, and other crowded places across Delhi-NCR. Personnel drawn from a range of security agencies are standing guard at Delhis vital installations such as Parliament, Prime Ministers house, Rashtrapati Bhavan, India Gate, and tourist spots. The officers have been asked to take anti-terrorist measures and keep personnel on their toes. The SWAT commandos along with anti-terrorist officers have been deployed at important places, especially in Delhis Lutyens zone. A special attention is being given on checking of hotels, guest houses and tenants across the city. Personnel deployed at border points have been directed to keep a close watch on suspicious vehicles and people entering the city. They have been asked to conduct a thorough searching and frisking of suspicious vehicles. The Delhi high court on Tuesday issued a notice to Delhi Police in Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Kumar Vishwas case wherein a party volunteer accused him of molesting her, besides issuing a notice to the volunteer as well. Justice Sunita Gupta issued the notices and posted the matter for hearing on July 21 after police stated they had not found any evidence to substantiate the allegations. The complainant made the complaint, but there is no proof. For us no cognisable offence is made out. She has been changing her stance everywhere, the police said. An FIR was registered against Vishwas last week at Sarojini Nagar police station under directions from a trial court for the alleged offences under Sections 354A (sexual harassment) and 509 (word, gesture or act intended to insult the modesty of a woman) of the Indian Penal Code. Both these offences are punishable up to one year imprisonment. In a hearing on March 16, a trial court said that the complaint against Vishwas of making sexually coloured remarks and advances towards the woman required investigation, and directed police to file a first information report (FIR). Vishwas however filed a plea challenging the trial court order, and sought to quash it, claiming the allegations were baselsess. At the time, the police had informed the magistrate court that they had not found any evidence to justify a criminal case. Appearing for the AAP leader, senior advocate HS Phoolka questioned the unprecedented over-enthusiasm shown by the metropolitan magistrate in ordering the FIR for a bailable offence despite the police stating there was no evidence to support the allegations that were made last year. Vishwas countered the womans claims stating he never called or invited the complainant to his political meetings or stage programmes, but the woman herself chased the petitioner (Vishwas) at every spot. Lieutenant-governor (L-G) Najeeb Jung on Tuesday urged the Centre to clear pending legislative bills sent by the Delhi assembly for approval. The L-G, the constitutional head of the National Capital Territory of Delhi, reports directly to the Bharatiya Janata Party-ruled Centre. The AAP government and the Centre have been in a continued slugfest over key issues, including administrative jurisdiction. In his address to the lawmakers on the first day of the budget session, Jung outlined the governments achievements in his speech. He especially touched upon education, health and transport sectors, and spoke about anti-graft reforms. The L-Gs speech for the occasion is prepared by the state government and cleared by the cabinet. My government is awaiting approval of the Government of India for the enactment of these proposed legislations, he said, referring to bills on transparency and equality in the schools. At least 14 legislative bills related to education reforms, MLAs salaries and Janlokpal are pending with the Centre since last year. Jung told reporters the governments achievements over the past year were bemisaal (exceptional). Education Jung spoke about last years proposals to build 25 school buildings, 7,289 classrooms, 700 toilet blocks in existing schools and identifying 54 schools to be transformed into model schools. He also mentioned the governments loan and scholarship schemes for higher education, besides the reforms brought by amending the Delhi School Education Amendment Bill. To prevent manipulation in the admission process, for the first time the directorate of education is conducting a centralised online lottery, based on neighbourhood criterion in schools of the Capital for nursery admissions under Economically Weaker Section category, Jung said. Health Jung hailed the decision to establish 1,000 new Mohalla clinics, 100 polyclinics, increasing beds in government hospitals, waiving of diagnostic charges, providing free medicines, and health insurance scheme for all residents. Transport The L-G listed the governments proposals to induct 1,000 new low-floor buses and e-ticketing machines in all DTC buses from June 2016. After Jungs speech, transport minister Gopal Rai moved a motion of thanks. Rai, in his speech, said the main reason behind the AAP governments unprecedented success was its honesty. The upcoming budget will only take this forward, he said. The Delhi government has decided to install air quality monitoring systems in the national capital region when the odd-even scheme is rolled out for the second time in Delhi on April 15. The list of exemptions from the odd-even restrictions will be announced on April 8. The odd-even scheme was introduced in the national capital for the first time from January 1 to January 15. In the first phase of the road rationing scheme, women drivers, CNGfuelled cars, all types of emergency vehicles, VIPs (excluding some of those associated with the Delhi government), and the differently-abled were exempted. Delhi transport minister Gopal Rai said on Monday that the environment department has been directed to come up with a detailed plan for the areas and locations where pollution readers would be placed to assess air quality. The odd-even scheme was implemented successfully in January, when the city witnessed a considerable drop in traffic volume, but confusion remained over the schemes success in cutting pollution. The Delhi gover nment had said that the environmental conditions in neighbouring Ghaziabad, Noida and Gurgaon could have prevented a significant dip in air pollutants, especially in the border areas of the city. When the odd-even scheme returns in April, the air quality will be monitored even in NCR towns. The decision has been taken to assess how different is the air quality in areas where the odd-even scheme is not in place in comparison with the air quality in the Capital during the same period, Rai told reporters after attending the first coordination committee meeting of the odd-even scheme. The scheme will be in force from April 15 to April 30. The transport minister also said that the rotational route monitoring will be done to map pollutants on an entire stretch instead of recording air quality at fixed locations. Mobile vehicles will do sampling on particular routes twice a day. It will help in assessing environmental impact in the surrounding areas as well on these stretches, Rai added. It was also decided to hire ex-servicemen on contract basis for 15 days to assist the enforcement team of transport department in monitoring and issuing challans to defaulters during the drive. Interviews for inducting ex-servicemen will begin from March 28. The transport department will also begin registration of contract carriage buses for paryavaran bus sewa to be run during the scheme period, the Delhi transport minister told reporters. The South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) plans to construct high-end toilet complexes at important locations across south Delhi. The civic body has identified 94 sites for the project, the proposal for which will be placed in the standing committee meeting on March 21 for final approval. After this, the civic body will begin the tendering process for the Public Toilet Units (PTUs). The move surprised many as the unified Municipal Corporation of Delhi had launched a similar, but unsuccessful, project ahead of the 2010 Commonwealth Games. Nine such public facilities were proposed in south Delhi and were to be constructed in a Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) model. There was a plan to develop them as cafe-cum toilet blocks. Only eight such centres were developed by the concessionaire. However, the corporation scrapped the project later after the opposition alleged a scam. Residents associations had also raised objections over the terms and conditions of the contract, which gave real estate rights to a private company for a pittance. A few of them were constructed on pavements. The matter is still pending in Delhi high court. But, this time SDMC claims to have planned the project properly. It has already taken in-principle approval from the land-owing agency for the construction. Radhey Shyam Sharma, SDMC standing committee chairman, said, SDMC has taken prior admission from Public Works Department (PWD) as a majority of the sites are located on roads owned by it. The PTUs will be built on a design-build-operate-and-transfer (DBOT) basis and cover an area of 22-25 square metres. An SDMC official said, The concessionaire will maintain the hygiene in terms of the upkeep and cleanliness. The facilities will be free. The design of the facilities will be such that the differently abled will also be able to use them easily. The toilets will also have a provision for four toilet seats in addition to the urinals. There will be changing stations for infants and vending machines for sanitary napkins. Unlike the previous high-end complexes, these new ones will not have provisions for coffee or flower shops. The land for the construction of the toilets will be provided by SDMC while the concessionaire will bear the cost of developing these toilets and maintain them for 10 years. After that, the corporation will take over the maintenance of these complexes, said Mukesh Yadav, SDMC spokesperson. Out of 94 sites in the four SDMC zones (South, West, Central and Najafgarh), 36 are in south zone and 22 in central zone. Sharma said that 12 of the facilities will be constructed from the funds provided by Indraprastha Gas Limited (IGL) under their Corporation Social Responsibility (CSR) scheme. IGL has already started working at some sites. For the rest of the 82 sites, tendering process will be done in a phased manner. The work over the project will start from April. The private concessionaire will earn by placing advertisements outside the toilet complex. Since the private company will bear all the construction cost, they need a source to generate revenues too. They will be allowed to put advertisement as per the SDMC advertisement policy, said Subhash Arya, SDMC mayor. The licensing fees charged by the SDMC from the advertisements placed at the toilet complex will be evaluated on the basis of the location of each site. For example, the advertisements placed at the toilet complex on BRT road will earn more revenue than the advertisement placed at some market in the Najafgarh zone. In phase-I, four agencies will be selected and each will be given the contract to construct a cluster of 15 toilet complexes. Each cluster will include sites from three zones and a mix of advertising sites falling under A, B and C categories. This will give all four companies an opportunity to earn equal revenue from the advertisements, Sharma said. Based on the performance of these concessionaires in terms of maintenance, services and design of the complex, work will be allotted for rest of the sites in subsequent phases. Farhad Suri, SDMC leader of opposition, criticized the move. He said SDMC is committing the same mistake which they had done in 2010. The 2010 project was finalised on the basis of their advertisement value. At present, it is difficult to comment if the sites are approved on what basis requirement or advertisement value. He added that Govindpuri and Sangam Vihar need more toilets but more facilities have been proposed for Sarvpriya Vihar and Greater Kailash. A toilet complex, constructed in 2010, in GK-I N block wears a deserted look. (S Burmaula / HT Photo) 2010 PROJECT FLUSHED DOWN THE DRAIN In 2010, the unified Municipal Corporation of Delhi had announced construction of as many as 216 high-end toilets in South Delhi. Nine bidders had come forward and constructed model complexes. But the project was put on hold as some residents welfare associations objected the construction. The local bodies raised questions over allowing commercial activity on land meant for public utilities. Following this, former mayor and the standing committee gave an anticipatory approval for the project but later they decided to scrap it. After all this development, the bidders and one of the RWAs took the matter to court. The RWA wanted the complexes to be removed while the concessionaire sought for compensation as it had spent money in building the structures which were never used. The matter is sub judice. Later, SDMC suggested in court about using the structures for other purposes. Among the options suggested are milk and vegetable booths, e-governance kiosks, railway booking offices, space for ironing of clothes, public libraries, recreation centres and gyms. Nothing has been finalised yet. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The suicide attack at the Brussels Zaventem airport, which has killed several people, and an explosion at a busy metro station in the city will place the idea of a borderless Europe under further stress. For some time now, the integrated EU has been creaking under a financial crisis, terror threats and a wave of migrants fleeing the civil war in Syria. German chancellor Angela Merkel might have won a deal with Turkey to end the stream of migrants last week, but Tuesdays attack will nevertheless increase the clamour for stronger national borders within the EU. Read: Live: 13 people killed in Brussels airport, metro blasts It was only on Friday that Salah Abdeslam, dubbed as Europes most-wanted fugitive for his involvement in the November 2015 Paris attacks that killed more than 130 people, was arrested in a dramatic raid. Belgiums foreign minister said an interrogation of Abdeslam revealed that there were plans to target the capital. Abdeslam is a Belgian-born French national. Though the attackers identities are not yet known, recent attacks across Europe have shown that it is not foreign fighters but indoctrinated locals and home-grown youth who carry out these attacks. Read: Shouts in Arabic, gunshots fired: What we know about blasts in Brussels The Kouachi brothers, the main suspects in the 2015 Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris, were French citizens born in the countrys capital. This is deeply disturbing for nations trying their best to integrate outsiders. The cessation of hostilities in Syria and the coalition in Iraq might eventually check the Islamic State in West Asia, but Europe is yet to come to grips with how to stop its youth from getting radicalised by extremist groups. The Brussels attack is also symbolic because it is a strike on the European Union headquarters and the very cockpit of Europe. Read: Blood everywhere, says witness after twin blast at Brussels airport Read: In pics: Panic grips Brussels airport after two explosions SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Nepal, a landlocked nation that uses India to ferry goods, has now secured transit rights through China. This is one of the outcomes during Nepal Prime Minister KP Sharma Olis ongoing visit to China. This has generated a lot of interest in India, symbolic as it is of Kathmandus intent to reduce its dependence on India and of the Nepalese political elites resolve to steer a sovereign course even if it aggravates New Delhi. Nepal is, of course, well within its right to do both. Read | Nepal-China transit treaty is posturing by Kathmandu, say experts There are two things Indian policymakers and analysts need to be mindful of as they absorb the implications of Olis special mission to China. One, get a bit of perspective on what has been agreed. Yes, transit rights are significant but China and Nepal are not yet in an interlocked geographical embrace. Chinese ports like Guangzhou are 2,844 kms from Kathmandu as compared to 866 kms from Kolkata. There are hence real cost and logistical limitations to factor in when considering potential for transit rights. India has 27 border points with Nepal while China has one and the main one at Tatopani is yet to open after last years earthquake. Chinas fuel exports to Nepal have not materialized and it is also not clear how keen Beijing is on improving Tibet-Nepal connectivity for fear of activating Tibetan networks on both sides of the border. Read | Nepal-India ties remain stuck on constitution That said, this development has definite downsides for India. It underlines that unless political elites in smaller neighbours are carefully and sensitively cultivated they are likely to look further afield for allies and balancing actors. A globalizing world that enables China to overcome geographic barriers through finance and technological prowess also poses a frequent challenge Indias claims to be the predominant power in South Asia. China is rapidly improving connectivity along Indias northern border and will be in a position to reorient economic exchanges in the region within a couple of decades. India has to honestly question which countrys soft power is more compelling for the Kathmandu elite right now and craft policies accordingly while continuing to urge Nepal to address Madhesi grievances. Its a tough balancing act to pull off. The Indian Institute of Management, Indore (IIM-I) has been blamed by the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) for failing to provide a conducive atmosphere to its Scheduled Caste (SC) student, Sakshika Raghav. Raghav had joined a five-year integrated programme in management (IPM) course of IIM-I in 2012. Her first-year CGPA (scores of all three semesters) had fallen short of the required CGPA as she had done badly in non-management subjects such as swimming, Bhagwad Gita etc. She was asked to reappear or leave IIM-I and opted to quit. Later, filing a complaint with NCSC, Raghav blamed the institute for her poor performance in three semesters of the first year. She had also alleged that the IIM-I programme did not have the requisite approvals as IIM-I didnt have degree-granting status. The institute, however, she alleged, had not given her this information when admitting her. Agreeing with Raghav, Raju Parmar, NCSC member, in an order on June 23, 2015, after hearing both the parties, said the fee for the full year paid by Raghav during admission had to be refunded. The reason was that Sakshika was not provided conducive atmosphere in the institute resulting (in) bad performance by her in 1st semester. I, therefore, recommend for refund of full fees, Parmar said. Read more: IIM Indore wont consider HRD ministry plea to help dyslexic student Sakshikas father, TD Raghav, a retired scientist, alleges that despite the NCSC order issued almost eight months ago, IIM-I did not refund what he claimed was Rs 3.8 lakh for the first year (all three semesters). Money for the fourth semester was taken in advance. According to the course structure, a student is supposed to pass three semesters in the first year (first, second and third), three semesters in the second (fourth, fifth and sixth) and the remaining three semesters in the third year (seventh, eighth and ninth) to get a diploma. The other two years are for completing a postgraduate diploma programme in management and the full fee then was Rs 23 lakh. IIM-Indore claims to have refunded about Rs 1,83,453 to Raghav (including caution money) for the fourth semester which she had not attended. When contacted, Prof Rishikesh T Krishnan, director, IIM-I, said that the NCSC recommendation had been placed before the B-schools board of governors (BoG). As per the boards advice proportionate refund of charges paid by Raghav had to be refunded for the duration (of course) not attended. Accordingly, the institute has refunded to her the entire tuition fees of the fourth term along with the pro-rata hostel charges, mess fee and caution money amounting to `1,83,453 on October 30, 2015. She has acknowledged receipt of the same. This has been informed to the NCSC as well immediately after the payment was made, says Krishnan. Responding to NCSCs order that says a conducive atmosphere for studies was not provided to Raghav, Krishnan said a committee had been formed to ascertain whether she had been subjected to mental stress, trauma and harassment during her stay at IIM-I. In spite of the committees best efforts, there was no response received from Ms Sakshika. The committee went through the available records and in the absence of any other inputs, it was of the view that there were no instances which indicated that Ms Sakshika was subjected to mental stress, trauma and harassment during the period of her stay in the institute. The committee recommended that the matter be treated as closed, he added. Krishnan also said that the institute was fully committed to providing a conducive work environment to all its students and would not tolerate any instances of harassment on any grounds whatsoever. Determined to fight back, TD Raghav alleges his daughter had been mentally harassed and that he would take the fight to the Delhi High Court. He also alleged that the institute had written to Miranda House where Raghav had been studying before leaving the programme mid-way to join IIM-I. IIM-I had asked Raghavs former institute why she was pursuing two degree courses at one time (against rules) Isnt this harassment? When IIM-Is own programme is not a degree course, how can an institute write about this to another college? Whats the intent behind doing so? he asked. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The United Nations (UN) and ELS Educational Services have announced the third edition of Many Languages, One World Contest and Global Youth Forum for 2016. The contest will qualify contestants for a trip to New York to participate in the UN Global Youth Forum. It is aimed at supporting multilingualism and recognising the impact of the UNs six official languages Arabic, Chinese, English, French, Russian and Spanish. Students will be asked to write their essays in their second or third language. For full contest details, rules and entry guidelines, visit ManyLanguagesOneWorld.ELS.edu. For this years contest, 10 winners will be selected from entries in each language for a total of 60 winners. Winners will receive an all-expense paid trip to New York in July 2016. They will attend a five-day Global Youth Forum on Hofstra University campus, US, to prepare to present their views at UN headquarters. At the Global Youth Forum, the students will create plans of action addressing selected topics. They will also get to interact with invited international scholars and tour New York City. The deadline for essay submissions is March 31, 2016. Read more: After CAT, essay is your key to top B-school In 2015, more than 3,500 people from 130 countries took part in the initial phase of the contest. Students 18 years of age and older currently enrolled in a full-time degree programme at university are eligible to compete to win a place as a delegate to the Global Youth Forum. They must be recommended by a university faculty member or authorised university representative to participate. The essay, not exceeding 2,000 words, should explore how multilingual ability advances global citizenship and cultural understanding. It should reflect the entrants academic, cultural and national context. Entries should be in an official language of the UN that is not the first language of the entrant. Haryanas beef ban is depriving Gurgaons Muslim migrants of buffalo meat, one of their most preferred and cheapest sources of protein. The reason: cow protection activists are allegedly targeting migrants and meat-sellers over suspicion of dealing in beef. Meat-sellers say vigilante groups have become more assertive after the BJP government in the state last year introduced a stringent law that invites rigorous imprisonment up to 10 years and a fine of Rs 1 lakh for cow slaughter. Last year, at least eight cases of violence by vigilante groups were reported to police though many incidents are believed to have gone unreported for fear for persecution. In the first two months this year, one case of cow slaughter was registered. Though there is no ban on sale of buffalo meet in Haryana, sources said the assaults by cow activists are creating a fear psychosis among the migrant population. Gurgaon, one of the most affluent cities in India, has a large Muslim migrant population engaged as domestic helps, drivers, helpers, guards and mechanics, most of them staying in slum clusters at sectors 56 and 57. This low-income group prefers buffalo as it is the cheapest among all meats, costing between Rs 80-100 per kg. In contrast, chicken costs Rs 180-200 per kg and mutton Rs 450 per kg. Beef consumption has become a controversial issue in the country after fringe groups and self-styled protection groups started targeting people they accuse of slaughtering cow, considered sacred by Hindus. In September, a 55-year-old Muslim man was lynched and his son seriously injured by a mob over allegations of cow slaughter at Bisada village in Uttar Pradeshs Dadri area, sparking a nationwide debate on religious intolerance since the BJP came to power in 2014. Last week, two Muslim cattle-traders including a minor were hanged from a tree in Jharkhands Balumath. One among the five arrested over the incident is a member of a cow protection group. Few days ago, I was assaulted by gau rakshaks (cow protectors) on Sohna road while I was supplying buffalo meat for a marriage partySince that incident I have stopped visiting Mewat (from where buffalo meat is sourced), said Muhammad Noor Hasan, who runs a meat shop in Ghata, a south Gurgaon locality. Besides Mewat, most of the buffalo meat for Gurgaon comes from Faridabad. Rita Hussain, a domestic help working in DLF City Phase-4, said they cannot afford goat meat as it is very expensive. And we do not find it (mutton) tasty compared to buffalo meat. It is (also) a tradition to cook buffalo meat during marriages and other important family functions, she added. Bhani Ram Mangala, chairman of the Haryana Gau Sewa Ayog, a state government body, sided with the activists saying that meat sellers or buyers who transport in bulk should get a certificate from a veterinary doctor. Otherwise, how can we know what is being sold, he added. The pressure on meat sellers is likely to increase with the Haryana government setting up a panel in each district to tackle cruelty against animal -- Pashu Krurta Nivaran Samiti. The panel is headed by a deputy Commissioner. We will not only oppose cow slaughter but also cruelty meted out to other animals such as buffaloes because they are treated in an inhumane manner, said Kuldeep Janghu, a member of Gurgaons cow protection group. However, supermarkets and high-end restaurants continue to sell buffalo meat sourced from Mangalore at Rs 390 per kg. Police said they will not allow any vigilante group to hold society to ransom but added that the beef ban will be strictly enforced in Haryana. We conduct regular meetings with the gau rakshak dal and our teams carry out regular patrolling to thwart cow slaughter. No one is allowed to take the law in their hands, said Hawa Singh, assistant commissioner of police (crime). If your partners snoring is keeping you awake all night, heres something you need to be more worried about: Loud snoring has many more worrying consequences. Subjecting mice with kidney cancer to reduced oxygen, US and Spanish scientists found evidence that starving the body of oxygen can trigger the development of tumours by promoting the growth of blood vessels that feed them, the Mirror reported. Read: Women who struggle to sleep or sleep too much have high diabetes risk Sleep apnoea, in which the walls of the throat relax and block the airways, is already associated with obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart attacks and strokes. Dr Antoni Vilaseca, of the Hospital Clinic of Barcelona, told a conference in Munich that this indicates that conditions which restrict oxygen may promote cancer. Read: You will wake up grumpy if you sleep on the right side of bed A report suggested the findings may explain how a bad nights sleep might worsen cancer development and why patients, who exercise and get oxygen pumping, through their blood may be more likely to beat cancer. Follow @htlifeandstyle for more. Bollywood star John Abrahams latest action thriller Rocky Handsome is all set to clash with Hollywood superhero film Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice at the domestic box-office, however, the 43-year-old actor is in no mood to watch the Hollywood flick and you wont believe the reason behind it. Batman v Superman: Best and worst of The Dark Knight & Man of Steel In an exclusive interview with ANI in New Delhi, the Madras Cafe star revealed, I wont watch the latest Batman v Superman film because I just cant see Ben Affleck in the role of a Batman. For me, Christian Bale will always be the real Batman, he added. Watch the Rocky Handsome trailer here When asked during a press conference whether he is affected with the clash with the Hollywood superhero movie, John said that it is up to the fans what they want to watch, his real-hero film or the superhero flick Batman v Superman. Rocky Handsome trailer: Guns, goons and John Abraham at his best Directed by Nishikant Kamat, who also plays the antagonist, Rocky Handsome will hit the theatres on March 25. Follow @htshowbiz for more The case of Ammu, a stray dog in Bengaluru, is strengthening the resolve of animal lovers across the country to get a stringent act in place to punish animal cruelty. For the past week, Ammu has been wandering around Krishnanagar, mourning the death of her eight puppies she gave birth to just 15 days before. The puppies were flung against a boulder by a woman and killed, locals reported. Locals registered a case with Compassion Unlimited Plus Action (Cupa) on March 17, two days after the ghastly incident, accusing one Ponamma for the alleged violence. Residents said they were upset by the wails of the dog, who they had reportedly seen digging up the grave of the puppies to nurse them. Following the complaint against Ponamma, police arrested the woman and later released her on bail. According to a news report, Peenya police inspector Aiyanna Reddy said they were investigating the matter and had recovered CCTV footage from the area. Krishnanagar is fairly stray dog-friendly, with even domesticated pets getting along with strays, according to locals in the area. News of Ammu quickly spread through social media, with people reacting sharply to the incident and calling for a more punitive law than the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, 1960, that imposes as little as Rs 10-50 as fine. A proposal to increase the penalty has been pending for over half a decade. The incident follows a string of recent instances of animal cruelty Shaktimaan, a police horse, was attacked with a lathi by an MLA in Dehradun which ultimately cost him a leg. Last week in Delhi, footage emerged of a man stabbing three stray dogs near the Green Park metro station. A puppy was also found dead close by. Read more: Police horse Shaktiman undergoes surgery, BJP MLA Joshi faces flak Read more: Dog stabbing: Cops access more footage, get close-up of puppy killer Ponamma reportedly acted out at the dog because she was annoyed by the litter taking refuge in the drain under the entry gate to her house. After some attempts to the shoo them away, she allegedly took the drastic step to teach the dog a lesson. Members of Cupa have approached the Centre through Animal Welfare Board of India to push for a stricter animal cruelty act and have Ammus case tried under it. Bharatiya Janata Party Braj Prant vice-president and corporator Kundanika Sharma was arrested on Monday for his hate speech during the condolence meeting of VHP leader Arun Mahour last month. Sharma was later released on interim bail by a local court till April 2. To recall, Sharma was one among three people booked for hate speech during a condolence meeting on February 28, after the murder of VHP leader Arun Mahour. Many BJP, VHP, Bajrang Dal and Shiv Sena leaders had attended this meeting, including Union minister of state for human resource development Ram Shankar Katheria and MP from Fatehpur Sikri Chaudhary Babulal. Later, a case was registered at Loha Mandi police station against three people, including Kundanika Sharma, but the Union minister and Fatehpur Sikri MO were spared. Sharma had been daring Agra police to arrest her and had been attending various protest meets in the city. After the inaction of the police was questioned over this, they finally arrested Sharma on Monday. She was taken for medical examination before being presented in the court of additional city judicial magistrate (I). However, a battery of lawyers was there to seek bail for her. BJP leaders, including city unit president, party MLAs and other leaders had also gathered in court. There were noisy scenes and finally, Kundanika Sharma was granted interim bail till April 2. Targeted by opposition parties over costly gifts given to legislators during the budget session, the Bihar government has approved the release of Rs 1,137.25 crore as payment of salaries to around 2.66 lakh contractual teachers. The amount would be released to the districts, after which it would be deposited in the teachers accounts. The decision to release the funds was taken at a cabinet meeting chaired by chief minister Nitish Kumar on Monday. As many as 29 other proposals were also approved at the meeting. Education minister Ashok Choudhary said the state government had to release funds under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA) from its own treasury because the Centre had refused to make its share of the funds available. He denied the BJPs claims that the state government had unilaterally decided to hike the teachers wages under the SSA, adding that all political parties favoured it. Read: Bihar BJP leaders on gift wapsi campaign against govt Chief minister Nitish Kumar wrote many letters to Prime Minister Narendra Modi in this regard. Even I met Union HRD minister Smriti Irani and apprised her about the increased load on the state exchequer due to the hike in teachers salaries. She assured all help to the state government, said Choudhary. The education minister said the payment was being held up because the state government was waiting for the Centre to release the promised amount. The chief minister has nevertheless made a provision to ensure the timely payment of teachers salaries without waiting for the Modi government to comply, he added. The opposition has been lambasting the state government for making customary gifts to MLAs when teachers have not been paid since December last year. Officials said salary arrears up to March this year would be provided over the next few days. Read: Bihar CM Nitish Kumars open invitation to Shotgun Sinha In its meeting, the cabinet also approved the home departments proposal to table an action taken report (ATR) with regard to the Forbesganj police firing in the House. Four persons, including a woman and a child, were killed in the June 3, 2011 incident. The state government had ordered a judicial inquiry into the matter. The cabinet also gave a one-year extension of service to about 200 contractual veterinary doctors, and around 300 junior engineers appointed by the planning and development department. It also released a Rs 29-crore grant for the Bihar administrative reforms mission. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON All Jet Airways planes in Brussels are safe after two explosions ripped through the departure terminal of the Zaventem airport on Tuesday, the airline said. The countrys second-largest airline by passengers numbers said it is trying to find out the status of its employees and guests. Brussels is the European hub for Jet Airways. The airline announced recently that starting March 27, it would be shifting its European gateway to Amsterdam. We are aware of the bomb explosions at the Brussels airport, Jet Airways said in a statement. Jet Airways is making all efforts to confirm the status of all its staff and guests. As per first information, the Jet Airways aircraft in Brussels are safe, it said. Chhattisgarh journalist Prabhat Singh was arrested for posting objectionable content on social media, amid growing incidents of intimidation of people critical of the state. Worried journalists frantically searched for Singh after he went missing on Monday. However, the arrest was confirmed after Singh was produced in the Jagdalpur district court on Tuesday. He is the only journalist who has reported on their [Bastar police] fraudulent arrests and encounters in the past year or two. Many journalists have been made to toe the line, but few like Prabhat hadnt agreed, said Kamal Shukla, Kanker-based editor of Bhumkaal Samaachar. Singh works as a stringer for the Patrika, a newspaper from the Rajasthan Patrika group, and also owns a small shop for Aadhaar registration near the Danteshwari temple. He started working for ETV around two months ago, but on March 19 his arrangement for news contribution was terminated without reason. On a WhatsApp group, Singh had claimed that this was done under police coercion. Read | Pen or gun: Journos in Chhattisgarh stuck between cops and Maoists His arrest comes amid growing reports of journalists, activists and lawyers being attacked and threatened in the area. In the past few months, lawyers belonging to the JagLag group were forced out of their rented houses in Jagdalpur. A few months ago, a contributor to news website Scroll, Malini Subramanium, was allegedly attacked by locals. Shukla said a few journalists, including Singh and him, received death threats from the Samajik Ekta Manch, a vigilante organisation considered a front for the Bastar police. The same organisation has also been protesting against the activists and lawyers in Bastar. Just a few days ago, Singh had filed a complaint against the Manch over these threats. In December last year, HT reported on the issues that affect journalists in the Bastar region of Chhattisgarh, and who face a constant threat from both the police and the Maoists. At the time, Singh told HT that he was singled out by Bastar inspector general of police SRP Kalluri at a press conference. He was warned by the police to tone down his reporting or face consequences, said Shukla. Read | Spare a child from each family for rebellion: Maoists to villagers Two journalists Somaru Nag and Santosh Yadav have been in jail for alleged Maoist links since last year. In this regard, a group of Chhattisgarh journalists launched a campaign demanding a law for their protection. Singh too was a part of this campaign and represented the group at a meeting with the chief minister. According to Isha Khandelwal, a lawyer with the JagLag group, Singh was arrested under the IT Acts sections 67 and 67A, and booked for a non-bailable offence. Two more cases, which Singh claims to be false, were registered against him earlier in Geedam and Barsur police stations. The Jagdalpur-based all-women legal aid group was recently hounded out of Bastar, a penalty they paid for helping villagers and journalists caught in the crossfire between the police and the Maoists. Everyone who is raising their voice against the police is being targeted. Prabhat has been very vocal about the Bastar IG. He has been writing a lot of pieces exposing police action, she said. Prabhat, who has received worse threats on social media by people from Samajik Ekta Manch, has been sent to jail. His FIR was never filed by the police. By most accounts of traditional political wisdom, Danie J Pauls is an unlikely voice to defend the BJP in Kerala a state where Christians remain largely unimpressed with the party. That the BJP is an anti-Christian party is a canard systematically spread by both the Congress and the Left. The saying that you cannot fool all the people all the time holds true for the Christian community in Kerala. They are seeing through their propaganda now, claimed Paul, president of the BJPs Minority Morcha in the state capital. Kerala, which has over 4,500 RSS shakhas and over 70 active Hindu organisations, is yet to elect a BJP MLA. In an attempt to expand its catchment area in the upcoming assembly polls, the party is on an all-out mission to win at least two to three assembly seats from the 14 in Thiruvananthapuram district. Read: Keralas bloodiest political arena Kannur on edge as elections near While the partys chances of opening an account in the state is still up for debate, it is leaving no stone unturned to woo Christians who constitute 19% of the states population. It is a calibrated strategy in which partys central leadership is taking a keen interest. BJP leaders from the state were in for a major shock when they rushed to New Delhi with a list of 22 candidates last week. Not only did the central leadership withhold the list, it also rebuked the leaders including state president Kummanam Rajasekharan for showing undue haste. Among the reasons cited for this was the failure of the state unit to take NDA allies along and its reluctance to zero in on independent candidates, especially from the Christian belt. Desperate to open an account in the state, the party has been wooing various Christian groups in Kerala for some time now. Both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and bishops from Kerala have paid courtesy calls to each other, and a few church heads are said to have expressed their willingness to be a part of the NDA governments flagship programmes. Read: Assembly polls: Left prepares for do-or-die battle in Kerala Another attempt by the BJP to expand its voter base was seen in the partys tie-up with the newly floated Bharat Dharma Jana Sena, an outfit of backward Ezhavas. A series of meetings held between Union ministers with church leaders over the last two months was aimed at bridging the gap with the Christian community. A BJP leader said on the condition of anonymity: Many bishops from the state have had a good equation with Modi since his days as the Gujarat chief minister. He was attentive to the needs of the community in that state. However, winning the communitys support will be no easy task for the party. Christians and Muslims remain the mainstay of the Congress vote bank in the state. There has been no larger consensus on Modi yet, said a priest, pointing out that the Catholic Bishops Conference of India had expressed reservations over being portrayed as the co-host of a seminar attended by the Prime Minister last year. The National Seminar of Religious Witnessing was held in the capital on February 17, 2015, to celebrate the sainthood awarded to Kuriakose Elias Chavara and Mother Euphrasia. The party had initially tried to woo the Kerala Congress (Mani), a predominantly Christian political outfit, but backed out when its chairman state finance minister KM Mani resigned after getting embroiled in a bribery case. The RSS bid to float a Christian outfit on the lines of the Muslim Rashtriya Manch also failed to take off. Read: Angry tipplers set to take on Kerala government, may contest elections However, the BJP has been sending feelers to the church regularly. After Modi met archbishop Mar George Alancherry in Kochi last December, a number of Union ministers including Sadananda Gowda also held meetings with various bishops. The fact that the BJP improved its tally in the Christian belt including regions such as Ernakulam and Kottayam in the last local body and Lok Sabha elections has spurred its efforts to garner Christian support. Though the community traditionally supports the Congress, many of its members are reportedly upset with the party for failing to back their agitations against the Gadgil and Kasturirangan expert committee reports on the ecologically fragile Western Ghats. We will go the extra mile to build mutual trust and cooperation with the Christian community, said Rajasekharan. Mar Thoma metropolitan Joseph Mar Thoma had inaugurated a public reception for Rajasekharan after he became the partys state president on December 18 last year. A rare three-foot long flying snake have been spotted in a village on the outskirts of Coimbatore. Venkatesan, a farmer, noticed the snake flying from tree-to-tree to catch its prey in his farm at Kalampalayam last Saturday. He sought the help of a snake catcher who with his team managed to catch the reptile after a three-hour operation. The snake was later handed over to Forest department. #WATCH: 3-foot long rare Sri Lankan flying snake rescued in the outskirts of Coimbatore by a rescue team(March 20)https://t.co/AcLDZ7HiEq ANI (@ANI_news) March 21, 2016 According to Forest department sources, this type of snakes are found in dry zone areas like South Eastern countries like Cambodia and Vietnam and also part of Sri Lanka and rarely in India. The snake, known as Chrysopelea, has the ability to fly horizontally in air and move at least 20 feet non-stop, they said, adding that the grey-coloured reptile has black spots around it, at a distance of two to three inches. The snake might have found its way to Kalampalayam on truck carrying wooden logs or hay, they said. It was released into the jungle area of Puthupathi in Western Ghats, the sources said. A day after a union ministers praise of Prime Minister Narendra Modi as gods gift, the Congress on Monday took a potshot at Modi and asked if he was gods gift or oligarchs gift to India. Whether he (Modi) is gods gift or the oligarchs gift to India, the jury is still out, Congress spokesperson Manish Tewari said. Union minister M. Venkaiah Naidu on Sunday dubbed Modi gods gift to India and a messiah of the poor and said India is recognised and respected everywhere because of him. What happened to Rs.15 lakh which you were supposed to get back and deposit in everybodys bank account in 100 days. Why are food prices going through the roof? Why is it that the common man is not able to afford even the basic food items, the Congress leader asked while referring to the Bharatiya Janata Partys promises in the run-up to the 2014 general elections. Tewari also flayed Modi for his comments on caste-based reservation, which he made earlier in the day. The question to the Prime Minister is: Who raised the issue of revisiting reservation. Was it raised by the Congress? Was it raised by anybody in the opposition? The issue was raised by the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh), by its chief Mohan Bhagwat. So, the prime minister would be well advised if he directs these queries with regard to revisiting reservation to its or to their ideological mentor, Tewari said. The Congress leader was referring to Modis speech at the foundation-laying ceremony of the B.R. Ambedkar National Memorial. Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chief Mehbooba Mufti met Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Tuesday in a renewed bid to break the deadlock over government formation in Jammu and Kashmir. The meeting at the PMs 7 Race Course Road residence is said to be the final step to reconciliation between the BJP and the PDP. It was a good and positive meeting. I am satisfied now, she told reporters after the meeting. The PDP chief has called a meeting of her legislature party on Thursday to elect a new leader and discuss the government formation. The ideologically opposite parties had forged an alliance in March last year and ruled the state for 10 months until the death of chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeed on January 7. Governors rule was imposed in J&K on January 8 and since then both the PDP and BJP have been negotiating new terms of engagement. Mehbooba, 56, wants firm assurances from the NDA government on transfer of central power projects to J&K and time-bound implementation of the Agenda for Alliance, a governance framework established by the two sides. The PDP chief, tipped to take over the reins of the coalition government, returned to Srinagar amid reports that her talks with BJP president Amit Shah had failed. That was Saturday. Two days later, she returned to the national capital to give a final push to government formation in a meeting with the PM. What prompted Mehbooba to meet the PM? On March 7, Mehbooba had told party workers at Kupwara in north Kashmir that the will of her father to have an alliance with the BJP was pather ki lakeer (carved in stone). The remarks indicated that Mehbooba wont go against her father and overturn his decision. Sayeed had gone against the tide and forged a coalition with the BJP though he had an unconditional offer of alliance from both the Congress and National Conference (NC) to form the government. The former CM had then equated his decision to go with the BJP to the bringing together of North Pole and South Pole, a move that enabled the BJP to be for the first time a part of any government in the Muslim-majority state. There had been calls from within the PDP even during her fathers time to review the alliance with the BJP but Sayeed chose to ignore those. Secondly, if there are snap polls at this juncture the PDP would be biggest loser given that her partys popularity had declined since it joined hands with the BJP after recording a stupendous performance especially from the Kashmir valley in December 2014 assembly elections. Political analysts had then attributed the huge voter turnout in the insurgency-hit Kashmir to the strong anti-BJP sentiment. If elections are held now, the NC has a good chance to make a comeback within a year of being thrown out of power in the wake of strong anti-incumbency. Thirdly, she is under pressure from her own party legislators as majority of them dont want mid-term polls. Reports had suggested that a PDP section was in touch with BJP leaders and there could be a split in the party. NC leader and former CM Omar Abdullah said it in as many words. She rushed to Delhi in a last-ditch effort to save her party, he said. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Panic gripped passengers at the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGI) in Delhi on Tuesday after the Jet Airways call centre received threats about bombs in five of its aircraft. The calls came within hours after blasts ripped through Brussels airport killing several people. Two Jet Airways crew members were injured in the blasts at Brussels airport on Tuesday. While three of the planes had already departed by the time the anonymous call about the bomb threats was received, the fourth aircraft, which was bound for Chennai, was diverted to Nagpur, sources said. Another plane, also bound for Chennai which was preparing for take off, was grounded and is undergoing checks by the security agencies, a senior police official said. Read | Two Jet Airways crew members injured in blasts at Brussels airport Jet Airways has received a security alert for five flights from Delhi. All flights are on ground and are being checked by security agencies at the respective airports, the airline said in a tweet but did not share specific details. We regret the inconvenience caused to our guests. The safety and security of our guests and crew is always our main priority, Jet Airways said. Sources said the three planes, which received bomb threats, had already flown to their respective destinations -- Gorakhpur, Chandigarh and Dehradun. A string of explosions ripped through Brussels airport and a city metro station, killing at least 34 people in apparently co-ordinated strikes that came days after the prime suspect in the November Paris attacks was arrested in the city. Jawaharlal Nehru University students union president Kanhaiya Kumar met Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday, days after the Congress vice-president attacked the government over a sedition row at the university. Kanhaiya met Gandhi along with delegations from the JNUSU and the All India Students Federation (AISF). Kanhaiya was booked and arrested on a charge of involvement in anti-national sloganeering on the JNU campus on February 9. Gandhi has mounted an attack on the government and the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, accusing them of crushing voices of dissent of college and university students across the country. Kanhaiya has garnered support from several politicians, the latest being Congress leader Shashi Tharoor, who came under fire for saying that the student leader had several similarities with freedom fighter Bhagat Singh. Kejriwal had attacked the Centre, too, saying it was at war with the students of the country and asked Prime Minister Narendra Modi to mend his ways. Advocate general Shreehari Aney resigned from his post on Tuesday following his controversial remarks that Maharashtra should be trifurcated, just months after he stoked a debate over a referendum for Vidarbha. Aney submitted his resignation to the Governor, Ch Vidyasagar Rao on Tuesday morning after a meeting that lasted about 20 minutes. The Governors decision though is pending. Aneys resignation was expected after chief minister Fadnavis expressed his unhappiness over the comment on Monday, a day on which state legislature proceedings were also disrupted over the issue. The Sena decided to ban state cabinet meetings till action was taken against Aney. Aney advocated for a separate Marathwada region while speaking at a function in Jalna on Saturday. He called on Marathwadas to brace for the fight for a separate state given the step-motherly treatment meted out to the region. Aney, a senior lawyer from Nagpur which is also Fadnavis hometown, was appointed Advocate General (AG) on November 15, 2015, after Sunil Manohar resigned from the post in June that year, serving just seven months. As AG, Aneys primary responsibility was to represent the state government before the judiciary. Aney had in December created another controversy when he called for a referendum on the statehood of Vidarbha, prompting the Shiv Sena to demand his removal. The BJP had at the time defended Aney saying he would not make any statements against the interest of the state. Read more: Shiv Sena demands Maharashtra AGs resignation over Vidarbha statehood remark Amid uncertainty over government formation in Jammu and Kashmir, Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) chief Mehbooba Mufti was likely to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the national capital on Tuesday. Mufti returned to Delhi within 48 hours following a reopening of channels of communication with the BJP to break the deadlock in her state, which is under governors rule since chief minister Mufti Mohammad Sayeeds death on January 7, a source said. She has called for a legislature party meeting on March 24. The 56-year-old Mehbooba, tipped to take over the reins after Sayeed, returned to Srinagar on Saturday after meeting BJP president Amit Shah amid reports that the talks had failed. However, as per reports, her meeting with the Prime Minister failed to take place and she returned to Srinagar. Speculation of the BJP hardening its stand swirled as the partys national general secretary, Ram Madhav, said no conditions from the PDP will be accepted before a new government is formed. Later, hints emerged that the BJP could agree to announce an economic package for the state to break the deadlock, sources said. The PDP chief called a meeting of the legislature party on March 24 to elect a new leader, which is viewed as a step towards government formation. But her rival and National Conference working president, Omar Abdullah, said she rushed to Delhi to avert a split in her party. There is an effort to try and gather support independent of Mehbooba Mufti. I think she has rushed to Delhi in her last-ditch effort to save her party, he said in Jammu. The delay and uncertainty over government formation have made a faction of PDP legislators unhappy, a source said in Srinagar. Mehbooba met some senior party leaders over rumours that a faction from the PDP was in deliberation with the BJP to form a government. The allies have been trying to negotiate new terms without success ever since governors rule was imposed. Mehbooba remained reluctant, apparently upset that her father died a sad man, regretting the unfulfilled promises made by the Centre. She wants the BJP to announce confidence-building measures and firm assurances from the NDA government on transfer of central power projects to the state and time-bound implementation of the agenda for alliance. But the PDP camp maintained that there had been some misunderstanding because it never put forth new conditions to the BJP. A fire blazed at Deonar, Mumbais biggest landfill, for a fourth consecutive day as local residents protested authorities failure to check the billows of toxic smoke that choked them and sent air quality plunging on Tuesday. According to the System of Air Quality Weather Forecasting and Research (SAFAR), the air quality index (AQI) a pollution indicator - at its Chembur station was 319 on Tuesday morning, falling under the very poor category. On Monday, AQI levels were at 301. SAFAR estimated AQI levels to continue under the very poor category at 316. The AQI for Mumbai overall was only marginally better, categorised as poor. The average for SAFARs 10 pollution measuring stations, including Chembur, gave a AQI reading of 210 on Tuesday morning. The index is expected to increase to 215 in the next 24 hours. This the second instance of a major fire at the dump in the last two months. In January-February, a week-long blaze had taken Mumbais air quality to hazardous levels. On Tuesday morning, residents of Chembur, Vashi and Wadala gathered at Azad Maidan, near the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporations headquarters, to protest against its failure to control the fire at Deonar. Citizens held banners that read Please respect article 21 - allow us to breathe clean air and wore black clothes and pollution masks as a sign of protest. Our only demand is shut this 90-year-old dumping ground once and for all. The civic body needs to give us a clear cut timeline as to when the measures to control the fire will be completed and when the dumping ground will be shut, said Vandana Tripathi, a Chembur resident. The protestors said that they have written letters to the state chief minister regarding the pollution problem. We have also garnered more than 6,000 signatures on our online petition to shut the dumping ground. The chief minister made several promises when he met us but not one has been met with, said Indresh Pradhan, a Chembur resident. There are no scientific methods being utilised or any alternate mechanism to process garbage by the civic body at this site. We have been breathing this polluted air for too long now and we are fed up. Smita Dighe, a resident of Govandi pointed children and senior citizens are suffering more from the pollution. Children are either not being sent to school or are forced to stay indoors while senior citizens have stopped going for morning or evening walks. The BMC seems to be pushing residents to leave the city. The BMC said it controlled the fire from spreading to new areas but reports emerged of eight isolated fires across the dump. The fire is now under control and we are carrying out filling operations to reduce the smoke, said an official from the solid waste management department of the civic body. Rais Shaikh, a Samajwadi Party corporator who represents areas near the dump, said, The situation in Deonar remains precarious. The whole area is engulfed with smoke. We reject municipal commissioners statements to resolve the issue. We demand he invokes disaster act and take steps to pull in all additional resources. Shaikh added if the situation didnt improve, party workers will block entry for garbage vehicles to the dumping ground from next week. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Pakistan has decided to opt out of the Saarc satellite project which was proposed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi for all member countries. Modi, during last Saarc summit in Nepal in November 2014, had announced Indias decision to develop the satellite to benefit all member countries in various fields including telecommunication and tele-medicine. Pakistan has decided to opt out of the satellite project. So it cannot be called a Saarc satellite. It will be a South Asia satellite, external affairs ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said. In June 2014, Modi had asked Isro to develop the satellite which can be dedicated as a gift to the neighbouring countries. India had held deliberations with experts from other Saarc countries to finalise modalities for the satellite exclusively for the regional grouping. Asked about last weeks Saarc foreign ministers meeting in Nepals Pokhra, Swarup said India pursued connectivity issues which it has been pushing strongly. Two agreements were close to finalisation which could not be finalised in the last summit, he said, terming the discussions as very positive. Pakistan will host the next Saarc summit from November 9-10. Swarup said the outcome of the next summit should be positive going by tone and tenor of discussions in Pokhra. External affairs minister Sushma Swaraj attended the Pokhra meeting. There is no change in the schedule of the European Union-India summit on March 30 to be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi following Tuesdays blasts in the Belgian capital, officials said. The Indian government confirmed Modis visit and called for united efforts to deal with terrorism after the coordinated attacks by the Islamic State killed 34 people. Two crew members of Jet Airways were injured in the attack at the airport, external affairs ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said. They did not sustain severe injuries and were being treated in a local hospital, he added. The external affairs ministry released emergency phone numbers in Brussels for Indian citizens. A Jet Airways spokesperson said there was no damage to any of its Airbus aircraft at the airport. The timing of the formal announcement of Modis visit to Brussels reflected Indias solidarity with the European country even as Belgium raised its terror alert to its highest level. We condemn the terrorist attack in Belgium in the strongest possible terms. We stand in solidarity with the people and government of Belgium, Swarup said. Read more | PM Modi gets set for tour to Saudi Arabia, Brussels and US Modi, who will attend a diaspora event in Brussels, tweeted soon after the attacks: News from Brussels is disturbing. The attacks are condemnable. Condolences to families of the deceased. May those injured recover quickly. From Belgium, Modi will travel to the US for the Nuclear Security Summit beginning on March 31. After the US visit, Modi will go to Saudi Arabia for an official visit beginning on April 2. Batuk Gathani, an Indian journalist based in Brussels for nearly a decade, told HT the vast majority of the Indian population in Belgium is based in Antwerp, engaged in the diamond trade. There are Nearly 2,500 NRIs in Antwerp. The Indian community in Brussels mainly comprises professionals but includes a sizeable number of Sikhs working on potato farms on the outskirts of city. Some Indians are employed in various organisations of the European Commission. According to the Indian embassy, the diaspora in Belgium numbers around 18,000, of whom 10,000 are Indian citizens. Nearly 1,500 Indian IT professionals work for Belgian companies and nearly 800 Indian students are registered at different universities. A travel advisory issued on Tuesday night asked Indian nationals living in Brussels or visiting it to exercise caution and remain alert in view of the attacks. The advisory specifically asked Indians to avoid crowded places, especially city centres, and to refrain from unnecessary travel and using public transport. Read more | In pics: Panic grips Brussels after string of explosions Congress leaders in Uttarakhand say that former chief minister Vijay Bahuguna is an antithesis of his more illustrious father, late HN Bahuguna, who led undivided Uttar Pradesh in the 70s and is still revered as a leader of the masses. In contrast, Vijay Bahuguna is described as moody and an introvert. The spotlight has turned once again on the moody leader as a political crisis gripped the hill state after six Congress MLAs rebelled against chief minister Harish Rawat and sided with the BJP for a possible change of guard. Read More | Trouble for Uttarakhand govt as BJP stakes claim with rebel Cong MLAs The rebellion is said to be centred on 69-year-old Bahuguna who was looking for an opportunity to avenge his unceremonious dumping as chief minister in 2014 to be replaced by Rawat. Sources within the Congress say that Bahugunas desire to see his dynasty flourish in the political spectrum is a major factor in the rebellion. While HN Bahuguna was never in favour of pushing his children into politics, as his close associate SC Ramola put it, Vijay Bahuguna has carefully backed his eldest son Saket, trying to groom him as the political successor. Saket was expelled for six years from the partys primary membership for leading the rebellion. Read More | Uttarakhand crisis: Cong expels ex-CM Bahugunas son for rebellion Among the children of HN Bahuguna, the first to enter politics was Rita Bahuguna a sitting MLA from Lucknow followed by her younger brother Shekhar. But Shekhar, a lawyer, failed to make a mark after twice contesting the assembly polls unsuccessfully from Allahabad. In his fifties, he now keeps a very low profile. Vijay was a late entrant to politics and it was Rita who guided his transformation from a judge to a hard-nosed politician. Vijay joined the Congress after resigning as a judge of Bombay high court in the mid 90s. However, it was not a smooth entry as he lost three parliamentary elections in a row till be was elected in the 2007 by-poll from Tehri. He was re-elected in 2012. Vijay Bahuguna emerged as the dark horse after the 2012 assembly polls when Harish Rawat was the frontrunner for the CMs post. But this development was not sudden. Rita had lobbied hard for her brother. A prominent face in Uttar Pradesh politics, Rita enjoys a good rapport with the Congress first family. After that, Bahugunas dynastic ambitions kicked in, sources said. Ignoring claims of several senior aspirants, Bahuguna gave the party ticket to Saket in the 2012 parliamentary by-polls. Saket, however, lost the elections. Saket, in his forties, is an advocate based in New Delhi and is chief legal officer with India Bulls, which is into real estate, housing finance and securities. Saket is a corporate person and takes politics the same way but that doesnt works, says Vijaypal Rawat, who worked closely with Saket. Bahugunas younger son Saurabh looks after his fathers constituency. Vijay Bahuguna lost the CMs chair over allegations of failure to respond promptly after the 2013 flashfloods that devastated large parts of the state including the holy shrine of Kedarnath. But it is unclear yet who will be the last man standing after the political tsunami kicked up by the ambitions of Vijay Bahuguna. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Students ransacked the office of Hyderabad University vice-chancellor Appa Rao, accused of abetting Dalit PhD scholar Rohith Vemulas suicide, hours after he returned to work from two-month-long leave, ANI reported on Tuesday. Hundreds of students protested on campus and broke into Raos office and lodge, damaging office furniture and breaking equipment, the news agency said. Rao is accused of abetting Vemulas suicide by suspending him and four other students from the university hostel for allegedly beating up an ABVP leader. Vemula killed himself on January 17 after days of alleged caste discrimination and ostracizing on campus. Students allege Rao didnt follow procedure and targeted Vemula and others all of whom were members of the Ambedkar Students Association after Union minister Bandaru Dattatreya wrote a controversial letter, describing the campus as a den of casteist, extremist and anti-national politics. Soon after, the five students were thrown out of the hostel amid allegations they were denied access to campus facilities, except their classrooms and respective workshops, on recommendation by an executive committee of the university. Vemulas suicide sparked a spontaneous outpouring of grief and rage across the nation and a debate on caste discrimination in campuses. Thousands of students have taken out protest marches demanding government action against the vice-chancellor and the enactment of an act against casteism in educational institutions. A group of students vandalised University of Hyderabad vice-chancellor Appa Rao Podiles lodge on Tuesday morning to protest against his resuming charge after having gone on leave in the aftermath of Dalit scholar Rohith Vemulas suicide on January 17. Rao was acccused of abetting the suicide and the university became a subject of a nationwide political debate over caste discrimination in education. Tuesdays violence came a day ahead of a planned meeting on the campus to be addressed by JNU student leader Kanhaiya Kumar. They ransacked the office, resorted to violence of a magnitude never seen before. This is a black day in the history of the university, Rao told reporters, adding that he would continue on the post. Can a handful of students dictate who should be the VC? Read: Depression or oppression: What led to Rohith Vemulas suicide? Let the courts decide on the (suicide) matter. Let the judicial commission report come out. But they have shown no patience. They made no representation for a dialogue to resolve the issue. What they are indulging in is violence, not protest, Rao said. He said university authorities would seek help from Telangana police to restore normalcy on the campus. Police were deployed in large numbers after Tuesdays violence. Students who continued their protest at the VCs lodge in the evening allegedly pelted stones at police personnel who charged at them. A few policemen were injured. As word spread in the morning that Rao had returned from leave and taken charge of his post, several students marched to the VCs lodge on the campus and shattered glass doors, uprooted plants, vandalised the interiors and broke office equipment, photo frames, etc. Appa Rao, who is the main accused in Rohiths death, has no right to be the VC any more and we will not allow him in that seat at any cost, a protesting student said. Students running a campaign under the banner joint action committee for social justice to demand justice for Vemula said Raos return was a provocation and threatened to shut the university again. Classes and other academic plus research activities at the central university were suspended for two weeks in January amid protests over Vemulas suicide. Read: The medias caste: How its to blame for Rohith Vemulas death BJP legislator Ganesh Joshi, who was arrested allegedly for injuring police horse Shaktiman, was granted bail on Tuesday by the Dehradun District Judge with a condition -- not to contact the witnesses. Joshis release on bail means he can vote on the floor of the House on March 28 for his party, which has staked claim to form the government with the help of nine rebel Congress legislators. The MLA was arrested on March 17, three days after a BJP rally in which a video clip appeared showing him brandishing a stick and appearing to strike the 14-year-old horse. Shaktimans limb was amputated after a surgery to fix injuries failed and risk of gangrene was increasing. Joshi was denied bail on March 18 when the state plunged into a political turmoil following passing of money bill in the assembly. District judge RD Paliwal on Tuesday granted him bail with riders that the accused MLA will not tamper with the evidences, not contact the witnesses and cooperate in the investigation. Besides, the MLA was also asked to fetch two bail bonds of `25,000 each. We maintained in the court that our client was being framed under unwarranted charges deliberately by the government. Allegations against him were unfounded. He held the stick that could have never hurt the horse on the rally day, said defence lawyer RS Raghav. He will abide by court order and directives in words and spirit, Raghav said. A top counterterrorism official will lead a special team from Islamabad to Punjabs Pathankot airbase on March 29 to investigate a deadly attack in January for which India blames the Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed group. The six-member team that will arrive in India on Sunday for a four-day visit will also question in the NIAs presence a police officer and two others who were allegedly abducted and later released by the attackers. The siege at the military facility derailed proposed talks between the foreign secretaries, with India making it clear that the possibility of dialogue hinged on Islamabad clamping down on those behind the attack. Additional inspector general Tahir Rai of Pakistans counterterrorism department, who will lead the visitors, is the counterpart of the National Investigation Agencys inspector general Sanjiv Singh. Government sources told Hindustan Times that the Pakistani special investigating team (SIT) will be allowed into the military facility after being flown to Amritsar from Delhi in a BSF aircraft and then dropped by a helicopter outside the air force station. They will enter the compound on vehicles and will be allowed to inspect the spot where the fighting took place, more than a kilometre away from the airbases technical area. Pakistan authorities registered an FIR on February 18 over the attack on the basis of information provided by Indias national security adviser Ajit Doval to his counterpart, Naseer Khan Janjua, the same day. The Pakistani team will not meet Doval as the NSA will be out of the country. The decision to allow the SIT into the airbase was taken at a high-level meeting in the prime ministers office (PMO) on March 19. The discrepancy between the FIR, which mentions four attackers, and home minister Rajnath Singhs statement in Parliament last week that there were six, will be addressed by showing the visitors the four bodies recovered and investigations on the remaining two militants based on a forensic report. Officials say the Indian probe has dug out the identities of the four attackers along with their two JeM facilitators in Pakistan. The addresses of the four men are known, so are the antecedents of the attacks planners and their phone numbers. While the Indian side is willing to share all details of its investigation with Pakistan, the SIT too is expected to share information from Pakistans probe as well as action taken against the JeM. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The decades-old European project appeared under increasing strain on Tuesday after three blasts in Brussels the seat of the European Union killed 34 people, switching on emergency measures in London, Paris, Berlin and elsewhere in the continent. Wracked by a migrant crisis, terror attacks in Paris, economic meltdowns in member-states such as Greece and growing tensions in Britain before the June 23 referendum, the EU was grappling with the longest calender of challenges since its inception before the blasts struck in Brussels. Britain scaled up its preparedness for terror attacks with increased police presence in London and elsewhere, while Prime Minister David Cameron chaired an emergency response committee soon after the Brussels blasts. Belgium was put on its highest terror threat level of 4. Britain has been on a severe threat level since August 2014, which means a terrorist attack is highly likely. Security officials recently conducted exercises in London to test responses to terror attacks. After an emergency meeting, President Francois Hollande of France said: The terrorists have struck Belgium but it is Europe that was targeted. And it is the whole world that is concerned with this. European Union president Donald Tusk said: These attacks mark another low by the terrorists in the service of hatred and violence. Mark Rowley, a top Scotland Yard officer and the national lead for counter-terrorism policing, said: As a precaution forces across the UK have increased policing presence at key locations, including transport hubs, to protect the public and provide reassurance. This is not in relation to any specific information or intelligence. A police car is deployed near the Eiffel tower in Paris on Tuesday. Paris said it will light the tower in the colours of the Belgian flag in the evening as an act of solidarity. (AFP) Security was heightened at Heathrow and Gatwick airports, while the police increased their presence in key areas such as Mayfair and Westminster in London. In London specifically, the Metropolitan Police Service has mobilised additional officers, who will carry out highly visible patrols at key locations around the Capital including the transport network.The number of officers deployed will be regularly assessed.These additional officers are deployed as part of reassurance measures, Rowley said. The police presence across London and the rest of the UK is constantly under review. We are in close liaison with the Belgium authorities and will continue to monitor the situation. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON There is a need to revisit Indias controversial sedition law, the newly-appointed chairman of the Law Commission said, flagging a sensitive issue weeks after the arrest of several JNU students sparked a nationwide debate on nationalism and free speech. We should give it a fresh look. The Indian Penal Code was drafted almost 150 years ago and the British rulers had a different purpose behind the law. Its time for us to examine whether the law holds good today or not, justice BS Chauhan told Hindustan Times. JNU students union leader Kanhaiya Kumar and two others were arrested in February over an event when anti-India slogans were allegedly shouted. They were among six students charged under the sedition law. Justice Chauhan a retired Supreme Court judge who took over as the chairman of the 21st Law Commission earlier this month however, said misuse of a particular law cant be the sole ground to declare it unconstitutional or to repeal it. The commission advises the government on legal issues but its recommendations are not binding. Whatever recommendations we make would be after having a public debate involving law universitieslaw teachers and after examining its definition, judicial pronouncements and taking into views of all concerned. Several opposition parties have demanded that the sedition law should be thrown out as it was a relic of the Raj. Justice Chauhans statement comes a few days after the Narendra Modi-led NDA government told Parliament that the sedition law was a broad-brush measure and needed a review. Anybody who speaks against the government can be booked under sedition law. Amendments have been suggested because the definition is very wide. That is why concerns have been raised, minister of state for home Kiren Rijiju told the Rajya Sabha last week. Home minister Rajnath Singh said the government would call a meeting of all parties to discuss the matter after the Law Commission submitted its recommendations. Justice Chauhan and the commissions member, justice Ravi R Tripathi, said they would like the government to prioritise the issues it wanted the panel to take up. Law on sedition Sedition was not a part of the original IPC that came into force in 1862. It was added to the in 1870 and its scope and ambit was broadened in 1898 to deal with the freedom movement that was gaining ground. According to Section 124A, a person commits the crime of sedition if s/he brings or attempts to bring into hatred or contempt, or excites or attempts to excite disaffection towards, the government established by law in India. It can be by words, either spoken or written, or by signs, or by visible representation, or otherwise. The maximum punishment for sedition is imprisonment for life. Explanation 1 to Section 124A clarifies that the expression disaffection includes disloyalty and all feelings of enmity. Explanation 2 and 3 to Section 124A make it clear that comments expressing disapprobation of the measures of the government or an administrative or other action of the government with a view to obtain their alteration by lawful means, without exciting or attempting to excite hatred, contempt or disaffection, do not amount to sedition. The Supreme Court upheld its validity in Kedar Nath Singh versus State of Bihar in 1962. A five-judge constitution bench headed by then chief justice of India BP Sinha said though the section imposed restrictions on the fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression, the restrictions were in the interest of public order and were within the ambit of permissible legislative interference with the fundamental right. The law struck the correct balance between individual fundamental rights and the interest of public order, the SC said. The apex court, however, clarified sedition law would be attracted only if the offence was such that it could cause public disorder by acts of violence. But despite the clarification given by the SC, sedition law has often been misused by various states. Homosexuality Asked if he favoured de-criminalising gay sex, justice Chauhan said: There should be a public debate. England also debated the contentious issue for more than a decade before finally de-criminalising it. A commission was appointed in 1957 to look into it and ten years later homosexuality was de-criminalised. He said discussions should happen and then Parliament should make a law in the light of public opinion. Death penalty Justice Chauhan -- who was a member of the SC bench that upheld Mumbai blasts case convict Yakub Memons death penalty said: Let it be on the statute book. Where they (courts) feel death penalty is not required, let them give fixed term sentences such as 30 years or 40 years in jail. Stating that the Mumbai blasts case was not a simple case of bombing but a war against the nation, he said that even in that case we commuted the death sentence of so many convicts and upheld the death sentence of just one of them. Uniform civil code He refused to comment on the issues of uniform civil code and discrimination against women in Muslim Personal Law, saying these issues are pending before the Supreme Court. He however, said gender discrimination was there in other religions personal laws as well and Parliament should consider these issues. Justice for poor The Law Commission chairman said he would strongly recommend that judiciary reserve some of its time for poor litigants, particularly those languishing in jails. There should be dedicated benches to hear bail matters of those languishing in jail for years, he added. After being at the receiving end of some harsh criticism over his remarks that Maharashtra should be trifurcated, senior lawyer Shreehari Aney resigned as the states Advocate General on Tuesday morning. His statements, however, have set off a political controversy, which saw a tussle between ruling allies Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Shiv Sena. Other political parties accused the BJP of hatching a conspiracy to divide the state. After causing a major embarrassment for the Devendra Fadnavis-led BJP government, Aney called on governor Ch Vidyasagar Rao on Tuesday morning and submitted his resignation. The governor had not accepted it until late in the evening, but the state government made it clear in the Assembly that if necessary, the cabinet will recommend the governor accept Aneys resignation. Speaking at a function in Jalna on Sunday, Aney a strong advocate of a separate Vidarbha state had said Marathwada had faced injustice more than Vidarbha and hence there is a case for a separate Marathwada state along with a separate Vidarbha state. It evoked strong reactions from the Shiv Sena and Opposition parties, who demanded the immediate removal of Aney. Fadnavis, too, had expressed unhappiness over Aneys statement, after which it became clear Aney would have to step down. He resigned from the post, but said he could not continue as AG while maintaining his ideological stand. He also insisted that neither Fadnavis nor Rao had asked him to resign from the post. Though Aney put in his papers, the controversy has turned into a bitter political tussle with some BJP-RSS leaders speaking in favour of a division and the Sena reacting in a violent way. Opposition parties Congress, Nationalist Congress Party and Raj Thackerays Maharashtra Navnirman Sena, too, targeted the BJP over the issue. Late on Tuesday, Sena workers disrupted a function organised at Nashik where the chief guest was BJP leader and chairperson of the state womens commission Vijaya Rahatkar. Sena workers shouted slogans against Rahatkar, who had earlier in the day said the demand for a separate Marathwada state should be considered as the region was facing discrimination. Following this, angry BJP workers blocked roads in Nashik. Earlier in the day, Sena mouthpiece Saamna launched a verbal attack on Fadnavis saying he has no right to continue as chief minister if he tolerates such an insult to the state. Having tasted blood with Aneys resignation, the Sena on Tuesday demanded the outgoing AG be booked for sedition. It also submitted a notice for a breach of privilege motion against Aney in the state Assembly. Raj alleged Aneys remarks were part of a conspiracy hatched by the RSS and the BJP to divide the state. The Sangh Parivar has always been the advocate of smaller states and hence Aney, who is from Nagpur and close to the RSS, is also echoing their views. It was part of the old RSS strategy to test the water and gauge the response of the people, Raj said. However, we are firm on a united Maharashtra and we will bash up anyone if they talk of division, he said. Aneys resignation has also embarrassed the government in just 17 months of being in power, two AGs have resigned after serving a tenure of seven and four months respectively. Sunil Manohar, who resigned for personal reasons in June 2015, also hails from Nagpur. Aney was appointed on November 15 last year. The state government is expected to announce Aneys successor soon. Earlier in the day, Fadnavis, who has served as Aneys junior during his short stint as lawyer in Nagpur, told the state Assembly that the resignation has been submitted by the latter to the governor and due process would be followed thereafter. The government has already clarified its stand on Monday we do not approve of the statement by Aney, he said. When the Opposition raised doubts over the acceptance of his resignation, the chief minister said the government would advise the governor to accept it. The honourable governor will take the appropriate decision on the resignation as he is the appointing authority of the AG. The state government is of the opinion that the resignation should be accepted. If need be, the council of ministers of the state will recommend acceptance of his resignation, he said. Though Fadnavis sought to distance his government from Aneys remarks, his party colleagues Rahatkar and Latur MP Sunil Gaikwad supported his demand for a separate Marathwada state. Senior RSS functionary MG Vaidya, too, said in Nagpur that Maharashtra could be divided into four states if the criterion of a three-crore population for each state was considered. These remarks would probably be used by Opposition parties as ammunition against the BJP. NCP leader Jayant Patil asked the government to clarify its stand on statehood for Vidarbha. In seven out of every ten patients detected with drug resistant Tuberculosis (TB) in Mumbai, four drugs out of the six-drug cocktail are ineffective, according to a study by doctors at PD Hinduja Hospital in Mahim which said that a new drug regime that looked at a patients unique requirements instead of a standard prescription for everyone, was needed to control the disease. The drugs are given as a part of the governments TB control program and the hospitals study indicates that the drug combination worked in just over a third of the patients. The rest, researchers said, were consuming pills that the TB bacteria in their body were resistant to. The findings of the study will be published in the Lung India, a scientific journal. Ideally what we need is a new regimen of drugs, said Dr Zarir Udwadia, chest physician at the hospital who has conducted the study along with his colleagues. Adding a new drug to the existing regimen is a domed (approach).On its own, a new drug is worthless. The study tried to find out whether the current blanket anti-TB program running in India is working. At present, a multidrug-resistant TB patient registered under the governments Revised National TB Control Program (RNTCP) will receive a cocktail of six drugs. The patient will be put on the drugs without conducting a drug susceptibility test (DST) to know which drugs will be effective in killing the TB bacteria they are infected with. The susceptibility test should be made available to all patients. We have to individualise treatment with the help of DST said Dr Camilla Rodrigues, consultant microbiologist at the hospital. In the study, the doctors tested sputum samples of 1,539 patients, of which, 464 had drug-resistant bacteria. In 30% of these patients, only three of six drugs were effective whereas in 9% of them only one of the six known anti-TB drug was effective. TB is in everybodys backyard, said Dr Rodrigues who was consulted recently by a pilot diagnosed of multi-drug resistant TB. If you dont get effective treatment, it continues to spread. The larger problem is not just that the patients are getting ineffective treatment but also they continue to spread the bacteria in the community where they live. It is only when a patients sputum is negative for the bacteria, the person stops spreading the bacteria to others. PD Hinduja Hospital was the first in the country to record the presence of totally drug-resistant tuberculosis, a classification World Health Organisation is still to accept. International health agencies said that the most resistant form of TB is classified as extensively drug resistant (XDR) TB as there are salvage drugs available to treat. Though the government is increasing the availability of diagnostic facilities to detect patients with resistant TB, it has little to improve the accessibility to drug susceptibility tests. Providing the GeneXpert (diagnostic test for detecting drug-resistant cases) to just 15% of the suspected TB patients would consume the entire annual TB budget, said Udwadia. Government medical officers said that it is difficult to start DST facilities at their hospital. Dr Sunil D Khaparde, deputy director general, (TB), said, I have not seen the study so it is difficult for me to comment on the findings. There is no doubt that performing a DST is the best way to treat patients but for a public health programme, it is challenging. Till we dont make DST available at all hospitals, individualised treatments will take time. An old rivalry between two Afghan students of Post Graduate Government College, Sector 46, led to alleged murder of one on Monday evening. Sanaullah, in his mid-20s, was repeatedly stabbed in broad daylight on the college campus by his batchmate Ehsanullah in presence of several college students. The police said accused Ehsanullah, around 25-year-old, stabbed the deceased multiple times, including on stomach, around 12.30pm. Ehsanullah also sustained injuries, following which the police was informed and both were rushed to the Government Medical College and Hospital (GMCH), Sector 32, where Sanaullah succumbed to his injuries. According to the police, he died around 8pm. Ehsanullah was discharged from the hospital on Tuesday. According to the college authorities, old enmity between the two BA final year students led to Sanaullahs death. Both reportedly had got into a fight last week as well, they added. The students had come on a scholarship sponsored by the Indian Council for Cultural Relations. A college official said both were residing at a rented accommodation. While accused Ehsanullah was living in Sector 46, Sanaullah was a resident of Sector 33. Ehsanullah and Sanaullah were meritorious students. Ehsanullah was the best among 18 other Afghan students studying in the college, said college vice-principal. We will inform the ICCR, which will further inform the embassy about Sanaullahs death, the college authorities added. According to an eyewitness and complainant Didar, the students had got into an argument on the campus, followed by a violent clash, wherein Ehsanullah stabbed Sanaullah several times. A murder case has been registered under Section 302 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code against the accused. We do not know the reason so far, but we have been told that there was an old enmity between them. We will record statement of the accused, after which we will be able to know the reason, said investigating officer Nar Singh of the Sector 34 police station. Captain Amarinder Singh and the Badals, sworn enemies in public, seem to have friendly relations in private and a tacit understanding to cover up each others corruption scandals, Aam Admi Party (AAP) leader Sukhpal Singh Khaira has said here on Tuesday. He has questioned the silence of Punjabs ruling family on a court notice to Amarinders son, Raninder Singh, who is accused of hiding his multiple bank accounts and companies in Europe, besides property in Dubai and London. The names of Amarinder and his wife, Parneet Kaur, also appear as beneficiaries in many of these companies and transactions. The disclosures have created a storm in the political circles of Punjab and while even the AAP has asked the Congress to sack Captain as its state party president, the Badal family and their Shiromani Akali Dal have said nothing, so far, even in the Vidhan Sabha. This connivance, friendliness, deep nexus, and quid pro quo between Captain and the Badals has been going on for a long time, said Khaira, adding: Amarinder, architect of the corruption case against the Badals in 2003, never challenged their state-manipulated acquittal in 2008; while the Badal government is soft-peddling two corruption cases (Ludhiana City Centre and Amritsar Improvement Trust) against Amarinder since 2008 by not pressing charges. Khaira added that the recent smooth acquittal of Captains former media adviser Bharat Inder Singh Chahal in a corruption case shows the Badal-Amrinder nexus that voters should see through in 2017. The project of building a museum dedicated to Shaheed Bhagat Singh at his native village, Khatkar Kalan, in the district has been left in the lurch for more than seven years. The protracted delay has also increased the total cost of the museum from Rs 8.45 crore to Rs 18 crore. The land acquisition cost of about Rs 3 crore is also included in it. The executive agency for building the museum, Markfed, has been waiting for funds from the government, due to which the work was also stopped. As Shaheed Bhagat Singhs martyrdom day falls on the coming Wednesday, some labourers reached the construction site. It is pertinent to mention here that deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal is scheduled to address a rally at Khatkar Kalan on Wednesday, near the museums construction site. Former Union home minister P Chidambaram had laid the foundation stone of the project on February 23, 2009, in the presence of the then Union minister for tourism and culture Ambika Soni and Punjab chief minister Parkash Singh Badal. The museum was envisioned as a memorial to Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev, Rajguru, and more than 9,000 martyrs from Punjab who sacrificed their lives in the Indian freedom struggle. As per the project, the existing building of the old museum was planned to be dismantled after the construction of the new building. For extension of the new museum, around 85 kanals of land was also acquired. The new structure will house the new museum, photo galleries, and an auditorium. Earlier, Punjab Mandi Board was entrusted the work of constructing the new building, but after some time, Markfed was appointed the executive agency for the project. Around 75% construction work of the museum has been completed by Markfed but completion of flooring, doors, windows, electrical fitting is awaited due to want of funds from the central government. Executive engineer, Markfed, Shiv Charan Kumar said, We sent a reminder to release the pending amount of Rs 3 crore to the central government ten days ago. Work has been delayed because of lack of funds. He added that work regarding exhibits of martyrs, to be done by the department of tourism and cultural affairs, was still pending and museum work would be accomplished only after that. Chief executive officer of Punjab Heritage and Tourism Promotion Board, Navjotpal Singh Randhawa, denied there were any issues related to the project. He said issues regarding land enhancement for the project had also been cleared and construction would be completed this year. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Black flags on World Water Day greeted a central team assessing damage to the Sutlej-Yamuna Link (SYL) canal in Punjab. The visit was supposed to be secret. The protesting farmers and Akali workers are against sharing water with Haryana. A bill has de-notified the SYL land, and without waiting for assent from the governor, farmers have reclaimed a huge part of the channel and plundered its tree wealth. As the three-member team led by Home Ministrys joint secretary (centre-state) Dilip Kumar and escorted by Punjab irrigation department secretary Kahan Singh Pannu reached Kami Kalan amid high security, the farmers and local residents, Akalis mostly, showed them black flags and raised slogans against the SYL project, Centre, and Haryana government. The team made a video of every point where the canal was filled or dismantled. Its members were unavailable to the media. Punjab has not even a drop of water for anyone. The SYL is history, shouted a protester, while the team was comparing the before-and-after maps. The speed with which villagers received black flags and mobilised at every location made it clear that the visits secrecy had been given away at the political level. At Kami Kalan near Ghanaur, former Akali minister Ajiab Singh Mukhmailpur, whose wife, Harpreet Kaur, is sitting legislator, led the protest. Justice Nirmal Singh and former MLA Didar Singh Bhatti confronted the central team at Bassi Pathana and Chunni, respectively. Chief minister Parkash Singh Badal has made it clear that Punjab has no water to spare and that the Shiromani Akali Dal wont allow the SYL at any cost. We want the central team to know that, said Mukhmailpur. In a report to the visiting team, the Punjab government has claimed that the canal was occupied and damaged before the status-quo order from the Supreme Court. The team went to Kapoori; Alampur near Chitkara University; Majjat near Chunni Kalan; Morinda and Inderpur Dhaki on the Rupnagar-Anandpur Sahib road; Doomcheri, and half a dozen other places in Patiala, Fatehgarh Sahib and Rupnagar districts through which the SYL passes. It will submit a report to the Home Ministry and Prime Ministers Office (PMO). We have cooperated with the team and provided it will all the information required, said state irrigation secretary Pannu. Some farmers want canal, not land Fatehgarh Sahib: Some of the local farmers say that if the water is kept for Punjab, they will take the SYL instead of the land, since the level of groundwater in the area has fallen drastically. The central SYL inspection team took 10 members to Chunni Khurd and Bhateri in Fatehgarh Sahib district on Tuesday morning. At these villages, farmers had started filling the canal shortly after the state government had passed a bill denying water to Haryana through this channel. After 10 minutes of inspection, team leader Dilip Kumar took some pictures of the spot on his mobile phone and also got a video made. He didnt interact with the media and local people. Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) district president Ranjit Singh Libra, former legislator Didar Singh Bhatti, and partys working committee member Gurpreet Singh, gathered hundreds of supporters for a protest against this inspection. Akali leaders said the Home Ministrys joint secretary for Centre-state relations had refused to listen to them. HTC SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON In his first meeting with education department officials, UT adviser Parimal Rai raised concern over the condition of government schools. Asking questions on requirements of schools, he laid emphasis on the state of toilets and hygiene besides nutritional content of midday meals being served to children, said sources. Deputy commissioner Ajit Balaji Joshi was also present at the meeting. Education secretary Sarvjit Singh said: We will definitely address the issues raised by the adviser. Committees have already been formed to hold surprise inspections in all schools round the year. Deputy director, school education, Chanchal Singh said six committees constituted by the department would not only look into the state of toilets and midday meal schemes, but also monitor other aspects, including student-teacher ratio, student-classroom ratio, discipline, working of teachers and their work load. Each committee comprises two members of the administration (from among the deputy director, school education; district education officer (DEO); deputy DEO; and deputy director, adult education) along with one state or national awardee teacher. The teachers would be rotated, so that their work is not affected. The education secretary said he, too, would be conducting surprise visits to schools to address the issues on the spot. Hindustan Times had highlighted in a report on January 27 that only seven out of 111 government schools in Chandigarh have midday meal kitchens. Government Model Senior Secondary School, Sector 10, Harbir Singh Anand has said prepared food on the school premises would help keep an eye on hygiene, avoid wastage and serve warm and nutritious food to children. Commenting on this suggestion, the education secretary said: It cannot happen overnight, but by the end of this year, we will have midday meal kitchens in a few more schools. The administration has also decided revise the menu to include more nutritious food items, like dalia, he said. The comptroller and auditor general (CAG), in its report on the midday meal scheme in 2014, had highlighted that the Chandigarh Industrial and Tourism Development Corporation (CITCO) was serving poor-quality food to students in government schools. The report for the period 2009 to 2014 stated that midday meals were being cooked in unhygienic conditions. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Water, water, everywhere, And all the boards did shrink; Water, water, everywhere, Nor any drop to drink. Water conflicts or water wars are now being seen as a new reality for business and governments. One of the root causes of the long-running war in Darfur in the African continent has been attributed to water. India too has a history of conflicts over sharing of river water. The ongoing issue of the Sutlej-Yamuna Link canal also brings into focus how politics over water sharing can turn ugly in the long run. Water, the life-giving source on Earth, is now the bone of contention between countries, states and communities. March 22 is observed as World Water Day every year to bring focus on the importance of freshwater and advocating sustainable management of these resources. Reports by the United Nations deliver alarming numbers that say 783 million people do not have access to clean water and almost 2.5 billion of the worlds population does not have access to adequate sanitation. In India, two-thirds of homes have no drinking water facility from a treated tap source, and fourfifths are devoid of closed drainage connectivity. Even now, 36% households have to fetch water from a source located within 500 metres in rural areas and 100 metres in urban areas. We, as responsible and educated citizens, can start by observing practices that save water in our own homes. On World Water Day, Hindustan Times talks to people to gather tips on water conservation at home, in our own simple way. Dheerja Sharma, geography teacher, GMSSS-16 Careful dish washing: One should not let tap water run continuously and should try washing dishes with stored water. Say no washing vehicles daily: A huge amount of water is used in washing vehicles. Avoid doing so daily to save water. Low flow taps: Maximise the use of low flow taps in the wash basins. Showering: Refrain from letting your shower run continuously and use buckets to keep a check on water consumed. Her message Water is synonymous to life, so saving it is equivalent to saving lives. Prerak Sharma, Class 12, Govt Model Senior Secondary School, Sector 16 Reusing water: We can direct water from the kitchen sink to water our lawns so as to not depend on an external or extra source for the same. Detergent mopping: Instead of draining away leftover water used for washing clothes, it can be utilised for mopping and cleaning the house. Fixing leaks: We must fix leaking outlets as soon as possible to ensure that not a single drop goes waste. Cistern displacement: This device used in toilets reduces the amount of water used in each flush. His message Save water. What is the purpose of talking about water conservation at length when there would be no water left? Rajni Gupta, homemaker Switch from dishwashers to traditional washing: Use this tech-savvy version of washing dishes only when the load is full otherwise it is a sheer waste of detergent and water. Also keep a check on running tap water. Preparing soup: Water for boiling vegetables or any other eatable, can be used for preparing soups or broths. New ways to water plants: While waiting for water to warm up, the amount of cold water accumulated in the duration, can be used for watering small plants or any other task. The whole idea is to not throw away water and put it to maximum use. Water-saving shower heads and low-flow faucets: These bathroom fittings will reduce the amount of water supply. Her message No amount of long discussions or lengthy essays will work; it is time that we put our ideas and strategies to use. A major fire broke out at Mohandai Oswal Cancer Hospital around midnight on Sunday, resulting in panic for scores of patients, their attendants and hospital staff, who were timely evacuated and a major tragedy was averted. When the fire broke out, a total of 600 people including 132 patients (including eight newborns), 200 attendants and nearly 300 hospital staff members were present inside the building. Within minutes, smoke engulfed the emergency ward, ICU and all three floors. Patients attendants claimed that pungent smell of burning acid was all over the place. As smoke spread, hospital staff members evacuated the patients from all wards and units, and shifted them to an open place on the hospital premises. While the attendants claimed that the fire broke out at 12am, the hospital authorities claimed that it broke out at 1am, following which fire brigade was called. The fire brigade team swung into action and immediately took out three LPG cylinders from the basement, thus preventing blasts. It took the fire brigade team more than six hours to douse the fire that erupted from the basement where acid was stored. Though exact reason behind the fire is yet to be ascertained, fire brigade officials said fire spread after blasts occurred in chemical containers at laboratory in the basement. Two assistants were present in the laboratory, but they came out just in time. Fire officer Rajinder Sharma said, Fire tenders from all city stations were rushed to the spot, but only three fire tenders were used to douse the fire. No casualty was reported. We have installed exhaust fans to drain out smoke from the basement. It seems that chemical reacted with water due to which blasts occurred. Hospital director Dr VK Kaushal said, Patients were shifted to the nursing hostel and college, while the eight newborns were shifted to the nursing hostels mess. Out of 132 patients, three patients who were on life supporting system at the ICU on first floor were referred to Christian Medical College and Hospital. Hospital staff attempts to douse flames Before the fire brigade reached the hospital, staff struggled to control the fire, but to no avail. Sources said smoke was so dense that it was difficult to breathe. Firefighters suffer skin irritation The fire teams started their operation by breaking the emergency doors to enter the basement. A fireman, Raj Kumar, said, We took out three LPG cylinders safely from the basement. Due to chemical reaction, some firemen also suffered irritation on the skin. Negligence comes to fore, MC marks inquiry The Ludhiana Municipal Corporation (LMC) has marked an inquiry into the fire incident to look into the alleged negligence by the hospital authorities as acid was stored in containers in the basement that caught fire. Moreover, the hospital was also found to be ill-equipped to handle such incidents. MC commissioner GK Singh Dhaliwal said, We have marked an inquiry into the matter and also written a letter to the health authorities to hold inspection in all hospitals on whether they are following fire safety norms. The inquiry has been entrusted to additional MC commissioner Devinder Singh. While the exact cause of fire is still unknown, sources said the fire spread after blasts occurred in the acid stored in containers at the basement of the hospital. Following the incident, three LPG cylinders kept in the basement were immediately removed by the firefighters, sources said. Even though the hospital authorities claimed they have adequate fire safety equipment, yet the way the fire spread negates their tall claims. Rahul Verma, a visitor at the hospital, said, I think the hospital staff should take required steps to avoid such incidents in future. There should be more exits from the building, as people were using stairs from one side. Staff was very supportive at the time of incident. A hospital official claimed that patients were shifted to nursing college and hostel and there was no panic-like situation. A spokesperson of the hospital said, After the fire was doused at 8 am, patients were shifted back to their wards. The hospital has sufficient equipment to deal with fire. Hospital records, computers and items in hospital store are safe. Hospital director Dr VK Kaushal said, All patients are safe. The hospital services were resumed. There was no panic in the hospital as the patients were shifted to other buildings of nursing college and hostel safely. Patients had to bear stench all day The smell of burnt items was being felt on till Monday afternoon. A fire tender remained stationed at the hospital throughout the day to pour water onto the gutted area. The heat level was still high in the chemotherapy ward, which is situated just above the basement. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON A youth who was recently selected in the Indian Army in January, was allegedly pushed off the Howrah Express by Railway Protection Force (RPF) cops at Jalandhar Cantonment station at 9am here on Tuesday. Deceased Mukhtiyar Singh, 19, a resident of Ballarwal village in Amritsar, had come along with 16 army aspirants to help them in passing the physical fitness test at the armys recruitment drive. Part of a group of 17 friends who were returning from the recruitment camp in Ludhiana, which was postponed to March 31, Mukhtiyar and others were enjoying breakfast in the compartment reserved for physically challenged persons, when their train stopped at the station. Mukhtiyars friends, including Sarwan Singh, Mangal Singh, Jasmail Singh, Baldev Singh and several others explained that as the recruitment drive was postponed to March 31, they were returning to Ajnala near Amritsar and had mistakenly entered the compartment of the train as they were hungry. They alleged that RPF cops arrived and asked them to exit the bogey immediately and subsequently, in an altercation, they pushed Mukhtiyar onto the tracks, following which he was run over by another train. Another youth, Kulwant Singh of the same village, was injured and is undergoing treatment at a private hospital. After receiving information, senior police and administrative officials arrived at the civil hospital, where the body of the deceased was shifted. Sub-divisional magistrate (SDM-2) Varinder Pal Bajwa, GRP superintendent of police (SP) Lakhwinder Pal Singh Khaira, assistant commissioner of police (ACP West) Ravinder Pal Singh Sandhu, inspector Paramjeet Singh and others arrived at the spot and pacified the agitating army aspirants. RPFs assistant sub-inspector Surinder Singh refuted the allegations of the youths and claimed that the deceased himself jumped from the bogey. SP Khaira said a case under Section 304 (Punishment for culpable homicide not amounting to murder) and 308 (Attempt to commit culpable homicide) had been registered against unidentified persons on the statement of deceaseds father Joga Singh. He said after due investigation, RPF cops responsible for the incident would be identified and arrested as the youths had seen them. The deceased Mukhtiyar had passed Class 12 last year and was selected for the Indian Army during a recruitment drive at Gurdaspur in January 2016. His family and friends said he was an inspiration for village youth and made a running track in the village to enable others to prepare for passing the physical fitness test. His father Joga Singh, a daily wager, said his son used to motivate other boys to join the army. In a development that is likely to pose hurdles in the way of collection of property tax and attainment of the immense annual target set for the same ahead of March 31 deadline, hoteliers in the city have refused to clear their property tax dues in the wake of the refusal of the civic authorities to extend rebate to them or urge the government to do so. According to officials of the Amritsar municipal corporation, the owners of hotels in Amritsar have refused to clear their property tax dues in the absence of any rebate on the same. Officials said more than 300 owners of hospitality units within the walled city area and elsewhere in the city owe the MC a fortune in terms of property tax. They had demanded a revision in the property tax rates, for which the government did the needful and issued a notification of the revised rates as well. However, besides this, the hotel owners sought 10% rebate, which the MC authorities refused to extend resulting in discontentment among them. The property tax target for the current financial year is around Rs 50 crore, but the MC has barely managed to collect Rs 16 crore so far. Meanwhile, remembering recoveries from various sources ahead of the end of the current fiscal year, which is just days away, the civic body has directed the officials of various revenue earning departments to work throughout religious and public holidays to attain targets. Consequently, revenue collection operations of various departments of the MC shall continue even on Holi, Good Friday and the weekly offs, to ensure that the annual targets are met. Besides this, the civic body has called a meeting of the officials of various departments to review revenue collection on their part and to set fresh weekly targets for them. Surinder Singh, MC joint commissioner, said the demand of the hoteliers pertaining to property tax has been taken up with Punjab deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal. It is up to the government to decide whether to extend the offer of rebate to them or not, he said. He added that the hoteliers owed at least Rs 1 crore in terms of property tax payment to the MC. A meeting has been called on Tuesday to assess the pace of collection of revenue from the property tax and other sources of revenue. Fresh targets shall be allotted to the officials concerned to ensure that the annual financial goals are attained ahead of March 31 deadline, he said. Protesting against fee hike and entry of cops on the campus, student organisations blocked Gate No. 2 of Panjab University on Monday noon. As the gate remained blocked up to 2 pm, other students, employees and residents had to park their vehicles outside the gate or move to other two gates to enter the campus. Over 100 students, who had decided to boycott classes on Monday, took out a rally from the vice-chancellors office to Gate No. 2 and ended up closing it. They resorted to sloganeering and were joined by students of affiliated colleges as well. Although the PU authorities were aware about the protest and the students threat to block the gate, no arrangements were made to prevent it. Dean, students welfare (DSW), professor Navdeep Goyal reached the spot after two hours. After listening to the students demand of rolling back the fee hike, Goyal expressed his helplessness on the issue. Had the university received its pending grant before the senate meeting scheduled on March 27, I would have opposed the fee hike too. At the present moment, we are in a fix as we have not received the Rs 90-crore grant while the previous years grant of Rs 17 crore is still pending, he said. Goyal said the fee hike had been reduced from 20% to 5%, but the students were still protesting. The vice-chancellor and registrar are in a constant touch with the higher authorities to address the issue, he said. Panel to look into manhandling case On the issue of alleged manhandling of students by the Sector-11 station house officer (SHO), Goyal agreed to form a committee within a day to investigate the March-14 incident. The cops had to be called as we knew security guards could not handle the situation. We will take a representative from among the students and watch the complete video to see what happened that day, he said. Read more: After manhandling incident, students, authorities divided Deputy superintendent of police (DSP, central) Satish Kumar also reached the campus to maintain law and order. SHO Narinder Patial, who allegedly manhandled and abused students protesting against fee hike outside the administrative block, was also accompanying him. The DSP assured the protesters that required action would be taken on the complaint against Patial submitted to the senior superintendent of police. Students also demanded a policy on entry of cops on the campus. Some demand azaadi While three student organisations of the campus came together to protest against fee hike and entry of cops, a group of students took to mikes and screamed slogans of azaadi, taking a cue from Jawaharlal Nehru University protests. They also sang a song titled university vech ditti (university has been sold). The girls were equally active when it came to sloganeering against the university authorities and singing Punjabi songs. A Punjab Vigilance Bureau (VB) preliminary inquiry has revealed selective leaks of question papers of recruitment tests for gazetted and non-gazetted officers by an organised gang. The papers price is Rs 20 to Rs 30 lakh. The appointment of 682 persons selected on the basis of one such entrance test conducted by Panjab University (PU) in November 2015 on behalf of the department of local bodies has been put on hold. The PU has also been barred from holding further tests for the Punjab government. We have directed the VB to bring all those involved in the scam to book, Punjab deputy chief minister Sukhbir Singh Badal told HT. The recruitment test conducted for patwaris is also under the scanner as we have received a complaint, added Sukhbir. The probe, being monitored by the offices of the chief minister and the deputy chief minister, points to the selective leaking of question papers to a handful of candidates, who then sell off the paper further to other candidates. The bureau has questioned members of the PU staff and four candidates, all among the toppers in the test. Other than putting on hold the recruitment of 682 persons--including subdivisional officers (SDOs) and junior engineers (JEs)--the university has been barred from holding the second test for selecting 1,200 patwaris. The first test to shortlist candidates is over already. The staff at the University Institute of Applied Management Sciences (UIAMS), which has been conducting these examinations for the Punjab government since 2008, denies that question papers were leaked out. UIAMS chief coordinator Pradeep Sharma said, Ours system is foolproof but since an inquiry is on, well cooperate with the VB. Candidates turn into conduits The Punjab vigilance bureaus probe into a November 2015 entrance test conducted by Panjab University, Chandigarh, on behalf of the state government points to the shocking possibility of a few candidates--who managed to procure the leaked question paper--themselves becoming conduits and further leaking questions to other candidates. The university conducted the test on behalf of the department of local bodies. The department had advertised 682 posts (including SDOs and JEs) in July 2015. More than 76,000 candidates applied for the test. The applications were invited online and the written examination was conducted at several centres across the state. Investigation into the scam began last month when a resident of Kollianwali village in Muktsar district complained to chief minister Parkash Singh Badal, saying his ward--who had appeared in the entrance test--had received an offer for sure-shot recruitment as an SDO for Rs 30 lakh. The complainant said a set of candidates were taken to Lucknow by the kingpin where the question papers were leaked. Discreet investigations, ordered by the CM, revealed that a set of candidates had indeed gone to Lucknow together a few days before the examination, and on reaching there, their mobile phones were switched off. Further inquiries said the candidates who were placed in the first 20 positions in the merit, had virtually identical answer sheets and had even made the same mistakes in answering some questions. Background check of these candidates showed that many of those who topped the test had barely managed to pass their engineering degree. Converted into a full-fledged vigilance probe earlier this month, investigations have found that while at least three candidates went to Lucknow, another dozen had accessed the question paper before the examination through one of the candidates who went to Lucknow. The common mobile number that all the candidates were in touch with belongs to a resident of Sangrur who was called for questioning by the VB earlier this week. The VB has now approached the university to further connect the dots and probe the source of the leak. PU vice-chancellor Arun Grover was called for a joint meeting with the vigilance bureau by chief secretary Sarvesh Kaushal earlier this week and was explained the seriousness of the situation. The entire examination process is in the PUs hands. We do not have anything to do with conducting the test. We only advertise the posts and when the process of selection is over we are given the merit list by the PU, said Priyank Bharti, director, local bodies. He said that other than the 682 posts being filled, this department had earlier used the PUs services to fill 329 posts in 2014-15 and another 50 in 2013. But then, the process had seemed fair. For this recruitment we have the result but have been asked not to issue appointment letters, he said. University Institute of Applied Management Sciences (UIAMS), that conducts the tests, said there is no possibility of leakage. We follow a secret process of setting the paper and sealing it. Last years question papers are used by private preparatory academies to create question banks, said Pradeep Sharma, chief coordinator, UIAMS. He said the UIAMS had been conducting examinations for the Punjab government since 2008. We have recruited over 2,500 people for Punsup, PUDA, food and civil supplies, and excise and taxation departments and there has never been any complaint. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON The unusually warm winter is melting into summer. And if youre just as bored as us (Were at work, whats your excuse?) and are looking for ideas to have the Holi of your dreams, heres our way of telling you, we feel you. You, guys, Holi, a heady festival of colour and laughter, is on Thursday! And heres your chance to make the most of it. If you love the sights, sound and colours of Holi, then travel to some of the most spectacular places in India where it is still celebrated in deeply traditional manner. Heres a list of six such places, where Holi celebrations are still full of verve and vigour. Lathmar Holi takes place around a week before the main day of Holi. Its worth going to Barsana a couple of days in advance so that you can also experience the Laddoo Holi festivities there. (Instagram) Lath Mar Holi, Barsana, Uttar Pradesh: Its one place on earth where people from all corners want to be in during the festival. No wonder -- Govardhan, Barsana and Nandgaon -- are the most visited places. The festival is popular here because of the way it is celebrated. The women of Barsana village near Mathura in Uttar Pradesh beat up men from neighboring Nandgaon village with sticks, in whats known as Lathmar (stick-beating) celebrations. Lathmar Holi takes place around a week before the main day of Holi. Its worth going to Barsana a couple of days in advance so that you can also experience the Laddoo Holi festivities there. Sweets are thrown around and spiritual songs related to Radha and Krishna are sung. Basant Utsav in West Bengal is a three-day folk festival where youll get to sing and play Holi with the locals, as well as enjoy a wide variety of folk art. (Twitter) Basant Utsav, Purulia, West Bengal: This is a three-day folk festival where youll get to sing and play Holi with the locals, as well as enjoy a wide variety of folk art. This includes the remarkable chau dance, darbari jhumur, natua dance, and songs of West Bengals wandering Baul musicians. What makes the festival special is that its organised by villagers as a way of helping sustain themselves. The location is around five to six hours by train from Kolkata. (Twitter) Hola Mohalla, Anandpur Sahib, Punjab: The best way to experience Holi the Sikh way is at Anandpur Sahib. During the festival of Hola Mohalla, it is enthralling to see Nihangs (Sikh warriors) in action on the banks of the Charan Ganga. Takht Sri Keshgarh Sahib is one of the five temporal seats of the Sikh religion where lakhs of devotees visit during the three-day festival to seek the blessings of the Almighty. It is an extremely colourful festival where Nihangs dressed in their blue/saffron clothes engage in mock battles with their weapons before an extremely receptive crowds. This is a boon for photographers and for those who loves to experience an Indian religious cultural mela. One must experience the festival in Mathura and Vrindavan and also pay a visit to the famous Banke-Bihari Temple. (Twitter) Traditional Holi at Mathura and Vrindavan: One must experience the festival in Mathura and Vrindavan and also pay a visit to the famous Banke-Bihari Temple. The crowds enthusiasm for their beloved Lord Krishna needs to be seen to be believed. In Vrindavan, the festival is celebrated for a week. Basantotsava, Santiniketan: This is one place that should be visited during the Spring Festival that falls during the Holi festivities. Students dress up in spring colours and stage a huge cultural program for visitors, including dancing to Rabindranath Tagores songs. This is followed by the usual exchange of colours. Basantotsava has become a cherished part of Bengali history and culture and attracts numerous tourists. Royal Holi, Udaipur: The experience in this majestic place is of course royal. A day before Holi, which is celebrated as Holika Dahan, hundreds of pyres are lit all over the city. But the one at the Jagdish Temple is the biggest. The Holi experience here is grand. So this Holi (March 24), which also happens to be a long weekend, celebrate with more vigour and, of course, safe colours. Follow @htlifeandstyle for more. Martill Guptill scored a brilliant half century as New Zealand reached 180 for 5 wickets at the end of their innings against Pakistan at Mohali on Tuesday. Over 19: runs off the over. NZ 164/5 18.6 Mohammad Sami to Ronchi Another well-executed yorker outside off, but Ronchi advances to covert it into a low full toss. Sliced straight to Malik at point. Had it beaten him, it would have been four. Over 18: 14 runs off the over. NZ 160/4 Over 17: 11 runs from the over. NZ 146/4 Over 16: 8 runs and a wicket off the over. NZ 135/4 15.2 Shahid Afridi to Anderson Andersons cameo ends. A googly outside off, Anderson looks to go down the ground but mis-times the drive. Skews it off the outside half of the bat down to long-off. Malik takes a sitter. Over 15: 4 runs and the important wicket of Guptill came in this over. NZ 127/3 14.3 Mohammad Sami to Guptill A great comeback from Sami after two loose deliveries. Gets the length right, on off and middle, tailing back in just enough. Guptill tries a deft dab to third man but that inward movement is responsible for Guptill tapping the ball back onto his stumps. Over 14: 13 runs off the over. NZ 123/2 Over 13: 10 runs off the over. NZ 110/2 Over 12: 7 runs off the over. NZ 100/2 Over 11: 12 runs off the over. NZ 93/2 Over 10: 5 runs off the over. NZ 81/2 Over 9: 7 runs and a wicket off the over. NZ 76/2 8.5 Shahid Afridi to Munro A flat delivery on middle, enough flight for Munro to get under it though. Times it pretty well but not enough power. Straight down the throat of the sweeper cover. Afridi strikes again. Over 8: 9 runs and a wicket came off the over. NZ 69/1 7.2 Irfan to Williamson The slower delivery does the trick for Irfan, rolled his fingers across the ball and kept it on driveable length, Williamson went hard and didnt bother to keep it down, hits it to the left of cover and was caught by Afridi. Over 7: 5 runs off the over. NZ 60/0 Over 6: 11 runs off the over. NZ 55/0 Over 5: 9 runs off the over. NZ 44/0 Over 4: 8 runs off the over. NZ 35/0 Over 3: 13 runs from the over. NZ 27/0 Over 2: 13 runs off the Mohammad Irfan over. NZ 14/0 Over 1: Good start by Pakistan as they concede just one run in the first over. NZ 1/0 Pakistan will be looking to bounce back from the defeat against India when they face an in-form New Zealand in Mohali on Tuesday with an aim to bounce back into the World Twenty20 and pacify their bitter fans back home. New Zealand XI: M Guptill, K Williamson, C Munro, C Anderson, R Taylor, G Elliott, M Santner, L Ronchi, A Milne, M McClenaghan, I Sodhi Pakistan XI: Shehzad, Sharjeel, Latif, Akmal, Malik, Sarfraz, Afridi (c), Imad, Amir, Sami, Irfan After a long tussle with Apple Inc, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) may take help of a third party to unlock an encrypted iPhone used by one of the San Bernardino shooters. This development, disclosed by the US prosecutors on Monday, could abruptly end the high-stakes legal showdown between the government and Apple Inc. A much anticipated hearing scheduled for Tuesday was postponed by a federal judge in Riverside, California, on request of the government so that prosecutors could try the newly discovered technique. The justice department said it would update the court on April 5. The government had insisted until Monday that it had no way to access the phone used by Rizwan Farook, one of the two killers in the December massacre in San Bernardino, California, except to force Apple to write new software that would disable the password protection. The justice department last month obtained a court order directing Apple to create that software, but Apple has fought back, arguing that the order is an overreach by the government and would undermine computer security for everyone. The announcement on Monday that an unnamed third party had presented a way of breaking into the phone on Sunday - just two days before the hearing and after weeks of heated back-and-forth in court filings - drew scepticism from many in the tech community who have insisted that there were other ways to get into the phone. From a purely technical perspective, one of the most fragile parts of the governments case is the claim that Apples help is required to unlock the phone, said Matt Blaze, a professor and computer security expert at the University of Pennsylvania. Many in the technical community have been sceptical that this is true, especially given the governments considerable resources. Apple not claiming a win Apple has however said that it would be premature to declare victory in the companys dispute with the government because its possible that authorities could come back in a few weeks and insist they still need Apples help. On conditions of not to be identified, attorneys for the tech company also told reporters that Apple has no idea what method the FBI is now exploring to try unlocking the encrypted iPhone. Former prosecutors and lawyers supporting Apple said the move suggested that the justice department feared it would lose the legal battle, or at minimum would be forced to admit that it had not tried every other way to get into the phone. In a statement, the justice department said its only interest has always been gaining access to the information on the phone and that it had continued to explore alternatives even as litigation began. It offered no details on the new technique but said it was cautiously optimistic it would work. That is why we asked the court to give us some time to explore this option, a spokesperson for the justice department, Melanie R Newman, said. If this solution works, it will allow us to search the phone and continue our investigation into the terrorist attack that killed 14 people and wounded 22 people. It would also likely end the case without a legal showdown that many had expected to reach the US Supreme Court. Nate Cardozo, staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a civil liberties group backing Apple, said the San Bernardino case was the hand-chosen test case for the government to establish its authority to access electronic information by whatever means necessary. FBI director James Comey testifies during a house judiciary committee hearing titled "The Encryption Tightrope: Balancing Americans' Security and Privacy," on Capitol Hill on March 1, 2016 in Washington, DC. (AFP file) In that context, he said, the last-minute discovery of a possible solution and the cancellation of the hearing is suspicious, and suggests the government might be worried about losing and setting a bad precedent. But George Washington University law professor Orin Kerr, a former justice department computer crime prosecutor, said the government was likely only postponing the fight. The problem is not going away, its just been delayed for a year or two, he said. Apples chief executive, Tim Cook, and his allies have argued that it would be unprecedented to force a company to develop a new product to assist a government investigation, and that other law enforcement agencies around the world would rapidly demand similar services. Law enforcement officials, led by FBI director James Comey, have countered that access to phones and other devices is crucial for intelligence work and criminal investigations. The government and the tech industry have clashed for years over similar issues, and Congress has been unable to pass legislation to address the impasse. A team of Islamic State suicide attackers targeted the international airport and a busy metro station in Brussels on Tuesday, killing 34 people in coordinated strikes four days after a key suspect in last years Paris attacks was arrested in the city. Two blasts ripped through the main hall of Zaventem Airport at 8am (0700 GMT), and another went off at Maalbeek metro station near the European Unions main buildings while commuters were on their way to work during rush hour. The IS claimed the attacks in a statement issued through Amaq Agency, which said Islamic State fighters opened fire inside Zaventem Airport, before several of them detonated their explosive belts. The statement added a martyrdom bomber detonated his explosive belt in Maalbeek metro station. Twenty people died at the metro station and another 14 at the airport, Belgiums public broadcaster RTBF reported. Belgian media reports put the number of injured at 170. We were fearing terrorist attacks, and that has now happened, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel told reporters. Belgium raised its terror threat to Level 4, its highest level, and declared three days of national mourning. People stand near Brussels airport after being evacuated following the explosions. (AP) Read: Brussels attack may bolster demand for strong borders within EU Earlier, interior minister Jan Jambon had warned of revenge attacks following the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, a prime suspect in the Paris attacks that killed 130 people, in the gritty neighbourhood of Molenbeek on Friday. Jambon announced Belgiums national security council was due to meet and deputy prime minister Alexander De Croo urged people to avoid making calls to stop the citys mobile networks getting saturated, and to communicate with online messages instead. A witness said he heard shouts in Arabic shortly before the two blasts in the packed airport departure lounge. Pictures on social media showed the ceiling had collapsed and smoke rising from the terminal building through shattered windows. Videos shared on social media showed passengers fleeing down a slipway, some still hauling their bags. A refugee holds up a placard reading "Sorry for Brussels", as refugees and migrants take part in a protest against the closure of the border at the Greek-Macedonian border. (REUTERS) A spokesperson for Brussels Metro confirmed casualties in an explosion on a train. The explosions triggered a transport shutdown in Brussels, home to the headquarters of both the EU and Nato. Flights were halted and metro, tram and bus services were suspended. These attacks mark another low by the terrorists in the service of hatred and violence, said EU President Donald Tusk. Belgian authorities deployed 225 additional soldiers sent in Brussels and the Belgian Crisis Centre, clearly wary of a further incident, appealed to the population: Stay where you are. Chaos at airport and metro station There were chaotic scenes at the airport as passengers fled in panic. The blasts smashed the windows of the departure hall and sent ceiling tiles shattering to the floor. We heard the explosion and felt the blowback, said Jean-Pierre Lebeau, a French passenger who had just arrived from Geneva, adding he had seen wounded people and blood in the elevator. In pics: Panic grips Brussels after string of explosions Brussels airport said it had cancelled all flights until at least 6am (0500 GMT) on Wednesday. The complex was evacuated and trains to the airport were stopped. All three main long-distance rail stations in Brussels were closed and train services on the cross-channel tunnel from London to Brussels were suspended. Airports in a string of cities across Europe swiftly announced they were boosting security, including in London, Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and Prague. While most European airports are known for stringent screening procedures for passengers and their baggage, that typically takes place only after passengers have checked in and are heading to departure gates. Although there may be discreet surveillance, there is nothing to prevent members of the public walking into the departure hall at Zaventem airport with heavy baggage. Security services on alert Security services had been in a high state of alert across western Europe for fear of militant attacks backed by the Islamic State, which had claimed the Paris attacks. Following an attempted ramraid attack at Glasgow Airport in 2007, several airports stepped up security at entrances by altering the pick-up and drop-off zones to prevent private cars getting too close to terminal buildings. Stocks hit by Brussels blasts European stocks fell after the explosions, particularly travel sector stocks including airlines and hotels, pulling the broader indices down from multi-week highs. Safe-haven assets, gold and government bonds rose in price. Swedens Prime Minister Stefan Lofven branded the blasts an attack against democratic Europe. British premier David Cameron tweeted his country would do everything we can to help, and announced Britains COBRA security committee would meet on Tuesday to assess the situation. Russian President Vladimir Putin said the blasts show once more that terrorism knows no borders and threatens people all over the world, according to a Kremlin statement. The fight against this evil requires vital international cooperation, he added. The bloodshed came four days after the dramatic arrest in Brussels of Salah Abdeslam after four months on the run. He is being held in a high-security prison in Belgium following his arrest in the gritty Brussels neighbourhood of Molenbeek, just around the corner from his family home. Belgiums foreign minister Didier Reynders said at the weekend that Abdeslam believed to have played a key logistical role in the carnage in Paris was planning some sort of new attack. Read: 2 Jet Airways flights landed within minutes of Brussels airport blasts Survivors in shock At the airport, Jean-Pierre Herman and his wife Tankrat Paui Tran embraced with shock on their faces. My wife just arrived, Herman said. I said hello, we took the elevator and in the elevator we heard the first bomb. When we came out of the elevator at that moment the second bomb exploded and then we saw doors flying, (the) glass ceiling come down and smoke. Charlotte McDonald-Gibson, a British journalist living in Brussels, said there was total confusion at the airport, where she was having breakfast. Suddenly staff rushed in and said we have to leave, she said. They rushed out and into the main terminal A departures building. Nobody knew what was going on. It was total confusion, people were just standing around wondering what was happening. British Sky News televisions Alex Rossi, at the airport, said he heard two very, very loud explosions. He added, I could feel the building move. There was also dust and smoke as well...I went towards where the explosion came from and there were people coming out looking very dazed and shocked. Alphonse Youla, 40, who works at the airport, said he heard a man shouting out in Arabic before the first explosion. Then the glass ceiling of the airport collapsed. I helped carry out five people dead, their legs mangled, he said, his hands covered in blood. Read: Blood everywhere, says witness after twin blast at Brussels airport Panic gripped Brussels airport after two explosions ripped through the facility and another was reported at a subway system. At least 20 people were killed in the attack that left a trail of destruction and came just days after the prime suspect in the November Paris attacks was arrested in the city. Read more: Several killed in Brussels airport blasts; metro hit too Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, told BFM television that the second, louder explosion brought down ceilings and ruptured pipes, mixing water with blood from victims. It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed, he said. There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere. We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene, he said. All flights were cancelled, arriving planes were diverted and security was tightened at all Paris airports. Belgiums terror alert level was raised to maximum. Read more: Shouts in Arabic, gunshots fired: What we know about blasts in Brussels Near the entrance to the Maelbeek subway station, not far from the headquarters of the European Union, rescue workers set up a makeshift treatment centre in a local pub. Dazed and shocked morning travellers streamed from the metro entrances as police tried to set up a security cordon. Read more: Brussels airport blasts: All Jet Airways planes are safe, says airline The metro was leaving Maelbeek station for metro when there was a really loud explosion, said Alexandre Brans, 32, wiping blood from his face. It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the metro. First responders ran through the street outside with two people on stretchers, their clothes badly torn. The explosions at the airport hit at the middle of the busiest time there. Smoke was seen billowing out of the terminal. Read more: In pics: Explosions rip through Brussels airport Amateur videos on Frances i-Tele television showed passengers, including a child with a backpack, dashing out of the terminal in different directions as they tugged luggage. Another image showed a security officer patrolling inside a hall with blown-out paneling and what appeared to be ceiling insulation covering the floor. I knew it was an explosion because Ive been around explosions before, said Denise Brandt, an American woman interviewed by Sky television. I felt the explosion, the way it feels through your body. And we just looked at each other and I said Lets go this way. It was over there. There was just this instinct to get away from it. Then we saw people running, crying, toward us. So I knew we were going in the right direction and away from it. With three runways in the shape of a Z, the airport connects Europes capital to 226 destinations around the world and handled nearly 23.5 million passengers in 2015. Passengers were led onto the tarmac and the crisis center urged people not to come to the airport. The explosions took place only days after Salah Abdeslam, the prime suspect in the November 13 Paris attacks that killed 130 people, was arrested in Brussels. Salah Abdeslam, 26, a Belgian-born French national, is believed to have played a key logistical role in the November 13, 2015 carnage in Paris which left 130 dead. He fled across the border to Belgium hours after the massacre. He and his brother Brahim, who blew himself up in Paris, managed a bar together in the Molenbeek area of Brussels, that was shut down by authorities just weeks before the massacre. Friends and locals said they were fond of the joint and that there was no sign they were radical Islamists with murderous intent. Between 2009 and 2011, Abdeslam worked as a mechanic for STIB, the Belgian state railway. The Abdeslam family is of Moroccan origin and hails from the run-down Brussels quarter of Molenbeek which is home to a large immigrant community. Map showing the Brussels district of Molenbeek where Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam lived (AFP) Before the attack In August 2015, Abdeslam and another suspected Islamic State militant caught a ferry in Italy and headed to Greece as free citizens, not sought-after terrorists, according to Italian Interior Minister Angelino Alfano. Early in September 2015, after traveling the length of Italy on his way home to Belgium, Abdeslam took a rental car twice to Budapest, according to Belgiums federal prosecutor. In mid-September last year, Abdeslam was stopped at a checkpoint on the Austrian border in a rental Mercedes, accompanied by two people with Belgian ID cards that later turned out to be fake, according to the Belgian federal prosecutor. He was waved on through. In October, Abdeslam bought detonators from a pyrotechnics shop outside Paris. Early November, he rented a Volkswagen Polo used in the attacks at Astral Rent Car in the Brussels suburb of Etterbeek. Video surveillance showed Abdeslam and fellow Molenbeek resident, Mohamed Abrini, together in a Renault Clio buying gas in the Oise region, north of Paris. On November 12, Abdeslams one-week rental began for two studios in Appart City Hotel in the Paris suburb of Alfortville. He and Abrini were spotted together that day leaving Brussels. Role in Paris attack He is thought to have fled to Brussels the day after the Paris attacks after refusing to blow himself up and believed to have holed up in a flat for at least three weeks evading detection by the Belgian police. He slipped past three police checks in France as he fled to Belgium just hours after the terror assaults, a source close to the probe said in December. Investigators believe Abdeslam hired one of the cars used in the attacks and then used it to drive suicide bombers to the Stade de France with the task to then blow himself up. But he apparently backed out, and an explosives-filled suicide vest was later found in Paris in a region that mobile phone signals indicated he had been in. The ringleader of the attacks, IS member Abdelhamid Abaaoud, was also from Brussels. He was killed in a raid in Paris in November. Abdeslam is a childhood friend of Abaaoud. Belgium polices handout containing details of Salah Abdeslam Arrested last week Salah Abdeslam was arrested in Belgiums capital after four months at large on March 18, 2016. He was arrested in a major police operation in the Brussels neighborhood of Molenbeek. The capture of Abdeslam came after Belgian authorities found his fingerprints in an apartment raided earlier in another Brussels neighborhood. A string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station on Tuesday, killing at least 21 people, days after the dramatic arrest in Brussels of Salah Abdeslam. Facebook activated its Safety Check feature on Tuesday afternoon after hours of outrage by activists and public as two explosions ripped through the Brussels airport, killing at least 21 people. The tool that allows people to let friends and family members know that theyre safe, will display for any Facebook user whom the site detects to be in Brussels. The tool will also be activated for users who are friends with people marking themselves safe. Quickly find and connect with friends in the area. Mark them safe if you know theyre OK, reads the dedicated Safety Check page for todays terror attack. The feature that lets people mark themselves safe in case of terror attacks or natural calamities has run into controversy in the past. Activists say the company is often not fast enough with the tool, especially when strikes occur in third-world countries. Victims lay in pools of blood, their limbs blown off, as the smoke cleared to reveal scenes of horror after twin explosions ripped through the main terminal at Brussels airport, witnesses said. The normally-bustling check-in hall at Zaventem airport was wrecked by the morning rush-hour blasts, with part of the ceiling collapsing near the airline desks and many of the huge plate-glass windows blown out. Horst Pilger said his children thought fireworks were going off when the first explosion struck on Tuesday, but he instantly knew that Brussels Airport was under attack. My wife and I both thought bomb. We looked into each others eyes, he said. Five or 10 seconds later there was a major, major, major blast in close vicinity. It was massive. Read | Images of Brussels attack suspects released, death toll crosses 30 Pilger, an Austrian who works for the European Union, was planning a short family trip to Rome and, two hours before departure, was sitting at a coffee shop in the main departure hall. We were just halfway through the coffee and there was a boom. It was a bit distant, but fairly loud, Pilger said by telephone from a hotel opposite the terminal building where travellers were taken by airport staff. Later on, the kids told me theyd thought it was fireworks, he said. But the second blast left no doubt. Pilger, who works at the European Commission, said the whole ceiling collapsed and smoke flooded the building. We were very scared, he said. Police control the access to the central train station following bomb attacks in Brussels. (REUTERS) Confined to the hotel for hours after the attacks, with a bomb later exploding at a Brussels metro station, Pilger said he was also present when there was a subsequent blast, probably a controlled explosion by security services. Around 2 oclock, we were told to go to the back of the building now. So obviously they knew there was some sort of explosion going to happen...That explosion really destroyed the terminal building more than the previous one had. Alphonse Youla, 40, who works at the airport, said he heard a man shouting out in Arabic before the first explosion. Then the glass ceiling of the airport collapsed. I helped carry out five people dead, their legs destroyed, he said, his hands covered in blood. Read | #BrusselsLift: Belgians offer rooms, rides on Twitter after attacks Video showed devastation in the hall with ceiling tiles and glass scattered across the floor. Some passengers emerged from the terminal with blood spattered over their clothes. Smoke rose from the building through shattered windows and passengers fled down a slipway, some still hauling their bags. Shortly afterwards, another explosion ripped through a train at Maalbeek metro station. The coordinated strikes by the Islamic State killed more than 30 people and injured over 250. The city was already on high alert following Fridays arrest of Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in the November attacks on Paris that killed 130 and were claimed by the West Asian terror group. Many of the dead and wounded at the airport were badly injured in the legs, one airport worker said, suggesting at least one bomb in a bag on the floor. A local journalist tweeted a photograph of a person lying covered in blood among smoke outside Maelbeek metro station, on the main Rue de la Loi avenue which connects central Brussels with the European Union institutions. The blast hit the train as it left Maelbeek station heading to the city centre. Ambulances were ferrying the wounded away and sirens rang out across the area. A police sharpshooter takes aim from a helicopter hovering over Brussels' rooftops. (REUTERS) Total confusion Brussels-based Briton Julian Firkins, 44, was in the departure terminal with his partner close to where the first bomb went off. We had been waiting in line when I decided to get a tea. Literally five seconds after I left, the first bomb went off right next to us, Firkins said. He ran back to his girlfriend just as the second blast rocked the hall, wreaking further carnage which they miraculously escaped. Michel Mpoy, 65, who was at the airport to pick up a friend arriving from Kinshasa, said it was a total mess -- it was terrible. Read | IS supporters celebrate on social media after Brussels bombing Another person waiting at the airport was Jean-Pierre Herman who had just met his wife off a flight from Thailand. I said hello, we took the elevator and in the elevator we heard the first bomb, he said. The second exploded just when we got off. We ran away to an emergency exit. I think we are very lucky. Charlotte McDonald-Gibson, a British journalist living in Brussels, said there was total confusion at the airport, where she was having breakfast before a flight. Suddenly staff rushed in and said we have to leave, she said. Nobody knew what was going on. It was total confusion, people were just standing around wondering what was happening. People bring flowers and candles to mourn at the Place de la Bourse in the center of Brussels. (AP) Grisly injuries In the city, AFP journalist Lachlan Carmichael was on the metro when his train was halted in the tunnel after he and the other passengers felt a shock wave from the explosion a hundred or so metres down the line at Maalbeek. Train staff said there was an explosion ahead and evacuated the train as it began filling up with smoke. Passengers got out onto the tracks whose power lines had been switched off. Another AFP journalist, Cedric Simon, said saw clouds of smoke and dust coming out of Maalbeek station and about 15 people lying by the road, many with bloodied faces who were being treated by medical staff. The Thon Hotel opposite the station was turned into a makeshift hospital with medics treating about 40 wounded people, general manager Hans Van der Biesen said. Read | Brussels blasts put focus back on Belgian capitals terror hotbed I saw one person with his leg completely ripped apart. Then there was another person whose head was completely bloody, said Maya Halaoui, a Belgian woman of Lebanese origin who was in a business meeting at the hotel. The streets were filled with police cars and emergency vehicles, sirens wailing and blue lights flashing. Brussels has been on high alert since January 2015 when jihadists stormed the Paris offices of the Charlie Hebdo satirical weekly and a Jewish supermarket, killing 17, with heavily-armed police and then troops deployed on the streets. Security was further hiked after the November attacks on the French capital that were hatched by jihadists in Brussels. Click here for full coverage Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump has said he would dismantle the disastrous nuclear deal with Iran and would veto any UN-imposed Middle East peace agreement even as he pledged his complete support to Israel if elected US president. My number one priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran. I have been in business a long time. I know deal-making and let me tell you, this deal is catastrophic - for America, for Israel, and for the Middle East, he said. The problem here is fundamental. We have rewarded the worlds leading state sponsor of terror with $150 billion and we received absolutely nothing in return, he said in an address yesterday to the annual conference of the powerful American Israeli Political Action Committee (AIPAC). Alleging that the recent nuclear deal with Iran doesnt even require Iran to dismantle its military nuclear capability, Trump said it places limits on its military nuclear programme for only a certain number of years. But when those restrictions expire, Iran will have an industrial-size military nuclear capability ready to go, and with zero provision for delay no matter how bad Irans behaviour is, he said. The deal is silent on missile tests but those tests do violate UN Security Council Resolutions and no one has done anything about it, he said as he slammed the UN. First, we will stand up to Irans aggressive push to destabilise and dominate the region. Iran is a very big problem and will continue to be, but if Im elected President, I know how to deal with trouble. Secondly, we will totally dismantle Irans global terror network. Iran has seeded terror groups all over the world. Third, at the very least, we must hold Iran accountable by restructuring the terms of the previous deal, Trump said. Laying out his vision of US-Israel relationship, he said that as American president, he would work to destroy the alleged global terrorist network of Iran and prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons. The United States has dropped spying charges against top diplomat Robin Raphel who was considered sympathetic to Pakistan and, by extension, hostile to India, for the lack of evidence. We are pleased that the Department of Justice has closed its investigation involving Ambassador Robin Raphel, said Raphels lawyer Amy Jeffress in a statement It was clear from the outset that this investigation was based on a fundamental misunderstanding. The Department has now completed a lengthy investigation that has fully exonerated Ambassador Raphel of the allegations that anonymous government officials irresponsibly leaked to the press nearly two years ago. Raphel, who was once a top US diplomat for India and Pakistan as assistant secretary of state for the region, had not responded to a request for comments till the filing of this report. The Department has now completed a lengthy investigation that has fully exonerated Ambassador Raphel of the allegations that anonymous government officials irresponsibly leaked to the press nearly two years ago, said her lawyer. Raphel came under investigation last year after the US intelligence intercepted a conversation in which a Pakistani official said she was providing information to Islamabad. The case, however, began to weaken as soon as it started, according to The New York Times, which first reported the justice departments decision to drop it. Raphel continued her high-profile presence in Washington DC, appearing at think-tank events, also at those related to India, where she met and spoke with this reporter several times. Raphel was the first assistant secretary of state to head the south and central Asia affairs desk, a newly created administrative unit in the Clinton administration in 1993. She soon ran foul of the Indians with her outspoken advocacy of the American role in solving the Kashmir dispute, which New Delhi views as strictly a bilateral issue with Pakistan. Indians remain convinced she is partial to Pakistan. Raphel was pulled out of retirement by Richard Holbrooke, the first head of the Afghanistan-Pakistan cell at the state department, as a top adviser, which she remained till the end. The external affairs ministry on Tuesday received visa applications for five members of the Pakistans joint investigation team (JIT) probing the Pathankot air base attack in January this year. Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said that the modalities of visit will be discussed now that we have the composition of the team, Swarup said. Swarup, however, added that he did not yet have the details of the JIT members. Following a meeting with Sartaj Aziz, advisor to the Pakistan Prime Minister on foreign affairs, on the sidelines of the Saarc ministerial meeting at Pokhara in Nepal last week, foreign minister Sushma Swaraj announced that the Pakistani JIT would arrive in India on March 27 and start its work from the following day. Seven security personnel died when terrorists from across the border attacked the air force base in Pathankot on January 2. The Pakistan-based Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) claimed responsibility for the attack in which all the six terrorists also were reportedly killed. The attack derailed the proposed foreign secretary-level talks that were scheduled for the middle of January after the two countries agreed in December last year to start a comprehensive bilateral dialogue. 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 JIT to India to probe the attack. With Pakistan moving towards tactical nuclear weapons, there is an increasingly higher risk of nuclear theft, a US think-tank report has warned ahead of the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington later this month. Overall, the risk of nuclear theft in Pakistan appears to be high, said the report Preventing Nuclear Terrorism: Continuous Improvement or Dangerous Decline? released by the prestigious Harvard Kennedy School. The trend seems to be toward increasing risk, as Pakistans nuclear arsenal expands and shifts toward tactical nuclear weapons, while adversary capabilities remain extremely high, it said. Over the longer term, the possibilities of state collapse or extremist takeover cannot be entirely ruled out, though the near-term probability of such events appears to be low, according to the report. Read | Pak a nuclear power, knows how to defend itself: Sartaj Aziz The report from the Harvard Kennedy School comes a week after a top American diplomat had raised a similar concern. Weve been very concerned about Pakistans deployment of battlefield nuclear weapons, US under secretary of state for arms control and international security, Rise E Gottemoeller told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during a Congressional hearing on Thursday. Battlefield nuclear weapons, by their very nature, pose security threat because youre taking battlefield nuclear weapons out to the field where, as, you know, as a necessity, they cannot be made as secure, Gottemoeller had said. In Pakistan, a modest but rapidly growing nuclear stockpile, with substantial security measures, must be protected against some of the worlds most capable terrorist groups, in an environment of widespread corruption and extremist sympathies, said the Harvard Kennedy School. By some estimates, the Strategic Plans Division, which manages Pakistans nuclear weapons, has 25,000 troops available to guard Pakistani nuclear stocks and facilities. Read | India voices concern over reports of US-Pak nuclear deal Pakistani officials report that sites are equipped with extensive barriers and detection systems, that the components of nuclear weapons are stored separately (though that may be changing as Pakistan moves toward tactical nuclear weapons intended to be rapidly deployed to the field), and that the weapons are equipped with locks to prevent unauthorised use. It said there are negative trends, which may be related to the absence of recent US expressions of confidence. Pakistan has the worlds fastest-growing nuclear arsenal, and is shifting toward tactical nuclear weapons intended to be dispersed to front-line forces early in a crisis, increasing the risks of nuclear theft in such a crisis, it said. Read | Analysis by MI6 helped unmask Pak nuclear scientist AQ Khan This increase in numbers of weapons is probably leading to an increase in numbers of locations as well, it said, adding that terrorist groups continue to demonstrate that they are willing and able to launch complex, well-coordinated attacks on heavily-defended military targets within Pakistan. Two explosions were heard at Brussels airport on Tuesday during the morning rush hour as hundreds of passengers were trying to check in. Reports said at least 21 people were killed and 35 injured. Graphic images surfaced on the social media showing some of those injured in the blasts. Hindustan Times could not independently verify the posts. The blasts centred on an American Airlines desk in a departure hall. Niels Caignau, a Swissport employee, told Flemish broadcaster VRT: The windows are completely shattered. People went outside in shock. It doesnt look good. Don't come to the airport - airport is being evacuated. Avoid the airport area. Flights have been cancelled. Brussels Airport (@BrusselsAirport) 22 March 2016 Here is the scene at the airport after the explosions, in pictures: A victim receives first aid by rescuers, on Tuesday after two explosions ripped through the Brussels airport. (AFP Photo) A security perimeter near Maalbeek metro station in Brussels. (AFP Photo) Injured people at the scene of the triple blasts at Zaventem airport near Brussels on Tuesday. (REUTERS) Broken windows of the Zaventem airport. (REUTERS) People leave the scene of the explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels, Belgium on Tuesday. (REUTERS) Two women walk away from Brussels airport after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels, Belgium on Tuesday. (AP Photo) People react as they walk away from the Brussels airport after the explosions. Explosions ripped through the airport and the subway system on Tuesday. (AP) People at the scene of the explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels, Belgium. (REUTERS) People walk away from Brussels airport. (AP Photo) Emergency services personnel assist a woman after an explosion hit a metro station in Brussels on Tuesday. (AP) Two women wounded in the explosions at Brussels Airport on Tuesday. (AP Photo) Emergency rescue workers assist an unidentified person at the site of an explosion at a metro station in Brussels, Belgium on Tuesday. (AP Photo) Airport workers embrace as they leave the scene of the explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels. (REUTERS) People leave the scene of the two explosions at Zaventem airport, near Brussels. (REUTERS) Emergency services at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels on Tuesday. (REUTERS) Black smoke is seen rising from the Brussels airport following the two explosions. (REUTERS) All flights have been cancelled, arriving planes have been diverted and Belgium's terror alert level has been raised to maximum. (@AAhronheim on Twitter) The damaged airport building. (REUTERS) A view of the check-in area of Brussels airport after the blast. (@wardmarkey on Twitter) An image shared on social media showed smoke rising from the Zaventem airport in Brussels on Tuesday. (Twitter) Cars on a blocked highway near Zaventem, Brussels National airport, on Tuesday after the two explosions that killed at least one person and injured several others. (AFP Photo) A general view of the Zaventem's international airport near Brussels. (REUTERS File Photo) There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attacks in Brussels on Tuesday though supporters of the Islamic State praised the blasts that killed more than 30 people on social media. The state will force you to reevaluate your ways a thousand times before you are emboldened to kill Muslims again, and know that Muslims now have a state to defend them, said one supporter of the terrorist group on Twitter. Another pro-IS Twitter handle praised the attacks and warned of more strikes. A tweet that was retweeted by the Terror Monitor group read: What a pleasure to explode an unfaithful head and even better to cut his head. Expect more bombs, more death! in future also, the pro-IS handle said. The attacks came four days after the dramatic arrest in Brussels of Salah Abdeslam, the prime suspect in the Paris attacks claimed by the IS. Security services across western Europe had been on a high state of alert for fear of attacks backed by the IS. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the US house intelligence committee, said the attacks at the airport and a metro station in Brussels bore all the hallmarks of an ISIS-inspired, or ISIS-coordinated attack. Read | In Pics: Panic grips Brussels after string of explosions Schiffs staff said he had received a preliminary briefing from US officials on Tuesday. Schiff also said it was unclear if encrypted communications played a role in the attacks but noted that the assault occurred despite Brussels being under constant vigilance. The US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) said it was closely monitoring the events in Brussels and would not hesitate to adjust our security posture, as appropriate, to protect the American people The attacks are expected to revive national security as a key issue in the 2016 US presidential election. Scores were also injured in the coordinated attacks -- only four days after Belgian Police arrested the suspect in the Paris terror attack which killed 130 people in November. Also read Tintins tears become symbol of solidarity after Brussels attacks Belgian authorities urge media blackout on Brussels blast probe Brussels: From chocolate city to hub of jihad in Europe The Islamic State on Tuesday claimed responsibility for the three blasts that killed 34 people in Brussels, saying the suicide attacks were carried out in retaliation for Belgiums participation in an international coalition targeting the group. A message posted on the website of Amaq Agency, which operates in areas controlled by the IS, said the attacks were carried out by several suicide bombers. Read: IS supporters celebrate on social media after Brussels bombing Islamic State fighters carried out a series of bombings with explosive belts and devices on Tuesday, targeting an airport and a central metro station in the center of the Belgian capital Brussels, a country participating in the international coalition against the Islamic State, the message said. Islamic State fighters opened fire inside Zaventem Airport, before several of them detonated their explosive belts, as a martyrdom bomber detonated his explosive belt in the Maalbeek metro station, it added. Read: Blasts, blood and chaos as terror visits Brussels, at least 34 killed The IS claimed the attacks resulted in more than 230 dead and wounded. The coordinated strikes came four days after a key suspect in last years Paris attacks, which too were claimed by the IS, was arrested in Brussels. Two blasts targeted the main hall of Zaventem Airport and another went off at Maalbeek metro station near the European Unions main buildings while commuters were making their way to work in rush hour. Belgian authorities confirmed the involvement of a suicide bomber in the attack at the airport. Twenty people died at the metro station and another 14 at the airport, Belgiums public broadcaster RTBF reported. Belgian media reports put the number of injured at 130. We were fearing terrorist attacks, and that has now happened, Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel told reporters. Earlier, interior minister Jan Jambon had warned of revenge attacks following the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, a prime suspect in the Paris attacks that killed 130 people, on Friday. Read: Brussels attack may bolster demand for strong borders within EU Read: Tintins tears become symbol of solidarity after Brussels attacks Nepal could become a bridge between India and China, President Xi Jinping told visiting Nepalese Prime Minister KP Sharma Oli in an uncharacteristic mention of a third country at a bilateral meeting. Oli is on high-profile week-long visit to China, his first after becoming premier, which many experts say is an effort to reduce the land-locked Himalayan countrys dependence on India for trade and supply of essential goods. On Monday, Oli signed 10 deals, including one on a new trans-border railway line and another on China opening up its sea ports to Nepal for trade. During his discussion with Oli, Xi said it would be best for Nepal to benefit from the growth of both China and India. Nepal can be a bridge between China and India, Xi told Oli, according to the official Xinhua news agency. As to the trilateral China-Nepal-India relationship, Xi said he hopes Nepal will benefit from development in China and India, adding that it is in the common interests of the two big neighbours that Nepal enjoys stability and development, Xinhua reported. Nepals ambassador to China, Mahesh Maskey, too mentioned India in an interview with the state media. Nepals national interest is safeguarded if the two great neighbours collaborate more rather than get drawn into conflict. Therefore Nepal playing the China card against India or for that matter, India card against China is out of the question, Maskey told the Global Times newspaper. At best such notions may be figments of the imagination of those who do not understand the national interest of Nepal. Maskey said the dissatisfaction of the Madhesi community following the adoption of Nepals new Constitution would be addressed and is expected to be fully resolved in the near future. In an opinion piece, the Global Times said: Sandwiched between the two giant neighbours, keeping good relationships with both China and India is the only sound choice for Kathmandu, as well as for regional harmony. Therefore, instead of being forced into becoming a strategic barrier against China, Nepal should be better treated and act as a bridge between Beijing and New Delhi. At the same time, it said, India should not treat Nepal as its vassal state and allow Kathmandu to choose its development partners. The signing of a transit treaty by Nepal and China, aimed at reducing the landlocked Himalayan countrys dependence on India, has been described by experts as posturing by Kathmandu. Nepal currently has access to sea ports for trade with third countries only through India. But the treaty inked in Beijing on Monday during Prime Minister KP Sharma Olis visit hopes to change that. Though news reports in Kathmandu referred to the treaty as a major geo-political shift, experts see it more as a gesture by Oli to please the public in Nepal and send a message to India. The treaty is purely symbolic as it will be difficult to put into operation. People are not going to be fooled by it, said Lok Raj Baral, a former Nepali ambassador to India. Read | Nepal PM gets red carpet in China, signs deal for rail link via Tibet The Chinese sea port nearest to Nepal is at Tianjin, located 3,300 km from the border between the two countries. In contrast, Haldiya port near Kolkata, through which Nepal conducts almost all of its third country trade, is barely 1,000 km away. During Olis visit to India last month, New Delhi had agreed to allow Kathmandu to use the Vishakhapatnam port for its third country trade. Even if they are able to bring goods from Tianjin to the Nepal-China border, our poor infrastructure wont make the plan feasible, said Baral. A senior Indian diplomat, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said: Since Nepal is a landlocked country, it is obligatory for neighbours who have access to the sea to let Nepal use their ports for trade. The diplomat felt the transit treaty between Nepal and China is impractical and couldnt be implemented because of geographical conditions, infrastructure and costs involved when compared to transit trade through India. It was a purely political move by the Nepal government aimed at media management at home. We are very well aware of it and were not bothered in the least, the diplomat said. Nepal and India share a 1,800-km open border with 27 points through which trade takes place. But only one trading point is currently operational between Nepal and China, and another at Tatopani has been closed since last years massive earthquakes. China has expressed its willingness to bring its rail network to the Gyirong border point with Nepal by 2020. During his talks with the Chinese leadership, Oli requested that the rail link be extended further inside Nepali territory. A recent blockade of the border with India by Madhesi parties opposed to Nepals new Constitution has forced Kathmandu to look for alternatives to end its complete reliance on its southern neighbour for essential goods and trade. SHARE THIS ARTICLE ON Pope Francis will wash the feet of 12 young asylum seekers to highlight the need for the international community to provide shelter to refugees, the Vatican said on Tuesday. The pontiff will visit the town of Castelnuovo di Porto north of Rome on Maundy Thursday, which commemorates Jesus Christs Last Supper with the apostles, and perform the Easter ritual there. He will kneel in front of 12 asylum seekers to wash their feet in a gesture... bringing attention to their condition, Archbishop Rino Fisichella said. Francis has long called for the global community, and Europe in particular, to open its doors to refugees and step up the fight against xenophobia. The ceremony is part of the run-up to Easter Sunday, and has seen the Argentine pontiff in the past wash the feet of prison inmates and disabled people. Shortly after his election in 2013, Francis visited a youth detention centre where he performed the ritual on a group of young inmates including two Muslims -- the first Catholic leader ever to do so. Explosions tore through the departure hall of Brussels airport and struck a metro station on Tuesday morning killing up to 21 people and injuring several others, local reports said. The Belga agency said shots were fired and there were shouts in Arabic shortly before the blasts at the airport. Pictures on social media showed smoke rising from the terminal building through shattered windows and passengers running away down a slipway, some still hauling their bags. The blasts at the airport and metro station occurred four days after the arrest in Brussels of a suspected participant in November militant attacks in Paris that killed 130 people. Belgian police had been on alert for any reprisal action. 4.50pm - The whole of Europe has been hit: Hollande. The whole of Europe has been hit: Hollande. 4.30pm - Belgian federal prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw calls all three explosions in Brussels terrorist attacks. Belgian federal prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw calls all three explosions in Brussels terrorist attacks. Major terror attacks in Europe since 2000: 4.14pm - Many dead, many seriously injured in Brussels attacks: Belgian PM. Many dead, many seriously injured in Brussels attacks: Belgian PM. 4.13pm - Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel says what we feared has happened, we were hit by blind attacks. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel says what we feared has happened, we were hit by blind attacks. 4.04pm - Border between France and Belgium has been closed. Border between France and Belgium has been closed. 3.57pm - 3.47pm - Two Jet Airways cabin crew injured in the blasts at Brussels airport, says the airline. Two Jet Airways cabin crew injured in the blasts at Brussels airport, says the airline. 3.43pm - Quick round-up of what has happened in Brussels: () Quick round-up of what has happened in Brussels: 3.32pm - Sushma Swaraj tweets: Please do not worry. Indian Embassy in Brussels will provide all assistance Sushma Swaraj tweets: Please do not worry. Indian Embassy in Brussels will provide all assistance 3.30pm - Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweets: Prime Minister Narendra Modi tweets: 3.31pm - Eurostar has suspended high-speed rail service to Brussels-Midi station. - Eurostar has suspended high-speed rail service to Brussels-Midi station. 3.25pm - At least 21 dead in Brussels airport, metro blasts: firefighters to AFP At least 21 dead in Brussels airport, metro blasts: firefighters to AFP 3.20pm - Indias minister of external affairs Sushma Swaraj tweets: Indias minister of external affairs Sushma Swaraj tweets: 3.15pm - All flights from Mumbai to Brussels cancelled: ANI All flights from Mumbai to Brussels cancelled: ANI 3.14pm - American Airlines says no employees hurt in Brussels blasts American Airlines says no employees hurt in Brussels blasts 3.13pm - Authorities refer to explosions at airport, subway as terror attacks Authorities refer to explosions at airport, subway as terror attacks 2.59pm - First details on the location of the blasts emerge. - First details on the location of the blasts emerge. 2.56pm - French President Francois Hollande is holding an emergency meeting after the explosions. French President Francois Hollande is holding an emergency meeting after the explosions. 2.52pm - Belgian PM tweets: We are following the situation minute by minute. Top priority goes to the victims and people at the airport. Belgian PM tweets: We are following the situation minute by minute. Top priority goes to the victims and people at the airport. 2.49pm - Authorities tell everyone in Brussels to remain where they are after explosions at airport, subway station. Authorities tell everyone in Brussels to remain where they are after explosions at airport, subway station. 2.48pm - Major railway stations closed in Belgian capital: Brussels prosecutor. Major railway stations closed in Belgian capital: Brussels prosecutor. 2.46pm - Londons Gatwick airport steps up security Londons Gatwick airport steps up security 2.47pm - American Air releases statement. American Air releases statement. 2.45pm - Security measures have been reinforced at the Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris Security measures have been reinforced at the Charles De Gaulle airport in Paris 2.42pm - Brussels blasts are attack against democratic Europe: Swedish prime minister Brussels blasts are attack against democratic Europe: Swedish prime minister 2.40pm - At least 13 dead, 35 injured in Brussels airport blasts: Belgian media - At least 13 dead, 35 injured in Brussels airport blasts: Belgian media 2.28pm - EU staff told to remain indoors or at home after Brussels blasts: Commission 2.20pm - Belgian public broadcaster says bomb at Brussels airport was a suicide attack. 2.16pm - Aftermath footage emerges from airport. 2.15pm - Brussels airport tweets: Questions about family or friends > Call 02/753.73.00 2.11pm - AP reporter: several people injured in explosion in Brussels Metro. 2.07pm - UK Prime Minister David Cameron tweets on attack. I am shocked and concerned by the events in Brussels. We will do everything we can to help. David Cameron (@David_Cameron) March 22, 2016 2.05pm - Local reports say three explosives found at the airport. 2.05pm - An AP reporter says saw several people with facial injuries following an explosion in a Brussels metro station near European Union headquarters. At least two people were seen being moved on stretchers 2.04pm - MEA says not report of Indian casualty. 2.04pm - Smoke reported at subway station near EU headquarters. 2.03pm - European airline, travel stocks fall sharply after Brussels blasts. 2.02pm - Metro operator STIB announces on Twitter that the metro is closing. 2pm - Jet Airways says all planes in Brussels, its Europe hub, are safe. Airline trying to find status of passengers and staff. 1.54pm - Terror alert level raised from three to a maximum of four; applied across Belgium. 1.57pm - Explosion reported at Brussels Metro station close to EU institutions. No official confirmation. 1.48pm - Belgian fire service tells local media least several dead. Social media showed pictures of smoke rising from the departure hall where windows had been shattered by the blasts. Passengers were seen running away down a slipway. Sky News televisions Alex Rossi, at the scene, said he heard two very, very loud explosions. I could feel the building move. There was also dust and smoke as well...I went towards where the explosion came from and there were people coming out looking very dazed and shocked. The thinking here is that it is some kind of terrorist attack - that hasnt been verified by any of the authorities here at the airport. Belgian interior minister said the terror alert has been raised to the maximum level in wake of the explosions. Video showed devastation inside the departure hall with items scattered across the floor. Don't come to the airport - airport is being evacuated. Avoid the airport area. Flights have been cancelled. Brussels Airport (@BrusselsAirport) March 22, 2016 Belgian media said rail traffic to the airport was suspended. Brussels airport said it had cancelled all flights and the complex had been evacuated. Salah Abdeslam, the prime surviving suspect for Novembers Paris attacks on a stadium, cafes and a concert hall, was captured by Belgian police after a shootout on Friday. Belgiums Interior Minister, Jan Jambon, said on Monday the country was on high alert for a possible revenge attack following the capture of 26-year-old Abdeslam. We know that stopping one cell can ... push others into action. We are aware of it in this case, he told public radio. French investigator Francois Molins told a news conference in Paris on Saturday that Abdeslam, a French citizen born and raised in Brussels, admitted to investigators he had wanted to blow himself up along with others at the Stade de France on the night of the attack claimed by Islamic State; but he later backed out. Danish researchers created a major overview of Nonsteroidal Anti-Inflammatory Drugs (NSAIDs), which are commonly used for treating painful conditions, fevers and inflammation. The research revealed that these common painkillers are more dangerous than previously believed, particularly for the heart. NSAIDs are sold over the counter in small doses in aspirins for minor aches and are prescribed in stronger doses for more serious diseases of the muscular and bone systems, such as arthritis. The new study, which was a collaboration among 14 European universities and hospitals, including several leading European heart specialists, collected all research that has been done in this area, indicating that arthritis painkillers are particularly hazardous for heart patients, and that older forms of arthritis medication, which have not previously been focused on, also appear to be dangerous for the heart. "It's been well-known for a number of years that newer types of NSAIDs - what are known as COX-2 inhibitors - increase the risk of heart attacks," said lead researcher Morten Schmidt from Aarhus University. "For this reason, a number of these newer types of NSAIDs have been taken off the market again. We can now see that some of the older NSAID types, particularly Diclofenac, are also associated with an increased risk of heart attack and apparently to the same extent as several of the types that were taken off the market." "This is worrying, because these older types of medicine are frequently used throughout the Western world and in many countries, available without prescription," he added. The research team gathered all research on NSAIDs use in patients with heart disease. As a result, for the first time, the European Society of Cardiology now has a series of recommendations about what doctors should take into consideration before giving prescriptions for painkillers to patients. "When doctors issue prescriptions for NSAIDs, they must in each individual case carry out a thorough assessment of the risk of heart complications and bleeding," explained study co-author Christian Torp-Pedersen from Aalborg University. "NSAIDs should only be sold over the counter when it comes with an adequate warning about the associated cardiovascular risks. In general, NSAIDs are not be used in patients who have or are at high-risk of cardiovascular diseases," he said. Each year, more than 15 percent of the populations of Western countries is given a NSAIDs prescription, a figure that increases with age. While the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have recently warned doctors in the U.S. about prescribing highly addictive narcotic painkillers, the risks associated with common NSAIDs often remain to be addressed. "We can still do better," Schmidt said, "and it's often the case that paracetamol, physiotherapy, mild opioids or other types of NSAIDs with less risk for the heart would be better for the patients." The findings were published on March 16 in the European Heart Journal. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. North American monarch butterflies living east of the Rocky Mountains could be on the way to extinction as soon as 20 years from now, said a new study. The research is based partly on long-term declines in the butterfly's overwintering population, and was conducted by a team from the U.S. Geological Survey and Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego. For example, in the time between the winter of 1996-1997 and the winter of 2014-2015, the Eastern migratory monarch population fell by 84 percent. Knowing about that decrease, the team showed that there is an 11 to 57 percent chance that that population could go quasi-extinct over the next two decades. Quasi-extinct means that so few individuals live that recovery cannot occur. In this "last monarchs standing" scenario, individuals could survive for a short while, but the population would inevitably become extinct. "Because monarch numbers vary dramatically from year to year depending on weather and other factors, increasing the average population size is the single-most important way to provide these iconic butterflies with a much-needed buffer against extinction," noted Brice Semmens, the study lead author and a Scripps scientist. Backing up this idea of variability, a recent report from the World Wildlife Fund Mexico and its partners noted a significant increase in monarch numbers since last year. But that jump in population was quickly followed by a winter storm that may have had a negative effect on the population. Good winters for the population are positive news, but it's still necessary to gain higher average monarch numbers in order to decrease the risk of quasi-extinction. In the study, the scientists looked at the geographic area covered by a monarch colony while wintering in Mexico in order to measure population size. The aim of researchers in Mexico, the United States and Canada is to ramp up Eastern monarch numbers wintering in Mexico so that the geographic area takes up about 15 acres by 2020. As of this year, the population size has increased and reached nearly 10 acres. It was as low as 2.8 acres in the winter of 2014-2015, and even lower the winter before that at 1.7 acres. The team learned that if the Eastern monarch population can reach the 15-acre goal, the risk of quasi-extinction over 20 years will fall by greater than half. "Previously published research suggested that the most effective way to increase monarch numbers is to focus on the restoration of their breeding habitat," noted USGS scientist Darius Semmens, a report co-author. "Over the previous two winters, Eastern monarch populations were very low, indicating a higher risk of losing the species. If their numbers continue to grow, as they did this year, the risk will decrease." The findings were published in the journal Scientific Reports. Follow Catherine Arnold on Twitter at @TreesWhales. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Kmart Australia unveiled its newest catalogue in time for Easter and as a first, the giant chain store featured child models with disabilities. Shoppers seemed to like what the company has done and it has been receiving praises for its move. One child model, an 11-year-old named Cooper Smith with cerebral palsy, was shown holding a chocolate Easter egg on his lap as he's smiling against his walking frame. Another child, who has Down syndrome, was photographed smiling next to a "Star Wars" talking gumball dispenser. The chance to become a model has been Cooper's dream and his mom revealed that he loved every minute of the photoshoot for Kmart. "They spoke to Cooper just as they would any other 11-year-old. He felt extremely welcome and proud." "I love how your latest catalogue includes children with physical differences. As the mother of three sweet girls, two of whom have a physical difference, I thank you for doing your bit to normalize kids with disabilities!" Faith Hope Joy wrote on Kmart Australia's Facebook wall. "Thank you Kmart for using models with disabilities in your Easter catalogue. All kids love Easter eggs and the more that people with disabilities are seen doing everyday things the easier that society will be more inclusive and not use them as 'inspiration or people to be pitied,'" another customer, Julie Jonestreet posted. "I will be buying my eggs from Kmart and sharing this with as many people as I can to do the same." I love how your latest catalogue includes children with physical differences. As the mother of three sweet girls, two of... Posted by Faith Hope Joy - diastrophic dysplasia on Monday, March 21, 2016 Thank you Kmart for using models with disabilities in your Easter catalog. All kids love Easter eggs and the more that... Posted by Julie Stonestreet on Thursday, March 17, 2016 The company said that featuring models with disabilities in their catalogue goes with its goals and ideals. "[It's] an extension of our broader and very important focus on improving diversity within our business and truly representing our team, customers and communities that we operate in and are part of," a spokesperson said. Changing the Face of Beauty, which advocates for disabled people's representation in mass media, also commended Kmart Australia's decision. "It is good that retailers around the world are representing them and taking notice of their buying power," the organization president Katie Driscoll said. "[This ad] says we see you, you matter and we appreciate you buying our products. It is that simple." View Kmart Australia's Easter catalogue here. @ 2022 HNGN, All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. Riyadh, Saudi Arabia To capitalise on a growing hospitality industry, Naseba has partnered with Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals (HFTP) to produce the 19th Edition Hotel Technology Summit, which kicked off on March 21st in Riyadh. The Summit is an extension of the Hospitality Series of initiatives conducted across the Middle East over the past eight years, the most recent of which were held in Riyadh and Jeddah consecutively in March 2015 and in Dubai in November 2015. More than 100 decision makers from the hospitality sector gathered at Al Faisaliah Hotel in Riyadh to discuss developments in hotel technology, tackle the challenges of catering to business and religious guests, and share insights built over years of experience in a constantly changing industry. Mohammed Almojel, Chairman of the Tourism Committee at the Riyadh Chamber of Commerce & Industry (RCCI) opened the Summit with a keynote address. He highlighted the important role of technology implementation in the hospitality industry to attract new visitors to the Kingdom. Enhancing guest experience is vital to a hotel's ability to develop and grow its business, and features heavily in the agenda of the most recent edition of the summit. The hospitality industry will be seeing massive changes in the near future in the wake of the drop in oil prices and the restructuring of regional economies. With Middle Eastern governments seeking to reduce their dependence on oil, tourism and hospitality will be among the sectors receiving focused attention and investment. Hotels in the region will need to ensure that they not only take advantage of this attention to attract guests, but that they are equipped with the necessary technology to offer these guests the ultimate experience. "Saudi Arabia is one of the top 35 countries around the world in terms of using IT technology. As it has become part of the daily life of Saudi people, our guests depend on many forms of technology to measure hotel services," remarked Mohamed Gharib, Director of Information Technology of Burj Rafal Hotel Kempinski. Abdullah Alswaha, Deputy General Manager at Cisco, highlighted that one of the most important trends in the hospitality industry is the increased use of smartphones when engaging with guests, during, before and after their stay at a hotel. Speeches and interactive panel discussions at the summit covered a diverse list of topics, including the rise of smart hotels, the use of mobile apps in the hospitality industry, and the unique challenges of catering to religious and business travellers. Commenting on the latter topic during a panel discussion at the summit, David Henry, VP of Marketing, Sales and Distribution at Accor, said: "There are a number of great opportunities today in Saudi Arabia's hospitality industry and great developments ahead of us. These will not only be in the luxury segment, but also in the mid-scale segment. To cater to this, training staff and being able to develop excellence in service will be crucial. There are also several challenges that accompany this growth, such as the drive for digital solutions and what needs to be done to adopt new technologies to create one-to-one relationships with customers". As the hospitality industry continues to move beyond card keys and physical check-in processes to an age of automated and autonomous technology, hoteliers need to stay abreast of not only the dazzling possibilities offered by this technology, but also of its many complex challenges. They have to be on the look-out for innovative ways to improve guest experience by adopting the latest technologies. "Hoteliers are known as innovation seekers," commented Austine Jarome, Director of Purchasing at Al Khozama Management. Enhancing guest experience is a priority for many technology providers, including Cisco, a worldwide leader in IT that has established a strong regional presence in the Middle East. The company's extensive range of services and solutions includes the Cisco Collaboration Solution for Hospitality, which provides hotels with cutting-edge networking, wireless, communications and collaboration capabilities, allowing them to provide world-class experiences for their guests. The summit also hosted well-established technology providers such as Infor, Alcatel Lucent, Al Futtaim, Arabian Sounds and Lights Co., Nawatt, Scent Company, Interlabz Technologies, Technology Leads, Simplivity and others. Media partners include Eye of Riyadh, TTG MENA, Travel and Tour World, eHotelier, Hospitality Business Middle East and Hsyndicate. About Naseba Naseba offers business facilitation expertise in growth markets. We create deal flow, foster networking and enhance knowledge exchange. Naseba supports you with educating your workforce, entering new markets, raising capital, securing partners and closing sales. Our services include investor introductions, industry meetings, leadership forums, and professional trainings. Naseba partners with governments, key figures in media, industry and academia to add real value to our network worldwide. Since its inception in 2002, Naseba has connected over 80,000 executives globally through more than 700 proprietary business platforms. Naseba has offices in France, India, United Arab Emirates and the United States. Naseba. Creating opportunity. Olga Gavrilova naseba + 971 43 67 13 76 naseba SAHIC 2016 The 9th annual South American Hotel Investment & Tourism Conference 2016 (www.sahic.com) to be held in Guayaquil, Ecuador September 27-28, 2016, has confirmed that industry leader and Hilton Worldwide President & CEO Christopher J. Nassetta will be featured as the Conference's keynote speaker. During one of the most awaited conference sessions and before an audience of hospitality executives and investors in Latin America, Nassetta will speak about his experience in the industry, his vision for future development of projects and his view on challenges faced by the region. "Chris Nassetta's presence at our Conference brings such enormous value to our informative and educational two-day event," states Arturo Garcia Rosa, President & Founder of the SAHIC. "Nassetta's renowned experience in our industry, and his very personal reflections will bring us such integral insight and a personable quality to the keynote address." Since taking the helm in 2007, Nassetta has transformed Hilton into the largest and fastest growing hospitality company in the world, with more than 4,600 hotels, resorts and timeshare properties, and more than 758,000 rooms in 100 countries and territories. Under his leadership, the Hilton portfolio has grown to 13 industry-leading brands, including the recently launched Tru by Hilton, the company's game-changing new midscale brand. Among his many recognitions, Nassetta has been included on Washington' Business Journal's Power 100 list of influential business leaders, as well as named a Commercial Property Executive Executive of the Year in 2015. Nassetta's focus on company culture has also led Hilton to numerous Great Place to Work recognitions, including placing on Fortune magazine's 100 Best Companies to Work For list in 2016. "Latin America is an incredibly important development region for the hospitality industry, and Hilton expects another year of significant growth in this market," said Nassetta. "it is a privilege to keynote SAHIC this year, and I look forward to a great conference with the region's key industry leaders." "The major players in the international hotel industry meet year after year at SAHIC to look at the new business opportunities offered by the region for the development of their projects," stated Arturo Garcia Rosa. And he added, "It is truly an honor to have someone as iconic as Chris Nassetta speak at our conference; His participation will certainly be a major highlight and will clearly show that this event stands as Latin America's benchmark and most important event." During the two-day sessions at the Hilton Colon Guayaquil in Ecuador, SAHIC 2016 will continue to contribute to the development of businesses in Latin America, a region with a current marked growth and a promising future for anyone who is developing or seeking to develop projects. For more information about SAHIC and to register with Early Bird Rates (by March 31, 2016) visit www.sahic.com. ABOUT SAHIC and SAHIC Cuba SAHIC, the premier Latin America hotel and tourism investment conference organizer promotes business and related real-estate projects in the region. The inaugural SAHIC Cuba, which was held May 15-16, 2017 was the must-attend event, designed to promote the hotel, tourism and related real estate businesses in Cuba. The Conference was destined to be "the" place to meet and network with the leading industry players in the island nation: hotel chains and groups, investors, banks, mutual funds, developers, architects, and interior designers, regional government representatives and other decision makers of the industry. For more information, visit www.sahiccuba.com Leora Lanz LHL Communications SAHIC - Latin American Hotel & Tourism Investment Conferences 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 Data and analytics specialist STR has named Scott Hendryx as the companys new chief information officer. Hendryx served for the last five years at Calsonic Kansei as senior director of computer information systems and change management for enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation. Based in Shelbyville, Tennessee, Hendryx directed a 46-person CIS team that supported IT functions across 12 sites in the U.S., Mexico and Brazil. Scotts experience complements our needs as a global company that reports on more than 7.1 million hotel rooms in 175 countries around the world, said Amanda Hite, STRs president and COO. The foundation of our business is built on providing an IT experience that emphasizes security, confidentiality and the transfer of large amounts of data. Scott will be instrumental in building upon the integrity weve established during the past 30 years as STR continues to expand its reach throughout the 21st century. Prior to his tenure at Calsonic Kansei, Hendryx worked at Proctor Hospital in Peoria, Illinois, as a 6 sigma black belt (June 2009-August 2010) then as administrative director of surgical and cardiovascular services (August 2010-January 2011). Hendryxs resume also includes more than 30 years at Caterpillar/Cat Financial with various roles in 6 sigma and global project management/deployment. Hendryx has led successful implementation of ERP in Europe, Brazil, the Middle East, Mexico and the U.S., and he is a 6 sigma master black belt with certification in DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control) and DMEDI (Define, Measure, Explore, Develop, and Implement) methodology. During my interview process, I was inspired by the energy of the team members and their pride in STRs culture, Hendryx said. It also was clear that were embracing ITs role as a business partner as we look for new and creative ways to deliver more information faster and easier. As the world continues accelerating, we must keep improving our ability to deliver secure data solutions that shape the future of industries, providing the right data, to the right people, at the right time, all the time. About STR STR provides clients from multiple market sectors with premium, global data benchmarking, analytics and marketplace insights. Founded in 1985, STR maintains a presence in 10 countries around the world with a corporate North American headquarters in Hendersonville, Tennessee, and an international headquarters in London, England. For more information, please visit str.com. Sean Kingston kicked off the roll out for his next album last month with the release of Thank Me. He returns today with a new single called All I Got, released in an HNHH premiere. All I Got has the temperament of a club banger but the sound is quite restrained, so as to bring the melancholy aspects to the fore. The sorrow in Kingstons vocals and lyrics (the sorrow of rejection and failure and determination) gives it significantly greater depth than it would have featured if he had simply cranked the bass up 11. Put this reggae-inflected ditty the next time youre drinking on the beach. Quotable Lyrics Real niggas all around me, thats all I got Little Hennessy and vodka, thats all I got Can you drop it down for me? thats all I got Riding around now let me see, thats all I got The Irish platform has helped 1,300 projects get off the ground with more than 65,000 pledges Irish crowd-funding platform Fund it is celebrating its fifth birthday. Over the last half-decade, more than 65,000 pledges have helped more than 1,300 artistic projects come to fruition; The Cake Cafe Bake Book; Fight Like Apes self-titled third album, and over 40 Tiger Dublin Fringe Festival performances among the most notable. With an impressive 71% success rate, artists have been able to achieve the support they need, while fans have been able to get involved like never before. Run by the charity Business to Arts, they recently welcomed a significant investment from Bank Of Ireland, which will allow them to develop the technology of the site, continue to provide hands-on moderation and engage with new markets. It is incredible to look back on Fund its five-year history and acknowledge the remarkable talent and creativity that has emerged through various projects," says Andrew Hetherington, Chief Executive of Business to Arts and Fund it "Many project creators are now showcasing their work internationally. This past week, We Banjo 3 performed for President Obama, while Breathe, one of our funded short films will be shown at BFI Flare Festival. Fund it has become a mainstream route to raise funds and validate products and we, along with our partners at Bank of Ireland, look forward to continuing to engage and nurture Irish creativity, championing project pledging, so that dreams become reality." A series of animated illustrations by artists Keep Sketch will be rolled out on social media throughout the week to celebrate the milestone - and, of course, the projects of the future continue on their respective journeys at [link]fundit.ie[/link]. 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. 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Sometimes the account number has extra zero's in front of it, just ignore those. iHire Wins 2016 Users Choice Award Job seekers and recruiters pick iHire as one of the best job boards on the web Posted by Press Releases on Tuesday, 03-22-2016 6:21 am Currently 3.0/5 Stars. 1 2 3 4 5 3.0 from 5 votes Frederick, Maryland (PRWEB) March 21, 2016For the second year in a row, iHire was chosen by its users as one of the top 25 job boards on the web. 3,800 unique ballots were cast in this years Users Choice Awards, an annual survey hosted by WEDDLEs Media Group. Instead of relying on pundits picks, the program turns to those who use the sites for job search and recruiting support to determine the leaders in the online employment services industry.An industry-focused website, iHire provides comprehensive job search and hiring solutions to candidates and employers in 50+ sectors. We work hard every day to help job seekers and businesses meet their employment goals, said Jason Hayes, iHires Sales Director. Being chosen by our users is both an honor and a clear testament to the quality of the products and services we provide.Peter Weddle, CEO of WEDDLEs Media Group, noted, There is no higher accolade than to be ... 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 Google has regularly been voted the best company in America to work for its staff get free meals, generous paid holidays, access to nap pods for power-napping during the business day, and are even encouraged to grow their own fruit and vegetables at work. And, despite their old dont be evil motto, Google top brass hasnt set things up this way simply because they are lovely people. Like everything they do, their decisions were based squarely on data and in this case the data showed that treating their staff well would increase employee satisfaction. Employers have been using analytics for some time now to understand what makes their staff tick using metrics such as staff engagement to understand what drives productivity and innovation in the workplace. The Big Data revolution has accelerated this practice as well as taken it in new directions companies now have more data than ever on their employees, and more tools and technology with which to analyze this data. But can or should we monitor people who work for us in the same way we monitor our machinery and equipment? Can their behavior be predicted, or even manipulated, in the same way? Is it even ethical to try? After all, people are far less predictable, more nuanced in our reactions to events or situations, and complex in our motivations. If the productivity of a piece of machinery is consistently lower than it sh... Weve all heard about the skills gap across Canada boomers are retiring and there arent enough qualified workers to fill their roles. It all paints a pretty dismal picture for Canadas economy. According to a recent Randstad study though, it seems that young Canadians are getting the message. There is a wealth of opportunity for career building within the various skilled trade sectors across the country, and people are taking notice. Whats drawing them in could be the opportunity for exploration, creation and experimentation within so-called traditional fields. Many of todays job seekers have grown up in a high-tech, dynamic era where the first and fastest to market are rewarded. We believe that innovation and the chance to work within a team of innovators is appealing to Canadian workers. Job seekers who responded to our Employer Branding Study say they are increasingly attracted to companies who require engineers, computer scientists, data architects and other highly skilled, technical professionals. Companies like Pratt & Whitney, IBM Canada Limited, and Bombardier that have built reputations around the newest, best or most efficient technologies get a ringing endorsement from Canadian employees, who this year rank these and other innovators in the top 20 companies Canadians want to work for. A positive sign for the skills gap This is an important consideration in terms of addressing Canada&rsqu... Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-03-22 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at CONTENTS [01] Debate on Justice system to be held in parliament plenary [02] Two ferries with more than 520 refugees arrive at Pireaus on Tuesday [03] Government is currently preparing laws on asylum requests with EC [01] Debate on Justice system to be held in parliament plenary A debate on the Justice system will start in the plenary of the Greek parliament on Tuesday, at 19.00. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras in a letter to the president of the Parliament Nikos Voutsis asked for this debate because as he said the public opinion has been lately poisoned by groundless complaints concerning the government policy on justice. Defence Minister and junior coalition government partner Panos Kammenos stressed that it is high time the Greek people found out about hundreds of millions transferred to foreign banks and other cases of embezzlement. [02] Two ferries with more than 520 refugees arrive at Pireaus on Tuesday "Nissos Mykonos" ferry carrying 140 refugees and migrants from Mytilene and 357 from Samos islands docked early in the morning on Tuesday at the port of Piraeus. After the arrival of the 497 refugees and migrants of "Nissos Mykonos" the current number of the persons hosted at the facilities provided by the portuary authorities is totalled to 5,247, according to the newest data. Later in the morning is expected to arrive also at Piraeus the ferry "blue star1" with 131 refugees and migrants from Mytilene. [03] Government is currently preparing laws on asylum requests with EC The legal framework which will be used in the asylum application procedures which form part of the EU-Turkey deal is currently being drafted, sources from the Asylum Agency told ANA-MPA on Monday. The formulation of the framework which is being prepared in cooperation with the European Commission, will also determine the committees that will be formed and the Appellate Body that will examine asylum requests. Any announcements will be made after this procedure has been completed, the sources added. Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article Athens Macedonian News Agency: News in English, 16-03-22 Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article From: The Athens News Agency at CONTENTS [01] President Pavlopoulos expresses condolences to King Philippe of Belgium over Brussels terror attacks [02] 11-year-old Rami and his family to be reunited in Munich after Germany gives permission [01] President Pavlopoulos expresses condolences to King Philippe of Belgium over Brussels terror attacks President of the Hellenic Republic Prokopis Pavlopoulos on Tuesday sent to King Philippe of Belgium his deepest condolences for the families of the victims of the terrorist attacks in Brussels earlier the same day. He also expressed the Greek people's feelings of solidarity with the people of Belgium in the face of these horrendous acts, which he said were an offense against Europe and democratic values, as well as all European societies. [02] 11-year-old Rami and his family to be reunited in Munich after Germany gives permission After receiving the all-clear from Germany, the family of an 11-year-old Syrian refugee suffering from cancer have been allowed to join him in Munich, where he is undergoing treatment. Rami's mother, brothers and his cousin will leave on a flight from Thessaloniki airport on Wednesday, accompanied by an employee of the Thessaloniki regional asylum office where the family submitted an asylum request on Monday. Once they arrive in Munich, German authorities will take over their case. Rami, a boy from Syria who was in Germany with his father, has been receiving treatment Hodgkins lymphoma at Munich's University Hospital for the past four months. He urgently needs a bone marrow transplant and his immediate family, such as his mother and brothers, are the most likely donors. After the borders were closed, however, his mother and brothers were stuck in Greece, which they reached by boat from Turkey, and could not continue their journey north. They officially applied for asylum on Monday and will now travel to Germany. Rami's story, which was published in the international media, moved both German and Greek authorities, who took action to find them and launched fast-track procedures to reunite the family. Athens News Agency: News in English Directory - Previous Article - Next Article On Monday, members returned from their March break to learn that the prime minister racked up a $50,000 bill for a private plane that sat idle on a Caribbean tarmac in December. Some were less than impressed. During question period, Tory MP Alex Nuttall grilled Prime Minister Justin Trudeau over the latest details about his familys New Years trip to St. Kitts and Nevis. Advertisement Fifty thousand is just the bill for the private plane to sit on the tarmac. Alex Nuttall, Tory MP Whats worse is that Canadian taxpayers are on the hook for $50,000 so the prime minister could enjoy his sunny ways, the BarrieSpringwaterOro-Medonte MP said. He continued: Fifty thousand is just the bill for the private plane to sit on the tarmac. How much more will the Canadian taxpayer have to shell out for this prime ministers private Caribbean vacation? Trudeaus family vacationed for 10 days on the tropical island, renting villas at an exclusive resort. After the trip, the prime minister reimbursed taxpayers the economy airfare equivalent for each family member who travelled with him on the government plane. Advertisement CTV News reported that the prime ministers private military plane, pair of pilots, and flight crew all of which sat idle on a tarmac in case of emergency will cost the government approximately $48,000. Conservative MP Alex Nuttall and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speak during question period on March 21, 2016. (Screengrab: ParlVu) House Leader Dominic LeBlanc responded to Nuttall by saying the costs are not extraordinary theyre following long-standing security protocols and policies that existed under previous governments. The prime minister and members of his family reimbursed an economy airfare, LeBlanc said, reminding the House of a standard procedure that the PMs plane must be constantly ready to leave with three hours notice in case of national emergencies. Advertisement That policy existed under previous governments and were respecting that same policy today, he said. At a Conservative networking event in Barrie, Ont. Saturday, Nuttall called Trudeau a millionaire prime minister who ought to fund his own taxpayer-funded nannies. Last year, Trudeau faced criticism from both Conservatives and NDP members, who charged that just because hes prime minister with a $325,000 salary doesnt mean he should get taxpayer dollars for his child care needs. The prime minister defended the use of tax dollars to pay for two nannies for his three children, saying he reorganized the allotted household budget to suit his young familys needs. Advertisement Also on HuffPost OTTAWA Six months ago, Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau looked Canadians in the eye and pledged not to break his election promises. Thats what our plan is about, and Im being straight and honest, Trudeau told the public during The Globe and Mails leaders debate on Sept. 18 about the Liberals commitment to run three deficits of $10 billion or less, reach a balanced budget in 2019-2020 and kick start the economy. Advertisement Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau debates NDP Leader Tom Mulcair during The Globe and Mail leaders' debate, Sept. 17, 2015 in Calgary. (Photo: Jonathan Hayward/CP) Mr. Mulcairs plan is to actually do what we know politicians of all parties including my own have done in the past, which is to say were going to balance the books and then, oops, the numbers are worse than we thought. Were going to have to break our promises, Trudeau said. Thats not what Im going to do. Im being honest with Canadians. Were going to run three deficits and were going to invest in the future Canadians need right now. Fast forward two months. The Liberals win. Nova Scotia MP Scott Brison, the new Treasury Board president, faces reporters after the Parliamentary Budget Officer reports a weakened economic outlook. Brison is asked whether the Liberals might run deficits larger than $10 billion. Advertisement He points the finger at the Tories. We will deal with, first of all, addressing the fact that we inherited from the previous government a bare cupboard," Brison responds. A week later, Finance Minister Bill Morneau announces that his department now anticipates economic growth to be 1.2 per cent rather than the two per cent projected in the spring. He forecasts a deficit of about $3 billion for 2015-2016, rather than the $2.4 billion surplus anticipated in the Conservatives final budget. A deficit of $3.9 billion is expected for 2016-17, with deficits every year until 2019-2020 even before the new Liberal government has spent a cent. Minister of Finance Bill Morneau speaks to media as he delivers a fiscal update during a news conference, in Ottawa, on Friday, Nov. 20, 2015. (Photo: Adrian Wyld/CP) Morneau tells reporters he wanted to provide them with an early understanding of the governments finances as weve inherited them. Advertisement In his 16 days as finance minister, Morneau says, he has discovered in briefings with his department that the economy is growing far more slowly than was previously forecast. Weve made a commitment to a government thats open, transparent and positive. So I want to be open and transparent about what weve found so far, he says. He insists that this starting point is objective and independent. We wanted to show this is the situation that weve inherited. He says the word inherited three times. Some economists suggest the Liberals are being cautious with their math and building a contingency reserve. Three months later, Morneau again faces reporters. This time, its to tell them the deficits are again much larger than expected. Advertisement Collapsing oil prices and weaker-than-expected growth worldwide have contributed to revised deficit projection to $18.4 billion in 2016-2017 $6 billion of which is contingency planning by the finance department. The deficit is projected to be $15.5 billion in 2017-18 again before the Liberals campaign commitments are factored in. "In a volatile economic situation, it may take a little longer than we expected. Morneau acknowledges that the Liberals wont keep their $10-billion-deficit promise and wont likely reach balance by 2019-2020. "In a volatile economic situation," the minister says, "it may take a little longer than we expected. Still, he tries to make the case that the Liberals spending plans are exactly what the doctor ordered to fix sluggish growth. Was it all just politics? So, was Trudeau justified in his attack of the NDPs balanced-budget pledge? Could the Liberals have foreseen the worsening economic tide coming? Or is this just, simply, politics? Advertisement Emmett Macfarlane, an assistant professor at the University of Waterloo, is of two minds. On the one hand, private bank economists, the Bank of Canada and the Parliamentary Budget Officer always have to revise their projections, he told The Huffington Post Canada. No one ever always nails it, and the same is inevitably going to be true of political parties that rely often on those exact sources of information. That said, it is kind of a perennial thing, that parties are going to put the most positive gloss on their own platform projections, and the Liberals dont really have anything special here that they can hang their hat on to explain away why things are worse off and kind of try to justify the change in tone from the campaign to now, when they have to deal with reality. The Liberals didnt necessarily have the most conservative projections on the state of the countrys finances, Macfarlane said. Some things, like slower economic growth are definitely out of their control, he noted, but their rhetoric isnt. I dont think they deserve a lot of sympathy for being able to turn around and kind of blame the previous government for their own approach. Advertisement The Liberals caught themselves in their own framing, the professor said, and theyve consequently contributed to feeding an increased sense of apathy towards politics. Alexandre Laurin, the research director at the C.D. Howe Institute, the think tank that Morneau used to chair, said he thinks the Liberals were just engaging in politics as usual. Its a recurring story. It happens all the time, so why would it be different this time? "Is a political party ever careful when they campaign? Its not really in their advantage." The economy really did worsen during the campaign, Laurin noted. But were they careful? Is a political party ever careful when they campaign? Its not really in their advantage. They always end up having made more commitments than they can afford, so they come out and say: We are in a worse fiscal shape than we thought we were. Sheila Block, a senior economist with the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives, said there is a great temptation for any new government to blame the former government and say the fiscal situation is worse than they had been led to believe. To be fair, she said, few people were estimating oil prices below $39, which was a fairly dramatic shift. But, Block suggested, Canada is in such an anti-tax, anti-government cultural place that to do things that you want or should be doing, you need to blame the previous government because you cant be bold enough. Advertisement Block and Laurin noted that the Liberals' platform included a pledge to have the Parliamentary Budget Officer cost out the parties election promises during future campaigns. That would likely lead to less variation, in terms of economic assumptions, and make it easier for voters to compare across platforms, Block said. Scott Clark, a former deputy minister at finance and a senior adviser to prime minister Jean Chretien, told HuffPost the strategy of blaming the previous government is almost standard federally and provincially. He noted, however, that a lot of things happened that were not the fault of the previous government, such as the drop in oil prices and a general deterioration of the economy throughout the election. Unfortunately, Clark said, the numbers that [the parties] were using were out of date [during the campaign] they meant nothing. And yet, all three political parties kept putting out platforms based on assumptions that were out of date, and nobody during the election seemed to care about that." If the Conservatives had won, there would still be a high deficit that they would be confronted with. It didnt matter who was elected, they would all have been confronted with a situation that was worse than was detected a year ago in the spring budget," he said. Advertisement Tom Mulcair announces that former Saskatchewan finance minister Andrew Thomson will run as an NDP candidate, Aug. 14, 2015. (Photo: Michelle Siu/CP) Andrew Thomson, Saskatchewan's former NDP finance minister who ran federally in the election and served as Leader Thomas Mulcairs spokesman on finance issues, told HuffPost that the Liberals baseline deficit of $18 billion is a direct result of their own decisions. The Grits are exaggerating the deficit by $3 billion in pension accounting, inflating the contingency by $3 billion, undertaking $3 billion in tax cuts that few Canadians have benefited from, refusing to increase taxes on corporations and pledging $3 billion in spending review that would erase any deficit they currently claim, he wrote in an email. So much of this deficit is a result of Liberal decisions, not anything directly attributed to the economy or the previous government, Thomson wrote. We will need to wait and see the details and choices, but the fact is this budget will be a far cry from what the Liberals promised. Advertisement We put forward a plan that focused on investing in our communities, helping the middle class, and creating growth in a way that would help all Canadians." Monday, Trudeau said the upcoming Liberal budget was exactly what the party had campaigned on. We put forward a plan that focused on investing in our communities, helping the middle class, and creating growth in a way that would help all Canadians, the prime minister said. That is exactly what we are going to be delivering in tomorrow's budget. But some leaks suggest that Tuesdays budget will defer some of the Liberals spending promises. During the election campaign, when Mulcair promised his first budget would be balanced, Trudeau argued that the NDP couldnt fund its program without making deep cuts or postponing investments, such as child care spaces and infrastructure spending, to years down the line. Mr. Mulcair talks about putting things off for three, five, 10, 20 years. Thats not what we need, Trudeau said during that Globe debate. Were the only party thats said, Yes, we will run three modest deficits because its time to invest in Canada once again and give people the support they need. Trudeau, who called Mulcairs promises puffs of smoke, may Tuesday be seen to be guilty of doing his own puffing if the Liberals budget reveals several promises have been postponed. Advertisement Or, the prime minister may stand accused of plunging Canada into an even larger sea of debt. At the time of Trudeaus deficit announcement back in August, then Conservative prime minister Stephen Harper suggested the Liberal leader had no idea what hes talking about. Thats why you could be sure that his small deficits will become large deficits and would get Canada into the same pickle of high taxes and program cuts that we had under the last Liberal government, Harper warned, referring to the actions undertaken in by the Grits in the mid-1990s to respond to free-spending decades by Progressive Conservative prime minister Brian Mulroney and Liberal prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau. Also on HuffPost It began as a chirp 10 years ago or as Twitter's current CEO and founder Jack Dorsey puts it, "a short inconsequential burst of information". just setting up my twttr Jack (@jack) March 21, 2006 Advertisement What you're looking at is the world's oldest tweet. Today marks the social media platform's 10-year anniversary and since then, Twitter's surged to 300 million users. It's changed the way millions of people report and consume the news. It's given celebrities and politicians a whole new platform to reach out to fans. If only Bradley's arm was longer. Best photo ever. #oscarspic.twitter.com/C9U5NOtGap Ellen DeGeneres (@TheEllenShow) March 3, 2014 Revolutions like the #ArabSpring and the #BlackLivesMatter movement wouldn't have been as vocal without the platform. It's also made major revamps to its timeline algorithm to compete with Facebook. Advertisement The company's undergone some big changes of its own since 2006, rotating between two of its founders as CEOs, and eventually going public on the stock market in 2013. It's also branched out into the online video with services like Vine and Periscope. But it's also undergone some growing pains. As Wired points out, the company's stock has reached an all-time low. The platform's been implicated with misogynistic movements like #Gamergate, and the company's efforts to stay relevant amid a slew of competitors like Instagram and Snapchat haven't been well received. A lot can happen in a decade, so we spoke with Rory Capern, the Managing Editor of Twitter Canada on what's changed since 2006. Watch the full video above. Also on HuffPost Khalil Karbani/Facebook Voters will head to the polls Tuesday to choose a new MLA for Calgary-Greenway, and it's looking to be a close finish. A Mainstreet/Postmedia poll released March 12 found that anything could happen, with four of the candidates sitting within just a few points of each other. Advertisement It looks like a four way race may be underway in Calgary Greenway with a by election less than two weeks away, said Quito Maggi, president of Mainstreet Research, in a statement. "It appears that the PC candidate has a clear lead, but with a 4 point margin of error, this could be a lot closer than it appears. PC candidate Prabhdeep Gill is sitting at seven points above NDP candidate Roop Rai. And Rai, Wildrose candidate Devinder Toor and Liberal candidate Khalil Karbani are all within three points of each other. Advertisement Former Alberta MLA Manmeet Bhullar was killed in November. (Photo: Manmeet Bhullar/Facebook) The byelection is being held to replace the seat left vacant by Progressive Conservative MLA Manmeet Bhullar. Bhullar was killed in a traffic accident last November after stopping to help a stranded motorist. Byelection could forecast future of PCs in Calgary Some political observers are saying today's results could be important for the future of Alberta's Progressive Conservatives. Calgary has long been the keystone of Tory support in the province, which changed drastically when the NDP won a majority in last May's election. In a September byelection, the Wildrose party beat the PCs in Jim Prentice's former riding. "This could be a lot closer than it appears. Calgary political scientists Duane Bratt and Melanee Thomas say the PCs need to win Calgary Greenway as they face pressure from some sectors to merge with the Wildrose party. "This byelection may have province wide implications as the PCs appear poised to hold the seat previously held by Manmeet Bhullar. A PC win could stall talks to unite the right. A combined Liberal and NDP vote would surpass both the Wildrose and PCs. If the NDP can reproduce their success in attracting Liberal voters from 2015, they could win this by election," Maggi said. Advertisement The Mainstreet/Postmedia Poll surveyed 523 Calgary-Greenway voters by phone, and has a margin of error of +/- 4.26%, 19 times out of 20. With files from The Canadian Press Also on HuffPost: Condiment maker Frenchs stumbled into a public-relations victory this month, when the fact it uses Canadian tomatoes for its ketchup went viral across the country. Now the company is doubling down on that at least partly accidental strategy, and has announced its going to start bottling its ketchup in Canada, too. Advertisement "We are currently in negotiations on moving bottling and expanding our food service business to Canada," the company said in a statement quoted by CBC News. Its not known yet where the new bottling plant will be. The obvious choice would be Leamington, Ontario the heart of southern Ontarios tomato-growing region, and site of a Heinz bottling plant that closed in 2014. But Frenchs president Elliott Penner told Postmedia that Leamington wont be the site of the new bottling operation. Highbury Canco took over the old Heinz plant, rescuing some 250 of nearly 800 jobs there, and they are already processing the tomatoes for Frenchs ketchup. But Penner says Highbury Canco doesnt have the capacity to bottle the ketchup as well. Advertisement The tweet that started it all: Since Heinz decided to pull the plug on its Canadian plant in Leamington, 740 jobs were lost. Heinz decided to make its... Posted by Brian Fernandez on Tuesday, February 23, 2016 Still, French's says the new plant will be somewhere in southwestern Ontario. In the space of several weeks, Frenchs ketchup has become a de facto icon of Canadian patriotism, with even some politicians campaigning for Frenchs and against Heinz, given Heinz' decision to shut down its Leamington plant. Grocery giant Loblaws took flak from the public when it announced it would be dropping Frenchs ketchup from its shelves. The company reversed its decision a day after announcing it. Immigrants have beaten Canadians at entrepreneurship over the past three decades, says a report by Statistics Canada. And it offers more proof that Syrian refugees could be good for Canada's economy in the long run. The StatsCan report, which was compiled in partnership with researchers at UBC and the Institute for Research in Public Policy, is the first to address "business ownership and job-creation activities of immigrants," it says. Advertisement Its main finding was that immigrants, including refugees, tend to surpass Canadians at private business ownership and self-employment proportionally, anyway. The report drew its conclusions by contrasting immigrants who arrived in various years against "comparison groups" that included mostly Canadians, and people who moved to Canada before 1980. It also examined entrepreneurship in a number of categories: incorporated private companies, unincorporated self-employment, and people who drew most of their income from self-employment. This chart compares immigrants (in green) and Canadians (in red) in three categories: self-employment, income primarily from self-employment, and private business ownership: Advertisement (Scroll over the bars to see what the percentages are) StatsCan found that 5.3 per cent of immigrant taxfilers who came to Canada in 2000 owned private companies by 2010. In a comparison group of non-immigrants, 4.8 per cent owned a business the same year. Researchers observed a similar trend among the self-employed. Immigrants who came to Canada in 2004 had a self-employment rate of 19.6 per cent in 2010, compared to 16.1 per cent among a comparison group. But not all self-employed immigrants derived most of their income from that work. About half of them (46 per cent) worked other jobs that supplemented their pay. The rest of them (54 per cent) earned most of their money through self-employment. Eleven per cent of immigrants who arrived in 2004 earned mostly self-employed income by 2010, more than the comparison group's 7.5 per cent. StatsCan also looked at immigrants who moved to Canada between 1980 and 2000. Approximately 5.8 per cent of these immigrants owned private companies in 2010, more than the 4.8 per cent among the comparison group. Advertisement Self-employment was also higher among these immigrants at 22.3 per cent. It was 16.1 per cent for comparable Canadians and longer-term arrivals. About 11.6 per cent of immigrants who came to Canada between 1980 and 2000 made most of their money from self-employed work, topping the 7.6 per cent earned by the comparison group. This chart compares immigrants (in blue) and Canadians (in red) in three categories: self-employment, income primarily from self-employment, and private business ownership: (Scroll over the bars to see what the percentages are) But StatsCan also found that immigrants don't quite match Canadians when it comes to job creation. The agency calculated job creation by dividing the number of positions created by private companies by the total number of immigrants who arrived between 1980 and 2000. The same was done for a comparison group. By this measure, immigrant-owned businesses created approximately 0.170 jobs per person, compared to 0.237 jobs per comparison-group member. Advertisement The statistics nevertheless show a strong propensity for entrepreneurship among people moving to Canada and it boosts a case for accepting Syrian refugees that Vancity credit union made last year. The financial institution estimated that refugees could contribute as much as $563 million in economic activity in B.C. alone over the next 20 years. It noted that immigrants are "highly entrepreneurial people" who were "30 per cent more likely to start a business than non-immigrants." "Even though there will be a financial cost to settle the refugees, it must be taken into account that immigrants have children, integrate over time, change the structure of the labour market and support a strained public pension system," Vancity's report said. Advertisement "The long-term fiscal impact of accepting refugees is typically positive." Also on HuffPost: The three Kardashian sisters could be on the hook for a lot of cash after a business partner sued them. Hillair Capital Management has filed a US$180 million lawsuit, accusing Kim, Kourtney and Khloe of fraud and breach of contract, according to the New York Daily News. Advertisement The company said in court filings that it sunk US$10.2 million into their beauty line in 2014 to save it after the previous distributor went bankrupt. But soon after, the women started looking for a better deal, Hillair said. It accused the reality stars of sabotaging the contract on purpose by refusing to promote the line, according to GossipCop. However, the Kardashians never found a new buyer, and threatened to remove their names from the products. Khloe even "publicly disparaged" the line at a 2015 beauty exhibition in Dubai, screaming and claiming that she hated it, according to the Daily News. Advertisement WEST HOLLYWOOD, CA - OCTOBER 12: Khloe Kardashian, Kourtney Kardashian, Kim Kardashian, Kris Jenner and Kylie Jenner arrive at the Cosmopolitan Magazine's 50th Birthday Celebration at Ysabel on October 12, 2015 in West Hollywood, California. (Photo by Steve Granitz/WireImage) Hillair wants the value of its $10 million investment back, as well as lost profits up to $180 million, according to TMZ. The sisters were forced to change the name of their line to Kardashian Beauty from Khroma Beauty back in 2013, after a company called Kroma Makeup accused them of copyright infringement. This isn't the first time Kim, Kourtney and Khloe have been in the news recently on legal matters. A corset company endorsed by all three is facing a class-action lawsuit that claims it misled customers about the products' weight-loss capabilities. Also on HuffPost The Weekly Review: HuffPost Canada Style Contributors' Beauty & Fashion Faves See Gallery Infamous Toronto politician Rob Ford has died at the age of 46. Ford served one term as Toronto's mayor from 2010 to 2014, and was representing Etobicoke North on city council at the time of his death. A site has been collecting thousands of messages of support since mid-March after Ford's family released a statement thanking supporters during a "difficult time." His family released a statement Tuesday announcing his death, with "heavy hearts and profound sadness." Advertisement Toronto Mayor Rob Ford addresses the crowd at Ford Fest, as his wife Renata, and children Stephanie and Doug look on in Toronto on Sept. 27, 2014. (Photo: Chris Young/The Canadian Press) He became a household name three years ago after a video of him reportedly smoking crack cocaine made headlines around the world. Ford later entered rehab in the summer of 2014 for addiction issues. Ford ran for re-election as mayor but abandoned the race shortly after he was diagnosed with pleomorphic liposarcoma, a rare form of cancer. His older brother Doug took his place in the mayoral race while Rob underwent multiple rounds of chemotherapy. Advertisement Ford was easily elected to his old council seat, instead. Ford was admitted to hospital in 2014 after abdominal pains he had been experiencing for months became "unbearable." He went through an hours-long surgery to remove a tumour, and he recently had additional rounds of chemotherapy to treat tumours on his bladder. Rob Ford attends a Toronto Blue Jays game on June 28, 2015. (Photo: Facebook) Ford was a penny-pinching city councillor for 10 years before winning the mayoral seat in a landslide; his unlikely campaign was fuelled by populism and "respect for taxpayers." During his time in public office, Ford built a reputation as a folksy politician who made himself accessible to constituents and personally returned their phone calls. On a website set up by the Ford family, hundreds of people have left "get well soon" messages for the still popular politician. Advertisement Rob Ford wiped his forehead while chatting with a visitor to his office before returning to council chambers on Aug 27, 2014. (Photo: Marta Iwanek/Toronto Star via Getty Images) Ford was first elected to Toronto city council in 2000, buoyed by an endorsement by the Toronto Star the very national paper responsible for breaking news of a damning video of him clutching a crack pipe 13 years later. "The people said they wanted change and they got change," he said about his election victory at the time. Advertisement Rob Ford arrives at his office to sign bobblehead dolls in Toronto on Nov. 21, 2014. (Photo: Chris Young/The Canadian Press) Born May 28, 1969 to Doug Ford Sr. and Ruth Diane Campbell, Rob was the youngest of four siblings. The Ford children all worked at their father's business, Deco Labels and Tags. In 1995, the senior Ford won provincial seat for the Ontario Progressive Conservatives. While he served as an MPP, his son Doug minded the family's lucrative business and expanded its operations to Chicago. Rob, meanwhile, focused on carving out a career in politics. Ten years ago, Ford's father died of colon cancer at the age of 73. Ford is survived by his wife Renata and their two children, Stephanie and Douglas. Full statement from the Ford family: With heavy hearts and profound sadness, the Ford family announces the passing of their beloved son, brother, husband, and father, Councillor Rob Ford earlier today at the age of 46. A dedicated man of the people, Councillor Ford spent his life serving the citizens of Toronto. The family asks that you respect their privacy and join them in their grieving and their prayers. The family will not be making any statements to the media or taking any questions. Information will follow at a later time regarding memorial services. Listen: How a complicated politician became unstoppable Advertisement Also on HuffPost: Politicians had kind words Tuesday for a former mayor who had a tumultuous time in office. Former Toronto mayor Rob Ford died Tuesday after a long battle with cancer. Conservative interim leader Rona Ambrose said she was "saddened" to hear the news. Rob Ford was a tireless fighter for the taxpayer and a true advocate for the people he represented," she said. She said Ford was known for personally engaging with his constituents, and offered her deepest condolences to the Ford family. Advertisement "Despite the challenges he fought and the controversies he faced, it is my sincere hope that Canadians will remember Rob Ford for his enduring love for his community and country, and his dedication to his constituents. Toronto Mayor John Tory said in a statement the city is "reeling with this news." "I have known Rob Ford for many years. He was a man who spoke his mind and who ran for office because of the deeply felt convictions that he had." "He was above all else, a profoundly human guy whose presence in our city will be missed." Received sad news that Councillor and former mayor @TorontoRobFord has passed away. Please find my statement here: pic.twitter.com/WHhbk2oowv John Tory (@JohnTory) March 22, 2016 At a press conference earlier in the day on the attacks in Brussels, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau mentioned that his thoughts were with Ford's family. He later took to Twitter to laud Ford's "courage" fighting his disease. Advertisement Rob Ford fought cancer with courage and determination. My condolences and best wishes to the Ford family today. Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) March 22, 2016 Former prime minister Stephen Harper also his shared condolences online. Rob was a fighter throughout life & dedicated public servant who will be remembered for his courage, love for Toronto & his family. 1/2 Stephen Harper (@stephenharper) March 22, 2016 Laureen and I offer our deepest condolences to the Ford family. 2/2 Stephen Harper (@stephenharper) March 22, 2016 NDP Leader Thomas Mulcair wrote that "46 is far too young to lose a loved one." Sincere condolences to Rob Fords family during this difficult time. 46 is far too young to lose a loved one. Tom Mulcair (@ThomasMulcair) March 22, 2016 Ford's nephew Michael Ford, a trustee with the Toronto District School Board, tweeted a photo of his uncle. Advertisement Uncle Rob, You have fought the good fight long enough and now can rest in peace. Love you and will forever miss you. pic.twitter.com/3tIM0KZJdK Michael Ford (@MichaelFordTO) March 22, 2016 Ontario Premier Kathleen Wynne announced the news to the legislature Premier Wynne voice shakes a bit annc'ng death of former Toronto Mayor #RobFord in Legislature.Says moment silence coming end of QPeriod Paul Bliss (@blissblogs) March 22, 2016 Saddened to learn that former Toronto mayor Rob Ford has passed away. My thoughts & prayers are with Rob's friends, family & colleagues. Kathleen Wynne (@Kathleen_Wynne) March 22, 2016 Full statement from Premier Wynne on Ford's death: pic.twitter.com/HMOB0zxErb Jennifer Pagliaro (@jpags) March 22, 2016 Others tweeted their condolences and tributes. My condolences to the family of @TorontoRobFord, especially his wife & young children. Cristina Martins (@CMartinsMPP) March 22, 2016 Advertisement Rob Ford had a passion for people and politics. I'm saddened by his tragic passing. My thoughts and prayers are with his family. #RIPRobFord Norm Kelly (@norm) March 22, 2016 My hope is that Torontonians will remember Rob Ford for his accomplishments and unswerving dedication to our city. #RIPRobFord Norm Kelly (@norm) March 22, 2016 Also on HuffPost Vienna is the grand dame of Europe. A monarchy up until 1918, echoes of her aristocratic roots can still be felt and experienced by visitors today. As important as this history and tradition are to the city, there is also an edgy emerging art, fashion and food scene that are definitely worth exploring, experiencing and tasting. So without further ado here is our guide to caffeinating, eating, sleeping, shopping and playing in this (once) dynastic capital. Caffeinating: Coffee house culture is a huge part of Viennese life and so visitors and locals alike are spoiled for choice. For a traditional experience (read: brightly lit, bustling and smoky). Be sure to try Hotel Sacher Cafe for its elegance and proximity to the opera house (and don't miss their world-famous chocolate torte), Cafe Pruekel and Kaffe Zentral(frequented by all the famous literati at the end of the 19th century). For something more akin to a Brooklyn brew, we loved Balthasar in the up and coming Praterstrasse 2 (second district). Advertisement Something a little stronger than coffee: Hotel Sacher Blaue Bar is a Viennese institution, and a glass of champagne or a delightful local white wine is just the thing to order. For a more contemporary vibe and a birds-eye-vista, be sure to visit Loft for views that won't stop (it's located on the 18th floor of the Sofitel) Advertisement Roberto's American Bar sets the standard for cocktail culture in Vienna. Small, smoky, dark and intimate. What the bar lacks in space it more than makes up for in style and hospitality. Cocktails with a capital C. Ask for Roberto and tell him we sent you! Loos Bar -- don't let the ongoing feud with neighbouring Roberto's bar deter you. Loos bar is not only architecturally beautiful (amazing Art Deco), but historically significant as well. Most of Vienna's intellectuals drank here throughout history. The bar, designed by Adolf Loos in 1908 has (fortunately) remained un changed. Lunching & Snacking around the Ringstrasse: Zum Schwarzen Kameel has been an institution since 1901. Still serving fine coffee, Austrian wine and the prettiest open faced sandwiches with the original recipes from fraulein Frieze. Spend an afternoon enjoying an aperitif and some of their many delicacies while watching their sophisticated customers come and go. Advertisement Bitzinger Sausage Stand, because a visit to Vienna would not be complete without a late-night sausage, a post-opera sausage or a just-because sausage snack. A visit to this civilized little stand is the perfect cap to nearly any activity. Street food with 200 years of tradition! Plus you can enjoy a glass of wine or beer to accompany your choice of wurst. Dining: Tian - Vegetarian or not, the menu at the one Michelin starred Tian is so mouth-watering that even a die-hard carnivore couldn't possibly miss their beloved meat. Set in a beautiful, light-filled historical building, both the lunch and dinner menus are definitely something to write home about. Labstelle -- with a dedication to local, fresh and seasonal bordering on obsessive, this central eatery manages to be both rustic and contemporary all at the same time. The menu delights with unique, sometimes foraged ingredients, and the staff are as knowledgeable as they are hospitable. Be sure to save room for any of their mind blowing deserts and don't pass up the house blend coffee roasted locally by Bernd Salat (www.salatkaffee.com). Even the wine comes from less than 10 miles away (in Vienna city limits no less). Looking for a classic option to satiate your schnitzel craving? Be sure to pay a visit to Plachuttas Gasthaus zur Oper. According to the Viennese, a proper schnitzel is prepared with veal, and this one ticks all the right boxes (thin, light and crispy) -- ever so decadent! Served with a traditional potato salad in a vinegar dressing and paired with a glass of Austrian white wine, you'll want to yodel your praise from the foothills of the Alps (incidentally, less than an hour outside Vienna)! Advertisement Sleeping: The Sofitel is a great boutique property on the edge of Praterstrasse 2, a hip emerging neighbourhood with some cool boutiques and cafes nearby that can easily be explored on foot. The all-white rooms and cloud-like beds will make it hard to rise come morning, but the city streets will beckon. The Park Hyatt Vienna is the newest luxury hotel to open its doors in Vienna. This converted bank in a prime location has more marble than a Roman bathhouse. The historical rooms are large and luxurious with traditional wood paneling and herringbone floors that belie all the intuitive technology built-into the furnishings -- no need to leave your bed thanks to the command centre within arm's reach. Be sure to take a dip in the old vault that now houses a stunning spa and pool. Shopping: Supersense is part hipster coffee shop and part boutique offering customers the opportunity to ignite all their senses. From sound (they sell analogue music from cassettes to records), smell (create your own memory scent in a glass vial composed of various elements to be cracked and inhaled at a poignant life event), taste (a selection of locally roasted coffee and delicacies) and much more. Advertisement Ceramics are not the easiest souvenir to transport, but you'll be inspired to take the risk upon visiting Sandra Haischberger's stunning bright studio shop, Feinedinge. Delicate clay vases, tableware, pots and their famous glowsphere. Bring on the bubble wrap! Muhlbauer -- Celebrities like Madonna and Brad Pitt flock to this fashionable hat shop for fanciful headgear from Muhlbauer Hutmanufaktur, all handmade since 1903. Karmelitermarkt Market offers up interesting food stalls and restaurants permanently stationed in an open square in Praterstrasse 2. The neighbourhood is up and coming and is full of contemporary art and interesting cafes and boutiques that are worth a visit. Advertisement Doing & Seeing: The Visual Arts: The Leopold Museum is located in the heart of the MuseumsQuartier, an example of city planning at its finest. Visitors can take in the impressive modern art collection with works by Schiele, Klimt and Josef Hoffmann. Get a combined ticket to save some euros then wander next door to the MUMOK (Museum Moderner Kunst Stiftung ludwig Wien) where you can continue your art crawl into and through the remainder of the 20th century. Doing & Seeing: Music: Take in an Opera at the Wiener Staatsoper (Vienna State Opera House) because, well quite frankly, it's bucket-list worthy (and just what one does while in Vienna). Many of the productions are thoroughly modern but approachable for opera rookies. Opt for a balcony seat and join your fellow guests for a glass of champagne at intermission, like something out of a James Bond film. Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook Chris So via Getty Images TORONTO, ON - FEBRUARY 12, 2016 Christopher Belnavis-Giant, 17, applauds as he watches Oscar Teixeira, 16, congratulate Prime Minister Justin Trudeau following a friendly game of foosball at the Boys and Girls Club in Toronto. PM Justin Trudeau announces a budget increase for summer jobs program for students to $113 million. (Chris So/Toronto Star via Getty Images) Justin Trudeau has Canada's youth to thank for his election as prime minister. Trudeau was able to successfully engage youth in his campaign by addressing our concerns and realities in his platform (who would have thought?). Trudeau promised students and youth: An increase for the maximum Canada Student Grant to $3,000 per year for full-time students and $1,800 per year for part-time students by investing $750 million in the Canada Student Grants Program An end to the restrictive two per cent cap on increases to the Post-Secondary Student Support Program for Indigenous learners and an additional investment of $50 million per year in annual support 40,000 good youth jobs, including 5,000 youth green jobs More student co-op placements for students with $40 million per year in funding A 12-month break on employment insurance premiums for employers who hire between the ages of 18 and 24 into a permanent position $25 million for a restored and modernized Youth Services Program $10 million to develop and expand apprenticeships In turn, students and young people showed up to vote. More than 70,000 youth voted in just four days at early on-campus polling stations, and recent numbers from Statistics Canada indicate that voters between the ages of 18 and 24 had the biggest gains in voter turnout, jumping from 55 per cent in 2011 to 67 per cent in 2015. But are we a genuine focus, or was #PMJT merely appealing to student and youth voters by addressing our federal election campaign demands? Following a campaign with such a strong focus on young people, we should expect nothing less than Trudeau's promises to youth to be included in his first budget as prime minister. He cites his desire to be a strong advocate for youth issues as the reason he first entered politics. He himself is the second-youngest Canadian prime minister, and the father of three young children. He also has a history of working with youth, from teaching to chairing the Katimavik board. And if that wasn't sufficient, he also appointed himself minister of youth. Advertisement But the challenges we face as students and youth will not be solved by the announcement of a figurehead ministerial position. With student loan debt rising by almost $1 million per day, we need real action on unending tuition fee increases, student debt and bleak job prospects. A budget is not just a financial document, but a political one that reflects priorities and we won't be told to wait another year to be this government's priority. While some of the Liberal's commitments require new funding, its costliest commitment -- an increase to Canada Student Grants by $750 million -- is actually a cost-neutral proposal with funding being redirected from ineffective tax credits. This change has been called for by students for a number of years and will be an important test in this budget. Even against the backdrop of pre-budget "economic uncertainty" speak, this campaign promise can be implemented with no new funding. If Trudeau does not include his promises to youth in this federal budget, he should expect to be burdened by his inaction throughout the rest of his mandate. No rhetoric of economic uncertainty can distract us from a broken promise. Advertisement Our issues are not just youth issues, they're Canada's issues. Our generation's future is Canada's future. Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook MORE ON HUFFPOST: From the price to the chemicals, buying a new mattress can be a nightmare and shopping for "natural" or "organic" one will definitely NOT have you sleeping easy. In fact, it's one of the hardest areas in the home to green and that's thanks to a number of factors. Advertisement Investing in a new mattress is a big deal for most families, they are a huge expense, but if you make the right choice right out of the gate, you will be happy and will have made a good investment in your health and that of your family. Some background: The biggest concern when buying a conventional mattress is the chemical concoction of toxins found in many of them. You've got petroleum based petrochemicals, plastic, vinyl's and flame retardants. The first flame retardants were created by Obadiah Wyld in 1735 and were comprised of alum, borax and ferrous sulphate. Fast forward to today where there are more than 175 different types of flame retardant chemicals found in everything from our TVs to furniture to mattresses. The problem with flame retardants is that give off VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) that find their way into the dust in our homes and because we are always touching surfaces where these chemicals are found, our hands pick them up and we inadvertently ingest them. We also breathe them in at night when we are sleeping. Advertisement The most common fire retardants called polybrominated diphenyl ethers or PBDEs first raised concerns in the 1970s after fish, shellfish, birds and other marine life were found to have higher concentrations of the chemicals. In 2007 a study found high levels of PBDEs in milk from mothers in the Pacific Northwest. Being fat soluble, PBDEs accumulate, and their large size means slow elimination from the body. Studies have revealed that teens and babies have higher concentrations than adults and are more at risk. In 1999 and 2010 Environment Canada took issue with this family of flame retardants and actually banned PBDEs after research showed these chems are tied to cancer, brain damage, reproduction issues and more. Good news right? Well here is where is gets a bit complicated, when it comes to decaBDE (a family of PBDEs), the government asked manufacturers to voluntarily phase these out by 2012. Some companies have already done this, but others have not and the consumer really just does not know, and although some of these flame retardants have been banned, they can still be found in goods imported into Canada. According to an Environment Canada report "Human Health State of the Science Report on decaBDE", published in December 2012, decaBDE has not been banned completely. Advertisement There is some good new though, while the government takes its time to impose strict regulation on these chemicals, manufactures are voluntarily adopting phase out policies. But we, the consumer still need to know what to look for and because there is no regulation around using the words "natural" and "Organic", it's key to know what look for and what to ask. First, you want to know the "ingredients" and you want to pick the right ones: Most people don't know that Organic wool (untreated) is a natural flame retardant, it also has added benefits, it resists mildew, dust and dust mite droppings. Natural latex is made from rubber trees. You must make sure the latex is 100% natural, there far too many latex blends on the market that can include petroleum-based polyurethane or styrene, a known human carcinogen. If you are opting for organic cotton make sure it has a third party certification. A bit more on certifications: First party certification is certifications used by the actual company that makes the products, and are 100% BS. Second party certifications are made by trade associations, an example of this is CertiPUR, a "certification program developed by the flexible polyurethane foam industry", so even though there may not be PDBEs present it's still a polyurethane mattress. Advertisement Finally, there are third party certifications that come from either government agencies or not-for-profit organizations and have no financial gain. These are the ones you want to look out for. Certification examples: GreenGuard is a third party seal that does not regulate fire retardants; they focus mainly on VOCs like formaldehyde. G.O.T.S or Global Organic Textile Standard, certifies the materials used to make the mattress are in fact certified organic, these guys are considered to be one of the best as they also take workers rights into consideration This means the cotton or some other material used to make your mattress is certified organic by what's considered by many to be the world's best organic textile certifier. Goes beyond just making sure the cotton is organic, workers have to be treated well too. Oeko-Tex was originally developed as a label that gives guarantees on various aspects of textile ecology, with the first component focusing on consumer health, especially to prevent adverse health reactions made by textiles. Advertisement From this perspective, OEKO-TEX Standard 100 focused on requirements on hazardous substances, like heavy metals, toxic dyes, crop protection substances, and carcinogenic substances like formaldehyde. Each label has a serial number and carries the name of the institute that carried out the laboratory tests for the qualification for the standard. For me this is the best certification available. My top 3 eco mattress (in no particular order): The IKEA Sultan Heggedal mattress is a good choice, my husband and I bought this mattress a few years ago after some research on natural latex. Not only is it unbelievably comfortable, it's 85 percent latex, the padding is made from wool, corn-based PLA (a biodegradable plant-based polyester) and coconut-husk coir. The outer fabric is made from cotton (not organic), lyocell (from tree pulp) and flaxy linen. Ikea is very transparent and all their mattresses are free from flame retardants. Sleeptek (in Ottawa) is made from certified organic rubber and padded with certified organic wool (an effective flame retardant) and certified organic cotton. Sleeptek offers a range of brands including Obasan, Dormio and Soma. All the beds are third party certified with high standard for VOCs, heavy materials and flame retardant. Made in Canada, but they've been in a bit of hot water with their claims. In 2013, the Federal Trade Commission stripped Essentia from stating their mattresses are VOC- and chemical-free and "made with 100% natural materials." In the big picture these are great mattress, and they have since changed their wording. They offer some really great choices when it comes to eco mattresses. Advertisement Bottom line: Getting rid of your toxic mattress is one of the MOST important changes you can make in your home, especially if you have a baby or very small children. CHOOSE Products made without polybrominated diphenyl ethers Products manufactured in Canada Encased products to reduce exposure chemical exposure Natural rather than synthetic fibres Natural latex foam AVOID Products made with polybrominated diphenyl ethers Products made outside Canada Wrinkle-resistant fabrics treated with formaldehyde Polyurethane foam Second hand bedding and furniture Pacific Press via Getty Images UN HEADQUARTERS, NEW YORK, NY, UNITED STATES - 2016/03/16: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks at a press conference at UN HQ. In conjunction with his participation at the 6oth Session of the Commission on the Status of Women, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau held a press conference upon his arrival at UN Headquarters. (Photo by Albin Lohr-Jones/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images) Legitimate questions have long been raised by a vigilant media and civil society about how Canada's $15-billion arms deal with human-rights pariah Saudi Arabia can satisfy the human rights safeguards of Canadian military export controls, which are intended to ensure that "there is no reasonable risk" of misuse of Canadian-made military equipment. So far, however, there have been no satisfactory answers from either the previous Conservative or the current Liberal governments. Among the litany of unconvincing responses are some that are completely devoid of ethical considerations (if Canada does not sell weapons to the Saudis, somebody else will) and others that set a troubling precedent (the prospect of profit and job creation makes even the worst human-rights offender eligible to receive Canadian-made weapons). Almost all miss the point entirely. Advertisement Is this the sort of international relationship that will help Canada to the coveted UN Security Council seat? Now it seems that the Trudeau Liberals have settled on a new talking point: they are contractually "bound" to honour the agreement brokered by the Conservatives. Canada's reputation in the world, they argue, would suffer if it reneged on the contract. The prime minister recently declared that it would be "just about impossible" for Canada to conduct business internationally if it got a reputation as a deal breaker. According to Mr. Trudeau, "Decisions taken in the past, we will not overturn. But moving forward, we are committed to the kind of openness, transparency and rigour that, quite frankly, Canadians voted for in the last election." This latest statement came during the PM's announcement that Canada will seek a seat on the UN Security Council. And so we might ask: Has Ottawa also considered the cost to Canada's reputation of helping to sustain an utterly repressive regime? Is this the sort of international relationship that will help Canada to the coveted UN Security Council seat? Advertisement But even this concern, while significant, is really beside the point. Because here is the key implication of the government's latest position: honouring the agreement with Saudi Arabia does NOT necessarily guarantee the shipment of weapons. Any agreement signed by the Harper Conservatives must have been contingent upon the subsequent issuance of export permits, which are key to the integrity of Canada's military export control system. Honouring the deal with Saudi Arabia -- as Prime Minister Trudeau has pledged -- simply means allowing the export control system to function as it should. And, assuming a process that is unbiased and free from political interference, there is no such thing as a predetermined outcome for an export permit assessment. It has now been established that the deal was completed and announced without a single export permit having been issued. Whatever the terms of the deal, had the Harper government entered into an agreement that guaranteed the still-pending export permits "no matter what," this overt subversion of Canada's export control system would be scandalous in its own right. Quite simply, the outcome of objective export control assessments cannot be guaranteed by any law-abiding democratic government. If this particular deal is found to be incompatible with the human rights safeguards of Canadian export controls and cannot proceed, Trudeau still honours the agreement by accepting the export control assessment. Global Affairs Canada has acknowledged that the Saudi deal will require a succession of export permits over the 14-year contract. As Foreign Affairs Minister Stephane Dion has explained, the contract is "for many years so over the years the minister of foreign affairs will have the duty to consider the export permits." Thus the principles of "openness, transparency and rigour" promised by Prime Minister Trudeau should cover the vast majority of decisions related to the Saudi Arms deal going forward. Advertisement Even if one of the successive required export permits has already been issued (Ottawa will not say), the deal is far from irreversible. In fact, only weeks ago, Global Affairs Canada conceded that the department could consider suspending or cancelling existing permits if relevant reports emerged. Further, the Liberal government has announced that Canada will become a state party to the international Arms Trade Treaty. Article 7 of the ATT specifically encourages states parties to reassess export permits, even "after an authorization has been granted," if there is new, relevant information. Reports relevant to this deal emerge almost daily. Some of the latest relate to summary executions by the Saudi regime and damning condemnations by the UN of "widespread and systematic" targeting of civilians by the Saudi forces. So make no mistake: there are clear avenues for Ottawa to handle -- and honour -- this contract that do not result in Canadian-made military equipment shipped to one of the most oppressive regimes on Earth. Ottawa's hands are only as tied as it wants them to be. Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook ALSO ON HUFFPOST: Shutterstock / timy In a climactic scene from the film classic Casablanca, Captain Renault sees Rick with his gun smoking and says to his subordinates, "Major Strasser's been shot... Round up the usual suspects." In the world of business ethics, that scene reminds me of the impact of the actions taken by many organizations in addressing ethics issues. It's too hard to take the action that will actually get to the heart of the matter, so leaders take the easy path and make it seem like they're doing something. Advertisement For example, many organizations that have run afoul of the regulators and the Department of Justice have entered into deferred prosecution agreements (DPA) or corporate integrity agreements (CIA) which outline the remedial steps the organization must take to avoid prosecution or regulatory restrictions. Many of these CIA's and DPA's require the company's employees to undergo compliance training, often requiring all employees to take online ethics courses. Like rounding up the usual suspects, this is an easy way to implement an intervention, even though it has limited utility. However, taking the easy way out can also be worse than doing nothing: it deflects responsibility for taking meaningful actions, and creates a false sense of what is effective tone at the top. Employees are often resentful and feel that they are being punished for the deeds of others. Culture Drives Behaviour How can leaders take actions that matter and stop wasting time with ineffective interventions? Organizations must start looking at what will in fact change the behaviour they want to stop. An organization cannot change behaviour; only individuals can. And it is true that sometimes individuals will change their behaviour when they are introduced to new incentives or information, such as new sales incentives or better ways to do my work. Advertisement But changing behaviour to align with desired values, such as acting with integrity, rarely happens by merely informing people of what is expected of them. In my career I have never seen anyone have an "aha" moment and suddenly realize that they did not know what was the right thing to do was. And then, based on a message from leadership, instantly act ethically. With regard to values, it is the organization's culture that drives behaviour. We act based on the norms of our environment. While all of us intend to always do the right thing, many of us will succumb to the pressures and fears generated from intense working environments. Leaders must focus on the climate they create more than the words that they speak. Yet, too few organizations understand the role that culture plays in driving behaviour. And too few of those organizations understand how to effect the changes they need to create the cultures they want. Some self-aware leaders understand and take responsibility for their actions in creating climates that are feeder grounds for ethical ambiguity. Most leaders need a kick in the rear. In 2016, FINRA, the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, gave such a kick to the 640,000 brokers under its supervision. FINRA has acknowledged the "profound influence" of corporate culture on how a broker-dealer conducts its business, including how it manages conflicts of interest. "A culture that consistently places ethical considerations and client interests at the center of business decisions helps protect investors and the integrity of the markets. Conversely, failures in these areas can impose significant harm on investors and the markets as well as firms themselves. One estimate places fines and litigation costs to firms, or their parent companies, related to cultural failures at over $300 billion since 2010. This underscores the critical importance of firms establishing and implementing strong cultural values." FINRA recently announced that it will formalize its assessment of firm culture while continuing its focus on conflicts of interest and ethics. In its assessments of its members, FINRA will focus on the frameworks that firms use to develop, communicate and evaluate conformance with their culture. They will assess cultural indicators such as whether control functions are valued within the organization, whether policy or control breaches are tolerated, whether the organization proactively seeks to identify risk and compliance events, and whether supervisors are effective role models of firm culture; So how can organizations stay ahead of the regulators? - Boards must hold management accountable for culture-based risks and for taking positive steps to create healthy organizational cultures - Leaders and managers must come to understand how they individually and collectively impact their organization's culture - Organizations must understand the nature of the behaviour roadblocks employees face and what steps are needed to clear them away. Culture matters. David Gebler has over 25 years' experience advising global leaders on how to manage culture-based risks and create climates needed for their organizations to achieve their highest potential. His latest book is "The 3 Power Values" published by Wiley Press (Jossey-Bass). Advertisement Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook ALSO ON HUFFPOST: Here in Canada, we turn on our taps and clean water comes out. Simple as that. It's always clean, always plentiful, and unless we have long-showering teenagers in the house, usually the temperature we want it. This World Water Day, however, millions of people who share our planet are constantly thinking about water. How could they not be? Their children die from waterborne illnesses, because the local stream is contaminated. Others forfeit their schooling to trek long distances for water each day. Families lose their harvests -- and their food supplies -- because there's no irrigation for their parched crops. Here in Canada, a ready supply of clean water contributes to our health, longevity, and freedom to live as we choose. But in too many communities around the world, a lack of clean water keeps people sick, struggling -- and trapped. Advertisement Over the last five years, World Vision has reached more than 7 million people with water, sanitation and hygiene, and has provided safe drinking water to more than 5.5 million people. Here is a gallery of images of families we've been able to help, and families we can reach -- with your help. Zambia -- The power of a tap How many faucets do you have in your home? In Zambia, 14-year-old Mutinta has just one near her house -- but it's changed her life. This water comes through a system powered by solar panels, giving Mutinta the gifts of health, time and hope. Advertisement Rwanda -- Drilling day! It's the day many of these parents have waited for all of their lives. Their children have grown up drinking water from the local stream, battling stomach worms, cholera, diarrhea, and eye infections. But thanks to a donation through World Vision, a borehole is to be drilled in their community today. Nepal -- Lifeline restored Improving access to clean water is often part of World Vision's work, when we help communities recover from major natural disasters. In the year since the deadly earthquake in Nepal, families have had to walk long distances over rough terrain to fetch water. They can now drink deep in their own village, leaving more time to care for their children. Afghanistan -- School comes second In remote areas of Afghanistan, water for drinking, washing, cooking and watering animals must be fetched from ponds. Many parents must choose between having their children carry water all day -- or sending them to school. You can see from this picture which comes first. Advertisement Ethiopia -- No other choice Women and children in a remote rural community collect water from a polluted. Children in the community have died from water-borne diseases. In the same place where women and children fill their water bottles, others do laundry and animals foul the water. World Vision is finalizing a plan to cap the spring and provide pure, clean drinking water to the community. Bolivia -- The long, dry journey Can you imagine spending most of your day fetching dirty water which gives you diarrhea? When you lose body fluids and need to drink -- yet the water makes you sicker still. This is 11-year-old Darwin's life. He makes his journey at least twice a day in all weathers, even when ill and exhausted. There's no other choice. Advertisement Cambodia -- Ancient irrigation In rural Cambodia, families irrigate their crops using the same methods that farmers have used for centuries. It's hard work under the hot sun, especially during the dry season. But thanks to a water project in this community, they don't have to travel far to fill their watering cans. This cuts the work in half. Darfur -- The joy of being wet Tamadur and Babiker go without many things, in this camp for 42,000 people forced from their homes by conflict in South Darfur. But since World Vision created motorized water systems and rehabilitated hand pumps in the camp, fresh, clean water is in plentiful supply. Philippines -- The curse of El Nino "El Nino has greatly affected my farming," explains this farmer, referring to the lack of rain. "Before, I could harvest at least 25 sacks of rice for our family's consumption. The last time I harvested, it was only 15 sacks of rice." For parents relying on every sack to nourish their children, such a drop can be deadly dangerous. Advertisement India -- Fish but no house Surendra is happy trying to catch fish with his friends in the flooded canal near his home. His parents are more worried about their house which was carried away by high waters. All around the world, families struggle to access the right amounts of water in the right ways, while remaining safe in changing weather patterns. Lebanon -- Bath time for baby "Somehow he knows it's his bath time," says Shawwaga, a Syrian refugee mother of three children. The baby, Abd Al Rahman, was born in this makeshift camp. But thanks to water projects supported by donors, she has clean water from a nearby tank to bathe her little boy. "No more polluted water," says Shawwaga. "Where there is water, there is life." Advertisement Zambia -- A cruel journey "I don't like this water at all," says thirteen-year-old Dorcas, of the water she gathers from the village watering hole. She travels there four times a day with her leaky bucket. "Dorcas usually has diarrhea, but she's a strong girl," says her grandmother. Waterborne illness such as relentless, dehydrating diarrhea can mean long strings of school absences for children around the world, putting them far behind in their studies. Afghanistan -- Clean water, bountiful food In Miguel's community, there's now clean water for year-round irrigation, thanks to the dam provided by World Vision in partnership with the local municipal government. The eight-year-old loves helping his grandfather water their crops of corn with the sprinkler system connected to the dam. This week, World Vision in launching a nation-wide water campaign aimed at connecting Canadians with the water needs of people around the world. Want to know more? Please visit our web site at worldvision.ca All photos from World Vision. Dimitri Otis via Getty Images Street signs with Republican and Democrat options There's a great scene in The West Wing when Alan Alda's character, the Republican nominee, remarks, "If this were Europe, the Republican Party would be three parties." The Republican National Committee chairman retorts, "Thank goodness they don't have to sleep together. They just have to show up on the same day and vote Republican." How relevant these words seem today in the age of Donald Trump. The "big tent" factor of both American parties and the constraints of the "winner-take-all" presidency makes for some particularly strange bedfellows. But is the two-party system under attack this election cycle? It certainly seems so -- and it could well be to Secretary Hillary Clinton's advantage. Advertisement It is amusing, even confusing, for someone schooled in the Westminster political system to view how Americans go about labelling their politicians and dividing up their party loyalty. In other Western democracies, there are essentially three, maybe four, major camps corresponding to three or more parties. In particular, it's odd to see Senator Bernie Sanders -- who has sat in congress for decades as an independent -- challenging for the leadership of a party he only just recently joined. Stranger still is how he is simultaneously called a "socialist" and a "liberal," because in most democracies, these are two distinct labels for two distinct parties and ideologies. Socialism and liberalism are not synonymous, although occasionally they can be synergistic on some issues. (It seems in America, "liberal" is a catch-all term for a progressive, even a somewhat derogatory one at that.) In the same way, why is a xenophobic, populist nativist like Donald Trump not leading a separate party like the United Kingdom Independence Party or Marie Le Pen's ultra-right-wing Le Front National in France? Such a scenario would have left the likes of Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio and John Kasich alone to run for a more respectable conservative party. Advertisement In other Western democracies, there are essentially three, maybe four, major camps corresponding to three or more parties. Let's call these four camps socialists and liberals ostensibly on the left and centre-left, and conservatives and reactionaries on the right and far right. So, in Britain, you have the governing Conservative Party representing the right, but making overtures to moderate, modern voters and occasionally the odd sop (like Brexit) to its more reactionary members; the UK Independence Party appealing to anti-immigrant, populist sentiments; Labour is socialist, especially now under new leader Jeremy Corbyn, who is Sanders's British clone; and the Liberal-Democrats, who straddle the centre and sometimes veer to the left or right, depending on the issue. In Canada, it's much the same. The New Democratic Party formerly professed to be democratic socialist and as embattled, centrist leader Thomas Mulcair attempts to hold on to the party leadership, it seems the erstwhile socialism is suddenly (or perhaps cynically) back in vogue (no doubt due to the influence of Sanders and Corbyn). Meanwhile, the centre-left Liberal Party has long been accused of "campaigning from the left but governing from the right," but nonetheless often acts as the middle ground between the NDP and Conservatives. And, of course, the Conservatives, after the merger of the Progressive Conservatives and the Reform Party, now have the right wing to themselves, and occasionally veer to the far right to motivate their base, although doing so arguably acts as a limit to their ability to stay in power, as in the 2015 federal election. It's interesting how the division in, for instance, the UK and Canada between three or four major parties and philosophies corresponds to today's emerging divisions in the two American parties. Advertisement In particular, are we perhaps seeing the breaking up of the American two-party system as the Republican Party descends into civil war? The Republican Party is tearing itself to pieces, with about half the party trying to stop Trump, even as the likes of Chris Christie cave and accept the inevitable. It remains to be seen what will happen to the party, as the more moderate "establishment" finds itself divorced entirely from its nativist "Tea Party" base and their buffon, billionaire leader. On the Democrat side, it's a strange confluence of circumstances that have allowed Secretary Hillary Clinton to simultaneously swing left and yet still appear to be the moderate candidate. Of course, she's been helped along by two diametrically opposed opponents in Sanders and the Republicans. Clinton is certainly more comfortable in 2015 than she was in 2008 speaking unabashedly about progressive issues. As other commentators have noted, this is partly because the American electorate has seemingly moved left under President Barack Obama. Americans are now more likely than not to support equal marriage, to favour sensible gun control, to believe climate change is real and to favour drug policy that treats addicts rather than imprisoning people. (To the rest of the world, this newfound majority of common sense centrism seems like, in the words of the late, great comedian Robin Williams, "America is finally out of rehab".) Meanwhile, with race-baiting, anti-immigrant sentiments dominating the Republican debates -- as a billionaire blowhard advocates mass deportation -- Clinton's progressiveness on social and race issues looks moderate standing between bizarrely right-wing Republican xenophobes and a socialist senator -- or as Saturday Night Live put it: "clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, here I am: stuck in the middle with you". With a socialist as her foil, and radical Republicans as her rivals, Clinton has managed to put herself squarely in the middle. Arguably, she's what Canadians in particular would recognise as the "liberal candidate" running against a socialist and conservative reactionary. In Canada, being a liberal--existing as the centre-left alternative between socialists and conservatives--has been an electoral sweet spot over the past century. Could the same hold true in America in November? Advertisement In short, Clinton has put herself right in the middle, exactly where the majority of the voters are said to be. And that's not too shabby a place to be, even if the rest of the world might still find the American two-party system strange. Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook ALSO ON HUFFPOST: Boris Austin via Getty Images Business communication Parliament just marked 100 days of online petitioning and Canadians are clearly getting the hang of this democratic innovation. Over 100,000 people have signed an official e-petition since the House of Commons launched the new system in December 2015. These early levels of engagement show we are on track to match other countries when it comes to e-petitioning. We could even top the international charts if the Trudeau government decides to grant bigger payoffs such as automatic debates for the most popular petitions. Advertisement Prior to the launch of Parliament's e-petitions system, hundreds of thousands of Canadians electronically signed petitions hosted on private websites or on sites hosted by organizations such as Change.org or Avaaz. But these unofficial petitions are not eligible to be presented in the House of Commons, nor is the government officially required to respond. This all changed in the last Parliament when MPs backed my private members' motion to modernize our longstanding petition process. Canada now joins countries such as the U.S., U.K., Germany and many others in allowing citizens to create and sign official petitions online. The first 100 days of official e-petitioning have been a resounding success. Over 100,000 Canadians have signed the 43 e-petitions posted on the House of Commons website and activity is starting to pick up. Only seven petitions were initiated in the first month of e-petitioning, but this number has since tripled with 19 new e-petitions posted in month three. This rapid increase echoes the experience of other countries where e-petitioning starts slowly then takes off like a rocket. The first three years of the U.K. e-petitions system saw 53,500 petitions filed with 28,500 admitted under the terms and conditions of the system, and 25 receiving enough signatures to trigger debates in the British House of Commons. Advertisement Thus in Canada, we can expect dozens of e-petitions per month soon turning into hundreds, then perhaps thousands as Canadians fully engage with this new tool. We could expect even more if we adopted U.K.-style rules which force MPs to debate petitions which gain over 100,000 supporters. The prime minister should put in the measures found in my original motion where e-petitions gaining a high level of public support, say 100,000 signatures, could trigger debates in the House of Commons. E-petitions are a barometer as to what issues are capturing public attention -- with the number of signatures attached to each showing which matter most. Although we are in the very early stages of our in new process, the five petitions that garnered the most signatures from Canadians include: firearm regulation, electoral reform, banning dog and cat fur sales, legalizing cannabis and the Energy East oil pipeline. My initial interest in electronic petitioning sparked from a desire empower citizens to draw attention to issues often avoided by government. For example, the first e-petition I sponsored was from two constituents and tireless animal rights advocates -- Gwendy and Alfie Williams -- who call on the federal government to ban the use of electric shock collars on household pets. This is an issue which politicians might usually ignore, but under this new system the government must now publicly respond to Gwendy and Alfie because the e-petition has over the 500 signatures threshold (currently it has over 5,000!). Advertisement If the government agrees with the petition, it will be pressured to bring in new animal rights legislation. If it disagrees, the relevant minister will be forced to explain why. Learning from other countries, the House of Commons made sure to include safeguards to prevent inappropriate or frivolous topics from being brought forward. For example, all e-petitioners must identify one MP to sponsor the petition before it is posted on the parliamentary website. MPs might sponsor petitions as a service to local constituents or if the issue is one about which the MPs passionately cares. In the first 100 days, it is encouraging to see that members from all political parties have started using the system and are sponsoring e-petitions on behalf of Canadians. While the posting and signing of e-petitions is already well underway, we have yet to see how the new Trudeau government will respond to these grassroots requests. Every e-petition stays open for 120 days and those receiving at least 500 signatures can be tabled in the House of Commons by the sponsoring MP. Once tabled, the government must provide a written response within 45 days, which is then emailed to all the signatures and posted on the official website. Before Parliament rises for the summer, the Trudeau government will have to tell Canadians if it will: Advertisement Establish legislation to protect Canada's remaining old-growth forests Re-classify the Armalite Rifle-15 back to non-restricted status Open a judicial inquiry into the Afghan detainee issue Halt the proposed development of a CN terminal in Southern Ontario Create a new Canadian Military Volunteer Service Medal The extent to which the Liberal government takes seriously its response to these petitions will demonstrate how much it embraces openness and accountability, whether or not it chooses to support or oppose these requests. In two years, the Trudeau government is scheduled to review how the new system is working and how it might be improved. In my view, the prime minister should put in the measures found in my original motion where e-petitions gaining a high level of public support, say 100,000 signatures, could trigger debates in the House of Commons. This would give regular Canadians even more control over politics and lessen the power of political parties to control the political agenda. Given that the Liberals voted for my motion -- including now-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau -- I am hopeful we can move forward with this reform as soon as possible and further improve our petitioning process. Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook MORE ON HUFFPOST: HAZEM BADER via Getty Images Palestinian youths throw stones towards Israeli security forces during clashes in the West Bank town of Hebron on October 4, 2015, after Israel barred Palestinians from Jerusalem's Old City as tensions mounted following attacks that killed two Israelis and wounded a child. AFP PHOTO / HAZEM BADER (Photo credit should read HAZEM BADER/AFP/Getty Images) A symposium was held on radicalization of youth held Feb. 9 to 12, 2016, sponsored by the Canadian embassy in Australia and Griffith University, held at their campus in Brisbane. In an effort to share experience, current and best practices, academic, operational and policy/political experience, the invitation list was extensive. Having expertise shared from Canada, Australia, United Kingdom as well as the Middle East saw agreement in a number of areas but as well saw extensive and healthy debate and disagreement throughout the dialogue(s). Advertisement It became clear during the dialogue that building resilience against terrorism is a clear goal of governments facing the home-grown threat. It was identified by government and non-governmental representatives at the conference that both Canada and Australia are directing their attention at the "at risk" targets in their countries. Whether it is the Extreme Dialogue program funded by Public Safety Canada or Living Safer Together and Countering Violent Extremism initiatives by the Australian government, both countries recognize the threat and the need to be proactive. The group assembled agreed that Chatham House rule would be the order of the day, so participants would be open to discussing the issues without attribution or retribution.The continuous attacks against the Islamic faith/religion was and is negatively impacting on the relationship between Muslims and non-Muslims. Also apparent that there is a new level of importance placed on the need for calm dialogue as we manage the concern surrounding youth becoming engaged with radicalization. The head of the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO), Duncan Lewis has identified concerns surrounding the rhetoric of some politicians and it resulted in his speaking to two MPs in an effort to "educate" them, as acknowledged by the Australian prime minister, which mirror concerns raised by many at the conference. Advertisement A Senate Committee meeting in Canada in February 2015 generated a discussion between Canadian legislators and Muslim leaders identifying similar concerns that the actions of a few, was impacting on the many. The head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) stated while appearing before a Senate Committee on March 7, 2016, that there are 300 plus or minus radicalized individuals in Canada, as well as 180 Canadians acting with ISIS overseas presently. Not all are Muslim, and if they were, with a population of 1.3 million Muslims in Canada we can see that means .03 per cent are engaged in this activity. A remarkable number in reality, but clearly not representative of the Muslim population. The mislaid attention at the feet of the Islamic faith as the foundation of the ISIS-driven hatred is destined to split countries such as Canada and Australia, if allowed. That will be a success for ISIS as they don't care what non-Muslims think about Muslims, they don't represent the Muslim interests at all, just hatred and the violence they can bring through their actions. Peter Hartcher, international editor for the Sydney Morning Herald, spoke to this and identified that ISIS has a goal of driving fear and separating segments of society through that fear. It has been identified by many that ISIS has no connection or concern about the Islamic religion. Didier Francois, a French journalist who was held for 10 months by ISIS, stated that discussion among captors was about politics, and never Islam or the Quran. Participants in the conference, particularly those who have been engaged with those who have been radicalized, also stated that in discussion those engaged focused on government policy and political decisions, not religion. Advertisement An area of discussion and interest was the difference between de-radicalization and dis-engagement. Particularly that we must assist in having those radicalized disengage, as most who are radicalized never engage in an illegal or terrorist activity. Research conducted by John Horgan, published in Perspectives on Terrorism in 2008, identified that the need for disengagement must be the focus, as that is where success is found. The article points to the fact criminologists have looked at this as well, and it is the only thing we can truly measure. The Middle East Institute identified that de-radicalization is really about a process moving toward disengagement. Those at the symposium, as well as academic research, support that changing what is in someone's head is difficult and may be impossible, as it isn't something we can "see, feel, taste" -- but their actions are. Disengagement means the bias present within the individual is something they have moved away from, and that should be our goal. Advertisement A problem raised during the symposium identified that we have focused our attention when there are arrest, charges and convictions. But is that what the public wants? Of course not, as that means there have been crimes committed and no one wants more crime. The concern raised in Brisbane surrounded the laws being put in place, but as well the calls from some politicians for action. It is understandable that when you spend taxpayer dollars, in Australia and Canada, on something specific you expect to see results. The challenge is that a successful intervention from Canada and Australia's police agencies, security agencies and their partners will lead to no arrests, no charges and no convictions, as the alternative is that we have more terrorist acts. No one is naive in thinking that we will not have charges, but we shouldn't complain when those representing our country's security interests are successfully utilized and cause those radicalized to disengage. Having been a police officer for 32 years, I have yet to meet a member of the public who wants more arrests; they want to live in a safer community, free from fear. Advertisement I believe that our collective success in fighting terror will see engagement with those communities targeted by radicalizers to collectively bring them to justice, and the assertion of every tool we have to bring youth who are being radicalized to a place of disengagement, thereby making all of us safer. Follow HuffPost Canada Blogs on Facebook MORE ON HUFFPOST: The five things you need to know on Tuesday March 22, 2016 1) A BUCKET FULL OF OZ Reports of the Brussels bombing are the big moving story today. But on a domestic note, all eyes may still be on George Osborne. Advertisement After the Omnishambles of 2012, some hacks have dubbed 2016 the Ozzzyshambles Budget. He refused to appear in the Commons yesterday, but the submarine Chancellor will once more come to the surface, now the waters are less stormy, and get a chance to stage his fightback. And the overnight brief is that he will offer a bucketful of soz (copyright: Miranda). Sorry is often the hardest word to say for Osborne (a bit like the Met Police), yet this may be a very modern kind of apology. Im sorry Iain Duncan Smith chose to leave the government and want to recognise his achievements in helping to make sure work pays, breaking the old cycles of welfare dependency and ensuring the most vulnerable are protected. Of course, thats not the same thing as saying hes sorry for his own policies and cuts plans, no siree. And privately Osborne is still baffled by the illogicality of IDSs position. But it was clear yesterday, from the moment David Gauke (give that man a promotion) stood in for Osborne, as well as during the Cameron statement, that both sides in the IDS row had decided to put their stilettos and meat cleavers away. A message went out to new MPs to show Government support and they did. The PM had learned the lesson from his recent lashing out against Boris and went for full conciliatory tone. Advertisement Boris last night emerged from his own curious period of silence on the IDS affair and tried to follow the PMs lead. Tom Bradby cleverly managed to eke out of him a bit of criticism of Osbo: Its obvious from whats happened that its admitted that it was a mistake to cut benefits. That wasnt much, but it was enough to give the Telegraph a splash. When he gets up to address the Commons to wind up the Budget debate, Osborne will speak for at most 15 minutes, wont have to take questions and will literally have the last say. If hed turned u for McDonnells UQ yesterday he would have faced 45 minutes of sustained queries. The Brussels bombings may actually cast a more sombre mood over the Chamber, not least if there's a statement. But before the news broke, many Labour MPs were expecting to yell frit! and chicken! at Osborne. Lots of papers this morning pile bucketfuls of manure on his head and many are writing Osbornes political obituary. Lets see if he rises to the occasion - or sinks like a holed submarine. 2) CRABB SANDWICH It is arguable that IDS has done more for those on benefit in the past six days (since the Budget) than he has in six years at the DWP. But in fact it is Stephen Crabb who in his few short hours in post has secured one of the biggest victories of any Cabinet minister against the Treasury since 2010. The new Work and Pensions Secretary certainly made a splash with his debut in his new role yesterday. For the few of us hacks actually in the chamber for the event, it didnt disappoint. Advertisement What struck me immediately was the strength of the language Crabb used. He wasnt just announcing PIP cuts would be scrapped and not replaced by alternative welfare cuts. He had a much bigger message: that the Government was not seeking any further, new welfare cuts at all for the rest of the Parliament. The Treasury swiftly went into spin mode, telling the Sun to note Crabbs line that there were no plans for further welfare cuts. And its true that Crabb added a proviso that it would be absurd to rule out any changes at all. But politics is all about nuance, not swallowing spin, and it was just as obvious that Crabb was pushing the envelope. He repeatedly said that he had had very long conversations with the PM and the Chancellor in recent days to get his statement agreed. The killer line for me came right at the end of the statement, when Crabb pushed the envelope most, to say the Government will not cut welfare further. Yes, will not is much stronger than no plans. Read his words in full: This statement is about my [yes my] Department and budget, and it is extremely clear that we are not pressing ahead with the proposed changes to PIP, that we will not be seeking alternative offsetting savings and that the Government will not be coming forward with further proposals for welfare savings. The Sun reports Crabb extracted on Sunday night a pledge that any more savings would have to come through reform, not salami-slicing of his budget. Cameron and Osborne may have tried to sandwich Crabb with pressure not to demand too much, but it was obvious yesterday that he was the one who came out with real meat. Advertisement In the chamber, Crabb even got in a jibe at Osborne, and backing for IDS, with his line that behind every statistic there is a human being and perhaps sometimes in government we forget that. Ever the gent, and ever ambitious, Crabb last night texted fellow MPs who had been so supportive in the Commons. And as Michael Fabricant pointed out yesterday, there's a big difference between 'friends' and 'allies' in Westminster (George has lots of the latter, few of the former). Will Osborne hint today where the missing 4bn will come from? Or will he just repeat the line that we will have to wait for the Autumn Statement? The danger is that if he is waiting for better growth figures, he may have a shock from the global economy. He would also risk sounding like JMcDonnell, who wants a growth-not-cuts answer to balancing the books. 3) CORBYSHAMBLES The goal was wide open, the goalie wasnt even on the pitch (he was watching in his office on telly), the ball was waiting with a great big IDS logo on it. Yet Jeremy Corbyn booted it way over the bar yesterday during the PMs Commons statement. Its obviously a lack of experience on the frontbench, but surely one of his team could have prepped him with a string of Duncan Smiths most telling quotes from Marr? Instead, the Labour leaders only real ammo was that Osborne had gone awol despite most of the Cabinet showing up, (and he was right about that - I counted 13 Cabinet ministers on the front bench). Owen Smith later showed how it should be done, getting straight to the point with the best IDS quote of all, that the Tories looked like they had targeted the poorest because they dont vote for us. Anyway, as the Shadow Shadow Cabinet were out in force, the knives were out after Corbyns display. Several Labour MPs with long memories were quick to say (privately natch) this was his Westland moment, when Kinnock famously failed to rise to the Parliamentary occasion. One MP told PolHome: Today shows the Tories are beatable, but not with Corbyn and McDonnell. How can it have turned into a bad day for Labour? Maybe it will turn out to be a moment of clarity for the party. Corbyns allies point out he doesnt really do Parliamentary theatrics, thats not his style. Advertisement Last night at the PLP, just 10 MPs turned up to hear John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn address them. Yes, just 10 (plus 20 peers to be fair). This may not have been a deliberate snub, given Jezza was never scheduled to turn up (he got there at 6.15pm), and MPs had been told it would be Lilian Greenwood giving an update. The fact that the PLP clashed with the Crabb statement obviously hit numbers too. Yet the JezWeCant crowd are still using it as fresh proof of something badly wrong with the leadership operation. BECAUSE YOUVE READ THIS FAR Watch Donald Trump serenaded by a crooner. Donald, stand by me. A pure cringefest as Trump and Ben Carson dad-dance along. 4) SEXT BOMB Shadow Education Secretary Lucy Powell has had a good hit on the media this morning with new police figures showing a 1200% increase in reports of under 16s sexting over the last two years. Powell also confirmed Labours commitment to making Personal Social Health and Economic education, including age-appropriate Sex and Relationships education, a statutory subject in all state-funded schools. Its a tad surprisingly that guidance for schools on Sex and Relationships education has not been updated since 2000, before the smartphone generation were even born (rather quaintly, the guidance contains the word internet twice, in the same sentence). Apps like Tinder, Snapchat and Kik are opening up young people to lots of danger online yet Labour says ministers are refusing to act because of their ideological stance on school structures. Forced academisation of all schools will make the problem worse, Powell says. Speaking of which, Nicky Morgan got another bit of a kicking after she told Mumsnet how good the plans were to end council control. Shes got a skin as thick as Gaukes, but wasnt the whole point of her arrival at DfE to calm things down? Advertisement Speaking of Morgan, shes an old pal of Stephen Crabbs. Normally media savvy, moderate, Christian, like her colleague. But last night on Newsnight she was ambushed by an Evan Davis graph on the Budget. Osborne will have to do better today. 5) ITS A KINDER TRAGIC Even as David Cameron yesterday was talking about his modern, compassionate One Nation Conservative government, over in the House of Lords there was a vote that peers said proved his words were mere rhetoric. Their Lordships inflicted a big defeat on the Government, passing an amendment to the Immigration Bill to allow 3,000 Syrian child refugees from across Europe to come to the UK. A combination of Labour, Lib Dem and Crossbench peers backed Alf Dubs amendment by 306 votes to 204. They want to end the tragic scenes seen in recent months, with an updated version of the Kindertransport scheme that saved children like Dubs himself from Nazi Europe. But just minutes earlier, the PM sounded like he wouldnt budge. He had said comparing child migrants in Europe with the Kindertransportcountries such as France, Germany, Italy and Spain are safe countries.I do not believe that it is a fair comparison. Will the Government stick to its guns in the Commons or will Theresa May shift? Among the Tory rebels last night was Lord Livingston - the former trade minister. Thats the kind of development that can influence No.10. If youre reading this on the web, sign-up HERE to get the WaughZone delivered to your inbox. Brussels rocked by multiple explosions after 7am GMT So called Islamic State claim responsibility for attacks Police issue CCTV image from airport of three suspects At least 34 confirmed dead with scores more injured 20 killed at Maalbeek Metro and 14 at Zaventem Airport One Briton confirmed injured, Downing Street says Terror alert raised to maximum and Metro system closed Gunfire and shouts in Arabic reported at Brussels airport At least one airport blast confirmed as suicide bombing Police patrols in the UK to be stepped up at 'key locations' Emergency no for concerned relatives: +44 2070080000 Brussels Zaventem airport was rocked by two explosions at 8am local time - at least one a suicide bombing - with 14 dead and more than 92 injured. Advertisement Belgian Prosecutor Eric van der Sypt said two bombers died at the airport and a third is being "actively" sought. About an hour later a second explosion ripped through a rush-hour train at Maalbeek Metro station near the European Union headquarters, where 20 people were killed and more than 100 injured. All Metro stations in the city have been closed. The man on the right is reportedly being sought by police . Islamic State have claimed responsibility for the attacks. Islamic State has said it is responsible for the #Brussels attacks according to a news agency close to the group Sky News Newsdesk (@SkyNewsBreak) March 22, 2016 Advertisement A third bomb at the airport has been deactivated. Terrified passengers had to evacuate through darkened tunnels to safety. Brussels Airport Aftermath See gallery Belgian news agency Belga has said shots were fired and there were shouts in Arabic shortly before the airport explosions. An unexploded bomb belt and at least one and possibly two Kalashnikovs were found in the departure lounge at the airport. It was not immediately clear whether the firearms were used in the attacks. A Belgian TV station is reporting that at least one of the bombs at the Brussels airport contained nails. Flemish language broadcaster VTM interviewed Marc Decramer of the Gasthuisberg hospital in Leuven, who says the hospital is treating 11 people with serious injuries, three of them in critical condition. Decramer says the wounded have fractures and deep cuts caused by flying glass and nails. Advertisement Belgian security authorities have said the explosions happened near an American Airlines check-in area. More than 200 flights to Brussels were diverted or canceled, according to flight tracking service Flightradar24. Anthony Deloos, an airport worker for Swissport, which handles check-in and baggage services, said the first explosion took place near the Swissport counters where customers pay for overweight baggage. He and a colleague said the second blast hit near the Starbucks cafe. "We heard a big explosion. It's like when you're in a party and suddenly your hearing goes out, from like a big noise," Deloos said, adding that shredded paper floated through the air as a colleague told him to run. "I jumped into a luggage chute to be safe," he said. Advertisement Authorities told everyone in Brussels to remain where they are with fears there may be militants still at large in the city. The terror alert has been raised to maximum, Belgium's interior minister confirmed. "What we feared has happened," Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel told reporters. "In this time of tragedy, this black moment for our country, I appeal to everyone to remain calm but also to show solidarity." "We are at war," French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said after a crisis meeting called by the French president. "We have been subjected for the last few months in Europe to acts of war." #NEWSGRAPHIC Explosions rock Brussels airport and metro service in Tuesday morning rush hour pic.twitter.com/fCUFNOfBoI AFP news agency (@AFP) March 22, 2016 The bomb that went off an hour later on the subway train killed 20 people and injured more than 100, Brussels Mayor Yvan Majeur said. Advertisement "The metro was leaving Maelbeek station for Schuman when there was a really loud explosion," said Alexandre Brans, 32, wiping blood from his face. "It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the Metro." Near the entrance to the station, rescue workers set up a makeshift medical treatment center in a pub. Dazed and shocked morning commuters streamed from the Metro entrances as police tried to set up a security cordon. Just arrived at Schuman station after walking on the tracks. pic.twitter.com/4xc0YCQmIv Evan Lamos (@evanlamos) March 22, 2016 European security officials have been bracing for a major attack for weeks, and warned that the so called Islamic State group was actively preparing to strike. Advertisement The arrest Friday of Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in the November attacks in Paris, heightened those fears, as investigators said many more people were involved than originally thought, and that some are still on the loose. Abdeslam, a Belgian-born French national was dubbed Europes most-wanted fugitive. He is now fighting extradition to France. After his arrest Friday, Abdeslam told authorities he had created a new network and was planning new attacks. IMAGE: Damage inside Brussels airport pic.twitter.com/Y5hNpM8RhG The Int'l Spectator (@intlspectator) March 22, 2016 Smoke of #Brussels airport terminal after what sounded like two explosions just before 8 AM pic.twitter.com/d7e8mGBp1M Daniela Schwarzer (@D_Schwarzer) March 22, 2016 Advertisement Reporting for Sky at the scene, Alex Rossi, said: "I was in the duty free in Zaventem Airport and I heard two very, very loud explosions. "I could feel the building move. There was also dust and smoke as well." A spokesperson for the Foreign Office said: "We are liaising with the local authorities and stand by to help any British nationals who may have been affected by the incident at Brussels airport. "British nationals should follow the advice of local security authorities and check our travel advice for updates." #Brussels: Anyone affected or concerned about family and friends can contact our helpline on +44 207 008 0000 pic.twitter.com/2WIatCYNsj UK in Belgium (@UKinBelgium) March 22, 2016 I am shocked and concerned by the events in Brussels. We will do everything we can to help. David Cameron (@David_Cameron) March 22, 2016 Advertisement I will be chairing a COBRA meeting on the events in Brussels later this morning. David Cameron (@David_Cameron) March 22, 2016 An airport worker told told Flemish broadcaster VRT: "I was on a break and heard and felt a big explosion - we have from here a view over the departure hall and saw a plume of smoke come out. "The windows are completely shattered. People went outside in shock. It doesn't look good." European Council president Donald Tusk said in the aftermath of the explosions: "These attacks mark another low by the terrorists in the service of hatred and violence." Eurostar says no trains are currently running to or from Brussels Midi station. Passengers are being advised to postpone journeys and services are terminating at Lille. Was able to help carry this brave little guy out from the Metro line to Arts-Loi. pic.twitter.com/vHRIlORz2v Evan Lamos (@evanlamos) March 22, 2016 Advertisement Airline staffers emotional outside #Brussels airport. People still being evacuated, orderly but lots of confusion. pic.twitter.com/xFWoEVgoq6 Alexander Marquardt (@MarquardtA) March 22, 2016 Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, told France's BFM television that the second, louder explosion brought down ceilings and ruptured pipes, mixing water with blood from victims. "It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed," he said. "There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere." Jordy van Overmeir had just collected his luggage after landing at the airport from Bangkok when "all of a sudden I heard a loud explosion this boom. Initially I thought it was the sound of a suitcase falling down." Advertisement "At this point I saw all these policemen running around, shouting and saying 'there was an explosion," he told Sky News. To mark World Water Day, come with WaterAid for a moment to Papua New Guinea, an island in the Pacific Rim - a remote and mountainous country boasting more than 850 different languages among its 7.3 million people. This island is facing some of the most difficult development challenges on Earth. A poor nation threatened by rising seas, and with climate change worsening both regular flooding and droughts, Papua New Guinea also has the worst rates of household access to water in the world. Advertisement Doris Talban, 51, collects water from a stagnant lake which is her source of water for washing in times of drought, near Marata 2 settlement, Port Morseby, Papua New Guinea. Photo: WaterAid/Tom Greenwood Nearly two-thirds of people in Papua New Guinea face a daily struggle of long hikes or negotiating with black-market vendors, just to get small amounts of water that are most likely to be neither clean nor safe to drink. This situation, combined with the 81% of people who don't have access to decent toilets, has left this nation and its people in a never-ending struggle for survival. The devastating impact of doing without water It is a situation repeated in many other countries, with devastating impact. WaterAid's State of the World's Water briefing examines where in the world it's most difficult to get access to clean water, and the costs - financial and otherwise - that are borne by the poorest and most marginalised. Among our findings are that there remain 16 countries in the world where more than 40% of people do not have access to clean water, 12 of which are in Sub-Saharan Africa. The result is that some 315,000 children around the world lose their lives to diarrhoeal illnesses before their fifth birthday, each and every year. One in five babies who die in their first month of life is claimed by sepsis, which might have been prevented with safe water, good sanitation and good hygiene, including midwives being able to wash hands with soap. Advertisement The impact reaches beyond health, affecting access to education and work, and communities' ability to develop and progress. In places where water is hard to come by, the poorest may be spending half or more of their precious incomes just to get this life necessity. And even in countries where in general progress has been made in improving access to clean water, we've shown that families living almost side-by-side may be paying dramatically different prices for their water, depending on whether they've been reached by government-subsidised tapstands, or are still relying on vendors with massive markups on cost for water of dubious quality. There are solutions What makes this situation so frustrating is that we know the solutions. We can address so many other problems by ensuring that communities have affordable access to safe water, good sanitation and good hygiene, including handwashing with soap. Political will and financing can turn this situation around, and it makes good economic sense to do so. The annual global economic losses associated with poor water supply and sanitation are estimated at US$260 billion - nearly double the net overseas development aid, $135.2billion, given by donor nations in 2014. Since we marked the first UN-declared World Water Day in 1993, the world has made incredible progress. Yet there remain more than 650million people in the world without access to clean water, who are faced with a daily struggle involving long dangerous walks or expensive black-market vendors, just to get water that is likely neither clean nor safe to drink. The impact of climate change and increasing extreme weather patterns are likely to make competition for water resources more fierce, and it is the poorest and most vulnerable who will lose out - unless we succeed in keeping the promises of the Global Goals. Advertisement A shameful struggle Six months ago, world leaders at the United Nations promised in Global Goal 6 to deliver access to water and sanitation to everyone, everywhere by 2030. This is possible only with real political dedication and financing to back it. It is shameful that so many of the world's poorest still struggle for access to this life essential. On this World Water Day join WaterAid and our partners in showing your support by going 'Blue for Water' on Twitter, on Facebook, by signing our petition and by adding your voice to call on governments to address this injustice. This year we have seen various feminists and LGBT-Rights defenders indicted as 'intolerable', 'encroachers of LGBT-rights' and, most worryingly, unfit for a speaker platform within university campuses. Whether it is the feminist and anti-islamist Maryam Namazie being charged with 'incitement of hatred' and initially no-platformed at The University of Warwick, or the feminist Julie Bindell being labelled a 'transphobic' and consequently prevented from speaking at The University of Manchester - these last few years have been deeply frightening for those who care about pluralism and debate within universities. We have witnessed an increasing encroachment of free-speech by various Student Unions recently, and much of the encroachment has been masterminded by the National Union of Students (NUS). Why has this happened? How did the NUS evolve from a body that contravened university platforms when fascists and racists wanted to be heard - to a body that deemed any speaker who "might cause offence to a persecuted minority" worthy of interdiction? The NUS caused an uproar recently when its LGBT officer, Fran Cowling, decided to indict the much-revered LGBT-rights campaigner Peter Tatchell as a 'racist' and 'transphobe' - and no-platformed herself from an event that she was scheduled (alongside Tatchell) to appear on. This was obviously a serious charge - something that many students, campaigners and academics around the country were awaiting evidence for. However, no evidence was proffered, and the NUS stood resiliently in Cowling's corner without any degree of indignity. Advertisement As a result of the excessive no-platforming by various Student Unions - principles encouragingly wielded by the NUS - students, campaigners and academics amassed on the 17th of March outside of the NUS Headquarters in protest against what they perceived to be a flouting of free-speech and a defilement of pluralism. However, many in the NUS were confused! What were those in the protest calling for? Completely scrapping safe-space policy? Allowing any speaker to come into a campus uncontested and put across any message that they desire? Protestors had varying views: some wanted to scrap safe-space policy altogether and allow truth to triumph; some believed there is a legitimate space for safe-safe policy but believed that censorship (unless a speaker is in breach of the law) shouldn't be the go-to procedure when safe-space policies are violated. There was one message that all protesters alike shared: the NUS has interdicted free-speech for too long, and has undermined legitimate debate within universities - leaving untold damage to the rich pluralism and debate that once characterised universities. However, is it not the case that universities should be 'safe places' where people are immune from offence? Should it not be the case that bigotry - especially bigotry that larrups the inalienable human-traits of people, especially minorities - should be censored? I think that there is an important component that universities should never compromise: debate. Bigotry of all sorts will likely be encountered wherever we might find ourselves, and whatever age we may be. Bigotry can penetrate our local communities, our work environments, our friendships, and even our families. Is it not therefore imperative that young people at university be equipped with the invaluable tools to effectively invalidate and neutralise bigotry such as racism, homophobia, transphobia and sexism? How can young people challenge noxious narratives - wherever that is in university or in the wider world - if they have been taught that narratives can only be defeated through muzzling them? Advertisement Various distinguished campaigners around the country came together during the protest and many addressed the audience with eloquent and very forceful voices - including Tatchell and Namazie; as well as others, including the Bangladeshi women's-rights campaigner, Rumana Hashem, and Gita Sahgal - director of the Centre for Secular Space. The legions of protesters were standing shoulder to shoulder with the campaigners; allied hand-in-hand, and chanting resiliently for reform within the NUS, whilst brandishing various placards and posters. I have attended various protests during my years as an adult, and this one had a fervour that I had not witnessed before. There was a legitimate ire towards what all attendees deemed an injustice, and there was a consternation that left us all affright: a sacrosanct principle was being defiled by the NUS. What is this principle? Tatchell rousingly articulated it when he said: "as long as a speaker isn't inciting hatred or calling for violence, a speaker should have the freedom of expression within university campuses!" How can we be in a position today when we see the NUS failing to remonstrate - and even at times condoning - the platforming of speakers like Zakir Naik who has called for death of apostates, or for refusing to no-platform CAGE - an organisation whose director called the disgusting Islamist and decapitator Jihadi John a "beautiful young man"? I think that there is obviously a regressive political position that is infecting the NUS: toxic narratives proffered by those in a minority group warrant less criticism and reprobation, Moreover, any criticism by those who are (perceived as) privileged towards any strand within a minority group should be gagged! People like Tatchell, Bindell and Namazie are deemed "the establishment" and therefore when they criticise such things as 'islamism', 'sexism' or 'homophobia', their arguments are deemed suspect and even precarious. The message is clear: their identity carries most weight: what they say is deemed negligible and even trivial. How dare such the white and privileged Tatchell cry foul at certain strands within the Islamic community! Haydar Zaki - student and co-founder of the #Right2Debate claimed that the NUS should be debating ideas, not identities. He is right! The NUS' position has a whiff of ad-hominem to it, and it is a position that is becoming increasingly dominant within many Student Unions around the country - leaving many students victimised: the targets of narrative-sanitisation. Advertisement What can be done? I think that it is imperative that students and activists collectively ambush censorship! Censorship creates, sooner or later, the kind of environment that is incapable of expending real discretion. Why? Because censorship, such as excessive no-platforming, has the dire consequence of creating a very large faction of people who are unequipped with the tools of extolling the difference between, on the one hand, independence of thought and, on the other hand, subservience. Today is World Water Day and this morning over 650million people around the world woke up with no clean water. That's one in ten people. Forced to drink, cook and wash with dirty water, people are at risk of getting sick and missing vital days of work and education, trapped in a cycle of poverty. Last month WaterAid invited me to travel to India with my 12-year-old daughter Glenys to see the situation for myself. Shockingly, every year in India around 140,000 children die from diarrhoea caused by dirty water and inadequate sanitation. I visited Sanabenakudi, a remote village in east India, to understand what everyday life is like for people living without access to safe water. Advertisement Walking through the village with my daughter Glenys Credit: WaterAid / James McCauley A community of over 400 people living in thatched mud huts and set against a palm fringed lake, Sanabenakudi initially appears idyllic. However, I soon discovered this couldn't be further from the truth. The groundwater here is contaminated with iron and saline. The scattered water pumps throughout the village frequently break, taking weeks to repair. When this happens people are forced to use the water from a large, open, dirty pond. A woman washes her plates in the pond at Sanabenakudi village, India. Credit: WaterAid / James McCauley The pond is a hive of activity - everything happens here. It's where animals and people bathe and clothes are washed, it's where insects swarm and rubbish floats on the surface. Fertilisers from nearby farms drain into the pond. As a result the water is a dark green colour, and covered in a film of detergent. A large cow bathes on one side of the pond, while a lady brushes her teeth on the other. Advertisement Carrying water buckets with Sibani Credit: WaterAid / James McCauley I met 20-year-old student Sibani who has grown up in this village and is part of an active women's group, campaigning for change around water and sanitation. I walk through the village with her, carrying the silver bucket she uses to collect water several times a day. Sibani tells me that she had been sick many times from drinking the water here, once having to take a whole month off school. She explains that she's seen the colour of the water in the pond get worse over the years and that it tastes really horrible. But she has no choice. She has to drink this water. Without access to safe water people like Sibani are at risk of missing their education and the chance to earn a livelihood and build a better life for themselves. However, there is hope in this village. Sanabenakudi has been declared 'open defecation free', thanks to the arrival of household toilets and the hard work of women like Sibani, who have been encouraging their fellow residents to learn more about hygiene. They have since been campaigning to secure access to safe water. Later this year WaterAid will be working with local partners and this community to install a sand filter in the pond, creating a safe and reliable water source for the village. Advertisement Saying good bye to Sibani Credit: WaterAid / James McCauley Having clean water here would change the lives of people like Sibani. It would mean she no longer has to worry about getting sick every time she takes a sip of water, securing a brighter future for her and the village of Sanabenakudi. Sadly, the situation in this village is not unique. Millions of people around the world still don't have access to safe water, an essential we take for granted here in the UK. WaterAid's vision is a world where everyone everywhere has access to clean, safe water and the people of Sanabenakudi just took us one step closer to reaching that goal. The Conservatives made three fiscal promises to the British public at the election: to find 12bn in savings from the welfare budget, to bring down debt as a proportion of national income, and to produce a surplus by the end of the parliament. But, as Osborne continues to break his rule on reducing debt, his attempts to meet the two remaining ends of his self-created economic 'credibility' has produced a budget of truly perverse means. Despite claiming that Britain is paying down its debts and that the deficit is falling, the economic outlook is not as bright as Osborne or Cameron would have us believe. Advertisement At the autumn statement in 2015, the Chancellor declared it was time to "fix the roof while the sun is shining" on the UK economy, but barely four months later, with the economy slowing and debt continuing to rise relatively unabated, "storm clouds" are apparently gathering in the global market, with China's engine losing steam and oil prices plummeting. As the Office for Budget Responsibility revises its forecast of the productivity growth potential of the UK economy downwards, the "cocktail of risks" of which Osborne warned us appears to have given the government a hangover; thanks to the budget's new tax on soft drinks, a can of Irn-Bru to alleviate it has just gone up by 10p- and they need more than just the one. Although the Tories' self-imposed 'fiscal mandate' to run a surplus by 2019-2020 is more of a political stunt than an economic necessity, the downgrade in estimated tax revenues means more cuts are needed to meet it. It is here where the Chancellor's budget is at its most pernicious and has met its staunchest criticism from campaigners, opposition MPs and even some of his own party. After the government's U-turn on tax credits at the last budget in response to public outrage and concerted protest, this budget set the target of its welfare cuts elsewhere, with a plan to cut 4.4bn from disability benefit. By changing one simple component of the formula used to calculate the daily living component of the personal independence payment (PIP)- with those who use aids and appliances, such as specialist toilet seats or grab rails, now receiving only one point instead of two during the eligibility assessment-, the Treasury expects to make an enormous saving. But at what cost? Advertisement With hundreds of thousands of disabled people getting less money, 350 on average, or losing the benefit altogether, the trend in Osborne's budgets where the cumulative impact of cuts continues to be felt by those it will affect most acutely and the wealthiest are exempted or even rewarded, is becoming unmistakable, although it has not perhaps been as flagrant as on this occasion. The incomes of the poorest 10% is set to fall by 7% by the end of the parliament, the Institute for Fiscal Studies estimates, and 9% for the second poorest decile- an annual loss of 1300 and 1600 respectively-, while the average income of the richest 10% of households will rise 600 a year by the end of the decade. When Osborne announced at the dispatch box on Wednesday that the threshold at which the higher rate of income tax rate becomes payable would be increased, he lauded it as "social justice delivered by Conservative means". Could there be anything more 'Conservative' than giving a tax cut to people earning over 42,000 whilst cutting disability benefit and proclaiming it as social justice? With their manifesto committing them to eventually raising the rate to 50,000, the top of the income distribution is in for more of the 'handouts' that are so scarce when it comes to affording disabled people or poor families with three children the dignity that is their right. As if that chutzpah was not enough, the decision to reduce the main rate of capital gains tax, which is only payable on gains above 11,000, making those who are already making money the likely, if not only, beneficiaries, from 28% to 20%, is difficult to stomach for its deplorable affront on the values of fairness and justice; it will also cost the Treasury an estimated 735m If Tory policies were increasing the number of children growing up in poverty, cutting critical support for disabled people and widening income inequality while treating the richest to multiple tax breaks, but actually repairing the economy sustainably as they purport to, austerity would still be a political choice to broaden the shoulders of the wealthiest as the poorest and most vulnerable bear the brunt and public services are slashed to make room for markets. But when they are failing at their own self-imposed economic imperatives, how can they be defended at all? Advertisement The bookmakers have George Galloway in third place for the position of Mayor of London, which is determined by the Supplementary Vote. Neither Sadiq Khan nor Zac Goldsmith stands any realistic chance of winning outright on first preferences. They, and all other Mayoral candidates who want to win, need to start engaging with Galloway's policy proposals. No, I do not live in London. But its governance affects us all. And in any case, try answering these questions. Will you require and insist that any housing project submitted for your approval must be comprised of 50 per cent affordable housing? Will you define affordable housing as 50 per cent of average rents, not the 80 per cent that is currently the case? Will you fight to introduce legislation to take back idle properties and developments that are not lived in, rented, or used for business purposes by their owners? Will you be a voice on the national stage to bring this issue to the centre of our political debate, seeking allies in all parties and in all parts of the country, to crack down on the speculators, and to make sure that our national priority became the provision of affordable and decent housing for all? Advertisement In introducing an all-night Tube service, will you make sure that workers are properly consulted on the process, are properly recompensed, and are not forced into working long, unsocial, and potentially dangerous hours? Will you ban HGV vehicles from Central London during daytime hours, in a bid to reduce fuel emissions during those hours? Will you invest in more cycle lanes and initiatives that make it safer to cycle around London? Are you against a third runway at Heathrow, since Gatwick offers a better alternative? Will you support moves to renationalise the rail network? Will you be a leading voice at national level demanding that this country follow Australia's example of forcing Uber to pay VAT, and take the international lead in requiring Uber to pay its fair share of corporation tax? Do you propose to merge the Metropolitan Police and the City of London Police? Do you propose a substantial increase in the recruitment of black and minority ethnic Police Officers? Do you propose a zero tolerance attitude to racism within London's Police Force? Advertisement Will you end the scandal of stop and search, which has marginalised ethnic minority communities? Will you give greater powers to the Police to deal with hate crimes? Will you deliver greater spending to ensure the protection of places of worship such as mosques, synagogues and churches? Will you turn the Oyster Card into an interest free debit card that can be used in shops and restaurants, for other services, and for the transfer of money abroad, either in family remittances or simply when parents needed to send emergency funds to their children overseas? In that sense, will you turn City Hall into a publicly owned People's Bank? Will you put the 18 billion annual City Hall budget online in real time, absolutely transparently, so that every expenditure, by every department and official including the Mayor, was visible to the public, and was thus able to be criticised instantly? To achieve this, will you use the BlockChain technology developed by London's red hot FinTech industry, currently based in the Shoreditch Corridor? Will you end immediately all fire station closures, and all cuts to London's fire services? Will you reverse the cuts that have already been made to this vital, lifesaving public service? Have you a close working relationship with the London Fire Brigades Union, such as could be used to ensure that Londoners enjoyed the world class fire service that they deserved? In view of London's unique contribution and requirements, will you campaign to have a "London NHS", with its own budget run directly by City Hall, allowing the Mayor to ensure that Londoners had access to a healthcare service suited to the unique pressures and challenges faced by a global city in the twenty-first century? Advertisement This year marks the 15th anniversary of the removal of homosexuality as a listed mental illness in China. And whilst there is still much to do to ensure equality for LGBT people in China, it is also worth looking back to see just how far we have come in a short space of time. When I look back on the past decade and a half that I have spent promoting LGBT issues in China, I see that so much has changed for the better. Fifteen years ago, I could have never imagined that I would be one of the British Councils 33 Global LGBT Influencers (For more information go to www.britishcouncil.org). Being regarded as one today, however, makes me incredibly thankful. Before launching Blued, I was a police officer in the coastal city of Qin Huangdao, in the northern Hebei Province. In my spare time I also worked on the LGBT website www.danlan.org which I had started in 2001. But then, in 2012, mobile internet started to challenge and displace traditional internet as smartphones became prominent and I saw my chance. I thought this was an unprecedented opportunity to create a private mobile network where gay people could meet others around them by taking advantage of the GPS feature in smartphones. At that time, homosexuals in China were ignored by the main stream media, misunderstood by society and often struggled alone. Using technology in this way was how I could help gay people build their own community. So in 2012 I resigned from the police force and launched Blued. I wanted to give gay people a voice and a place to connect and meet each other. Advertisement Homosexuality was decriminalized in China in 1997 and was finally removed from the Ministry of Health's list of mental illnesses in 2001. Since 1997 the attitude of Chinese society toward homosexuality has changed tremendously, and for the better I'm glad to see. There has far more main stream media coverage of LGBT groups, and most of it positive. Thanks to the internet it is also much easier today for young people to access information on LGBT issues, so they don't feel as isolated as young gay people did when I was younger. I think LGBT issues are better understood by Chinese people now and homosexuality is also becoming more accepted in larger and economically developed Chinese cities. However, ignorance, misunderstanding, and prejudice still exist in China so despite our great strides forward with regards to acceptance, we still have a lot of work to do before we can build enough support to get legal protection as well. The biggest legal right of course is the right to marry. Gay marriage has had a lot of global coverage in the past decade as more countries are voting for legislation changes which enshrine equality in marriage. In 2015, Blued flew seven gay couples to the USA to get married to highlight the issue. It became one of the biggest social media stories of 2015. This marked a huge advancement for LGBT awareness in China, True equality is on the horizon, but it will take time for China as a whole to move towards it as reality. Photo courtesy of Arnaud Bouissou According to UNFCCC the Paris Agreement can only be successful if everyone fully supports it, and helps bring it to life. This means that commitments need to be honoured by national, regional, and local governments. Stakeholders such as investors, and businesses also need to abide by the new regulatory environment. Citizens also need to buy into the concept including making lifestyle changes that may be uncomfortable at times. Heads of State and Government will travel to New York on 22nd of April to sign the historic Paris Climate Change Agreement. Ahead of the signing the UN Climate Change Newsroom Team are running a campaign - What does the Paris Agreement means to you? Advertisement People across the world are posting 30-second videos to social media, giving their opinions on the agreement. If you wish to participate visit the UNFCCC newsroom website. http://newsroom.unfccc.int/unfccc-newsroom/what-does-the-paris-agreement-mean-for-you/. I have asked some Climate Change Guru's to give their thought on the agreement. What does the Paris Agreement mean to you? "Paris was a moment of hope for me. I believe that the consensus that emerged between the 190 or more countries is significant in the power that comes from such collective agreement. I welcome the new rules on transparency and accountability and the mechanism for increasing ambition, which I think should help us make the transition we need to make to a cleaner and more equitable economic model. I know the agreement is not perfect, and following the event there seems to be little or no increase in ambition at a domestic level, but it at least provides us with the measure of such inaction." Eamon Ryan, Leader of the Irish Green Party. "The Paris COP21 Agreement is a much-needed step towards the substantial greenhouse gas (GHG) reductions required to limit the increase in average global temperatures to at least 2 degrees Celsius. However, every day I see new scientific studies which indicate that the many negative consequences of anthropogenically-caused GHG emissions are accelerating at rates worse than predicted. Therefore I'm convinced that the world absolutely must limit the average temperature increase to the COP21 aspirational goal of 1.5 degrees Celsius. Here in the USA, the second-largest contributor to GHGs, it is extraordinarily inexcusable that climate change is perceived, and treated as a political issue by our Republican party. The denial of climate change by so-called "leaders" of that party forced President Obama to seek (and get) a legally non-binding agreement, as he knew the Republican party would block any efforts to join a legally-binding agreement. There is similar opposition to a binding treaty in many other developed countries as well. This failure to achieve a legally-binding agreement severely undermines the likelihood that the world can attain even the 2 degrees Celsius limit. The "Free-Rider" problem will persist, and many countries will not make the reductions in GHG emissions required. View Article - https://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.15000001 Advertisement One effort at a creative resolution is the proposal from economist William Nordhaus to create a Global Climate Club, to incentivize countries to not become Free-Riders, and to make the GHG reductions required. This approach has several challenges, but represents an innovative approach, which is desperately needed." Ted Howard Principal Sustaenable, http://www.sustaenable.com "The Paris agreement is a good start. The preamble of the agreement includes an important acknowledgement of the diverse lifeways and knowledge systems of Indigenous peoples. Leading up to the meeting, the International Indigenous People's Forum on Climate Change characterized COP21 as a potential "turning point or another missed opportunity on the hard path towards climate justice." As it turned out, the outcomes of COP21 for Indigenous peoples fell somewhere in the middle. Indigenous peoples are recognized in the preamble of the Paris Agreement (which serves as the key to unlock the interpretation and implementation of the operative provisions), but not in the legally binding operative section. Thus, there is much work left to be done on the "hard path toward climate justice." Personally, I feel encouraged by the Paris agreement. I am cautiously optimistic, though, because while the agreement makes critical strides in mitigation and adaptation, it still needs to be voted into force, and even then, it lacks effective enforcement measures. My hope is that enforcement will be worked out among countries who realize the mutual benefit of doing so. The sort of future we have as global citizens depends on it." Heather Lazrus, Ph.D. National Center for Atmospheric Research Co-founder of Rising Voiceshttps://risingvoices.ucar.edu/program-leads "The Paris Agreement means that 195 nations agreed they will come together and attempt to cut greenhouse gas emissions to a level that will limit the global average temperature to a rise "well below" 2C (3.6F) compared to pre-industrial levels - a level of warming deemed to be the point when dangerous climate change could threaten life on Earth." Sohail Iqbal I have the privilege of being the guardian of one of Britain's most loved brands, Cadbury, the nation's favourite chocolate. I am also the UK's number one fan of Cadbury Dairy Milk Caramel. But most importantly I'm a representative of the thousands of people that are proud to work for Mondelez in the UK. It's on their behalf that I want to express the sense of disappointment we feel as a result of the misleading documentary which aired tonight claiming to 'lift the lid' on Cadbury. Perhaps you, like me, grew up falling in love with Cadbury - whether it was the taste of your favourite bar, Roses assortment or Easter treat. Cadbury is a brand that's nearly 200 years old and is treasured in the UK. I'm a Brit, and I hope that you, like me, care deeply about Cadbury's future in the UK. I'd like to reassure you that we all take huge pride in both safeguarding Cadbury's rich heritage and securing its future for generations to come. This is why I'm so disappointed the documentary does not fully reflect the thriving life at Cadbury in 2016. Advertisement Not only is this is a great disservice to our thousands of hard working colleagues in the UK who treasure Cadbury's history and are excited about its future; it didn't actually "lift the lid" to show you Cadbury today. In short, I'd like to make clear that we are committed to Cadbury in the UK. Yes, we have had to make some tough decisions to remain competitive compared to some of our European competitors - who hasn't? And, yes, we had to make some changes to keep ourselves in pole position. But, as custodians of Cadbury, we take huge pride in both cherishing its long history and safeguarding its future. That is why we have invested 200 million in our UK business since 2010, including 75 million into the chocolate manufacturing in Bournville, which has secured the factory as the home of Cadbury for generations to come. Advertisement And in turn, this has helped to position Cadbury as the thriving business it is today, where sales for Cadbury Dairy Milk have grown by 27% since 2010. We believe in being open and honest. In fact we regularly welcome journalists and other stakeholders into our home in Bournville to meet the people who make Cadbury a successful, thriving place to work. This is why I'd like to share the commitments we hold dear. You will find the only thing that is secret at Cadbury is our closely guarded recipe for Cadbury Dairy Milk! We are committed to Britain's favourite chocolate Everything we do is about ensuring Cadbury Dairy Milk remains as loved as it has always been. That is why the recipe for Cadbury Dairy Milk has not changed. Demand for the nation's favourite chocolate is stronger than ever. Bournville - the home of Cadbury - makes five and a half million blocks of Cadbury Dairy Milk every day, and more than 400 million Buttons. This Easter we'll have made over 47 million Easter Eggs. We always seek to delight our customers and as chocolate makers and inventors we are perfectionists. In 2012, we rounded the corners of Cadbury Dairy Milk bars following the discovery by our tasters that it enhanced the melt in the mouth experience. Advertisement Then last year we returned to the original Cadbury chocolate recipe for Cadbury Creme Egg's shells. Our taste tests showed our British customers preferred the classic taste. Today's recipe is true to the traditional Cadbury chocolate shell originally created in 1971. In fact, only six out of 45 years of Creme Eggs history saw the shell made with Cadbury Dairy Milk. Sales of Cadbury Creme Eggs show that they remain one of the nation's favourite Easter treats. We are committed to chocolate invention Since 2010 we have increased tenfold the number of people focused on innovation in the UK. We now have 250 chocolate inventors, and they undoubtedly have some of the best jobs in the country, spending their day thinking about new exciting chocolates. We know customers love our classic Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate and so do I. Its recipe remains a closely guarded secret and has not changed. But our chocolate inventors know customers also enjoy trying new things too. Delicious new products like Cadbury Dairy Milk Bubbly, Marvellous, Puddles and Medley are just some of the bars they have created in Bournville in the last five years. We are committed to British manufacturing Bournville firmly remains the beating heart of manufacturing for Cadbury. All the classic Cadbury Dairy Milk bars are manufactured here except for the small 95 calorie bar and the limited edition 850g bar - which has never been made in Bournvile. And our investment of 75million - part of a wider 200million investment programme - has secured the next generation of manufacturing in Bournville. Advertisement This investment was vital to ensure Bournville remained the centre of Cadbury. Bournville production costs were double those of similar factories in other countries like Germany. Our investment replaced outdated equipment and allowed the creation of four new chocolate manufacturing lines, including for Roses and Heroes. It has helped make the factory more competitive, and protected jobs in the long term. Our products are not just loved in the UK, they are enjoyed around the world and have been for many decades. As a result, Cadbury has had an international footprint for nearly 100 years, with its first overseas factory being built in Tasmania as far back as 1922. Cadbury had factories in Poland making products for UK consumers since 1993, long before Mondelez. But wherever they are made, and wherever they are sold, every single Cadbury product is invented in Bournville. Every day thousands of people come to work at Cadbury in locations across the UK, and do some of the most exciting jobs in the country - we are, after all, chocolate makers! - whether that's making sure Easter Eggs hit the shelves on time, taste-testing delicious Cadbury products, or coming up with Cadbury's next exciting TV advert. You can find some of their stories on this website. We are committed to our farmers at home and abroad We are very proud of Cadbury's pioneering work with the Fairtrade Foundation and Cadbury remains the biggest purchaser of Fairtrade Cocoa in the UK. Advertisement Our commitment, which was started by Cadbury in 2009 with Cadbury Dairy Milk bars, now includes all our hot chocolate drinking products, Cadbury Dairy Milk Buttons and Giant Buttons and Cadbury Dairy Milk Bubbly. We are proud to support this commitment and subsequent extension beyond our Cadbury Dairy Milk bars. We have also extended our relationship with Fairtrade as part of our Cocoa Life sourcing programme. Cocoa Life is a long-term $400 million investment which aims to improve to the lives and communities of 200,000 cocoa farmers by 2022. Closer to home, in Herefordshire we add over 150m litres of fresh British milk to the Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate you see on the shelves, every year. That's 23,000 cows! The majority of which comes direct from Selkley Vale - a cooperative of farmers from Wiltshire and Gloucestershire. We are committed to the future As tens of thousands of people in London and other British and continental European cities marched this past weekend in support of welcoming refugees, the question remains: "Are we really willing to take them in?" An estimated 15,000 people from all over the UK, including refugees from countries torn apart by war and other conflicts around the world, marched to Trafalgar Square in London on Saturday. Demonstrations also took place in Belfast, Edinburgh Glasgow, Cardiff, Brighton, and other cities and towns. Notably, tens of thousands gathered in Denmark in support of the refugees. Advertisement But not everyone on the streets of London was in favour. Britain First occupied the steps of the Eros statue in Piccadilly Circus, raising Union Jack flags and mysteriously-worded posters proclaiming: "Veterans before Migrants". Surrounded by a substantial police guard, they numberered fewer than a hundred. That's roughly one to every 150 people calling for a more welcoming policy towards refugees. Repudating the failure of European states The far larger number of pro-refugee activists on the streets than in some previous demonstrations, is further evidence of continuing public concern, repudiating the failure of European states to respond adequately to the thousands of men, women and children fleeing wars and devastation. Reports from Denmark say tens of thousands were on the streets, rising up against the decision of their parliament which two months ago passed legislation designed to deter refugees from entering the country. The legislation - widely condemned by international campaigners -- allowed police to seize refugees' assets. Advertisement In the UK, the refugee campaign, #refugeeswelcome, reports that 1,403,691 people have signed on to back their efforts, 620 local campaigns are underway and more than 700 landlords up and down the country have offered properties. That is in addition to more than 40 local councils who have offered sanctuary to refugees fleeing from the fighting in Syria. Six months ago, David Simmonds of the Local Government Association's asylum, refugee and migrant task force said councils in England were already supporting 2,000 unaccompanied refugee children at a cost of 50,000-a-year for each child. Half a nation's people driven from their homes With the war in Syria now in its fifth year, even if current international efforts at a limited ceasefire succeed, around half of the country's population of 22 million have been driven from their homes and a quarter of a million are estimated to have been killed. "Unless something big is done to resolve this conflict through political means, the human train that has started moving out of Syria and the neighbourhood will continue to be running for many months to come," Facoub El Hillo, the UN resident and humanitarian coordinator in Syria, told Reuters. The evidence of public willingness to offer sanctuary and support to those fleeing the carnage continues to mount. This is inspite of reports in mainstream media of nationalistic, exclusionist political movements like the Front National in France and Pegida (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West) in Germany. Advertisement Over the same weekend that thousands marched in London, the BBC's farming programme, Countryfile, profiled an East Anglian farm - part of the Care Farming UK organization - that is offering therapeutic support to refugees. The farm's Director Doeke Dobma invites those who have fled war to spend time working together on the land. "My mum had horrendous experiences during the Second World War," he said. "As a small person, born here, the least we can do is offer and show compassion." Among those interviewed on the programme during its visit to the farm was a refugee from Kurdistan. Asked why he left, he said, "Every single night there were people shooting. People missing, people kidnapped. That's why I came here." Care Farming also provides the support to local people. Among them, on Sunday's broadcast, was Malcolm who suffers from dementia and has been coming to the farm for six years. Advertisement "What about these refugees you are working with now?" he was asked. "What do you think about that?" "Good idea," he said, "putting them on the farm. It can bring them back to life." And so the 'quiet man' goes out with a bang. In fact, no, it was an almighty explosion: The Conservative Work and Pensions Secretary has left office in a manner not seen since the resignation of Geoffrey Howe - in fact it makes Johann Lamont's departure as leader of Scottish Labour look sheepishly polite. Timed to inflict maximum damage on the Prime Minister and the Chancellor, the former Tory leader has blown apart what is supposed to be our normally chirpy, cheery Chancellor's big week, and staged an almighty interruption to the Second Lord of the Treasury's continuous audition for leader of the Conservative party: It's less Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, more Kim and Aggie of How Clean Is Your House fame. Oh the drama! It is well known that Mr Duncan Smith and Mr Osborne have not had the easiest of relationships. Now laid bare for all to see, Smith saw himself as the great reformer of welfare and Osborne was the schoolboy bully strutting across Whitehall and pinching the DWP Secretary's lunch money. The Bedroom Tax? JSA cuts? Sanctions? It was George's fault, Miss. Advertisement Of course no one is buying the line that the reason for his departure is the way that the Treasury has been forcing his hand over welfare cuts for the past six years - not wholly anyway. Whilst there is some plausibility in the view that he's not happy with how changes to Welfare have been packaged by the Chancellor - although the PM rejects this - his frustrations over the Government's approach to Europe are probably his primary motivations. Oh how we've missed a Tory rift over Europe - 'twas ever thus. The worst part of the Tory soap opera - probably the worst since Crossroads - is that it inevitably alienates the electorate: at a time when the public ought to be engaged in a debate about Britain's place in the world - and, of course, upcoming Scottish, Welsh and English local elections - instead the party of government has chosen to go into self-destruct mode. For me, as someone who wants Britain to remain in the EU, this is enormously frustrating. The only people I can see this benefiting are those seeking to take the UK out of Europe, and the more time we spend as mere spectators in this affair (know your place, boy!) the less time we have to make the case for Europe and shine a light on the woeful case of the Brexiteers. Even as I write this article, there are reports on the Today Programme that more Ministers are expected to head for the exit (the Whiethall one, that is). How depressing. So if you were hoping to hear more about what a vote for remaining or leaving the EU would mean for job security; for our colleges and universities or for your rights at work, I'd hold off for now. The solipsism of the Parliamentary Under-Secretary for paperclip counting and whiteboards requires their moment in the Sun. Again, know your place. Advertisement And what of Labour in this whole affair? The Government is now deeply divided on three huge areas of policy: welfare, the budget and foreign affairs. That surely brings their ability to govern in the national interest into sharp focus, and sets up nicely a huge political opportunity for Labour's Jeremy Corbyn. Well, yes and no: Yes, in that it is a huge political opportunity; and no because Labour are split on the three same issues - and much more - and the Rt. Hon. Gentleman for Islington North has an almost Mr Bean-like talent for missing and hitting the wall. Last week's PMQs was the perfect example. Despite weeks of a continuing crescendo of internal Tory Warfare, a Tory budget only minutes away and a referendum on Europe only 100 days away, Jeremy chose to take the PM to task on air quality. Now I don't want to diminish the importance of this issue - in fact it is linked to my own work on the Transport Select Committee - but it showed an opposition leader who is leading with tin ears, and it is letting the country - the whole country - down. The Scottish National Party is now the only major party in Commons who are united on the big issues, and can be relied on to take the fight to the Tories at Westminster - and that is what we will continue to do. Supplied It comes down to eight. The eight crossbench senators hold the keys to when a federal election will be held. If they support the Prime Minister's bills around the Australian Building and Construction Commission, we avoid an early election and most things carry on as usual; but unless six of the eight support the bills, we go to the polls on July 2 for a rare double dissolution. Jacqui Lambie, Glenn Lazarus, Nick Xenophon, Bob Day, John Madigan, Dio Wang, David Leyonhjelm and Ricky Muir are the most pivotal political people in the country right now. Only one has given explicit support for the bills, two have come out strongly against the legislation; leaving five up in the air. Advertisement It's been a whirlwind 24 hours since Turnbull made his bombshell announcement, sparking the country's political classes into action just as they were settling in for what they expected to be a long, relatively quiet period until the federal budget. Hopes of a holiday or at least a bit of a rest before the election were dashed; parliament will resume early to consider the ABCC bills, a double dissolution election will occur if the bills don't pass, and the budget is coming a week early. All the major players have been out pushing their messages, speaking for or against Turnbull's 'House of Cards'-esque political manoeuvre. Here's what the big guns and the pivotal pawns are saying: Malcolm Turnbull The PM's announcement framed the early election and budget entirely around the ABCC bills, which seek to re-establish the watchdog for the building industry. "Well this is a very important economic reform. We're getting on with the business of Government. And the time has come for the Senate who have been given the opportunity of an additional three sitting weeks to deal with these bills and pass them." "We strongly urge [Senate crossbenchers] to support this legislation as we have done for some considerable time now." After the PM's announcement, he appeared on ABC's 7.30 program with Leigh Sales. Asked whether Australians "have heard of the ABCC, let alone care" about the bills which the election and foreseeable political future now hinge on, Turnbull was quick to defend his framing of the narrative: "I think many Australians, many if not most Australians are well aware of the level of lawlessness and corruption and waste in the construction industry. The Heydon Royal Commission set it out very graphically, if we had reason to doubt it, there is about a hundred officials of the CFMEU and members of the CFMEU facing court proceedings at the moment... I believe we are right in saying there should be a special regulator." Bill Shorten Opposition leader Shorten, former national secretary of the Australian Workers Union, unsurprisingly was on the offensive over Turnbull's plans for an early election over union-based issues. Speaking on Sunrise on Tuesday, he said: "Labor won't be supporting the Government's measures. So, I suspect in fact, I am pretty sure, we will be having an election on 2 July in 103 days time." "I don't think that we should be creating laws where construction workers, building workers are governed by one set of laws and everyone else is governed by another set of laws." Despite Turnbull's recent approval ratings on the slide, Shorten is still far behind the PM in popularity stakes. Shorten brushed that off as a factor in an early election: Advertisement "Absolutely, we can win. And it's going to come down to who has the positive policies. I look forward to the fact that over the next 103 days, we will outline our positive plans." Tony Abbott The former PM has been a thorn in Turnbull's side for some time, giving commentary and writing opinion pieces deemed unhelpful to Turnbull and the government. With an election now on the horizon, it was asked of Abbott -- currently overseas in the Ukraine -- how he would act in the election campaign. He made it about himself, telling Sky News on Monday: "The Turnbull government is seeking election fundamentally on the record of the Abbott government. Stopping the boats, finalising the free trade agreements, our strong national security policy" Its very easy for me to campaign on the election of a Turnbull government because the Turnbull government is running on the Abbott governments record. Its a very strong record. Asked about Abbott's comments and whether his input would help or harm the government, on Tuesday Turnbull told 3AW Radio: It depends on what he says, frankly. Whether its a plus or minus depends entirely on the nature of his contribution, he said. I hope that he will be supportive and hes indicating that he will be, so that will be good. The Senate crossbench Realistically, the prospect of an early election comes down to the eight independent Senators; Jacqui Lambie, Glenn Lazarus, Nick Xenophon, Bob Day, John Madigan, Dio Wang, David Leyonhjelm and Ricky Muir. Turnbull needs the support of six of the eight to pass the ABCC bills; if he doesn't get six, the bills won't have the required support, which the PM said will motivate him to ask the Governor-General to dissolve parliament and have an election. At this stage, it seems the required support is not incoming. With the crossbench already viciously hostile to the Coalition government over their ramming through of the controversial Senate voting reforms -- which, essentially, will see most of the crossbench lose their seats under reforms that will make it harder for independents and members of microparties to be elected -- it seems unlikely Turnbull will be able to sweet-talk the very same people he just single-handedly put out of work. Lambie, Lazarus and Muir voted against the bills last time, and all three have either rubbished the laws or said they want significant changes in exchange for their vote. Senator Day said he would support the ABCC bills, but gave little chance his crossbench colleagues would follow his lead. He told Sky News that the PM's announcement was "too clever by half": "Had the government been a little bit more patient last year, it perhaps could've got them over the line." "I don't see any point in me trying to lobby them ... the events of last week put paid to that sort of action." "They won't get the ABCC through and they won't clear out the minor parties and independents from the Senate - they'll get neither of the things they are after." Lambie, speaking on Q&A on Monday, flatly rejected supporting the bills: "I will be voting 'No' to the ABCC, I'll be quite honest like that." "I will not be blackmailed, I will not have a gun held to my head." Xenophon helped the government pass the voting reforms, but has not yet explicitly given his position on the ABCC bills. He says he would support the bills if amendments were added, but it's unclear whether his arm could be twisted on the bills in their original form. On Monday, he said: "It's a very nifty and cunning manoeuvre on the part of the PM but I expect it's going to cause fireworks in the Senate." Leyonhjelm said he could be persuaded into supporting the legislation, if amendments were added, but claimed he wouldn't be strong-armed: "If it's a take-it-or-leave-it attitude, then I'm going to leave it." Lazarus, too, wants changes in support for his vote; he wants a national building industry watchdog, not the ABCC as it would stand in the current legislation, which he calls "garbage": "I want to sleep at night and if I voted for the ABCC in its current form, I wouldn't be able to." Dio Wang abstained from voting on the ABCC last time it appeared before the Senate, but said he could be swayed with some changes to the legislation. He told the Australian Financial Review: Advertisement "I think my consideration on the bill would never be contingent upon whether there is going to be a double dissolution." As more than 20 people have been confirmed dead and dozens injured by three explosions rocking Brussels on Tuesday morning, many are wondering whether the explosions are linked to the terror raids in Belgium on Friday. The raids ended with alleged terrorist Salah Abdeslam arrested and charged over the Paris attacks. But national security expert Dr Alexey Muraviev told The Huffington Post Australia he doesn't believe the explosions are a "knee jerk reaction" to the raids. Advertisement "It is a series of well-planned and well-coordinated attacks, paralysing Brussels' transportation network," Dr Alexey, who advises the federal government on national security matters, told HuffPost Australia. "It may seem to be a response to the counter terrorism raids but normally these types of attacks require significant preparation in terms of the logistical elements such as strike teams, assembly of improvised explosive devices.. that all requires time and effort." Dr Muraviev -- who is the Head of the Department of Social Sciences and Security Studies at Curtin University -- said Brussels is a particularly difficult city to plan an attack on as security is particularly strong. "Brussels is an iconic target, being at the heart of the European Union. Its a very symbolic place for the attacks to occur.. it represents the EU and it represents the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. Advertisement "It will have a serious impact on the stance of security by the Europeans." Belgium's terror threat has since been upgraded to the highest level, with both Paris and Frankfurt airports tightening their security. Brussel's transportation network is at a standstill, the airport closed and Belgians are being advised to stay where they are as emergency services work to evacuate the injured. While the nation, the continent and the world unite in solidarity, Dr Muraviev said the attacks have the potential to cause further conflict over asylum seeker policies throughout the world, but particularly in Europe. In the remote mountains of South Africa, Matsepo rises at 3 am to start the day. She has important work to do, work which is a matter of life or death. Such an early start is necessary for her to wash, get dressed, and prepare tea before waking her feverish, emaciated 5 year-old granddaughter Ntabaleng. She hoists the fairy-light girl onto her back to begin the four-hour walk to the nearest clinic. Ntabaleng's own mother cannot do this because she is dead, a victim of the same drug-resistant tuberculosis (DR-TB) that is responsible for Matsepo's daily journey with her precious granddaughter. Ntabaleng must go to the clinic for treatment because she has to receive a daily injection as part of her DR-TB therapy. Although it's usually difficult for her to even muster the energy to lift her head, she wails as soon as the needle pierces her raw buttocks. "Make it stop grandma," she sobs, "make it stop." Advertisement Thousands of miles away, Alma, too, wakes in the gloaming hours. She haunts the halls of a hospital in California where her son will soon face his own daily battle with the monster called DR-TB. Nine-year old Antonio has drawn a picture of himself, decked out in a superhero cape, "socking it" to the TB villain he has depicted as an angry swirl of black, green and red. But Alma knows this brave boy will soon be reduced to tears as he chokes back the 19 tablets he takes daily. The yellow ones make him vomit, and as she wipes his sweaty brow with a cool cloth, Alma hears his piteous whisper. "Make it stop mom," he begs, "make it stop. Thursday, March 24 has been designated World TB Day, and although such commemorative events are ubiquitous, a day of global reflection and action may be most pertinent in the case of TB, since at least a third of the world's population are infected with the bacteria that causes this sickness. Unless radical action is taken, DR-TB is one of three infectious diseases that will kill more people than cancer by 2050. It is estimated that 33,000 children fall ill with DR-TB each year. Another 1 million are infected with the germ annually as it spreads through the air from adults to children, whose main risk factor is breathing. Many of these children will go on to become sick and die without ever knowing what hit them. "We must do everything in our power to end their suffering. It is up to us to make it stop." Believe it or not, Ntabaleng and Antonio are two of the lucky children in this epic struggle for health against DR-TB. They were actually diagnosed and are receiving treatment. But can kids like Ntabaleng and Antonio whose suffering is so apparent really be considered fortunate? Blessings may be relative, but when one considers the dire situation of pediatric DR-TB, it is hard to conclude that there are any winners. Here is the state of the art: diagnosing DR-TB in children still often relies on ancient technology, and pediatric patients have to undergo painful procedures--such as tracheal or gastric aspirates--to even get specimens for testing. If they are diagnosed, these children will face significant challenges in accessing treatment. In fact, although approximately 33,000 cases of DR-TB occur each year in children, fewer than 1,000 of these children are ever offered appropriate therapy. And this therapy--no matter where the child lives in the world--is brutal. It consists of multiple medications (including the daily injection) that can cause hideous side effects, such as deafness, psychosis, and liver failure. It is a testament to the resilience of children that they actually do better than adults with this grueling medication regimen. But this difficult daily therapy which lasts for 18 to 24 months places a heavy burden on their tiny shoulders and on the shoulders of those who care for them. And almost no children who have been exposed to DR-TB are offered access to post-exposures measures that could stop them from ever becoming sick in the first place. Advertisement Recent advances in the treatment of DR-TB have brought great hope to adults suffering from the disease. Perversely, children have been left behind when it comes to implementing these innovations. There are two new drugs that have been approved by stringent regulatory authorities and recommended by the World Health Organization for the treatment of DR-TB. The WHO recommendations, however, are only targeted at persons above the age of 18 years, even though one of the new drugs--delamanid (Otsuka Pharamceuticals)--has been shown to be safe and effective in children as young as 6 years of age. Another problem for children with DR-TB when it comes to delamanid--a drug that could potentially replace the excruciating injection--is that the drug is only registered for use in the European Union, Japan, and South Korea. Registration for delamanid is not even pending in most of the countries in which it was tested, including South Africa. Nor is it pending in the United States. And until such registration happens, most children who desperately need this drug will have to go without. World TB Day becomes a facade if the events that mark it are not tied to specific actions. The children affected by DR-TB have given us a clear mandate to which we should all pledge ourselves on this commemorative day: make it stop. Demand that new drugs for children be registered; that global guidelines be rapidly updated to endorse better treatment for children; that donors prioritize funding initiatives that focus on this vulnerable population; that post-exposure prevention measures become a part of routine care. When it comes to DR-TB among these tender casualties, we must do everything in our power to end their suffering. It is up to us to make it stop. This post is part of the 'A Look At The Isolation of Airborne Cancer' series produced by The Huffington Post for World TB Day. This series will look at the devastating issues surrounding tuberculosis, the number one infectious killer. To follow the conversation on Twitter, view #WorldTBDay. Just in time for warm weather and school vacation, we partnered with eBay to ask kids from around the country what they would do and where they would go if they could choose any outdoor adventure with their family. Their answers were cute, and simple: for these kiddos, adventures don't have to be lavish -- time spent outside with family is exciting simply because they're spending it with the people they love most (though a little scuba diving never hurts, but only if there are no dragons!). Check out their answers, and add your own favorite family outdoor moment in the comments! 1. Clocked Out Image: Sola Deo Gloria via Getty Images "If I could take any adventure, I would go camping" says 6-year-old Kira from Tampa, Florida. "You can do so many activities outside, like biking, and, at night, roasting marshmallows to make s'mores. But Kira's favorite part of the outdoors? "I love being outside with my family because it means no one is working!" 2. The Wild Life Image: Juan Carlos Vindas via Getty Images Hayden (6) is nothing if not adventurous. "I would go to South America because I love the tropics," the Los Angeles native says. "Also I would love to see jaguars and monkeys and sloths!" He adds: It's fun to be outside with my family because we can help each other see stuff, like hawks and lizards." Advertisement 3. A Deep Dive Image: Shin Okamoto via Getty Images Cooper from Oak Park, Illinois, hasn't been scuba diving before, but stories of his mom snorkeling pique his interest. If the 6-year-old could have any outdoor adventure, he would go scuba diving and discover the things his mommy likes in the ocean, like "jellyfish, shark, turtles, fish and dragons!" Cooper says. Of course, scuba diving would require one to be careful: "Actually, no scuba diving if there are dragons!" 4. Dressing Accordingly Image: Altrendo Images via Getty Images "When we're spending time together as a family outdoors, it reminds me about how much I am loved," says 6-year-old Savannah from Millburn, New Jersey, whose dream outdoor trip is to travel to Japan to see red-faced monkeys. But for Savannah, the best part of being outside isn't the creatures, it's the comfort: "When I'm outside, I just feel good because I get to wear shorts," she says. 5. Free Wheeling Image: Blend Images - Inti St Clair via Getty Images Anna (9) adores alfresco adventures, but the Manhattanite's love of the concrete jungle rivals her fondness for the jungle gym. The Big Apple native wants to go to Barcelona, where her teacher visited over break, and ride bikes with her family to see the pretty buildings and big churches. However, the urbanite's Italian heritage also appeals to her travel fever. "I think Italy would be my number one. Because first of all, my dad is a little bit Italian and also I heard it's really beautiful and I want to go there," Anna explains. "Being with my family is the best because, when we're all together, we can go to the park and play," she says. "And we can go on the swings!" 6. Happier Together Image: JGI/Jamie Grill via Getty Images Parents, take note: the key to a successful outdoor odyssey is toys, according to 7-year-old Virginian Haelie. "I would like to go to the beach, or maybe to see the [California] redwoods and walk through them. I'd love to go to a cave! It would be funny if we found a dinosaur in there, except they aren't around anymore or maybe some crystals, don't you think?" says Haelie. And both adventures are better when she can do them with family. As the Leesburg native puts it: "I like being outside because, when it's nice out, we can bring toys outside and play with everyone. It makes it more special to play with my family because everyone is happier together." Advertisement 7. "All The Snacks" Image: Fotosearch via Getty Images Hays (4) from Tarrytown, New York, is quick to note that the absence of work, TV and computers makes spending time outside with family extra special. But one other ingredient is essential: good eats. Of his dream vacation, Hays says, "I would ride in a camp truck on Route 66 where Lightning McQueen is from. We can eat s'mores, sleep in a tent, look for shooting stars. Oh, and make an egg on a fire. And hot chocolate before bed in my firetruck sleeping bag ... and Mom says no phones, too. And all the snacks." As a human rights activist, I cringed at President Obama's response when Raul Castro attacked America's human rights record. It is not that the United States is free from human rights violations. In fact, under the current administration, the government has infringed on press freedoms, and has used the federal bureaucracy to intimidate and persecute civil society groups seen as political opponents. Police violence is widespread. But Castro wasn't speaking about those problems. Castro claimed that while Cuba was in compliance with international human rights standards, the United States violated human rights with respect to welfare policies. President Obama replied, "President Castro, I think, has pointed out that in his view making sure that everybody is getting a decent education or health care, has basic security and old age, that those things are human rights as well. I personally would not disagree with him." Ever since economic and social rights were implanted in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948, American diplomats have insisted on a distinction between human rights to basic freedoms, as opposed to rights to government services. In doing so they have sought to defend the sacrosanct character of natural rights -- moral rights that are prior to any national law -- as opposed to welfare rights, which reflect the politics of different societies and eras, and are protected by positive law. Advertisement Obama missed an opportunity to explain and defend that idea of human rights, which animated America's founders, and which they bequeathed to Americans and to people all over the world in the Bill of Rights to the U.S. Constitution. Instead, Obama "personally" embraced an interpretation of human rights at variance with the philosophy of the U.S. Constitution. What is more, Cuba has arguably done more than any other nation to subvert respect for authentic human rights in the United Nations. With his response, Obama indirectly but clearly endorsed that program. If his words indeed reflect the U.S. approach to human rights, it is bad news for those who defend human rights as natural rights to basic freedoms, and who look to America for support and as an example of the success of freedom. Cuba has consistently defended the world's worst human rights abusers, like North Korea, from criticism in international forums, claiming that such criticism is "political" and "biased." In fact, Cuba is the most vocal member of the United Nations seeking to blunt the UN's already blunt instruments for investigating grave human rights violations and putting pressure on governments to reform, favoring anodyne, "thematic" issues instead. Cuba has been a leader in proposing bogus human rights mandates in the UN Human Rights Council, like the "Independent Expert" on the "Promotion of a Democratic and Equitable International Order," which is nothing but a platform for ideological attacks on free societies and free enterprise -- in the name of "human rights." Thanks in large part to Cuba, the international human rights system has become hopelessly clogged up with such institutions. The language of human rights has become thoroughly polluted with left-wing, politicized rhetoric used to justify restrictions on freedom and to attack other states, while drawing attention away from actual human rights problems. What is more, human rights treaties are being drafted on such issues as "business and human rights," a topic seen as a top priority by leading UN human rights bureaucrats, and on the human rights of the elderly and peasants. Individual rights have been marginalized, while collective rights reflect an international identity politics. The idea of human rights has become so expansive and that there is no longer any rational basis for determining what is and what is not a human right. But to preserve their meaning and what enforcement is possible, human rights need to remain clearly defined and apart from politics. What legislatures decide about taxation in order to protect the vulnerable and needy is a matter of politics. Protecting that process itself, and other basic political freedoms, is the challenge of human rights. Advertisement A few years ago, at a UN briefing in Geneva, Cuban diplomats bragged about their "free" health care and education systems as proof that their government respected human rights. A Cuban dissident responded, "Our health care system and our education system are not without costs. We have paid for them with our freedom." Obama's betrayal of the idea of natural rights was also a betrayal of Cuban human rights campaigners, and indeed people around the world living under dictators who exploit the conflation of human rights and welfare rights in order to defend oppression. Each year the NCUB publish statistics on the number of female students entering GCSE and A-Level Physics, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate technology studies. The dashboard contains targets to improve these numbers between 2012 and 2030 and forms the genesis of it's Talent 2030 project. A major weapon in helping to achieve this was officially launched today. The BBC micro.bit is a collaborative project that has given 1 million pocket-sized computers to year 7 school children throughout the UK. The project hopes to inspire digital creativity in a new generation and propel them into STEM related careers. The project has participation from a number of the biggest names in technology, such as Cambridge based ARM, who develop the designs for the chips found in the majority of mobile phones around the world. Advertisement "The BBC Micro started me on my journey towards a career in technology and the BBC micro:bit can have the same effect on children receiving their devices from today," said Simon Segars, CEO of ARM. "The ability to code is now as important as grammar and mathematics skills and it can unlock important new career options. I can easily imagine a new wave of design entrepreneurs looking back and citing today as the day their passion for technology began." The video below shows Jonny Austin, the technical lead for ARM on the micro.bit project showing off what can be achieved with the device and highlighting the fun applications of the technology. The project has also received considerable support from Microsoft, who have not only provided an online programming environment for the micro.bit, but have developed resources such as The Quick Start Guide for Teachers that aim to help users get started. Advertisement The company has also worked alongside teachers to produce a number of lesson plans for both the Touch Develop and for the Block Editor to help children of varied abilities develop things such as a Pac Man game or a Magic 8-ball fortune teller. "As soon as we saw the ambition and the scale involved, we jumped at the chance to partner with the BBC on a project designed expressly to introduce young people to coding. The reality is that in the UK we haven't done enough to nurture the next generation of tech talent. The BBC micro:bit is a huge step forward, because it shows young people the creative power of digital skills," Hugh Milward, Director of Corporate Affairs at Microsoft UK, says. U.S. President Barack Obama delivers his speech at the Grand Theater of Havana, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Obama who is in Cuba in a trailblazing trip said he came to Cuba to "bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas.a (AP Photo/Desmond Boyland) It's funny. Sometimes -- okay, a lot of the time -- when I'm on book tour, or giving a talk at a university, or being interviewed for an article, people make assumptions about me, because I'm Cuban-American. Five assumptions. All of them suck. They are: 1. That I was born in Miami. (Nope. Albuquerque.) 2. That I come from money. (I. Friggin. Wish.) 3. That my Cuban dad and his family must have been rich before the Revolution. (Uhm, yeah. No.) 4. That I myself hate the Cuban Revolution. (The only thing I HATE is black licorice. Ew.) 5. That deposing the Castros is front and center in my consciousness 24-7 and that it is my obligation as a visible Cuban American Author to denounce the regime constantly and especially if I'm in Miami. (It is never a thought; I speak for no one but me, and even then not all that well; Miami scares me a little, ever since those old Cuban exile men with guns showed up at my last Books and Books reading in Coral Gables, pretending to be Chick Lit fans.) Advertisement I am apparently a rare breed of Cuban-American, in that I am politically progressive and was raised by a Cuban exile father who changed his politics from far right to far left after visiting his homeland in his 30s (20 years after coming to the U.S. as a teenager) and seeing how much the Revolution had helped our once-impoverished, illiterate family in the countryside near Santa Clara. Once starving peasants, our family (all of whom stayed behind other than my father, he having left at 15 in search of adventure) are now doctors, engineers and entrepreneurs. I was raised, like Cubans in Cuba, to respect the Revolution, by a father whose sociology professor career centered around studying it. Yep. My dad is a Cubanologist. We had a framed photo of Fidel Castro on the piano in my childhood home, in which he shakes my father's hand. I was also raised, like Americans in the United States, to be critical of the Revolution's faults, and there are many, because ours was a home that prized critical thinking and honest assessments. I have been to Cuban several times, and while I found much to admire there, I also found much to detest. Kind of like New Jersey. Or Kanye West. When I was extremely sick seven years ago with autoimmune issues, and had no health insurance, the Cuban government welcomed me and treated me for free, proudly claiming me as one of their own, even if no one in Cuba could understand how I, with my crappy Spanish and love of weak coffee, could be considered a Latina author when I was so obviously just American to them. The doctors were amazing. The people with whom I shared my hospital room were kind and warm. I was amazed by the good health and high level of education among average citizens in Havana. I realized, while spending 10 days in an excellent, albeit crumbling, Cuban hospital next to the sea, that the United States and Cuba were like photo negatives of each other. In Cuba, the buildings were decaying and the people were in phenomenal shape, mind, body and soul. In the United States, precisely the reverse was true; we have beautiful hospitals, but sickly people, new school buildings, but shockingly undereducated children, beautiful cars, yet 80 percent of us haven't read a book in the past year. Advertisement "But the Cuban people aren't free!" Right-wing exiles in Miami love to remind me. Me, and Janet Reno. Me, and Janet Reno, and anyone else who will listen to their furious shouting. But is that true? And, furthermore, are we Americans as free as we think we are? My dad taught me long ago that there was more than one kind of freedom in the world. There is the Freedom To, and then there is the Freedom From. In the United States, we get the Freedoms To: TO choose our own careers, TO move whenever we like (if we can afford it), TO speak out against our government (even if it does no good) -- while Cubans get... yeah, pretty much none of that. In Cuba, meanwhile, they get the Freedoms From: FROM hunger, FROM illiteracy, FROM homelessness, FROM lack of medical care, FROM expensive education -- while we Americans get, well, exactly none of that, ever. For a society to be just and good, I believe it needs to offer both to its people, like Canada. So, no. I'm not angry that President Obama went to Cuba, becoming the first president since Coolidge to do so. I am Cuban American, and I am pleased. I think our two countries could learn a lot from one another, if both were willing to put down their shortsighted arrogance and ignorance and admit to the strengths of the other - you know, the way people do when they are in harmonious, healthy relationships. I do hope that's where my two beautiful nations are headed -- towards a harmonious, healthy relationship. It's about time both sides grew up and replaced cold war rhetoric with compassionate realism. It seems that after 275 years of mining coal, both U.S. regulations and swiftly changing private energy markets are arriving at the same conclusion: financial markets and the earth's atmosphere can no longer afford to burn coal as in the past. When we were Bureau of Land Management (BLM) State Directors, in the 1990's, responsible for leasing public lands for coal production, the understanding of climate change was just hitting the public consciousness. When we toured various coal mines in our region, it struck us as odd that so much of our Nation's energy production was still tied to an antiquated source of energy like coal, but we didn't yet fully understand the climate implications. In the past 20 years much has changed and the BLM's coal leasing program needs to change with it. When Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell announced a review of the federal coal leasing program, she noted that the regulations for leasing and producing coal owned by the American people are over 30 years old. She also cited "an obligation to current and future generations to ensure the federal coal program delivers a fair return to American taxpayers and takes into account its impacts on climate change." Advertisement The public lands managed by the BLM are under Congressional direction to be managed "in a manner that will protect the quality of scientific, scenic, historical, ecological, environmental, air and atmospheric, water resource" and other values. If public lands contain coal resources and are suitable for coal leasing, the agency can lease them to private companies to develop the resource. In making leasing decisions, private companies consider long term markets, prices and the regulatory environment under which they operate. Energy resource markets have seen total U.S. coal production decline by 22% in the past ten years. "The declining number of new mines reflects reduced investment in the coal industry, strong competition from natural gas, stagnant electricity demand, a weak coal export market, and regulatory and permitting challenges," the U.S. Energy Information Administration said in a recent report. Confirming this trend, no federal coal reserves in Wyoming or Montana have been leased since 2012. Despite these long term market forces, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., called the review of the coal leasing program "just the latest front in an ideological war on coal". But in fact the nation's ideology has long favored coal. The coal production royalty rate has been 12.5 percent since the 1970s, however, coal companies rarely pay the full 12.5 percent due to subsidies, loopholes and deductions. According to recent studies, the effective royalty rate for public coal is under five percent. The environmental impacts of burning coal can no longer be ignored or treated as an economic externality that has no societal costs. Burning of coal and other fossil fuels for electricity production accounts for 31 percent of domestic greenhouse gas emissions, making it the single-largest factor contributing to anthropogenic climate change. Advertisement If the U.S. is going to make progress on President Obama's plan to reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuel power plants by 32 percent by 2030, then the government's own program to lease coal needs to be part of the equation. While state and federal environmental reviews are conducted on decisions to lease coal, the BLM has yet to do a comprehensive environmental analysis that includes the full impact of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses associated with coal production on public land. Even though the Interior Department will stop issuing new coal leases while their review is underway, the coal reserves already under lease are estimated to be enough to sustain current levels of coal production from federal land for another 20 years. We commend Secretary Jewell for taking a comprehensive look at an outdated and subsidized resource program and for integrating the goals of sound and sustainable land management with the President's goals to address climate change. Ann J. Morgan was the Bureau of Land Management state director in Nevada and in Colorado (1994 to 2005) and is now a consultant living in Colorado. Larry Hamilton retired from the BLM in 2006 after serving as the national director for the Office of Fire and Aviation. He was also the state director of Montana and the Dakotas, associate state director of the Eastern States Office, and director of the National Training Center. Larry now lives in North Carolina. This month's recognition of World Water Day - a day in which we acknowledge the fact that upwards of 1 billion people around the world do not have access to clean water - is underscored by two disparate events. In Flint, Mich., people are contending with the fact that the water from their taps is unsafe, a predicament that amplifies just how much we rely on clean water in every part of our daily lives. In a distant part of the globe, Ethiopia is experiencing a water catastrophe of a far different kind: another calamitous drought. Exacerbated by El Nino, two consecutive seasons in Ethiopia have come and gone without adequate rainfall, and the consequences have been devastating. Without the crops that in a normal season would provide sustenance for some 80 percent of the country, more than 10 million people are unable to feed themselves. Close to a half million children are malnourished. Six million people need emergency water for drinking, sanitation and personal hygiene. While the Ethiopian government and international aid organizations are responding, the situation throughout the nation remains critical. The weather patterns of East Africa make Ethiopia particularly vulnerable to drought. With an economy based on family-oriented subsistence farming and modest herding, periods of drought can easily rise to crisis levels. Experts fear that the current lack of precipitation may rival the epic drought of 1985 in human impact, despite an outpouring of donations. Advertisement That year, I saw the impact of the drought firsthand. As an aid worker in next-door Somalia, I worked in the camps that, in total, received some 1 million Ethiopian refugees. They would come in massive waves, tired, hungry, thirsty and eerily silent, perhaps drained of hope or at least any expectation that the day ahead would be better than the one before. I had already begun to appreciate the precious nature of water during my earlier work in East Africa. In two years of living in Kenya as a Peace Corps volunteer, it rained just once at my site. In that semi-arid area of northeastern Kenya, what little farming was attempted was carried out by irrigation. That didn't help the camels and goats the locals reared for their livelihood. There was, of course, no running water in most houses, either. Like millions of others around the developing world, water had to be carried in daily for our use. In most parts of the developing world, the task of toting water is consigned to children. They rise early and, depending on their age and size, arm themselves with as many jugs and bottles as they can carry. If they're lucky, that early-in-the-day trip is made prior to school. But for too many others, their water-carrying duties can last throughout much of the day and cover many miles. This is the case now during the ongoing drought in Ethiopia. Currently, more than 2 million children are at risk of dropping out of school, their contributions to the family's survival too vital to spare for the "luxury" of education. As a result of these potential dropouts, more than 3,000 schools are now at risk of closing. In many ways, the situation is akin to eating the seeds of crops that can't be planted. Without schooling, these children will never reap the fruits of an education, an education that is perhaps their single largest hope for disrupting the poverty that has burdened their families for generations. Despite the colossal scale of the current drought situation in Ethiopia, incremental progress has been made in helping bring a regular source of water to some rural parts of the country, at least during periods of regular rainfall. In the town of Buee in southwestern Ethiopia, for example, ChildFund International worked with members of the community and some local partners to develop several springs and wells, giving 12 neighborhoods access to safe water. By networking the water sources into a system with 32 different access points, the water now reaches some 8,000 people and eight schools. Given the scope of the problem, this accomplishment in Buee may be just the proverbial drop in the bucket, but it provides a model that can be replicated many times over. Meanwhile, pioneering innovations also are beginning to flow in other parts of the world. Procter & Gamble's Children's Safe Drinking Water program is helping communities across the globe turn dirty water into water clean enough to drink. By stirring P&G's Purifier of Water packets into buckets of water drawn from murky rivers and lakes, children and families without access to clean water can almost magically create supplies of drinkable water in a matter of minutes. And because the water does not have to be boiled, the process also saves the trees that otherwise would have been used for firewood. Our partnership with P&G in seven countries over the past decade has helped to turn what water that is available into a safe source for drinking, bathing, cooking and other uses. Advertisement No amount of engineering or innovation, however, can replace the rainfall that would normally have nourished the now failed crops and livestock so many Ethiopians depend on for their food supply. Until the rains return, our efforts during this time of crisis in Ethiopia are focused on working with the government to ensure that people get the nourishment they need, especially young children and lactating mothers. But where are you now? Where are you now? -- "Where Are You Now," Mumford and Sons It's said that our souls are too big for our bodies. This mystical fact has its roots in many ancient religions and it's believed by many today. It's almost a relief to be one of the believers, because then, on the days when we wonder if we're too small to matter, we can remember that we're actually so big that we don't even fit inside ourselves. This idea helps in times of grief, and so it's helping us now because we are grieving. We're feeling so small because our questions are so big. They hardly fit inside our brains. Whereas before we used to wonder what to wear or where to go, we now ponder questions as big as our souls. Advertisement Where did he go? Why did this happen? When I first started yoga I thought I was asking all the big questions. I thought the big questions had to do with my practice. I wanted answers so that I could exercise and get fit. So the only questions I ever thought to ask were about where to put my elbows or how to position my feet. I even took some private lessons so that I could ask some more. But the more I learned, the more questions I had. Every time I thought I had enough information, I discovered that there was still more to learn! Every pose could be taken deeper, so there was never really an endpoint. There was no final answer. When questions have no answers, we're left to turn to our faith. But what if we question that, too? What if what happens also makes us question our faith? Grief requires a lot of faith, but that doesn't mean we stop asking questions. Even if we believe there is a place where he's gone and a higher purpose to what's happened, we still want to know where he is and why he's there. We still want him back. Advertisement I didn't know the practice of yoga required any sort of faith. In fact, up until the day I first stepped into the yoga studio, I hadn't really given my faith much thought. I had been away from it for a long time. But then as I practiced my questions grew larger than just the ones about the poses. I'm not sure why moving on the mat makes me wonder about where I am and why things happen, but that's what happens. Soon I started listening in on the conversations that take place in the nooks and crannies of the studio, the ones before and after class and sometimes on the sidewalk outside. These conversations were all about energy and our subtle bodies, about our chakras and our spirit. My instructors tell me it's all about the energy. They say we are all made up of energy. "I didn't even know there was such a thing as energy in me," I told them. "Yes you did," they said. "You just didn't have the words for it." So now I have the words. Now I know that inside all of us is something called prana, or energy. And when we practice, our prana moves through our chakras, or energy centers. The practice helps shift our energy, and when our energy is flowing well, we are okay physically, emotionally and spiritually. This is how the practice becomes about so much more than where we put our elbows or how we position our feet. But when painful things happen to us, our chakras get blocked and our energy gets stuck. And we have to practice grieving for our energy to flow again. The loss of a loved one reaches deep into our chakras. It impacts our sense of family (the first chakra, or root chakra); our relationships (the second chakra, or sacral chakra); our sense of self (the third chakra, or solar plexus chakra); our hearts (the fourth chakra, or heart chakra); our levels of communication (the fifth chakra, or throat chakra); our intuition (the sixth chakra, or third eye chakra), and our spirituality (the seventh chakra, or crown chakra). Advertisement I think the first step in facing grief is to simply understand that something major has happened. Loss can be like the size of our souls. It's often so big that it's impossible to grasp. We went to a hot yoga class the other night. In our grief, we were seeking the heat. In this healing room, the instructor opened the class with a few words on energy and pain. She spoke about the Hindu gods and their energies. One of them was Shiva, the god with the energy of destruction. Another one was Brahma, the god with the energy of creation. The instructor explained why Shiva is considered the first guru. "Why would a god of destruction be ahead of the god of creation?" she asked. We were poised to practice, so no one had the answer. "Because there is more to learn from destruction than from creation," she said. I don't think she knew that she was speaking to the confusion of our grief. It's confusing to have to learn from pain and suffering. But that's the thing about grief. It's never our choice. We would never choose what happened as the price for whatever it is we are supposed to learn. In our grief, our energy shifts daily. These shifts are incremental, and they are taking place in the places unnoticed, in the nooks and crannies of our bodies and our minds and our spirits. Every day is a practice, and all our questions are the poses. And it's these subtle shifts of energy that have to serve as our answers, because, as with the practice, there just are no final answers. Advertisement I guess in this way everything really is all about the energy. I am the energy inside of me. I am the part of my soul that fills my body. Our souls fill us all to capacity. And this brings me to the biggest question yet, one so big that the answer requires every ounce of faith. The question is: If someone is no longer here, does it really mean that he has left? The 2016 Illinois primaries are now behind us. Although it wasn't fraught with too many surprises, there were a few upsets, affectionately dubbed "proxy races", by the media, in this election. One headline grabber was the 5th district house seat in the Illinois General Assembly. Newcomer Juliana Stratton annihilated incumbent Ken Dunkin at the polls, garnering over 60% of the vote. Unfortunately, Dunkin committed political suicide, by breaking ranks with the Democratic Party on several issues-most directly, going against House Speaker Madigan by voting with Governor Rauner on a key human services bill. What made this a proxy race? Well, that would be the fact that both Governor Rauner, Speaker Madigan, and their interests, contributed just over $5 million dollars in this District race, a starch contrast to the typical war chest of around $100,000. The democratic nod went to Kim Foxx in the State's Attorney race, sweeping away the two-term incumbent Anita Alvarez with 60% of voters taking her to victory, and she's on the brink of making history. If elected in the general election come November, Foxx will be the first African American to hold office as Cook County States Attorney. Advertisement The political climate in Chicago was extraordinarily contentious due to the recent police shooting of Laquan McDonald. The public illustrated much outrage and called on her to resign, based on her 400-day delay of charging the Chicago Police officer responsible for McDonald's death, with his murder. By many accounts, it appears it took a 17 year-old loosing his life in the manner that he did, for people to hold their government officials accountable. In the words of Thomas Jefferson, "When the government fear the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny." This past Tuesday's polls bear witness to what can happen to an elected official when the people are fed up and what change and want it now. Smart money typically bets on the incumbent; but not this go round. Two "established" politicians were asked to see their own way out the door. According to the Cook County Clerk David Orr, typical primary elections have a 25-30 % voter turn out. It's believed the actual voter turnout hovered around the 40% and not to mention, there was a record breaking early voting turnout as well. WASHINGTON, DC - MARCH 22: Republican presidential candidate Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) addresses the bombings in Brussels during remarks March 22, 2016 in Washington, DC. Reports indicate at least 34 people have died and scores more injured in the bombings at the airport and Metro. (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) Today, in response to the tragic Brussels terrorist attacks, Ted Cruz called for the United States to "empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized." Leaving aside the blatant violations of civil and human rights, namely due process, what would that even look like? Try to imagine your local sheriff's department picking and choosing streets to patrol based on the (perceived) religious identity of the residents. It's not a pretty picture. Advertisement And although this comes only one day after Cruz defended his choice of an anti-Muslim conspiracy theorist and hate group leader Frank Gaffney as a national security advisor, this call for securing Muslim neighborhoods marks a new low in Cruz's efforts to marginalize and ostracize Muslims in the United States. It may be a new low, but, unfortunately, it is not unexpected. For years, leading figures in the organized anti-Muslim movement have focused their time and money on stoking fear of Muslims, in hopes that those fears will translate into bigoted public policy. People like Gaffney and Brigitte Gabriel, president of anti-Muslim hate group ACT! For America, have become experts in using broad stereotypes to create distorted images of Muslims living in the United States. Think of the false controversy created around the Islamic Cultural center proposed for lower Manhattan in 2010 (the supposed 'Ground Zero Mosque'), anti-Muslim state legislators introducing anti-Shariah bills to restrict religious freedom, the promulgation of the myth of no-go zones in the UK, and so on. This call to monitor Muslim neighborhoods can only be seen as proof that the work of anti-Muslim activists has been successful. Advertisement That wasn't the only controversial comment Cruz made, adding, that "Our European allies are now seeing what comes of a toxic mix of migrants who have been infiltrated by terrorists and isolated, radical Muslim neighborhoods. He also took the opportunity to renew his calls for an immediate halt to refugees from "countries with a significant al Qaida or ISIS presence" and increased border security at the southern border. He really hit all the anti-Muslim movement's policy points. And in a kind of perverse circular strategy, Cruz ended his Facebook post with some fear stoking of his own. "The days of the United States voluntarily surrendering to the enemy to show how progressive and enlightened we can be are at an end. Our country is at stake." Detained Azerbaijani businessman Reza Zarrab (C) is surrounded by journalists as he arrives at a police center in Istanbul on December 17 ,2013. Turkish police detained more than 20 people including the sons of three cabinet ministers and several high-profile businessmen on December 17 in a probe into alleged bribery and corruption, local media reported. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which boasts of being pro-business, has pledged to root out corruption, a chronic problem in Turkey. AFP PHOTO / OZAN KOSE (Photo credit should read OZAN KOSE/AFP/Getty Images) Yesterday, the United States Department of Justice announced that Reza Zarrab, 33, an Iranian-Turkish businessman was arrested in Miami for conspiring to evade U.S. sanctions against Iran, money laundering and bank fraud. The indictment which was unsealed in the Southern District of New York against Reza Zarrab and other two Iranians claim that the defendants were engaged in hundreds of millions of dollars-worth of transactions on behalf of the government of Iran and other Iranian entities, which were barred by U.S. sanctions, laundering the proceeds of those illegal transactions and defrauding several financial institutions by concealing the true nature of these transactions. Advertisement The arrest of Reza Zarrab in the U.S yesterday, may cause very important political consequences in Turkey. On December 17, Turkish law enforcement officers raided several houses of prominent figures linked to Erdogan's government. Among the detainees, the three sons of Turkish ministers were also included. During the police operation, $4.5 million in cash packed in shoe boxes in the house of the chief executive of a state-run bank, Halkbank, was seized; another $750,000 along with a money-counting machine in the bedroom of a government minister's son. All of the other fifty two people detained during the police operations were in various ways connected with Erdogan and his ruling Justice and Development Party. The central figure of the corruption case was, Reza Zarrab, who in the indictment, was accused of bribing ministers in the Turkish Government as well. Erdogan declared that it was a coup attempt to his government. The very first things the then Prime Minister Erdogan were to dismiss the Istanbul police chief and other prominent police officers and remove all the public prosecutors leading the corruption case. His government fired all the prosecutors and police officers during a witch hunt as a revenge. Some of the prosecutors even fled the country. Advertisement Erdogan believed that he himself was the target of the corruption case as well. What the Turkish prosecutors and police officers discovered were exactly the very same things that FBI and American federal prosecutor has discovered. The Turkish public prosecutors had discovered that Reza Zarrab was the link between Erdogan government and Iran through the hundreds of millions of dollars of transactions as part of a scheme to evade U.S sanctions. The formula was very simple. In order to bypass sanctions and international banking system, Iran was made an offer to be paid in gold through a gold account in return to Turkey's gas and oil payments instead of foreign currency. While many Turkish banks reluctant to get involved, Erdogan Government utilized a state-run Halkbank for the transactions. According to the speculations, Iran's some $14 billion were vaporized as bribes and commissions during the gold trade scheme with Turkey. That's one of the most important reasons that Reza Zarrab's boss, Babek Zencani was sentenced to death for corruption only two weeks ago in Iran. He was accused of withholding billions in oil revenue channelled through his companies. Reza Zarrab knows highly powerful Turkish names who vaporized this huge of amount of money during this illegal trade. Advertisement Ben Arnon (BA): Is there a particular photograph that stands out as your proudest photograph. If so, why? Peter Turnley (PT): I'm often asked that question and the absolute truth is no. I feel very fortunate that I made a point at an early age to meet a whole group of photographers who were a reflection not only of a single great photograph that they had made but whose life's work represented what the French like to call an oeuvre, or a body of work. My heroes were people like Andre Kertesz, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Doisneau, W. Eugene Smith, Robert Frank, Edouard Boubat, and many others. And what always struck me about all these people was that while they each had made many iconic images it was more what their whole global body of work represented to me. This notion that every photograph that one makes, every moment that one stops, is part of a stairway leading to something greater. Every photograph is a step. So I've always conceived photography from the very outset as this opportunity to be, not only a diary and an autobiography of my life, but also a reflection of a world that I would want to live in. A projection of a world I want to embrace. So I don't have an easy answer to the question is there one photograph. I would say I've had the incredible opportunity to be present at many of the world's most defining moments over the last four decades: the fall of the Berlin Wall, all the revolutions in Eastern Europe in 1989, the liberation of Nelson Mandela from 27 years in prison, the end of apartheid in South Africa, the pro-democracy mass protests in Tiananmen Square in China in 1989, the end of of the Soviet Union and the transition to Russia as we know it today, and on and on. I've been present at most of the world's wars over the last 30 years. Often moments that I recall the most are not moments of necessarily great drama but moments where I came across an individual or group of people, often times unknown to the public, whose example of courage and decency and poetry and grace really touched me and gave me a kind of a guiding light for a better way of life. But, all of that said, potentially one of the most singular exciting moments of my photographic life was witnessing Nelson Mandela walk out of prison after 27 years. I made, with a small group of other photographers, the very first photographs of his walking out of prison. And that was an absolutely glorious moment that will always stay with me. BA: Talk to me about Cuba for a bit. Your exhibition is in Havana. You've just published a book on Cuba and your photographs from the island. Tell me about your relationship with Cuba. PT: One of the themes that has so often driven my most important life decisions has been the theme of grace. I found grace on the inner city streets of my hometown of Fort Wayne, Indiana. I found grace, without a doubt, when I moved to Paris. I found grace when I moved to Harlem in New York City in 2004. I first made the trip to Cuba in 1989 with Mikhail Gorbachev. Ironically my first trip to Cuba was flying on a plane with Mikhail Gorbachev for a state visit with Fidel Castro in 1989. And I've now been traveling often to Cuba for the last 30 years. I've had this kind of modus operandi that dates back to my early days working as a photographer for Newsweek of always wanting to try to ascertain what the big stories of the moment are that are going to fundamentally affect the history and the geopolitics of the world. Five years ago, I just had this sense, in very much the same way I had a feeling about Eastern Europe in 1989 before the fall of the Berlin Wall. I had a sense that Cuba was going to be one of the next fundamental world stories of geopolitics and history. I feel grateful that at this point I was correct. This is, without a doubt, an amazing and fundamental moment in the history of Cuba. One of my greatest life's honors was to be invited by the most important museum of Cuba to offer my work, which is a visual discussion of the world over the last 40 years. Though I've had exhibitions in other places I have never had a response to my photographs so collectively the way in which not only the Cuban people, but also visitors from all over the world, have responded to this exhibition. In Cuba it's different. Every day I walk into this exhibition people from all the world come to me directly, often with tears in their eyes. Voices are often trembling and I can see their emotion and tell that the visual discussion they have just entered into has really touched their life. This leaves me with an amazing feeling of gratitude and fulfillment but also a tremendous sense of pride, that I can be part of this wonderful moment in the life of Cuba. Every time I go to Cuba I leave with this powerful sense of having been offered a lesson in life. Almost categorically across the board anyone who visits Cuba from overseas comes away feeling that the people they met were among the most beautiful, graceful, joyful, kind, rich, and human people they've ever met anywhere. I think a lot of people have this sense that this is just somehow kind of organic and Caribbean and maybe even somewhat genetic. I think they miss a really important point. Even if we accept that there are things that need to be changed in Cuba, and there are certainly things that are broken, it is important to recognize that the fundamental ideas of the Cuban revolution - the ideology of the Cuban revolution - has had tremendous impact on the cultural behavior of Cuban people. Cubans look at the world through a prism of living as part of a collectivity, a community. They don't look at the world as being only an individual. They embrace the notion of their family, of their neighborhood, of their community, of their city, and their country. I think it would be very difficult to ever meet a Cuban who is not profoundly proud of their Cuban-ness, of being Cuban. In Cuba I've witnessed at least five times when an older person falls down, people run from all directions to help pick them up. There's a sense of collective responsibility for each other that is really beautiful. Again, I just want to underline that I absolutely love the spirit of Cuba. Throughout my life as a photojournalist I've thrown myself at many of the world's most difficult dynamics. I was present in Rwanda shortly after the Rwandan genocide. I witnessed a major famine in Somalia in 1992 where more than 200 people were dying per day of starvation in a certain village. I've witnessed the tragedy of war in Afghanistan, Iraq, Chechnya, Haiti, South Africa, Kosovo, Bosnia, the Persian Gulf, and on and on. And in the Middle East, in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and all over the world. But in the places I choose to live and work frequently I've tried to, when I can, expose my heart to places that uplift me and that are examples of life at its best. Without a doubt Cuba is this lamppost for me today. I absolutely love the people of Cuba and I always look tremendously forward to returning. BA: To me, Cuba and Havana, in particular, is a photographer's paradise, for many different reasons - the people, the colors, the architecture, the textures, the old American cars. What are your favorite locations in the world to shoot photography? PT: When I'm in Cuba I love to walk. I walk long hours and I like to walk by myself. I adore the the human encounters that I have on a daily basis with people. I think that it's difficult to meet anyone, particularly a photographer, that returns from Cuba not having been simply delighted by the visual landscape of Havana and the rest of Cuba, including the countryside. In many ways the country has lived within this sort of time warp since the revolution in the late 1950s. The American blockade has unfortunately isolated Cuba in such a way that the country hasn't had access to a lot of the material and technological evolution the rest of the world has known. We do often see this fascination for old cars. The quantity of amazing and fascinating, beautiful old cars in Cuba is just mind blowing. The architecture is also very beautiful and, even when it is occasionally in a very degregated state it still has this great notion of visual authenticity and uniqueness. I think something that impacts a lot of people visiting Cuba, particularly photographers, is that since we live in a world today of globalization, for better or worse, everything looks the same. I think technology and globalization has impacted the world in so many ways to create this form of homogenization where everything looks the same. It often looks like it's made in a box and I think we all are starving for authenticity and individuality, and I don't mean that it in a collective human sense. I mean that more in a way of expression. You find that in Cuba. Cuba is a place where everything just doesn't all look the same. It has this very unique character about it. People dress differently. They have tremendous personal expression in the choice of clothes that they wear, in the cars, in the architecture, in the way they move, the music they listen to, and I think everyone who visits Cuba absolutely loves that. I think beyond that one of the challenges for a communicator - for a photographer - is to go beyond stereotypes. I've been now photographing very avidly the life of Cuba for the last 30 years and particularly the last five years. This last fall I self-published a book that is beautifully printed, comes with a slip case, and all copies are signed. The book is called Cuba: A Grace of Spirit and is available on my website. The guiding force for my selection of photographs for this book was that every photograph had to, in one way or another, go beyond the stereotype of simply a visual discussion of old themes like the fascination of old cars and architecture, but had to actually penetrate somewhere much deeper to be a reflection and discussion of the incredible spirit of the Cuban people. I think this is the most overriding powerful aspect of life in Cuba today - the spirit. I also think that as I get older, I realize that I don't believe in the notion of objectivity. I don't know what that word means. Everytime we say something, the way we line words up in our oral expression is a choice. Everytime we put pen to paper, the way we write, the organization of our words, these are choices. Every time we click the shutter of a camera it's a choice. There is nothing objective. The word 'objective' has no meaning. What gives each of us power in our expression is personality and our own personal choice. I believe very much in fairness. I believe in honesty. But I don't know what objectivity means. So I don't think as we assess life experience that there is such a thing as an objective appraisal, but if I was going to try to assess what I have most fundamentally learned over the last 60 years it is that what I have witnessed to be the most defining force in life is spirit. Much more than any aspect of material life, spirit seems to really define all. It is how people approach life. It is what they make of each day of their life. I actually think that the work of my early hero, Henri Cartier-Bresson, has in many ways been majorly misunderstood, even by museum curators. There's this constant discussion of the role of geometry, of lines, of composition, of light in his work. And I don't deny in any way that's all there. But, in my mind, what is most fundamental about the body of the life's work of Henri Cartier-Bresson is that for him to have seen what he saw and to choose to stop those moments and to frame them, he had to have a tremendous faith and conviction that life can be interesting. Otherwise he never would've been open to seeing the things and feeling the things that he chose to stop and show. If you think about it some people walk out of their door every day convinced that today's going to be a day just like the one before. Other people choose to walk out the door with the idea that at any moment their life could change, and I'm quite sure that is how Cartier-Bresson approached the world. That at every moment there was something interesting that could be noticed and that is what is most fundamental about his life. To me that is so much a reflection of spirit, almost bordering on a notion of faith, but certainly spirit. BA: Today there is more producing, consuming, and sharing of photographs than ever before in the history of the world. What are your thoughts about the future of photography? Are we at a place right now where the craft of photography is devalued and not really appreciated or are we experiencing a golden age of photography where more people than ever before take photographs and are interested in photographs? PT: I would have a tendency to say that, if we accept as a premise that photography is first and foremost about sharing, that this is probably the most exciting time in the history of photography. Never before have we had a chance to share so widely and so quickly to so many people. To touch others, to share with others, something we see, feel, perceive, observe. So in that way I'm very optimistic and very excited. I also think that I'm of an age where, at the age of 60, I had the great fortune of working as a photojournalist in the real heyday of the traditional model of analog media publication expression. I worked with Newsweek from 1984 to 2001 and I had the great opportunity to travel to over 90 countries around the world and each time I would have a cover of the magazine which I did 43 times. I had this knowledge and sense that close to 30 million people around the world would see my photographs and that was beautiful. At the same time I never got any feedback. I didn't know who saw my pictures. I didn't know what they thought of them. I don't want to be uniquely pollyannish. Without a doubt, in my own lifetime, the transition from this analog to digital world has impacted many of the models of the livelihood of photography. But still I'm not pessimistic. I regret that budgets have shrunk at magazines, newspapers and print publications so that staffs of photographers have largely decreased and declined. I am very aware of how that moment of change has created hardship and the necessity of transition for many people. At the same time I'm still extremely optimistic. To me at this moment in time, the fundamental core aspect, aside from making powerful images that touch the hearts of others and that represent personal expression, is the notion of building a community of people that are interested and follow our work. And the opportunity to create this kind of community with social media - with Facebook, and Instagram, and having one's own blog - is just tremendous. I look today to certain people like the young man, Brandon Stanton, who has the site Humans of New York, as a real lightpost. Here's a person whose daily work touches millions of people across social media and this has enabled him to publish books and to continue to do the work that he wants to do. I have been incredibly energized in my own work life by my opportunity to connect with people through social media and through online publications which is translated into the opportunity to also touch people by leading workshops around the world, by having literally thousands of people acquire signed prints of my work, by self-publishing two books of my work. BA: I think it's very important, regardless of what we do in life, to make an impact, whether we're a photographer, teacher, businessperson, or anything else. A single photograph can make a huge impact on people's emotions and on the world. Do you think it's easier for a photographer to make a big impact today because it's so easy to distribute and to share, or is there such a proliferation of images that it's hard to cut through the clutter and was it easier back in the day - 30 years ago - when there weren't as many photographs out in the ether? PT: I'm not overly concerned with the notion of a proliferation of images. While I love great writing and I love a beautiful choice of words and great oratory, I'm dismayed that while sight and vision are such a fundamental aspect of every human's life experience, that young people never formally study seeing in school. We all learn how to read and write but if you asked people if they've ever had a class in seeing - how to use the God-given gift of sight - almost no one has ever had a class in seeing. I think that would be a great dynamic subject to introduce in the formal elementary school education for children. I'm really excited that while we don't have these studies of sight, I do think that the generalized embrace of visual expression young people have today with smartphones and social media is terrific. It used to be, say in 1980, if I turned to the person next to me and asked them anything about photography, 9 out of 10 people probably rarely made a photograph and if they did it would be for a family snapshot. Today if you turn to the person next to you he or she makes photographs all the time, is very excited about the images they're making and sharing with others, and to me this all represents a tremendous opportunity for anyone who is really serious about visual expression. More than ever before there's a world of people that are very receptive to powerful visual content. So I see overall all this as very positive. I will say I think as I look at Instagram and some of these kinds of engines of visual expression, I might be a bit critical that too often today it feels to me that there is a sense that it's enough to sort of aim the camera at something and sort of get a glimpse of things. People have become quite sophisticated often with composition, with filling up the frame with elements, and light, and color and juxtaposition of elements. What I think too often lacks in this age, when I'm looking at a newsfeed of a lot of photographs, is a real notion of heart. Or a human connection with the world that one is around. And the sharing of a story that has real direct human impact and feeling. Those are elements of a great photograph that mean a lot to me. I would encourage young people thinking about a life in photography to study as many things other than photography as possible because I think their vision would always be a function of what they know about the world and not photography. It makes me sad when I hear that so many young people are devoting entire university educations to the study of photography. I think there would be almost nothing one can do that would be more helpful than to study languages. Languages are such an incredible opening of doors for one's life and in photography. I would encourage people to study Spanish, French, Arabic, and certainly English if they are not a native English speaker. I would encourage people to study history, political science, economics, art history, and to have as broad a background in the liberal arts as possible. I would say nothing has opened up my opportunity in life to encounter people as much as language. It has opened up so many doors. I still wake up in the morning and, after all these years, want to think about Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother" photograph and the way in which that photograph asks so many questions and represents an enigma, but there's a human heart and an emotion in that photograph that stirs me and stays with me. I don't only admire its composition. It goes to a level much deeper than that and literally changes my life and wants me to always know more. A nontrivial portion of online comments are going to be unconstructive and/or offensive. Especially when a columnist writes something provocative, a lot of people are going to be unhappy about it, and many of them, bolstered by the relative anonymity and psychological distance the Internet affords, will respond with vitriol. That said, there are actually a lot of thoughtful readers out there, and even angry responses can sometimes contain good points. Authors who take the time to consider the feedback they receive - to parse the constructive commentary from the trash - can improve their arguments and demonstrate that they've really thought through the fairness and implications of what they've written. Unfortunately, many authors don't do that. And during this election cycle, this failure in self-reflection has been particularly prevalent among prominent Hillary Clinton supporters. To illustrate what I mean, I'm going to focus on two columnists, Paul Krugman and Michael Tomasky, who share a few characteristics: Advertisement They've got wide readership. Krugman is much more well-known and writes for the New York Times, but Tomasky has a decent following in his own right; he's a columnist for the Daily Beast and also edits Democracy: A Journal of Ideas. They routinely (and fairly) excoriate Republicans for advocating for illiberal ideas and/or distorting the truth. They've written multiple pieces in support of Clinton that express illiberal ideas and/or distort the truth - that is, they've done exactly the type of thing they frequently ding Republicans for doing. Instead of addressing any of numerous valid criticisms of their pro-Clinton articles, they've cast all of their critics as "Bernie Bros" who can't possibly have anything legitimate to say. In "An Ode to My Berniebro Trolls," Tomasky asserts that there is "nothing" even potentially objectionable about his previous piece, "Time for Bernie Sanders to Get in Line," except that perhaps the title was an oversell of his main point: Sanders is "going to lose" and should therefore "lay off the attacks on Hillary Clinton, the Goldman Sachs speeches and all the rest." Krugman, for his part, has long complained of being subjected to the "Bernie Bro treatment," which seems to mean that he's been called "a corrupt tool of the oligarchy." He has recently claimed that the Sanders campaign itself is "getting pretty ugly in a way the Clinton [campaign] hasn't." If Krugman really believes that "[g]ood ideas don't have to be sold with fairy dust" and that "getting real is or ought to be a core progressive value," he isn't currently putting his money where his mouth is. And Tomasky's insistence that he's "open to hearing a smart argument against [his] position" would be a lot more believable if he hadn't thus far ignored those that have been offered. If Krugman and Tomasky are serious about "getting real," they will begin to acknowledge and address the following points: The "Bernie Bro" narrative is "a Cheap Campaign Tactic Masquerading as Journalism." Everyone who has made this point recognizes that some Bernie Sanders supporters make sexist, racist, and/or otherwise offensive comments. We condemn those comments. We also request that Clinton supporters stop using a sexist label themselves, one that, when it isn't being applied to women or people who don't even support Bernie Sanders, is marginalizing the millions of women (and people of color; the "Bernie Bro" is often cast as an angry White guy) who are staunch proponents of the Sanders campaign (Sanders is actually way more popular than Clinton among young women and, increasingly, among younger Black and Latino voters). As a recent study confirmed about sexism, Internet harassment is a major issue but is mostly not from "the left in general or Sanders supporters in particular." There are numerous examples of Hillary Clinton supporters who make sexist, racist, and homophobic comments as well. Whether you're subject to such comments is both a function of which candidate you support and how much privilege you have (women and people of color who support any candidate are much more likely to be harassed than White men like Krugman and Tomasky or half-Indian men who are perceived to be White like me, for instance). So let's not go around calling people "Hillary Elites" or "Hillary Straights" or "Bernie Bros." Instead, let's condemn harassment without opportunistically twisting the truth about it and focus our energy on substantive debates about issues. The Sanders campaign's critiques of Clinton's record and platform have been significantly fairer than the Clinton campaign's misleading and/or untrue attacks on Sanders. Advertisement The only specific "attack" on Clinton that Tomasky actually attributes to Sanders is his call for Clinton to release the transcripts of three speeches Goldman Sachs paid her $225,000 (each) to make during the past few years. But Sanders' critique here is completely fair (as is what Tomasky calls Sanders' "anti-Rahm Emanuel tincture"). Clinton has repeatedly claimed that the money she receives from Wall Street doesn't influence her; the American people have a right to know how her remarks to bankers comport with her professed commitment to regulate them (though how her comments could possibly look as bad as her continued refusal to share them is anyone's guess). Sanders has a very strong track record as a legislator and executive. Tomasky incorrectly argues that Sanders is an ineffective legislator, citing a lack of cosponsors on his bills as evidence that he doesn't work well with Congress. Tomasky omits, however, that Sanders recently negotiated a bipartisan bill "to expand veterans' access to health care" with John McCain, a bill which is widely viewed as a huge success. Sanders' Republican colleagues, despite their disagreements with him, liked working with Sanders and praised him for his integrity and work ethic, while Democratic Senators said that, without Sanders, they "don't think [they] would have gotten [the bill] done." Tomasky also fails to mention that Sanders has mastered the art of adding power-balancing amendments to larger bills; his accomplishments include (but are not limited to) securing funding for community health centers in the Affordable Care Act, blocking imports made with child labor, and increasing transparency about one-time government officials' subsequent employment opportunities. Advertisement Sanders' record as mayor of Burlington also shows that he's an excellent executive. He has a history of setting big goals, fighting for them, and eventually working out the best deal he believes he can. The citizens of Vermont love Sanders for a reason - they know his record a lot better than Krugman and Tomasky do, and it's a damn good one. If anything, I'd prefer Sanders were much less into what Krugman calls "hardheaded realism" than he actually is. That's because Krugman is wrong about how to make change; we are served best not by "accepting half loaves as being better than none," but by reframing issues and forcing policymakers' hands. As climate expert Bill McKibben explains, major accomplishments like gay marriage and civil rights legislation weren't driven by leaders all too willing to compromise; they were driven by "big, impassioned movement[s] that cleverly changed the zeitgeist." Sanders gets this dynamic more than any major presidential candidate in recent memory, and that's why his "political revolution" carries so much potential to change this country's politics. All the evidence suggests Sanders is a more "electable" general election candidate than Clinton. Both Krugman and Tomasky write off the head-to-head polling that has consistently shown Sanders to outperform Clinton in hypothetical general election matchups with Republicans. Tomasky argues that "a billion-dollar onslaught" from the GOP, targeted at the "tax increases he's proposing," would tank Sanders. Yet as I've explained before, the GOP would also mercilessly attack Clinton, and the idea that those attacks would work better against Sanders is entirely inconsistent with other polling trends. As shown below, Clinton's favorability ratings have been steadily declining, while Sanders' have continued to rise as voters have become more familiar with him. As I've also explained before and the graphs below show, Sanders does significantly better than Clinton among two demographic groups key to winning a general election: young people and Independents. Voters in these groups - unlike voters in Clinton's key constituencies - may very well abandon the Democrats if Clinton is the party's nominee. I wouldn't personally recommend basing your vote on perceived electability, but if that's what you're planning to do, the evidence indicates that you should vote for Sanders. Advertisement There are substantial, important differences between Sanders and Clinton. These differences are in some respects much larger than the differences between Clinton and various Republicans. Krugman argues that the differences between Sanders and Clinton "are trivial compared with the yawning gulf with Republicans." Ironically, the context for those comments - an article about financial policy and donations - provides a compelling counterexample: Wall Street does not like Sanders, but the industry seems to like Clinton more than many of the Republican candidates, as the graph below shows. And though many of them likely agree with Krugman that the differences between Clinton and the Republicans are larger than those between Sanders and Clinton, numerous smart people and policy experts whose existence Krugman ignores believe both that Sanders' Wall Street plans are much better than Clinton's and that Sanders is far more likely than Clinton to surround himself with a staff that will execute a power-balancing policy vision. In light of all these facts, Tomasky's argument that Democrats should refrain from criticizing Hillary Clinton (who he thinks will be the Democratic nominee), like a similar argument from Markos Moulitsas at Daily Kos, is a hell of a lot scarier to people like me than a Donald Trump presidency. This undemocratic idea elevates party tribalism over good policymaking and "winning" over holding politicians accountable. It presents a major obstacle to the change the world's most disadvantaged populations desperately need, change which perpetual endorsements of lesser-of-two-evilsism will never deliver. Such a misguided notion of "political pragmatism undermines progressive goals," as I've argued before. Sanders still has a legitimate shot to win the Democratic primary. Half the country still hasn't cast their ballots and Bernie Sanders isn't all that far away from the pledged delegate targets he'd need to win the nomination; Tomasky is wrong to assert that "Sanders can't win the delegate race now." Yes, winning will be difficult, but there's still a clear path for him to do so, and as Sanders' historic upset win in Michigan shows, an election isn't over until the voters actually cast their ballots. Krugman thinks an extended primary isn't "good for the Democratic party;" I, on the other hand, think the Clinton coronation he and the Democratic party Establishment has been pushing is a whole lot worse, as it flies in the face of a lot of what the party is supposed to stand for. All of that said, Krugman and Tomasky are right about one thing: Sanders supporters should avoid the reflexive attribution "of foul and malevolent motives" to Clinton supporters. Advertisement I know a lot of awesome Clinton supporters who do great work. People support presidential candidates for a variety of reasons, and instead of jumping to conclusions about the character of those who disagree with us, we should listen to those reasons and evaluate them on their merits. In fact, I'd urge everyone to extend the same courtesy to Bernie Sanders supporters, to Jill Stein supporters, to those who refuse to vote, and yes, even to people who plan to vote for one of the Republican candidates. We should consider the possibility that others have thought through their electoral choices and have entirely legitimate reasons for making them. At the same time, ethics and evidence matter, and it's perfectly fine - in fact, it's essential - to hold voters accountable for attending to them. If you say your top priority is raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, for example, you can't possibly defend a vote for a Republican this year. You also can't really explain a vote for Clinton, which is why Sanders supporters were justifiably furious when the Service Employees International Union endorsed Clinton in November. I suspect that Krugman and Tomasky don't share all of my values and priorities. We agree on a lot - I enjoy their writing outside of election season and appreciate much of what they advocate for - but they seem much more comfortable with the policy status quo than I am. I reject the idea that public policy must inevitably leave millions of people behind; they very well may not. In Tomasky's words: "Fine. I can appreciate that." If more voters share Krugman and Tomasky's values than share mine, so be it. The problem, however, is that Krugman and Tomasky haven't been writing about value disagreements. Instead, rather than acknowledging and responding to the evidence and logical arguments that contradict their claims, they've continued to pen inaccurate and/or highly misleading articles for popular media outlets. Is it any wonder that, in response to such widely read misinformation, they've received angry responses from Sanders supporters? My best guess is that Krugman and Tomasky are suffering from a severe case of confirmation bias: they're convinced that Clinton is the best option and have developed tunnel vision to avoid the cognitive dissonance that actually considering feedback might bring about. But that doesn't make what they're doing okay. And given how often they assign "foul and malevolent motives" to Republicans who write fallacious things, they'd do well to reflect on why it is that their readers have recently been doing the same thing to them. Advertisement (NOTE: 'Confucianism' is a misnomer, replaced in this essay by 'Ruism,' which refers to the tradition whose most famous practitioner was Confucius. The word 'Ruist' is both an adjective and a noun, either describing something about the tradition or referring to a practitioner of the tradition. 'Ru', however, because of its compliance with the pinyin form of the Chinese character , is a more professional term solely denoting a practitioner of Ruism.) Ruism is frequently introduced as a tradition which is too this-worldly to care much about what happens after death. To a certain degree, this is true. Ruism teaches that there is no afterlife, no final judgement, no Paradise or Hell, and no reincarnation. When people are born, this is only a contractive form of the movement of the cosmic matter-energy called Qi (); when people die, this energy dissipates, and accordingly people's lives lose their agency. Accordingly, life and death is just one embodiment of the constantly contracting (yang) and dissipating (yin) natural processes of cosmic change. As a consequence, nothing is supernatural, nothing is uncanny. However, this does not mean that Ruism does not have its own systematic view of death. Neither does it imply that a Ru cannot live a peaceful life up until his or her last moments. Let me relate some stories which will provide a glimpse of how a Ru dies: Advertisement When Wang Yang-ming turned 57, he retired from government because of disease. He went back to Nan-an, and one of his students, Zhou Ji, came to visit and then took care of him. One day Wang announced to his student: "I will pass away." Zhou wept and asked: "Do you have any last words?" Wang smiled: "Since this heart of mine is bright and luminous, why do I need to say anything?" (). After these words, Wang closed his eyes and died (From The Complete Works of Wang Yang-ming). Wang Gen, a prominent student of Wang Yang-ming, died at the age of 58. It was said that before his death, there had been a light dimly shining throughout his sickroom at night. Because of this, Wang Gen murmured to himself: "Will I die?" In the next morning, when gathering his students and sons, Wang Gen was asked about how to arrange his funeral. Wang Gen told his sons: "Since you know how to study, what additional concerns could I have?" (). Then Wang Gen told his students: "You have brothers such as my sons who know how to study, do I need to have any further concerns? After my death, you only need to continue doing good deeds. Human beings suffer from the departure of their beloved. However, as long as you friends can continually meet and learn from each other, your lives will be benefited, and your learning will advance." No other word was said. Wang Gen then closed his eyes and died. His tender and rosy complexion did not change until his internment (From The Collected Works of Wang Xin-zhai). Luo Ru-fang, another prominent Neo-Ruist, died at the age of 73. On the first morning of September of that year, after Luo had washed his hands and face, and combed his hair, he walked out and sat in his appropriate position in the main room. He required his students and children to drink and toast one another, and after this, he cupped his hands and bowed to them: "Now I will leave." People asked him to stay for another day, and Luo agreed. At noon on September 2nd, Luo dressed up, sat down in the proper position, and died.From The Collected Works of Wang Jin-xi. Advertisement Although these events may have been recorded in a somewhat prettied-up way by the deceased's students, we can nevertheless discern the key message: a Ru can continue to live an extremely peaceful life even in the face of his own death. So, how can this be possible? In my view, each of these Ruist deaths is a good exemplar of Confucius' teaching: "If one hears the Dao in the morning, one can die at ease in the evening" (Analects, 4:8). In other words, if you know the truth of the Dao of Heaven (), as well as the truth of the Dao of Human Beings (), and furthermore, if you have tried to continually live out these truths in your everyday life, then at the end of your life, you will come to appreciate that you have in fact tried your very best to fulfill your most valuable potentiality: that of becoming fully human. At that point you can die without any regret, and at peace. According to Ruism, the truth of the Dao of Heaven () is that the entire universe is a constantly creative process called 'Tian' (, Heaven). Tian creates a process of dynamic harmony, endowing energy and creativity to all creatures within Tian, in all places and at all times, by means of a method called 'wu-wei' (, effortless action). In this view, the movement of cosmic matter-energy is the manifestation of Tian's creativity. However, Tian's creation is neither anthropomorphic nor anthropocentric. For, natural disasters on this little blue planet can be considered 'disasters' only from a human perspective. From the perspective of Tian, a flood, as one of millions of processes within Tian, has its own beauty, a beauty which is not inferior to that of, for example, the human houses being destroyed. In the same way, from Tian's point of view, the HIV virus has a value which is not less lovable than that of the human bodies which have been infected by the virus. Therefore, the axiologically transcendent and non-anthropomorphic character of Tian entails that human beings have their own intrinsic needs and particular responsibilities for the manifestation of Tian's creation in their own human way. In a Ruist sense, this is called 'making great the way of Tian by making great the way of Humans' () (Analects 15:28). In concrete terms, it is an endless process leading to the realization of the conditions of dynamic harmony among all concerned cosmic beings, but based upon their particular diverse values measured primarily from a human perspective. For example, if floods bring disaster, let's build dams, and also, let's refrain from the excessive exploitation of forests whose loss leads to excessive flooding. This of course will not mean that we give up employing natural resources such as wood and coal used in maintaining human civilization. In this sense, the targeted harmony under human management is a humanistic and anthropo-cosmic harmony, which stands firmly upon the intrinsic needs, interests and values of humanity in general, but also of course maintains its distinctive cosmic extension. If we examine the Dao which rendered Confucius willing to die in the evening after he had heard it in the morning, we will realize that there are, among all the world's religions, not one which emphasizes 'cultural immortality' more powerfully than Ruism. This is because, for Ruism, to be human is not only a fact; it is even more a value, which can and must be continually realized human generation after human generation. Thus, one's personal contribution to the continual flourishing of the entirety of human civilization against the cosmic backdrop of the constantly creative process of Tian, will become the ultimate criterion for giving an account to the meaning of an individual human life and for judging the value of a human person. The phrase, 'To live a meaningful and valuable human life, and then, to die but not (to culturally) decay' (), is a distinctly Ruist way of living in the shadow of one's own death. Advertisement In particular, the Ruist tradition extols three ways for achieving cultural immortality: to establish moral worth (), to establish good works (), and to establish good words(). 'To establish words' means to say the right words and writing good books. This is how intellectuals succeed in preventing their deaths from cultural decay. 'To establish works' means to help resolve impending issues for human society at large. For example, President Obama succeeded in rescuing the American economy from 'the Great Recession.' Obama's presidency will therefore, in my view, be remembered in a positive way by the American people. In contrast to words and works, 'moral worth' (de ) is of utmost importance for human beings who are trying to avoid cultural decay at their death. De (), usually translated by the word 'virtue,' is the practical moral influence or moral charisma of a virtuous, noble person (). A virtuous, noble person, by means of his or her well-cultivated deeds and words, sets a moral norm which will motivate other people to achieve the same Ruist moral ideal - the creation of the conditions for dynamic harmony - within different contexts. Among these three ways, establishing moral worth is foundational because, according to Ruism, without a solid moral underpinning, people's works and words are ultimately groundless. On the other hand, Ruism promotes the 'unity of knowledge and action' so, saying the right words without actually doing good deeds, must be considered of lesser value than doing good deeds on the basis of right knowledge. In this way, human beings need to try to achieve cultural immortality in this order: firstly, try to say the right words, then, try to do good works, and finally, try to embody moral worth. According to the tradition, only two Ruists throughout the entirety of Chinese history have accomplished these three ways of cultural immortality: Confucius and Wang Yang-ming. They both wrote great books, formed their own schools consisting of thousands of students, served in high governmental positions and helped to resolve impending issues for their states and, what is most important, they never stopped learning and cultivating themselves so as to set great moral examples. And by doing so, they exerted a huge influence upon future generations. Understood in this way, it will be no surprise to hear that Wang Yang-ming and his followers could die such peaceful deaths. In the words of another prominent Neo-Ruist philosopher, Zhang Zai, the death-consciousness of these Ruists could be stated as: 'When I was alive, I was devoted to the mission of becoming fully human among humans; now that I am dying, I feel content with myself' (). Bubbles In Clear Water World Water Day is on Tuesday, March 22nd and you may be thinking to yourself, "Good gosh, another day? Why does water need a day? The bloody earth is covered in the stuff!" Well first off, if French Bread, Bavarian Crepes, and Chips and Dip have their own days then surely water can make the cut to have its own day. I mean it's not even 'Crepes' day... but Bavarian crepes day... And if that's not enough how about this... ... 663 million people are still living without clean water. That's 19 times the entire population of Canada. That's 2 times the population of the United States. Insert complicated statement about stacking 663 million of something on one another and how it goes to the moon and back x times. Regardless of how you want to quantify it, it's... oh... about 663 million times more than it should be. Better yet, than it could be. Because it's a (relatively) simple problem to solve. There's no shortage of water and we have some great people and organizations already making progress. Look at charity: water for example. Now, I've long been an admirer of charity: water. As a 'charity nerd' with a passion for international development, it's been amazing to see how the organization has grown, goes about its work, and the massive impact they are having in the world. This year, charity: water will turn 10. And in those 10 years, with the help of over 1 million people, they've funded over 19,000 projects and helped millions of people get the clean water they need to live and survive. And yet... Advertisement 663 million people are still living without clean water. That's why this World Water Day, charity: water is launching their latest and biggest campaign, #fightdirty. Because as great as their last 10 years have been, and they aren't the only ones doing great work in the world of clean water, there are still... 663 million people are still living without clean water. (Use password "fight" to watch the video if required.) But Why Is Water So Important? There are many smarter people than me who can better articulate the case for water as a priority for our world and donated dollars, but for me it comes down to this: Clean water is a prerequisite for education and job creation - the two biggest levers in developing and sustaining economies. So without clean water, the impact of education and creating jobs will be limited. Therefore, the sooner we can solve the clean water crisis, the sooner we can make more progress in the areas of education and job creation. Which will mean more progress in developing countries and in advancing our world. Advertisement That's time stolen from young girls for their education. That's time ripped away from women for farming and earning an income. That's time snatched away from mother's for being just that, a mother. It's the saving of time and human capacity that leads to $1 invested in clean water yielding $4-$12 in economic returns. Not bad. And as strong as the logical or rational case for water is, my heart breaks thinking of what life must be like as a 13-year-old girl living in Ethiopia without clean water. What does that mean for your day? What does that mean for your education? What does that mean for your life? So What Can You Do? Give. It's simple, powerful and will make you happy. And just $30 gives clean water to one person. Yes, I'm sure you can make your Facebook profile picture blue or something. You can probably buy something you don't really need and a tiny percentage of it will go to a cause eventually. Or you might be able to 'Like' some post and some company will give $1 they were going to give away anyway. And after all that... Advertisement 663 million people will still be living without clean water. So this World Water Day, give. And you don't have to give to charity: water --although they are awesome and great at what they do--but you should give to a water organization. Today. Right now. Because... 663 million people are still living without clean water. Mexican flag in map Given all the electoral noise surrounding "big beautiful walls" and calls for mass deportations of the alleged rapists and other criminals streaming across the U.S.-Mexico border, it is very easy to lose track of one simple and powerful fact: no relationship affects the United States more than our relationship with Mexico. Mexico and the United States share enormous economic and energy ties, and cooperate on everything from environmental to health issues, tourism to educational exchanges. More than $530 billion in trade moves across the United States' southern border every year, making Mexico one of the United States' top three trading partners. Mexico also remains a critical ally in protecting the United States from transnational threats. To think that America can ensure its security by simply building a wall is naive at best, and dangerous at worst. Instead, it requires a steadfast long-term partnership that centers on strengthening democratic institutions. Advertisement In the United States, Republicans and Democrats have long recognized that partnering with and supporting Mexico is the most strategic approach to achieving U.S. national interests. In 2007 Presidents Bush and Calderon signed the Merida Initiative, a $1.4 billion dollar three-year program that initially focused mostly on combatting drug trafficking and organized crime in Mexico and Central America. The Obama administration inherited these programs, but moved them away from the rhetoric and policies of an unsuccessful "war on drugs" to one advancing citizen security through stronger institutions and a healthy and active civil society. The Obama administration and the State Department under Secretary Hillary Clinton understood Mexico's role as key partner in protecting U.S. national security. They understood that Mexico faces tremendous challenges, and that by helping Mexico improve the strength of its institutions, threats to U.S. security can be mitigated prior to reaching the U.S.-Mexico border. On Clinton's first official visit to Mexico in March 2009, she recognized the United States' shared responsibility for the cartel-fueled violence wracking Mexico that has claimed more than 100,000 lives over the last decade. In her 2010 visit, Clinton shifted U.S.-bilateral relations away from the drug war and towards community building. Expanding on Secretary Clinton's efforts, the United States and Mexico revamped the Merida Initiative along four distinct pillars: 1. Disrupt organized crime, 2. Institutionalize rule of law and improve human rights, 3. Create a twenty-first century border, and 4. Build resilient communities. The initiative has a strong emphasis on institutionalizing rule of law and improving human rights through police, justice, and prison reform. Since 2008, the U.S. Congress has appropriated more than $2.5 billion towards the Merida Initiative. Of that, $1.5 billion has been spent on training and equipping Mexican security forces, bolstering democratic institutions and implementing anti-corruption initiatives, developing resilient societies through community-based socioeconomic programs, and improving cooperation along the U.S.-Mexico border. For example, the U.S.-Mexico partnership is embracing community policing strategies and investing in at-risk youth in border communities like Ciudad Juarez and Tijuana by stimulating education and employment opportunities. Still, Merida is designed to support a strategic U.S.-Mexico partnership so it's important to note that Mexico has invested more than 50 times than the United States in improving its own security; Mexican investment reached nearly $80 billion by 2015. Advertisement Can you imagine living in a world where gender parity meant fighting through child marriage, human trafficking, child labor or a lack of access to education? The picture I'm painting is very real and highlights common barriers faced by girls enrolled at the training center of Studio Samuel, a non-profit that aims to help Ethiopian women and girls become self-reliant. Martial arts provide self-defense skills and is a proven self-esteem builder. Photograph taken at the Studio Samuel training center during a karate lesson with girls in the Training for Tomorrow program. Studio Samuel, a non-profit founded in 2012 by New York-based designer Tamara Horton, provides life skills to vulnerable young women and girls in Ethiopia through its flagship impact program Training for Tomorrow, which works with girls ages 9-18 in a local community in Addis Ababa. Central to the approach is "empowerment without pity." Studio Samuel aims to break the cycle of poverty with dignity - one girl at a time. Advertisement Computer programming offers 21st-century career opportunities in a global market. Pictured here are girls with Studio Samuel's Training for Tomorrow program participating in Africa Code Week. The framework emphasizes the importance of education and Studio Samuel's training center provides the girls with a sense of community and a safe haven after school and on weekends. 94% of girls saw improvement in their behavior and/or academic performance within the first six months of entering the program. There also has been a 97% success rate in preventing trafficking and child marriage, which too often are the pathways of young girls in Ethiopia. Mentoring and counseling are key to overcoming past trauma and building trust. While addressing the hard topics and poverty-related realities these girls face, Studio Samuel consistently tells their stories through positive messaging, which is important to me as a supporter. Below is a short video filmed at their training center. It features a song by Julian Lennon, a Studio Samuel Advisor and one of the organization's many celebrity supporters. Advertisement I had a chance to meet up with Studio Samuel's New York City-based founder Tamara Horton and Skype with Hilawi Alemayehu, Studio Samuel Country Director based in Ethiopia. Here's what they told me about the important work they're doing. Why Ethiopia and why women? Tamara Horton: My husband and I adopted our son from Ethiopia. The seed was planted the first time I met him. I wanted to give back in some way and after seeing the struggles that poverty places on a family, particularly the girls, it was the place to start for me. Tell me more about your Training for Tomorrow program. Hilawi Alemayehu: The World Health Organization defines the Ten Core Life Skills as "the abilities for adaptive and positive behavior that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life." Training for Tomorrow creates a holistic approach when teaching the Ten Core Life Skills. Through counseling, mentoring, occupational training, life skills training, healthcare courses, entrepreneurial workshops and karate classes, our curriculum incorporates the thinking skills, social skills and emotional targets that encompass these core skills laid out by the World Health Organization. Studio Samuel's mantra, Empowerment without Pity, is aligned with this as well. What has been Studio Samuel's biggest obstacle and accomplishment? Hilawi Alemayehu: Ours is one and the same. It's our "teach a man to fish" business model that creates opportunity within the community by working alongside them, not over them. By creating together and not giving handouts, a foundation unfolds that may not have existed. It builds pride and accountability and, once welcomed, it is extremely impactful. At a recent community meeting at our center, an older woman stood to say, "Thank you for teaching our girls these skills and for not just giving them things." There was an immediate round of applause from this older generation of women, showing their support of our model. That will always be a memorable turning point. Introduce me to your girls. What should I know? Tamara Horton: Take any 9-18 year old girl you know or one you see throughout the day hanging out with her friends after school, on the playground, etc. That's our girl, but she happened to be born into poverty. She has the same pre-teen and teenage energy, thoughts and mindset. The differences are the barriers she faces at this age, moving into adulthood. We've seen girls forced into early marriage, pulled from school to work at home or sent abroad to work, typically in dangerous situations. Many girls lack proper feminine hygiene supplies, keeping them home during their periods. This leads to a high spike in the dropout rate of girls advancing from primary to secondary school. These are the most pivotal years in our girls' lives, with her current choices and options determining her future. The first step is a girl knowing her value and that she can break her poverty cycle. Advertisement Because there's nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline, no matter how many times it's sent away. Sarah Kay I took myself away as a birthday treat in spring. I called it my Solo Mermaid Self-Care Surfari. Like many in New Zealand, I live close to postcard-type beaches with gorgeous surf, sealife and sand, and appreciate it everyday. As things got busy and more demanding with research work, it soon became clear, once again, that the greatest distance one travels is often in our heads. No matter how many resources there are out there on how to relax (thank goodness there are), often work mode and relaxation mode can feel planets away. I was needing some time to relax and play and be in nature, and knowing I was close to it meant there was no excuse not to go. I vacuumed the inside of my van, packed my clothes, blankets and water toys, and took off to the wild west coast beaches of Muriwai, just two hours away. Advertisement The beaches on the west coast of the North Island of New Zealand are often a beautiful jet black, from titanomagnetite, otherwise known as magnetic ironsand. The titanomagnetite has been brought to the coast via rivers passing to inland volcanoes, and moved along the beaches following the prevailing currents. Click here to read more on how these black sand beaches formed. On this little solo camping trip, where I got to meet other travellers and long-time residents of the campground in an uncrowded and unhurried (the best!) way, I spent alot of time wandering the beach in between surfs. It wasn't a hot day in summer, so I got away with wandering the beach barefoot: the black sand gets too hot in the sun and you see lots of people quickstepping into the water on those days. They say to always look where you are going, and to keep your head up, and eyes peeled on the horizon. This is especially true for when you are out in the water watching for bumps and waves, but I got to indulge in keeping my head down and eyes peeled on the sand, watching with quiet fascination at the beautiful art emerging in the sand beneath my toes as the outgoing tide swept thin sheets of water over the beach. Advertisement Wave after wave, carrying with it tiny black and silica 'white' sand particles as far as their weight would allow, and as each wave receded it left a pattern that was especially pretty, and you could see where a few successive waves had met and mingled, and your eyes traced where the water rippled, slithered and hugged around each object it met along the way back to the sea, leaving its impression in sand patterns formed around seashells and other remnants of ocean residents. I shell leave you here to enjoy the beautiful beach art I got to witness happen before my eyes... can you guess in each picture, the direction the water was moving to get back to the rest of the ocean? Enjoy your little stroll on the black sand beach. There will be a short video at the end where you can see how these patterns form. It's pretty relaxing! Get a feel for how the sand patterns are arranged. Can you see how even a tiny piece of shell or rock can influence how the water and sand moves because of it? Can you see how the pattern changes because of that one shell, for a distance and space much bigger than itself? Don't some of these patterns look just like shooting star trails? Hope you enjoyed this little stroll on the black sand beach of Muriwai. (More pictures here) From the footprints it is clear many other people and their pooches enjoy it too! Advertisement What happens when a wave rolls onto shore and slides over sand like a soft crystal sheet and one by one by one by one a grain of jet iron and a speckle of silt mingle in this unavoidable all encompassing and yet transparent matter that starts to leave as soon as it gets here leaving only the swirled then settled grains in its likeness a weave so we can see for a while in the sparkly sun how it flowed over and around each bump and shell and grain of sand to get home to the rest of the sea only to return again and again fleeting everlasting beauty Denver native Taletha Fitzpatrick describes herself as a problem-solver who "keeps moving forward" no matter what. After graduating from the Aerospace Physics program at Metropolitan State University of Denver, she joined Jeppesen Sanderson, Inc., where she works as a Quality Systems Specialist. Her story is an inspiration for anyone pursuing a STEM career or considering a major career transition. We are looking forward to her involvement at the GlobalMindED Conference (www.globalminded.org), June 9-10 in Denver. Taletha graduated from George Washington High School with an International Baccalaureate diploma. She planned to pursue the arts in college as she had for most of her life: "I was an accomplished musician from elementary school and through high school. I began my university education at the University of Colorado as a music major. But ongoing issues with anxiety and depression, which stemmed from a chaotic home life, resulted in such powerful performance anxiety that I couldn't get to my classes." She left college in 1999, and only in 2009 did she decide to complete her bachelor's degree. After giving music another try at Indiana University Southeast (New Albany, IN), she felt that she might enjoy, and have more success in, another field. She "had been interested in science from a very young age. As a matter of fact, my first career choice as a child (besides rock star) was astronaut." Recalling her positive experiences in elementary school, when she was selected to travel periodically to another school to take astronomy classes, she discovered that "the desire to learn all about the universe and how it works was still there." Advertisement The decision to change course wasn't an easy one. "I excelled so easily in the arts: drawing, writing, music, you name it, that seemed to be what I was destined for," she says. She "spoke with a friend of mine who was a physics graduate student at Purdue University at the time. I wanted to get a feel for physics and see if the conversations I had with someone in the field would engage me enough to want to study it." Those conversations proved inspirational, and she decided to "take a chance on science." Making the transition turned out to be as difficult as Taletha expected. "I was right. It was hard. I had to retake some math that I had taken (and forgotten) in high school. I then had to continue my math studies into Differential Equations. Many times I wouldn't learn the math I needed for a Physics class until the semester after I had already muddled through the Physics class. My undertaking was made much more arduous by the fact that I was on a medication that made it nearly impossible to remember day-to-day activities, let alone how to solve for the age of the universe using the universal constant," she recalls. Additionally, "I was an artist in my thirties, going to school full time and working what amounted to two part time jobs. I was in an emotionally abusive relationship. The ends weren't meeting most of the time and my homework was all that I had time for when I wasn't working or in class." "It almost wiped me out entirely," she says, "but I was determined. And I knew that any little bit I did understand and retain would make me a much stronger and more fulfilled person in the long run." Advertisement In the end, it was worth it. As a Quality Systems Specialist, she enjoys the "opportunity to learn about the entire company by taking a look at how each department's processes fit into the quality management system to ensure high quality products and services." This summer, along with taking Six Sigma Green Belt classes (one of the highest certification levels in quality control), she will likely begin pursuing a master's degree, either in space systems, systems engineering, or physics. When thinking back on the support systems and mentors that helped her through her new path, Taletha appreciates her professors for their professional, academic, and personal guidance: "The thing about the Aviation and Aerospace Science department at Metro is that everyone is excited about what they are doing there. That comes from a having a group of instructors who have a true passion for what they do and from Dr. Jeffrey Forrest, the department's chair, who is always there to provide encouragement and help me make it happen. Near the end, when I couldn't have possibly been more exhausted, he was always there to provide that extra push and remind me that I was doing something extraordinary." Taletha's instructors helped her to a remarkable and rare accomplishment: having a paper published as an undergraduate. "The combined efforts of myself, Dr. Forrest, David Gingerich (a professor and aerospace professional) and Andrei Abiin (another student)," she says, "paid off with our Russian r-16 Nedelin Disaster paper being published in the Journal of Space Safety Engineering (available here)." Encouraging words from another professor were also crucial: "I would be negligent not to mention one of the hardest professors I've ever had, Dr. Jim Dove. I felt like the worst physics student ever in every single one of his classes. I remember sending him an e-mail to that effect when all was said and done. He told me not to beat myself up, that he had seen students do far worse with far less on their plates. That doesn't seem like much at face value. But it was the truth coming from one of the most exceptional people I've ever met." Having fought for marriage equality for years we are extremely concerned that should a Republican be elected President they will try to overturn the SCOTUS ruling on nationwide marriage equality. People tell us "don't worry it will never happen", but never say never! Trump has already said that he wants to elect new Supreme Court justices who would vote against marriage equality and Cruz has said his presidency would not endorse the Supreme Court's ruling that same-sex marriage is a Constitutional right. What I don't understand is how my same-sex marriage affects anyone else's marriage? As a bi-national couple, I am British and my wife, Laurie, is American, it was really important to celebrate our weddings with our family and friends from both sides of the pond. We married in Massachusetts, USA, on July 29th 2006 and then a little over two weeks later on August 18th we had a civil partnership in West Sussex, England. Both weddings meant so much to us and they were both very different, in America we had a Hawaiian themed wedding, Laurie and I had leis sent fresh from Hawaii and I sang Both Sides Now. We had a close friend as our Justice of the Peace and exchanging our vows in front of our family and friends was so important to us. In England we had a more formal wedding, you could say "traditional" but there would be those who would disagree because they believe a "traditional" wedding is only between one man and one woman. Advertisement As with most weddings we celebrated with speeches, toasts, great food, great wine and dancing, even the maitre'D joined in the dancing, everyone enjoyed our special days both sides of the pond and we felt well and truly MARRIED. Not so many people have two weddings in two countries in two weeks but we pulled it off. What we didn't know then was that the federal government of the USA didn't care how many times we got married; it didn't recognize it one way or another! People wrongly assumed because our marriage was recognized in the state of Massachusetts that it was okay for us but it wasn't. Laurie couldn't sponsor me for a green card so every time I entered the US I had a very difficult time and would be sent down to border control for intense questioning. So from July 2006 Laurie and I have been advocating for marriage equality, we've put ourselves out there at every opportunity in the hope of changing hearts and minds towards LGBT acceptance. Along the way we have been lucky enough to make some incredible friends and allies who have helped tell our story, we've also had to incur some hateful people too but that never swayed us from fighting for our civil rights. Mainly Laurie and I would travel together whenever I had to leave the US in order to maintain my US visa so that helped, but after Laurie's father had a severe stroke she didn't want to leave him for long so when it came time for me to leave next she stayed home. On that occasion when I re-entered the US, after visiting my family in England, I had an extremely difficult time and had a lengthy interrogation at Border Control. I was doing everything right, I had a visitors visa which allowed me to stay for 6 months at a time and I never outstayed that, I had my own income, Laurie and owned a home together but despite all that I wasn't welcome. In fact I was told that the next time I left the country I might be forced to stay away for at least a year or more or face being banned for 10 years. After that we took legal advice from many different sources and made the decision that I was going to out stay my visa, having done absolutely everything right and by the book up until that point it was a very hard decision to make. Our story was even taken to the Judiciary Committee in support of the repeal of DOMA (Defense of Marriage Act), I wasn't able to travel anywhere and we constantly worried about ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) arriving on our doorstep to drag me off. To say it was a stressful time is an understatement. So when, after agonizing years of worry and fighting for marriage equality the Supreme Court justices ruled that DOMA was un-constitutional we cried with relief. Advertisement Now as we head to our 10th wedding anniversary we don't feel we can sit back and not worry about what might be, we can't contemplate going backwards and our marriage not being recognized. Because not only is there the possibility of a president who is anti-gay but there is an army pushing for anti-gay discrimination bills state by state across the USA, Georgia being the most recent. Silence is not an option but peacefully telling our story is. You can see the trailer for our short docu-drama, Status Unknown, about our fight for equality below. Like Dislike Election Hands Vector Background Every conversation I am in about this year's presidential primary campaign regardless of the person's political affiliation quickly evolves into an expression of strong feeling and concern about what it reflects about the current state of our political dysfunction. Embarrassed, ashamed, frustrated, sick of the negativity, scared, worried about how the world sees us, angry, disgusted, disenfranchised, tired of the candidates acting like children. Advertisement People who feel this way are definitely not alone. According to Weber Shandwick's recently released sixth Civility in America poll, 95% of Americans said civility is a problem. 70% of respondents said that incivility in this country has risen to crisis levels. And as we continue to see incidents of uncivil rhetoric leading to physical violence (most recently Saturday in Tucson) one word is showing up more and more in these conversations - fear. I have heard that word from very experienced media strategists and pundits inside the beltway and ordinary citizens in communities all across the country. More and more references are being made to the August 1968 Democratic Convention in Chicago expressing the fear that violence could erupt again in Cleveland at the Republican Convention in July. In fact civic leaders, academics, elected officials of both parties and journalists in the State of Ohio are so concerned about this that they have come together to discuss what can be done by each of their sectors to take some heat out of the process and hopefully introduce some light on the policy differences and consequences for the country of the outcome of the election. The Ohio Civility Consortium's Town Meeting: "Can We Talk? Moving from Discord to Dialogue", a day-long conference, was the product of over 20 statewide organizations seeking a way to change the political dialogue in 2016 in this critical battle ground state. The groups had been meeting for two years planning for an interactive way to highlight the need for moving from discord to dialogue. Former Ohio Supreme Court Justice, Yvette Magee Brown, summed it up best, saying, "our children are watching, we have to act". #CivilOhio If you, too, are concerned about too much heat and too little light, don't be complicit with how off track this election season is; let your elected officials and media outlets know how you feel. No matter what your political affiliation take a stand for civil language and behavior on everyone's part. Advertisement As President Obama expressed at the annual Congressional Friends of Ireland luncheon: "...it's worth asking ourselves what each of us may have done to contribute to this kind of vicious atmosphere in our politics. I suspect that all of us can recall some intemperate words that we regret. Certainly, I can. And while some may be more to blame than others for the current climate, all of us are responsible for reversing it. For it is a cycle that is not an accurate reflection of America. And it has to stop." As emergency services are still digging through the rubble of Zaventem Airport and Maelbeek Metro Station in Brussels, it is clear that the full scale of the devastation will take days if not weeks to assess. At this point there are already 28 reported dead and 151 injured. While no organization has claimed responsibility yet, the terrorist attacks seem most likely related to the recent arrest of Salah Abdeslam, the mastermind behind the Paris attacks of last year. In fact, eerily prophetic, the Belgian Minister of Interior, Jan Jambon, had said on Monday: "We know that stopping one cell can... push others into action. We are aware of it in this case." Given that both attacks look like suicide bombings, and involve soft targets, i.e. easily accessible, they look like brutal acts of desperation by individuals who expected to be caught any day (as a consequence of Abdeslam's arrest) rather than as a well-planned terrorist attack, as the one in Paris last November. The Brussels terrorist attack, just as the related attack in Paris, shows many things, some more important than others. Advertisement First and foremost, it shows that terrorism is the new normal for Western Europe, at least for now. Citizens and politicians should acknowledge, rather than simply accept, this. To be clear, this is not the first time this is the case -- think of the extreme left terrorism of the 1970s or the decades-long terrorist campaigns of separatist organizations like ETA in Spain and the IRA in the United Kingdom. The main difference is that terrorism is now affecting more countries and more people. Second, the attacks prove that even the strongest emergency and security measures cannot make a (democratic) society 100 percent safe! Both Brussels and Paris are cities on the highest state of alert, fully aware they are prime targets of Jihadist terrorists, and were nevertheless hit. Third, although some terrorist attacks have caused massive destruction of lives and property, most show at best a modest level of organization - hence the almost exclusive use of soft targets. While this makes the terrorists generally less lethal, it also makes them even harder to detect. Fourth, most of the Jihadi terrorists have a relatively clear socio-demographic profile, which depicts only a small sub-set of the European Muslim population: second-generation 'immigrants' and 'native' converts, several of which have recently fought in the Middle East (or tried to) and have a criminal background, unrelated and often directly opposed to their later terrorist path. Many have radicalized in prison and were recruited either in prison or soon after being released. But terrorists are not only 'losers of integration;' some are from middle class families and have a relatively high level of education. At the same time, Advertisement Fifth, and foremost, Jihadi terrorism has both domestic and foreign roots. It is mostly directed or inspired by foreign terrorist groups, mainly groups like ISIS in the Middle East, but almost exclusively carried out by domestic terrorists with largely local grievances. As Olivier Roy has argued, the 'Jihadi problem' is not so much about religion or politics, it is a 'generational revolt.' The domestic Johadis terrorists feel squeezed between the (non-Muslim) 'natives' and the Muslim establishment, mostly older first-generation immigrants, which ironically both treat them as 'guest' in their own country of birth. This all is obviously not to say that Europe is responsible for its own terrorism problem. It has created the conditions for the resentment that drives the terrorists, but the vast majority of people in those conditions do not resort to terrorism. But it also doesn't mean that simply destroying foreign terrorist threats like ISIS would get rid of the 'Jihadi threat' in Europe. Politicians from across the political spectrum are going to call for strong and swift responses and claim that this 'new threat' requires more competencies for the security services. They are going to promise to 'keep us safe,' even though they know that they can never guarantee full security. That is why it is so important that right now, at the height of the shock and trauma, liberal democratic citizens and politicians remain alert and vigilant and reject the utopias offered by opportunistic politicians. Neither authoritarianism nor nativism can save liberal democracy in Europe! A state of security directly undermines the rule of law and the protection of rights of all citizens, not just those of the 'guilty' or 'others.' Similarly, keeping immigrants and refugees out of Europe does little to undermine the supply of terrorists, which are almost all European born-and-bread. In fact, it will only strengthen their resentment as well as their discrimination by an ever more fearful 'native' population. "Reading large blocks of text is an extremely unpleasant, energy-intensive task for the brain to perform, especially on a website," says Dr. Medina. "Reading takes almost 20 milliseconds per letter to perceive, and the brain has to inspect every letter in every word, often revisiting certain letters in the same word, just to make sure it has apprehended the content correctly. "Having an instantly recognizable, defined, bite-sized block of text may telegraph to the brain that the painful experience is limited, providing relief." Photo courtesy of Flickr. There's a lot of talk in the media about "low-information" voters. Ted Cruz may be responsible for coining the term. He referred to supporters of Donald Trump as those "who have relatively low information, who are not that engaged and who are angry." He observed that other candidates are beating Trump "when voters get more engaged and they get more informed." The danger of "low information" I see a parallel between the worlds of politics and investing. The securities industry preys on "low-information" investors who don't know the underlying data. These investors are inundated by pundits, analysts and other "financial pros" who claim the ability to pick outperforming stocks, time the markets and identify the next "hot" mutual fund or alternative investment. When investors get "more engaged" and "more informed," they understand that efforts to "beat the market" simply enrich brokers while likely causing them to underperform comparable index funds. "High-information" investors are taking action "High-information" investors understand this reality: It's not that it is impossible to "beat the market." Rather, it's that the odds of doing so are so small it makes no sense to try. It's for this reason that, according to Morningstar, "investors added $361.8 billion to all passively managed stock and bond funds in the U.S. in the first 11 months of 2015, while pulling $139.5 billion from actively managed funds." Advertisement Misleading arguments for active management I recently heard a broker make a very clever argument for active management, which was geared to take advantage of a certain lack of sophistication among some investors. Here's what he said: "If you invest in index funds, 100 percent of those funds will underperform their benchmark index. With active management, you know that at least some funds will outperform the index." This statement is technically true, but fundamentally misleading. You can't buy the index. But you can purchase funds that track the index. Doing so incurs a management fee. As a result, investors earn the return of the index less this fee. Therefore, all index funds will underperform the index. However, because many index funds charge very low fees, the majority of actively managed funds underperform both their benchmark index and index funds tracking that index. Active management vs. index funds My colleague, Larry Swedroe, recently analyzed the performance of actively managed funds that attempted to beat different indexes. He compared this performance to comparable index funds managed by Vanguard (and not to the index). Here's what he found for the 10-year period from 2006 through 2015: Advertisement The Vanguard 500 Index Fund (VFINX) outperformed 77 percent of comparable actively managed funds. The Vanguard Value Index Fund (VIVAX) outperformed 68 percent of comparable actively managed funds. The Vanguard Small Cap Index Fund (NAESX) outperformed 85 percent of comparable actively managed funds. The Vanguard Small Cap Value Index Fund (VISVX) outperformed 79 percent of comparable actively managed funds. Lack of persistence To beat the returns of these index funds, your broker would have to identify the small minority of actively managed funds likely to outperform them prospectively. This is an exceedingly difficult task. According to an analysis by Standard & Poor's, only 7.48 percent of large-cap funds, 3.06 percent of mid-cap funds and 7.43 percent of small-cap funds maintained top-half performance over five consecutive 12-month periods. Think about this data for a moment. If your broker claims the ability to pick an outperforming mutual fund, ask for details on the methodology he or she is using. If you are told the methodology is past performance, you know this can't be right. There's an inverse relationship between past and future performance. Become an evidence-based investor If you understand the low odds of picking an outperforming actively managed fund over the long term, as well as the lack of persistence among the funds that do outperform, you've made a giant leap toward transitioning from a low-information to a high-information investor. Advertisement Now fire your "market-beating" broker and become an evidence-based investor. Dan Solin is a New York Times bestselling author of the Smartest series of books, including The Smartest Investment Book You'll Ever Read, The Smartest Retirement Book You'll Ever Read and his latest, The Smartest Sales Book You'll Ever Read. River delta patterns, Columbia River, Western Washington and Western Oregon, USA Until a year ago, serious tensions were mounting in northeastern Africa. Egypt, Sudan and Ethiopia were confronted over the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam on the border of Ethiopia and Sudan. Ethiopia had started building the dam, claiming its rights to use waters of the Nile River within its territory. Egypt, "the gift of the Nile" objected, fearing that the dam would obstruct the flow of the river to its fields. Suddenly, a miracle happened. Seizing the occasion of the World Water Day on 22 March 2015, the presidents of the three countries met in Khartoum and decided to coordinate the construction of the dam in a way that would cause no harm and would allow an equitable outcome. Implementing their agreement is not easy. But the hostile rhetoric has toned down and a spirit of cooperation is gradually surfacing in the region. Advertisement There is no alternative to trans-boundary water cooperation anywhere in the world. There are 263 shared river basins flowing through 148 countries. Unless the countries through which the rivers run collaborate for the sustainable management of water courses, wars and environmental disasters can occur. On the other hand, cooperation in water can lead to comprehensive peace. The Water Cooperation Quotient constructed on the basis of the analysis of 219 shared river basins in 148 countries by Strategic Foresight Group, an international think tank, reaches a dramatic conclusion. Any two countries engaged in active water cooperation are not likely to go to war over water or any other reason. It is often asked whether water would be the oil of the 21st century. It certainly is not. Oil has alternatives such as natural gas and renewable energy. The only alternative to water is water. Therefore, last September the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Water Goal as one of the Sustainable Development Goals. It has an ambitious objective of ensuring water security of the world's population by 2030. Cooperation among countries is an important component of the UN Water Goal. The Water Cooperation Quotient provides a scientific formula to measure trans-boundary cooperation using indicators of joint investments, collaborative management of environment, cooperative management of floods and drought, integration of water in regional economic programmes, and interaction between the heads of states to enable large exchanges. Advertisement When countries reach the optimum level of water cooperation, they are in the state of Blue Peace. At this stage, water transforms from a source of potential crisis into an instrument of peace. The Senegal River Basin Organisation established by Guinea, Mali, Mauritania and Senegal in West Africa is an example of Blue Peace. The four countries jointly own all water related infrastructure including dams and hydro-electric stations. The organisation also facilitates political dialogue to end ethnic or border conflicts. The Middle East is conspicuous for its absence of joint river management bodies. This is one of the reasons why ISIS, the violent extremist group, has been able to spread so quickly. They take over vital dams and use them to incarcerate high value prisoners knowing well that such dams cannot be bombed for the fear of flooding the entire region. They also use their control over dams and pipelines to force people to obey their order. For years, Iraq, Syria and Turkey refused to heed calls for cooperation over the Euphrates and Tigris Rivers. The result is that all the three states have lost and a non-state organisation has as a space to create a base for its violent designs against the civilized world. In order to usher in an era of Blue Peace in this century, it is necessary for the international community to join hands to achieve concrete results. First, it is essential to encourage all 263 shared river basins to establish collaborative institutions and joint investment plans, slowly climbing up on the Water Cooperation Quotient. Second, it is necessary to introduce concessional and preferential financial possibilities for the neighbouring countries that wish to cooperate in the management of water basins. Third, water infrastructure must be protected from terrorist actions and violent conflicts. Finally, the members of the UN Security Council need to come together for the future of the world's water. It is in their interest to prevent ISIS from controlling dams and reservoirs. It is in their interest to boost economic growth in all shared river basins of the developing world. It is indeed essential to establish Blue Peace in every region and the World Water Day of 2016 is a good occasion to strengthen every effort in this direction. Advertisement Danilo Turk is former President of Slovenia and Chairman of the Global High Level Panel on Water and Peace convened by 15 countries from all parts of the world. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during the Palm Beach County GOP Lincoln Day Dinner at the Mar-A-Lago Club, Sunday, March 20, 2016, in Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Wilfredo Lee) Considered the official divider-in-chief of 2016, he's arguably at war with everyone who isn't an angry white man in America. That means women, Latinos, African Americans, Muslims, former President George W. Bush, FOX News Anchor Megyn Kelly -- and yes, even the Pope. What's worse, the hostile crowds and the violence he incites at his rallies are exacerbating these clashes and deepening the already intense divisions in our nation. Advertisement You guessed it, I'm talking about the one and only, Donald J. Trump. Since the formation of his campaign back in the summer of 2015, he went from being written off as a hoax to the frontrunner GOP candidate and leader of a brazen movement aimed at ripping apart the fabric of today's Republican Party. The equivalency of a political volcanic eruption that's scorching lava incinerates anything in its path resembles how Trump's reach has oozed throughout the entire GOP apparatus. Anyone who is following the 2016 Presidential race knows that Trump is not part of the so-called Republican establishment, its evangelical cohort, the conservative movement or the Tea Party wing of the GOP. Rather than being confined to one contingent within the Party, he's successfully peeled away slices of each of these factions to amass his coalition of support. It's comprised almost entirely of mad-as-hell, working class and disenfranchised white men who feel marginalized in a culturally, economically and socially modernizing America. Advertisement So far, it's largely worked in Trump's favor as he's poised to become the GOP nominee. But, in doing so, he has exploited peoples fears and anxieties by escalating racial tensions, promoting isolationism, reinforcing sexism and preying on Americans' economic insecurities-- all for his own personal gain. Anything but a conventional candidate, this strategy illuminates how Trump has been singularly focused on running a divide and conquer campaign that's centered on self promotion. At a time when white males without a college level education are seeing their wages stagnate and increasingly feel left behind by Republicans in Washington, Trump has positioned himself as the only candidate who has the remedy to calm their economic nerves. The problem for these voters is that Trump has blinded them in much the same way he did to those who were promised big career returns after attending Trump University. Like students of Trump University who got scammed by the billionaire, Trump is following the same fraudulent playbook to take advantage of these angry white men. Instead of helping these voters, he stands against policies that will directly benefit them. Whether it's opposing an increase in the minimum wage, enacting lavish tax breaks for the rich and powerful or creating trade wars around the globe, hardly any of Trump's policies will help to lift up this demographic. Advertisement And even though such policies are at odds with these voters' own self interest, for reasons that still puzzle most political analysts, they have pledged their unyielding allegiance to Trump. Why? Because rather than embracing a dialogue around problem-solving and ways to improve Americans' quality of life, Trump has taken the easier route, playing into voters' fears by engaging in a blame game. Instead of prescribing solutions to alleviate the economic unease among these angry white voters, he's created a facade aimed at blurring the lens of which they use to view him. He's capitalizing on their frustration and is using it to pit Americans against Americans. It's a strategy focused on pointing the finger at others as the reason for a shrinking middle class and economic uncertainty. And, its leading to the mayhem and increasing violence at Trump's events. Beyond exploiting these voters' insecurities, Trump is attempting to use his frontrunner position in the race to dictate the rules of the upcoming Republican Party convention. He's even stooped so low as to threaten riots at the upcoming convention should he not win the Party's nomination. Such tyrannical moves by Trump have managed to turn off many of the Republicans that he'll need to win a general election. Advertisement The past two GOP Presidential nominees, Governor Mitt Romney and Senator John McCain, as well as House Speaker Paul Ryan have renounced his hateful rhetoric. Respected thinkers on the right, like conservative blogger Erick Erickson, The Weekly Standard's Editor William Kristol, the National Review's Editorial Board, among others have coalesced around a swelling anyone-but-Trump campaign. In Republican circles, there's also a growing discussion around the need of a potential third Party candidate to enter the race, should Trump secure the GOP nomination. Making matters worse, recent exit polling shows that it's not just the Republican Party leaders in Washington who are open to a third Party strategy. It's primary voters in key swing states who would seriously consider a third party candidate, including 29 percent of primary voting Republicans in Florida, 39 percent in North Carolina and 45 percent in Ohio. Surely such a move would almost certainly guarantee that the GOP would lose the general election. Many Republicans acknowledge that such a loss is plausible. Still, they'd prefer it over Trump becoming the sole standard bearer of the conservative and mainstream Republican movement. Either way, the GOP is damned if they embrace Trump and damned if they don't. Both options are devastating to the Republican Party's brand, but at least the later option would help detach the supposed family values-aligned Party from the poisonous and barbaric style campaign that Trump's has become. Last year Ukraine skipped Eurovision because of their conflict with Russia. This year they are back with a vengeance not only entering an incredible song, but also a powerful political statement about Russia's deportation of the Tatars from Crimea. The song addresses this troubled slice of history in a direct and poignant way, opening with these nihilistic lines: "When strangers are coming, they come to your house; they kill you all inside [and say] 'We're not guilty, not guilty'." Numerous news media view this as a clear political statement. Advertisement Using Eurovision to make a political statement is not new. Two years ago Ukraine & Russia had dueling songs that many said, spoke to the conflict between them. To the point that Jon Oliver featured it in a segment of his show. What is going to make this even more interesting is that Ukraine & Russia have two of the best entries in the show. They could actually end up first and second. And all of Europe will be watching that night. The voting in Eurovision always has a political component. This year it will be even more political. Do you think Ukraine's song is too political for Eurovision? And which do you think is better, Ukraine's or Russia's entry? Let us know in the comments below. President Barack Obama listens during a joint news conference with Cuban President Raul Castro at the Palace of the Revolution, Monday, March 21, in Havana, Cuba. (New York Times Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) Given the recent flood of opeds and editorials on the wonders of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), the Obama administration must be about to present the deal to Congress for approval. Otherwise, it's hard to see why so many pieces would spontaneously appear on the TPP. Since there is real money at stake, we can expect the debate to get pretty low and nasty, with the pro-TPP forces liberally substituting ad hominems and claims to expertise for serious arguments. My favorite on the lack of argument side is the exciting news that if the TPP is approved it will eliminate 18,000 tariffs on U.S. exports to the countries in the deal. That sounds like a huge boon to trade, right? Public Citizen looked up the 18,000 tariffs that would be eliminated. If found that the United States is not currently exporting in more than half of the categories in which these tariffs apply. Included in the list of tariffs to be removed are Malaysia's shark fin tariffs, Vietnam's whale meat tariffs, and Japan's ivory tariffs. Advertisement The overwhelming majority of these tariffs are of little consequence in very narrow product categories, like Brunei's tariff on ski boots. So when the proponents of the TPP tout the 18,000 tariffs is this because they have no clue what they are talking about, or are they deliberately trying to deceive the public? But this is just the beginning of the fun when it comes to the TPP. The very pro-TPP Peter Peterson Institute for International Economics produced a study showing that the deal will add 0.5 percentage points to GDP when its effects are fully felt in 2030. While this projection is supposed to convince people of the huge benefits of the TPP, taken at face value it means we will be as rich on January 1, 2030 as we would otherwise be on March 15, 2030. But even this limited projected gain is dubious. The model used to project this result explicitly assumes that the TPP cannot increase unemployment. If people are concerned that the TPP will lead to a further rise in the U.S. trade deficit, which would cost jobs, the Peterson Institute model has nothing to tell them on the topic. It rules out this possibility by assumption. The Peterson Institute has a long track record of pushing trade deals and dismissing concerns about trade deficits and unemployment. Back in 2000 it published a paper that dismissed as "extravagant" the concerns raised by Rob Scott, my former colleague at the Economic Policy Institute, that admitting China to the W.T.O. will cost 817,000 jobs. Advertisement Scott ended up being far off the mark on this one. The actual job loss figure was probably close to three times his projection. Of course the story with China was its decision to deliberately hold down the value of its currency, which allowed it to run massive trade surpluses with the United States and other countries. In spite of demands by members of Congress and numerous economists, including the Peterson Institute's former president Fred Bergsten, the TPP includes no provisions that will prevent currency management by the countries in the pact. But the real story of the TPP is that it has little to do with trade. After all, we already have trade agreements with six of the other eleven participants in the deal. After NAFTA, there are not many trade barriers to remove with Canada and Mexico. The deal is about putting in place a pro-business regulatory structure. It was largely negotiated by business trade groups who crafted a deal to boost their profits. The TPP will put into question every health, safety, and environmental regulation that governments at any level seek to implement. The assurances from the Obama administration to the contrary on this front are absolutely worthless. The TPP sets up an extra-judicial system, not bound by precedent and not subject to appeal, which can impose large fines for any measure it chooses. Former President Obama will not be pulling money out of his personal bank account to compensate anyone if his assurances prove to be wrong. But the most pernicious part of the deal is its extension of protectionism in the form of stronger and longer patent and copyright protection. This will raise the price of the protected products, most importantly prescription drugs. Advertisement While the public in the United States has been focusing on making drugs cheaper, our TPP negotiators were working to make them more expensive. High drug prices are a serious problem in the United States; they can prove deadly in poorer countries where large segments of the population can't afford to pay Pfizer tens of thousands of dollars for the drugs on which it holds patent monopolies. Incredibly, it doesn't seem the Peterson Institute folks included the impact of these protections in its modeling of the TPP. Chattanooga's 2016 GroundBreakers Storytelling Series began with a session on immigrants. Introduced by entrepreneur Denise Reed, three women who immigrated to Chattanooga shared their stories, followed by Dr. Lisa Clark Diller, Chair of History & Political Studies/ Southern Adventist University. Diller explained, "Historians collect stories over time and then try to draw conclusions about them, so I hope to make some general observations here about women and immigration in Chattanooga--which are set in the larger U.S. historical context." The Storytellers Dr. Mbakisya (Mbaki) Onyango who was born in Tanzania, a country in eastern Africa that has 120 dialects, where the national language is Swahili and English is business language. She received her bachelor's degree in Civil Engineering in Tanzania and her masters in Transportation Engineering in England. she obtained her Ph.D. Transportation Engineering in America as a single mom, vice president of African Students Union, and the outstanding Ph.D. student in her class. When her husband died in a car accident, she raised two sons by herself, making sure that she and the boys got a good education. After graduation she joined UTC as assistant professor of Civil Engineering and was voted SGA Outstanding professor. She also advises National Society of Black Engineering (NSBE) which gives free ACT workshops to high school students in Chattanooga. Advertisement Jessica Oliva-Calderin was born in Peru and immigrated to the Miami Beach area as a child. Her high energy and risk-taking attitude have shaped her innovative career in the legal profession. A resident of the Chattanooga area since 2005, she has successfully built an immigration law practice with her husband in three different states. Empathetic with her clients, she provides services tailored to their needs. Nasera Souidi-Johnson was born in France of parents who had immigrated from Algeria in the early 1960s. Her mother spoke no French. Immigrants must have Courage, conviction, and commitment to be successful. She is an advocate of global education, culture, and business. Nasera is the founder of the French-American Chamber of Commerce and is heavily involved in the Chattanooga community. Historical Context Lisa Diller began the early history of immigrants to Chattanooga with the European Americans who replaced and deported/exiled the Cherokee. After the Civil War, the migrants were primarily African-American. In 1870, more than 500 of the 17,000 residents of Hamilton County were foreign born, mostly from Europe. By 1890, 2,000 of the 29,000 people in the county came from Europe with migrants from China, Japan and India added to the mix. The Asians were all men, probably brought here to help build the railroads. Immigration declined after WW I until the 1965 the Immigration and Nationality Act which emphasized family reunification, increasing the number of women immigrants. "In the 1970s, Chattanooga, along with the nation, was at its low point for immigrant citizens. Yet, foreign born citizens gradually increased, many of whom came for education or specific jobs. This time, women came in larger numbers and filled highly-trained jobs as teachers, professors, medical practitioners and religious leaders." The migrants' diversity increased, with many coming from the former Soviet Union and, more recently, from Asia and Central/South America. Advertisement And how you can do it too! It takes planning and courage to leave a job and start your own business. Friends and family might tell you that it's not worth the risk, but I know from personal experience that it's a very rewarding, life-changing decision. More than anything, taking the leap sets you free to make your dreams come true. Security Isn't Always Enough I understand how hard it is to imagine walking away from an established position and a steady paycheck. By the time I was 24, I had an excellent job with the deputy commissioner for Children's Services here in Chicago. It was secure employment with all the benefits, and I really loved my work. Advertisement I've always wanted to make a difference, and this position gave me the opportunity to help so many people. For the first few years, I was sure that I would be happy until retirement. My confidence grew with my responsibilities that included managing the budget for the city's Head Start Program. I began applying for better positions within the department, and my bosses agreed that I was a great candidate, but the promotions never happened. It became clear that I'd reached a plateau. That's when I knew that I wanted and needed more. Success Takes Time and Patience From start to resignation, I put in 10 years, and I value that experience very much. However, I knew that I wasn't fulfilling my potential or satisfying my need to do more. It's true that you can wake up one morning and realize that you just have to make a change. I'm so grateful that my husband was supportive, and together we sat down and began to make our plans. We decided to launch our own fire and water damage cleanup company in Chicago because we both had strong backgrounds in helping other people. Advertisement We gave ourselves five years to transition from salaried jobs to independent entrepreneurs. That's sounds like a long time, but we knew that we had to be realistic. It was very hard. Between my job and our new company, I worked seven days a week, but we were determined to make our business a success. It's Worth the Wait Today, ServiceMaster Restoration by Zaba is one of the three largest restoration & cleaning services companies of its kind in Illinois. Our first offices weren't much bigger than a walk-in closet, and we worked in the field every day. By the two-year mark, we hired a full administrative staff and expanded our field teams. We also earned our franchise, and that really helped because our industry is very competitive. Since opening our doors in Chicago in 2008, we've enjoyed enormous success, and I credit our commitment, hard work and incredible teams in the office and the field. Advertisement I've never regretted leaving the government sector world behind. I'm the boss now, and I'm in a position to make a positive difference in people's lives every day. I also feel a deep responsibility to share the knowledge I've gained. If you're ready to take the leap and follow your dreams, friends and family will give you plenty of input. My advice comes from my real-world experience and my heart. 1. Don't just walk into the boss's office and quit your job. Give yourself between two and five years to make the transition. Dreams don't come true overnight. 2.Use that first year to formulate a solid business plan. Even if you have a strong background in your future field, now is the time to get to know it inside out. You have to be prepared when you strike out on your own. 3. Save money, cut back on expenses, and keep driving that old car. Figure out how much you'll need to invest, and know that you'll probably need more. The first few years can be very lean. Advertisement 4. As you approach your resignation date target, be sure to take advantage of any benefits that you've accrued. Don't walk away from things like tuition reimbursement or health-care savings balances. 5. Be proactive. That's not a cliche when you're starting your own business. You're positioning yourself to be in control, so make things happen. Don't let them happen to you or your plans for the future. 6. Find out everything you can about the competition. Learn from their success, but figure out what they're doing wrong so that you can get it right from the minute you open your doors. 7. Be willing to barter your services with other businesses. If you need help building a website or printing business cards, figure out what you can do in trade. This strategy also expands your new professional network. 8. Have a backup plan until things turn around - even if it's just waiting tables. Returning to your old corporate job isn't an option, so figure out what you can do if your new business gets off to a slow start. Advertisement 9. Spread the good news about yourself. Let friends and family know that you're ready to go to work. Don't feel shy about selling your services to people you know. Do a good job, and they'll be your best customers. 10. Harness the promotional power of social media, but put social consciousness into your work too. Volunteer your services to local organizations, and establish your business as one that really cares about the community. When You're Ready Sometimes, big dreams and everyday realities collide. It happens in the corporate workspace, and it happens when you start your own business. However, when you wrestle with obstacles that belong to you instead of the head office, you become stronger with every victory. In the end, leaving the comfort of a stable job is something that you can do because you want to and you know that you have to. Advertisement That determined spirit will see you through anything. Iranians recently voted for a new parliament (Majlis) as well as Assembly of Experts, tasked with choosing the successor to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Moderate reformers did well in both bodies, vindicating the Obama administration's decision to try diplomacy after years of confrontation with the Islamic republic. America's relations with Iran long have been troubled. In 1953, the U.S. helped engineer a coup against democratically elected Prime Minister Mohamed Mossedegh. For a quarter century, Washington backed the authoritarian and corrupt Shah, who built up Iran's military, began a nuclear program, suppressed peaceful opposition, and forcibly modernized his traditional society. The result was a revolution with broad support, but unfortunately Islamic hardliners led by the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini won control. The seizure of the American embassy in November 1979 after the Shah entered the U.S. for medical treatment turned the new Islamic republic into one of Washington's bitterest enemies. As a result, the Reagan administration supported Iraq after the latter invaded Iranian territory; the U.S. mistakenly shot down an Iranian passenger plane in 1987 while patrolling the Persian Gulf. Tehran, at odds with Israel and its Gulf neighbors, engaged in subversion and restarted the Shah's nuclear program. Advertisement Washington responded by imposing sanctions on and threatening war against the Iranian monster that it had done so much to create. The U.S. also more closely embraced such countries as Saudi Arabia, actually more repressive and supportive of radical Islam than Tehran. Indeed, Saudi backing for fundamentalist Wahhabism fomented violent extremism around the globe. In the aftermath of the Iraqi invasion, Iran offered to negotiate, but the triumphalist Bush administration refused. Tehran responded by ramping up its nuclear program. As Iraq turned into a debacle Washington's leverage ebbed. U.S. threats grew as Vice President Richard Cheney and others pressed for war. Although the Obama administration reiterated that "all options" were on the table, it turned to negotiation, yielding perhaps its most important diplomatic achievement. Despite criticism from Neocons who saw destroying Israel's adversary as America's duty, the nuclear deal allowed the U.S. to escape the policy cul-de-sac within which it had been stuck. There now is increased if restrained hope of better bilateral and regional relationships with Tehran as well as more moderate political dynamics within Iran. The most important objective with the nuclear agreement was to stop any movement toward a nuclear weapon. Although Western intelligence believed that Tehran had halted its program, Iran retained an obvious incentive to move forward. Israel, already a nuclear power with a sizeable arsenal, threatened to attack Iran. Most of Tehran's Gulf neighbors were hostile; Saudi Arabia spent lavishly to build up a military directed at Iran. Most important, the globe's singular superpower, having dismembered Serbia and imposed regime change in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya continued to threaten military action. Advertisement An accord was reached. No doubt, the West would have preferred Tehran to blow up its nuclear facilities, shoot its nuclear engineers, and exile its extremist supporters, but that never was going to happen, even under President Hassan Rouhani, a dramatic change from his hardline predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Nor was there any reason to believe the GOP uber-hawks who argued that the U.S. need only maintain sanctions while huffing and puffing a little more to make Tehran surrender to American dictates. When Washington rejected previous Iranian overtures Tehran added centrifuges. The deal was struck because it was a deal, which meant Iran's government received benefits too. The accord ended any potential nuclear weapons program for now. And so far Tehran is living up to the accord. The International Atomic Energy Agency affirmed it had "verified and monitored Iran's implementation of its nuclear-related commitments." No new construction, no production of uranium pellets, heavy water was shipped, no reprocessing, and centrifuges remained in storage. None of which would have occurred without the agreement. Another line of attack against the settlement was that the negotiation over Iran's nuclear program did not cause the Islamic republic to turn itself into a liberal democracy, adopt unilateral conventional disarmament, abandon regional security interests, and accept Saudi dominance. Even some supporters of the nuclear pact worry about Tehran's missile program. Sen. Chris Coons (D-Conn.) argued "We're going to have to be clear that we're not going to tolerate their bad behavior, and we're willing to punish Iran." But no nation, including America, would voluntarily dismantle its political system and sacrifice its safety at the insistence of another country, especially one which long posed its greatest military threat. Iran cannot be blamed for acting militarily when its neighbors and America do so as well. Indeed, why should Tehran supinely accept not only American but Saudi hegemony, including violent regime change in long-time neighboring ally Syria? One can imagine Washington's reaction to a similar threat against Canada or Mexico. In fact, in Bahrain and Yemen Iran is opposing oppression and violence, while in Syria Tehran's conduct is no worse than those who have backed Islamist radical insurgents. Moreover, most of these demands have little to do with America's own security interests. Syria is a humanitarian tragedy, but the U.S. gains nothing from ousting President Bashar al-Assad, which likely would turn more of the country over to the Islamic State. Lebanon's chief occupation is avoiding another bloody break-up, not acting as an Iranian proxy. Tehran's influence in Iraq has risen--as an inevitable result of America's ouster of Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein. Iran's support for Houthi rebels in Yemen is a partnership of convenience triggered by Riyadh's attack and doesn't much concern America. Advertisement In fact, Saudi Arabia's regional influence is equally if not more malign. It has turned a lengthy insurgency into a bloody sectarian conflict in Yemen, used military force to preserve a repressive Sunni monarchy in majority-Shia Bahrain, and underwritten Egypt's brutal military dictatorship. To reject an agreement constraining Tehran's nuclear options because it did not further strengthen totalitarian Islamic rule in Riyadh would be bizarre in the extreme. Iran's election confirms that the administration was right to negotiate. One of the chief criticisms of the agreement is that it is temporary and dependent on transformation of the Islamic regime. Wrote Eli Lake: "the only way it can be considered a success is if, over time, Iran really does undergo reform and its leaders abandon the revolution that threatens the rest of the Middle East." Actually, the accord is dependent on offering enough benefits to convince whoever rules Iran that they do better by not building nuclear weapons. Washington could help by moderating the hostile security environment created by constant U.S. military threats and Saudi military build-up. Indeed, Riyadh has spent more than $80 billion each of the last two years on defense, by some estimates more than Russia. Iran's expenditures were only $26.5 billion and $30.5 billion, respectively, in 2014 and 2015 Still, the administration helped sell the nuclear pact by claiming that the latter would help open up Iranian society and promote a more liberal politics. President Obama expressed his hope that the agreement "would serve as the basis for us trying to improve relations over time." The possibility of such a transformation is why Trita Parsi of the National Iranian American Council called these "the most consequential non-presidential elections in Iran at least for the last two decades." No surprise, resistance from Iranian hardliners has been strong. Muhammad Sahimi argued that "the deep state is also terrified by President Rouhani's high popularity in the aftermath of the nuclear accord" and end of sanctions. The Guardian Council disqualified many reformist candidates, including the Ayatollah Khomeini's grandson. The supreme leader decried "a U.S. infiltration plot" and "foreign meddling." Advertisement But, noted author Hooman Majd, "No matter how undemocratic and how compromised the system is, there's no question that the elections matter." Moderates have prospered despite their manifold handicaps. The regime will face greater challenges. Opined Maryam Rajavi of the National Council of Resistance of Iran, the result will "aggravate internal tensions, thereby socially isolating the regime further while jeopardizing the political and economic advantages of the nuclear agreement. In a word, the regime will become even more vulnerable." Of course, change remains uncertain and will take time. Indeed, many "moderates" seem reasonable only in comparison with the hard-liners who have run the nation into the ground. However, the alternative--call it massive resistance--favored by American hardliners, especially Neocons who think of nothing other than continued economic sanctions and military threats, would ensure no domestic change in Iran. Washington has no magical ability to reach inside Iran, turn conservative Muslims into Western liberals, and install a regime friendly to America. It isn't 1953 again, and that play actually ended badly. If international social engineering abroad was so easy, Presidents Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Bush would have fixed the problem long ago. Moreover, intensifying threats against Iran would increase the likelihood of Tehran cracking down domestically while reactivating its weapons program. After all, a regime under siege is less likely to risk opposition on any grounds and more likely to use foreign hostility to justify greater repression. A patriotic public told to choose between unpleasant domestic leaders and hostile foreigners is likely to select the domestic devil they know as the least bad alternative. The end result would be some combination of greater regional instability, a nuclear Iran, conflict between Tehran and Saudi Arabia or Israel, and, worst of all, an American attack on Iran. A democratic, nuclear free Iran would be about the least likely outcome. Washington should play the long game. Hardliners, whether believing Islamists or ambitious cynics, recognize that increased engagement with the West threatens their power. More than 60 percent of the population is under 30 and many younger Iranians already favor the West and its liberal values. The accord has empowered President Rouhani and energized outward-looking citizens. The noteworthy failure of forces of repression to stifle reform currents, buttressed by increasing economic opportunities, likely will encourage greater reform activism. Noted Reza Marashi of the National Iranian American Council: "After these elections there will be a more diverse range of voices, and that will better reflect the will of people. It's not perfect, but will be better." America needs to encourage a welcoming international environment that benefits Iran and draws Iranians outward. As more of the population gains from peaceful engagement, finding both prosperity and security, Tehran is more likely to maintain the same path even after expiration of the nuclear accord. Particularly important is sustained economic growth reaching rural and working class people as well as more Western-oriented elites. No wonder President Rouhani is hoping for $50 billion in foreign investment annually. Whoever is in charge, a more liberal political and social environment is likely to develop in an Iran which has reentered the oil markets, benefited from Western money, and traded with the world. A move back to Islamic radicalism and isolation would become less likely. Advertisement There is, of course, no guarantee for the future. There are no reform programs or timetables, no transformations or end states which inevitably will result. After a few years Iranians and Westerners alike might be greatly disappointed. However, the nuclear accord appears to have triggered or at least accelerated a process which offers the best chance for the future. U.S. policy in the Middle East has been a catastrophic failure. Yet Washington appears oblivious. Secretary of State John Kerry opined that the U.S. was "not going to stand by while the region is destabilized or while people engage in overt warfare across lines, international boundaries and other countries." Yet it is America which overthrew a democratic Iranian government, sustained decades of dictatorship in Egypt, backed Saddam Hussein's attack on Iran, intervened disastrously in the Lebanese civil war, subsidized an oppressive Israeli occupation over millions of Palestinians, placed a garrison on sacred Islamic soil in Saudi Arabia, ousted Iraq's secular dictatorship, overthrew the Libyan government, backed the overthrow of Syria's secular regime, supported Saudi Arabia in opposing democracy in Bahrain and attacking indigenous rebels in Yemen. Washington's own policies have done much to release the virulent forces of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. Driving along the dusty, single-lane road from Dolakha to Kathmandu on the holiday of Maha Shiva Raatri provides an unexpected reminder of the whimsical ingenuity of childhood. As we wound through the hills away from Dolakha, where we had been at our new public-private-partnership (PPP) hospital, children of all ages attempted to stop our jeep to enact a toll in celebration of the holiday. Some had crafted a full-on tollgate propped up between two sticks. One had a rope and lever system, others had frayed ropes. A few just waved a piece of wood. We would pay our five or ten rupees and move on to the next toll a few hundred meters down the road. As I watched these children, I thought of our work and what we call this "dignity pitch" that is central to it. Children carry an intrinsic sense of dignity that obscures harsh realities. The status of their families, like many throughout rural Nepal, rural America, and all over the world, is a stark reminder that poverty is not merely the absence of wealth; it is the exclusion of justice. Engrained in our social consciousness is a notion that, on the one hand, poverty is a passive process: "Well, some people just are born without much money," and, on the other hand, a personal deficiency: "those Others, those poor people are dumber, lazier." Nothing in my experience has confirmed this bias; rather, I have come to see poverty as an active process by which those of us in power extract or horde resources at the expense of the Other. Advertisement Six weeks ago, our team at Possible initiated services at the government-owned Charikot Hospital in Dolakha through a PPP model with Nepal's government. As in our first district in Achham, the government owns the property, leases it to us, and provides supplies and co-financing. At Charikot, we operate on an integrated staffing approach, where independent management is provided to us, with both staff from the government and employees from Possible. Of the sixty employees at Charikot Hospital, the split is roughly 50%. We started services, including surgery, within five days of signing the agreement with the government. By the time I arrived six weeks after we had opened, the hospital already had full spectrum inpatient, emergency, and outpatient services, and the electronic health record had been deployed. Charikot Hospital Our mission is to strengthen the government system to realize the constitutional right to high-quality healthcare. We see ourselves as strengthening the public system to counter-balance a growing, unregulated, fee-for-service private sector that does considerable good but also poses substantial risks to health justice, from fee-imposed impoverishment, to delays in care and overuse of antibiotics. A core tension remains--a nagging sense among those in the government that we are somehow undermining the public sector rather than strengthening it. Even in six weeks, there had already developed manifestations of "us versus them," including conflicts about overtime pay and holiday schedules, professionalism, hierarchy, and reporting structures. The conflicts are similar to any new enterprise, especially one that took on 60 new employees overnight. Staff has not had sufficient time to be onboarded to the organizational culture, incorporated properly into our management system, and trained on our systems. There are also intrinsic conflicts between "local" staff and those from Kathmandu or elsewhere in Nepal, who have typically come from backgrounds of greater wealth and have had access to better educational opportunities. Advertisement Even beyond those issues remains the very identity of what it means to be a government employee in the 21st Century. Globally, public servants of various backgrounds are our favorite punching bags, from healthcare workers, to teachers and bureaucrats. Some political campaigns are centered around the almost wholesale destruction of government as we know it. Much of the criticism has merits; governments are failing in their responsibilities to deliver healthcare, education, justice services, and safe and clean environments. Yet, like our unconscious assessment of poverty itself, our causal reasoning is false. The problem is long-standing systems of power that conspire to weaken government competency and citizen's abilities to hold the government accountable. The use of the state power to wield over minority or dissenting groups in certain parts of government, most notably in those areas involved in security, policing, surveillance, and criminal justice, further erodes our notion of what government can and should be. We are trying to change that dynamic. The government system is not using citizens (taxpayer) funds optimally to reach the most marginalized. The private sector in healthcare has zero incentives to reach the poor. We are asking the government to work with us to do better. We are not asking the government to enter a position of powerlessness. We are asking they leverage their expertise to regulate healthcare, hold us accountable, advocate for their citizens, and facilitate greater investment through the PPP. We need to change the narrative of public services to one of cooperation and accountable regulation. If we consider power in government to be realized in accountable, affordable, and just public services rather than authoritarian control over resources, that will make the government more powerful. Possible's Director of Governance (Right) with Mahendra Shrestha from Nepal's Ministry of Health (Left) Advertisement Developing an effective sales pitch is as core to non-profits as it is in for-profit business. Indeed, at Possible, when we talk about "pitching" our work, we agree all of us are in sales. We believe the heart of good design is clear, concise communication. We believe we should treat colleagues, patients, families, and government officials with timeliness, respect, and compassion. Those beliefs are at the heart of the pitch. It is not about duping those in government, tricking them, or even "convincing" them. It is about pitching an honest vision about how healthcare can be better. We have to believe that monolithic, state-run healthcare is failing patients, failing communities, and failing constitutional mandates. We need to prove an alternative: Healthcare is a human right and a public good, and the State must be accountable to health and social justice and must fund, partner, and regulate. Yet achieving that vision requires a greater balance of power between citizen, government, and private organizations. This pitch requires a spiritual transformation among our leaders. From a young age, we are cultured towards an implicit classism: Bureaucrats and government employees are less capable and motivated. We need to watch our thoughts and language and correct them, in the same way we would retrain our minds away from implicit sexism or racism. As we retain our minds, we can start to appreciate others' perspectives and perceptions, and arrive at a new narrative that works for their egos, worldviews, and biases. The pitch is as much to ourselves as it is to our colleagues and patients. Many members of our community don't see a way out of poverty, premature disease, and government ineffectiveness. They've been shafted by mere virtue of their place of birth and excluded from the most basic of opportunities. Our healthcare providers are cultured in way of medicine marked by hubris--of peddling unnecessary antibiotics, of demanding that patients come to the hospital when they are better treated at home, of not listening, partnering, or dialoguing with patients. Our societies are conditioned to spend our money in ways that are antithetical to human dignity, in service of the ego rather than the greater good. Our companies tend to overlook the dignity and career potential of their employees. Our healthcare systems in the fee-for-service era have commodified healthcare and incentivized providers to sell medicines rather than care. The pitch is not about money, votes, or salvation. It is about human dignity. We pitch to patients that together we can alter the "natural history" of diseases, be it that children don't have to die of pneumonia or adults don't have to suffer strokes in their fifties. All around the world, we are being pitched a different vision: Dignity is elusive for much of humanity, and we have little control to change that. Advertisement It does seem like any press is good press for Donald Trump? While I have long believed the theory wasn't correct and have advised clients accordingly, I stand corrected with @RealDonaldTrump. You can stop reading my book on PR and my book on Leadership now, I'm wrong apparently? When violence becomes a love fest and the people behind it are simply "spirited", what's a voter to think? It seems as if Trump ups the ante daily and he usually begins on Twitter. Follow one news cycle and you will see his comments that light up a day of news routinely begin there. While the war hero who got caught wasn't quite worthy of a Trump compliment, it did merit a tweet or two. Even the great KKK backtracking was facilitated by a tweet and the claim of being given a bad headset by CNN. I would have gone for the dog ate my homework excuse first. Advertisement It seems as though if you're a presidential candidate and you want to go far on Twitter, you'll have to get a bit irreverent and get the young voters talking? An analysis of the tweets of the mainstream candidates since their respective campaign announcements and you will see all sorts of displays of panache, pop culture savvy, and even a little moxie seem to go far. We've never known or cared about the penis size of any President, right? There's even a book out called Politics and the Twitter Revolution which discusses how Twitter influences the relationship between political leaders and the public. Read it and you'll get a better idea of just why Donald Trump is doing so well. The fact-checkers are busier than usual. Details aside, Trump's offensive comments against Muslims, Mexicans, women and people with disabilities (to name a few) would have quickly ended the campaigns of other White House candidates but they haven't hurt Trump. What voter block is left to offend and does it even matter? Basically, facts and offensive comments aside, we have Twitter and 140 characters shaping the race. I love Twitter, although I lose more followers with every negative comment about the presumptive Republican candidate than I gain. But with all due respect, 140 characters inching so precariously close to the oval office is concerning. While some people, who aren't drinking the Trump Kool-Aid consider him a bully in the sandbox, the fact is with the vast reach Trump has on Twitter he can hit anyone fast and furious and instantly, pivot and move on to the next news cycle. Advertisement Not a bad strategy? The Choices We Make As a new political season is upon us, its consequences promise to introduce radical political changes. They go beyond one or the other party coming to power: the Economist Intelligence Unit, a leading think-tank, included Mr. Trump's potential presidency into 20 greatest threats to global well-being. Therefore now more than ever we need to review the situation from multiple perspectives multiple times -- and then get off the couches and vote. Clearly, the US politics on both left and right has radicalized to such a degree that today every American citizen taking a stand can help define the future of the entire country and even the world. Especially for the immigrant women as the most vulnerable demographic, making the right choices is existential. When interviewing prominent first-generation immigrant women for the upcoming book, I learned it isn't easy to win their minds: sophisticated, contributing to America's well-being and culture, they are part and parcel of American minorities whose votes cannot be taken for granted. It is for them - and other politically-responsible people - that I review our choices and ask the readers to share their thoughts before the big-leap in November. Making Sense of Trumpism Donald Trump, once described as merely colorful, rich, and self-serving - and dismissed as a serious contender - has now emerged as a mighty political player and Republican front runner. Media has long underestimated Mr. Trump, hoping that his serial insults of women and a label of a racist/fascist would bury him. They did not, and the pundits started looking deeper to explain his popularity. It appeared that his magic message is not anti-immigrant or even anti-establishment: it is anti-free-market. This is why millions of angry Americans whose manufacturing jobs were shipped overseas stand up for him. Yes, globalization and free-market concept, so unanimously adopted by politicians and economists of all stripes, do hurt--and Mr. Trump's base believes that his powerful persona will be able to turn the tide bringing their jobs back. Thomas Frank elaborated it quite convincingly: Trumpism coordinates best with "deindustrialization and despair, with the zones of economic misery that 30 years of Washington's free-market consensus have brought the rest of America." Advertisement Thus, the real reason for Mr. Trump's base snowballing is his tapping people's economic woes. Playing the anti-political-correctness tunes and catering to people's prejudices might be reason three at best. Making Sense of Progressivism Let's look to the left of Trumpism, at the Democratic presidential contenders. The extremely engaging Senator Bernie Sanders is a phenomenon in his own right: a self-proclaimed democratic socialist calling for mass political activism (and naming it "revolution") became broadly popular with the youth and the disgruntled blue-collar workers. His ideas are far from the "extreme socialism" as we know it. Indeed, Senator says it's possible to narrow the inequality gap in a European or Canadian style, making medical care and education free for all those eligible. However, some analysts state his plans lack reality-rooting, just like Mr. Trump's. Interestingly, these presidential candidates both deplore free-trade. Hillary Clinton has a special place in the hearts of all American women and many think it's high time to have a woman-President, as 63 nations already did. Importantly, she is also considered a "formidable and in some ways admirable candidate," if flawed--but aren't we all? Today, Mrs. Clinton appears as a battered-but-unbowed, compassionate matriarch, a modern image for the American President. Still, despite accumulated political skills and hard-to-get government acumen that she brings to the table, it is hard to get the "likes," although she does oppose the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal she once advocated for. Advertisement Evidently, the united front of the progressivists will need to neutralize the anti-free-trade message of Mr. Trump - emphasizing really effective solutions. Thinking Thoroughly Now meet one of the prominent immigrant women and see why their votes are precious. Ginny Gong, from China: From Ironing Board to Corporate Board Ginny is used to wearing many hats in her eventful life: an immigrant child growing up in the back of her parents' laundry, she became, in turn, a math teacher/administrator, an author, a speaker/facilitator, a TV talk show host (pictured), a beauty queen, a community leader at the local and national levels, a corporate board member, and the 4-term National President of one of the oldest civil rights advocacy groups in Washington, DC. The first Asian-American appointed to head a government agency in Montgomery County, MD, Ginny serves as Director for the Office of Community Use of Public Facilities, managing the community's use of the County's public facilities and its multi-million Enterprise Fund. She is credited with establishment of the first New Americans Welcome Center serving the County's diverse immigrant community; photographed as the face of Asian-American women over 50 in AARP-1st national Asian-American outreach campaign; and elected to head OCA, a national Asian-American organization with 80 chapters/affiliates nationwide. That's where Ginny's influence is coming from. Her memoir, From Ironing Board to Corporate Board, describes Ginny's perpetual dual-culture negotiations of a person who is very American in mindset but Asian in appearance and spirit, referring to her "heart of an immigrant and mind of a native," as descriptive of her integration into mainstream American culture. Ginny's gotten all she has wanted in life: a higher education, rewarding jobs with decision making authority; three kids raised to be good people; beautiful grandchildren, loyal friends, and national recognition as a community activist. She truly embodies the American Dream come true. The Point Routinely a person of great conviction, Ginny's voice will be heard in this presidential election with the welfare of America she loves at stake. For her it's always been a vote for the most qualified person, not necessarily the party or the gender. Catch her if you can, politicians! Think Before YOU Leap BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 22: Police officers patrol outside Maelbeek metro station following todays attack on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. At least 34 people are thought to have been killed after Brussels airport and a Metro station were targeted by explosions. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) After last year's tragic events in Paris, which killed 17 people in January and 130 more on November 13, and now with the Brussels attacks, there is a strong, even irresistible temptation to assume that we are now dealing with a "shadow army," or worse, a real army. The multitude of targets, the diversity of execution methods, and the recurrence of attacks imply that there is a developing mob of participants of North African origin. Abdeslam and his consorts move around like fish in water, despite the ubiquitous police presence. And don't the terrorists claim that they belong to a state embodied by ISIS? Advertisement Thus, there is a chance that we could be at war, no longer in the metaphorical sense. Remarks by Francois Hollande, as well as many other leaders, since the night of November 13 seemed to suggest that we could be in the midst of a real war with their army. The most recent massacre in Brussels would confirm this. Before jumping on the bandwagon of this narrative, we should take a few moments to reflect, both to verify it, and to consider its consequences. Terror can be spread without an army. Let's look at the facts first. We know that there were at least 10 players in the Paris attacks at the time, supported by a Franco-Belgian network that couldn't be accurately measured at the time, but which appears to constitute about 20 individuals, including a few relatives of the murderers. That's not surprising -- the weapons can be obtained, the logistics can be organized, the hideouts can be rented, and the explosives can be manufactured. This isn't an army, but at most, a squad of outlaws. This is a group of criminals mainly fighting against intelligence services, police forces and judicial repression. Let's also add that we know that a very small number of individuals can cause disproportionate damage -- a prime example is the attack by the "lone wolf" from the extreme right, Anders Breivik, which left 77 people dead in 2011. He used a van crammed with explosives and his personal arsenal of firearms. Advertisement Terror can be spread without an army. Terrorism can also have different faces: The Oslo massacre was among the most deadly acts of terrorism in Europe, along with the 2004 Madrid train bombings, and the Paris attacks of November 13. Nothing is more helpful to ISIS than being treated like a state with its own army. Now, let's consider the consequences. ISIS considers itself to be a fully independent state, and it presents its "martyrs" as militants belonging to an army fighting against non-believers. Nothing contributes to bolstering its self-image more than being treated like a state with its own army and militants. We are giving the terrorists an honor that they certainly don't deserve. Talking about an army and a war strengthens the motivation of the ISIS servants. Talking about a shadow army is even worse: these murderers are certainly not the successors of the heroes of the Resistance. While it's true that ISIS is representative of a section of the populations in countries at civil war, particularly in Syria and Iraq, in Western Europe, it is no more than a terrorist group that in no way constitutes a mass movement. Tens of thousands of "S" cards in France is way too many, but that's still not representative, in a country of 66 million inhabitants, of which around 5 million are of Muslim faith. Don't fall into the mindset of civil war. By creating two categories of French people (ISIS and non-ISIS), by perpetuating a state of emergency with grave effects, and by confronting terrorism as if it were a question of fighting an army, we risk leaping from a scenario of fighting groups and individuals, to a drama involving entire populations. It's this prospect of a civil war that ISIS is hoping for; and that's what we must avoid. The fear sparked by the bloody Brussels attacks will test our ability to avoid this downward spiral. Advertisement Disruption has become the catchall word to describe a period of transformative change. Disruption has migrated into the everyday vocabulary of media practitioners, political scientists and corporate strategists. Disruption has also become the rallying cry for leaders within the anti-poverty movement. But what exactly does it mean to live in the age of disruption? What are the consequences of this disruption on the lives of everyday citizens? What kind of society will emerge in what the German philosopher Johann Fichte described as the new synthesis? The invention of the World Wide Web in 1989 signaled the starting point for a media revolution that has dramatically altered every aspect of our daily lives. Through social media, long-lost friendships have been restored, life-changing experiences shared and invaluable information communicated. Social media has reduced the world to the size of a keyboard. Social media has also created communities of common interest through which a revolution as seismic as the Arab Spring could be unleashed. Many argue that the Arab Spring demonstrated the power of the digital age at its best. However, my recent visit to Chicago coincided with news from the United Kingdom that the wonderful broadsheet newspaper The Independent will end its print publication on March 26 and become an online-only news source. At its peak, The Independent sold over 400,000 daily copies. Over the past 12 months, that figure has fallen to 40,000. The Chicago Tribune appears to be trending in the same direction. The Saturday edition of the Tribune was noteworthy for its lack of content. The migration online has clearly begun. Advertisement Jeffery Herbst, political scientist and president and CEO of the Washington, D.C.-based Newseum, frequently describes the digital revolution on the media landscape as both profound and far-reaching. For Herbst and others, the digital revolution has unleashed more information than ever into the public realm. This has also allowed each of us the ability to limit or filter the information that we receive. In the new media epoch, digital media platforms also use algorithms to feed us news content that reinforces our pre-existing beliefs. Healthy and informed debates within an environment of political civility have been replaced by dogma and extremism. Journalists have been replaced by bloggers. We have also witnessed disruptions within our established political order. The emergence of Donald Trump as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee has sent shockwaves through the GOP. It has also unleashed a vitriolic response from many who passionately oppose his more inflammatory statements. Trump's success is rooted in his ability to disrupt the established order within the GOP. His followers, fueled by anger and distrust of the prevailing political orthodoxy, have drawn their strength from conservative news sources, obscure websites and the blogging fraternity for views and opinions that reinforce rather than challenge established assumptions. The convergence of the power of new media on a political system dominated by extremes has formed a nexus within the present political cycle. Europe is also in the midst of a potentially far-reaching disruption. Britain will go to the polls on June 23 to decide whether to remain in the European Union. The British have always been the reluctant Europeans. The German-French axis, supported by Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg, have long taken the position that Europe's political and economic future is best served through integration and cooperation. Economic considerations rather than a shared sense of a common European destiny prompted Britain's belated entrance into the EU over 40 years ago. Today, Europe is a different place. Enlarged membership in the EU and increasing diversity have reopened old wounds around such polarizing issues as border control, immigration and the role of Brussels as the head of the European superstate. As we have observed in the rise of Trump within the United States, much of this debate is taking place in social media chat rooms and on Facebook. The "in-out" debate can also be found in the diametrically opposed positions taken by news sources representing the left and the right. As we are witnessing in the United States, reinforcing positions are being assumed by information outlets of both political persuasions. Advertisement Disruption within the business community has also created anxiety for many CEOs. The term "uberization" has gained increasing currency within the corridors of power. According to its 2015 survey, IBM found that 54 percent of CEOs expect to contend with competition from outside their industries -- rising from 43 percent in 2013. Uber has become the largest taxi company in the world without owning a single vehicle. Airbnb has become the largest lodging company in the world without owning any real estate. Corporate disruption will have far-reaching implications on strategy, new product development and employment security for decades to come. The anti-poverty movement has also issued a call for disruption in an effort to develop new approaches to solving intractable social ills. Over the past year, the Ford Foundation has placed a big bet on addressing the root causes of poverty and exclusion through the concentrated use of their philanthropic dollars. In support of their big bet, Ford recently launched #inequalityis. Using celebrity endorsers, Ford issued a call for action to bring the plight of the poor and the excluded to the attention of ordinary citizens and political leaders. By using its prestige within the philanthropic community, Ford is seeking to leverage the resources of others to support far-reaching outcomes. Time will tell whether they will succeed. IDEAGEN WISE LEADERSHIP 2030 A proposal to world leaders on leading to achieve the 2030 Agenda of the United Nations. Author; Ideagen Impact Leader Council Co-Chair - Dr. Juan F "Kiko" Suarez, PhD Leadership and Change/ Lumina Foundation Comments by the EU Delegation to the UN and Ideagen (www.Idea-gen.com) Abstract Considering the current political climate, low levels of trust in national and international institutions and the interconnectedness and degree of complexity of our world, nothing could sound more challenging to the average person than reaching 17 big audacious internationally-agreed goals and meeting 169 targets among 193 countries in 15 years. After this successful UN-achievement, it is now the great responsibility by the international community and leaders of those countries to come up, in partnership with the business community, private sector, NGO's, academia and think-tanks, with ways and means to reach those targets and accomplish what it is probably one of the most ambitious outcomes-based agendas of our time. In this paper I propose two frameworks for wise leadership and wise design for social innovation that could provide the necessary guidance for leaders in charge of the 2030 agenda for sustainable development to create the conditions required for positive change in their respective nations. Advertisement Commitment by the international community to implement the SDG's is now key. The EU for example has been a leader in contributing to this process from the start. It is now committed to take this agenda forward, both inside the EU (such as through forthcoming EU initiatives like the Circular Economy Strategy which is designed to address more sustainable patterns of production and consumption) and through the EU's external policies by supporting implementation efforts in other countries, in particular those most in need. The Purpose of Leadership "Leadership is a context sport" Dr. Suarez, EU Delegation to the United Nations, December 2015 Leadership is an ever expanding field of study. From the characteristics of the individuals who lead, to the actions taken by them and their followers, leadership is a fascinating practice to observe and research. After years of research and study, I came up with the following definitions of leadership: The craft of creating the conditions for desired change The craft of setting context for the achievement of specific outcomes The focus on "context" is critical in this definition. Change processes always benefit from a leadership approach that focuses on context, on condition setting for outcomes to occur. It is important, then, for leaders to understand the context in which change must happen rather than imposing change to those on the ground. Advertisement Thus, I propose that leaders in charge of implementing the 2030 agenda understand that their job is to set the conditions for the achievement of the goals and meeting the targets they are accountable for. Although this may sound a little counter intuitive, an obsessive push to get to the targets may become the worst possible obstacle for our 2030 leaders. Knowing where you are heading, focus on the conditions for a successful journey. Wise Leadership: the role of wisdom in accomplishing the desired 2030 outcomes "A smart person knows how to get out of a difficult situation; a wise person knows when not to get in a difficult situation in the first place". Dr Suarez, TEDx Talk, October 2014 We live in an increasingly entangled and interdependent world. That is what one could define as "complex", as opposed to "complicated", which would imply level of difficulty. A complex system is not solvable, a complicated one is. However, our instinct leads us attempt to simplify complexity, when complexity cannot be simplified, complexity just us. Complex systems are adaptive, and change over time. Time is a very important element in complexity. Things cannot be turned back to their original form (this is known as temporal asymmetry). We can turn eggs into an omelet, but cannot turn the omelet back into eggs. The whole is greater - and different- than the sum of the parts. In complex systems, the level of interconnectedness and interdependency lead to emergent properties, behaviors and opportunities that didn't exist before. And as scientists try to decipher the mystery of the underlying processes that lead to emergent behavior in complex systems, leaders of the world realize that the world we live in is a gigantic complex system with an increasing number of highly interconnected and interdependent environments that will certainly lead to unanticipated emergent properties. At a time when unpredictability leads to uncertainty, challenging the stability of market-based economies, leaders around the world seem to have an unreachable and ever raising bar to deliver results vs expected outcomes and regaining trust. What to do, if leadership is the art of setting context, but condition setting seems unsuitable? The answer lies on wisdom, the only inherently human capability that allows leaders to see even more complexity, giving them the acuity to understand and make meaning in a chaotic environment, seeing more clearly what the complexity means and equipping them to respond in the most appropriate way in an ever changing reality. Based on my research on those recognized as "wise" by others, I describe wisdom as an internal navigation system that leads each and every person to our true north (our higher purpose) of "human flourishing for self and others". This internal navigation system is equipped with 8 sensors (or senses) that are developed and nurtured over time and through exposure to "living". Cognitive Intuitive Experiential / practical Ethical Aesthetic Adaptive "Timeness" Balance Cognitive / Rational Sense It is about knowing, learning, fact finding, rationality. A wise person is well informed and knowledgeable about the topics at hand, and comes across as someone who is interested in multiple aspects of life, society and culture in general. Intuitive / Emotional sense It's our emotional intelligence, our gut feeling, our instinct. Emanating from exposure to life and upbringing, it tends to influence fast decisions, as opposed to the cognitive sense, that requires a slower deliberative process before a decision is made. Practical / Experiential Sense Directly from experience, it provides the parameters for usable, down to earth, applicable solutions to issues, conflicts and problems. Ethical / Humane Sense It triggers a line of questions: Why should it matter what happens to other people? Who benefits from it and how? What's my role in this? Ethics prepares a leader to respond humanely to paradoxes and dilemmas. Aesthetic Sense It's not about physical beauty, but about how to be more articulate, how to design a course of action that pursues beautiful outcomes vs ugly outcomes. Adaptive Sense It's about how to be quick, agile and nimble, blend when you must, make adjustments. Adaptiveness prepares a leader to be ready for emergence in a complex world. Sense of Time ("Timeness") It's about the ability to put things in a time perspective, assessing the consequences considering past, present and future. "Timeness" prepares a leader to both take time and consider time implications while discerning a path. It's not necessarily about "timing" a decision, but a consideration of the consequences over time. Advertisement Sense of Balance It's about being tempered, moderate, not being swayed by the extremes, poised, valuing the middle. Mastering balance prepares a leader to be calm but alert, relaxed but ready, smooth but sharp, humble but confident. I posit that human flourishing is a temporal state where all 8 senses are actively engaged in our lives. Our higher purpose is to reach as often as possible that state of high engagement both for ourselves and help others achieve the same. The constant pursuit of nurturing those 8 dimensions or "wisdom senses" for the purpose of actively engaging the world through them while helping others do the same, has the effect of "augmenting" our professional practices, including leadership. A "wise leader" could be seen, then, as one who is looking at her or his leadership craft through these 8 lenses, trying to ensure that conditions will not only accomplish pre-determined outcomes, but that in the process of getting there and sustaining the outcomes, those involved flourish (including the leader herself or himself) flourish as human beings. A more balanced and tempered, time sensitive, adaptive, articulate and beautiful, ethical and humane, practical and experiential, intuitive and rational individual and society that, at the same time, achieve those predetermined 17 goals and 169 targets, would be seen as successful, trustworthy and wise. Putting Wisdom to Work in 15 steps In the course of my research, I found that "wise leaders" apply the eight principles of wise design to their organizations in the following way. I have used education to illustrate some of the points. Advertisement 1. Articulate a balanced higher purpose. In education, educate well-rounded citizens with demonstrable market value. 2. Articulate a set of measurable higher outcomes. In education, focus on student learning, equity, and affordability. 3. Engage constituents (internal and external), listen, share, and co-create core values and ethical and humane principles. 4. Identify and master your ETHOS: Essential To Higher Outcomes Skills. ETHOS could include responsibility, accountability and opportunity. 5. Take immediate action on staff development with a wisdom-augmented approach to your practices. 6. Take the lead from within the organization; don't wait for external condition changes. 7. Launch a process for long-term sustainability of the higher outcomes, not just the organization. It is not just who you are, and how you do it, but what you get done and who benefits from it. 8. Measure and manage against higher outcomes and steer the ship without hesitation. 9. Use a futures-oriented strategic approach, as it creates the space and time to reflect and integrate multiple wisdom dimensions. 10. Assemble diverse teams and balanced perspectives in all the above: ages, genders, races, practices. 11. Make tough choices, if / when necessary, after consultation with constituents. 12. Have a transparent financial accountability mechanism and incentive around outcomes. 13. Create a process to value ideas and test them. 14. Create a scanning real-time process for monitoring outliers and trends and act before reacting. 15. Be agile, networked, and global; make units smaller and value connections within the organization and with other organizations in your local community, region, at national and international levels. Conclusion and Recommendations Ideagen Wise Leadership 2030 could be the customized version of "wise leadership" for the achievement of the SDGs. Using the frameworks mentioned above (8 senses, 15 steps), the UN could coin Wise Leadership 2030 and create a member state engagement process, so key actors in achieving the SDG's could develop processes, set targets and change behaviors in pursuit of the 2030 agenda. We would be more than happy to facilitate the necessary technical assistance and facilitation required to disseminate and integrate this framework across the planet. By Laura Woods, Contributor On Sunday, March 20, President Obama made history when he became the first American leader to visit Cuba in the post-Cold War era. Prior to his trip, the last American president to set foot in the country was Calvin Coolidge in 1928 -- more than 88 years ago. The First Family was warmly welcomed to Old Havana, Cuba. Obama hopes the first official meeting of the two governments in more than 50 years will ignite positive changes in Cuba and boost tourism. Learn about the United States' history with Cuba, how you can travel the island country and for how much. Advertisement President Obama to Spur Travel to Cuba When Fidel Castro took office on Jan. 1, 1959, he swiftly imposed a number of sanctions -- placing substantial taxes on imports from the U.S. and publicizing private land and companies-- that caused the U.S. to sever ties with Cuba. President Dwight D. Eisenhower initiated the first Cuba embargo on Oct. 19, 1960, including all U.S. exports to Cuba, with the exception of medicine and select food items. Just over one year later, on Feb. 7, 1962, President John F. Kennedy made the embargo a permanent arrangement and expanded it to incorporate U.S. imports from Cuba. Consequently, the Cuban government estimates the rigorous trade restrictions have cost the country approximately $1.126 trillion over the more than 50-year period since the embargo was put in place. During a Monday, March 21 press conference with Cuban President Raul Castro, President Obama declared the Cuba embargo will end, but he didn't say when. The ruling must come from Congress, but so far, lawmakers haven't budged. Can Americans Travel to Cuba? If you're wondering whether Americans can travel to Cuba, the answer is yes but not without a host of restrictions. Since the relationship between the U.S. and Cuba was restored in December 2014, Americans have been able to travel to Cuba under 12 categories of authorized trips. The Obama administration recently loosened sanctions, allowing Americans to travel to the country independently, as long as they complete a form declaring the visit an educational journey. Advertisement Cuba tourism is still technically outlawed, so if you want to book solo travel opting for an educational visit, you'll need to plan a people-to-people trip, where you meet Cuban citizens in normal daily life settings, such as schools and community centers. Previously, Americans visiting for educational purposes were required to have a fully booked cultural itinerary, which meant booking a trip with a tour company, which could come with an average weekly price tag of $2,000 to $3,500 per person. Planning a trip to Cuba on your own can be more affordable, but you'll need to find your own hotel and get in touch with locals to meet with, which might prove challenging. Preparing for Travel to Cuba The impact of President Obama in Cuba could result in a near-50 percent drop in flight prices if travel restrictions between the two countries are removed, according to the travel site Hopper.com. The average price of a round-trip ticket from the U.S. to Cuba is currently $717, but could fall to $364 without any travel constraints. Trips from Miami would be the cheapest, averaging $275 for a direct flight. Currently, you have to take a chartered flight when traveling to Cuba, but this will soon change. In February, the U.S. and Cuba signed an aviation agreement allowing for up to 110 daily flights to Cuba on U.S. airlines. American Airlines, United Airlines, JetBlue, Spirit Airlines and Delta have all announced plans to submit a bid to become a carrier. Advertisement Cuba Exchange Rate After arriving in Cuba, you'll need local currency. The country uses two different currencies, the Cuban convertible peso (CUC) and the Cuban peso (CUP). When visiting from the states, you'll need the CUC, which has a 1:1 exchange rate with the U.S. Dollar. The Cuban government imposes a 10 percent tax on U.S. currency exchange -- and many retailers charge a 3 percent service fee -- so work these costs into your travel budget. Some U.S. credit and debit cards can also be used when traveling to Cuba, but many businesses, especially those outside Havana do not yet have the infrastructure to accept this form of payment. Cuba Cell Phone Service and Internet Another technology concern to prepare for is the use of American cellphones. Sprint and Verizon have roaming services in Cuba, but other carriers do not yet offer mobile phone service. In March, Google announced plans to equip Cuba with high-speed internet, but efforts are still in early stages. Cuba does currently have internet access, but it is very limited, so don't rely on this form of communication. Advertisement Cost Breakdown of Travel to Cuba If you're planning to travel to Cuba, expect to spend about $45 per day during your trip, according to the travel site Budget Your Trip. The cost breakdown includes: Hotel: $24.62 Food: $7.24 Water: $1.24 Local transportation: $6.25 Entertainment: $26.59 Communication: $1.50 Tips and handouts: $1.15 Intercity transportation: $12.67 Souvenirs: $6.24 Alcohol: $8.15 Spending a week in Cuba will cost you approximately $315, but with pricey chartered flights averaging $717 per ticket, your grand total will reach an estimated $1,032. Of course, if you want to upgrade to a luxury property, such as the Paradisus Varadero Resort & Spa in Varadero, your nightly accommodation rates could total $300 to upwards of $1,300. While traveling to Cuba might be pricier than you expected, President Obama's trip to Cuba could help drop prices in the near future. Advertisement President Obama Arrives in Cuba More from GOBankingRates: Also on HuffPost: ITALY - DECEMBER 24: The Crucifixion (16th century), fresco by a master of the Lombard school, Church of St Sebastian (16th century), Biella, Piedmont, Italy. Detail. (Photo by DeAgostini/Getty Images) Many churches follow the Revised Common Lectionary, a three-year schedule of Scripture readings for the church year. Each year features one of the Gospels. The Gospel for this year, Year C, is the Gospel of Luke. (The Lectionary does not devote a year to John but scatters readings from John across all three years.) Luke presents a distinctive understanding of Jesus' death. This Holy Week, we may ponder that Luke interprets Jesus' death as a continuation of his ministry. Quite early in the story, Jesus identifies himself as bringing the reign of God through his acts of healing and liberation, his teaching ministry, and the community that forms around him. He shares that these activities will eventually lead to the cross. In his last hours Jesus continues this ministry by seeking blessing for other people rather than calling attention to himself. Advertisement For Luke, Jesus' death carries no saving power on its own. It provides no atonement for sins, whatever we may mean by atonement. Instead, Jesus dies as a consequence of his commitment to bless all people, especially the poor and sinners. He continues these activities even on the cross. And his resurrection vindicates him as the world's savior who brings God's presence to humankind. Because of the resurrection, Jesus' ministry continues through the church - despite its imperfections. Luke communicates this distinctive message in several ways. All of the features I will mention here apply only to Luke and do not appear in the other Gospels. For example, Luke locates Jesus' appearance in his hometown synagogue at the beginning of Jesus' public ministry (4:16-30). This scene occurs pretty much in the middle of Matthew and Mark, where we do not learn the nature of Jesus' teaching. According to Luke, however, Jesus announces that he brings good news to the poor and the downtrodden, and he shows how God's blessings extend even beyond the boundaries of Israel to embrace the Gentiles. This scene sets the tone for Jesus' ministry. Twice Jesus ponders what will happen to him when he reaches Jerusalem. While he is on the way to the Holy City, some Pharisees warn Jesus that King Herod is out to kill him. Jesus responds that he will continue his ministry just as he has been doing. Then he laments over Jerusalem: "it is not possible," he says, "for a prophet to die outside Jerusalem" (13:31-35). As he approaches Jerusalem, Jesus weeps because the city has not recognized "the things that bring peace near" (19:41-44). Unfortunately, these passages have provided fuel for anti-Jewish rhetoric, but for Luke they indicate that Jesus anticipates how the course of his ministry will lead to a violent end. Space won't allow for a detailed treatment of how Luke interprets Jesus' final hours, but we can call attention to several points. Again, these are features of Luke that do not occur - or they play out very differently - in the other Gospels. We know that Luke used a copy of Mark's Gospel as the framework for its own story. Therefore, the places where Luke's account diverges from Mark's are all the more important. Advertisement During his final meal, Jesus reaches out to express his prayers for Simon Peter, who is in for a very rough night (22:31-34). When Jesus enters Gethsemane he does not throw himself upon the ground in agony, as he does in Mark, nor does he ask his disciples to stay awake while he prays; instead, he encourages the disciples to pray for themselves while he kneels to pray (22:40-46). During Jesus' arrest a disciple cuts off the ear of one of the high priest's slaves. Only in Luke does Jesus heal the slave (22:50-51). On Jesus' way to the cross, a large group of women wail and lament concerning his fate. But Jesus tells them they should grieve for themselves and their children instead (23:27-31). On the cross Jesus asks God to forgive his tormentors (23:34). While on the cross, Jesus assures one of the criminals beside him, "Truly, I tell you, today you will be with me in Paradise" (23:43). Luke's Gospel shows more interest in Jesus' companionship with sinners than do the other Gospels, and here Luke makes clear that the men crucified with Jesus are actual criminals, something that isn't clear in Mark. Mark and Matthew relate Jesus' agonizing final words: "My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?" (Mark 14:34; Matthew 27:46). Luke omits this cry. Instead, Jesus' last words attest to his faith: "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit" (23:46). All of these examples show that Jesus faces his death not only with remarkable calm but with a focus upon blessing other people rather than focusing upon his own suffering. This is how Luke interprets Jesus' death. Jesus dies just as he lived, seeking the blessing of others, especially sinners and the disadvantaged. In my experience, many people struggle with the idea of Jesus' death as a sacrifice or atonement for sins. (Sacrifice and atonement are not necessarily the same thing.) So do I - and apparently, so did the author of Luke. Whoever wrote Luke also wrote the Book of Acts. (Compare the first few verses of each.) Whenever Jesus' disciples preach the good news, they discuss Jesus' execution as a horrible crime - and then they announce the good news of Jesus' resurrection. (There's one exception. Stephen's speech in chapter 7 never proclaims the good news.) Peter's first great sermon at Pentecost delivers precisely this message: "This Jesus God raised up, of which we are all witnesses. Being exalted to God's right hand, and having received from the Father the promise of the Holy Spirit, he has poured of this very thing which you see and hear" (2:32-33). In our "Bridging Differences" blog discussion on Education Week, Deborah Meier and I have been discussing the meaning of democracy. We both agree that such discussion is important today, when democracy's meaning has been dramatically reduced - and we both agree that democracy is vastly more than elections! We also have agreement that democracy involves tradeoffs and compromises, and agree on principles such as rough equality in power and knowledge. I like the comment of William Hastie, the first black federal judge, that democracy is a journey, not a destination. We also have some differences worth exploring. For one thing, Meier stresses self-governance as the heart of democracy, and, related, highlights the idea of leisure time ("the trouble with socialism is that it takes too many evenings," quipped Oscar Wilde, who meant it resolves around meetings. People say the same about democracy). In contrast, I find compelling the argument of Victor Hanson in The Other Greeks. Hanson argues against the dominant scholarship which assumes that Athenian public life represented the democratization of aristocratic leisure. Such a view is associated with the ideal of "civic virtue," which holds that citizens should put aside their interests to pursue a common good. Advertisement Hanson marshals a good deal of evidence to suggest that in fact Athenian democracy grew out of the breakup of the large landed estates and the rise of small farms. The gritty, everyday challenges and disciplines of such farming necessitated cooperative labors on common projects. It wasn't a matter of putting aside interests, but finding that interests sometimes needed to be pooled through cooperation. It was a political process, in the sense of politics we've been discussing. And the discipline of learning to tie one's interests, especially in work, to the long range health of the city turns out to be a key democratic habit. Hanson's argument complements my research on the roots of democracy across the world in communal labors, which also suggests what the classicist Josiah Ober has shown: democracy in its Greek meaning did not mean a decision making structure, majority rule (see my last blog, "What Is Democracy?"). Rather for the Greeks it meant the capacity or power to act to shape the public world. Put differently, democracy doesn't only involve participating in decision making. It means creating communities. The concept of citizen as co-creator is a revolutionary challenge to contemporary societies, worth much more discussion. Democratic practices of communal labor, what we call public work, can be found in every culture long before the term democracy came into existence. Cooperative public work across differences of economic rank and status, sometimes others like ethnicity, has an element of democratic decision making that distinguishes it from conscripted labors organized and controlled by outside powers, whether emperors or nobles or kings. Public work is self-organized cooperative effort by a mix of people which produces something of lasting common benefit (cultural as well as material). It generates the sense that democracy is something people make, not simply participate in. Water systems, common spaces, public institutions, and also cultural products, from songs and dance to schools, are all examples of the many "commons" whose creation and sustenance are foundations of a democratic way of life. Advertisement Public work existed in settings (like medieval Europe) where formally people were ruled by kings and immigrants brought these traditions to America - a wellspring of our democratic culture. I describe the ways in which public work generates civic agency, collective power, in an essay in Political Theory, "Constructive Politics as Public Work." Another ancient democratic practice is deliberation. Nelson Mandela in his autobiography Long Walk to Freedom argues that deliberation of (male) villagers of all backgrounds and ranks is the heart of democracy - even though the chief made the final decision. These practices of deliberation, often around a great tree in the middle of villages, are an ancient feature of African civic life. Deliberation and public work feed into the transdisciplinary field called Civic Studies, with a website at The Jonathan Tisch College of Citizenship and Public Service at Tufts University. Civic Studies is based on concepts of agency and citizens as co-creators of communities at different scales. Another concept in Civic Studies is self-governance of common resources like forests, irrigation systems, fisheries and others, which turns out to be essential to their survival, according to the research of Elinor Ostrom, one of our co-founders, her husband Vincent, and an international network of collaborative researchers. Olstrom won the Nobel Prize in Economics for this research in 2009. Her Nobel lecture, "Beyond Markets and States," can be taken as a brilliant case for Civic Studies. She contrasted citizen governance of common resources, where local communities set rules and sanctions and apply them, with control by outside forces ("markets and states"). Formal governance structures often are complex, what Ostrom calls "polymorphic," with many levels, but strong citizen involvement in their governance is essential for their survival. Advertisement After we worked together with several others to form Civic Studies and before her untimely death in 2012, we had many conversations about the relationship between governance of common resources and the work that creates and sustains them. Ostrom was enthusiastic about the concept of public work and terms I had discovered for its different forms, in cultures across the world. Civic Studies also includes other traditions of theory and practice such as critical theory, community organizing, popular education, and interpretative social science, which recognizes the importance of different kinds of knowledge and different ways of knowing, not simply scientific or academic knowledge. While attending elementary school I started to work after school at a department store near my house in the coastal western town of Mayaguez, Puerto Rico. The store's name was PITUSA, Tienda por Departamentos. At first I thought that Don Delio and Dona Ana Martinez were the store owners. In fact, they were the store managers, a position that they held because they were referred to Israel Koppel (the actual owner of Pitusa Inc.) by other Cubans, who, like them, had migrated to Puerto Rico escaping the Cuban Revolution. That was my first exposure to the Cuban immigrant community in Puerto Rico - a community that came to dominate retail commerce in many bubbling cities and towns. There, in the middle of downtown Mayaguez, Puerto Rico, the Cuban entrepreneur and professional class tried to rebuild their lives. They quickly adapted to the island and thrived. Don Delio in particular liked to share his story. He was escaping a revolucion that had betrayed him after he initially supported it. Other Cuban store owners and managers shared similar stories. In their accounts, Batista and Castro were two sides of the same coin, equally bad. The Cuban exiled community in Puerto Rico, just like in the US mainland, was not shy about showing their fierce anti-communist feelings which usually came out in long anti-Castro rants. Advertisement For the most part, unlike Dominican and Haitians, Cubans were in Puerto Rico with documents and they joined the Puerto Rican middle class, and prospered as professionals and entrepreneurs. Just between 1960 and 1980, an estimated half a million Cubans left the island for the United States. Some 30,000 Cubans were admitted to Puerto Rico during the 1960-70s period alone. This Cuban exodus was a consequence of the Cuban Revolution and the policies followed by the United States' government with regard to Cuban immigration. The Cuban Revolution did not happen in a vacuum. It was in fact one of most important chapters of the Cold War. And the immigration policies of the United States with regard to Cuba reflect how important Cuba was for the United States and the Soviet Union. The Cold War is a well-known story. As World War II was coming to an end the Great Alliance that defeated Nazi Germany and the Empire of Japan quickly disintegrated and the world became polarized, initially divided between the West and its allies, and the Communist Bloc. Soon the non-aligned movement emerged and came to be known as the Third World. The Cold War, like most wars, was not about freedom versus tyranny, democracy versus totalitarianism. It was about two super powers trying to export their respective economic systems- capitalism versus Soviet socialism. Advertisement The West and the soviet bloc avoided direct confrontation fearing escalation into global conflict and nuclear warfare. Instead they would support whoever fight the other bloc by providing military assistance, training, equipment, and financial support. Most of these Wars by Proxy would be fought in Africa, Asia and of Latin America. The Korean War, Vietnam and Afghanistan are the most prominent examples of the War by Proxy approach followed by the contending superpowers. An overlooked phase of the Wars by Proxy is Cuba and Puerto Rico. The fate of both islands would be influenced by a propaganda war between the Soviets and the Americans. Making the Cuban revolution fail became an imperative for the Americans after the revolucionarios began to align with the Soviets. The narratives put forward by President John F. Kennedy's during his presidential campaign made a showdown with the revolutionaries almost inevitable. Attempting to present Eisenhower's administration as weak on Cuba, JFK invoked the much hated Monroe Doctrine (America for the Americans) to explain how he would deal with revolutionary Cuba. He also denounced Eisenhower for allowing the Soviets to edge the Americans regarding missile capabilities, the so-called "missile gap" - in effect, a non-existent threat. In early January 1961, the U.S.broke diplomatic relations with Cuba after the government expropriated all foreign property in response to American sanctions imposed by the Eisenhower administration. On April 16, the U.S. landed counter-revolutionaries at Bay of Pigs (Playa Giron) in an attempt to overthrow the revolutionary government. The invasion soon became a fiasco and U.S. military officer's proposed to use U.S. air and naval support to tilt the balance. JFK refused such direct involvement. The invasion failed and actually helped Castro to consolidate his position. A month later Castro announced that Cuba would be a Socialist Republic. A worse crisis was yet to come. After openly allying with the Soviet Union the Cuban government started to receive massive economic and military aid. During October 14-28, 1962, the world was at the brink of a nuclear confrontation after a U.S. spy plane discovered that the Soviets were building missile sites for nuclear weapons in Cuba. The Cuban Missile Crisis was peacefully resolved after the U.S. agreed not to invade Cuba and to stop its support of counter-revolutionary forces in the country side (los alzados); and the Soviet Union halted the construction of nuclear missile sites in Cuba. Advertisement That the Cuban revolutionary government could not be brought down by force did not mean that other means were not to be employed. A way of discrediting the Cuban government was to incentivize Cubans from fleeing the revolution. The Cuban Adjustment Act Statute of 1966 was such incentive. This law allowed Cubans to become permanent residents after being present in the United States for 2 years (reduced to one year in 1976). It set no caps on the number of Cubans to be accepted into the U.S. And, unlike other immigrants, Cubans were not required to enter the United States at a port-of-entry- they could be rescued at sea and would be granted all the benefits of the Cuban Adjustment Act. Roughly 500,000 Cubans came this way to the U.S. between 1960 and 1980. These policies were in place as a way to continue waging war by other means. It was a way to embarrass the Revolutionary government, to denounce its "tyrannical" rule, to portray the revolution as a failure. For U.S. policy makers Cuba had to fail and Cubans fleeing the revolution were to be welcomed and celebrated. On the other hand, Puerto Rico had been at the center of international politics for quite some time. It became imperative to find a non-colonial status for the island after WWII especially in view of the U.S. government's involvement (even if mostly by paying lip service) in dismantling the colonial empires of both its enemies and former allies. It is within this context that the Estado Libre Asociado was created- as an alternative decolonization model. After Cuba became a socialist state, American administrations saw the value of making the island's socio-economic and political projects work and to contrast it to a "failing" Cuba. Puerto Rico was presented as an example of what would happen when you aligned with the U.S. and follow the peaceful path to decolonization. Cuba, on the other hand was presented as a failed state, aligned with an evil empire, unable to feed and clothe its own people, a desperate people ready to brave a treacherous sea to find another live and freedom. For that matter, when the Puerto Rican economy faltered in the 1970s, the now infamous Section 936 of the U.S. Internal Revenue Code, was extended to the island. It was designed specifically to attract mainland investors to Puerto Rico with companies receiving as much as $70,000 a year in tax write-offs for each job created under Section 936. Advertisement But historical processes are not static and the Cold War came to an end, or so it seemed, between 1989 and 1991 as the Soviet Bloc collapsed and the U.S. showed its unparalleled military superiority during the Gulf War. The world briefly became unipolar with the U.S. as the only, and unchallenged, super power. Most diplomatic historians and the press would mark 1991 as the year when the Cold War ended. However, there was an unsolved chapter, Cuba, and by addition, Puerto Rico. Puerto Rico and Cuba lost their relevance after the collapse of the Soviet bloc. Cuba was expected to fail after losing the Soviet's support. Hence, enticing Cubans to flee the island was no longer important. In 1995, the Clinton administration revised the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966 and started to follow a "Wet Foot, Dry Foot Policy." The U.S. stopped admitting Cubans intercepted in U.S. waters. Instead, they would be sent to Cuba or to a third country. Only those who made it to land ("dry feet") could stay in the United States and qualify for expedited legal permanent residence and U.S. citizenship. In Puerto Rico the 936s began to be dismantled in the 1990s as part of a compromise between the Clinton administration and the Republican Party. Neo-liberalism demanded a sacrifice and Puerto Rico fit the bill. The gradual dismantling of the 936s has been identified by several scholars and economists as the beginning of the current debt and humanitarian crisis in Puerto Rico. Yet, in the 1990s it looked as if Puerto Rico would reinvent itself economically and Cuba would certainly fail. Instead Puerto Rico fell, and has been ignored by Congress, and by the Obama administration until recently. Meanwhile, there has been a fast rapprochement with Cuba which started with the reopening of both countries' embassies and was recently capped with President Obama's visit to Cuba. The Obama administration is committed to ending this chapter of the Cold War. Advertisement A question remains, what will happen with Puerto Rico? Will the administration move strongly to solve the debt and humanitarian crisis? More importantly, will the perennial status question be solved? Will Puerto Rico come center stage in American politics or will it continue to exist as an unfinished chapter of both the post-war decolonization struggles and the Cold War. The real prospect of Donald Trump emerging as the Republican standard-bearer this fall is edifying on many levels. In so many ways, Trump's unexpectedly successful candidacy reveals a deep-seated hypocrisy and moral decay within America's modern conservative movement that Ronald Reagan, the father of that movement, would never condone. While Reagan benefitted from the votes of working class white Democrats, evangelicals and social conservatives (as Trump has), a close reading of the record underscores that the former president never endorsed the kind of xenophobic, divisive or unbending positions Trump and much of modern conservatism has embraced. Reagan, clearly a committed conservative, customarily refused to impose ideological litmus tests on public policy. While the California politician never supported a woman's right to choose where abortion was concerned, neither did he invest any real political capital to deny that right. Advertisement Reagan also showed capacity to compromise on important issues in order to advance the larger public interest. For example, he joined with then-Democratic House Majority Speaker Tip O'Neil in 1986 to pass the nation's last comprehensive immigration reform package. And Reagan, to his great credit, also never endorsed hate as a legitimate basis of government action. When then-presidential-candidate Reagan had the opportunity to endorse a 1978 California ballot proposition to "legalize" employment discrimination against gay teachers, he actively opposed the measure. On the world stage, while Reagan was ardently anti-totalitarian, he nevertheless worked hard behind the scenes with then-Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to substantially reduce both superpowers' nuclear arsenals. He also never advocated military aggression against America's other most significant adversaries: China, Cuba, Iran or North Korea. By contrast, Trump speaks often, if absent specifics, about the many ways he would compel those nations to comply with American will, often hinting irresponsibly at armed conflict or trade wars as appropriate instrumentalities in these connections. Finally, Reagan's ultimate gospel imperative to his own Republican Party leaders and candidates was never to speak ill of one another in public discourse. Advertisement Donald Trump's positions on issues ranging from immigration to women's rights, and his utter and very public disrespect for his fellow Republican presidential candidates, demonstrates a kind of world view that Ronald Reagan would find offensive and not in his party's interests, were he alive today. Indeed, Trump's emergence as the Republican Party front runner reflects a vast departure from the essence of Reagan's Revolution. It also reveals a large dose of hypocrisy within the Republican Party's traditional evangelical and libertarian bases. Ironically, Trump has found support among many Christian and social conservatives, despite the man's clear disassociation from the core values of these groups in his own personal history and public life, and the highly questionable morality of his policy positions. The candidate's not-so-subtle endorsement of racism, sexism and hate in our nation's public policy is a disturbing reminder of the kinds of sentiments that led an otherwise advanced German society to embrace Adolph Hitler in the early 1930s. To establish that truth, one need only look to the recent public endorsements of Trump's candidacy by former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and far right French National Front founder Jean-Marie Le Pen. Trump's ascendance as a "serious" presidential aspirant speaks volumes about how far from its moorings the Republican Party has strayed in recent years. By endorsing bigotry and exclusion, and by generally embracing extremism in American political life, Trump and his large constituency of supporting Republican voters are taking us down a dangerous and unprecedented path. None of what the Republicans offer today can ultimately be good for America, especially if Trump turns out to be their official response to our nation's changing demography and realities. In fact, if Trump is finally Republicans' choice to become the nation's chief executive, it is unlikely conservatives will prevail in our presidential and national politics for decades to come. Advertisement It is even possible that Trump's nomination would end the Republican Party as we have known it throughout our history, forcing it to break into several ideological factions and effectively ending its relevance as a major American political party. The founders of our nation envisioned a robust political discourse informed by diverse and competing political interests, the willingness to compromise for the common good, and tolerance for diversity. The recent rise of Donald Trump and the strident tone of the campaign he has driven, cuts in a wholly different direction -- one that is hard to square with longstanding American values or traditional Republican tenets. Even as a progressive, left-leaning political observer, I would be the first to admit the continued demise of a responsible Republican Party such as we have observed over recent years -- and that Donald Trump has accelerated -- constitutes a sad and undesirable development for American civic culture and Democracy. We can and must do better in America to face our challenges with more inclusive and affirmative policy solutions, rather than backward-looking and divisive rhetoric that is neither constructive nor patriotic. On these terms, there is no way responsible Republicans can maintain their party's political integrity or viability with the likes of Trump at the top of their national ticket. ________________ Henry A. J. Ramos is President of the Insight Center for Community Economic Development, a California policy think- and do-tank that seeks to increase economic opportunity and prosperity sharing in America. I recently wrote about the professed religious views of presidential candidates. I asked my favorite candidate, Bernie Sanders, at a public forum in South Carolina, if he would acknowledge being an atheist. Sanders, who almost always gives direct answers to questions, said, "Not gonna happen." At least he didn't lie about his religious beliefs, as many candidates do. The most surprising and disappointing reaction to my attempt to "out" Bernie Sanders came from other atheists who support Sanders. They also assume that this Jewish socialist is an atheist, but they think he should stay in the closet. Here are a few of the comments I heard: "You should know better than to think an open atheist could ever be elected president. Bernie does not want to commit political suicide by acknowledging he is an atheist. Bernie should wait to get elected, and then say he is an atheist. People who want political power better not reveal little quirks that would alienate a great majority of voters. Most religious Americans don't believe in evolution, so they certainly wouldn't vote for an atheist. This country is not yet ready to elect an atheist to high office." Advertisement If these critics are correct that the country is not yet ready to elect an acknowledged atheist, then how can we change "not yet ready" to "ready?" If we do nothing, the country will never be ready. Our country was once not willing to elect African-Americans, women, gays, and other minority groups. The model for atheists is more similar to that of gays because African-Americans and women could never be closeted. Attitudes toward gays changed rapidly when people realized that their friends, neighbors, family members, and even famous people are gay. And so it can be for atheists. Here are two attitude-changing national organizations that aim to end the secrecy. Openly Secular: Its purpose is to provide support and encouragement for atheists, agnostics, humanists, and other nonreligious people who feel they can't be open about who they are. They provide resources to help secular people live full, honest, and open lives. Their goal is to eliminate discrimination and increase acceptance of the secular community. Their website contains dozens of short videos made by ordinary and extraordinary people from all backgrounds in all walks of life, describing why they became openly secular. Here is mine. Freethought Equality Fund: This is a Political Action Committee (PAC) dedicated to expanding voter choices by backing the candidacy of open nontheists. The PAC supports candidates who want to protect the separation of religion and government and defend the civil liberties of secular Americans. The PAC also aims to dispel the bigoted notion that atheists are immoral and lack values. It is the first such PAC with a paid staff. (Disclosure: I'm an unpaid advisory board member.) Both Openly Secular and the Freethought Equality Fund think the country is ready to elect nonreligious candidates. More than 20 percent of Americans now claim no religious identity, and the percentage is even higher among young people. Nonreligious Americans are one of the largest minorities in the United States, but you'd never know it because they have lacked political power. Interestingly, Congressman Barney Frank publicly came out as gay in 1987, but didn't come out as an atheist until he left office. Advertisement My candidate Bernie Sanders may not win the Democratic nomination, but he can show the country that he is one of many reasonable and honest atheists. And voters willing to support a Jewish socialist are not likely to abandon Sanders if he says he is an atheist. In fact, I think he would energize a lot of "nones," people with no religion who cringe when political candidates try to turn their personal supernatural beliefs into government policy, and claim a "holier than thou" morality. Speaking of holier than thou, Pastor Mark Burns, a pastor in South Carolina and a Donald Trump surrogate, said at a Trump rally in North Carolina that Bernie Sanders doesn't believe in God and that he needs to find Jesus. (I agree with the former statement, but not the latter.) A case can be made that the Jesus of the Gospels wants us to feed the poor, love our neighbors, welcome the immigrant, promote peace and social justice, turn the other cheek to insults, and be humble. Jesus is even more of a Jewish socialist than Bernie. Jesus wants us to sell our possessions and give to the poor (Matthew 19: 21), share what we own with one another (Acts 2:44), and not brag about being rich (Mark 10:25). Regardless of labels, it sounds like Donald Trump, not Bernie Sanders, is the one who needs to find Jesus--or at least to take seriously the more compassionate passages in the Gospels. Also, Jesus and Bernie both spent their early years as carpenters, not hiring carpenters to build expensive towers for the pleasure of wealthy people. Co-authored by:Joao Felipe Scarpelini, Youth Advisor, Office of the Deputy Special Representative of the Secretary-General, Resident and Humanitarian Coordinator for Somalia Youth in Peace-Building Post-Brussels The recent devastation that occurred in Brussels has sparked mass reaction from around the world and will remain in the forefront of international attention for the days to come. While the scope and severity of these attacks on the city have yet to be fully understood, it is clear that this process will take time. Many scholars have already begun to anticipate possible motivators for the multiple bombings in Brussels, yet their focus remain on just that: causes. Few have initiated a fruitful discussion on how to reconcile this wave of radicalism that has haunted the global community these past two decades. Advertisement It is clear that most of the terrorist attacks seen in the Western world were enacted by young individuals, but it not known whether young radicals were the initiators of the attack on Brussels. The involvement of some young people -- especially young men, but increasingly also young women -- in extremist groups has led to a widespread portrayal of youth as a threat to peace and global security. Consequently, the depiction of youth in conflict is marked by a dichotomy: they are either portrayed as victims or perpetrators. The reality is much more nuanced. Increasing evidence shows that youth can and should play active and valuable roles in bringing peace and development. Yet, the potential contribution and inclusion of young people to effective peace-building has received little attention and support. For instance in Somalia after decades of unrest, conflict and instability, the majority of Somali youth have grown up experiencing conflict, natural disaster, and poverty. Avenues for youth to obtain an education and gainful employment opportunities are limited and opportunities to engage politically, economically, or socially remain low or non-existent. These exclusions create frustration and demoralization among many young people that sometimes are pushed into violence and radicalization. Although widely known and referred to, many people do not know that Al-Shaabab, a jihadist terrorist group that operates in East Africa (especially in Somalia), can be translated to "The Youth". Countries like Britain and Norway have already recognized and begun to address this issue of youth radicalization, which they assume to result from social exclusion. In fact, the young people as a whole are at the most risk of social exclusion in Europe. Loosely defined as a general lack or inaccessibility to accumulate social capital through formal channels in social, cultural, and political processes, social exclusion can lead to desolating long-term effects and distrust in institutions. Advertisement Just this past December, the United Nations Security Council passed Resolution 2250 on Youth, Peace and Security. This historic resolution urged UN Member States to create the political environment necessary engage young people in all levels of decision-making, understanding the crucial role they have in society and in countering violent extremism, while remembering the power young people wield to challenge and overthrow oppressive regimes. This could not have been more well-highlighted in the Arab Spring of 2011. In Somalia, the United Nations has recently launched the UN Youth Strategy , which aims among other things to support and enhance young men and young women's participation in activities to prevent violent extremism, by prioritizing meaningful engagement mechanisms at the national level and engaging those hardest to reach. Only through multigenerational collaboration can the international community create a culture of peace, tolerance, intercultural and interreligious dialogue that involve youth and discourage their participation in acts of violence, terrorism, xenophobia and all forms of discrimination. Despite the important role young people have in various levels of society, including peacebuilding, they have been on the margins of policy attention. Yet, as much as people are outraged at the attack on Brussels-and rightly so-and are demanding answers, the solution has been in front of them all longer: engage the youth. Placing youth empowerment at the core of all peace-building and development goals is essential. And although it may sound obvious, this aspect sometimes gets overlooked. Young people's leadership and roles in preventing and resolving conflict, violence and extremism are rich resources fundamental to achieving sustainable peace that is currently untapped. Youth can no longer be regarded only as a beneficiary or a target stakeholder group. We need to create the space, the trust and an enabling environment with and for young people. Young people must be given the opportunity to partner with the UN, governments, and civil society organizations, and to work hand in hand in the process towards peace. Analyzing the social and political implications of this terror attack, like all the others, will only take us so far. Real remedies must include direct involvement with actors that can impact radicalism on the ground: young people. This not only includes governments in the Europe and North America, but authorities all around the world. Countries like Turkey and Somalia, and others that recently experienced acts of terrorism, need to be especially vigilant and attentive towards their youth. Advertisement Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally in Fayetteville, N.C., Wednesday, March 9, 2016. (AP Photo/Gerry Broome) Poor Fayetteville; apparently the Arkansas town has to deal with a rather boorish city councilman, John La Tour, who seems prone to buffoonery. He thinks he's being amusing, he's just not clever enough to know the way he is actually amusing people is not the way he intended. Fayetteville passed an anti-discrimination ordinance, which upset Conservatives so they insisted it be put to a public vote. Conservatives told every lie in the book to scare the bejeezus out people, but voters approved the ordinance by a comfortable 6-point margin. Advertisement Mr. La Tour, in his dotage, makes feeble jokes about the evils of the ordinance. Of course, to do so he has to continually invoke the scary image of transgender folk. He appears convinced he's not only being witty, but assumes he making some trenchant point as well. Instead, his comments raise the specter of Curly, Larry and Moe. La Tour reportedly stopped at Arsaga's restaurant to meet some friends and complained the music was too loud. When the restaurant didn't immediately jump to his command he decided to indulge his buffoonery and dance along to the music -- not the image of a male dancer anyone wants to see, I assure you. He reportedly approached a waitress and made one of his not-so-witty jokes about being transgender and said to her he wanted to dance but he couldn't know whether she was a man or a woman, not since the anti-discrimination ordinance passed. Apparently the ordinance has so confused things that poor Mr. La Tour can't tell whether he's hitting on a woman or a man -- not that either gender would appreciate the effort. Then, to make a bad joke even worse, he made a crude remark about how he could prove he's a man. Apparently since Donald Trump made his unproven brag about his own genitals -- not that anyone wants to see the proof -- it is now de rigueur for insecure Conservatives to invoke their genitalia. When it comes to statistical bragging they clearly won't invoke IQ points. Advertisement La Tour defended himself to the media with the same bad joke: "You can declare you're a man or you're a woman, whatever you want to. I'm not going to ask a man to dance with me." At that last remark gay men throughout Arkansas breathed a sigh of relief, counterbalanced by increased anxiety among the female population. The waitress felt rather put-off by his remarks and said he told her that he couldn't tell whether she was a woman or a man. One Fayetteville resident, Gavin Smith, wrote on Facebook, Yesterday Fayetteville Alderman John La Tour, Ward 4, assaulted a dear friend in public demanding they choose a gender in a packed restaurant. He demanded she pick a gender declaiming loudly that he couldn't tell if she was a man or a woman. She is not transgender and does not in any way present any ambiguity about gender in any way. She's a woman. He then explained that he was a man and could prove it by dropping his pants and showing his penis. That is bullying behavior and unacceptable on so many levels. After this unpleasant encounter, La Tour returned to his table and the waitress went to speak to the manager. Apparently the manager was none too amused either and asked the council member to vacate the premises. He was not welcome in the establishment given his behavior. One has to look with wonder and confusion on the contemporary Conservative scene. In spite of all the rhetoric about traditional values and limited government their agenda consistently comes across as the polar opposite. Advertisement There was a time when civility and courtesy were considered traditional values, yet today's Conservatives compete with one another to be as impolite and demeaning as possible. Their opponents are always branded with demeaning epithets. Obama is labeled a communist or a Muslim -- which in fundamentalist Christian circles is meant as an insult. Gay people are not just homosexual, but "radical homosexuals." It's as if radicalism is as genetic a trait as the homosexuality and comes with it as a set. Ronald Reagan could tell jokes without resorting to crudeness or demanding to see someone's genitals. He never once thought it wise to reference his penis during a political debate. Just as modern Conservatives have betrayed their own traditional values, they have abandoned the very concept of limited government. Surely a government firmly entrenched in the bedrooms of the American people -- something the moralistic Right demands -- is about as intrusive a government as one can conceive. They applaud police violence against civilians, demand the death penalty and favor sending troops off to wars. Surely government agents shooting people to death on the streets of our cities, executing people or sending them to battlefield deaths is just about as "big government" as you can get. Yet, Conservatives seem to want more of this. With Trump's wins continuing, the question of whether Colorado Republicans will vote for the mogul, if he's the nominee, becomes even more relevant, as we inch toward the Republican Party's July 18 national convention in Cleveland. Here's an update of my handy TrumpWatch guide for reporters tracking Colorado's GOP response to Trump. The mogul still apparently has only one GOP elected official who, based on public statements, affirmatively likes him and would vote for him as nominee. That's State Sen. Laura Woods, the Republican from Westminster (though her candidate-of-choice is Ted Cruz). You recall, Woods "narrowed" her choices to Cruz and Trump after the GOP debate in Boulder. Advertisement Other high-profile Republicans in Colorado don't share Woods' enthusiasm. Even a brash politician, like former CO Secretary of State Scott Gessler, is turned off by Trump. Asked last week by 9News' political reporter Brandon Rittiman if he's "comfortable with Trump being the face of the Republican Party," Gessler said: Gessler: "My sense with Trump is, he certainly could beat Hillary Clinton, but he could end up being a complete disaster. Obviously, he's been a lot ruder and cruder than other candidates to date. Does that alienate a lot of the electorate? I think there's a really high probability of that. And his style is certainly not my style. And that's in part why I'm not real comfortable with him." Still, as you can see here, I can only find a couple former or current Republican elected officials or candidates who will say, flat out, that they won't support Trump. One of them is former State Sen. Shawn Mitchell, who wrote on Facebook last week: Mitchell: "I can imagine Hillary representing me on the world stage before I can stomach His Blondness performing on my behalf. I won't vote for her, but I will not vote for him. Supreme Court be damned. America has recovered from worse, and if we don't recover, God is in charge." The signs can be found at numerous rallies Republican and Tea Party alike. There is no mistake in the hidden meaning of these words when you read "we want to take our country back," or hear presidential candidates like Donald Trump repeat them. Energized by people like Trump, who questioned the birthplace of President Obama, thereby canonizing the "Birther" issue into right-wing catechism, the idea that Obama was born in Kenya was promulgated as much for their base to believe he was a Muslim than the color of his skin. In poll after poll, a significant amount of Republicans and Independents indeed believe that President Obama is a Muslim. So putting aside for the moment that Obama is of black complexion with an African American heritage, the rallying cry of his detractors is accentuated by their belief (no matter how many times Obama has said he is a Christian) that Barack Hussein Obama follows the tenets of the Islamic faith. Now, almost four years after Republicans claimed that after their party lost the presidential election because they were not inclusive enough, they have added religion as a litmus test for patriotism. Led, by their all-but-certain nominee for president in 2016, Donald Trump's call for banning Muslims in this country, the party continues to drift toward a theocratic vision for America. And Trump is not the only candidate that is or was running for president with this optic. Republican presidential candidates Ben Carson and Marco Rubio both extolled Christianity on the campaign trail with Rubio during a Fox News debate in January answering, "Well, let me be clear about one thing, there's only one savior and it's not me. It's Jesus Christ, who came down to Earth and died for our sins." Moreover, recently Ted Cruz, who has used his Christian faith to justify his anti-gay rhetoric listed Frank Gaffney (confirmed by the Southern Poverty Law center as one of "America's most notorious Islamaphobes") as one of his national security advisers. Now, as the GOP claim Christianity is under attack in this country, their dialogue brings opacity both to their own statements of prejudice and the history of religious freedom in this country. In the 17th century, British North American colonies were settled by men and women who faced religious persecution. Though some settlers came for more secular reasons to make their fortune a majority sought refuge from Catholicism if they were Protestant or conversely "militant Protestantism" if they were Catholic. Advertisement Although these settlers came to America victims of religious persecution, some once here believed that the state had a duty to impose religious uniformity (to save souls of all its citizens) in any given society. With dissenters to be executed as heretics. The dominance of this concept first opposed by Roger Williams, who was a proponent of religious freedom for all and a separation of church and state. As a reformed Baptist, he was considered ahead of his time in his fair dealings with Native Americans (who were seen by most as pagans) and as an early abolitionist against slavery. It is in part why men of his caliber that were to follow had the foresight to include in the Constitution of the United States the "wall" that must exist between church and state and article VI, which states there will be no religious tests to serve in public office or hold the public trust. In 2016, words like "taking our country back," -- as in back to a time when John F. Kennedy's Catholic faith was in question -- was acceptable. Today to describe terrorist attacks as Islamic terrorism objectify the word Islam has consequences. With over 1.6 billion people who observe the Islamic faith, we are remiss if we do not categorize these attacks as anarchy perpetrated by fringe or outlier groups who in their senseless violence prove they do not follow the teachings of any compassionate religion. And if republicans like Donald Trump, Ted Cruz or others insist on blind allegiance to the phrase Islamic terrorism they have political amnesia. Daniel Pollack Daniel Pollack likes my shoes. Somehow my mundane story of a delayed shoe delivery made it to the Pollack household and soon after taking our coats and offering a drink, he requested to see the shoes. It is a detail indicative of Daniel Pollack and one that makes it easy to forget while in his presence that he is a world-renowned concert pianist who has played at a joint session of Congress and received a Fulbright nomination from President Harry Truman (which, of course, he was awarded). This is the magic of Daniel Pollack, he notices details and listens to stories. His natural fascination with people makes it impossible to feel like anything other than family. A few weeks later, I am at an event with the Pollack family. Our respective spouses are working so I am left to wander the crowd with Daniel Pollack. He starts chatting with a family in from Ohio and after about five minutes it is as if they have known each other for years. This is the magic of Daniel Pollack. They have no idea they are chatting with a man who, in 1958, was a top American prizewinner in Russia's First International Tchaikovsky Piano Competition, an event that propelled his career and launched him to star status in international music circles. A few short weeks later still on February 21, I am sitting in the Alfred Newman Recital Hall at the University of Southern California listening to Daniel Pollack premiere an original piece by the great composer Lalo Schifrin. As he strikes the final notes, I realize that I am digging my fingernails into my husband's arm, and I have forgotten to breathe. This is also the magic of Daniel Pollack. Daniel Pollack The Malambo Con Brio is the culmination of a thirty-six-year friendship between two masters of their fields. Daniel Pollack and Lalo Schifrin met in 1980. Schifrin was the Music Director for The Competition, a film starring Amy Irving and Richard Dreyfus centering around two competing pianists. Daniel played Prokofiev's third piano concerto track, which would earn Amy Irving an onscreen win in the fictional piano contest. More importantly, it would spark a life-long friendship and admiration between Pollack and Schifrin that ultimately results in my husband's damaged arm. Advertisement The Malambo itself is derived from a traditional Argentinean folk tradition wherein two men compete via dance. Aggressive and masculine, the Malambo was a show of machismo and strength, the music designed to match the power behind the competition. The alternative for women was a singing competition, equally aggressive, a simple folk melody is played, and the women create lyrics, not unlike a modern rap battle. Lalo Schifrin tells me the story of the Malambo and Daniel Pollack describes the motor driven rhythm that creates an intentionally uneven feel. The gaucho music of Argentina is decidedly masculine, unpredictable and aggressive. It lacks the smooth flow that accompanies the other pieces played that night in Newman Recital Hall - Chopin, Liszt, Menotti and Prokofiev, all carry their own unique styles and stand apart. But the Malambo is on a plane of its own. Violent bursts are followed by a gentleness that seems to belong in an entirely different piece. The result is unsettling in the best possible way. Lalo Schifrin - photo credit Joel Lipton Lalo Schifrin tells me that he wrote this piece for Daniel as well as a tribute to the great Malambo composer, Argentinean legend Alberto Ginastera, who would have celebrated his 100th birthday this coming April. Schifrin tells me he wanted to create a piece that highlighted Daniel Pollack's "technique, musicality and sensitivity." Anyone who has heard Pollack play knows exactly what Schifrin is talking about. Standing outside the recital hall waiting for Pollack and Schifrin to greet their fans, a woman behind me comments on how Pollack can extend such power to his music and then pull it back so that it is nearly a whisper. Balance, Pollack tells me, is the most important thing to consider when performing. Brains, Heart, Fingers, he says. Any piece needs a perfect balance of all three in order to touch an audience. No great piece of music can reside too heavily in our heads anymore than it can live in our hearts, and without perfect execution, the message will be lost entirely. It's a lesson for any artist regardless of the chosen medium. Pollack then asks me what is the most important: The composer? The performer? The audience? It's a trick question; of course, the perfect balance of all three is what takes a piece of music from the page and makes it soar. Advertisement The real beauty of both Daniel Pollack and Lalo Schifrin, however, transcends their art. A mutual respect and admiration guides their continued collaborations. Schifrin has recently completed another original piece for Pollack, Elegy, which he describes as entirely different from the Malambo. It shifts, he says "from sadness to hope, to frantic and back to sadness." No date has been set for a performance, but it would well worth the time to keep a close watch on the University of Southern California recital schedule. Five consumers in the Topeka, Kansas, area recently yielded to high-pressure sales tactics from a local lawn care service and paid the price. Now, the lawn care service has been ordered to refund more than $78,000 to the five consumers, all of whom are elderly. Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt says T's Lawn Service of Topeka engaged in "deceptive and unconscionable practices" through advertising and door-to-door solicitation of home improvement services, such as lawn care and tree trimming. In a lawsuit, Schmidt accused T's Lawn Service of failing to disclose the total cost of services before completing the transactions and committing other violations under the state's consumer protection law. In February 2016, a Kansas judge agreed with Schmidt and demanded that T's Lawn Service refund the money paid by the five consumers who were bilked. Advertisement Be Smart, Be Wary The Kansas case offers a wake-up call for lawn care customers. While the majority of lawn care providers are upstanding and trustworthy, consumers must be on the lookout for scammers who want to take their money and offer little or nothing in return. The police department in Amarillo, Texas, warns that elderly people frequently are the targets of lawn care scammers. "It's important to take the same amount of care finding a business to perform work outside your home as you do when you're preparing to remodel," says Dana Badgerow, president and CEO of the Better Business Bureau of Minnesota and North Dakota. "Always be sure you know who you're dealing with." The Better Business Bureau warns consumers to be especially careful when dealing with lawn care providers who solicit door-to-door. Far too often, the bureau says, shoddy or incomplete work is performed, and then the lawn care provider vanishes. Ask Around Before and during lawn-mowing season, business cards and brochures for lawn care providers pop up in the mailboxes or on the doors of homes. But, the Better Business Bureau advises, a fancy business card or brochure is no guarantee that you'll be happy with the provider's work. Advertisement "A better predictor of your satisfaction is your friends' and neighbors' experiences with a company," the bureau says. "Ask around. Find out what lawn services are used in your neighborhood and how happy they have made their clients. If you see them at work on your neighbors' yards, watch carefully and note what sort of job they do." Ask Questions If you are inclined to do business with a door-to-door solicitor, be sure to ask these four questions. 1. How long have you been in business? If a business has been around for, say, 10 years, chances are it's reliable. But a lawn care provider that says been around for just a month should raise suspicions, as the provider might be engaging in a fly-by-night scam. 2. Is your company a member of a professional lawn care group? The National Association of Landscape Professionals recommends considering a lawn care company that's licensed, accredited or certified by a national, state or local association. The association points out that some state laws require lawn care providers to be licensed, so inquire about that as well. Also find out whether the company is accredited by the Better Business Bureau. 3. Are you insured? At a minimum, a lawn care provider you do business with should carry general liability insurance in case something goes wrong on your property. Advertisement 4. How does your lawn care contract work? Before a lawn care business cuts one blade of grass and before you pay a single penny, you and the provider should have ironed out a written, signed contract or plan. Details should include a description of the work to be done, the timetable, the cost and the payment terms, the National Association of Landscape Professionals says. Steer Clear of Trouble "If you fail to do your homework, you could end up with a substandard job and unwanted charges on your credit card," says Paulette Scarpetti, president of the Better Business Bureau of Connecticut. "If a lawn maintenance contractor doesn't do the job properly, you can end up with problems that will cost more money to fix." Cuban President Raul Castro (R) receives US President Barack Obama at the Gran Teatro of Havana where US President Barack Obama will deliver a speech in Havana, Cuba on March 22, 2016. AFP PHOTO/ Yuri CORTEZ / AFP / YURI CORTEZ (Photo credit should read YURI CORTEZ/AFP/Getty Images) It is not too late for President Obama to reconsider his decision to shun Fidel Castro on his trip to Cuba. There are at least three good reasons for doing so. First, the aim of the trip, according to administration statements, is to stoke the goodwill that Mr. Obama fostered by his rapprochement with Cuba in December 2014. The premise behind that policy is that engagement is a likelier vehicle of political and economic change than ostracism. Advertisement If goodwill is the goal there is no better place to start than overcoming the bad will that continues to separate Americans from the former Cuban president. By reaching out to Castro, Mr. Obama would not only reinforce the idea that grown ups resolve their differences face to face, he would show respect for -- not agreement with -- someone the vast majority of Cubans still deeply admire, despite their many criticisms. Second, once Mr. Obama departs Cuba he will head for Argentina and a meeting with its new president, Mauricio Macri. The visit to Argentina is part of Mr. Obama's initiative to improve relations with Latin America. Few things symbolize Latin Americans' frustration with the United States as starkly as our enduring enmity towards Castro. By reaching out to him, the President would demonstrate that he understands Latin Americans' centuries-long aspiration to be free and independent of colonial rule, whether Spanish, U.S., or Soviet. That is what Mr. Castro means to them. One person who knows this first hand is Pope Francis. Hailing from Latin America himself, Francis took pains to meet with Mr. Castro on the Papal visit to Cuba last fall. On his own trip to the region, President Obama could do worse than aligning himself with the Great Bridge Builder. Advertisement Third, and finally, by meeting Mr. Castro, President Obama could help dispel the caricature of Castro as a ranting demagogue that endures in U.S. media and politics. There is far more to Castro than that, as I have discovered in recent work in the Cuban archives. In July 1953, a twenty-six year old Castro led a band of militants on an a quixotic attack on a government military barracks in Santiago de Cuba to protest the suspension of constitutional liberties by dictator Fulgencio Batista. For leading the attack, Castro was sentenced to fifteen years in jail (he would serve twenty months), but not before delivering a two-hour speech in defense of the universal right to resist tyranny during which he cited, among others, Montesquieu, Aquinas, Locke, Milton, Rousseau, the American Founders, and Thomas Paine. In jail, Mr. Castro read an astounding selection of books, including literature, history, philosophy, psychology, political economy, and classics. He was a fast but not casual reader, reading not simply for amusement but for clues to the meaning of life and about successful revolutions. His interest in revolutions brought him inevitably to Franklin D. Roosevelt, about whom Castro demonstrated an abiding interest. What the prisoner wanted to document, he wrote a friend, was "FDR's policy of raising agricultural prices, promoting and preserving soil fertility, providing credit, forgiving debts, developing internal and external agricultural markets, expanding jobs, reducing working hours, lifting wages, supporting the unemployed, aging, and infirm, reorganizing industry and the tax system, regulating trusts and banks, and achieving monetary reform"--in short, what Castro himself wanted to do for Cuba. Advertisement How Castro's interest in political liberty and liberal reform warped into an embrace of the Soviet Union and repression of civil and political liberties is an instructive story that Mr. Obama and his fellow Americans would do well to understand. It was not inevitable that things turned out this way, and acknowledging the lost opportunity might speed further cooperation. It has been observed that this will be the first visit of a U.S. president to Cuba since Calvin Coolidge's trip 88 years ago. The context of that trip is instructive. Coolidge went at the invitation of Cuban president Gerardo Machado, arguably Cuba's most notorious dictator ever, whose corruption, brutality, and kowtowing to Washington inspired a revolution that was quashed by a lack of U.S. recognition in January 1934. That history helps explain not only the rise of Fidel Castro but also why Cubans still admire him. Many Cubans lost a lot to the Revolution. Many more gained recognition and resources they never had. One fundamental and unrequited aim of Castro and the Revolution was for the United States to grant Cuba recognition, respect, and reciprocity as a free and independent nation for the first time. This Mr. Obama has at long last done, which is why the great majority of Cuban people love both men despite their flaws. Bringing the two together would be the clearest signal yet that things have really changed. Jonathan M. Hansen, a historian at Harvard University, is writing a biography of the young Fidel Castro. One by one, they file out of the Community FoodBank of New Jersey, offering a heartfelt thank you and a smile. We'll be back soon, they say. These grateful people aren't hungry clients of ours. They are volunteers. Every day, they thank us for the opportunity to give back. They are college students and corporate executives, scout troops and senior citizens, the well-to-do and the working poor. All have given time from their busy workdays, weekends and evenings to help people they will probably never meet. Advertisement Here at the Community FoodBank of New Jersey, the state's largest anti-hunger and anti-poverty organization, we couldn't do what we do without our volunteers. Part of it is their emotional contribution - the love and goodwill and generosity that fill our 285,000 square foot headquarters whenever volunteers visit to lend a hand. Part of it is their economic contribution - the monetary value of that time they give so freely. In the past year, our organization had 50,589 volunteer visits, totaling 129,201 hours. The latest estimate puts the value of volunteer time in New Jersey at $25.68 an hour. So for the FoodBank, that comes to more than 3.3 million dollars. That's what we mean by making a difference! April is National Volunteer Month, a time when we, as a country, offer our collective thanks to the more than 62 million Americans - a quarter of the adult population - who give nearly 8 billion hours a year to the causes close to their hearts. And when it comes to their hearts, it turns out volunteering is good for... the volunteers! The scientific evidence keeps mounting that volunteering is good for physical and mental health. Researchers have the statistics and say the benefits are clear. Lower blood pressure, less stress, even longer lives are all associated with volunteering. Advertisement Statistics aside, I keep thinking about Virginia McLaurin, who smiled and danced her way into America's heart in February when she got to live her dream of visiting the White House and meeting President and Mrs. Obama. Mrs. McLaurin has spent decades volunteering in the Washington, D.C. area. These days she volunteers as much as 40 hours a week at a charter school as part of a foster grandparent program, mentoring and nurturing special-needs students. That's just one way she's involved in making her community a better place. Virginia McLaurin just turned 107 years old. She has lived through 18 presidents! Her unbridled joy, her beaming smile and her amazingly spry dance steps in the Blue Room endeared her to millions. But "Grandma Virginia," as her students call her, is more than an Internet sensation. For anyone who has seen her dance and heard her story, she is an indelible inspiration, and the embodiment of the volunteer spirit. Mrs. McLaurin says she always tells people to "live the best they know how." Now in her second century of life, she knows a lot. The power of service and volunteer work is one of those things. National Volunteer Month is a chance for us to honor and thank those 62.6 million Americans who give of their time and energy and talent. Everyone from 107-year-old Virginia McLaurin to the girl 91 years her junior who recently passed through our doors. This 16-year-old volunteer says while she doesn't personally know the people she is helping by packing food boxes for seniors or meals for hungry kids and families, she tells us "I feel like I'm changing somebody's life." Advertisement You can't put a price on that. Congress may take up bipartisan legislation to reform federal mandatory minimum sentencing laws any day now. These laws have torn apart families and communities, wasted billions of dollars, and failed to make the country safer. I know about their impact on families firsthand. Twenty-six years ago, my brother was convicted for growing marijuana in his garage in Washington State. Back then no policymakers were talking about legalizing marijuana, much less doing it. My brother was guilty and my parents and I understood that he would have to be held accountable. On the other hand, my brother was a first offender and he wasn't a major trafficker or kingpin, but he ended up being treated like one. Because of the mandatory sentencing laws passed by Congress in the 1980s, the judge had no discretion but to sentence my brother to five-years in prison, without parole. I was stunned to learn that the judge no longer controlled the sentence, and I was angry that this kind of clear injustice could happen in our country. I was convinced that if others heard about how these one-size-fits-all sentences were being used, the public would rise up and demand that Congress repeal them. So in 1991, I started a nonprofit organization focused on telling the stories of the families directly harmed by them. The stories flooded in. Before long, I met a woman in Indianapolis whose brother was sentenced to life in prison for selling marijuana. I learned of a young Alabama mother who was sentenced to serve 30 years in federal prison for playing a very minor, non-violent role in her boyfriend's drug distribution operation for one month. Every day, I found myself outraged and heartbroken by each new story. But I was inspired by the dignity, passion, and grace of the parents, children, and loved ones who came forward to share their stories. These families made up the army of our new organization, Families Against Mandatory Minimums (FAMM). For the next 25 years, we went anywhere and everywhere we could to tell the politicians how mandatory sentencing laws were needlessly destroying families and communities. Our pleas often fell on deaf ears in an era when being "tough on crime" and talk of "superpredators" won elections and was a popular refrain. Back then, Democrats like President Bill Clinton joined Republicans in supporting a massive crime bill that lengthened prison sentences, imposed mandatory minimums and accelerated the unprecedented growth in our nation's prison population. Today, former President Clinton concedes that the bill went too far, and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton has apologized for the "superpredator" language she used to rally support for the bill. Conservatives who once touted long prison sentences for both violent and non-violent crime now urge lawmakers to find a better balance. The conservative Heritage Foundation, for example, has said that requiring severe mandatory minimum sentences for low-level drug offenders is "the most urgent problem facing America's criminal justice system." Republican leaders like Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) and Mike Lee (R-Utah) have expressed support for rolling back drug mandatory minimum laws. What caused this sea change? People across the ideological spectrum began to realize the significant human and financial cost to our country. Our nation spends close to 80 billion dollars on incarcerating people and 50 percent of federal prisoners are incarcerated for drug offenses - 80 percent of which are non-violent offenses. Even law enforcement leaders are joining a chorus of voices for change. Former Bush administration attorney general Michael Mukasey has joined current attorney general Loretta Lynch in urging Congress to pass sentencing reform, writing "[L]ocking up low-level offenders for long prison sentences doesn't reduce crime... Research shows that longer sentences can often increase recidivism, especially for low-level offenders." There is a growing consensus that reforming mandatory minimum sentencing laws will make the public safer and save tax payers money. States that repealed or reformed their mandatory sentencing laws have seen their crime rates and their prison populations decrease. They are getting more safety for less money -- a win-win for taxpayers. The laws are slowly changing. Thousands of first-time, low-level offenders are now exempted from excessive federal mandatory minimum sentencing laws. Thousands more who were sentenced to prison terms Congress repudiated received retroactive relief and were able to rejoin their families early. Tens of thousands of small-scale drug offenders and addicts in Michigan, Georgia, Massachusetts, and many other states now receive more reasonable sentences. A story narrated by Death may sound ominous and maybe even a bit outlandish. However, Markus Zusak captures Death's voice in a poetic, elegant and human way. Zusak's The Book Thief is one of the most celebrated works in modern literature, winning awards such as Publishers Weekly's Best Children's Book of the Year (2006), the Bulletin Blue Ribbon Book (2006) and the Michael L. Printz Honor Book (2007). This year marks the 10th anniversary of Zusak's beautifully written novel and to celebrate, the Australian author traveled around the United States to conduct book signings. He also talked to me about the novel and his experiences as a writer. Markus Zusak's inspiration to start writing was sparked by the way he became immersed in a story when he started reading a novel. "You know it's not real, but you believe it when you're in it, and that's what I love about writing in general. It's not a bad life to be paid to make things up. Believing it is the hard part," he says. One of his favorite books has always been What's Eating Gilbert Grape by Peter Hedges, since it taught him that great characters lead to great stories and even greater books. Advertisement When asked about his inspiration for The Book Thief, Zusak says that his parents told him and his siblings stories about growing up in Germany and Austria, both during and after World War II. "It was like a piece of Europe came into our kitchen," he muses. "When I started writing The Book Thief, I realized it was like waking up one day and being able to speak another language." In The Book Thief, Liesel--our daring protagonist--faces challenges such as losing her brother and being given away to foster parents. Hans and Rosa Hubermann take her in and become instrumental in her life. Hans develops a fatherly relationship with his foster daughter and teaches her to read. Rosa also dearly loves Liesel, despite swearing at her and being strict with her. Zusak notes that, as he was growing up, he read books that featured no parents or portrayed them in a negative light. "My first attempts at books were largely the same," he says. However, in the first book he had published, the parents were hardworking and positive influences. "That felt a lot more faithful to me. I believed it," he says. Hans and Rosa Hubermann were originally based on his mother's foster parents, but Zusak says that as he wrote the story, the two characters turned into their own people. The protagonist, Liesel, goes on in the story to steal books (hence the fitting title). I found it interesting that Zusak chose to make her steal books in particular. "Like most of the better ideas in books, it was an accident. I'd written the first page of a book set in my hometown of Sydney, about a girl stealing books. I thought, how about putting that idea into a book set in Nazi Germany? I didn't know at the time that it would come to have a lot more meaning. In the novel, Hitler is destroying people with words, and Liesel is stealing them back to write her own story, and hopefully it's a beautiful story, written through that ugly world," he explains. Advertisement However, books are not the only unique symbol in The Book Thief. Death, as mentioned before, is the narrator of the whole story and shows off an almost human personality, showing a slight fear of humans and even feeling bad when he has to take the last bit of life away from someone. Most books we read are narrated in third person by an unknown, external narrator, or in first person, narrated by the main character of the story themselves. Zusak believed that Death made the best narrator for his novel, especially because it was set around wartime. War and death go hand in hand and are often described as best friends, leading Zusak to choose the unconventional, yet intriguing narrator to tell Liesel's story as she lived in Nazi Germany. He adds, "I also had the idea, in the end, that Death would be afraid of humans, given he's often on hand to see us at our worst. He would tell Liesel Meminger's story as one that proves that humans can be beautiful and selfless and worthwhile." More symbols arise throughout the novel and, when asked about them, Zusak jokes that he has to try and remember them after all these years. The one that jumps out at him was one from when he was describing Max Vandenburg as a bird. "I used the irony of that idea because he was German but he was imprisoned in his own country; he was a caged bird who needed to hide in order to survive," Zusak explains, giving us even more insight into how intricately the motifs are woven throughout the story. "Mostly I just write something within the framework I've created, and then the unplanned moments arrive. I start building them, and that's how they become symbolic or more thematic. I feel like the more time you spend with a book, the more you know it, and the more meaning you can garner. You also start to realize what to keep and what to leave out." Zusak describes his writing process and says that he tends to write out chapter headings over and over again for each segment of the book. "I literally do that a good thousand times per project. It usually helps me get back inside the book if I've been out of it for a while, and helps me get the order right," he explains. He's found that if he plans for a chapter to be in part one or two, it ends up being in a completely different part. He thinks frameworks and routines are important and finds a feeling of safety when he gives himself a structure to follow. "I'm basically like a child when I write--I need boundaries," he says. Advertisement Zusak has been working on a book called Bridge of Clay for quite a while, but explains that he is actually okay with the struggle. "I've realized it's a nice challenge to attempt a book I'm not quite sure I can write," he admits. March 17-20 several hundred Sufi shaikhs and scholars gathered in Delhi for the first Sufi World Forum. Syed Salman Chishti, one of the key organizers of the event, said to me, "Sufis have been gathering in small communities all over India and Pakistan, all over Africa and the Middle East, without knowing much about each other and without uniting their efforts. I want these people to meet and realize that this is a worldwide movement, that our voices need to be heard today when a counter movement is gaining in strength. One hundred years ago most of India was Sufi." I had just finished giving a plenary talk when a young woman came to me and said, "Please, can I have just five minutes with you. It is urgent and I am desperate. I have traveled all the way from Kashmir to meet someone from Rumi's tradition." "I am a university student and I want to be a writer, but I have no one to talk to at home. The situation is very bad. The Salafis have increased in the last five years, especially. They are everywhere. Even many of my friends have been convinced by their propaganda." This was just one of many encounters that made me more aware of the spread of militant pseudo-Islam in certain parts of the world, especially among the young and impressionable who feel that a war is being waged against Islam. Most Americans are unaware that before 9/11 the extreme political parties of Islamism were being marginalized throughout the Muslim world. The knee-jerk, or some might say engineered, "War on Terror" changed all that and has given extremists an excuse to propagate hatred and violence. Advertisement I was still in the glow of the previous night's address by Prime Minister Modi. Yes, glowing from what would in the end be one of the best talks at this event, delivered by a man that I had little sympathy for previously. In fact I had the impression that Narendra Modi was a Hindu fundamentalist who had presided over massacres of Muslims in Gujarat and who was selling India out to global corporations while traditional, sustainable lifestyles were being decimated by GMO agriculture, privatization of water, and so on. I'm not an expert on these matters, but that was my impression. The talk that the Prime Minister gave would have been worthy of the most articulate Sufi shaikh both in its criticism of religious fundamentalism and in its spiritual depth. At the very least, he had found a superb speechwriter (I would eventually meet the young man who crafted some of these words) and to his credit it was a message of global significance. It remains to be seen how this talk will be walked. The following are some selected passages from his address to the Forum: "You represent the rich diversity of the Islamic civilization that stands on the solid bedrock of a great religion. It is a civilization that reached great heights by the 15th century in science, medicine, literature, art, architecture and commerce. It drew on the immense talents of its people and also Islam's engagement with diverse civilizations--ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Africa; the Persian, Central Asian and Caucasian lands; the region of East Asia; and, with Buddhism and Indian philosophy and science. As it enriched itself, it also enriched the world. It set, once again, an enduring lesson of human history: it is through openness and inquiry, engagement and accommodation, and respect for diversity that humanity advances, nations progress and the world prospers. Advertisement "And, this is the message of Sufism, one of the greatest contributions of Islam to this world. From its origins in Egypt and West Asia, Sufism traveled to distant lands, holding aloft the banner of faith and the flag of human values, learning from spiritual thoughts of other civilizations, and attracting people with the life and message of its saints. "Sufism reflected the universal human desire to go beyond the practice and precepts of religion for a deeper unity with the Almighty. And, in that spiritual and mystical enquiry, Sufis experienced the universal message of the Almighty: That perfection in human life is reflected in the qualities that are dear to God. That all are creations of God; and, that if we love God, we must also love all his creations. For the Sufis, therefore, service to God meant service to humanity. "Just as it once came to India, today Sufism from India has spread across the world. But, this tradition that evolved in India belongs to the whole of South Asia. That is why I urge others in the region to nurture and revive this glorious heritage of ours. When the spiritual love of Sufism, not the violent force of terrorism, flows across the border, this region will be the paradise on earth that Amir Khusrau spoke about. "This is an extraordinary event of great importance to the world, at a critical time for humanity. At a time when the dark shadow of violence is becoming longer, you are the noor, or the light of hope. When young laughter is silenced by guns on the streets, you are the voice that heals. "Terrorism divides and destroys us. Indeed, when terrorism and extremism have become the most destructive force of our times, the message of Sufism has global relevance." These days if a few extremists enact some atrocity, we will hear about it. The strategy of terror is to create the maximum horror through random, isolated acts. But if two million loving souls gather annually in Tuva, Senegal, you very likely have never heard of it. Nor are we aware of the millions of souls who annually flow through the shrines of the great Sufi saints, at Rumi's dergah in Konya, at the tombs of Khwaja Moinuddin Chisti in Ajmer Sharif, or that of Nizamuddin Awlia in Delhi, experiencing an energy of solace, peace, and love. Advertisement As Rumi said, "Come, and keep on coming, even if you have broken your vows, come yet again; our is not a caravan of despair." Or in the words of Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya, "The Almighty holds dear those who love Him for the sake of human beings, and those who love human beings for the sake of the Almighty." Or in the words of Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti, "Of all the worships, the worship that pleases the Almighty God the most is the grant of relief to the humble and the oppressed." In all the different lands where Sufis of different cultures quietly pursue their work of spiritual realization and service to humanity--Turkey, Iran, Central Asia, Pakistan, India, the Arab world, Africa, Southeast Asia, Europe, and North America--Sufis are becoming more aware of each other and realizing the urgent need to transform the ideologies of hatred and violence with the spirit of love. The four-day World Sufi Forum, inaugurated by the Prime Minister and attended by delegates from 22 countries, concluded with the declaration of the 25-point agenda by the All India Ulema and Mashaikh Board before an outdoor gathering of an estimated quarter million people. If you want your kids to have a healthy relationship with food and their bodies, you may need to tone down your negativity about this Halloween tradition. When he opened the seventh seal, there was silence in heaven for about half an hour. And I saw the seven angels who stand before God, and seven trumpets were given to them. Another angel, who had a golden censer, came and stood at the altar. He was given much incense to offer, with the prayers of all God's people, on the golden altar in front of the throne. The smoke of the incense, together with the prayers of God's people, went up before God from the angel's hand. Then the angel took the censer, filled it with fire from the altar, and hurled it on the earth; and there came peals of thunder, rumblings, flashes of lightning and an earthquake. -Revelation 8:1-5 Cuba is an island country, just 90 miles from the US. Since 1960, the US has banned all travel and trade with Cuba. (That policy is known as the Cuba embargo.) In December 2014, the White House revealed they'd secretly been working on making relations with Cuba normal again. (If you want more backstory, it's right here.) Right now, President Obama is in Cuba for a few days. Que bola Cuba? Just touched down here, looking forward to meeting and hearing directly from the Cuban people. President Obama (@POTUS44) March 20, 2016 Advertisement So what? Who cares? Why does it matter? It's the first time a US president has gone there in 88 years. The last president to go to Cuba was Calvin Coolidge. Looks like someone could use a mojito. (Wikimedia Commons) Obama is there meeting with President Raul Castro. PHOTO: President Obama meets with Raul Castro at Cuba's Palace of the Revolution: https://t.co/RcAm7enzBd pic.twitter.com/nE6wfdHK10 The Associated Press (@AP) March 21, 2016 It's a huge step forward in normalizing relations with Cuba The Pope helped warm things up between Cuba and the US. Since then we've been taking baby steps towards having a normal relationship. Like letting Americans go there on a trip, and re-opening the US embassy. Secretary of State John Kerry watches as the US flag goes up at the reopened US embassy in Cuba. (Giphy) Advertisement There's no bigger way to send the message that having a decent relationship is important than for the president to visit. Yes, even bigger than Beyonce and Jay-Z. Seriously, this Obama trip is hugely controversial. It's probably strangely fitting that when the Obamas arrived, the skies were cloudy and rainy. The sun was not shining. Cuban people are overall pretty psyched to see Obama. But there are problems. Cuba is known for rampant and horrible human rights abuses Lets not forget the Castro regime has been guilty of countless human rights abuses. https://t.co/2K9OOmNG1G #Cuba pic.twitter.com/68axS7zGVr Paul Ryan (@SpeakerRyan) March 21, 2016 Advertisement Every Sunday, after church, a group called Ladies in White marches to demand better human rights in Cuba. And every week, some of those demonstrators get arrested. They thought maybe Cuba cops would just leave them alone the day President Obama was arriving. (After all, some people criticized him for going to Cuba because they have a long list of human rights abuses.) Nope. They marched, and about 50 members got arrested. Arrest of Ladies in White in Havana today ahead of Obama arrival, "La calle es de Fidel!" crowd chants pic.twitter.com/eEcR6ViO4U Nick Miroff (@NickMiroff) March 20, 2016 Many of the ladies are the wives of jailed dissidents, people who outspokenly criticize the government. Cuba is communist, not democratic. They don't have a law like our First Amendment. They have no right to speak freely, especially when it comes to the government. Advertisement What's the Cuban government doing to violate their citizens' human rights? Here's a small snapshot of just part of what they've done recently, from Freedom House: "In 2014, the Cuban government increased its systematic use of short-term "preventive" detentions--along with harassment, beatings, and "acts of repudiation"--to intimidate the political opposition, isolate dissidents from the rest of the population, and maintain political control of all public spaces. A record number of politically motivated detentions were recorded in 2014, and crackdowns on activists continued." Human Rights Watch described other brutal ways the Cuban government cracks down on their own people: "... [T]he Cuban government continues to repress individuals and groups who criticize the government or call for basic human rights. Officials employ a range of tactics to punish dissent and instill fear in the public, including beatings, public acts of shaming, termination of employment, and threats of long-term imprisonment. Short-term arbitrary arrests have increased dramatically in recent years and routinely prevent human rights defenders, independent journalists, and others from gathering or moving about freely." It's pretty horrible. 1,118 killed by firing squad, concentration camps filled w/ dissidents, homosexuals, Jehovahs Witnesses, Afro-Cuban priests: #ObamaenCuba Brad Thor (@BradThor) March 21, 2016 Advertisement Many people, including Senator Ted Cruz--a Republican who is running for president, and whose father fled Cuba--argues that Obama going to Cuba to "hang out" with President Raul Castro sends a terrible message to dissidents in Cuban prisons and dungeons. Obama says he hopes that his being part of a US delegation to Cuba will "prompt more change." It spotlights US immigration policy We've long had an influx of Cuban immigrants to the United States. But since the US-Cuba relationship started warming up in late 2014, there's been a major immigration wave. Immigration from Cuba was 78% higher in 2015 over 2014. Wow. That's a big jump. Why are so many Cubans suddenly streaming into the US? For years, the US has given all Cuban immigrants political asylum, a special status that makes it easier to get a green card, AKA become a permanent legal resident. If relations between the two countries become more normal, though, Cubans fear that special immigration status will end. So they're coming in droves before that policy can change. There are about 1.2 million Cuban immigrants living in the US. Cuba's total population is just over 11 million. That means close to 10% of the entire population has sought a better life in the US. (And that doesn't count the Cubans who have emigrated to other countries.) Advertisement Wishing the best for @POTUS during his ongoing #CubaVisit. Reestablished relations will help open doors of opportunity for its people Tim Kaine (@timkaine) March 21, 2016 This is a stark reminder that Cubans still suffer difficult lives in their country. Not only do they lack many basic rights, but their economy is really weak (partly because of the US trade embargo, which still hasn't been lifted). Pretty fitting that the building in the background is rundown, dilapidated and 1984-ish. #CubaVisit pic.twitter.com/2AoTBoHsgE Jason (@jasonelevation) March 21, 2016 So many Cubans who leave for the US come for economic, not purely political, reasons. In the end, the only sustainable immigration policy involves a free and prosperous Cuba https://t.co/fs0g7zMCSE pic.twitter.com/vXyr4udR5i The Economist (@TheEconomist) March 13, 2016 It's also a stark reminder that US immigration policy really needs to be reformed. People in other Latin American countries say it's totally unfair that Cuban immigrants get a path to legal status easier than immigrants from other countries, where people are suffering equally harsh conditions, if not worse. Advertisement Venezuelans: "Our country is as bad as Cuba used to be," but no immigration help. https://t.co/VxctxVfFkJ pic.twitter.com/j1ZEb2nrEA PRI's The World (@pritheworld) March 21, 2016 Don't forget Guantanamo At the other end of Cuba from the capital, Havana, is Guantanamo Bay, where the US operates a notorious detention camp. Obama just announced a new plan to close the camp once and for all. Most Democrats really want him to. So does the United Nations. It's hard to think about the president of the United States going to Cuba without being reminded of Guantanamo Bay. Where prisoners are held on suspicion of terrorist activity. Advertisement Unlike regular US prisons, though, these prisoners can be held indefinitely, and they're not subject to US laws like due process or the right not to undergo cruel and unusual punishment. (Many detainees have been subjected to practices that sure sound a lot like abuse and torture.) Obama wants to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center, but keep the US military base itself open. But Cuba wants it back in their control. It's a weird arrangement: Cuba owns the land, but the US leases it, with a term of ... forever. Yes, really. Both sides have to sign any agreement for that lease to end. The two sides aren't going to agree on Guantanamo for the foreseeable future, no matter who the US president is, and no matter whether the US keeps its prison open there or not. Still, it's going to be pretty tough for Obama to push Castro on human rights, because Guantanamo. So Obama is going to raise human rights with the Castros. I wonder how long it will take them to raise Occupied Cuba and #Guantanamo? yvonne ridley (@yvonneridley) March 21, 2016 This article was written by Holly Epstein Ojalvo and originally appeared on Kicker. Kicker explains the most important, compelling things going on in the world and empowers you to get in the know, make up your own mind, and take action. For more, check out the Kicker site, like their Facebook page, or subscribe to their email newsletter. Photo Credit: Courtesy Amazon.com As winter officially turned into spring, Leslie Day was in Fort Tryon Park at the northern tip of Manhattan signing her latest book, Field Guide to the Neighborhood Birds of New York City. Dr. Day and her collaborators have chosen to devote their efforts to information about birds in the five boroughs exclusively. "New York City offers some of the best birding sites in the northeastern United States," offers Dr. Day. "There are so many birds in New York because of where we sit geographically. We sit below the Atlantic Flyway. As they pass over the city, birds see an abundance of parks and coastline." Dr. Day has chosen to collaborate on her New York City field guide with two other New Yorkers: Trudy Smoke, who provided the book's wonderful illustrations, and Beth Bergman, whose fabulous photos are a joy. These three fabulous New York women have been to every park in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island and the Bronx, seeking out their feathered material. Their pooled talents have yielded a field guide that runs from Double-Crested Cormorants to Yellow-Bellied Sapsuckers, revealing the richness of diversity in the lives of our fellow New Yorkers from the natural world. Advertisement Picture Credit: Courtesy Trudy Smoke Typical of New York, the city's avian population has its superstars. New York City Red-tailed Hawks (Buteo jamaicensis), include the famous Pale Male, the Fifth Avenue Hawk, who has his own web page and stars in a movie. But city living can be dangerous for birds. Pale Male is raising young with his fifth mate. The previous four Mrs. Pale Males died from rodenticide after ingesting poisoned rats and pigeons. Other New York City birds die during migrations from wintering to breeding grounds and back. Many crash into windows on the city's skyscrapers. Others become confused by the city skyline lighting up the night sky. These birds fly in circles, eventually dropping from fatigue. At the request of the Audubon Society, the city's tallest skyscrapers now defer to nature at least twice a year as part of its Lights Out Program. Lights are dimmed at midnight in September and October, during the peak of the fall migratory season, and again in April and May, during the peak of the spring migratory season. Picture Credit: Courtesy Trudy Smoke Each bird entry in Field Guide to the Neighborhood Birds of New York City includes city-specific information including: Where and when to find, Behavior, Nest and eggs, and Ecological role. And birds in the five boroughs certainly do seem to have a New York City frame of mind, or at least avian city street smarts. Advertisement House Sparrow Passer domesticus: Where and when to find: One hundred house sparrows were introduced from Europe into Brooklyn, Manhattan and Chicago in the early 1850s, and the species expanded throughout North America. It is the most commonly seen bird throughout the five boroughs and lives here year-round. Nest and Eggs: I have seen them emerge from places that are surprising, like the nostrils of Teddy Roosevelt's bronze horse on Central Park West in front of the American Museum of Natural History. Dr. Day's field guide even gives ample coverage of the city's pigeons, which she admits, are often classified by their fellow New Yorkers as flying rodents. Rock Pigeon: Columba livia: Behavior: European settlers brought them to North America in the seventeenth century. As carrier pigeons, they have saved thousands of lives during wars. Ecological role: Omnivores; they help clean up food litter on our streets and feed on berries and weed seeds. The field guide begins with a foreword by Don Riepe, Jamaica Bay Guardian, American Littoral Society, who quickly debunks New York myths about about the city as "a concrete jungle devoid of any bird life save pigeons, starlings and house sparrows." The back of the field guide includes New York birding organizations and resources for New York City birders such as a list of Birdwatching Organizations and Rehabilitators for hurt, orphaned and sick wildlife. There is also a detailed list of Birding Hotspots by borough (Staten Island has the most), and a surprisingly long list of Photographers' Blogs that Dr. Day describes as "a great gift to our city." Concludes Dr. Day: "Once you start to notice birds, New York City will never look the same." Advertisement We're backpackers. We're trying to see the world on a budget, and more often than not it means that we must sacrifice some things that were used to at home. These sacrifices also usually happen whether we like it or not.... Living with less comes with the territory of backpacking through an area that is culturally... well.... different than what we're used to. In so many ways. Asia has so incredibly much to offer and so many beautiful sights and places to see. But seeing these places often requires adapting to a little bit of a different lifestyle - especially if you do it the way us backpackers do. We wouldn't stop doing what we're doing for the world, and the lessons we are learning through backpacking Southeast Asia and living so differently and impermanently out of our packs are completely irreplaceable. Advertisement But, it's still pretty hilarious to make light of a few things that Southeast Asia doesn't really do like the West does. Here are a few things you take for granted until you arrive in Asia: Toilet Paper This one goes without saying. Toilets with paper are a serious luxury here. Your options are usually to bring your own roll, prepare to drip-dry, or embrace the bum gun... Ah, bum guns. Such a love/hate relationship. Towels The amount of times I have dried myself with another article of clothing or the clothes I was about to put on, because my towel is in the wash, forgotten, or lost, is insurmountable. Hobo lyfe. Hostels with towels, we love you. Hand Soap A serious luxury. I do a small happy dance each time a toilet actually has soap. Otherwise, I pray that running that water over my hands will get at least some germs off. Hand sanitizer, where you at? Advertisement Hand Dryers /Hand Towels This goes hand in hand with not having soap to clean my hands - not having a towel to dry them. We shake them out, and use our shirt. I just love walking out the bathroom with two huge wet handprints on my shirt. Love it. Getting a Good Night's Sleep Snorers. People coming home drunk at 3am and clashing about. 12 Beds in one room that squeak and shake and creak. People who have no regard for others and talk at full volume. In hostels there is ALWAYS something to wake you up.... Earplugs are a necessity! I'm not even kidding that this was my night ferry from Koh Phangan to Surat Thani. There were 2 bed numbers per less-than-full sized "bed," and you got to sleep next to people you didn't know. And basically wake up spooning 36 strangers. What an experience. (Photo: @kimmconn) Having a Room to Yourself And not having to keep your belongings locked up at all times. I mean, I love waking up next to 12 strangers every morning but... Privacy in General Things were used to: Hoping no one comes in the hostel room while you're changing. Using communal showers and bathrooms. Waking up and going to sleep in the presence of many others each day. In the backpacker life, you get no privacy. That's just how it is. If you ever end up with a private room while backpacking Southeast Asia... SERIOUS LUXURY. You mean I can just put my stuff wherever I want? And can walk around naked?!?! Advertisement Comfortable Beds I'm not sure how they get away with calling these hard-as-concrete slabs with sheets 'beds,' but there you go. Classic Asia. When you get a comfy bed it's seriously like you won the lottery! Being Able to Flush Toilet Paper Down the Toilet Although most of us accidentally forget a majority of the time. It just doesn't feel right to wipe yourself and throw the toilet paper in the trash can. It just feels... Wrong. Hot Sauce I do miss Sriracha, Tabasco, Cholula, etc.. When a restaurant has Tabasco it's a serious win. Chilli is ok though- chilli sauce on errthang. Napkins Apparently people here are just flawlessly able to eat without making a mess. I haven't reached that point yet unfortunately. Wiping on my shorts it is! When they do have napkins, they tend to be like 4 times thinner than normal and turn into a tiny shriveled ball with one wipe. Well, I suppose I will just have to use 12. Toilets That Flush or Have a Seat and Aren't a Hole in the Ground We have all learned to be experts on the squatter toilets by now. Or the ones that you flush by dumping a bucket of water down them. Those were so confusing at first. Advertisement Pee. On my shoes. Every Time. (Photo: @kimmconn) Bathroom Floors That Aren't Sopping Wet Really though, are there any in Asia that aren't? Don't ever think of going to the restroom without shoes. Damn you again, bum guns. Hooks in the Bathroom I never even thought about this one until I got to Asia. But when you have to use the toilet, have a full backpack and purse on, and the bathroom floor is soaking with no hook... what do you do?! #problemsolving Grocery Stores I found my first one a month into my Asia trip in Ho Chi Minh city. It was actually so exciting. Cooking Your Own Food It was great when I found said grocery store, but it didn't matter too much because if I wanted to buy groceries I would have nowhere to cook them. Hostels here aren't like European ones with kitchens.... And we all know it's way cheaper to get some $2 street food than cook anyway. Clean Clothes, Dry Clothes, and/or Clothes That Don't Smell And not having a massive bag of laundry just sitting inside your bag all the time. The amount of times I have looked at a dirty shirt, said f**k it, and put it on anyway is, well, a lot. We're backpackers and must pack light... This means that our laundry accumulates FAST. And we're often dirty. This is true especially when you're doing things like waterfall treks, getting caught in rain storms, and swimming in the sea... with 12 hour night busses afterwards. How do we think those wet clothes are going to smell after being in a bag that whole time? And after we likely forget about them for another 12 hours? RANK. Advertisement Not Having Mosquito Bites We have such a hatred for mozzies. Not sure about you, but I am a 'mosquito magnet.' Even people who aren't magnets get devoured here in Asia... I probably have at least 7 on my body at any given moment. Thank god for tiger balm! And OFF. Die, you little life-sucking sneaky buzzing bastards. Extra Seats on the Bus You know when you get on a bus and try to commandeer a whole row so you can stretch your legs and get a nice sleep? Not here. They fill every bus, minivan, and ferry to the brim here. Hope you have a neck pillow! And want to make friends with the little old local lady next to you who will share her strange Asian snacks with you then fall asleep on your shoulder. When the ferry is full so you have to sit on the floor with the only snack you have left - strange green bean crisps. (Photo: @kimmconn) Knowing What You Are Eating Okay, 'chicken' noodles. Sounds good, 'beef' soup. Fish sticks? Squid chips? Strange dried fruits? Food is often quite questionable here, and we have grown to accept just eating most things anyway. It's all part of the experience... I just hope to the lord it isn't dog. (too far?) Normal Bowel Movements I'm sorry I'm sorry... I'm sorry. But I couldn't leave this one out. Everyone silently knows it's the truest thing on here. Didn't you know laxatives are free while backpacking Southeast Asia? They go by the name of 'tap water' and 'most foods.' Forrrrreal. Advertisement Currencies That Make Sense By now we're all accustomed to having at least three zero's on the end of anything we buy, if not five or six! 150,000 for a night's stay in Vietnam? Sounds about right. Places Without Bugs Everywhere I would honestly be more surprised NOT to have to use the toilet underneath the web of a large black spider. We learn to be friends with the bugs. There will probably be bugs dropping down on me from this little straw hut. But it is oh, SO worth it. Look at that view! (Photo: @kimmconn) Breakfast Burritos Ok this is probably the California in me coming out, but I seriously miss a good breakfast burrito. Or burritos in general really. If a menu has a breakfast burrito on it, it's pretty much game over. Avocado is also an immediate yes. Take my money. Wine Lets have a moment of silence for the lack of wine in Asia. This is something I was not mentally prepared for... Not a single bottle of cheap wine? Anywhere? WHAT KIND OF PLACE IS THIS?! Advertisement Okay, yes, I'm being overly dramatic. I know. But a wine lover like me silently weeps each time they only have a few awful bottles for $15 each when we're used to paying $1-2 per drink here. That just doesn't make sense for my backpacking budget but I want it so, SO badly. I miss you, wine. In Asia you are only for very special occasions. Being Able to Complain In Western countries, customer service is very important, and you always want to keep your customers happy and will therefore usually try to make people happy if they aren't. Asia: nope. Not really. There is no 'Can I speak to the manager" here. No complaining, no nothing. Accidentally spill your drink and ask for another one? They will laugh at you. Find a bug in your food? Oops. Journey take three hours longer than you were told? Ha sorry that's life! Health & Safety Your fate is in your own hands out here. There will be no railings on cliff edges, seat belts in cars, or inspections for cleanliness, usually. H & S goes out the window here, which can be a great or awful thing depending on the situation! In the US, someone would be making me sign waivers and line up to jump off the cliff behind me, with lifeguards standing by. In Thailand you just.... jump. Which I did a few minutes after this photo. (Photo: @kimmconn) Good Music Alright, I know this one is extremely relative to personal music taste. And that there are a lot of variations of music In Asia, live and recorded, that you can find to make anyone happy. But I can't be alone when I say I honestly can't handle much more awful "5, 4, 3, 2, PUT YOUR FCKNG HANDS UP!!!!" Electro from hell that is extremely prominent on most nights out. Kill me now. When you find a place that caters to your musical taste it's like a sweet breath of fresh air. Advertisement Being In Contact with the Outside World "Sorry mom, I was traveling for 17 hours then the wifi at my hostel didn't work for two days!" Literally, good wifi were is a LUXURY. If you can get texts out and check your Facebook, that's pretty good. If you can actually upload things and load photos, amazing. We generally tend to get stuck for an hour or more in cafe's that actually have good wifi, or base our meal selection on the condition of the restaurant having wifi. Gotta let the parents know were alive... and post that Instagram, and that Facebook status, and a tweet or two.... Traffic Laws Lol, there aren't any here. Especially in Vietnam. I actually low key love it. It's going to be bad when I go home and try to jaywalk across the 5 lane highway or disobey all traffic lights. Vietnam. The home of, "family of four driving on the same moped without helmets on the wrong side of the road." (Photo: @kimmconn) Knowing What is Going On Or Where You're Going Not a single time have I understood the process of having joint tickets to get to my next destination, crossing borders, or traveling anywhere in general. It is just something that you come to terms with here - not understanding what is happening or where you are supposed to go during traveling . You just end up trusting it at a certain point. "Get on this bus." Okay. "Get off now." Okay. "Get in this line." Ok.... "Stand here." Okay. "This is your tuk tuk." Ok, getting in. "Sit in these seats and wait for 45 minutes for the ferry." Right. You got it, tiny asian man. I trust you will get me where I'm going, albeit probably 4 hours later than the travel agency said. Advertisement Being On Time I don't think I have ever actually arrived at my destination when I was supposed to, or left when I was supposed to either. Just the other day I was still waiting at 2:15 for my 1pm bus. The one and only time I have ever been early was when my night ferry arrived at 4am instead of 6am... the one time I needed the extra time to sleep. Classic. This is just life backpacking Southeast Asia. Don't plan on getting to your destination by the time the hostel/agent said you would. Bring extra food and water. Because if you wanted to have dinner when you arrived in Siem Reap at 5... you had better bring some with you, because chances are you'll be there at 7:30 earliest. Ah, well. We have grown to love the life of sitting on busses and to fall asleep in the strangest positions, bobbing heads with the people next to us. Just your everyday Laotian roadblock. One of many reasons you'll always be late! (Photo: @kimmconn) No matter what happens or what we do or not not have, backpacking brings people together. The community that traveling cultivates is unlike any sense of community I have ever known. We may be roughing it a tiny (or a large) bit sometimes... but the benefits of backpacking Southeast Asia far, FAR outweigh the costs. We all get through it together. So here's to the randoms that we have shared our toilet paper with in the most awful of bathrooms. Here's to the brave ones who have killed bugs for the more afraid. Here's to the travelers we have bonded with while brain dead on night bus stopovers trying to buy some Pringles from a sketchy cafe. Here's to the new friends with whom we have decided to go in on bottles of wine with, to the hostel bunk mates who have evolved into the best of friends, and the people we ended up traveling with for weeks. Here's to us backpackers - to the ones who always seem to have their head in the clouds while at home just dreaming of their next destination - but who are able to finally feel at home in the company of other backpackers in the back of a bumpy tuk tuk in a foreign country. Advertisement When we travel here, we sacrifice a little to get back a LOT more. Toilet paper, I don't need you. Memories? Life experience? Knowledge? Culture? Lifelong friends? Discovery? I need YOU. Also on HuffPost: Photo: I had the honour of meeting Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau "The fourth industrial revolution is unlike anything humankind has previously experienced. New technologies are merging the physical, digital and biological worlds in ways that create both huge promise and potential peril. The speed breadth and depth of this revolution is forcing us to rethink how countries develop, how organizations create value and even what it means to be human." - Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum Photo: Prime Minister Justin Trudeau takes a selfie with the Global Shapers after our private session - he is definitely the new face of global leadership for millennials We are living in an increasingly complex and uncertain world of constant change unlike anything in history. Advances in technology are outpacing implementation and these emerging technologies whilst presenting brilliant opportunities for a more positive world also present potentially detrimental threats. Advertisement In January, I had the unique opportunity to see the world through a crystal ball otherwise known as the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum. The meeting is popularly known as Davos, because it takes place in Davos, Switzerland a remote ski town located 3 hours south east of Zurich. So what exactly is Davos? From my experience it is an extremely exclusive gathering of 2500 of the most powerful and influential leaders on the planet meeting to discuss ideas and opportunities to change the world for the better including issues of immediate global consequence, such as the refugee crisis. The audience is diverse capturing business leaders, innovators and creatives, nobel laureates, academic stalwarts, government officials and celebrities, but Davos is especially known for its enduring ability to attract billionaires and world leaders in abundance. This is a one of a kind convergence of people bold enough to believe they have a role to play in shaping the future of the entire planet and it may be fair to conclude that the collective is well positioned with many of resources necessary to do so. The gathering offers a unique community feel, a trust network where heads of state and the business elite are extremely approachable and open to dialogue. For the most part people are open to discussion and the playing field is relatively level. Photo: Microsoft Founder Bill Gates sits on a panel at the Annual Meeting I was the only participant from the Caribbean throughout the entire event, so I feel compelled to share my experience as a Jamaican participating in this global gathering. Like many in the region, I often feel the Caribbean is being leap frogged by the rest of the world. I also think we miss opportunities to showcase our brilliance in areas where we have proven leadership and excellence. I believe events like Davos are important for us in the Caribbean to keep pace with the rest of the world. It's important that we find ourselves at the cusp of innovation and well positioned within ecosystems that influence our futures. Advertisement The opinion makers gathered to discuss topics including artificial intelligence, robotics, smart cities, the future of energy, space travel, digital currency which encompasses bitcoin, the shared economy, big data and space travel. There was also a focus on the 'internet of things,' the potential multi trillion dollar industry being driven by the increase in connected devices in the world. Companies including Google, Intel and Cisco are investing billions to capitalize on the future potential of this emerging sector. What's most interesting about working to predict the future in a positive manner is the high level of forward thinking required to anticipate them problems that may arise and how to circumvent them. For many of us these topics may seem out of touch with our daily lives and to some extent they are. Much of this won't be realized for the next 5-15 years, but to bring this into the immediate just imagine that Google has never considered itself a search engine but instead an artificial intelligence company, and Siri on the iPhone operates on artificial intelligence as well. Honda just announced a self-driving car and numerous other companies are working on them, and rumor now has it that transportation giant Uber is scouting for a manufacturer for a fleet of 100,000 self-driving cars. The connected world is just as scary and as it is exciting, cars today are already being hacked, so self-driving cars will be vulnerable as well. The technological revolution will birth new industries and create trillions of dollars in economic value. Despite all the advances we have experienced in the last decade alone it is fair to say we barely scratched the surface. Technology is the great equalizer that threatens the power of dominant players across various sectors including governments. We are already seeing this play out and experts believe this is only the beginning. In the same breadth we must be mindful of the negative social, economic and environmental consequences. It may result in greater divides between people and poses major concerns about privacy, security and waste. Photo: Global Shapers private session with Justin Trudeau Conversations on the future impact of technology raise questions of a more socio-economic nature such as diversity and inclusion. In some instances Jamaica is already a stand out leader with so much to share with the world. For example, at Davos, Unilever CEO Paul Pohlman shared an interesting statistic; if women shared the same inclusive rights as men in terms of employment, health and social mobility, global GDP would rise by US$37 trillion. I also sat and listened to Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau call himself a feminist, which has gone viral globally. Jamaica is already a trailblazer in this space with numerous female CEOs and senior executives penetrating our work force. More developed nations struggle with this and we should work to take ownership of this and use it as an avenue to become apart of global leadership accessing the benefits and responsibilities that come. Jamaica has also successfully pulled off 2 debt exchanges and continues to employ austerity towards economic stability. This has required national buy in, with the potential for civil unrest. This has been no easy feat, even considering our size. With the tight economic conditions facing global economies, countries will have to find creative ways to manage debt and while no one should follow in our footsteps on the path that led us to where we were, we have much to share on our path to recovery. Our creative culture also offers the opportunity to become a hub for people in the creative industries. Jamaica could establish itself as a leading destination for creative minds to connect and collaborate. Considering our musical heritage, I've always imagined a future where musicians think of Jamaica as the holy grail, a place where they must visit and record a few songs to announce themselves to the world. A point of validity, in line with what Davos means to corporate leaders and government leaders. It's possible. I was honoured to be offered a seat at the table as 1 of 50 members of the Forum's 6000+ member Global Shapers Community. We're called the Davos 50, a group chosen by the Forum each year, a stand out minority, in a gathering, which for the most part was much older than us, but extremely excited to hear our views as we reflected the voices of young people around the world. For me it was a dream come true. When I was in high school I used to watch coverage of Davos on television with awe, wondering how on earth was a kid from Jamaica ever going to qualify to access such an amazing community, but low and behold here I was, in the company of giants. Photo: Leonardo DiCaprio accepts his Crystal Award from the World Economic Forum for his work in Climate Change Just about every global corporation you can think of is represented and anyone you can think of was present from Bill and Melinda Gates to Vice President Joe Biden and Al Gore, HP CEO, Meg Whitman; IMF Director Christine Lagarde; Credit Suisse CEO Tidjane Thiam; Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg; Former United Nations General Secretary Kofi Annan; Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu; UK Prime Minister David Cameron; Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair; U2 front man Bono; Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg; Hamdi Ulukaya, CEO of Chobani; African American Billionaire Robert Smith; Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma; Microsoft's CEO Satya Nadella, Salesforce CEO Marc Beneioff. Advertisement ROCKEFELLER CENTER, NEW YORK, NY, UNITED STATES - 2015/12/10: Officers from the NYPD's Strategic Response Group stand alert by their service vehicles on Seventh Avenue. Amid growing concern for the possibility of a terror attack in New York City. NYPD counter-terrorism officers maintain alert status near Rockefeller Center, a popular seasonal attraction in Midtown Manhattan. (Photo by Albin Lohr-Jones/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images) There's little dispute today that we live in a National Security State. Unlawful police surveillance and infiltration of religious and political groups has become so common that it barely evokes outrage. Perhaps the most notorious perpetrators of unwarranted spying on Americans is the New York Police Department (NYPD), which continues to establish questionable counter-terrorism and counterintelligence units to spy on New Yorkers despite being repeatedly sued over it. However, there's a rare opportunity this month and next to voice opposition to NYPD spying practices. U.S. District Court Judge Charles S. Haight, Jr. recently issued a Notice of Fairness Hearing for which the federal court is seeking comment from the public. Advertisement The Fairness Hearing, which will be held on April 19 at 10 a.m. at the Moynihan Federal Courthouse (500 Pearl Street in Manhattan), stems from a proposed settlement agreement in two class-action lawsuits, one of which has been ongoing for more than 40 years. The more recent lawsuit, Raza v. City of New York, was filed in 2013 by several legal and political groups on behalf of religious and community leaders, mosques and a charitable organization, alleging they were swept up in NYPD dragnet surveillance of Muslims. Also in 2013, lawyers filed briefs in Handschu v. Special Services Division, an historical lawsuit that established a decades-long consent decree restricting NYPD surveillance and infiltration of political groups and activists. A settlement agreement was reached in January for both the Raza and Handschu cases. The settlement agreement would amend the longstanding "Handschu Guidelines," which have been eviscerated since 9/11. Since Raza and Handschu are class action lawsuits, the court is inviting comment from the class of political groups and activists--hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of New Yorkers. Advertisement In order to comment, you must register with the court by April 5th. In anticipation of a desire by class members to submit comments, a coalition of political groups are hosting free public educational workshops to review the history of Raza and Handschu and the consent decree, as well as learn details of the proposed settlement agreement, and how to file comments. New Yorkers interested in learning more about these lawsuits, NYPD spying, and this rare opportunity to comment should come to 339 Lafayette Street in Manhattan on either Wednesday, March 30 at 6:30pm or Thursday, March 31 at 6:30pm for free public education workshops on these issues. Proposed settlement agreement The proposed settlement agreement negotiated by the Handschu attorneys, most of whom are members of the New York Civil Liberties Union (NYCLU) and the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), has pluses and minuses. On the plus side, the terms will amend the Handschu Guidelines to add a civilian representative unaffiliated with the police department to oversee investigations. However, the civilian representative, who is an attorney appointed by the Mayor, will assume tremendous responsibility yet have questionable accountability to the people and groups most affected. Most of the provisions are benign and not likely to result in any practical changes to NYPD practices, such as "an explicit commitment against investigations in which race, religion or ethnicity is a substantial or motivating factor" and that "the choice of investigative techniques should take account of the potential effect of the investigation on the political or religious activity of individuals, groups or organizations," according to the Fairness Hearing Notice. Advertisement The settlement terms also institute "presumptive time limits on investigations" where before there were none. Although each investigation will be reviewed every six months, there appears no real restriction on indefinite extension. The terms fail to curb spying by undercover officers and informants, providing infiltrators with near complete discretion based on a determination that "the information sought could not be reasonably obtained in a timely and effective way by a less intrusive means." But, possibly even more of an affront to the aggrieved plaintiff-class is the refusal by the NYPD to admit any wrongdoing that led to the Raza lawsuit or violated the Handschu Guidelines. The settlement terms read: Defendants [including NYPD] deny any and all liability and deny that they had or have a policy, or engaged in or currently engage in a pattern or practice of conduct, that deprived any persons, including the Plaintiff Class and the plaintiffs in Raza, of rights protected by the Constitution and laws of the United States. How did we get to this point? As a result of blowback against the repressive counterintelligence (COINTELPRO) tactics used by the FBI, a small wave of reform took place in the U.S. in the mid-to-late 1970s. Reform included congressional legislation that made intelligence committees permanent in both houses and executive orders issued by presidents Ford and Carter restricting certain intelligence operations. In the mid 1980s, the federal courts granted injunctions in a couple of important cases--Alliance to End Repression v. City of Chicago and Handschu v. Special Services Division--that attempted to limit surveillance activity by local police. Advertisement In 1971, NLG attorney Barbara Handschu and others filed a lawsuit stemming from COINTELPRO-era police tactics. The Handschu plaintiffs--including Abbie Hoffman and members of the War Resisters League, the Gay Liberation Front, the Black Panther Party, and others--accused the NYPD of "[deterring] them from First Amendment activity by using informers, infiltration, interrogation, surveillance, summary punishment, and by creating a fearful atmosphere at public gatherings." As part of the settlement, a consent decree was established in 1985 implementing court-ordered guidelines that "prohibited [police] from investigating political activity" unless there was evidence of current or planned crimes and "prohibited creation of files on groups or individuals based solely on their political, religious, sexual or economic preference." The Handschu consent decree also established an "Authority" within the NYPD to oversee the police Intelligence Division activities. However, hard-fought legal victories are often impermanent. After 9/11, Handschu met its fate. In 2002, the police requested modification of the Handschu Guidelines on the basis that it would inhibit efforts to fight terrorism. Despite the lack of specific instances in which criminal investigations had been curtailed, the NYPD requested a virtual repeal of the guidelines. District Court Judge Haight ultimately agreed and, in early 2003, relaxed the guidelines and significantly weakened the 1985 decree. Whereas the original guidelines authorized investigations only with evidence of "specific information" that a crime was about to be committed, the new guidelines merely require "reasonable indication" of a future crime. The Court also eliminated the requirement that police get approval for intelligence gathering from the Handschu Authority, a three-member panel consisting of two high-level police officials and one civilian appointed by the mayor. No group has been more affected by the evisceration of the Handschu consent decree than the Muslim community. In August 2011, the Associated Press published a Pulitzer Prize-winning series exposing the vast domestic spying network developed by the NYPD since 2001. The massive multistate operation was aimed at the surveillance, mapping, and infiltration of Muslim groups, from recording information like where they pray and eat to manufacturing criminal activity in an effort to entrap them. As indefensible as the spying operation was, New York Police Commissioner Ray Kelly claimed it violated no laws and was "within the framework of the modified [Handschu] consent decree." Advertisement Just as the relaxed Handschu Guidelines signaled a green light for spying on the Muslim community, the NYPD has also used the new intelligence landscape to spy on political groups. Internal police reports made public in 2006 showed that, as early as 2002, teams of undercover NYPD officers "attended meetings of political groups, posing as sympathizers or fellow activists" in order to gather information, which they shared with other law enforcement agencies. NYPD also used "proactive arrests" and psychological tactics at political demonstrations. Claiming success, the police reports recommended that such tactics be used at future political demonstrations. The modified decree also allowed for the widespread surveillance and infiltration of political groups in the lead-up to the 2004 Republican convention. Indeed, the New York Times reported in 2007 that the NYPD had "spied broadly" before the convention, traveling to "cities across the country, Canada and Europe to conduct covert observations of people who planned to protest at the convention, according to police records and interviews." Notably, a month before the March 2007 New York Times story, the federal courts pointed to Handschu and found that police must have "some indication of unlawful activity on the part of the individual or organization to be investigated." Nevertheless, the Times concluded after reviewing hundreds of reports stamped "NYPD Secret," that the police Intelligence Division "chronicled the views and plans of people who had no apparent intention of breaking the law," including "members of street theater companies, church groups and antiwar organizations, as well as environmentalists and people opposed to the death penalty, globalization and other government policies." Footage taken by the videographer collective "I-Witness Video" during the RNC 2004 also showed that the NYPD was using undercover police to infiltrate the protests. Political and religious repression today Arguably, dissidents and other targeted groups have never been completely protected from police harassment, surveillance, and interference, or from arbitrary and mass arrest. But, political and religious repression has reached intense proportions today in the U.S. Advertisement Since at least 2002, the NYPD's Intelligence Division profiled and spied on Muslims as well as political organizations in New York City and elsewhere. This highly discriminatory practice was carried out in part by the NYPD Demographics Unit, later renamed the Zone Assessment Unit, which was forced to close in April 2014 due to public pressure after the exposure of its existence and the Raza lawsuit. Less than a year after shuttering the Demographics Unit, NYPD Commissioner William Bratton announced the formation in January 2015 of a new counter-terrorism and counterintelligence group called the Strategic Response Group (SRG). The SRG, whose roughly 350 officers are trained in heavy-weapons tactics, clumsily merged the city's anti-terrorism enforcement with its crowd control efforts around political protest. The SRG quickly drew fire from political and legal groups for its heavy-handed practices and chilling effect on protests in the city. In late 2015, less than a year after it was formed, the SRG not only swelled in size to nearly twice the number of officers, it also gained attention for helping to suppress Black Lives Matter demonstrations and on multiple occasions used a military-grade Long Range Acoustic Device (LRAD or noise cannon) and aggressive arrest tactics. "The SRG combines many of the problems of the NYPD's Disorder Control Unit's approach to crowd control and policing with many of the problems of its Intelligence Division's and Counterterrorism Bureau's approaches to pre-emptively and hyper-aggressively policing political protests in the streets," NLG and civil rights attorney Gideon Oliver told Gothamist. "Rather than rejecting approaches to policing protests that have proven to result in civil rights violations, the NYPD has continued to entrench and institutionalize those approaches, including recently in the form of the SRG." Yet, there seems to be no reference to the SRG or its counterintelligence efforts in the Handschu/Raza settlement agreement. Advertisement Another counterintelligence tactic of the NYPD was exposed just last month by the NYCLU in response to a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request. In February, the NYPD confirmed that it owns and regularly operates Stingray devices used to eavesdrop on cell phone conversations by mimicking a cell tower. The NYPD admitted it used Stingrays more than one thousand times between 2008-2015 "without a written policy" and using a "practice of obtaining only lower-level court orders rather than warrants," according to the NYCLU. "If carrying a cell phone means being exposed to military grade surveillance equipment, then the privacy of nearly all New Yorkers is at risk," said NYCLU Executive Director Donna Lieberman. Keeping the NYPD out of mosques, community spaces, and political meetings For these reasons and more, it's important to voice opposition to the relaxed policies that barely dictate what the NYPD can and cannot do in regards to surveillance of religious and political groups. Although the level of societal fear post-9/11 is palpable and complicated to address, it should not prevent us from keeping police departments like the NYPD in check and accountable to the people it purports to serve and protect. If New Yorkers cannot attend any of the educational meetings but still wish to file comments with the court, be sure to review the filing requirements and this FAQ by the CLEAR project of CUNY Law School. You must register to comment by sending an email with your name and address to handschusettlement@gmail.com or by sending a letter with your name and address to Handschu Settlement, Clerk's Office, U.S. District Court, 500 Pearl Street, NY, NY 10007. All emails and letters must be sent or postmarked on or before April 5, 2016. You may include the substance of your comment or objection in the email or the letter, but you are not required to do so. Objections or comments will not be considered by the court unless you have given notice by email or by U.S. Mail that you want to comment or object. Advertisement Be sure to submit your comments before the deadline! The safety, privacy and free expression of New Yorkers could depend on it. Energy is at the forefront of most economic, environmental and developmental issues the world faces today. In Nepal, roughly 80% of the population lives in rural mountainous regions that lack access to reliable electricity. Solar integration for agricultural purposes has been implemented throughout various parts of rural Nepal to aid in irrigation and agricultural needs all year round. The remaining population of Nepal is grid-connected, but face a 500 MW energy deficit, with 16+ hours of daily blackouts on average during load shedding hours. Many businesses run privately owned diesel generators for backup, but still suffer from increasing fuel costs, frequent shortages, and pollution from fumes and noise. In the current situation, local businesses have been forced to shut down and are actively seeking out clean, reliable and alternative energy solutions. Solar energy has become a very feasible and viable answer to power Nepal and provide a path towards energy independence. Advertisement Farmer Dilli Ram Regmi, 65 years old, lives in the farming village of Jharlyangdi in Walling, Syangja District. He's been a farmer since the age of 16 and grew up working in agriculture. There are 12 members in his family and they depend on agriculture to make a living. Dilli Ram saw a lack of water in his community and shared his concern with the Syangja Agricultural Committee. With the help of local and international charitable organizations, iDE Nepal, Renewable World and SunFarmer, a Solar water MUS (Multiple Use System) was implemented in December 2012 and completed within two months. His community uses a solar powered water pump that lifts water from the valley below to a tank above the community on a hill. Access to 16 water distribution taps stand outside the 32 households in the community and provides water for drinking and irrigation giving Dilli Ram and his family back time they would otherwise use for collecting water. Renewable World and iDE Nepal, describes a Solar MUS (Multi Use Water System) as an improved approach to water resource management for small communities to meet both domestic and agricultural needs. The Solar MUS system provides the farmers in Syangja with a 15,000 Litre storage tank. During the dry season, there is a scarcity of water and with a second storage tank, the farmers would have the opportunity to irrigate an additional area of 520 sq. meters of land. The land in Sirubari is ideal for vegetable farming, but currently there is only enough water for drinking and livestock. Traditionally, the land was able to grow millet, corn, rice, and vegetables including tomatoes, cauliflower, cabbage and radish. Nepal continues to rebuild with reliable energy technology that is clean, efficient and affordable. Access to reliable energy is fundamental to a modern quality of life for its citizens and the country's global prosperity. www.kristinlau.com Advertisement Community farmer Dilli Ram Regmi with iDE Nepal representative, introduces himself to the group in Sirubari, rural Nepal. Non-profits Renewable World, iDE, Practical Action, and community farmers meet in Sirubari, rural Nepal to discuss the impact of solar energy for drinking water. Farmer Dilli Ram Regmi shares the interior of the controller for the solar water pumping system that pumps water over 80m high for drinking and agricultural purposes in his community. Dilli Ram Regmi stands beside the 4.5kW solar array that harnesses the sun's energy to pump water for drinking and mushroom farming. A long-life span of solar panels, over 20 years, and decreasing manufacturer costs in the past decade, makes solar the future of sustainable energy. Advertisement Dilli Ram Regmi sits proud beside the well filled with water powered by solar water pumps at the base of the mountain. This storage well has proved highly beneficial to the farming community who would otherwise have to walk hours to carry drinking water daily. One of the 16 distribution taps providing drinking water to 32 households in Farmer Dilli Ram Regmi's community. Dilli Ram Regmi's home. His family no longer feels safe staying in their home because it has cracked as a result of the April 25th Nepal earthquakes that hit the country. An old family photograph of farmer Dilli Ram Regmi and his farmers group inside the bedroom of his cracked house post earthquake. Dilli Ram Regmi and his wife Dil Mava Regmi inside the bedroom of their cracked house post April 25th earthquakes. Advertisement Farmer Chola Kanta Regmi lives and works in the farming community with Dilli Ram Regmi. Livestock that Dilli Ram Regmi and his family tend to in Sirubari, Nepal. Dilli Ram Regmi and his family are forced to reside in this temporary shelter with the word "Safety" printed above the entrance. Their home was damaged and cracked as a result of the April 25th earthquakes. The community of farmers that live and work with Dilli Ram Regmi in Nepal. Donald Trump speaking at CPAC 2011 in Washington, D.C.Please attribute to Gage Skidmore if used elsewhere. "Ms. Lauren, I heard that Donald Trump is going to make all Muslims register on a list, and that he's not going to let any Muslims in the country anymore. What if he wins this election? How does this even happen?" I felt 26 pairs of eyes surveying my face in that moment, searching for an answer that I did not have. A few seconds before the question stopped my United States History class in its tracks, I had called on my student Hana*, whom I assumed wanted to share her thoughts on the most recent homework assignment. My students, well-acquainted enough with me by now to know even what I did or could not say, sensed that their classmate's question had swiftly bulldozed my plan for the hour. Advertisement Hana fixed her gaze on me, her petite face framed by a hijab. Our nation's story -- essentially two-and-a-half centuries of cognitive dissonance regarding the meaning of "all men are created equal" -- is rife with complexity, and teaching this story presents a unique challenge, especially since all of my students are young men and women of color. Simultaneously, I try help them access the truth about their country's substantial failures and systemic oppression, but I also want them to feel the buoyancy of hope, a hope that could propel them to engage in societal change-making as they grow into adulthood. More than the "who" or "where" of any president or famous battleground, our work focuses on the "why"-- the patterns that leads our people in a familiar spiral from heyday to recession, from war to peace and eventually back again. To that end, my lessons are heavily supplemented with discussion of current events, so that students can draw parallels between that which they read in a textbook, and that which they hear on the news and at the dinner table. Donald Trump has entered the national conversation in such a forceful way that his name is currently unavoidable in my classroom, and the tenets of his campaign have dispelled the seductive notion that racism and bigotry are relics of the past we study. When my students studied the immigration boom of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries back in December, they noticed that their textbook depicted the United States as an attractive destination for thousands of people searching for security and freedom. Within twenty-four hours of our first immigration lesson, Donald Trump issued a written statement calling for a ban of all Muslim immigrants into the United States for the forseeable future. Six months prior to our lesson, he had publicized his plan to build a wall, funded by the Mexican government, that would separate the United States from Mexico. Advertisement During our World War I unit, my students studied the words of WEB DuBois, who urged young, black American men to enlist in the military and help fight for a country that did not yet recognize their full citizenship. That month, more than one white Trump supporter would assault a black protestor at Trump rallies, all while Trump promised to "look into"paying the legal bills of the assailants. In September and October, I made the mistake of underestimating the power of an angry voter base to fuel a presidential candidate's campaign. In an attempt to assuage my students' very real worries of a Trump presidency, I reassured them that Trump would not remain the GOP frontrunner for long, that he would be eliminated after the first few primaries. Then, Trump emerged victorious from more than a few primary elections, and when I stood wordlessly in front of my class in the wake of Hana's question, my students realized that while I can teach history, I can predict it no more accurately than they can. In spring, my students will study the rise of Adolf Hitler and World War II. In years past, the question inevitably is asked on the first day: how could a developed nation choose a leader so hateful, so outwardly bigoted? How could a man so angry persuade thousands of ordinary people that he is the best choice for a prosperous future? Each year, my students have incredulously gaped at the fact that Hitler was chosen, that he ran a campaign, that he needed the support of the populace to gain the political power he needed to wage a world war. My current students have been drawing the necessary parallels all year long, and they know by now that history, for better or for worse, has an immense capacity to repeat itself if we are not careful. They will likely be the first class I ever have that will learn of Hitler and find no need to ask the question. Advertisement And in the mean time, I will search for an answer to Hana's. While the nation contends with elected officials who continue to insist that climate change is a hoax, there are others who stand as an example to being ahead of the curve understanding the environmental challenges facing the country. Rep. Barbara J. Lee (D-CA), has a long history of standing up to those who would consciously chip away at the rights of citizens to have clean air and water. Lee was an early adopter of the premise that there is an inherent connection between environmental hazards and the quality of daily life. Most specifically, she understood how poor and minority communities were inequitably burdened. The League of Conservation Voters has calculated that Lee has a 95 percent lifetime score for her votes on environmental issues. She has consistently disagreed with efforts to prevent the EPA from regulating greenhouse gases, fought against the subsidies that keep Big Oil in receivership of generous government subsidies, and promoted a renewable energy trajectory that would be a boost to the economy. While others were on the fence about the Keystone XL Pipeline, Lee was clear that she believed it was an ill-advised option. Advertisement In Oakland, situated in Lee's district, stats show that the asthma rate is at the top levels in America. Lee has noted, "Children in West Oakland are seven times more likely to be hospitalized for asthma than children in the rest of California." I contacted Lee's office with some questions about her ongoing activism in protecting her constituency and promoting proactive solutions. You are a founding member of the Safe Climate Caucus (SCC) which originated in 2013. A brief was recently filed with the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington presenting the premise that the EPA has "overstepped it legal authority" through its proposed regulation of carbon dioxide emissions. 171 House members have signed on, in an effort to disrupt the Clean Power Plan. How do you and your colleagues in the caucus plan to respond? For the last seven years, Congressional Republicans have worked to derail the President's agenda at any cost, including the health of our environment and families. As a proud Member of the SCC and Sustainable Energy & Environment Coalition (SEEC), we are working to help the President implement his Clean Power Plan and advance legislation that preserves our planet for future generations. Focusing on Environmental Justice, you have worked to advocate for the health issues of families and children from low-income communities of color. Can you discuss your initiatives on this important front? For generations, African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders and low-income communities have been disproportionately hurt by pollution. You can clearly see these disparities in the childhood asthma rates for these communities. Recently, I joined several of my colleagues in introducing the Low-Income Solar Access Act (H.R. 3041). This legislation would expand solar energy access to low-income communities and empower them to build sustainable, community-based energy generation that doesn't further pollute our communities. The repercussions from climate disruption threaten all areas of the country with severe weather occurrences, rising sea levels, fires and more. However, we still have those in public office who refute the science. Are you concerned that this will impede America in meeting its agreements from the Paris accords if carbon emissions aren't reduced? The American people know that climate change is a serious economic, national security and environmental challenge; they also understand that leadership and action is needed. Unfortunately, a small minority has chosen to ignore science in favor of supporting special interests that have derailed our work on this issue. The nation has now seen the dangers of methane leaks and fracking infrastructure play out in your state. What steps do you think need to be taken? Advertisement For many years, we have understood the devastating impacts of methane leaks and fracking. It's past time that we sever our dependence on hydrocarbon energy generation and adopt more sustainable technologies that are already powering communities and nations around the world. Lee ended our interview with this comment: We can no longer wait for environmental justice; we must demand it. Simply, too much is at stake. We are talking about our children's health and their futures. As policymakers, parents and grandparents, and community members, we must turn up the street heat and push back against the special interests that reject science and are willing to risk our children's health. Mindfulness is the state of being aware of the present moment, observing with detachment our thoughts, feelings and whatever is happening around us without judgement. From its ancient Buddhist roots, mindfulness is becoming popular in the West as a way to reduce stress, generate clear thinking and bring peace, calm and many other benefits to our busy lives. For more on what mindfulness is, and its many benefits CLICK HERE I am thrilled to see that organizations are beginning to "embrace" mindfulness , as expounded on in this HBR article: "Why Google, Target, and General Mills Are Investing in Mindfulness." - CLICK HERE TO VIEW ARTICLE To find it being introduced with gusto in the workplace is joy to my soul. I wonder, though, at the motivation behind it - the idea that mindfulness is something to be invested in, which indicates an expectation of a return. Indeed, the final paragraph of the article holds this statement: Advertisement "Perhaps most importantly from a management perspective, mindfulness gives employees permission to think." "Permission to think." The word "mindfulness" has always struck me as being the opposite of what actually happens when you sit still and be mindful. In my humble opinion, and in my practice of mindfulness, when one is truly mindful, there is actually less mind and more, well, more no-thing. We become aware of the present because we do not have thoughts of the past or future cluttering our minds. In this awareness, our thoughts are not channeled or pigeonholed into "life", "work", "family" or any of the other discrete boxes which we use to define our lives. We simply become aware because the emptier our minds are, the more room there is for awareness. But maybe awareness is not a function of the mind. Using the mind implies thought and thinking. Awareness is simply observing. The more mindful we are, or actually the more mind-less, the more we are able to observe unfettered and unfiltered. Perhaps what we should practice is mindlessness. Can we "practice" mindfulness, as exhorted by the corporate mindfulness programs, or should we simply BE mindful? Practice implies some quest for mastery, for an endgame or results. We master mindfulness just by being mindful, without the stress or concern about making it perfect. My mother Daisy used to sit in quiet time each morning. I loved to watch her, her back straight, hands nestled in her lap like two feathers, eyelids not closed, but just resting together. She was the epitome of peace. Or so I thought. For she shared with me once her frustration, as her mind was so busy, she just couldn't quiet it. She sought counsel with Rev. Elma, her spiritual guide, who said, "Daisy. Just watch the thoughts passing by like clouds in the sky. Just watch them come and go. Don't hold on to them. Just observe." Advertisement Mindfulness in daily life as a state of BEING means just watching our thoughts, watching what's happening without being attached. At work, be mindful. Watch. In this state of less mind, we can become empty. No need to be full of anything, just the need to BE. The less we attach ourselves to the mind, the more we can be. Whatever the motivation for this latest corporate bandwagon, I welcome it. For I am sure that when people actually practice mindfulness they will start to experience more presence in all aspects of their lives. And then they will realize that it's less about "permission to think" and more about "permission" from themselves to be present to who they truly are. TAKE ONE ACTION Every day, our planet and many of our brothers and sisters with whom we share it are in danger. Just look at the news. Wars continue to be waged in the Middle East, drought is forcing millions into hunger in Southern and Eastern Africa, and forests in South Asia are falling victim to deforestation. For many of us, these disasters seem to be occurring in a distant world. But if you think that you will not also be impacted by these events, it is time to think again. Many of these regions are home to wild species that are distant relatives of the foods we eat every day - from bananas and beans to the wheat in our bread. These crop wild relatives contain a range of traits that are becoming increasingly important for our food crops to have, as the rising temperatures and irregular weather patterns brought on by climate change take hold. This includes genes that confer resistance to diseases, or drier climates. But a new study has shown that over 70 per cent of the wild relatives of important food crops are under-represented in genebanks. This means plant scientists don't have easy access to genes that could be bred into our everyday foods, and make them more resilient to future shocks and stresses that threaten our food supplies. The study, "Global Conservation Priorities for Crop Wild Relatives", published in Nature Plants this week, not only quantifies just how many important wild species are running low in genebanks, but also maps where they can be found in the world. This one-of-a-kind "atlas" is now being used by scientists all over the globe to collect samples of these high priority plants. However, the results show that many important species are in areas suffering from civil strife, deforestation and climate change, making the need to act in these areas all the more more urgent. Maybe scientists will never get to see them at all, let alone realize their potential. Advertisement The "fertile crescent" of the Middle East, spanning modern-day Syria and Iraq through to Egypt, is so called because it is one of the oldest and richest of agricultural lands. But now, civil strife is destroying these lands, and the genetic diversity they support. According to the study, 49 high priority wild species related to crops including wheat and lentils can be found in areas of Syria affected by civil war. South East Asia was revealed to be a hotspot for disappearing wild species of banana - but continued deforestation in this region is making it difficult to collect and preserve them. Banana is an important source of income for smallholder farmers all over the world, and is periodically affected by a deadly fungus, which its wild relatives may be able to resist. Crop wild relatives have already made many crops more resilient in this way. For example, when grassy stunt virus was attacking rice fields in Asia in the 1970s, improved varieties that contained genes from the wild rice species Oryza nivara that provided resistance to the disease were bred and released. This helped thousands of farmers combat the disease and avoid big losses in production. In sub-Saharan Africa, prolonged drought is currently a dominant threat. The African continent is rich in wild species of sorghum, which is going to be key in the region's fight against warmer temperatures due to its drought tolerance. As many as 88 per cent of the wild relatives of sorghum were designated high priority by the study, and can be found in the Sahel belt and across the East of sub-Saharan Africa. Advertisement Disasters around the world could have a long-term effect on our food supplies. Collection and preservation efforts, particularly in fragile areas, should be supported with stable, long-term funding. For example, the team at the International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA) successfully sped up its work to duplicate its seed collection housed in Syria when civil war escalated. When ICARDA was forced to leave the country, 100 per cent of the seeds were safely preserved outside of Syria, providing an effective insurance policy for plant breeding work that will bolster future food supplies. Maintaining back-ups of these back-ups, at the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, is another important measure we can take. The icy conditions ion that arctic island allow seeds to be kept fresh for decades, even without power. Currently, the vault holds more than 860,000 samples, and has the capacity to store 2.5 billion seeds. Finally, plant breeders around the world need the necessary funding, equipment and policies to move genetic material around the globe. MIAMI -- "Of course we're upset," said Reince Priebus, Chairman of the Republican Party. "We've spent years demonizing Cuba, and now that hard work is down the drain." This comment comes as President Obama makes the first state visit to the communist nation in memory. "Look at Iran. Obama signed the treaty with Iran," complained Senator John McCain, "And now the Iranians have thrown aside the hard-liners and elected a moderate government. It screws up everything." Priebus was philosophical. "Voters don't understand that our military-industrial complex and our media-government exchange program depend on having an adequate supply of countries to hate," Preibus explained. "It feeds our economy. Failed presidents like Obama just don't get it." Advertisement There is hope on the horizon, however. "Donald Trump is our savior," said New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. "Donald is on the warpath against Mexico, China and Japan. Carefully cultivated, that hate will keep us going for years." If you spend a lot of time following the travel blogging community it starts to become obvious which countries are paying bloggers to visit and write about them. Suddenly your Twitter and Facebook feeds are flooded with posts from multiple travel bloggers all visiting the same destination for months on end. One of the first times I noticed this, it was Jordan. Later it was Iceland and South Africa. As collaboration between professional bloggers and the travel industry has become more and more standard, some destinations have begun bringing in a constant flow of travel bloggers, like Alberta, Canada. These campaigns have been very successful in what they were meant to do. They raised awareness of these destinations in both consumer circles and influential online communities, which usually resulted in increases in both visitors and editorial attention from traditional media. Advertisement I can tell you that -- although I havent visited either country yet -- I know more about, and have a stronger desire to visit, Jordan and Iceland than I do most other countries that are on my must-visit list. I can tell you that is a direct result of each countrys travel blogging campaigns. Many travel gear and service vendors have also jumped on the travel blogger bandwagon, creating extremely successful marketing campaigns like the Expedia Viewfinder blog and the Gorilla Glass Tough Drops campaign. Global Differences In Approaches To Bloggers The thing about tourism boards and travel bloggers is that there has been a markedly unequal adoption of influencer marketing by travel industry around the world. Working with travel bloggers become more-or-less standard for brands and destinations in Europe and North America. On those continents Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) often pay travel bloggers to visit and write about their destinations, while allowing the travel bloggers to have full editorial control over the content they produce. Outside of those continents, however, the adoption of the paid travel blogging model -- which has been touted by those whove used most it to be cost effective and successful -- has not been widely adopted elsewhere in the world. Advertisement Making Headway In Asia Bloggers working on the beach in Sri Lanka following TBC Asia 2014 As President Of The Professional Travel Bloggers Association (PTBA) its my job to promote cooperation between travel industry and travel bloggers around the world. We do this in many ways, but most of our work in this area includes having our board members attend and speak at as many travel industry conferences around the world as possible. I personally focus on conferences in Asia and the Middle East. The talks are almost always the same. They have titles like The Benefits Of Working With Travel Bloggers, How To Work With Travel Bloggers, and How Your Company Can Benefit From Travel Bloggers and Blogging. After these talks our speakers are normally approached by dozens of people who have the same questions. Whats the difference between a blog and a website? (There isnt one.) How to I find good bloggers? (Thats what the PTBA is here for.) Ive been doing it for several years. It gets monotonous repeating the same message over and over. But it works and the past couple of years have been proof. About 16 months ago the PTBA partnered with Cinnamon Hotels and Sri Lankan Airlines to hold TBC Asia, the first major travel blogging conference in Asia, which was preceded by the biggest group press trip of travel bloggers Ive ever heard of (probably the biggest in history). Advertisement Last fall TBEX, the biggest travel blogging convention in the world, held its first Asian event in Bangkok, and will be holding its second this year in Manila. Earlier this year PTBA signed a partnership with the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA) -- whose membership is largely Asian -- to teach PATA members about working with bloggers and help them to find bloggers to work with. Thanks to this effort weve already been receiving inquiries for group press trips. Last year I started Xpat Media in Hong Kong to provide companies with training and consulting services for working with bloggers and this year the first company specializing in organizing influencer press trips in Asia, Destinspire, set up shop in Bangkok. The tide is turning. What To Expect Things are not all roses..yet. For example, when the PTBA arranged for 12 bloggers to attend the PATA Adventure Travel And Responsible Tourism Mart in Chiang Rai, Thailand last month, we had to find a hotel willing to accommodate all the bloggers in exchange for the social media coverage they would receive. In most places, during a period of slow tourism, this is an easy sell. But that was not the case in Chiang Rai. In many Asian destinations such as Chiang Rai, there is still a lack of understanding how this kind of social media exposure will benefit a business. We approached several hotels to host the bloggers. Some offered discounts. Some offered nothing at all. I could not bring myself to accept a discount for a service that many hotels elsewhere in the world pay thousands of dollars for, and turned them down. Advertisement Finally, due in a large part to the help and strong recommendation of the executives at PATA, the spacious and sprawling riverside Rimkok Resort agreed to take us in. It have been worse. We were fortunate to find such a gorgeous place to stay. By the end of the conference the industry attitude toward bloggers had changed dramatically. Talks about working with bloggers had been held. A blogger lounge had been built to provide a non-threatening atmosphere where interested industry members could sit down with bloggers to learn more about what we do. By the end of the conference companies that had never thought of working with bloggers were inviting them on free trips and hiring them. This story is a near perfect illustration of the mood surrounding travel blogging in Asia in general. Its still not quite where wed like it to be, but its ready crack wide open. While the mentality among Asian marketers toward travel bloggers is still about five years behind those in Europe and North America, it will not take them five years to catch up. PATAs member countries and companies look to the organization for advice and thought leadership. Because they are recommending bloggers and the PTBA to their members, we are in a much stronger position to change minds than ever before. That, coupled with a wealth of information about best practices and industry success stories, we should expect Asia to catch up to Europe in two to three years. Advertisement There is one thing that wont happen in Asia, however. Its important to remember that -- while some Asian economies can compete with those in the West -- many cannot. Their currencies are weaker, and their budgets smaller. Bloggers should not expect to earn the same amount on a press trip to Vietnam as a trip to Great Britain any more than a British janitor should expect to earn the same wage mopping floors in Hanoi as they would in London. Opinion by Reboot Illinois' Madeleine Doubek Hello, it's me I was wondering if, after all these years, you'd like to meet To go over everything They say that time's supposed to heal ya But I ain't done much healing Hello, it's me, your friendly neighborhood political observer. I'm right here in Illinois, wondering what to make of that primary. Seems like Adele's mega-global hit lends itself to Illinois voters' psyches these days. Hello, it's me ... Illinois voters said to the political ruling class involved in federal politics and in Cook County, ... I've forgotten how it felt before the world fell at our feet So, congratulations, Illinois voters, we showed up like never before. And we sent a loud message to the establishment. There's such a difference between us And a million miles The Illinois Campaign for Political Reform reported 44.6 percent of us cast ballots last week. That's 3.35 million out of 7.5 million eligible voters. And nearly a million of us cast ballots for Bernie Sanders, very nearly giving him a victory in Hillary Clinton's home state. And nearly 550,000 of us gave our votes to Donald Trump in the GOP primary. Record numbers of voters participated in Cook County, too, giving Kim Foxx a 2-to-1 victory over establishment Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez. The pundits have been saying the nation is raging, and Illinois went along with the nation. Hello from the other side I must have called a thousand times ... What about within all of Illinois? Gov. Bruce Rauner lost a few high-profile primaries in which he was heavily involved. Democratic House Speaker Michael Madigan left him quite a message, but it seems Rauner isn't checking his voicemail, having issued a statement the day after the primary that essentially said, "I'm not listening. Come back to work and give me what I want." Advertisement Madigan, of course, believes his election victories mean Rauner and Republicans should bow to his dominance. His message? "Over the last year, you will find the times that the governor and the Legislature were able to work together, ... is when the governor was willing to put aside his agenda that hurts middle-class families and work directly with the Legislature on the most important issue at hand." So, the Illinois observers and pundits again are saying it's even more likely nothing gets done about Illinois public colleges and disabled and vulnerable Illinoisans who don't get automatic or court-ordered funding until after the Nov. 8 general election. Unfortunately, Rauner wasn't on the ballot and most Illinoisans never will have a chance to send a direct message to Madigan, the premier political class ruler for most of the past three decades, who has led the overspending charge that drove Illinois taxpayers into debt calamity. Advertisement The only and best option we have now against Springfield politicians is to pressure our individual state representatives and senators to do their jobs. And to demand that Rauner and Madigan do theirs and find a compromise solution. Do. Your. Jobs. It's not that difficult. Give up tort reform, governor. Allow a vote on term limits, Mr. Speaker. Let Democrats and Republicans together take credit for some type of property tax break and move on. Why aren't angry Illinoisans delivering that message to the ruling class within Illinois? Hello?! We should be ringing their phones off the hook, sending emails, carrying signs outside their district offices. Our lives matter. The political ruling class does respond when enough of us leave a strong, demanding message. And, as Rich Miller noted in a Crain's column, Republican state Sen. Sam McCann's win in central Illinois demonstrates you can defy your party's leader, side with your constituents and win. We need to let our lawmakers know what we want. A record 44.6 percent of primary voters stopped their normal routines and sent quite a message. Nearly a million Illinoisans voted against the grain in the Democratic primary. Another 976,891 voted either for Trump or Ted Cruz, the anti-establishment Republican options. That's more than a quarter of eligible Illinois voters jumping into a closed primary to say we are against the status quo. We're angry. You can find out who your state representatives and senators are with Reboot Illinois' Sound Off tab at the top of the home page. In four mouse clicks, you can use that tool to send an email about the budget to them, Rauner, Madigan and the other legislative leaders. That's just one way we can send a message we're angry. Hello from the outside Advertisement The short answer to this is: No. Members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints are not in any way instructed to or encouraged to practice polygamy. No matter what you have seen on television or what you've heard about "Mormons," it's not true that the mainstream LDS church promotes the practice of polygamy as part of its religion. In fact, any member of the LDS church who is found by church leaders to be practicing polygamy will be immediately excommunicated. The LDS church is so eager to make it clear that it does not practice polygamy, that even children of polygamists cannot be baptized into the mainstream church unless and until they are adults and they disavow the practice of polygamy. Advertisement That said, the long answer to the question above is: it depends on what you mean by "Mormon" and by "polygamy." There are many off-shoots of the mainstream LDS church which do, in fact, continue to practice various forms of polygamy, which was originally practiced during the mid to late 1800s by the early Mormon pioneers who came to Utah after being persecuted and driven out by mobs in Nauvoo, Illinois after being driven out by other settlements in the Eastern United States. The LDS church has recently admitted that polygamy was first practiced secretly by Joseph Smith in Nauvoo, before Brigham Young and the pioneers came to Utah, where "the Principle" was practiced widely and openly for some years. Why did Mormons stop practicing polygamy? In 1890, after the United States government had made it increasingly difficult for polygamous members of the church and finally with the Edmunds-Tucker Act allowed the confiscation of all church property, President Wilford Woodruff issued a revelation from God called "The Manifesto" that said that it was time to stop practicing polygamy. This was difficult, of course, for those Mormons who were already in polygamous marriages, and there is certainly evidence that not everyone even in the higher echelons of the LDS church followed the Manifesto's edict. Some Mormons who wished to continue to practice polygamy fled to Mexico or Canada. Others divorced or separated, but continued to financially support formerly polygamous wives and children. Some men continued to cohabit with multiple wives and to father children until the second Manifesto in 1904 by Joseph F. Smith, when polygamy was banned even in Mexico for the LDS. Some LDS continued to talk about polygamy as something that was an eternal law based on D&C 132 , but that would not be practiced until it became legal again at some time in the future. Wilford Woodruff himself had been known to say that polygamy would become legal again in the future. Other LDS church members believed for some time that polygamy was a "celestial law" that would be practiced in heaven, and was a law that God Himself practiced. But in the latter part of the twentieth century and continuing to the present, the mainstream LDS church has become increasingly strident in its support of one-man/one-woman marriage. It is difficult to imagine the mainstream LDS church today sanctioning the practice of polygamy once more among its members. Advertisement As for the offshoots of the Mormon church which continue to practice polygamy, it is important to make distinctions between them. Some call these groups "fundamentalist Mormons," because they think of themselves as practicing an older and truer form of Mormonism, but none of them practice polygamy as it was taught by Joseph Smith or Brigham Young. While the mainstream LDS church has over 16 million members and is one of the fastest growing churches in the world, with large groups outside of the United States, in Latin America in particular, the polygamous and fundamentalist off-shoots of Mormonism seem to grow only by a prodigious birthrate and do not proselytize throughout the world -- indeed seem to have no interest in doing so. The largest fundamentalist Mormon group is the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS, about 8,000 people), which has become well-known because of the conviction of its leader, Warren Jeffs, for crimes including rape. It is important to note that the practices of marrying closely related family members, which has led to widespread problems of incestuous birth defects is not part of the original Mormon practice of polygamy as promoted by Brigham Young. Nor is the marriage of 12 year-old girls who have barely had a chance to have an education part of historical Mormon polygamy. Underage marriages may have happened, but they were a rarity. Other, smaller polygamist "Mormon" groups include the Apostolic United Brethren (AUB, less than 1,000 people), the TLC (True and Living Church of Christ), the Centennial Park group (in Arizona), the Righteous Branch led by Rulon Allred, and the Latter-Day Church of Christ led by the Kingston clan. These other groups largely do not practice under-age marriage and seem to have less cult-like tendencies in allowing people to move in and out of plural marriages depending on their own choices, rather than threats and monetary lures. But the solemn practice of marrying in Mormon temples for eternity, as was done in the 1800s through most of Utah under the direction of the prophets and apostles of the LDS church, is no longer possible for these polygamists, no matter what their claims are to living the "true" principles of historical Mormonism. There are some who claim that polygamy continues to be taught in mainstream LDS churches because D&C 132 is still part of LDS scripture and there has been no significant change in its wording about the practice of "celestial marriage." It is also true that LDS men whose wives have died can be sealed for time and all eternity to a second or even third wife within LDS temples, while women whose husbands have died can marry for "time only" a second husband in the temple. Most of the LDS don't spend a lot of time worrying about this, and assume that "God will work it out." The church has begun to allow descendants to seal women who have died to more than one husband after the death of the woman in question, confirming the idea that both men and women will be able to choose their eternal spouses in the after-life. Advertisement What is my personal opinion on the matter of polygamy? As a practicing Mormon, I have not heard polygamy mentioned in church in many years, except when discussing the early leaders of the church, and even then, it is often with embarrassment and eagerness to move onto something else. Does that mean that the church is trying to hide the truth? I suspect it is more that no one is willing to say that the early church leaders were wrong about polygamy because it puts in doubt other truth claims about the church, but at the same time, no one wants to talk about polygamy, either. Hard to believe it's only 10 months since I had to write this in the aftermath of a really bad decision from the Obama administration: Why is it so hard for so many of our leaders to recognize what Martin Luther King, Jr., once called "the fierce urgency of now"? We really don't have time to waste, yet our government keeps promoting drilling, fracking, and mining as if the laws of nature could be suspended at our convenience. That was last May, when Shell Oil was given a green light for what proved to be unsuccessful exploratory drilling in the Arctic. Less than a year later, although the Arctic is still not permanently protected from oil and gas exploration, the administration's approach to dirty fuels has changed dramatically. The latest evidence is the draft released last week of the administration's 2017-2022 plan for offshore drilling. While the new plan still allows for drilling in the Gulf, it proposes new standards for Arctic, and reverses President Obama's previous intention of allowing drilling off the Atlantic Coast. Advertisement Don't get me wrong -- at a minimum, the only sensible offshore drilling policy would be to permanently protect both Atlantic and Arctic waters from drilling and allow no new drilling the Gulf of Mexico. But the draft plan released last week is nevertheless a big victory and a milestone for the growing movement to "keep dirty fuels in the ground" and save our climate. And lately, those milestones have been flashing past at a steady clip: On March 10, President Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced a joint agreement to regulate climate pollution from methane and other sources, including shipping and aviation, and strengthen environmental protections for the Arctic. Also this month, Oregon passed landmark legislation to rid itself of coal. It will completely eliminate the use of coal-fired power by 2035 and double the amount of renewable energy in the state by 2040. And just last week -- in more great news for Oregon -- the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission rejected a proposed liquid natural gas export terminal that would have been built in Jordan Cove, near Coos Bay. Just two years ago, that terminal had conditional approval from the federal government. Now it's dead. Advertisement Those are just a few highlights from March -- and we're barely more than halfway through the month. What's changed? Two big things. First, President Obama has gotten our message that we need to keep dirty fuels in the ground. In fact, with the Paris climate agreement, it's fair to say that most of the world has gotten that message. Second, through a lot of hard work and perseverance over the past decade, we've built a climate and clean energy movement that can advocate for and win victories like the ones we've seen this month. What's more, the next president of the United States (assuming that person is a Democrat) will be even more committed to keeping dirty fuels in the ground. Of course, you can still find plenty of politicians (in the legislature and on the campaign trail) who still don't get it. Congress alone currently boasts 182 climate deniers. But their days are numbered, if only because their positions are clearly at odds with what their constituents actually want. In 21st century America, that's not going to fly. Obviously, our work is far from finished. But it's always good to see that momentum -- and ultimately history -- is on our side. I recently had a universal meltdown. I mean literally, a Universal meltdown. Two weeks ago my husband, our two boys and I spent spring break in Florida. Our first three days of the trip were dedicated to visiting the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios in Orlando. I'll tell you straight-up, theme parks are not my gig. The crowds, the lines, the $29 hamburgers, the fact that despite my vat of hand sanitizer, chances are still good that I will succumb to the 21st-century version of the Black Death as a result of the barrage of germs. To say nothing of the expense. As I mentioned to my husband when we clicked "Purchase" for the three-day park pass: "We could sponsor two and a half underprivileged kids overseas for the cost of this!" Not to put a big, fat damper on the fun or anything. Advertisement That said, I was pretty psyched about the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. My boys LOVE Harry Potter. We've read all the books, and watched all the movies ad nauseum, and plus, I'd heard really good things about the theme park (cue red flag: sky-high expectations). Which is why, on our first morning there, when my eleven-year-old son announced, "I don't think I'm going to ride any of the rides. I think I just want to walk around," things began to fall apart. Not at first, mind you. Initially I tried, really I did, to be The Rational and Empathetic Parent. We talked about his fears. I suggested we scale back to the tamer amusement ride options and ease into the more dramatic experiences later. But no, Rowan, who has historically been the dare devil of our family, would have none of it. In fact, he was quite specific about which rides he would not partake in: "the ones with the conveyor belts." In other words, pretty much every single amusement park ride ever known to mankind. We had basically remortgaged our house and our favorite neighbor's house so that our youngest child could "walk around," "look at stuff" and "maybe have some popcorn" at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter at Universal Studios for three days. People, can I just say, this is like visiting the Swiss Alps to drink hot chocolate in the chalet. This is like flying from the United Emirates to the Mall of America to "window shop." This is like holding front-row Adele concert tickets in your hand and then deciding, "Eh, I'll just watch one of her music videos on YouTube instead." Advertisement Catch my drift? Commence Universal Meltdown. As my husband later described it, "We ride-shamed our kid." There was whisper-yelling (mine). Threatening (mine). Bribing (mine). Guilting (mine). Sighing (mine). Eye-rolling (mine). Bitter retorts (mine). Shaming (mine). Pouting (mine). The Ice-Cold Shut-Down (mine). And crying (mine and Rowan's). In fact, at one point, as I sat on a stone wall next to Dudley Do-Right's Ripsaw Falls water ride and cried behind my sunglasses, I actually thought to myself, "There are 16,638 mothers in this park right now, and I am quite possibly the only one who is weeping." In the end we salvaged the vacation. Life dramatically improved when we left Orlando and headed for the beach. And we did actually have a few good moments at the Wizarding World of Harry Potter (I captured all three of them and posted them to Instagram and Facebook, because even if we're not having the time of our lives, it's important that we at least look like we're having the time of our lives, right?). I apologized to my son. We made up. And as is always the case with Rowan, he was quick to forgive me and move on. But here's the clincher: I couldn't forgive myself. I couldn't move on. A week after we'd returned from Florida, I was still inwardly berrating myself for my atrocious behavior. I prayed the exact same confession five nights in a row. "Please forgive me, Lord, for shaming my child and for being a terrible mother." By the third night, I'm sure God was thinking, "Have we not sufficiently covered this yet?" Advertisement The thing is, God may have forgiven me the first time I confessed, but I didn't believe it. I simply couldn't believe my terrible-parent behavior was forgivable. I refused to trust the fact of grace. I suspect I'm not the only one neck-deep in this struggle. I suspect I'm not the only one who has sinned and repented and yet still struggles to accept the real truth of God's grace. In moments like these, grace simply seems too good to be true. In moments like these, grace seems possible for everyone else but ourselves. Let me remind you of what I've had to remind myself this past week: Jesus Christ died for this very reason. Think about that for a moment. A real person, a human being who is at the same time God, died a painful, humiliating, lonely death on a cross 2,000 years ago for this very reason: so that we would not have to bear the burden of our faults and failures forever. Jesus Christ died so that we could be free from the very weight I have insisted on clutching and carrying ever since we returned from Florida. He died so that we could be free. Advertisement Refusing to accept God's grace, a grace that comes to us at the highest cost, defeats the whole point of Jesus' ultimate sacrifice. Holding on to our guilt and our shame and our inability to forgive ourselves not only hurts ourselves, it also hurts God. Because Jesus died for this moment - this moment right here, the ugliest moment that feels impossibly broken, the moment that feels definitively unfixable. When we insist on holding as tightly as we can to our guilt and shame, when we refuse to relinquish our sin and accept God's grace, we deny the gift God gives us. We deny his life. We deny his sacrifice. We deny his resurrection. We deny him. U.S. President Barack Obama delivers his speech at the Grand Theater of Havana, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Obama who is in Cuba in a trailblazing trip said he came to Cuba to "bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas.a (AP Photo/Desmond Boyland) The government of Cuba is overwhelmed in the face of the Obama phenomenon. People across the country waited for Obama with euphoria and hopes that haven't been felt in a long time. The president of the United States arrived in Havana on March 20. His official visit, which lasts from March 21 to March 22, has the prestige of promises fulfilled and efforts to continue making progress. The visit signifies support for maintaining the same objectives of democracy, respect for human rights and support for an independent civil society. Advertisement Although Raul Castro officially repudiated Obama before December 17, 2014, since then the U.S. president has gotten praise from Castro. Castro demands that the embargo be lifted, while also calling for more Americans to visit Cuba (with the process regulated by the State, of course). Most of the islanders believe that Obama's measures will not have much benefit for the population and the nation because of the reticence of the Cuban authorities to facilitate their implementation. Being aware of the idiosyncrasy of Cubans, the president filmed a spot with the most popular comic in Cuba, which was shown on national television the night before his arrival in Havana. The Cuban people started to like Obama during the 2008 electoral campaign, while facing the possibility that he would become the first black president in the United States. But the empathy is a result of the friendly smile, the strong personality and the feeling of closeness radiating from the most important man in the world. The admiration turned into gratitude, when shortly after arriving in the White House in 2009 he started proactive policies, which facilitated the reunion of families and friends separated during 50 years through visits by Cuban-Americans, and the remittance of money to alleviate the shortages and poverty of a large part of the population. Obama liberated Cubans from the permanent burden of propaganda, meetings, political acts and military demonstrations against the Yankees, but above all he eliminated the government's pretexts for repressing and blaming the American government for the economic disasters caused by capricious and failed programs. The almost seven years of the people-to-people policy, the restoration of diplomatic relations and Obama's visit to Cuba are true to the values of his initial race for the White House. Audacity of hope is the driving force that Barack Obama transmits. His determination and knowledge about how to reach objectives -- with good intentions for Cuban society -- coincide with a period when changes in Cuba are inevitable. This inevitable change is due to historic direction, as well as the social discontent and the endemic economic crisis. It also goes along with abandoning the confrontational positions favored by Cuban-Americans, convinced that they strengthened the authorities on the island, as well as the Americans, who in all spheres promote change in policies, trade and investment. Noble intentions mix with interests in the United States, while in Cuba the only way out of the multifaceted crisis is the reformulation of relations, the elimination of the embargo and opening to the world. The new course is irreversible. Advertisement For the moment, the Cuban leaders try to demonstrate strength through demands that they know can only be met in the long-term, like the return of the territory of the naval base at Guantanamo; they act in ways that go far against the protocol like honoring Nicolas Maduro in Havana two days before the arrival of President Obama, even if it becomes an embarrassment. At the domestic level, Cuban leaders have gradually lost the respect of the population, 77 percent of which was born after 1959. This is due to the moment in which historic leaders took power, and support turned into pretense and lies. The voluntary demonstrations of almost a million people lost their spontaneity and continued because of pressure through mechanisms created in all the political and social institutions. The biggest concern is maintaining strict control on society with subtle methods that don't damage the international image that Raul Castro has been able to create. "By Allah, he is not a believer! By Allah, he is not a believer!By Allah, he is not a believer. One whose neighbour does not feel safe fromhis evil" -- Prophet Muhammad. A Muslim response to the terror attacks in Brussels Once again terrorism has rocked a major global city. The Center of global Diplomacy and global governance, Brussels, was rocked by terrorist attacks, claimed by ISIS that have killed at least 30 and injured over 200. Globalization has brought much that is desirable and is truly bringing people closer, but it also has its dark side and one of them is the globalization of terror -- Paris, Ankara, Peshawar, Brussels.. the trail of blood and devastation is truly worldwide. Advertisement I express my condolences to the friends and family of the victims, they are in our prayers and I vociferously condemn the ideas, values and impulses behind this dastardly act. While the world is shocked and in sorrow, political opportunists and hate mongers are going to town. This is the time to unite, share comfort and security and remind ourselves that it is our values of tolerance, pluralism, love for humanity and the desire to do good that make us human and not hate, anger and violence. As hate mongers move to capture the moment to gain politically, people who care for a pluralist and harmonious world must unite and repel these advances. We must unite to fight terror and also work to remove the structural incentives for terror. I fear that our leaders may not respond prudently. I anticipate political reaction that may add fuel to fire. The door for refugees escaping war, famine and terror, specially in the Middle East will most surely be shut by European leaders worried about the spread of ISIS. Advertisement Those who were reluctant to join the emerging fascist tendencies in Europe and the US, will be one more step closer to supporting them. Every act of terror is nutrition to fascism. Today, Donald Trump has surely won many new voters to his case. Islamophobia already raging like a fire will gain more strength and more venom. All Muslims, everywhere, regardless of their politics will feel the heat. May God protect us all. In an increasingly diverse and multicultural American social landscape, the battles over the histories of different communities - coupled with communities' right to self define - are becoming more prominent. Unfortunately, American classrooms are turning into battlegrounds, with teachers and students getting caught in the crosshairs of such conflicts. Part of the challenge has been to move away from Eurocentric paradigms that have Othered underrepresented groups and into ones that embrace accuracy and cultural competency. As noted historian James Loewen argues in Lies My Teacher Told Me, instructional content has largely been shaped by a mentality of excluding voices that contradict preconceived "grand narratives." Advertisement But even as we attempt to move away from those narratives, challenges remain. This week, the California Department of Education's Instructional Quality Commission is set to make recommendations on a history and social science framework, which, if approved by the State Board of Education in May, will define the way diverse histories are taught for the next decade or longer. More problematically, these narratives are drawn from the state's outdated content standards, which continue to depict diverse groups like Hindus in outdated, archaic, and simply inaccurate ways. In 2014, the California State Senate and Assembly both approved a measure that would have revised the state's content standards, but Gov. Jerry Brown vetoed the bill, despite overwhelming and bipartisan support from legislators and from a coalition of more than 100 educators, diverse community and education groups, and government leaders. As such, communities like Hindu Americans had to rely on the state's curriculum framework revision process, which began in the fall of 2014, in order to see a more inclusive set of guidelines for teaching about diverse religions like Hinduism and diverse communities like Indian Americans. Because California is home to the largest community of Hindus in the country (numbering about 1 million), having an inclusive, accurate, and culturally competent history and social science curriculum would seem like a mandate for the state's Board of Education. Since the revision process started, HAF has worked constructively with the California Department of Education's Instructional Quality Commission to ensure a culturally competent and accurate draft narrative was adopted. Given that these frameworks are for 6th and 7th grade teachers to guide their teaching to middle school students, HAF's requests were in line with academic consensus and best practice pedagogy. Its primary goals were to note that the origins of Indian history are contested, as evidenced by current scholarly battles; that caste in India developed over many centuries and needed to be nuanced for a better understanding of how a social practice arose - often in contradiction to religious teachings; and that Hinduism's core philosophies, including its inherent pluralism, were included in the frameworks. Advertisement We made sure commission members understood our concerns and worked in a constructive and positive manner to ensure that the Hindu community had a voice in the process. Other Hindu organizations representing diverse constituencies also have been active in the process. While each of the groups have the same goal of seeing a more accurate depiction of Hinduism, the scale and scope of suggested improvements in the frameworks have varied. In other words, the Hindu community's involvement in California cannot be reduced to a homogeneous or monolithic effort. Instead, these efforts reflect Hinduism's diverse and pluralistic ethos. What made this effort more encouraging was the number of scholars - professors of religion and history - who made independent (or jointly signed) recommendations that aligned with what HAF and other Hindu groups were seeking. These scholars wanted a more accurate, accessible, and culturally competent document that emphasized Hinduism's role as a living tradition. They also pushed for an understanding of world history as a period of exchange and interaction, and that such interactions must be treated with nuance to respect diverse perspectives and social histories. Similarly, the Hindu community's efforts drew widespread support from a diverse coalition of over 100 interfaith and civil rights leaders, as well as members of cultural and educational organizations, who collectively urged the Instructional Quality Commission in November to represent Hinduism, Jainism, and India accurately and equitably in the framework. In December, the commission released a draft that many felt was close to a more inclusive document. However, last week, the commission's new recommended revisions - which included a set of last-minute edits from a small group of South Asia faculty members - undid many of those positive changes and seemed to ignore the recommendations of a much larger body of educators, academics, and community members. These edits maliciously sought to erase Hinduism and India from many parts of the sixth and seventh grade sections of the framework, and re-link caste with Hindu religious beliefs, for example. While the commission's vote won't take place until Thursday or Friday, it's already being set up as a politicized showdown among a variety of groups. Instead, what it should be about is how to improve the state's curriculum to empower educators to teach about religions such as Hinduism. Advertisement It is critical that frameworks and textbooks depict not just Hindus, but all groups accurately, fairly, and equitably, in order to better educate all students and prepare them for an increasingly globalized society. Just as we would condemn Islamophobic, racist, homophobic, or sexist language in the frameworks, we would expect that language that seeks to undermine or erase Hindu history and contributions would be excluded. The commissioners, and subsequently, the Board of Education, must use their best judgment to ensure that Hindu community members' concerns are taken into consideration. Removing outdated or archaic terminology is essential for cultural competency. This is not just a question of protecting the "hurt feelings" of Hindu American students, but of ensuring that children are allowed to feel secure in their identity in an educational environment and are not bullied due to their religious beliefs. As our soon-to-be released national survey highlights, anti-Hindu bullying - often fueled by classroom stereotypes - continues to have an impact on Hindu American schoolchildren. For example, the survey found that more than 3 out of 5 of the respondents said that their social studies classes focused on caste and Hinduism, including claims about the religion and Indian social practice that have been long debunked. It's also important to see exactly what's being proposed. The public comments about the frameworks are available on the California Department of Education's web site, while our suggested edits - couched in scholarly input and consensus - can be found here. Actors make their living manufacturing emotions at a moment's notice. Happy. Sad. Surprised. Photo by Nancy A. Ruhling Toney started acting in elementary school. Toney Brown does them all flawlessly, but there's one he doesn't have to fake: wide-eyed enthusiasm. Toney, who will go by the stage name of Anthony Joel Brown when he gets his first professional acting or directing credit, is fresher than newly baked bread, and his arrival in Astoria puts a whole new "new" take on New York City. He doesn't give a second thought to shedding his first name, which, funny spelling and all, is a hand-me-down from his great-grandfather. His surname's another matter: It matches the color of his hair and eyes, making him easier to remember. If Toney acts like a kid locked in a candy store, it's probably because he's 23, straight out of college and away from his home state for the first time. Advertisement Photo by Nancy A. Ruhling Toney has a degree in theatre arts. He just got an apartment, a one-bedroom basement he shares with the sax-playing roomie he had at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Just so you understand, Toney isn't aiming for fame or even fortune, not because few are chosen but because he's not interested in starring on a Broadway stage or in a blockbuster movie. He has his bright brown eyes, which are framed by professorial black horn rims, on theatre. Photo by Nancy A. Ruhling He also studied at the British American Drama Academy. "My ambition is to connect with everyday people through storytelling," he says. Curiously, acting doesn't run in Toney's family. His father worked for a phone company, and after Toney was born in Burlington, Vermont, he got summoned to Warsaw, Poland for a three-year project. "I'm not sure exactly how old I was when this happened," Toney says. "I was too young to remember anything about my time there." Advertisement Photo by Nancy A. Ruhling He's happy. When the family returned and settled in West Newbury, Massachusetts, his parents took Toney to a lot of cultural events. He started performing in school plays in kindergarten -- his first role was as a Munchkin in The Wizard of Oz -- and never stopped. When his older sister fell hard for acting, he decided to follow her lead. He was in high school performing in an adaptation of Shakespeare's Richard III when he realized that he could connect with a crowd from the stage. Photo by Nancy A. Ruhling He's sad. "I found I had the power to captivate people and bring up their own experiences," he says. Shakespeare remains his wordsmith of choice. "He's definitely the most human playwright because of his focus on themes that are human truths and experiences," Toney says. Photo by Nancy A. Ruhling He's surprised. There was no doubt in Toney's mind that he was headed for New York. He chose Astoria, in large part because his sister lives here, and in lesser part for its artistic associations. Advertisement "I've heard people call it Artoria," he says. He's doing what up-and-coming actors always do: working a job around auditions. He already has a half dozen tryouts under his belt. Photo by Nancy A. Ruhling He's cute. Right now, he's manning the check-in desk five nights a week at Manhattan's Pearl Studios, a prime rehearsal space. His duties include collecting money and cleaning rooms. "I'm in my learning phase," he says. "I'm meeting people, going to plays and sitting in in rehearsals." He's also workshopping with college friends in the hopes of mounting his own production. Photo by Nancy A. Ruhling He's trying to persuade you. "Someday, I want my own theater company," he says. "I figure it will take me two years to do the first production. In eight to 10 years, the company will be well established." In his free time, Toney surrounds himself with the people he loves. He sees his sister every two weeks. Advertisement "She works days and I work nights, so it's hard to coordinate," he says. His girlfriend has a job in Hartford, Connecticut, which, thankfully, is only a short and cheap bus ride away. Photo by Nancy A. Ruhling It's no act -- Toney's confident. So Toney's in a good place and all set for success. "Whatever happens, I can't see myself doing anything else," he says. "I see myself continuing to be involved in the arts the rest of my life." Of course, there's always the possibility that things won't follow Toney's stage directions. Life, after all, can be a lousy actor. No matter. Happy. Sad. Surprised. Toney's eager to express all of these feelings on and off the stage as he and the world continue to dance around each other. Co-authored by Samantha Peters In light of March being Women's History Month, many articles and reports have been circulating about the issues that Canadian women currently face. One report that is important to highlight is the Criminal Law Association's "Retention of Women in Criminal Defence Practice Study." The report created plenty of discussion. And, as people tweeted out the report, agreeing with the report's findings, we remained uncomfortable and cautious. Where did our story, our realities, our experiences and our voices fit in the report? (Photo credit: Sergei Yahchybekov) We are Black and Indigenous women who are currently in law school at a Canadian university. Our school says that it is already committed to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Calls to Action. One call to action encourages all law schools to require students to take a course in Aboriginal People and the Law, where discussions and content will include the history and legacy of residential schools, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples...and the list goes on. Buzzwords are used, much like how "reconciliation" is the new cool thing to do. Much like social justice or anti-racism. Advertisement Still, in both of our experiences, while the school says one thing - like that they are committed to indigenizing the curriculum - we see and experience another thing. We know we are not alone and after reading the Criminal Lawyers' Association report, we see that the situation does not get any better in the practice of law. In fact, when we first read the report, we knew and more importantly, we know that women experience systemic discrimination, like sexism. Yet, the report itself and the discussion surrounding the report remained silent on systemic issues like racism: anti-Indigenous racism and anti-Black racism. Yes, women are treated in the courtroom differently than men, but what about the differences among women? Specifically, how are Indigenous and Black women treated in the courtroom by judges and court staff? And what issues do Indigenous women, Black women and other women of colour in the criminal profession highlight as important issues we experience? The essentialism of women is highly problematic and dangerous. The homogenization of women is even scarier. This report and the discussions surrounding it should have included the diversity of experiences among women in the analysis. When we talk about women, we must be specific on what kind of women we are talking about. This erasure or more appropriately, our erasure of our experiences from statistics, data, and discussions as a whole is a sentiment that we often feel while sitting in our classrooms at law school. We often sit in classes like criminal law and public law, experiencing the erasure of our experiences. Our bodies are erased in the way class subjects are taught by who we read, who is allowed to speak, and whose ideas and opinions are centered. Advertisement We talk about criminal law cases and our bodies are only brought up in tokenistic ways. We talk about Gladue principles and have to hear heavy sighs and see eye rolls. We talk about sex work and we hear the narrative that Indigenous women in the sex trade must be saved-and the assumption that there are zero sex workers, current or former, while at law school. And we talk about the over policing of Black people (and Indigenous People are thrown in there for good measure) and we hear the huffs and puffs or the stories of white people being entered. With her hand raised high, "But in my experience with police....", asserts the solicitous white peer. Perhaps some of the reasons why racialized women are leaving the criminal profession are more complex than what is discussed in the report. Perhaps it is also because we do not get paid the same as white women, let alone white men. What about Black and Indigenous women in criminal law practice? We are often mistaken for the assistant in the courtroom, rather than the lawyer. And the most obvious, racialized lawyers in criminal law practice are often in solo practice. Maybe it is because we are not even hired as much. We commend the report for talking about retention. But let's talk about getting into the door first, the barriers of getting into law school and the obstacles of staying in law school. And so, the report discusses some of the barriers for women who remain in private practice. The report reads, "Not one single strategy will likely remove the barriers that are keeping some women from staying." Women cited concerns about "being forgotten by clients or colleagues while they were gone" while away on maternity leave. The condescension runs deep. Nevertheless, we write these words with hope of calling on these women to always remember their Black and Indigenous colleagues...often not seen as lawyers or courtroom players but seen as the help. Another Kind of "Return" -Dr. Hankus Netsky- At a recent Jewish studies conference that was held in Boston, I decided to attend a panel discussion on "Yiddish Literature in Translation." As I settled into my seat in a room packed mostly with fellow Yiddish speakers, I was a bit taken aback by the first words of the first presenter and found myself fixating on them. "Now that we have reached the Post-ethnic era of American Jewish life..." I thought to myself, "Did he actually say that?" Moreover, just how out-of-touch are these conference attendees that they can hear someone say that and not roar out "What? When did that happen?" (as, I must admit, I eventually did). More to the point, how am I supposed to explain that to my Russian-emigre relatives or my Brooklyn hipster students who just invested every penny they had in an "artisanal gefilte fish" factory? Indeed, as a major instigator of the revival of Klezmer (the music of professional Jewish folk instrumentalists), I can remember a time when such a statement might have seemed a bit more logical, namely back in the 1960s, when mainstream American Jews seemed completely obsessed with burying their ancestral ethnicity and culture and trading it in for acceptance at affluent country clubs, an era most profoundly chronicled by a Hollywood-based sage by the name of Alan Sherman. For young Jews of the time who actually wanted to be Jewish, pretty much the only choice available was ersatz inclusion in the exotic but, to me at least, noticeably foreign culture of the nascent state of Israel. In those days, Jewish ethnic culture literally had to be rescued from the dustbins and dumpsters of history, one Dave Tarras 78 RPM clarinet recording at a time. That is what a handful of us did, wondering at the same time if anyone would ever care. Advertisement But in these times, how can the organized Jewish community, academic or otherwise, possibly afford to ignore what is clearly a growing trend among both Jews and non-Jews to embrace an ethnic culture that, much like the assimilated Jews of the 1960s, has finally "arrived"? Indeed, when the Pew Research Forum's comprehensive survey of Jewish attitudes toward their ancestral identity was released in 2013, the mainstream Jewish community was virtually beside itself with fear, determined that the precipitous decline of religious identification among Conservative and Reform Jews needed to be reversed at all costs. Somehow, the news that Jewish identification primarily through "culture, ethnicity, and ancestry" had risen steadily over the years from 7 percent among "The Greatest Generation" (that of my parents) to 32 percent among millennials was received as if it were some sort of virus that needed to be stopped at all costs. Okay, I get that ethnic musicians are not usually the ones called upon to point out significant trends in a community, but as music director of several projects spearheaded by renowned violinist Itzhak Perlman that have been featured in recent years at such venues as Ravinia, Tanglewood, the Hollywood Bowl, Boston's Symphony Hall, New York's Carnegie Hall, not to mention in three PBS Great Performances specials, I do need to ask if there might be a positive side to this rising trend toward pride in Jewish ethnic expression (besides supporting my own career). Advertisement I remember well the phone call I received from a reporter representing Israel's largest circulation newspaper, Yediot Ahronoth, after one of our Ravinia performances, looking to review our concert. "There I was sitting out on the lawn and on various sides of me were not only Jewish but Korean, Chinese, and African American families listening in rapt attention...and, when you broke into the lively music, they all got up to dance together. Can you explain this to me?" Really no explanation is necessary. When you play exciting music, people dance. When you play music with profound emotional intensity, people listen. When you offer workshops for young people who want to explore a vibrant culture, as was recently done for a week in New York (http://www.ajsnet.org/conference-menu.htm) and as has been done every summer since 1995 in Quebec's Laurentian mountains (http://klezkanada.org/), in Krakow, Poland (http://www.krakow-info.com/jewfest.htm) and in numerous other locations worldwide, people sign up and show up...in droves! And perhaps that's how a people actually survives. The era of "embarrassment" over Jewish "ghetto culture" is long over. A major effort is needed to go beyond one-week workshops and find a way to provide substantial support for offerings in traditional Jewish music and culture at all levels of Jewish and general education...and, if not now, when? About Dr. Hankus Netsky Dr. Hankus Netsky is chair of Contemporary Improvisation at New England Conservatory, "one of the most versatile in all of music education" (JazzEd). Netsky is also founder and director of the Klezmer Conservatory Band, musical director for Itzhak Perlman's Jewish Music Projects, including "Eternal Echoes" and "In the Fiddler's House," and the recipient of a 2013 "Forward Fifty" award for his role in the resurgence of Eastern European Jewish music. The concert will provide an opportunity for attendees to purchase Netsky's recent book, Klezmer: Music and Community in 20th Century Jewish Philadelphia. The book presents a detailed ethnographic portrait of Philadelphia's Jewish musicians, the environment they worked in, and the unique repertoire they performed at local Jewish lifestyle and communal celebrations. He can be reached at hnetsky1@aol.com. Photo of Hankus Netsky. Photo Credit: Mimi Bernadin Let's talk to the people who were in the bombings in Brussels about privacy and security and Apple, whose business is, primarily, selling apps to appholes and accessories for a hand held computer we are now addicted to. Apple and their devotees are passionate about privacy, but it seems they are always sending naked photos of themselves up to iCloud, as if will never rain. As it turns out, it pours. Just like the pricey American Girl doll that became a money making machine churning out clothes and accessories that parents could not buy unless they had a certificate that proved they had bought at least one doll, Apple geniuses have lured us on to a merry-go-round that keeps spinning with no way to shut if off. They have not invented a way to shut it off, you see. One of my friends, who happens to be a physicist, explained to me that when you delete messages they don't actually really delete. When you send a message into the universe and bounce it off a satellite, that message does bounce to another place. But the universe is vast and space takes up most of the space, and so to get rid of something you have sent into space is complicated. For the Apple corporation to paint themselves as an entity with lofty moral standards is absurd. They allow Google to spy on me and keep a data base on every product I consider buying on the internet. They themselves sell a product they know is as alluring as heroin and nicotine and has become an obsession among young people, especially. On iPhone you can hook up with hundreds of your imaginary friends on Facebook and feel like you're a social butterfly. You can check your email, or gmail. But how many friends in life can we really handle? I find it hard to see all of my real friends. I long to be with my family, mostly, and with people I have known since before Facebook was invented. We remember what it was like to make a phone call in a phone booth and speak privately. Advertisement How many appholes who are crowing about privacy speak on their phones in public, spewing out their personal lives to anyone within a twenty-foot radius or more? There is nothing private about a cell phone conversation these days. I sat next to a man on a plane yesterday that did nothing but look at his cell phone for the entire flight. Across the aisle his wife looked at hers' and next to her their son, who had on headphones, looked at his. I happened to follow this family down the escalator to baggage claim and the wife and husband continued to look at their cell phones and the son remained on his headphones. Maybe this is the family values so called conservatives are pining for, but not me. Every month Apple rolls out some new technology, like drip morphine, and addicts rush to the Apple store to get their fix. Apple changes the design of our expensive toy every year so we have to by new expensive toys and new chargers and accessories lest we cannot use them, and the prices keep going up. The newest Apple iPhone I bought last year is a piece crap, actually. The battery dies overnight. Siri often answers the questions I ask it with the wrong answer, and I find myself insulting her, because you see my personal assistant, Siri, is a woman with a smart mouth. Apple is a one-way street to another new Apple iPhone and that's their mission. Their refusal to help open up a phone is no different than a citizen who is under suspicion refusing to open their door. With a warrant, authorities can search your house, and since iPhones now house our lives, a search warrant ought to suffice. What corporation has the right to build a house that nobody can get into, ever, under any circumstance? Advertisement When a house is burning, firemen don't have to ask permission to put out the fire. Our privacy is not under siege. We have given that up already with the invention of the cellular phone, Facebook, google, IMDB, and fact checks on line that can be had by anybody who wants to know all about you. Currently we are under attack, at least now and then, by a worldwide radical organization that wants women to wear dark sheets over their bodies and hoods over their faces. These are devout fascists who pretty much aspire to a world in which women step in line and make babies and do what they are told and where gay people shut up and stop being gay. I'm not on the side of fascists like Ted Cruz or Donald Trump, who singles out people as criminal by their ethnicity. I was never on the side of the fascist takeovers of Chile and Argentina by juntas America supported and even conspired with. But I am on the side of recognition that there is an organization called ISIS that is an extremely dangerous and we need to track them with what means we have. Apple is selling iPhones to terrorists. They don't discriminate, nor do they have the technology to discriminate. Maybe they do and haven't told us yet. But we ought to be able to look inside the phones Apple sells to terrorist, especially the one who was shot after a murderous attack in San Bernardino. There is almost more inside our iPhones that is about our lives than what is in our actual homes. When need be, we have to be able to collect that evidence, with a warrant, and use it to our advantage. Senator Mitch McConnell's determination not to even consider President Obama's nominee for the US Supreme Court is without precedent. Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley has said he will not hold hearings, and Senator Ted Cruz, who wants to be president, has promised to filibuster this nomination. No Senate has ever acted in this way before. All three senators claim to be conservatives. In fact, they are all acting more like revolutionaries or anarchists. They are not interested in the Constitution, the law, or more than two hundred years of American history. Their argument is that the next president should make this nomination, because it is now an election year. In essence, they argue that in the final quarter of a president's term, there should be no important decisions made. They are attempting to reduce the president's term from four years to three. In November, 1987. President Ronald Reagan was in the last year of his final term. The Democrats controlled the Senate, 55 to 45. That, of course, is a nearly perfect mirror image of today, when we have a Democratic president and Republicans have a 55 vote majority in the Senate. But there is a key difference between the two situations: when President Reagan nominated Anthony Kennedy the Democrats in the Senate, led by George Mitchell, held hearings and then voted to confirm him. The Republicans today refuse to even consider President Obama's nominee. Advertisement One wonders what Justice Kennedy thinks of the behavior of Senator McConnell and his colleagues? Does he cringe at the notion that he would not have his job if the Democrats had acted this way in 1988? Kennedy is one of 14 justices (including three Chief Justices) who were confirmed during an election year, or after a presidential election took place. It is a tradition that dates back to the Court's very early years. In January 1796 George Washington nominated Samuel Chase to the Court. By this time Washington had indicated he would not run for a third term, but no one in the Senate suggested the nation needed to wait more than a year to replace Justice John Blair, who had retired. Chase was confirmed the next day. Two months later, the Senate confirmed Washington's choice of Oliver Ellsworth as the third Chief Justice of the United States. In January 1801, John Adams had already been defeated in the election of 1800. But, not even the supporters of his victorious opponent, Thomas Jefferson, argued that Adams did not have the right to nominate a new Chief Justice. Adams nominated John Marshall, who he described as his "gift" to the American people. The Senate confirmed Marshall, and he went on to be our greatest Chief Justice. To this day much of our constitutional history and constitutional law focuses on his landmark opinions. Advertisement Lame duck presidents filling vacant seats was not merely a practice in the early republic. In 1844-45 the Senate refused to confirm four nominees of President John Tyler. President Tyler was a lame duck who had become president after the death of William Henry Harrison. He had very little political clout and no support in either political party. The senate rejected all four nominees because they were viewed as unfit for the job, not because Tyler was at the end of his term and would not be running in the 1844 election. In February, 1845, after the election was over and Tyler had less than a month to serve, the Senate confirmed his fifth choice for the Court, Samuel Nelson of New York. In December 1851, eleven months before the next presidential election, Millard Fillmore sent the name of Benjamin R. Curtis to the Senate. At the time, Fillmore claimed he was not going to seek his party's nomination for the 1852 election, and thus he was viewed as a lame duck president with an election looming. Nevertheless, the Senate confirmed Curtis only nine days after he was nominated. Election year nominations continued after the Civil War with no one arguing such nominations were illegitimate. In December 1880, the Democratic Senate confirmed William B. Woods, the choice of the lame duck Republican, President Rutherford B. Hayes. Eight years later, just a few months before the presidential election, the Senate confirmed Melville Fuller, President Grover Cleveland's nomination for Chief Justice. In July 1892, four months before the election, the Senate confirmed Benjamin Harrison's nominee, George Shiras. Harrison lost that election, yet in February 1893, less than two weeks before he would leave office, the Senate confirmed his last nominee, Horace Jackson. And in March 1912, less than eight months before the 1912 presidential election, the Senate confirmed President William Howard Taft's nominee Mahlon Pitney. In January 1916 -- almost exactly 100 years ago -- a Supreme Court justice appointed by William Howard Taft (the most conservative Republican president to that point) died. President Woodrow Wilson, a progressive Democrat, had a chance to begin to reshape the Supreme Court. But Wilson was up for reelection, with no guarantee he would be reelected. Indeed, in the previous 76 years only two presidents had been elected to two consecutive terms. Many Republicans expected Wilson to lose the upcoming election. Advertisement Wilson nominated Louis D. Brandeis, a famous but controversial public interest lawyer, to the Court. He was known for taking on insurance companies, powerful public utilities, and banks. His book, Other People's Money and How the Bankers Use It, hardly endeared him to Wall Street. On top of all this, he was the first Jew to be nominated to the Court, and the country was in an age of rampant anti-Semitism. The Republicans in the Senate hoped the nomination would fail, and they held endless hearings trying to undermine support for Brandeis. But no one in the Senate thought the President should not nominate someone to fill the vacant seat in an election year or that the Senate should not act on it. In the end, after a four month confirmation process -- the longest in our history -- the Senate confirmed Brandeis in June, five months before a presidential election. Brandeis went on to be one of our most important and influential Justices, and even one of his opponents, ex-President William Howard Taft, later came to admire and respect Brandeis when Taft himself joined the Court as Chief Justice in 1921. Nine days after Brandeis's confirmation, Justice Charles Evans Hughes, also a Taft appointee, was nominated to be the Republican candidate for president, and resigned his seat on the Court. Wilson nominated John H. Clarke. Again, despite the election being mere months away, no one argued that in the heat of his reelection campaign Wilson should not be allowed to nominate someone to the Court, and Clarke was confirmed unanimously within ten days. Advertisement In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, Herbert Hoover was about as unpopular as a president could be. That fall he would be overwhelmingly defeated for reelection. By July he was already essentially a lame duck. But the Senate quickly confirmed his nominee, Benjamin Cardozo. In the election year of 1940 the Senate confirmed Frank Murphy. In November, 1975, less than a year before the next election, President Ford, a Republican, nominated John Paul Stevens to the Court. Ford was our first, and only, unelected president. He had been appointed vice president when Spiro Agnew resigned in disgrace, and then became president when Richard Nixon also resigned in disgrace. Nevertheless, when he sent his nominee to the Senate, the Democratic leadership did not assert that with an election less than a year away, this unelected president had no right to nominated someone to the Court. Instead, in December 1975 the Senate confirmed Stevens. This stands in marked contrast to President Obama, who has been twice elected by a popular and electoral college majority, but nevertheless faces a Republican Senate that will not even consider his nominee. As noted above, in February 1988 the Democratic majority in the Senate confirmed Anthony Kennedy, who is still on the Court today. At the time many observers thought the Democrats would win then 1988 presidential election, and, had the Democrats acted like Senator McConnell and his party, they would have refused to hold hearings on the Kennedy nomination and refused to vote the nomination up or down. But, acting responsibly, the Democrats held hearings and confirmed him. The history is clear. Until now with the passing of Justice Scalia, no Senate leaders have asserted that a sitting president does not have the power to nominate someone for the Court and that the Senate does not have an obligation to consider that nomination. Not all late term nominations have been successful, but never before has the Senate refused to even consider them. Advertisement The proposals of Senator McConnell and his allies are unprecedented, and if they had been adopted at other times, such Chief Justice John Marshall and Justices Louis Brandeis and Anthony Kennedy, would never have served on the Court. Equally significant, at a number of crucial times, the Court would have been both understaffed and had an even number of justices, leading to inconclusive decisions in important cases. We might be able to take McConnell's stance more seriously if the remaining Republican presidential candidates -- Trump, Cruz and Kasich -- all publicly pledged that if elected they will not to make any court nominations during the last quarter of their term. So far none of them has stepped up to do so, and Senator Cruz, while indicating that he will filibuster the nomination, has failed to pledge that if elected he would not nominate any judges in 2020. What was it like to be in Brussels during the March 22nd attacks? originally appeared on Quora - the knowledge sharing network where compelling questions are answered by people with unique insights. Answer by Simon Souris, Belgian citizen, on Quora: At 8:30 am local time this morning, I received a notification. I glanced at my phone thinking it was one of the usual morning newsletters I'm subscribed to. On my screen: "Breaking news (...) Brussels Airport hit by blasts." I didn't immediately understand what I had just read. A few moments later, my phone went crazy: "(...) 11 people dead, 25 injured", "Brussels Airport evacuated after two explosions", "'several dead people' after an attack." This was serious. Very serious. My father called me from Spain when he saw a TV broadcast of what was happening. As I didn't know what was going on -- I live in the city center, approximately 15km from the airport -- I went straight to my computer and social media. At that point I began to realize the magnitude of the situation. Here is a before and after picture of the Brussels airport. I chose one that is not too explicit. While checking the horrifying videos and pictures of today's attack on Brussels Airport published on Twitter and in live coverage by Belgian media outlets, I received another couple of emails around 9:30 am. The Maelbeek subway station was hit. A bomb had been detonated. Some people even spoke of other explosions in Schuman and Arts-Loi -- it later turned out it was the echo of the one that blew up in Maelbeek. To understand what this means, a bit of geography is needed. Those metro stations are at the very heart of the city (see this picture). Advertisement To give you a better sense of the distance between the place where the attack took place and the major city buildings, here is a real-life view of what people see when walking or driving on this important street. Around 10:00 am or so, live reports and first interviews were coming from the airport and the Rue de la Loi / Wetstraat, the main street in this area, binding, more or less, the European district to the official residence and office of the Belgian Prime Minister located at 16 Rue de la Loi. I could hear sirens all over the city; they weren't very close or loud, though. There were just more of them than usual. From then on, I tried to reach out to my friends and family. Belgium is a small country and a lot of people commute to Brussels daily or have to go there on a regular basis. As it turned out, my brother, who lives almost 100km away, had come to Brussels to visit our Federal Parliament -- 364 safe days in a year and he had to come today. Even worse, an entire class from his school was at the bombed airport, checking in for a school trip to Prague (source: Une classe du College Sainte-Marie a Saint-Ghislain etait a Zaventem, en partance pour Prague: Tout le monde est sain et sauf mais nous sommes passes tres pres du drame...). They lived through the whole thing. They heard shots, and then the detonations. There were two of them, apparently. They ran. They tried to survive. They saw chaos: dust, destroyed windows, people on the ground. Two of my brother's friends ran so far they only realized they were safe when they had reached a farmer's field near the airport. Another boy from his school was so shocked he had to be taken care of by medical and psychological teams. Advertisement Friends of mine who work as photojournalists took their cameras and went to cover the event. I bet they never expected to see such a thing when when they woke up this morning. ... Answer by Matteo Courthoud, Currently an intern in Bruxelles, on Quora: This morning I was having breakfast in my apartment in Etterbeek when a friend of mine asked me what was going on in Brussels. It was around 8:45 in the morning. I readily checked the news and I realised there had been explosions at the Bruxelles Airport. I guess different people digest such a news in different ways. I have been in Bruxelles for more than two months now and, when I arrived in January, I was already in constant alert. I am currently doing an internship there and they told me I was accepted right after the Paris massacre. Nothing happened in Bruxelles in those days but it was clearly an hot city. When I left for Bruxelles I had the feeling of leaving the comfort zone. So, this morning, when I read about the explosions at the airport I was deeply worried and alerted more than shocked. News were scarce at that hour and they were starting to circulate on local newspapers but not worldwide. I had to decide whether to go to work or not. I decided to. It was 9 a.m. Advertisement The bus just passed in front of my door so I decided to walk. It's a 30 minutes walk and I usually pass in front of Maelbeek metro station, the exit under Rue de la Loi bridge. I spent most of the time checking the news while I was walking. More details started to appear and it seemed clear it was a terrorist attack. I was tense. I avoided crowded roads and important buildings (Parliament in the first place). When I was close to Schuman train station (about 300m from the metro station) I realised something was wrong. There were people stating still, looking at the bridge, but when I approached, they left without a sign. I moved closer to the bridge and the situation was more and more suspicious, a lot of people were moving in my direction but nobody was running or screaming. I was compulsively looking for any sign of danger but there weren't. I arrived at the metro station and only then I say the glasses on the streets and a soft smoke coming out. The whole glass entrance was in pieces and everybody was on the phone. I asked a guy what was going on. "A bomb, dozens of deads". I was deadly frozen. "Ici?" I asked. "Oui, ici". He was crying on the phone. Then it was a quick decision. Staying there, no good. I had to move. I didn't know the situation, I didn't know if danger was ongoing and, most of all, I after the airport, I couldn't imagine what craziness was going on. I came back home. I contacted my friends, colleagues and parents on my way home but nobody knew anything. It appeared on the news when I was already in my apartment, around 9:30. I am now checking the news every time I hear a siren and it happens every 5 minutes. Advertisement The Sages of the Jewish tradition saw the twin brothers Jacob and Esau as the yin and the yang of the human soul. In their imagination, Esau was the brute, the pleasure-seeker, the perpetrator of violence, in their language "there was no crime he did not commit". Jacob was the paradigm of the peaceful scholar, the spiritual seeker the visionary leader, the humble student of Torah. Yet, it is clear that they also understood that these twin brothers represented two facets of the human soul, sometimes at war one with the other. When Jacob is left alone and wrestles on the eve of his fateful reunion with Esau, the early twentieth century commentator Benno Jacob sees the struggle as Jacob fighting with his own base attributes. The medieval commentator Rashi imagines Jacob gazing at himself in the mirror and seeing the ugly materialism and greed that always had a claim on his character. This week, I joined 18,000 supporters of Israel at the Aipac conference in Washington, DC. In recent years Aipac has made a true effort to broaden its tent, to include those in the center and even the center left of the wide spectrum of Zionist supporters of Israel. This year was no exception. Aipac did an excellent job of allowing such center-left figures such as Jeffrey Goldberg, Ari Shavit, and Knesset member Stav Shaffir to present their views. In addition we were truly enriched by such thoughtful conservatives as Bret Stephens of the Wall Street Journal and Gov John Kasich. Aipac skillfully and effectively highlighted the incredible miracle that is Israel, showcasing Jewish and Arab Israelis alike and celebrating their achievements in medicine, technology, and social justice. As a devoted Zionist, I came away with a new appreciation for the vital work of Aipac and its effort to support Israel in these difficult times. Aipac is a vital and exceptional organization, and I am a supporter. Advertisement In keeping with its practice of non-partisanship, Aipac invited all presidential candidates to speak, including Donald Trump. As one who has been horrified by the racism and hate stirred by Mr Trump, it was my plan to exit the hall when he spoke, in silent protest of his views and statements. Indeed, when Trump entered the hall, I, along with a minority of delegates, absented ourselves. What was dispiriting, however was the raucous and enthusiastic applause that Trump received when he made particularly noxious statements about the current administration and President Obama. He received several standing ovations during his speech. Given his hateful statements in the past about women, minorities, Muslims, and others, it seemed incredible that any thinking person could stand and applaud such a man; but applaud they did. I had the date on my calendar for weeks: a Shabbat dinner with some of the couples in my "Love and Religion" class. We've gotten together several times over meals and I knew that nobody has any eating restrictions besides "kosher style." Emily was hosting the dinner at her house and had offered to order chicken from Zankou (a favorite LA chicken spot) with all the delicious fixings: hummus, babaganoush and tabbouleh. I was making challah and bringing wine. I knew everyone ate chicken which is perfect for Shabbat, convenient and would be a big hit. I was sure of it. Then, as the three of us started trading emails to coordinate the menu, one of the guests said, "Chicken is great for me, but my boyfriend is observing Lent -- we'll bring fish." Oh right. It's Lent! And Shabbat! And he's Catholic. This IS an interfaith couples' Shabbat dinner after all. Now what the heck do I do for Lent? Shabbat is a time for people to be together and celebrate community. It can be a time for inclusion and joy... and eating. When people feel singled out or excluded it is hard to strengthen relationships and build community, and that's antithetical to so much of what I aim to create at a Shabbat dinner. I appreciated the participant bringing up her boyfriend's tradition. I also appreciated her offer to bring something special for him, but it would have detracted from the spirit of the gathering. In order to create the best scenario for community and relationship-building, I realized I needed to learn more about his tradition in order to honor it and make sure everyone felt included. Advertisement I reached deep into my religious studies major memory bank to try to remember the rules about Lent -- something about Fridays and fish but I have no clue. Are there special prayers? Do they HAVE to eat fish or can we get falafel and call it a day? (Does he even like falafel? It seems to be the go-to vegetarian option for Jewish functions, but is that a normal thing or one of those weird Jewish things that no one else does?) I realized I need to call in reinforcements. I emailed some colleagues and I posted on Facebook: "Catholic friends, please tell me what you like to eat on Fridays during Lent!" I typed in a search in Pinterest: "Challah and fish recipes." I went into the living room to talk with my El Salvadorian, kind-of-Catholic nanny. "Do you know anything about Lent customs?" I asked. "Yes, you don't eat meat on Fridays," she said. "But sometimes people eat chicken. Not everyone will eat chicken. Chicken broth is OK for some Catholics, but not everyone. People like to eat fish." Oy, what had I gotten myself into? By this point, I had so many different opinions and answers and I just didn't know what to do. And then I got a text from my InterfaithFamily/LA project manager. "Want me to have my wife call you to talk about Lent?" Advertisement Yes! How had it slipped my mind that her wife is Catholic? She tells me everything I need to know. Order fish: It's one of those things that's not necessary but it's tradition. And either way, fish is delicious and healthy. We hang up the phone and I text her. "Any restaurant recommendations for good Catholic fish?" She responds, "I know of a few places, but there's not really 'Catholic fish.' Catholics eat pretty much anything." Except chicken on Shabbat during Lent, apparently. As I kept trying to find a solution that worked for everyone, the emails continued and the couple offered again to bring their own fish. But I've been that person who had to bring her own food to gatherings and parties because they were making pork and I kept kosher. I hated being singled out like that and I always felt alienated. As much as she reassured me that they could bring their own food, I did not want her boyfriend to feel left out at this interfaith dinner. I insisted on serving fish for dinner and, as it turned out, our host said she would rather have fish anyway and would love to cook it for everyone rather than ordering in from a restaurant. It was her first time hosting a Shabbat dinner and thought we were supposed to eat chicken on Shabbat, even though she would have rather eaten fish all along! Problem solved. We had fish. And I even tried my hand at a fish-shaped challah. Because if you can't braid your challah into a fish on lent, when can you? Advertisement It's been a few weeks since the dinner and I'm happy to share that it went extremely well. The Catholic partner and his Jewish girlfriend were touched that they were both made to feel so welcome and included. The fish was excellent. And after spending all afternoon Googling "How to braid a challah shaped like a fish," I let it rise too long and it melted in the oven. So we had flatbread for our Lenten Shabbat dinner and I'm bringing in a better baker to teach us all how to make a proper challah next time. In an election season marked by finger-pointing, bitter political infighting, and gender anxiety, the time is ripe for a revival of Arthur Miller's The Crucible, the semi-fictional dramatization of the Salem Witch Trials that will premiere in a much-anticipated Broadway production this April. Miller wrote The Crucible--the most frequently performed of all his plays--in response to the atmosphere of suspicion and treachery surrounding the hearings led by Senator Joseph McCarthy's House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). It comes on the heels of festivities surrounding the Miller centennial in October 2015, which recognized the playwright's political integrity in denouncing the war in Vietnam and standing up to HUAC. But renewed interest in Miller continues to overlook a darker episode of secrecy and evasion in his past: the story of his 49-year-old son, Daniel, born with Down syndrome. The child of Miller and his third wife, Inge Morath, Daniel was institutionalized at his father's insistence. Miller rarely accompanied Morath when she visited Daniel and did not mention him in his memoir, Timebends. It was not until 2005 that an expose published in Vanity Fair disclosed Miller's secret shortly after his death. According to the story, Daniel was placed in a home for infants just a week after his birth. Between the ages of four and seventeen, he was housed at Southbury Training School, which former staff member Marcie Roth recalled as "not a place you would want your dog to live." While Daniel's three siblings enjoyed the benefits of wealth and celebrity, he was raised in squalid, overcrowded confinement. Despite the circumstances of his upbringing, Daniel is said to be a warm, capable, and well-balanced person. Although Daniel was not mentioned in his father's will, a separate trust bequeathed him an equal share of the Miller estate. Advertisement I wept while reading the Vanity Fair story after my son was born with Down syndrome in 2007. Determined to love and protect my new baby, I was outraged at the thought that a parent--especially one who had devoted his literary career to speaking out against oppression, injustice, and war--could send his child away. I also was reminded of the good fortune that my child was born at a moment of greater commitment to including people with disabilities rather than hiding them from view. Over time, I came to understand Daniel Miller as part of a generational tragedy. Miller was certainly not alone in giving up his son, although his failure to visit or publicly acknowledge Daniel is his own. It was common for doctors to advise new parents to commit children with disabilities for their own good and that of the family. This was the fate of Judith Scott, the celebrated fiber artist with Down syndrome who was institutionalized for over three decades until being rescued by her twin sister. And of Dwight Core, Jr., born with Down syndrome in the 1960s, whose story is movingly captured in the home movies that were added to the Library of Congress archives in 2006. When Emily Perl Kingsley, a writer for Sesame Street, gave birth to her son Jason in 1974, doctors counseled her to send the baby away and tell people he had been born dead. Instead she brought him home, raised him alongside her other children, and became a pioneer in making people with disabilities visible on television. Advertisement People with Down syndrome weren't the only victims of institutionalization: Steve Silberman's recent book Neurotribes tells the stories of countless people with autism who were tortured, ostracized, and locked away because of their unusual behavior. Ruth Sienkiewicz Mercer, a woman with cerebral palsy born in 1950, was diagnosed as an "imbecile" and sent to an institution at age eleven, where she was abused for eight years. Eventually, advocates enabled her to publish a memoir and secure her release. Countless less fortunate others died without ever having a voice. Why, then, dig skeletons out of the closet at a moment devoted to celebrating Miller's accomplishment? Is it unfair to hold Miller to present day standards of decency and compassion? The point is that Miller wasn't just anybody. He used his public stature to decry injustice and persecution, even when it put his career and reputation at risk. He could have used his position to speak on behalf of people with disabilities, like the Kennedy and Shriver families, Kingsley, or George Will, whose son Jon was born with Down syndrome just 6 years after Daniel. The Middle East is a very hot geographic zone due to its continuous political unrest and instability. The region has been through many horrible civil wars, political tension, and Sectarian clashes. Syria was a beautiful country located in that region. With its interesting history, beautiful nature, and multicultural mosaic society, we didn't talk about it much when the country was in its golden time and had political security. Now, everyone knows Syria as a war-torn country, a war zone for terrorist groups, and an area of misery and death. The bloody civil war is still ongoing, and the internal political unrest between the government and rebels has encouraged many outsider forces to intervene and to play into this proxy war. The media outlets provide information about facts of war in Syria, such as the death toll, an elaborated explanation for the proxy war, and the multiple positions of the outside actors involved. Trying to solve the Syrian issue politically is very useless because major actors are not honestly willing to give up their own geopolitical interests to end Syria's misery. However, there is still a solution that could revive the dead Syria--at least socially. In fact, if Syrians are given the chance to gain expertise in social work programs, they can help Syrian refugee communities in neighboring countries from marginalization and possibly rebuild, democratically, a better Syria with a better civil society. The good news is that McGill's International Community Action Network (ICAN) has already started this initiative. McGill has a notable 20-year history of furthering human rights in the Middle East. To date, over 50 alumni of its Master of Social Work (MSW) program have gone on to play lead roles in establishing and running the 11 ICAN-affiliated, rights-based community practice centers currently operating in the region. Advertisement In light of the crisis in Syria, ICAN admitted its first Syrian Fellow in 2014 and is now shifting the focus of the entire program to Syria. McGill's ICAN at the School of Social Work is currently running a crowdfunding campaign to raise funds to help cover the costs of the two-year MSW program for a Syrian Fellow along with his or her family. McGill is aiming to admit six MSW Fellows from Syria into the fully funded program in 2017. So, bringing one Syrian fellow to McGill can impact thousands of Syrian lives. It can also have a positive, long-term impact for Syrians in preparing them for building civil societies, as well as protecting Syrians from marginalization, discrimination, and violence. Any donation can have a huge impact for Syria; it can light a candle in the middle of the rubbles bloodbath. BRUSSELS, BELGIUM - MARCH 22: A woman lights a candle as people gather to leave tributes at the Place de la Bourse following today's attacks on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, Belgium. At least 31 people are thought to have been killed after Brussels airport and a Metro station were targeted by explosions. The attacks come just days after a key suspect in the Paris attacks, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in Brussels. (Photo by Carl Court/Getty Images) Sadly, what happened this morning was predictable. Several months ago, we expected it. As the details of the Paris attacks were revealed, we discovered the involvement of the Brussels branch, and found out that for several years, the radical Islamism of ISIS had spread in Molenbeek and other neighborhoods of Brussels in spite of Belgian security services. Many predicted that an attack would eventually take place in this city. In the week following the Paris attacks, the authorities were concerned about follow-up attacks. Soldiers could be seen on the streets every day, guarding official buildings as if there was a state of war in Brussels. The attack that took place this morning was seemingly expected. Advertisement What can I say that hasn't already been said? I must first acknowledge how painful this tragedy is, and to extend condolences to the families of so many innocent victims. Again, we feel helpless before these people. Again, everyday life is interrupted by a barrage of news. Death tolls grow, and security measures are implemented, restricting movement and interrupting plans. This is how things are in Brussels today. We found ourselves locked up in Parliament. Suspending activities. We called for moments of silence. We changed travel plans. We await news. It is unacceptable that tensions between Europeans themselves undermine the security of all citizens, and it is urgent to overcome those fears to be more efficient in the fight against terror. "We are at war," said Manuel Valls, the French prime minister. Of course, this war is very different from those we encountered during the previous century. In the nearby Ypres, a small Belgian town in which more than 500,000 people died during World War I, there is a museum commemorating the horrible, bloody war. These wars are different, but I fear that what we are witnessing now is indeed a war. I also fear it will be long. Advertisement What can we do? Here are three urgent topics we must consider: 1. Create a unified body of European police intelligence. Since 2004, Europe has suffered terrorist attacks at the hands of perpetrators that share similar ideological origins and strategic objectives. But our policemen respond within their respective national territories, with little interconnection mechanisms beyond those provided by Europol. The instruments of police and judicial cooperation and coordination on intelligence remain insufficient. Despite successive attempts to launch intensive information exchanges -- at least from 2010 -- they haven't done anything; I'd like to hear from anyone with contrary evidence. It is unacceptable that tensions between Europeans themselves undermine the security of all citizens, and it is urgent to overcome those fears to be more efficient in the fight against terror. 2. European anti-terrorism policy coordination with US security agencies must improve, and be backed by foreign relations with the countries of the Maghreb and Mashreq; implemented strategically and coordinated at a European level. The latter is simply not happening now; on the contrary, Middle East interests collide with national dissenting views. This current scenario prevents Europe from stabilizing the area. Stability of the region, after all, is essential to fighting the Islamic State with any chance of success. The United Nations has recognized that this goal is key to peace in the world, so let's get to work. 3. We need a clear policy for the Muslim population in Europe.It is necessary to develop a policy of integration in the neighborhoods with the highest concentration of young people vulnerable to the trap of jihadism. Providing a vision of the future in the form of jobs and opportunities, while controlling any growth in radicalized networks is the best way to prevent many European citizens from radicalizing. And let us not forget that these people are often European citizens who radicalize into terrorists or foreign fighters in Syria and Iraq and then return to Europe. Above all, we must count on the people in our neighborhoods. Militant jihadist terrorism must be fought and beaten by Islam and Muslims for peace. And we must help them. Female Hands presenting a red heart. One of the nice things about being a human being is that when you have a problem, you can appeal for help, and you'll often get it. People actually want to help people. (Unlike chimps, who have a very nasty attitude.) You would not believe how many people called my office after the earthquake in Haiti on Jan. 12, 2010, and asked how they could help. A lot of those people had never met a Haitian in their entire lives. But they wanted to help. Advertisement I'll give you another example. I went to Somalia a few years ago. I went with a group, because I wasn't entirely comfortable visiting Somalia alone. Our group also visited other countries in East Africa. We flew from one country to another, often because land borders were closed. But flights were few and far between. Upon arrival at the airport in one small country, the immigration official noticed that the visa for a member of our group had expired. She said that that member would have to re-board the flight, and return from whence we had come. Which was a huge problem, because the next flight was four days later, and we were staying only for three. In some parts of the world, such problems are solved by the sudden appearance of cash. Sure enough, cash suddenly appeared. The immigration official quietly declined the offer. She reiterated that our colleague needed to re-board the airplane. This caused a great deal of consternation within our group. Advertisement Our group leader was possibly the most traveled human being who ever lived. For instance, he had been to Ethiopia, a nearby country, more than thirty times. He knew a thing or two about human nature. He went up to the immigration official, he quietly and tactfully explained the awful consequences for our colleague if he were separated from our group, and he then used the magic words: "Have a heart." He said those words three times. The immigration official smiled (for the first time), took the passport with the expired visa, and told him that everyone would have to wait until she returned. So we did. The plane left. We didn't know whether that was a good thing or a bad thing. After 45 minutes, she came back. She showed my colleague that inside the passport there was a new, valid visa. "No charge," she said in French. What makes a $15 minimum wage politically possible? It's because people have a heart. Why immigration reform? Because people have a heart. Why universal healthcare, paid sick leave, free public college? Because ... people have a heart. Our progressive campaign is not rooted merely in idealism, the conviction that the world can be a better place. Our progressivism is rooted in human nature, that shared spark in all of us we call "empathy." In a very fundamental way, we care about each other. We love each other. We want everyone to live a decent life - even people we've never met, and never will meet. Advertisement We all have a heart. Courage, Dear Cherished Friends, The Republican Party has become intellectually and morally bankrupt, a mockery of its traditions -- corrosive to our society, our civility, and our capacity to govern. This is not a temporary condition; it is woven into the fabric of the party. Unless and until it reverses course, you should take your votes and money and walk away. I never thought I would presume to say this. I respect that your allegiance is rooted in considered beliefs and years of loyalty which, at the beginning of my political journey, I shared. I certainly don't think I have all the answers, and I enjoy exploring our differences. You inform me, correct me and, most generously, tolerate me. You care, as do I, about the world we are leaving the next generations. Our friendship far transcends our political beliefs. We share each other's celebrations, enjoy each other's successes. I value your advice. You've helped me through hard times, and some of you have helped my kids as well. You are loyal friends, generous members of the community, and deeply committed parents and grandparents. My world, and the larger world, would be a grayer place without you. Advertisement "To compare the two parties at this time in our history is to indulge in false equivalency." Knowing you as I do, I know that you are troubled by the direction of your party. Little wonder -- you are mainstream Republicans whose mainstream has run dry. But I also accept that, for you, the Democrats may not be the answer -- that you see them as feckless devotees of identity politics and too much government, don't trust Hillary Clinton, and believe that Bernie Sanders would drive us off the fiscal cliff. I'm not writing to quarrel with these beliefs. Nor do I suggest that unchallenged dominance by the Democrats would serve the country well. But to compare the two parties at this time in our history is to indulge in false equivalency. For rationalizing the GOP's pathology by responding with a partisan tit-for-tat is not adequate to the circumstances. The sins you perceive in Democrats are the usual ones -- misguided policies, ill chosen means for dubious ends, and the normal complement of rhetorical dishonesty and political squalor. However mistaken you may find Clinton and Sanders on the issues, their debate is addressed to the world as it exists and therefore open to a sensible critique. The squalor to which the GOP has sunk, an alternate reality rooted in anger and mendacity, transcends mere differences in policy, threatening the country with profound, perhaps irreparable, damage. This is not simply about Donald Trump. For Trump is not the result of forces which will come and go, but of a deterioration within the Republican Party that has been accelerating for years. The GOP has become a Frankenstein monster, assembled from dysfunction, demagoguery, myopia and myth, nurtured in a fever swamp where lies and hysteria kill off reason. Nothing better will arise until you help drive a stake through its heart. One of our ongoing disagreements has been about the nature of the party, and where you fit within it. With respect to GOP extremism in areas like climate denial, gun violence or reproductive rights, you often say, "but I'm not like that." But the party is. You may be moderate in your views; the party is not. Even candidates with temperate instincts must go along to survive, or meet the fate of Jon Huntsman, mocked for publicly accepting climate change and evolution. Advertisement Long since, the GOP killed its moderates and trashed everything they stood for. It has replaced respected figures like William Cohen, Richard Lugar and John Danforth with rigid ideologues like Ted Cruz and Mike Lee, and social illiterates like James Inhofe, Jeff Sessions and Richard Shelby. On issue after issue, they have embraced an orthodoxy rooted in extremism and divorced from fact. These dynamics forced Mitt Romney to win the nomination by running so far right that he could never get back. And what was the lesson learned among the party base? That Romney was not nearly extreme enough. In short, the Republican Party no longer belongs to you, or you in it. 2016 has proven the point. I saw this coming not because I'm uniquely prescient, but because I began writing reality-based political novels 20 years ago. I hung around with party pros, consultants, lobbyists, donors, pollsters, officeholders and political partisans, some of whom became my friends. Bit by bit, I saw the party sell out its agenda for short-term gains with disastrous long-term consequences. Eventually the GOP's train wreck became inevitable -- no longer a matter of if, but when. How did this happen? Start with the relationship between the party establishment and its base. Your family, and mine, occupy a privileged slice of American society. Not so for most members of the GOP electorate. They are folks that few of us know very well: evangelicals; modestly educated whites threatened by economic dislocation; and people whose distrust of government partakes of paranoia. Economically, they are not natural allies of the party of business or its wealthy donors, who tend to focus on tax cuts and free-market principles irrelevant to the base. So in exchange for pursuing its economic agenda, the party offered evangelicals a faith-based vision of America: barring abortion, banning gay marriage, and giving government preferences to fundamentalist religious institutions. Why should business people care, the reasoning went, when we can rally these voters with promises which, however illusory, cost us nothing? But as "promise keepers," the party failed its fundamentalist flock. Abortion remains legal; gay marriage became a right; the constitution prevents government from enshrining religious preferences as law. So there was nothing to stop evangelicals from noticing that their own lives were often harder and less secure. Advertisement Ditto other members of the middle and working classes. The real causes of their woes are globalization, the Great Recession, the housing crisis, and an information society which marginalizes blue-collar jobs. But the GOP never addressed these complex forces with any kind of candor -- let alone proposed solutions like job retraining and educational access for their kids. Barren of ideas for helping its base voters, it resorted to blame-shifting and scapegoating -- of government, Obama, illegal immigrants, Muslims and other minorities. Instead of looking forward, the party indulged a primal nostalgia for simpler times, an imaginary white folks' paradise which can never be resurrected. "Typical was the establishment's darling, Marco Rubio, who claimed that Obama was not simply wrong, but trying to destroy America as we know it. Republican politics became not faith-based, but hate-based." Some of this was shameful. The GOP countenanced a race-based birtherism directed at our first black president, giving Donald Trump a political foothold. It nurtured xenophobia that targeted all Muslims at home and abroad. It pretended that illegal immigrants were poisoning our economy. It aped the mindless masters of talk radio and trafficked in conspiracy theories. It embraced Tea Party dead-enders who claimed that shutting down the government, at whatever cost, was the only answer. In Congress, the party resolved to deny Obama reelection by grinding the legislative process to a halt, then blaming him for gridlock as if its tactics played no role. Political polarization polluted foreign-policy -- as when all 300 Republicans in Congress turned the Iran deal into a political wedge issue, shunning the careful consideration it deserved in favor of shrill and simpleminded denunciations. In the world of the GOP, our many and complex problems had but one misbegotten cause: that Barack Obama was president. Advertisement So-called mainstream Republicans competed to fan the flames of outrage, poisoning political discourse. Typical was the establishment's darling, Marco Rubio, who claimed that Obama was not simply wrong, but trying to destroy America as we know it. Republican politics became not faith-based, but hate-based. For the Republican base, nothing changed. Except, of course, their rising anger, stoked by yet more empty and diversionary anti-Washington rhetoric that only deepened their sense of impotence. Focused on the donor class, party leaders charged the Democrats with "class warfare" against the less than embattled rich, while still failing to acknowledge through substantive policies the very real struggles of its rank-and-file. The election in 2014 of yet more Republican senators and congressmen made no difference in the lives of the people who supported them. Not unreasonably, the base came to believe that our governmental and financial institutions -- including the Republican Party -- were controlled by an elite that was indifferent to their plight. And so demagogues like Donald Trump and Ted Cruz became the agents of their frustration and despair. Like the sorcerer's apprentice, the party lost control. Among the casualties was the agenda most dear to the Republican establishment. Its insensitivity to the base has eroded support for free trade. Despite its claims of fiscal probity, the GOP continued its meretricious complaints about deficit spending -- for which, as ever, it blamed the Democrats' self-serving rhetoric about protecting Social Security and Medicare -- while proposing tax cuts for the wealthy that would explode the national debt. And consider this: How do tax cuts at the top benefit the struggling middle and working classes? And wouldn't slashing or privatizing Social Security further threaten their fragile place in our society? But set aside the party's disingenuousness with respect to the economic and fiscal concerns that, in many cases, have gained it your allegiance. In other important areas the party has abandoned serious thought. Instead, the alternate reality of the GOP has created a closed intellectual system immune to fact or reason, imposing a mindless political fundamentalism on its candidates which no reflective person, least of all you, can any longer support. Advertisement Here is the fact-free theology one supports every time one votes for a Republican candidate for president, senator or representative: Climate denial. In the anti-science world of the GOP, man-made global warming is a hoax -- just ask Ted Cruz or Donald Trump. This is one of many areas where the party perpetuates ignorance among its base, separating them from the populace at large. In a recent Gallup poll asking if human activity was a factor in climate change, a 85 percent of Democrats and 68 percent of independents answered yes. Republicans? Only 38 percent. Faced with overwhelming scientific consensus, the party will not even consider how to combat this existential menace. Denial of evolution and general scientific knowledge. I know you can't believe this, but a Pew Research poll showed that over 50 percent of Republican voters don't accept the theory of evolution. When the core of the party thinks that The Flintstones was a documentary -- and none of its presidential candidates dare say otherwise -- the broader implications for policies rooted in scientific inquiry are disturbing. Hence people like Trump who profit by suggesting that vaccination engenders autism. Gun violence. The GOP slavishly follows the NRA line. It has opposed any effort to curb gun violence, hiding behind paranoid nonsense about disarming all Americans. Its only answer to our unique and devastating mass slaughter is that more Americans should carry guns -- quite literally, that the black churchgoers in Charleston mowed down by a madman should have brought weapons to their place of worship. Racism. Given that all of you deplore it, I can feel you bridling. But the troubling signs proliferate. Voter suppression laws aimed at minorities in states where no evidence of fraud exists. Scapegoating American Muslims -- many of whom have more experience defending our country than any of us -- as potential terrorists. Targeting illegal immigrants whose presence owes as much to American business interests as to their own desperation. Advertisement Want more? Ignoring the glaring evidence of unequal law enforcement against blacks which, in some cases, includes unjustified police shootings. Upholding a death penalty that disproportionately targets minorities and the poor -- not a few of whom turn out to be innocent. And still more? Gutting programs that seek to recognize the impact of race and class, often because they are deemed "unfair" to far more advantaged whites. Tolerating a relentless disparagement of our president that reeks of racism -- imagine, if you will, the outcry if a black congressman had shouted "liar" at George W. Bush during a State of the Union Address. The party which claims to be "race-blind" has become blind to its own tacit bigotry. Curbing reproductive rights. Protected by Roe v. Wade and our own privilege, it is easy for us to ignore what the GOP is doing beyond our field of vision -- our daughters, after all, have access to safe and legal abortion and any form of birth control they need. But this is not so in America at large, where Republican legislatures and the Congress are working overtime to limit access to abortion and reproductive care, often at great cost to women and their families. The GOP's senseless war on Planned Parenthood is only part of it. How many of us know that, due to draconian laws sponsored by Republicans, 90 percent of American counties have no legal abortion provider? How many of us have stopped to consider that no healthy family needs GOP-sponsored parental consent laws, which in authoritarian, abusive and incestuous families can lead to the murder of a daughter? "The GOP has utterly abdicated its responsibility to participate in reasoned governance, and so given us Donald Trump." All this is central to the rigid orthodoxy that Republican presidents and legislators will be forced to follow, now and in the future. Mitt Romney did; Marco Rubio has; Paul Ryan will. No matter how personally attractive, no candidate will change this party until forces outside the party make dramatic change imperative. I appreciate that this conclusion is depressing. No doubt many of you will object to some aspect of my indictment. Fair enough. But I doubt that you are much inclined to dispute most of its particulars -- if only because you've acknowledged them yourselves. And there are still more issues to consider. Why hasn't the GOP made creative efforts to confront the problems of middle-class and working people -- many of whom have now turned to Donald Trump -- seeking solutions that are consistent with its philosophy? Are we squandering the talents of our young people by saddling them with prohibitive student debt, cheating our society in the bargain? Are we stifling struggling families by not trying to retrain their breadwinners? For that matter, what sense does this phony war on Obamacare make when the GOP offered no alternatives -- even to deal with pre-existing conditions or the ruinous effects of catastrophic illness? When did the GOP stop caring -- I mean really caring, not offering bromides about liberating the engines of free enterprise -- about the everyday life of citizens who are falling behind? One can debate the best policies and solutions for all this -- and we should. But the GOP has utterly abdicated its responsibility to participate in reasoned governance, and so given us Donald Trump. Advertisement Trump's policies, such as they may be, are a disastrous expression of bottled up resentment among the base, a blind lashing out at all they feel besets them. Again and again, he offers phony and dangerous prescriptions that betray his complete ignorance of the most basic rudiments of governance, economics, domestic policy, and national security. He caters to racial antagonism, spreading its toxins in the party and the country as a whole. As a man, he is an intellectually vacant and self-obsessed misogynist clearly in the grips of a profound personality disorder which makes him unfit to lead. He is not simply a disgrace to the party, but a product of all that disgraces it. And yet it is not Donald Trump who best captures the party's sickness. It is that the only possible alternative in the GOP as it exists is not John Kasich, but Ted Cruz. Indeed, Cruz expresses the disease in its purest form. He is gratuitously cruel in his comments about others -- who can forget his deathless assertion that, in debate, "Mitt Romney French-kissed Barack Obama." He uses his own GOP colleagues as targets for lies, slander and smears. He panders to hatred and suspicion of all Muslims. He casts his irresponsible grandstanding -- like trying to shut down the government -- as lonely heroics. He denies climate change and compares himself to Galileo. He wallows in fake piety while perpetrating dirty tricks. He demonizes disagreement and lies without compunction. He shows no real empathy for anyone. His campaign appeals to fear, not hope. His transcendent calculation is repellent; his apocalyptic and nihilistic "conservatism" exists solely to slake his craving for power. His coalition is evangelicals, gun fanatics, nativists, climate deniers and Tea Party atavists -- and even many of his ideological allies despise him. He is Joseph McCarthy reborn, a man without conscience, willing to say anything. Choosing between Trump and Cruz depends on whose personal and political pathology you fear most. I can't imagine you will ever make such a choice. That this is the only choice you have makes it imperative to leave the GOP. Advertisement I'm not urging you to become Democrats. I'm not even trying to win an argument. I simply want our political arguments to make sense in the world of reality, the better to move our country forward with the goodwill and considered judgment required by these challenging times. So what I profoundly hope is that, collectively, you will abandon the Republican Party until it becomes worthy of the country we love in common. Because, in the end, a big chunk of our common future may depend on you. With abiding friendship, Judge Merrick Garland, President Barack Obamaas choice to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court, sits during a meeting with Sen. Robert Casey, D-Pa., on Capitol Hill in Washington, Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Garland, who sits on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, is being blocked from a confirmation hearing by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., who has been steadfast in his refusal to advance any Supreme Court nominee during the waning months of Obamaas presidency. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite) Whatever dwindling hope remained that Trumpism would somehow magically go away just got two more blows in the last few days. First, Donald Trump got a hero's welcome at AIPAC. Then, Trump exploited a terrorist attack in Brussels to generate headlines with calls for purported "tough guy" measures such as "closing the borders" and "doing a lot more than waterboarding." To save America from Trumpism, we need to strengthen our democratic institutions that Trump and the national Republican Party have been working tirelessly to undermine. That certainly includes the Supreme Court, which needs nine justices to function with full legitimacy. The dominant view in national media is that there's no way that we can compel the Senate to vote on the nomination of Judge Merrick Garland. But this is the same national media that told us there was no way we could stop the planned 2013 U.S. bombing of Syria, nor any way we could stop the Keystone XL pipeline. National media have a tendency to underestimate the potential of democratic organizing. Since they hang out with powerful insiders, they tend to share the prejudices of powerful insiders. Advertisement On Monday, I helped organize an action in Chicago at Republican Senator Mark Kirk's office, demanding that Senator Kirk do more to press Senate Republican leaders for a debate and vote on Judge Garland. When Senator Kirk's staff met with a delegation from our demonstration, they promised that Senator Kirk would indeed keep pressing the Senate Republican leadership for a debate and vote on Judge Garland, publicly and privately, exactly as our demonstration and our Illinois petition demanded. After the recent terrorist attack in San Bernardino, California, where two gunmen killed fourteen people and injured several more, the FBI assures us that accessing data on the iPhone of one attacker will yield valuable insights about the terrorist organization involved. To that end, the FBI has requested that Apple write special code to unlock the terrorist's phone, and by so doing creating a backdoor into its systems. But Tim Cook, CEO of Apple Inc., has refused to comply. He contends that creating a backdoor is dangerous and is a denial of privacy. (Source) Is Spying Really the Best Way? This high profile terrorist case raises questions about how much information the government should be able to access. Some feel that governmental eavesdropping is acceptable to preserve national safety; they believe that citizens should have nothing to hide. In reality, this is a dangerous precedent. There are many individuals and organizations whose integrity, security, or well-being could be at risk if a backdoor was created to allow access to sensitive information on a personal phone. Who would control the use of that backdoor? Under what circumstances could it be used? One example of an at-risk target is organizations with intellectual property or secret information that give market advantage. This type of proprietary information is developed sometimes at great cost to the organization, the loss of which could spell financial ruin. Let's face it--most employees keep highly secure information on their phones, including email accounts or documents in Google docs or Dropbox. Giving the federal government a method to access private cell phone data could prove to be very costly if placed in the wrong hands or if sold by greedy employees to foreign governments. If foreign governments obtained this same backdoor to personal data on cell phones, there could potentially be no organization safe from the loss of private or sensitive information. Potentially, foreign governments could spy on the phones of any person living or working abroad or those visiting as tourists. This could prove to be very harmful. Why would a foreign government respect the privacy of US citizens when the federal government has shown the way? Viable Alternatives to Spying Spying is not the best long-term answer to protecting the rights and sensitive information of our citizens. Could there be a better way for the federal government or private industry to regulate and protect the people? Are there alternative technologies that could assist in monitoring employees or contractors, immigrants or refugees, parolees, or sex offenders? With modern technological advances, there are solutions arising in the area of deception detection. Deception detection entails using technology to monitor a person's responses to questioning in order to determine if they are truthful or deceptive. The best criminal database in the world is a person's memory of past actions, and existing solutions attempt to tap in to this "database" to measure physiological reactions that imply deceit. Credibility Assessment Tools The long-standing lie detection solution used by the federal government has been the polygraph. It has been used for criminal investigations since the 1930s. However, US law prohibits private companies from using deception detection tools. Only federal, state, or local government agencies may test job applicants or employees with polygraph or similar things. These legal limitations make it a viable solution but only under specific circumstances. To be candid, one important challenge with polygraph is that the decision about an examinee's truthfulness or deception is reached by the human examiner. Human examiners can be inexperienced, biased, fatigued, corrupted, or they may discriminate. In addition, there is no perfect lie detector. In spite of that, it can be quite effective to have the results of a lie detection test as one data point among many in making decisions. New Technology New methods of deception detection are more effective and versatile. Some new technologies place the decision about a person's truthfulness in the hands of computer software. With software, the decision is made without bias, fatigue, or subjectivity. DARFUR, SUDAN - SEPTEMBER 26: Refugee woman carries plastic bottles to get water from a water-well as they try to live under hard conditions at UNICEF supported refugee camps in Darfur, Sudan on September 26, 2015. (Photo by Zekeriya Gunes/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images) Water is one of those vital things, like air, that we take for granted until it's in short supply. That's why World Water Day was established, which this year falls on March 22nd. An international observance that dates back to the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, World Water Day is an opportunity to learn more about water related issues, take action to make a difference and be inspired to tell others. So in light of the occasion, let me share a moving story about the intersection of water with one man, one woman, one company and many employees. Advertisement The man is Salva Dut, who was born in South Sudan and found himself, at the age of 11, displaced by the country's civil war. Fleeing through the war-torn southern desert, Dut became one of the thousands of "The Lost Boys of Sudan." Heroically, Dut led 1500 "Lost Boys" hundreds of miles through the Southern Sudan desert to a refugee camp in Kenya, and eventually was lucky enough to gain entrance to the U.S. While Dut was embraced by his adopted American family, he insisted on helping those from his homeland by forming a nonprofit called Water for South Sudan to provide much needed water that is safe and clean throughout the year. Today, Dut lives most of the time in South Sudan overseeing Water for South Sudan's drilling operations. The woman is Linda Sue Park, author of the New York Times bestseller A Long Walk to Water, which has sold more than a million copies and become a modern classroom classic since it was published in 2010. Park's novel combines the true story of Salva Dut with the fictional story of Nya, a Sudanese girl who must walk eight hours a day to retrieve water from a distant well for her family. A Long Walk to Water has electrified young readers across the country and inspired many of them to raise money to build more wells in South Sudan. To date, the efforts of children to help their less fortunate counterparts a continent away have raised more than $1 million for Water for South Sudan, directly leading to the building of many wells in South Sudan and the subsequent transformation of communities and lives, especially the lives of girls, who can now attend school and dream of a future for themselves. For many of these readers, Dut's selfless example will serve as a model for how they want to live their own lives, carving meaning from giving back. Advertisement Park spoke about this remarkable effort in a recent TED Talk, examining how children's books can change the world by lighting up pathways for empathy and engagement in young minds. The pools of inspiration from one boy's courage and perseverance ripple even further. Global learning company Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, the publisher of A Long Walk to Water, decided to celebrate the book's one million copies sold milestone by donating $15,000 to Water for South Sudan for the drilling and installation of a new well. Then the organization took its corporate philanthropy one step further by offering a challenge to its employees to raise an additional $15,000, leveraging its matching gift initiative to accelerate this goal and fund the build of a second well. To the surprise of everyone, the employees reached $15,000 in just two weeks. This was the first company-wide matching campaign for HMH - which is a client of my company, Causecast - but given the strong employee engagement in the Water for South Sudan challenge, it's surely not its last. With a mission to change people's lives by fostering passionate, curious learners, it makes sense that HMH employees would rally together and show their personal commitment to a story and a cause that has touched so many hearts and changed so many lives. It's an effort that thrilled the employees of HMH and drew many of them closer to their company, connecting them with the larger purpose and impact of their jobs. All because of one boy's determination to survive and then help the people he left behind. The 2016 theme of World Water Day is "Better Water, Better Jobs," focusing on the central role that water plays in creating good quality jobs, which in turn fosters economic, social, and human development. Half of the world's workers - 1.5 billion people - work in water-related sectors, and almost every job across every sector relies directly on water. World Water Day 2016 asks us to recognize and support people and jobs whose work with water helps us all. How do you revive interest in a story that has been around for more than five years? A story, that actually feels like a cliche from a region regularly rocked by one conflict or another? One social media user did something, well, different, something that triggered a virtual debate and backlash. Making headlines, the "Hot Migrants" Instagram account was posting screen grabs of "handsome men on their journey to Europe", according to the page's bio. "Their countries might be falling apart but their sex appeal still goes strong." Advertisement The images were taken from news footage of refugees making the treacherous journey from conflict zones like Iraq and Syria to western Europe. But since it made headlines, the account has disappeared.A new one with the same bio, and photos appeared with the name: "@HotRefugees." There is also a website hotrefugee.com that describes itself as "Scouting hot refugees....let's get these poor people modeling jobs!" Reaction to the 'hot migrants' account has ranged from being attacked as "inappropriate" - given what those in the photos must have gone through to reach their destination - to feeling that the men featured are being "objectified". At the same time, others are praising it for humanising the refugees as people who have distinct looks instead of the almost generic gloomy-looking battered images of fleeing people. The creator of the instagram account, who is in the United States and wants to remain anonymous, fired back in interviews that it should not be taken too seriously, and that the aim is to shed a different light on a humanitarian crisis and make it more understandable to the average social media user. Advertisement It is interesting to contemplate whether there would have been such a strong reaction if the page was focused on beautiful refugee children or women. That one is very risky, as vultures and predators would hound and try to find these vulnerable figures. Women have been objectified enough, and I have written before about how photos of Syrian and Iraqi refugee women are shared on social media with announcements like: "Beautiful brides await you." Just terrible. Let us pause a bit and take a step back. While we don't like to admit it, we do this sort of thing in the media all the time. We focus our lens and writings on that one extra "attractive" or distinct-looking refugee child or woman - because, as shallow as it sounds, people do take more notice of someone attractive or distinctive-looking regardless of their plight and story. Here's one example: a photo of a blond, blue-eyed Syrian refugee child that got many likes and was making its rounds last year was accompanied by ignorant comments such as: "Oh! She doesn't even look Syrian. She looks European." What is coming out of the continuing crisis is that stories that trigger strong emotions get noticed and reshared. Advertisement There is great outrage, like in the case of ISIL terrorists forcing Yazidi sex slaves to take birth control so they can continue to rape them. When I got the chance to talk to Yazidi women who fled to Erbil, Iraq, they told me how they were treated "less than human" for their beliefs by Daesh (what ISIL is called in the Arab world) and how they not just lost their loved ones, but lost themselves, over and over again as they got beaten and raped. It is not enough to feel outrage and write emotional comments on social media and under articles on this. I wrote about a photo that triggered a lot of emotions, it was a photo of a child that thought a camera was a gun, and had actually put up her arms, bitten her lip and looked with fear at the camera. It is said that when you want to see the purest form of feelings, devoid of politics, expectations and social interference, look through the eyes of a child. So we see this photo and many others and feel pain for those in them. What can we do? Well, something active needs to be done - and there are projects out there that allow us all to help out refugees and the vulnerable. Besides the many great initiatives by the UN, there are several ones like War Child, Kafa (enough) in Lebanon and many more I have reported on, volunteered with, and seen their great impact. Every small bit helps. Then there are those stories that touch a chord with the public, as they can imagine themselves in the shoes of the refugees. Advertisement In this category is the case of Kunkush the cat, a beloved pet who was reunited with his Iraqi refugee family in Norway after he was lost on the Greek island of Lesbos. The family was fleeing ISIL militants in Mosul and took their pet with them. But along the journey the cat panicked and slipped away. Eventually, through social media and volunteers, the cat was brought to Norway and reunited with the family. I know I teared up along with the mother and her children when she held and kissed Kunkush and called him "hayati" (my life), a term of endearment. A refugee boy and his pet. More and more photos and videos are coming out capturing how refugees are clinging to their pets in refugee camps or taking them with them on their long journey to safer grounds. The refugees and migrants, like everyone, just want to live. They want a home, they want to love their pets, they want to feel, look and be human. They don't want to live up to some image of a refugee we have in our minds. They are survivors and want to move on, and we need to help them do that. People are evacuated from Brussels Airport, in Zaventem, on March 22, 2016. after at least 13 people have been killed by two explosions in the departure hall of Brussels Airport. / AFP / Belga / LAURIE DIEFFEMBACQ / Belgium OUT (Photo credit should read LAURIE DIEFFEMBACQ/AFP/Getty Images) The heinous act of multiple bombings across Brussels didn't come as a surprise. That it happened immediately after the capture of Saleh Abdeslam, the mastermind behind the Paris attacks, is unsettling. The Belgian authorities had a major security lapse after such a high-profile arrest that led to the carnage. The European Union -- embroiled in a battle for survival -- also shares the blame. Mishandling of the refugee crisis and over-reliance on the United States for solving the Syrian crisis gave way to a collective pessimism and heightened terror threats. All said, the EU can still emerge stronger and mitigate future threats. The approach calls for greater cohesion among member states. The EU crisis is intrinsically linked with the Syrian civil war. Europe was essentially left to its own devices by the U.S., and an aggressive Russian policy further compounded the problems. The first four years of the civil war were still a manageable headache for the Europeans -- more of a moral agony than physical stress. The sudden onslaught of refugees and rise of ISIS made it impossible to remain a distant observer. The EU has since been under a slow implosion of sorts, with member states outdoing each other in trying to deflect responsibilities. Advertisement Paris and now Brussels have made it impossible to stay indifferent. One approach calls for accelerating the breakup of the EU with stringent border controls and greater state sovereignty. It also involves the use of force, however disproportional to the original losses, to send a strong message to the perpetrators. On paper, the strategy appears to be the most rational. The bombing campaign after the Paris attacks also reflects this thinking among the decision makers. Still, the policy didn't help in eliminating ISIS or containing future threats. It only added to the refugee outflow from Syria, where people were already fleeing the regime and Russian carpet bombing campaign. The second approach involves the EU as the central decision-maker. It entails greater cooperation among member states, devising of a muscular foreign policy; and adopting a pragmatic approach to the refugee crisis and its catalyst. Although fraught with challenges, this appears to be the only way out for the EU. Borders can't be closed for long as Europe is a highly integrated region. Refugees can't be kicked out given the complexities involved. Threats can't be mitigated by a few bombing campaigns in Syria. The Paris bombings were not carried out by refugees in the first place. There could also be a homegrown element in the Brussels attacks. The ghettoization of Muslims in France and other European states has created ideal breeding grounds for extremism. Europe was largely silent as Bashar al-Assad and his Iranian proxies kept obliterating the Syrian population. The eventual rise of ISIS and its indefatigable propaganda influenced some who already felt marginalized in their place of birth. Still, the extremists are few and far between. The incessant hate campaign led by the National Front and other right-wing parties can actually strengthen the hardliners. A better approach will be to empower the local communities and provide educational and employment opportunities to those living in the "banlieues." This, along with effective community policing can help in mitigate future threats. On March 9, The Huffington Post posted an article by Soorah Hassan on the growing Islamophobia in the United States. The piece powerfully illustrates the types of bigotry American Muslims face, and analyzes the United States' effort to be a multicultural nation. While narrating her experiences as an international Muslim student, Hassan references House Resolution 569, introduced by Rep. Don Beyer (D-VA08), which condemns anti-Muslim bigotry and declares Muslims an integral part of our nation. However, she does not feel the resolution is needed, or that it goes far enough. Advertisement Hassan's first problem with the resolution is that it is mere language - devoid of any teeth or enforcement mechanisms. But a resolution is just that - a non-binding piece that is "used to express the sentiments of a single house" of Congress, and thus has no effect of law. But just because the resolution has no power of law, we should not and cannot dismiss the power of language. Firstly, the American Muslim community is in the crosshairs of bigots these days. As Hassan points out, and has experienced herself, the rhetoric is heated and offensive. Anti-Muslim hate crimes are at unprecedented levels. The last thing we need is silence. Language creates an environment where certain ideas can be expressed, and then acted upon. We have a problem with Donald Trump's words not only because they are offensive and false, but because they make anti-Muslim sentiment acceptable. And if anti-Muslim sentiment is acceptable, then it becomes a little easier to reject a mosque permit, a little easier to deny employment to someone based on their hijab, a little easier to vandalize a mosque unpunished. That is why what Rep. Beyer did is so impactful. In these trying times, being seen as nuanced or even friendly towards Islam can be a death-knell for a political career. Rep. Beyer is taking a courageous step by even acknowledging that anti-Muslim incidents occur, but he goes further by recognizing our community's contributions to our nation. Advertisement Of course, it's not "a good sign that a resolution aimed at protecting any specific ethnic, religious or racial group has any sort of perceived necessity" and that "we need to stop separating Muslims from the general populace in what should be this free, tolerant and open multiethnic country." However, the fact is that it is a necessity and that the first thing we can do to accept American Muslims into our society is by acknowledging the bigotry we face. As the number of refugees worldwide continues to increase, Western nations struggle to show off their true humanism and the Enlightenment in the face of massive movements of desperate people. Making matters worse, certain politicians and several news organizations and groups continue to make harsh and disparaging comments about refugees. This reproachful and ruthless propaganda hurts humanity and the roots of European culture in the Enlightenment. As a call to return to the eighteenth century European Enlightenment, l would like to share some points using my own experience of immigration and my background in two different cultures. I divide my concerns into two groups: theory and practice. Fundamental Concepts and Misunderstandings: 1)Missing time and space. Though there are some common themes between humanity and many animal species with regards to having a home, humanity is the only specie which makes history, based on an understanding of time, and thus creates civilization. Time and space shape the human mind and play a role in wishes, concepts, emotions and the will. A refugee not only leaves the hometown and the space to which he belonged, but also leaves time to which he is accustomed. I am not talking only about the transition from a traditional to a modern society, a change in calendar, working schedule, holidays and celebrations. I also refer to the huge change in self-consciousness which appears in language. For example, they used to introduce themselves in their own communities, answering who they are. Right now, they have to answer what they are doing. It's not simply a matter of an expression; rather it is a matter of entering a new world. S/he is a refuge because s/he experienced an extraordinary evolution. This gives them the opportunity not just to bear the previous traditions and culture, as most people taught, but a chance to celebrate new achievements; they can be freer because their idols are already broken down. Openness to new ideas, cultures, and achievements is at the heart of the European Enlightenment. Change in the concept of time was another element that led to the age of reason. Advertisement 2)There are only humans, no tools. Ernest Cassirer, the great historian of the Enlightenment attributed to this age this motto that humanity is the origin and the end of knowledge because 'the proper study of mankind is man'. The categorical imperative of Immanuel Kant was that we treat every human person as a subject or an end not as an object or a means to an end. This European spirit is lost in today's massive movements of desperate people. Why? Look, even humanitarians are spreading the news of this migration and they encourage others to act benevolently and to help the needy and the suffering. Humanitarian media highlight the child dead on the beach or the grieving mother. The refugees must be treated with dignity even if their particular circumstances are not heart breaking. Such images highlight the refugees' helplessness. This harms their integral dignity and is contrary to the United Nation's Refuge Convention and The Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Thus, refugees deserve to be treated as a person with an identical human nature rather than as a weak and lesser being. Their character, dignity and honor are forgotten. The worst case happens with several European immigrant policies; countries which need workers give the refugees a warmer welcome than those countries which have no need for additional workers. Apparently, humans are reduced to tools and detached from their own dignity and rights. Is it an enlightened approach which shaped modern Europe? Surely not. 3)Change is the foundation of advancement. In contrast to the Enlightenment's openness toward the "Other" and acknowledgment of cosmopolitanism, today the West fears that it is losing its nature. Today Europe reveals its lack of self-confidence in the face of the 'Other'. The United States has gone through this a number of times. As each new wave of immigrants came to America, those who were already living there began to worry. When the Catholic Irish came the predominately protestant English and German Americans feared their political culture, society, and lifestyle were at risk. This happened again when the Poles, Lithuanians, Ukrainians and others from central and eastern Europe came. On the West Coast, the arrival of Chinese immigrants, and the integration of large Spanish-speaking, Catholic communities in the formerly Mexican territories created the same fear and worry. Even the Puerto Ricans and the Italians famously described in West Side Story caused trouble for those already living in the States. Each of these groups changed and were changed by America. There is no reason why the Muslims and Christians fleeing the Syrian Civil War and those fleeing the gang-violence in Central America will not follow the same path. Protestant-Catholic relations have come a long way from the 16th century when some Lutherans thought Ottoman conquest to be better than Catholic domination. In the 20th century the United States was able to elect the Catholic Kennedy president. Americans today have a lack of knowledge and understanding of the political culture, philosophy, theology, culture, and family relations of the refugees just as they did of previous immigrants; but their fears proved unfounded. The Europeans can learn from this American experience. If they do they will find many of their fears to be unfounded. There has never existed a pure unadulterated culture. Advertisement 4)Reality deserves realism. The Enlightenment Philosophy replaced synthetic conceptualization with realistic analysis to teach humanity a new perspective on life. They changed from geo-centrism to helio-centrism, but they also moved from imaginary concepts to experimental facts. To our point, massive immigration is a given, a reality that cannot stop with dreams. Why not celebrate this opportunity, work with that and use these new forces to enrich human civilization. Mass communication media and social networking have made the globe like a close-knit village; the massive refugees embody the real changes before our physical life. New problems require new solutions. 5)Mutual responsibility. The current refugee crisis is a product of all humanity and requires responsibility of all. How? Sure, it immediately comes from political games and international policies, but nobody can forget the great financial gains from the sale of large numbers of small-arms and large weapon systems. Recently a report showed how the Saudis used of so many European-made weapons in Yemen. To be honest and to "be brave to think," the other motto of the Enlightenment, asks a greater attention to control the deaths caused by the sale of large numbers of weapons to both sides. People are not fleeing from political conflict; rather, this mass of refugees is more the product of using vast numbers of deadly weapons exported from Western countries. 6)Opportunities, not burdens. The refugees seem homeless and to be suffering. This causes them to be seen as a burden to Western people. It is wrong, because as long as they bring their sufferings, they carry also their potential and talent. Many of them are highly-educated and highly-skilled people who left their countries because of persecution and a lack of safety. They had a successful life in the past and can create new jobs, businesses, and opportunities in their host lands. This is also an enlightened approach which substituted the inner force with an exterior force in Newtonian Physics; it means if they there are in the position of moving toward progress, they can function as well! However, the fundamental values demonstrate their real validity in a time of crisis. Both Imam Ali ibn Abitalib and C.S. Lewis stated that you see the true nature of a person by their conduct during unexpected and challenging circumstances. In times of plenty all value systems function similarly. This is a time for the Enlightenment to illustrate clearly its respect of humanity; otherwise, it has not lived up to its nature in the modern West. Recommendations: I would like to end my paper with some practical points as follow. 1)Special aids: as I wrote earlier so many of these refugees are well skilled and professionals including physicians, professors, bloggers, business people, and the like. They only need a fair resettlement and few special aids to enrich their hosts. A professor can teach, a doctor can help other refugees' medically, a business can change markets with innovations, and an artist can inspire new ideas. Advertisement 2)The international policy needs to take seriously several particular strategies to remove the roots of violence. The production and export of offensive indiscriminate weapons or weapons of mass destruction must be banned or at least severely controlled in the context of civil war. The international powers must also fight against the political games which cost people their lives and dignity. For example, the last EU-Turkey deal explicitly considers the life and dignity of refugees to be a political issue. If such a deal was made between China and Russia, for example, would it still be welcomed by Europeans? 3)Change in the Public narrative. The media, political leaders, and other elites need to inspire the people to accept the refugees. The Enlightenment teaches the need to welcome the 'Other'. In accordance with the roots in the Enlightenment, they need to explain how the refugees are human persons who deserve dignity and respect. They need to show how the refugees can contribute positively to society. 4)The refugees will face the shock of dislocation. They will need help to avoid the moral pitfalls that come with such dislocation. Dislocation does not justify moral evil, it only increases the opportunities for such sins and crimes. It is suggested that the host countries try to help them reunite their families in order to prevent such problems. Silhouetted woman waves through airport window at plane For the past year and a half, my oldest child has been studying at a university in Amsterdam. He's majoring in physics and -- if all goes according to plan -- he should be earning his bachelor's degree in 2017. He comes home summers and over Christmas and I visit him there at least twice a year. So far, so good. But on the heels of this morning's news of terrorist attacks in Belgium, he said something that rocked me to my core: "It seems as though the bombings are getting closer." Only last November, terrorist attacks in Paris -- 316 miles from Amsterdam -- killed 129 people. One of those killed was a 23-year-old California State Long Beach student, Nohemi Gonzalez, who had gone to Paris for a semester of study at the Strate School of Design. Not only did her death horrify her classmates, but it also made many parents of study-abroad students wonder whether kids should still be taking college classes overseas. Advertisement Now it's Brussels -- 108 miles from Amsterdam -- that's under attack, with at least 34 people killed and many more injured today in blasts at the airport and a subway station. Only a few days ago, the suspected mastermind behind the Paris attacks was arrested. Upon hearing of the attack, I immediately messaged my son in Amsterdam on Facebook. Although he's alarmed -- and has commented that the attacks are indeed too close for comfort -- he's not going anywhere. He'll continue living his life and attending classes this week, just as he has been. He noted his certainty that his professors will discuss the issue today with students, just as they did in the days following the Paris attacks. But this latest incident has given me pause, and when friends ask me what I think about whether American students should continue studying abroad, I'm no longer sure exactly what to tell them. My husband and I raised our three kids in London, and lived there for seven years before moving to the States in 2000. I've long been a proponent of kids studying abroad, and even wrote an article a few months back about the advantages of getting a degree overseas. At the time, I asserted that the advantages to earning a degree abroad are many, but one of the main ones is the money saved by students and families. Many programs in Europe offer bachelor's degrees after only three years, and often at a fraction of the price charged by U.S. institutions. Advertisement Currently, more than 46,500 U.S. students are pursuing degrees overseas, roughly 84 percent of whom are enrolled in bachelor's or master's degree programs, according to the most recent data from the Institute of International Education. The United Kingdom is the most popular destination, followed by Canada, France and Germany. But on this particular day, as a parent of an undergrad studying in Holland, I'm not sure I can recommend going abroad with the same unabashed enthusiasm I might have only yesterday. Ever since the U.S. State Department issued a worldwide travel alert last year, I'm sure many other parents have felt the same. I still believe, for so many reasons, that studying overseas is a priceless experience, but I can't deny that I'm unnerved by what's happened. My gut tells me that we all just need to keep on living our lives -- study abroad students included. Immersing young people in different cultures is -- to me -- the best way to ensure they are prepared to thrive in an increasingly diverse world. I want all three of my kids to know people as people rather than to buy into any prevailing stereotypes. But yes, it's a dangerous world, and the best I can do today is tell my oldest to remain extra vigilant. When I spoke with Allan Goodman, president of the Institute of International Education, last year, I remember him telling me that students from other countries consistently ask him whether it's safe for them to study in the United States. And of course, attacks can happen anywhere -- in Boston, San Bernardino, Chattanooga. The list goes on and on. Even so, you'll have to forgive me if I hold my breath until the day in June when my oldest steps off the plane in Newark, safely home for the summer. Advertisement Earlier on Huff/Post50: Women speak to soldiers as they block the access to road close to Maalbeek metro station in Brussels on March 22, 2016 after a series of apparently coordinated explosions ripped through Brussels airport and a metro train, killing at least 14 people in the airport and 20 people in the metro in the latest attacks to target Europe.Security was tightened across the jittery continent and transport links paralysed after the bombings that Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel branded 'blind, violent and cowardly'. / AFP / PHILIPPE HUGUEN (Photo credit should read PHILIPPE HUGUEN/AFP/Getty Images) The latest horrible bombings in Brussels are a tragedy and a test. It is meant by the jihadists to enhance fear and bring about the election of a Trump and other right-wing forces throughout the world -- thus making it a worldwide religious war against radical Islam. If fear lets us fall into this trap we have nothing but repression and bloodshed ahead. The dystopian Trumpian world of walls and thugs knocking down doors in the middle of the night -- for the innocent as well as the suspects -- is what awaits us. Life is always fragile and humankind has always been an endangered species -- but we have survived by being smarter than the bad weather and the bad leaders who come every generation. It was so in our own Civil War, WW1 and WW2, and we have often lost our way in the name of security -- internment camps for the Japanese, alien and sedition acts, McCarthy vs freedom of thought, and, in Europe, the gulags of the Soviets, the camps of the Nazis, and all of it starts to the tune of terrorism; the list goes on. Advertisement Former Intel Chairman and CEO Andy Grove delivers the keynote speech at the Plug-In 2008 conference on plug-in hybrid vehicles on Tuesday, July 22, 2008, in San Jose, Calif. (AP Photo/Jeff Chiu) Andy Grove and I were just a year apart in college, but we didn't get to know each other until many years later, when I was the editor-in-chief of Business Week magazine and he was the CEO of Intel Corporation, the Silicon Valley colossus he had built. Of course, I knew his story. A penniless refugee from Communist Hungary who had survived the Nazi occupation as a child, Andy came to the U.S. in 1957, enrolling as a chemical engineering student at the City College of New York, which was tuition-free at the time. He graduated at the top of his class, earned a PhD from Berkeley, and helped launch Intel. In 1997 he was named Time's Man of the Year -- surely one of the great rags-to-riches stories in recent American history. Perhaps because we both were engineering graduates of City College, we hit it off. He was tough and confrontational, but also witty. He was opinionated but respected good journalism. And he always ran scared. A later book he wrote was aptly called Only The Paranoid Survive, which stemmed from one of his favorite aphorisms: " Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive." Andy told the story of his own survival in his poignant 2001 memoir, Swimming Across. Advertisement Over the years, I always went to see him when I was in California, and we shared lunches and dinners in New York. We talked about technology, journalism, education, and healthcare issues, including his treatment for prostate cancer, which he had written about. He admired Business Week's technology coverage and often incorporated material from our stories into his speeches. That, of course, didn't stop him from complaining when he didn't like something we wrote. In one of our chats, around the year 2000, I casually suggested that he ought to make a major donation to City College to name the engineering school in his honor. After all, I said, the College played a major role in his success. Besides, it was the right thing to do. I knew immediately I had crossed the line. I was always careful to keep my distance from people we wrote about, and I never had asked anyone for anything. Andy didn't much like the idea anyway, waving me off in his gruff style with a comment about not wanting to put his name on some damn building. Still, I decided to recuse myself from editing any major stories thereafter on Intel. In 2004, when I was ready to announce that I was leaving Business Week to start a new graduate school of journalism at the City University of New York and Andy was about to retire as Chairman of Intel, I broached the subject again. He still said no, but he seemed more receptive, adding that Greg Williams, then president of City College, had sent him a copy of his book, a memoir about his boyhood growing up thinking he was white, only to find out he had an African-American father. Greg and I knew each other, and I mentioned that Andy had liked his book and that the two of us had conversations about the engineering school. I didn't think much more about it, until about a year later, when I ran into Greg Williams. He told me that Andy had just met the young man who had won the Intel Science Prize, which was given annually to a high school student who had undertaken a major science project. The prestigious prize came with a generous college scholarship, and it was obvious that the winner, David Bauer, could have gone to any college in the country. But largely because his mentor on the project was a City College professor, David decided to attend CCNY. Andy was so moved by David's story, rekindling his own experience 45 years earlier, that he told Greg he would donate $25 million to City College, which would name the engineering school in his honor: the Grove School of Engineering. I was stunned. Advertisement I e-mailed Andy my congratulations, and a day later, October 26, 2005, came an e-mail reply, which said in part: "...you were an important factor in strengthening the bridge between me and CCNY, and specifically getting me to pay attention to Greg. So you should take personal pleasure from the outcome." The gift was officially announced the next day. And so, months later, I sat in the Great Hall at City College for the naming ceremony. Reluctant mensch that he was, Andy had quietly concluded that, yes, it was the right thing to do. Three years later, David Bauer graduated from CCNY with honors in chemical engineering and won a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford. When Microsoft showed HoloLens at TED in Vancouver, its presentation was dramatic and impressive. I wasn't sure why, but the TED crowd of techno early adopters and thought leaders seemed less than impressed. The augmented reality glasses promised to place holograms on top of the real world. photo: Steven Rosenbaum / @Waaywire But after the demo, the TED Host Helen Walters asked Alex Kipman about the criticism that HoloLen's field of vision was narrow and limited. Kipman didn't answer the question, and you could feel the room shift uncomfortably. So, when I was invited to try the HoloLens for myself, I jumped at the chance. Augmented Reality is a new, red-hot field - and Microsoft has the resources and the intellectual firepower to do something great - at least that's what I thought. Advertisement I arrived on time at the Microsoft store on 5th Avenue in Manhattan. Once inside, I was directed to the 4th floor. Immediately, I was surprised. The temporary demo space wasn't glamorous, or hip or crisply designed. Maybe all the resources went into the hardware and the demos - but it felt more like office cubicles than a high-tech product launch. I was shown a demo on how to put on HoloLens, and the three ways you could communicate with the device. Eye gaze, touch, and voice - the video presentation explained. I could look to move the 'pointer' within the 3d space, I could use my finger to 'click' when directed, and I could answer questions with voice. Ok, I can do that. Then I was asked if I knew my IPD, which it was explained, my optometrists would have told me. Inter-pupillary distance (IPD) is the distance between the eyes. I did not - do you? In any case, they measured my IPD and I was given a card with the number on it. Mine is 63. photo: Steven Rosenbaum / @Waaywire I did three different HoloLens demos. The first was 3D design, where I manipulated a 3D sign, changed its colors, and then was able to see the final result as a 3D print out. Inside the HoloLens - the experience doesn't feel immersive, but rather flat. Unlike my experience with the Meta2 glasses that I'd written about earlier, the HoloLens experience feels more like seeing through a letterbox video monitor. The holograms seem like they're pasted over the real world than as an extension of it. And while I was told I could manipulate the holograms with my hands, the only way I used my hands was with a stiff right pointer finger and a rather determined clicking motion. More often than not, the HoloLens didn't recognize my gestures - and it took try after try to 'click' on the imaginary image. The second demo was called storytelling, but really it was augmented reality advertising. I was able to experience a high-end wristwatch, and explore it - but again the experience was cramped and formal. Not fluid and exciting as it was in the Meta2 glasses. Advertisement Finally - the last demo was gaming. I was attacked by evil robots - and using a device they gave me to hold in my right hand - I clicked to fire lasers at them. This was fun - and having them come from around the room was exciting. I'm not sure how a true gamer would feel about the HoloLens experience, but I suspect it looks a little like the first generation of pong does compared to where video games are now. Which is to say - simplistic, flat, and frankly not really that much of the holographic experience that I was expecting. The cropped video frame made it hard to forget that the projections were just that. The lack of a wide field of view damaged the HoloLens' ability to create the illusion that holograms are "real" objects. The field of view makes the edges of the illusion noticeable, even distracting. So, no surprise then that Microsoft didn't let me photograph or record any of the demo space or the experience itself. And while the HoloLens is on display on the floor of the Microsoft store, it's in a sealed plexiglass cube - to be seen but not touched. In the past month, India was thrown into quite an unforeseen turmoil over nationalism; or rather a possible lack of it. Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, served as base for a series of rallies after the execution of a convict (convicted on charges of attack on the Indian Parliament, 2001). The protesters (or dissenters?) at the rally were said to have voiced anti national slogans in addition to their concerns on the execution. Video aired on a popular news show indicated pro-Pakistan, pro-separatist movement slogans being shouted. The video was later proven to be doctored and witness accounts emerged claiming nothing "anti-national" happened at the rallies, but it was too late for the student union president and his companions. They were jailed, beaten (by a group of lawyers!), and subsequently charged with sedition. This caused weeks of unrest, protests around the country and social media, support from national and international universities extended to the JNU community, and a sudden burst of posts on social media on the sacrifices of the Indian soldiers who protect our borders! Advertisement The student union president (Kanhaiya Kumar) has since then been released on bail and is now quite a hero owing to his passionate yet restrained speech following his release. But the nation hasn't calmed down. Social media newsfeeds are still crowded with posts of this nature: 'why is Kanhaiya made to be a hero, when soldiers die unsung?' and the news channels are continuing to report headlines on the subject with expert testimonies and debates every day on what is nationalist vs. what is separatist. Following on from the US, the louder rhetoric coming through didn't seem very different to me from what I have been hearing here. 'Let's make this nation great again - by building walls around - by throwing out the ones we don't think belong - and punching the ones who disagree'. Is there really a rise of ultra-nationalism simultaneously all over the world? Or is it that nationalism tantamount to fascism is starting to stick out like sore thumbs to the conscience of the modern post- colonial world? What is the relevance of such nationalism today? What it prevents? What it fosters? What are my own feelings towards my country of origin and my country of residence? Am I a national? An anti-national? Or a multi-national (if corporations can be - why not individuals)? Advertisement Indian soldiers - like soldiers of almost every nation - are rightfully hailed as heroes for their service and sacrifice. But in this case, are they being tacitly used as a facade to divert attention from the unlawful arrests and oppression of a student community? For any nation, protecting her sovereignty is an easy topic to evoke emotions. It incites strong feelings based on fear of possible loss. And what better way to do so than to bring the martyrs forward? This is what I suspect is being done here. JNU students didn't protest against the Indian army - nor is India currently in an active war. Yes, there were and are ongoing discussions on the history of modern India (I tried to review most you tube videos, news clippings and posts available on the topic before writing this piece). Discussion on Indian states - how they came to be a part of modern India and if the grievances are valid - are being reacted to as a threat to India. But to discuss, debate, be aware and acknowledge doesn't demonstrate intent of disruption of borders. India has had separatist movements and uprisings throughout her modern history. But how can this be solved by denying or re-defining history and silencing dissenting voices? There needs to be instead efforts of assimilation and integration of those who feel oppressed and left out from mainstream India. They can't be bullied into being champions for India: they need to be heard and convinced through action that they matter. Quoting Kanhaiya Kumar: provide 'freedom in India' not 'freedom from India'. Nationalism is being touted as defending borders and preserving a nation's sovereignty against outside enemies (real or perceived) only. But nationalism should (and more importantly) be commitment to building a nation from within - striving to be a society fostering equality, civility, lawfulness and human rights. Nationalism should be upholding and furthering of a nation's values. Advertisement We are at a risk of diverting away from the second in our efforts to perform heavily on the first all over the world. Whether it is a front runner here shouting to build a wall, attacking certain communities and threatening to deport an unprecedented number of people in front of a cheering crowd, or nations willing close their doors on persecuted children, or nationals taking to social media to justify unlawful arrests as border-keeping, it is symptomatic of a fascist and fearful mindset - one that touts national interest over human interests. What is the point of protecting borders if free, just, stable, humanitarian and lawful state is not pursued within the borders? A nation's cogency is defined by the quality of life and opportunities availble to its residents and its stance and policies. Not by its size and borders. What should nationality mean to Indians? Or to inhabitants of any other nation really? What should it mean to a global citizen? What should it mean to us as a human race? - I am not attempting to answer this question as an absolute, but I can present a personal example to try and elaborate my thoughts on the same further. One of my posts on why I would prefer to raise my daughter in the US in spite of always having a sense of belonging to India, drew some criticism from patriots in both countries. Indians criticizing my stance called me anti-national for bringing up and publicizing shortcomings in the field of women's safety in front of the world and therefore choosing to vindicate my nation. Americans criticized me for longing for India and pointing out things I don't like here. Advertisement I can't understand how stating the problems I know from personal experience plague the nation proved that I am against my nation - aka - anti-national. I believe only if you love deeply you can care enough to discuss shortcomings. So I felt the concern was more because of the forum being international and the possible negative perception that could result in about India. This 'nationalism', in my opinion, is of concern. Not only does blind national pride cause citizens to live in denial instead of seeking improvement, if you choose to not have free media and international insight into issues of significance, because you would rather not be embarrassed, you are not doing your state a favor. You are paving the way for any government or entity in power to be oppressive and fascist if they choose to be. You are protecting the borders, but not seeking improvement within. I would care to have "freedom in India" to raise my head high, have the assurance of protection from law and fair prosecution if accused of wrong doing. I would be quite upset if in spite of having secured borders, I could be beaten up by a mob before I was proven guilty and my assailants could be not prosecuted. And why I say 'I' in this? Because what happened to Kanhaiya and the students could happen to anyone dissenting if we allow this to be excused in lieu of protecting national interest. The other themed criticism to my piece - 'if I felt I belonged more in India, and am not in complete love and awe of the US way of life, I should not be here' - surprised me more than the above. Do we really believe that US is 'made great' by people choosing to immigrate here leaving behind and forsaking all sense of belonging to their respective countries of origin? Or can be 'made great' by shutting off/throwing out people? Do we think immigrants/refugees/any-one choosing to come permanently to or reside temporarily in another country turn blind to anything that is different/questionable here? Or do we want their gratefulness to suppress their rights to voice concern? Is that what assimilation is? Advertisement I believe America is what it is today because of people who emigrate here choose to remember and compare. Because they strive to improve what they don't like here, and fight to preserve what is better. Every nation has struggles and shortcomings, and just like I said above for India, to love and care means to be sensitive to these so that we can work and strive for improvement. And sensitivity is enhanced by perspective: from being able to compare. That brings me to sum up the point. Nationalism is overrated. It, like religion in the hands of zealots, is made into this all or nothing space where you are expected to be a blind devotee. It makes us consider long term possibilities before immediate humanitarian needs. It causes us to doubt the right steps at the first signs of struggle - wondering if we made a mistake by opening the door. It fosters fear and mistrust. Being national should not be antonym to being rational. It shouldn't make us forget, while we revere the soldiers, the rights and values they are fighting to protect. What makes sense instead and is relevant for today is to be pro human. Borders and sovereignty are practical necessities, but to question and recognize cracks within is not separatist. Wanting to fix such cracks when they threaten human rights whether or not they are within the borders we choose to reside in, or were born into, is human. In no way can being pro one nation should exclude being pro any other, or foster assumptions that the proponent is automatically anti another. I am an Indian citizen and US permanent resident. Born into one, assimilating into another, belonging and contributing to both. I feel a deep belonging to Bangladesh too, where my ancestors come from, although I have never been there. I do not need to take sides in favoring the good and criticizing the bad for either of these. Neither do students in JNU vocalizing concerns of other nations or protestors here vocalizing support for immigrants from another country. The culture of demonstrating 'love' by practicing 'hate' doesn't make sense in any other context - it needs to stop here too. 'Anti-National' should apply only when there is active engagement in actions or thoughts causing harm to or intending to cause harm to a nation. Everything else is being a concerned and aware human. Advertisement With U.S.-Cuba diplomatic relations officially restored, albeit far from ideal, how does this curveball impact China-Cuba relations? China's Ministry of Foreign Affairs called thawing of U.S.-Cuba relations "a good thing," but made clear "China and Cuba have long enjoyed friendly and mutually beneficial cooperation. We will deepen our relations with Cuba, and this does not target nor affect any third party." Nonetheless, China-Cuba relations have certainly strengthened since Chinese President Xi Jinping assumed office in 2013. Overall, Chinese trade with Latin America reached $261.6 billion in 2013 and bilateral trade between Beijing and Havana reached nearly $1.6 billion during the first three quarters of 2015, the Chinese Embassy in Havana said, according to Chinese state-run media. Advertisement When Mr. Xi officially visited the communist country at end of a four-country tour in July 2014, he signed 29 bilateral agreements on a multitude of areas, including finance, agriculture, industry, telecommunications, oil, and energy. "China cherishes the traditional friendship between the two nations. No matter how the international situation changes, it will be a set policy of China to develop a long-term friendship with Cuba," Mr. Xi stated during his 2014 Cuban visit. Recent developments might test Beijing's "traditional friendship." Hotel giant Marriott and Chinese insurance company Anbang were caught in a more than $14 billion bidding war for Starwood hotels, which recently became the first U.S. hotel chain to operate in the Cuban market. Marriott tentatively won the deal when it proposed a $14.41 billion bid mere days after Anbang offered its bid. Anbang or another firm has until April 8th to propose a counteroffer. This news comes on the back of a 2010 agreement by Chinese and Cuban investors to construct a massive $117-million hotel in Havana. Advertisement Aside from infrastructure projects, telecommunications and energy are major areas of joint cooperation. But it remains unclear whether Chinese telecommunication giants like Huawei will strengthen its grip on the Cuban market like it has in other countries. Beijing will certainly meet Washington eye-to-eye on the energy reserves located in the Gulf of Mexico, an area of extreme interest to all parties, and one which Beijing might have an advantage. The Center for Integrity Wisdom held its annual board meeting this week, by invitation only. It is a good bet that leading some of the sessions was the Center's master spiritual teacher, Marc Gafni. Gafni, 55, has created a following in post-modern spirituality, called the Unique Self, where he offers the wisdom of many faiths and philosophies in order for each person to access their unique self. But he has also created a following of a different sort: Alleged sexual abuse victims by the tens, over three decades' worth, from different ends of the globe, who want to see justice done. Gafni, also known as Mordechai Gafni, help found the California-based CIW, and continues to garner support for himself and the organization from the likes of John Mackey, CEO of Whole Foods Market, and media personality Arianna Huffington. Advertisement The alleged victims, who live in the US and Israel, seem to have two common denominators: They are female and have spoken up after the statute of limitations expired on their individual cases against Gafni. Some allege abuse when they were as young as 13. Their story reappears in the media every few years, usually following a story about a new enterprise of Gafni's or a new alleged victim speaking out. Some stories seem to attest to his brilliance and charisma, and others to his ability to defy justice and continue life with a new alibi. And just as quickly as the stories appear, and garner an endless stream of responses, they die fast. When Gafni's story resurfaced most recently last Christmas in the New York Times, it was unclear if it was for the former or latter reasons. Though the article did demonstrate that-- well into the new millennium and despite the advances Western culture has made on the subject of sexual abuse--there still exists a great imbalance as the word of alleged victims of sexual abuse continues to be challenged, and the alleged perpetrators continue living their lives with impunity. The question that arises when covering an allegedly persistent sexual abuse crime like this one is: Do continued stories- where it appears as one man's or woman's word against the other- then take the advancements of the sexual abuse movement back to the Bronze Age, some twenty five years ago in the early 1990s, when former Miss America Marilyn Van Derbur's incest story was first broken by the media to the American public? When Van Derbur Atler, known today as the Mother Theresa to sexual abuse survivors, was the first celebrity figure to go public with her story of incest in Colorado in 1991, most of the local and national media was compassionate toward her story. She was 53 years old and told of her childhood of being pried open many nights by her powerful father. But there was one famous Rocky Mountain News columnist Gene Amole-who doubted her story. Advertisement "Assassination," Amole wrote of Marilyn's revelation of her father, the socialite, philanthropist, and millionaire. "What this really boils down to is one person's word against another's-her word, against her father, who is dead and cannot respond." What the Time's article demonstrates- years after Amole's skepticism- is that even though today we have hundreds of survivors networks, endless literature and studies on the subject, camps and schools with sexual abuse protocols, guidelines for teachers and students, guidelines for male obstetricians and gynecologists, and many laws protecting victims, the social doubt toward an alleged predator still persists. Whereas in the past, support for a sexual abuse victim who had no legal recourse was virtually non existent, today the public is often split between supporters and detractors of the alleged predator. Though for this story, the rage seemed to fill endless social mediums with statements such as those from Gafni's third ex-wife's anonymous article in The Times of Israel, "How can it be that there is zero condemnation in this spineless article," she writes. "Just quotes of excuse from his high-powered supporters. ..the last word given to the abuser." The media response continued so ferociously against Gafni, that, in fact, the New York Times' author himself responded to his own story in Tablet, where he felt compelled to explain why he initially wrote the piece. The resurgence of the Gafni story highlights the question: what do we do about believing victims if the predators remain alleged forever? How far do we take alleged victims' pleas for action against an alleged predator where a legal option no longer exists? At the heart of the question is still another question: If we cannot believe an adult who names her predator years later when she has no legal recourse, then how will we ever believe the child who speaks up, who could potentially prosecute within the limited time frame? Advertisement (I use female victims as the example based on data from the White House's 2014 report The White House Council on Women and Girls, which found that the majority of victims are girls and women.) I write about the court of public opinion not because I do not believe in the court of law or think that sexual crimes should not be prosecuted in a court of law, but because of the unique, traumatic nature of sexual abuse, where the court of public opinion often matters more than the legal courts. Sexual abuse victims- more often than not-still do not disclose of their crime because of shame and fear. Sara Kabakov, the woman who alleges she was molested repeatedly in her childhood home by Gafni when she was 13, corroborates the impossible situation a sexual abuse victim often faces in the Forward: "these children will grow up, and it may take years before they figure out how to speak the unspeakable, until they have the strength and courage to overcome the pressure to be silent. And by then, their ability to seek legal recourse may have expired." Is it then one person's word against the other, just as Amole had assessed it three decades ago? Or is it possible to find a way to honor alleged victims and our legal system? This ethical dilemma goes to the fundamental issues of government and justice that the founding fathers attempted to ameliorate when setting up the U.S. government: Every American is protected by the law. Nonetheless even with a legal and political system in place, the public's impulse can still be reduced to that Puritanical, social ethos of Plymouth: guilty until proven innocent. Advertisement In fact, Gafni uses this logic for himself, stating in the article how he remains a victim of "pseudo feminist witch-hunt," a term coined by attorney Alan Dershowitz, who is fighting his own sexual allegations made against him by his client's accuser. Which then, in this case, is the truth that the court of public opinion is left to believe: Gafni, or any alleged predator, as victim of public media witch hunts or Gafni as predator, enjoying the powerful and protective position of a male-dominated society, and in effect manipulating the long-standing misogynistic narrative to his benefit? In the past it was always the female victim who was guilty until proven innocent, stripped of her virginity and integrity. Three hundred some years after the Puritans settled the East Coast, is that still the case? Are we just swinging the pendulum in the opposite direction? If there is no trial by which to verify the truth can the court of public opinion, through our free press, become the space where we treat the social scourge of sexual abuse? Or are we behaving irresponsibly and unethically, reducing ourselves to a lynching mob in our attempt to uphold safety and democracy? And if the latter is the case, then how do we as a society address the fact that there is a grave crime that continues to plague almost 25 % of women that is not being resolved. (One in five women and 1 in 71 men are raped annually in the US. One in four girls and one in six boys are assaulted annually, the National Sexual Violence Resource Center reports.) Additionally, if the public is the judge and does believe the female victim/s, then does that same public ever leave room for the perpetrator-if his record creates a consensus to deem him so-to come clean, to return to society? Does the all-powerful public jury allow a perpetrator to return to society on a social level, to be accepted, to be forgiven? A friend told me over dinner recently about a property purchase he tried to make in Mendoza, Argentina. He likes the city, but he travels a lot and has property investments in many other countries. He didn't really need an apartment in Mendoza and owning one would further complicate an already complicated life. On the other hand, my friend thought that having an apartment in Mendoza would give him more reason to return more often to Argentina. The negotiation for the apartment, my friend told me, went something like this: He offered 85% of the asking price. The seller countered with the full asking price. My friend then offered about 92% of the asking price. The seller countered with the full asking price. After some deep soul searching and because he really liked the apartment and really wanted an excuse to spend more time in Argentina, my friend finally went back to the seller a third time and offered his full asking price. The seller countered with 110% of the asking price. Advertisement That may seem crazy, but it's not uncommon. It's happened to me and my husband several times in different countries. Once when looking at some land in Panama, I sat down with the owners and made an offer based on the asking price quoted to me by their real estate agent. They immediately declined the offer and said the new asking price was 40% more than the original asking price. We left that meeting further apart than when we started. After running some numbers, I made another offer that was less than the original asking price but more than my original offer. They declined. No counteroffer, just a simple "no," and the meeting ended. A couple of weeks after that meeting, the sellers called my real estate agent asking when they could expect a new offer from me. I took that as a sign that they were finally interested in negotiating, so I returned to the table with yet another offer, higher but still below the original asking price. At that meeting, they gave yet another no without countering and suggested that they were going to raise the asking price to an amount that was double their original asking price. I explained that we were never going to pay their original asking price let alone more and that that day's offer was my final offer. We walked away again without making a deal. Advertisement For weeks, maybe months to follow, the sellers called my real estate agent asking when we were going to make our next offer. The real estate agent tried to explain that we were done. There would be no more offers. Eventually, the sellers stopped calling. That property remained listed at double the asking price I'd initially responded to for more than a year without selling. The sellers eventually increased the price again, this time to triple the original asking price. Huh? The logic these owners applied is one I've encountered often. It goes like this: "My property hasn't sold since I listed it more than a year ago, but meanwhile property values in my area continue to increase. My property must be worth more, so I'll increase the price." Generally, that logic doesn't fly. A property that is overpriced to begin with isn't going to gain more traction if you increase the price. Still, many people whose only asset is a piece of land can't bear the thought of selling too cheaply so they end up not selling at all because they don't really understand their own market. I knew better after the first conversation with this seller than to continue negotiations. When a seller increases his price when you show interest, the best thing to do is walk away. Advertisement Of course, real estate prices do go up... just not, normally, during negotiations. Developers increase prices over time as infrastructure is installed and progress is made. You can't expect to inquire about a project today and pay today's prices when you come back to the developer in a year or two. One prospective buyer at a project in Nicaragua that my husband managed years ago had received the original email detailing launch pricing, which included beachfront lots for US$25,000. He didn't act, but he followed the project over the next several years, eventually writing in again to ask about current prices. When he saw that all the beachfront lots were gone and ocean-view lots were selling for US$75,000, his response was, "Well, it's too late for me with this project." He couldn't bear the thought of paying more when he knew what the original pricing had been. That perspective kept that investor from making money a second time. As with any investment, you can't judge the upside potential of a piece of real estate based on what that property sold for a couple of years ago. You have to analyze current prices in the current market and project appreciation from the current point, not from some past point. If the investment makes sense at current prices, then make it. The investment's history isn't relevant. In the case of the Nicaragua beachfront lot, the investor didn't buy when he first heard about the project because he determined there was too much risk. The project had just gotten under way, and no infrastructure had yet been installed. By the time the guy made his second inquiry, infrastructure was in place, and the project risk had been reduced significantly. At this point, though, all the investor could think about were the profits he'd missed out on. He seemed to have forgotten all about the early risk he had avoided. Had he invested the second time he inquired about prices, he still would have made money, as prices continued to go up for the next couple of years as the developer made further progress. The potential rate of annualized appreciation was lower, but so was the level of risk. Bottom line, though, the project still had upside potential that this investor missed out on a second time. Advertisement by George Rosenfeld Last month, over 700 delegates from 72 countries convened in New York for the UN Youth Assembly. The focus was on young people's role in implementing the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the UN's long-term plan for tackling such global issues as poverty, inequality and climate change. Despite inevitably varied backgrounds, delegates were united in their unanimous appreciation of the importance of the SDGs and the role of youth in their achievement. The two-day conference was a great success, with renowned speakers and engaging delegates all keen to share their experiences and passions. But on returning from the Youth Assembly, I would like to remark upon three observations which I believe must be addressed in order to accelerate the progress which our planet requires. 1. Education is the first step onto the ladder of engagement In the past, the phrase 'youth engagement' could often have seemed oxymoronic. No longer. More and more, people are starting to realise that it makes sense for us to have a say in the world which we will inherit. The problem, however, is that young people's interest in issues on such a vast scale is often formed too late. Indeed, while anyone between 16 (my age) and 28 was invited to apply for the Youth Assembly, very few of the attendees were still at school. Advertisement I think that part of this, especially in more developed countries where extreme poverty isn't so visible an issue, is down to the education system. So often, as is the case in England, children are passed through primary school with a minimal (if any) focus on poverty. We are taught that water is H2O before learning that over 600 million people don't have access to it. We are well-versed in Shakespeare before learning that over 700 million people can't read. Even before we go to secondary school, we have been educated based on a distorted view of modern priorities. To create a generation of teenagers aspiring to fix the world's problems, education must be the first thing we look at. 2. A bigger picture greater than the sum of its individual parts In the run-up to the finalising of the SDGs, everyone wanted to get a word in. It's understandable - everyone had their own 'favourite issue' and wanted to see it emphasised strongly in this vital document. In many ways, this was a very healthy state of affairs - with people discussing all these issues, awareness was spread for each of them. But now the goals have been decided, this attitude must change, lest we start pitting global problems against each other. At the Youth Assembly, it was unsurprising that every delegate, including me, was particularly passionate about one or two of the goals. Indeed, it is this issue-specific focus from which an overall desire for global improvement stems. It is undeniable, however, that there is no single goal which isn't implicitly linked to another. I agreed entirely with Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon, when he said "The SDGs are an indivisible tapestry of priorities for collective action." By way of an example, Goal 6 (water and sanitation) is closely connected with goals on poverty, hunger, health, education, gender equality, good jobs, wealth inequality and sustainable cities. Need I go on? The point is that whilst individual goals provide a focus to inspire and engage people, such a narrow viewpoint risks bypassing the inherent interdependence of the SDGs, thereby potentially jeopardising their ultimate success. Advertisement 3. Rich countries must roll their sleeves up My final observation was that at the Youth Assembly, there was a shocking underrepresentation of Europeans. Admittedly, I didn't have a chance to speak to everyone, but I met more delegates from Afghanistan than the whole of Europe. Whilst this clearly may have been an isolated example, it exposes a broader pattern - people from richer countries tend to 'take action' less. It only takes a brief glance at history to see that those who have experienced greater hardship have had a greater influence - take Mandela, Malala and Gandhi as examples. This long-standing trend will be highlighted now more than ever if we fail to address the imbalance. The SDGs' prequel (Millennium Development Goals) placed a higher emphasis on the main role of rich countries being to fund the changes, whereas the SDGs require a far more integrated approach, with all countries playing an active role in the physical implementation of these changes. For generations, anti-internationalists have been arguing that rich countries support the poorer ones too much, saying that 'charity starts at home.' But the time has come when we can no longer fight 'each for their own'. Technology has shrunken the planet down to the size of a smartphone, and just in time too. We have reached crossroads in the future of our civilisation - as the UN Envoy on Youth said: "We are the first generation which can end extreme poverty and the last which can end climate change." The time to act is now and we need to work together. If charity ever did start at home, it's time to step outside the front door. by Veranika Lukashevich On September 25th 2015 top world leaders gathered to adopt a set of 17 highly ambitious Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), which are aimed to be achieved in the course of the next 15 years. Growing from the success and the failures of the Millennium Development Goals, the SDGs are thoroughly more inclusive, reassuring that no one is left behind. The implementation of the SDGs heavily relies on youth, which makes us the agents of change. There are 1.8 billion young people in the world today - a fact, that should automatically grant youth with a much more crucial role in the decision-making process of the world issues. While the SDGs are not legally binding, youth's participation and contribution to the performance of the goals solely rely on their motivation. Looking at the 2030-plan, one cannot miss the 5th SDG on the subject of gender equality. In 2016 gender inequality still profoundly exists in various modes and needs to be brought to our fullest attention. Gender discrimination creates disadvantages for women, which subsequently makes them feel and be inferior. Girls from all countries in the world experience some form of injustice in their workplace, public or private life, which largely stems from deeply anchored stereotypes and rigid traditional worldviews. The most common form of violence experienced by a woman is by her intimate partner. How can we achieve gender equality in all spheres of our lives, when the closest partner standing to a woman, feels free to degrade her value? There is an urgent need to comprehend that gender equality is not always seen on the surface. It is subliminal and deeply embedded in the mindsets of men and women. We need to start at the root of the matter and reconstruct our attitudes, inflicting that women's rights are human rights. Change can only be initiated, if we are willing to alter our attitudes that go hand in hand with the progress that we deserve. As Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, the executive director of UN Women has stated, finding change also "includes redefining our deeply ingrained perceptions of masculinity" . Advertisement At this years' Winter Youth Assembly at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, one of the speakers Mohammed Naeem, who is a delegate at the "Man Up" campaign, striving to achieve gender equality, has mentioned something that has stuck with me. He stated that men are only ready to stand up for women if they "appreciate the feminine and the masculine sides of themselves". We all are more similar and equal than we think. Additionally, I am convinced that gender equality is closely intertwined with quality education, which represents the 4th Goal on the list. Education should not be considered as privilege, but be given as equal opportunity for all. Quality education enables young adults to participate in dialogues of various topical backgrounds; it encourages their minds to thrive, and question stereotypes and moral judgments. Young people all over the planet are working hard to achieve gender equality and are generally engaging in the implementation of the SDGs. As one the world's biggest student organizations, AIESEC (who I was lucky to be a part of) is one of them. It directs the attention of young leaders to the issues of today. With the launch of YouthSpeak, a global youth movement, young people are encouraged to voice their opinions on how they envision the world in 2030 and take action. Our efforts and engagements will build the framework for future generations that will continue the work towards a socially inclusive and secure future. YouthSpeak is set out to transform the workplace, entrepreneurship, and address the issues of education. Advertisement In conclusion, I would like to mention the necessity of communication. I understand communication not only as a multifaceted transcultural phenomenon, but also as the necessary tool to find reliable solutions for global challenges. It is important for young people to engage into conversations with their peers as well as global leaders in order to productively find ways to eliminate the world's biggest issues. It is time we understood how spoiled we are, with the digital resources being available and simplifying the dialogue among people. We are ready for change and all we need is to be aware of the power of our influence, use it intelligently and help change the world for better. As Monique Coleman said at this year's Winter Youth Assembly on February 18th: "We are the heartbeat" of change. As one of the delegates of the Winter Youth Assembly, I feel privileged and honored to be one of the people to stand up for change and the world that we deserve. Veranika Lukashevich is a postgrad student of Translation Studies, AIESEC member and journalist from Vienna, Austria. The ability to access and use financial services is critical to managing day-to-day life, weathering unexpected events, and capturing opportunities. Yet, some 46 percent of working-age adults in developing countries remain excluded from the formal financial system. That doesn't mean they don't use finance. It means they use the age-old informal mechanisms such as the moneylender, the pawnbroker, or the rotating savings club that can be unreliable and very expensive. In developed countries, working families are more likely to be under- or badly served rather than outright excluded. In the US, for example, every year some 25 million households use alternative services such as payday lenders or check cashers. And research suggests that more than half of American households are not able to reach financial health goals, such as saving $2,000 to make up for an income loss in case of an emergency. Technology-enabled, 21st century insights and business models can make a huge dent both towards financial inclusion in developing and household financial health in developed countries. Advertisement Imagine a world where your financial life is aggregated by a trusted party and all information is neatly summarized in a smartphone app; where your cash flows are optimized to avoid penalties or late fees, and built-in credit is available should there be a temporary need to manage a bigger expense; where intelligent algorithms based on Nobel Prize-winning insights help you save for retirement or a rainy day and make you pause before indulging in an ill-timed impulse purchase. Such a world could reach far more people with a far superior value proposition at far lower costs. While nobody has pulled it all together yet, the key building blocks exist around the globe to capture this opportunity: User-centric, individualized, technology-enabled retail financial services that create long-term, trust-based customer relationships and help people improve their lives. At the foundational level, some 950 million people in India have gotten unique, biometric IDs using iris scans and fingerprints under the government's Aadhaar Program. The Indian Banking and Securities regulators are now allowing use of Aadhaar-based identification for the set up of new bank and investment accounts. This makes account opening convenient, instantaneous, and coupled with digital contracts, crushes costs by an estimated 75 percent relative to the previous, signature on paper-way. Instantaneous connectivity dramatically accelerates reach. In Kenya, the largely unknown and small Commercial Bank of Africa (CBA) partnered with the dominant mobile telephone provider, Safaricom, and its leading mobile money service, M-Pesa. Because of the easy digital connection, M-Pesa users could become instant savings account holders, and and within 24 months CBA became one of the largest retail banks in the country based on the number of accounts. Advertisement Digital bank-to-bank account connections make payments cheap and fast. The National Payments Corporation of India (NPCI) enables SMS-based payments at negligible cost. Average transaction fees are about 7 cents (5 INR) for transfers on any amount up to $1,500 (100,000 INR). Settlement is immediate. NPCI is now introducing an open interface that will allow users to make instant, "any-to-any" payments -- that means between wallets, banks accounts, prepaid cards, and other instruments -- without the need to reveal account or card details. The power of digital connectivity to fundamentally change convenience and economics is also evident for international remittances. Without any bitcoin wizardry, a number of startups offer international remittances using the digital account-to-account corridors for well under 1 percent transactions fees. Digital transaction data unlocks small credit. In emerging markets around the globe, there are at least one billion adults without a traditional credit profile such as a FICO score in the US. Big data innovators are using mobile phone usage, social media activity, and browser history data to help establish creditworthiness for low- and middle-income consumers in emerging markets. Their algorithms increase access and help price credit risk to "thin-" or "no-file" consumers around the world. In Kenya, the CBA/M-Pesa partnership provided over 20 million such small denomination loans to 2.8 million borrowers in the first two years after starting operations. The digitization of retail financial services also allows for better advice. In Colombia, for example, financial services startup Juntos worked with Bancolombia to help improve savings via SMS-based, targeted customer engagement. The interaction increased account balances by 50 percent and activity by 32.5 percent. In the US, we are seeing personal financial management tools or robo-advisors for mass-market investment management, and other markets are working on similar concepts. It is only going to be a matter of time before the first financial services providers in the most conducive market environment will put all the existing digital building blocks together to deliver a vastly superior, comprehensive consumer value proposition. Advertisement In the developed world, the UK is poised to get there first. British regulators are keen to have neo-banks compete with the small group of big, traditional banks, and have issued the first set of licenses to two digital-only, mobile-first challenger banks, including Tandem Bank, which is preparing to kickoff operations later this year. The UK's faster payments inter-bank infrastructure allows for near real-time settlement. The government is working on an open-API regime within the financial services industry, which would allow consumers to have their financial data easily consolidated with a provider of their choice in a secure, regulated environment. Financial services are central to people's lives. They are needed to better manage day-to-day affairs, and they are crucial to protect from downside risks and to capture long-term opportunities. Traditional financial services have left too many working families behind. Opportunities abound for technology-led business model innovations, soft infrastructure investments, and smart policies to come together to create a promising new paradigm, where better financial services can help more working families achieve healthier financial outcomes at lower costs. On Wednesday the Georgia House of Representatives passed HB 757, despite widespread opposition from Georgia businesses. Many observers thought the bill would die when the legislative session ended next week, but partisan politics seem to have prevailed over economic common sense. Promoted as a protection of religious freedoms, the bill actually creates a license to discriminate. It now moves to the desk of Governor Nathan Deal. He should veto it. I grew up in North Carolina, and went to school in Virginia and in Raleigh-Durham, so I have great respect and appreciation for Southern hospitality. My parents now live outside Atlanta, and whenever I visit, I'm touched by the welcome I receive from their friends and neighbors. I can't count the number of times I've heard the phrase "y'all come back now" after settling up the check. Hospitality is one of the South's greatest and most underrated economic assets, but the fact that states around the region are considering laws like HB 757 undermines the South's well-deserved reputation for warmth. Advertisement The law Governor Deal is considering is less broad than the First Amendment Defense Act (FADA) the Georgia State Senate passed in February, but it's still a step backwards. Similar to the controversial Religious Freedom Restoration Act (RFRA) that caused a national uproar when it was passed in Indiana last year, Georgia's FADA would have allowed purveyors of goods and services to refuse service to individuals under the guise of religious freedom. Businesses that cited "sincerely held religious belief or moral conviction" to discriminate against LGBT people would be free to do so. The amended version of HB 757 that passed on Wednesday protects "faith-based organizations" that choose to deny services or employment on the basis of a "sincerely held religious belief" about marriage. Faith-based organizations are defined as churches, religious missions, and schools, but the language is broad enough that LGBT advocates believe it could also be found to apply to businesses and hospitals. Laws like this are wolves in sheep's clothing. While legislators who vote for them say that they're working to protect business interests, laws that legalize discrimination harm economies. When Indiana passed its RFRA, the resulting uproar led by the business community cost Indianapolis more than $60 million in lost tourism revenues alone. The state's reputation still hasn't recovered. There's no question why many of Georgia's most iconic brands and largest employers, including The Coca-Cola Company, Delta Air Lines, The Home Depot, SunTrust Banks, and UPS, have banded together to form a business coalition, Georgia Prospers, that aims to ensure that the state remains "an open and inclusive home for all." In joining the coalition, corporations have sent a strong signal that discrimination has no place in Georgia. Advertisement And they're not alone: many other companies doing business in the state have publicized their opposition to such legislation. The chief executives of Dell, Salesforce, Unilever, and Virgin were all vocal in their opposition to the bill passed last month. Microsoft president Brad Smith tweeted about his frustration with Georgia's FADA, saying that he hoped that Georgia would remain hospitable and "a great place to do business." The economic impact of such legislation is real and could be catastrophic for the state: separate studies from the Metro Atlanta Chamber and the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau estimate that such legislation could cause cost the state economy $2 billion. A few weeks ago, Governor Deal stood up in strong opposition to laws that legalize discrimination, saying: "I don't think we have to have anything that allows discrimination in our state in order to protect people of faith," The governor, a conservative South Baptist, later said that the Bible taught him not to "discriminate unduly against anyone of the basis of our own religious beliefs." unmonumental (Manhattan Ave) 2, 2015-16, Courtesy Joy Garnett Joy Garnett is in her own words, a "Flickr-tographer". Her unmonumental series is grounded in the daily uploading of her photographs via social media, Instagram, Twitter, Tumblr, Flickr, and Facebook. Garnett's photographs show paper that has fallen from waste bin to paved street, paint splatters on a sidewalk, once useful materials splintered and fragmented into an array of color and shape, now arranged decoratively in flower boxes. On one hand the forms appear to be arbitrarily arranged, pieces of plastic fall, trash spills, and the wind scatters. And yet, also captured here is the careful placement of planks levered up against garbage bags or a mirror leaned with intention against a building. Always, the hand of man is felt but unseen. unmonumental (Ingraham), 2015-16, Courtesy Joy Garnett Garnett snaps shots of leftovers and giveaways as she wanders the neighborhoods of New York and its boroughs. She is a storyteller who observes remnants that are discoverable only by travel on foot. Her images tell of the capriciousness of mundane details, the bits that get away from us as we move through the day. unmonumental (Pulaski Bridge), 2015-16, Courtesy Joy Garnett TH: You have said that your first photograph in the series was a parody of the New Museum's 2008 exhibition, Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century. Tell us what your reaction was to that show and what inspired you to continue shooting these objects for another 8 years. Advertisement JG: I went to see the Unmonumental show with my husband, Bill Jones, who is a conceptual photographer and videographer. He has a long relationship to ephemera and to photographing found objects; he has been taking pictures of garbage all his life and he may have invented the genre. We were walking from the New Museum to Chelsea, north and west through the Meatpacking District, which in those days was still pretty much full of garbage. As we walked, we talked about the exhibition, and we kept spotting objects in the street that reminded us of works in the show. I guess post-New Museum snark sauce has its own special flavor. unmonumental (Norman Ave), 2015-16, Courtesy Joy Garnett JG: I was the one with the smartphone and the Flickr and Twitter accounts. I shot a few choice bits of garbage and tweeted them with a hashtag: #unmonumental. It started as a joke, part of Bill's and my conversation. I had other social media projects going at the time, but unmonumental turned out to be the one that stuck. It grew and developed to become a part of my life. JG: Eventually, I put together a website for unmonumental. The images have been included in different formats, including prints and slide shows, in exhibitions in New York University's Gallatin Galleries and at an apex art franchise exhibition in Memphis. I've created a little print-on-demand book with a nice essay by the artist and writer Tom McGlynn, who curated the apex art show. But the main event is the real-time shooting and posting/sharing of #unmonumental on social media. In other words, the spontaneous shooting and posting of images online is a kind of live performance; social platforms are the conduits. The photos are shared in real-time, and each iteration that follows the live event moves closer to becoming "documentation." Anyway, that's how I see it. unmonumental (Clay Street), 2015-16, Courtesy Joy Garnett TH: The New Museum show was thought of as a collection of works by artists who used very low-tech materials and had a DIY process. Their work was assembled and situated in a clean white box/museum setting and doesn't interact with the environment at all. The so-called commonplace objects and materials were placed pristinely into position. Your photographs are a kind of ecosystem, where the setting for the object is as important as the object itself. Tell us about this aspect of the photographs and how it informs what you see. Advertisement JG: I've always been big on long walks. Walks are a way for me to think and look and absorb, a way of connecting physically with the world around me while simultaneously being alone with myself. For me, walking is essential to working; I need to walk if I'm going to work in the studio. Finding and shooting unmonumentals and posting them online has become part of my ritual of walking, an extension of thinking and reflecting. It's a way of marking my steps as well as my internal, inarticulate thoughts and feelings. And it's a way of sharing some of my process with others. unmonumental (Freeman), 2015-16, Courtesy Joy Garnett TH: As a chronicler of the small detritus that lives on the streets, how have the photographs changed? Have they evolved in some way due to changes in the city as it gains almost a decade in age? JG: If you do anything regularly for years, your choices evolve and you refine your way of working. But everything is a moving target -- me, the city -- so it's hard for me to gauge exactly which of us has changed more, me or the city, and what, if anything, has remained constant. JG: I guess even as the city gentrifies, wherever there's a concentration of souls there's going to be garbage. I used to work at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and on my lunch hour I wandered around the neighborhood shooting pictures. The Upper East Side has surprisingly good garbage, by the way, and some of my quirkiest unmonumental photos date from that period. These days I shoot unmonumentals while walking from the subway to my studio in Ridgewood. I have to say that Flushing Avenue has some pretty good garbage on offer. unmonumental (Vernon Blvd), 2015-16, Courtesy Joy Garnett TH: How does your training and work as a painter influence the way you see the objects you photograph? Do the photographs influence your painting? Advertisement JG: This is a really important question and I'm still figuring it out, but the short answer is "yes": unmonumental is my sketchbook. TH: Do you seek out images that address formal art concepts and structure or are your finds simply serendipitous? JG: Both! Initially, my idea was that the unmonumental objects I find evoked Minimalist and Post-Minimalist sculpture; found objects, mostly industrial readymades, informed both of these movements, and post-Minimalism was photographically inflected. I'm thinking of Robert Smithson, Nancy Holt, and Bruce Nauman. Photography as sculpture. As a painter, I tend to engage sculpture and objects in the landscape through pictures, which include the photographs I take. unmonumental (Box St) 2, 2015-16, Courtesy Joy Garnett TH: Your phone seems like a great and obvious choice for shooting this series, as you walk around the city. Tell us about how this is in some ways a project as much about social media as it is about photography/art. JG: I guess I'm not a photographer, I'm a phone-o-grapher? A Flickr-tographer, a twit-picker, a ---- what am I doing? Social media IS photography. And yet. Advertisement Joy Garnett is an artist who lives and works in New York. unmonumental (Calyer), 2015-16, Courtesy Joy Garnett Websites: Her upcoming show of paintings, Ends of the Earth, takes place at Slag Gallery, Brooklyn (March 25 - April 24, 2016) www.slaggallery.com Tamara Vega is a section waiter for Noma, one of the world's best restaurants. Arguably then, that makes Tamara one of the world's best waiters. Tamara is currently in Australia for a 10 week pop-up project. Noma has relocated its staff from Denmark and opened its doors in Sydney for the summer. All of the staff have been flown out, accommodated in CBD apartments, and given the opportunity to explore a new country; or in Tamara's case, reconnect with family and friends. Not bad for a job in hospitality. "There can be this misconception that hospitality is not a real profession," Tamara explains in her softly blended accent, "but that's wrong." Tamara is passionate about food, which in turn fuels her passion for her job. She reads any material about the industry that crosses her path, takes sommelier courses when she gets the chance, and genuinely cares about the experience her guests have when they dine in her 14 seat section at Noma. "It's a relaxed fine dining experience," the self confessed perfectionist explains. "Guests can see the action in the kitchen and listen to the wait staff talk, we want them to enjoy themselves when they come to visit." Tamara's hospitality career began as a 17 year old in Brisbane. "The memory of the Greek Club still haunts me, polishing thousands of pieces of cutlery until three in the morning," Tamara laughs, "but I loved it." At the same time, Tamara enrolled in a food science and nutrition degree. However, the outgoing teenager soon realised that the future prospect of life in a lab coat, analyzing the nutritional value of vegemite was not for her. "I loved the interaction with people working in hospitality gave me," Tamara explains. Advertisement Her first career inspiration came in the form of renowned Australian Chef David Thompson. "I met him at the launch of his book Thai Food, just before he left Australia. I remember thinking, "Wow, this guy is impressive, I'd love to work with him one day," Tamara says. David was on his way to London to open Nahm, the first Thai restaurant in the world to receive a Michelin star. Tamara was also on her way to the UK armed with a working holiday visa. True to her conviction she made contact with David and within 12 months, was working at his award-winning restaurant. Tamara spent the next eight years at Nahm progressing through the ranks from Waiter to Restaurant Manager. "That was a big achievement for me," Tamara says. "My time at Nahm was the first time in my career that I had really put my mind to what I wanted and achieved it." Nahm closed and David relocated for his next venture, drawing to a close a successful alliance. "I'm still in touch with David. I saw him just recently and it was kind of like seeing an old boyfriend. I had this rush of emotions because Nahm was such a big part of my life." Tamara stayed working in London and assessed her next career move. "I wanted an environment that would open me up to a different type of food, service and experience," Tamara explains. "I wanted to sink my teeth into something that would change my perspective, and also a place that had a strong environmental connection." Tamara reached out to a small number of restaurants across Europe, offering them a week of her time. "I thought I could go and learn something new, and also they could see what I was like." The two Michelin star Noma in Denmark, Copenhagen responded, providing Tamara the opportunity to spend a week with the award winning team. "It was my first experience working in a two star restaurant and I loved it," Tamara says. The admiration went both ways and six weeks after returning to London, Noma called with a job. Tamara and her husband, who also works in hospitality, packed their bags and headed to Denmark. "Moving to Copenhagen has been the best decision of my career," Tamara says of her choice to join the world famous Noma. "It has really opened my eyes to a new way of working and expanded my networks with more amazing people." Noma Director Lau Richter is one colleague in particular Tamara regards with admiration. "He is so kind and always has a smile for everyone, he makes things look effortless in an environment that can be so charged. I'd like to think I could be like that too," Tamara says. Asked to provide advice to others considering a job in hospitality, Tamara takes a moment reflect. "I'd say go for it. People shouldn't shy away from industries that are built on practical experience, it's OK not to go to university." With a work history that has traversed Australia, England, and Denmark, including employment with two of the world's leading restaurants, Tamara is a fantastic example of someone creating a successful career, in role most people wrongly dismiss as a serious profession. By Patrick Barnhill If I knew what it took to build a million-dollar online business when I first started, I probably would have done something easier. But not knowing how to do it was the best part about starting. It's hard to find what it is you want to do, sell, and what you are really passionate about. When I was working as a teenager just outside of Portland, Oregon as a tech support agent for ID card printers, I didn't think my passion would be badge holders and accessories. That wasn't the coolest idea of what I thought I would dedicate my life to. But there is something amazing about being challenged every day, innovating, learning and finding out how to add value to a competitive market. You need that youthful, naive, fearless entrepreneur spirit, and listening to a seasoned veteran may just scare you from ever starting. So don't think about how to do it, think about why you want it and just start now. Learning to Be the Best at What You Love to Do These days, almost anyone can start a business, but how do you make one last? In Jim Collin's book, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don't, he gets into the science of transforming a company from a mediocre one into a business that "can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise." This means, as a business owner, you should strive to be the best in the world at what you're doing. I know this is a bold claim. Being the best in the world? For me, that was my "a ha" moment. Once you do find that "thing" that you either love to do, or know you can and will be the best at, you need to find a way to market it as a product or service. Chances are, you already have competition, so the key is to present it in a way that is unlike any others in your industry. I developed the mindset that my business had to set itself apart from competitors and even other industries, so I took these three steps. Advertisement Glamorize your product. When we first started Specialist ID, we were trying to compete for the biggest and most glamorous security products: big ticket items that required lots of capital, technical staff and resources. Whether your product is sexy or not, you want it to pop off a computer screen and grab your customer's attention. Take tips from businesses that work. Even if they're not a competitor, take the time to look at what other businesses are or aren't doing, and do it. For example, Zappos does an amazing job describing their products with great photos and video. So our team set out to be the "Zappos of badge holders." Cross-Pollinate. Harvard Business Professor Lee Fleming states in his article, "Perfecting Cross-Pollination," that breakthroughs that arise from multidisciplinary work "are frequently of unusually high value--superior to the best innovations achieved by conventional approaches." Cross-pollinating is worth the effort, because the results that are achieved -- as sparse as they might be -- usually contribute a significant amount of profit for your company. Overcoming the Obstacles Starting a new business will have its challenges: the two major obstacles you'll likely run into will involve money and advertising expenses. But even for startup businesses on a limited budget, there are ways to work around this. Advertisement Find ways to boost your cash flow. Most traditional businesses need cash for inventory. Eventually, we got smart and leveraged distributors that stocked lots of inventory who were in close proximity. We were able to put their inventory online, sell it, then make a run every day to pick up the product we had sold the day before, and still ship all orders within 24 hours. This let us get paid up front, and carry almost no inventory while we built up positive cash flow and our own stock. Don't spend too much on advertising. Back when it was the number one e-commerce store, we used eBay and pushed customers in the direction of our website whenever possible. In the beginning, building great content and dominating a small niche was worth more to us than pay-per-click sales, and we could afford to invest the time because we didn't have any money. One of the best pieces of advice I ever received in response to big business taking over the top pages of search results was to "become the brand." Big businesses know about branding and the value of it. Make this a bigger focus in your vision now, not later. Building a million-dollar online business from square one takes hard work and long hours of dedication, so be sure you like what you're doing, whether it's the industry you're in, or just the challenge of building a business. Once you've found that business niche, think about ways to make it stand out from the competition. Don't be afraid to try different conventions, don't let a lack of money stop you, and don't be afraid to ask for help. Most importantly, don't give up. ASSOCIATED PRESS Sikh leader Simranjit Singh Mann, center, raises a sword and shouts religious slogans inside the Golden Temple complex, in Amritsar, India, Friday, July 21, 2006. Head priest of Akal Takht, Sikhs supreme religious temporal seat, on Tuesday lifted a ban imposed on Mann from holding meetings and functions at gurdwaras, or Sikh temple, for not observing the sanctity of the Golden Temple on July 2. (AP Photo/Aman Sharma) A Sikh politician has come up with a unique reason for refusing to chant 'Bharat Mata ki jai' he said that his religion doesn't permit worshipping women, and even though he respects 'Bharat Mata', no Sikh could worship her. "We (Sikhs) can say 'Bharat Mata ki fateh' but not 'jai' because that would make us Hindus," Simranjit Singh Mann, president of Shiromani Akali Dal's Amritsar wing, said yesterday. Advertisement Sikh religion doesn't include any form of idol-worship, as Sikhs exclusively follow the teachings of Guru Granth Sahib and believe in one "rab" (God). "Narendra Modi, Amit Shah, Arun Jaitley, have all said that those who won't chant 'Bharat Mata ki jai' can't be patriotic, and a case will be pursued against them like it happened in the Maharashtra assembly against a Muslim MLA," he said. "Even Congress, which always claims to have no religious bias, took the BJP's and Sena's side and allowed the MLA to be ousted." "We can't do this. We respect the Mata but we can't worship her. Sikhs should say Waheguru ji ka Khalsa, Waheguru ji ki Fateh." The issue of chanting 'Bharat Mata ki jai' has already rankled several Indians, as the slogan has Hindu nationalist roots. A Maharashtra MLA and member of India Majlis-E-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM), Waris Pathan, was suspended from the state assembly last week for saying he won't chant the slogan. Advertisement The Constitution does not say it. We will say Jai Hind. We wont chant 'Bharat Mata ki jai'," Pathan said in the assembly. (Correction: An earlier version of this post incorrectly named the AIMIM member suspended from Maharashtra assembly as Asaduddin Owaisi, instead of Waris Pathan. The error is regretted.) Advertisement Contact HuffPost India Also See On HuffPost: Hindustan Times via Getty Images SRINAGAR, INDIA - JUNE 27: Kashmiri protesters displaying the flags of ISIS during a protest against alleged desecration of Jamia Masjid by police personnel yesterday after Friday prayers, on June 27, 2015 in Srinagar, India. Clashes broke out in several parts of downtown Srinagar on Saturday against the alleged desecration of Jamia Masjid by government forces yesterday. Reacting very sharply against police action, Auqaf Jamia Masjid, which functions under Mirwaiz, called for a shutdown in Srinagar followed by Geelani, Malik and Shah. (Photo by Waseem Andrabi/Hindustan Times via Getty Images) Apart from the sheer brutality of its methods, what makes ISIS more terrifying than most other terrorist organizations is its use of boundary-breaking internet technology for attracting new recruits, planning attacks (through its own encrypted chat app, no less) and spreading its propaganda. The group has also been spreading its virtual tentacles in India as well to propagate its message and recruit potential jihadis. In February this year, software engineer Mudabbir Mushtaq Shaikh was arrested along with several others by the National Intelligence Agency (NIA). He was reportedly recruited by a Syria-based Indian who trawled through the internet looking for recruits in India. The modus operandi is reportedly to search for accounts of people who post on the topic of Islam and watch videos of fiery speeches by clerics so on. Such people are then traced, contacted and then wooed to join ISIS. Advertisement The modus operandi is reportedly to search for accounts of people who post on the topic of Islam and watch videos of fiery speeches... Although Shaikh posted a bunch of stuff on his Facebook timeline, including software articles and videos of Paulo Coelho, he also demonstrated his interest in Islam, religious speeches and conspiracy theories about 9/11. In 2013, he came across an account run by a man called Yusuf al-Hindi. According to a detailed report in the Indian Express, the account was actually run by Muhammad Sultan Armar, a former Indian Mujahideen member and the leader of ISISs Indian cell. The two of them first met in a group called "Dajjal-e-Akbar" and started interacting. The NIA indicates that they started talking through Skype and Shaikh even downloaded jihadist material on Armar's suggestion. Armar disappeared for a while but reappeared in 2014 and they began the conversation again. When he was killed, his brother Shafi Armar picked up the thread. Advertisement Earlier this month, the NIA also arrested a 19-year-old mechanical engineering student in Durgapur, West Bengal, called Ashik Ahmed for his suspected connections with ISIS. He watched the video posted by Mohammad Nafees describing the plight of the Muslims in West Bengal and decided to contact him. Nafees told him that ISIS operates under the name Jund Al-Khalifa Al-Hind in India. Ahmed was later appointed chief of the West Bengal wing, NIA reported. The NIA has arrested 24 people allegedly linked to ISIS so far. Minister of State for Home Haribhai Parathibhai Chaudhary said in Rajya Sabha, "ISIS is using various internet-based platforms for propaganda and to propagate its ideology. The intelligence and security agencies monitor the cyberspace closely to identify potential recruits and keep them under surveillance and take further action, if necessary." According to this Times of India report India falls on the world dominion map of ISIS. The terrorist organizations fondness for technology is well documented. In January, they launched an encrypted app to facilitate communications. Later, they incorporated a 'Help Desk' to evade Western authorities. A recent report suggests the Paris attackers used sophisticated tools like burner cellphones and encrypted laptops to eliminate any digital trail. Advertisement Contact HuffPost India RAVEENDRAN via Getty Images NEW DELHI, INDIA: Chairperson of the Jammu and Kashmir People's Democratic Party (PDP), Mehbooba Mufti (L) answers a question as President of the National Conference of Jammu and Kashmir, Omar Abdullah looks on during the third annual Hindustan Times Leadership Summit in New Delhi, 16 November 2005. The two-day long Hindustan Times Leadership Initiative is attended by key political and business leaders from both India and overseas, with the aim of discussing the changing dynamics between India and the world on social, economic and political issues. AFP PHOTO/RAVEENDRAN (Photo credit should read RAVEENDRAN/AFP/Getty Images) Although the Bharatiya Janata Party leadership in Delhi remained "not very hopeful" of a breakthrough, PDP President Mehbooba Mufti is in the national capital in the hope of breaking the deadlock in Jammu and Kashmir under Governors rule since January 7. "Tuesday is very crucial," a senior PDP leader told The Indian Express, adding that a final call on government formation will likely be taken. Advertisement Mufti is likely to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi today after efforts to revive the coalition with the BJP hit a roadblock last week. Mehbooba's second visit to the national capital in five days after her talks with BJP President Amit Shah on Thursday failed to make any headway, triggered speculation that the two parties could be making renewed efforts to reach out to each other in a bid to break the prolonged impasse. We stand fully committed as far as agenda of governance is concerned. The visit comes a day after Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said, "we stand fully committed as far as agenda of governance is concerned" in J and K. On her arrival yesterday, Mehbooba, after some personal work, remained closeted in her room at the Jammu and Kashmir House in Chanakyapuri and sources in the know said that a meeting with the Prime Minister was likely to be happen. Mehbooba had a meeting this evening with her senior party colleagues including former Finance Minister Haseeb Drabu where final touches was being given for a possible meeting. The fresh efforts from PDP, which has 27 MLAs in the 87-member state Assembly, come in the backdrop of repeated assertions made by the BJP that it was committed to implementation of Agenda of Alliance arrived at by her father late Mufti Mohammed Sayeed. Advertisement The talks with BJP, which has 25 MLAs, had hit a roadblock last week when party's interlocutor on the state Ram Madhav made it clear that no fresh demands would be entertained from its former alliance partner PDP and that they decide whether they want to form a government based on the Agenda of Alliance document. The toughening of stand came as a surprise for Mehbooba who boarded a plane next morning and returned to the state. God help J&K if Mehbooba as CM is going to be as indecisive as she has been as Party President over the last 2 1/2 months. Omar Abdullah (@abdullah_omar) March 21, 2016 Mehbooba's father negotiated the Agenda of Alliance so she must tell us what was wrong with it. Her father was CM 10 months with this agenda Omar Abdullah (@abdullah_omar) March 18, 2016 If all she wanted was the Agenda of Alliance, that was a roadmap with a SIX yr implementation period so what was the problem with timeframe? Omar Abdullah (@abdullah_omar) March 18, 2016 Baig, who has been playing a key role in the back-channel talks, had clarified that PDP had made no fresh demands and that there was a miscommunication from both sides leading to derailing of talks. While there was no official confirmation from PDP side, it was believed that Mehbooba has conveyed her willingness to take over reins of the government and discuss other issues later. PDP is also understood to have called for a Legislative party meeting on Thursday where she may be elected as its leader. PDP and BJP had formed an alliance on March one last year with Sayeed as the Chief Minister. Both the sides had formed an "Agenda of Alliance" which sought to address internal and external dimension of the state. The PDP had toughened its stance after Sayeed's demise by seeking concrete plans for the state's development including handing over of power projects to the state and vacation of land by Army before the coalition could be revived. Meanwhile, former Chief Minister Omar Abdullah called on Governor NN Vohra yesterday but ruled out National Conference providing an alternative saying his party would rather prefer mid-term elections than indulging in "horse-trading". He, however, said nobody wants mid-term polls, but if a government is not formed, then election is the only way out. Advertisement I think rushing to Delhi is Mehbooba Mufti's last ditch effort to save her party because she realises if she does not form the government on the terms and conditions set by BJP, her party will split and if her party splits then she will be in a much weaker position than she is today. "There is an effort right now to gather support independent of Mehbooba Mufti. I think rushing to Delhi is Mehbooba Mufti's last ditch effort to save her party because she realises if she does not form the government on the terms and conditions set by BJP, her party will split and if her party splits then she will be in a much weaker position than she is today. So she is trying to save her party," Omar told reporters after meeting Vohra at Raj Bhawan. Omar also alleged BJP was breaking parties in states. "Now BJP or elements attached to BJP are breaking parties. We have seen this type of government formation by horse trading in Arunachal Pradesh and another attempt is now made in Uttarakhand," he claimed. (With PTI inputs) Advertisement Contact HuffPost India Also see on HuffPost: Hindustan Times via Getty Images NEW DELHI, INDIA - FEBRUARY 23: Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal and External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj during a lunch party for the political and media fraternity hosted by Union Minister of Food Processing Industries Harsimrat Kaur Badal and her husband and Punjab Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal, on February 23, 2016 in New Delhi, India. Eminent personalities from the Indian social circuit were present at the do and were seen indulging in discussions about the current state of affairs. (Photo by Prabhas Roy/Hindustan Times via Getty Images) CHANDIGARH -- Punjab assembly today passed a bill which states that whoever causes injury, damage or sacrilege to Guru Granth Sahib with an intention to hurt the religious feelings of the people will be punished with imprisonment for life. The Bill - Code of Criminal Procedure (Punjab Amendment )- was moved by Deputy Chief Minister Sukhbir Singh Badal. Advertisement The Bill seeks life imprisonment for sacrilege of the Guru Granth Sahib, by adding section 295 AA in IPC and enhancement of punishment under section 295 of IPC, injuring or defiling place of worship with intent to insult the religion of any class from two to 10 years. The move comes amidst a number of cases of sacrilege involving the Guru Granth Sahib in the past couple of months which triggered violent protests. Police firing during the clash in Faridkot had claimed two lives last month. However, the amendment in the bill brought by Leader of Opposition Charanjit Singh Channi and Congress MLAs Ashwini Sekhri and Tarlochan Singh was lost by voice vote. The Congress leaders wanted provisions of similar punishments should be made for those causing damage to Gita, Bible, Quran, Ramayan and Mahabharta. Advertisement He, however, requested that provision for life imprisonment should also be made for those hurting or causing damage to Gita, Ramayan, Bible, Quran and Mahabharta. Hailing the bill, he however, said that "what is more important is to arrest those who indulge in such crimes and implementation of such an Act." Channi said Congress supports the bill, but keeping in mind the secular credentials of the country similar provision for punishments should also be made for those damaging Holy books of other religions. "Before making a law, government should first arrest the culprits behind such crimes," he said. Revenue Minister Bikarm Singh Majithia demanded capital punishments for those indulging in incidents of sacrilege. BJP's Madan Mohan Mittal, who is also Parliamentary Affairs Minister, said that it is mentioned in the bill that those destroying or defiling a place of worship or sacred object with intent to insult the religion of any class or persons will get imprisonment for ten years. Advertisement Under IPC's section 295 A, punishment for sacrilege is jail term for three years. Hitting out at Congress for expressing concern for people of other religions, he said that there are many sects in the country. Sukhbir said the government decided to increase the punishment from two years to life imprisonment for those indulging in incidents of sacrilege after consultation with the SGPC and Sant Samaj. Besides, the House passed seven other bills with no discussion on these. Among those included Punjab Agricultural Produce Markets (Amendment) Bill. The Bill was moved by Agriculture Minister Tota Singh. He said that now the farmers will be provided a health insurance cover of Rs 50,000 and personal accident insurance of Rs five lakh. Advertisement Contact HuffPost India Also see on HuffPost: Bertrand Demee via Getty Images Dog with funny contortion The appalling news that a woman allegedly killed eight puppies of a stray dog by dashing them against boulders in Bengaluru has horrified animal rights activists and in fact anyone who has a shred of human decency. The incident took place on the same day that a man in Delhi was caught on camera stabbing three dogs and beating a puppy to death. According to Bangalore Mirror, the stray dog, adopted by the entire community in Krishnanagar and fondly called Ammu, has been howling since her 15-day-old puppies were killed, allegedly by the wife of a former honorary flight lieutenant. Advertisement The woman, who apparently stays in the area, killed the puppies to teach their mother a lesson for daring to give birth in a drain near her gate. The woman, reports NDTV, has now been arrested. (Representational image) The incident, which comes close on the heels of the brutal attack on the police horse Shaktiman during a BJP protest, and then the violent killings of three dogs and a puppy in Delhi, has ignited a debate about revisiting and revising the animal rights laws in India. "The Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (PCA) Act was framed in 1960 and the penalties in the Act have not been revisited ever since... A fine of 50 is in no way a deterrent for an act so ghastly that it leaves a living being maimed for life," says DownToEarth.org. Advertisement Now, animal welfare activists from Compassion Unlimited Plus Action (CUPA) have decided to take help of the Animal Welfare Board of India (AWBI) and request the government to pass the 'Shaktiman Act', reported Mirror. "The Shaktiman Act, should it be passed, will make the offence of killing an animal a cognizable one, compoundable with a drastic rise in the penalty," Suparna Ganguly, animal rights activist, and secretary, CUPA, told the Mirror. "The Prime Minister will look into the Shaktiman Act if a body of public opinion is involved. We will also pursue this matter with minister Maneka Gandhi. This incident will also be recorded as a case study we want the case to be tried under the Act," she added. (Police horse Shaktiman with an amputated leg) In the past few months, several shocking incidents of cruelty against animals, especially dogs, have been reported. Earlier this year in January, some Chandigarh residents beat up a stray dog and hung it alive from a tree. A similar incident had taken place in Pune last year. Advertisement However, several progressive steps are also being taken to curb violence against animals in India, such as the stay order from Supreme Court on cockfights and the ban on jallikattu, among others. Contact HuffPost India Also On HuffPost: STR via Getty Images Indian Bollywood actor Rekha attends the '61st Filmfare Awards 2016' ceremony in Mumbai on January 15, 2016. AFP PHOTO / AFP / STR (Photo credit should read STR/AFP/Getty Images) NEW DELHI -- Timely help from celebrated actress Rekha has allowed the Congress party retain its old electoral 'war room' in Lutyens Delhi, which it was at the danger of losing after the Narendra Modi government wanted to evict the bungalow's present resident and Telangana MP Ananda Bhaskar Rapolu. Rekha, who is a Rajya Sabha MP nominated by the President, has reportedly donated the bungalow to the Congress party. She had been allotted the house on 15, Gurudwara Rakabganj Road last week. She can keep the house for at least the next two years, until her present term as Rajya Sabha MP ends. Advertisement "Ever since the Modi government came to power, they have been trying to get us to vacate 15 GRG. A year ago, the bungalow was allotted to me. Now, Rekha has helped us out," former union minister Kumari Selja toldMumbai Mirror. Meanwhile the Bharatiya Janata Party denied that they had been trying to remove Congress presence from the "war room", instead alleging that Rapolu was not entitled to that particular accommodation. Rapolu had the bungalow in his name for the past four years. This particular bungalow is known to be Congress' favourite camp for chalking out major strategies before big elections. It has been, in the past, described as the Congress Coordination Centre (CCC). Advertisement Contact HuffPost India Also See On HuffPost: Twitter While laying the foundation stone for the Dr. Ambedkar National Memorial in Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi paid glowing tributes to BR Ambedkar on Monday, comparing him with Martin Luther King Jr. "If Martin Luther King is seen as a symbol of fight against injustice the world over, BR Ambedkar should also be not seen as second to anyone," Modi said at the foundation stone laying ceremony. Advertisement Laid the foundation stone for the Dr. Ambedkar National Memorial. Paid tributes to Babasaheb's enduring contributing to our nation. Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) March 21, 2016 However, he did. And guess who he came second to? Narendra Modi himself. A students' group of The Indian Institute of Technology, Madras called the Ambedkar-Periyar Study Circle (APSC), tweeted out a photo of the foundation stone. Modi laying foundation stone for Ambedkar memorial center. Notice font size for his name and Dr. Ambedkar's name. pic.twitter.com/m6C0N19Y4u APSC (@ambedkarperiyar) March 21, 2016 So, whose name do you see first? Yes, Narendra Modi's and that's because it comes in a font size much bigger than Ambedkar's name. Advertisement Last year in August, the student body, many of whose members are Dalits, was suspended for a week following a complaint that they were critical of Prime Minister Modi. The HRD minister also came under fire. Later, the suspension was overturned following several meetings with the dean and the students' body. Yesterday, while the Prime Minister said that his government will fulfil Ambedkar's dreams by providing electricity in 18,000 villages and when the villages get power supply, credit should be given to Ambedkar, not him--it turns out that his team didn't quite check the foundation stone. Was this ceremony to lay the foundation stone of Ambedkar Memorial or Modi Memorial? This is complete nonsense. pic.twitter.com/gejGdJ4sQs Gaurav Pandhi (@GauravPandhi) March 21, 2016 PM Narendra Modi lays foundation stone for BR Ambedkar National Memorial in Delhi pic.twitter.com/w1ox6PfH6x ANI (@ANI_news) March 21, 2016 Also See On HuffPost: PTI In the three weeks that they spent in jail, JNU students Umar Khalid and Anirban Bhattacharya had much to learn. While some policemen lectured them on nationalism, some others became their friends, with one among them gifting the two a paper boat, and another announcing his support for the students since he 'hated' the RSS. Advertisement While many of them lectured the JNU students, who were arrested on charge of sedition, accusing them of 'biting the very hand of the country that fed' them, both of them got a peek into the policemen's idea of nationalism through several experiences. One of the officers kept addressing his colleague from the Nagaland Armed Police as 'chinki', reports The Telegraph. Umar was in fact told not to move without permission because the 'chinkis' did not understand Hindi and they ate humans. While lecturing them on 'patriotism', the cops kept on referring to Kashmiris as 'others'. "One officer told us he hated the RSS and how the organisation was anti-Dalit," Umar said in an interview after he got bail. "He said he had to do his duty of investigating us, but he actually supported us." Advertisement The students got bail on Friday as the court questioned the Delhi Polices basic understanding of what sedition entailed. In an interview, the JNU students said that they didn't give lectures to policemen on subaltern studies or demanded momos or biriyani, but they did request for cigarettes and even got them. They even made friends with some policemen inside the jail and Anirban said he will 'miss them'. "We used to speak to them at length. There was one day when it was raining heavily and one of the policemen made a paper boat and gave it to me through the window. I still have it. I think we will all miss each other," he said. While some policemen kept telling Umar that he was a 'bad Musilm' with comparisons such as "look at inspector Khan, he will give up his life for the country," the students also met a few officers who were "Ambedkarites". In fact, one of the officers told them he hated the RSS and hence supported them, but he was just doing his duty. Advertisement When they were transferred to Tihar after three days of judicial custody, the students found a jail employee who used to defend them each time somebody decided to lecture them on patriotism. "He would ask them if they knew what the government did to Rohith Vemula," Anirban said. A guard once decided to have a serious conversation with Anirban on condoms, notes the Telegraph report. Besides the arrests, JNU also made headlines after a BJP lawmaker said that the students danced naked at night, and 3,000 condoms and 500 abortion injections" were found everyday on their campus. The jail guard, who was clearly intrigued, asked Anirban, "Is it true that you people use 3,000 condoms every day," . "Are condoms good or bad and shouldn't people be using them?," Anirban asked the guard in response. The guard agreed with him and said, "Yes, boys won't have sex after 50." Impressed with Anirban, the guard then reportedly told the medical officer (who would routinely lecture on patriotism) that he will become their supporter if they listened to them for ten minutes. Advertisement Before leaving the jail premises, Anirban left a message. "Before leaving, Kanhaiya had written on the wall of the cell, 'India, the largest democracy in the world. Let's think... equality is indispensable to democracy'. When I left, I also wrote something. I wrote 'People shouldn't be afraid of their government, the government should be afraid of its people'." Contact HuffPost India Also On HuffPost: Something went wrong, please try again later. Invalid email Something went wrong, please try again later. Sign up to the Hull Live newsletter for daily updates and breaking news Seven years after the MPs' expenses scandal, how much are Hull and East Yorkshire's MPs claiming? Parliamentary Correspondent Patrick Daly reports. Scroll through the slideshow to see individual MP's claims. Hull MPs have claimed expenses for 50p parking tickets, Hebrew lessons and for a 1,000 trip to see the effects of the migrant crisis. They were also reimbursed for a staff member's PR training and a mileage claim of 1.80 for a four-mile journey. The Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority (Ipsa), the body that verifies MPs' expenses, has released the details of every claim made in October and November last year. It provides a snapshot of what MPs are currently claiming public money for. The figures shows that all the expenses filed by Hull and East Yorkshire MPs, who earn 74,000 a year, were in accordance with the rules and were paid to them in full. Brigg and Goole Tory MP Andrew Percy claimed the most over the two-month period, logging receipts worth 9,249, while Haltemprice and Howden Tory MP David Davis was a close second, being reimbursed for 9,125. Mr Percy, heavily involved a few days ago in the Iain Duncan Smith resignation row, said that his top-of-the-table position was "not a fair assessment". His running costs were higher due to operating two constituency offices, one in Goole and the other in Brigg, North Lincolnshire, the former teacher said. The ex-Hull city councillor, a member of the Conservative Friends of Israel, also claimed 136 for Hebrew lessons. He said the lessons were part of his "professional development" and explained that he paid for some of the sessions out of his own pocket. Mr Percy regularly goes to Israel to meet with ministers and also makes media appearances while in the Middle East. The former teacher said he found it "embarrassing" that he relied on his political colleagues speaking English or on translators and so took up lessons to be able to converse in their native tongue. A spokesman for Eurosceptic MP Mr Davis said his two-month claim was "higher than usual" because a number of September bills were claimed late. An annual 2,000 subscription to the European Research Group, offering briefings on European matters, was also shelled out for in the same period. MP for Beverley and Holderness, Graham Stuart, spent 1,053 last September while in Hungary learning about the impact of the Syrian migrant crisis on Europe. The three-day trip cost 402, with the hotel bill coming to 567. Travel and hospitality receipts tipped the visit over the 1,000 mark. A spokesman for Mr Stuart said: "Graham was in Budapest for three nights, from September 10 to 13. "He visited Hungary in light of the refugee crisis and constituents' concerns. "He met with officials, members of the Hungarian parliament, the deputy speaker of the Hungarian National Assembly and with Syrian refugees." Hull West and Hessle Labour MP Alan Johnson forked out 276 to pay for one of his staff to be trained how to court media attention, paying for them to undertake a corporate course with the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ). A spokeswoman for Mr Johnson said: "The PR training was a bespoke press training course for parliamentary researchers organised by the NCTJ. "The training included modules on press release writing and campaign planning." The NCTJ said it was not able to disclose how many MPs had hired them for similar services, but two other MPs list the course in their expenses bill. Between September and November, Diana Johnson, Labour MP for Hull North, spent more than 1,500 on stationery and also paid out 700 in travel expenses for a volunteer. Listed in her expenses was a reimbursement for a 50p parking ticket while she was working in the constituency. Ms Johnson said her claims had all been verified by Ipsa, but did not wish to comment further. Karl Turner, Labour MP for Hull East, was reimbursed 1.80 for a four-mile journey taken within his constituency, a claim also accepted by Ipsa. Mr Turner said: "I only claim for what is necessary and try to keep the cost down as much as possible. As you can see, the most expensive part of being a Member of Parliament is the accommodation costs which, as we're based in London, is rather high. "On the rare occasion that staff use their own transport to drive me to meetings in the constituency, it is proper that they are reimbursed and not left out of pocket. Staff shouldn't be expected to pay for this themselves." East Yorkshire Tory MP Greg Knight's claims ranged from a 1.50 Humber Bridge toll to 1,447 in rent. But his total claim was the lowest of all the local MPs at 2,713. About the magazine All Animals, our award-winning magazine, is packed with stories about how your donations are changing the world for animals. Inside each issue, we give you the latest on how you're helping us fight for all animals, as well as profiles of people on the front lines, tips for caring for your pets and protecting wildlife, heartwarming tales of rescue and rehab, actions you can take and more. Beautifully illustrated and thoroughly researched, All Animals will inspire you and keep you informed on the issues you care about. Reno County sees a spike in drug and alcohol overdoses during October The 27 overdoses through Oct. 21 is an average of more than one a day, the highet average since officials began tracking the data real time. 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NO transfer fee! A proposed expansion of the Village Business District (red line) with a conceptual drawing of how the new Williams inn could be situated. Williamstown Planners Advise Zoning Change for New Williams Inn WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. The Planning Board last week unanimously recommended town meeting approve an expansion of the Village Business zoning district that will allow Williams College to build a new inn south of Spring Street. The board held a public hearing last Tuesday to consider six different zoning bylaws that will be on the May town meeting warrant. Although the bulk of the hearing focused on the citizen's petition to create an overlay district that would allow a new hotel in South Williamstown, the other hotel bylaw on the warrant generated a fair amount of public comment. The bulk of the reaction was positive from the crowd in the elementary school auditorium. But there were a few residents who rose to question whether the town should allow Williams to build a replacement to the current inn in the area commonly known as the location of the Agway barns south of Latham Street and west of Spring Street. The college first came to the Planning Board with that idea in 2014 with an eye toward getting it on the 2015 town meeting warrant. But Williams later asked the town to put the bylaw project on hold while it took time to further evaluate its plans. This winter, the college decided to go ahead with the lines that were drawn by the Planning Board last year and asked the Board of Selectmen to refer the proposed bylaw to the planners for a public hearing. College Vice President for Community and Government Affairs James Kolesar explained that the proposed new inn would be part of a greater effort to revitalize Williamstown's downtown. "If you think about it, several vectors are coming together that promise to have more life on the street," Kolesar told the board. "Last fall, we had the reopening of The Log. That's working splendidly so far. We have Cable Mills being moved into. In a few months, the book store will be pulled in from its outer orbit [on Water Street] to a more inner orbit. "Now we have the opportunity to take the Williams Inn, an important center of not just visitor but community activity, and embed it in the heart of our town." The idea of a new inn increasing foot traffic on Spring Street drew positive responses from several businesses on the street and a member of the board of the Williamstown Theatre Festival. Selectman Andrew Hogeland, who served on the town's yearlong Economic Development Committee last year, said the relocation of the inn would bring a sense of vitality to the Village Business District and that visitors to the inn's current Main Street location too often do not find their way downtown. Not everyone agreed that the increased traffic on Spring Street will be a blessing. South Street resident Roger Lawrence argued that traffic is bad enough on the street in the summer months and that further expansion of the college into the core of the village will not improve the quality of life for residents. Some residents are concerned that an inn at the bottom of Spring Street will increase congestion; the college says it may relieve pressure with addition of more parking. "There been a trend in Williamstown recently: the construction of new large institutional buildings downtown and the destruction of the residential fabric of our downtown," Lawrence said. "I think that's having a profound influence on the nature of Williamstown as a small town where people live. "I'm going to advance a radical proposition, and that's that the people who live in Williamstown constitute a large portion of the life we feel is missing on Spring Street. I think the people of Williamstown really represent the beating heart of this town. The more we drive residents out of Williamstown, the more that heart is going to go still." Lawrence also said the town needs to worry about unintended consequences of new construction even a project as heavily studied as the college's proposed inn. "The Clark Art Institute went through a major expansion, and you can only say the parking plan was an abject failure, and the result was that South Street was turned into a parking lot all summer," Lawrence said. "The presentation the Clark presented looked fine, but it went wrong. I don't see how we can be sure the same won't happen here." While Lawrence did not want the inn moved at all., others questioned whether Williams picked the right Spring Street location. As it has in the past, the school was urged to consider a location that fronted the street in order to create an even stronger connection with local businesses. Kolesar said that while a Spring Street address had some advantages, the area to the south was deemed preferable. One issue is that a building that fronted on Spring Street would exacerbate the kind of traffic concerns Lawrence raised. "If you had a large event happening at the inn and lots of cars arriving at the same time, you might have some queuing issues on the street," Kolesar said. Kolesar pointed out that a new inn on the college's Spring Street property probably would consume some of the land currently used for a college-owned public parking lot. "Because the inn [would be] so close to the regular parking lot, guests at the inn, by human nature, would park in the public lot," he said. The college's executive director of design and construction said an inn set back from Spring Street expands parking options. "One major benefit [to the current plan] is not only are we not impacting the town lot, but we're able to add to the south another 67-car lot," Rita Coppola-Wallace said. "Potentially, and I think it's a very real potential, town folks during the day and low occupancy times would gain another 67 spots." Parking would be among the topics for further review by the town if and when the college begins the formal regulatory process for a new inn. The expansion of the Village Business District, which requires a two-thirds vote at town meeting, is just the first step, college attorney Jamie Art noted. "This doesn't mean this inn necessarily gets built," Art said. "It doesn't mean it gets built as of right. It means the design development continues, and the project is subject to multiple layers of review. The Zoning Board of Appeals would need to issue a special permit. The Conservation Commission would need to review impacts within its jurisdiction. The Planning Board would need to review this because it would be the creation of more than one building on a lot. "Even if a town meeting vote allows the zoning change, that does not mean the inn will be immune from further scrutiny or review." Public Input Sought on Endangered Pittsfield Buildings PITTSFIELD, Mass. Private homes, commercial structures, social clubs, churches if it's vacant or underutilized, the city wants to hear about it. A grant-funded effort to inventory at-risk historic buildings is currently looking to collect additional information from city residents before establishing a final list of which properties will be included. The project is funded through a grant from the Massachusetts Historical Commission. Elizabeth Rairigh, the preservation planner hired to undertake the project, has heard from a variety of city staff and appointed officials in recent months, but is looking for more information and opinions from the broader community before deciding which buildings will be included in the final "casebook" of endangered properties. "In a lot of ways this is a very unique project," Rairigh told iBerkshires. "There are few places that have taken this type of look at historic properties, to see how they might be reused, reimagined, or updated." Boston is one example of this rare effort in the commonwealth, resulting in the Historic Boston Casebook that can be viewed online. About 949 properties and districts are listed within the MACRIS, or Massachusetts Cultural Resource Information System, index of properties, and 33 buildings or districts in the city are currently listed with the National Register of Historic Places. Rairigh says a running list of about 100 properties has been put together as part of the current effort, which will eventually be narrowed down to about 25 properties that will be fully researched for the final casebook. Casebook listings will include a variety of information about each building's construction, architecture, history and current condition data that could help developers who might be interested in them. For example, Rairigh says a similar casebook effort in New Bedford helped that city "right-size" real estate utilization of many former mills that were only partly in use. Thus far, the properties of concern in Pittsfield that have received the most mention include the former fire station on Tyler Street, and the state-owned William Russell Allen House on East Street. So far the main criteria that will be used to determine which buildings are ultimately included in the casebook include the building's community impact; structural condition; historic significance; and economic impact but input from the public is also desired in setting any additional criteria. As part of her preliminary assessment, Rairigh has heard from members of the Historical Commission, Community Development Board, and staff from the Community Development and Building departments. An initial open house held at City Hall last week sought to expand on this with additional perspectives from interested parties outside of local government, but failed to attract any new public interest, so Rairigh is now working with City Planner Cornelius Hoss to generate more participation. Toward this end, maps and white boards have been set up in the Local History Room at the Berkshire Athenaeum, allowing for comments and suggestions to be made at any time during the Athenaeum's hours of operation. A brief online survey is also being developed, and a new public meeting will be held on Wednesday, March 30, for those interested in speaking to Rairigh about buildings of concern in their neighborhoods. The meeting will be held at 6 p.m. in City Council Chambers at City Hall. The project is funded through a grant from the Massachusetts Historical Commission. Exclusive: Rahul Dravid a Very Good Communicator, Over Time India Will See Benefits of Him as Head Coach - John Buchanan 'He Just Asks How The Ball is Coming From The Wicket...': Virat Kohli Enjoys Batting With Suryakumar Yadav Page Content MONTREAL, 21 MARCH 2016 The Council President of the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), Dr. Olumuyiwa Benard Aliu, expressed the UN agencys deepest condolences today for the families and friends of the victims of FlyDubai FZ981, a charter flight from Dubai to Rostov-On-Don (URRR) Airport in Southern Russia, carrying passengers from nine countries, which was lost due to still unknown causes on 19 March. "Any accident or incident resulting in loss of life is always a matter of utmost concern to ICAO and to the entire air transport community," President Aliu remarked. ICAO will await the Annex 13 accident investigation Preliminary and Final Reports to learn more about the causes and contributing factors of this event, and ultimately we will work with the global civil aviation community on any associated risk mitigation recommendations appropriate to our role. An accident investigation into the loss of Flight FZ981 has been launched under the responsibility of the Interstate Aviation Committee in the Russian Federation as per the provisions of Annex 13 to the Convention on International Civil Aviation (Chicago Convention). The attached Fact Sheet explains how those States are determined, as well as the process prescribing the issuance of an accident investigation Preliminary Report (within 30 days of the event) and Final Report (within 12 months of the event). Accident investigation Final Reports ultimately provide as much official information as possible on the causes of the event, as well as official recommendations on how the air transport safety framework might be amended in light of those causes. ICAO does not normally participate in aircraft accident investigations, except in rare circumstances when the State or States with authority under Annex 13 request its assistance. In those exceptional circumstances, said assistance normally involves ICAO acting as an official observer and/or clarifying various Annex 13 technical requirements when requested. Accident Investigation Fact Sheet For more information please contact: communications@icao.int 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 Edward Price Non-Resident Senior Fellow NYU Center for Global Affairs Contact email linkedin Edward Price, a former British economic official, teaches international political economy, financial systems and international relations at NYUas Center for Global Affairs. He is also an economic advisor for BritishAmerican Business (BAB). Educated at the London School of Economics (LSE), Edward holds an MSc in Finance and Economic Policy and an MA in German History. He has worked in both the British and European parliaments, was Americas editor at IFLR and has worked in the City of London. He speaks German, gets by in Italian and is a member of the Economic Club of New York (ECNY). The content you are trying to view is exclusive to our subscribers. To unlock this article: IMF Survey : Gabon Seeks to Diversify its Economy as Oil Revenues Decline Oil price decline significant shock to the economy Country needs to diversify economy, contain spending Infrastructure crucial for economic transformation Hit hard by the recent oil price decline, Gabon can build resilience and revive growth by continuing to diversify its economy, says the IMF. Economic Health Check In its annual assessment of the economy, the IMF also welcomed the governments plan to improve the level and quality of infrastructure, and raise the quality of human capitalthe key constraints to economic growth. IMF Survey sat with Montfort Mlachila, IMF Mission Chief for Gabon, to discuss the countrys economic outlook and ways to adapt to the challenges it faces. IMF Survey: The IMF just finished its annual assessment of the Gabonese economy. Could you tell us how is Gabon doing now? Mlachila: The recent collapse in oil prices, following significant declines from the middle of 2014, is a major challenge for the Gabonese economy and its resilience. As you know, oil prices have declined by about 75 percent over the past 18 months. They used to be a little over $100 per barrel. Now theyre about $30 per barrel. Its a significant shock for the economy. It also means that government revenues have declined significantly, and so have exports. In practice, theres less money circulating in the economy and that has affected the growth rate of the economy, which has declined to about 4 percent in 2015. And this year it is expected to decline further to just over 3 percentabout 3.2 percent. So, the overall effect is quite significant compared to the level of growth rates that were observed before 2014. Between 2010 and 2014, the growth rate was around 6 percent, so it has had a significant impact for the Gabonese economy. IMF Survey: In these circumstances, how should Gabon adapt to this new environment? Mlachila: The impact, obviously, has been mostly on government revenues, and the authorities are fully aware of the issues. The government can adapt in several ways. The key strategic objective over the long run is to diversify the economy so that it is less dependent on oil, which will make the economy more resilient. In the short run, the government needs to live within its means by doing two things. First, it needs to raise additional revenue outside of the oil sector, notably, for example, by reducing the extent of tax exemptions; and then on the spending side the government can take a number of measures to control better the growth of the wage bill. Second, it needs to reprioritize capital spending to focus on projects that have the highest benefits or the highest economic returns so that it can live within its means. So, those are the key areas that the government can adapt to the fall in the commodity prices. IMF Survey: But isnt there a risk that the poorest segments of society will be hurt if the government reduces spending? Mlachila: Indeed, and the government is aware of these challenges. The issue is to adjust spending in line with what is available in terms of revenue. On the one hand, the government can potentially raise additional revenue from the rest of the non-oil sector. So, the oil revenue loss can be, to some extent, compensated by additional measures which can mobilize additional revenues. On the other hand, the government can put in place or strengthen its social safety net by doing a number of things. For instance, for people in the rural areas it can develop further the agricultural sector. This is an area where Gabon can do a lot more given that the country still imports a lot of food, and can produce some of the food more cheaply locally. The government is already working on addressing this issue. This can be done, for instance, by improving rural access roads or improving the availability of inputs in the agricultural sector. At the same time, especially in the urban areas, the government can improve its social safety net by introducing or expanding cash transfers for the most vulnerable segments of the population. So it can do both, actually. It can definitely reduce some of the spending, but, at the same time, reinforce the social safety net by getting additional revenues from the non-oil sector. IMF Survey: You also talked about the need for Gabon to be less dependent on oil. How do you see Gabon diversifying its economy? Mlachila: Certainly, Gabon has been highly dependent on the oil sector, which in 2014 has contributed to about 45 percent of government revenue and about 85 percent of exports. So it is an important sector in the economy. But, there is a need to diversify the economy so that it is less dependent on oil and therefore oil prices. To this end, the authorities have put in place a strategic plan. Its called PSGE, Plan Strategique Gabon Emergent. First, it focuses on development of infrastructure, especially in the area of transport such as roads, ports, and railways, and, at the same time, also paying attention to improving availability of electricity. So, thats one area in which the government has been spending a considerable amount of money. The government is also trying to increase the amount of value added in the economy by creating a Special Economic Zone. Theres a Special Economic Zone called Nkok near Libreville, the main function of which is to develop various industries, notably in the wood processing industry where there can be additional value added. More generally, the government needs to improve the business climate throughout the country to promote investment. Finally, in the area of education, for instance, the government is fully aware that theres a shortage of qualified manpower in various economic activities. So by investing more in training, especially in vocational training, theres potential to improve the performance of the economy, including through developing skills to help diversification into other new areas. IMF Survey: To conclude, if you had three key priorities to identify for Gabon going forward, what would those be? Mlachila: The key priority is for Gabon to boost its growth rate because without growth theres no improvement of peoples incomes and livelihoods. For that, Gabon needs to implement structural reforms to elevate the level of growth over the long run. The second priority is to diversify the economy so that it is more resilient to external shocks and therefore less likely to be hit by reductions, for example, in oil prices or other commodity prices. And finally, Gabon needs to pay attention to ensure that long-run fiscal sustainability is safeguarded, without which there could be a significant increase in public debt levels in the economy, and it would make it difficult for Gabon to meet its key strategic objectives over both the short run as well as the long run. Imperial Valley News Center Secretary Kerry's Meetings with Colombian Government and FARC Negotiators Washington, DC - Secretary of State John Kerry, at the request of Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos, met with the parties negotiating a peace agreement for Colombia this afternoon in Havana, Cuba. The Secretary first met with the Colombian government's negotiating team and then with the FARC negotiating team. Secretary Kerry reiterated to both sides that the United States strongly supports the peace process, and is prepared through "Paz Colombia," announced February 4 by President Obama, to support the implementation of a final agreement to end the longest running conflict in the Western Hemisphere. He underscored to both sides that the peace process in Colombia, like President Obama's historic visit to Cuba, was a sign of "a profound transformation underway in Latin America." Secretary Kerry stressed that the international community is also supporting the peace process, including the UN Secretary General and Security Council, the European Union, and the Holy Father, Pope Francis. He told both parties he is encouraged that the "end of conflict" issues are now front and center in the negotiations, including a formal bilateral ceasefire monitored by the UN Security Council; a timetable for disarmament, and security guarantees post-conflict for all lawful political actors. Secretary Kerry urged the parties to redouble their efforts to resolve these difficult issues that are necessary to conclude a final agreement. Congressman Vargas Leads Efforts to Secure Funding for Phase 2 of the Calexico Land Port of Entry Washington, DC - Congressman Juan Vargas (CA-51) is leading efforts to secure $248 million for Phase 2 of the Calexico West Land Port of Entry (LPOE) Reconfiguration and Expansion Project. President Obamas Fiscal year 2017 budget includes this level of funding, which will be the final funds needed to complete the Calexico West LPOE. Im pleased President Obama included the necessary funds to complete the last phase of the Calexico West LPOE project, said Rep. Vargas. Investing in our infrastructure will stimulate our mega region and our nations economic potential, as well as increase jobs, safety, and commercial growth. Rep. Vargas will continue working with local, state, and national leaders to ensure the funding is obtained. Funds for Phase 1 of the project were approved by Congress in December of 2014. Vargas represents Californias 51st Congressional District which includes the southern portion of San Diego County, all of Imperial County and Californias entire US/Mexico border. Vargas was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 2012 and is currently serving his second term in Congress. He represented the 40th California State Senate District from 2010-2012, the 79th California State Assembly District from 2000 2006 and served on the San Diego City Council from 1993 2000. Department of Social Services Mobile Office Open House El Centro, California - Tuesday, the Imperial County Department of Social Services (ICDSS) will host an open house of their new Mobile Office unit during the Imperial County Board of Supervisors meeting in El Centro. The Mobile Office will be available for viewing from 10:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. (noon) at the County Administration Center parking lot. The open house is an opportunity to tour the new unit and learn about the services that will be provided by ICDSS staff to Imperial County residents in the countys outlying areas. The goals of the Mobile Office are to increase participation in the programs that improve quality of life and strengthen community partnerships by increasing access to services. The ICDSS Mobile Office will be staffed by experienced program technicians who are able to complete eligibility determinations, process benefits applications and changes to active cases, receive documents for Medi-Cal and other Social Services programs remotely and enable ICDSS staff to supplement current outreach efforts. Additionally, the mobile office can be utilized as a disaster response vehicle to efficiently respond to impacted areas throughout the county in the event of an emergency. Residents of the Imperial Valley interested in receiving more information about the services provided at this mobile office are encouraged to attend. Open House of the ICDSS Mobile Office Tuesday, March 22, 2016, from 10:00 a.m. 12:00 p.m. Imperial County Administration Center Parking Lot, North Entrance, 940 West Main Street, El Centro Presidential Elections in the Republic of Congo Washington, DC - The United States congratulates the Congolese people for their active participation in the March 20 presidential elections. Their enthusiasm and determination to register to vote and peacefully engage, despite many impediments, demonstrates their commitment to democracy. We note numerous reports of irregularities that have raised concerns about the credibility of the process, including the media blackout during the polls, an imbalanced and restrictive media environment, significant disparity in access to state resources, a short timeframe for electoral preparations, and restrictions on freedoms of expression, communication, and association in the pre-election period. We urge Congolese authorities to restore communications and to complete the electoral process with accuracy, credibility, fairness, and transparency. As the vote tallying continues, the United States urges the Congolese people to remain patient and avoid speculation. We ask all political leaders to renounce violence, call upon their supporters to remain calm, and seek to resolve any differences peacefully in accordance with existing laws and procedures. Tunisia's National Day Washington, DC - Secretary of State John Kerry: "On behalf of President Obama and the people of the United States, I am delighted to join the Tunisian people in celebrating the 60th anniversary of Tunisias independence. "Tunisians continue to build upon their countrys rich history and remarkable achievements since 2011, which remain a truly inspiring example throughout the region and for the world. Indeed, we commend the courage of the Tunisian people, whose commitment to peaceful dialogue, consensus building, and compromise have enshrined citizen engagement as a cornerstone of their inclusive and growing democracy. We also applaud Tunisias commitment to ensuring security and stability, as well as to modernizing its economy, even amidst daunting challenges. "This is a moment to reflect on the strength, unity, and resolve of the Tunisian people, and all that they have achieved. I send all Tunisians my warmest wishes for a patriotic holiday and prosperous year ahead." The founding CEO of the HSE has warned that the rest of the world is moving away from hospital groups structures that were financially unsustainable and would only serve to further disintegrate the health service, IMT reports. Speaking at a conference in UCD last week, Prof Brendan Drumm said he did not know what had made the Government go back to create hospital groups. Now every country in the world is moving away from hospital groups. They want the hospitals to get integrated, not to get disintegrated. Prof Drumm who made the comments at the inaugural Joint Scientific Meeting of the Association of University Departments of General Practice (AUDGPI) and the ICGP last Friday (March 11) also pointed to a radical rationalisation of hospitals in the capital and across the country and a halving of NCHD numbers. Perhaps a lot of what I am going to say might be seen as challenging, in some way argumentative, but I dont mean it to be that. What I really want to do is continue a debate I have been involved in for a long time, which is that if you genuinely do care and we genuinely do want services to work, then we have to change our healthcare system, said the Professor of Paediatrics at UCD, who was among the speakers at the meeting. He was responding to a question by Galway GP and NUI Galway Professor Dr Andrew Murphy, who asked: Why is it that the HSE just wont give 100 million to somebody in charge of diabetes in the West of Ireland and give them control as to how that money can be best spent? I think that all the forces that you are looking for [better patient experience, effectiveness of service and the safety of services through integrated care] will be leveraged in the same way from that. More than that identify the top five conditions. If we just target those and let budgets be spent on a reasonable basis, regionally, I think a lot of what you are looking for will flow directly. Prof Murphy added: At the moment the budgets are separate. If there was a unified budget for diabetes in the West of Ireland that could be spent in hospitals or in the community, I think all these cost-effective measures will come through, but they will not unify the budgets. Prof Drumm responded: If general practice wants to take on the responsibility for doing this work and I think it should I think I have pushed for that for years it also has to take on the responsibility and have the confidence to say we want that budget. However, he added that having that budget did not mean continuing to have that hospital down the road that does one overnight piece of surgery a month and continues to pay an operating team, a whole load of junior doctors, a whole lot of registrars. If you want to know the truth of it that money needs to move. Dublin needs two hospitals only to run its health services, not seven or eight on call every night or something like that. Ireland needs 14 or 15 [hospitals]. It needs half the number of junior doctors it possibly has at the moment in any sort of rational structure. So you have to support the rationalisation of the structure and put the money in the right place, concluded Prof Drumm. lloyd.mudiwa@imt.ie The Master of the National Maternity Hospital has called for an honest discussion on the controversial facility provided by multinational corporations such as Apple and Facebook, whereby female staff are offered egg-freezing services so they can delay starting families, as this still comes with an increased risk of miscarriage. Dr Rhona Mahony told those attending the recent (March 4) BLM Reform and Innovation: The future of healthcare regulation and claims in Ireland conference in Dublin that the facility was commercially motivated, IMT reports. This kind of says it all. This is Apple and Facebook, Dr Mahony said at the meeting, gesturing to a screenshot from her presentation. Now you have egg freezing. So not only can we do IVF, but now we can say to young women that: If you are not ready to have a baby yet, why dont you work away. We can freeze your eggs and then when you are ready at 45 [years of age] you can go and have a baby, and your eggs will be waiting for you. You can have young eggs, which is different to being 45 and waiting that long to have your baby. The Holles Street Master added: This, I think, is a fascinating reflection on our society, the whole idea that companies and institutions would offer their young women free freezing of their eggs so, I presume, they could work harder over that particular time. Or perhaps its a good thing? Perhaps youre giving women a choice about a reproductive choice. Apple and Facebook are reportedly offering payment to female employees to freeze their eggs and store them. The companies have previously stated that they believe this can address gender imbalance in the corporate world by enabling women reach their career goals by delaying pregnancy, while maintaining the option to have children later in life. Numerous efforts to get a response from either company to the Masters remarks were unsuccessful at the time of going to press. This is a highly commercial activity and theres no guarantee at 45 when you go to use your eggs that your IVF will be successful, added Dr Mahony. Theres still going to be an increased risk of miscarriage. We need to have a really honest conversation about where this sits. See interview here lloyd.mudiwa@imt.ie Senator John Crown is not seeking re-election to the Seanad due to the lack of reform of the upper House of the Oireachtas. When I made my acceptance speech five years ago, I said I would not run again unless they reformed the Seanad. They did not do that, Prof Crown, one of the countrys most vocal health commentators, told Irish Medical Times. I have stated very plainly that the way the Seanad is elected is an affront to democracy. Perhaps unusually for a politician I said I would do something and I am doing it. Thus, I will not run in 2016. On the question of reform, Prof Crown had argued for an upper House based on universal suffrage. Prof Crown continued with his clinical work his first love during his time as a Senator and will now resume his career as an oncologist and cancer researcher, full-time. Recently, the oncologist said consultants being forced to retire at age 65 unlike judges and Ministers was part of the health services problem. He has also criticised the bizarre, abnormal medical career structure that currently exists in Ireland, with many of the jobs for NCHDs not appropriate training posts. gary.culliton@imt.ie Inflatable Halloween Pumpkin Twice the Size of a House Rings in Spooky Season 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 }} A $2m mint edition of Supermans very first comic-book appearance, which was stolen from the collection of the actor Nicholas Cage, will be displayed at a private view in London. The worlds most expensive comic book, a copy of the 1938 first issue of Action Comics, featuring Superman's debut, will join a display of the most valuable comic artefacts at Londons St. Pancras Renaissance Hotel on 23 March. Hollywood star Cage - who has a son called Kal-El, Supermans birth name - reported his copy stolen in 2000. It was recovered in a San Fernando Valley storage locker and returned to Cage. The nearly-pristine copy of Action Comics No. 1 was then sold for a record $2,161,000 at an online auction. It is the most valuable item in the 1,000-strong DC Comics collection of Ayman Hariri, the billionaire son of assassinated Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. The Cage edition is in great condition given the journey its been on, said Hariri, whose collection includes Detective 27 from 1939, which features the first appearance of Batman and Batman #1, featuring the Jokers debut. Superman's story started in the 1938 first edition of Action Comics There are believed to be just 100 copies of Action Comics No. 1, originally sold for 10 cents, in circulation. Hariri, revealed for the first time as the wealthy secret collector snapping up original runs of classic books, also owns an edition deemed to be the highest graded copy in existence. Hariri, 37, whose father was killed in 2005 in a Beirut car bombing, said: I had a picture in my room of my father as Superman, flying above the rubble, above the universities and hospitals he helped build. After he passed, I bought as many original Superman stories as I could find. I always looked to my father as a Superman to emulate. Hariri, a construction magnate worth 1bn, bought a walk-on role in the new Batman V Superman film at a charity auction. His Impossible Collection of DC Comics will go on public display in London later this year before embarking upon a global tour. Since I was a child I have been attracted to superhero stories, said the collector, who until now has kept his collection locked in a guarded safe. Its because characters like Superman, who could simply rule the world, use their powers for good and place themselves in harms way to help others. It would be wrong to suggest my family history hasnt been an influence. Hariri is believed to have a similarly-valuable collection of Marvel comics, home of Spider-man, under lock and key. 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 }} Gaston, presumably, is a little like Highlander; meaning when two incarnations are in the same room together, they must inevitably do battle to determine who is the superior Gaston. So, when Hugh Jackman and Luke Evans both turned up as guests on The Jonathan Ross Show, something epic was inevitably going to go down; with the host challenging the pair to a competitive rendition of the song 'Gaston' from Disney's 1991 animated classic, Beauty and the Beast. Jackman played the role in an Australian production of the film's Broadway adaptation. Evans is set to star as the villainous cad in Bill Condon's remake of Beauty and the Beast, with Emma Watson and Dan Stevens in the titular roles; alongside the likes of Ian McKellen, Josh Gad, Ewan McGregor, Stanley Tucci, Kevin Kline, and Emma Thompson. The film is, indeed, set to be a musical reviving its original songs; meaning we'll be getting to see Evans' full version of the ditty in all its silver screen glory. Who wins? It's a close one, certainly; though Jackman's well-known as a musical phenomenon, Evans' spirited rendition perfectly inhabited the rakish figure in a way that's certainly going to raise expectations for the upcoming live-action adaptation. It's Jackman's Eddie the Eagle co-star Taron Egerton, however, who held no hesitation in revealing himself as the room's biggest Beauty and the Beast fan; jumping into the role of Gaston's loyal sidekick LeFou without prompt for the song's opening lines. Is it too late swap Josh Gad out for him? Evans currently stars alongside Tom Hiddleston and Sienna Miller in Ben Wheatley's dystopic High-Rise, now out in UK cinemas. 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 }} While Netflix is best known for creating spectacular original programming like House of Cards, Orange is the New Black and Narcos, they managed to surprise everyone last year by releasing a film that was quickly branded unwatchable by viewers. Titled The Ridiculous 6 - a spoof Western I imagine is supposed to be making fun of The Hateful 8 but bares no resemblance in plot or quality - the film was the first part in a four part series created by Adam Sandler. Instead of just letting Sandler go, the streaming service has decided to stick to its original plan and release the comedians follow-up, titled The Do-Over. While not directly linked to The Ridiculous 6, the first trailer decides to mention that the pair are related - with the slogan The madness continues splashing on screen. Any normal person would have thought Netflix would attempt to disassociate themselves with the film completely, but apparently theyre happy to bring it up again. However, even though critics hated the film - it holds a 0% fresh rating - in its first 30 days on Netflix it was watched more than any other film in the history of Netflix for the same time period. If that is true - and there isnt a way of proving the claim is correct because the company dont release their viewing figures - then that would explain why theyre happy to parade out Sandler film after Sandler film. Thankfully, The Do-Over has yet to cause the same controversy as The Ridiculous 6 which was accused of racial stereotyping, sexism and using make-up to darken the skin of actors to make them look Native American. 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 }} When he was first asked to play the role of Inspector Jules Maigret in ITV's new version of Georges Simenon's celebrated Parisian detective stories, Rowan Atkinson turned it down. The 61-year-old actor says that initially he couldn't see a way in to the character of the emotionally buttoned-down sleuth. Atkinson makes for a fascinating interview. Far removed in person from his more extravagant, out-there screen creations such as the Blackadder, Mr Bean and Johnny English, he is a very thoughtful and intelligent man who takes time to give a well-considered answer to your questions. He also displays an admirably precise use of language. He begins by revealing why he was at first deterred from taking on the part of Maigret, the subject of 75 novels written between 1931 and 1972, which have sold an eye-watering 853 million copies worldwide. The problem with Maigret is that he hasn't got a limp, he hasn't got a lisp, he hasn't got a French accent, and he has no particular love of opera or any of those other things that people tend to attach to fictional detectives. He's just an ordinary guy doing an extraordinary job in a very interesting time. In the end, though, it was Maigret's very ordinariness that won Atkinson over. When he was approached by ITV a second time several months later, he changed his mind and assented to play the part. He explains why. What appealed to me about it was the very challenge of it. I found the prospect quite difficult. The decision to do it was related to the fact that the character is a very ordinary man. Generally speaking, I haven't played many ordinary men. I tend to play rather odd men or people who are more eccentric or have a more particular attitude to life. You go through the part in your head and read the speeches and think, 'Can I find a way of doing this?' The demand of modern TV drama is to be very low-key and naturalistic, and in general the characters I've played have not been low-key or naturalistic. Atkinson continues that, I like to relish words and sentences and phraseology, and there are no opportunities for that in Maigret. What directors in TV drama are constantly telling you is, 'Don't act it. Don't try. Don't emphasise that word.' Whereas someone like the Blackadder relished the lines that he had and the words that he was given. So there was a lot of inflection in that. Maigret is inflection-free acting. And it has to be said, in his first outing as the detective (the second, Maigret's Dead Man, will go out at a later date), Atkinson really pulls it off. In the first episode, Maigret Sets a Trap, which goes out on ITV at 9pm on Easter Monday, the actor reins in his natural screen exuberance to deliver a banked-down, contemplative performance. His role in this film, where Maigret is initially struggling to track down a serial killer on the streets of 1950s Montmartre, is all the more effective for being so understated. As Maigret, Atkinson is not given to showy, look at me acting. While he puffs melancholically on his pipe and stares into the middle distance, the pain he feels for the victims is clear from his faraway look. The eyes are the window to the soul. Access unlimited streaming of movies and TV shows with Amazon Prime Video Sign up now for a 30-day free trial Sign up John Simenon, Georges' son, an executive producer on the film and the keeper of the Maigret flame, concurs. Simenon, 65, who makes a Colin Dexter-esque appearance in the closing frames of Maigret Sets a Trap reading a Tintin book to a young boy on a park bench, observes that, Three qualities characterise Maigret: his humanity, his empathy for the victims and to a large extent for the criminals and a touch of vulnerability as well. When I met Rowan for the first time, it was obvious he had all those qualities. I never had any doubt about it. And when I see the film now, I know that I was right. For all that, some people were still surprised when they first heard the news that Atkinson renowned the world over for his comedy performances was going to play this very serious character, who in the past has been portrayed by, among others, Michael Gambon, Richard Harris, Charles Laughton, Jean Gabin and Rupert Davies. One wag even joked that Atkinson would be more suited to portraying Inspector Clouseau than Inspector Maigret. But the actor does not hold with the view that appearing in comedy is in some way inferior to tragedy. One thing I'd never wish it to be thought is that you play serious roles in order to achieve some kind of respectability that you can't get if you're playing comedy roles, he asserts with quiet authority. It's quite weird the way the arts community, for want of a better word, still have a long-lasting cynicism about the importance or the artistic value of comedy. To them, comedy is just farting around for money. Whereas as soon as you play a serious role aha, now you're an actor and doing something of meaning. For them, art is something where nobody laughs and nobody makes any money out of it which is an attitude that I would dispute! Which, Atkinson adds that, Is why I'm not looking for anything other than an interesting role to play. As far as I'm concerned, when I play a serious role, I'm using the same skills as I do when I'm playing something more obviously comic. It's slightly different muscles, but the same skill set. So it is evident that Atkinson does not see the role of Maigret as part of a master plan for going straight. I don't really have plans like that, he reflects. You go for the parts that are offered or the parts that inspire you. I'd never wish to say that I'd finally waved goodbye to any character if I feel I could still play him. It's just that the emphasis tends to shift. I don't think you should be too absolutist about what you play and what you don't play. Atkinson proceeds to disclose that he used to be more rigid about the sort of parts he would accept. Prior to 2008, I'd always said that I'd never play a part that had been played before. Mr Bean, the Blackadder and Johnny English were roles that I created. Then I got offered the role of Fagin in a revival of the musical Oliver!. And I thought, 'Wow, that would be a fun thing to do. The role has been played before extremely successfully on film and on stage, but I shouldn't let that stop me having a go.' So I had a go, and it seemed to work. So I broke my own rule again by having a go and playing Maigret. One disappointment for Atkinson, a card-carrying car enthusiast, was that on this production he did not get to drive any of the gorgeous 1950s cars. A great frustration for me and it's a discussion that John and I had very early on is that the one thing Maigret never does is drive. The cars are great, but he's always driven or gets the train or the bus. So I was saying, 'Why don't we ring the changes for the 21st century and stick him behind the wheel of a car?' John replied, 'You can if you want, but will be lots of Maigret devotees who don't like it'. So he's still a non-driver! The other non-negotiable aspect of this production which was filmed in Budapest, a city that looks a lot more like 1950s Paris than present-day Paris does was Maigret's trademark pipe, which he turns to in times of great stress. Atkinson did not find it hard to make those scenes look convincing. I used to smoke a pipe when I was 20, a fact of which I'm not proud. So I did know vaguely what to do and how to do it. Simenon was impressed by the actor's pipe-smoking technique. I've seen all the versions of Maigret, and Rowan is the first one who makes the smoking believable. It's actually the way my father used to smoke his pipe. 'Maigret Sets a Trap' is on ITV at 9pm on Easter Monday 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 }} New depth restrictions will be imposed on ships in the Panama Canal after water levels fell at nearby lakes. The Panama Canal Authority (APC), which manages the waterway, has announced ships hoping to cross must comply with a maximum depth limit of 39 feet (11.89 meters) beginning on April 18. The temporary and preventative measures are due to the effect of the El Nino weather pattern which has caused a drought in the surrounding area. The authority says the measure will be phased in over the course of several weeks. What is El Nino? The Panama Canal Authority added that ships loaded after 21 March would need to comply with the new restrictions. It predicted the impact on operations would be minimal. It comes just months after Bolivias second largest lake, Lake Poopo, was officially declared evaporated due to the effect of El Nino. The lake, which is situated more than 12,000 above sea level, has dried up in the past due to the weather phenomenon before rebounding to twice the size of Los Angeles. 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 But experts say it may not rebound quite so successfully after three decades of environment stress from heavy industry upstream and the rise in the global temperature. In December last year, scientists at the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency said the current El Nino - which occurs roughly every seven years - was due to be the biggest since records began with temperatures in the Central American Ocean reaching 3.1C above average. This is compared to 2.8C above average during the previous record El Nino between 1997 and 1998. Additional reporting by Reuters Sign up to our free weekly newsletter for insider tips and product reviews from our shopping experts Sign up for our free IndyBest 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 IndyBest email {{ #verifyErrors }}{{ message }}{{ /verifyErrors }}{{ ^verifyErrors }}Something went wrong. Please try again later{{ /verifyErrors }} How long have you had your phone? If your contract is due for an upgrade, then youll probably be eligible for something faster, smarter and more capable than before. What are your priorities? Longer battery life? Better camera? Bigger screen? Smaller screen (not everyone has massive hands, you know)? Or a phone with a low initial price? Prices quoted are upfront cost on contract and how much to buy it without a contract at all. 1. Apple iPhone SE: from free on contract with EE, from 359 without contract from Apple The newest iPhone, announced on Monday, looks like an improved iPhone 5s. Its four-inch screen means it feels much more suited to smaller hands and pockets. This is the lowest priced iPhone ever, but it includes much of the tech of the latest models, including a blazing-fast processor and 12-megapixel camera capable of shooting video at 4K resolution, impressive panoramic shots and more. Buy on contract now Buy without contract now 2. Samsung Galaxy S7 edge: from 9 on contract with Vodafone, 639.99 without contract from Selfridges Easily the best Android smartphone on the market. It has a dazzling design (the sloping-edged screen looks great), fast processor, super-fast 12-megapixel camera and strong battery life. The 5.5-inch screen is as big as the iPhone 6s Plus but this feels more manageable in the hand. And its waterproof, surviving for 30 minutes in 1.5 metres of water. Not cheap, but the advantages are considerable highly recommended. Buy on contract now Buy without contract now 3. Sony Xperia Z5 Premium: from free on contract with Vodafone, 599.99 without contract from Carphone Warehouse If you want the highest-quality screen around, this phones for you. Many phones now shoot video in the super-high 4K resolution, but only this one can play it back in full resolution, too. Theres a powerful 23-megapixel camera and the fingerprint sensor is discreetly mounted in the edge, in the power button. Buy on contract now Buy without contract now 4. LG G5: from 9.99 on contract from EE, 529 without contract from Amazon Just announced and available now on pre-order, the G5 is a beast that's different to anything else around: the base slides off so you can insert a new battery or attach an optional camera grip for the 16-megapixel camera. It has an always-on screen that shows the time even when the phone is sleeping (and uses barely any battery). On EE, the first 2,000 pre-orders get B&O headphones and speaker, too. Buy on contract now Buy without contract now 5. Apple iPhone 6s Plus: from 39.99 on contract from Carphone Warehouse, from 619 without contract from Apple This is the biggest-screened iPhone with a gorgeous, high-resolution, 5.5-inch display and impeccable 12-megapixel camera. The fingerprint sensor that unlocks the screen is very speedy it also activates Apple Pay so you can pay for thing as you would with a contactless credit card. Other Apple benefits include a massive range of quality apps, excellent voice recognition system Siri and 3D Touch, where you press harder on the screen to activate extra functions. Buy on contract now Buy without contract now 6. Samsung Galaxy S7: from 9 on contract from Three, 606.55 without contract from Amazon If youd like the latest Galaxy but prefer a smaller screen, the S7 with its 5.1-inch display is a great alternative. It packs the same camera, performance and battery life as the S7 edge in a more conventional, but still spiffy, styling. Both phones will have access to Samsung Pay later in the year like Apple Pay but designed to work with pretty much any card reader, not just contactless. Buy on contract now Buy without contract now 7. Microsoft Lumia 950: from free on contract from Tesco Mobile. 399.99 without contract from John Lewis This is like having your full Windows computer on your phone. It uses a version of the new Windows 10 software so will be familiar to users (though very different from Android or Apple). You can even connect it to a display, keyboard and mouse via an optional Display Dock so it works like a full computer. Theres a 20-megapixel camera and a decent 5.2-inch screen. Buy on contract now Buy without contract now 8. Nextbit Robin: 277.20 without contract from Nextbit This is a great phone if you want a large amount of storage at an affordable price, but dont need everything on your phone all the time. The Robin has 32GB built in, plus 100GB of storage in the cloud. When the phone gets full, it automatically transfers stuff to the cloud to free up space. The design is a refreshing change from black slabs with curvy corners. Theres a good 5.2-inch display and decent 13-megapixel camera. Only available direct from Nextbit. Buy now 9. HTC One A9: from free on contract from EE, 357.45 without contract from Amazon If you like the chic design of an iPhone but prefer Googles Android operating system, the A9 is a wise choice. It has a pristine five-inch display and a tremendous 13-megapixel camera thats fast and satisfying to use. HTCs customisation of Android has always been excellent, especially when it comes to the well-designed app icons and wallpapers, for instance. Buy on contract now Buy without contract now 10. Honor 5X: free on contract from Three, 189.99 without contract from Three This is a great-value phone. Slick aluminium build, excellent 5.5-inch display, 13-megapixel camera and even a second sim card slot so you can run two numbers on it (one work, one personal, perhaps). It has a good battery life, nippy processor and a fingerprint sensor on the back. But its the price that makes it stand out against the competition. Buy on contract now Buy without contract now Verdict Smartphones are complicated, intricate machines which we use all day long. So battery life is important. All the phones here will last a full day, though the Honor, Samsung and Sony handsets stand out. The Samsung Galaxy S7 edge, Apple iPhone 6s Plus and new iPhone SE have the best design. If photography is crucial to you, the Apple, Samsung and Sony snappers are exceptional. But, all things considered, we have to give it to the iPhone SE, which stands out as the best value option. 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 }} Last month, Hiromi Asai's New York Fashion Week show looked much like others happening across the city: the throb of Uptown Funk filled the room as lithe models strutted down the runway; camera shutters clicked; the front row appeared unmoved while the crowds behind craned their necks to watch the spectacle. But rather than wearing haute couture gowns or the latest in pret-a-porter, the models were decked out in formal silk kimonos. Asai, a designer and stylist born in Tokyo and now living in the US, is on a mission to bring handmade kimonos to the world of high fashion. While various big-name designers have adopted different takes on the style over the years, Asai's goals are loftier: she wants the kimono to be seen as a universal style of dress, one that would work for Jennifer Lawrence on the Golden Globes red carpet. It's easier to just show the kimono as culture, but I want to show the kimono as fashion, Asai says. We don't use Japanese music or Japanese motifs in the show. We display the kimono in a Western setting. For Asai, bringing the kimono back isn't just a lark. The entire kimono-making industry is in crisis, and the designer sees acceptance outside of Japan as its path to salvation. Her first step was to present an official show at New York Fashion Week after launching a successful Kickstarter campaign last year to raise money to show the real kimono to the world. The kimono has existed for more than a thousand years, but at the turn of the 20th century Western-style clothing entered Japan and started changing the fashion landscape. Over the ensuing decades, the kimono transformed from an everyday garment into one worn mainly on special occasions. While the kimono is still revered as Japan's national costume, the industry faces trouble from multiple sides. For one, the market has seen a sharp decline in sales. In 1980, kimonos were an almost $20bn industry, says Osamu Nasu, a representative from Kimono Artisan Kyoto, an association of textile designers who collaborated with Asai. But in 2015, it had shrunk to about $3bn. Then there are the artisans who painstakingly craft the colourful, intricate textiles from which kimonos are made. This class of craftsmen is ageing, and for the first time in centuries few up-and-comers are available to replace the declining workforce. There are still many people interested in making kimonos, even younger people, but kimono-making is like a hobby, not a business, Nasu says. All of the income is very low, so even in the very professional, senior artisans, they need another job. The kimono's future looks especially bleak when the artists who have the most reverence for the garments can't afford to actually buy them. Sleeves on the line: a model walks the runway wearing a Hiromi Asai design last month (Getty) There is hope for the kimono in modern Japan, however. Manami Okazaki, author of the book Kimono Now, says young people in the country still care deeply about preserving this element of their history. Many are getting into kimono culture in different ways, she says for example, in the Harajuku neighbourhood of Tokyo, known for being the place where groups of young people show off their wild street style, including those who belong to the kawaii (cute) and gothic Lolita style subcultures. Okazaki says people have found new ways to wear the garment such as backward or with trainers and more accessible options in lower-cost, laser-printed cotton versions. One of the biggest new trends is the denim kimono, which has the bonus of being easy to wear. According to Okazaki, the denim fabric is simpler to maintain it can go in the washing machine and it folds more easily around the waist than traditional silk versions. This is no small factor, given the intricacy of the formal kimono and the industry that has risen around teaching people how to wear it. While there are now instruction videos on YouTube, kimono wearers have traditionally attended formal schools or hired stylists to learn the technique, incurring additional costs. For her runway presentation, Asai hired four dressers to help backstage. Fashion weeks around the world Show all 6 1 /6 Fashion weeks around the world Fashion weeks around the world Mercedes-Benz China Fashion Week is held in the art district of Beijing Getty Fashion weeks around the world Tess Van Zalinge, Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Amsterdam autumn/winter 2016 Fashion weeks around the world Sivico Qiao Dan, Mercedes-Benz China Fashion Week, spring/summer 2016 Fashion weeks around the world Broadcast:bo Wang Tao, Mercedes-Benz China Fashion Week, spring/summer 2016 Fashion weeks around the world Saint Tokyo, Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Russia, spring/summer 2016 Fashion weeks around the world Tarik Ediz, Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week Russia, spring/summer 2016 Rather than campaigning for more approachable, lower-cost versions, Asai thinks the focus should be on raising awareness of the authentic kimono on a global scale. Not everybody can afford the handmade silk version (or handle the production that goes along with putting it on), so Asai wants the fashion world to see it as a universal form of haute couture. By expanding the market to affluent buyers in countries beyond Japan and, more importantly, saving the artisans and their craft, she thinks that the entire industry could get a much-needed influx of cash and interest. We need to show the brilliance of the kimono to the world using the handmade market, Asai says, and then maybe the kimono lovers will increase all over the world. This is the first step. IBT Media Inc 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 judge has postponed a court hearing about the FBI's demand for Apple to unlock the phone of one of the San Bernardino terrorists after the agency said they may have found a way to unlock on their own. In a filing late Monday, federal prosecutors asked to delay a much-anticipated court hearing set for Tuesday over the FBI's demand for Apple to help unlock Syed Rizwan Farook's encrypted phone. An "an outside party" came forward over the weekend and showed the FBI a possible method for unlocking the phone, according to the filing. Authorities need time to determine "whether it is a viable method that will not compromise data" on the phone. If viable, "it should eliminate the need for the assistance from Apple," according to the filing. In a statement, U.S. Justice Department spokeswoman Melanie Newman said the government was "cautiously optimistic" that the possible method will work. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym could rule on the government's request to delay Tuesday's hearing at any time. For more than a month, the government and Apple have waged a very public debate over whether breaking into one phone would jeopardize the security of all encrypted devices. Syed Farook, the suspect Prosecutors have argued that the phone used by Farook probably contains evidence of the Dec. 2 attack in which the county food inspector and his wife, Tashfeen Malik, slaughtered 14 at a holiday luncheon attended by many of his work colleagues. The two were killed in a police shootout hours later. The FBI has said the couple was inspired by Isis. Investigators still are trying to piece together what happened and find out if there were collaborators. The couple destroyed other phones they left behind and the FBI has been unable to circumvent the passcode needed to unlock the iPhone, which is owned by San Bernardino County and was given to Farook for his job. Last month, Pym ordered Apple to create software that would disable security features on the phone, including one that erases all the information if a passcode is incorrectly entered more than 10 times. That would allow the FBI to electronically run possible combinations to open the phone without losing data. In pictures: San Bernardino shooting Show all 15 1 /15 In pictures: San Bernardino shooting In pictures: San Bernardino shooting A couple embraces following a shooting that killed multiple people at a social services facility, in San Bernardino In pictures: San Bernardino shooting A victim is wheeled away on a stretcher following a shooting that killed multiple people at a social services facility, in San Bernardino AP In pictures: San Bernardino shooting Rescue crews tend to the injured in the intersection outside the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino Reuters In pictures: San Bernardino shooting A survivor (2nd L) of the mass shooting at the Inland Regional Center meets her family after police questioning in San Bernardino Rex In pictures: San Bernardino shooting An armed police officer protects a busload of people who were inside the Inland Regional Center where gunmen shot and killed 14 people and injured another 14, to be escorted to meet relatives at the Rudy Hernandez Community Center in San Bernardino Reuters In pictures: San Bernardino shooting People wait at a community center for a family member who was near a shooting that killed multiple people at a social services center, in San Bernardino, California AP In pictures: San Bernardino shooting In this image taken from video, armored vehicles surround an SUV following a shootout in San Bernardino AP In pictures: San Bernardino shooting Law enforcement officers search for the suspects of a mass shooting in San Bernardino Getty Images In pictures: San Bernardino shooting Law enforcement officers search for the suspects of a mass shooting in San Bernardino Getty Images In pictures: San Bernardino shooting The Inland Regional Center complex is pictured in an aerial photo following a shooting incident in San Bernardino Reuters In pictures: San Bernardino shooting Authorities prepare to search an area near a church, following a shooting that killed multiple people at a social services center for the disabled in San Bernardino AP In pictures: San Bernardino shooting Evacuees from the scene of a shooting at the Inland Regional Center hug each other as they wait inside the Rudy C Hernandez Community Center in San Bernardino EPA In pictures: San Bernardino shooting Omar Riopedre embraces his wife Diana, who was in the Inland Regional Center when the mass shootings took place, as they leave the Rudy C. Hernandez Community Center in the San Bernardino In pictures: San Bernardino shooting A Sheriff's Deputy runs after reports that suspects in the shooting at the Inland Regional Center were sighted in San Bernardino EPA In pictures: San Bernardino shooting Law enforcement officers search for suspects in a neighborhood after a shooting at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino EPA Apple said the government was seeking "dangerous power" that exceeds the authority of the All Writs Act of 1789 it cited and violates the company's constitutional rights, harms the Apple brand and threatens the trust of its customers to protect their privacy. The 18th-century law has been used on other cases to require third parties to help law enforcement in investigations. The company said the order is unreasonably burdensome. Once created, it would be asked to repeatedly design such software for use by authorities at home and abroad, and the technology could fall into the hands of hackers. The couple destroyed several other phones in their house (pictured) before the attack (AFP) The government has countered that Apple could create the software for one phone, retain it during the process to protect itself, then destroy it. Apple has said that creating software is a form of speech and being forced to do so violates its First Amendment rights. Apple says it was being asked to create a method to access the phone's data that does not exist. Three weeks ago, the judge sided with Apple, saying prosecutors were stretching an old law "to produce impermissibly absurd results." The government is appealing that order. 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 interactive tool created by Google was designed to encourage Syrian rebels and help bring down the Assad regime, Hillary Clinton's leaked emails have reportedly revealed. By tracking and mapping defections within the Syrian leadership, it was reportedly designed to encourage more people to defect and 'give confidence' to the rebel opposition. It was allegedly described as a pretty cool idea by senior Clinton adviser Jake Sullivan, and Google said it had enlisted the help of Al Jazeera to broadcast the tool in Syria. "We believe this can have an important impact."

Google executive Jared Cohen on the defection-tracking tool

Thousands of Clinton's personal emails have been published and indexed by WikiLeaks, and some reveal interesting details about the relationship between the State Department and major corporations. The email detailing Google's defection tracker purportedly came from Jared Cohen, a Clinton advisor until 2010 and now-President of Jigsaw, formerly known as Google Ideas, the company's New York-based policy think tank. In a July 2012 email to members of Clinton's team, which the WikiLeaks release alleges was later forwarded to the Secretary of State herself, Cohen reportedly said: My team is planning to launch a tool on Sunday that will publicly track and map the defections in Syria and which parts of the government they are coming from. Hillary Clinton in quotes Show all 11 1 /11 Hillary Clinton in quotes Hillary Clinton in quotes Hillary Clinton After losing the 2016 election: 'To all of the little girls who are watching this, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams.' Getty Hillary Clinton in quotes Hillary Clinton On running for President in 2016: 'I'm going to decide when it feels right for me to decide. ... certainly not before then [the end of 2014].' AP Hillary Clinton in quotes Hillary Clinton On the Monica Lewinsky affair: 'Its liberating to be able to reach the point in your life where you feel you can forgive. Everybody feels they have been trespassed upon and nearly everybody has trespassed on somebody else, maybe not intentionally.' Hillary Clinton in quotes Hillary Clinton On news and hair: 'If I want to knock a story off the front page, I just change my hairstyle.' Getty Images Hillary Clinton in quotes Hillary Clinton On being asked which fashion designers she preferred: 'Would you ever ask a man that question?' Getty Images Hillary Clinton in quotes Hillary Clinton On equality: 'Well I'm very conscious of how important it is for us to shatter that glass ceiling in my country. A country that has done so much for so many women and really has set the standard for women's rights and responsibilities, and I do want to see that glass ceiling shattered.' Getty Images Hillary Clinton in quotes Hillary Clinton On not winning in 2008: 'I think because I really didn't have a good strategy for my campaign. I didn't plan it the right way. ... As a candidate who was already so well known ... I don't think I ever said, 'Yes, you may have known me for eight years, but I don't take anything for granted. I have to earn your support.' Getty Images Hillary Clinton in quotes Hillary Clinton On self-confidence 'You have to be true to yourself. You have to be enough in touch with who you are and what you want, how you want to live and what's important to you, to make your decisions based on that. Sometimes that's very difficult.' AP Hillary Clinton in quotes Hillary Clinton On 9/11: 'Every nation has to either be with us, or against us. Those who harbor terrorists, or who finance them, are going to pay a price.' Getty Images Hillary Clinton in quotes Hillary Clinton On women around the world: 'If women are healthy and educated, their families will flourish. If women are free from violence, their families will flourish. If women have a chance to work and earn as full and equal partners in society, their families will flourish. And when families flourish, communities and nations will flourish.' Getty Images Hillary Clinton in quotes Hillary Clinton On her political life: I suppose I could have stayed home and baked cookies and had teas, but what I decided to do was to fulfill my profession which I entered before my husband was in public life. Getty Images Our logic behind this is that while many people are tracking the atrocities, nobody is visually representing and mapping the defections, which we believe are important in encouraging more to defect and giving confidence to the opposition. The email said Google would be partnering with Al Jazeera who would take primary ownership of the tool, maintaining it and publicising it in Syria. Cohen asked the Clinton team to tell him if there was anything the company needed to think about before launching the tool, before adding: We believe this can have an important impact. The visualisation was eventually published by Al Jazeera in English and Arabic, and Jigsaw's website claims it became one of the site's most-viewed visualisations. A post about the tool on the site claims it successfully showed "patterns and trends" in support for the regime, but makes no mention of encouraging defectors or helping the opposition. WikiLeaks has previously been responsible for publicising links between Google and high-ranking State Department officials, and founder Julian Assange's 2014 book When Google Met WikiLeaks accused the company of helping to further the US government's foreign policy agenda. As the Daily Mail points out, the news comes as Google reveals its plans to expand internet access in Cuba, in an announcement timed to coincide with Barack Obama's historic visit to the island. Clinton's thoughts on Google's plan were not revealed in the WikiLeaks release, but she reportedly instructed an aide to print out Cohen's email for later reference. Google did not provide a comment. 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 }} Children who witness conflict between their parents have poorer long-term life chances and can become suicidal in extreme cases, a new study has warned. Arguments between parents can affect children, even if they are no longer in a relationship, according to researchers at the University of Sussex commissioned by the Department of Work and Pensions. Unresolved tension between parents in particular has an impact on long-term mental health and wellbeing of a child. The Early Intervention Foundation (EIF), a charity which worked with the university on the research, warned that positive relationships between parents is neglected by maternity, childrens and family services. The charity said programmes run outside of the UK show that it is possible to improve relationships. This in turn had a positive outcome for children. The team found parents engaged in conflict are more aggressive towards their children and less responsive to their needs. Children who are exposed to severe, long-term and ongoing conflict between their parents can become aggressive, hositle and violent, while others can develop low self-esteem, anxiety and depression. Researchers said that some children can even become suicidal. A childs academic performance can also suffer, which affects the development of their social and emotional skills. Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Show all 10 1 /10 Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Mental Health Foundation: Living With Anxiety report 30 per cent of people deal with anxiety by talking to a friend or relative, or by going for a walk. Getty Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Mental Health Foundation: Living With Anxiety report Almost one in five people feel anxious all or a lot of the time. PA Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Mental Health Foundation: Living With Anxiety report 22 per cent of women feel anxious a lot or all of the time, compared to 15 per cent of men. Roman Levin/Flickr Creative Commons Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Mental Health Foundation: Living With Anxiety report 45 per cent of people who feel anxious in everyday life cite financial issues as their biggest cause of worry. Getty Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Mental Health Foundation: Living With Anxiety report And 26 per cent of people who feel anxious say fearing for the welfare of their children and loved ones leaves them burdened with worry. And 26 per cent of people say fearing for the welfare of their children and loved ones leaves them burdened with anxiety. Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Mental Health Foundation: Living With Anxiety report 27 per cent of people who suffer from anxiety say work issues, such as long hours, are the source of the problem. Getty Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Mental Health Foundation: Living With Anxiety report But 16 per cent use alcohol to cope, while 10 per cent turn to cigarettes in the face of anxiety. Unemployed people are more likely to resort to these harmful strategies: 27 per cent use alcohol and 23 per cent use cigarettes. AFP/Getty Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Mental Health Foundation: Living With Anxiety report Only seven per cent of people who say they suffer from anxiety seek help from their GP. Getty Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Mental Health Foundation: Living With Anxiety report People are thought to be more anxious than they were five years ago. Alessandra/Flickr Creative Commons Mental Health Awareness: Facts and figures Mental Health Foundation: Living With Anxiety report The stresses of modern life are thought to have created "The Age of Anxiety". Getty Carey Oppenheim, EIF Chief Executive, said: Children of all ages can be affected by inter-parental conflict. [It] is vital to ensure we avoid missing a crucial piece of the jigsaw in improving childrens mental health and future life chances. Professor Gordon Harold, from the School of Psychology at the University of Sussex, said that a growing body of evidence suggest that relationships between parents is one of the strongest influences on childrens long-term mental health, wellbeing and future life chances. This will not only affect todays generation of children, but tomorrows generation of parents. 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 }} Studies which suggest that drinking alcohol moderately has health benefits are flawed, according to new research. Previous studies have suggested that drinking alcohol, for example a glass of wine, can cut the risk of heart disease. However, a study reviewing 87 past research papers concluded that the idea that drinking at a reasonable level was flawed. Canadian researchers claimed that the studies were biased, poorly designed and pointed to positive effects that were unlikely in reality. The team behind the study published in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs also highlighted concerns about groups of abstainers who were compared to moderate drinkers, despite giving up drinking due to ill health. This meant that those who were classed as drinking occasionally, at fewer than one drink per week, lived the longest. Health news in pictures Show all 40 1 /40 Health news in pictures Health news in pictures Coronavirus outbreak The coronavirus Covid-19 has hit the UK leading to the deaths of two people so far and prompting warnings from the Department of Health AFP via Getty Health news in pictures Thousands of emergency patients told to take taxi to hospital Thousands of 999 patients in England are being told to get a taxi to hospital, figures have showed. The number of patients outside London who were refused an ambulance rose by 83 per cent in the past year as demand for services grows Getty Health news in pictures Vape related deaths spike A vaping-related lung disease has claimed the lives of 11 people in the US in recent weeks. The US Centre for Disease Control and Prevention has more than 100 officials investigating the cause of the mystery illness, and has warned citizens against smoking e-cigarette products until more is known, particularly if modified or bought off the street Getty Health news in pictures Baldness cure looks to be a step closer Researchers in the US claim to have overcome one of the major hurdles to cultivating human follicles from stem cells. The new system allows cells to grow in a structured tuft and emerge from the skin Sanford Burnham Preybs Health news in pictures Two hours a week spent in nature can improve health A study in the journal Scientific Reports suggests that a dose of nature of just two hours a week is associated with better health and psychological wellbeing Shutterstock Health news in pictures Air pollution linked to fertility issues in women Exposure to air from traffic-clogged streets could leave women with fewer years to have children, a study has found. Italian researchers found women living in the most polluted areas were three times more likely to show signs they were running low on eggs than those who lived in cleaner surroundings, potentially triggering an earlier menopause Getty/iStock Health news in pictures Junk food ads could be banned before watershed Junk food adverts on TV and online could be banned before 9pm as part of Government plans to fight the "epidemic" of childhood obesity. Plans for the new watershed have been put out for public consultation in a bid to combat the growing crisis, the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) said PA Health news in pictures Breeding with neanderthals helped humans fight diseases On migrating from Africa around 70,000 years ago, humans bumped into the neanderthals of Eurasia. While humans were weak to the diseases of the new lands, breeding with the resident neanderthals made for a better equipped immune system PA Health news in pictures Cancer breath test to be trialled in Britain The breath biopsy device is designed to detect cancer hallmarks in molecules exhaled by patients Getty Health news in pictures Average 10 year old has consumed the recommended amount of sugar for an adult By their 10th birthdy, children have on average already eaten more sugar than the recommended amount for an 18 year old. The average 10 year old consumes the equivalent to 13 sugar cubes a day, 8 more than is recommended PA Health news in pictures Child health experts advise switching off screens an hour before bed While there is not enough evidence of harm to recommend UK-wide limits on screen use, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health have advised that children should avoid screens for an hour before bed time to avoid disrupting their sleep Getty Health news in pictures Daily aspirin is unnecessary for older people in good health, study finds A study published in the New England Journal of Medicine has found that many elderly people are taking daily aspirin to little or no avail Getty Health news in pictures Vaping could lead to cancer, US study finds A study by the University of Minnesota's Masonic Cancer Centre has found that the carcinogenic chemicals formaldehyde, acrolein, and methylglyoxal are present in the saliva of E-cigarette users Reuters Health news in pictures More children are obese and diabetic There has been a 41% increase in children with type 2 diabetes since 2014, the National Paediatric Diabetes Audit has found. Obesity is a leading cause Reuters Health news in pictures Most child antidepressants are ineffective and can lead to suicidal thoughts The majority of antidepressants are ineffective and may be unsafe, for children and teenager with major depression, experts have warned. In what is the most comprehensive comparison of 14 commonly prescribed antidepressant drugs to date, researchers found that only one brand was more effective at relieving symptoms of depression than a placebo. Another popular drug, venlafaxine, was shown increase the risk users engaging in suicidal thoughts and attempts at suicide Getty Health news in pictures Gay, lesbian and bisexual adults at higher risk of heart disease, study claims Researchers at the Baptist Health South Florida Clinic in Miami focused on seven areas of controllable heart health and found these minority groups were particularly likely to be smokers and to have poorly controlled blood sugar iStock Health news in pictures Breakfast cereals targeted at children contain 'steadily high' sugar levels since 1992 despite producer claims A major pressure group has issued a fresh warning about perilously high amounts of sugar in breakfast cereals, specifically those designed for children, and has said that levels have barely been cut at all in the last two and a half decades Getty Health news in pictures Potholes are making us fat, NHS watchdog warns New guidance by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the body which determines what treatment the NHS should fund, said lax road repairs and car-dominated streets were contributing to the obesity epidemic by preventing members of the public from keeping active PA Health news in pictures New menopause drugs offer women relief from 'debilitating' hot flushes A new class of treatments for women going through the menopause is able to reduce numbers of debilitating hot flushes by as much as three quarters in a matter of days, a trial has found. The drug used in the trial belongs to a group known as NKB antagonists (blockers), which were developed as a treatment for schizophrenia but have been sitting on a shelf unused, according to Professor Waljit Dhillo, a professor of endocrinology and metabolism REX Health news in pictures Doctors should prescribe more antidepressants for people with mental health problems, study finds Research from Oxford University found that more than one million extra people suffering from mental health problems would benefit from being prescribed drugs and criticised ideological reasons doctors use to avoid doing so. Getty Health news in pictures Student dies of flu after NHS advice to stay at home and avoid A&E The family of a teenager who died from flu has urged people not to delay going to A&E if they are worried about their symptoms. Melissa Whiteley, an 18-year-old engineering student from Hanford in Stoke-on-Trent, fell ill at Christmas and died in hospital a month later. Just Giving Health news in pictures Government to review thousands of harmful vaginal mesh implants The Government has pledged to review tens of thousands of cases where women have been given harmful vaginal mesh implants. Getty Health news in pictures Jeremy Hunt announces 'zero suicides ambition' for the NHS The NHS will be asked to go further to prevent the deaths of patients in its care as part of a zero suicide ambition being launched today Getty Health news in pictures Human trials start with cancer treatment that primes immune system to kill off tumours Human trials have begun with a new cancer therapy that can prime the immune system to eradicate tumours. The treatment, that works similarly to a vaccine, is a combination of two existing drugs, of which tiny amounts are injected into the solid bulk of a tumour. Nephron Health news in pictures Babies' health suffers from being born near fracking sites, finds major study Mothers living within a kilometre of a fracking site were 25 per cent more likely to have a child born at low birth weight, which increase their chances of asthma, ADHD and other issues Getty Health news in pictures NHS reviewing thousands of cervical cancer smear tests after women wrongly given all-clear Thousands of cervical cancer screening results are under review after failings at a laboratory meant some women were incorrectly given the all-clear. A number of women have already been told to contact their doctors following the identification of procedural issues in the service provided by Pathology First Laboratory. Rex Health news in pictures Potential key to halting breast cancer's spread discovered by scientists Most breast cancer patients do not die from their initial tumour, but from secondary malignant growths (metastases), where cancer cells are able to enter the blood and survive to invade new sites. Asparagine, a molecule named after asparagus where it was first identified in high quantities, has now been shown to be an essential ingredient for tumour cells to gain these migratory properties. Getty Health news in pictures NHS nursing vacancies at record high with more than 34,000 roles advertised A record number of nursing and midwifery positions are currently being advertised by the NHS, with more than 34,000 positions currently vacant, according to the latest data. Demand for nurses was 19 per cent higher between July and September 2017 than the same period two years ago. REX Health news in pictures Cannabis extract could provide new class of treatment for psychosis CBD has a broadly opposite effect to delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the main active component in cannabis and the substance that causes paranoia and anxiety. Getty Health news in pictures Over 75,000 sign petition calling for Richard Branson's Virgin Care to hand settlement money back to NHS Mr Bransons company sued the NHS last year after it lost out on an 82m contract to provide childrens health services across Surrey, citing concerns over serious flaws in the way the contract was awarded PA Health news in pictures More than 700 fewer nurses training in England in first year after NHS bursary scrapped The numbers of people accepted to study nursing in England fell 3 per cent in 2017, while the numbers accepted in Wales and Scotland, where the bursaries were kept, increased 8.4 per cent and 8 per cent respectively Getty Health news in pictures Landmark study links Tory austerity to 120,000 deaths The paper found that there were 45,000 more deaths in the first four years of Tory-led efficiencies than would have been expected if funding had stayed at pre-election levels. On this trajectory that could rise to nearly 200,000 excess deaths by the end of 2020, even with the extra funding that has been earmarked for public sector services this year. Reuters Health news in pictures Long commutes carry health risks Hours of commuting may be mind-numbingly dull, but new research shows that it might also be having an adverse effect on both your health and performance at work. Longer commutes also appear to have a significant impact on mental wellbeing, with those commuting longer 33 per cent more likely to suffer from depression Shutterstock Health news in pictures You cannot be fit and fat It is not possible to be overweight and healthy, a major new study has concluded. The study of 3.5 million Britons found that even metabolically healthy obese people are still at a higher risk of heart disease or a stroke than those with a normal weight range Getty Health news in pictures Sleep deprivation When you feel particularly exhausted, it can definitely feel like you are also lacking in brain capacity. Now, a new study has suggested this could be because chronic sleep deprivation can actually cause the brain to eat itself Shutterstock Health news in pictures Exercise classes offering 45 minute naps launch David Lloyd Gyms have launched a new health and fitness class which is essentially a bunch of people taking a nap for 45 minutes. The fitness group was spurred to launch the napercise class after research revealed 86 per cent of parents said they were fatigued. The class is therefore predominantly aimed at parents but you actually do not have to have children to take part Getty Health news in pictures 'Fundamental right to health' to be axed after Brexit, lawyers warn Tobacco and alcohol companies could win more easily in court cases such as the recent battle over plain cigarette packaging if the EU Charter of Fundamental Rights is abandoned, a barrister and public health professor have said Getty Health news in pictures 'Thousands dying' due to fear over non-existent statin side-effects A major new study into the side effects of the cholesterol-lowering medicine suggests common symptoms such as muscle pain and weakness are not caused by the drugs themselves Getty Health news in pictures Babies born to fathers aged under 25 have higher risk of autism New research has found that babies born to fathers under the age of 25 or over 51 are at higher risk of developing autism and other social disorders. The study, conducted by the Seaver Autism Center for Research and Treatment at Mount Sinai, found that these children are actually more advanced than their peers as infants, but then fall behind by the time they hit their teenage years Getty Health news in pictures Cycling to work could halve risk of cancer and heart disease Commuters who swap their car or bus pass for a bike could cut their risk of developing heart disease and cancer by almost half, new research suggests but campaigners have warned there is still an urgent need to improve road conditions for cyclists. Cycling to work is linked to a lower risk of developing cancer by 45 per cent and cardiovascular disease by 46 per cent, according to a study of a quarter of a million people. Walking to work also brought health benefits, the University of Glasgow researchers found, but not to the same degree as cycling. Getty But by taking into account study design issues, such as the abstainers, researchers found that moderate drinking had no link to longevity. And Dr Stockwell said he doubted that drinking infrequently was the reasons that occasional drinkers had lower mortality rates because the level of alcohol in their bodies was biologically insignificant. A fundamental question is, who are these moderate drinkers being compared against? said lead author Dr Tim Stockwell, director of the University of Victoria's Centre for Addictions Research in British Columbia, Canada. Of the 87 studies assessed, only 13 did not have an issue with the selection of abstainers. Therefore, alcohol should not be linked to people being healthier, said Dr Stockwell. The study assessed health in terms of drinking in general, rather than specific types of drink. Dr Stockwell said: There's a general idea out there that alcohol is good for us, because that's what you hear reported all the time, but there are many reasons to be sceptical. Dr Harshal Kirane, director of Addiction Services at Staten Island University Hospital in New York, who was not involved with the study, told CBS News that the research highlights the limitations of past efforts to characterize the impact of low-volume alcohol use. He told CBS News that authors have highlighted pitfalls in the current literature. Additional reporting by PA 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 }} Mothers explicitly target the good birth-giving seasons of spring and summer when planning to have children, according to new research. Far fewer babies are born between November and March, while far more are born between June and September, a US study looking at tens of millions of first births found. Younger women, and those in states along the eastern seaboard where the winters are harshest, prefer to have their births in the first half of the year when newborn health is highest. Recommended Read more Women who give birth in their 30s are more likely to have smart kids The opposite occurs in southern hemisphere countries, which have more births in December to March and fewer in May to August, their summer and winter respectively. The findings, in the paper Choosing Season of Birth: The Role of Biological and Economic Constraints and carried out by scientists at universities in the UK and Chile, were presented at the Royal Economic Societys annual conference in Brighton. Co-author Dr Climent Quintana-Domeque, from the University of Oxford, said: For the first time, our research documents that season of birth is actually a planned decision: mothers have a clear desire to target the good seasons of birth of spring and summer and often manage to do so. The most stunning photos that capture the beauty of birth Show all 15 1 /15 The most stunning photos that capture the beauty of birth The most stunning photos that capture the beauty of birth First Place Winner: Marijke Thoen (Geboortefotografie) Underwater birth, baby with gorgeous curly hair The most stunning photos that capture the beauty of birth Best In Category: Labor (Apple Blossom Families) The Surge The most stunning photos that capture the beauty of birth Best In Category: Delivery (Birth Blessings Photography & Childbirth Services) En-Caul Unassisted Twin Water Birth The most stunning photos that capture the beauty of birth Best In Category: Postpartum (Natalia Walth Photography) Where peace begins The most stunning photos that capture the beauty of birth Honorable Mention: 'Love' (Krista Evans Photography) It calls to her both loudly and softly in song The most stunning photos that capture the beauty of birth Honorable Mention: 'Untethered Beginning for The Birthing Woman' (Angela Gallo) Maternal Grace The most stunning photos that capture the beauty of birth Honorable Mention: (alexandra kayy photography) In between two worlds The most stunning photos that capture the beauty of birth 'Untethered Beginning for The Birthing Woman' (Angela Gallo) The most stunning photos that capture the beauty of birth 'Support' (Ashton Renee Photography) The most stunning photos that capture the beauty of birth 'Earthside' (Amy Lynn Photography & Design) Amy Lynn Photography & Design The most stunning photos that capture the beauty of birth 'The wait in silence and calmness' (Senhoritas Fotografia) The most stunning photos that capture the beauty of birth 'A calm and loving support' (Coastal Lifestyles Photography) Shea Michelle Long The most stunning photos that capture the beauty of birth 'The Journey' (Bonnie Hussey Photography) Bonnie Hussey Photography The most stunning photos that capture the beauty of birth 'We did it!' (Chanda Williams, photographer doula) The most stunning photos that capture the beauty of birth 'She's here!' (Blue Muse Photo) The UK website babycentre also cites research that shows children born between June and October are likely to be slightly taller and have bigger bones than winter-born children. The reason is thought to be related to vitamin D exposure during pregnancy. Babies born in autumn and winter are also more likely to develop food allergies, although scientists have been unable to explain why, and asthma is more common in autumn-born children. One theory is that as babies have increased exposure to allergens, such as house dust mites, during the first few months of life at this time as they stay indoors far more than if they were born in hotter months. Personal budget for mums-to-be The scientists found young women respond very clearly to bad weather. In US states where winters are the most extreme, younger women are nearly 8 per cent more likely to give birth in summer than in winter (54 per cent summer versus 46 per cent winter). There was no such difference among older first-time mums, those aged 40 and above, who are equally likely to give birth in summer or winter, even where the winters are coldest. Similarly, women who have children through IVF and similar artificial techniques are found to have no power over the timing of their birth, with births spread equally throughout the year, with the exception of a downward spike in December conceptions due to shorter clinic hours. The authors also discovered that a womans job also played an important part in their decision making. Those working in education overwhelmingly targeted spring and summer, with their longer holidays and lesser workload, compared to autumn and winter. The effects of season of birth on newborn and adult socioeconomic outcomes have been widely documented across disciplines, where a clear and consistent pattern of good and bad seasons has emerged, the authors concluded. This is the first analysis of season of birth as a choice that women may make, and to estimate the value of good season of birth in terms of birth weight and wages. Elizabeth Duff, Senior Policy Adviser at the National Childbirth Trust, said: Many women plan when to give birth which could depend on a lot of factors including the ages of previous children, work opportunities, household finances and also the time of year. It is a good idea to plan a pregnancy so that youre prepared for your impending arrival, but also to bear in mind the best laid plans dont always work out. 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 }} Teachers will descend on Westminster to march in protest against the Government's plans to force all state schools to become academies. Members of the National Union of Teachers and the Association of Teachers and Lecturers said they would stage the demonstration outside the Department of Education on Wednesday. Mary Bousted, general secretary for the Association of Teachers and Lecturers, said: Against all logic, and evidence, the Government is promoting its ideology to fragment the education system. There is no evidence academies improve childrens education. All the evidence shows the quality of multi-academy trusts (MATs) is highly variable. Even Sir Michael Wilshaw has said that the worst MATs are performing as badly as the worst local authorities This is a battle we must fight, and we can win. Lets get to it. It follows Chancellor George Osborne's announced in last week's Budget that all state schools would be forced to become independently run academies by 2020. Recommended Read more Teachers explain why making all schools into academies is a bad idea This was followed by the release of an education White Paper from education secretary Nicky Morgan, entitled Academic Excellence Everywhere, which outlined in detail the plans for the academisation of state schools. Since the announcement, two petitions have exceeded the 100,000 signatures required to have them discussed in parliament one calling for a referendum, and another calling for the move to be scrapped immediately. Teachers to protest at Westminster against forced academies Several teachers have openly spoken against the government plan, labelling it the result of callous market-driven and profit-making motives. Teachers are concerned about lack of evidence for the claim academies do better than schools run by local authorities. There is also concern that the already tough working conditions teachers face will become worse if schools are made into academies, and that the meagre supply of new teachers may well dry up further, worsening the shortage of teachers that Britain is already facing. Kevin Courtney, deputy general secretary for the National Union of Teachers said: The Government should be addressing the real issues facing schools: the teacher shortage, the lack of pupil places, the chaos in the curriculum. The [education] White Paper is a distraction from those central concerns. Incredibly, this is all being done despite the fact that there is no evidence that academies improve the educational results of children. We must all speak out to keep education in the hands of our communities and stop this reckless and destructive policy. There are serious democratic concerns surrounding the White Paper. Its proposal to convert all schools to academies wasnt in the Conservative manifesto, and it deliberately cuts parents out of decision-making about their schools. The Hands Off Our Schools demonstration will begin outside Westminster Cathedral at 5.30pm on Wednesday 23 March, marching through Westminster to the Department of Education. Shadow education secretary Lucy Powell MP and journalist Owen Jones are among those due to speak at the rally. Similar protests are due to be held simultaneously around the UK. 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 exotic locations featured in hit drama The Night Manager have proved as attractive to viewers as Tom Hiddlestons undercover spy. But the Doctor Who star Peter Capaldi has called on the BBC to spend more licence-fee money telling stories which reflect real life in Britains regions. Asked what he would change if he was placed in charge of the BBC and given 8bn to spend, Capaldi told Radio Times: Id have more regional drama. As the BBC is paid for by the entirety of the nation, that should be reflected in its content more. The actor added: High-quality writing and production should be both encouraged and experienced by people all over the country. Capaldis plea comes as the BBC is winning plaudits for high-quality dramas, set in dramatic overseas locations, which are primed for international sales. The Night Manager on BBC1 has had viewers drooling over the opulent lair owned by the villainous Roper (Hugh Laurie), a 17th century fort in northern Majorca which is Spains most expensive property. The 18m le Carre thriller followed another international co-production War & Peace, which utilised sumptuous locations in St Petersburg and Latvia to tell Tolstoys sweeping Russian tale. The BBC said those productions were not at the cost of dramas which shine a spotlight on the UKs town and cities. The acclaimed Happy Valley has boosted tourism to the picturesque Yorkshire market town of Hebden Bridge, the location for the gritty police drama, despite the disproportionate number of murderers apparently operating in the locale. Nearby Leeds is the location for a second BBC1 series of Kay Mellors drama In The Club, about six couples who had bond at a local parenting class. The Night Manager cast: (from left) Hugh Laurie, Hiddleston, Elizabeth Debicki, Olivia Colman and Tom Hollander (BBC) (The Ink Factory/BBC) The Lake District provides the backdrop for The A Word, Peter Bowkers new drama about the challenge a family faces when their 5-year-old son is diagnosed with autism. The BBC recently returned to Shetland for the Scottish murder mystery named after the windswept Isles. However much of the filming took place on mainland locations doubling as the Zetlandic archipelago. A final instalment of The Fall on BBC2, will return to Belfast for the denouement of the detective drama starring Gillian Anderson and Jamie Dornan as the serial killer she hunts down. 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 }} Donald Trump has reacted to the devastating attacks in Brussels by claiming the West is having problems with Muslims and suggesting authorities should surveil mosques and study what is going on. Two explosions at Brussels Airport and one at a metro station in the Belgian city have killed at least 31 people and injured 170 more. Authorities believe the airport explosion, which took place at about 7am GMT, was carried out by a suicide bomber. Responding to the blasts, Trump claimed Brussels was once a crime free zone but is now a "total disaster". Trump has made a number of inflammatory claims about Muslims since launching his campaign for the Republican nomination and in March declared that Islam "hates us. He has already provoked international condemnation by calling for Muslims to be banned from the US in the wake of the Paris attacks and will no doubt ignite fury again after escalating his rhetoric in response to the Brussels attack. Frankly, were having problems with the Muslims and were having problems with Muslims coming into the country," he told Fox Business. When asked whether upping surveillance could be one course of action in response to attacks over recent months, he responded: We have to deal with the mosques whether we like it or not. These attacks are not done by Swedish people. That I can tell you. We have to be smart. We have to be vigilant. We have to watch very closely whats going on. We have to look at the mosques, we have to study whats going on. In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man carries an injured person in Brussels Airport, after explosions ripped through the departure hall In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Travellers get to their feet in a smoke filled terminal at Brussels Airport after explosions In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man is wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man speaks on a mobile phone in Brussels Airport, after the explosions ripped through the departure hall In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Belgian police officers detain a man at the Gare du Midi train station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A police officer stands guard as people are evacuated from Brussels airport, after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People stand near Brussels airport after being evacuated following explosions that rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Crew and passengers are evacuated from Zaventem Bruxelles International Airport after an attack in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers gather near Brussels airport in Zaventem, following its evacuation after blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Two women wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers and airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers and airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Broken windows seen at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People leave the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People are evacuated from the scene after two explosions were heard at Brussels Airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People wait outside of the Brussels Airport after evacuation In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People leave the airport area after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers comfort each other as they are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People react as they walk away from Brussels airport after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services attend the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Injured people at the scene at Brussels Airport after two explosions were heard PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The aftermath of the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People wait outside of the Zaventem airport after two explosions were heard PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services at the scene of explosions at Brussels Airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A view of the scene after the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The aftermath of the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The view of the Brussels airport after the explosion PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Smoke is seen at Brussels airport in Brussels AP In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A photo shows cars on a blocked highway near Zaventem, Brussels National airport, after two explosions rocked the main hall of Brussels Airport Getty Images In a separate interview, Trump claimed the US and Western countries are lax and foolish and must take more severe measures against Isis, telling Fox&Friends: We don't know where they're from, who they are. They could be Isis. They could be Isis related. We just don't learn." The terrorism threat in Brussels has been raised to the highest level possible and public transport in the city has been completely shut down. Travellers are being advised to stay away from the airport and residents are being told to stay inside. The Prime Minister Charles Michel has called on everyone to show calmness and solidarity in the wake of a day of tragedy. The explosions come just four days after Salah Abdeslam, a suspect in the Paris terror attacks, was apprehended in Brussels. 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 Telegraph columnist has been accused of using the deadly explosions in Brussels to shamelessly push a political point about Brexit, after claiming the city is the jihadist capital of Europe. At least 20 people were killed and dozens injured in two blasts in the departure hall at Brussels Airport and one at a metro station in the Belgian capital, with each blast thought to be suicide attacks. Allison Pearson, an author and former columnist for The Daily Mail, responded to news of the blasts with a tweet questioning arguments that Britain was safer staying in Europe ahead of the in-out referendum. In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man carries an injured person in Brussels Airport, after explosions ripped through the departure hall In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Travellers get to their feet in a smoke filled terminal at Brussels Airport after explosions In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man is wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man speaks on a mobile phone in Brussels Airport, after the explosions ripped through the departure hall In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Belgian police officers detain a man at the Gare du Midi train station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A police officer stands guard as people are evacuated from Brussels airport, after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People stand near Brussels airport after being evacuated following explosions that rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Crew and passengers are evacuated from Zaventem Bruxelles International Airport after an attack in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers gather near Brussels airport in Zaventem, following its evacuation after blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Two women wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers and airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers and airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Broken windows seen at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People leave the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People are evacuated from the scene after two explosions were heard at Brussels Airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People wait outside of the Brussels Airport after evacuation In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People leave the airport area after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers comfort each other as they are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People react as they walk away from Brussels airport after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services attend the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Injured people at the scene at Brussels Airport after two explosions were heard PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The aftermath of the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People wait outside of the Zaventem airport after two explosions were heard PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services at the scene of explosions at Brussels Airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A view of the scene after the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The aftermath of the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The view of the Brussels airport after the explosion PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Smoke is seen at Brussels airport in Brussels AP In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A photo shows cars on a blocked highway near Zaventem, Brussels National airport, after two explosions rocked the main hall of Brussels Airport Getty Images She wrote: Brussels, de facto capital of the EU, is also the jihadist capital of Europe. And the Remainers dare to say we're safer in the EU! #Brexit" Kay Burley and the Guardian columnist Owen Jones were among a number who questioned the tweet. The terror alert has been raised to the highest in the city and travellers have been warned not to come to the airport. The entire public transport system in Brussels has been shut down and the airport will remain closed until 6am tomorrow morning. The explosions come just four days after Salah Abdeslam, a suspect in the Paris terror attacks, was apprehended in Brussels. A spokesperson for Brussels Airport said: There have been two explosions at the airport. Building is being evacuated. Don't come to the airport area. All airport operations have been suspended until further notice. Passengers that are still located in other areas in the airport are asked to remain calm and wait for further information. 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 tweet reminding Katie Hopkins that she speaks only for herself has been shared thousands of times after the controversial columnist suggested pro-refugee policies were to blame for the attacks in Brussels. Hopkins has faced a particularly angry backlash for her tweets about the explosions at a Brussels Airport and a metro station, which are now estimated to have claimed up to 31 lives. The Mail Online columnist claimed refugee policy and the German chancellor Angela Merkel were responsible for the terrorist attacks, provoking fury. But one tweet from a resident in Brussels in response to her remarks has been shared thousands of times by those keen to remind her that her that refugees are welcome there. One Twitter user, Kat Brown, told The Independent she had reported Hopkins' comments to the Metropolitan Police for alleged "hate speech". There is a feeling that this is 'just Twitter' so it doesn't count. If everyone continues to think that, then people who incite hatred will continue to bounce around unopposed, Brown said. Every time people like Hopkins lump entire groups of people together from the actions of the few, I get horrible flashbacks to school history lessons. It's up to us to say enough. Brussels airport explosion Scotland Yard declined to comment on this. Hopkins wrote on Twitter, Next time you hear someone say we are safer IN the EU - remember Brussels. Seen as the heart of Europe, it is now jihadi central. #brexit". How can you separate the human from the political. Merkel - and her ilk- blew up Brussels. #brexit, the columnist added. In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man carries an injured person in Brussels Airport, after explosions ripped through the departure hall In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Travellers get to their feet in a smoke filled terminal at Brussels Airport after explosions In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man is wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man speaks on a mobile phone in Brussels Airport, after the explosions ripped through the departure hall In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Belgian police officers detain a man at the Gare du Midi train station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A police officer stands guard as people are evacuated from Brussels airport, after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People stand near Brussels airport after being evacuated following explosions that rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Crew and passengers are evacuated from Zaventem Bruxelles International Airport after an attack in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers gather near Brussels airport in Zaventem, following its evacuation after blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Two women wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers and airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers and airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Broken windows seen at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People leave the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People are evacuated from the scene after two explosions were heard at Brussels Airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People wait outside of the Brussels Airport after evacuation In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People leave the airport area after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers comfort each other as they are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People react as they walk away from Brussels airport after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services attend the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Injured people at the scene at Brussels Airport after two explosions were heard PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The aftermath of the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People wait outside of the Zaventem airport after two explosions were heard PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services at the scene of explosions at Brussels Airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A view of the scene after the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The aftermath of the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The view of the Brussels airport after the explosion PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Smoke is seen at Brussels airport in Brussels AP In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A photo shows cars on a blocked highway near Zaventem, Brussels National airport, after two explosions rocked the main hall of Brussels Airport Getty Images Since Brussels was struck by three explosions, the city has raised its terror alert to its highest level and the metro has been shut down entirely. Prime Minister Charles Michel called the latest attacks, blind, violent and cowardly, adding, This is a day of tragedy, a black day... I would like to call on everyone to show calmness and solidarity. Rather than expressing sympathy with those killed and seriously injured, the former Apprentice star quickly took to Twitter to vent her frustration at Europes refugee policy. In doing so, she implied that refugees were answerable for terrorist attacks such as these. In her own words, Open borders = open season for Isis. "Please don't turn this tragedy into a political debate. Show some respect," wrote one user in response. "This is nothing to do with the EU and it is disingenuous to suggest it is. Scoring political points before the bodies are cold," added another. Hopkins recently underwent brain surgery in a bid to cure her epilepsy and is recovering in hospital at the moment. This is by no means the first time Hopkins has prompted outrage for her comments about migrants. She faced demands to apologise after comparing refugees fleeing conflict and persecution to cockroaches back in April of last year. At the same time, she also proposed gunships to prevent migrants from reaching European shores. No, I don't care, she wrote in The Sun. Show me pictures of coffins, show me bodies floating in water, play violins and show me skinny people looking sad. I still don't care. 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 }} Olivia Newton-Johns former boyfriend who disappeared 11 years ago has allegedly been found alive and well in a small fishing village in Mexico, according to detectives. Womans Day magazine claims that Patrick McDermott, who dated the Australian actress for nine years, was found living in Mexico with his German girlfriend. Investigator John Nazarian told the publication: Its rumored he was with a German national. I spoke to people there. The girl he was travelling with was described as having a German accent. Mr McDermotts disappeared in 2005 during a fishing trip. He was 48 and working as a camera man when he set off on the fishing boat "Freedom" from San Pedro Marina on 30 June that year. Rumours at the time of Mr McDermotts disappearance included self-harm and accidental death, but Mr Nazarian, who was reportedly the first investigator on the case, said to the magazine: To come up with the conclusion that he fell off the boat, and allegedly no-one saw him fall off the boat, is the most preposterous thing Ive ever heard in my life." US investigators claimed two months after his disappearance that Mr McDermott had faked his own death and was living in Mexico, shortly after filing for bankruptcy with unpaid debts totaling more than $30,000. This allegedly included $8,000 in child support for his ex-wife Yvette Nipar and their son, Chance. Korean-born Mr McDermott, now 59, is reportedly working and living in the isolated fishing village of Sayulita in Mexico. Fox News reported that private investigator Philip Klein ended his investigation in 2009 after he received a letter faxed on Mr McDermotts behalf which read: Pat has asked that I portray to you his innocence. Pat has committed no crime. Pat simply wishes to be left alone. Let him live his life in peace and harmony. He is safe and has started anew again in a new place both physically and mentally. Stop this search immediately. Ms Newton-John married her second husband John Easterling in 2008. 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 }} Disney is seeking to emulate Game of Thrones in using Northern Irelands landscape in creating a global hit as it films what it hopes will be a successful follow-up to its phenomenal High School Musical franchise. The Lodge, a musical, is mostly set on the 400-acre Montalto Estate at Ballynahinch in County Down, where Disney is shooting the story of Skye, a 15-year-old city girl who goes with her father to live in a rural holiday lodge following the death of her mother, The project represents another huge opportunity for the Northern Ireland production community, which is developing a global reputation, especially as a location for science-fiction stories. Ridley Scotts new film, starring Kate Mara, is being made at Galgorm Castle, Ballymena. The same location has been used for The Frankenstein Chronicles, a television series starring Sean Bean. Recommended Read more A Game of Thrones filming location has been wrecked by a storm Northern Ireland has a great production pool and up until now it has been mostly known for swords and dragons, said David Levine, the director of programming for the Disney Channels in the UK and Ireland. Disney Channel is bringing songs and dancing we have a great, talented cast who can not only act but sing and dance and we have original songs. The musical will feature nine songs, which are performed more than 30 times during the 10-part series and which Disney hopes will become hit tunes as well as comprising a successful soundtrack album. Some will be released with high-concept music videos. Disney will also be hoping that the project can match the phenomenal merchandising success of its past musical projects. 'The Lodge' hopes to repeat the success of the 'High School Musical' series (Disney) The Disney Channel has had a great history of bringing music to its audiences, said Levine. We can only hope that we can hit the success of the likes of High School Musical, Camp Rock and Hannah Montana. The Lodge stars London-based actress Sophie Simnett as Skye and features mostly British talent alongside young French, Dutch and Scandinavian actors. It will be launched on the Disney Channel in the UK and Ireland in the autumn and later rolled out to territories in Europe, the Middle East and Africa. Sophie Simnet will play Skye in Disney's 'The Lodge' (starnow) Disney said the key themes of The Lodge would include the ability to accept change, overcoming hardship and being true to who you are. But it will also reference key millennial trends, including the centrality to young lives of social-media communication and reality TV shows. Disney has built bespoke sets around the woodland and lake at the Montalto Estate and is shooting further scenes at the nearby Castlewellan Country Park. Members of the construction crew and the props team formerly worked on HBOs Game of Thrones. The series was inspired by North Star, a long-running Disney Israel drama, that was identified as having potential for a remake in a musical format. It follows the success of 2014s Cheshire-shot fantasy drama Evermoor, Disneys first original series to be filmed in the UK and for which a 20-part follow-up series is currently being completed. 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 }} Belgium has raised its terror alert to its highest level in the wake of a series of blasts across Brussels Airport and a Metro station, killing at least 20 people and injuring dozens. Two explosions hit Brussels Airport, one of which was carried out by a suicide bomber, Belgiums federal prosecutor has confirmed. A third explosion occurred at Maelbeek Metro station, close to EU buildings. Belgiums interior minister has now raised the countrys entire terrorist threat alert to its highest level, which sees extra soldiers deployed to the streets and security at its ports and borders. All airport operations have been stopped and incoming flights diverted, while public transport has been halted in Brussels and trains and subway stations have been closed. People in Brussels have been told to stay where they are, bringing the city to a standstill. Police and intelligence agencies have been on high alert in the UK and France since the terror attacks in Paris in November last year when 130 people were killed. In the wake of the Brussels attacks, Frances top security official said the country was immediately reinforcing security at airports, train stations and metros. Evacuating between the Maalbeek and Arts-Loi Metro stations in Brussels The threat level in Paris is already high, with the French government warning the public to be extra vigilant in addition to reinforcing its own domestic and security measures. In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man carries an injured person in Brussels Airport, after explosions ripped through the departure hall In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Travellers get to their feet in a smoke filled terminal at Brussels Airport after explosions In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man is wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man speaks on a mobile phone in Brussels Airport, after the explosions ripped through the departure hall In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Belgian police officers detain a man at the Gare du Midi train station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A police officer stands guard as people are evacuated from Brussels airport, after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People stand near Brussels airport after being evacuated following explosions that rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Crew and passengers are evacuated from Zaventem Bruxelles International Airport after an attack in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers gather near Brussels airport in Zaventem, following its evacuation after blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Two women wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers and airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers and airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Broken windows seen at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People leave the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People are evacuated from the scene after two explosions were heard at Brussels Airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People wait outside of the Brussels Airport after evacuation In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People leave the airport area after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers comfort each other as they are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People react as they walk away from Brussels airport after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services attend the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Injured people at the scene at Brussels Airport after two explosions were heard PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The aftermath of the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People wait outside of the Zaventem airport after two explosions were heard PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services at the scene of explosions at Brussels Airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A view of the scene after the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The aftermath of the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The view of the Brussels airport after the explosion PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Smoke is seen at Brussels airport in Brussels AP In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A photo shows cars on a blocked highway near Zaventem, Brussels National airport, after two explosions rocked the main hall of Brussels Airport Getty Images Threat levels are designed to give the public an indication of the likelihood of a terrorist attack. In the UK the threat level from international terrorism is currently severe, meaning that an attack is highly likely. It is the fourth highest terror threat level set out by the security service. The UKs threat levels range from low, for when an attack is unlikely, to moderate, for when an attack is possible but not likely; substantial, for when an attack is a strong possibility; severe, for when an attack is highly likely; and critical, for when an attack is expected imminently. 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 }} Security is being stepped up at UK airports, major train stations and other transport hubs and border checks tightened at the Channel ports, in the wake of the Brussels terror attacks, David Cameron has said. The Prime Minister condemned the appalling and savage attacks at Zaventum Airport and on the Brussels metro system, which have killed at least 26 people. He said that Britain faced a a very real terror threat. Downing Street confirmed that one British citizen had been injured in the airport attack, but said there were no confirmed reports of other British casualties. No details have been released about the identity of the British national, or the severity of their injuries. While police patrols at key locations around the UK will be stepped up, the Prime Ministers spokesperson said there was currently no reason to increase the UKs terror alert level from severe, to the highest level: critical St Pancras International train station will see increased police patrols as will other areas of the capitals transport network, while UK Border Force staff at the French Channel ports and train terminals at Calais and Coquelles will tighten security measures and carry out extra sniffer dog searches. In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A private security guard helps a wounded women outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Wounded people receive assistance by rescuers outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Rescue workers treat victims outside the Maelbeek underground station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Passengers waiting to be evacuated from the train between Arts-Lois and Maelbeek In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency services and police work around a metro station after an explosion in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Rescue teams evacuate wounded people outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A woman is evacuated in an ambulance by emergency services after a explosion in a main metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A Belgian soldier stands guard outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels after a blast at this station located near the EU institutions In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Belgian police officers stand outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Belgian policemen and a soldier carrying an injured person after an explosion at the Maelbeek Metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A view of the train after the explosion in Maelbeek station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station People receive treatment as emergency services attend the scene after an explosion in a main metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Maelbeek Metro station after an explosion on a train in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Passengers walk on underground metro tracks to be evacuated after an explosion at Maelbeek train station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A victim receives first aid by rescuers, near Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Firefighters arrive at the scene near Maalbeek metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency workers arrive at a security perimeter set near Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency rescue workers stretcher an unidentified person at the site of an explosion at a metro station in Brussels AP In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Police seal off the area at the scene of a blast outside a metro station in Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency personnel are seen at the scene of a blast outside a metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency personnel are seen at the scene of a blast outside a metro station in Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Belgian police and emergency staff arriving in the Wetstraat - Rue de la Loi, which has been evacuated after an explosion at the Maelbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Smoke rising from the Maalbeek underground, in Brussels, following a blast at the station close to the capital's European quarter Getty Images In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station People are evacuated from the Schuman station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station The scene outside the Maalbeek underground in Brussels after the explosion Mr Cameron chaired a meeting of the Governments emergency Cobra committee this morning, attended by security, intelligence and police chiefs, as well as the Mayor of London Boris Johnson. The Prime Minister said: These are appalling and savage terrorist attacksthey could just have as well be attacks in Britain or France or Germany or elsewhere in Europe. We need to stand together against these appalling terrorists and make sure they can never win. Recommended Read more Advice for travellers following blasts at Zaventem and Maalbeek Metro Mr Cameron has contacted Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel to express his condolences and offer logistical support of the Metropolitan Police in Belgiums investigations following the attacks. Downing Street refused to be drawn into a discussion of the political implications of the attacks to Britains EU referendum debate, after UKIPs defence spokesperson Mike Hookem cited the atrocities as evidence that free movement in the EU was a threat to our security. First and foremost today is a day about supporting Belgium and the Belgian peopleWe should realise this is a shared threat and a shared threat that we should be working together to tackle, as we have been, the Prime Minsters spokesperson said. 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 }} Even before the full details of the Brussels terror attacks were known, voices calling for Britain to leave the EU were using the atrocities as ammunition to argue again that we would be safer out. In the course of the debate, both sides have used the highly emotive question of security to further their view. Brexit campaigners argue that only outside of the union can we take full control of our borders and prevent potential terrorists slipping into the country. The Government, and others advocating a Remain vote, say that the UK benefits hugely from the cross-border collaboration on policing, intelligence, and justice that the EU facilitates. Recommended Read more Ukip blames Brussels terrorist attack on EU freedom of movement The obvious flaw in the argument of those who warn of the dangers posed to UK citizens by freedom of movement within the EU, is that Britain is not part of the Schengen border-free area. We already scan passports at the border, and would continue to do so outside the EU. There is of course, a debate to be had about the benefits and risks that Schengen area countries are taking, in light of recent attacks in Paris and now Brussels. In January, a report by Europol the EUs criminal intelligence body said Isis recruiters were targeting refugees travelling into the continent from Syria and elsewhere. Europe on high alert after Brussels attacks But it is hard to see how Brexit would change the way the UK border with the Schengen area operates unless we were to introduce new visa requirements for EU passport holders, which would have major implications for the jobs market. Dr Hugo Rosemont, of Kings College Londons Centre for Defence Studies, said the UK had negotiated a favourable position with Schengen, allowing access to databases without being a member. The key arguments used by supporters of the UKs continued EU membership tend to centre on the strength and security Britain derives from collaborating across borders. Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Show all 27 1 /27 Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Wreaths of flowers in front of an entrance of the Maalbeek subway station in Brussels in homage to the victims of a terrorist attack. Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Wreaths of flowers in front of an entrance of the Maalbeek subway station in Brussels in homage to the victims of a terrorist attack. Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims A building illuminated with the Belgian flag colours and a heart in Brussels, two days after suicide bombing attacks of terrorists on March 22 in Zaventem airport and subway Maelbeek. Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims A picture taken on 24 March, 2016 on place de la Bourse in Brussels, shows drawings and a candle, two days after suicide bombing attacks of terrorists on March 22 in Zaventem airport and Brussels subway Maelbeek Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Candles are displayed in tribute to the Brussels attacks victims on 24 March, 2016 on place de la Bourse in Brussels, two days after the suicide bombing attacks of terrorists on 22 March. Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims A mourner lights a candle in Trafalgar Square during a candlelit vigil in support of the victims of the recent terror attacks in Brussels. Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels airport workers pay tribute to the victims near Zaventem Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Activists light candles and hold placards to condemn the terrorist attacks in Belgium, during a gathering in Manila, Philippines Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims A banner for the victims of the bombings reads "I am Brussels" at the Place de la Bourse in the center of Brussels Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, left front center, stands with front row, left to right, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, Belgium's King Philippe, Belgium's Queen Mathilde and Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel as well as members of the European Commission during a minute of silence at EU headquarters in Brussels Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims People join hands in solidarity near the former stock exchange following the bomb attacks in Brussels Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Belgium flags ornate the facade of the Paris Town Hall Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims A woman embraces her children at The Place de la Bourse as she pays her respects to victims of the terrorists attacks in Brussels Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Belgian and European Union flags fly at half mast following the bomb attacks in Brussels Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Candles in the colors of the Belgian national flag are lit inside the Belgian embassy in Madrid, a day after the deadly suicide attacks on the Brussels airport and its subway system Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Servicemen of Azov, Ukrainian volunteers battalion, hold torches in front of floral tributes during a ceremony in front of the Belgian embassy in Kiev, in tribute to the victims of Brussels attacks Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims A refugee boy holds up a placard reading "Sorry for Brussels" at a refugee camp near the Greek-Macedonian border Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes People light candles in tribute to victims at a makeshift memorial at the Place de la Bourse in Brussels Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes A woman holds a drawing by French cartoonist Plantu picturing a character made of a French flag consoling another made of the Belgian flag, in front of the Hotel de Ville in Paris Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes The colours of the Belgian flag are projected on to (clockwise from top left) the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the town council building in Belgrade, Rome's Campidoglio and the Royal Palace at Dam Square in Amsterdam Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes Candles are lit in tribute to the victims, at the Place de la Bourse in Brussels Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes A woman holds a placard reading "Paris hearts Belgium, How much time will it take us to open our eyes and say STOP, Today our hearts are broken, Open your eyes to change the future" at the Place de la Republique in Paris Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes People gather to pay a tribute to victims of terrorist attacks in Brussels Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes People write messages on the ground at Place de la Bourse in Brussels Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes A bouquet of flowers in the Belgian national colours with a card reading 'To our neighbours, to our friends, to our Belgian brothers - an indignant Parisian' is seen next to a French national flag at the fence of the Belgian embassy in Paris Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes Solidarity messages are written in chalk outside the stock exchange in Brussels AP Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes Messages and floral tributes outside the Brussels stock exchange AP Europol works with UK authorities daily. The former Director of Public Prosecutions Keir Starmer, now a Labour MP, has said we rely very heavily on the close collaboration being in the EU permits from sharing intelligence to co-ordinating the timing of anti-terror raids in multiple countries. In the Coalition years, the Home Secretary, Theresa May, toyed with opting out from much of the EUs security infrastructure. But the benefits of measures such as the European arrest warrant and more recently the EUs new structures for combating cyber threats have led to a quiet climb-down. Facing a referendum, the Government now argues strongly for the vital importance of hand-in-glove collaboration within Europe in the fight against terror networks. Those backing Remain also point to the UKs lobbying for a rule change that would enable EU states to share air passenger records of all those travelling within the bloc, not just into it. There have been concerns raised in the European Parliament but I think the mood may be changing and the UK is playing a leading role, said Dr Rosemont. We benefit from European co-operation through Europol and sharing of best practice, intelligence and information, and also from European arrest warrants. 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 }} Britain will do everything it can to help after reports of a series of explosions in Brussels, David Cameron has said. Two blasts have rocked Brussels Zaventem international airport while another has been reported at a metro station in the Belgian capital. The blast at the Maalbek metro station occurred in the close vicinity of the European Union institutions. I am shocked and concerned by the events in Brussels, Mr Cameron posted on Twitter shortly after the news broke. We will do everything we can to help. People are evacuated from the Schuman station in Brussels (Evan Lamos/Twitter) Mr Cameron himself has spent much time in Brussels recently, in and out of European Union summits to renegotiate Britain's membership of the bloc. In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man carries an injured person in Brussels Airport, after explosions ripped through the departure hall In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Travellers get to their feet in a smoke filled terminal at Brussels Airport after explosions In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man is wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man speaks on a mobile phone in Brussels Airport, after the explosions ripped through the departure hall In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Belgian police officers detain a man at the Gare du Midi train station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A police officer stands guard as people are evacuated from Brussels airport, after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People stand near Brussels airport after being evacuated following explosions that rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Crew and passengers are evacuated from Zaventem Bruxelles International Airport after an attack in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers gather near Brussels airport in Zaventem, following its evacuation after blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Two women wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers and airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers and airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Broken windows seen at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People leave the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People are evacuated from the scene after two explosions were heard at Brussels Airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People wait outside of the Brussels Airport after evacuation In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People leave the airport area after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers comfort each other as they are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People react as they walk away from Brussels airport after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services attend the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Injured people at the scene at Brussels Airport after two explosions were heard PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The aftermath of the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People wait outside of the Zaventem airport after two explosions were heard PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services at the scene of explosions at Brussels Airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A view of the scene after the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The aftermath of the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The view of the Brussels airport after the explosion PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Smoke is seen at Brussels airport in Brussels AP In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A photo shows cars on a blocked highway near Zaventem, Brussels National airport, after two explosions rocked the main hall of Brussels Airport Getty Images The Belgian Government has said there have been a number of casualties in the explosions, but has not yet released any figures. Belgiums terror alert level is at the highest level following the arrest in the city of Salah Abdeslam, who authorities allege to have been centrally involved in the Paris terrorist attacks of November last year. The city is no stranger to terrorist attacks. In May 2014 a gunman opened fire at the city's Jewish museum, killing four people. 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 }} European Union freedom of movement rules bear some responsibility for Tuesday explosions in Brussels, Ukips defence spokesperson has suggested. Mike Hookem said the attacks illustrated that freedom of movement in the bloc was a threat to our security. At least 13 people have reportedly been killed on Tuesday morning in two explosions at Zaventem international airport and one at Maalbeek metro station. I am appalled at the loss of life and injuries. Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families of those killed and injured, the MEP for Yorkshire and the Humber said. This horrific act of terrorism shows that Schengen free movement and lax border controls are a threat to our security. Mr Hookem said 5,000 jihadists were at large in the EU having slipped in from Syria citing concerns raised last month by the head of Europol Rob Wainwright. Mike Hookem, Ukip's defence spokesperson (Twitter) There are 94 returned jihadists currently living in Molenbeek, Brussels he claimed. This fact alone should alert people to the fact that open borders are putting the lives of European citizens at risk. There is currently no intelligence to confirm whether the explosions were carried out by Belgian citizens or people coming from abroad. Brussels airport explosion The UK is not in the Schengen passportless area and still maintains border controls with other EU nations, despite EU citizens having the right to live and work in Britain. Other parliamentarians took a different view to Ukip. Conservative MEP Timothy Kirkhope said he was in the European Parliament at the time of the explosion. [This attack] highlights need for pan European co-operation on counter terrorism, he tweeted. In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A private security guard helps a wounded women outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Wounded people receive assistance by rescuers outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Rescue workers treat victims outside the Maelbeek underground station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Passengers waiting to be evacuated from the train between Arts-Lois and Maelbeek In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency services and police work around a metro station after an explosion in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Rescue teams evacuate wounded people outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A woman is evacuated in an ambulance by emergency services after a explosion in a main metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A Belgian soldier stands guard outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels after a blast at this station located near the EU institutions In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Belgian police officers stand outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Belgian policemen and a soldier carrying an injured person after an explosion at the Maelbeek Metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A view of the train after the explosion in Maelbeek station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station People receive treatment as emergency services attend the scene after an explosion in a main metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Maelbeek Metro station after an explosion on a train in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Passengers walk on underground metro tracks to be evacuated after an explosion at Maelbeek train station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A victim receives first aid by rescuers, near Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Firefighters arrive at the scene near Maalbeek metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency workers arrive at a security perimeter set near Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency rescue workers stretcher an unidentified person at the site of an explosion at a metro station in Brussels AP In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Police seal off the area at the scene of a blast outside a metro station in Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency personnel are seen at the scene of a blast outside a metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency personnel are seen at the scene of a blast outside a metro station in Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Belgian police and emergency staff arriving in the Wetstraat - Rue de la Loi, which has been evacuated after an explosion at the Maelbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Smoke rising from the Maalbeek underground, in Brussels, following a blast at the station close to the capital's European quarter Getty Images In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station People are evacuated from the Schuman station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station The scene outside the Maalbeek underground in Brussels after the explosion In December last year Nigel Farage, Ukips leader, said that the idealised Schengen area had led to the free movement of Kalashnikovs around Europe. Belgium has raised its terror alert status to the highest level. The explosions come following the arrest in the city of Salah Abdeslam, who authorities allege to have been centrally involved in the Paris terrorist attacks of November last year. 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 }} The economic fallout from Brexit could be limited but only if the UK continues to welcome in large numbers of migrants from the European Union every year, according to an analysis by a respected consultancy. In a major economic modelling exercise involving no less than nine different post-exit policy scenarios, Oxford Economics said that in its best -case scenario the UKs GDP would be just 0.1 per cent lower by 2030 and income per head of population could actually rise by 40. But that benign outcome would only be achieved if the Government did not cut European Union net migration substantially despite the Leave campaign touting a reduction in immigration as a major reason to quit the EU. It would also be dependent on ministers signing a trade deal with the bloc that severely limits the UKs ability to make its own bilateral trade deals with other non-European countries. Britain would also have to continue to make contributions to the EUs budget. The long-term impact of Brexit need not be severe. But benign scenarios involve retaining aspects of EU membership: continued high immigration, restrictions on our ability to make trade deals with non-EU countries and continuing to pay money to Brussels, said Henry Worthington of Oxford Economics. The findings have a rosier best-case economic scenario from Brexit than those laid out by the accountants PwC on behalf of the CBI, which warned of a minimum 1.2 per cent shock to GDP by 2030. But the Oxford Economic results also back up warnings from Remain campaigners that Britain might well be forced to re-create much of the existing institutional relationship with the EU to minimise impact. The consultancy argues that any Brexit scenario that involves a major clampdown on immigration would open up a black hole in the public finances that would force substantial tax rises or spending cuts equivalent to between 22bn and 31bn in todays money. It points out that this would more the offset the net gain from ceasing the UKs 8.5bn net contributions to the EU budget. Despite the short-term benefit to the UK Budget of no longer contributing to Brussels, populist policy choices would damage tax revenues by much more. The result would be even more austerity said Mr Worthington. The Oxford report, which was overseen by two independent Oxford University economists and was not commissioned by any outside group, also suggests the UK would be the weaker party in the event of post-Brexit negotiations with the bloc since the worst-case economic cost to Britain would dwarf that of the EU. Following Brexit it says the EU economy would be just 0.2 per cent smaller in 2030 in the worst-case. That compares with a worst case for the UK of a 3.9 per cent GDP shortfall. 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 }} George Osborne ignored a call to apologise to disabled people for rolling out and then cancelling cuts to a key disability benefit, choosing instead to chat and laugh with Michael Gove. Labour's shadow Chancellor John McDonnell asked the Chancellor to apologise for the "pain" he had caused the group over the last two weeks. "Apologise for the pain and anguish he's caused disabled people and their families for the last two weeks. When you make a mistake and you correct it as least you should apologise," the Labour MP said. 7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people Show all 7 1 /7 7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people 7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people Closing Remploy factories The Work and Pensions Secretary called time on Britains system of Remploy factories, which provided subsidised and sheltered employment to disabled people. People employed at the factories protested against their closure and said they provided gainful work. Is it a kindness to stick people in some factory where they are not doing any work at all? Just making cups of coffee? Mr Duncan Smith said at the time, defending the decision. I promise you this is better. The Remploy organisation was privatised and sold to American workfare provider Maximus, with the majority of the organisations factories closed. The future of the remaining sites is unclear 7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people Scrapping the Independent Living Fund The 320m Independent Living Fund was established in 1988 to give financial support to people with disabilities. It was scrapped on July 1 2015, with 18,000 often severely disabled people losing out by an average of 300 a week. The money was generally used to help pay for carers so people could live in communities rather than institutions. Councils will get a boost in funding to compensate but it will not cover the whole cost of the fund. This new cash also doesnt have to be spent on the disabled 7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people Cut payments for the disabled Access To Work scheme Iain Duncan Smith is bringing forward a policy that will reduce payments to some disabled people from a scheme designed to help them into work. The 108m scheme, which helps 35,540 people, will be capped on a per-used basis, potentially hitting those with the more serious disabilities who currently receive the most help. The single biggest users of the fund are people who have difficulty seeing and hearing. The cut will come in from October 2015. The charity Disability UK says the scheme actually makes the Government money because the people who gain access to work tend pay tax that more than covers its cost. The DWP does not describe the reduction as a cut and says it will be able to spread the money more thinly and cover more people 7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people Cut Employment and Support Allowance The latest Budget included a 30 a week cut in disability benefits for some new claimants of Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). The Government says it is equalising the rate of disability benefits with Jobseekers Allowance because giving disabled people more help is a perverse incentive. The people affected by this cut are those assessed as having a limited capability for work but as being capable of some work-related activity. A group of prominent Catholics wrote to Mr Duncan Smith to say there was no justification for this cut. Mental health charity Mind, said the cut was insulting and misguided 7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people Risk homelessness with a sharp increase disability benefit sanctions Official figures in the first quarter of 2014 found a huge increase in sanctions against people reliant on ESA sickness benefit. The 15,955 sanctions were handed out in that period compared to 3,574 in the same period the year before, 2013 a 4.5 times increase. The homelessness charity Crisis warned at the time that the sharp rise in temporary benefit cuts was cruel and can leave people utterly destitute without money even for food and at severe risk of homelessness. It is difficult to see how they are meant to help people prepare for work, Matt Downie, director of policy at the charity added 7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people Sending sick people to work because of broken fitness to work tests In 2012 a government advisor appointed to review the Governments Work Capability Assessment said the tests causing suffering by sending sick people back to work inappropriately. There are certainly areas where it's still not working and I am sorry there are people going through a system which I think still needs improvement, Professor Malcolm Harrington concluded. The tests are said to have improved since then, but as recently as this summer they are still coming in for criticism. In June the British Psychological Society said there was now significant body of evidence that the WCA is failing to assess peoples fitness for work accurately and appropriately. It called for a full overhaul of the way the tests are carried out. The WCA appeals system has also been fraught with controversy with a very high rate of overturns and delays lasting months and blamed for hardship 7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people The bedroom tax The Governments benefit cut for people who it says are under-occupying their homes disproportionately affects disabled people. Statistics released last year show that around two-thirds of those affected by the under-occupancy penalty, widely known as the bedroom tax, are disabled. There have been a number of high profile cases of disabled people being moved out of specially adapted homes by the policy. In one case publicised by the Sunday People last week, a 48 year old man with cerebral palsy was forced to bathe in a paddling pool after the tax moved him out of his home with a walk-in shower. The Government says it has provided councils with a discretionary fund to help reduce the policys impact on disabled people, but cases continue to arise But Mr Osborne could be seen entirely ignoring Mr McDonnell on the benches opposite, apparently preferring to swap jokes with Mr Gove while the justice minister tapped away on his phone. The Chancellor had planned to save 4.4 billion by 2020 by cutting payments to people who use specially adapted applianced. The Institute for Fiscal Studies says this cut would have seen 370,000 disabled people lose an average of 3,500 a year. The Chancellor however U-turned after a blistering attack on the policy by former Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith. 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 }} The new Work and Pensions Secretary is fighting his own constituents in court in order to force them to pay the discriminatory and unlawful Bedroom Tax. Stephen Crabb is MP for Preseli Pembrokeshire and counts the Rutherford family among his consituents. Under his new role at the DWP Mr Crabb is leading a Supreme Court appeal against the family whose legal challenge led to the so-called Bedroom Tax being declared unlawful by the Court of Appeal in January. The successful appeal was brought by Paul and Susan Rutherford on behalf of their severely disabled grandson Warren. Warren suffers from a rare genetic disorder and requires 24 hour care because he cannot walk, talk or feed himself. The couple was hit by the under-occupancy charge because they have a room that is used for overnight carers and storing specialist medical equipment. The court found the policys impact on disabled children was contrary to the European Convention on Human Rights. We now have the ludicrous scenario where Stephen Crabb is taking his own constituents through the highest court in the land, Labours Rachel Reeves said, according to the Daily Mirror newspaper. Mr Crabb replaces Iain Duncan Smith, who resigned after claiming the Government was hurting the most vulnerable (Getty Images) If you want to listen to disabled people, he should listen to his own constituents, instead of fighting them tooth and nail after they won in the High Court. The Work and Pensions Secretary is also appealing a legal challenge victory by anonymous rape victim who was forced to pay the bedroom tax on their police-installed panic room. Mr Crabb replaced Iain Duncan Smith, who was in charge of the DWP at the time the appeal to the Supreme Court was launched. 7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people Show all 7 1 /7 7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people 7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people Closing Remploy factories The Work and Pensions Secretary called time on Britains system of Remploy factories, which provided subsidised and sheltered employment to disabled people. People employed at the factories protested against their closure and said they provided gainful work. Is it a kindness to stick people in some factory where they are not doing any work at all? Just making cups of coffee? Mr Duncan Smith said at the time, defending the decision. I promise you this is better. The Remploy organisation was privatised and sold to American workfare provider Maximus, with the majority of the organisations factories closed. The future of the remaining sites is unclear 7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people Scrapping the Independent Living Fund The 320m Independent Living Fund was established in 1988 to give financial support to people with disabilities. It was scrapped on July 1 2015, with 18,000 often severely disabled people losing out by an average of 300 a week. The money was generally used to help pay for carers so people could live in communities rather than institutions. Councils will get a boost in funding to compensate but it will not cover the whole cost of the fund. This new cash also doesnt have to be spent on the disabled 7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people Cut payments for the disabled Access To Work scheme Iain Duncan Smith is bringing forward a policy that will reduce payments to some disabled people from a scheme designed to help them into work. The 108m scheme, which helps 35,540 people, will be capped on a per-used basis, potentially hitting those with the more serious disabilities who currently receive the most help. The single biggest users of the fund are people who have difficulty seeing and hearing. The cut will come in from October 2015. The charity Disability UK says the scheme actually makes the Government money because the people who gain access to work tend pay tax that more than covers its cost. The DWP does not describe the reduction as a cut and says it will be able to spread the money more thinly and cover more people 7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people Cut Employment and Support Allowance The latest Budget included a 30 a week cut in disability benefits for some new claimants of Employment and Support Allowance (ESA). The Government says it is equalising the rate of disability benefits with Jobseekers Allowance because giving disabled people more help is a perverse incentive. The people affected by this cut are those assessed as having a limited capability for work but as being capable of some work-related activity. A group of prominent Catholics wrote to Mr Duncan Smith to say there was no justification for this cut. Mental health charity Mind, said the cut was insulting and misguided 7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people Risk homelessness with a sharp increase disability benefit sanctions Official figures in the first quarter of 2014 found a huge increase in sanctions against people reliant on ESA sickness benefit. The 15,955 sanctions were handed out in that period compared to 3,574 in the same period the year before, 2013 a 4.5 times increase. The homelessness charity Crisis warned at the time that the sharp rise in temporary benefit cuts was cruel and can leave people utterly destitute without money even for food and at severe risk of homelessness. It is difficult to see how they are meant to help people prepare for work, Matt Downie, director of policy at the charity added 7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people Sending sick people to work because of broken fitness to work tests In 2012 a government advisor appointed to review the Governments Work Capability Assessment said the tests causing suffering by sending sick people back to work inappropriately. There are certainly areas where it's still not working and I am sorry there are people going through a system which I think still needs improvement, Professor Malcolm Harrington concluded. The tests are said to have improved since then, but as recently as this summer they are still coming in for criticism. In June the British Psychological Society said there was now significant body of evidence that the WCA is failing to assess peoples fitness for work accurately and appropriately. It called for a full overhaul of the way the tests are carried out. The WCA appeals system has also been fraught with controversy with a very high rate of overturns and delays lasting months and blamed for hardship 7 ways the Tories have helped disabled people The bedroom tax The Governments benefit cut for people who it says are under-occupying their homes disproportionately affects disabled people. Statistics released last year show that around two-thirds of those affected by the under-occupancy penalty, widely known as the bedroom tax, are disabled. There have been a number of high profile cases of disabled people being moved out of specially adapted homes by the policy. In one case publicised by the Sunday People last week, a 48 year old man with cerebral palsy was forced to bathe in a paddling pool after the tax moved him out of his home with a walk-in shower. The Government says it has provided councils with a discretionary fund to help reduce the policys impact on disabled people, but cases continue to arise A DWP spokesman at the time of the Rutherfords' appeal court victory the people found to have been discriminated against were in receipt of discretionary housing payment payment provided by councils to cancel out the effects of the bedroom tax. We are pleased that the court found once again that we have complied with the Public Sector Equality Duty, the spokesperson said in a statement. We fundamentally disagree with the courts ruling on the ECHR, which directly contradicts the High Court. We have already been granted permission to appeal to the Supreme Court. We know there will be people who need extra support. That is why we are giving local authorities over 870m in extra funding over the next five years to help ensure people in difficult situations like these dont lose out. 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 }} Liberia has partially shut its border with Guinea after the country confirmed its fifth Ebola death in just a week. The Liberian Information Minister Eugene Nagbe told the BBC they were contemplating closing the entire border with Guinea but for now it is only the border in the Lofa county area. Liberia lost over 4,000 people to the disease at the height of the epidemic in 2014-2015 and has been declared free from the disease three times. Guinea had been on track to be free of Ebola transmission this month before the new cases emerged. Critics warn the border between the two West African countries is porous and people will continue to enter Liberia in forested areas because of cross-border business. In pictures: Ebola virus Show all 62 1 /62 In pictures: Ebola virus In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus A health worker from Sierra Leone's Red Cross Society Burial Team 7 carries the corpse of a child in Freetown In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus A health workers from the Sierra Leone's Red Cross Society Burial Team 7 is sprayed with desinfectant after removing a corpse from a house in Freetown In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus Health workers from Sierra Leone's Red Cross Society Burial Team 7 prepare to remove a body from a house in Freetown AFP In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus Health workers from the Sierra Leone's Red Cross Society Burial Team 7 place a body in a grave at King Tom cemetary in Freetown In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus Mustapha Rogers of the Red Cross talks as health workers from the Sierra Leone's Red Cross Society Burial Team 7 remove a corpse from a house in Freetown In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus A citizen from Mali arrives at a hospital in Murcia city, south-eastern Spain. The protocol for a possible case of Ebola has been activated as the man, who arrived from Mali to Jumilla town in Murcia province five days ago, presents clinical symptoms of high fever and vomiting EPA In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus Kenyan medical workers show how to handle an infected Ebola patient on a portable negative pressure bed at the Kenyatta national hospital in Nairobi Getty Images In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus A health worker sprays disinfectant onto a college in Monrovia, Liberia AP In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus A burial team in protective gear bury the body of a woman suspected to have died from Ebola virus in Monrovia, Liberia In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus Healthcare workers in protective gear work at an Ebola treatment center in the west of Freetown, Sierra Leone AP Photo/Michael Duff In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus A healthcare worker in protective gear is sprayed with disinfectant after working in an Ebola treatment center in the west of Freetown, Sierra Leone In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus A member of the NGO U Fondation leaves a house after visiting quarantined family members suffering from the Ebola virus in Monrovia In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus An Ebola sign placed infront of a home in West Point slum area of Monrovia, Liberia In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus A Liberian man carries his sick brother suspected of having Ebola after being delayed admission to the Island Clinic Ebola Treatment Unit due to a lack of beds at the clinic on the outskirts of Monrovia, Liberia In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus Health workers remove the body a woman who died from the Ebola virus in the Aberdeen district of Freetown, Sierra Leone In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus A health worker fixes another health worker's protective suit in the Aberdeen district of Freetown, Sierra Leone In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus Health workers spray themselves with chlorine disinfectants after removing the body a woman who died of Ebola virus in the Aberdeen district of Freetown, Sierra Leone In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus A woman crawls towards the body of her sister as Ebola burial team members take her sister Mekie Nagbe (28) for cremation in Monrovia, Liberia In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus Sophia Doe sits with her grandchildren Beauty Mandi, 9 months (L) and Arthuneh Qunoh, 9, (R), while watching the arrival an Ebola burial team to take away the body of her daughter Mekie Nagbe, 28, for cremation in Monrovia, Liberia In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus Varney Jonson (46) grieves as an Ebola burial team takes away the body of his wife Nama Fambule for cremation in Monrovia, Liberia In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus Family members grieve as Ebola burial team members prepare to remove the body of Nama Fambule for cremation in Monrovia, Liberia In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus A Liberian burial squad carry the body of an Ebola victim in Marshall, Margini county, Liberia In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus An Ebola burial team dresses in protective clothing before collecting the body of a woman (54) from her home in the New Kru Town suburb of Monrovia, Liberia In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus An Ebola burial team carries the body of a woman (54) through the New Kru Town suburb of Monrovia, Liberia In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus An Ebola burial team dresses in protective clothing before collecting the body of a woman (54) from her home in the New Kru Town suburb of Monrovia, Liberia In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus Health workers in protective gear carry the body of a woman suspected to have died from Ebola virus, from a house in New Kru Town at the outskirt of Monrovia, Liberia In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus Volunteers in protective suit bury the body of a person who died from Ebola in Waterloo, some 30 kilometers southeast of Freetown FLORIAN PLAUCHEUR/AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus Nowa Paye (9) is taken to an ambulance after showing signs of the Ebola infection in the village of Freeman Reserve, about 30 miles north of Monrovia, Liberia In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus Medical staff members burn clothes belonging to patients suffering from Ebola, at the French medical NGO Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in Monrovia PASCAL GUYOT/AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus A medical staff member wearing a protective suit walks past the crematorium where victims of Ebola are burned in Monrovia In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus A Liberian burial team wearing protective clothing loads the body of a 60-year-old Ebola victim after retrieving him from his home Getty Images In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus Sick women rest while hoping to enter the new Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Ebola treatment center near Monrovia, Liberia Getty Images In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus Hanah Siafa walks in the rain with her children Josephine, 10, and Elija, six, while waiting to enter the new Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Ebola treatment center in Monrovia, Liberia Getty Images In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus UNICEF health workers walk through the streets, going house to house to speak about Ebola prevention in New Kru Town, Liberia. The virus has killed more than 1,000 people in four African countries Getty Images In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus Local residents watch as public health advocates stage an Ebola awareness and prevention event in Monrovia, Liberia Getty Images In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus Public health advocates stage an Ebola awareness and prevention event in Monrovia, Liberia. The Liberian government and international groups are trying to convince residents of the danger and are urging people to wash their hands to help prevent the spread of the epidemic Getty Images In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus Hanah Siafa lies with her children Josephine, 10, and Elija, six, while hoping to enter the new Doctors Without Borders (MSF), Ebola treatment center Getty Images In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus A health worker examines patients for Ebola inside a screening tent, at the Kenema Government Hospital AP In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus A health worker cleans his hands with chlorinated water before entering an Ebola screening tent at the Kenema Government Hospital, about 86 miles from Sierra Leones capital Freetown AP In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus Aid workers and doctors transfer Miguel Pajares, a Spanish priest who was infected with the Ebola virus while working in Liberia, from a plane to an ambulance as he leaves the Torrejon de Ardoz military airbase, near Madrid, Spain AP Photo/Spanish Defense Ministry In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus A Liberian money exchanger washes hands between customers as a precaution to prevent infection with the deadly Ebola virus while conducting business in downtown Monrovia, Liberia EPA In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus A Liberian health worker sprays disinfectant on a drivers boots to stop the spread of the deadly Ebola virus at the Christian charity Samaritan Purse head offices in Monrovia, Liberia. Over 660 people have died of Ebola in West Africa in 2014 making it the world's deadliest outbreak to date according to statistics from the World Health Organisation EPA In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus A Liberian taxi driver wears protective gloves as a precaution to prevent infection with the deadly Ebola virus whilst driving in downtown Monrovia, Liberia. Many Liberians have taken to wearing gloves and washing hands after every interaction in an attempt to curb the spread of the deadly virus EPA In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus A Liberian money exchanger wears protective gloves as a precaution to prevent infection with the deadly Ebola virus while transacting business with customers in downtown Monrovia, Liberia EPA In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus A woman from Liberia takes food to a sick relative in the Ebola isolation unit at the ELWA Hospital where US doctor Kent Bradley is being quarantined having contracted the Ebola virus. Over 660 people have died of Ebola in West Africa in 2014 making it the world's deadliest outbreak to date according to statistics from the World Health Organisation EPA In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus The disease has now spread to Liberia and, for the first time, Sierra Leone and Nigeria, killing at least 672 people in 1,201 cases, according to the World Health Organisations latest figures AP In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus Health specialists prepare for work in an isolation ward for patients at the Medecins Sans Frontieres facility in southern Guinea AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus A Liberian street vendor wears protective gloves as a precaution to prevent infection with the deadly Ebola virus while transacting business with customers in downtown Monrovia, Liberia EPA In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus A nurse from Liberia sprays preventives to disinfect the waiting area for visitors at the ELWA Hospital where a US doctor Kent Bradley is being quarantined in the hospitals isolation unit having contracted the Ebola virus, Monrovia, Liberia EPA In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus Staff of the 'Doctors without Borders' ('Medecin sans frontieres') medical aid organisation carry the body of a person killed by the virus In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus A Liberia man (right) talks to a nurse (left) about the health of his relative who is in the isolation unit of the ELWA Hospital where a US doctor Kent Bradley is being quarantined having contracted the Ebola virus, Monrovia, Liberia EPA In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus A nurse from Liberia walks to spray preventives to disinfect the waiting area for visitors at the ELWA Hospital where a US doctor Kent Bradley is being quarantined in the hospitals isolation unit having contracted the Ebola virus EPA In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus Staff of the Christian charity Samaritan's Purse put on protective gear in the ELWA hospital in the Liberian capital Monrovia AFP In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus Lagos State Health Commissioner Jide Idris, speaks, during a news conference in Lagos, Nigeria. No one knows for sure just how many people Patrick Sawyer came into contact with the day he boarded a flight in Liberia, had a stopover in Ghana, changed planes in Togo, and then arrived in Nigeria, where authorities say he died days later from Ebola AP Photo/Sunday Alamba In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus Staff of the Christian charity Samaritan's Purse put on protective gear in the ELWA hospital in the Liberian capital Monrovia. An American doctor battling West Africa's Ebola epidemic has himself fallen sick with the disease in Liberia, Samaritan's Purse said AP In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus Protective gear including boots, gloves, masks and suits, drying after being used in a treatment room in the ELWA hospital in the Liberian capital Monrovia AFP In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus A Liberian man holding a Civet being sold on a roadside as bush meat in Lofa County. Bush meat is one of the major carriers of the Ebola virus. The Liberian government and International partners have warned people to not eat it. The World Health Organisation (WHO) reported that a total of 888 Ebola cases including 539 deaths have been recorded in West Africa since February AFP In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus People unload protection and healthcare material at Conakry's airport, to help fight the spread of the Ebola virus and treat people who have been already infected AFP/Getty Images In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus Body of evidence: health workers transport a casket of a nun whose death resulted from an Ebola infection in Zaire in 1995 Getty In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus Peter Piot in Yambuku, northern Congo (then Zaire), in 1976, where he was part of the original team to discover the Ebola virus J Breman In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus A member of Doctors Without Borders helps to unload protection and healthcare materials in Guinea Getty In pictures: Ebola virus Ebola virus Doctors in protective gear work inside the Medecins Sans Frontieres isolation ward as Guinea faced the worst ever outbreak of the Ebola virus Getty Images The latest case was detected in Macenta prefecture, about 200km from the village of Korokpara where the four other recent Ebola-related deaths occurred, said Fode Sylla Tass, spokesman for National Coordination of the Fight against Ebola in Guinea. Mr Tass said the man, who was not identified, had recently visited the village. Additional reporting by agencies 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 }} With Raul Castro looking on from a balcony seat in the opulent Grand Theatre in downtown Havana, President Barack Obama has admonished the Cuban regime to embrace democracy and roll back political repression so its people can speak their mind and criticise their leaders without fear. The appeal came in the last hours of Mr Obamas visit to Cuba that was meant first to highlight the progress made towards ending more than five decades of fierce enmity between the two countries but which nonetheless could never disguise the profound differences that still separate them, most notably Cubas one-party system and its harsh intolerance of political dissent. It is a raw nerve for the regime that was jangled on 21 March when Mr Castro was asked about political prisoners at a press conference with Mr Obama broadcast across the nation. Shocked Cubans watched as Mr Castro attempted ignorance. What political prisoners? he asked, before saying that if he was made aware of any they would be released before the days end. There was never any alternative for Mr Obama but to address the issue head-on in his speech, the marquee moment of his visit. He said his coming to Cuba was a chance to bury the last remnants of the Cold War in the Americas. He drew cheers from the audience when he reiterated his call on the US Congress to rescind the US trade embargo, calling it an outdated burden on the Cuban people. However, he said that Cubas future would not be determined by the US but by the Cuban people, lauding their talent, pride and hard work. He went on: Even if we lifted the embargo tomorrow, Cubans would not realise their potential without continued change here, in Cuba. Obama in Cuba Show all 6 1 /6 Obama in Cuba Obama in Cuba U.S. President Barack Obama makes a face towards a group of children in the audience as he stand on stage with first lady Michelle Obama as he is introduced by Ambassador Jeffrey DeLaurentis Charge d'Affaires to the U.S. Embassy in Cuba Obama in Cuba President Barack Obama shakes hands with Cuba's Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez upon arrival to the airport in Havana, Cuba Obama in Cuba U.S. President Barack Obama and his wife Michelle approach Cuba's foreign minister Bruno Rodriguez as they arrive at Havana's international airport Obama in Cuba US President Barack Obama waves after his arrival on Jose Marti Airport in Havana, Cuba Obama in Cuba US President Barack Obama carries an umbrella as he is followed by First Lady Michelle Obama after their arrival on Jose Marti Airport in Havana, Cuba Obama in Cuba The 'Air Force One' jet carrying US President Barack Obama touches down at the Jose Marti Airport in Havana, Cuba He then issued his challenge on political freedoms. I believe that citizens should be free to speak their mind without fear, to organise and to criticise their governments and to protest peacefully and the rule of the law should not include arbitrary detention for people who exercise those rights, Mr Obama argued. The President later met with a group of Cuban dissenters at the US embassy in Havana. Ben Rhodes, the Deputy National Security Advisor, told reporters that a list of 53 political prisoners had been submitted to Cuba shortly before the December 2014 unveiling of the rapprochement process and said all those on it had been released at that time. But disagreement persists over the real status of some of those dissidents still behind bars. Its their belief that they are not political prisoners, he said. Before his meeting with the dissidents, Mr Obama praised their extraordinary courage in showing their opposition to the Castro regime in spite the risks to their freedom. Much of this is a matter of us being able to hear directly from the Cuban people and making sure that they have a voice and making sure that their concerns and their ideas are helping to shape US policy, he said of the session. Mr Obama has been accused by his critics at home of legitimising the Cuban regime without demanding reforms first. At moments eloquent, Mr Obama held up his own life story a mixed-race child born to a single mother who became the US president - as an illustration of how open debate and democratic struggle eventually forges a better society. And he cited the 2016 presidential race also. You had two Cuban-Americans in the Republican party running against the legacy of a black man who was president while arguing that theyre the best person to beat the Democratic nominee who will either be a woman or a Democratic socialist, he said. Who would have believed that back in 1959? 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 }} A senior Washington Post journalist has lashed out at Donald Trump after he called her beautiful following an hour-long editorial board meeting on foreign policy. During the meeting with the newspaper, Deputy Digital Editor Karen Attiah claimed that Mr Trump was polling negatively among Hispanics, and the Republican replied that was only the case among illegal immigrants but he was doing very well among legal Hispanic people. She then challenged him over his use of racist rhetoric, and he replied that Muslims present a serious problem and accused Muslims of sheltering terrorists in Paris. Ms Attiah thanked Mr Trump for answering her question as they walked out of the room. Mr Trump reportedly turned to her and said: I really hope I answered your question, and added Beautiful, with a smile. I was stunned. I didnt say thank you, and I dont think I smiled. He then walked out to meet with my Post colleagues briefly before heading to the elevator, Ms Attiah wrote. I stayed in the conference room for a few minutes as it sunk in that the potential GOP nominee for president thought it was okay to comment on my appearance. Did he just say that? In a post for her newspaper, Ms Attiah lambasted Mr Trump's world of "no rules", which allows him to incite violence at his rallies and to predict riots if he does not win the nomination. Perhaps he thought that calling me beautiful would make me ignore the fact that he brazenly lied about his polling numbers among Hispanic voters, she said. Or make me believe that he wasnt really a racist. Who knows? At least now I know, firsthand, that the sexism that Trump puts on display against Megyn Kelly under the lights of national TV is not that much different from how he is in real life toward female journalists. Mr Trump recently called Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly crazy and unwatchable as he claimed she was spinning the election numbers last week following five states voting in Super Tuesday. Mr Trump landed himself in hot water after making a show of inviting a female veteran onto the stage this week and offering her a job depending on the salary and calling her sweetie. His campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was also criticized for allegedly grabbing the arm of Michelle Fields, a former reporter from conservative website Breitbart, while she tried to question Mr Trump at a rally. Early voters line up in Arizona on Tuesday morning. (Nancy Wiechec/Reuters) 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 }} On a day that will be remembered for much more than the US presidential primaries, voters in three states are heading out to the polls. Both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump have been declared the winners in Arizona. Republicans voted in Arizona and Utah, where a total of 98 delegates are up for grabs. Democrats are hitting the polls in those states and Idaho, and 131 delegates will be decided. In the Democratic contest, Mr Sanders and Mrs Clinton are fighting for 75 delegates in Arizona on Tuesday and hoping that Latino voters will propel them to victory. Twenty-two per cent of voters in Arizona are Latino and both candidates spent the past few weeks campaigning across the state. Senator Sanders has spent time campaigning at the US-Mexico border where he condemned Mr Trump and Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Clinton also condemned Sheriff Arpaio, who was criticised for his treatments of inmates, at a Phoenix-area high school this week: We are a nation of immigrants and of exiles. When I see people like Sheriff (Joe) Arpaio and others who are treating fellow human beings with such disrespect, with such contempt, it just makes my heart sink, Ms Clinton said, according to KPNX-TV. In the Republican contest, Mr Trump leads Mr Cruz in Arizona polls, according to Real Clear Politics. Although most polls show Cruz as a shoe-in for the Utah primaries, Mr Trump still obtains a wide lead with the lion's share of delegates. Results: Republican: Arizona (58 delegates): Donald Trump Utah (40 delegates): No winner declared yet. American Samoa (9 delegates): No winner declared yet. Democrat: Arizona (75 delegates): Hillary Clinton Idaho (23 delegates): No winner declared yet. Utah (33 delegates): No winner declared yet. 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 }} Donald Trump began his appearance at the annual AIPAC conference in Washington DC by insisting he would not pander to his pro-Israel audience, claiming Thats what politicians do. But during a lengthy address designed to demonstrate the Republican front-runners foreign policy chops to the largest pro-Israel organisation in the US, he did little else. Describing himself as a lifelong supporter and true friend of Israel, Mr Trump cited several examples of his loyalty to the Jewish state, including lending his plane to the then-Mayor of New York, Rudy Giuliani, to fly to Israel in the weeks after the 9/11 attacks. He also pointed out that his daughter Ivanka is due to give birth to a beautiful, Jewish baby. Mr Trump even noted that he had been the Grand Marshal of New Yorks Salute to Israel parade in 2004, during a period of sustained violence 6,000 miles away in the Middle East. It was a very dangerous time for Israel and, frankly, for anyone supporting Israel, said the billionaire property developer. I took the risk and Im glad I did. For the first time during his frequently improvisational White House run, Mr Trumps speech had been prepared beforehand, and its policy substance was straight out of the Republican playbook. As President, he said he would dismantle the recent Iran nuclear deal, which he described as catastrophic, adding: I have studied this issue in great detail... greater, by far, than anybody else. He also decried the utter weakness and incompetence of the United Nations, saying he would veto any attempts by the organisation to impose its will on Israel. No one should be telling Israel it must abide by some agreement made by others thousands of miles away that dont even really know whats happening, Mr Trump said. People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Show all 8 1 /8 People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Miley Cyrus 'God he thinks he is the f***ing chosen one or some shit! Honestly f*** this sh*t I am moving if this is my president! I dont say things I dont mean!' Jemal Countess/Getty Images People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Whoopi Goldberg 'I dont think thats America. I dont want it to be America. Maybe its time for me to move you know' People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Samuel L. Jackson 'If that mother**er becomes president, Im moving my black ass to South Africa' People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Raven Symone 'My confession for this election is, if any Republican gets nominated, Im gonna move to Canada with my entire family. Is that bad? I already have my ticket. I literally bought my ticket, I swear' People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Cher 'If he were to be elected, I'm moving to Jupiter' People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Neve Campbell 'Im terrified. Its really scary. My biggest fear is that Trump will triumph. I cannot believe that he is still in the game ... [I'll] move back to Canada' People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Jon Stewart 'I would consider getting in a rocket and going to another planet, because clearly this planets gone bonkers' People who will flee America if Donald Trump wins Randy Blythe 'He could just be a clown. If he is the president, though, I am leaving America 'till he's gone' To loud applause, he vowed to move the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, insisting a Trump administration would send a clear signal that there is no daylight between America and our most reliable ally, the state of Israel. After boasting of his lengthy acquaintance with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he said the two men would be able to work closely together to bring stability and peace to Israel and to the entire region. Perhaps the most surprising thing about Mr Trumps speech to AIPAC the American Israel Public Affairs Committee was the overwhelmingly positive reaction from the crowd. Before his appearance, Mr Trump had been criticised by some leading rabbis for his harsh rhetoric regarding immigrants and religious groups. Other AIPAC attendees questioned previous comments in which he had said he would approach the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a neutral guy. Arnold Schwarzenegger walks out of interview over Donald Trump question Yet instead of the threatened protests, Mr Trumps speech was met with laughter and several standing ovations, not least when he attacked the foreign policy of the current administration and of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, whom he seems increasingly likely to face in the general election. Ms Clinton, he said, is a total disaster. The billionaire was speaking just hours after the Democratic frontrunner had sharply criticised him in her own address to AIPAC. Though Ms Clinton did not name Mr Trump by name in her speech on Monday morning, there was little doubt to which candidate she was referring when she described his approach to foreign affairs as dangerously wrong. She went on: We need steady hands. Not a president who says hes neutral on Monday, pro-Israel on Tuesday and who knows what on Wednesday because everything is negotiable. Ms Clinton also compared Mr Trumps views on Muslims and other immigrants to American attitudes of the 1930s, when the US turned away some European Jews, sending them back to Nazi-occupied Europe. America should be better than this, and it is our responsibility as citizens to say so, she said. Mr Trumps GOP rivals, Texas Senator Ted Cruz and John Kasich, the Governor of Ohio, also made AIPAC appearances. Yet Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, who is challenging Ms Clinton for the Democratic nomination, instead spent the day campaigning ahead of Tuesdays primaries in Arizona, Utah and Idaho. His absence from the conference was notable, not least because he is the only Jewish candidate ever to win a presidential primary. In a meeting with the editorial board of the Washington Post earlier on Monday, Mr Trump listed the names of his foreign policy advisory team, led by Republican Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, an immigration hard-liner. They include Joseph Schmitz, a former inspector general of the US Defence Department under President George W Bush, and George Papadopoulos, a conservative energy consultant who previously advised Dr Ben Carsons presidential campaign. 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 }} Aung San Suu Kyi plans to take charge of four of Burmas most important ministries in the new government which comes to power at the end of March, as well as giving orders to her friend and proxy, president-elect Htin Kyaw. It has emerged that she will hold the foreign, education and electric power and energy portfolios as well as being minister in the presidents office. Confounding reports the previous day sourced to a senior figure in her party, the National League for Democracy (NLD), that she would confine her formal role to running the party, it is now clear that she will be as hands-on as it is possible to be and perhaps more so. It was widely predicted in recent weeks that she would become foreign minister: her close familiarity with top officials and heads of state around the world, as well as her ease in English, made her the obvious candidate for the post. It is also the only available job which would give her a seat on the powerful 11-member National Defence and Security Council, which, as successor to the security councils through which the military ran Burma from 1989 onwards, has the power to declare martial law and suspend democratic government. Seven of the 11 members come from the military. But no-one expected that Suu Kyi would also take on four ministerial portfolios. As the president enjoys wide powers under the constitution, it would theoretically have been sufficient to have herself appointed minister in the presidents office, so she could call the shots from there. Instead she will be directly in charge of taking some of the most crucial decisions in the country. Her ambitions might have stretched even further were it not for the fact that, under the constitution, the military controls three vital ministries: Home, Border Affairs, and Defence. U Win Htein, a veteran politician and co-founder of the NLD, commented philosophically, It doesnt matter how many ministries she takes, as she will run the whole government anyway. Her domination of government underlines the difficulty she has experienced in delegating power within her party. Aged 70, she has no clear successor or deputy. President-elect Htin Kyaw has been a friend of hers since childhood, but has never played a political role, and will be expected merely to implement her decisions. The electric power and energy portfolio will be an early test of her mettle: in 2011 President Thein Sein, bowing to public outrage, suspended work on the huge, Chinese-financed Myitsone dam in the north of the country, which was intended to export most of the power it generated to China. The Chinese government is exerting strong pressure for work on the dam to resume, yet it remains deeply unpopular within Burma. Getting that right would be an early indication of Suu Kyis competence despite the staggering array of challenges she has given herself. The Lady and the Generals: Aung San Suu Kyi and Burma's Struggle for Freedom by Peter Popham is published by Rider 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 warning shot has been fired during a police operation near Amsterdam's central station. Amsterdam police said three people were arrested after being involved in a short car chase shortly after 6:30PM on Tuesday. One suspect was arrested after the car was forced to a stop near the station, and the other two were apprehended nearby as they tried to flee on foot, after police fired a warning shot. The incident occurred on the same day at least 30 people were killed in Brussels, but the Amsterdam case is not believed to be linked to terrorism. Police noted that one suspect was seen throwing away a package thought to contain drugs as they ran away. No-one was injured in the incident, although panic was sparked in the Dutch capital after the events in Brussels. The suspects are now being investigated by police, and traffic in the centre of Amsterdam is beginning to return to normal. 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 }} Brussels Airlines, the main carrier to and from the Belgian capitals Zaventem airport, says The airport is closed until further notice. The thoughts and prayers of everyone at Brussels Airlines go out to everyone affected by these terrible attacks. Brussels Airlines priority now is to do everything to assist and support its colleagues and passengers. All its flights are cancelled on 22 and 23 March; affected passengers can get a full refund or re-book for flights up to the end of June. The airport management says it will be opening for a restricted flight programme from 24 March onwards. However, it will be far from normal because a significant proportion of the landside facilities are unusable, and security will be extremely strict - with only ticketed passengers allowed access. British Airways says passengers with a confirmed booking for travel to/from Brussels on Wednesday 23 March can rebook flights for a later date or claim a full refund. Anyone travelling from or to the Belgian capital between Thursday 24 March and Tuesday 29 March can postpone their journey. Brussels airport currently remains closed and our flights from and to Brussels on 22 and 23 March have been cancelled. In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man carries an injured person in Brussels Airport, after explosions ripped through the departure hall In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Travellers get to their feet in a smoke filled terminal at Brussels Airport after explosions In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man is wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man speaks on a mobile phone in Brussels Airport, after the explosions ripped through the departure hall In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Belgian police officers detain a man at the Gare du Midi train station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A police officer stands guard as people are evacuated from Brussels airport, after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People stand near Brussels airport after being evacuated following explosions that rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Crew and passengers are evacuated from Zaventem Bruxelles International Airport after an attack in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers gather near Brussels airport in Zaventem, following its evacuation after blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Two women wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers and airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers and airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Broken windows seen at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People leave the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People are evacuated from the scene after two explosions were heard at Brussels Airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People wait outside of the Brussels Airport after evacuation In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People leave the airport area after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers comfort each other as they are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People react as they walk away from Brussels airport after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services attend the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Injured people at the scene at Brussels Airport after two explosions were heard PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The aftermath of the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People wait outside of the Zaventem airport after two explosions were heard PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services at the scene of explosions at Brussels Airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A view of the scene after the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The aftermath of the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The view of the Brussels airport after the explosion PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Smoke is seen at Brussels airport in Brussels AP In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A photo shows cars on a blocked highway near Zaventem, Brussels National airport, after two explosions rocked the main hall of Brussels Airport Getty Images The UKs biggest budget airline, easyJet, coincidentally ended flights between Gatwick and Brussels just before the attack. It still has a number of routes to and from the Belgian capital, and has cancelled services on 22 and 23 March. Our thoughts are with those affected by the incident, its statement concludes. Ryanair flies from both Brussels and Charleroi, the budget airport south of the capital. It says Charleroi services are running, although with some delays. Customers due to travel to/from Brussels Zaventem on 23 March should check the Ryanair.com website for the latest information. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of the victims. Eurostar has restarted a limited service from London St Pancras to and from Brussels Midi as from this evening and plans a full service on 24 March. The train operator says passengers should allow an hour for check-in. 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 }} For the second time in four months, Brussels is invovled in a terrorist attack in Europe. A wave of bombings has killed at least 30 people across the city just four days after it celebrated the arrest of the most-wanted man in Europe, Salah Abdeslam. Abdeslam is alleged to have taken part in November's Isis-inspired terror attacks in Paris which killed 130 people. It is believed there could be a connection between his arrest and the attacks in Brussels, which Isis has claimed responsibility for. In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man carries an injured person in Brussels Airport, after explosions ripped through the departure hall In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Travellers get to their feet in a smoke filled terminal at Brussels Airport after explosions In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man is wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man speaks on a mobile phone in Brussels Airport, after the explosions ripped through the departure hall In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Belgian police officers detain a man at the Gare du Midi train station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A police officer stands guard as people are evacuated from Brussels airport, after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People stand near Brussels airport after being evacuated following explosions that rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Crew and passengers are evacuated from Zaventem Bruxelles International Airport after an attack in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers gather near Brussels airport in Zaventem, following its evacuation after blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Two women wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers and airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers and airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Broken windows seen at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People leave the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People are evacuated from the scene after two explosions were heard at Brussels Airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People wait outside of the Brussels Airport after evacuation In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People leave the airport area after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers comfort each other as they are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People react as they walk away from Brussels airport after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services attend the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Injured people at the scene at Brussels Airport after two explosions were heard PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The aftermath of the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People wait outside of the Zaventem airport after two explosions were heard PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services at the scene of explosions at Brussels Airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A view of the scene after the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The aftermath of the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The view of the Brussels airport after the explosion PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Smoke is seen at Brussels airport in Brussels AP In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A photo shows cars on a blocked highway near Zaventem, Brussels National airport, after two explosions rocked the main hall of Brussels Airport Getty Images Raffaello Pantucci, an international security expert for the Royal United Services Institute said: "When Abdeslam gets arrested, you will have the network around him all starting to panic. "If you have problems building up, or people thinking about doing stuff, they might accelerate any planned attacks. "You are concerned about what might get exposed and the last thing you want to do is get captured. Abdeslam was captured in the suburb he grew up in - Molenbeek; a district now considered being a hotbed of jihadism. It is believed that he hid in plain sight for five months managing to evade the worlds police. Paris attackers Brahim Abdeslam and Abdelhamid Abaaoud also had links to the district. In the aftermath of Novembers attacks, The Independent spoke to Malika Sassi, a friend of the Abdeslam family, about how these young men became radicalised. She was shocked by events and believed Molenbeek was not responsible for their radicalisation. His mother told me yesterday how lovely he [Salah] was. He didnt even have a violent personality at home. A lovely, lovely boy, who plays with his mother and kisses her every day. Her children lived a double life a life they were indoctrinated into. In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A private security guard helps a wounded women outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Wounded people receive assistance by rescuers outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Rescue workers treat victims outside the Maelbeek underground station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Passengers waiting to be evacuated from the train between Arts-Lois and Maelbeek In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency services and police work around a metro station after an explosion in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Rescue teams evacuate wounded people outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A woman is evacuated in an ambulance by emergency services after a explosion in a main metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A Belgian soldier stands guard outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels after a blast at this station located near the EU institutions In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Belgian police officers stand outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Belgian policemen and a soldier carrying an injured person after an explosion at the Maelbeek Metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A view of the train after the explosion in Maelbeek station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station People receive treatment as emergency services attend the scene after an explosion in a main metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Maelbeek Metro station after an explosion on a train in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Passengers walk on underground metro tracks to be evacuated after an explosion at Maelbeek train station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A victim receives first aid by rescuers, near Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Firefighters arrive at the scene near Maalbeek metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency workers arrive at a security perimeter set near Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency rescue workers stretcher an unidentified person at the site of an explosion at a metro station in Brussels AP In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Police seal off the area at the scene of a blast outside a metro station in Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency personnel are seen at the scene of a blast outside a metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency personnel are seen at the scene of a blast outside a metro station in Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Belgian police and emergency staff arriving in the Wetstraat - Rue de la Loi, which has been evacuated after an explosion at the Maelbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Smoke rising from the Maalbeek underground, in Brussels, following a blast at the station close to the capital's European quarter Getty Images In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station People are evacuated from the Schuman station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station The scene outside the Maalbeek underground in Brussels after the explosion However, jihadists operating in the area have been linked to at least four terrorist attacks in the last two years. High unemployment and a lack of identity are being blamed for this rise in extremism. Molenbeek will now face further scrutiny following the suicide bombing at Maelbeek metro station, located just two miles away. 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 skeleton service that operated on 23 March on the Brussels Metro system shut down at 7pm that evening - an indication that restoring normal life to the Belgian capital will be a slow and difficult process. Eurostar trains from London St Pancras are running a normal service, though passengers booked to travel up to 29 March are able to postpone their journeys without penalty. The citys main airport at Zaventem will remain closed to passenger flights on 24 March, disrupting travel for an estimated 60,000 passengers. In a newly-released statement, the airport said: Because the forensic investigation is still under way, we currently have no access to the building. Until we can assess the damage, it remains unclear when we can resume operations. Recommended Read more Video purporting to show Zaventem Airport blast was shot in 2011 Brussels Airlines, the main carrier, said: The airport is closed until further notice. The airline has vowed to get back to normal operations as quickly as possible, but added: Due to difficult operational circumstances, delays and/or cancellations during the following days cannot be excluded. The airline is offering full refunds to any passenger booked to travel up to 28 March. Ryanair switched all its flights that would normally serve Brussels Zaventem to the capitals secondary airport, Charleroi. The airline is asking passengers to arrive three hours before their flights because of extra security checks. Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Show all 27 1 /27 Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Wreaths of flowers in front of an entrance of the Maalbeek subway station in Brussels in homage to the victims of a terrorist attack. Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Wreaths of flowers in front of an entrance of the Maalbeek subway station in Brussels in homage to the victims of a terrorist attack. Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims A building illuminated with the Belgian flag colours and a heart in Brussels, two days after suicide bombing attacks of terrorists on March 22 in Zaventem airport and subway Maelbeek. Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims A picture taken on 24 March, 2016 on place de la Bourse in Brussels, shows drawings and a candle, two days after suicide bombing attacks of terrorists on March 22 in Zaventem airport and Brussels subway Maelbeek Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Candles are displayed in tribute to the Brussels attacks victims on 24 March, 2016 on place de la Bourse in Brussels, two days after the suicide bombing attacks of terrorists on 22 March. Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims A mourner lights a candle in Trafalgar Square during a candlelit vigil in support of the victims of the recent terror attacks in Brussels. Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels airport workers pay tribute to the victims near Zaventem Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Activists light candles and hold placards to condemn the terrorist attacks in Belgium, during a gathering in Manila, Philippines Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims A banner for the victims of the bombings reads "I am Brussels" at the Place de la Bourse in the center of Brussels Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, left front center, stands with front row, left to right, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, Belgium's King Philippe, Belgium's Queen Mathilde and Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel as well as members of the European Commission during a minute of silence at EU headquarters in Brussels Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims People join hands in solidarity near the former stock exchange following the bomb attacks in Brussels Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Belgium flags ornate the facade of the Paris Town Hall Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims A woman embraces her children at The Place de la Bourse as she pays her respects to victims of the terrorists attacks in Brussels Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Belgian and European Union flags fly at half mast following the bomb attacks in Brussels Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Candles in the colors of the Belgian national flag are lit inside the Belgian embassy in Madrid, a day after the deadly suicide attacks on the Brussels airport and its subway system Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Servicemen of Azov, Ukrainian volunteers battalion, hold torches in front of floral tributes during a ceremony in front of the Belgian embassy in Kiev, in tribute to the victims of Brussels attacks Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims A refugee boy holds up a placard reading "Sorry for Brussels" at a refugee camp near the Greek-Macedonian border Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes People light candles in tribute to victims at a makeshift memorial at the Place de la Bourse in Brussels Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes A woman holds a drawing by French cartoonist Plantu picturing a character made of a French flag consoling another made of the Belgian flag, in front of the Hotel de Ville in Paris Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes The colours of the Belgian flag are projected on to (clockwise from top left) the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the town council building in Belgrade, Rome's Campidoglio and the Royal Palace at Dam Square in Amsterdam Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes Candles are lit in tribute to the victims, at the Place de la Bourse in Brussels Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes A woman holds a placard reading "Paris hearts Belgium, How much time will it take us to open our eyes and say STOP, Today our hearts are broken, Open your eyes to change the future" at the Place de la Republique in Paris Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes People gather to pay a tribute to victims of terrorist attacks in Brussels Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes People write messages on the ground at Place de la Bourse in Brussels Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes A bouquet of flowers in the Belgian national colours with a card reading 'To our neighbours, to our friends, to our Belgian brothers - an indignant Parisian' is seen next to a French national flag at the fence of the Belgian embassy in Paris Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes Solidarity messages are written in chalk outside the stock exchange in Brussels AP Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes Messages and floral tributes outside the Brussels stock exchange AP British Airways has offered passengers booked to fly between Heathrow and Brussels up to 29 March the chance to switch destination or postpone their trip without penalty. BMI Regional, which normally flies from East Midlands and Newcastle to Brussels, said: We are still waiting for updates on flights from 25 March. Passengers booked for travel within the next 28 days can transfer to an alternative flight free of charge. Many passengers are still without their luggage, having abandoned it when the airport was evacuated after the attacks. As the airlines wait for the airport to re-open, they are planning how services will resume. Jamie Bowden, a former terminal manager at Heathrow for British Airways, said: Its likely the local airline user group will have got together to agree where they can all contribute to paring back movements to allow the passenger throughput to build gradually. Theres no reason why things shouldnt be running pretty well by the weekend - not 100 per cent of the schedule, but a sense of normal operations albeit with more overt security checks. However, evidence from a fire in a shopping area at Rome Fiumicinos Terminal Three last May suggests that effects of the bombing in the departures hall may disrupt some flights for months. The Rome fire led to a large number of cancellations through the summer. While Brussels handles fewer flights that the Italian airport, it is a more significant hub for connecting passengers - in particular serving as Europes key link to central Africa. The Belgian Crisis Center, which is coordinating the response to the attacks, said: The Belgian government has increased the threat level to 4 for the whole country as a safety measure. The Foreign Office is warning British travellers to remain alert and vigilant, stay away from crowded places, and follow the instructions of the Belgian authorities. Meanwhile Canadas government warned its citizens travelling in Belgium: If you are in an area where a police raid is being conducted, remain indoors and close all windows and blinds. 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 }} Belgian authorities fear that suspects linked to a deadly wave of bombings in Brussels may still be at large as security operations continue along the country. At least 34 people died in three explosions coming little over an hour apart at the citys main airport and a Metro station on Tuesday morning. At least one of the blasts was reported to be a suicide bombing but the fate of other suspected attackers was unclear. Brussels in lockdown after multiple bomb attacks In a statement claiming responsibility for the attacks, Isis claimed "explosive belts and devices" were used but did not specify the number of assailants. A third suicide belt was destroyed in a controlled explosion at Brussels Airport on Tuesday afternoon, VTM News reported, while a Kalashnikov was found in the departures hall. We fear that people are still at large, said Didier Reynders, the Belgian foreign minister. He did not give any further details. The twin explosions near check-in desks at the airport came little over an hour before another explosion on a Metro train near EU buildings at Maalbeek station. An American official told the Associated Press agency that a suitcase bomb was among those used at Brussels Airport, alongside at least one suicide vest, while the device used on the train was unclear. In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man carries an injured person in Brussels Airport, after explosions ripped through the departure hall In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Travellers get to their feet in a smoke filled terminal at Brussels Airport after explosions In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man is wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man speaks on a mobile phone in Brussels Airport, after the explosions ripped through the departure hall In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Belgian police officers detain a man at the Gare du Midi train station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A police officer stands guard as people are evacuated from Brussels airport, after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People stand near Brussels airport after being evacuated following explosions that rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Crew and passengers are evacuated from Zaventem Bruxelles International Airport after an attack in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers gather near Brussels airport in Zaventem, following its evacuation after blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Two women wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers and airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers and airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Broken windows seen at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People leave the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People are evacuated from the scene after two explosions were heard at Brussels Airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People wait outside of the Brussels Airport after evacuation In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People leave the airport area after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers comfort each other as they are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People react as they walk away from Brussels airport after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services attend the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Injured people at the scene at Brussels Airport after two explosions were heard PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The aftermath of the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People wait outside of the Zaventem airport after two explosions were heard PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services at the scene of explosions at Brussels Airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A view of the scene after the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The aftermath of the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The view of the Brussels airport after the explosion PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Smoke is seen at Brussels airport in Brussels AP In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A photo shows cars on a blocked highway near Zaventem, Brussels National airport, after two explosions rocked the main hall of Brussels Airport Getty Images The Kalashnikov was found in the air terminal, officials said, seemingly corroborating witness accounts of gunfire shortly before the first explosion. The national terror alert has been raised to its maximum level of four across Belgium, sparking tightened security measures and raids. The Tihange nuclear power station, 50 miles south-east of Brussels Airport, was partially evacuated as searches continued on Tuesday. All non-essential staff were asked to leave the plant as part of increased precautions, operators Electrabel said. Surveillance was being stepped up with added security measures at nuclear plants across Belgium, with vehicles being checked and police officers and soldiers sent for extra protection. A police officer stands guard at the entrance of Brussels Airport, in Zaventem (AFP) Investigators probing the Paris attacks had found video footage of a senior Belgian nuclear official at a key suspect's home during a search in February, the AFP news agency reported. Police also destroyed a suspicious package in a controlled explosion at the Free University of Brussels (Vrije Universiteit Brussel). Students and staff had been urged to stay inside at its Etterbeek campus in the aftermath of the attacks and the detonation was carried out at around 12.45pm (1.45pm local time). There was no immediate claim of responsibility but the timing, coming days after the arrest of Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam was considered significant. As the death toll rose amid continuing rescue operations, supporters of the so-called Islamic State were championing the attacks on Twitter. A man carries an injured person in Brussels Airport, after explosions ripped through the departure hall Dr Natasha Underhill, an expert on terrorism in the Middle East at Nottingham Trent University, said there was little doubt that the latest atrocity in Europe was linked to Isis or its affiliates. The likelihood of further attacks in Europe is now in very little doubt, she added. The promotion of fear is one of the strongest assets that Islamic State possesses and it is sadly doing an excellent job in spreading this message across Europe. Abdeslam, the only surviving attacker from Isis massacres in Paris in November, had reportedly told investigators he was part of a cell planning further atrocities in Brussels after a large cache of weapons was found. Security has been increased at airports and transport hubs across Europe as investigations continue. Additional reporting by 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 }} The Belgian Red Cross has put out an appeal for A and O negative blood donations in Brussels following a major attack on an airport and a metro station which has killed at least 30 people. In a statement on its website, the charity has sent out an appeal specifically targeted at those two blood types. A spokesman for the charity told Belgian broadcaster RTBF: "First, we are only asking for O negative, A negative donors". In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A private security guard helps a wounded women outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Wounded people receive assistance by rescuers outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Rescue workers treat victims outside the Maelbeek underground station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Passengers waiting to be evacuated from the train between Arts-Lois and Maelbeek In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency services and police work around a metro station after an explosion in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Rescue teams evacuate wounded people outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A woman is evacuated in an ambulance by emergency services after a explosion in a main metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A Belgian soldier stands guard outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels after a blast at this station located near the EU institutions In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Belgian police officers stand outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Belgian policemen and a soldier carrying an injured person after an explosion at the Maelbeek Metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A view of the train after the explosion in Maelbeek station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station People receive treatment as emergency services attend the scene after an explosion in a main metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Maelbeek Metro station after an explosion on a train in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Passengers walk on underground metro tracks to be evacuated after an explosion at Maelbeek train station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A victim receives first aid by rescuers, near Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Firefighters arrive at the scene near Maalbeek metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency workers arrive at a security perimeter set near Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency rescue workers stretcher an unidentified person at the site of an explosion at a metro station in Brussels AP In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Police seal off the area at the scene of a blast outside a metro station in Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency personnel are seen at the scene of a blast outside a metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency personnel are seen at the scene of a blast outside a metro station in Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Belgian police and emergency staff arriving in the Wetstraat - Rue de la Loi, which has been evacuated after an explosion at the Maelbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Smoke rising from the Maalbeek underground, in Brussels, following a blast at the station close to the capital's European quarter Getty Images In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station People are evacuated from the Schuman station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station The scene outside the Maalbeek underground in Brussels after the explosion He confirmed three ambulances filled with blood bags were en route to Saint-Pierre hospital where the victims are being treated. At least 55 people are believed to have been injured - at least 10 critically - in three explosions which struck the city around 7am (8am GMT). Belgian journalist Sandrine Beigas tweeted there was a large security presence outside the hospital. Video shows people fleeing from the airport terminal after an explosion near the American Airlines check-in desk at Zaventern aiport. Men were reportedly heard "shouting in Arabic" and some witnesses say there were the sounds of gunfire before two explosions hit the terminal. Minutes later, another attack hit the Mallbeek metro station in the city. 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 }} An explosion has detonated at a Metro station in Brussels. 15 people have died and 10 others are injured, a spokesperson for the Metro operator La Stib has said. A spokesperson for emergency services called the blast "a very big explosion". It took place at Maalbeek Metro Station in central Brussels which is situated near the headquarters of the European Union. Francoise Ledune, a spokesperson for Brussels Metro, told local media that there appeared to have been just one explosion , in a car which was stopped at Maalbeek. Eye witnesses reported being evacuated after the station filled with smoke. Those travelling in carriages reported being told to get off and walk along the tracks through smoke to the next station. Photos posted to social media appear to show people running out of the station and into the adjoining street. The blast took place during rush hour when the Metro was full of passengers commuting to work. People are evacuated from the Schuman station in Brussels (Evan Lamos/Twitter) Alexandre Brans was in the Metro when the blast happened. He told AP: "The metro was leaving Maelbeek subway station when there was a really loud explosion. It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the metro." Metro company STIB announced on Twitter that all Metro stations are now closed. Emergency services staff carried injured people out of the station on stretchers, many of whom were seen to have torn and blood stained clothes. Evacuating between the Maalbeek and Arts-Loi Metro stations in Brussels A makeshift treatment centre to give emergency medical aid to the wounded has been set up at a nearby pub. The EU building is just a short walk from the Metro station. The European commission has reportedly sealed off the building following the attack and told staff to remain inside. EU institutions are on 'organge alert' meaning that all meetings are cancelled. EU's delegation to Rwanda tweeted that he had felt the blast in the next station. The blast follows two explosions at Zaventem Airport in Brussels this morning shortly before 8am local time (7am GMT). At least 13 people are reported to have died and several others are seriously injured. Increased security measures have been in place in recent weeks, especially following the capture of Salah Abdeslam on Friday during a raid linked to the November Paris attacks. In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man carries an injured person in Brussels Airport, after explosions ripped through the departure hall In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Travellers get to their feet in a smoke filled terminal at Brussels Airport after explosions In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man is wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man speaks on a mobile phone in Brussels Airport, after the explosions ripped through the departure hall In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Belgian police officers detain a man at the Gare du Midi train station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A police officer stands guard as people are evacuated from Brussels airport, after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People stand near Brussels airport after being evacuated following explosions that rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Crew and passengers are evacuated from Zaventem Bruxelles International Airport after an attack in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers gather near Brussels airport in Zaventem, following its evacuation after blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Two women wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers and airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers and airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Broken windows seen at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People leave the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People are evacuated from the scene after two explosions were heard at Brussels Airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People wait outside of the Brussels Airport after evacuation In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People leave the airport area after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers comfort each other as they are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People react as they walk away from Brussels airport after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services attend the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Injured people at the scene at Brussels Airport after two explosions were heard PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The aftermath of the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People wait outside of the Zaventem airport after two explosions were heard PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services at the scene of explosions at Brussels Airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A view of the scene after the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The aftermath of the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The view of the Brussels airport after the explosion PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Smoke is seen at Brussels airport in Brussels AP In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A photo shows cars on a blocked highway near Zaventem, Brussels National airport, after two explosions rocked the main hall of Brussels Airport Getty Images This breaking news story will be updated shortly. If you want to receive Breaking News alerts via email from The Independent you can sign up here. You can also follow @Independent on Twitter to follow the latest updates. 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 manhunt is under way for the third member of a team of bombers who brought carnage to Brussels Airport, after at least 34 people died in jihadist terror attacks on the Belgian capital. Days after the Belgian authorities ended their four-month hunt for the Paris attacker Salah Abdeslam, a new pursuit began as police issued a CCTV image of three men pushing heavily laden luggage trolleys into Brussels Zaventem Airport shortly before its departure hall was devastated by two explosions at 8am (7am GMT). At least 14 people were killed at the airport and 81 wounded. At least 20 others died in a bomb attack on a metro train and more than 100 were wounded. Investigators were urgently seeking one of the three men clad in a thick light-coloured jacket with a black hat and thick glasses after announcing that his two apparent accomplices were believed to have died in the suicide attack. The two men who are believed to have died were captured on grainy CCTV footage wearing what looked like single black gloves on their left hands - giving rise to speculation that they may have been used to conceal detonators for the devices. Recommended Read more Brussels metro survivors on moment bomb ripped through carriages They came in a taxi with their suitcases, their bombs were in their bags, Zaventems mayor, Francis Vermeiren, told the Agence France Presse news agency. They put their suitcases on trolleys, the first two bombs exploded. He added that a third put his on a trolley but he must have panicked, it didnt explode. An unexploded suicide vest was later found at the airport, which led to speculation that the wanted man may have pulled out of the assault at the last moment. In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man carries an injured person in Brussels Airport, after explosions ripped through the departure hall In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Travellers get to their feet in a smoke filled terminal at Brussels Airport after explosions In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man is wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man speaks on a mobile phone in Brussels Airport, after the explosions ripped through the departure hall In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Belgian police officers detain a man at the Gare du Midi train station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A police officer stands guard as people are evacuated from Brussels airport, after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People stand near Brussels airport after being evacuated following explosions that rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Crew and passengers are evacuated from Zaventem Bruxelles International Airport after an attack in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers gather near Brussels airport in Zaventem, following its evacuation after blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Two women wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers and airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers and airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Broken windows seen at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People leave the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People are evacuated from the scene after two explosions were heard at Brussels Airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People wait outside of the Brussels Airport after evacuation In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People leave the airport area after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers comfort each other as they are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People react as they walk away from Brussels airport after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services attend the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Injured people at the scene at Brussels Airport after two explosions were heard PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The aftermath of the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People wait outside of the Zaventem airport after two explosions were heard PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services at the scene of explosions at Brussels Airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A view of the scene after the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The aftermath of the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The view of the Brussels airport after the explosion PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Smoke is seen at Brussels airport in Brussels AP In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A photo shows cars on a blocked highway near Zaventem, Brussels National airport, after two explosions rocked the main hall of Brussels Airport Getty Images An hour after the attack, a third device detonated on a train at the central Maelbeek metro station. Isis claimed responsibility for the atrocities. Brussels had been living in fear of such an event since it emerged that the city had been the planning and logistical base for the attacks on Paris last November. Europe on high alert after Brussels attacks There was speculation that the attackers may have been prompted to strike swiftly because they feared police may be closing in on them, after the revelation on Monday by Abdeslams lawyer that his client was collaborating and communicating with police. Pieter Van Ostaeyen, an expert on Islamic radicalism in Belgium, told The Independent: These guys acted because of last week, the arrest of Salah Abdeslam. They needed to kill immediately before they would be identified. It is not in retaliation over the capture. It is rather that their cover might have been blown. Brussels airport bombing The Belgian Prime Minister acknowledged that fears of further attacks on home soil had come true. A sombre Charles Michel said: What we feared has happened. In this time of tragedy, this black moment for our country, I appeal to everyone to remain calm but also to show solidarity. Federal prosecutors confirmed that raids in the Schaerbeek area of Brussels had led to the discovery of an explosive device containing nails, chemical products and an Islamic State flag. A security checkpoint outside the Midi train station following the bomb attacks (Reuters) At least one Kalashnikov was recovered from the attack on the airport. Doctors treating the injured said they had recovered nails from survivors, suggesting the bomb or bombs had been packed with additional shrapnel. Belgian federal prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said two of the three men in the CCTV photo had very likely committed a suicide attack, while confirming the manhunt for the third man dressed in white. Brussels survivors talk But as the hunt for the fugitive continued, questions were being asked about the timing of the attack and whether it was linked to publicity surrounding the arrest of Abdeslam in a shootout on Friday. Ministers and officials were barely able to conceal their relief at the capture of the Belgian-born jihadist. But revelations from prosecutors that they believed the jihadist may have been plotting further attacks and confirmation from his lawyer that his client was co-operating with investigators led to concern that the killings were the work of members of the same or a linked jihadist cell who believed security services were close to tracking them down. Mr Van Ostaeyen said the bombings followed the same logic of previous attacks: kill as many people as possible, without discrimination. He added: Im afraid that the police are just a few steps behind. They were very convinced that they stopped something big last week. And Isis probably wanted to show they can hit the heart of Europe at any time. Witnesses described hearing shouts in Arabic and gunshots moments before a heavy detonation blew out windows at the airport, bringing down a rain of ceiling fittings and water from ruptured pipes on the bodies of passengers who had moments earlier been queuing at check-in desks. The bombing at Maelbeek station took place some 100 metres from the headquarters of the European Commission. Dazed and injured commuters spilled out on to the streets in scenes reminiscent of the 7/7 attacks on London. Within minutes of the assault, the Belgian capital was placed in a state of lockdown with all public transport suspended and workers ordered to remain in their offices and pupils in their schools. Security was also tightened at Belgiums nuclear power plants. Within hours of the attack, the Twitter hashtag #PrayforBelgium was trending across Europe and the United States, while in Brussels itself residents offered to open their doors for workers stranded in the city centre. The association representing the citys taxi drivers said its members were offering free rides to anyone seeking to return home. Images shared on social media included Tintin, the cartoon reporter created by Belgian cartoonist Herge, saying Lets be strong, along with a drawing by French cartoonist Plantu showing a figure in the French tricolour putting an arm around a weeping Belgian flag. The US President, Barack Obama, called the bombings outrageous attacks on innocent people. As the country began three days of national mourning, Belgiums King Philippe said: For all of us, the 22nd of March will never again be a day like any other. Our country is in mourning. Our whole country bears the pain of lives that have been broken, of deep wounds that have been inflicted. 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 }} Ryanair is charging of a group of 28 British passengers in Brussels nearly 6,000 in total to change their flights to this evening. The Belgian capital has been hit by two major terror attacks, at Zaventem airport and Mallbeek metro station, which have left at least 30 people dead. And, addressing the House of Commons, Labour's shadow small business minister Bill Esterson said a group of Britons was trying to get home from the city a day earlier than planned and had been told the new flights would cost them 214 each. He said: "I have been contacted by a number of my constituents who are in Brussels, who travelled there today and are trying to get home, as I'm sure many others are as well. "They have been told by the airline Ryanair that it will cost them 6,000 to be brought back to this country. "I wonder if, through you, Mr Speaker, I can ask ministers if perhaps they might intervene and suggest to Ryanair and other carriers that all efforts are made to help those who want to come back to this country in a reasonable way." Brussels in lockdown after multiple bomb attacks The group had arrived at the airlines desk at Brussels Charleroi airport and asked to change their flight to Manchester to this evening. They were asked to pay a 60 charge to change their flights plus an upgrade of 154 each to match the avaliable fare on the new flights. A Ryanair spokeswoman told The Independent the high fare was due to the fact there were only 28 seats remaining on the flight. In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A private security guard helps a wounded women outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Wounded people receive assistance by rescuers outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Rescue workers treat victims outside the Maelbeek underground station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Passengers waiting to be evacuated from the train between Arts-Lois and Maelbeek In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency services and police work around a metro station after an explosion in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Rescue teams evacuate wounded people outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A woman is evacuated in an ambulance by emergency services after a explosion in a main metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A Belgian soldier stands guard outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels after a blast at this station located near the EU institutions In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Belgian police officers stand outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Belgian policemen and a soldier carrying an injured person after an explosion at the Maelbeek Metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A view of the train after the explosion in Maelbeek station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station People receive treatment as emergency services attend the scene after an explosion in a main metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Maelbeek Metro station after an explosion on a train in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Passengers walk on underground metro tracks to be evacuated after an explosion at Maelbeek train station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A victim receives first aid by rescuers, near Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Firefighters arrive at the scene near Maalbeek metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency workers arrive at a security perimeter set near Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency rescue workers stretcher an unidentified person at the site of an explosion at a metro station in Brussels AP In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Police seal off the area at the scene of a blast outside a metro station in Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency personnel are seen at the scene of a blast outside a metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency personnel are seen at the scene of a blast outside a metro station in Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Belgian police and emergency staff arriving in the Wetstraat - Rue de la Loi, which has been evacuated after an explosion at the Maelbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Smoke rising from the Maalbeek underground, in Brussels, following a blast at the station close to the capital's European quarter Getty Images In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station People are evacuated from the Schuman station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station The scene outside the Maalbeek underground in Brussels after the explosion She said: "The reason for the upgrade is that there were only 28 seats remaining on this evenings flight. "This group, declined to accept this change offer as is their right and we look forward to welcoming them on their scheduled flight from Brussels Charleroi tomorrow. "As of 1.30pm today, there only 12 seats remaining on this evenings flight from Brussels Charleroi to Manchester as Ryanair has been prioritising free changes and transfers for passengers travelling on flights to and from Brussels Zaventem today and tomorrow. "We regret any inconvenience caused to this group but our priority today remains re-accommodating our disrupted Brussels Zaventem passengers, and all other passengers are free to avail of our change facility in the normal manner." Additional reporting by PA 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 }} In time, 22/3 will be seen as a date with far-reaching consequences for travellers - and the industry that depends upon them. The bomb attack at Brussels airport struck at the weak point of aviation security: landside. Huge amounts of resources are poured into prevented aircraft bombings and hijackings by keeping the airside area sterile - preventing passengers taking anything onto an aircraft that could threaten its safety. But there is nothing secure about the check-in and arrivals zones of western European airports. No routine checks are made on flow of people into the pre-security departures area or the arrival area. Airports are naturally places full of people with luggage - which, from a terrorists perspective, signifies both an opportunity and a target. Bringing guns or explosives into a modern, open western European airport such as Brussels is all too easy. The statements issued by Britains two biggest airports in the wake of the Brussels airport attack inadvertently hint at the vulnerability of 21st-century aviation. Heathrow said: In the light of events in Brussels airport, we are working with the police at Heathrow who are providing a high-visibility presence. Its rival said: As a result of the terrible incidents in Brussels, there will be increased police and security patrols in and around Gatwick Airport. But the feeling within the aviation security community is that these moves are mainly cosmetic: while they might reassure passengers, they do little to reduce the risks. Police officers patrol Gatwick Aiport's south terminal shortly after the Brussels attacks (Getty) (Getty Images) Governments across Europe are looking urgently at the implications of the attack on Brussels airport, and some countries may direct airports significantly to harden their security - including, crucially, the screening of passengers and their belongings before they are allowed into the check-in area. Cities that have suffered multiple terrorist attacks, such as Istanbul, Nairobi and Bombay, already screen passengers and their baggage before entering the main terminal building. The problem for European airports - especially crowded and constrained hubs such as Heathrow, Gatwick, Amsterdam and Paris Charles de Gaulle - is that significant remodelling would be needed to allow that to happen. In the short term there are likely to be random checks on passengers and other airport users. Long term, more radical solutions will need to be found. But ACI Europe, representing airports across the continent, warned: The possible adoption of additional security measures such as checks on persons and goods entering airport landside spaces could be disruptive and actually create new security vulnerabilities. By displacing the gathering of passengers and airport visitors to spaces not designed for that purpose, such measures would essentially be moving the target rather than securing it. Europe on high alert after Brussels attacks The addition of yet another layer of security would make the flying experience even more stressful, and is likely to diminish further the appetite for aviation. Globally, the effect of the Brussels attacks is likely to lead some prospective tourists from outside Europe to cancel their travel plans, and cause a slump in inbound tourism. Four hours after the first bomb exploded at the Belgian capitals airport, Australias government told its citizens: We recommend you reconsider your need to travel to Belgium at this time. For a friendly power to urge its citizens to stay away from a modern, western European nation is an indication of the magnitude of effect of this mornings attacks. In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man carries an injured person in Brussels Airport, after explosions ripped through the departure hall In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Travellers get to their feet in a smoke filled terminal at Brussels Airport after explosions In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man is wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man speaks on a mobile phone in Brussels Airport, after the explosions ripped through the departure hall In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Belgian police officers detain a man at the Gare du Midi train station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A police officer stands guard as people are evacuated from Brussels airport, after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People stand near Brussels airport after being evacuated following explosions that rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Crew and passengers are evacuated from Zaventem Bruxelles International Airport after an attack in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers gather near Brussels airport in Zaventem, following its evacuation after blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Two women wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers and airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers and airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Broken windows seen at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People leave the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People are evacuated from the scene after two explosions were heard at Brussels Airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People wait outside of the Brussels Airport after evacuation In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People leave the airport area after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers comfort each other as they are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People react as they walk away from Brussels airport after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services attend the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Injured people at the scene at Brussels Airport after two explosions were heard PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The aftermath of the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People wait outside of the Zaventem airport after two explosions were heard PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services at the scene of explosions at Brussels Airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A view of the scene after the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The aftermath of the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The view of the Brussels airport after the explosion PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Smoke is seen at Brussels airport in Brussels AP In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A photo shows cars on a blocked highway near Zaventem, Brussels National airport, after two explosions rocked the main hall of Brussels Airport Getty Images Brussels Airlines, the main carrier to and from the Belgian capitals Zaventem airport, has cancelled all its flights on 23 March; affected passengers can get a full refund or re-book for flights up to the end of June. The airport management says it will be opening for a restricted flight programme from 24 March onwards. However, services will be far from normal because a significant proportion of the landside facilities are unusable. Security will be extremely strict, with only ticketed passengers allowed access. British Airways says passengers travelling from or to the Belgian capital between Thursday 24 March and Tuesday 29 March can postpone their journey without penalty. Eurostar cancelled train services between London St Pancras and Brussels Midi for most of the day, and restarted a limited service on the evening of 22 March. It plans a full service on 23 March, but warns passengers should allow an hour for check-in. 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 }} It was as the metro train was beginning to pull out of Maelbeek station in the heart of Brussels at the height of rush-hour that the second of its three carriages was ripped apart. Above ground, workers and inhabitants had been only beginning to turn their attention to early reports of the bombings at Zaventem airport, an hour earlier. But at 9.11am, commuters passing through the station close to the headquarters of several European Union institutions would have had little or no idea that their city was under attack until ill-fate put them on a train targeted by one of the bombers. Pierre Meys, a firefighter for four decades, was one of the first to witness the aftermath. He said: Its war, it was indescribable. Everything in bits. In 40 years of doing to this job, it is the worst thing I have seen. Survivors said the train and platform had been crowded with commuters as the rushhour reached its peak. The carriages were pulling out from Maelbeek heading for the next stop, Schuman, which is the main station for the Belgian capitals EU buildings, when the explosion happened. One woman on board the train told Belgian state television: We were heading towards the centre and the train had just started to move when there was the most enormous explosion. All the lights went out. At first there was no great surge of people everything was very calm. Then several people managed to force open the door on our carriage and I rushed through it. The platform was full of smoke and I headed for the exit. I just pushed forward without looking back. I didnt see any of the victims. In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A private security guard helps a wounded women outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Wounded people receive assistance by rescuers outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Rescue workers treat victims outside the Maelbeek underground station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Passengers waiting to be evacuated from the train between Arts-Lois and Maelbeek In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency services and police work around a metro station after an explosion in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Rescue teams evacuate wounded people outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A woman is evacuated in an ambulance by emergency services after a explosion in a main metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A Belgian soldier stands guard outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels after a blast at this station located near the EU institutions In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Belgian police officers stand outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Belgian policemen and a soldier carrying an injured person after an explosion at the Maelbeek Metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A view of the train after the explosion in Maelbeek station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station People receive treatment as emergency services attend the scene after an explosion in a main metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Maelbeek Metro station after an explosion on a train in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Passengers walk on underground metro tracks to be evacuated after an explosion at Maelbeek train station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A victim receives first aid by rescuers, near Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Firefighters arrive at the scene near Maalbeek metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency workers arrive at a security perimeter set near Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency rescue workers stretcher an unidentified person at the site of an explosion at a metro station in Brussels AP In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Police seal off the area at the scene of a blast outside a metro station in Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency personnel are seen at the scene of a blast outside a metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency personnel are seen at the scene of a blast outside a metro station in Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Belgian police and emergency staff arriving in the Wetstraat - Rue de la Loi, which has been evacuated after an explosion at the Maelbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Smoke rising from the Maalbeek underground, in Brussels, following a blast at the station close to the capital's European quarter Getty Images In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station People are evacuated from the Schuman station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station The scene outside the Maalbeek underground in Brussels after the explosion Outside the station, Alexandre Brans, 32, who had also been on board the train headed for Arts-Loi in the city centre, wiped blood from his face as other walking wounded milled around with their clothes badly burned; one survivor stood with the stuffing of their jacket hanging in shreds. Mr Brans said: There was a really loud explosion. It was panic everywhere. At the airports departure hall little more than an hour earlier, Alphonse Youla had been going about his duties as a baggage supervisor in the check-in area for flights departing to Africa when he heard a bang which he immediately recognised as a gun being fired. He said: There was a shot and a man spoke in Arabic. After that I heard boom, an enormous explosion. People began running for the escalators or the lifts. Brussels survivors talk Two elderly men came to me and I put them in the lift. But they didnt want to let me go. There were so many people, I told myself there were others I had to help. The airport worker continued to shepherd passengers to safety before taking in the horrific scene in the destroyed check-in area. He continued: There were burned bodies. The windows and the tiles from the ceiling had fallen down. I saw one body the glass from the windows had fallen and cut both legs. Still wearing his blood-stained green uniform, Mr Youla was asked if he had himself been hurt. He said: The blood isnt mine. Its from the people I helped. Brussels airport bombing Ralph Usbeck, 55, an electronics technician from Berlin, was checking in his baggage for an American Airlines flight to Florida when the first blast struck. He told the Associated Press: I assumed it was training, but some litter was in the air, so I was not sure if it was a terrorist act. Seconds later, a much more heavy, heavy detonation happened... This was the moment I realised this was a terrorist act. Marc Noel, 63, an entrepreneur from North Carolina, had decided to go to a shop in the terminal to buy some motoring magazines while waiting for his Delta Airlines flight home. It was a decision that may have saved his life as he was browsing the first explosion happened about 50 metres from him. He said: People were crying, shouting, children. It was a horrible experience. I dont want to think about it, but I would probably have been in that place when the bomb went off. I was as close as I could be to the other side. I guess its not my hour. Julien, 24, a Belgian trainee accountant on his way to Sweden, said he saw bodies in a blur of panic. There was this huge explosion, and everyone was in shock, some knocked to the ground, he said. When I looked back, through the mess and the dust, I could see people on the floor. I dont know if they were dead, but they werent moving. I didnt have time to check: we just ran out of there. At Maelbeek station, a survivor described how a moment of forgetfulness saved her life. The unnamed woman told Belgian state television: I was on my phone and I noticed Id forgotten my keys. I got back off the train and as I was crossing the platform I heard an explosion and all the windows [on the train] exploded behind me. People were running everywhere. There was a woman lying on the ground injured. I was saved because of my keys. 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 }} Isis has now claimed responsibility for the Brussels terror attacks in which at least 30 people have been killed and scores more injured. But although the so-called Islamic State means Syria is the current focus for so many people, we shouldnt think that Syria is the only source of terrorism. Belgium has become the hub of Islamist terror groups. Most of them are of a North African background; they come from Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and a huge number have gone and fought in Syria, a lot of them with Isis. How many terror cells are there? We dont know how many. There has obviously been a failure of intelligence in France and there has not been adequate liaison. People say that if we leave the EU, then the terror threat will grow. But we can see the two countries side by side with a lack of intelligence being shared. As far as the UK is concerned there is supposed to be around 800 British jihadists who have gone to fight in Syria. A number of them will fight for Isis when they come back to the UK. We have had up to 4,000 people who have gone to terror training camps. In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man carries an injured person in Brussels Airport, after explosions ripped through the departure hall In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Travellers get to their feet in a smoke filled terminal at Brussels Airport after explosions In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man is wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man speaks on a mobile phone in Brussels Airport, after the explosions ripped through the departure hall In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Belgian police officers detain a man at the Gare du Midi train station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A police officer stands guard as people are evacuated from Brussels airport, after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People stand near Brussels airport after being evacuated following explosions that rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Crew and passengers are evacuated from Zaventem Bruxelles International Airport after an attack in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers gather near Brussels airport in Zaventem, following its evacuation after blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Two women wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers and airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers and airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Broken windows seen at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People leave the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People are evacuated from the scene after two explosions were heard at Brussels Airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People wait outside of the Brussels Airport after evacuation In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People leave the airport area after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers comfort each other as they are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People react as they walk away from Brussels airport after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services attend the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Injured people at the scene at Brussels Airport after two explosions were heard PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The aftermath of the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People wait outside of the Zaventem airport after two explosions were heard PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services at the scene of explosions at Brussels Airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A view of the scene after the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The aftermath of the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The view of the Brussels airport after the explosion PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Smoke is seen at Brussels airport in Brussels AP In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A photo shows cars on a blocked highway near Zaventem, Brussels National airport, after two explosions rocked the main hall of Brussels Airport Getty Images What is extraordinary is that the main terror suspect in the Paris attacks did not do very far, he did not flee he stayed in Belgium - right next door. The Belgiums have said they were looking for five or six terror cells, but is a very fluid number. Of course some were killed in the Paris attacks. Belgium is the hub of European terror and there has been a large turn towards that because weve seen things like Molenbeek. Because Belgium is so central, they can travel to other countries and carry out attacks there. We dont know the numbers of terrorists for sure, from the UK is it around 800. Belgium sends the largest number of people to Syria, per head of population. 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 threat to Brussels was always there, but no one wanted to believe it. As the shaken Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel noted grimly, What we feared, has happened. The attacks were a harsh reminder, in the heart of Europe, of the unforgiving nature of modern terrorism, as well as the sinister links between the Belgian capital and Islamic extremism. The threat was certainly there the day after the Paris attacks on November 13, when Belgian police raided homes in the notorious Molenbeek district of Brussels. They had already connected the dots from Paris to Molenbeek which had long been known as an incubator for Islamic terrorists. Recommended Read more Brussels metro survivors on moment bomb ripped through carriages It was in Molenbeek, a poor, marginalised neighbourhood with a large Muslim population, that investigators believe the Paris plot was hatched by Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the Belgian-born son of an immigrant shopkeeper from Morocco. Abaaoud was part of a web of Belgium-based foot soldiers, whose exploits have left a trail of death and destruction across Europe. And beyond, as well: around 500 young Belgians have gone to Syria to fight for jihadist groups like Isis. Compared to its population, no other European country has sent more foreign fighters. Messages and floral tributes outside the Brussels stock exchange (AP) Despite the long history of Islamist extremism in Belgium, until the Brussels atacks there were few attacks on Belgian soil. But there has been significant involvement in atrocities elsewhere. There are Belgian links to the murder of the Afghan anti-Taliban fighter Ahmed Shah Masoud just before the September 2001 attacks in the US and to the Groupe Islamique Marocain Combattant (GICM), which had a major role in the 2004 Madrid train bombings. In 2005, Muslim convert Muriel Degauque, became the first known female Western suicide bomber, when she blew herself up in Iraq. The Belgian connection was laid bare in last years trial in Antwerp of Fouad Belkacem, the leader of the radical group Sharia4Belgium, which claimed to be an Islamic information network, but was actively recruiting fighters for Syria. It was the largest trial of its kind in the country: 44 other members of Sharia4Belgium were given sentences ranging between three and 12 years, although most of these were delivered in absentia, as those involved were in Syria. In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A private security guard helps a wounded women outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Wounded people receive assistance by rescuers outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Rescue workers treat victims outside the Maelbeek underground station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Passengers waiting to be evacuated from the train between Arts-Lois and Maelbeek In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency services and police work around a metro station after an explosion in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Rescue teams evacuate wounded people outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A woman is evacuated in an ambulance by emergency services after a explosion in a main metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A Belgian soldier stands guard outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels after a blast at this station located near the EU institutions In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Belgian police officers stand outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Belgian policemen and a soldier carrying an injured person after an explosion at the Maelbeek Metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A view of the train after the explosion in Maelbeek station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station People receive treatment as emergency services attend the scene after an explosion in a main metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Maelbeek Metro station after an explosion on a train in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Passengers walk on underground metro tracks to be evacuated after an explosion at Maelbeek train station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A victim receives first aid by rescuers, near Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Firefighters arrive at the scene near Maalbeek metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency workers arrive at a security perimeter set near Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency rescue workers stretcher an unidentified person at the site of an explosion at a metro station in Brussels AP In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Police seal off the area at the scene of a blast outside a metro station in Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency personnel are seen at the scene of a blast outside a metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency personnel are seen at the scene of a blast outside a metro station in Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Belgian police and emergency staff arriving in the Wetstraat - Rue de la Loi, which has been evacuated after an explosion at the Maelbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Smoke rising from the Maalbeek underground, in Brussels, following a blast at the station close to the capital's European quarter Getty Images In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station People are evacuated from the Schuman station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station The scene outside the Maalbeek underground in Brussels after the explosion Most trails linking terrorism to Belgium led ultimately to Molenbeek. In May 2014, Mehdi Nemmouche, a French gunman of Algerian origin, killed four people at a Jewish museum in Brussels. He was later found to have been in contact with Abaaoud. Ayoub el-Khazzani, who in August 2015 was planning to attack the Thalys train service from Amsterdam to Paris, boarded the train in Brussels after staying in Molenbeek. So last Novembers police raids were almost inevitable. They began the first of what would add up to around 120 house searches and 58 arrests over four months, as investigators sought to root out the associates of the Paris attackers. Most searches were focused on Molenbeek, where two of the Belgian members of the gang were based, as well as three of the six French members. The assumed ringleader of the Paris attackers, Abaaoud, 28, had grown up Molenbeek but went to school in the elite College Saint-Pierre in the affluent Uccle neighbourhood. He was eventually found in St Denis, Paris, in the days after the attacks, and died after a lengthy siege and shoot-out with police. The other Belgian was Bilal Hadfi, 20. A look at Molenbeek, the small Belgian suburb home to some of the worlds most dangerous terrorists But of more immediate concern was the fate of Salah Abdeslam, the 26-year-old Frenchman, who apparently ducked out of a suicide attack with his companions in Paris. His brother, Brahim, 31, had gone through with the act, blowing himself up at the Comptoir Voltaire, yet Salah was on the run. He was eventually captured in Molenbeek on 18 March, but for four months since November he was the most wanted man in Europe, as the only known surviving member of the Paris attackers. Indeed, when police first learnt that he had headed from Paris back to Brussels, it prompted a three-day lockdown of the city with metros, schools, cinemas and shopping centres closed, and soldiers patrolling the streets as police strained every resource to track him down. Europe on high alert after Brussels attacks During those jittery days, the people of Brussels braced themselves for an atrocity like Paris. At the time, there were rumours of that Abdeslams suicide belt had failed, and that he was looking to redeem himself with a spectacular abomination. The spectre of Abdeslam hung over them, like the Sword of Damocles. Four months later, it finally came to pass: on 22 March, two bombs ripped through the airport, and another obliterated a train in the citys subway. It wasnt Abdeslam he is in a maximum security prison in Bruges but it is all connected to him, Paris, Molenbeek and other killings. A security checkpoint outside the Midi train station following the bomb attacks (Reuters) When last Novembers lockdown lifted, the city cautiously returned to normal albeit with a continued army presence around key addresses. The Abdeslam trail went cold, and some suggested he had left the country. The city began to heave a sigh of relief. 15 March, questions about police efficacy were asked when a man thought to have been Abdeslam got away, along with an accomplice, after they were unexpectedly discovered at an address in Forest, south Brussels, that police had gone to search. A third terrorist at the flat, who drove police back with gunfire, was shot dead. Brussels survivors talk Then on 18 March, Belgians erupted in euphoria at the news public enemy number one had been captured. But even then, there were warnings that the celebrations may have been premature. Abdeslam claimed to investigators that he was planning a new attack in Brussels. But it is questionable whether he was leading those plans. In any case, Belgian police warned that two other suspects remained free and on 21 March, they launched a manhunt for man presumed to have made the suicide belts for the Paris attackers. He was named as Najim Laachraoui, 24, and was known to have used the name Soufiane Kayal for a false ID. He is likely also to have made the bombs used at Brussels Airport and in Maelbeek Station yesterday. Another Belgian, Mohamed Abrini, was also at large: he was seen in surveillance video with Abdeslam at a petrol station north of Paris, two days before the city was attacked. The flat that police raided last week had yielded a cache of information for investigators, and on 21 March Abdeslam made clear, through his lawyer, that he would cooperate with the police, heaping even more pressure on the others on the run. Last Tuesday, With the authorities apparently close on their tail, the remaining Isis members probably felt they had to strike quickly before police closed in. These guys acted because of last week, the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, said Pieter Van Ostaeyen, a Belgian researcher on Islamic radicalism. It is not in retaliation over the capture of Abdeslam. It is rather that their cover might have been blown. Van Ostaeyen added: Im afraid that the police are just a few steps behind, he said. They were convinced that they stopped something big last week. And Isis probably wanted to show they can hit the heart of Europe at any time. 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 }} Eyewitnesses have described the confusing and horrifying scenes after the two explosions at Zaventem Airport and another at the Maalbeek Metro station in Brussels. It is feared up to 25 people have been killed, although the death toll is expected to rise. Belgian authorities have raised the alert level to maximum, diverted all planes, stopped Brussels' Metro service and advised people to stay where they are. Here, those caught up in the bombings reveal what it was like to be in the middle of a terror attack: Denise Brandt, from Arizona: "We were in the departures lounge shopping area when we felt it and heard it. We were standing there, you feel it in your whole body. "I was like 'that's a bomb, lets go'. People were running, we were just standing there and I said 'lets go!'. So we walked and we saw people running, running, and some people crying, so we knew it was a bomb. "We found a quiet corner to go reflect in. It was very confusing, they don't manage expectations very well. There was some man who was still sleeping. "We were in Terminal B then we heard later when we were walking up to the Brussels Airlines counter that there was a second explosion. We only heard one" In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man carries an injured person in Brussels Airport, after explosions ripped through the departure hall In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Travellers get to their feet in a smoke filled terminal at Brussels Airport after explosions In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man is wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man speaks on a mobile phone in Brussels Airport, after the explosions ripped through the departure hall In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Belgian police officers detain a man at the Gare du Midi train station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A police officer stands guard as people are evacuated from Brussels airport, after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People stand near Brussels airport after being evacuated following explosions that rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Crew and passengers are evacuated from Zaventem Bruxelles International Airport after an attack in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers gather near Brussels airport in Zaventem, following its evacuation after blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Two women wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers and airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers and airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Broken windows seen at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People leave the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People are evacuated from the scene after two explosions were heard at Brussels Airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People wait outside of the Brussels Airport after evacuation In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People leave the airport area after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers comfort each other as they are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People react as they walk away from Brussels airport after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services attend the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Injured people at the scene at Brussels Airport after two explosions were heard PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The aftermath of the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People wait outside of the Zaventem airport after two explosions were heard PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services at the scene of explosions at Brussels Airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A view of the scene after the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The aftermath of the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The view of the Brussels airport after the explosion PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Smoke is seen at Brussels airport in Brussels AP In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A photo shows cars on a blocked highway near Zaventem, Brussels National airport, after two explosions rocked the main hall of Brussels Airport Getty Images Andrew Brandt: "We felt like a wave, you feel it in your whole body, it is like you are in water and someone jumps in the water and you feel that wave. I'm former law enforcement, she [Mrs Brandt] lived in Afghanistan for years. "We wanted to be away from the crowds. They [the airport staff] have no idea what they are doing. They kept saying 'evacuate'. We were telling airport agents what we felt, that it was an explosion, then they were like 'what?'. "Then we heard 'evacuate, evacuate'. Then they say 'stay where you are'. Then 'evacuate, evacuate'. But everyone is just standing around. They would not let me take my bag. They said you are not going on the tarmac with your bag. The security people had no idea what they were doing. Where the hell were we supposed to go?" Video shows aftermath of Brussels airport explosions Yassine Amrani, a 38-year-old homeless person who lives in the airport parking area and ran into the check-in area when he heard the bomb. He was covered in blood: "I was with my friends - boom, in one second, all the people were running away. I went inside and I saw everywhere dead people and fire. There were fire extinguishers and I was looking for people because the ceiling had fallen on the people and you had to search for the people. There were many deaths. People were dying in my arms. One woman had a baby in her arms and kept saying "my baby, my baby". I said "you have your baby in your arms and he is fine." Daniel Widman, from Sweden, was travelling from Liberia to Sweden: "I was sleeping and I was woken up by people screaming and running. I just followed the crowd. People came running down the stairs. People left their luggage and kept running. We were given no information in the terminal." Colonel Chuck Helms, a US military medic: "I was in 9/11. I was here en route to Kamapla. So I embedded with the Belgian medic and we gave first aid to about 15 people. I was in Terminal T when the bomb went off. We moved here (outside the terminal). I saw the Belgian medic and because I'm a medic I said "can I assist" and he said "come with me". "We moved in to where the bombing area was and we were able to provide trauma and then we went outside and provided first aid here. There was a lot of people trying to help, you had the police, you had the military, but there was glass everywhere, so most of the military had glass in their hands, they didn't realise that they had injuries because they were trying to assist people. "There were a lot of tourniquets, a lot of people had put on tourniquets. I didn't see anyone I thought was a complete casualty, I didn't see any deaths." Josh Balser, from the US: "In Terminal B this guy came running down the hall. I was in the lounge and heard a rumbling so thought something had hit the airport. Then they told us to go to the end of the hallway and eventually some guy was screaming 'we found guns and ammunition, everybody leave your bags and exit the airport.' He was airport personnel." 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 }} This is the hospital X-ray of a person injured in the Brussels terror attack showing a bolt embedded in the victim's chest. The pictures were taken at the Military Hospital in Neder-over-Heembeek in the north of the Belgian capital following the three explosions at an airport and metro station. At least 30 people have been killed and nearly 200 people have been injured in the terror attack, for which Isis has claimed responsibility. Two of the attackers blew themselves up in the attack at the airport while officials have also released a wanted notice of a third man dressed in a white coat who is thought to have fled. Twenty people then died in a third blast at Maalbeek Metro station. It is not known if the fugitive fled from the airport to Maalbeek or whether another person is involved. Police also found an Isis flag and a nail bomb in the Brussels district of Schaerbeek during raids later in the day, according to ITV News. One person has been arrested, although police have yet to confirm his or her identity. The identity of the person pictured in the X-ray or their current condition is unknown. Brussels survivors talk The jihadist group said the attacks were in retaliation for Belgium's participation in air strikes against their positions in Syria and Iraq. Video footage of the two explosions at Zaventem Airport show people fleeing the terminal as the two explosions were heard. Witnesses said he heard men shouting in Arabic and shots being fired before the blasts. Belgian prime minister Charles Michel said: "What we feared has happened. "In this time of tragedy, this black moment for our country, I appeal to everyone to remain calm but also to show solidarity." Belgian's foreign minister Didier Reynders warned attackers may still be at large. It comes just days after the arrest of Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam in the Molenbeek district of Brussels. In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A private security guard helps a wounded women outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Wounded people receive assistance by rescuers outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Rescue workers treat victims outside the Maelbeek underground station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Passengers waiting to be evacuated from the train between Arts-Lois and Maelbeek In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency services and police work around a metro station after an explosion in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Rescue teams evacuate wounded people outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A woman is evacuated in an ambulance by emergency services after a explosion in a main metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A Belgian soldier stands guard outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels after a blast at this station located near the EU institutions In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Belgian police officers stand outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Belgian policemen and a soldier carrying an injured person after an explosion at the Maelbeek Metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A view of the train after the explosion in Maelbeek station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station People receive treatment as emergency services attend the scene after an explosion in a main metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Maelbeek Metro station after an explosion on a train in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Passengers walk on underground metro tracks to be evacuated after an explosion at Maelbeek train station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A victim receives first aid by rescuers, near Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Firefighters arrive at the scene near Maalbeek metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency workers arrive at a security perimeter set near Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency rescue workers stretcher an unidentified person at the site of an explosion at a metro station in Brussels AP In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Police seal off the area at the scene of a blast outside a metro station in Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency personnel are seen at the scene of a blast outside a metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency personnel are seen at the scene of a blast outside a metro station in Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Belgian police and emergency staff arriving in the Wetstraat - Rue de la Loi, which has been evacuated after an explosion at the Maelbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Smoke rising from the Maalbeek underground, in Brussels, following a blast at the station close to the capital's European quarter Getty Images In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station People are evacuated from the Schuman station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station The scene outside the Maalbeek underground in Brussels after the explosion The 26-year-old was shot in the leg by police marksmen as he attempted to flee from the house on Friday. Mr Reynders said on Sunday that Abdeslam had been planning to attack Brussels while on the run leading to fears that this attack was revenge for his arrest. He said Abdeslam was "ready to restart something from Brussels, and its maybe the reality". 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 }} Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia are the most corrupt countries in the EU, according to a new European Parliament study which reveals that corruption throughout Europe is costing almost 800 billion a year. The staggering sum, which equates to 6.3 per cent of overall EU-28 GDP, has prompted calls for the creation of a European Public Prosecutors Office as part of a crackdown on corrupt practises. The new estimate of the total annual loss, at 782bn, is more than eight times higher than previous calculations. This is because it measures the full cost of the problem ranging from indirect effects such as companies being put off from investing, to direct impacts including money lost from tax revenues. Corruption, which the report defines as the abuse of power for private gain can vary from paying bribes to officials abusing their powers to award lucrative procurement contracts. And the cost is not just financial. There are also significant social and political costs, such as greater inequality, higher levels of organised crime, and a weaker rule of law, it warns. Besides economic costs, corruption represents a substantial threat as a tool of organised crime and terrorist groups, often utilised to gain influence and maintain their operations, states the research, carried out for the European Parliament by the Rand Europe think tank. Britain is the sixth least corrupt country in Europe, behind Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland and Denmark, it says. Eastern European countries are all above the EU average when it comes to levels of corruption and are ranked in the bottom half of a table of 28 member states. 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 The report recommends several major changes which could save more than 56bn a year. These include extending a Cooperation and Verification Mechanism already used with Bulgaria and Romania to a number of other European countries; creating a European Public Prosecutors Office to support the work of the European Commission Anti-Fraud Office; and a shared EU procurement system. Marco Hafner, a research leader at RAND Europe and the reports main author, said: Corruption imposes significant social, political and economic costs. Not only does it result in huge amounts of money being lost annually, but corruption leads to more unequal societies, higher levels of organised crime, weaker rule of law and lower trust in public institutions. He added: Measuring corruption is challenging, but our study provides one of the most realistic and current estimations of its true cost to Europe as a whole. Our recommendations highlight achievable targets for the EU and member states to help stop corruption from taking place and limit the amount of money lost each year. Responding to the findings, Carl Dolan, director of Transparency International EU, said: These figures confirm what we have always suspected corruption is a big black hole at the heart of the European economy and a brake on recovery. He added: The EU should use its powers to drive a transformative transparency agenda, one which would open up public and corporate data to scrutiny by civil society, journalists and anti-corruption activists. 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 Eiffel Tower will be lit up in black, yellow and red in solidarity with Belgium following the bomb attacks in Brussels. Anne Hidalgo, the mayor of Paris, has tweeted that the famous landmark of France's capital will be illuminated in the colours of its neighbour after blasts in which at least 26 people were killed. Ms Hidalgo said: "In solidarity with the people of Brussels, Paris will light up the Eiffel Tower in the colours of the Belgian flag tonight. #Weareunited." The airport blasts struck at just after 8am local time, reportedly close to the American Airlines section of the terminal. Another explosion then hit Maalbeek Metro station, located near EU institutions, one hour later. Charles Michel, the prime minister of Belgium, has tweeted his condemnation of the attacks on his country. At least 132 people were killed during a series of attacks across the French capital in November 2015, the deadliest act of terror Europe since the Madrid train bombings of 2004. Several of the attackers in Paris had links with Brussels, and French and Belgian police have since worked together to establish the events leading up to the attacks. Anne Hidalgo, mayor of Paris (Rex Features) Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected ringleader who attacked bars and restaurants, was a Belgian national who was killed in northern Paris a few days after the shootings. Salah Abdeslam, meanwhile, was a French national born in Brussels who had been hunted by police since fleeing the scene on November 13. Brussels airport explosion Abdeslam was captured in Brussels while brandishing a handgun and was reportedly shot in the knee before being taken away by police on Friday. Questions have since been raised as to how police in France and Belgium allowed him to pass back through after checks, and why with a history of petty crime Belgian police had not flagged him up sooner. World's monuments show solidarity with Paris Show all 30 1 /30 World's monuments show solidarity with Paris World's monuments show solidarity with Paris National Portrait Gallery, London, UK World's monuments show solidarity with Paris London Eye, UK World's monuments show solidarity with Paris Sydney Opera House, Australia World's monuments show solidarity with Paris The Christ the Redeemer statue, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil World's monuments show solidarity with Paris The Great Pyramid of Giza, Egypt World's monuments show solidarity with Paris The HSBC building, Hong Kong, China World's monuments show solidarity with Paris California State University, Long Beach, USA World's monuments show solidarity with Paris US Embassy, Paris World's monuments show solidarity with Paris The Swiss Parliament, Bern, Switzerland World's monuments show solidarity with Paris Chhatrapati Shivaji train station building, Mumbai, India World's monuments show solidarity with Paris The Eiffel Tower, Paris World's monuments show solidarity with Paris Wembley Stadium, London World's monuments show solidarity with Paris The fortress 'Tsarevets', Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria World's monuments show solidarity with Paris The SSE Hydro arena, Glasgow, Scotland World's monuments show solidarity with Paris The Story Bridge, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia World's monuments show solidarity with Paris The Perth Council house, Perth, Australia World's monuments show solidarity with Paris Plaza Francia (France's Square), Caracas, Venezuela World's monuments show solidarity with Paris World's monuments show solidarity with Paris Penshaw Monument, Sunderland, UK World's monuments show solidarity with Paris St Mary's Cathedral, Sydney, Australia World's monuments show solidarity with Paris Chile's presidential palace La Moneda, Santiago, Chile World's monuments show solidarity with Paris World's monuments show solidarity with Paris World's monuments show solidarity with Paris World's monuments show solidarity with Paris De La Salle university, Manila, Philippines World's monuments show solidarity with Paris The Greenland Centre, Jinan city, China World's monuments show solidarity with Paris Calagary Tower, Alberta, Canada World's monuments show solidarity with Paris The Senate building, Mexico City Reuters/Tomas Bravo World's monuments show solidarity with Paris One World Trade Centre, New York, USA World's monuments show solidarity with Paris The Angel de la Independencia monument, Mexico City One district in Brussels, Molenbeek, has become a particular focus of investigations following the Paris attacks, with commentators noting unemployment and disengagement have allowed radical preachers promoting violent jihadi doctrine to gain a foothold. When the Paris shootings happened, many countries around the world also showed their solidarity with France by lighting their monuments in the Tricolor colours. 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 wave of bombings that killed at least 30 people in Brussels was carried out by Isis militants, the group has claimed. In a statement released through one of its propaganda outlets, the so-called Islamic State said "explosive belts and devices" were used to massacre passengers checking in at Brussels Airport and on a Metro train. "Islamic State fighters opened fire inside Zaventem Airport, before several of them detonated their explosive belts, as a martyrdom bomber detonated his explosive belt in the Maalbeek Metro station," a spokesperson said. Brussels survivors talk The group claimed that the attacks left more than 230 dead and wounded, although Belgian authorities put the figure slightly lower at at least 31 killed and under 200 injured. It said Belgium was targeted as "a country participating in the international coalition against the Islamic State", although the country only carried out a limited bombing campaign confined to Iraq before stopping its air strikes in June 2015. More than 100 supporting troops and military advisers are believed to remain in the country. The timing of the attacks, coming days after the arrest of Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam was considered significant but no mention of the captured militant was made. As the death toll rose amid continuing rescue operations, Isis supporters were championing the attacks on Twitter. What a beautiful day today, one man wrote, calling the victims Belgium supporters who did not count as civilians. In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A private security guard helps a wounded women outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Wounded people receive assistance by rescuers outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Rescue workers treat victims outside the Maelbeek underground station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Passengers waiting to be evacuated from the train between Arts-Lois and Maelbeek In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency services and police work around a metro station after an explosion in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Rescue teams evacuate wounded people outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A woman is evacuated in an ambulance by emergency services after a explosion in a main metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A Belgian soldier stands guard outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels after a blast at this station located near the EU institutions In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Belgian police officers stand outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Belgian policemen and a soldier carrying an injured person after an explosion at the Maelbeek Metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A view of the train after the explosion in Maelbeek station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station People receive treatment as emergency services attend the scene after an explosion in a main metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Maelbeek Metro station after an explosion on a train in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Passengers walk on underground metro tracks to be evacuated after an explosion at Maelbeek train station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A victim receives first aid by rescuers, near Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Firefighters arrive at the scene near Maalbeek metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency workers arrive at a security perimeter set near Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency rescue workers stretcher an unidentified person at the site of an explosion at a metro station in Brussels AP In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Police seal off the area at the scene of a blast outside a metro station in Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency personnel are seen at the scene of a blast outside a metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency personnel are seen at the scene of a blast outside a metro station in Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Belgian police and emergency staff arriving in the Wetstraat - Rue de la Loi, which has been evacuated after an explosion at the Maelbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Smoke rising from the Maalbeek underground, in Brussels, following a blast at the station close to the capital's European quarter Getty Images In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station People are evacuated from the Schuman station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station The scene outside the Maalbeek underground in Brussels after the explosion F***. Belgium Belgium wanted to bomb the Islamic state Now enjoy what your hands have sown. A lot of duas [prayers] were answered today. The supporter claimed to have received a message from an Isis militant to the groups supporters in Belgium reading: We have come to you with slaughter. In Arabic, the hashtag #Brusselsonfire was being used by those praising the slaughter in a similar wording to the #Parisonfire trend seen when the French capital was hit. Alongside al-Qaeda, Isis is considered one of the few international terrorist organisations with the means and manpower to target a European city on this scale. Investigations into the massacres that killed 130 people in Paris in November uncovered a wide network of hideouts and safe houses across France and Belgium, including a bomb-making factory concealed inside a flat. Travellers get to their feet in a smoke filled terminal at Brussels Airport after explosions Isis released its official claim of responsibility for those attacks the following morning, spreading audio and written statements in Arabic, French and English claiming the blessed battle was an act of revenge for Frances involvement in the US-led coalition bombing its militants in Iraq and Syria. Dr Natasha Underhill, an expert on terrorism in the Middle East at Nottingham Trent University, said there was little doubt that the latest atrocity in Europe would not be the last. The likelihood of further attacks in Europe is now in very little doubt, she added. The promotion of fear is one of the strongest assets that Islamic State possesses and it is sadly doing an excellent job in spreading this message across Europe. Abdeslam, the only surviving attacker from Isis massacres in Paris in November, had reportedly told investigators he was part of a cell planning further atrocities in Brussels after a large cache of weapons was found. Security has been increased at airports and transport hubs across Europe as investigations continue. 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 }} Isis supporters have been celebrating the Brussels attacks online as speculation mounts that the group is behind a wave of deadly attacks in the Belgian capital. There was no immediate claim of responsibility in the wake of three bombings at the citys airport and a Metro station on Tuesday morning but the timing, coming days after the arrest of Paris attacks suspect Salah Abdeslam was considered significant. As the death toll rose amid continuing rescue operations, supporters of the so-called Islamic State were championing the attacks on Twitter. Brussels airport explosion What a beautiful day today, one man wrote, calling the victims Belgium supporters who did not count as civilians. F*** Belgium. Belgium wanted to bomb the Islamic state Now enjoy what your hands have sown. A lot of duas [prayers] were answered today. The supporter claimed to have received a message from an Isis militant to the groups supporters in Belgium reading: We have come to you with slaughter. The claims could not be confirmed and Isis supporters are known for claiming responsibility for terror attacks around the world without offering proof. In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man carries an injured person in Brussels Airport, after explosions ripped through the departure hall In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Travellers get to their feet in a smoke filled terminal at Brussels Airport after explosions In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man is wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man speaks on a mobile phone in Brussels Airport, after the explosions ripped through the departure hall In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Belgian police officers detain a man at the Gare du Midi train station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A police officer stands guard as people are evacuated from Brussels airport, after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People stand near Brussels airport after being evacuated following explosions that rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Crew and passengers are evacuated from Zaventem Bruxelles International Airport after an attack in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers gather near Brussels airport in Zaventem, following its evacuation after blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Two women wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers and airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers and airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Broken windows seen at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People leave the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People are evacuated from the scene after two explosions were heard at Brussels Airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People wait outside of the Brussels Airport after evacuation In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People leave the airport area after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers comfort each other as they are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People react as they walk away from Brussels airport after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services attend the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Injured people at the scene at Brussels Airport after two explosions were heard PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The aftermath of the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People wait outside of the Zaventem airport after two explosions were heard PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services at the scene of explosions at Brussels Airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A view of the scene after the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The aftermath of the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The view of the Brussels airport after the explosion PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Smoke is seen at Brussels airport in Brussels AP In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A photo shows cars on a blocked highway near Zaventem, Brussels National airport, after two explosions rocked the main hall of Brussels Airport Getty Images In Arabic, the hashtag #Brusselsonfire was being used by those praising the slaughter in a similar wording to the #Parisonfire trend seen when the French capital was hit the BBC reported. Charlie Winter, a terrorism analyst and senior research associate at Georgia State University, said there was no official claim from Isis in the hours after the explosions. Lots of fanboy noise, but no statement, he added on Twitter. Official claims usually come from the Amaq Agency and Isis other propaganda outlets, which were silent on Brussels on Tuesday morning even while publishing details of other alleged operations in Iraq and Syria. Alongside al-Qaeda, Isis is considered one of the few international terrorist organisations with the means and manpower to target a European city on this scale. A Belgian soldier stands guard outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels after a blast at this station located near the EU institutions Investigations into the massacres that killed 130 people in Paris in November uncovered a wide network of hideouts and safe houses across France and Belgium, including a bomb-making factory concealed inside a flat. Isis released its official claim of responsibility for those attacks the following morning, spreading audio and written statements in Arabic, French and English claiming the blessed battle was an act of revenge for Frances involvement in the US-led coalition bombing its militants in Iraq and Syria. But its statement exaggerated the death toll of the massacres and listed shootings in the 18th arrondissement, where there was no attack. If the group is responsible for Tuesdays bombings, it may be delaying any announcement until its planned attacks are over and militants are all killed or have escaped. The Belgian foreign minister, Didier Reynders, said authorities feared an unknown number of attackers or accomplices were still at large several hours after the explosions. Broken windows seen at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels (Reuters) Dr Natasha Underhill, an expert on terrorism in the Middle East at Nottingham Trent University, said there was little doubt that the latest atrocity in Europe was linked to Isis or its affiliates. It should, in some ways, have come as no surprise that there would have been some reaction from the group in response to the capture of Salah Abdeslam, she added. This was no doubt a warning strike to European leaders and there may be more to come. The group has time and time again issued statements that it will have no mercy in targeting those who are supporting the US and who are fighting against the group. The likelihood of further attacks in Europe is now in very little doubt. The promotion of fear is one of the strongest assets that Islamic State possesses and it is sadly doing an excellent job in spreading this message across Europe. Michael Horowitz, a security analyst with the Levantine Group, cautioned against blaming the attack on Abdeslams arrest in Molenbeek on Friday. Salah Abdeslam was arrested in Brussels Very unlikely that such a large scale attack was a retaliation to Salah Abdeslam's arrest as some are claiming, he wrote on Twitter. Attack was likely planned months ago, possibility that Abdeslam was going to talk and give intel about the cell likely triggered the attack. The 26-year-old militant had reportedly told investigators he was part of a cell planning further atrocities in Brussels after a large cache of weapons was found. The terror alert has been increased to its highest level in Belgium as police operations continue, with Brussels airport, public transport systems, federal buildings closed. Security has been increased at airports and transport hubs across Europe as investigations continue. 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 }} They are sprinkled around the Italian countryside in their thousands. So many in fact, that locals and expats are blase about the presence of these borghi, the picture postcard hilltop villages you see the length and breadth of the country. But while they look delightful, their existence is threatened. Rural poverty is causing many to be abandoned. Others are menaced by natural disasters. And now, those that remain appear under threat from bureaucrats who want to merge them with bigger towns and cities. Recommended Read more Italy passes law to make supermarkets give wasted food to charity This week, 112 mayors of borghi, from the Piedmont region in the north-west to Puglia in the south-east, met to declare war on proposed legislation that will see all towns with a population of less than 5,000 merged with larger municipalities. The mayors say that such a bill would be the death knell for an important part of Italian culture and tradition. The mayors present at the meeting of the Association of Forgotten Communities declared that party political lines were not important; all that mattered was saving the identity of their little communities and preventing an administrative shake-up they feared would herald further spending cuts. Political differences dont count here, said Sergio Pirozzi, mayor of the hilltop village of Amatrice, whose contribution to Italian culture is obvious to pasta lovers. The eponymous amatriciana tomato, bacon and pecorino sauce is not only loved around the world today, but supposedly led popes to send their cooks to Amatrice over the centuries to hone their skills. Sergio Pirozzi, the Mayor of Amatrice in the Apennine mountains, said he isnt paid enough to live on (Facebook) Mr Pirozzi, whose other job is to coach of the local serie D football team, said that national politicians should realise there was little left to cut from the budget of his community of just 2,468 people, which overlooks the Apennine mountains. For my job as mayor I earn just 650 (513) net a month and thats not enough to live on, he said. What do they think they can save? They should come here and see what Italy looks like from where we are constantly fighting because they want to cut hospital staff, school classes or close a post office window. One of the biggest fears is that the planned administrative change would do further damage to remote communities health services. Two years ago Amatrice, which lies on the borders of four regions, declared it wished to move from the jurisdiction of the Lazio region to that of Abruzzo, after a dispute with Lazio over hospital services. 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 Marco Buselli, the mayor of another small town, Volterra, who also attended the meeting, told La Repubblica: We have to create a united front, to say its not only the hard numbers that count. He added that if Italy didnt want borghi to become abandoned ghost towns, then the national and regional authorities would have to change direction and do much more to help them. The abandonment of many small villages has been dramatic, none more so than that of Civita di Bagnoregio, a spectacular borgo built on a vulcanic outcrop 75 miles north of Rome. In the Middle Ages it was home to around 3,000 people. Now, after constant erosion and landslides, its permanent winter population has collapsed to fewer than 10. Some dying villages such as Montieri, in Tuscany, are encouraging the sale of houses below the market prices to encourage new inhabitants, who are obliged to refurbish them as part of the deal. Emanuele Lodolini, the Democratic Party MP who proposed the merger of small communities, said parliamentarians would listen to the protests. He said the bill was in part a provocation and that he hoped there would be two years of debate before it was decided how to proceed. But he insisted the final result would lead to better funded communities. 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 Ukrainian pilot began singing when she was found guilty of complicity to murder in the deaths of two Russian journalists in eastern Ukraine. Nadezhda Savchenko was convicted by a Russian court on Tuesday, but upon hearing the verdict, she interrupted the judge and began singing the Ukrainian national anthem loudly. The judge was forced to call a break before sentencing the 34-year-old to 22 years in prison. Savchenko, who will also be fined for crossing into Russia illegally, has previously mocked the proceedings during the trial. She has also shouted that she is a victim in the courtroom. Petro Poroshenko, the Ukrainian President, has called the proceedings a farce. In July 2014, Savchenko was serving as a volunteer with Ukraines ground forces when she was captured by pro-Moscow rebels. She then surfaced in Russia. According to prosecutors, the pilot called in coordinates for shelling that killed two journalists near the Russian border the same month. Several civilians also died in the incident. Upon sentencing, something that is likely to increase tensions between Russia and Ukraine, the judge said: The evidence provided by the prosecution side is trustworthy and completely disproves the theory of the defence about Savchenkos innocence. Pavlo Klimkin, the Ukrainian Foreign Minister, wrote on Twitter: The result is an expected one, but all the same its pretty painful The sentence is not the end of struggle. Its the beginning of a new stage in the fight for Savchenko. Regarded a national hero in Ukraine, Savchenko has denied any wrongdoing. Since she was detained, she has been elected to the Ukrainian parliament as a member of the Fatherland party. According to the Ukrainian government, Savchenko is a prisoner of war who should be released under current truce agreements. Officials from Russia have suggest that after the trial, there may be room for negotiations about handing Savchenko over to Ukraine. This may form part of a prisoner exchange. 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 }} Radovan Karadzic saw himself as locked in struggle to save the Serbs even as their forces were reducing the besieged city of Sarajevo to rubble. On Thursday, 21 years after he was first indicted, a UN war crimes tribunal delivers its verdict on the man many Bosnians feared as the master of life and death during the 1992-95 war. The former Bosnian Serb leader has been on trial in The Hague since 2009, charged with war crimes and genocide against Bosnian Muslims and Croats. He faces a life sentence, if convicted. Recommended Read more Karadzic claims no proof to link him to Bosnian Serb atrocities A man who liked to recite his own poetry and hold court in a ski resort near Sarajevo, Karadzic was president of the self-styled Bosnian Serb Republic and supreme commander of its armed forces until he lost power in 1996. The next year he went into hiding, disappearing until his arrest 11 years later in Belgrade, where he lived disguised as a New Age healer. He became one of the worlds most wanted men, swapping his trademark bouffant hairstyle for a long white beard and adopting a false name. The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia charged him with 11 counts of genocide and crimes against humanity and violations of the customs of war, including the Sarajevo siege and the 1995 Srebrenica massacre Europes worst atrocity since the Second World War. Ex-Bosnia-Serb leader gives closing statement at trial After shaving and donning a suit, Karadzic regained the look of a persuasive demagogue, denying any wrongdoing and saying he should be praised for promoting peace, not accused of mass murder. I have a clear conscience but a heavy heart because the war was not according to my taste, he said during his trial. Just as he manipulated Western envoys who visited him during the war, Karadzic, a trained psychiatrist, tried to drag out his trial, refusing to attend sessions and asking to defend himself. For 497 days in court, he became a familiar sight with his silver mane, peering through spectacles at some of the three million pages of evidence against him. His aim was to pin blame on his wartime ally, Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic, who is also on trial for genocide, and to try to prove that some atrocities blamed on Serb forces were carried out by Bosnian Muslims against their own people. His trial included testimony from 586 witnesses and the UN tribunals chief prosecutor, Serge Brammertz, complimented him on how he conducted his defence: There are professional lawyers who have done a less good job. Karadzic remains popular in some parts. Milorad Dodik, the Serb Republic nationalist president, opened a student dormitory on Sunday named after him.Mr Dodik, who has repeatedly threatened the secession of the Serb region from Bosnia, said the moment was chosen ahead of the Karadzic verdict after a five-year trial that he said was humiliating for the Serb Republic. The humiliation may be compounded later this week. 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 }} A school has been criticised after a teacher used suicide as an equation example in a lesson. An unidentified teacher posed the question to 14 and 15-year-old students in a physics lesson at a school in Lausanne, Switzerland. "Mr. Durant decided to end his life, specifically by jumping off of the Pont Bessieres bridge, the question began. "He reaches the bottom with a speed of 77 kilometres per hour. How high must the bridge be?" The Pont Bessieres bridge is a well-known suicide spot in Lausanne. School director Jean-Francois Borgeaud admitted to Swiss news site 20 Minuten that a "tactless act had been committed". "We will ensure that something like this does not happen again in the future," he added. "We will meet with the students from his class to make sure that no one felt traumatised." The exercise was criticised by suicide prevention campaigners. 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 "Imagine the pain felt by a student who perhaps lost a parent or another person close to them due to suicide," said Stop Suicide spokeswoman Irina Inostroza to 20 Minuten. "We encourage all schools to approach the topic of suicide with good judgement and care. One should neither trivialize it, nor speak about it in brutal language. The subject of death is always a shock for all concerned." The incident comes two months after Lausanne resident and worlds best chef Benoit Violier was found to have killed himself at his home elsewhere in the town. The Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. 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 }} Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko has been found guilty of complicity in the murder of two Russian journalists and sentenced to 22 years in prison by a Russian court, a verdict sure to aggravate already tense relations between both countries. Russian judge Leonid Stepanenko spent two consecutive days and over 15 hours summing up the proceedings of what is broadly considered to be one of the most egregious political show trials in Russias recent history. As the judge delivered the sentence in a courtroom in southern Russias Rostov region, Ms Savchenko broke into a Ukrainian folk song, forcing the judge to briefly clear the room before continuing the sentencing. A 34-year old veteran of the Ukrainian army, Ms Savchenko is charged with directing mortar fire to two Russian journalists in war-torn east Ukraine in 2014 which resulted in their deaths. Prosecutors claim that she then illegally crossed the Ukrainian-Russian border with the aim of seeking asylum. Ms Savchenko denies all wrongdoing and has called the trial a farce. She claims that she was captured by pro-Russia separatists in Luhansk who took her across the border into Russia where they handed her over to Russian authorities. Her lawyers say that the prosecutors have fabricated the case and claim that evidence, including phone records, show Ms Savchenko had been kidnapped by separatists over one hour before the mortar fire that killed the two journalists. Ms Savchenko had earlier said she would not appeal the verdict as she thinks it has nothing to do with justice. However one of her lawyers, Mark Feygin, has said that her defence team has launched international procedures for her release via UN apparatus. The question now is whether a prisoner exchange will be agreed upon between Moscow and Kyiv. Ukrainian Petro Poroshenko, dismissing the sentencing as a kangaroo court and vowing to bring Ms Savchenko home, has offered to exchange her with two Russian special forces soldiers who were captured in eastern Ukraine in May last year. Since her imprisonment in 2014, Ms Savchenko has been celebrated as a national hero in Ukraine. 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 }} Operation Magic Carpet was the first major airlift of Jews to the newly independent Israel. In 1949, more than 50,000 were flown from Yemen in secret flights before the operation was officially unveiled amid much publicity as a declaration of the Jewish States commitment to bring its people home. Israel recreated the mission in recent days, once again flying Jews out of Yemen. The number this time was 19, reflecting how the community has dwindled in the intervening years. About 50 more refused to leave, preferring to stay on in a country enmeshed in a bitter civil war. The US State Department was involved in co-ordinating the evacuation, Israeli officials said, as it revealed the covert mission. There are no American boots on the ground in Yemen, according to Washington, but private security contractors, including some former members of Western forces, have been hired by Sunni Gulf states for the campaign against Shia Houthi rebels. The Houthis chanted death to the Jews and death to Israel as they entered the capital Sanaa in the early days of the rebellion. Sunni extremist groups, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (Aqap) and those pledging allegiance to Isis have also threatened the community. The evacuation, organised by Israels Jewish Agency, was from Raydah, in the north-west of the country, which had a long established Jewish community. The local rabbi, Saliman Dahari, who also had the role of the towns kosher slaughterer, brought 600-year-old Torah scrolls with him to Israel. The Jewish community in Yemen has dwindled in recent years (AFP) There are differing chronologies of Jewish presence in Yemen. According to one account King Solomon sent merchants to Yemen to obtain gold and silver for his Temple in Jerusalem. According to the lore of the Jews in Sanaa, a settlement took place 42 years before the destruction of the First Temple, with 75,000 led to Yemen by the Prophet Jeremiah. Also among the recent evacuees were the family of Aharon Zindani, a community elder, who was murdered in 2012. The same year a young Jewish woman was abducted, forcibly converted to Islam and disappeared after, according to reports, being forced to marry a Muslim. Those from the community staying behind are mainly in Sanaa, living in an enclosed compound called Tourist City, which used to house foreign workers in more peaceful times. However, many in the deeply religious community feel they may not be able to settle in the more secular Israeli society. Both the Yemeni government, backed by Saudi Arabia and the Houthis, supported by Iran, maintain that the Jewish community has been protected and there have been few anti-Semitic incidents. Natan Sharansky, the chairman of the Jewish Agency, a quasi-governmental body, said: From Operation Magic Carpet until the present day, the agency has helped bring Yemenite Jewry home to Israel. Today we bring that historic mission to a close But Yemenite Jewrys unique 2,000-year-old contribution to the Jewish people will continue in the State of Israel. 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 }} By their targets, you shall know them. The slaughter in Brussels followed closely the pattern of the atrocities in Paris on 13 November: these mass killings were callous and indiscriminate, but they were not random. The targets were selected to murder and maim as many innocent people as possible. They were also chosen to make a political point. In Paris, the broader target was the Western way of life and especially the tolerance and joie de vivre of the secular, urban, professional and multiracial young. In Brussels, the broader targets were internationalism and the European Union. Two bombs went off in the departure hall of one of Europes busiest airports. Another exploded in a metro train in a station 200 metres from the European Commission. For that reason alone, the political fingerprints of Isis are all over the attacks. Murder with a message is an Isis speciality. The bombings were probably planned long before the arrest of the surviving Paris attacker, Salah Abdeslam, but were doubtless accelerated by that event. Isis was, in effect, saying that the capture of Abdeslam is a side-show. Within hours, right on cue, and not just in Britain, voices were raised to blame the attacks on immigration, the border-free EU and excessive tolerance of Europes Islamist minorities. Others spoke, more reasonably, of the security failures of Europe and especially of Belgium. There will be much criticism of the Belgian government in particular and much unspoken Schadenfreude that a country which has unwittingly exported jihadism in recent years should now become one of its victims. Some of this criticism is justified. In the past two decades, parts of the federal Belgian state have fallen into chaos and disrepair as real political power, and patronage, passed to the language-based regional structures of Flanders, Wallonia and Brussels. Co-operation between police forces, and between police and intelligence and security forces, has become a standing joke. The festering radicalism of Muslim-dominated boroughs in Brussels, like Molenbeek, went unchallenged. In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A private security guard helps a wounded women outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Wounded people receive assistance by rescuers outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Rescue workers treat victims outside the Maelbeek underground station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Passengers waiting to be evacuated from the train between Arts-Lois and Maelbeek In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency services and police work around a metro station after an explosion in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Rescue teams evacuate wounded people outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A woman is evacuated in an ambulance by emergency services after a explosion in a main metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A Belgian soldier stands guard outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels after a blast at this station located near the EU institutions In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Belgian police officers stand outside the Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Belgian policemen and a soldier carrying an injured person after an explosion at the Maelbeek Metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A view of the train after the explosion in Maelbeek station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station People receive treatment as emergency services attend the scene after an explosion in a main metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Maelbeek Metro station after an explosion on a train in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Passengers walk on underground metro tracks to be evacuated after an explosion at Maelbeek train station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station A victim receives first aid by rescuers, near Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Firefighters arrive at the scene near Maalbeek metro station In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency workers arrive at a security perimeter set near Maalbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency rescue workers stretcher an unidentified person at the site of an explosion at a metro station in Brussels AP In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Police seal off the area at the scene of a blast outside a metro station in Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency personnel are seen at the scene of a blast outside a metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Emergency personnel are seen at the scene of a blast outside a metro station in Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Belgian police and emergency staff arriving in the Wetstraat - Rue de la Loi, which has been evacuated after an explosion at the Maelbeek metro station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station Smoke rising from the Maalbeek underground, in Brussels, following a blast at the station close to the capital's European quarter Getty Images In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station People are evacuated from the Schuman station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels metro station The scene outside the Maalbeek underground in Brussels after the explosion It is important, however, to learn the right lesson from this latest tragedy. Ultra-nationalists in France and anti-Europeans in Britain can point to Belgium as an example of what happens if a strong sense of national identity dies and strong national institutions fail. Those who support a supra-national Europe can point to a linguistically divided and perennially quarrelsome Belgium as an example of what a post-Treaty of Rome Europe might look like. There are, however, more modest and pragmatic lessons to be learned. Radical Islam, though it detests internationalism, knows no nationality. Modern terrorists can cross borders easily Schengen or no Schengen. Festering radicalism is far from just a Belgian or a French phenomenon. The 2005 London bombers were all British-born. Jihadism cannot be defeated easily and it cannot be defeated in Iraq and Syria alone. There will be other politically targeted atrocities like those in Brussels. The solution must come partly from a clear rejection of the perversion of jihadism by the Wests Islamic communities themselves. It must come partly from the sense of economic and spiritual opportunity offered to young Muslims in Manchester as well as Molenbeek. But it must also come from rejecting a drawbridge mentality and by pursuing well-structured judicial and police co-operation and intelligence-sharing across European frontiers. 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 }} Lord Adonis came to talk yesterday to the Masters students taking the "Blair Years" contemporary history module that I teach with Jon Davis at King's College, London. It was a fascinating dissection of radicalism versus caution and a fitting way to bring the course to an end. He said that he joined the Labour Party in 1995, the day after Tony Blair succeeded in reforming Clause IV of the party's constitution (which committed it to the common ownership of the means of production). "That was when I decided that the liberals had achieved a reverse takeover of the Labour Party." He joined the Number 10 Policy Unit in 1997, becoming its head in 2001. In that role he started to set up academy schools, which he continued to do as schools minister in the House of Lords from 2005. After Blair stood down in 2007 he was kept on by Gordon Brown and expanded the academy programme further. He moved to the Department of Transport to work on the High Speed 2 rail line in 2008 and joined the Cabinet as Transport Secretary 2009-10. He is now chair of the Government's Infrastructure Commission and a visiting professor at King's. His subject yesterday was the evolution of Blairism: Political parties are largely franchise operations vested in leaders and their teams. The Labour Party of Harold Wilson was very different from that of Neil Kinnock, which was different from that of Tony Blair. The same is true of the Tories. Ideas matter but the relationship of ideas to leaders is vitally important. Jonathan Freedland once wrote that people believe in people who believe in ideas; they rarely believe in ideas themselves. Tony was essentially a social liberal with a strong imperialist streak. He was strongly in favour of the assertion of power abroad. He was more Thatcherite than Thatcher; he was positively Gladstonian. Those ideas became more apparent over time. Equally, the extent of his liberalism was disguised in the early years because he used Labour language. Tony wasn't wildly interested in policy. Policy tended to be franchised out to people he appointed. What he was very good at was stopping things happening, such as any threat to private schools or grammar schools. He was only really interested in public services that affect the middle class. He never wanted to reform the police the Tories would have to do that. He was not interested in local government, except in London, because of the middle class. And his interest in London rapidly waned when it became clear that the mayor was going to be Ken Livingstone. And he had no interest in repeating the changes in London elsewhere. Health and education were the big public services the middle class consumed, and they were electorally and socially vital to his project. He wanted to make them more user-friendly to the middle class without upsetting the Labour Party. So his approach was to franchise policy increasingly to ministers who would be radical and then to row back. After a cautious start with the first secretaries of state, Frank Dobson and David Blunkett, Blair "franchised" policy to people who would be bolder. In health, to Alan Milburn, who became Secretary of State in 1999, and in education to Adonis, although Blunkett was succeeded by Estelle Morris in 2001, who was appointed to try to keep the teacher unions on board. Asked about Blair's regret in his 2005 speech that he had not been more radical ("Every time I've ever introduced a reform in government, I wish in retrospect I had gone further"), Adonis said: "He didn't regret it at the time, though." Lord Adonis, a visiting professor at King's College, London, at yesterday's class He described the origin of academies, which started in 2000 as a small experimental programme for failing schools, and the struggle to set a target for expanding the number, which had reached 200 by the end of Blair's time as Prime Minister. He wanted 500, Alan Johnson (Blair's last Education Secretary) offered 300. Blair decided on 400. Adonis was worried that "Gordon Brown might come in and tear it up", but "Gordon realised that academies were working, although he wouldn't say so publicly" because of the hostility towards them from parts of the Labour Party. Adonis realised Brown would back them "when one of his advisers came to me to ask how to get his son into Mossbourne" Mossbourne being the outstandingly successful academy in Hackney whose head, Michael Wilshaw, is now head of Ofsted. Lord Adonis said the combination of higher spending and reform on health and education produced results. It had to be remembered that in 1997 the NHS was "on the verge of becoming unviable", and that in the 13 years of Labour government "there was no increase in the proportion of children going to private schools, despite a huge increase in incomes". On constitutional reform devolution, House of Lords, Human Rights Act, Freedom of Information "Tony did the minimum he could get away with, the minimum that was credible." Where Blair was really bold and radical was in foreign policy, he said. He was far bolder than anyone had attempted since Anthony Eden and than had been achieved since the Second World War. It was more radical conceptually than public service reform. On public service reform Tony was not very bold and [he was] successful. On foreign policy he was very bold and largely a failure. He described early "liberal interventionism" in Kosovo and Sierra Leone as "essential", but "it was the post-9/11 world that changed it". He said: "Nobody would be talking about liberal interventionism if it was just Kosovo and Sierra Leone. It was Afghanistan and Iraq that made it big." Asked if he thought Blair was a good Prime Minister, he said: "Yes. He left the country in a better state than he found it, but its international reputation was worse." Asked about Blair's failure to promote possible successors other than Brown, Adonis said: The only alternative leader who was recognisably viable was David Miliband. Tony did almost nothing for him. He didn't make him Foreign Secretary in 2006, appointing Margaret Beckett instead. He'd done a deal with Gordon promoting David would have been seen as a seriously hostile act. Lord Adonis said he didn't think Blair would ever have moved against Brown. He constantly licensed people to talk about a government without Gordon but never showed any inclination to move. Someone said they couldn't imagine the conversation in which he sacked Gordon, which I think is right. Asked about the failure of Labour-Liberal Democrat co-operation in 1997-98, he said that was "impossible" because of the size of the majority, and that Blair "never had any intention" of implementing Roy Jenkins's plans for electoral reform. The great missed opportunity in Lib-Labbery was not under Tony but under Gordon. Gordon could have made a bigger break on Iraq. He did promise the Alternative Vote in the manifesto, but he seemed to want to do it without ever talking to the Liberal Democrats. I have written about the other classes in this term's "Blair Years" MA course here. If you want to receive the Catch-Up Service email for all my posts for The Independent, sign up here. 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 }} George Osborne is not a hard-hearted man who delights in taking money away from disabled people and the working poor. But he is careless. He is not interested in social justice, except as a slogan. So when he did his Budget-by-numbers, trying like a content-free Gordon Brown to meet several intensely political objectives at once, he simply didn't notice that the losers would be people on disability benefit and low-income workers while the beneficiaries would be those earning more than 42,000 a year. In some ways, the Chancellor was too honourable. He wanted to fulfil his manifesto promise to cut 12bn a year from welfare spending, and he wanted to set out spending plans to meet his target of a surplus by 2020. He seemed not to realise that the costs of retreating from either of those objectives would be negligible. Nobody, even on his own side, thinks they are a good idea. So he learned the hard way. Today, he had to redefine the 12bn welfare cut to mean 12bn a year of cuts minus 1bn a year of unexpected higher spending on disability benefits. If he had done that in the Budget last week, Iain Duncan Smith would still be in the Cabinet and he would still be in with a fighting chance of taking on Boris Johnson in the Cameron succession battle. So it's swings and roundabouts: he would have been better off in one respect, at least. The 2020 surplus is still there in the books, although it is 1bn lower than it was in the Budget, but Osborne has discovered that simply abandoning the disability cuts was a cost-free option after all. This afternoon, Conservative MPs cheered him happily as he performed a three-point turn in broad daylight on the floor of the House of Commons. "We've made a mistake," he said to Chris Leslie, one of Labour's shadow shadow chancellors, who demanded that he admit he'd made a mistake. "We've listened and we've learned." To Rachel Reeves, Labour's other shadow shadow chancellor, he said there are "no further plans" for cuts in the disability benefits budget. In other words, the plans announced in the Budget just six days ago are no longer operative and he will worry about whether the numbers add up later. Much later in the Autumn Statement, which conveniently happens after the European referendum. In a noisy Chamber at one point I heard a strangled cry of "Fair?" from a Labour MP Osborne repeated the claims he made in his Budget speech that he spoke for a "compassionate, One Nation Conservative government determined to deliver social justice and economic security". That was what the Budget what was left of it, after the disability cuts had been stripped out would deliver, he said. I don't know if he had seen Nicky Morgan, the Education Secretary, confronted with the Institute for Fiscal Studies' analysis of the effect of the Budget measures last night. The disability cuts were always, to be blunt, a small amount of money in relation to total spending, and the Budget measures that are planned for the next four years, and which have been planned since last year's Budget, hit the poor and hardly affect the better-off at all. There might be a case to be made for the Government. Fraser Nelson, the editor of The Spectator, thinks the continuing jobs miracle will boost the incomes of the poor by more than they lose in benefits or credits, as it did in the last parliament. But that case wasn't made by Morgan last night or by the Chancellor today. I am led to conclude that he doesn't know what he's doing. He doesn't mean to be a hard-faced right-winger; he's doing it by "mistake". 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 }} Yet again Europe has been shaken by the impact of a terrorist attack and, once again, it has responded in a way that we have come to see as tragically routine. On social media we have Facebook safety check-ins, Twitter hashtags and sharable cartoons. In real life the Belgian flag will be hoist or projected over the national monuments of neighbouring European countries. The responses have taken on the morbid ritual of a funeral. And arguably, they are important to help us process the inexplicable horror and to give us some tools with which to communicate defiance in the face of terror. The Mayor of Paris has tweeted that the Eiffel Tower will be illuminated in the colours of the Belgian Flag, Downing Street has raised the Belgian flag and the BBC reported that the word Brussels in various languages dominated Twitters list of top worldwide trends. Recommended Read more The Brussels attacks expose the failures of Belgian society However, there is unease as we share the cartoon by Plantu showing France expressing solidarity with Belgium. Where was our cartoon for those who have died in Turkey at the hands of terrorists? Why didnt Downing Street raise the Turkish flag after the atrocities in Ankara? Last week three died and 36 were injured; in February 28 died and 60 were left injured; in January two attacks left 18 dead and 53 injured. In 2015 a swathe of attacks left a gasping 141 dead and 910 injured. Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Show all 27 1 /27 Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Wreaths of flowers in front of an entrance of the Maalbeek subway station in Brussels in homage to the victims of a terrorist attack. Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Wreaths of flowers in front of an entrance of the Maalbeek subway station in Brussels in homage to the victims of a terrorist attack. Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims A building illuminated with the Belgian flag colours and a heart in Brussels, two days after suicide bombing attacks of terrorists on March 22 in Zaventem airport and subway Maelbeek. Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims A picture taken on 24 March, 2016 on place de la Bourse in Brussels, shows drawings and a candle, two days after suicide bombing attacks of terrorists on March 22 in Zaventem airport and Brussels subway Maelbeek Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Candles are displayed in tribute to the Brussels attacks victims on 24 March, 2016 on place de la Bourse in Brussels, two days after the suicide bombing attacks of terrorists on 22 March. Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims A mourner lights a candle in Trafalgar Square during a candlelit vigil in support of the victims of the recent terror attacks in Brussels. Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels airport workers pay tribute to the victims near Zaventem Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Activists light candles and hold placards to condemn the terrorist attacks in Belgium, during a gathering in Manila, Philippines Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims A banner for the victims of the bombings reads "I am Brussels" at the Place de la Bourse in the center of Brussels Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker, left front center, stands with front row, left to right, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, Belgium's King Philippe, Belgium's Queen Mathilde and Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel as well as members of the European Commission during a minute of silence at EU headquarters in Brussels Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims People join hands in solidarity near the former stock exchange following the bomb attacks in Brussels Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Belgium flags ornate the facade of the Paris Town Hall Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims A woman embraces her children at The Place de la Bourse as she pays her respects to victims of the terrorists attacks in Brussels Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Belgian and European Union flags fly at half mast following the bomb attacks in Brussels Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Candles in the colors of the Belgian national flag are lit inside the Belgian embassy in Madrid, a day after the deadly suicide attacks on the Brussels airport and its subway system Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Servicemen of Azov, Ukrainian volunteers battalion, hold torches in front of floral tributes during a ceremony in front of the Belgian embassy in Kiev, in tribute to the victims of Brussels attacks Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims A refugee boy holds up a placard reading "Sorry for Brussels" at a refugee camp near the Greek-Macedonian border Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes People light candles in tribute to victims at a makeshift memorial at the Place de la Bourse in Brussels Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes A woman holds a drawing by French cartoonist Plantu picturing a character made of a French flag consoling another made of the Belgian flag, in front of the Hotel de Ville in Paris Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes The colours of the Belgian flag are projected on to (clockwise from top left) the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the town council building in Belgrade, Rome's Campidoglio and the Royal Palace at Dam Square in Amsterdam Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes Candles are lit in tribute to the victims, at the Place de la Bourse in Brussels Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes A woman holds a placard reading "Paris hearts Belgium, How much time will it take us to open our eyes and say STOP, Today our hearts are broken, Open your eyes to change the future" at the Place de la Republique in Paris Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes People gather to pay a tribute to victims of terrorist attacks in Brussels Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes People write messages on the ground at Place de la Bourse in Brussels Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes A bouquet of flowers in the Belgian national colours with a card reading 'To our neighbours, to our friends, to our Belgian brothers - an indignant Parisian' is seen next to a French national flag at the fence of the Belgian embassy in Paris Getty Images Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes Solidarity messages are written in chalk outside the stock exchange in Brussels AP Brussels attacks: tributes are paid to the victims Brussels tributes Messages and floral tributes outside the Brussels stock exchange AP The weight of a terror attack shouldnt be measured in terms of the numbers hurt and killed. Each life taken to prove a political point is an outrage. But the figures stand. There were so many more lives lost in Turkey, while Europe remained mute. There seems to be limits to our solidarity and these boundaries look uncomfortably like the map of western Europe. Turkey remains just outside of our realm of care, not close enough in proximity to afford our grief. Terrorist attacks you might not have heard of Turkey is somewhere exotic, somewhere we holiday, but not somewhere we need to understand or lavish with our sympathy. The motivations behind the attacks in Turkey are different to those behind the Brussels bombings. Some are carried out in the name of a century-long Kurdish independence movement against the Turkish state; some are carried out by the same Islamic fundamentalists - Isis - who carried out the Brussels attacks. But their tactics are the same: terror. And so should be our collective response: sympathy and solidarity. Recommended Read more The social media response to the Brussels attacks is shocking Our indifference and our casual suspicion of Islam is fuelling terrorist organisations like Isis. As a Muslim and a survivor of terrorism, Malala Yousafzai recently spoke out against the problem of dividing victims of terrorism in the East and West: "If your intention is to stop terrorism, do not try to blame the whole population of Muslims for it, because [that] cannot stop terrorism. We should heed her final warning: It will radicalise more terrorists." 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 }} One of the greatest tricks David Cameron pulled on the country was when people voted Conservative; they thought they were voting for the coalition. The country saw before the election five years of stable government and economic competence. The cost of rescuing the economy shared around with the richest taking the biggest load. As has been pointed out by John Rentoul in The Independent, for all the overheated language from the left about inequality, the record of the Coalition was surprisingly good. Almost all the great ideas of the coalition werent Tory, but they relentlessly took credit for it in their leaflets and their rhetoric; three million apprenticeships; help with childcare; the Pupil Premium; massive rise in the basic income tax allowance; and the triple lock on pensions. All delivered in a time of austerity. Now people are acting surprised as the Conservatives stand by their election pledge to slash 12Bn from the welfare budget. Its not as though it was a secret. Nick Clegg and Danny Alexander drew voters attention to it, but you cant blame the electorate for not reading the small print. When the electorate saw the vicious cuts proposed they assumed it was going to be the workshy and scroungers who would see the worst of it, not the working poor. In coalition budgets the disabled and the vulnerable were protected by Nick Cleggs veto. As Nick has confirmed, he would have stopped the cuts to the Personal Independence Payments from ever getting off the ground. I blocked similar, he said. Tory economic competence has proved to be a mirage. Bad economics and terrible politics was the way Vince Cable has described the Tory chaos of recent days. I couldnt agree more. Yet Labour are just as culpable. With the Government in meltdown, their failure to do that very basic function of an opposition - oppose, has been lamentable. Whichever analogy you wish to use for Labours ineffectiveness, be it open goals, fish in barrels or falling off logs, to not exploit Iain Duncan Smiths resignation whist the Government have literally been taking candy off a baby is unforgivable. Recommended Read more How do we decode the sensational resignation of IDS George Osborne no doubt thought he was being clever when he sneered in his budget speech that he was going to: abolish the Liberal Democrats. Yet, a Liberal Democrat in Government would have preventing him making the biggest foul up of any Chancellor in living memory. Not so smug now, eh George? Compassionate conservatism never really existed within their activist base. Neither has the idea of Labour fiscal competence. They are now both parties being driven by their extremes, coming up with ever more extreme ideological policies. That is not a reflection of most of the British public: reasonable, fair-minded people who want their economy run sensibly and we saw that during the coalition. That voice has now been lost. 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 }} The atrocities in Brussels this morning broke disturbing new ground. Until now, Belgium has been a incubator of jihadism rather than itself a target for indiscriminate, home-grown terrorism. The May 2014 attack on the Jewish Museum in Brussels, in which four people died, was more anti-Semitic than anti-Belgian in motivation. It was carried out by a French-born Islamist radical. Today's attacks are different. The chosen targets were Belgian, although also clearly international. The bombers struck the American departure area of Zaventem airport and a metro station 200 metres from the headquarters of the European Commission. Brussels has become, for complicated reasons, one of the epicentres - if not the epicentre of jihadism in Europe. The 13 November attacks in Paris last year were, as we know, planned and carried out from Brussels. Their ringleader, Abdehamid Abaaoud, was born in Belgium. The runaway surviving Paris attacker captured last week, Salah Abdeslam, is a French citizen of Moroccan origin who has spent his whole life in Molenbeek, the sprawling 40 per cent Muslim commune (borough) which stretches west from the centre of Belgians capital. Proportionally, there are more young Belgians including many converts fighting with Isis and other jihadist groups in the Middle East than from any other European Union nation. The timing of yesterdays attacks suggests that the motive might have been revenge for Abdeslams capture. The truth may be more complicated. In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Show all 30 1 /30 In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man carries an injured person in Brussels Airport, after explosions ripped through the departure hall In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Travellers get to their feet in a smoke filled terminal at Brussels Airport after explosions In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man is wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A man speaks on a mobile phone in Brussels Airport, after the explosions ripped through the departure hall In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Belgian police officers detain a man at the Gare du Midi train station in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A police officer stands guard as people are evacuated from Brussels airport, after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People stand near Brussels airport after being evacuated following explosions that rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Crew and passengers are evacuated from Zaventem Bruxelles International Airport after an attack in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers gather near Brussels airport in Zaventem, following its evacuation after blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Two women wounded in Brussels Airport in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers and airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers and airport staff are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Broken windows seen at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People leave the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People are evacuated from the scene after two explosions were heard at Brussels Airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People wait outside of the Brussels Airport after evacuation In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People leave the airport area after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Passengers comfort each other as they are evacuated from the terminal building after explosions at Brussels Airport in Zaventem In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People react as they walk away from Brussels airport after explosions rocked the facility in Brussels In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services attend the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Injured people at the scene at Brussels Airport after two explosions were heard PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The aftermath of the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport People wait outside of the Zaventem airport after two explosions were heard PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services at the scene of explosions at Brussels Airport In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A view of the scene after the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Emergency services at the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels Reuters In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The aftermath of the explosions at Brussels airport PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport The view of the Brussels airport after the explosion PA In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport Smoke is seen at Brussels airport in Brussels AP In pictures: Terror attacks at Brussels airport A photo shows cars on a blocked highway near Zaventem, Brussels National airport, after two explosions rocked the main hall of Brussels Airport Getty Images There are good reasons to believe that Abdeslam has been on the run from Isis for the last four months, as well as the Belgian and French police. He pulled out of a suicide bombing in Paris on 13 November. The network which has hidden him under the nose of the Belgians security services appears to have been composed mostly of disaffected youths with no particular Islamist axe to grind. Yesterdays attacks could have been carried out by a quite different 'cell', as a demonstration of continuing jihadist menace rather than specifically to avenge Abdeslam. Brussels airport explosion All these facts point, nonetheless, to a deep and festering problem in Brussels, which goes beyond, the disturbing radicalisation of a fringe of Muslim youth in France or Britain or the Netherlands or Germany. Why Belgium? Why Brussels? Why Molenbeek? There are the usual factors unemployment, discrimination, split-identities which explain the alienation of young Muslims in other European countries. In Belgium, they have been intensified by the countrys own divided identity as Dutch and French speakers have drifted further apart in the last two decades. Most Muslim youths in Britain or France do consider themselves British or French. What should a youth of Moroccan origin born in Brussels consider him or herself to be? A Fleming or a Walloon? Or a Bruxellois? At the same time, the division of the country in all but name has undermined the national or federal institutions including the police, justice system and intelligence services. Belgian politicians now think largely in terms of their regions or language communities, rather than problems on a national scale. The different branches of the police and security services have infamously poor communications with one another. Hans Bonte, the mayor of Vilvoorde, a suburban town outside Brussels, once called Belgiums security arrangements a perfect example of organised chaos. Recommended Read more Why The Night Manager got it wrong about illegal arms trading A country which regards itself as supremely international has become dysfunctionally preoccupied with parish politics. Add to this the fact that Belgium has long been a clearing house for illegal arms deals and that its geographical situation makes it a perfect launch-pad for attacks on neighbouring countries. Until today, the hatred of western and democratic values spawned in Europes capital has mostly been exported. Divided, inward-looking Belgium is no longer immune. Bermuda financial services firm Somers is understood to have converted a 2.5m loan note in Dublin-based stockbroking firm Merrion Capital into equity, increasing its stake in the Irish business to just under 22pc. Somers previously owned just under 6.5pc of Merrion, and had also advanced a 2.5m loan to the brokerage that could be converted into equity. The Bermudan company noted in its annual report that it now controls 22pc of Merrion, while company filings in Ireland show the 2.5m loan has been converted to equity. Somers acquired its initial stake in Merrion, which also acts as an investment manager, in 2014 for 750,000, and also acquired 2.5m of convertible loan notes issued by Merrion. The bulk of Merrion had been sold to Iceland's Landsbanki in 2005. By 2008, the Icelandic bank had paid 90m for 86pc of the Irish firm, and was due to acquire the remainder in 2009. But as Landsbanki collapsed, Merrion management moved to buy back the business. A total of 30m was paid to buy it back, with Merrion management then owning about half the business. New York investment bank Allen & Co remained a strategic investor. In 2014, Somers and Tetrarch Capital (previously Brehon Capital Partners), took minority stakes. At the end of December 2015, Somers noted that it had a 2.5m, three-year, 3pc convertible loan note with Merrion, which if converted would give the Bermudan group a 21.8pc stake in the Irish financial firm. Somers noted that Merrion's two main business lines are Merrion Investment Management (MIM), accounting for 24pc of total 2014 revenues; and private clients/stockbroking, which accounted for 33pc of total revenues in 2014. The IFA has denied there is a "serious problem" with the Boortmalt malting barley contract as growers begin sowing this week. Liam Dunne, the IFA's grain committee chairman, said a pricing arrangement had been agreed before Christmas to allow greater forward selling opportunities. Mr Dunne said Boortmalt are still involved in the selling arrangements for some malt, after making arrangements with growers. "In a developing situation, there wasn't and still isn't any serious problem," he said. Mr Dunne said everyone was "happy" with it, including the stakeholders and the IFA. He said growers were getting some exceptionally good prices as high as 176/t in forward selling options. However, the Irish Grain Growers Association (IGAA), said there was a "serious problem" as there was a "material change" in the contract that had been agreed late last year. Bobby Miller from the IGGA, formerly the Irish Malt Growers Association, pointed out it was now suggested that 25pc of the contract tonnes would be paid at a surplus price to be set by Boortmalt after harvest. Mr Miller pointed out growers had "agreed a deal and forward sold grain on the strength" of the agreement reached late last year and they rejected the changes. Mr Dunne said farmers were being kept informed and a new malting barley chair would be elected shortly. Another issue that has been emerging on the IFA hustings is the collection of levies, with the IFA stating farmers will be able to claim their levy back. "A levy of 38c per tonne is collected each year. 19c goes to IFA to help fund its administration and negotiations on malting barley. This contribution is voluntary and can be reclaimed," said Mr Dunne. He pointed out 19c is spent on research and development of the crop through programmes with Teagasc and UCD, which Boortmalt also contribute towards. He said no monies go towards the IFA's Ifarm which promotes farm-to-farm selling. Mr Miller said farmers wanted the levy to be made optional before the monies are paid out of grain cheques. "IFA are only adding to the red tape that farmers have to tolerate by asking growers to reclaim the levy if they so wish," he said, pointing out that other sectors are allowed opt-in or opt-out. "Boortmalt are currently asking non-contract farmers to grow malting barley for them as traditional growers are reducing their acreage dedicated to malting barley. This is the biggest indicator that all is not well in the malting barley sector," said Mr Miller. Could cereal growers be left with nothing but their EU payments at the end of this year, even on owned land? That's the way it's looking. I got a shock when I looked at Teagasc's excellent cereal crop margin calculator app this week. When Tim O'Donovan was doing his costings for 2016 last Christmas, there was still hope that green grain prices would be 135-145/t for barley and wheat. Since then the price slide has continued, to the point that some farmers are being offered a harvest price of 115/t for their barley. At this price, even if you do everything right and hit the target yields of 3.25t/ac and sell your straw for 40/ac, you will dearly pay for the pleasure of growing the crop, to the tune of 58/ac. Naturally, if you have to pay for land rental on top of this, you move even deeper into the red zone, to the point that no EU farm payment is going to cover your losses. And yet, auctioneers tell me that they will have no problem getting farmers to bid on conacre this spring. "Land that was making 180/ac last autumn will still make 140/ac this spring," claimed Meath-based auctioneer, Thomas Potterton. It would make far more sense for the farmer to sit back and let somebody else lose their shirt on the punt. Even if growers have extra entitlements to activate, new rules allow them to lease out the entitlements without any land attached to another farmer for 12 months - exactly the same way conacre operates. Well-known entitlement traders, the McGees of HMG in Kells say that there's a ready market for entitlements, especially those worth more than 300/ha, before the 30pc greening top-up is included. "Farmers are getting 60pc of an entitlement worth 300/ha, while up to 70pc is available for an entitlement worth 400/ha," said John McGee. Things have got so bad that advisors are even telling farmers with their own land to think hard before planting any more cereals this spring. It's at crisis points like this that we need everything to be on the table. For example, fertiliser prices are totally out of sync with the price of grain, and the IFA are campaigning hard to get EU import tariffs on fertiliser reduced. But a longer term solution would be a change in mindset among the authorities here to allow farmers to make better use of the resources that they already have at hand. Human sludge, known in the trade as biofert, is widely used on cereal crops in Britain without any implications for the quality assurance of the grain. It would immediately reduce the cost of fertiliser to farmers by 33pc. But Irish farmers can't use it because it is not accepted by Bord Bia. Surely there has to be a better way to allow us to make the most of our own resources? Profits at Irish travel software firm Datalex increased to $4.2m last year as revenues at the firm jumped by 13pc. The company said its 2015 performance was boosted by both adding new customers and growing its services to its existing customers. In 2015 Datalex added JetBlue Airways and Beibu Gulf, its third customer from China. Datalex posted revenue of $46.6m while its operating costs increased by 9pc to $42.6m. The Irish firm's earnings before interest tax depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) were up 23pc to $10.4m while basic earnings per share stood at US5.67c. Datalex chief executive Aidan Brogan said 2015 was "another year of strong performance" for the company. "We continued to deliver double-digit growth in our revenues, Adjusted EBITDA and cash and short term investments, while undertaking significant investment in key scaling capabilities, including our product and our people," Mr Brogan said. The company's proposed dividend increased by 33pc to US4c per share. Datalex reported 19pc growth in its cash reserves and short-term investments, up to $21.8m. Pro-Brexit minister Iain Duncan Smith, who has stepped down from Prime Minister David Camerons Conservative government, leaving the stage at a past Conservative Party Conference. Photo: PA A vote for a British withdrawal from the European Union would hit confidence and growth across the EU, with the fallout felt by Ireland in particular, Moody's Investor Service has warned. The New York-headquartered agency said some sectors could relocate to Ireland or other countries from the UK, but it said any gains to those countries would be small and gradual. Sterling was hit yesterday on concerns that divisions within the Conservative Party may be deepening in the wake of the resignation of UK Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, who is backing the leave campaign, amid a row over last week's budget. One euro is worth around 78 pence, up from 69 pence in July of last year. In a report examining the impact of a so-called Brexit, Moody's said that if UK voters opt to pull out of the European Union on June 23, the wider impact would be felt by Ireland in particular. "The general uncertainty engendered by a Brexit vote would likely hit confidence across the EU, which could weigh on economic growth," Moody's said. "Any disruption would likely be felt by Ireland in particular, which has strong economic and financial ties to the UK, but also the Netherlands, Germany and Belgium. "Set against that, certain activities could potentially start to relocate from the UK to Ireland or other EU countries, such as security clearing and dealing activities. However, we would expect any such gains to be small and gradual." Moody's said that in the short-term, following a potential vote on June 23 to leave, the initial reaction would be felt on financial markets. But it pointed out that no change would take place immediately as there would be a two-year period of negotiation. "This gradual process of negotiation implies that uncertainty about any new trading arrangements would likely persist for at least two years," Moody's said. "Indeed, the recent decline in sterling is an indication that markets are already factoring in some uncertainty prior to the vote itself. However, following a vote to leave, uncertainty would increase significantly, weighing on firms' investment, spending and hiring decisions, which would depress GDP growth." Moody's said the flow of FDI into the UK would also be hit. The agency said a British exit would be a "credit negative" for the EU as it could heighten the risk of further exits from the European Union, as well as potentially lowering commitment to supporting budgetary outlays or even a commitment to the EU itself over time. "At the same time, we do not envisage a significant immediate credit impact on other individual countries, such as Ireland," Moody's said. Meanwhile, a separate study said banks in London would be hit hard in the event of a Brexit. "Banks and investment firms are likely to be significantly and adversely affected by new restrictions on cross-border business," the study by law firm Clifford Chance said. Many banks, including international ones such as JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, have their European bases in London, the EU's biggest financial centre, and would lose their "passport" under EU law to offer services across the bloc."This 'passport' is key to the UK's appeal for many non-EU financial institutions," the study said. United Ireland would be worth billions to island - study Unification between Northern Ireland and the Republic could give an all-island economic boost of 35.6bn, a new report has found. The study, due to be launched in Dublin today, was carried out by political science and economics researchers, who conducted similar examinations of German and Korean unification models. It found that there would be long-term improvement in the Northern Irish economy as a result of the removal of currency, trade and tax barriers. The Republic would benefit from barrier-free access to the Northern Irish market. The PetroNeft board says Natlata is seeking to get control of the board without having to pay the shareholders a fair price for obtaining the company. PETRONEFT'S biggest shareholder has said the Irish-based oil and gas explorer has put forward "no solutions" apart from spending more money amidst a conflict over the company's direction. Dublin stock exchange-listed Petroneft yesterday announced that it had agreed a major work programme for its west Siberian project with Oil India as partner. That plan includes a commitment by the Indian company to fully cover costs at joint venture through a $35m loan. It was announced in the teeth of attempts by Petroneft's own biggest shareholder, Natlata, controlled by Russian businessman Maxim Korobov, to replace the listed company's entire senior managament at an extraordinary general meeting (EGM) called for April 18. The deal with India Oil will only stand if Mr Korobov's proposals are voted down at the EGM. Ahead of that meeting, Petroneft yesterday called on shareholders to vote against all of Natlata's resolutions, which include the appointment of three new directors, Anthony Sacca, David Sturt and Maxim Kirobov. Natlata is also looking for the removal of four current directors in Dennis Francis, David Sanders, Paul Dowling and David Golder. The PetroNeft board says Natlata is seeking to get control of the board without having to pay the shareholders a fair price for obtaining the company. Maxim Korobov denied that. "Our proposals are aimed solely at unlocking the value of company for the benefit of all shareholders. "In the next week we will be sending out our response and look to having a full and open discussion with shareholders in the run-up to the EGM," he said. "It is immediately apparent that the board offers no solutions of its own, except spending more money," Mr Korobov said. However, PetroNeft chief executive Dennis Francis said the agreement of the programme and budget was a major step forward for the development of License 61. Principal payments on the proposed loan would not fall due until 2019, he said. "Given the challenges currently being experienced in the market, the ability to secure this funding is a major positive for the company," he said. Natlata, meanwhile, has signalled that it could launch a takeover bid of PetroNeft. Shares in Petroneft closed unchanged yesterday at 3.20 cents each. Here are the main business stories from today's papers: Irish Independent * Apple has set its sights on the sub-premium market with its new four-inch handset, the iPhone SE. The SE was launched at Apple's 'Loop You In' event in California yesterday and is the world's fastest four-inch phone boasting an A9 processor chip. The 16GB version of the phone has a 500 price tag while the 64GB edition has been priced at 600. It is expected to go on sale in Ireland in early April. * A vote for a British withdrawal from the European Union would hit confidence and growth across the EU, with the fallout felt by Ireland in particular, Moody's Investor Service has warned. The New York-headquartered agency said some sectors could relocate to Ireland or other countries from the UK, but it said any gains to those countries would be small and gradual. Sterling was hit yesterday on concerns that divisions within the Conservative Party may be deepening in the wake of the resignation of UK Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith, who is backing the leave campaign, amid a row over last week's budget. One euro is worth around 78 pence, up from 69 pence in July of last year. * BREXIT could result in a 6bn boost to the level of foreign direct investment into Ireland, the National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) has said. In an investor update, the State's debt management agency said foreign firms in the UK could consider relocating. "This may be especially pertinent for firms who use the UK as a base for its EU operations," the NTMA note said. "Ireland could be a beneficiary from this displaced FDI. Estimates suggest some 6bn of FDI might be attracted to Ireland in the case of a Brexit." The Irish Times * Frank Keane is to become the sole trader of Volkswagen sales and services in South Dublin, replacing MSL Motor Group. Responsibility for sales and services in south Dublin will transfer over to Keane from May 1 with the move pending approval from the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission. According to a report in The Irish Times, MSL Group did not sign up to the new investment plans that were required by Volkswagen when it advertised for a south Dublin dealer. * Building materials firm CRH may be lining up a move for LafargeHolcim's Indian unit, which is valued at $1.5bn. The company spent 6.5bn on assets from Lafarge and Holcim before they merged. According to a report in The Irish Times, KKR and Blackstone are also said to be interested in the Indian unit. * A reduction in the rate of VAT down to 9pc will help stimulate house building and reduce homelessness according to lobby group Property Industry Ireland. In a policy submission to Government the group has also asked for a minister for housing, infrastructure, and planning. The PII says the volume of houses built over the course of 2017 and 2018 will be decided by the next Government's first 100 days.] Irish Examiner * Sales of properties associated with the receivership of Treasury Holdings's main Spencer Dock firm have soared five-fold with receivers banking 4.2m from the sale of 11 properties since last July. The 4.27m realised from the sale of property on behalf of receivers David Hughes and Luke Charleton of EY during the period, compared to sales of 785,093 in the prior six-month period. The prices secured for the properties developed by Spencer Dock Development Company Ltd reflect the buoyant property market in Dublin. * Sticking with CRH and the Irish Examiner says the firm is not expected to by more assets being disposed by European cement giant, LafargeHolcim. Last week LafargeHolcim said it had made significant progress towards its 3.2bn target. Contrary to The Irish Times, the Examiner suggests that CRH won't be making a move for Lafarge India, which is being sold in its entirety. * Ireland's economy is the most vulnerable to a British exit from the EU, according to new research by Oxford Economics. The research shows that Ireland's growth rate could potentially be hit by 2.2pc as a result of the exit. The Irish economy is forecast to grow this year by 4.8pc and 4.1pc in 2017. Apple has set its sights on the sub-premium market with its new four-inch handset, the iPhone SE. The SE was launched at Apple's 'Loop You In' event in California yesterday and is the world's fastest four-inch phone boasting an A9 processor chip. The 16GB version of the phone has a 500 price tag while the 64GB edition has been priced at 600. It is expected to go on sale in Ireland in early April. The smaller device bucks the trend of screen sizes increasing. However, Apple's Greg Joswiak reminded the international press that the firm sold 30 million four-inch units last year. The iPhone SE will be as fast as an iPhone 6S and double the speed of the handset it's replacing, the 5S. Apple says the phone comes with improved battery life and will be available on restricted release from next week in certain countries before it becomes widely available by May. Chief executive Tim Cook ended the event talking about the firm's new ring-shaped campus that it is set to move into in 2017. However, the Apple boss was sentimental about the firm's current headquarters. Memories "It's a very special place, with lots of memories - the iPod was announced in this room, and so was the App Store,"he said. The tablet market has been suffering of late, but that hasn't stopped Apple from also releasing a new iPad Pro. The latest edition comes with a smaller 9.7 inch screen compared to its 12.9-inch bigger brother. Like the first iPad Pro, the smaller version comes with Apple's fastest mobile processor, the A9X. During the keynote address Apple pitched heavily to PC users, saying that the iPad Pro is the "ultimate PC replacement". The smaller iPad Pro starts at 700 for a 32GB version and 880 for the 128GB version. The new device will also allow improve the quality of document scanning using its camera. Apple's iPad sales have been in freefall over the last two years with the firm hoping its iPad Pro launch in November would act as a stimulant. However, in the final quarter of 2015 sales of the tablet fell by 25pc, down to 16.1 million. Apple also launched a new healthcare framework called CareKit, which has been designed to help improve the collection of data in medicine. The first app on the framework will be used to study Parkinson's disease. Cook also used the event to defend the issue of privacy and the now notorious San Bernardino iPhone case. Apple has consistently refused to unlock an iPhone 5c owned by one of the shooters in the terrorist attack last year. "We built the iPhone for you, our customers. "And we know it is a deeply personal device," Cook said. Developer Gerry Gannon, who was one of the so-called Maple 10 called upon to help support Anglo Irish Bank's share price before it collapsed, has been told to submit more information to Fingal County Council about his plans for a huge site in north Dublin that includes the historic Georgian Belcamp Hall. Gannon acquired the 81-hectare site in 2004 for 105m, but the historic house has been subject to arson attacks and vandalism. Late last year, Gannon Properties applied for planning permission to build 34 apartments at Belcamp Hall, which it noted will repaired and upgraded, with the "historic building fabric" conserved. There will also be a three-to-four storey block of 37 apartments; one three-storey block of 16 apartments; and 139 semi-detached and detached houses. The council has told the Gannon company that it needs to submit an environmental impact statement, and noted that the "layout of the development as proposed has had no regard to the archaeological heritage of this site", and that "it may need to be fundamentally redesigned". "The applicant's suggestion that should preservation in situ be required, one block of housing would be omitted, is considered unsatisfactory, resulting in a haphazard and piecemeal approach to the development of this site," the council said. Grand Slam goes to Finch The Punt always suggests investors look coldly at a proposition and remove any emotion before getting into a deal. It's usually a good rule. And it looks like rugby fans involved in property firm HWBC's "Armchair Pundit" followed similar advice. AIB's Jason Finch took the top prize in the light-hearted prediction game, with John Middleton, head of property at wealth managers Harvest, and Kennedy Wilson's Jason Buyers, among those tied for second place. There were respectable performances from the likes of stock picker Ray Tilson of Tilman Brewin Dolphin in 26th place while Irish Life property fund manager David Eggers came 30th out of a 150-strong field. The real rugby tournament was a pretty lacklustre one overall but we wonder if we'd be saying that if Ireland had won it all for a third year in a row. As it turned out it was Les Rosbifs - England to the rest of us - who brought home the silverware. HWBC director and English native Jonathan Hillyer had the office bragging rights after his country's clean sweep of the tournament. He told The Punt: "Ireland's victory over Scotland was a nice starter before the main course of England putting some manners on Les Bleus to win the Grand Slam". Team Lyons roars ahead in Liberties Irish billionaire Pearse Lyons, who owns the US-based Alltech business whose activities range from animal feed to brewing, has been busy getting his new boutique distillery in Dublin up and running. But it's his wife, Deirdre, below, who's been driving development at the site at the historic St James' Church in the capital's Liberties area. The church was deconsecrated in 1964 and Pearse Lyons' grandfather, John Lyons, was one of the last people to be buried in its graveyard, in 1948. Deirdre Lyons has always been active in the Alltech business as its director of corporate design and image. Unsurprisingly, she said recently that the new distillery will be named the Pearse Lyons Distillery. "We are carefully restoring the property which will allow visitors experience a working boutique distillery," she said. The distillery is expected to open next year, and will join a raft of new distilleries in Ireland, including another Alltech site in Carlow. U.S. President Barack Obama walks with first lady Michelle Obama, who is holding the arm of her mother Marian Robinson, during a walking tour of Old Havana, Cuba, Sunday, March 20, 2016. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) Local Cubans watch from their homes as the motorcade of U.S. President Barack Obama arrives in a section of Old Havana, Sunday, March 20. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais) Booking.com, Starwood Hotels and Google are among the US companies leading a push into Cuba, as President Obama visits the Communist state. Priceline Group has agreed to make Cuban hotel rooms available to US customers using its subsidiary Booking.com, becoming the first US online travel agency to strike a deal with the island state, a Booking.com executive said. The deal came on the first full day of Barack Obama's visit to Cuba and on the heels of US hotel firm Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide's agreement with the Cuban government to manage and market three Havana hotel properties. The Cuban economy is dominated by the state and government-linked agencies. President Barack Obama was received by Cuban President Raul Castro in Havana yesterday at the start of historic talks where the US leader will press his counterpart for economic and democratic reforms while hearing complaints about US sanctions. Obama arrived in Cuba on Sunday on a trip that comes 15 months after he and Castro agreed to end five decades of Cold War-era animosity and work to normalise relations. Expand Close Click to view full size graphic / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Click to view full size graphic On the first full day of his visit yesterday, he went to the heart of Cuba's communist system, laying a wreath in Revolution Square at the memorial to independence hero Jose Marti. Alphabet's Google is poised to expand internet access in Cuba, President Obama told America's ABC News. "One of the things that we'll be announcing here is that Google has a deal to start setting up more wifi and broadband access on the island," Obama said in the interview that aired yesterday. Booking.com said it would allow Americans travelling to Cuba to reserve and pay for rooms at a number of Cuban and foreign hotels, starting within weeks, the company's Americas managing director, Todd Dunlap, told Reuters in an interview. Americans previously had to reserve Cuban hotels principally through travel agencies or tour groups. Booking.com would operate initially only in Havana, Dunlap said. It planned to work with foreign firms already on the island, including France's Accor and Spanish chains Melia Hotels International and NH Hotel Group. It was also working on deals with state-run Cuban chains. The only major American lodging booking service currently available to Americans travelling to Cuba is online home-rental marketplace Airbnb, which began operating in Cuba in April last year. Priceline began working on bringing its services to Cuba shortly after President Obama announced the restoration of diplomatic ties with the island on December 17, 2014. Cuban tourism infrastructure has seen significant strain since US relations to the island warmed. Prices have surged for the island's 63,000 hotel rooms, many of which are booked solid months in advance. Cuba received a record 3.52 million visitors last year, up 17.4pc from 2014. American visits rose 77pc to 161,000, not counting Cuban-Americans. American tourism to Cuba is still technically illegal under the US trade embargo. US travellers to the island are required to do so under "general licences" which permit travel for religion, family visits, cultural exchange, sports, and other purposes approved by the Treasury's Office of Foreign Asset Control. (Reuters) Game of Thrones star Alfie Allen believes the show dealt with the controversial rape scene "beautifully". The makers of the hit fantasy series faced an avalanche of criticism last year (15) after a scene showed Sansa Stark, played by British actress Sophie Turner, being sexually attacked by her new husband Ramsay Bolton on their wedding night as Alfie's character Theon Greyjoy looked on in horror. As well as slamming the show's producers for including the rape scene for shock value, critics took exception to the episode's director Jeremy Podeswa's handling of the harrowing moment. However Alfie believes that although any rape scene will be controversial, the one which saw Iwan Rheon's character attack his new wife dealt with the subject of rape delicately. Expand Close Alfie Allen in Game of Thrones / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Alfie Allen in Game of Thrones "I mean it's obviously something that I don't really like to get into or talk about," he tells Australia's Junkee news website. "And in any real life situation if that were to happen, it must be awful to deal with. But I think it was very delicately handled and if it can be beautifully done, then it was beautifully done." The actor was full of praise for his co-star Sophie Turner, whom he said brought a grim storyline focused on brutality to life. "Sophie's just amazing," he says. "First of all, she's an incredible actress. I mean she brings life onto set, especially for my and Iwan's storyline... "She can just switch it on, it's incredible. She literally is one minute singing One Direction and the next, is broken." Speaking about shooting the controversial scene, Alfie says the show's stars struggled with its subject matter, but that Game of Thrones' critics failed to see the horrifying moment within the context of a show which regularly shows savage violence. "It was a horrible day to shoot, you know," he says. "It wasn't enjoyable. Iwan was definitely losing sleep over it. It was tough. But there was such a furore about that, then two episodes later you've got an eight-year-old being burnt at the stake and no one really seemed to care too much about that. It's mental, isn't it?" Director Podeswa has revealed that in the wake of the row over his scene, the show's producers had taken on board their critics points about depicting sexual violence on screen, saying they, "were responsive to the discussion and there were a couple of things that changed as a result. Video of the Day The sixth season of Game of Thrones begins airing in Ireland next month Television star Barbara Windsor is made a Dame Commander of the order of the British Empire by the Queen The cast and crew of EastEnders donned pretend crowns as they welcomed Barbara Windsor back to the show - one day before she was made a dame by the Queen. Everyone involved in filming on Monday bowed and curtseyed as the star returned for a six-week stint to mark her final exit from the popular soap, Dame Barbara said. Expand Close Television star Barbara Windsor is made a Dame Commander of the order of the British Empire by the Queen / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Television star Barbara Windsor is made a Dame Commander of the order of the British Empire by the Queen Famed for her role as Peggy Mitchell, the 78-year-old Londoner was made a dame for her services to charity and entertainment on Tuesday. She said: "They all - all of them - had crowns on. All the crew, everybody. Because I was coming here. Expand Close BBC ROSS KEMP as Grant Mitchell, BARBARA WINDSOR as Peggy Mitchell and STEVE MCFADDEN as Phil Mitchell. / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp BBC ROSS KEMP as Grant Mitchell, BARBARA WINDSOR as Peggy Mitchell and STEVE MCFADDEN as Phil Mitchell. "I said 'Oh shut up, you daft lot'. It was just so wonderful, because I am the first dame they've ever had. "My scenes were with June Brown - Dot Cotton - who is one of my dearest friends and I absolutely adore her. "It was an absolutely wonderful day." The actress added that she thought it was funny she had been asked to go in for two early shifts either side of the investiture ceremony at Buckingham Palace. Expand Close EastEnders star Dame Barbara Windsor said despite her decision to leave for good, her love for the show would never change / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp EastEnders star Dame Barbara Windsor said despite her decision to leave for good, her love for the show would never change She said: "Typical - they call me in first thing in the morning. It made me laugh - 'You might be a dame but you're still in first thing in the morning' - I loved it!" Wearing a figure-hugging purple lace dress with button detailing, a ruffled collar and matching fascinator, the petite star said it was lovely to meet the Queen - "another small lady". She said she was impressed by the monarch's "gorgeous" skin and joked to guests - "I wonder what she uses." The Queen, wearing a green knee-length dress, presented honours to 59 people, as 260 family members and guests watched on. Expand Close Barbara Windsor and husband Scott Mitchell at The Pride of Britain Awards / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Barbara Windsor and husband Scott Mitchell at The Pride of Britain Awards Video of the Day Dame Barbara was joined by her husband Scott - "also a Mitchell!"- and her former agent, Barry Burnett, at the ceremony. The Carry On! star, who was previously awarded an MBE, is an ambassador for Age UK and backs other charities supporting the elderly, as well launching the British Legion's Poppy Appeal in October. She will celebrate later with family and some EastEnders colleagues - June Brown (Dot Cotton) and Pam St Clement ( Pat Butcher) - for a special lunch at Fortnum & Mason in central London. The EastEnders theme tune was played by the orchestra just before the Queen arrived, Dame Barbara's husband said proudly. The actress said receiving her award felt like performing on an opening night, but she relaxed when she started talking to the Queen. "I wished her happy birthday, I was quite amazed at how beautiful she looks," Dame Barbara said. Cold Feet and The Hobbit actor James Nesbitt said he was "thrilled" to be awarded an OBE for his services to drama and to the community in Northern Ireland - after spending years helping families affected by the Troubles. Watching proudly were Nesbitt's daughters, Peggy, 18, and Mary, 14, as well as his 88-year-old father. Others honoured at the ceremony include former Lord Mayor of London Alan Yarrow, who received a knighthood for his services to international business, inclusion and the City of London. Collette Kallee, from Bury in Greater Manchester, was made an OBE for her services to the Ebola response in Sierra Leone, and the chief executive of Tameside Metropolitan Borough Council, Steven Pleasant, picked up an MBE for his services to the welfare and housing of asylum seekers and refugees. Twink is on the panel of the Midday Show. Photo: TV3 Did Twink's beloved pooch Teddy pass out on live TV or was the good-natured Yorkshire terrier just taking a nap? The tiny terrier was by Twink's side as she was interviewed on TV3's Midday Show. The pampered pooch is used to life in the spotlight but The Sun reports that Teddy appeared to pass out under the bright lights of the studo. "There was a bit of a panic upstairs in the director's box. Teddy seemed to go under with the heat of the lights," the newspaper reports a source at TV3 revealed. Expand Close Twink is on the panel of the Midday Show. Photo: TV3 / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Twink is on the panel of the Midday Show. Photo: TV3 However, the miniature Yorkshire terrier is a seasoned professional and is used to TV and theatre sets. "I can confirm that Teddy didn't pass out live on air," says Paul Blake, assistant producer of Midday. "The director didn't highlight any issues with the dog during the show and was at no point worried about him. Teddy was asleep." Journalist Andrea Smith, who was on the set with Twink and Teddy, says the suggestions that the terrier passed out are "disgraceful and unfounded". Expand Close Teddy poses for the camera with journalist Andrea Smith. Photo: Andrea Smith / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Teddy poses for the camera with journalist Andrea Smith. Photo: Andrea Smith "I was on that same Midday panel with Twink, Terry Prone, Rosemary MacCabe and host and producer Elaine Crowley yesterday, and for anyone to suggest that Teddy passed out on air is disgraceful and unfounded," says Smith. "Teddy is an extremely docile, well-behaved little companion dog who goes everywhere with Twink, and is well used to the atmosphere of a TV studio or stage. "I have been in their company on many occasions at the theatre, award ceremonies and social occasions, and Teddy always greets everyone with delight and then settles down and goes straight to sleep once the event begins. "He causes no fuss, much to my own envy, as none of my seven dogs would ever behave as beautifully in company. And I'm sure Twink wouldn't mind me saying that she wouldn't be able to bring all of her other dogs on set - she has six in total - and for them to behave as impeccably as Teddy." Expand Close Teddy gets his make-up done before he's called on set. Photo: Andrea Smith / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Teddy gets his make-up done before he's called on set. Photo: Andrea Smith Video of the Day Twink has filled in co-presenting The Seven O'Clock Show on TV3 on several occasions, accompanied on set by Teddy, and he also performed in panto with her for several years in Limerick. "She idolises him and would never do anything to jeopardise his welfare, and any suggestion to the contrary is absolutely scurrilous," says Andrea. "It is also outrageous to suggest that TV3 personnel and the producers of Midday allowed the show to continue if they genuinely believed that the dog had been overcome by heat and had passed out. "Firstly the studio wasn't hot, and secondly the idea that anyone on that panel or in the studio would allow a dog to pass out in their presence without intervening is deeply insulting. It didn't happen anyway. Expand Close Andrea Smith and Twink. Photo: Andrea Smith / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Andrea Smith and Twink. Photo: Andrea Smith "After having a bit of fun with the girls in the make up room beforehand, Teddy settled down on the desk and went to sleep peacefully during the show. When it was over, he woke up, came out with Twink and walked around happily." Teddy and Twink share a close bond and the panto performer was left devastated when her dog disappeared from her home in 2014. But before the day was out, thanks to a massive social media appeal, her loyal pooch was back home in Knocklyon and was in good spirits despite the dognapping ordeal. Twink said she was overjoyed at Teddy Bears return Dublin Zoo's new wolves get settled in to their new environment. Photo: Patrick Bolger. Hear her roar! One of Dublin Zoo's new wolves shows off her impressive bark. Photo: Patrick Bolger Dublin Zoo's new wolves get ready for feeding time. Photo: Patrick Bolger. Dublin Zoo's new wolves get settled in to their new environment. Photo: Patrick Bolger. Dublin Zoo has announced the arrival of eight new grey wolves. The new pack of wolves, which came from Osnabruck Zoo in north-west Germany, consists of an alpha male, an alpha female and their offspring. Expand Close Dublin Zoo welcomes eight new wolves. Photo: Patrick Bolger. / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Dublin Zoo welcomes eight new wolves. Photo: Patrick Bolger. The furry family range in age from two to ten-years-old. In order to help the new arrivals settle in with ease, the animal care team will introduce the family to the existing pack of wolves in the coming weeks. Expand Expand Previous Next Close One of Dublin Zoo's new wolves keeps a watchful eye over his new home. Photo: Patrick Bolger. Dublin Zoo's new wolves get settled in to their new environment. Photo: Patrick Bolger. / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp One of Dublin Zoo's new wolves keeps a watchful eye over his new home. Photo: Patrick Bolger. It's important that they get to know their neighbours. Team leader Ciaran McMahon said, We are very pleased with these wonderful additions to Dublin Zoo. The pack arrived from Germany just two weeks ago and the wolves are showing clear signs of settling in. "They are comfortable and confident in their new surroundings and remain close at all times. Despite the name, greay wolves can exist in any colour from black to white. They live in well-organised packs with a complicated social system. The whole pack travels, hunts, and raises their offspring together. Expand Close Hear her roar! One of Dublin Zoo's new wolves shows off her impressive bark. Photo: Patrick Bolger / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Hear her roar! One of Dublin Zoo's new wolves shows off her impressive bark. Photo: Patrick Bolger Grey wolves once lived in the forests of Ireland but their habitat was destroyed and they were hunted. Once the forest disappeared, the wolves disappeared. The last wolf seen in Ireland was in County Carlow in 1786. Expand Close Dublin Zoo's new wolves get settled in to their new environment. Photo: Patrick Bolger. / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Dublin Zoo's new wolves get settled in to their new environment. Photo: Patrick Bolger. Visitors to Dublin Zoo can see the grey wolves at their habitat in the Zoo. The wolves can also be observed on the Zoo webcam which is on Dublin Zoos website. Seeing the names of most of the civilians who died in 1916 make for sombre reading, reminding us of those who became unwillingly entangled in the story of Easter Week. The list includes the names of Christina Caffrey, a two-year-old child shot in her mothers arms in their Corporation Buildings tenement home, and Bridget McKane, a teenager accidentally killed during the evacuation process of the GPO Garrison towards Moore Street. One name that appears on the list is that of Ernest Kavanagh. While not a rebel participant in the fighting, he certainly had a rebel outlook on Irish political life. Kavanagh utilised his skills as a political cartoonist for the good of the radical political movements he belonged to, contributing striking cartoons to Jim Larkins newspaper The Irish Worker , the Irish Republican Brotherhood newspaper Irish Freedom, and other publications in the early twentieth century. Many readers of left-wing newspapers knew the artist only as E.K, which is how he signed his work. Ernest Kavanagh was born in Dublin in 1884, but it was from 1912 he began to make his work, when his work began to appear in the Larkinite press. The Irish Worker newspaper Described as vitriolic and scurrilous, Jim Larkins newspaper The Irish Worker was born in 1911. The historian John O'Beirne Ranelagh has noted that the paper "enjoyed an average circulation of 20,000 and was sued for libel seven times in its first year of publication." For context, its print run was remarkable for an explicitly political journal, far and above that of the Sinn Fein publication or others like it. It was also closely monitored by 'G-Division', or the intelligence police officers, of the Dublin Metropolitan Police. The language deployed by Larkin against his political opponents, coupled with the papers humorous content and Kavanaghs cartoons ensured that it was a hit. While wholesale distributors were sometimes uneasy with the content of the newspaper, it was routinely distributed by a loyal band of newsboys. So committed were Dublins newsboys to Larkinism, they had actually gone on strike themselves in 1911, seeking improved conditions from the Evening Herald, turning over newspaper delivery vans and throwing bundles of newspapers into the Liffey. During the Lockout of 1913, Kavanaghs cartoons poured scorn on the Dublin Metropolitan Police. One cartoon depicted a baton-swinging policeman clinging to a bottle of Jameson whiskey, implying that the police were drunk on the job during violent clashes with locked-out workers. Yet the police were not the only ones to fall victim to Kavanaghs pen; the constitutional nationalist John Redmond was often ridiculed after the Volunteer split in 1914, presented as little more than a recruiting sergeant for the British war effort. Demonstrating strong political sympathies towards the womens movement, Kavanagh once depicted Redmond as the angel of freedom in the pages of feminist newspaper The Irish Citizen, showing the politician standing upon the body of a Suffrage campaigner. It was because of what one friend termed an inherent antipathy to discipline that Ernest did not join the ranks of the Volunteer or Citizen Army movements that emerged during the revolutionary period. Kavanagh tended to draw political opponents, to mock and ridicule them. As a contemporary remembered, it was the men he deemed hypocrites, cowards, tyrants or liars that he minutely dissected. In addition to his work as a cartoonist, Kavanagh worked in Liberty Hall as a clerk to the Irish Transport and General Workers Union, the trade union that had been established by Larkin, but which came under the control of James Connolly following Larkins departure to the United States in 1914. Shot dead A journalist in one Dublin newspaper would describe Liberty Hall dramatically as the centre of social anarchy, the brain of every riot and disturbance. It was the epicentre of a workers counter-culture that both Larkin and Connolly promoted, and its printing press was one of the weapons at its disposal. It was the same printing press that was utilised to print Connollys newspaper The Workers Republic that would ultimately print the Proclamation. On 25 April 1916, the second day of the rebellion, Kavanagh was shot dead on the steps of Liberty Hall. Kavanaghs biographer James Curry, who has done much in recent years to draw fresh attention to this important figure in the history of the radical press, maintains that Kavanagh seemingly called to Liberty Hall in order to offer his services to the rebels due to feeling guilty for not joining the Rising at its commencement the day before. British military forces had presumed Liberty Hall to be occupied in the early stages of the rebellion, a mistaken assumption that would also lead to the Helga shelling the trade union headquarters. Maeve Cavanagh MacDowell, Ernests sister (who adopted a different spelling of the family name), recalled in her statement to the Bureau of Military History that Ernest had told a sibling he was unable to sleep the night previous to his death, overcome with guilt at not being in the ranks of the rebels. Maeve, like her brother, contributed to the revolutionary generation in unique ways, as a gifted poet and writer. She would later dedicate a book of her work to her brother, murdered by the English military on the steps of Liberty Hall. Fr Joseph Mallin was conferred with the honorary freedom of the capital by Lord Mayor, Criona Ni Dhalaigh The only surviving child of an executed leader of the 1916 Rising has been honoured with the freedom of Dublin city. Fr Joseph Mallin was conferred with the honorary freedom of the capital by Lord Mayor, Criona Ni Dhalaigh. Fr Mallin is the son of Michael Mallin, who was second in command of the Irish Citizen Army during the Easter Rising. He was only two when his father was executed in Kilmainham Jail in 1916. Fr Mallin has been a Jesuit priest in Hong Kong since 1948, and was honoured at a ceremony in the city on Monday morning. Dublin's Lord Mayor paid tribute to Fr Mallin for not only his father's part in the Rising but also his stellar work in Hong Kong for more than half a century. "The Freedom of the City is the highest civic honour Dublin city can bestow," said Ms Ni Dhalaigh. "I am acknowledging his family connection to the Easter 1916 Rising as the son of Commandant Michael Mallin. "His skills as a priest, a mentor, teacher and giver of grace have made a difference to thousands of lives," she added. Fr Mallin becomes the 81st person to receive the honour and joins the likes of John wF Kennedy, Gay Byrne and Brian O'Driscoll on the honours list. A man dubbed the "worst offender" before court will not serve any extra jail time after he admitted driving without insurance for the 46th time. Jimmy Connors (59), of The Avenue, Belgard Heights, Tallaght - the brother of gang murder victim 'Fat Andy' Connors - was given suspended sentences totalling 25 months at Tallaght District Court by Judge John Lindsay. Connors' lawyer, Gabby Deane, said the defendant had experienced some tragedy in his life, including the murder of his brother in August 2014. Connors admitted to having no insurance and no driving licence at Brookview Drive, Tallaght, on June 30 last. He also pleaded guilty to having no insurance, no licence, fraudulent use of a tax disc and driving while disqualified at Bothair Katherine Tynan, Tallaght, last July 15. He further admitted having no insurance and no licence at Rossfield Drive, Tallaght, last July 5. Hearing the extent of Connors' previous convictions, Judge Lindsay said: "He deserves to qualify for the position of the worst offender before the court." Sgt Michael Ahern said Connors, who was before the judge for a probation report, had 279 previous convictions including 45 for no insurance. Connors is currently serving a 15-month sentence. Judge Lindsay sentenced him to consecutive sentences totalling 25 months, all suspended for 24 months, and banned him from driving for 30 years. Connors' younger brother 'Fat Andy', who was one of Ireland's most notorious criminals, was shot dead in a bitter cash dispute in August 2014. The 45-year-old father-of-six was murdered in front of his wife and children at their newly-built home. No arrests have yet been made in the investigation into his death. Extortion Connors' extended Traveller gang, which has more than 200 members, was the chief target of Operation Fiacla and other large investigations, but his murder did not end the thugs' nationwide crime spree. They are the most prolific gang involved in countless burglaries, sources say. Gardai have been investigating whether Connors was killed by the INLA after he refused to bow to their extortion demands. They are also looking into a dispute he was involved in with a high-profile south Dublin businessman. The Criminal Courts of Justice in Dublin Two men have been charged in connection with a robbery that occurred outside a Dublin supermarket yesterday afternoon. Gardai have charged two men, aged in their late 20s and mid 30s, in connection with the robbery that occurred outside a supermarket in Balgaddy, Lucan at around 2 p.m. The two men are due to appear before District Court 2, Criminal Courts of Justice, Dublin this afternoon. The men were arrested yesterday afternoon following a robbery in which a firearm was produced. The suspects left the scene in a Ford Mondeo. This vehicle was abandoned on Esker Lane a short time later and a number of Gardai carried out a search of the area and two men were arrested. They were both detained at Lucan Garda Station under Section 30 of the Offences Against the State Act, 1939-'98 as amended. Gardai recovered the proceeds of the robbery, and a firearm. The father who tragically died along with his two sons, mother-in-law and sister-in-law, was described as a "devoted father" who "idolised his children". Sean McGrotty's brother, Tommy (60), said he read a Facebook post about the Donegal nightmare on Sunday night without realising it was his own family who were involved. "I thought to myself, 'Somebody's going to get a bad knock at the door tonight.' Just at that minute, my phone rang and it was a nephew of mine. He said to me, 'You need to get up to my da's house straight away,'" he said at the family home in the Ballymagroarty area of Derry. Sean (49), his two sons, Mark (12) and Evan, eight, their grandmother, Rita Daniels (59), and her daughter, Jodie-Lee (14), all drowned. Jim McGrotty, another brother, said Sean "was the most devoted of fathers and husbands. He idolised his children". Read More The family paid tribute to Davitt Walsh, who jumped in to the sea to rescue baby Rioghnach-Ann. Mr McGrotty said the boys stayed with their grandmother the night before the family trip to Buncrana for a "nice day's outing" turned to tragedy. "On the Sunday, Sean decided to take them all out for dinner," said Tommy. "He called down and took the wee ones out to Buncrana. They all had dinner in Buncrana and then he took them to the park along the shorefront. "It must have been on the way home they decided to go look at the sunset on the pier and then, that's when it all went wrong and tragically ended in disaster. "It was just a day out, it was just a nice day's outing, as anybody does on a Sunday." Read More He paid tribute to his younger brother Sean, who worked as a glazier in Derry, saying: "He was a man's man. He loved his pigeons but most of all he loved his kids and family. I was really close to him." Mr McGrotty said Sean and his partner Louise had been faced with "unimaginable tragedy" about 10 years ago when they lost a baby at childbirth. "She was devastated by that," he said. "It was a wee girl as well, so she was really excited when she had Rioghnach-Ann." The McGrotty family suffered a second loss last year when their sister, Ann McColgan, died from cancer. Their father and sister are flying home from Canada for the funerals on Thursday. Irelands oldest university has been described as 'misguided and naive' by the QS agency because of letters it sent to academics, alumni and employers, encouraging participation in surveys used to gather data Trinity College Dublin (TCD) has been rapped on the knuckles by an international university rankings agency for breaching the guidelines it uses to ensure the accuracy of its annual league tables. Ireland's oldest university has been described as "misguided and naive" by the QS agency because of letters it sent to academics, alumni and employers, encouraging participation in surveys used to gather data. A QS spokesperson said the "saddest part of this affair is that a prestigious institution such as TCD felt the need to execute such a campaign, overlooking the potential damage to its otherwise solid reputation as a world top-100 university". TCD is our highest-ranked university internationally but has dropped down the league tables in recent years. The college is making a determined effort to improve its standing in two leading rankings, the UK-based Times Higher Education (THES) and QS, through a range of measures, including ensuring that its research gets due attention and by making key players aware of upcoming 2016 surveys. But the QS spokesperson said it had notified TCD that its 'awareness' campaign was "in breach" of QS guidelines. She said they would be "reviewing the TCD case and discussing the potential consequences with our advisors over the coming days, before further engaging with the institution directly to discuss the potential outcomes of our inquiry". A TCD spokesperson said it had sent the letters in good faith and the Times Higher Education agency had no issues with the letters. "At no time were they intended to influence the response of the recipients. We regret that our communication with our community on this matter has caused any concern," it said. "At all times, we respect the integrity of the rankings agencies in their collation of data in informing the annual global rankings." The controversy broke as the latest QS rankings showed that Irish universities have dropped two top 50 places in its World University Rankings by Subject. Ireland takes six top 50 places across 42 disciplines in more than 4,000 universities - two fewer than last year. TCD has the most top 50 finishes for Ireland, claiming four of the six: 31st in nursing; 32nd in English language and literature; joint 39th in modern languages; and 43rd in politics and international studies. UCD is 31st in veterinary science and UCC is 34th in nursing. Subjects that fell out of the rankings this year included development studies in UCD, biological sciences, and history in TCD and pharmacy in UCC. Independent TD Michael Healy-Rae is "sore but recovering" after being injured in a farm accident in Kerry. The 49-year-old was rushed to Cork University Hospital (CUH) after being hurt when he was apparently kicked by a cow as he was working on a Kerry farm at 6pm on Sunday. He was expected to be discharged last night after being kept for tests and observation throughout the day by doctors. Medical staff wanted to ensure the Kerry politician had not sustained any fractures or soft tissue injuries. His son, Jackie Junior, confirmed his father will be fine. "My father is recovering well at present," he said. Mr Healy-Rae's brother, Danny, who was elected a TD for Kerry last month, said his sibling was "quite sore but will make a full recovery". Speaking to Newstalk's Pat Kenny Show today, Mr Healy-Rae said; "The cow and the calf are being minded in my absence." He continued: "The show will carry on. "It was just one of those things. But I do feel sorry for children that you hear are involved in machinery accidents. If one good thing can come out of this it's to make even one more person more careful then I was and not to take their eyes off the ball like I did." The family stressed that Michael Healy-Rae will be back attending to constituency business "within days". His injuries will similarly not stop him participating in negotiations over the formation of the next Government. The family described the incident as "a minor farm accident". Mr Healy-Rae, after being kicked and injured by the cow, was able to get away from the animal but, on the advice of a GP, he was taken to CUH to have his injuries fully assessed. Mr Healy-Rae is now expected to return to his Kerry home to recuperate. The incident occurred as Mr Healy-Rae has emerged as a key figure in talks to form a Government in the 32nd Dail. He made history by being elected alongside his brother, Danny Healy-Rae, in the five-seat Kerry constituency. The Department of Environment, Community and Local Government revealed that acting minister Alan Kelly has received proposals from the Association of Irish Local Government in relation to payments to councillors. The incoming government will consider a pay rise for county councillors as a senator called for a 40pc hike in their wages. The Department of Environment, Community and Local Government revealed that acting minister Alan Kelly has received proposals from the Association of Irish Local Government in relation to payments to councillors. "These are being considered by him in the context of an operational review of the local government reforms introduced in 2014," it said. Fine Gael senator Tom Sheahan said local authority politicians are overworked and deserve a salary hike from 9.60 to 13.40 an hour. This would bring their yearly wages to 23,000 for their contracted 33 hours work per week. Mr Sheahan, who served on Kerry County Council for the Killarney area following the 2004 local elections, claimed that only the wealthy will want to do their job in the future. He said councillors are working far more than their contracted hours following the abolition of municipal, town and borough councils. The senator said the part-time job had become full-time and most councillors work 40 hours or more a week, including weekends, and are always on call. The CEO of Chambers Ireland, Ian Talbot, said any increase in costs must be matched by the same level of savings. The shocking image below shows a man ripping down posters for a missing young mother who vanished without a trace over two years ago. Elizabeth Clarke (25) was last seen leaving her ex-partner's house in the Claremont estate in Navan, Co Meath, in November 2013. But despite two years of searching, there has been no clues as to her whereabouts. Photos taken close to where she was last seen show an individual tearing down missing person posters that had been placed there just days earlier by the mum-of-two's heartbroken family. "We just can't understand why this person would do this," said Elizabeth's uncle, Anthony Clarke. "Why on earth would anyone want to do this? Why would anyone hinder the search for a missing mother?" he added. Elizabeth's family say she went missing without her bank cards, passport or phone and they have now come to terms with the fact that they are "looking for a body". "There is nothing of Elizabeth," her heartbroken aunt, Geraldine Olliffe, told the Irish Independent previously. "She has completely disappeared leaving her two young kids, and there have been no sightings, no evidence of where she went. "People don't just vanish into thin air without a trace, and that is what has happened to our Elizabeth. "We know that she wouldn't leave her little ones either, she lived for them, and everything she did was for them," she added. Her family are conducting private searches in the Navan area in the hopes of finding her. "There is no doubt in our minds that she has been murdered," said Anthony. "The more time that passes, the more we are convinced of that." Gardai said they are still treating her case as that of a missing person. Anyone who can assist in locating Elizabeth is asked to contact Navan Garda Station on (046) 9036100, the Garda Confidential Telephone Line (1800) 666 111 or any garda station. Teenagers who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and intersex (LGBTI) can experience "harrowing" levels of mental distress, leaving them at a three times higher risk than normal of attempting to take their own lives. Their quiet desperation, which is revealed in the largest ever study of the mental health of the LGBTI community, is particularly severe during the crucial teenage years between 14 and 18. The study shows 56pc of LGBTI people in this age group had self-harmed, 70pc had suicidal thoughts and one in three had attempted suicide. Compared to their peers, they have twice the levels of self-harm; three times the rate of attempted suicide, and they are four times more likely to endure extreme stress, anxiety and depression. Across age groups, between 12-35pc of LGBTI people report having severe depression. The study was funded by the National Office for Suicide Prevention and was undertaken by a team at Trinity College Dublin, led by Professor Agnes Higgins. Dr Carol-Anne O'Brien, director of advocacy at BeLonG To said: "As well as differences across age groups, it also found differences among LGBTI people." The research reveals that there is a hierarchy of risk among LGBTI people, with intersex, transgender and bisexual people reporting poorer mental health. "This hierarchy of risk reflects the fact that more progress has been made on reducing homophobia in Ireland than biphobia and transphobia. "This hierarchy of progress highlights the need for increased advocacy and support for bisexual, transgender and intersex people and to address the diversity of needs within the LGBTI community." Former President Mary McAleese, who will launch the report today, described some of its findings as "horrifying". She said: "The ongoing damage is undeniable. That it involves so many young people is tragic." But she added the good news is that it is "solvable" as it would leave people "heart sore". Odhran Allen, of the support group GLEN, said: "The progress achieved for Irish LGBTI people in 2015 gives us solid ground for the urgent work necessary in our schools, communities, workplaces and in our homes." Support is available at www.lgbt.ie and the national LGBT helpline at 1890 929 539. Last Novembers attack at the Bataclan theatre in Paris has been of particular interest to the researchers along with recent attacks in Norway and Kenya A team of Irish researchers will interview security forces, first responders and survivors of terrorists attacks to explore people's movements and actions during incidents. In a first-of-its-kind study that will examine people's behaviour during the first 10 minutes of "marauding" terrorist attacks like the Paris attack in November 2015, Maynooth University researchers will also assess information collected by international agencies. Dr Mark Maguire, Head of Maynooth University's Department of Anthropology, said the first 10 minutes of these attacks are central to this research. "The role played by natural instinct in these circumstances has been greatly overstated in the past," he said. "Evidence points to learned behaviour and cultural factors playing a far more significant role in decision-making processes when people are placed in extreme stress." The researchers' preliminary findings demonstrate that when the public is accustomed to being protected by the government, they are more likely to have a passive response to an attack. However, in countries with a history of conflict and unrest, those under threat are more likely to take action against the attackers. Attacks Attacks by terrorists using assault rifles and low-grade explosives to slaughter innocent people at cafes, stadiums, shopping malls and other public places have become one of the principal forms of terrorism across the globe. Last November's attack at the Bataclan theatre in Paris has been of particular interest to the researchers along with recent attacks in Norway and Kenya. Once their work is concluded, the group aim to establish a bank of knowledge that first responders can draw upon to improve their services. They will then organise a series of workshops that will bring representatives from relevant organisations together for role-playing exercises and develop a major international research project. Team member Sadhbh McCarthy said such knowledge could be vital in dealing with threats. "Having our first responders properly prepared for an attack, should it occur, represents the most cogent and mature strategy for protecting the lives of citizens. "The trends of these attacks show that the perpetrators are typically domestic citizens and carry out these attacks for a multiplicity of reasons." Luas operator Transdev has refused to reveal its back-up plan should two days of strikes go ahead over the Easter weekend. The company caused union consternation when it announced it was hiring a special bus service to ferry passengers into the St Patrick's Day parade during a proposed strike. The NBRU accused it of "strike-breaking" and bringing in "scab labour". But after that strike was averted, the company proposed a new deal that would put Luas staff in line for pay increases of more than 6pc a year, or up to 18pc in less than three years. Company and union sources were pessimistic about staff backing the deal yesterday. A spokesperson for Transdev insisted it was in "sales pitch mode" as it focused on getting the pay deal over the line in a ballot tomorrow and Thursday to halt further industrial action at the Luas. Meanwhile, the threat of a strike at the Dart next month has deepened after unions refused to attend talks today on a new roster. Siptu and the National Bus and Railworkers' Union (NBRU) said the dispute over more frequent services had been overtaken by the pay increases negotiated at the Luas, which they were now demanding for their members. They will not engage with Irish Rail at the Workplace Relations Commission until it responds to their claim for an increase to match the Luas increase as well as the payment of 6pc due under an old social partnership agreement. The Luas wage hike is at least double the average pay rise being given in other sectors and the NBRU has already lodged claims with Bus Eireann, Dublin Bus and Irish Rail for similar increases. Siptu is recommending the deal to its members and is holding a meeting today with almost 250 workers, including 172 drivers. Drivers plan to mount Luas strikes on Easter Sunday and Monday. Irish Rail said it regretted the decision of Siptu and the NBRU to withdraw from today's talks. "It is notable that during the recession, when Dart frequency was reduced, roster and timetable changes were accepted without issue, but as we seek to restore Dart services in line with demand our trade unions refuse to engage with the company," said Irish Rail. General secretary of the NBRU, Dermot O'Leary, said pay rises proposed to settle the Luas dispute would "inevitably result in setting this as a benchmark for pay in exchequer-subsidised public transport". The heartbroken mother whose family died when their car plunged in to the sea in Buncrana spoke to them minutes before the tragedy. Louise James lost her long-term partner Sean McGrotty (46), sons Evan (8) and Mark (12), mum Ruth Daniels (57) and 15-year-old sister Jodie-Lee Daniels. Ms James was returning from a hen party in Liverpool when the tragedy unfolded in Co Donegal. Northern Ireland's Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness visited Ms James in her home in Derry, where the local community has been left "stunned". "She actually spoke to her children around seven o'clock last night in a park in Buncrana and half an hour later they were gone," he said. "To meet with her this morning was just a scene of utter devastation in the house. She is obviously surrounded by close family members, all of whom are just distraught. "It is just one of the most heartbreaking scenes that you could ever envisage. "The young woman that I met has to live with this for the rest of her life. How do you live with this?" Her baby daughter, who was said to be doing well in Letterkenny General Hospital, was rescued by passer-by Davitt Walsh, who stripped down and swam out to the sinking car as Mr McGrotty screamed for help. Sean McGrotty's brother Tommy said the rest of the family will have to be strong for Louise and Rioghnach-Ann. "She's heartbroken, how can you cope with it?," he said. "I think it will take a long time for this to set in, for her to realise what actually has happened. It's the aftermath of it all, she has to cope with that. We have to be there for her and be strong for Louise, that's all we can do." Mr McGrotty smiled as he described his nephews, Evan and Mark, as "two characters". Evan had muscular dystrophy and was recently measured for his first wheelchair, he said. Despite this, he was warmly remembered as a happy-go-lucky child who never got upset with his illness. "Mark would have been the quieter one, he would have been a bit more of a thinker. Whereas Evan was a joker, he loved getting involved and carrying on. He would play to get what he wanted," said Mr McGrotty. "But they were great kids, they wouldn't turn a bad word in your mouth. They just loved life. "Jodie-Lee was a lovely wee girl. She had her whole life in front of her," said Mr McGrotty. Last night, her sister Louise was being supported by family and friends as she tried to grasp the extent of the tragedy. Parish priest Fr Paddy O'Kane said the family is utterly devastated. "Words cannot describe what they are going through," he said. "I have been a priest for 43 years and it is the worst incident I have come across, with three generations of the same family lost like this." Mr McGuinness, who is from Derry, said everyone in the area was stunned by the tragedy. "We are all lost for words. It's mind-numbing, it's horrific, it's heartbreaking, it's all those things," he said. "There are no words adequate to describe the loss that a young woman has suffered as a result of this tragedy. "She (Louise) has lost her partner, her two sons, her mother and her sister." Family members react as they arrive at the funeral service for prison officer Adrian Ismay, at Woodvale Methodist Church in Belfast, Northern Ireland March 22, 2016 The coffin of prison officer Adrian Ismay arrives at Woodvale Methodist Church in north Belfast for his funeral, who was murdered by dissident republicans The hearse carrying the coffin of prison officer Adrian Ismay, arrives for his funeral service at Woodvale Methodist Church in Belfast, Northern Ireland March 22, 2016 The coffin of prison officer Adrian Ismay is carried into Woodvale Methodist Church for his funeral service in Belfast, Northern Ireland March 22, 2016 A mourner holds a printed tribute at the funeral service for prison officer Adrian Ismay, at Woodvale Methodist Church in Belfast, Northern Ireland March 22, 2016 The coffin of prison officer Adrian Ismay is carried into Woodvale Methodist Church for his funeral service in Belfast, Northern Ireland March 22, 2016 The funeral for a prison officer murdered by dissident republicans in Northern Ireland is under way in Belfast. Family, friends and colleagues of 52-year-old Adrian Ismay are attending a service at a church off the city's Shankill Road. Expand Close A mourner holds a printed tribute at the funeral service for prison officer Adrian Ismay, at Woodvale Methodist Church in Belfast, Northern Ireland March 22, 2016 / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp A mourner holds a printed tribute at the funeral service for prison officer Adrian Ismay, at Woodvale Methodist Church in Belfast, Northern Ireland March 22, 2016 Mr Ismay, a married father-of-three, died 11 days after suffering serious leg injuries when a bomb exploded underneath his van. A public vigil for the officer will be held outside City Hall later. Northern Ireland Secretary Theresa Villiers is attending the funeral service at Woodvale Methodist Church, as is Stormont First Minister Arlene Foster. Mr Ismay's Prison Service cap, gloves and medals were placed on top of his coffin as it was carried inside the church. Expand Close The coffin of prison officer Adrian Ismay is carried into Woodvale Methodist Church for his funeral service in Belfast, Northern Ireland March 22, 2016 / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The coffin of prison officer Adrian Ismay is carried into Woodvale Methodist Church for his funeral service in Belfast, Northern Ireland March 22, 2016 A dissident republican group calling itself the New IRA, which opposes the Northern Ireland peace process, claimed to have carried out the attack on the long-serving officer. Police fear the bombing was part of a planned surge in dissident activity ahead of the symbolic republican centenary of the Easter Rising against British rule in Dublin. Mr Ismay had been released from hospital in the wake of the blast in east Belfast on March 4 and had reportedly been making good progress. But he died unexpectedly last Tuesday when a blood clot triggered a heart attack. The results of a post-mortem examination led detectives to open a murder investigation. In the wake of Mr Ismay's death, a number of dissident republicans held in Maghaberry high-security prison in Co Antrim reportedly celebrated by lighting cigars. A 45-year-old man from west Belfast has been remanded in custody charged with the murder. Mr Ismay worked at Hydebank Wood Young Offenders Centre in south Belfast, where he trained new recruits to the Northern Ireland Prison Service (NIPS). All visits to Maghaberry and Hydebank Wood have been cancelled today to allow staff to attend their colleague's funeral. Three newly qualified gardai have already resigned from the force due to low wages, a new survey has revealed. Officers have told this month's edition of the Garda Review that they have been recruited into poverty. Over 24,000 people applied for the garda posts when they were announced in January 2014. But the Garda Representative Association (GRA) has revealed that three of the elite few who qualified from Templemore have already quit because they couldn't live on the wages. The new officers have a starting wage of 23,171 - significantly less than their colleagues who qualified before the recruitment freeze. Many more new members have also threatened to quit with one saying they would be better off "stacking shelves in Tesco". GRA vice president Ciaran ONeill said: The new question is now whether these members will remain within an Garda Siochana with many contending that the two-tier pay structure has recruited them into poverty. From the new entrants, three have resigned so far. All are citing financial reasons, it is unprecedented. They have all gone to better-paid jobs. Expand Close GRA vice president Ciaran ONeill / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp GRA vice president Ciaran ONeill Read More Mr ONeill, who regularly liaises with the new entrants who have joined An Garda Siochana since 2014, asked them to submit feedback of personal circumstances and financial pressure as a result of the low pay. In total 685 recruits have qualified and a further 150 are in training at Templemore College in Tipperary. The magazine carries 15 first person accounts of the daily struggles of a new recruit. The stories are anonymous to protect the identities of the gardai. One 25-year-old officer told the magazine that he had applied for family income supplement from the Social Welfare as we earn so little. I cannot afford medical aid or any other health insurance, and we need some kind of insurance in this job. Another newly qualified officer told how he dreamed of being a garda for the majority of his life but is now considering leaving. The Dublin based officer explained how he has been forced to live on just 100 a week for food and savings after paying all his bills. I may have to abandon my dream job and find another job due to the circumstances that have arisen from pay-scale, rent allowance and taxation issues. Many of the officers told how they were stationed many miles from their homes and now struggle to pay for transport. One wrote: I live in Clonmel and commute 220 km in total everyday to Wexford. Its an hour and a half journey each way; so on top of a 10 hour shift Im driving for three hours. This is costing over 100 per week in diesel which is a lot considering the wages we are on. Also being away from home for 13 hours a day means that during the six working days I barely see my son. Read More: Another officer wrote: On a daily basis I hear of their struggles in paying mortgages and how they do not earn enough for the dangers of the job. This makes me wonder is my life really worth 23,000 per year. Why should I stay in a job where saving money is more important than me going home at the end of the day? One officer explained that he will have no option but to quit if pay increments are frozen. "It is despicable that I would be better off on the dole. On the positive side, I enjoy the job and I am proud that I have managed to help people who have been in despair on occasions. The officer added: "It is rewarding when you make a difference to some peoples lives. Its just sad now that I will probably have to go back to working in Tesco near home, stacking shelves and making very little difference to anyone - and unfortunately Id be better off too. The garda press office declined to comment on the article. A Dublin man is recovering in hospital after falling from a fifth floor apartment at the weekend. The 26-year-old had been socialising with pals in The Ramparts complex in Loughlinstown, South Dublin on Sunday afternoon. Independent.ie has learned that shortly after 3pm he slipped and fell from the balcony, dropping 50 foot on to a hard surface. Emergency services were called to the scene and the man was rushed to St Vincents Hospital in a critical condition. Sources said he suffered back, leg and arm injuries. But incredibly he did not damage his head or brain. The man, who is originally from Dun laoghaire, remains in St Vincents hospital where his condition is believed to be serious but stable. Gardai were called to the scene but the incident is not being treated as suspicious. Equally it is not being treated as an attempt to self-harm. A senior source explained: This lad was just over at his friends house on Sunday afternoon. He slipped from the balcony and fell five floors. It is a miracle that he survived this. Nevertheless he suffered very serious injuries. Sinn Feins Mary Lou McDonald has claimed she was subjected to heavy-handed and very invasive security searches while travelling home from the United States after St Patricks Day. The partys deputy leader described the treatment of Sinn Fein members by the US authorities as almost off the wall. Certainly people have to be kept safe and all the rest of it. We represent absolutely no threat to anybody and I think they know that, she said. It comes as Sinn Fein president Gerry Adams revealed he intends to write to the White House to complain about his treatment during the St Patricks Day festivities. Read More Mr Adams was detained for over an hour while trying to gain access to the Shamrock Ceremony due to an administration error. He said that while he accepts an apology he does not believe the reason given for stopping his entry to the party. Controversially Mr Adams likened his treatment to that or civil rights campaigner Rosa Parks, claiming Sinn Fein would not sit at the back of the bus for anybody. Read More Speaking outside Leinster House today, Ms McDonald said her party were being treated unfairly year after year in the US but the White House incident had brought the situation into the limelight. Ill be meeting with the ambassador, well be talking to the authorities because this shouldnt be happening. Its completely unnecessary, she said. Read More The administration in the US is well aware that Sinn Fein and the leadership of Sinn Fein over many years have been architects of the peace process, are a force for good, for positivity, for democracy. And whereas stringent security is defensible, singling people out, it seems to me simply on the basis of your political view, is not an acceptable thing to do, Ms McDonald said. A devoted father who idolised his children passed his baby out of a smashed car window before losing his own life in the Buncrana tragedy. Sean McGrotty (49), his two sons Mark (12) and Evan(8), the boys' grandmother Ruth Daniels (59) and her daughter Jodie-Lee (14) perished when their car plunged into the sea off a slipway in Co Donegal. Hero Davitt Walsh (28), who dived in to the sea, revealed how Mr McGrotty passed his four-month-old daughter Rioghnach-Ann out of a smashed window and pleaded: "Save my baby". Mr McGrotty then stayed in the car while trying to save the rest of his family. "I will never forget those screams. It was awful," said Mr Walsh. "The man stayed in the car and just said, 'Save the baby'. I think he could have saved himself but he wanted to stay with his family and help them." The boy's mother, Louise James, was away with friends at a hen party in England when the tragedy unfolded on Sunday evening. Her parish priest, Father Paddy O'Kane, told the Irish Independent the family was utterly devastated by the loss of three generations. "Louise said to me, 'I have lost everyone, except little Rioghnach-Ann'. She said, 'Rioghnach-Ann is my reason to go on.'" The infant remains in Letterkenny Hospital, where her condition has been described as stable. Ms James' mother, sister, long-term partner and two sons will be buried on Thursday in Derry. "Words cannot express the enormity of the tragedy which has befallen our family," said Mr McGrotty's brother Jim. "We are all numbed by this tragedy which has visited us. "If there is anything good which has come out of it, it is the fact that baby Rioghnach-Ann has been saved." It has emerged that the heartbroken mother had spoken to her children minutes before the tragedy. "She actually spoke to her children around seven o'clock last night in a park in Buncrana and half-an-hour later they were gone," said Northern Ireland's Deputy First Minister, Derry native Martin McGuinness, who visited the family yesterday. "It is just one of the most heartbreaking scenes that you could ever envisage. The young woman that I met has to live with this for the rest of her life. "How do you live with this?" Dennis and Deorick visited a family in hospital after receiving texts from an unfamiliar number A family who accidentally text the wrong number announcing the birth of their first child were delighted when the strangers turned up at the hospital bearing gifts. After receiving a number of text messages and images from an unrecognised number announcing the birth of a child, Dennis Williams and his brother Deorick decided to congratulate the family in person and arrived at the hospital to meet the baby. Expand Close The texts exchanged between Dennis and Lyndsey Photo: Facebook / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp The texts exchanged between Dennis and Lyndsey Photo: Facebook "We are at the hospital. Having a baby today! She has dilated to between 5-6 [cm], the text to Dennis read, to which he responded: "Congrats lol but I think someone got the wrong number." Despite the clarification the family proceeded to send Dennis a picture of the new baby, prompting him to plan a visit to the hospital. Dennis, who is from Georgia in the USA, delighted new parents Lindsey Lashley and her husband Mark with their visit who thanks the brothers for their kindness towards the new baby Cason. They were so sweet and kind to do this! the caption read. You two are great guys and thank you for giving to someone you didnt know! If we all only had this kind of heart. Trish Deseine is not a household name here, but the food writer from Northern Ireland is one of France's best-selling authors of cookery books, with sales of more than a million copies. In the country that invented gastronomy, she is now as well known as Nigella Lawson or Jamie Oliver. Her 12 cookery books, written in French, have inspired a generation of home chefs and food writers. The French edition of Vogue magazine has named her one of the 40 most influential women in the country, where she has lived for three decades. The 51-year-old farmer's daughter from Antrim is credited with fundamentally changing the way many ordinary French people cook. Despite the traditional Gallic disdain for Irish or British cooking, her practical "no stress" recipes helped the French to overcome their fear of failing to live up to the demanding standards of one of the world's greatest cuisines. "I think I was one of the first voices in cookery writing that let them off the hook," she says. "I had kids and a job and my approach was to go for maximum taste and pleasure with minimal fuss. "Perhaps it took an outsider to say you don't have to go through 50 complicated steps." Deborah Dupont-Daguet, the owner of the world's largest cookery bookshop, La Librairie Gourmande in Paris, said the first coo kery book she bought was Deseine's Petits Plats Entre Amis (Little Dishes Between Friends). "It's weird but I learned French cooking from that book. You would never see those types of tips in a French cookbook 15 years ago. It's completely crazy but it took an Irishwoman to tell us these things." The bookshop's co-owner, Sophie Daguet, said Deseine had succeeded against the odds. "It's not obvious for a foreign author to become so well-known in France, but her books are clear, fun to read and pleasant to look at. We get a lot of people asking for them. "These days, there's a lot of demand for other foreign cookery writers too, like Yotam Ottolenghi, but she was there years ago." Deseine said she had also appealed to people's greed, with unabashed books such as Je Veux Du Chocolat (I Want Chocolate). Now Deseine has taken on a new challenge. In her latest book, Mon Irelande, published in English under the title Home, she seeks to convert the French to the simple virtues of "plain Irish cooking". "I know it's a very difficult thing to do, but I love doing difficult things. A lot of the earlier books I wrote for a French audience have a lot of Irish and British touches, so this is really just a step further." She has now returned to live part of the year in Ireland. Based in West Cork, she often travels to Ulster. "The food scene in Ireland is tremendously exciting now," she said. She loves Ulster home baking and her book showcases new Irish cooking as well as the traditional staples of bacon, cabbage and mackerel. Having conquered France, her fame is now spreading here. She is now preparing Autumn cookery shows for BBC Northern Ireland. Flowers left at the scene at Buncrana Pier in Co Donegal after five people, including at least two children, have been killed and a baby girl is in hospital after a car they were in slipped from the pier Some tragedies seem too stark for words. The sorrow evinced by the harrowing events at Lough Swilly has touched the hearts of the whole country. Affixing expression to such loss appears futile, but the lines of the poet Robert Herrick come some way to capture the sense of grief: "The eye by tears speak, while the tongue is mute." The shock has been compounded by the suddenness, and the senselessness, of such a catastrophic end to a Sunday drive. The thoughts and prayers of the country will be with the surviving relatives of Sean McGrotty (49), his two young sons Mark (12) and Evan (8), his mother-in-law Ruth Daniels (59), and Ms Daniels's daughter Jodie-Lee Daniels, who was 14. Amidst the overwhelming grief was the extraordinary heroism that resulted in the rescue of Mr McGrotty's four-month-old baby daughter Rioghnach-Ann. The gardai rightly paid tribute to the courage of local man Davitt Walsh, whose exceptional bravery saved the infant from certain death. The rescue services did everything possible and their sensitivity and professionalism was also singled out by witnesses. As one witness put it: "I was hoping against hope and praying ... that the car would stay afloat, knowing that everybody [emergency services] was on their way. "And then, just all of a sudden, the whole lot just went under the water." The emergency services arrived promptly but such was the tragic pace of events that within just 10 minutes a rescue mission became one of recovery and five lives were lost. In the days ahead, there will be investigations - clearly the slipway was covered in algae and thus hazardous for driving; but in the twilight of evening, this may not have been obvious. The anguished scenes at Buncrana are a searing and pitiless reminder of the need for extreme caution when driving close to water. The French Ambassador, HE Jean-Pierre Thebault, held a ceremony last night in honour of Penneys/Primark director Breege O'Donoghue, on the occasion of the presentation as Chevalier de la Legion d'Honneur. The Legion of Honour is a French order that was established by Napoleon in 1802 and is the highest honour in France. Penneys is an Irish success story in France and Ms O'Donoghue was a key force in Primark opening in Marseilles in 2013. The fashion chain now has seven stores in France. The order recognised Ms O'Donoghue's "exceptional care and constant friendly support you have personally provided for the further development of friendly ties between France and Ireland". The ceremony at the French Ambassador's residence in Dublin yesterday evening was attended by family from her home place in Boston in north Clare and from Galway, as well as friends, relatives of her late husband, James Saint Lawrence O'Dea, and her fellow Primark directors. Rising Ms O'Donoghue said: "Even if my own contribution to Franco-Irish relations seems to me quite modest, this honour is not only a reflection of the warm and easy relations that our countries have always enjoyed, but gives much-appreciated recognition of the commitment shown by those who work with me in Primark, both in France and here in Ireland." Earlier in the day, Penneys unveiled its newly refurbished store on Dublin's O'Connell Street, 100 years after the building was severely damaged during the 1916 Rising. At least 17 Hindus have died after consuming illegally-made alcohol during religious celebrations in southern Pakistan. Police spokesman Niaz Shah said 37 people from the Hindu community in Tando Muhammad Khan district were rushed to hospital on Monday. He said they consumed the hooch during preparations for Holi celebrations, which will begin on Wednesday. Mr Shah said 11 people have since been discharged, but nine remain in a critical condition in hospital. He said four people have been arrested over brewing the illegal drink. With the exception of a few licensed shops permitted to sell alcohol to non-Muslims, it is against the law to drink or sell alcoholic drinks in Pakistan. Numerous incidents of mass poisonings from home-made alcohol have been reported in the past. UN soldiers on the street following a gun attack at a hotel hosting an EU military training mission in Bamako, Mali yesterday. HABIBOU KOUYATE/AFP/Getty Images Three members of the Irish Defence Forces have escaped unscathed after gunmen opened fire at a Mali hotel. The gunmen launched an attack at the hotel, which is the location of the EU headquarters in the Malian capital of Bamako. Armed forces killed at least one man, who lay outside the hotel in a pool of blood next to a Kalashnikov rifle. His backpack lay beside him. A total of 10 Irish personnel are stationed in Mali, with the other seven located in Kouli Koro, 300km north of Bamako. The three Irish at the Hotel Nord-Sud were taking part in an EU training camp. It is unclear whether the members of the Irish Defence Forces will be withdrawn from the country, with a spokesman saying that it is a matter for the Government. Chief of Staff for the Defence Forces Mark Mellett visited the training base earlier this month. The EU mission later released a statement, saying none of its personnel had been wounded during the attack. The assault comes about four months after Al-Qaida jihadis attacked the Radisson Blu hotel in Bamako, killing 20 people. This week marks the fourth anniversary of the coup that unleashed widespread chaos in Mali. Over the past year, jihadis have mounted a growing wave of violent attacks against UN peacekeepers, who are trying to help stabilise the country. Malcolm Turnbull, Australia's prime minister, has recalled parliament and threatened to call an early general election - most likely for July 2 - saying "the time for playing games is over". Six months after he ousted Tony Abbott, Mr Turnbull, a staunch republican, said parliament would hold an extraordinary sitting in April to deal with legislation aimed at preventing union corruption. If the legislation is defeated by the senate, or upper house - where no party currently has a majority- this would give Mr Turnbull a "trigger" to call an early general election of both houses of parliament. An election of this sort has not been held since 1987. "This is an opportunity for the senate to do its job of legislating rather than filibustering," Mr Turnbull said. An international manhunt has been launched for one of the terrorist suspects behind co-ordinated bombings in Brussels which left 34 dead and almost 200 - including two Britons - injured. A series of police raids were mounted across Belgium, leading to the discovery of an explosive device containing nails, chemical products and an Islamic State (IS) flag, almost 12 hours after the first explosion, at around 7am (GMT). The terror group has claimed responsibility for the attacks. King Philippe of Belgium led the calls for calm as Belgian police issued an image of the fugitive, one of three seen pushing luggage trolleys through Zaventem airport moments before two bombs exploded. A third bomb was deactivated at the airport hours after the initial attack - which was followed by a bomb blast on a Metro train in the city centre as terrorists inflicted a new outrage on a European capital. Prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said the forensic operation would last well into the evening. He said: "A photo of three suspects was taken at Brussels airport. "Two of them have probably committed a suicide attack, the third - dressed in a white jacket and wearing a hat - is actively sought. " Various departments and experts are currently in various crime scenes. This will take place for many hours to come. "Due to the violence of the attacks, this investigation is particularly difficult. "Various operations are ongoing across the country and several witnesses have been heard. "Several explosions have been heard. They are due to bomb squad activity upon the discovery that the suspects might have left explosives behind. And this could continue." The attacks left a major city in lockdown once again less than five months after Paris was hit by a wave of deadly strikes. The atrocities on Tuesday, condemned as "blind, violent and cowardly" by Belgian prime minister Charles Michel, came after the arrest last week of terror mastermind Salah Abdeslam, who plotted November's massacre in the French capital. Security was being stepped up at major transport hubs around the continent, with British police forces boosting numbers at "key locations" including ports, airports and the rail network. French prime minister Manuel Valls said: "We are at war. In Europe we have been subjected to acts of war for several months." As the city went into lockdown: :: Local media reported that 20 people were killed following the blast at Maelbeek metro station, while 14 died in the suicide attack at the airport :: The number of people injured in both attacks was believed to be 198 :: Two Kalashnikov rifles and an unexploded bomb belt were found at the airport :: The Foreign Office said two British nationals are known to have been injured In a televised address, King Philippe said he and Queen Mathilde "share the pain" of all those who had suffered in the attacks. But he called on Belgians to stay "confident" in the face of terror. He said: "Today our country is in mourning. For each of us this March 22 will never be a day like any other. "In the face of threats, we will continue to respond together, firmly, with calm and dignity." As night fell on Brussels, Mr Michel lit a candle at a vigil at Place de la Bourse, the city's stock exchange building. He told a press conference earlier that the atrocities had killed people whose lives "were in full course". He said: "The lives of people who were most likely travelling without a care in the world, going to work or to school, lives that have been broken by extremism." Witnesses reported the chaos that descended on the transport hubs as the terrorists struck. Jef Versele, 40, from Ghent, told the Press Association: "I was on my way to check in and two bombs went off - two explosions. "Everything was coming down. Glassware. It was chaos. It was unbelievable. It was the worst thing." Footage from inside the airport building showed a scene of devastation with ceiling tiles strewn across the floor and suitcases abandoned. Images of passengers climbing from a train into a smoke-filled tunnel near Maelbeek station were reminiscent of scenes following the July 7 attacks in London. Other images showed the injured from the Metro being treated in the street, while at the airport people could be seen fleeing in terror in video footage shot from an airport car park. International leaders united in support for Belgium, with David Cameron branding the atrocities "appalling" and US president Barack Obama condemning the "outrageous attacks against innocent people". The Prime Minister's official spokeswoman said Britain was also sending a team of specialist police officers to the city to assist with the investigation. And the Foreign Office updated its travel advice to Belgium, advising against travel to Brussels. One eyewitness, Theo Vassilopoulos, said Maelbeek station remained completely closed off on Tuesday evening with police cars and officers still in the area. The 36-year-old from Greece, who has lived in Brussels for seven years, described chaotic scenes as people poured out of the station following a bomb blast. Mr Vassilopoulos, who works at the European Parliament with the Greek MEP Stelios Kouloglou, told the Press Association: "It all started with a distant sound, we didn't realise what it was. "But a few moments later we heard people shouting and screaming so we went by the window and we saw lots of people coming out of the station. I saw some of them had serious injuries, head injuries, a lot of blood on their head, wounds on their legs. "We realised something was going on. More people kept coming from inside the station and some of them were in dusty clothes or their clothes were torn apart, so then we knew that there was an explosion or something bad." Christian Delhasse, the driver of the Metro train which was attacked at Maelbeek station, told Belgian broadcaster RTBF: "Seeing bodies on the floor, it leaves a mark on you. "I did what I had to do. Nothing happened to me, no injuries." In this image provided by Daniela Schwarzer, smoke is seen at Brussels airport in Brussels, Belgium, after explosions were heard Tuesday, March 22, 2016 The Brussels attacks would have taken "quite a while" to plan as they involved explosives and targeting an airport, an international security expert has said. Shashank Joshi, a senior research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute, urged caution in viewing the atrocities solely as revenge for the arrest of Paris plotter Salah Abdeslam. He said: "This would take quite a while to plan, particularly involving an explosive, involving an airport. We should be wary of seeing it purely as a retaliation for Salah Abdeslam's arrest." Terrorists risk the higher security at sites like airports in a bid to gain international attention, he said. "It is higher security than a metro stop or a concert venue. It's an international site. It's almost a trade-off between dealing with higher security and the number of headlines." Belgium's terror threat level was only raised to the maximum level in the wake of the explosions at Brussels airport and the metro system, but Mr Joshi said it is "far too premature" to blame the country's law and security forces. "The maximum level can involve very costly, very burdensome measures which cannot be sustained for a long period of time. It's like an army mobilising. Intelligence agencies and law enforcement agencies face very difficult challenges. It's far too premature to blame them for their choices. "Not all of these attacks are intelligence failures. It's an intelligence failure if it was something that was known and wasn't used, or dots weren't connected." Read More Terrorism expert Shiraz Maher said the attacks "underscore how pointed and significant the threat facing Europe is right now". Expand Close Map of Brussels Metro / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Map of Brussels Metro He believes that the attacks would have happened regardless of Abdeslam's arrest on Friday, and that a terror cell was "primed and ready to go". "If it turns out to be Islamic State (Isis) it would not be retaliation for his arrest. Nobody could have put together a bomb and conceived an attack in three days. It shows the broader network that's sitting in some of these places that's already primed and ready to go." Belgian authorities need to examine why it took so long to find the Paris attacker, he said. "The real concern is that someone could hide out for a full month after the Paris attacks. It does demonstrate that the Belgian authorities need to become much better at detecting this kind of thing." One explosion at Brussels airport was reportedly near an American Airlines check-in desk, and Mr Maher said jihadis leaving Syria are looking for "soft" targets symbolising US interests. The senior research fellow at the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation said: "Isis fighters coming out of Syria are not able to get to the US. It has become increasingly difficult. So they are looking to hit US symbols that are easier to get to. "US embassies in any city around the world are heavily fortified, so they are looking for softer targets that they can use to send a message to the US. A check-in desk is an easy and unguarded soft target." Another explosion shatters the morning commute of a major European city; the railway concourses of Antwerp and Paris echo to the clatter of army boots; the borders of the Netherlands, Belgium and France slam shut once more in the hope of stopping terrorists. While all immediate thoughts go out to the people of Brussels today, the reality is that this latest terror outrage delivers a triple blow to Europe and its cherished notions of open borders, free movement, tolerance and free speech. Political leaders will call for courage from the public to resist turning inwards, to refuse to allow the terrorists to divide and rule us, but the failure yet again to prevent a major attack makes such calls ever harder to heed. Firstly, the sight of European borders closing again puts another dent in Schengen, the no-borders agreement that facilitates European cross-border trade and travel, but as the public well understands after the Paris attacks the free movement of terrorists too. Just four days after the capture of the main Paris attacker Salah Abdeslam a belated victory, as it seemed, for Franco-Belgian security the jihadist Hydra sprouts another head, commits another atrocity. No one underestimates the difficulty of stopping random terror attacks on the open street from committed suicide attackers, but these outrages took place at an airport and a metro station - controlled spaces where travellers should expect to feel safe. Secondly, if as happened after Paris it emerges that those responsible for these Brussels attacks were among the migrants who were "waved through" into Europe in the last 12 months, attitudes to migration and multi-culturalism risk hardening still further. More immediately, while these attacks are likely to drive up public support for the EU-Turkey deal to deport migrants from Greece back to Turkey, they will also undermine a key component of that agreement. Namely, that Turkey agreed to take back the migrants in exchange for visa-free travel to Europe for Turkish tourists and businessmen. France and Spain were already openly dubious about the wisdom of this quid pro quo; these attacks are likely to render the idea still-born, both practically and politically. The EU-Turkey deal was always a long shot, but given the closure of the Balkan Route had already choked off numbers, there was a faint chance that a display of determination to deport migrants back to Turkey might have sent the message to the refugees not to bother coming. With these attacks, the chances of success for the deal become more remote, building further pressure on Europe and Greece over migration at a time when Europe, for the sake of its credibility and unity, desperately needs a deal however legally dubious and ugly to stick. Lastly, looking still further towards the dark horizon, these attacks are likely to sow yet more seeds of doubt in the minds of British voters on June 23. Downing Street had hoped to make security a key plank of the campaign to remain in the EU, but on days like today, the very phrase European security sounds like a bad joke. Mr Cameron wants to argue that we need to remain part of European agencies like Europol and Eurojust precisely to prevent terrorist atrocities in Britain, but in the rough and tumble of the campaign that counter-intuitive argument will be hard to make. Inevitably, attacks such as this striking at the very capital of the European project risks deepening the urge among some British voters to retreat behind our borders, throwing up the Brexit sign as we go. Mr Cameron and other leaders will argue that would be a short-sighted mistake unravelling the same Europe now under terrorist assault but every new attack renders the argument that the EU makes us safer a little harder to make. Telegraph Media Group Limited [2022] A man working near the European Commission's main building said his decision not to take the Metro to the office after hearing of two explosions at Brussels airport may have saved his life. Barry Magee, who takes the subway to work in the EU quarter every morning, woke to the news of the attacks at the city's airport and immediately emailed his boss to say he did not feel safe to take public transport. A short time later he heard there had been an explosion on the line on which he would have been travelling. Mr Magee said: "The fact that it happened really close to my own doorstep, on my way to work, that's unnerving. That could've been me." Asked if he feels lucky he said: "Definitely." The 33-year-old said he was not planning on leaving his house in the south of the city for the rest of the day and could hear police and ambulance sirens as well as a helicopter flying overhead. Mr Magee, a communications manager for the European biofuels industry, said he was not surprised by the attacks, describing Brussels as a "logical" target because of its status as the heart of the European Union. He said: "In that sense I'm not surprised that there has been an attack. I'm actually surprised that it hasn't happened before now." During the lockdown in the city last November, after the Paris attacks which were planned in Brussels, Mr Magee said he stayed indoors for up to five days, following the advice of authorities. And he questioned why the same precautions did not appear to be taken this time. He said: "I think there's going to be questions asked of the authorities, why they didn't immediately shut down the public transport system after the airport attacks." Mr Magee, originally from Downpatrick in county Down, said the violence echoed the experience of people during the Troubles. He said: "It's weird. You come from living in Northern Ireland and you've seen what terrorism can do. You move abroad and think you're getting away from that." Handout photo taken with permission from the Twitter feed of @davidcrunelle of the scene at Brussels Airport after two explosions were heard Brussels is in a state of panic and lockdown following a series of terror attacks. Belgian federal police have confirmed two explosions at Brussels international airport, with witnesses at the scene reporting smoke rising from the departures terminal. This was the scene a short while ago, between the Arts-Lois and Maelbeek metro stations in Brussels. pic.twitter.com/aTZjqsF7Gt Evan Lamos (@evanlamos) March 22, 2016 The cause of the explosions is not known. Witnesses in Brussels city centre are also reporting smoke rising from Maalbeek metro station, near the EU institutions, and the evacuation of Brussels Central train station. The police have not confirmed any casualties, but local media is quoting Belgian fire services saying that up to 17 people have been killed and many more injured. The airport has been evacuated and police and airport authorities have warned people not to come to the area. Train services to the airport, which is located in Zaventem, around 10km north of Brussels city centre, have been suspended and all flights have been diverted, the airport authority confirmed. Witnesses quoted in the Belgian media have reported the blast happened near the American Airlines check-in desk at around 8am local time (7am Irish time). Pictures from the scene show devastation in the arrivals hall, with windows blasted through and debris littering the floors. Belgian prime minister Charles Michel has said via Twitter that the absolute priority is now the victims. According to French-language state broadcaster RTBF, the terror alert level has been raised to level 4, the highest level possible. The incident happened four days after the arrest of terror suspect Salah Abdeslam, who is accused of direct participation in the 13 November Paris terror attacks. The attacks paralysed Brussels for weeks, with the army patrolling tourist centres and government institutions. The atmosphere had eased after Christmas, but the arrest of Abdeslam and the latest airport attacks will throw the country into a renewed panic. In this photo provided by Ralph Usbeck travellers stand in a smoke filled terminal at Brussels Airport, in Brussels after explosions Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Brussels remains in a state of chaos this afternoon as army and police lock down the city following a succession of bomb blasts at the airport and a metro station that Belgian prime minister Charles Michel called blind, violent and cowardly. Police cars and ambulances wail across the city while helicopters criss-cross the sky as police search for the perpetrators of the attacks. All public transport has been suspended, children are being kept inside school gates and government and EU buildings have been put on high alert. The Belgian federal public prosecutor has opened up a criminal inquiry into the attacks and Belgian media are reporting police raids are taking place across the city. Eyewitnesses at the airport said the blast occurred near the entrance to the departures hall, close to a Starbucks coffee shop and where travellers access city centre train and bus links. All passengers have now been evacuated from the scene, and all flights cancelled until at least tomorrow, the Brussels airport authority confirmed. In Brussels city, EU institutions are in lockdown, with their internal terror alerts raised a notch following the blast at the Maelbeek metro station, which is located at the heart of the EU district. One Irish official working in the institutions said he was advised not to leave the building, and to move away from offices with street-facing windows. The Irish embassies in Brussels - both the bilateral embassy to Belgium and the Permanent Representation to the EU - say they have established the safety of all staff and have set up a Dublin-based number for people to call if they are worried about relatives and friends in the Belgian capital. A spokesman for the European Commission said there was no indication this was a terror attack on the EU institutions and that the Belgian security services were in charge of safety operations. However, there is plenty of nervousness and agitation inside the Commissions Berlaymont headquarters, where the 28 commissioners and their staff are housed. Flags are flying at half-mast outside, and people are being advised not to leave if they are already inside the building and to stay home if they have not yet arrived. Two of the European Commissions offices - those closest to the Maelbeek metro station, where an explosion hit just after 9am local time - have been evacuated. The staff canteen in one of the buildings, at 86 Rue de la Loi, is being used to treat the injured from the blast. A hotel close to the metro station, the Thon Hotel on Rue de la Loi, is also acting as a makeshift hospital for the Maelbeek metro victims. All qualified doctors from the EU institutions have been sent down to help deal with the carnage as the death toll mounts. Many people on the street feel bewildered by the attacks, which seem to have been orchestrated to coincide with the busy rush hour period and to target air travellers heading home for the Easter holidays. They follow four days after the arrest of the most wanted man in Europe, Salah Abdeslam, a development which had brought the country - and the beleaguered security services - a mild sense of relief. All that has evaporated now as Belgians prepare for another period of high alert, with army patrols on the streets, cancelled public events and public transport chaos. British Prime Minister David Cameron leaving Downing Street after being forced to defend his finance minister George Osborne. Photo: Hannah McKay/Reuters THE British Labour Party last night attempted to turn up the heat on prime minister David Cameron as he was forced to insist that he absolutely backs his finance minister after a senior minister quit over Budget cuts. Mr Cameron was engaged in desperate moves to try to unite an increasingly divided party. Yesterday, Labour insisted that Chancellor George Osbornes Budget was in absolute chaos and should be withdrawn. Shadow chancellor John McDonnell was asking an urgent question about changes to the Budget including the decision to shelve disability benefit cuts. The cuts led to the resignation of work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith with a furious attack on the government. Treasury Minister David Gauke said more was being spent on disabled benefits. Spending on Personal Independence Payments (PIPs) was up by 3bn since 2010, he said, adding that the Budget closes the gap between rich and poor and North and South. He said details of how the cash that had been earmarked from the benefit cuts would be recovered would be revealed in the Autumn statement from the exchequer later in the year. Labour has called on Mr Osborne to resign following Mr Duncan Smiths departure and the furore over the PIP cuts, but Downing Street says the chancellor has the full confidence of the prime minister. Mr McDonnell said Mr Osbornes absence from the Commons chamber insults this House and that Mr Gauke had been left to defend the indefensible. He said he agreed with Mr Duncan Smith in his criticism of the decision to include Capital Gains Tax cuts alongside the disability benefit reforms in last weeks Budget, which the former work and pensions secretary said showed we are not all in this together as the government has repeatedly stated. Mr McDonnell said there was now an enormous hole in the Budget as a result of the cuts being shelved, calling on the government to withdraw this Budget and start again. He added: This is no way to deliver a Budget and no way to manage an economy. Mr Gauke said the chancellor would be in the chamber for todays Budget debate, and said Labour was not in a position to comment on black holes in Budgets. Mr Cameron was left puzzled and disappointed on Friday when senior minister and former leader of the Conservative Party, Iain Duncan Smith, resigned his post over cuts to disability benefits which were outlined in finance minister George Osbornes Budget last week. The sudden departure of Duncan Smith not only widened divisions in the ruling party, split over whether to stay in the European Union, but also prompted calls from the opposition Labour Party for Osborne to step down. Asked whether Mr Cameron had complete confidence in Osborne, the prime ministers spokeswoman told reporters: Absolutely. Weve faced ... tough decisions about how the country lives within its means and he (Mr Cameron) has worked very closely with the Chancellor and other ministers on that to date, and will continue to do so. She said Cameron would no longer pursue the cuts to disability benefits, meaning a loss for the Budget of stg4.4bn (5.6bn). Osborne, once seen as a frontrunner to succeed Mr Cameron, will outline how he will fill that hole in the Autumn statement, she said, referring to one of two statements, usually held in October, when the government makes its economic forecasts. The Chancellor has already said that he is looking at this issue and, yes, we will set out our approach at the Autumn statement, she said. People wrapped in blankets leave the scene of explosions at Zaventem airport near Brussels, Belgium, March 22, 2016. Reuters/Francois Lenoir Passengers walk on underground metro tracks to be evacuated after an explosion at Maelbeek train station in Brussels, Belgium, March 22, 2016. Reuters/Courtesy @OSOSXE via Twitter An Irishman in Brussels who works in an office just above Maelbeek station where this morning's explosion happened has said he witnessed injured people being carried out of the metro. Graham White, an Irish man working for the Brussels-based Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development, said he felt a tremor in his office building when the explosion happened at Maelbeek station. Our office is just above Maelbeek station. It was a normal morning. I took the subway to work, I get off at Maelbeek, go in the building and switch my PC on. There was a tremor in the floor, a bit of a bang. I didnt really think anything of it because theres a lot of construction in the area, but then a colleague ran to the office and said to get away from that window, that theres been a bomb in Maelbeek, Mr White told RTE Radio Ones News at One. He said the police, ambulances and fire brigade arrived on the scene within seconds, as the fire alarm began to go off in his office. Mr White and his colleagues were quickly evacuated, and he described the horrific scene outside the metro station. I saw a few bodies being carried out. A woman walked past me and half her hair was gone. Then the police started screaming at us to run, there was another bomb. There were 500 people running down the street, it was just chaos. The Belgian police advised people on the streets to move away from the entrance to the metro station as quickly as possible. When Mr White arrived at Ambiorix Square, a short walk from the station, he received a security alert on his phone urging him to head home. Brussels attacks r tragic and shocking - thinking of the thousands of Irish living and working in Brussels Simon Coveney (@simoncoveney) March 22, 2016 The first thing I did was call a couple of family members from my office phone, then I put something up on social media to let people know I was fine. When asked whether he felt safe, Mr Whites voice began to tremble. He noted that he was expecting to fly home to Ireland tomorrow for Easter, but now his flight is likely to be cancelled. Im a bit scared to be honest, and Im still kind of in shock. If Id have taken the metro five minutes later I would have been on that metro. Im trying to make sense of it. Im scared, Im not afraid to say it. I take the metro to work every day. I dont know whats going to happen now. One Irish man who works just 100 metres away from the site of this morning's explosion in Brussels has described how dust was pouring from the metro and through the tunnel in its aftermath. Tom Moylan, who works for the European Commission and has been living in Brussels for two years, says his friend was on the metro train just one stop away from where the explosion happened. Im just down the road in the Charlemagne, the European Community building, which is around 50 to 100 metres from where it happened. We can see it all from our window. A friend of mine was one stop away from the station. He could hear the explosion in the tunnel which is pretty freaky. The explosion raised all kinds of dust down the tunnel. You can see Maelbeek station is cordoned off, the length of the street is blocked off. There are police and ambulances, and journalists at the end of the street. The police have put up a screen to block off the area and allow them to do their work. I got a phone call from a friend of mine who was freaking out when she was driving by and she saw people walking out of the station covered in blood. And a colleague ran into us and was shouting about it. Everything is blocked off, and smoke is coming out of the metro station. Since it happened, weve all been trying to find out where friends and colleagues are, and nearly all my friends and colleagues have been accounted for. The public is using the Facebook safety check which is letting everyone know who has been accounted for. At the moment everyone is wandering around the hallways like zombies a little bit Its weird balancing between trying to work and trying to see if everyone is safe Theyre not letting us out of the building for the moment anyway. When something like this happens, its just horrible. Its unnerving. After the Paris attacks theres always a sense of unease but its still sort of distant. Theres always that thing in the back of your head, especially since it was so close and tied up in the place we live. Meanwhile, John Harkin, the son of independent MEP Marian Harkin, was at Maelbeek metro station just minutes before the attack. I was taking my normal commute to a meeting I had in the area, so I took the metro and got out at Maelbeek station, he told independent.ie. Five minutes after that, the bomb went off. Thankfully, I had just walked away. Mr Harkin, who is originally from Sligo, has been living in Brussels for seven years and working as a policy advisor for the European employers organisation CEEMET. He explained that by the time he reached his meeting, pictures from the explosion had started to circulate. I was shocked. Having been that close to it, I was very shocked, more so for the people who were injured at the station. We still dont know the number of people injured, but I was shocked. Mr Harkin was described his relief that he was lucky to have made such a narrow escape. As I left my house, my girlfriend and I parted ways. She was heading to the supermarket, but I said no, I was running a bit tight, so I decided to go straight to work had I gone with her, it could have been a different story. When he arrived at work, Mr Harkin was told there was no need to stay, and he headed straight home. I know that all my colleagues are safe, Ive spoken to them. As for my friends, information is trickling down that the majority are safe. Were still looking to hear from one or two people, but as of now everybody Ive spoken to is safe. The city is now in lockdown, Mr Harkin added. It is tense. Shops are closed, businesses are now beginning to close, public transport is closed. Its clear now that were going for another lockdown. O'Reilly's Irish pub in Place de la Bourse in the city has said it is closing today as a mark of respect for those caught up in the tragedy. "We have closed today in sympathy with all caught up in the tragedy," owner/manager Seamus McCarthy told independent.ie. Everyones being told to stay in their workplaces. My wife is in Toyota very near the airport - they are not allowed out. A friend wasn't allowed leave school when dropping off his daughters. Its terribly sad for the victims and their families its worrying times to be bringing up our little boys in Brussels. My dad left Dublin to bring us up in Galway in 1974 after the Dublin and Monaghan bombings. Perhaps history may repeat itself in that his eldest son may have to do the same for his family. Although Brussels and its people are very resilient and we feel we may get back to our normal lives quite quickly almost in defiance. God rest the poor souls who lost their lives today. Olof Gill, who works with European Commissioner Phil Hogan and manages the Brussels GAA team, said social media is playing a vital role in helping people communicate. People are taking to social media to alert everyone that they are safe, and to keep up with the news. So far we think everyone from Ireland is safe. There is a massive number of Irish in Brussels, he told the Herald. Just now we have heard that the Gare Centrale, Arts-Loi, Schuman and Maalbeek metro stations have been evacuated, and the agriculture building near to Maalbeek as well, he added. The metro stations are on the busiest lines in Brussels and were said to be full at the time of the blasts. Olof Gill said people are trying to carry on with their work and their lives to the best of their ability despite the terror threat. It is business as usual within the boundaries that are set, he said. Meanwhile, Taoiseach Enda Kenny said it is understood so far that no Irish citizens have been involved in the tragedy. As far as we are aware no Irish citizen is involved here. With such tragic circumstances one can never be sure of whats happened, he said. Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin also said that the atrocities in Brussels were an affront to everyone and part of a Europe-wide trend in terrorist attacks. On behalf of the Independent Alliance, Deputy Shane Ross, expressed "utter revulsion" at the latest terrorist attacks in Brussels. The Dail stood for a minutes silence to remember the victims. A HIGH Court judge has pleaded with Madonna and her ex-husband Guy Ritchie to resolve a legal dispute over the future of their 15-year-old son Rocco. Mr Justice MacDonald said yesterday that it would be a "tragedy" if any more of the "fast-receding days" of the teenager's childhood were taken up by the dispute. The judge said the youngster was a "very great credit" to his parents. He said it would be better if Madonna and Mr Ritchie could each spend time enjoying his company. The dispute relates to where the teenager should live. Judges have heard that Rocco had remained in London with his father after a visit. Madonna wants the teenager to return to live with her in the US. Litigation had begun in London and the United States. Mr Justice MacDonald made his plea for peace after ruling that the English proceedings could be halted. The judge analysed the latest round of the dispute at a private hearing in the Family Division of the High Court in London earlier this month. He was asked to decide whether he should allow English proceedings to draw to a close - or whether he should make decisions about Rocco's welfare. More court hearings are expected to be held in New York. No-one involved was in court yesterday when Mr Justice MacDonald handed down his ruling on the future of legal proceedings in England. "At the root of these proceedings . . . is a temporary breakdown in trust," said the judge. "For all the media coverage, comment and analysis, this is a case born out of circumstances that arise for countless separated parents the world over." He added: "I renew, one final time, my plea for the parents to seek, and to find, an amicable resolution to the dispute between them. Because agreement is not possible today does not mean that agreement will not be possible tomorrow. "Most importantly . . . summer does not last forever. The boy very quickly becomes the man. It would be a very great tragedy for Rocco if any more of the precious and fast-receding days of his childhood were to be taken up by this dispute. "Far better for each of his parents to spend that time enjoying, in turn, the company of the mature, articulate and reflective young man who is their son and who is a very great credit to them both." Mr Justice MacDonald had previously urged Madonna and Mr Ritchie to try to settle the dispute. A judge in New York has made similar pleas. Lawyers have told him that both had outlined proposals for negotiation. Mr Justice MacDonald said Madonna had issued proceedings under international legislation relating to parental disputes about children in London on December 21. She made an application, under the 1980 Hague Convention, for the summary return of Rocco to the jurisdiction of the United States - specifically to New York State. The judge said two days later Madonna launched separate proceedings in the Supreme Court of the State of New York. He said hearings in New York were being overseen by Justice Deborah Kaplan. Mr Justice MacDonald said Madonna accepted that the New York court had "jurisdiction" -and he gave her permission to withdraw the proceedings she had launched in London under the Hague Convention. The aftermath of the explosions this morning Screen grabbed image taken from the Twitter feed of Brussels Airport, where two explosions have been heard and smoke seen rising from one of the terminal buildings. In this image provided by Daniela Schwarzer, smoke is seen at Brussels airport in Brussels, Belgium, after explosions were heard Tuesday, March 22, 2016 Picture taken with permission from the Facebook site of Jef Versele showing the aftermath of this morning's explosions at Brussels airport Picture taken with permission from the Facebook site of Jef Versele showing the aftermath of this morning's explosions at Brussels airport CCTV image issued by Belgian Federal Police of three men they believe are connected with the explosions at Brussels airport. Photo: Belgian Federal Police/PA Wire Picture taken with permission from the Facebook site of Jef Versele showing the aftermath of this morning's explosions at Brussels airport Scenes from the Metro station in Brussels this morning In this photo provided by Ralph Usbeck an unidentified traveller runs in a smoke filled terminal at Brussels Airport, in Brussels after explosions Tuesday, March 22, 2016 In this photo provided by Ralph Usbeck an unidentified traveller gets to his feet in a smoke filled terminal at Brussels Airport, in Brussels after explosions Tuesday, March 22, 2016 In this photo provided by Ralph Usbeck an unidentified traveller lies on the ground in a smoke filled terminal at Brussels Airport, in Brussels, after explosions Tuesday, March 22, 2016 CCTV image issued by Belgian Federal Police of a man they want to trace in connection with the explosions at Brussels airport. Photo: Belgian Federal Police/PA Wire In this photo provided by Ralph Usbeck travellers stand in a smoke filled terminal at Brussels Airport, in Brussels after explosions Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Handout CCTV image issued by Belgian Federal Police of three men they believed are connected with the explosions at Brussels airport The Eiffel Tower is illuminated with the Belgium national colors black, yellow and red in honor of the victims of the today's attacks at the airport and the metro station in Brussels. (AP Photo/Thibault Camus) A woman lights a candle among floral tributes, a cross and notes in front of the Bourse of Brussels on March 22, 2016 in tribute to the victims of Brussels Photo:AFP/Getty Images ISLAMIC extremists struck in the heart of Europe on Tuesday, killing at least 31 people and wounding scores of others in back-to-back bombings of the Brussels airport and subway. Bloodied and dazed travellers staggered from the airport after two explosions - at least one blamed on a suicide attacker and another reportedly on a suitcase bomb - tore through crowds checking in for morning flights. About 40 minutes later, another blast struck subway commuters in central Brussels near the Maelbeek station, which sits amid the European Commission headquarters. Authorities released a photo taken from closed-circuit TV footage of three men pushing luggage trolleys, saying two of them apparently were the suicide bombers and that the third - dressed in a light-coloured coat, black hat and glasses - was at large. They urged the public to contact them if they recognised him. The two men believed to be the suicide attackers apparently were wearing dark gloves on their left hands. Belgian newspaper La Libre said that its sources said the gloves may have been worn to hide detonator devices. Read More In police raids across Brussels, authorities later found a nail-filled bomb, chemical products and an Islamic State flag in a house in the Schaerbeek neighbourhood, the state prosecutors' office said in a statement. In its claim of responsibility, the Islamic State group said its members detonated suicide vests both at the airport and in the subway, where many passengers fled to safety down dark tunnels filled with hazy smoke from the explosion in a train pulling away from the platform. As the city went into lockdown: * Local media reported that 20 people were killed following the blast at Maelbeek metro station, while 14 died in the suicide attack at the airport. Other agencies said 31 in total have been confirmed dead. * The number of people injured in both attacks was believed to be 198 * Two Kalashnikov rifles and an unexploded bomb belt were found at the airport Expand Expand Previous Next Close Passengers at Brussels Airport this morning The aftermath of the explosions this morning / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Passengers at Brussels Airport this morning * No Irish people are believed to have been injured in the attacks European security officials have been braced for a major attack and warned that IS was actively preparing to strike. The arrest on Friday of Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in the Paris attacks last November, heightened those fears, as investigators said many more people were involved than originally thought and that some are still on the loose. "In this time of tragedy, this black moment for our country, I appeal to everyone to remain calm but also to show solidarity," said Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, who announced three days of mourning in his country's deadliest terror strike. "Last year it was Paris. Today it is Brussels. It's the same attacks," said French President Francois Hollande. In Brussels Airport. Been evacuated afer suspected bomb. Luke Mac an Bhaird (@Luke_Mac_) March 22, 2016 Advice to people. Don't come to Gate B at Brussels Airport. We have been evacuated to back of the terminal. Ppl crying and very scared. Luke Mac an Bhaird (@Luke_Mac_) March 22, 2016 So my gate and another one has been told to stay put inside the airport...this is crazy stuff. Luke Mac an Bhaird (@Luke_Mac_) March 22, 2016 Being evacuated to the tarmac now. pic.twitter.com/lu1k3kmsEZ Luke Mac an Bhaird (@Luke_Mac_) March 22, 2016 Stampede now. Everyone running Luke Mac an Bhaird (@Luke_Mac_) March 22, 2016 There was a moment of intense worry as people shouted 'run'. On the tarmac now though. pic.twitter.com/n1O63vJgTR Luke Mac an Bhaird (@Luke_Mac_) March 22, 2016 Belgium raised its terror alert to the highest level, shut the airport and ordered a city-wide lockdown, deploying about 500 soldiers onto Brussels' largely empty streets to bolster police checkpoints. France and Belgium both reinforced border security. Medical officials treating the wounded said some victims lost limbs, while others suffered burns or deep gashes from shattered glass or suspected nails packed in with explosives. Among the most seriously wounded were several children. live sur Periscope depuis #zaventem. 10K viewers (30 de plus a chaque seconde. impressionnant) https://t.co/dpJN2kmk4h Damien Van Achter (@davanac) March 22, 2016 Read More The bombings came barely four months after suicide attackers based in Brussels' Molenbeek district slaughtered 130 people at Paris nightspots, and intelligence agencies had warned for months a follow-up strike was inevitable. Those fears increased following Abdeslam's arrest in Molenbeek, along with police admissions that others suspected of links to the Paris attacks were at large. A high-level Belgian judicial official said a connection by Abdeslam to Tuesday's attacks is "a lead to pursue". Abdeslam has told investigators he was planning to "restart something" from Brussels, said Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders. He said on Sunday that authorities took the claim seriously because "we found a lot of weapons, heavy weapons in the first investigations and we have seen a new network of people around him in Brussels". There have been 2 explosions at the airport. Building is being evacuated. Don't come to the airport area. Brussels Airport (@BrusselsAirport) March 22, 2016 Don't come to the airport - airport is being evacuated. Avoid the airport area. Flights have been cancelled. Brussels Airport (@BrusselsAirport) March 22, 2016 Explosions and smoke at Brussels Airport. Evacuation underway. pic.twitter.com/Ufn1TwQri4 Declan Varley (@declanvarley) March 22, 2016 I'm in terminal A departure hall at @BrusselsAirport and no one seems to know what is going on. No security staff to be found anywhere. C McDonald-Gibson (@cmcdonaldgibson) March 22, 2016 My uncle works at Brussels Airport. Just called that he's okay, but that everyone is in full panic. Windows are all broken. Jill (@autumnalsoul) March 22, 2016 IMAGE: Damage inside Brussels airport pic.twitter.com/Y5hNpM8RhG The Int'l Spectator (@intlspectator) March 22, 2016 While they knew that some kind of extremist act was being prepared in Europe, they were surprised by the size of Tuesday's attacks, said Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon. "It was always possible that more attacks could happen, but we never could have imagined something of this scale," he said. Officials at the airport in the Brussels suburb of Zaventem said police had discovered a Kalashnikov assault rifle and an explosives-packed vest abandoned at the facility, offering one potential lead for forensic evidence. Bomb disposal experts safely dismantled that explosive device. A US administration official said American intelligence officers were working with European counterparts to try to identify the apparently skilled bomb-makers involved in the Brussels attacks and to identify any links to bombs used in Paris. The official said that at least one of the bombs at the airport was suspected to have been packed in a suitcase left in the departures hall. Three intelligence officials in Iraq told the AP that they had warned European colleagues last month of IS plans to attack airports and trains, although Belgium was not specified as a likely target. One of the officials said Iraqi intelligence officials believe that three other IS activists remain at large in Brussels and are plotting other suicide-bomb attacks. Leaders of the European Union said in a joint statement that Tuesday's assault on Brussels "only strengthens our resolve to defend European values and tolerance from the attacks of the intolerant". Reflecting the trauma of the moment, Belgian officials offered uncertain casualty totals at both the airport and subway, where police conducted controlled explosions on suspicious abandoned packages that ultimately were found to contain no explosives. Belgium's health minister, Maggie de Block, said 11 people were killed and 81 injured at the airport, where thousands of passengers were waiting to check luggage and collect boarding cards. Brussels Mayor Yvan Mayeur said 20 people died and more than 100 were wounded in the subway blast. Rescue workers set up makeshift first aid centres in a nearby pub and hotel. Passengers on other trains said many commuters were reading about the airport attacks on their smartphones when they heard the subway blast. Hundreds fled from stopped trains down tunnel tracks to adjacent stations. Political leaders and others around the world expressed their shock at the attacks. "We will do whatever is necessary to support our friend and ally Belgium in bringing to justice those who are responsible," US President Barack Obama said. Belgium's king and queen said they were "devastated" by the violence, describing the attacks as "odious and cowardly". After nightfall, Europe's best-known monuments - the Eiffel Tower, the Brandenburg Gate and the Trevi Fountain - were illuminated with Belgium's national colours in a show of solidarity. Read More Irish witnesses An Irish student on Erasmus in Brussels has documented the evacuation from the airport. Law and politics student Luke Mac an Bhaird said the crowd at Gate B at Brussels Airport were evacuated to the back of the terminal. The crowd were first told to remain put, before they were evacuated to a tarmac area at the back of the terminal. He described how a stampede began as panic set in. "There was a moment of intense worry as people shouted 'run'. On the tarmac now though," he tweeted. "There was just a mass of people at once running to the bottom of the gates, they were saying that another bomb was coming," he told the Anton Savage Show on TodayFM. "I didn't know what was going on. It was very confusing." "Ever since what happened in Paris last year, there's always an army presence [in Brussells]. Even this morning when I got the train to go to the airport the army was there but there was nothing different today though to suggest that something was [about to happen]. "What really put it into perspective for me was hearing thousands of people shouting all at once," he said. Irish man Ian McCafferty, who was underground at the next Metro station said the crowd heard a 'muffled thud' and panic set in. "There was a loud muffled thud, it was very audible. There was a lot of dust and smoke raised at the metro station," he told Sky News. "Soldiers who are always on hand these days were very quick to evacuate the building. "There was a lot of people crying. "The initial shock of the explosion would have lifted a lot of dust through the tunnels and once we were evacuated from the building we saw some smoke. Shock The Minister for Foreign Affairs and Trade, Charlie Flanagan TD has expressed his shock at this morning's explosions in Brussels. "I am horrified by reports of multiple explosions in Brussels, Belgium and my thoughts are with those affected. "The Consular Section of my Department, in conjunction with our Embassy in Belgium, are working with the local authorities. "Anyone with concerns for family and friends can contact the Consular Division of my Department on +353 1 418 0200. "Any Irish citizens in Brussels or Belgium should exercise caution and closely follow the instructions of local authorities. "We will be updating our guidance in consultation with the Authorities as this situation unfolds." A Sky News journalist at the scene reported security at the airport to be requesting people to leave their hand luggage and head out of the building immediately. Sky News televisions Alex Rossi was at the scene and said he heard two very loud explosions. I could feel the building move. There was also dust and smoke as well I went towards where the explosion came from and there were people coming out looking very dazed and shocked, he said. International reaction The European Confederation of Police has released a statement this morning saying that the latest incident reminds us "once again of the dangers and threats facing our citizens." EuroCOP extends their sympathies to those who have been impacted, people who have lost loved ones or have been injured themselves. "At this time it appears police officers in Brussels are dealing with a coordinated terrorists attack. These attacks have left several dead and many more injured," EuroCOP's Angels Bosch said. Once again incidents such as this serve to remind us of bravery shown by police officers as they place themselves in harms way so others don't have to. All Europeans can be grateful that they are served by such courageous men and women giving their all in attempts to keep them safe. I want to be very clear however that brave men and women is not enough. We must ensure our police forces cooperate in a way they never have before. Recent events have shown us that terrorism knows no borders." Flags are currently being put at half mast outside the European Commission. A minute of silence has been held outside the Spanish parliament and Madrid's town hall at noon in memory of the victims. Today's attacks show "the most brutal and inhumane side of those who know only the language of violence and terror", said a spokesperson for the Spanish government. President Barack Obama has sent a message of support to the people of Brussels, saying: "We can and we will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world." The Eiffel Tower will show the colours of the Belgium flag tonight in an act of solidarity following this morning's attacks. An Irish student on Erasmus in Brussels has described the panic that ensued after a bombing at Brussels airport this morning. Law and politics student Luke Mac an Bhaird said the crowd at Gate B at Brussels Airport were evacuated to the back of the terminal after the two separate explosions. The crowd were first told to remain put, before they were evacuated to a tarmac area at the back of the terminal. He described how a stampede began as panic set in. "I was at Gate D when it happened. I was listening to music, I didn't actually hear the explosion but there was a lot of panic and people running with their children. "There was just a mass of people at once running to the bottom of the gates, they were saying that another bomb was coming," he told the Anton Savage Show on TodayFM. Expand Close Handout photo taken with permission from the Twitter feed of @davidcrunelle of the scene at Brussels Airport after two explosions were heard / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Handout photo taken with permission from the Twitter feed of @davidcrunelle of the scene at Brussels Airport after two explosions were heard "I didn't know what was going on. It was very confusing." Mr Mac An Bhaird described scenes of panic in the airport as people were evacuated. Expand Close In this image provided by Daniela Schwarzer, smoke is seen at Brussels airport in Brussels, Belgium, after explosions were heard Tuesday, March 22, 2016 / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp In this image provided by Daniela Schwarzer, smoke is seen at Brussels airport in Brussels, Belgium, after explosions were heard Tuesday, March 22, 2016 "They've put us on a bus and [parked] at the side of the runway. They've evacuated everyone to the tarmac in the last hour or so. "When they were moving us from the gate to the tarmac on the runway, there was hundreds of people queued up at the tunnel as if they were going to [board a plane] but we were going out through an exit door. Expand Close Picture taken with permission from the Facebook site of Jef Versele showing the aftermath of this morning's explosions at Brussels airport / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Picture taken with permission from the Facebook site of Jef Versele showing the aftermath of this morning's explosions at Brussels airport "People started to scream and run again and there was a bit of a stampede towards the tarmac. "Fortunately I didn't see any injuries... I went straight through security to wait for my flight but there was a lot of hysteria. It was quite a scary moment. Expand Close Picture taken with permission from the Facebook site of Jef Versele showing the aftermath of this morning's explosions at Brussels airport / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Picture taken with permission from the Facebook site of Jef Versele showing the aftermath of this morning's explosions at Brussels airport The Erasmus student said that the response from airport officials was "immediate". "Ever since what happened in Paris last year, there's always an army presence [in Brussells]. Even this morning when I got the train to go to the airport the army was there but there was nothing different today though to suggest that something was [about to happen]. "What really put it into perspective for me was hearing thousands of people shouting all at once," he said. "It was very surreal... it was like everything was going in slow motion for the first ten seconds." Mr Mac An Bhaird has said that the passengers waiting on the runway have not been advised on where they will be transported to. "There's been no information about where we will be transported to. There's about six or seven ambulances coming in right now." Speaking to Sky News, Mr Mac an Bhaird said; "There was about 100, 150 people there and we were told there was a bomb going off in the airport. People were quite scared and there were a load of people crying. Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Expand Previous Next Close Passengers are evacuated from Brussels airport, on March 22, 2016 in Zaventem, after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Belgian emergency vehicles arrive at the Brussels Airport in Zaventem, on March 22, 2016, after a string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station, killing at least 21 people, as Belgium raised its terror threat to the maximum level. AFP PHOTO / THIERRY MONASSETHIERRY MONASSE/AFP/Getty Images Passengers wait, on March 22, 2016 near Brussels airport in Zaventem , following its evacuation after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Flags being put at half mast outside European Commission Credit: Twitter Passengers are evacuated from Brussels airport, on March 22, 2016 in Zaventem, after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Passengers are evacuated from Brussels airport, on March 22, 2016 in Zaventem, after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Passengers are evacuated from Brussels airport, on March 22, 2016 in Zaventem, after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Passengers board a bus as they evacuate the Brussels Airport in Zaventem, on March 22, 2016, after a string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station, killing at least 21 people, as Belgium raised its terror threat to the maximum level. AFP PHOTO / THIERRY MONASSETHIERRY MONASSE/AFP/Getty Images Passengers are evacuated from Brussels airport, on March 22, 2016 in Zaventem, after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Passengers are evacuated from Brussels airport, on March 22, 2016 in Zaventem, after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images Passengers evacuate the Brussels Airport in Zaventem, on March 22, 2016, after a string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station, killing at least 21 people, as Belgium raised its terror threat to the maximum level. AFP PHOTO / THIERRY MONASSETHIERRY MONASSE/AFP/Getty Images Firefighters arrive at a security perimeter set near Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images Passengers evacuate the Brussels Airport in Zaventem, on March 22, 2016, after a string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station, killing at least 21 people, as Belgium raised its terror threat to the maximum level. AFP PHOTO / THIERRY MONASSETHIERRY MONASSE/AFP/Getty Images A police officers sets a security perimeter near Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images A police officers sets a security perimeter near Maalbeek metro station, on March 22, 2016 in Brussels, after a blast at this station near the EU institutions caused deaths and injuries. AFP PHOTO / EMMANUEL DUNANDEMMANUEL DUNAND/AFP/Getty Images People are evacuated from Brussels Airport, in Zaventem, on March 22, 2016 after two explosions in a hall of the airport. AFP PHOTO / BELGA / DIRK WAEM / Belgium OUTDIRK WAEM/AFP/Getty Images An armed policeman secures the access to the terminal area of the Frankfurt Airport, on March 22, 2016, in Frankfurt, western Germany. AFP PHOTO / DPA / Boris Roessler / Germany OUTBORIS ROESSLER/AFP/Getty Images / Facebook Twitter Email Whatsapp Passengers are evacuated from Brussels airport, on March 22, 2016 in Zaventem, after at least 13 people were killed and 35 injured as twin blasts rocked the main terminal of Brussels airport.AFP PHOTO / JOHN THYSJOHN THYS/AFP/Getty Images "There was very little being said to us only to run to the back. Read More "We're out at this tarmac area now and we're waiting for a bus to bring us somewhere." A Sky News journalist at the scene reported security at the airport to be requesting people to leave their hand luggage and head out of the building immediately. Sky News televisions Alex Rossi was at the scene and said he heard two very loud explosions. I could feel the building move. There was also dust and smoke as well I went towards where the explosion came from and there were people coming out looking very dazed and shocked, he said. CCTV image issued by Belgian Federal Police of three men they believe are connected with the explosions at Brussels airport. Photo: Belgian Federal Police/PA Wire CCTV image issued by Belgian Federal Police of a man they want to trace in connection with the explosions at Brussels airport. Photo: Belgian Federal Police/PA Wire Police raids are happening around Belgium after two men "probably" staged suicide bombings at Brussels airport and a third fled, a Belgian prosecutor said. Prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said that the third suspect is actively being sought by police. At least 31 people were killed and nearly 190 wounded in the two airport bombings and another in the Brussels subway system. Belgian Prosecutor Eric van der Sypt said two bombers died at Brussels airport and a third is being "actively" sought. Belgian police have released CCTV footage of three men suspected of carrying out the attack on the airport. The photo shows three unidentified men pushing trollies with suitcases in Zaventem airport's terminal building, two of whom are wearing a black glove on their left hand. Belgian police have released the image as part of their investigation, according to the Belgian news agency Belga and local newspaper La Libre. Prime Minister Charles Michel said the country will tighten security at its borders. He declared three days of national mourning after what he says were probably the most tragic attacks the country has seen in peacetime. A RUSSIAN court has begun reading the verdict on Nadia Savchenko, a Ukrainian army officer, who is expected to be found guilty of murdering two Russian journalists during a battle in Ukraine in 2014. Miss Savchenko is accused of directing a mortar strike that killed Anton Voloshin and Igor Kornelyuk, employees of Russia's VGTRK state broadcaster, and a number of civilians during a battle north of Luhansk in eastern Ukraine on June 17, 2014. In opening remarks at the final hearing, the judge in Russia's Rostov region said Miss Savchenko "acted as part of a group, by prior agreement and conscious of the consequences, with the aim of killing an unlimited number of people" and was motivated by "political hatred". Russian and international news agencies reported that she had been found guilty on all counts, although it was not immediately clear if this was a verdict or a summing-up of the prosecution case. Prosecutors are seeking 23 years in prison. The judge will deliver the sentence after reading his judgment, which could take up to two days. Miss Savchenko, who has called the proceedings a "farce," denies all the charges against her and maintains that she was captured by separatist fighters an hour before the journalists were killed and was brought into Russia against her will as a prisoner of Russian intelligence operatives. Miss Savchenko is a Ukrainian army helicopter pilot, but was fighting as a volunteer in a pro-Kiev militia called Aidar battalion at the time. The Ukrainian and Western governments have described Miss Savchenko as a "hostage" being used by the Kremlin to extract concessions from Kiev. The case has emerged as a diplomatic flashpoint in the confrontation between Russia and Ukraine, where she has been hailed as a national heroine. Since she was imprisoned, she has been elected as a member of parliament and made a Hero of Ukraine, the country's highest state decoration, by president Petro Poroshenko. He has repeatedly demanded her release and appeared to claim that he had secured a promise to do so from Vladimir Putin during peace talks in Minsk in February 2015. The Kremlin denied that any such deal had been made and Russian officials have since explicitly said Miss Savchenko is not subject to the part of the Minsk agreement requiring release of prisoners because she is being held as a suspected felon, not a prisoner of war. Western leaders, including Barack Obama and Angela Merkel, have also called for her release. ( Daily Telegraph, London) A small number of people based in Ireland are being monitored closely in the wake of the Brussels terror attack. The Government has said a terrorist attack here is not likely but we cannot consider ourselves immune from the threat. Gardai are working closely with EU and other international security and intelligence counterparts. A statement issued on behalf of the Government this afternoon said: The activities of a small number of people based here and whose behaviour may be of concern will continue to be monitored closely. It described the events in Brussels as deplorable and said they have highlighted starkly once again the threat from international terrorism. Acts of violence like these are an attack on the democratic way of life that we in Ireland hold dear and the values that we share with our EU partners, it said. There is no information at present of any Irish casualties but the statement cautioned it remains an evolving situation. While it remains the case that there is no specific information in relation to any threat to Ireland from international terrorism we cannot consider that we are immune from the threat. It remains the case that an attack here is assessed as possible but not likely. The level of threat is kept under constant review by An Garda Siochana and all appropriate measures will continue to be taken by the authorities here. For obvious security reasons, we could not go into the details of the operational responses. All the agencies here co-operate closely in respect of any threats that are identified, the statement said. It added that there can never by any justification for such brutality. The National Security Committee is meeting this afternoon to asses the risk to Ireland in the wake of the Brussels terror attacks. Taoiseach Enda Kenny asked the committee to meet as a matter or urgency and expects to receive an update on the situation this evening. A spokesman for Mr Kenny said it was not aware of any increased threat here but the meeting was convened as good practice. A significant security event has occurred in the EU, he said. The full Cabinet is to briefed on the situation once the meeting ends. The National Security Committee is chaired by the Secretary General of Department of the Taoiseach, Martin Fraser. Its members include the Chief of Staff of the Defence Forces Mark Mellet and Garda Commissioner Noirin OSullivan. Earlier today, the Taoiseach said: As far as we are aware no Irish citizen is involved here. With such tragic circumstances one can never be sure of whats happened, he said. Those who seek to use death and violence in this way must be confronted, will be confronted and will be defeated, Taoiseach Enda Kenny has said. He told the Dail that the Irish embassy in Brussels is seeking to establish further details about the loss of life and serious injuries. These acts were utterly indiscriminate and are an attack on our democratic values. I condemn them in the strongest possible terms, Mr Kenny said. The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade are monitoring the situation very carefully and has activated its incident centre. Fianna Fail leader Micheal Martin also said that the atrocities in Brussels were an affront to everyone and part of a Europe-wide trend in terrorist attacks. On behalf of the Independent Alliance, Deputy Shane Ross, expressed "utter revulsion" at the latest terrorist attacks in Brussels. The Dail stood for a minutes silence to remember the victims. An Iraqi identified by French and Belgian authorities as having contact with terrorists has been arrested on a European warrant in Italy. Italy's interior minister Angelino Alfano said the Iraqi was arrested on Tuesday near Naples, but he did not elaborate on whether the connection was directly related to the attacks in Brussels, or the November attacks in Paris. He said investigators were working to determine more about the suspect's terror contacts and activities in Italy. Mr Alfano told reporters after a meeting of security officials that he will shortly sign additional expulsion orders for foreigners "who demonstrated to not respect the rules of our country". Since the beginning of 2015, he said Italy has expelled 74 people, including five imams, as part of terrorism prevention measures aimed against "subjects who showed advanced signs of radicalisation or for having given ideological support" to Islamic State. He said 396 people had been arrested since the beginning of 2015 as part of anti-terrorism investigations, which included searches against 2,249 people suspected of religious extremism. Mr Alfano added that intelligence officials are working 24 hours a day, "but no country can be at zero risk and the tragic facts of these days unfortunately are evident demonstrations". A victim is evacuated by emergency services after a explosion in a main metro station in Brussels (AP) Handout photo taken with permission from the Facebook page of Bart van Meele of the scene at Brussels Airport after two explosions A woman is evacuated in an ambulance by emergency services after a explosion in a main metro station in Brussels (AP) CCTV image issued by Belgian Federal Police of a man they want to trace in connection with the explosions at Brussels airport. Islamic extremists struck in the heart of Europe on Tuesday, killing at least 31 people and wounding scores of others in back-to-back bombings of the Brussels airport and subway. Bloodied and dazed travellers staggered from the airport after two explosions - at least one blamed on a suicide attacker and another reportedly on a suitcase bomb - tore through crowds checking in for morning flights. About 40 minutes later, another blast struck subway commuters in central Brussels near the Maelbeek station, which sits amid the European Commission headquarters. Authorities released a photo taken from closed-circuit TV footage of three men pushing luggage trolleys, saying two of them apparently were the suicide bombers and that the third - dressed in a light-coloured coat, black hat and glasses - was at large. They urged the public to contact them if they recognised him. The two men believed to be the suicide attackers apparently were wearing dark gloves on their left hands. In police raids across Brussels, authorities later found a nail-filled bomb, chemical products and an Islamic State flag in a house in the Schaerbeek neighbourhood, the state prosecutors' office said in a statement. In its claim of responsibility, the Islamic State group said its members detonated suicide vests both at the airport and in the subway, where many passengers fled to safety down dark tunnels filled with hazy smoke from the explosion in a train pulling away from the platform. European security officials have been braced for a major attack and warned that IS was actively preparing to strike. The arrest on Friday of Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in the Paris attacks last November, heightened those fears, as investigators said many more people were involved than originally thought and that some are still on the loose. "In this time of tragedy, this black moment for our country, I appeal to everyone to remain calm but also to show solidarity," said Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, who announced three days of mourning in his country's deadliest terror strike. "Last year it was Paris. Today it is Brussels. It's the same attacks," said French President Francois Hollande. Belgium raised its terror alert to the highest level, shut the airport and ordered a city-wide lockdown, deploying about 500 soldiers onto Brussels' largely empty streets to bolster police checkpoints. France and Belgium both reinforced border security. Medical officials treating the wounded said some victims lost limbs, while others suffered burns or deep gashes from shattered glass or suspected nails packed in with explosives. Among the most seriously wounded were several children. The bombings came barely four months after suicide attackers based in Brussels' Molenbeek district slaughtered 130 people at Paris nightspots, and intelligence agencies had warned for months a follow-up strike was inevitable. Those fears increased following Abdeslam's arrest in Molenbeek, along with police admissions that others suspected of links to the Paris attacks were at large. A high-level Belgian judicial official said a connection by Abdeslam to Tuesday's attacks is "a lead to pursue". Abdeslam has told investigators he was planning to "restart something" from Brussels, said Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders. He said on Sunday that authorities took the claim seriously because "we found a lot of weapons, heavy weapons in the first investigations and we have seen a new network of people around him in Brussels". While they knew that some kind of extremist act was being prepared in Europe, they were surprised by the size of Tuesday's attacks, said Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon. "It was always possible that more attacks could happen, but we never could have imagined something of this scale," he said. Officials at the airport in the Brussels suburb of Zaventem said police had discovered a Kalashnikov assault rifle and an explosives-packed vest abandoned at the facility, offering one potential lead for forensic evidence. Bomb disposal experts safely dismantled that explosive device. A US administration official said American intelligence officers were working with European counterparts to try to identify the apparently skilled bomb-makers involved in the Brussels attacks and to identify any links to bombs used in Paris. The official said that at least one of the bombs at the airport was suspected to have been packed in a suitcase left in the departures hall. Three intelligence officials in Iraq told the AP that they had warned European colleagues last month of IS plans to attack airports and trains, although Belgium was not specified as a likely target. One of the officials said Iraqi intelligence officials believe that three other IS activists remain at large in Brussels and are plotting other suicide-bomb attacks. Leaders of the European Union said in a joint statement that Tuesday's assault on Brussels "only strengthens our resolve to defend European values and tolerance from the attacks of the intolerant". Reflecting the trauma of the moment, Belgian officials offered uncertain casualty totals at both the airport and subway, where police conducted controlled explosions on suspicious abandoned packages that ultimately were found to contain no explosives. Belgium's health minister, Maggie de Block, said 11 people were killed and 81 injured at the airport, where thousands of passengers were waiting to check luggage and collect boarding cards. Brussels Mayor Yvan Mayeur said 20 people died and more than 100 were wounded in the subway blast. Rescue workers set up makeshift first aid centres in a nearby pub and hotel. Passengers on other trains said many commuters were reading about the airport attacks on their smartphones when they heard the subway blast. Hundreds fled from stopped trains down tunnel tracks to adjacent stations. Political leaders and others around the world expressed their shock at the attacks. "We will do whatever is necessary to support our friend and ally Belgium in bringing to justice those who are responsible," US President Barack Obama said. Belgium's king and queen said they were "devastated" by the violence, describing the attacks as "odious and cowardly". After nightfall, Europe's best-known monuments - the Eiffel Tower, the Brandenburg Gate and the Trevi Fountain - were illuminated with Belgium's national colours in a show of solidarity. Burma's president-elect has proposed an 18-member Cabinet which will include party leader Aung San Suu Kyi, the former dissident who campaigned for decades to replace the military junta with a democratically elected government. Htin Kyaw submitted the names to parliament for a formal review and approval by legislators on Wednesday, after which the ministers' Cabinet positions will be decided. At the top of the list is Ms Suu Kyi, who was not able to become president because of a constitutional block, even though she led her party to a landslide victory in a general election last November. It has been widely rumored that Ms Suu Kyi will become foreign minister, but that is far from certain because if she were to take that post she would have to give up her parliamentary seat and end party activities. "I doubt that Aung San Suu Kyi would take the position of the foreign minister," said Toe Kyaw Hlaign, a political analyst. "Also, working as a foreign minister requires a lot of time travelling around the world. She will have to do a lot of international relations and overseas trips, and she won't have the time to exercise control over the government." Ms Suu Kyi has said in the past that she will be "above the president" and govern the country indirectly. Nevertheless, her entry into the government is a remarkable turn of fortunes not only for the Nobel Peace Prize laureate but also for the country, which had been under iron-fisted military rule since 1962. For decades the junta kept Burma in isolation and economic stagnation while refusing to listen to international counsel or homegrown demands for democracy. Ms Suu Kyi came to prominence in 1988 when popular protests were building up. The junta crushed the protests that had turned into anti-government riots, killing thousands of people and placing Ms Suu Kyi under house arrest in 1989. The junta called elections in 1990 but refused to hand over power when Ms Suu Kyi's National League for Democracy party won overwhelmingly. Ms Suu Kyi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize a year later. As Burma continued to wallow under military rule, Ms Suu Kyi was released and re-arrested several times. The junta finally started loosening its grip on power in 2010, allowing elections that were won by a military-allied party after the NLD boycotted the polls as unfair. After more reforms, another general election was held last November 8 and was won by the NLD, a reflection of Ms Suu Kyi's widespread public support. The constitutional clause that denied her the presidency excludes anyone from the position who has a foreign spouse or children. Ms Suu Kyi's two sons are British, as was her late husband. The clause is widely seen as having been written by the military with Ms Suu Kyi in mind. The democracy that Ms Suu Kyi and her colleagues are building is still not a complete package. The military has reserved 25% of the seats in parliament for itself, guaranteeing that no government can amend the constitution without its approval. Also, it ensured that one of Htin Kyaw's two vice presidents is a former general, Myint Swe, a close ally of former junta leader Than Shwe. Myint Swe remains on a US Treasury Department blacklist which bars American companies from doing business with several tycoons and senior military figures connected with the former junta. SHARE By Vince Jackson, Special to Independent Mail CLEMSON The City Council voted 4-2 Monday to let the City Planning Commission discuss whether construction of hotels up to 65 feet in height should be allowed downtown. The council has in the past turned down similar requests. Allowing construction of hotels of such a height would involve creating a conditional use in the city's central business district. The council voted on the matter after lengthy discussion. Mary McCormac, attorney for the city, said she saw no legal problems with letting the planning commission discuss the issue. Council members Jerry Chapman and June Hay voted against the request. Several residents spoke against the request and asked that it be denied. In other business, the council unanimously approved a request to move forward with a $1.9 million fire station near Issaqueena Trail and Cambridge Drive on the city's east side. Hogan Construction Group is completing a design-build agreement for the new station, officials said. The city shares fire protection with Clemson University and its campus fire department. CCSHP Clemson, the developers of the 114 Earle Street apartment complex, will provide 40 public parking spaces in the development's parking garage on a 50-year-lease. City Administrator Rick Cotton said the spaces are needed on College Avenue. The council also reached an agreement of understanding with Farm Clemson, LLC, developers of The Farm residential complex at 100 Old Central Road in the historic Calhoun District. The Farm, when completed, will have 33 student-oriented patio cottages, according to developers. The agreement approved Monday allows for property line adjustments and streetscape improvements. Cotton also updated council members Monday about sewer work at Keith Street and College Avenue. Keith Street is temporarily closed. Fendley, McCollum and Keith streets may be accessed by Earle Street. All public parking on Earle Street between College Avenue and McCollum Street will be unavailable for at least one week, city officials said. Elections in Anderson County: How to vote early and what to know SHARE By Frances Parrish of the Independent Mail Anderson County high school girls from low-income families will have the chance to shop for free prom dresses at the annual Cinderella Project boutique event. But to make that happen, Leslie McIntosh, the organizer for the Anderson Cinderella Project, is asking residents and businesses to donate new or gently used prom dresses, shoes and jewelry. "Anything a girl would need for prom, we'll take it," McIntosh said. While nearly 300 dresses have been collected, McIntosh is asking for more to give the 200 or so students who participate a greater selection of styles and sizes. "The ones that don't get picked this year are kept for next year," McIntosh said. For one day, high school girls will be able to sift through racks of dresses at the Anderson County Library's main branch, looking for the perfect one to go with those shoes or earrings. With dresses ranging anywhere from $150 to nearly $500, prom is an expensive event, and for those who don't have a lot of money, it's difficult for them to pay for the dress, the shoes, a hairdo, makeup and accessories. "The world stops for prom," said Pendleton High School guidance counselor Teresa Horton. "It's is such an event. It's expensive, and girls want to have a new dress." Prom is considered a rite of passage in high school, and the Cinderella Project started 15 years ago when a group of young lawyers decided to fill a need they saw in the community. "This event means so much to each and every student; we help to make their prom dreams come true," said Sheila Bias, statewide Cinderella Project committee chairwoman. "Prom is a quintessential moment in everyone's lives, and we want to make sure every student in South Carolina has the opportunity to have that memory without any financial limitations. For the students in the homeless liaison program in city of Anderson-based Anderson School District 5, going to the Cinderella Project boutique means the world. "We want to make sure those girls have those same moments," McIntosh said. "They deserve the same moments as everyone else." The boutique event will happen April 9 at the Anderson Library on South McDuffie Street. No girl in high school with a student ID will be turned away, McIntosh said. For questions or more information, contact McIntosh at leslie@msslawfirm.net or 864-225-0001. Follow Frances Parrish on Twitter @frances_AIM Want to donate? Donations can be dropped off at the following locations. Beyoutiful Boutique at 725 E. Front St. in Iva. Blake and Brady Boutique at 140 N. Main St. in Anderson. McIntosh, Sherard, Sullivan and Brousseau at 138 N. Main St. in Anderson. MRK Boutique at 14 N. Main St. in Honea Path. Senevius Law Firm at 517 N. McDuffie St. in Anderson. Thomason and Pracht at 303 E. Greenville St. in Anderson. Starting and Running a Tech Company in India: Panelists: - Varun Aggarwal, Co-Founder & CTO, Aspiring Minds - Katie Taylor, Tata Center Fellow and Founder, Khethworks - Hemant Khemka MD, Stesalit Systems Ltd. - Pradeep Nakhate, Head of India, EyeNetra Internet of Things and Behavior Change by Richard Fletcher, Research Scientist, MIT Development Through Dialogue, Design and Dissemination Solar Cheaper than Coal by Frank van Mierlo, CEO, 1366 Technologies About KPIT Technologies Ltd. KPIT (BSE:532400, NSE: KPIT) is a global technology company specializing in providing IT Consulting and Product Engineering solutions and services to Automotive, Manufacturing, Energy & Utilities and Life Sciences companies. Together with its customers and partners, it creates and delivers technologies to enable creating a cleaner, greener, and more intelligent world that is sustainable and efficient. KPIT Technologies (BSE: 532400; NSE: KPIT), a global technology company specializing in IT consulting and product engineering, today announced that it will host the respected Industrial Liaison Program with Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) titled, 2016 MIT Innovation for an Emerging India Workshop on 21March, 2016 at the KPIT campus in Pune. The workshop will have eminent speakers delve into the strong links between MIT and companies leading the development and application of cutting-edge innovations in India and around the world.The conference will feature presentations by MIT faculty, keynote addresses from Indian industry leaders and Lightning Talks from MIT-connected startups founded and operating in India. They will discuss innovations in diverse fields such as advanced manufacturing, artificial intelligence, clean energy amongst several groundbreaking domains. The sessions will also focus on how big data can be utilized to improve operations and processes in businesses, resulting in business growth and better lives.With KPITs focus on building an environment conducive to innovation, this program is an excellent platform to explore development and application of advanced technology in India and globally. Ravi Pandit, Co-founder, Chairman & Group CEO, KPIT Technologies will be the key note speaker at the event.The workshop will include sessions on digitizing the processes of fabrication in manufacturing by Neil Gershenfeld, Director, MIT Center for Bits and Atoms and data driven artificial intelligence by Una-May O'Reilly, a Principal Research Scientist.Other topics that will be discussed include:The 2016 MIT Innovation for an Emerging India Workshop is a daylong conference, being held from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm on the 21March 2016. Registration is open for ILP members and invited guests. Click here to register. has signed acontract withBhutans largest telecom service provider. Under the terms of the agreement, Bhutan Telecoms complete billing systems will be transformed into a convergent environment supporting mobile, fixed line andAs a result, Bhutan Telecom will be able to launch promotions and notifications, product and service cross-bundling, cost-control for postpaid subscriptions and service personalization. The operator will be able to design and offer promotions and campaigns in real time and in accordance with subscribers interests, while monetizing ongoing growth in data traffic.Ericsson will be responsible for design, deployment and systems integration of the solution. The convergent charging solution, based on Ericssons BSCS iXR4 offering together with data monetization features such as PCRF will be integrated with Bhutan Telecoms existing infrastructure. Bhutan Telecom will migrate its subscribers onto the new platform by the third quarter of 2016.We are delighted to further strengthen our partnership with Ericsson. This transformation will help us to standardize and modernize our billing systems. We will be able to introduce innovative offers for our customers, and at the same time manage differential charging options effectively. We feel privileged to partner with Bhutan Telecom in transforming their billing architecture. Bhutan Telecom will now be able to introduce new and innovative charging mechanisms quickly and flexibly for its subscribers, while keeping control of any revenue leakages at the same time. This will ensure greater customer satisfaction. stock views: Umesh Chowdhary, Managing Director, Titagarh Wagons, in a recent interaction with ET Now spoke about the defense procurement policy and its influence on defense manufacturing in the country.Mr. Chowdhary stated that his company is bullish on both the railway business and the defense business. He acknowledged that the DPP is a driver towards generating orders from Indian manufacturers. He stated that some of the chapters of the policy have not yet been published, and the company has not reviewed what has been published due to time constraints. He, however, noted that the policy creates a directional policy framework and shows the government commitment towards the "Make in India" initiative.He noted that foreign firms would previously get into India with their products and perhaps even engage in production within the country. However, the situation is changing because Indian companies that manufacture their products in the country are now receiving more priority. Chowdhary believes that it is a significant move towards locally produced defense equipment.Chowdhary described the defense as a lumpy business in the traditional sense because one large contract can lead to changes in operations. He also hopes that the cumbersome nature of the business will be addressed sometime in the future. He also pointed out that those who invest in the sector are people who do not require sustainability and the lumpy nature of the business can lead to negative productivity. This applies even in the higher lumps because there are some fixed costs involved.Nevertheless, Mr. Chowdhary noted that the defense business has always been one of the companys main or focus businesses. Titagarh Wagons has been present in the defense industry for the past six years, but the firm took up the sector in a very minimalistic manner. Since its entry into the business, the firm has been trying to find a foothold especially through participation in many of the defense programs that have been initiated.Titagarh Wagons Ltd ended at Rs. 102.8, up by Rs. 5.8 or 5.98% from its previous closing of Rs. 97 on the BSE.The scrip opened at Rs. 98.4 and touched a high and low of Rs. 103.4 and Rs. 96.4 respectively. A total of 2792110(NSE+BSE) shares were traded on the counter. The current market cap of the company is Rs. 1119.23 crore.The BSE group 'B' stock of face value Rs. 2 touched a 52 week high of Rs. 166.4 on 01-Jan-2016 and a 52 week low of Rs. 85.2 on 29-Feb-2016. Last one week high and low of the scrip stood at Rs. 98.45 and Rs. 90.45 respectively.The promoters holding in the company stood at 46.11 % while Institutions and Non-Institutions held 29.38 % and 24.5 % respectively.The stock traded above its 100 DMA. Hero MotoCorp Ltd is currently trading at Rs. 2793, down by Rs. 9.75 or 0.35% from its previous closing of Rs. 2802.75 on the BSE. The scrip opened at Rs. 2780 and has touched a high and low of Rs. 2815.95 and Rs. 2754.5 respectively. So far 354736(NSE+BSE) shares were traded on the counter. The current market cap of the company is Rs. 55970.92 crore. The BSE group 'A' stock of face value Rs. 2 has touched a 52 week high of Rs. 2857.35 on 02-Mar-2016 and a 52 week low of Rs. 2252 on 08-May-2015. Last one week high and low of the scrip stood at Rs. 2838 and Rs. 2763.5 respectively. The promoters holding in the company stood at 34.64 % while Institutions and Non-Institutions held 56.48 % and 8.88 % respectively. The stock is currently trading below its 100 DMA. Hero MotoCorp's workers held a protest inside the Gurgaon plant canteen regarding the wage settlement of the company. The workers have demanded that the long-pending issue needs to be resolved immediately.Hero MotoCorp Gurgaon Worker Union has staged a protest. They have also talked to the management but no concensus has been reached yet.Honda 2wheeler on Saturday finalised wage settlement where the company gave an increment of Rs 23,300 per month over three years between 2015 and 2018. Himachal Futuristic Communications Ltd (HFCL), a leading integrated telecom solutions provider is entering into defence equipment manufacturing as part of its strategy to contribute to the nation's plan for self sufficiency in the defence sector by participating in the defence equipment manufacturing under the Government of India's "Make in India" initiative. HFCL will be exhibiting its wide range of defence related equipment during the eleventh edition of DEFEXPO 2016 starting March 28, 2016. The company has already been granted industrial licences for a range of products, which include electronic fuses, electro optical devices and communication equipment along with permits for assembling electronic warfare systems, radars and the design, development and manufacturing of aircraft, including helicopters. It is in discussions with global original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) for a tie-up to produce equipment in an array of expanses. The main objective behind this move is to play an active role in making India a global hub in defence engineering, manufacturing and exports. HFCL entered in Defence Communication infrastructure way back where it commissioned one microwave based and one satellite based communication project for Northern Command. These were major defense infrastructure projects executed by us. In recent years, it won a sub project to lay optical fibre cable for Defence Sector's pan-India communication project 'Network for Spectrum' (NFS). Mahendra Nahata, Managing Director, Himachal Futuristic Communications Ltd. said "According to government statistics, roughly 60% of India's defence requirements are met through imports. Our country certainly has the potential to emerge as a global platform for defence research, manufacturing and supply chain sourcing, which will strengthen our defence capabilities and spur defence manufacturing as well as its exports. The recent initiative of the Government to open the defence sector for private players will help foreign OEMs to enter into strategic partnerships with Indian companies and leverage the domestic markets. Our aim of getting into Defence manufacturing is to bring in world-class technologies to the Country, cut down on import of defence products and make available state-of-the-art technologies to our soldier." "DEFEXPO, the most important biannual event of its kind presents opportunities for the foreign companies to enter into the Indian market and also for the local companies like us to collaborate, design, develop and showcase our engineering strength and capabilities ta deliver military equipment." he further added. Closing bell:The BSE Sensex ended with a gain of 45 points at 25,330. The BSE Sensex opened at 25,331 touched an intra-day high of 24,372 and low of 25,084.The NSE Nifty closed with a gain of 11 points at 7,715. The NSE Nifty opened at 7,696 hitting a high of 7,722 and low of 7,644.The Indian Rupee was trading down by 14 paise at 66.67 per US dollar.On the global front, China's Shanghai Composite index closed down 0.60% and Hang Seng ends marginally lower.European shares fell in early trading with travel and leisure stocks leading the market lower after explosions hit the airport in Brussels. The FTSE 100 marginally down 0.5%. On the other hand, DAX gained 1.2% and the CAC 40 trading lower by 0.5% each.Tata Power, BHEL, Bosch, Vedanta, Tata Steel, Hero MotoCorp, M&M, HDFC, Hindalco and TCS were among the gainers on NSE, whereas Dr.Reddy's, ITC, Tech Mahindra, Adani Ports, HUL, Ambuja Cement and ACC were among the losers today.Live market:At 3:06 PM, the S&P BSE Sensex is trading at 25,317 up 31 points, while NSE Nifty is trading at 7,709 up mere five points.The BSE Mid-cap Index is trading up 0.59% at 10,506, whereas BSE Small-cap Index is trading down 0.28% at 10,477.BHEL, M&M, Sun Pharmaceuticals, Lupin, Maruti Suzuki and L&T are among the gainers, whereas ITC, Dr.Reddy's, Bharti Airtel, HUL, Adani Ports and Infosys are losing sheen on BSE.Some buying activity is seen in realty, capital goods, power, consumer durables, oil & gas, utilities and energy sectors, while IT, fmcg, banking, telecom and Teck sectors are showing weakness on BSE.The INDIA VIX is up 2.78% at 16.7875. Out of 1,796 stocks traded on the NSE, 870 declined, 646 advanced and 280 remained unchanged today.A total of 12 stocks registered a fresh 52-week high in trades today, while 18 stocks touched a new 52-week low on the NSE.The Indian rupee opened marginally down by 6 paise at 66.58/$ on Tuesday as against the previous close of 66.53/$. On Monday, rupee closed marginally lower against the US Dollar. US dollar seems to be stabilising against the basket of major currencies, which in a way is also restricting the upside in the emerging market currencies. On the domestic front, Indias current account deficit narrowed to 1.3% of the gross domestic product (GDP) in the fiscal third quarter, from 1.5% in the year earlier.Himachal Futuristic Communications Ltd galloped 13% to Rs.16.20 on BSE. The company is entering into defence equipment manufacturing as part of its strategy to contribute to the nation's plan for self sufficiency in the defence sector by participating in the defence equipment manufacturing under the Government of India's "Make in India" initiative. HFCL will be exhibiting its wide range of defence related equipment during the eleventh edition of DEFEXPO 2016 starting March 28, 2016.Indoco Remedies Ltd stock was higher by 11% at Rs. 298. The company has received the Establishment Inspection Report (approval) from US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) for its solid dosages manufacturing facility at Goa (Plant I), thereby confirming the closure of inspection in October, 2015.Reliance Defence and Engineering Ltd stock was higher by 3% at Rs. 68. The Defence Acquisition Council reportedly said that it approved the Defence Procurement Policy (DPP) 2016, which will come into effect from April 1, 2016.Persistent Systems Ltd stock was lower by 5.3% at Rs. 701. The company announced plans to organize its business around four key growth strategies unique to Persistent. The companys product development and technology DNA drive all four growth strategies.JMC Projects (India) Ltd stock was higher by 9% at Rs. 219. The company secured new orders worth over Rs. 930 crores.Prestige Estates Projects was higher by 6% at Rs. 162. The Board of Directors of the company at its meeting held on March 19, 2016 has approved the payment of Interim Dividend at the rate of 12%, i.e., (Rs. 1.2 per share) for FY15-16.JSPL gained 1.9% to Rs.61.15 on BSE. Sajjan Jindal-led JSW Energy Ltd is in advanced talks to acquire a power plant owned by Jindal Steel & Power Ltd, controlled by his younger brother Naveen, reports a business daily. The deal is valued at more than Rs. 5,000 crore and is to be announced before the 31st March, says the financial newspaper.Just Dial Ltd stock was higher by 5% at Rs. 676. The company has made a post buyback public announcement dated March 18, 2016 for the attention of its shareholders in accordance with the provisions of the Securities and Exchange Board of lndia (Buy Back of Securities) Regulations, 1998, as amended.Eros International Ltd stock was up by 3% at Rs. 170.Eros International Plc Audit Committee has completed the internal review which it commenced in November 2015.Bharti Airtel slipped 1% to Rs.349.95 on BSE. After market hours the company has announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement with American Tower Corporation through its subsidiary company, Airtel Tanzania, for the sale of approximately 1,350 of its communications towers in Tanzania. Under the agreement, American Tower may acquire up to approximately 100 additional sites currently in development for an additional consideration. Airtel will be the anchor tenant on the portfolio under a lease with a ten-year initial term.Defence stocks rallied on BSE and NSE after the new Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP), focusing on India-made products and fast-tracked acquisition process, was cleared by the top committee of the Defence Ministry on Monday. The DPP will be unveiled at the Defence Expo on March 28. The policy will give first priority to Indian Designed Developed and Manufactured (IDDM) acquisition and relax norms with respect to blacklisting, says report. Reliance Defence and Engineering climbed 4.6% to Rs.69.10. BEML jumped 2.8% to Rs. 1,097 on BSE. Bharat Electronics gained 0.5% to Rs.1,184. L&T gained 1.2% to Rs.1,243.Tata Global Beverages gained 1.7% to Rs.121.75 after the company has on March 21, 2016 sold 92,48,060 equity shares of Re. 1 each held in Titan Company Limited (TCL) constituting 1.04% of the paid up equity capital of TCL as a market transaction.Mangalam Cement soared 6.4% to Rs.239.80 on BSE after block deal. Around 3.82 million equity shares of the company have changed hands in block deals.Puravankara Projects jumped 4% to Rs.49.35 after the company announced its foray back into the Western Region with a proposed development of 30 acres in Mundhwa, Pune. Purva Silversands, the first phase of development across 20 acres is being launched as a unique Integrated Lifestyle District with a design theme that the city of Pune has hitherto not seen before. McNally Bharat Engineering Company Ltd has informed BSE that the Board of Directors of the company has approved in principle a proposal to merge the company, its subsidiary McNally Sayaji Engineering Limited and EMC Limited with Kilburn Engineering Limited.The company has also agreed to form a Committee with a Representative from each of the aforesaid Companies to oversee the preparation of a draft Scheme of Amalgamation and appoint such professionals as it deems fit to obtain valuation to determine the Share Exchange Ratio and drafting the Scheme of Amalgamation and to do all such acts, deeds and things as may be necessary for the above purpose and to report back to the respective Board of Directors in due course.Kilburn Engineering Ltd ended at Rs. 67.1, down by Rs. 2.9 or 4.14% from its previous closing of Rs. 70 on the BSE.The scrip opened at Rs. 73.95 and touched a high and low of Rs. 74 and Rs. 67 respectively. A total of 104390(NSE+BSE) shares were traded on the counter. The current market cap of the company is Rs. 92.82 crore.The BSE group 'XD' stock of face value Rs. 10 touched a 52 week high of Rs. 91.5 on 26-Oct-2015 and a 52 week low of Rs. 43.1 on 30-Mar-2015. Last one week high and low of the scrip stood at Rs. 72 and Rs. 55.55 respectively.The promoters holding in the company stood at 57.09 % while Institutions and Non-Institutions held 0.02 % and 42.89 % respectively.The stock traded below its 200 DMA. Gloster Ltd stock was higher by 9% at Rs. 570.A meeting of the Board of Directors of the Company will be held on March 29, 2016, inter alia, to consider Issue of Bonus Shares.Jindal Steel and Power Limited (JSPL) has commissioned a 1.4 MTPA Rebar Mill at Sohar, Oman. The 1.4 MTPA Rebar Mill, the largest in Gulf and African region, along with the existing 2 MTPA SMS makes JSPLs Jindal Shadeed the largest integrated steelmaker in Oman.Himachal Futuristic Communications Ltd galloped 13% to Rs.16.20 on BSE. The company is entering into defence equipment manufacturing as part of its strategy to contribute to the nation's plan for self sufficiency in the defence sector by participating in the defence equipment manufacturing under the Government of India's "Make in India" initiative. HFCL will be exhibiting its wide range of defence related equipment during the eleventh edition of DEFEXPO 2016 starting March 28, 2016.JSPL gained 1.9% to Rs.61.15 on BSE. Sajjan Jindal-led JSW Energy Ltd is in advanced talks to acquire a power plant owned by Jindal Steel & Power Ltd, controlled by his younger brother Naveen, reports a business daily. The deal is valued at more than Rs. 5,000 crore and is to be announced before the 31st March, says the financial newspaper.Defence stocks rallied on BSE and NSE after the new Defence Procurement Procedure (DPP), focusing on India-made products and fast-tracked acquisition process, was cleared by the top committee of the Defence Ministry on Monday. The DPP will be unveiled at the Defence Expo on March 28. The policy will give first priority to Indian Designed Developed and Manufactured (IDDM) acquisition and relax norms with respect to blacklisting, says report. Reliance Defence and Engineering climbed 4.6% to Rs.69.10. BEML jumped 2.8% to Rs. 1,097 on BSE. Bharat Electronics gained 0.5% to Rs.1,184. L&T gained 1.2% to Rs.1,243.Tata Global Beverages gained 1.7% to Rs.121.75 after the company has on March 21, 2016 sold 92,48,060 equity shares of Re. 1 each held in Titan Company Limited (TCL) constituting 1.04% of the paid up equity capital of TCL as a market transaction.Just Dial Ltd stock was higher by 5% at Rs. 676. The company has made a post buyback public announcement dated March 18, 2016 for the attention of its shareholders in accordance with the provisions of the Securities and Exchange Board of lndia (Buy Back of Securities) Regulations, 1998, as amended.Eros International Ltd stock was up by 3% at Rs. 170.Eros International Plc Audit Committee has completed the internal review which it commenced in November 2015.Bharti Airtel slipped 1% to Rs.349.95 on BSE. After market hours the company has announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement with American Tower Corporation through its subsidiary company, Airtel Tanzania, for the sale of approximately 1,350 of its communications towers in Tanzania. Under the agreement, American Tower may acquire up to approximately 100 additional sites currently in development for an additional consideration. Airtel will be the anchor tenant on the portfolio under a lease with a ten-year initial term.Indoco Remedies Ltd stock was higher by 11% at Rs. 298. The company has received the Establishment Inspection Report (approval) from US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) for its solid dosages manufacturing facility at Goa (Plant I), thereby confirming the closure of inspection in October, 2015.Reliance Defence and Engineering Ltd stock was higher by 3% at Rs. 68. The Defence Acquisition Council reportedly said that it approved the Defence Procurement Policy (DPP) 2016, which will come into effect from April 1, 2016.Persistent Systems Ltd stock was lower by 5.3% at Rs. 701. The company announced plans to organize its business around four key growth strategies unique to Persistent. The companys product development and technology DNA drive all four growth strategies.JMC Projects (India) Ltd stock was higher by 9% at Rs. 219. The company secured new orders worth over Rs. 930 crores. Prisons have been an intricate part of history. Some of them are remembered for being home to some famous inmates. Others are recalled for their barbaric treatment of prisoners. But all of these have secured their place in the world as tourist spots. Read on as we take you through some of the most famous prisons in the world and the fascinating stories behind them. 1. Cellular Jail, Port Blair, India Cellular jail, popularly known as Kaalapani, is the place where Indian freedom fighters were detained during India's freedom struggle. Convicts from different parts of the country were brought here and then segregated according to the kind of crime committed by them. It is interesting to note that this is the place where Veer Savarkar and Batukeshwar Dutt who threw bomb at empty places in assembly along with Bhagat Singh were kept and tortured. In the torture cells, people were assigned extra hours at the grinding mill, made to stand handcuffed for a week, and sometimes even starved. 2. Alcatraz, California, USA Alcatraz was Americas first prison that had a maximum security facility. Al Capone and Robert Stroud, famous American criminals, were captured here. Back in the day, it was considered impossible to escape this prison, since 36 people had attempted to escape, but had failed miserably. Myth has it that prisoners, rangers and visitors have observed whispering in cells, phantom figures in corridors and even sounds of musical instruments and sewing machines. 3. The Tower of London, England #2016 #vacances #angleterre #london #toweroflondon #visiteurope #visite A photo posted by Damien Boussiquet (@dada17.db) on Mar 16, 2016 at 1:35am PDT Most of us know the Tower of London as home to the British crown jewels, but it actually served as a prison from 1100 to the mid twentieth century. Some of the famous inmates include King Henry VI, and Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard. If myths are to be believed, this place is also the most haunted building in England, with countless tales of ghosts inhabiting the tower. Interestingly, twelve-year-old Prince Edward V and 10-year-old Prince Richard of Shrewsbury, who were known as the Princes in the Tower were among the most famous prisoners to have disappeared within the interiors of the tower. 4. Robben Island, South Africa Robben Island is where Nelson Mandela was imprisoned under the Apartheid regime. Beginning from the 17th century to the 20th century, this place served as a prison cum hospital for socially discriminated classes. Nelson Mandela spent 18 years of his imprisoned life here. Today, it is a UNESCO heritage site. 5. Devils Island, France Devil's Island, French Guyana #devilsisland #iledudiable #frenchguyana #guyanne #prison #history A photo posted by Natalia Boada (@nataliaboada) on Mar 4, 2016 at 11:08am PST Devils Island is located in the Caribbean, off the coast of French Guiana. It remained open for 90 years and almost 80,000 prisoners spent time there. It was yet another island prison that was designed in a way that it was almost impossible to escape from it. French artillery officer Albert Dreyfus was imprisoned here, when he was accused of treason. But this prison became famous only when Henri Charriere, a former inmate, wrote a book about his own successful escape. The film Papillon was made on the story later. 6. Elmina Castle, Ghana #tbt to this time last year #elminacastle #ghana #capecoast #grammasters3 A photo posted by Karin Alexis (@liveyouraesthetic) on Mar 3, 2016 at 9:54am PST Elmina Castle, built in 1492, is one of the oldest European buildings in the world. It served as a holding area for people who were captured against their will as slaves. Slaves shared cells with almost 200 inmates cramped together with hardly any space to lie down. 7. Hoa Lo Prison, Vietnam Today we had a heavy visit to Hoa Lo Prison. #Hanoi #vietnam #hoaloprison @choyy_vansprogga A photo posted by susiedalgleish (@susiedalgleish) on Mar 9, 2016 at 9:49pm PST Hoa Lo was originally built by the French. It was used to hold prisoners during Vietnams Independence struggle, and later for capturing Americans during the Vietnam War. The most famous prisoner was US presidential candidate John McCain. It has now been turned into a commercial complex that has a small prison museum within it. 8. Tuol Sleng, Cambodia 64/366 una de las celdas de la antigua carcel de Tuol Sleng, utilizada por el gobierno de Pol Pot durante el genocidio Camboyano. Phnom Penh. Camboya 2013 Juan Jose Cacho @cachuco A photo posted by Nosvamos. es (Travel Blogger) (@nos_vamos) on Mar 6, 2016 at 12:35pm PST Tuol Sleng is considered one of the most horrifying museums in the world. The site was previously a high security prison where prisoners were regularly tortured in order to obtain a confession for their crime. Once they accepted and gave the names of conspirators, they were executed. More than 17,000 people were incarcerated in Tuol Sleng in the four years it operated, and there were only a few known survivors. After the Vietnamese army uncovered the prison in 1979, Tuol Sleng was turned into a historical museum as a memoir for the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia. 9. Port Arthur, Australia Port Arthur. We weren't going to come here as part of our holiday but decided it would be worthwhile - and it was #ourtassieholiday #discovertasmania #tasmania #portarthur A photo posted by emma jane bartlett (@emma_jane_bartlett) on Mar 15, 2016 at 10:06pm PDT Port Arthur, a UNESCO heritage site, was called an inescapable prison. It was the place where hardened criminals were kept isolated and given a series of tasks like fetching timber and boat building, as a part of their sentence. However, there have been inexplicable occurrences and reported paranormal activities that suggest this prison is probably haunted. Holi, the festival of colours, is just around the corner. But while we're already excited for the long weekend, and have our drinking and dancing plans in place, there are several kinds of Holis that we are unaware about. Read on as we tell you about the different kinds of Holi that are celebrated in India. 1. Lathmar Holi - Barsana village, Uttar Pradesh commentsdb According to myths, Holi began in the Barsana region of India, which includes Vrindavan, Mathura, Nandgaon and Barsana. Interestingly, the festival here is celebrated with not just colors, but with lathis. As per tradition, women chase away the men with lathis. But its not a beating session - its a crazy one, and the men come prepared too. 2. Khadi Holi - Kumaon region, Uttarakhand dw.com Khadi holi is played in the Kumaon region that includes mainly towns in Uttrakhand. As a part of the celebration, the locals wear traditional clothes, sing khari songs and dance in groups. They move in tolis, and greet the people they pass by. In this region, Holi is usually a musical gathering in different versions known as Baithika Holi, Khadi Holi and Mahila Holi. 3. Hola Mohalla - Punjab Flickr/Gaurav Agrawal Hola Mohalla, known as the warrior Holi, is celebrated in Punjab. This festival is observed by Nihang Sikhs. They exhibit martial arts, and sing their hearts out on this day, that is usually celebrated a day before Holi. 4. Basant Utsav and Dol Jatra- West Bengal altocarrera The Basant Utsav is a way to welcome the spring season. On this day, there is a special celebration at Shantiniketan. Boys and girls dress up in saffron coloured clothes, sing and dance to celebrate this festival. On the other hand, Dol Jatra is a part of the main Holi festivities. On Dol Purnima, idols of Radha and Krishna are taken to the streets in a procession. To add to the fun, men spray water and colours at this procession. 5. Shigmo - Goa Flickr Shigmo festival is a massive spring celebration in Goa. It is one of the major festivals of Hindus. Here, traditional folk and street dances are done by farmers. Even tourists at Goa celebrate this festival with a lot of excitement. 6. Yaosang - Manipur paolive.net In Manipur, Holi or Yaosang is celebrated for six days. It starts on the day of the full moon and combines Hindu and indigenous traditions. The highlight of the festival is the Thabal chongba, a Manipuri folk dance that is performed during. To add to the traditions and maintain uniformity, the Hindus of Manipur play this festival with colours too. 7. Manjal Kuli - Kerala Hindu Down south, Holi isnt as popular as it is in North India. However, some communities in the southern part of the country celebrate Holi, but with distinct traditions and names. In Kerala, Holi is called Manjal Kuli and is celebrated in the Konkani temple of Gosripuram Thirumala. 8. Phaguwa - Bihar newindianexpress Bihar and Holi go hand in hand. The festival is known as Phaguwa in the local Bhojpuri dialect. However, in Bihar, its important to light the Holika pyre before playing Holi. After that, Holi is played with folk songs, water and powdered colors derived from natural sources. Consumption of Bhang is also a part of the holi celebrations in the state. 9. Phakuwah - Assam wsj.net Phagwah is Assams name for Holi. It is similar to Bengals Dol Jatra. However, here the festival is celebrated over two days. On the 1st day, clay huts are burnt signifying the legend of Holika dahan. On the 2nd day, the locals celebrate it with colours just like everyone else! 10. Rang Panchami - Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh indiamarks Maharashtra celebrates Holi in the most fun way possible. Colour celebrations take place on the 5th day after Holika dahan and is known as Ranga Panchami. 11. Royal Holi - Udaipur, Rajasthan mediaindia.eu On the eve of Holi, locals light bonfires to mark the occasion and get rid of evil spirits in the holika dahan. This celebration is done at a grand level by Udaipur's Mewar royal family. The fancy procession includes decorated horses and the royal band. Later, the traditional sacred fire is lit and an effigy of Holika is burnt. And here's a whole map for you that shows Holi in different parts of the country. Apart from receiving excellent reviews, Dharma Productions Kapoor & Sons is doing great business at the box-office too! According to reports, the film has already managed to earn 26.35 crore and overseas $2.78 mn. Yes. In just one weekend! Twitter All six central characters of the film are being praised for their flawless performances. However, while Ratna Pathak Shah and Rishi Kapoor are earning a lot of praises for their convincing performances, Pakistani actor Fawad Afzal Khan is nowhere behind. Being one of the key characters, Fawad managed to pull off the role of Rahul with so much ease that it looked like the character was written just for him. From Khoobsurat to Kapoor & Sons, Fawad Khan's bollywood journey has all ups and no downs (*touchwood*)! On one hand while Fawad is receiving a lot of validation and praises from the Indian audience and the film fraternity, there is someone back home in Pakistan who is all praises for Fawad! Shahbaz Sumar, a leading filmmaker from Pakistan (who also shot a video called Zeal For Unity) said few of the nicest things about Fawad. In an interview with Bollywoodlife, Shahbaz said: Facebook/Shahbaz Fawad is a talented actor no doubt but hes also a very clever guy whos played his cards extremely well. When Shahbaz was asked to comment on Fawad's character in the film, he said: Dharma Productions I havent seen the film yet but from what I hear its a ground-breaking performance. Finally, India and Pakistan are, maybe, ready to root for negative characters who are dysfunctional or depressed or gay or one of these very normal things in our lives. Somehow we are not ready to watch on the screen until now Its a huge step. A company in France has developed a new smart umbrella that, when paired with a smartphone app, can not only predict the weather but also send you a notification if you leave it behind. 'Oombrella', the smart umbrella is fitted with a capsule having sensors for air pressure, humidity, temperature and light. clubic.com This setup allows the umbrella to tell whether or not it may rain in the next 15 minutes, notifying the user via a Bluetooth-connected smartphone with the corresponding app. It can also record weather data and can hold a camera at the top. The capsule also has an integrated buzzer and light so that users can be alerted when they get a call. geekwire.com The ribs of the umbrella are made of Kevlar, a synthetic fibre of high tensile strength, TechTimes reported. According to the company Wezzoo, that developed Oombrella, the device is "really wind-resistant" with the capability of withstanding storms, hailstorms and snowstorms. The handle has a waterproof, ergonomic design that makes it easy to hold while ensuring that the components inside are not damaged by rainwater. Oombrella/BNPS The canopy is made from the "finest shiny material", and is UV-resistant. Dissatisfaction with sexual life isn't a reason women from rural India usually cite when asking for a divorce. But newly-married Fatima Biwi (name changed) from Katna village in Murshidabad sought divorce because her husband has erectile dysfunction. She also wanted her in-laws to return Rs 55,000 cash and assets worth Rs 55,000, which Fatima brought as dowry. After a series of meetings, Fatima won the case on Saturday. reuters Last week, a complaint made by Fatima was discussed at a meeting in the presence of both families. Barely two weeks ago, 18-year-old Fatima was married to Wasim Abbas (name changed) from Khechuri village in Burdwan district. After the ceremonies, when members from the girl's family went over to her in-laws' house, some of them got to know about Wasim's sexual problems. But Fatima was too new a bride to make any complaints then. It was after she returned to her father's house that she broke down. When her family advised she seek justice, Fatima approached Shabnam Ramaswami, founder of an NGO called Street Survivors India. Ramaswami said: "Since 2002, villagers have been approaching us to sort out their problems. This includes cases where a woman or a man have problems in their relationships or when a girl has been denied her rights to her house and assets. At our Stree Shakti Prokalpo, we have a forum where women's issues are discussed. Fatima's case was addressed here." huffpost When TOI spoke to Fatima, she said, "On our wedding night, I realised that my husband has erectile dysfunction. In our village, marriages have broken up earlier. But no girl has ever cited impotence as a reason." Fatima said she had no fear while discussing the problems in front of everyone. That attitude stumped filmmaker Debarati Gupta when she accidentally became a witness to a dispute-redressal meeting. "I had gone to this village for some research work when I heard about this on-going dispute from Shabnam (Ramaswami). While the groom's family wanted Fatima to give some time before walking out, her family insisted the marriage be called off immediately. They feared the delay might lead to Fatima being branded infertile," she said. reuters "On Friday, they were taken to the Kandi court. The cost of the divorce was borne by both families. Wasim's family has handed me the cash to be returned to the bride's family. Wasim's mother has requested that in lieu of the assets, she would rather give Rs 55,000 to Fatima's family. That money has already been paid on Friday. I have also assured Wasim that I will connect him to a sexologist to address his issue," Ramaswami said. "On Wednesday, Wasim's family is going to come over to take the divorce papers. That's when the dowry money will be returned to us formally ," Fatima said. Some from her village had teased Fatima for speaking up on such an issue. "But had I not spoken up, I would have had to suffer all my life," Fatima said Bihar legislator Gopal Mandal (Janata Dal-United) has again raised controversy today when he said he would resort to the politics of murder, and resume killing just like he used to do. khaskhabar "Main ab hatya ki rajniti hi karunga aur hatya karwaunga" (I will do politics of murder and order murders)," the MLA from Gopalpur in Bihar's Bhagalpur district said at a function. "Pahle bhi hatya karta tha, ab bhi karoonga (I used to commit murders in the past, now I will murder again)." lifesizepotato / flickr Ruing "false" allegations levelled by his rivals in opposition parties, Mandal said he would take the gun in his hands again and would kill. Mandal told the people at the function that he would provide security to all including those who had not voted for him. "I have plenty of arms and ammunition," he boasted. wikimedia Also, questioning Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar's decision to ban country-made liquor in the state from April 1, he said, "It is a wrong decision. If liquor is banned, there is ganja and bhang for the people to enjoy." Meanwhile, JD-U spokesperson Ajay Alok distanced the party from Mandal's remarks, saying such remarks were condemnable and should be avoided by Mandal. Last month, Mandal had said he would "chop off the tongues" of people trying to threaten his supporters. He also said his "one leg remains in jail and the other outside". Already facing various criminal charges, Mandal is known as a 'Dabangg' or 'Bahubali' (local muscleman). Abdul Sattar Makandar, an Indian migrant working as a driver in Saudi Arabia, was detained twice after he had made an emotional appeal for help, citing ill-treatment from his employer's end. The video was posted on social media by a human rights activist, Kundan Srivastava. Gaining immediate traction, Abdul's tearful plea went heavily viral, sparking outrage and demanding government intervention. Following the incident Abdul was jailed for the second time after initially being arrested under a Saudi law that prohibits the spreading of misinformation on social media. However, New Delhi soon took cognizance of the situation, with External Affairs minister Sushma Swaraj springing into action. She asked Indian officials to deal with the situation on a diplomatic level: Abdul Sattar Makandar - Indian Embassy in Saudi Arabia has sent me a report with a comprehensive reply from the Company. /1 Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) March 22, 2016 Please let us handle this matter at the diplomatic level. /2 Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) March 22, 2016 Abdul Sattar Makandar - Indian Embassy in Saudi Arabia has sent me a report with a comprehensive reply from the Company. /1 Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) March 22, 2016 Indian Embassy in Oman has reported about some companies who have not paid their dues to the labour. /1 Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) March 22, 2016 Abdul (35), who hails from Karnataka, had migrated to Saudi Arabia for work five months ago. However, he soon filed papers to be released from his employer's service after alleging poor salary. But according to a Saudi law, a worker cannot be severed from a company until the employer approves his/her leave. A group of five engineering students has robbed a bank of crores by using fake mobile wallet transactions over the last four months. Though all of them, along with four others, have landed in police net, the cops are worried over the alarming trend of youngsters exploiting tech loopholes to dupe customers and banks alike. tnwcdn A private sector bank, which had opened its wallet transaction operations in December, did not realise that there was a basic flaw in their system. If a customer tried to pay from his own wallet to another wallet holder and the latter knowingly or unknowingly had his internet connection switched off the one who is transferring the amount did not end up losing any money. Instead, it was the bank that ended up paying for him. The bank did not realise the fraud till Rs 8.6 crore was siphoned off. The bank fraud section of the detective department has so far arrested nine persons. Jewel Rana, the gang leader, is one among the five students. Apart from the age and profile of the accused, the investigators are particularly alarmed over the fact that the gang was supplied with thousands of pre-activated SIM cards in the border district of Murshidabad to carry out the daring operation. Innocent villagers were asked to open accounts and wallets with this bank using these SIM cards. A cash incentive was promised for those registering for the scheme. covaipost "Jewel was known to Habibur Rehman, a dealer of a mobile service provider in Murshidabad. While Jewel was the brain of the gang with the college students arranging the wallet transactions, the unnaccounted and unverified SIM cards were all arranged by Habibur's men," said joint CP (crime) Debashish Boral. According to police, it was on December 23 that senior bank officials from the Kolkata office lodged a complaint with Lalbazar that someone was withdrawing money from their accounts by using thousands of their newly launched mobile wallet service. A probe found that the accused had managed to open around 2000 accounts across Kolkata and Murshidabad with the bank. Against these accounts, over 18,000 wallets were created. "We are investigating the case but it may take us some more time to dig into the details. It seems the accused used fake wallets to carry out a cheating operation of unprecedented magnitude. The arrests were carried out from Kolkata and Hariharpara in Murshidabad. The gang operated from Hariharpara," said an investigating officer. harmonysite The detective department is working in tandem with the bank's investigating team. "The procurement of the SIM cards by violating all TRAI regulations will call for a separate probe," explained a sleuth. "Wallets are proving a major headache for cops at Lalbazar. We have come across a few wallet apps that don't follow basic rules, like encrypting the data when a transaction is taking place," said a senior officer, citing the example of tech blogger and e-marketing consultant Sidharth Bhansali. He lost money kept in his wallet because of a security glitch. A fraudster accessed his wallet and operated from it. Bhansali saved screenshots of the transactions and took the matter up with the wallet company. After months of legal battle, the wallet company apologised and offered compensation. "Unless the wallet is security-proof, there are crooks ready to pounce on the opportunity," he said. The Korean Dosa mastiff has a heavy wrinkled skin, hanging jowls and a blunt nose, but it is entitled to put it up in the air. For this rare bundle costs an eye-popping Rs 1 crore-as much as a good-sized villa. And the nose may be flat, but it smells sharp. petpaw Bengalurean Satish S, who is importing this exotic breed, is set to become the first owner of the Korean breed in India. Satish, breeder and president of Indian Dog Breeders' Association, said two two-month-old pups, each costing Rs 1 crore, are flying in from China. This is the first time the breed is entering India, he claimed. dogbazar "This is a dream come true, I wanted this dog for over 20 years," said Satish, who has over 150 dogs, a combination of rare and big breeds, at his farmhouse in Kumbalgodu, and has been in the business for over 25 years. "After a long and exhausting search, I finally got good news. I was in touch with a breeder in China whose Korean mastiff littered recently. I'm importing one female and one male pup," he said. "It is one of the rarest breeds, known for its heavily wrinkled body. The body is so wrinkly that even its eyes are barely visible," he said. The pups are on their way to Bengaluru, with a day's rest to break their long and strenuous journey. They were put on a plane from Beijing to Bangkok, where they rested on Monday, and will arrive on Wednesday. dogbazar Satish is rolling out the red carpet for the two pups-one will be picked up in a Rolls Royce and another will travel in a Range Rover from the airport to his house in Banashankari II Stage. "I've rented a Rolls Royce for a day. The Range Rover belongs to a friend," he said. "They are coming from a cooler place, so I will keep them in an air-conditioned room till they adjust a bit to the heat here," said Satish. The most expensive dog Satish has imported till date is the Tibetan mastiff, for which he paid Rs 65 lakh. "But the Korean mastiff will be my most expensive buy now," he said. Were excited to announce that indmin.com is now part of fastmarkets.com. A new look and an improved experience means you can still stay ahead of this fast-moving market with price data, news and market intelligence right here on Fastmarkets. Discover more than 2000 prices, news and analysis in primary and secondary metals markets. We cover base metals, industrial minerals, ores and alloys, steel, scrap and steel raw materials. If you already have a Fastmarkets account, youll still have uninterrupted access to your markets by logging in with your current details. Since its acquisition by Glacier Media in April of 2018, we have been working hard on developing exciting new products, and updating our legacy products to better serve the Mining Industry. In that interest, we have begun the process of retiring the InfoMine brand, and moving its best products onto new platforms. Over the coming month, EventsMine will be retired and no longer be accessible. If you have questions regarding this change, feel free to contact us here . BARCELONA, Espana, 22 de marzo.- Los medios de comunicacion internacionales destacan el encuentro historico entre Barack Obama y Reul Castro como noticia del dia. La crisis de los refugiados, las primarias norteamericanas o la lucha entre el FBI y Apple sobre el desencriptaje de los iPhone. Este es un repaso a los titulares mas relevantes de este martes 22 de marzo. New York Times: El diario neoyorkino da su visto bueno en su editorial de hoy a la creacion de una : El diario neoyorkino da su visto bueno en su editorial de hoy a la creacion de una region semi autonoma kurda en Siria . La medida implica riesgos y ha sido condenada por Turquia e incluso por algunos kurdos, pero podria ofrecer un modelo para la gobernabilidad descentralizada en una hipotetica Siria federada, afirma el periodico. The Guardian: El periodico britanico explica como : El periodico britanico explica como las mujeres solteras norteamericanas estan moldeando la politica de su pais hacia la izquierda , y se pregunta si en el Reino Unido podria pasar lo mismo. Independent: Siguiendo con su cruzada en contra del Brexit, la cabecera londinense explica que : Siguiendo con su cruzada en contra del Brexit, la cabecera londinense explica que un Reino Unido fuera de la UE necesitaria mantener un nivel alto de inmigracion para evitar las consecuencias economicas . La campana a favor de dejar la Union utiliza como argumento que la salida supondria una reduccion de la inmigracion, algo que el periodico sostiene que es falso. Le Figaro: El rotativo parisino hace : El rotativo parisino hace un retrato robot del funcionario frances . En un infografico, el diario desgrana los rasgos generales de los trabajadores del Estado: La mayoria son mujeres (solo el 38% son varones), tienen entre 35 y 49 anos y cobran una media de entre 2.400 y 2.600 euros. Politico: El portal de informacion politica norteamericana explica como Obama tendio una trampa a Raul Castro. En una conferencia de prensa historica, el presidente estadounidense no solo permitio que se presionara a su homologo cubano respecto a los presos politicos, sino que el mismo participo. A continuacion, How Obama set a trap for Raul Castro: Raul Castro pone punto final a la conferencia de prensa conjunta con Obama que se llevo a cabo en el Palacio de la Revolucion. (AP) Por Edward-Isaac Dovere / 21-III-16 HAVANA In Cuba, just having a news conference is news. President Barack Obama jokes that he likes news conferences and wants to do more of them, and let them go on longer. That tends to be less the case at the White House than abroad, when Obamas trying to make a point about a repressive regime by turning to the news media. He did it in China in 2013 by giving a New York Times reporter a question to President Xi Jinping right after the government in Beijing had kicked out a reporter from the newspaper. He did it in Ethiopia last year, when he forced the journalist-jailing prime minister to stand next to him for a long news conference during which Obama talked about the countrys record on human rights and held forth on American politics. Monday afternoon here in Havana, he did it to Raul Castro, right in the Revolutionary Palace, letting him be pressed with questions for the first time ever and joining in himself. And not just that: He had to answer for the political prisoners whom the government rounds up almost daily yet denies even exist. Cubans watching on state television, which broadcast the whole thing live and in full, had never seen anything like this. Neither has the White House press corps. Or anyone who works at the White House. The awkward photo that ended the event, with Obama looking like he had a limp wrist because he resisted Castros attempt to raise their hands together in victory as they walked out of the room, couldnt change what had happened in whats likely to be the most important hour of the presidents two-day trip here. The negotiations continued until the final hours and came down to White House officials counting on Cubans watching American movies and TV. U.S. officials pressed their Cuban counterparts early Monday morning, according to one American familiar with the discussions, and leveled with them: Youve seen how this goes. The president finishes speaking, everyone shoots a hand in the air and the president takes a question. Itll be really embarrassing if your president is just standing there or walks out. Just before the news conference, reporters were led in for a brief look at the bilateral meeting between the two leaders, the U.S. and Cuban flags behind them, the delegations facing each other on either side. Obama never does a great job of hiding how silly he thinks that kind of access is. Castro seemed to be picking up on that, saying through a translator as they posed for the handshake, Make them happy. By the time the leaders moved into the news conference next door, it was clear it was Castro who wasnt happy. First he stood, eyes blinking as he listened to Obama take several questions from CNNs Jim Acosta. Then Castro took a long drink of water and coughed theatrically as the reporter, whose father had left Cuba, turned to address the Cuban leader in Spanish. Smirking at Acostas pronunciation, Castro leaned into the lectern as Acosta asked him about political prisoners. As Obama continued ticking through his answers, Castro called an aide onstage and conferred with him at length. Obama kept answering his question, but his eyes started to flit to his left. Excuse me Obama said, his disbelief immediately becoming mocking. White House officials tensed. Castro looked back at Acosta, pretending as though the later question hadnt been for him. Second one was to you, Obama said, prodding Castro along (and along the way, managing to deftly duck Acostas question about why he wasnt meeting with former President Fidel Castro on this trip). He talked about political prisoners, Raul Castro said, turning back to Obama, according to the official simultaneous translation. Also Trump and Hillary, Obama said. For him or for me? Castro asked, looking at Acosta. Finally, Castro relented and asked Acosta to repeat his question about political prisoners, then cut off the reporter, his right hand chopping the air. Give me a list of the political prisoners and I will release them. Just mention names, Castro said. If we have those political prisoners, they will be released before the night ends. Obama looked on with a smile. Castro remembered the second question, about whether he preferred Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton, and recovered for a moment: Well, I cannot vote in the United States, he said. The bubble was popped. The reporter for Cuban state television had a question for Obama but started with one for Castro about what steps he was taking toward improving the countries relationship. Castro started to answer, but stopped himself. You are making too many questions to me, he said. I think questions should be directed to President Obama. So Obama took another. He turned to NBCs Andrea Mitchell. He quickly answered her question about the future of the embargo, which he said is going to end. When, I cant be entirely be sure. But I believe it will end, and the path that were on will continue after my time in office. He talked about his faith in what would come from more person-to-person contact between Cubans and Americans. Then, playing media moderator, he passed it to Castro, who had been fiddling with papers the whole time, except for another long, theatrical drink of water. Now Im done, but I think Senor Presidente, I think Andrea had a question for you, Obama said. He turned to Mitchell. He did say he was going to take one question, and I said I was going to take two, Obama said, before pivoting to Castro. Shes one of our most esteemed journalists in America. Im sure shed appreciate just a short answer. Doing his best impression of Dick Dastardly from the old Hanna-Barbera cartoons, Castro rubbed his hands together, rolling his rs as he said, Andrea, several times. I know that if youll stay here, youll make 500 questions. I said I was going to answer one, and Im going to answer one and a half, he said. He had his answer about her human rights question prepared: Im going to make the question to you now, he said. There are 61 instruments of human rights, Castro said, quoting a number he seemed to have invented on his own. What country complies with them all? Do you know how many? I know. None. None whatsoever. Some countries comply some rights, others comply with others, Castro said, by way of defense. Of these 61 instruments, Cuba has complied with 47 issues. He turned the exchange into an opportunity to beat up on the U.S. In Cuba, they think universal health care is a human right, Castro said. Every child is born in a hospital, no matter where theyre from, or who their parents are, he added. They believe education for all is a human right, he said. And finally, in a point that got Obama senior adviser Valerie Jarrett nodding at communications director Jen Psaki, implying the Cuban leader had a point, Castro said he thinks equal pay for women is a human right, too. Human rights issues, he said, should not be politicized. That is not fair, its not correct. Im not saying its not honest, its part of confrontations of course, Castro concluded. Castro checked his watch. Theres a schedule to keep to, he said, though his scheduled time with Obama was until later in the evening, when they would attend a state dinner. But he returned to the point that had gotten under his skin a few minutes earlier. Its not correct to ask me about political prisoners in general, he said. Then he looked toward the exit. I think this is enough, Castro said. We have concluded. Thank you for your participation. An Osun State Magistrates Court in Osogbo has ordered the remand of three siblings accused of raping a woman and her daughter through the night. The magistrate, Mrs. Abibat Basiru, ordered that the three accused arraigned by the police -Dayo Tajudeen (18), Kamaru Tajudeen (21), and Ahmed Tajudeen (27) be remanded at the Ilesa Prison. The police prosecutor, Mr. Mireti Wilson, had told the court that the accused, who were armed, broke into the apartment of one Mrs. Adebayo and raped the woman and her daughter till dawn before they carted away N700,000 and two phones valued at N15,700. He said the three defendants committed the offence on March 5, 2016, at about 1.30am at the Owode area of Osogbo. He said, The offence is contrary to Section 6 (b) and Section 1( 2) (a) (b) and punishable under Section 1(1) of the Robbery and Fire Arms ( Special Provision) Act, Cap 11, Vol. 14, Law of the Federation of Nigeria, 2004, and Section 516 PDF of the Criminal Code, Cap 34, vol. 11, Law of Osun, 2003. The magistrate ordered the prosecutor to send the case file to the Directorate of Public Prosecutions and adjourned till March 23, 2016. Source: http:///forum/general/clumsy-news/24022-3-brothers-rape-woman-daughter-till-dawn-osun-robbery-attack The All Progressives Congress (APC) in Rivers State has called on the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to cancel the entire National and State Assembly rerun elections, which took place in the state last Saturday. The APC chairman in Rivers State, Davis Ikanya, who made the call in a press briefing in Port Harcourt, the state capital yesterday, described the rerun as the worst election ever conducted by the INEC. According to Ikanya, the election was marred by irregularities, violence and unnecessary interference from Rivers State Governor, Nyesom Wike and other top government functionaries. He further said the APC had documented evidence to prove that the election was manipulated in favour of the Peoples Democratic Party. The APC chief claimed that the security personnel deployed to conduct the election were inadequate, a development he alleged paved the way for the PDP to manipulate the process. The Rivers State rerun elections fall below acceptable norms. When we said that the 2015 general election was a fraud, the rerun election held on Saturday was the worst election ever conducted by INEC. Wike saturated the state with threats of violence. He threatened INEC officials with violence. He masterminded the killing of people in Ogba/Egbema/Ndoni local government area as well as killing of a Major and two soldiers of the Nigerian Army. Some local government areas have no electoral officials while untrained ad hoc staff participated in the election, he said. Mr. Ikanya also alleged that INEC cancelled elections in the areas where his party was leading. The APC, therefore, calls on INEC to cancel the entire re-run elections in the state to enable it to correct the pitfalls, he said. The Kogi State council of the Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC) yesterday condemned the decision of the State Governor, Alhaji Yahaya Bello to extend the 30-day compulsory leave earlier issued to permanent secretaries and other categories of state workers. The Kogi TUC Chairman, Ranti Ojo, who addressed a press conference in Lokoja, the state capital yesterday, said the decision of government to extend the compulsory leave by another 30 days without stating the offences committed by the affected workers, is tantamount to witch hunt and negation of the civil service rules. We were taken aback by another circular no: HCS/KGS/CIR/3/VOL.V/542 dated 15th March 2016 titled: Re: Urgent Directives from the Executive Governor for another 30 days compulsory leave granted to our members in the service of Kogi State even when none of them has actually been accused and/ or found guilty of any gross misconduct. This current action is tantamount to a witch hunt and a negation of civil service rules and regulations governing the conditions of service of our members in the state. The TUC Kogi State is demanding for immediate withdrawal of this circular to allow peaceful industrial harmony to prevail in the state, he said. Mr. Ojo said while the organised labour is in support of the ongoing workers verification aimed at blocking leakages in the state resources, it would not compromise the wellbeing of its members through the non-payment of their over four months salary arrears. The TUC therefore calls on the state government to commence without further delay, payment of accumulated salary arrears of as our members are dying of hunger and avoidable sicknesses daily, he said. The Kogi TUC boss also expressed concern over alleged plot by the state government to reduce its workforce by 40%. Environmental and human rights activist, Annkio Briggs, on Monday alleged lack of diligent prosecution of Yunusa Dahiru alias Yunusa Yellow, who is standing trial before the Federal High Court in Yenagoa, Bayelsa State. Mr. Dahiru was on March 8, 2016 arraigned by the police on charges of abduction, kidnapping, unlawful carnal knowledge and sexual exploitation. The accused had pleaded not guilty to the charges leveled against him. He had legal representation by a team of six solicitors led by Kayode Olaosebikan. It would be recalled that Mr. Dahiru, a tricycle operator, was arrested in Kano State on the orders of the Inspector General of Police, Solomon Arase, for allegedly abducting a 13-year-old girl, Ese Oruru, from her parents in Bayelsa, and whisking her to Kano where he reportedly married and converted her to his religion. Speaking to PREMIUM TIMES shortly after the accused was granted bail yesterday by the court in the sum of N3 million, Ms. Briggs wondered why the defence team was more fortified. Briggs, who is the founder of non-governmental organization, Agape Birthrights and convener of Niger-Delta Self Determination Movement (NDSDM), charged the police to live up to expectation and draft more lawyers to beef up the legal team to prosecute the case. I am not at all satisfied at the way this matter is going, this is a very sensitive case, if it was someone that went to Kano to abduct a 13-year old, the country would have been on fire by now. The Bayelsa and Delta state governors have not done anything to support the prosecution of this matter, abandoning the prosecution to the Police, who from what I saw in court, is not good enough. How come Yunusa, a Keke driver has a more formidable legal team comprising of good lawyers. I hear the defense team has up to 10 lawyers. Is he the one hiring the lawyers? Briggs asked. Meanwhile, a mild drama played out inside the court yesterday when the presiding judge, Justice Hyeladzira Ajiya Nganjiwa granted Mr. Dahiru bail with stringent conditions. Aside the N3 million bail bond, the judge ordered the accused to produce two sureties in like sum, who must present three years tax-clearance receipts to be verified by the Court Registrar. The two sureties, who must be within the jurisdiction of the Court, must also be a title holder and a civil servant of grade 12 above. Immediately the presiding Judge gave his ruling on the bail, Mr. and Mrs. Oruru stormed out of the court premises. Punch FRESH crisis appears to be looming in the Peoples Democratic Party as its acting National Chairman, Senator Ali Modu Sheriff, has ignored the directive given to him and the members of the National Working Committee by the partys National Executive Committee. Vanguard PORT HARCOURT THE Independent National Electoral Commssion, INEC, has said that it will not return to Rivers until the state is conducive to conduct elections. The Sun Governor Ayo Fayose has said President Muhammadu Buhari should not contemplate declaring a state of emergency in Ekiti and Rivers states. Daily Times President Muhammadu Buhari has assured manufacturers in Nigeria, that the current foreign exchange scarcity is painful but temporary. Guardian The National Youth Service Corps (NYSC), on Monday, confirmed the killing of a corps member, Mr Okonta Samuel, during the Rivers State re-run elections held on March 19. Daily Trust National leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, was in Sokoto on Saturday where he rallied support for President Muhammadu Buhari. National Mirror Lagos High Court yesterday dismissed preliminary objections filed by former director-general of the Nigerian Maritime Administration Safety Agency, NIMASA, Patrick Akpobolokemi, and two others, challenging jurisdiction of the court to hear the suit filed against them by the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, over alleged stealing Leadership Governor of Edo State, Adams Oshiomhole has approved 5per cent pay rise for health workers in the state, emphasizing that the wage increment is for all health workers including laboratory technicians, nurses and midwives. Thisday President Muhammadu Buhari monday in Abuja identified five key sectors which the country must focus on to revive the economy. Tribune CYRIL Dum Wite, the Special Adviser on Special Projects to Governor Nyesom Wike, has debunked the allegation that he was arrested by soldiers during the legislative rerun on Saturday, for being in possession of military uniform and large sum of money. The Nation All seems set for the repatriation of over $200billion stashed away by some former governors, ex-ministers and other public officers in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), The Nation learnt yesterday. U.S Presidential candidates Donald Trump, Hilary Clinton and Ted Cruz blasted each other on Monday night during an exclusive on-air interview with CNN. Although the trio werent sat face to face, they still had a go at each other while interviewed by CNNs Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer at the Aipac stage. Hilary Clinton, launched her most direct attack yet on Donald Trump, accusing him of bigotry and bluster and bullying and inciting violence at all his campaign rallies. While Texas senator Ted Cruz said even though he understands Trumps widespread support, his campaign is based on lies and he together with Clinton have traded influence in Washington. While Trump offered a more subtle attack on rival Hilary Clinton saying she lacked stamina to become president of America. Trump said, I think she doesnt have the stamina. You watch her life. You watch how shell go away three or four days; shell come back. Look, weve got to beat China in trade. Weve got to beat Isis. Weve got so many problems in this country; I say she does not have the stamina to be a good president doesnt have the energy, she doesnt have it. Doesnt have the strength to be president, in my opinion. Republican candidate Ted Cruz said, The lie behind Donalds campaign is that he will stand up to Washington. He is the system. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are flip sides of the same coin. Donald Trump has made billions buying influence in Washington. Hillary Clinton has made millions selling influence in Washington. Cruz predicted that he would beat Trump in a head-to-head battle if the Republican convention were to be contested. Clinton, said I think its important to listen to what he says, she said. You have to take him at his word so to speak. He has been engaging in bigotry and bluster and bullying. And I think when it comes to understanding what he would do as president there are serious questions that have been raised in this campaign. Should he be the nominee well have to address them. Asked if she believes Trump really is a bully, Clinton replied: Well, I think his behaviour certainly qualifies for that. I think his incitement of violence, his constant urging on of his supporters in large numbers to go after protesters, his saying I want to punch people in the face and telling somebody who did punch somebody I will pay your legal bills, i think that raises very serious questions. She recounted some of Trumps comments from the past few months, ranging from calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals, saying John McCain was not a war hero, being reluctant to denounce the Ku Klux Klan and David Duke. And the list goes on. Source: CNN/UK Guardian On this day in 1961, Ghanaian President Kwame Nkrumah called on world leaders to impose total economic and political sanctions on South Africa Pan-Africanist and first president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, was a leader who strived for a united Africa. Nkrumah was one of the founders of the Organisation of African Unity (OAU) and its first president. On 22 March 1961, Nkrumah called on world leaders to impose sanctions on South Africa because of its Apartheid policies. African harbours were closed to the South African government, and South African aircrafts were prohibited from flying over the rest of the continent. In addition, the OAU managed to convince the United Nations (UN) to expel South Africa from bodies like the World Health Organisation (WHO). The Nigerian Army on Tuesday said gallant troops on counter-insurgency operations in the Northeast killed at least 58 Boko Haram terrorists and seized arms and foodstuff being ferried to the group. The Acting Director, Army Public Relations, Col. Sani Usman, who made this known in a statement, said that the terrorists were killed by troops of the Armys 153 Task Force Brigade and 5 Brigade, who executed a clearance operation at the Musari area of Borno State. In continuation with the clearance of the remnants of the Boko Haram terrorists, troops of 153 Task Force Brigade, 5 Brigade on Monday had an encounter with terrorists at Musari village on Monday, the statement said. It added that During the clearance operations, a soldier paid the supreme price, while the troops killed 58 terrorist and recovered 2 hand grenades, 52 motorcycles, several bags of foodstuffs such as beans, onions, sweet potatoes and guinea corn, as well as cartons of fish. News of the terrorists death came shortly before the Army announced the remarkable success its 29 Task Force Brigade was making in another clearance operation aimed at smoking out more insurgents from their hideouts. Within the last two days the units under the Brigade cleared the remnants of Boko Haram terrorists hibernating in the following areas; Abukarti, Baradili, Borgozo, Gaijaribul Abukar, kolomi, Marguba, Umarumi and Yasori 1 and 2, Mr. Usman said. The gallant troops also recovered several items including one single barrel gun, motorcycles, drums and bags of millet and dead cattle that ran into Improvised Explosive Device (IED) buried by the Boko Haram terrorists. Similarly, the troops detonated an IED in one of the buildings at Yasori 1. It was equally discovered that prior to the clearance, the terrorists have also been frequenting Borgozo general area which they used as harbour and staging area when conducting their nefarious activities. Members of the Kano State House of Assembly have denied receiving N17.2m bribe from the state governor, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje. The lawmakers, led by the speaker, Hon. Kabiru Alhassan Usman Rurum, last week visited Ganduje at the Government House, Kano, to pledge their loyalty and pass a vote of confidence on him. Governor Ganduje is currently locked in a supremacy battle with his former boss and ex-governor, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso. A former media aide to Kwankwaso, who is now the senator representing Kano Central, Sharu Garba Gwammaja, had claimed that the governor approved N17.2m for each of the 34 members who supported him. Gwammaja also said the money was shared to the members as bribe to declare support for the governor and renounce the red cap the symbol of Kwankwasos political movement also known as the Kwankwasiyya. The alleged N17.2 million was a new dimension to the political battle between the two All Progressives Congress, APC, leaders. However, debunking the allegation during a press briefing yesterday, Majority Leader of the House, Yusuf Abdullahi Ata, said the mastermind of the rumour had been arrested by the police. The majority leader said the House had instituted a legal action against Gwammaja over the matter and he was arrested by the police. This is a false allegation and an attempt to blackmail and tarnish the image of the Assembly members and the House will not take it lightly. We have reported to police and reports reaching us from them indicated that he was arrested, Ata said. He further stated that apart from the state lawmakers, two senators and 19 of the 24 members of the House of Representatives from the state, chairmen of the 44 local government areas and chairmen and secretaries of APC in the state had also declared support for Ganduje. Last Tuesday, Microsoft dropped an enormous number of seemingly innocuous patches -- seven for .Net running on Windows Embedded, plus 40 separate nonsecurity patches. There's a full list on AskWoody.com. The next day poster Opskito complained that he was seeing an update on his PC that wasn't included in the list. Identified as KB 3103709, there was no KB article for the patch (which, alas, isn't uncommon). More perplexing, the patch wasn't mentioned on Microsoft's main Windows Update list. A week later, there's still no KB article and no entry on the Windows Update list. The patch apparently only appears on Windows 8.1 systems and it's Optional, unchecked. Here's where things get weird. On the Microsoft Answers forum, in a post enigmatically titled "Is Update KB 3103709 fake?" poster skepticaluser_2016 reported a transcript of a conversation with "Judy D" at Microsoft Tech Support that includes this enlightening exchange: Skepticaluser_2016: I'm reluctant to install the update since there is no information regarding it on the Microsoft website Judy D: Okay Actually this is a free upgrade to everyone. If you are using win 8.1 now, you are one of the qualified to upgrade your PC to windows 10 To check if the update is already installed, go to the Start screen. If you see a Search button near your account name at the top of the Start screen, you already have the update. Skepticaluser_2016: So this update is the beginning of the install for Windows 10? Judy D: Yes The update is gradually rolling out to everyone with a PC running Windows 8.1 or Windows RT 8.1 over a period of several weeks. If you get automatic updates but you don't see the update yet, wait a few days and check again. Skepticaluser_2016: Ok, thank you. I'm glad I asked. I already went down that road and had to format my computer because Windows 10 made it effectively unusable. Judy D:That's awesome:) There's some speculation in the thread that skepticaluser_2016 was, in fact, conversing with a bot (maybe AlphaGo moonlighting?), but the possibilities are frightening -- especially for folks who have been rickrolled by the Get Windows 10 juggernaut. There's a German-language post from Spike2 on Borncity that says (auto-translated by Google and edited for legibility): KB 3103709 seems to be an update for Microsoft's Active Directory Services, more precisely "NTDSAI" and "DSPARSE" because it includes changes to Windows 8.1 ntdsai.dll and dsparse.dll That's what I found out by downloading (without installing) followed by unzipping and viewing the accompanying XML and manifest files. I had one report about a pop-up appearing on some PCs with KB 3103709 (the description was unclear). If there is a pop-up that refers to KB 3103709 floating around, it most certainly is not a Windows patch. That's where the trail ends. Have you seen anything reliable about this patch? It's the end of the IPv4 world as we know it -- but we've been very good at forestalling IPmageddon. According to Akamai's Q4 2015 State of the Internet Connectivity Report, the shortage of IPv4 addresses hasn't spurred a broad-scale exodus to IPv6. Instead, it's encouraged savvier IPv4 management efforts on the part of organizations and ISPs. Where there has been significant IPv6 uptake is on the leading and bleeding edges -- mainly in the newly created network infrastructure for wireless networks and forthcoming Internet of things projects. Counting down from zero On a global level, the number of IPv4 addresses went up slightly -- a little less than 1 percent -- over the course of 2015. But the picture varies a great deal by country. The United States lost 5.4 percent of its IPv4 unique address count, both because of better IPv4 management techniques and the slow but ongoing shift to IPv6. But Japan and South Korea added many IPv4 addresses -- 9.4 percent and 10 percent, respectively, the latter in the country with some of the heaviest broadband development in the industrialized world. (The United Kingdom added 9.4 percent as well.) Such disparities make more sense when you realize most of the IPv4 pinch is in North America. ARIN, the Regional Internet Registry (RIR) that governs the use of IP addresses in North America, has no addresses left to give out. But outside the United States, other RIRs -- AFRINIC (Africa), APNIC (Asia-Pacific), LACNIC (Latin America), and RIPENCC (Europe) -- have been assigning IPv4 addresses at a growing rate. AFRINIC, in particular, depleted almost one-fourth of its total address pool over the last three months of 2015. With ARIN out of addresses, U.S.-based firms are either ramping up network-address translation schemes to get around the limit or swapping blocks of addresses among themselves. Akamai noted the second-largest such transaction last quarter, on Oct. 6, was "when a /11 [address block ] was allocated to Ford Motor Company," which Akamai interpreted as "an indication of the increasing connectivity that is coming to cars in the near future." (It's also likely that connectivity needed a high degree of backward compatibility; hence the use of IPv4 rather than IPv6.) In addition to buying IP address blocks outright from other carriers, ISPs are resorting to carrier-grade network address translation, or encapsulating IPv6 traffic inside IPv4, to forestall moving to IPv6. A rocky road forward Within the United States, the switch to IPv6 largely remains guided by individual network providers -- with mixed results. Mobile networks have long been at the forefront of the move to IPv6, in big part because the network hardware on both the provider and consumer sides tends to be newer to begin with. Cable-based ISPs don't upgrade as aggressively. David Belson, author of the report, noted in an email how the longer upgrade cycle for consumer-grade networking hardware was its own obstacle. "To upgrade [cable Internet users] to support IPv6 would, in many cases, require a coordinated effort on the parts of both the providers and the users, for something that is ultimately transparent to the end user, and of unclear value to them," he wrote. According to Akamai, AT&T, Verizon Wireless, and T-Mobile all lead in terms of percentage of IPv6 traffic -- 38 percent, 67 percent, and 44 percent, respectively. But it's not clear from the report whether Verizon's and AT&T's numbers are for both their wireless and landline/cable network service or for only one of the two. Adoption numbers for IPv6 have also leveled off. The United States currently ranks fifth in overall adoption of IPv6, but that only accounts for 18.2 percent of its total Internet traffic -- and that number is down from its peak. Starting at the end of 2014, the traffic count rose from 10.6 percent to a high of 21.4 percent in November 2015, but has remained flat and even declined somewhat since. Apart from mobile, another burgeoning technology thought to be driving IPv6 adoption is the Internet of things, where the sheer number of devices in use would require a network with a gigantic address space. But it's still not evident whether this will drive IPv6 adoption generally or merely create a separate case for IPv6 adoption that leaves the current problems untouched. [Edited to add comment from David Belson.] 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%) Most D.C. cocktail parties mean pigs-in-a-blanket, martinis, and rubbing elbows with politicians and K Street lobbyists. Not next weeks cocktail party, hosted by the Carnegie Corporation and MacArthur Foundation, at the Australian Embassy. To mark the kickoff of the upcomingand finalNuclear Security Summit (NSS), these two major foundation players are bringing together nuclear experts, diplomats, and NSS Sherpas." The NSS will bring hundreds of global leaders, nuclear experts, and industry representatives to our nations capital to discuss how to keep the world safe from nuclear terrorism. A number of funders are in the mix, too, reflecting the philanthropic sectors longstanding concern about nukes. Its a challenging area of work. One point of frustration is the scarcity of government resources toward locking down loose nuclear materials worldwide. President Obama is only asking for $1.5 billion for the Department of Energys nuclear nonproliferation and counterterrorism programs. This is a decrease of 8 percent, from the fiscal year 2016 appropriation. Meanwhile, the United States annually spends tens of billions of dollars to sustain and modernize its nuclear arsenal. What are funders doing to move this critical issue higher on the governments agenda? Well, its no secret that nuclear weapons dont command the same attention that they did during the Cold War. But a number of foundations have remained doggedly on the case, arguing that we can't let up in a world rife with terrorism and a black market for nukes. Carnegie and MacArthur are notable in this regard, and among other things, are supporting nuclear experts like those in the Fissile Materials Working Group to hold our world leaders accountable and provide them with innovative solutions to remaining nuclear challenges. But other funders, including some small foundations, also pay attention to nukes. In a forthcoming and first-of-its-kind analysis, the Peace and Security Funders Group found that nonprofit organizations working to control and decrease nuclear arms and nuclear materials received support to the tune of $29.8 million in 2013, the latest year for which grants data is available. Frankly, nuclear security funders punch well above their weight. The most recent example is the landmark agreement to keep Iran from going nuclear. Without the support of private funders for the technical and policy solutions, as well as public education and policymaker engagement, this historic national security deal wouldnt have been possible. The immediate resultsremoving Irans nuclear material, closing down a critical reactor and dismantling centrifugeswere major gains for U.S. and global security. In the long term, the agreement heads off another major Middle East war. Yet, funding for addressing nuclear threats in 2013 was a fraction of the $1.8 billion spent by human rights funders the same year. Funders arent just working harder on nukes lately, theyre working smarter. For example, in 2014, five of the largest nuclear funders launched N Square, a two-year, $2.4 million pilot designed to foster collaboration, ignite the public imagination and spark new ideas about how to eliminate the threat of nuclear weapons. Collaboration gives nuclear funders outsized impact. The small but effective nuclear funding field needs more national security-minded philanthropists to join its ranks. The departure of large funders like the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Ford Foundation has left major gaps, but there is ample opportunity for real, lasting impact in the nuclear security space for funders at all levels. You can be sure that reporters on the sidelines of the 2016 Nuclear Security Summit will ask lots of juicy questions about the state of global nuclear security. Lets hope they remember to ask the most important question of all: Wheres the money? Alexandra Toma is executive director of the Peace and Security Funders Group, a growing network of foundations and philanthropists committed to promoting international peace and security. Commercial property-investment firm Marcus & Millichap has released its 2016 U.S. Self-Storage Investment Forecast. The 58-page report offers analytical insight to the sector on a national, regional and local-market level. The outlook for self-storage facilities in 2016 remains strong as broader economic momentum supports household formation and consumptionboth positive demand drivers for these properties, wrote report authors Richard Baird, first vice president and national director, and John Chang, first vice president of research services. The sector has also benefited from limited construction, but leading indicators point to additional development in the coming year. The national overview examines industry trends in investment and operating performance, while also providing outlooks for 2016 on expected demand for climate-controlled and traditional units as well a forecast on occupancy. It also covers key factors driving self-storage use including job growth and industry capitalization (cap) rates compared to the 10-year Treasury average. Regional breakdowns offer geographic overviews for the Midwest, Northeast, South Atlantic, Southwest and West. Summaries for each region are accompanied by chart information highlighting trends in operational performance (rent per square feet and vacancies) and real estate (average price per square foot and cap rates). Each region also lists some self-storage specific real estate transactions. The report also includes graphics and brief summaries examining trends related to demographics, housing, self-storage rentals and vacancies in 43 individual markets. The PDF report may be downloaded for free by users who register with the companys website. Marcus & Millichap produces more than 2,000 research products each year, officials have said. The Research Services department offers a range of publications, from national economic perspectives to property-type-specific analyses at the market level. The company website enables users to search for reports by multi-family and commercial property type, as well as by location and keyword. Marcus & Millichap has more than 1,500 investment professionals in offices throughout the United States and Canada. The company closed more than 8,700 transactions in 2015 with a value of approximately $37.8 billion. The outlook in Italy today is better than it was even six months ago a fact that markets are missing at the moment so we expect the return to consumption and investment to gain speed, reports Carlo Messina, who in 2013 became chief executive officer of Intesa Sanpaolo, the nations largest bank by market capitalization (39.2 billion, or $42.8 billion). Last year Italy posted real gross domestic product gains for the first time since 2011, at 0.8 percent, according to government figures. This year the European Commission expects the euro zones third-largest economy to expand by 1.4 percent. The real estate market is growing, consumer confidence is returning, and businesses are investing in growth domestically and abroad, the 53-year-old points out. For Intesa Sanpaolo this outlook means that our strategy remains the same, to support the recovery by extending credit to households and businesses. To me thats what banking is about: the real economy. The Turin-based financial services firm, formed in 2007 by the merger of Italys Banca Intesa and Sanpaolo IMI, continues to bolster its core retail and corporate businesses while also focusing on such high-growth market segments as private banking, asset management and insurance. Italians are wealthy, and they like to save. The total household wealth is 9 trillion, so the opportunity is immense, Messina explains. Italians are also very conservative investors. Most of this wealth has been in cash, real estate and Italian government bonds, but the recent crisis has them hungry for better returns. In December, Intesa opened a private banking branch in London, as a way to tap into the large presence of wealthy Italians in the U.K., he says. It plans to do the same in New York. The lender is also expanding its insurance business, which increased profits in 2015 by 18.4 percent year over year, to 1.1 billion, by introducing products in both property and casualty and life coverage, he adds. One growth strategy not under consideration is M&A. Speculation that we might consider participating in Italian market consolidation is totally off target, he declares. If there is a flight to quality from other banks, we expect to benefit without the need for acquisitions. Nor does he see opportunities in foreign acquisitions. Cross-border integration is very complex, and I think it would distract from our very strong core business, the CEO says, although he concedes the bank would be open to small, high-quality acquisitions in wealth management as a way to gain clients and private banking talent. Messinas commitment to expansion at a time when many businesses have adopted a bunker mentality in response to gloomy global growth projections wins him many admirers. Money managers and sell-side analysts who participated in the All-Europe Executive Team, Institutional Investors annual ranking of the regions best corporate leaders, insist that Intesa is the top institution in Europes banking sector and Messina its best CEO. This years survey results reflect the opinions from nearly 1,665 investment professionals at close to 570 financial services firms. Respondents from the buy side work at firms that collectively manage an estimated $4.1 trillion European equities. The Honored Companies table in the navigation panel at right lists the companies that receive the highest scores in each of 31 industry sectors. Click on the Best CEOs, Best CFOs and Best IR Professionals to view the winning individuals in each category. Best IR Companies shows which entities come out on top when responses to IR attribute questions are aggregated. Winners will be honored at a dinner and ceremony on Wednesday, June 15, at 155 Bishopsgate in London. Click here for more information. M&A may not be part of Intesas forward-looking strategy, but its a major consideration at Continental, the leading company in Autos & Auto Parts. Europes No. 2 tire maker is working toward our goal of further reducing our economic dependency on the automotive industry, asserts Elmar Degenhart, who became CEO in 2009. Therefore we are ruling out neither further acquisitions that strengthen our business with other industries nor takeovers in the automotive sector that strengthen our existing expertise. Examples of the Hanover, Germanyheadquartered companys recent purchases include last years 1.4 billion buy of U.S.-based Veyance Technologies, a conveyor-belt maker, and 600 million acquisition of Finlands Elektrobit Corp.s automotive software business. In fact, over the past two decades, Continental has evolved from a pure-play tire maker to a technology company and, with 13,000 developers, one of Germanys largest software companies. We view developing high-performance tires and then going on to produce them in their millions to be just as much a demand on a technology company as developing innovative materials such as special foils that protect reservoirs from being contaminated and from evaporating, while simultaneously converting solar power into electricity, he explains. What he describes as shaping the future of mobility is an important initiative for the company beyond its central tire manufacturing business. We are talking about clean air, zero accidents and intelligent mobility. We are working intensively on clean vehicle power, on systems and solutions for maximum traffic safety and, above all, on a fully interconnected, comfortable and ultimately automated driving experience, explains Degenhart, 57. In doing so, we further invest in advanced driver assistance systems [ADAS], automated driving, the electrification of the drive train and cloud based services for the car. Continental expects to boost its presence in the ADAS industry from 1 billion this year to roughly 1.5 billion in 2018, given the increasing digitization of electronics, sensors and software. Already, the company generates more than 14 billion, or 60 percent of its automotive sales, from digitization technologies, he says. Given the uneven global economic outlook, Degenhart says he directs the company in accordance with the principles of value-oriented management. By doing so, we are able to generate a return on capital employed that exceeds 20 percent, he continues. To cope with increasing market volatility, fluctuating exchange rates and raw materials prices, we will further balance our sales across different markets and customer segments. Our strong financial basis enables us to continue to act strategically and effectively. That base took some time to build. Degenhart joined the company at a time when Continental was hobbled by both the financial crisis and debts from its 11.4 billion takeover of Siemens VDO Automotive in 2007. It has since strengthened its cash position to such an extent that management has been able to reduce debt from 10.4 billion in 2008 to 3.5 billion today. Also, equity is now 13.2 billion, its highest level to date, and the equity ratio is back to a healthy level of just over 40 percent. Strengthening our high-performance mentality has been of at least equal importance as ensuring our financial basis right from the beginning at that time, Degenhart concludes. Our intention was to prepare the organization for the challenges to come, such as constant change in light of the progressing digitization of mobility. Telecommunications is a far less cyclical industry, according to Timotheus Hottges, who in 2014 was promoted to CEO of Deutsche Telekom the No. 1 company in the sector. In good times or bad, the best thing to do is to work at improving our customer propositions, he believes. Our investments in fiber, [long-term evolution] and innovations such as the cloud empower our customers to perform better whatever the economic environment is. One such undertaking is the Bonn-based outfits multiyear Pan-Net project, a significant technological transformation that will centralize service platforms across its 12 subsidiaries in Europe. This is an example of the German carriers priority, which is to increase the value of our existing businesses and leverage synergies between them, observes Hottges, 53. Even so, he notes that regional markets are too fragmented in a global context, and therefore consolidation would make sense. Deutsche Telekom has actively pursued M&A in other parts of the world. In the U.S. its 2013 acquisition of MetroPCS Communications strengthened the position of its T-Mobile unit. In the U.K. the company formed a joint venture with Frances Orange in 2010, Everything Everywhere (now known simply as EE), and earlier this year turned it into a 12 percent shareholding in BT Group, the countrys leading operator, with significant scope for further value creation, according to Hottges, who joined Deutsche Telekom in 2000. Spains Iberdrola, Europes No. 1 utility by market capitalization and the top-ranked outfit in the Utilities sector, has undergone significant changes since Jose Ignacio Sanchez Galan, 65, took over as CEO in 2001. Most significantly, he and his team early on embraced the production and delivery of clean and competitive electricity and gas. Despite public concern about the challenges posed by global warming being less significant than they are today, we firmly believed in the growing importance that decarbonization would play in the years ahead, he says. Two-thirds of the Bilbao-based companys installed capacity is emissions-free, and Iberdrola operates 25 gigawatts of renewable energy assets, boasts emissions that are 40 percent lower than its peers and is the worlds top wind energy producer, according to Galan. Also during his tenure, the company has taken on a more global profile. We realized that in order to expand beyond the borders of a mature electricity market such as Spain we had to look to countries or areas that provided security for investment, regulatory stability and opportunities for growth and development, he explains. Gradually, we strengthened our presence in Mexico and Brazil, and we entered the British and North American markets. Today, Iberdrola generates roughly 60 percent of its earnings from outside Spain, with total assets worth 100 billion and revenue of 30 billion. In 2001 it generated just 1 percent of earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization from overseas, its assets were valued at 18 billion, and revenue stood at 7 billion. During that period, the power companys market cap has tripled, to 38.7 billion. While acknowledging that the short-term economic outlook may be bleak, Galan points out that the International Energy Agency forecasts electricity demand will grow twice as fast as demand for primary energy (such as coal, oil and gas) over the next 25 years. And even in markets where demand growth is expected to be more moderate, investments will still be essential, he says, noting that the U.S. alone will require more than $2 trillion to upgrade its electricity generation and transmission infrastructure. Globally, advances in technology and efficiency, as well as extending electricity supply to more than 1 billion people still lacking it, provide reasons for optimism in our industry, he declares. I cannot think of many other capital-intensive sectors with such a clear long-term horizon of growth. Get more research and rankings. Mainland Chinese investors have found creative ways to shift capital to wealth managers in Hong Kong, the U.S. and other destinations. Since last summer, volatility in Chinese financial markets has sparked a flight of capital from the mainland that totaled roughly $1 trillion by year-end, according to some estimates. One source of this money is the countrys ever-growing high-net-worth population, whose desire to diversify their investments and preserve capital has created opportunities for foreign wealth managers. Although concern over Chinas financial system remains a powerful market narrative, there are many reasons Chinese companies and individuals might choose to cash out. A study published by the Bank for International Settlements in March concluded that a large portion of recent outflows were the result of Chinese companies moving aggressively to retire U.S. dollardenominated debt; other analysts have cited the closure of carry trade positions by institutional investors. No one knows how much of the capital leaving the mainland represents wealthy households shifting assets, but the outsize impact of Chinese buyers on luxury property markets in the U.S., the U.K. and Australia in recent years gives some indication. Theres plenty more money where that came from. Bain & Co. estimates that as of last year China was home to more than 1 million wealthy individuals, which the consulting firm defines as those with more than $1.5 million in invested assets. Their combined riches: almost $5 trillion. Many of those investors are seeking greener pastures elsewhere. For companies and affluent families, Hong Kong plays a key role in shifting assets from the mainland. The semiautonomous region is part of China but retains control over domestic and economic policy. There may be short-term impact due to negative market sentiment given the stock market sell-off and the renminbis depreciation, says Ivan Wong, HSBC Private Banks Hong Kongbased head of investment services and product solutions for Asia. The implication in the longer run can be more positive, given that Hong Kong has always been a gateway for outbound investment for Chinese investors due to the established legal and tax frameworks. Although officially limited to $50,000 a year in offshore transfers, wealthy Chinese investors have become adept at moving money into other currencies. In addition to aggregating the capital limits of family and friends unable to take advantage of the transfer allowance, many investors have exploited less savory routes in the past. One popular avenue involved the use of gambling junkets to the casinos of Macau, the neighboring offshore center, to shift yuan to Hong Kong and beyond, but the anticorruption campaign unleashed by Xi Jinping after he became president in 2013 has largely shut down that option. The search for new and more creative mechanisms to funnel wealth overseas continues, though. In January, China UnionPay, the nations sole credit card administrator, began to limit available credit for cardholders traveling abroad, according to one senior executive at a primary Chinese bank. The move came after Chinese nationals began using high-limit cards to purchase U.S. dollardenominated annuities in Hong Kong and elsewhere to skirt rules capping foreign currency holdings. Since the crackdown on insurance products, wealthy Chinese have sought new avenues to use credit to convert yuan to other currencies, including the purchase of art and fine wines that are salable worldwide. Regardless of how private capital leaves the mainland, the global financial services industry is taking notice. We have seen a steady flow of money from China over the past few years, and this is obviously a large opportunity for wealth managers, says Gerald Ferguson, general manager for Asia at RFi Group, a Sydneybased research firm specializing in banking and finance. From our research we do see the majority of the outflows settling in Hong Kong, and to a lesser extent Singapore, which is mainly due to customers wishing to take advantage of the wider array of investment options available outside of China. When Chinese private investors do bring liquid assets directly to U.S. or European financial advisers, their accounts are often held offshore to avoid unwanted scrutiny. An executive with one major American asset manager says his firm prefers to hold Chinese private assets in Luxembourg-domiciled funds; several U.S. wire houses recently clamped down on advisers keeping domestic accounts for emerging-markets private clients, forcing those managers to reassign them offshore. Chinas elite prefer to spread their wealth across geographies and asset classes. The volatility at the beginning of 2016 has underscored the need for investors in this region to have a fully diversified global portfolio, says Jean-Claude Humair, regional market manager for UBS Wealth Management in Hong Kong. Get more on private wealth. The Massachusetts Division of Insurance said this month that it has opened an investigation into Zenefits, a troubled insurance software startup. Founded in 2013, the San Francisco-based Zenefits offers software to small- and mid-sized businesses to help automate their HR services, including healthcare benefits. The company has some 10,000 corporate clients across the country, including more than 200 customers in Massachusetts. But Zenefits has come under regulatory scrutiny for allegedly allowing unlicensed brokers to sell health coverage. Insurance regulators in California and Washington also recently opened investigations into the company. Zenefits said it is taking steps to address the compliance concerns. In February, Zenefits Chief Executive Officer Parker Conrad resigned, and David Sacks, a former PayPal executive who joined as chief operating officer a year ago, took over as the new CEO. The company also appointed its first chief compliance officer. Zenefits spokesman Kenneth Baer said that when it came to light that Zenefits had problems with its licensing compliance, the company asked an independent, Big Four accounting firm to conduct an independent third-party review. We also self-reported to all 51 departments of insurance across the country including Massachusetts about the issue and our internal review, and are working with them, Baer said. As Zenefits new CEO has made clear, Zenefits has turned the page on what happened in the past, and is embracing new corporate values and culture, he said. Operationally, that means we have built best-in-class software in our Salesforce system that prevents anyone who is not licensed from selling a policy from selling it. According to media reports, Zenefits also announced in February that it is eliminating some 250 jobs, about 17 percent of its workforce, to refocus its strategy. Topics Massachusetts Two couples were awarded nearly $4.25 million on March 10 after a federal jury found one of the largest natural gas drillers in Pennsylvania polluted their well water. The verdict came at the end of a bitter and long-running federal suit pitting homeowners in the village of Dimock, Pennsylvania, against Houston-based Cabot Oil & Gas Corp. The company said it will appeal, accusing the jury of ignoring overwhelming scientific and factual evidence that Cabot acted as a prudent operator in conducting its operations. Dimock was the scene of the most highly publicized case of methane contamination to emerge from the early days of Pennsylvanias natural-gas drilling boom. State regulators blamed faulty gas wells drilled by Cabot for leaking combustible methane into Dimocks groundwater. Cabot claimed the methane was naturally occurring. The rural community became a battleground in environmental activists fight against fracking, and its plight was featured in the Emmy-winning 2010 documentary Gasland. Residents first reported problems with their wells in 2008. Homeowners, all of whom had leased their land to Cabot, said the water made them sick with symptoms that included vomiting, dizziness and skin rashes. Dozens of plaintiffs settled with Cabot in 2012, but two homeowners opted to take their claims to trial. Stephen Dillard, one of Cabots attorneys, argued that the problems in water wells predated Cabots drilling. A state investigation found that Cabot had allowed gas to escape into the regions groundwater supplies, contaminating at least 18 residential water wells. Topics Lawsuits Pennsylvania New Hampshire insurance regulators are working with their counterparts in Maine to monitor a financially struggling health insurance cooperative that serves both states. Community Health Options, based in Lewiston, Maine, was the only cooperative in the country to make money on the Affordable Care Acts public insurance exchanges in 2014, but it saw big losses last year and stopped taking new customers in December. Last week, the Maine Bureau of Insurance announced it will be monitoring and posting financial updates about the cooperative every month. In New Hampshire, where the co-op is one of five companies offering individual ACA plans, Insurance Commissioner Roger Sevigny says his priority is making sure New Hampshire residents are treated fairly. With 71,500 members, the co-op is the largest provider of individual health insurance in Maine. In New Hampshire, it has 12,700 customers. After experience higher-than-expected enrollment and claims costs, Community Health Options posted a $31 million loss in 2015, and is now setting aside $43 million to cover possible big losses this year. Officials have said premiums are likely to go up, and the cooperative plans to submit its proposal to state insurance regulators in May. If Maine regulators determine that the company would not be able to meets its obligations on an ongoing basis, consumers would be entitled to a special enrollment period during which they could select new coverage. Related: Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Maine New Hampshire Chubb announced a number of appointments within its claims management team in Europe, with immediate effect. All the following positions will report to Peter Murray, director of claims for Chubb in Europe and will be based in London, unless otherwise stated: Steve Parry , formerly UK and Ireland claims manager for ACE will serve as claims director UK and Ireland, operations and integration, for Chubb. Parry will have overall responsibility for UK and Ireland claims as well as for operations and integration activities for claims across Europe. formerly UK and Ireland claims manager for ACE will serve as claims director UK and Ireland, operations and integration, for Chubb. Parry will have overall responsibility for UK and Ireland claims as well as for operations and integration activities for claims across Europe. Graham Lambourne , formerly multinational claims manager for ACE European Group, will serve as global clients claims manager for Chubb in Europe. formerly multinational claims manager for ACE European Group, will serve as global clients claims manager for Chubb in Europe. Steve Crabb , formerly claims manager for ACE in Eurasia and Africa, will serve as claims manager for Chubb in Eurasia and Africa. formerly claims manager for ACE in Eurasia and Africa, will serve as claims manager for Chubb in Eurasia and Africa. Deborah Carter , formerly claims legal counsel for ACE European Group, will serve as claims legal counsel for Chubb in Europe. formerly claims legal counsel for ACE European Group, will serve as claims legal counsel for Chubb in Europe. Lisa Payne-Lawrey , formerly casualty claims technical manager for legacy Chubb in Europe, will serve as casualty European technical claims lead for Chubb in Europe. formerly casualty claims technical manager for legacy Chubb in Europe, will serve as casualty European technical claims lead for Chubb in Europe. Andy McAvan , formerly property and energy claims manager for ACE European Group will serve as property and energy European technical claims lead for Chubb. formerly property and energy claims manager for ACE European Group will serve as property and energy European technical claims lead for Chubb. Mark Bailey , formerly financial lines claims manager for ACE European Group, will serve as financial lines European technical claims lead for Chubb in Europe. formerly financial lines claims manager for ACE European Group, will serve as financial lines European technical claims lead for Chubb in Europe. Robert Whelan , formerly consumer lines claims manager for ACE European Group, will serve as Europe consumer lines claims manager for Chubb in Europe, based in Dublin. formerly consumer lines claims manager for ACE European Group, will serve as Europe consumer lines claims manager for Chubb in Europe, based in Dublin. Tim Scott-Young , formerly claims director, Continental Europe at legacy ACE, will serve as claims director, Continental Europe for Chubb, based in Paris. In addition, reporting to Tim Scott-Young: Ron Bakker , formerly claims manager for legacy Chubbs Northern Europe zone, will serve as deputy claims manager, Continental Europe, for Chubb, with responsibility for overseeing claims in the Nordics, Benelux, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary and Switzerland. He will additionally assume responsibility as the claims integration lead for Continental Europe. Bakker will be based in Amsterdam. formerly claims director, Continental Europe at legacy ACE, will serve as claims director, Continental Europe for Chubb, based in Paris. In addition, reporting to Tim Scott-Young: The following roles will report to Steve Parry with immediate effect and will be based in London, unless otherwise stated: Katerina Kikillou, formerly claims manager, UK and Ireland, for legacy Chubb, will serve as UK and Ireland claims manager, London/Brentwood and Dublin, for Chubb. formerly claims manager, UK and Ireland, for legacy Chubb, will serve as UK and Ireland claims manager, London/Brentwood and Dublin, for Chubb. David McNamara , formerly European claims operations and systems manager for ACE European Group, will serve as claims operations manager, for Chubb in Europe. formerly European claims operations and systems manager for ACE European Group, will serve as claims operations manager, for Chubb in Europe. Jim Bonner , formerly Glasgow shared services manager for ACE, will serve as Glasgow shared services manager for Chubb, based in Glasgow. , formerly Glasgow shared services manager for ACE, will serve as Glasgow shared services manager for Chubb, based in Glasgow. Kelly Hotchkiss, formerly claims vendor manager for ACE European Group, will serve as claims vendor manager for Chubb. Working closely with the European claims team will be Mona Barnes, formerly financial lines technical manager for legacy Chubb in Europe who has been appointed to the role of vice president, claims, for Chubbs Overseas General Insurance division. In her new role, Barnes will report to Julie Chalmers, senior vice president, Professional Lines and High Net Worth Claims for Overseas General, and Mike Noonan, senior vice president, property and casualty claims, for Overseas General. She will continue to be based in London. This is a team of highly skilled, experienced claims professionals. They all personify our commitment to anticipate and respond to our clients rapidly evolving claims needs in Europe with efficiency, transparency and speed. I am looking forward to working with them all, said Peter Murray, director of claims for Chubb in Europe. At the core of our new Chubb brand is the delivery of superior service and there is no more important part of that than claims, said Jalil Rehman, executive vice president and chief business operations officer, Europe. Our new team brings together the very best of our world-class claims talent and expertise. Building on the strengths of both legacy companies, they will deliver a market-leading claims operation that our clients demand and deserve across the region. Source: Chubb Related: Topics Claims Europe London Chubb Itasca, Ill.-headquartered Arthur J. Gallagher & Co. announced it has reached an agreement with Kane Group to acquire its insurance management operations (KIM). This acquisition is expected to close on or about March 31, 2016 and is subject to certain closing conditions. Other terms were not disclosed. With a history that dates back to 1984, KIM is a global insurance management company specializing in the formation and management of insurance and alternative risk solutions with expertise in the healthcare, insurance, financial services, transportation and construction industries. It provides administration for insurance linked securities and structured transactions, supporting catastrophe bonds, sidecars, collateralized reinsurance and similar structures, Gallagher said in a statement. Robert Eastham, Linda Haddleton, Ann West and their associates will continue to operate from their locations in Bermuda, Cayman, Guernsey, and in the states of South Carolina and Vermont under the direction of David McManus, head of Artex Risk Solutions Inc., Gallaghers Bermuda-based captive management and alternative risk programs operation. KIM is highly regarded for its industry-leading expertise in the ILS market and its emphasis on quality customer service, said J. Patrick Gallagher Jr., Arthur J. Gallagher & Co.s chairman, president and CEO. KIMs specialized products add to Artexs client capabilities, and its team will expand Artexs presence, particularly in Bermuda and Cayman. This group will be a wonderful complement to Artex Risk Solutions as it continues to add innovative client products and extend its international footprint. We are extremely pleased to welcome Rob, Linda, Ann and their colleagues to our growing family of risk management professionals, Gallagher said. Source: Arthur J. Gallagher Topics Mergers & Acquisitions A.J. Gallagher A woman can collect a $120,000 insurance windfall after the death of her former husband, despite their divorce years ago, the Michigan appeals court says. John Jerry Lett never removed Nancy Henson as the beneficiary before he died in 2014. The appeals court said he had plenty of time to erase her name if thats what he wanted. There is no factual or legal basis to set aside the clear and unambiguous beneficiary designation that John left in place, the court said, reversing a decision by a Kent County judge in Grand Rapids. The 3-0 opinion was released March 18. Lett and Henson divorced in 2009. Letts son Craig argued that Henson was listed as a beneficiary only in case his father had died before paying off a $28,500 debt from their marriage. The debt was settled in 2012, two years before his death at age 59. Kent County Judge David Murkowski held a one-day trial over the disputed insurance money and ruled in favor of John Letts sons, saying their father and Henson didnt like each other, among other things. But the appeals court said Murkowski went too far. The court said its significant that Lett never listed other beneficiaries on the insurance policy. Lett was described as careful and aware of money matters, and received annual reminders about his benefits from his Kent County employer, the court said. He supervised the maintenance staff at the sheriffs department and was named civilian employee of the year in 2008. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Michigan Two big New York law firms that represented the now-imprisoned financier Allen Stanford persuaded a federal appeals court on Thursday to throw out a lawsuit claiming that they helped conceal his $7.2 billion Ponzi scheme. Reversing a lower court ruling, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans said Chadbourne & Parke and Proskauer Rose were immune from liability for losses that 18,000 former Stanford investors blamed in part on Thomas Sjoblom, a lawyer who had represented the financier and worked at both firms. The investors claimed that the law firms knew Stanford had been selling fraudulent high-yielding certificates of deposit through his Antigua-based Stanford International Bank, and that the firms obstructed a related U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission probe. Stanford, 65, was convicted of fraud in March 2012 and is serving a 110-year prison term. His scheme was revealed in 2009. Lawyers for the investors did not immediately respond to requests for comment. The lawsuit had made it to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in February 2014 allowed it to proceed. It then returned to the courtroom of U.S. District Judge David Godbey in Dallas, who last March rejected the law firms arguments that they deserved immunity under Texas law. But the Texas Supreme Court later ruled in a different case that it was not enough to claim that a lawyers conduct was fraudulent to overcome the immunity that the lawyer enjoys when representing clients. In Thursdays 3-0 decision, the 5th Circuit said that ruling required the dismissal of the Stanford investors case, given that Sjobloms dealings with the SEC reflected the classic give-and-take that occurs when representing clients. That some of it was allegedly wrongful, or that he allegedly carried out some of his responsibilities in a fraudulent manner, is no matter, Circuit Judge Edith Brown Clement wrote. The law firms and Sjoblom have also faced lawsuits by Ralph Janvey, a court-appointed receiver for Stanfords companies, and a committee of Stanford investors helping him recover money for creditors. Proskauer said it is pleased with Thursdays decision, and expects the equally baseless claims in the other litigation will be dismissed. Chadbourne did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Sjobloms lawyer Joshua Hochberg said the decision will protect lawyers who are unfortunately lied to and misled by their clients. The case is Troice et al v. Proskauer Rose LLP et al, 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, No. 15-10500. (Reporting by Jonathan Stempel in New York; editing by Grant McCool) Topics USA Fraud The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday stepped into the high-profile patent fight between the worlds two fiercest smartphone rivals, Apple and Samsung, agreeing to hear Samsungs appeal of what it contends were excessive penalties for copying the patented designs of the iPhone. Samsung Electronics Co Ltd paid Apple Inc. more than $548 million in December related to a jury verdict from 2012. It is seeking to pare back the $399 million of that amount that was awarded for infringing on the designs of the iPhones rounded-corner front face, bezel and colorful grid of icons, saying they contributed only marginally to a complex device. A Samsung spokeswoman said in a statement the courts review can lead to a fair interpretation of patent law that will support creativity and reward innovation. An Apple representative declined to comment. Apple sued in 2011, claiming the South Korean electronics company stole its technology and ripped off the look of the iPhone. Last May, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit in Washington upheld the 2012 patent infringement verdict. The court, however, said the iPhones appearance could not be protected through trademarks, forcing another trial later this month in federal court in San Jose, California, to recalculate some of the damages Apple is owed. The Supreme Court has not reviewed a design patent case in more than 120 years, when the products involved included a spoon handle and a rug. In court papers, Samsung said that for complex, modern products such as smartphones, design patents have led to unjustified windfalls, far beyond the inventive value of the patents. On Monday, the high court said it would answer whether courts should award in damages the total profits from a product that infringes on a design patent if the patent applies only to a component of the product. Apple urged the high court not to take the case, saying Samsungs illegal conduct was clear. Samsung consciously decided to copy the iPhone after its debut in 2007, Apple said, and soon after its mobile devices became iPhone clones. Samsung was supported by other major high-tech firms including Google and Facebook. The companies filed a friend-of-the-court brief that said the Federal Circuit decision will lead to more design patent lawsuits, which will stifle innovation. Samsung has said in court papers that if it wins the case, it expects to be reimbursed the money it has already paid. (Reporting by Lawrence Hurley in Washington and Andrew Chung in New York; Editing by Will Dunham and Alexia Garamfalvi) The Texas Department of Insurance is seeking an employer representative to serve on the Texas Workers Compensation Appeals Panel. The panel resolves policyholder disputes with insurance carriers that are referred by the National Council on Compensation Insurance (NCCI). The panel consists of: Five voting members, including insurance carriers, agents, and employer representatives. One nonvoting technical advisor from NCCI. One TDI employee. The employer representative must work for a company that provides standard workers compensation coverage to employees and should be familiar with Texas workers compensation classifications and premiums. Applications are available on the TDI website at: http://www.tdi.texas.gov/. Topics Texas Workers' Compensation Commercial Lines Business Insurance A lack of succession planning, the costs of fighting cyberattacks and competition with online mortgage companies that have no brick and mortar branches are some of the reasons the number of banks in Arkansas has fallen by 35 percent over the past decade, financial experts said. The number of institutions could drop another 30 percent in the next 10 years, said Phil Baldwin, chief executive officer of Citizens Bank in Batesville, which has about $725 million in assets. I think for really, really small banks in very small markets, there could be a time when there is no value there anymore, Baldwin told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. The bigger banks in Arkansas right now are probably not interested in buying small banks. Theyre so big it doesnt matter. They are out buying big banks. Bankers are feeling the competitive pinch, too, from businesses like Wal-Mart and Rocket Mortgage a subsidiary of Quicken Loans and one of the largest mortgage lenders in Arkansas. (Rocket Mortgage does) everything online and they have no branches, Baldwin said. And small banks are competing against that. There were 161 banks based in Arkansas at the end of 2005 and 104 at the end of 2015 a decline of 35 percent. In Arkansas, there are 11 banks with more than $1 billion in assets, 35 between $970 million and $205 million and 58 with less than $200 million in assets. The lack of succession planning is one of the causes of bank mergers because there are no younger members of the family moving into management, said Garland Binns, a Little Rock banking attorney with the Dover Dixon Horne firm. The younger members of the family move away and gravitate to larger metropolitan areas, where there is more opportunity for employment, Binns said. Sean Williams, chief executive officer of First National Bank of Wynne, said banks need to form partnerships with each other and assist with compliance issues. Weve got to figure out how to help one another, Williams said. Its going to be a challenging environment. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Trends Arkansas Deputies in Harrison County, Mississippi, have arrested two relatives in an ongoing case of workers compensation fraud that occurred at a Gulfport business. The Sun Herald reports Sheriff Troy Peterson said 39-year-old Detria L. Vogle, of Biloxi, and 26-year-old Rachel C. Vogle, of Gulfport, were arrested March 14. Deputies say Rachel Vogle was apprehended after a warrant was issued for her arrest and Detria turned herself in after being contacted by phone. Peterson said the sisters were wanted for a multi-count fraud indictment. Details of the alleged fraud were not released. Both are being held without bond at the Harrison County Adult Detention Center pending an initial hearing. Online jail records do not list an attorney for the sisters. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Workers' Compensation Fraud Mississippi A newspaper in South Carolina has reported the state has paid about $40 million since 2010 to settle road claims and lawsuits against the Transportation Department, with much of that money going to settle cases involving damages caused by potholes. The State newspaper in Columbia reports the number of claims has averaged 2,600 over the past two years, up from 1,600 a year on average during the four preceding years. More than half the claims against DOT since 2010 have been for damage caused by potholes. In the 2005-2006 budget year, the state paid $4.3 million to settle claims against the Transportation Department. Costs reached $8.2 million in 2014. Pothole-related claims also are on the rise, accounting for roughly 70 percent of claims against DOT, growing to 1,761 in 2015 from 960 in 2010. Meanwhile, lawmakers are debating how best to fix South Carolinas crumbling roads and bridges with Gov. Nikki Haley backing a Senate plan to spend $400 million on roads. But thats not nearly enough money to fix the roads since DOT estimates it would cost an addition $1.2 billion a year for nearly three decades to bring the states roads and bridges to excellent condition, said Ted Pitts, president of the S.C. Chamber of Commerce. The Chamber wants the state to spend at least $600 million more a year on roads and bridges. That additional amount spent yearly over a decade would eliminate structurally deficient and load-restricted bridges while also improving interstate, primary and secondary road surfaces, according to DOT estimates. According to DOTs estimates, with a one-year injection of $400 million, you dont address one single secondary road bridge, Pitts said. You dont change that at all. Transportation Secretary Christy Hall has said the $400 million would be a welcome start. Any investment in the road network would reduce those numbers, said Hall, referring to damages that DOT pays. Besides potholes, drivers and pedestrians also have sought money for damages caused by other issues as well, including objects thrown by mowers, painting and resurfacing, and drainage and shoulder drop offs. State law allows drivers or pedestrians who have accidents or are injured on the states roads and bridges to file claims at the DOT maintenance office in their county. The Transportation Department has spent $2.3 million since 2010 settling some of those claims. Larger claims are sent to the S.C. Insurance Reserve Fund, which has spent more than $37 million since 2010 settling cases against DOT. Thats a poor use of state money, Pitts said. Ask any taxpayer theyre going to tell you thats a waste of taxpayer dollars, he said. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Claims South Carolina The Alabama Supreme Court has overturned a $12.6 million judgment in a lawsuit resulting from a workplace accident. The justices sided with Dothan-based South Alabama Brick Co. in a decision released Friday. A Mobile County court returned the judgment against South Alabama Brick after a worker, Benito Perez, fell through a skylight while working on the roof of a company warehouse in Mobile in 2010. The opinion says Perez suffered catastrophic injuries when he plunged more than 20 feet. But the justices ruled that the brick company didnt have a legal duty to warn workers of the danger of being on the roof. They threw out the award. The multimillion-dollar judgment also went against Conner Roofing, which hired a work crew that included Perez. The court says Conner didnt appeal. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Commercial Lines Business Insurance Alabama The city of Los Angeles has agreed to spend up to $30 million to settle a lawsuit that challenged widespread injunctions that restrict the movements of thousands of suspected gang members. The City Council voted to fund nonprofit organizations to provide job training, counseling, tattoo removal and other services that aim to help people leave the gang life. The city would pay at least $4.5 million but no more than $30 million over four years. The proposal creates an innovative pathway for individuals served with gang injunctions to gain the job skills they need to turn their lives around, City Attorney Mike Feuer said in a statement. If a court approves the settlement, the city also will stop enforcing curfew restrictions that a federal court ruled were unconstitutional and provide a way for people named in injunctions to be removed from the list. Unconstitutional gang injunction curfews forced several thousand black and brown residents of Los Angeles indoors on a nightly basis, Olu K. Orange, an attorney for the lawsuit plaintiffs, said in a statement. These individuals are part of the Los Angeles community and this settlement is a step by city leaders toward showing them that their lives do matter. Gang injunctions were designed as a tool for fighting gang crime and violence. They give police the power to arrest reputed gang members named in the injunction for otherwise legal activities such as gathering in public, wearing gang colors or being outside in a gang area late at night. Since being pioneered in Los Angeles in the 1980s, the use of the injunctions has proliferated across the nation and even overseas. Vast swaths of Southern California have been subject to such injunctions. Advocates say the injunctions have reduced gang crime while opponents say they cast too wide a net and unfairly brand young men as gang members without due process. Courts have struck down portions of gang injunctions in Ventura and Orange counties. The proposed Los Angeles settlement covers a lawsuit that was filed in 2011 by two men who were arrested for violating curfew restrictions in an injunction. The men denied they were gang members and charges against them eventually were dismissed. Their lawsuit argued that the arrests violated their constitutional rights to free assembly, travel and protection from unlawful seizures. Copyright 2022 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Topics Lawsuits Dallas, TX, March 22, 2016 National wholesale brokerage and managing general agent Worldwide Facilities, LLC is pleased to announce that its Dallas office is growingand it is adding two new members to its team. Philip Collins is joining Worldwide Facilities as Senior Vice President, Financial Services in the Dallas office. With more than a decade of experience placing risk for healthcare, private companies, nonprofits, and financial institutions, he is a licensed D&O and Privacy CE instructor and served as a key member of Chubb and ACE Producer Advisor Councils. Prior to joining Worldwide, Philip spent 11 years at Crump (now CRC). Matt Sheehan will also be joining the team as Senior Vice President, Financial Services in the Dallas office. He is a seasoned senior professional liability broker with over 14 years of underwriting and brokerage experience. His specialized expertise includes Professional, Executive, Healthcare, Media, and Cyber / Privacy Liability exposures. Matt spent 11 years at Crump (now CRC) prior to joining Worldwide Facilities. Im excited and grateful for the opportunity to be a catalyst in the growth of a flat, entrepreneurial organization that is aligned with the goals of our retail partners, says Sheehan. With their wealth of experience and industry relationships, both Matt and Philip offer a great deal of value to our team in Dallas, adds Tom Ciardello, Senior EVP at Worldwide Facilities. Were thrilled to be able to bring their expertise to our retail partners to ensure they get the best experience possible. Contact: Philip Collins Senior Vice PresidentCell: (615) 377-0729 pcollins@wwfi.com Contact: Matthew Sheehan, CIC, CPCU, RPLU, MLIS Senior Vice President Cell: (214) 789-4371msheehan@wwfi.com About Worldwide Facilities, LLC Worldwide Facilities is a national wholesale insurance broker and managing general agent that has been in business since 1970. Our seasoned brokers and underwriters are industry leaders in providing expertise in a wide range of specialty lines, and offer extensive contacts with carriers domestically and overseas. Media Contact Erika Guerra EGuerra@wwfi.com Direct: (213) 236-4509 Topics Agencies Leadership E arrivata lufficialita, dopo una giornata di voci rincorrenti: per il triennio 2018-2021 sara lemittente Sky a godere dei diritti televisivi per trasmettere, in esclusiva assoluta, le partite non solo delle prossime edizioni dellEuropa League ma anche quelle della massima competizione continentale, la Champions. Un pacchetto da favola per il quale la tv satellitare di Rupert Murdoch avrebbe messo sul piatto unofferta giudicata piu congrua di quella presentata dalla concorrente Mediaset. A dare lannuncio dellaffare concluso e stata la stessa Sky che, in un comunicato, ha spiegato che il nuovo format sviluppato dalla UEFA ci consentira di portare ai nostri abbonati un prodotto rivoluzionario per il calcio europeo in Italia. Per la prima volta la UEFA Champions League e la UEFA Europa League saranno insieme in unesclusiva offerta integrata, che permettera agli appassionati di seguire fino a 7 squadre italiane, mai cosi tante prima dora, impegnate nelle sfide con i migliori club europei. Sky: Rafforzata leadership Anche il livello tecnico dellofferta sara altissimo ed e ancora lemittente a rivelare i dettagli: Continueremo a fare innovazione, trasmettendo le partite piu importanti anche in 4K HDR. Questofferta senza precedenti rafforza la posizione di Sky come leader della programmazione sportiva in Italia ed e anche un altro passo importante di sostegno al calcio italiano. Insomma, per i prossimi tre anni, sara unegemonia totale quella della satellitare sul calcio europeo, avendo mantenuto il pacchetto Europa League (gia sua esclusiva) e affiancandola a quello ancor piu appetibile della Champions League ad appannaggio Mediaset dal 2015 al 2018. Sfida Serie A Ora la sfida fra i due colossi delle trasmissioni sportive si spostera sui diritti televisivi della prossima Serie A, per la quale si e ancora in attesa di un nuovo bando che, come annunciato dal commissario della Lega, Carlo Tavecchio, avra le stesse caratteristiche del precedente, andato pero a vuoto: solo una delle offerte presentate per i cinque pacchetti, infatti, superava la soglia minima richiesta dalla base dasta. Niente di fatto, quindi, anche in virtu della stessa Mediaset che, in sostanza, ha disertato il bando (giudicato inaccettabile) non presentando alcuna offerta. La battaglia, anche in questo caso, sara sulle esclusive: del resto, dopo essersi vista scivolare via una componente importante come la Champions, sulla Serie A Mediaset dara sicuramente battaglia. 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. Once, risk management and compliance were barely tolerated nuisances in the investment management world. Managers and advisors were only encouraged to participate in processes they felt were both simple and annoying. However, after the great financial crisis of 2008, these procedures and processes became an integral part of the investment process. With developments by the Department of Labors Fiduciary Rule, compliance and risk management directives were further cemented into the foundation of all advisory practices. Great Financial Crisis: A Game Changer Before the financial crisis, the market had experienced isolated dislocations and occasional company blow-ups due to poor management or illegal activities. While these incidents were devastating and impacted the lives of many, the breadth of the housing crisis in 2008 left no one in the country untouched. Those that thought their portfolios were diversified found their investments correlated. Those who assumed that their risk procedures accounted for and protected them from even the most unlikely scenarios found that they were gravely incorrect. Some investment managers and financial advisors may argue that this crisis was unique, that we have learned from it, and that the likelihood of a repeat is low. For clients, even the smallest chance of a similar event is too much when the damage caused is so great. Therefore, clients are demanding more assurances that their assets are treated as safely as possible. In turn, money managers and advisors must design risk and compliance processes that are more effective at maintaining and mitigating risk, while also not restricting themselves from managing assets appropriately. Risk and Compliance Guidelines The CFA Institute, a professional organization, in conjunction with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), has created several guidelines to make compliance directives as effective as possible. Compliance and risk management procedures should do the following: 1. Legal and Regulatory Requirements First and foremost, compliance policies and procedures need to be developed to ensure all investment activities comply with laws and regulations. Federal laws that apply to asset managers will result in similar compliance reporting programs, but the specific internal controls of each managers program may differ slightly. For example, tools that require each member of the investment team to self-assess their compliance are sometimes developed specifically for that manager or advisor. These programs will vary based on the size of the firm and the type of investments each firm engages in; however, most firms will be held to the same guidelines by the Department of Labors recent legislation. 2. Separate Function Creating an independent function for a compliance team or manager separate from the investment team is a good way to allow a compliance team to implement the most effective procedures. A compliance officer should be responsible for designing, implementing and overseeing the procedures and policies. For example, the compliance officer should ensure the client is the top priority by reviewing all personal and firm transactions. A risk manager needs to develop an effective risk tool that can create risk boundaries or guidelines, monitor the investments, determine the areas of potential risk and implement corrective actions. The compliance team and procedures should regularly convey to all employees that adherence to compliance policies and procedures is crucial and that anyone who violates them will be held liable, according to the CFA Institute. 3. Third-Party Verification Client portfolio information should be verified by a third party to make sure it is accurate and complete. Not only does it enhance manager credibility but it can help to identify potential areas of risk. Third-party verification can take the form of an annual audit or through trade confirmations from a custodian. 4. Record Keeping Keeping accurate and easily assessable records is an important requirement for several reasons. For compliance and risk purposes, the CFA Institute suggests that Managers should retain records that substantiate their investment activities, the scope of their research, the basis for their conclusions, and the reasons for actions taken on behalf of their clients. Meticulous record keeping and transparency of information are both things highlighted in the Department of Labors Fiduciary Rule. Additionally, accurate records can assist the implement risk management in back-testing various risk scenarios to determine levels of correlation or other risk metrics. 5. Appropriate Resources Qualified staff and adequate technological resources are needed to monitor investment actions. This includes the ability to thoroughly analyze and track investment decisions and actions. These tracking tools should identify that client interests are a priority and the services clients receive are within the purview of their agreement. Internal controls are also required to prevent illegal activities with respect to the client relationship such as excessive gift giving and other questionable processes. The term appropriate resources does not just apply to the number of staff, but also the qualifications of the staff. Advisory practices have a responsibility to employ experienced and knowledgeable staff members, provide full disclosure, and implement money management tools that are approved by regulatory institutions. In terms of risk management, advisors need appropriate resources, both human capital, and technology, to be able to competently perform the necessary research and analysis that are performed to make informed investment decisions. Technological tools can include software to perform analyses like Value at Risk (VaR) or stochastic models. A risk management process needs to also include regular portfolio monitoringat the holdings level and for the overall portfolio to make sure it is managed within the clients guidelines. This is increasingly important as more sophisticated securities, such as derivatives or other alternative investments are used. 6. Disaster Planning The financial crisis of 2008 highlighted the fact that a plan for management during a disaster and recovery is essential. Procedures developed to safeguard client interests could include having a backup offsite facility, creating secondary monitoring and trading systems and developing communication plans for employees. These plans should be developed by everyone within the company, reviewed regularly and tested firm-wide periodically. The Bottom Line Events like natural disasters, terrorist attacks, or market crashes used to seem unlikely, but the global nature of the markets has increased the likelihood of unusual occurrences, bringing to the forefront the need for strong risk and compliance processes in any organization. These processes, which will improve the diligence and care with which managers invest clients' assets, should enact procedures that are reviewed and tested on a regular basis. Intel Corporation (INTC) was founded in 1968 by Robert Noyce and the father of Moores Law, Gordon Moore. Noyce and Moore left Fairchild Semiconductor to launch a new venture, NM Electronics. Several months later, they purchased the rights for the name Integrated Electronics Corporation from a company called Intelco. In 1969, they developed the Intel logo, with the "e" dropped below the other letters. That same year, Intel introduced its first product, the 3101 random access memory (RAM) chip. In 1974, Intel introduced the first, general-purpose microprocessor, the 8080. Intel began marketing its famous 8086 microprocessor in 1978. It was the first in the companys successful series of x86 microprocessor chips. The first Pentium microprocessor in 1993 was five times more powerful than the i486. Intel is one of the worlds largest semiconductor companies, with an annual net revenue of $79 billion in the fiscal year 2021. On Feb. 15, 2021, Intel named Patrick Gelsinger as chief executive officer (CEO). Here are five of the company's key individual shareholders. Key Takeaways Santa Clara, California-based Intel is one of the world's biggest semiconductor makers. Key individual shareholders include former board chair Andy Bryant and former CEOs Brian Krzanich and Robert Swan. As well, former employees Stacy Smith and Diane Bryant also hold sizable positions. 1. Andy Bryant Andy D. Bryant joined Intel in 1981 as the controller for the companys commercial memory systems operation. He became the firm's chief financial officer (CFO) in 1994, before rising to the role of chief administrative officer (CAO) in 2007. He was named a director in 2011. From 2012 to 2020, Bryant was chair of the board. Bryant owns 413,052 shares directly, according to an April 2020 Form 4 filing. 2. Brian Krzanich Brian Krzanich served as the company's CEO from May 2013 until stepping down on June 21, 2018. Krzanich joined the company in 1982, working as a process engineer in New Mexico. After working as a manufacturing manager at several Intel factories, he served as the Fab 17 plant manager, from 1997 to 2001. At the Fab 17 plant, Krzanich oversaw the integration of Digital Equipment Corporations semiconductor manufacturing operations into Intels manufacturing network. Krzanich owns 253,590 shares. 3. Robert Swan Robert Swan joined Intel in October 2016 as the chief financial officer (CFO), after serving as CFO of TRW Inc., Electronic Data Systems, and eBay. After former CEO Brian Krzanich resigned on June 21, 2018, Swan stepped in as interim CEO for seven months. On Jan. 31, 2019, Swan was named CEO, but stepped down in February 2021. Swan owns 422,801 shares directly. 4. Stacy Smith Stacy Smith was the group president of manufacturing, operations, and sales for Intel until Jan. 31, 2018. Smith previously served as the company's executive vice president and CFO. He joined the company in 1988 and has worked for Intel in the United States, Asia, Europe, and Latin America, holding positions in finance, information technology, sales, and marketing. Smith holds 183,958 shares of Intel. 5. Diane Bryant Diane Bryant was Intel's executive vice president and general manager for their Data Center Group but left the company due to personal reasons. Between 2008 and 2012, she served as corporate vice president and chief information officer, responsible for corporate-wide information technology solutions and services. Bryant holds 112,140 shares of Intel. Investment Banking vs. Investment Management: An Overview Plenty of undergraduate finance majors and master of business administration (MBA) students consider pursuing a career in investment banking or investment management, two intensely competitive fields in the finance industry, after receiving their degrees. These professions offer some of the highest starting salaries in the field, and there's plenty of room for growth for those who are talented and ambitious enough to land one of these spots. If you take away all of the industry terminologies and boil these jobs down to their basic elements, investment bankers and investment managers (sometimes called asset managers or fund managers in the U.K.) are primarily responsible for channeling money from investors to companies that need capital. Some of the top experts in the investment world can be found in these positions. Investment management is all about investment decisions and asset allocation. This means coming up with investment strategies and directing funds to property, equities, or debt securities on behalf of clients. Investment bankers, by contrast, are deal-makers. They work as high-level consultants and analysts for large companies to help with capital raising strategies. Key Takeaways Investment managers help clients by managing their money. Clients can include individuals, educational institutions, insurance companies, and pension funds. Investment managers perform financial analysis, portfolio allocation between bonds and stocks, equity research, and issue buy and sell recommendations. Investment bankers help with corporate finance needs, such as raising funds or capital. Companies and governments hire investment bankers to facilitate mergers and acquisitions as well as IPOs, and new debt issuance such as a bond offering. Investment Management Investment managers help clients reach their investment goals by managing their money. Clients of investment managers can include individual investors as well as institutional investors such as educational institutions, insurance companies, pension funds, retirement plans, and governments. Investment managers can work with equities, bonds, and commodities, including precious metals like gold and silver. Investment managers can have varied roles and responsibilities, depending on the firm, which can include: Financial statement analysis Portfolio allocation such as a proper mix of bonds and stocks Equity research and buy and sell recommendations Financial planning and advising Estate and retirement planning as well as asset distribution Investment Banking Investment bankers help with corporate finance needs, such as raising funds or capital. Companies and governments hire investment bankers to facilitate complicated financial transactions, including: Debt issuance such as a bond offering New securities underwriting Mergers and acquisitions Initial public offerings (IPOs) Investment banking can involve equity and security research and making buy, sell, and hold recommendations. Investment banking firms are also market makers, which provide liquidity or connect buyers and sellers to "make" the market. Almost every investment banker starts out as an associate or analyst and hopes to put in enough years to reach a role as a vice president or managing director. Special Considerations Education and Skills Competition for both careers is notoriously stiff. Investment banking firms are usually only interested in candidates who have graduated from top schools and who have worked previously with major corporate players. It's virtually impossible to find an investment banking associate position without an MBA and strong recommendations from respected professionals in the field. Investment management positions aren't quite as crowded by top applicants, but it's still very difficult to break into major firms. Networking is very important and sometimes matters more than experience or academic bona fides. Many firms use internships as extensive application processes; in fact, some investment management and banking internships are more competitive than entry-level positions for corporate finance or research analyst positions. Undergraduate degrees are preferred in business disciplines, such as finance, economics, accounting, or investment analysis, although degrees from other fields are considered. Some banks look for demonstrated analytical proficiency in specific sectors, like healthcare or pharmaceuticals. Firms are generally looking a strong combination of the following skills and characteristics: Strong written and verbal communication skills Analytical and problem-solving skills Demonstrated independence and responsibility Responsiveness and attention to detail Negotiation and client management skills Knowledge of investments, corporate finance and business negotiations (practical commercial expertise) Advanced mathematical and technical skills An ambitious, eager, get-it-done attitude Salary Investment banking and investment management jobs have attractive salaries and bonuses. Even the lowest-level investment banking analyst at a smaller firm can expect a first-year salary of $65,000 to $95,000 and a hefty signing bonus. The average base pay for investment managers is $95,829 with salaries that can be as high as $180,000, according to glassdoor.com. Additional compensation averages $14,900, which includes commissions and bonuses. The average base pay for investment bankers is $119,110 with salaries that can be as high as $235,000, according to glassdoor.com. Investment banking analysts make anywhere from $73,000 to 108,000. Work-Life Balance High-level investment jobs are highly concentrated in New York, London, and Tokyo. Even though there is some evidence of geographical shifts as the 21st century marches forward, it is still probable that a career in investment banking or investment management means moving to one of these three global financial hubs. Workloads for investment managers vary. Those employed by mutual funds or hedge funds work when the stock market opens and closes. This can be a relatively short time if the firm is only active in one market, but those active in all three major exchanges can have very irregular. Private equity firms average much longer workdays, sometimes as many as 65 to 70 hours per week. Investment bankers sometimes joke that they enjoy a nice "work-work" balance. Very few careers demand as much time and energy as investment banking; it's not uncommon to work 12- to 14-hour days for six or seven days a week. Despite the high salary and prestige afforded to an associate or analyst, many burn out and suffer physically and emotionally after a few years on the job. These roles are for career-minded people who may have little time for relaxing on weekends and spending time with family. Occupational Outlook These are very prestigious careers with huge salaries, so competition should remain very high for the foreseeable future. The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that financial jobs such as analysts, bankers, and financial managers will experience 15% job growth between 2019 and 2029. In all likelihood, a prospective banker or manager must decide on a firm-by-firm basis. Pay structures and workloads can vary, and the choice may hinge on the specifics of the role and the career goals of the individual. A variety of factors can keep you from qualifying for a mortgage. The big ones include a low credit score, insufficient income for the size of the loan you want, insufficient down payment and excessive debt. All of these factors are within your control, however. Let's take a look at your options for overcoming any liabilities you may have as a borrower. Key Takeaways Improve your credit score by paying off any consumer debts, using a debit card instead of a credit card, paying your bills on time and correcting any errors on your credit report. If you dont earn enough to qualify for the loan, try finding a new job in your existing line of work to show steady employment history to lenders. Save appropriately for your down payment to have the largest possible down payment and the lowest possible LTV. Dont pay more than the banks appraised value. Decrease your debt by paying off your student loans, credit cards, car payments, etc. 1. Repair Your Credit and Increase Your Score To lenders, your credit score represents the likelihood that you will make your mortgage payments in full and on time every month. Therefore, with most loans, the lower your credit score, the higher your interest rate will be to compensate for the increased risk of lending you money. If your credit score is below 620, you will be considered subprime and will have difficulty getting a loan at all, let alone one with favorable terms. On the other hand, if you have a credit score above 800, you'll easily be able to get the best interest rate available (also known as the par rate). Measures you can take to improve your credit score relatively quickly include paying down revolving consumer debts, such as credit cards or auto loans, using your debit card instead of your credit cards for future purchases, paying your bills on time every month and correcting any errors on your credit report. However, some flaws, like seriously late payments, collections, charge-offs, bankruptcy, and foreclosure, will only be healed with time. In addition to managing your existing credit responsibly, don't open any new credit accounts. Applying for new credit temporarily lowers your credit score, and having too much available credit is also considered a warning sign. Lenders may be afraid that if you have a lot of available credit, you'll take advantage of it one day and adversely affect your ability to make your mortgage payments. 2. Get a Higher-Paying Job If lenders say your income isn't high enough, ask them how much more you need to earn to qualify for the loan amount you want. Then try to find a new job in your existing line of work where you'll be able to earn that much money. Because lenders like to see a steady employment history, you'll have to stay in the same line of work for this strategy to be successful. This can be disappointing news for borrowers, as switching professions entirely might offer the best chances for a salary increase. However, switching companies can also be a good way to get a significant boost in income. Significant raises from existing employers aren't that common, but a new employer knows he'll have to offer something special to get you to make the switch. If switching companies right now won't be enough to get the raise you need, think about things you can do relatively quickly to make yourself more valuable to employers. Is there a continuing education program that you could complete? If you're a legal secretary, could you become a paralegal? If you're a receptionist, could you become a secretary? A career counselor or headhunter might be able to give you some guidance specific to your situation about how to improve your marketability and how to reach your income goals. Unfortunately, getting a part-time job on top of your full-time job may not provide what lenders consider qualifying income. The part-time job may be viewed as temporary, and since it will probably take you at least 15 years to pay off your mortgage, lenders are looking for you to have long-term income stability. 3. Save Like Crazy The larger your down payment, the smaller the loan you'll need. Also, the lower your loan-to-value ratio (LTV ratio), the less risky lenders will consider you. Both of these factors will make you more likely to qualify for a loan. Be aware that you may have to reach a certain down-payment threshold, like 10% or 20% (with 20% being the most conventional) before a larger down payment will help you qualify for a loan. 4. Don't Pay More Than the Bank's Appraised Value The bank will not want to lend more than the house is worth because they could be on the losing end of the deal, should you foreclose and owe more than the bank could get for it. A 20% down payment also becomes much less valuable if the house is worth 20% less than the purchase price. Collateral value is important to lenders, so it should be kept in mind when making an offer to purchase a property. 5. Reduce Your Debt To a lender, what constitutes excessive debt is not a set number - it's a total monthly debt payment that is too high for you to be able to afford the monthly mortgage payment you're asking for. When deciding how much loan you qualify for, lenders will look at what's called the front-end ratio, or the percentage of your gross monthly income that will be taken up by your house payment (principal, interest, property tax and homeowners insurance), and the back-end ratio, or the percentage of your gross monthly income that will be taken up by the house payment plus your other monthly obligations, such as student loans, credit cards and car payments. The more debt you're required to pay off each month, whether it's "good debt" like a student loan or "bad debt" like a high-interest credit card, the lower the monthly housing payment lenders will decide you can afford, and the lower the purchase price you'll be able to afford. Decreasing your debt is one of the fastest and most effective ways to increase the size of loan you're eligible for. The Bottom Line Qualifying for a mortgage isn't always easy. Lenders require all applicants to meet certain financial tests and guidelines and allow a limited amount of flexibility within those rules. If you want to score a mortgage, you'll have to learn how to play the game, and you're likely to win if you take the steps outlined here. [For Immediate Release] Revenue decreased by 26.9% to RMB8,241 million for FY2015 Profit attributable to Equity Shareholders down 49.5% to RMB519 million * * * * * (Hong Kong, 21 March 2016) - CIMC Enric Holdings Limited ("CIMC Enric", or with its subsidiaries, the "Group") (Stock code: 03899.HK) announces its annual results for the year ended 31 December 2015. Mr. Gao Xiang, the Chairman of CIMC Enric, said, "CIMC Enric experienced a crucial year in 2015 with a range of challenges facing the sectors it engaged in. After many years of growth, the Group reported a revenue decrease in 2015. Nevertheless, it would not affect the Group's vision of becoming a world-leading manufacturer of specialised equipment and provider of project engineering services for energy, chemical and liquid food industries." Operational Performance The Company acquired Burg Service B.V. from its substantial shareholder, China International Marine Containers (Group) Co., Ltd., in 2015 and the Company has applied Accounting Guideline 5 issued by HKICPA to account for the acquisition. Accordingly, the comparative figures for 2014 have been restated. Profit attributable to equity shareholders of the Company decreased by 49.5% to RMB519,194,000 (2014: RMB1,027,638,000). Basic earnings per share was RMB0.268 (2014: RMB0.531) and diluted earnings per share was RMB0.265 (2014: RMB0.195). As a result of the weak international oil price in 2015 and natural gas pricing reform implemented by the Chinese government in recent years, the price advantage of natural gas as an alternative fuel over oil has weakened significantly in comparison with 2014. Therefore, the market demand for natural gas equipment dropped significantly during 2015, and the Group's energy equipment segment recorded a significant fall in revenue. Despite a robust growth in special tank containers' revenue, the falling demand for standard tank containers caused the chemical equipment segment to post a decrease in revenue. While the liquid food equipment segment's Chinese subsidiary posted a revenue growth for the year, this was offset by the decline in the revenue contribution by the segment's European subsidiaries which are the core operating units of the segment. The segment's European subsidiaries recorded a slight fall in revenue in Euro terms which was further exacerbated by the Euro's significant depreciation against RMB which is the reporting currency of the Group. As a result, the revenue for 2015 slipped by RMB3,025,489,000 to RMB8,241,333,000 (2014: RMB11,266,822,000). The performance of each segment is discussed below: During 2015, the energy equipment segment's revenue fell by 37.4% to RMB3,396,808,000 (2014: RMB5,422,026,000) because of a decline in the demand for natural gas equipment in general which was caused by a deceleration in oil-to-gas projects in China as well as the attractiveness of using natural gas as an alternative fuel given the diminished price advantage of natural gas over oil during the year. In particular the sales volume of LNG trailers, on-vehicle LNG fuel tanks and LNG refueling stations saw various degrees of decrease comparing with last year. At the same time, due to increased competitive pressures, the average selling price of these products declined which also contributed to the fall in segment revenue. The chemical equipment segment's revenue decreased by 19.9% to RMB2,709,679,000 (2014: RMB3,383,062,000) due to a fall in the sales volume of standard tank containers which more than offset an increase in demand for special tank containers during the year. The liquid food equipment segment's revenue posted a decline of 13.3% to RMB2,134,845,000 during the period (2014: RMB2,461,734,000) mainly because of a slight decline in the revenue of the Group's European subsidiaries and the depreciation of Euro against RMB as Euro is the operating currency of the European subsidiaries which are the core operating units of the segment while RMB is the reporting currency of the Group. Having taken into account the Group's continued business development and efforts to increase return on equity, the Board proposes to maintain a stable dividend payout ratio for the year 2015. The Board recommends a final dividend in respect of 2015 of HKD0.100 (2014: HKD0.195) per ordinary share payable in cash on or about 20 June 2016 to shareholders whose names appear on the register of members of the Company on 31 May 2016, subject to shareholders' approval in the forthcoming annual general meeting on 20 May 2016. Prospects Global economic activity remained subdued in 2015. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) projected the global growth at 3.1% in 2015, where growth in emerging market and developing economies declined for the fifth consecutive year, while a modest recovery continued in advanced economies. Global GDP growth is projected at 3.4% in 2016. For China, the country's GDP growth for 2015 recorded a 25-year low of 6.9%. The Chinese government set the GDP growth target in 2016 at a range of 6.5% to 7.0%; whilst IMF estimated the growth in China to be 6.3% in 2016, primarily reflecting weaker investment growth as the Chinese economy continues to rebalance. The market expected the Chinese government to announce supportive policies to help stabilising the economic growth in China. The government also targets to promote renovation and upgrade in the industrial goods manufacturing industry, and has been actively seeking new drivers for development and growth by means of "Made in China 2025" action plan, "One Belt One Road" strategy, state-owned enterprises reform, as well as new technology promotion. CIMC Enric will continue to explore and develop new opportunities with the government's future development paths. To seize market opportunities and support its long-term development, the Group will focus on enhancement of its core competiveness and business integration of the newly acquired subsidiaries, on the back of dedicated efforts on organic growth and persistent innovation. For the existing business, by enhancing its core strengths, the Group targets to achieve increased productivity and cost reduction. Meanwhile, the Group strives to develop new business and growth drivers by means of acquisition, innovative technology and finance lease business model. The Group's overall goal is towards one-stop solutions, to offer comprehensive and tailor-made products and services to customers. More attention will be devoted to exploring overseas markets in order to achieve sustainable revenue growth. On the basis of Sino-European cooperation, the Group has established a business structure of "local knowledge and global operation". To further develop strategic and operational management capability of its management team in a global sense, the Group will continue to promote leadership training programmes and incentive schemes to develop and motivate talented leaders, who are essential for the Group's long-term success. In addition, through the leadership training programmes, the Group targets to enhance the capability of its management team to pursue continuous business development under undesirable external environment and to grasp market opportunities timely. In the past three years, the Group's leadership training programmes provided to the China team have been successful, such programmes are planned to cover the Europe team in the near furture. In order to achieve better management and strengthen internal control, the Group has implemented measures to enhance its organisational structure and work procedures of each department at the headquarters as well as its subsidiaries. Energy equipment Following the plunge in international oil price by more than half since the middle of 2014 and the Chinese government's natural gas pricing reforms implemented in recent years, the price advantage of natural gas as an alternative fuel over oil has weakened gradually, and the gap between natural gas price and oil price has narrowed significantly, and to a certain extent, undermined the motivation for oil-to-gas projects in China as well as the attractiveness of natural gas as a vehicle fuel. Therefore, the market demand for natural gas equipment dropped significantly in 2015. Moreover, the natural gas equipment industry in China has grown rapidly in recent years, market competition becoming more intense and average selling prices of some products decreased significantly. Grasping this critical moment, the Chinese government announced natural gas price cuts in April and November 2015 to maintain the natural gas price competiveness in China. Given the absolute environmental benefits of natural gas over other fossil fuels and together with the supportive policies for natural gas consumption by the Chinese government, the Group remains confident on the long-term prospects of the natural gas industry in China. Nevertheless, the natural gas equipment market is still pending a confirmative recovery, the Group's energy equipment segment will implement various measures to achieve lower cost of production, increased customisation and innovation as well as superior customer service, and will carefully manage and control its capital expenditure and working capital. Apart from carrying out marketing strategies in the China market, the energy equipment segment will look for more growth opportunities in overseas markets. Moreover, the Group believes that LNG marine storage and transport industry and marine oil and gas module industry are facing challenges in the short-term but remain bullish in the long-term, the segment targets to enhance its capability to deliver projects for small and midsize LNG, liquefied ethylene gas (LEG) and LPG carriers. The segment will also continue to explore and develop business opportunities in small-scale LNG liquefaction systems and equipment as well as EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) services. Chemical equipment In recent years, the Group's chemical equipment segment has recorded modest growth on the back of previous years' global economic recovery. In 2014, as the average selling price of tank containers was decreasing, customers purchased more tank containers for inventory reserves. In 2015, the slowdown in global economic growth continues to impact on the chemical industry, and the Group's standard tank containers business has experienced cyclical fluctuations of the chemical market. Moving into 2016, the growth of standard tank containers business is expected to slow down in the difficult economic environment. Due to the recent fall in steel price, being the major material cost of tank containers, the Group expects the average selling price of tank containers will remain under pressure in 2016. With many years of expertise and experience in the chemical equipment industry, the segment remains committed to maintaining its leading position in tank container manufacturing business by controlling production costs, improving quality and enhancing operational efficiency. To pursue a healthy and sustainable growth in revenue, the segment will step up its effort to develop the market of special and high-end tank containers, such as LNG tank containers. Standard tank container is an intermodal transportation equipment for vehicles and vessels, yet its market penetration in China is still relatively low, and this reflects a bright prospect of its application in China. In addition, following the acquisition of Burg Service B.V. in 2015, the segment has increased its presence in the Europe market, and has gained access to advance technologies for repair and modification of tank containers in Europe. For more information, please visit http://doc.irasia.com/listco/hk/enric/annual/2015/respress.pdf. Massachusetts, heavily influenced by the Know-Nothing Protestant group, allowed the deportation of Irish fleeing the horrors of the Great Hunger. Writing in The Irish Times in March 2016, Hidetaka Hirota, a Mellon Research Fellow who is writing a book Expelling the Poor (Oxford University 2017) on the subject, revealed a little-known hardship many Famine emigrants faced. The Know-Nothings, the Ku Klux Klan-like Protestant group, was behind the persecution of Catholics who had fled to Boston during the Famine. The State of Massachusetts, heavily influenced by the Know-Nothings, systematically deported destitute Irish men and women as a matter of public policy. As anti-immigrant sentiment grows today in Europe and America, this story of hardship is worth remembering, Hidetaka Hirota wrote. Massachusetts law allowed the deportation of beggars and many indigent Irish were targeted. Foreign paupers, up to 50,000 in number, were deported between 1840 and 1870, the vast majority of whom were Irish. It was a sweeping policy. Irish Americans born in the USA, that is citizens, were among the swept up. Some immigrants had spent up to 40 years in America but were not spared. American-born children were also shipped off As Hirota wrote, 'In 1855, the Boston Pilot, an Irish Catholic newspaper, fiercely condemned these manners of removal: How much more will [the deportation law] be abused under this vile tyranny which decrees that poverty, Irishism, and Catholicity are crimes, and to be punished as such?' Deportation was supported by the Know-Nothings. Calling Irish paupers leeches upon our taxpayers they described an ignorant and vicious Irish Catholic population. One leading nativist in Boston said in 1858 that an Irishman will not work while he can exist by begging. Most were shipped to Liverpool and many were shipped on to Ireland because of their condition, in effect being deported twice. Even in Ireland, they were not welcome. Hirota wrote that 'a group of four deportees entered the workhouse in Cork in 1868, one local official asserted that they ought not to come at all. Another Cork official complained, This city is the receptacle for every poor person who comes from America or England. Some were even re-deported back to America. * Originally published in 2016. Updated in August 2022. IrishCentral History Love Irish history? Share your favorite stories with other history buffs in the IrishCentral History Facebook group. The bloody and divisive Irish Civil War resulted in the surprise restoration of the death penalty. The last-minute decision to reinstate the ultimate deterrent would cost twenty-nine ordinary Irish citizens their lives after they were convicted of murder, until the death penalty was abolished in 1964 for everything but the murder of public figures. Dozens more would have the penalty imposed on them only to receive last-minute commutations. Patrick Aylward was one such individual whose escape from the gallows became legendary. In an increasingly urbanized society it can be difficult for the modern Irish person to comprehend the vicious feuds between rural farming families. Sadly, in the Ireland of 1922, these fights were all too common. Patrick Aylward was sixty-three years old and a farmer from Mullinavat, County Kilkenny. He had returned to Ireland in 1921 after thirty-nine years in Connecticut in order to nurse his elderly brother on their twenty-five acre holding. Fifty yards away lived the Holden family, which included Patrick, Mary and their eight children. Relations between the two households had soured shortly after Patricks return. He complained about the alleged trespassing on his land by animals belonging to the Holden family, even setting his dog on a goat belonging to Mrs. Holden. On another occasion, a missing fowl belonging to the Holdens was found dead in Aylwards shed. Mary would describe her neighbor as a violent and unpredictable man who had twice struck her with a stick. Aylward disagreed, asserting that she was the aggressor and had attacked him several times. Her children also constantly annoyed his animals and used his well as a toilet. What started out as a minor disagreement was about to take a far more sinister turn. On Saturday, April 21, 1923, Patrick Holden was out working while his wife was minding the children. At 5pm Mary put her eighteen-month-old son William to bed and departed the house to buy an outfit for another sons confirmation. Despite the lawless nature of the times, Mary saw fit to place eight-year-old Patrick in charge of the house in her absence. She told him to lock the door and stay inside. His younger sister Mary and brother Michael were also present. William, the second youngest of the Holden family, suffered from rickets and was not able to crawl or walk but was sleeping peacefully when his mother left. Some minutes afterwards, Patrick Aylward allegedly knocked at the Holdens front door. The children reluctantly opened the door and Aylward burst in shouting that he would put an end to the trespassing. Aylward lifted William, who was still sleeping, and walked over to the fire. He then proceeded to hold the infant down over the burning grate. Patrick Holden allegedly endeavored to intervene but was powerless against the older mans strength. Aylward stayed watching the crying infant as he burned on the fire, all the while using a stick to hold off the other children. Just as Williams clothes caught fire, Aylward said Dont let them goats into my haggard anymore before striding out the door. The children quickly removed their infant brother from the fire and put him in a bucket of water to quench the flames. The severely-burned baby was then put back into his bed and the door was locked. Patrick Holden Snr. arrived home within the next few minutes to be met with several hysterical children and a baby suffering from life-threatening burns. There were no gardai in the area at that turbulent point in Irish history, so Holden instead sent for a doctor from Waterford. He duly arrived and found the baby in a state of collapse. William was charred black all over his body and died from toxemia twenty-four hours later. The coroners inquest took place just days after the death. Aylward appeared and denied having any knowledge of the burning. The coroner referred the case to the gardai nonetheless, but also had harsh words for the bereaved Holdens, telling them that he did not know whether to sympathize with them because they had abandoned their young children at home. Aylward was arrested on May 8. He replied I did not do it. The murder trial began on the November 26, 1923. The prosecutor stated that the prisoner was charged with a crime which, if proved against him, was as terrible and hideous a crime as any one described as a human being could commit. Aylward maintained a cool demeanor throughout despite the gravity of the charges against him. He pleaded not guilty. Dr. Matthew Coghlan appeared on the stand and told the court that the injuries to William Holden could not have occurred accidentally. When asked about the defendant, he described him as a degenerate who lived in squalor, referring to the Aylward homestead as a manure heap and cesspool. He did insist that Aylward was sane and capable of distinguishing right from wrong, however. Patrick Holden also took the stand and was described as an intelligent witness, despite never attending school and being unable to write his name. He described letting Aylward in and witnessing his neighbor grabbing William and putting him across the fire. Patrick attempted to aid his brother but was unable to do so. Michael Holden also recounted Aylward raising a stick at them and telling them as he left the house Dont tell your mother or Ill kill you. Patrick Aylward admitted that he had poor relations with his neighbor but insisted that he had not been in their house for five months before the incident when he had complained to Mrs. Holden about her children chasing his sow and swimming in his spring well. Her response was to hit him with a scrubbing brush. He retaliated by giving her a whack with his walking stick. He denied harming the children however, pleading Dont you think I have a soul to save as well as everyone else, or what do you think I am? Aylward insisted that the Holdens had told their children to lie about him. Two witnesses, Aylwards brother and a friend, also vouched that the prisoner had been tending a sick cow all day and had not visited his neighbors. The trial took just one day and despite the contentious and contradictory evidence the all-male jury needed just ten minutes deliberation before passing a guilty verdict, with a recommendation to mercy. The judge announced his agreement and sentenced the prisoner to death. Aylward responded I am not guilty at all. I have not been in that house for five months. May God forgive the woman who put the lie on me and God forgive the jury. His pleas fell on deaf ears and his execution was set for the December 27, putting him among five convicted murderers to be sentenced to death in that month. Three of the men would indeed be hanged. Aylward, however, was fortunate to receive petitions from numerous luminaries, including the Bishop of Ossory. His Grace petitioned government minister Kevin OHiggins, questioning the guilt of the elderly man. He mentioned the Holden familys bad moral character, and alluded to a previous incident when another Holden child had burned to death in suspicious circumstances in 1910. It was announced just hours before the execution that Aylwards death sentence was to be commuted to one of penal servitude for life. The minister was not obligated to give a reason for this sudden commutation but a reasonable doubt was surely present. The government may also have been reluctant to execute a man solely on the evidence of children. Patrick Aylward served ten years in prison and was released in 1932. He died three years later, still maintaining that he had taken no part in the burning of William Holden. The death penalty remained in the Irish Constitution until 1990 and twenty-eight men and one woman would meet their death at the end of an Irish rope. Harry Gleeson was shamefully hanged for murder in 1941, a crime he did not commit. Twenty years before, did Patrick Aylward come within hours of suffering a similar injustice? The truth may never be known. Colm Wallace has written a book Sentenced to Death: Saved from the Gallows about thirty Irish men and women who had the death penalty imposed on them between 1922 and 1985. Order on books.ie or Amazon. Click here for more information. **Originally published in March 2016 The College of Arts and Sciences, Irelands Great Hunger Institute, and Ireland's Great Hunger Museum at Quinnipiac University, in collaboration with the Arnold Bernhard Library, will host several special events in the coming months as part of Quinnipiacs remembrance of the 1916 Easter Rising. The centerpiece will be the institutes exhibit, The Seed of the People: 1916 Remembered, which will run from March 23 until September 30 in the Lender Family Special Collection Room, located in the library on the Mount Carmel campus, 275 Mount Carmel Avenue. The exhibit will feature both a full Proclamation of the Irish Republic, which is being loaned to the institute by Jim Callery of Strokestown House in County Roscommon, and a rare half copy of the Proclamation, considered to be one of the most important documents in Irish history. Christine Kinealy, professor of history and director of Ireland's Great Hunger Institute, said private collector Todd Allen of New Jersey lent the authentic half proclamation to the institute. Todd has a great passion for Irish history and great interest in 1916, Kinealy said. Kinealy added that original copies of the proclamation had to be printed in halves because of typesetting issues. She said that when the British troops raided Liberty Hall, where the documents were printed, they found the typeset copy in the printer for the lower half, and many printed off half pages for souvenirs. They are quite rare, Kinealy said. It might be the only copy in America, and this is possibly the only time that a full and a half Proclamation will be exhibited together. The exhibit will also feature a medal of honor, original postcards and newspapers from the period, and items signed by leading figures in Irish history such as James Connolly and Patrick Pearse, who read the Irish Proclamation at the General Post Office in Dublin to mark the beginning of the Easter Rising. The hours for the exhibit, which is free and open to the public, are Monday through Saturday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sundays from noon to 5 p.m. In addition to The Seed of the People: 1916 Remembered, the other events at Quinnipiac will include poetry readings, film screenings, displays of first edition books, dramatic readings, a production of Sean O'Casey's play The Shadow of a Gunman, and public lectures. On March 28 at noon, Irish poet Desmond Egan will read the authentic proclamation aloud on the steps in front of the Arnold Bernard Library. Egan will also read some of his poems during an evening of Irish poetry from 4-6 p.m. at the Carl Hansen Student Center piazza. On April 4, Quinnipiac will host the lecture, Twinsome Minds: Recovering 1916 in Images and Stories, from 5-6:30 p.m. in the auditorium of the Center for Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences on the North Haven campus. Twinsome minds, a phrase from Finnegans Wake, is a multimedia performed talk with text by Richard Kearney and images by Sheila Gallagher. The performance re-imagines a series of micro-narratives surrounding 1916 in Dublin and the World War I battlefields of Belgium. Quinnipiacs Theater for Community Group will perform, for the first time, The Shadow of a Gunman, April 14-16 at 7:30 p.m. and April 17 at 2 p.m. in the Clarice L. Buckman Theater on the Mount Carmel Campus. Crystal Bain, professor of theater, will direct the play. Tickets are $15 for general admission and $10 for students and senior citizens. In addition, Quinnipiac will screen the documentary film, "1916: Irish Rebellion," on September 29 from 4-7 p.m. in the Mount Carmel Auditorium in the Center for Communications and Engineering. A panel discussion will follow with faculty from Quinnipiac and the University of Notre Dame. All events are open to the public. For more information about institute events, call 203-582-7809. To find out more about museum events, call 203-582-6500. Ten years ago, the skeletal remains of three humans were found behind McCuaigs Pub in Co. Antrim, Northern Ireland. The pub owner had stumbled upon an ancient burial while clearing land for a driveway. His discovery would challenge the traditional centuries-old account of Irish origins. As far back as the 16th century, it was believed that the Irish are the descendants of the Celts, an Iron Age people who originated in the middle of Europe and invaded Ireland somewhere between 1000 BC and 500 BC. However, the bones discovered behind McCuaigs Pub tell a different story. "DNA research indicates that the three skeletons found behind McCuaig's are the ancestors of the modern Irish and... https://t.co/fiYdpoeJUa Dan Kline (@afdtk) March 18, 2016 The DNA evidence based on those bones completely upends the traditional view, said Barry Cunliffe, an emeritus professor of archaeology at Oxford. DNA analysis indicates that the remains found behind the pub belonged to ancestors of the modern Irish and predate the Celts and their purported arrival by a thousand years or more, reports The Star. In other words, the genetic roots of todays Irish people, existed in Ireland long before the Celts arrival. According to research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science journal, the most striking feature of the bones is how much their DNA resembles that of contemporary Irish, Welsh and Scots. Older bones discovered in Ireland, however, are closer to those of Mediterranean people than to the modern Irish. Radiocarbon dating indicates that the skeletons discovered at McCuaigs go back to about 2000 BC, making them hundreds of years older than the oldest artifacts generally considered to be Celtic. Read more: Are the Celts one of the ten lost tribes of Israel? With the genetic evidence, the old model is completely shot, said John Koch, a linguist at the Centre for Advanced Welsh and Celtic Studies at the University of Wales. Dan Bradley of Trinity College Dublin, who is the senior author of the DNA research paper, was reluctant to weigh in on the cultural implications of the finding, but did say that the discovery challenges popular beliefs about Irish origins. The genomes of the contemporary people in Ireland are older much older than we previously thought, he said. So where does this leave the belief that the Irish and other people of the region are Celtic? This may depend on how you define Celtic, reports The Star. The first argument revolves around the Irish language, which, like Welsh and Scottish Gaelic, linguists have labeled as Celtic. This group of languages seems to have emerged after a similar evolution from Indo-European and are indisputably related. It is unclear, however, whether the term Celtic is an appropriate name for the languages. The traditional view holds that the Celtic languages originated with the Celts on continental Europe and spread to Ireland, Wales and Scotland. However, a growing number of scholars have started to argue that the first Celtic languages were not spoken by the Celts in the middle of Europe but by ancient people on Europes westernmost extremities, possibly in Portugal, Spain, Ireland or the other locales on the western edges of the British Isles. In 2008, Koch, the linguist at the University of Wales, suggested that Celtic languages were not imports to the region but instead were developed somewhere in the British Isles or the Iberian peninsula, and then spread eastward into continental Europe. He began questioning the traditional beliefs after studying inscriptions on artifacts from southern Portugal, which strongly resembled the languages known as Celtic. The inscriptions dated as far back as 700 BC., which placed Celtic languages far from the Celt homelands in the middle of Europe at a very early date. What it shows is that the language that became Irish was already out there before 700 BC and before the Iron Age, Koch said. It just didnt fit with the traditional theory of Celtic spreading west to Britain and Iberia. The second argument about the definition of Celtic arises from archaeology. Read more: Where the Celts come from and have lived for 3,000 years In recent years, some archaeologists have challenged the long held story that the Celts who invaded Rome around 390 BC, also invaded Ireland. They propose that the culture was not imported but rather exported, originating on the western edge of Europe earlier than previously thought and spreading into the continent. Cunliffe, the Oxford scholar, made this argument in a 2001 book, saying that on the basis of archaeological evidence the flow of Celtic culture originated from the western edge of Europe, from what he calls the Atlantic zone, into the rest of the continent. From about 5,000 BC onwards, complicated ideas of status, art, cosmology were being disseminated along the Atlantic seaways, Cunliffe said, and that culture then spread eastward. If were right, the roots of what is known as Celtic culture go way way back in time, Cunliffe said. And the genetic evidence is going to be an absolute game-changer. The new genetic evidence undermines notions of a separate Irish race, and suggest the Irish are at the extreme end of a genetic wave that washed across Europe, a wave of migrants that swept eastward from above the Black Sea across Europe about 2,500 BC. The DNA in the bones found behind McCuaigs links the Irish to that surge of population. The way to think about genetic variation in Europe is that it is more of a gradient than it is of sharp boundaries, said Bradley, the DNA researcher. Sometimes, cultural features like language and natural borders can coincide with genetics, but most times not. Genetics is fuzzy, and it doesnt follow political and cultural borders. The experts warn that the new findings may disappoint many who want a simple answer to the question Irish origins. The public will always want a place on the map and for someone to point and say, This where the Irish are from, said J.P. Mallory, an emeritus professor of archaeology at Queens University Belfast and the author of The Origins of the Irish. But theres going to be no way to do that. These groups were frequently traveling east-west across Europe, from one place to another. Everyone is a mix. H/T: TheStar.com Update 5.55pm: The Irish flag to be flown at half-mast tomorrow and Thursday "out of respect for those who lost their lives in Brussels and following the tragedy in Buncrana". Update 5pm: Senior United Nations officials have strongly condemned today's terrorist bombings in Brussels, extending condolences to the victims and their families while expressing solidarity with the people and Government of Belgium. A statement issued by Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's spokesperson said the despicable attacks today struck at the heart of Belgium and the centre of the European Union. The Secretary-General hopes those responsible will be swiftly brought to justice. He is confident that Belgium's and Europe's commitment to human rights, democracy and peaceful coexistence will continue to be the true and lasting response to the hatred and violence of which they became a victim today, it added. Also reacting to the terror attack, the President of the UN General Assembly, Mogens Lykketoft, said he is horrified. We have in the last week seen atrocities in Turkey, Ivory Coast and now in Belgium. It must be condemned in the strongest terms, Mr. Lykketoft said in a statement. Acts of terrorism are unjustifiable regardless of their motivation and terrorism in all its forms and manifestations constitutes on of the most serious threats to international peace and security. Acts of terrorism have no place in the modern world and only serve to strengthen the resolve of governments the world over to find and prosecute the individuals responsible, he added. Meanwhile, the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) said it is deeply shocked by the tragic attacks perpetrated today. This is not an attack on Belgium, it is an attack on us all and sadly these tragic events remind us again that we are facing a global threat that needs to be addressed globally, said UNWTO Secretary-General, Taleb Rifai. Update 1.40pm: The National Security Council will meet this afternoon to review Ireland's security arrangements following the Brussels attacks. The council includes the Garda Commissioner, the Chief of Staff of the Defence Forces, and the heads of four government departments. Update 1.25pm: Authorities tell people in Brussels to stay where they are, bringing the city to a standstill. In Paris, France's top security official said the country was immediately reinforcing security at airports, train stations and metros. Update 12.55pm: President Michael D Higgins has told Belgium's King Philippe of the sympathy of the Irish people "at this most difficult time". "I am deeply saddened to learn of the attacks and the tragic loss of lives in Brussels today," he said. "These attacks strike at the fundamental right of all to live in peace. "These actions must not undermine the will of all Europeans to live and work together." President Higgins expressed his "sincerest condolences" to the families of all those bereaved and affected by the bombings. "All of our thoughts are with the people of Brussels at this time of tragedy," he added. Update 12.05pm: Minister for European Affairs Dara Murphy TD has expressed his horror at news of this mornings explosions in Brussels. I was deeply saddened and horrified to hear the terrible news coming from Brussels this morning of multiple explosions and reported loss of life in Europes capital. My thoughts are with those affected, the people of Brussels, and with the large Irish community in Brussels and Belgium. "The Consular Section of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, in conjunction with the Irish Embassy in Belgium, are working with the local authorities. "Anyone with concerns for family and friends can contact the Consular Division of the Department on +353 1 418 0200. Irish citizens in Brussels or Belgium are being advised to exercise caution and closely follow the instructions of local authorities. "The Department of Foreign Affairs will be updating its guidance in consultation with the Authorities as this situation unfolds." Update 11.45am: Anthony Deloos, an airport worker for Swissport, which handles check-in and baggage services at the airport, said the first explosion took place near the Swissport counters where customers pay for overweight baggage. He and a colleague said second blast hit near the Starbucks cafe. "We heard a big explosion. It's like when you're in a party and suddenly your hearing goes out, from like a big noise," Mr Deloos said, adding that shredded paper floated through the air as a colleague told him to run. "I jumped into a luggage chute to be safe," he said. Tom De Doncker, 21, check-in agent intern, was near the site of the second explosion. "I saw a soldier pulling away a body," he said. "It felt like I was hit too" from the concussion of the blast. Update 11.25am: Ryanair have issued a statement saying: "Brussels Zaventem Airport is closed until 6am tomorrow and as a result, all of our remaining Brussels Zaventem flights have been cancelled. "Flights to/from Brussels Charleroi are running, although with some delays at the airport. Customers due to travel to/from Brussels Zaventem today should check the Ryanair.com website for the latest information. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families and friends of the victims." Update 10.44am: Associated Press has quoted Brussels police spokesman Christian De Coninck saying there were deaths at Maelbeek. "There are victims, serious injury, people have died. I have no idea yet on the numbers of injured or dead," he is quoted as saying. Walking in darkness along metro tracks in Brussels - video via Jennifer Dassy of @RTBF LIVE: https://t.co/xmlDcDTtcW pic.twitter.com/yQkWA6epV0 Mark Frankel (@markfrankel29) March 22, 2016 Update 10.35am: Anthony Barrett, 50, who works for the Wales Audit Office was in his room in the Sheraton Brussels Airport Hotel when the blast occured. "I looked at the window and could see people fleeing the terminal building," he said. "Police began evacuating the airport and there were multiple casualties. At one point, I counted 22 people being stretchered into ambulances." "I could see armed police were taking cover behind a number of parked cars. I don't know if they had a suspect cornered." Update 10.12am: The Irish Department of Foreign Affairs has increased its security setting for Belgium. "Any Irish citizens in Belgium should exercise extreme caution and closely follow the instructions of the local authorities," it stated this morning. Update 10.05am: Ryanair have released a list of cancelled flights due the Brussels attacks, you can view them here. You can also view a list of diverted Ryanair flights here. Update 10am: Aer Lingus is offering free changes and refunds to anyone travelling to Brussels today. #Brussels flights cancelled for Tuesday 22 Mar EI 631 BRU-DUB EI 638 DUB-BRU EI 639 BRU-DUB Free change/refund online or via +353 1 886 8989 Aer Lingus (@AerLingus) March 22, 2016 Update 9.32am: Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, told BFM television that the second, louder explosion brought down ceilings and ruptured pipes, mixing water with blood from victims. "It was atrocious. The ceilings collapsed," he said. "There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere." "We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene." UPDATE PHOTO Main hall of Brussels airport after the blast. live coverage: https://t.co/xejEmy28Qm pic.twitter.com/819IjV5rSM AIRLIVE (@airlivenet) March 22, 2016 Update 9.22am: Near the entrance to the Maelbeek subway station, not far from the headquarters of the European Union, rescue workers set up a makeshift treatment centre in a local pub. Brussels blasts: Another explosion target a metro station near EU headquarters https://t.co/ycSZeaNmgO FRANCE 24 English (@France24_en) March 22, 2016 Dazed and shocked morning travellers streamed from the metro entrances as police tried to set up a security cordon. "The metro was leaving Maelbeek station when there was a really loud explosion," said Alexandre Brans, 32, wiping blood from his face. "It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the metro." First responders ran through the street outside with two people on stretchers, their clothes badly torn. Update 9.11am: Belgian broadcaster VRT is reporting that at least 13 people have been killed and 35 severely injured in the airport blasts. #Belgium federal prosecutor confirms 13 dead to Belgian radio. Alex Marquardt (@MarquardtA) March 22, 2016 Update 9am: An Associated Press reporter has said that several people were injured in explosion at Maalbeek metro station. Update 8.24am: It is now being reported that an explosion has been heard at a Brussels metro station close to EU buildings. Another photo of #Brussels metro blast.. the Maalbeek station was targeted soon after explosions hit airport pic.twitter.com/3fSAbEe01z Tayyab Khan (@TayyabYounis) March 22, 2016 Just arrived at Schuman station after walking on the tracks. pic.twitter.com/4xc0YCQmIv Evan Lamos (@evanlamos) March 22, 2016 Update 8.07am: Belgian authorities have confirmed that at least one person has died in today's explosions at Brussels Airport, the BBC has reported. Update 7.56am: The BBC has reported that the Belgian fire service has told local media that there are several dead and wounded. Update 7.40am: Sky News Middle East correspondent Alex Rossi said people were "dazed and shocked". "The word is definitely two explosions. Passengers that are still located in other area's in the airport are asked to remain calm and wait for further information. Brussels Airport (@BrusselsAirport) March 22, 2016 "The thinking here by everybody is that it is some kind of terrorist attack although that hasn't been verified by anyone here at the airport. There have been 2 explosions at the airport. Building is being evacuated. Don't come to the airport area. Brussels Airport (@BrusselsAirport) March 22, 2016 "No word too of casualties. Don't know how the explosion took place, the method if you like. But it certainly seems Brussels airport has been targeted in a terrorist attack. "We are all being moved out of the airport now towards the emergency exit. "There is a great deal of confusion here. Certainly there are a number of very upset, as you might imagine, very frightened people." He added: "There are fears that there might be other attackers." Authorities have released the following emergency number for anyone seeking information about relatives in the area: (+32) 02 506 47 11. FRANCE 24 English (@France24_en) March 22, 2016 Update 7.35am: The incident came as the Belgian capital was on a state of high alert following the arrest of Paris terror attack suspect Salah Abdeslam in the city last week. Sky News Middle East correspondent Alex Rossi, who was at the airport en route for Tel Aviv, told the channel: "I could feel the buildings move." According to reports the incident centred on an American Airlines desk in a departure hall. Belgian media were reporting several casualties. Research by Oxford Economics into the potential Irish impact should UK voters choose to leave the EU identifies Ireland as the sole economy outside Britain that could be significantly impacted by such a decision. The study found that, in the worst-case scenario, up to 2.2% could be wiped off Irish GDP rates in the long run. The economy is forecast to expand 4.8% this year and 4.1% in 2017. The cost to small Irish businesses could be even greater should voters opt out of the EU in Junes referendum, according to the Small Firms Association (SFA). Some smaller Irish firms could even be put out of business by Brexit, said SFA assistant director Linda Barry. Trade between the two countries directly supports over 400,000 jobs half of them in Ireland, said Ms Barry. For small Irish businesses looking to expand, the UK is often their first export market and 43% of exports from indigenous Irish companies are destined for the UK. The UK is a strong voice for free trade, reduction in red tape and other pro-enterprise policies at EU level. For all of these reasons, it is in the interests of the Irish small business community that the UK remains in a reformed EU. Small firms do not have the same degree of mobility, flexibility and diversification that may help larger businesses to navigate the risks posed by a UK exit from the EU. Small businesses may be dependent on a UK supplier, investor or market, which means their very survival hangs in the balance. Uncertainty around the UKs continued membership of the EU has already caused difficulties for business here with the value of sterling falling since late last year, making Irish exports more costly. The Oxford Economics research found that, in any plausible scenario, the UK economy would shrink post-Brexit. A clampdown on immigration would leave a funding gap of 22bn to 30bn that would need to be plugged by spending cuts or tax increases from 2030. While specific policies could limit the impact of leaving the EU, many of these are behind euro- sceptics desire to leave the union in the first place. The long-term impact of Brexit on the UK need not be severe, Oxford Economics associate director Henry Worthington said. But benign scenarios involve retaining some of the least popular aspects of EU membership: Continued high levels of immigration, restrictions on our ability to make trade deals with non-EU countries, and continuing to pay money to Brussels. While none are positive for overall GDP, the most benign scenarios rely on achieving a settlement similar to the status quo placing little or no restriction on EU immigration, while continuing to contribute to the EU budget at a reduced rate or retaining membership of the customs union, thereby foregoing the opportunity to make bilateral trade deals with other countries. The report concluded such policies are unlikely to be politically viable after a vote to leave. It also found fiscal savings from the elimination of EU budget contributions would be a false economy. The request came in a July 27 email from a Peoples Bank of China official with a subject line: Your urgent assistance is greatly appreciated! In a message to a senior Fed staffer, the PBOCs New York-based chief representative for the Americas, Song Xiangyan, pointed to the days 8.5% drop in Chinese stocks and said my Governor would like to draw from your good experience. The combined company will have more than 5,500 hotels with 1.1m rooms worldwide, giving Marriott a greater presence in markets such as Europe, Latin America, and Asia and allow it to better compete with apartment-sharing startups such as Airbnb. Starwood, the owner of the Sheraton and Westin hotel brands, said Anbangs proposal no longer constituted a superior proposal and under the revised merger agreement it was not allowed to engage in discussions with Anbang. Just a month ago, oil traders were weighing up whether to park unwanted crude aboard tankers, while BP chief executive Bob Dudley joked that swimming pools might be needed to hold the excess. Yet instead of offering bumper profits, as in previous market gluts, stockpiling barrels on ships would result in a financial loss, just as it has done for the past six months, in a sign the current surplus may not be as big as feared. Declining US oil production coupled with disruptions in Opec members Iraq and Nigeria have helped revive crude to $40 a barrel, leading the International Energy Agency to conclude that the worst of the rout is over. Contrary to expectations that tankers would be needed, onshore storage has not been exhausted, according to Torbjoern Kjus, an analyst at DNA ASA in Oslo. Theres less going into floating storage rather than more in the past few months, Mr Kjus said. Fundamentals are gradually improving. The worst of the price rout was just sentiment, he said. A crude trader would lose about $7.6m (6.74m) if they wanted to park 2m barrels at sea for six months, more than double the loss they would have swallowed in February, according to data. The losses from storage partly reflect that hiring a tanker has become more expensive amid robust demand for crude. Day rates on the industrys benchmark route to Japan from Saudi Arabia advanced to $66,641, according to data from the Baltic Exchange in London. That is about 30% more than a month earlier. In dollars-per-barrel terms, the cost of using the ships to store for six months advanced to $6.80 from $6.16 over the month, EA Gibson estimates. Yet the economics also give an insight into the oil market itself. Storing crude at sea becomes profitable when the spread between the current price and longer-term ones, known as contango, is wide enough to cover the cost of hiring a tanker. The gap between first and seven-month futures narrowed to $2.59 a barrel on Monday, down from $5.07 a barrel on January 29. Its simply nowhere near enough to cover the cost, said Ted Petrone, vice chairman of tanker operator Navios Maritime. The biggest change between now and a month ago is oil supply that is been unexpectedly curbed. One pipeline linking the northern part of Iraq to the Mediterranean Sea has halted, while another from Nigeria was hit by sabotage. US oil production is threatening to drop below 9m barrels a day for the first time since late 2014. It follows Bord Pleanala dismissing an appeal by Tesco Ireland and local residents against a decision by Dublin City Council to give Lidl the go-ahead for a new store on the Old Cabra Rd and Annamoe Rd in Dublin 7. The appeals board has given Lidl the go-ahead in spite of its own planning inspector having recommended refusing it. The inspector had said the plan would detract from the character of Annamoe Rd and seriously injure the amenities and tend to depreciate the value of properties close to the site. However, the board said the issues could be dealt with by planning conditions. Tesco Ireland had said the plan contravened the Retail Planning Guidelines. Five other appeals were lodged by residents. However, the board has said the mixed-use development would enhance the area and would be acceptable in terms of traffic safety and convenience. Meanwhile, Tesco in the UK launched a new range of own-label fresh produce, poultry, and meat yesterday, stepping up its fightback against German discounters Aldi and Lidl. The seven new farm brands will consist of 76 lines that will either match the price of competitors or beat them, Tesco said. Sales, profit, and asset values at Tesco have been hit by shifts in shopping habits and the rise of the discounters. Its shares have climbed 37% over the last three months, however. We believe that Farm Brands will be price-positioned to compete directly with discounters, said HSBC analyst David McCarthy. The London-based group founded in 2011 by former Gruppo Campari chief Enzo Visone and ex-investment banker Warren Scott yesterday confirmed the purchase of the Dublin Whiskey Company for an undisclosed multi-million euro figure. A deal had been much speculated upon in recent weeks. A 10m investment plan covers the acquisition and the building of a new distillery in the capital, which is set to open next year. Speaking yesterday, Mr Scott said Quintessential plans to grow in Ireland both organically and via further acquisition. To that end, he said that the company has identified its next Irish acquisition and expects to be in a position to make an announcement by early summer. The Dublin Whiskey Company takeover was in the offing for around a year. Quintessential entered the Irish market via the takeover of First Ireland Spirits from a consortium including former CIE chairman John Lynch and ACT Venture Capital in 2014. The group already employs 40 people here and last year spent 4m on doubling production at its Abbeyleix facility where it produces a number of brands. These include Dubliner Irish Whiskey, Dublin Liberties Irish Whiskey, Feeneys Irish Cream Liqueur, and OMaras Irish Country Cream. Abbeyleix will continue to be the base for the cream liqueur brands and Quintessentials bottling facility, which is also used for third party contracts. The new Dublin distillery will be used for the production of the whiskey brands, while Mr Scott also said that the company is keen to grow into new drinks categories. Through First Ireland Spirits we have been in the whiskey business since 1994 and now we are set to take this to an entirely new level, said Mr Scott. We plan to become a leading player in the Irish spirits industry. Quintessential Brands is the largest independent Irish cream liqueur producer in the world, selling more than 1.3 m cases, or 16m bottles, per year and is aiming to significantly expand its share of the Irish whiskey market. It already sells its whiskies in Ireland, Britain, Germany, and the US, and will soon extend that reach to more than 50 countries. The company will employ nearly 100 people once its new distillery which will also include a visitor centre is up and running next year. The bank is looking to hike the cost of its pension scheme in response to changes being introduced by the UK government. Ulster Banks national insurance employer contributions will increase by 1m (1.28m) per year from next month as part of UK pension reforms. The banks proposal is to pass these costs onto staff members who are part of the organisations defined benefit scheme by requiring them to pay an extra 2% of their salary 1% in October and the rest the next year. The proposal would not affect workers in the Republic. IBOA, the union representing the banks workers in the North, has rejected the proposal, arguing it would undo recent pay increases. By imposing this additional burden on its workers, Ulster Bank would effectively wipe out the modest pay rises secured by our members recently, said IBOA general secretary Larry Broderick. Our members in Northern Ireland consider this to be totally unacceptable. It represents a very inauspicious start to the move towards closer integration with RBS. Ulster Bank is owned by Edinburgh-based RBS. A spokesperson for RBS confirmed the bank was proposing to increase the cost of the defined benefit scheme as a result of UK government reforms. Reforms made to defined benefit pensions mean that the costs of our scheme have risen, the spokesperson said. As a result, RBS is proposing to increase the cost of being a member of the scheme. The bank will be consulting on this proposal with affected staff and employee representatives. The proposal has faced similar opposition in Britain from trade union Unite, which represents RBS workers there. Unite national officer Rob MacGregor called on RBS to absorb the higher National Insurance contributions which he said would cost 18m across the entire group and affect 28,500 staff. RBS employees, who have struggled to bring the bank back from the brink, deserve better, he said. Collie Ennis posted this video to Twitter with the caption: "Just your average day in tallaght. The View from the 77a." Take a look. Another photo posted on Twitter shows the three elephants are enclosed by a thin rope, and that the public are free to approach. Why is there 3 elephants on the green in tallaght? pic.twitter.com/S5m0drL0Cp Niall (@Niawwwlll) March 22, 2016 The animals are likely from Circus Belly Wien which is currently touring Ireland - yo can see their poster in the video - but some are a little concerned that the elephants are only separated from the busy road by such a flimsy-looking barrier. @TheEchoOnline theres no one looking after them though is that not a bit dangerous on the side of the main road Niall (@Niawwwlll) March 22, 2016 Between this and that camel in Limerick Weve reached out to the circus for comment. HT: breakingnews.ie HRW says: "People with psychosocial disabilities (mental health conditions) in Indonesia are shackled or forced into institutions where they often face physical and sexual violence, involuntary treatment including electroshock therapy, seclusion, restraint and forced contraception." The shackling of these people is called pasung in Indonesia and is very common. Independent councillor John GIlligan said opposition was growing to a planned 100m pedestrian crossing designed to run from Arthurs Quay Park linking Merchants Quay near the county courthouse. Finance Minister Michael Noonan announced in October 2014 that the Government was allocating 6m to Failte Ireland to help fund the structure. At that time, Mr Noonan said: Failte Ireland think it is a very good project and it is either at the top or very near the top of the projects they want to fund. Mr Gilligan, speaking at a meeting of the Metropolitan District of Limerick City and County Council yesterday, said: We had The Bridge over the River Kwai and A Bridge Too Far. This is a bridge to nowhere. Nobody wants it. They are telling us that this will be an iconic structure. The river is Limericks iconic feature. People wont come to look at this bridge. To spend more than 15m on this is just crazy. We havent heard anything about a planning application and when, and if, it does we can deal with it. There is no point in this development. We have enough bridges in the city. I dont know what this proposed bridge is supposed to achieve. Another former city mayor, Labour councillor Joe Leddin, also dismissed claims the bridge will form an iconic vista. All it will achieve is blocking the view of the iconic Curraghour Falls, King Johns Castle, and St Marys Cathedral, he said. It will in fact deface these historic structures which date back to the 12th century. Mr Noonan, however, said at the time that the bridge would link Shannon Rowing Club at Sarsfield Bridge with Merchants Quay and enhance the citys tourist appeal by linking the three existing bridges with pedestrian walkways. Failte Ireland says the bridge would have a wow factor and link a number of existing tourist attractions within walking distance. It also says it will encourage visitors flying into Shannon to take in Limerick City on the Wild Atlantic Way. Of the 6m approved by Mr Noonan, he said 3m would be made available in 2015 and another 3m in 2016. A business case drawn up by Limerick City and County Council on the project states that private donations will be required and the council has pledged to make up any shortfall. The council also pushed the case for the footbridge on the grounds of social regeneration stating it will provide a further connection to the St Marys Park estate on Kings Island, one of citys four run- down areas receiving major funding under the citys regeneration project. The bridge project also forms part of the Limerick 2030 plan, which proposes to transform the city centre over the next 15 years. The first part of the plan provides for the building of a new courthouse in Mulgrave St near Limerick prison on which work has begun. Louise McGrotty, from Ballymagroarty in Derry City, had been away for a hen weekend when tragedy struck as the family went on a day trip over the border to Co Donegal. Her husband Sean, 49, died alongside their sons Mark, 12, and Evan, 8, her mother Ruth Daniels, 59, and the grieving mothers 14-year-old sister Jodie Lee. The only survivor was the McGrottys four-month-old baby girl Rionaghac-Ann. Ms McGrotty was in the family home for much of the day surrounded by family and friends. Clergy and politicians also came to express their condolences, including parish priest Fr Paddy OKane. They are inconsolable, he said. Frank McGrotty: "I want to thank the man who saved her [baby Rionaghac-Ann], youre a hero in this family's eyes" https://t.co/JL3qhQMQrv RTE News (@rtenews) March 21, 2016 Louise said to me, I have lost everyone, except little Rionaghac-Ann. She said Rionaghac-Ann is my reason to go on. The baby girl is said said to be doing well in Letterkenny General Hospital . Gardai are treating the incident one of the worst to hit the Inishowen area of Donegal as a tragic accident. The Daniels and McGrotty families thanked everyone who had supported them in the wake of the tragedy. Interview with Davitt Walsh, who saved baby Rionaghac-Ann in yesterdays tragedy in Buncrana https://t.co/a228dN4yDu RTE News (@rtenews) March 21, 2016 Our families have been devastated by the tragic events of last night in which five members of our family died in a terrible accident, they said. The family has been inundated with support and sympathy from the local community and further afield and this is deeply appreciated. President Michael D Higgins joined Northern Irelands First and Deputy First Ministers in extending sympathies to the families. I have heard with the greatest sadness of the terrible loss of life of a family in Buncrana, he said. My heart goes out to the family and loved ones. Martin McGuinness, who visited the scene in Buncrana after visiting the grieving mother in Derry, said there were no words to sum up her heartache. I have just come from meeting a young woman who has lost her partner, her two sons, her mother and her sister and it is a very, very sad house, he said. Truly heartbreaking, mind numbing and shocking beyond belief. He said the family were in a total state of shock. They are absolutely heartbroken. NI First Minister Arlene Foster issued a joint statement with Mr McGuinness to express sorrow over the deaths. This tragedy resonates with us all. At times like this it is difficult to comprehend how life can be so altered in the matter of moments. The Audi car driven by Mr McGrotty is believed to have been turning at the end of the pier in Buncrana when the wheels failed to grip. Kerry County Council and landowners are in talks over planned improvements to the N86, the main road from Annascaul to Dingle. It is envisaged that works may begin later this year. Women featured strongly in a delegation to Brussels 20 years ago when a lobby group warned of the consequences for health, business, and tourism. The planned 65m works, on a phased basis, had effectively been parked for four years in the planning and legal processes. The attempt by Kerry County Council and the then NRA to realign and widen 28kms of the road led to an oral hearing with protracted legal action since 2012. The improvements involve the provision of cycle lanes. Part of the improvements on the eastern, or Camp, side had already been partly completed. An Bord Pleanala had refused permission for the Annascaul to Dingle section and a judicial review by the county council for a grant of permission ensued. It was followed by legal action to the High Court and Court of Appeal by An Taisce who unsuccessfully sought to overturn a grant of permission on the grounds of likely environmental damage. An Taisce had argued hairpin bends were natural features, the road project was unnecessarily wide, intrusive, and expensive. Now, however, the first of the landowners in a 2.7km section near Lispole and a 1.3km section near Camp are being asked to negotiate with the council. Notices have been served by the council. Kerry Co Council is confident advance works on the scheme, under Transport Infrastructure Ireland, will commence this year. Levels of pollution had not reduced there despite intensive awareness campaigns by Kerry County Council and relentless efforts by volunteers. A county council meeting in Tralee heard calls for a specific litter warden for tourist town Killarney. The county has three mobile litter wardens covering notable blackspot areas. Killarney councillor Michael Gleeson said he was very disappointed that there had been no reduction in litter levels on the main Cork-Kerry road. My fear is volunteers will get disheartened, he said, saying a full-time litter warden for Killarney was also needed. Dog fouling, meanwhile, was a huge problem on Kerry beaches and on streets and public parks, while paper and plastic materials lined roadsides. However, a new phenomenon of microwaves and other white goods being left along roadsides was also emerging, Independent councillor Brendan Cronin said. A council move to weigh rubbish at transfer stations and charge by weight was a retrograde step and would set matters back by years, said Mr Cronin. Last year, on a single day, April 18, more than 3,600 volunteers worked with the county council to collect more than 60 tonnes of litter from roadsides in Kerry. Business and community groups and individuals were involved. A further 20 tonnes of waste was collected on another occasions under the An Taisce Spring Clean project. This years countywide spring clean day is April 2. Council senior executive Liam Quinlan said: The challenge is to get an even better response in 2016. A total of 787 litter pollution cases was investigated in Kerry last year and 57 on- the-spot fines issued. A total of eight prosecutions for non-payment of fines were taken. Dublin District Court heard Resen Modeley, aged 30, allegedly told gardai it cost 7,000 for an arranged marriage. He was allegedly involved in 50 of them which would have amounted to 350,000 but had to use most the money to cover significant expenses. The father of six was arrested following an investigation by the Garda National Immigration Bureau. He faces three counts under the Theft and Fraud Act for using as false instruments two letters from a guesthouse offering employment to a named man and woman, between May 6 and May 7 last year, at his home address, at Chapel Gate, St Alphonsus Rd, in Dublin 9. He was also charged with using another letter from the same guesthouse as a false instrument between April 28 and May 29 last. Judge Michael Walsh has refused jurisdiction, meaning the accused will be tried in the circuit court, which has tougher sentencing powers. He granted the State an additional four weeks to complete the book of evidence which needs to be served before an accused person is returned for trial. The defendant was remanded on continuing bail to appear again on a date in April. The district court has heard he allegedly paid a member of staff at a guest-house to produce the fictitious job offer letters to assist Portuguese nationals obtain PPS numbers which were necessary to apply to marry a foreign national. The court heard he had been running a commercial enterprise related to them since coming here in 2009. Mr Modeley had worked in a third-level private school attended by a lot of foreigners, the court was told. The action has been brought by Julian Myerscough, aged 54, with an address at Alexandra Rd, Lowestoft, Suffolk. He arrived in Ireland shortly after he was found guilty by a jury of 13 counts of making indecent images of a child at Ipswich Crown Court on September 30, 2015. He was also found guilty of three counts of breaching a Sexual Offences Prevention Order imposed on him following a previous conviction for similar offences. He attended his trial but failed to return after lunch when the jury reached its verdict. He was convicted in his absence. After it was discovered he had travelled to Ireland, Myerscough was arrested at a Dublin hotel on foot of a European arrest warrant issued by the English authorities. He had opposed the extradition. Last month, Ms Justice Aileen Donnelly made an order for Myerscoughs extradition. Rejecting all his arguments, she said there was no reason for her to make orders refusing to surrender Myerscough to the British authorities. At Mondays sitting of the High Court, Myerscough, represented by Kieran Kelly, asked Mr Justice Robert Haughton for an inquiry under Article 40.4 of the Constitution into the legality of his detention in custody in Ireland pending his extradition to Britain. Counsel said the application, which was made on an ex parte basis, concerned Myerscoughs desire to appeal Ms Justice Donnellys judgment to the Court of Appeal. Following her judgment, Ms Justice Donnelly refused to give him permission to appeal. Myerscoughs legal team says the denial of an opportunity to appeal is unconstitutional and contravenes EU law. Mr Kelly told the court that his client is likely to be returned to England some day this week. Mr Justice Haughton adjourned the case to todays vacation sitting of the High Court. The application for an inquiry is to be heard in the presence of lawyers for the State, the judge directed. During the extradition hearing, Myerscoughs lawyers argued that he should not be extradited because he had not received a fair trial in England. Myerscough claimed a key police witness, whose testimony was used to convict him, was not available for cross-examination during trial. This amounted to a breach of his right to a fair trial under Section 6 of the European Convention on Human Rights. He also claimed he had been spat at and threatened after his home address was revealed by the media. He said he lived in fear of death and the police in England were not able to protect him. The State said there was nothing preventing his surrender from taking place. The European arrest warrant seeking Myerscoughs surrender stated that charges were brought against him after a USB stick and a computer seized by police at a house he lived at in September 2013 were found to contain a number of indecent images of children. The possession and making of these images breached a Sexual Offences Prevention Order, of 10 years duration, made against him in December 2010. That order was imposed on him in respect of three counts of making indecent photographs of children and two counts of possession of indecent images of children, the warrant further stated. Green leader Eamon Ryan said any government option required the two to make a deal, while Independent Maureen OSullivan said it was problematic supporting either side without them talking to each other. The warnings come after Independent Roscommon-Galway TD Denis Naughten, the putative leader of a group of rural TDs, this week said it was irresponsible of Fine Gael and Fianna Fail not to talk as any type of government cannot be formed without at least the others consent. Both Fine Gael and Fianna Fail are separately expected to continue talks with smaller parties and Independent TDs this week as both bid to get the most support for a vote for taoiseach on April 6. Fianna Fail have circulated a mini-manifesto to TDs, which commits the party to tackling housing, Oireachtas reform and establishing new senior ministerial posts, including for climate change and rural affairs. Fine Gael wants to maximise support for a rainbow-type coalition, to include various non-party TDs who would be offered cabinet positions, similar to the 1948 inter-state government. Green leader Eamon Ryan said he expected further government formation talks with either party later this week. He added: Even if it is a minority or a rainbow government, they are going to need to talk to each other. Maureen OSullivan, who has already spoken to both parties, said: It doesnt make sense that the two biggest parties havent spoken to each other. What game are they at? Former tanaiste Mary Coughlan yesterday warned there could be another general election on the way. She criticised smaller parties and independents who, she said, had no interest in being part of government. She said a grand coalition would never get the backing of ordinary Fianna Fail members: I dont believe that Fianna Fail members would support a coalition with Fine Gael. Micheal Martin would not get support for that at an ardfheis. Meanwhile, several former Fine Gael, Labour, Sinn Fein, and Fianna Fail TDs who lost seats in the general election are running for the Seanad, according to a list of nominations released yesterday. A list of candidates competing under the five panels includes former minister Paudie Coffey, former Oireachtas committee chairman Jerry Buttimer and former Fine Gael TDs Noel Coonan, James Bannon, Tony Lawlor and Joe OReilly. Former Labour ministers Aodhan O Riordain, Ged Nash and Kevin Humphreys are also running, as are former Fianna Fail TD Colm Keaveney and Sinn Feins Padraig Mac Lochlain. Polls for the Seanad elections take place at the end of next month. Inspector Bill Duane outlined the allegations at Cork District Court yesterday . Frank Buttimer, solicitor for both men, stressed neither of the accused was charged with assault. Insp Duane said on May 11, 2015, there was a report of a rickshaw driver being assaulted by two males at Grand Parade. Gardai found two males fitting the descriptions given. They were smiling and punching the air: They took turns kicking the phone box. It did not break. Insp Duane said the rickshaw driver did not follow this up with a complaint that he had been assaulted. Shane OLeary, aged 22, of 4 Oak Field Park, Riverstown,Glanmire, Co Cork, pleaded guilty to being threatening and abusive and being drunk and a source of danger during the incident on May 11, 2015. Judge Leo Malone imposed fines totalling 500 on OLeary. Christopher Ryan, aged 23, of Rathcooney, Glanmire, admitted engaging in disorderly conduct. Judge Malone gave him the benefit of a dismissal under the Probation of Offenders Act. Cystic Fibrosis Ireland wants the next government to tackle major staffing shortages in CF centres and ensure access to ground-breaking drugs . There are around 1,200 people with CF in Ireland the country has the highest rate per head of population in the world. Ireland also has one of the most severe manifestations of CF because of the particular genotype prevalent here. Two of Irelands top broadcasters, Keelin Shanley and Bryan Dobson, are supporting this years 65 Roses Day that takes place on Friday, April 15. The charity is hoping to raise 65,000 for much-needed services for people with CF, including patient support grants for transplant assessment and counselling, research, and new healthcare facilities. Cystic Fibrosis Ireland chief executive, Philip Watt, said that, despite coming from a very low base, much progress had been made in improving CF care in Ireland in the past three years. He says the next government must ensure staffing at CF centres met European standards some were 20 short of what they should be. And, with more people living with CF than every before, it was crucial the HSE ensured that staffing levels were adequate. Mr Watt said there are still centres with inadequate inpatient facilities Beaumont Hospital in Dublin only had seven in-patient rooms 20 are needed. There is also uncertainty as to whether the HSE will pay for Orkambi, a new drug that could transform the lives of half of the CF population in Ireland. We are in a period of real hope for people with CF for the first time lets not put that in jeopardy now, said Mr Watt. Opposition has been mounting in recent months to the necrology wall, which is due to be unveiled by the Glasnevin Trust early next month. The trust has described the wall as an initiative to remember in a non-judgemental way, all who died as a result of the conflict from 1916-1923. Fresh from their High Court victory in having an expanded section of Moore Street declared a national monument, James Connolly Heron of 1916 Relatives Centenary Initiative described the plan as disgraceful. That the British army dead are to be included on this wall is extraordinary and bizarre. We were not ever contacted about it and neither were a number of other groups who have complained about it to the trust. It has just been pushed through without our involvement. It is disgraceful. Donna Cooney of the 1916 relatives group GPO Garrison said her group is considering legal action. It is something we might have to consider on the grounds that they dont have our permission or any kind of agreement from us. It is hard to believe that they havent tried to consult us around inscribing the names of the British army alongside our relatives, those who were executed by Crown forces, she said. We are all opposed in principle to any proposal to locate a wall, plaque or register in Glasnevin Cemetery or elsewhere upon which names of British Army personnel will be inscribed alongside 1916 volunteers who were killed in action or executed by Crown forces. It is, in our view, a deeply insulting and bizarre proposal. According to Ms Cooney, the Glasnevin authorities did not consult with the 1916 Relatives Association or descendants of the executed 1916 signatories to the Proclamation individually or as a group UK-based Roderic Wilson, the son of Fiona Connolly, the youngest daughter of James Connolly, said: I cannot understand how any Irish person can contemplate, never mind propose, that the names of British army personnel be inscribed at Glasnevin Cemetery alongside those killed or illegally executed during the Easter Rising. This would not occur in any other country. The Necrology Wall will list the names of the 485 people identified as having died in the Rising including 262 civilians, 107 British soliders, 58 rebels and 13 policeman. A trust spokesman said the wall will record the names, date of death, and status of those who perished based on historical fact, without judgement or hierarchy. Each will be free to take from the wall what they wish. We acknowledge that for some this Necrology Wall is difficult to accept. But that does not prevent us from hoping that through the recording of facts, without judgement, a better understanding of this period will emerge. He said similar initiatives have been done such as at the International Memorial of Notre Dame de Lorette, at Ablain-Saint-Nazaire in France, where the names of 580,000 soldiers from all sides who died in the battlefields of northern France in WW1 were recorded. A ceremony will be held at the cemetery on April 3 to unveil the wall. QS, which compiles world university rankings, has confirmed there was a breach by TCD of its policy around independently promoting participation. It said such contraventions are rare and it had informed TCD of its concerns. But it is unlikely TCD will be temporarily suspended from the rankings process as this sanction is more likely to be reserved for repeat offenders, according to QS. Two years ago, University College Cork got a slight rap on the knuckles from QS, and had its results watched carefully after president Michael Murphy sent staff a letter that he suggested they might send to international contacts to make them aware of the QS reputation survey. UCC was not found guilty of a breach, however. Referring to the latest mishap, a QS spokeswoman said: We think the saddest part of this affair is that a prestigious institution such as TCD felt the need to execute such a campaign overlooking the potential damage to its otherwise solid reputation. Trinitys vice-president, John Boland, sent the email asking graduates to fill out the surveys, which he said were important in order to maintain the universitys reputation, attract good students, and pursue collaborations with other institutions. QS will engage further with TCD to discuss potential outcomes and appropriate consequences. Whatever the outcome, we will establish a fixed and repeatable set of consequences which will apply to any other institution found to be contravening these policies in the future. We need to model the impact of this particular sanction carefully. Our ranking is inclusive and doesnt allow institutions to opt out as it would falsely elevate the ones below them. A TCD spokeswoman said it regularly provides updates to the wider Trinity community, comprising of alumni, employers and academics with whom we have an ongoing relationship, on our successes and achievements in that sphere. Our letters were sent in good faith and called for participation in the surveys. At no time were they intended to influence the response of the recipients. We regret that our communication with our community on this matter has caused any concern. While society has undoubtedly become more secular over the last few decades, when it comes to tying the knot, most of us still prefer a church wedding to exchanging our vows in a civil ceremony. Figures from the Central Statistics Office reveal that while civil marriages are on the rise, weddings in a Roman Catholic church still account for more than half of all marriages in the State each year. And for most couples who want a church wedding, attending a pre-marriage course is a prerequisite to walking down the aisle (unless of course the priest marrying the couple decides to help them prepare for marriage himself). Each year, thousands of couples put their names down to attend courses. Couples can attend any pre-marriage course which meets a set of criteria laid down by the Irish Episcopal conference and its up to the individual bishops to determine the courses in their diocese that meet these criteria. Its generally presumed that most go to these courses unwillingly and find them, for the most part, a waste of time, but in reality couples experiences differ widely and many find them very useful. According to Ann Coleman, a specialist in marriage education with Accord (an organisation which runs Catholic marriage preparation courses), couples who come to the course and dont want to be there, generally tend to say afterwards that they found it beneficial. Accord courses are delivered in a group setting by three trained facilitators (one of whom is a priest), and usually run for three hours on a Friday evening and on a Saturday. The work done is on a one-to-one between the couple themselves, says Coleman. They are given that time to turn to each other and have a discussion about a particular topic and the relevance of it for them as a couple its not in a general open forum. The programme covers nine topics ranging from family of origin, to intimacy, natural family planning and fertility. Its really awareness of fertility. Sometimes couples feel, Well have a baby two years after we get married. But sometimes its unfortunately not as easy as that, says Coleman. The sacrament of marriage (which is usually delivered by the priest) is a big element of the programme. Coleman said a major benefit of the course is that it presents an opportunity for the couple, in the madness of planning a wedding, to take nine hours and to spend that time together as a couple. They always afterwards say; I was pleasantly surprised. I actually got a lot out of that or , It was different to what I thought it was going to be. It would be great if couples realised in advance that they are actually going to have an opportunity to talk about things that will be beneficial to them as couple for the future. Maeve and Andrew Purcell from Knocklyon in Dublin, who married in 2013, are one such couple. They did a day-long Accord pre-marriage course at All Hallows College, Dublin, and signed up simply because it was necessary if they were to get married in a Catholic Church. They found, to their surprise, that the course was good. Maeve and Andrew Purcell attended an Accord pre-marriage course. It wasnt very religious, says Maeve. There was one section where the priest came in to talk about the sacrament of marriage and about what would happen in the church ceremony. The rest of the day was more practical the facilitators talking about different experiences of marriage. Both the man and the woman were married themselves and one of them was definitely a marriage counselor. I had heard about courses run only by priests and people didnt find them as useful. Some of the topics we had discussed before. Some we hadnt. Im happy we did it just from the point of view that it might have uncovered some fundamental difference. I would not look back and think That was a waste of money. Not everyone, however, has such a positive experience of the pre-marriage course. Jacquie Kirrane and her husband Alan OBrien from Churchtown, Dublin, did a Catholic pre-marriage course prior to getting married in 2010, but were not impressed with the experience. I thought it was a waste of time to be quite honest, says Jacquie. What stood out for me was that they needed to update their material to the 21st century, she says. One area that really stood out for her as flawed was the discussion on contraception. I thought it was irrelevant. People do not need to know about contraception. I was just thinking, Do I have to listen to two old women and a priest talking about contraception?. I think I just switched off. I would not recommend anyone to do it. I actually dont think there was anything we took from the course, says Jacquie, who added she thought a course which addressed the subject of finances and tax credits could be useful. Meanwhile, other people who are not having a Catholic ceremony and are not required to do a pre-marriage course opt to do one anyway. Relationships Ireland in Dublin run non-denominational marriage preparation courses for individual couples. Relationships counsellor Tony Moore says a wide variety of people attend their three-hour length courses, from those having religious ceremonies, to heterosexual and same sex couples having civil ceremonies. Some people having Catholic ceremonies also attend non-denominational courses, once the priest marrying them gives it the thumbs up. They want to check that their view of marriage, (how they want things to be). They like the fact that the pre-marriage courses are run by qualified, experienced relationships counsellors who are also psychotherapists, says Moore. Both individuals fill in a questionnaire beforehand, which they send back before attending the course. Expectations of love and marriage, finances, children (fertility treatment, adoption, fostering), communication, the use of electronic devices, sex, contraception and in-laws are among the topics addressed. Moore says couples get to know each other better and tackle difficult issues. One of the purposes is to get the couple to talk about these issues. Many of them will say, We never talked about that or Weve avoided that subject. Many find there are loads of things that they dont know about each other. Denise and Paul Campbell from Oranmore, Co Galway, did a non- denominational course in the West of Ireland prior to their church wedding in Italy. We are not very religious and did not want a priest facilitating a pre-marriage course when they themselves have no experience of been married. We also preferred that it was just us and the counsellor, as I was not keen on hearing other couples talk about their relationship or on others hearing us. To be honest, we did not find it terribly useful because both my partner and I had already discussed the topics covered, but it probably helped reinforce some of our beliefs and viewpoints on issues. I think it would have been more useful if we had been presented with real life scenarios regarding the difficulties you could encounter as a married couple and asked us how we would have dealt with those situations. FOR much of the last decade, anyone booking a flight with Aer Lingus at a peak time of the year would have had a sense of trepidation that a potential strike by employees could signal chaos for their travel plans. There was often a feeling that dates for industrial action were chosen specifically because they would create the most headlines, concentrating the minds of the employer and ensuring that their grievances were addressed. After all the upheaval of the last 10 years, the last 12 months at the airline have actually been settled industrial relations-wise and those planning to travel with Aer Lingus this summer can, it appears, book in confidence that their flight will not be disrupted. The airline is going from strength to strength, boosting the profits of its new owners IAG. However, as we have witnessed with the Luas dispute in the last few weeks, transport unions are continuing to use dates for industrial action which will cause the highest level of disruption to the public. Tens of thousands of people travelling into Dublin for St Patricks Day would have been hugely impacted if the strike action had gone ahead on that day. As it stands, commuters this Easter weekend could still be affected if Luas workers decide the deal hammered out at the Workplace Relations Commission which will secure pay increases of up to 18.7% for some is rejected. Acceptance is by no means guaranteed. Sources close to the talks put the likelihood of a ballot in favour as 50-50. But even if the increases are backed by the Luas workers, the battle they have fought ultimately successfully could spell trouble for the travelling public in the coming months. As one seasoned trade union figure pointed out: People in the room last Tuesday and Wednesday [when the Luas deal was hammered out] knew the significant knock-on impact that was going to have. All bets are off now. Dublin Bus drivers are due before the Workplace Relations Commission on Wednesday. On February 4, drivers union, the National Bus and Rail Union (NBRU), lodged a pay claim with the company seeking parity with Luas drivers for its members in Dublin Bus and Bus Eireann. It is a certainty that demand will now be increased to match what was offered to the Luas drivers last week. Furthermore, Irish Rail drivers, unhappy at the closing of the gap between their salaries and those of the Luas drivers, as they believe there is much more involved in their roles, have lodged for increases reaching 25%. There is a vast difference, a vast gulf, between the duties of a train driver and a tram driver one being heavy rail and one light rail, said NBRU general secretary Dermot OLeary. Some of the conditions and standards train drivers work under are far more rigorous than those of a Luas driver, with respect to Luas drivers. Management and unions at Irish Rail have only recently been in mediation with the latter seeking recognition for past productivity. Those talks were fraught with animosity. Discussions on pay increases worth 25% just a few months after Irish Rail claimed it was losing in excess of 1.5m a month are likely to bring that animosity to a whole new level. Irish Rail workers are familiar with leveraging their demands with threats of strike action which will hit services to the public most forcefully. In August 2014, disgruntled staff announced a series of stoppages on days which included the dates of All Ireland GAA finals. Every time one of the countrys major transport providers is hit by strike action, the cost to the company can be measured in the millions. Irish Rail has said the claim for a 25% increase is not grounded in reality considering it has an accumulated deficit of 135m and is only paying wages and bills through loans. It is unlikely, therefore, that the company will allow itself to come anywhere near to paying what is being demanded. The net result is that the public should brace itself for transport chaos over the summer as days and days of strikes are threatened and, very likely, carried out. It is not just in the transport sphere that unrest is bubbling. After years of pay freezes and cuts, increases are now being demanded by employees in numerous sections of the private sector, While 2% is being flagged as the norm, many feel that is too little for the sacrifices that have been made. The Workplace Relations Commission is likely to have its work cut out over the next six to 12 months in mediating between the sides. And the public sector is also becoming restless. Leading public service trade unionist, Tom Geraghty, told a recent Industrial Relations News conference that If economic growth rates of 7% are sustained, the Government would not be able to justify continuing with the financial emergency legislation that was used to cut the wages of public servants. If the existing high levels of growth continues, you can absolutely take it for granted that we will be looking to speed up the process of restoration, he said. I HAVE a confession. I was going to keep quiet about it, but then I read an article at the weekend, and I realised Im guilty: I just cant get worked up about 1916. There, Ive said it. Ive read everything I can. Ive tried to dredge up all my school-boy memories. I even forced myself to sit through all five episodes of Rebellion, and the dreadfully overblown documentary series narrated by Liam Neeson. It has all left me cold. Apparently, its because Im politically correct. Thats according to Gene Kerrigan, whom I greatly admire, writing in the Sunday Independent. There was a time, he writes, up to the late 1960s, when the politically correct thing to do was praise the 1916 Rising without qualification. Your attitude to the Rising was a litmus test, indicating the purity of your Irishness. Then, violence erupted in the North. For the next quarter century, the politically correct thing to do was to denigrate the 1916 Rising with a concession that some of the lads meant well, but they were led astray by Patrick Pearse. Your attitude to the Rising had, by then, become a litmus test indicating the purity of your commitment to constitutional politics. Guilty as charged, Im afraid. The article forced me to accept that Im still not over the 30 years of murder, maiming, atrocities, and cover-ups perpetrated by the lads. Im still one of those politically correct types, who believes that nothing, not even the gloriously failed adventure of 1916, can justify a callous and brutal war, in which nearly 80% of the victims were Irish people. I dread the thought that those who perpetrated that violence continue to derive self-satisfaction, at the very least, from the notion that they are in a direct line of descent from MacDonagh and MacBride, and Connolly and Pearse. Like most people of my generation, I was raised to look at the 1916 Rising in a particular way. Ask me to describe it and the words I use are heroic, seminal, necessary, martyrdom. Ive never really questioned that, and Im in no position, unlike many of the experts Ive read, to make a definitive judgement. That may be my failing, but there it is. But, as I grew, doubts surfaced in me, and Ive never been able to reconcile some of them. Doubts about Pearses seeming addiction to blood sacrifice. Doubts about how other struggles, and the need for a different class of politics, were always subsumed into the so-called national question. In early adulthood, I firmly rejected the notion that whatever about 1916, my view of the world would never be defined by who had won or lost the Civil War. And my entire attitude was shaped by the Troubles (isnt that a wonderful euphemism). I can see the nobility in dying for Ireland, but I can see nothing but brutality in killing and maiming for Ireland. Those who claimed to have lived by the Proclamation of Independence, who asserted their own legitimacy as heirs to its meaning and tradition, continuously dishonoured it by acts of cowardice, inhumanity, and rapine. So, I cant claim to be sure what it is were celebrating right now. For sure, the Proclamation has resonance for me. Its nearly 500 words, or many of them, still have the capacity to inspire. The lyrical language in which past assertions of freedom are defended, the proclamation of a sovereign independent state, and the commitment to the freedom and welfare of the nation are noble aims. As is its simple definition of a republic, its guarantee of religious and civil liberty, its promise of equal rights and equal opportunities for every citizen, its commitment to the happiness and prosperity of the nation, and all of its parts. Also, its overarching promise of equality cherishing all of the children of the nation equally. The legitimacy of all that, it seems to me, is not to be found in bombs or bullets or even in grandiose assertions of our place in the world. Of course, its right to celebrate what was undeniably an historic, and often heroic, turning point in our country. Im not suggesting we should put them on hold and theres a nice irony in the fact that the celebrations over the next few weeks will be presided over, as the Rising was, by a provisional government that still doesnt know whether it will survive the next month or so. Im guessing its the Proclamation we want to celebrate not the violence, nor the blood sacrifice, nor the martyrdom, and not the by-standing civilians and children who died. Some of us, I suppose, have our individual heroes and villains, but the turning point wasnt so much the battle (they surrendered, after all), but the stupid brutality of the aftermath and the executions. It is really the Proclamation that has stood the test of time, and which makes us proud still, whatever our other reservations. But if it is the Proclamation, the question Im guessing we should ask ourselves is: are we there yet? The happiness and welfare of the nation have an awful lot of clouds hanging over them. Were in the middle of a homelessness crisis (and thats fundamentally different from a housing-shortage crisis, which takes years to solve a homelessness crisis is destroying lives now and needs radical action now). But were also in the middle of a political crisis. Our elected parliamentarians are playing games, jockeying for position, talking about other peoples responsibility, and insisting on reform before they go any further. Heres a little reform that might match the spirit of 1916 what about changing the rules, so that TDs dont start getting paid, and cant claim any expenses, until they vote in a government? But, every now and again, something happens that brightens up my perspective. The other night, on the news, I saw children from all over Ireland celebrating the Proclamation in their schools, and singing the national anthem. Watching and listening the African faces among the children singing their hearts out, the foreign accents among the children being interviewed I thought, thats something anyway. Weve got a new generation coming along. Theyre culturally and socially diverse to an extent the leaders of 1916 wouldnt have recognised (and some mightnt have approved of). Theyre full of hope and excitement, and theyre learning all this stuff without the baggage we carry. Maybe theyll get it in a different way. Maybe theyll catch the idealism of a republic, and the principles of equality, in a way weve never quite got. Maybe theyre the ones wholl have what it takes to produce a society in which discrimination becomes a thing of the past. Now, that would be something worth celebrating! I sat through Rebellion, and the documentary narrated by Liam Neeson. It has all left me cold Economically battered Greece, for months at the epicentre of Europes biggest migrant crisis since the Second World War, is struggling to mount the massive logistics operation needed to process asylum applications from the many hundreds of refugees still arriving daily along its shoreline. Turkish officials arrived on the Greek island of Lesbos yesterday to help realise the deal, which requires new arrivals from March 20 to be held until their asylum applications are processed and for those deemed ineligible to be sent back to Turkey from April 4 onwards. We must move very swiftly and in a co-ordinated manner over the next few days to get the best possible result, Greek prime minister Alexis Tsipras said after meeting EU migration commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos in Athens. Assistance in human resources must come quickly. Under the EU-Turkey roadmap agreed last Friday, a co-ordination structure must be created by March 25 and some 4,000 personnel, more than half from other EU member states, deployed to the islands by next week. Mr Avramopoulos said that France, Germany and the Netherlands had already pledged logistics and personnel. We are at a crucial turning point. The management of the refugee crisis for Europe as a whole hinges on the progress and success of this agreement, he said. However, yesterday, the day after the formal start of an agreement intended to close off the main route through which 1m refugees and migrants arrived in Europe last year, authorities said 1,662 people had arrived on Greek islands by 7am, twice the official count of the day before. Just after 4.30am, one coastguard vessel rescued 54 refugees and migrants from the open sea and brought them to the port, some of the 698 arrivals counted in Lesbos. They staggered down the ramp, women and children first, one elderly man bundled up in blankets. Where are we going? asked one Syrian woman who was travelling with her husband and daughter. The refugees were directed to a coastguard bus that would drive them to the Moria hot spot, a centre where new arrivals are being registered and their asylum applications processed. We are very tired. I want to go to my family in Sweden, said Ahmet Bayraktar, a 32-year-old accountant from Aleppo, Syria. Well try, god willing. Like others, he was unaware of the new EU-Turkey accord. We dont know about this, said Mr Bayraktar. Were coming directly from Syria. Everybody wants to go to the border. We dont have the news, we dont have electricity, we dont have anything. Two hours later, just as the sun rose above the Aegean Sea, the same coastguard vessel pulled another 44 people from the water. One woman cradled a baby just a few months old. Before Fridays deal, migrants and refugees had been free to wander out of the camp and head to ferries to the Greek mainland, from where they would mostly head north through the Balkans towards wealthier western Europe, especially Germany. Mr Justice MacDonald said it would be a tragedy if any more of the fast-receding days of the teenagers childhood were taken up by the dispute. The judge said Rocco was a very great credit to his parents. He said it would be better if Madonna and Mr Ritchie could each enjoy his company. The dispute relates to where the teenager should live. Judges have heard that Rocco had remained in London with his father, after a visit. Madonna wants the teenager to return to live with her, in the US. Litigation had begun in London and the US. Mr Justice MacDonald made his plea for peace after ruling that the English proceedings could be halted. The judge analysed the latest round of the dispute, at a private hearing in the family division of the High Court, in London, earlier this month. He was asked to decide whether he should allow English proceedings to draw to a close or whether he should make decisions about Roccos welfare. More court hearings are expected to be held in New York. No-one involved was in court when Mr Justice MacDonald handed down his ruling on the future of the case in England. At the root of these proceedings ... is a temporary breakdown in trust, said the judge. For all the media coverage, comment, and analysis, this is a case born out of circumstances that arise for countless separated parents the world over. I renew, one final time, my plea for the parents to seek, and to find, an amicable resolution to the dispute between them. Because agreement is not possible today does not mean that agreement will not be possible tomorrow. A judge in New York has made similar pleas. Lawyers have told him that both had outlined proposals for negotiation. Justice MacDonald said Madonna had issued proceedings under international legislation, relating to parental disputes about children, in London on December 21. She made an application, under the 1980 Hague Convention, for the summary return of Rocco to the jurisdiction of the US, specifically to New York state. The judge said two days later Madonna launched separate proceedings in the Supreme Court of the State of New York. Mr Justice MacDonald said Madonna and Mr Ritchie married in December, 2000, and divorced nine years later. They agreed that Rocco would live in the US with Madonna, but spend time with Mr Ritchie. A family court judge approved that agreement. In November 2015, arrangements had been made for the Christmas period. Rocco was due to return from his father, in London, to his mother, in New York, in early December. However, he did not return and remained in the care of Mr Ritchie, said the judge. These are just some of the methods used on people with mental health issues in Indonesia, where Human Rights Watch says abuse is rife and treatment options can be scarce. Despite shackling having been outlawed in Indonesia since 1977, a report released by the non-governmental research agency Human Rights Watch (HRW) says the practice is widespread and government action on the issue has been ineffective. According to the most recent government statistics, around 18,000 people with mental health conditions in Indonesia are being subjected to pasung shackling or confinement. Researcher and author of the report, Kriti Sharma, says the practice is fuelled by fear and stigma surrounding mental health, with families often believing their relatives are possessed and the result is a living hell. We found people who had been living in a goat shed for four years. One woman lived in a shed for 15 years, Ms Sharma said. Those who are not shackled can find themselves arbitrarily detained in institutions where physical and sexual violence and involuntary treatment, such as electroshock therapy, is rife. Women are forced to take contraception to hide cases of rape, said Ms Sharma. One man in Sumatra had been living in a mental health hospital for 30 years even though he was declared fit for release, she said. His family were too scared for him to return home. Meanwhile, so-called treatment methods employed by unregulated faith healers include bathing under moonlight and the whispering of Koranic verses. Even in Jakarta we met a father who took his daughter to 27 faith healers before consulting a doctor. So attitudes need to change, said Ms Sharma. In Indonesia, thousands of people with mental disabilities are living in chains.https://t.co/4ol95lqyzr AJ+ (@ajplus) March 21, 2016 HRW is calling on the Indonesian government to change the Rights of Persons with Disabilities Bill currently before parliament so those living with mental health conditions are empowered where possible to make their own decisions. There needs to be more monitoring of institutions and greater investment in the sector, Ms Sharma said. Indonesia has around one psychologist per 300,000 to 400,000 people, with those living in parts of Sumatra having to travel for up to three days to access care, she said. MEXICO: Two new species of magnolia have been identified with the help of a photograph held on a UK-based archive of life on Earth. A picture of a magnolia, one of the Earths oldest flowering plants, identified as the endangered Magnolia dealbata, was among a series of images donated to the Arkive website by Mexican photographer and conservationist Roberto Pedraza Ruiz in 2010. A botanist at the University of Guadalajara, Mexico, raised questions over the plant when he spotted it in a search of the 16,000 online flora and fauna fact files on the Arkive database, based 8,000km away in Bristol. Jose Antonio Vazquez asked for more images. The move led to the identification of two new species. ENGLAND: The brains behind Boaty McBoatface has apologised and said he will not be backing the name he put forward for a new polar research ship. James Hand said that while he stands by Boaty McBoatface as a brilliant name for a boat, he has actually voted for David Attenborough to be the new name. The former BBC radio presenter explained his reasons for suggesting the name to the Natural Environment Research Council on Thursday, on BBC Radio Jersey. He said: I would say 90% of the entries at that point were funny so I thought, Ill throw one into the ring. By the time the site eventually crashed yesterday it was leading by about 8,000. I have apologised profusely. The storm thats been created, its got legs of its own. USA: A nine-year-old rock fan up late at a Bruce Springsteen concert had a note for his teacher if he was late for class the next day. And it was signed by The Boss himself. Fourth-grader Xabi Glovsky and his father Scott attended the sold-out show in Los Angeles and they caught Springsteens eye with a homemade sign that said: Bruce, I will be late to school tomorrow. Please sign my note. After the show, Springsteen invited them backstage and scribbled a note for the boys teacher. The note said: Dear Ms Jackson, Xabi has been out very late rocking & rolling. Please excuse him if he is tardy. ENGLAND: The worlds largest aircraft has been unveiled for the first time since being fully assembled in the UK. The 92m-long Airlander 10 part plane, part airship was floated in a First World War hangar in Bedfordshire. Photographers struggled to capture the whole length of the aircraft, which is around 15m longer than the biggest passenger jets. It was first developed for the US government but fell foul of defence cutbacks. British firm Hybrid Air Vehicles launched a campaign to return the Airlander 10 to the skies in May 2015. USA: A second man has pleaded guilty to his role in the theft of more than 300 from a group of Girl Scouts selling biscuits at a Massachusetts store. Cassidy Michalski, of Deerfield, was sentenced to three years of probation after pleading guilty to theft, assault and battery with a deadly weapon and shoplifting. Taverna got the same sentence earlier. FRANCE: With their beloved baguette already available 24 hours a day, it seems only logical that Parisians can now get the Bayonne ham and Basque pate that goes so well with the bread from the first meat vending machine installed in the French capital. The lively Rue de Charonne area has at least two dozen butchers shops and no shortage of meat, but that did not deter the owners of one of those shops, Florence and Michel Pouzol of Lami Txulette, from investing 40,000 to set up their project, selling vacuum-packed meat from the refrigerated machine. Mr Obama and Mr Castro stood together as a Cuban military band played the national anthems of Cuba and the US stunning sounds in a country where resistance to the US has been part of the national mission for decades. Greeting each other warmly, the two leaders inspected an honour guard before sitting down for a series of meetings. Whether Mr Obama and Mr Castro could use the meeting, one of the first since Cubas 1959 revolution and the only one in Cuba, to further the ambitious diplomatic experiment they started 15 months ago was an open question, infusing Mr Obamas historic trip to Cuba with tension for both governments. For Mr Obama, there was no better place than Havana to show that engagement can do more than isolation to bring about change on the communist island. Yet for the Cubans, the glaring question is whether their government is ready to prove the ambitious diplomatic opening is more than just talk. US companies, eager for opportunities in Cuba, were wasting no time. Mr Obama announced that Google had struck a deal to expand wifi and broadband internet on the island 145km south of Florida. Outside the palace in Havanas sprawling Revolution Square, Mr Obama posed for a photo in front of a giant sculpture of Ernesto Che Guevara, creating an indelible image sure to reverberate in Cuba and beyond. The revolutionary leader was once one of Fidel Castros top lieutenants, his face an iconic symbol of Cubas revolution. That revolution is reviled by critics of the Castro government. Paying tribute to another Cuban independence hero, Mr Obama adjusted a wreath at the foot of an 18m statue of Jose Marti, calling it a historic moment. It is a great honor to pay tribute to Jose Marti, who gave his life for independence of his homeland, Mr Obama wrote in the guestbook. His passion for liberty, freedom, and self-determination lives on in the Cuban people today. On his first full day in Cuba, Mr Obama planned an event with US and Cuban entrepreneurs aimed at championing Cubas fledgling private sector. He was to be feted in the evening at a state dinner, an honour illustrating just how far the US and Cuba have come despite their deep differences. Asia Taiwan Security Agency Says Chinas Gambia Gambit Meant to Pressure President Taiwan says Chinas resumption of diplomatic ties with one of Taiwans former allies was meant to pressure President-elect Tsai Ing-wen to fall in line. TAIPEI Taiwans top security agency said on Monday Chinas establishment of diplomatic ties with one of the islands former African allies was meant to put pressure on President-elect Tsai Ing-wen to fall in line before her inauguration on May 20. China resumed ties with the small west African state of Gambia last week, ending an unofficial diplomatic truce between China and Taiwan following landslide wins in presidential and parliamentary elections by Tsai and her pro-independence Democratic Progressive Party. Gambia was one of only a few African countries, along with Burkina Faso, Swaziland and Sao Tome and Principe, to recognize Taiwan, which China regards as a wayward province to be recovered by force if necessary. Taiwan has only 22 allies in the world, including the Vatican City. China and Taiwan have for years tried to poach each others allies, often dangling generous aid packages in front of leaders of developing nations. On Monday, Taiwans normally secretive National Security Bureau said in a report presented to parliament the islands ties with its few remaining diplomatic allies were at risk of being undermined by financial aid packages from China. The warning to our new government was thick with meaning, the bureau said in its report. It had the intention of pressuring President-elect Tsai Ing-wen to respond in her May 20 inaugural speech in a way that falls in line with Chinas expectations, the bureau said. Tsai said in an interview carried by one of Taiwans biggest dailies, the China Times, on Monday that both sides should show goodwill in the period before she is sworn in. Through the expression of goodwill, the hope is to build a foundation of trust, Tsai said. She said through a spokesman last week she hoped the Gambia case was not a targeted move by China. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said the resumption of diplomatic ties with Gambia was not aimed at any person. Hua also warned the United States not to put in a good word for Taiwan, after US President Barack Obama signed a bill supporting Taiwans participation in Interpol. Hua said Interpol was a body only sovereign nations could join. China has repeatedly warned Tsai against any moves towards independence, while Tsai has stuck to her stance of maintaining the status quo without offering a clear policy. Gambia broke its ties with Taiwan in 2013, but did not immediately establish ties with China. Burma In Arakan State, Resource Control Fuels Conflict Arakan Oil Watch urges the new government to amend the Constitution to allow states to manage their own natural resources, in an effort to reduce conflict. RANGOON In a new report, Arakan Oil Watch (AOW) has urged Burmas incoming government to amend the Constitution in an effort to quell tensions between the military and the countrys ethnic armed groups. Breaking the Curse, released on Tuesday by the environmental non-government organization, describes the decentralization of natural resource management as key to ending the conflict and resource curse in Burma. The problems legislative roots can be traced to two constitutional articles: 37(a) and (b), according to AOW. Article 37(a) stipulates that the national government is the owner of all lands and all natural resources both above and below ground and water, while 37(b) says that the government can enact necessary laws to supervise the extraction and utilization of state-owned resources. Kyaw Khine, AOWs director, explained that if the government were to amend these two articles, states and regions would be able to manage their own natural resources. This, he argues, would contribute to greater self-determination for Burmas ethnic states and potentially de-escalate the countrys decades-long civil war. Specifically, gas and jade projects should be postponed until the existing laws have been amended, he said. There have been several natural resource projects pursued in Arakan State, including titanium and marble mining, offshore gas projects and the construction of deep-sea ports. Local civil society groups in the region have also urged lawmakers to delay development of the Kyaukphyu Special Economic Zone, led by the Chinese state-owned conglomerate CITIC (China International Trust and Investment Corporation), because of potentially negative environmental impacts and a lack of transparency. Tun Kyi, secretary of the Kyaukphyu Rural Development Association, a local AOW partner, echoed Kyaw Khines concern over links between ethnic clashes and control of resources. We [ethnic groups] want to know how the government is spending the budget, Tun Kyi said at the conference. Our [Arakanese] situation is like government enslavement. AOW has been working to expose violations of human and environmental rights by the extractive industries since 2006. According to Kyaw Khine, no political parties in the region have submitted a proposal that would call on the government to amend articles 37(a) and (b) of the 2008 Constitution. Burma The Butterfly Book: A Look into Burmas Colonial Past A uniquely designed Burmese document, with text printed on wings of silk, is among the highlights of a new display at the British Library in London. RANGOON A uniquely designed Burmese document, with text printed on wings of silk bound within an oyster shell, is among the highlights of a new display at the British Library in London. Informally dubbed the Butterfly Book by the librarys staff, the unusual item is actually a formal petition from residents of Mergui Archipelago requesting development projects in the region from colonial authorities, including the construction of a new hospital and a ferry service to other nearby coastal settlements. The petition was presented in 1907 to the British Lt-Gen of Burma on his first visit to the area. The item is part of a small exhibit called More Than a Book that sits at the entrance to the Librarys Asian and African Studies Reading Room. The exhibit presents examples of writing from Southeast Asia in a variety of formats and materials, including texts incised on bamboo and gold, painted on paper with a brush, and written on gilded wood, according to information on the librarys website. Two Burmese sazigyo, or woven cotton tapes used to bind sacred texts, are also on display, along with items from northern Thailand, Vietnam, Sumatra and Bali. The British Library is located at 96 Euston Road, next to Kings Cross and St. Pancras International rail stations in London, England. Burma Former Generals, a Hotelier and More in Suu Kyi Cabinet The NLD-nominated cabinet includes a male-dominated array of technocrats, ethnic minorities, NLD loyalists and others not sworn to the party, including two former generals. RANGOON With 18 names put forward for 21 ministerial posts on Tuesday, the National League for Democracy has included a diverse but male-dominated array of technocrats, ethnic minorities, NLD loyalists and others not sworn to the party, evening selecting two members of the military-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP) for the incoming cabinet. From the USDP, Thein Swe, a party secretary, and the former central executive committee member Thura Aung Ko secured the blessing of NLD chairwoman Aung San Suu Kyi, whose party had said members of the outgoing ruling party would be considered for cabinet slots in a national reconciliation government. Five experts and technocrats, seven NLD membersmost prominently Suu Kyi, who is expected to take four portfoliosone ethnic party leader and three military selections round out the proposed cabinet. With the NLD failing to explicitly assign any of the 18 names to specific ministries, speculation has focused on what formal role or roles Suu Kyi will play in a government that she has said she will ultimately lead through her chosen proxy, President-elect Htin Kyaw. According to NLD sources in Naypyidaw, Suu Kyi will take four portfolios: the ministries of Foreign Affairs, Electric Power and Energy, and Education, as well as the recently streamlined cabinets Presidents Office ministerial post. The Foreign Affairs Ministry was tipped in recent weeks as a likely Suu Kyi choice, affording her a seat on the powerful National Defense and Security Council (NDSC). While a clearer picture may not be offered until Thursday, when lawmakers will discuss the proposed cabinet, several of the nominees have been confirmed for specific assignments. The Ladys Men One demographic that fared particularly poorly was women: Suu Kyi is the lone female cabinet member. The party did a far better job in female representation for last years election, when nearly 15 percent of its candidates were women. The five experts and technocrats are tipped to head up ministries covering the environment, industry, health, construction and media. In terms of partisanship, two non-NLD parties were given cabinet seats, with Nai Thet Lwin of the Mon National Party assigned the Ethnic Affairs minister post, and the aforementioned USDP duo. Thein Swe, a former major-general turned Lower House lawmaker representing the Ann Township constituency, won re-election to the same Arakan State seat in Burmas Nov. 8 general election. The 67-year-old has been picked to lead the Ministry of Labor, Population and Immigration. He was a minister of Transport from 2004-10, under Burmas former military regime, and prior to that served as minister of the Prime Ministers Office from 2003-04. Thein Swe told The Irrawaddy on Tuesday that the NLD was acting in accordance with its policy of collaborating with different parties, individuals and experts in the aftermath of its landslide election win last year. As our partys policy dictates, we are ready to work together for the national interest, he said of his USDP affiliation, adding: Now our collaboration will bring betterment of the state and the people. Thura Aung Ko, who was purged from the USDP leadership along with former parliamentary Speaker Shwe Mann in August last year, is tipped to head the Ministry of Religious Affairs and Culture. The 68-year-old is a former brigadier-general turned lawmaker, who served as deputy minister of Religious Affairs under military rule, which ended in 2011. He lost to his NLD opponent by a razor-thin margin of 49 votes in the November election, in Chin States Kanpalet constituency. Among lawmakers for the military-backed USDP, Thura Aung Ko developed a reputation as one of the blocs more pro-reform lawmakers, late last year voicing support for a suspension of Article 59(f), the constitutional clause that bars Suu Kyi from the presidency because her two sons hold British passports. The political analyst Aung Thu Nyein, who works as a freelance governance consultant, said the nomination of representatives from outside the NLDs ranks would be viewed favorably in the name of national unity, even if that meant former generals turned politicians. As the NLD and Daw Aung San Suu Kyi have won the public trust, the public has reacted positively to whatever her arrangements [including USDP cabinet members], he told The Irrawaddy. That being said, checks and balances on the cabinet, and the efficiency of the ministerial departments, are the key to successful governance, Aung Thu Nyein added. The analyst said he did not expect rapid change or improvements under the new administration, but rather gradual reform as the ministers-in-waiting grow more comfortable with their roles and responsibilities. Asked about the possibility of Suu Kyi taking four portfolios, Aung Thu Nyein said: If it happens, it would be due to the uniqueness of the 2008 military-backed Constitution. Part of that uniqueness allows the Burma Army to select three ministers for the security portfolios of Defense, Home Affairs and Border Affairs. On Tuesday, the names of a trio of lieutenant-generals, Sein Win, Kyaw Swe and Ye Aung, were included in the cabinet roster, and they are expected to take the respective ministerial posts. Analysts have noted that these ministers ability and willingness to work with Suu Kyi will be critical to the success of the NLDs five-year term. Writer, Hotelier Among Others Pe Myint is the odds on favorite to serve as the countrys next Information minister, a post in which he will be responsible for reforming an institution that for years has been synonymous with government propaganda. The NLD has not offered specifics on the Information Ministrys future, but reforms could include privatization of the three state-run dailies it currently prints. Born in 1949 in Thandwe, Arakan State, the ethnic Arakanese is a well-known writer and chief editor of Pyithu Ayay (Peoples Affairs), a weekly journal focused on political issues. He is also the vice chairman of the Myanmar Press Council. Pe Myint graduated from the Rangoon Medical College in 1975 and worked as a general practitioner for more than a decade before transitioning into the realms of literature and media. The retired CEO of a resort hotel at Shan States Inle Lake was named the next minister of Hotels and Tourism. A family member confirmed to The Irrawaddy that Ohn Maung, the former CEO of Inle Princess Resort, internationally known for its corporate social responsibility initiatives and eco-tourism practices, was picked to handle a portfolio covering an industry that generates a major share of the countrys foreign exchange and is expecting continued rapid grow in the coming years. I think he was picked for his 40 years of experience in the hotel and tourism sector. But when it comes to making decisions, he will seek advice from experts to make the best judgment, I think, said the family member. Ohn Maung was not available for comment on Tuesday. Ohn Maung, 68, is an NLD member and was an elected lawmaker from his native Nyaung Shwe in Southern Shan State during the 1990 election. He is no stranger to the tourism industry, starting the first and at the time only guesthouse in the town in 1976. In 1998, his family opened the Inle Princess at a quiet inlet on the eastern shore of the lake, still one of the first hotels on the lake at the time. Managing the nations coffers will be Kyaw Win, tapped to serve as minister of Planning and Finance after a decades-long career in the civil service that dates back to 1972. He pointed to his lengthy career in the National Planning Ministry and later Internal Revenue Department as reason for his selection. The NLD leadership have a policy to put the right man in the right place. I think I was assigned because I deserve it, he told The Irrawaddy. Htet Naing Zaw contributed reporting from Naypyidaw. Burma New Portfolio, Old Political Hand for Ethnic Affairs Post Nai Thet Lwin is set to become Burmas ethnic affairs minister, taking up a newly created portfolio that supporters hope will help further national reconciliation. RANGOON Nai Thet Lwin has been nominated to act as the incoming National League for Democracy (NLD) governments minister of ethnic affairs, a newly created portfolio that supporters in Burma hope will help further national reconciliation in the diverse nation of nearly 52 million people. An ethnic Mon who is vice chairman of the Mon National Party (MNP), Nai Thet Lwins name appeared on a list of 18 Union-level ministers announced in Parliament on Tuesday. Though the NLD did not offer specifics on who would take on which of the 21 ministries making up the incoming governments cabinet, Nai Thet Lwins daughter confirmed that the 76-year-old has been tapped to lead the Ethnic Affairs Ministry. My father will do the best he can with this position offered him, Mi Kon Chan told The Irrawaddy. A longtime politician committed to equal rights for Burmas ethnic minorities, Nai Thet Lwin is well-respected in Mon circles. Born in a small village in Kawkareik Township, Karen State, Nai Thet Lwin attended Moulmein University in neighboring Mon State, where he became involved in underground resistance to the ethnic Burman-dominated government of the late dictator Gen. Ne Win. He graduated with a degree in philosophy in 1970 and spent several years teaching and advocating for the preservation of Mon literature and culture before committing more fully to his peoples struggle for self-determination. According to Nai Soe Myint, general secretary of the MNP, he allowed Mon politicians to establish a political party office at his home ahead of Burmas 1988 pro-democracy uprising. That party, the Mon National Democratic Front, would go on to win five seats in a 1990 general election that the military government nullified. The regime dissolved the party, in which Nai Thet Lwin was vice chairman, in 1992 and imprisoned many of its members. Nai Thet Lwin did not contest the 1990 vote and avoided imprisonment. The MNP was formed in 2012 as a reincarnation of the former MNDF. Nai Thet Lwin has since served as vice chairman of the MNP, though he again opted not to run in last years general election. His party is a member of the United Nationalities Alliance (UNA), a grouping of ethnic political parties that contested the 1990 election. He is believed to have maintained close ties with the New Mon State Party, an ethnic armed group that abstained from the signing of a so-called nationwide ceasefire agreement on Oct. 15 of last year. Nai Thet Lwins daughter Mi Kon Chan, who was elected to Parliament for the NLD, said it was too early to know how effective the Ethnic Affairs Ministry would be, but she highlighted equal rights and peace as priorities. It is time for our ethnic [minorities] to work toward having equal rights, said the lawmaker, who represents Mon States Paung Township in the Lower House. We have been expecting to have this chance for a long time. The NLD-dominated Parliament is expected to discuss the proposed cabinet roster on Thursday. Tuesdays nominations were ostensibly put forward by President-elect Htin Kyaw, who was chosen by NLD chairwoman Aung San Suu Kyi to serve as her proxy leader of the incoming government. Burma Suu Kyi Listed Among NLD Cabinet Nominees Aung San Suu Kyi, the National League for Democracy (NLD) chairwoman, is among 18 proposed Union-level ministers announced by Parliament as nominees for cabinet posts. RANGOON Aung San Suu Kyi, the National League for Democracy (NLD) chairwoman, was named Tuesday on a list of 18 Union-level ministers announced by Burmas Parliament, all but ensuring she will be a member of the incoming governments cabinet. Eighteen names for cabinet positions were revealed by the incoming NLD government on Tuesday in Parliament, but specific assignments for 18 corresponding ministerial posts were not, with the timeline for that disclosure unclear at present. What is known is that Suu Kyi, assuming she is confirmed by the NLD-dominated legislature, will be the only female member of a cabinet with Suu Kyi loyalist Htin Kyaw at the top as president-elect of the incoming government. Suu Kyi herself is constitutionally barred from the presidency, and has effectively said that she will call the shots in the executive branch via her proxy Htin Kyaw. Parliament is due to discuss the proposed cabinet roster on Thursday. The names of at least two members of the Union Solidarity and Development Party (USDP), the former ruling party that was thrashed by the NLD in Novembers general election, are also on the list, making good on a pledge by the incoming government to form a cabinet of national reconciliation that included other parties members, the military-backed party notwithstanding. The names for three security postsministers of Defense, Home Affairs and Border Affairswere also revealed, with these positions filled by the Burma Army as per a constitutional framework that entrenches a military role in Burmas politics. Sein Win, Kyaw Swe and Ye Aung are the three lieutenant-generals listed on the cabinet roster announced Tuesday, expected to take the respective ministerial posts in the incoming government. Business Are New Ministers an Auspicious Sign For Burmas Businesses? Burmas business community reacts positively as Parliament releases 18 names for cabinet positions in the countrys new government. RANGOON Burmas business community reacted positively as the Union Parliament released 18 names for cabinet positions on Tuesday. Among the national ministers listed are National League for Democracy (NLD) lawmakers Than Myint and Kyaw Win, who have been nominated for the positions of Minister of Commerce and Minister of National Planning and Finance, respectively. Than Myint, 72 years old, is currently the NLD chairman for Rangoons Hlaing Tharyar Township and a lawmaker in the Lower House. He received a Bachelors degree in economics from Rangoon University and completed graduate work in the United States. He has served in a number of positions within the Ministry of Finance, and joined the NLD in 2012. He [Than Myint] is a member of the NLDs economic development committee and has a good background in economic affairs so I believe he will work for this post, Aye Lwin, central executive committee member of the Union of Myanmar Federation of Chambers of Commerce and Industry (UMFCCI), told The Irrawaddy on Tuesday. Ministers must also implement the governments policies, which is another reason why I believe he can do this, Aye Lwin added, referring to Than Myints NLD ties. The other candidate, Kyaw Win, 68 years old, is a business consultant and an NLD lawmaker for the Lower House representing Rangoons Dagon Seikkan Township. He holds a Bachelors degree in economics, as well as a doctorate. I would welcome the national planning and finance ministries becoming one ministry since all national projects are related to finance. He [Kyaw Win] would be able to control such a ministry because he has solid experience with businesses, Aye Lwin said. Yet both nominees are essentially unknown within Burmas business community. I dont know either of them, but [the NLD] will make policies, and they will follow them. We still have to see how to build a good system, but what I can say now is that they [Than Myint and Kyaw Win] must be honest, unlike previous ministers, Chit Khine, chairman of the Eden Group of Companies, told The Irrawaddy. Maung Maung Lay, vice chairman of the UMFCCI, echoed Chit Khines optimism. The Ministry of Commerce already has some good policies, so the next government should maintain these policies while also, for instance, trying to curtail red tape. The minister must be able to work with all government staff members more efficiently, he said. Crafting good policy while also following the law and regulations will be important in the new government era. The incoming NLD government revealed 18 names for cabinet positions for 21 ministries, though the specific assignments for the ministerial posts have not all been disclosed. Tuesday, March 22nd, 2016 (9:17 am) - Score 4,373 The UK telecoms regulator has today published the final outcome of its Business Connectivity Market Review 2016 (BCMR2016), which has proposed changes that among other things would open up access to BTs national Dark Fibre network, cut leased line (Ethernet) prices and deliver quicker installs. Ofcoms review of the 2bn leased line market, which runs to more than 800 pages in length (here and here), kicks things off by stating that BTOpenreach has been taking too long to install leased lines and is not providing adequate certainty that the services will be provided by the date first given to the customer. Jonathan Oxley, Ofcoms Competition Group Director, said: All of us depend on high-speed, fibre optic lines. Businesses use them to communicate, and they also underpin the broadband and mobile services used by consumers at home and on the move. BT is relied on by many companies to install these lines, and its performance has not been acceptable. These new rules will mean companies across the UK benefit from faster installation times, greater certainty about installation dates, and fast repairs if things go wrong. On top of that they also found that Openreach was failing to complete one in four leased line installations on the initial date it promised and as a result theyve moved to impose new rules onto the operators high-speed Ethernet services, which should also shorten the install time (reaching 40 days after April 2017, instead of todays 48 day wait). Ofcom has further announced new Charge Controls to help push down the prices that BT charges for their leased lines, which is something that they seem to do at every business connectivity review. The new controls will apply to BTs newer very high speed Ethernet lines and their older leased lines using Traditional Interface (TI) technology. The New Charge Controls * For BTs Ethernet services with bandwidths up to and including 1Gbit/s, Ofcom has concluded an initial reduction in prices of 12%, with an overall cap of CPI -13.25%, for each year of the charge control. * For BTs traditional interface services with bandwidths up to and including 8Mbit/s, Ofcom has concluded an initial reduction in prices of 9%, with an overall cap of CPI -3.5%, for each year of the charge control. The regulator said they would bring prices down over a three-year period from 1st May 2016. Dark Fibre Operators often build future capacity into their fibre optic networks to cope with expectations of rising demand, such as by laying additional fibres that might not all be made live (unlit) at the same time (saves money versus the need for future civil works). We often call these Dark Fibre. The last business connectivity review in 2012 (here and here) flatly rejected the idea of using so-called Passive Remedies, such as Dark Fibre access, to improve the market. At the time Ofcom said it would, carry significant risks of worse outcomes, both for consumers and for effective competition, including adding costs and encouraging inefficient entry. However all of this changed in May 2015 when Ofcom made a dramatic U-turn (here) and the recent Strategic Review outcome (here) only reinforced that decision as part of the goal to make Openreachs national UK telecoms and broadband network more accessible to rivals (this may help ISPs to build rival networks and to do so more cheaply). Ofcoms Statement This means BT would have to give competitors physical access to its fibre-optic cables, allowing them to take direct control of the connection. This service is often referred to as dark fibre, because the cables would not be lit using BTs electronic equipment. Instead, they would be lit by the competitor installing its own equipment at either end of the optical fibre. BT is already required to offer wholesale leased line products, which bundle the optical fibre and BTs own network equipment, at regulated prices to competitors. BT would still be required to provide these services, but the new proposal would go further, allowing operators to use BTs fibre-optic cables with their own equipment, rather than rely on BTs equipment. Ofcoms earlier strategic review also proposed a new wholesale Duct and Pole Access (DPA) solution, which complements the above approach by giving rivals access to the cable ducts and telegraph poles that BT uses to run their network (details here). Apparently the requirement on BT to make Dark Fibre available would apply in all parts of the UK except central London (including the City of London and Docklands) where Ofcom deems that there is sufficient competition in the market and Hull, where most leased lines are provided by KCOM (KC) rather than BT. The requirement would also only apply to a particular kind of leased line known as Contemporary Interface Symmetric Broadband Origination (CISBO). However the big problem with both Dark Fibre and DPA is with the issue of price and administration (Gigaclear and Hyperoptic recently talked about these issues). BT will naturally want to get the best return possible, while Ofcom will wish to see a simplified administration process for the scheme and perhaps some lower pricing. Easier said than done and there are likely to be big differences between what BT wants and what Ofcom expects them to deliver. A BT Spokesperson told ISPreview.co.uk: Todays statement from Ofcom is very much in line with what they proposed last year so there are no surprises here. Competition and choice have been growing in the business connectivity market and we believe there is a strong case for less, not more, regulation. We accept there is more to do on service and are committed to doing better and meeting our business customers rising expectations. Ethernet provision can be complex and the need for street works and wayleaves mean delays are often beyond our control. We are doing all we can to overcome such challenges. The required Ethernet price cuts and the introduction of dark fibre will not help to underpin service improvement. Dark fibre is a flawed piece of regulation that introduces an unnecessary layer of complexity and will deter others from building their own fibre networks. It is at odds with Ofcoms recent statements about increasing competition at the infrastructure level. It is a cherry pickers charter benefiting those who dont invest in networks at the expense of those who do including BT, Virgin Media, Cityfibre and Zayo. Ofcoms Strategic Review has put pressure on BT to propose a voluntary solution to some of these issues; otherwise Openreach could be split from BTs control. At the very least Ofcom may have to intervene in order to finalise the terms for Dark Fibre. The regulator is currently seeking a solution by the end of 2016, which means their final Dark Fibre fix wouldnt be ready to use until 1st October 2017. In the meantime BT have been told to publish a draft Dark Fibre reference offer by 1st September 2016, which will probably show an initial outcome that favours BTs position.. subject to more negotiation. Ofcom has also notified todays proposals to the European Commission and, short of any significant objections, they currently expect to publish their final statement next month. UPDATE 10:27am Added the latest BT statement above. Considerations for Maintaining Critical Business Continuity Multiple emerging technologies pose significant changes to the status quo, and many of these also pose significant potential dangers. The Internet of Things (IoT) can track our every move. Autonomous driving can lead to crackers cutting off our brakes. Robotics can steal our jobs and turn on us. Its scary. Another scary new technology is drones. Thousands and thousands of them are in the sky. They clearly pose a threat to commercial aviation. Computerworld says that a recent incident, in which a horrific collision between a drone and a Lufthansa flight landing at Los Angeles International Airport was barely averted, could galvanize legislators to more aggressively look at drone safety. The subject is not new to legislators. Last year, Senator Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) introduced the Consumer Drone Safety Act. She used the Lufthansa near-miss, which occurred on March 18, to urge its passing this session: The bill would, among other things, direct the Federal Aviation Administration to require safety features for newly manufactured consumer drones, such as geofencing to govern the altitude and location of flights and collision-avoidance software. The provisions in the legislation were incorporated into the FAA reauthorization bill, which is expected to be debated on the Senate floor next month, Feinstein added. Drone sightings by pilots are growing, from 238 in 2014 to more than 650 in the first seven months of last year, according to numbers released last August by the Federal Aviation Administration. Though Congressional action has not gained traction, the FAA has put some regulations in place. The website for WUFT, which supports radio and television stations in central Florida, says that rules were enacted last month to require registration of drones and display of their registration numbers. Drones cannot surpass an altitude of 400 feet or be used within five miles of an airport. Penalties for not doing so can reach $250,000, according to the story. Indeed, the new FAA regulations and anything subsequently passed in Congress will run into a familiar challenge: The tension between state and federal law. A story at Campus Security makes the point that state laws vary greatly. Thats a recipe for trouble, since many organizations will use drones in multiple states: The Senate measure would explicitly give FAA supremacy over all drones laws, Rule said. That would give companies like Amazon, Google and Walmart a one-stop shop for their drone-delivery proposals. But that would also block local governments from adopting measures prohibiting encroachment on private property similar to zoning laws, he said. We have a lot to be afraid of in modern technology, and drones are high up on the list. Lets hope federal and state legislators can cooperate to take the dangers down a notch. 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. Small business owners believe that the company tax rate should be cut for Australia to remain globally competitive, and if the rate was lowered many of the SMEs say they would be more likely to invest the savings back into their business. A recent survey of 400-plus SMEs by cloud accounting provider MYOB shows that 53% of of the small business owners agreed with the Business Council of Australia that Australias company tax rate is globally uncompetitive and should be reduced immediately. Simplifying the GST/BAS tax was likely to have a similar effect at 49%, the SMEs said. It was encouraging to see the government lower the company tax rate to 28.5% for businesses with an annual revenue of $2 million or under in last years budget. However, company tax affects businesses of all sizes, said Tim Reed, CEO of MYOB. According to Reed, the current system discourages SMEs to grow beyond $2 million in revenue because they then lose many of the benefits of being a small business. These barriers to growth need to be removed, he said.When we asked Australian SMEs what they would do with financial savings from a company tax rate cut, just under half (48%) of respondents said they would keep this money to increase their financial position and weather any future business challenges.Reed said this finding aligns with previous MYOB Business Monitor survey results.This latest SME Snapshot also asked small businesses if they were investing in innovation.While the vast majority of SMEs (85%) agreed that Australia needed to embrace innovation to deliver success, only 4% of those surveyed admitted to investing a set dollar amount towards innovation.We are seeing that Australian SMEs are struggling to invest in innovation. However, knowing that 36% of business owners would use a cut in the company tax rate to invest more in their business is certainly encouraging, Reed said.Australia needs its economic engine room firing on all cylinders, and having small and medium businesses invest more will go a long way to securing our prosperity. Verizon has moved to strengthen its presence in the Asia-Pacific region with the rollout of a new partner program, including in Australia, which the company says will allow it to serve a broader range of clients. The Verizon Partner Program (VPP) will offer systems integrators and solution providers tailored engagement opportunities to tap into Verizons network, managed security, cloud, advanced communications, connected devices and professional services expertise. The rules of engagement have changed, said Francis Yip, Verizons group vice president of Asia-Pacific. The new streamlined VPP has now been introduced in the Asia-Pacific region and were seeing strong interest from the partner community. Compellingly, companies can decide how they want to work with us whether on specific solution areas, vertical markets or targeted geographies. While were not putting a cap on the number of partners who work with us, our chosen partners must be as passionate as we are about adding value to our customers as they evolve their business in the digital world. According to Verizon, since its introduction in the US, more than 1,300 partners have signed up to the program.In the Asia Pacific region, he program is initially being rolled out for agent partners in Japan, Australia, Taiwan and Hong Kong to offer solutions for the healthcare, financial services, hospitality, manufacturing and BPO industries.Partner members will receive access to the Verizon Partner Portal, co-marketing resources, online training tools and global certifications, and the company says members can progress through 4 partner tiers Member, Silver, Gold and Platinum - at their own pace.Peter Yialas, managing director of Australian-based DX Solutions said: We view this as an opportunity to work with Verizon, a world-class technology leader, to expand our customer offerings. The combination of Verizons product capabilities and our market leading reputation, products and services, means we are able to offer a very compelling value proposition. Yet another outage appears to be happening right now on Telstras network, allegedly Australias best, but what happens if Telstra goes down during a free data day? Reports on Twitter and in the media say theres a Telstra outage happening right now. Ive got a couple of phones on Telstra, and for me at least, right now at 1.25pm AEDT, Im able to make and receive calls without issue, and data is working. However, just because its working for me doesnt mean it is working for everyone else. Heres just a few of the Tweets out there from the last couple of hours: Mitch Cairns @mitchcairnsbass 1h1 hour ago Congratulations @Telstra You've shut down my business again.. Stop sinking my efficiency down to your level #Telstra #telstraoutage Andrew Sterzl @AndrewSterzl 1h1 hour ago Another #Telstra outage. Remind me again why I'm paying more for superior coverage and reliability? Free data for a day doesn't cut it! Dominic Miller @dominicmiller68 2h2 hours ago Hey @optus? What's the difference between between @Telstra and the sun? The sun only goes down once a day. #telstra #TelstraOutage Melissa MeehanVerified account @melissameehanau 2h2 hours ago Can't make calls from my #Telstra mobile in East Melbourne but I can receive them. More below, please read on! Theres no Tweet from Telstra yet (at time of publication) to confirm this, but radio and TV outlets are also confirming the outage is occurring. Clearly there will be a lot of outage outrage yet again, and precisely what Telstra does to rectify this and specifically to prevent this from happening again is yet to be seen. Quite how much grovelling Telstra CEO Andrew Penn can do in the face of the previous troubles is yet to be seen, and the questions over whether Telstra is really under some form of advanced persistent nation state hacking is yet to be seen, but if the faults keep occurring, you do have to wonder. Telstra - all we want is for you to make it easy for us to use our phones - no-one wants Telstrafail, but so far, the 800 pound telcorilla that is Telstra is looking like one giant fail whale! UPDATE: The Macquarie radio network is now reporting that Telstra says the issue is now solved. However, time will tell. UPDATE 2: 3.05pm Two hours ago, Telstra announced in a tweet that 'We can confirm we have resolved the issue. We're sorry for the inconvenience.' However 6 minutes at time of Update 2 publication, Telstra said via a tweet: -- Telstra @Telstra 6m6 minutes ago We're investigating some residual issues for a small number of customers. -- So, hopefully the issue will be fully resolved for everyone soon. Below is the actual tweet embedded: Andrew Stephen "Andy" Grove was a Hungarian-born American businessman, engineer, and author. He was a science pioneer in the semiconductor industry. Andy was the visionary who changed the face of semiconductor maker Intel. Affectionately called the mastermind he left a huge mark on the technology industry. Time Magazine named him man of the year in 1997. He is perhaps best known for three quotes: Success breeds complacency. Complacency breeds failure. Only the paranoid survive. Leaders have to act more quickly today. The pressure comes much faster. Just as we could have rode into the sunset, along came the Internet, and it tripled the significance of the PC. He originally joined Fairchild Semiconductor in 1963, where he researched microchip technology. Intels founders George Moore and Robert Noyce first hired him in 1968. He became Intels president in 1979, CEO in 1987 and chairman and CEO in 1997. He gave up his CEO title in 1998 and stayed on as chairman until 2005. It is fair to say that he shifted Intels focus on memory (DRAM) to reinvent it as a manufacturer of microprocessors had he not done so Intel would not have been the company it is today. He was largely responsible for the Intel Inside campaign that led it to supply most of the x86 processors for the emerging personal computer and server industry. Bill Gates, Microsofts co-founder who was one part of the Wintel equation said, Andy Groves death is a huge loss for the computing industry and everyone who had the honour to know him. I feel lucky to have been one of those people. He was at the forefront of creating the personal computer industry, and whenever we spent time together, I always came away impressed by his brilliance and vision. Andy made the impossible happen, time and again, and inspired generations of technologists, entrepreneurs, and business leaders, said Brian Krzanich, Intels chief executive since 2013. Andy Grove was one of the giants of the technology world. He loved our country and epitomized America at its best. Rest in peace, Tim Cook, CEO Apple. Grove is survived by his wife, Eva, two children, and eight grandchildren. His books include High-Output Management and Only the Paranoid Survive. Today A mix of clouds and sun with gusty winds. High 88F. Winds WSW at 20 to 30 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph. Tonight Mostly clear. Gusty winds diminishing after midnight. Low 64F. Winds W at 20 to 30 mph. Winds could occasionally gust over 40 mph. Tomorrow Sunny. High 81F. Winds WNW at 10 to 20 mph. The Rob Kardashian and Black Chyna romance has been bubbling these past few weeks. Now, the two are rumored to be filming a reality television show. The couple, nicknamed "ChyRo," by Mic, are allegedly pursuing their own show. Are the two trying to veer away from the "Keeping Up With the Kardashians" spotlight? "Rob and Chyna are hoping for a spin-off," quoted People magazine. The unidentified source has confirmed that the Chyna doesn't want to film the series with Rob's family in it. "ChyRo" has concluded that a spin-off is the best course of action. "They have had meetings and things look promising," the insider explained. If you'd rather keep up with Rob Kardashian and Blac Chyna then this is the show for you. It's no secret that Blac Chyna has not been in good terms with the Kardashian women ever since she broke up with Tyga, who is the father of her son King Cairo. Now, Tyga is dating Kylie Jenner and it appears Chyna doesn't want to be involved in the K-family drama. Spin-offs are not a strange thing for the Kardashian and Friends circle. Rob's sisters, Kourtney, Khloe, Kim, and even Lamar have all had their own spin-offs. What do you expect to see in Rob Kardashian and Blac Chyna's reality show? Will it feature Blac Chyna cooking healthy food for Rob for him to get fit again? Or will it feature tons of smooching? While the Kardashian women have not yet commented on the matter, it appears that they just want Rob to be happy - even if he publicly disowned them on Twitter. "Star Wars Episode 8" has officially started production last month. JNH has previously reported sightings of alien architecture and a possible chase scene in Dubrovnik, Croatia. But the surprise addition of "Jurassic Park's" actress Laura Dern left a question to fans. What is her role in "Star Wars Episode 8?" Dern appears to have filled an important role in the film. According to Screencrush, speculations lead to the possibility of adding someone very close to both Leia, Rey and Luke Skywalker. It looks like the veteran actress will be playing a senior officer within the Resistance group, as told by Latino Review. While it is unclear what her exact rank would be in "Star Wars Episode 8," it is said that she'd be second-in-command. Theories have led fans to believe that she will be a close ally to General Leia when she gets injured at some point in the next few episodes. However, Screencrush further explained that Dern's role does not rule out the most obvious possibility that she could be possibly Rey's mother. While Luke's relationship with Rey as his daughter has not been fully confirmed, there is a strong "Force" possibility between the two. And Dern's entry into the picture might just make the relationship concrete. While Laura Dern is slated to play a good character in the upcoming movie, Benicio del Toro is said to play an unconfirmed villain. "Star Wars Episode 8" is scheduled to premiere in theaters on Dec. 15, 2017. The Master of Business Administration or MBA is a master's degree in business administration. The courses offered by the MBA program cover a wide array of business and management areas including accounting, finance, marketing, human resource and more. If you are an MBA graduate, check out six of the hottest jobs in the market for you right now, according to U.S. News. 1.Financial Advisor Financial advisors, although a generic term with no precise industry definition, are different types of financial professionals that fall into this category. Members of this group include stockbrokers, financial planners and a whole lot more. Financial advisors, in short, render financial services to certain clients. 2. Fundraisers Fundraisers are those who bring money for their employer. They may work at non-profit organizations and certain types of campaigns. Fundraising, on the other hand, is the process of gathering voluntary contributions via request. 3. Medical and Health Services Manager Medical and health services managers are the reason why hospitals, nursing homes and health centers are operating well and smoothly. They are also known as healthcare executives or healthcare administrators who plan and direct medical and health services. 4. Logistician Although this field of work may not appeal that much to some MBA graduates, students who enjoy project management and operations management courses which are also offered by the MBA program will surely find joy in this type of profession. Logisticians analyse and coordinate the system that moves a product from the supplier to the consumer. They are the ones who manage the entire life cycle of a product. 5. Human Resource Specialist The human resource specialists are the ones who recruit, screen, interview, and as well as place workers to where they're supposed to be. They handle human resources work related to the employees' compensation and benefits, training, and a whole lot more. 6.Marketing Manager Marketing managers focus on the practical application of marketing orientation, techniques and methods inside an organization. For many decades, the connection between the United States and Cuba was not restored. However, the recent visit of President Obama was forecast to bring the customary ties of the region. Also, the meet up was speculated to lift up the embargo that currently baffles both nations. According to the recent post from the White House, it would be hard to restore the relationship of both nations in just a short period of time. To bring back the positive outlook, the need to engage with Cuba is crucial because it can open the way towards restoration. The same post mentioned of the importance of overcoming the difficulties so that the Cuban people can experience empowerment and bolster the ties linking the nations as well. President Obama further stated the need to open the trading of both states. According to the United States Commander-in-Chief, to increase travel and commerce between the two countries is among his main agenda to bolster the lives and economy of the Cuban people. On a different note, it appears that the president is not alone in his ideas. A former post from Jobs and Hire mentioned that even U.S. enterprises see the potential of Cuba and even considered the region as fresh frontier to pool their resources. Even though the road to restoring the relationship of the two nations is still a long way off. The mere idea of eradicating the embargo set on Cuba is now a possibility. To prove the latter, the United States and Cuba have already attained an arrangement to bring back regular, direct flights within the two nations, the United States and Cuba and that alone proves that more positive outcomes are underway. In less than 24 hours on Monday, federal prosecutors declared "a third party" came forward to present a possible solution for unlocking the encrypted iPhone belonging to the San Bernardino shooters, a stunning disclosure that could end the month long legal standoff between Apple and the government. Late Monday in Riverside California, a federal judge approved the FBI's request to postpone the court hearing until April 5 that was supposedly scheduled for Tuesday to determine whether the newly revealed method will help unlock Syed Rizwan Farook's encrypted iPhone without the assistance of Apple. Authorities perceived that there was no way to break into the phone of the shooter, unless Apple was willing to assist in building a backdoor that would disable the security protection. Where last month, the Justice Department obtained a court order demanding Apple to build the software, but the company debated the issue stating that it would be a security risk for everyone. Monday's announcement showed the unknown third party on Sunday, two days before the hearing, demonstrated an alternative to unlocking the iPhone. The result of an outside party that found a new way into the phone without Apple's help, drew skepticism to every heated court filing that was put forward by the Justice Department in the last month. A professor and computer security expert at the University of Pennsylvania Matt Blaze said, "From a purely technical perspective, one of the most fragile parts of the government's case is the claim that Apple's help is required to unlock the phone. Many in the technical community have been skeptical that this is true, especially given the government's considerable resources." FBI Director James Comey gave a sworn testimony earlier this month to the House Judiciary Committee stating that federal agency even asked the National Security Agency for assistance that was not much of a help. The fact remains that Apple's encryption battle could further continue, and the bitter conflict between Apple and law enforcement is a result of a cease fire. Although the company's security measure were enough to delay the federal investigators for a few month, this would give time to authorities to demonstrate whether the new method is viable without compromising data on the phone. And if so, it would eliminate the assistance from Apple completely. HAVANA President Barack Obama, traveling in Cuba, was briefed Tuesday morning on the Brussels attacks that killed dozens of people. The White House said the U.S. was in contact with Belgian officials about the explosions at the Brussels airport and subway system. Secretary of State John Kerry, who spoke by telephone from Cuba with the Belgian foreign minister, said in a statement that the U.S. was working "to determine the status of all American citizens in Brussels." The embassy there issued a statement telling Americans to stay where they are and "take the appropriate steps to bolster your personal security." The State Department said it was looking into reports that at least three Americans may have been wounded in the attacks, but cautioned that those reports were preliminary and unconfirmed. At least one of the attacks was believed to be caused by a suicide bomber, and Belgium raised its terror alert to its highest level. Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the ranking member of the House intelligence committee, said the attacks "bear all the hallmarks" of an Islamic State group coordinated or inspired attack. His staff said he received a preliminary briefing Tuesday from U.S. officials. Schiff says it's unclear if encrypted communications played a role in the attacks but noted that the Brussels attacks occurred despite the city being under constant vigilance. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security said it was closely monitoring the unfolding events and "would not hesitate to adjust our security posture, as appropriate, to protect the American people." DHS reiterated that members of the public should report any suspicious activity in their communities to law enforcement authorities. Attorney General Loretta Lynch was also briefed on the attacks, Justice Department officials in Washington said. They said the Justice Department and the FBI was coordinating with other U.S. government agencies, as well as with Belgian counterparts. Last week U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Homeland Security officials constantly monitor world events and evaluate whether there is a need to either publicly raise the nation's security posture or issue another bulletin via the government's National Terror Advisory System. Such a bulletin was issued in December advising the public that federal law enforcement was concerned about the possibility of homegrown violent extremists and terrorist-inspired individuals. The photos from overseas of babies born with unusually small heads, possibly linked to the Zika virus, are heartbreaking. But officials here are responding well. Were glad that theres not the kind of hysteria that we saw in 2014 when the Ebola virus was in the news. One case of the Zika virus has been confirmed in Forsyth County, officials told the Journals Richard Craver last week. The individual, who hasnt been identified because of privacy concerns, had traveled recently to a country with active Zika virus transmissions and likely acquired it there. But Marlon Hunter, Forsyth Countys health director, said no cases have been acquired in Forsyth County or elsewhere in North Carolina. Another case was reported in North Carolina in February, but again, that person was infected while traveling in another country and has now recovered. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, The most common symptoms of Zika are fever, rash, joint pain, and conjunctivitis (red eyes). The illness is usually mild with symptoms lasting for several days to a week after being bitten by an infected mosquito. People usually dont get sick enough to go to the hospital, and they very rarely die of Zika. For this reason, many people might not realize they have been infected. Once a person has been infected, he or she is likely to be protected from future infections. Zika was first discovered in 1947, and outbreaks have never been widespread. The main reason for recent concern is because of its detrimental effect on some pregnancies. Zika has been associated with a serious birth defect of the brain called microcephaly and other adverse pregnancy outcomes that have been reported in some infants born to mothers who were infected with the virus while pregnant, the Journal reported. The Zika virus is most commonly transmitted through mosquito bite, though it has in rare cases been transmitted through sexual contact and blood transfusion. Its extremely unlikely to affect area residents. Still, its nice to know that officials are on top of the situation. The county is working with the N.C. Division of Public Health and the CDC to help test people returning from areas in which the virus has been transmitted, Hunter told the Journal. We have anticipated all along that travel-related cases would be identified in North Carolina, Dr. Randall Williams, the states health director, told the Journal. Its important to be aware of mosquitoes while traveling in areas where Zika has been identified, such as Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, America Samoa and Brazil. Women who are trying to become pregnant should talk to their doctors about the risk before traveling. Anybody who suspects they may have been exposed to the Zika virus would be wise to check with a doctor. Caution and care are good and needed. What we dont need is panic. The items in the store are marked with color coded "spot" tags. The price for that color is the price of the item. Credit: Michael Sears By of the Wauwatosa Kohl's Corp.'s new Off/Aisle store has a polished concrete floor, sleek lighting fixtures and a way of pricing merchandise that is very different from the Menomonee Falls retailer's traditional department stores. No coupons or special discounts here. At Off/Aisle, everything has a "spot" price. Items with an orange circle on the tag are $4; items with a blue circle, $6. Prices range from $4 to $70, most on the lower end of that scale. Kohl's opened its first Off/Aisle store in New Jersey in June. The two Milwaukee-area stores in Wauwatosa at the Mayfair Collection and on Sunset Drive in Waukesha are its second and third. "It's very different from a typical Kohl's store," said Rick Schepp, chief administrative officer of Kohl's. "It doesn't have all the fancy fixtures, and the values you'll find here are deep and compelling." Off/Aisle's target is women, specifically women who love to shop. There are fewer pieces of each item, so shopping is more of a hunt, and the store does not take returns, Schepp said. Merchandise will change quickly and be mostly in season, Schepp said. The stores are a good place for Kohl's to sell merchandise that isn't stocked in its traditional stores but has been returned to them by online customers, he said. Those goods previously would have been sold to wholesalers, he added. The New Jersey Off/Aisle store didn't cannibalize sales at the traditional Kohl's about a mile down the road, Schepp said. Kohl's move into the off-price arena comes as traditional department stores have struggled and off-price retailers have flourished. Kohl's is not the only traditional department store to take an "if you can't beat 'em, join 'em" approach. Macy's opened a number of off-price stores called Macy's Backstage in the New York area last fall. It's not surprising Kohl's and other are moving into the space. Ross Stores Inc. and TJX Cos., both off-price chains, are the only companies covered by Morgan Stanley's retail analysts that have delivered earnings growth every single year during the last decade, the investment firm said in a report released Monday. Kohl's said in February that its net income for 2015 dropped 22% to $673 million, and that it planned to close 18 underperforming stores. As part of what it calls its "Greatness Agenda," the retailer in October announced plans for more new store sizes and formats. It is planning to open five to 10 new 35,000-square-foot stores, more than half as small as a typical Kohl's store. Kohl's also plans to open 10 to 15 new Fila apparel and footwear stores in outlet malls, with Kohl's handling operations and buying the merchandise for the South Korean sportswear company. About 50 shoppers were lined up at the new Waukesha Off/Aisle store awaiting its opening at 9 a.m. Sunday, Schepp said. And sales at the Waukesha and Wauwatosa stores were strong on their first day, he said. Jaimee Warner, a student at the University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, pushed a cart full of bargains through the Wauwatosa store on Monday: a speaker for $20, a suitcase for $10 and Calphalon baking sheets for $8. Sarah Stankus of Waukesha said she could spend a whole day in the store. She planned to be back, unless the shopping looked better that day at a traditional Kohl's store. "If I had a 30% off coupon at Kohl's, I'd probably go to Kohl's," Stankus said. SHARE By of the The Kroger Co. on Tuesday said it has promoted Michael Marx, currently vice president of people operations for Kroger, to serve as president of Roundy's Supermarkets, Wisconsin, effective April 1. Kroger also announced the promotion of Don Rosanova, currently executive vice president of operations for Roundy's, to president of Mariano's, effective immediately. Both leaders will report to Roundy's CEO Bob Mariano. "Michael's knowledge of store operations and merchandising, combined with his expertise in human resources and organizational effectiveness, will serve him well in this role," Mariano said in a statement announcing the promotions. "Michael's leadership skills and business knowledge make him an excellent addition to our Roundy's team in Wisconsin." Marx joined Kroger in 1975 as a stocker at the former Highland Village store in Houston. After completing the management development program, he served in numerous leadership positions through the years, including store and district management and produce, floral and natural foods merchandiser. He was promoted to director of regional operations for the Southwest division in 2006, and to vice president of operations in 2007. Marx was named vice president of transition at Kroger's general office in Cincinnati in 2011 and took on his current role earlier this year. Rosanova has served in his current role as executive vice president of operations for Roundy's since May 2006. He previously served as group vice president-supply chain from 2002 to 2006. Before joining Roundy's, Rosanova was vice president of operations of Edward Don & Co., a provider of food service supplies and equipment, from 1999 to 2002. He also served as group vice president of operations at Dominick's Finer Foods from 1996 to 1998, and held various management positions within Dominick's from 1971 to 1996 in the greater Chicagoland area. "Don has been my partner in building the Mariano's brand, and I could not have built this without his leadership," Mariano said in the statement. "His passion for excellence has made him a well-respected leader within the Roundy's and retail grocery community." Kroger, the world's third-largest retailer, serves 8.5 million customers a day at 2,778 retail food stores under a variety of local brands in 35 states and the District of Columbia. The company employs 431,000 people. The company has 38 food production plants in the United States. By virtue of its purchase of Roundy's late last year, Kroger became the grocery market share leader in Wisconsin, with more than a third of the marketplace in the state. Oshkosh Corp. has landed $677.1 million in work refurbishing old military vehicles and building new ones. Credit: Mark Hoffman SHARE By of the Oshkosh Corp. has landed $677.1 million in new military business, including rebuilding hundreds of tactical trucks. The work for the U.S. Army will take place in Oshkosh between now and Dec. 1, 2024. It will include $433.3 million for refurbishing some of the Army's biggest armored trucks used in the war in Afghanistan. It also includes $243.8 million for 657 new Joint Light Tactical Vehicles, or JLTVs which are replacing military Humvees trailers and other products. Heavy trucks are the backbone of the Army's transportation system, hauling weapons, ammunition and supplies. Some of the trucks that saw action in Iraq and Afghanistan were more than 20 years old. One of the vehicles, the Heavy Expanded Mobility Tactical Truck, or HEMTT, is an eight-wheel-drive, diesel-powered truck that has been in continuous production since the early 1980s. Another vehicle, the Palletized Load System, or PLS, truck, can carry up to 16.5 tons. It's about 25% cheaper to refurbish one of the vehicles than to replace it at a cost of $400,000. The refurbishments will take place between now and Nov. 30, 2017. The production of the 657 JLTVs is scheduled to be completed by Dec. 1, 2024, according to the Department of Defense. Altogether, the work will support about 2,500 jobs at Oshkosh Corp., the Fox Valley's largest manufacturer, in addition to supporting hundreds of jobs at Oshkosh's suppliers. "This is very positive news," said John Daggett, the company's vice president of corporate communications. Trucks will be rebuilt on the same assembly lines used for manufacturing new vehicles. "The delivery dates (for rebuilt vehicles) are spread out the rest of this year and into 2017, so it bodes well for keeping level-load production and keeping things level in terms of employment," Daggett said. The vehicles, some of them 20 years old or heavily damaged from war, will get technology upgrades while they are being refurbished. Many of the thousands of military trucks that Oshkosh has rebuilt in the past 20 years have seen the worst that combat can dish out. They've come back to the company with bent frames, mangled wheels and cabs riddled with bullet holes. "Basically, what we do is strip them down to the frame rails and completely rebuild them to like-new condition," Daggett said. The work is coming from the Army via three contract modifications totaling $433.3 million. It comes as the company gears up to build JLTVs meant to replace thousands of military Humvees. The year after year of steady manufacturing is expected to offer job security for Oshkosh Defense employees and more than 300 suppliers, plus hundreds of other businesses. Wisconsin ranked 30th among states in federal procurement dollars in fiscal 2015, up from 32nd in 2014. Now, nearly six months into fiscal 2016, economic development officials are seeing steady federal spending in areas such as defense. Wisconsin had 1,549 federal contractors in 2015, including 214 first-time contractors. Oshkosh Corp. is still the state's largest defense contractor. Another large player is the Marinette Marine shipyard, in Marinette, which is building U.S. Navy littoral combat ships for defense contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. There's also been a trend of more diversified federal spending in Wisconsin, said Aina Vilumsons, executive director of the Wisconsin Procurement Institute in Milwaukee. Some of the top spending has been from agencies connected with health care and information technology. The Department of Agriculture also has spent millions of dollars on Wisconsin agricultural products. And hundreds of subcontractors, which supply products and services for prime contractors such as Oshkosh Corp., have benefited from the military spending. Recently, Boeing Corp. and some other large federal contractors visited Wisconsin to connect with suppliers. "We encourage that. It's a great way to learn the system," Vilumsons said about working for a prime contractor. "If you are not quite comfortable of working with the government, especially if you are new at it, then consider subcontracting to the primes," she added. Another trend is multiyear deals, which are less expensive for the government and prime contractors to manage. "There's more stability and less risk for the subcontractors, too," Vilumsons said. SHARE Kareem Bandealy and Helen Sadler perform in Lookingglass Theatres Blood Wedding. Liz Lauren Elizabeth Ledo shares a moment with Postell Pringle in Thornton Wilders The Matchmaker at Goodman Theatre. Liz Lauren By , Chicago Early in Thornton Wilder's "The Matchmaker" which would later morph into an obscure little musical called "Hello, Dolly!" Dolly Levi imagines a world in which we might give fuller expression to ourselves rather than falling in line like "a collection of nervous and tired ants." Late in Federico Garcia Lorca's "Blood Wedding," in which a bride runs off with her lover on her wedding day, woodcutters reflecting on what's happened echo Dolly's expansive world view. "You have to follow your passion," says one. "The world is wide; everyone can live in it, agrees a second." So much for poetry: the bride is ostracized and her lover is murdered. In life and love, how true to ourselves can we really be, living in a world where those who play must often pay? But do we pay a still steeper price living lives of quiet desperation in which we fail to be true to our hopes and dreams? Different as these plays are, they're both wrestling with such questions, and they're both currently on stage in Chicago. Superb 'Matchmaker' at Goodman It appears to be all work and no play at the beginning of "Matchmaker," a great but infrequently staged play being given a first-rate production at Goodman Theatre, under Henry Wishcamper's direction. Dry-goods merchant Horace Vandergelder (Allen Gilmore) won't let his niece marry her true love, an artist with more dreams than cash. And Horace most certainly won't give put-upon clerks Cornelius (Postell Pringle) and Barnaby (Behzad Dabu) their requested night off each week. Having denied himself to get where he is, he wants others to do the same. But much like Scrooge, Horace isn't quite past redemption. He can still remember being young. He enjoys holding court and wants others to like him. He chances hiring someone with less than impeccable references. He's got more than a touch of vanity. And despite being widowed and 60, he's willing to "risk a little security for a certain amount of adventure" by remarrying. That explains his fateful decision to journey from his Yonkers store to New York with the matchmaking Dolly (Kristine Nielsen), paying court on Irene Molloy (Elizabeth Ledo) at her milliners' shop. Gilmore conveys the softer and much more likable side of a man who'll eventually marry Dolly and make Cornelius his partner; this Horace is clearly a man who'd like to return to a past when "I wasn't always free of foolishness," if he could only figure out how. Although Nielsen occasionally overdoes it, Dolly willingly shows him the way. Missing Elizabeth Ledo But the truly great awakening to life's possibilities in this production involves its second couple: Ledo's Irene and Pringle's Cornelius. Every time I see Ledo on one of Chicago's stages where she has been doing solid, critically acclaimed work for a long time I miss her days as a regular at the Milwaukee Repertory Theater, where she performed in more than 20 productions. As the widowed, black-bedecked Irene, she gives one of those vintage Ledo performances that mix mischief and seemingly irrepressible good humor with the underlying disappointment of a woman who plays hard because life is hard, as well as unfair. Lamenting over all she's missed as "I sit at home darning my stockings," Irene seizes her chance for more, once Cornelius walks into her store and falls in love with her. "I'm in danger of losing my job and my future and everything that people think is important," Pringle's Cornelius says, trying to explain to Barnaby why he's hanging around rather than minding the store back in Yonkers. "I don't care." Pringle conveys an uneasy combination of brave new inspiration and long habits of timidity; his wide, infections smile makes clear which of the two will win particularly with Ledo encouraging him by channeling her own inner Dolly, as an Irene who has lived too long for too little to make that mistake ever again. True to Wilder's highly theatrical aesthetic, this production foregrounds the improvisation through which these characters play at being different selves through impersonations and disguises to discover who they really are. Most important, nontraditional casting here includes a differently abled actor with a prosthesis; a transgendered actor; and several actors of color (the actors playing Horace and Cornelius are African-American). Hence even though the costuming invokes a specific 1890s milieu, we're continually reminded that "Matchmaker" speaks past this moment to all of us, regarding the transformative possibilities inherent in the world and ourselves. We just need to take the time to look around while mustering the courage to embark on some of the "adventures" that change this cast of characters forever. 'Blood Wedding' a la Steinbeck A mile to the northeast at Lookingglass Theatre, director Daniel Ostling has moved Lorca's "Blood Wedding" to rural California during the Great Depression. Instead of flamenco guitars and Andalusian costumes, Lorca's poetry is sung in the key of Guthrie by women in calico and men in corduroy. This initially jarring transition arguably better helps an American audience enter the Spanish world of Lorca's play: One that's isolated, poor, traditional, narrow and intolerant particularly when those within it fail to play by the rules. But while a naturalist approach invoking Steinbeck rather than Spain may give us easier access, it cuts against the grain of Lorca's heightened and highly symbolic story involving the star-crossed Leonardo (the only named character) and the bride, who abandons the bridegroom during her wedding feast. Lorca's title tells you what happens after that. Realist conventions are less important here than grasping what this charged narrative is really about: the restless, never-satisfied desire threatening to engulf any of us, as we seek an escape from our narrow lives and inexorable march toward death through the sort of transfixing, transcendent passion that gives us intoxicating intimations of immortality. Stuck on the ground in California, this production rarely soars. Primarily a scenic designer, Ostling delivers a few striking vignettes. But in Ostling's chosen setting, Lorca's poetry and actors' flights of fancy frequently come across as florid rather than ravishing. It doesn't help that in a cast filled with miscasts, Kareem Bandealy and Helen Sadler are trying too hard for a chemistry that just isn't there; all night, I found myself wishing that American Players Theatre Core Company member Melisa Pereyra who really can light the world on fire had been cast in Sadler's role rather than as Sadler's understudy. Pereyra is very good in the more significant of her smaller roles, as a bloodthirsty moon lighting the way toward destructive revenge. And there are fine performances from Atra Asdou as Leonardo's wife and from Troy West, doubling as the bride's father and the specter of death. It's not enough. In a play that ought to make us think hard about the disconnect between everyday existence and all it overlooks, this "Blood Wedding" is bloodless. It's the Goodman's stirring, ostensibly more traditional "Matchmaker" that quickens the pulse and heats the blood, challenging and inviting us to take a walk on the wild side by daring to live. IF YOU GO "The Matchmaker" continues through April 10 at the Goodman Theatre, 170 N. Dearborn St., Chicago. For tickets, visit goodmantheatre.org. "Blood Wedding" continues through April 24 at Lookingglass Theatre, 821 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago (adjacent to Water Tower Place). For tickets, visit lookingglasstheatre.org. Read more about these productions at TapMilwaukee.com. TAKEAWAYS Making the Scene: In the "Matchmaker" script, the same playwright who called for "no curtain" and "no scenery" in "Our Town" prescribes a false proscenium arch and a set that isn't "solid." Set designer Neil Patel delivers, keeping things effectively spare. Meanwhile, cast members assist with set changes or, in some cases, play instruments during those changes, highlighting that the scene we make and live depends on how we choose to arrange the furniture in the rooms we inhabit. Taking the Stage: Unlike the scene-setting Stage Manager presiding over "Our Town," multiple characters here are involved in such arrangements, reflecting a play where many characters are self-consciously aware that they've fallen into a rut and need to make changes. Some of these comparatively reflective characters break the fourth wall and chat with us, in delightful asides delivered under lowered lights, about why they live as they do. Emily's Vision: Toward the close of "Our Town," Emily famously realizes too late that people are "blind" and the world is "too wonderful for anybody to realize you"; she's already dead. It's Emily who comes to mind when Ledo exclaims through her tears that "the world is full of wonderful things" echoing Cornelius saying the same thing, in rueful wonder, just moments earlier. Like Emily, both characters' awakening is flecked with sadness at all they've missed and how much time they've wasted. But their wonder is also filled with a great joy that Emily was denied; they awaken when still alive and still able to choose differently. As can we. Workers of the World, Unite! For many of these characters, changed relations don't just involve romantic love. They also implicate the organization of work, in a world divided by class. Employers always think their employees love them, observes the delightfully rascally Malachi (Marc Grapey) to a cab driver (Lawrence E. DiStasi). But Horace's clerks are miserable; Irene learns to her chagrin that her employees only dance when she's not around, for fear she'll be cross with them. No wonder Irene in yet another of Ledo's many movingly heartfelt moments in this production wonders how we'll ever be able to understand each other, divided as we are. "Matchmaker" and the Election: As illustrated by Irene's concern that we won't and can't understand each other, many lines in "The Matchmaker" have something to say to us during this 2016 election season; so does this play as a whole. As with "Our Town," Wilder is challenging us to consider what sort of community we want, who it will include, whether it will make room for change, and how it will engage the larger world. Another Bare Stage: In the Lookingglass "Blood Wedding," Ostling's stage is even more simply and sparsely dressed than the Goodman's "Matchmaker" stage; at Lookingglass, that empty space continually calls to mind the characters' economic and spiritual impoverishment rather than serving as an invitation to devise something new and better. There is little play or improvisation in this world; old patterns and rituals repeat history rather than remaking it. A Wedding Song: Those rituals are most appealing during the morning of the wedding, as Lorca's poetry is set to composer Rick Sim's original, folk-inflected music which in turn gives shape to Tracy Walsh's simple but effective choreography to offer an idealized image of a community celebrating the dawn of a new day and new possibilities. Ritual Is Not Enough: It's a false dawn, for reasons unwittingly foreseen by the maid (Eva Barr), an earthy woman who tells the bride that designations like wife and the wedding rituals that consecrate them are meaningless if they're not grounded in passion. "A wedding is just that and nothing more," she tells the bride, while dressing her for the ceremony. "Is it the sweets or the bouquet of flowers?," she continues. "No. It's a shining bed and a man and a woman." "Romeo and Juliet": One is reminded here of Juliet's bawdy nurse, trying to talk Juliet into marrying Paris even though the Nurse knows deep down, much as this maid does, that her recalcitrant charge's heart belongs to another. Among the reasons "Romeo and Juliet" was on my mind while watching "Blood Wedding" involved the presence on stage of Pereyra, a passionate and very good Juliet in the 2014 APT staging of "Romeo and Juliet." Juliet and the Moon: As noted above, Pereyra gives us a taste of what she can do, when appearing in Act III as a haunting, garishly lighted moon. Thirsting for blood to warm her cold innards, this moon is willing to slake that thirst by lighting the forest and thereby exposing the lovers who have been hiding there from their vengeful pursuers. Light that had been concentrated in milk pails dotting the ground and casting an eerie glow into Pereyra's face spills out and about, brightening the surroundings and sealing the lovers' doom (lighting by TJ Gerckens). Sideshow is Door County Brewings first IPA. Credit: Door County Brewing SHARE By of the Spring has formally begun and new beer events are coming up like daffodils should. But really, it's more like a potholes one everywhere you look. No worries. April is just around the corner, and so is the release of Sideshow, the first IPA from Door County Brewing. March 27:Metropolitan Brewing is the topic for this episode of the Beer Series from 4 to 8 p.m. at The Sugar Maple, 441 E. Lincoln Ave. Guest instructors include owners (and Wisconsin natives) Doug Hurst and Tracy Hurst. Pay $15 for class and five samples. March 28: Pabst for Paws: A Wisconsin Humane Society Fundraiser is a chance to celebrate Capt. Frederick Pabst's 180th birthday and help the Wisconsin Humane Society. Half of every general admission to visit the Pabst Mansion, 2000 W. Wisconsin Ave., will go toward the Wisconsin Humane Society. There are other incentives through the week. See the Pabst for Paws Facebook page. March 30: Champps, 1240 S. Moorland Road, Brookfield, calls the event Avery Demons and Barrels, it's meant in a good way. Look for Tweak Bourbon Barrel, Imperial Coffee Stout 2014 and 2016, Uncle Jacob's Bourbon Barrel Imperial Stout and Samael's Oak Aged Ale 2015 on tap starting at 6 p.m., according to the Champps Facebook page. March 31:Pizza Man Wauwatosa, 11500 W. Burleigh Ave., pairs Hinterland Brewery beers with foods from braised octopus and spaghetti to roasted pork tenderloin. Tickets are $50. Reservations are required and can be made at (414) 249-2000. April 1: What do you want with your beer on April Fools' Day? Yup, a photo booth with jester hats. Draft & Vessel, 4417 N. Oakland Ave., Shorewood, will pour North Coast brews Pranqster, Nitro Old 38, Scrimshaw, Red Seal, Steller and Old Stock starting at 6 p.m., according to the Draft & Vessel Facebook page. April 2:Girls Pint Out, a community of women who love craft beer, and Brewery Ommegang tackle spring with an afternoon of food and beer at G. Groppi's Market, 1441 E. Russell Ave. The party begins at 2 p.m., according to the event Facebook page. Tickets are $20 and are available online at brownpapertickets.com. April 3:The Sugar Maple celebrates its eighth anniversary by hosting a benefit for the Mitchell Park Domes from noon to 5 p.m. Silent and live auctions will help raise funds. Look for some special beers and a food truck out front. April 5: Comet Cafe, 1947 N. Farwell Ave., rings the Bells on Beer School starting at 7 p.m., according to the event Facebook page. The session will explore brews from the Bell's Brewery lineup. April 6: Come to hear Eric Blowtorch but stay for the Lakefront beer tasting from 6 to 10 p.m. at the Miramar Theatre, 2844 N. Oakland Ave. Tickets are $5. April 7: Burnhearts, 2599 S. Logan Ave., goes wild with Brewers Gone Wild, a series of brews from Tyranena on tap. Look for Wrath of Rocky, Kissers, Doubley Down & Even Dirtier beginning at 6 p.m., according to Burnhearts Facebook page. April 22: Combine a love of beer with a love of The Bard during Cakes & Ale, a benefit for Optimist Theatre's Shakespeare in the Park starting at 7 p.m. at The Woman's Club of Wisconsin, 813 E. Kilbourn Ave. Renaissance attire admired but not required. Tickets are $50 and are available at birthdaybard.org. For a guide to beer news and more, check out Tap Milwaukee's Beer Here page. The food of Jews and African-Americans and how it expresses culture will be the topic when culinary historian Michael W. Twitty speaks April 12 in Centennial Hall at the Milwaukee Public Library downtown. The talk, "Kosher/Soul: Black & Jewish 'Identity Cooking,'" is free and open to the public; it's presented by the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Sam and Helen Stahl Center for Jewish Studies. Twitty, a convert to Judaism from the Washington, D.C., area who is an expert on Southern cooking and its African-American roots, writes on the Afroculinaria blog; his Twitter handle is @Koshersoul. His first book, "The Cooking Gene: A Journey Through African-American Culinary History in the Old South," will be published in November. The April event begins at 7 p.m. Centennial Hall is at 733 N. 8th St. Know of an upcoming event centered on dining, cooking or spirits? Email cdeptolla@journalsentinel.com. Charlie Tennessen claims he's no food rebel. He is, however, the only farmer growing and marketing rare heritage wheat in southeastern Wisconsin. Anarchy Acres, Tennessen's farm in Mount Pleasant near Racine, is not growing any of the modern wheat hybrids that are blamed for an ever-growing list of health problems, and that have prompted gluten-avoidance lifestyles and bestselling books. Instead, Tennessen is cultivating an old-fashioned hard red winter wheat called Turkey Red, a relic plant the soil of Wisconsin has not seen in many decades. You might even say he is going against the grain. "I like the challenge of growing an heirloom wheat and feel most comfortable with seed that was developed prior to the 1930s agricultural revolution," he explained. "Varieties from this (pre-1930s) era were grown without chemical fertilizers, so they are suited well to organic growing." Let's talk Turkey Red Heirloom vegetables have rebounded in recent years, why not heirloom wheat? To feed the resurgence, however, it begins with rare seeds planted by remarkable farmers. Tennessen, a 49-year-old software developer, began experimenting with heritage wheat in 2008. It soon became apparent, however, that he needed to ramp up his operation to avoid a "wheatpocalypse" scenario. "Turkey Red was suggested as a good backyard wheat for home growers in Thom Leonard's 'The Bread Book,'" he said. "Recently, my seed supply was threatened, so I realized I had to scale up a bit to ensure a future. "Based on the fantastic feedback I experienced this year, I now realize there is a market for heirloom wheat in southeastern Wisconsin." Last year's crop yielded a rich harvest. Not your run-of the-mill wheat, Turkey Red is back in demand. But why? Turkey Red is a tall heritage wheat considered to be the "grandfather of all hard red winter wheat in the U.S.," Tennessen explained. It is drought-resistant and improves the soil as it grows. Some claim heritage wheat is easier to digest for those with gluten intolerance. Heritage, also called heirloom, wheat once dominated the so-called bread basket of the Great Plains and Midwest, predating the high-yielding, mass-produced Big Food modern hybrids prevalent today. Turkey Red came to Kansas in the early 1870s by Mennonite immigrants from Europe. Turkey Red was developed from Old World red wheats in a region under the Ottoman Empire hence the name. It possesses excellent baking qualities cherished by artisan bakers. Being a winter wheat, Turkey Red is in the ground now. Tennessen said his current crop was planted in September. It emerged only a few days after being sown. Under a cover of winter snow, it now lies dormant. Harvest is anticipated this July. Once reaped, the wheat berries are sold whole to grind at home or to use in savory side dishes. The berries are also crushed into flour. "The flour is stone-milled at the farm in small quantities, so it can be offered at peak freshness," he said. While the terms heritage and heirloom wheats are interchangeably used, Tennessen prefers the term heritage wheat. Wisconsin's wheat belt Tennessen is part of a small but growing group of forward-thinking food entrepreneurs looking to the past to save a forgotten crop. Farmers, millers, bakers, cafe owners, farmers markets, retail stores and consumers are together taking part in a resurrection of heritage grains. The fascination with Turkey Red is underway in Wisconsin. "The 2015 harvest was excellent, and it has permitted me to bake the best bread of my life," Tennessen said. "Professional bakers like Lizz Fabel (The Bread Lady in Racine), Madison Sourdough (bakery) and Amaranth (Bakery and Cafe in Milwaukee) are also doing well with this harvest." Anarchy Acres is run with a "high level of integrity," according to Shawn Rediske, baker at Water House Foods in Lake Mills. Rediske owns the bakery and cafe with his wife, Raelyn. "One farmer is making a difference," he said of Tennessen. Rediske bakes with and sells local, organic ingredients, including Turkey Red flour from both Anarchy Acres and Lonesome Stone Milling, a mill owned by Gilbert Williams from Lone Rock in southwestern Wisconsin. The heritage wheat revival has particularly caught on in that area of the state, where Lonesome Stone Milling grinds heritage grain including Turkey Red from nearby farms. "We are a family-owned business with a mission of supporting family farms and turning the bounty of careful agriculture into nutritious and flavorful grain products through the art of stone milling," reads the label on their organic Turkey Red whole-wheat flour. The label also credits farmer Dave Dolan, who grew the heritage wheat in 2014 near Dodgeville. "People in urban areas want that farm connection," said Williams. He credits Madison Sourdough bakery for initially bringing Turkey Red back to Wisconsin. Wheat back on the menu So just what are the benefits of heritage wheat? According to baker Rediske, they are: Superior taste. This reason tops the list. Flour should not taste like...well, nothing. "Turkey Red has a better flavor: a grassier, earthier, more complicated flavor with a nuttiness," he said. Environmental stewardship. Rediske prefers to purchase his ingredients from small, nearby farms so that he knows who grew it, how it was grown and who milled it. The farmer, miller and baker all do their part to encourage these emerging grains, he said. Whole-grain nutrition. "It's genetically a little bit purer. It doesn't have a lot of the 'tomfoolery' that we imposed upon modern wheat," Rediske explained. Customers with diabetes have told Rediske that Turkey Red baked goods don't spike their blood sugar levels. Easy to use. Turkey Red flour has a lower protein content than many bread flours, which can reach up to 16%, he said. Protein content for Turkey Red flour ranges from 11% to 13%, which is comparable to an all-purpose flour. "That's why I really like it in cookies," Rediske said. "Turkey Red is a grain you can substitute one-to-one for any flour and any recipe," he said, although he urged bakers to experiment with flour combinations to achieve their desired balance of structure versus softness. For home bakers, Water House Foods offers weekly classes on Sunday afternoons. More rare wheats While Turkey Red has received a warm welcome, Tennessen is not sure if it is the ideal heritage wheat variety for Anarchy Acres. "There are possible competitors," he said, referring to a 1919 University of Wisconsin bulletin on wheat varieties. The bulletin was published just after World War I, when wheat farming become extremely important in the state and elsewhere. This year he's planting two spring varieties of heritage wheat, Red Fife and Marquis. "In 1919, 59% of the Wisconsin wheat crop was Marquis, and Marquis is specifically known for being a very good bread wheat," he said. If all goes well, he'll be selling flour made from Red Fife and Marquis by the end of summer. The Marquis planting is likely the first in Wisconsin in many decades, he said. In addition, Anarchy Acres is testing even rarer wheat varieties from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's small grains collection. Tennessen estimates it will take at least four years before these are ready for market. In any case, look for his current harvest of heritage wheat this summer. "Growing and marketing Turkey Red is as challenging and fulfilling as anything I have done in my life, and I encourage other people to go out and find a passion that feeds back into the community," he said. "It's very possible to do well by doing good." Jennifer Rude Klett is a freelance writer of history, food and Midwestern life from Delafield. Contact her at jrudeklett.com. where to buy Searching for a taste of local heritage wheat? Here's a listing of state purveyors that grow, sell, mill or bake with Wisconsin heritage wheat flour or berries, with contact information. Some have no storefront and appear only at farmers markets. Amaranth Bakery & Cafe: Milwaukee; (414) 934-0587 Simple Bakery & Market, Cafe: Milwaukee, Lake Geneva Outpost Natural Foods: Milwaukee, Mequon, Wauwatosa, Bay View Madison Sourdough: Madison Willy Street Coop: Madison, Middleton Lonesome Stone Milling: Lone Rock Anarchy Acres: Mount Pleasant Molbeck's Health & Spice Shop: Racine, Kenosha Water House Foods: Lake Mills Gitto Farm n Kitchen: Watertown Honey Bee Bakery:Madison Great River Organic Milling: Fountain City Bake Street Cafe: Brookfield Good Harvest Market: Waukesha Malicki's Piggly Wiggly: Racine Tree Huggers Market: Three Lakes Driftless Market: Platteville Pine River Coop: Richland Center Cow & Quince: New Glarus Three Brothers Farm Store:Oconomowoc Metcalfe's Market: Wauwatosa, Madison Conscious Carnivore:Madison Whole Foods: Milwaukee, Wauwatosa, Madison Blue Heron: Reedsburg When Susie Fishbein launched the "Kosher by Design" series, she gained an international following for her approach to modern kosher cooking. A former public school teacher, she had no formal kitchen training. She did have a family to feed and loved entertaining. Poring over recipes by Martha Stewart and Ina Garten, she became inspired to bring a similar approach to kosher cooks. Fishbein, a 48-year-old mother of four, considers her work ethic a large part of her success. After 15 years and countless frequent flier miles, she's wrapping up her "Kosher by Design" cookbook series. Between culinary tours in places like Europe and Israel, she's continuing to do classes around the country. The ninth and final installation in her series, "Kosher by Design Brings It Home: Picture-Perfect Food Inspired by My Travels" (Mesorah Publications, ($34.99), arrives in stores this month. Fishbein lives in Livingston, N.J., with her husband, Kalman. Q.How did you come to write cookbooks and teach kosher cooking classes around the world? A. I did not grow up cooking, quite honestly. I was a tenured public school teacher. I taught fourth-grade science. I loved 10-year-olds, and that's what I thought I would do forever, until I had my first child. I did a charity cookbook for the school and fell in love with the process of cookbook writing. Then I got a job writing a cookbook for Artscroll Publishing. They mostly did scholarly work, not cookbooks. It was a risk, and it just launched me. Q.For people who may not be familiar, let's give the basics of your approach. Kosher cooking means what exactly in today's kitchen? A. The only thing that someone not kosher would notice is that there are no pork or shellfish products, and there is no mixing of meat and dairy. There is nothing traditional "Jewish" in these cookbooks. In the back of the first book, there were some recipes, but after that it (has been) just kosher cooking. That's the success. It has appeal to Jews, non-Jews. It's just food, not traditional food or Jewish food necessarily, but it is kosher food. That's what started me in the first place. All there was were Martha Stewart and Ina Garten. I'd sift through their magazines and cookbooks and there was so much I couldn't use. Who cooks more than an observant Jew? If you celebrate the Sabbath every week, there is no one who cooks more. These women are so hugely successful, yet the audience who needs their products can't use them. That's where it started. Q.What's the biggest influence on your menus? A. I write about what I want to eat, and I tend to follow food trends carefully. One of my favorite things to do when I go to a new city is see if there's a Koreatown or a Chinatown. These are things I can't eat that aren't kosher, but I can smell and observe. I follow trends pretty closely. Kosher used to lag behind. Whatever was in the world would pop up in kosher about five years later, and in some ways now I think it tends to lead the way, especially when it comes to food allergies and gluten-free.... Q.Have you seen any shift or change in people keeping kosher kitchens since you started teaching? A. The kosher consumer is becoming a much stronger and more vocal consumer. Companies are for-profit organizations, so they're not going to put the certification on it if it doesn't benefit them. I think companies have taken notice of this. It's a loyal group and the kosher community really helps support products. There's even a Facebook group Kosher Trader Joe's, and they couldn't pay for better advertising. I'm not a Trader Joe's shopper, and I read about a coffee rub there. I was in my car in 20 minutes to get that rub. Q.Tell us about the latest book in the "Kosher by Design" series. A. I've been giving cooking classes for 15 years. About five years ago I was hired to run culinary tours. It was the Amalfi Coast, Tuscany, Provence, France and these kosher Jewish tours teaching people the local food and the history of the Jewish community's food in that area. It was very different from what was going on in America. Everything in America was what's new and fusion and what can we throw together, what else can you put in. ...When I worked in Europe, specifically in Italy and France, they wanted to teach me recipes exactly how their mothers and grandmothers taught it to them. It was really important to teach me the authentic recipes to their areas. Then three years ago, I started running culinary tours all over Israel. It was a mashing up of the philosophies. You have these guys trained all over Europe, but then these guys come back to Israel and have the recipes of their grandmothers and there is fusion cuisine. It just seemed a great topic to write about. There's actually a cheddar ale soup recipe in the book in honor of my time in Wisconsin (back in 2009). I worked with The Spice House in Milwaukee, and from a kosher perspective they have amazing spices. Q.What do you want people to know? A. People always tell me I should write a gluten-free cookbook, but I always say I don't live a gluten-free lifestyle. I wouldn't feel right. I was asked once to do work for a cookbook for a not-kosher restaurant. I couldn't take the job because I don't think I could rant and rave about a dish I couldn't even put past my lips. People trust me. I talk like I'm the girlfriend in the kitchen. I write the way I speak. It's not flowery. I have been offered amazing commercial appliances and had to say no. I have a 13-year-old kitchen. I have been careful not to spoil myself in the kitchen, because I have to write for everyday cooks in the kitchen. Q.What are your kitchen essentials? A. A good knife and a proper cutting board, I could do 80% of what I have to do. I am very partial to my onion goggles. I love my brand new Le Creuset grill pan, a gift from my kids. It is awesome, but it is not a necessity. The biggest price-tag toy I ever talk about in a book is where I give a tutorial for challah. I don't make it by hand. I use a machine that makes dough. It really is a game changer. In order to make a batch of challah you can make a blessing over, you need five pounds of flour. I would make it less often if I did it by hand. But if you have this machine, it kneads it, you dump everything in, there's no mess. It makes the art of making challah so easy. It's the Bosch Universal Plus. I hesitated to talk about it, but for anyone interested in making challah on a regular basis, it is a game changer. During a recent trip to Austin to visit my daughter Candace, we ate many things: Duck fat fries, truffled deviled eggs and crispy brussels sprouts with raisins at a trendy gastropub called the Salty Sow. Some mighty fine barbecue (brisket, pulled pork, sausage) and trimmings at a bar with patio dining near the University of Texas campus. And some addictive Mexican vanilla ice cream. And of course, we patronized a few food trucks after all, there are more than 1,000 in this capital city of 900,000, the more popular ones sporting long waits. One morning, we waited 45 minutes for our order of doughnuts to be filled. Granted, these weren't just any doughnuts, and they were made fresh. Flavors like Fat Elvis peanut butter icing, fresh grilled bananas, grilled bacon and honey and Porkeys grilled Canadian bacon, warm cream cheese and house-made jalapeno jelly turned a simple breakfast classic into an experience. But longtime Wisconsin resident that I am, the two things I wanted to re-create when I returned home were all about cheese. They were a delicious, creamy, just-spicy-enough cheese soup, a signature dish in the 1886 Cafe at the historic Driskill Hotel, and a "queso" my daughter whipped up for us for a rousing evening of board games. Yes, "queso" is the Spanish word for cheese. But in Texas, it's shorthand for chile con queso or queso dip, a hot dip served with tortilla chips. In the Lone Star State, queso is a potluck classic kind of like German potato salad in Wisconsin. According to seriouseats.com, a famous recorded recipe for Texas-style queso was one contributed in 1976 by Lady Bird Johnson to the San Antonio Symphony League's community cookbook. This simple concoction of Velveeta and canned Ro-Tel tomatoes long ago made its way up north. (I first had it at a party in the early '80s.) Another version of the first lady's dip, with more ingredients, was said to be served at White House events. The version my daughter made the same one she's taken to parties in Austin is also a more from-scratch concoction. As for the soup, it was developed in 1954 by the hotel's food and beverage director at the time, Helen Corbitt, whose long, varied career led to her designation as the "duchess of Texas cuisine." The hotel uses her classic recipe, but with a few minor changes. According to the hotel's current food and beverage director, Mark Bedford, the soup is extremely popular: "We can't take it off the menu; it's one of those things we always have to offer." Funny thing both these iconic Texas recipes are built around American cheese; the hotel uses Velveeta in its soup, and the dip uses white American cheese. Heresy! But then, in both cases, it's all about the melt, and nothing melts better than American cheese. We'll save our fancy artisanal cheeses to wow the Texans when they come to Wisconsin to visit us. SHARE By of the A Bayside woman who with her husband and sister helped scammers obtain more than $1 million in bogus income tax refunds they sent to their native Ukraine was sentenced Tuesday to 39 months in prison after a portion of her hearing was conducted in secret. Natalya Sonina, 47, was charged last year along with her husband, Vladimir Sonin, 50, and her sister, Irina Tinney, 47, of Milwaukee. All agreed to plead guilty, the couple to one count each of mail fraud and aggravated identity theft, Tinney to a different charge, and all agreed to cooperate with investigators. Sonina's attorney, Anderson Gansner, told U.S. District Judge J.P. Stadtmueller that Sonina was pressured to participate in an international scam by her brother, who had been deported to Ukraine years ago. "She was afraid for her brother; she was trying to help him," Gansner said, noting she had emigrated from Ukraine in 1995, became a U.S. citizen, raised four children and started a business a tailor's shop and dry cleaning business on Oakland Ave. in Shorewood. Sonina and her husband were not the masterminds, he said, and netted only about $200,000 from two years of steady work on the scheme. He suggested two years of prison, the mandatory minimum for identity theft, was appropriate. But Stadtmueller said the angst and frustration suffered by the hundreds of people whose identities were used to submit the false tax returns deserved more punishment, and he added 15 months. Prosecutors said more than 1,500 people's identities were misused in the crime. He also ordered Sonina to pay more than $308,000 restitution to the IRS and state governments for the stolen tax refunds. The judge also let Sonina delay her prison term until her husband completes his. His sentencing is set for March 31. Sonin's original sentencing hearing last month was suspended after the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel objected to it being conducted in secret. Stadtmueller allowed the newspaper to file a brief on the issue of open access, but ruled in favor of defense lawyers for Sonin and his wife, who argued that the discussion of the extent and nature of their cooperation should be not be heard by the public. Widespread scam All have agreed to cooperate with investigators looking to find others involved in the scam, so common its has a nickname, SIRF, for Stolen Identity Refund Fraud. According to the IRS, since 2012, an identify theft clearinghouse has gotten more than 10,000 leads involving 1.7 million tax returns seeking $11.4 billion in refunds. But new safeguards, developed with tax software companies, have increased security and helped the IRS block 1.4 million in returns seeking $8 billion last year. A North Carolina couple were recently charged with obtaining nearly $12 million in bogus refunds from returns filed in other people's names. In spring 2014, hundreds of southeastern Wisconsin residents complained to police that unauthorized income tax returns had been electronically filed in their names. Nearly all the victims had been patients at one of two unnamed clinics or businesses that were unaware at that time that their patients' personal information had been breached. According to the defendants' plea agreements, they don't know who stole the patients' ID information or who filed the false tax returns, only that they got bank-issued debit cards in the names of other people. The defendants would use the cards to get cash from ATMs, but according to court records, there were some 1,500 fake returns that generated refunds sent to hundreds of cards mailed to addresses in Chicago and the Milwaukee area. Tinney pleaded to structuring wiring money overseas in a series of amounts less than $3,000 to avoid triggering reporting requirements. Tinney got 42 cards at her east side apartment, in the names of various identity theft victims, and used them to obtain more than $200,000 in cash she sent to her brother in Ukraine. She was sentenced Feb. 5 to three years of probation and ordered to pay almost $211,000 in restitution. Tinney's sentencing memorandum indicates her family fled Ukraine in 1995 to escape anti-Semitism, poverty and chaos that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union. They wound up in Milwaukee. SHARE By of the A man who previously was convicted of robbing a bank was sentenced Monday to 14 years in federal prison for holding up a service station on the northwest side of Milwaukee. Dave Anglin was living in a halfway house, finishing a federal sentence on bank robbery, when he robbed the Hampton Service Center in late 2013 with his brother and another man. At the time, Anglin had just been released from prison and was finishing up his federal sentence at Parson's House in Milwaukee. During the December 2013 robbery, Dave and Michael Anglin were armed with a 9mm handgun and an assault rifle. Michael Anglin pistol-whipped and shot an employee of the Hampton Service Center, 8201 W. Hampton Ave., causing serious injuries, according to court documents. The brothers planned another armed robbery but law enforcement intervened after receiving a tip, according to the U.S. attorney's office. Anglin's brother, Michael, was convicted of the service station robbery following a jury trial last April. He received 19 years in prison. Dave Anglin did not go to trial, pleading guilty. His history in federal court reaches back to 2008 when he was convicted of robbing a bank on N. King Drive with four other men. He received just over 10 years in prison on that robbery. With good time, Anglin was nearing his release date when the robbery was committed in 2013. Anglin, 27, received an additional 10 years in prison on a gun conviction related to the 2013 robbery. The sentences run concurrently. The robbery and gun cases were investigated by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, the FBI and Milwaukee Police. By of the Milwaukee Public Schools is not an educational operator under a new state statute aimed at forcing Milwaukee to sell vacant and underused MPS buildings to outside operators, City Attorney Grant Langley told a city zoning committee on Tuesday. The statute, if his opinion holds, means MPS would have no standing to block competing operators of charter and voucher schools from acquiring those buildings, he said. "It is a poorly written statute," Langley told members of the Zoning, Neighborhoods and Development Committee, pointing out a separate, contradictory clause that allows MPS to declare interest in some of the affected buildings. The committee had been scheduled to take up a resolution identifying those entities it considers educational operators under the law. Instead, committee members held the resolution to seek additional legal advice, sidestepping Langley's observation that the city could be sued if it failed to sell buildings by the Legislature's mandated deadline. "Let them sue us," said 4th District Ald. Robert Bauman, who suggested he'd rather work out a side deal with one of the operators Penfield Children's Center than cave to the demands of the Legislature or a litigious "conservative think tank." The conservative special interest law firm Wisconsin Law & Liberty has threatened to sue the city if it does not comply with the statute's requirement that it sell the buildings. In a letter sent to committee Chairman Ald. James Bohl on Monday, MPS Superintendent Darienne Driver urged the committee to "pause and consider the consequences of moving too quickly with the sale of MPS schools." "The district, like the Common Council, shares concerns about a lack of community input and lack of due process inherent in this new law." Milwaukee owns all MPS property and holds it for the benefit of the school district. Aldermen made repeated references to lawmakers meddling in Milwaukee's business without understanding city policies or procedures. One example, provided by Langley: The new statute allows MPS to assert interest in any buildings in which it holds a lease with the city, however, Langley noted, there are no such leases. "Did they even consult us?" said 3rd District Ald. Nik Kovac, drawing chortles from the audience. Langley, whose office also represents MPS, said he would be meeting with district officials and outside counsel obtained in case conflicts emerge later Tuesday. The sale mandate is part of the Opportunity Schools and Partnership Program, one piece of the Republican-led school reform agenda inserted into the 2015-'17 biennial budget. That measure also called for Milwaukee County Executive Chris Abele to appoint a special commissioner, who would have authority to take control of a limited number of poorly performing public schools and turn them over to operators of public charter or private, nonparochial schools. As required by the new statute, MPS last summer identified 10 buildings it considered vacant or surplus, but said some of those were already targeted for sale or redevelopment. Driver asserted interest in all of the buildings in January, saying they are needed for district programs or reform initiatives. The nonprofit Penfield is proposing to create a Montessori school in the former Wisconsin Avenue School near N. 27th St. Bauman suggested Tuesday that he would support a long-term, zero-rent lease for the project in return for Penfield taking on the costly maintenance and repairs of the building, which he estimated at more than $100,000 annually. "Right now, that property is costing the city and MPS a lot of money," he said. Approved operators The other providers deemed by Langley's office to be educational operators are: Risen Savior Savior Lutheran School, a longtime participant in the Milwaukee Parental Choice voucher program, which would expand into the former Fletcher Elementary School at 9520 W. Allyn St. Right Step Inc., a military-style voucher school, which has expressed interest in three schools in four buildings the former 37th Street, Carleton, Centro Del Nino and Phyllis Wheatley schools. Rocketship, a California-based charter school operator that runs a school on Milwaukee's south side, is interested in two schools 37th Street and the former Frederick Douglass School at 3409 N. 37th St. Pilgrim Rest Missionary Baptist Church also voiced interest in Frederick Douglass. Lance Johnson, Milwaukee firefighter and dive team member, says he tries to avoid hearing the back story of a call. Credit: Michael Sears By of the As a Milwaukee firefighter, Lance Johnson is used to responding to emergencies. And then moving on to the next one. "With our job, we're in and we're out and then we just kind of disassociate," Johnson said. "It's over very quickly." Years ago, he and his fellow firefighters searched the obituaries for a patient they had treated on a call who died. They wanted to know more about him. It was the first and last time Johnson did that. It wasn't traumatic to read about the man and his family, he said, but it also didn't help to know the details. He tries to avoid hearing the back story of a call, but often still does through media reports or chatter from firefighters or police officers who stop by the firehouse. A few weeks ago, Johnson, who is part of the department's dive team, was called to McKinley Marina to help recover a body. "We thought it was a suicide," said Johnson, 46. "Well, we didn't actually know what it was." He later learned from media reports that the woman had shot and killed herself after fatally shooting two relatives: a 45-year-old woman and a 12-year-old boy. "It's not like all the information is going to do you any good or help you process it better," Johnson said. "Maybe actually this was worse because I learned it was a murder-suicide." Johnson tries not to learn the details, because if he does it becomes harder to compartmentalize his work. Instead, he is limited to glimpses of a traumatic experience as he and his colleagues rush to help, then move on to the next call. His job contrasts with the experience of his wife, Nicole Sheldon, whose former job as a prosecutor required her to sit with victims' families for hours and pore over documents, crime scene photos and other evidence. At times, their professional lives served as bookends, with Johnson's firehouse responding to a homicide or shooting scene and Sheldon later playing a role in prosecuting a suspect in the case. Sheldon, 35, who was featured earlier in Precious Lives, resigned as a prosecutor in early 2015 because the work aggravated her own post-traumatic stress from being robbed in 2013. It was a necessary step, she said, in dealing with the traumatic experience, and she's also coped with the help of therapy, friends and family, and yoga. When the couple first met, Sheldon had just started working at the Milwaukee County district attorney's office. On her first day, she was asked to assist in the prosecution of a high-profile homicide case. The victim was a Miller Brewing Co. executive killed in an armed robbery. As she prepared the case, she realized Johnson's firehouse had responded to the scene. Johnson was on the next shift after the homicide and his crew hosed the blood off the pavement where the shooting had occurred. "Maybe it was a little foreshadowing of how our careers are parallel in some sense," Johnson said. Johnson tries to compartmentalize his work and avoid bringing it home with him. But sometimes it's impossible. When he came home the morning of Nov. 7, 2014, his wife knew something was wrong. Johnson usually walks in, makes coffee and leashes their dogs for a walk. "You just were not emotionally steady like you usually are," Sheldon said, looking at her husband. "You were rattled." Johnson was among the first-responders to the fatal shooting of 5-year-old Laylah Petersen, who was sitting on her grandfather's lap when bullets ripped through the house. He distinctly remembers two images from that night: the girl's body, and then the girl being carried away. "Seeing her, I guess I can still see that that stuck with me," he said. The fire crew's heavy equipment operator, a friend of Johnson's from their academy days, scooped up the wounded girl. "I can still see him picking her up and carrying her to the paramedic rig," Johnson said. "He was distraught after that, because he had had children around her age." The Fire Department has worked to make sure firefighters and paramedics are handling the stress of the job by offering a peer support team, diffusion sessions in which first-responders describe what they saw and deeper sessions called debriefings. The department sent counselors to the firehouse to offer services to those who responded to Laylah's shooting. Johnson declined to attend the debriefing. "I think I just didn't even want to talk about it at that point," he said. "I think it was just too much, too soon. It was too soon to be in a room with everyone that was there." Last fall long after Sheldon had left the district attorney's office the couple learned they both had a connection to the case. In October, three men were charged in connection with the killing. The shooting suspects Arlis W. Gordon, 23, and Carl L. Barrett, 20 each face charges of first-degree reckless homicide. Their cases are pending. A third man, Paul T. Farr, 24, pleaded guilty to harboring or aiding a felon for driving them to and from the shooting. Prosecutors say Gordon and Barrett fired into the home of Petersen's grandparents, mistakenly thinking they were targeting 20-year-old Jaquan Howard. Earlier that day, a jury had acquitted Howard in the shooting death of Terreonte Henry-Boston a man prosecutors said Gordon considered his brother. Sheldon had issued the original charges against Howard, but had left the district attorney's office before the case went to trial. She was confident in her decision to charge the case, but knew it would be a tough one to win because of witnesses who were at times uncooperative and scant physical evidence. She said the revelation last fall, made public in the charging documents, made her feel slightly responsible. "I'm overthinking that, but it pops into your head," Sheldon said. "If I hadn't charged him, then this wouldn't have happened, then that wouldn't have happened. "If we all think that way, especially as a prosecutor, then you might as well just dig your own grave," she said. Sheldon, who now is a partner in a yoga studio, understands her husband's need to disassociate from what he sees at work. For Johnson, it's a central skill of any first-responder. "I think it comes from just being in that high-stress situation over and over," he said. "Every work day you're flying out of the firehouse with lights and sirens. You're there to do it and there's no one else. "You have to get it done." More from Precious Lives For past stories in the Precious Lives project including a radio piece focusing on Lance Johnson go to jsonline.com/preciouslives. You can also listen to the weekly radio stories on Tuesdays, at about 10:45 a.m., on WUWM-FM (89.7) and Wednesdays at about 10:50 a.m. on WNOV-AM (860). Paul Bentley (middle) and his sons, Nate (from left), Mike, Alex and Nick Bentley are facing some difficult choices. Paul needs a kidney. Nick and Nate would be excellent donors, but the family had already planned for them to donate kidneys to their two brothers. Credit: Family photo The Bentley family had it all figured out. Mom Judy donated a kidney to dad Paul nine years ago. And two of their four sons, Nick and Nate, who dodged the disease passed down from their dad, would someday each give a kidney to their brothers, Alex and Mike, who have the disease. "We thought we had a completely closed system where everybody was taken care of," Judy said. "The family joke is that you're either going to be a recipient or you're going to be a donor. But you're not going to be nothing." Then the kidney Paul received from Judy began to fail and now has, in his words, flamed out. He went on dialysis three times a week beginning in February and desperately needs another kidney. Tough decisions may lie just ahead, particularly for the brothers with healthy kidneys. A flier distributed by the family to find a suitable donor puts it this way: "If we don't find a donor for Paul soon, one of them is going to have to choose between saving his dad and saving his brother." Some call this kind of agonizing decision a Sophie's choice. "It weighs super heavily on me all the time," said the oldest son, Nick, 38, a board game designer in Madison. He has known for years that he does not have the genetic defect, called polycystic kidney disease and characterized by multiple cysts and enlargement of the organ. There is no cure. Like his brothers, his chance of getting it or not getting it was 50/50. "For all that time I've thought of myself as a vessel for the preservation of a kidney for one of my brothers. I thought my dad was taken care of. Now that's turning out not to be the case," Nick said. Paul is 70, which is on the high end of patients considered for kidney transplants. He and Judy raised their sons in Whitefish Bay and now live in Oostburg. Paul is retired after 30 years working in marketing at Cramer-Krasselt. His disease was not diagnosed until he was in his 40s. He lived with the weakness, nausea and other symptoms before finally getting the kidney from his wife in 2007, and at the same time having his own broken kidneys removed. The couple's hope was that this would buy him 20 or more years, but the kidney came with a virus that was benign for Judy but problematic for Paul. He is on the waiting list at Froedtert Hospital for a kidney from a deceased donor, and is about to get on the list at University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison. But with time drawing short, his real hope is to find a live donor. A couple family members, friends and a former co-worker already have stepped forward. But it's not that simple. "Most people think you just put your hand up and you're the live donor," Judy said. "But there's a huge qualification process, and there's a big wipeout rate of people who want to donate. We've had two people who went to Froedtert who have already been rejected." Paul in particular seeks volunteers matching his O blood type. People with other blood types can sometimes participate in a paired donation, meaning they give to another person in need of a transplant, and that person's donor would give to Paul. The couple's son Mike, 32, a civil engineer living in Shorewood, has the kidney defect but no symptoms yet. "I'm very ambivalent," he said. "My dad, obviously I want him to have a kidney. That would be more time-sensitive. Hopefully mine doesn't go into full blown kidney failure. It's not my decision. I need to step back." Ehab Saad, medical director of the kidney transplant program at Froedtert, said polycystic kidney disease is slow to progress and relatively common. Sometimes a family will face a dilemma like this, though he was speaking in general and not about the Bentleys. He recalled one woman who decided to give a kidney to her father, knowing her own children possibly would later develop the disease. "I will do this now, and God will provide for my children," she told him. The role of doctors is to educate, not dictate, he said. "It is really up to the person who is going to donate," Saad said. "We will never, ever pressure anybody to donate a kidney. That is absolutely out of the question." Nick said he knows what he must do. If a donor for his father can't be found quickly before his health fails, he will give Paul what one doctor called his Ferrari of a kidney. He has been told he has a far better chance to be a perfect match for a brother, but their need for a kidney might be years or decades away. Paul has more living to do and grandchildren to enjoy, but he knows Nick's decision could affect his other sons. "It weighs on Judy and I because we put our kids in this situation," Paul said. Sons Alex, 34, a teacher living in West Allis, and Nate, 28, who lives in Salem, Ore., and works at a vineyard, are in agreement that a healthy kidney from within the family may have to go to Dad rather than Mike or Alex as originally planned. "It was going to work perfectly," Judy sighed. If you have an interest in donating a kidney to Paul or getting more information, call the family's transplant coordinator at Froedtert, Tanya Anderson, at (414) 805-1457, or their coordinator at UW Hospital, Christine Lillesand, (608) 890-9363. Call Jim Stingl at (414) 224-2017 or email at jstingl@jrn.com. SHARE Election 2016 Visit our election section for complete coverage of the 2016 spring and fall local, state and national elections. By of the One half of 18 supervisory seats on the Milwaukee County Board will be filled by contested races on the April 5 spring election ballot. And there will be at least five new faces on the 18-member board after the spring election. Four will represent districts where incumbents are not seeking re-election: 3rd District Supervisor Gerry Broderick; 8th District Supervisor Patricia Jursik; 2nd District Supervisor Khalif Rainey; and 5th District Supervisor Martin Weddle. The fifth will represent the 11th District supervisory seat that has been vacant since the September resignation of Mark Borkowski, who became a Milwaukee alderman. Among the nine contested races, three do not include incumbents. They are: District 5: Two Milwaukee Public Schools teachers Michael Glabere and Marcelia Nicholson are vying for the job to replace Weddle. Glabere received a $1,000 contribution just $48 less than the limit for this district from the Political Action Committee of the Milwaukee Teachers Education Association. District 8: David Sartori of Cudahy and Tony Bloom of South Milwaukee are running to replace Jursik. Sartori is a retired state parole officer and former Greenfield alderman. Bloom was owner of a small business, the former PJ's Variety Store in South Milwaukee. District 11:Patricia Najera of Milwaukee and Dan Sebring of Milwaukee are vying to fill Borkowski's vacant seat. Najera is director of partnerships and fund development for the Electa Quinney Institute for American Indian Education at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She has served as an appointed member of the Milwaukee City Plan Commission since 1999. Sebring is owner of Sebring Garage LLC, an auto repair shop on the south side of Milwaukee. He currently is in Chapter 13 bankruptcy to repay debts. Two other candidates do not have to compete for a seat on the board. Sequanna Taylor, an MPS parent engagement specialist, is unopposed in her bid to represent the 2nd District and replace Rainey. In the 3rd District, Sheldon Wasserman of Milwaukee, a physician and former state representative, is running unopposed to replace Broderick. The six contested races with incumbents are: District 7: Supervisor Michael Mayo Jr. of Milwaukee and Valerie Sauve of Milwaukee. Mayo has served on the board since he won a 1994 special election. Sauve is a retired MPS math teacher. District 9: Supervisor Steve F. Taylor of Franklin and Patti Logsdon of Franklin. Taylor was first elected to the board in 2012. He is a member of the Franklin Common Council. Logsdon is a retired accountant. District 14: Supervisor Jason Haas of Milwaukee and Franz Meyer of Milwaukee. Haas has served on the board since he won a special election in 2011. Meyer, a teacher and mentor with Teach for America-Milwaukee and a former MPS teacher, also has worked as a volunteer community organizer for Common Ground. District 16: Supervisor John F. Weishan Jr. of West Allis and Scott Espeseth of West Allis. Weishan was first elected to the board in 2000. Espeseth is a self-employed business development consultant. District 17: Supervisor Tony Staskunas of West Allis and Timothy J. Johnson of Greenfield. Staskunas, a former state representative, was elected to the board in 2013. Johnson is a custodian for Honda City in Greenfield. District 18: Supervisor Deanna Alexander of Milwaukee is being challenged by Martha R. Collins-De La Rosa of Milwaukee. Alexander was elected to the board in 2012. Collins-De La Rosa is executive director of Wisconsin Jobs Now. Seven incumbents are not facing opposition in their re-election bids. They are: District 1 Supervisor Theodore Lipscomb Sr. of Glendale, the current board chair; District 4 Supervisor Marina Dimitrijevic of Milwaukee's Bay View neighborhood; District 6 Supervisor James Schmitt of Wauwatosa; District 10 Supervisor Supreme Moore Omokunde of Milwaukee; District 12 Supervisor Peggy Romo West of Milwaukee; District 13 Supervisor Willie Johnson Jr. of Milwaukee; and District 15 Supervisor Eddie Cullen of Milwaukee. After the April election, supervisors will be paid an annual salary of $24,295, less than half the current base pay of $50,679. The Milwaukee County Board chair's annual salary will drop from $71,412 to $36,442. Milwaukee County supervisors' terms in office will be reduced from four years to two beginning in April, under a 2013 state law known as Act. 14. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos is vowing to revive a bill to help chidren with chronic seizures in the next session of the Legislature. Credit: Associated Press By of the Madison Frustrated with last week's failure of a bill to help children with chronic seizures, the head of the state Assembly said he's going to push the proposal as soon as possible next session. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) has described himself as a former skeptic who's become a convert to the possibilities of so-called CBD oil, a strictly controlled drug sometimes used to treat severely epileptic children with few other medical options. A bill to make it easier for parents to obtain CBD oil passed the Assembly last session but, to the surprise of supporters like Vos, was blocked in the Senate last week by three Republicans. Vos said he won't accept that outcome next year if he remains the leader of the Assembly majority. "If that happens, I am going to do everything in my power to make sure this passes as one of our first bills in January," Vos said in an interview. Another of the bill's key backers agreed. "This is going to be ready to go right out of the chute (in January)," said Sen. Van Wanggaard (R-Racine), who pledged to overcome the obstacles to the bill next session. "It will not happen to me again." Cannabis oil is a byproduct of marijuana that proponents say may reduce seizures in children who suffer from scores of them in a single day. Under normal circumstances, the oil won't make users high because it's extremely low in THC, the active ingredient in a joint. The National Conference of State Legislatures lists 17 states as having passed measures to allow or condone limited use of CBD products low in THC. At the federal level, the move to legalize CBD for medical use has supporters like Speaker Paul Ryan of the U.S. House of Representatives. But CBD is still illegal in most circumstances in Wisconsin and as a treatment it remains controversial. Legislators and Gov. Scott Walker approved legislation in 2014 to allow families to obtain cannabidiol oil, known by the acronym CBD, in certain limited cases to treat patients. But the conditions have proved so restrictive that families and physicians have been unable to make use of it. AB 228 was aimed at expanding that access, but the bill's opponents managed to block it last week even though it appeared that as many as 30 of the Senate's 33 senators would have voted for it if given the chance. That was deeply frustrating to Sally Schaeffer of Burlington, whose daughter Lydia suffered from seizures in her sleep and who died in 2014 at age 7 from her profound medical challenges. Schaeffer, who has lobbied elected officials like Vos, Wanggaard and Ryan on the issue, has continued to fight to make CBD treatment available for other families even though it came too late for her daughter. Schaeffer talked Monday about the anguish she and her husband still feel and the struggles they have to explain Lydia's death to her 5-year-old brother, who now worries about losing his mother and other family members. "I come home every day and I can't believe she's gone," said Schaeffer. AB 228 passed the Assembly in February on a voice vote, which is normally used for noncontroversial legislation. But in the Senate it still faces substantial obstacles. Three Republicans Senate President Mary Lazich of New Berlin and Sens. Duey Stroebel of Cedarburg and Leah Vukmir of Wauwatosa have firmly opposed the bill out of concerns that include a fear it could lead to the legalization of marijuana in Wisconsin. Lazich said Monday that she wasn't running for re-election but Vukmir and Stroebel will likely remain as opponents. Vukmir, a nurse by training, said that CBD oil hasn't been approved by the federal Food and Drug Administration and that policy should be "driven by facts not emotion." "I support scientific study and proper protocols as a means for providing patients with clinically observed answers. My opposition stems from not understanding why a drug derived from marijuana should circumvent the FDA process which helps ensure safety, a process that all other prescription drugs must go through," Vukmir said in a statement. The Wisconsin Medical Society also opposed AB 228, as did several law enforcement groups. Schaeffer and other supporters of the bill say that leaves desperate families with no options. She asked why CBD is kept effectively off limits when Lydia was allowed to try certain drugs for her seizures that were "off label," or being used for an unapproved age group or purpose. Vos said he believes that patients and families deserved a chance to decide for themselves. "If you don't help everybody, let them try," Vos said. "Give them a chance." SHARE By of the Madison Wisconsin Attorney General Brad Schimel asked the U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday to reinstate a requirement that doctors who provide abortion have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals a regulation that has been blocked by lower courts as unconstitutional. The filing came three weeks after the nation's high court heard arguments over a Texas law that requires admitting privileges and places other restrictions on abortion that critics say would force the closure of three-quarters of Texas' abortion clinics. The two abortion cases come at a time when the Supreme Court is short one justice because of the death of Justice Antonin Scalia and a standoff between President Barack Obama and Republican senators over naming a replacement this year. That raises the prospect of 4-4 splits on abortion. If that were to happen in the Texas case, an appeals court decision upholding the abortion regulations would go into effect. But a 4-4 split in the Wisconsin case would have the opposite result because a different appeals court has ruled Wisconsin's admitting privilege law violates the constitutional right to abortion. Other outcomes are possible. The Supreme Court could send the Texas case back to lower courts to develop a fuller record. Or the high court could avoid a deadlock and issue a decision that definitively said what kind of abortion regulations are permissible. If the Supreme Court resolves the Texas case, it would likely make the Wisconsin case moot. First, the justices must decide whether to take the Wisconsin case. GOP Gov. Scott Walker and Republicans in charge of the Legislature in 2013 approved the law, which required doctors who perform abortions to have admitting privileges at hospitals within 30 miles of where the procedure is performed. They said the provision was aimed at patient safety. The state's two abortion providers, Planned Parenthood of Wisconsin and Affiliated Medical Services, challenged the law, contending it would force Affiliated's clinic in Milwaukee to close because doctors there couldn't get admitting privileges. U.S. District Judge William Conley in Madison blocked the law almost immediately and in 2015 ruled it was unconstitutional. The 7th Circuit Court of Appeals in Chicago ruled 2-1 in November that the law was unconstitutional. The author of the opinion, Judge Richard Posner, said the law was designed to shut down clinics, not protect women's health. Admitting privileges allow doctors to admit patients to a hospital and treat them there, but privileges are not needed to get a patient into a hospital in emergencies. The state does not require admitting privileges for doctors who perform other outpatient services, including those that have much higher complication rates than abortion, Posner noted in his decision last year. Doctors at Planned Parenthood's clinics have admitting privileges at nearby hospitals. They work at the clinics part time and were able to secure privileges because of the separate practices they have. But Affiliated's doctors work full time at their clinic and cannot get privileges because they don't routinely practice hospital procedures. Inflation is a top issue for voters, but politicians' solutions could make things worse Voters have shifted their top priority from abortion to their wallets, but candidates are limited in what they can do about rising prices. Mark Hoffman A 44-year-old father of five recounts the seven months of torture he endured at the hands of the Syrian government while speaking with social worker Stacey Volkman (foreground) and Syrian-born pediatric neurologist Tarif Bakdash at the Zaatari refuge camp. Zaatari refugee camp, Jordan Photojournalists consider a camera a tool; sometimes they can be a shield or a filter. A camera in the right hands can illuminate a wrong that needs to be righted. Frequently those images are of emotionally charged situations. I was alerted to a man who had been whisked from the streets of Damascus without his family knowing his whereabouts and then was tortured by the Syrian regime for seven months because he was born in city that was considered disloyal to the government. After being treated for scabies, the burly man entered the small box of a room to speak with social worker Stacey Volkman with group leader and Syrian-born pediatric neurologist Tarif Bakdash as an interpreter. He wept as he embraced and kissed us before sitting down and telling his story. He gave me permission to make a photo I knew we needed to get to heart of the story we are covering. The camera was my shield today when I was a few feet from him making photos as he wept and recounted what happened to him in a Syrian prison. This sounds horrible, but while I am doing this I dont really hear or feel what he is saying; Im just concentrating on capturing a moment. I was given an opportunity to make a photo that not only will draw readers into reporter Mark Johnsons story, but one that I hope will change hearts and minds of how people think about an estimated nine million Syrian refugees. Reporter's Notebook Previous Entry Next Entry Follow along with photos, videos and notes from reporter Mark Johnson and photojournalist Mark Hoffman on our Follow along with photos, videos and notes from reporter Mark Johnson and photojournalist Mark Hoffman on our Journey to Jordan page. Reflecting on it now, I am moved by what I have seen and heard. Ill be honest, if the roles were reversed I dont think I would have said yes. Maybe he knows something I dont. I hope that when this story is published he feels I did right by him of making and using one of those images. READ MORE International reporting for this project is supported by a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting. twitter.com/MJSphotog mhoffman@journalsentinel.com SHARE By A winter storm warning has been issued for the entire mid section of Wisconsin, where from 6 to 10 inches of snow is possible Wednesday and Thursday, according to the National Weather Service in Sullivan. The warning will be in effect from 7 p.m. Wednesday until 1 p.m. Thursday. A winter storm watch is in effect for the northern section of southern Wisconsin, from Grant to Washington counties, where 6 to 10 inches of snow are also possible but less likely, according to the weather service. The watch will be in effect from Wednesday evening until Thursday afternoon. In Milwaukee which is not in the areas included in the warning or watch rain, fog and high winds are likely Wednesday and Thursday, according to the weather service. Up to a half-inch of rain is possible in Milwaukee on Wednesday and another three quarters of an inch Thursday, along with wind gusts from the northeast as high as 30 mph, according to the weather service. The rain is expected to turn into snow Thursday afternoon. now accumulations of less than a half-inch are expected in Milwaukee through Thursday night, according to the weather service forecast. High temperatures in Milwaukee are expected to be in the upper 30s Wednesday. Reddit Email 20 Shares By Juan Cole | (Informed Comment) | I once heard Hillary Clinton give her AIPAC speech at a university. It doesnt change much, just as US policy toward the Mideast doesnt change much. She was still a senator then. Much of the audience was Middle East experts, who could barely keep themselves from gagging. Clinton used her speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee meeting, the gathering of some of the most powerful lobbyists in Washington, to lambaste Donald Trump for saying hed try to be neutral in heading up negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Donald Trump should be lambasted. He is wrong on everything most of every day. But, like a clock, he is right twice a day and this a point on which he is correct. The US cannot be an honest broker in the Mideast conflict if it is more Israeli than the Israelis, which it typically is. Palestinian negotiators over the years complained that theyd get an Israeli proposal, then go to the US to tweak it, and get back the same proposal from Dennis Ross or some other American partisan of Israel who had been put in a position to shape negotiations on the American side. For Clinton to imply that Trump, by saying he wanted to be neutral in negotiations, was indicating that he would compromise on Israeli security is just dishonest. Im not sure what conventional security threats Israel has. Lebanon is weak and a mess. Syria is in complete disarray. Jordan and Egypt have peace treaties with Israel. Those are the immediate neighbors. Libya has fallen apart. Tunisia doesnt care and anyway is also small and weak. Turkey and Israel have their tensions, but do a great deal of business, including military business, with each other. Iraq is in disarray. Iran is so distant as to pose no conventional threat, and does not have nuclear weapons, which Israel does. So what is the threat to Israeli security Clinton is talking about? It is that Palestinian children might not have to live under Occupation. Clinton perpetuates the Israeli propaganda talking point that they are the ones who are being oppressed, and that even-handed moves toward peace threaten their security, which is alleged to be precarious. This propaganda is so successful that most Americans probably do not know that Israel, a country of 8 million, is occupying 4.5 million stateless Palestinians. The collapse of the peace process and the current Apartheid in a Palestine wholly occupied by the foreign Israeli military is not the fault of the Palestinians, who are weak, and stateless and powerless. No written-down deal has ever been offered them but Oslo, and current PM Netanyahu publicly and openly vowed to destroy Oslo, which he has. By now he has reneged on every single provision of the commitments Israel made in the 1990s. The US has actively enabled the continued imprisonment of the Palestinian people in the iron cage of statelessness. As [Earl Warren] observed, citizenship is the right to have rights. Palestinians have been actively prevented from being citizens of a state, and so they have no right to have rights. Any accord conducted with them can be broken at will by the powerful, nuclear-armed Israeli state, and has been. The only brake on this oppression of a whole people would be the UN Security Council, which is keenly aware of this historic and interminable set of wrongs. But the US vetoes all the resolutions passed by the UNSC (including ones championed by our allies, Britain and France). Now that Sec. Clinton has so forcefully rejected the whole idea that the US could ever be even-handed toward the Palestinians, shouldnt she at least recuse herself at the UN Security Council on this issue? Another plank of her platform was combating peoples right to decline to buy Israeli-made goods, to decline to have their stocks in companies that enable the Occupation, and to seek sanctions on Israel for breaking the Geneva Conventions by illegally flooding its own citizens onto Palestinian lands. It is extremely ominous to have someone who is likely the next POTUS declare against Americans rights as enumerated in the Bill of Rights. I myself dont agree with boycotting Israel proper, but I would have in good conscience to boycott squatter institutions on the West Bank. But it is absurd to interfere with other peoples decisions on whether to buy, e.g., wine made by Israeli squatters in Syrias Golan. She went on to say: As we gather here, three evolving threats Irans continued aggression, a rising tide of extremism across a wide arc of instability, and the growing effort to de-legitimize Israel on the world stage are converging to make the U.S.-Israel alliance more indispensable than ever. Well, Iran is stronger in the region because it picked up Iraq as an ally after Clinton voted to overthrow the Sunni government there. It is kind of rich for her to go around invading other countries illegally and then accuse Iran of aggression. (Irans 2500 spec ops personnel in Syria were there at the behest of a long-standing government in control of 75% of the country, so that cant be equated with sending in 120,000 troops to overthrow a foreign government. I dont like either regime, but I reject this inevitable comeback as apples and oranges). Clinton has just joined the Republican field in pledging to squander and throw away the diplomatic opening President Obama made with Tehran (she denies, in fact, that there even is a diplomatic opening). She does support the UNSC nuclear deal, but says relations with Iran go no further than that. Since Trump says he just wants to tweak that deal, her position on Iran is probably more hawkish than his. Likewise, much of the rising tide of extremism comes from the overthrow of the Iraqi state and the dissolution of the Iraqi army. As for Syria, it was in part undermined by the US economic boycott on it via the 2003 Syria accountability act. This bill was co-sponsored by . . . Hillary Clinton. And, it is never clear with the inside-the-beltway crowd who the extremists are. It is still not clear that she repudiates hard line Salafi Jihadi groups in Syria allied de facto with al-Qaeda. You cant get stability by overthrowing governments, squeezing governments, and continuing to support groups that go extremist after they go extremist. That is, many of the things Clinton is complaining about in the Middle East are the result of her policies (mostly the same as AIPAC policies). And when the West Bank explodes in hot civil war, that will be a result of her policies, too. And of course among the most deadly extremists are the Israeli squatters on Palestinian land in the Palestinian West Bank. They are armed and dangerous, routinely shoot at innocent Palestinians in a low-intensity civil war, and routinely invade and usurp Palestinian property. They are building vast colonies from which Palestinian residents are excluded, in a mindless replication of the policies of White South Africa in the 1980s. And every time they shoot a Palestinian or steal her home, it is front page news in the Muslim world, and sentiments like those of Sec. Clinton are remembered, fanning hatred against the US. If the Israeli squatters were admirable people doing something admirable, then it would be worthwhile standing up for them even if it increased anti-US terrorism. But they are just criminals, openly breaking every tenet of international law. So standing up for them is morally wrong as well as, policy-wise, completely wrong-headed. In the US, the Israel lobbies do what they can to have anyone who is critical of the squatters blackballed, smeared and marginalized, using techniques redolent of those of cults. Clinton has just announced a diction and a set of policies toward the Middle East that differ in no particular from those of far right Israeli prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu. - Related video: AFP: Hillary Clinton addresses AIPAC lobby annual meeting Reddit Email 0 Shares By Frud Bezhan | ( RFE/RL ) | Saudi Arabia made a splash when it announced the formation of a 34-country "Islamic" alliance against terrorism in December and followed it up with a massive military exercise that ended last week. The mainly Sunni Muslim coalition which includes regional power and NATO-member Turkey, the region's most populous state in Egypt, and nuclear-armed Pakistan appears formidable. But Riyadh's "Islamic Military Alliance" is missing Muslim powerhouses Indonesia and Iran, and questions remain about the makeup and motives of the coalition. High-Profile Omissions The exclusion of Shi'ite-dominated Iran and Iraq, and their ally Syria, has fueled suspicions that Riyadh is not motivated by the desire to combat terrorism. "The Saudis are motivated by their internal security and grip on power as well as a sectarian and geopolitical rivalry with Iran," says Hayder al-Khoei, an associate fellow at Chatham House, London. Tensions have escalated between Saudi Arabia and Iran in recent months particularly in January, when Iranian protesters ransacked the Saudi Embassy in Tehran and set fires inside after Saudi authorities executed an outspoken Shi'ite cleric. Riyadh and Tehran also back opposite sides in ongoing wars in Syria and Yemen. Khoei says it is unclear how the coalition would tackle Islamic State (IS) extremists in Iraq and Syria without the agreement of those governments. Afghanistan and Indonesia have both been invited to join the alliance but have not yet accepted. Ten other countries have been invited to join the alliance but have been dragging their feet. Unlikely Torch-Bearer? The notion that Saudi Arabia a country that has been widely accused of exporting Islamic radicalism around the world could lead a fight against extremism strikes some analysts as deeply ironic. "In order to really fight terrorism, the Saudis must declare war against themselves and end the support it has been giving to radical groups across the world," says Khoei of Chatham House. Micah Zenko, a senior fellow at the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations, says that a Saudi-led coalition fighting terrorism is like a "[drug] cartel leading a counternarcotics campaign." Riyadh has come under mounting international pressure over its air campaign against Iran-supported Huthi rebels in Yemen, which is widely seen as a sectarian-driven proxy war with Tehran. Saudi Arabia has also been criticized for its failure to go after clerics in the kingdom that spread radical Wahhabism. On top of that, some critics allege that Riyadh supports the IS extremist group. And while some of the biggest Muslim countries are outside the "Islamic" alliance, some of its members do not have Muslim majorities. For example, around 80 percent of the West African state of Gabon's population is Christian. In Benin, the biggest religion is Roman Catholicism, while the majority of people in Togo hold indigenous beliefs. All these countries, however, do have sizable Muslim minorities. Caught Unawares When Riyadh announced the military alliance on December 15, several of the countries listed as joining or invited seemed surprised. Indonesia's Foreign Ministry said it had been invited to join a "center to coordinate against extremism and terrorism," not a military alliance. Lebanon's Foreign Ministry denied having knowledge of Saudi Arabia's creation of an Islamic antiterrorism coalition. Pakistani Foreign Secretary Aizaz Chaudhry was quoted in the daily newspaper Dawn as saying he had been surprised to read of Islamabad's inclusion. Pakistan, which has strong historical ties with Riyadh, later expressed support if not much visible enthusiasm for the coalition. Pakistan's role will be limited to providing training to troops from the participating countries, sharing intelligence on terrorist groups, and helping member states create counter-radicalization initiatives. Frud Bezhan covers Afghanistan and the broader South Asia and Middle East region. Send story tips to bezhanf@rferl.org. Via RFE/RL . Copyright (c) 2015. RFE/RL, Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut Ave NW, Ste 400, Washington DC 20036. Related video added by Juan Cole: Aljazeera English from last winter: Saudi Arabia announces new Muslim anti-terrorism coalition Reddit Email 0 Shares Maan News Agency | RAMALLAH (Maan) Palestinian Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah on Sunday slammed the recent Israeli decision to ban Palestinian food products from entering Jerusalem as racist. Israel is moving forward with attempts to isolate Jerusalem from its surroundings and erase its identity, Hamdallah said during an opening of a Palestinian food exhibition at an al-Bireh municipality building near Ramallah in the central occupied West Bank. h/t Maan Images Hamdallah described the recent decision by Israeli authorities to deny the trucks of five Palestinian food production companies from entering Israel as an oppressive political decision breaching all commercial agreements and protocols regulating Palestinian and Israeli economic relations. Through this decision, Israel is attempting to wipe out our national economy and suppress its development, the Palestinian Authority official said. Hamdallah added that the racist decision would have devastating consequences for the Palestinian economy, and urged the international community to put pressure on Israel to adhere to its commercial agreements with the PA. The PM threatened to respond by banning Israeli products from entering the Palestinian market. Hamdallah maintained that protecting Palestinian national products is a top priority on his governments agenda. We have launched a national export strategy, created a council for Palestinian exports, and tried our best to ban the entry of products from Israeli settlements in our markets. The prime minister pointed to successes in strengthening local production of palms and dates for international export as instrumental in preventing Israeli settlement products from being smuggled into the occupied Palestinian territory. Fadi Abu Hilweh, the director of marketing for Hamoda company one of the companies affected by the decision told Maan at a protest against the ban that about 50 percent of the five companies production goes to Palestinian consumers in occupied East Jerusalem and Palestinian communities in Israel. If this ban continues, he said, the companies could lose some 1.2 billion shekels ($309.5 million) a year. According to the Paris Protocols, an agreement signed in 1995 between the PLO and Israel, bilateral trade agreements between Israel and other parties are considered valid in the occupied West Bank, however Israel prevents the import of many Palestinian products to the Israeli market. A poll by the the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research conducted in June 2015 reported that the overwhelming majority of those interviewed in the West Bank and Gaza Strip 86 percent said they supported the campaign to boycott Israeli products. Via Maan News Agency Reddit Email 0 Shares TeleSur \ The cases, brought to the court by several legal and activist groups, include wide-ranging charges of war crimes against Israel[i officials]. A Palestinian delegation presented documents to the International Criminal Court to try Israel[i officials] and possibly Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for war crimes. The delegation, acting on behalf of the Palestinian Liberation Organization and the Palestinian Authority, recounted the history of Israeli settlements and presented cases against Israeli operations in Hebron and East Jerusalem. Its claims spanned from water deprivation to environmental damage to abuse of Palestinian prisoners. The Dawabsha family, killed in their sleep during a firebombing, and Mohammed Abu Khdeir, a teenager kidnapped and burned alive, were brought up as specific cases of war crimes. Meetings happened for the first time in Amman, Jordan, from Saturday until Monday and will result in a definitive decision on four cases that were already filed with the ICC. If ICC Prosecutor Fatou Bensouda finds that there is enough evidence to open an investigation, the process the most far-reaching incrimination of Israel for war crimes could last years. Palestine joined the ICC in January 2015, despite pressure by Israel and the United States neither a signatory to the court to block it. One of the legal groups presenting the documents, Al-Haq, received multiple phone threats this month against its staff. The ICC was forced in November to review its decision on the Mavi Marmara, a flotilla carrying Turkish activists that was shot at on its way to Gaza, after Bensouda closed the case in 2014. Via TeleSur Related video added by Juan Cole Democracy Now! from last summer After Palestine Overcomes U.S.-Israeli Pressure and Joins ICC, Will Gazas Victims See Justice? March 22, 2016 / TheNewswire / New Carolin Gold Corp. (the "Company" or "New Carolin") (TSXV: LAD) is pleased to announce it has completed an Option agreement with Crucible Resources Ltd (Crucible) in respect to acquiring mining claims adjoining the Company's Ladner Gold Project (the Project). The Company entered into a previous option agreement in 2012 with Crucible in respect to seventeen (17) mining claims and revisions to that agreement have resulted in a new Option, which now consists of a total of twenty (20) claims, covering an area of 30 sq km. These claims are situated in the southern portion of the Project below the Coquihalla Hwy. Three (3) of the new Crucible claims adjoin a prospective new gold zone which has been traced to a length of approx. 1 kilometer to date, where a sampling program was carried out in the 1980's. Reported soil samples from this historic program ranged between 20 and 1000 ppm, with one sample of 5900 ppm (close to 6 g/t). It has been noted that gold returns of 20-50 ppm are considered high in soils and this zone has wide areas with numerous samples between 100-1000 ppm. The assay of 5900 ppm and other sporadic higher grade samples reported are unusual in soils and we note this may indicate placer-type gold particles in the soil cover. The Company intends to engage Crucible to carry out a new sampling program in 2016 to confirm historic sample locations and assay results, and expand the sampling program on the three new claims with the expectation of extending the gold zone and locating the source. Very little exploration work has been carried out on the lower 72 square kilometer section of the Project to date, which includes the former high grade Emancipation Mine and one of the Company's other prospective gold zones. The Company plans to step up efforts this year and explore lower claim zones where gold on surface is present. The designated area with elevated gold values spread consistently over a wide area is of immediate interest and will be the focus of further exploration on the lower claim block. Further details will be provided in this regard when exploration plans are finalized. Please note that gold values mentioned are based on historical reports and have not been verified by the Company. We also note that the initial option agreement required that the Company make certain annual payments to Crucible and expend $250,000 over the initial 5-year option period. Because of poor resource market conditions the past several years Crucible did not hold the Company to the financial conditions in the 2012 option and instead agreed to a settlement and provided the Company with its full support on the newly completed Option agreement. Relevant Terms of the new Crucible Option Agreement: The Company is to pay Crucible $32,000 in respect to settlement and to secure the new Option; The Option period is 5 (five) years; The Company may now acquire all twenty (20) claims for a total of $50,000, at anytime; Funds expended on exploration will be factored into the $50,000 acquisition purchase price; Crucible retains a 2% NSR. The Company may purchase the first 1% back for $250,000 and the second 1% for $500,000, at any time. Completing the Option Agreement may be subject to regulatory approval. About New Carolin Gold Corp. New Carolin Gold is a Canadian-based junior company focused on the exploration, evaluation and development of a strategic 144 square kilometer contiguous mineral claim property, collectively known as the Ladner Gold Project. The 100% controlled property is located near Hope, BC, in the prospective and under-explored Coquihalla Gold Belt, which is host to several historic small gold producers including the Carolin Mine, Aurum Mine, Emancipation Mine, Pipestem Mine and numerous high grade gold prospects dating back to 1885. For additional information, please visit the Company's website at www.newcarolingold.com. ON BEHALF OF THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS "Robert L. Thast" President & Chief Executive Officer Phone: 604.542.9458 Cell: 604.220.5031 E-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Web site: www.newcarolingold.com This news release does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of an offer to buy any of the securities in the United States. The securities have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933, as amended (the "U.S. Securities Act") or any state securities laws and may not be offered or sold within the United States or to U.S. Persons unless registered under the U.S. Securities Act and applicable state securities laws or an exemption from such registration is available. 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 the accuracy of this press release. Caution concerning forward-looking information This news release may contain forward-looking statements that are based on the Company's expectations, estimates and projections regarding its business and the economic environment in which it operates. These statements are not guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to control or predict. Therefore, actual outcomes and results may differ materially from those expressed in these forward-looking statements and readers should not place undue reliance on such statements. Statements speak only as of the date on which they are made, and the Company undertakes no obligation to update them publicly to reflect new information or the occurrence of future events or circumstances, unless otherwise required to do so by law. Copyright (c) 2016 TheNewswire - All rights reserved. The Botswana Court of Appeal on Wednesday ruled [judgment, PDF] that the Home Affairs ministrys refusal to register a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights group was unconstitutional as it violated the right to freedom of association. The Botswana High Court had previously ruled in 2014 [JURIST report] that the Lesbians, Gays and Bisexuals of Botswana (LEGABIBO) [advocacy website] could formally register their organization under the Botswana Societies Act. A representative of the Home Affairs ministry argued that registration of the group may encourage members to break anti-homosexuality laws in the country, but the court found [News24 report] that, [t]hat concern or reason for refusal was irrational on the evidence before us[.] The decision was applauded [press release] as a groundbreaking achievement for LGBT rights in Botswana. Recent court rulings in Botswana, Kenya and Zambia illustrate significant progress [JURIST op-ed] in human rights in Africa and in LGBT rights in particular. The Kenya High Court handed down a similar judgment [text] to that of the Botswana High Court in April when three judges rejected subjective moral convictions and asserted fundamental human rights and the rule of law: No matter how strongly held moral and religious beliefs may be, they cannot be a basis for limiting rights. In May, the Zambian High Court upheld the acquittal [text, PDF] of a human rights activist, Paul Kasonkomona, and distinguished between soliciting someone to engage in same-sex sexual acts, a criminal offense in Zambia, and advocating for peoples rights. Simone Gbagbo, formerly the Ivory Coast first lady will be tried for crimes [AFP report] against humanity on April 25, her lawyer said Friday. Gbagbo was already sentenced to 20 years in jail for attacking state authority, which occurred following the countrys debated 2010 elections. The International Criminal Court (ICC) [official website] in The Hague has accused Gbagbo of having a significant role in the post-election violence, which resulted in 3,000 deaths. The Ivory Coast government refused to turn Gbagbo over to the ICC, instead insisting that their own courts can effectively dispense justice. The former Ivory Coast president Laurent Gbagbo pleaded not guilty in January to charges of crimes against humanity at the start of his trial at the ICC. Laurent Gbagbo faces four charges of crimes against humanity for murder, attempted murder, rape and persecution during a wave of post-election violence between December 2010 and April 2011. He is charged along with [JURIST report] former militia leader Charles Ble Goude, who also denies the charges. This is the first time [BBC report] the ICC has tried a former head of state. [JURIST] The International Criminal Court (ICC) [official website] on Monday declared unanimously [judgment, PDF] that ex-Congolese military leader Jean-Pierre Bemba is guilty of two counts of crimes against humanity and three counts of war crimes for his role in the armed conflict in the Central African Republic (CAR) in 2002 and 2003. The case [ICC press release] of The Prosecutor v. Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo [ICC case materials] has lasted almost eight years, following Bembas arrest by Belgian authorities in 2008. Bemba [BBC profile] was on trial before the ICC for war crimes committed in CAR during his time as the president and commander-in-chief of the Movement for the Liberation of Congo (MLC) [CRS backgrounder, PDF], a rebel group with operations in the north of the country during the second Congo war. The ICC found Bemba guilty of rape, murder and pillage, and the ICC verdict condemned the widespread use of sexual violence as a means of war. The UN High Commissioner for Human Rights [official website], Zeid Raad Al Hussein, welcomed the judgment [press release], stating the ruling sends an important message across the world that international justice will finally prevail, even in cases where civilians with supervisory, or command, responsibility are accused of crimes committed in a country other than their own. The Bemba [JURIST news archive] case has been ongoing before the ICC since 2008. In September Bemba pleaded not guilty to charges of interfering with the administration of justice after Bemba and four members of his legal team were ordered to stand trial [JURIST reports] on those charges. In October 2014 ICC Trial Chamber III delayed the closing statements [JURIST report] for the case against Bemba. The closing statements were delayed so that the Chamber may hear additional witness testimony after the defense requested to testify about alleged collusion between prosecution witnesses. Also that month, the ICC reviewed the detention status of four suspects motu proprio and ordered their interim release [JURIST report] in a case pending before the ICC related to the detention of Bemba. The four suspects all citizens of the Congo are named Aime Kilolo Musamba, Jean-Jacques Mangenda Kabongo, Fidele Babala Wandu and Narcisse Arido. In November 2013, four persons were arrested on charges of falsifying evidence [JURIST report] in connection with the trial of Jean-Pierre Bemba Bembas defense lawyers opened their case before the ICC in August 2012. [JURIST] After a two-day reading of the verdict, the Donetsk municipal court in southern Russia on Tuesday sentenced a Ukrainian pilot to 22 years in prison for complicity to murder two Russian journalists and illegal border crossing. Nadezhda Savchenko has been charged with complicity in the killing of two journalists [Moscow Times report], with prosecutors accusing her of providing coordinates to the Ukrainian army for an attack in eastern Ukraine in 2014. According to her lawyers, the case against Savchenko was a show trial, and they argue that call log data from her cell phone disproves the charges against Savchenko [Reuters report]. Savchenko has protested her innocence, calling the proceedings against her unjust and saying that she was a Ukrainian officer who had a right to defend her country. Earlier this month, Savchenko threatened a hunger strike [JURIST report] as she continued to vocalize strong opposition towards the trial proceedings. Both rights groups and Western politicians have called for the release of the pilot, who was named a member of Ukraines parliament [DW report] after her arrest. Savchenkos lawyer, Mark Feygin, has called her a prisoner of war and accused Russia of kidnapping and smuggling her across the border to try her in June 2014. The prosecution originally requested a 23-year sentence if Savchenko was found guilty. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko [BBC profile] announced that Ukraine will never recognize the verdict [BBC report], and the country is considering a prisoner exchange of Savchenko for two Russian soldiers. Russia and Ukraine have been in conflict since the annexation of Crimea [JURIST backgrounder] in March 2014. Last month Russia filed suit [JURIST report] against Ukraine over Ukraines default on $3 billion in bonds. A Ukrainian official said in January that the nation plans to sue Russia [JURIST report] in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) [official website] on claims of financing terrorism. In December the UN issues a report about serious human rights concerns [JURIST report] that persist in Ukraine. In August a Russian military court sentenced [JURIST report] two Ukrainian activists to substantial jail time for the charge of conspiring to commit terror attacks. Last March the EU committed to stand by its policy of refusing to recognize Crimeas annexation [JURIST report]. Last February Russian liberal political activist Boris Nemtsov was shot in the back four times [BBC report] in the middle of busy downtown Moscow. Nemtsov was openly politically opposed to Russias annexation of Crimea and its role in Ukraine. [JURIST] The US Supreme Court [official website] heard oral arguments [day call, PDF] in two cases on Monday. In Wittman v. Personhuballah [transcript, PDF] the court heard arguments [SCOTUSblog backgrounder] regarding an election district plan for Virginias Third Congressional District. This district was altered in 2012 in a manner that increased the already majority-African American population, and the district court found the plan unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment. This is the second time the case has come before the Supreme Court, as the court previously remanded the case back to the US Court for the Eastern District of Virginia [official website] for reconsideration in light of its then-recent decision in Alabama Legislative Black Caucus v. Alabama [opinion, PDF; JURIST report], which held that courts must decide whether race predominated over nonracial considerations when planning districts. The district court again found the plan unconstitutional [opinion, PDF] in June. The Supreme Court now must decide whether the lower court erred in its holding as it never found that race rather than politics predominates in District 3 and never required the plaintiffs to prove the legislature could have changed the districting plan in another way that would have achieved more racial balance. In RJR Nabisco, Inc. v. The European Community [transcript, PDF] the court heard arguments [SCOTUSblog backgrounder] on whether the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (RICO) [text] applies extraterritorially. The European Community (EC) and 26 of its member states brought this suit claiming that Russian and Colombian organized crime rings smuggled drugs into Europe, then laundered the profits into a scheme that included the sale of RJR Nabisco cigarettes. RJR executives allegedly bribed border agents in South America and wired the cigarette payments into accounts in the US. The EC suffered injury in this scheme in the form of lost tax revenue and lost profits from state-owned tobacco businesses. The court must determine whether RICO rebuts the presumption against territoriality, which says that federal laws only apply within the US unless Congress clearly expressed a contrary intent. The US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit [official website] reversed [opinion, PDF] the district courts decision to dismiss the suit. Justice Sonia Sotomayor will not take part in this case, and the 7-justice court will not face the possibility of a deadlock as was the circumstance with every other case arising after the death of Justice Antonin Scalia [JURIST report]. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan [official website] on Sunday urged the prosecution of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in the International Criminal Court (ICC) [official website]. Speaking on a live broadcast on the TRT [media website] state news network, Erdogan called for Assad to be charged with state terrorism [AA report], claiming that the Syrian president is responsible for the death of 500,000 people. The Turkish president spoke out in anger, questioning how Assad can receive red carpet treatment in Russia while killing his own people with IED barrel bombs. The Syrian Civil War [JURIST backgrounder] has been ongoing since 2011 when opposition groups first began protesting the Assad regime, and the increasingly bloody nature of the conflict has put pressure on the international community to intervene. Earlier in March Amnesty International reported [JURIST report] that Russian and Syrian armed forces are deliberately attacking hospitals and other medical facilities as part of a military strategy to clear the way to northern Aleppo. Just prior, the US House Foreign Affairs Committee passed two resolutions calling for an international tribunal in the Middle East to address [JURIST report] the alleged war crimes committed by the government of Syria and its allies, specifically Russia and Iran. [JURIST] UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon and UN High Commissioner Zeid Raad Al Hussein [official profiles] on Friday expressed concern [statement, text] over increased violence and rights violations in Burundi, and called for an inclusive political dialogue to end the 11-year struggle. Speaking to the council about his trip to Burundi last month, the Secretary General stated, I cannot stress enough the profound humanitarian consequences that political unrest, violence and impunity carry for the population. Addressing the UN Security Council, the UN officials laid out a plan for the East African Community (EAC), the African Union (AU) [official websites] and the UN to work together as mediators, and called on the Burundi government to summon the necessary courage and confidence to open the political process. Violence in Burundi began in the wake of President Pierre Nkurunzizas announcement that he would seek a third term of office, which he was voted into [JURIST report] in July. In January, the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights released a report stating that Burundian authorities barred entry into Burundi to independent rights experts dispatched by the UN Human Rights Council to investigate violations in the nation. Also in January, Zeid Raad Al Hussein warned [JURIST report] of increasing violence in Burundi. In December, the UN Human Rights Council approved [JURIST report] a resolution to dispatch experts to investigate human rights violations in Burundi, condemning violence in the country, use of excessive force by officials and restrictions on freedoms. In November the UN Security Council unanimously adopted [JURIST report] a resolution condemning the political violence and killings currently afflicting Burundi. [JURIST] The UN Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief Heiner Bielefeld called [statement] Tuesday on Denmark to be more inclusive to all of its citizens [press release]. The Special Rapporteur stated, the Government has to play a leading role in further developing a fair and inclusive Danish society, in which members of religious communities, as well as secular people, can likewise feel at home. The Special Rapporteur, although acknowledging the countrys progress, stated that the government needs to lead by example by halting its reference to Muslims as extremist or terrorists in the state. He stressed that the governments actions of giving special privileges to certain groups has done nothing but create inequality for religious minorities in the state. Danish lawmakers recently faced backlash for approving a controversial bill that will allow authorities to seize assets [JURIST report] from immigrants seeking asylum in order to cover their expenses. Under the law, police will be allowed to search and seize immigrants cash or belongings valued over 10,000 kroner (USD $1,450). Several human rights organizations have criticized the law [Al Jazeera report], likening it to the seizure of valuable belongings by Nazi forces during World War II. However, lawmakers have defended the law stating that it aligns with the welfare model of Denmark. NEWSLETTER Sign up Tick the boxes of the newsletters you would like to receive. Just Drinks Daily News The top stories of the day delivered to you every weekday. Just Drinks Weekly News A weekly roundup of the latest news and analysis, sent every Monday. Just Drinks Magazine The industry's most comprehensive news and information delivered every quarter by Evangelos Areteos Together with the photographer Eleni Papadopoulou, we spent six days following refugees from Turkey to Idomeni, northern Greece, through Lesvos, Piraeus and Athens for the cypriot daily POLITIS. (All photos are courtesy of Eleni Papadopoulou) What we lived and what we saw was a great lesson of humanity and strength but also a painful experience of suffering. The texts and the photos are just one small part of what is really happening WILL OF STEEL The fate of thousands of refugees trapped in Greece and not only in Greece, but also the political and moral heritage of the EU will be decided by the Summit starting tomorrow in Brussels. What we witness is a great bazaar where the politicians of the EU member States try to defend their national positions, to ensure the interests of their countries and to ensure their political survival as the refugee crisis is now an atomic time bomb ticking in the foundations of the systemic parties and politicians across the Old Continent. A key issue for almost all member States, is to keep the refugees away from Europe and to ensure that those who eventually will come to the Old Continent will be the ones chosen by the Sates with their own criteria, ie the most educated, the youngest, the most healthy, the most integrational. Few of those who take part in this big bazaar and who are shaping developments in Brussels are fully aware of the horrific conditions under which refugees live nor of the reasons why they have taken the road of the great escape. Some politicians and high European officials went yesterday only for the first time in Idomeni. European politicians and officials have simply forgotten that refugees are people, that behind this refugees are human lives, human suffering, human hopes. That the EU has forgotten that behind the refugees there are people is indicative of the dramatic moral decline to which the European project has come. The refugee crisis may actually turn to be the death certificate of the European Union a system of human values and principles. At the same time, the fact that the EU considers that an agreement with a third country, which now happens to be the Tayyip Erdogans Turkey, will be able to hold the largest number of refugees outside European territory or ultimately that the sealing of the borders of the Balkan countries will keep refugees in Greece shows how far from reality are the European bureaucracies. Most refugees fleeing their countries because if they stay there not only they face certain death, but many of them face a horrible death. Because in many cases how one dies makes a great difference. All our fellow human beings, those who happened to be born in Syria of the Assads or Saddams Iraq or Talibans Afghanistan and not only these places, have no hope today than to get into Europe. What the European diplomatic and political bureaucracies fail to see (or just refuse to see) is that for the refugees, the borders between Greece and Skopje or the rest of the borders towards central and western Europe, are obstacles that can be circumvented just as all the other obstacles-borders up to Greece. The power of these people is inexhaustible and their will is of steel. And unfortunately, together with the strength and the will, there are networks of smugglers who dont lose the opportunity to take advantage of new situations, new routes. As Amnesty International warned, the agreement that the European Union wants to strike with Turkey is inhumane. Among other things, any border closure will provide new opportunities for smugglers, notes Amnesty International and stresses that the new routes that smugglers will propose to refugees will be even more dangerous and much more expensive. Among the dozens of refugees that we met during our journey from Turkey to Idomeni, through Lesvos, Piraeus and Athens, people with chronic health problems and disabilities are among the most representative examples of this will of steel. Those people who have left their countries and were of limited mobility or who should have access to treatment almost every day will not stop in Idomeni. They will not stop anywhere. In the mud of Idomeni we saw many wheelchairs outside tents. And the last day before we left, we met Bashir. A Kurd from Hasakah in northern Syria where particularly harsh battles are still ongoing between Kurds and the jihadists of the Islamic State, Bashir was born without legs. He left, together with two parents and siblings and their family from Hasakah a month ago. In the hazardous Turkish-Syrian border, Bashir was carried on the shoulders by the other family men. They fell, picked him up, dragged themselves on earth and stones, Bashirs hands had become a large wound. Then by bus from the border to Izmir. And there, Bashir boarded with the help of family men in one of the rubber dinghies that smugglers are pushing into the dark and dangerous waters of the Aegean sea, towards Lesvos. I was a little bit scared in this boat but I had a life jacket and I was with my family, he says with his broken Turkish. When borders in Idomeni closed for good, Bashir was blocked on the Greek side with his oldest sister and her family, the other family members and their parents manage to cross to Macedonia and from there to Germany. I stay here, perhaps the border will open even for a moment and I can cross it. Maybe theres another way, he said and he went to his tent, spinning the wheels of his wheelchair. Bashir was among the refugees tried to cross the Axios river to FYROM, two days ago. Dalal is talking without much comfort in English but we talk without problem. We are in the kidney dialyses unit in the state hospital of Kilkis, about half an hour by car from Idomeni. I need to make three dialyses per week, I do dialysis for the past four years. Dalal is from Latakia, she was a nurse there. She left with her husband and their children and grandchildren before nearly a month. From Latakia to Izmir, passing the dangerous Turkish-Syrian border, she stayed five days without dialysis. When I arrived in Izmir my body was very weak, I wanted to vomit and I could not stand on my feet. She had made a dialysis in Izmir, entered a rubber dinghies of the smugglers, fortunately we made it with the first attempt, she had two dialyses in Lesvos, one in Athens and she came to Idomeni. I will wait here. Something might come up and we might somehow cross the borders to Europe and we ll move on. Next to Dalal, Hassan, a pharmacist from Damascus. He began to do dialysis two months ago in Syria. Yet he too followed with his family the road of the great escape. And he does the roundtrip with the van of the Doctors without Borders from the mud of Idomeni to the hospital of Kilkis to do the dialysis. Waiting for the decisions of the Unions leaders This article by Evangelos Areteos was originally published, along with the photos by Eleni Papadopoulou, on the Roving Correspondents blog on 16 March 2016. It is reproduced here with the authors permission. Other parts have been subsequently published (click on the links): Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5. The destructive power of terrorism lies in its capacity to blow up a hole in the fabric that keeps society together. But todays attacks in Brussels were also, if not primarily, an attempt to jeopardize the rule of law. It is known that the suicidal fundamentalist shahid, or the so-called martyr, is a sort of a saint in the eyes of his supporters. Nevertheless, the terrifying spectacle that he or she creates also helps him or her to acquire a touch of divine (or demonic) nature in the eyes of the Western psyche. A young body is blown to pieces, engulfing innocent bystanders along with it in death, as if not so much by the force of an explosive belt as by the no less explosive force of inner convictions. It is a spectacle as well as a mystery. As an individual, each of us is vulnerable. But as societies, we are stronger than we think, stronger than we feel on a day like this. This is the precise reason behind the terrorists tactics. But clearly, after todays attacks, a shocked resident of Brussels, as well as a consumer of the mass-media news-coverage, would find it difficult to remember that terror is a sign of weakness and not of strength; that its warfare is asymmetric. This is why, at this very moment, the terrorists wilful accomplices, radicals of all kinds, populists and #hellhole prophets gleefully lick their lips in preparation for their own attacks. But whatever we hear from them in the coming days wont be new. They too want to polarize or, even, atomize, and make whole societies act as threatened individuals, succumbing to the deadly charm of their extremist thinking. Hence, now is high time to act as societies. It is the time to uphold the very values that originate in Europe: human rights, equality and the rule of law. In the name of these, we must fight for the inclusion of the disadvantaged in our midst and on our borders, and against bigotry, racism and intolerance. We must do that at least as strongly as we fight terrorism. To put Brussels under lockdown might be comprehensible but, in the long run, it will only maim its very life and contribute nothing to its security, tweeted Eric Corijn, Brussels-based professor and urbanist . Europe as a whole must also put an end to its lockdown-attitude. A Reuters photograph has captured a refugee boy on the Greek-Macedonian border with a handwritten sign in his hands: Sorry for Brussels. The attacks today were a dramatic demonstration that this boy and all Europeans are locked in the very same, bloody struggle. Hence, Europes ethical, symbolic and concrete survival depends not so much on becoming a fortress but on accepting and integrating the refugees. An important way to express solidarity with the victims of terrorism is to show solidarity with the refugees and their plight. Furthermore, I think it would be a simplification to treat the attacks as an act of vengeance for Salah Abdeslams arrest last Friday, as the Belgian intelligence services are reported as suggesting. Suicide also helps terrorists avoid this worlds judicial system. This is an additional efficacy of terrorism since the impossibility to duly process and punish acts of extreme violence leaves the society symbolically traumatized. Thats the reason why Abdeslams arrest was a historic moment: one of the first times if not the first time ever that an Islamist terrorist, a co-organizer of suicide attacks, was taken into custody alive. I was hopeful that the machinery of justice would be able to start its slow rolling. The suspect would appear before judges, the families of the victims, and the general public; he would appear as a human with his story, with all his human ambiguities, secrets and weaknesses. He would have to explain in detail his involvement and, maybe, also why he is still alive after what happened in Paris on November 13. I imagined that, with time, his case would become healthily boring, that the civilizations clumsy, dry-as-dust normality would prevail. That is why, in my opinion, todays violent events were primarily an attack on the rule of law. And thats also why I still hope that the rule of law will be upheld and that Abdeslam will face a fair and just process in court. It seems that todays terrorists, with whom he might have been involved, desperately want to make him a martyr at all cost. I do hope the Belgian or the French courts will remain as emotionally unaffected and as bureaucratic as they possibly can, that they will treat terrorists for what they are criminals. News / National by Stephen Jakes Heal Zimbabwe on 16 March 2016 conducted a public meeting on the National Peace and Reconciliation Commission (NPRC) in Masvingo at Mucheke Community hall.The trust said the meeting was held in partnership with the Community Tolerance Reconciliation and Development Trust (COTRAD)."It was aimed at soliciting public views on the recently gazetted NPRC bill and to enhance people's knowledge so that they participate positively during the public hearings on the bill to be conducted by the Parliamentarian Portfolio Committee on Peace and Security next month," said the trust."The public meeting was attended by 180 members of the public drawn from in and around Masvingo province. Among the panelists were Reverend Zenda from the Christian Voice International Zimbabwe (CVIZ), Zivanai Muzorodzi from COTRAD, Cleto Manjova from Heal Zimbabwe and Advocate Martin Mureki."The trust said various issues were raised by the presenters regarding the content of the bill.In his presentation, Advocate Martin Mureki, unpacked in simple and understandable terms, the NPRC bill.He highlighted that the bill gives too much powers to the Minister in charge and this poses a threat to issues of fairness and transparency in the work of the NPRC. He also noted that clause 8 (7) of the bill gives the Minister power to stop disclosure of evidence by issuing out a certificate."This greatly compromises the independence of the Commission from interference and opens it to manipulation," said the trust.Reverend Zenda from the Christian Voice International Zimbabwe (CVIZ) presented on the important role the church plays in facilitating healing and reconciliation.He noted that the church has a huge responsibility of praying for peace and healing in communities. He further states that the church also offers counselling services, which is vital for healing, reconciliation and forgiveness.Participants were alert to note that the bill falls short in meeting the expectations of the survivor."...I am a survivor of political violence from 2008, where do I get the resources for legal assistance and bus fare to travel to the NPRC offices to report my case? The bill doesn't even mention or make a provision for that....", lamented one participant.This is evident that the bill is silent on decentralising the NPRC services. Ideally it is suppose to establish provincial and districts centres accessible to the most remote survivors of human rights violations."The bill was also dismissed on the grounds that it leaves so much power in the hands of the Minister. Participants also expressed concern over the administrative work of the Commission which gives the Minister power to appoint civil servants to work as secretariat of the Commission. This would eventually create a commission that is not transparent and fair in the discharge of its constitutional obligations," the trust noted.Participants also highlighted the lack of seriousness by the NPRC to raise awareness on the bill and yet intend to get views on the bill from the public."...We are grateful to organizations like Heal Zimbabwe, which have taken it upon themselves to educate us on the bill, this should have been done by the NPRC itself....", said a participant from Mucheke suburb.Other members present also expressed concern over the fact that the NPRC has remained domiciled in Harare and has not set up offices in all provinces for easy access.This has isolated their interactions with the Commission. Participants also questioned why even after the swearing in of the Commissioners to the NPRC, the Commission has remained dysfunctional. They expected the Commission to immediately commence its constitutional obligation of receiving and considering complaints from the public and take necessary action," said the trust.The public meeting come at a time when Government has gazetted the NPRC bill which is a bill that regulates the operations and functions of the NPRC.The public meeting in Masvingo is one among many public meetings on the NPRC that Heal Zimbabwe is conducting in all the provinces of Zimbabwe under the campaign #Participate to Heal Zimbabwe/NPRC."The campaign is meant to gauge the preparedness of the country to spearhead a genuine, transparent and meaningful national healing and reconciliation process. The findings shall feed into the organization's advocacy and lobby strategy with all relevant stakeholders involved in the transitional justice process," said the trust. News / National by Stephen Jakes Matabeleland South MDC-T senator Sithembile Mlotshwa has expressed his dissatisfaction of the capability to discharge duties by some soldiers who have big bellies.Asking the Defence Minister Sydney Sekeramayi in parliament, Mlotshwa said, "My question is directed to the Minister of Defence. Minister, in our Constitution, Section 212, Functions of the Defence Forces; what is the cut off weight for a solder and what is the level of fitness that the soldier has to maintain? Seeing the pot bellies that we see in the soldiers, we are worried that this function they may not be able to perform this function."In his response Sekeramayi said the cut-off age for recruitment is 18-22 years of age."The boys and girls run to just check their physical fitness and on the basis of that, if they have got the right qualifications, they are then inducted into the defence forces. I am not sure how much weight they are supposed to gain per day or per week. To be very honest I am not very sure what the maximum size of the belly should be at any given time," he said."You will understand that some of them are there and they do rigorous work, some are now in offices and it is possible that those who are in offices may have slightly bigger tummies than when they were recruitment. I am not very sure what the standards are in the Senate, but you can also see that in the Senate they are some who are fairly small and some who maybe a little bigger than the others."He said what he just want to emphasize and to assure the nation is that they want members of the defence forces to be as physically fit as required by their duties."That detail I will check, but I do not think it is major issue," he said. News / National by Stephen Jakes Deputy minister of Primary and Secondary Education Paul Mavima has said the government has disbursed some funds for the construction of the satellite schools in the country.Speaking in Parliament Mavima said the Ministry is doing everything possible to ensure that proper infrastructure is put up at all satellite schools in the resettlement areas throughout the country.He said through the Ministry's initiative, almost all schools in resettlement areas are getting school improvement grants every year, whose main purpose is to provide teaching and learning materials."The first five schools on the list were all given US$6 500 each in 2015 for them to use towards school infrastructure development. However, it has been established that Rhovic Primary School is the same as Lukuluba Primary School, which also benefited from the School Improvement Grant; it is only that the names are used interchangeably. Woodlands Primary School, which is mistakenly stated as Woodend Primary School was given US$3000 since it is an already established school," he said. "Since all the listed schools are likely to qualify again for the same funding, they will continue to benefit and it is up to the communities to consider their priorities, whether it is cement or roofing material that they need first. They are most likely to get more funding in 2016."He said satellite schools are also being prioritised under the Public Sector Investment Programme (PSIP) since they have the greatest need in terms of infrastructure development."The Ministry is cognisant of the mammoth task it is seized with in terms of school infrastructure development. That is why we have embarked on joint venture partnerships, infrastructure bonds and the payment of a building levy, so that we are able to put up proper infrastructure at every school in Zimbabwe. In short, indeed the Ministry has plans to assist the named schools and many others to construct standard infrastructure," he said.He said S$20 million new loan have been directed towards the construction of satellite schools."We are targeting 17 of them and this is going to be a complete construction of each of those schools together with the teachers' houses. If Science laboratories or workshops are needed, it is going to be used there," he said. 183 Shares Share During my first year of medical school, I attended a speed dating event, where medical students met attendings from various specialties to get a better sense of what we could do with our lives once we graduated. Older physicians consistently remarked that they decided their future during their intern year. One even said that he waited until the end of his internship to decide on otolaryngology. I, along with my fellow third years, no longer have this luxury of time. Across the nation, thousands of medical students are planning out their fourth year just two and a half years into medical school, setting up auditions and electives, and hoping we can land a residency in the specialty we want. But just how many medical students have the time to explore specialties they receive no exposure to? For instance, planning a career in ophthalmology today requires gunning and networking from day one of medical school. Yet, my school provides only a scant weeks worth of ophthalmology three semesters in. How am I supposed to know what I like or dislike if I only see a small sliver of it? One may argue that there are shadowing options available, but who is to say that these are available at every medical school in every state? And who is to say a student can find a specialty they want to shadow that fits into their core rotation schedule? We have little control over when we have our rotations, and not all of us are at liberty to rearrange them in our favor. Part of the problem lies with how the 2+2 Flexner model operates: two years of preclerkship are dedicated to the sciences that will be applied during third and fourth year. And thats assuming that clerkship is entirely dedicated to rotations, just as preclerkship is to the basic sciences. In reality, an air of impatience permeates the latter. The first half of third year is spent trying to figure out what specialty to try and match in; the second half is spent planning out fourth year relative to said specialty. Then, the first half of fourth year is spent auditioning and interviewing, while the second half is spent waiting for good (or bad) news. That said, preclerkship exposure to many specialties remains highly limited, barely enough to pique any sort of interest until its too late. Even during third year, each school has different core requirements, which further hinder exposure to fields like pathology or orthopedics. Mine, for instance, requires 12 weeks of internal medicine while a neighboring school requires 8. The Flexner model is in need of evolution; or more radically, complete dismantlement if it is to keep up with continuously changing medical knowledge and practice. Medical education cannot watch as a bystander. On top of this, medical students today face challenging obstacles high rates of burnout, a growing elderly population with an impending physician shortage, relatively fewer residency spots due to lack of graduate medical education funding, and staggering debt upon graduation, to name a few. Would you do medicine again if you had the chance to start over? My class president once asked me that, and both of our answers to that question was a quick no. On my journey to a medical degree thus far, I have asked many the same, and I have yet to hear an answer different from mine. Maybe my sample size is too small, but I havent the time to find out more. Im spending every last minute dealing with student coordinators. The author is an anonymous medical student. Image credit: Shutterstock.com 568 Shares Share Im not sure when it happened, but driving into the parking lot that cold winter day, I knew it had. Tears welled in red eyes, snot dripped out of my nose. I felt so alone and lost. My whole life Id wanted this the drive to the hospital and wondering whether I would change a life. But as I sat in my car, engine off, I didnt want that dream anymore. I didnt want to be here, but I also didnt want to be anywhere else. Did I even want to be a doctor anymore? Regardless of my inward struggle, I was still an overachiever and my shift about to start. I wiped my eyes, blew my nose and stepped out of my car. A truck pulled up next to me, and the window rolled down. A smile and cheerful hello greeted me. Its good to see you back in town you arent looking your usual cheerful self, Dr. A quipped. I must have passed him on my way in and not noticed because typically Id wave. I forced a smile, strangely grateful for the greeting and acknowledgment of my mood. I needed that human connection. I needed to know someone cared. Sorry, I said, I was in my own little world and didnt see you. Its OK youre just usually always smiling. I smile forcibly again and apologize. He was right. I am usually smiling. But not today. Today I am I dont know Today I am what? Today I am crying. Today I dont want to be a doctor, and I dont know why. SIGECAPS Every medical student learns about SIGECAPS, the pneumonic to diagnose depression. We rely on it for testing, our psychiatry rotation, and often during patient interviews. How often do we ask ourselves the questions? I never considered myself depressed. Even though the last few months had been challenging, I chalked it up as just med school. But then people started mentioning my weight. You look great, my best friend said. My mother offhandedly mentioned, You look skinnier than usual. And my significant said, Wow, your legs are really skinny. At first I was pleased, then I thought, Why now? Why not last year when I was trying? The years of testing kicked in. Like a good student, I picked up the question stem, Person X under lots of stress has lost weight the answer is Ask SIGECAPS! Sleep? I definitely oscillated between insomnia and hypersomnia. Interest? Patients, doctors, the hospital were all becoming commonplace. Throughout medical school, Id jotted down stories of patients and lessons Id learned. I thought about the last few months and realized entries had ceased (not because I was busy, but because I was no longer interested in what patients could teach me.) Guilt? I was without a role or purpose. I spent months pretending to be a doctor without real input on patient care but with constant pressure to perform and make a positive impression. The reality was my presence felt meaningless to patients and staff alike. Energy? Gone. Workouts had fallen by the wayside sometime throughout the year. Making it through a shift was all I could ask of myself. Concentration? I had always enjoyed studying and research, but it seemed I could not focus on topics that interested me (i.e., anemia) let alone those that didnt (i.e., electrolyte disorders). Appetite? The question which triggered this exercise in self-diagnosis, most definitely gone. Psychomotor symptoms? I dont believe I was manifesting this symptom of course, Id always had trouble comprehending exactly what qualifies as psychomotor. Suicidal? No, but I wonder, if I was, would people notice? I was still skeptical, and so double checked my thought process: depressed mood? Yes, especially when alone. SIGECAPS? I met criteria. Duration? At least one month, probably two. If I was a test question, the answer was depression. Me, the student who had loved medical school. The first two years had been academically challenging, but I enjoyed pushing myself. Third year had been one of the best years of my life: I loved the clinical setting, meeting patients, assisting physicians. But fourth year: What happened? Physician, heal thyself In the first year of medical school, a lecture was given quoting studies showing 50 percent of medical students experience burnout, around 15 percent moderate to severe depression, and up to 10 percent suicidal ideation. I was blown away by the statistics yet somehow thought they didnt apply to me. How incredibly arrogant I was. Medical student burnout has become a hot topic over the past few years. As medical students, we like to intellectualize; its a known defense mechanism, and we are great at it. We talk about each other, worrying about who is at risk for suicide. We empathize with each other, understanding why we should be depressed. We discuss the topic ad nausea, and I was an expert at these conversations; I empathized with the most depressed of students, I encouraged my classmates, I argued for school-life balance and stress relieving activities. I never truly thought I would be one of the percentages. But I am officially a statistic: one of 50 percent experiencing burnout; one of 15 percent with depression; not one of 10 percent contemplating suicide yet. I dont know what to do, where to go. I feel alone, yet I know half of my classmates are experiencing similar burnout. I attempted to slyly confide in the faculty at my institution mentioning simply increased stress and was met with hang in there. I ask myself what support I expect, realizing I dont know and would say the same thing if roles were reversed. Support from family and my significant other is even harder to ask for. I dont know how to explain myself, let alone ask for help; so I avoid conversation and rely on impersonal texting to communicate. A paper was published in 2005 hypothesizing causes of medical student distress and categorized six experiences that contribute to high rates of depression including adjustment to the environment of medical school, ethical conflicts, exposure to death and human suffering, student abuse, personal life events, and educational debt. Additionally, in a NEJM perspectives piece, a professor of psychiatry states distress increases in third and fourth years as students are isolated on rotations and the pressure to match grows. As I read these papers, I found my worries eased as I could relate to stressors legitimized by experts. The question left is what to do: Do I want an SSRI? Counseling? It would help, but I am switching locations on a monthly basis and cannot imagine finding spare time to make an appointment. So I will cope via intellectualization and hope my story encourages other students that they are not alone. The author is an anonymous medical student. Image credit: Shutterstock.com News / National by Stephen Jakes A political commentator Allan Wenyika has accused MDC-T President Morgan Tsvangirai of behaving the same as war veterans by thinking that he is entitled to lead the party for ever just because he was bashed by the police for it.He said the war veterans also think that they are entitled to do what ever they want in the country just because they went to war."MDC-T leader, Morgan Richard Tsvangirai, feels he is entitled to the party presidency by virtue of having had his head bashed and shaved by the CIO hooligans," he said. "How is he different from those war vets and the so-called national heroes who think they're superior to everyone just because they went to war and others didn't? We create our own dictators by allowing the politics of entitlement to supersede democratic conduct from our leaders."Wenyika said Tsvangirai now feels he owns the revolution."As much as he was brave enough to confront the regime head on at some point in his political career, nothing makes him more Zimbabwean than Allan Wenyika," he said. Gisela Lanza explores global production strategies and she is dedicated to the promotion of young scientists. (Photo: Markus Breig, KIT) Professor Gisela Lanza of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) is awarded the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany by President Joachim Gauck on March 7. On the eve of International Women's Day, the President honors 24 women for their outstanding achievements in culture and science. Gisela Lanza receives the distinction for her research in the field of production engineering and her commitment to the promotion of young scientists. Planning and designing production systems in global production networks is the focus of Professor Gisela Lanzas research. At KIT, the engineer is Head of the Production Systems Group of the Institute of Production Science (wbk). Here, she develops methods and models that enable high-quality and yet cost-effective production. "This involves, among other things, how companies can shape and implement the transition to an automated and intelligent production in the sense of Industry 4.0'", Lanza says. In doing so, she puts particular emphasis on production in global production networks: "Today, the production of complex products is distributed over various locations throughout the world." Thus, a basic understanding of important markets such as China is vital, she says. Therefore, Lanza, who is also KITs representative for China, founded a branch office of her institute in Suzhou: The Global Advanced Manufacturing Institute (GAMI). At GAMI, the theoretical understanding of global production structures is used to create concrete, robust, and locally adapted networks for industrial enterprises. Since 2014, the GAMI has also been acting as KITs official representative office in China. As Germanys first shared professor, Lanza, who studied industrial engineering and has a PhD in mechanical engineering, combined her teaching and research activities at KIT with management tasks in the automotive industry for four years. Not least, the award also recognizes Gisela Lanzas commitment to young scientists: She addresses students and young researchers from around the world not only with her lectures at KITs Department of Mechanical Engineering and the HECTOR School of Engineering and Management of the International Department of KIT, but also with strongly involving the GAMI in research and teaching at KIT. Photo: Bundesregierung / Sandra Steins Journalists who would like to use the picture, please contact the Bundesbildstelle directly: bilderdienst does-not-exist.bpa bund de About Gisela Lanza Gisela Lanza, born in 1973, studied industrial engineering at the former University of Karlsruhe (TH) and received her doctorate at its Department of Mechanical Engineering in 2004. For her dissertation on "Simulation-based start-up support based on the quality capabilities of production processes" she received the 2005 Erna Scheffler Award of the Soroptimist Club Karlsruhe, followed by the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) in 2009, which is the most important award for young scientists in Germany. From 2008 to 2012, she held KITs first shared professorship "Global Production Engineering and Quality" in cooperation with Daimler AG. Since 2012, she has been holding the professorship Production Systems and Quality Management and heading the Institute of Production Science of KIT. Lanza is a member of various national and international committees, including the International Academy for Production Engineering CIRP, the German Academy of Science and Engineering acatech, the wgp Scientific Society for Production Engineering, and the jury of the Erwin Schrodinger Prize of the Stifterverband as well as the steering committee of the Allianz Industrie 4.0 Baden-Wurttemberg. Being The Research University in the Helmholtz Association, KIT creates and imparts knowledge for the society and the environment. It is the objective to make significant contributions to the global challenges in the fields of energy, mobility, and information. For this, about 9,800 employees cooperate in a broad range of disciplines in natural sciences, engineering sciences, economics, and the humanities and social sciences. KIT prepares its 22,300 students for responsible tasks in society, industry, and science by offering research-based study programs. Innovation efforts at KIT build a bridge between important scientific findings and their application for the benefit of society, economic prosperity, and the preservation of our natural basis of life. KIT is one of the German universities of excellence. News / National by Staff Reporter AT least 11 girls are raped daily in Zimbabwe with relatives and boyfriends cited as leading perpetrators.National police spokesperson Senior Assistant Commissioner Charity Charamba said more than 325 girls were sexually abused monthly, translating to 81 cases weekly, adding the figure could actually be higher as some of the victims were afraid of exposing their abusive relatives."Of these cases, the majority of the reported cases are against the 11 to 15-year age group. This does not mean that the 16 to 18-year age group is spared, but maybe less reported," she said."Most perpetrators usually threaten their victims with assault or death, among other unspecified threats. Others promise victims cash or some eats such as sweets to prevent disclosure.""The 11 to 15-year age group tends not to take heed of the threats, hence they come forward to report. Others in this group are, however, raped by their boyfriends. We urge you to report these cases."Charamba said besides rape, girls were also exposed to drug abuse mostly at nude parties that have become so common within the city."Adolescents think that drug and substance abuse removes or reduces inhibition and makes them feel confident to talk to boys, going to night clubs and nude parties and having sex without being shy about it," she said. (Kitco News) - Coordinated terror attacks in Brussels, Belgium have helped to push gold prices moderately higher in early U.S. trading Tuesday, on fresh safe-haven demand. April Comex gold was last up $9.40 at $1,253.50 an ounce. May Comex silver was last up $0.093 at $15.95 an ounce. Risk aversion is back in the marketplace Tuesday, following the terrorist attacks in Brussels. At least 13 people were killed and scores injured in at least two separate attacks. One attack occurred at the Brussels airport, which is now closed. The other attack occurred at a metro train station. All public transit in Brussels was immediately closed. World stock markets saw selling pressure in the wake of the attacks, but the selling has not been heavy and stock markets have come up from their lowest levels seen in the aftermath of the attacks. Other safe-haven assets are also benefiting from the risk aversion, as the U.S. dollar index and U.S. Treasuries are also trading higher Tuesday. Focus of the world marketplace will continue to be on the events in Brussels, and also on future implications of worldwide terror and its impact on economies and politics. In other overnight news, the closely watched German ZEW economic expectations index was reported at 4.3 in March versus 1.0 in February. The Euro zone services purchasing managers index (PMI) was also upbeat, coming in at 54.0 in March versus 53.3 in February. The Euro zone March manufacturing PMI came in at 51.4 versus 51.2 in February. U.S. economic data due for release Tuesday includes the weekly Johnson Redbook and Goldman Sachs retail sales reports, the monthly house price index, the U.S. flash manufacturing PMI, and the Richmond Fed business survey. (Note: Follow me on Twitter--@jimwyckoff--for breaking market news.) Wyckoffs Daily Risk Rating: 3.5 (Trader and investor market risk aversion is elevated today.) (Wyckoffs Daily Risk Rating is your way to quickly gauge investor risk appetite in the world market place each day. Each day I assess the risk-on or risk-off trader mentality in the market place with a numerical reading of 1 to 5, with 1 being least risk-averse (most risk-on) and 5 being the most risk-averse (risk-off). Technically, April gold futures bulls have the firm overall near-term technical advantage. Bulls next upside near-term price breakout objective is to produce a close above solid technical resistance at the March high of $1,287.80. Bears' next near-term downside price breakout objective is closing prices below solid technical support at last weeks low of $1,226.00. First resistance is seen at the overnight high of $1,260.90 and then at $1,263.90. First support is seen at Mondays low of $1,241.20 and then at $1,230.00. Wyckoffs Market Rating: 7.0 May silver bulls have the overall near-term technical advantage. Prices are in a three-week-old uptrend on the daily bar chart. Silver bulls next upside price breakout objective is closing futures prices above solid technical resistance at the October high of $16.372 an ounce. The next downside price breakout objective for the bears is closing prices below solid support at $15.165. First resistance is at last weeks high of $16.17 and then at $16.372. Next support is seen at Mondays lowof $15.725 and then at $15.565. Wyckoff's Market Rating: 6.0. By Jim Wyckoff, contributing to Kitco News; jwyckoff@kitco.com Follow me on Twitter @jimwyckoff Company officials say Iamgold Corp. (TSX: IMG; NYSE: IAG) issued flow-through shares to fund development of the Westwood mine, and investment holdings of gold were sold. The sale of 135,148 ounces of bullion took place from Feb. 16 through March 17 at an average price of $1,260 per ounce for proceeds of $170.3 million, Iamgold says. Meanwhile, in recent years, the company has issued flow-through shares to fund exploration and development projects in Canada which qualify for this type of investment. The flow-through offering passes unused tax deductions to the purchasers of the shares, for which they are willing to pay a premium over current market prices. In the first quarter, Iamgold issued 12 million flow-through shares at a weighted average price of C$3.41 to raise C$41M. Iamgold now has 405.4 million shares outstanding. "During this period of continued volatility and uncertainty in the price of gold, having strong liquidity remains a priority for Iamgold and its investors," says Steve Letwin, president and chief executive officer. "Selling the bullion at an average price of $1,260 per ounce crystallizes the benefit of the recent rise in the value of gold, without limiting our fundamental upside leverage to our profitability and cash flow at higher gold prices. The flow-through shares will fund approximately half of the capital the company has committed in 2016 for the development of Westwood, he adds. By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com Silver Wheaton Announces Metals Agreement With Panoro Minerals For Cotabambas Project Silver Wheaton Corp. (TSX, NYSE: SLW), a Vancouver-based silver streaming company, reports that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Silver Wheaton (Caymans) Ltd., has entered into an early-deposit precious metals purchase agreement with a subsidiary of Panoro Minerals Ltd. for its Cotabambas project located in Peru. Silver Wheaton will be entitled to purchase 100% of the silver production and 25% of the gold production from the project until 90 million silver-equivalent ounces have been delivered, at which point the stream would drop to 66.67% of silver production and 16.67% of gold production for the life of mine. Under the early-deposit agreement, Silver Wheaton will pay $140 million plus an ongoing production payment. Once certain conditions have been met, Silver Wheaton will advance $14 million to Panoro, spread out up to nine years. The Cotabambas copper-gold-silver has been explored since 1995. Silver Wheaton cites a 2015 report saying the project has indicated mineral resources of 117.1 million tonnes at average grades of 0.42% copper, 0.23 gram per tonne gold and 2.74 g/t silver, comprising contained metal of 1.09 billion pounds of copper, 0.86 million ounces of gold and 10.3 million ounces of silver. Inferred mineral resources point to 4.16 billion pounds of copper, 3.38 million ounces of gold and 45.37 million ounces of silver. By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com Kinross Intends To Defend Itself Vigorously Over Water Issue At Maricunga Mine Kinross Gold Corp. (TSX: K; NYSE: KGC) says operations continue at the Maricunga mine in Chile despite a water issue raised by the government, suggesting the problem may be due to an extended drought. The company issued a statement at the start of the week after subsidiary Compania Minera Maricunga received a notice from Chilean environmental authorities saying they will seek to close the mines water-pumping wells located in the Pantanillo area, citing environmental concerns. CMM has taken numerous measures and performed various studies over the years to understand the causes of the current situation and mitigate, as appropriate and permitted, any impacts of its water use, Kinross says. Kinross wishes to also underscore that the Atacama region has suffered from a protracted drought for many years, resulting in a drop in groundwater levels across the region that is unrelated to CMM's operations. CMM only recently received the resolution and will review it thoroughly with its legal counsel. CMM will respond within the periods allowed by law, and intends to file an appeal with the appropriate environmental tribunal. CMM disagrees with the allegations on which the resolution is based, and intends to defend itself vigorously. In the meantime, the company says the Maricunga mine continues to operate normally but relies solely on water from Pantanillo wells to support its operations. By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com For the second time in as many months one major Dutch bank has increased it forecast for gold. In a report published Tuesday, analysts at ABN Amro increased their year-end target for gold to $1,370 an ounce, up from their previous target of $1,300. For 2017 they see prices ending the year at $1,450 an ounce, up from the initial forecast at $1,300. They note in the report that a dovish Federal Reserve, a weaker U.S. dollar and negative real interest rates will all be positive for gold this year. Recently, we revised our overall US dollar outlook. We now believe that the multi-year US dollar rally has peaked and that it will turn lower, the say. Over the recent years, the most dominant driver for gold prices has been the direction of the US dollar. As we are now expecting a lower dollar over the coming years, a crucial headwind is taken away. As for the Fed the analysts say that even if the Fed does raise interest rates later this year -- a scenario they see as unlikely -- they will be perceived as being behind the inflation curve. This should be positive for gold prices as investors will likely buy gold because of lower US real yields and as some may see gold as a possible inflation hedge. Therefore, gold prices will unlikely suffer next year when we expect gradual Fed rate hikes, they say. By Neils Christensen of Kitco News; nchristensen@kitco.com MKS: Gold ETFs Posting Most Sustained Inflows Since 2008-09 Financial Crisis Tuesday March 22, 2016 08:55 Inflows of gold continue into exchange-traded funds, says MKS (Switzerland) SA, noting the recent data show that the three major ETFs added another 91,000 ounces. According to Bloomberg, the total holdings of gold ETFs have risen a staggering 9.785 million oz (~304 tonnes) in the first three months of the year and sit at 56.775 million ounces (1,766 tonnes), a 21% rise, MKS says. The last time we saw such a sustained gain in holdings was back in 2008-09, in the grips of the financial crisis. By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com TDS: Gold Supported By Dovish FOMC But Does Not Rally To Fresh Highs Gold was underpinned but did not trade to new highs following the Federal Open Market Committees dovish views last week, perhaps because of lingering fears that a U.S. rate hike is still possible, says TD Securities. Comex April golds 13-month high of $1,287.80 an ounce occurred a few days before the FOMC meeting and individual views of Fed officials suggesting they envision two rate hikes this year rather than the four seen in December. TDS says gold and silver surged higher immediately following the FOMC's unexpectedly dovish communication, but both metals failed to reach new highs. It seems that investors are unwilling to load up on gold and silver given that while dovish, the Fed also implied that every meeting is live for a rate hike. Still, there seems to be good support near $1,225/oz. We would need to see very strong economic numbers and risks such as Brexit (U.K. exit from the European Union) to dissipate for this support to be breached on a sustained basis. By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com Wells Fargo: Gold Draws Safe-Haven Bid After Terror Attacks In Brussels Gold has risen with other so-called safe havens, while risk assets fell, after deadly explosions in Brussels, says Janet Mirasola, managing director of the metals group with Wells Fargo Securities LLC. This new level of terrorism has sent most global assets falling as safe-haven trade takes over from risk, she says. She later adds, Euro bourses and base commodities are all following the trend lower off the early opening as they watch the tragic headlines from Brussels. Only the Shiny One has caught a bid as a measure of safe-haven sanctuary that has taken its value soaring back through $1,250. Shortly after 8 a.m. EDT, Comex April gold was $7.70 higher at $1,251.90 an ounce, and May silver was up 8.3 cents to $15.93. Meanwhile, the June S&P 500 futures were down 8.90 points to 2,033.80, May copper was down 1.35 cents to $2.2790 a pound, and May crude oil was down 46 cents to $41.06 a barrel. Gold was up despite a stronger U.S. dollar, as the euro fell to $1.12233 from $1.12385 late Monday. By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com HSBC: End Of Indian Strike Supportive, But Not Overwhelmingly Bullish For Gold HSBC describes the end of an Indian jewelers strike over the weekend as supportive, but not overwhelmingly bullish for gold. The strike ended after the government assured jewelers they would not be harassed by revenue officials when collecting the new gold and diamond 1% jewelry sales tax, announced in the Feb. 29 budget, according to news reports. India traditionally has been the worlds largest consumer and importer of bullion. The recent merchant and jeweler strike crippled imports, HSBC says. This is likely to mean there is significant pent-up demand by consumers, which may translate into greater imports near term. That said, world prices are still high and price-sensitive buyers in Indian may still refrain from making substantial purchases. Thus, we see the end of the strike as gold prices supportive, but not overwhelmingly bullish. By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com HSBC: Industrial Demand, Low Prices Boost Chinese PGM Imports In January Lower prices combined with good industrial demand meant Chinese imports of platinum group metals doubled in January from a year ago, HSBC says. The bank cites Chinese data showing that the country imported 10.1 tonnes of platinum in January, almost twice as much as in the same month a year ago. It is very likely that the skid lower in prices when platinum dropped to near $800/oz, revisiting 2008 lows, galvanized demand for platinum, HSBC says. Palladium imports reached 2.6 tonnes in January, an almost 90% increase year-on-year and a near 150% increase from December. Prices for a while were below $500 an ounce. In the case of both PGMs, industrial users, notable auto makers, seemed to take advantage of the drop to rebuild local inventories, the bank says. Metals analysts add that positive views from HSBC macroeconomic, auto, chemical and glass research imply that demand for the PGMs in China is likely to be moderately good this year. This leads us to view the gains in imports as not solely due to lower prices. Although Chinas auto sales and production volume edged slightly lower, the implementation of China V emissions regulations is in full swing, HSBC continues. The regulations tighten the NOx and particulate matter emissions and require heavier palladium loadings. This should support demand, the bank concludes. By Allen Sykora of Kitco News; asykora@kitco.com SHARE William J. Hipp of Silverdale May 12, 1923 to March 10, 2016 Veteran William J. Hipp, LCDR USN and World War II submarine veteran, was called to join his shipmates on Eternal Patrol on March 10. 2016. Bill was born in Puyallup, Washington May 12, 1923. He enlisted in the Navy in 1941. He served in Alaskan waters until April 1943, when he reported to the Navy Submarine School at New London, Connecticut. While there, he met Jane Russel Pfannenstiel. They were married on Oct. 17, 1943 and celebrated their 72nd wedding anniversary in 2015. Bill served aboard the USS Flounder for six war patrols. He continued to serve on submarines until 1952 when he was commissioned as an Ensign. He retired from the Navy in 1968. After retirement from the Navy, Bill worked for the Electric Boat Division of General Dynamics as a QA Inspector for submarine construction. Bill was active in the World War II Submarine Veterans organization, serving one term as president of the local chapter and had a lifelong interest in submarines and in those who served on them. Bill's survivors include his wife, Jane; his daughters, Margrettta Josephson (Walter Jamison) and Linda Ketcheson (Roy); six grandchildren, and seven great-grandchildren. Graveside services with military honors will be held April 4, at 11:30 a.m. at Tahoma Military Cemetery, 18600 SE 240th Street, Kent, Washington followed by a reception at 2:30 p.m. at the home of his daughter: 865 Baby Doll Road E. Port Orchard, Washington. Donations to Bill's memory may be made to the USSVI Scholarship Fund Bremerton Base, P.O. Box 465 Silverdale, WA 98383. SHARE By John Crisp Here are two movies that you're unlikely to find playing at your local multiplex, but if you can somehow manage to put them together in a double feature, as I did on Saint Patrick's Day, you'll see in several hours a poignant depiction of the best and the worst that humankind has to offer. These aren't films that you would ordinarily think of as any sort of pair. The first is "Son of Saul," a Hungarian movie about the Holocaust, which won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar at the recent Academy Awards. The other is "Where to Invade Next," Michael Moore's new documentary about his "invasion" of various countries in order to appropriate, not their oil, as usual, but their best ideas and practices for our own use. First, the worst of humankind: "Son of Saul" is the story of Saul Auslander, a Hungarian Jew serving with the Auschwitz Sonderkommando, a squad of prisoners who, in exchange for certain privileges and a brief reprieve from the gas chambers, facilitates the deaths of other Jews by ushering them into the deadly shower chambers and collecting their clothes and valuables afterward. Saul's moral standing is complicated. His story is told mostly in his face, which from the beginning of the film is depicted, often in close-up, as emotionless and almost oblivious to the horrors taking place around him in soft focus. The Holocaust wasn't the first genocide and won't be the last. But the Nazis' vile genius was the application of efficient industrial methods to the systematic annihilation of a group of people based on their religion. "Son of Saul" wasn't the best Holocaust movie we've seen I was accompanied by two Jews but I'm glad the film was produced. The Holocaust requires regular commemoration; we could make no bigger mistake than to forget it. Now, for some of the best that humanity has to offer: Michael Moore finds it in "Where to Invade Next." In Italy, he explores a culture that guarantees all workers five weeks of paid vacation a year, as well as paid holidays and paid maternal (and paternal) leave. He shows factory workers taking two-hour lunch breaks, which give them time to go home every day for a delicious home-cooked meal. Newlyweds get 15 days off for a honeymoon. In France, public-school children dine daily on meticulously prepared cuisine, and they're mildly appalled when they see pictures of what American schoolchildren have for lunch. In Finland, schoolchildren never have homework or take standardized tests. Finland's teachers believe that an essential goal of all education is the happiness and well-being of the child. In Slovenia, all students graduate from college without any debt whatsoever. In Norway, the maximum penalty for any crime is 21 years in prison, and Moore takes his audience inside a maximum security facility, where the emphasis is on rehabilitation rather than punishment. Prisoners carry the keys to their own "cells," which are outfitted with flat-screen TVs and private showers. Oh, what a paradise, almost too good to be true. In fact, one should remember that Michael Moore freely admits that his films always have an agenda, and sometimes he's careless with facts. On the other hand, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the recidivism rate for American prisons is pushing 80 percent, while Norway, the land of cushy prisons that focus on rehabilitation, has one of the lowest rates in the world, around 20 percent. And homework-free Finland often outranks the U.S. by significant margins in terms of student achievement. So, what links these two seemingly disparate films? The proposition that nearly all worldly conditions from Holocaust to socialist paradise are driven by the extent to which we exercise empathy for other humans. Genocide is impossible without the complete death of empathy. And the best conditions that humankind can produce depend on our willingness to place the well-being and happiness of those who are not like us on an equal plane with our own. And this is why current trends in American politics should make us all uneasy. SHARE By Kathleen Parker Now that Donald Trump has spoken before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), a pro-Israel lobbying group, Americans have learned the following: Trump can read a teleprompter; he finally got someone to write him a decent speech, which he was able to deliver without resorting to vulgarities; and he has provided something like a justification for reluctant Republicans to support him. Which is a pretty low bar, you must admit. And it's not nearly enough. You know all the arguments pro and con by now. He speaks plainly. So did Archie Bunker. His message of walled-in isolationism appeals to those tired of loose immigration policies. So was the case with Sen. Berzelius "Buzz" Windrip, the nativist demagogue in Sinclair Lewis' 1935 cautionary novel, "It Can't Happen Here." Windrip, like Trump, spoke of national greatness, though Windrip was more explicit, saying that Americans "must continue to be the greatest Race on the face of this old Earth." Like Trump's, Windrip's base consisted largely of working-class white males, whom he called upon to help control dissent after he ascended to the Oval Office. Sound familiar? Punch anybody in the nose lately? It's called fascism by any other name and, yes, it does seem that it can happen here. That is, a demagogue can become president, as Lewis was trying to warn. And, yes, we do have checks and balances in this country, but does anyone really think that Trump should have the power to start a nuclear war? He's mighty quick to rile. No one is more familiar with the language of marginalization and authoritarianism than the Jewish community, causing one to wonder why Trump, whose rise has been spiced with bigotry and group-blaming rhetoric, was allowed in AIPAC'S door. The answer is that the nonpartisan organization traditionally invites all presidential candidates, among others, to speak to its annual policy conference. Well, that's an explanation, anyway. The conundrum for Republicans is that though Trump may be the devil, he's their devil. How can they condemn the guy that a near-majority of their own party prefers? If you're, say, House Speaker Paul Ryan, how do you say you won't support your party's nominee? Then again, if you're a good man like Ryan, how do you support him? That is the question of the moment, isn't it? This is what we ask ourselves about the industrialists and "good Germans" who supported Hitler. This is what we ask our Southern grandparents about the time when blacks were being lynched. What we ask the World War II generation about rounding up Japanese-Americans. And while we're at it, what was your vote on Vietnam, Iraq? There's a price to pay for silence. That so few have shown the courage to deny Trump tells us how difficult it is to be brave and how rare character is. But one can only pretend for so long not to hear the dog whistles of history, a skill at which Republicans have become too well practiced over the decades. Perhaps they're no longer listening. Or they're deluding themselves that Trump's words don't really mean what, you know, they mean. "He won't be that bad." No, he's worse. A Jewish friend of mine a Democrat, scholar, erstwhile politician and former U.S. ambassador whose parents were Holocaust survivors called to vent after Trump's speech to AIPAC. First, he said he was glad his father wasn't alive to see this, and that he'd almost like to join AIPAC so he could resign in protest. "The reality," he said, "is if you go back and look at Hitler, somehow you elect someone that you know is beyond the pale. But you do it because you're afraid of someone else. And then later, you look closely. And it's too late." Unless. The tiny flame at the end of this darkening tunnel is a contested convention, which depends on Ted Cruz and John Kasich starving Trump of the necessary 1,237 delegates needed to secure the nomination. It could happen, according to Princeton University's Sam Wong, a statistical prognosticator and game theorist with a golden record. Basically, if Kasich campaigns only in proportional delegate states, leaving winner-take-all states to Cruz, Trump's chances of becoming the nominee are reduced from 90 percent to 50 percent, says Wong. It's a big gamble, but it beats losing your soul. SHARE By Leonard Pitts A few words about the pious insincerity of Mitch McConnell. As you are no doubt aware, McConnell, the Senate majority leader, announced on the very day that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia died that he would refuse to hold hearings on any replacement nominated by President Obama. McConnell's "reasoning," if you want to grace it with that word, was that since the president has less than a year left in his term, the appointment should be made by whomever the American people choose as his successor. Last week, after Obama fulfilled his constitutional duty by nominating respected federal judge Merrick Garland to the post, McConnell renewed his refusal. "The Biden rule," he said, "reminds us that the decision the Senate announced weeks ago remains about a principle and not a person. It seems clear that President Obama made this nomination not with the intent of seeing the nominee confirmed, but in order to politicize it for purposes of the election." The American people, added McConnell, should have a say in this. "So let's give them a voice. Let's let the American people decide." There are four lies here, each more threadbare and cynical than the last: 1. The Biden rule? There is no such thing. There is only an opinion Vice President Biden expressed 24 years ago as chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, that if a vacancy opened on the top court during convention season which is still several months off the president should "consider" not nominating a replacement until after the election. It bears repeating: Biden never said the president should not nominate or the Senate should not vote; he only suggested waiting until "after the election" to do so. 2. It's the president who's politicizing this? In psychology, that's known as "projecting." Around the way, it's known as the pot calling the kettle black. 3. "A principle and not a person?" No, it's about a person the same person, the president toward whom McConnell and his party have expressed such unremitting disrespect the last seven years. 4. The voice of the people? The people have already spoken twice in elections that were not close. For that matter, they are still speaking. A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll says 63 percent of us want the Senate to hold hearings and vote. McConnell should just claim he's too busy arranging his sock drawer. That would be more credible than the excuses he's given. The quality of a lie is a direct reflection of the respect the liar has for the person being lied to. That will seem counterintuitive, but consider: You put effort into a lie, work to make it plausible, credible, believable, when you have regard for the recipient, when his good opinion matters or his discovery of the truth would be disastrous. That being the case, what does it suggest when you put as little effort into a lie as McConnell has? Indeed, while he has been roundly condemned for disrespecting the president, let's spare some outrage for the way he is also disrespecting us. Not just in failing to do his job, but also in offering such a transparently dishonest rationale for it. He knows he's lying, you know he's lying and he knows you know he's lying. But you get the sense he doesn't care. Why should he? Those who need to believe there's a noble principle behind this obstructionism will be willingly gulled. As to the rest of us, so what? That's not statesmanship. It is not even politics. It's just contempt and not only for the president. If we cannot count on McConnell and his party to do the country's business and behave in a manner befitting serious people in positions of responsibility, perhaps it's not too much to ask that they at least spare us that. Tell better lies next time. The Herald reports: Dominos says its working with the Government on a plan to permit robot pizza delivery to hungry New Zealanders. The government and Dominos Pizza are working to explore and test driverless pizza delivery options with a four-wheeled unit named DRU (Dominos Robotic Unit). Minister of Transport Simon Bridges said the use of the robot is an exciting opportunity for New Zealand, which is one of the first countries in the world being considered for testing autonomous pizza delivery. DRU is an early prototype, but the fact that New Zealand is being considered as a test site shows we have the right settings to attract innovation. New technology and encouraging innovation is a government priority, Bridges said. Over the last 12 months Ive been actively and aggressively promoting New Zealand as a test bed for new transport technology trials. Our enabling laws and regulation means we have the ideal environment to trial all forms of technology, he said. News / National by Staff Reporter A vote of no confidence has been passed on Vice-President Phelekezela Mphoko and seven top party officials by war veterans.The war veterans demanded that Mphoko "must fall", raising the stakes ahead of a crunch meeting between the former liberation fighters and Mugabe set for early next month.Other leading party figures that the war veterans want fired are Zanu PF political commissar Saviour Kasukuwere, politburo member Jonathan Moyo, women's league finance secretary Sarah Mahoka, Harare provincial commissar Shadreck Mashayamombe, women's league deputy secretary Eunice Sandi-Moyo, youth league deputy secretary Kudzai Chipanga and Youth minister Patrick Zhuwao.Zimbabwe National Liberation War Veterans' Association (ZNLWVA) spokesperson Douglas Mahiya yesterday said they were unapologetic over their actions, declaring they were the owners of Zanu PF."The war veterans are the owners of Zanu PF. Zanu PF cannot afford to ignore its forces in as much as Zanu and Zapu could never have ignored Zipra and Zanla," he said sternly."We are the foundation of the party and the party must take what we say very seriously. The vote of no-confidence has been passed and must be executed, that is what we expect."Mphoko is accused of fanning factionalism as well as tribalism after he said at a rally in Chiweshe a few weeks ago it did not follow that since Mugabe was a Zezuru, a Karanga must succeed him.The VP has been strongly linked to Zanu PF's Generation 40 (G40) faction, which is allegedly led by First Lady Grace Mugabe.' News / National by Tichaona Zindoga OPPOSITION MDC-T leader Mr Morgan Tsvangirai's tour of Mashonaland East over the weekend turned to be miserable affair as he attracted paltry crowds at rallies he addressed.According to the state media, Tsvangirai addressed rallies in Marondera, Mudzi and Mutoko on Saturday before a scheduled rally in Chikomba on Sunday, but had to be content with a handful of supporters some of whom he had bussed from Harare.In Marondera, the opposition leader addressed about 200 people and faced an estimated 100 people at Kotwa Growth point in Mudzi, which was snubbed even by his own party structures as only nine out of 18 wards in the district attended.It was the same story in Mutoko where less than 100 people turned up.The opposition leader cancelled a scheduled visit to the Dzamara homestead in Nyamakosi Village where he was expected to address the family of journalist-cum-political-activist Itai Dzamara who was last seen in public last year.The opposition, its civic society allies and Western embassies have rallied to blame Government for the alleged disappearance of Dzamara without substantiating their claims.Tsvangirai told his supporters that he was assessing the state of the party ahead of elections in 2018 and urged structures to recruit more people and said he was going to engage the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission to have his supporters registered.He promised his followers that he had the keys to unlock the economy.Tsvangirai said MDC-T should take advantage of what he described as infighting in the ruling party and challenged Zanu-PF to name President Mugabe's successor so that he would know his opponent in 2018.Commenting on the party's tour, MDC-T spokesman Obert Gutu, said his boss was connecting with the people and hearing their grievances."President Morgan Tsvangirai is a natural grassroots mobiliser who is a very firm believer in the retail brand of politics. He believes in meeting with people and supporters at grassroots, one-on-one level, talking to them and discussing pertinent socio-economic and political issues with them."His countrywide tours afford him an opportunity to hear from the horse's mouth, so to speak,'' said Mr Gutu."He's connecting with the toiling masses of Zimbabwe and listening to their daily trials and tribulations. These tours also give him an opportunity to fully explain the MDC policies on pertinent national issues such as job creation, food production and food provision, climate change adaptation and mitigation measures, etc."President Tsvangirai is giving the people of Zimbabwe a message of hope," he said.But Zanu-PF Mashonaland East provincial secretary for administration and Marondera East MP Lawrence Katsiru, scoffed at the opposition and said the low turnout at MDC-T rallies showed that the party was finished.Speaking to The Herald before an inter-district meeting at Murehwa Centre on Sunday, Katsiru said: "The fact that they could not gather more than 100 people in Mudzi and Mutoko and only had a sizeable crowd in an urban centre shows that the party is finished."It means that all their support cannot even constitute one of our wards."He said the ruling party remained strong for the opposition in the province.Meanwhile, the ruling party in the province lifted its recommendations for the expulsion of three members, who are also legislators, namely Tendai Makunde (Murehwa North), Felix Mhona (Chikomba Central), Washington Masvaire (Maramba-Pfungwe).The trio were recently reprimanded at national level and Katsiru said yesterday's meeting was to tell the district leadership to work with the trio again as the province had also reprimanded and forgiven them. SHARE Bill Ailor, judge Knox County Circuit Court Division II. By Jamie Satterfield of the Knoxville News Sentinel KNOXVILLE A state appellate court has disrobed a Knox County judge in a wrongful termination lawsuit. The state Court of Appeals in an opinion issued Monday stripped Knox County Circuit Court Judge Bill Ailor of any right to judicial immunity in the August 2014 firing of judicial assistant Judith Moore-Pennoyer, who for years had served Judge Harold Wimberly. Ailor, a Republican, defeated the veteran Democratic judge in an upset victory in the August 2014 election. He fired Moore-Pennoyer without apparent cause a week after the election and before he was set to be sworn into office on Sept. 1. Attorney David Dunaway sued Ailor on behalf of the judicial assistant, who was a state employee. The Tennessee Attorney General's Office filed on behalf of Ailor a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, contending judges are immune from lawsuits over employment decisions and most everything else arising from their duties. Senior Judge Jon Kerry Blackwood, who has since retired, ruled Ailor was not yet a judge when he fired Moore-Pennoyer and was entitled to neither judicial immunity or a state-provided attorney. Ailor appealed. In its Monday ruling, authored by Judge John W. McClarty, the court agreed with Blackwood. "(Ailor) posits that it is the election, not the induction ceremony that bestows upon the elected individual the rights to the office that he or she will assume," McClarty wrote. "The Constitution provides that Judge Wimberly's term was not subject to expiration until his successor was elected and qualified. Further, Judge Ailor's term could not begin until Sept. 1, 2014, unless specifically provided by the Legislature." Moore-Pennoyer, who was a state employee, spent 18 years of her 24-year career as a judicial assistant working for Wimberly. Dunaway alleges in the lawsuit Ailor fired her without the authority to do so and because he wanted someone younger and free of health conditions. Moore-Pennoyer has multiple sclerosis. The lawsuit stated she had no history of excessive absences from work despite her illness and had always received good evaluations. The lawsuit seeks the return of Moore-Pennoyer's job and a maximum $1.5 million in damages. With Monday's opinion, the case now returns to Circuit Court. The appellate court taxed Ailor with the cost of the appeal and he now will have to hire his own attorney. A second veteran Knox County Circuit Court employee who also would have served Ailor was ousted without explanation on Sept. 27. Jenny Workman, a 36-year Circuit Court employee, was notified by mail her services were no longer needed. The letter sent to Workman by her boss, Circuit Court Clerk Cathy Quist-Shanks, offers no explanation other than "ongoing office reorganization." Ailor has failed to respond to the News Sentinel's request for comment on Workman's firing as has Quist-Shanks. Like Moore-Pennoyer, Workman's personnel file was filled with commendations and positive evaluations. She said last year she had no idea a termination was afoot. She has not filed suit. 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 Newly released reports have spotlighted an incident in which too much uranium-bearing material was loaded into a sample bottle violating nuclear safety rules and transferred from one facility to another inside the Y-12 nuclear weapons plant. The problem was discovered after the magnesium oxide sample, containing residual amounts of fissionable U-235, arrived at the Oak Ridge plant's in-house analytical lab, where it had been sent for evaluation. The situation was discussed in a couple of weekly activity reports by staff members of the Defense Nuclear Facilities Safety Board. One of those reports was posted on the federal safety board's website, and Y-12 contractor Consolidated Nuclear Security released the other report upon request and responded to questions. The sample was originally taken from a processing operation at Y-12's 9212 uranium complex in October 2015. "The contaminated material was a specific type of sand used in Building 9212 reduction operations that contain residual amounts of uranium-235," the Jan. 29 report by safety board staff stated. The sample was reportedly taken so that the sand's particle size could be analyzed information that was needed for a "planned design modification" at the uranium operation. "Operating outside of established work control protocols, the responsible supervisor instructed the operator to collect a representative sample but did not give instruction on the quantity of material required nor note the NCS (nuclear criticality safety) limit of 100 grams for uranium-bearing solids in sample bottles." According to the report, the sample weighed 197 grams almost double the nuclear safety limit. Highly enriched uranium has to be handled according to strict procedures to prevent an uncontrolled nuclear chain reaction. The overloaded sample was reminiscent of an incident last summer in which Y-12 mistakenly sent 10 times the intended amount of enriched uranium to a New York firm, resulting in a $33,620 fine from the Department of Transportation for shipping violations. However, Y-12 spokeswoman Ellen Boatner said the two incidents were different. The incident last summer was blamed on human error, while the more recent concern was the mostly the result of the complexity of procedures, she said. "Operators did not apply all aspects of a complex set of rules," Boatner said via email. "Actions have been taken to clarify this rule set and preclude recurrence." The entire process of shipping uranium, either in-house or outside the plant, has reportedly drawn additional oversight at Y-12 over the past year. Consolidated Nuclear Security ordered a number of actions in the wake of the latest incident, including direct oversight of sampling activities and a temporary suspension of uranium samples to the analytical lab. A standing order enacted by the contractor also prohibits operators from performing the sampling-and-transfer procedures by memory. News / National by Thobekile Zhou "The government directive, instructing tobacco farmers to open bank accounts whilst doing away with spot payments at the auction floors, should under normal circumstances be welcomed. "Opening bank accounts encourages savings and helps farmers to plan and accessing loans which invariably will increase their production and thus their earnings. "However, the move to force farmers to open bank accounts is not being done in their best interests. There is an ulterior motive on the part of the government. "Most individuals and companies are failing to get access to their funds from the banks as there is limited cash. "The cash crisis is because there is no production and real active in the economy. Real production is in sector such as agriculture, mining, production, ICT. In Zimbabwe these sectors have collapsed. "Without wealth creation, the liquidity crunch is evident. Zimbabwe is also lacks capital in the form of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) and basic saving. "The cash crunch in the country has been worsened by finance minister, Patrick Chinamasa who is raiding the Real Time Gross Settlement Systems (RTGS) balances at the Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe (RBZ). "Since the end of the government of national unity (GNU), this terrible government has made it a habit of looting bank balances held at the RBZ in order to finance government recurrent expenditure such as wages and salaries. "Chinamasa's nefarious activities at the RBZ are creating a huge gap in the RTGS balances and it is only just a question of time before the chickens come home to roost and we have the mother of all bank runs on the market. "It is foreseeable that thousands of farmers are going to be disadvantaged as they will fail to access their money. "The government's coercion will only open floodgates to unscrupulous middlemen (Makoronyera) most of whom are connected to senior Zanu PF officials to fleece the desperate farmers into selling their tobacco for hard cash to them below market prices. "As the People's Democratic Party (PDP), we restate our call that this government has failed and should resign immediately. "We thus call on Parliament to pass a vote of no confidence on this government". OPPOSITION People's Democratic Party has praised govement for banning spot cash for tobacco farmers this season as payments will now be directly made into bank accounts.Farmers used to cash in their cheques at the banks at the auction floors.They are now required to open bank accounts into which their cash will be deposited.This year's tobacco selling season will commence on March 30.Alhough PDP welcomed the move it said in vieqw of cash shortages in banks, farmers might struggle to access funds.Below is the statement from Vince Musewe, PDP Secretary for Finance and Economic Affairs : SHARE Attorney Jim Emison, left, is thanked by professor Shelly Page after his talk at the LMU Duncan School of Law about his mission to solve the 75-year-old civil rights cold case of Elbert Williams. Williams is believed to be the first NAACP official murdered for attempting to restore voting rights for African-American residents of Hayward County, Tenn. Emison has been investigating the June 20, 1940 murder of Williams and the Justice Department is considering reopening the case. (AMY SMOTHERMAN BURGESS/NEWS SENTINEL) Elbert Williams (far left), pictured with other charter members of the Haywood County NAACP chapter. Williams is believed to be the first NAACP official murdered for attempting to restore voting rights for African-American residents of Hayward County, Tenn. (Elbert Williams Memorial Committee) Attorney Jim Emison speaks at the LMU Duncan School of Law about his mission to solve the 75-year-old civil rights cold case of Elbert Williams. Williams is believed to be the first NAACP official murdered for attempting to restore voting rights for African-American residents of Hayward County, Tenn. Emison has been investigating the June 20, 1940 murder of Williams and the Justice Department is considering reopening the case. (AMY SMOTHERMAN BURGESS/NEWS SENTINEL) By John Shearer of the Knoxville News Sentinel Jim Emison had a long career as an attorney until retiring in 2011, but his most impassioned legal fight ever might be one he is currently tackling more as a historian. The 1968 University of Tennessee College of Law graduate and West Tennessee resident has been researching the largely forgotten 1940 murder of Brownsville, Tenn., civil rights advocate Elbert Williams. He has written a soon-to-be published book, "Elbert Williams: First To Die," about this man who he says was the first member of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People to be murdered for his civil rights work. But, as he told students and others gathered at Lincoln Memorial University's Duncan School of Law Tuesday afternoon, he wants justice as well as a legacy of remembrance for Williams. "I want to bring these killers to justice," he told the audience in a passionate tone more closely resembling closing arguments in a criminal trial instead of a lecture. "If his killers had been prosecuted in 1940, would we have had the (civil rights related) carnage of the 1960s?" Emison, who was dressed in blue jeans and a sport coat, said Williams was killed a few months after Brownsville became the first small and rural town in Tennessee to form an NAACP chapter. The formation prompted backlash from the white residents in those Jim Crow law days, and many other members of the chapter were forced to leave through fear tactics. Williams later tried to call an NAACP meeting and was locked up with another black man, Emison said. The other man was released, but Williams was kept in jail and was not seen alive again by his friends. His body was later found in the nearby Hatchie River, the speaker said. A homicide was given as the reasonable cause of death, and one of the early U.S. Justice Department investigations into a civil rights-related crime was launched. However, it did not get very far due to a lack of any key information provided by town officials. "The federal investigation closed the books and this was where the matter lay for 75 years," Emison said. "Nobody cared enough about a black man who was murdered by a white man, especially a black man who wanted to vote." Emison said he was unaware of Williams' story until 2012, despite living in that area of Tennessee. He was doing research for an article he planned to write and came across an online article about some past lynchings, including the one in 1940 involving Williams. Through research and records from the U.S. National Archives, he has been able to find much about the case. He helped get a Tennessee historical marker erected last year in Brownsville, and Williams' forgotten grave has been located. Emison hopes to have a new grave marker erected at that cemetery. He also hopes to get the case reopened by federal justice officials, have the body exhumed and have some modern DNA evidence gathered. And, if Williams' body still has bullet fragments, Emison hopes to have ballistics testing done. He said the old investigation mentioned a policeman in Brownsville at the time as someone who was questioned, and he learned the late law officer's daughter still has his gun. "I really have a passion for justice for Elbert Williams," said Emison, who pointed out that Williams' name was mentioned by NAACP leader Roy Wilkins at the 1963 funeral for slain Mississippi civil rights leader Medgar Evers. "He was murdered and his killers went free and he was never given a funeral or memorial service. He has basically been forgotten." After Emison's talk, law school dean Gary Wade pointed out to the audience that Byron De La Beckwith was arrested and convicted decades after Evers' killing, and maybe similar justice can come in the Williams' case. McGhee Tyson Airport By News Sentinel Staff Travelers using Knoxville's McGhee Tyson Airport can expect an increased security presence there in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks in Brussels. People will not see any changes in procedures as they go through the process to catch a flight, but they will see more security personnel than usual, said Becky Huckaby, spokeswoman for the Metropolitan Knoxville Airport Authority. "The process for passengers moving through the terminal has not changed, but they will see an increased presence in both uniformed officers and TSA representatives," she said. Nashville International Airport has increased police presence and heightened security Tuesday after the attacks at a Brussels airport and metro station, according to The Tennessean. Delays are possible as other airports around the country also beef up security measures that could have a cumulative effect on travel in and out of Nashville, airport spokeswoman Shannon Sumrall said. Volume at Nashville International is expected to be heavier than normal this week as well with spring break travel and conventions expected to be leaving town, Sumrall said. "With any national (or) international terrorism attack, there is an increase in airport police presence and a heightened sense of security," Sumrall said. Passengers are encouraged to check their flight status and arrive at the airport at least two hours in advance. This home located at 2105 Campbell Road in East Knox County has been described as "a known drug house," is where authorities have removed the bodies of four women since 2000. Homeowner Ricky Carl Clark is facing trail for the most recent death. (NEWS SENTINEL FILE) SHARE By Jamie Satterfield of the Knoxville News Sentinel Four women died from drug overdoses inside a confessed morphine user's Knox County home in eight years. But homeowner and admitted morphine user Ricky Carl Clark stands accused of only one the January 2008 overdose by morphine injection of 40-year-old Penny Welch. Clark is, in fact, the only defendant facing charges in Knox County Criminal Court in this decade for allegedly providing drugs to a fatal overdose victim despite a state law allowing such prosecutions. Tennessee law makes it an act of second-degree murder to supply someone with drugs that ultimately kill that person. It is punishable by as much as 25 years in prison. However, authorities say it is often a tough case to prove because the victim is dead and can't tell law enforcers what drugs were ingested and by whom they were supplied. Autopsies are needed to pinpoint the exact cause of death, but law enforcers typically treat overdose deaths as accidents and forensic examinations are not always ordered up. Clark's case is a prime example. Three women, including Clark's wife, Theresa Bozeman, had been found dead from apparent overdoses inside his Campbell Road home: Bozeman in 2000, Kara Kirby in 2004 and Penny Bright in 2005. No autopsies were requested in any of those deaths. The Knox County Sheriff's Office each time interviewed Clark, wheelchair-bound after a work-related fall and admittedly addicted to legally prescribed morphine. Clark denied supplying the women morphine and, instead, insisted the trio were homeless junkies whom he sheltered. "On each occasion, the deaths were investigated by authorities, and (Clark) was never charged in any of the deaths," according to court records. That changed when Welch turned up dead in Clark's home, largely, court records show, because a New Market woman told authorities she saw Clark inject Welch with morphine just before she died. An autopsy of Welch's body confirmed morphine overdose as the cause of her death. Even so, a Knox County grand jury turned aside the second-degree murder charge KCSO filed against Clark in Welch's death and instead lowered the charge to criminally negligent homicide, which carries a maximum two-year prison term. Clark, set to stand trial in March, is asking a judge to bar prosecutors from telling jurors Welch was the fourth overdose victim to be found inside his home, arguing such information would prejudice jurors against him. A ruling has not yet been issued. Clark is free on $25,000 bond. Aug. 29, 2004, by Ricky Lee Clark concerning Kara Kirby 911: "Knox County 911." Clark: "My name is Rick Clark. I live at 2105 Campbell Road. My girlfriend is ... obviously took an overdose of something and she's dead, cold dead ... I need you to get some sheriffs out here." 911: "2105 Campbell?" Clark: "Yes sir, there is no need for an ambulance because she is ice cold. It's her (unintelligible) is a different color." 911: "She possibly took an overdose?" Clark: "She took a mouthful of pills last night and spit them back in the bottle. She said, 'No, it ain't worth it.'" 911: "What's you name?" Clark: "Ricky, Ricky Clark." Oct. 6, 2005, by Ricky Lee Clark concerning Penny Bright 911: "Knox County 911." Clark: "Yes, my name is Ricky Clark. Ya'll was out here last weekend. There's a young lady, named Penny Bright. She's took an overdose and she died. I talked to ya'll last weekend. It's the same situation. There's a Penny Bright in my house, she's not breathing." 911: "What's going on sir?" Clark: "She's cold. She's not breathing. We rolled her over to give her mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. She's got vomit running out her mouth." 911: "Okay, do you want me to help you do CPR on her?" Clark: "She's dead as a doornail, lady." SHARE A DJI Phantom 3 Professional drone takes off during a demonstration for students at Tate's School on Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Tate School has introduced a drone piloting program for their middle school students that will teach students how to fly drones and also shoot video with them. (SAUL YOUNG/NEWS SENTINEL) Jonathan Hodge shows students the drone he pilots during a demonstration at Tate's School on Tuesday, March 22, 2016. Tate School has introduced a drone piloting program for their middle school students and teaches them how to fly drones and shoot video with them. (SAUL YOUNG/NEWS SENTINEL) By Gerald Witt of the Knoxville News Sentinel With a swarming buzz, the quad-copter lifted from a table on a mission to find a lost pet. Elementary school students at Tate's School watched the demonstration as the white drone lit into the sky with its 4K camera trained at the ground. "These things are very capable," said Donald Gunter, a technology instruction at the school. Gunter is using his knowledge as a professional airline pilot and drone pilot to teach children the use and application of drones in the 21st century. He's also worked in the military for 31 years, including the Pentagon and the Strategic Operations Center in Iraq. The school's Drone Pilot Program is designed for sixth- and seventh-grader students to learn theory behind unmanned aerial vehicles, or UAVs, including their flight operation using that knowledge in real-time flight scenarios. Gunter's demonstration Tuesday was a teaching moment for students. He asked the students what satellites do. "Satellites are in space and give us, like, the Internet," one girl said. He asked what GPS does, and explained how it works with the drone as it soared more than 100 feet in the air. "I've got eyes on our pet," Jonathan Hodge said. He flew the drone while a volunteer was picked out to recover the lost pet. When the boy returned, in a dead sprint, he held a toy in his hand. "It was a stuffed animal!" one student said. Gunter explained the computer in the drone that helped keep it upright and steady against winds. "There's a computer inside the drone and inside the controller and they're constantly talking," Gunter said. "Some (drones) are as big as airplanes, and some have jet engines inside of them." Zoe Winterbotham, a sixth-grader at the school, told her classmates what their weekly drone classes have been covering. "We are learning about the FAA rules," she said, "and the weather we can fly it in." Wednesday's lesson is on aerodynamics, she said. Soon, according to Gunter, they'll be flying the drones themselves. "This is technology that has become highly valuable," Gunter said, "and it has many uses. EMMA JAYNE WILLIAMS/SPECIAL TO THE NEWS SENTINEL This former supermarket on Andersonville Highway in Norris will be the site of a temporary satellite campus of Knoxville's Tennessee College of Applied Technology. SHARE By Bob Fowler of the Knoxville News Sentinel CLINTON Enrollment is booming and there's a long waiting list of prospective students at the Tennessee College of Applied Technology (TCAT) in Knoxville, and to help ease the overload, a satellite campus is in the final planning stages for Anderson County. "It's just about a done deal," Tim Thompson, president of the Anderson County Economic Development Association, said Tuesday. The proposal calls for a temporary facility in a vacant grocery store on Andersonville Highway at the edge of Norris for two years, followed by a permanent, 20,000-square-foot building on seven acres in the Clinton/Interstate 75 Industrial Park. Auto parts maker SL Tennessee, which has a sprawling factory there, is donating the land. TCAT trains workers for new careers in the changing manufacturing arena, which is becoming more automated and high-tech. "Nearly every industry in East Tennessee is having trouble finding skilled labor," Thompson said. Skills such as welding, machine tool technology, industrial maintenance, and injection molding are taught at the college. Having a satellite campus "is a great opportunity for Anderson County," Thompson said. TCAT seeks to address part of Gov. Bill Haslam's "Drive to 55" program to boost postsecondary education so that at least 55 percent of the workforce has that advanced training. Another of Haslam's initiatives, Tennessee Promise, provides free tuition to community colleges for qualifying high school graduates and for TCAT workforce training. Those programs are spurring enrollment in the Knoxville TCAT on Liberty Street downtown, where there are now 1,148 enrollees, including 237 students from Anderson County, said Thompson. County Commissioners on Monday approved using $250,000 to upgrade the old Hensley's IGA Shop 4 Less grocery store, which Thompson said would be available rent-free for two years. Local industries would help on that upgrade, he said. Another $250,000 was set aside Monday as the county's share of the proposed permanent satellite campus in the industrial park. Thompson said that building of about 20,000 square feet, along with the necessary training equipment, would have about a $5 million price tag, and state funding is a possibility. Half of the county's share comes from an industrial development account, while the balance is a payback of a special appropriation given to the county's ambulance service several years ago, County Commissioner Myron Iwanski said Tuesday. The plan is for the temporary satellite campus in the former grocery store to open by September with a projected student enrollment of about 200 by January, Thompson said. MaKayla Dyer, 8, killed by a shotgun blast Saturday, Oct. 3, 2015, in White Pine. An 11-year-old boy was charged with her murder. By Richard Locker of the Knoxville News Sentinel NASHVILLE A state House committee on Tuesday voted down for this year a bill that would have penalized adult gun owners who leave loaded guns unlocked and accessible when children under age 13 get hold of them. Penalties would have increased under the bill if children hurt or killed themselves or someone else with such guns. The House Civil Justice Committee killed the bill on a 2-7 vote, with Democrats Bill Beck and Sherry Jones of Nashville voting to advance the bill and seven Republicans voting against it Reps. Mike Carter of Ooltewah, Jim Coley of Bartlett, Martin Daniel of Knoxville, John Forgety of Athens, Jamie Jenkins of Somerville, Jon Lundberg of Bristol and Courtney Rogers of Hendersonville. The bill, called "MaKayla's Law" by its sponsors, was prompted by the gun deaths of 12 children in Tennessee since January 2015, including 8-year-old MaKayla Dyer of White Pine, who was shot by her 11-year-old neighbor after he removed his father's shotgun from a closet last October. A Jefferson County Juvenile Court judge found Benny Tiller delinquent by reason of first-degree murder in her death and ordered him held in state custody until age 19. No one else has been charged. MaKayla's mother, LaTasha Dyer, appeared before a Senate committee earlier this month to urge passage of the bill. "If the gun had been simply locked away and not loaded, MaKayla would still be here. Please help me make sure MaKayla's horrible fate isn't shared by one more child," she said. National Rifle Association lobbyist Erin Luper told the same Senate committee that her organization opposed the bill because it's a gun owner's responsibility to safely store guns and the state shouldn't impose criminal consequences on them. "No responsible gun owner would ever be impacted by this law," Rep. Sherry Jones, D-Nashville, the House sponsor, told the House committee Tuesday. "The only people who would be impacted would be irresponsible gun owners who leave loaded guns unlocked and accessible to children under 13. "We all know Tennessee has an accidental shooting problem. We are ninth in accidental shootings, and many of them involve children. This is a way for children to be protected. It's what the NRA says in its training: always store guns out of reach of children." The bill would have made it a crime for an adult to "recklessly place, leave or store (a gun) in plain view and readily accessible to a child under 13 if the gun is left unattended," not under the owner's control, and either loaded or with ammunition nearby unless the gun had a trigger lock or similar device or were in a locked container or cabinet accessible only by the owner or the owner's spouse. A violation would have been a Class A misdemeanor if a child under 13 got hold of the gun; a class E felony if the child fired, or let another fire the gun and the shot caused injury; and a Class C felony if the shot resulted in death. Beth Joslin Roth, policy director for Safe Tennessee Project, vowed to return with the bill next year. "The NRA was against the bill, and in this state and with this Legislature, pleasing the NRA is more important than taking steps to address these preventable tragedies that continue to injure and kill Tennessee kids," she said. "We now know that this is a growing problem in this state and our legislators' answer is to do absolutely nothing about it." She said that in Tennessee since January 2015, there have been 30 incidents of a child finding a loaded gun and firing it, resulting in 18 injuries and 12 deaths. Past coverage: Mother of slain 8-year-old girl pleads for tougher gun law (March 1, 2016) Bill would make it crime to leave loaded guns accessible to children (Feb. 25, 2016) State challenged to find treatment program for Jefferson boy, 11, convicted of murder (Feb. 4, 2016) White Pine boy, 11, found guilty in slaying of 8-year-old girl; siblings in state custody (Feb. 4, 2016) DA: No decision made about trying White Pine boy, 11, as adult in slaying of girl, 8 (Oct. 9, 2015) Video: White Pine mobile home park manager describes murder scene (Oct. 5, 2016) White Pine boy, 11, not the youngest to face charges in an East Tenn. slaying (Oct. 6, 2015) Questions abound in shotgun slaying of 8-year-old girl (Oct. 6, 2015) Jefferson County sheriff: 11-year-old boy charged in shooting death of girl, 8 (Oct. 5, 2016) The Tennessee State Capitol in Nashville. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey) SHARE By Joel Ebert, The Tennessean One week after a House subcommittee approved a controversial bathroom bill that sought to require students to use bathrooms that match their sex at birth, Tennessee lawmakers have decided to halt the legislation. The measure, sponsored by Rep. Susan Lynn, R-Mount Juliet, and Sen. Mike Bell, R-Riceville, would have created a statewide policy that opponents said could result in putting the state's Title IX funding in jeopardy. With an overflow crowd watching, three members, including two Republicans, of the House Education Administration and Planning Committee, expressed opposition to the bill. "I dont think it's appropriate nor do I think it's necessary," said Rep. Craig Fitzhugh, D-Ripley. Reps. Rick Womick, R-Rockvale, concurred with Fitzhugh, saying the bill is unnecessary. Womick asked John and Valerie Guenst and their 17-year old daughter Jennifer, who attends Franklin High School, to discuss the legislation. Her parents explained that although their daughter was born male she has breasts and identifies as a female. "Would you like to see her at the urinal beside you today?" Valerie Guenst asked the committee, before turning to Jennifer, who said she has not had a problem with her school, which has made accommodations for her and recognizes her as a female. Although Rep. Mark White, R-Memphis, voted in favor of the measure when it appeared before a subcommittee last week, he said he talked with Henry Seaton, an 18-year-old Beech High School student, and learned more about the issue. White indicated on Tuesday that he agreed with Fitzhugh and Womick. Opponents of the bill have continually noted that it would be harmful to transgender students and could potentially put the state at risk of losing hundreds of millions of dollars in Title IX funding, a point that has been continually reiterated by Gov. Bill Haslam. A fiscal note for the bill was recently amended to note that as much as $1 billion in federal funding for secondary and post-secondary education could be in jeopardy if the legislature approved the measure. Proponents of the legislation largely cited privacy concerns, arguing that Tennessee's schools need a statewide policy to follow, rather than the current system, which allows schools to make accommodations to students on a case by case basis. The House committee ended up sending the measure to summer study essentially ending the bill's advancement this year. After the move, ACLU-TN Executive Director Hedy Weinberg praised the committee's decision. "The powerful voices of transgender students and their families who spoke out against this bill truly increased understanding of what it means to be transgender and moved legislators to recognize that this legislation was extremely harmful," she said. "Every child in Tennessee deserves to be treated with respect and dignity, which is why todays vote is so important as we work to move Tennessee forward and ensure that all Tennessee children are treated equally under the law. Reach Joel Ebert at 615-772-1681 and on Twitter @joelebert29. SHARE By Richard Locker of the Knoxville News Sentinel NASHVILLE State and University of Tennessee employees told a Senate committee Tuesday that if Gov. Bill Haslam's plan to outsource the operation and maintenance of all state property and buildings sounds too good to be true, it probably is. The Senate State & Local Government Committee heard presentations from the Tennessee State Employees Association and from Tom Anderson, a buyer in UT's Facilities Services office the first time that workers have testified formally in a legislative committee since the massive outsourcing initiative was publicly revealed last August. Two weeks ago, the governor's outsourcing team presented to the same panel its "business justification" for outsourcing: that a private contractor could save up to $35.8 million when fully implemented, without cutting staff or benefits, primarily through volume purchasing, better-trained staff and more work performed in-house directly by contractor's employees. But TSEA spokesman Chris Dauphin told the committee that "essentially means" that when the state buys good and services, "we are being overcharged by $35.8 million." He said outsourcing everything is an overreaction to a small problem that can be corrected. "Let's simply leverage our $30 billion plus enterprise (state government's annual budget) to negotiate better pricing on goods and services, cross-train our current employees and let state employees continuing the great work they are doing." Dauphin also said private contractors often charge extra for services not specified in a contract. He read Texas media reports to the committee of "cost shifting" by the private vendor at Texas A&M University, which the governor's outsourcing team says is a model for facilities management outsourcing. Randy Stamps, a former state legislator and legislative staffer who now heads TSEA, cited the Legislature's experience with Jones Lang LaSalle's state contract to manage the Legislative Plaza, including having to file work orders to Chicago to obtain simple maintenance tasks. Anderson, a 15-year employee of UT Knoxville, took issue with the Haslam team's claim that a private contractor "can do a cheaper job with no loss of service, no job cuts, no benefit cuts, no other cuts (that) everything is going to be better and will cost less and there's no real evidence to back that. That is a sales job I won't buy. Usually when someone makes you a promise that sounds to good to be true, it probably is," he said. Anderson said UT facilities services workers have years of knowledge, experience and expertise about buildings and grounds on campus and often work around the clock to make sure the campus is ready for students, faculty and staff. Private contractors, he said, "would be coming to a campus they know nothing about, having to support a set of buildings, a community of faculty, staff and students, a campus they know nothing about ... The transition itself is going to be, frankly, devastating to campus communities for a long term." The committee chairman, Sen. Ken Yager, R-Kingston, said it's too early to say whether the committee will make a recommendation on the governor's outsourcing initiative. SHARE State Sen. Randy McNally, R-Oak Ridge, listens to discussion on the Senate floor, Wednesday, April 16, 2014, in Nashville. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey) Senate Speaker and Lt. Gov. Ron Ramsey sent shockwaves through the Tennessee General Assembly last week when he announced he would not run for re-election this year. The Blountville Republican's surprise decision opens up the most coveted post in the Senate and the second most powerful in state government. Several Republican senators reportedly are interested in the job, but none have the experience and record of Oak Ridge's Randy McNally. McNally said Friday that he would run for the post. Only two people have held the position in the past 46 years Ramsey, whose tenure will be a decade, and the late John Wilder, who was speaker a record 36 years. McNally, 72, would be more of a transitional figure. He is not up for re-election until 2018 and has said he would serve only one more term if he runs and is re-elected. With the GOP holding 28 of 33 seats in the Senate, the Republican supermajority is secure this election cycle. That means the winner of a vote of the Senate Republican Caucus after the November election is almost certain to be elected speaker by the full Senate when the next General Assembly opens its two-year run next January. McNally is one of five Republicans likely considering running. One of those, Sen. Bo Watson, R-Chattanooga, told NashvillePost.com that he'll back McNally. Watson is vice chairman of the powerful Finance Committee and would be in line to replace McNally as chairman if McNally moves up. Other potential candidates are Senate Majority Leader Mark Norris of Collierville, GOP Caucus Chairman Bill Ketron of Murfreesboro and Commerce Committee Chairman Jack Johnson of Franklin. Elected to the House in 1978 and the Senate in 1986, McNally is the longest-serving member of the Legislature. Longevity is not McNally's only virtue, however. From his first term in the Legislature, he has served his constituents with honor and distinction. In the 1980s, McNally played a key role in Operation Rocky Top, the Federal Bureau of Investigation's probe into corruption tied to the bingo industry. After reporting being offered a bribe, the first-term senator worked undercover for the FBI, collecting evidence that helped lead to more than 50 convictions including those of several lawmakers. He has won numerous awards over the years, both from his colleagues in the Legislature and advocacy groups such as Mothers Against Drunk Driving. In addition to serving as chairman of the Senate Finance, Ways and Means Committee, he is chairman of the Joint Pensions and Insurance Committee, 1st vice chairman of the Senate Rules Committee, a member of the Senate Health and Welfare Committee, and a member of the Joint Fiscal Review Committee. If elected, McNally would be the first speaker of either legislative chamber from the Knoxville area in modern Tennessee history. The 5th Senate District encompasses Anderson, Loudon and a portion of North Knox counties. McNally's experience, intellect, institutional knowledge and integrity would make him an ideal speaker and lieutenant governor. SHARE Below are the core comments I sent to about 40 legislators in the General Assembly, including the legislators from the Knox County area. Sen. Richard Briggs responded with his support. A few others responded with various comments that were either non-committal or possibly leaning in favor of the legislation to defund the diversity program at the University of Tennessee. Legislators will likely be influenced by comments they receive from their constituents and other Tennessee citizens. I urge people to be very thoughtful about this legislation and to express their views. My earlier comments are: The pending bill to defund the Office for Diversity and Inclusion at the UT Knoxville campus is a knife in the ribs of the greater Knoxville area and Tennessee in general. The purpose of the office is to promote an atmosphere and culture of mutual respect of all people. UTK seeks to be welcoming to all and hostile to none. That laudable goal should be respected by our community leaders, including legislators. These goals have tangible consequences. The existence of these goals and, more importantly, the achievement of them encourage students, faculty and employers to come to our area. Recruitment of talented and capable individuals is more effective in a diverse culture. Obtaining investment for activities in East Tennessee and obtaining grant money to support research and UT partnerships with industries and government not only becomes easier, but eligibility for some of those grants would be denied in the absence of adequate diversity. Jobs and our economic welfare are supported by diversity. Defunding will wound our efforts to provide jobs and better economic conditions as well as degrade the programs and standing of UTK. Any legislator who supports defunding should be considered an enemy of our East Tennessee economy and culture. Arnold G. Cohen, Knoxville Opinion / Columnist Recent utterances by MDC-T spokesperson, Obert Gutu on cash flow challenges that the country is temporarily encountering should not be tolerated as the statement is meant to incite fear and chaos among depositors and the general banking public.If he is not aware, Obert Gutu should be reminded that, Reserve Bank of Zimbabwe Governor, Dr John Mangudya clearly announced that the recent rise in demand for cash in the country was a short term crisis, hence there is no need for the banking public to panic.It is imperative for Zimbabweans to take heed of Dr Mangudya's advice. Dr Mangudya highlighted that Zimbabweans must use plastic money, a popular phenomenon in developed world instead of hard cash in their transactions, as there are several merits of using plastic money at the expense of hard cash.Firstly, using plastic money is convenient, safe and flexible. In that vein, an individual can either buy groceries in shops or pay bills using plastic money. By so doing, the current challenges of cash shortages will be reduced.However, it is a disgrace that the MDC-T as always want to politicize this issue. MDC-T seems to find relevance when the country experiences challenges. It has now become common knowledge that the MDC-T has a single tool they use when trying to gain political mileage, attacking the ruling Government without proffering any tangible solutions that may develop and keep the country moving forward.The real cause of cash shortages in banks is absolutely clear. As stated by Governor Mangudya, cash demand were heightened by a shift in civil servants' pay dates which coincided with the rest of the employees in the private sector. It's actually a shame that the MDC-T fails to realize such economic difficulties and point a finger at the ruling Government. Gutu absurdly said that "the apparent cash flow shortages was a result of deteriorating political situation and the almost complete failure of Government ".The other cause of cash scarcity could be externalization of funds by either individuals or traders travelling across the country's borders. Money laundering is when funds available in the country are being illegally channeled out of the economy to foreign bank accounts. While delivering his monetary policy in February this year, Dr Mangudya highlighted that money was flowing unlawfully outside Zimbabwe, a process that is worsening liquidity in the economy. It is therefore, prudent for every Zimbabwean to be a responsible citizen through shunning such deleterious activities.Indeed, there is no reason for Gutu and cronies to make noises about on this issue. The only ticket that the MDC-T has been riding on since its inception is worsening the country's economy. At one point, Gutu foolishly noted that, "We need to hear ZANU-PF scream, and as a democratic party we can only engage in peaceful resistance to this regime until it squeals." In other words, the current cash shortages could be a result of the MDC-T who are fighting the ruling Government from a hidden corner.From the onset, the MDC-T has never proffered positive ideas that assist or support ruling Government's programmes. They are there only to criticize Government with a misguided notion of removing it from power. Also, it is the MDC-T that called for the illegal economic sanctions against Zimbabwe in 2000. Unfortunately, those sanctions are causing great suffering to innocent Zimbabweans including MDC-T supporters.In his recent rally in Marondera, leader of MDC-T Morgan Tsvangirai nonsensically noted that he will lead the protests and stay away actions as a way to force the ruling government to implement electoral reforms. Tsvangirai should be ashamed of inciting the public. Such acts of sabotage are not accepted as they destabilize the economy.If Tsvangirai is comfortable with not going to work he should stay at home alone and stop inciting true Zimbabweans who are willing to work for their country. Zimbabwe is not for Tsvangirai; therefore he should not just utter reckless statements that provoke the general populace.It's indeed a shame for Gutu and his MDC-T to say ZANU-PF rigged the 2013 elections. The elections were held in the presence of both MDC-T and ZANU-PF observers. Where exactly were the elections rigged? Gutu should provide evidence that support his statement rather than uttering baseless information. Honestly, is it a crime for a political party to win any elections in Zimbabwe?MDC-T should know by now that Zimbabwe will not fall at their behest. An artist's concept of the Xilin Station to be built in Singapore. / Courtesy of Samsung C&T By Jhoo Dong-chan Samsung Construction & Trading (C&T), Korea's first general trading company and also an engineering and construction affiliate of Samsung Group, has won a 737 billion won ($633.32 million) deal to build a subway station and train tunnel in Singapore. According to a Samsung C&T official, Tuesday, the company clinched the construction deal with the Land Transport Authority, for the construction of a 1.2 kilometer tunnel for the Thomson-East Coast Line (TEL) extension to reach Xilin Avenue in southeastern Singapore along with a subway station there. The route, named the T313 section, will require advanced construction techniques and precise schedule management because the tunnel will be under a river and must connect to TEL system. The work will be completed by 2024. An official said that Samsung C&T has won and undertaken seven similar construction projects and built two highways in Singapore since the company chose the city-state as a strategic market several years ago. Samsung C&T has prioritized construction safety during the previous projects and also regularly participated in a series of safety programs. Such efforts were highly acclaimed by Singapore's transport authorities, an official added. "The company will do its best to secure more work in Singapore with our sound and proven construction methods," said an official. By Choi Sung-jin Small- and medium-sized manufacturers have called for the government to expand dispatched workers to help ease their manpower shortage. At a workshop on Monday to foster SMEs through economic legislation, managers of smaller businesses asked the government to include the "root industries" such as metal casting and welding in the category of businesses that can use dispatched labor. "Currently, we have to renew employment contracts with outsourcing agencies every six months because related laws do not allow the use of dispatched labor for more than half a year," said a small business manager. "Because of the rigid law, a number of SMEs are wasting time and energy while worrying about breaking the law." The manpower shortage at SMEs is far more serious than in large businesses, with their average understaffed ratio rising from 4.6 percent in 2012 to 11.5 percent last year. "Smaller manufacturers are suffering from a chronic manpower shortage, and they want the government to solve it in any ways available, be it the expansion of dispatched workers or whatever else," said the CEO of a midsize company. A researcher at the Korea Small Business Institute said that if the government allowed metal casting and welding firms to use dispatched labor, it would create about 36,000 jobs. Others want the age limit of dispatched laborers to be extended to 55 or older. The law now permits dispatched labor only to 32 types of businesses, including computers, management and broadcasting. Among these jobs, only a few are suitable for older workers, such as cleaners and gas station attendants, which have poor working conditions. The government needs to open up more jobs to dispatched labor so that more aging workers can do decent work, they say. The advocates for more flexible use of dispatched labor want the government to ease the restrictions for high-income professions such as patent experts, translators-interpreters and pilots. Others have made more radical demands, calling for the overhaul of the dispatched labor system. "About 60 percent of the 43 OECD countries have no restrictions on dispatched labor," said Professor Lee Seung-gil of Aju Law School. "Like Japan and Germany, Korea needs to make a small number of exceptions and allow it for all others." But he acknowledged that these industrial countries had an institutional framework that supplemented their almost free dispatched labor system. "The government, while deregulating dispatched labor in principle, needs to work out measures to prevent the aggravation of job security," he said. By Jhoo Dong-chan Korean construction giant GS Engineering & Construction (E&C) has won a 1.7 trillion won ($1.46 billion) contract with Singapore's Land Transportation Authority (LTA), a GS E&C official said Tuesday. Under the deal, GS E&C is expected to complete building what it claims will be the world's largest subway vehicle depot by February 2024. The vehicle depot will be built on a total area of 320,000 square meters near Changi Airport in southeastern Singapore, connecting three major Singapore subway lines the Downtown Line, Thomson East Coast Line and East-West Line. Once completed, subway vehicles running through the city's three subway lines are expected to be stationed there along with public buses. So far, GS E&C has clinched seven construction projects with Singapore authorities worth a total of 3.2 trillion won, including a previous contract last June worth 350 billion won. Reportedly, officials at the city-state's LTA rated GS E&C's performance in a previous vehicle depot construction project for Singapore's Downtown Line last July highly favorable. The company shortened the construction period by six months. The company received the highest rank of "Star" in Singapore's environment rating system last May and also won a safety contest hosted by the LTA in September. "GS E&C has proven its quality in safety, environment and construction management with Singapore," said GS E&C CEO Lim Byung-yong. "The company will live up to Singapore's expectations with another successful construction project, proving Korea's advanced technology in construction." Opinion / Columnist The vicious attack of a Zanu PF member, Kenny Chabwana by the raucous MDC-T hooligans only serves to give credence to what have been said of that party all along. The MDC-T is a violent party and that violence is within its DNA.The recent attack threw eggs in the face of the Zimbabwe Peace Project (ZPP), Heal Zimbabwe Trust and many other Non Governmental Organisations which have been documenting cases of political violence. Most of these cases were said to have been perpetrated by Zanu PF.This case in point will go undocumented as these organizations always wink at the evil committed by the MDC-T. This has actually exposed the sinister agenda behind the documentation of the perceived political violence. Already we have seen some attempts to divert attention from the attackers to the police who, of course descended on Harvest in search of the barbaric culprits. The police were doing their work and they must not be blamed at all.We are told the MDC-T headquarters is actually a haven for criminals. It's strange that a government in waiting can harbor fugitives of the law. Ironically, they are at the forefront of accusing Zanu PF of not upholding the rule of law. This is a signal that we will have another Somalia, a total anarchy should the MDC-T takes over the reins.It is not the first time that the MDC-T has attacked innocent citizens who pass by the Harvest House. There are reports that passer byes have been pelted with stones by the savage MDC-T security personnel. Three soldiers were recently beaten by the same rogue MDC-T elements while passing by on their way home from work at Defence House.The MDC-T knows it is now a spend force, thus it wants to use any means to destabilize peace in this country. We have seen such Machiavellian tactics used by Afonso Dhlakama of the RENAMO who, after facing repeated defeats in Mozambique, decided to destabilize peace and order in that country. Violence is the language of hopeless people. It is resorted to by people who would have been defeated in a battle of the mind.It is barbarism at its best for the MDC-T to beat a fellow citizen just because he is wearing his party t-shirt. It is strange that the attack was perpetrated by a party that claims to be fighting for democracy in Zimbabwe. These democrats' must be schooled on the subject they pretend to be masters of. Democratic principles dictate that a person must have a freedom of association and movement. These fundamental freedoms are enshrined in the Constitution of this country. Democrats must uphold these constitutional provisions. People have the right to belong and vote for a political party of their choice. It is therefore, the democratic right of Cde Makoni or any other Zimbabwean, to belong to Zanu PF or any other political party.Imagine in this age, 36 years after independence, someone is still butchered for trespassing. These were the wicked and infamous laws that Ian Smith used in Rhodesia to oppress the black majority. Are we still in Rhodesia? We have seen in many cases when the MDC-T especially Morgan Tsvangirai becoming nostalgic of the colonial Smith Regime. He wants land to be given back to the whites and he once said Smith regime was better because he used to drink five beers on a dollar.Harvest House is situated along a very busy street in the Central Business District. If the MDC-T needs to enjoy that kind of privacy, they must relocate their offices to Belgravia, Vumba or even somewhere in Buhera. We cannot have some no-go areas in Harare. If the MDC-T can restrict the movement of citizens when it is still an opposition, what more when it, through a miracle of course, gets into power. People will be killed for just looking at their headquarters.They used their numerical advantage to attack Cde Makoni. We know Zanu PF has the majority. What will become of this nation if that diabolic MDC-T spirit seized Zanu PF and start attacking anybody wearing MDC-T t-shirts? What if the soldiers decide to retaliate on the attack of their officers? Food for thought for the MDC-T.Zanu PF must not retaliate. You cannot argue with a fool and win. The fool drags you into mud and then beat you with experience. This is what the MDC-T is looking for. It is an unconcealed act of provocation so as to attract undue international backlash on Zanu PF.In most cases, an organization places cheerful staff at its front office. If you go to a hotel for an instance, you will be greeted with smiles. However, the MDC-T places violent bouncers at the front. These people are a reflection of the whole organization. By Yoon Ja-young It is illegal for attorneys to provide real estate brokerage services, according to an official statement issued by the land ministry Tuesday. According to the Korea Association of Realtors, it recently received an official response from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport regarding its inquiry about a brokerage service run by attorneys. The ministry stated that it is a breach of the Realtor Act for lawyers to engage in real estate brokerage services without being officially registered as a real estate agency. The response follows a controversy over a real estate brokerage service set up by a group of lawyers. "Trust Lifestyle," which was launched in January, offers assistance to real estate sellers and buyers throughout property transactions. Services range from examining if there are legal problems with assets to advice when drawing up transaction contracts. This generated a great deal of interest because it suggested there would be limited commission fees with a cap of 990,000 won. Consumers can therefore make significant savings because real estate agents generally request commission of approximately 0.5 percent on transactions of homes valued at between 600 and 900 million won. If an individual buys or sells a house worth 900 million won, for instance, he or she then has to pay 4.5 million won in commission to realtors, while they will have to pay only 990,000 won for Trust Lifestyle. The company says it isn't against regulation because it is only offering legal consultation for "direct" real estate transactions between homeowners and buyers. Those who wish to sell a house, for instance, can request to register their home on the Website of the Trust Lifestyle. Then, a company will examine if there are legal problems with the asset. If there are no problems, they will take pictures of the house and register it on the Website. When there is a buyer, an attorney will draw up a contract, which both the homeowner and the buyer will sign. While the service is getting a favorable response from consumers seeking to pay lower commission, real estate agents are maintaining pressure. "We will continue taking tough measures against illegal brokerages by Trust,' including filing a case with the prosecution and requesting additional investigation by the police," said the Korea Association of Realtors. The conflict is expected to continue because the realtor market is already saturated. There are over 90,000 real estate agencies operating in the country, the highest ever. Housing transactions, meanwhile, decreased 25 percent last month from the previous year. Around 360,000 Koreans hold realtor licenses, but many are doing other jobs because the market is saturated. Financial Supervisory Service Gov. Zhin Woong-seob speaks during the financial watchdog's annual policy briefing to foreign financial companies operating in South Korea at a Seoul hotel, Tuesday. / Yonhap By Nam Hyun-woo The top financial regulator pledged Tuesday to grant greater autonomy to foreign financial firms operating here, while at the same time calling on them to set an example in following rules and protecting consumers. Financial Supervisory Service (FSS) Governor Zhin Woong-seob said the watchdog will shift its supervision to "ex-post monitoring" from "ex-ante regulations." The policy shift is designed to give more freedom to the firms by relaxing rules requiring them to make prior reports to the FSS. At a meeting with the heads of the financial firms and other interested parties, Zhin said the regulator will make sure that its examination and supervision functions effectively. Among the participants were U.S. Ambassador to Korea Mark Lippert, Bank of China Executive Vice President Gao Yingxin, HSBC Head of International Asia Pacific Jayang Rikhye, Citibank Korea CEO Park Jin-hei and DBS Bank Country Head Eugene Bang. Some 350 officials and executives from foreign financial companies and international credit rating agencies also attended the event at the Lotte Hotel in central Seoul. "We expect financial firms to take their own initiative to continually improve their internal controls and exercise effective risk management," Zhin said. "We will certainly do our part to encourage new, more diversified and innovative products for the market as well." The FSS announced that its policy direction this year will have a three-pronged approach consisting of providing greater autonomy and responsibility, preventing financial incidents through preemptive measures and enhancing trust toward the financial sector. Zhin stressed that the government is well aware that foreign financial firms serve a "critically important" role and asked them to continue to help Korea's financial industry develop global competitiveness. In return, he pledged the FSS will build a fair and transparent environment. Bang, who is also chairman of Foreign Bankers Group in Korea, suggested that the FSS legislate separate rules and governance frameworks for foreign financial institutions for consistency. "I'm not saying we want preferential treatment, but for the regulator to recognize that we are part of the integrated system of global companies," he said. Bang also suggested the adoption of the universal banking system in order to foster innovative financial business growth. Universal banking refers to various financial services, including insurance, being provided by a single bank. Zhin said such a system is necessary in Korea. During the meeting, FSS speakers said the regulator will closely monitor potential risk factors and come up with tangible reform of financial practices. "Financial firms need to win the trust of customers and enhance accountability amid market uncertainties and a difficult business environment," said FSS Deputy Governor Kim Young-ki, adding that the FSS will also help firms create their own consumer protection systems. Bank of China Executive Vice President Gao called for strengthened financial cooperation between Korea and China. "Apart from traditional business cooperation in deposit, loan and payment, we can now expand our cooperation to consumer credit, asset management and bond issuance and advisory services," he said. Violinist Baek Ju-young will perform on April 19. Pianist Paik Hae-sun will open the festival on April 1. Cellist Yang Sung-won is scheduled to perform on April 3. By Yun Suh-young The 2016 Orchestra Festival will make April special for classical music fans, with the KBS Orchestra opening the 19-day event on April 1, the Seoul Arts Center reported Monday. A total of 19 orchestras will be featured during the festival this year, with each day dedicated to one orchestra's performance. The festival has been held annually for 28 years. This year, the festival will offer music reflecting everything an orchestra can express from musical tone and the time period, to the characteristics of the composer. The pieces that will be performed during the festival range from modern-day compositions to those composed 300 years ago, from Haydn, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff to Shostakovich. Especially with this year celebrating Shostakovich's 110th birthday, the program includes many of his compositions in the lineup. For the first time, the Seoul Arts Center added innovation to the 28-year tradition by offering online live broadcasting for some of the performances throughout the festival. Performances on April 1, 8, 15 and 22 will be broadcast live on KBS's online website and mobile application "My K." The opening and closing performances on April 1 and 22 by the KBS Orchestra and Seoul Philharmonic Orchestra respectively will be broadcast live on Naver, the nation's largest online portal site. The lineup of musicians that will be collaborating with orchestras this year is particularly topnotch, with pianist Paik Hae-sun opening the first day and noted musicians such as pianists Cho Jae-hyuck, Park Jong-hwa, Han Sang-il, and Lee Hyo-joo, violinist Kwun Hyuk-joo, violist Lee Hanna, cellist Yang Sung-won and Kim Doo-min also scheduled. New and rising musicians who have won awards overseas are also participating in the festival for the first time. Lim Ji-young, the first Korean winner of Belgium's Queen Elisabeth International Music Competition, will be participating, as well as Moon Ji-young who was the first Korean to clinch first place at the Ferruccio Busoni International Piano Competition in Italy. Kim Yu-been, flutist winner of the Prague Spring International Music Competition, and Abel Quartet, joint first place winner of the International Joseph Haydn Chamber Music Competition in Austria, will also be performing. The conductors are younger this season. Conductors in their 30s and 40s have taken up the baton to lead the orchestras from Seoul, Gwacheon and Gyeonggi Philharmonics to Wonju, Jeonju and Gunsan Philharmonic Orchestras. Ticket prices range from 10,000 won to 40,000 won. For more information, visit the Seoul Arts Center website (www.sac.or.kr) or call 1544-1555. A special program to allow the general public to see the interior of four throne halls of Deoksu Palace in central Seoul will kick off from March 29 through April 3, the Cultural Heritage Administration said Tuesday. One of Seoul's five grand palaces built during the Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910), Deoksugung, meaning "Palace of Virtuous Longevity," became a palace in 1593 when King Seonjo moved in after all of Seoul's other palaces were destroyed during the Japanese invasion. Visitors taking part in the program will be able to see the inside of the royal halls -- Junghwajeon, Seogeodang, Hamnyeongjeon and Jeonggwanheon. The palace's main throne hall, Junghwajeon, was used for ceremonial occasions such as coronations, and is adorned with dragons and golden window frames. Behind it is the palace's only two-storey non-wooden structure in a grand neoclassical-style, Seogeojeon, designed by a British architect and completed in 1910. Behind these structures is the fusion-style pavilion Jeonggwanheon, designed by a Russian architect as a place for the Korean monarch to savor coffee and entertain guests. A maximum of 20 people will be admitted each time from 10 a.m., with the guided tour to last one-and-a-half hours. People can apply for admission at King Gojong's living quarters, Hamnyeongjeon, can also be accessed. His death in his living quarters in 1919 sparked off nationwide protests against Japanese rule.Behind these structures is the fusion-style pavilion Jeonggwanheon, designed by a Russian architect as a place for the Korean monarch to savor coffee and entertain guests.A maximum of 20 people will be admitted each time from 10 a.m., with the guided tour to last one-and-a-half hours. People can apply for admission at www.deoksugung.go.kr. (Yonhap) South Korea's science ministry said Thursday it will spend 3 billion won for research study on the Zika virus, amid concerns that it could reach the country. The Ministry of Science, ICT, and Future Planning said it plans to select three teams of researchers, providing 1 billion won to each, to find solutions to different tasks related to coping with the virus. The researchers will develop core-technologies related to the treatment of the Zika virus, as well as diagnosis kits that can promptly find out if a patient is infected. The Zika virus is almost non-fatal, causing only mild symptoms like fever, joint and muscle pain, headaches and bloodshot eyes. However, it can cause birth defects such as microcephaly, a debilitating condition where a baby is born with an abnormally small head and brain. The ministry said the preemptive move is vital as the country lacks know-how in dealing with the Zika virus, adding it cannot rule out the possibility of an outbreak in South Korea. South Korea has so far had no confirmed Zika virus cases. The government earlier said the Asian tiger mosquito has been cited for the spread of the virus, and that its control efforts will be centered on this insect. The tiger mosquito becomes active around May. (Yonhap) By Choi Sung-jin "Like the MERS turmoil of last year, the Zika virus could emerge as a serious social risk in Korea this year. The problem is that Korea has few researchers of Flavivirus, a group of viruses transmitted by mosquitoes. This country is a blind spot as far as basic virus research is concerned." So said Professor Ryu Wang-shik of Yonsei University at a workshop on zoonoses, or communicable diseases between humans and animals, organized by Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology Thursday. At the public meeting, about 100 participants discussed various pending issues, such as prediction, diagnosis and monitoring of zoonoses, basic research for developing remedies and vaccines, and establishing infrastructure to cope with such diseases. Experts pointed out the lack of Fravivirus researchers and the urgency in establishing an international network for joint research, while calling for redefining the roles and missions of related agencies. Ryu said if the Zika virus should flow into Korea, it will cause uncontrollable confusion in the nation. "With Fraviviruses, like the Zika virus, it is difficult to predict how and to what extent the spread of infection might be," he said. "To enhance the chances of prediction, basic researchers are necessary but there are few experts in the nation." In order to develop the diagnostic apparatus, vaccines and treatments, it is necessary to inquire into the biological traits of viruses. That in turn requires scientists to proliferate and cultivate the viruses, and then have the adequate facilities so they can conduct their work. But Korea lacks in both, the biochemist noted. / AP-Yonhap By Ko Dong-hwan S. Korea has its first case of the dangerous Zika virus, according to health authorities Tuesday. The Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said a man, 43, who returned from a business trip in Brazil after staying there from Feb. 17 until Mar. 11, has tested positive to the mosquito-borne virus. The man was tested after suffering from fever and muscle pain. The virus is particularly dangerous to the unborn babies of pregnant women, because it can spread to the fetus, resulting in the baby being born with an abnormally small head, a condition known as microcephaly. Discovered in Africa, the virus has spread to parts of Asia and Latin America, including many Caribbean countries. In Asia, China and Japan have reported a few confirmed cases. In February, the World Health Organization declared the Zika virus outbreak a global emergency. By Chung Ah-young A high court in Seoul convicted a man of illegally leaking and distributing questions for the Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SATs) in 2012-2013, Tuesday. Upholding a lower court ruling, the appeals court ordered the man, surnamed Kim, to pay 4 million won in fines and forfeit an additional 4 million won which he had earned through selling the questions. The SAT is a test taken worldwide for college admissions in the United States, owned and administered by Education Testing Service (ETS) of Princeton, New Jersey. ETS prohibits the sharing of test questions or answers. It provides only part of the questions through its authorized channels but no questions may be distributed or reproduced without consent from ETS. Kim purchased the questions from a broker and sold them to lecturers, cram school operators and other brokers from July 2012 to June 2013, gaining some 4 million won. Later that year, the prosecution indicted 22 people including Kim for leaking the questions. The other 21 defendants have been on trial in the lower court. "The lower court ruling seemed light considering Kim's act caused unfavorable results for many Korean students," the court said. "However, such an act was attributed to social problems that many people want to raise their scores within a short period of time through illegal means. So we have upheld the lower court ruling." In 2007, ETS cancelled the scores of some 900 Korean students who took the test in January after suspicions arose that some had illegal access to the questions in advance. Following the repeated leakage scandals, ETS reduced the number of tests from six to four in 2013. Lawyers for a Democratic Society Secretary General Cho Young-sun, right, speaks at a press conference in Seoul, Tuesday, about a damages suit against the government and police by the family of Baek Nam-ki, a farmer who has been in a coma after being hit by a police water cannon at an anti-government rally last year. / Yonhap State, police blamed for injury during protest By Chung Ah-young Relatives of Baek Nam-ki, a 69-year-old member of a farmers?union who has been in coma after being hit by a police water cannon during a rally last year, have filed for damages against the government and police personnel. Lawyers for a Democratic Society, a group of progressive lawyers representing Baek's family, said Tuesday that it filed a lawsuit with the Seoul Central District Court, seeking a total of 730 million won from the government and six police officers in compensation for his critical condition. The family will seek 240 million won from the government, 150 million won from National Police Agency Commissioner-General Kang Sin-myeong, 100 million won from former Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency Chief Goo Eun-soo and the rest from four police officers in charge of water cannon operations at the rally. Baek was taken to Seoul National University Hospital after being knocked down by a sustained blast from the water cannon at the anti-government rally on Nov. 14. He has remained unconscious since then, despite undergoing surgery. "The government has not taken any action or made any apology although Baek remains in coma after 131 days," the group said at a press conference in Seoul. Lee Jung-il, a lawyer also representing Baek and other injured ralliers, said that police mobilized some 20,000 officers, 19 water cannon vehicles, 10 police buses and 580 pepper sprayers under an emergency order from Kang given a day before the rally. "The number of water cannon vehicles used to suppress the protesters on that day was the highest ever," Lee said. "Police are required to aim the water cannon under a target's chest according to safety guidelines. But police directly aimed the water cannon at Baek's head." The group revealed surveillance camera footage capturing the scene in which Baek was repeatedly hit by the water cannon even after being knocked to the ground. After the rally, police admitted that they used the water cannons at 10 atmospheres of pressure, a dangerous level when directed at people. The guidelines recommend setting the water cannons at less than seven atmospheres of pressure if protesters are within 20 meters. Baek had been standing less than 20 meters away from the water cannon while taking part in the demonstration. "Police operating the water cannon committed a severely barbaric act," the group said. "To prevent such abuses, we should hold them responsible and request they come up with safety measures." Baek Doraji, a daughter of the farmer, said that they earlier filed a criminal complaint with the prosecution against the police officers but prosecutors have not questioned any of them yet. "We will use all possible legal means for my father," she said. During the Nov. 14 rally, violence erupted between police officers and protesters comprising labor, civic and farmers' groups. Some of the ralliers attempted to destroy police vehicles, and police suppressed them using water cannons, injuring dozens of them. By Kim Hyo-jin Yoo Seong-min The ruling Saenuri Party is continuing to delay making a decision on whether to nominate Rep. Yoo Seong-min, an estranged former aide to President Park Geun-hye, as a candidate for the general election, prompting public speculation Tuesday. With 21 days before the April 13 national ballot, the party has yet to announce who will run in the Dong B district of Daegu, Yoo's constituency the final electoral seat awaiting a nomination with one day left before candidate registration begins. On Tuesday, the party's nomination committee held a meeting to discuss the issue, but ended without any progress being made. "We couldn't reach a conclusion today. The matter will be discussed tomorrow," Lee Hahn-koo, the head of the committee said after the meeting. According to the Election Law, candidates who will run in the parliamentary race must register 20 days ahead of the election, specifically this Thursday and Friday at the National Election Committee. But those who leave or change their party during this period are not allowed to register, even as independent candidates. If Yoo plans to run in the race, he has no other choice but to abandon his party membership by today because the party is postponing making a decision. The party's nominations committee has nudged Yoo to voluntarily quit the party while indicating that his exclusion is a fait accompli. While delaying the announcement, the committee even made it impossible to hold a primary to select a candidate for Yoo's district. Park Jong-hee, a member of the committee, said in a radio interview, "The primary is not our option anymore considering it takes about two days to conduct the public polls. Putting up a single candidate without intra-party competition is the remaining option." Some also expected that the party could leave the district with no candidate to avoid a potential backlash following the exclusion of Yoo. With the party increasing pressure on the lawmaker, some party members objected to the delay, expressing concerns about the falling popularity of the party amid the deepening nomination row. "It's clear that the row was caused by the party leadership catering to the will of the powerful and ignoring the public," Rep. Chung Doo-un said during a press conference, Tuesday. "Many citizens say they will not vote for the party this time. They are now harming themselves, while only seeking the expansion of a powerbase in the party after the election." Yoo parted ways with Park and her followers last year, following a series of remarks in which he took aim at the policies of the Park administration. He clashed with the president over a push for endorsing the revision bill designed to allow a parliamentary review of government ordinances. He was forced to step down from the floor leader post in July after Park criticized him for agreeing to deal with the bill with his opposition counterpart. She denounced this move as an example of the "politics of betrayal." Since then, the chasm has further widened. Park openly slammed Yoo, asking voters to "judge those who practice the politics of betrayal." She even called for people to choose "sincere people," widely seen as an encouragement to her loyalists. Park's loyalists in the party have constantly questioned whether Yoo's stance fits with the party's identity, taking issue with his previous remarks while he was floor leader. Yoo argued that raising welfare benefits without raising taxes, one of Park's pledges, is "false" in his Assembly speech in April. The committee's nominations list released last week was embroiled in controversy because it excluded most incumbent lawmakers close to Rep. Yoo and former President Lee Myung-bak. The pro-Park controlled committee faced a backlash by the excluded lawmakers claiming it was an attack on the non-Park factions. China has reported two more imported cases of the Zika virus, bringing the number of diagnosed Zika infections to five in mainland China, according to the country's health authorities on Wednesday. A 38-year-old man and his eight-year-old son from Yiwu City in China's eastern Zhejiang province were confirmed to have been infected by the Zika virus after traveling to Fiji and Samoa, China's National Health and Family Planning Commission said in a statement. China confirmed its first case of an imported Zika infection earlier this month and there have been no cases of the spread of the disease in mainland China. In the statement, the Chinese health authorities said there is a low risk of spreading the virus. The World Health Organization has declared the Zika virus outbreak a global emergency. (Yonhap) South Korea and Japan are set to hold working-level talks on Tuesday to discuss the enforcement of last year's agreement to settle their decades-long dispute over Tokyo's wartime sexual enslavement of Korean women. The meeting will be held in Tokyo, led by Chung Byung-won, director-general of the South Korean Foreign Ministry's Northeast Asian Affairs Bureau, and Kimihiro Ishikane, director-general of the Japanese Foreign Ministry's Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau, Seoul officials said. Topping the agenda is the implementation of a Dec. 28 deal to resolve the sexual slavery issue. Under the landmark deal, Tokyo expressed its apology and contrition for its colonial-era atrocities, and agreed to provide 1 billion yen ($8.9 million) for a foundation to be established by Seoul to support the surviving victims, euphemistically called "comfort women." But the deal has yet to be implemented, as some of the victims and their supporters refused to accept it. They have lambasted it as "diplomatic collusion," arguing the deal was pushed forward without sufficient consultation with them. Historians estimate that up to 200,000 women, mostly from Korea, were forced to work in front-line brothels for Japanese troops during the war. Only 44 South Korean victims, mostly in their late 80s, are currently known to be alive. (Yonhap) By Yi Whan-woo Korea and Japan agreed to push for early establishment of a foundation aimed at helping former Korean sex slaves before and during World War II in a working-level talks in Tokyo, Tuesday. It was the first dialogue between the Asian neighbors concerning their agreement on Dec. 28 to "finally and irrevocably" settle the issue of "comfort women" forced into sexual servitude for Japanese troops. Chung Byung-won, the director-general at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs' Northeast Asian Affairs Bureau, led the Seoul delegation. The Japanese side was headed by Kimihiro Ishikane, director-general of the Japanese foreign ministry's Asian and Oceania Affairs Bureau. "We explained to the Japanese side that we are carrying out an internal review of various aspects regarding the establishment of the foundation," Chung said after the meeting. "In line with the Dec. 28 deal, We agreed to carry out to restore the victims' honor and heal their wounds as soon as possible." Diplomatic sources speculated that the delegates may have discussed a possible second summit between President Park Geun-hye and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe on the sidelines of the Nuclear Security Summit in Washington, D.C., scheduled from March 31 to April 1. The two leaders had their first one-on-one meeting in Seoul on Nov. 2. They then agreed to spur negotiations on wartime sexual slavery for an early breakthrough. Despite the agreement, Seoul and Tokyo have still failed to make a breakthrough in their decades-long dispute because they remain apart in interpreting the provision of compensation for the former sex slaves. Tokyo insists on removing a statue of a girl situated across the street from the Japanese Embassy in Seoul. The statue symbolizes the victims of Japan's state-perpetrated sex crimes. Japan claims the statue's removal will be a precondition for the country contributing 1 billion yen ($8.9 million) to set up a foundation to help the dwindling number of surviving victims in Korea Seoul maintains the view that the government cannot meddle in the issues involving the statute, saying it was set up by civilians. The agreement also has drawn a backlash from surviving victims and their advocates, who claim the government did not adequately consult with them before striking the deal. Seoul has remained low-key about the comfort women in line with the two nations agreeing to refrain from accusing each other over sex slavery issues. However, Japanese government officials have been making disparaging statements about Japan's responsibility for the sex slavery, according to the U.N. Committee on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination. Tokyo also denied coercion of wartime sex slaves in a report submitted to the U.N. in February. The U.N. Human Rights Committee assessed that Japan was not sufficiently carrying out its recommendations concerning the "comfort women," according to Tokyo's Kyodo News Agency, Tuesday. Shawn Despres, host of a weekly show "Sounds from the Korean Underground" / Courtesy of Shawn Despres By Jon Dunbar Canadian music lover Shawn Despres, who stayed in Korea for seven years, is now promoting Korean music in Canada. Every Sunday night from 11 to midnight, Despres hosts a show "Sounds from the Korean Underground" on CFMU 93.3FM, a radio station in Hamilton, Ontario. It is a late slot, but that's early Monday afternoon (KST) for listeners here. In Korea, he got to know and helped develop the nation's live music community. Last spring he moved back home. But Despres has stayed in touch with Korea's indie music scene through the weekly music show. "Korea's indie scene was a pretty major part of my life for seven years," Despres told The Korea Times. While here he ran KoreaGigGuide.com, wrote about Korean music for The Japan Times and worked as an international publicist/tour booker with the Korea Creative Content Agency (KOCCA) to globalize Korean music. North Korea has strictly screened people and goods coming into the isolated country from the outside world in a "brisk campaign" over fears of the spread of the Zika virus, according to the North's state media on Tuesday. A recent edition of the Pyongyang Times newspaper said, "The rapid spread of the Zika virus over the world arouses growing concern." North Korea held a "national emergency meeting to take immediate measures to counter the virus," the article said, without specifying exactly when the meeting was held. "A campaign is brisk to raise public awareness. Visitors from foreign countries and foreign products are strictly screened at airports, ports, railway stations and border areas," it said. North Korea's health authorities also "advise the public to refrain from touring countries or regions where the virus is highly prevailing." Previously, North Korea showed frantic measures against the outbreaks of deadly viruses in foreign countries. Pyongyang lifted a months-long ban on foreign travelers earlier last year due to the spread of the Ebola virus. Last week, China confirmed its first case of the imported Zika virus amid growing fears over the fast-spreading illness that is blamed for birth defects such as incomplete brain development. China is North Korea's key trading partner and tens of thousands of Chinese tourists are estimated to visit North Korea a year. The World Health Organization has declared the Zika virus outbreak a global emergency. Zika was first discovered in Africa, and has spread to parts of Asia and Latin America, including many Caribbean countries. It is related to yellow fever, Japanese encephalitis and dengue fever, with 1 in 5 infected showing signs of fever, rash and joint pain. (Yonhap) The top nuclear envoys of South Korea and the United States are set to hold a bilateral meeting on Tuesday in Seoul to discuss joint responses to Pyongyang's evolving nuclear threats and relentless provocations, Seoul officials said. On the previous day, the allies held their first high-level meeting here on implementing bilateral and international sanctions that have recently been crafted to punish the communist regime for its nuclear test in January and long-range rocket launch in February. Kim Hong-kyun, South Korea's special representative for Korean Peninsula peace and security affairs, will hold talks with Ambassador Sung Kim, U.S. special representative for North Korea policy. "On the previous day, the talks focused on concrete sanctions-related issues such as the implementation of U.N. Security Council (UNSC) sanctions and unilateral sanctions. But today, the discussions will be about the overall North Korean nuclear issue and joint efforts to prevent additional provocations," an official at Seoul's Foreign Ministry said on the condition of anonymity. During the talks, Kim Hong-kyun is expected to explain the results of his recent visit to Beijing and discuss with his U.S. counterpart ways to flesh out their plans to bolster three-way cooperation with China. On Friday, Kim held talks with his Chinese counterpart Wu Dawei to discuss the implementation of the newly adopted UNSC sanctions resolution. During the talks, Wu said that Beijing was open to three-way talks with Seoul and Washington on implementing the resolution. Before the talks between the allies' nuclear envoys, Sung Kim and Daniel Fried, the State Department's coordinator for sanctions policy, will briefly meet with Seoul's Foreign Minister Yun Byung-se, officials here said. During Monday's talks on anti-Pyongyang sanctions, the U.S. nuclear envoy said that the allies would implement new U.N. sanctions on the North with "vigor and energy" in cooperation with the international community. (Yonhap) North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has conducted a field inspection of a naval ship repair yard, the North's official news agency reported Tuesday. Kim's visit to the October 3 Factory under the Korean People's Army (KPA) Navy Unit 597 came as the country is under increasing pressure after the U.N. Security Council's recent sanctions for its nuclear test and rocket launch. According to the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), the North Korean leader lauded the repair facility for providing a solid technical foundation for repairing any type of warship in a short period of time. He said that the dock was successfully remodeled so that it may ensure the safest and most convenient repair of warships. Kim added that the wharf and embankment projects have also been carried out in an impeccable manner. The KCNA report did not make any mention on when he visited the shipyard. Kim was quoted by the KCNA as having said, "The remodeling of the factory as a modern one by our own efforts was a striking demonstration of the indomitable fighting spirit and validity of the cause of the army and people of the DPRK who are waging an offensive despite difficulties and trials while resolutely smashing the desperate moves of the U.S. imperialists and their followers to stifle Korean socialism." DPRK stands for the North's official name, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea. He expressed great expectation and conviction that the officials and workers at the factory would make positive contributions to developing the Juche-oriented naval force, noting that the defense of territorial waters is equivalent to national defense since the Korean Peninsula is surrounded by the seas on three sides. Created in July 1947, the ship factory is the first repair yard for North Korean warships. It has various facilities including living quarters for workers and covers 51,750 square meters of land. (Yonhap) A North Korean diplomat paid a total of 1.5 million yuan ($230,942) in damages to the families of three Chinese victims who he killed in a drunk driving accident last month, a source in the Chinese border city of Dandong said Tuesday. The accident took place on Feb. 7 in Dandong. The North Korean consular official killed the three Chinese people while driving drunk, although the exact circumstances of the accident were not immediately known. At the time of the accident, the North Korean diplomat had taken part in an event to celebrate North Korea's launch of a long-range rocket on Feb. 7. The launch was condemned by the international community as cover for the test of a long-range ballistic missile launch. According to the source, who received the information from local public security authorities, North Korea sent the money to the diplomat because he could not afford to pay the money by himself. It is rare for North Korean authorities to send money to resolve a car accident involving one of its diplomats, the source added. "Local people were very angered by the car accident caused by a North Korean diplomat," the source said. "North Korea may have sent the money swiftly to appease such public sentiment." The families of each victim was paid 500,000 yuan in compensation. (Yonhap) North Korea's new large caliber rocket launcher system has the range to strike large parts of South Korea, posing new security challenges for Seoul's military, observers said Tuesday. The assessment of security threats comes after Pyongyang's state-run Korean Central News Agency carried a report earlier in the day showing a photo of its leader Kim Jong-un being present at the final test-fire of a multiple rocket launching system (MLRS). It said the new system is ready for combat deployment. The new weapon would help increase "the capability of the Korean People's Army (KPA) to mount a precision attack on the enemies' targets in the operational theater in the southern part of Korea," the news outlet claimed. The report did not specify the date of the test, but it may have been taken Monday when the isolationist country fired five short-range projectiles into the East Sea. South Korea's military has been tracking North Korea's tests of the newest multiple rocket launching system with a 300 millimeter caliber since the country was first seen test-firing it in mid-2013. In October last year, the North showed off the system during a military parade to mark the anniversary of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea. Currently, North Korea has three types of the multiple launcher system actually used by combat troops, with the largest having a caliber of 240 mm. The forthcoming introduction of a larger-caliber launcher system into North Korea's arsenal would significantly enhance the country's attack capability. The rockets fired near the northeastern city of Hamhung early this week flew some 200 kilometers, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. This means they can easily fly over South Korea's capital of Seoul and even reach far down into the country, should they be fired near the inter-Korean border. Possible targets within this range include the headquarters of the military's three branches -- Army, Navy and Air Force -- in the central province of South Chungcheong, and the new base of the United States Forces Korea in Pyeongtaek. In terms of warheads, these rockets could carry high-yield explosives or dual-purpose improved conventional munitions, that, after being fired, burst into sub-munitions over the target area for anti-armor and antipersonnel attacks. South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff spokesman Jeon Ha-kyu confirmed the Monday test-firing to be of a "large-caliber multiple rocket launching system as North Korea has announced." "North Korea has been continuing tests of it as part of performance upgrade efforts," the spokesman said. He said, "The military perceives the North Korean weapon as a threat and, based on that, we are preparing a readiness posture." (Yonhap) South Korea's Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that the U.N. Security Council (UNSC)'s recent decision to exclude four of the 31 blacklisted vessels from its new package of sanctions on North Korea was a "result of international efforts" to faithfully enforce the new sanctions. The UNSC sanctions resolution, adopted recently to punish Pyongyang's latest provocations, had blacklisted the 31 vessels related to the North's Ocean Maritime Management (OMM) company. But four of them were delisted after the Chinese owners of the ships sacked all of the North Korean crewmen working on the vessels. "We evaluate the decision to delist the four vessels as part of the ongoing efforts by U.N. member states to faithfully carry out the UNSC sanctions," ministry spokesperson Cho June-hyuck said during a regular press briefing. "The four vessels were removed from the blacklist as the vessels are no longer under the control of the OMM. Our government has been in close consultation with the U.S., related countries and the UNSC sanctions panel in the process of making the decision (to delist the vessels)." Under the UNSC resolution, U.N. member states are to ban the entry of OMM-related vessels or impound them. The resolution aims to choke off sources of hard currency that can be funneled into Pyongyang's nuclear and missile programs. (Yonhap) By Robin Rhee In the days and weeks which lead up to important national elections, citizens will be bombarded by politics at its best and worst. There will be rallies, speeches, photo-ops, neighborhood meet and greets, and media coverage of the candidates. People surely will be irritated by the traffic jams which occur when candidates move from place to place. War chests will be amassed by small donations from individuals. Corporations may donate large amounts to candidates of opposing views. It's possible that the large contributors may expect to be rewarded with favors down the road. Some of the money may end up in slush funds. If irregularities exist, however, they will not be addressed until the elections are finished. Voters' first impressions seem to be important, but what do they look for? Tall or short? Good looking or plain? Old or young? The make-up and size of his or her entourage? Some analysts say it's possible to detect sincere smiles from fake ones. Real smiles exhibit round cheeks, wrinkles at the corners of the eyes and full lips. Fake ones only have thinly stretched lips which border on sneers. Some candidates who have had gray hair suddenly have black hair. It's long been a joke that if you spot a man who wears both a belt and suspenders chances are he's an ultra-conservative. Those voters who are dissatisfied with the party currently in power will be looking for leadership from new faces. Candidates will make a wide variety of promises during their campaigns. Since the economy tops the list of concerns, they will promise a vigorous economy and job opportunities for all. Affordable education, quality childcare for working mothers, accessible housing, a more comprehensive safety net for the elderly and an end to corruption will also be included. (We all know that corruption may lessen but it will never be completely wiped out.) If all of these promises became reality, it would take an enormous government investment. Where would the money come from? Prepare for a sharp increase in taxes! Prior to elections, politics is bound to get dirty. Computers will make it easy for rumors and allegations to circulate speedily. Some will turn out to be true and others will not. There will be concerted efforts to find skeletons in candidates' closets as well as the dirt about close friends and relatives. At last it's time to vote. People often cast their ballots for only the candidates who represent their political party, the way their families and friends vote or for the candidates they think will win. Those are the lazy voters. Thoughtful voters will research the candidates' education, recent employment and what skills he/she will bring to elected office. Then there are those who will not vote at all. This should not come as a surprise since many citizens view politics as a mud pit and a cesspool. After all, candidates call each other nasty names and sling mud in the hope that some of it will stick. When all of the votes have been tallied and the winners are in a celebratory mood, will the best and brightest candidates have been elected? Suffice to say, citizens deserve the kind of government they elect. The writer is a former weekly columnist for The Korea Times and currently resides in Centerville, Ohio. Write to RRKORAM@aol.com. By John J. Metzler UNITED NATIONS It's a stunning reality check which many diplomats knew but did not expect to hear. That for 2016, "Survival will be an achievement for the National Unity Government" in war torn Afghanistan. The words came as a blunt assessment by the UN's new political point man for Afghanistan, Mr. Nicholas Haysom, who warned the Security Council that the beleaguered South Asian land faces a "difficult fighting season" as the Taliban will seriously confront the Kabul government on a nationwide scale. Nicholas Haysom, stated five particular challenges facing Afghanistan: an economy characterized by low growth and high unemployment; an intensifying insurgency, an increasingly fractious political environment; the need for continued foreign donor assistance, and progress to achieve a peace deal to end the long running Islamic fundamentalist Taliban insurgency. In the wake of the large scale international withdrawal at the end of 2014, which was precipitated by the Obama's Administration's premature pullout of the majority of American security forces and the departure of most international troops too, the already fragile economy faced a loss of confidence and growth. According to Haysom. "Low levels of economic growth have resulted in high unemployment" which in turn "fuels not only the impulse for migration but also lays a foundation for social volatility." He adds that "Taliban emboldened by their military successes in Kunduz, will continue to test the Afghan security forces across the country." So far government forces have held their own in the face of widening attacks. Taliban insurgents have been battling the government for fifteen years. British Ambassador Peter Wilson stated, "An economy cannot flourish without security. Long-term growth needs long-term stability." NATO's multinational military stabilization mission stands at only 13,000 troops; with 7,000 from the USA, 850 from Germany, 229 from Australia and a score of other countries. India's UN Ambassador Syed Akbarsddin addressed the deteriorating situation: "The distress signals are unremitting, a worsening security situation, an increase in the tempo of insurgent activities, a greater toll of civilian causalities and a deteriorating humanitarian situation." The continuing Afghan conflict has caused significant causalities; 11,000 civilians were killed last year, a quarter of the victims being children. Significantly, Afghanistan's government, based on a power sharing agreement, still bedevils a workable political solution in the troubled land. "The National Unity government continues to be subject of criticism on account of economic and security deterioration," according to Haysom, "it is being challenged by a fractious political elite, the erosion of national unity and consequently that most precious political commodity, hope in the future." Despite a swirl of political bickering in the capital Kabul, the fact remans that Afghanistan remains in dire dependence on the international community both for security and for economic assistance. Sixty-nine percent of government expenditures come from foreign donors. With another Afghan pledging conference approaching, the world community is challenged by the question should we sustain a problematic situation in Afghanistan or more dangerously so, let it unravel? Since 2002 the United States has given over $13 billion in economic aid to the country through the Agency for International Development (USAID). Japan and Australia are major donors too. Assistance is focused on education, health care and infrastructure building. The UN's Haysom stresses, "Failure by the international community to pledge a medium term commitment to Afghanistan will have a devastating impact both materially and on the levels of confidence of ordinary Afghans." He added bluntly, "Investment in Afghanistan is a better alternative to the costs of integrating immigrants." Germany's delegate Harald Braun concurs, "For Germany and the European Union migration from Afghanistan has become a pressing issue, with the arrival of over 150,000 Afghan nationals to Germany last year alone." Ambassador Braun added, that Afghanistan can only be successful "if Afghans themselves believe in this future." Afghanistan's Ambassador Mahmoud Saikal stated, "We continue to face challenges from the Taliban, Daesh (ISIL) and Al Qaida and other violent and extremist groups," yet, "We repeat our call to the Taliban to engage in peace talks and to give up violence. We assure them that they will be among the first beneficiaries of the peace dividend." Hayson reiterated, "We have repeatedly and will continue to call, for nothing less than direct talks between the Taliban and the Afghan government." But will this olive branch settle the insurgency or shall the militants simply wait out the foreign forces departure? For the U.S. who has paid a steep price in blood and treasure, the political outcome in Afghanistan must not be squandered. John J. Metzler is a United Nations correspondent covering diplomatic and defense issues. He's the author of "Divided Dynamism: The Diplomacy of Separated Nations: Germany, Korea, China." By Carl Bildt MOSCOW There are two possible futures for eastern Ukraine's Donbas region. One could be found under the framework of the Minsk peace process, the series of agreements cobbled together to defuse the showdown between Russia and Ukraine. Or the region could become the site of a "frozen conflict" of the sort found elsewhere in post-Soviet territory, with low-level skirmishes underscoring the ever-present risk of more serious bloodshed. For the moment, the process has sunk into a stalemate. Finger pointing by both sides is likely to escalate as the European Union and the United States discuss whether or not to prolong sanctions on Russia . Moving the process forward will require a much more assertive approach by the West. The decision about whether to lift sanctions should not be a difficult one. The condition for doing so has always been described as the "full implementation" of the Minsk agreement . And there are no signs that this will be accomplished by the summer, when the current round of sanctions is set to expire. It should also be obvious that easing the sanctions would deprive the EU and the US of their leverage over the Kremlin and their remaining credibility in Kyiv. Such a decision would almost certainly mean a continuation of the conflict, alternating between hot and cold phases. The biggest bottleneck in the implementation of the Minsk agreement regards Ukraine's commitment to provide the country with a federalized form of a government. The Kremlin has frequently accused Ukraine of moving slowly, if not deliberately stalling, on the issue. But while constitutional reform, including decentralization, is included in the Minsk agreement, the text is very vague about what this might entail. Indeed, Russia itself is a perfect example of how constitutional language does not always translate into reality. On paper, Russia is a federation. But President Vladimir Putin has centralized power in his hands. The key question now is who should represent the regions under de facto Russian occupation as the constitutional process moves forward. The Kremlin, unsurprisingly, wants the regions to be represented by the separatist leaders, who were installed with its blessing and depend on its support to remain in power. But the government of Ukraine, just as obviously, opposes this, and has made free and fair elections in those regions a precondition for discussing constitutional changes a stance that is fully compatible with the Minsk agreement. A fierce diplomatic battle is being fought over who should run these local elections, and under what conditions they should take place. The separatist leaders do not want political parties from the rest of Ukraine to take part. Nor would they like the 1.5 million people displaced by the fighting to other parts of the country to be able to cast ballots. But these conditions should be unacceptable to the government of Ukraine, the EU, and the US. If the Minsk process is to move forward, there seems to be no alternative but to have some sort of international organization run the elections, as has been done in similar cases elsewhere. But setting this up will take time; and, again, it is unlikely to happen before the summer. If Russia is truly committed to resolving this part of its conflict with Ukraine (its illegal annexation of Crimea remains completely unaddressed), it should not have any difficulty agreeing to an internationally run election. Those running their fiefdoms in eastern Ukraine would certainly oppose such an arrangement, but Putin's Kremlin is no stranger to dealing with those who disagree with it. Another important issue concerns security. Russia is involved in supplying and manning key parts of the two army corps that are occupying Donbas, and the Ukrainian government is right to insist on the restoration of its control of the border as a precondition of constitutional changes. The West should not underestimate its leverage. The Kremlin has put on a brave face regarding when sanctions might be lifted; indeed, it is busily imposing sanctions of its own. But there is no doubt that serious damage is being done to the Russian economy. Furthermore, output from Russia's existing oil fields is projected to decline by as much as half over the next decade; as it does, access to the technologies needed to exploit harder-to-extract reserves will become increasingly important. As long as sanctions are in place, such technologies will remain out of reach. There are certainly some in Russia who might advocate a prolonged, low-level conflict, interspersed perhaps with occasional bursts of military offensives, in the expectation that Ukraine will eventually disintegrate. This would be a serious misreading of the situation, one that could damage Russia deeply, and for a long time to come. For all of its problems, Ukraine is emerging as a more coherent and viable state. The West must not allow the sanction regime to crumble and the Minsk process to slide into irrelevance. If it does, the ultimate outcome will be a low-level conflict that one day could suddenly become much more serious. And that would be in nobody's interest. Carl Bildt was Sweden's foreign minister from 2006 to October 2014 and Prime Minister from 1991 to 1994, when Sweden joined the EU. Officials must not repeat MERS blunders Korea has confirmed the country's first Zika virus infection. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDCP) said a man, 43, tested positive for the mosquito-borne virus Tuesday. The patient returned home on March 11 via Germany after traveling to Brazil from Feb. 19 to March 9. While in Brazil, he used mosquito repellant and wore long-sleeved shirts, but to no avail. The patient is being treated at a hospital in the southwestern city of Gwangju. Health authorities are closely tracking his movements since he returned. Since China and Japan reported their first confirmed cases of the virus last month, speculation has been rife that it would only be a matter of time before Korea reported its first case. Those who contract the Zika virus usually suffer fever, a rash and muscle pain. But if a woman is infected during pregnancy, the baby could be born with an abnormally small head, a condition known as microcephaly. Zika, which the aedes aegypti mosquito transmits, has not been proven to cause microcephaly in babies. But experts warn of a ''strongly suspected'' relationship between the virus and microcephaly. / AFP-Yonhap The U.S. Supreme Court agreed Monday to hear Samsung Electronics' appeal of the massive damages it was ordered to pay for infringing upon Apple's design patents, a decision that could lead to significant reduction in the amount, Yonhap reported. Samsung paid Apple $548 million in damages awarded by a lower court for copying designs of the iPhone. In December, Samsung took the case to the highest court, asking it to reconsider the scope of design patents and how damages are calculated, in an effort to get up to $399 million reimbursed. On Monday, the court said it will take up the case, but consider only one of the two questions raised by Samsung, which is, "Where a design patent is applied to only a component of a product, should an award of infringer's profits be limited to those profits attributable to the component?" The question reflects the South Korean smartphone giant's claims that it is unfair for a patent violator to hand over all profits from sales of a product using the patent design even if that design made only a tiny contribution to sales. At the time of appeals to the Supreme Court, Samsung claimed that "a patented design might be the essential feature of a spoon or rug. But the same is not true of smartphones, which contain countless other features that give them remarkable functionality wholly unrelated to their design." It will mark the first design patents case the highest U.S. court has taken up in 120 years. The last Supreme Court cases over design patents involved spoon handles in the 1870s and carpets in the 1890s. The court is expected to hear arguments and rule in the nine-month term that starts in October. Monday's decision bodes well for Samsung because it means there is a sufficient reason to consider its case. It is rare for the highest court to agree to hear appeals. About 7,000 appeals are filed with the court every year, but only some 70 of them are heard. The case is one of the two last-remaining lawsuits between the two smartphone giants. In the other case, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit ruled last month that Samsung did not violate three Apple patents and therefore does not need to pay about $120 million in damages. The ruling overturned the 2012 verdict by a federal court in San Jose, Calif., that ordered Samsung to pay Apple $119.6 million for violating three patents on "quick links," "slide-to-unlock" and "auto-correct" technologies. By Yoon Sung-won A U.S. appeals court has nullified key Apple patents, helping Samsung accelerate its efforts for an "exit strategy" from its long-running patent disputes with its "love-and-hate" American business partner. Last week, the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington D.C. overturned the original verdict that confirmed Samsung's infringement on Apple's three patent rights and nullified the charge. The latest ruling means Apple's attempts to receive $119 million from Samsung Electronics have failed and that Apple must pay $158,400 to the Korean company for infringing on one Samsung-owned patent. "Last week's ruling is significant because Samsung Electronics found an excuse that its Galaxy devices weren't the result of copying," an official said on Sunday. "Efforts by the two companies to end litigation will be accelerated." Samsung had dropped its lawsuits against Apple in all countries, but not in the U.S. Despite the continued legal tussle, Apple still relies heavily on Samsung Electronics to source displays, mobile processor chips and DRAM chips for iPhones and iPads. Samsung Electronics refused to say if it had any imminent plans to withdraw its lawsuits against one of its largest business clients in the U.S. Apple did not comment on the ruling. However, officials said the iPhone designer might take the case to the Supreme Court, expecting the ruling to be overturned in the final ruling. By Yoon Sung-won The government and major gaming companies here have revealed a difference of opinion over virtual reality (VR) technology used for games. While the administration is promising investments and policy support to foster VR technology as one of the nation's R&D projects, the largest gaming companies including Nexon, NCSOFT and Netmarble Games remain diffident over its immediate applicability to gaming. The Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning picked VR games and a VR theme park, Sunday, as one of five VR flagship projects, aiming at nourishing the new market for VR platforms and related industries. The ministry also pledged to invest about 50 billion won in the sector over the next two years; and more afterwards if the first investment proves to be successful. It plans to establish a VR-related industry complex at Digital Media City in western Seoul and build related infrastructure such as VR content creation studios, exhibition halls and test facilities. "As this year is thought of as the first year of the VR industry, we will provide active support including the five flagship projects to vitalize the VR ecosystem here," a ministry official said. The move came as global IT giants such as Google, Apple and Facebook are increasingly pushing for VR and augmented reality (AR) technologies through active investments and acquisitions. Google has developed advanced head-mounted VR devices that are compatible with smartphones running on its Android mobile operating system. Facebook has made bolder moves including its $2 billion acquisition of Oculus, one of the world's leading VR technology firms, in 2014. Last week, Oculus said it will roll out its first commercial head-mounted VR device named Oculus Lift on March 28. Taiwan's HTC also plans to release its VR device Vive. Samsung Electronics and LG Electronics have designed their latest flagship smartphones Galaxy S7 and G5 to support VR. Adding to its first head-mounted VR device, the Gear VR unveiled in October 2014, Samsung Electronics introduced its VR camera dubbed VR 360 at the Mobile World Congress 2016, while LG Electronics introduced a 360-degree VR camera for its modular G5 smartphone. In the gaming industry, Sony said it will launch the PlayStation (PS) VR, as a peripheral to the PS 4 to support VR games, in October. The PS VR has drawn much market attention as it is expected to be provided with a far greater amount of compatible content compared to other makers. Whereas Korea's small and medium-sized gaming companies are seeking a breakthrough in VR, larger ones here have said it is "untimely," considering that VR devices have not sufficiently penetrated the market. "We have not officially discussed developing VR games," said an official at Nexon, the nation's largest game company. "VR-related devices are not common yet. We may start evaluating the market success of VR games after the latter half of this year." NCSOFT, the leading computer online game provider here, also said, "We are currently mulling what kind of games we need to develop and how can will utilize VR devices one they are commercialized." Admitting that VR can become one of the company's biggest income sources, Bang Jun-hyuk, senior advisor to Korea's largest mobile game company Netmarble Games, pointed out the head-mounted VR devices that are available now are too heavy to be portable, with models that have been unveiled so far weighing between 300 and 400 grams. "Mobile games should be freely available regardless of space," Bang said. "VR devices should be light like sunglasses or goggles to be easily worn by gamers without discomfort." SKT says it will act within legal boundaries By Lee Min-hyung KT and LG Uplus have stepped up their calls for the government to make a careful review of SK Telecom's planned takeover of CJ HelloVision (CJH), as the decision grows near. "The Fair Trade Commission (FTC) should take enough time to conduct a transparent and thorough screening of the merger plan," the mobile carriers said in a joint press release on Tuesday. Neither company wants the relevant government agencies including the Ministry of Science, ICT and Future Planning (MSIP), the Korea Communications Commission (KCC), and the FTC to approve the controversial deal. Last week, KT joined forces with LG Uplus to denounce SK Telecom, claiming the nation's largest carrier aims to extend its mobile dominance into the broadcasting sector. But SK Telecom said its rivals wanted to be "above the law," as the deadline for acquisition screening is clearly stated by law. "According to Fair Trade Act. 12, the FTC should notify us of the results of the screening process 30 days after we submit the takeover plan," said an SK Telecom official. "And the law also states that the FTC can extend the period for another 90 days, if the 30-day deadline is not enough." The company said KT and LG Uplus do not have the right to ask the FTC to extend the legal deadline. In the joint statement calling for stricter screening, KT and LG Uplus cited similar cases abroad. "It took about 11 months for the Competition and Markets Authority of the United Kingdom to approve of the proposed takeover of the country's mobile carrier Everything Everywhere (EE) by British Telecom," according to the statement. "The authority also made the screening processes public." Both companies released the statement in their bid to spread awareness of the longer time foreign authorities took to review proposed merger plans. SK Telecom submitted the documents on Dec. 1, but the FTC has yet to announce the results of the screening processes in detail, leaving KT and LG Uplus in a state of unease. "KT and LG Uplus are citing such foreign cases without taking into account Korea's legal system," the SK Telecom official said, calling the move a scheme to distort the facts. The MSIP held two rounds of public hearings last month, in its bid to gather a variety of opinions from the three carriers and experts in the telecom and broadcasting sectors. But the events have resulted in both sides hardening their stances, with the MSIP failing to draw any significant results ahead of its final decision. The 500 billion won deal, if approved, will allow SK Telecom's Internet protocol television (IPTV) subsidiary SK Broadband to acquire CJH. On Nov. 1, SK Telecom unveiled its decision to buy a 30 percent stake in CJH, now held by CJ O Shopping. SK Broadband will then purchase an additional 23.9 percent stake through put and call options. Lawsuit against merger plan An LG Uplus employee who holds shares in CJH filed a lawsuit with the Seoul Southern District Court on Tuesday, demanding the proposed merger be nullified. This came about a month after about 97 percent of CJH shareholders who attended a shareholders' meeting last month voted in favor of the takeover plan. "It is apparent that CJH shareholders will suffer damage, because stock values between CJH and SK Broadband have been unfairly calculated for the takeover," LG Uplus said in a statement, citing the employee's complaint. The company said strict legal measures should be addressed for all similar cases that could potentially prevent fair competition. "The takeover is highly likely to hurt the competitive landscape in the telecom and broadcasting industries," the company said. "The results of the shareholders' meeting should be nullified, given the unfairly calculated stock values between the two companies." By Kim Yoo-chul Samsung Electronics welcomed the top U.S. court's decision, Tuesday, to consider its appeal of a ruling that the Korean company infringed on Apple's design patents. Samsung has sought to cut the $548 million in damages it paid Apple after a ruling that it copied the latter's smartphone designs and technology. "Samsung Electronics welcomes the decision by the U.S. Supreme Court," Samsung said in a statement. The decision by the court to review the Samsung-Apple dispute will delay indefinitely a bilateral damages appeal scheduled to begin later this month in the Northern District of California. "A decision to hear the case is not a decision in any party's favor, but it is substantial headway for Samsung and comes less than a month after the Federal Circuit threw out Apple's entire second California case against Samsung, nixing a $120 million jury award and rendering an injunction decision irrelevant," said Florian Mueller, an intellectual property activist. Super Junior's Kim Heechul and EXID's Hani (Ahn Hee Yeon) are the new MC's for a variety show. On Thursday, Mar, 17, a broadcast insider revealed to news media outlet My Daily regarding Heechul and Hani being the new MC's for MBC Every1s Weekly Idol. "Heechul and Hani have been confirmed as new MCs for Weekly Idol. Alongside MC Defconn, there will be three MCs," said the insider, as reported by Soompi. Last November 2015, Jung Hyung Don had to halt all activities, including his role as MC for the show. With Jung not MC'ing, the show has featured different special MC's, including Heechul who appeared on two episodes. The insider clearly revealed that Jung has not left the show, and that Hani and Heechul will MC until Jung Hyung Don returns. Fans who has found out the news about Heechul and Hani being the MC for Weekly Idol, are looking forward to seeing them host the show. Also, they hope Jung Hyung Don quickly returns. Hani and Heechul will start hosting in early April. Best Watches Under $1,000 Don't Drop Big $ on a Watch Without Reading This First The AskMen editorial team thoroughly researches & reviews the best gear, services and staples for life. AskMen may get paid if you click a link in this article and buy a product or service. When it comes to wearable status symbols, men arguably get the short end of the stick. The one exception, however, is the wristwatch. Unsurprisingly, then, the first major purchase for a lot of those men is a luxury watch something premium, eye-catching and well made. The trouble is, most watches that fit those criteria also cost a small fortune. High-end Swiss watches can exceed the cost of a new car! But don't despair with a little research and know-how, you can find a quality luxury watch, with serious aesthetic appeal, that doesn't set you back an arm and a leg. RELATED: Best Watches Under $250 In our current tech-crunched days, a bona fide, well-made analog wristwatch makes a statement about your values, your taste, and your approach to life in general. Now, more than ever, an appreciation of timekeeping is the mark of a man of means or one who means to be. You can buy a functional watch from a decent name brand for under $500, or you can splurge on a more recognizable brand name under $2,500, and when youve really made it, you could even drop some major cash for the best watch under $10,000. But just know that the perfect price point for any beginner lands right under a grand. Consider it in the way you would a custom-tailored suit or pair of handmade shoes: Youre past the point of growing out of something and establishing your permanent style is more a process of refinement than experimentation. Best Watches Under $1,000 All high-end watch manufacturers spend a great deal of money and energy in research and development, notes David Lee, general manager of watches at StockX, the live bid/ask luxury marketplace backed by Eminem and Mark Wahlberg. However, most lower-price point brands cannot do so at a similar scale. But a small number allow technological advances and techniques to trickle down to their lower end price points. A perfect example is Seiko, which borrows from the super lux Credor and high-end Grand Seiko companies. Another rule of thumb: Complications are always cool, Lee says. So if you find an automatic chronograph or day-date at this price point, that is a great value. Independent brands are also trending. One of the recent trends in the watch industry is the huge growth and popularity in small independent brands. While the big brands rely heavily on what has been popular for them in the past, a lot of innovation and new design concepts are being driven by the independents, Lee explains. You can find a great deal of value and originality with some of them. You should avoid fashion brands, however, whose watches are licensed out and mass-produced. You end up paying for the brand name, and not the quality of the watch, Lee points out. Youll find better value in actual watch brands. What to Keep in Mind Invest in Swiss: If you can, with few exceptions, youll want to buy a Swiss watch from well-respected brands such as Tissot, Alpina, Seiko and TAG Heuer. "Not only will Swiss watches hold their value better, they'll be more reliable in the long run as they are generally easier to service and maintain," says Blake Buettner, director of watches at StockX. RELATED: Best Watches Under $100 Swiss-made watches aren't the final word in watchmaking, but they're among the most elegant and the most respected thanks to the tried-and-true Swiss movement inside the same movement youll find in watches priced much higher. Consider the Chronograph: Chronographs i.e., watches with multiple functions offer more bang for the buck. They hold their value better due to the complexity of the piece, look (and are) more impressive, and are always remain in demand. There are plenty of reputable Swiss brands that offer chronographs under $1,000 that won't feel out of place in a room full of enthusiasts." Buettner explains. "In this price range, don't expect bespoke mechanical movements or the use of exotic materials. Rather, look for tried and true workhorse movements, either mechanical or quartz movement, from well-known suppliers such as ETA or Sellita, which will maintain their accuracy, and be readily serviceable by your local watch shop. Don't Be Cheap: So how far under a grand should you go? Be prepared to spend at least $500 on your investment-grade timepiece. Thats still a far cry from Rolex territory, which start around a cool $5,000, but the watches weve selected here will earn you respect even from self-professed watch guys, and quite possibly even admiration at your financial acumen. And dont shy away from the styles closest to the $1,000 mark, even if it means vending machine lunches for a month. High-end watches hold their value well, after all. When it comes to watches, most people wont be able to distinguish the entry-level model from the higher priced pieces in any case. And if and when you do decide to trade up once more, youll have something worth a good chunk of change to get started with. Here, we're putting you wise to some of the best watches under $1,000 with style and reliability that suggests a much higher price point. You want to show the world that youre someone to be taken seriously and that your time is literally valuable as it should be if you dont want anyone to waste it. So here we go with the best watches under $1,000. Best Automatic Watches Under $1,000 Longines HydroConquest Longines Based in Saint-Imier, Switzerland, Longines was founded in 1832 and its winged hourglass logo is the oldest registered trademark of any watch brand. If you're only buying one watch, and you're OK inching above the $1,000 mark, we suggest the Longines Conquest, the brands classic go-to. But for under $1,000, the HydroConquest is as serious as it sounds, making it a reliable companion any day of the week. The stainless steel case and band give it heft and durability, and overall it's designed to be the perfect combination of style and technical innovation complete with an automatic movement. $849.98 at Amazon.com Raymond Weil Freelancer Diver Automatic Watch This diver watch is a suitable option for yacht owners and office-workers alike. It blends durable aesthetics and pricey components into an opulent, sporty-but-not-too-sporty design. A sapphire crystal face, black bezel, and folding buckle clasp with double push-security system proves that the manufacturer hasnt compromised quality for functionality. The mechanical movement with automatic winding also has a 38-hour power reserve feature to keep the clock ticking longer. $949.85 at Amazon.com Luminox Atacama Field Automatic Watch Luminox Luminox watches are 100% Swiss-made and use a Swiss-made automatic movement. These bad boys are basically built to be abused. What really shines about these bad boys literally is the included lume that glows unaided for up to 25 years. With a day/date function and water-resistance up to 660 feet, this handsome timepiece can prove useful every one of those 25 years. $825 at Amazon.com Best Dive Watches Under $1,000 Citizen Promaster Aqualand Dive Watch This is nautical-inspired design at its finest. With Maximum depth memory, rapid ascent alarm, and an auto-start dive mode, this timepiece is one of the best in its class for the price. Its stainless steel case comes in at 46mm, with a blue and red bezel to match, making it the most hefty on our list, which wins points when youre at the max 660 feet this watch will go and need to see the face but its OK if you just want to keep it on land and admire its beauty. $518.25 at Amazon.com Orient Kanno Dive Watch Crisp. Clean. Classic. Those are just a few of the words easily used to describe this stainless steel case beaut. What makes it different than its popular predecessor the Mako USA? Its now powered by the newly developed caliber F6922 a mechanical movement that is not just automatic, but also allows hand-winding. At just around 42mm and water resistant to 660 feet, this is the smallest style on our list, yet still offers all the same qualities of its bigger brothers. $255 at OrientWatch.com Mido Ocean Star Dive Watch Mido effectively merges a timeless style profile with a bold orange rubber strap, or stainless steel strap shown here, and stylish black and orange bezel to create a dive watch that plays well in both worlds. Using its caliber 80 a next-generation automatic watch movement it offers up to 80 hours of power reserve which ends up being about twice as much as a regular caliber. Using titanium to house the automatic movement and keep all mechanics free of water up to 660 feet, we figured it was worth the extra penny. $870 at Amazon.com Best Dress Watches Under $1,000 Frederique Constant Classics Index Automatic Dress Watch If understated elegance is your aim, look no further than the Classics Index from Frederique Constant. Its black, crocodile-embossed leather band and silver dial exude class, and can safely take you from the office to a formal party. As an added bonus, it's even water-resistant to over 300 feet, so even the after-party swim won't be off limits to you. $980 at Amazon.com Shinola Runwell Chrono Dress Watch Shinola watches, assembled in Detroit, has sparked a renaissance in the Motor City and for American watch brands in general. This particular style is destined to become a classic design that will no doubt age well with its PVD gold case and durable leather band. With a clean ivory-colored face and luminous hands, wearing this watch makes a statement that you value good design, but dont need an overly expensive timepiece to speak for you. It also says you have a certain pride in American-made goods. $825 at Shinola.com Best Swiss Watches Under $1,000 Tissot Heritage Visodate Swiss Watch This handsome, traditional timepiece was first introduced in the 1950s to commemorate the centennial anniversary of Tissot. The Heritage Visodate boasts a topstitched leather strap with a stainless steel case and buckle closure to keep it steady and stylish on your wrist. The clean-brushed dial and hands and Arabic numerals on the face inspired by Tissot's vintage watches also complement the watchs vintage appeal. The Swiss quartz movement ensures time accuracy to within a few seconds a year, and at 40mm, its understatedly elegant, calling for quiet attention rather than loudly seeking it. $995 at Amazon.com Tag Heuer 300 Aquaracer Tag Heuer TAG Heuer, founded in 1860 by Edouard Heuer in St-Imier, Switzerland, and coveted by many motorsports enthusiasts, is a name that commands respect in every watch-loving quarter. Rarely are any of its pieces attainable at under a grand, which makes the Formula 1 a steal at its current price. Sporting a black-perforated rubber strap with a stainless steel case and black bezel, the watch speaks to rugged adventurers ready to invest. While its not suited for scuba diving, you can submerge it in up to 660 ft. of water. Interestingly, the iconic Formula 1 model also has the distinction of being worn by actual Formula 1 drivers. $974.97 at Amazon.com Movado Heritage Calendoplan Chronograph Movado No distinguished gentleman should be without a Movado watch. What other way to showcase your sub-luxury wealth and style than with this timeless chronograph model from Movado, which draws inspiration from the brands fashion-forward 50s collection? The Calendoplan is masterfully designed, from the luminous hands and markers to the rivets on the leather strap that are reminiscent of the iconic Museum Watch style gold dot. $795 at Amazon.com Best Mechanical Watches Under $1,000 Hager Commando Milsub Mechanical Watch This large, 41mm offering from Hager boasts sturdy construction including a scratch-resistant sapphire crystal face, red enamel bezel, and water resistance up to 1,000 feet and elegant good looks. The burgundy bezel adds a subtle splash of color and helps to set off the black dial and luminous silver watch hands. $965 at HagerWatches.com Invicta Pro Diver Mechanical Watch We get it, this watch is way, way below the $1,000 threshold, but sometimes, a watch or brand knows their stuff so well, they earn the coveted spot. Invicta is one of those brands and it Pro Diver is one of those watches. Japanese movement and a classic sapphire crystal face with a good ole easy-to-read analog display keep this clean style looking sharp for years to come. $180 at Amazon.com Seiko Presage Mechanical Watch If you are looking for a clean looking watch, it does get much cleaner than Seiko. Seiko has long been known for its attention to detail and dedication to quality at an affordable price. This stylish time teller uses the Seiko 4R36 caliber self-winding movement which can also easily be hand wound and hacked. $425 at Amazon.com Best Pilot Watches Under $1,000 Hamilton Khaki Aviation Pilot Watch Hamilton While being huge fans of the Jazzmaster series, weve also discovered another inexpensive Hamilton model thats worthy of occupying space in your watch case. The Khaki Pilot chronograph combines some of the same vintage design elements and Swiss ingenuity as its higher-priced cousin. Seriously, the build quality of this crisp pilot watch is certainly reflective of its MSRP of under $1,000. $945 at HamiltonWatch.com Laco Aachen Pilot Watch Using an original design from WWII, this German designed timepiece garners a lot of respect. The same cant necessarily be said for those fighting for the Germans in WWII, but thats a discussion for another time. The stainless steel case, jet-black dial and SuperLuminova illumination make this stylish timepiece work with whatever era you want to throw back to. The Citizen Miyota 821A automatic self-winding movement keep it working during every era in the future. $379 at Amazon.com AVI-8 Hawker Hurricane Pilot Watch This classic aviation inspired chronograph features detailed dials, colors, and graphics that celebrate the spirit and adventure of WWII. Inspired by the Hurricane aircraft produced for the Royal Air Force by Hawker Aircraft Ltd, this stylish timepiece blows the others out of the water, much like the Hurricane did during WWII. Many consider the Hurricane the unsung hero of the Battle of Britain, since it delivered more enemy kills in this crucial victory than any other aircraft combined. Hows that for a conversation-starting watch? $235 at Amazon.com Best Sports Watches Under $1,000 Victorinox I.N.O.X. Carbon Sports Watch This I.N.O.X. limited edition heads for even more elevated performance levels than the standard I.N.O.X., which is saying a lot. The case is crafted from the same carbon composite that protects space shuttles from the highest reentry temperatures. Combine this the luminous hand with the firefighter "chevron" that's featured on the red and yellow stripes on the second hand and you have a watch worthy of heroism, strength and protection. From $925 at SwissArmy.com Apple Watch Series 7 Apple This is a sports watch of the modern era. Can it survive being crushed between rocks from a mountain climb gone wrong? Maybe not. However, thanks to its cellular connectivity, it can call for help if you do and let whoever is on the way know exactly where you are with its GPS. That added to the new optical and electrical heart sensors make this no just a smartwatch, or a sports watch, but an overall health watch. If you really want to make it fashion, go for the Apple Watch Hermes, but that will put you over your $1,000 budget. From $399 at Apple.com Casio G-Shock G-Steel Sports Watch Casio If you are looking for a sports watch that will survive a fall, a collision and likely the apocalypse, G-Shock G-Steel is going to be your best bet. Known for the ability to withstand just about anything and everything its wearer can possible put it through, this lightweight, Bluetooth enabled, carbon bezel wonder is going to give you unbeatable shock-resistance, dual dial world time and solar charged-power, even if in left in complete darkness for up to two full years. $350 at Amazon.com Whether you are spending well below $1,000 or coming right up on full four-digit territory, there are many brands and watches that provide both quality craftsmanship as well as undeniable style without breaking the bank. You Might Also Dig: AskMen may get paid if you click a link in this article and buy a product or service. To find out more, please read our complete terms of use. The SLFP does not condone the continuation of the Emergency Regulations (The Public Security Ordinance) more than a day necessary Read more Money always ranks high among the reasons for divorce. In the failing marriage between Anthem Blue Cross and Express Scripts, its reasons one through 15 billion. Thats how many dollars the party of the first part thinks its been cheated out of by the party of the second part. For those who missed the wedding announcement back in 2009, Anthem Blue Cross is the nation's second-largest health insurance company; Express Scripts is the nations biggest pharmacy benefits management firm, or PBM. They seemed to be in a marriage made in heaven, until household finances strained the relationship to the breaking point. To be precise, the issue is the run-up in pharmaceutical high drug prices, which Express Scripts was tasked with moderating. According to Anthem, the pharmacy firm either failed to achieve the savings it expected, or kept too much of them for itself. (Express Scripts') breach ... has resulted in massive damages to Anthem and an obscene profit windfall to ESI. Anthem's chief claim in its lawsuit against Express Scripts (ESI) Now they're in litigation. Anthem on Monday sued Express in New York federal court, alleging that the latter owes it at least $13 billion, and as much as $14.8 billion, in undelivered savings from negotiating lower prices on prescription drugs for Anthem's customers. The filing is assumed by observers to be the final break after attempts at working things out failed. Earlier this year, Anthem Chief Executive Joseph Swedish told an investment conference that his company was overpaying for drugs by $3 billion a year, and blamed Express Scripts. Express hasn't responded to the lawsuit in court, but in statements its spokesmen have said Anthem had "mischaracterized" its obligations and that the lawsuit is "without merit." At a conference call about Express' 2015 earnings, its retiring CEO, George Paz, said he had "no clue where the $3 billion came from.... The number doesn't make any sense to me." He did imply, however, that Anthem may not have achieved the savings it expected in drug pricing because it wasn't sufficiently rigorous in dictating which drugs it would cover for patients, a system known as a "formulary." "One of the biggest things you can do to manage your costs," he said, "is by really focusing your buying on the most efficacious, best priced products." That's a hint that the core problem is the incredible run-up in pharmaceutical prices generally in recent years. That explosion in drug costs has upended the finances of federal programs such as Medicare, state-funded health programs such as Medicaid, and private insurers alike. Much attention has focused on such profiteers in generic drugs as Martin Shkreli, the former CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals. But the real damage has occurred in the market for branded wonder drugs such as Gilead Sciences' Sovaldi and Harvoni for hepatitis C, which cost as much as $100,000 per 12-week treatment and address a potential market of millions of patients. ---------- RELATED: How a hugely overpriced hepatitis drug helped drive up U.S. health spending ---------- Prescription costs lead Americans top healthcare concerns. Thats according to a poll released in October by the Kaiser Family Foundation, in which 77% of respondents said that ensuring affordable treatments for such conditions as hepatitis and cancer should be a top priority for the president and Congress. Some 63% listed government action to lower prescription prices as their top priority. In a report last year, however, actuaries for Medicaid and Medicare projected that although prescription spending would grow faster than overall healthcare costs through 2024, the difference in the trends was modest. Spending would rise because improved benefit management for patients with chronic diseases would keep more of those patients on their drug regimens, they projected, and because pharmaceutical companies would shift more of their research and development budgets toward specialty drugs. These drugs, which include cancer drugs and Gilead Sciences blockbuster hepatitis C treatments, Sovaldi and Harvoni, command prices as high as $100,000 for a course of treatment. Still, the actuaries projected that prescription drugs share of total healthcare spending would rise only from 10.1% in 2015 to 10.4% in 2024. The annual growth in drug prices, they estimated, would moderate to about 6.6% in 2018-2034 from 12.6% in 2014. (That huge leap in 2014 was due almost entirely to the hepatitis treatments.) But the drugs may be almost too effective for their impact to be sustained. They provide a complete cure for more than 90% of hepatitis C sufferers, with minimal side effects. In fact, sales of the Hep C drugs Gileads two treatments and AbbVies competing Viekira Pak formulation may have peaked in March 2015, when a combined 56,800 prescriptions were filled at retail, according to the healthcare consulting firm Symphony Health Solutions. Last month, the consulting firm estimates, combined retail sales came only to about 38,330. But these still are big numbers retail spending on prescriptions came to more than $328 billion last year. That has made the work of pharmacy benefit management firms, which use their bulk buying power as middlemen to squeeze drug makers for discounts, more important to health insurers such as Anthem, and given the firms a bigger footprint in the healthcare industry. According to PhRMA, the drug industrys trade organization, the five biggest PBMs have a market share of more than 80%, led by Express Scripts, which covers 85 million patients, with 29%, or 85 million patients. The run-up in drug prices has placed a premium on pharmacy benefit management and brought added value to PBMs, which function as middlemen to buy in bulk to extract discounts from drugmakers. Express Scripts is the largest such management firm, but also one of the few unaffiliated with an insurance company or drug retailer. As the journal Modern Healthcare observes, CVS and Rite-Aid both have PBM units. UnitedHealth Group, the nation's biggest health insurer, is expanding its PBM, OptumRx -- which might inherit Anthem's drug-buying contract if Anthem breaks with Express Scripts. Aetna is taking over Humana, which has its own PBM. Industry observers believe that the lawsuit's aim may be to unwind the two companies' partnership, which is due for renewal in 2019. In its lawsuit, Anthem paints a portrait of a dysfunctional partnership. Anthem ended in-house drug buying in 2009 and turned over its PBM to Express Scripts on a 10-year contract, with provisions requiring periodic renegotiations over drug prices. Anthem became Express Scripts' largest single customer, accounting for about 16.3% of its $101.8 billion in 2015 revenue. The insurer says Express has been dodging its efforts to launch the next renegotiation cycle. It says it has determined that the prices Express Scripts is charging are "not remotely competitive," with the excess coming to $13 billion over the remainder of the contract to 2019, and an additional $1.8 billion during a post-contract transition year. Anthem says it has offered Express deals several times to save the contract, including accepting smaller discounts than the $13 billion it says it deserves through 2019, but Express has ignored or rebuffed them. Industry observers say the lawsuit signals that the relationship may be beyond repair. But in the larger picture, efforts to limit prescription costs are warranted. More prescription drugs priced so high that thousands of potential patients are excluded from treatments that soon could reach the market. Americans pay much more than patients in other countries for many brand-name drugs, including Sovaldi and Harvoni, which excessively burdens the U.S. healthcare system. Medicares policy of reimbursing doctors a flat 6% of the average cost of drugs they prescribe and administer in their offices or outpatient clinics arguably gives doctors an incentive to order the most expensive drugs for their patients; a new proposal to reduce the reimbursements for costlier drugs and increase them for cheaper prescriptions aims to reverse these incentives. The burden of high prescription prices looks to be sticking with us for many more years. The spat between Anthem and its drug middleman is only one symptom. FURTHER READING: High cost of hepatitis drug reflects a broken pricing system The Shkreli saga: A huge spike in the cost of an old drug reignites the pharma pricing debate Keep up to date with Michael Hiltzik. Follow @hiltzikm on Twitter, see his Facebook page, or email michael.hiltzik@latimes.com. Return to Michael Hiltzik's blog. UPDATES: 11:12 a.m., Mar. 27: This post has been updated with background on pharmaceutical prices. 7:25 a.m., April 1: This post has been updated to clarify that the change in Medicare drug reimbursements applies only to drugs administered in a doctor's office or outpatient clinic. Carnival Corp., the worlds largest cruise company, will sail a ship to Cuba on May 1, the first cruise voyage from the U.S. in more than 50 years, the Miami companys chief executive announced from the island nation. During a conference call from Havana, Carnival CEO Arnold Donald said that the Adonia, part of the companys Fathom cruise brand, will leave from Miami, carrying 704 passengers for a week-long trip to Cuba. Donald made the announcement as President Obama was wrapping up a visit to Cuba to push for normalizing relations with its communist government. Advertisement The Adonia ship will make ports of call in Havana, Cienfuegos and Santiago de Cuba. The ship will sail every other week. Its an extraordinary day, Donald said. We are truly honored. Although the Adonia is one of the smaller ships in the Carnival fleet, the chief executive said he hopes the first cruise can pave the way to bring Carnivals larger brands to the island. You are not going to see this financially move the needle, he said, adding that including Cuba to its ports of call will increase interest in cruising. Under federal laws, U.S. travelers must meet 12 specific criteria to visit Cuba. But Tara Russell, president of Carnival Corp.'s Fathom brand, said the cruise company will help passengers fill out all the needed paperwork. We do make it very easy for our passengers, she said. Prices for the seven-day trip start at $1,800 a person, excluding Cuban visas, taxes, fees and port expenses and including all meals on the ship, on-board experiences and several on-the-ground activities. The U.S. Department of Transportation is considering applications from United, American, Southwest, JetBlue and other carriers to launch 20 daily round-trip flights to Havana, and 10 flights to nine smaller airports across Cuba. The agency plans to award a share of the routes to the individual airlines this summer. To read more about travel, tourism and the airline industry, follow Hugo Martin on Twitter at @hugomartin. As Mitt Romney proclaimed in 2011, Corporations are people, my friend. But that doesnt necessarily make them nice people. Sue Ogle learned this after being informed last week by American Airlines that the carrier no longer offers discounts for people whove lost a loved one even though, after the death of her father, she was told just the opposite by the carriers service reps, who made her jump through hoops to get a promised refund. Wheres the decency? Ogle said. I understand that theyve changed their policy. But in a situation like this, you should back up what your reps are telling people. Advertisement See more of our top stories on Facebook >> At the very least, companies should be willing to make amends when their reps mislead or misinform. But customer service has become a low priority for many businesses, even as profits soar. I didnt know until Ogle, 60, contacted me that so-called bereavement fares are an endangered species. American and United did away with them in 2014. American was the first to pull the trigger. The airline said at the time that it remained committed to doing all we can to relieve the burden of our customers in times of need. But it said bereavement fares were no longer needed because walk-up fares are generally lower than in the past. United followed suit shortly afterward. Of the three remaining legacy carriers, only Delta Air Lines continues to offer bereavement fares. Its worth noting that in 2014, after those cheap walk-up fares mitigated the need for bereavement programs at American and United, airline profits began to take off as fuel costs plunged by 50% and as carriers filled a record number of seats. Air fares declined last year but are on the rise again. Even though fuel costs remain at crazy-low levels, airlines have attempted six fare hikes since January and three have stuck, raising the average round-trip ticket cost by $22. And dont forget fees for such things as extra bags and more legroom. Consulting firm IdeaWorksCompany estimates that carriers made almost $11 billion from various fees last year, up 24% from a year before. Many airlines are still even hitting passengers with a fuel surcharge, although now they call it a carrier-imposed surcharge. Meanwhile, the 10 publicly traded U.S. passenger airlines saw combined profit of $24.2 billion last year, according to a recent estimate by the industry group Airlines for America. Thats three times as much as the $7.3 billion they earned a year earlier when American and United could no longer bring themselves to muster financial sympathy for grieving passengers. Ogles father died Feb. 8 at the age of 95. A service was scheduled for Feb. 17 in Toledo, Ohio. Since this was spur of the moment, the Laguna Beach resident contacted American to see whether the airline still offered special prices for her round-trip flight from Orange Countys John Wayne Airport. I got a nice lady who said they didnt have the bereavement fares anymore, Ogle recalled. But she said American will still offer a refund if you provide proof of your relatives death. This was good news. Otherwise, Ogle, who has flown American for years, was looking at more than $1,500 in total ticket costs for her and her husband. After returning home from the funeral, she followed the service reps instructions and tried to apply for the refund on Americans website. She kept getting an invalid entry notice. So Ogle called the carrier again and reached another rep. Once again she was told that a refund was available, but shed have to apply by mail. Following the reps instructions, Ogle made copies of her tickets, her itinerary, her fathers death certificate and other materials and mailed them to American. She received an email from the carrier last week. It expressed Americans condolences for Ogles loss. But it said no special fares or refunds were available in such circumstances. Given the sometimes burdensome rules and requirements necessary for customers to prove their eligibility for a bereavement fare, we believe it is generally simpler, and often cheaper, for our customers to simply purchase whatever discount fare is available, it said. Make of that what you will coming from a company that posted record profit last year of $7.6 billion. That, according to Chief Executive Doug Parker, was way beyond what any airline has ever earned in a single year. The amount was more than double Americans $2.9 billion profit in 2014. Its not shocking to see a company thats rolling in cash want to hoard as much as possible for itself and shareholders thats capitalism, after all. Nor is it a surprise that, having done away with bereavement fares a couple of years ago, an airline would stick with its decision. What makes Ogles case noteworthy and the same can be said for all customer-service interactions is that American apparently finds itself unable to acknowledge that its reps steered a passenger wrong. Twice Ogle was misled and twice she followed all the instructions given her to a T. Im not telling Parker how to run his airline. But if it were me, Id recognize that a loyal customer wasnt treated as thoughtfully as possible during a challenging time. Even a modest gesture 10% off her next ticket, say would demonstrate that the company isnt staffed by money-grubbing cyborgs. Josh Freed, a spokesman for American Airlines, told me only that the carrier would reach out to Ogle to better understand how this mix-up occurred. Maybe I can help. Try human error. Corporations are people, my friend. David Lazarus column runs Tuesdays and Fridays. He also can be seen daily on KTLA-TV Channel 5 and followed on Twitter @Davidlaz. Send your tips or feedback to david.lazarus@latimes.com. ALSO U.S. airlines set records for passenger traffic in 2015 Airline complaints rise 30% in 2015; airfare gripes nearly double If all restrictions were lifted, flights to Cuba could drop 50% in price, study says They had been recognizable hallmarks of smartphones for years: Rectangular bodies. Rounded edges. And a colorful grid of app icons. But Apple Inc., which had patented the designs, took aim at rival Samsung Electronics Co. in 2011, accusing it of illegally copying the look in its phones. A federal jury in San Jose sided with Apple, stoking fears in Silicon Valley that a rarely feuded-over class of patents would become a minefield of legal troubles. Now, the Supreme Court could put those fears in check. The high court agreed Monday to hear part of Samsungs appeal in the long-running dispute with Apple. If the Supreme Court upholds an earlier ruling, Samsung would have to turn over $399 million to Apple, or all the profit from smartphones that took advantage of the iPhone makers patents. The large sum led to concerns that holders of design patents would sue for damages with increasing frequency. Advertisement But a Supreme Court decision turning over the previous judgment probably would significantly reduce the penalty, amounting to just earnings that could be tied to the rectangular, rounded look and the grid-based layout. That raises a question: How much of a role did the look of Samsung phones actually play in their sales? To Samsung, many patent law experts and much of the tech industry, it certainly wasnt 100%. Samsungs attorney Kathleen Sullivan said a federal patent court had adopted the ridiculous view that Apple was entitled to the entire profits earned by Samsung from its phones, no matter how little the patented design features contributed to the product. In other words, even if the patented features contributed 1% of the value of Samsungs phones, Apple gets 100% of Samsungs profits, Sullivan said. Smartphones contain thousands of patented inventions, and one of them is just a tiny fraction of what makes that product valuable, said Brian Love, co-director of the High Tech Law Institute at Santa Clara University who has supported Samsung in court documents. You have a huge mismatch between the contribution to society in the form of the design, and the amount of compensation you can get from the infringers, Love said. Apple has had the backing of companies including Oakley Inc., Crocs Inc. and some medical device companies. They all argue that awarding a full share of profits for infringing a design patent is consistent with the law and older cases. But the Apple vs. Samsung case will be the first in 120 years in which the high court reviews a design patent case. In the late 19th century, the court heard claims over whether the design of a spoon or a saddle infringed the patent of another maker. Samsung had asked the court to take a deeper look at design patents, which stand in contrast to utility patents that cover functional features. Samsung has argued that design patents cover only ornamental issues and that something such as rounded corners which the company argues help phones slide into pockets is a functional quality, not decorative. But the justices passed up the chance to review the notion of design patents in the smartphone era and said they would rule in the next year only on whether a company guilty of patent infringement can be forced to hand over all related profits, regardless of the extent of the design features significance. Apple and Samsung will present their arguments this fall, and a ruling is likely early next year. The Supreme Court decision could affect other cases, including a design patent lawsuit Microsoft Corp. filed against software maker Corel Corp. in federal court last December. Repeatedly in recent years, the justices have intervened and overturned pro-patent rulings by the Federal Circuit Court in Washington, which reviews patent cases. The latest patent case was the first case of any kind that the Supreme Court has agreed to hear since the death of Justice Antonin Scalia on Feb. 13. Love said hed bet that the courts decision to hear the case is a signal that it plans to rule in Samsungs favor. If so, the concern over big verdicts in design patents cases could be wiped away. It just reinforces the futility: You might not even get enough to cover your lawyers, he said. paresh.dave@latimes.com david.savage@latimes.com Twitter: @peard33, @DavidGSavage A federal court on Monday signed off on the Justice Department's request to cancel a major hearing in a months-long battle with Apple Inc. over obtaining personal data from the iPhone of one of the San Bernardino shooters. Prosecutors said the government needed time to test "a possible method for unlocking [Syed Rizwan] Farooks iPhone" that they received from "an outside party" on Sunday. If they deem the method works -- and can ensure it won't damage the smartphone's memory -- it would no longer need Apple's help in the San Bernardino case. The FBI must provide a status update by April 5. FULL COVERAGE: Apple's fight with the FBI >> So what gives? The general public and cybersecurity experts have been throwing ideas the FBI's way for several weeks, and experts said it's unlikely that someone devised a new technical workaround at the last moment. Could there be more to the 11th-hour postponement than the Justice Department is saying? Here are some theories. The FBI is giving the ACLU's method a try -- at last. Daniel Kahn Gillmor, a technology fellow at the ACLU, laid out two weeks ago what's considered among the most plausible ways to unlock Farook's iPhone 5c. The phone is guarded by a four-digit passcode, but the FBI bears the risk of making the contents of the device permanently inaccessible if it incorrectly guesses the passcode too many times. Gillmor suggested the FBI could copy a special portion of the phone's memory that counts the number of passcode entries. Constantly restoring the copy could get the agency around the limit on guesses. The ACLU said Gillmor's method, or some variation of it, might be the one the FBI is considering. If true, it suggests that the FBI "either doesn't understand the technology well enough or wasn't telling us the full truth earlier when it said that only Apple could break into the phone," ACLU staff attorney Alex Abdo said in a statement. "Either possibility is disconcerting," he said. See the most-read stories this hour >> The FBI is bluffing because it needs more time -- or wants the case to die down. Members of the Obama administration quietly have expressed reservation about the case against Apple, according to reports. Meanwhile, other federal agencies including the Department of Defense don't want to see encryption technology weakened. Polls show Americans remain divided on the issue -- suggesting the FBI has not yet won over the general public. Add to those concerns the last-minute cancelation and there's fodder for conspiracy theorists to wonder whether the FBI might be backing down in what has been an acrimonious battle with the world's most valuable company by market capitalization. The NSA stepped in. FBI Director James Comey told Congress that his investigators exhausted every possible idea they had to get help from other government agencies, including the National Security Agency. When it comes to computer hacking, experts say the NSA is years ahead of the FBI. Fearing the court would rule against the FBI, perhaps Comey made one last plea for help to the NSA -- and came away with the goods. There's no publicly known vulnerability to disable the core security on the iOS 9 operating system that's installed on Farook's phone, but top hackers say the NSA is one of the few organizations in the world that would have its hands on such software if it were to exist. Join the conversation on Facebook >> Apple tipped off the FBI. Apple attorneys said Monday that they have no idea what the FBI got its hands on and didn't offer any guesses. The company also declined to say whether it has investigated the feasibility of the ACLU method or any other iPhone hacking ideas raised in recent weeks. But given Apple's desire to fix all threats to the security of its products, it makes sense the company would be among the first to know of any flaws. If Apple found a loophole that unlocked a phone without requiring company engineers to do the government's bidding, it may have reason to share it with the FBI. Doing so could remove the pressure from the case while ensuring there is no legal precedent allowing authorities to force Apple to unravel its own security measures in future investigations. Such a tip could come voluntarily through Apple employees or an intermediaries. John McAfee, or someone like him, cracked the iPhone. Coming up with a new hacking tool in such a high-profile case would be a remarkable feat for any hacker -- one that could warrant bragging rights, future job opportunities and perhaps a hefty consulting fee from the FBI. Difficult as it may be, hackers who spend their time looking for these types of vulnerabilities have good reason to concentrate entirely on this case. John McAfee, a pioneering entrepreneur in computer security who has a history of making bold claims, has already said he can decrypt the phone if given the chance. He didn't immediately respond to a request for comment. The Justice Department didn't name the outside party but said it's "cautiously optimistic" about the idea. paresh.dave@latimes.com Twitter: @peard33 ALSO For law enforcement, there is no single profile of a self-radicalized jihadist Islamic State claims responsibility for Brussels attacks; at least 31 dead FBI says it might be able to unlock San Bernardino terrorist's iPhone without Apple's help A new photography exhibition documenting the plight of refugees in Europe, Africa and beyond will open next month at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Century City, and will feature work from five photographers who have captured displaced persons in multiple countries, including the U.S. Refugee, running April 23 to Aug. 21, will feature more than 100 photos arranged by chapters devoted to geographic regions. The center said that all of the photos in the show were commissioned expressly for the exhibition, though archival material will also be on display. Through images created by five internationally acclaimed artists, the Refugee exhibit at the Annenberg Space for Photography in Los Angeles explores the lives of refugees displaced from a host of locations throughout the world. The exhibit runs th Advertisement Among the notable works will be a series captured last year by photojournalist Tom Stoddart chronicling refugees arriving in Greece and traveling through Croatia and Serbia, and continuing on to Germany. FULL COVERAGE: Spring 2016 arts preview | Exhibits | Theater | Dance | Pop music Lynsey Addario will exhibit a photographic series dedicated to the Rohingya people -- a minority Muslim population in Myanmar that has faced persecution and resettlement in camps in the predominantly Buddhist country. Addario won a Pulitzer Prize in 2009 as part of a New York Times international reporting team covering the war in Afghanistan. Renowned Mexican photographer Graciela Iturbide will show images of settlements of Central American refugees in Mexico, as well as displaced communities in Colombia, while Senegalese fashion photographer Omar Victor Diop will exhibit his images of refugees from the Central African Republic who have fled to Cameroon. The exhibition will also include photos of refugees who have settled in the U.S. for a section entitled New Americans. The images were taken by Martin Schoeller, the German photographer known for his tight close-up portraits of celebrities. We wanted the show to be different from photos you see in newspapers every day, said Patricia Lanza, the centers director of talent and content, in an interview. Thats why we gave it to these people -- this isnt usually their genre. Our goal was to give people a different glimpse of the human face of refugees today. The concept for the show originated from discussions between the UNHCR, the U.N. Refugee Agency; and Wallis Annenberg, the Los Angeles philanthropist whose foundation opened the photography space in 2009. Organizers of the exhibition also worked with the U.S. Department of State to locate refugees who have settled in this country. The exhibition overall will attempt to humanize them as they struggle to build new lives and look at their spirits as they create a new life, rather than focusing just on the journey itself, said Cinny Kennard, executive director of the Annenberg Foundation, in a separate interview. Leaders at the Annenberg Space for Photography said the show is expected to travel to other cities, both in the U.S. and internationally. In a statement, Wallis Annenberg said, I cant think of an issue more important and vital than the global refugee crisis. Now more than ever, we need to go beyond superficial readings of this worldwide concern in order to understand its deeply human ramifications. david.ng@latimes.com A movie from the leader of the anti-vaccine movement is set to create controversy when it screens at the Tribeca Film Festival next month. On Monday, the annual springtime confab quietly announced that, amid a list of Hollywood-centric talks, it would screen a documentary titled Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe. The festival said that the film, a previously unknown production, draws a link between vaccines and autism and that the April 24 event would also feature a conversation with creators and subjects of the film. See more of Entertainments top stories on Facebook >> Advertisement Tribeca did not reveal the director. He is, it turns out, the highly controversial anti-vaccine activist Andrew Wakefield. Wakefield helped launch the anti-vaccine movement with a 1998 paper in the Lancet that drew a link between the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine and higher rates of autism. Many scientists have since refuted the claim, and the British General Medical Council would go on to find Wakefield guilty of three dozen charges in connection with his research, including four counts of dishonesty and 12 counts involving the abuse of developmentally challenged children. He was also barred from practicing medicine in the United Kingdom. The Lancet retracted the paper. Wakefield, though, has pressed on with the cause, and has now taken the fight to the medium of cinema. On Monday he posted to his Twitter and Facebook feeds the message: Havent posted forever. Huge news tomorrow. An official movie page, with a trailer bearing the Tribeca logo, then went up Tuesday. The roughly two-minute piece walks through claims that the Centers for Disease Control concealed its knowledge of a vaccine-autism link and also forecast that rates of the disease would grow drastically worse if vaccines are not stopped. In the spot, a selection of anti-vaccine voices are seen talking about the connection. The piece includes comments such as: The CDC had committed fraud on the MMR study and notes grievous harm to innocent children. The festival described the movie with the following passage: The most vitriolic debate in medical history takes a dramatic turn when senior-scientist-turned-whistleblower Dr. William Thompson of the Centers for Disease Control turns over secret documents, data and internal emails confirming what millions of devastated parents and discredited doctors have long-suspected -- vaccines do cause autism. Wakefield continues to be discredited by wide swaths of the scientific community, many members of which have held him responsible for convincing parents not to vaccinate their children, with disastrous consequences for public health. Its shocking, Michael Specter, a staff writer at the New Yorker who has studied and written extensively about the issue, said when asked in a phone interview Tuesday about the screening. This is a criminal who is responsible for people dying. This isnt someone who has a point-of-view. Its comparable to Leni Riefenstahl making a movie about the Third Reich, or Mike Tyson making a movie about violence toward women. The fact that a respectable organization like the Tribeca Film Festival is giving Wakefield a platform is a disgraceful thing to do. Tribeca is an annual springtime showcase both for high-profile new films and an assortment of movie-related events. In recent years the festival, co-founded by Robert De Niro, has stirred media interest with its public talks. Last year, for instance, Stephen Colbert chatted with George Lucas while Jon Stewart spoke onstage with the stars of Goodfellas. This years gathering includes sessions with Tom Hanks, Tina Fey and David Byrne. But the Wakefield movie is likely to attract a whole other level of attention. Contacted by the Times, a Tribeca spokeswoman provided a statement about the decision to host the film and its director. Tribeca, as most film festivals, are about dialogue and discussion. Over the years we have presented many films from opposing sides of an issue. We are a forum, not a judge, it read. Efforts to reach Wakefield via his publisher were not immediately successful. Festivals are known for including provocative voices, especially in documentary categories, which sometimes feature advocacy pieces. But its rare for a gathering to touch on such a hot-button issue from only one side. Many screenings with activist positions usually come from outside filmmakers, such as Gabriela Cowperthwaites Blackfish, about animal abuse at Sea World, or Davis Guggenheims Waiting for Superman, about public education in the United States, both of which premiered at Sundance. The latter was strongly opposed by teachers unions, but it was made by a decorated Oscar winner, not the activists themselves. Already the news has caused a stir in the online-science world, where the blog Respectful Insolence, which has published frequently on Wakefield, questioned the decision to screen the movie, saying from the trailer that it is a greatest hits of CDC whistleblower nonsense and called on any skeptics in the NYC area to attend the event. Besides asking skeptical questions, you can report on which celebrities show up for this screening. My guess is that theyll be on the order of Jenny McCarthy or Rob Schneider, noting two outspoken anti-vaccine Hollywood personalities. Tribeca this year is also screening Life, Animated, Roger Ross Williams movie that looks at autism through the prism of one familys encounter with the disease. That movie, about the writer Ron Suskind and his son, won a prize at Sundance and recently screened at the prestigious True/False Film Fest. Tribeca appears to hope the movie offers a counterpoint of sorts to Wakefields film, though Life, Animated is not a scientific study and merely looks at the complicated realities of living with autism. Twitter: @ZeitchikLAt MORE: Tribeca will feature Billie Joe Armstrong acting, Katie Holmes directing Tribeca Film Festival to open with movie of China-themed Met exhibit Tribeca Film Festival premieres: Demetri Martin, Mia Wasikowska and a famous-named rock star L.A. Affairs is our Los Angeles Times column about the current dating scene in and around Los Angeles -- and finding romance in a wired world. If youve got a story to tell, we want to hear it. We pay $300 per published column. Submission requirements We seek previously unpublished work. Your essay should be set in the present day, not the distant past. Advertisement Each story needs to have an arc. Mere musings on the state of affairs wont do. We like stories to have a strong sense of place and to feel rooted in Southern California. Stories must be factually correct and about your own life. No exaggeration, no fictional or composite characters, no hyperbole for dramatic effect. Submissions should be 800 to 900 words. A few words on editing We will edit your stories for content, length and tone. We understand that these stories are personal, and the process will be collaborative. But ultimately the editors decisions will stand. How to submit an essay Please email submissions and questions to: home@latimes.com. Include L.A. Affairs in the subject line. Essays may be sent as text in the body of the email or included as an attachment, or both. Please be patient as we are not always able to respond immediately. We look forward to reading your essay. The editors of L.A. Affairs To mark the 75th anniversary of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, a group of California activists is calling on the U.S. government to honor them with a postage stamp. The Stamp Our Story campaign has spent the last decade petitioning the U.S. Postal Service to commemorate the service of Japanese American soldiers, many of whom were drafted out of internment camps and fought abroad while their families were incarcerated back home. And now, the group says, is the right time for the stamp to be released. Advertisement We really want to see the stamp next year to coincide with the 75th day of remembrance for the internment, said Wayne Osako, coordinator and co-chair of Stamp Our Story. Thats an important year for the campaign and for American history. Stamp Our Story started in 2005, with a group of three Japanese American women in California who had been incarcerated during World War II. Fusa Takahashi, 88, grew up in a Japanese farming community in the San Joaquin Valley. She was interned along with her parents and six brothers and sisters in 1942. One thing that stuck with her from that time was how many young men her age including her future husband enlisted in the U.S. Army straight out of the camps. I had classmates, friends and friends brothers who were killed in action, she said. At the time, I thought, Jeez, isnt it terrible that they made the ultimate sacrifice when we were imprisoned behind barbed wire? Decades later, Takahashi, Chiz Ohira and Aiko King decided they needed to do something to honor these veterans, whose experience had been unlike any other American soldier but who are rarely recognized for their service. We were at the Japanese American Museum in Los Angeles and saw an exhibit about nisei soldiers and their accomplishments, Takahashi said, using the Japanese word for second-generation Japanese Americans. Exhibits are nice, but they dont reach the broader audience, and I wanted something that would raise awareness to the public. Thats how she settled on a stamp. A stamp is universal and its something tangible, she said. For our future generation, I want them to be proud of what they are, where they come from and what their heritage is. After the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Japanese Americans were considered a threat. Two months later, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which forced 120,000 Japanese Americans from their homes into internment camps. In addition, Japanese American men of draft age were classified as enemy aliens and prohibited from serving in the military. But in 1943, Roosevelt in need of more troops to fight in the war lifted the ban and created a segregated unit of Japanese American soldiers. In 2010, the Congressional Gold Medal was awarded to Japanese American World War II veterans. Although the forces behind the Stamp Our Story campaign were pleased Takahashi attended the ceremony in Washington, D.C. getting a stamp is still important, said Osako, who also had nisei relatives who served in World War II. The stamp reaches people through a basic, everyday level, he said. Some people dont know what the Gold Medal is. Their ceremony was televised, but the everyday person may not know that. But if someone receives a letter in the mail with the stamp, they can look at that stamp and learn a little bit about these soldiers story. Mark Saunders, a Postal Service spokesman, said the agency is considering the proposal. caitlin.kandil@latimes.com Kandil writes for Times Community News. One question has persisted in the months since the San Bernardino terrorist attack: Could authorities have foiled the shooters plot before they opened fire? Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife, officials said, were self-radicalized terrorists who built bombs in their suburban garage in the months before they killed 14 people at a holiday party. Some in Congress have said the case underscores the need for the public to be vigilant in reporting suspicious activities and not be overly concerned about singling out people who happen to be Muslim. Advertisement But coming up with a way to identify self-radicalized jihadists has proven difficult for law enforcement, despite massive efforts since Sept. 11, 2001. There is no single set of characteristics to identify who will cross the line into violence. Attempts to create criminal profiles, similar to those used to track down serial killers, have generated fierce criticism for casting too wide a net. Some homegrown jihadists have been well-educated with good jobs. Others whiled away hours playing video games and smoking pot. Some came from Muslim immigrant families, while others were converts to the religion. Outwardly, Farook led a conventional life that did not arouse any suspicion. The San Bernardino County health inspector was known as well-mannered and devoutly religious. He was recently married and had a baby daughter. The New York Police Departments attempt to meld the diverse traits of American jihadists into a unified profile has been criticized for placing just about every young Muslim male under a cloud of suspicion. See more of our top stories on Facebook >> The department agreed to take its controversial report off its website as part of a settlement with the ACLU and others announced this year. You dont need any common background to identify with something, said Marc Sageman, a forensic psychiatrist and former CIA officer who has been critical of attempts to generate a profile. You can have rich people, like Bin Laden, or poor people, like the guys [who attacked] in Paris. In the Los Angeles area, counter-terrorism leaders say they zero in on suspicious behavior rather than demographic profiles. The Los Angeles Police Department tries to identify potential attackers with a suspicious activity checklist that includes trespassing, using false identification, taking photos of protected sites and accumulating large quantities of chemicals. Is it illegal to be a Muslim with a camera? Of course not, said Deputy Chief Michael Downing, who oversees the LAPDs counter-terrorism bureau. If you can articulate what hes doing, taking pictures with a nexus to a security interest, that might be something. Chief Scott Edson, head of counter-terrorism at the Los Angeles County Sheriffs Department, said his investigators rely on tips to pinpoint possible suspects who have recently undergone a drastic change. The signs might include casting old friends aside or expressing dissatisfaction with life. We depend on family and friends and community members to really recognize that some aspect of this person is acting different and give us that lead, Edson said. :: After 9/11, police officials in New York City stepped up their counter-terrorism efforts against overseas plotters as well as the increasing threat of homegrown jihadists. In a 2007 report posted on its website, the NYPD described how unremarkable individuals with ordinary jobs and ordinary lives could evolve into people who slaughter innocent civilians. Middle-class males 15 to 35 years old who spend time in Muslim enclaves were the most likely candidates for radicalization, said the report, which drew from nearly a dozen cases to reach its conclusions. Beyond that, the descriptions ran the gamut, from the bored and/or frustrated, successful college students, the unemployed, the second and third generation to new immigrants, petty criminals and prison parolees. Of this broad group, a few will experience a personal crisis, such as losing a job or family member, that draws them to extremist religion and eventually to violence, the report said. The FBI released a report around the same time that similarly traced a path from pre-radicalization to embracing the cause to bonding with a group of like-minded jihadists. Critics say such portraits are over-inclusive and provide a false justification for ethnic profiling and intrusive surveillance. 1 / 7 San Bernardino County Sheriffs Department SWAT officers crouch on Richardson Street searching for the shooters involved in the Inland Regional Center attack. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 2 / 7 The scene where shooters Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik were killed by authorities hours after the attack on the Inland Regional Center. (Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times) 3 / 7 FBI agents search the townhouse of Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik in Redlands. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times) 4 / 7 The kitchen inside Syed Rizwan Farook and Tafsheen Maliks Redlands townhome. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 5 / 7 A crib inside the babys room inside the Redlands townhome where Syed Rizwan Farook and Tafsheen Malik lived. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 6 / 7 A tapestry inside Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Maliks Redlands townhome. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) 7 / 7 A hole in the ceiling could be seen inside the Redlands townhome where Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik lived. (Marcus Yam / Los Angeles Times) Ramzi Kassem, a law professor at City University of New York, said he believed the NYPDs report functioned as a blueprint of sorts for the agencys now-shuttered program that monitored mosques, ethnic restaurants and predominantly Muslim neighborhoods. Kassem represented plaintiffs in one of two lawsuits alleging that the department engaged in discriminatory surveillance of Muslims. In addition to removing the report from its website, the NYPD agreed to prohibit investigations based largely on race, religion or ethnicity and to limit the use of undercover officers and confidential informants. Lawrence Byrne, the NYPDs deputy commissioner for legal matters, said the report was never meant to be a basis for police work. It was valid at the time but predated the rise of Islamic State, he said. Faiza Patel, co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, said such profiles are based on stereotypes and damage police relationships with Muslim communities. Rather than place a dragnet around an entire community, you focus on where you have suspicion of wrongdoing, she said. It shouldnt be that being an observant Muslim is enough to trigger the Police Departments scrutiny. :: Still, some terrorism experts believe there are clues that can help identify those who may turn to violence at a time when Islamic State is calling on its supporters to carry out attacks on their own initiative. Efforts to develop a jihadist profile are valuable, they say, and should not be abandoned because of concerns about how the information is used. One common thread may lie in aspiring jihadists deepest motivations. People who a few generations ago might have joined violent domestic fringe groups like the Symbionese Liberation Army are now attracted to jihad, said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at Cal State San Bernardino. Levin has interviewed members of extremist groups with disparate ideologies, such as the Jewish Defense League and Islamists in the Middle East. He said he found consistent themes, including the severing of family ties and a desire to make a difference in the world by righting perceived injustices. Brian Michael Jenkins, a national security expert at Rand Corp., was quoted as an outside voice in the 2007 NYPD report, endorsing it for the guidance it would provide to law enforcement. Since then, Jenkins said, the terrorist threat to the U.S. has changed, with the danger more likely to come from small groups or lone wolves acting on their own rather than a large team of centrally controlled attackers. Jenkins said Islamic States graphic videos appeal to troubled individuals with a propensity toward a particularly gruesome brand of violence. The display of beheadings, crucifixions, mass executions that has attracted a unique self-selecting group, he said. :: The three people linked to the San Bernardino attack illustrate just how different self-radicalized jihadists can be. Farook, born in the U.S. to Pakistani immigrants, was seen by co-workers as living the American Dream. His wife, Tashfeen Malik, had earned top grades as a pharmacology student in Pakistan. She was known as a modern girl, according to relatives, until she began wearing a veil and attending a conservative religious academy. The two met on an online dating site. Enrique Marquez Jr., who is accused of supplying two rifles used in the Dec. 2 attack on the Inland Regional Center, was a California native who worked as a security guard at a local Wal-Mart. Marquez did not appear to know about the plot, but prosecutors allege that he gave the rifles to Farook several years ago when the two men were planning attacks against Riverside City College and commuters on the 91 Freeway. Farook, prosecutors say, introduced Marquez to jihad while they were next-door neighbors, first bringing him to a local mosque, then exposing him to the teachings of radical Islamic clerics. Such bonds between aspiring jihadists can be more telling than individual biographies, said Robert Pape, a professor at the University of Chicago who analyzed suicide terrorists across three decades in his book Cutting the Fuse. Odd social groupings sometimes form, as people who otherwise have little common ground meet at mosques, gyms or cafes and find they share the same obsession with jihad, Pape said. They eventually cut themselves off from previous relationships and hole up with their terrorist cellmates. These types of plots are difficult to disrupt, because little, if any, of the planning gets beyond the inner circle. Farook remained in contact with his family, but investigators have identified only his wife as being involved with him in the plot. When the FBI and others are trying to catch them, theyre surveilling, listening to phone calls, tracking computer records.... But [would-be terrorists] are talking to each other face to face, watching videos together face to face, Pape said. Radicalizing in teeny tiny cliques of people is really difficult to find by surveillance. cindy.chang@latimes.com Twitter: @cindychangLA victoria.kim@latimes.com Twitter: @vicjkim ALSO First-responders, investigators in San Bernardino terror attack honored After San Bernardino attack, third shooter claims are just human nature For San Bernardino shooting victim, the hardest part of recovery is fully conveying her gratitude Police are searching for an arsonist who set a series of blazes around the North Park and Hillcrest neighborhoods of San Diego on Monday morning. The first fires were started in the beds of pickups parked on Boundary Street between Lincoln and Polk avenues about 4:40 a.m., said San Diego Fire-Rescue Department spokesman Lee Swanson. A couple of hours later, several fires were started within blocks of each other in Hillcrest. The first one was in a Dumpster in an alley off University Avenue west of Herbert Street about 7 a.m., said San Diego Police Officer Joshua Hodge. Advertisement At 7:10 a.m., a garage was lit on fire on Herbert Street near Essex Street, Swanson said. The blaze was doused before it could spread to a nearby home, but it still caused about $30,000 in damage to the garage and an additional $25,000 in damage to the garages contents. Then, at 7:19 a.m., two Dumpsters were scorched near University and 10th avenues. Another Dumpster was burned in a shopping center near Vermont Street and University at 7:46 a.m., authorities said. About 45 minutes later, another Dumpster fire was started, this time on Centre Street south of University. The blaze blackened the outside of a nearby apartment building but didnt cause any serious damage, Swanson said. Fire investigators suspect all of the fires were intentionally set and are looking into whether they were set by the same person. At least one witness spotted a potential suspect. He was described as white, unshaven, in his 30s or 40s, about 5 feet 10 inches tall and about 160 pounds with a medium build. He was last seen wearing a gray shirt, a black jacket, black pants and a black hat. A different man was arrested on a warrant as officers were investigating, but he is not suspected in the fires. lyndsay.winkley@sduniontribune.com Twitter: @LAWinkley Winkley writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune. California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris wants to require police agencies to file detailed reports about officer-involved shootings to her office electronically, so they can be quickly and easily posted on a state website for public viewing. Despite the heated national debate over police use of force, no reliable database tracks all police shootings in California, making it difficult for researchers to definitively answer some fundamental questions, including whether minorities are shot at disproportionately higher rates and which departments pull the trigger most often. For years, state law required police departments to report deaths in custody, including fatal officer-involved shootings, but the requirement had little enforcement and many departments routinely neglected to file the required information. Advertisement Interested in the stories shaping California? Sign up for the free Essential California newsletter >> And, there was no reporting requirement if a suspect was shot but not killed. Last year, the Legislature passed a law requiring new, detailed reports on all police shootings that result in serious bodily injury or death. The departments will have to disclose the age, race and gender of the person shot, whether the person was armed and, if so, what type of weapon was possessed. That law, however, allowed departments to provide the information on paper. The new bill backed by Harris and sponsored by Assemblywoman Jacqui Irwin (D-Thousand Oaks) would require departments to submit the information electronically, making it much easier to disseminate on the attorney generals Open Justice website. This legislation will bring criminal justice data reporting into the 21st century, Harris said. The bill would also require departments to file traditional crime statistics electronically, including the numbers of murders, rapes, robberies and property crimes. Currently, 60% of departments submit that information on paper, requiring state workers to type it into computers before it can be analyzed and disseminated. The process is unnecessarily expensive and time-consuming, state officials said. Harris, a Democrat who is running for U.S. Senate, has been criticized by some civil rights activists for not doing enough to increase accountability for police departments amid the national debate over shootings of young black men. Harris, who is the daughter of immigrants from Jamaica and India, is the top law enforcement officer in California. Last year, she opposed a bill that would have made her office responsible for investigating police shootings. Currently, those investigations are handled by local prosecutors, who critics say are too close to the police to provide impartial oversight. A Times investigation last month found that since 2004, there had been more than 2,000 officer-involved shootings in Southern California, with only one officer charged with a crime. He was acquitted. jack.dolan@latimes.com ALSO Join the conversation on Facebook >> Flight attendant had 70 reasons to run: TSA seizes 70 pounds of cocaine after she kicks off her heels and flees Defense opens in Grim Sleeper trial by challenging DNA, ballistics evidence Driver charged in killing of CarMax salesman surrenders to authorities The LAPDs plan to map Muslim communities in an effort to identify potential hotbeds of extremism departs from the way law enforcement has dealt with local anti-terrorism since 9/11 and prompted widespread skepticism Friday. In a document reviewed Friday by The Times, the LAPDs Los Angeles Police Departments counter-terrorism bureau proposed using U.S. census data and other demographic information to pinpoint various Muslim communities and then reach out to them through social service agencies. FOR THE RECORD: Muslim mapping: In Saturdays Section A, a photograph caption with a story about a Los Angeles Police Department program to map Muslim communities said, Mohammed Abdul Aleem, center, with Faisal Ansari, left, and Siraz Bawa says ideas like the LAPD program push moderate Muslims toward extremism. The caption should have made clear that the statement about pushing moderate Muslims toward extremism was Aleems alone. LAPD officials said that it is crucial for them to gain a better understanding of isolated parts of the Muslim community. Those groups can potentially breed violent extremism, the LAPD said in its plan. This is not . . . targeting or profiling, Police Chief William J. Bratton said Friday in defending the program. It is an effort to understand communities, he said. Advertisement But the effort sparked an outcry from civil libertarians and some Muslim activists, who compared the program to religious profiling. Others noted that the effort faces enormous practical difficulties. The U.S. Census Bureau is barred by law from asking people for their religious affiliation. As a result, there is no scientific data on the size of the nations Muslim population, let alone its location, with estimates of the population nationwide ranging from about 1.4 million adults in a Pew Research Center study this year to the 7 million or more claimed by some community organizations. Census data on ancestry also would not yield accurate Muslim estimates, because significant numbers of ethnic Iranians are Jewish and many ethnic Lebanese, Palestinians and Syrians are Christians. Its not realistic to think you are going to be able to find out where all the Muslims are, said Salam Al-Marayati, executive director of the Muslim Public Affairs Council. Hussam Ayloush of the Council on American-Islamic Relations in Anaheim said the LAPD project seemed based on the European experience of isolated and often-distressed Muslim enclaves -- a model that doesnt apply to the United States, where the Muslim population is far more dispersed. American Muslims differ from their European co-religionists in several other respects. A Pew survey of 1,050 adult American Muslims nationwide found them to be largely assimilated, happy with their lives and moderate. Although two-thirds are immigrants, most respondents said Muslims should integrate into U.S. society rather than isolate themselves. The survey found striking differences between American Muslims and their European counterparts, with more in the U.S. rejecting extremism and supporting coexistence with Israel. Only 2% of American Muslims were low-income, compared with rates of 18% and higher in the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Spain. The LAPDs proposal differs substantially from the way federal counter-terrorism authorities have dealt with Southern Californias Muslim community. Stung by decades of controversy over its monitoring of antiwar and civil rights groups, the FBI has been wary of post-9/11 initiatives that would draw criticism that its anti-terrorism efforts are based on racial profiling of Muslims. As a result, its counter-terrorism efforts have been largely driven by informants, intelligence reports or specific incidents that direct attention to a particular group or community. We learned our lesson early on, one retired FBI counter-terrorism official said Friday. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, questioned the logic of the mapping program, reasoning that the wholesale plotting of Muslim communities -- rather than zeroing in on suspected extremists -- could drain counter-terrorism resources and alienate Muslim residents at a time when they are crucial to law enforcement efforts. Al-Marayati and others who gathered for Friday prayer at the Islamic Center of Southern California questioned the premise of the mapping project. There were no clearly defined Muslim neighborhoods in Southern California, he said. Some neighborhoods are known for large Middle Eastern populations, but often their residents are not Muslim. Beverly Hills, for example, has a sizable and well-known Iranian population, but many of them are Persian Jews. Mosque member Omar Ricci, offspring of a Pakistani Muslim mother and Italian American Catholic father, said he has more Armenian Christian neighbors than Muslims on his street in Glendale. Maher Hathout, an Egyptian native and retired physician, who is a spokesman for the Islamic Center, said his neighborhood in Arcadia is an ethnic and religious polyglot; he said he was more familiar with his Christian next-door neighbor than the Muslims who live a few doors away. The mosque is on Vermont Avenue in Koreatown. The backlash against the program was intense enough Friday that LAPDs planned partner in the project, USCs National Center for Risk and Economic Analysis of Terrorism Events, said it was carefully studying whether to join the endeavor. I realize that there are many concerns with a potential mapping project related to profiling, privacy and civil liberties, center Director Detlof von Winterfeldt said in a statement. But LAPD leaders stood behind the proposal. Hoping to defuse the controversy, Bratton said Friday that the LAPDs plan is in its early stages and extended an invitation to meet with critics to hear their suggestions on how to advance what he described as a community engagement effort. In outlining the program last week before a congressional committee, Deputy Police Chief Michael P. Downing, who heads the counter-terrorism operation, said the departments plan was designed to minimize the radicalization of Muslims in Los Angeles. Instead of relying on experts, he said, the mapping would produce a richer picture of the community and guide future strategies. While this project will lay out geographic locations of many different Muslim populations around Los Angeles, we also intend to take a deeper look at their history, demographics, language, culture, ethnic breakdown, socioeconomic status and social interactions, he said. It is also our hope to identify communities, within the larger Muslim community which may be susceptible to violent ideologically based extremism and then use a full spectrum approach guided by intelligence-led strategy. On Friday, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa defended the LAPDs efforts. Chief Downing has good intentions here, said Villaraigosa, who added that he had only learned of the new program through newspaper articles and at a short briefing. But some Muslims fear that the police intervention in their communities could have the opposite effect from what officials intended. Anytime the administration talks about attacking Iran, anytime they start to float ideas like these, we are pushed more toward extremism, Mohammed Abdul Aleem, 49, of Culver City said. Every time our president opens his mouth, there are more people joining Al Qaeda. To Aleem, the LAPDs plan to map out the citys Muslim community will do nothing more than fuel the fire. Its making it harder and harder for the moderate Muslims, he said. Times staff writer Jean-Paul Renaud contributed to this report. The U.S. governments announcement that it might be able to unlock a San Bernardino shooters iPhone without Apples help is not likely to end the debate over encryption, privacy and national security. Law enforcement has complained for many months that data encryption creates a major investigative hurdle in the hunt for killers, human traffickers, child pornographers and other offenders. The latest fight over the issue arose after the Dec. 2 attack at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino that left 14 dead and 22 wounded. Justice officials have concluded that the assault by Syed Rizwan Farook and his wife was an act of terrorism. Advertisement See the most-read stories this hour >> After the couple were killed in a shootout with police, investigators found an iPhone 5c that Farook was issued for his job as a county health inspector. Although FBI agents have managed to learn much about Farook and his wife, they wanted to access the phone in hopes it would help answer outstanding questions, such as whether the killers had accomplices. Q: What do we know about why the FBI halted a planned court hearing designed to compel Apple to help unlock the phone? An outside party came forward Sunday and showed investigators a way to circumvent the iPhone security features that had previously flummoxed the FBIs computer experts, federal authorities said Monday. With the eleventh-hour announcement, prosecutors sought, and quickly received, an indefinite postponement of a court hearing that had been scheduled in Riverside on Tuesday. Prosecutors had planned to use the hearing to make their case for why a judge should force Apple to cooperate in hacking into the phone. In a court filing, and on a conference call with reporters, Department of Justice officials did not provide details about who had approached them or the technique that was suggested for breaking into the phone. They said, however, they were cautiously optimistic the idea would succeed. If the method is viable, prosecutors wrote, it should eliminate the need for the assistance from Apple. Q: What does the possible breakthrough mean in the larger effort by U.S. officials to tap into the electronic devices of suspected terrorists? Even if the FBI is able to crack the iPhone belonging to the San Bernardino assailant without Apples help, the larger issue isnt going to go away. Brian Levin, a Cal State San Bernardino professor and terrorism expert, said terror groups are even developing their own encryption and operating systems to no longer rely on corporate systems. This is a situation where technology can outrun any legal decision, Levin said. While the FBI might be able to crack this iPhone, what is going to happen to the latest iPhone and other advancing technology? Levin said counter-terrorism agencies face constant and new encryption efforts by Apple and other commercial technology providers. But intelligence shows that terrorists are doing their own work in this area, he said. Terrorism groups, including ISIS and Al Qaeda, are doing an end-run around commercial systems and they are developing their own encrypted systems. They are getting their own programmers, Levin said. Q: What does the delay in the court hearing mean for Apple? Apple has at least a temporary reprieve in what had become a risky and possibly damaging legal face-off with the U.S. government. But the announcement that the FBI might have another way into the phone presented the worlds most valuable company with another troubling scenario: that some unknown group has devised a way to break into iPhones despite the companys efforts to protect customers privacy with new encryption and security buffers. FULL COVERAGE: Apples fight with the FBI >> In a call with reporters, Apple attorneys underscored the bind the company finds itself in. If the government does drop its demand for help, the firm will probably remain in the dark on what prosecutors learned and who taught it to them. The attorneys, who spoke on the condition that they not be identified, said Apple would ask the government to share what vulnerability it had recently discovered as a result of Sundays new information. They stressed that they remained uncertain whether there is in fact a way to bypass the security measures. MORE ON APPLE VS. FBI Tim Cook jumps right into discussing Apple-FBI iPhone encryption fight FBI says it might be able to unlock San Bernardino terrorists iPhone without Apples help In FBI encryption fight, Apple seeks Latino support The deadly terrorist bombing at the Brussels Airport is a grim reminder of how Los Angeles own airport has been targeted by terrorism over the years. LAX was targeted in two elaborate terrorism bombing plots as well as two shooting incidents. Here is a summary of those attacks from the files of The Times: Advertisement LAX Alphabet Bomber Muharem Kurbegovic was convicted of first-degree murder for a 1974 bombing at LAX that killed three people and injured 36 others. See the most-read stories this hour >> The jury found the so-called Alphabet Bomber guilty on 25 counts of murder, arson, attempted murder, possession of explosive material and exploding a bomb. He was associated with a group called Aliens of America and was called the Alphabet Bomber because of his scheme to explode bombs at locations alphabetically to spell out Aliens of America until our name has been written on the face of this nation with blood, The Times reported. China Airlines counter explosion In 1980, a homemade explosive was set off at the China Airlines counter at LAX. It caused damage, but no one was hurt. Millennium bomber In 1999, there was a plot to blow up Los Angeles International Airport at the start of the millennium. Ahmed Ressam left British Columbia in a rented Chrysler loaded with explosives, electronic timing devices, detonators, fertilizer and aluminum sulfate. After he crossed by ferry to Port Angeles, Wash., an alert customs inspector, Diana Dean, noticed that he was agitated and asked other agents to search his car. They found component parts of a bomb hidden in the trunks spare tire well. Ressam was arrested and indicted and convicted after years of legal wrangling. El Al attack Protecting soft targets has long been an issue in Los Angeles. For years, experts have expressed special concern about LAX, saying the airport is vulnerable to truck and car bombs that could be detonated next to crowded terminals and sidewalks. Officials have said they have boosted security dramatically since 9/11. But since then, the airport has been the scene of two violent incidents. In 2002, a gunman attacked the El Al Israel Airlines ticket counter, killing two people and wounding several others before a security guard working for El Al shot him to death. TSA attack In 2013, a gunman roamed through a terminal with an assault-style rifle before killing a Transportation Security Administration officer. The suspect, Paul Ciancia, allegedly targeted TSA employees in the attack a signed, handwritten note found in a duffel bag he carried said he wanted to instill fear into their traitorous minds, according to a federal affidavit written after the shooting. He is awaiting trial. ALSO Live updates: Terrorist attacks in Brussels A look at some previous extremist attacks in Western Europe Three Mormon missionaries from Utah are among the seriously injured A Bay Area man who was wanted in connection with killing a CarMax salesman while test driving a Corvette has turned himself in to authorities, prosecutors said. Alex Demetro, 28, surrendered to authorities at 10:45 a.m. Friday at the San Bernardino County Superior Court in Rancho Cucamonga, according to county jail records. He was immediately arraigned and taken into custody, court records show. The Union City, Calif., resident is scheduled for a bail hearing Tuesday. Advertisement Demetro faces one count of gross vehicular manslaughter while intoxicated, one count of driving under the influence of a drug and causing injury and one count of driving on a suspended license, according to court records. Prosecutors declared Demetro a fugitive after he failed to appear for a court hearing. A warrant for his arrest was issued and he was charged in the death of 43-year-old Warren Smale, according to court records. Demetro was arrested Feb. 23 when he crashed the Corvette into a tree about 12:45 p.m. on Mercedes Lane near Concours Street during the test drive, said Sgt. Jeff Higbee of the Ontario Police Department. He was released from jail the next day after posting $100,000 bail. Witnesses told police that the driver was traveling at a high speed when he lost control of the Corvette and crashed into the tree. Smale, a CarMax salesman from Montclair, was a passenger in the car. He was taken to an area hospital in critical condition and was later pronounced dead. Demetro was on more than one prescription medication, Higbee said. Witnesses told KTLA-TV Channel 5 that the vehicle appeared to reach speeds of up to 70 mph. For breaking news in California, follow VeronicaRochaLA ALSO 1 dead in possible street-racing crash in San Bernardino Defense opens in Grim Sleeper trial by challenging DNA, ballistics evidence Nearly 250 arrested, 20 hospitalized at Beyond Wonderland rave in Inland Empire Debra Duardo, a former high school dropout, will become the top education official for Los Angeles County, heading an agency that provides schooling for teenage inmates as well as for thousands of disabled studentsprograms that have been criticized in recent years. Duardo, 53, was the consensus pick of the countys five-member Board of Supervisors after closed-session interviews with three finalists last week. She is scheduled to be formally hired Tuesday, when the board votes in open session. She would replace Arturo Delgado, who will have served five years when he retires in June. Advertisement Duardo, a veteran administrator, comes over from the mammoth L.A. Unified School District, where shes worked for two decades and heads the student health and human services division. Because of her role at L.A. Unified, Debra is uniquely qualified to run the Los Angeles County Office of Education, said Supervisor Sheila Kuehl. Im thrilled. The countys education office also manages the payroll for nearly all of the countys dozens of smaller school systems. In a watchdog role it also provides an early warning system about districts that face insolvency. But the countys own programs, including services to the disabled, also have come under scrutiny. This has contributed to a decline in revenue. In 2011-12, the education offices special education programs received almost $84 million in state tax revenue. The estimate for 2014-15 was $38 million, according to a recent outside review. See the most-read stories this hour >> In 2012-13, the county programs employed 772 teachers. Two years later, that number was down to 408. There have been some real complaints from school distrcts about the quality of programs we put together, Kuehl said. Some districts have already pulled out. Kuehl added that there also have been shortcomings in classes for juvenile offenders, but said that a new, successful pilot program showed promise and needed to be expanded. Other county-managed operations, such as a huge Head Start effort for preschoolers, are performing better, she said. Duardo has spent her entire career focused on students who are troubled, disengaged from school or facing difficult challenges. She was such a student herself, dropping out of Hollywood High after a week to work the counter at a Kentucky Fried Chicken. She eloped to Las Vegas and gave birth to her first son as a teenager. Her son was born with a spinal disability; she decided she needed to know more to help him and herself. Saddled with parenting duties and the night shift at a grocery store, Duardo needed 10 years to earn a diploma and a two-year community-college degree. Follow the Times education initiative to inform parents, educators and students across California >> She subsequently earned a bachelors, masters and doctorate at UCLA. At L.A. Unified she worked in a succession of counseling-related positions. She inaugurated the Diploma Project in 2006, when the district came under fire from then-Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa for a dropout rate well above the state average. Thats still the case, although the numbers have improved considerably. In her school district position, Duardo has focused on improving student attendance at campuses with the worst attendance rates, concentrating especially on kindergartners and ninth-graders. She said there have been significant gains, but more needs to be done. One key to helping students, she said, is to involve families, other government agencies and the larger community. School district counselors are now expected to conduct home visits and often work in conjunction with officials from other agencies. At the district, we fought really hard to make sure that students in foster care are getting support, Duardo said. We worked hard for data sharing with county childrens services so that we know when a child is in foster care. They tell us which students are taken out of a home, when a case is opened and we give them the childs enrollment history, grades, attendance. We are in the third year of that now. She added: Were all serving the same children and families, and we can all do a lot better if we work together. See more of our top stories on Facebook >> Under the countys arcane system, the supervisors hire the superintendent and recommend a salary, but the salary must be approved by the county Board of Education. This board is appointed by the supervisors. The supervisors have recommended a salary of $267,788 for Duardo. County Board of Education member Alex Johnson said he expected the board to have no issue with Duardos hiring. The supervisors made an extremely strong selection, Johnson said. Dr. Duardos leadership and personal story of triumphing over adversity is shining example for a county office which serves young people in our juvenile halls and camps. Howard.blume@latimes.com Twitter: @howardblume Times staff writer Joy Resmovits contributed to this report. ALSO UC Berkeley chancellor defends provost under fire in sexual harassment case Nearly 250 arrested, 20 hospitalized at Beyond Wonderland rave in Inland Empire Amid custody battle, 6-year-old girl is removed from her Santa Clarita foster parents The trial of the man accused in the so-called Grim Sleeper serial killings shifted to the defense Monday, with an attorney repeatedly challenging DNA and ballistics evidence linking his client to the grisly deaths and suggesting other attackers may have been involved. Lonnie Franklin Jr. faces 10 counts of murder in the slayings of nine women and a 15-year-old girl over more than 20 years. He also faces one count of attempted murder. Franklin, 63, has pleaded not guilty. In an opening statement, defense attorney Seymour Amster told jurors that DNA belonging to other people was found at some of the crime scenes, on victims clothing and on their bodies apparently suggesting that men other than Franklin could be involved in the deaths. Advertisement They excluded Lonnie Franklin of being the source of that DNA, Amster said repeatedly. Amster said the defense would also dispute the methodology used by police to match the gun found in Franklins home to Janecia Peters, 25, who is believed to be the Grim Sleepers final victim. For weeks, prosecutors have carefully constructed their case: That each of the 10 victims is connected to Franklin by DNA evidence, ballistics or both. The woman believed to be the Grim Sleepers lone survivor, Enietra Washington, identified Franklin as her attacker in court. And a gun found in Franklins home was used to shoot one of the victims, according to testimony. Police criminalists testified that bullets from seven victims six of whom were killed and one of whom survived were fired from the same weapon. Franklins DNA was on the bodies of three of those victims, according to previous testimony. But Amster told jurors that the method used to make those matches was not proper science. Amsters opening statement comes midway through the trial of Franklin, a former Los Angeles Police Department garage attendant who was arrested in 2010. The victims bodies were found dumped in alleys and trash bins across South Los Angeles. Amster declined to give his opening statement at the onset of the trial, preferring to wait until he began his case. Before the opening statement, the defense and prosecution once again clashed over a number of issues related to evidence and witnesses Amster intended to have testify. Prosecutors asked L.A. County Superior Court Judge Kathleen Kennedy to disqualify a defense witness who intended to discredit ballistics evidence, saying they were only alerted to the witness over the weekend. This is trial by ambush, Deputy Dist. Atty. Beth Silverman said. I think these two attorneys dont give a damn about ethics, the rules, professionalism. Theyve shown that time and time again. Silverman accused Amster of turning the trial into a circus. The judge repeatedly admonished the two attorneys Silverman for repeatedly interrupting Amster and Amster for shouting during his remarks. Another issue involved a subpoena the defense served on the LAPD for documents, which the judge ruled was overly broad. She asked Amster to refile the subpoena and narrow its scope. That request led to a testy exchange: Dont shake your head when I speak, Kennedy warned the defense attorney, before continuing and stopping again. Take your hand away from your face, she said to Amster, who sat low in his chair. Dont be disrespectful. Im now going to rest, I have no defense! Amster shouted. I cannot competently represent this man any further. I want you to chill, she said. Stop yelling at me. Kennedy eventually agreed to let Amster amend the subpoena rather than refile it. You do need to calm yourself down, she said. Later in the day, jurors heard from Lynda Lewis, a former friend of Washington, who survived an attack. After she was shot in November 1988, Washington testified, she walked and dragged herself to the home of Lewis. She lay bleeding on the front porch until Lewis arrived home from a party. Under questioning from Amster, Lewis recalled that Washington gave conflicting accounts about her ordeal. Initially, she said, Washington had told her that a man had raped and shot her. Later, Washington told her shed been attacked by two men. During her testimony, Washington identified Franklin in court as her sole attacker. stephen.ceasar@latimes.com For more on the Grim Sleeper trial, follow @sjceasar Hiroshi Motohashi was angry with the management of the Studio City sushi restaurant, so police said he decided to leave something for other customers to remember him by. Instead of dropping the mic after a memorable rant, officials say the 46-year-old man dropped a 13-foot-long snake in the middle of the restaurant then slithered out. Motohashi later was arrested on suspicion of making criminal threats, said Lt. Jim Gavin of the Los Angeles Police Department in Van Nuys. Advertisement See more of our top stories on Facebook >> The cold-blooded act unfolded about 7:20 p.m. Sunday when Motohashi entered Iroha Sushi of Tokyo in the 12900 block of Ventura Boulevard and showed off a small snake to customers sitting down for dinner. Restaurant managers confronted Motohashi and asked him to leave, Gavin said. Motohashi left, but returned minutes later to the restaurant with an even bigger snake: a 13-foot-long python. The snake owner said, [Expletive], you guys, then dropped the larger snake in the middle of the restaurant floor and walked out, the lieutenant said. There was no confusing the yellow python slithering on the restaurant floor with a supersized caterpillar roll. Employees told KCBS-TV that Motohashi had paid for a $200 meal before showing off the smaller snake to customers. The customers did not like that. They liked the giant snake even less. Some terrified customers even ran out of the restaurant, the station reported. Get this thing out! You know, everyones like eating, so customers are yelling, Get this thing out! Are you crazy, waitress Jessie Davaadorj told KCBS-TV. The Los Angeles Fire Department and Los Angeles Animal Services went to the restaurant and captured the snake, which apparently had gotten stuck near a cash register. Animal control officers took the snake away, Gavin said. Animal Services is caring for both snakes at its East Valley facility in Van Nuys. Motohashi must show proof of ownership, including the proper permits, to get his snakes back, Cmdr. Mark Salazar of the Animal Services Department said. This isnt Motohashis first run-in with the law over his love of exotic pets. He was convicted in 2005 in federal court of selling endangered animals and venomous lizards. He was sentenced to 15 months for selling Gila monster lizards without a permit. Along with the venomous lizards, he sold yellow-spotted sideneck turtles and San Esteban Island chuckwallas to an undercover officer in 1997, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported. Motohashi was one of a dozen people arrested by the agent, who posed as the owner of a business that was buying and selling exotic animals in Reno. Years later, Motohashis San Diego-based pet shop, A Glass Jungle, was featured in a 2011 article in San Diego Uptown News. He was photographed with a 15-foot-long albino tiger python named Cleopatra. I love to educate people about the animals and let them see things they wouldnt normally seeand I want people to see how they could take care of these animals responsibly, he told the paper. For breaking news in California, follow VeronicaRochaLA ALSO Man crushed to death between crane, trailer in West Hollywood Yes, its windy. Much of Southern California remains under wind advisory Amid custody battle, 6-year-old girl is removed from her Santa Clarita foster parents In December, a married couple who authorities said had been self-radicalized killed 14 people in San Bernardino in what has been described as the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11. Authorities found that the couple had bomb-making equipment in the garage of their townhouse and that one of them had plotted an earlier terror attack. Still, experts say the terror attack in San Bernardino pales in comparison to the Paris and Brussels attacks due to those cities much more sophisticated and vast terror networks. Advertisement See more of our top stories on Facebook >> Based on months of investigation by the FBI and local police, the San Bernardino shooters had little support and appeared to act on their own after reviewing terrorist literature online. By contrast, the terrorist cells in Brussels and Paris had the support of a network of bomb makers, safe houses and weaponry. Brian Jenkins, a counter-terrorism expert for Rand Corp., said European cities such as Brussels are providing a perfect breeding ground for soft target attacks. The big difference between here and Europe and what has made Europe so dangerous is they have a far larger number of returning foreign fighters from Syria, and they, more importantly, have a logistical support network in place, said Jenkins, a senior advisor to the Rand Corp.s president. Salah Abdeslam, the main fugitive in the Paris attacks seized in Brussels four days ago, Jenkins said, was a logistics specialist. These fighters come back home determined to carry out an attack. But they need a place to hide, someone to build bombs, someone to supply weaponsthey need a network. In U.S., by contrast, we are seeing very little connectivity. We are seeing a single individual or autonomous action. They dont have a terrorist underground here to turn to logistically, Jenkins said. That was evident in San Bernardino, where Syed Farook and Tashfin Malik killed 14 people and wounded 22, he said. Essentially, the threat consists of lone wolves operating solo or small groups inspired by Islamic State or Al Qaeda web literature. Islamic State, he said, is under pressure domestically but that does not mean the fight is over. Jenkins said the group will likely go underground, but the foreign fighters will either head to another region such as Libya or take the risk of returning home. He said that may mean more attacks as Isalmic State is pushed back. Some will return home disillusioned, but others will determine to seek revenge, Jenkins said. Brian Levin, a Cal State San Bernardino terrorism expert, said he would not rule out an attack on U.S. soil from Islamic State. But he noted that terrorists in the U.S. dont have the vast support network that can build suicide vests and hide people, as in Europe. The risk in Europe is different but it doesnt mean we dont have a risk here, Levin said. We remain one of their top targets, Levin said. richard.winton@latimes.com NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >> MORE ON BRUSSELS ATTACK Islamic State claims responsibility for attacks; at least 34 dead Who are the Americans injured in the Brussels attack? Who are the Americans injured in the Brussels attack? The Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach is embarking on a $53-million expansion by adding a wing with architectural lines evoking the shape of a blue whale and featuring an immersive theater with a high-definition projection system and 130-foot-long, 180-degree curved screen designed to simulate ocean and coastal environments. The 300-seat theater is nearly twice the size of the one it is replacing, and each seat will be wired to bring film productions of seascapes to life with films and simulated vibrations, fog, wind gusts and scents. The theater will also screen live feeds from floating laboratories around the world. Advertisement The new Pacific Visions wing scheduled to open in 2018 will also include an art gallery of rotating offerings from across the nation, add 6,000 square feet of floor space for animal exhibits and provide more room for cultural events, lectures and even live performances by the Long Beach Symphony. Animals arent very good at telling their own stories about whats happening to their vast but fragile wilderness, said Jerry Schubel, the aquariums president and chief executive officer. But new technologies will help us provide visitors with a deeper emotional understanding of how their own lives and those of the species on exhibit here are intertwined. Chris Lowe, a professor of marine biology at Cal State Long Beach, said the changes will enable the museum to promote the cause of oceanic conservation in ways that also show people how they can get involved and make a difference. The plan, which will not require alteration of the existing aquarium, is an attempt to boost attendance in a target market dominated by powerhouse tourist attractions including Disneyland, Knotts Berry Farm, Universal Studios and SeaWorld. Designed by the San Francisco architectural firm EHDD, the new wings undulating facade will contain 800 iridescent glass panels that will change hues as the sun and clouds move during the day. The aquarium opened with much fanfare at the edge of a palm-lined bay in 1998 as a crucial component of Long Beachs effort to transform its gritty past as a naval shipyard into a regional tourism attraction. It was conceived as a cornerstone of a waterfront retail and amusement complex that would bring visitors to Long Beach at a time when it was struggling to cope with the closure of a Navy shipyard and the loss of about 50,000 jobs. Within years, the aquarium was struggling against dwindling attendance, strained relations with city officials and complaints of crowded rooms, lousy food and boring exhibits. The problems left the aquarium unable to meet its $117-million bond obligation, which was to be paid from attendance revenue. The city refinanced the debt in 2001 to lower the payments. The aquarium recruited new managers, who set to work responding to negative reviews. Concession menus were improved and a time-ticketing system was installed to accommodate no more than 2,500 visitors at a time. The aquarium also made news by opening its Shark Lagoon exhibit and by receiving an award from the Assn. of Zoos and Aquariums, a nonprofit organization that accredits facilities that have met rigorous standards, for being the first facility in the world to successfully breed bizarre creatures known as weedy sea dragons. As part of an effort to diversify what began as a largely white customer base, the aquarium launched a series of annual cultural festivals featuring the foods, dances and celebrations of various ethnic groups rooted in surrounding communities. The aquarium also hosts a Festival of Human Abilities, featuring a hip-hop wheelchair dance performance. Based on annual attendance figures, the Long Beach aquarium, home to 11,000 animals, today ranks among the four most popular aquariums in the nation. More than 25 million people have visited the facility since it was built during a boom in aquarium construction in the 1990s. Weve made a lot of progress, Schubel said. Last year was our very best by every measure. Long Beach Mayor Robert Garcia hopes to see the aquarium continue that trend. This aquarium expansion is a huge deal for the study and appreciation of marine life, as well as for the city as an attraction that will draw more tourists to nearby hotels, restaurants and retailers, Garcia said. The Pacific Visions wing is supported by a fund-raising campaign that so far has more than $35 million in cash and pledged donations, and aquarium revenue. That amount includes a $15-million matching grant from the city of Long Beach, which owns some of the aquariums buildings and all of its property, and a $5-million matching grant from the citys philanthropic Molina Family. The aquarium anticipates raising the rest of the money from donations. Members of the public can support the project by making an online donation as well as on site by visiting the aquarium. The city still owes $89,957,000 on the original debt, due by 2030, city officials said. Louis.Sahagun@latimes.com | @LouisSahagun ALSO Live updates: Terrorist attack in Brussels L.A. City Council approves two controversial high-rises in Hollywood Angry man spends $200 at sushi restaurant, then leaves 13-foot python instead of a tip Four years ago, Maribel Marroquin began knocking on doors in her Santa Ana neighborhood, trying to persuade more Latinos in Orange County to vote Republican. It was an uphill struggle in the heavily Democratic area. But the 25-year-old Mexican American college student racked up some victories, including persuading her all-Democratic family to switch. Then Donald Trump came along, referring to Mexico sending rapists and drug dealers to the United States and threatening to deport millions while building a massive wall along the border. Advertisement To have worked so hard and taken so many steps forward and then to have somebody like Trump with his comments come in, it just sets us back a lot, Marroquin said. Marroquin is part of a larger strategy by the Orange County GOP to recruit more Latino and Asian voters. The county, a birthplace of the Reagan revolution and reliable conservative stronghold, has seen Republican registration plummet as the population transitions from mostly white to majority minority. Republican registration is now at about 40%, down from nearly 60% a generation ago. Though Republicans still outnumber Democrats in the county, their shrinking ranks hurt the GOP on the statewide level. President Obamas reelection in 2012 was a turning point, said Fred Whitaker, chairman of the Orange County Republican Party. Only 27% of Asian Americans and 29% of Latinos in California voted Republican. Orange County GOP leaders began more aggressively targeting non-white voters, notably Vietnamese Americans, whose disdain for the Communist government in Vietnam has made them more receptive to the GOP than other Asian American groups. Last year, the GOP scored an upset victory when Republican Andrew Do defeated Democrat Lou Correa for a seat on the county Board of Supervisors. But the rise of Trump has some in Orange County worried about these fragile gains. Join the conversation on Facebook >> I think some of the rhetoric has been over the top and not helpful and certainly I dont think that castigating one group in society is the way to deal with the problem of illegal immigration, Whitaker said. Frankly, most of the illegal immigrants right now are not coming from Mexico and many are visa overstays. Ill disagree with Mr. Trump on that. For several years, Republicans have been working with the Lincoln Club, a prominent business-oriented political action committee, to improve the GOPs standing with local minority communities. They groomed and financially backed Asians and Latinos for local offices, such as Cecilia Iglesias, a Republican and Santa Ana Unified School District trustee. Iglesias said she tells Latinos she tries to register as Republican to not focus on the presidential race because that is not going to dictate what happens here.... Vote for the person who is going to be more aligned with your values. When Trump comes up, Iglesias said she tells them: He is an entrepreneur, a businessman and hes marketing himself to the base. But dont let that distract you. Hes very defensive. Moreover, hes crude. Hes ignorant. He should know that a president should reflect what America is -- and it isnt someone like him. Kim Nguyen, 30, of Huntington Beach Trumps most heated rhetoric has been about immigration from Latin America. But some worry he could also alienate some Asian Republicans. A 2014 survey by APIAVote, a group that tries to mobilize Asian American and Pacific Islanders into greater electoral participation, found that 41% of Asian American voters would probably vote against a candidate who expressed strongly negative views about immigrants, even if the voter agreed with him or her on other issues. Outside the packed 85 Degrees C Bakery in Irvine, Kim Nguyen, 30, of Huntington Beach said she remembered the way Trump responded when he was asked about the support he got from David Duke, a former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan. Hes very defensive. Moreover, hes crude, Nguyen said. Hes ignorant. He should know that a president should reflect what America is and it isnt someone like him. Four years ago, Nguyen voted for Mitt Romney. Though she is Republican, she said she wont vote for Trump. Nguyen said she doesnt think Trumps ascendancy was going to help the GOP recruit Asians. Election 2016 | Live coverage on Trail Guide | March 15 election results | Track the delegate race | Sign up for the newsletter For young people who are deciding what party to join, I would run and far away from the Republicans if this is the kind of guy they nominate, she said. Still, there are Latinos and Asians in Orange County who support Trump. They say they are drawn to his ideas on the economy and what they see as his great success. Korean Americans Rose Lee, 30, and her partner, Michael An, 31, said the only reason theyre paying more attention to politics is because of Trump. For the first time, theyre watching prime-time debates and tracking the polls. The marketing specialists from Costa Mesa say they are inspired by the businessman. He could say his message differently, but the fact is hes very real. I agree with everything he stands for, Lee said. Im tuning in because I want to know what he says, An added. I think theres more pride now in our country because we have this amazing personality people are following. I like his negatives. To me, they are positives. But Jay Park, 23, a conservative independent who is a political science student at Irvine Valley College, called Trump a ridiculous person. To be fair, I like his ideas on trade and on how we can beat back ISIS with more military force, but because he discriminates, youths like me cant vote for him because we want people to work together, Park said. The fact that both Republicans and Democrats are fighting for non-white voters in Orange County reflects a major demographic shift. In 2003, whites lost their majority status amid a surge of Latino and Asian residents. From 2000 to 2010, Asian American saw a 41% increase, now making up about 600,000 of Orange Countys 3 million residents. Wayne Lindholm, the Lincoln Clubs president, said his group has surveyed 12,000 Latinos who rank jobs, education and crime as some of the issues most important to them. At a meeting in late summer at Palm Lane Park in Anaheim, Teresa Hernandez, a Lincoln Club leader, spoke to a group of overwhelmingly Latino parents who wanted to create a charter school. A woman waved a stack of voter registration cards to the crowd. All of us here are Republicans. And most of the people who are against you are Democrats, she told the crowd in Spanish. If you are going to vote, vote for people who are going to help you. It remains unclear how much support Trump has in Orange County or how much that would divide the local Republican Party. But Marroquin, the Republican college student, said Trump could prove a setback for her cause. Both of my parents are Mexican. A lot of people I know and love are Mexicans as well, she said. How would you feel if someone insults your family and culture in that way and says that everyone who crosses the border are rapists and drug dealers? Jeanette Saldivar, a 40-year-old Mexican American from Anaheim, said that Trump appealed to her at first. If he was going to do good for himself he could do good for the country. Im going to vote for him, the registered Republican said was her thinking. He can bring the economy up, jobs, everything. But as Trumps comments about immigrants, women and Muslims heated up, Saldivar said she was turned off and can no longer support him. cindy.carcamo@latimes.com anh.do@latimes.com MORE ON DONALD TRUMP Anti-Trump graffiti mars Newport Beach neighborhood Donald Trump hasnt switched to a general-election game yet, and thats risky What happens when Donald Trump runs out of campaign cash? Were about to find out Officially, the legal issue at hand was a misdemeanor charge of perjury. But in many ways the days proceedings also concerned Sandra Bland, the black woman whose death in jail last summer fueled criticism of police and their treatment of minorities. Former Texas state Trooper Brian T. Encinia, whose traffic stop of Bland led to her arrest, pleaded not guilty to the perjury charge before District Judge Albert McCaig Jr. in Hempstead, about 55 miles west of Houston. More than a dozen deputies and a Texas ranger kept guard around the courtroom packed with Bland supporters, including some in Black Lives Matter T-shirts. Advertisement Outside the courthouse, about three dozen Bland supporters gathered with signs reading, What happened to Sandra Bland? and Stop police brutality & terror. The crowd shouted down Waller County Sheriff R. Glenn Smith with calls of, Youre responsible for Sandras murder! and Sandy still speaks a reference to Blands online postings before her death in support of the Black Lives Matter movement, which has championed the familys cause. Encinia, escorted by a Texas ranger, entered the courtroom in a gray suit and blue tie with three attorneys, including Houston lawyer Chip Lewis, who earlier this year helped defend New York real estate scion Robert Durst in New Orleans. At first, the former trooper did not look at Blands mother, Geneva Reed-Veal, seated in the front row of the gallery with her eldest daughter, Shante Needham, their attorney and friends. As Encinia passed, Reed-Veal stiffened. He kept his back to her during the hearing, which lasted just a few minutes. Then he turned as he left, and their eyes met briefly. Neither flinched. Reed-Veal and Needham wore rhinestone cross earrings. Reed-Veal also wore a bracelet that said Justice for Sandra, and Needham a T-shirt with a picture of Bland seated in her car. Encinia, 30, stopped Bland outside nearby Prairie View A&M University on July 10 for failing to properly signal a lane change. After a heated argument captured on a dashboard camera, the trooper arrested Bland, 28, on allegations of assaulting a public servant and took her to Waller County Jail. Three days later, Bland who had been visiting from Chicago for a successful job interview at the university, her alma mater was found hanged in her jail cell. Her death has been ruled a suicide. A woman holds a poster bearing the portrait of Sandra Bland. (Kena Betancur / AFP-Getty Images) In January, a Waller County grand jury indicted Encinia after concluding there was evidence he had lied about the circumstances under which Bland left her car. Encinia turned himself in the day after he was indicted and was released on $2,500 bond. If convicted of the misdemeanor perjury charge, he could face up to a year in jail and a $4,000 fine. Earlier this month, Encinia was formally fired by the Texas Department of Public Safety director, who said the troopers actions during the traffic stop violated department standards. Encinia has appealed that decision. On Tuesday, Encinia was ushered out of the courthouse without comment. His attorney paused outside to thank supporters. This case now represents much more than Brian Encinia, Lewis said. It is a threat to all police officers in the state of Texas of a runaway grand jury or a rogue prosecutor deciding to Monday-morning quarterback a police officers decision. He said Encinia was charged because of a tempest of emotion fueled by a media frenzy from a very tragic situation. What Mr. Encinia did on the date of Ms. Blands arrest, from the moment he encountered her to the moment he finished filing his charges, was proper and in no way was a violation of any law in the state of Texas, Lewis said. Blands mother and her Chicago-based attorney Cannon Lambert remained in the courtroom to speak with the two special prosecutors handling the case, Chad Dick and Phoebe Smith. We made it very clear that we are of the mind that in order for accountability to be had, they have got to try the case and not accept a plea, Lambert said. Blands family has demanded investigative records in the case as part of the wrongful-death lawsuit they filed in August against the sheriffs office, jail officials and the state Department of Public Safety. A federal judge in Houston set the case for trial Jan. 23, 2017. Government attorneys have sought to delay the lawsuit until Encinias criminal case plays out, or dismiss it, arguing that Bland killed herself because she was distraught that friends and family didnt bail her out. After the hearing, Reed-Veal greeted supporters outside with hugs, saying, What happened in court was what needed to happen. She added, I want an opportunity to allow accountability to be shown. I want answers as to what happened to my daughter. As the familys car pulled away, supporters chanted Sandy still speaks! The next hearing is scheduled for May 17. Twitter: @mollyhf ALSO Brussels attacks: U.S. airports and transit systems step up security Down on its luck, Atlantic City may shut down government for weeks Supreme Court upholds workers class-action verdict in setback for corporations U.S. cities have stepped up security measures in the wake of the deadly bombings in Brussels, although Department of Homeland Security officials said no credible threats have been detected against U.S. targets. Airports and transit systems around the country were placed on heightened alert because of concerns about possible copycat attacks. Some cities added extra bomb-sniffing dogs and foot patrols to major transit hubs and airport terminals. Airports including those in Los Angeles, Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, Denver, Miami, and Philadelphia put security staff on heightened alert. New York National Guard troops were deployed to John F. Kennedy International and LaGuardia airports, and state police stepped up patrols at major train stations in Manhattan. Advertisement Amtrak added security officers to train lines. In Washington, D.C.s Union Station, passengers and luggage were being randomly screened during boarding, and additional K-9 teams have been added at Reagan National Airport and Dulles International Airport outside the capital, according to authorities. The senseless attacks that struck the people of Belgium earlier today have left us all stunned and heartbroken, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a statement . I have directed state law enforcement officials to step up security at high-profile locations around the state, including our airports, bridges, tunnels and mass transit systems, he said. See more of our top stories on Facebook >> Federal officials said they had not elevated the threat level but that extra precautions made sense because of the possibility that the bombings in Belgium -- claimed by the terrorist group Islamic State, also known as ISIS -- could inspire someone to stage an attack in the U.S. In the wake of these attacks, we here in the U.S. and our allies across Europe must be on alert for possible copycat attackers who activate in the wake of these bombings, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, Rep. Adam Schiff of Burbank, said in a statement. Europe is facing a real threat from the thousands who have traveled abroad to Syria and Iraq to train with ISIS, and have returned home. It is enormously difficult to track all of them, or defend soft targets like those attacked in Brussels and previously in Paris, Schiff said. And as we saw in San Bernardino, we are not immune from the threat at home, even if it is still more likely to come from home-grown radicals than ISIS fighters returning from Syria or Iraq. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Tulare) said governments should step up their ability to track and arrest terrorists. NEWSLETTER: Get the days top headlines from Times Editor Davan Maharaj >> Thwarting these killers will require vigilance both by governments, which need to track and apprehend terrorists before they have a chance to strike, as well as citizens, who need to report suspicious activity to the authorities, Nunes said in a statement. Although we dont have all the details yet on these bombings, its clear that terrorists are exploiting security gaps throughout the Western world to commit mass murder, he said. MORE ON BRUSSELS ATTACKS Before Brussels, LAX was repeatedly a target of terrorism Police release photo of potential suspects U.S. Embassy is trying to track down American citizens WASHINGTON The Supreme Court dealt a setback to corporate America on Tuesday by upholding a nearly $6-million class-action verdict for a group of Iowa meat packers who contended they were not paid for time spent putting on and taking off safety gear. The high court has been skeptical of class-action claims in recent years, and when the justices agreed to hear the appeal from Tyson Foods, corporate groups including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the National Assn. of Manufacturers had hoped the justices would use the case to further rein in class-action claims. Instead, in a 6-2 ruling, the high court said the class-action claim made sense. Advertisement This is excellent news for workers, said Adam Klein, deputy managing partner of employment law firm Outten & Golden LLP, which represents employees. In its appeal, Tyson had argued that the workers could not prove how much time they spent putting on their protective clothing, relying instead on estimates. Since the company did not keep records, workers used an expert who studied a sample and concluded they spent on average about 18 minutes a day putting on safety gear. Thats good enough, said Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. A representative or statistical sample, like all evidence, is a means to establish or defend against liability, he said. Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan agreed. In dissent, Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr. said the class-action claim should have been tossed out. Our precedents generally prohibit plaintiffs from maintaining a class action when an important element of liability depends on facts that vary among individual class members, Thomas said. That was the finding five years ago, when the court tossed out a huge class-action suit alleging gender bias in salaries brought on behalf of 1.5 million women who worked for Wal-Mart. The justices said at the time that the women, who worked in stores across the nation, could not point to a common policy that led to lower wages. Statistics alone could not prove discrimination, the court said. But in Tuesdays decision, Kennedy said the Wal-Mart ruling does not stand for the broad proposition that a representative sample is an impermissible means of establishing class-wide liability. Also, unlike with Wal-Mart, the Tyson workers were employed at the same pork-processing plant in Storm Lake, Iowa. In this case each employee worked in the same facility, did similar work and was paid under the same policy, Kennedy said. The ruling is especially significant for low-wage workers whose employers dont keep track of their hours and often put the burden of proof on employees, said Catherine Ruckelshaus, general counsel and program director for the National Employment Law Project, which submitted an amicus brief for the case. The Supreme Court really clearly said workers, like the workers in this case, can use statistical evidence and representative evidence to determine the classwide liability because Tyson didnt keep track of the time, she said. But Richard Alfred, partner at Seyfarth Shaw LLP and chair of the firms national wage and hour litigation practice, said the courts opinion is narrow and will have a limited effect on employers defense of wage and hour class-action lawsuits. Since Tyson did not contest the methodology used by the plaintiffs expert in determining the conclusions of the study, the court could only assume that the study was admissible and could be used by a jury to determine a class-wide recovery, he said. I think that employers will be more apt to challenge the experts methodologies and to contest the way the experts sampling was done and how the experts came up with his or her conclusions, he said. The outcome also differed from the courts decision in 2014, when it rejected a class-action claim from workers at an Amazon warehouse who said they should be paid for the time spent waiting in line to pass through security screenings. In the Amazon case, the justices said the time spent in security lines was not a principal activity of their job, and therefore was not covered by the federal law that workers claimed the company had violated. In the Tyson case, both sides agreed that putting on protective gear was an integral and indispensable part of the hazardous work, Kennedy said. Federal law requires employees to be paid overtime wages if they work more than 40 hours a week, and workers filed a class-action suit alleging Tyson did not pay for the extra hours. The jurors ruled in favor of the class of 3,344 workers and awarded back pay and damages totaling $5.8 million. david.savage@latimes.com samantha.masunaga@latimes.com Donald Trump rolled to another big victory Tuesday in Arizona, inching closer to the delegates he needs to capture the Republican presidential nomination without a contest at the partys national convention this summer. With nearly-two thirds of the vote counted, Trump was crushing Ted Cruz and John Kasich, his remaining GOP rivals, giving him all 58 of Arizonas delegates and pushing him more than halfway to the 1,237 needed to mathematically clinch the nomination. Texas Sen. Cruz won the Utah caucuses, the days other contest, and took all 40 delegates and slowed Trumps progress before his lead becomes insurmountable. Advertisement After weeks of cross-country balloting with hundreds of delegates in play, Tuesdays stakes were comparatively meager, and the results were starkly overshadowed by the terrorist attacks in Belgium. Hours before the polls opened, a series of bombs shook Brussels, killing at least 30 people and immediately thrusting the issue of terrorism and national security to the fore of the presidential campaign. Taking to the airwaves, Trump reiterated his proposal for an open-ended ban on Muslims entering the United States and for using extralegal means in the fight against terrorism. On CNN, Trump called for torturing Salah Abdeslam, a suspect in Novembers terrorist attack on Paris who was captured last week in Belgium. You know, he may be talking, but hell talk a lot faster with torture, Trump said. Cruz responded with his own provocative proposal, calling for law enforcement authorities to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized. For years, the West has tried to deny this enemy exists out of a combination of political correctness and fear, he said, blaming the attacks on a toxic mix of migrants who have been infiltrated by terrorists, and isolated, radical Muslim neighborhoods. Ohio Gov. Kasich, characteristically, was more restrained. We are not at war with Islam, he said. Were at war with radical Islam. Entering the days contests, Trump had 681 delegates, Cruz 425 and Kasich 143, and the only question seemed to be how much the Manhattan real estate mogul would pad his lead. Arizona, which borders Mexico, was seemingly tailor-fit for Trumps pugnacious position on immigration; the wall he proposes to build on Americas southern border would run, in part, through Arizonas Sonoran Desert. For years, the state stood at the epicenter of efforts to stop people entering the United States illegally, passing one of the most aggressive laws in the country, and Trump campaigned with two of the leading hard-liners on the issue, former Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. So many killings, so much crime, drugs pouring through the border.... Were going to build the wall, and were going to stop it, Trump said to loud, sustained cheers at a weekend rally in the Phoenix suburbs. Its going to end. But more than any issues, Trumps brief campaign in Arizona was marked by another outbreak of violence, this time on Saturday at a Tucson rally, where a heckler was beaten in full view of television cameras. Trump responded by praising the assailant and criticizing demonstrators and the media for, he said, distorting the coverage. The incident seemingly did little to diminish Trumps support. Cruz had hoped to pull off an upset in Arizona, campaigning hard in the state. But he was undermined by early voting, which started Feb. 24. Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida, who quit the contest last week after losing his home state, was capturing nearly a fifth of the vote, support that otherwise might have gone to Cruz. Utah, with its sizable Mormon population, presented the more competitive contest and the best hope for anti-Trump forces to slow his momentum and force a contested convention this summer, which appears to be the only way to stop him from topping the Republican ticket in the fall. Utah was the rare state where Trump entered election day as a decided underdog. For one thing, his disparagement of immigrants and exclusionary talk of banning Muslims have not gone over well in a state built by newcomers fleeing religious persecution. His boorish behavior also offended many in the buttoned-down state. Just last week on a swing through Salt Lake City, he questioned the religious faith of Mitt Romney, a part-time Utah resident and favorite son. (Trump later said he was joking, but otherwise stood by his harsh criticism of the 2012 GOP nominee.) Romney, who has sharply denounced Trump and backed Kasich in last weeks Ohio primary, said he would vote for Cruz as part of an effort to deny Trump the nomination. The only path that remains to nominate a Republican rather than Mr. Trump is to have an open convention, he wrote in a posting on Facebook. At this stage, the only way we can reach an open convention is for Senator Cruz to be successful in as many of the remaining nominating elections as possible. Cruz won 69% of the Utah vote, which entitled him to all of the states delegates. Kasich campaigned aggressively in Utah and picked up a few endorsements. But he did not come close to winning either state Tuesday. His victory last week at home in Ohio remains his only first-place finish of the Republican contest. After Tuesday, the campaign enters a lull of sorts. There will be no Republican contests until April 5, when Wisconsin awards its 42 delegates. Last week, as the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority was preparing to unveil a plan to increase the sales tax and double the size of the regions rail system, commuters in San Francisco and Washington, D.C., were experiencing what can happen when public transit grows without the money or the commitment by public officials to maintain the network. The D.C. Metro was shut down entirely for a day so employees could inspect and repair power cables after a fire in a tunnel. A year earlier, a passenger died and several others were sickened when a train filled with smoke in a tunnel, prompting complaints that the agency had underfunded and ignored basic system maintenance. In the San Francisco area, Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) took part of a rail line out of service after mysterious power surges disabled some 50 train cars. Even BART officials acknowledge the agency was too focused on expanding rail into the suburbs and not on maintaining the existing system, which is nearing the end of its useful life. By 2025-30, [Metro] wont have enough money to cover maintenance needs... That could leave [it] with a vastly expanded system that is prone to breakdowns and service delays. Advertisement To its credit, Metro is attempting to avoid that mistake with its proposed sales tax hike. Metros board of directors is expected to vote in June on whether to put a new tax increase for transportation on the November ballot. The plan would extend the existing Measure R half-cent sales tax for two more decades, and it would add another half-cent to the sales tax for a combined 1 cent tax rate for transportation until 2057. The program would generate $120 billion over 40 years that could pay for three dozen mass transit and highway projects, as well as fund bike lanes, pothole repairs and paratransit for the disabled. It would also boost funding for bus operations, which are typically the first services cut whenever Metros finances get tight. The plan would also, for the first time, set aside money specifically for maintenance. Metros staff has called for putting 2% of the sales tax revenue, or $2.4 billion over four decades, into a State of Good Repair program. Thats important because Metros system has begun showing its age and has a growing backlog of infrastructure repairs. Yet, there is currently no dedicated funding for regular maintenance, which has led to service interruptions and delays on some of the older lines, particularly the almost 26-year-old Blue Line between downtown and Long Beach. And the need for regular maintenance will only increase as Metros existing lines age and the new lines begin operation. The State of Good Repair program is a significant improvement, but Metros report acknowledges that the new money wont be enough to actually keep the full system in good repair. By 2025-30, the agency wont have enough money to cover maintenance needs and the funding gap will grow to roughly $400 million by the end of the program. That could leave Los Angeles County with a vastly expanded system that is prone to breakdowns and service delays just like in the San Francisco Bay Area and Washington, D.C. It doesnt have to be this way. Metros board of directors ought to make clear now, before voters consider the sales tax proposal, that they intend to fully fund the maintenance and operation of the system even if that means delaying or trimming back some of the other initiatives. The reality is that Metro doesnt collect nearly enough money from riders to cover the expense of operating and maintaining the system. The agency has one of the lowest fare-box recovery rates in the nation: Riders pay only about 26% of the cost of the system, with the rest covered by state fuel taxes and local sales taxes. As Metro builds more rail lines to serve the needs of the region, the expense will grow but not the ability to raise fares without affecting ridership. Los Angeles County politicians have been jockeying over how to get the most projects built the soonest in their districts. They should not ignore the fact that it will take a lot of money to maintain those shiny new lines for future riders. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook It has been clear at least since the massacre in Paris last November that jihadist terrorists are embedded in Europe, difficult to detect and determined to engage in spectacular acts of violence. So while Tuesdays carnage in Brussels was horrific, it also was achingly familiar. This time more than 30 people were killed and hundreds injured in separate attacks at the Brussels airport and at a downtown subway close to the headquarters of the European Union. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attacks. While condemnations come easy, a strategy for preventing such outrages is elusive. It does seem that Belgian intelligence and law enforcement have been overmatched. It was only last Friday that authorities captured Salah Abdeslam, a suspect in the Paris attacks who was living in Brussels and reportedly planning further attacks. Obviously European governments need to cooperate more on identifying and uprooting terrorists in their countries. This attack also demonstrates the importance of the multinational military effort to, in President Obamas words, degrade and ultimately destroy Islamic State in Syria and Iraq a campaign in which Obama has overcome his aversion to military action in the Middle East. That attempts to defeat Islamic State will inspire retaliation is no reason to abandon the effort, but it underlines the importance of adequate intelligence and information-sharing not just in Europe, but between European governments and the U.S. Advertisement Obama vowed Tuesday to do whatever is necessary to support our friend and ally Belgium in bringing to justice those who are responsible. Some of those who would succeed Obama have other ideas about how the U.S. should respond to this and other terrorist attacks ugly ideas. Donald Trump, who has proposed a moratorium on Muslims entering the U.S., said Tuesday that at this point we cannot allow these people to come into the country. Sen. Ted Cruz said the U.S. should immediately halt the flow of refugees from countries with a significant Al Qaeda or ISIS presence, adding: We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized. As the attack in San Bernardino and 9/11 before it demonstrated, America isnt immune to terrorist attacks. But Muslims in the U.S. are more integrated into the larger society than they are in some European communities, where segregation and alienation has played into the hands of terrorist recruiters. Indiscriminate bans on Muslim immigration or patrols of Muslim neighborhoods send the message that Muslims are strangers to this country the same message that Islamic State is propagating. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook As I write these words, Donald Trump appears likely to win the Republican nomination for president even though he has not won a majority of votes in a single Republican primary. (His best showing was 49% in Massachusetts.) The second-place candidate, Sen. Ted Cruz, made his name in politics by lashing out against his own party for example, by shutting down the government in a self-serving, if successful, bid to advance his political brand. On the Democratic side, one of the two contestants for the nomination is not even a Democrat. Bernie Sanders is an independent who openly acknowledges that his switch to nominal Democratic affiliation in November was opportunistic. In primaries, he does well with independents but consistently loses among Democrats. Showing his true colors, he seems intent on staying in the race and hammering the likely Democratic nominee long after he has any chance of supplanting her, something no party loyalist would do. Though political parties arent popular, they perform all kinds of positive and necessary functions in our system. Advertisement If you think the 2016 presidential race has been erratic, extreme and chaotic, you would be right. If you think the process is more responsive to angry minorities than broad majorities, thats correct too. If you think the weakness of the political parties has something to do with the situation you would be right yet again. Here is the reigning political paradox of our era: Partisanship is strong, but parties are weak. As individuals, Republicans and Democrats pretty much hate one another. Yet, as institutions, both parties have lost much of their capacity to moderate the campaign process and discourage antisocial behavior by candidates. The result is a lot of crazy political driving on roads lacking medians and guardrails. Is there a path back toward order? Yes. And it begins with state parties. Though political parties arent popular, they perform all kinds of positive and necessary functions in our system. Because they take a long-term view of politics, they discourage renegade and extreme political behavior. Because they have a long-term interest in governing, they provide forums and incentives for legislative negotiation. In his new book, political scientist Raymond J. La Raja of the University of Massachusetts in Amherst finds that states with stronger parties have less polarized legislatures. No coincidence, that. State parties play a key role. They recruit and cultivate political talent, building a farm team of candidates for higher office. They coordinate campaigns up and down the ballot, connecting politicians to each other and discouraging rogue behavior. They build networks of volunteers, connecting leaders with the party base. They gather voter data and make it available to all candidates, building a library of knowledge about the electorate. In all those ways and others, state parties provide what economists call public goods: benefits not just for themselves and their teams, but also for society as a whole. La Raja and I recently surveyed and interviewed state parties for a new Brookings Institution report. We found that they are struggling to keep their heads above water as outside groups pump ever more resources into politics. Thats in no small part because of regulations that tightly limit state parties ability to raise and spend money and to coordinate campaigns. Even when they use state money to promote state (and local) candidacies, the state parties must follow restrictive federal rules that only a team of lawyers can understand. The rules were intended to reduce the pernicious role of money in politics, but their result especially post-Citizens United has been to weaken the state parties and drive money to unaccountable, often secretive outsiders. Fortunately, rumors of state parties death are greatly exaggerated. Hundreds of state chairs, thousands of county party heads and tens of thousands of volunteers are still active and will do more if allowed. Better still, steps to reduce the artificial disadvantages under which these people labor are eminently practical. Here are a few suggestions. Raise or eliminate restrictions on state parties ability to raise and spend money, strengthening their ability to compete with the unaccountable outside groups; Get rid of obsolete restrictions on state parties ability to coordinate their candidates and activists efforts, allowing the parties to run coherent plays amid swarms of attack ads; Make donations to state parties tax deductible, helping the parties compete for resources (and building on the nonprofit status they already enjoy for mailing purposes); Prune the layers of federal regulation that needlessly and counterproductively hamper state parties ability to do their jobs. Although these changes sound boring and incremental, thats a good thing. Boring, incremental reforms have a better chance of passing than radical plans to transform the system, and are most likely to succeed. The road back from chaos is long, but the first steps are pretty easy. Jonathan Rauch is a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook When rabbis walked out of Donald Trumps speech Monday night at the national convention of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee in Washington, they were literally turning their backs on the man who has been compared rightly or not to some of the worst haters in modern history. While its dubious that Trump is a fellow traveler of Hitler, it is not dubious that he spews contempt with the ease of a born hate-monger. Trump hasnt said anything truly noxious about Jews; he always demurs that he cannot be anti-Semitic because his daughter converted to Judaism. But the AIPAC protest was right because hate toward one people easily spills over into hate toward others, right because of the tragic history of the Jewish people, right because of the Judeo-Christian prophetic tradition, a moral reflex to denounce injustice, iniquity and corruption, even when that truth is unwanted and, as too often happens, is frustratingly unheeded. Perhaps the finest embodiment of this tradition in the 20th century was Rabbi Abraham Heschel, of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, who in the 1960s reached out to the poor, the disenfranchised, the forgotten of all faiths. His colleagues-in-empathy were such Christian luminaries as Dorothy Day, Thomas Merton and Martin Luther King Jr. All of them saw beyond the divisions of ideology and theology; all knew, as Heschel wrote, that when religion speaks only in the name of authority rather than the voice of compassion, its message becomes meaningless. Religion is an answer to humanitys ultimate questions. We need to rediscover the questions to which religion is an answer. Advertisement In some perverse way, Trump is providing a public service by forcing us to do as Heschel commanded. For the religious, the questions will be spiritual and theological. For the secular, they will be questions of civil comity and polity and national purpose. There are many precedents for the rabbis protest Monday night. Marching in 1965 with King in Selma, Heschel said his feet were praying, a holy rebuke to the violent and immoral legacy of segregation. Two years earlier with King jailed in Birmingham, Ala., for local protests, eight white ministers publicly stated that King, and the civil rights movement, should temporize. Change, they said, will come, just not on Kings disruptive, presumptive schedule. From his cell, King responded that if the Christian theologian Paul Tillich was right and sin is separation, then is not segregation an existential expression of mans tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? King also reminded those who resisted civil rights that, when early Christians entered a town, the powerful tarred them as outside agitators. But the Christians pressed on, King noted, in the conviction that they were a colony of heaven, called to obey God rather than man. Clergy of all faiths -- rabbis, priests, ministers, imams -- should rise boldly and vociferously against [Donald Trump]. The prophetic impulse survived even in Nazi Germany. A pastor in the Rhineland courageously told his superiors that anti-Jewish violence violates the simplest moral judgment. I have never doubted my people as deeply as now. Wrong, said church leaders, revealing their own anti-Semitism. The violence was a legitimate outlet for the resentments at what the Jewish-dominated press, stock exchange and theater have done to us. German Protestants were so staunchly pro-Hitler that one renegade church newspaper bravely published a vision of a worship service of the future: Standing at the altar, a minister tells anyone not 100% Aryan to leave the church. No one moves. He repeats the announcement. Again, everyone is still. When the minister repeats it again, Christ climbs down from the cross over the altar and walks out the door. Even Jesus was disgusted with German Christians. In Berlin, theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer unrelentingly preached against the Nazis, arguing that helping Jews was a matter of theological necessity: Jews and Christians were united in the person of Jesus Christ. Eventually, Bonhoeffer warned, the Lord will judge, condemn, and topple into the dust anyone who worshipped the clay idols of the Nazis. After great agonizing, Bonhoeffer decided that loving his neighbor meant killing Hitler. Jailed for the botched July 20, 1944, attempt, Bonhoeffer accepted his guilt while lamenting the moral bankruptcy of the church. The Nazis hanged Bonhoeffer two weeks before the war ended. Trump is not Hitler, and unlike Bonhoeffers tortured decision to help kill the Fuehrer, no violence should be visited upon him. But clergy of all faiths rabbis, priests, ministers, imams should rise boldly and vociferously against him. He is too large a threat to be left to the mobs he has incited. Prayers can propel feet and feet can take action, all nonviolent, sacred and, yes, prophetic. Across the country, Sabbath services can be devoted to exhortations toward brotherhood. Clergy can lay down in front of entrances to Trump rallies. They can lock themselves with chains to the doors of those rallies. They can link arms and encircle the venues of those rallies. Christian clergy should refuse him communion. He should find no churchly refuge within our borders. To date, there have been a few scattered clerical alarums against Trump. It is time to raise the volume, as the rabbis in Washington did Monday night. Arthur J. Magidas last book is The Nazi Seance: The True Story of the Jewish Psychic in Hitlers Circle. He is writer-in-residence at the University of Baltimore. Follow the Opinion section on Twitter @latimesopinion and Facebook The Senate on a 26 to 12 party-line vote approved the proposal to raise the minimum wage to $15 , sending the measure to Gov. Jerry Brown for his signature. 2:24 P.M. Flurry of activity outside Capitol building after some at rally are taken to hospital As debate over the proposed minimum wage bill continued inside the state Capitol on Thursday, an incident that occurred during a rally outside the building drew fire and police officials and quickly raised alarm. The Sacramento Fire Department initially described the event as a mass casualty incident, adding to the concern. About 7,000 people were gathered outside the Capitol for a rally with Franklin Graham, son of evangelist Billy Graham, according to Chris Harvey, public information officer for the Sacramento Fire Department. Reports of threats made during the rally have not been substantiated, Harvey said. During the event, the fire department and California Highway Patrol received numerous calls from people who were feeling lightheaded and experiencing chest pains and dizziness. Five people were taken to the hospital to be treated, and some passed out, Harvey said. One person was evaluated at the scene and refused treatment. Fire officials say the injuries were heat-related despite temperatures being in the mid-60s, and may have been caused by the tightly packed crowds gathered on the Capitol grounds. Debate in the state Senate, which is considering the minimum wage bill that passed the Assembly earlier Thursday, continued uninterrupted. Earlier in the day, Sacramento police removed a suspicious package found in a parking structure across the street from the Capitol, KCRA-TV reported. No evacuations or street closures were in effect. By now, most candidates in Donald Trumps position would have begun looking ahead to November, modulating their tone and emphasizing positions that could broaden their appeal ahead of the general election. Trump, of course, is no ordinary politician. That has been perhaps his greatest strength as he moves closer to nabbing the Republican presidential nomination. Now, though, it may become a problem. Over and over, despite the concerns expressed by Republican leaders, Trump has offered scant accommodation to anyone put off by his shock-jock-radio style, which thrills supporters but offends many others. Advertisement That take-or-leave-it approach was on display again as he campaigned ahead of Tuesdays Republican contests in Arizona and Utah. After a six-week truce, he randomly renewed his attacks on Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly, calling her sick and crazy. When violence broke out Saturday in Tucson at yet another Trump rally, his reaction to the televised beating of a heckler was to praise the attacker and criticize protesters and the media. All the while, the main TV ad that Trump aired in Phoenix promoted his call for a temporary ban on Muslims entering the United States and showed scores of Latinos swarming across what looks like the U.S. border with Mexico, underlining positions that have antagonized members of both parties. Obviously he believes this is working, because at this point hes got more delegates than anybody else, said David Winston, a pollster for Republican leaders of the House and Senate and no fan of the billionaire. But Trump, who has never won a majority in any state, can be competitive in November only if he draws support beyond the aggrieved, mostly white male voters who drove his victories in 19 contests and made him the overwhelming GOP front-runner. Women and Latino voters, in particular, are two key constituencies in the general election that Trump has badly alienated. When you take a look at national surveys, hes trailing Hillary Clinton by a pretty significant margin, Winston said. So he better start thinking through what a general election is going to look like and how he begins to address that if hes going to be the nominee. Its never been Trumps way to dial back his rhetoric. Rather, his first instinct when criticized is to dig in, and his success few expected him to be in the commanding political position he enjoys today has only reinforced that inclination. In Phoenix and Tucson on Saturday, he campaigned with two of the nations best-known hard-liners on illegal immigration: former Gov. Jan Brewer and Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Few politicians are as widely loathed by Latino voters. Mike Madrid, a California Republican strategist who has spent decades working to build Latino support for the GOP, said Trumps image may be too firmly fixed, especially in the Latino community, to change at this point. He might say, Well take 10 feet off the wall but still have Mexico pay for it, and maybe that would work, Madrid said, though he doubted it. The die is pretty much cast. Its not something that switches from the primaries to the general election. Amid his unmatched string of victories, there have been warning signs, which Trump so far has chosen to ignore. Throughout the primary season, exit poll interviews showed that late deciders tend to favor his opponents. That suggests that over time Trumps antics havent worn so well. Also worrisome for Trump, nearly 3 in 10 Republicans who cast ballots in five primary contests last week said they would not vote for him if he won the GOP nomination; two of those states, Ohio and Florida, will be major fall battlegrounds. Separately, 4 in 10 Republicans surveyed said that in a contest between Trump and Democrat Hillary Clinton, they would consider voting for a third-party candidate rather than their partys nominee. For now, Trump is still facing GOP rivals Ted Cruz and John Kasich, along with a blast of attack advertising by major Republican donors trying to block him from securing a majority of delegates before the partys July convention in Cleveland. Trump annoyed the partys top elected officials last week by saying riots could break out if hes denied the nomination after winning more delegates than any other candidate. Nobody should say such things in my opinion, because to even address or hint at violence is unacceptable, House Speaker Paul D. Ryan told reporters in Washington. On Monday, Trump mingled with members of the GOP establishment at a party meeting in Washington, which included some Republican members of Congress as well as former House Speaker Newt Gingrich and Jim DeMint, president of the Heritage Foundation. Characteristically, he suggested the party needed to move in his direction, not the other way around. If people want to be smart, they should embrace this movement, Trump said. If they dont want to be smart, they should do what theyre doing now, and the Republicans can go down to a massive loss. michael.finnegan@latimes.com Twitter: @finneganLAT mark.barabak@latimes.com Twitter @markzbarabak Finnegan reported from Phoenix and Barabak from San Francisco. Times staff writer Joseph Tanfani in Washington contributed to this report. Rep. Zoe Lofgren knew what would happen as hundreds of thousands of children fled to the United States on their own over the last few years. Because being present in the U.S. illegally is a civil offense, there is no right to an attorney during immigration or asylum proceedings. That means many children stand alone before an immigration judge when they ask to stay in this country. Lofgren said its a problem she has fought for years. In the 1970s, she practiced immigration law and taught at the Santa Clara University School of Law. She knew that many who came fleeing violence would be sent back home because they lacked legal representation and had no one to advocate for them. Advertisement Now the San Jose Democrat and 54 of her House colleagues have put forth a bill to argue that, at a minimum, children and people with certain disabilities should have government-appointed attorneys to help them navigate the asylum process. Eleven California Democrats have co-sponsored the bill, which has been referred to the House Judiciary Committee, where Lofgren is the highest-ranking Democrat on the Subcommittee on Immigration and Border Security. Youve got a 10-year-old who speaks Spanish and theyre in a courtroom facing a trained prosecutor making the asylum case. Its not going to work, Lofgren said in an interview in her Capitol Hill office. The consequences of being unable to make your case are severe. Since October 2013, more than 132,000 Central American children and teens without legal status have been caught near the United States border with Mexico, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection. It isnt yet clear whether that trend will continue this year, or if federal deportation efforts have caused it to slow. A child who goes before an immigration judge without an attorney has a 1 in 10 chance of being allowed to stay, while about half of children with an attorney get U.S. protection, according to a study by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University. About half of unaccompanied children get an attorney, the analysis shows. Although being in the country illegally is a civil offense, being caught crossing the border can lead to federal criminal charges. Opponents of the bill argue that American taxpayers shouldnt pay for an attorney to represent a person who came to the country illegally. John Feere, legal policy analyst for the conservative Center for Immigration Studies, wrote in a March 15 blog post on the centers website that if immigration groups want an attorney for people in the U.S. illegally, being in the country without legal status should be made a criminal offense, not a civil one. It can be a difficult situation for children, no doubt, and its unfortunate that the parents have put them in that situation. And its unfortunate that the Obama administration has encouraged people to risk their lives crossing the border, but that is precisely what Deferred Action has done, Feere said. Theres already a way to make sure all illegal aliens receive an attorney during their immigration proceedings: criminalize immigration law. Lofgren said concerns about cost shouldnt trump due process. She argued that requiring access to attorneys could help avoid delays and streamline the process, which would save money. Several nonprofit groups provide free legal representation to migrant children, as does a Department of Justice program, though many still end up in court without an advocate. Many immigration judges delay and postpone hearings as they look for an attorney to represent children seeking asylum, Lofgren said. Not having a lawyer gums up the works, she said. That costs money and time. You translate those delays and the cost with those delays over 50,000 cases, its a lot of money. Once a child is detained, Department of Homeland Security asylum officers perform an initial screening to determine whether the child may have a valid claim for asylum and should go before an immigration judge. These kids, most of them, over 90%, were found to have valid claims by the trained asylum officer. But of course if they werent represented, they were unable to actually articulate that when it came to court, Lofgren said. Whether the government must provide attorneys for children and people with special needs is a question pending in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington. The American Civil Liberties Union and immigrant rights groups want to require the government to provide appointed counsel for every child who cannot afford a lawyer in immigration court proceedings. The Justice Department is contesting the lawsuit. In a recently unsealed deposition, Judge Jack Weil, an assistant chief immigration judge for the U.S. Department of Justice, made the case that migrant children as young as 3 years old are capable of representing themselves in deportation hearings. Weils job includes coordinating training for other immigration judges and court staff. Ive taught immigration law literally to 3-year-olds and 4-year-olds. It takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of patience, Weil said. They get it. Its not the most efficient, but it can be done. Lofgren said the statement was absurd. If you are a mother, its hard to say how its fair that a small child should be left on their own in an important proceeding, she said. Theres no other area of the law where that happens. A group of immigration lawyers made the same point recently in a video where they asked children questions they would hear in court. Lofgren understands her bill may not move far. Im aware that the Republican leadership may not move the bill, but I do think its important to raise the issue legislatively, she said. The two other former immigration lawyers in the House, Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Raul Labrador (R-Idaho), have not signed onto the bill. The Senates lone former immigration lawyer, Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), has co-sponsored the Senate version of the bill led by Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.). The United States should give immigrant children a fair day in court, Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard (D-Downey) said in a statement when the bill was introduced. We have a moral obligation to ensure these children and other vulnerable populations seeking our nations protection receive due process, and are not merely deported back to the dangers and the terrors they risked so much to escape, she said. Lofgren says she sees her own kids, now grown, in the faces of children who came to the U.S. alone. When they were 5 they could not have gone into court, faced off with a trained prosecutor and made a coherent case for asylum in a language they didnt speak, she said. sarah.wire@latimes.com Follow @sarahdwire on Twitter Read more about the 55 members of Californias delegation at latimes.com/politics ALSO: Obama administration starting in L.A. to help immigrants become citizens Central American immigrants, wary of recent raids sweeping up young people, adjust to a life of fear This judge says toddlers can defend themselves in immigration court Central American immigrants fleeing due to violence, poverty, and now fears of Trumps proposals Im Christina Bellantoni. Here we go. We take readers first into the heart of Orange County, the birthplace of the Reagan revolution and reliable conservative stronghold, where Republicans are coming to terms with what Donald Trump might mean for GOP gains with minority voters over the last few years. Advertisement I think some of the rhetoric has been over the top and not helpful and certainly I dont think that castigating one group in society is the way to deal with the problem of illegal immigration, Fred Whitaker, chairman of the Orange County Republican Party, told Cindy Carcamo and Anh Do. Trumps candidacy has been particularly difficult for Asian voters, they write, even as they find Latinos and Asians in Orange County who support Trump and who are tuning into politics for the first time. CLOONEY FOR CLINTON Hillary Clinton called in a little megastar power this week, starting a fundraising contest for supporters to win a chance to hang out with George Clooney and his wife, Amal, next month. The actor offered two nods to whats happening with the campaign, first suggesting that Clinton is on her way to the convention without mentioning Sen. Bernie Sanders. As this primary process continues, Hillary could soon have an insurmountable delegate lead and with that, the Democratic nomination, Clooney wrote in the pitch. That would then make her the only grown-up in the room. And if ever there was a time for a grown-up, that time is now. He also made a clear reference to Trump. If you listen to the loudest voices out there today, youd think were a country that hates Mexicans, hates Muslims and thinks that committing war crimes is the best way to make America great again, he wrote. The truth is that the only thing that would prevent America from being great would be to empower these voices. HISPANICS LOVE ME AND OTHER MYTHS ABOUT THE ELECTION David Lauter rounds up the common misconceptions about this wild campaign, from the new voters Trump has supposedly lured into voting to who is favored by Latino voters. TRUMPS DAY IN WASHINGTON Trumps one-of-a-kind campaign for the White House briefly nodded toward the traditional on Monday for a day of friendly dealings with the Washington establishment that he has generally fought and scorned. He named several foreign policy advisors for the first time, including a former Army officer and a consultant on international oil and gas businesses. But the main event was his much-anticipated address to a leading pro-Israel lobbying group. The speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee was light on his trademark improvisation and full of standard rhetoric favoring the U.S. ally. Trump mostly stuck to prepared remarks read from a teleprompter, declaring at the outset that hes a newcomer to politics but not to backing the Jewish state. Clinton, again with her eye on the general election, lashed out at the GOP front-runner as unfit to be commander in chief. During her AIPAC speech, the former secretary of State questioned Trumps temperament as much as his overall foreign policy vision or lack thereof. For now, the focus is on contests in Arizona and Utah Tuesday. Well have live results and analysis all night, so keep an eye on Trail Guide and follow @latimespolitics. LAWYERS FOR IMMIGRANT CHILDREN Immigration advocates recoiled when it was reported this month that a Justice Department official testified in federal court that 3- and 4-year-old immigrant children could represent themselves before a judge. Now, Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-San Jose) is among more than 50 U.S. House members working to ensure that the U.S. provides attorneys for those children and certain people with special needs. SENATE SCOTUS FIGHTS Lisa Mascaro sees a barrage of public pressure directed toward Republican senators from swing states as interest groups call for confirmation hearings for Merrick Garland. Pennsylvania, Ohio and New Hampshire all have become staging grounds for the largest mobilization over a Supreme Court pick seen in years. TODAYS ESSENTIALS Sen. Dianne Feinsteins office was mourning the loss of longtime aide Percy Pinkney, who was based in Los Angeles. Former Rep. Gabby Giffords, who was shot at a massacre in her district in 2011, appeared with Clinton at a rally in Arizona Monday. Ted Cruz named Phil Gramm his economic advisor. Michael Hiltzik explains Gramms economic legacy. Dolores Huerta endorsed embattled Rep. Mike Honda. A fight over free speech in Baldwin Park is just the latest example of actions that legal experts say appear to be driven by a desire from politicians to silence outspoken and annoying critics. Almost three-quarters of states across the country are at least considering rules on public access to police body camera footage. The nonprofit Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press has a cool map showing all the laws. The Los Angeles City Council moved one step closer to establishing Indigenous Peoples Day. 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. Three Eagle Scouts were recognized for outstanding achievements last Thursday during a banquet at the Mormon Church in Burbank. The honorees belong to the Verdugo Hills Council of the Boy Scouts of America, whose members are from Glendale, La Crescenta, Burbank and parts of Los Angeles. Liam Paul McKenna, a Burbank resident and an eighth-grader at St. Finbar School, received the Glenn A. and Melinda W. Adams Award for conducting an outstanding Eagle Scout project. He worked with the city of Burbank, as part of Burbanks Host City program, to help coordinate a send-off for the athletes and staff representing Zimbabwe and Botswana, who went on to participate in the Special Olympics World Games in Los Angeles. He raised funds to purchase special souvenirs for the athletes and, through his promotional activities, packed the send-off party with guests. Mayor Bob Frutos attended the banquet to present Liam a certificate for his contributions to the program. Liam joined Cub Scout Pack 219 in 2007. He earned his Arrow of Light in April 2012. In the spring of 2012, Liam was a founding member of Boy Scout Troop 219, sponsored by the Knights of Columbus No. 3472, called the Cabrini Knights. As a Boy Scout, Liam has been awarded the United States Heritage Award-Gold Medal, International Catholic Awareness Medallion and Messengers of Peace Award. In the fall of 2013, Liam was elected to the Order of Arrow, the honor society of the Boy Scouts of America. He became a Brotherhood member in 2014. In addition, Liam, along with his classmates, started a coat drive, which has evolved to include St. Finbar School, St. Finbar Parish, Knights of Columbus and Boy Scout Troop 219. After four years, 890 coats have been sent to the children living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. Also during the evening, Ron Sowers of La Crescenta and David Geisen of Burbank received the National Eagle Scout Assn.'s Distinguished Eagle Award. The honor is given to Eagle Scouts who continue providing outstanding contributions to Scouting and their community as adults. Geisen came through the Verdugo Hills Council from Cub Scouts to Boys Scouts. He and his brother, Tom, were among the five original members of Boy Scout Troop 210 in Burbank. He earned his Eagle Scout award in 1982. Geisen then served as assistant Scoutmaster of Troop 210 for more than eight years and was also assistant Scoutmaster of Troop 233, which served children with special needs. He serves on the executive board of the Verdugo Hills Council and has been chairman of the Friends of Silver Fir Committee since 2000. The committee oversees maintenance and operation of Camp Silver Fir at Huntington Lake, which is one of two camps owned by the council. During his Scouting career, Sowers has earned five palms and was a member of the Order of the Arrow and Knights of Dunamis. He also spent four summers working at the Lake Arrowhead Scout Camps, starting as dining hall steward and teaching Scouting skills and then rowing and canoeing. Optimists honor five police employees From the officers who patrol the streets to those who serve behind the scenes, the Magnolia Park Optimists Club recognized five employees from the Burbank Police Department. They were applauded by members and their families during the Respect for Law dinner program held recently at the Elks Lodge in Burbank. This award is so little thank you for all they do. God bless them for all they do! said Doreen Wydra, Optimist president. We should even do this more. Police Chief Scott LaChasse served as master of ceremonies and told the audience what makes the department a success is teamwork. And thats the approach we take at the Burbank Police Department, he said. We stay together, work together and prosper together and it is truly a team and I think the entire community benefits from the team effort of the department. Adam Baumgarten received the Detective of the Year honor. He is a Burbank native and graduate of John Burroughs High School. He joined the Burbank Police Department in 2005 and has served as a patrol officer and was a member of the Crime Impact Team and Gang Enforcement Team. He was promoted to detective in 2013 and is considered highly proactive in the enforcement of crimes involving gangs. Michele Larson was named the Non-Sworn Employee of the Year for the second time. She first received the honor in 2009. She joined the Burbank Police Department in 1992 and over the years has served as communications operator, data entry operator, police technician, network systems analyst I and network analyst II. In July 2004, she was assigned to the citys information technology department and returned to the police department in November 2007 as a crime analyst. Police officer Cindy Guillen was named Co-Officer of the Year. She became a police officer in 2000 and has worked the park detail in addition to being a defensive tactics instructor and Explorer adviser. She also served as a community resource officer from 2011 to 2015. Guillen is the contact person for neighbor disputes and mediation with the city attorney and other law enforcement offices. She is the public information officer for the Spanish-speaking media. The other Co-Officer of the Year is police officer Joshua Kendrick. He joined the Burbank Police Department as a recruit in January 2006 and became a police officer in June 2006. In 2011, he started as a community resource officer, performing such duties as recruitment, press information including social media, conducting the Community Academy, handling community complaints and event organizing for National Night Out, Police-Fire Service Day, Coffee with a Cop and Shop with a Cop. John Kemmerer was named the Police Department Volunteer of the Year. In 2015 alone, he logged 548 volunteer hours. He became a Burbank Police Department Volunteer in 2007 and has spent most of his volunteer time at the front counter helping the public. He also volunteers at the Burbank Animal Shelter, the Hoof & Woof Walk to benefit the K-9 and mounted police units and the Baker to Vegas Race. Recently, he began training new police department volunteers. -- JOYCE RUDOLPH can be reached at rudolphjoyce10@gmail.com. Travelers who have plans to fly to Belgium and other European countries after three deadly terrorist bombings Tuesday may be able to change or cancel flights without penalty. More than 34 people died, and more than 80 were injured after two bombs went off at Brussels Airport and a third bomb exploded at the Maelbeek metro stop in the city. Islamic State has claimed responsibility for the attacks. The airport and the citys metro were shut down Tuesday as Brussels remains on alert. Advertisement In the aftermath, some airlines have eased rules that allow passengers to reschedule or cancel flights without additional charges. American Airlines will allow travelers who were planning to fly between Tuesday and March 29 to reschedule their flight without charge, one time only; or they may request a refund. Check rebooking rules at American Airlines Travel Alerts, (800) 679-8215. The policy applies to those flying to Brussels, Amsterdam, Dusseldorf and Frankfurt in Germany, London and two Paris airports, Charles de Gaulle and Orly. In a statement, American said that the bombings didnt affect its departure hall at Brussels Airport and that all passengers and staff had been accounted for. See more of our top stories on Facebook >> United Airlines will waive change fees one time for passengers ticketed Tuesday through Thursday who want to reschedule. Passengers also may postpone travel until April 1 or later without paying a change fee, but you may have to pay the difference in airfare prices. Passengers whose flights are canceled may receive a refund. Check United Important Notices for more details. Delta Air Lines says passengers flying between Tuesday and March 31 may request a refund if their flight is canceled or significantly delayed. They also may make a one-time ticket change without penalty, though changes in fares would apply. Check Deltas website for more information on rebooking tickets. The policy applies to those traveling to Brussels, Paris (Charles e Gaulle) and Amsterdam. Check with your airline about its rebooking policy if you are concerned about an upcoming trip. People who bought travel insurance policies that cover terrorism before March 22 may be able to cancel their trip to Brussels, according to Florida-based travel insurance website Squaremouth. Some conditions to note: Your departure date must be within seven to 30 days of the date of the attacks, and you must be traveling to Brussels or within 50 to 100 miles of the city. Of course, if you have a cancel for any reason travel insurance policy, you can decide not to go, even if youre just afraid to travel right now. For more details about travel insurance policies, check the companys Brussels Attacks and Travel Information Center. Before Tuesdays attacks, the U.S. State Department updated its Worldwide Caution for Americans traveling internationally. Its a broad warning about violence linked to terrorism and provides advice by regions of the world. The section on Europe says credible information indicates terrorist groups such as Islamic State and Al Qaeda and its affiliates continue to plot attacks in Europe. Specifically, it warns Americans that likely targets are subway and rail systems as well as airports and ports. MORE Islamic state claims responsibility for Brussels attacks that killed at least 34 Is travel insurance worth it? Seven things to consider Carnival will be first in 50 years to sail cruise ship from U.S. to Cuba Is your drivers license Real ID compliant? What air travelers should keep in mind. Below the Pol-e Sokhta bridge on the western outskirts of the Afghan capital, hundreds of homeless drug addicts live in squalor. The smell of human waste and smoke from opium pipes fills the air. Some people who do not live in the filth cannot resist their curiosity, so they come by to stare. Mohammad, 24, who like many addicts would give only his first name, was born and raised as a refugee in neighboring Iran. He lived under the bridge for three years after he was deported to Afghanistan, a place he barely knew. Advertisement He says he became addicted to crystal methamphetamine while living in Iran and began smoking heroin when he couldnt secure work or a place to live. I knew that living there under the bridge, through the rains and the snow, surrounded by the putrid smells of garbage sitting atop the dirt and mud wasnt life, Mohammad said. It was like being an animal in the wild. But now Mohammad is among the first group of homeless addicts admitted to Ibn Sina, the largest drug treatment facility in Afghanistan, which has accepted more than 650 people since opening in January. The facility, formerly known as Camp Phoenix, was one of the largest U.S. military bases during the war in Afghanistan after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, but has been converted by the Afghan government. It can house up to 1,500 addicts for a 45-day detoxification and rehabilitation program, said Ahmad Fawad Osmani, director of the Drug Demand Reduction Department of the Afghan Ministry of Public Health. The Afghan government estimates that up to 3 million people roughly 10% of the population are addicted to drugs, one of the highest rates in the world. The U.S. spent more than $8 billion on counter-narcotics programs in the country during the last 14 years. But Afghan officials and experts say drug use is growing and Afghan politicians, warlords and Taliban leaders continue to rake in huge sums from the cultivation and trafficking of opium, which comes from the poppy plant. Drug traffickers make payoffs to the Taliban to protect their farms and smuggling routes, while the Taliban generates revenue from taxing drugs that pass through areas under its control, the State Department said in a recent report. The cultivation, production, trafficking and consumption of illicit drugs flourish in Afghanistan, the State Department said in its 2016 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report, submitted to Congress this month. Khalil Ahmad, 30, a mosaic maker, said he has been addicted for eight years. He suffered excruciating pain in his job, which required him to lift tiles weighing as much as 150 pounds, and co-workers encouraged him to take a few puffs of opium to numb the pain. Ahmad was soon hooked. As his body grew used to the high, he found himself in need of something stronger. Thats when he discovered heroin. As was the case with many other patients at Ibn Sina, his addiction cost Ahmad his connection to his family. In the four years since he returned to Afghanistan after being deported from Iran, he lost contact with his wife and two children in the northern city of Mazar-i-Sharif. He traveled through western Afghanistan before landing in Kabul, where he lived under the Pol-e Sokhta bridge for eight months. Laila Haidari, who runs a private drug treatment center in west Kabul, said addicts such as Ahmad are often cut off from their families primarily because of anachronistic assumptions surrounding addiction. Our people still dont see addiction as an illness, they still think its a crime, she said. Halfway through the 45-day treatment program, Ahmad said he was on the path to reconnecting with his family. If I knew it would be this easy to get clean, I would have done it a long time ago, he said. Afghan officials faced challenges in converting the former U.S. Army-run training facility, which had been vacant since U.S. troops left in mid-2014 as part of the drawdown in foreign forces in Afghanistan. When the Health Ministry took over the facility late last year, officials were surprised to see that the troops had left nothing behind only empty buildings, cracked pavement and stripped electrical wires. Everything was gone, we had to start at zero, said Osmani, the Health Ministry official. Workers had to restore the facility, rebuilding doors and fences and acquiring everything from generators to electrical poles. Occasionally, the former addicts, who were taking part in carpentry and blacksmith courses at the center, pitched in to help with the reconstruction. The government has given the facility a $3-million budget for the first year, though Osmani said it has yet to receive all the money and much of what it has received already has been spent. Fuel and other supplies were bought on credit, he said, estimating that the center will need at least $6 million to cover its annual expenses as the number of patients grows. Still, the centers staff members said they were dedicated to their patients well-being. They look to patients such as Gholam Sakhi, 70, as proof of what can be achieved. The bread seller had been addicted to opium for more than four decades, but he said that in 23 days at the center he had begun to feel like a new man. Look at me, he said. If I can let go of my addiction, anyone can. Latifi is a special correspondent. 2:43 P.M. REPORTING FROM WASHINGTON Confirmed: Najim Laachraoui, who was linked to Paris attacks, was one of the Brussels suicide bombers Najim Laachraoui was one of the suicide bombers at Brussels Airport on Tuesday, a U.S. official said. He has previously been linked to explosives used in the Paris attacks in November. We have no reason to doubt reports that he was killed, the official said. Police announced on March 21 that they were searching for Laachraoui in connection with the Nov. 13 Paris attacks. The announcement followed the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, who is accused of playing a key role in the Paris plot. Laachraouis DNA has been linked to explosives used in Paris, the official said. The official spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss internal matters. Laachraouis exact role in producing the Paris bombs is unclear, the official said, and he may not have been the only bombmaker. 1:08 P.M. Islamic State has trained 400 fighters to attack Europe, officials say The Islamic State militant group has trained at least 400 fighters to target Europe in deadly waves of attacks, deploying interlocking terrorist cells like the ones that struck Brussels and Paris with orders to choose the time, place and method for maximum carnage, the Associated Press has learned. The network of agile and semiautonomous cells shows the reach of the extremist group in Europe even as it loses ground in Syria and Iraq. Officials, including European and Iraqi intelligence sources and a French lawmaker who follows the jihadi networks, described camps in Syria, Iraq and possibly the former Soviet bloc where attackers are trained to attack the West. Before being killed in a police raid, the ringleader of the Nov. 13 Paris attacks claimed to have entered Europe in a multinational group of 90 fighters, who scattered more or less everywhere. Read more 12:45 P.M. What we know so far A recap of our coverage. Read more 11:54 A.M. How the airport attacks unfolded 11:50 A.M. Belgian, French media identifying second airport suicide bomber French newspaper Le Monde and Belgian newspapers De Standaard and La Libre are reporting that the second airport suicide bomber is Najim Laachraoui, whom police had been searching for in connection with the Nov. 13 Paris attacks. Two pictures of Najim Laachraoui released by Belgian Federal Police. (Belgian Federal Police) Braden Goyette 11:07 A.M. Brussels attacker was deported to Netherlands, not Belgium An official in the Turkish presidents office says the Brussels attacker who was deported from Turkey was Ibrahim El Bakraoui. The official corrected Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogans account, saying El Bakraoui, who was caught in June at the Turkish-Syrian border, was deported in July to the Netherlands, not to Belgium. Turkey says it warned both Belgium and the Netherlands that he was a foreign terrorist fighter. The official says Dutch authorities later allowed El Bakraoui to go free because Belgian authorities could not establish any ties to terrorism. The official cannot be named because he was not authorized to speak publicly on the issue. A Belgian prosecutor says El Bakraoui, a 29-year-old Belgian, blew himself up at the Brussels Airport on Tuesday. 11:06 A.M. Names of victims begin to emerge So far, we know the identities of two people confirmed dead in the attacks. Adelma Tapia Ruiz, 36, from Peru. Ruiz was at the airport with twin daughters and her Belgian husband, Christophe Delcambe, who was injured. She and the twins were going to visit her mother in New York. She lived in Brussels for six years. Leopold Hecht, 20. He was a law student at the Universite Saint Louis in Brussels. There are no words to describe our dismay in the face of this news, Rector Pierre Jadoul wrote on Facebook. All our thoughts go out to his family and loved ones. Many others have been reported missing. Well update as we get more information. 10:34 A.M. Reporting from Washington Obama: Ted Cruzs counter-terrorism plan makes absolutely no sense (Victor R. Caivano / Associated Press) President Obama derided the idea of monitoring Muslim neighborhoods or conducting a carpet bomb campaign against the Islamic State, saying Wednesday that such proposals made by GOP presidential hopeful Sen. Ted Cruz would compromise American values while making absolutely no sense in the fight against terrorism. Addressing ideas floated by Cruz since the bombings in Brussels, Obama said surveillance of Muslim neighborhoods would violate the principles of freedom that drew Cruzs father to the U.S. from his home in Cuba where Obama made a historic visit this week. I just left a country that engages in that kind of neighborhood surveillance, which, by the way, the father of Sen. Cruz escaped for America, the land of the free, Obama said. The notion that we would start down that slippery slope makes absolutely no sense and its not going to help us defeat ISIL, he said, using an acronym for the terrorist group. Obama made his remarks in a news conference with Argentinas president, Mauricio Macri, in Buenos Aires that was dominated by concerns about the attacks in Belgium. Obama said that fighting terrorism is his number one priority, insisting that the U.S. fight Islamic State in an intelligent way. Read more 9:56 A.M. Whittier students witnessed attacks 10:08 A.M. Turkey: We deported Brussels attacker Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan says one of the Brussels attackers was caught in Turkey in June and deported to Belgium. Erdogan says Wednesday that the Belgian authorities released the suspect despite Turkish warnings that he was a foreign fighter. Erdogan did not name the attacker. He said the man was detained at Turkeys border with Syria at Gaziantep and that Turkey formally notified Belgian authorities of his deportation on July 14. Erdogan says despite our warnings that this person was a foreign terrorist fighter, Belgium could not establish any links with terrorism. 9:33 A.M. Belgian king and queen visit victims at hospital (Nicolas Maeterlinck / AFP/Getty Images) French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, left, and Belgiums Queen Mathilde and King Philippe visit a military hospital in Brussels on Wednesday where victims of the terror attacks are being treated. 9:10 A.M. Obama: We will defeat those who threaten our safety Obama addressed the Brussels terror attacks in remarks from Argentina on Wednesday. We can and will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of our people and of people around the world, he said. 7:29 A.M. REPORTING FROM BRUSSELS The apartment where the terrorist suspects were picked up (Erik Kirschbaum / Los Angeles Times) 6:17 A.M. The final bomb At a news conference Wednesday morning, Belgian federal prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw said the third suspect left behind a big bag that turned out to be the heaviest load of explosives. After authorities arrived, they carried out a controlled explosion of the bomb and luckily no one was hurt, he said. Read more 7:19 A.M. REPORTING FROM BRUSSELS The latest (Belgian Federal Police) The suicide bombers who blew themselves up in Brussels airport and on a crowded metro train were two brothers of Belgian nationality, the countrys prosecutor said Wednesday. A third suspect who fled the scene, leaving behind a massive bag laden with nails and explosives, is now the subject of a massive manhunt. He and a second man who died at the airport have yet to be identified. Christina Boyle, Erik Kirschbaum and Sheldon Chad Read more 5:06 A.M. Some fear Molenbeek is becoming the black sheep of the world Police detain a man in Brussels Molenbeek district on March 19 who is believed to be connected to a suspect in the Paris attacks. Residents say the district shouldnt be demonized for the actions of a few. (Zouheir Ambar / Associated Press) For months, Salah Abdeslam was Europes most wanted man. He was accused of helping plot the horrific November terrorist attacks carried out by a team of well-organized militants beneath officials noses in Paris. But when Abdeslam was finally captured last week, he wasnt caught with his alleged Islamic State associates in Syria. He was captured where he grew up, practically in plain sight of his hunters in Brussels working-class, largely Moroccan neighborhood of Molenbeek St. Jean. Matt Pearce and Sheldon Chad Read more 1:00 A.M. reporting from brussels Brussels Airport suicide bombers identified Belgian police have identified two suicide bombers who blew themselves up at the Brussels Airport as brothers who had police records but until now had not been linked to terrorism, according to Belgiums public television network RTBF. Citing police sources, the network said brothers Khalid and Brahim El Bakraoui had been positively identified from images captured on a surveillance camera at the airport shortly before they detonated their bombs Tuesday morning. At least 30 people died and scores were injured in attacks on the airport and the Maelbeek metro station. The third suspect in the airport attack, who was seen pushing a luggage cart at the airport next to the brothers, was still at large Wednesday morning. Khalid El Bakraoui had used a false name to rent an apartment in Brussels where police killed a suspected terrorist in a raid last week, the network said. If confirmed, that would link Tuesdays twin attacks on in the Belgian capital city to Novembers terror attacks in Paris. Police found an Islamic State flag in that apartment, an assault rifle, detonators and a fingerprint of the prime suspect in the Paris attacks: Salah Abdeslam, a breakthrough that led to his arrest three days later. Erik Kirschbaum 4:28 P.M. Google offers free calls to Belgium and Turkey Google announced it is offering free calls via Hangouts, Hangouts Dialer or Google Voice to Belgium and Turkey to connect people with loved ones after the recent attacks. Users can call people on Belgiums biggest mobile carriers Lycamobile, Mobistar, Proximus and Telenet as well as all landlines in Turkey. 4:17 P.M. Our darkest day As the day came to an end in Belgium, newspapers throughout the country began to share Wednesday mornings front pages. Belgian newspaper Het Belang van Limburg tweeted a copy of its cover, emblazoned with the words Our darkest day. Every 10 days or so Rajabhau Deshmukh buys enough water for his family of six to drink and to irrigate what farmland he can in the drought-stricken Beed district of southern Maharashtra state in India. Seventy dollars gets him about 2,642 gallons, an allotment that falls so short of his farming needs that five acres of his arid land have grown useless. But for man who makes roughly $600 a year, its all Deshmukh can afford. See more of our top stories on Facebook >> Advertisement Across India and much of the globe, the story is the same the worlds poorest have the most limited access to clean, safe water, and pay the largest chunk of their incomes to obtain it. According to a WaterAid study published Tuesday, water saps more than half of the meager earnings of many of the worlds poorest while those in developed nations spend only a fraction of their incomes on water. The study, Water: At What Cost? The State of the Worlds Water, coincides with the international observance of World Water Day. It ranks nations based on rates of household access to water, calculated on the typical low daily salary in each country, WaterAid officials said. It also includes countries that have improved the most over the last 15 years. The report concludes that at least 650 million people -- or nearly 1 in 10 people -- around the globe do not have access to clean and safe water and more than 2.3 billion lack access to basic sanitation. In 16 countries, even a basic water facility such as a protected well is unavailable to more than 40% of the population, according to the report. The result is that those living in extreme poverty often have no choice but to buy water from water delivery trucks, or from vendors who seek inflated prices for the scarce resource. Ultimately it boils down to the fact that the poorest people often get the least attention and investment from their governments and they have the least power to demand their rights to these services, said Lisa Schechtman, director of policy and advocacy for WaterAid America. Papua New Guinea, Equatorial Guinea and Angola top the list of nations with the lowest percentage of households with access to clean water. In Papua New Guinea, for example, where 60% of the countrys 7.3 million population is without safe water, the poorest of the poor pay as much as 54% of their daily earnings for about 13 gallons of water from a delivery service, according to the report. Those 13 gallons, which is what the World Health Organization recommends as the minimum daily amount to meet basic needs, cost $2.60. In Madagascar, people who rely on tanker trucks for their water supply would spend as much as 45% of their daily income to get just the recommended daily minimum supply, according to the report. And in Mozambique, families who depend on black-market vendors for water could spend up to 100 times as much for the resource than people who have access to a community tap subsidized by the government. In developed parts of the world, a standard water bill is as little as 0.1% of the income of a minimum-wage earner, according to the report. Poor people are victimized because this is a resource they really cannot live without, Schechtman said. India, China and Nigeria have the highest numbers of people without access to clean water. In India, where almost 76 million people lack safe water and where most of those survive on about $4.25 a day, the daily-recommended minimum supply of water could cost them 17% of their salaries, according to the data. Ram Kunwar Nagarboje, who comes from a family of farmers in Beed, said the water tanker parks a couple of miles from her house, so at least once a week family members must haul their drums to be filled. The chore can take up to seven hours. Nagarboje, 30, said the family of six goes two to three days without bathing to save water for their livestock, which is their livelihood. A lot of water is set aside for our cattle and we manage with whatever remains, Nagarboje said. Deshmukh said the water he buys is often dirty and his village has seen an increase in illnesses in the last year. But, he added, the quality is not the issue as long as it helps us survive. The choice really is between dirty water and no water. According to WaterAid statistics, 140,000 Indian children die each year from diarrhea because they lack access to clean water. Globally, diarrheal diseases caused by dirty water and poor sanitation kill about 315,000 children annually and are the second biggest child killer after pneumonia. An estimated 50% of malnutrition cases are linked to chronic diarrhea, the report says. Time spent waiting for or collecting water could be used more productively for economic, education or family support, Jennifer Sara, the World Bank Groups director for water, said in a written response to questions. Lack of access to sanitation poses genuine safety issues for women and girls. Poor sanitation facilities affect female attendance at schools. Some countries, such as Cambodia, Mali, Laos and Ethiopia have made progress in improving access to water for their populations over the last 15 years, according to the report. But tens of millions are still not being served and it is often the poorest who are paying the highest percentages of their incomes for water, the report says. Lack of access to funding is central to this issue, and is caused by a mix of weak governance, inefficiency, poor commercial activities and inability to generate enough revenue to maintain or expand services, Sara said. In India, for example, WaterAid cites poor management of water resources, embezzlement and failure to use adequate sources or pipeline to reach settlements as reasons why the resource is not reaching the entire population. Legal frameworks, such as discounting the right to water of people living in informal settlements, like slums, have also prevented the poor in some countries from getting access to water, said Schechtman. And climate change has contributed to the depletion of ground-level water sources. Still, water advocates remain optimistic that access to clean, safe and affordable water for everyone is achievable. The biggest step, said the World Banks Sara, is to make water supply and sanitation a political priority in a country. Special correspondent Parth M.N. in Mumbai, India, contributed to this report. For more news on global sustainability, go to our Global Development Watch page: latimes.com/global-development And follow me on Twitter: @AMSimmons1 ALSO Coal represents the polluted past -- except in the interior West Chinas blame for global warming is relatively small, study says China made 85 billion sanitary pads last year, and not one tampon. Heres why Three Syrian nationals have been charged by U.S. authorities with being members of a notorious hacking group that launched high-profile attacks on U.S. government and media targets, including one in 2013 that briefly sent stock markets tumbling. The three men are allegedly part of the Syrian Electronic Army, which the FBI described in affidavits as a consortium of computer hackers responsible for computer intrusions intended to punish perceived detractors of the Syrian government and its embattled president, Bashar Assad. In court papers unsealed Tuesday morning in federal court, FBI agents said two of the men whom they identified as Ahmad Umar Agha, 22, known online as The Pro, and Firas Dardar, 27, known as The Shadow were accused of hacking computer systems belonging to several companies and institutions, including Harvard University, CNN, the Associated Press, Reuters, NPR and Human Rights Watch during a two-year span beginning in 2011. Advertisement Agha and Dardar also tried to access computers in the White House, though those attacks do not appear to have been successful, the FBI said in court papers. The hackers, both believed to be at large in Syria, deployed a common tactic known as spear phishing, which involves emails containing malware, to gain access to attack the organizations websites. In September 2011, for example, they penetrated Harvards security and altered the universitys homepage to say, Syrian Electronic Army Were Here. A month later, the two men created a false post on the Washington Posts website, and a year later, they took over Reuters Twitter account to publish false information about the conflict in Syria, the FBI said. In its most well-known attack, the hackers took over APs Twitter feed and published an alert saying the White House had been bombed. The tweet caused the U.S. stock market to briefly drop by 150 points. Dardar and Peter Romar, 36, who U.S. officials said resided in Germany, were accused of hacking U.S. companies for personal profit. As part of their scheme, U.S. officials said, the pair penetrated the computer systems of online businesses and then threatened to destroy data or sell stolen information unless they were paid thousands of dollars. The Syrian Electronic Army publicly claims that its hacking activities are conducted in support of the embattled regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, Assistant Attorney General John P. Carlin said in a statement. While some of the activity sought to harm the economic and national security of the United States in the name of Syria, these detailed allegations reveal that the members also used extortion to try to line their own pockets at the expense of law-abiding people all over the world. Carlin added that the case demonstrated that the line between ordinary criminal hackers and potential national security threats is increasingly blurry. Because of the conflict in Syria, U.S. authorities said, it will be difficult to capture Agha and Dardar. Peter Carr, a spokesman for the Justice Department, said U.S. authorities would seek to bring Romar to justice here in the United States. He declined to elaborate further. The FBI separately announced Tuesday that it has added Agha and Dardar to its list of Cyber Most Wanted fugitives and is offering a reward of $100,000 for information leading to their capture. del.wilber@latimes.com ALSO U.S. declares Islamic State atrocities as genocide What we know so far about the fugitive Paris terror suspects New generation of more radical youth emerges in the Kurdish region of Turkey All material is subject to strictly enforced copyright terms & conditions and cannot be repurposed or reproduced. 19882022 Latin American Financial Publications Inc. Hampered by low oil prices, Ecuador is facing a budget shortfall this year and may find it hard to make up the difference Jacinta Gonzalez, one of numerous protesters who shut down an Arizona highway leading to a Donald Trump rally on Saturday, was arrested after chaining herself to a car. While two male protesters were arrested for Class 3 misdemeanors, police took the extra step of handing Gonzalez over to Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents. All three were questioned by ICE, but only she was detained overnight. "As a Latina with a Latina surname, I was the only person interviewed by ICE, and they placed an immigration detainer against me," Gonzalez told ThinkProgress. "Because I asserted my civil rights, I was retailed against." Held as Part of Protocol The Maricopa County Sheriff's Office told Arizona's ABC affiliate that Gonzalez was held for unknown reasons. Officials were about to release her before ICE stepped in. ICE issued a statement citing procedures as reason for Gonzalez's detention. "Under current ICE procedures, all foreign-born individuals who are booked in to the Maricopa County Jail are interviewed by ICE personnel to determine alienage and removability and whether they would be an enforcement priority for the agency," the statement read. Maricopa County is home to over one million Latino residents. The area has seen its share of racial profiling cases, but at least one county detective believes Gonzalez's arrest fell in line with protocol. "Everyone that enters Maricopa County Jail, whether it's for spitting on the sidewalk or for murder, you are seen by ICE," said Detective Doug Matteson. "They interview everyone - male, female, black, white - and for some reason they put her on hold. They always operate in our jail facility. It's not like she was singled out." Protesting Trump's Rally Gonzalez is part of Puente Hills Right Movement, a Phoenix-based grassroots organization dedicated to educating and empowering immigrant communities. She was one of dozens of protesters who temporarily stopped Trump supporters from reaching a Fountain Hills rally headlined by the Republican presidential front-runner and controversial Arizona Sheriff Joe Arpaio. The organization posted a video taken shortly after Gonzalez's release from ICE headquarters Sunday morning. In it, Gonzalez describes the conditions experienced by detainees, and she vowed to continue fighting against a Trump presidency. Ongoing violence at rallies prompted Twitter users to create Anti-Trump hashtags suggesting alternative events that may be safer. Hashtags like #DumpTrump and #SaferThanATrumpRally began trending on Monday, hours after Gonzalez's arrest and after a Trump supporter in Tucson reportedly sucker-punched and kicked a protester. "We believe that [Trump] events have to be shut down because the hate, the xenophobia, the Islamophobia, the homophobia that is spewed in those events is permeating America," she said. President Barack Obama has called on the U.S. Congress to lift the Cuban embargo and abandon the policy that has benefited no one in Cuba or in the U.S. Belgium Terror Attack Obama first commented on the terrorist attacks in Brussels, which killed at least 30 people at an airport and a metro train station on Tuesday morning. Obama said the U.S. stands in solidarity with the people of Belgium and will do anything to bring to justice to those responsible for the terror attacks. "And this is yet another reminder that the world must unite, must be together regardless of nationality, or race or faith in fighting against the scourge of terrorism," Obama said. "We can and we will defeat those who threaten the safety and security of the people all around the world." Todos Somos Americano, We Are All Americans Obama addressed the Cuban population from the Gran Teatro de la Habana Alicia Alonso in Habana Vieja, or Old Havana. He spoke about the progress in diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba since relations were officially renewed in December 2014, as well as steps for the future. "I have come here to bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas. I have come here to extend the hand of friendship to the Cuban people," said Obama. Obama, on his final day in Cuba, said he offers the Cuban people a hand of peace. Acknowledging Havana is only 90 miles south of Florida, he pointed out the many barriers crossed to get to the three-day trip, including ideology and historical difference. Obama said there was a simple motivation behind renewed diplomatic relations now, adding the American Cold War policy of isolation no longer made sense in the 21st century. "The [Cuban] embargo was only hurting the Cuban people instead of helping them. ... I believe in the Cuban people. This is not just a policy of normalizing relations with the Cuban government, the United States of America is normalizing relations with the Cuban people," said Obama. The president, speaking about the future between the U.S. and Cuba, said he's hopeful for relations because the Cuban people are as innovative as the rest of the world. He recognized Cuba's education system, which provides access to both boys and girls, and how the Cuban government has opened itself to the world. "As president of the United States, I have called on our Congress to lift the embargo," Obama said, which garnered a standing ovation. "It is an outdated burden on the Cuban people, it's a burden on the Americans who want to work and do business or invest here in Cuba. It's time to lift the embargo." But even if the embargo was lifted, Obama said, change must also occur within the island. He called for improved opportunity for individuals to open businesses, as well as greater Internet access. Obama believes sustainable prosperity in the 21st century involves education, healthcare and environmental protection but also the exchange of free and open ideas. Obama said he is aware his remarks may be "sensitive" to hear, especially coming from a U.S. president, but he wanted to speak honestly on what he and Americans believe. "I can't force you to agree but you should know what I think. I think that every person should be equal under the law. Every child deserves the dignity that comes with education and healthcare and food on the table and a roof over their heads. I believe the citizens should be free to speak their mind without fear, to organize and to criticize their government and to protest peacefully. And that the rule of law should not include arbitrary detentions and people who exercise those rights," Obama said. He also said citizens should be free to practice religion and choose their governments in free and democratic elections. Obama said conversations with President Raul Castro included the latter acknowledging U.S. flaws, such as economic inequality, the death penalty, racial inequality and wars abroad, but Obama added he welcomes such open debate and dialogue. "I'm not afraid of it," Obama said. Cuba, Democracy and the 2016 Election He also spoke about the ongoing U.S. presidential elections and how they are shaping democracy. Obama acknowledged two Cubans have campaigned for the Republican Party's presidential ticket, referring to Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas. "You had two Cuban Americans in the Republican Party running against the legacy of a black man who is president while arguing they are the best candidate to beat the Democratic nominee who will either be a woman or a Democratic socialist. Who would have believed that in 1959? That's a measure of our progress as a democracy," Obama said. Speaking to Castro, who was in attendance, Obama said the Cuban leader should not feel any sense of threat from the U.S. or from the diverse voices of the Cuban people. Obama said he's hopeful Cubans will make the right decisions and play a role in the region and the international community. Obama's three-day trip to Cuba started on March 20. With his family and mother-in-law, Obama met with Castro and with Cuban entrepreneurs and civil society. Following his remarks in Cuba, Obama will travel to Argentina. Reaction from the House's Highest-Ranking Latino House Democratic Caucus Chairman Xavier Becerra, D-Calif., has been traveling with Obama and found Cubans to be appreciative of the president's visit. "President Obama just said he came to Cuba to 'bury the last remnants of the Cold War.' One generation closing the chapter of the former," Becerra said in a statement following Obama's address. "'We should not fear change. We should embrace it.'" Becerra, congressman for California's 34th Congressional District, said he sensed the attendees in the Gran Teatro were likely anxious rather than nervous for Obama's speech. He added that many were also hopeful and anticipate an opening for "authentic" opportunities. Hard at work with #DerekJeter in #Havana. @MLB may be one of our best weapons to defeat the Cold War. #MLBinCuba pic.twitter.com/KL6BdSvqRj Xavier Becerra (@RepBecerra) March 22, 2016 Based on talks with Cubans, Becerra also found that there is interest for further U.S.-Cuban interactions, which includes the hope that Congress repeals the embargo and return Guantanamo Bay to the island's control. __ For the latest updates, follow Latin Post's Michael Oleaga on Twitter: @EditorMikeO or contact via email: m.oleaga@latinpost.com. __ Update: 3/23/16: Article amended to include statement from Rep. Xavier Becerra. Republican turnout through the first 12 primaries in the 2016 race for the Oval Office is at an all time high. According to the Pew Research Center, in the first dozen primaries of this election season 17.3 percent of eligible Republican voters have turned out at the polls, the highest rate since 1980. As part of that trend, such states as Idaho, Virginia and Missouri have seen increases of more than 200 percent compared to just four years ago. Turnout has nearly been just as intense on the Democratic side, where 11.7 percent of eligible voters have cast their ballots, the highest percentage since 1992 other than the year Barack Obama was first elected president in 2008. Primary Voting Typically Lags Behind General Election Typically, primaries attract far fewer voters than general elections, such as in 2012 when 129.1 million Americans, or 53.6 percent of the estimated voting-age population, went to the polls compared to 28 million in that year's primaries. In 2008, when Obama was first elected, 131.4 million people, or 56.9 percent of the estimated voting-age population, voted for president in the general election, more than twice the record number of primary voters that year. Much of this year's increased interest has to do with Republican front-runner Donald Trump, who has sparked much controversy with some of his fiery rhetoric, including his vow to deport 11 million immigrants if he is elected. Trump has also vowed to erect a massive wall along the Mexican border in order to keep immigrants out of the U.S. Several media outlets have recently reported large swaths of legal Hispanic citizens are registering to vote in swing states across the country with the express purpose of casting their ballots against the unapologetic Trump. The outspoken New York real estate magnate launched his campaign by deriding Mexican immigrants as killers and rapists. "We've seen more people this year that want to become citizens and specifically because they want to vote against Trump," said Mi Familia Vota executive director Ben Monterroso, whose group is among those leading a nationwide effort aimed at getting more Latinos to the polls. "People vote in an election if the election is interesting, and there are two factors that are particularly relevant in this election cycle," said Michael McDonald, an associate professor of political science at the University of Florida and director of Election Project, a website devoted to information about elections. McDonald explained those factors include how competitive the election is and how different its participating candidates are from one another. In a move that many Latinos have internalized as the antithesis of Trump, Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton has vowed to tackle the issue of immigration reform within her first 100 days in office if elected. Latinos Could Make All the Difference Pew recently reported 27.3 million Hispanics are expected to be eligible to vote in 2016, with Hispanic millennials comprising nearly half (44 percent) of all those voters. Overall, Latinos are expected to cast roughly 10 percent of votes tabulated in November, nearly three times the 3.9 percent they represented as recently as 1992. The United Nations Security Council has lifted sanctions on four ships on Monday at the request of China. The said ships were previously blacklisted by the U.N. due to its links to North Korea's arms trade. The U.N. Security Council granted the removal of the sanctions after China assured that the vessels would not employ North Korean crews. On March 16, China sought the help of the United States in removing four of its ships from the U.N. blacklist, Reuters reported. A diplomatic cable sent from the U.S. permanent mission at the United Nations to a group of U.S. embassies shows top diplomats from the United States and China at variance about the newly imposed sanctions on North Korea. The U.S. mission at the United Nations declined to comment about the cable. The ships in question were among the 31 vessels sanctioned by the United Nations Security Council on March 2 during to its reported association with the Ocean Maritime Management, a North Korea shipping firm known engaging in the transport of arms and other illegal products to Pyongyang. According to Kyodo News, the first of the first ships to be detained was the Jin Teng cargo ship, which was apprehended in the Philippines, followed by the Grand Karo which was faced problems entering northeastern China. "We discovered that they are not OMM ships," Chinese U.N. Ambassador Liu Jieyi said. "The basis for the listing of the ships is basically that they belong to OMM, so if you make a mistake, then you correct the mistake." Although Bejing is known as Pyongyang's primary ally and trade partner, it has managed to show a united front with Washington against the isolationist state. The Korea Herald noted that China's local governments have been briefed on how to follow through with the new U.N. sanctions against North Korea, particular with respect to limiting the volume of imports. The new United Nations sanction against Pyongyang imposes more stringent limits and regulations on the importation of North Korean coal, iron and other mineral resources especially if the profits of the sale will fund the country's nuclear and missile programs. North Korea, however, are allowed to continue exports of their products to China provided that such transactions are done for "livelihood purposes." Morocco is trying to expel military staff from its peacekeeping mission in Western Sahara. They are now ordering civilian staff to protest against the UN secretary general's remarks According to The Wall Street Journal, the protest started when U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said the word "occupation" as he described the Moroccan's annexation of the Western Sahara. The secretary general used this word to describe the refugee camps in Algeria for the Sahrawi's, the region's native inhabitants. As reported by Reuters, Stephane Dujarric, UN spokesman, received a request from Morocco telling them to remove all the 84 civilian staff from the U.N and the African Union on the Western Sahara. Dujarric added that all of these measures will affect the function of the mission known as MINURSO. Farhan Haq, the UN deputy spokesman accused Morocco of acting illogically which escalates the tension and is against the purpose of UN. He further hopes that Morocco will realized that these types of behaviors will not be tolerated. In 1975, Morocco occupied the Western Sahara and fought against a local independence group known as the Polisario Front until UN came in and started a ceasefire in 1991. The peace and order of the area has always been monitored by the peacekeeping forces as per ABC News. Morocco has always considered the Western Sahara as its southern province and wanted a wide range autonomy for the region. The Polisario Front on the other hand insist on self-determination through a referendum for the local population. The referendum was never pushed through due to disputes over its voters list. Mohamed Salem Ould Salek, the Polisario Front foreign ministe, said the action made by Morocco is irresponsible and could end the MINURSO mission. He added that because of this, Morocco stirs up the tension and encourages the Sahrawi people to take up arms again. There will be increased tension and possible conflict if the UN leaves said the foreign minister. U.N, however, has been constantly talking with Morocco and other concerned countries to try and relieve the tensions that are building up. The United Arab Emirates has dropped terrorism charges against one Canadian, two Americans and one Libyan who have been detained for more than 550 days in the country. Canadian-Libyan Salim Alaradi and Libyan-American father and son Kamal and Mohamed Eldarat were apprehended by officials in August 2014, together with Libyan national Issa al Manna. The four were charged with funding, supporting and cooperating with alleged terrorist organizations, particularly Libya Dawn and the Martyrs Brigade. They denied any relation to the said groups. Paul Champ, Alaradi's lawyer, said the government has dropped terrorism charges against all four detainees. "It was a real dramatic turn," said Champ. "It seems that state security is trying to salvage this situation and save face when they know they really don't have anything against these men." The Guardian reported that the men will face less serious charges for giving supplies to terrorist groups in other countries and soliciting donations for them without consent from the U.A.E government. Alaradi, al Manna and the Eldarats will remain under the custody of the U.A.E government until April 11, during which trial for their case will resume. "What happened today is clear evidence that my father is innocent," Alaradi's 18-year-old daughter Marwa said, via CP24. "The closer we get to his innocence the more the U.A.E. State Security plays games with his freedom." The case has been gaining international attention, and the Canadian government and United Nations are getting involved. U.N. human rights experts demanded the release of the detainees after it was reported that the men have been deprived of sleep and suffered torture in the hands of U.A.E. authorities. According to Vice.com, a doctor's report filed on Monday suggesting that any proof of violence and torture are wanting has drawn doubt and criticism. Alaradi reportedly had 15 scars all over his body, accumulated from beatings he suffered in 2014. Champ said the Canadian government considers the torture allegations "Serious and credible." Canadian officials are reportedly concerned with how U.A.E officials are handling Alaradi's health and well-being, and how he is granted access to consular assistance and fair trial. Champ added there's a possibility that Alaradi and the other detainees will be released before the end of April. Mar 22, 2016, 9:06am ET Jeep to ramp up Wrangler production, overlapped with next generation Output is expected to increase by approximately 50 percent, building up inventory as the new model begins production. Fiat Chrysler Automobiles is reportedly preparing to ramp up Jeep Wrangler production ahead of the next-generation model's arrival. The company's Toledo assembly plant is expected to increase output by approximately 50 percent, building around 350,000 units annually, according to internal documents reviewed by Automotive News. Notably, the factory reconfiguration is expected to allow FCA to continue building the current JK-chassis Wrangler into 2018 -- six months after the next-gen off-roader begins rolling off the Cherokee's current assembly line. The Cherokee, meanwhile, will be headed to an assembly plant in Illinois. Jeep brand sales are up by 19 percent for the first two months of the year, maintaining years of growth momentum. The Wrangler is the only model in the red for the year, with deliveries down by a modest two percent so far, however the iconic nameplate achieved a 16-percent gain for 2015 overall. The company appears to anticipate ongoing demand for the current Wrangler, which is expected to be sold as the 'Wrangler Classic' through early 2018. The new Wrangler will be offered in several different configurations, including a hybrid variant and a pickup body style. A diesel powertrain will also join the family at a later date. fisher.jpeg Daniel Joseph Fisher, 28, on Tuesday, March 22, 2016 is led out of district court following a preliminary hearing in Palmer Township. Fisher is facing facing a felony drug delivery resulting in death charge and a separate drug delivery charge after allegedly selling heroin to Thomas O'Brien Jr., 26. (Pamela Sroka-Holzmann | For lehighvalleylive) (Pamela Sroka-Holzmann | For lehighvalleylive.com) Heroin supplied by an alleged Forks Township drug dealer might not have caused the fatal overdose of a 26-year-old man found unresponsive at his workplace, an attorney argued Tuesday. Daniel Joseph Fisher, 28, of the 1200 block of Fox Ridge Road, is facing a felony charge of drug delivery resulting in death, and a separate drug delivery charge, after allegedly selling heroin to 26-year-old Thomas O'Brien Jr., of Plainfield Township. Dressed in a dark gray prison jumpsuit with handcuffs and shackles, Fisher appeared Tuesday before District Judge Jacqueline Taschner for a preliminary hearing. He didn't address the court, but whispered with his attorney Philip Lauer and grinned as witnesses provided testimony. Lauer argued there is no dispute Fisher delivered the drug on Aug. 20, but prosecutors can't be certain the four small bags with heroin residue marked "unforgiven" and supplied by his client caused O'Brien's death. About five other empty plastic bags -- all once containing heroin -- were not marked "unforgiven" and were seized near the body. 9 bags found The incident unfolded at 3:17 p.m. last Aug. 20 at the Follett Corp., 801 Church Lane, in Forks Township, where O'Brien worked as a materials handler. Officers found O'Brien unresponsive in a bathroom and employees administering CPR. O'Brien was transported to an area hospital, where he died Aug. 24. Officers later found a total of nine plastic bags that once contained heroin, a needle underneath O'Brien's body, a needle in his backpack and a white spoon with heroin residue, according to police. Detective Philomena Kelly testified during the hearing four white bags of heroin were determined to have been supplied by Fisher because they were stamped "unforgiven." Three other white bags were stamped with another name and two yellow bags weren't stamped. O'Brien's parents told police they confronted a man named "Dan" about selling heroin to their son. Family members were able to identify Fisher as the dealer through photos, police had said. Kelly testified when she and Detective Michael Friel on Aug. 25 spoke with Fisher at his home, Fisher said he knew police were coming for him as a result of the overdose. The pair had a history; Fisher also delivered heroin to O'Brien on Aug. 19, Kelly said Fisher had told her. He also told Kelly he knew O'Brien tended to "overdo" it when using heroin and felt uncomfortable that day, she said. "He basically laid it out to me; they exchanged text messages," Kelly said on the stand. "He sold him four to five bags of heroin for $50." A series of text messages found in O'Brien's phone matched Fisher's phone. They began with O'Brien at 1:02 a.m. Aug. 20 texting if Fisher was awake. They continued throughout the day with O'Brien asking if Fisher could get a cab to his mother's home to retrieve a Jeep, then come to the Follett Corp. with heroin during O'Brien's break, Kelly testified. The pair ended up meeting when O'Brien's shift ended at 2 p.m. They traveled to Weis Market, where O'Brien bought a bag of syringes from the pharmacy counter and then, to PNC Bank for O'Brien to retrieve $100 in cash, according to testimony. Investigators were able to obtain surveillance video of Fisher exiting Follett Corp. just after 2 p.m. Aug. 20 and at Weis Market and PNC Bank. A Weis pharmacist identified O'Brien as the person who bought the syringes, Kelly said. "On Aug. 25, Dan, he pretty much told you what happened that day?," Lauer questioned Kelly on the stand. "He had been in touch with Tom? ... He also told you he had some concerns because Tom sometimes overdoes it?" Kelly agreed and offered police had evidence of latent fingerprints belonging to O'Brien on at least two of the bags. But when Lauer asked if those bags contained those supplied by his client, Kelly wasn't certain if one of the white bags had "unforgiven" on it. A fingerprint was taken off a white bag, as well as a yellow bag, Kelly testified. Northampton County Assistant District Attorney Patricia Mulqueen argued text messages show Fisher delivered a total of seven bags. The statement contradicts the defense saying there were only four bags because Fisher marked "unforgiven" on just four of the bags seized. Northampton County Coroner Zachary Lysek determined O'Brien died from acute heroin intoxication and the manner was deemed accidental. Lysek said O'Brien had five different substances in his system at the time of death. These included caffeine; cotinine, which is often found in tobacco; naloxone, which is used to reverse the effects of an opioid and was used by emergency workers at the scene; codeine, which Lysek said often is something heroin is cut with; and morphine from the heroin. Lauer asked Lysek to determine what would be considered normal amounts to consume of the drugs. "It would depend on the person's tolerance," Lysek replied, but noted what O'Brien had in his system at death was considered "high" even for those who have developed a tolerance. Taschner asked if naloxone would would affect those limits but Lysek said he was not qualified to answer. Lysek then told the court O'Brien's medical history showed he had overdosed on drugs several times before. Charges proceed to county level Lauer told the judge it's not certain the four bags supplied to O'Brien caused his death. "My (argument) here is whether the Commonwealth can show that the drugs used Dan Fisher delivered or something else," Lauer said. "Mainly, the other five bags weren't 'unforgiven' bags." Mulqueen said the evidence is clear Fisher delivered the drugs that caused O'Brien to overdose and eventually die. "The 'unforgiven' packets were empty and shows he used them," Mulqueen argued. Taschner then determined there was enough evidence to send the charges to Northampton County Court. A formal arraignment is scheduled for May 26. Following the hearing, Mulqueen said no plea arrangements are on the table for Fisher, who is held at Northampton County Prison in lieu of $500,000. Lauer called the case painful for both sides and acknowledged O'Brien's family, present in the courtroom, shed tears during testimony. O'Brien was a graduate of Pen Argyl Area High School. "It's a really sad case," Lauer said. "Dan feels significant remorse and sorrow for what occurred. They were friends; they took care of each other. They had a history together." Pamela Sroka-Holzmann may be reached at pholzmann@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @pamholzmann. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. A normally indoor house cat is down a life but seems none the worse for wear after getting stuck up a tree in Downtown Easton. Max the cat was stuck about two hours up a tree March 21, 2016, in the back yard of a Bushkill Street home in Downtown Easton. (Kurt Bresswein | For lehighvalleylive.com) Janice Barndt said she opened her door to take out the trash Monday afternoon and Max darted out after a squirrel and up a tree behind her home in the 100 block of Bushkill Street. "It's a straight tree and he went up straight up it," Barndt said. "He looked like a koala bear." Her niece, Liz Silver, lives downstairs from Barndt and dialed 911. Easton police officers responded but weren't about to climb the 25 or so feet to Max's perch, with electrical wires interwoven among the bare branches. The city fire department declined to respond. Fire Capt. Kevin Arnold deferred to the fire chief on why the department doesn't rescue cats stuck up trees. "Generally cats come down down on their own," Arnold allowed. "You don't normally see cat skeletons in trees." The squirrel seemed to toy with Max as it left the tree then came back, before climbing down a utility pole and disappearing from sight. Barndt called her husband, David Barndt, to come home. Silver shook cat treats at Max; an open can of wet food sat on a picnic table, its scent wafting around the back yard. After Max was up the tree, according to Janice Barndt, about two hours -- and with the squirrel gone -- Max swung his legs under a branch that he clung to with both forepaws. After a moment, he let go. David Barndt broke Max's fall with the suede shoulder of his Philadelphia Eagles jacket, emerging with a reddening scratch to his wrist. Liz Silver offers a can of cat food to Max as David Barndt holds him after the feline ordeal March 21, 2016, in Easton. (Kurt Bresswein | For lehighvalleylive.com) Max didn't yelp, and pinched shut his eyes in David Barndt's arms as he ate from the can held by Silver. "My neck's cramped," David Barndt said as he got used to looking down, finally, from the branches overhead. Kurt Bresswein may be reached at kbresswein@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @KurtBresswein. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. A 35-year-old Wilson Borough woman had a blood-alcohol content of four times the legal limit when she was found passed out behind the wheel of a running car in the Wegmans parking lot in Lower Nazareth Township, police said. Debra Jean Leluga, of Fourth Street, will be charged with DUI and related traffic offenses, Colonial Regional police report. A witness told officers she saw a Toyota being driven recklessly from Nazareth to the grocery store, at which point the witness dialed 911, police said. Bethlehem Township EMS arrived before officers at 12:41 p.m. March 12 at 3791 Easton-Nazareth Highway, police said in a news release. Once she woke up, Leluga's speech was slurred, she smelled of alcoholic beverage and was unable to walk on her own, police said. She was taken to St. Luke's Hospital in Bethlehem Township for medical treatment and a blood draw. Her blood-alcohol content came back at 0.32, police said; penalties for most drivers begin at 0.08. Charges will be filed in District Judge John Capobianco's Nazareth court, police said. A current phone number for Leluga wasn't immediately available so she couldn't be reached for comment. Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. Officers investigating a call of suspicious activity in Fountain Hill found a duffel bag with two stolen guns, loaded magazines and ammunition. Police arrested a convicted felon who allegedly had the key to the car in which the bag was found. Michael Lombardo, of Glendon, is charged with three counts of prohibited possession of a firearm and two counts of receiving stolen property. He was sent to Lehigh County Jail in lieu of $75,000 bail. The 47-year-old Lombardo, formerly of Phillipsburg, is awaiting trial for allegedly fleeing from Easton police last fall. Fountain Hill police said they were called a little after 4 p.m. Monday for suspicious activity in the 700 block of North Clewell Street. Police said they saw a man, later identified as Lombardo, arrive in a black BMW. When Chief Ed Bachert stopped him, Lombardo put both hands in the air, police said. As the chief spoke to another person, Lombardo lowered his arms and began walking away, according to police. Lombardo was stopped on Delaware Avenue near North Bishopthorpe Street, police said. An officer found an unmarked key on Lombardo, which opened the BMW. Police said Lombardo consented to a search of the car, and the loaded bag was discovered inside, including a Kel-Tec handgun, a Ruger 94 pistol and Smith & Wesson Model 4006 semi-automatic handgun. Police said the Kel-Tec was reported stolen from Wilson Borough, and the Smith & Wesson was reported stolen from Bangor. Lombardo was convicted of felony burglary in 1990 in New Jersey, and he is not legally allowed to possess firearms, according to police. Sarah Cassi may be reached at scassi@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow her on Twitter @SarahCassi. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. A mother and her son tried to escape on a LANTA bus after shoplifting at the Wal-Mart in Lower Nazareth Township, Colonial Regional police said. Sharon Timberman, 50, of the 800 block of Ferry Street in Easton, is charged with retail theft and receiving stolen property in an incident March 17, 2016, at the Wal-Mart in Lower Nazareth Township, Colonial Regional police report. (Courtesy photo | For lehighvalleylive.com) Sharon Timberman, 50, of the 800 block of Ferry Street in Easton, put two external hard drives and two bottles of Coca-Cola, with a total value of $260, in her purse about 1:25 p.m. Thursday, while her son, Tyler, 22 and also of Ferry Street, took a WiFi camera, police said. When Tyler Timberman went through the store's front door, an alarm sounded, police said. Both Timbermans got on a bus, but officers asked the Allentown-based transit authority to hold the vehicle until they arrived, police said. Before officers got there, Tyler Timberman got off the bus and returned the camera to loss prevention, police said. He accompanied store personnel to security and he will be cited with retail theft after stealing the $79.97 device, police said. He was later released, police said. Sharon Timberman, who was on probation, was arrested on the bus, police said. She also had a warrant out of New Jersey involving shoplifting, police said. She was charged with retail theft and receiving stolen property in last week's incident, police said. Northampton County's adult probation office also issued a detainer for her, police said. She was arraigned before District Judge Richard Yetter and sent to Northampton County Prison in lieu of $20,000 bail, according to court records. She remained jailed on Tuesday morning, online records show. A preliminary hearing is tentatively scheduled Friday. Tony Rhodin may be reached at arhodin@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @TonyRhodin. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. 403 Forbidden 403 Forbidden Code: AccessDenied Message: Access Denied RequestId: 7BB3DCAA0609C8B1 HostId: ZZdHlLMG5DpUCYx5W4pRFG4LzJwnZaxizyBOLi3yixVgnCDDwtLbTm5nEhSTtzWNRW1IYI0DkhY= An Error Occurred While Attempting to Retrieve a Custom Error Document Code: AccessDenied Message: Access Denied A group of Lehigh Valley Muslims on Tuesday spoke out against the deadly terrorist attacks in Belgium, calling the violence senseless and tragic. Bombs were set off at the main airport and a subway station Tuesday morning in Brussels. At least 30 people were killed and hundreds more were wounded in the attacks. Belgian federal prosecutors say a house search in a Brussels neighborhood found an explosive device, chemical products and an Islamic State flag. The Muslim Association of the Lehigh Valley, based in Whitehall Township, issued the following statement: "The Muslim Association of the Lehigh Valley is greatly saddened by the horrific events that have occurred today in Brussels. The mass scale loss of innocent lives is devastating and should not be taken as representative for any faith-based tradition. We stand in solidarity with the citizens of Brussels over this tragic and senseless act of violence. Our prayers are with the families of the victims, the authorities, and all the people of Brussels." Some of Europe's best-known monuments have been illuminated with Belgium's national colors in a show of solidarity after the attacks in Brussels. At nightfall Tuesday, the Eiffel Tower in Paris lit up in the black, yellow and red colors of the Belgian flag. The Muslim Association of the Lehigh Valley also spoke out after December's deadly shootings in California, and spoke at a rally around Easton's Peace Candle when terrorists struck Paris in November. The Associated Press contributed to this story. Steve Novak may be reached at snovak@lehighvalleylive.com. Follow him on Twitter @type2supernovak. Find lehighvalleylive.com on Facebook. A man has been convicted of conspiring with the late Eamonn Dunne and four other criminals to raid a cash-in-transit van in Celbridge five years ago. A man has been convicted of conspiring with the late Eamonn Dunne and four other criminals to raid a cash-in-transit van in Celbridge five years ago. Joseph Warren (30) of Belclare Crescent, Ballymun had pleaded not guilty to conspiring to steal cash from Chubb Ireland at Tesco supermarket on the Shackleton Road in Celbridge on November 2, 2007. The 16-day trial at Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard evidence that Gardai had mounted a surveillance operation on Warren, and five other men who gathered in four vehicles at 6 am in Ballymun on the morning of the raid. The vehicles travelled in convoy to near the Chubb Ireland headquarters and from there followed a cash-in-transit van, a wine coloured Nissan Patrol, to Celbridge. The Nissan Patrol arrived at Tesco in Celbridge just before 10 am and the driver got out to deliver the cash. Warren and Michael Ryan (38) of Carton Drive, Poppintree approached the van but failed in their attempt to open the door. Warren was carrying a consaw while Ryan had a set of keys. At this point Gardai intervened and Ryan dropped the keys. The keys were later found to open four Chubb vans but not the one they were approaching. Warren had returned to his vehicle and had put the consaw into the boot before gardai moved in. He was walking away from the carpark when gardai arrested him. Three more men, Jeffrey Morrow (30) of Hazlecroft Road, Finglas, Eamonn Dunne (34) of Dunsoughly Drive, Rathoath Road, Finglas and Alan (38) and Wayne Bradley (33) of Churchfields Road, Kentstown, Co Meath and of Rathroad Road, Finglas respectively, were also arrested nearby. Warren told the jury his role on the day was to source a consaw and was told minutes before the raid to use the tool to cut open the Nissan Patrol, to allow Ryan access to the vehicle and to walk away. He said he later bottled it because he thought the job was suicidal. I thought it was ludicrous, madness, in a full carpark, in full view of everyone, Warren said before he added that if he had used the consaw it would have drawn attention to them. With the exception of Mr. Dunne, all of the men have been successfully prosecuted in relation to the incident. Eamonn Dunne was facing the same charge when he was shot dead in April 2010. The jury of five women and seven men had spent just under three hours considering the verdict before they unanimously found Warren guilty. Judge Patrick McCartan thanked the jurors for their service before he revoked Warrens bail and remanded him in custody. He adjourned the case to next week when he will also hear evidence of a firearm offence that Warren has pleaded guilty to and which was committed while he was on bail for the attempted heist. Warren claimed during the trial that he was under duress from Eamonn Dunne to get involved in the raid. He said he got a Skoda Octavia from Dunne on tick and when he was slow to pay back the debt Dunne told him he had no option but to get involved in this raid. Warren claimed Dunne told him he would be on top of Marlo and be sent to Gods house if he didnt do as instructed. He said he knew at that time that Dunne was a gangster and was a very, very serious man. He said it was in the newspapers that Dunne had killed another criminal, Martin Marlo Hyland and was responsible for 20 murders. Mr Warren said that his frame of mind in the days leading up to the raid, after being told by Dunne to source a working consaw, was Just to keep him happy. Mr Warren did not accept suggestions that he was, in fact, a willing and active participant in the attempted heist. He also rejected a suggestions from Deirdre Murphy SC, prosecuting, that he was in fact very close to Mr. Dunne. The jury was shown nine photographs of Dunnes funeral which depicted Warren acting as pallbearer on the left of the coffin, with Wayne and Alan Bradley carrying the casket at the front. The photographs also showed Warren embracing Eamonn Dunnes father as the coffin was placed in the hearse. - - Sonya McLean CCC.nuacht Godfried Gyechie was a Lib Councillor in Lewisham from 2006 to 2010. In a ceremony in Akwamufie in Ghana earlier this month he was formally installed as the Tufohene (Chief advisor) to the Osomanyawa of the Akwamu state. The Osomanyawa is the second in command to the paramount King of the Akwamu. Akwamufie is the capital of the Akwamu state, which was once a great empire and ran from the Ivory Coast, through Ghana to Togo in its height. As the Tufohene, Godfried has the responsibility of settling disputes across the area. He is Head of the Armed Forces and leader of the asafo companies (the warrior groups in Akan culture). During the ceremony of Enstoolment (ie enthronement) the Tufohene is seated on the sacred stool three times, and the name he is given is called out. The red band around his head protects him and his spirit during the ceremony, and he is perceived as having one foot in this world and one in the spirit world of the ancestors. As the son of a Prince, Godfried already carried the title Prince, and is properly addressed as HRH Nana Gyamera-Gyechie I. His aunt, HRM Nana Safoa II, is the Queen of Akwamufie. Godfried was the first BAME councillor to represent the Blackheath ward in Lewisham. He has been actively involved in Ethnic Minority Lib Dems as an Executive member and Treasurer but resigned from that post in order to take up the role in Ghana, although he still lives in London for most of the year. We all join in congratulating him on this very high honour. Almost three-quarters (73 per cent) of Londoners polled recently want Britain to remain in the EU. It is the highest number among all UK regions polled. In addition to the normal electorate, who will vote in the referendum on 23 June, some 500,000 EU citizens will also have a vote in the GLA / Mayoral elections on 5 May. In the capital, mark the lack of enthusiasm in the Labour Party for the cause of staying IN, mirrored by its mayoral candidate Sadiq Khan. Zac Goldsmith, the Conservative candidate for mayor is described as a Euro-sceptic, and Boris Johnson is plain anti-EU. And of course the open warfare that has broken out among the Tories which plays into our hands. Liberal Democrats now possess a considerable advantage with our enthusiastic and almost total unity commitment to remaining IN. It is surprising that the Lib Dem campaign has not wholeheartedly made Keep London in the EU the main plank of its policy platform. Of course housing and transport are the main problems facing the capital, and we have attractive policies for dealing with them. But if we take the easy route to gaining many more votes, perhaps more times as many as the forecast 3 per cent will vote for us. That in turn will give have more seats and more influence in what could be a hung assembly. We could help ensure that voting exceeds the 37 per cent turnout in 2012, as EU citizens and other supporters come out to vote Lib Dem. And if we leave the EU we have far less chance of doing anything about them. Caroline Pidgeon, our energetic and eloquent mayoral candidate, has already made several excellent speeches on us staying in the EU. With just six weeks to go now is the time for Lib Dems to be brave and offer a lead to Keep London in the EU. And in doing so, increase our numbers on the GLA. * Jonathan Hunt is President of Camberwell & Peckham local party and chair of the Southwark Co-ordinating Committee. He is an elected Life Member of the NUJ, and a former parliamentary candidate. As some commentators are expressing incredulity that Iain Duncan Smith has found himself a conscience over welfare cuts for disabled people, not long after signing off those very same cuts, or are attibuting these events to a phoney war over Brexit, I think there is a more interesting possibility. If we take IDS position at face value, this reveals something about how government works or about how it did work under the coalition and is now liable to go wrong. IDS position is that his cuts to PIP are defensible narrowly that they are reasonable in the context of his welfare reform agenda and the need to make public spending cuts overall but are not defensible in the context of a budget that contains big giveaways to the better-off, such as the CGT cut back to 20% (the rate it was under Labour) from the 28% it was set to under the coalition to raise revenue more fairly and reduce tax avoidance. Osbornes position is that IDS signed off these cuts, which he should not have done if he was not prepared to defend them, full stop. IDS has been mugged by the treasury in that the budget was not one he was expecting. This is a failure of communication. A government should not need Liberal Democrats in both departments to do its thinking in a more joined-up way. Though clearly, Liberal Democrats would have blocked the idea at birth, as we did during the coalition. It is also a sign of treasury dominance. We have a treasury bold enough to set education policy, to (and this I agree with) devolve power over economic levers to city regions, to butcher BIS, now that Vince Cable has moved on, to rule the rest of Whitehall. A sensible division of labour in a government with few consciences to go round would be for the Treasury to ask for welfare savings, because its job is balancing the budget, and for Work and Pensions to deploy a conscience and resist anything too vicious. This relationship is clearly unbalanced at the moment in the favour of the treasury. I realise I am in danger of giving IDS too much credit we can only speculate as to his true motives. But it is Osborne that comes out of this looking the worse of the two. I wish it werent so: Osborne is the Remainer. What is more, it is Osborne who is driving the northern powerhouse agenda from the treasury. This is where it needs to be because only the treasury or the PM is powerful enough to bang all the necessary heads together. Now the Northern Powerhouse, the devolution deals, are not ambitious enough, but they are, for now, survivors from the front page of our 2010 manifesto to rebalance the economy. I genuinely fear for the north if Johnson or May become Tory leader that the whole thing will be quietly forgotten. You may say I am for treasury dominance when it suits me, but really I am for a better kind of joined up government than this. * Joe Otten was the candidate for Sheffield Heeley in June 2017 and Doncaster North in December 2019 and is a councillor in Sheffield. THERE are growing calls for Irish Cement to hold another round of consultation with residents over its plans for its Mungret plant. Multi-million euro proposals will see the generation of cement by fossil fuels replaced with the burning of rubber tyres at thousands of degrees. While the project will bring 60 jobs to the area, concerns have been expressed over the impact the burning of the tyres will have on the environment. A number of chemicals such as dioxins and furans can be emitted as a result of this, it has been claimed. Irish Cement has now withdrawn its application to change the way it operates in Mungret but will seek a ruling from An Bord Pleanala over whether the project should be considered as a strategic infrastructural development. If it is, An Bord Pleanala will administer a new application. If not, it will be done by council. Labour City West councillor Joe Leddin claimed the original set of consultations held in December at the South Court Hotel were attended only sparsely. I have been getting a lot of calls from concerned residents living in the Raheen/Dooradoyle/Mungret area regarding the proposed application," he said. "I was surprised at the reaction of some of the other councillors who were quick to welcome the proposed alteration. I can [understand their concerns] because there was an incident only last summer where people woke up one Saturday morning to find dust all over their cars. There was a huge concern from a health and safety perspective, he said. However, he acknowledged the fact Irish Cement is a long term employer in Mungret, and everyone welcomes the valuable employment. Cllr Daniel Butler, Fine Gael, also requested the company hold further talks with the local community, something he says management there acceded to. People are worried. It is in an area where kids are growing up. It is only reasonable have they have these concerns addressed, he said. Cllr Butler also said consultation would also debunk some of the myths that exist around the impact of burning tyres on the environment. If you Google it, there is a lot of information which would scare you. It is about being mindful that a lot of that information is not factually based, he said, also pointing out Irish Cement would be bound by strict guidelines from the Environmental Protection Agency and European Law. TYPE the words Emily Duffy or 'Duffily Bag' into a search engine and you will discover that the story of how Knockaderry teenager Emily Duffy, who invented a sleeping bag to help the homeless, has now gone global. On website after website, including the prestigious Huffington Post, Emilys story has been told and retold in a number of languages. But the Desmond College student remains unphased by all the publicity her innovation has brought her, including a spot on the Late Late Show. Perhaps even better, the sleeping bag idea, which first saw the light of day as an entry in the BT Young Scientists Exhibition in early 2015, is now being put to practical use in Dublin and elsewhere. Emilys original idea was to devise a sleeping bag that would be waterproof, fire-proof, very-well insulated, lightweight and cheap to manufacture. And her initial aim was to come up with a practical response to an aspect of homelessness. She also hoped that the bag might be of use in emergency or disaster zones. Now, almost two years since she began work on the idea, her sleeping bag, now the Duffily Bag, has more than fulfilled those aims. And perhaps even more crucially it has given a second chance to a number of once homeless people. Charles Richards of the Mendicity Institution approached Emily and, following a number of modifications to her prototype, a programme began to manufacture the special bags in a workshop in Dublin, staffed by people who had experienced homelessness. Since then, a number of these men have been empowered to move from the workshop back into full-time employment. The organisation has also had enquiries about the sleeping bag from as far away as the US and Australia and have sent instructions to other organisations abroad. They now hope to expand their workshop programme from four to 20 participants by the end of this year. Through her collaboration with the Mendicity Institution, Emily has become a firm fan of their work. Theyre great there theyre doing a great job, and when I went up there recently to view the latest version of it, it was unbelievable, said Emily, the daughter of proud parents Margaret and Coleman Duffy. THE leader of the Fine Gael delegation in the European Parliament Sean Kelly has expressed his shock following the terror attacks in Brussels this morning. At least 34 people are reported to have been killed following explosions at the city's main airport, Zaventum, and a downtown metro station. Dozens of people have been injured in the attacks, which have been described as a "black day for Belgium" by the country's Prime Minister Charles Michel. Speaking from the European parliament - where all staff have been asked to remain inside - Mr Kelly said: "Our thoughts and prayers are with the innocent victims who have lost their lives and their families who will be devastated. Many people have been injured in these attacks and will be totally traumatised." Mr Kelly added that now is a time for solidarity in Belgium and across Europe. The Ireland South MEP advised any Irish citizens in Brussels to stay safe and follow the guidance of the authorities. If you have anyone in #brussels during #brusselsattack contact 014082000 to find out if they are ok. #Limerick #Ireland Cllr Daniel Butler (@DanielButlerFG) March 22, 2016 Is anyone from #Limerick or with local connections in #Brussels this morning? Get in touch with us @Limerick_Leader #brusselsattack Nick Rabbitts (@Nick468official) March 22, 2016 Fellow Fine Gael MEP Deirdre Clune said the actions of a "radical minority" cannot be allowed to "spread fear and close Europe down". "European values are under attack here in Brussels. Whilst we are shocked and saddened, our resolve is strong. We must protect core European values, such as freedom of movement and freedom of expression. These are values that we hold dear and cannot be bombed out of existence," she said. Our thoughts are with those affected in the #brusselsattack and their families. pic.twitter.com/7g25rrTQzG PayItForwardLimerick (@PIF_Limerick) March 22, 2016 - If you are caught up in the terror attacks in Brussels, contact the Limerick Leader on 00353-61-214503 or news@limerickleader.ie PLANS to build a 18m bridge across the River Shannon have again been criticised by councillors as pointless. Former Mayor of Limerick city, Independent city councillor John Gilligan described the plans as a bridge too far and said it makes no sense, as it would act as a deterrent from walking along the boardwalks at the rivers edge, which also cost the council substantial sums to install. Im told that itll be an iconic bridge, but whats iconic is the river, he argued at a council meeting on Monday. I dont think anyone really wants it, and neither is it necessary. We have three quarters of the walkways built around the Shannon, and the last leg is around the castle and the cathedral. That has stalled now that theres talk of this bridge, but nobody asked for a bridge. Nobody is going to come to Limerick just to look at a bridge; its absolutely ridiculous. Somebody out there is playing games with us, and nobody is being honest and upfront about it, he told the Limerick Chronicle. Another former Mayor, Labour city councillor Joe Leddin backed him saying that when the plans come before the council he wont be voting in favour, as he too believes that the money could be best spent elsewhere. A third former mayor of Limerick, Kathleen Leddin, has also publicly criticised the plans. Minister Michael Noonan approved 6m towards the cost of the bridge in 2014. Failte Ireland think it is a very good project and it is either at the top or very near the top of the projects they want to fund, the minister told the Leader two years ago. However, councillors this week were left scratching their heads as to who conceived the original idea, and were unaware of Failte Irelands drive in what has been called a vanity project by some. Cllr Leddin said that to build a bridge across what is already an iconic vista with the river, the castle and the Curragower Falls would amount to defacing the view that has been there for centuries. I wont have any part in it when it comes before us, he added. A Failte Ireland spokesman previously said that the bridge would have a wow factor and would link up several tourist attractions within walking distance. Former Mayor of Limerick, Cllr Michael Sheahan, said at the time of the announcement: They are very exciting designs. It is in keeping with our new approach to Limerick. What this bridge does is marry the old with the new. It connects the castle, the courthouse, the Curragower, and all of old Limerick with new Limerick. We are looking forward to the future in a most positive way, and I think the bridge will respect all of that, he said. A spokesperson for Limerick City and County Council explained that three years ago Failte Ireland identified a deficit in terms of Limerick's riverside infrastructure between Arthur's Quay and the historic part of the city on King's Island, following a tourism infrastructure assessment. The council's Limerick 2030 Economic and Spatial Plan outlines that Arthur's Quay will be transformed into a signature waterfront public space that draws visitors, hosts special events and provides a key stopping point within the city centre and along the waterfront and riverwalk. On foot of the Limerick 2030 Plan and Failte Ireland report, Limerick City and County Council carried out a technical study to ascertain the feasibility of a footbridge across the River Shannon linking Arthur's Quay park to the Potato market. The technical feasibility report was positive and gave an indicative cost of between 10m and 18m. When constructed, the new footbridge link will act as an economic driver by bringing people back to the city's waterfront and reinvigorating the riverfront, will be a new tourism attraction where the user seeks the unique perspective afforded by the new vantage point over the River Shannon and takes into consideration the urban infrastructure and impact towards creating a new architectural symbol which has the potential to transform Limerick Citys image. They continued: The footbridge will complete a circular river walk and form part of a wider tourism investment linking the citys three bridges with pedestrian walkways and also linking many of Limerick's important buildings and tourist attractions. The council is in the process of putting a footbridge design team in place. A planning application will be made in due course to An Bord Pleanala. The council will as part of the bridge design and planning application process hold information workshops and invite inputs from all stakeholders and interested parties. A LIMERICK mum whose daughter was due to fly home from Brussels this Tuesday has spoken of her relief after she escaped the terrorist attacks which left at least 32 dead. Corbally woman Eva Devaney was terrified for the wellbeing of her daughter Catherine and boyfriend Cian Brennan, from Castletroy, after news emerged of the attacks at the citys main airport, and a downtown metro station. It took Eva a number of hours to get hold of her daughter following the horrific attacks. The pair had taken a weekend break to the Belgian capital, as Catherine said she had always wanted to see a city which she describes as the capital of Europe. Fourth-year UL aeronautics student Catherine was among numerous Limerick people in Brussels when the attacks, responsibility for which have been claimed by Isis, took place. Speaking to the Limerick Leader, Catherine said: There was a lot of commotion and pandemonium. There were lots of police cars and ambulances. People seemed confused as to what was going on. The pair stayed in an apartment near the main Brussels Midi-Zuid rail station, some distance away from where the attacks took place, and are having to make alternative arrangements to reach home, having seen their original flights cancelled. Martin Ryan, who also hails from Corbally, is in Brussels since Monday. He said: The place is in lock-down so we are not sure when we will be able to get out of here. But we are being well-looked after by the local people. They genuinely could not be more helpful and accommodating. Alison Graham, who has relatives in Castleconnell, works beside Maelbeek Metro Station as an environment policy officer with pharmaceutical firm Bayer. She said she was terrified, initially learning about the news from her concerned mother who called. The University of Limerick has confirmed none of its students were affected by the attacks. Acting Taoiseach Enda Kenny has said that as far as we aware, no Irish citizens were killed or injured in the explosions. According to Department of Foreign Affairs estimates, there are around 700 Irish people working in the EU institutions in Brussels, with up to 15,000 Irish citizens living in Belgium. Limerick City and County Council has opened an online book of condolences for the victims, and a moment of silence will be held at this Wednesday afternoons meeting of the authority. 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. Update on March 22, 2016: Former Toronto Mayor Rob Ford died on Tuesday, March 22, after his fight with a rare and fast-growing cancer called pleomorphic liposarcoma, the Associated Press reported. Ford's family released a statement: "With heavy hearts and profound sadness, the Ford family announces the passing of their beloved son, brother, husband, and father, Councillor Rob Ford, earlier today at the age of 46. A dedicated man of the people, Councillor Ford spent his life serving the citizens of Toronto." Live Science published this article (below), on Sept. 18, 2014, at the time of Fords diagnosis: Toronto Mayor Rob Ford has been diagnosed with an extremely rare and fast-growing cancer, called pleomorphic liposarcoma, one of his doctors announced yesterday (Sept. 17). Dr. Zane Cohen, one of the physicians treating Ford, said the tumor is about 2 to 3 years old, and described it as "very rare" and "very difficult," according to the Associated Press. The cancer is spreading and the mayor will soon receive intensive chemotherapy, said Cohen, who is a colorectal surgeon at Mount Sinai Hospital in Toronto. The controversial mayor gained notoriety in 2013 after he admitted to smoking crack cocaine and drinking excessively while in office, and later made lewd comments to reporters about oral sex. Liposarcoma is one type of "sarcoma," which are cancers that arise from soft tissue such as fat, joints, muscle, nerves or blood vessels. Liposarcoma begins in the connective tissue, with cancer cells that resemble fat cells, according to the Liddy Shriver Sarcoma Initiative, a nonprofit group that advocates for people with sarcomas. (In contrast, cancers that originate from the tissues lining the organs are called carcinomas or adenomas.) Soft tissue sarcomas are not very common they account for less than 1 percent of all cancers in adults. In 2014, an estimated 12,000 people in the United States will be diagnosed with these cancers, and about 4,700 people will die of these cancers, according to the American Cancer Society (ACS). For comparison, about 136,000 people are diagnosed with colon cancer yearly, and 232,000 people are diagnosed with breast cancers. [The 10 Deadliest Cancers and Why There's No Cure] Ford's cancer, pleomorphic liposarcoma, is the rarest subtype of liposarcoma. Pleomorphic means that all cells within the tumor look different in size and shape under a microscope. Ford's tumor, measures about 5 inches by 5 inches (12 centimeters by 12 cm), and was found in his abdomen, Cohen said. Liposarcomas can develop anywhere in the body, but are most often found in the thigh, behind the knee or inside the back of the abdomen, according to the ACS. Patients are often diagnosed with this cancer between ages 50 and 65. Ford is 45 years old. It's not clear what causes liposarcoma, or what factors may increase a person's risk of developing it. Certain inherited conditions that involve defects in several genes are thought to increase a person's risk of developing soft tissue sarcomas. People may also develop sarcomas from radiation treatments they received for another cancer, according to the ACS. A few studies have looked at whether smoking, drinking and using other drugs may affect the risk of developing sarcomas, but no clear link has been found. One study, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology in 1989, that looked at 228 people with soft tissue cancers and 1,610 healthy people, found a greater risk of sarcomas among those who chewed tobacco. However, another study of 93 sarcoma patients and 721 healthy people didn't find a link between risk of soft tissue sarcoma and smoking and alcohol consumption, according to the findings published in the journal Cancer Causes and Control (opens in new tab) in 1991. One study even found smoking was linked to lower risk of developing a type of sarcoma. Ford's doctors told reporters that they plan to administer two rounds of chemotherapy to him over the next 40 days. They will then assess whether his tumor has responded, and whether surgery is needed. About 56 percent of patients with pleomorphic liposarcoma live for at least five years after their diagnosis, according to the Liddy Shriver Sarcoma Initiative. Ford withdrew from his re-election campaign after being hospitalized for his treatment. His brother, Doug Ford, has replaced him on the mayoral ballot. Additional reporting by Sara G. Miller. Email Bahar Gholipour. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Originally published on Live Science. Does this look like a "Boaty McBoatface" to you? "Name our ship!" This was the call from the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) in an online poll soliciting names for a U.K. polar research vessel. And the Internet responded in the most predictable way possible: The people have spoken and the name they want is "Boaty McBoatface." The whimsical suggestion captured the public imagination and rocketed the humorous moniker into first place, trouncing even recommendations honoring beloved British icons like Sir Richard Attenborough and recently deceased musician David Bowie. [Image Gallery: Back-Breaking Science At The Earth's Poles] The British Antarctic Survey (BAS) currently boasts two polar research vessels a stately pair of ships named for famed arctic explorers: the Royal Research Ship (RRS) James Clark Ross, used primarily for conducting oceanographic research, and the RRS Ernest Shackleton, which transports cargo, passengers and fuel to polar research destinations. And no doubt when NERC which proposed the design and construction of the new polar research vessel mounted the "Name Our Ship!" poll (which has been frequently crashing recently due to exceedingly high traffic), they may have hoped to receive votes for names that would be equally dignified, reminiscent of notable and intrepid polar scientists. "The ship could be named after a local historical figure, movement, or landmark," NERC officials said in a March 17 statement. "Or a famous polar explorer or scientist." But what they hoped for and what they're getting are proving to be very different indeed. James Hand, a former presenter for BBC Radio Jersey, expressed on Twitter that when he proposed Boaty McBoatface, he never expected it would take off the way it did. (The name now has its own Twitter account, which Hand said he does not operate.) "It's been utterly bizarre," Hand said in a March 21 interview on BBC Radio Jersey. Hand also tweeted his astonishment at all the attention the name has received and issued a rueful apology to the Natural Environment Research Council for all the kerfuffle ("I'm terribly sorry about all of this," he tweeted), but ultimately he does not regret his choice. "I stand by it being a brilliant name," he wrote. Ultimately, the poll choices are only "suggestions," according to the Terms and Conditions, and the vessel's official name will ultimately be decided by NERC's chief executive. NERC representatives said in a statement, "We would like the name to be inspirational and about environmental and polar science, to help us tell everyone about the amazing work the ship does." The poll will remain open until April 16, and time will tell whether "Boaty McBoatface" meets those expectations. Follow Mindy Weisberger on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science. Scientists have long puzzled over the root causes of Alzheimer's disease, a devastating and typically fatal condition that currently denies more than five million Americans their cognition and memory. But in a provocative editorial soon to be published in the Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, a cadre of scientists argue that the complex disease may have a surprisingly simple trigger: tiny brain-infecting microbes. This controversial view, which is not new, has long been dismissed as outlandish, but a growing body of work suggests it may be worth considering and further studying. If researchers can prove the theory and iron out the many argued-over details both formidable tasks, as brain infections are difficult to study Alzheimer's could become a preventable illness. The editorial, signed by 31 scientists around the world, argues that in certain vulnerable individuals such as those with the APOE 4 gene variant, a known Alzheimer's risk factor common microbial infections can infect the aging brain and cause debilitating damage. These microbes may include herpes simplex virus 1 (HSV-1), the ubiquitous virus that causes cold sores as well as Chlamydophila pneumoniae and Borrelia burgdorferi, the bacteria that cause pneumonia and Lyme disease, respectively. The controversial idea butts heads with the long-standing theory that amyloid-beta proteins and tau tangles, both of which build up inside the brains of those with Alzheimer's, are the main drivers of disease-induced cell death. Instead, supporters of the pathogen hypothesis, as it is called, posit that either pathogens induce brain cells to produce the amyloid proteins and tau tangles or that nerve cells that have been damaged by infection produce them as part of an immune response. "We think the amyloid story does come into play, but it's secondary to the initial inflammation," says editorial co-author Brian Balin, who directs the Center for Chronic Disorders of Aging at the Philadelphia College of Osteopathic Medicine. Critics of the pathogen theory point out that much of the supportive human research does not establish cause and effect. In a study published in The Lancet in 1997, a team led by Ruth Itzhaki, one of the editorial's co-authors and a molecular neurobiologist at the University of Manchester in England, reported that people whose brains were infected with HSV-1 and who also had the APOE 4 gene variant were 12 times more likely to develop Alzheimer's than those with either the gene variant or the infection alone. One hypothesis is that the APOE 4 variant makes it easier for HSV-1 to infect brain cells but, critics say, it could also be that the gene variant and the infection are associated with Alzheimer's in ways that are not causal. Scientists have tried to nail down the mechanics of the relationship using animals. Researchers in Spain have found, for instance, that mice whose brains have been infected with HSV-1 produce nearly 14 times as much viral DNA when they have the APOE 4 variant compared with when they do not. And after infecting the brains of mice with HSV-1, Itzhaki's group showed that their brains accumulated amyloid plaques. But these studies are criticized, too after all, what happens in a mouse's brain may not happen in a human's. The burden of proof is formidable for this theory, in part because it is impossible to detect infections like HSV-1 in the brains of living people they can only be seen postmortem. "'Proof of causation is a major, critical and very complex issue," says David Relman, an infectious disease specialist at Stanford University. Itzhaki agrees, noting that one cannot just inject people with the virus and wait to see if they develop Alzheimer's. (That said, Australian microbiologist Barry Marshall finally convinced skeptics that Heliobactor pylori bacteria cause gastric ulcers by infecting himself.) Itzhaki says that one potential solution would be to conduct a pilot clinical trial that evaluates whether HSV-1-infected individuals with mild Alzheimer's and the APOE 4 variant improve if they are treated with antiviral drugs. They have already shown in the lab that these drugs inhibit amyloid plaque production in HSV-1 infected cells. But she has applied for funding for a human study multiple times and has so far has been unsuccessful. Rudolph Tanzi, a neurologist at Harvard University who directs the Genetics and Aging Research Unit at Massachusetts General Hospital, agrees that microbes likely play a role in Alzheimer's but his work suggests that the brain's response to the infection is more dangerous than the infection itself. "We do need to take the role of microbes in the brain seriously, but it's going to be a lot more involved than simply saying 'infection causes Alzheimer's disease,'" he notes. (He was not involved in the editorial.) In a 2010 study Tanzi and his colleagues reported that the amyloid protein strongly inhibits microbial growth in the brain, which suggests that it accumulates as a protective response to infection. "Over the last five years, following up from that 2010 paper, we've showed that in every Alzheimer's model tested from cells to flies to dirt worms to mice beta amyloid potently protects from infection," he explains. The presence of even just a few microbes in the brain, he says, triggers its accumulation. Infections induce potent immune responses, too, and they likely worsen the problem. Normally, brain immune cells called microglia clear amyloid proteins from the brain. But when these cells get fired up in response to infection, they stop, causing the proteins to build up even faster. As Tanzi's team showed in a 2014 Nature paper, the amyloid proteins that fill up the brain then spark the creation of tau tangles, which cause more brain cell death. "And now, you have the full-blown disease," he says. (Scientific American is part of Springer Nature.) As for which pathogens might be triggers, HSV-1 is a contender, Tanzi says, but it is too soon to know for sure. "I think we have to take a couple of steps back and say, 'What types of bacteria, viruses and fungus accumulate in the brain as we age?' and study this systematically in an unbiased, agnostic way," he says. He is leading a consortium funded by the nonprofit Cure Alzheimer's Fund to map the microbiome of the human brain; once potentially important microbes are identified, it might be possible to develop neuroimaging techniques to track them in the brains of living individuals, he says. Other Alzheimer's scientists still are not convinced, however. David Holtzman, chair of the department of neurology at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis and associate director of its Knight Alzheimer's Disease Research Center, told Scientific American that although more research on the idea is warranted, "there is not clear or conclusive evidence of whether or how different infections influence risk for Alzheimers disease." Tanzi says that when he presents his findings and ideas at scientific meetings, reactions are indeed mixed. One comment Itzhaki often hears is that HSV-1 cannot cause Alzheimer's if it is also found, as it is, in the brains of elderly healthy people. But she points out that other pathogens, including tuberculosis, only cause symptoms in subset of vulnerable individuals, too. If microbes do turn out to be a potential trigger for Alzheimer's and to most in the field, this is still a big "if" the implications would be huge: It might be possible to vaccinate against the debilitating disease simply by inoculating against offending infections. At the very least, doctors might be able to treat infections with antimicrobial drugs before they harm the brain. But building enough evidence to prove the theory could take decades. Among other challenges, researchers working in the area complain of funding woes. "Over the 50-plus years that I've been doing the work, our group has had extreme difficulties nearly all the time we've been working on a shoestring," Itzhaki says. But given that hundreds of clinical trials for Alzheimer's drugs have failed based on the prevailing dogma, those working on the various versions of the pathogen theory believe it is worth pushing forward. More than anything, they hope their editorial will encourage skeptics to at least consider the possibility that microbes could play a role in Alzheimer's disease and support their desire to study it more. "We're saying 'wait a minute, folks we have a body of evidence here from decades of work that we have to stop ignoring,'" Balin says. This article was first published at ScientificAmerican.com. ScientificAmerican.com. All rights reserved. Follow Scientific American on Twitter @SciAm and @SciamBlogs. Visit ScientificAmerican.com for the latest in science, health and technology news. Birds may use alligators as bodyguards to protect their nests from hungry raccoons and opossums, but gator payment may come at a steep cost namely, in the form of the birds' chicks that are dropped into the water, researchers say. For many species of birds, the greatest threat their chicks face are nest-attacking predators, such as raccoons and opossums. Previous research found that wading birds such as storks, herons, egrets, ibises and spoonbills often choose to nest above alligators. By doing so, these birds benefit from the way in which the formidable reptiles often scare off, or even eat, smaller predators. Such mutually beneficial relationships between reptiles and birds may be common throughout the tropics, scientists noted in previous studies. However, there was little research into what, if anything, alligators gained from such arrangements. One possible grisly benefit that prior studies suggested the reptiles might receive were meals in the form of chicks pushed from the nests. Many colonially nesting birds lay more eggs than they can raise, and the birds typically adjust the size of their broods to fit available food levels by ejecting one to two chicks from each nest, alive or dead. Such chicks might provide the gators with a substantial source of meat, the researchers said. [Beastly Feasts: Strange Photos of Animals Eating Other Animals] To see if alligators might reap such gruesome rewards, the scientists compared 20 alligators that lived near nesting colonies of wading birds in the Florida Everglades with 19 alligators that did not live near such colonies. The researchers focused on female alligators because they move less and have smaller home ranges than males in the Everglades, and therefore should be a better reflection of food opportunities near their homes than males, the researchers said. To see how well fed the alligators were, the scientists measured their mass and length, and took blood samples to measure blood nutrient levels. They found that the alligators that lived near wading-bird nesting colonies were better nourished than the alligators that did not live near wading-bird nesting colonies. This is the first time that scientists have shown that these birds and reptiles have a mutually beneficial relationship, said study lead author Lucas Nell, an ecologist at the University of Georgia in Athens. "I was particularly surprised by the magnitude of the difference in body condition that is, fatness or health we found," Nell said. "To put this into perspective, a 2-meter-long (6.5 feet) alligator would, on average, weigh about 3 kilograms (6.6 pounds) more near a nesting colony than [one in a] similar habitat without a colony." In previous research, scientists placed fake alligators near islands in the Everglades that wading birds might colonize. The research revealed that such birds colonized the islands with fake alligators significantly more often than the islands without fake alligators, Nell said. [Florida Everglades: Follow the 'River of Grass' (Photos)] Moreover, this prior work also found that although about half of the islands in the Everglades with no wading-bird nesting colonies had alligators present, 96 percent of the islands with such colonies had alligators. This finding suggests that these birds seek out these alligators and that these alligators seek out these birds the alligators are not too difficult to find, as they often lie conspicuously on land when basking, and loud, smelly bird colonies are equally easy for gators to find, Nell said. Nell emphasized that the alligators do not appear to intentionally protect the birds and that the birds do not appear to intentionally sacrifice chicks to the alligators. "Birds neglecting a certain number of chicks is based, to our current knowledge, entirely on food availability," Nell told Live Science. "From what we know, both partners here are acting selfishly with no concerted effort to cooperate with the other." The researchers noted that crocodilians and nesting birds are often found together throughout the tropics. As such, the mutually beneficial relationship that the scientists discovered "could be a globally widespread and ecologically important interspecies set of relationships," Nell said. Future research can investigate whether wading-bird nesting colonies help alligators persist in places they might otherwise not. "This has important implications in Everglades restoration, especially given that alligator body condition appears to be trending downwards overall," Nell said. The scientists detailed their findings March 2 in the journal PLOS ONE. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science. The slashed kneecap of a bear found deep inside a prehistoric cave suggests human hunters lived in Ireland earlier than had been previously thought, a new study finds. Until now, the earliest evidence of humans in Ireland dated to the Mesolithic period, about 10,000 years ago. But new analyses of the bear's kneecap push back that date by 2,500 years, and shine a light on what animals these prehistoric people ate and what butchery techniques they used. Researchers found the kneecap in Ireland's Alice and Gwendoline Cave, in County Clare, in 1903. They noted that the bone had knife marks on it, but no one gave the artifact a second look for about 100 years. [Emerald Isle: A Photo Tour of Ireland] Then, in 2010 and 2011, Ruth Carden, an animal osteologist at the National Museum of Ireland, began going through the cave's many bone artifacts. She had two independent experts radiocarbon-date the kneecap and another three specialists examine the cut marks (to ensure that these marks were made shortly after the bear died). The two radiocarbon-dating experts agreed that the bone was about 12,500 years old. Moreover, the other specialists confirmed that the cuts were made on fresh bone, Carden said. The finding shows that people likely lived in Ireland during the Paleolithic period, which is also known as the Old Stone Age. "Archaeologists have been searching for the Irish Paleolithic since the 19th century, and now, finally, the first piece of the jigsaw has been revealed," Marion Dowd, an archaeologist at the Institute of Technology, Sligo, in Ireland, said in a statement. "This find adds a new chapter to the human history of Ireland." The results of the radiocarbon dating surprised the researchers, they said. This technique measures the amount of carbon-14 left in an organism that was once alive. (Carbon-14 is an isotope, or variant, of carbon, meaning it has a different number of neutrons in its nucleus than the more common Carbon-12.) This method works on remains that are up to 50,000 years old, so the brown bear's patella fit within these parameters. "When a Paleolithic date was returned, it came as quite a shock," Dowd said. "Here we had evidence of someone butchering a brown bear carcass and cutting through the knee probably to extract the tendons. Yes, we expected a prehistoric date, but the Paleolithic result took us completely by surprise." However, whoever cut the kneecap probably wasn't that experienced, the researchers said. A number of score marks are visible, showing that multiple slashes likely made with a long flint blade were needed to get the job done, Dowd said. She added that the scientists plan to examine more bones found from the 1903 cave excavation to see what else can be learned about these prehistoric people. The new discovery follows on the heels of a similar Scottish finding. In 2013, researchers in that country found a cache of flint tools on the Isle of Islay, evidence that Paleolithic people once lived in Scotland. Before that, researchers had evidence only of Mesolithic people in the United Kingdom's northernmost country. The new findings were detailed online Monday (March 21) in the journal Quaternary Science Reviews. Follow Laura Geggel on Twitter @LauraGeggel. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science. Over the past several days, a massive wave of online support propelled the unlikely name "Boaty McBoatface" to the top of a poll proposing monikers for a British polar research vessel. And because just enough of a good thing is never quite enough for the Internet, Twitter users followed up by asking the perfectly reasonable question: What if the Boaty McBoatface naming aesthetic were applied to animals? Gauging by the swiftness and the variety of responses under the Twitter hashtag #TheInternetNamesAnimals, quite a number of people had apparently been waiting for exactly this opportunity. [From Blobfish to 'Adorable' Octopus: 9 Animals with Perfect Names] For instance, @JarodAnderson put forth the name "Pantless Thunder-Goose" atop an image of an ostrich. And Alex Wild (@Myrmecos), curator of entomology at the University of Texas at Austin, suggested "Toothy McHugs" for a trap-jaw ant. Jessa Kent (@JessaKent) shared a colorful cassowary, dubbing it, "Rainbow McMurderbird," while Jonathan Colby (@myfrogcroaked) presented a spiky green caterpillar with the recommended name of "Ouchmaster Flex." Extinct animals were also fair game, as Franz Anthony (@franzanth) demonstrated with "Crocs McPugface" (the short-skulled crocodile relative Simosuchus) and "Duckface McPancake" (turtlelike marine reptile Henodus.) And Michele Banks (@artologica) introduced a charming pair: giant panda "Floofy McBoopface" and an unrelated humanoid individual native to Canada, "Prime Mountie McDreamy." See more See more See more See more See more What's in a name? Perhaps Boaty McBoatface wasn't quite as dignified a recommendation as its future operators and proposers of the poll the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) might have wanted. But as its overwhelming popularity suggests, many factors operate in its favor. It's catchy. It's certainly memorable. And, to be fair, it is an accurate description when you hear the name, you don't have to think too hard to guess what it might represent. (Image credit: Karel Gallas Shutterstock.com) Animal common names frequently reference some physical feature that helps to identify them think of the white-tailed deer, the yellow-bellied sapsucker, the trap-jaw ant or the shovel-nosed snake. And no one would suggest that the blobfish's name isn't a perfect fit. But common names can also be puzzling, or even downright misleading. The red panda is certainly red, but it's no panda it occupies the Ailuridae family and isn't a bear at all. Cuttlefish, jellyfish and starfish aren't fish they're all invertebrates (animals without backbones) and are described respectively as mollusks, gelatinous zooplankton and echinoderms. Guinea pigs are rodents not pigs and they don't even hail from Guinea. And as ridiculous as some of the proposals circulating on Twitter may sound, there are certain animal species whose actual common names are equally outlandish. But don't take our word for it. Just ask Maratus jactatus, the jumping spider commonly known as sparklemuffin, or Acanthonus armatus, also known as the bony-eared assfish. Follow Mindy Weisberger on Twitter and Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science. When chasing insects for their dinner, bats can perform aerial acrobatics that would shame even the steeliest test pilots. Inspired by the wings that allow bats to pull off such impressive maneuvers, a team of engineers designed new kinds of wing surfaces for drones. At the University of Southampton in the United Kingdom, a group led by engineering professor Bharathram Ganapathisubramani designed a flexible, membrane wing for small drones, otherwise known as micro air vehicles (MAVs). MAVs are used for a variety of purposes, including reconnaissance and scientific work. The new membrane wings change shape in response to local conditions in the environment, allowing for more efficient flight. "If you compare a flexible wing to [a] rigid wing, you get far better efficiency," Ganapathisubramani told Live Science. [Biomimicry: 7 Clever Technologies Inspired by Nature] The team tested its MAV one that measured about 18 inches (46 centimeters) across over water near a local beach. The MAV was designed to skim above the surface and land safely, like a seaplane. The membrane is stretched between struts where a stiff wing would ordinarily be, the engineers said. "It just uses a passive membrane that changes shape on its own based on the wind," Ganapathisubramani said. The early tests were a good start, but Ganapathisubramani wants to take it a step further, he said. Bat wings are membranes stretched between finger bones. The bats' membranes are covered in a network of blood vessels and have muscle, so they can change stiffness and shape depending on what the bat wants to do. The reason bats can change direction so fast and do loops and dives is because they can change their wing shapes, and thus their aerodynamic capabilities, in real time, Ganapathisubramani said. To get this shape-changing effect, the researchers used a polymer that expands and contracts when a voltage is applied to it. Such polymers have been studied for several years, and can function as a kind of artificial muscle. Because the amount of contraction depends on the voltage only, the currents can be small, the researchers said. Ganapathisubramani's team has tested designs in a wind tunnel and will be experimenting with the drones over the next few years. "The idea is, in the future, [we could] put it on the drone and run a voltage through the wing," Ganapathisubramani said. The voltage makes the molecules of the polymer squeeze together, and the material has to expand in another direction, similar to what happens when you squeeze a sponge, he added. While membranous wings wouldn't be practical on a commercial aircraft, it might be possible to make some of a plane's control surfaces flexible, the researchers said. For example, the ailerons (the hinged sections that form part of the trailing edge of a wing) and the rudder could be made with this kind of polymer on the edges. This could make the aircraft's controls more precise, the scientists said. And enabling a plane to change its wing configuration depending on the weather could translate into fuel savings, along with smoother rides, the researchers added. For now, though, Ganapathisubramani said, he and his colleagues want to use this technology on drones, and they have done computer modeling to decide exactly how to build the wing surfaces. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science. More than 2,500 babies could be diagnosed with microcephaly in Brazil if current trends within the Zika-affected country continue, the World Health Organization (WHO) told reporters today at a news conference in Geneva. To fight Zika, a vaccine against the virus and measures to control mosquitoes will be crucial, WHO officials said. This is because more than half of the world's population lives in areas inhabited by Aedes aegypti, which is one of the mosquitoes that carry the virus. "In less than a year, the status of Zika has changed from a mild medical curiosity to a disease with severe public health implications," Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO director-general, told journalists. So far, about 39 percent of all infants suspected of having microcephaly in Brazil wound up being confirmed to have the condition, WHO health officials said. Doctors have made these diagnoses a total of 863 confirmed cases by analyzing a computer tomography (CT) scan of the infants' brains. [Zika Virus News: Complete Coverage of the 2016 Outbreak] Right now, there are about 4,300 more infants in the northeastern part of Brazil who are suspected of having microcephaly, doctors said. If this 40 percent confirmation rate continues, more than 2,500 of those babies could be diagnosed with the condition in the coming months, they said. This number is far above the norm. Typically, an average of 163 infants with microcephaly have been born yearly in northeastern Brazil, WHO officials said. Just 1 in 5 people infected with the Zika virus experiences symptoms, including rash, fever and muscle pain. However, infants born to women who become infected with the virus while pregnant may have an increased risk of congenital birth defects, including microcephaly. The virus is now circulating in 38 countries and territories, Chan said. Although the virus's first "explosive wave" may occur before a vaccine is ready, scientists are already hard at work, she said. "At present, more than 30 companies are working on, or have developed, potential new diagnostic tests," Chan said. "For vaccines, 23 projects are being worked on by 14 vaccine developers in the United States, France, Brazil, India and Austria." However, because the vaccine will be used to protect pregnant women and other women of childbearing age, "it must meet an extremely high standard of safety," she said. [The 9 Deadliest Viruses on Earth] Despite the urgency of the situation, the WHO is struggling to receive funding to fight Zika. The organization requested $25 million; so far, it has received $3 million from various countries and is in active discussions to receive another $4 million, Chan said. The United States is in a similar quandary. President Barack Obama has asked Congress to provide $1.8 billion to fight Zika, but that money has not been approved yet, largely because some members of Congress have asked that money allocated to fighting Ebola be reassigned to Zika. This funding shortage is frustrating to some in the research community. "This is a nonpartisan issue," Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine and infectious diseases at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee, told Live Science in a previous interview. "This is the public's health." Follow Laura Geggel on Twitter @LauraGeggel. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science. There is a bad misperception that Rhonda Thurman an outspoken member of the Hamilton County School Board and I are in some tit-for-tat squabble over the way she and I disagree and nothing could be further from the truth. I like Rhonda and I respect her. She has been actively working on behalf of children ever since her own children were born and has been a member of the school board for nearly 12 years, if memory serves me right. But after I wrote that it was idiotic for the countys Department of Education to shun any offers of community help in returning our clearly-failing school system to one of proficiency, my girl wrote a scathing Earth to Roy letter on the Chattanoogan.com forum. She claims that I write with my poison pen what (I) wanted to hear not necessarily what happened. As you can see in the Forum section of Chattanoogan.com., a dozen others shared their opinions and to me there is no wrong nor right. Everybody has their own idea, but the overwhelming request in my in-box is Dont stop. The glare that has been put on public education has been needed for a long time and I think it is making a difference. If anyone wants to disagree with me that suits me fine. Ive been offering my opinion on things for a long time and I get far too many complimentary emails to let those that are critical sway my stance. I think it is healthy that Rhonda, as well as other board members, and I disagree. I think it is wonderful whenever we do agree and, so help me, I love the fact Rhonda isnt scared or timid when it comes to sharing her own opinion. She knows politics and education are neither very popular right now and she knows criticism comes with the title. Rhonda voted against acknowledging the Chattanooga 2.0 initiative and, while I strongly disagree, I would more adamantly shout if she had always follow your gut instinct. The fact that seven of nine board members voted in favor of 2.0 shows democracy works. Personally I think it is the first piece to the puzzle in getting our tests scores up, our graduates proficient when they graduate from high school and most importantly enabling our children to gain solid employment in a workplace they will enjoy. Since the Ooltewah tragedy in late December, I have studied the school board and Department of Education. I have learned quite bit. No, I havent the slightest knowledge about education and its structural model, but virtually every person in Hamilton County can tell you our Department of Education is most certainly not what it should be. What is amazing is that the vast majority of the 3,200 employees are bright, able and talented. The dreadful leadership team, I believe, is the largest reason the Department of Education has come unglued and, in my opinion, a great army of all of us can make the district better than ever. Rhonda is on this screwy stay in your own lane tear which makes no sense, not when the only votes that count are from our nine elected board members. Let anybody say anything they want. Listen to the voices you trust and admire. But in the end, the school board members will rightfully have the final say. Why get in a tiff if there is no way you lose? When the idea was broached that any interim or permanent superintendent must have an education degree, Rhonda was the first to swat down such an idea. She knows best the central office can no longer function with educators alone. Thats not a bad thing, just a fact American corporations have proven time and again. The budget is right about $411 million. We need a financial guru, and we need logistics experts to get the most-for-the-mile with our school buses. Let human resources people find the best personnel for every role. In short, lets move to a make-sense business model to operate the district and lean on our 120 PhDs to devote their full time to educate our students. More than anything, communications is vital. Rick Smith closed the schools publicity office, in the same way a Communist nation silences TVs and newspapers. We ought to have a knowledgeable source where the media, the board or the public can get a quick answer. It is horrifying how little information was ever shared with the board but just as incomprehensible that nine elected people, each being paid over $1,000 per month by the taxpayers, ever allowed it to happen. Trust me, the public definitely wanted Smith gone but fully blames the school board. Rhonda will also agree there needs to be accountability. She and the other board members should be given attendance figures, disciplinary actions, spending analyses, and every other speck of both good and bad each month. Hide nothing. A public information officer should send an email to each school board member before they ever find out anything in the public media. Both the interim and permanent superintendent should poll the board about key decisions. Sure, the buck stops on his command but the school board, i.e. the peoples voice, has been horribly under-utilized. I would make the board earn the money and outlaw the word abstain; school board members are elected and paid for answers, not dodges. The deadline for qualifying for one of four school board seats in the August election is Thursday, April 7. That means you must go to the Hamilton County Election Commission in a day or two, get enough signatures to qualify in a district that is included in this rotation, and turn the application back into the election commission before the deadline. This is a four-year term and pays half what a county commissioner makes. All any candidate needs is a clean record and a high school diploma. Already each present school board members up for re-election faces challengers. Chairman Jonathan Welch, Vice-chair Donna Horn, Rhonda Thurman and George Ricks are all being opposed and, since the school board has been roundly disgraced by Supt. Ricks Smith parade of shenanigans, and the boards reaction at times having been quite comical, even more candidates are expected to qualify in the next two weeks. So you ask: Would I endorse Rhonda Thurman? You darn tootin I would if I felt she was the best in her district. Again, I like her and I think her intentions reflect what she believes. Did she make a mistake when she voted for Rick Smith in a one-horse race? She sure did but since has apologized so lets move on. We all make mistakes. Learn from them and dont do it again. If Rhonda Thurman has a fight with me which I dont think she does let her keep hitting but I wont hit back. Ill just offer my own opinion. royexum@aol.com To the editor: I have been reading with dismay at the halt in construction of the new Catholic Student Center at TAMIU. The Center is already funded and will be staffed by the Brothers of Saint John who are ready for the task. An agreement was already reached in 2009. Yet we dont have any reason whatsoever for its stoppage. I, for one, will withhold my Catholic Sharing Appeal donations until the project is back on track or we are given a good reason why not. I encourage all others who have made their pledge to do the same. If this drags out, instead of writing checks to the Diocese, we can write them directly to the organizations that benefit from the Sharing Appeal (Case de Misericordia, etc.). Ultimately we control the purse of the Diocese and as good stewards of the money, we have every right to effect change in this way. Sincerely, Bob Simpson Cleveland State Community College summer registration will be held Monday, April 4 through Thursday, May 26 for all students. Jason Sewell, director of Enrollment Services said, Many times, a summer class can be a great way for students to concentrate on that one class or two that they may feel might be more difficult for them. This allows them to focus entirely on that class without the demands of a full load. Taking summer classes is a great way to work toward completing a credential quicker. Classes begin on Tuesday, May 31 for both the first and the full summer session, and classes begin on Tuesday, July 5 for the second summer session. "Cleveland State offers a wide variety of programs including four associate of arts options, three associate of science options, and ten associate of applied science options with 24 concentrations, and 25 technical certificates. There are a number of different scheduling options for working adults, as well as the ADVANCE program, the Regents Online Degree Program and programs for veterans. "The ADVANCE programs offer students a quick and convenient way to obtain a college degree by attending class one night a week along with online options," officials said. There programs to be offered as an Advance cohort including: Advance Cohort Programs Starting June 2016: ? Business (Degree) Advance Cohort Programs Starting August 2016: ? Medical Informatics (Degree) ? Medical Assistant (Degree) ? Customer Service (Certificate) ? Electrical Maintenance (Certificate and Degree) ? Mechanical Maintenance (Certificate and Degree) ? Criminal Justice (Degree) Registration for fall semester at CSCC will begin Monday, April 4 and will run until Thursday, Aug. 18 for all students. The last day to submit applications for degree seeking students is Friday, Aug. 12, and the priority deadline for submitting financial aid documents is Friday, July 15. We know that adults have busy lives and it is a complex thing to attend school, so we continue to redesign our programs to fit a working adults life, said Dr. Denise King, vice president for Academic Affairs. We've added additional cohort-based programs that have a set schedule so you will know when your classes are throughout and can make one plan for the entire program. Dr. King continued, We are also excited to announce that we have new programs launching this fall at our new Monroe County Center, the Athens Center and in Cleveland. Local business and industry has worked with us to develop programs in Welding (Monroe), Agribusiness (Athens) and Mechatronics (Cleveland) to tailor the skills students develop to those employees will need. They are eager to hire the graduates of these new programs. According to Dr. King, fall programs offered in cohort format include: (Cleveland) Criminal Justice, Paramedic, Business (Athens Center) Business, Electrical Maintenance; (Monroe County Center): Electrical Maintenance; (Online): Customer Service and Medical Informatics. The Advance Business program is offered in both Cleveland and Athens locations. In addition, Cleveland State and the Cleveland State Foundation have worked together to provide funds for last dollar scholarships for adult students. This resulted in the Adult Promise Scholarship, which is a commitment to adult students attending college for the first time or returning to college to complete their first degree. The deadline for this scholarship is Wednesday, June 1. For more information about summer or fall registration or to view a schedule of classes, contact the Admissions office at 423-478-6213. For more information about the Business and Technology ADVANCE program, call 423-478-6224. If you do not have a current print subscription to the Lodi News-Sentinel, but want to view unlimited articles for the month, please choose this option. Local News, Business & Finance, Community, Charity & Cause, Press Releases By Phil Andrews Published: March 22 2016 Social media is leading way to build the social fabric and economic capacity of our community by connecting the chamber to broader segment of the community which increases our capacity. Freeport, New York - March 22, 2016 - The Long Island African American Chamber of Commerce, Inc. is celebrating the milestone of 1000 Facebook Likes. The chamber regularly post updates on facebook regarding upcoming events, membership news, workshops, seminars, and overall activity of the chamber in the region. Social Media is an important way to communicate the progress that the chamber is making in the entire region. Social media is leading way to build the social fabric and economic capacity of our community by connecting the chamber to broader segment of the community which increases our capacity as an organization to serve a wider population who need and can benefit from our services. Phil Andrews, President Long Island African American Chamber of Commerce, Inc. Long Island African American Chamber of Commerce, Inc. The mission of the Long Island African American Chamber of Commerce, Inc., is to advance and promote economic development for business and to advance responsive government and quality education on the behalf of all small businesses, with emphasis on African Ancestry, while preserving the Long Island community. Long Island means the New York State counties on Nassau, Suffolk, Queens and Kings. A Chamber of Commerce is one of the most well-known and recognizable organizations in the country chartered to stimulate business in local and regional areas where they are designated to serve. The Long Island African American Chamber of Commerce, Inc. is a member of the US Black Chamber located online at usblackchamber.org To join our fanpage on facebook log on and click here. Visit us online at liaacc.org Local News, Crime, National & World News, Press Releases By Long Island News & PR Published: March 22 2016 Nassau County Executive Edward P. Mangano and Police Commissioner Thomas C. Krumpter express their condolences to the people of Brussels, Belgium in light of the recent terrorist attacks. Nassau County, NY - March 22nd, 2016 - Nassau County Executive Edward P. Mangano and Acting Police Commissioner Thomas C. Krumpter express their condolences to the people of Brussels, Belgium in light of the recent terrorist attacks. Although there are no known imminent threats to Nassau County, police are monitoring these attacks along with federal, state, and local authorities. Nassau County Police are intensifying patrols in all areas of mass transit, critical infrastructure, and will increase patrols at significant public events. The public is reminded if they see any suspicious activity to contact 911 immediately. Suspicious social media activity can also be reported through Text-a-Tip via the Nassau County Crime Stoppers app available free for smartphones and tablets. 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 My editor John Wilson sent me to the Chattanooga Airport yesterday morning to cover the monthly board meeting. The last time I came to this airport was on April 21, 2015 to fly to San Diego and start the Pacific Crest Trail. It didn't click with me until I got there that the day marked my one-year anniversary of quitting my corporate job. I left my stall on the cubicle farm a month before my journey to finalize preparations and pursue what I really love: adventure and writing. Being at the airport again - the sun illuminating the takeoff strip - shot that same sense of terror stirred with thrill I felt as I boarded the plane to California, alone, my only luggage a 40-liter backpack. That same day, a young man known as Big Spoon in the hiker world boarded a plane in New Jersey. He, too, only had a backpack and the necessities that fit inside that he would need to survive for the next five months in the wild.Famous San Diego trail angels Scout and Frodo housed 35 hikers that night. Big Spoon was one of them, and so was I. With all the hustle and bustle going on that day - as everyone geared up packs, rationed out food, and "got in the zone" for the trail the next morning - I didn't speak to Big Spoon. But I did notice him in his robins egg blue shirt and Indiana Jones hat. I did notice his powerful presence as he stood off to the side to simply observe.He noticed me too, he says when he tells his side of the story.Not until a couple days later on the trail did our paths (literally) reconnect. He tried to get me to stay in a cabin with him and four others in Mount Laguna, to wait out the violent storm heading in. I thought to myself, "Who is this guy? intrigued, but still wanting to do my own thing."No, thanks," I told him, and hiked on through the storm.I never could have guessed I'd be saying "I do" to this person less than 30 days later."A lot can happen in a short amount of time," I thought as I looked out on the airport runway. Writing my book has let me relive my and Big Spoon's journey - the challenges, the joys, the treasures I never imagined I'd find. In the words of Tennyson and Muir, this jam-packed journey was one of "drinking life to the lees" and "receiving far more than I sought."Which is how our lives are meant to be: drunk down all the way to the sediment in the barrel, becoming far more full with richness and reward than had we merely taken a sip. --- District Attorney Neal Pinkston said Tuesday that his office is not the reason the mayor's Violence Reduction Initiative is not working. He said he plans to start an anti-gang effort with other law enforcement agencies. Mayor Andy Berke said, "I am not interested in pointing fingers -- I'm interested in ways we can make the city safer for Chattanoogans. That works best when everyone stops blaming others and comes to the table, accepts responsibility, and works together. Unfortunately, General Pinkston does not appear to be interested in doing that." Lacie Stone, Mayor Berke's senior advisor said, "Mayor Berke has reached out to General Pinkston numerous times since the article in the Times Free Press in November to discuss any issues he may have with VRI. General Pinkston has not returned his calls or Mayor Berke's multiple requests for a meeting. In addition, the Chattanooga Police Department has not been asked to be a part of the Multi-Agency Task Force." Mr. Pinkston said: To the citizens of Chattanooga and their council: When Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke unveiled his Violence Reduction Initiative two years ago, he promised an immediate drop in violence, particularly gang violence. As we know, that didn't happen. Fast-forward two years. It should not surprise anyone that 200 misdemeanor arrests have not curbed violence in our city. Suddenly, a few City Council members are now using the media to point fingers at me, although they haven't bothered to call me at any point in the past twenty-four months to discuss the VRI or the way my office prosecutes cases. The full council asked for my take on the VRI. Let me be clear: My office is not the problem and I will not allow my staff to bear responsibility for the city's failure. The VRI is not working because the city isn't implementing many of the basic components the initiative requires. Among the problems: The city has not been working collaboratively with the District Attorney's Office on the front end. Dr. Kennedy's plan calls on the city to consult with my office before deciding which gangs to target. This would allow prosecutors to give input on the strength of potential cases so that focused deterrence efforts would be more accurate. The city is not using every possible means to target gang members. There are many ways to disrupt gang activity and the VRI calls for all of them to be leveraged. Stolen cable and electricity should be shut off. Houses that violate code should be shuttered. Gang members with child support arrears should be arrested. The city is not building enough federal cases. The most powerful way to keep offenders off the streets for significant periods of time is to build federal cases against them. This is why Chattanooga is funding a federal prosecutor. The city is not building gang activity cases for my office to prosecute. If a case doesn't meet federal criteria, the best way to ensure a maximum sentence is for investigators to prove crimes are being committed as part of a gang's business. This allows us to use enhancement factors in sentencing so we can ask a judge for extra prison time. Too many shooters are still on the streets. All of this year's homicides and a majority of shootings to date remain unsolved. The public is often unwilling to share information with police. That information could be vital to charging a violent offender with murder or attempted murder. To stop violence police must be able to put more shooters behind bars and in large part that requires the public's help. The city's police officers don't buy in to the initiative. At a VRI meeting with CPD officers last fall I was told the biggest obstacle to VRI success is a lack of officer buy-in. That same day came the announcement that 1 1 of the 12 members of the Street Crimes Response Team had asked to be reassigned. Ultimately, Mayor Berke and the city council bear responsibility for the success or failure of their own initiative. If implemented properly, the VRI can have a positive impact. But minor traffic citations and other low level arrests alone - no matter how many - will not curb violence, as no reasonable person would expect. Currently, the right cases are not reaching court with enough frequency to stop the violence. That is a problem I will seek to change with the creation of a Multi-Agency Gang Unit. This week I will be asking federal, state and local law enforcement agencies to join my office in a joint effort to hold gang offenders accountable for violent crimes throughout Hamilton County . Together, the unit's specialized investigators will focus on homicides, armed robberies, attempted murders, weapons and drug cases, as well as other violent offenses. I will have more to say about the multi-agency gang unit in the coming days. In the meantime, if any citizen, councilperson or not, has questions about Tennessee sentencing law or other rules prosecutors must follow, they can call our office at 423 209-7400. Our office hours are Monday through Friday, 8 :00am-4 :00pm. Neal Pinkston District Attorney General Leader of the Jund al Tawhid Battalion making the pledge of bayah (allegiance) to the Islamic State Another battalion from the Philippines-based Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG) has reportedly defected to the Islamic State in recent days. Their pledge of allegiance was recorded and released by the Islamic States Furat Media, a largely Russian-language propaganda media outlet. At least 22 fighters and one child from the former ASG battalion Jund al Tawhid are shown pledging their allegiance to Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al Baghdadi somewhere in the southern Philippines province of Sulu. Some of the fighters appear to be teenagers, while others are adults. Almost all of the jihadists are equipped with M16 or M4 assault rifles, which were likely captured from Filipino security forces. Jund al Tawhid joins two other ASG battalions which have defected to the Islamic State. Last month, Furat also released a video showing the Ansar al Sharia Battalion and the Marakah al Ansar Battalion pledging to Baghdadi. That video also featured the overall leader of ASG, the US-designated terrorist Isnilon Hapilon. The three now join several other groups in the region to join the Islamic States ranks. (See LWJ report, Philippines-based jihadist groups pledge allegiance to the Islamic State.) It is unclear if all of ASG has sided with the Islamic State or if individual battalions of the group continue to release videos showing their defections. Traditionally, ASG has been tied to al Qaeda. In June 2014, a master ASG bomb maker thought to have been killed in a drone strike in North Waziristan, Pakistan, turned up in the Philippines before being killed last year. The operative, Abdul Basit Usman, was wanted by the US for his involvement in multiple bombings in the Philippines and also had ties to JI. Additionally, ASG was funded and financed by Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, one of Osama bin Ladens brother-in-laws, according to Khaddafy Janjalani, the leader of Abu Sayyaf, before he was killed in 2006. Khalifa, an al Qaeda financier and facilitator, was killed by US special operations forces in Madagascar in 2006. In recent hostage videos released by ASG, no mention of the jihadists holding the hostages in the name of the Islamic State is made, rather the jihadists refer to themselves as being from ASG. It is unlikely that fighters loyal to the Islamic State would use the ASG moniker. Screenshots from the video: Caleb Weiss is a research analyst at FDD's Long War Journal and a senior analyst at the Bridgeway Foundation, where he focuses on the spread of the Islamic State in Central Africa. 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. Shabaab fighters after overrunning the base. Al Qaedas official branch in East Africa has reportedly overran a Somali military base southwest of Mogadishu, furthering its control in southern Somalia. While Somali officials have conceded the fall of the base, numbers have differed wildly on the total number of casualties. According to Shabaabs propaganda arm, Shahaada News on Telegram, the jihadists killed more than 70 members of government militias just 27 miles southwest of Mogadishu. The jihadist outlet reported that Shabaab used light and heavy weapons in the attack, seizing nine vehicles in the process. Shahaada News also released photos of the vehicles, as well as almost a dozen rocket-propelled grenades (RPG) and several crates of ammunition. While Shabaab claimed that more than 70 were killed, Somali officials told Reuters that only one soldier was killed in the battle and the rest were able to flee the base. Both Shabaab and Somali officials often exaggerate numbers, so without photo evidence it is difficult to assess just how many were killed in the attack on either side. Shabaab has been regaining ground in southern Somalia in 2016. Last month, Shabaab briefly recaptured the coastal town of Marka, which it originally lost in 2012. African Union (AU) forces recently retook the town. Nonetheless, Marka marked the third major town in a span of just a few weeks that Shabaab was able to wrestle African Union (AU) and Somali forces. On January 26, Shabaab marched into the towns of El Ade and Badhadhe after Kenyan forces withdrew, leaving a security vacuum. (See LWJ report, Shabaab regains ground in southern Somalia.) Shabaab has mounted attacks in the region despite the presence of a large African Union mission in Somalia. The jihadist group has also launched numerous suicide assaults on heavily guarded hotels in Mogadishu this year. It has continuously targeted African Union troops in southern Somalia, building on their operations in the central part of the country, Puntland and neighboring Kenya. In late November, Shabaab said its forces temporarily took control over a Kenyan town bordering Somalia. Photos released by Shabaab: Caleb Weiss is a research analyst at FDD's Long War Journal and a senior analyst at the Bridgeway Foundation, where he focuses on the spread of the Islamic State in Central Africa. 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. Leaders from the U.S. Congress and the Administration met in the Russell Senate Office Building to recognize Women's History Month and the Million Women Mentors movement. Million Women Mentors, an initiative of STEMconnector, announced its commitment of 650,000 Mentor pledges-- out of a goal of one million mentors by 2019-- to guide girls and women interested in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math careers. Edie Fraser, CEO of STEMconnector and MWM, has long championed diversity, STEM education and workforce development. With her team, she has built a respected consulting and communications firm, which covers 6,600 organizations and has over 150 paying members. MWM works in collaboration with more than 65 partners, 48 corporate sponsors, 35 state leadership teams, and thousands of groups and individuals interested in advancing the movement. Senator Bob Corker, a featured speaker at the event, was introduced by Sheila Boyington, owner of Chattanooga-based Thinking Media/Learning Blade who also serves as the National States chair for Million Women Mentors movement. Senator Corker used the platform to express the need for women in STEM and highlighted the Tennessee statewide adoption of the Learning Blade STEM career awareness curriculum for middle school students. Furthermore, he communicated how this need relates to his End Modern Slavery Initiative, which focuses on eliminating slavery and human trafficking around the globe. It is an absolute honor to not only introduce Senator Bob Corker at such a historic event, but also witness his support and leadership of the Million Women Mentors initiative in TN and nationally and dedication to the safety and success of both women and men, said Ms. Boyington. The attendees at the luncheon included over 20 Congressional and government leaders, plus corporate executives and representatives from nonprofits nationwide. These men and women include Senators Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY);Tammy Baldwin (D-WI); ), Mike Enzi (R-WY), Debbie Stabenow (D-MI); Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-NH); Maize Hirono (D-HI); Jeanne Shaheen (D-NH); John Boozman (R-AR); Sherrod Brown (D-OH); Cory Booker (D-NJ), Amy Klobuchar (D-MN); Joni Ernst (R-IA; Bob Casey (DPA); Congresswomen Carolyn Maloney (D-NY); Barbara Comstock (R-VA); Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL); Under Secretary of the USDA, Dr. Catherine Woteki. Terrorists struck an international airport in Brussels and a subway station not far from the European Unions headquarters earlier today. Initial casualty reports indicate that at least 34 people were killed and approximately 170 more were injured. Two explosions reportedly rocked the Brussels Airport and a third bomb was detonated at the Maelbeek station in downtown Brussels. The Amaq News Agency, a propaganda arm of the Islamic State, has issued a claim of responsibility on its social media sites. The claim can be seen above. Islamic State fighters carried out a series of bombings with explosive belts and devices on Tuesday, targeting an airport and a central metro station in the center of the Belgian capital Brussels, a country participating in the international coalition against the Islamic State, Amaqs statement reads in English. Later, the Islamic State issued a formal statement claiming bombings on its Twitter and Telegram sites, and threatened further attacks. A group of the soldiers of the Caliphate, wrapped in explosive belts and carrying explosive devices and machine guns, launched to target sites carefully chosen in Brussels, the capital of Belgium, to immerse inside Brussels airport and the metro station and kill a number of Crusaders, before detonating their explosive belts amidst their groupings, the Islamic State said, according to the SITE Intelligence Group, which translated the statement. We promise the Crusader states allied against the Islamic State with dark days, in response to their aggression against the Islamic State, and what is coming is worse and more bitter, the group threatened. Todays attacks in Belgium took place just four days after Belgian and French police arrested Salah Abdeslam, an Islamic State operative who is suspected of providing logistical support and explosives manufacturing for the terrorist team responsible for the Nov. 13, 2015 coordinated attacks in Paris. Another suspect, Mohamed Belkaid, was killed in a shootout during the raid in Brussels that netted Abdelslam. The Islamic State has long targeted Belgium. And todays attacks emphasize the persistent threats Europeans face. After the assault in Paris, French President Francois Hollande explained that the massacre was planned in Syria, organized in Belgium, [and] perpetrated on our soil with French complicity. Belgium was a key operational hub for that attack and other terrorist plots. The Islamic State has repeatedly said that Belgium is in its crosshairs. European counterterrorism officials identified a Belgian man, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, as a key figure in the Paris attacks. Abaaoud was subsequently killed during a raid by French authorities, but his network continues to pose a threat to France, Belgium and other European nations. Known terrorists such as Abaaoud and his comrades are slipping through the cracks because European officials are being forced to investigate more threats than ever. French officials linked Abaaoud to two other plots in France earlier in the 2015. According to the Associated Press, Abaaoud is thought to have been involved in an attack on a Paris-bound train and another on a church in the suburbs of Paris. Despite his involvement in these plots, Abaaoud continued to operate in Europe. And he did not keep a low profile. The Islamic State interviewed Abaaoud in the seventh issue of its English-language magazine Dabiq, which was released in February 2015. [See LWJ report, Key suspect in Paris attacks has been featured in Islamic State propaganda.] The cover of Dabiq 7 mocked Muslims who stood in unity with France over al Qaedas attack on the offices of Charlie Hebdo in Paris in January 2015. Dabiq described Abaaoud as a mujahid being pursued by Western Intelligence agencies for his jihad in Belgium. Two members of Abaaouds cell were killed in a shootout with Belgian police during a raid on their safe house in Verviers on Jan. 15, 2015, just one week after the massacre at Charlie Hebdos offices. In his interview with Dabiq, Abaaoud admitted that he and two accomplices, Abuz-Zubayr al-Baljiki (Khalid), and Abu Khalid al-Baljiki (Sufyan), traveled to Europe in order to terrorize the crusaders waging war against the Muslims. Abaaoud said Belgium was a target as the country is a member of the crusader coalition attacking the Muslims of Iraq and Sham [Syria]. After some difficulties in traveling to Belgium, the three jihadists were then able to obtain weapons and set up a safe house while we planned to carry out operations against the crusaders, he claimed. Abaaoud mocked Western intelligence services for failing to prevent him from entering Belgium and establish a cell, and then later failing to capture him after the Verviers raid. Allah blinded their vision and I was able to leave and come to Sham despite being chased after by so many intelligence agencies, he stated. All this proves that a Muslim should not fear the bloated image of the crusader intelligence. My name and picture were all over the news yet I was able to stay in their homeland, plan operations against them, and leave safely when doing so became necessary. Abaaoud said he was stopped by security officials after the Verviers raid and police failed to match him with a photograph of him that was obtained while he was in Syria. I was even stopped by an officer who contemplated me so as to compare me to the picture, but he let me go, as he did not see the resemblance, he said. Regardless of whether or not Abaaouds account is entirely accurate, it is clear that the Islamic States network in Europe has been able to launch attacks even though its operatives are sometimes well-known in Western counterterrorism and intelligence circles. Belgian authorities have repeatedly warned that their country could be attacked at any time. After the raid on Abaaouds cell in Verviers, Belgian federal magistrate Eric Van der Sypt said the Islamic State was on the verge of committing important terror attacks, the AP reported. Van der Sypt added, It shows we have to be extremely careful. An Islamic State fighter succeeded in executing an attack in Belgium in May 2014. Mehdi Nemmouche, a fighter who worked in the Islamic States jails in Syria, opened fire at a Jewish museum in Brussels, killing four people. Bill Roggio is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Editor of FDD's Long War Journal. Thomas Joscelyn is a Senior Fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies and the Senior Editor for 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. The US Department of State added the emir of the Islamic State-linked Mujahidin Indonesia Timur (MIT) to its list of specially designated global terrorists. Abu Warda Santoso, the MIT leader, swore allegiance to the Islamic State in 2014. His group was previously listed by the US as a terrorist group last year. Santoso, whose full nom de guerre is Abu Warda Santoso As Syarqi Al Indunisi, has frequently appeared in MIT propaganda in the past. He has called on Indonesians to attack Special Detachment 88 (Densus 88), the Indonesian counter-terrorism police force put in place to target jihadists after the Bali bombing in 2003. MIT, under Santosos leadership, has been responsible for numerous killings and kidnappings in Indonesia over the past few years, States designation noted. In August 2012, MIT killed two police officers; in September 2012, it conducted a bomb attack against an Indonesian police station; in November 2012, was responsible for the shooting of an Indonesian police chief; and in December 2012, it shot four Indonesian National Police (POLRI) Mobile Brigade (BRIMOB) personnel. Not listed in States designation was a June 2013 suicide bombing which targeted police headquarters in Poso. The suicide bomber was the only one to die in the attack. MIT claimed credit for the bombing in a statement released in October 2013, and warned of further attacks if the Indonesian government did not sever ties with the US and Australia. We inform you that you will not be safe until you stop diplomatic relations with America, Australia and the other countries that take part in the massacre against Muslims around the world, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Burma, Palestine, and elsewhere; and until you release our mujahideen and Muslim brothers in this country that you call terrorists, read the statement, which was translated by the SITE Intelligence Group. Santoso also called on Indonesians to reject Special Detachment 88, which he claimed has been slaughtering your parents and killing your children. He claimed Special Detachment 88 to be a tool of the US and Australia. Special Detachment 88 has captured and killed numerous Indonesian jihadists since it was created in June 2003. They [Special Detachment 88] are defending Australia and America, Santoso continued, according to the SITE Intelligence Group. They are soldiers infiltrated by Australia and the US to destabilize the existing system in Indonesia, especially to eradicate the Islamic Ummah [community] in Indonesia in any possible way, either by killing them, or giving money to people that would enter Christianity, or want to obey to laws that are not based on the Quran and the Sunnah. Santoso pledged allegiance to Abu Bakr al Baghdadi on July 1, 2014, just days after Baghdadi announced the formation of the Islamic State and was named its caliph. The US listed MIT as a terrorist entity in September 2015. MIT has become increasingly bold in its attacks on security forces, which includes the use of explosives and shootings, State proclaimed in its designation. 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. This Associated Press article on the growing influence of the Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization Force (PMF or Hashed al Shaabi) is a must read. The Long War Journal has warned about the danger of the Popular Mobilization Force since it was established in the summer of 2014 after the Islamic State broke the Iraqi military and police. The Long War Journal reported from the beginning that the Popular Mobilization Force is dominated by Iranian-supported militias such as Asaib Ahl al Haq, Hezbollah Brigades, Badr Brigades, and Sadrs so-called Peace Brigades, as well as offshoots like Saraya Khorasani, Harakat al Nujaba, Kataib Imam Ali, Sayyed al Shuhada, while being directed by Iranian Qods Force pawn Abu Mahdi al Muhandis. Despite these facts, the US military has either directly or indirectly aided the PMF and by extension, Iran, by launching airstrikes while the PMF was on the offensive, and sent weapons to Iraq that are then funneled by the government to the PMF. The AP article is important because it neatly summarizes how the PMF has grown to become a dominant force in both Iraqi politics as well as in the military sphere. Iraqi officials are now worried that the PMF will supplant the military and government, as the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps did in Iran. A militia commander was even quoted stating that the PMF wishes to model itself after the IRGC: We want to be a third power in Iraq, alongside the army and police, al-Jazaeery [the commander of Saraya Khorasani] said. Why cant the Hashd be like the Revolutionary Guard in Iran? An excerpt of the AP article is below. Note that Iraqi militias are currently fighting in Syria, militia commanders have threatened to attack US forces in Iraq and beyond and said they would overthrow Iraqs government if ordered to do so by Irans supreme leader, while the militias have attacked and intimidated Iraqi minorities. From the AP: Two top generals warned that the army could eventually come to blows with the militias, known collectively as the Hashd, Arabic for mobilization. They (the militias) have now infiltrated the government and are meddling in politics, said Ali Omran, commander of the armys 5th Infantry Division and a veteran of numerous battles against IS. I told the Hashd people that one day I and my men may fight them. The more than 50 Shiite militias in Iraq have between 60,000 and 140,000 fighters, according to estimates from the government and the Hashd itself. They are backed by tanks and weapons, and have their own intelligence agency, operations rooms and court of law. The larger militias, like Asaib Ahl al-Haq, the Hezbollah Brigades, Badr and the Peace Brigades, have been in place since soon after the 2003 ouster of Saddam Hussein. They are linked to political parties, effectively forming armed branches for politicians. But the ranks of the militias swelled dramatically after IS overran nearly a third of Iraq in the summer of 2014 and Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, Iraqs top Shiite cleric, called on able-bodied males to fight IS. At the time, tens of thousands turned out. Those same militias now want to remain a permanent, independent armed force and are resisting attempts to integrate them into the military or police, the AP found from interviews with more than 15 government officials, army generals and militia leaders and visits to Tikrit and Samarra, Sunni-majority areas where the militias now hold power. The militias insist they have earned a special status, pointing to the 5,000 militiamen killed and 16,000 wounded fighting IS. Those who sacrificed more are entitled to more, said Hamed al-Jazaeery, head of the al-Khorasani Brigades militia. What is written with blood cannot be removed. It is not ink on paper. Al-Jazaeery wears the black turban of a cleric and the camouflage fatigues of a fighter. The walls of his office are adorned with photos of the leader of Irans Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and its current supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Other photos show al-Jazaeery posing with Iranian Gen. Qassem Suleimani, the powerful Revolutionary Guard figure who helped organize the Iraqi militias against IS. We want to be a third power in Iraq, alongside the army and police, al-Jazaeery said. Why cant the Hashd be like the Revolutionary Guard in Iran? The model of the Revolutionary Guard, often cited by militia leaders, would be a dramatic change for Iraqs militias. In Iran, the Guard is an elite force independent of and better armed than the military, tasked with protecting the Shiite cleric-led power structure. It is effectively a state within a state, rivaling the political strength of Irans supreme leader. 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. Bulgari Hotel, London Offers Royal Package to Celebrate Queen's 90th Birthday Available for 2,860 per person, the package can include the following:Day 1:Chauffeur service from airport to hotel and then on to a private fine wine tasting at Berry Brothers & Rudd in the historic Royal Quarter of St James's. Guests will then have the option to travel to The Queen's grocers, Fortnum & Masons or Hyde Park for a speciality Fortnum & Mason Afternoon Tea, served by Fortnum's very own butler.Day 2:A tour led by a Blue Badge Tour Guide of: the Royal Parks; the Duke & Duchess of Cambridge's Wedding Route; Westminster Abbey; Crown Jewels. The day culminates with a visit to Kensington Palace, the London home of William and Kate, followed by a Royal Afternoon Tea in the Orangery.Day 3:River-boat trip with Humphreys of Henley to Henley on Thames. This includes a personal tour and lunch at the historic Cliveden House.All experiences can be tailored to each guest and their interests.The 85-room Bulgari Hotel, London is a hidden gem in London's exclusive Knightsbridge neighborhood and opened in 2012 as the first brand-new luxury hotel build in the city in 40 years. Silver is the underlying theme of the hotel, in tribute to the luxury Italian brand's silversmith origins. The hotel celebrates its silver screen heritage with the luxurious 47-seat Richard Attenborough screening room with a curated library of more than 200 new and classic films available to hotel guests. The hotel has "Movie Mondays" in which they host monthly pre-release screenings. A nearly 22,000 sq. ft award-winning spa is spread over two floors and features a swimming pool and fitness center offering state of the art equipment and wellness programs. Culinary options include Rivea London by Alain Ducasse and Il Bar, the place to enjoy an Italian aperitivo and take in London's social scene.Visit website: Sandals Offers the Caribbean's First Over-the-Water Suites These gorgeous over-the-water suitesper night, convey an intimate connection to the Caribbean Sea. From floating water hammocks to glass floors, these Tahiti-style private villas deliver an immersive journey of the Caribbean's finest turquoise waters and rich marine life.Couples can admire the majestic beauty of the ocean from their private infinity pool or either of their two outdoor showers. They won't even have to step outside to appreciate the Caribbean's best crystal-clear waters. Every suite captures the height of luxury with stylish king-size beds made from teak adorned with soft Egyptian linens and plush pillows for the ultimate sleep experience.Each villa will receive their own personal butler, trained in accordance to the exacting standards of the Guild of Professional Butlers, who provide butlers to nobility and celebrities.Sandals Royal Caribbean, Mahoe Bay, Montego Bay, Jamaica. Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchills great-grandson is travelling to Chattanooga, in order to deliver a special invitation to some students at McCallie. Former Lord Mayor of the City of Westminster, Duncan Sandys (pronounced Sands) is to invite the McCallie School Band to participate in the 31st New Years Day Parade and Festival in London on Jan. 1, 2017. The highly prestigious turn of year tradition is established as the biggest event of its kind anywhere in the world, said officials. More than 8,000 performers from all corners of the globe entertain a street audience of around 500,000 and a global TV audience of tens of millions. The Tornado Wind Bands performance will be made available to all TV stations in Tennessee and the rest of the USA free of charge and will be streamed live around the world. Executive Director of the parade Robert Bone and his daughter Lizzie Bone, operations director of the event, will accompany the former lord mayor. The office of Lord Mayor carries many civic duties and responsibilities in the city at the heart of government, state, church and royal residence and includes hosting the highly prestigious street parade and festival. Patrons of the event include the current lord mayor of Westminster and senior representatives of the American community in London. The Former Lord Mayor of Westminster Sandys will be at McCallie Wednesday afternoon to issue the invitation. No more than 18 hours before a scheduled court hearing, the FBI is now saying it doesnt need any help from Apple to get into San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farooks iPhone 5c. So, as of Monday night, the hearing has been called off, and the February 16 court order that started Apples battle with the FBI has been stayed. Wait, what? On Sunday, March 20, 2016, an outside party demonstrated to the FBI a possible method for unlocking Farooks iPhone, the Department of Justice wrote in a Monday afternoon court filing. Testing is required to determine whether it is a viable method that will not compromise data on Farooks iPhone. If the method is viable, it should eliminate the need for the assistance from Apple set forth in the All Writs Act Order in this case. Early Monday night, Apple held a conference call with reporters to discuss the latest development, which surprised Apple as much as everyone else whos been following the case. After all, the FBI and its director, James Comey, have insisted multiple times that only Apple has the expertise to break into this phone. This premise was the linchpin to the FBIs request for Apple to write GovtOS, a version of iOS that would run on Farooks phone and remove the Erase Data feature that would wipe the phone after 10 incorrect guesses at his passcode. In fact, warrants issued under the All Writs Act need to pass some tests (established by the courts in prior cases), and one of them is whether such a warrant is necessary and appropriate. If the FBI is now claiming it doesnt need Apples help, its suddenly uncertain whether that court order would pass the necessary test. The stay, issued by Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym on Monday afternoon, reads in part: As there is presently uncertainty surrounding the governments need for Apples assistance, the courts February 16, 2016 Order Compelling Apple, Inc. to Assist Agents in Search, in case number ED 15451-M, is hereby stayed, pending further submissions in this case. Its not over yet, though. The stay also gives the government a deadline of April 5 to file a status report. If the FBI is indeed able to get into Farooks phone without destroying its data, the government might choose to drop the issue altogether. Of course, if the government is successful in accessing Farooks phone, then Apple will be left with unanswered questions of its ownthe first being, How exactly did the FBI get inside the phone? This was a bolt from the blue from them, said Apples lawyers. Indeed, the company says it had no idea the FBI was still attempting to break the iPhones encryption on its own. Right now, Apple doesnt know howor even ifthe phone was breached. But theyre curious. Apples lawyers said that if the government decides it wants to pursue the case, the company would want to find out who the government consulted to get into the phone without Apples assistance, and what method they were offered. If the government drops the case, Apple still hopes the FBI would share what it learned about iOSs vulnerabilities. So for the time being, the case is on hold. Judge Pym wants a status update from the government by April 5. The stay is embedded below. Apple-FBI March 21 order 2016 marks the 20th anniversary of the Carson Scholars Fund. What started with awarding 25 scholarships has grown into a network of over 7,300 scholars. The Carson Scholars Fund (CSF) is pleased to announce that 12 Hamilton County Schools students have been newly named 2016 Carson Scholars. Each year the CSF recognizes a select group of high achieving students in grades 4 11 who demonstrate outstanding academic achievement and humanitarian qualities. Students receive a $1,000 college scholarship award and the coveted honor of being named a Carson Scholar. In addition, 25 students have renewed their Carson Scholar status. These previous winners have maintained high academic standards and a strong commitment to their communities and are being recognized for their efforts. The Hamilton County Schools recipients are attached. These scholastically gifted students and others from surrounding areas will be honored at a special awards ceremony on Sunday, April 24, at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga beginning at 12 p.m. John Mercer will host the program. Mr. Cordell Carter, II, CEO of TechTown Foundation, will be presented with the Trailblazer Award. To date, the Carson Scholars Fund has awarded over 7,300 scholarships to promising young students in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. This year 625 students were named 2016 Carson Scholars. These students represent all 50 states and Washington, D.C. In addition, 841 students renewed their Carson Scholar status. The Carson Scholars Fund is a non-profit 501(c)(3) public charity founded in 1994 by Dr. Benjamin Carson and his wife, Candy. The Carson Scholars Fund is dedicated to impacting the nation in a positive way by cultivating future leaders who are academically talented and socially conscious. The newest officer in the ranks of the Dalton Police Department was confirmed on Tuesday morning by a unanimous vote of the Public Safety Commission. Officer Caleb Morang graduated from the police academy last Friday. He was confirmed by a 4-0 vote (PSC member Carlos Calderin did not attend Tuesdays meeting). Officer Morang is a 2011 graduate of Rome High School and attended classes at Georgia Northwestern in pursuit of a business degree. He comes to the Dalton Police Department after two year career with the Floyd County Sheriffs Office where he served as a jailer. Officer Morangs training now continues with the DPDs mini-academy and then he will hit the road for the departments Field Training Officer (FTO) program where he will ride and train with and be evaluated by veteran officers. Officer Morang will receive his badge Wednesday at a ceremony at the Police Services Center. 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. A series of explosions across Brussels has left Belgium in shock. This is what we know so far... Reports began breaking at around 7am (UK time) of two loud explosions at Zaventem airport, 15 kilometres outside Brussels. Eyewitnesses described glass shattering and smoke filling the main terminal. 'We heard the walls shake and dust began falling from the ceiling,' said Sky News reporter, Alex Rossi, who was there at the time. 'Theres no doubt in my mind that the explosion happened in the building.' According to Anna Ahronheim, Defense Correspondent for i24 News, a suicide bomber had entered the terminal, before detonating an explosive vest. The number of casualties is still unconfirmed, but reports suggest up to 13 individuals could have been killed, and more than 20 others injured. As all flights were grounded - and any travellers were urged to stay away from the airport - reports of up to four more explosions across Brussels began to break on Twitter. Meanwhile, Belgium authorities raised the country's terror threat to 'maximum', and confirmed a bomb had been detonated at Maelbeek metro station - close to the EU building. Local media are confirming that at least 15 individuals were killed in the explosion at Maelbeek (pronounced 'mal-bec'), and judging from the images emerging from the scene on social media (which we've chosen not to publish here), the bomb appears to have detonated within one of the train carriages. Reports are claiming up to 80 individuals could be injured. At 10am, Michael Horowitz, Head of Business Development for the Levantine Group, tweeted that another explosion had been heard in Rue de la Loi, near the European Commission - clarifying that it wasn't certain if it was another attack, or the controlled detonation of a suspicious object. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel released a statement just before 11am. 'What weve feared has happened, we were hit by unforeseen attacks,' he said, adding that there was nothing to link the attacks to Salah Abdeslam, who was behind the Paris Attacks in November, and was arrested last week. 'This is a dark moment for our nation. We need calm and solidarity. We know there are many dead, many injured.' Saint-Pierre University Hospital in Brussels is asking people in the area to donate blood following the attacks. The view of Maelbeek from the European Commission. Picture credit: Francesca Jenner We spoke to Francesca Jenner, 28, a communications consultant at the European Commission, who works next to Maelbeek station. 'It's so lucky I didn't take the metro this morning. I was running late and got a lift into work with my boyfriend - we had the radio on in the car and that's when i heard about the explosions at Zaventem. At first we thought we'd misheard. We were totally shocked and upset and immediately worked out if we knew anyone travelling today - thankfully not. But it's getting close to the Easter holidays so there's lots of people travelling home at the moment. 'I work right in the centre of the EU district where the metro explosions went off. When i got to the office i was feeling worried but still fairly calm. It may sound strange but the airport is on the outskirts of town so it felt a bit removed at that point. I was talking about the awful events at the airport with colleagues when one of them got a text message from her boyfriend saying a bomb had just gone off at Maelbeek metro station - that's when the reality really hit. It feels different when it's happening outside your door. I immediately checked the Belgian news sites to find out more. 'My office is two minutes walk from Maelbeek metro so I could see smoke from the blast, and lots of people huddled together on the street from the window. There have been sirens blaring outside all morning and helicopters flying overhead. We've been told it's not safe to leave the building so we're basically on lockdown inside the office. Just been informed by a senior official there's a lot of military staff outside on the street who are looking for something or someone... Hoping there aren't any more attacks coming... People at work are mostly staying calm, but everyone is talking about what's going on and constantly checking the news for updates and any information.' We'll continue to update this as events develop. FOREIGN EMBASSY PHONE NUMBERS: Australian +32 2 286 05 00 British:+32 2 287 62 11 Canada: +32 2 741 06 11 USA: +32 2 811 40 00 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. Celebrities wear high street clothing too, and here's our guide to the hottest A-List looks to shop right now... We are always more than excited to spot celebrities wearing high street fashion, not only because it confirms our unwavering obsession with the high street as totally worthwhile, but it also means we can get our hands on a slice of A-list style, without breaking the bank. Kendall Jenner, Alexa Chung and Olivia Palermo are all firm fans of hero high street buys, alongside The Duchess Of Cambridge, who regularly steps out in Reiss or Hobbs, and sees said item sell out instantly as a result. Luckily for us, not all items sell out at top speed, with many purse-friendly buys passing us by as we assume the look is undoubtedly super posh and likely to be designer. From Topshop to H&M, ASOS to Kurt Geiger, we've rounded-up all the best celebrities wearing high street clothing. Our new style crush Emily Ratajkowski recently shared a snap on Instagram of her ultra-chic suede shirt dress, which at 39.99, is perfectly priced to amp up your off-duty wardrobe. Just add some white plimsolls and a chunky grey coat to polish off your new celebrity-inspired outfit. Those in the know will remember that suede skirt from Marks & Spencer, which first made it's debut on Alexa Chung, swiftly followed by Olivia Palermo, and as a result sold out at an alarming rate. Good news then that said skirt is back in stock, and is every bit as chic as it was first time around. Meanwhile, celebrity pals Lena Dunham and Taylor Swift have been slipping into some seriously cool ASOS buys, giving us some top styling inspo, as has Poppy Delevingne in her striking Topshop Unique outfit. Most recently though, Naomie Harris killed it at the press night performance of 'The Bodyguard' in London wearing Self-Portrait's plunge neck prairie dress with an organza slip detail from the brand's Pre-Fall 2016 collection. The Duchess of Cambridge The Duchess was spotted out and about carrying the velvet Hilary clutch bag from Spanish label Pretty Ballerinas Taylor Swift, November 2016 Taylor Swift wears a Hunter Original Wool coat whilst out and about in New York. Teyana Taylor Teyana Taylor wore this luxe velvet Zara suit to the WEEN Awards in New York. Lily Collins Lily Collins wore this gorgeous Self Portrait dress on NBC's The Today Show. (opens in new tab) Isla Fisher VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Isla Fisher wears the Topshop badge Lucas jeans whilst out and about in LA. They can be yours for too for just 55. Olga Kurylenko in Self-Portrait French actress and model Olga Kurylenko wore this pretty Self-Portrait resort 2017 Look (the Beaded Sequin Mini Dress), to the premiere of 'Snowden' during the 60th BFI London Film Festival at Odeon Leicester Square on Saturday 15th October 2016. Kate Middleton The Duchess of Cambridge stepped out in Canada in a classic pair of white Supergas. Gigi Hadid Gigi Hadid styles herH&M bustier (29.99) from their AW16 collection with band T-shirt whilst out and about during Milan Fashion week. Naomi Harris in Self-Portrait VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) For all the latest celebrities wearing high street fashion, click through to see (and shop) the lot... Pippa Middleton in LK Bennett Newly-engaged Pippa Middleton wore a floral LK Bennett dress to the Frost Summer party in aid of the British Heart Foundation in London. Pippa is Ambassador for Prevention for the charity. Fearne Cotton Here's Fearne Cotton, out and about in London wearing a gorgeous 70s-inspired maxi dress by H&M. Olivia Palermo in Self-Portrait Olivia Palermo (opens in new tab) rocked Self-Portrait's gorgeous 'Amelia (opens in new tab)' dress, from the brand's Pre-Fall 2016 collection, to the Love: from Cave to Keyboard, Imagined by Pepsi exhibition opening in New York City. Alexa Chung Alexa wore these gorgeous Zara (and that's TRF Zara so they're even more affordable at just 30) Mary-Jane's while filming a TV commercial in New York. (opens in new tab) Elle McPherson VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Elle McPherson was spotted in this achingly cool faux suede Karen Millen coat. Kate Middleton Duchess Kate was spotted at the Buckingham Palace garden party, clutching onto a rather chic nude box bag that's only from LK Bennett, and luckily, it's still available now. That's our wedding season clutch bag sorted. (opens in new tab) Daisy Lowe wearing Velvet VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Daisy Lowe was snapped on Instagram wearing this ultra-soft cashmere breton top from Velvet. (opens in new tab) Millie Mackintosh wearing River Island VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Heading to a festival (or two) this summer? You won't want to be without these blue high waist shorts from River Island, as seen on Millie Mackintosh. (opens in new tab) Emily Ratajkowski VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Emily Ratajkowski slipped into this cool cold shoulder top from Reformation. (opens in new tab) Agyness Deyn VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Agyness Deyn showed her support for fellow Brit model Alexa Chung, belting-up in this Archive by Alexa khaki trench coat. (opens in new tab) Maisie Williams VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Maisie Williams slipped into this pair of uber-cool Adidas trainers ahead of a recent appearance at BBC Radio 1. (opens in new tab) Lily Aldridge in Reformation VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Addicted to shirt dresses? Lily Aldridge stepped out in quite possibly the coolest white version we've ever seen. Bravo, Lily. Millie Mackintosh in Spirit of Rue Bikini VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Millie Mackintosh shared this Instagram snap wearing the perfect spring summer bikini. Vanessa Hudgens in The Jet Set Diaries VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Vanessa Hudgens shared this Instagram snap, and we can't avoid that achingly cool striped sun dress from The Jet Set Diaries. (opens in new tab) Poppy Delevingne In Solid & Striped VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Poppy Delevingne modelled her very own one piece gingham design for Solid & Striped on the brand's Instagram page. (opens in new tab) Laura Jackson In Ganni VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) TV presenter Laura Jackson gave us all a lesson in spring layering, throwing on this chic lace Ganni dress over a classic breton t-shirt. Olivia Palermo One of the many reasons we love Olivia Palermo is her love of high street, seen here in this sleek silky bomber from Zara. (opens in new tab) Emily Ratajkowski VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Emily Ratajkowski was spotted at Coachella wearing this fun floaty floral slip dress from ASOS. (opens in new tab) Hailey Baldwin In H&M VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Hailey Baldwin was spotted at Coachella wearing off-duty denim shorts and a white crop top from H&M. (opens in new tab) Dakota Fanning In Reformation VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Dakota Fanning stepped out in this achingly cool powder blue shirt dress from Reformation. (opens in new tab) Pixie Lott In Jovonna VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Pixie Lott took on the trend of the season and stepped out in this chic white cold shoulder top from Jovonna. (opens in new tab) Whitney Port In Madewell VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Whitney Port stepped out wearing one of our favourite denim brands, Madewell. Wear yours with espadrilles and super sized sunnies for the ultimate spring look. Miranda Kerr in Self-Portrait VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Miranda Kerr joined the celebrity set slipping into Self-Portrait. Seen attending a press event in Tokyo, Miranda opted for the Daisy Guipure monochrome mini dress. (opens in new tab) Emma Roberts In ASOS VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) We spied an ever-so-stylish Emma Roberts wearing none other than a ruffle front blouse from ASOS. The good news? It's still in stock and can be all yours for just 32. Laura Whitmore VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Looking for a cool logo sweater? take your cue from Laura Whitmore and snap-up this 'Kale' number for just 45 from SEASOUL & SNOW. Kate Bosworth in River Island Kate Bosworth sporting River Island tan boots while out and about in LA. How much you ask? Well, these beauties will only set you back 95. We'll race you for them! Chrissy Teigen Chrissy Teigen roaming the streets of LA in One Teaspoon 'Le Homme Awesome Baggies,' which would only set you back 110. Jamie Chung Jamie Chung stepping out in LA in March 2016 in a high-fash ensemble. Loving that blue skirt? You're in luck. It's Related Apparel and costs 125. Olivia Palermo in Topshop Olivia Palermo trotted around Paris Fashion Week in March 2016 in Topshop and costs 39. Olivia Palermo In Topshop At London Fashion Week, Feb 2016 Always open to new ideas and brands, Olivia often mixes together high street and high end, just as she did at the recent Topshop Unique show. Nicky Hilton in Topshop In early January 2016, we spotted Nicky Hilton Rothschild in Topshop wearing a leopard print coat, as she went about her errands in West Hollywood, LA. Kate Middleton Wearing one of her favourite high street brands, Reiss, Kate stunned in a houndstooth coat, protecting herself from the cold British weather as she attended another royal event. (opens in new tab) Gigi Hadid In Topshop VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Gigi Hadid's gorgeous camel coat is a Topshop Unique special and is still in stock at 225. Bella Thorne VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Love Bella Thorne's Christmas jumper? This quirky festive knit can be all yours for just 13.21. (opens in new tab) Hailey Baldwin In Kurt Geiger VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Hailey Baldwin is the latest celeb to slip into some over-the-knee boots, and if you love her daring look, you can snap-up Hailey's exact pair from Kurt Geiger, now. (opens in new tab) Amy Poehler In Zara VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Amy Poehler stepped out to celebrate her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in this unbelievably chic floral dress from Zara. Kylie Jenner In VFILES Sweater VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Kylie Jenner shared this sweet sunset snap on her Instagram, showing off her freshly dyed green locks, and looked ultra-cool in this red sweatshirt from VFILES. (opens in new tab) Lottie Moss In Topshop Boutique VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Love Lottie Moss' pink party dress? Good news then, as it's from Topshop and it's still in stock. Taylor Swift In UGG Boots and Ray Ban Sunglasses VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Taylor Swift has her pick of the crop when it comes to fashion, so we were pleasantly suprised to see this fun snap on Instagram, where the stunning 25-year-old was seen taking some time off from her busy schedule, wearing UGG boots, Ray Ban sunnies and a cosy Babaton Johannes jumper. (opens in new tab) Angela Scanlon In River Island VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Angela Scanlon stepped out looking ultra-chic navy trench coat from River Island. (opens in new tab) Lilah Parsons In New Look VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Lilah Parsons ditched the designer gear in favour of this super-chic coat and faux fur scarf combo from New Look. (opens in new tab) Alexa Chung Wearing Ray Bans VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Alexa Chung takes on our favourite sunnies style, seen here posing up a storm in a retro pair of Ray Bans. (opens in new tab) Kendall Jenner Wearing Ugg Boots VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) We've long been fans of the Ugg Boot, and it seems we're not the only ones. Kendall Jenner seems to be a firm fan of the ultra-fluffy sheepskin style, seen here sharing her love for them ti her 42 million Instagram fans. (opens in new tab) Emma Roberts Wearing Topshop VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Emma Roberts has her pick of the crop when it comes to wardrobe choices, so we were more than suprised to see the style-savvy star slip into some Topshop. We love how Miss Roberts has toughened up her look with a chunky biker jacket and a peep toe lace-up boot. Emily Ratajkowski Wearing Misguided VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Who knew Emily Ratajkowski loved Misguided? The good news is that this achingly cool ribbed knit top is still in stock. Just add black flares and a longline coat to make this knit work for your winter wardrobe. (opens in new tab) Alexa Chung In Topman VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Forget Topshop, Alexa Chung is wearing Topman. Sharing this candid snap with her 2 million Instagram followers, the Brit beauty wore this monochrome knit from her pal Nick Grimshaw's collection for Topman. (opens in new tab) Olivia Palermo In Zara VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Olivia Palermo is never one to miss a trend, and is regularly seen in some sort of designer must-have, styled-up to perfection, as always. So we were pleased to see the former reality star championing the high street, seen here in a billowing boho blouse from Zara. The good news? It's still in stock, and can be all yours for just 49.99. (opens in new tab) Laura Bailey In Etre Cecile VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Laura Bailey took on the logo too trend in this ultra-chic Etre Cecile t-shirt. (Instagram: @laurabaileylondon) (opens in new tab) Emma Roberts In Kurt Geiger VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Emma Roberts wrapped up in serious style, stepping out in the coolest high-shine boots from Kurt Geiger. (Instagram: @elkincollection) Kate Upton In Theodora & Callum VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Kate Upton shared this super-sweet snap on Instagram, and that chic printed scarf instantly caught our eye. Team this Theodora & Callum scarf with your new winter coat for an instant shot of colour. (opens in new tab) Lilah Parsons In H&M VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Lilah Parsons takes on the hottest coat of the season, the suede trench. Sharing this fun snap on her Instagram page, Lilah is teams her suede H&M trench coat with some leather trousers and a fine stripe knit. Millie Mackintosh In Millie Mackintosh VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Millie Mackintosh is seen here in her very own collection, wearing this figure-hugging navy velvet jacket. Take your cue from Millie and wear yours with some black leather trousers for maximum impact. (opens in new tab) Coco Rocha In Kurt Geiger VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Coco Rocha shared this fun snap on her Instagram page, showcasing her super-chic look, but also her sky-high lace-up red heels from Kurt Geiger. The perfect choice for party season? We say yes. (opens in new tab) Millie Mackintosh In Russell & Bromley Boots VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Millie Mackintosh took on the coolest boot style of the season, and stepped out in this pair of grey over-the-knee boots from Russell & Bromley that are still available now. Wear with skinny jeans and a chunky grey cashmere knit for maximum style points. (opens in new tab) Kendall Jenner In ASOS Denim Jumpsuit VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Kendall makes this ASOS white denim jumpsuit work for daytime, teaming hers with a fluid trench coat and some geek chic glasses. (opens in new tab) Alexa Chung In Marks & Spencer VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Alexa's standout suede skirt is back, and we predict it won't stick around for too long, so snap up your version pronto. (opens in new tab) Poppy Delevingne In Topshop VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Poppy Delevinge stepped out to attend the Topshop Unique SS16 show, wearing, you guessed it, Topshop Unique. And the good news there is, you can get your hands on this chic floral frock as it's just landed in store. Taylor Swift In ASOS Taylor Swift has her pick of the crop when it comes to coats, so we were pleasantly suprised to see this powder blue number comes from none other than our beloved ASOS. (opens in new tab) Kendall Jenner In Kurt Geiger VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Kendall Jenner cut a cool figure in Paris, wearing this ultra-chic bag from Kurt Geiger. (opens in new tab) Atlanta De Cadenet In Topshop VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Atlanta De Cadenet looked seriously cool during LFW, and she did so with a little help from Topshop. And that standout leopard print coat is stil in stock. Buy now, wear with everything in your current wardrobe. (opens in new tab) Emily Ratajkowsi In H&M VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Love Emily Ratajkowsi? Love her style? You're in luck. Shop her suede shirt dress now on H&M. (opens in new tab) Cressida Bonas In Topshop VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) Cressida Bonas is another firm fan of Topshop, and it's easy to see why. This black lace dress is a winning look, and is perfect for the upcoming party season. Lena Dunham In ASOS Looking for something showstopping? Take your cue from Lena Dunham who totally nailed it in this ASOS number. (opens in new tab) Olivia Palermo In Marks & Spencer VIEW NOW (opens in new tab) If it's good enough for Olivia Palermo (and Alexa Chung), it's definitely alright by us. The St. Lawrence Seaway Management Corporation (SLSMC) marked the opening of the Seaways 58th navigation season today, with the transit of Canada Steamship Lines Thunder Bay through Lock 3 on the Welland Canal. The ship, carrying a load of road salt, will be replenishing stocks depleted by ice storms which repeatedly struck Eastern Canada over the winter. We certainly welcome the warmer weather. A return to an opening in the third week of March provides our clients with the opportunity to move cargo in a timely manner, and make the most of the navigation season said Terence Bowles, President and CEO of the SLSMC. Allister Paterson, President of Canada Steamship Lines, served as the keynote speaker at the opening. Its an honour for CSL to be opening the Seaway this year with Thunder Bay, one of our state-of-the-art Trillium Class self-unloading Lakers. Like her five sister ships, this vessel is part of a new generation of vessels in the Lakes that are more energy efficient, environmentally-friendly, reliable and safe said Paterson. The ongoing investment in new vessels by a variety of Seaway carriers underscores our customers faith in the future of the waterway said the SLSMCs Bowles. In parallel with our customers investments, the Seaways award winning modernization program is now well-over 50% complete, with Hands-Free Mooring operational at eight of the Seaways locks. We are making steady progress in bringing about gains in efficiency and safety for all concerned, ensuring a highly competitive transportation system for years to come. K+S Windsor Salt ships the majority of the production coming from its Ojibway Mine in Windsor via the Great Lakes / Seaway System. Francois Allard, Director Marine Distribution for K+S Windsor Salt Ltd., said: Not only is the Seaway transportation system the most cost-effective way to reach our markets, it also minimizes our impact on the environment. The Thunder Bays transit from the Ojibway mine to Bowmanville takes almost 1,000 truckloads off Ontario highways. Its important that all levels of government continue to invest in infrastructure along this waterway and we applaud the modernization of the lock system. The Great Lakes St. Lawrence Seaway System continues to be an environmentally sustainable, vital route for commerce in the global supply chain, said Betty Sutton, Administrator of the U.S. Saint Lawrence Seaway Development Corporation. The Great Lakes region, North Americas Opportunity Belt, is a thriving and influential destination and the Seaway System connects this region to the world. Businesses are choosing to move their cargo through the Seaway System because of the economic benefits, safety, and reliability of our waterway, and its direct access to the heartland of North America. In terms of the outlook for 2016, the SLSMCs Terence Bowles noted that a lower Canadian dollar may spur more Canadian exports this year. The combination of a rebound in Canadian manufacturing activity, a solid U.S. economy, and the prospect of more trade with Europe brings about several catalysts which may boost Seaway tonnage, said Bowles. Pentair, a global leader in creating sustainable water solutions, announced today its commitment to open two Application Centers dedicated to helping municipal, industrial and commercial companies better manage water use. The commitment is being announced in conjunction with Pentair's participation at the White House Water Summit, taking place today in honor of the United Nations' World Water Day. The Summit brings together public and private companies in an effort to catalyze ideas and actions to help build a sustainable and secure water future through innovative science and technology. "As the world's growing population puts increasing demands on our precious water resources, Pentair is committed to continued innovation to help customers produce more food, energy and efficiencies from each drop of water," said Randall J. Hogan, Pentair Chairman and CEO. "To that end, these centers will help accelerate new innovation development by engaging our customers and others to innovate, validate and collaborate as we work to help municipal, industrial and commercial companies reduce their water footprint." The Pentair Application Centers will be established in the United States over the next three years. The centers will focus on industrial water reuse in manufacturing, one of the largest users of fresh water, and water stewardship in food and beverage processing- areas of focus where Pentair has proven expertise working with global customers as well as in its own manufacturing facilities. For instance, at its site in Conroe, Texas, Pentair has engineered closed-loop water systems to cool production equipment and machinery, as well as a water reuse system for the wastewater produced during manufacturing. In total, the efforts have reduced the site's water consumption by 95 percent. "Our innovative solutions help companies reuse water, reduce waste, and save money," said Hogan. "We are implementing this strategy at our operations worldwide to improve and reduce our own use of water, as well." Increasing Access to Sustainable, Safe Water In addition to efforts to help customers better manage water resources, Pentair is working to transform the way safe water is sustainably delivered to people in need. Through Project Safewater, the company's holistic approach to providing safe water solutions, Pentair collaborates with a range of partners with innovative approaches-combining technology, micro-enterprise business models, and scientific research-to provide sustainable access to safe water. Since 2006, Pentair has implemented numerous Project Safewater programs around the world, providing clean, safe drinking water to more than 2.8 million people. Its initial Safewater initiative, launched in 2006 in Colon, Honduras has enabled the community of 300,000 to sustainably operate more than 200 Safewater stations, reducing the incidence of water borne illness by 80 percent. Attention landing force, standby for call aways, comes over the 1MC. Upon hearing the call, Marines and sailors begin hastily throwing packs on their backs and grabbing their weapons from the armory. The loud clang of metal hatches rings through the spaces of the ship and the thud of boots on the deck can be heard while people rush to get their gear ready. The 1MC continues to call out while the Marines and sailors make their way through the cramped passageways trying to make it to the well deck and flight deck on time. Once they reach their designated departure areas they board AAV-P7/A1 Amphibious Assault Vehicles, Landing Craft, Air Cushioned hovercraft and helicopters and prepare to assault the beach. The Marines and sailors of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit joined almost 20,000 service members from four different countries to conduct a combined amphibious assault and simulated follow-on actions as part of Ssang Yong 16 in South Korea. Ssang Yong, which means Twin Dragons, is a biennial combined amphibious exercise conducted by U.S. forces with the Republic of Korea Navy and Marine Corps, Australian Army and Royal New Zealand Army forces in order to strengthen interoperability and working relationships across a wide range of military operations. Ssang Yong 16 began with a combined amphibious assault with 19 ships from the 31st MEU, 13th MEU and the ROK Marine Corps Marine Task Force. Multiple amphibious vehicles and aircraft assaulted the beach and brought troops ashore to begin the exercise. Ssang Yong 16 was among the largest combined amphibious exercise to date, incorporating more than 19,000 U.S., ROK Navy-Marine Corps, Australian Army, Royal New Zealand Army, said U.S. Marine Col. Romin Dasmalchi, the commanding officer of the 31st MEU. It was an incredible experience to share tactics, build personal relationships and enhance our ability to work cohesively together. Bringing together forces on a scale as large as this is complex. It is important we continue to train and work together to ensure cohesion and interoperability. After the combined amphibious assault, the MEU conducted many different follow-on actions to simulate what operations would need to be conducted after carrying out a forcible entry into enemy-held territory. In addition to the initial assaults, the Marines conducted urban warfare training, live fire platoon assaults, mortar shoots, artillery fire missions and a range of air operations. Because of Ssang Yongs large scale amphibious assault and follow-on missions, it required a significant amount of planning and logistical support. That support came from Exercise Freedom Banner 16. Freedom banner set the conditions for the combined amphibious assault that formed the cornerstone of Ssang Yong 16, said Dasmalchi. Freedom Banners purpose was to practice using naval and amphibious assets to support forces ashore. The amphibious operations conducted during Ssang Yong were the next operational step to Freedom Banners seabasing operations. Incorporating the combined forces during Ssang Yong helps to build maritime superiority between allied countries and prepares the Navy and Marine Corps units to use the sea as maneuver space for operational reach and sea control. Building stronger relationships and working with our allies and partners in this region to foster a collective stance, or peace through strength when faced with security challenges are critical to the successful defense of the ROK and the ability of U.S. military forces to effectively respond to regional challenges, said Dasmalchi. This cooperation and training ensure the 31st MEU is ready to respond rapidly throughout the Asia-Pacific as needed, across a spectrum of military operations. More Media A little over a year ago on March 10, 2015, seven Marine Raiders and four Louisiana Army National Guard soldiers lost their lives in a tragic helicopter crash off the coast of the Florida Panhandle. On March 10, 2016, 14 Marine Raiders from Marine Corps Forces, Special Operations Command met in Navarre, Fla., for a memorial service to honor there fallen brothers in arms. Following the memorial service, on March 11, 2016, the Marine Raiders began a 770-mile ruck-march from Navarre, Fla., to Stone Bay aboard Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, N.C. The Marine Raider Memorial March was designed to honor the seven Marine Raiders who died on March 10th, 2015 and their families, as well as bring awareness to their sacrifice. The ruckers were made up of both active duty and former Raiders, family members, and close friends. A few of the Marine Raiders chimed in on why they wanted to be a part of the ruck and the motivation that carried them through it. On this march we have several active-duty Raiders, we have Marines that were there during the infancy and creation of MARSOC, there is a 16-year-old high school sophomore, and there are two incredibly strong women. And everywhere we go communities have come out to greet us, at all hours, night and day. This Memorial March is about family, said one of the participants. Another continued saying, why am I doing this you ask? Simple. I want to honor those we lost and the families they left behind. Although I only had the privilege of knowing one of the team members, I can tell by the character of the fellow Raiders I have spent the last couple of weeks with and the level of commitment and perseverance they have displayed, that the men of 8231 were some of the finest this country has to offer. For some, the ruck was about the opportunity to honor and show support to not only the fallen Raiders but their families as well. As for why I'm doing this, Liam's daughter, Leilani, is my biggest motivation. As she grows up, I'm confident she will know what an amazing man and warrior her daddy was, but I want her to also understand how important he was to me and so many other people. And finally, as Liam watches from above, I want him to see how his family will always be loved and looked after by his brothers and their families who remain here on earth. The family aspect of the Raider community is one thing that sets us apart from so many others and prevails during this time where we honor our brothers and friends, said one of the ruckers. Along the way the ruckers were met with an overwhelming amount of support from local communities. Fellow service members, law enforcement officers and civilians went out of their way to meet the ruckers and march with them. Others helped provide logistical support, from medical supplies to helping provide fuel for vehicles. At the same time the Raiders had the opportunity to inspire the younger generations they met along the way. When I grow up I want to be a Marine. My uncle used to be a Marine. I want to serve the people who served to keep me safe and my country safe. I want to save those people who saved my country and me. I would love to be a Marine, said Jeremiah McNeely, a young child who stayed up to midnight to show his support by waving an American flag as the ruckers marched past him. Once the Memorial March made it to Marine Corps Base Camp Lejeune, Stone Bay, there was a short ceremony where the fallen were honored and the paddle that was recovered from the wreckage was presented to Lt. Col. Craig Wolfenbarger, commanding officer of 2nd Marine Raider Battalion, to be kept in their hall of honor. Wolfenbarger quoted a former speech given by Lt. Col. Evans Carlson, It behooves us who remain to rededicate ourselves to the tasks that lies ahead. The convictions of these comrades are our convictions. With the memory of their sacrifice in mind let us dedicate ourselves into brining into reality the ideals for which these men died, and not let their sacrifice be in vein. More Media Bitcoin Trading Alert: $400 Level Becoming More Important In short: short speculative positions, target at $153, stop-loss at $515 It has been known for some time that Bitcoin transactions are not really anonymous. Now, a company focused on Blockchain surveillance has received significant venture capital funding, we read on The Telegraph website: A British technology company that attempts to fight crime by spotting suspicious Bitcoin deals has raised $5m (3.5m) as banks and regulators begin to take the blockchain technology that backs up the virtual currency seriously. London-based Elliptic claims to help solve one of the biggest challenges of Bitcoin for companies that use it - the inherent anonymity, which means banks are reluctant to embrace it for fear of falling foul of anti-money laundering regulation. (...) Dr James Smith, one of Elliptic's three co-founders, said its software, which uses artificial intelligence to scan the Bitcoin network, makes it easier to identify patterns of suspicious behaviour and trace it back to the source. It is already widely used by online exchanges and law enforcement to detect potential money laundering, and has processed around $2bn in Bitcoin transactions. (...) Paladin Capital, a US-based investor with close connections to the US government, led the investment. Kenneth Minihan, a former director of the US National Security Agency who is now a managing director at Paladin, said: "Elliptic is a game-changer for blockchain and is already trusted by some of the smartest minds in law enforcement and compliance. The firm's monitoring capability will be an essential component of any blockchain in the future and we will help Elliptic to expand in the US, via our contacts and knowledge of US law enforcement and government agencies." Bitcoin has never really been anonymous, to start with. Actually, the fact that all transactions are recorded in a public ledger seems to make Bitcoin surveillance not so big a problem. This is not the first time we actually hear about the possibility to analyze various transactions but it might be the first highly-publicized professional attempt to tackle the subject. The way Bitcoin is set up makes it relatively easy to track transactions but not necessarily easy to discover who is behind them, at least not always. Elliptic seems to be focused on discovering patterns in the Bitcoin data which could identify potentially fraudulent transactions. We'll still have to see whether this evolves into an AML system. For the time being, it seems that financial institutions are very much interested in the possibility to have tools identifying potentially suspicious transactions. This could make Bitcoin-based systems more attractive to them, ceteris paribus. For now, let's focus on the charts. On BitStamp, we have a situation where Bitcoin hasn't really moved very much in a couple of weeks. This doesn't mean that the current situation is boring, in our opinion. The mere fact that Bitcoin hasn't moved recently is by no means a guarantee that it won't move in the future. Since Bitcoin hasn't moved much, our previous comments are still up to date: (...) Yes, we saw a failed breakdown below $400 but it doesn't necessarily have any meaningful implications for the next significant move in the market. Bitcoin might go up some based on the bounce back above $400 but the implications are weak and of very short-term nature. The most important part still is the fact that we're below a possible long-term declining resistance line. (...) Additionally, we now see that the late-February local top in Bitcoin is lower than the January and December tops, not to mention the November spike. A series of potentially lower highs might be a bearish indication. The recent lack of action and the fact that Bitcoin remains below the possible long-term declining resistance line are indications that the previous trend remains unchanged - down. The mere fact that Bitcoin hasn't moved might lull some traders into thinking that volatility has died down. This might not be the case. There were periods in the past when declines took some time to unfold. In any case, we wouldn't bet on Bitcoin staying in place. On the long-term BTC-e chart, we don't see much action, in spite of the recent problems with BTC-e withdrawals. We actually still think that anybody considering depositing funds with BTC-e should check that the situation is now resolved. Bitcoin remains relatively flat above $400 and this means that there haven't been serious changes in the outlook. Recall our previous comments: For the time being, it seems that we still have important resistance lines $450-470, so the situation doesn't really seem bullish. (...) Combining this with the bearish indications still results in a bearish indication, particularly given the recent rally. It seems that Bitcoin might be ready for more declines (in our opinion). Even if we were to see the recent months as a head-and-shoulders formation (which itself might be debatable), it would seem that we are now after the second shoulder. This would itself be a bearish indication for the next couple of weeks. Right now it seems that Bitcoin has a lot of downside potential ($350 being the first possible pause for a potential decline) while at the same time not displaying much upside potential. If we see a slip below $400, the decline might accelerate. (...) What is more, if you take a look at the RSI, it's around 50, implying that there still might be room for Bitcoin to decline. As mentioned in our previous comments, there seems to be a lot of downside potential for Bitcoin with not much upside potential. Combine that with a series of lower highs, a lack of breakout above a possible long-term declining resistance line and the recent low volume of the moves up, and the situation still looks very much bearish. Actually, Bitcoin has been trading above $400 for some time now. Does this mean that a move up will follow? It might, there are no sure bets in any market but our assessment is that depreciation might actually be the next part of the move. The fact that the $400 level has not been taken out in the last two weeks suggests that the next move below $400 might be a more violent one. Summing up, in our opinion speculative short positions might be the way to go now. Trading position (short-term, our opinion): short speculative positions, target at $153, stop-loss at $515. Regards, Mike McAra Bitcoin Trading Strategist Bitcoin Trading Alerts at SunshineProfits.com Disclaimer All essays, research and information found above represent analyses and opinions of Mike McAra and Sunshine Profits' associates only. As such, it may prove wrong and be a subject to change without notice. Opinions and analyses were based on data available to authors of respective essays at the time of writing. Although the information provided above is based on careful research and sources that are believed to be accurate, Mike McAra and his associates do not guarantee the accuracy or thoroughness of the data or information reported. The opinions published above are neither an offer nor a recommendation to purchase or sell any securities. Mr. McAra is not a Registered Securities Advisor. By reading Mike McAras reports you fully agree that he will not be held responsible or liable for any decisions you make regarding any information provided in these reports. Investing, trading and speculation in any financial markets may involve high risk of loss. Mike McAra, Sunshine Profits' employees and affiliates as well as members of their families may have a short or long position in any securities, including those mentioned in any of the reports or essays, and may make additional purchases and/or sales of those securities without notice. Mike McAra Archive 2005-2019 http://www.MarketOracle.co.uk - The Market Oracle is a FREE Daily Financial Markets Analysis & Forecasting online publication. Watch Anthony Bourdain's Trip To Chicago, Then Eat Like He Did By Anthony Todd in Food on Mar 22, 2016 2:41PM The Food Film Festival, which specializes in putting on events where you watch and eat the same things, is coming back to Chicago for one night only in Apriland they're bringing a Bourdain premiere. Anthony Bourdain toured Chicago for an episode of his CNN show, Parts Unknown. The episode hasn't aired yet, but apparently includes visits to Old Town Ale House, Ricobenes and Lao Sze Chuan, along with some visits to the homes of local celebs. At Begyle Brewery on April 27, guests will get a chance to watch the episode before it airs, eat what they're seeing on the screen (the exact menu hasn't been published, but Bourdain had breaded steak sandwiches at Ricobene's and Mapo Doufu at Lao Sze Chuan, so expect that), and enjoy beer and wine pairings. There's an after-party with more food. And the whole thing only costs $50. The proceeds go to the Good Food Project, and tickets will absolutely sell out. Buy them now. Chinese Premier Li Keqiang (R) meets with International Monetary Fund (IMF) Managing Director Christine Lagarde, who is here to attend the China Development Forum, in Beijing, capital of China, March 21, 2016. [Xinhua] Premier Li Keqiang met with managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) Christine Lagarde on Monday, promising to press ahead with financial market reform. The premier also voiced China's disapproval of a global "currency war," as it would be no good for the world economic recovery. China has no intention to boost exports by devaluating the yuan, as this is not conducive to China's economic transformation either, Li said . Li said China will continue to push forward with financial market reform and construction of legal system, and press ahead with developments to the yuan exchange rate formation mechanism in line with the principles of independence, gradualism and controllability. China will, according to its economic fundamentals and the need to maintain financial stability, make the exchange rate of yuan float in two ways within a reasonable range, and maintain the exchange rate "basically stable at an adaptable and equilibrium level," the premier stressed. He also called on major economies facing increasing uncertainties and volatilities of the world economy, to strengthen macroeconomic coordination to keep the stability of the global economic and financial systems. The government attaches high importance to the communication with the market, as well as the role of the IMF and other international financial institutions. The government will strengthen dialogue and cooperation with them to give more signals to shore up market confidence, Li said. The premier also vowed that China is capable of preventing regional and systemic financial risks. He noted that most of China's big commercial banks are state-owned. The government's debt ratio, especially that of the central government is comparatively low while the people's saving rate is comparatively high. The central government could support banks to maintain the capital adequacy ratio at a relatively high level by market means. The central bank also has many tools to prevent financial risks. Lagarde, who is here for the China Development Forum, spoke highly of China's 13th Five-year Plan, saying it will help China's economy continue to play a leading role in world economic development. She also praised China's recent policy communication on the exchange rate of yuan as effective, as it strengthened the international market's confidence. She said the IMF lauded China's continuous efforts to reform and stands ready to strengthen communication and coordination with China to send positive signals to the market. In Defence of Marxism is committed to safeguarding your privacy. At all times we aim to respect any personal data you share with us, or that we receive from other organisations, and keep it safe. This Privacy Policy (Policy) sets out our data collection and processing practices and your options regarding the ways in which your personal information is used. This Policy contains important information about your personal rights to privacy. Please read it carefully to understand how we use your personal data. We may update this Policy from time to time without notice to you, so please check it regularly. The provision of your personal data to us is voluntary. 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(Mayo Clinic) The Mayo Clinic announced Tuesday it will close its New England laboratories. The world's largest research group and medical practice employs over 50,000 health staff and 3,800 physicians. The not-for-profit's headquarters and flagship hospital is based in Rochester, Minnesota. The health group also operates facilities throughout the state and in Arizona, Florida, Iowa and Wisconsin. For 20 years, Mayo Medical Laboratories New England has based East Coast operations in an Andover facility. The Massachusetts lab will close at the end of this year, the organization announced in a statement. The Massachusetts lab has 105 employees who were informed of the closure Tuesday morning, a spokesperson told the Post-Bulletin, a daily newspaper based in Rochester, Minnesota. The employees will be invited to move to Minnesota and work out of the company's headquarters or take a severance package. "It is our hope that the vast majority of staff at our New England facility will be interested in open positions at other Mayo locations," Mayo Clinic spokeswoman Gina Chiri-Osmond told the Post-Bulletin. "There are positions available for all employees who hope to continue their careers at Mayo. Mayo Clinic is committed to doing everything possible to retain current employees during this time of change and to providing support throughout this process." HOLYOKE - PeoplesBank has announced the appointment of Angela Liebel as Mortgage Consultant. Ms. Liebel brings a combined 32 years of real estate sales and residential lending experience to her new position, including nine years with PeoplesBank before she moved out of the area. She will offer a variety of home-financing options to customers, including fixed and variable-rate mortgages, home equity lines of credit, and PeoplesBank's unique "First-Time Homebuyer Plus" mortgage program. Ms. Liebel will primarily serve Springfield, Longmeadow, East Longmeadow, Wilbraham and Hampden. "It gives me great pleasure to welcome Angie back to the PeoplesBank team and Western Massachusetts," noted James Sherbo, Senior Vice President, Consumer Lending at PeoplesBank. "I think it is her experience in real estate sales and residential lending that makes her unique and a valued member of our team." A resident of Longmeadow, Ms. Liebel holds a Master of Business Administration from Western New England University and a Bachelor of Arts from American International College. She also holds a Massachusetts real estate broker's license and paralegal certificate from Southern Methodist University. Ms. Liebel is a member of the Women's Council of Realtors and serves as a trustee for the West Springfield Public Library. WESTFIELD - The YMCA of Greater Westfield is pleased to welcome Patrick Lusteg to our team. Pat will be taking on the role of Camp and Programs Director. A 2013 graduate of Norwich University, Pat is no stranger to the Y community, or Camp Shepard. Pat began his Y career in 2008 when he spent his first summer as a counselor at Camp Shepard. Over the next 5 years his leadership skills earned him more responsibilities at Camp, as well as earned him a school year position as a counselor, then site-coordinator, and interim assistant director for the Y's Kids after-school program. Pat is excited to bring his energy to Camp Shepard and the Y Community. "I am honored to have been chosen to succeed (former Camp and Program Director) Chris Maddy. I learned so much from him while he was my supervisor and I hope to continue to build upon the consistent high quality camping experience The Y offers. I am excited to add new programs for campers, staff, as well as the community at large. Camp Shepard is an incredible resource for our community and I am looking forward to reconnecting with some familiar faces and offering an amazing camp experience to new families in the coming months." You are here: Home Flash Heavy clashes broke out on Monday in the Libyan capital Tripoli between armed militias, witnesses said. The clashes erupted in Bab Benghashir area in downtown Tripoli, near the headquarters of Tripoli's outgoing general national congress. Tripoli is controlled by the so-called Libya Dawn militia, a coalition of armed groups that seized the capital in 2014 and revived the expired parliament, creating the current political division in the country. Media reports said the clashes were between a local militia that attacked a bank in the area and the other militia securing the parliament's headquarter. The clashes lasted for almost two hours while heavy gun firing could be heard. No reports were made about possible casualties. On Saturday, similar clashes broke out in the same area, causing damages to nearby vehicles and houses. Flash At least 13 people were killed in two explosions Tuesday at the Brussels airport and 15 people were killed in another explosion at a metro station in the Belgian capital. The following are major terrorist attacks that have hit the European Union over the past several years. On March 11, 2004, at least 190 people were killed and more than 1,200 injured in a series of bomb attacks on the Madrid train system during the morning rush hour and three days before the Spanish general election. On July 7, 52 people were killed and more than 700 injured in suicide bomb attacks in London's underground system. On March 19, 2012, three children and an adult were killed in a shooting outside a Jewish school in the southwestern French city of Toulouse in the morning. The shooting was the third of its kind in the region in a week. On March 11 and March 15, three soldiers were killed in two similar shootings in Toulouse and in nearby Montauban. On Jan. 7, 2015, the Paris office of Charlie Hebdo, a satirical newspaper, was attacked by heavily armed men. Twelve people were killed, including the chief-editor of the newspaper. On Jan. 8, a 20-year-old policewoman was killed in a shooting in Montrouge, south Paris. On Jan. 9, at least two people were killed and one injured in the Porte de Vincennes hostage crisis in East Paris. On June 26, 2015, two men entered by force a U.S. gas company in Isere, southeast France, leaving behind several wounded victims. A decapitated body was found at the site with an Islamist State flag aside. On Nov. 13, 2015, about seven simultaneous shootings and fresh explosions rocked central Paris during the evening. One of the shootings resulted in a hostage taking crisis at the Bataclan theater and concert hall, killing at least 140 people and wounding many. Flash European governments moved swiftly to beef up security in the wake of the attacks in Brussels which officials say killed many people and injured hundreds. In London Prime Minister David Cameron chaired a meeting of COBRA, the government committee which coordinates security in the UK. It groups senior cabinet ministers, intelligence chiefs, senior police officers and military officers, including those from the elite SAS regiment. Similar meetings were taking place in Paris, Berlin and other key European capitals, and officials said extra security was being put in place at airports and travel hubs throughout the continent. In France, President Francois Hollande ordered an extra 1,600 police and paramilitary officers onto the streets of Paris. Security and police checks were also established at borders throughout the Schengen area of mainland western Europe, normally open to free travel between countries, officials said. In Germany extra security was drafted in to cover key public areas as well as airports and railway stations, according to local media. The British Broadcasting Corporation put the death toll at 26, of which 11 were killed at Zaventem Airport and 15 dead at Maelbeek metro station, near the area where many EU offices are located. At least 90 were injured, the BBC said. Hollande told reporters "This is a war against terrorists. France has moved to consolidate our borders. It will be a long war, but we should be calm and determined. "Today we are with Belgium. It was Europe that was targeted, and we should be united," he added. London mayor Boris Johnson said "We are stepping up the security presence at major security hubs. This is partly for security and partly for reassurance purposes." Police in the British capital patrolled rail stations and airports armed with semi-automatic weapons, a rare sight in a country where the police are not routinely armed. Dogs trained in sniffing explosives were also deployed, security officials said. Long queues formed at London"s airports, in part because of increased security checks on passengers, and in part because of delayed and cancelled flights. Brussels airport, scene of two bomb blasts, was closed, and the flight situation in Europe was compounded by a strike involving French air traffic controllers, UK television channels reported. In Belgium armed soldiers patrolled the streets as the security threat was raised to the highest level. Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel cancelled a planned trip to China because of the situation. Michel said he was sending up to 200 extra troops to the capital to join those already deployed, and added: "What we feared has happened. It is a black moment in our country. We should face up to this challenge by being united, and coming together." In the UK the threat level from international terror attacks was severe, which means an attack is considered likely. UK security officials who requested anonymity said intelligence monitoring was being shared with other security services in Europe, including so-called "chatter" on mobile devices and social media which often immediately precede an attack. Governments throughout Europe had been on alert since gun and bomb attacks in Paris on November 13 killed 130 people and wounded hundreds of others. The suspects, many of whom died in the attacks, were traced to the Molenbeek area of Brussels, home to many migrants. The main suspect, Salah Abdelslam, was arrested by Belgian police and special forces troops after a gun battle in Molenbeek four days ago. Government officials throughout Europe have said they feared an attack as a result of Abdelslam"s arrest, which was hailed as a breakthrough by intelligence chiefs. French media reports said officials were sifting through the debris from today"s Brussels attacks for evidence of suicide vests, which they hoped may offer DNA and other traces to link them with the abandoned vest found after the Paris attacks in November. Three startups, Carbon Engineering, Global Thermostat and Climeworks, are making strides with technology that can directly remove carbon dioxide from the air. What they need now is a viable business model Marc Gunther Full Story: http://www.theguardian.com/sustainable-business/2015/jul/14/carbon-direct-air-capture-startups-tech-climate Many thanks to Bradley Layton Associate Professor I Director, Energy Technology Program Department of Applied Computing and Engineering Technology Missoula College UM for sharing this article. The Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) recently awarded the Montana SHRM State Council http://montana.shrm.org/ its prestigious EXCEL Gold Award for the Councils accomplishments in 2014. The award is part of the SHRM Affiliate Program for Excellence, which aligns individual chapters and councils with SHRMs goals. The award recognizes accomplishments and strategic activities and initiatives that enhance the human resources profession. "At SHRM, advancing the human resources profession is our mission. The work of our chapters and councils are central to accomplishing that," said Henry G. (Hank) Jackson, president and CEO of SHRM. "Receiving this award is testament to the Councils commitment to advancing the HR profession through local networking and professional development activities." The EXCEL award can be earned at four levels: bronze, silver, gold and platinum, and each level has a prescribed set of requirements and accomplishments that have to be met. Montana SHRM State Council will receive recognition in SHRM publications and conferences, a certificate of recognition, and special signage to display at its meetings and events. Some accomplishments for the State Council this past year were offering a webinar to members and non chapter members as part of our membership outreach as well as provided a stipend to each of our seven Montana Chapters to support their membership growth and retention goals. In 2014 the Montana SHRM State Council was delighted to have all seven State Chapter 2015 Presidents attend the 2014 SHRM Leadership Conference in Washington DC and represent SHRM in Montana on the Leadership Capitol Hill Visit where we visited with our Montana representatives. "I am extremely proud of our Montana SHRM State Council for our 2014 achievements and am thrilled that we have been awarded the EXCEL Gold Award" noted Elizabeth Rissler Pratt, 2014 Montana SHRM State Council President, "Our team worked very hard and this award is proof that our efforts and hard work paid off. Thank you to SHRM National for recognizing our efforts." For more information on the award visit: http://www.shrm.org/communities/volunteerresources/resourcesforchapters/pages/award_info.aspx. Media: For more information, contact Rebecca Morgan, Communications Director, Montana SHRM State Council at 406-544-5085 and [email protected] About Montana SHRM State Council The Montana SHRM State Council mission is to support local Chapters in being highly successful in their assistance to members and others vested in the field; elevate the profession to the highest standards; and provide education, updates and connections among all Montana human resource professionals. For more information, please visit http://www.montana.shrm.org About the Society for Human Resource Management Founded in 1948, the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) is the worlds largest HR membership organization devoted to human resource management. Representing more than 275,000 members in over 160 countries, the Society is the leading provider of resources to serve the needs of HR professionals and advance the professional practice of human resource management. SHRM has more than 575 affiliated chapters within the United States and subsidiary offices in China, India and United Arab Emirates. Visit us at http://www.shrm.org and follow us on Twitter @SHRMPress. *** Developing A Business Culture That Is Focused On Client Satisfaction Must Start First With Building Employee Empowerment and Satisfaction http://www.matr.net/article-63608.html Companies with HR analytics outperform those that dont http://www.matr.net/article-63372.html All people decisions at Google are based on data and analytics http://www.matr.net/article-61479.html JPMorgan Algorithm Knows Youre a Rogue Employee Before You Do http://www.matr.net/article-65486.html Hiring C-Suite Executives by Algorithm http://www.matr.net/article-65478.html http://www.matr.net/article-65323.html Power to the new people analytics http://www.matr.net/article-65217.html The Secret to Making Magic at Macys Human Resources Metrics and Analytics http://www.matr.net/article-64548.html How Predictive Analytics is Making Walmart a Better Employer http://www.matr.net/article-64502.html Why You Should Invest in Talent Analytics http://www.matr.net/article-63962.html "Work Rules" Testing, testing. Whos happy at work? An interview with Googles Laszlo Bock http://www.matr.net/article-65323.html More: http://www.matr.net/news.phtml?showall=1&catlabel=Inteneo+Systems&cat_id=152 Montana Code School (MTCS) is a statewide initiative dedicated to training the states next generation of junior developers with 2016 classes being held in Missoula and Bozeman. We offer intensive, fully-immersive coding bootcamp programs designed to produce highly employable software developers ready to hit the ground running in Montana?s thriving community of startups and tech businesses. MTCS is a life changing educational experience, dedicated to giving students the tools to become successful web developers. MTCS does more than just provide skills training to our students. We also focus on developing soft skills such as effective communication skills around technical and non-technical topics, teamwork and collaboration. MTCS is currently seeking an experienced JavaScript developer to lead a 12-week immersive bootcamp in Bozeman. The instructor we are looking for must be a skilled developer with experience working within highly functional teams. The instructor will be leading a full-time intensive web development bootcamp to: Support our initiative, which is helping lifelong learners achieve their dreams of launching successful/meaningful careers in software dev. Work in sync with other co-instructors to guide students through the course. Dedicate yourself to becoming a better leader through mentoring of fellow peers. Be the driving force behind the students as they identify their passions and excel through the curriculum. Play a major role in establishing a safe and challenging learning in environment to accommodate for students with a vast spectrum of abilities and learning styles. What we teach: HTML/CSS/jQuery/JavaScript FullStack JavaScript NoSQL/ SQL databases Agile Methodologies Submit your cover letter and resume here: https://montanacodeschool.submittable.com/submit/55791 Questions? [email protected] Chicken will be the best-positioned protein due to its low price position in times of pressure on consumer spending power but rises in production costs and the long-term impact of COVID-19 threaten to disrupt the sector, according to Rabobank. by Laurie Sullivan , Staff Writer @lauriesullivan, March 21, 2016 The Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization has been on a mission for the past year to raise awareness for the organization and its member companies. Earlier this month it held its first Global Awards Event in San Diego, California to highlight some of the talent in the search industry. Nebo, Geary LSF, and Back Azimuth Consulting were the big winners for the first SEMPO Global Awards event. Nebo took the award for the Best Paid Search Campaign, intended to increase brand awareness for Scheller College of Business. The award recognized efforts for integrating paid-search advertising campaigns -- text ads, shopping campaigns, or remarketing lists for search ads -- with other online and offline media. Finalists in the Best Paid Search Campaign category also included Bluerank, and Apogee Results. advertisement advertisement In the Best SEO Campaign Category, Geary LSE won for Monkey Sports. The paid media agency works with or has done work for brands such as Expedia, Mayflower, Target, Kate Spade, CHG Healthcare, Lord & Taylor, and Philosophy, according to its Web site. Finalists in the Best SEO category also included Bluerank, and Smarter Searches. Back Azimuth Consulting, which offers keyword management services, took top honors for the Best Use of Technology/Tool for HREFLang Builder. Bill Hunt, the agency's president, worked at Neo@Ogilvy between February 2007 and May 2009, according to Link edIn. Finalists in the Best User of Technology/Tool category also included adMarketplace for BidSmart. In the first annual SEMPO Cities Leadership Awards category, honoring the people whose efforts made SEMPO Cities Month in October 2015 successful, the Skyscraper Award went to Corey Morris of Kansas City, Kansas; the Highrise Award went to Pete Prestipino of Chicago; and the Highrise Award went to Carlos Guzman of Mexico City. Two special SEMPO Spotlight Awards were given, in conjunction with Gridsum, to outstanding search and digital marketers in China. The Best International Innovative Big Data Application went to Jingdong; and the Best International Big Data Marketing Practice went to VIPABC. Global sponsors Baidu and Google, as well as Bing, Marin Software and Yahoo sponsored the event. by Laurie Sullivan @lauriesullivan, March 21, 2016 A deal between Adobe and Conductor that the companies plan to announce Tuesday allows advertisers to measure organic marketing campaigns that include content running on search, and some social with their key performance or business performance metrics. The partnership provides tools through an integration between Conductor Searchlight and Adobe Analytics to measure any type of organic content that doesn't come from paid advertisements, according to Seth Besmertnik, CEO and founder, Conductor. The integration aims to solve three challenges faced by advertisers: the value of the content, the type of content needed to drive performance, and the reasons why content doesn't perform. Companies struggle to measure return on organic marketing -- especially compared to paid media, which has much better measurement tools. advertisement advertisement The data integration will give advertisings information on the types of content consumers seek whether a car, a shirt or a tablet, as well as where they find it such as on a search engine or site like YouTube. The advertiser then ties "what" and "where" to their key performance and revenue metrics on specific media channels. For instance, a person in Munich on a smartphone was looking for a men's shirt. They went to an ecommerce store on a German-based Web site and bought it. The data also provides what drove the search and sale. It took twelve months to create the integration between Adobe and Conductor, according to Besmertnik, who admits that a lot of work went into bridging the gap between the way Adobe and Conductor look at data. When the project came to an end, the integration provided a way to answer complex questions from advertisers, such as what content should be created to increase revenue in Japanese marketing, how to get early-stage mobile visitors to convert, and if I'm losing traffic in Dusseldorf, so does my content match the way customers in that region search. To answer these questions, Conductor's engineers built out in a variety of metrics and measurements to account for campaigns running across mobile devices and desktops worldwide. For instance, in the case of Citibank -- which has different metrics and KPIs in each country of the world in which they operate -- the biggest challenge was tying back the data from local search engines like Baidu in China to KPIs in that region, Besmertnik said. by Richard Whitman , Columnist, March 21, 2016 The Outdoor Advertising Association of America (OAAA), as part of its earlier Feel the Real campaign, has released a white paper that works super hard to drive home the benefits of outdoor while pointing out the pitfalls on online advertising. With report sections titled the likes of "If a bot clicks a non-viewable ad, does the ad blocker hear it?", the report highlights some of digital advertising's more egregious failings such as the lost $7.5 billion (in the U.S.) due to non-viewable ads and the $7.2 billion (globally) lost from bot fraud. "This is What Reality Looks Like," written in partnership with agency of record Partners NYC (PNYC), will be made public as the 4A's Transformation 2016 kicks off in Miami, and is a comprehensive analysis of the OAAA's widely covered Feel The Real campaign. Of the campaign which led up to the study, OAAA CMO Stephen Freitas said, "With Feel The Real, we conducted a two-month-long experiment to prove the immense value of OOH while communicating its power and purpose. We believe these results will spur much needed conversation in our industry." advertisement advertisement Launched during Advertising Week 2015, the Feel The Real campaign plastered New York City and 20 other markets with upwards of 1,400 unbranded OOH units, both digital and traditional. The ads were deployed at eight different levels of targeting, narrowing in on media agencies and even individuals with over 280 custom messages. All ads drove traffic with a reported 40 percent of visitors falling into OAAA's core target, marketing and advertising professionals. 85 percent of visitors accessed the site, primarily through mobile, after seeing the outdoor campaign. While the campaign and the report both point out some of the failings of digital, the organization isn't going all Mad Men and ignoring digital completely. PNYC Chief Strategy Officer Ted Florea said: "In today's world of ubiquitous camera phones and social media, targeted OOH can be a powerful way to generate significant -- and 100% bot-free -- digital engagement. I think this report will inspire media planners and creatives to see OOH as playing an essential role in digital media plans." Further calling attention to the not-so-positive elements of online advertising, the OAAA created mirror sites and bought "100% guaranteed human" traffic from "highly reviewed" Web traffic brokers. But a look at Google Analytics revealed a different story, with, according to the OAAA, virtually all of the supposed U.S. traffic coming from botnets in Russia, China, Indonesia, the Philippines and elsewhere. Along with the white paper, the OAAA today releases a video case study of their findings, also available here. Attendees of the 4A's Transformation conference will be greeted at the Miami International Airport with a special OOH takeover. by Karlene Lukovitz @KLmarketdaily, March 22, 2016 On the heels of General Mills March 18 announcement that it will begin nationwide labeling of all of its products that contain genetically modified ingredients, Mars and Kellogg have announced the same. The companies are implementing the labeling in order to comply with Vermonts first-in-the-nation mandatory GMO labeling law, set to go into effect July 1. The three companies made their announcements after last weeks Senate defeat of the voluntary GMO labeling bill for which the food industry had been heavily lobbying for many months. Another major CPG food maker, Campbell Soup, got out in front of the issue by announcing in January that it would not only voluntarily implement GMO labeling, but also would support mandatory GMO labeling on a national basis. advertisement advertisement Like General Mills, Kellogg made it clear that it still strongly advocates a federal regulation. "We continue to strongly urge Congress to pass a uniform, federal solution for the labeling of GMOs to avoid a confusing patchwork of state-by-state rules, stated Kellogg North America president Paul Norman. The statement said that until a federal solution is reached, Kellogg would begin labeling appropriate products as Produced with Genetic Engineering starting in mid to late April. Mars did not explicitly address the regulatory scenario, but stressed that worldwide scientific research has found GM ingredients to be safe. The GMA-led Coalition for Safe Affordable Food characterized the latest GMO labeling announcements by food companies as urgent cries for the Senate to act in order to avoid cost hikes for consumers, food makers and farmers. General Mills stated that while the label changes would cost it millions of dollars, it would not pass the costs along to consumers. Campbell made the same promise. After Mars announcement on Monday, Scott Faber, SVP for government affairs for the Environmental Working Group, described it as yet another step toward greater transparency. EWG has said that it is in favor of a national GMO labeling standard that works for both industry and consumers. by Tobi Elkin , Staff Writer @tobielkin, March 22, 2016 Loads of publications took note on Monday of the 10th anniversary of the little blue bird: Twitter. Remarkable that Twitters a decade oldnot a baby, and almost a teenager. In somewhat of a slump these days as subscriber growth has slowed, it remains a powerful tool for real-time marketing, news source, vehicle for influencers, marketers and anyone who wants to express themselves. Twitter reported a net loss of $90 million for Q4 2015 vs. a loss of $125 million for the same period in 2014. User growth stalled in Q4 2015 with 320 million average monthly active usersthe same number as the previous quarter. But you cant count Twitter outnot by a long shot. Forbesnotes that Twitter has changed the way brands market and how people create, share and consume content. It also makes the point that Twitters most compelling proposition is its real-time content, particularly with the debut last year of its Moments feature. Moments flags and curates the top stories of the day from around the world all in real time. advertisement advertisement Some of those moments from Twitters decade-old life include: the Arab Spring; Ellen DeGeneres selfie during the 2014 Oscars; President Obamas 2012 election victory, four more years; Oreos dunk in the dark; LoveWins when the Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriageand so many more. Twitter has shown the power that individuals, nonprofits, politicians, celebrities (who occupy a different orbit), activists and brand marketers have to express themselves in the moment, influence potentially millions of people and share news and content that might not otherwise surface. Twitter is a content-discovery engine, a vehicle to share and overshare, influence, educate, waste time on and more. Its all in real time, in the moment, of the momentalthough we know that brand marketers and others have carefully calculated strategies on the platform. Thats not a bad thing. Its just a fact. So happy birthday, Twitter. Show us what youve got next by Philip Rosenstein , Staff Writer, March 22, 2016 The relentless rise of Donald Trump has thrown the Republican Party into complete disarray. Potential outcomes for the core of the GOP are looking increasingly dire. As panelists on this weekends Face the Nation described it: Pigs are still in the air here. More to come. Theyre launching right now. Many Republicans are standing firm against the front-runner, with members of Congress refusing to support Trump and even actively campaigning to block his nomination. Mitt Romney, the GOPs presidential candidate in 2012, has framed the central battle in his party as Trumpism against Republicanism. GOP voters are realistically facing a choice between Trump and Texas Sen. Ted Cruz. The irony here: Views espoused by Ted Cruz and by extension a host of establishment Republicans and Tea Party members don't fall far from Trumpism. By isolating Trump, it obscures their suspect policies. advertisement advertisement Gov. John Kasich is on the margins and forcefully told both Meet the Press and Face the Nation this weekend that he truly believes in his chances to win the Republican nomination. Unfortunately for the Ohio Governor, as executive editor of the National Review, Reihan Salam explained: It is impossible for him to win. And the idea that he is going to be the one coming out of a brokered convention is just it just defies comprehension. Romney elaborated on what he calls Trumpism. Its about racism, misogyny, bigotry, xenophobia, vulgarity, threats and violence, adding: I am repulsed by each and every one of these. Whereas Trump does have a plurality of delegates and is likely to arrive in Cleveland with a strong lead, establishment Republicans are by and large not lining up behind him. Furthermore, his favorability rating among registered voters is low, at 33.6%, compared to an unfavorable rating of 62.6%, according to HuffPost Pollster. More worrisome for the GOP, this unfavorability rating has been steadily increasing in the new year. South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham has said the Republican Party will rupture if Trump is the nominee: I believe Donald Trump would be an absolute disaster for the Republican Party, destroy conservatism as we know it. We would get wiped out. While Hillary Clinton isnt widely liked either, it is difficult to see enough people coming out to vote for Trump in a general election, unless his favorability suddenly shoots through the roof. Its almost impossible to fathom what he could do or say for that to happen. GOP leaders have made that calculation and are organizing a concerted effort to block Trumpism from overriding the traditional conservative values of the Republican Party. They hope to field a candidate they deem able to defeat Hillary Clinton. Will they be successful in their anti-Trump campaign? At this point, its anyones guess, but so far it looks fairly unlikely. To secure the nomination Trump needs around 54% of the remaining delegates. Last Tuesday, he picked up 60% of available delegates -- he is solidly on track. by Larissa Faw , March 22, 2016 Audio creative often takes a back seat, but radio is the No. 1 reach medium, which is why Horizon Media is launching Wordsworth & Booth, its own stand-alone audio creative and production entity, based in New York City. The new unit will provide audio creative and production services, including creative consulting, content creation, and enhanced audio production capabilities and will produce work on behalf of brands across all industries. The new entitys first clients are Burger King and iHeartMedia. Wordsworth & Booth will be Burger Kings Radio Agency of Record. For iHeartMedia, the agency will be responsible for proposal development, ideation, production and other duties. Audio services veteran Tony Mennuto -- who was formerly VP, branded content solutions at CBS Altitude Group -- will serve as president of the operation. He will oversee all creative and production services. Matt Nelson, executive producer of Wordsworth & Booth, will lead account management and work with Mennuto on production services. advertisement advertisement Nelson was formerly radio and music producer at Hogarth/J.Walter Thompson NY and co-founder of MixFly Audio Post and Remix Your Brand, both based in New York. "Radio reaches 245 million consumers a month. In order to effectively communicate with this massive audience, the talent, creative and content need to be more impactful and more thoughtful," says Bill Koenigsberg, president, founder, and CEO of Horizon Media. "Radio provides a direct line to our emotions, moods and memories. Im excited to provide audio creative and production capabilities for advertisers as new opportunities to capitalize on the power of audio continue to emerge. Horizon selected the name Wordsworth & Booth for the quality creative writing skills required to develop exceptional audio creative, as well as the recording booths historically used in audio production. by Wendy Davis @wendyndavis, March 22, 2016 Federal Trade Commissioner Julie Brill, one of the agency's most vocal privacy advocates, is leaving the commission at the end of the month. She will go to the law firm Hogan Lovells, where she will serve as co-director of the privacy and cybersecurity practice. Commissioner Brill has been an unwavering advocate for consumers and competition during her six-year tenure at the Federal Trade Commission, FTC Chairwoman Edith Ramirez said in a statement. Commissioner Brills expertise in consumer protection, privacy, and antitrust has been an asset to the agency, and we are sorry to see her leave." During her tenure at the FTC, Brill repeatedlyurged ad companies to give consumers more control over the collection of data about them. advertisement advertisement As recently as last September, she criticized the online ad industry for failing to move forward with a do-not-track mechanism. "In 2010, we called for the establishment of a universal Do Not Track tool where consumers could opt out of cross-site data collection in their browsers," Brill stated in a speech delivered at the annual conference of the Better Business Bureau's National Advertising Division. "And yet, here we are, in 2015, and consumers still do not have an adequate means to opt-out of data collection. It is more clear than ever that self-regulation needs to keep up with the times: after all these years, consumers still dont understand whats happening with their personal information, and they continue to struggle to control targeted advertising and data collection." In that same speech, she also urged ad companies to close a "loophole in the industry rules" that allows companies to send targeted ads that relate to sensitive health conditions. At Hogan Lovells, Brill will succeed Christopher Wolf, who will transition to "senior status" at the firm. Wolf also serves as president of the board of the think tank Future of Privacy Forum. Brill, who joined the FTC in 2010, previously worked for the North Carolina Department of Justice and the Vermont Attorney General's office. Her departure leaves the agency with just three commissioners. Privacy advocate Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, describes Brill in an email to MediaPost as "an extraordinary FTC commissioner who has played an important role supporting the strongest possible consumer protection actions by the agency." He adds she will face a "formidable task as she tries to balance what she knows are industry-wide practices that undermine privacy with the intense commercial pressures to financially harvest our data." by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, March 22, 2016 In a development cheered by digital rights advocates, the FBI has postponed its fight with Apple -- possibly permanently. The Justice Department late Monday asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym in the Central District of California to postpone a showdown with Apple over its encryption technology. The authorities said in court papers that an "outside party" had demonstrated a potential method to unlock an iPhone used by San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook. "Testing is required to determine whether it is viable method that will not compromise data on Farooks iPhone," the Justice Department wrote in court documents. "If the method is viable, it should eliminate the need for the assistance from Apple." After receiving the papers, Pym canceled a hearing that had been scheduled for today. She ordered the government to provide a status report by April 5. For now, the agency's decision to retreat is being hailed as a victory for digital rights. "Its very clear that public engagement on this issue was key to helping move this from a fight just between Apple and the government to one where all of us know that our security is at stake," Electronic Frontier Foundation director Cindy Cohn wrote. advertisement advertisement Last month, Pym set off a nationwide controversy by ordering Apple to develop software to help the FBI hack into the iPhone used by Farook. The FBI specifically wanted Apple to disable a security feature that prevents hackers from repeatedly testing different passwords on the phone. Apple said that doing so would require it to develop a new operating system. Apple asked Pym to vacate that order, which was based on her interpretation of the 1789 All Writs Act. That law states that courts "may issue all writs necessary or appropriate in aid of their respective jurisdictions and agreeable to the usages and principles of law." A broad coalition of other tech companies, security experts and digital rights groups sided with Apple. Among other arguments, they said that the type of software sought by the government could fall into the wrong hands, leaving all iPhone users vulnerable to hackers. Pym's initial ruling also raised questions about whether the government can order Apple's engineers to develop software they believe harmful. The New York Timesreported last week that some Apple employees may quit their jobs, if told to create software that would undermine security features. The Justice Department's decision to back away from its demands is notable for several reasons, including that it obviously hoped to set a precedent with the San Bernardino case. The Timesreported last month that the FBI had asked for Apple's assistance unlocking nine other devices, and that Apple was fighting at least seven of those requests. In a local level, that figure is higher: In Manhattan alone, the prosecutor's office has sought to access data on 175 encrypted iPhones. If the FBI is unable to unlock Farook's phone, the agency could always return to Pym and renew its request for an order against Apple. But the FBI would do so in a weakened position, given its prior argument that Apple's help was absolutely necessary. Theyve created ambiguity in a place where theyve previously said there is none, Robert Cattanach, a cyber-security expert and former Department of Justice attorney, toldThe New York Post. Cattanach added said the authorities probably wouldn't have acknowledged that they had found a potential avenue for unlocking the phone unless they believed it would work. by Larissa Faw , March 22, 2016 One key challenge for the ad industry is training aspiring professionals and putting them in the right jobs. Are they filmmakers? Social media mavens? Tech specialists? "I think we are creative problem solvers for clients," says Susan Credle, global chief creative officer, FCB, during a Tuesday session at the 4As Transformation Conference in Miami. "I didn't get into advertising because it was creating content. If that was the case I would have gotten into film or something. But I thought art and commerce together was fascinating." She says all agency executives need to understand the full scope of services offered by the industry to clients. Despite all the buzz surrounding native ads, content marketing and related areas, Credle said, Adland offers much more: "It is not about brands sponsoring content." Credle was joined by Cutwater's Chuck McBride, R/GA's Chloe Gottlieb, and CP&B Miami's Gustavo Sarkis to discuss the state of creativity in today's rapidly evolving industry. advertisement advertisement A big part of the recipe for success is great people. Credle recognized that she was defaulting to "easy choices" when it came to hiring new talent. "It wasn't conscious, but I know five names, so let's go talk to them." However, she admits looking for more diversity is not easy. Gottlieb adds that there are three things the industry needs to do. One, look at the data since numbers don't lie. Two, look at how the industry hires and upgrade its current tactics. And three, once people come in we have to make space for them." She mentions that she wasn't meant to be on the panel, but Credle was the reason she was invited to do so. "Otherwise it is likely to be four men up here but she made space for me." Sarkis points out that diversity isn't limited to gender and other much-discussed characteristics. It is important to expand beyond the U.S. as well. He emphasizes the importance of turning internationally for the "best talent in the world," which is what CP&B does to ensure it has many different points of views and a diverse culture. Cutwater's McBride reminds people to look at the "other end of the telescope" for the perspective of those entering the industry. "You didn't want to be a banker or salesman. Agencies encouraged you to express yourself. Rosacea is a chronic inflammatory skin condition that usually affects the face. People may mistake rosacea for acne, eczema, or an allergic skin reaction. The main symptoms of rosacea are facial flushing, irritated skin, and pimples. Other symptoms include blushing easily and eye problems. Rosacea is common, affecting around 120% of the population. However, people frequently receive the wrong diagnosis when they have rosacea, so the true incidence may be a lot higher. There is currently no cure for rosacea, but people can treat the symptoms using creams and medications. Some foods and beverages can worsen the symptoms, such as dairy products, spicy foods, caffeine, and alcohol. Sun exposure can also make the symptoms worse. Rosacea is more common in females than males, and it usually develops after the age of 30. This article provides an overview of rosacea, including its treatments, causes, symptoms, home remedies, and possible complications. Treatments Although there is currently no cure, various treatments can relieve the symptoms of rosacea. Without treatment, the symptoms may get worse over time. A combination of medications and lifestyle changes generally gives the best results. The following sections look at some possible treatment options for rosacea. Skin creams Skin creams can help reduce inflammation and skin discoloration. Doctors may recommend using them once or twice per day. Examples include topical antibiotics, tretinoin, benzoyl peroxide, and azelaic acid. A doctor may also prescribe camouflage creams that mask blemishes on the skin. Eye drops Eye drops can relieve eye symptoms, which occur in ocular rosacea. For example, a doctor may recommend a type of steroid eye drop called blephamide. They may prescribe this for a few days to a week, followed by a break or tapered use. Antibiotics Oral antibiotics can have anti-inflammatory effects. They tend to give faster results than topical ones. Examples include tetracycline, minocycline, and erythromycin. Tetracyclines are antibiotics that can help with eye symptoms. Doxycycline helps improve dryness, itching, blurred vision, and sensitivity to light in people with ocular rosacea. Isotretinoin Isotretinoin (Accutane) is an oral medication that people use in severe cases of rosacea (if other treatments have not worked). This is a powerful drug that prevents the skin from making oil. The side effects can be severe. This medication is not helpful for people with erythematotelangiectatic rosacea. Laser treatment Dermatologists can use laser treatment to help reduce visible blood vessels, or telangiectasia. This treatment uses intense pulsed light to shrink them. Although the procedure may cause some pain, most people will not need an anesthetic. Laser treatment can sometimes cause bruising, crusting of the skin, swelling, tenderness, and, very rarely, infection. If a person wishes to remove thickened skin that has developed due to rosacea, they can speak to a cosmetic surgeon. Laser treatment or scalpel surgery can remove excess skin. A carbon dioxide laser can also shrink thickened tissue. Types There are four main types of rosacea, according to the American Academy of Dermatology (AAD): Erythematotelangiectatic rosacea: Symptoms include skin discoloration, flushing, and visible blood vessels. Symptoms include skin discoloration, flushing, and visible blood vessels. Papulopustular rosacea: Symptoms include flushing, swelling, and breakouts that resemble acne. Symptoms include flushing, swelling, and breakouts that resemble acne. Phymatous rosacea: Symptoms include thickened, bumpy skin. Symptoms include thickened, bumpy skin. Ocular rosacea: Symptoms include eye redness and irritation and swollen eyelids. A condition known as steroid rosacea can result from long-term use of corticosteroids, specifically when a person uses them to treat dermatitis and vitiligo. Symptoms The signs and symptoms of rosacea can vary considerably from person to person. Rosacea is more common in people with lighter skin. However, the symptoms of rosacea are easier to notice in these skin tones, and few studies have looked into the prevalence of rosacea in people with darker skin. The following symptoms tend to be present in most cases of rosacea: Persistent skin discoloration: This may look like a blush or sunburn that does not go away. It happens when hundreds of tiny blood vessels near the surface of the skin expand. This may look like a blush or sunburn that does not go away. It happens when hundreds of tiny blood vessels near the surface of the skin expand. Skin thickening: The skin may get thicker from excess skin tissue. This usually affects the nose and can cause rhinophyma, which affects males much more than females. The skin may get thicker from excess skin tissue. This usually affects the nose and can cause rhinophyma, which affects males much more than females. Flushing: This occurs when the face temporarily darkens. It may spread from the face down to the neck and chest, and the skin may feel unpleasantly hot. This occurs when the face temporarily darkens. It may spread from the face down to the neck and chest, and the skin may feel unpleasantly hot. Skin bumps and pimples: Small, red, acne-like bumps may develop. These may contain pus. Small, red, acne-like bumps may develop. These may contain pus. Visible blood vessels: Also called spider veins, or telangiectasia, this commonly affects the cheeks, bridge of the nose, and other parts of the central face. Also called spider veins, or telangiectasia, this commonly affects the cheeks, bridge of the nose, and other parts of the central face. Eye irritation: People may have irritated, watery, or bloodshot eyes. The eyelids can become red and swollen (blepharitis), and styes are common. Rosacea affects the eyes in around 50% of people with the condition. Rarely, vision can become blurred. People may also have the following secondary symptoms of rosacea: burning or stinging sensations in the skin facial swelling, due to excess fluid and proteins leaking out of the blood vessels dry or rough facial skin The following symptoms may be useful indicators of rosacea in darker skin: a warm feeling most of the time dry, swollen skin patches of darker skin, or a dusky brown discoloration to the skin persistent acne-like breakouts hard, yellowish-brown bumps around the mouth, eyes, or both a burning or stinging sensation when applying skin care products swollen or thicker skin on the forehead, nose, cheeks, or chin Causes Experts are not sure what causes rosacea. However, many believe that the following factors may contribute: Abnormalities in the blood vessels: Skin specialists suggest that facial flushing and spider veins are due to abnormalities in the blood vessels of the face. However, they are unsure as to what causes inflammation in the blood vessels. Skin specialists suggest that facial flushing and spider veins are due to abnormalities in the blood vessels of the face. However, they are unsure as to what causes inflammation in the blood vessels. A skin mite called Demodex folliculorum: This mite lives on the skin and usually causes no problems. However, people with rosacea tend to have more of these mites than others. It is unclear whether the mites cause the rosacea or the rosacea causes the increase in mites. This mite lives on the skin and usually causes no problems. However, people with rosacea tend to have more of these mites than others. It is unclear whether the mites cause the rosacea or the rosacea causes the increase in mites. Bacteria called Helicobacter pylori: These gut bacteria stimulate the production of bradykinin, a small polypeptide that causes blood vessels to dilate. Experts suggest that this bacterium may play a role in the development of rosacea. These gut bacteria stimulate the production of bradykinin, a small polypeptide that causes blood vessels to dilate. Experts suggest that this bacterium may play a role in the development of rosacea. Family history: Many people with rosacea have a close relative with the condition. This means that there may be an inherited or genetic component. Triggers For many people, dietary factors can affect rosacea symptoms. Consuming the following foods and beverages may cause or worsen symptoms: hot foods and beverages caffeine dairy products spices and seasonings that contain capsaicin, such as hot sauce, cayenne pepper, and red pepper alcohol, including wines and hard liquors foods containing cinnamaldehyde, such as tomatoes, chocolate, and citrus fruits Avoiding one or more of these foods and beverages may reduce the risk of flare-ups and help control rosacea. Other factors can aggravate rosacea by increasing blood flow to the surface of the skin. These include: extremes of temperature sunlight, humidity, and wind stress, anxiety, anger, and embarrassment vigorous exercise hot baths and saunas some medications, such as corticosteroids and drugs for treating high blood pressure acute medical conditions, such as a cold, cough, or fever some chronic medical conditions, such as hypertension Natural remedies Minimizing exposure to rosacea triggers will help prevent its symptoms. Adopting good skin care practices can also help. The following lifestyle changes and home remedies may help control symptoms if a person uses them alongside medical treatments: Avoid rubbing or touching the face. Wash the face with a gentle cleanser, and avoid using products that contain irritants or alcohol. Avoid comedogenic products. These block the oil and sweat gland openings. Keep the skin hydrated with a gentle moisturizer. Wait for topical medications to dry before moisturizing. Wear a broad-spectrum sunscreen when outdoors. In cold weather, protect the face with a scarf or ski mask. Avoid extreme temperatures. Avoid foods and beverages that might trigger an outbreak. Avoid using over-the-counter steroid creams unless a doctor has recommended them. These may worsen symptoms in the mid to long term. Use an electric shaver when shaving, as this is less likely to trigger flare-ups than a normal razor. Some people find that using green or yellow pre-foundation creams and powders help mask the skin discoloration. Reducing stress Stress is a common trigger of rosacea. Taking any measures to reduce stress levels will help prevent flare-ups. People can reduce stress by following these tips: Get regular exercise. Get good quality sleep. Eat a healthful diet full of nutrients. Try yoga, tai chi, or meditation. Rosacea can be a source of stress for many people. It can make a person feel embarrassed, frustrated, anxious, or low in self-confidence. Becoming well informed about rosacea may help people manage their emotions, as they may feel more in control and better prepared to manage any possible complications or recurrences. Seeking effective treatments, and speaking to a doctor or mental health professional if necessary, can also help. Diagnosis There is no clinical test for rosacea. A doctor can make a diagnosis after examining the persons skin and asking about their symptoms and triggers. The presence of enlarged blood vessels will help the doctor distinguish it from other skin conditions. The presence of a rash on the scalp or ears usually indicates a different or coexisting diagnosis. Rosacea signs and symptoms occur mainly in the face. Early diagnosis and prompt treatment can significantly reduce the risk of progression. If the doctor suspects that there may be an underlying medical condition, such as lupus, they may order blood tests or refer the person to a dermatologist. Antipsychotic drugs that are commonly prescribed for people with Parkinsons disease may be causing additional harm, says research reported in JAMA Neurology. Share on Pinterest Physicians may prescribe antipsychotics for some patients with Parkinsons. Parkinsons disease is a neurological disorder primarily affecting older people. Around 1 million Americans are estimated to be living with Parkinsons, and physicians diagnose 60,000 new cases each year, according to the Parkinsons Disease Foundation. Parkinsons causes tremors, rigidity and difficulty walking in the early stages; in time, it can lead to cognitive decline. Research has shown that up to 60% of patients with Parkinsons experience psychosis and 80% develop dementia. Antipsychotics, such as quetiapine, are commonly prescribed. Potential adverse effects of antipsychotic drugs include reduced alertness, a higher risk of diabetes and heart disease, low blood pressure and, in the long term, movement disorders that resemble those seen in Parkinsons. Antipsychotic drug packages carry warnings for patients with dementia Since 2005, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) have required antipsychotic drug packaging to carry black box warnings, initially due to evidence that they could lead to strokes among users. Fast facts about Parkinsons 7-10 million people worldwide live with Parkinsons 4% of cases manifest before the age of 50 years Men are 1.5 times more likely to develop the disease than women. Learn more about Parkinsons Previous studies have suggested that psychotic drugs may cause higher rates of mortality among patients with dementia, and the FDA warning notes the risk to patients with dementia. Most people with dementia have Alzheimers disease, but there are other forms of dementia, and one of these occurs in around 80% of individuals with Parkinsons, usually some years after diagnosis. In 2011, Dr. Daniel Weintraub, senior author of the current study, and colleagues found that despite these warnings, there was little action to reduce prescriptions of antipsychotic for patients with Parkinsons. To investigate further, Dr. Weintraub and researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan Medical School and the Philadelphia and Ann Arbor Veterans Affairs (VA) Medical Centers analyzed records, from a large Veterans Affairs database, for around 15,000 patients. The team wanted to know whether the use of antipsychotic drugs might lead to higher mortality in all patients with Parkinsons, not just those with dementia. Although psychosis in Parkinsons normally occurs with dementia and later-stage disease, it can manifest early on, and even when there is no dementia. The exact cause of psychosis in Parkinsons is unclear, but it may be due to the spread of the disease to certain brain areas or the use of certain drugs for enhancing dopamine function. We have all come across them: selfish individuals who lack the ability to empathize with others. But the results of two new studies suggest it may be possible to make people more altruistic, after finding that reducing activity in certain regions of the brain increased peoples generosity. Share on Pinterest Reducing activity in specific areas of the brain caused people to become more generous, researchers found. Researcher Leonardo Christov-Moore, of the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA), and colleagues publish their findings in the journals Human Brain Mapping and Social Neuroscience. In the first study, the team set out to identify the brain regions that play a role in empathetic decision-making. The researchers enrolled 20 participants and asked them to take part in two tasks while undergoing brain scans with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). One task involved viewing a video of a hand being pricked by a pin, while the other task involved viewing photographs of faces showing a variety of different emotions such as happy, sad and angry and imitating them. Low generosity linked to high activity in areas of prefrontal cortex The researchers found that the amygdala, somatosensory cortex and the anterior insula areas of the brain were involved with imitating others and experiencing pain and emotion, while two other areas in the prefrontal cortex the dorsolateral and dorsomedial regions played a key role in behavior and impulse control. Next, the participants took part in a task called the dictator game, in which they were given $10 each round for 24 rounds and asked whether they wanted to keep their money or share it with a stranger, for whom information on age and income was provided. On comparing the brain scans of participants with the amount of money they shared in the dictator game, the team found that individuals who demonstrated the greatest activity in the prefrontal cortex parted with the least money, giving away an average of $1-3 in each round. However, subjects who showed the greatest activity in areas of the brain linked to pain perception, emotion and imitating others gave away an average of 75% of their funds. The researchers say this behavior can be referred to as prosocial resonance a type of mirroring impulse that they believe is a key driver for altruism. Its almost like these areas of the brain behave according to a neural Golden Rule, says Christov-Moore. The more we tend to vicariously experience the states of others, the more we appear to be inclined to treat them as we would ourselves. Regulators in the US have moved to ban most powdered gloves because they pose a health risk to health professionals and patients, and new or updated labeling would not be enough to reduce the risk. Share on Pinterest The FDA are proposing to ban powdered surgeons gloves, powdered patient examination gloves and absorbable powder for lubricating surgeons gloves. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) note in their announcement this week that: The proposed ban applies to powdered surgeons gloves, powdered patient examination gloves and absorbable powder for lubricating a surgeons glove. Dr. Jeffrey Shuren, director for Devices and Radiological Health at the FDA, says the purpose of the ban is to protect patients and health professionals from risks they may not even be aware of. The FDA say they considered all the available evidence before proposing the ban. They reviewed all the available scientific literature and comments they received following a Federal Register Notice they posted in February 2011. Powder in the form of cornstarch is sometimes added to gloves to make them easier for doctors, nurses and other health care professionals to put on and take off. But, note the FDA, there are several reasons why powdered gloves pose health risks. One reason is that in natural rubber latex gloves, the aerosolized glove powder can carry proteins that can lead to respiratory allergic reactions. This is not the case, though, with synthetic (non-rubber) powdered gloves. Studies are increasingly hailing the potential health benefits of moderate alcohol consumption, particularly when it comes to the heart and lifespan. But new research suggests many of these studies are flawed and that such benefits may be largely overestimated. Share on Pinterest The researchers say we should be skeptical of studies reporting the health benefits of moderate drinking. Lead researcher Tim Stockwell, PhD, of the Centre for Addictions Research at the University of Victoria, Canada, and colleagues reached their conclusion by analyzing 87 studies that assessed the effects of moderate drinking on longevity. They recently published their findings in the Journal of Studies on Alcohol and Drugs. According to the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA), over the past month, around 24.6% of adults report engaging in binge drinking and around 6.8% report engaging in heavy drinking. Such drinking habits can increase the risk of alcohol use disorders, which affect around 16.6 million adults and 697,000 adolescents in the US. On the other hand, numerous studies have suggested that, in moderation, alcohol may be good for us. A recent study reported by Medical News Today, for example, suggested moderate drinking defined in the study as three to five alcoholic beverages a week may lower the risk of heart attack and heart failure. However, the new research from Stockwell and colleagues suggests the results of such studies should not be taken at face value, after finding that many of them are subject to biases that, when accounted for, eliminate the reported health benefits of moderate drinking. Possessing two X chromosomes is a double-edged sword, immunologically speaking. Females are better at fighting off infection than males, but they are also more susceptible to many autoimmune conditions, such as lupus. A new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and led by researchers from the University of Pennsylvania now offers the first mechanistic explanation for why this is the case. The research team, headed by Montserrat C. Anguera, an assistant professor in the Department of Biomedical Studies at Penn's School of Veterinary Medicine, focused on X inactivation, a mechanism that serves to balance gene dosage between males and females by inhibiting gene expression on one of a female's two X chromosomes. They discovered that, in females, the immune system's lymphocytes, specifically T cells and B cells, lack the typical patterns of Xist, an RNA molecule essential for the inactivation process, as well as other markers of X chromosome inactivation, thus making X inactivation incomplete in these cells. That incomplete activation was present in lymphocytes in all females, but lupus patients also had unique expression patterns of key immunity-related genes and unusual patterns of Xist RNA localization, suggesting an underlying explanation for the disease condition. "There just seems to be something about lymphocytes," Anguera said. "The silencing of the X chromosome doesn't seem to be as tight in them as it is in other cell types." Anguera's coauthors on the paper were lead author Jianle Wang, Camille Syrett and Michael Atchison, all of Penn Vet; Marianne C. Kramer of the Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics in Penn's Perelman School of Medicine; and Arindam Basu of Pennsylvania State University, formerly of Penn Vet. The study had its origins in Anguera's postdoctoral research, which focused on X inactivation in pluripotent stem cells. In particular she examined the role of Xist, a long non-coding RNA molecule that is known to initiate X inactivation and maintain it by residing with the inactivated X chromosome, which also acquires small-molecule tags called heterochromatic modifications, further repressing gene expression. Anguera's studies found that, in some cases, stem cells lose both Xist expression and the modifications that normally reside on the inactive X. As a result, the cells would start to become partially reactivated, growing rapidly and beginning to resemble cancer cells. She began to wonder whether certain diseases might arise from improper maintenance of X inactivation, notably autoimmune conditions such as lupus; 85 percent of lupus patients are women. "What caught my attention about autoimmunity and specifically lupus," Anguera said, "was that there were genes on the X chromosome that were immunity related and that had been shown to have higher expression levels in lupus patients." To address this question, the Penn researchers examined lymphocytes donated by healthy human females as well as "naive," or unstimulated T and B cells from female mice. They found that, unlike in other cell types where Xist is associated tightly with the inactive X chromosome, female lymphocytes lacked this Xist "cloud," even though the cell still contained expected levels of Xist. This suggested that Xist was failing to properly migrate to the inactive X to silence it. When the research team activated the human T and B cells, simulating how these cells would respond when presented with a pathogen, the Xist clouds reappeared. The team observed similar results in mice. Yet the naive and stimulated lymphocytes all had similar quantities of Xist. "What was really striking to us was that this wasn't due to a difference in the amount of Xist. There is a ton of Xist RNA in these cells," Anguera said. "It's just not getting to the inactive X chromosome in the naive lymphocytes." Further examinations of the inactive X in lymphocytes found that it lacked the heterochromatic marks found on the inactive X in other cell types. The findings that even healthy females had such unusual maintenance of the inactive X in their lymphocytes was entirely unexpected. "Our hypothesis was that the lupus samples were going to be dysregulated and the healthy females would be fine," Montserrat said. "So it was really shocking to us that lymphocytes in normal females lacked these markers of X inactivation as well." To see if this lack of heterochromatic marks and Xist, both of which normally block gene expression on the inactive X, resulted in increased gene expression, the researchers looked at immunity-related genes on the X chromosome to see if there was one or two copies being expressed. They found that about 3 to 5 percent of female lymphocytes expressed two copies of these genes, as well as two copies of a gene unrelated to immunity. No male lymphocytes showed this same two-copy expression. Consistent with that result, the researchers found that certain regions of the X chromosome in human female B cells, including regions that contain immunity-related genes, were expressed at higher levels than male cells. Because Xist in the female lymphocytes was present but simply wasn't localizing to the proper place on the inactive X, the research team took a closer look at two proteins, YY1 and hnRNPU, that are known to bind with Xist and possibly play a role in moving it back to the inactive X after lymphocytes are stimulated. Using human T cells in culture as well as mice lacking one of these genes, YY1, they found that, indeed, the two proteins did help move Xist back to the inactive X chromosome in activated lymphocytes. Though it was clear that female lymphocytes were different from males' in their patterns of Xist localization, the team wanted to know whether lupus patients had additional unusual features of X inactivation that might explain their disease. Using lymphocyte samples from both pediatric lupus patients and healthy children of similar ages, the team found more Xist mis-localization in lupus patients and some evidence that they were more likely than healthy people to have two copies of immunity-related genes. The researchers also noted that the region of the X chromosome containing Xist showed the biggest differences in expression when comparing lupus to healthy patients. One possibility, said Anguera, is that all females may have a subpopulation of lymphocytes with incomplete X inactivation; in healthy individuals, those lymphocytes stay in the minority, but that subpopulation may take over in patients with autoimmune conditions. To build on the work, Anguera's team is performing additional studies using primary samples from lupus patients as well as samples from a mouse model of lupus. While the current study was done on immortalized cells from lupus patients, Anguera is hopeful the researchers will obtain a clearer picture of how Xist patterns differ using primary cells. The team is also embarking on a study of another female-biased autoimmune disease, Sjogrens syndrome, which has an even more extreme female bias than lupus, to see if similar X inactivation patterns are present. If the findings hold up across different autoimmune diseases, it's possible that the characteristic patterns of Xist localization could be used as a disease biomarker, enabling earlier diagnoses and treatment. Phase 3 data presented at the 11th Congress of the European Crohn's and Colitis Organisation (ECCO) showed that treatment with STELARA (ustekinumab) induced clinical response and clinical remission in adult patients with moderate to severe Crohn's disease who had previously failed or were intolerant to one or more anti-tumour necrosis factor (TNF)-alpha therapies (anti-TNF failure population). The Janssen Phase 3 UNITI-1 study, which included 741 people with Crohn's disease, achieved its primary endpoint with ustekinumab treatment groups demonstrating significantly higher rates of clinical response at week 6 when compared with the placebo group (p=0.003, p=0.002, respectively).1 Major secondary endpoints of clinical response at week 8 (p0.001) and clinical remission at week 8 (p<0.001, p=0.003, respectively) were also significantly higher among patients receiving ustekinumab compared with patients receiving placebo.1 These latest findings follow Phase 3 results from the UNITI-2 study, which demonstrated the efficacy and safety of ustekinumab in patients who had previously failed conventional therapy, the majority of whom were naive to treatment with anti-TNF-alpha therapy.2 Regulatory applications seeking approval of ustekinumab for the treatment of moderately to severely active Crohn's disease are currently under review in Europe and the United States. Ustekinumab, which is approved for the treatment of moderate to severe plaque psoriasis and active psoriatic arthritis in many countries, is a monoclonal antibody that targets interleukin (IL)-12 and IL-23 cytokines, which are believed to play a role in immune- mediated diseases, including Crohn's disease.3 "Results from the UNITI-1 study show that ustekinumab therapy induced clinical response and remission in patients with moderate to severe Crohn's disease who had previously failed treatment with TNF inhibitors," said Professor Paul Rutgeerts, Professor Emeritus of Medicine and Former Director of the Multidisciplinary Department of Endoscopy, Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, and ustekinumab Crohn's disease steering committee member. "With two Phase 3 induction studies demonstrating the efficacy and safety of ustekinumab in anti-TNF-alpha naive, exposed and failure patient populations, we look forward to the forthcoming maintenance study findings. The need to induce and maintain control of disease symptoms is paramount in the treatment of Crohn's disease." Patients participating in the Phase 3 UNITI-1 study received a single intravenous (IV) infusion of placebo, ustekinumab 130 mg or ustekinumab ~6 mg/kg (weight-tiered dosing: patients weighing less than or equal to 55 kg received 260 mg; patients weighing more than 55 kg and less than or equal to 85 kg received 390 mg; and patients weighing more than 85 kg received 520 mg) at week 0. All enrolled patients had previously failed or were intolerant to treatment with at least one anti-TNF-alpha therapy, and half of the enrolled patients had failed two or more anti-TNF-alpha therapies.1 At week 6, 34 percent of patients receiving ustekinumab 130 mg and 34 percent of patients receiving ustekinumab ~6 mg/kg achieved clinical response, as defined by a reduction from baseline in the Crohn's Disease Activity Index (CDAI) score of at least 100 points, compared with 22 percent of patients receiving placebo (P = 0.002 for ustekinumab 130 mg; P = 0.003 for ustekinumab ~6 mg/kg).1 CDAI is a symptom-based disease assessment tool commonly used in clinical trials to quantify Crohn's disease activity. At week 8, 34 percent and 38 percent of patients receiving ustekinumab 130 mg and ustekinumab ~6 mg/kg, respectively, achieved clinical response, compared with 20 percent of patients receiving placebo (P < 0.001). In addition, 16 percent of patients receiving ustekinumab 130 mg and 21 percent of patients receiving ustekinumab ~6 mg/kg achieved clinical remission at week 8, as defined by a CDAI score of less than 150 points, compared with 7 percent of patients receiving placebo (P = 0.003 for ustekinumab 130 mg; P < 0.001 for ustekinumab ~6 mg/kg).1 In addition to significant improvements in signs and symptoms as measured by CDAI, both doses of ustekinumab resulted in significant improvements in the Inflammatory Bowel Disease Questionnaire (IBDQ), a health-related quality of life measure for patients with IBD, as well as significant reduction in markers of inflammation, including faecal lactoferrin, calprotectin and C-reactive protein (CRP) (P < 0.001 for ustekinumab ~6 mg/kg; P = 0.012 for ustekinumab 130 mg).4 Through week 8 (placebo-controlled period), adverse events (AEs), serious AEs and infections were reported in similar proportions across ustekinumab and placebo treatment groups. One case of Listeria meningitis infection was reported in the ustekinumab ~6 mg/kg group. No malignancies, deaths, cases of tuberculosis or major adverse cardiovascular events (MACE) were observed in patients treated with ustekinumab.1 "We are pleased to share these important results from the Phase 3 UNITI-1 induction study, which complement Phase 3 results from the UNITI-2 study and further support regulatory applications submitted seeking approval of ustekinumab for the treatment of moderately to severely active Crohn's disease," said Newman Yeilding, M.D., Head of Immunology Development, Janssen Research & Development, LLC. "Janssen Immunology remains committed to the continued development of ustekinumab and the discovery of innovative medicines for the treatment of immune-mediated diseases." About the UNITI-1 Trial UNITI-1, a Phase 3, multicentre, randomised, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel group study, evaluated the efficacy and safety of ustekinumab induction therapy in adult patients with moderate to severe Crohn's disease. Patients (n=741) were randomised equally to receive a single IV infusion of placebo, ustekinumab 130 mg or ustekinumab ~6 mg/kg (weight-tiered dosing: patients weighing less than or equal to 55 kg received 260 mg; patients weighing more than 55 kg and less than or equal to 85 kg received 390 mg; and patients weighing more than 85 kg received 520 mg) at week 0. All participating patients had previously failed or were intolerant to treatment with at least one anti-TNF-alpha therapy. The primary endpoint was clinical response at week 6, measured by the proportion of patients who achieved at least a 100-point reduction from baseline CDAI scores. Major secondary endpoints at week 8 included clinical response and clinical remission (defined by CDAI scores less than 150 points). At week 8, patients either transitioned to the IM-UNITI maintenance study or were to complete a safety follow-up period through week 20.1 UNITI-1 is part of a comprehensive Phase 3 clinical development program investigating ustekinumab for the treatment of moderate to severe Crohn's disease. About ustekinumab5 Ustekinumab, a human IL-12 and IL-23 antagonist, is approved in the European Union for the treatment of moderate to severe plaque psoriasis in adults who failed to respond to, or who have a contraindication to, or are intolerant to other systemic therapies including ciclosporin, MTX or psoralen plus ultraviolet A (PUVA). Ustekinumab is also indicated for the treatment of moderate to severe plaque psoriasis in adolescent patients from the age of 12 years and older who are inadequately controlled by or are intolerant to other systemic therapies or phototherapies. In addition, ustekinumab is approved alone or in combination with MTX for the treatment of active psoriatic arthritis in adult patients when the response to previous non-biological disease-modifying antirheumatic drug (DMARD) therapy has been inadequate. The Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson maintain exclusive worldwide marketing rights to ustekinumab, which is currently approved for the treatment of moderate to severe plaque psoriasis in 87 countries and psoriatic arthritis in 71 countries. Psychiatric diseases and mood disorders like panic disorders and/or anxiety, may increase the risk of ischemia in women. Anxiety in itself, can cause spasms of the coronary arteries and reduce perfusion of the heart without the presence of a coronary artery blockage. It can also cause chronic stress, which may lead to constantly elevated levels of cortisol in the body, which can be a risk factor for the development of heart disease. Stress also leads to behavioral changes, e.g. smoking, which are not conducive to good cardiac health. panic disorders Anxiety in itself, can cause spasms of the coronary arteries and reduce perfusion of the heart without the presence of a coronary artery blockage. It can also cause chronic stress, which may lead to constantly elevated levels of cortisol in the body, which can be a risk factor for the development of heart disease. Stress also leads to behavioral changes, e.g. smoking, which are not conducive to good cardiac health. Men experience the classic symptoms of chest pain and shortness of breath in coronary artery blockage while women experience atypical ones like palpitations, hot flushes, chest discomfort and neck pain. These are very similar to the signs of anxiety and the diagnosis of a coronary artery disease may be missed or delayed. Stress is also associated with an abnormal autonomic control. This may be the reason why women with coronary artery disease show worse outcomes than their male counterparts. Another study conducted by Deepak L.Bhatt, MD, MPH, FACC, across 366 U.S. hospitals and over 49000 patients revealed that women were less likely to receive appropriate care as compared to men and therefore, showed a higher mortality rate owing to sub-optimal care. This revelation, coupled with the theory that heart disease is often misdiagnosed in women as anxiety, can have serious consequences. Anxiety and psychiatric disorders must be taken seriously and treated early with cognitive therapies and medication. Physicians need to test women extensively before attributing the cause to a psychogenic source instead of coronary artery blockage. Women with anxiety disorders must be tested for heart disease as anxiety predisposes such patients to myocardial ischemia. Awareness among women must be raised over stress management and the adoption of a healthy and active lifestyle to ensure good cardiac health. Advertisement https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/news/fullstory_157417.html http://newsroom.heart.org/news/special-issue-highlights-new-heart-disease-research-on-women-call-for-more http://www.acc.org/latest-in-cardiology/articles/2016/02/23/16/45/study-finds-women-may-be-less-likely-to-receive-optimal-care?w_nav=Tab Laura D. Kubzansky, Ichiro Kawachi, Scott T. Weiss, David Sparrow; ''Anxiety and Coronary Heart Disease: A synthesis of epidemiological, psychological, and experimental evidence'', Annals of Behavioural Medicine, June 1998, Volume 20, Issue 2 The study has revealed that anxiety may not just have emotional manifestations. It may have physical ramifications in women as well.The study has sent across an important message- stress and anxiety 'The idea that stress can be related to ischemia and even a heart attack is an important message to get across,'' said Dr. Carolyn Lam Su Ping, senior consultant at the National Heart Centre in Singapore.Physicians over the world have been researching long over the association of stress and anxiety with heart disease. This study has proven once again that the concern possibly holds true. Anxiety has a detrimental effect on pre-existing heart conditions and even delays diagnosis and treatment.Physicians have divided opinions on this issue, but quite a few believe that there may exist a diagnostic bias due to the similarity of symptoms of anxiety and heart disease that may cause labeling of women with coronary artery disease as those suffering from a mood disorder. This study supports the fact that physicians need to assess patients both physically as well as mentally as anxiety is a common ailment of the modern world. Not treating anxiety may have equally disastrous effects as misdiagnosing an underlying heart condition as anxiety.Further research needs to be undertaken in order to ascertain the extent to which anxiety and mood disorders affect the outcomes in patients with coronary artery disease and whether early intervention and treatment of psychiatric ailments can result in improved outcomes in these patients.Source: Medindia The full text of this post is available to subscribers. Please login or register to request subscription information from MEMRI The following report is a complimentary offering from MEMRI's Jihad and Terrorism Threat Monitor (JTTM). For JTTM subscription information, click here. On March 22, 2016, a series of attacks in Brussels, targeting the Zaventem Airport and Maalbeek Metro station, left at least 34 dead and 230 injured. These attacks come days after the capture in Brussels of Salah Abdesalam one of the prime suspects behind the November 2015 Paris terror attacks. Hours after the Brussels attacks, the ISIS-affiliated A'maq News Agency claimed responsibility for the attacks on behalf of ISIS.[1] ISIS supporters on social media platforms such as Twitter, Telegram, Instagram, and Facebook reacted by issuing additional threats as well as by celebrating the attacks, expressing joy with the scale of the devestation, and boasting about the fear ISIS sows across Europe. One Twitter user even singled out Germany as the next target. The attacks were also presented as retribution for Western attacks against ISIS. Threats Twitter user Um Omarah Al-Muwahhidah tweeted in French, using the French-language #Bruxelles hashtag, "After the bombs, wait for our soldiers with kalachnikovs. They will fire (with machine guns) in all the streets! OCiThis is only the beginning of your nightmare. The second part of the plan is activated. OCiExpect more deaths!"[2] "Wait for more bombs, more deaths! Soon in Germany, too!" "A black day for Belgians today, but this is only the start of a long series of attacks on your soil." Another Twitter user, Aisha Al-Dawlawiyyah, posted a series of tweets in French warning that more bombs were placed around the city. She wrote, "Urgent, do not transport the victims to CHU [University Hospital] Saint Pierre in Brussels, several bombs are inside!"[3] OCi"#Urgent several bombs placed at the University of Brussels in retaliation for the University of Mosul." "#Urgent Several bombs were placed at the European commission! Clear out immediately or die!" Using the hashtag "Brussels Raid," Twitter user Abu Omar Al-Ansari[4] posted in Arabic, "The lions are still roaring in Brussels, thanks to Allah. The results of the Brussels raid, so far, 26 dead and 135 wounded." In the same hashtag, another supporter (@KaRiM2twit[5]) tweeted: "The Islamic State has infiltrated and humiliated all the European entrenchments and strucke once again." Twitter user @T7alf_60,[6] an ISIS supporter using the Arabic hashtag "Brussels Attack" tweeted: "It won't be the last, by Allah's promise. O worshiper of the Cross, safety [will be something] you will wish for." The Telegram group "Inspire Muslims" posted the following message: "European Union under attack simultaneous days. "* Bamako mali-Eu base 21 March. "* Brussels airport, metro station 22nd. "U either stop working against Islam and Muslims and leave Muslim Lands Or [series of explosion emoji]" A prominent ISIS disseminator and translator currently using the name Anbariyyah Ansariyyah aka Radical Bird[7] tweeted: "The message has been delivered to all leaders of Kufr [unbelief], For every actions - a reaction. But when believers react, it hurts!! The west needs to know. As long as they bomb Syria and Iraq. They will be bombed in their own land. This is just the beginning..."[8] On Instagram, an ISIS fighter using the name misqandmaidens posted a photo of the carnage from the Brussels airport and wrote: "The dearest thing to the kuffar [infidels] is to live in this dunya [life], they think this is paradise so we will show them hell."[9] Celebrating The Attacks Twitter user Milk Sheikh wrote: "Today is a happy day for the believers!" He added, "The best thing to do now by Belgium is to crackdown on Muslims, it would just make the indoctrination work much easier for us."[10] An ISIS fighter in Libya named Abu Baraa[11] posted on Facebook: "I am happy today, extremely happy! The Brussels attack has indeed healed the hearts of the believers and striked terror in the hearts of the enemy! Let them live a second of what our families in darul khilafa [the Islamic State] experience every day! #KillThemWhereverYouFindThem."[12] Facebook user Omar Abdul Wadud posted an image of a chocolate grenade and wrote: "Belgium chocolate anyone?"[13] Twitter user "Sleeper Cell" posted before and after images of Zaventem Airport and wrote: "Before and after Allahu Akbar!!!"[14] Twitter user Abu Abdulluh tweeted: "Did the kuffar think tht they will be left alone after harming us? have a taste of ur own medicine. #brusselsairport."[15] ISIS supporters on Facebook have been using different hashtag to celebrate the Brussels attacks. One Arabic hashtag "the war will be inside your land" featured a post from user Ghazi Alhaj[16], who wrote: "The lions are still roaring in Brussels, thanks to Allah. So far, the results of Brussels raid is 26 dead and 135 wounded. In the bombing of Brussels' metro, 15 were killed and 55 wounded. In the bombing of Brussels airport, 11 were killed and 80 wounded." Advice And Security Tips Following The Attack The pro-ISIS Telegram group "Information Security" shared the following post, intended for its Belgian followers, providing security tips following the attacks: "Attentions for all our brothers in Belgium "- Stay away from using Internet unless you are using encryption Software such as (Tor Network- i2P Network-VPN) "- Encrypt all your jihadies Files and it's better to delete them Permanently with Eraser or iShredder or kill disk. "- We highly recommend using Tails OS or Qubes OS and stay away from Using any other products or systems unless you unplug internet. "- Stay away from Social Media websites don't share any information with your brothers right now. Keep low profile until the heat dies down. "- Intelligence agencies will work all day and night to catch any jihadi in Belgium So be ready to act. "- Try to change your location as soon as possible and don't tell anyone about your location. "- Don't panic keep calm and concentrate on your next movie and don't Forget to warn your brothers to Take precations." Speculation Dutch Jabhat Al-Nusra fighter Abu Saeed al-Holandi speculated as to why more security measures were not taken at the airport. He tweeted: "Belgium's main international airport was always at the top of the jihadist's target list. I wonder why no security measures were taken."[17] American Telegram user Abu Sharif al-Amriki wrote: "It's brilliant, because when they caught abdulselam the[y] thought they could interrogate him and stop an attack but now, it doesn't matter, might as well let him go." ISIS Supporters Organize Facebook called Ahmed Kalah shared a Telegram message from the Caliphate Cyber Army which reads: "Share and join, time to play your minor role and make your voice heard by the billions who will be viewing those hashtags! In a few moments the raid is going to start. We are posting as much as we can in these hashtags #Bruxells, #Brussel and #Brussels. This is top priority now, need to fill our stuff into the brussels hashtag. Get ready, we need everyone!!!!"[18] The story of Ramayana is one of the most popular tales in Hindu mythology, after the Mahabharata. There have been hundreds of versions of the epic sagaon television, on the silver screen, and in books; and yet it never gets old. And now, Ramayana is going to be told in a way it has never been told before. There is an English film being made on the epic, and the filmmakers promise its going to be at par with Hollywoods fantasy adventure hits like Lord Of The Rings and Planet Of The Apes. YouTube The two directors, Vineet Sinha and Sean Graham, are looking to retell the epic in the grandest way possible and present the story to an international audience. Sinha told PTI, Hollywood, Japan and China make and market their stories such as Batman, Superman, Star Wars and Pokemon to the whole world. But Indian stories are not as well known. Facebook The duo aims at using the latest technology to create special effects thatd sweep the audience off its feet. Creating a world that is thousands of years old means heavy designs. We have to make sure we are keeping true to the time, while also adding our own spin on things. The biggest challenge has also been the most fun to figure out. How do you get a Rakshasa (demons) to fly in the air after being hit by Hanumans gada (mace), Sinha said. The cast will be mainly comprise Indian actors and the film would be dubbed in many Indian and Western languages. Facebook The project would, of course, require a massive budget, keeping in mind the special effects. The makers are trying to raise a fund of Rs 50 lakh on Wishberry.in, and anyone who contributes Rs 5 lakh will be considered a co-producer. Yes, that means seeing your name on the credits and being invited to the premiere in San Francisco, Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore. The contributions start at Rs 750 and go up to a maximum of 5 lakh. Those who invest Rs 750 will find mention on the website of the film on their social media pages and also get sticker packs! Hear out the makers themselves: Ammu wandered around the burial place of her lost babies since they have died. She was the proud mother of eight but her happiness did not last long as her eight most precious little ones were brutally killed. Now she wanders around the neighbourhood in Krishnanagar in Bengaluru, wailing and mourning for them. Bangalore Mirror Ammu is a four-year-old stray dog who had grown up under the love and compassion of the neighbours of Lane No.3 Krishnanagar off Tumkur Road. The residents are true animal lovers who not only take care and feed their own dogs but also the stray dogs in the locality. The dogs even share their meals. So, what went so wrong when Ammu gave birth to her eight pups? Her only fault was to litter under the drain of Ponnammas resident gate, who is the wife of an ex-honorary flight lieutenant. It is because of this reason Ponnamma took this gruesome step to catch hold of each and every pup and bash them against the strong boulders mercilessly in front of their helpless mother, killing them. Though the eighth one survived, yet the little one could hold on to life only till the next day. Bangalore Mirror On 17th March prompt action was taken by the incensed residents who filed a complaint with the NGO, CUPA (Comapassion Unlimited Plus Action), who further went on to register a complaint against the killer with the Peenya Police. The woman had thrashed the pups on the boulders in an empty site opposite her house killing them. She had hit them so hard against the boulders that even some of the pups intestines came out. Ammu ran around the locality seeking help and tried to wake the neighbours. On receiving severe protests from neighbours, Ponnamma had only one answer for them that she did this to teach the poor dog a lesson. Bangalore Mirror Though the accused was released on bail, the police have gathered the CCTV footage and are investigating to have other evidences in this case. When you are done with your graduation, you would probably want to start your career and earn your own money. You dont want to depend on your parents for your meagre pocket money anymore. Rather you would want to support them. But what happens if you are conned on your first job? Hindustan Times Harsh S. Nar, who had just graduated and was in desperate need of a government job, had gone through this nightmare. He thought his prayers might have been answered after he saw in the prominent Gujarat Weekly, Sandesh, an advertisement of a job vacancy in the Indian Government Secret Service. Everything went smooth and he even got an appointment letter on an MHA letterhead with the emblem of Ashoka stamped on it. The offer letter said that he would be under 6 months probation period and will be paid Rs 32,500 and that he should specifically work as a secret soldier and therefore he should not tell anyone about this as it is against the job description. He was told to report to the Ministry of Home Affairs. But along with the good news, he was also instructed to deposit Rs 35,000. If he had only known what mess he had actually got into! Hindustan Times According to what Harsh told Hindustan Times, The men said they were from the ministry and asked me to deposit a sum of Rs 16,000 as processing fee in their account. Later, I again got a call. They asked me to deposit a sum of Rs 19,000 for my medical before attending the training on September 6. I did as instructed. The epiphany that he was being conned fell upon when he reached Delhi. As he could not contact them over phone he reached the office of Home Ministry in South Block B, as instructed, to find nothing was there. It was at that moment he realized that it was a scam. Arjun and Suresh, the two con men who had duped Harsh along with 190 others from Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Uttarakhand were arrested by Delhi Police crime branch. Almost 200 people in their 20s who had contacted them were promised jobs in government departments like the Defence Ministry, BCCI and Ministry of Home Affairs. Thinkstock/Getty Images The duo would publish their advertisements in the remote towns of the states along with their mobile number. After getting calls they would send them fake appointment letters in exchange of the money they demanded in the name of transport and medical expenses and would tell them to come to either South or North Block office at a certain date. They had not only forged the seals of MHA, ITBP and other ministries but also used temporary sim cards which they discarded after getting the money. Beware the next time you apply! The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied Nebraska and Oklahomas proposed lawsuit against Colorados legal marijuana laws. The 6-2 vote means the nations highest court will not rule on the interstate dispute, and Colorados legal cannabis market is safe for now. Because the Supreme Court has passed on the case, Nebraska and Oklahoma could now take it to a federal district court if they choose to, law experts say. The states have not yet said how or if they will move forward with a similar suit in another court. Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. joined Thomas in dissenting. Nebraska Attorney General Doug Peterson on Monday said he was disappointed, but that he is working with partners in Oklahoma and other states to figure out their next steps toward vindicating the rule of law, according to a statement. Today, the Supreme Court has not held that Colorados unconstitutional facilitation of marijuana industrialization is legal, Peterson said in the statement, and the Courts decision does not bar additional challenges to Colorados scheme in federal district court. Colorado Attorney General Cynthia H. Coffman celebrated the victory on Monday morning but also acknowledged that Nebraska and Oklahomas concerns wont disappear with the courts ruling. Im proud of the legal team in my office that successfully defended this complicated case, Coffman said in a statement. I continue to believe that this lawsuit was not the way to properly address the challenges posed by legalized marijuana. But the problems are not going away. Although weve had victories in several federal lawsuits over the last month, the legal questions surrounding Amendment 64 still require stronger leadership from Washington. Legalization activists reacted positively to the courts decision on Monday. Theres no question about it: This is good news for legalization supporters, said advocate Tom Angell, chairman of Marijuana Majority. This case, if it went forward and the Court ruled the wrong way, had the potential to roll back many of the gains our movement has achieved to date. And the notion of the Supreme Court standing in the way could have cast a dark shadow on the marijuana ballot measures voters will consider this November. The lawsuit was filed more than a year ago by two neighboring states, Nebraska and Oklahoma, and it specifically challenges Colorados ability to license and regulate marijuana businesses. The two states say Colorados system impermissibly conflicts with federal law and creates burdens for them by increasing the amount of pot coming across their borders. Because the lawsuit involves a dispute between states, it was filed directly to the Supreme Court. The first step in the lawsuit was for the justices to decide whether they even wanted to consider it. When the Supreme Court does accept such cases, the subsequent litigation can go on for years or even decades. Attorneys for both the state of Colorado and the Obama administration had urged the Supreme Court not to take up the lawsuit, while a group of former leaders of the Drug Enforcement Administration sided with Nebraska and Oklahoma and asked the court to accept the case. In 2012, Colorado voters legalized possession of small amounts of marijuana and also authorized the creation of state-administered rules that would allow stores to sell marijuana to anyone over 21 years old. Those stores opened in 2014, and, since then, Nebraska and Oklahoma say they have seen an increased number of people bringing marijuana into their states, in violation of both their state laws and federal law. The State of Colorado has created a dangerous gap in the federal drug control system, the two states complained in their lawsuit. Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman responded that eliminating the stores while keeping marijuana possession legal would likely create more trafficking. And, the Obama administration, in its own filing, said the case was inappropriate for the Supreme Court because the harm is allegedly being caused by individual lawbreakers, not the state of Colorado, itself. Entertaining the type of dispute at issue here essentially that one States laws make it more likely that third parties will violate federal and state law in another State would represent a substantial and unwarranted expansion of this Courts original jurisdiction, U.S. Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. wrote in his brief to the court. The Supreme Court justices spent more than a year pondering whether to take the case. The lawsuit was scheduled and re-scheduled five times for a closed-door conference, where the justices would debate the merits of taking the case. John Ingold: 303-954-1068, jingold@denverpost.com or @johningold For many Americans, For Whom the Bell Tolls was the beginning and end of an education about the Spanish Civil War. Ernest Hemingways novel is a fine start, says Adam Hochschild. But theres so much more to the story. In Spain in Our Hearts: Americans in the Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939 (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, $30, 438 pages), Hochschild offers a deep account of the war in which nearly 3,000 American volunteers joined the International Brigades to aid Spains democratic forces in the fight against fascism. Moving and informative, the book interweaves history with personal narratives by some of those Americans. Hochschild, 73, has spent much of his career writing about those who cant speak for themselves. In a recent interview, the Berkeley historian, co-founder of Mother Jones magazine, and author of books including King Leopolds Ghost and To End All Wars, said he got interested in Spain in the mid-1960s when he was a young reporter at the San Francisco Chronicle. There were two reporters there who were Spanish Civil War veterans, both 30 or 40 years older than me, said Hochschild, who teaches at UC Berkeleys School of Journalism. When things were slow in the city room, I would ask them about their experiences. Their stories stayed with him, says Hochschild: The world was in great crisis, fascism was looming and Spain was where people felt it had to be stopped. In many ways, the Spanish Civil War predicted World War II. In 1936, the countrys democratically elected Republicans came under siege from Nationalist forces under Gen. Francisco Franco, aided by fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. As the United States and its allies watched, the only country to come to the Republicans aid was Stalins Soviet Union. At the same time, a revolution erupted in the North of Spain, where anarchists began taking over factories and restaurants (the book includes a photo showing the dining room of Barcelonas Ritz Hotel, converted to Peoples Cafeteria No. 1.) Just trying to figure out the political intricacies of all that fascinated me, Hochschild said. The war was the single most covered news event of its time, with more than 1,000 front-page New York Times stories on its events between July 1936 and April 1939. Nearly 1,000 foreign correspondents reported from Spain. Yet Hochschild says their coverage missed significant aspects of the war, including the involvement of Torkild Reiber, a Texaco oil executive and Nazi sympathizer who supplied Franco with military intelligence and oil at a huge discount and on credit, notes Hochschild. Texacos gift, he says, was ignored by the American press; in most histories, it scarcely merits a footnote. Also underreported, says Hochschild, was the revolution in northern Spain. As journalists focused on battles between Francos forces and the Brigades, the anarchists story was often overlooked. One writer who focused on it was George Orwell, whose Homage to Catalonia remains Hochschilds favorite book of the era. For me, its one of the great nonfiction books of the 20th century, he said. Orwell has an ability to bring the scene alive with a crispness and vividness of detail how things smelled, how they looked in a particular city or place. His eyes are always wide open. Hemingway covered the war as a journalist before writing A Farewell to Arms, but Hochschild says his reportage often got the story wrong. Better, he says, were Lois Orr, a 19-year-old Kentucky woman who went to Spain on her honeymoon and wrote about the war, and Virginia Cowles, whom Hochschild calls the best correspondent writing in English at that time. Her memoir, Looking for Trouble, is still in print. Threaded through Spain in Our Hearts are individual American stories, including those of Robert and Marion Merriman, a young couple who traveled to Spain in 1936. Robert, a natural leader, fought in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade. Marion worked in support roles. Robert Merriman was believed killed in battle, although his body was never recovered. But his diary, Marions memoir and letters between them were rich sources for Spain in Our Hearts. Reading those letters, housed at UC Berkeleys Bancroft Library, Hochschild was astonished to discover that the Merrimans lived in Berkeley, just four blocks away from where Hochschild and his wife lived for many years. When I walk from here to the Journalism School, I go right past it, he said. The Americans who joined the cause were heroes, says Hochschild. About 800 died in Spain; others went on to fight in World War II. But the U.S. didnt welcome them back with open arms; in the 1950s, many became victims of the Red Scare. The publication of Spain in Our Hearts comes weeks after the announcement that Delmer Berg, the last known American to fight in the Lincoln Brigade, had died at his California home at age 100. Its possible there are others who are not known, said Hochschild. The Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives has a very good online database. But they do not know of any others still alive. SAN JOSE Leona and Dave Messink lost their first golden retriever, Riley, to cancer. Now they have Brewer, a gentle 4-year-old golden who loves people but retreats between his owners legs in unfamiliar situations. Brewer is healthy now but regularly submits to urine collection, nail clipping samples and a volley of other undignified tests while the Messinks take notes on everything he eats and everywhere he goes and send their records to scientists studying canine cancer. The Messinks, from San Jose, are participating in one of a number of new studies focused on the genetics of mans best friend. In 2005, researchers first sequenced the canine genome and unleashed science on dog genetics. Now, scientists are digging into the genetic bases of diseases that hound pet pooches. The results could lead to healthier dogs and perhaps humans, too. We realize this research might not help Brewer, Leona Messink said, noting that scientific breakthroughs can take longer than a single dogs life, but were hoping it can help some future pups. The studies already have revealed some surprising findings. In addition to uncovering genetic mutations that increase the risk for certain diseases, scientists have debunked the popular dogma that mixed-breed dogs are healthier than purebreds. I think theres a consensus growing that pet dogs are a model for genetics, and its going to be growing faster soon, said Jessica Alfoldi, a scientist in the Broad Institutes Genome Sequencing and Analysis Program who has studied genomes in dogs and other animals. Pet dogs boast important virtues as a genetic model. There are lots of them an estimated 78 million in the U.S. and they suffer from many of the same diseases that humans do. Whats more, purebred dogs which are heavily inbred tend to have less genetic variation than humans, allowing scientists to sniff out harmful gene mutations more easily. For similar reasons, many human genetic studies focus on relatively insular groups such as Icelanders, Mormons and Ashkenazi Jews. Genetic studies call for dog owner participation. So far, pet owners such as the Messinks have answered the call, collaborating with vets to send scientists the data they need. Brewers data goes to Missy Simpson in Denver, who leads the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study for the Morris Animal Foundation, the oldest veterinary nonprofit in the U.S. The project, which completed enrollment in 2015, is the first of its kind, following 3,000 young golden retrievers throughout their lives to monitor how genes and environmental factors influence their risk of cancer. Simpson, who owns a scruffy black mutt named Jammies, chose to study goldens because of the breeds popularity and vulnerability to cancer 60 percent of all golden retrievers die from the disease. Nearly 300 of the enrolled goldens were from California, more than from any other state. The owners, who call themselves the 3,000-strong family, for the 3,000 golden retrievers enrolled in the study, support one another on a Facebook page smattered with photos of golden retrievers. Our dogs are basically our children, our four-legged kids, Leona Messink said. Despite golden retrievers high vulnerability to cancer, Anita Oberbauer, a geneticist at UC Davis, has found that purebreds as a whole are not less healthy than mixed breeds. Oberbauers team analyzed over 27,000 dogs through electronic records and compared the frequency of genetic diseases in mutts versus purebred pups. She found that mixed breeds suffered just as much as pure breeds from 13 disorders, including hip dysplasia and cancer. In a follow-up study, the researchers found that increased vulnerability to other diseases did not apply to all purebred dogs but only to certain subgroups. For example, the fact that golden retrievers are especially vulnerable to cancer does not mean all purebreds are. Because studies tend to focus on purebred dogs rather than mixed breeds, diseases in mutts get less play. The findings are really important to get out there to the public, said Kari Ekenstedt, professor at the University of Minnesotas College of Veterinary Medicine, who was not involved in the studies. Theres a misconception out there that purebred dogs are automatically across the board less healthy than mixed dogs. Even vet students may falsely believe mutts to be healthier than purebreds, Ekenstedt said. If genetic research succeeds, the number of diseased purebreds and mutts could decrease. As scientists uncover genetically based genes, more and more breeders are getting their dogs genetically tested before breeding them. Oberbauer, who owns four Belgian shepherd dogs, said the dog research community makes a point of sharing data openly. That collaboration may eventually expand into clinical trials for human medicine. The Broad Institutes Alfoldi said pharmaceutical companies are interested in rolling out promising cancer drugs to pet dogs during clinical testing rather than the current system of testing in humans and distributing to vets later. But to get the right drugs to the right dogs, companies need to wait for scientists to retrieve more genetic data. That means continued cooperation from dogged researchers, pet owners and, of course, canines such as Brewer. Dave Messink said he and his wife rely on the golden retriever studys Facebook page for motivation. My unfortunate belief is that it will become a support group over the years, he said. But right now, theres a big sense of pride among the people who are in the study. Contact Natalie Jacewicz at 408-920-5745. Follow her at Twitter.com/nataliejacewicz. Over a decades-long career, one that includes several dozen films, television roles and more than 100 plays, Olympia Dukakis has seen a shift in the way theater works. "There are a few straight (non-musical) plays on Broadway that are really good," said Dukakis, 84, who came to Wisconsin this week to teach a group of professional actors at Ten Chimneys Foundation in Waukesha. "To find a straight play is not easy today for an actor, never mind for an audience to go and see it," she said. "Whats good is that people keep pushing at it, pushing to loosen it up. "There was a time when theater had a predominant feeling about it that everything ... was being newly investigated. Not that the same form was being used over and over again." Dukakis will push back in her own way this week, as she digs into the drama in Anton Chekhov's 1904 play "The Cherry Orchard" at Ten Chimneys with professional actors like American Players Theatre's Sarah Day and James Ridge. Dukakis is an Academy Award winner (in 1987, for "Moonstruck"), and just signed on (as did Laura Linney, she said) to film an adaptation of the last three "Tales of the City" books by Armistead Maupin, the source for a popular PBS miniseries in the 1990s. The Capital Times talked with Dukakis just after she returned to New York from a stint teaching in Florida. Since you've come to Wisconsin to teach, I wanted to ask you first about that. Youve been a teacher for many years now. Yes, I fulfilled my father's promise. My father wanted me to be a teacher, and I did not want to be a teacher. I fought it and fought it, and now here I am at the end, doing what my father wanted me to do. Why did you fight it? Just because he wanted you to do it? Yeah, because I wanted to be an actress. First generation Greeks want stability for their children, because they experience so much instability. They want something that ... has a bank account attached to it. The pressure that came from me was to have a responsible life. So when I rejected that, I freed myself. I wasnt going to be responsible! I was just going to do what I wanted to do. And who did I affect? Only me. Who didnt eat well? Only me! Who lived in crappy places here in New York City? I didnt pull anybody else into it. I didnt get married until I was about 30, and by that time I got my foot in the door. How have you found that education in classical acting has changed since you came up? It has changed, actually. Its become less a craft and more a group of skills. The actor has become less collaborative and more the tool of the director to fulfill his needs in interpreting and defining the play in his way or her way. Do you think that's good? In some very crucial ways, its not good, but in some ways, its more compatible with the times that were in. Productions are being dominated by directors and their point of view. The two people marginalized are the playwright and the actor. This week at Ten Chimneys, you'll be teaching Anton Chekhov's "The Cherry Orchard" to professional actors. What draws you to Chekhov? His plays are like magic realism. Hes a very interesting playwright who changed and shifted over the course of his time. What was going on in that period which is fascinating. In 1860-61, Alexander the Czar freed the serfs. There was no movement up and down or to the side, if you were born a serf, you stayed one. This was totally thrown to the winds. They're asking, "How do we live? How do we go forward? Where do we find security, medical care?" When you come to Ten Chimneys, its as a teacher for classical actors who have been performing for years. In what way is that different than younger students? I was down at the University of Florida, in the graduate program, teaching them. The younger actors have concerns the older actors dont have. The older actors have wrestled their demons. They are not thinking, "Is this crazy what Im doing, trying to be an actor?" They understand that in order to be an actor, you have yourself and your own humanity and thats where you need to go. Thats what you need to investigate and expand and challenge. The younger people dont know. They're always afraid theyre not going to look good. Somebodys going to come around and say, "Youre not really talented." The suspicion that they're frauds, a lot of actors have that. People who are coming to Ten Chimneys have already proven themselves. They have been making a living; they have children, homes, mortgages. Have you kept up with your Tales of the City character, Anna Madrigal, through the latest Maupin book? Theyre going to do another one! I just signed a piece of paper that said that I would do it. Theyre going to do the last three books. I'm really excited about; I love that character. What do you look for now, in a character or a play? Is it about something? There were times when, because we had three kids, I did things for money. Although I always was very aware of when that was happening and when it wasnt. I dealt with it with dispatch; I did the best job I could and moved on, because it's not a good feeling. I want the piece to be about something. I want to work with other people who are committed to that. Why do you return to Ten Chimneys? Why is it important that these kinds of master classes continue? My experience there has been really unique. The people who come there, they are well trained and so experienced. It's walking into a room with real professionals, and thats very exciting. That gets me going too. Ten Chimneys has always been incredibly supportive of my work and the work of the other people. You don't always get that. Mostly the people that care about your work are you. Everybody else is interested in the result. But at Ten Chimneys, we all can sit there and think about our work, and that's what is wanted. That's what Alfred and Lynn Fontanne wanted, an opportunity for actors to restore themselves, focusing in on the work not as a way of making money (or) creating a reputation but because of the interest. The joy of it, the complexity of it, the mystery of it. MADISON Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker will decide next week who he intends to vote for in the state's upcoming presidential primary and whether he will publicly endorse that person, the Republican told The Associated Press in an interview Tuesday. Walker ended his own run for president in September with a call for others to drop out so it would be easier to take on front runner Donald Trump. But now with just Texas Sen. Ted Cruz and Ohio Gov. John Kasich left in the GOP field trying to derail Trump, Walker remains reluctant to publicly back either one. "I'm more in line, both in thought and process, with Cruz or Kasich than I would be with Trump," Walker told the AP on Tuesday. "But part of it is trying to decide that. For me personally the biggest reason why I haven't done more sooner is I've been focused on Wisconsin." Walker spoke to AP by telephone as he traveled from Madison to Green Bay where he was to sign a trio of bills designed to help people deal with dementia. Time is running out for Walker to have any influence on the state's primary which is just two weeks away. How much sway he will have is also a question, given that his approval rating hasn't risen above 40 percent in a year. Both Cruz and Kasich had campaign stops planned in the Milwaukee area on Wednesday, but Walker said he would not be appearing at either one. Should he endorse someone, Walker said he would campaign with them as much as needed before April 5. "I know John Kasich well, I got to know Sen. Cruz over the campaign," Walker said. "I like each of them, they're perfectly fine. I'm doing enough stuff on my own, they don't need me at their rallies." Cruz has been picking up support in Wisconsin this week, with conservative Milwaukee talk show host Charlie Sykes and the Right Wisconsin political website endorsing him. Sykes and other influential talk radio hosts in southeastern Wisconsin have been part of the anti-Trump conservative wing for months. Cruz was set to appear Wednesday night at an event hosted by Sykes in Pewaukee. A number of other leading conservatives are also slated to be there, including Republican U.S. Sen. Ron Johnson and Wisconsin Supreme Court Justice Rebecca Bradley, who is also on the April 5 ballot. Cruz also won the backing of state Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke, who had been backing Florida Sen. Marco Rubio before he dropped out last week. A number of other conservative state lawmakers have previously endorsed Cruz. Kasich has the support of former Gov. Tommy Thompson and former U.S. Reps. Mark Neumann and Scott Klug, all of whom Kasich worked with while he was in Congress. Walker said just like voters, he is trying to determine which candidate can actually follow through on their promises. "Whoever of the remaining candidates can show they're going to take on the status quo, they're going to take on Washington, but can actually deliver on those promises, I think that's the candidate or candidates who will do well in the primary," Walker said. "I think they each can make a case on it." The battle of the five presidential campaigns arrives in Wisconsin this week with the two Democrats and three Republicans all establishing a presence two weeks ahead of what is shaping up to be a meaningful primary. Among Republicans, Ohio Gov. John Kasich is making a concerted effort to prove he can win contests outside his home state, while Texas Sen. Ted Cruz seeks to whittle the race to a two-man contest against front-runner Donald Trump. Meanwhile, anti-Trump Republicans see Wisconsin as a firewall to slow down the real estate moguls momentum. On the Democratic side, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders is hoping for another Rust Belt upset to maintain viability, while former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton seeks to solidify her lead. Were in a remarkable situation where its significant for all five of the major candidates, UW-Madison political science professor Barry Burden said. All five campaigns are setting up offices in the state and all are expected to make visits, though so far only Kasich has announced an event in Wauwatosa on Wednesday. UW-La Crosse political science professor Joe Heim called the relatively early activity a clear indication that the campaigns recognize the significance of Wisconsin and clearly are gearing up for a contested contest here. After Tuesdays primaries in Arizona and Utah, the next GOP battleground is Wisconsin on April 5. Democratic caucuses are scheduled for Tuesday in Idaho and in three more western states on Saturday before the campaign has a 10-day lull the longest stretch without a vote from March through May in which attention will be heaped upon the Badger State. Wisconsin is also the only state to hold its primary April 5, making it the first to have a day to itself with both parties voting since New Hampshire on Feb. 9. Early voting here began Monday and ends April 1. State election officials predict voter turnout could be 40 percent, driven in part by a competitive Republican primary and state Supreme Court race. That would be the highest mark for spring presidential primaries since 1980. National forces that oppose Trump have signaled plans to mount a stand against him in Wisconsin with significant advertising and other efforts. Some Wisconsin conservatives who oppose Trump have begun to coalesce behind Cruz, while Kasich has received endorsements from former Gov. Tommy Thompson and former congressmen Mark Neumann and Scott Klug. The opinion of Donald Trump in Wisconsin is not as high as the opinion that he has of himself, said Brian Nemoir, a Wisconsin Republican strategist and senior adviser to the Kasich campaign. Nemoir pointed to Marquette Law School Poll results that have shown a net negative favorability rating for Trump among Republicans. In the five polls since August, hes had a 47 percent unfavorable rating and a 40 percent favorable rating. But those numbers are reversed outside the states major media markets of Madison, Milwaukee and Green Bay. In the conservative stronghold of Waukesha, Ozaukee and Washington counties, 25 percent have viewed him favorably compared with 64 percent who have viewed him unfavorably. Trumps favorability ratings among Republicans are higher nationally than in Wisconsin. Meanwhile 46 percent of state Republicans have a favorable view of Cruz, compared with 18 percent who viewed him unfavorably in the same five polls. Kasich has low favorable and unfavorable numbers, and 53 percent who say they dont know enough about him to form an opinion. When were in the business of comparing candidates, almost always the candidate that has better favorability gets the vote over the candidate with low favorability, poll director Charles Franklin said. Thats a big deal in the Republican race where Trump has low overall favorability. Trump has held a double-digit lead in recent Marquette polls over his closest rivals, but the next poll due out March 30 will be the first without Florida Sen. Marco Rubio or retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson. Some factors favor Trump in Wisconsin, GOP pollster Gene Ulm said. Wisconsin allows same-day voter registration and is an open primary state meaning any registered voter may choose to vote in either partys primary, regardless of their political affiliation. Ulm said those factors aid Trump because his success depends in part on mobilizing voters who arent reliable Republicans and may not be regular voters. This is tailor-made for Trump to continue his march, Ulm said. As the GOP continues to be riven by internal discord over Trump, anti-Trump forces are eyeing Wisconsin as a place to blunt his momentum. Club for Growth, a leading conservative group, told The New York Times it plans to spend as much as $2 million in the Wisconsin primary. The influential conservative website Right Wisconsin announced its support for Cruz on Monday, as did state Assembly Majority Leader Jim Steineke, who has been among the most outspoken GOP voices in Wisconsin opposing Trump. Steineke previously supported Rubio. But on Monday, he said he has offered his aid to the Cruz campaign because he views the Texas senator as the only candidate who can stop Trump. Cruzs staunch, across-the-board conservative views mean many Republicans dont have to sacrifice their principles to support him, Steineke said. Yet Steineke, R-Kaukana, acknowledges it remains to be seen if Cruz a divisive figure even within his own party can rally Republicans of all stripes. Thats the true test for him, Steineke said. In his current position, he hasnt had to be a unifying figure. Kim Simac, a tea party activist from northern Wisconsin, said she has been a Trump supporter since Gov. Scott Walker dropped out of the race in September, but her support has wavered in recent weeks. I get pretty dismayed by what comes out of his speeches, so Im kind of confused, Simac said. Cruz would be the candidate that a person with the principles like me would be aligned with. But I know we want to beat Hillary Clinton. My thought is that Donald Trump would have the best chance. Walker remains noncommittal about whether hell endorse, spokesman Joe Fadness said Monday. All three Republican candidates have incentive to fight hard in Wisconsin because its GOP primary is structured in such a way that all three candidates could win delegates to the July national convention in Cleveland, at which the partys nominee will be selected. While 18 delegates go to the overall winner, the remaining 24 are divvied up among whoever wins each of the states eight congressional districts. Democrats allocate their 96 delegates proportionally both statewide and in each congressional district. Sanders is making a play for a broad swath of those, with two offices in Milwaukee, one in Madison and another in Green Bay, the campaigns state director, Robert Dempsey, said Monday. Since last week, the campaign has already made tens of thousands of calls, and though no events have been announced, the campaign expects Sanders to make multiple stops. Wisconsin is a very important state to our overall national strategy, Dempsey said. Clinton has an office in Madison and is opening another in Milwaukee, spokesman Yianni Varonis said. Clintons daughter, Chelsea, is visiting those locations and Waukesha on Thursday. A broad coalition of Democrats have given Hillary Clinton a nearly insurmountable lead in pledged delegates, but she remains committed to earning every vote by sharing her plans to move our country forward, Varonis said. That is why Hillary Clinton is committed to Wisconsin. Police said they were investigating the motive and circumstances of the blast, which didn't appear to be terror-related. The bakery, which didn't sustain major damage, is owned by former Culture Minister Bratislav Petkovic. He didn't immediately comment. The man in his 50s asked two employees and one customer to leave the popular bakery before he laid down on the floor and activated the grenade beneath his body, police said. Witnesses said the blast sounded as if two cars crashed into each other. "We didn't realize that anything had happened before we saw police rushing to the scene," said Vesna Zigic, a seller from a food shop across the street. Hand grenade explosions inside cafes and nightclubs have become quite common in Serbia after wars in the Balkans in the 1990s. Mark Holmes warned Trump voters not to call in an ad he placed last week for the two-bedroom apartment that's part of his home in Grand Junction. The 62-year-old told The Daily Sentinel that he doesn't know what to do anymore about the possibility of the GOP front-runner getting elected but that he doesn't want to live upstairs from someone who backs Trump. One caller accused Holmes of discrimination, but excluding renters based on their political affiliation isn't prohibited by federal law like barring them based on sex or race. Holmes' voicemail box was understandably full Monday and he couldn't be reached for further comment. Bernice Dyck, a mother of two sons, formally adopted Chendra Kaub Chumb as her daughter six months ago, the Fresno Bee reported Saturday (bit.ly/1UIoMkW). Dyck and her family knew the woman for years after helping her come to the United States from Cambodia following high school. Chumb's biological mother still lives in Cambodia, and Chumb travels there yearly to visit her. After Chumb arrived in the U.S., she lived with Bernice Dyck and Dyck's late husband in Fresno. Chumb has since graduated from Fresno City College and Fresno Pacific University. She is pursuing a master's degree in marriage and family counseling. "The full life she helps me live, as my child, is the miracle," Dyck told the newspaper. Chumb said the adoption allowed her to experience true love. "My adopted mother, Bernice, wants the best for me," she said. "Her love and always being my mother means the world to me." Bernice Dyck's son, Rick, opened a school in Cambodia in 2003 and stopped into a cafe where Chumb was working. He recommended she study in the United States and showed her Fresno City College's website. Chumb arrived at Fresno Yosemite International Airport in August 2003. "We fell in love with her," Bernice Dyck said. Bernice Dyck's other son, Skip, said he has been grateful for Chumb's presence, especially since he lives far away in Michigan. "I have called her 'sis' regularly. I guess this sort of makes it legal now," he said. The Dycks said they are hopeful the adoption will make it easier for Chumb to travel between the U.S. and Cambodia. Chumb has had to reapply for a U.S. visa on previous trips. BAD AXE A Kinde man who carried out his plan to attack a corrections officer in the Huron County Jail was hauled away to prison to serve what his attorney called a life sentence. Timothy Allen Tait was serving time in the county jail for an unrelated incident when he attacked Huron County Corporal Steven Bischer on May 8, 2015. The 52-year-old rushed Bischer and stabbed him twice with a homemade shank fashioned out of a pen and with some cellphone as a handle. The attack did not completely puncture the skin, and Bischer was not severely injured. Tait was charged with assault with intent to commit murder and jail prisoner in possession of contraband as a result of the attack. A jury found him guilty of both charges on March 2. The inmate and his Bad Axe attorney, Chris Boyle, stood before Huron County Circuit Judge Gerald M. Prill and awaited sentencing on Monday. Boyle recalled testimony heard during the trial about Taits mental health. In 2011, while incarcerated in jail, Tait was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. In February 2015, he was also diagnosed with personality disorder, Boyle said. They have very similar symptoms, which is anger, Boyle said regarding Taits mental health issues. Because of Taits age, mental state and the sentence recommendation, Boyle called it a life sentence because at the low end, Tait would be roughly 67 years old if released at the earliest time allowed. For that reason, I think if hes going to be sentenced to prison, he should receive the low end of the recommendation, Boyle said. Tait then addressed the court and briefly talked about how the Huron County Jail needs to look into the help and programs available for inmates who suffer from mental health issues. Prosecution sought a heavy penalty for Tait, who has not been an ideal inmate while in jail. Huron County Prosecutor Timothy J. Rutkowski noted Taits two prior felonies and 23 misdemeanors as well as his behavior while incarcerated. The prosecutor mentioned previous testimony during trial in which two days before the incident, Tait wrote a letter to someone stating he was going to carry out the attack. Instead of getting older and more mature, hes getting more violent, Rutkowski said. ... He talks about how much he hates everyone at the jail. He continuously said he was going to harm Corporal Bischer, he added. He doesnt care about law enforcement and I submit the court show no mercy and sentence him to 30 years in prison. Hes a threat when hes in jail and hes a threat when hes out there (in public). Before he imposed a sentence, Prill looked at all the factors age, mental health and the length of the sentence presented by Boyle. Prill also considered Taits behavior while hes been in jail past and present. To me, your issue is, If I dont like it, Im going to act out, Prill said of Taits behavior. ... But I have to ask myself, Wheres the defendant seeking help himself? The only help he receives is when hes in the county jail. When I take them (the factors) into account, I believe the recommendation by Mr. (Todd) Kloska is appropriate, Prill added. ... This minimum term could be increased by three times its amount based on your behavior in prison. Following the judges final statement, he was ready to impose a sentence. Tait was sentenced to a minimum of 17 years, and a maximum of 30 years, in the Michigan state prison system for the assault with intent to commit murder charge. He was sentenced to three to 10 years in prison for the jail prisoner in possession of contraband charge. Tait was given credit for 311 days served on both counts and his sentences will run concurrently. UPPER THUMB Huron County ranks among the 10 best counties in the state and top in the Thumb area for child wellbeing, according to a Kids Count in Michigan report by the Michigan League for Public Policy. While its an improvement, the report, intended to influence state policymakers, says child poverty has risen in 80 of 83 Michigan counties since 2006. Nearly 21 percent of Hurons total children population 17 and under, or 1,286, live in poverty, according to the report. Thats a lower percentage than in Tuscola and Sanilac counties, but higher than in Lapeer and St. Clair counties. Hurons No. 9 ranking for child wellbeing is up from 14th in 2012 and 11th in 2013. However, the report notes child abuse and neglect rates were up across the state. In Huron County, the rate was 15.8 per 1,000 kids higher than the state rate of 14.7. Fortunately, if theres any good news, we havent had any fatalities, said Elizabeth Herd, president of the Huron County Child Abuse and Neglect Council. Herd says Huron County had about 9.3 percent of its child population investigated for child abuse or neglect. (But) we know statistically only about a third of actual victims are reported, she said. The CA/N Councils goal is prevention. In one program, Period of Purple Crying, a DVD is sent home with new parents at Huron Medical Center to teach them of crying patterns of a baby to prevent shaken baby syndrome. Talking About Touching teaches safety in schools. The Stewards of Children program is geared to teach adults and professionals to recognize and respond to signs of abuse and neglect. Id really like to see more evidence-based parenting programs, Herd said. The CA/N Council also is behind a proposal that would create a child advocacy center to help reduce rising child abuse. The plan (http://bit.ly/1Qq2JhB) is to pool law enforcement, Department of Health and Human Services/Child Protective Services and SafePlace, a shelter for victims of domestic abuse. Commissioner Clark Elftman, vice president of the CA/N Council, says Sanilac County has a 0.25 millage to fund a similar venture, and wed like to see the same thing happen in Huron County. Herd says the plan is in the early stages, and theyre trying to secure a location for the center. We are spending more money using out-of-county services, she said of families and professionals having to travel to Lapeer and Sanilac facilities. Bright spots the report highlights: for the second year in a row Huron is No. 1 in the state for having the lowest rate of babies born to mothers receiving less than adequate prenatal care 16 percent. The county also ranked among the five best in state for the percentage of 3- and 4-year-olds in preschool, at about 58 percent. Last year, Dr. Russell Bush, chief medical examiner for Huron and other area counties, told the Tribune (http://bit.ly/22zI3rv) that a declining population and environmental factors makes the numbers misleading. My advice would be primarily to take it all in, but to ask questions and dont take it as being written in stone, Bush previously said of residents reading the report. If one looks at the numbers and tries to just use them to develop public policy thats what they do with them and thats why they gather this data the problem is, youve got a lot more factors to consider than the actual number. You need to look at a lot more aspects to be accurate. Other statistics from the report include: Huron County Total child population 2006: 7,137 2013: 6,325 Confirmed victims of child abuse per 1,000 kids 2006: 49 2012: 74 2013: 100 Children living in families investigated for abuse or neglect 2006: 301 2013: 587 There is a lower percentage on Supplemental Nutrition Assistance than state averages, but higher amount receiving Women, Infants and Children support. Tuscola County Child wellbeing rank: 28th Total child population 2006: 13,554 2013: 11,773 Rate of child abuse and neglect per 1,000 kids: 20.1 Confirmed victims of child abuse per 1,000 kids 2006: 139 2014: 237 Sanilac County Child wellbeing rank: 33rd Total child population 2006: 10,607 2013: 9,379 Rate of child abuse and neglect per 1,000 kids: 18.3 Confirmed victims of child abuse per 1,000 kids: 2006: 179 2014: 172 After Two Years of Praying and Waiting, South Asian Village Gets 'Jesus Well' More Than 400 Gospel for Asia-Supported Wells to be Dedicated on World Water Day Contact: 434-426-5310, pressrelations@gfa.org WILLS POINT, Texas, March 21, 2016 /Christian Newswire/ -- The entire community of one South Asian village will join in World Water Day celebrations on March 22 by dedicating their new "Jesus Well" -- a well drilled and installed with the support of Gospel for Asia (GFA), and which is the result of more than two years of prayer. Photo: A pastor pumps the first water from a new "Jesus Well" in a South Asian village. More than 400 Gospel for Asia-supported wells will be dedicated on World Water Day, March 22. "Wells have been community gathering places and opportunities for God-encounters since Biblical times, and the same is true today," said K.P. Yohannan, founder and international director of GFA. "A 'Jesus Well' is a great place to share love of the Lord and a cool, healthy cup of water in his name, while villagers fill their water pots." GFA-supported "Jesus Wells" -- paid for by donations and built by local contractors -- provide clean water for an entire village for only $1,400. A total of 410 new "Jesus Wells" will be dedicated on World Water Day this year. According to the World Health Organization, 3.4 million people die of waterborne diseases each year, many of them children. Pastor Bablu knows firsthand the damage caused by impure water. When he began working at his first village assignment, he found that many people suffered from dysentery and malaria. Malaria alone had killed 15 in the area, which only had access to polluted water from open ponds and a nearby river. The pastor began praying for the health of his congregation in 2012, and, later, asked for GFA assistance to drill a 'Jesus Well.' The well was completed in October 2015, and, today, families have easy access to safe water for cooking, drinking, bathing and cleaning. "This demonstration of Christ's compassion is also bringing more villagers to hear the word of the Lord," said Yohannan. "For Christians, though, this well simply reminds us of Matthew 25:40: 'Truly I tell you, whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.'" 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 Have you tried everything to quit smoking? TRICARE beneficiaries now have a new resource to help them called the The Freedom Smoking Quitline. If qualified, participants will have a 2 times better chance at quitting smoking. The Freedom Smoking Quitline is a National Institutes of Health-funded research study, co-sponsored by the 59th Medical Wing and University of Tennessee Health Science Center. The study is enrolling TRICARE beneficiaries that are motivated to quit smoking. If qualified, participants will receive four proactive, telephone-based smoking cessation counseling sessions along with eight weeks of free nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) sent directly to their homes. After 3 months, participants will receive a follow-up call to ensure they are still smoke free. However, if they experienced a relapse and started up again, participants are offered a second chance to try again. Dr. Gerald Wayne Talcott, Ph.D., Col USAF (Ret) is a co-investigator for The Freedom Quitline. He served as an Air Force psychologist for 28 years and has 30 years of experience in tobacco cessation treatment. Dr. Talcott states that relapses for people trying to quit smoking are all too common, and thats why participants are offered a second chance with The Freedom Quitline. Further, when participants enroll in this study, they are not only receiving a premium smoking cessation program at no cost, but they are also helping researchers gather critical data to improve these programs for our military community. Talcott says "Quitting smoking is one of the hardest things that anyone ever tries to do in their lifetime and studies show that it might be even more difficult for our military community". He also emphasized that what makes The Freedom Quitline more effective than most alternatives, is that the counselors have not only extensive training in smoking cessation, but 90% are military veterans themselves. Results from an Air Force study evaluating a smoking Quitline conducted by the University of Tennessee Health Science Center showed participants were 2 times more likely to quit compared to those who called a standard Quitline. Its easy to find out if you qualify. Call 1-844-I-AM-FREE (1-844-426-3733) or go online to learn more at www.freedomquitline.org. Almost 100 people mostly from Haiti who were rescued from an overcrowded boat off the Florida coast had no food or water for... An Air Force staff sergeant and security forces airman is being charged with assaulting a protester at a Donald Trump rally in Arizona, where officials at his base are now reviewing the incident to determine what action, if any, they will take. During the March 19 rally in Tucson, Staff Sgt. Tony Pettway, out of uniform and wearing civilian clothes, was captured on camera punching a protester carrying an anti-Trump sign, knocking him to the floor and kicking him. Pettway is assigned to 355th Security Force Squadron at Davis-Monthan Air Force Base, Tucson. "We are reviewing the situation, fully cooperating with local authorities, and will take appropriate action," said Capt. Casey Osborne, a spokesman for the 355th Fighter Wing. All Defense Department members may participate in the political process "in their personal capacity without implying any endorsement from the DoD," she said. "We believe wholeheartedly in our fellow Americans' rights to express their views on political issues, and we strongly condemn any attempt to silence those views through force or violence," Osborne said. In the video, a protester wearing an American flag shirt and later identified as Bryant Sanders can be seen walking up the stairs as hundreds of Trump supporters booed and jeered from the sides. A protester behind Sanders was wearing a Ku Klux Klan hood. As the two were heading up the stairs, Trump can be heard calling the hooded protester "a disgusting guy He thinks he's cute. He's a disgusting guy," according to an article in The Washington Post. At one point an African-American man later identified as Pettway can be seen knocking a sign out of Sanders' hands, sucker punching him, knocking him to the floor and then stomping and kicking him repeatedly. Uniformed police officers approached Pettway, who can be seen turning and placing his hands behind his back to be handcuffed. Pettway, 32, was charged with assault with injury, a misdemeanor, Tucson police spokeswoman Sgt. Kimberly Bay said. The incident was much different from an earlier Trump rally in North Carolina, where an elderly man, John McGraw, was caught on video sucker punching an African-American protester, Rakeem Jones. Police there initially ignored the 78-year-old McGraw and instead grabbed Jones and escorted him outside. Police arrested McGraw after the video was broadcast nationally, including McGraw's comment to the television program Inside Edition afterwards that Jones "deserved it. The next time we see him, we might have to kill him."--Bryant Jordan can be reached at bryant.jordan@military.com. Follow him on Twitter at @bryantjordan. Related Video: The U.S. Army announced the launch of new pilot program designed to team up certain active, National Guard and Reserve units so they can train together before they deploy. The Associated Units pilot will begin this summer by teaming up about two dozen active Army units with various Guard and Reserve units. "Much of America's Army's capacity is resident in the Reserve Components, and we must rely more heavily on them to meet the demands of a complex global environment," Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army, Gen. Mark Milley said today in an Army press release. "The Associated Units pilot allows us to leverage the capabilities and capacities of the active component, Army Reserve and the Army National Guard as one Army." The first of these unit associations will occur in Georgia. The 1st Battalion, 28th Infantry Regiment, an active-Army infantry battalion stationed on Fort Benning will be associated with the 48th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, a Georgia Army National Guard unit. The 48th Infantry Brigade, meanwhile, will also be associated with the active component's 3rd Infantry Division, stationed on Fort Stewart, Georgia. "The soldiers of Task Force 1-28 and the soldiers of the Georgia Army National Guard's 48th Infantry Brigade will wear the patch of the 3rd Infantry Division," Lt. Gen. Timothy J. Kadavy, Director of the Army National Guard said. "This brigade will train and, if called to do so, deploy and fight with the 3rd Infantry Division as an Associated Unit. These units will develop relationships and standards in home station so they may fight together in combat without having to meet on the battlefield and figure these things out." That afternoon, lawmakers from the House Appropriations Committee's Defense Subcommittee discussed the new pilot program with Guard and Reserve leaders. Subcommittee Chairman Rep. Rodney Frelinghuysen, R-New Jersey, asked if the pilot will mean that "Guard and Reserve will bring their worn out equipment to the battlespace or does everybody train on what the regular Army is doing?" Lt. Gen. Timothy Kadavy Director Army National Guard told lawmakers that these units are scheduled to have full-operating capability by early Fiscal 2018. There will have to be "programing actions" made 2018 and beyond to ensure Milley's intent for everyone to have the same capabilities, Kadavy said. "The intent is for them to have the exact same signal equipment; the exact same wheeled vehicles as part of that team," he said. Frelinghuysen said he was impressed with Milley's presentation of the pilot. "The good thing about Gen. Milley's presentation today -- he was so emphatic that there would be one Army that it was sort of let known that if some people didn't like where he was going they could exit the stage. I like that," he said. Rep. John Carter, R-Texas, said he was concerned that the new pilot will create more strain on the Guard and Reserve. "It takes 90 to 100 days to stand up a unit," he said. "This will probably increase more training days on top of those training days. ... And what it does it do to the citizen-soldier concept of the guy back home that's got a job? Gen. Frank J. Grass, chief of the National Guard Bureau, said that a recent survey showed that 92 percent of company-grade officers from the Army and Air National Guard said "it's either about right or they would like to deploy more." "The younger ones that haven't deployed are looking for a deployment," Grass said. "The associations would probably give us more opportunities, but we cannot break our model of 39 days a year as far as the baseline, and I hear that from the town halls. ... But what we find is there is probably well over 80 percent of the Guard that is doing more than that time right now." Grass said that currently families and employers are still supporting the current pace of operations. "We have a unit that is getting ready to deploy with the 101st Airborne right now through a training association," he said. "They know that they had to put in extra days to get ready to go so as long as they know their mission, and they know this is going to make them more ready." In addition to the Georgia-based units, the following additional units will be involved in the Associated Units pilot this summer: -- The 1st Battalion, 143 Infantry Regiment from the Texas Army National Guard will be associated to the 173rd Airborne Brigade Combat Team stationed in Vicenza, Italy; -- The 1st Battalion, 151 Infantry Regiment from the Indiana Army National Guard will be associated to the 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division stationed in Schofield Barracks, Hawaii; -- The Hawaii-based 100th Battalion, 442 Infantry Regiment, U.S. Army Reserve, will be associated with the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division stationed in Schofield Barracks, Hawaii; -- The 81st Armored Brigade Combat Team, Washington Army National Guard, will be associated with the 7th Infantry Division stationed in Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Washington; -- The 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, stationed in Fort Polk, Louisiana, will be associated with the Texas Army National Guard's 36th Infantry Division; -- The 86th Infantry Brigade Combat Team from the Vermont Army National Guard will be associated with the 10th Mountain Division, stationed in Fort Drum, New York; -- The North Carolina-based 824th Quartermaster Company, U.S. Army Reserve, will be associated with the 82nd Sustainment Brigade, stationed in Fort Bragg, North Carolina; -- The 249th Transportation Company, Texas Army National Guard, and the 1245th Transportation Company, Oklahoma Army National Guard, will be associated with the 1st Cavalry Division Sustainment Brigade, stationed in Fort Hood, Texas; -- The 840th Engineer Company, Texas Army National Guard, will be associated with the 36th Engineer Brigade, stationed in Fort Hood, Texas; -- The 1176th Transportation Company, Tennessee Army National Guard and the 2123rd Transportation Company, Kentucky Army National Guard, will be associated with the 101st Sustainment Brigade, stationed in Fort Campbell, Kentucky; and -- The 5th Engineer Battalion, stationed in Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, will be associated with the 35th Engineer Brigade from the Missouri Army National Guard. -- Matthew Cox can be reached at matthew.cox@military.com Related Video: U.S. European Command and NATO went on high alert Tuesday in response to the terror bomb attacks on the Brussels airport and Metro subway system that killed at least 30 people and injured hundreds more, including an American military family. The command initially said all troops in the city were unharmed. "At the present time, we have accounted for all our U.S. military members who were in the region at the time of the attacks," it said in a statement. "Again, these personnel are safe and all accounted for." The command later confirmed that one American troop and five of his family members were hurt in the attacks. The injuries weren't life-threatening. The Defense Department has about 1,300 military personnel and dependents and about 600 civilian employees in Belgium, which is home to the European Union and NATO. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, the head of EUCOM and NATO Allied Command Operations, arrived Tuesday morning in Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia. It wasn't immediately clear whether he would return to Europe. At NATO headquarters in Brussels, Jens Soltenberg, secretary general of the alliance, said, "We have decided to increase the alert state at NATO Headquarters. We remain vigilant and continue to monitor the situation very closely." At least three explosions ripped through the airport and the subway system in Belgium's capital, killing at least 28 and wounding more than 130. Belgian media said the blast at the airport occurred near the American Airlines counters. About an hour after the airport explosion, there was a blast at the Maelbeek Metro station in central Brussels near the U.S. Embassy and European Union headquarters. "We were fearing terrorist attacks, and that has now happened," said Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, referring to the arrest in Brussels last Friday of the suspected bomb-maker in the wave of terror attacks in Paris last November. Paris, London and other European capitals also went on higher security alerts, fearing copycat attacks. The European Command statement said the U.S. military in Europe was "working closely with our interagency partners and host nation counterparts to determine the appropriate steps to ensure the safety and security of all U.S. personnel." Note: This story was updated to include a reference to an American military family being injured beginning in the first paragraph. --Richard Sisk can be reached at Richard.Sisk@Military.com. A newly proposed law would increase male service member's paternity leave from 10 days to 12 weeks, matching the maternity leave given to female service members under an expanded policy recently implemented by the Defense Department. The bill, known as the Military Parental Leave Modernization Act, was proposed March 21 by Rep. Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat from Illinois, military veteran and mother. It would allow any service member, regardless of gender or marital status, to take 12 weeks of leave following a child's birth, adoption or foster placement. "I hope Congress will step up and pass my Military Parental Leave Modernization Act to secure the rights and protections that all new parents, both in and out of uniform, deserve," Duckworth said in a statement on the proposal. "Doing so will only make our military stronger and more competitive." Currently, new mothers are given 12 weeks of maternity leave after the birth of a child. Commanders are not permitted to deny that leave. Fathers are given 10 days of paternity leave at the commander's discretion. Newly adoptive parents are granted three weeks of leave for one parent. Service members who foster parent are not given non-chargeable leave. Pentagon officials have said they plan to ask Congress to expand paternity leave to 14 days for both a birth and an adoption as part of their Force of the Future personnel proposals. The proposals included no other expansions for adoptive or foster parents, and do not apply to parents who are not married to the father or mother of their child. Military family benefits experts, speaking on background, said they were surprised by Duckworth's proposal and don't expect it to pass. They said they do, however, expect the paternity expansion to 14 days to move forward, likely as part of the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act process. Some lawmakers, however, have been skeptical about expanding benefits included in the Force of the Future rollout, such as the 14-day paternity leave plan, a proposal to increase military daycare hours and the expansion of "mothers' rooms" across all installations department-wide. "[It] has been an outrageous waste of official time and resources during a period of severe fiscal constraints," Sen. John McCain, a Republican from Arizona and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, told acting Pentagon undersecretary for personnel Brad Carson, the plan's designer, at his confirmation hearing. "It illustrates the worst aspects of a bloated and inefficient defense organization." Carson has since announced his resignation, effective April 8. --Amy Bushatz can be reached at amy.bushatz@military.com. The U.S. Army on Tuesday announced 500 soldiers will deploy to Afghanistan this summer as part of a scheduled troop rotation. The service in a release said the soldiers from the 1st Cavalry Division Headquarters and Sustainment Brigade, based at Fort Hood, Texas, will replace the headquarters of the 10th Mountain Division at Bagram Airfield in the northeastern part of the country. The unit will support Operation Freedom's Sentinel at the location as the national support element, according to the statement. "The 1st Cavalry Division has once again been called by our nation's Army," Maj. Gen. John C. Thomson, III, commander, 1st Cavalry Division, said in the release. "First Team troopers are trained, well-led, and ready to accomplish assigned missions in support of Operation Freedom's Sentinel." The Army had previously announced that about 1,000 others from the 3rd Cavalry Regiment, 1st Cavalry Division, also based at Fort Hood, are also preparing to deploy to Afghanistan. The soldiers were also 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. At the time of the previous announcement, Lt. Col. Sunset Belinsky, a spokeswoman for the 1st Cavalry Division, said the regiment will probably deploy in May or June. Soldiers were returning from the National Training Center at Fort Irwin, California, and planned to 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. -- Richard Sisk contributed to this report. -- Brendan McGarry can be reached at brendan.mcgarry@military.com. Follow him on Twitter at @Brendan_McGarry. The Padres very nearly passed on A.J. Preller in the clubs 2014 general manager hiring process, Bryce Miller of the San Diego Union-Tribune writes. President Mike Dee says he had settled on another candidate very likely, now-Angels GM Billy Eppler, but took Preller up on his request for a final sit-down just as a kind of courtesy, because he was so good throughout the process. Preller obviously made a great final impression, because Dee left the meeting convinced in the young executive and told San Diego chairman Ron Fowler the next morning that hed had a change of heart overnight. The story details how the organizations current leadership group came together, and is well worth a full read. Heres more from out west: In Mandalay Region, where drought and failed harvests have pushed many farmers out of business, another industry is thriving, as Chinas demand for human hair has turned entire villages into centres of trade and repair. Traders say hair is imported from India and Bangladesh through the border town of Tamu in Sagaing Region, or is collected from villages in Yangon and Mandalay regions. Villages in Pyawbwe and Thazi townships have been famous for their hair trade for some time, but the nature of the industry is changing quickly, said merchant Ko Aung Ye Thu. In the past we travelled from one village to another collecting hair from women, but now we buy it directly from traders in Mandalay, he said. We repair it and sell it to wholesale traders, who take it to China. Ko Aung Ye Thu, who has been working in the industry for more than three years, said people are increasingly drawn to the trade as a more profitable alternative to farming. Entire villages have started repairing and selling hair, he said. Hnin Kwet Aing village in Thazi township, for example, has 350 houses and 300 hair sellers. His business includes 80 staff who sell around 8 viss (13 kilograms) every day. Depending on their capacity, employers can make between K1800 to K15,000 a day, he said, adding that most traders make their money from untangling hair and selling it on to wholesalers. Together the villages in the two townships sell around 600 viss (980kg) per day, he said, with prices varying depending on the length of the hair. Shorter hair of around 8 inches sells at around K20,000 per viss while one viss of 38-inch strands can fetch as much as K600,000. I once sold 50 inches of hair, said Ko Aung Ye Thu. Ko Pyone Mg Mg, who employs 30 workers, said there are five large-scale merchants who travel around the villages, buying from small firms. We mostly sell bags weighing 30 viss, which cost us around K5 million to put together, including expenses [such as rent and salaries]. We usually sell them for between K5.2 million and K5.3 million. Weakness in Chinas currency is a major concern and is impacting business, he said. The value of the yuan has depreciated since the start of 2014 and was trading at 6.48 to the US dollar yesterday, according to Bloomberg data, while the Central Bank of Myanmars reference rate showed 1 yuan costing K188.05. Waste is also a problem, said Ko Pyone Mg Mg. If we buy 4 viss of hair, once we have finished repairing it we are usually left with around 3.80 viss. In the past, Chinese traders relied on middlemen, but now they buy directly from central Myanmar and sell to China, or buy the raw materials and sell finished products usually wigs to shops in Yangon. The owner of Thiha Hair in Yangons Insein township opened her shop in 2006. At first she sold her products to local buyers, and did not ask where the hair ended up. I just sold to the traders I did not know where they sent it. Now Chinese traders come directly to my shop, so I know where the hair goes. They buy from me, and also give me finished products to sell, she said. For retail customers in Yangon, a tical (0.01 viss, or 16 grams) of short hair is priced at K10,000 and a tical of long hair sells for between K25,000 and K30,000. As the hot season begins, it is customary for young women to cut off their hair and sell it, said Thiha Hairs owner. It is also traditional for women to shave their heads to become nuns during the Thingyan festival. From March 20 the amount of hair in the market is likely to spike, said the owner of Mhwe Mhwe San hair shop in Insein township. I have worked in this job for 18 years. For the first three I walked around the streets and bought hair to sell to businesspeople. After three years I opened a shop and I hired other people to buy hair. Traders sometimes try to pay in advance, she said. I dont accept advance money because they fix the price at less than the market price. I run the shop with my own money which allows me to negotiate. If theyre not satisfied, they dont have to buy from me. A few shop owners travel to China to trade directly with merchants there, but this is not easy because it requires investment. Most prefer to deal with Chinese traders who travel to Myanmar, she said. Retail buyers in Yangon are beauty salon owners, make-up artists and spirit mediums, she added. Many of our local buyers are gay, and use the hair in their salons. I dont know exactly what its used for, I think mostly for wigs. Companies paid more tax in the fiscal year 2015 than in the previous year, according to the latest annual figures published in state media, with the highest revenues coming from import-export businesses and the banking industry. {modal url=http://www.mmtimes.com//files/images/mte/2016/di259/top-commercial-tax-p...} {/modal} The Internal Revenue Department (IRD) established a Large Taxpayer Office in 2014 and has since publicly announced the names of companies that make the highest payments to the state. An awards ceremony for top taxpayers, held annually since 2011, is widely seen as a good method of generating national income and promoting responsible business. An accompanying glossy publication congratulates the winners. This year, Denko Trading which operates fuel stations around the country, paid the most in commercial tax, while Kanbawza Bank was the top income tax payer of the year. One of the countrys largest corporations, military-owned Union of Myanma Economic Holdings Limited (UMEHL) joined the top five commercial and income tax payers for the first time, as did its subsidiary Myawaddy Bank. Its trading arm, Myawaddy Trading, came fourth on the top income tax payers list. This year, Denko Trading and Kanbawza Bank each paid the state more than K20 billion, trumping last years highest payment of more than K17 billion in income tax and more than K10 billion in commercial tax. The government has not offered tax exemptions to military corporations for the past three years. UMEHL has many subsidiaries and their participation helps us to collect higher revenues, said an IRD director in Yangon. He said tax rules will be stricter in the coming fiscal year under the new government. Citizens will no longer be able to easily get away with doing business or buying things without paying regular taxes. They will have to pay, even if they want to buy a car, he said. Most of the companies in the top taxpayers list are under the purview of the Large Taxpayer Office, which has a registry of around 500 large companies and conglomerates, while several are under the Companies Circle Tax Office. The local operator of Australian coffee franchise Gloria Jeans has recently opened its first branch in Yangon and plans to open at least eight more outlets across the country. Seezar Soesan, which holds the sole rights to operate the Gloria Jeans franchise in Myanmar, opened its first cafe in Myanmar Plaza in January. Its second branch will be in Yangons new international airport terminal, which opened earlier this month, said U Kyaw Htin Latt, the companys chief operating officer. The first coffee shops will be in Yangon, he said, though the company will also consider opportunities in other cities such as Mandalay further down the line. Seezar Soesan plans to continue as sole operator for the next two years, after which the company may allow other interested firms to open branches, U Kyaw Htin Latt said. A big challenge to operating in Myanmar is finding staff that love coffee, he said. Employees at Yangons newest coffeehouse were flown to Malaysia for training. Competition is another potential threat, he said, but Seezar Soesan and Gloria Jeans have a head start, as the first foreign coffee chain to open in Myanmar. If [other] international chains open it will be a challenge but weve opened first and have a chance to be the main brand. Gloria Jeans uses the same Australian coffee in all its branches across the world, although the menu varies slightly according to cultural tastes, he said. Myanma Insurance paid out over K200 million yesterday to policy holders who suffered fire damage in two recent blazes, taking its total fire insurance payouts to twice that of last fiscal year, an official at the firm said. Fires in Namhsan in northern Shan State and Labutta in Ayeyarwady Region on February 4 destroyed almost 500 shops and homes and left over 1000 people homeless. State-owned Myanma Insurance has paid K209 million to households in Labutta and Namhsan, said U Aye Min Thein, the companys managing director. The firm receives nearly K2 million in premium payments from the two townships every year, he added. As the fiscal year draws to a close Myanma Insurance has paid out almost K2 billion under its fire insurance policies this year, compared to about K1 billion during the 2014-15 fiscal year, he said. This makes this year the second highest for fire insurance payouts in the firms history, said another Myanma Insurance official U Saw Sein Lin. The previous highest year was 2008. The company paid out K4.5 billion across all types of insurance policy that year when Cyclone Nargis hit the Ayeyarwady delta. Myanma Insurance monopolised the market until May 2013, when the Myanmar Insurance Business Supervision Committee issued insurance licences to 12 private companies. However, while more people are buying insurance, many are still unaware of the benefits. A fire at Yangons Mingalar Market on January 9 destroyed some K36 billion worth of goods, but insurance firms reported that only a small percentage of shopowners had insurance. The aftermath of the twin fires at Namhsan and Labutta told a similar story. Only around 10 percent of Labutta residents whose buildings suffered fire damage had insurance. Of around 200 homes that were damaged by fire, 21 had taken out insurance with Myanma Insurance and just a single home had insurance with a private firm, according to U Saw Sein Lin and several local residents. In Namhsan, three Co-operative Department buildings and one home had insurance policies with Myanma Insurance, U Saw Sein Lin said. Data for private fire insurance in Namhsan was unavailable. Some who took out insurance policies with Myanma Insurance found themselves without cover due to missed payments. One person [in Labutta] was late paying their premium by only one or two days, said U Aye Min Thein. We couldnt [pay out] even though he had regularly paid his fees for many years. Others opted to take out policies worth only a small percentage of their propertys value. Daw Tin Tin Oo, owner of Yaung Ni Oo store in Labutta township, said she had taken out a K30 million insurance policy for her three-storey building, worth about K150 million. The yearly premium cost her K360,000, she added. I did not know much about insurance, she said. I was never faced with fire in our part of town, though other areas suffered damage in the last decade, so I decided to only insure the building for K30 million. Daw Tin Tin Oo regularly paid her premium over the last 10 years, and received a payout from Myanma Insurance after six weeks, she said. We wouldnt have lost property if I [had taken out a policy to] the actual value, she said. Daw Tin Tin Oo was not the only one to take out a policy worth less than the value of the building being insured. Other owners across Labutta and Namhsan took out policies worth only one-third of their buildings value, according to Myanma Insurance. Daw Tin Tin Oos K30 million payout was the highest across the two townships, according to Myanma Insurance data. Myanmar's technology is already sky-high, with consumers zooming to the cloud every day through services such as Gmail. But its not all sunshine for companies that want to offer and run cloud services, as they face a sceptical market and capacity challenges. Cloud is a tech buzzword representing the idea that information stowed on the internet can be obtained any time, any place as if plucked from the sky. Running on the cloud means youre [taking out a loan on] someone elses servers on a server farm instead of setting up your own, said Ko Yan Naung Oak of Yangon innovation lab Phandeeyar. Its analogous to getting electricity from the utility board instead of running your generator at home. It is also democratising in the sense that tech companies dont need to have staff babysit their own servers any more when you host on the cloud. In that way, I think it enables leapfrogging. Consumers and businesses in Myanmar have already rocketed to the cloud, according to tech experts. Anyone who gets directions through Google Maps or sends files through Dropbox interacts with the nebulous technology. Telenor Myanmar launched an application last year for storing pictures on the cloud. However, Fairway Technology managing partner Ko Ei Maung said that Myanmar lacks fundamentals required for building cloud infrastructure services. We are not ready as we dont even have basic things yet, such as stable electricity and fast internet, he said. Even if we manage that, I think there is not enough market opportunity for local cloud infrastructure service providers and it will be very difficult to compete with already-established, global-scale cloud infrastructure service providers. Ko Yan Naung Oak also said the market prospects in Myanmar may be limited. I dont know if theres a need for Myanmar to have its own cloud service provider, since its an economies of scale thing, and global companies have a much bigger competitive edge, he said. Zwenexsys managing director Ko Thar Htet said his software and development company and others are using cloud infrastructure from developed countries to serve the Myanmar market, and that local internet service providers could run cloud services if they so chose. The readiness is a different story, he said. Myanmar needs professionals with knowledge and experience, fibre network infrastructure, international connectivity bandwidth and electrical power to enable the datacentres that will provide cloud infrastructures. Meanwhile, an American enterprise resource planning software company, whose solutions can run on the cloud, said the mindset of the people toward the technology represented an obstacle. The most difficult thing we are trying to change is a perception that cloud is not secure and that cloud is slow, said Acumatica international operations president Laurent Dedenis. The cloud is only getting better everywhere ... If it is usable today for most processes, which is the case in most of the central parts of Myanmar and the main business areas, its absolutely possible to think that adoption will become extremely fast in the next year. What is the way forward for Myanmars education system? During the week of March 14 to 18, the countrys 11th graders wrestled with their matriculation exams the stepping stone, for the industrious few, to prestigious universities. Parents and children alike gathered in anxious knots around the schools in anticipation of the results. But only the best will make it into medical and engineering schools. Data from a 2012 survey revealed that only about 2000 students, mostly male, reached the PhD level in any field of academia, and only 37 percent of students passed the exam in 2015. Teachers, students and parents have been questioning whether the system should be so skewed toward the results of one single test. I dont like the fact that my choice of university is restricted by my marks in this exam, said Ma Su Lei Yee Tun, an 11th grader at Latha 2 high school in Yangon. Why dont they let universities set individual entrance exams? Then you could apply to the one you wanted without prior restrictions. The debate has taken on new intensity with the rapid and visible development the country has undergone over the past few years. But there are as many answers as questions. Daw Cinthy, the current head of Grade 11 at Latha 2 high school, said that allowing universities to hold the exams would be even worse for Myanmar students: In Myanmar government schools, there is no grade 12, leaving graduates a year behind competitors from private schools that are one year more schooled. Grade 12 should be introduced in government schools so students can sit for entrance exams in universities, she said. As long as government schools only last until Grade 11, having an entrance exam for universities will not be favourable for the students. Criticism of the current system rained down from students too. Ma Me Me Khant, a recent graduate, said that the government schools should teach students more about life instead of indoctrinating them to pass the exam which will only be useful for them to get a job. Some students rebel against the indoctrination by refusing to go for exams at all. About 70,000 students who registered to sit this years matriculation tests did not even turn up. U Ye Myint, the father of an 11th grader, said, Teachers should let students discuss and debate topics. I also think practical learning is as important as classroom teaching. My daughter had to learn about the old coins once in circulation, but the teacher never provided a sample to look at. He added, To give students a brighter future, revising the test system alone will not make much difference. Teachers learned under the old system too, and their teaching techniques and syllabus should be reformed. To the dismay of many, rote-learning continues to play a part in the education system. Rather than learning everything by heart, I want to be tested with unseen questions that I can answer with my own ideas, said Ma Ei Chan Myae Khin as she went for her matriculation. The change, if it comes, must be effected gradually, however. Ma Chit Chit Kyaw Saw, an 11th grader, said, They cant suddenly change the format for students like me, who have been taught rote-learning since the beginning. That would be unfair. The education system should start changing from kindergarten. And one teacher who requested anonymity pointed out that the teachers need to be re-educated as well. Many are young and lack experience, and the average class size of 60 students can be hard to manage. They should train us better, the teacher said. Some students say its parents that should lead the reform effort. A former male student at BEHS 3 Dagon, who wished to be anonymous, said, My parents made me take the exam seriously. They say that according to Myanmar Buddhism, children should repay their parents for the love and care they have given. I thought acing the exam was the way to make them proud. Many students feel the same way. Nobody seems to expect rapid results. This will take 20 years, said the grandmother of an 11th grader, Daw Khin Khin Htwe. Despite almost unbearable heat, artists from Beijing and Yangon have said they are enjoying a tour around upper Myanmar and Shan State. Nine guest artists from Beijing Painting Academy and seven artists from the National University of Arts and Culture in Yangon and Mandalay are involved in the tour, which was organised by the Chinese embassy in Yangon to provide outdoor landscape painting opportunities. The group left Yangon in March 18. During the five-day tour, they will visit Bagan, Taunggyi, Inle and Mandalay, using the experiences as inspiration to paint beautiful countrysides, people and lifestyles. Bagan is a beautiful city full of culture and history. Inle, Taungyi and Mandalay are important landmarks in the country. Thats why we chose these places for Beijing artists to explore, said participating artist U Tin Soe, a lecturer at the National University of Arts and Culture in Yangon. We did some sightseeing in Bagan. It was fascinating to see how different artists from home and abroad drew their inspiration from temples, beautiful sunsets and the rural peoples way of life, he said. The artists from Myanmar will be offered to participate in a tour to China in May to paint outdoors in return. The paintings resulting from both tours will be shown at an exhibition, to be determined at a later date. New layer... Tourism will continue to boom in the coming year, thanks to the countrys political stability as demonstrated in last Novembers elections, says the Ministry of Hotels and Tourism. The ministry predicts that the number of international visitors will grow from last years 4.68 million to 6 million in 2016. Outgoing Union Minister U Htay Aung told The Myanmar Times on March 18 that he was confident of a 25 percent increase in arrivals this year. We will be able to welcome 6 million tourists this year if the tourism situation can keep pace with the kind of sustainable peace and stability that the country has enjoyed. Thats very important in tourism, he said. Previous ministry forecasts have been on the optimistic side. The estimate for 2015, which saw the entry of 4.68 million, was 5 million. But some tourism experts fear that the country is not ready for 6 million tourists, if indeed they arrive. Critics also point out that the vast majority of visitors are not tourists, but day-trippers who cross land borders with Thailand and China, and contribute relatively little to the economy outside of border towns. Of last years visitors, barely one- quarter, or 1.3 million, came through the international airports of Yangon, Mandalay and Nay Pyi Taw, according to ministry figures. Tours Mandalay managing director U Khin Zaw said the country would have to develop its infrastructure, including airport capacity and human resources, before it could accommodate a major increase in arrivals through airports. Judging by my 28 years of experience in tourism, we dont yet have the capacity for those 6 million tourists, he said, adding that more immigration officers would have to be recruited, tour guides trained and hotels improved. Instead of focusing on the numbers, the ministry should direct its attention to attracting more visitors during the low season, which coincides with the monsoon from May to September, said U Khin Zaw, a former Union of Myanmar Travel Association chair. We need to create a tourism market for the whole year to reduce the gap between high- and low-season prices. Myanmar is very expensive for tourists. He urged the incoming National League for Democracy government to focus on developing the tourism sector in a way that spreads the benefits to communities. One important step is to appoint a tourism minister with industry experience, he said a break with past government practice, which saw serving or former military generals take the job. The tourism industry is not like other ministries. Tourism does not consume natural resources and it raises the living standards of the people. I believe the NLD will nominate the best person to reduce any negative impact from tourism, he said. Tour operator Daw Aye Sandar, director of Mother Irrawaddy, said she believed 6 million tourists would come as a result of the new political stability. Im sure the next government will implement the best policy for the tourism sector, she said. The defence team for two Myanmar men sentenced to death for the murder of two British backpackers has successfully applied for a third postponement of the appeal hearing, which is now set for April 22. Ko Zaw Linn and Ko Wai Phyo were convicted in December of the murder of David Miller and the rape and murder of Hannah Witheridge. They have appealed the verdict and their lawyers have spent the past three months collecting information to contest the forensic evidence, which was crucial in the duos conviction. The appeal is almost finished and we need to finalise it. Therefore, we requested the court to give us an extra month, said U Sein Htay, chair of the Migrant Worker Rights Network, which has been assisting the defence team. We can surely submit an appeal to the court after the extra time, he said. The defence is also working together with Australian DNA expert Jane Taupin in questioning the prosecutors claim that forensic samples lead to a 100 percent match with the defendants. Despite international criticism about how the Thai police handled the case from failing to secure the murder scene to testing of the DNA sample collection the two Rakhine natives were found guilty beyond reasonable doubt and sentenced to death on December 24, 2015. The verdict sparked outrage in Myanmar. Protests were held by nationalist monks and even Commander-in-Chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing weighed in, suggesting his Thai counterparts take another look at the case. At the beginning of January, President U Thein Sein assigned a group of Myanmar lawyers to observe the case and report to the embassy in Thailand. The delegation plans to give suggestions to the defence team after finishing observations on the murder case documents. The murder case documents are being analysed by a team of Myanmar lawyers and they will inform the defence about their suggestions before the appeal is sent to court, said U Aung Myo Thant, a legal adviser at the Myanmar embassy in Bangkok. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi will take a post in U Htin Kyaws government, the National League for Democracy has confirmed to parliament. President-elect U Htin Kyaw submitted a list of 18 proposed ministers, including three from the military, to parliament this morning, with Daw Aung San Suu Kyi at the top. It did not specify which of the 21 ministries they had been given. The party leader, who is barred from the presidency by the junta-drafted constitution because her sons are foreign citizens, has been widely tipped for the foreign minister post, which would also give her a position on the 11-member National Defence and Security Council. Reports overnight suggested she would get more than one ministry. Her position in the government will require her to abstain from party activities, as per section 232(k) of the constitution. Others listed include former Yangon University rector U Aung Thu, who is expected to get the agriculture ministry, and U Pe Myint, a noted writer, who will likely be minister for information. Two Union Solidarity and Development Party members, former MP Thura U Aung Ko and current MP U Thein Swe, have been nominated. Thura U Aung Ko is likely to become minister for religion and culture, having previously served as deputy minister for religious affairs. U Thein Swe is a former minister for transport. Both served under the military junta. Another nominee from outside the NLD, Mon National Party vice chair Naing Thet Lwin, is expected to head the new Ministry of Ethnic Affairs. Others nominated include U Than Myint from the partys economic committee and U Myint Htwe, a former technocrat in the United Nations. Commander-in-chief Senior General Min Aung Hlaing put forward Lieutenant General Sein Win, Lieutenant General Kyaw Swe and Lieutenant General Ye Aung to head the ministries of Defence, Home Affairs and Border Affairs. Daw Aung San Suu Kyi is also the only woman nominated by the NLD for a ministerial post. Parliament still needs to approve the list of ministers, but can only reject nominees if they do not fit the broad criteria outlined in the constitution. Minister list: Daw Aung San Suu Kyi U Aung Thu U Than Zin Maung Thura U Aung Ko U Ohn Win U Thein Swe U Kyaw Win U Khin Maung Cho U Myint Htwe U Win Khaing U Win Myat Aye U Ohn Maung U Than Myint Naing Thet Lwin U Pe Myint Lieutenant General Sein Win Lieutenant General Kyaw Swe Lieutenant General Ye Aung Investigators are interviewing staff from two government ministries following the leak to social media of information concerning requests for housing by three Union ministers. About 25 staff members in the Ministry of Construction and its Department of Urban and Housing Development are under investigation, according to Deputy Minister for Construction U Soe Tint. Three current and former Union ministers Minister for the Presidents Office U Soe Thein, Minister for National Planning and Economic Development U Kan Zaw, and U Tin Naing Thein, a former minister in the Presidents Office applied to Minister for Construction U Kyaw Lwin to buy apartments in a government development in Mandalays Satetaramahi ward. The circulation of their applications on social media led to the investigation. The letters, which U Soe Tint confirmed are real, are written in an informal style two are handwritten notes and were clearly never intended to be made public. U Kan Zaw said he wanted to buy the apartment to live with his family after he retires from the government, while U Tin Naing Theins was more ambiguous, asking the minister to put an apartment in his sons name. When I get older I cant go upstairs so I want to have a ground floor or second floor [apartment] if possible, he wrote. U Soe Thein said he wanted to buy or lease an apartment to keep tabs on economic developments in Mandalay while representing residents of Kayah States Bawlakhe in the Amyotha Hluttaw, after winning a seat in the November 2015 election. The requests have prompted widespread public anger, with many alleging impropriety on the part of the ministers. The ministry has just 22 apartments for sale in the estate, and the official price offered to the lucky buyers is well below the market rate. Observers have also noted that the ministers appear to be very financially well-off, so should not be seeking any financial favours from government colleagues before they leave office. None of the ministers could be reached for comment yesterday. They have not publicly responded to the scandal. U Zaw Htay, a director in the Presidents Office, where two of the ministers work, directed inquiries to the Ministry of Construction. Deputy minister U Soe Tint insisted they had done nothing wrong. There is nothing particularly secret about these applications, because the apartments in question are available for sale to the public. This is not civil service housing, and the apartments are not reserved for VIPs, he said. But he confirmed that the price for the apartments would be about K100 million below the market rate for condominiums in such a sought-after location. Anyone can buy them, if they have the money, he said. U Tin Maung, head of the Myanmar Real Estate Services Association branch in Mandalay, said the apartments would fetch at least K140 million on the open market. These apartments are right in downtown, near the Mandalay Railway Station and Zegyo Market. Its a popular location and there are few apartments like this available in the area, he said. The scandal has prompted the ministry to suspend the sale of the apartments, despite having already approved the requests from the three ministers. But it is also moving ahead with the investigation into the source of the leak. Civil servants up to the level of deputy director and staff in the ministers office are under investigation. U Soe Tint insisted last week that the inquiry is simply aimed at finding out what happened. We have no plan to take action against the staff concerned, he added. But despite the deputy ministers assurance, anyone found to have leaked confidential information could face demotion and other penalties under civil service rules. A final report is expected by the end of this month. At the same time, a Facebook campaign has been launched to halt the investigation, with an anonymous letter from Ministry of Construction staff urging President U Thein Sein to take action against U Kyaw Lwin, U Soe Tint, permanent secretary U Kyaw Lin, directors general U Min Htein and U Win Tint, deputy permanent secretary U Myint Maung Win and director U Aye Cho. The letter accused them of launching an illegal investigation to find out the source of the leak, in contravention of labour laws. Subordinate staff are working unhappily because our phones have been checked, they threatened with demotion [and] used excessively obscene language accusing us leaking the papers, the letter said. U Min Aung Aye, deputy director of the Department of Urban and Housing Development, told The Myanmar Times on March 14 that he was under investigation. But he supported the probe and rejected the allegations made in the anonymous campaign. Nobody bullied me or seized my phone. They just questioned me about the project. I understand a report was subsequently made to the president. I suggested that the security of official documents should be stricter. We still dont know who will be charged due to the investigations, he said. He said eventually the Union minister would establish a board to decide on any charges as a result of the ongoing probe. Everyone is looking forward to the result. I think they investigated me because I had worked there as head of office and knew the history, he added. The Satetaramahi project is on the site of an old government housing complex that is being redeveloped under an agreement with five private developers. Work is about 90 percent complete. Under the agreement, 122 former residents will be given upgraded apartments in the development. Of the 42 apartments that the government will receive, 20 will be allocated to the Mandalay Region government and 22 to the Ministry of Constructions Department of Urban and Housing Development. Translation by Mee Mee Myint Thu and Su Wunna Aung The National League for Democracy is set to propose changes to a law that requires citizens to report overnight guests to their local ward administration office a practice that activists say infringes on human rights, and the party argues is a disgrace to the country. However, the draft amendment, which was yesterday handed out to parliament members, could bring the NLD into conflict with the military, which controls the security and administrative apparatus that implements the reporting requirements. The move will be welcomed by activists, who have long been calling for reform of the law. Under the military junta, the authorities would search private homes in the middle of the night under the pretence of checking for unregistered guests in order to harass and detain activists. Under outgoing President U Thein Seins government the law was used to detain activists who were forced into hiding after the violent crackdown by the Myanmar Police Force on a student protest at Letpadan in Bago Region in March 2015. The amendment said that forcing people to report overnight guests, checking guest lists and taking legal action against those failing to report overnight guests were against democratic principles. Reporting overnight guests is required under the Ward or Village-Tract Administration Law which was passed in 2012 and replaced two colonial-era laws. It is a powerful tool for the Ministry of Home Affairs, which oversees the General Administration Department that employs ward and village-tract administrators. The extent of the incoming NLD governments control over the Ministry of Home Affairs is unclear, as the constitution requires that the minister be a serving military officer nominated by the commander-in-chief. However, the partys majority in parliament is such that it could pass changes to the law regardless of military opposition. The bill distributed to MPs yesterday proposes the removal of sections 13(g) and 17 which lay out the reporting of overnight guests and inspections from the law. In its current form it would also scrap penalties for not complying with section 17, which are specified in section 27. According to a report to be submitted with the bill, these sections disgrace Myanmars image and are not adopted in other countries. The sections have been used to persecute ethnic people and could lead to disunity, it says. We handed out the amendment bill today. It is interesting to amend the law about reporting guests. It will be debated in the coming weeks. Currently, it is too soon to give a comment on it, said Amyotha Hluttaw representative U Saw Moe Myint. The Myanmar Times understands the bill was drafted by senior NLD official U Zaw Myint Maung during the last parliament, but never made it past the bill committee. The Pyidaungsu Hluttaw is likely to debate the bill this month. Translation by Thiri Min Htun About 1500 people protested yesterday in Yangon against National League for Democracy MP U Phyo Min Thein, accusing him of election violations and his party of shielding him from a legal investigation. The demonstration was led by two Union Solidarity and Development Party officials from U Phyo Min Theins Hlegu township constituency: outgoing regional hluttaw MP U Hla Than and branch secretary U Aung Myat Thu, who lost to the NLD candidate on November 8. The protesters marched from Bo Sein Mhan ground in Bahan township to the public speaking corner in Tarmwe township, where they shouted chants calling for U Phyo Min Theins prosecution and an end to NLD interference in the judicial system. The protest was held with the approval of local police. While organisers insisted the party had not endorsed the rally, the protesters, who included at least some USDP, were brought in to central Yangon on party-owned trucks. The dispute has festered since the election, with U Aung Myat Thu submitting a complaint to police on November 22 accusing U Phyo Min Thein who is hotly tipped to be Yangons next chief minister of threatening polling station staff on voting day. A complaint to the Union Election Commission was redirected to local police. However, Yangon Region Speaker U Tin Maung Tun has not granted permission for police to proceed with the case, U Aung Myat Thu said. Under Myanmars constitution, while parliament is in session an MP can only be arrested with the permission of the Speaker. The Yangon Region Hluttaw is currently in session, although sitting days have been relatively infrequent since it first convened on February 8. If the Speaker doesnt allow police to investigate my complaint, we will protest again to the parliament and MP Phyo Min Thein. We really want to know why the Speaker hasnt allowed his prosecution. He [the Speaker] should reply to us, he said. Former regional MP U Hla Than said that the Speaker should not reject the case without specifying the reason. We suspect that the Speaker wont allow prosecution because he [U Phyo Min Thein] is to be named as chief minister, said U Hla Than. Neither U Tin Maung Tun nor his deputy responded to requests for comment yesterday. But U Phyo Min Thein rejected the accusations and said his election complaint, against Chief Minister U Myint Swe and Electricity Minister U Khin Maung Soe, had also been blocked by the former USDP Speaker and U Tin Maung Tun. They have been accused of promising constituents electricity in exchange for votes under a complaint submitted on November 21. He said the NLD office in Hlegu has submitted eight complaints against the USDP, none of which have been allowed to proceed. But the bad blood in Hlegu goes back further than November 8. U Phyo Min Thein said the USDP had submitted a complaint against him when he won the Pyithu Hluttaw seat in a 2012 by-election, but it was later thrown out. He added that the protesters at yesterdays rally were not real USDP supporters and had been given incentives to travel to Yangon and take part in the march. At least some of the demonstrators appeared to have little idea what they were protesting about yesterday. One 23-year-old man, who asked not to be named, said, I know [U Phyo Min Thein] but I dont know exactly why we are protesting against him. Three female employees at a Yangon steelworks who recently complained about labour rights violations have quit after being placed on heavy duties by the factory manager, according to the workers and a local union. The women had submitted complaints to the Myanmar National Human Right Commission (MNHRC) and the Ministry of Labour about practices at the Yar Shin steelworks in Hmawbi township. They were transferred on March 3, barely two weeks after speaking to a visiting inspection team on February 16. Following the inspectors visit, Ma Phyu Phyu Win said she and two colleagues had been switched from their previous role sorting pieces of iron to general workers, which means they have to carry out any tasks assigned by the manager. These tasks have included cleaning the worksite, shifting molten metal and cutting hot iron rods. They are the only women assigned to those roles, she said. Since March 3 we have had to do anything the manager asks, she said. We cant work for him anymore He changed our position because he has a grudge against us. On March 14 the women refused to continue working and submitted a complaint to the township Arbitration Council. The next day the council ruled that the factory must offer them compensation based on their length of service, said Ko Nyi Su, a member from the Hmawbi township workers union who has been helping the three women. However, the factory has appealed the decision to the regional Arbitration Council, arguing that it should not have to pay them any compensation. The human rights commission was called in to inspect the factory in February following complaints that workers had been putting in 10-hour days with no overtime pay, and had also been forced to buy their own safety equipment. During the visit of a combined team comprising MNHRC members, union leaders and Ministry of Labour officials, Ma Phyu Phyu Win and two other women workers reported that they had not received the minimum wage and had not been given any safety equipment. The inspection team later confirmed the allegations of underpaying and poor safety standards. In December 2015, the Arbitration Council ruled that the factory could not cut food subsidies and overtime pay from the workers salary, as it had tried to do after the introduction of a K3600-a-day minimum wage on September 1. Following the criticism by the inspection team, factory management began paying the minimum wage to all workers except the three women. Ive been working here one year and get K75,000 per month. Officials from the Ministry of Labour have ordered the factory to pay a daily wage of K3600 to every worker who has been here for more than three months. But we still havent got it yet, said Ma Phyu Phyu Win. Ko Nyi Su said the women had filed a complaint to the labour ministry over the allegations of underpayment by the factory. Yar Shin manager U Tin Tun could not be reached for comment. Owner U Kyaw Win has previously declined to comment when contacted by The Myanmar Times. Yangon Region Ministry of Labour deputy director Daw Lwin Lwin Myint, also a member of regional arbitration council, said she was not aware of the latest dispute at the factory. However, she said it appeared to be a breach of labour rules. Factories are not allowed to change the position of workers in contravention of the primary agreement of job hiring, said Daw Lwin Lwin Myint. She said that the minimum wage law clearly states that employers must pay the minimum wage to all workers who have completed their three-month probation period. Employers found to be in violation of the law face up to one year in prison. Muncipal authorities say a new departure terminal is needed at Aung Mingalar highway bus station to relieve crippling traffic congestion. Yangon City Development Committee has drawn up plans for the new terminal but these are yet to be approved. YCDC member U Khin Maung Tint said the committee hopes the incoming mayor, who will be appointed by President-elect U Htin Kyaw, will sign off on the project shortly after taking office on April 1. Once a budget has been allocated, a tender will be called, he said. I think [construction] will start in the coming budget year. We are still negotiating with vehicle owners. We will submit our plans to the new mayor, he said. U Nyan Tun Aung, deputy head of YCDCs Tax Department, said the poorly planned layout of the Mingaladon township terminal was creating congestion around the site. If there is a departure terminal, passengers dont need to spend time looking for the gates. Now, passengers look for the gates while carrying large pieces of luggage, he said. Roads inside the terminal are small and are difficult to navigate for newer highway buses. The big buses have to go to their gates to take passengers. Some roads are narrow because they were made with the size of the old Hino cars in mind and cannot be widened. Aung Mingalar bus station was built in 2001 and includes lodging houses, restaurants, clinics and car repair shops. An arrival terminal was constructed later. According to figures from the YCDC Tax Department, 35,000 people pass through the terminal each day. About 2000 buses are based at Aung Mingalar, with 500 to 600 services departing each day for destinations in upper Myanmar, including Nay Pyi Taw and Mandalay. Translation by Khine Thazin Han What an age it must have been. Imagine. No one had cars yet. You could not take an airplane. You could not call anyone, and radios did not exist. Women could not vote. The tsars still ruled Russia. There was not even an income tax. You could say the Myanmar of 1899, which politically also did not exist until half a century later, was in no way like the country of today. Except in one respect: stamp duty. The Stamp Act of 1899 has in every material respect been kept exactly as it was and applies as such today. Stamp duty, once described by a learned judge as a mere incoherent list of one thing after another without any fundamental thought, is a tax paid on instruments such as contracts, the sales deed for a property, mortgages, leases, loans and so on. For each category there is a rate in the Schedule to the Stamp Act. Rates can be very or fairly small, like K300 or K150,000, but rates for some instruments are high. For example, leases will trigger stamp duty at 1.5 percent or 3pc of the lease fee, sale of property 3pc of the value, bonds 1.5pc of the amount, and mortgages 1.5pc or 3pc of the amount secured. Not surprisingly, as these categories were made up in 1899, they dont work so well 117 years later. In no area this is more acutely felt as in finance. Loan agreements, which are not mentioned in the Schedule, could fall under half a dozen categories with vastly different consequences in terms of rate. They could be a bond at 1.5pc duty, or a mortgage at 1.5pc or 3pc, or just an agreement at K300. There are differences between bonds and agreements (to lend money) and some are spelled out in the law plainly. But many differences are on a hair-thin legal line which often seems vague to officials and taxpayers, and there is plenty of room for interpretation depending on how the language of an instrument is framed. The problem has been exasperated by a circular from the tax authorities last November, apparently a well-intended attempt to simplify the flawed process of categorisation, which suggests that every type of financing is a bond or a mortgage costing at least 1.5pc on the loan amount. Once described as the most boring by far of all revenue laws, stamp duty abruptly got a sharp edge in Myanmar. The sudden break with the somewhat prevailing practice of categorising loans as agreements subject to a fairly low duty is difficult to understand for taxpayers. After all, there has not been any change in the law or in the rates, and there are nearly no countries in the world that require such high amounts of stamp duty for all loans. Its not just a problem of finding the right category (and thus rate) for a loan. Modern financing transactions, long absent from Myanmar, come with a cluster of documents and are often syndicated, involving a score of parties including several lenders, an arranger and a trustee. As stamp duty is a tax on instruments, there is a risk that one would have to pay duty on a per-instrument basis. Imagine paying 1.5pc plus 3pc, plus another 1.5pc all on one loan. There are rules in the Stamp Act to prevent this in the case there are several instruments in one transaction but there is no official guidance on what forms one transaction. Is a loan from A to B and a guarantee from C to A one transaction, or two? Is a loan by a syndicate of three banks to one borrower one loan, or three? There is no certainty on these questions, and that is scary for banks and their customers. We had these questions in Myanmar for decades, but there were no syndicated loans to speak of. Until now, of course. A big part of why stamp duty is posing such a problem for banking and finance is because of what happens if you do not pay duty (on time). A loan or a security document which is not duly stamped cannot be used as evidence, for example in a court case to enforce the debt; it can be impounded and could even lead to a criminal fine. In other words, not paying the right duty, even though there is a lot of confusion about what that should be, could mean banks might not be able to get their money back. In any case, just to rectify the problem one would have to pay 10 times the original duty. Imagine a borrower who is already in default. Before starting a legal proceeding the lender has to first fork up another 15pc of the loan amount. There is a reason why most countries which inherited stamp duty have done away with it on financing transactions. That includes the Dutch who invented it, the British who exported it, and Asian neighbours Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore and Hong Kong. Stamp duty on bonds may have worked in 1899, but it does not work in a modern financial marketplace. A tax which is so fundamentally uncertain should not be allowed to disable a lenders right to get their money back. By the same token, a penalty of 10 times the original tax is by modern standards repressive and unwarranted. Legally, I just dont see how we can justify these sanctions in a country where lenders have a right to their property and both borrowers and lenders have a right to a minimum of advance certainty in their tax affairs. Economically, I believe you cannot optimally restart a countrys economy, help SMEs, promote financial inclusion, alleviate poverty through microfinance, strengthen the banking system or raise money to fund desperately needed infrastructure with such an unnecessary uncertainty hanging over borrowers and lenders. The reluctant stamp duty renaissance in Myanmar comes at the worst possible time. Just when the first foreign banks ramp up, the first international financing deals have been inked, and microfinance starts to get a foothold, lenders do not need a reminder of what could go wrong. There are issues affecting lenders in Myanmar for which there is no quick fix, such as future currency conversion and debt enforcement by the courts. But stamp duty on loans would actually be a quick fix, in my view only requiring a regulatory clarification. Keeping a high or uncertain stamp duty for any loan is fiscally unnecessary, legally questionable and economically unwise. Lets bring Myanmar stamp duty into the 21st century. Edwin Vanderbruggen is the senior partner of law firm VDB Loi in Myanmar. Sai Wine & Champagne Cafe, located at Labone recently marked this year's International Women's Day in a significant way when the Cafe shop hosted some women groups to an Afternoon Tea. It brought together various women from all sectors including the corporate industry. This afternoon tea consists of a selection of dainty sandwiches, scones served with clotted cream and preservers including cakes and pastries are also served. Some of the women groups, who took the time to tour the Cafe shop, admired the architecture and serene environment. Sai Wine & Champagne Cafe, is indeed a great place for friends to meet, relax and unwind, hold corporate meetings or simply just to drink some fine wine and champagne! Sai wine & champagne cafe is open for business and a wonderful addition to Accra! Sai sells nothing but wine and champagne from key wine producing countries throughout the world. Alongside wines, they also have complimentary foods such as Cheese & cold meat platters, oysters, clams, pate, salmon, lumpfish roe that you can enjoy, with friends and family or on your own! About The Afternoon Tea The Afternoon Tea was introduced in England by Anna, the seventh Duchess of Bedford, in the year 1840. During the hours of four o'clock to five o'clock, the Duchess would be hungry and would ask for a tray of tea, bread and butter and cake to be brought to her in her room. This became a habit of hers and she began inviting friends to join her. This pause for tea became a fashionable social event in the 1880's, upper class and society women would change in their long gowns, gloves and hats for their afternoon tea which was usually served in the drawing room between four and five oclock. Having been established some few years ago in Ghana, Rainbow Radio International is gradually, really showing its true colours by winning three different categories in this years Ghana DJS Award 2016. This is due to the fact that, although everyone working in the station is arguably pulling their strength and weight towards making the station the best it could be, three radio personalities came up tops. Nana Agyemang Prempehs dexterity on the gospel front has finally been rewarded and awarded, while the skills and crafts of both Dj Collins and Dj Invisible have seen the light of day. These three distinctly scooped various awards for themselves, friends, fans and their beloved station. Speaking to Dj Invisible from his London base as to how he feels winning The Best Ghana International Dj Award 2016, he said: Well is been a long time coming words cant even express how I feel right now. I just want to say a big Thank you to all of my supporters! However, in showing his readiness to defend his newly crowned title, the Afrocentric Mix-man said: Best International Ghanaian Dj 2016 This is just the beginning so keep on supporting! We Thank God and of course each and every one of you!!!! THANK YOU. Invisible to some of his fans and still gaining grounds on air, the sky could only be the limit for the man of the moment. Below are the rest of the winners. Gospel DJ of the Year Agyemang, Rainbow Radio Reggae/dancehall of the Year King Lagazee, Hit FM Highlife DJ of the Year Micky Darling, Peace FM Mobile DJ of the Year DJ Collins, Rainbow Radio Hiplife DJ of the Year DJ Azonto, Pink FM Scratch DJ of the Year DJ Kaxtro, Ultimate FM DJ song of the Year Kakai by Shatta Wale Mixtape of the Year DJ X Dumsorlogy Best International Ghanaian DJ of the Year DJ Invisible Artiste DJ of the Year DJ Justice [Stonebwoy] Nite Club DJ of the Year- DJ Cobby Krack [Bella Roma] Best Video Jockey of the Year DJ Xpliph Best Club MC of the Year MC Kay Best International non Ghanaian DJ of the Year DJ Jimmy Jatt , Nigeria Discovery DJ of the Year DJ Wabs Best Campus DJ of the Year DJ Snipes, UPSA Best Female Radio DJ of the Year Ohemaa, Adom FM Pub DJ of the Year DJ Mac Tonto Best Male Radio DJ of the Year DJ Black Best Event DJ of the Year DJ Virusky Best Music Promoter of the Year DJ Adviser Best Female DJ of the Year DJ M Jay Best DJ of the Year DJ Black 22.03.2016 LISTEN Marketing Communications company, Ghana News Link, this week announced the rerun of season one of its talk show, Law Express, on Joy Prime (available on Multi TV) from Sunday 27th March 2016. Law Express is a social service program designed to educate the general public on the operation of the law as well as the constitution of the Republic of Ghana in an easy to understand manner. Showing every Sunday from 9pm to 10pm, Law Express seeks to educate Ghanaians on their rights, how and when these rights accrue and steps they could take when they decide to pursue a case. In every episode, a panel of three lawyers will discuss different and relevant law topics which applies in our everyday life with members of the public contributing to the discussion through recorded vox pops. Nuhela Seidu, a young private legal practitioner with a decade of experience in broadcasting, both television and radio is the moderator of the show. She holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Sociology and Political Science from the University of Ghana, Legon, where she also attained her LLB Qualification. She was called to the bar after successfully graduating from the Ghana School of Law with a BL Qualification. Make it a point to watch Law Express every Sunday on Joy Prime at 9pm to get insight into what to do when confronted with a series of issues and also get clarity on areas within the law you might not be conversant with. For further information about the program, kindly visit www.lawexpresstv.com and like our pages on Facebook and Instagram (lawexpresstv) as well as our twitter handle (@lawexpresstv) for updates. Veteran musician Gyedu-Blay Ambolley has expressed worry over the style of music embraced by the young crop of musicians in Ghana, describing them as copycats. He believes that every country has a style of music they are identified with but the current crop of musicians are diverting from the highlife genre, which Ghana is noted for. Every country has music that it offers, we have so much to offer in this country in connection with [identity] but the young ones that have come I think they have a problem because they are not being original and they are doing too much of a copy and it's bothering me, he told KMJ on Daybreak (Showbiz Review) on Hitz FM. According to him, Ghanaian dancehall artistes prefer to popularise music from Jamaica instead of finding a creative way of fusing highlife with the dancehall to own the beat. Known as the father of rap in Ghana, Ambolley, blamed radio stations for playing more dancehall tunes than highlife music. Ambolley has 29 albums to his credit and has received several awards. He is set to launch his 30th album in June this year. Commenting on what inspires him to do music, he said Its a gift that was given to me by the Most High. I sat down and thought twice and realised that music is the only thing I can contribute to the world and I have not regretted taking that role. He further revealed that the new album is made up of nine songs and the name of the album is yet to be decided on. When asked whether the songs on the album can fit the latest trend in the music industry, the Simigwa man said I dont think its going to be like a challenge. Each and everybody knows that whatever that I come out with is Gyedu-Blay Ambolley, my music, my interpretations. Bamako (AFP) - Four gunmen attacked a hotel hosting an EU military training mission in Mali's capital on Monday, with one shot dead by security guards, according to a source within the mission. Gunfire was heard in the area by witnesses and AFP correspondents from around 2000 GMT as the armed assailants attempted to enter the premises of a hotel owned by Mali's "Azalai" chain, before fleeing return fire from security guards. "Four people tried to force their way through the barricade firing shots," the source told AFP. "One of the four was neutralised, we are searching for the three others," the source added. Police showed AFP a photo they said was of the dead attacker, who was pictured wearing blue jeans and slumped in a pool of his own blood following the confrontation. "I heard heavy gunfire behind the hotel. Then Malian troops blocked off the area," a witness told AFP. The source within the mission said there was a sniper among the group of attackers. The European Union Training Mission-Mali (EUTM) confirmed in a tweet posted around 2010 GMT that none of its personnel had been harmed. The establishment where the EU deployment was staying is in the same upmarket neighbourhood as the city's Radisson Blu hotel, the site of an attack in November by Al-Qaeda-linked jihadists that left 20 people dead. - Extremist groups - The area was cordoned off and armoured vehicles belonging to the UN and Malian military were on the scene, where an operation to find the escaped gunmen was still ongoing by 2200 GMT. "A suicide bomber is in the vicinity of the EUTM headquarters," said a Malian security source. An advisor to Mali's President Ibrahim Boubacar Keita called for calm and described the situation as "under control". "Security forces are on the front line," the advisor said in a text. The president is currently on a visit to Namibia. The EU training mission aims to reinforce the Malian army's ability to engage in combat operations as they battle a jihadist insurgency and rampant banditry across vast swathes of the desert nation. An EU foreign affairs representative said in a statement sent to AFP they were "cooperating with the Malian national authorities to understand the circumstances of this incident and to help find the persons responsible." The EUTM mission draws on expertise from 25 countries with more than 600 personnel, and is currently German-led. French and UN forces are also attempting to back up the army but extremist groups are using new methods to spread terror after being ousted from key northern towns after a French-led intervention in 2013. Northern Mali had fallen under the control of jihadist groups linked to Al-Qaeda in 2012, with the government unable to maintain security with domestic forces alone. Since being chased from northern Mali, the jihadists have staged sporadic attacks on the country's military forces and the UN peacekeeping mission based in the country, killing dozens, before turning to more spectacular civilian targets. November's attack was claimed by Al-Murabitoun, led by one-eyed Algerian militant Mokhtar Belmokhtar, as a joint operation with Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). 22.03.2016 LISTEN The engineers, who designed the Accra-Tema motorway, which was opened to traffic in November 1965, had genuine reason why they left large track of land in the median. But 51 years down the line, the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) government thinks it is useless to keep the land in the median and has actually taken the decision to expand the road into the median, instead of widening it to cover the land lying fallow on both sides of the Motorway. Experts who spoke to The Chronicle over the issue noted that the land in the median was deliberately left by the designers of the road to serve as buffer to reduce fatalities in case of road crashes. For instance, when a speeding vehicle or car burst its tyres, instead of crossing to the opposite lane, the median, serving as buffer, would stop it to limit the impact. A reliable source close to the Ghana Institution of Engineers, however, says the government is contemplating turning the median into two additional lanes in fulfillment of the pledge to turn the motorway into six lanes. The experts' fears are that if the decision is indeed implemented, it will compromise safety on the motorway. As The Chronicle reported last week, the government intends to convert the Motorway from the current four to six lanes, but as at the time of writing this report, the cost of the project is still not known because no consultant has been appointed to do the evaluation and come out with the cost. The World Bank, which is funding the consultancy work, has reportedly expressed concern over the delay in appointing the consultant. Intelligence information indicates that government intend to hand pick the contractor, who would finance the entire project under Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT). The Chronicle further gleaned from credible sources that the government is dragging its feet in appointing the consultant because such a decision will make it virtually impossible for it to hand pick its preferred contractor. As we talk to you, a contract for the appointment of a consultant has been submitted to the Ministry of Roads and Highways but the document is yet to be signed, sources within the Ghana Institution of Engineers told this reporter. Under the BOT contract, the successful contractor would toll the Motorway for 30 solid years to recoup his investment and profit. The Chronicle established that since the Accra-Tema Motorway is the busiest highway in Ghana, carrying traffic of over 65,000 vehicles and cars a day, some businessmen with strong links in government see it as a cash cow and are moving heaven and earth to get the contract, in order to reap the huge windfall. The experts who spoke to The Chronicle argued that since the government of Ghana is not going to spend a pesewa on the whole project, they were wondering why the proper thing should not be done by expanding the road to the preserved lands on both sides, instead of going to the median. Already, some private developers have started encroaching the lands preserved for future expansion, but despite constant threat by the authorities to have them demolished, nothing concrete has been done. It is, however, not known whether this is part of the deal to justify the use of the median to expand the road. The idea of building the motorway was conceived by Ghana's first president, Dr. Kwame Nkrumah as part of his seven year development plan which started in 1963 and was to be completed in 1970. The actual construction of the road, which was fashioned after the Autobahn in Germany started in 1963 and completed in November 1965 at the cost of 3,380,000 British Pound Sterling. The road was to be extended to all parts of the country in a gradual process but the idea has failed to materialize after the overthrow of the Convention People's Party government in 1966. It took the country 43 years after the Motorway was opened to traffic in 1965 before the New Patriotic Party (NPP) government headed by the Gentle Giant, President Kufuor managed to construct the Motorway Extension, which starts from the Tetteh Quashie Interchange and terminates at Mallam, on the Cape Coast road. The new road has beautified the landscape of Accra. But the idea to expand the original Motorway is now docked with controversies, with the government reportedly trying to give the contract to its preferred contractor and reap the 'fruits' that would follow. The Accra-Tema Motorway currently generates about GH40,000 a day, GH1,200,000 a month and GH14,400,000 a year. If the yearly income of GH14, 400,000 is multiplied by 30 years that the BOT contract is to cover, the contractor will rake in GH432, 000,000. The figure would be minus the future increment in road tolls. According to experts, if future increment in the road tolls are factored into the equation, the eventually winner of the bid to reconstruct the road could make a bumper harvest. The above analysis shows that the Tema Motorway is the most profitable and well patronized road in Ghana. Stay tuned for more. By Emmanuel Akli 22.03.2016 LISTEN Ghanaians woke up yesterday morning to the obnoxious and heartbreaking news about the demise of the immediate past National Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Mr Jake Okanta Obetsebi Lamptey, who was said to have died in far away London, in the United Kingdom. Mr. Obetsebi Lamptey served as Chief of Staff and Minister of Tourism and Diasporan Relations in the cabinet of President John Agyekum Kufuor. He was previously Minister of Tourism and Modernization of the Capital City (20022005) and Minister of Information (20012002). In December 2015, there were social media speculations that Mr. Lamptey had died; meanwhile he was alive and receiving treatment from an ailment in South Africa. In fact, that was not the first time the living had been pronounced dead in this country. We at The Chronicle have observed that the hoax on the pronouncement of the living as dead, is fast gaining currency in this country, while propagating the need for this culture to be discouraged in no uncertain terms. Ghanaians have also cultivated the habit of heaping praises on the dead, even if they had questionable characters when they were alive. And this, they do, under the cover of We dont speak ill of the dead. Unfortunately, Mr Jake Obetsebi Lamptey was a beneficiary of this sad trend. While alive, the National Democratic Congress (NDC) constantly chastised Mr. Obetsebi Lampety over his genuine purchase of the government bungalow he occupied at Ridge, while serving as a Minister of State in the erstwhile Kufuor administration. After the NDC, led by Samuel Okudjeto Ablawah and Dr. Omane Boamah, was soundly thrown out in a 6-3 Supreme court ruling, members of the party went on their usual tongue-lashing exercise. Several name calling and scolding engulfed the bungalow controversy. And here is this same political party, which today, claims the death of the very person they did not spare while he was alive, has hit the party hard in the heart. A statement issued by the NDC's General Secretary, Asiedu Nketiah, said: Ghana's contemporary history cannot be written without the mention of Jake Obetsebi Lamptey. However, The Chronicle sees this as nothing but pure hypocrisy! On the part of the opposition NPP, a statement signed by its acting General Secretary, Mr. John Boadu, stressed that Mr. Obetsebi Lamptey did not only serve his party selflessly and diligently, but also helped in nation building. Mention was also made of his effort in bringing the party to power in 2001 and also retaining the seat for the party in 2004. Due to his contribution to the party and the respect he commanded within the rank and file of the New Patriotic Party, the statement added that: As we mourn this great man of our party and country, we request that all party flags- national, regional, constituency and polling stations offices- fly at half mast. The Chronicle wishes to appeal to the NPP to see the death of Mr. Obetsebi Lamptey as a platform to unify the party, ahead of the polls in November. The infighting and unnecessary hatred among the leadership of the party must discontinue, though there are positive signs to that effect. This is especially so as the late Obetsebi Lamptey, after the party lost in the landmark election petition, when he was a party chairman, called on the NPP to remain vigilant to forestall the danger of being robbed in this years elections. The Chronicle, therefore, sees the late former National Chairmans advice as a wakeup call on the party to remain focused, put its house in order and also strategise so as to emerge victorious in the polls. Baroness Anelay welcomes the International Criminal Court's verdict that Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo, former Vice-President of the Democratic Republic of Congo, is guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity Human Rights Minister and Prime Minister's Special Representative on Preventing Sexual Violence in Conflict, Baroness Anelay, said: I welcome the guilty verdict in this groundbreaking case. This is a milestone in prosecuting crimes of sexual violence in conflict through the international justice system. This is the first case before the International Criminal Court (ICC) to allege that a commander is criminally responsible for abuses carried out by their troops, even if they did not order the violence. It is also the first case before the ICC to focus heavily on sexual violence and rape as a war crime and a crime against humanity. Although the suffering of the survivors and relatives of those abused or killed cannot be erased, today's verdict sends a powerful message that those who allow such atrocities to occur will be held accountable for their actions and that there will be no impunity. Angelina Jolie Pitt Co-Founder of the Preventing Sexual Violence Initiative said: "My thoughts and my admiration go out to the survivors and witnesses who bravely testified in this case and contributed to this landmark conviction. I can only imagine the reaction of victims who in their hearts probably never thought that this day would come. It is shocking that this conviction is the first of its kind. It is a reminder of how long it has taken us to reach this point, and how many victims have never seen justice. I urge the international community to build on the important legal precedent that has been established: to bring forward more cases, gather the necessary evidence and support witnesses, in order that we can collectively shatter impunity for the use of rape as a weapon of war and terrorism." Further information Jean-Pierre Bemba Gombo was tried for two counts of crimes against humanity (murder and rape) and three counts of war crimes (murder, rape and pillaging) allegedly committed in the context of the situation in Central African Republic in 2002-2003. Some 1,500 Bemba troops allegedly went on a rampage of killings, rapes and pillage in villages in the Democratic Republic of Congo's northern neighbour from October 2002 to March 2003. Ex-president John Kufuor is appealing to the leadership of the New Patriotic Party to close their ranks and fight the 2016 elections in unity. He said that will be the only honour worthy of the late chairman of the party Jake Obetsebi Lamptey. "When we do that Jake would not have served in vain," he told Joy News' Beatrice Adu a day after Mr Lamptey died at a London Hospital. The astute advertiser whose campaign strategy brought the NPP into government for the first time under the fourth republic was unwell and went to South African, then to London for treatment but died on the dawn of Sunday March 20, 2016. Mr Kufuor said his death came as shock to him and is yet to recover from it. Recounting the legacy of Mr Lamptey, the ex-president said Jake was a "devout Danquah Busia man committed to the tenets of the tradition- respect for the rule of law. human rights, respect for the freedom of thought, speech and association. He was also a respecter of individual initiatives, private sector." The qualities of Jake Obetsebi Lamptey notwithstanding, Ex President Kufuor believes the NPP is a party of talents, none of whom is indispensable. He admitted though that "filling the vacuum he left will be a challenge. It is not easy. But having said that, i would say that nobody is indispensable. We all come and go. We play our roles when the time is up we go but he played his role very well. "My appeal is for the party to close ranks. To hold together and put our side of our argument across to Ghana and hope that this year Ghana will favour the NPP by returning the NPP back to power. "When we do that then Jake will not have served in vain all together. We would have honoured Jake in ways that he really deserves," he said. Mogadishu (AFP) - Somalia security forces have killed 65 Shebab Islamic insurgents who attacked coastal towns in the semi-autonomous Puntland area in the country's northeast, the regional army chief said Monday. The fighting is almost over and the security forces are now pursuing the remnants of the militants" after five days of clashes, General Muhidin Ahmed Muse told reporters. "Sixty-five of the militants who have been misled into this war, have been killed so far and 31 others, most of them children, were captured alive, he added. The Al-Qaeda-affiliated Shebab was ousted from Mogadishu in 2011 and has since lost much of the territory it once held. Shebab attacks have increased in tempo recently, seen as an attempt to destabilise the internationally-backed government ahead of an election due later this year. A group of the Islamic insurgents stormed a Somali military base outside the capital Mogadishu early Monday, claiming to have inflicted heavy casualties. Both the Somali authorities and the insurgents regularly report having inflicted significant losses on the other, claims that are often impossible to verify. Government sources told AFP that military equipment was flown into Puntland last week to help the local security forces to battle the newly-arrived insurgents. Several residents of the region said they saw Shebab fighters come ashore aboard fishing boats last week armed with machine guns, mortars and rocket launchers. Around 100 insurgents sought to take control of the villages of Garmal and Suuj, near the port of Eyl, a pirate hotspot, local officials and residents said. There has been no word from Shebab on the fighting or their reasons for their surprise deployment in Puntland. Puntland set up its own government in 1998, but unlike neighbouring Somaliland, it has not declared full independence. United Nations (United States) (AFP) - UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon expressed grave concern Monday over the fate of elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo, warning of the danger of political violence. The DRC is supposed to hold elections in November, but the chances of them actually taking place are growing dimmer, with President Joseph Kabila suspected of planning to extend his rule after his mandate runs out at the end of the year. Speaking during a Security Council debate on the situation in Africa's Great Lakes region, Ban called on all parties "to settle their differences through dialogue and to create conditions conducive to holding timely and credible elections, in keeping with the constitution." "I am very concerned by the impasse in the organization of the next elections," Ban said. "In the past, the political crises that have hit the Great Lakes region have turned into generalized violence and serious security problems. We must prevent this scenario from being repeated." Ban urged the council and regional leaders "to help preserve political stability in the DRC by rapidly finding a way out of the current impasse." He said there has been "some progress" in security in the eastern DRC with the defeat of the M23 rebel movement and the resumption of military cooperation between the UN mission in the DRC and government forces against armed rebel groups. But he recalled that 7.5 million civilians are still in need of humanitarian relief, including 1.5 million uprooted by the conflict. US Ambassador Samantha Power said "there is no excuse for the harassment and detention of peaceful activists and opposition leaders in the DRC." "Not only must ballots be cast, but individuals must be allowed to campaign for their preferred candidates and express their opinions freely," she argued. Power also voiced concern at the DRC government efforts to limit cooperation with the UN peacekeeping mission, MONUSCO. "Let us be clear: this council should not allow peacekeeping missions to become pawns in political games. When blue helmets are deployed, they must be allowed to fulfill their mandate - in the DRC or any place else," Power said. 22.03.2016 LISTEN Today, is World Water Day, an international observance that shines the spotlight on the importance of freshwater and helps people to learn about water issues, and the role they can play to promote sustainability of fresh water resources. Water is essential for nearly all aspects of society and the economy, in particular food production and security, domestic water supply and sanitation, health, energy, industry, and the functioning of ecosystems. But as crucial as water is to mans sustenance, it is sad that for hundreds of years, humanity has not done enough to use this all-important resource efficiently. As a consequence, the global outlook for water security is becoming increasinglytroubling. In January 2015, the World Economic Forum published its Global Risk Report, which ranks water crises first among the global risks of highest concern for global growth. This projection is hardly surprising given thataround 1.2 billion people, or almost one-fifth of the world's population, live in areas of physical water scarcity. Another 1.6 billion people, or almost one quarter of the world's population, live in a developing country that lacks the necessary infrastructure to take water from rivers and aquifers (this is known as an economic water shortage). According to WaterAid, 63 million people in Nigeria also do not have access to clean and safe water. Acknowledging the stark waterrelated challenges the world faces today is not about fear mongering or idealism, its about advancing an agenda that is absolutely crucial to all of us. Its about inspiringindividuals, businesses and government to play a part in promoting the responsible use of freshwater. It is heartening to note that water related issues are alreadygetting considerable global attention. Goal 6 of the recently unveiled United Nationsglobal Sustainable Development goals aims to Ensure access to water and sanitation for all.But having a goal is nosubstitute for positive action; a goal in itself - noble as it may be - cannot ensure globalwater security. Progress can only be made if this ambitious goal inspires all of us to play a part each day to protect the worlds freshwater from the tremendous threats it faces. As individuals, we have an important role to playin conserving the earths fresh water resources. We can contribute through small actions like fixing leaky pipes in our homes, turning off running taps while we brush our teeth, avoiding unnecessary waste of water while having our showers, and reusing water when we can. While these small actions may seem insignificant, they can add up to a big difference if we collectively play a part Now.Now isalso the time for businesses, especially companies who use water in manufacturing (as well as farmers who use water for irrigation) to accelerateefforts to promote efficient use of water and build long term resilience to water availability. It is encouraging to note that, some companies in Nigeria,including the one I lead -Guinness Nigeria- are already implementing various initiatives that promote the efficient use of water. Building on our tradition of water stewardship Diageo (parent company of Guinness Nigeria) has adopted an integrated strategy (the Diageo Water Blueprint)that will help us manage our impact on water. ThisBlueprint outlines ambitious water management targets that underpin our commitment to improvingour corporate water stewardship. Guided by this Blueprint, we will be accelerating our efforts to address the global water challenge along our value chain in sourcing of raw materials, within our operations, in the communities where we operate, and through advocacy. Leveraging our flagship, Water of Life programme, we have helped improve access to safe drinking water in Nigerian communities that face acute water scarcity. To date, Guinness Nigeria has completed 36 water projects across several states in Nigeria - serving over a million people in households across the nation. Our commitment to improving access to clean drinking water has however not been without its challenges; however, the challenges we have encountered have inspired theadvancement of our water delivery model. For instance, to help ensure the sustainability of our water projects, we have gone into partnership with leading international NGOs who are helping us implement self-sustaining water delivery models. Recently, we provided funds that enabled Water Health International to install, operate and maintain three Water Health Centres in Nigeria. WaterHealth Centres are innovative, self-sustaining water facilities comprising a borehole, as well as an ultramodern purification equipment that treats locally available water through a 6-step purification process. Under this partnership, Water Health International manages daily operations of these facilities, as well as their routine maintenance. This model has proved effective in ensuring optimal functionality of our Water Health Centres, and helped us extend our impact by providing clean drinking water to thousands of Nigerians. In February 2016, Guinness Nigeria also announced partnerships with renowned international NGOs OXFAM, WaterAid and Concern Universal on three Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) programmes. All water projects we will be delivering with these partners also have in-built strategies that will help ensure the long term sustainability of provided facilities. We have also introducedsustainable technology like the use of solar-powered pumping machinesthat are not only cost effective but also environmentally friendly. Our current partnership with OXFAM, WaterAid and Concern Universal will help us provide clean drinking water to an additional 40,000 Nigerians. Although our various water-focused interventions are already making a positive impact in many communities, we recognize that there still exists a huge opportunity to improve water resilience in Nigeria, andhelp many more Nigerians access safe drinking water.We therefore encourage other stakeholders in the society communities, governments, regulators, NGOs, the academia etc to partner and drive initiatives that will help achieve water resilience in Nigeria especially in the light of the countrys increasing population. We all need to take positive action to ensure that future generations also have an adequate supply of this priceless resource we all enjoy today. As an ancient Indian proverb observes, 'Wedon'tinherit the earth from our ancestors, weborrow it from our children.'I believe thatthat by the same token,we dont inherit water from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children.My hope is that the observance of World Water Day today rekindles our commitment to use water responsibly, and repay this debt when it is time. Peter Ndegwa is the Managing Director of Guinness Nigeria Plc. Australias Black Rock Mining says it now expects to develop a low cost long life US$57 million graphite mine within the next 12 to 24 months in the rich Tanzanian region aimed at key high demand and emergent high technology centres in Europe. This follows the release today at the inaugural Paydirt 2016 Australian Graphite Conference in Perth of a highly positive scoping study into Black Rocks Mahenge project in Tanzania. At [email protected] 7.9% TGC with high grade portions of 37.6Mt @10.2% or [email protected] 11.1%, Mahenge is the fourth largest flake graphite JORC resource in the world and the highest grade graphite project in Tanzania. Addressing Conference delegates, Black Rock Managing Director, Mr Steven Tambanis, said the scoping study had delivered robust results including a straight forward mining and processing operation delivering 52,000 tpa graphite concentrate from a 500,000 tpa throughput, and a two year payback. The study identified scope for a 25 year mine life, an NPV of >US$285 million, and an internal rate of return of 62%. Cash costs for Mahenge were set at US$458/t, with an expected sale price of around US$1,230 per tonne. The independent scoping study was undertaken by consultancy, BatteryLimits. Mahenge offers the flexibility to initially develop a smaller mine then scale-up as demand increases, ensuring lower capital and lower risk, Mr Tambanis said. The project exhibits a high proportion of coarse and jumbo flake and has excellent purity levels in the 96-98% range for coarse flake. This is a premium graphite product and buoyed by todays scoping study outcomes, we have already commenced the pre-feasibility study. Mahenges metallurgical results to date exceed expectations and significant improvements are expected as our test program continues to optimise the process route. Perth-based Black Rock will undertake a final 30 drill hole program at Mahenge next month to increase the deposits proportion of Indicated resource and to define more high-grade tonnes. The large flake size and high purity of Mahenge graphite tested to date suggests that Mahenge graphite can be applied to the premium battery market as well as traditional applications, Mr Tambanis said. As well as the PFS, Black Rock has also commenced our graphite marketing initiatives to parallel our objective of financing, constructing and commissioning this new Tanzanian mine within two years. We will ensure however, that we fully understand just what product Mahenge can consistently produce over the long mine life so that we can match its graphite attributes specifically to customer requirements. This will ensure offtake is linked to planned production levels, as we envisage selling a range of graphite products into different applications. Agricultural Development Bank (ADB) has denied allegations it bribed MP for the Efutu Constituency in the Central Region, Alexander Afenyo Markin, to drop a suit against the bank. The bank says claims that more than $900,000 was given to the MP from the bank to drop a lawsuit blocking the issuance an IPO are false. Spurious as these allegations are, we cannot accept the fact that the Bank could misapply public funds in this reckless manner a total of $900,000 being paid to one single person because there was a threat of court action against the banks IPO? the bank legal department said in a letter to the media. The banks response to the matter which made news headlines last year was captured in a letter signed by the companys Lawyer, M.K Amoakohene, and copied to the banks Managing Director and Board Secretary. The letter, dated 4th March 2016, was in response to a request from lawyers for an anti-corruption advocacy group, the Forum for the Protection of Public Funds, for further details on the alleged corrupt act, so they could pursue it in court.The request letter was dated February 28, 2016. The group wanted the bank to release the audio tape on which they claim the MP admitted receiving a bribe from the bank to drop the Supreme Court case initiated by his colleague MP, Mark Assibey-Yeboah, to force the state-owned bank from launching its initial public offer (IPO), without parliamentary approval. The Bank in its letter said, We wish to observe that the contents of your letter are not only disturbing and shocking but appears to be a professionally tabulated pack of half-truths completely in sync with outright lies. More shocking is the information on the payment of $400,000 into the account of Mr. Alexander Afenyo-Markins in South Africa and a further $500,000 into a sisters account in the United States by the Bank. There is also the cedi component of Ghc250, 000 allegedly paid to Hon. Afenyo Markins in an act of extortion. Spurious as these allegations are, we cannot accept the fact that the Bank could misapply public funds in this reckless manner- a total of $900,000 being paid to one single person because there was a threat of court action against the banks IPO? These are calculated distractive acts intended to derail the IPO which has already seen enough upsets. There is no way the Bank will employ that quantum of funds to simply get an IPO through by any such illegal means or that the process had been threatened by a court action and there was therefore the need to do something to get the process going. At any rate, the court actions came by and the bank marshalled its legal brains and eventually dealt with the matter. Leaked tape had nothing to do with us According to the Bank, linking the said leaked audio tape to the confusion over its IPO at the time was a flaw. It is true that there was a leaked tape which went viral but to link the tape and the contents to our bank because there was an issue about IPO we think is a little unimaginative. Assuming without admitting that there was ever any such approach by the Hon. Afenyo Markins, we wish to state categorically that no money from the bank has ever been paid or will be paid to anyone for this kind of cause. Copies of the tape are not in the custody of the Bank and we are unable to so assist you in obtaining copies. To conclude, we wish to say that the bank has not paid any monies to Hon. Afenyo Markins or anyone connected to him, the banks letter concluded. 22.03.2016 LISTEN No matter what age you are, your family background or geographical location, we all share something in common- the desire to succeed and live with a difference. Success means different things to different people. Some people consider success to be having the power and ability to control others, being a caring and loving parent or spouse, having lots of money or material possessions, rising to the pinnacle of ones career or profession among others. I personally think success is living ones dream, living a meaningful life which positively impacts the lives of others, and living a healthy and happy life which is fulfilling and pleasing to your creator. Success is a treasure that does not come easy. I believe that by becoming students of those who have achieved the kind of success we want we will be able to forge a path that could lead us to our hearts desires. There is a lot we can learn from those who have succeeded before us. We should study them and know what they did differently than us. Knowing their strategies would help us apply them to achieve our dreams and visions and live the life we truly desire and deserve. Give back to society The people who succeed in life are the people who always think of what they can do for their community, nation and humanity in general. They identify problems and solve them. You need this kind of mental attitude to succeed. What problems are plaguing your community? Think seriously about how the problems can be solved. Think creatively and take action to solve any of the problems. People may pay you for the solution you provide. Money gravitates towards those who solve problems. The richest people on earth were also problem solvers. They were paid for their services or product. Value addition was the secret of their wealth creation and riches. Use time wisely Time is an important resource which needs to be used judiciously. This is because it cannot be stored and used as we want. Successful people use their time wisely to achieve their goals. They prioritize their activities. They focus their energy and attention on activities that draw them closer to their goals. They then follow this with the less important activities but which nevertheless can contribute to the attainment of overall objectives. Fortunately we all have the same 24 hours. Always prepare a to-do list and carry out your activities to achieve results on schedule and meet deadlines. Be happy Learn to enjoy every moment of your life. Let go of past hurts and live in the moment. If you want happiness, make others happy. Take counsel from Dr Norman Vincent Peale who said, The way to happiness: Keep your heart free from hate, your mind from worry. Live simply, expect little, give much. Scatter sunshine, forget self, think of others. Try this for a week and you will be surprised. Worry and anxiety are not good emotional states to be in. They can interfere with clear thinking and lead to depression. A person who is in a state of anxiety is more likely to make mistakes than one is happy and well composed. Successful people learn to create happiness for themselves. They take interest in the happiness of others. To become happy, they make others happy. To succeed in life, be happy; it is easier for the force of the universe to work through a happy person to produce results than through one who is worried and unhappy. Have courage People who made outstanding achievements were not timid but courageous. Goliath was somebody who struck awe and fear in his challengers but not David. David first conquered himself (he overcame his fears), crossed the red line and with a sling and stone killed goliath. Most discoveries would not have happened unless those involved took risks. No one reaches the top without daring. Chuck Yeager once commented, You dont concentrate on risk. You concentrate on results. No risk is too great to prevent the necessary job from getting done. Success favours the brave. To join the club of achievers, be a courageous and risk taker. Dream, explore and take action. The results will surprise you. Dont give up Success will not come on a silver platter; it requires a lot of efforts and perseverance. Even Thomas Edison had to learn this. When he was making the light bulb, he made so many mistakes; it took him more than 10000 times to get it right. Keep striving even when things become rough and tough. Develop a plan. A plan is crucial for achieving results. Your plan will spell out your goals, action steps, deadlines, who your employees or partners are, monitoring and evaluation. If you want to establish and run a business, you will need a business plan. Your plan will give interested investors details about your goal/business. No shortcuts Achieving success is not a one- time event. It is a gradual process. However some people who do not want to sweat, cut corners to reach success which does not endure. Success comes with a lot of sacrifices. As you work towards your goals, be patient and optimistic. Anytime you are tempted to resort to quick fixes, remember the farmer who is planting seeds. The farmer can only harvest after he has taken good care of the plant which sometimes can take several months. Dont give excuses The greatest mistake anyone can make is focus on their weakness rather than their strength. I know people who are physically challenged but have excelled in life. They did not use their disability as an excuse. Nick Vujicic was born without hands and legs but is an internationally acclaimed motivational speaker and author today. Joel Acheampong of Kwadaso in Kumasi has no normal hands and legs. He paints with his mouth. His paintings are wonderful and amazing. Onepa Nua was blind but that did not stop him from doing what he was born to do- music. We can take inspiration from such people who lived their best without giving excuses for their disabilities. Keep track of your achievements As you work towards success, it will do you a lot of good to keep track of what you have achieved. Have a journal for this purpose. Note the fears you conquered. Anytime you feel discouraged, go back and look at your achievements. Get inspired and get back on track. Have a quiet time with God. The devil is always out to destroy us and our plans. To the Christian, our most potent weapon against the devil is, without doubt, prayer. Corrie Ten Boom taught: The devil smiles when we make plans. He laughs when we get too busy. But he trembles when we pray. Whenever you are troubled, worried or anxious, get on your knees and pray. Prayer is a healing balm. It can rejuvenate and energize you for life transformation. Anything that is worth doing is worth praying about. The above are by no means exhaustive and the reader is encouraged to further explore and get more tips on how to succeed in life and business. A successful life is possible for you. Yours in inspiration, Abundant Robert K. AWOLUGUTU Correction Officer, priest & Author Email: [email protected] Cell: 0208 455 296 A processing plant costing around US$80 million will be built in the United States under plans by an Australian company to provide spherical graphite to major American conglomerates evolving leading edge graphite and graphene products. Addressing the inaugural Paydirt 2016 Australian Graphite Conference in Perth today, Managing Director of Metals of Africa, Ms Cherie Leeden, said feedstock from the plant would be sourced from the Companys advanced Balama Central graphite project in Mozambique in Africa. Much of the global drive to develop leading edge graphite derivatives as well as a host of graphite based new era green energy products is being driven by globally focused conglomerates in the US, Ms Leeden said. However, these conglomerates are driving hard the condition that access to their supply chain will only be granted if there is high level integrity and accountability in their providers own supply chain, she said. This requirement is part of a welcome and overall movement in regulatory and public expectation that product development is environmentally sustainable and fully accountable. Post offtake agreement, Metals of Africa is prepared to establish this processing plant in the US as this is the preferred way in which we can secure such high end supply contracts with these global markets and developers for our African ore concentrates. Ms Leeden said the Company had already signed confidential agreements with a range of US corporates and had commenced commercial negotiations designed to secure a route to market. These corporates will only ever sign a contract which is final and binding so it is an opportunity for Metals of Africa to lock in a first mover position in this vital American springboard into international graphite customer routes, Ms Leeden said. The Company would process its Balama Central graphite on site in Mozambique to a 96% TGC concentrate which would then be transported to the US plant for conversion to high grade >99.5% spherical graphite for supply to the major conglomerates. Our initial costing puts the plants capex at US$80 million and we are highly confident of securing construction funding for that as soon as we sign binding supply agreements, Ms Leeden said. The US proposal marks a strong year to date for Metals of Africa which in just four weeks, drilled out a maiden resource of 16.3 million tonnes grading 10.4% total graphitic carbon at Balama Central. The Company has initiated pre-feasibility studies, eyeing an initial 10 year or so mine life for the deposit. Perth-based Metals of Africa has a second major graphite deposit in Mozambique, at the larger and longer Montepuez project and may examine dual development of both it and Balama Central. The leading telecommunication industry in the country, MTN Ghana will hold its second edition of the MTN SMEs Business Fair from Wednesday, March 2324, 2016 in the Western regional Capital, Takoradi. The fair, an initiative of MTN Business is expected to create a platform for interaction and networking opportunities for businesses within the Western Region. MTN has developed ICT Solutions aimed at improving operational efficiencies of SMEs and increase productivity, improve customer experience and ultimately grow businesses, Mr. Samuel Addo (General Manager of MTN Business) said it in a statement. He also urged individuals and corporate bodies to participate in the fair and to see what opportunities are there for them to leverage. Participants will have the opportunity to experience MTNs ICT offers which include Corporate Voice Solutions, Internet & Messaging Solutions, Data Centre Services and Security Solutions. Vehicle tracking devices, modems, routers, and corporate devices will also be showcased at the Fair. The Business Fair forms part of the activities marking the 2016 Twin City Fest, which aims at celebrating MTN customers in the Western Region. The Business Fair is proudly sponsored by MTN in partnership with the Association of Ghana Industries (AGI) and the Western Ghana Chamber of Commerce. Follow Amisty on twitter @ElAmistyNobo E-Mail: [email protected] Seth Amoako and Kelvin Evander in police custody 22.03.2016 LISTEN Two out of five senior high school graduates who allegedly ganged up to rape a 16-year-old junior high school student at Darkuman, Accra, have been arrested by personnel of the Kaneshie branch of the Domestic Violence and Victim Support Unit (DOVVSU) of the Ghana Police Service. The suspects include Seth Amoako, 18 years old and Kelvin Wood, 20. The three others identified only as Evander, supposed boyfriend of the victim, Emmanuel and Desmond, are being wanted for by the police to assist in investigations. Confirming the story to the media, the officer in-charge of the Kaneshie branch of DOVVSU, DSP Anita Abrokwa, said four of the suspects raped the victim in turns while another fondled her breasts. The victim, she said, had been in a relationship with Evander for the past one year. Sometime this year, the victim (name withheld) threatened the boyfriend that she was quitting the relationship. DSP Abrokwa indicated that on March 10, 2016, at about 7:30 pm, Evander went to the victim's house at Darkuman, upon realizing that the victim's parents were not in town. After a conversation, Evander requested that the victim escort him to Desmond's house to collect his uniform. . The two went to Desmond's room but instead of collecting his uniform as he claimed, Evander attempted to have sex with the victim but she resisted. According to DSP Anita Abrokwa, Evander then got infuriated and left the room, leaving the victim alone. Desmond, DSP Abrokwa said, entered the room under the pretext of coming to charge his mobile phone and three others Seth, Kelvin Evander and Emmanuel later arrived. DSP Anita Abrokwa maintained that the four boys then pounced on the teenage girl and forcefully had sex with her in turns but Desmond, who claimed his organ could not erect, only fondled with the victim's breasts. After satisfying themselves sexually, the four bolted, leaving the victim in the room. A report was later lodged with the police leading to the arrest of the two suspects. Efforts are underway to apprehend the other three. By Linda Tenyah-Ayettey ( [email protected] ) Ghana Francophonie Festival: The Embassy of France in Ghana and its two major arms, Institut Francais and Alliance francaise, as well as the Francophone embassies in Ghana participated once again in one of the largest francophonie festivals in the world, featuring in particular literary and performing arts events. Most of the events took place at the Alliance francaise which acted as a cultural window of the Francophonie in Ghana. On the evening of Saturday 19th of March, the Francophonie Festival reached its peak with the One woman show performed by Burkinabe stand-up artist Roukiata Ouedraogo. This was the closing event of an entire week dedicated to the Francophonie, for which every year, all French-speaking Embassies in Ghana get together to share and enjoy their cultural and linguistic traditions through the French language. On this occasion, the Ambassador of France to Ghana, HE Francois Pujolas appreciated Ghana's participation as a member of the International Organization of La Francophonie (OIF) since 2006. Interacting with media, he also commended the government's involvement to obtain the signature of a linguistic pact with the OIF that shall soon bear fruit. He stated that improving the Francophonie in Ghana will contribute in a better regional integration, value addition for Ghanaian youth careers and thus leading to economic development of Ghana and political stability in West Africa. The festival kicked off on Saturday 12th of March with an opening ceremony at the Alliance Francaise in Accra, in presence of Francophone Ambassadors to Ghana and a wonderful evening of concerts with Ghanaian songstresses Suga and Sherifa Gunu, followed by Malian star Fatoumata Diawara and her band, to the great pleasure of the crowd. Along with the musical theme, Francophone films were screened twice every day in Maison Francaise at the University of Ghana, Legon. Similar events took place in various Alliances or Maisons Francaises all across Ghana. On Wednesday evening, Ambassador Pujolas hosted a dinner at the Residence of France. Over 150 guests and representatives from over 15 francophone embassies in Ghana enjoyed a grand buffet with culinary specialties of each francophone country represented on this occasion, thanks to the contribution in kind provided by each embassy. The deputy minister of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts, Hon. Dzifa Gomashie, was present on this occasion among other distinguished guests. This week-long festival also hosted economic and academic events with the 'Job and Entrepreneur Fair', which enabled students or young graduates to meet businesses and associations for various job opportunities, while a roundtable discussion with successful businessmen was dedicated to entrepreneurship. Besides, information as provided on studies in Francophone countries, especially France, to all interested students from Ghana. Many students also took part in the French Contest, le Grand Concours, showcasing their incredible abilities to master this language. John de Baptist KOUAO, from the University of Education, Winneba won for the Specialist category and Carlos DOSSOU-YOVO, from University of Development studies (UDS), Navrongo Campus won for the Non-specialist category. Both of them won a trip to France! The last day of the Festival witnessed a Francophone cultural fair at the Alliance Francaise, which allowed visitors to travel in Africa without leaving Accra! The products, food and drinks were simply incredible, all aligned with a rich selection of literature, dance, fashion or craft exhibitions. About Francophonie: What is Francophonie? The term Francophonie refers to all of the states and governments worldwide who share the French language. The International Organisation of La Francophonie (IOF), created in 1970, represents one of the biggest linguistic zones in the world. Its mission is to embody the active solidarity between its 80 member states and governments (57 members and 23 observers), which together account for a population of over 890 million people, including 274 million French speakers. IOF organizes political activities alongside the four main missions which it has been assigned: To share the French language and the cultural and linguistic diversity with other countries; To promote peace, democracy and human Rights; To support education, training, higher education institutions and research; To foster cooperation towards sustainable development. In 2006, Ghana joined, as an associate member, the International Organization of La Francophonie (OIF in French). Francophonie in Ghana, a country surrounded by French-speaking countries, represents a unique opportunity to meet French-speaking and Francophile: French language and culture enthusiasts and develop partnerships with the francophone communities. La Francophonie Benchmarks 274 million French speakers worldwide There are an estimated 274 million French speakers worldwide, among them 212 million with a daily use, 54, 7% living in Africa. French is the 9th most widely spoken language on the planet French is the 9th most widely spoken language on the planet and the only one, together with English, to be spoken on all five continents. 60% of French speakers are under 30 years old In most of the IOF member countries, 60% of the population is under 30 years old. French is the 3rd most widely used language on the Web French is the 3rd most widely used language on the Web with 5% of Internet pages, after English (45%) and German (7%) and ahead of Spanish (4.5%). French is an official language in 32 member states French is either the official language, or one of the official languages in 32 of the IOF's member states, governments or observers. 19 countries have French as a language of instruction, 13 in Africa at the pre-tertiary level while other countries have French or bilingual studies at the tertiary level of Education French is the 2nd most widely spoken mother tongue in the European Union French is the second most widely spoken mother tongue (16%) after German (23%) and ahead of English (15.9%) in the European Union French is the 2nd most widely spoken foreign language in the European Union French is the 2nd most widely spoken foreign language (19%) after English (41%) and ahead of German (10%) and Spanish (7%) in the European Union. 900,000 French teachers worldwide There are an estimated 900,000 French teachers worldwide. 96.2 million French-speakers in Africa Africa is the continent with the largest number of French speakers, with 96.2 million French speakers in the IOF member countries. March 20, 1970: the birth of an intergovernmental organisation of French-speaking nations March 20, 1970 saw the birth an intergovernmental organisation of French-speaking nations, with the creation in Niamey (Niger), of the Agency of Cultural and Technical Cooperation. This organisation adopted a new Charter of Francophonie in 2005 and was renamed the International Organisation of La Francophonie (IOF) as it is still known today. The IOF: 80 States and governments The IOF has 80 States and governments (including 23 observers) across the five continents. IOF's community: 890 million people In 2008, the IOF's 80 States and governments represented a total of 890 million people, or 13% of the world's population. The IOF: over one-third of the UNO's member states The International Organisation of La Francophonie's 75 member states and governments represent over one-third of the United Nation's member states. The French-speaking zone accounts for 19% of world trade in goods With 18.9% of world exports and 19% of world imports, French-speaking countries account for 19% of world trade in goods TV5 is broadcast in 202 countries TV5MONDE, the multilateral French language television channel, has the 3rd largest international television network and is broadcast in 202 countries. 215 million homes: TV5's audience TV5MONDE broadcasts French productions 24 hours a day to an audience estimated at over 220 million homes. IOF has partnerships with 31 international and regional organizations The IOF has signed cooperation agreements with 31 international and regional organizations including the UNO, the European Union and the African Union. All IOF's members signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child All of the IOF's members signed the Convention on the Rights of the Child. 78 French-speaking parliaments or interparliamentary organizations The Parliamentary Assembly of La Francophonie comprises 78 parliaments or interparliamentary organizations. 781 French-speaking establishments for further education and research The Academic Agency of La Francophonie federates 781 establishments for further education and research in 94 countries. The International Association of Francophone Mayors represents cities in 48 countries It comprises cities and city associations from 49 countries. The Embassy of France in Ghana and its two major arms, Institut Francais and Alliance francaise, as well as the Francophone embassies in Ghana participated once again in one of the largest francophonie festivals in the world, featuring in particular literary and performing arts events. Most of the events took place at the Alliance francaise which acted as a cultural window of the Francophonie in Ghana. On the evening of Saturday 19th of March, the Francophonie Festival reached its peak with the One woman show performed by Burkinabe stand-up artist Roukiata Ouedraogo. This was the closing event of an entire week dedicated to the Francophonie, for which every year, all French-speaking Embassies in Ghana get together to share and enjoy their cultural and linguistic traditions through the French language. On this occasion, the Ambassador of France to Ghana, HE Francois Pujolas appreciated Ghanas participation as a member of the International Organization of La Francophonie (OIF) since 2006. Interacting with media, he also commended the governments involvement to obtain the signature of a linguistic pact with the OIF that shall soon bear fruit. He stated that improving the Francophonie in Ghana will contribute in a better regional integration, value addition for Ghanaian youth careers and thus leading to economic development of Ghana and political stability in West Africa. The festival kicked off on Saturday 12th of March with an opening ceremony at the Alliance Francaise in Accra, in presence of Francophone Ambassadors to Ghana and a wonderful evening of concerts with Ghanaian songstresses Suga and Sherifa Gunu, followed by Malian star Fatoumata Diawara and her band, to the great pleasure of the crowd. Along with the musical theme, Francophone films were screened twice every day in Maison Francaise at the University of Ghana, Legon. Similar events took place in various Alliances or Maisons Francaises all across Ghana. On Wednesday evening, Ambassador Pujolas hosted a dinner at the Residence of France. Over 150 guests and representatives from over 15 francophone embassies in Ghana enjoyed a grand buffet with culinary specialties of each francophone country represented on this occasion, thanks to the contribution in kind provided by each embassy. The deputy minister of Tourism, Culture and Creative Arts, Hon. Dzifa Gomashie, was present on this occasion among other distinguished guests. This week-long festival also hosted economic and academic events with the Job and Entrepreneur Fair, which enabled students or young graduates to meet businesses and associations for various job opportunities, while a roundtable discussion with successful businessmen was dedicated to entrepreneurship. Besides, information as provided on studies in Francophone countries, especially France, to all interested students from Ghana. Many students also took part in the French Contest, le Grand Concours, showcasing their incredible abilities to master this language. John de Baptist KOUAO, from the University of Education, Winneba won for the Specialist category and Carlos DOSSOU-YOVO, from University of Development studies (UDS), Navrongo Campus won for the Non-specialist category. Both of them won a trip to France! The last day of the Festival witnessed a Francophone cultural fair at the Alliance Francaise, which allowed visitors to travel in Africa without leaving Accra! The products, food and drinks were simply incredible, all aligned with a rich selection of literature, dance, fashion or craft exhibitions. About Francophonie: What is Francophonie? The term Francophonie refers to all of the states and governments worldwide who share the French language. The International Organisation of La Francophonie (IOF), created in 1970, represents one of the biggest linguistic zones in the world. Its mission is to embody the active solidarity between its 80 member states and governments (57 members and 23 observers), which together account for a population of over 890 million people, including 274 million French speakers. IOF organizes political activities alongside the four main missions which it has been assigned: To share the French language and the cultural and linguistic diversity with other countries; To promote peace, democracy and human Rights; To support education, training, higher education institutions and research; To foster cooperation towards sustainable development. In 2006, Ghana joined, as an associate member, the International Organization of La Francophonie (OIF in French). Francophonie in Ghana, a country surrounded by French-speaking countries, represents a unique opportunity to meet French-speaking and Francophile: French language and culture enthusiasts and develop partnerships with the francophone communities. The Art of Leadership 22.03.2016 LISTEN By Dag Heward-Mills Imagine leading a group of people with very different aims from yours. What will be the result? Confusion will describe it mildly. The main mission of the church of Jesus Christ is the Great Commission to 'go into all the world and preach the gospel' to every man on this earth. Today, there are many other reasons why the church exists. Some churches exist to provide humanitarian care. Some churches exist to provide a centre for funerals. Other churches exist for political and social activities. People inevitably develop their own agenda, which is different from the original vision. A leader must be aware of this! The leader must crush the hidden and unspoken agenda in the followers by addressing them openly. Attack other subtle ideas and plans that develop in people's hearts as they claim to be following you. Joshua, the great Israeli general, had one thing in mind to conquer Jericho and enter the Promised Land. Achan was one of Joshua's soldiers but he had a hidden agenda to get wealth through the war. This hidden agenda caused a curse to descend on God's people. The children of Israel were defeated in the war because of one person's private agenda to be rich. This is what is happening in the church today. The hidden agenda that we nurture in our hearts is different from God's agenda to win the whole world and preach the gospel to every creature. And Achan answered Joshua, and said, Indeed I have sinned against the Lord God of Israel, and thus have I done: WHEN I SAW AMONG THE SPOILS A GOODLY BABYLONISH GARMENT, AND TWO HUNDRED SHEKELS OF SILVER, AND A WEDGE OF GOLD OF FIFTY SHEKELS WEIGHT, THEN I COVETED THEM, and took them; and, behold, they are hid in the earth in the midst of my tent, and the silver under it. And Joshua said, Why hast thou troubled us? The Lord shall trouble thee this day. And all Israel stoned him with stones, and burned them with fire, after they had stoned them with stones. Joshua 7:20-21, 25 Some soldiers may have a mind to become rich through the war. Others may have a hidden agenda to escape at the next possible opportunity. Other soldiers may have no intention of fighting at all. . Alexander and His Troops Alexander the Great set out to invade Persia and extend the authority of his father's kingdom into the East. He sought to reach the ends of the world and the great outer sea. He invaded India in 326BC and wanted to continue expanding into the rest of Asia. However, after ten years of fighting, his soldiers developed another agenda different from the original agenda of going to the ends of the world. At the Hyphasis River, Alexander's men mutinied and refused to march any further east. Alexander tried to persuade his soldiers to march further but his general, Coenus, pleaded with him to change his mind. He explained, The men long to see their parents, their wives, their children and their homeland. Alexander the Great eventually agreed to turn back to Greece and give up his campaign. Notice how the private agenda of these soldiers to see their wives and children brought an end to Alexander the Great's vision of going to the ends of the world. This is exactly how the personal, domestic and financial vision that we have can quench God's vision and God's work. This is why Jesus said, If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple (Luke 14:26). Looking after your wife, children and family are important but it is not the same as building the church and doing the work of God. Some people are surprised that a verse like Luke 14:26 can be found in the Bible. One day, a lady applied for a job in the ministry. She wanted to receive as much money as she was receiving in the bank. When she mentioned the salary she expected to receive, I almost burst out laughing. The amount she mentioned was about twenty times the amount the highest person in the ministry was being paid. We obviously did not accept her in the ministry. The aim of the ministry is not to provide good jobs that are comparable to those in the secular world. The aim of the ministry is to minister the Word of God. We are to use every means; to go everywhere we can and convert the heathen! A leader must attack the hidden agenda of the people who live and work around him. He must ensure that everyone has the same agenda and the same reason for being around. It is time to root out all those with a hidden agenda that is different from the original agenda. [email protected] 22.03.2016 LISTEN President Barack Obama has shown remarkable courage in visiting Cuba and holding frank discussions with the Cuban Government on how to improve relations between the two countries at a practical level. Cuban and the US used to be very good friends. Havana harbour was once the yacht-parking-lot of the rich and famous in America. Ernest Hemingway wrote The Old Man And The Seawith the salty air of the Cuban beach in his nostrils. But beneath the glamour, there was enormous corruption, and one young man and his band of guerrillas decided that the regime of Fulgencio Batista must go. This was Fidel Castro, and he launched a revolution from the Sierra Maestra mountains that propelled him to power on New Year's Day in 1959. Despite the romantic manner in which Fidel and his little band of revolutionaries achieved power, the bearded cigar-smokers meant business. Seriously. American companies that had served as Batista's pay-masters were given short shrift. But they had clout in Washington, and they got President Dwight Eisenhower to impose a trade embargo on Cuba. However, some in the Eisenhower administration did not think the trade embargo went far enough and they authorised the CIA to assemble an army, recruited mainly in Miami, Florida, and trained in Guatemala, to invade Cuba. The invasion occurred on a beach called Playa Giron (Bay of Pigs) on 17 April 1961. But the operation was monumentally botched by the CIA. The anti-Castro band found itself marooned and about 1200 of them surrendered. 100 were killed. The Bay of Pigs attack convinced Castro that the US would not rest until it had overthrown him. So, willy-nilly, he signed up to a full alliance with the Soviet Union. In 1962, he agreed to station Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. The US hit the roof. It sent an armada of warships to quarantine Cuban waters. Their orders were to turn back Soviet ships that were en route to Cuba with missiles! This created the worst confrontation between the two world super-powers since World War Two. It looked indeed as if the world was headed for World War Three a thermonuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union. However, at the last minute, good sense prevailed. The Soviet Ambassador in the US got together with President John F Kennedy's younger brother, Attorney-General Robert Kennedy, and made each other understand that neither country wanted war. An agreement was hatched that saved the faces of both countries. And thus, the Cuban missile crisis came to an end not one minute too soon. But from then on, the US tightened the economic noose around Cuba's neck. It prevailed on its allies to join it in imposing a more hefty trade embargo on Cuba. The Soviet Union did its best to help Cuba out, but the provision of consumer goods had never been a priority in the USSR itself, and Cuba ran short of many essential goods that had previously been imported from the US and other Western countries. Nevertheless, despite the hardship it was enduring, Cuba provided military assistance to many African liberation movements, including the MPLA in Angola and FRELIMO in Mozambique. It was Cuban assistance to the MPLA in Angola that enabled the party to claim power after Portugal withdrew from Angola in 1975. On the surface, the MPLA was fighting for control of Angola against Jonas Savimbi's UNITA movement and Holden Roberto's FNLA. However, these two organisations were actually the creation of the US and the South African Defence Force the apartheid government's regular army. So, in fighting them, the MPLA was fighting both South Africa and the USA. Eventually. the South Africans began occupying Angola towns. Castro reacted by sending a huge number of Cuban soldiers estimated at 36,000 altogether to help the MPLA. In November 1987, a fierce battle occurred between the Angolan/Cubans, and the South Africans, in the southern Angolan town of Cuito Cuanavale. The Angolan/Cuban side won. On his release from prison on Robben Island, Nelson Mandela recalled hearing about the Cuban victory in Angola. He said: I was in prison when I first heard of the massive aid that the internationalist Cuban troops were giving to the people of Angola..... We in Africa are accustomed to being the victims of countries that want to grab our territory or subvert our sovereignty. In all the history of Africa, this is the only time [that][ a foreign people has risen up to defend one of our countries. For the great feat of putting the South African Defence Force to flight alone, Cuba would merit the undying gratitude of the people of the entire African continent. But that is not the only service Cuba has rendered to Africa. An American publication gives perhaps the best testimony about this aspect of Cuba's relationship with Africa. According to Time Magazine, http://time.com/3556670/ebola- cuba/ QUOTE: As the first nation to dedicate hundreds of health care workers to West Africa, Cuba is an unlikely hero in the Ebola outbreak. In spite of not being among the wealthiest countries, Cuba is one of the most committed when it comes to deploying doctors to crisis zones. It has offered more than 460 Cuban doctors and nurses to West Africa, and currently,[November 2014] 165 are working there under the direction of the World Health Organization (WHO). More than 50,000 health care workers from Cuba are working in 66 countries around the world. Cuba is world-famous for its ability to train outstanding doctors and nurses, said WHO director Margaret Chan in a Sept. [2014] press conference announcing Cubas surge of health care workers. But why is Cuba so uniquely prepared to treat Ebola? It comes down to a national priority that even has its own name, coined by academics:Cuban Medical Internationalism. Cubas global health crisis response system is a Doctors Without Borders-like program, but instituted by the government. When Cuban doctors graduate medical school, they are given the opportunity to volunteer to be called upon for medical missions, like an Ebola outbreak or a natural catastrophe. Often, these are one to two-year commitments. To prepare for something like Ebola, health care workers not only undergo aggressive training for the specific disease they are treating, but they also take courses on the regions culture and history as well.... Gail Reed, co-founder of Medical Education Cooperation with Cuba (MEDICC) says: Its coming from a commitment to make health care a universally accepted right. . It started around 1960, shortly after the Cuban Revolution. A massive earthquake killed up to 5,000 people in Chile, and Cuba sent health care workers into the disaster aftermath. A few years later, a medical team of more than 50 people went into war-torn Algeria.... In 1998, Cuban medical teams discovered that they were treating a lot people who had never before had access to doctors, and they decided that leaving the health care systems as they found them was irresponsible. So Cuba founded the Latin American Medical School (ELAM), which offers scholarships to low-income students from around the world with the expectation that they will graduate and return to their home countries as health workers.... More than 23,000 physicians from low-income communities in 83 countries (even the U.S.) have graduated from ELAM, and nearly 10,000 are currently enrolled. Not surprisingly, Cubas leadership in the current Ebola epidemic has become political in the U.S.Republicans are angry that a CDC worker recently went to Cuba for an Ebola meeting...... The very fact that Cuba is the only other nation than the United States to contribute human resources to the Ebola crisis in a big way, creates enormous international political capital, especially when most nations are unwilling to send their own people into the centre of the calamity, says Robert Huish, an assistant professor of international development studies at Dalhousie University in Canada. UNQUOTE. Altogether, Cuba has more than 50,000 doctors and nurses posted in 66 countries around the world, including more than 4,000 in 32 African countries. To continue to benefit mankind in this way, Cuba has to become economically strong and that can only be done if she is able to trade without any restrictions. Apart from consumer goods for its people, Cuba must import the machinery necessary to turn it into an industrial power. For if Cuba can do what it has done while fettered by an embargo, what can it do when it engages in industrial production without hindrance? That is why the world must encourage President Barack Obama to work hard to achieve success in his discussions with the Cuban authorities during his visit to Cuba. Success at the talks will be one of the legacies he can leave to the world as the first black President of the United States. For why should a country's internal social policy be used to prevent it from contributing its utmost to mankind? No-one can question Cuba;s credentials in that regard -- as recognised by Time magazine. 22.03.2016 LISTEN BANGKOK Polish, Israeli and Thai diplomats, academics and students gathered together to listen and learn about the courage of Polish people saving the Jews during the Second World War. Chulalongkorn University hosted The Good Samaritans of Markowa exhibition to honor the innocent and brave Polish families in Markowa who risked their lives saving the Jews from Nazi extermination. The event took place in Bangkok to celebrate the 40th year of lasting friendship between Poland and Thailand. During the course of World War II, more than 50,000 Jews were saved by Polish people. Each Jewish survivor needed to change their shelter at least 7 times and required as many as 10 people to be involved in the process. Irena Sandler, a Polish nurse, was one of the brave Poles who saved at least 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto. At the end of the War, 6,600 Polish people were awarded with the Israeli Righteous Amongst the Nation. However, not every brave Pole survived Nazi capture. Approximately, 1,000 to 2,000 Poles were executed as punishment to save the Jews. The brutality of War took away more than 6 millions Jewish lives and has inflicted deep wounds to those who have survived. The Ulma Family Museum of Poles Saving Jews in World War II in Markowa is one of the Museums established to offer a place of solace and for those who are left behind to come to term with this atrocity. Understanding the complexity of the Holocaust has far reaching ramification not only to those directly affected, but also to students and public who live world apart and far removed from it. Why? Firstly, learning about the Holocaust from multiple perspectives allows human race to come to term with painful history with greater compassion. Learning about war and its awful aggression should not and must not instill hatred, but rather to promote greater understanding across nations, races and religions. Secondly, through better understanding, it is hoped that we can prevent such crime against humanity to ever take place. His Excellency Mr. Zenon Kuchciak, the Ambassador of the Republic of Poland to Thailand, added to this: These memories oblige us to act against the policies of religious hatred and racial prejudice. Religious hatred and racial prejudice are not problems of the past. They are still here and now. There are still many leaders and extremists who preach war and call for racial discrimination. Professor Jolanta Zyndul, expert from the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, however, reminded that one should not study the Holocaust as a singular event in history. Something that happened once and won't be repeated. Rather, it should be read and learned in relations with other genocide such as Khmer Rouge, Darfur and Rwanda. While we should not downplay the unique characteristic of the Holocaust, students must learn that massive killing has happened in so many places around the world and they are closer to us than we realize, Professor Zyndul added. This strongly invites us to revisit and reaffirm often disregarded truths of the WWII, like those in words of prof. Anis Bajrektarevic: while Jews where the preferred non-territorial target of Hitlers Nazi policy, Slavic states of the East/Southeast were the prime territorial target. As many as 36 million nationals (mostly civilians) of the Europes Slavic states such as SSSR, Poland, Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Ukraine, (including their Jewish minority) have been killed by Germans and their servant fascists. Comparing it with the casualties of the Atlantic Europe at around 1 million, gives us a stunning proportion: 36 to 1 !! Despite all its might, forces of darkness were defeated and peace gradually prevailed. The story of Poles Nazi victims themselves, saving its Jewish minority empowers us all with the sense of courage and power of human sensitivity. Through the act of kindness toward fellow human being, change, a significant one, can take place even at time of aggression, suppression and extermination. The Polish families in Markowa shed the beaming light of hope in time of darkness, the symbol of life at time of despair. Stories of these bravery and courageous ordinary people remind us that that there is hope for humanity even in the middle of war, World War. Talking about Poles Saving Jews and Hitler's atrocity during World War II in Bangkok has a context specific significance at a whole new level; educationally and diplomatically. Not so long ago, there were public debacle about Thailand's ignorance on the history of the Holocaust. A group of Thai students used the image of Hitler to signify heroism, while the Thai military government propaganda of 12 core values used Nazi symbol as a representation of democracy. While the military's ignorance is unacceptable and unexplainable, students' mistake was perhaps the product of Thailand's infamous educational system that promotes rote learning, enforces obedient and offers single-minded cum nationalistic learning of history. The textbooks tell what the powerful and authority wants students to read, and classroom pedagogy is top-down, lecture intensive and exam-driven. There is very little space for students to engage in any topic critically and creatively. Anna Lawattanatrakul, a student from Faculty of Arts at Chulalongkorn, reflected on her educational experience in Thai school. I was taught about the history of the Second World War simplistically, with an emphasis on memorization than understanding, and frankly I do not think it is enough. It is not enough. Changing Thai educational system will take a long time and changing public attitude will take even longer. But that does not mean we should not try. In fact, it is the role of university to be the wind of change. Dr. Verita Sriratana, Head of Central and Eastern European Studies Section, Chulalongkorn University, succinctly encapsulated this the goal of an educational institution is to create a platform where knowledge, and in this case, the history of the Holocaust to be discussed from as many as different perspectives as possible. Historical sensitivity with cultural awareness is lacking in Thailand. This dialogue serves to fill that gap. It is a small step toward the larger goal of educating Thai students and public to break away from the small box of ignorance and understand the complexity of the world outside Thailand. All of these won't happen over night but it has to begin somewhere. The first step for Thai students is to get the facts right. Hitler is not a Hero and the Nazi is not a symbol of democracy. Leading media development and free expression organisations in West Africa have called on governments in the region to prioritise safety of journalists and access to information. At the just ended West Africa Conference on Media and Participatory Governance, participants deplored the continuous attacks on journalists and the impunity for which such crimes are committed. Participants also noted with concern that many more countries in the region are yet to pass Right to Information laws to guarantee access to information for citizens. This was contained in a communique issued at the end of the Conference which was organized by the Media Foundation for West Africa (MFWA) in Accra on March 15, 2016. The Conference brought together representatives from freedom of expression and media development organisations from 15 countries in West Africa, ECOWAS, UN agencies, diplomats and other civil society stakeholders with the aim of identifying key challenges in the areas of freedom of expression and the role of the media to promote good governance, regional integration and peace in West Africa. The Conference was carried out with support from the Open Society Initiative for West Africa (OSIWA), fesmedia Africa, the Embassy of the United States of America in Ghana and Global Partners Digital. Below is the full communique that was issued by the participants at the Conference. Communique We, the representatives of leading press freedom and media development organisations from West Africa who participated in the West Africa Conference on Media and Participatory Governance held in Accra on March 15, 2016, after deliberating on press freedom, professional journalism and good governance issues in West Africa, adopt the following resolutions: We call on all governments in West Africa to create and maintain, in law and in practice, a safe and enabling environment for journalists, media professionals and associated personnel to perform their work professionally without attacks and undue interference. We urge governments in the region to take steps to tackle impunity for crimes against journalists by prosecuting and punishing perpetrators of such crimes. We urge the ECOWAS to take necessary steps to ensure compliance of member states with the human rights decisions of the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice. We call on journalists unions, all media owners, managers, editors, journalists and media development organisations in the region to take steps to improve professional standards among the media. We call on the ECOWAS to prioritise the adoption and national level implementation of the pending regional frameworks on Access to Information and Freedom of Expression in line with the ECOWAS Protocol on Democracy and Good Governance. We urge governments of countries that are yet to adopt Right to Information (RTI) Law to prioritise processes for the passage of such laws to guarantee access to information for all citizens. We commend the West African governments that have guaranteed citizens access to information through the adoption of RTI Law; and urge these governments to adopt appropriate mechanisms for the effective implementation of their respective RTI laws. We acknowledge that the right to freedom of expression is as important online as offline and we urge all governments to ensure that the rights of citizens are respected and protected online in accordance with the United Nations Human Rights Council Resolution which reaffirms that the same rights that people have offline must also be protected online. Adopted in Accra on March 15, 2016. Nyaho-Tamakloe 22.03.2016 LISTEN Deputy General Secretary of the New Patriotic Party (NPP), Nana Obiri Boahen has scoffed at the credentials of Dr. Nyaho Nyaho-Tamakloe as a leading member of the Elephant fraternity. He noted on Neat FMsmorning show 'Ghana Montie' that, Nyaho-Tamakloe is not even a member of the opposition party after explaining that his conduct is rather a dent on the image of the party. Nyaho-Tamakloe is not part of the NPP so he should let the party be, he said but host of the program, Kwesi Aboagye hastily asked him [Obiri Boahen] if Dr Nyaho-Tamakloe is not a leading member of the NPP. Apuu tor! Who is a founding member? Dont provoke me with that to hang up the call, he angrily shot back. His comment comes after the NPP founding member, Dr. Nyaho Nyaho-Tamakloe criticized the party heavily in his recent interview with Accra-based television station, GHONE. He lashed at the factions in the NPP as well as the party's inability to win the upcoming elections Dr Nyaho-Tamakloe also believe that NPP flagbearer, Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo might not win the November 7 polls and claimed the NPP is 'bleeding'. But Obiri Boahen dismissed Dr Nyaho-Tamakloe's claims and accused him of not even paying his party dues How can such a person be a founding member of the party? he retorted. NPP is united without Tamakloe. No sensible person will say bad things about his party. What is his [Tamakloe] problem about the NPP? He is not part of us, he repeated. On behalf of the Government and people of Seychelles, in a message of condolence addressed to Mr. Charles Michel, Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Belgium, President James Michel remarked that it was with a sense of shock and deep sadness that he learnt of the explosions which occurred at Zaventem Airport and the Maalbeek Metro Station in Brussels, kingdom of Belgium claiming lives. We strongly condemn these cowardly acts of terror and we remain convinced that justice will prevail and the perpetrators will be apprehended and answer for the crimes, said President Michel. President Michel also noted that the victims will be in the thoughts and prayers of the Seychellois and that he was confident of the resilience of the Belgian people to emerge stronger from this tragedy. Ernest Bediako Sampong 22.03.2016 LISTEN Ernest Chemists Limited, one of the leading manufacturers of pharmaceutical products in the country, is poised to provide quality and affordable products to meet the pockets of everybody. Ernest Bediako Sampong, chief executive officer of Ernest Chemists, who revealed this, indicated that the company has over the years provided support in the healthcare sector through the manufacturing and distribution of quality medicines. The philosophy of Ernest Chemists, Mr Bediako Sampong pointed out, is to continue to contribute to the health needs of society. He pledged that the company would maintain standards in the production of medicines and ensure that whatever the company produces becomes affordable to meet the pockets of everybody. The Ernest Chemist CEO made this known in an interview with DAILY GUIDE during a dinner organised by the company for its staff in Takoradi to climax activities marking the 10th anniversary of the company in the Western Region. The drugs manufacturing company started operations in Accra some 30 years ago, but established a branch in the Western Region about 10 years ago. Various activities, including medical screenings, were organised as part of the celebration. . According to him, since the company started business in 1986, it has come to appreciate the immense contribution of its value system based on integrity which has contributed to the growth and advancement of the company's operations. He said, In the competitive global environment, Ernest Chemists believes that its destiny lies in fairness to all partners and stakeholders, honesty in all undertakings and perseverance in all things. We shall continue in our efforts to contribute our quota to the growth of the pharmaceutical industry in Ghana and Africa, he added. Madam Christable Ofori, Western and Central regional branch manager of the company, added that Ernest Chemist would also continue to fulfill its social responsibilities as a good corporate citizen in the communities it operates. She expressed her appreciation to all those who patronised the products and services of the company and called on them to continue to have faith in us, motivate us as we provide you with the best of products and services. Nana Kobina Nketsia V, Omanhene of Essikado Traditional Area, who was the guest speaker, mentioned that we all know the state of our pockets. And what is disturbing is the fact that there are lots of fake drugs around, but whenever we enter Ernest Chemists, our fears are gone. From Emmanuel Opoku, Takoradi 22.03.2016 LISTEN The Headmaster of St Augustine's Senior High School (SHS) in Cape Coast, Joseph Connel has disclosed that the school admitted 660 first-year students to pursue different programmes in the 2015 academic year. This has brought the number of students in the school to 1,994, comprising 660 first-year students, 670 form two students and 664 form three students. Mr Connel made this known during the 86th Speech and Prize Giving Day of the School at Cape Coast over the weekend in the Central Region. Hundreds of people from all walks of life attended the ceremony, which was on the theme, 'Leadership and Self-Development in the 21st Century.' He said the school was able to score 95 percent in the 2015 West Africa Senior Secondary Certificate Examination (WASSCE). The headmaster noted that students must be disciplined and work hard to improve their academic performance. He criticized parents who question punishment meted out to their wards openly, adding that it does not send good signals to the students to change and imbibe good values. Guest speaker for the ceremony, Prof Charles Appeadu of the Georgia State University, USA, stressed the need for the government not to shy away from punishing officials engaged in corrupt practices due to their tribal and political affiliations. The benefits of plugging loopholes to stealing, bribery and corruption are just immense and we should do all that we can as a people to create an orderly society where such societal vices are reduced to a minimum, he added. . He hinted that Ghana would struggle to achieve her aims if the country fails to get an effective leadership to manage the affairs of the country. Assistant Senior Prefect, Anthony Jacklingo Kwame Quansah, stated that they recognize the immense contributions of all stakeholders but there are certain factors that tend to prevent the college from attaining certain objectives. Mr. Quansah expressed concern about the deplorable nature of toilet facilities in some of the houses and appealed to stakeholders to help rehabilitate them. Some hardworking staff and students were awarded for their commitment. Email:[email protected] From Sarah Afful, Cape Coast 22.03.2016 LISTEN The Korle-Bu Teaching Hospital (KBTH) has launched a trust fund, to, among other things, provide funding for the treatment of indigent patients who need immediate or emergency care but cannot afford or whose treatment is not covered by the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS). The Korle-Bu Trust Fund would also help the health facility to replace valuable equipment, consumables and logistics which are not readily available at the hospital. Prof Anthony Sallar, Board Chairman of KBTH, speaking at the ceremony held at the Banquet Hall, traced the setting up of the fund to the charge given the board to come up with innovative ways to enhance its revenue during its inauguration by the then Minister of Health Dr Kweku Agyeman-Mensah. He said since the inauguration, the hospital has taken up the challenge to trim down cost and plug all revenue leakages, eliminate waste and improve efficiency. I am proud to say with the necessary control measures, we have increased revenue by GH1.1 million in four departments in a year. We have paid GH 5 million out of GH6 million debt, he said. He further mentioned that following a meeting in February, the board took into consideration the onerous financial commitments on government and the limited resources camp up with one innovative way of increasing its financial resource, hence the birth of the trust fund. He said with the trust fund in place, KBTH will be a ready source for emergency cases instead of waiting to make public appeals which may take some time to arrive. Appealing to corporate organisations to support the fund, he said, Let us remember that when people die they don't come back. It is, therefore, our individual and collective duty to take such steps as necessary and humanly possible to not only delay death but also prevent unnecessary death or pain. . Minister of Health Alex Segbefia, delivering a speech on behalf of President John Mahama, said he was particularly pleased because of the realisation that in spite of government's injection of $60 million to retool and place KBTH on a sound footing, the role of the corporate world is still vital to attain its goal. He said despite the huge investment in the hospital, Mr Segbefia agreed to the fact that the hospital still faced some challenges, adding that while the ministry was aware of the challenges, they welcome the contributions of corporate bodies to address substantial infrastructure of the hospital. The trust fund provides a philanthropic vehicle that will prioritise projects and help the hospital meet its targets, he said. He encouraged the board of trustees to work hard in crafting packages that would attract corporate world to invest in the trust fund as well as manage the trust fund in a transparent and accountable manner. Metropolitan Archbishop of Accra, Palmer Buckle, giving some words of encouragement to the gathering, affirmed his belief in the hospital, asking that all should be proud of the health institution that has made a name in Africa. He, however, agreed that although KBTH was facing some challenges more than expected, it was time for all to work towards a better KBTH. You can count on me to help raise funds for this trust, he said. By Jamila Akweley Okertchiri 22.03.2016 LISTEN The Ghana Navy has expressed concern about the level of crime in the Gulf of Guinea and the Saharan Regions. According to the Ghana Navy, the two regions have been plagued in recent times with high levels of piracy, armed robbery, oil theft, Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing, as well as drug trafficking, among others. These are complex transnational crimes which cannot be dealt with by any single nation. To this end, the Ghana Navy stressed the need for cooperation between the various agencies. Commodore Mark Ransfrod Nanabanyin Yawson, the Flag Officer Commanding Western Naval Command, revealed this at the opening ceremony of 'Exercise Obangame/Saharan Express 2016' at the Sekondi Naval Base yesterday. It is an annual multinational maritime security exercise involving Navies from the sub-region, Europe and Latin America, which is led by the United States Navy. It is aimed at building the capacity of the Naval personnel in the sub-region to maintain security in the maritime domain for socio-economic development. It focuses on information sharing between maritime stakeholders. He was happy that Economic Community for West African States (ECOWAS) and the Economic Community of Central African States (ECCAS) continue to collaborate with other African and Western nations in the exercise. He was hopeful the exercise would evaluate operational capability to respond to maritime events and prevent maritime threats, as well as evaluate operation centre interoperability across the regions. During the 10-day exercise, personnel would be required to carry out various scenarios designed to enhance the task of preventing and combating maritime threats. . Some of the scenarios will include hijacking at sea, oil pollution and trafficking of narcotics, among others, he added. He stated that this year's exercise has been designed to involve other maritime stakeholders to ensure interoperability between maritime partners. The objective primarily is to ensure information sharing between maritime stakeholders for efficient and effective handling of information, he stressed. To this end, Commodore Yawson indicated that the Marine Police, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), Narcotics Control Board and the Fisheries Commission would participate in the exercise. He urged the participants to give off their best to ensure the successful conduct of the exercise, adding that let us work towards reducing crime in our maritime domain. Leader of the US Navy, Captain Crystal Stabloid, indicated that the grand opening ceremony would be held in Dakar, Senegal to officially commence the multinational exercise. From Emmanuel Opoku, Sekondi 22.03.2016 LISTEN Even before the sound was connected and the chairs arranged, Heat arrived through the doors filling every corner with his Fahrenheit posse, making life unbearable and tough for the organizers. His whole plan was to take advantage of the open spaces and make sure they all had good seats as they expanded to fill the girth of the seats. They had been curious about the type of party it was going to be since they got their invitations. It was a first in Ghana. A waist party. Water followed in sachets and bottles packaged to international standards, replacing the regular supply of tap water or what could be found in filters. They knew no one would drink straight from the taps, but the stigma had worn off and even if supply was considered erratic and the smell of the water still foul, they had stopped caring a long time ago. It was at the point now where they either pushed for more money or the citizens could complain till they fell asleep. Of course 2-Purc and his Bukom side crew could not miss out. They had just survived a radio hamper attack and nothing could stop them from turning their backs on a toothless society. They had long mastered the art of shutting out complaints and together with the E-CeeGee team they had the whole system nailed down pat. And talk about E-CeeGee, they arrived in grand style at the venue, trailing no. 7 dumsor perfume by the Shatta Movement, switching the power off as they arrived, threatening to make the whole party a complete misery even before it was fully underway. So they all came. Representatives from the Ministry of Finance, Agriculture, Health, Trade and Industry, Accra Metropolitan Assembly, President's Office, various Departments and Agencies and Metropolitan Assemblies, Municipalities and Districts as well as Public Boards and Project offices. Each one of them dressed in one form of Agbada, Batakari, Party cloth or the other, hoping to surprise the other with their waist size, as the party seemed to suggest. Keynote address was the recently announced co-President of Ghana, but who unfortunately could not make it for some diplomatic reason or the other. The real reason of course was that he saw no reason to be further embroiled in this mess we call a developing economy, when others behind us have moved on so far and fast; we look like an afterthought of economic destitution. So the co-host, the newly crowned Alderman of Scotland had nominated the Speaker of Parliament, who could not attend because he is now the President in Ghana and has so many more duties to attend. He in turn had asked the leader of the Parliamentary Accounts Committee (PAC) to deputise for him, a strange decision, which was yet to trickle down to the party players. And this is what they heard and what started the stampede. Invited Guests to this first in the series of waste parties, It is a privilege to address all of you gathered here, even though your attire seems a bit out of consonance with the events of this gathering. My overall objective in auditing the public accounts of Ghana and reporting to Parliament is to determine and report whether: Proper records and books of accounts have been maintained, the accounts have been properly kept; all public monies due have been fully accounted for, and rules and procedures applicable are sufficient to ensure an effective check on the assessment, collection and proper allocation of the revenue; monies have been expended for the purposes for which they were appropriated and the expenditures have been made as authorised; essential records have been maintained and the rules and procedures applied are sufficient to safeguard and control public property; and programs and activities have been undertaken with due regard to economy, efficiency and effectiveness in relation to the resources utilised and results achieved. My audit is intended to provide assurance to the citizens of this country and other stakeholders about the regularity of actions and the propriety of government revenues, expenditures and assets, as well as the integrity and adequacy of systems and procedures to perform their intended roles as would lead to orderly, efficient, effective and economical achievement of program objectives by State institutions and other Government agencies given the use of State resources. . I present below the results of my audit. I found that due to poor cash management and procurement practices, MDAs exhibited difficulties in payroll administration because of the prevalence of unearned salary payments; there was also poor management of loans and debts for agricultural purposes, as well as poor collection of taxes due to the State. The resulting financial weaknesses and other irregularities are presented in two Tables in this Executive Summary. They have been grouped under seven broad categories as follows Cash irregularities; Outstanding debts/loans; Payroll Irregularities; Tax Irregularities; Contract Irregularities; Stores/Procurement Irregularities, and Rent payment Irregularities. The overall financial impact of weaknesses and irregularities identified amounted to GH253 million. There has not been significant compliance with financial reporting requirements and internal controls, though record-keeping continued to improve. Financial indiscipline and activities contrary to the Financial Administration Regulations, L.I. 1802 still persisted. Some MDAs have prepared and submitted their financial statements but these have not met fully the requirements of Section 41 of the Financial Administration Act and are not commented on in this report. It is my expectation that with the roll out of the Ghana Integrated Financial Management Information System (GIFMIS) there will be an improvement in the situation such that my reports can now embody my audit opinion on MDAs' financial statements. I must, in this regard, repeat my previous submission regarding my work, that timely preparation of sound and accurate consolidated financial statements and their submission by the MDAs for subsequent audit should be seen as a key requirement for continued assistance for the Central Government, and Local Government Units. We observed that mechanisms put in place to protect Government revenue at the ports and enhance increased revenue collection while decreasing Customs Officers abuse of discretionary power, among other purposes, were not being as effective as expected. The inefficiencies within had led to petroleum tax revenue of over GH83.3million due to Government being withheld by Ecobank and Ghana Commercial Bank over unduly long periods by the collecting banks without surrendering this to the appropriate Consolidated Fund account at the Bank of Ghana. Electronic bank statements, which could be used as input for mechanised reconciliations were not provided to assist with the monitoring and reconciliation process. Inadequate narrations in bank statements issued by Bank of Ghana posed similar reconciliation difficulties and resulted in the inability to confirm the sources of credits to the Petroleum Tax Revenue Account No. 1018131461585 amounting to GH263 million for the year 2011 with revenue lodgment records at GRA-Customs Division. Consistent with past reports, this year's report contains also issues relating to poor cash management practices resulting in failure to pay non-tax and other revenues collected into the Consolidated Fund, cash irregularities, tax irregularities and unauthorised payments, as well as non-availability of adequate records on revenue collected and some expenditures made. We noted, also, instances where controls over the administration of procurement, payroll and contracts were inadequate. The assessed financial impact of the irregularities, weaknesses and other occurrences within the MDAs during the period covered by this report came to an aggregate of GH364 million, US$16million, GBP669k and Euros9,307 as represented in Table 1 to the report. Table 2 provides a breakdown of the irregularities by MDAs. But I do apologise, I appear to have mixed up my pages and some of the items relate to prior audit periods and not the current one. However, I assure you the pattern is the same, the issues are very much a repetition of all the other years and I would not have said anything different even without the jumble up. Then the Printer's devil stood up and admitted his error. The invitation should have read The Great Waste Party. And that's how these things get going. Ghana, Aha a y din papa. Alius atrox week advenio. Another terrible week to come! Sydney Casely-Hayford, [email protected] 22.03.2016 LISTEN ANY COMMUNITY Police Assistant recruit that will leave the walls of the Police Training School at Patase in Kumasi without prior permission from authorities, will be expelled from the five-week training programme. Robert Mensah Akpedonu, the Ashanti Regional Director of the Youth Employment Agency (YEA,) which is in charge of the programme, said he had received complaints of female recruits usually running to town. He therefore admonished the 836 recruits that have been selected from over 5000 applicants in the Ashanti and Brong Ahafo regions for a five-week training programme, to be disciplined and comport themselves. According to Mensah Akpedonu, the recruits were being trained to assist the police to curb crime and maintain law and order in the country hence the need for the recruits to put up a good behaviour at all times. He was speaking during the official opening ceremony for 836 Community Police Assistants Module of YEA at the Police Training School at Patase a suburb of Kumasi in the Ashanti Region on Friday. The Ashanti Regional Boss of the YEA stressed that government is committed to solving the unemployment quandary facing Ghanaians, especially the energetic youth, urging the youth to take advantage of the programme. Ashanti Regional Minister, John Alexander Ackon, stressed that without proper security, Ghana's dream of developing properly for the citizenry to have better living conditions, would be in vain. . He charged the recruits to be disciplined and take their lessons seriously so that they would complete their course well trained and ready to assist the police to help provide law and order in the country. Deputy Ashanti Regional Police Commander, ACP Ampofo Duku, also reminded the recruits about the need for them to obey all the rules regarding their training so that they would not get into trouble. Chief Supt Charles Botwe, Head of the Police Training School in Kumasi, said the recruits started their training on March 8 and they would complete in five weeks time. He noted that the recruits would be taught Criminal Law, Criminal Investigations, Community Policing, Basic Security Tips, Physical Education, Civil Law, Criminal Procedure, among others. FROM I.F. Joe Awuah Jnr., Kumasi Laura Carpini 22.03.2016 LISTEN Laura Carpini, Italy's Ambassador to Ghana, has encouraged Ghanaian investors to exploit investment opportunities in Italy. Ms Carpini disclosed this while speaking at the launch of the Italian Business Association Ghana (IBAG) on Wednesday at the La Villa Boutique Hotel in Accra. According to her, Ghanaian businesses and their Italian counterparts ought to join forces in order to promote trade between the two countries. She explained that the Italian Embassy in Ghana recently opened a trade promotion centre to facilitate trade between the two countries and expressed satisfaction with the growth of Italian businesses in Ghana. . About IBAG Vice President of IBAG, Nii Amaa Ollenu, in a statement, pointed out that the association, which was incorporated in June 2015, intends to create opportunities for Italians and Ghanaians. IBAG aims at networking and bridging a strong bond with potential members aimed at organizing focus interviews, events, workshops and seminars on specific sectors of the economy by bringing experts to the table, facilitate business-oriented capacity building programmes for members to enable them advance in their various business endeavours. He indicated that IBAG is a non-profit organization with membership open to businesses and individuals without nationality restrictions. BY Melvin Tarlue 22.03.2016 LISTEN The Deputy Minister of Power John Jinapor has told Citi Business News that the current shut down of the Kwame Nkrumah FPSO for routine maintenance will not lead to a load-shedding exercise. His assertions follows that of the Ghana Grid Company (GRIDCo), which earlier assured the public that measures have been put in place to mitigate the impact on power supply during the shutdown of the FPSO Kwame Nkrumah. The FPSO Kwame Nkrumah was shut down yesterday to undergo mandatory inspection and maintenance works for two weeks. According to GRIDCo, the Volta River Authority (VRA) has purchased enough light crude oil to power some of the thermal plants within the Aboadze power enclave in the Western Region. GRIDCo, earlier in a statement, copied to Citi Business News, said the transmission system may experience some challenges which may affect power supply stability due to the conversion of all dual fuel thermal plants to run on light crude oil. But in an interview with Citi Business News Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the GRIDCo Engineer William Amuna, said their engineers are working hard to complete the conversion in the next two to three days. Deputy Minister of Power John Jinapor, speaking to Citi Business News on the development, said measures have been taken to prevent the shedding of load. The FPSO is currently down that created an initial deficit of 850 megawatts, 250 from Ameri, 300 from TAFCO units and 300 from the TICO units. However, in anticipation of the shutdown, we made adequate provision to procure crude oil. Indeed, we made provision and placed order for almost one million barrels of crude oil. We have discharged about 450 in Tema, and we intend to spend another 450 thousand in Takoradi today. And so our plan is to switch all dual fuel thermal plants within the Aboadzi enclave on light crude oil. And let me say that is the process. So far indication is that one unit is being successfully switched and today they are working on the other units. So barring any unforeseen circumstances, if we are able to switch all the units, we should be fine and we should have no problem. John Jinapor added that if we are able to switch as soon as possible, we wouldn't have any problem. Even though we have not completed the switching, we are not shedding, but in the events that we have a technical challenge and it results in some disruption, we think that we should pre-inform consumers, and that should be considered as temporal, but now we are not shedding. Buying crude comes at a cost and that is why we have to run the system. We are prepared to shoulder whatever cost to ensure that we supply power and so yes we want cost efficiency but for now, our primary objective is to get reliable power to the people of Ghana. Dr. Kofi Wampah 22.03.2016 LISTEN Government and the Central Bank appear to be churning out conflicting figures on the actual debt stock of the country. Both government and the Central Bank have quoted different figures at various forums in recent times. President Mahama's claims President John Mahama, a couple of weeks ago, put the total national debt stock at $24 billion. Reacting to assertions by Dr Mahamadu Bawumia, NPP's Vice Presidential candidate, who told University of Development students in Wa last month that in US dollars the Mahama administration had borrowed the equivalent (at the time of borrowing) of about $37 billion in seven years, President Mahama said: The borrowing has not been excessive. I heard one of the candidates say that this government, we have borrowed $37 billion. The total debt of Ghana, as it stands today from independence, is $24 billion. But the BoG, which has been dodgy with the figure, at the weekend disclosed that the total debt as at December 2015 was $25.6 billion, representing $1.6 billion over President Mahama's figure. The debt stock, according to the BoG, is 73 percent of GDP, confirming what Dr Mahamudu Bawumia had stated. Recently, the Deputy Finance Minister, Casiel Ato Forson, put it at less than 70 percent of GDP. BoG's report Data released ahead of the MPC meeting by BoG revealed that in cedi terms, the total debt stock was GH97.2 billion, equivalent to 72.9 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) with the domestic component, representing GH39.4 billion, equivalent to 29.5 percent of GDP, while the external component recorded GH57.8 billion, equivalent to 43.4 percent of GDP. Forson's hullabaloo Barely a week ago, Ato Forson, Deputy Finance Minister, issued a sharp response, challenging Dr Bawumia to provide evidence to back his claims. He said Ghana's public debt as at December, 2015 stood at GH97.2 billion and not GH99 billion as claimed by Dr Bawumia. He also said the projected GDP was 140 billion with a debt-to-GDP ratio of 69.45, contrary to the 73 percent figure given by the NPP vice presidential candidate. During a post-2016 budget analysis programme organised by the Ministry of Finance and the Institute of Financial and Economic Journalists (IFEJ), Mr. Forson indicated that the country's debt was reducing when measured in dollar terms. If you look at the debt numbers carefully, the debt is not going up. The foreign part of the debt in terms of forex is actually reducing, it is not going up. People think it is going up when the figures are translated into cedis. Because of depreciation of the currency, it looks as if the debt is going up, but in real terms it is reducing. Debt rising However, per the announcement made by Finance Minister Seth Terkper in November last year, the total debt figure, which was GH92.2 billion as of September last year and equivalent to 69.1 percent of GDP, has now increased to GH97.2 billion. Puzzle The figure would currently be abnormally high considering the quantum of borrowing that had taken place in recent times. Information about the actual debt stock of the country has remained a mystery in the country. It would be recalled that at an earlier press conference of the MPC this year, journalists who wanted to find out the actual debt of the country were told by the Governor that the Ministry of Finance had the responsibility to disclose the figures, even though the latter failed to do so. By Cephas Larbi & Samuel Boadi Brazzaville (AFP) - Washington and the European Union called for calm in Congo as the country Tuesday awaited results from a weekend presidential election, with communications lines cut for a third day. Fears of violence are running high as the country waits to see if President Denis Sassou Nguesso has beaten eight other candidates to succeed in his bid to extend his 32-year rule. Congo has been on edge since an October constitutional referendum that ended a two-term limit on presidential mandates, allowing 72-year-old former paratrooper colonel Sassou Nguesso to run for office again. The National Independent Electoral Commission (CENI) is planning a news conference on "the first main trends" in the vote at 6:00pm (1700 GMT), with Sassou Nguesso's team expected to hold its own briefing afterwards. The streets of the capital Brazzaville were quieter than usual on Tuesday, as they were on Monday. Five opposition candidates have urged people to "exercise their sovereignty" if Sassou Nguesso wins the election on the first round, as his supporters have said he will. They created their own parallel "technical commission" to monitor the vote and compile information from polling stations to compare it to the official results which the CNEI will give to the authorities. The government has declared the commission to be illegal and announced Saturday that communications networks were being cut for 48 hours to stop the opposition publishing its own rival election results. By mid-day on Tuesday, mobile phone, internet and text services were still unavailable, according to AFP journalists in Brazzaville. A government source said they would be cut until after the official results were announced. - International concern - France expressed concern Tuesday over the cut in communication lines, urging "transparency" in the counting of votes. "This vote took place in a worrying context, particularly due to the cut in communications. France is being vigilant and recalls its commitment to transparency and fairness in the electoral process," said foreign ministry spokesman Romain Nadal. The European Union called on all sides to use legal routes to settle their differences and urged the authorities to open communication lines again. The EU had earlier refused to send election observers, saying conditions had not been met for a transparent and democratic vote. On Friday the UN called for calm, while Washington also urged the authorities to restore communications and "to complete the electoral process with accuracy, credibility, fairness, and transparency". "We ask all political leaders to renounce violence, call upon their supporters to remain calm, and seek to resolve any differences peacefully in accordance with existing laws and procedures," US State Department spokesman John Kirby said in a statement. Sassou Nguesso is accused by critics of rampant corruption and nepotism in the oil and timber-rich country, which saw growth of five percent over the five years to 2014 but remains in dire straits. Unemployment hit 34 percent in 2013, the last data available, and stood at 60 percent for 15 to 24-year-olds. The IMF fears "domestic instability" without progress in the battle to eliminate poverty. Sassou Nguesso served as president from 1979 to 1992 and returned to power in 1997 following a civil war. He won two successive mandates in 2002 and 2009, but both tallies were contested by opposition parties. 22.03.2016 LISTEN The Christ Apostolic Church International according to a Ghana News Agency report is urging religious leaders to mobilise resources towards the enactment of a legislation that would weed out fake pastors and prophets, whose activities are undermining the credibility of the Christian faith. Addressing the opening ceremony of the Ministerial and General Council Meeting of the Church in Accra, the Chairman, Apostle Dr Stephen Kwame Ntow Amoani said: I also urge all Christian leaders to speak against this unacceptable behavioural ineptitude and absurdity. We should go further to bring pressure to bear on the Government to regulate the springing up of mushroom churches and religious organisations, which eventually tarnish the image of our dear nation, Ghana. We condemn in no uncertain terms the unethical and immoral behaviour of these so-called prophets and men of God whose discreet interest is to amass wealth at the expense of the unsuspecting citizens of this country, he said. Apostle Amoani said if bible-based believers and genuine Christians failed to express disgust at the turn of events, the activities of the charlatans would continue to bring the Christian faith into disrepute, ridiculing the hard-won reputation, the genuine ones had built on moral uprightness and virtues. We believe we can overcome these negative tendencies only when we rediscover our God-given authority and power as salt and light, to impact our generation, the Chairman said. It is incontrovertible fact that Apostle Amoanin has hit the nail right on the head. The kingdom of God has now become a big time business venture in Ghana. In their quest to get financial and other breakthroughs, poor Ghanaians are being swindled day in and day out by these so called pastors and Prophets who have taken the advantage of the proliferation of the media to advertise themselves. Unfortunately, until a congregant reports to the police that he or she has been swindled by some of these prophets, it would be very difficult for the police to just move in and arrest them. Regrettable, as this development may sound, The Chronicle is not all that surprised because Jesus himself stated in Matthew 24:5 that: for many will come in my name, claiming, 'I am the Messiah,' and will deceive many. The proliferation of these charlatans masquerading as Prophets of God fulfill the prophesy in the Bible. This does not, however, mean that they should be allowed to denigrate the name of God as they seem to be doing. The Chronicle is, therefore, calling on the Christian Council and all other recognized bodies of Christ to liaise with the government and find out the appropriate way to fashion out the law Apostle is calling for. We should not gloss over the fact that the 1992 Constitution guarantees freedom of worship and association. To, therefore, enact a law to outlaw activities of these charlatans is surely going to be a herculean task but if legal experts can navigate their way through, it would be a good news for all who want to ensure sanity in the kingdom work. But whilst waiting for a solution to the problem, we call on all genuine Christian leaders to come together and mount a campaign to educate Ghanaians on the need to shun these charlatans. If these so called Prophets fail to cajole the masses to follow them, the pranks they have been using to deceive the public would be a thing of the past. As part of the celebration of the social, economic and political achievements of women globally, Airtel Ghana commemorates international womens celebration with inspiring thought provoking talk series dubbed Airtel Talk Series throughout the month of March. The month long campaign themed Winning with Women seeks to encourage effective action for advancing, encouraging and recognizing women in their various fields of endeavour. It is also to recognise the enormous contributions women make as equal contributing partners in the socio-economic development of Ghana, Africa and in the World. As part of the month long celebrations, highly accomplished and iconic women are invited to share their life and professional experience with Airtel women and staff. Hannah Agbozo, Legal and Corporate Affairs Director in her address remarked, Women in Airtel continue to shatter many glass ceilings and advance across new frontiers in their careers and personal lives. She continued We will continue to work towards measurable and impactful actions that resonates with this years global theme Planet 50-50: Step It Up for Gender Equality. Today I am happy and proud to say we have an almost equal balance of male to female representation in senior leadership within Airtel Ghana and we will continue to ensure, pave the way and set good examples so other women can emulate. Ms. Efua Addotey, Acting Board Chair of Women in Law and Development (WILDAF) and the Vice President of FIDA Ghana, spoke about legislations on matrimonial property rights and the distribution of property in Ghana. She advised women to take up the responsibility and challenge themselves to strive for excellence and parity in their homes, workplaces and the society as a whole. International Womens celebration for Airtel Ghana is a time to reflect on progress made, to call for change and to celebrate acts of courage and determination by ordinary women who have played an extraordinary role in their countries and communities.Airtel believes in the power of potential that every individual has an inherent capacity to succeed in whatever they put their minds to. Airtel is Ghanas fastest growing network that offers unparalleled communication, connectivity and collaborative solutions to all customers. The company has won several CSR awards and recently awarded as the Best organisation for Learning and Development practices at the HR Focus Awards. About Bharti Airtel Bharti Airtel Limited is a leading global telecommunications company with operations in 20 countries across Asia and Africa. Headquartered in New Delhi, India, the company ranks amongst the top 3 mobile service providers globally in terms of subscribers. In India, the company's product offerings include 2G, 3G and 4G wireless services, mobile commerce, fixed line services, high speed DSL broadband, IPTV, DTH, enterprise services including national & international long distance services to carriers. In the rest of the geographies, it offers 2G, 3G and 4G wireless services and mobile commerce. Bharti Airtel had over 335 million customers across its operations at the end of August 2015. To know more please visit, www.airtel.com The Writer 22.03.2016 LISTEN As the world marks water day today, I wish to remind Ghanaians of the River bodies this country is blessed with. River Pra, River Tano, River Ankobra, River Densu and Volta. The Volta lake is the largest man made lake in the whole world not to talk about the Sea scattered around this country along our Coastal lines. We have sat and watched human activities to destroy our water bodies with impunity. Nobody cares! Foreigners do some of these human activities. These Chinese migrants largely do the likes of Galamsy or illegal mining. Who gives them Visa entry into this country? How did they bring those huge Trucks into this country for such activities? Who enforces the law? How many of these Nationals have been prosecuted? Your guess is as good as mine. The country and its people cannot be left in this matter. We liter our water bodies like nobody's business. Indeed the "Accra lavender Hill" culled its name from the throwing of our total excretion into the Sea at Korle-Gonno. I pray one day Shatta Wale will take up that fight to save the occupation of his people because anytime I here the song "Korle-Gonno ni dze" that's what comes to mind.... (Lavender Hill). Areas like Zongo and Nima where some of us hail from also throw all kinds of rubbish into the gutter anytime it rains. These are not heresy but it's something I witness everyday. You dare not complain. You are tagged "too known" or insulted. I don't blame them. There is little an individual can do in such matters. The onus is on our governments to enforce the laws in our statutes to ensure total adherence to the law. Until that is done, it will be difficult for anybody to put a stop to this. As people, we need to reflect on these things. Let's eschew politics in such matters and deal with it. #MayAllahhelpusall# HAPPY WORLD WATER DAY The 21st day of March each year marks the international day of forests, popularly known as international forest day. The day is celebrated globally in diverse ways to portray the gratitude of all humans to mother earth for the provision of forest reserves and its unlimited benefits. This year, Abibimman Foundation in collaboration with Kingdom Dynamic Future Home, celebrated the day with the pupils and Staff of Only Believe International School (Kukurantumi) in the Akim District of the Eastern Region here in Ghana. The day was not originally popular with pupils and therefore presented an opportunity for them to be part of the event. The Project Coordinator of Abibiman Foundation and the President and founder of Kingdom Dynamic Future Home, Mr. Prince Anthony Blessed Amegbor, who presented the opportunity to several students to understand the significance of forests and the role they play in climate change mitigation, how useful they are as sources for food, water, raw materials and other uses. As the UN theme for this year is water and Forests, Forests are home to more than 80 per cent of the terrestrial species of animals, plants and insects. They provide shelter, jobs and security for forest-dependent communities, with approximately 1.6 billion people relying on forest resources for their livelihoods, with most of them (1.2 billion) using trees on farms to generate food and cash. Ecosystem services are essential for human wellbeing. They provide food, water, energy and other benefits. Thus it is important to connect ecosystems to global development priorities. The head teacher of the School, Mr. Justice Nii Klu and his assistant, Mr. Francis Ampaw were grateful to the two organizations for coming together to promote the international day of forests celebration with his school. The students partook in a tree planting exercise to mark the day and help support the Chinese proverb that says, The best time to plant a tree was twenty years ago, and the best next time is now. The event saw some students who pledged and dedicated themselves to taking care of their trees they planted for posterity sake. The pupils of the school participated in the event by expressing their views on how forests should be protected in relation to its role as a source of fresh water for most communities, asking interesting questions and answering very challenging questions which proved that the young understood the benefits water and forests play in their lives and the climate change mitigation process as a whole. All the students were glad they were part of a global celebration of this kind and expressed their keen interest in celebrating the day annually. Abibimman Foundation therefore seeks to promote the integrity sustainability of our forest reserves as they are vital to the water cycle and the best ticket to carbon sequestration for climate change mitigation. Isaac Korku Dorgbetor Project Coordinator Abibimman Foundation. www.abibimmanfoundation.org Email:[email protected] On World Water Day, people around the world express their care and that they have the power to make a difference. World Water Day is observed worldwide each year on March 22nd. It is an opportunity to focus attention on a natural resource that all our lives and livelihoods depend on. Each year, UN-Water, the entity that coordinates the UNs work on water and sanitation sets a theme for World Water Day corresponding to a global challenge. This year, World Water Day highlights how water and jobs interact to transform peoples lives. Almost half of the world's 1.5 billion workers are working in water related sectors and nearly all jobs depend on water and sanitation are essential workers lives and health. On this day, millions of people who work in water are often not recognized or even protected by basic labour rights. This needs to change. It is a day on which to be inspired and take action to make a difference for those who cant take water for granted. Every hour 38 workers die from water-related diseases. These deaths can be prevented with better water and sanitation (improved quality drinking water, sanitation, hygiene and related knowledge). Abibimman Foundation therefore on the 22nd day of March 2016 celebrated the world water day in collaboration with the Kingdom Dynamic Future Home with the pupils of God Almighty International School in Kukurantumi in the Eastern Region of Ghana. The pupils participated in an interactive talk on the basic provision of adequate water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) services at home and in the school. They also asked questions on how to purify water from various sources and they relate to impacts lives through its presence, quality and quantity. The pupils engaged in the formation of a club that would be coordinated by the Abibimman Green-Life Club to help the students become ambassadors of WASH in their district. Water has the ability to create paid and decent jobs. It can contribute to a greener economy and sustainable development. But for this to happen, we need more qualified workers. And we need those workers to work in dignity, equality, safety and have a fair income. The President and founder of Kingdom Dynamic Future Home, Mr. Prince Anthony Blessed Amegbor, promoted the days celebration with the assistance of the head teacher of the School Mr Emmanuel Modzaka and a teacher, Mr. Antwi Agyeipong. The pupils engaged happily in the global celebration and sang songs to show how much water means to them and everyone. Many have lived without love, yet not one without water. It is therefore a necessity to commemorate this day of a substance that is substantial and crucial, and a unique source of life. Miss Christiana Bonni, Project Coordinator of Abibiman Foundation said access to a safe, reliable and affordable supply of water and adequate sanitation services, creates an enabling environment for long-term employment opportunities, as well as development and growth across different economic sectors. This is especially important when we factor in the important role water quality and water quantity play. For example, in the irrigated agriculture sector, which represents 70 per cent of freshwater withdrawals globally, a farmer's job depends on their ability to manage the available freshwater while at the same time facing challenges such as groundwater depletion, climate change and water scarcity. Agriculture accounts for more than 90 percent of freshwater withdrawals. Without improved efficiency measures, agricultural water consumption is expected to increase by about 20 per cent globally by 2050. In the forestry sector, it is often necessary to reduce deforestation to avoid water shortages or excess water flows with negative impacts on a region, resulting in lay-offs in the industry. Christiana Bonni, Project Coordinator Abibimman Foundation. www.abibimmanfoundation.org Email:[email protected] Perry Okudzeto, NPP's Deputy Communications Director 22.03.2016 LISTEN The opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP) has taken issues with state newspaper, the Daily Graphic and officials of the Bureau of National Investigations (BNI), following the arrest of three security trainers of South African origin, who were consulted by a local security firm, Delta Security, to train the party's private security team. The Daily Graphic on Tuesday March 22, headlined a front page story titled '3 South Africans arrested for acts likely to compromise national security'. The paper further reported that the three retired South African Police Officers, Major Ahmed Shaik (retd), 54; Warrant Officer Denver Dwahye, 33, and Captain Mlungiseli Jokani, 45 were picked up at the EL-Capitano Hotel at Agona Duakwa in the Central Region, where they had been based since arriving in the country early this month. According to the paper, the three were said to be training some young people in various security drills, including unarmed combat, weapon handling, VIP protection techniques and rapid response manoeuvres. The NPP, which has been linked to the incident because those who were being trained including sixteen members of the party's private security detail ahead of a major election this November, says the state newspaper appears to have put a spin on the story to create a negative impression about them. Speaking to Citi News, Perry Okudzeto, the NPP's Deputy Communications Director, said it the state newspaper was irresponsible in its reportage. The issue is not about whether or not the NPP knows about these people. The issue is about how irresponsible our national newspaper has been in publishing a story with the kind of twist that has been put on it. The issue is that there are three former police officers who work for a security company in South Africa who are in Ghana legitimately doing business. Our security people, who are part of the Flagbearer and the running mate's security detail, are being trained by a local security company here in Ghana which has these foreigners as consultants. They have not broken any law; they are being trained on crowd control. Why our security team needs training The continuous popularity of our Flagbearer and running mate requires that our security detail is trained on how to handle crowd and are trained on crowd control techniques and that is simply what this is about. So it's a licensed Ghanaian security company is training our people with the help of consultants from South Africa Mr. Okudzeto explained. . Who invited them is immaterial Asked whether the NPP directly invited the consultants, Mr. Okudzeto said, Who invited them to the country is not the matter for discussion. They are working for a local licensed security company. We do not have recruits. The 16 people who work for the running mate and the flagbearer are those who are being trained and this is something we do from time to time. And the leader of these consultants who happens to be Chris, whose name has been written in a certain way in the Graphic to create the impression that they are mercenaries, has been a member of the late President Mandela's security detail, and has been a member of Thabo Mbeki's detail and offered VIP security training across the continent. They're not being trained in weapon handling Mr. Okudzeto stressed that the men were not being trained in weapon handling and that the alarm being created was needless. They are here doing business and so what is the big deal about the people who invited them. Who said that they are being trained in weapon handling? They are being trained in crowd control. And the Graphic itself whatever the motive is has said that they were being trained in unarmed combat. Even me as an individual I can acquire a gun legally and get training on how to use it so it's not a crime to train people in that, but that's not the training they are being given. Private security training not unusual The Deputy NPP Communications Director said there was nothing usual about individuals or businesses employing the services of security firms to train security personnel as long as they do not flout any law. He said that is not only the responsibility of the Ghana Police Service. All the hundreds of security companies in Ghana that offer security services don't need to get it from the Ghana Police Service. Aren't there people who are bodyguards for individuals in this country? So a political figure cannot have his bodyguards trained? And this is published on a state newspaper and given front page as if people who have come into this country executing their mandate are criminals. I think the South African High Commission in Ghana must investigate this issue since their nationals are involved. -Citifmonline 22.03.2016 LISTEN The Legal Department of the Agricultural Development Bank (adb) has explained that the bank has not paid any monies to Mr. Alexander Afenyo Markin, Member of Parliament (MP) for Efutu, as contained in several wild media reports. A couple of months ago, there were wild mild media reports that adb had paid US$400,000 into the accounts of Mr. Alexander Kwamina Afenyo-Markin in South Africa. Aside a cedi component of GH250,000 the bank was alleged to have paid the Effutu MP in an act of extortion, the media reports alleged that adb paid a further US$500,000 into the accounts of the MP's sister in the United States. Responding to those wild allegations, Counsel for adb, M.K. Amoakohene, in a worded letter, said spurious as those allegations were, they could not accept the fact that the bank could misapply public funds in such a reckless manner. adb could not pay a total of US$900,000 to one single person, because there was a threat of court action against the bank's IPO, M.K. Amoakohene stated, and added that these are calculated distractive acts intended to derail the IPO, which has already seen enough upsets. He said: There is no way the bank would employ that quantum of funds simply to get an IPO through by any such illegal means, or that the process had been threatened by a court action, and there was, therefore, the need to do something to get the process going. At any rate, the court actions came by, and the bank marshaled its legal brains and eventually dealt with the matter. The adb Legal Department described it as a little unimaginative to link the contents in a leaked tape to the bank, because there was an issue about the bank's IPO. Concluding, it said: Assuming, without admitting, that there was ever any such approach by Honourable Afenyo Markin, we wish to state categorically that no money from the bank has ever been paid, or will ever be paid to anyone for this kind of cause. The letter of the Legal Department of adb was copied to the Managing Director and Board Secretary. adb Denies Paying Dough To Afenyo Markin By Inusa Musah Accra, March 21, GNA - Mr Richard Agyei, the Managing Director of the Kasapreko Company, said the company was poised to take the leadership role in the beverage industry. He said the company would soon put on the market 'Alomo Koolup' and 'True Root' which are sugar-free to meet the high demands of customers. Mr Agyei said this when Master of Business Administration (MBA) students of the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) paid a visit to the company in Accra. The visit was to afford the students the opportunity to know the operations of the company and also interact with management. Mr Agyei underscored the need for Ghanaians to cherish what they had and eat what they grew. He said as a multi-national drink manufacturing company, it produced first class but affordable products, using authentic traditional blends and world class technology in an environmentally responsible manner to satisfy its customers. Mr Agyei said the company, as part of its corporate social responsibility, had set up Kasapreko Education Foundation which was supporting 19 students up to the university level as well as the National Cardiothoracic Centre. He said the company, established in 1989, had won many international awards including Activating Brand of the Year 2015, and urged Ghanaians to support indigenous companies to grow and expand their operations by patronising local products. He said the company was also putting up measures to ensure the safety of the workers. Professor Matthew Tsamenyi, the Executive Director of CEIBS, who led the students, commended the company for coming out with many products using herbs and also offering employment to the youth. He charged the students to be innovative so as to set up their own companies. The company exports its products to Togo, Nigeria, South Africa, and Tanzania among others. GNA 22.03.2016 LISTEN Accra , March 21, GNA - Former President John Agyekum Kufuor has expressed profound shock and sadness at the demise of Mr. Jake Otanka Obetsebi-Lamptey, a former Chairman of the New Patriotic Party (NPP). Former President Kufuor described Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey as: 'Very professional in his field of Public Relations and Advertising.' 'He conveyed serious matters with a relaxed mien and charm, was affable and had a great sense of humour. He was a good man,' Mr Kufuor said of him. A statement signed by Mr Frank Agyekum, a Spokesperson/Special Aide, Mr Kufuor, quoted the Former President as saying: 'Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey was born into the Danquah - Busia tradition and stayed true to its tenets throughout his adult life. The party has lost a pillar and Ghana, a true son. 'The party must be in mourning and his death must be a period of deep and sober reflection for all NPP members. 'It should help in our efforts at reconciliation and unity, which are principles for which Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey stood for. May He Rest In Peace.' Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey died in the early hours of Sunday in a London hospital where he had gone for treatment. Mr. Obetsebi-Lamptey was the Campaign Manager of the then Candidate Kufuor in the his successful bid for the presidency in 2000. He served as the first Chief of Staff in the Kufuor Administration and variously as Minister of Information and Presidential Affairs, and Minister of Tourism and Modernisation of the Capital City. GNA 22.03.2016 LISTEN Brussels, Accra, March 22 - (dpa/GNA) - At least 13 people were killed and 35 injured Tuesday in two explosions that ripped through the departure hall of the airport in the Belgian capital Brussels, prosecutors told local media as the city went into lockdown. The royal prosecutor called the airport blasts a suicide bombing. The STIB public transport operator reported another explosion at the Brussels subway station Maelbeek, which is located near EU institutions, local media said. A dpa journalist saw at least one injured person being treated by emergency responders. Belgium raised its terror alert level to 4 - indicating a "serious and imminent" threat. Prosecutors have opened a terrorism investigation, according to the RTBF broadcaster. Belgium had already been on high alert since the arrest in Brussels last week of Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in the Paris terrorist attacks. In the French capital, President Francois Hollande was holding an emergency meeting with top ministers, including Prime Minister Manuel Valls and Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian. The entire public transport network in Brussels was shut down Tuesday, while the city's tunnels were being closed to car traffic. International institutions in Brussels were sending staff home. Authorities called on people to stay where they are and not to make phone calls with the mobile network overburdened. The airport is located about 15 kilometres from the Brussels centre. "There have been two explosions at the airport. Building is being evacuated. Don't come to the airport area," Brussels Airport wrote on its Twitter account. "Flights have been cancelled." Train traffic to the airport has also been halted, the SNCB rail company wrote on Twitter. Pictures posted on social media showed a blown-out window front, debris that appeared to come from a collapsed roof and bloodied people inside and outside the airport. Smoke could also been seen rising from the building. The explosions at the airport took place one after the other around 8 am (0700 GMT), eyewitnesses told the Belga news agency. Eyewitnesses told the news agency that they had heard shots and calls in Arabic before the explosions. GNA The Chairperson of the African Union (AU) Commission, Dr. Nkosazana Dlamini Zuma, strongly condemns the despicable attacks at the Zaventem airport and the central metro station in Brussels, claiming dozens of lives of innocent civilians and leaving scores wounded. The Chairperson of the Commission expresses the African Union's solidarity with the Government and people of Belgium, offers her condolences to the bereaved families and wishes speedy recovery to the wounded. The Chairperson of the Commission reaffirms the AU's strong rejection of all acts of terrorism and violent extremism by whomever, wherever and for whatever purposes. She reiterates the AU's commitment to continue working with Belgium, and the other members of the European Union, and the international community at large, in the fight against terrorism and violent extremism. In this regard, she stresses the need for enhanced international cooperation within the framework of the relevant AU and international counter-terrorism instruments. Grand Mufti of Egypt Shawki Ibrahim Abdel-Karim Allam strongly condemned the 22 March terrorist attacks in Brussels and talked about his work challenging extremist propaganda in an exchange of views with Foreign Affairs Committee MEPs on Tuesday. They praised his efforts, but called for more dialogue within Islam and for the rule of law to be strengthened in Egypt. In his opening remarks Foreign Affairs Committee chair Elmar Brok (EPP, DE) emphasized that terrorist attacks must not stop dialogue and cooperation between Egypt and the West and reminded the audience that globally the majority of the victims of terror were Muslims. Shawki Allam, who is seen as Egypt's primary source of religious authority, expressed his solidarity with the victims' friends and families and said that such heinous acts can never be justified by religion. Terrorism knows no borders and is a plague on all of us. We must work hand in hand to dismantle terrorism. Dialogues like this one are a step in the right direction, he said, stressing that words must translate into actions. The Grand Mufti explained that he had set up a specialist centre to challenge extremist views on websites and the social media by providing an authentic interpretation of Islam. This unit of experts publishes an e-newspaper, videos in 10 languages and interacts on Facebook with young people who are at the core of this struggle. Correct education is the right answer to ignorance and extremism, he affirmed, noting that the Egyptian government had declared 2016 the year of youth to help fulfill the dreams of a young generation. While MEPs praised these efforts, some observed that an effective internal dialogue within the main branches of Islam would also be essential in tackling extremism. Others highlighted the need to strengthen the rule of law in Egypt, and especially the separation of powers, because, in their view, only a truly democratic country is able to offer prospects to young people. MEPs also voiced concerns about hasty death sentences and other grave human rights violations in Egypt's judiciary and prisons, pointing out that we cannot fight terrorism with terrorism. A Federal Foreign Office Spokesperson issued the following statement in Berlin today (22March) on measures against human rights organisations by the Egyptian authorities: We are following the latest travel bans, bank account freezes and investigations against human rights activists and organisations in Egypt with great concern. These steps not only contravene international human rights standards, but also the Egyptian Constitution. Respect for human rights and a free civil society are a prerequisite for sustainable stability. We call on the Egyptian Government to create conditions in which human rights groups can do their work unhindered work that is important for the country. Background information: In recent weeks, human rights organisations in Egypt have been targeted by state repression and investigations on an unprecedented scale. In the past few days, organisations including the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, the Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, Nazra for Feminist Studies and the ElNadeem Centre for Rehabilitation of Victims of Violence, and well-known activists such as GamalEid and Hossam Bahgat, have had their bank accounts frozen and been banned from leaving the country. A counter-terrorism law adopted in 2015 lays down heavy penalties, including life imprisonment, for harmful acts against the national interest or acts that destabilise the general peace, independence or unity of Egypt and stipulates strict approval regulations for operating an organisation with an international range and accepting funding from abroad. The Peace and Security Council of the African Union (AU), at its 582ndmeeting held on 14 March 2016, was briefed by the AU Commissioner for Peace and Security, Ambassador Smail Chergui on the AU Peace Fund, as well as by the AU High Representative for the Peace Fund, Dr. Donald Kaberuka, on his activities. Council took noteof the comprehensive briefing given by the AU High Representative for the Peace Fund, in particular, his consultations with key partners with regard to the AU's proposals that AU-led peace support operations be financed from United Nations (UN) assessed contributions, since these missions are undertaken within the framework of the UN Charter, in which the UN Security Council has primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security, while the role of regional arrangements is also recognized. Council congratulated Dr. Kaberuka on his appointment as the AU High Representative for the Peace Fund, tasked with assisting the AU to meet its financial commitments to peace and security, develop a roadmap for sustainable funding for AU-led peace support operations, mobilize funds to the Peace Fund and to also act as an important interlocutor with international partners on the proposal that UN assessed contributions be provided to finance AU-led peace support operations. Encouraging him to persevere in discharging his responsibilities, Council pledged its full support to his efforts. Council underscored the imperative need for all Member States to extend their full cooperation to Dr. Kaberuka, in order to ensure the success of his efforts. In this context, Council recalled decision Assembly/AU/Dec. 561(XXXIV) on alternative sources of funding, adopted at the 25thOrdinary Session of the Assembly of the Union, held from 14 to 15 June 2015, in Johannesburg, South Africa, regarding the need for Member States to enhance ownership of the budget of the Union by financing 100% of the operating budget, 75% of the programme budget, and 25% of the peace and security budget, to be phased in incrementally over a five-year period. In this respect, Council urged all Member States to fully honour their commitments. Underlining the close linkages between peace, security and development, Council strongly appealed to all Member States to extend their full support to Dr. Kaberuka during the course of his consultations at the highest level within Africa, as part of the overall African efforts to silence the guns by 2020. Council called on the UN to respond positively to its call for financing of AU-led peace support operations from UN assessed contributions, and urged African members of the UN Security Council to promote this agenda vigorously. Council looked forward to the finalization of the AU Peace Fund roadmap, which would include modalities for the realization of the AU's contribution of 25% of the cost of AU-led peace support operations, and its submission to the Assembly of the Union at its next Ordinary Session in June-July 2016, before submission to the 71stUN General Assembly in September 2016. Council agreed to remain actively seized of the matter. Start in Ghana Investments; a business group that promotes businesses between Ghana and Nigeria has lauded the acting Nigerian High Commissioner to Ghana, Her Excellency Adekunbi Sonaike Ayodeji, for promoting the rights of Nigerians, particularly Fulanis living and working in Ghana. In a statement issued by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the group, Mr. Yahaya Alhassan, he thanked the High Commissioner for her motherly role by traveling across the regions to ensure the protection of the Fulanis in the wake of high media persecution of them. He revealed that Fulanis have lived and worked in Ghana before independence and most are no doubt Ghanaians and it is unfortunate that they (Fulanis) are treated as Nigerians and foreigners. If that is the case then there are more Ghanaians in Nigeria earning their livings he reasoned. He said whiles it is worrying to hear and read of destruction of farms by Fulani herdsmen, it is equally a disconnection of truth to attribute all crimes to the Fulani herdsmen. Media around the world have naturally been harsh and sensational when dealing with issues bordering on migrants or foreigners but I implore the Ghanaian media to be less sensational with Nigerian stories for there is the danger of putting innocent people at risk he advised. He called on the Ghana Education Service to include in the educational curriculum moral training to inculcate the teaching of love and trust among Africans especially our Nigerian counterpart. Ghanaians do not have any close relation or better neighbours than their Nigeria counterparts and I am appealing to the Ghanaian public to show their spirit of hospitality to the many Nigerian students who are studying in Ghana he said. 22.03.2016 LISTEN Germany in Europes history was involved in many wars with its neighbours. Britain wanted to end the power of Germany after ending World War II forever creating peace in Europe and itself as the Leader in the region. While France had the intention to convert defeated Germany into a giant Potato field and annex Saarland with its rich Coal Mines, UK forced upcoming German Manufacturer to imprint on their products the logo Made in Germany. It was the intention of the British Government to discredit Germans on the world market and demonstrate the products they were pushing were from Hitlers Germany for that reason from a country no country should ever engage in doing business with. As reparation for the damaged caused by the Germans, UK, France and Russia dismantled German Factories, took railway tracks and locomotives besides ships back to their respective countries. What was intended to destroy Germany, its spirit and credibility and keep it as an underdog in world affairs, turned out to be an unexpected and unintended blessing for the Germans, helping them in fact to become once again the strongest and richest country in all of Europe and today number four in the world. While the Allies used the old factories from Germany for their production, Germany struggled to set up a complete new Industry with the most modern factories in all of Europe, that their products soon became well known around the world. Made in Germany logo soon was seen as a sign of quality and innovation especially in the heavy machinery industry, reliable service and trustworthiness. Particularly UK was left behind with old production facilities and Made in UK has never made it to a story like Made in Germany (shame became of worldwide success story!). Over time the close collaboration between Germany and France created a more and more political united Europe with UK as its fifth wheel, its spare part. French Nicholas Sarkozy, former President, asked Chancellor Angela Merkel to take the lead in the European Union. The bible teaches us, the one that is first will be last and the last will be first. When starting off in life most people have the understandable desire to reach far in richness and fame, while the wise man knows it is better not to ask for fast and early fortune and celebrity status. Lars Windhorst, a German, went to Hong Kong, created a waste Empire in the Real Estate business. At the age of 19 he was known as the Wonder child of modern business and admired by many in Germany and beyond. It took 10 years and his Empire collapsed forcing him to return back to Germany where he was heading a Venture Capital Fund that had to encounter heavy losses shortly after his assignment. Over time even the meanest Media Houses lost interest in him. Someone being successful at early age should hope for a good Controller in his life like a Man of GOD (Prophet Emmanuel Badu Kobi, Glorious Wave International Church, is strongly recommended) to mature until he is experienced enough to carry the positive and negative sides of richness and fame. Tic Tac Toe, a German Pop Group widely known in Europe and parts of Asia, destroyed itself in a press conference before live camera recordings opening up the inner differences among the three young women. One of them ended up in a Prostitution and Drug scandal, all forgotten by Music Production companies and the public. It is alleged that Michael Jackson, a hero in the music industry, died with no money in his pockets being bankrupt and Rapper 50 Cents recently had to file for administrative protection unable to foot his bills. Do not look always to the Top, look who is behind you on his way up, he might be just the one overtaking you. Richness and fame to live well and successful is an issue of character. Character does not come over night, develops and matures with time. Most Millionaires making it from nowhere to somewhere in life had their breakthrough at the end of their forties, beginning of their fifties. Such people have gone through pitfalls, have fallen and broken their noses, have risen up again and improved on their thinking and acting, were shaking into the right mindset and position in life to stand as shining stars on top of their families, not with their nose up in the wind like a full blown sail, but with the certainty in head and heart of their rightful position in their lives knowing all corners of human life. They can make the best possible decisions for their course in life, manage human and financial resources well for the benefit of many others around them that do not have the courage and will to make it from an underdog to a hero in life. Everything is possible in life when understanding the laws and principles and fight for it, day in and day out. Enemies never sleep, they have come to destroy, and therefore the winner must take it all and constantly fight backfight for his rightful place in life. We have only one life to livelive it well! Author: Dipl.-Pol. Karl-Heinz Heerde, Sakumono Estate, Block D10, Aprt.9, Tema West, Ghana, phone +233(0)265078287, [email protected] , 22.04.2016 22.03.2016 LISTEN Mr. Samuel Okudzeto-Ablakwa is a freeloading government appointee who has never really held a real civil-service job. But he had admirably used his foothold in government to secure himself a juicy parliamentary seat, and with the latter a comfortable living and a fat check, just like National Democratic Congress apparatchiks like Messrs. Fiifi Kwetey and Richard Quarshigah, the notorious foulmouthed Keta schoolboy. And so it is only natural to expect that if a list is being composed to elevate some polytechnics into universities, that Mr. Ablakwa would deftly maneuver to have the Ho Polytechnic Institute, which is located in his home region of Volta, placed onto that list. Such self-serving maneuvering gives him some electioneering campaign bragging rights. It also goes without saying that this year is an electoral watershed season. You simply cant blame the young man for wanting to retain his Tongu parliamentary seat. Dont ask me which of the two Tongu seats; I couldnt care less. Anyway, a group calling itself the Coalition of Central Regional Youth has accused Mr. Ablakwa of deliberately shunting a more deserving Cape Coast Polytechnic Institute off the list, while ensuring that a supposedly far less deserving Ho Polytechnic Institute made the list (See Ablakwa Denies Smuggling Ho Poly into [sic] Technical University List Starrfmonline.com / Ghanaweb.com 2/20/16). I am not going to ask whether the Koforidua Polytechnic Institute, in my proverbial neck of the country, made the list or not because it really does not matter. What matters most is that students who have worked hard and qualify for admission to any of these newly-designated polytechnic universities would not be denied admission because they do not hail from any of the regions in which these polytechnic universities are located. It is an open secret that traditionally, residents of the Volta Region, stereotypically speaking, have been known to be relatively slow to readily welcoming students to schools and colleges in that region who were either not born in the Volta Region or are known to have no ethnic affiliation with the same. In particular, my reference here is primarily to the Anlo-Ewe parts of the Volta Region. The situation is especially so when it has to do with the ethnicity of the head of an institution. Lets not be politically correct about this open secret, which is that Anlo-Ewes are traditionally more hostile towards non-Ewe civil servants holding positions of considerable influence and trust in the region, compared to their fellow Akan citizens, for example. I also really dont know or care about Mr. Ablakwas lament that those accusing him of nepotism, in the decision regarding which polytechnic institute made the list of the first batch of newly converted polytechnic universities, were being wicked and malicious. What I know for a fact is that the Atta-Mills-proposed Allied Health University of the Volta Region was almost totally packed with Ewe-descended Ghanaians on its boards of advisers, trustees, administrators and promoters of the initiative. It was strikingly akin to the infamous GYEEDA Scam in which only northern-descended Ghanaians qualified to hold administrative and trusteeship positions. Talk of Ghana as a typical African constitutional democracy! Now, I dont know the basis upon which the Coalition of Central Regional Youth predicated their criticism that Mr. Ablakwa, the Deputy Education Minister for Tertiary Education, has, somehow, allowed both his ethnicity and region of provenance to color the decision of which polytechnic institute made the list of the newly designated polytechnic universities. The coalition members or their executives need to present a far better proof than merely invoking Mr. Ablakwas ethnicity or region of birth or descent, if they want to be taken seriously. For starters, the substantive Minister of Education, Prof. Jane Naana Opoku-Agyeman, who is also a former Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Coast (UCC), is a bona fide Fante and a longtime resident of the Central Region. If, indeed, the Cape Coast Polytechnic Institute better qualified to be named among the list of the first batch of newly designated or converted polytechnic universities in the country, you bet Naana Opoku-Agyeman would not have dumbly clammed up or kept mum while her own people were meted the proverbial short-end of the stick. Of course, there is a lot of ethnic prejudice in Ghana that is invariably brazenly muffed into the routine policy practices of the countrys two major political parties, namely, the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the main opposition New Patriotic Party (NPP). Sometimes I wonder whether the level and practice of ethnic chauvinism is not higher and relatively more shameless in Ghana than the practice of racism and ethnic chauvinism right here in the United States. *Visit my blog at: kwameokoampaahoofe.wordpress.com Ghanaffairs An Accra Circuit Court has adjourned the extradition case involving British Fugitive David McDermott to March 24, 2016. The case was adjourned after the first witness; Detective Sergeant Mawuko Siaw of the Bureau of National Investigations gave his testimony. Forty-two-year-old David McDermott is wanted for his role in a conspiracy to import 71 million worth of cocaine into the UK in 2013. He was arrested in Ghana on March 11, at Airport in Accra upon an extradition request issued by the British High Commission to the Foreign Affairs Ministry of Ghana. He was charged with illegal possession and dealing in narcotics but pleaded not guilty when he appeared in court on March 14. At the Circuit court today, Lawyer for the accused, Victor Adawudu was given ten minutes to confer with his client after he raised concerns of lack of access to his client. State prosecutors moved a motion for the extradition of the accused based on a revised charge of Conspiracy to supply cocaine and two other counts. According to Joy News Raymond Acquah, the witness explained to the court that on May 16, 2013, David and four others held a meeting at KFC in Liverpool UK and discussed the importation of the 400kg of cocaine that was intercepted in beef imported from Argentina. He said McDermott and his colleagues at the meeting discussed the possibility of using violence to retrieve the drugs, Raymond reported. He said the witness indicated that David had contact with his accomplices while living in Ghana. A decision by Ghana to extradite him to the UK was justified by the extradition Act 1960. The court will decide on the extradition on the next adjourned date on March 24, when the second witness will be called. Story by Ghana| Myjoyonline.com| Akosua Asiedua Akuffo| [email protected] The President of the Federal Republic of Somalia, HE Hassan Sheikh Mohamud, condemned the Daesh-perpetrated attacks in Brussels today. We join the world in condemning the brutal attacks of civilians in Brussels. We grieve with those who have lost loved ones. We pray for the families affected. Our thoughts are with the Belgium government as it seeks to provide support to its people. Daesh murdered more than innocent people today. It also killed any illusions that it is intent on doing anything other than wreaking havoc and destruction across the world. We condemn its barbaric acts of terrorism. Somalia stands by to offer any support needed, the President said. The President added that terrorism is a global threat, requiring collective responsibility, adding that Somalia as it is a country hit by terror acts continues to work closely with the international community to eradicate extremist groups. Ghanas cocoyam exports have gone down as farmers are hit with harsh weather conditions. According to the Ghana Export Promotion Authority, cocoyam exports dropped from 242 thousand tonnes in 2009 to 33 thousand tonnes in 2012. It is ranked the fifth important staple crop in Ghana. Officials of the Ministry of Agric are worried despite introducing farmers to modern farming practices and providing them with quality planting materials, production continue to fall drastically. Asante Akyem South District in the Ashanti Region is noted for producing cocoyam on large scale in the past but the situation is different now. The dwindling fortune of cocoyam business is a worry to many as the district produces below par. Agriculture Extension Officer for Juaso, Stephen Ampoh believes misapplication of agrochemicals in addition to change in rainfall pattern has compounded low production, an observation farmers admit. Most farmers spray directly onto the crops. If you dont spray right, the cocoyam becomes stunted in growth and it takes time before it rejuvenates. A cocoyam farmer at Boboaso near Juaso, Baba Joseph admits farmers use a lot of chemicals to clear the land before cultivation. Businesses along the value chain have been affected. At the Kumasi Central market for instance, there was a specific section where solely for cocoyam business. Known in the local parlance as Mankani Adwasuo which literally translates as Cocoyam Lane, the market has collapsed for several months now. The traders here complain business has gone down drastically; as traders are forced to use their stalls for other businesses. One such trader is Akua Fordjour who has stopped selling cocoyam for plantain. Most of us have converted our shops into other businesses because of how bad trading in the cocoyam business has been. I am selling plantain now. She said. Besides, demand for cocoyam on the market is low, a situation traders are unable to explain. A bag of cocoyam is between 100 and 120 Ghana Cedis. Akua explains that because patronage is low she seldom sell to make profit. The scarcity of the commodity perhaps has pushed the price, making it expensive on the market. With patrons unable to meet the price, traders have no business selling the food item on the market. The decline in cocoyam business means Cocoyam leaves also known as kontomire business suffers. A set of smaller cocoyam leaves has increased from 1 to 2 Ghana Cedis whiles the bigger ones has seen a push from 2 to Gh 5. Akosua Asante , who has been selling Kontomire since 2009 no longer get kontomire to buy because of the prolonged harmattan [dry season ]. She hopes to see the situation improved as the rain sets in. Cocoyam is a major ingredient in the preparation of a major local dish, Fufu, in the Ashanti region. The delicacy is often prepared with cocoyam and cassava, plantain and cassava or yam and cassava. But the cocoyam-cassava combination has apparently lost its patronage at food joints. Linda Lamis, a caterer, and Abubakar Ibrahim, manager of Its My Kitchen Restaurant confirmed this. Abubakar Ibrahim, Manager of Its My Kitchen Restaurant for instance revealed that for months nobody has asked for cocoyam fufu as a result it is not on their menu anymore. To avert the trend, Dr. Joe Manu-Aduening, the Head of Root and Tuber at Crop Research Institute of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research says use of agrochemicals must be deemphasized so far as roots and tubers are concerned. On one hand, we advise them (farmers) to use agrochemicals for weed controls and land preparations, but on the other hand, we fail to advise them on the suitable types. We need to protect them; else we will get them extinct. Dr Manu-Adueining added. Baba Joseph who owns a six-acre farm at Boboaso near Juaso has seen his cocoyam harvests reduced drastically from 200 in 2014 to 20 bags in 2015. Baba fears the worst could hit his farming business this year with unreliable rainfall patterns. There are fears cocoyam may also just go extinct just as the good old Taro popularly called Kooko, in the local parlance. 22.03.2016 LISTEN Accra , Mar. 22, GNA - The Agricultural Development Bank (adb) has described as false an allegation that the Bank paid bribes to two members of Parliament who instituted a suit to restrain the Bank from making a public offering. The two legislators, Alexander Afenyo-Markin, the MP for Effutu and Dr Mark Assibey-Yeboah MP for New Juaben South, were last year accused of using the suit to bait the Bank to pay them huge sums of money, which many suggested was a blackmail. It was alleged the Bank paid out some GHa250,000.00 to Mr Afenyo-Markin to get him to withdraw the suit against the adb to enable the Bank commence its Initial Public Offering (IPO) to pave the way for the Bank to enlist on the Ghana Stock Exchange. But the Bank, in a communication to the solicitors of an anti-corruption advocacy group, Forum for the Protection of Public Funds (FPPF), who have indicated their readiness to petition the Speaker of Parliament and institute a suit against the lawmakers on the allegation, said that those allegations were 'spurious, disturbing and shocking'. The Ghana News Agency has cited that communication by the Bank dated March 4, 2016 and signed by M.K. Amoakohene, General Counsel for the Bank. The communication, which was a response to an earlier communication dated February 28, 2016 issued by the solicitors for the FPPF, Dubik, Onny and Associates, asking the adb to furnish it with the exact figure of the pay-outs made to the legislators. However, the Bank, in response, described the contents of the communication of solicitors of the FPPF as 'not only disturbing and shocking but appears to be a professionally tabulated pack of half-truths completely in sync with outright lies'. 'More shocking is the information on the payment USD 400,000 into the account of Mr Afenyo-Markin in South Africa and a further USD 500, 000 into a sister's accounts in the United States by the Bank. 'There is also a cedi component of GHa250,000.00 allegedly paid to Mr Afenyo-Markin in an act of extortion. Spurious as these allegations are, we cannot accept the fact that the Bank could misapply public funds in this reckless manner- a total of USD900, 000 being paid to one single person because there was a threat of court action against the Bank's IPO? 'These are calculated distractive acts intended to derail the IPO which has already seen enough upsets', said the Bank in the communication. The Bank said there was no way the court action could have thwarted issuance of its IPO and that it could not have under any circumstance apply that amount of money to get its public offer running through such an illegal means. 'There is no way the bank will employ that quantum of funds simply to get an IPO through by any such illegal means or that the process had been threatened by a court action and there was therefore the need to do something to get the process going. 'At any rate the court actions came by and the bank marshalled its legal brains and eventually dealt with the matter. 'Assuming without admitting that there was any such approach by Mr Afenyo-Markin, we wish to state categorically that no money from the bank has ever been paid or will ever be paid to anyone for this kind of cause', it said. 'We wish to state that the Bank has not paid any monies to Mr Afenyo-Markin or anyone connected to him'it concluded. Mr Afenyo-Markin in 2015 instituted a suit on the behalf of Dr Assibey-Yeboah, who had wanted the launch of the Adb's IPO stopped until Parliamentary approved the share floatation. But the Adb went ahead to issue the IPO despite a pending court case on the matter. However, the case was pulled out of court in June 29, 2015, days before the IPO was launched on July 3, 2015, prompting speculations Mr Afenyo-Markins had fleeced the bank of some monies. The perception was fuelled also by the release of a voice recording of the legislator chatting with a close friend, and who in the conversation insinuated that he was doing 'legal gymnastics' to get 'something' from a not very clear source. Subsequently, Mr Afenyo Markin was in October 2015 invited by the Criminal Investigative Department of the Ghana Police Service to make a statement on the matter, after three petitioners asked the CID to arrest him over the allegation. GNA 22.03.2016 LISTEN Accra, Mar. 22, GNA - Airtel Business, the Enterprise solutions sub brand of Airtel Ghana has hosted its second SME breakfast series for Small and Medium Enterprises (SME) within the Kumasi Metropolis. A statement issued in Accra by Mr Richard Ahiagble, Head, Corporate Communications and copied to the Ghana News Agency, said the ultimate purpose of empowering them is to face their internal and external business challenges while innovatively taking advantage of opportunities in country. The theme for the series is: 'Innovation - the wheels for driving today's business'. It said the session covered topics such as harnessing the transformational power of technology to grow businesses, human resource management processes and best practice in financing for SMEs amongst others. Mr Kwame Annor, HR Business Partner at Airtel Ghana, advised business owners on best practice and HR practices to harness the best from employees whilst urging the latter to work not only for their salaries but for the ultimate development of their employers. Mr Sebastian Yalley, Group Head, eBusiness, First Atlantic Bank, shared with participants the various ebusiness platforms in Ghana that they could use to ensure efficiency and effectiveness in their financial administrations. It recommended Airtel Money as the most preferred Mobile Money platform service in the country. 'As the leading provider of unparalleled solutions for SMEs in Ghana, Airtel brought together more than 100 business owners and decision makers from the business community in Kumasi under the same roof to engage, network and share ideas that will propel their business. The SME Business series provides a platform for SMEs to learn, benefit from the wide array of bespoke communication, connectivity and collaborative solutions we have at Airtel to enhance their businesses. Today's session has been truly impactful and we will be organising these sessions regularly to support our SME sector. Mrs Hannah Agbozo, Airtel's Director for Legal and Corporate Affairs, also urged participants to strive for excellence in their operations. It said 'the SME sector is critical to Ghana's economy contributing significantly to GDP and employment. GNA Gomoa-Amanful (C/R), March 22, GNA - Mr. Justice Peter Ansah, the Gomoa Area Organizer of the Red Cross Society of Ghana (RCSG), has expressed the need to curb the alarming rate of teenage pregnancy cases the nation was currently experiencing. Mr. Ansah said teenage pregnancy was affecting the social, economic and educational development of the country. He said this at a press conference at Gomoa-Amanful, after touring 12 towns and villages in his area of operation to educate the people, especially parents, guardians, teenage girls and boys on the negative effects of teenage pregnancy. Mr Ansah therefore called for the introduction of bye-laws and tough penalties for teenage boys and young men who influenced and impregnated teenage girls to ensure the social well-being of the girls. He called on all state organs charged with the responsibility for curbing teenage pregnancy to step up their sensitization activities in the urban towns, villages, the cities, schools and churches. He further urged all religious leaders and other well-organized bodies in the society to join the sensitization campaign. GNA Kumasi, March 22, GNA - A sales manager of Izwe Loans Company, Stephen Sarfo, has run into trouble with the law for defrauding another financial institution. He reportedly used stolen documents and photographs of an employee of the Ghana Education Service (GES) to access a loan of GH 5,400.00 from Ronik Ghana Limited. Sarfo was on Tuesday put before a Kumasi Circuit Court, presided over by Mr. Ekow Mensah, to answer the charge of defrauding. He pleaded not guilty and was granted a GH 10,800.00 bail to make his next appearance on April 25. Police Chief Inspector Felix Akowuah told the court that the offence was committed in June, last year. The crime was uncovered after the Controller and Accountant General's Department started the loan instalment deductions on behalf of Ronik from the salary of the innocent GES worker. GNA Accra, March 22, GNA - Small and growing companies in the agribusiness sector have identified lack of appropriate human capital as a major challenge for entrepreneurs, aside access to capital. At an event organized by the Mobile Business Clinic of the Lundin Foundation in Accra, Mr. Randall Kempner, Executive Director of the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE), said access to talents or human resource was a major challenge facing small business. He pointed out that for a company to grow, it needed access to skilled human capital that would justify investment, however most small businesses did not get such talent because they wanted to work for bigger companies, government or NGOs where they could get stable employment and be paid better. ANDE is a support network, focusing on helping entrepreneurs to overcome such challenges. Mr Kempner said 'For small companies in emerging markets, it is hard to attract that kind of talent. We hope we can help to pitch to such talent that it does make sense to work in small companies. Our network also helps the companies to help build talent with the staff they already have.' Anna Samake, Portfolio Manager West and Central Africa at Lundin Foundation, the organization that runs the MBC programme, reiterated that many early stage agribusinesses in Ghana struggled to get talent, especially for the middle management level, a challenge that the MBC helped to solve. The MBC, which started out as a training programme, is now an accelerator programme that works to provide an enabling environment for small agribusinesses by providing access to comprehensive business solutions including access to talent, business development services, innovation and technology and financing. MBC an organization that support businesses with start up support together with ANDE helps entrepreneurs by assisting them to get access to financing, talent, access to lawyers or specific raw materials based on the needs of the organization As part of activities for the day, ten small agribusinesses had the opportunity to pitch to potential investors for access to capital for their businesses. Their pitches were assessed by a five-member panel of ANDE member organisations. The judges were Mr. Anthony Annan from Impact Capital, Mr. Baafour Out-Boateng-Investisseurs & Partenaires (I&P), Mr. Alex Ariho, CEO of Unibrain and Hamdiya Ismaila from Venture Capital. The ten companies that competed in the pitching event included Success Avenue Farms- a Catfish farm, Cheshgro, Darsfield Village Farms, Virgin Farms Limited- producers of fresh fruits and vegetables, Joecarl, Uni Nuk Ventures, SMD Oils, Savannah Seeds Services Limited, Esatwood Farms and Agro Africa Limited. Three winners were selected at the end of the competition. The overall winner, Agro Africa Limited would receive six months of full accelerator services from MBC and its partners as well as access to the MBC Fund for investment into their company. The first and second runners up; Uni Nuk Ventures and Darsfield Village Farms will also receive accelerator or incubation services from MBC depending on their individual needs. Quoting Dr. Mensah Otabil, Ms. Samake noted that there was no difference between Ghanaian, Malian, Ivorian, American or Canadian youth in terms of smartness and knowledge; the only difference is the environment and urged African countries to provide the enabling environment for entrepreneurs to thrive. 'If we want these entrepreneurs to emerge, and create the businesses we want them to create, jobs and values for all the stakeholders, we need to create many MBCs, enabling environment, ecosystems that gives them the comprehensive and holistic approach necessary to turn from business ideas to business models and to sustainable companies and corporations.' GNA From: George-Ramsey Benamba, GNA Special Correspondent, Abidjan, Cote d' Ivoire Abidjan, March 22, GNA - President John Dramani Mahama on Tuesday called on African countries to be vigilant in order to ward off any imminent terrorists attacks in the region. "We live in dangerous times and we therefore need to be more vigilant by sharing useful information that will help us resist any security threats in our countries." President Mahama who is primarily in the Ivorian capital to attend the fourth African Chief Executive Officers'(CEO) forum took time to call on President Alassane Quattara of Cote d' Ivoire to commiserate with them for the recent death of 19 people at Grand Bassa terrorist attacks. The attacks followed a similar attack on a prominent hotel in Ougadougou, capital of the Republic of Burkina Faso a couple of months ago. President Mahama said although he sent a delegation as soon as the attacks occurred, it was also fair for him to console his Ivorian counterpart, once he was in the country. The President said once the attacks occurred in different dimensions in the sub-region, sharing of security tips was useful to 'dismiss' their common assailants in the sub-region. He commended the security network in Cote d' Ivoire for speedily dispatching the attackers and for restoring peace and calm in the country, just few days after the attacks. The President said fighting terrorism collectively was paramount to pave way for economic growth and development in the African continent. He said it was unfortunate that the attacks occurred at the time that West African countries were forging ahead for integration and gave the assurance that in spite of that, they would continue to put in workable measures that would propel them for high economic growth. President Mahama called on the development partners to support with the elimination of such terrorist attacks to create enabling environment for the development of business and commerce in the region. President Quattara on the other hand commended President Mahama for the support and called for closer ties that would help eliminate the canker from the continent. GNA 22.03.2016 LISTEN Accra, March 22, GNA - Cleanacwa, a non-governmental organization (NGO) dedicated to improving water, sanitation and hygiene issues, has provided boreholes for five communities of the Suhum District in the Eastern region. The communities are Akropongfong, Ahafi, Kpladey, Addo Nkwanta and Koko Junction. Mr Sangu Delle, Founder of the NGO disclosed this at the end of a health walk in Accra. The walk, which started from the 'A' and 'C' Mall at East Legon through some principal streets of Accra, ended at the starting point. It formed part of activities marking this year's World Water Day celebration and also to help raise money for some water projects in Ayensuano and Suhum Districts in the Eastern Region. World Water Day is celebrated on March 22 every year Mr Delle said so far the NGO had provided about 120 boreholes to some selected communities throughout the country. He said last year, the NGO managed to raise an amount of 13,000 dollars through the climbing of Mountain Kilimanjaro, to support some water projects in Ayensuano and Suhum Districts. Mr Delle said the NGO would continue to work tirelessly to ensure that every community had access to clean water by the year 2030. Mr Emmanuel Agyarko, Member of Parliament for Ayawaso West Wuogon, who led the walk, commended Cleanacwa for the good work they were doing. He urged Ghanaians to exercise their franchise by taking part in the November 7 polls, and warned the youth to desist from all forms of negative tendencies that might bring chaos during the elections. GNA Accra, March 22, GNA - Mr Napoleon Oduro, Vice President of the Ghana National Association of Poultry Farmers has called for a national policy for the sector to enhance its operation and revitalize the industry. Mr Oduro said the country had pieces of consultative documents without a clear-cut policy for the industry, and called for a legislative instrument to protect the sector and increase poultry production in the country. He was speaking during a panel discussion in Accra on the Ghana Journalists Association programme dubbed: 'Business Advocate' on Ghana Television supported by BUSAC Fund, DANIDA, United States Agency for International Development and the European Union. Mr Oduro said in 2014, government launched the Ghana Broiler Revitalization Project to boost local capacity in the production, processing and marketing of broiler chicken but failed to back it up with the needed legislative instrument. The project sought to develop the poultry industry along the poultry value chain and ensure that production farms, input suppliers, hatcheries, feed mills, veterinary service producers, processors, marketers and consumers all played their roles to ensure self-sufficiency. The project was also to revive the local broiler industry between 2010 and 2012 during which the country had imported approximately 200,000 metric tonnes of chicken valued at 200 million dollars which is equivalent to 2.6 million chicken per week. Mr Oduro said the country was deficient in her meat and milk requirements and that the present levels of livestock and poultry production were woefully inadequate to meet the animal protein needs of the population. He explained that the situation had resulted in Ghana becoming a net importer of frozen meat of which poultry meat constituted the highest proportion. He said the Association was calling for government's support to expand the production of broilers locally since imported ones were taking over the market. Mr Oduro explained that the lack of production materials and high cost of production had raised the prices of local broilers, making imported ones gain a larger market share due to their comparatively low prices. 'The Ghana National Association of poultry farmers was calling for the implementation of government policy which mandates importers to patronise 40 per cent of local poultry products while reserving the right to import 60 per cent of foreign ones', he added. Dr Anthony Akunzule, Deputy Director, Veterinary Services of the Ministry of Food and Agriculture said the target of the project was to produce 30,000 metric tonnes of broiler meat with an expected increase to 60,000 metric tonnes by 2016. These targets, he said, would progressively reduce Ghana's meat import burden to 40 per cent by 2016, in line with MOFA's national livestock strategy policy to increase the supply of meat, animal and dairy products from the current aggregate level of 30 per cent to 40 per cent of the national requirement by 2016. Dr Akunzule expressed the belief that increasing local livestock and poultry production in the country was the way forward in ensuring not only self-sufficiency in meat production but also the creation of employment opportunities for the youth in poverty alleviation. Mr Papa Kow Bartels, Director, Logistics and Value Chain, Ministry of Trade and Industry said the project would stem the current growing imports of poultry products, create employment, sustain the local poultry industry, guarantee food security, and increase supply of animal protein. He noted that the poultry industry was a private enterprise and as such it was imperative for the Association to strategize new ways of reviving the industry. GNA 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. business WHO red flag on Cadila to cost Rs 30-35cr revenues: Analyst The World Health Organization (WHO) has issued a Notice of Concern to Cadila Healthcare over a unit in its Moraiya plant that manufactures vaccines. you are here: This morning, Kathmandu posted a NZ$9.4 million net profit after tax for the first half of 2016. Early last year, Kathmandu Holdings [ASX:KMD] released their very disappointing second-half results for 2015. The retailer reported a net loss of NZ$1.8 million, down from NZ$11.4 million profit a year earlier. The group blamed the hugely disappointing Christmas trading period at the time. KMD tried to discount excess stock left over from winters end. Yet this strategy just ended up hurting their margins. At the time, KMD was depending on Easter and winter sales periods to save them. These days, however, it would seem that KMD has been able to turn things around. This morning, KMD posted a NZ$9.4 million net profit after tax for the first half of 2016. It seems KMDs struggles with inventory woes are far behind them. The group was able to increase sales for the first half of 2016 by 9%, to NZ$195.9 million. Same store sales rose 3.8% on a constant currency basis. Kathmandu CEO Xavier Simonet commented: The results for the first half of FY2016 were in line with our expectations. Operating margin improvement was achieved as a result of increased full price sell through combined with implementing planned cost efficiencies. The slightly stronger Australian dollar also helped boost profits. Australian sales growth was up 8.9%; converted into NZ dollars, sales growth bumped up by 11.7%. Online sales saw improvements across all countries. Overall online sales growth increased 23%, contributing 6.6% to total sales. KMD is expecting full-year net profits after tax to be in the region of NZ$30.2 million. However, this will depend on the success of its Easter and winter campaigns. While it is good to be on track with our plan for the first half, as in ever year, the full year result is highly dependent on the sales and margin achievement in our Easter and Winter campaigns. We have just commenced our Easter Sale so it is too early to provide an update on this promotion, Simonet said. KMDs share price opened up 3.2% this morning, to $1.517 per share. Yet shares have been slightly receding since market open. Source: Google Finance From instore to online KMD could very well be on track in meeting their net profit targets. However, they may soon need to address an issue facing many instore retailers the threat of online stores. While KMD does have online stores for customers, it only makes up 6.6% of total sales. Right now, the biggest thing shoppers care about is price. Research conducted by a global technology company, Pitney Bowes, found that 74% of Australian consumers shop for price. And thats why a lot of Australian shoppers are buying from international retailers. The IBM 2015 Global Smarter Consumer Study showed that brand loyalty could become a thing of the past. The study surveyed 1,800 Australians about their online consumer habits. The study found that consumers are increasingly more confident shopping online, with purchases increasing by 25%. This was pointed to as an indicator of consumers willingness to spend more. And one fifth of those surveyed said their last purchase was made online. This just reaffirmed the trend towards online spending. But what is even more damaging, I believe, to retailers like KMD was that brand loyalty was decreasing. Australian shoppers said they were less loyal to brand names, preferring to go with the cheaper option. Brand loyalty was sitting around 13% in 2014 but has come down to 10% in 2015. Therefore, its imperative that KMD prepares itself for the new breed of shoppers to come. If not, then we might see KMDs profits swing again into negative territory. Harje Ronngard, Junior Analyst, Money Morning PS: Investing in small cap stocks appeals to many investors. Small cap stocks are big enough to have relevant financials to evaluate and compare, just like a blue chip. And theyre generally not as expensive as microcaps though thats not always the case. With these potential benefits, small cap companies could be a way to get started in the investment world. Money Mornings small cap specialist, Sam Volkering, believes there are three great stock opportunities worth looking at right now. Sams report, Top Three Aussie Small-cap Stocks, can help you get started. In it, hell show you how to find small caps that could return 2050% in a single day. To get your free copy of Sams report, click here. March 22, 2016 Mr. Trump Goes To Washington Donald Trump toured Washington yesterday for backroom meetings with Republican party bigwigs, for pandering to the Israel lobby and for an examination by the neoconned Washington Post editors. The Republican party has given up its resistance to Trump. See for example the Republican functionary John Feehery who opined on February 29 that Trump is an authoritarian, and: We beat the Nazis and the Japanese in the World War II and protected freedom and democracy by beating the Soviet Union in the Cold War. It would be a damn shame if we lost it all by giving in to the authoritarian impulse in this election. The same guy only twenty-two days later: Republican voters can support the nominee picked by a majority of the voters, they can sit this election out, or they can start a third party. The last two choices give the White House to the Clinton machine. I am not happy that Donald Trump could be our nominee, but I am learning to live with that distinct possibility. That, in short, is the revised position of the Republican party. It has given up on fighting Trump and will now propel him into the White House. What will happen thereafter? Who knows? Trump is pure marketing. A salesperson throughout. This video explains how his linguistics works - words with only very few syllables, strong buzzword at the end of the sentences. It is fourth grade reading level language. Exactly the level needed to sell his product to the U.S. public and the Republican party. He is an expert in doing this. But what product does Trump sell? Does he know it? Does he know how that product functions? Is he serious in what he claims that product to be. I have my doubts. So has Par Lang. He remarks on yesterday's Trump appearance at the U.S. Zionists beauty contests: Trump's pander was so extreme that one ponders the possibility that he was mocking the audience. Trump probably does not even care what political product he sells. For now he is selling the salesman himself. Buy Trump and all problems will be solved. He does this convincingly. Most of what he said so far is just nonsense and solely for marketing purpose. There are only few consistent political lines that did not (yet) change over time. These are the lines that rile the Washington Post editors: Donald Trump endorsed an unabashedly noninterventionist approach to world affairs Monday during a day-long tour of Washington, casting doubt on the need for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and expressing skepticism about a muscular U.S. military presence in Asia. ... At what point do you say, Hey, we have to take care of ourselves? Trump said in the editorial board meeting. I know the outer world exists, and Ill be very cognizant of that. But at the same time, our country is disintegrating, large sections of it, especially the inner cities. Trump said U.S. involvement in NATO may need to be significantly diminished in the coming years, breaking with nearly seven decades of consensus in Washington. We certainly cant afford to do this anymore, he said, adding later, NATO is costing us a fortune, and yes, were protecting Europe with NATO, but were spending a lot of money. To this the editors opine: Unfortunately, the visit provided no reassurance regarding Mr. Trumps fitness for the presidency. Im not a radical person, he told us as he was leaving. But his answers left little doubt how radical a risk the nation would be taking in entrusting the White House to him. But who are the real radicals, the real radical risk? The salesperson Trump or the neoconned Washington Post publisher and editors? You may judged that from this excerpt at the end of the talk's transcript: [FREDERICK RYAN JR., WASHINGTON POST PUBLISHER]: You [MUFFLED] mentioned a few minutes earlier here that you would knock ISIS. Youve mentioned it many times. Youve also mentioned the risk of putting American troop in a danger area. If you could substantially reduce the risk of harm to ground troops, would you use a battlefield nuclear weapon to take out ISIS? TRUMP: I dont want to use, I dont want to start the process of nuclear. Remember the one thing that everybody has said, Im a counterpuncher. Rubio hit me. Bush hit me. When I said low energy, hes a low-energy individual, he hit me first. I spent, by the way he spent 18 million dollars worth of negative ads on me. Thats putting [MUFFLED] RYAN: This is about ISIS. You would not use a tactical nuclear weapon against ISIS? [CROSSTALK] ... The salesperson stopped there. Instead of answering that question Trump asked for personal introduction to the people taking part in the event. To nuke some lunatics in Toyota technicals is not Trumps idea of his product. He would not sell that. Not even for gaining the support of the WaPo neocons. Buying Trump is buying a pig in a poke. One does not know what one might get. But I find it unlikely that he would pursue an interventionist policy. Then again - George W. Bush also pretended to be a non-interventionist - until that changed. But Trumps current non-interventionist position is a big contrast to Hillary Clinton. She unashamedly offers her well known toxic brew of neo-liberal and neo-conservative orthodoxy. She will wage war, Trump may. As a foreigner that is the decisive difference to me. But if I were a voter in the U.S. my position would be based on economic policies. There Bernie Sanders is surely preferable to Trump and very much preferable to Clinton. Posted by b on March 22, 2016 at 17:45 UTC | Permalink Comments next page next page Investors, listen up: One year of underperformance does not necessarily mean a fund will lose investors money in the long run. Investors who dumped funds after short periods of underperformance would have missed out on spectacular gains when the fund performance rebounded in the years after, according to data from Morningstar Direct. Records in Morningstar Direct show even the top funds awarded with a positive Morningstar rating of Gold, Silver or Bronze have periods of underperformance. But if you stick with these top rated funds, trusting the analysts view, in the long run they deliver stellar returns, proving that investors might not let a market slump change their long-term investment plan. Buy low sell high is an obvious mantra but few investors actually do it. When markets are low their confidence is also low so they wait. But this is the time you should be diving in, head of investing at AXA Self Investor Adrian Lowcock said recently. This situation describes what happened in 2008 to JPMorgan Emerging Europe Equity Fund, a now Bronzed Rated fund run by manager Oleg Biryulyov. This fund seeks to provide long-term capital growth by investing primarily in equity of companies in European emerging markets countries, including Russia. Before the global financial crisis in 2008 the fund had built a strong performance record, winning 44.5% in 2007 and 29.9% in 2006. But when the global financial crisis swept the world in 2008 many countries in emerging Europe proved vulnerable because of high levels of private debt to foreign banks and foreign-currency exposure. And the JP Morgan Emerging Europe Equities fund was hit particularly hard, losing 61.8% in that year alone. Proving what a bad year it was across the entire sector; even with that loss, the fund still outperformed the MSCI Emerging Europe index by 4.7%. However, a year after the slump the fund rebounded strongly by 102.6% in 2009, beating its benchmark by a sizable 43%. Then the fund maintained a steady positive return of 30.5% in 2010 and 22.3% in 2012, proving fund managers successful longer-term investments approach. Investors reaction to this outperformance, in 2009 to 2010, investors bought more than 39 million of this fund. Investors who have invested in this fund continuously would have earned profits in this period of time. The same scenario can be found with the top rated developed market equities funds. Looking back in the past 10 years, AXA Framlington Monthly Income Fund, CF Morant Wright Japan Fund, Schroder European Opportunities Fund did not rebound as significant as the emerging Europe fund, given the less volatile nature of these sectors. However, these positively rated developed market equities funds illustrate a strong long-term track record despite a one year loss. The AXA Framlington Monthly Income fund was the strongest example. The fund underperformed in 2007, losing 13.2%, but since then it posted consecutive positive returns, gaining 30.3% in 2009 and 16.3% in 2010. The now Bronze Rated fund presents a strong 9.9% three years annualised return and a 8.6% five years annualised return. Another longer term capital growth funds, CF Morant Wright Japan Fund also has a strong long-term annualised return despite of its loss in 2006. The fund had a 7.6% three years annualised return and a 9.1% five years annualised return. Schroder European Opportunities fund had a 7% five years annualised return. The fund gained 20.6% in 2012 and 31.8% in 2013. Which Funds Could Be a Buying Opportunity? Examples above effectively prove that even highly rated funds can have bad years once in a while. However they manage to outperform the market over the long term. Therefore investors should not fault a fund during periods of underperformance. If a fund receives a positive Morningstar rating of Gold, Silver, or Bronze, it means Morningstar analysts think highly of the fund and expect it to outperform over a full market cycle of at least five years. When these positive rated funds experience a loss, it might be a bargain to be included in your portfolio. Amid the recent market volatility, quite a few funds posted losses, however Morningstar analysts still retained their conviction in these funds. Some Gold, Silver and Bronze funds have a one-star rating, meaning that they have significantly underperformed in recent years compared to the peer group average. So a fund with a one star rating but a Gold, Silver or Bronze award might indicate that this could be a good opportunity for long-term investors to buy the fund at a discount. Below, we have identified three of these funds using Morningstars free Fund Screener. Legg Mason Royce US Small Cap Opportunity Fund This Silver Rated fund has struggled in 2015 after three years of consecutive gains. Investors should not be disheartened by its underperformance in 2015 as it has a strong 6.9% five years annualised return. Prior to 2015, the fund had a stellar three years, gaining 3.9% in 2014, 37.9% in 2013 and 16.2% in 2012. Morningstar analysts Lena Tsymbaluk says that this fund is a strong offering within the Morningstar US Small-Cap Equity Category, however warning that investors must be able to tolerate the extra risks that come with the approach. CF Miton Defensive Multi Asset Fund Despite this Bronze Rated fund losing cash in 2013, down 0.4%, the fund delivered consecutive gains in 2014 and 2015 by 2.9% and 1.9%. The fund has a 1.7% five years annualised return and a 3% 10 years annualised return. Morningstar analyst Randal Goldsmith says that this fund is a strong choice for investors seeking real returns and capital preservation. The fund managers bring a solid track record from PFS Darwin Multi Asset and M&G Cautious Multi Asset, which show cumulative outperformance of the GBP Moderate Allocation category. Neptune Global Equity Fund With a Bronze Rating, this fund has posted consecutive gains since 2012. In 2013, the fund delivered its best performance in four years by 22.1%. The fund has a 3.4% 10 years annualised return. Benefiting from an excellent fund manager in Robin Geffen, who has more than 30 years of investment experience, this fund remains a good choice for investors who are cognisant of its risks, Morningstar analysts say. One of the warning lights that theres too much oil around is no longer flashing, adding to signs that global crude markets are finally on the mend. Just a month ago, oil traders were weighing up whether to park unwanted crude aboard tankers while BP Chief Executive Officer Bob Dudley joked that swimming pools might be needed to hold the excess. Yet instead of offering bumper profits, as in previous market gluts, stockpiling barrels on ships would result in a financial loss, just as it has done for the past six months, in a sign the current surplus may not be as big as feared. Declining U.S. oil production coupled with disruptions in OPEC members Iraq and Nigeria have helped revive crude to $40 a barrel, leading the International Energy Agency to conclude that the worst of the rout is over. Contrary to expectations that tankers would be needed, onshore storage hasnt been exhausted, according to Torbjoern Kjus, an analyst at DNA in Oslo. Theres less going into floating storage rather than more in the past few months, Kjus said. Fundamentals are gradually improving. The worst of the price rout was just sentiment. A crude trader would lose about $7.6 million if they wanted to park 2 million barrels at sea for six months, more than double the loss they would have swallowed in February, according to data compiled by Bloomberg from E.A. Gibson Shipbrokers Ltd. and oil futures exchanges. The losses from storage partly reflect that hiring a tanker has become more expensive amid robust demand for crude. Day rates on the industrys benchmark route -- to Japan from Saudi Arabia -- advanced to $60,003, according to data from the Baltic Exchange in London. Thats about 21 percent more than a month earlier. In dollars-per-barrel terms, the cost of using the ships to store for six months advanced to $6.80 from $6.16 over the month, E.A. Gibson estimates. Yet the economics also give an insight into the oil market itself. Storing crude at sea becomes profitable when the spread between the current price and longer-term ones, known as contango, is wide enough to cover the cost of hiring a tanker. The gap between first and seven-month futures narrowed to $2.78 a barrel on Monday, down from $5.07 a barrel on Jan. 29. Its simply nowhere near enough to cover the cost, Ted Petrone, vice chairman of tanker operator Navios Maritime Holdings Inc. said on March 3. Its a distinct shift from the market conditions prevalent a month ago, when Chris Bake, a senior executive at Vitol Group, said that with primary storage sites pretty much full, it was probably a good time to be a vessel owner. The biggest change between now and a month ago is oil supply thats been unexpectedly curbed. One pipeline linking the the northern part of Iraq to the Mediterranean Sea halted in mid-February, while another from Nigeria was hit by sabotage. U.S. oil production is threatening to drop below 9 million barrels a day for the first time since November 2014. From those three locations alone, combined output was restricted by about 1 million barrels a day compared with a month earlier, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Thats about half the global surplus. Since then, flow from Iraqs north has started to resume. Trading houses including Vitol, Koch Supply & Trading and Glencore, plus the in-house trading arms of BP and Royal Dutch Shell, collectively made billions of dollars from 2008 to 2009 stockpiling crude at sea. At the peak of the floating storage spree, sheltered anchorages in the North Sea, the Persian Gulf, the Singapore Strait and off South Africa each hosted dozens of supertankers. The receding risk that storage tanks will overflow encouraged Goldman Sachs in its view that the worst for oil prices is over. Your probability of having a containment issue, of blowing out storage, is starting to decline, Jeff Currie, New York-based head of commodities research at Goldman Sachs Group Inc. said in a Bloomberg Television interview. If you want to know why its so hard to find good help these days, visit your local elementary school. Spend some time in a third-grade reading class. No, not because prison planners use reading scores to predict future demand. Thats an urban myth. But whether a child can read in third grade does predict whether he or she will graduate from high school. Thats important for employers who understand that good employees are a predictor of a companys success. Unfortunately, Texas reading scores in general, and Harris Countys in particular, signal a gloomy economic future. Statewide, 64 percent of third-graders do not meet reading standards. Harris County scores a little better, with 39 percent of children reading at grade level, according to the Center for Public Policy Priorities. The primary reason for the low scores is that Texas does not guarantee free full-day pre-kindergarten education, which means economically disadvantaged children are behind before they start public school, and teachers can only do so much to make up the deficit. In too many cases, the kids never catch up. The trouble escalates when they try to transition to high school, and about 10 percent have to repeat the ninth grade. After that, 8 percent dont finish high school, and too often they spend their lives mired in poverty. If a child does graduate from high school, half dont go to college. And among those who do, 52 percent dont finish within six years, according to the center. Too often, a young person who is the first in his or her family to attend college doesnt have the money for tuition and books or the social network to thrive. The result is a breakdown in the labor market. Forty-seven percent of Texas jobs require a bachelors degree, but only 19 percent of the workforce over the age of 25 has one, according to the national education group Achieve. Meanwhile, 48 percent of workers have nothing more than a high school diploma, but only 36 percent of jobs accept applicants with less than an associates degree. These numbers show we have a long way to go to meet our education goals in Texas, said Bill Hammond, president of the Texas Association of Business. State-funded education is failing at the same time that businesses are closing down apprenticeship programs, in-house training and contracts with labor unions that once created a steady stream of qualified workers. Instead, employers are pressuring state lawmakers and community college boards to train workers at the taxpayers expense. Intervention after public school, though, comes too late if there arent enough high school graduates. Thats why employers need to demand that state lawmakers fulfill the Texas Constitutions requirement to make suitable provision for the support and maintenance of an efficient system of public free schools. Per-student spending makes a difference. The top 25 performing school districts in Texas spent $7,372 a year per student on average, while the bottom 25 districts averaged $4,875, according to the Center for Public Policy Priorities. Harris County spent the statewide average of $5,461. Successful districts invested the extra cash in full-time pre-kindergarten and outperformed those that didnt. Schools that offer high school courses that qualify for college credit also produced more successful students. These well-known truths, though, mean nothing to the Republican majority that controls the Texas Legislature. They keep cutting per-student spending to reap the short-term political rewards for cutting taxes. In 2011, they cut funding because of the Great Recession. In 2013, they restored some of the money, but not all it. Then in 2015, when the state had plenty of money, conservative leaders decided it was more important to cut property taxes than to make Texas schools whole again. School districts recognized that lawmakers were failing to make suitable provision for public schools and sued. The state Supreme Court is expected to uphold at least part of a lower courts finding that state education funding is inadequate, unequal and in need of an overhaul. The courts decision in the coming weeks will be the signal for civic-minded business people to ask lawmakers to pass a comprehensive , long-term solution to Texas education crisis. Thats going to entail raising taxes, but we know that investing in an educated population fuels a successful economy, just as skilled workers drive profitable businesses. Right-minded lawmakers will need political cover to do whats necessary at a time when oil revenues are down, and pressure is rising to cut taxes. Business people can shape the debate by making clear whats at stake, namely, Texas economic future. ROCHESTER, Minn. -- Medical students are more prone to alcohol abuse than their peers not attending medical school, especially if they are young, single and under a high debt load. Thats according to a study on medical student burnout by researchers at Mayo Clinic. The findings appear in the journal Academic Medicine. Our findings clearly show there is reason for concern, says Liselotte Dyrbye, M.D., Mayo Clinic internist and senior author of the paper. We recommend institutions pursue a multifaceted solution to address related issues with burnout, the cost of medical education and alcohol abuse. Mayo researchers surveyed 12,500 medical students, and one-third of those students responded. Approximately 1,400 of that subgroup experienced clinical alcohol abuse or dependence. Nationally, that translates to about one-third of those responding, compared to only 16 percent of peers not in medical school, and double the rate of alcohol abuse or dependence of surgeons, U.S. physicians or the general public based on earlier research by this team. Burnout factors such as emotional exhaustion or feelings of depersonalization were all highly associated with alcohol abuse or dependence among the medical students. Three other factors were independently associated: -- a younger age than most peers in medical school, -- being unmarried, -- amount of educational debt No statistical difference was found between differing years of medical school or between men and women. Researchers say the average cost of medical school from 1995 to 2014 increased by 209 percent at private colleges and 286 percent at public schools. They say physicians graduating with a medical degree in 2014 had an average of $180,000 in educational debt. In our paper we recommend wellness curricula for medical schools, identifying and remediating factors within the learning environment contributing to stress, and removal of barriers to mental health services, says first author and Mayo Medical School student Eric Jackson. Other co-authors include Dr. Tait Shanafelt, Omar Hasan and Daniel Satele of Mayo Clinic. The research was funded by the American Medical Association and Mayo Clinic. --- Distributed by Tribune Content Agency The Petroleum Academy had the continued goal of trying to make the classroom more reflective of the oil and gas industry. We have been fortunate to have a good response from the local oil industry -- both in the classroom and giving the students the opportunity to view oilfield equipment. Schlumberger employees brought an open/cased hole unit to all four schools as part of the presentation on logging by Daniel Martinez with SM Energy. We had an actual tailgate safety meeting that helped emphasize that every job begins with safety. Special thanks to the logging crew who explained both the rigging up process and also showed and opened up several logging tools. Inside the unit, the engineer displayed how logs are recorded in the logging unit. Liberty Lifts visited all the classes, and presented the Pump Jack 101 class that they provide to company people when they make field presentations. Thanks to Trey Aguilar for bringing several other speakers as well as for the different presentations. Even though it was impractical to bring a pumpjack to class, the students familiarity with these helped make the instruction better understood. One particular aspect of the talk was how the production side (midstream sector) of the oil industry is less up and down than the drilling and exploration side (upstream sector). The timing of this visit was very good because the following week students had the opportunity to visit the Chevron Training Facility. After a job safety assessment, they were able to tour and see pumpjacks as well as complete oil leases set up with training components. Some students were able to un-stuff, and re-stuff a stuffing box. We hope to have more hands-on and site visits next year for the Petroleum II classes that are going to be more in-depth. Small tool training will be taught in these classes. Thanks to Robert Johns and Monte Duncan from Chevron for setting up the visit and guiding the students at the facility. This week students will be viewing a light plant to see a diesel engine as well as a common piece of rental equipment in the oil field that is directly related to job-site safety. The Midland Reporter-Telegram has posted pictures of the visits, and we sincerely thank them for their continued support. Students at the two freshman campuses had the opportunity for their first-year class to count as dual credit with Midland College. We believe this is the first time MISD freshmen have been able to earn college credit. Our partnership with Midland College is essential in providing opportunity for our students, whether they are college-bound or career-focused. College credit helps all of the students, but for our career-focused students this partnership is how they can earn certifications in diesel mechanics, automotive mechanics, welding and oilfield technician. We are also working with Texas Tech University to get people from several of their departments to visit us to share the opportunities such as their Legal and Landman programs that many of our students may not be aware of because one of the academys goals is to make students aware of opportunities beyond engineering and drilling. Anthony Frost is coordinator of Midland ISDs Petroleum Academy. MISDs CFO is award finalist David Garcia, Midland ISDs chief financial officer, was a finalist for the Texas Association of School Business Officials annual Commitment to Excellence Award. Garcia has been a member of TASBO since 1989. He currently serves as chair of the Governmental Relations Committee and was board president 2012-13. He has been in school district administration for 26 years and has a bachelor of business administration in accounting from Texas Tech University. Frankie Jackson of Cypress-Fairbanks ISD won the 2016 award and Mike Singleton of Dallas ISD was the other finalist, according to a press release from TASBO. The winning district will receive $3,000; the finalists districts will receive $1,000. Science teacher to be recognized The West Texas Geology Foundation is seeking nominations for the Most Outstanding Science Teacher 2016. Teachers of any scientific discipline in grades seen through 12 are eligible for nomination. The winning teacher, selected by the foundation board, will receive $2,000 ; the sponsoring school also will receive $2,000. Nomination should be one single-spaced page describing the teachers qualifications: subjects and ages taught, teaching methods, learning environment created by the nominee, participation by the nominee and/or their students in science competitions or other events; other activities or extra effort on the part of the teacher. Nominations also must include teachers school and school system; name of principle; sponsors name, email address, phone number and relationship to the nominee. Nominations must be postmarked by April 15 and mailed to West Texas Geology Foundation, attention David Crass, P.O. Box 1595, Midland Texas 79702. Past honorees are, Karen Wilson, Odessa High School; Chuck Bell, Trinity School; Rick Day, Andrews Middle School; Benji Resaldo, Marfa School District; and Shella Condino, Presidio High School. Music scholarship applicants sought Permian Basin Opera (formerly Midland Opera Theater) is accepting applications for its Opera for Tomorrow Scholarship for the 2016-17 school year. The winner of the $2,000 scholarship will be determined by audition. Past winners are Marenda Natera of Fort Stockton and Rachel Holder and Alec Williams, both of Odessa. Eligibility requirements and application packet are available at www.mypbo.org. The deadline to apply is May 1. UTPB launches online nursing program ODESSA -- The University of Texas of the Permian Basin has launched fully online registered nurse-to-bachelor of nursing degree program. The program id designed specifically for working nurses and blends the science and art of patient care, according to a press release from UTPB. It program can be completed in as few as 12 months and is accredited by the Commission on Collegiate Nursing Education. Enrollment is now open for the first class start date of May 9. For more information or to apply, visit http://degree.utpb.edu/Programs/1252/online-rn-to-bsn. Carver Center, ECHS receive recognition Carver Center and Early College High School @ MC have been selected by Educational Results Partnership and the Institute for Productivity in Education as two of 713 public schools in Texas to receive the title of 2015 Honor Roll school. The Honor Roll is part of a national effort to identify higher-performing schools that highlight successful practices and improve outcomes for students. These schools have demonstrated consistent high levels of student academic achievement, improvement in achievement levels over time and reduction in achievement gaps among student populations, according to a press release from Midland ISD. For high schools, the recognition also includes measures of college- readiness. The Honor Roll has two awards: Star Schools (with significant populations of socio-economically disadvantaged students) and Scholar Schools (do not have a significant population of socio-economically disadvantaged students). ECHS is being recognized as a Star School and Carver Center is being recognized as a Scholar School. Star Schools are those with significant populations of socio-economically disadvantaged students that have shown a significant increase in grade-level proficiency over time. Scholar Schools are schools that are showing significant levels of academic achievement, but do not have a significant socio-economically disadvantaged student population. MISD board now to meet at Bowie Midland ISD school board meetings now will be held at the auditorium of Bowie Fine Arts Academy, 805 Elk St. The auditorium is located in the southeast area of the campus and is accessible from the parking lot off A Street. MISD Board of Trustees meetings begin promptly at 5:30 p.m. Meeting agendas are posted on the Midland ISD website. Source: Midland ISD Having already endured the bulk of the spring break crunch, the Alamo started work Monday on two of dozens of emergency upgrades scheduled for construction in the year ahead. The $5 million in improvements to begin this week include installation of high-speed fiber-optic cable for Internet and Wi-Fi service on the roof of the Long Barrack and replacement of a concrete porch canopy at the front entrance of the Alamo Research Center. Both projects are expected to continue through the week. The Alamo will continue to be open for business. The work should not interfere with visitation, said Brittany Eck, press secretary with the Texas General Land Office, which oversees the state complex. Crews will place scaffolding by the mission-era Long Barrack for worker safety, she said. Staff and visitors at the research center will be able to enter that facility through Alamo Hall while work on the front entrance is underway. Other projects planned this spring and summer include replacement of interior doors in the Alamo gift shop with fire-rated historical replica doors; a first phase of renovation of the Alamo Research Center, including re-roofing and carpet replacement; construction of a wheelchair-accessible restroom in Alamo Hall; and renovation of public restrooms at the 4.2-acre complex. Drainage improvements around the gift shop, to help reduce moisture damage to the 1930s structure, also are planned this summer. The Alamo, which charges no admission, plans to provide temporary restrooms while the permanent ones are being renovated in the summer. Long lines of students and families traveling for spring break had formed last week at the popular downtown historic site, which welcomes about 1.6 million visitors annually. An exhibit at the shrine featuring a famous painting of Texian leader Ben Milam and about 30 documents tied to the 1835 Battle of Bexar will run through May 29. Other emergency upgrades planned for the shrine include a mechanical, electrical and plumbing assessment of the entire complex; a landscape study to review plantings, pavement and outdoor furnishings; a topographic survey focusing on drainage; and removal of an 8-by-10-foot audio booth erected in 2010 by the 1930s arcade. The Land Office also has hired VOH Architects of Austin to prepare comprehensive historic structure reports that will support a $1.7 million effort to study and rehabilitate the Alamo church and Long Barrack The Legacy of Mercury in Lake Superior Aboard the R.V. Agassiz, researchers gather data about past mercury deposition in the Lake Superior watershed. The northern Great Lakes are praised for being clean, but these aquatic systems dont exist in a vacuum. Contaminants still find their way into lake water and sediments. Mercury is of particular interest because of its toxicity and persistence. In a new study published in the Journal of Great Lakes Research in February, an interdisciplinary team from Michigan Technological University examined the legacy of mercury in Lake Superior. Currently, the National Atmospheric Deposition Program reports low levels of mercury deposition across most of the upper Midwest. However, those figures dont account for past mercury deposition and what that might mean for heavy metal contamination. In fact, when mining was booming around the lake in Michigan, Minnesota and Canada in the 1800s and 1900s, the researchers found mercury input was higher than expected. We document that the mining effort was discharging mercury at 1,000 times the normal deposition rate in the region, says W. Charles Kerfoot, a professor of biology and director of the Lake Superior Ecosystem Research Center at Michigan Tech. We set out to quantify this depositionand it was a real wake-up call. Mine Tailings Kerfoot collaborated with Noel Urban, a professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of the Center for Water and Society at Michigan Tech. Together they dug into mine tailings buried at the bottom of local waterways near campus to start piecing together the regions mercurial history. Booms and busts rocked not just the areas economy, but also heavy metal fluxes. Naturally, some metalsincluding mercurymake their way into water bodies. Mining speeds up that process, and the more mining, smelting and processing taking place, then the more heavy metals get deposited. In the Keweenaw Waterway and Torch Lake, lakebed sediments record these mercury-rich layers in lighter bands. Because of the unique environment of the Keweenaw Peninsula, the team was able to quantify two kinds of mercury in these layers. Thats normally difficult to do, Urban explains. But here, we can show that the amount of mercury in the environment due to local activities is huge compared to the amount coming from other sources like regional coal power plants. Urban, Kerfoot and their team gathered dozens of 5-centimeter diameter core samples by boat, then lugged them back to the lab for analysis. Thats where Kerfoot and Urban uncovered some of the lingering effects from mercury deposits. Methyl Mercury Mercury as an inorganic metal is not as toxic as its organic form, methyl mercury, which is formed by bacteria. The organic form is bioavailablemeaning it is readily taken up and stored in organismsand tends to accumulate up the food chain. A little plankton feeds an invertebrate that feeds a fish and then another fish. By the time a person eats that fish, the methyl mercury has accumulated every smidge from every plankton and fish into a sizable dose of heavy metals. Because of bioaccumulation, there are guidelines on how much fish is safe to consume. Understanding the quantity and timing of the initial inorganic deposition is then crucial for understanding how much methylation occurs and how much methyl mercury is hanging out in the ecosystem. For each core, you need to know the concentration of the total inorganic mercury, and then you need to know how much time it took to be deposited, Kerfoot says. Once that data is compiled, its compared to a similar set of data for methyl mercury. In this case, as the team writes in their paper, the results reveal that methylation occurred at the time of mining operations and shortly afterwards, with an apparent time lag of 20 to 40 years. Regional Impacts The question remains why the lag is there and there are several possible explanations. The delay could be from the time it takes the watershed to move mercury back into surface waters. Following clear cutting and other landscape-scale changes, forest and wetland regrowth could have played a part in remobilizing mercury. On a smaller scale, the microbes living in sediments needed time to recover from copper toxicity before being abundant enough to methylate mercury. To better understand the time lag, and connect local activities to regional impacts, the next step of the research is to scale up. Kerfoot points out that the research in the Keweenaw gives researchers a baseline to start comparing additional sites around the lake. The work can also affect how remediation is done with mercury contamination. At the very least, knowing how much mercury is present in the environment changes the conversation about how to deal with heavy metal contaminants in the Lake Superior region. Michigan Technological University is a public research university founded in 1885 in Houghton, Michigan, and is home to more than 7,000 students from 55 countries around the world. Consistently ranked among the best universities in the country for return on investment, Michigans flagship technological university offers more than 120 undergraduate and graduate degree programs in science and technology, engineering, computing, forestry, business and economics, health professions, humanities, mathematics, social sciences, and the arts. The rural campus is situated just miles from Lake Superior in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, offering year-round opportunities for outdoor adventure. Last week, things heated up pretty quickly between Memphis rappers Young Dolph and "Down in the DM" rapper, Yo Gotti. Dolph uploaded a series of Instagram videos directed at Gotti where he accused him of being jealous of his success and even insinuated that he had called the police on Dolph for reasons unbeknown to us. Late Wednesday night (Mar.16) things hit a boiling point between the rappers when Dolph took to his Instagram and made some pretty strong accusations again against Gotti in a video he posted with the caption: "First thang first everybody kno it's u HO GOTTI, dats sendin your artist out to say da lame sh*t he been sayin and doin ..LOL(lame)... I GUESS U STILL MAD CAUSE I DIDN'T NEVER SIGN WIT YO P*SSY ASS.. Or is u still in your feelings cause u fail out wit Gucci Mane and u was mad at me cause I kept rockin wit Gucci. Sound like a lotta B*TCH SH*T TO ME.. How u do all dat HATIN on me, then go put da police on me.. sh*t sad... U CAME IN DA GAME HATIN ON 3-6 Mafia, NOW U HATIN ON DOLPH(smh) WWF ass nixxa." Warning: Videos contain graphic language. A video posted by DOLPH GABANNA (@youngdolph) on Mar 16, 2016 at 5:54pm PDT HO GOTTI boy u faker than them fake ass watches @fakewatchbusta been bustin u with! (BUSTED)... U one of da first ones they busted..... You say u a REAL nixxa too much to be wearing fake ice bra.. Take dat monkey shit off u embarrassing us smh.... #FakestRapperInTheGameGoesToHoGotti #TalkForYourselfBITCH A video posted by DOLPH GABANNA (@youngdolph) on Mar 16, 2016 at 10:42pm PDT According to XXL, Dolph and Gotti have had bad blood for quite some time, but things reached a tipping point when Gotti's artist, Blac Youngsta, threatened to slap Dolph at the beginning of March after reports indicated that he planned to name his debut album, King of Memphis. Youngsta viewed this as a personal affront to Gotti, being that the "king of Memphis" catchphrase was one made popular by Gotti. Youngsta took to Instagram and threatened to slap Dolph on sight for the disrespect, but later apologized for his actions. As of now, Gotti has yet to respond to Dolph's accusations. 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A Miami-Dade Transit supervisor is facing sexual battery and kidnapping charges after authorities say he allegedly raped an intoxicated woman from Brazil who was in town attending Ultra Music Festival. The transit employee, Carl Lee Wilt, 41, was arrested on Sunday and remains behind bars without bond according to NBC Miami. According to the police report, the 25-year-old Brazilian victim was heavily intoxicated at the Park West Station Saturday night and was not allowed onto the metro mover for her safety. What a witness then described to police should be reserved for horror movies. The witness who was on the platform got the attention of officers, telling them that he saw a man pick up a woman and drag her body into a utility room and lock the door. Officers came to investigate and had to wait for five minutes outside before it was opened by Wilt. Wilt opened the door with his zipper down and the woman unconscious on the floor according to police. The woman couldn't remember any details of the encounter and said she did not consent to having sex with Wilt. The transit employee admitted to having sex with the woman in the utility room according to the report. "The Miami-Dade County Department of Transportation and Public Works holds its employees to the highest standards for professional public administrators. We expect all employees to serve our residents and visitors with professionalism and respect," department of transportation director Alice Bravo said in a statement via NBC Miami. "Because this incident is currently under investigation, the Department cannot comment further and refers all questions to the Miami-Dade Police Department." The woman was taken to a rape treatment center, while Wilt into police custody. Wilt has been relieved of his duties without pay and is being disciplined by the department in addition to whatever may happen through the legal system. 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. A judge has released a statement urging Madonna and her ex-husband, Guy Ritchie, to settle their custody battle over son Rocco, 15. The judge feels that it is tragic for Roccos teenage years to be torn apart by the bitter battle over custody and that the two should try to keep things amicable for the sake of their son. The run-down is that Rocco stayed in London with Ritchie after visiting his father, but Madonna wants her son to return to the US to live with her. Litigation on the case had started in both London and the US, but the judge feels that the legal proceedings in London should come to a halt. When asked whether he should be the one to decide Roccos living arrangements, the judge issued a statement that made his opinion on the matter known. At the root of these proceedings is a temporary breakdown in trust, MacDonald said in a ruling according to The Guardian. For all the media coverage, comment and analysis, this is a case born out of circumstances that arise for countless separated parents the world over. He further said,I renew, one final time, my plea for the parents to seek, and to find, an amicable resolution to the dispute between them. Despite the judges statement, there are expected to still be court hearings in New York, but none of the parties were present in court the day (March 21) that MacDonald issued it. Madonna recently broke down on stage over the custody battle and dedicated a performance of La Vie en Rose to Rocco on stage while performing in Auckland, New Zealand. She also expressed her sadness over her loss to Ritchie with a short speech posted by TMZ, saying, Theres no love stronger than a mother for her son, and if I talk about him too much, Im going to cry. I hope he hears this somewhere and he knows how much I miss him. 2015 MusicTimes.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission. The star-studded official remix for the remix of Hundred Waters' 2014 track "Show Me Love" has at last been released. The remix features the two big artists on the track, Skrillex and Chance The Rapper, plus two more names, Robin Hannibal, who provides additional arrangement and Moses Sumney. The track also comes with an official video of the various collaborators having a good time in Los Angeles. The remix builds on the feel-good original from Hundred Waters, as Skrillex and Robin Hannibal add their own spin on the instrumental, while Chance The Rapper and Moses Sumney deliver on the positive message of love in the song. "It's all about love and positivity, what this world really needs right now," says Skrillex in a statement. "I want to thank all of the artists in the world going out of their way to make people's lives better and happier through creating and sharing their art." "This song was literally a journal entry I wrote to myself a few years ago, so seeing it become something bigger in the context of everyone involved was really special," says Hundred Waters. The song was first premiered in a Mija live set last December. She fittingly has a place in the video. It was then given its radio premiere yesterday with Annie Mac on BBC Radio 1. The video was shot over Thanksgiving week with the whole cast involved hanging out in the Los Angeles area spending time by the water, in shops and in parking lots. To go with the message of love, the song is being released through Loveback a platform that connects fans directly to creators. For this remix, fans will be able to directly support Hundred Waters' FORM Arcosanti, a free multi-day camping, music and arts festival in Arizona each May. By donating, fans will get a copy of the song and will be entered for a spot to the festival. 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 Someone should sue the President for ... Microphone and US Flag View Photos North Carolina Sen. Thom Tillis delivered this weeks Republican address and discussed why he feels that the American people deserve to have a say in the selection of the next Supreme Court Justice. Tillis was Tuesdays KVML Newsmaker of the Day. Here are his words: Hi, Im Thom Tillis, Senator from the great state of North Carolina. I want to speak with you today about the vacancy on the U.S. Supreme Court. Its a topic that has generated a lot of attentionand frankly, a lot of misinformation, especially since President Obama named a nominee earlier this week. There are a couple of things that make this vacancy unique. First, the seat became vacant in the middle of an election year, literally as Americans are casting their ballots to help choose the next President of the United States. Second, the seat will determine the balance of the court for generations to come, as were replacing the incomparable Antonin Scalia. Justice Scalia was widely admired and respected for defending the original intent of the Constitution and its prescribed separation of powers, and he served as a critical check on President Obamas executive overreaches. While the Constitution allows the President to nominate a Supreme Court justice, our Founding Fathers also made sure to give the Senate advise and consent authority, to help protect the integrity of our system of checks and balances. The Senate can confirm a nominee, we can reject a nominee, or we can simply choose to withhold consideration of the nomination altogether so the American people can weigh in on this important decision. This is about principle, not the person the President has nominated. And its why the majority of the Senate has chosen to use this unique situation as an opportunity to let the American people have a voice. The President and Democratic leaders arent exactly thrilled with giving the American people a voice. And contrary to their claims, the Senate is doing its job and fulfilling its constitutional obligation by deferring consent in order to let the peoples voice be heard. Both sides can respectfully agree to disagree, but its now time to move on to address the many pressing challenges facing our nation. We know good things happen when both parties in Washington cast aside their areas of disagreement and instead focus on identifying areas of common ground. We saw that last week when the Senate passed the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act, bipartisan legislation that gives states and local communities vital tools they need to combat the painkiller and heroin epidemic. Its a great accomplishment, but there is still much more work to be done this year. We need to fund our military and make sure our brave men and women have the equipment and training they need to keep themselves and our nation safe. We need to ensure veterans are receiving the best health care possible and more healthcare choices. And we need to hold VA bureaucrats accountable. This year, Ill be leading an effort to reform the militarys health insurance programand work to ensure that military families with autistic children have access to the care and the therapy they need. Senate Republicans already have their sleeves rolled up and were ready to get this and much more done. The question now is what choice the President and Democratic leaders will make. Will they join us in doing our jobs on behalf of the American people? Or will they instead seek to further divide our nation by turning the Supreme Court process into a blatantly partisan back and forth? Are they going to resort to blocking and sabotaging important legislation and good-faith efforts to help the American people all in the name of seeking to score cheap political points in an election year? Senate Democrats should remember the message the American people sent, during the 2014 election, which resulted in a new Republican Senate majority and 12 new Republican Senators, including myself. American voters made it clear they were sick and tired of the bitter partisanship and inaction of the then Democrat-controlled Senate. And they were frustrated with the Presidents over-reliance on executive orders to bypass attempts at compromise and cooperation with Congress. For the good of the nation, I hope the President and the Democratic leadership do not repeat their mistakes of the past. I hope theyll accept, however reluctantly, the fact that the American people will have a voice in this Supreme Court decision, and start focusing on the issues that concern hardworking Americans. I hope the Presidents final months in office will be spent working with both parties to do great things for our nation. Thats what the American people want. Thats what the American people deserve. Thank you for your time, God bless you and may God continue to bless the United States America. The Newsmaker of the Day is heard every weekday morning on AM 1450 KVML at 6:45, 7:45 and 8:45 AM. Calaveras County Seal View Photos San Andreas, CA Immediately following a closed session at 8 this morning, the Calaveras supervisors hope to finalize damage control and amends for a racist comment-turned shot against Mexicans heard around the state like it had been fired from a musket. Immediately following a closed session to discuss unrelated personnel matters, the Calaveras County Board of Supervisors plan to ratify and adopt a proclamation it drafted and read at a special closed session meeting last Thursday morning. As previously reported here, the proclamation condemns a racism-tinged crack made by District 4 Planning Commissioner Kelly Wooster some weeks ago during a discussion on invasive species that effectively lumped Mexicans into that category. The proclamation notes the commissioners March 10 apology, past performance and service, and his promise to not repeat his mistake. It also proclaims a board promise to enact sensitivity training for all elected and appointed officials. While the supervisors clearly hope their actions are enough to be able to move on from the Wooster incident, a petition calling for a Wooster dismissal or resignation and comments from both the Latino Legislative Caucus as well as Secretary of State Alex Padilla last Friday, as reported here, indicate that more public comments will likely be heard during the meeting. In other business, the supervisors will adopt a Proclamation declaring April 2016 as Child Abuse Prevention Month in Calaveras County. Regular agenda items will include a Butte Fire Recovery update from Board Chair Cliff Edsen, department heads, CalOES and FEMA; an appointment approval of Nancy Giddens as the new County Librarian; and consideration of fee waivers for Mokelumne Hill Fire Protection District for a zone amendment, conditional use and building permits for a new fire station in Paloma. The meeting will be held in the board chambers at the government center in San Andreas (891 Mountain Ranch Road). A Land O Lakes family witnessed something remarkable over the weekend while vacationing on a cruise ship: the rescue of 18 Cubans at sea who might not have survived another day. Steven Smith, his family and their neighbors were on their annual spring break vacation. They decided to take a cruise with Royal Caribbean, which left the Port of Tampa on Thursday en route to Cozumel, Mexico. Twelve hours into the cruise, in the middle of the night, their ship came across a group of people stranded in the Gulf of Mexico. Smith captured it on camera. They're yelling for water, yelling for help," Smith said. "They had to have been going through something tragic." The U.S. Coast Guard said nine Cubans died at sea on the 30-foot boat. The other 18 on board had been at sea for weeks. In Smith's video, one of the cruise ship captain's announcements regarding the rescued migrants can be heard. They have been at sea 22 days -- 22 days on a boat that was about to sink under their feet, the captain said. The captain said there was a hole in the front of [the boat], so everybody was sitting in the back to keep it elevated so it wouldn't sink," Smith said. Smith and his family could only watch as the migrants were picked up in small groups. I just stayed there and watched the boat take off from our ship, go over to the vessel, and they did three or four trips," Smith said. The rescue, which took place about 130 miles west of Marco Island in Southwest Florida, lasted almost two hours. Survivors were given food, water and medical treatment. They were dropped off at the cruise ship's next stop in Cozumel. Kudos to Royal Caribbean for making that attempt," Smith said. "They could have easily kept on going, and all of these poor men and women would have perished." A jury has hit Gawker Media with $15 million in punitive damages and its owner with $10 million. This is in addition to the $115 million it awarded last week for publishing a sex video of Hulk Hogan. Friday's $115 million award was for economic harm and emotional distress. "I'm really happy about everything that has happened and I think we made history today because I think we protected a lot of people from maybe going through what I went through, Hogan said as he walked out of the courthouse Monday. So, we're very excited and very happy." Juror Salina Stevens, 35, said she has no doubt Hogan did not know he was being secretly recorded having sex with Bubba the Love Sponge's wife at the time, Heather. "The video was worse than I expected in some sort of content, Stevens said. Not so much the sex part of it but just the conversation. I just feel like that if he knew that he was being videotaped he would not have spoken about the things he spoke about." Stevens said viewing the video changed the game for her. "I mean, I went into that deliberation room thinking one way and watching that video sealed it for me," she said. Stevens said she did not buy Gawker's argument that publishing the sex video was protected under the First Amendment. She hopes her verdict sends a message to other tabloid media. "We also have privacy laws and I hope that those will be taken into more consideration when stories are being ran, she said. Data curated by PrettyFamous A.J. Daulerio, the former Gawker editor, owes Hogan $100,000 and Nick Denton, the Gawker CEO has to pay an extra $10 million. Denton said the jury did not have all the evidence and Gawker plans to appeal. "We have heard the jury's decision and we look forward to going to the appeals court, Denton said. Where the law will be followed and all the facts known." A Gawker statement says the jury deserved to know that Bubba told his radio listeners and the FBI that Hogan knew he was being recorded. Gawker also wanted the jury to see Bubba on the stand but the judge did not force him. Hogan said he's being getting support from the community and looks forward to getting back to normal. The Hogan legal team released a statement saying the verdict now requires media organizations to respect privacy or pay the price for failing to do so. A brush fire tore through 20 acres in east Orange County Monday afternoon. The fire was first reported off of Podocarpus Lane in densely-populated Avalon Park around 3 p.m. Crews battled the blaze for hours, eventually containing it shortly after 6:30 p.m. As the fire inched towards their fence lines, many neighbors considered themselves lucky that they didn't have any major damage. Now I can see how you lose everything in one minute," said Ivan Perez. Looking over the burnt land butted against his house, the father got emotional. I feel very blessed, you know. Perez, like many others Monday, was lucky. He didnt have any damage as the fire ripped through thick brush behind his home. The Florida Forest Service says wind played a major factor in moving the brush fire along. It burned through two vinyl fences, melting everything in its path. Elsewhere, Jonathan Bourdeau was hosing down his yard. "We saw this big, black smoke coming up on, and saw one fire truck and one police car," he said. Bourdeau just finished packing up to move, but spent the afternoon safeguarding for a future sale. "I am not taking any chances," he said. "I don't know if our sprinkler is on or not, but I am not taking any chances." As for Perez, he came home from work grateful for his quick-thinking neighbor, who he said began spraying the fire with a backyard hose. He credits that neighbor with potentially saving his house. He was fighting for me," he said. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Firefighters spent Monday night monitoring the fire, watching for hot spots. No injuries were reported and the cause of the fire is still under investigation, according to the Florida Forest Service. A panoramic view shows how close the fire came to homes. (Michael Wash, Staff) Being prepared for a brush fire Spring is generally when we see the worst fires. That's why it's important to have a plan, in case a fire starts near your home. Here are some tips from Orange County Fire Rescue. An investigation is underway after one person was shot and killed Monday in Apopka, deputies said. Jeff Williamson, of the Orange County Sheriff's Office, said deputies received a call at about 2:35 p.m. of multiple shots fired. "My understanding that this was a gathering in a field. This is the first day of spring break," Williamson said. Orange County Fire Rescue officials said an adult male was shot in the area of 13th Street and Ocoee Apopka Road. Williamson said at the scene that it was a teenager, but neither the victim's age nor name have been released. Deputies also said there were about 40 witnesses, but no one was fully cooperating. The feeling is someone must have seen something and can make some sort of ID and give us more information. But like I said, its been very limited, with multiple person out here on scene," Williamson explained. "So I understand what youre saying about that, large crowd, chaos perhaps. No one seeing anything. I dont think thats the story that Im hearing," Williamson said. The crime scene lies in a field, between a playground and a church, which is across the street from a bike trail. No other information has been released. Anyone with information is asked to call CRIMELINE anonymously at 1(800) 423-TIPS (8477). GET OUR APP Our Spectrum News app is the most convenient way to get the stories that matter to you. Download it here. Daytona Beach Police are looking for a man they say tried to lure a 14-year-old girl into his car Friday. "It happened. And I was just wondering if this, am I going to die, am I going to get raped, am I going to get kidnapped and never seen again? Zaporha Steward said. I don't know what to do; I was scared." Steward said she was walking along Hillcrest Drive at about 6 p.m. on her way to pick up her friends sister. She told police she noticed a man following her in a blue Jaguar. Steward said the dark-skinned man repeatedly asked her where she was going. Then things escalated when she ignored him. "He finally just said, 'Come into the car,' and literally said, 'You can come into the car, or I can come to you. I got really scared, so I screamed," Steward said. Fortunately, her boyfriend was close by, and the driver sped off when he came to her aid. Zaporha's mother called police, and officers canvassed the area. Neighbors in the area say they've seen the blue Jaguar stopped on street corners. "The blue Jaguar looks familiar, and I just feel like, it's crazy, its hurtful," said Quinton Emmons, who lives just a few homes away from where the attempted abduction happened. Emmons has teenagers of his own. Zaporha is on spring break from school, but her mother said the girl will not be going out anytime soon. She wants the man caught and locked up. "I wouldn't want this to happen to other little girls, or boys," she said. Daytona Beach investigators have questioned several Jaguar owners in the neighborhood, but so far, they have no new leads. Deputies have released the identity of the man shot and killed Monday in Apopka. Contondre Bryant, 18, died after being shot near Old Apopka Road and 13th Street. According to Orange County Sheriff's Office spokesman Jeff Williamson, deputies received a call at about 2:35 p.m. of multiple shots fired. "My understanding that this was a gathering in a field. This is the first day of spring break," Williamson said. There were about 40 witnesses, but no one was fully cooperating, the Sheriff's Office said. The feeling is someone must have seen something and can make some sort of ID and give us more information. But like I said, its been very limited, with multiple persons out here on scene," Williamson explained. The crime scene is in a field between a playground and a church, which is across the street from a bike trail. Deputies are asking anyone with information on this shooting to call CRIMELINE anonymously at 1 (800) 423-TIPS (8477). March 23, 1946: Thomas F. McNeely, who was discharged from the Army paratroopers last April, will re-enter the Army Air Corps on April 4. The son of Mrs. B. McNeely, he was injured during the service with the paratroopers. He served 4 1/2 years and saw action in North Africa and Sicily. --Wink Dye has been discharged from the Army after more than two years of service, most of the time overseas. He flew to the U.S. from Hawaii recently and after getting his discharge joined his wife at Childress. A staff sergeant, he will return to employment with the Railway Express Co. in Vernon. --Girl Scout Troop 8 at Central School met Thursday under the leadership of Mrs. W.C. Shelton and Mrs. C.V. Heath. The girls elected officers: Kay Robinson, president; Dixie McWilliams, vice president; Joan Heath, secretary; Linda Mills, treasurer; Carolyn Waller, song leader; and Shirley Pass, reporter. March 23, 1956: P.W. Neel, farmer about a mile north of the Plainview city limits and a farmer in this area for more than 10 years, says he has never seen conditions better for starting a crop. --Pvt. Herman D. McCullar of Plainview will graduate this week from the Pole Line Construction Course, one of the man courses offered at the Southeastern Signal School, Camp Gordon, Georgia. He is the son of Mr. and Mrs. Thurman McCullar. --The Plainview Model Railroad Club, reactivated after several months due to lake of operating space, will meet Wednesday in the old Express Office of the Fort Worth and Denver Station. The group has leased that space and plan to begin work on an HO scale model railroad layout. Contact Bob Hilburn, president, for information. March 23, 1966: A Plainview junior, Katrinka Howard, has been elected chairman of the Study Advisory Board of the 10-month Character Research Project being conducted at Wayland Baptist University. She is the daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Fred D. Howard. --Clayton Cunningham of Ralls has purchased Connor Mathis Co., 701 W. Sixth, from Reuel Nash. The purchase of the auto parts and equipment firm was effective March 1. He and his family plan to move to Plainview soon. --Mrs. Leon Meyer presented her piano students in a recital on Sunday at Second Baptist Church. Participants were Frances and Tommy Cunningham, Paula and Pamela Preston, Jon and Jim Armstrong, Susie Richburg, Debbie Braddock, Jim Simmons and Terecia Clifton. March 23, 1986: Nina Morris took the oath of office Friday as interim county commissioner for Precinct 1. She replaces her late husband, Ronald Morris, who was serving his third term when he was killed March 13. She will serve through the November general election. --Airman George Gonzales, son of Maria M. Gonzales of Plainview and Sostenes Gonzales of Dodge City, Kan., has graduated from Air Force basic training at Lackland Air Force Base. He is a 1983 graduate of PHS. --Waldo Wesley, owner of Wesleys Electric Co., will coordinate grass-roots legislative efforts in this area for the Guardian Advisory Council of the National Federation of Independent Business/Texas. Compiled by Doug McDonough Cameron County authorities are searching for a teen who was enjoying spring break but went missing early Saturday morning. Justin Kirby Walker, 18, was last seen at the Ultimate Music Fest held at the Schlitterbahn Beach Waterpark on South Padre Island. Later that day, Cameron County Park Rangers received a report of a lost or missing person. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate The Trans-Pecos natural gas pipeline could cause the mysterious Marfa Lights to disappear, activists opposing the pipeline's construction claim. SEE MORE: Video: UFO reportedly sighted in downtown San Antonio Atlas Obscura reported that a new group called the Marfa Mystery Lights Brigade believes that the pipeline could rob Marfa of the attraction that has long befuddled conspiracy theorists and the scientific community. The logic: the lights can't be protected because the lights' source and cause is not definitively known. Additionally, the pipeline can be seen from the Marfa Lights Viewing Station, according to the publication. RELATED: What to eat, see and do in Marfa, Texas "It's the first tangible thing in this area that people will watch disappear," Alyce Santoro, also a member of an organization called Defend Big Bend, told Atlas Obscura. The pipeline has cleared a preliminary approval for a portion of the overall construction by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, but has been waylaid by property owners jostling with Energy Transfer Partners, the company slated to build it. Activists also believe that energy companies could be tempted to begin fracking in Big Bend if the pipeline comes to fruition, bringing along new lights that would displace the Marfa lights, according to the publication. READ MORE: Did Apollo 10 astronauts hear lunar music on the far side of the moon in 1969? What causes the light phenomenon has been debated since their first reported sighting in 1883. Conspiracy theorists have long thought them to be tied to UFOs and the like, but two studies in 2004 and 2008 conducted by students at the University of Texas at Dallas and Texas State University, respectively, concluded that the lights were caused by headlamps from passing automobiles and small fires. RELATED: UFO hunters see 'spy plane' in Apollo 12 image jfechter@mySA.com Twitter: @JFreports This week the folks at WalletHub released their rankings of the 100 metro areas in the United States that they say could be described as the "fattest." And since everything is bigger in Texas, perhaps it's no surprise that the Lone Star State has two cities in the top 20. The next time you run up a bar tab so high that you can't afford to pay up, don't feel so bad, it happens to bars, too. But while you end up in hot water with your credit card company or bank, bars and other stores face regulation from the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission. A grand jury determined the fatal shooting of a Kerrville man by police responding to a domestic violence call last summer was justified, authorities said. Kerrville police said officers shot Steven B. Norton, 47, late on Aug. 16 after he fired on them from the porch of his home on Linda Joy Street. Norton, who owned a local pest-control firm, later died at a San Antonio hospital. Kerr County grand jurors who examined the incident last week found no criminal conduct by police and concluded the officers use of deadly force was justified, Assistant District Attorney Lucy Wilke said Tuesday. She said an investigation by Texas Ranger Kevin Wright didnt identify which of four officers fired the fatal shot because the bullet had disintegrated. Wright declined to comment on the case. Jennifer Norton had called police that night, saying her husband had assaulted her and her daughter and armed himself with a rifle. The two left the home, and arriving officers were unable to establish dialogue with Norton. Police said he came outside and fired in their direction. Police Chief David Knight called the grand jury findings welcome but not unexpected. Its always a tragic circumstance when the actions of a citizen place our officers in a situation that requires the use of deadly force, Knight said. Its not a tragedy only for the family of the citizen involved, but is also something that officers carry with them for the rest of their lives. Although Kerrville police reported that all four officers at the scene returned fire at Norton, the Department of Public Safety said Wednesday that Wright's investigation concluded that three officers shot a total of 12 bullets at Norton, striking him once in the lower back. Kerrville police on Wednesday could not identify the three shooters from among the four officers, who the chief had identified as Sgt. Jonathan Lamb and officers Roy Alonzo, Daniel Haas and Stephen Wherry. Jennifer Norton called the domestic problem that night an anomaly during their eight-year marriage, and said she, too, believes the actions by police were justified. Nothing like this had ever happened before. He was a good guy, she said Tuesday. The Police Department did what they were supposed to do. After the shooting, she learned from toxicology tests that her husband had used tranquilizers, including Ketamine, whose side effects include hallucinations, mood swings and confusion. Jennifer Norton said she was unaware her husband was being prescribed the drugs found in his system. zeke@express-news.net This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate With March showers dropping four inches of rainfall northwest of Austin in the past two weeks, Lake Travis reached full capacity for the first time since May 2010. And the timing couldn't have been better; spring breakers were out in full swing last weekend, soaking up the sun and enjoying a bloated lake. One of those visitors was Facebook user Kenn Zuniga, who shared a photo of a crystal-clear Lake Travis on Sunday with the caption, "Welcome back to your full glory, #LakeTravis!" Before the weekends sunny and cool weather, Central Texas received anywhere between one and five inches of rain since March 7, according to the National Weather Service. RELATED: Bikinis and beer bongs: 25 Instagram photos that perfectly sum up spring break 2016 in Texas The rainfall helped Lake Travis level out to 681 feet after battling the effects of a state-wide drought. In September and October of 2011, more than 80 percent of the state was in an exceptional drought, the highest category on the U.S. drought monitor scale. Lake Travis' water level dipped to one of its lowest points in history in September 2013, when it was just 28.9 percent full, according to the Texas Water Development Board. Only twice has its capacity fell below 28 percent; in 1951, the lake was 25 percent full and in 1963, the lake was 26 percent full. Today, .12 percent of the state is experiencing drought conditions from moderate to exceptional, while 11.3 percent is experiencing dry conditions and 88.5 percent is experiencing no drought. Click through the slideshow to view Texas' water reservoirs hit hard by drought. rsalinas@mysa.com Congratulations, Marco Rubio. Youre free. For one thing, now that your presidential bid has ended, and youve already said youre not running for re-election to the Senate, youre no longer shackled by other peoples plans for you. Back in December 2011, in Washington, I met with another Republican senator who was part of the GOP establishment. A moderate on immigration, she wanted to write a bill to accommodate Dreamers those young undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children. What about including Rubio? I asked. No, she said. This will be messy. We have big plans for Marco. She didnt say what the plans were. But it was clear that your colleague considered you a major asset to the GOP, and she wanted you to go far. Youre also free to earn a good living. You have four children whom youd probably like to send to college. As a lawyer, speaker, author and consultant, you could pull down more than $1 million next year. Youre young, smart, telegenic, a hard puncher, a fast thinker, a quick study on foreign policy and a natural communicator whether its on radio, on television, or in front of a crowd. Finally, you appeal to two groups who often clash: Hispanics and those white Americans who are frightened by the growth of our community. And, to the degree that you choose to be, youre also free of that one policy issue that has caused you so much grief: immigration. Its odd that a self-described son of exiles who later amended that phrasing to immigrants because your parents actually came to the United States in 1956, before Fidel Castro took power had such trouble with how to secure the U.S.-Mexico border, how to provide workers for employers who need them, how to streamline the system for immigrating legally and what to do with the estimated 11 million undocumented immigrants who are already here. If only you had made progress as easily as you made enemies. Liberals accused you of turning your back on immigrants. Conservatives sent you angry mail telling you to go back to Mexico. Too ethnic for some, and not ethnic enough for others, you embodied the Hispanic experience in America. Youre free of a political culture where one clumsy statement can send you into a ditch. Consider the brilliant exchange you had a few years ago with conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh, who worried that legalized immigrants would vote Democratic. Not necessarily, you said. Not if the Republican Party adhered to its true values entrepreneurship, smaller government, personal freedom, a strong defense. That was a contest that the GOP could win, you said. And Limbaugh was put in the awkward position of arguing with someone who seemed to believe in the persuasive power of conservative principles more than he did. You did not shine so bright when, during a Republican debate a few weeks ago, you turned to Ted Cruz and in a cultural low blow accused your fellow Cuban-American of not speaking Spanish. Most importantly, youre free to be your own man and to chart your own destiny. Remember what you said about your parents at the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa: They immigrated to America with little more than the hope of a better life. My dad was a bartender. My mom was a cashier, a hotel maid and a stock clerk at Kmart. They never made it big. They were never rich. And yet, they were successful because just a few decades removed from hopelessness, they made possible for us all the things that had been impossible for them. You were always in your sweet spot when you talked about what you called the American miracle the fact that, in this country, dreams come true that are unreachable anywhere else. So whats your dream? Becoming president was what others expected of you. Its time to claim your own miracle. Vaya con dios, Marco. You did good. You made us proud. Now that you have your life back, make sure you live it to the fullest. ruben@rubennavarrette.com Straight-party voting is a fast and convenient way to cast a ballot, but sometimes it leads to marginal judicial candidates being elected. While many states are moving away from straight-party judicial voting, Texas appears in no hurry to abandon the practice. As a result, it is time to consider increasing the minimum qualifications for judicial posts. In the 2014 Bexar County general election, almost half the 303,971 voters participating cast straight-ticket votes. The harshest effects were felt at the courthouse, where Republicans snared a sweep and five incumbent Democratic judges lost their re-election bids. It was not the first time Bexar County fell victim to the phenomenon, and it probably wont be the last. Democratic judicial candidates have been riding the wave in presidential years, and Republicans score big in gubernatorial years. Regrettably, Bexar County is not the only community that has suffered the bad that can come with straight-party voting. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has charged the Senate State Affairs Committee with exploring the idea of removing the ability to cast a straight-ballot ticket on judicial elections. Judges would still have their party affiliation next to their name, but judicial races would be down on the ballot and voters would be required to make a selection in each individual race. Bills seeking to remove judicial elections from straight-party balloting have not gotten much traction during previous legislative sessions, and it is unlikely to be much different when the 85th Legislature convenes in January. At a committee hearing in Austin last month, leaders from both major political parties testified against changing the status quo. They argued that removing judicial races from straight-party voting would slow the voting process. The move would result in long lines at the polls, which would have to be addressed with more voting equipment and more personnel, and end up costing taxpayers more money, they said. Party officials also expressed concern that moving judicial races to the bottom of the ballot would result in a larger drop-off in the number of voters casting ballots in those races. At present, candidates seeking to make a bid for state district or county court-at-law judge are required to have been lawyers for only four years. Raising the bar to require judicial candidates to have a minimum of 10 years experience as lawyers wont eliminate all bad candidates, but it would help weed out some. Of course, some lawyers who have practiced for decades are still bad lawyers. And some judges who were elected with minimal experience have done the job well. But setting higher standards for judicial candidates will at least ensure these crucial jobs are not going to newbies based solely on that R or D after their name. That should improve the caliber of new judges overall. A 10-year experience minimum is not the best solution to the problem, but it would be a move in the right direction until Texans are willing to address straight-ticket balloting and the judicial selection process. Sen. Mitch McConnells argument that the American people should have a say in picking the next Supreme Court nominee may be an argument for direct election of Supreme Court justices by the American people. Might be a good idea given the partisan deadlock ongoing in Washington. William Stavisky Heart of the Spurs Re: Duncans strange season; Addition of Aldridge has lessened legends role, Sports, March 15: This article reminds all of us what leadership is all about. A leader and the Spurs have been blessed with several great ones knows that leading is always most important when the focus is on team. Tim may be old and slow (his words), but he remains the heart of the Spurs. Ruben Zamora Its only wrong Re: Let reader know what you mean, John Eubanks, Another View, March 14: I thought I was the only remaining human on the face of the Earth who cared one way or another about the misplacement of the word only. Thank you for your column. And just above the commentary was a political cartoon by Jimmy Margulies, in which a dismayed Hillary Clinton is depicted as saying, I may only get a $300,000 speaking fee. Do you think The Donald is grammatically incorrect enough to make it to the White House? Jean R. Crump Trump the man Get over it and join the movement as the majority of Republicans have done. Donald Trump is the man. Elected as president, he will level trade with other countries. You charge a tariff, we will match. As leader of the most powerful country in the world, he will not bow to anyone but will shake their hand. He will continue equal rights in this country. He will expect all countries to treat us with respect, as we will them; if they choose to disrespect us, shame on them, and they should hide. We do not need another career politician or union organizer. He will make America great again. Richard Goforth Widespread anger There appears to be no end to the hate and anger displayed every day by a great number of your readers. Never have I seen so much criticism against the Obama administration some valid, most not. To some individuals, the president cannot do anything right, and the tone of their statements shows a racial profanity. I wish and pray that is not true. Sometimes we have to stand in front of a large mirror and ask the person you see, what is your purpose in life, what world do you leave for your loved ones, and what can you do to improve the lives of the people in this world? God provided us with an abundance of tools. Let us use those gifts. I could go on, but I believe God is the only one to render judgment. D.M. Lopez Fight persecution Re: Trump is making a deal with the devil, Brian Chasnoff, March 8: Donald Trump is doing an excellent job of dividing Muslims from the West. While professing to be a Christian, Trump lashes out in hate at all immigrants and all Muslims. As a Christian, this concerns me. ISIS is a radical minority, and they do not represent all Muslims. In fact, most of the people killed by ISIS have been Muslims. Islam is not a cult, and Allah is not a fantasy. Allah is the name that Muslims use for God, just as Jewish people often refer to God as Yahweh. Christians need to stand up for Muslims and denounce the religious persecution they are facing. If we as Christians want to enjoy religious freedom, we have to be willing to extend that freedom to other religions. Janie Harrison Hug a Republican We are not surprised by the GOP self-immolation, nor should we rejoice in the fire of hate and bigotry that destroyed them. No, as Americans, we must unite our nation and unify a new GOP, built from the foundations of Abraham Lincolns precepts of civil discourse and equal justice for all. Americans should take no pleasure in the demise of the GOP. Without at least a two-party system, our nation is doomed. No single party works. We need the GOP to repair itself and join us to have spirited discourse about serious matters, agree to disagree. The Democrats must not fuel this obvious defeat with taunts and nasty rhetoric. We must rise to help rebuild the GOP into what was once a staunch advocate of the truth. We the people must make this happen. Hug a Republican. We the people are in this together. Craig C. Budreau, Austin Rule of law Re: Veto power shouldnt be prosecuted, Editorial, Feb. 27, and A politically motivated process? You be the judge, Rick Casey, Other Views, Feb. 27: Regardless of disagreement about the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals decision in the case against former Gov. Rick Perry, the editorials discussion of the case should be complimented because it focused on the legal issues. Rick Caseys piece, on the other hand, dismissed the legal questions as a bit technical, left an assessment of (the decisions) merits to professionals and concentrated on bits of political evidence to insinuate that the entire judicial process was influenced by partisan politics. The editorial upheld the rule of law and the integrity of the criminal justice system. Caseys piece did not. Senior District Judge Robert R. Barton, Kerrville Bias at schools How do we justify funding universities and colleges where there is a recognized political bent right or left? I want my tax dollars to foster education, not politics. These institutions should be nonpolitical and should encourage discussion and thinking. Hank Forrest Radical Cairo in Shenzhen It is not too often that Cairo's informal settlements are hosted at an international architecture event, especially not as a positive case. This year, the informal area of Ard-El-Lewa is prominently featured at the Bi-City Biennale for Urban Development and Architecture in Shenzhen, in the Radical Urbanism section. Charlotte Malterre-Barthes / Quelle: ETH-Zukunftsblog / Dienstag, 22. Marz 2016 / 11:17 h A formal look into informal settlements The ETH Zurich Master of Advanced Studies program in Urban Design at the chair of Marc Angelil initiated an investigation of informal settlements in Cairo, looking into designs for affordable housing units in the neighborhood of Ard-el-Lewa, an informal area of Cairo. The results of our research are featured at the Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture in Shenzhen: "Radical Cairo: From agrarian land to new urban forms in Cairo". At this year's Biennale, which closes next Sunday, the ETH professors of architecture Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner are part of the four-person curatorial team. On display in Shenzhen The exhibition displays existing typologies of buildings in the area, their flexibility and qualities, along with selected projects which demonstrate how rearranging existing building components can lead to new urban forms, and better living conditions. A red wall shows the growth of the area, case studies of existing buildings and projects, and surrounds a large 1:20 model of the studied urban area developed over agrarian land. The model displays remains of agrarian land, property lines and irrigation channels as the base for later urbanization, as well as the existing streetscape with established housing types of concrete frames and brick infill. Alternative projects developed by the MAS Urban Design for an innovative architecture are positioned on site. The MAS Urban Design is working against the negative perception attached to informal areas, and for a stronger involvement of architects and designers in these vibrant, inclusive and inventive neighborhoods. Ultimately, it is calling for governmental awareness to legalize, recognize and integrate these areas as an integral part of the city. In many large urban areas, settlements develop independently from any official city planning. The informal mode of urbanization in Cairo indeed appears radical because it alters conventional ownership structures and questions the validity of formal planning. Informal construction at this stage of development calls for a reassessment of the way in which the discipline of architecture reacts to forces of urbanization operating beyond the usual legal framework. Persistent urban growth shows that, while lacking public services and infrastructures, informal settlements are nonetheless successful in generating dense and affordable housing. However, a constructive governmental policy to legalize these settlements has yet to materialize, and their potential is not understood.The ETH Zurich Master of Advanced Studies program in Urban Design at the chair of Marc Angelil initiated an investigation of informal settlements in Cairo, looking into designs for affordable housing units in the neighborhood of Ard-el-Lewa, an informal area of Cairo.The results of our research are featured at the Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture in Shenzhen: "Radical Cairo: From agrarian land to new urban forms in Cairo". At this year's Biennale, which closes next Sunday, the ETH professors of architecture Alfredo Brillembourg and Hubert Klumpner are part of the four-person curatorial team.The exhibition displays existing typologies of buildings in the area, their flexibility and qualities, along with selected projects which demonstrate how rearranging existing building components can lead to new urban forms, and better living conditions. A red wall shows the growth of the area, case studies of existing buildings and projects, and surrounds a large 1:20 model of the studied urban area developed over agrarian land. The model displays remains of agrarian land, property lines and irrigation channels as the base for later urbanization, as well as the existing streetscape with established housing types of concrete frames and brick infill. Alternative projects developed by the MAS Urban Design for an innovative architecture are positioned on site.The MAS Urban Design is working against the negative perception attached to informal areas, and for a stronger involvement of architects and designers in these vibrant, inclusive and inventive neighborhoods. Ultimately, it is calling for governmental awareness to legalize, recognize and integrate these areas as an integral part of the city. Auslander-Kredit fur Investitionen in der Heimat? Immer ofter - gerade auch vor den Ferien - wird das Beratungsteam von kredit.ch angefragt, ob auch in der Schweiz lebende Auslander die Moglichkeit haben, einen gunstigen, fairen Kredit zu erhalten. Fortsetzung Endlich: SMS versenden mit Outlook 2007/2010 St. Gallen - Das muhsame Getippe ist vorbei. Als erster Schweizer Anbieter stellt ASPSMS.COM eine Anbindung an den Mobile Service von Microsofts Outlook 2007/2010 zur Verfugung. Ohne zusatzliche Software konnen SMS bequem via Outlook 2007/2010 versendet werden und das auch noch gunstiger als mit dem Handy. Fortsetzung Radiolino - Grosses Radio fur kleine Ohren Radiolino ist das erste deutschsprachige Web-Radio der Schweiz fur Kinder zwischen 3 und 12 Jahren. Das Programm richtet sich aber auch an Eltern, Grosseltern, Onkeln und Tanten, sprich an die ganze Familie. Fortsetzung WASHINGTON Late last week, U.S. Sens. Tim Scott (R-SC) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN), along with Reps. Tim Walberg (R-MI) and John Kline (R-MN), introduced S. 2707 and H.R. 4773, respectively. The legislation, the Protecting Workplace Advancement and Opportunity Act, would require the Department of Labor (DOL) to start over with its overtime proposal, which was published on July 6, 2015. DOLs proposed rule would extend overtime protections to nearly five million white collar workers within the first year of its implementation and raise the minimum salary threshold required to qualify for the FLSAs white collar exemption from $23,660 to $50,440 per year. DOL also proposed to automatically update the salary threshold in between rulemakings to avoid it becoming outdated. While the proposal does not propose changes to the duties teststhe tests that establish whether an employee can qualify for the white collar exemptionDOL has indicated that it is contemplating changing them. According to Scott, the Protecting Workplace Advancement and Opportunity Act stops DOL from irresponsibly redefining the overtime threshold without understanding the real world consequences. It will also require [DOL] to start over and ensure that any new regulation on overtime considers the daily impact on our nations economy. Specifically, the legislation would require DOL to conduct a comprehensive economic analysis on the impact of mandatory overtime expansion on small businesses, nonprofits and public employers before issuing any final rule. In addition, S. 2707 and H.R. 4773 would also prohibit automatic increases to the overtime threshold and require a formal rulemaking process prior to any changes in the duties tests. Lawmakers introduced the legislation mere days after DOL sent its final overtime rule to the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which is generally the last step in the process before a regulation is published and often lasts between 30 and 90 days. Many believed the final rule would be released in July 2016, but by sending the rule to OMB on March 14, it appears the final rule may be announced earlier than anticipated. Last week NACS members were on Capitol Hill during the NACS Government Relations Conference talking with legislators about their businesses. Labor issues were a hot topic of the discussions, and retailers shared that in its overtime proposal, DOL rejected longstanding methodology that considered differences in regional labor markets and across various industries when setting the overtime salary threshold. Instead, DOL chose to set the salary threshold in its proposal based on nationwide data. Therefore, DOLs overtime proposal would disproportionately increase labor costs of certain geographic regions. NACS also filed comments on DOLs overtime proposal in September 2015. Visit the NACS Grassroots page to identify your representative and to find a pre-written, editable letter that you can immediately email to their office to help NACS slow down the new overtime rules. UNITED KINGDOM The Telegraph reports that Dominos in New Zealand may have created the best use for robots yet: pizza delivery. The news source writes that the pizza chain is planning to test delivery by robot, dubbed the Domino's Robotic Unit (DRU), which is a three-foot tall battery-powered unit that contains a heated compartment for storing up to 10 pizzas, and is capable of self-driving up to 12.5 miles. Sensors on the DRU can detect obstacles on its route, and customers receive a unique code to key into the pizza compartment once it arrives at their house to prevent thieves from trying to steal the pizzas. The DRU is designed to drive on both roads and pavements, and returns to its home store to recharge once the delivery has been completed. DRU is cheeky and endearing and we are confident that one day he will become an integral part of the Domino's family, New Zealand general manager of Dominos Scott Bush told the news source. He's a road to the future and one that we are very excited about exploring further. Domino's and the New Zealand government are working toward a date for the trial to begin, writes the Telegraph, in addition to driverless vehicle regulations that are still being discussed. Delivery by robot is not so far-fetched! For more on how robot delivery is becoming mainstream read Endcap in the February issue of NACS Magazine. NEW YORK CNBC reports that the already competitive imported Mexican beer marketplace is gaining a new player. Anheuser-Busch InBev is bringing the 106-year-old Pilsner brand Estrella Jalisco brand to the United States, a beer first brewed in the city of Guadalajara. Anheuser-Busch InBev is betting that one of the largest beer brands in Mexico will find a ready audience among Hispanic consumers who are familiar with the brew. "We know they know this brand, and in many instances, they grew up seeing this beer or they used to drink it and then they moved to the U.S, or their parents moved to the U.S.," said Jorge Inda Meza, marketing director, West region for Anheuser-Busch. "It's a special memory and finally they can drink it again." A-B InBev hopes the brand and its appeal to Mexican consumers will resonate with the growing number of adult Hispanic millennials in the United States, notes CNBC. The brew will be distributed in 10 states, including California, Texas, Illinois, New Mexico and New York. While A-B InBev is not setting specific expectations for the Estrella Jalisco brand, writes CNBC, the company isnt hiding its conviction that the brand will have a powerful effect. There are a number of players in the space, but there is no other proposition that truly celebrates the heritage and iconography of Mexico, said Inda Meza. We think it's going to be one of the success stories across any category for this year. What does it mean when the backers of a must pass bill present a case for it that is not only weak but also fails to mention the bad conduct it is designed to correct? The bill is Californias AB 2833: landmark private equity legislation. It provides for extensive disclosure of private equity fees and costs, most importantly, those charged directly by general partners to the portfolio companies theyve acquired on behalf of investors (the limited partners). This bill, proposed by California Treasurer John Ching and launched by Assemblyman Ken Cooley, came in the wake of the SECs 2014 revelation that private equity firms were engaged in widespread abuses, including waht normally be called embezzlement but the general partners dressed up as unauthorized fees. To add insult to injury, complacent and clueless limited partners seemed more upset by the fact that these bogus charges werent being largely kicked back to them. That reaction revealed another sad fact about private equity: the limited partners are no match for general partners. Not only, as the SEC pointed out, have the limited partners signed agreements that are disconcertingly vague on too many key issues, but the limited partners, as evidenced by their bleats about not sharing in the general partners pilfering as they had assumed, didnt even understand the agreements they had signed.* The SECs disclosures kicked off a series of articles in the New York Times and Wall Street Journal (as well as posts here) that described how many of the biggest firms in the industry were engaged in the sort of misconduct that the SEC had called out. We took this line of inquiry further by focusing on capture of limited partners by the private equity general partners, with the giant public pension fund CalPERS, and to a lesser degree, its Sacramento sister CalSTRS, as case studies. Yet despite the range and extent of malfeasance exposed (guaranteed to be only a small fraction of what had actually taken place), limited partners sided with the general partners rather than admit that they were part of the problem. Readers may recall that their letters to Chiang, who sits on the boards of CalPERS and CalSTRS, criticizing the fecklessness and cognitive capture of both funds on the private equity front. led him to announce that he would be proposing private equity transparency legislation, including not just disclosure of heretofore opaque charges levied directly on portfolio companies, but also the disclosure of related party transactions (see the example of KKR Capstone for why that matters). Assemblyman Cooley introduced AB 2833 in February. It is expected to be included in hearings before the Assemblys public employees and retirement committee in April. According to an article in the Financial Times FundFire last week (no online version), Chiang has said the bill is on his must pass list, and so far, his staff and Cooleys office say they have heard no organized opposition to the measure. That should be encouraging, until you look at the fact sheet Cooleys staff put out about the pending legislation, as well as the silence of CalPERS and CalSTRS about the measure. Weve embedded that fact sheet at the end of the post, as well as a document on the bill prepared by former private equity executive and CalPERS investment committee chairman Michael Flaherman, who has become a major voice for private equity reform (you can also read it on his site, Why AB 2833). Now a visiting scholar at UC Berkeley, he publishes a newsletter whose revelations have rattled some general partners (see here, here and here for examples of his research). The contrast between the two documents supposedly pumping for the passage of the same bill is stark. Admittedly, Cooleys fact sheet is constrained by a prescribed format. Nevertheless, it has a leisurely Background section, with more detail than is germane about the holdings of the biggest California public pension funds, including inaccurate data on fees. For instance, it cites CalPERS data that shows that CalPERS paid $414 million in management fees to private equity firms. But that omits the portion of those fees shifted on the portfolio companies acquired with CalPERS and other investors money. CalPERS own consultant, CEM Benchmarking, stated in a widely-cited report last April that this type of fee understatement is incorrect. Yet bizarrely, this is the very sort of problem the legislation is designed to clean up, yet the fact sheet blandly reinforces CalPERS fee misdirection. However, alert readers may also notice that the Background section also includes language about hedge funds, which would seem to be off-topic. In fact, if you look at the bill, you will see that it has been amended to include alternative investments, defined broadly. So Naked Capitalism readers should pat themselves on the back, in that your efforts on the private equity front have played a significant role in producing broad reforms. Nevertheless, the length of Background section is at the expense of the Why This is Needed section. Whether by accident or design, it comes off as not terribly persuasive: All public pension plans are funded by employee contributions and taxpayer dollars. These funds pay significant fees to its alternative investment general partners but lack sufficient insight into the amount and nature of those fees. The investment portfolios of Californias public pension plans require certain levels of returns to fund constitutionally guaranteed benefits for government workers. Both management and carried interest payments to general partners decrease the net returns on the portfolio. If net returns of the portfolio are reported to pension plans without specific disclosure of the amount of fees paid to general partners, public pension plans have no means of assessing whether the amount of compensation paid to private equity managers or hedge fund managers is appropriate. Its not as if the one argument mades, that the public pension funds have no idea what they are paying, and thus cant begin to tell if the charges are justified, is invalid. But the fact sheet fails even to hint at the fact that private equity firms have been caught cheating investors, and that all the SEC has seen fit to do is make noise and issue some parking-ticket-level fines. The SECs excuse is that private equity limited partners are accredited investors and are thus able to protect themselves. The agency due to understaffing, ideological bias, and the fact that political appointees have the final say, will not go to war with the private equity industry, which is what it would take for a real clean-up to occur. Having alerted the supposedly capable investors of the magnitude of the problem, the SEC has effectively washed its hands of the matter. By contrast, Flahermans FAQ for the bill is highly readable and detailed, and makes clear what is at stake. He focuses on the issue of how general partners extract hidden compensation from portfolio companies and why those charges are dubious, gives an illustration of their size, and debunks the idea that limited partners are close to getting to their hands around the problem. As he points out, many players, like CalPERS, have been investing in private equity for decades. If they had the will or the ability to get this information, they would have done so long ago. Chiang and Cooley appear unwilling to deal with the elephant in the room, meaning the real reason the legislation is desperately needed. Its a well-established principle that a fiduciary must assess the reasonableness of fees and costs of any investment strategy or product in which he invests. Fiduciaries who invest in private equity have flagrantly violated that standard. And the failure to perform that duty is what has allowed general partners to cheat them and to levy charges in aggregate that result in private equity being a lousy deal on a risk/return basis. The SEC in 2014 made clear the consequences of private equity limited partners placing too much trust in the general partners. Yet the limited partners still refuse to stand up for themselves. So this sort of bill is a desperately-needed deus ex machina. Since the SEC will not ride in to protect clueless, cowed, and captured investors from themselves, the alternative is state-level measures. Of course, one can argue that the conundrum that Chiang faces is that he cant criticize the public pension funds openly, since if they were to oppose the bill, that would be likely prove to be a death sentence. And suggesting that California public pension funds have been derelict in performing their fiduciary duties would also raise the uncomfortable question of why it has taken Chiang, who has been on the CalPERS and CalSTRS boards since 2009, so long to figure that out? There is additional good news and bad news. The influential union AFSCME has endorsed the bill. One can hope that the American Federation of Teachers, whose spokesman Dennak Murphy recently stated that investors like CalSTRS needed to get full transparency on private equity fees and costs, will also back the legislation. By contrast, it is disturbing to see CalPERS engage in bait and switch. Its staff, encroaching on the role of the board, said it supported Chiangs transparency bill hot on the heels of his announcement last November. But what do we see now in the FundFire article? The CalSTRS government affairs office is currently analyzing the bill and does not have public comment on it yet, a spokeswoman says. CalPERS similarly has its legislative staff reviewing the bill. We dont have a position at this time, a spokeswoman says. Its actually a bit worrisome to read that: So far, the private equity industry has been relatively quiet on the matter. The four largest private equity managers Blackstone Group, Carlyle Group, Apollo Global Management, and KKR did not list the bill as a pending regulatory risk in their recent SEC annual report filings. Our understanding is that the private equity is firmly set against complying with the newly-promulgated-but-toothless private equity fee reporting template from the Institutional Limited Partners Association. Youd expect the private equity industry to be working against Chiangs bill if they thought it was likely to pass. Does their inaction indicate that they know that Chiang and Cooley only want credit for proposing a bill, as opposed to having it pass? Or are they confident that they have enough California public pension funds who will come out in opposition if need be so as to keep their hands clean? So it is important once again for Naked Capitalism readers, particularly those of you in or with friends, family, and colleagues in California, to ontact elected official by letter or e-mail. And better yet, the same missive can serve as an important prod to the many parties that can help move this bill forward. Most important is to write your state Senator and Assemblyman to tell them how important it is for them to back this legislation. Crib arguments from the Flaherman document. The overarching theme should be that the public pension funds have shown themselves to be so badly captured as to be incapable of acting in the best interests of beneficiaries and California taxpayers. It is important to depict the funds as being remiss and needing the legislature to force the disclosure of information that the limited partners should have insisted on getting from the very outset. You can find the contact information for your state Senator and Assemblyman here. Send a copy of this letter to the editorial board of the Sacramento Bee: The Sacramento Bee 2100 Q. St. Sacramento, CA, 95816 Or you can rework it as a letter to the editor or an op-ed and submit it using this form. Please also send copies or letters to the editor to your local paper. They carry a great deal of weight with elected officials. Last but critically important, please send a copy to John Chiang and CalPERS and CalSTRS board member, state Controller Betty Yee, or give them a call: Mr. John Chiang California State Treasurer Post Office Box 942809 Sacramento, CA 94209-0001 (916) 653-2995 Ms. Betty Yee California State Controller P.O. Box 942850 Sacramento, California 94250-5872 (916) 445-2636 Please tell them that you are disappointed that CalPERS and CalSTRS have not yet backed AB 2833 and you trust they will do everything within their power to make sure that happens. Or if you prefer to use e-mail (you can attach your letter as a .pdf), you can let all the members of the CalPERS board that you know that staff initially endorsed Chiangs bill, and you expect them to follow through and voice their support. Be sure to let them know if you are a current or prospective CalPERS beneficiary, or a concerned California taxpayer. Their addresses: Robert Feckner (President) rob.feckner@calpers.ca.gov Henry Jones (Chairman of the Investment Committee) henmarj@aol.com Michael Bilbrey Michael.bilbrey@calpers.ca.gov John Chiang john.chiang@calpers.ca.gov; Grant Boyken (Chiangs staffer; quoted in FundFire) grant.boyken@treasurer.ca.gov Richard Costigan richard.costigan@calpers.ca.gov Richard Gillihan richard.gillihan@calpers.ca.gov; Katie Hagen (one of Gillians staffers) katie.hagen@calhr.ca.gov Dana Hollinger Dana.Hollinger@calpers.ca.gov Ron Lind rlind1@me.com JJ Jelincic jj@calpers.ca.gov Priya Mathur Priya.mathur@calpers.ca.gov Bill Stanton wjstanton@gmail.com Theresa Taylor Theresa.taylor@calpers.ca.gov Betty Yee b.t.yee@sco.ca.gov; Alan LoFaso (one of Yees staffers) alofaso@sco.ca.gov And again, thanks for your efforts! The fact that this proposal has gotten this far is a testament to your being willing to roll up your sleeves. But the pressure needs to stay on for this initiative to come to fruition. So pull our your keyboards and go to work. ____ * The private equity contracts (limited partnership agreements) are clearly set up so that only certain specified fees are partly rebated (more technically, offset against management fees; the current average across the industry, as reported by CEM Benchmarking, is 85%. But notice that the structure of using a fee offset also means that the total amount of the offsets is limited to the amount of the management fee). AB-2833-Cooley AB 2833 (Cooley) Why-AB-2833 Why AB 2833 New Zealand cat burglar caught stealing mens underwear BBC (Richard Smith). She looks so proud of her cache! Indias red tape causes trouble for exporting cats Financial Times. Try bringing a pet to Australia. The Aussies can out-do any other Commonwealth bureaucrats on those rare occasions when they put their minds to it. Ditto when I tried bringing my garden variety dietary supplements in when the Olympics were on. Andy Grove, Valley Veteran Who Founded Intel, Dies at 79 Bloomberg Warmer Winter Brings Forest-Threatening Beetles North New York Times (David L) The exhausting uber-violence of Netflixs superhero shows Washington Post (furzy) Brussels Paris terrorists used disposable burner phones to hide plans. No evidence of encryption. Boing Boing These 25 Companies Are More Powerful Than Many Countries Foreign Policy (resilc). Amazon is ranked higher than Google, now Alphabet? Ditto Nestle? I think readers will have a party with this list Brexit? Grexit? Last Chance, Amigo? You Can Never Be Too Late in Havana Der Spiegel. Glenn F: This article by a former East German is very interesting and provides a perspective on Cuba not available through the MSM. By rejecting $1bn for a pipeline, a First Nation has put Trudeaus climate plan on trial Guaridan (Glenn F) Syraquistan Big Brother is Watching You Watch Imperial Collapse Watch 2016 The Republican Party is old and getting older. Thats a huge problem for the GOP. Slate (resilc) Its Hard to Find America Inside of Pulitzer Bait Gawker Illinois College Students Say They Were Threatened With Arrest And Turned Away From The Polls ThinkProgress (martha r) Lufthansa reports near miss with drone over Los Angeles Reuters (EM) Kaleidoscope Eyes Michael Shedlock. Dissing Fed rate hike talk. US Home Sales Slump in February; Supply Shortage Hits Market ABC (furzy) Saudis to freeze oil output without Iran Financial Times The Current Oil Price Rally Is Reaching Its Limits OilPrice Class Warfare New Rules for the Monetary Game Reghuram Rajan, Project Syndicate. Todays must read. Rajan was the economist who earned the ire of just about everyone at Greenspans last Jackson Hole by delivering his paper, Has Financial Development Made the World Riskier? which concluded Yes. This article is (as required of someone at his level) coded, but its not hard to discern that he is leveling serious criticisms. Antidote du jour (furzy). @MsWZ: Caught a family portrait: Video and related story via Reuters. Look how the eagles, who are awkward moving around in the nest, are so careful around their chicks. See yesterdays Links and Antidote du Jour here. SHARE Peach Republic owner Sue Bobak presented a check of $3,332 to Golisano Children's Hospital of Southwest Florida, representing proceeds from a trunk show held at Peach Republic, featuring creations from Lisette L Montreal. MarineMax Fort Myers raised over $40,000 to benefit the Golisano Children's Hospital of Southwest Florida. Blessings in a Backpack has been selected as the recipient of the 2016 Push-it-Forward Grantoffered by Pushing the Envelope, providing 20 hours of marketing and public relations services. Information: getpushing.com/ community/push-it- forward. Expansion Thrifty Car Rental, part of Estero-based Hertz Global Holdings Inc., continues to expand its global footprint with its launch in Thailand. Thrifty is now open for business in Bangkok Downtown (Sathorn Road) and Pattaya Downtown (North Pattaya Road), and a further seven additional airport locations are planned for 2016. New store A new Sears Outlet Store opens today at 4929 Rattlesnake Hammock Road in East Naples. Information: 239-732-5066; searsoutlet.com Appointments Miromar Development Corp. has appointed Lynn Schneider director of marketing and public relations. Events The Bonita Springs Area Chamber of Commerce is partnering with Express Employment Professionals of Bonita Springs/Naples to host the 2016 Refresh Leadership Live Simulcast 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. April 13 at the Bonita Springs Area Chamber of Commerce, 25071 Chamber of Commerce Drive, Bonita Springs. Information: www.cvent.com/d/mfq2rb/4W?RefID=FL-Florida-Naples To submit your business news directly online, go to naplesnews.com/BIZwire or email news@naplesnews.com. SHARE Gregg Pachkowski/Special to the Daily News (2) Occupational therapists Cindi Montgomery, left, and Therese Cinotto do an exercise with Virginia Chandley at her home in Naples on Friday. Cinotto, left, and Montgomery are the creators and owners of Moving Forward Now in Naples. Occupational therapist Therese Cinotto, right, does an exercise with Virginia Chandley at her home in Naples. Gregg Pachkowski/Special to the Daily News Occupational therapists Therese Cinotto, left, and Therese Cinotto, right, do an exercise with Virginia Chandley at her home in Naples, FL on Friday, March 18, 2015. Therese Cinotto and Cindi Montgomery created Moving Forward Now which is a Naples-based business centered on providing treatment options for people with Parkinson's disease. (Photo by Gregg Pachkowski/Special to the Daily News) By John Osborne; 239-435-3435, Daily News Correspondent When it comes to fighting the ravages of Parkinson's disease, baby steps definitely aren't the goal. So with that in mind, a local pair of registered and licensed occupational therapists combined forces to create Moving Forward Now, a Naples-based business centered on providing treatment options for people suffering from Parkinson's disease, a progressive affliction that affects as many as 1 million people in the U.S. According to the American Parkinson Disease Association, doctors diagnose as many as 60,000 new cases of Parkinson's disease each year, with the disease striking roughly 50 percent more men than women, and 60 years old marking the average onset age. A disease of the nervous system characterized by tremor, muscular rigidity and slow, imprecise movements, Parkinson's is associated with degeneration of the basal ganglia of the brain and a deficiency of the neurotransmitter dopamine. To combat those symptoms, occupational therapists and former professors Cindi Montgomery and Therese Cinotto specialize in LSVT Big, an exercise program based on the principle that the brain can learn and change (neuroplasticity). The protocol was formatted from a program called the Lee Silverman Voice Treatment to help with speech for people with Parkinson's disease. "LSVT Big is a very intense protocol that results in phenomenal changes," said Montgomery, who met Cinotto while both taught occupational therapy at Kaiser University in Fort Myers. "When I saw what it could do, I knew it was something I wanted to do with my life. I got a tingling feeling just thinking about it." A Michigan native who holds occupational therapy degrees from the University of Michigan and the University of New Hampshire, Montgomery said LSVT Big lives up to its larger-than-life name. "If you've ever seen or known someone with Parkinson's, you know that their movements are slow, with small steps that often cause falling," she said. "So what we do is work with individuals to increase the amplitude of their movements. The point is to recalibrate the brain to initiate bigger movements, which in turn spur improvements in gait and balance and stopping and starting and freezing all the things that are so much a part of a person's life with Parkinson's." Montgomery said LSVT Big therapy takes place four times per week for four consecutive weeks, followed by exercise routines that need to be performed for the rest of a patient's life. "It's quite intensive, and since we go to patients' homes for the therapy, we really feel like we have filled a niche in town because, for many people, getting to an outpatient clinic four times a week can prove difficult," Montgomery said. "Patients also receive the added benefit of training in their home atmosphere, which they navigate the most." Montgomery said the monthlong LSVT Big therapy costs $1,450, with follow-up exercise services available for $50 per visit or at a price of $35 apiece when purchased in packages of six. Client Barbara Lay, of Naples, said it was money well-spent. "The program was so good; it helped me more than any other discipline I've tried, and I really appreciated their enthusiasm and skills," said Lay, who was diagnosed with the disease in 2013 after a dozen years of leading exercise classes for people with Parkinson's at local hospitals around Southwest Florida. Client Virginia Chandley, of Naples, who was diagnosed six years ago, said much the same. "I took this program in the hospital, and I continue to benefit from the exercises," she said. "Part of life for Parkinson's patients, which I am, is that we tend to make all small movements. With the protocol and practicing the large gestures, everything comes together more normally. I was recently in the hospital, where I was in bed and not able to exercise, but when I was tested I'd lost almost nothing. I really think that is probably due to performing this program." Cinotto, who studied at Colorado State University and moved to Florida in 2002, said she hoped she and Montgomery could make a real impact on the community with their new business. "I hope we can reach out and touch those newly diagnosed or those people who have lived with Parkinson's for a number of years and help them understand that they can improve the quality of their life by doing this protocol," she said. "There are a lot of good, positive things that come out of this protocol, so right now our biggest challenge is getting word out about who we are and educating the public and medical professionals that there's an option for the folks who have this diagnosis." For more information call 239-572-6557 or email moving forwardnow.net@gmail.com. Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks at the 2016 American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Policy Conference at the Verizon Center, on Monday, March 21, 2016, in Washington. (AP Photo/Evan Vucci) Florida's delegates to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland will be hand-picked by veteran party insiders, the sort of people with long-standing connections to the likes of Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio and little loyalty to a brash outsider like Donald Trump. But party leaders maintain the delegates won't bolt for the nearest establishment candidate if Trump doesn't secure the nomination at the outset of the convention. More than any other state, Florida's delegates are tied to the winner of the state primary, which this year is Trump, who easily beat Rubio, Sen. Ted Cruz and Gov. John Kasich in last week's vote. Florida's 99 delegates, 8 percent of the 1,237 delegates need to secure the nomination, are bound to Trump for the first three ballots at the convention. While delegates from most other states can vote for someone else on the second ballot, only if no candidate can garner a majority vote of convention delegates after three votes will individual delegates from Florida be free to vote their personal preference. And some would stick with Trump no matter what. Doug Rankin, a state committeeman for Collier County who hopes to be a delegate to the convention, said Trump's primary win will guide his vote, if he's selected. "Now that Trump's won Florida, I'm bound to be a Trump supporter and I will gladly do so," he said. Some of the party's rules can be changed in the days before the convention but the one binding Florida delegates for the first three ballots isn't one of them, said Peter Feaman, an attorney from West Palm Beach who is a member of the Republican National Committee. That rule must be set by the end of October in the year preceding a presidential election, Feaman said. Other rules changes being kicked around in the media are possible but not likely, in Feaman's opinion. Those changes are typically mentioned in discussions about how Trump isn't a favorite with the old guard of the Republican Party. All manner of legerdemain to assure Trump doesn't win are being floated in the media, but Feaman doesn't see any of them becoming a reality. For instance, if neither Trump nor Cruz has the requisite number of delegates as the convention begins, could the convention goers nominate someone new to the race to swoop in and be declared the nominee? A rule in place says a person has to have won primaries in at least eight states to be nominated. "I can't imagine a scenario in which the rules would be changed to such an extent that somebody who hasn't been running would be the nominee. I can't see that happening. That would nullify the entire process," Feaman said. Most of Florida's 99 delegates will be selected in a series of meetings in the coming weeks. In each of the state's 27 congressional districts, party members can fill out an application to be a delegate or an alternate. Presidential candidates who were on the primary ballot can submit a list of names of their preferred delegates in the week following the primary but as of Monday, the Trump camp had not submitted any names, according to Republican Party of Florida officials. Usually, it's up to local supporters of a particular candidate to apply locally and lobby on their own behalf, Feaman said. A panel of Republican Party leaders, comprising a state committeeman, a state committeewoman and the party chairman from each county in the congressional district will consider the applications, listen to the applicants who attend, then pick the delegates. Rankin will be one of six party leaders to pick the three delegates and three alternates from Congressional District 19. In District 25, the selection panel will include 12 members, since that district covers parts of four counties. Rankin will apply to be one of the three delegates there, since he lives in that district. The District 19 delegate selection meeting is set for April 14 in Bonita Springs. The District 25 meeting will be April 16 in Miami. At the 27 meetings, a total of 81 delegates will be selected, the remaining 18 "at large" delegates include office holders like the governor, RNC members and other top party officials. That at large delegates are bound by the same rules as the other delegates. Party nominating rules are always evolving. Feaman said the direction is toward more voter input. "We've substituted picking a nominee at the convention with picking a nominee in the primaries. The delegates don't have the power they used to," he said. Rankin agreed that whoever prevails in the primaries is most likely to be the nominee. Talk of a brokered convention and an outside candidate might make for good headlines, but ultimately the delegates will respect the will of the voters, he predicted. The important thing is for the party to coalesce behind one person to focus on winning in November. "I think what we're seeing now is a bunch of sound and fury signifying nothing, to quote Shakespeare," Rankin said. (Connect with Brent Batten at brent.batten@naplesnews.com, on Twitter@NDN_BrentBatten and at facebook.com/ndnbrentbatten) SHARE Douglas Lee Carter Sr. A 64-year-old Marco Island businessman serving 2A years in a federal prison for mortgage fraud won't have to pay restitution to his victims ? unless they sue and win. U.S. District Judge John Steele ruled Wednesday after Chief Assistant U.S. Attorney Douglas Molloy and Assistant U.S. Public Defender Russell Rosenthal agreed that due to mortgage transfers, the government is unable to identify the total loss or what people, banks or lenders lost money because of Douglas Lee Carter Sr. In a two-page order following a restitution hearing Monday, the judge said determining that would involve complex issues and cause delays, outweighing the need for mandatory restitution. Steele, who sentenced Carter in July to prison and three years of supervised release for filing a false mortgage application, also prohibited him from financial dealings worth more than $500 without permission, ordered mental health treatment and debt management counseling. Law enforcement officials say Carter is in bad health and not expected to live beyond prison. Carter was among hundreds, including police officers, brokers, title agents, bankers and others, targteted in a large statewide federal investigation into mortgage fraud. A week before his April trial, Carter pleaded guilty under a plea deal that dropped two counts of wire fraud. His sentence was lenient due to a "substantial assistance agreement" in which he cooperated and named others involved. His record of land deals in Collier Circuit Court is six pages long, with more than $30 million in foreclosures, lawsuits, judgments and dissatisfied sellers and buyers dating to 1984, so the FBI was asked to investigate. In most cases, Carter signed promissory notes, stopped paying sellers after financing homes for more than they were worth, then pocketed the difference. Although some sellers were indicted, most were innocent victims who lost millions. In 2007, he was involved in several Marco Island real estate deals that led to an indictment against 31 people. Two years later, a federal grand jury indicted him, just after his fraud arrest by sheriff's deputies. Victims say attorney John P. White of Naples, who handled most of his deals, is now under investigation. He was suspended from practicing law for 21 days by the Florida Supreme Court in November after the victims in this federal case filed a complaint and he was charged with dishonesty, fraud and misrepresentation; he pleaded to general misconduct. However, a pending complaint by a former employee says he continued taking clients after the Supreme Court ordered him not to, which was 30 days before his suspension went into effect. He now works with attorney E. James Kurnik II at Naples Law Group PL, operating a loan modification and foreclosure defense business. White couldn't immediately be reached for comment. In this case, Carter, who had since moved to East Naples, admitted he agreed to pay Alan and Jane Lantieri $600,000 for their Naples Park home on March 2, 2006. When he applied for a $540,000 loan, he lied on a Housing and Urban Development (HUD) statement, saying there was only a $60,000 second mortgage, not disclosing a $90,000 third mortgage from the Lantieris. He never paid and the house went into foreclosure. The Lantieris couldn't be reached for comment. The plea involved only two victims in one of hundreds of thousands in loans he was charged with fraudulently obtaining in the federal case. After pleading guilty, the State Attorney's Office dropped its charges. SHARE By Kristine Gill of the Naples Daily News Deputies say a former Naples Police officer molested a girl between the ages of 12 and 16. Ricardo Vazquez Jr., 37, of Golden Gate, was arrested by Collier County Sheriff's deputies Saturday on charges of lewd and lascivious molestation. Vazquez' mug shot was redacted from reports under a Florida statute protecting former law enforcement officers. His street address also was redacted given that his arrest was classified as domestic violence. Reports show a girl between the ages of 12 and 16 accused Vazquez of inappropriately touching her on multiple occasions over several years. The girl told a relative who contacted deputies. Vazquez was a police officer for the city of Naples between November 2005 and December 2010. He resigned voluntarily, according to the city's human resources department. Vazquez has worked for Collier County as a utility technician in its wastewater collection department since May 2013. Q: Why is spearfishing in Florida prohibited only in Collier County and the Keys? ? D.A., Naples A: You can thank or blame Collier County voters nearly 60 years ago for approving the spearfishing ban, which prohibits spearing fish in the county, as well as within state waters off Collier's shores ? nine miles into the Gulf of Mexico. The referendum was on the November 1956 ballot after the County Commission in 1955 approved 'an act to prohibit spear fishing in all of the waters of Collier County,' immediately effective upon voter approval at the next general election. 'It shall be unlawful to take or attempt to take fish in any and all waters of Collier County, Florida, by means of a spear, gig, or similar device. Any person violating the provisions of this act shall be guilty of a misdemeanor, and upon conviction subject to the penalty provided by law,' according to sections 1 and 2 of the law, chapter 30665. Even though a Florida law, effective Oct. 1, 1973, eventually made it legal to spearfish in nearly all salt waters in the state, Collier County's stricter regulations remained on the books, and still are enforced today. Cpl. Bob Marvin, with the Collier County Sheriff's Office Marine Bureau, said violators will receive a citation to appear in court. Fines vary depending on the type, size and number of fish speared. State fines can be steep for the taking of undersized or prohibited fish. Divers wishing to avoid a fine for undersized catch are advised to keep in mind that objects underwater usually appear larger than actual size. Spearfishermen are bound by the same restraints as other saltwater fishermen, including fish length, types of species and bag limits. Even in areas of Florida where spearfishing is permitted, many fish are still on a statewide no-take list. Although it is against the law to take goliath grouper by any means anywhere off Florida, it also is illegal to spear many kinds of fish, including billfish, sharks, snook, redfish, permit, pompano, tarpon, bonefish, some rays and crabs, ornamental fish and many other species. Fishing regulations are constantly changing, so before making the trip, make sure you go to the FWC website to brush up on the latest. Florida fishers also may not use spearing equipment or even have possession of it within 100 yards of public beaches, fishing piers or bridges where public fishing is allowed. Spearing and the possession of spears and spearguns also is not permitted in most state parks, and Everglades National Park, and one may not have possession of spearing equipment in freshwater recreational areas or man-made canals. Spearfishing is defined as the taking of a saltwater fish by use of a spear, gig or lance, whether the angler is above the water or below, according to the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission. As with any recreational fishing, most spearfishers also need a valid Florida saltwater fishing license and must display a diver down flag, if diving or snorkeling. Of course, Collier's stricter law was enacted before the Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission was created in 1999, and even predates both the state's former Marine Fisheries Commission and Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission. The law addressed the abundant spearing of snook off Collier beaches, wrecks and fish-spawning mangroves in the 1950s, Cpl. Marvin said. 'That's why they put that in there, to stop that,' he said. Why hasn't the grandfathered regulation been repealed? 'We have not been requested to remove the rule,' said Amanda Nalley, a spokeswoman for FWC. Collier-specific laws enacted even earlier ? in 1939 and 1949 ? cracked down on nets and seining in the county, and a 1951 law made it illegal to spear fish in saltwater by using any artificial light. Click here for a link to the list of FWC's special acts of local application. The validity regarding these special acts has caused some confusion over the years. In 1983, the Florida Legislature actually did repeal the Collier spearfishing laws, but the regulations were carried forward as administrative rules of the newly created Marine Fisheries Commission, and are still in effect under the FWC. Citizens are understandably confused by local fishing and diving regulations, said Kevin Sweeney, owner of SCUBAdventures, which sells a lot of spearguns ? prominently displayed on a wall of his Naples store. Sweeney notifies spearfishers about Collier's ban and provides them with a sheet of rules. 'We educate everybody,' he said. 'Most of the people that come in have a boat and go offshore for clearer water. We do educate people to keep them out of jail.' Because nearshore diving is limited anyway because of low visibility, Sweeney said he is puzzled by Collier's special exemption for spearfishing. 'Why they have it, I don't know,' he said. Capt. Mark Garcy, the owner of Naples Marina and Excursions off the Cocohatchee River in North Naples, said the local ban hurts everybody. 'What's the point? It hurts our economy. It hurts business. It's definitely not a beneficial thing,' he said. Garcy, one of the founders of the Lee & Collier Spearfishing Club, said good diving conditions exist for spearfishing off Wiggins Pass. He said he gets asked all the time about local spearfishing. 'I just had a call today from people who want to go tomorrow,' he said Sunday. 'Why should they not be able to fish in fishable waters?' In addition to Collier County, spearfishing is prohibited within the boundaries of John Pennekamp Coral Reef State Park off Key Largo and the area of Monroe County known as the Upper Keys, the string of islands from the Miami-Dade County line south through Long Key. Spearfishing regulations in the Keys are even more convoluted to navigate, especially with additional federal restrictions. ___ Have a local question? Email it with your name and city of residence to intheknow@naplesnews.com. 'In the Know' is published Mondays and Wednesdays in the Naples Daily News. Find a complete archive of 'In the Know' columns at naplesnews.com/intheknow. SHARE Gary Lytton Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve Director Submitted By Gary Lytton, Naples Executive Director Friends of Rookery Bay Inc. An exciting new partnership with China Rilin Industrial Group, a private corporation based in China, to conduct one of the largest mangrove wetland restoration projects in Florida was recently announced by the Rookery Bay National Estuarine Research Reserve. The Reserve is a 110,000-acre wildlife sanctuary in Collier County, managed by the state of Florida, and supported by The Friends of Rookery Bay. Mangroves are a vitally important refuge and food source for marine wildlife, including birds, fish and shellfish, while supporting our local economy through tourism, sport fishing and commercial harvest. Wenliang Wang, chairman of China Rilin Group, is donating $4.5 million to fund the restoration of 64 acres of dead mangroves near Goodland and Marco Island. Recent studies, conducted by Rookery Bay scientists in collaboration with the Conservancy of Southwest Florida and Coastal Resources Group (CRG), concluded the die-off area was caused by the construction of State Road 92 in the 1930s with the subsequent loss of tidal flows so important to sustaining the health of mangroves. In response, Rookery Bay worked with CRG and the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service to design the large-scale restoration project, and secure the required regulatory permits. All that was needed to proceed was the money to fund the project. I was director of the Rookery Bay Reserve during this time, before retiring in August 2015 after nearly 30 years. It was our intention then to seek RESTORE Act funds from the Deepwater Horizon spill: unfortunately the majority of these funds remain tied up in court battles. Enter Wang and China Rilin, with a sincere interest and proven track record in environmental philanthropy. The U.S. Senate recently recognized Wang for contributing $35 million to restore the Dandong Yalu River Estuary Wetland, a vitally important wetland and bird sanctuary of international significance in northeast China, and refuge for hundreds of thousands of coastal birds. Wang also provides significant support for disaster relief, cultural heritage protection and educational institutions including Harvard University and New York University. He is interested in working with us at Rookery Bay, so we can restore a mangrove-forested wetland in urgent need of help. Along the way we will learn how best to conduct similar large-scale restoration projects all over the world. Globally, mangroves have been lost at an alarming rate due to coastal development, including in the U.S. and China. As a National Estuarine Research Reserve, the restoration work will be monitored carefully. At the same time, the work will provide outstanding opportunities for students from Florida Gulf Coast University, and other institutions, to gain important experience and knowledge about restoring wetlands over the projected five year-long effort. Research also has demonstrated that healthy mangroves are highly efficient as carbon sinks, removing carbon dioxide from our atmosphere. Taken within the context of a warming planet, the restoration of mangroves that help alleviate excess carbon dioxide become even more essential to our future, and our quality of life. In 1997, through an international science agreement, the Rookery Bay Reserve became the first Reserve in the nation to be designated with a sister reserve in China, the Shankou Mangrove Reserve on the south coast of China. In the following 20 years of collaboration and partnership, I have learned our colleagues in China face the same environmental issues, and feel the same sense of responsibility to our planet as we do in the U.S. I applaud Wenliang Wang's generous gift. Together, we will now be able to roll up our sleeves and start working to help get us back on course. __ For more information visit www.rookerybay.org The national law firm of Quarles & Brady LLP announced that Kimberly Leach Johnson, firm chair and partner in the firms Naples office, participated in a panel discussion at the recent Diversity & Flexibility Alliance 2016 Annual Conference in Washington, D.C. The panel discussion on Optimizing Talent: A Conversation with Women Law Firm Chairs consisted of Johnson and three other managing partners from across the country discussing the rise in the number of women as law firm chairs. Conference attendees heard how these trailblazers are literally changing the face of leadership and working toward advancing women and retaining top talent within their organizations. Panelists also provided helpful lessons that can be applied to leading change for women. Johnson is a member of the Quarles & Bradys Estate, Trust & Wealth Preservation Practice Group. She has extensive experience representing families in the planning of their estates and the handling of affairs after individuals pass away. Johnson was honored by the Collier County Womens Bar Association as its Woman Lawyer of the Year in 2011 and is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation. She earned her law degree from the University of Florida Levin College of Law, L.L.M. degree from the University of Miami, and bachelors degree from Anderson College. Johnson has also received several professional honors, including being named among the Top 50 Woman Florida Super Lawyers and The Best Lawyers in America. BauerFinancial has awarded Sanibel Captiva Community Bank a five-star rating, the highest granted by the independent bank research firm. A five-star or superior rating indicates the institution has at least twice the capital that regulators require, is profitable and has kept delinquent loans in check. Sanibel Captiva Community Bank is well-capitalized, with $277 million in assets, and generates the third highest return on equity of Floridas 157 chartered banks. BauerFinancial has been analyzing and reporting on the financial condition of the nations banking industry since 1983, using several indicators of a banks financial strength in determining its rating. The firm analyzes data reported quarterly to federal regulators and compares it with historical statistics for consistency. To learn more, visit www.bauerfinancial.com. Founded in 2003, Sanibel Captiva Community Bank is the only bank chartered on Sanibel, where it has two locations, the main office at 2475 Library Way and 1037 Periwinkle Way. It has three locations in Fort Myers, in the Myerlee community, on McGregor Boulevard near Kelly Road and on College Parkway. The banks professionals provide customized individual and business banking services and specialize in residential loans. Sanibel Captiva Community Bank provides free personal and business checking, top-yielding money market accounts, safe deposit boxes, electronic statements and a mobile banking app, as well as online and drive-thru banking. To learn more, visit www.sancapbank.com. WASHINGTON Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Melvin Watt didn't receive quite the homecoming he may have hoped for when he appeared before the House Financial Services Committee on Tuesday. Though they at times joked with their former colleague, GOP lawmakers hammered Watt over his recent decisions to allow Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to buy loans with lower downpayments and provide money to two affordable housing trust funds during a grueling four-hour hearing. It was Watt's first time in front of the committee since leaving Congress to head the FHFA last year. Below are four crucial takeaways from his lengthy appearance before Congress. The GOP is clearly frustrated with the 3% downpayment plan Republican lawmakers were perhaps toughest on Watt's recent decision to reduce downpayment requirements for government-sponsored enterprise-backed loans to 3% from 5%, which they argued could increase risky lending and push the country back toward another financial crisis. "We're concerned where taxpayer dollars are potentially going to be as we turn to these very loose underwriting standards," said Rep. Scott Garrett, R-N.J. Rep. Jeb Hensarling, R-Texas, chairman of the panel, added that the decision amounts to a "race to the bottom" for the agency. "As history repeats itself, historically prudent underwriting standards are yet again being thrown out the window," he said. "The data is overwhelming that there is a direct correlation between delinquencies and foreclosures on the one hand and low down payments on the other." But Watt defended the decision, noting that the proposal calls for taking into account other factors about a potential borrower's financial position that can help offset the risks associated with a lower downpayment. "If you carefully look at other considerations and take them into account in deciding whether to extend that credit or in Fannie and Freddie's case, whether to back that credit then you can ensure that a 3% loan is just as safe as a 10% downpayment loan," he said. Republicans are also angry about the housing trust funds Watt faced more pushback from Republicans for his decision last month to turn on GSE contributions to the Housing Trust Fund and the Capital Magnet Fund. The two trust funds were established by a 2008 housing law, but never funded because Fannie and Freddie were quickly put into conservatorship after the law was enacted. GOP lawmakers argued that the decision to divert some GSE profits to the housing trust funds violates language in the 2008 law. "How can the enterprises be in this state, with these leverage ratios, and not be deemed both financial unstable and undercapitalized?" said Rep. Ed Royce, R-Calif., who reintroduced a bill Tuesday that would block FHFA from funding the trust funds as long as the GSEs are in conservatorship or receivership. But Watt argued that while he believes his predecessor Edward DeMarco acted appropriately in turning off contributions to the funds, "circumstances have changed" around the condition of the GSEs, given their profitability. Moreover, he said, concerns about capital at the GSEs are no longer relevant now that the government doesn't allow Fannie and Freddie to build up capital reserves. "Basically, when Fannie and Freddie were put into conservatorship, and the preferred stock agreements were entered into with Treasury, that suspended the capital of Fannie and Freddie," Watt added. The FHFA director also said that the decision includes backstops for suspending the funds again, should the GSEs slip financially. "We put in place prudential stops if circumstances go back in the other direction, if we ever have another draw on the Treasury, that would automatically stop the funding of the housing trust funds," he said. Democrats, meanwhile, continued to praise the decision, arguing that the funds will help needy renters who don't currently have access to affordable housing options. "These critical new funds will not only add to the supply of affordable rental housing, but will also help to address homelessness and poverty across the country," said Rep. Maxine Waters, D-Calif., ranking member on the panel. Lawmakers from both parties dislike FHFA's proposal regarding the Home Loan Banks Several lawmakers also voiced concerns about a controversial FHFA plan that would impose ongoing membership requirements on institutions that belong to the Federal Home Loan Bank System. The proposal would require banks and credit unions with less than $1 billion in assets to hold at least 1% of their assets as mortgages, and bigger institutions to hold at least 10% of their assets as mortgages to remain in the system. Regulators, bankers and others have criticized the plan, arguing that it could push out smaller institutions from a stable source of funding. "Is this an effort to try, through the rule process, to determine how these resources can be used and, in effect, to put the institutions that are part of the Home Loan Bank System on a rather short leash?" said Rep. Frank Lucas, R-Okla. Watt conceded that the agency has "touched a nerve" with the plan, but argued that the agency estimates just 50 to 100 of the roughly 7,500 institutions in the system would be pushed out by the new requirements. FHFA has yet to make a decision on G-fees or principal reductions Watt reiterated earlier comments that he hopes the agency will announce a decision on mortgage guarantee fees by the end of March, though he warned that it "may slip" later into the spring. The mortgage industry has long been awaiting a response from Watt on the issue of G-fees, after the FHFA director postponed an earlier decision to increase the fees under DeMarco. "We're still in the process of evaluating the input we got in response to a request for input from the public on this issue," Watt said, declining to provide any specifics on which way the agency might be leaning. He also indicated that the agency will continue to look at ways to offer principal reductions that are helpful to consumers without being costly to the GSEs. Some Democrats, including several on the Senate Banking Committee, have pushed Watt to find ways to modify existing mortgages through principal reductions, arguing it could still help millions of Americans affected by the financial crisis. "What we're trying to do on principal reduction is find a place where it is beneficial to borrowers and not negatively net present value to Fannie and Freddie there are some instances in which that is the case," said Watt. "When we find that niche, that's when we're going to make a decision about this." Home prices rose in January as shoppers competed for a limited inventory of listings. Prices increased 0.5% on a seasonally adjusted basis from December, the Federal Housing Finance Agency said Tuesday in a report from Washington. The gain matched the median estimate of 19 economists, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Prices climbed 6% from a year earlier. The low number of homes on the market is holding back home sales and driving up prices. Closings on purchases of existing homes decreased 7.1% to a 5.08 million annual rate in February, a three-month low, after a 5.47 million pace in January, the National Association of Realtors reported on Monday. "There isn't a lot of supply being built and markets are extremely tight," Gennadiy Goldberg, rate strategist for TD Securities USA in New York, said in a phone interview Monday. "We expect prices to be pressured higher." Prices increased from a year earlier in all regions, led by the South Atlantic including Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia with an 8.9% gain. Prices climbed 7.4% in the Pacific area, with California, Oregon and Hawaii. The Middle Atlantic region New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania had the smallest increase, 1.7%. The FHFA index measures transactions for single-family properties financed with mortgages owned or securitized by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It doesn't provide specific prices. The median price of an existing single-family home in the U.S. was $215,000 in January, up 8.3% from a year earlier, according to the Realtors group. L-R: Wayland Plond, Todd Sherman, Tyler Sherman Randall Scott Todd Sherman, president and co-founder of Motivity Solutions, died unexpectedly March 19. He was 45 years old. Sherman, a native and resident of Aurora, Colo., suffered a heart attack while exercising, according to a March 21 letter the company sent to clients and partners. "The world has lost the most amazing husband, father, brother, son, friend and human being. He left behind a legacy and spirit that will forever be the foundation of the Sherman Family," Todd Sherman's brother, Motivity Solutions CEO Tyler Sherman, said in a written statement. "I know I am only one of thousands that Todd has inspired, and I know he would want us all to come together and emerge from this tragedy as better people." Todd Sherman is survived by his wife of 17 years and their three children, as well as numerous siblings, cousins and other extended family. In lieu of flowers, the Sherman family has requested that donations be made to the newly created Sherman Entrepreneurship Foundation, "dedicated to fostering the next generation of entrepreneurs." The foundation's website is toddsherman.org Todd and Tyler Sherman co-founded Motivity Solutions, a provider of business intelligence software for mortgage lenders, in 2006, where Todd Sherman has overseen the company's software development, day-to-day operations and strategic implementations. Previously, the pair co-founded Watermark Financial Partners Inc., a Denver-based mortgage originator specializing in Federal Housing Administration lending. When they sold the company to Mortgage Investors Corp. in Feb. 2005, it was the seventh largest FHA lender in the country. "It's not very often that you see brothers that can work efficiently and well side-by-side, and this is one of those cases where a very wonderful phenomenon happened," said Jody Collup, vice president of marketing at real estate valuations software provider Global DMS and a veteran mortgage technology executive. "They seemed to be the halves to each other; the visionary and leader Tyler alongside the meticulous, organized, detail-oriented Todd. Together, they created a wonderful concept and really brought it to life to the benefit of multiple companies in the industry," she added. Before co-founding Watermark, Todd Sherman worked as a software engineer at loan origination system provider Mortgage Cadence. He earned an undergraduate degree from University of Colorado Boulder in 1993 and an MBA from University of Colorado Denver in 1998. "Todd was a very passionate young man and he was a visionary. He was a very, very creative software engineer and architect; always looking for ways to solve a problem and come up with the right answer," Michael Detwiler, the longtime CEO of Denver-based Mortgage Cadence who oversaw the company's sale to Accenture in 2013, said in an interview. Motivity Solutions has been the recipient of numerous awards and recognitions in the mortgage industry, including the 2009 Release of the Year and 2013 Synergy categories of NMN's Mortgage Technology Awards, and was named a Top Service Provider by sister publication Mortgage Technology magazine each year from 2009 until 2014, when the last edition of the list was published. Motivity is also unique in that the company has created a configuration of its business intelligence platform for internal use, allowing managers to use dashboards and reports to monitor and score employee performance. "You can expect to see us continuing our growth and constantly improving our offerings as we build technology solutions and business intelligence to help you grow your competitive advantage," Tyler Sherman wrote in the company letter. "After all, thats what Todd would have wanted us to do. His incomparable spirit will be with us always." Representative Mel Watt, a Democrat from North Carolina and U.S. President Barack Obama's nominee as director of the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), swears into a Senate Banking Committee nominations hearing in Washington, D.C., U.S., on Thursday, June 27, 2013. Watt faced lawmakers skeptical of his knowledge of housing finance issues today at a Senate Banking Committee hearing on his nomination to oversee mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Photographer: Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg *** Local Caption *** Mel Watt Andrew Harrer/Bloomberg WASHINGTON Only eleven months after cheering Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Melvin Watt's confirmation, Senate Democrats are fed up with the pace of reforms at the agency. In a sometimes-tense hearing before the Banking Committee on Wednesday, several top Democrats, including Sens. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., Robert Menendez, D-N.J. and Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., had tough questions for Watt. For example, both Warren and Menendez pressed Watt on why he hasn't allowed principal reductions on loans owned by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The issue has been a hot-button topic since Watt's predecessor, Edward DeMarco, opposed principal reductions at the government-sponsored enterprises in 2012. Supporters of the policy continue to argue that reductions would help underwater borrowers and reduce foreclosures, while critics say the policy would impact considerably fewer homeowners at this stage. "You've been in office for nearly a year now, and you haven't helped a single family not even one by agreeing to a principal reduction," Warren told Watt, noting that 5.3 million families are still underwater. "Why has this not been a priority for you?" Menendez, meanwhile, added that "time is of the essence" to help borrowers through principal reductions. Watt acknowledged that the agency "has not taken responsible principal reduction off the table" perhaps not surprising given he was supportive of targeted reductions when he served as a Democratic congressman from North Carolina. But he repeatedly deflected criticisms from lawmakers about timing, calling the problem "perhaps the most difficult that I have faced as director." Watt was more forthcoming on another issue of whether the FHFA would allow the GSEs to fund two affordable housing trust funds that could be used by low-income borrowers and renters. The National Housing Trust Fund and the Capital Magnet Fund were established under a housing law in 2008, but DeMarco suspended funding soon after the GSEs were placed into conservatorship. Housing groups and Democratic lawmakers have pushed for the GSEs to fund the trust funds, arguing they can assist struggling borrowers. Watt said the FHFA would have a decision soon on that issue. "There are specific statutory provisions that indicate when the contributions to the housing trust funds can be suspended. Those statutory provisions have not changed," said Watt. "But that doesn't mean that circumstances that triggered the determination may not have changed, and that's what we're evaluating at this point." It's possible that Watt is leaning towards turning the funds back on, which would be a boon for progressives and housing advocacy groups. Housing and Urban Development Secretary Julian Castro said last month that he and Watt have been discussing the issue and that he was hopeful the funding would kick in soon, according to media reports. "If you can find a way to fund it, it would practically be helpful for thousands and thousands of people," said Sen. Jack Reed, D-R.I. Merkley, meanwhile, appeared frustrated with Watt for the FHFA's failure to crack down on force-placed insurance. The issue made headlines in 2011 when mortgage borrowers were hit with hefty premiums, often after they defaulted and went into foreclosure. Force-placed insurance is purchased by the servicer when a struggling homeowner fails to maintain coverage on the property. The FHFA's inspector general recommended this summer that the FHFA sue banks and force-placed insurers for inflating prices and causing losses. "I'm not satisfied yet that homeowners are getting a fair shake," Merkley said. When Watt said he was looking into the issue, Merkley accused him of offering "excuses." "These are predatory practices and you're in a position to help stop it. I'm asking you do so," Merkley said. GOP lawmakers also had some tough questions for Watt on Wednesday, including concerns about the risks involved with new plans to expand credit. The FHFA announced a proposal last month to allow borrowers to put down as little as 3% on GSE-backed loans. "I'm troubled that you would reduce borrower home equity after the problems we've seen, so early," said Sen. Mike Crapo, R-Idaho, ranking member on the panel, pushing for more information about how the agency plans to mitigate any increased risk from the change. Watt said that the agency would release additional details about lowering the minimum downpayment for certain borrowers in early December, including giving specifics about others steps that would be taken to reduce risk. "The problem is that the downpayment itself is not necessarily a reliable indicator of whether somebody will pay a loan," Watt added. "If they have good credit, if they have housing counseling... and know how to be responsible homeowners those can mitigate the perceived increased risk." The FHFA director also told Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., that the agency is in an ongoing discussion about how the GSEs can better evaluate creditworthiness, including reviewing the accuracy of traditional credit scores calculated by FICO. "We are thinking about it on an ongoing basis not only whether it would be advantageous to have competition in the credit score area, but whether Fannie and Freddie through their own processes could evaluate creditworthiness. And they do, using things other than credit scores," said Watt. He added: "It's a daily part, an hourly part of our regular process, because if you can't accurately evaluate the ability of a borrower or prospective borrower to repay, we have real trouble." Fannie Mae is marketing its second offering of the year of Connecticut Avenue Securities transferring the credit risk on mortgages that it insures. The Series 2016-C02 is also Fannie Mae's third transaction offering exposure to actual losses on a pool of mortgages, as opposed to estimated losses, according to Moody's Investors Service, which is rating the deal. Unlike the previous transaction, CAS 2016-C01, which is backed by two reference pools of loans, the notes in CAS 2016-C02 are backed by a single reference pool of loans with loan-to-value ratios between 60.01%-80% that were acquired between March 1 and May 31, 2015. The loans are seasoned by 9.1 months, on average. By comparison, in the previous transaction there were two series of notes backed by two separate pools of loans, one with LTVs below 80% and with LTVs above 80%. The credit quality of the reference pool for CAS 2016-C02 is similar to that of the lower LTV pool backing CAS 2016-C01, according to Moody's. There are 146,193 prime, fully amortizing, fixed-rate, one-to-four unit, first-lien conforming loans totaling $36 billion. The weighted average original LTV of the pool is 74.92% and the weighted average FICO is 752. The loans were originated on or after Oct. 1, 2014 by various originators and acquired by Fannie Mae between March 1 and May 31, 2015. The largest three originators (by loan balance) are Wells Fargo Bank (12.23%), Quicken Loans Inc. (6.21%) and JPMorgan Chase Bank (2.9%). Fannie Mae is not offloading all of the credit risk of the loans; it will retain at least 66% of the most junior tranches, incurring the first losses, 5% of the mezzanine tranche and 100% of the senior tranches. This aligns the mortgage insurer's interests strongly with those of investors in the deal, according to Moody's. However, the presale report states that Fannie Mae "may have incentives to work out breaches of sellers' loan representations and warranties and servicers' breaches of servicing obligations in ways other than requiring such seller or servicer to repurchase the related mortgage loans," which would not be in the best interest of investors. Moody's has assigned ratings to four tranches of notes: the $342 million 1M-1 tranche is rated Baa3, the $222.5 million 1M-2A tranche is rated Ba1, the $376.6 million 1M-2B tranche is rated B2 and the $599 million 1M-2 tranche is rated B1. Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Wells Fargo Securities are the deal's co-lead managers; Barclays Capital, BNP Paribas Securities, JPMorgan Securities and Nomura Securities are co-managers. The North Atlantic Council (NAC), chaired by the NATO Deputy Secretary General, Ambassador Alexander Vershbow, will pay a visit to the Republic of Lithuania on Wednesday 23 and Thursday 24 March 2016. The North Atlantic Council will have a series of informal meetings with focus on the current security challenges in the region. They will also meet with President Ms. Dalia Grybauskaite, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr. Linas Linkevicius and the Minister of National Defence, Mr. Juozas Olekas. During the visit, the Deputy Secretary General and the NAC will attend a demonstration of military activities at the Mechanized Infantry Brigade Iron Wolf in Rukla together with Minister of National Defence, the Commander of the NATO Force Integration Unit, Colonel Jakob Larsen, the Commander of the Lithuanian Land Force, Major General Almantas Leika and the Commander of the US Army Europe, Lieutenant General Ben Hodges. Still and video imagery will be available on the NATO website after the event. For access to events open to media coverage please contact the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Lithuania - www.urm.lt. Follow us on Twitter (@NATOPress and @NATOdsg). (NaturalNews) Obesity is associated with a wide and growing range of health issues and problems, and now, it seems, we can add memory loss to that list.As reported by the BBC, people who are obese have a worse memory than thinner friends , according to the findings of a small, recent study. Tests on 50 people deemed clinically obese showed that being overweight was tied to worse "episodic memory," or the ability to remember past experiences.The study, which was published in theargues that inability to recall some details of recent meals may also lead to overeating. That said, other aspects of memory, like general knowledge, were not affected.The BBC reported further:Researchers tested 50 people with a body mass index (BMI) ranging from 18, which is healthy, to 51, which is very obese. Each took part in a memory test something like doing a treasure hunt on your own. They were asked to "hide" objects at different times and on different screens displayed on a computer. Later, researchers asked them to recall what they had hidden and where they had stashed it. The results: Obese test subjects scored 15 percent lower than thinner test subjects."The suggestion we're making is that a higher BMI is having some reduction on the vividness of memory , but they're not drawing blanks and having amnesia," Dr. Lucy Cheke, from the University of Cambridge, told the BBC News website."But if they have a less strong memory of a recent meal, with a less strong impact in the mind, then they may have less ability to regulate how much they eat later on."Scientists know that hunger hormones play a large role in how much food we consume at a sitting, but they also know that the human mind plays a key role as well. And food companies know this, too, which is why they market the way they do. For instance, people who watch TV while they are eating dinner have been shown to eat more or feel hungrier sooner. What's more, scientists have found that people with amnesia will have repeated meals in a shorter period of time."It is too early to talk in terms of advice, but we are certainly beginning to observe the mechanisms that obesity perpetuates itself," Cheke concluded. "Concentrating on your food has been a message for a long time, but that may be a bit harder if you're overweight."Hopefully knowing what's going on will help us to develop ways of helping people."In a separate report, the WorldLifeExpectancy.com website reported that weight loss can improve memory function.A report, published in the journal, cited a study that shows a growing body of evidence suggesting that obesity is linked to a number of cognitive deficits, including memory loss . The study found that in addition to being a known risk factor for heart disease, diabetes, cancer and other disease processes, obesity acts against a number of different metabolic pathways that can affect the way humans process information."Obesity affects a number of physiological mechanisms that can have an adverse effect on the brain," said John Gunstad of Kent State University, one of the authors of the study Though the research was conducted on people who weighed an average of 300 pounds, the factor related to obesity that is causing memory loss is tied to weight loss, therebymemory function as well.Gunstad said that he believes that people who can lose 20 to 25 pounds should summarily experience the same health benefits as people who undergo gastric bypass surgery CDC has cornered the market on viruses and vaccines 'Don't believe it was suicide' (NaturalNews) A research biochemist and molecular biologist who has long believed that the vaccine movement is dangerous , has become the target of government harassment and intimidation, having even been jailed at one point, all because she refused to destroy documents in an attempt to hide incriminating evidence against the industry.In 2011, while conducting research in Nevada, Dr. Judy Mikovits, PhD, was arrested and charged with "stealing" research documents, a sting that was conducted with assistance from corrupted local officials,reported.However, in truth, she never stole any documents; they were in her lab office the whole time, the website noted. She says she had refused to destroy them as part of an attempt to hide incriminating evidence After that, she became the target of a lawsuit, to be further harassed and intimidated. It wound up costing her a job and her savings, but "that hasn't deterred her crusade to expose the lies, corruption, and medical barbarism that exists that hides the underbelly of so-called 'health care,'" the site reported.reported further:"This 2011 harassment through legal channels was the apex of constantly mounting government campaigns against her intrepid integrity that involved being cited for insubordination and getting fired."It should be noted that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention sends scientists and others out to obtain viruses from infected tissues, then bring them back where they can be cultured and, eventually, stored in cold vaults, giving them essential control over all known pathogens and infectious diseases.The CDC then supplies pharmaceutical companies with copies of the original cultures, so that they can be transformed into vaccines, the website reported. In addition, the CDC also serves as an information clearinghouse of sorts some would argue a propaganda operation to "inform" the masses whenever an epidemic is forming that the virus is known, and not to worry because a vaccine is on the way.In her capacity as a cancer researcher, Mikovits' work for government agencies enabled her to gain access to the most up-to-date technology for classifying viral genetics and retroviruses."Politically, she's in the same boat now as Bernice Eddy, a top NIH scientist who tried to warn Congress about the SV40 virus in polio vaccines that posed long term cancer threats. Bernice lost her lab and her job, but she was right,"reported.The following text is taken and paraphrased from scientist Russell Dobkin's review of her book,, co-written by Kent Heckenlivy:Watch a short video presentation from Mikovits and Heckenlivy here "If I'm 'suicided' the way others [microbiologists] have been, don't believe it was suicide," Mikovits says. We practiced attachment parenting in our home (baby wearing, breastfeeding, co-sleeping, non vax, no circ, gentle parenting style) but my handsome boy was unhappy. We had multiple doctors visits and even a couple ER visits where my mama intuition said something is JUST not right. The nightmare begins When my son was almost four months old I picked him up out of his crib it didn't feel right under his left arm, like a popping feeling. My fiance and I went straight to the hospital. When we got to x-ray they would not allow us to stay in the room with him. They told us that they had found multiple fractures of my son's ribs. First we were just blown away, very shocked. Shortly thereafter, the social worker from the hospital came in and she looked right at us she said 'I know that you guys abused your son.' Very first thing she said. The police came. The detective screamed at me, he cursed at me, he told me I was the worst f****** mother he had ever seen. He told me they were going to put me under the f****** jail. Hopes for reunification Pom Wonderful LLC has failed to persuade a California jury that Coca-Cola engaged in false advertising. On Monday, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California ruled in favor of Coca-Cola and awarded no damages to Pom, The Wall Street Journal reported. In 2008, Pom filed a complaint against Coca-Cola under the Lanham Act, a federal trademark statute through which rivals can sue each other for false advertising. Pom accused Coca-Cola of duping consumers into believing a Minute Maid beverage contained mostly blueberry and pomegranate juices when in fact it contained very little of those substances. Coca-Cola had persuaded a trial court and a federal appeals court (9th Circuit) that its compliance with FDA labeling regulations precluded the lawsuit. But the U.S. Supreme Court in 2014 overturned the appellate ruling. Nothing in the text, history, or structure of the FDCA [Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act] or the Lanham Act shows the congressional purpose or design to forbid these suits. Quite to the contrary, the FDCA and the Lanham Act complement each other in the federal regulation of misleading food and beverage labels," Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the opinion. Competitors, in their own interest, may bring Lanham Act claims like POMs that challenge food and beverage labels that are regulated by the FDCA." Coca-Colas drink consisted nearly entirely of apple and grape juices (99.4 percent), Kennedy pointed out, containing a mere 0.3 percent pomegranate juice and 0.2 percent blueberry juice. Pom sought around US$78 million in damages from Coca-Cola, but the jury ruled Pom hadnt proved Coca-Colas labeling was misleading, The Journal reported. We are pleased and gratified by the jurys verdict," Coca-Cola spokesman Josh Gold said in an emailed statement. As we have said all along, our flavored juice blend was clearly and properly labeled in compliance with all FDA requirements." Missy Miller, a spokeswoman for Pom, said the company was disappointed with the jury's ruling. "We believe that Coca-Cola intentionally confused consumers with its so-called Minute Maid Pomegranate juice product, which had a mere 0.3% pomegranate juice; the rest was ordinary apple and grape juice," she said in an emailed statement. "Food and beverage manufacturers have a responsibility to provide honest and accurate information about whats in their products, and consumers have a right not to be deceived by products which arent as they appear." It seems like living in the urban jungle has given birds street smarts, too, according to researchers from the McGill University in Quebec, Canada. In a first-ever study comparing bird brains in the city to their country counterparts, results showed that city birds have better problem-solving capabilities, such as accessing to food in drawers, and are more daring. The birds have adapted to their tough urban environment, allowing them to learn new tricks of the trade. A team of three researchers, namely Jean-Nicholas Audet, Simon Ducatez and Louis Lefebvre, conducted the study with more than 50 Barbados bullfinches from different parts of the Carribean Island. The Carribean was a prime location since some of its areas have human settlements, while others are mostly untouched. Audet, a doctoral candidate in Biology told CBC News that he was inspired to do the test after being "hounded by birds at a restaurant terrace in Barbados." Barbados bullfinches are the only endemic bird species in the island-nation. They are seedeaters and have shown great adaptation with humans. Besides attitude and skill, urban birds also showed better immunity than rural counterparts, with Audet saying that they seem to "have it all." Their study is published in the current issue of Behavioral Ecology. On the other hand, other research show that not only bullfinches have certain smarts. Mental Floss compiled a list of surprisingly smart birds, including Galapagos woodpeckers that arm themselves to get grub and ravens that are excellent meat cutters. Studies on crows have also been quite extensive. Prior research show that crows can recognize faces, have sharp memory and can pass information to their offspring. Now, researchers from University of Washington are figuring out if crows also know about death, as per this AP report. Glass rained down, dust choked the air and water from burst pipes mixed with victims' blood when a series of explosions rocked a metro station and international airport in Belgium's capital city Tuesday, killing at least 31 people and injuring scores. "There was dust everywhere, glass everywhere," said witness Jef Versele, who was at the Brussels airport Tuesday morning when twin explosions erupted. "There was chaos, there was people on the floor everywhere. The ceilings came down. It was quite a mess." Versele told NBC News "a lot of people were in panic." "I saw a lot of blood, a lot of people were injured. People were crying, on the floor, covered by parts of the roofing," he explained, adding, "I saw a lot of leg injuries; a lot of people couldn't move anymore. There were quite a lot of people injured. In the departure hall you saw people storming out. It was like, 'run for your life.'" Amateur video shown on France's i-Tele television showed passengers streaming from the terminal with their luggage, desperate to get out. Another image showed a security officer patrolling inside a hall with blown-out paneling and what appeared to be ceiling insulation covering the floor. Mohammad Abid, a passenger who witnessed one of the explosions, described the bloody scene to Reuters. "As passengers passed by, the mirror was flying and people were injured there with bleeding skull, everything, bleeding in the nose," Abid recalled. "Many things happened there." Another traveler, Haziqah Hashim, said passengers made light of the first blast, not assuming the worst until a second explosion tore through the airport. "We heard the first explosion, but that was not quite big. We made jokes about it, saying, 'Is that an explosion?' And then suddenly, the second one was very near," Hashim told Reuters. "And we just ran. We just ran away from that. It's just a very short time suddenly, it happened, so suddenly." Anthony Deloos, an airport worker for Swissport, which handles check-in and baggage services, said the first explosion occurred near the Swissport counters where customers pay for overweight luggage. "We heard a big explosion. It's like when you're in a party and suddenly your hearing goes out, from like a big noise," Deloos said, adding that shredded paper floated through the air as a colleague told him to run. "I jumped into a luggage chute to be safe." Deloos and a coworker said the second blast hit near a Starbucks cafe, an assertion confirmed by the coffee giant in a statement posted online Tuesday. Starbucks said one employee was injured in the attacks and all Starbucks stores in Brussels will be closed until further notice. Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the first blast, told a Belgian media outlet the scene was "atrocious." Mouzoun said the second, louder explosion brought down ceilings and ruptured pipes, mixing water with victims' blood. "There was blood everywhere, injured people, bags everywhere," he told BFM television, adding, "We were walking in the debris. It was a war scene." Marc Noel, 63, was about to board a Delta flight to Atlanta to return to his home in Raleigh, North Carolina. A Belgian native, Noel said he was in an airport store buying magazines when the first explosion occurred 50 yards away. "It was a horrible experience," he told The Associated Press, adding that the decision to shop may have saved his life. "I would probably have been in that place when the bomb went off." Check-in agent intern Tom De Doncker, 21, was near the site of the second explosion. De Doncker said he "saw a soldier pulling away a body" and the concussion from the blast made him feel like he, too, had been hit. With three runways in the shape of a "Z," the airport connects Europe's capital to 226 destinations around the world and handled nearly 23.5 million passengers in 2015. Near the entrance to Brussels' Maelbeek subway station, not far from the headquarters of the European Union, rescue workers set up a makeshift medical treatment center in a pub. Dazed and shocked, morning commuters streamed from the metro entrances as police tried to set up a security cordon. "The Metro was leaving Maelbeek station for Schuman when there was a really loud explosion," said Alexandre Brans, 32, wiping blood from his face. "It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the Metro." Horrified by yet another European terror attack, people around the world took to social media in a show of support. The mayor of Paris which endured two terror attacks last year said on Twitter the Eiffel Tower would be illuminated with the colors of the Belgian flag. "Paris and Brussels are united," Mayor Anne Hidalgo said. Neighbors are using the hashtag #porteouverte, which circulated in the aftermath of November's Paris attacks, to offer shelter to those seeking refuge. Also trending is #JeSuisBruxelles, with tweets often accompanied by pictures of the Belgian flag. A viral tweet from French media outlet Le Monde depicts a cartoon image of a French flag, weeping, with an arm around a crying Belgian counterpart. Facebook activated its security check in the wake of Tuesday's attacks, allowing residents and visitors to "check in" and let friends and family know they were safe. Ari Mason contributed to this report. Illinois politicians are reacting to Tuesdays terrorist attacks in Brussels that left at least 31 dead. While an ocean may separate us, Chicago and Brussels are united by common values of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in a statement. While there are no known threats to the City of Chicago, we will remain vigilant to ensure the safety and security of all of our residents. Chicago will continue standing with the Belgian people both today and in the difficult days ahead as they move forward in their healing process, Emanuel added. Two explosions rocked the check-in zone of Brussels Airport and a third blast hit a metro station in the Belgian capital, in what appeared to be a coordinated attack, NBC News reported. ISIS has claimed responsibility for Tuesdays attacks, according to a news agency affiliated with the group. In response to the deadly attacks, the Chicago Police Department stepped up presence Tuesday morning at airports and transportation sites within the city. Interim Police Supt. John Escalante ordered the amped up security measures just after 7:30 a.m. after similar precautions in New York and Washington, DC and are not in response to any specific threat. U.S. Representative Mike Quigley echoed Emanuels sentiments and called for a proactive response to the attack. "In light of these new attacks, it is clear that we must continue to strengthen our intelligence gathering capabilities and increase intelligence sharing with our allies to destroy terror safe havens, identify new plots and hunt down the terrorists responsible for this atrocious attack, Quigley said in a statement. We must also ensure that our intelligence community is working closely with federal, state and local law enforcement agencies to increase security and awareness here at home. Preventing a similar attack from happening in Chicago is my top priority and I will continue working vigilantly to keep Chicagoans safe, Quigley added. Fellow U.S. Representative Tammy Duckworth, a combat war veteran, sent her condolences to victims and families affected by the attacks. She also pledged support to American allies, but warned against compromising the country's values in the name of security. "America stands shoulder-to-shoulder with our allies around the world, ready once again to remind our enemies of the global community's strength and resilience in the face of such unfathomable evil," Duckworth said in a statement. "While we must remain steadfast in our resolve to hunt down terrorists wherever the hide as well as defeat them on the battlefield, we cannot abandon our values in pursuit of that effort." "The America that I fought to protect leads with strength, not fear." The attacks comes on the heels of increased counterterrorism activity in Brussels. On Friday, Europes most wanted man, Salah Abdeslam, was captured in the Belgian capital in connection with last Novembers Paris terror attacks. Two men who were scooped up in the initial investigation into the death of Fox Lake Police Lt. Joe Gliniewicz have filed a federal suit against the village, its former police chief and others, alleging their constitutional rights were violated, the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting. Lawyers for Preston Shrewsbury and Manuel Vargas say the two men were detained several times last September in connection with Gliniewiczs death, even though The Village of Fox Lake knew there was a strong suspicion and likelihood that . . . Gliniewicz took his own life, according to the suit filed Monday in U.S. District Court. On one occasion, a police helicopter hovered above the home where Shrewsbury and Vargas were living in Fox Lake, and SWAT members surrounded the place, according to the suit. Gliniewicz was found shot dead on Sept. 1 after calling in a report that he saw three suspicious subjects at an abandoned concrete plant in Fox Lake. The death sparked a massive manhunt, national media coverage and a heros funeral for Gliniewicz. Investigators eventually determined that Gliniewicz staged his suicide to look as if he were murdered because he feared discovery that he had been stealing thousands of dollars from a youth police group he led to spend on vacations, pornography and other expenses. Gregory E. Kulis, a lawyer representing Shrewsbury and Vargas, told the Chicago Sun-Times that Fox Lake officials were initially happy to go along with the theory that Gliniewicz didnt take his own life because they didnt want the village under an intense media spotlight to have its dirty laundry aired. The Village of Fox Lake, former Police Chief Michael Behan, who retired before Gliniewicz committed suicide, and the Village of Libertyville are among those mentioned as defendants in the suit. The Village of Fox Lake has not been formally served with the lawsuit and has not had an opportunity to review details of the complaint, according to a statement the village issued Monday. The village will determine a proper course of action after it has thoroughly reviewed the complaint. Therefore, the village will reserve any comment until it gains a better understanding of the lawsuit and its specific allegations. Libertyville officials didnt immediately returns calls seeking a comment about the suit. Behan could not be reached for comment. Police reports show a man in Ohio texted his three sons to remove them from their home before he entered and killed his wife and took his own life. The bodies of Stephen Bice, 53 and his wife Kristi Bice, 42, were found at their Hudson home in the 7000 block of Ravenna Road Saturday at noon, according to police reports provided to NBC Chicago. Both had suffered gunshot wounds. Before the tragedy, Bice texted his 18, 16 and 14-year-old sons to meet at a Fun-N-Stuff amusement park in Macedonia to discuss problems within the family, the police reports showed. The boys debated not leaving their mother Kristi alone because their father had previously threatened to kill her, the boys uncle who happens to be a detective at the Akron Police Department told the publication. Kristi texted her adult daughter that she was suspicious of her husbands plan. "Boys get there and he isn't there," Kristi texted, according to the reports. "I hope he isn't planning on getting them out of the house so he can blow me up." Stephen broke into the home with a 9-millimeter semiautomatic handgun, according to the police reports. He shot Kristi four times: once in the left thigh, once in the right leg and once in the stomach. Finally, he shot her once in the head close range. As he stood over her, he used his final bullet to shoot himself, according to the reports. The couple's sons drove up to the scene alerted police to the crime, the reports showed. A GoFundMe has been started for them. "By continuing to tell Kristi's story we are raising awareness about the tragedy that is domestic violence, and most importantly continuing to raise money for these kids," the GoFundMe reads. "She was a wonderful mother to her boys and would do anything for them. I truly believe the only reason she stayed in the abusive relationship for so long is she truly believe his threats that he was going to kill her and her boys," Krista's brother Ron Kennedy told NBC Chicago. "She did her best to protect them and when she was strong enough to take a leap of faith and ask for help to take her life back he acted on his threats." The University of Illinois said all Illinois students studying abroad in Belgium are safe and accounted for after terror attacks in Brussels left at least 31 people killed and dozens of others wounded Tuesday. The universitys Office of International Safety and Security issued an International Safety and Security Alert for students abroad in Belgium, asking them to check in with the office and encouraging them to avoid public spaces until it is clear that it is safe to travel. Assistant Director for the office, Andrea Bordeau, said there are roughly 50 students and faculty currently involved in two separate foreign study programs in the Brussels area. While all are safe and accounted for, according to Bordeau, they have been given instructions to shelter in place and monitor media and social media for changes in the situation. There is currently no plan to bring the groups back early, but that could change depending on the conditions, Bordeau said. At least 31 people were killed and scores wounded Tuesday after two explosions rocked the check-in zone of Brussels Airport and a third blast hit a metro station in the Belgian capital, in what appeared to be a coordinated attack, NBC News reported. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks, a news agency affiliated with the group said. Brussels Mayor Yvan Majeur said an explosion at Maalbeck metro station killed 20 people and, according to the country's ministry of health, 11 people were also killed at the airport. The press office at Brussels fire service said 212 people were injured in the attacks, 30 of them critically burned or wounded. Three American Mormon missionaries were injured in the blasts at the airport, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said. All three are in critical but not life-threatening condition. The wife of an internationally known pianist has been charged with two counts of capital murder in North Texas in the deaths of the couple's children. Benbrook Police Cmdr. David Babcock made the announcement Monday afternoon and said Sofya Tsygankova will be held on two $1 million bonds for capital murder of a person under the age of 10, a first-degree felony. Vadym Kholodenko, a Ukrainian-born musician who played with the Fort Worth Symphony and is a Cliburn competition winner, found his estranged wife, Tsygankova, stabbed at her home Thursday and their children dead in their beds. The girls, identified by the Tarrant County medical examiner as 5-year-old Nika Kholodenko and 1-year-old Michela Kholodenko, showed no signs of visible trauma. An initial autopsy came back as "inconclusive," according to Babcock. Additional testing to determine their causes of death could take up to several weeks to complete. Benbrook Police Cmdr. David Babcock says Sofya Tsygankova faces two charges of capital murder of a person under the age of 10 in connection with the deaths of her children. Tysgankova was expected to undergo a mental health evaluation after her release from the hospital but will now be turned over to the Tarrant County Sheriff's Department. "We have probable cause, reason to believe, that she committed the homicides," Babcock said Monday afternoon, citing unspecified physical evidence recovered at the woman's home. An arrest warrant and a search warrant in the case were released Tuesday afternoon. Babcock said Tsygankova has spoken with detectives, but he refused to elaborate on what was said. An attorney for Tsygankova did not immediately return phone and email messages for comment from The Associated Press Monday. The cases are in the process of being filed with the Tarrant County District Attorney's Office. Kholodenko released the following statement Friday afternoon: "Being in a great grief I would like to address this message to everyone who thinks about my family. The loss of my children will be with me forever. But I would like to say that I feel the support of the Fort Worth community and all people who are sending me messages all over the world. My special gratefulness is for the Castro family who supported my family and who gave special care to my daughters. I would like to ask everyone who is going to the concerts this weekend at Bass Hall to think of the music. Wherever I go after this tragedy my heart will stay with the people here of Fort Worth and my daughters will rest in this soil." A private family service for the children scheduled for Tuesday was originally going to be a private event, but now welcomes the public. The public memorial will be held at 7 p.m. at Arlington Heights United Methodist Church at 4200 Camp Bowie Boulevard. In lieu of flowers, the family asks those wishing to contribute to a fund to consider making a gift to the Nika and Michaela Kholodenko Young Artist Fund, being administered by the Fort Worth Symphony Orchestra (330 East 4th Street, Suite 200, Fort Worth, Texas 76102 -- please be sure to note the Kholodenko Fund). Sofya Tsygankova's Arrest Warrant DV.load("https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2774403-Arrest-Warrants-6627-Waterwood-Trl-Redacted.js", { width: 650, height: 800, sidebar: false, container: "#DV-viewer-2774403-Arrest-Warrants-6627-Waterwood-Trl-Redacted" }); Arrest-Warrants-6627-Waterwood-Trl-Redacted (PDF) Sofya Tsygankova's Search Warrant DV.load("https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2774405-Search-Warrant-6627-Waterwood-Trl.js", { width: 650, height: 800, sidebar: false, container: "#DV-viewer-2774405-Search-Warrant-6627-Waterwood-Trl" }); Search-Warrant-6627-Waterwood-Trl (PDF) NBC 5's Amanda Guerra contributed to this report. At least 31 people were killed and scores wounded Tuesday after two explosions rocked the check-in zone of Brussels airport and a third blast hit a metro station in the Belgian capital, in what appeared to be a coordinated attack, NBC News reported. Florence Muls, a spokeswoman for the Brussels Airport, said a third bomb has been neutralized at the airport, The Associated Press reported. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attacks, according to a post by its affiliated Amaq Agency that was deemed legitimate by NBC News counterterrorism consultancy Flashpoint. Brussels Mayor Yvan Majeur said an explosion at Maalbeck metro station killed 20 people and injured scores of others. According to the country's ministry of health, 11 people were also killed at the airport. Belgian fire and rescue services said 212 people have been injured, including 30 critically wounded or burned. Three American Mormon missionaries were among the injured and were listed in critical condition after suffering non-life threatening injuries. U.S. military officials said a U.S. service member and four members of his family were also injured in one of the blasts. The attacks followed a raid in Brussels on Friday that captured Europe's most wanted man Salah Abdeslam in connection with the Paris terror attacks. A 6-year-old girl who spent most of her life with California foster parents was removed from her home on Monday under a court order that concluded her Native American blood requires her placement with relatives in Utah. Lexi, who is part Choctaw, cried and clutched a stuffed bear as Rusty Page carried her out of his home north of Los Angeles to a waiting car. Los Angeles County social workers whisked her away. Dozens of people had converged on a Santa Clarita neighborhood to demonstrate against plans to move Lexi from her foster family's custody and place her with Choctaw Nation blood relatives who live in Utah. "How is it that a screaming child, saying 'I want to stay, I'm scared,' how is it in her best interest to pull her from the girl she was before that doorbell rang?" he told KNX-AM radio. His wife, Summer Page, screamed "Lexi, I love you!" and a crowd of friends and neighbors cried, prayed or sang hymns. The child's case falls under the purview of the federal Indian Child Welfare Act, which was enacted in the 1970s to help keep American Indian children with American Indian families. The law, passed in 1978, outlines federal requirements that apply to state custody proceedings that involve a child who is a member of or eligible for membership in a federally recognized tribe. The Save Lexi Facebook page had indicated the girl would be removed Sunday morning from the home of foster parents Rusty and Summer Page, who took in the child four years ago, but it was later announced that the girl's removal had been postponed. Many of the demonstrators stayed put, some camping out in front of the home overnight and into Monday morning. The crowd remained at the home at midday after the foster family told NBC4 they plan to comply with the plan to move the child, who has been living with the foster family for more than four years. "It's all about Lexi," said foster father Rusty Page. "We've got to keep that in the forefront of our minds and our hearts." In a statement issued Monday, the National Indian Child Welfare Association said the foster family was aware of the case requirements and the temporary nature of the care provided. "In this contentious custody case, there have never been any surprises as far as what the law required," according to the statement. "The foster family was well aware years ago this girl is an Indian child, whose case is subject to the requirements of the Indian Child Welfare Act, and who has relatives who were willing to raise her if reunification with her father was unsuccessful. "In fact, the only surprising turn of events is the lengths the foster family has gone to, under the advice of an attorney with a long history of trying to overturn ICWA, to drag out litigation as long as possible, creating instability for the child in question. That the foster family now argues bonding and attachment should supersede all else despite testimony of those closest to her case, seems like a long-term, calculated legal strategy based on the simple fact that the law was always clear, they understood it, but just chose not to abide by it." The Pages say they want to adopt Lexi, who is part Choctaw, and say the girl considers them and their three children to be her family. The Pages' legal appeals have not been successful. Philip Browning, director of the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services, said law does not allow the agency to comment on details regarding specific cases. "I am aware that there are questions whether my Department will comply with a court order to replace a child in accordance with the federal Indian Child Welfare Act," he said in statement. "I want to assure the public that my Department will continue to act in the best interest of the children we serve and remain in compliance with the court orders and laws governing our work. I am also aware that sometimes the court must make orders that involve resolving competing priorities and interests. Often there are no easy solutions, but when a court makes an order, we must follow it. In this particular matter, I would ask the media to give this child her privacy, not only because it is in the child's interest, but because it is also the law." Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle announced the appointment of Brian Hamer as her new chief of staff Monday. I am grateful that Brian has agreed to join our team, Preckwinkle said in a statement. His substantial management experience, his thorough understanding of finance, his passion for public service, and his collaborative approach will fit well with our administrations approach to governing. Hamer previously served as director of the Illinois Department of Revenue under Gov. Rod Blagojevich and Gov. Pat Quinn. He served in this capacity from 2003-2015. I am pleased to join the Preckwinkle administration and have the opportunity to contribute to the continuing transformation of Cook County government, Hamer said in a statement. Public service is all about helping people, and President Preckwinkles emphasis on public health, public safety and criminal justice reform, and economic development are the kinds of policy priorities which do exactly that. Hamer replaces Tasha Green Cruzat, who is leaving Preckwinkles office to serve as president of Voices for Illinois Children, a statewide, nonpartisan child advocacy group. Cruzat served as Preckwinkles chief of staff for seven months. She replaced Kim Foxx in August of last year. Foxx recently won the Democratic nomination for Cook County States Attorney, beating out incumbent Anita Alvarez and former state and federal prosecutor Donna More in the March 15 primary. Hamer will begin serving as Preckwinkles chief of staff on Wednesday. Firefighters battled a raging two-alarm fire at a vacant three-story house on Magnolia Street, near Albany Avenue, in Hartford early Tuesday morning and evacuated a neighboring home when the fire spread. The fire department received several 911 calls at 1:59 a.m. and firefighters arrived to find that fire had engulfed 90 Magnolia St. and extended to the neighboring home at 92-94 Magnolia St. Firefighters evacuated 92-94 Magnolia St., displacing seven adults and one child. I felt the heat when they woke us up, bust open my bedroom door, telling us to get out, Josephine Batchelor said. I was hysterical. I had no clothes on. Im still kind of upset. As of 5:18 a.m., the house at 90 Magnolia St. had collapsed, according to the fire department. The building collapsed onto itself, so any fire is going to be deep-seeded. So were letting it build back up so we can see where the hidden fire is and then well hit it again, Deputy Chief Thomas J. Garrahy, of the Hartford Fire Department, said. No injuries are reported and the cause of the fire in under investigation. Governor Dannel Malloy's budget guru, Benjamin Barnes, responded with frustration to talk from state bargaining units that they will not budge on renegotiating their benefit packages as a way to save taxpayers money. We are on the cusp of laying off thousands of state employees and if we can lay off fewer of those state employees and preserve more services and avoid disrupting more lives by making moderate concessions on employee benefits I dont see why we wouldnt have those discussions" said Barnes, the appointed Secretary of the Office of Policy and Management. "That seems like a very reasonable ask" he said. Gov. Malloy said during his State of the State Address last month that he would seek to reopen negotiations with SEBAC, the State Employee Bargaining Agent Coalition, that works on behalf of the more than 45,000 union state employees working in Connecticut government. Last week, Gov. Malloy's Undersecretary of Labor Relations sent a letter to SEBAC's legal counsel, asking to reopen negotiations and to meet. SEBAC's legal counsel then responded with a letter saying they would be open to a meeting, but said any possibility of reopening negotiations is up to rank and file members and union leadership. In a statement, the Connecticut State Employees Association, in conjunction with the SEIU, sent a statement slamming the process by which the Malloy Administration is attempting to balance the budget which faces a $250 million shortfall this year, and in excess of $900 million next year. The groups want to see the line held on benefits, and increases on Connecticut's wealthiest residents to close the gap. "All working families contribute taxes at nearly twice the rate that that millionaires and billionaires do to fund vital services. Its time to stop using state employees as a punching bag and start pushing for a revenue system that asks our wealthiest and most successful individuals to pay their fair share" the statement read. Republicans are siding with Governor Malloy. Rep. Themis Klarides, (R - Derby), the House Minority Leader said she thinks the unions believe the governor is bluffing about the possibility of laying off as many as 3,000 employees, nearly 10% of the state workforce. She says to avoid such a scenario, SEBAC negotiators have to come to the table. This isnt about bad unions" Rep. Klarides said. "We have a very serious fiscal situation and we need everybody to help. We need all hands on deck. Barnes with OPM, speaking on behalf of the Malloy Administration, says when it comes to dollars and cents, it's in SEBAC's best interest to get members to approve a renegotiation, in order to save jobs. It is difficult for me to understand that they are not yet ready to come to the table" Barnes said. Saying terrorist groups continue to plan attacks in Europe, the United States State Department issued a travel alert to citizens Tuesday, warning of the risks posed by traveling in Europe. The alert mentions the series of explosions claimed by Islamic State terrorists Tuesday, which killed 31 people. "Terrorist groups continue to plan near-term attacks throughout Europe, targeting sporting events, tourist sites, restaurants, and transportation," the State Department said in its advisory, which urged vigilance in public places. The advisory expires June 20. American, United and Delta airlines had canceled or diverted their flights to and from Brussels Airport in the wake of the attack at the Belgian capital early Tuesday morning. Brussels closed the airport after the attacks, which left 11 people dead in the departure hall and 20 more dead in a subway car at a nearby station, authorities said. The city was on high alert as law enforcement agents searched for a suspect believed to have escaped the airport after the explosions, which left many others injured. The State Department Tuesday urged U.S. citizens to keep updated from local media sources on travel plans, update family on their travel plans and enroll in the State Department's Smart Traveler Enrollment Program. "European governments continue to guard against terrorist attacks and conduct raids to disrupt plots. We work closely with our allies and will continue to share information with our European partners that will help identify and counter terrorist threats," the department said. All three airlines affected by the airport's closure said they were making accommodations for travelers affected by the cancellations. Each also extended condolences to those impacted by the attacks. American Airlines had canceled all flights to and from Brussels for Wednesday and Thursday. Delta diverted a flight from New York to Amsterdam in the wake of the attack, and said two flights scheduled to depart the U.S. Tuesday night were canceled. United canceled its two flights scheduled to depart for Brussels Tuesday evening, which would have left from Washington Dulles International Airport and Newark Liberty International Airport, and canceled flights that would have returned to those airports tomorrow, according to a statement. All American employees and crew members are accounted for, the airline said, and no injuries were reported. Its check-in is located at Row 8 of Brussels airport's departure hall, and that the morning's explosions -- which occurred about 8 a.m. Brussels time -- did not happen at Row 8. The U.S. State Department said Wednesday it is aware of about 12 Americans injured in a series of deadly blasts that rocked a subway station and international airport in Belgium's capital city Tuesday morning. State Department Deputy spokesman Mark Toner said in a statement, "At this time, we are not aware of any U.S. citizen deaths. We must emphasize that a number of U.S. citizens remain unaccounted for and the Kingdom of Belgium has not yet released nationality information for reported fatalities." He said the U.S. government is "making every effort to account for the welfare of both Chief of Mission personnel and U.S. citizens in the city." Toner did not identify the injured Americans or provide information on their conditions. At least 31 people were killed and 270 wounded in Tuesday's bombings at the Brussels airport and subway. NBC News reported Tuesday, citing military officials, that a U.S. service member and four members of his family were among the Americans injured. Their identities have not been released, but one official said their injuries are not believed to be life-threatening. According to The Associated Press, an Air Force officer, his wife and four children were hurt at the airport. It's not clear if the Air Force officer is the same service member mentioned in NBC News' report. Three Mormon missionaries from Utah were also hurt. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints issued a statement Tuesday identifying the missionaries as 66-year-old Richard Norby, 20-year-old Joseph Empey and 19-year-old Mason Wells. Church officials said the three men were near the site of an explosion at Brussels Airport and have been hospitalized with serious injuries. They were serving in Paris and traveling with a fourth missionary, 20-year-old Fanny Rachel Clain, of France, who was on her way to an assignment in Ohio, church officials said. Norby's family said in a statement issued by the Mormon church Wednesday that shrapnel caused severe trauma to his lower leg and he also suffered second-degree burns to his head and neck. Following a lengthy surgery, he is now expected to stay in a medically-induced coma for a few days. His family said a lengthy recovery is expected. His wife, Pamela Norby, wasn't at the airport when the explosions happened Tuesday. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints said 20-year-old Joseph Empey of Santa Clara and 19-year-old Mason Wells of Sandy were also seriously wounded but have been awake and have spoken to their families. Empey suffered second-degree burns to his hands, face and head and underwent surgery for shrapnel injuries to his legs, his family said in a statement. "We have been in touch with him and he is grateful and in good spirits," the family said. The church's governing body, the First Presidency, also released a statement Tuesday, saying, "Our prayers are with the families of the deceased and injured, including three of our missionaries who were injured and hospitalized. We also pray for the people of Belgium and France as they continue to deal with the uncertainty and devastation caused by the recent terrorist attacks." Family members of an American couple living in Belgium told NBC News the two are missing. Justin and Stephanie Shults had just dropped off her mother at the airport when two blasts went off. "Her mom is fine but no one has been able to contact Justin or Stephanie," Justin Shults' brother, Levi Sutton, told NBC News. He added that the State Department told him Tuesday afternoon that the pair were not on any casualty list. Justin, 30, is originally from Gatlinburg, Tennessee, while 29-year-old Stephanie is from Lexington, Kentucky, but moved to the Belgian capital in 2014, Sutton said. Both work as accountants. Eleven people died at the airport and 20 were killed at a nearby metro station, according to Brussels' mayor and Belgium's ministry of health. Paris prosecutor said Wednesday 270 people have been injured. Victims suffered fractures, burns and deep cuts from shrapnel, according to a hospital east of Brussels that treated 13 people. All three bombs detonated Tuesday contained large nails or screws, one of which was shown on X-ray embedded deep in the chest of a victim, according to a photo obtained by the European Press Photo Agency. Roughly 50 students from the University of Illinois studying abroad near Brussels are safe and sheltering in place, the university said Tuesday. The students are part of two separate study abroad programs in the area. Four students from Quinnipiac University in Connecticut were also in Brussels at the time of the attacks, three of whom were at the airport, according to the university. All are safe. ISIS has claimed responsibility for Tuesday morning's attacks. The suspected suicide bombers were named early Wednesday as Khalid El Bakraoui, 27, and his 30-year-old brother Ibrahim. There is no "specific, credible intelligence" of any plots against the United States like those carried out in Brussels, Homeland Security Secretary Jeh Johnson said Tuesday. But as a precaution, the Homeland Security Department is stepping up security at major U.S. airports and rail and transit stations around the country. The NYPD and other law enforcement agencies increased security across New York City in response to terrorist attacks in Brussels early Tuesday morning, though authorities said there were no known credible threats to the nation's largest city. Mayor de Blasio, NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton and other top cops and FBI agents outlined stepped up measures throughout the five boroughs following the attacks in the Belgian capital that left 31 dead and more than 200 others hurt. Both the FBI and NYPD said that there were no known credible threats against the city, but people should expect to see more cops and members of the National Guard at transit hubs and near landmarks. "We are going to respond to their efforts to create chaos by showing them order, by showing our society functioning and our city functioning," de Blasio said. "The NYPD is ensuring that the everybody can go about their business safely." NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton said the department has assigned nearly 13,000 additional cops to the subway system and city landmarks, noting that he saw an uptick in police presence -- including National Guardsmen and members of an elite NYPD tactical squad -- as he took the subway to work at 1 Police Plaza from Grand Central Terminal Tuesday morning. "That degree of coverage will continue for the foreseeable future until we get a better idea of what transpired over (in Brussels)," Bratton said. The Port Authority Police Department stepped up security at Newark-Liberty, John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports. The department also employed high visibility anti-terrorist patrols throughout the PATH system and at the World Trade Center. Gov. Andrew Cuomo said that state agencies were also be taking extra precautions in the nation's biggest city. The National Guard provided additional security at JFK, while New York State Police assigned officers to Penn Station and Grand Central Terminal. The MTA will coordinate with the state police to elevate its presence at other busy train stations. Security has also been stepped up at bridges, tunnels and mass transit across the state, Cuomo said. At Newark International Airport, arriving international passengers saw the extra security right away. "They were standing by the aircraft door, with guns, which is quite unusual," said Hope Oduah of Yonkers. "It makes me feel better to see the police presence," Matio Costagliola, a former National Guardsman said in Times Square, where heavily armed Hercules teams were stationed. "I don't know if you can protect against every threat but it seems like if something were to happen, the right people are here to suppress it pretty quickly." A couple in town from Brussels also said that took comfort in the police here. They said their loved ones in Brussels were OK but they were shaken as they realized how close it hit. "One of the bombs went off near American baggage, I was just there a few days ago," said Pia Homm. Some New Yorkers said while they appreciated the security at the high-profile stations, there wasn't enough in other places. After all, taking the train remains an open system: there are no metal detectors at turnstiles, and there's not enough manpower to have armed officers at every station or on every train. "I know what increased police presence looks like, and I got on at Wall Street, took [the subway] to 59th Street and then the Upper East Side and I've seen nothing," said Susan O'Connor of Sea Bright. "I got an at 68th Street, business as usual," said Brett Diamond of Battery Park City. MTA Chairman Tom Prendergast acknowledged there was a risk on mass transit, but said the agency is constantly on alert. "Certainly the issue of on-board incidents, Barcelona was that, part of our psyche and approach to terrorism," said Prendergast. "To say we've been on heightened alert is an understatement," he said. Retired counterterrorism chief Michael Valenti said commuters are the extra eyes and ears that police need. "Is it a bag or suitcase? If it doesn't feel right, it probably isn't right," Valenti said. The measures come hours after two explosions rocked the check-in zone at the Brussels Airport, while a third was reported at the Maalback metro station. At least least 31 people were killed and 270 hurt, including several Americans. At least 11 people were killed in the blasts at the airport, NBC News reported. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack. Meanwhile, a Delta Airlines flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport to Brussels was diverted to Amsterdam, authorities said. Delta flight 0042 took off from New York at about 8:15 p.m. Monday and was set to land at Brussels Tuesday morning. It was diverted to Amsterdam, according to the airline. The attacks came just days after the main suspect in the November Paris terrorist attacks was arrested in Brussels. After his arrest, Salah Abdeslam told authorities he had created a new network and was planning new attacks. Officials at the Department of Homeland Security said they are in touch with their European counterparts but so far no formal recommendations have been made to operators of U.S. airports or mass transit, NBC News reported. The five people running for president of the United States were at odds Tuesday over how to squelch the terror threat at home and abroad after a string of deadly attacks rocked Belgium's capital city, killing at least 31 and injuring dozens. Republican presidential candidate Ted Cruz said in a statement Tuesday the U.S. must secure its southern border "to prevent terrorist infiltration." The senator from Texas warned that Europe is "seeing what comes of a toxic mix of migrants who have been infiltrated by terrorists and isolated, radical Muslim neighborhoods." ***Warning: This video may be disturbing to some viewers.*** Passengers are helped off a metro train between Arts-Loi and Maelbeek stations in Brussels after a blast hit the train station Mar. 22, 2016, around the same time two other blasts rocked the check-in zone of Brussels Airport. "We need to immediately halt the flow of refugees from countries with a significant al Qaida or ISIS presence," Cruz said in the statement. "We need to empower law enforcement to patrol and secure Muslim neighborhoods before they become radicalized." Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, called Cruz's statement "frightening" and "really astounding." [NATL] Trio of Deadly Explosions Hit Brussels in 2016, City Mourns "These candidates say these things, but what does that actually mean?" Hooper said. "What is a Muslim neighborhood? How many Muslims have to be in a neighborhood before it becomes worthy of checking papers and kicking in the doors of homes and businesses?" Hooper added that anti-Muslim bigotry has "almost become a litmus test to be in good standing in conservative circles." In an earlier statement, Cruz blasted President Barack Obama's handling of the terror threat and vowed to eradicate ISIS if elected. "We will name our enemy radical Islamic terrorism. And we will defeat it," Cruz said. [[373056831, C]] Republican front-runner Donald Trump, who has often stated his intent to build a wall along the Mexican border, said on NBC's "Today" show he would be "very, very tough on borders" if he were president. "And I wouldn't allow certain people to come into this country without proper documentation," he explained. Trump also said the government should "be able to do whatever they have to do" to obtain information from Salah Abdeslam, a suspect in November's Paris attacks who was arrested just days ago in Molenbeek, the Brussels suburb targeted Tuesday. "Waterboarding, if it was up to me, would be fine," Trump said, adding he would permit "a lot more than waterboarding." Do you all remember how beautiful and safe a place Brussels was. Not anymore, it is from a different world! U.S. must be vigilant and smart! Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 22, 2016 The billionaire businessman earlier reacted to the attacks on Twitter, recalling "how beautiful and safe Brussels was" and urging the U.S. to be "vigilant and smart." Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton, appearing on MSNBC, said closing borders is not the answer. "I think there are a lot of things we have to do to intensify our efforts. I think closing our borders is not one of them," Clinton said. "I think that even if we were to build a tall wall around the entire continental United States, the Internet would still get over it, and so our challenge is to have a united effort to defend our country, protect against terrorist attacks." Clinton emphasized the importance of working closely with allies in Europe and the Middle East with the "clear objective of defeating ISIS." NBC "I think the way to do that is to deprive them of territory in Syria and Iraq, to stop the flow of foreign fighters, arms, weapons, and to take them on on the Internet, which they use in quite a sophisticated way," Clinton said. Ohio Gov. John Kasich blasted Obama's response to the Brussels attacks, criticizing the president for remaining in Cuba to attend the country's first Major League Baseball game in 20 years. Obama arrived in Havana over the weekend for a historic visit to mark improving relations between two countries long at odds. "I'm a little surprised that the president is going to a baseball game," Kasich said during a press conference Tuesday afternoon. "Had I been president, I would have cut short my visit, I would have flown home." In a phone interview with MSNBC, the GOP candidate warned of "big gaps" in counterintelligence and urged the president to address them. President Obama condemned the Brussels terrorist attacks that left dozens dead on March 22, 2016. Obama, speaking in Havana, Cuba, said that the U.S. stands in solidarity with the people of Belgium. He also vowed to do whatever is necessary in helping Belgium bring those who are responsible for the attacks to justice, and called on world leaders to unite... "I think he ought to return home, he ought to work with the heads of state around the world, they ought to assemble teams, and they ought to examine the vulnerabilities we have," Kasich said of the president. "Because without effective human intelligence, without coordination and cooperation among all the civilized nations, we get these gaps, and these gaps get exploited by these people who are intent on killing civilized people." Gov. John Kasich's statement on the terrorist attacks in #Brussels. pic.twitter.com/6gwCCMwJcy John Kasich (@JohnKasich) March 22, 2016 Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who is running for president as a Democrat, said in an interview with NBC there "needs to be improved intelligence sharing" between the U.S. and its allies abroad, along with "effective monitoring of social media to stop the recruiting efforts of young people who are being led into the terrible life of terrorism." Although ISIS has lost its grasp on 20 percent of the territory it controlled last year in Iraq, Sanders said, "clearly, we've got to do more." "We need to forge a coalition of the Muslim countries in the region, including some that have not been as active as they should be, with the support of the United States and other major powers, to finally destroy this barbaric organization," he said. Sanders expressed his support for the victims in a Twitter statement Tuesday morning. Country icon Dolly Parton and pop star Katy Perry will sing together at next month's Academy of Country Music Awards, where Parton will receive a special award for her recent television movie about her childhood. Parton will receive the Tex Ritter Award on April 3 in Las Vegas for last year's NBC movie "Dolly Parton's Coat of Many Colors." The honor is given to a movie receiving major exposure featuring country music and previous recipients include "O Brother, Where Art Thou," ''Walk the Line" and "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas," which Parton starred in with Burt Reynolds in 1982. The 51st annual ACM Awards will air live on CBS from the MGM Grand Garden Arena. Other performers include Luke Bryan, Carrie Underwood, Kenny Chesney and Chris Stapleton. After an NBC 5 Investigation found DFW-area school districts skipping security drills, several districts pledged to do better. Six months later, records show three districts examined in the previous NBC 5 report are doing a better job of completing drills. However, some schools still failed to conduct lock down drills that are either required by their own district policies or recommended by the state. Safety experts said kids need to practice for emergencies, including what to do and where to go if an armed person entered their school. The Dallas Independent School District (DISD) requires all schools practice a lock down drill each semester. But, district records obtained by NBC 5 Investigates show Barbara Manns Education Center did not hold a single lock down drill for a year and a half. Records show none in the 2014-15 school year, and none in the first semester of the 2015-2016 school year either. DISD spokesman Andre Riley said, "It is unacceptable for that to happen at any of our schools, especially over that time period. It's not something we ever want to see." The principal at Barbara Manns declined to speak with NBC 5 Investigates, but the school did conduct a lock down drill this semester when school started up again after the winter break. Manns is not the only DISD school that has skipped drills in the past. In fact, its one of many that have been on NBC 5 Investigates' radar for more than three years. In 2013, NBC 5 Investigates discovered about 75 DISD schools did not record security drills or did not perform them. At the time, DISD Police Chief Craig Miller said NBC 5 Investigates' findings would help the district improve. "Now I feel a lot better after what you guys had come forward and told us. That helped us look at our record keeping and determine those that are in compliance and those that are not, said Miller, in a 2013 interview. In 2015, NBC 5 Investigates filed another records request and found another 70 schools with no records to show whether or not drills were performed. Again, the district promised action. It's not good enough to say we think we did it. We need to put pen to paper and have our facts, said Riley last fall. In March 2016, the numbers have improved. New records show only three DISD schools with no lock down drills recorded in the fall semester, Barbara Manns, Robert E. Lee Elementary and Birdie Alexander Elementary schools. DISD said Robert E. Lee School has now scheduled a lock down drill for this week and that Birdie Alexander School ultimately completed a lock down drill in January. DISD officials said anything less than 100 percent compliance from schools is unacceptable and the districts top new school leadership chief promises to make it happen to reassure parents. They're not going to be reassured until it's done because we have been talking about it a lot, said, Stephanie Elizade, DISD chief of school leadership. Elizade said principals will face disciplinary measures if they skip drills this year but she would not say exactly what kind of discipline. She also declined to comment on whether that principal at Barbara Manns school had been disciplined because the district does not want to comment on personnel matters. In an interview, Elizade told NBC 5 Investigates there will not be any gaps in security drill records going forward. At the Hurst-Euless-Bedford Independent School District all gaps in drill records have been eliminated. Theyve gotten the stuff done as expected. They rose the challenge, said Robert Ball, HEBs coordinator of educational support services. Ball joined the district last year. He created a calendar system for drills and personally supervised them. Today he believes students are safer. I really feel like they are more prepared -- and knowing every drill has been done in the district at the time it was supposed to, really prepares I think our kids to be safe whatever comes their way, said Ball. Garland ISD has also stepped up practicing drills since NBC 5 Investigates last examined district records. However, Garland ISD does not follow state guidelines at some schools. Many Garland ISD schools are only practicing lock downs once a year. The Texas School Safety Center recommends schools hold lock down drills each semester, or twice a year. But theres no penalty for schools that dont comply with those recommendations. When asked if once a year is enough, Garland ISD Security Director Pat Lamb said that was an ongoing conversation and that Garland plans to discuss the possibility of adding more drills to later this year. In the meantime, Garland ISD said all teachers have practiced lock down drills even if some students havent yet this year. I am confident every staff member has been trained. I'm confident in our ability to respond when seconds count, said Lamb. Seconds that can put students in life and death situations. An arrest warrant reveals new details into the investigation of an internationally known pianist's wife charged with the murder of the couple's children, including that she sought mental treatment and was given a prescription for an antipsychotic before her kids were found dead in North Texas. Vadym Kholodenko, a Ukrainian-born, Cliburn competition winner who plays with the Fort Worth Symphony, arrived at the home of his estranged wife, Sofya Tsygankova, Thursday morning to find her in distress and his children dead, authorities have said. The arrest warrant added details to the grisly finding: Kholodenko feeling dazed at the sight of his wife "going crazy" and her night gown covered in blood. His children, the document said, were "in bed, and not moving." After Benbrook EMS took Tsygankova to John Peter Smith Hospital for treatment, officers asked Kholodenko to recall what had taken place that morning. He said he talked with his daughter Nika and Tsygankova the night before and arranged to take the girls to school. When he arrived at the home the next morning, no one answered the door. He entered using his key and found his wife bleeding and in distress in the master bedroom closet. He then found his children dead and called 911. In the arrest warrant officers described in detail how and where they found the children, that they could find no pulse and that there were signs of rigor mortis. Officers later discovered linens soiled with blood in a vehicle parked in the garage -- the linens are believed to have come from the master bedroom where Tsygankova was found. Officers described a large amount of blood around the vehicle. A red suitcase was stuffed under the rear bumper, used as a brace to keep a rag stuffed into the vehicle's tailpipe. It is not clear whether the engine had been running. Police said a brown pillow matching the linens from the master bedroom was found in Nika's room, with a small spot of what appeared to be biological fluid on the pillowcase. Police also said there was a brown pillow, with a small spot of what appeared to be biological fluid, partially resting on Michela's head. The Tarrant County Medical Examiner's initial autopsies were "inconclusive" and additional testing to determine how the girls died could take several weeks. An empty prescription bottle for Quetiapine, filled March 16 for Tsygankova, was found on the kitchen counter. Quetiapine is an atypical antipsychotic used to treat the symptoms of schizophrenia or treat episodes of mania or depression in patients with bipolar disorder, according to the National Institutes of Health. A large butcher knife was found on the patio with blood on the blade and handle. A cleaver was found on the tub in the master bath with a large amount of blood on the floor. Police said three other prescription bottles with Tsygankova's name on them were found next to the knife the type of drug and how much remained was not disclosed. NBC 5 News Tsygankova was booked Tuesday into the Tarrant County jail. Her attorney, Joetta Keene, entered a not guilty plea on behalf of her client at an arraignment hearing Wednesday morning. Keene declined to comment on the specific allegations of the warrant. "This is, no doubt, a very heartbreaking case for everyone involved," she said. Sofya Tsygankova Interviewed at JPS Hospital At John Peter Smith Hospital, Tsygankova spoke with police and said she thought she committed suicide and that she remembered taking a lot of pills, according to the warrant. At some point during the interview with police she stated that "she didn't want to live." Police said Tsygankova was then read her Miranda rights, which she allegedly waived. She told police she arrived home at about 8:50 p.m. Wednesday and took custody of the children from her babysitter. The sitter had already put Michela to bed; Nika went to bed at about 9:20 p.m. after speaking with her father. Tsygankova told police both children were fine when the sitter left and that she was the only person home with them overnight, according to the arrest warrant. Tsygankova recalled that at some point she went outside with the knife because she "didn't see any future for me and kids." When the police asked Tsygankova if she knew where her children were, she said she hoped they were with their father. At one point she asked, "Did I do anything bad to my kids?" police said. She recalled that she thought she put the kids in the car before she hurt herself, but that she was unable to remember any of the details. She "made several mentions of having a bad dream that night, but was unable to elaborate fully," according to the arrest warrant. She then remembered her husband arriving at the home and asking, "What have you done?" Anna Grevtseva, a friend of Tsygankova's sister Anna, who lives in Amsterdam, said Sofya Tsygankova had been having a hard time dealing with the divorce had visited the Fort Worth MHMR facility on March 16 and had a history with MHMR. Benbrook police announced Monday that Tsygankova was to be held on two $1 million bonds for capital murder of a person under the age of 10, a first-degree felony, in the deaths of her daughters. Tsygankova was discharged from the hospital Tuesday afternoon and immediately booked into the Tarrant County Correction Center. Tarrant County Sheriff Dee Anderson said Tsygankova is undergoing a thorough medical and psychological screening and for now will be housed in a medical unit due to her injuries. Both Nika and Michela were laid to rest in a private ceremony Monday. A public memorial for the girls was held Tuesday at Arlington Heights United Methodist Church in Fort Worth. Sofya Tsygankova's Arrest Warrant DV.load("https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2774403-Arrest-Warrants-6627-Waterwood-Trl-Redacted.js", { width: 650, height: 800, sidebar: false, container: "#DV-viewer-2774403-Arrest-Warrants-6627-Waterwood-Trl-Redacted" }); Arrest-Warrants-6627-Waterwood-Trl-Redacted (PDF) Sofya Tsygankova's Search Warrant DV.load("https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2774405-Search-Warrant-6627-Waterwood-Trl.js", { width: 650, height: 800, sidebar: false, container: "#DV-viewer-2774405-Search-Warrant-6627-Waterwood-Trl" }); Search-Warrant-6627-Waterwood-Trl (PDF) An Austin police officer who fatally shot an unarmed, naked 17-year-old last month will be fired, Police Chief Art Acevedo announced Monday. In a memo outlining the disciplinary action, Acevedo said Officer Geoffrey Freeman violated department policy in the shooting of David Joseph -- that he should not have confronted the teenager alone, that his decision to draw his weapon wasn't warranted and that there were other ways he could have stopped Joseph after the teen began charging at the officer. Freeman's lawyers with the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas say they will appeal. The general counsel for the group has said Freeman feared for his life when he fired his gun at Joseph. The group will use the "resources necessary" to ensure that Freeman's "good name is restored and that he will be back to work," Executive Director Charley Wilkison said in a statement. Acevedo said he has "indefinitely suspended" Freeman, which he says is the department's term for firing. If Freeman appeals, the firing isn't final until an arbitrator upholds it. Travis County prosecutors also are investigating the shooting and plan to present the case to a grand jury for possible criminal charges. Acevedo's memo to the interim director of civil service explains that Freeman was one of four officers who responded to a call about a naked man running across a roadway on Feb. 8. Freeman knew the other officers were on their way and had even asked for extra help because he believed the person had a mental illness or was high, the memo states. Acevedo said Freeman should have waited for other officers before confronting Joseph. His memo also says Freeman could have used a stun gun, pepper spray or even physical force to stop Joseph when the teen kept coming toward the officer after Freeman told him to stop. The memo notes that Freeman weighed about 240 pounds, while Joseph weighed about 146 pounds. An autopsy found that Joseph had marijuana and an anti-anxiety drug in his system when he was fatally shot. The teenager was black, as is Freeman. Freeman, 42, was a 10-year veteran of the Austin police department. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers will make its case to Grand Prairie city council members Tuesday afternoon that oil and gas drillers need to be moved farther away from the Joe Pool Lake dam for safety reasons. The Corps, which maintains Joe Pool Lake and 23 other lakes and reservoirs in the Fort Worth District, released a report last week indicating its expansion of the exclusion zone around the dam from 3,000 to 4,000 feet. The Corps released a statement accompanying the report. USACE has concluded the 3,000-foot exclusion zone at Joe Pool Dam does not sufficiently meet our minimal tolerable risk guidelines and therefore, poses a risk to the dam, the lake, and the public. As a result of this finding, USACE has adopted a 4,000-foot exclusion zone at Joe Pool Dam. Within that zone no drilling will be allowed, regardless of depth. USACE is also working to protect the project from the effects of induced seismicity by limiting injection wells within five miles of Joe Pool Dam. The study was the result of a process that began in late 2010 when a group of concerned citizens, the Westchester-Grand Prairie Community Alliance, wrote a letter to alert the Corps that Chesapeake Energy had begun gas exploration drilling at a site approximately 850 feet from the Joe Pool Lake Dam. In a 2011 response to the neighborhood group, the USACE indicated it was unaware that drilling was proposed in such close proximity to our project. In a separate 2011 letter, this one to the City of Grand Prairie Deputy City Manager, the Corps noted its concern with the possible implication of drilling near the Joe Pool dam. Our engineers believe that drilling and fracturing activities at Chesapeake Energys Corn Valley drill site may increase the risk to the project, and possibly contribute to a catastrophic dam failure, wrote Col. Richard Muraski, Jr. Due to the potential for grave and irreparable harm to the dam and, as a consequence, the public, it is necessary for our engineers to conduct studies to verify that drilling and fracking activities will not affect the integrity of the project, increase the hazard rating currently assigned to the dam, or cause the Corps to incur substantial costs to mitigate any increased risks to Joe Pool Dam. In that same 2011 letter, the Corps requested the City of Grand Prairie to impose a moratorium on any drilling or hydrofracturing activities within 3,000 feet of Joe Pool Dam. In its subsequent report, the Corps indicated that the 3,000 feet exclusion zone seems reasonable, but still recommended extending the buffer by 1,000 feet. "I'm surprised they extended it beyond the 3,000, said Susan Read, a member of the citizens group that pushed the Corps to do the study. We just wanted them to enforce, maybe, what they had in place already." Read told NBCDFW she and other members of her group are happy with the release of the study, something they feared would not be made public. We believed the study might never be released since it would likely criticize the industrys practices in Texas, Read noted. In addition, Read said the study was concluded in 2013, prior to significant earthquake activity in North Texas, particularly in the area surrounding the former Texas Stadium site along the Irving/Dallas line. We wonder if the larger Exclusion Zone might have been extended further if the study had taken the earthquake activity since 2013 into account, Read said. A spokesperson for the Texas Railroad Commission, which regulates the oil and gas industry in the state, indicated that the agency has not yet had any direct contact with the Army Corps of Engineers about its report. The Railroad Commission's highest priority is protection of public safety and our natural resources, wrote Ramona Nye in a statement to NBCDFW. The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) has not contacted the Commission regarding its recent study of safety issues related to Joe Pool Dam. Railroad Commission staff are currently reaching out to USACE to discuss the findings of the study and determine what, if any further action might be warranted. A seismologist for the Railroad Commission has expressed skepticism on the connection between earthquakes and the natural gas industry. To that point, an industry insider familiar with the USACE study said Monday that the Corps is being inconsistent in its findings and its actions. Its bizarre that the Army Corps decided to expand its buffer while citing its new study, considering the study itself recommended the buffer thats currently in place, said Steve Everley, a Senior Advisor with Energy in Depth, an advocacy group started by the Independent Petroleum Association of America. The Corps study indicates that fracking has not contaminated groundwater, that any risk of seismicity is exceedingly low, and the existing buffer is not only adequate, but actually what the experts recommend, Everley said. Its really unclear why the Corps chose to reject all of these findings, especially since they were part of a study for which the Corps itself had asked. On Tuesday, representatives from the USACE will present the agencys findings to members of Grand Prairie city council. Council members are not expected to take any action at this point. USACE welcomes environmentally sound oil and gas exploration and other mineral extraction activities; but we must always ensure that those activities pose no threat to our critical facilities and life safety, said Col. Calvin C. Hudson II, commander, Fort Worth District. The search for a dog that escaped from a North Texas Banfield Pet Hospital has ended in tragedy. The Rodriquez family had been searching for Chewbacca, a 3-year-old Shar-Pei, since Friday. Adrianna Rodriquez dropped her dog off Friday morning for a veterinary visit at Banfield Pet Hospital inside PetSmart on Farm-to-Market Road 544 in Wylie. Her mother, Monica Cano-Rodriquez, later received a phone call saying Chewbacca escaped. "They called me, it happened so quickly I don't remember the time, more or less stating they went to let Chewbacca out and he escaped. He went through the Banfield out through the front doors," Monica Cano-Rodriquez said. "So I asked, 'OK, do you have him?' And they were like, 'No ma'am we don't have him.'" For three days, the Rodriquez family searched for Chewbacca, along with associates from Banfield Pet Hospital and a search-and-rescue K9 team. Monday evening, after NBC 5 aired a story on the search for Chewbacca, Monica Cano-Rodriquez said her daughter, Adrianna Rodriquez, found Chewbacca as he was hit by a car. Adrianna Rodriquez rushed him to Banfield Pet Hospital, the same hospital he escaped from, where he died. The Rodriquez family lives together in Rockwall, but several family members work around the Wylie area. Friday was Chewbacca's first time at the Wylie facility. The Rodriquez family questions how he was able to make it out of the Banfield Pet Hospital area and make it out the doors of PetSmart store without someone stopping him. They were told Chewbacca growled when someone went to let him out of his cage, according to the Rodriquez family. "They should be trained if a dog growls at you, you do this 24/7, you should be trained to handle these types of situations," Monica Cano-Rodriquez said. She went on to say, "How is it possible that a tech, I understand he may growl, I understand you may be scared but this is your job your job is to ensure his safety. They should be trained to handle scared dogs in these situations." Adrianna Rodriquez said the company told her employees chased Chewbacca, even following him in cars, to the place where he was last seen: a wooded area near FM 544 and Country Club Road. That's an area the family spent days searching. During Monday's search Monica Cano-Rodriquez told NBC 5, "There is no plan what are we going to do? This is day three. He's been gone at night. It has been cool. Yeah, he's an inside dog and he's a Shar-Pei, but what are we doing to ensure he's safe now? There's coyotes out here." "I ended up dropping a dog off and coming back with no dog and that's heartbreaking and really, really bad for a clinic," Adrianna Rodriquez said. I'm frustrated that they didn't take the precautions to catch a dog, and I understand he growled at you, but you work with dogs dogs are going to growl at you, and you should know how to take responsibility for that," Rodriquez said prior to Chewbacca's death Monday. NBC reached out to Banfield Pet Hospital's corporate offices for comment Monday and received this statement in response: At Banfield Pet Hospital we have strict policies in place regarding the handling of pets in and around our hospital. In the case of Chewbacca, we are working to fully understand how he got loose. Once Chewbacca exited the hospital, our associates immediately notified his family as they began their search. The hospital team and associates from neighboring Banfield Pet Hospitals are continuing to look for Chewbacca sun up to sun down, and have hired a search and rescue dog to assist with the search. There have been sightings of Chewbacca over the past few days and we hope this additional media exposure helps reunite him with his family as quickly as possible. -Dr. Ari Zabell, client advocate, Banfield Pet Hospital We have reached out again to the company in light of Chewbacca's death and received this response" "We hoped for a better outcome and are saddened by the news. Our hearts go out to the family during this difficult time. We are continuing to speak with the family and offer any assistance we can to help with their loss." -Dr. Ari Zabell, client advocate, Banfield Pet Hospital While Banfield Pet Hospital and PetSmart are separate entities, NBC 5 also reached out to PetSmart for comment Monday afternoon. They did not offer comment and instead referred us to Banfield Pet Hospital. Editor's Note: The headline has been changed to make it explicitly clear the animal escaped from the Banfield Pet Hospital inside the Wylie PetSmart. Carnival Corporation has announced that Cuba has granted approval for the company to begin travel to Cuba starting on May 1, 2016. Following U.S. authorization granted in July 2015, Carnival Corp. is now cleared to operate the 704-passenger MV Adonia to Cuba through its newest brand, Fathom. This marks the first time in over 50 years a cruise ship is approved to sail from the United States to Cuba. Cuban authorities from Havanatur Celimar, various other agencies and Carnival Corp. Monday signed agreements enabling cruising by Carnival Corporation to Cuba. The announcement came on the same day President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro met in Havana, a historic gathering that marked a new era in relations between the two countries. President Obama and President Castro tussled over differences on human rights and democracy but pledged to keep working on a new path forward between their two countries. "Our Carnival Corporation and Fathom brand teams have worked closely with Cuba throughout this process and we are thrilled to begin regular sailings to Cuba from Miami starting on May 1, 2016," said Tara Russell, president of Carnival Corporation's new Fathom brand. "We have been told that we will be the first cruise line to sail from the U.S. to Cuba with our historic inaugural sailing." During each sailing, Carnival Corp. through its Fathom brand initially will visit Havana, Cienfuegos and Santiago de Cuba, three ports of call for which Carnival Corp. has obtained berthing approval. Onboard programming will include a wide variety of activities, ranging from an orientation to Cuba's history, customs and culture, to geographic-inspired entertainment, to casual and fun personal enrichment activities, to conversational Spanish lessons, to guided sessions with the Fathom team. The first Fathom cruise ship will leave Port of Miami at 4:30 p.m. on May 1 and will arrive in Havana at 11 a.m. the following day. Regular weekend sailing will take place every other week. Prices start at $1,800 excluding the cost of a Cuban visa, fees, taxes and port charges. Meals, cultural exchange activities and ground transportation are included. For more information on the cruises, click here. Environmental activists have put Florida Power and Light on notice: they will use the federal Clean Water Act to sue the company for polluting Biscayne Bay with industrial wastewater used to cool the Turkey Point nuclear power station. /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;} At a news conference outside Miami City Hall, on the shores of Biscayne Bay, members of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy and the Tropical Audubon Society Tuesday revealed they gave FPL the required 60-day advance notice of the lawsuit on March 15. Their main complaint: the two- by five-mile unlined canal system that cools water used in the plant is leaking into the adjacent bay, according to the notice of intent to file the citizens suit. It accuses FPL of "ongoing, serious violations of federal law and permitting requirement" and vows to file suit unless state or federal environmental agencies sue the company first. "We're stepping in because of, in essence, the shredding of the regulatory safety net that should be in place," said Stephen Smith, executive director of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy. State Rep. Jose Javier Rodriguez (D-Miami) said Gov. Rick Scott's Department of Environmental Protection has been derelict in siding with the utility instead of the public health and environment. "Enough is enough," he said. "How long are we going to continue waiting for DEP to act and protect the public instead of continuing again to shield Florida Power and Light?" Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;} In a phone interview, FPL's chief communications officer said the utility is already working with the Environmental Protection Agency to protect the bay. "We're not concerned in the sense of EPA being involved," said FPL's Robert Gould. "We have been involved with the EPA and proactively engaging with them on the situation at Turkey Point." FPL's federal permit does not allow it to discharge waters directly into the bay, and the utility does not do so. But the complainants say recent testing proves the canal system and bay are linked by "hydrologically connected ground water." While there is no direct surface water connection between the bay and the canal, new tests show high-salinity groundwater under the canals is reaching the bay. The greatest exposures are coming at deeper depths near the berms that are supposed to separate the bay from the canals. Higher levels of salt, ammonia and phosphorous found in those tidal bay waters were linked to the plant by tritium, an isotope of hydrogen that is found in elevated levels in water that passes through nuclear power plants. The tritium concentrations found in the bay have reached only about 20 percent of the maximum level allowed for drinking water, so the radioactivity in the water is not considered a health threat. But the nutrients being deposited in the bay are a concern because they can lead to algae blooms that block sunlight, destroying vegetation and starving animal life. "We know those chemicals have an impact on fish and wildlife," said Laura Reynolds, a longtime activist on Biscayne Bay now consulting with SACE. "We know it degrades sea grass. We know high salinity brings diversity down. So were worried about the marine life, were worried about the future of Biscayne Bay and we need immediate action." "At the end of the day, we're going to fix that problem," said Gould, the FPL vice president, noting the utility has just sought permits to remove nutrient-rich waters and vegetative matter it suspects is contributing to the levels. "We're not running away from our responsibility regarding the nutrients." Biscayne Bay is a protected water body and the citizens notice to sue alleges FPL violates state law by causing degradation of water quality in the bay, which borders the plant just to the east. Gould said there's no evidence of FPL causing water degradation in the bay beyond the lower depths of man-made trenches just outside the plant's berms, the areas FPL has vowed to restore. To the west, hypersaline groundwater originating under the cooling canals has stretched more than four miles, toward wells Miami-Dade and Monroe counties rely on for drinking water. The utility has undertaken a project seeking to stop the flow of hypersaline water toward the wells. But the groups also say they will sue FPL for degrading that groundwater, as well. By resorting to a federal court action, the complainants are bypassing the state Department of Environmental Protection, which an administrative judge recently found has failed to stop FPL from potentially endangering the countys sole source for drinking water. The judge threw out a deal FPL reached with DEP, noting the state could have acted more forcefully to protect the waters. The agreement does not require FPL to "come into compliance with standards" or set a deadline for it to do so. The judges recommended order, which can be appealed, calls on DEP to rescind its agreement with FPL or at least amend it so it enforces existing environmental laws. Mike Sole, a former head of the state DEP and now a vice president for FPL, told NBC 6 Investigators he interacted with his former agency to reach the agreement that a judge has found lacking. "Obviously there's some disagreement with the judge's ruling," Sole said, adding, "but we look to DEP for their final decision on the recommended order." Thank you. Muchas gracias. Thank you so much. Thank you very much. President Castro, the people of Cuba, thank you so much for the warm welcome that I have received, that my family have received, and that our delegation has received. It is an extraordinary honor to be here today. Before I begin, please indulge me. I want to comment on the terrorist attacks that have taken place in Brussels. The thoughts and the prayers of the American people are with the people of Belgium. We stand in solidarity with them in condemning these outrageous attacks against innocent people. We will do whatever is necessary to support our friend and ally, Belgium, in bringing to justice those who are responsible. And this is yet another reminder that the world must unite, we must be together, regardless of nationality, or race, or faith, in fighting against the scourge of terrorism. We can -- and will -- defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world. To the government and the people of Cuba, I want to thank you for the kindness that youve shown to me and Michelle, Malia, Sasha, my mother-in-law, Marian. Cultivo una rosa blanca. In his most famous poem, Jose Marti made this offering of friendship and peace to both his friend and his enemy. Today, as the President of the United States of America, I offer the Cuban people el saludo de paz. Havana is only 90 miles from Florida, but to get here we had to travel a great distance -- over barriers of history and ideology; barriers of pain and separation. The blue waters beneath Air Force One once carried American battleships to this island -- to liberate, but also to exert control over Cuba. Those waters also carried generations of Cuban revolutionaries to the United States, where they built support for their cause. And that short distance has been crossed by hundreds of thousands of Cuban exiles -- on planes and makeshift rafts -- who came to America in pursuit of freedom and opportunity, sometimes leaving behind everything they owned and every person that they loved. Like so many people in both of our countries, my lifetime has spanned a time of isolation between us. The Cuban Revolution took place the same year that my father came to the United States from Kenya. The Bay of Pigs took place the year that I was born. The next year, the entire world held its breath, watching our two countries, as humanity came as close as we ever have to the horror of nuclear war. As the decades rolled by, our governments settled into a seemingly endless confrontation, fighting battles through proxies. In a world that remade itself time and again, one constant was the conflict between the United States and Cuba. I have come here to bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas. I have come here to extend the hand of friendship to the Cuban people. I want to be clear: The differences between our governments over these many years are real and they are important. Im sure President Castro would say the same thing -- I know, because Ive heard him address those differences at length. But before I discuss those issues, we also need to recognize how much we share. Because in many ways, the United States and Cuba are like two brothers whove been estranged for many years, even as we share the same blood. We both live in a new world, colonized by Europeans. Cuba, like the United States, was built in part by slaves brought here from Africa. Like the United States, the Cuban people can trace their heritage to both slaves and slave-owners. Weve welcomed both immigrants who came a great distance to start new lives in the Americas. Over the years, our cultures have blended together. Dr. Carlos Finlays work in Cuba paved the way for generations of doctors, including Walter Reed, who drew on Dr. Finlays work to help combat Yellow Fever. Just as Marti wrote some of his most famous words in New York, Ernest Hemingway made a home in Cuba, and found inspiration in the waters of these shores. We share a national past-time -- La Pelota -- and later today our players will compete on the same Havana field that Jackie Robinson played on before he made his Major League debut. And it's said that our greatest boxer, Muhammad Ali, once paid tribute to a Cuban that he could never fight -- saying that he would only be able to reach a draw with the great Cuban, Teofilo Stevenson. So even as our governments became adversaries, our people continued to share these common passions, particularly as so many Cubans came to America. In Miami or Havana, you can find places to dance the Cha-Cha-Cha or the Salsa, and eat ropa vieja. People in both of our countries have sung along with Celia Cruz or Gloria Estefan, and now listen to reggaeton or Pitbull. Millions of our people share a common religion -- a faith that I paid tribute to at the Shrine of our Lady of Charity in Miami, a peace that Cubans find in La Cachita. For all of our differences, the Cuban and American people share common values in their own lives. A sense of patriotism and a sense of pride -- a lot of pride. A profound love of family. A passion for our children, a commitment to their education. And that's why I believe our grandchildren will look back on this period of isolation as an aberration, as just one chapter in a longer story of family and of friendship. But we cannot, and should not, ignore the very real differences that we have -- about how we organize our governments, our economies, and our societies. Cuba has a one-party system; the United States is a multi-party democracy. Cuba has a socialist economic model; the United States is an open market. Cuba has emphasized the role and rights of the state; the United States is founded upon the rights of the individual. Despite these differences, on December 17th 2014, President Castro and I announced that the United States and Cuba would begin a process to normalize relations between our countries. Since then, we have established diplomatic relations and opened embassies. We've begun initiatives to cooperate on health and agriculture, education and law enforcement. We've reached agreements to restore direct flights and mail service. We've expanded commercial ties, and increased the capacity of Americans to travel and do business in Cuba. And these changes have been welcomed, even though there are still opponents to these policies. But still, many people on both sides of this debate have asked: Why now? Why now? There is one simple answer: What the United States was doing was not working. We have to have the courage to acknowledge that truth. A policy of isolation designed for the Cold War made little sense in the 21st century. The embargo was only hurting the Cuban people instead of helping them. And I've always believed in what Martin Luther King, Jr. called the fierce urgency of now -- we should not fear change, we should embrace it. That leads me to a bigger and more important reason for these changes: Creo en el pueblo Cubano. I believe in the Cuban people. This is not just a policy of normalizing relations with the Cuban government. The United States of America is normalizing relations with the Cuban people. And today, I want to share with you my vision of what our future can be. I want the Cuban people -- especially the young people -- to understand why I believe that you should look to the future with hope; not the false promise which insists that things are better than they really are, or the blind optimism that says all your problems can go away tomorrow. Hope that is rooted in the future that you can choose and that you can shape, and that you can build for your country. I'm hopeful because I believe that the Cuban people are as innovative as any people in the world. In a global economy, powered by ideas and information, a countrys greatest asset is its people. In the United States, we have a clear monument to what the Cuban people can build: its called Miami. Here in Havana, we see that same talent in cuentapropistas, cooperatives and old cars that still run. El Cubano inventa del aire. Cuba has an extraordinary resource -- a system of education which values every boy and every girl. And in recent years, the Cuban government has begun to open up to the world, and to open up more space for that talent to thrive. In just a few years, we've seen how cuentapropistas can succeed while sustaining a distinctly Cuban spirit. Being self-employed is not about becoming more like America, its about being yourself. Look at Sandra Lidice Aldama, who chose to start a small business. Cubans, she said, can innovate and adapt without losing our identityour secret is in not copying or imitating but simply being ourselves. Look at Papito Valladeres, a barber, whose success allowed him to improve conditions in his neighborhood. I realize Im not going to solve all of the worlds problems, he said. But if I can solve problems in the little piece of the world where I live, it can ripple across Havana. Thats where hope begins -- with the ability to earn your own living, and to build something you can be proud of. Thats why our policies focus on supporting Cubans, instead of hurting them. Thats why we got rid of limits on remittances -- so ordinary Cubans have more resources. Thats why were encouraging travel -- which will build bridges between our people, and bring more revenue to those Cuban small businesses. Thats why weve opened up space for commerce and exchanges -- so that Americans and Cubans can work together to find cures for diseases, and create jobs, and open the door to more opportunity for the Cuban people. As President of the United States, Ive called on our Congress to lift the embargo. It is an outdated burden on the Cuban people. It's a burden on the Americans who want to work and do business or invest here in Cuba. It's time to lift the embargo. But even if we lifted the embargo tomorrow, Cubans would not realize their potential without continued change here in Cuba. It should be easier to open a business here in Cuba. A worker should be able to get a job directly with companies who invest here in Cuba. Two currencies shouldnt separate the type of salaries that Cubans can earn. The Internet should be available across the island, so that Cubans can connect to the wider world -- and to one of the greatest engines of growth in human history. Theres no limitation from the United States on the ability of Cuba to take these steps. Its up to you. And I can tell you as a friend that sustainable prosperity in the 21st century depends upon education, health care, and environmental protection. But it also depends on the free and open exchange of ideas. If you cant access information online, if you cannot be exposed to different points of view, you will not reach your full potential. And over time, the youth will lose hope. I know these issues are sensitive, especially coming from an American President. Before 1959, some Americans saw Cuba as something to exploit, ignored poverty, enabled corruption. And since 1959, weve been shadow-boxers in this battle of geopolitics and personalities. I know the history, but I refuse to be trapped by it. Ive made it clear that the United States has neither the capacity, nor the intention to impose change on Cuba. What changes come will depend upon the Cuban people. We will not impose our political or economic system on you. We recognize that every country, every people, must chart its own course and shape its own model. But having removed the shadow of history from our relationship, I must speak honestly about the things that I believe -- the things that we, as Americans, believe. As Marti said, Liberty is the right of every man to be honest, to think and to speak without hypocrisy. So let me tell you what I believe. I can't force you to agree, but you should know what I think. I believe that every person should be equal under the law. Every child deserves the dignity that comes with education, and health care and food on the table and a roof over their heads. I believe citizens should be free to speak their mind without fear -- to organize, and to criticize their government, and to protest peacefully, and that the rule of law should not include arbitrary detentions of people who exercise those rights. I believe that every person should have the freedom to practice their faith peacefully and publicly. And, yes, I believe voters should be able to choose their governments in free and democratic elections. Not everybody agrees with me on this. Not everybody agrees with the American people on this. But I believe those human rights are universal. I believe they are the rights of the American people, the Cuban people, and people around the world. Now, theres no secret that our governments disagree on many of these issues. Ive had frank conversations with President Castro. For many years, he has pointed out the flaws in the American system -- economic inequality; the death penalty; racial discrimination; wars abroad. Thats just a sample. He has a much longer list. But heres what the Cuban people need to understand: I welcome this open debate and dialogue. Its good. Its healthy. Im not afraid of it. We do have too much money in American politics. But, in America, it's still possible for somebody like me -- a child who was raised by a single mom, a child of mixed race who did not have a lot of money -- to pursue and achieve the highest office in the land. That's whats possible in America. We do have challenges with racial bias -- in our communities, in our criminal justice system, in our society -- the legacy of slavery and segregation. But the fact that we have open debates within Americas own democracy is what allows us to get better. In 1959, the year that my father moved to America, it was illegal for him to marry my mother, who was white, in many American states. When I first started school, we were still struggling to desegregate schools across the American South. But people organized; they protested; they debated these issues; they challenged government officials. And because of those protests, and because of those debates, and because of popular mobilization, Im able to stand here today as an African-American and as President of the United States. That was because of the freedoms that were afforded in the United States that we were able to bring about change. Im not saying this is easy. Theres still enormous problems in our society. But democracy is the way that we solve them. That's how we got health care for more of our people. That's how we made enormous gains in womens rights and gay rights. That's how we address the inequality that concentrates so much wealth at the top of our society. Because workers can organize and ordinary people have a voice, American democracy has given our people the opportunity to pursue their dreams and enjoy a high standard of living. Now, there are still some tough fights. It isnt always pretty, the process of democracy. It's often frustrating. You can see that in the election going on back home. But just stop and consider this fact about the American campaign that's taking place right now. You had two Cuban Americans in the Republican Party, running against the legacy of a black man who is President, while arguing that theyre the best person to beat the Democratic nominee who will either be a woman or a Democratic Socialist. Who would have believed that back in 1959? That's a measure of our progress as a democracy. So heres my message to the Cuban government and the Cuban people: The ideals that are the starting point for every revolution -- Americas revolution, Cubas revolution, the liberation movements around the world -- those ideals find their truest expression, I believe, in democracy. Not because American democracy is perfect, but precisely because were not. And we -- like every country -- need the space that democracy gives us to change. It gives individuals the capacity to be catalysts to think in new ways, and to reimagine how our society should be, and to make them better. Theres already an evolution taking place inside of Cuba, a generational change. Many suggested that I come here and ask the people of Cuba to tear something down -- but Im appealing to the young people of Cuba who will lift something up, build something new. El future de Cuba tiene que estar en las manos del pueblo Cubano. And to President Castro -- who I appreciate being here today -- I want you to know, I believe my visit here demonstrates you do not need to fear a threat from the United States. And given your commitment to Cubas sovereignty and self-determination, I am also confident that you need not fear the different voices of the Cuban people -- and their capacity to speak, and assemble, and vote for their leaders. In fact, Im hopeful for the future because I trust that the Cuban people will make the right decisions. And as you do, Im also confident that Cuba can continue to play an important role in the hemisphere and around the globe -- and my hope is, is that you can do so as a partner with the United States. Weve played very different roles in the world. But no one should deny the service that thousands of Cuban doctors have delivered for the poor and suffering. Last year, American health care workers -- and the U.S. military -- worked side-by-side with Cubans to save lives and stamp out Ebola in West Africa. I believe that we should continue that kind of cooperation in other countries. Weve been on the different side of so many conflicts in the Americas. But today, Americans and Cubans are sitting together at the negotiating table, and we are helping the Colombian people resolve a civil war thats dragged on for decades. That kind of cooperation is good for everybody. It gives everyone in this hemisphere hope. We took different journeys to our support for the people of South Africa in ending apartheid. But President Castro and I could both be there in Johannesburg to pay tribute to the legacy of the great Nelson Mandela. And in examining his life and his words, I'm sure we both realize we have more work to do to promote equality in our own countries -- to reduce discrimination based on race in our own countries. And in Cuba, we want our engagement to help lift up the Cubans who are of African descent -- whove proven that theres nothing they cannot achieve when given the chance. Weve been a part of different blocs of nations in the hemisphere, and we will continue to have profound differences about how to promote peace, security, opportunity, and human rights. But as we normalize our relations, I believe it can help foster a greater sense of unity in the Americas -- todos somos Americanos. From the beginning of my time in office, Ive urged the people of the Americas to leave behind the ideological battles of the past. We are in a new era. I know that many of the issues that Ive talked about lack the drama of the past. And I know that part of Cubas identity is its pride in being a small island nation that could stand up for its rights, and shake the world. But I also know that Cuba will always stand out because of the talent, hard work, and pride of the Cuban people. That's your strength. Cuba doesnt have to be defined by being against the United States, any more than the United States should be defined by being against Cuba. I'm hopeful for the future because of the reconciliation thats taking place among the Cuban people. I know that for some Cubans on the island, there may be a sense that those who left somehow supported the old order in Cuba. I'm sure theres a narrative that lingers here which suggests that Cuban exiles ignored the problems of pre-Revolutionary Cuba, and rejected the struggle to build a new future. But I can tell you today that so many Cuban exiles carry a memory of painful -- and sometimes violent -- separation. They love Cuba. A part of them still considers this their true home. Thats why their passion is so strong. That's why their heartache is so great. And for the Cuban American community that Ive come to know and respect, this is not just about politics. This is about family -- the memory of a home that was lost; the desire to rebuild a broken bond; the hope for a better future the hope for return and reconciliation. For all of the politics, people are people, and Cubans are Cubans. And Ive come here -- Ive traveled this distance -- on a bridge that was built by Cubans on both sides of the Florida Straits. I first got to know the talent and passion of the Cuban people in America. And I know how they have suffered more than the pain of exile -- they also know what its like to be an outsider, and to struggle, and to work harder to make sure their children can reach higher in America. So the reconciliation of the Cuban people -- the children and grandchildren of revolution, and the children and grandchildren of exile -- that is fundamental to Cubas future. You see it in Gloria Gonzalez, who traveled here in 2013 for the first time after 61 years of separation, and was met by her sister, Llorca. You recognized me, but I didnt recognize you, Gloria said after she embraced her sibling. Imagine that, after 61 years. You see it in Melinda Lopez, who came to her familys old home. And as she was walking the streets, an elderly woman recognized her as her mothers daughter, and began to cry. She took her into her home and showed her a pile of photos that included Melindas baby picture, which her mother had sent 50 years ago. Melinda later said, So many of us are now getting so much back. You see it in Cristian Miguel Soler, a young man who became the first of his family to travel here after 50 years. And meeting relatives for the first time, he said, I realized that family is family no matter the distance between us. Sometimes the most important changes start in small places. The tides of history can leave people in conflict and exile and poverty. It takes time for those circumstances to change. But the recognition of a common humanity, the reconciliation of people bound by blood and a belief in one another -- thats where progress begins. Understanding, and listening, and forgiveness. And if the Cuban people face the future together, it will be more likely that the young people of today will be able to live with dignity and achieve their dreams right here in Cuba. The history of the United States and Cuba encompass revolution and conflict; struggle and sacrifice; retribution and, now, reconciliation. It is time, now, for us to leave the past behind. It is time for us to look forward to the future together -- un future de esperanza. And it wont be easy, and there will be setbacks. It will take time. But my time here in Cuba renews my hope and my confidence in what the Cuban people will do. We can make this journey as friends, and as neighbors, and as family -- together. Si Senate puede. Muchas gracias. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced Tuesday that One World Trade Center would be adorned in Belgian flag colors Tuesday night, in a signal of support for the nation reeling from a deadly terror attack. Tonight, One World Trade Center will be displayed in black, yellow and red as we stand in solemn solidarity with the people of Belgium, just as they have done for us in the past, Cuomo said in a statement Tuesday afternoon. We join the world in mourning the victims of these attacks and remain committed to helping create a more just and peaceful world." AP But the spire appeared to be lit in red, white and blue for a period Tuesday night. A Port Authority spokesperson said the spire was initially lit at 10 percent white, which was supposed to darken the spire enough to appear black. https://www.instagram.com/p/BDQvGSIocW6 After dusk, the lighting was further darkened so the Belgian colors of black, yellow and red were clearly visible, the spokesperson said. Uptown, the Empire State Building remained dark Tuesday night in sympathy for the lives lost in the Brussels attack. Other tall buildings and monuments around the world were lighting up in the colors of the Belgian flag as well, including the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin and Dubai's Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building. [NATL] Global Landmarks Light Up After Brussels Attack At least 31 people were killed when explosions rocked a Brussels airport and train station Tuesday morning. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack, believed to be perpetrated by suicide bombers, NBC News reported. It's not the first time in recent months that the World Trade Center's spire, America's tallest, was used to show solidarity with a nation after a terror attack. The 408-foot spire on top of the building constructed after a terror attack leveled the twin towers on Sept. 11, 2001 was lit up in the colors of the French flag following the November terror attack in Paris. The American Red Cross is looking for local volunteers to join its 400,000-strong community of helpers around the United States. According to the organization, volunteers make up about 90 percent of the total work force, meaning for each paid employee, there are 15 volunteers in the Red Cross. For more information about volunteering, watch NBC10 News at 11 a.m. Tuesday (or streaming live right here on NBC10.com), when a local Red Cross official will talk about volunteering -- or visit RedCross.org to learn more and apply. Capping his remarkable visit to Cuba, President Barack Obama on Tuesday declared an end to the "last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas'' and openly urged the Cuban people to pursue a more democratic future for this communist nation 90 miles from the Florida coast. With Cuban President Raul Castro watching from a balcony, Obama said the government should not fear citizens who speak freely and vote for their own leaders. And with Cubans watching on tightly controlled state television, Obama said they would be the ones to determine their country's future, not the United States. "Many suggested that I come here and ask the people of Cuba to tear something down,'' Obama said. "But I'm appealing to the young people of Cuba who will lift something up, build something new.'' On the streets of Havana, the president's address sparked extraordinarily rare public discussions about democracy, and some anger with Cuba's leaders. Cubans are used to complaining bitterly about economic matters but rarely speak publicly about any desire for political change, particularly in conversations with foreign journalists. Juan Francisco Ugarte, Oliva, a 71-year-old retired refrigeration technician, said the American president "dared to say in the presence of the leaders, of Raul Castro, that (Cubans) had the right to protest peacefully without being beaten or arrested.'' Omardy Isaac, a 43-year-old who works in a gift shop, said, "Cubans need all of their rights and I am in favor of democracy.'' Later, Obama sat beside Castro at a baseball game between Cuba's beloved national team and the Tampa Bay Rays of America's Major League Baseball. Leaving the game early for Jose Marti International Airport, Obama was met there again by Castro who walked him to Air Force One. They chatted in relaxed fashion, any awkwardness or tension apparently gone from the previous day's news conference that saw Castro hit with tough questions from U.S. reporters. How quickly political change comes to Cuba, if at all, is uncertain. But the response from at least some Cubans was certain to be seen by Obama as validation of his belief that restoring ties and facilitating more interactions between Cuba and the United States is more likely than continued estrangement to spur democracy. "What the United States was doing was not working,'' Obama said. He reiterated his call for the U.S. Congress to lift the economic embargo on Cuba, calling it an "outdated burden on the Cuban people," a condemnation that was enthusiastically cheered by the crowd at Havana's Grand Theater. The president's visit was a crowning moment in his and Castro's bold bid to restore ties after a half-century diplomatic freeze. While deep differences persist, officials from both countries are in regular contact, major U.S. companies are lining up to invest in Cuba, and travel restrictions that largely blocked Americans from visiting have been loosened. After arriving Sunday, Obama plunged into a whirlwind schedule that blended official talks with Castro and opportunities to soak in Cuba's culture. He toured historic sites in Old Havana in a rainstorm, ate at one of the city's most popular privately owned restaurants and joined a big crowd for Tuesday's baseball game. The fans roared as Obama and his family entered the stadium, which underwent an extensive upgrade for the game. Castro joined the Obama family and sat alongside the president behind home plate, one of several moments from the U.S. president's trip that would have been barely imaginable just months ago. Obama also met Tuesday with about a dozen dissidents, praising them for showing "extraordinary courage.'' The group included journalist Miriam Celaya, attorney Laritza Diversent and activists Manuel Cuesta and Jose Daniel Ferrer. The White House said the meeting was a prerequisite for Obama in coming to Cuba. Yet the gathering did little to appease those who say he hasn't gotten enough human rights concessions from the Castro government to justify the American economic investment expected to pour into the island. Cubans have been riveted by 15 months of changes in their country's relationship with the United States. But they've learned of it almost entirely through state-run media who have focused on two primary themes, the embargo's continued responsibility for Cuban economic problems and the importance of Cuba changing at its own pace, not one imposed by Washington. Obama's speech was the first opportunity for Cubans to hear his vision of warming U.S.-Cuban relations as closely linked to Cuba's internal evolution. It's a vision of free speech, free assembly and the ability to earn a living without relying on a centrally controlled economy. The president appeared to deliberately use neutral terms to describe the Cuban state: "a one-party system'' and "a socialist economic model'' that "has emphasized the role and rights of the state.'' Obama's last day in Cuba was shadowed by the horrific attacks in Brussels, where scores of people were killed in explosions at the airport and a metro station. The president opened his remarks by vowing to do "whatever is necessary'' to support Belgium. Associated Press writers Josh Lederman, Andrea Rodriguez and Peter Orsi contributed to this report. To stir excitement for his evening rally, dozens of Bernie Sanders supporters marched through the streets of downtown San Diego on Tuesday morning. The supporters began at the San Diego Civic Concourse before walking to the San Diego Convention Center, where the Democratic presidential candidate is set to speak at 8 p.m. Wearing T-shirts and holding Feel the Bern signs, the voters were aiming to drum up support for Sanders, who trails his rival Hillary Clinton by about 300 delegates. That didnt matter to the supporters who turned out Tuesday morning. I live about an hour from here to be here, Carlsbad resident Catherine OCallahan said. This is something really big. You know, the message. Its a political revolution." Many made colorful appearances. Paul Sasso painted his Tesla into a "Bernie machine," an engine-powered billboard for the candidate. "My wife and I created this in September and then I drove it around the country the whole month of September," he said. Then, there Nathaniel Allenby, who was dressed as Uncle Sam and was perched atop stilts for the march. He said he feels Sanders is the one to "beat Trump." "Bernie has the voice of the people for the people and he's tickling the people's fancy and they are ready to feel the Bern," he said. There were a few detractors at the march, calling the supporters socialists, but they were mainly ignored. Sanders appearance is part of his West Coast tour. Doors to the convention center open at 5 p.m and the event is free to the public. Filmfest DC is coming back to Washington, D.C., and this time, its celebrating its 30th Anniversary! The Districts first, largest and only international film festival has continuously brought new, diverse and entertaining films to District residents and visitors since 1987. This year, the 11-day festival will bring 75 films from 35 countries that will be shown on six screens. The genres of film range greatly and include international dramas, comedies, thrillers and espionage, music and dance, social justice, international and women-directed shorts and Cine Cubano. Cine Cubano plans to bring insight to timely issues by showcasing three films that focus on life in Cuba today. NBC4 has sponsored Filmfest DC since 2007, and the station will be designated as The Official Television Station of Filmfest DC. The full Filmfest DC catalog that will be published in the Washington Post on Friday, April 8. The festival will be from April 14-24 at the Landmark E Street Cinema and AMC Mazza Gallerie. Opening Night celebration, which is sponsored by the Embassy of Australia, will feature "The Dressmaker," starring Kate Winslet. "The Dressmaker" led the 5th Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards with 13 nominations. Closing Night, sponsored by the Office of Quebec and the Office of Cable Television, will feature the Canadian comedy "My Internship in Canada" by Philippe Falardeau and director Monsieur Lazhar. Numerous directors and filmmakers will be present throughout the festival to answer questions and start discussions. Akilah Johnson, a sophomore at Eastern Senior High School in Northeast D.C., has received the surprise of a lifetime when she was named the winner in Google's national "Doodle 4 Google" contest. Johnson's doodle, called "My Afrocentric Life," was showcased on Google's homepage Monday. Johnson is the contest's first winner from Washington, since the District was not eligible to participate in the "states-only" contest in the past. Her entry was picked from 100,000 student entries and topped the 53 state and territory champions. Along with being named the "Doodle 4 Google" national winner, Johnson won some other big prizes as well -- including a $30,000 college scholarship and a $50,000 Google for Education grant "towards the establishment and improvement of a computer lab or technology program" in her school. She also won a trip to the Google headquarters in California to meet the Google Doodlers, the opportunity to nominate a teacher to accompany her to Google Headquarters, a Chromebook, an Android tablet, and a T-shirt with her doodle printed on it. For her trip to California, Johnson decided to bring her mother, Tikecia Johnson, and her art teacher, Zalika Perkins, who'd urged her to enter the contest. This year's contest theme was "What makes me... me." Johnson's attendance in the Roots Public Charter School and the Roots Activity Learning Center in Northwest D.C. was the inspiration for her doodle, which consisted of many black culture symbols and signs that represent the Black Lives Matter movement. She drew the word "Google" as a box braid, one of the many things that represent that. "These schools promote a strong connection to African heritage, and an Afrocentric lifestyle; we regularly celebrated important African-American people, and I learned a lot about my history as an African-American," Johnson wrote in her contest entry. "As I grew older, I realized that the black people that came before us have made us into what we are today. So of course, I had to include them in my doodle on the theme, 'What makes me... me.'" Johnson also paid homage to the District by including the D.C. flag, a Washington sign, and the Washington Monument. "I based this picture off my lifestyle and what has made me into what I am today," Johnson wrote. "Of all the things I chose to include, the six most special to me are the Symbol of Life (the ankh), the African continent, where everything began for me and my ancestors, the Eye of Horus, the word 'power' drawn in black, the woman's fist based on one of my favorite artist's works, and the D.C. flag -- because I'm a Washingtonian at heart and I love my city with everything in me!" Two other local students -- Anjali Pulim, from Clarksville Middle School in Maryland, and Preston Sakata, from Herndon Elementary School in Virginia -- were also finalists in the contest. Doctors say sudden cardiac arrest is responsible for more deaths than breast cancer, lung cancer and HIV combined. Yet, unlike those diseases, they say we already have the technology to save many of those lives -- so why arent we using it? Some members of Congress are trying to change that, but their success may depend on a group of sixth graders. Lawrence, Sara, Olivia, Lee and Brighton are five talkative, totally typical sixth graders who had no idea what was waiting for them behind the door of Studio D at NBC Washington. But before we tell you what they found, we first have to take you on a trip to Houston, Texas, to meet Scott Corron. I was essentially dead Corron pointed to a spot on one of Houston's popular biking trails. I biked up through here and made it to about right here, he said. "I fell off my bike with cardiac arrest. I had no pulse, no breathing and was essentially dead." He was just 44 years old and told us an automated external defibrillator -- or AED -- brought him back to life. Corron now wants to make it as easy as possible for businesses to install these life-saving devices in their buildings. "Only five percent of hotels and restaurants have AEDs, he said. Many facilities don't actually have them because they're threatened by the laws and believe if they have one they're going to be held to a standard of care of a medical facility and therefore will be at risk," he added. Corron went to his Congressman, Pete Olson (TX-R), who sat down with us in his Capitol Hill office. Rep. Olson said too many nationwide chains told him they're afraid to install the devices in their stores. "They're worried about liability. They worry about if they have it in their store somewhere and they try to employ it, they'll be sued," he said. Trying to Fix Complicated Liability Laws Olson pointed to the AED in the hall near his office, which is posted with a warning saying it can only be used "by trained persons" because, Olson said, D.C. has a complicated liability law. But just across the border in Virginia, an AED can be put up with no restrictions, Olson said. Olson told us the rules vary so much from state to state, he introduced House Resolution 4152, dubbed The Cardiac Arrest Survival Act, to protect any business that installs an AED -- and anyone who uses it -- from being sued. These devices are designed to be used by folks who are not trained medical personnel, said Dr. Jonathan Reiner at George Washington University Hospital. Dr. Reiner is a nationally renowned cardiologist and contacted us after seeing our recent investigation, which found one out of five AEDs in our area was locked up in offices or hidden away behind security desks. "They should be out in the open rather than locked in an office," Reiner said. He said he thinks too many local businesses lock AEDs away because complicated D.C. law makes them think defibrillators can only be used by trained personnel. But, he said, there's a huge amount of scientific research showing the devices are so easy to use, you don't need any training to help bring someone back to life. "My favorite study, Reiner said, is the study that compared sixth-graders to paramedics." The 6th Grader Study And that is why our sixth graders found themselves sitting on chairs in a hallway, wondering what they were going to find behind the door of Studio D. To demonstrate what that study on AEDs and sixth-graders by the University of Washington found, we brought each child, one by one, into the studio. They were greeted by Capt. Lee Silverman, who held a gray and yellow box. Silverman trains the Montgomery County Fire and Rescue Departments EMTs and gave each of the sixth graders directions similar to those used in the scientific study. "We're going to pretend this mannequin is on the floor, he told each child. His heart has stopped and his breathing has stopped. What we need you to do is use this automated external defibrillator. We can't help you, and I can't give you any directions, but everything you need is in this box. I want to see how fast you can do it." And with that, each child went to work as we timed them. With our cameras rolling, we watched how each child first had to figure out how to open the AED, turn it on, find the pads and figure out how to stick those pads onto the mannequin -- something that tripped them all up for a bit. Some of the kids tried to zap the mannequin too quickly -- but the machine wouldn't let them do it until it was safe. After each child successfully shocked the mannequin, Silverman checked the placement of the pads. While some of the kids put them closer together than the diagram indicated, the fire department captain said they all would have worked in a real emergency. The pads are in the right place, he told one child. So, you did a good job! We found that with no training, each of the children figured out how to use an AED within, on average, about 2 minutes 1 second. Thats plenty of time to save a life and similar to what the scientific study found. The study showed it took the average sixth-grader just seconds longer to deploy the device when compared to trained paramedics. You Cant Kill Someone Who Is Already Dead "Every kid could do it, Reiner, the cardiologist, said about the University of Washington study, one of his favorites. Every kid did it correctly the first time and there was no practical difference in the time it took them to do it versus the trained professionals," he said. Everyone should take a few minutes and get AED training so theyre comfortable using the devices, Reiner said. It takes less than five minutes to watch this educational video made by the News4 I-Team and the Montgomery County fire department. Even if youve never had training, don't be afraid to use an AED in a real emergency, Reiner said. As several experts told us, you can't kill someone who is already dead. And as the sixth-graders learned, an AED will only shock someone if they have no heartbeat. "I think a grown-up can handle it," one of the children, Olivia, said. Sara agreed. It only took us a couple of minutes! They can do this, Brighton, another of the children, said. And they should know how to do it so they can save someone's life." Because, as Lawrence and our brave little group of sixth graders will now tell you, "If we can do it, they can do it too." Travelers can expect increased security in public areas of airports after the deadly attack Tuesday in an airport departures hall in Brussels, an aviation security expert says. Airports and other high-profile locations, like mass transit systems, bridges and tunnels, were on high alert Tuesday. Parts of Denver International Airport were evacuated Tuesday, while a plane from Brussels to Florida was searched upon landing soon after the attacks. Airline passengers may soon see more officers and security measures in check-in and baggage claim areas, aviation security consultant and Metropolitan State University of Denver professor Jeffrey Price said. "I think you're going to see more law enforcement presence in the public areas," he said. "It's a visible deterrent to an attacker." But it's not clear to other experts how additional security could prevent every terror attack. We are in a war right now, and as long as we live in societies where there is free enterprise and the free movement of peoples, you cannot protect every gathering, consultant Daniel E. Karson said. Two bombs full of nails exploded before 8 a.m. Tuesday in a public departures hall of the Brussels airport, officials said. Less than an hour later, another blast ripped through a subway car near the headquarters of the European Union in the morning rush hour. The attacks, for which ISIS claimed responsibility, killed at least 31 people. A manhunt for one of three suspects caught on surveillance video at the airport was still underway late Tuesday in Brussels. Price said some increased security measures would be visible, including officers in uniform and an uptick in random searches. Other measures, like the presence of undercover officers, would be invisible to most passengers. "These may not be things the average traveler could notice," said Price, who trains airport management workers in security and previously worked as a security director of Denver International Airport. The costs of security upgrades in airports' public areas would be covered by airport operators, said Price and a spokesman for the Airports Council International-North America, which represents the industry. The federal Transportation Security Administration controls security checkpoints but not the public areas, Price said. Any increase in security costs would not be passed on to passengers in the form of increased fees, ACI-NA spokesman Scott Elmore said. Price said he believes a boost in visible security at airports would be effective. "The majority [of attackers] don't want to be caught until they're successful," Price said. But Karson cautioned that attacks like the one in Brussels will continue to occur, even as terrorists' plans are being uncovered and stopped. An Uphill Battle in Keeping Airline Passengers Safe Karson, a chairman of Kroll, an international security and risk management company based in New York, said terrorist threats in the U.S. are different from those possible in Europe. Within Europe, people can move freely across borders with little passport control and those who have been involved in terrorist organizations have been able to travel between Europe and the Middle East, he said. Karson noted that America is made safer by the "very big oceans" separating the country from much of the rest of the world. Border agents check passports and the incidents that have taken place in the U.S. aren't typically as organized as Tuesday's attack, instead "involving more or less lone wolves," he said. But that doesn't mean all security measures will be successful within American borders. Crowds will still likely have to form somewhere at airports, and it is difficult to protect people from determined terrorists when they form that kind of target, according to Karson and other experts. One consultant said it might not help for airports' secure borders to extend beyond the TSA's current line. Frankly, the terrorists and the adversaries are going to go after large groups of people wherever they happen to congregate," said Trenton Higareda, vice president of CTI Consulting. "You could push things out to the curb or the parking lot, or beyond that even, and they would still find a way to go after those groups wherever they happen to be. It would be more effective to better train law enforcement officers and airport staff about interactions with passengers, said Higareda, who has spent nearly three decades advising airports on security. The technique is called "behavioral detection." "Are they walking together and then splitting up suddenly, going in different directions? Are they sweating? Are they nervous? Are they stammering, not able to answer questions?" Higareda said. Timothy Horner, a retired New York City police captain who is a managing director at Kroll, said attacks have been thwarted in the U.S. through a combination of infiltration and luck. Even with that, some plots succeed, including the Boston Marathon bombings in 2013, killing three when pressure cooker bombs exploded at the finish line, and the shootings in San Bernardino, California, where Rizwan Farook and his wife killed 14 last December. The reason why we have a pretty good intelligence network here in the U.S. is because we have different levels of law enforcement and full cooperation between those law enforcement agencies both on the local, state and federal level, coordinating very closely with the federal intelligence agencies, Horner said. See Something, Say Something In the meantime, passengers are advised to keep their eyes and ears open. Price said he expects travelers will be more vigilant about any potential threats they see in the weeks following the bomb blasts, but then will return to a lower level of awareness. "When we don't have an attack for a long time, we tend to go back to sleep and jump back into [looking at] our phones," he said. If you see something, say something, Price said. "Pay attention." American University students studying in Brussels found themselves coping Tuesday with the aftermath of deadly terror attacks in the city. An AU junior on study abroad in Brussels, Max Okabayashi, said he often takes the Metro line that was attacked early Tuesday to classes, but he instead was headed that morning to his internship. He told News4 via Skype that several of his classmates faced close calls on their morning commutes. It was really scary to find out some of my friends were close to the bombings. Several of them were on trains either just before or just after the bombs went off on the same line," he said. "If they had been any sooner or later, they could have been hurt." All AU students studying in Brussels are safe, a university representative said. The terror attack killed more than 30 people and injured more than 200 people, NBC Washington reports. Its actually happening to the area where I live, Okabayashi said. He said he heard about the first explosions, at the Brussels Airport, as he ate breakfast. He then headed to his internship, taking an above-ground tram. When he arrived at the office, a trade association for agriculture companies, his supervisors told him to go home. It was definitely very crazy, very hectic. People rushing to get out, trying to get their things together and just figure out what is going on, he said. Okabayashi tried to get home, but his tram was shut down, forcing him to find a different route amid the confusion. It was kind of difficult to reach my friends because the phone lines, at least the cellphone lines, were down," he said."I couldnt call anybody and nobody could call me." A friend invited Okabayashi to her home nearby. They arrived there, in the Ixelles neighborhood, at 9 a.m. Okabayashi was still at his friend's home hours later. He said the neighborhood was very tense and very quiet." Sirens could still be heard in the distance as children walked home from school. Some transit agencies in the Washington, D.C., area are increasing their security efforts after three explosions rocked an airport and metro station in Belgium, killing at least 31 people. Metro Transit Police officers began performing additional K9 sweeps and patrols Tuesday in response to the series of attacks. Metro officials said there were no known, specific or credible threats against Metro. The sweeps and patrols were being performed as a precaution. Metro Transit Police officers are working overtime, and are on overlapping shifts, officials said. If you don't see officers, they still could be there -- many Transit Police officers and federal officials are riding dressed in plainclothes. At least two explosions rocked the check-in zone of Brussels Airport Tuesday, killing and wounding more than a dozen people. Explosions also were reported at metro stations across Brussels. [NATL] Trio of Deadly Explosions Hit Brussels in 2016, City Mourns Metro Transit Police said they will continue to closely monitor the attacks in Brussels with their federal partners. If you see anything suspicious, police advise you to call 202-962-2121 or text MyMTPD. In a statement, the Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority said Reagan National and Dulles International have robust security, both visible and behind-the-scenes and the authority's priority is the safety and security of passengers and employees. The authority said it constantly trains workers and evaluates procedures with federal and local partners to make adjustments based on new information. United Airlines flight 951 from Dulles to Brussels was canceled Tuesday, Metropolitan Washington Airports Authority said. District of Columbia police Chief Cathy Lanier said in a statement that her department is always "on a heightened state of alert.'' But she asks people to stay alert to their surroundings as the department works with federal partners to "determine the credibility of this threat.'' A worker for a Northern Virginia towing company with a history of complaints -- including a rant by ESPN reporter Britt McHenry -- is accused of stealing pricey valuables from cars. Phillip Pierce, 35, was arrested early Sunday and charged with grand larceny. Arlington County Police said fellow workers at Advanced Towing Company saw Pierce appearing to move items from the tow truck he had been driving to his personal car. "This is really a violation of the trust of the community," police spokeswoman Ashley Savage said. Pierce's coworkers called police after they spotted him going from tow truck to his own car several times with items in his hands. They called 911, police said. A short time later, police saw a tow truck towing a car improperly on Wilson Boulevard in the Ballston area. They stopped the tow truck and saw expensive items and burglary tools inside, police said. "We found some electronics, laptops, as well as some high-end items like purses," Savage said. Advanced Towing declined to comment about Pierce's arrest. The company has been the subject of dozens of complaints in recent years, police said. Drivers have accused the company of predatory practices and of damaging cars. McHenry, the ESPN reporter, was caught on video berating an employee of the company after her car was towed in the Clarendon area. She later apologized. Pierce, who was charged with grand larceny, is believed to have stolen items from at least three cars. Police advise drivers to never leave valuables in their cars. A Fredericksburg, Virginia, police officer was dragged during a traffic stop Tuesday afternoon, and the driver was shot and killed during a struggle. Virginia State Police said the police officer stopped a car at the intersection of Lafayette Bouelvard and Braehead Drive around 1 p.m. The officer was able to determine the driver was wanted on an outstanding warrant. During the stop, an altercation ensued, and the driver put his car in gear and attempted to drive away, dragging the officer about 600 feet. The car eventually crashed into a ditch along Braehead Drive. Investigators said the struggle between the officer and the driver continued before the driver ran away from the scene. The officer pursued, catching up to the driver and a struggle started again. During the altercation, the officers weapon discharged, striking the man in the leg. The man, who has not been identified, was taken to Mary Washington Hospital for treatment, where he died. His body will taken to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner in Richmond. The officer was not injured but he was checked anyway by medics as a precautionary measure. Many are still keeping vigil at sites in Brussels after terrorist blasts killed more than 30 people earlier in the day. Around the world, tributes arose, with thousands showing their support for those killed, wounded, and affected by the trio of blasts that hit the Brussels airport and a metro station. In Washington, many visited the Belgian embassy in northwest D.C. Secret Service police swept the grounds of the embassy Tuesday evening as U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Jeh Johnson spoke with Belgium Ambassador Johan Verbeke to address any security concerns and offer support. It is my desire to be here and express my condolences on behalf of the department, Johnson said. People brought flowers to a growing memorial outside the embassy to honor the lives lost in Tuesdays terrorist attacks in Brussels. It was my mother's idea, said high school student Danny Overcash. We have family back in Belgium, a lot of family actually. My grandfather was an immigrant during World War II, so we are just keeping them in our thoughts and our prayers during all this horrible stuff that's going on over there right now. Evangelist Mary Clement, of Silver Spring, spent almost an hour outside the embassy. "The people of Belgium were so hurt today, Clement said. Everybody is sad." Verbeke thanked everyone who called, emailed and stopped by the embassy for their thoughts and prayers. We are a resilient people, Verbeke said. Well stand on our feet. And I'm sure that with the strength, not just of our own security service and intelligence community, but also the strength of the International community, we will overcome this, and we will survive." Glastonbury police have arrested the director of a daycare just days after the arrest of an employee accused of hitting children at the facility. Meegan Beach, 40, of Hebron, was arrested on Monday. Beach is charged with failing to report child abuse after police say her employees at the Stork Club daycare made her aware of the abuse of children at the hands of another employee, Nicole Mayo. Mayo, 22, was arrested on Friday after a 3-month investigation. According to police, investigators found no evidence that Beach reported the alleged abuse to the Department of Children and Families or authorities. Daycare providers are mandated by law to report suspected child abuse to the proper authorities. Beach is being held on $45,000 bond. The number of children who died of abuse or neglect in Massachusetts is down. The news comes as the state's child welfare agency implements new policies in a sweeping overhaul of the state Department of Children and Families. But in a joint investigation with the New England Center for Investigative Reporting, weve found the state has failed to fix a critical component of reform. Sitting in her West Dennis apartment, Jenn Cronin flips through pictures of her children in happier times. Pointing to a picture of her son Lucas Braman at the beach, her face clouds and her eyes well up with tears. "I knew it immediately," she says. "I knew it immediately that this wasn't supposed to happen." Twenty-three-month old Lucas is part of a devastating list - children who the Department of Children and Families say died of abuse or neglect in 2014. In a joint investigation with the New England Center for Investigative Reporting, necn found nearly half of those children had at some point been engaged with state social workers. According to federal data obtained by NECIR and necn, those numbers actually reflect a 44 percent drop in child abuse deaths in 2014 - the most recent data available. "It could be the ebb and flow or there could be more to it," DCF supervisor and SEIU Local 509 union representative Peter Mackinnon says. "It's hard to tell just by that data alone." Mackinnon says one year is not a trend, but he does point out that 2014 marked the beginning of the state's effort to hire more social workers at the troubled agency and social workers got more aggressive in removing children from troubled homes. After the state admitted that DCF bungled a string of abuse cases, Gov. Charlie Baker last September announced a major overhaul of the agency. Its budget was increased. A net of 54 social workers have been hired, along with more managers to oversee them. And - this month - social workers have begun to put new policy into practice. DCF now must: Run criminal and sexual offender background checks on all caregivers and household members over the age of 15 Act on abuse and neglect reports within one business day Track 911 calls and police activity at DCF-involved homes The agency has also ended what some social workers called a dangerous two-track system where some cases were labeled lower risk resulting in less aggressive monitoring of children. Lucas was on that lower track. The toddler was found unresponsive in his crib in this Yarmouth home. His mother, who had been addicted to painkillers, had lost custody of Lucas and his then 3-year-old sister Layla, but says DCF didn't do enough to investigate her fears that the children were suffering abuse. In a DCF investigation conducted after Lucas died, a state investigator found enough evidence to support allegations that the children had been burned, bitten, pinched and slapped. In the investigators report provided to Cronin by DCF, the investigator wrote that abuse and neglect "ultimately played a role in Lucas' death..." The toddler's cause of death remains undetermined by the medical examiner and the criminal investigation is ongoing. Says Cronin, "They failed Lucas and they failed Layla and they failed my family." We wanted to talk to DCF Commissioner Linda Spears on how the agencies new policies could keep children from falling through the cracks, but she declined our request for an interview. DCF spokeswoman Andrea Grossman issued the following statement instead: "In September 2015, the Baker administration and the Department embarked on a comprehensive, multi-faceted and multi-year reform effort to address longstanding policies that were not strong enough to keep children safe. As a result, DCF has already overhauled its protective intake policy to ensure clear direction and expectation for screening and responding to reports of abuse and neglect and created a supervision policy to increase management oversight, both of which will be implemented on February 29th." Mackinnon applauds the efforts at reform, but says little can change if social worker caseloads remain at crisis levels. Federal recommendations say social workers should not carry a load of more than 15 families. Massachusetts has set that bar at no more than 18, but the state admits, that nearly 60 percent of DCF social workers carry a caseload heavier than the 18 limit. "There are workers still that have - many workers -- that have 25 to 30 families on their caseload," Mackinnon says. "Some have 50 or 60 kids on their caseload that they're responsible for." He likens DCF to righting a tanker: "Three decades of ignoring the problem and trying to fix it in a relatively short time frame is a tremendous task." It's a task that Baker hopes to make easier in his next budget. He has proposed an additional $12 million to hire more than 250 social workers. NELLIS AIR FORCE BASE, Nev. Airmen assigned to the U.S. Air Force Warfare Center and affiliated units were joined by Gen. Hawk Carlisle, commander, Air Combat Command, and local community representatives today at the Thunderbirds Hangar on Nellis AFB, Nevada to recognize a transition in leadership. Maj. Gen. Jay Silveria, USAFWC commander since February 2014, handed over command to Maj. Gen. Glen VanHerck on stage during a ceremony aimed at celebrating U. S. Air Force Warfare Center accomplishments, recognizing the Airmen behind the innovations and focusing continued efforts on testing, tactics and training. Silveria, who will soon deploy to Qatar as the Deputy Commander, U.S. Air Forces Central Command; Deputy Combined Force Air Component Commander, U.S. Central Command, Southwest Asia spent much of his time behind the podium expressing gratitude to Airmen, family, mentors, and community member who helped him along the way. All of us whove had the great honor to command know that we do so only with the dedicated support of many, said Silveria. As the Warfare Center goes, so goes the Air Force; that saying exists because of you all. You never cease to amaze me. Silveria, a command pilot with more than 3,900 hours at the controls of a variety of Air Force fighter platforms, presided over some of the most intense efforts by USAFWC members to propel the F-35 Lightning II program toward initial operational capability in accordance with Department of Defense goals. It seemed that every week we were hitting new milestones, said Silveria. Our maintenance professionals represented themselves and performed at the very highest level every step of the way. Maj. Gen. VanHerck also has a great depth of experience in a variety of aircraft, and comes to the USAFWC off of his assignment as Director of Operations, Headquarters Air Force Global Strike Command. His address to the crowd focused on his recognition of his responsibility in command, and challenged his Airmen to join him in striving for continued success. Its a tremendous responsibility to command, not only to my country, not only to the Air Force, not only to Air Combat Command or to the Warfare Center, VanHerck said. My responsibility is to my Airmen; their mothers and fathers, their children and their loved ones. The USAFWC has long been at the forefront of developing innovative leaders and full spectrum capabilities through responsive, realistic, and relevant Air Force and joint testing development, and advanced training across all levels of war. VanHercks challenge to his new Airmen was simple. I ask you to keep pushing every day to stay the innovators youve proven yourselves to be. South Norfolk Filling Stations first delivery The Yare Valley Filling Station opened Thursday March 17 and delivered its first monthly informal celebration meeting, to over sixty adults at Alpington & Bergh Apton Primary School. Kevin Gotts reports. The IRS faces an uphill battle in fighting identity theft, but that doesnt mean it isnt trying. In fiscal year 2015, the IRS said it started 776 identity theft related investigations, which resulted in 774 sentencings through its Criminal Investigation enforcement efforts. The courts continue to impose significant jail time with the average penalty in 2015 at 38 months in jail the longest sentencing being over 27 years. +More on Network World: IRS Scam: 5,000 victims cheated out of $26.5 million since 2013+ With that as a backdrop the agency today released what it called its Top 10 Identity Theft Prosecutions for fiscal year 2015. That is the prosecutions it says are a wide-ranging strategy to combat refund fraud and assist taxpayers through detection, prevention and resolving identity theft cases in a timely manner. Identity theft has shifted from small-time thieves to multinational criminal enterprises that mine the Internet for personal information that is stolen, collected and sold to other criminals," said Richard Weber, Chief of the IRS Criminal Investigation unit. The Federal Trade Commission recently reported that identity theft complaints were the second most reported to the agency in 2015, increasing more than 47% from 2014 on the back of a massive jump in complaints about tax identity theft from consumers. Identity theft complaints had been the top category for the previous 15 years. Missouri is the state with the highest per capita rate of reported identity theft complaints, followed by Connecticut and Florida, the FTC stated. +More on Network World: US Marshals warn of ongoing nationwide telephone scam+ The top 10 identity theft busts from the IRS include: Tampa Tax Fraudster and Wife Sentenced in Massive Identity Theft Tax Fraud Scheme: On June 19, 2015, James Lee Cobb III, was sentenced to 324 months in prison, five years of supervised release and ordered to forfeit $1,820,759 in a money judgment and to pay restitution in the same amount. On June 30, 2015, Cobbs wife, Eneshia Carlyle, was sentenced to 138 months in prison and three years of supervised release for wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. In addition, Carlyle received a forfeiture money judgment in the amount of $1,820,759 and was ordered to pay restitution in the same amount. Cobb and Carlyle pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail fraud, wire fraud and aggravated identity theft. In addition, Cobb pleaded guilty for being a felon in possession of a firearm as an armed career criminal. Cobb and Carlyle conspired with others to use stolen names, dates of birth and Social Security numbers to file false tax returns and open pre-paid debit cards. From 2011 through November 2013, Cobb and his co-conspirators filed false tax returns claiming approximately $3 million in refunds. During the execution of a search warrant at their residence, law enforcement officers recovered lists and medical records containing the personal identifying information of more than 7,000 victims. Nine Defendants Sentenced in $24 Million Stolen Identity Tax Refund Fraud Ring: On Sept. 25, 2015, in Montgomery, Ala., Keisha Lanier, of Newnan, Ga., was sentenced to 180 months in prison, three years of supervised release and ordered to forfeit $5,811,406 for her role as the ringleader of a stolen identity tax refund fraud (SIRF) conspiracy. Between January 2011 and December 2013, Lanier and co-conspirator, Tracy Mitchell, led a large-scale identity theft ring that filed more than 9,000 false individual federal income tax returns that claimed more than $24 million in fraudulent claims for tax refunds. The IRS paid out close to $10 million in refunds on these fraudulent claims. The defendants obtained the stolen identities from various sources, including from the U.S. Army, several Alabama state agencies, a Georgia call center and employee records from a Georgia company. In order to file the false tax returns, the defendants obtained several IRS Electronic Filing Numbers in the names of sham tax businesses. The defendants directed the IRS to pay the anticipated tax refunds to prepaid debit cards, buy U.S. Treasury checks and to financial institutions, which in turn issued the tax refunds via prepaid debit cards or checks. When the refunds were sent through the financial institutions, the defendants simply printed out the refund checks from the check stock that had been sent to their homes. After the financial institutions stopped the defendants from printing out the tax refund checks, the defendants recruited U.S. Postal Service employees. The corrupt postal employees gave the defendants specific addresses along their postal routes for mailing the U.S. Treasury checks. Once the checks came to the address, the postal employees took the checks and turned them over to the defendants for a fee. The scheme also involved a complex money laundering operation. Almost $10 million in fraudulent tax refund checks were cashed at several businesses located in Alabama, Georgia and Kentucky. Florida Man Sentenced for Stolen ID Theft Scheme, Obstruction of Justice: On Aug. 11, 2015, in Richmond, Va., Eddie Blanchard, of Miami, was sentenced to 204 months in prison, three years of supervised release and ordered to pay $568,625 in restitution for his role in a stolen identity tax refund fraud scheme. Blanchard participated in the Miami-based scheme with Ramoth Jean, Junior Jean Merilia and Jimmy Lord Calixte. The men travelled repeatedly to Richmond in the early part of 2012 and used stolen personal identifying information (PII) to file hundreds of fraudulent tax returns, utilizing online tax preparation programs. The men claimed significant refunds on the fraudulent returns and requested the refunds be placed on pre-paid debit cards, which were later mailed to Richmond addresses selected by the conspirators. The scheme began to unravel when a Virginia police officer encountered Jean removing a box containing stolen PII from a storage unit rented by the co-conspirators. Following Jeans subsequent arrest, Blanchard convinced him to mislead federal investigators about the identity of his actual co-conspirators, going so far as to facilitate the creation of a fictional accomplice. Jean was sentenced on Jan. 9, 2014, to 114 months in prison and subsequently sentenced to an additional eight months on a separate contempt charge for his refusal to testify before the grand jury. Merilia was sentenced on June 19, 2015, to 133 months in prison for his role in the fraud scheme and the subsequent obstruction of justice. Calixte is currently a fugitive. Ringleader and Conspirators Sentenced in Large-Scale Stolen Identity Refund Fraud Scheme: On July 21, 2015, in Newark, N.J., Julio C. Concepcion, of Passaic, was sentenced to 84 months in prison, three years of supervised release and ordered to pay $5,643,695 in restitution. Concepcion previously pleaded guilty to conspiracy to theft of government funds. From at least October 2009 through May 2013, Concepcion and others participated in a conspiracy to obtain the personal identifying information of other individuals, including residents of Puerto Rico. Conspirators filed false and fraudulent income tax returns using the stolen information, which generated income tax refund checks. Concepcion then obtained fraudulent refund checks and recruited others to open bank accounts and deposit the checks, sometimes providing them with false identification in order to do so. Other conspirators were sentenced as follows: Concepcions two sons, Angel Concepcion-Vasquez and Julio Concepcion-Vasquez were each sentenced to 16 months in prison; Jose Zapata and Romy Quezada were sentenced to three years and two years of probation, respectively; and Reyes Flores-Perez was sentenced to 26 months in prison. Four Georgia Residents Sentenced For Filing Over 1,100 Fraudulent Tax Returns: On July 27, 2015, in Albany, Ga., four defendants were sentenced for their roles in a tax refund fraud conspiracy. Patrice Taylor was sentenced to 84 months in prison and ordered to pay $1,107,802 in restitution to the IRS. Her husband, Antonio Taylor, was sentenced to 147 months in prison and ordered to pay $1,107,802 in restitution to the IRS. Jarrett Jones was sentenced to 20 months in prison and ordered to pay $94,959 in restitution. Victoria Davis was sentenced to 12 months in prison and ordered to pay $6,256 in restitution. Between January 2011 and February 2013, Patrice Taylor conspired with her husband and Jones to file over 1,100 fraudulent tax returns. At least 1,089 of the returns were filed electronically from two IP addresses registered to Patrice Taylor, both located at their home. From January 2012 to October 2012, a cell phone subscribed to Patrice Taylor was used to call the IRSs Automated Electronic Filing PIN Request 114 times. In addition, Patrice Taylor was employed at Tift Regional Hospital and used the personal identifying information of five patients to file fraudulent federal income tax returns. Also, the identities of 531 sixteen-year-olds were used to file fraudulent federal income tax returns. Finally, in January 2012, Patrice Taylor filed a federal income tax return, which included a dependent she was not authorized by law to claim, and requested a refund in the amount of $6,776. Fifteen Georgia Residents Sentenced In Stolen Identity and Tax Fraud Scheme: On June 23, 2015, in Statesboro, Ga., Stacy Williams, of Statesboro, was sentenced to 94 months in prison, three years of supervised and ordered to pay restitution in the amount of $84,940. Williams was convicted by jury trial on Sept. 23, 2014 of conspiracy, wire fraud, wrongful disclosure of individually identifiable health information and aggravated identity theft. Williams was the last of 15 federal defendants charged in April 2014 for their roles in a large-scale identity theft and tax fraud scheme. Alabama Woman Sentenced for Leading $4 Million Dollar Stolen Identity Refund Fraud Ring: On June 25, 2015, in Montgomery, Ala., Tamaica Hoskins, of Phoenix City, was sentenced to 145 months in prison, three years of supervised release and ordered to forfeit $1,082,842 in proceeds from the Stolen Identity Refund Scheme she led. Between September 2011 and June 2014, Hoskins, co-conspirators Roberta Pyatt, Lashelia Alexander and others used stolen identities to file more than 1,000 false federal income tax returns that fraudulently claimed more than $4 million in tax refunds. Hoskins obtained stolen identities from various sources. In order to file the false tax returns, Hoskins and Pyatt obtained two Electronic Filing Identification Numbers using sham tax businesses. On behalf of those sham tax businesses, they also applied to various financial institutions for bank products, such as blank check stock. The conspirators directed the IRS to mail U.S. Treasury checks to addresses under their control and to send the tax refunds to prepaid debit cards and financial institutions where the conspirators maintained and controlled bank accounts using the sham tax businesses. When the tax refunds were deposited into the financial institutions, the conspirators printed the refund checks using the blank check stock and cashed the refunds. In January 2014, Alexander, who worked for a Walmart check-cashing center in Columbus, Georgia, was approached by several co-conspirators about cashing fraudulent tax refund checks issued in the names of third parties and in return, Alexander would receive a portion of the refunds. Alexander cashed more than $100,000 in fraudulently obtained third-party refund checks containing forged endorsements. Alexander was sentenced to six months in prison and five years of probation and ordered to pay restitution of $110,804 to the IRS. Pyatt received three years of probation and was ordered to pay $88,155 in restitution to the IRS. Tampa Woman Sentenced for Stolen Identity Refund Fraud: On Sept. 29, 2015, in Tampa, Fla., Tiffani Pye Williams was sentenced to 123 months in prison and ordered to pay $1,533,283 in restitution to the United States Treasury for theft of government property and aggravated identity theft. From 2010 to 2014, Williams, using various aliases, participated in a scheme to defraud the IRS. As part of the scheme, she and others possessed, transferred, and used the personal identification of others, without their knowledge, to file fraudulent federal income tax returns. The fraudulently obtained tax refunds were wired from the IRS to reloadable debit cards. Williams and others then used these debit cards at various ATMs and retail stores. Investigators determined that Williams, together with others, filed more than 1,000 fraudulent tax returns using the stolen identities of approximately 991 individuals, many of whom were deceased at the time of filing. In filing these false returns, she and others claimed more than $5.3 million in refunds, and received approximately $1.5 million. When Chuck Robbins took over the CEO position at Cisco from the popular and iconic John Chambers there was a tremendous amount of speculation as to whether Robbins would just continue the path that Chambers was going or would he run Cisco his way. After less than a year, Robbins is coming out of Chambers shadow much the same way Steve Young did when he took over the QB position in the post Joe Montana era. This week Robbins restructured Ciscos enormous engineering unit to better align with market trends. In an email to the company Robbins outlined his plan to create four engineering groups. Bob Brown covered the basic structure of the reorganization in this post, but Ill go into a bit more detail. The new units are networking, cloud services and platforms, security and applications and Internet of Things. The structure of the groups is much better aligned with current customer and market trends rather than along technology lines like routing and switching and then having something like cloud overlaid on top of the technology. The Networking group will be led by Pankaj Patel, who has announced he is leaving Cisco at the end of this fiscal year. As to who takes over in August? Well thats something only Robbins probably knows right now. The Networking group will have sub groups that include Core Software Group (CSG), Core Hardware Group (CHG) as well as Enterprise and Service Provider segments and a Technology and Architecture Office. Also, worth noting is that Network Orchestration (APIC EM) and Network Management (Prime and other software) fall under CSG. As part of the reshuffling, Kelly Ahuja, an 18-year veteran will be leaving Cisco and Yvette Kanouff will be now taking the lead on Service Provider (SP). Kanouff has a good handle on current and future SP trends and should be an excellent lead for a group thats had its ups and downs over the past decade. This structure makes more sense than in the past when Cisco built products in "enterprise" and "service provider" silos. With cloud and mobility blurring the lines between these segments, the core hardware and software groups creates common technology that can be leveraged by the different segments and architectures. This is much more efficient, cost effective and offers time to market advantages over with the previous organizational model. Cloud Services and Platforms will be headed up by Zorawar Biri Singh, who will also continue his role as Ciscos CTO. In the dual role, Singh will need to run this group but also coordinate initiatives across all groups and Ciscos Executive Leadership Team (ELT). Interestingly, Business Insider reported that the Insieme team, or MPLS (Mario, Prem, Luca, Soni) will continue to report to Chambers but Singh will need to work closely with this team to ensure the great work done by this team can be realized across the organization. While its no secret that MPLS has ruffled some feathers along the way, their efforts have resulted it Ciscos leadership in many areas, most recently the Nexus/ ACI product line and before that, unified computing systems (UCS). Under the leadership of this group, Cisco has not only thwarted the white box, SDN threat but also become the market leader in SDN. Intercloud is a part of Ciscos business that has gone somewhat quiet since it first launched. Under Biri, it appears that Intercloud will be a broader, deeper initiative that will expand to include developers. This seems logical given the evolution of the cloud into micro services and containers, particularly in an increasingly mobile world. Intercloud has tremendous potential but needs a shot in the arm for Cisco and its partners to realize its full value. One cant give Intercloud a swig of 5 hour energy, so the next best thing is to have the newly appointed CTO run with it. Also, reporting into Cloud Services and Platforms is the Computing Systems Product Group (CSPG), which includes UCS and the new Hyperconverged product, HyperFlex. Additionally, almost every cloud first organization I talk to today is interested in big data and analytics. Because of this, the Analytics and Automation business unit will be part of Biris team and be headed up by Senior Vice President Mala Anand. The last member of Singhs team is Susie Wees DevNet team that is focused on building a developer ecosystem. Prior to Wees leadership DevNet was more talk than anything. However, the program has flourished since she has taken the help, partially because of acquisitions like Tropo, which added a big group of developers but more because DevNet is finally focused on driving developer value and not just Cisco value. I could argue that DevNet should sit along side all of the groups but given Singh is the CTO, it will be his responsibility to ensure that DevNet is having an impact across Cisco. Security will continue to report into David Goeckeler. The security group at Cisco has had a marked turn around under Goeckelers leadership as the group has evolved away from being a bunch of disjointed products into a true architecture that differentiates the company from the hundreds of point product vendors. Security is, by far, the top initiative for almost every company today and thats not likely to change any time soon. Lastly, Internet of Things and Applications will fall under the leadership of Rowan Trollope. This structure is an absolute no brainer as there has never been anyone at Cisco as obsessed with user experience as Trollope. Ask anyone that reports into him and they will echo this sentiment. If an application takes too many clicks or is awkward to use or even if the user has to scroll too far to get to the important information, its completely unacceptable to Trollope. Prior to Trollopes arrival at Cisco, the collaboration group had seen consecutive years of decline (not quarters) but the new, easy to use products such as the DX endpoints, new TelePresence systems and Cisco Spark have re-energized the collaboration group. Moving forward, Cisco will be going to market with IoT experiences like the Digital Ceiling and the customer experience solutions the company launched at Cisco Live Europe. These experiences must have the same level of dead easy simplicity as the collaboration tools have had. The new structure should help Cisco build products and compete more effectively in a rapidly changing, digital world. Its also worth noting that all four leads, Patel, Biri, Geockeler and Trollope are now part of the ELT and will report directly into Robbins. This shows that Robbins will be taking a very active roll in the direction of Cisco products. Don't expect the U.S. government to back off its push for technology vendors to build encryption workarounds into their products, even though the FBI acknowledged it may have a way to crack into an iPhone used in the San Bernardino, California, mass shooting case. Some lawmakers and President Barack Obama's administration will continue to look for ways to compel tech vendors to help law enforcement agencies defeat encryption and other security controls on smartphones and other devices, security and legal experts said. Even if the FBI can break into the iPhone used by San Bernardino mass shooter Syed Rizwan Farook, it doesn't significantly change the larger discussion about encryption, said Ed Black, president and CEO of trade group the Computer and Communications Industry Association. "There is an ongoing effort by our government and every government around the world ... to want more information." The California mass shooting case, with ties to terrorism, has "whet the appetite to get perfection in surveillance," Black added. Late Monday, the FBI and Department of Justice asked a California judge to delay a hearing, scheduled for Tuesday afternoon, on the agencies' request for Apple to help them unlock Farook's iPhone. On Sunday, an "outside party demonstrated to the FBI a possible method" for unlocking the phone, the DOJ said in a court filing. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym has ordered the DOJ to submit a status report on its unlocking efforts by April 5. Also on Monday, there were news reports of two prominent senators distributing long-rumored draft legislation that would require U.S. tech companies to help law enforcement agencies access encrypted communications. While a newly discovered iPhone unlocking method may help the FBI in this case, there's still a broader issue, legal experts said. In early March, Cyrus Vance Jr., district attorney for New York County in New York, told lawmakers his office was in possession of 205 locked smartphones that could be used as evidence in criminal cases. A legal precedent may be more beneficial to the FBI "as cracking this device will not provide a long-term solution for future technologies," said Jennifer Dukarski, a technology lawyer with the Butzel Long law firm in Ann Arbor, Michigan. "If the cracking method does work, that one intrusion wouldnt necessarily be a solution for every system or future iterations." Law enforcement agencies will continue to push for new rules, even as "a successful cracking would also suggest that there isnt a need for such legislation," she added by email. The case, and the potential for cracking into the phone, shows the risks involved with requiring security holes, added Elad Yoran, executive chairman of mobile security vendor KoolSpan. "What this demonstrates is that providing strong cyber security and encryption is extremely difficult, even for well-resourced companies like Apple," Yoran said by email. "It is impossible to do so with so-called workarounds and backdoors that the FBI seeks." Oh the Paris terrorists must have used encryption to evade detection weve heard again and again since the attacks; come to find out, the attackers resorted to using burner phones. Having gotten its hands on a 55-page report prepared by French police and given to Frances Interior Ministry, The New York Times reported that disposable phones played a big part in how the Paris terrorist avoided detection. They used only new phones that they would then discard, including several activated minutes before the attacks, or phones seized from their victims. Everywhere they went, the attackers left behind their throwaway phones, The Times said. In fact, investigators found crates worth of disposable cellphones. Days after the attack, when the police raided an apartment where the attackers were believed to have hiding, they found several dozen boxes of unused cellphones still in their wrappers. And two unused cellphones still inside their boxes were discovered at another location. The police found a Samsung phone in the trash outside the Bataclan theater; it had been used to place one call on the day before the attack. On those burner phones, The Times reported that not a single email or online chat from the attackers has surfaced so far. And then it happens Et tu, Brute?or NYT in this case as even though theres been no evidence uncovered to prove the terrorists were using encryption, The Times still finds a way to suggest encryption must have been used since authorities didnt detect chatter foreshadowing the attack. Perhaps it is because previous terrorists were hunted down after sending unencrypted messages that were intercepted and the Paris attackers were not? Or perhaps the terrorists knew that using encryption paints a red bulls-eye of suspicion on your back and marks you as a NSA target? Despite repeatedly mentioning the use of burner phones, The Times suggested there are lingering questions about the precise encryption and security procedures that allowed the attackers to evade detection during the three months before they struck. And then it gets weirder. The New York Times wrote: One of the terrorists pulled out a laptop, propping it open against the wall, said the 40-year-old woman. When the laptop powered on, she saw a line of gibberish across the screen: It was bizarre he was looking at a bunch of lines, like lines of code. There was no image, no Internet, she said. Her description matches the look of certain encryption software, which ISIS claims to have used during the Paris attacks. What the? Are you kidding me right now? Why not suggest that maybe the attacker was part of the Matrix too? Many privacy, security and tech experts have offered alternatives for what the woman saw. What about a non-GUI Linux distro? Or, for example, Julian Sanchez tweeted that she could have been seeing verbose boot. Sanchez added, Encrypted communication does not look like some s**t you saw in a 90s Sandra Bullock movie. It looks like iMessage. One of the things that has always been a bottleneck in electronics has been getting the data in and out of the chip. The silicon semiconductor, within itself, communicates faster than it does with the surrounding system. That may be about to change, though. A laser incorporated onto the semiconductor could be the answer to solving the slowdown, think scientists. And they now believe they know how to do it: Simply grow the laser straight onto the silicon. Faster-than-ever-before communications could be possible with the technique, think the scientists. In the same way that light, delivered by fiber optic, sends data faster than electrons do along a copper wire, the light via laser system would get the ones and zeroes out of the chip quicker and into the surrounding electronics faster. Wires could become obsolete. Conventional electrical interconnects between computer chips and systems are too slow, Cardiff University explains in its news release. Researchers have therefore turned to light as a potential ultra-fast connector, the university says. Cardiff University, in the UK led the research along with contributions from University College London and the University of Sheffield. The laser is actually grown on the silicon substrate. Silicon is the material used to create semiconductors and is found in all electronics. Communications and healthcare, to energy generation could all benefit from the faster chip-to-system output, the university says. The British-designed on-chip, grown-laser solution, isnt the only microprocessor using light, or photonics as its called. The photonics area is highly active and theres a race to get the best solution. University of California Berkeley researchers are combining transistors with photonics to guide light with limited loss. Theyre doing that in the chip itself, taking advantage of silicon-germaniums light-absorbing ability, and have built prototype chips in a regular foundry that work, they say. It proves the chips can be mass-produced, they believe. High speed, low power electrical links will be possible with its technology, the UC Berkeley scientist think. The reason is primarily because system designers wont need to incorporate energy-hogging repeaters. Less power and longer distances, along with cheap, mass production of chips are major objectives for Internet of Things, many think. The UC Berkeley crew say that their system can provide it. The practical laser as the University of Cardiff scientists describe their invention is a breakthrough too. Its not been easy, though, they say. It has been difficult to combine a semiconductor laser, the ideal source of light, with silicon, the university says. The 1300 nm wavelength laser is shown to work, Professor Huiyun Liu, one of the researchers there says. It can operate at 120 degrees Celsius and function for 100,000 hours, Liu believes. Realizing electrically-pumped lasers based on Si substrates is a fundamental step towards silicon photonics, Professor Peter Smowton, of Cardiff Universitys School of Physics and Astronomy, says. It will clearly transform computing and the digital economy, revolutionize healthcare through patient monitoring, and provide a step-change in energy efficiency, he says. The faster you can get chip-to-system, the faster the electronics function. How Ruth Hardman worked her way up from trainee to director of successful firm RUTH Hardman spends her days walking with wolves. And on days off from her favourite pastime she helps to run a successful firm of accountants. The 36-year-old, who lives near Reading, has spent more than a decade at Hungerford firm PBA Accountants, working her way up to the top after starting as a trainee. In her spare time she is also a handler at the UK Wolf Conservation Trust, based near Newbury, which is a not-for-profit organisation that protects wolves and aims to help people get a better understanding of the beautiful creatures. Born and brought up in Newbury, Ruth attended Falkland and Park House schools before moving on to St Bartholomews School sixth form. It was here, while studying for an A-level in business studies, that she first realised what it was she wanted to do as a career. She moved to the University of Portsmouth and undertook a two-year HND in finance, before getting her first job as a trainee accountant with Ross Brooke Chartered Accountants in Newbury. I was there for six months before I decided to go travelling for a while, she explains. I was away in America for six months, before coming home and starting a job here [PBA Accountants]. Over the next few years Ruth worked as a trainee accountant, sitting 11 exams to achieve her ACCA accreditation the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants. I joined as a trainee and think Ive had every job title since, she says. I qualified as a chartered certified accountant in 2007 and I became a director in January 2015. It has been a good first year. I now do more business management and run the office on a day-to-day basis, but I do have my portfolio of clients who I help with business advice too. Ruth is one of the firms three directors along with Clive Adolph and Paul Pointer. There are now 21 staff at PBA, which started life as Freeman Baker Associates, based in St Albans. The firm opened another branch in Somerset and then a third office in Hungerford, as it was halfway between the other two and it could cover the South of England. Clive was among the first people to set up Freeman Baker Associates more than 30 years ago and has been at the Hungerford branch since its inception. When the firm first moved into the town, Clive ran it from his own home, before taking a one-room office on High Street. The business has grown so much it now occupies the whole building. It became PBA Accountants in 2008 after separating from Freeman Baker Associates and becoming an independent firm. With six qualified accountants and two qualified tax managers among its staff now, PBA offers its clients a wide range of business advice and services. It is a Platinum-approved employer with the ACCA, which highlights the wealth of training offered to its staff. We do a lot of training with our staff, adds Ruth. It definitely pays to invest in your employees. One of our staff qualified in January and she came to us straight out of school eight years ago, which is great to see. Ruth says that she has noticed a recent shift in the number of people entering the profession directly from school. Entry level qualifications are GCSE maths and English, she explains. It helps if you have three A-levels but it is not essential. Most of our staff come straight from A-levels now because you dont have to go to university to enter the profession and they dont want to pay the fees. You can start working straight from school and all your training is paid for. We have certainly seen a bigger shift to non-university graduates in the past four or five years. Starting from the bottom and working your way up gives you the experience, which is very important. It is not just a shift in employees that Ruth has seen in recent years though. Everything is becoming much more electronic now, with online filing and talk of online tax accountants, she adds. Auto-enrolment has changed a lot of things too. Our client payroll is increasing and we now have about 350 clients. Its a big area for us now. There is also a lot coming in with the new accountancy standards in the next year or two. This means a lot more training. All qualified accountants must undertake 40 hours of training a year, in a variety of areas, including tax, HMRC changes, accounts and law. There is also a new dividends tax rate coming in from April and changes to how landlords can claim expenses and tax relief. With increasing demands for its services, PBA has just recruited a new member to the team and in the coming months is looking to grow the business even more. We still have space in this office to expand, Ruth adds. Being in Hungerford, we are in a great location to get out and see clients. Ruth is also on the committee of the West Berkshire Business Awards and PBA Accountants sponsors the Small Business Award. Play centre for children with special needs hoping to move to Thatcham A CHARITY that provides a vital space for children with special needs to play with their families is looking to make Thatcham its new permanent home. However, developer-controlled covenants may stand in its way. Swings and Smiles has been hunting for a permanent home since it was founded in 2007. After a seven-year search the charity moved into temporary premises at the Phoenix Resource Centre in Newtown Road, Newbury. The centre provides an environment where children and young people with special needs and their carers or families can play together without the pressures often experienced in wider community settings. But the charitys founder, Sian Cook, said that the hunt for a home had continued. The charity is now looking to use the Lower Way pavilion as its new base with a long-term lease or purchase from Thatcham Town Council. The move will be subject to planning consent and covenants. It offers pretty much everything we want; outside space and a building to fit our requirements in an absolutely fantastic location with accessibility for our families, Mrs Cook said. She added that being at the Phoenix Centre had proved a valuable learning experience for the charity, allowing it to not make any expensive mistakes in a permanent home. The cost of the charitys impending new home is around 750,000 and Mrs Cook said it was hopeful to move once the lease expired at the Phoenix Centre in 2017. More than 300 children from across West Berkshire and neighbouring counties use Swings and Smiles services, which include an optimusic suite, a sensory room, arts and crafts zone and a soft play area. Mrs Cook said: To be in a position were we open every day and during school holidays is critical. The demand is most definitely there. Thatcham Town Council discussed the charitys expression of interest at a meeting on Monday. The pavilion, workshop and playing fields are owned by Thatcham Town Council, but are subject to covenants held by developer Persimmon Homes. Rob Denton-Powell (Thatcham South and Crookham) said that the town council would need to try and amend the covenants with Persimmon before further steps could be taken. Lee Dillon (Lib Dem, Thatcham North) asked whether the council could get a quote for going to a land tribunal to remove the covenants. Agreeing, Jason Collis (Co, Thatcham North) said: We can go to a tribunal if we need to. Dominic Boeck (Con, Thatcham South and Crookham) said: I think we all believe this is a very valuable proposal and that we would welcome Swings and Smiles into Thatcham, and any other charity, but we need to send a message that we are serious about this. Reporter Debra Pressey is a reporter covering health care at The News-Gazette. Her email is dpressey@news-gazette.com, and you can follow her on Twitter (@DLPressey). One of Editor & Publishers 10 That Do It Right 2021 ANGLE plc, the specialist medtech company, is delighted to announce that the results of Barts Cancer Institutes ongoing work with ANGLEs Parsortix system have provided evidence in support of the use of Parsortix in the detection and assessment of prostate cancer. Barts patient data suggests that the Parsortix system may be used both to detect prostate cancer and to assess its aggressiveness, all through a simple blood test. This is crucial because it means that men with low level disease could avoid unnecessary and potentially harmful solid biopsy and surgical intervention instead having active surveillance, whereas men with an aggressive form of disease could be fast-tracked for further investigation and treatment. The current gold standard for detection is the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) blood test, which is known to have low sensitivity and low specificity (i.e. high levels of false positives) and the digital rectal exam (DRE - which is less effective than the PSA test). Where the PSA level is high or the DRE indicates an enlarged prostate, a solid prostate biopsy will be undertaken to detect cancer and assess the aggressiveness of the disease. This process results in many men having invasive biopsies unnecessarily. Prostate cancer is the second most common cancer in men and the fourth most common overall. More than 1.1 million new cases of prostate cancer were recorded in 2012, accounting for around 8 per cent of all new cancer cases and 15 per cent in men with an estimated 3.9 million men living with the disease (Source: World Cancer Research Fund International) and as the risk increases with age and men are living longer these numbers are increasing. There is a far larger population of men with a variety of symptoms that require investigation for the possibility of prostate cancer but do not have the disease. Currently these men are frequently subjected to solid prostate biopsy, which, even if it is negative for cancer (which is the case in 75% or more of solid biopsies), is painful, may miss the cancer and can cause infection. A simple blood test to assess whether this procedure is necessary would improve patient care as well as reduce healthcare costs. Barts Cancer Institute (BCI), Queen Mary University of London presented a poster on 19 March 2016 at the 10th ISMRC International Symposium on Minimal Residual Cancer: Liquid Biopsy in Cancer Diagnostics and Treatment in Hamburg. Key conclusions from the BCI work include the following: The Parsortix system detected circulating tumour cells (CTCs) in 100% of the metastatic prostate cancer patients. The patients with localised disease included patients with early stage disease (determined by clinical investigation including the Gleason score of solid tissues taken through invasive procedures), where the decision had been taken that active surveillance was appropriate rather than medical intervention. Even for these earliest stage, indolent cancer patients, the Parsortix system harvested CTCs that could be detected in 75% of these patients. The Gleason score is currently the best parameter for assessing aggressiveness of prostate cancer involving pathologist assessment of the morphology of the cells obtained from the solid biopsy. The number of mesenchymal CTCs harvested by the Parsortix system was compared to the Gleason score for each of the patients and there was found to be a good correlation suggesting that Parsortix liquid biopsy may be able to provide the same or similar information as the invasive solid biopsy in assessing the aggressiveness of the cancer. The status of the patient metastatic or localised was analysed against the number of mesenchymal CTCs harvested by the Parsortix system. Separately the status of the patient metastatic or localised was analysed against the patients Gleason score. Comparison of the results suggests that the Parsortix system may be able to indicate the metastatic or localised status of the patient with a higher level of accuracy than the Gleason score. ANGLE now intends to work with BCI and other leading cancer centres to develop and implement clinical studies to validate the use of the Parsortix system as a clinical application in the routine detection, assessment and treatment of prostate cancer patients. The multi-centre clinical studies need to be specified but would be expected to take at least 18 months to complete. Around 75% to 80% of men that have a solid prostate biopsy do not have prostate cancer and of those that do have prostate cancer more than half will be indolent (latent disease not causing harm to the patient). Less than 10% of patients having a solid prostate biopsy have aggressive prostate cancer requiring treatment. Assuming the clinical studies confirm the recent patient study results then ANGLE will be able to make clinical sales of the Parsortix system as a non-invasive liquid biopsy alternative to the solid prostate biopsy. Use of the Parsortix system would avoid the medical complications of the solid prostate biopsy, provide more reliable results in relation to detection of prostate cancer, disease status and risk stratification, at the same time, reduce healthcare costs and offer a faster, repeatable solution enabling active surveillance where appropriate. Dr Yong-Jie Lu, Reader in Medical Oncology at Barts Cancer Institute, commented: The Parsortix system enables investigation of the mesenchymal CTCs in the patient blood and the results of our work to date suggests this has the potential to become a non-invasive liquid biopsy for prostate cancer. The exciting part of this research is the potential for the Parsortix system to be used to assess the severity of the disease as well as to detect it. This meets a key medical need to avoid over-treatment as well as to ensure treatment is available for patients who need it. ANGLE Founder and Chief Executive, Andrew Newland, commented: In advance of World TB Day, to be observed on 24 March, the World Health Organization (WHO) is calling on countries and partners to Unite to End TB. The call comes as we enter the era of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Ending TB by 2030 is a target of the SDGs and the goal of the WHO End TB Strategy. That is an ambitious aim. While there has been significant progress in the fight against TB, with 43 million lives saved since 2000, the battle is only half-won: over 4,000 people lose their lives each day to this leading infectious disease. Many of the communities that are most burdened by tuberculosis are those that are poor, vulnerable and marginalized. Ending TB will only be achieved with greater collaboration within and across governments, and with partners from civil society, communities, researchers, the private sector and development agencies. This means taking a whole-of-society and multidisciplinary approach, in the context of universal health coverage. Momentum is growing at country and community levels including in the 30 countries with the highest TB burden (over 85% of the global burden). A number of countries are strengthening the strategic agendas of their TB programmes, by adopting newer tools, extending access to care and linking with other parts of government to reduce the financial costs borne by patients. Other countries are partnering with researchers to speed development of diagnostic tests, drugs and vaccines, and to improve delivery. For example, India which is home to more people ill with TB and multidrug-resistant TB (MDR-TB) than any other country, has committed to achieving universal access to TB care with its campaign for a TB-Free India. The Ministry of Health and Family Welfare is expanding its capacity to test patients rapidly for drug-resistant TB and is initiating use of bedaquiline, a new, WHO-recommended drug in MDR-TB treatment. In addition, by making TB case notification mandatory in 2012 and by intensifying efforts to engage the private sector, case notifications rose 29% in 2014 alone. In working towards universal health coverage, South Africa has greatly expanded access to Xpert MTB/RIF, a WHO-recommended rapid molecular test for TB and drug-resistant TB. South Africa has the largest number of people living with HIV who are receiving TB preventive treatment in the world. In Thailand, where a large percentage of the population has access to health services at modest cost, efforts are focusing on ensuring that all residents including migrants have access to TB treatment. In the Russian Federation, a high-level working group across government institutions has strengthened TB policies over the last 15 years. Since 2005, Russia reports that TB mortality rate has dropped more than 50%, and TB notifications have dropped 20%. WHO will work with the Ministry of Health in 2016 to assess these data and help assess the factors leading to such a decline. Brazil and Viet Nam, both with effective basic TB services, are investing in research efforts to drive down the TB burden. Brazil has formed a national network of TB researchers, REDE-TB, which is working on basic science, clinical trials, and operational research priorities. Viet Nam has formed VICTORY (Viet Nam Integrated Centre for Tuberculosis and Respirology Research), a research partnership that is initiating a TB prevalence survey and developing tools to prioritize interventions for MDR-TB. Despite these advances, formidable challenges remain including fragile health systems, human resource and financial constraints, and the serious co-epidemics with HIV, diabetes, and tobacco use. MDR-TB is another critical challenge. Urgent and effective action to address antimicrobial resistance is key to ending TB by 2030. So are increased investments, as the global tuberculosis response remains underfunded for both implementation and research. WHO is committed to continuing its work with countries and partners around the world to address these challenges and to accelerate collective action to end the TB epidemic altogether. Key TB Facts TB ranks alongside HIV/AIDS the worlds top infectious disease killer. In 2014, 9.6 million people fell ill with TB and 1.5 million died from the disease, including 380,000 among people living with HIV. More than 95% of TB deaths occur in low- and middle-income countries, and TB is among the top 5 causes of death for women aged 15 to 44. In 2014, an estimated 1 million children became ill with TB and 140 000 children died. TB is a leading killer of HIV-positive people: in 2014, 1 in 3 HIV deaths was due to TB. Globally, in 2014, an estimated 480 000 people developed MDR-TB. The TB death rate dropped by 47% between 1990 and 2015. An estimated 43 million lives were saved through TB diagnosis and treatment between 2000 and 2014. The WHO End TB Strategy aims to reduce TB deaths by 90% and to cut new cases by 80% between 2015 and 2030, and to ensure that no TB-affected family faces catastrophic costs due to TB Source: http://www.who.int/ A reader disagreed with last months column about the power of consumers to reduce the number of dogs and cats killed in shelters. The reader argued some parts of the country are facing an impending puppy shortage, and that is leading to rescues importing unhealthy dogs from abroad. She cited a March 2016 Pet Business article based on a presentation at the Pet Industry Leadership Conference forecasting the U.S. is three to five years away from a puppy shortage. The pet industry is unable to meet the demand in no small part to the political climate surrounding the commercial breeding and sale of dogs such as bans on retail pet sales in a growing number of localities throughout the country. Also contributing to the impending shortage, in the readers opinion, is the campaign by various groups to create a feeling of guilt [about buying pets] and the illusion of a pet population that is rapidly growing out of control. Its true rescues strongly promote adoption over buying. They also promote pet sterilization, and in areas where that message is taken to heart, there can be fewer dogs available for adoption. That difference may have led to another story the reader cited. A New Jersey rescue imported diseased dogs from Egypt. But, as the Centers for Disease Control noted, there are plenty of dogs in the U.S. the group could have transported. Thats because rescues are becoming increasingly sophisticated about taking dogs to other parts of the country where needed. Are we facing a puppy shortage soon? Cory Smith, the director of pet protection policy for the Humane Society of the United States, provides the rescue viewpoint. A puppy shortage in terms of numbers is hard to imagine. There may be a disconnect between the demand for puppies and the sources of puppies, based on gaps we know exist between adoption programs and the audiences they potentially miss in marketing or process. As for pet overpopulation, the Humane Society of the United States takes a nuanced approach. There are enough households acquiring pets to accommodate the animals in shelters and rescues, but there is a market divide that drives a big chunk of those acquisitions to pet stores/breeders instead, Smith said. The motivation behind the Shelter Pet Project campaign is to get those swing voter acquirers to shelters and rescues for their pets. Rather a pet overpopulation problem, we believe its more accurately described as shelter overpopulation. In Virginia, the number of dogs killed in shelters in 2004 neared 46,000. By 2015, that number dropped to 12,000. Another 25,000 were transported to other shelters within the Commonwealth or outside the state for better adoption opportunities. To me, as long as dogs and cats are being killed in shelters, there are more than enough animals to go around. Petco, PetSmart and our local Pet Craze dont sell dogs to stay in business. Rescue adoptions show consumers can embrace older animals. We are in a transition period regarding pet acquisition. Industry and consumers will adapt. 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 GamesRadar+ is supported by its audience. When you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. Heres why you can trust us. Wearable art meets street art The exhibition was curated by New York-based, TT fashion and textiles designer Donna Dove who had brought some of her brands latest looks to TT. Christopher A Nathan of Coco Velvet International said when he visited the exhibition an agreement was made to do a fashion shoot with St Georges art as backdrop using the two winners of Top Model Trinidad and Tobago 2015. The models are preparing to embark on international modelling careers, made possible by Elite Latin & South America contracts which they won at Queens Hall during the contest finale. In a media release Nathan said he thought the event provided A good opportunity to get some interesting portfolio pics. St Georges Finally featured old-fashioned windows that you would see on the George Brown houses in Woodbrook, intricately remodelled vases, lamps and an array of wall hangings which served as the perfect backdrop for Donna Doves Wearable Art, the release said. Make up was done by Adanna Sharpe. The shoot began in the Big Black Box exhibition space but soon moved into the backyard; then spilled out onto Murray Street, Ariapita Avenue and finally to Adam Smith Square. Take a look at the result when wearable art meets street art. Union questions Arcelor Mittals refusal to meet Approximately 644 workers were terminated after the Point Lisas Industrial Estate based Company announced on March 11 that a combination of local and international challenges had resulted in a decision to close the business. However addressing a news conference at the Unions California Village headquarters yesterday, Henry said the Union had not sat on its hands but had worked to source investors to purchase the Company and assume liability for its debts. This Union has not asked for the Government to just intervene, we would have taken our own destiny into our hands through our affiliates internationally and have acquired investors who are interested in taking over the plant, but we have been hindered by this Company and its attitude, Henry said. He continued: The Union would have outlined the advantageous factors to the investors as it relates to the anticipated turnaround of the steel market in the near future and the resources that continue to be available for continuity of the plant. This itemised argument has now attracted, not only one, but two highly interested and motivated investors and a letter was sent to the Company indicating such and a request was made for a meeting, he said, adding, I have the letter here where the Union would have written to the Company asking for a meeting to engage in discussions as it relates to the investors acquiring the plant. The Union succeeded in getting a response from the Company but the disbelief and absurdity in the articulation of the responder is bewildering to the Union, in that the Company, through its agent, refuses to engage in discussions with the Union and the investors, he said and also produced that letter where the Company responded to us indicating no interest in having discussions as it relates to an investor purchasing the plant or taking over the plant. The Unions greatest fear is now being realised as per this response by the Company, in that the Union believes that the intention of the Company is to dispose of their debt, liabilities being owed to the workforce and others by declaring insolvency. The Union also believes that following this, Arcelor- Mittal International will then return during the process of liquidation and purchase the plant for a fraction of the value, devoid of any financial obligation to the workforce, Henry said. Henry reminded reporters of a statement by ArcelorMittal to sell the plant for one dollar but had now reneged on that offer as soon as potential investors had been located. You must remember that they made this big statement that they want to sell the plant for a dollar, how all of a sudden today they not willing to sell the plant again? Here it is we have investors willing to take over the debt, where was that big statement? Where did it come from? Is it still on the drawing board? But the discussion must be with the Government, inclusive of the Company and the investors, he said. He said the Union was once again requesting Governments intervention to address the issue. And while he declined to identify the two potential investors, citing confidentiality issues, Henry said one investor was a local company with an international partner while the second investor was an international company. They are willing to acquire the plant with whatever debt that is there so the opportunity is tremendous, it is real, he said. 'He Had the Chance to Go in and Save the Children' (Newser) When visitors arrive at the Grand Egyptian Museumto open near the Giza pyramids in 2018they'll be greeted by a 4-ton statue of King Amenhotep seated beside the Egyptian god Ra. But first, the 3,500-year-old pink granite statue will be restored, having just traveled 400 miles from Luxor, reports NBC News. Carefully secured by the Tourism and Antiquities Police, the statue rediscovered in southern Egypt in 2009 was one of 780 Egyptian artifacts to arrive at the museum recently in special humidity-controlled trucks, per Ahram Online. They'll become part of a collection that will number 50,000 pieces, more than half of which have never been seen by the public before. Clay pots, painted sarcophagi, and limestone blocks inscribed with hierogylphics are just some of the items hand-picked by General Director Tarek Tawfiq, per Ahram Online. Every piece will be arranged in its original context. "You will be transferred to ancient Egypt and you will have an enjoyable experience through real authentic pieces," Tawfiq says. The Grand Staircase alone will be a spectacle. It will showcase 100 artifacts representing kingship, including the statue of King Amenhotep, a granite column from the temple of King Sahure in Saqqara, and two black granite statues of the lioness war deity Sekhmet from Luxor, reports Ahram Online. (Egypt is now celebrating this incredible discovery.) (Newser) A ring said to belong to the French martyr Joan of Arc triumphantly returned to France, after French donors raised $425,000 to buy it at an auction last month in the UKwhere it had resided for nearly 600 years since she was burned at the stake. But just as it was publicly unveiled at a celebratory rally in front of 5,000 spectators at an amusement park called Le Puy du Fou, the park's founder, Philippe de Villiers, announced that Britain has already come calling for the gold-plated first-communion ring, reports the Independent. Turns out the "spat" that has "marred" its return revolves around the not so exciting topic of licensing, reports Reason. Apparently the French needed to obtain a special export license, given the ring's age and value, a process that takes about a month, and failure to do so could result in the deferral of the license and the forfeiture of the ring back to the UK for additional bidding. But De Villiers claims his team checked the rules and found that the license is only required if the object leaves the European Union, reports the Local. "Ladies and gentlemen from Britain, if you want to see the ring, then come to the Puy de Fou," he told the crowd. "For the rest its too late." Though the ring appears to date back 600 years to the time of Joan of Arc's death in 1431, it has yet to be authenticated, and the head of the Joan of Arc archives in the French town of Orleans notes there have already been "several cases of false objects." (The French bought the ring in a bidding war for about 30 times its worth.) (Newser) A new twist in the Apple-FBI showdown means there may be no showdown after all. In a court filing Mondaya day ahead of the latest court hearing on the FBI's demand for Apple to unlock San Bernardino shooter Syed Rizwan Farook's iPhonethe Justice Department announced that a third party has suggested another way to get into the phone, the New York Times reports. If the method demonstrated by the outside party over the weekend succeeds, "it should eliminate the need for the assistance from Apple," according to the court filing. A federal judge granted the request to delay Tuesday's hearing and ordered the government to deliver a status report by April 5, the AP reports. US Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym also stayed her order for Apple to help investigators bypass security features on Farook's iPhone, which would have been the focus of Tuesday's hearing. The new development gives Apple some breathing space in the standoff with federal prosecutors, the Los Angeles Times reports, though it now has to deal with the fact that an unknown party may have developed a way to bypass its security featuresand experts say the showdown over encryption is bound to happen sooner or later, whatever happens in the Farook case. Analysts also note that since the involvement of an outside party undermines federal authorities' claim that only Apple can help them get into the locked phone, they must be very confident in the newly revealed technique. (Read more Apple stories.) (Newser) Federal authorities are searching for a flight attendant they say bolted from a security screening at Los Angeles International Airport, leaving behind about 70 pounds of cocaine stashed in her luggageand her Gucci heels. TSA officers stopped the woman at random Friday, and she remained at large Monday, a DEA spokesman says.The flight attendant was sent to a secondary screening area, but she quickly dropped her bag, ditched her heels, and fled barefoot down an upward-moving escalator, says Marshall McClain, president of the union representing LAX airport police officers. Police were called to investigate an unattended bag and later uncovered 69 pounds of cocaine inside, McClain says. McClain expressed concern that officers were alerted about the unattended bag but not a suspicious person running through the airport. He says the case also shows why all flight attendants and other airport employees need to be screened. "With her bringing this amount of narcotics in the airport, chances are this wasn't her first time through," he tells the AP. "We're hoping this is a wake-up call to airport management as well as federal legislators." A law enforcement source tells the Guardian that the flight attendant has been identified, though it's not clear what airline she worked for. (This smuggler was given away by fresh operation scars.) (Newser) Donald Trump described himself as "a lifelong supporter and true friend of Israel" in remarks to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee on Monday. His speech to the powerful pro-Israel group focused on the Iran nuclear deal, which he called "catastrophic for America, for Israel, and to the whole Middle East" and promised to dismantle, the AP reports. He also addressed earlier claims to be "neutral" in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, saying there is no "moral equivalency" and "Israel does not pay its children to stab random Palestinians," reports Politico, which notes that the AIPAC speech was the first time Trump has used a teleprompter and scripted remarks since he launched his campaign last year. Trump finished the speech by announcing that his daughter Ivanka, who married a Jewish man, "is about to have a beautiful Jewish baby." Earlier, Hillary Clinton addressed the conference and accused Trump of being unreliable, reports the New York Times. "We need steady hands," she said, "not a president who says he's neutral on Monday, pro-Israel on Tuesday, and who-knows-what on Wednesday." Ted Cruz spoke after Trump and attacked him for referring to Palestine, which Cruz said "has not existed since 1948." John Kasich also addressed the conference. An AIPAC spokesperson says Bernie Sanders was invited but was unable to attend because of his campaign schedule. (Read more Donald Trump stories.) (Newser) "Next time I talk to [God], I'm gonna ask him, 'Why me,'" Bob Ebeling said in January of his nagging guilt over the Challenger disaster, which he tried to prevent as an engineer with NASA contractor Morton Thiokol. He may now get his chance. The 89-year-old died Monday in Utah, after a battle with prostate cancer, reports NPR. Raised in Illinois, Ebeling moved to Utah and became a rocket scientist with Thiokol in 1962, per the Salt Lake Tribune. He was one of five engineers who tried to stop the Challenger launch, fearing the booster rockets' O-ring seals would fail in the cold. "He said, 'The Challenger's going to blow up. Everyone's going to die,'" daughter Leslie Ebeling Serna remembers of the morning of the launch. "He was beating his fist on the dashboard. He was frantic." Afterward, "he weptloudly." Ebeling retired soon after and helped restore Utah's Bear River Migratory Bird Refuge after a flood. He served as a volunteer there over the following decades, earning the Theodore Roosevelt Conservation Award in 1989 and the National Wildlife Refuge System Volunteer of the Year in 2012. Though he spoke about his persisting guilt over the Challenger disaster as recently as this year, Serna says it vanished before his death. Support for Ebeling had recently poured in, including from NASA, which said the disaster taught the agency "to remain vigilant and to listen to those like Mr. Ebeling who have the courage to speak up." "It was as if he got permission from the world," Serna says. "He was able to let that part of his life go." Ebeling put it best himself. "You helped bring my worrisome mind to ease," he said in thanking those who reached out to him. "You have to have an end to everything." (Read more obituary stories.) (Newser) A Detroit woman faces up to 10 months in prison for fraud after admitting to renting diseased body parts to researchers. Elizabeth Rathburn, 56to be sentenced in Julyalso must pay $55,225 to the American Anesthesiology Association, whose researchers were told the body parts were clean, reports the Detroit Free Press. But her estranged husband, Arthur Rathburn, 62, could face more than 20 years in prison if convicted of charges related to his work as a cadaver dealer. The trade of body parts "is not, in and of itself, illegal," but "crimes have been committed," an FBI agent says in an affidavit. Under the Rathburns' company International Biological Inc., Arthur Rathburn is accused of purchasing discounted body parts infected with HIV and hepatitis B, then renting them to unsuspecting customers who could have been exposed to infection, per the Detroit News. Arthur Rathburn worked with the University of Michigan's anatomical donation program for six years until he was fired for selling bodies in 1990. He then worked as a private dealer. Prosecutors say he cut up bodies with chainsaws "without using sanitary precautions," and kept more than 1,000 body parts at a warehouse. He's also accused of selling bodies for $5,000 on the black market. Heads were allegedly sold for $500, while arms fetched $750. In one instance, prosecutors say he shipped fresh headswhich reportedly sat in pools of blood inside coolerson a commercial plane. Rathburn faces charges including wire fraud, making false statements, and transporting hazardous materials at trial on April 5, per Reuters. His wife "will assist the government with any knowledge that she has," her lawyer says. "Her life has been ruined largely in part because of her association with Mr. Rathburn." (Read more Michigan stories.) (Newser) Three years after winning the prestigious gold medal at the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, pianist Vadym Kholodenko suffered the deaths of his two young children, for which his estranged wife has been charged with capital murder. It's just the latest tragedy to befall a Cliburn winner, Scott Cantrell writes at the Dallas Morning News, citing what is known as "the Cliburn curse." In minor cases, the so-called curse resonates in the form of a pianist failing to live up to expectations or falling into a career slump. More ominous, though, is that three of the 16 winners since the competition began in 1962 have died at an early age. Steven De Groote, winner of 1977 Cliburn, for example, died from a complication of AIDS in 1989. He was 36. That same year, Alexei Sultanov won the gold medal in what one judge labeled "a tremendous scandal." He was left partially paralyzed by a stroke in 2001 and died in his sleep in 2005 at age 35. Then in December 2014, 1985 winner Jose Feghali shot himself following a battle with depression. He was 53. "Some performers thrive for years in this rat race, but others become burned out and resentful. Lengthy periods away from home take tolls on families and relationships, too," writes Cantrell. "We didn't see a lot of Vadym in Moscow when he's traveling a lot," wife Sofya Tsygankovaa once-competitive pianist, per the Washington Posttold the Fort Worth Star-Telegram in 2014 after moving to Texas. "We wanted to be together, with Vadym, to be a family." (Read more child murder stories.) (Newser) Among those hurt in the terrorist attacks in Brussels on Tuesday: three Mormon missionaries from Utah and an Air Force officer and his family. Richard Norby, 66, Joseph Empey, 20, and Mason Wells, 19, were injured in the explosion at Brussels airport, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints confirmed, as Reuters reports. The Paris-based missionaries have been hospitalized and USA Today reports they were "seriously" hurt, but details are scarce. US officials tell the AP an Air Force lieutenant colonel, his wife, and their four children were also injured in the airport attack, though no further details were available on their conditions. At least 31 people were killed in the attacks at the airport and on a metro train. (Read more Brussels attack stories.) (Newser) ISIS on Tuesday claimed credit for the Belgium attacks by way of its Amaq News Agency. Rita Katz, director of SITE Intelligence Group, tweeted a statement from the agency that reads in part, "Islamic State fighters carried out a series of bombings with explosive belts and devices ... in the center of the Belgian capital Brussels, a country participating in the international coalition against the Islamic State." It states "several" fighters used explosive belts at the airport following the use of guns there; one belt-wearing bomber detonated himself on the metro. Meanwhile, the Guardian reports by way of local media that Belgian police are searching for a man clad in a light jacket who may have info on the airport attack; he was photographed with two other men, whose identities are also unknown. See the photo here. Local media has released video taken in the Zaventem airport in the aftermath of the attack. (Read more Brussels attack stories.) Former wrestling star, Hulk Hogan, was awarded $25.1 million in "punitive damages" Monday. The total damages in the "invasion-of-privacy" case against Gawker Media sum up to $140.1 million. The jury had decided last Friday that Gawker was accountable for the October 2012 publication of an amateur sex tape that featured Hogan, or Terry Bollea. He was awarded $60 million for going through emotional stress and $55 million for economic damages, said latimes. The jury had decided last Friday that Gawker was accountable for the October 2012 publication of an amateur sex tape that featured Hogan, or Terry Bollea. He was awarded $60 million for going through emotional stress and $55 million for economic damages, said latimes. Florida law says that the jury could have granted about thrice that amount in total "punitive damages," which would amount to $345 million. However, Judge Pamela A.M. Campbell of Florida's 6th Judicial Circuit Court in Pinellas County told the jury that punitive damages should not have a "devastating effect" on the defendants. Hence, the conclusion was arrived at, that Gawker needed to pay $15 million in punitive damages and that Nick Denton, its founder and chief executive, needed to pay $10 million. Moreover, Albert J. Daulerio, earlier editor-in-chief of Gawker.com was ordered to pay $100,000. Hogan's lawyers in court Monday said that Gawker Media's prejudgment valuation is $83 million. The company had driven in $48.7 million in 2015. Gawker's attorney, Michael Barry, had defended that the $115 million, which had already been awarded, was enough punishment. "The amount you have rendered in your verdict is already far beyond their means," he told jurors before they began deliberations Monday afternoon. "An additional punishment is unnecessary.... Your verdict will send a chill down the spine of publishers, writers, producers and publishers throughout the company." Meanwhile, Gawker will now appeal the case, which has been knocking about in the courts for three years. Last year, the Florida 2nd District Court ruled out a decision by Hogan's lawyers that called upon Gawker to remove the video. Following the judgement Friday, Hogan tweeted to 1.4 million followers: "Told ya I was going to slam another giant." What was previously thought as theoretical security flaw in Android devices turned to be real after a cybersecurity consultancy firm discovered the bug named 'Stagefright' last summer calling it as the 'mother of all Android vulnerabilities'. No white hackers have ever succeeded in executing the hack until now. According to researchers and cybersecurity experts at NorthBit, they now managed to create a version of the said malware that enables hackers to gain access to Android devices. As a matter of fact, NorthBit's bug version codenamed 'Metaphor' was 'a proof of concept Stagefright exploit' which they said was most effective on Nexus 5. The hack threat also extends to other Android phones like HTV One, LG G4, and the Samsung Galaxy S5 as reported by CBS News. However, it is significant to note that the simulated attack was in a lab-controlled research experiment and hasn't happened yet. Now that the attack is more than just theoretical, the news is a heads-up to Android users, smartphone makers, and Android's owner, Google. "The reason to keep researching this library is because it has proven to be very vulnerable in the past (multiple bugs and bad code), affects numerous devices and has many good potential attack vectors: mms (stealthy), instant messaging (automatic), web browser (minimaltono user interaction) and more," Hanan Be'er, a security researcher for NorthBit as quoted in a report by New York Daily News. Google lauded the latest discovery. For its part, the Silicon Valley giant released an update last fall to provide users the best protection they could offer to Android users. "Android devices with a security patch level of October 1, 2015 or greater are protected because of a fix we released for this issue (CVE-2015-3864) last year. As always, we appreciate the security community's research efforts as they help further secure the Android ecosystem for everyone," reads Google's official statement as mentioned in a report by Engadget. New Delhi: PDP president Mehbooba Mufti today met Prime Minister Narendra Modi in New Delhi to discuss the deadlock over the government formation in Jammu and Kashmir. Apparently, it seems that there has been some positive outcome of the meeting as the PDP President evaded the direct question on the government formation. She said that her party had sent her to meet the PM, and now she will return and discuss the minutes of meetings with her party legislators. "I had been authorised by the party MLAs to take a decision. I have convened a meeting on Thursday and after that we will announce the future course of action. Said Mufti. However she said that it was a positive meeting. It was a very positive conversation, the signs are positive she added. We are seeing a stalemate for last two to three months over government formation in the state but today I am satisfied. I am very satisfied, she told reporters here. To a question whether the stalemate has ended, she said, When you meet the Prime Minister of the country, naturally the solution to the problems faced by the people of Jammu and Kashmir is more clear. She will be flying back to Srinagar where she will brief her party legislators on Thursday. On government formation in the state, she said, As I said I will talk to my MLAs because that is the forum. This is not the place. There is a particular place to make such anouncements. I will go back to Srinagar and take the next step. This is Mehboobas second visit to the national capital in five days after her talks with BJP President Amit Shah on Thursday failed to make any headway triggered speculation that the two parties could be making renewed efforts to reach out to each other in a bid to break the prolonged impasse. The visit comes a day after Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said, we stand fully committed as far as agenda of governance is concerned in J and K. With PTI Inputs For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Washington: Scientists have developed a new pill that can improve breast cancer screening by lighting up tumours and help doctors better distinguish between cancerous and benign growths. An issue with current breast cancer screening methods is that they often identify lumps but cannot conclusively pinpoint which ones are cancerous. Screening can potentially catch the disease early in some patients, but false positives can lead to unnecessary, aggressive treatments in patients who dont need them, said Greg Thurber, assistant professor at University of Michigan. Breast cancer is the second most common cancer in women. Mammograms, the current standard for screening, are X-rays of breast tissue. They give doctors information about a lumps location and size, but they can not distinguish between cancerous and benign growths. To find out more, doctors take biopsies, which involve needles or surgery and are not 100 per cent conclusive. When suspicious lumps are found, doctors and patients will often opt for treatment ranging from surgery to radiation or chemotherapy, which can take months and cause serious side effects. To better weed out patients who do not really need treatment, the researchers developed the oral pill containing an imaging agent that selectively binds to cancer cells or blood vessels that are unique to tumours. Once attached to its target, the dye fluoresces under near-infrared light. Although at this wavelength, fluorescent tumours can only be detected 1 to 2 centimetres deep, pairing the technique with ultrasound in the same instrument should be able to detect most cancers, Thurber said. Testing in mice showed that with the proper formulation, a considerable proportion - 50 to 60 per cent - of the agent gets absorbed into the bloodstream. It also binds specifically to cancer cells with little background noise in the image. The fluorescent signal from the tumour was far stronger than the signal from the surrounding tissue. If the team succeeds in formulating the pill for human patients, Thurber said the high image contrast should bode well for women with dense breast tissue whose mammograms are difficult to read. New Delhi: A series of apparently coordinated explosions ripped through Brussels airport and a city metro station today, killing 34 people and wounding over 200 in the latest attacks to target Europe. There were also around 10 killed at the Maalbeek metro station where there was an enormous explosion, he said. Most of the wounded have been evacuated. The scene is rather chaotic, he said. In Pics: Twin blasts rock Brussels Airport leaving 21 people dead The toll at the airport was initial, he said. A false ceiling collapsed with lots of rubble and so there could still be more victims, Meys added. Twin blasts at Brussels airport #Brussels Airport Explosions: 17 feared dead; several injured Posted by Newsnation on Tuesday, March 22, 2016 Airport spokeswoman Anke Fransen said: There were two blasts in the departure hall. First aid team are in place for help. Passengers were led onto the tarmac and the crisis centre urged people not to come to the airport. The explosions happened only days after the prime suspect in the Paris attacks Salah Abdeslam was arrested in Brussels. Indian Embassy's helpline in Brussels : +32-26409140 +32-26451850 (PABX) & +32-476748575 (mobile) Pl RT Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) March 22, 2016 Incidentally, Prime Minister Narendra Modi is slated to visit Brussels on March 29th. Also, major airports in India have been put on alert following the blasts. External Affairs Ministry spokesperson Vikas Swarup said he has spoken to the Ambassador and that there were no reports of any Indian casualties. Here are some of the tweets by witnesses. There have been 2 explosions at the airport. Building is being evacuated. Don't come to the airport area. Brussels Airport (@BrusselsAirport) March 22, 2016 Don't come to the airport - airport is being evacuated. Avoid the airport area. Flights have been cancelled. Brussels Airport (@BrusselsAirport) March 22, 2016 PHOTO: Damage inside #Brussels airport main terminal after two large explosions - @wardmarkey pic.twitter.com/n0Zjo33A6m Conflict News (@Conflicts) March 22, 2016 Multiple explosions at airport Brussel - #terrorism pic.twitter.com/dDs2W2vtTi Thijs Becker (@ThijsSquare) March 22, 2016 With inputs from angencies. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi: Students protested in Hyderabad University after Vice Chancellor Appa Rao Podile, who went on a leave after the death of Dalit Scholar Rohit Vemula, returned to the University. As per a report, hundreds of students protested on campus and broke into Raos office and lodge, damaging office furniture and breaking equipment. Appa Rao Podile was accused by protesters of abetting the Dalit Scholars suicide, after which, he went on a two month leave. Rao was the one who had ordered the suspension of Rohith Vemula and four other students from the university hostel for allegedly beating up an ABVP leader. Vemula killed himself on January 17 after days of alleged caste discrimination and ostracising on campus. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi : The brilliant flash of an exploding stars shockwave has been captured for the first time by NASAs planet hunter- Kepler Space telescope. Though it lasted only for 20 minutes but the space agency managed to capture the breathtaking sight of the star exploding. Scientists call it the shock breakout which has been captured for the first time in visible light. A science team led by Peter Garnavich, an astrophysics professor in Indiana analysed light captured by Kepler every 30 minutes over a period of three years, searching 50 trillion stars. This hunting was for signs of massive stellar death explosions known as supernovae. Supernovae like these -- known as Type II -- begin when the internal furnace of a star runs out of nuclear fuel, causing its core to collapse as gravity takes over. When does it occur? A supernova occurs when a massive stars life comes to an end. A catastrophic explosion erupts, causing the star to burn brighter than other galaxies before fading to black. According to Peter Garnavich, astrophysicist, the star is so colossal that "Earth's orbit around the sun would fit comfortably within it. It is believed that life exists because of supernovae because these supernovae do have a tangible effect on our solar system. For example, all the silver, nickel and copper in the Earth and even in our bodies came from the explosive death throes of stars. For all the Latest Science News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. New Delhi : The Budget Session of Delhi Assembly today began with Lt Governor Najeeb Jung enunciating the achievements of the AAP government in education, health, transport sectors and seeking greater support from Centre to cater to the needs of the Delhiites in a better way. Addressing legislators on the first day of the Budget session, Jung listed steps in the field of education, including the proposal to build 25 school buildings and 7289 classrooms, 700 toilet blocks in existing schools and reforms brought about by amending the Delhi School Education Amendment Bill. In his speech, the Lt Governor also took up the issue of Delhis share in Central taxes remaining stagnant since 2001-02 at Rs 325 crore despite the fact the Centre received Rs 1,30,000 crore from the contribution of people of the capital in the Central taxes every year. My government seeks greater support from the Central government in order to better cater to needs of the people of National Capital Territory of Delhi, Jung said while addressing the legislators. Apart from this, 1000 new Mohalla clinics, 100 polyclinics, increase of beds in government hospitals, free medicines and Health Insurance Scheme for all residents, figured in the list of steps taken which brought about improvement in the health sector. In the transport sector, proposals to induct 1,000 new low-floor buses, fares through e-ticketing machines in all DTC buses from June 2016 were also mentioned by Jung with regard to measures being taken to augment public transport in the capital. He further said Delhi government is committed to make the city corruption-free and a move towards this was the passage of the Lokpal Bill which has now been sent to the Centre for its approval. Briefing about future projects of Public Works Department (PWD), Jung also said that the elevated corridor in Barapullah Nallah phase-III, from Sarai Kalen Khan to Mayur Vihar has been sanctioned and is likely to be completed by December 2017. He said that 11 major roads are being redesigned for better traffic management and free pedestrian movement, adding that for efficient and faster movement of traffic in and across Delhi, 10 new corridors are being finalised. Speaking on women safety, the Lt Governor said women safety is a matter of highest priority for his government and 46 major dark spots have been identified by the government and appropriate lighting have been installed in 42 stretches and the remaining work will be completed by the end of this month. Jung also listed the step to help farmers whose crops were damaged due to unseasonal rains and hailstorm last year. My government gave compensation of Rs 20,000 per acre to Delhis farmers who lost their crops due to unseasonal rains and hailstorm. This was perhaps, the highest compensation given to farmers, aimed at easing their distress. It is notable benchmark initiated by the Govt of NCT of Delhi, he also added. Later, Transport Minister Gopal Rai moved a motion thanking the Lt Governor for his address. In his speech, Rai emphasised that the AAP governments mantra is honesty, the prime factor behind its unprecedented success and the upcoming Budget will only take this forward. Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, who also holds the Finance portfolio, will present the Budget on March 28. The five-day session, that will not see any new Bill being introduced, will conclude on March 31. The House also condoled the death of army jawans in an avalanche in Siachen Glacier last month and observed silence in the memory of Mehtab Chand Jain, former member of Delhi Metropolitan Council and former MLA Krishan Tyagi. For all the Latest India News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Kiev: Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko on Tuesday offered to swap two suspected Russian soldiers captured in the separatist east for Ukrainian pilot Nadiya Savchenko who was sentenced to 22 years by a Russian judge. Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that after the so-called sentence, he will return Nadiya Savchenko to Ukraine, Poroshenko said in a statement published on the presidential website. The time to keep promises has come. I, in turn, am ready to hand over to Russia two Russian servicemen detained on our territory for their involvement in the armed aggression against Ukraine. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Kathmandu: Prince Harry today played Holi with Nepalese villagers and had his face smeared with red powder paint by them to celebrate the arrival of spring. The 31-year-old royal was given a rapturous welcome in Okhari by villagers who decked him with garlands and scarves. The princes cheeks and forehead were covered when he took part in a powder paint fight as Nepalese villagers celebrated Holi. The Hindu ritual, which marks the arrival of spring, involved revellers throwing paint and coloured water at each other. He visited Okhari, a village in the mountains, to see the Gurkha Welfare Trusts efforts to rebuild a school wrecked by last years massive earthquake. The prince had spent the previous night as the guest of Mangali Tamang, the 86-year-old widow of a former Gurkha rifleman, the BBC reported from Nepal. He described the experience of sleeping under the same roof as the Nepalese family as peaceful, actually. Lots of dogs barking, but it didnt seem to bother them. The prince visited the Gauda Secondary School in the village, to see how the British-based Gurkha Welfare Trust is helping to fund the rebuilding after it was damaged during last years earthquake. The princes five-day trip is celebrating 200 years of relations between Nepal and Britain. His tour comes as the country is rebuilding after last years devastating earthquake which killed more than 8,000 people. For all the Latest World News, Download News Nation Android and iOS Mobile Apps. Carol Kaliff / Hearst Connecticut Media BROOKFIELD Officials are scouring town files in a renewed effort to find missing records needed to satisfy the state, which is demanding repayment of $900,000 in grants spent renovating the high school nearly a decade ago. Town officials, who started searching for the documentation last year, have steadily chipped away at the amount originally requested by the state a whopping $8 million. This is a carousel. Use Next and Previous buttons to navigate "Life exists because of supernovae." Our sun will die. Yep. In another seven billion years or so, kaput. But, it will not die in the spectacular fashion scientists spotted when combing through data gleaned from the heavens by NASA's Kepler space telescope. Our sun isn't big enough to supernovae or explode in minutes, instead it will enlarge into a red giant for a few million years and then settle into a nice solid state as a white dwarf. Not true for the star KSN 2011d, located 1.2 billion light-years away. It was about 500 times larger than our sun and 20,000 times brighter, says NASA, and that was big enough to go kablooey, and boy did it. Scientists have seen big stars turn into big explosions before, but for the first time, says NASA in a news release, a team led by Peter Garnavich, an astrophysics professor at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana, spotted the initial shock wave of energy or the "shock breakout" cutting through the surface of this sun. NASA waxed poetic in this news release for just a bit ... Understanding the physics of these violent events allows scientists to better understand how the seeds of chemical complexity and life itself have been scattered in space and time in our Milky Way galaxy "All heavy elements in the universe come from supernova explosions. For example, all the silver, nickel, and copper in the earth and even in our bodies came from the explosive death throes of stars," said Steve Howell, project scientist for NASA's Kepler and K2 missions at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley. "Life exists because of supernovae." And then it was back to business: Garnavich is part of a research team known as the Kepler Extragalactic Survey or KEGS. The team is nearly finished mining data from Kepler's primary mission, which ended in 2013 with the failure of reaction wheels that helped keep the spacecraft steady. However, with the reboot of the Kepler spacecraft as NASA's K2 mission, the team is now combing through more data hunting for supernova events in even more galaxies far, far away. "While Kepler cracked the door open on observing the development of these spectacular events, K2 will push it wide open observing dozens more supernovae," said Tom Barclay, senior research scientist and director of the Kepler and K2 guest observer office at Ames. "These results are a tantalizing preamble to what's to come from K2!" Check out a slideshow above of the animation in this NASA video: Jake Ellison can be reached at 206-448-8334 or jakeellison@seattlepi.com. Follow Jake on Twitter at twitter.com/Jake_News. Also, swing by and *LIKE* his page on Facebook. If Google Plus is your thing, check out our science coverage here. On the eve of its showdown with Apple in a federal courtroom in Riverside County, the Department of Justice announced Monday that the FBI may have found a way to crack into San Bernardino killer Syed Rizwan Farooks locked iPhone. As a result, the Justice Department has received a continuance of Tuesdays court hearing involving the Cupertino company. In August of 2014, Gina Cuffari, an Ohio-based mother of two who had spent years working as a campus director, said she was sold on the mission of Snapology, a company that uses building blocks like Legos and technology to combine play with education for children in preschool all the way up to 14 years of age. The curriculum includes math, science, engineering, architecture, animation and more to create a holistic learning experience no matter what the skill-level or particular interest of the student. Cuffari opened her own Snapology as a franchisee in October of 2014. Related: This Franchisee Is Cooking up Some Lessons in Life for Her Young Clientele "I love seeing boys and girls in our classes building machines and talking about becoming engineers," she says. "I love observing children with special needs thrive in our classes and present their creations to the group. We build a foundation for lifelong learning -- and make learning fun." Sisters Lisa and Laura Coe founded Snapology in 2011 with the idea that kids will indeed learn more if they are having so fun that they don't even realize they are learning. Today, Snapology has several locations in the U.S. and one in Canada with passionate educators like Cuffari at the helm. Image Credit: Snapology Name: Gina Cuffari Franchise owned: Snapology of Cleveland Q: How long have you owned a franchise? We have owned Snapology officially since August of 2014, and our grand opening was Oct. 1, 2014. Q: Why franchising? I knew that I wanted to unleash my inner entrepreneur and take the plunge to become a business owner, but I also knew I was limited with time. I wanted a semi-established brand in which I could grow with over time. I knew I didnt have time to start from scratch because I was also working full-time. I didnt want to create every form, every process, etc. This gave me the best of both worlds -- the autonomy to run my business but a structure to get me started. Q: What were you doing before you became a franchise owner? Ive been a campus director in the field of higher education administration for more than 15 years. As an employee, Ive gained a lot of experience with planning, strategizing and management. Ive also had the opportunity to work with extremely talented people in the business and education sectors. Related: This Franchisee Turned His After-School Job Into a Business Q: Why did you choose this particular franchise? My background blends both business and education -- which has always been my passion. I am passionate about educational attainment and lifelong learning beginning with young children. Snapologys mission and curriculum sold me. The curriculum makes STEAM (science and technology interpreted through engineering and the arts, all based in mathematical elements) learning fun for preschoolers and up through teen years. Also, my children were 2- and 6-years-old at the time, and I wanted them to be involved and interested in the business. My previous work had required travel which has taken me away from my children -- so the business had to be family-friendly. Surprisingly, I wasnt a huge Lego fan prior to starting Snapology of Cleveland. My oldest son was just becoming interested in building with Lego bricks. We are definitely a family of builders and creators now. And our home is quite popular for play dates! Q: How much would you estimate you spent before you were officially open for business? I invested roughly $25,000 on licensing fees, training and legal fees initially. I invested another $10,000 or so on materials, kits, insurance and equipment to get started. Ive chosen to partner with schools, community centers and other businesses for hosting classes and camps. Not having overhead for real estate was a huge plus for me. Q: Where did you get most of your advice / do most of your research? I have experienced and notable friends in the industry who were very helpful. I also spoke to parents in our local community to help determine a niche. I knew I wanted my business to be oriented toward families with school-aged children. Through market research and advice from friends and family, I uncovered the potential for Lego and robotics programming in my area. Shaker Heights, Ohio has been a wonderful city as a business owner! My community is supportive, and there are many resources for startups. Q: What were the most unexpected challenges of opening your franchise? The sheer number of Lego bricks required was definitely a surprise to me! Seriously though, some challenges were unexpected but not altogether surprising. Hiring the right people to be the face of your business is always time-consuming. Teachers make excellent employees, but they arent always available due to their own schedules. Ive built a strong teaching staff over time with experienced and passionate educators. It took longer than I anticipated building a team of qualified instructors with afternoon, evening and weekend availability. Q: What advice do you have for individuals who want to own their own franchise? First and foremost, you have to choose something you are passionate about! I cant imagine owning or operating a business that didnt resonate with me personally. I love seeing boys and girls in our classes building machines and talking about becoming engineers. I love observing children with special needs thrive in our classes and present their creations to the group. Our program reinforces teamwork and introduces presentation skills. We build a foundation for lifelong learning and make STEAM learning fun. Related: Why Opening a Kumon Center Was an Educational Experience for Former Teacher Q: Whats next for you and your business? I will expand to serve a broader territory within the next year or two. I plan to continue to offer innovative and relevant programming for todays technology-savvy kids. You have to stay on your toes today! Kids are learning differently, and many of our programs incorporate the use of technology. It is important to stay on top of the trends to stay relevant. Related: Ohio Woman Leaves a Career on Campus to Make Learning Fun With Legos at Snapology This Franchisee Is Cooking up Some Lessons in Life for Her Young Clientele Former New York Times Pressman Worked Out a Strong Career Change in Mid-Life With Retro Fitness Copyright 2016 Entrepreneur.com Inc., All rights reserved #ClimateChain Instagram campaign will highlight water and the environment NEW YORK and TORONTO, March 22, 2016 /CNW/ - On World Water Day, UNICEF said the push to bring safe water to millions around the world is going to be even more challenging due to climate change, which threatens both water supply and water safety for millions of children living in drought- or flood-prone areas. In 2015 at the end of the Millennium Development Goal era, all but 663 million people around the world had drinking water from improved sources which are supposed to separate water from contact with excreta. However, data from newly available testing technology show that an estimated 1.8 billion people may be drinking water contaminated by e-coli meaning there is faecal material in their water, even from some improved sources. "Now that we can test water more cheaply and efficiently than we were able to do when the MDGs were set, we are coming to terms with the magnitude of the challenge facing the world when it comes to clean water," said Sanjay Wijeserkera, head of UNICEF's global water, sanitation and hygiene programmes. "With the new Sustainable Development Goals calling for 'safe' water for everyone, we're not starting from where the MDGs left off; it is a whole new ball game." One of the principal contributors to faecal contamination of water is poor sanitation. Globally 2.4 billion people lack proper toilets and just under one billion of them defecate in the open. This means faeces can be so pervasive in many countries and communities that even some improved water sources become contaminated. Safety concerns rising due to climate change When water becomes scarce during droughts, populations resort to unsafe surface water. At the other end of the scale, floods damage water and sewage treatment facilities, and spread faeces around, very often leading to an increase in water-borne diseases such as cholera and diarrhoea. Higher temperatures brought on by climate change are also set to increase the incidence of water-linked diseases like malaria, dengue and now Zika as mosquito populations rise and their geographic reach expands. "Climate change is one of the greatest threats of our time, whose impact is being felt more acutely around the world," says David Morley, President and CEO of UNICEF Canada. "Children and young people are especially vulnerable to its destabilizing impact." 160 million children in areas at high risk of drought According to UNICEF, most vulnerable are the nearly 160 million children under five years old globally who live in areas at high risk of drought. Around half a billion live in flood zones. Most of them live in sub-Saharan Africa and in Asia. UNICEF is responding to the challenges of climate change by focusing on disaster risk reduction for water supplies. For example: Nearly 20,000 children in Bangladesh now have access to climate and disaster-resilient sources of water through an aquifer-recharge system which captures water during the monsoon season, purifies it, and stores it underground. now have access to climate and disaster-resilient sources of water through an aquifer-recharge system which captures water during the monsoon season, purifies it, and stores it underground. In Madagascar , UNICEF is helping local authorities make classrooms for 80,000 children cyclone- and flood-proof, and provide access to disaster-resilient sources of water. , UNICEF is helping local authorities make classrooms for 80,000 children cyclone- and flood-proof, and provide access to disaster-resilient sources of water. In drought-prone Kiribati , new rainwater-harvesting and storage facilities are improving communities' access to safe drinking water. Government of Canada tackles climate change Last year, the Government of Canada committed $2.65 billion to take action on climate change. Canada is also providing humanitarian assistance funding to address climate related humanitarian emergencies. This includes a $4 million contribution to support UNICEF's efforts in Ethiopia to help improve access to safe water and sanitation for drought affected households, and protect children who face increased vulnerability due to drought. "We are in a race against time to stop a bad situation from becoming worse," says Morley. "We're pleased by the Government's efforts to lead the charge against climate change, and encourage Canada to continue to support investments that prioritize children and young people, and strengthen the resilience of the poorest and most vulnerable." A new agenda for action In a recent publication, Unless We Act Now, UNICEF has set out a 10-point climate agenda for children. It sets out concrete steps for governments, the private sector and ordinary people to take in order to safeguard children's futures and their rights. Starting on World Water Day and ending with the signing of the Paris Agreement on 22 April, UNICEF is launching a global Instagram campaign to raise awareness of the link between water, the environment, and climate change. Using the #ClimateChain hashtag, UNICEF Executive Director Anthony Lake, UN General Assembly President Mogens Lykketoft, UN climate chief Christiana Figueres, and other prominent figures will figuratively join hands with members of the public in a chain of photographs intended to urge action to address climate change. The images will be presented at the signing of the Paris Agreement. Note to Editors Broadcast quality photos and b-roll available here. About UNICEF UNICEF has saved more children's lives than any other humanitarian organization. We work tirelessly to help children and their families, doing whatever it takes to ensure children survive. We provide children with healthcare and immunization, clean water, nutrition and food security, education, emergency relief and more. UNICEF is supported entirely by voluntary donations and helps children regardless of race, religion or politics. As part of the UN, we are active in over 190 countries - more than any other organization. Our determination and our reach are unparalleled. Because nowhere is too far to go to help a child survive. For more information about UNICEF, please visit www.unicef.ca. For updates, follow us on Twitter and Facebook or visit unicef.ca. SOURCE UNICEF Canada Image with caption: "A woman with a girl toddler fills a jerrycan at a community water point in Ouereguekaha Village in Cote d'Ivoire. After four years, households again have access to safe, piped water, thanks to a UNICEF programme. (c)UNICEF/UNI94496/Guoegnon (CNW Group/UNICEF Canada)". Image available at: http://photos.newswire.ca/images/download/20160322_C1785_PHOTO_EN_647927.jpg For further information: To arrange interviews or for more information please contact: Stefanie Carmichael, UNICEF Canada, 416-482-6552 ext. 8866; 647-500-4320 (mobile), [email protected] OTTAWA, March 22, 2016 /CNW/ - CBC/Radio-Canada is grateful for the Government of Canada's important reinvestment in Canada's public broadcaster, announced today in Budget 2016. "This is great news for CBC/Radio-Canada, and for Canadians who support public broadcasting," said Hubert T. Lacroix, President and CEO. "This reinvestment is a vote of confidence by government and by Canadians in our programs, our people, and our vision for the future." It is also recognition that CBC/Radio-Canada faces some significant financial challenges. The additional $75M in funding this year and $150M for the following four years provides the stability that allows the Corporation some breathing room, to assess the progress of its digital strategy, and to invest in the future. CBC/Radio-Canada continues to transform the way it operates in order to ensure that public broadcasting, and the content Canadians enjoy, thrive in the digital age. It has been challenging, but that work is showing results. Canadians see it every day in the way they engage with us, and each other, on mobile devices, social networks, on television and radio. The number of people using our digital services each month has grown by 3 million in the past year alone. We are creating closer connections with Canadians. CBC/Radio-Canada will use these funds to create new content and strengthen our transformation to the digital environment. We will reinvest in key areas important to Canadians, and in new digital jobs. We will have more information to share about this reinvestment in the weeks ahead. "We are humbled by this important support," said M. Lacroix. "We look forward to showing Canadians what we can do for them with this reinvestment. " About CBC/Radio-Canada CBC/Radio-Canada is Canada's national public broadcaster and one of its largest cultural institutions. The Corporation is a leader in reaching Canadians on new platforms and delivers a comprehensive range of radio, television, internet, and satellite-based services. Deeply rooted in the regions, CBC/Radio-Canada is the only domestic broadcaster to offer diverse regional and cultural perspectives in English, French and eight aboriginal languages. SOURCE Canadian Broadcasting Corporation For further information: For additional information, please contact: Alexandra Fortier, Manager, Media Relations and Issues Management, tel. 613-288-6335, [email protected], @AFortier_ OTTAWA, March 22, 2016 /CNW/ - The Canadian life and health insurance industry welcomes today's federal budget initiatives. "We are particularly pleased with the focus on infrastructure and look forward to making an important contribution as the Government moves to the next phase of the plan," says Frank Swedlove, President and CEO of the Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association (CLHIA). Canada's life and health insurers are among the largest investors in the country, holding $630 billion in assets for the long-term. Given the industry's need for long-term investments we also are encouraged by the Government's intention to consider the release of 50-year bonds over the next year. The life and health insurance industry is supportive of the Government's intention to extend the deadline for the Financial Sector Review to 2019. "Given all the technical changes that have been implemented over the past few years, it is entirely appropriate to extend the deadline for the financial sector review and the life and health industry will be active participants in the process," stated Mr. Swedlove. The life and health insurance industry also welcomes the proposed consultations on reforms to the Canada Pension Plan (CPP). "We believe that the CPP levels should be reviewed, but the private sector should also play a key role in retirement savings by Canadians," stated Mr. Swedlove. About the CLHIA Established in 1894, the CLHIA is a voluntary association whose member companies account for 99 percent of Canada's life and health insurance business. The industry provides a wide range of financial security products such as life insurance, annuities (including RRSPs, RRIFs and pensions) and supplementary health insurance to 28 million Canadians. It also holds close to $720 billion of assets in Canada and employs about 155,000 Canadians. SOURCE Canadian Life and Health Insurance Association Inc. For further information: Susan Murray, Vice President, Government and International Relations, (613) 691-6002/ [email protected] MONTREAL, and PICKERING, ON, March 22, 2016 /CNW/ - Purdue Pharma Canada, a pharmaceutical company dedicated to developing and providing innovative medicines for patients and healthcare professionals, along with the NEOMED Institute, a public-private organization dedicated to drug discovery and the development of therapeutics up to human proof of concept, today announced that Purdue has become an industrial partner and thereby becomes one of the five leading pharmaceutical companies to support NEOMED's efforts to close the gap between great science and life-saving medicines. As part of this partnership, Dr. Julie Ducharme, Purdue's Vice President, Research and Development, will hold a seat on NEOMED's Scientific Advisory Board (SAB), with Purdue taking part in the selection of projects in NEOMED's portfolio and providing guidance on their progress. The SAB plays an active role in the evaluation of in-licensing opportunities and maximizes the chances of success of each potential drug in NEOMED's pipeline. Dr. Ducharme brings to NEOMED's SAB nearly 20 years of industry experience in drug discovery and early drug development, with expertise in the fields of drug metabolism, pharmacokinetics, and pharmacodynamics. At Purdue, Dr. Ducharme is responsible for building a robust and successful product pipeline to support Purdue Canada's growth strategy. "This partnership marks an important milestone in our research efforts within Canada, and furthering the success of potential drug candidates in NEOMED's pipeline aligns well with our research goals at Purdue," said Dr. Ducharme, who earned her BPharm, MSc, and PhD degrees at the Universite de Montreal, and held post-doctoral fellowships at McGill University and the Universite Rene-Descartes et Paris-Sud (Paris). Philippe Walker, Chief Scientific Officer at the NEOMED Institute, said, "NEOMED welcomes the opportunity to build stronger links with Purdue's research team in Canada. Purdue has been an R&D pioneer with a track record of successfully commercializing innovative formulations of central nervous system stimulants and pain medications in Canada, and we look forward to their valuable contribution in support of our mission." "This partnership supports Purdue Canada's goal of diversifying our existing portfolio and strengthening our research capabilities through external collaboration," said Dr. Craig Landau, President & CEO of Purdue Pharma Canada. "Importantly, this agreement demonstrates our commitment to advancing Canadian scientific excellence through strategic partnerships." ABOUT PURDUE PHARMA CANADA Purdue Pharma Canada is a research-based pharmaceutical company with its headquarters, R&D operations, and manufacturing located in Pickering, Ontario. The company is a leader in the research and development of medicines for the treatment of pain and central nervous system disorders (ADHD). Privately held, Purdue Pharma Canada is independently associated with the worldwide Purdue/Napp/Mundipharma group of companies. For more information, please visit our website: http://www.purdue.ca ABOUT THE NEOMED INSTITUTE The NEOMED Institute is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to create a bridge between basic research and the commercialization of new drugs by providing industrial expertise in drug discovery and development, combined with funding and a favourable ecosystem, to transform innovations into solid therapeutic solutions. NEOMED drives drug discovery activities up to the stage of human proof of concept. The NEOMED Institute has two fully integrated research and development facilities: one in Technoparc Montreal's Saint-Laurent Campus, specializing in small molecule therapeutics, and the other facility, specializing in the development of biologics and vaccines, in Laval. Both facilities function as open-access drug discovery hubs housing independent commercial businesses and providing a dynamic environment that stimulates collaboration, innovation, and creativity. The NEOMED Institute is jointly funded by the pharmaceutical industry, the Ministere de l'Economie, de la Science et de l'Innovation du Quebec, and the Networks of Centres of Excellence (NCE) of Canada. For more information, please visit our website: www.neomed.ca SOURCE Purdue Pharma For further information: Aimee Sulliman, Director of Communications, Purdue Pharma Canada, 575 Granite Court, Pickering, Ontario L1W 3W8, 905-420-6400, [email protected]; Rachel Cogdell, Communications Coordinator, NEOMED Institute, 7171 Frederick-Banting, Montreal, Quebec H4S 1Z9, 514-367-1212 x209, [email protected] The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) Tuesday arraigned a former Niger Delta militant leader, Government Ekpemupolo (aka To... The Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) Tuesday arraigned a former Niger Delta militant leader, Government Ekpemupolo (aka Tompolo) at the Federal High Court in Lagos in Lagos in absentia over N34billion fraud.He was charged along with a former Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) Director-General Patrick Akpobo lokemi; Global West Vessel Specialist Limited, Odimiri Electricals Limited and Kemi Engozu.Others are Boloboere Property and Estate Limited, Rex Elem, Destre Consult Limited, Gregory Mbonu and Captain Warredi Enisuoh.EFCC, in the 40-count charge before Justice Ibrahim Buba, said the suspects allegedly diverted N34 billion for personal use.It alleged the money accrued from the public private partnership agreement between NIMASA and Global West Vessel Specialist, said to be owned by Tompolo.The alleged offence contravenes Section 15 (1) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) (Amendment) Act 2012 and punishable under Section 15(3) of the same Act.Count one reads: That you, Government Ekpemupolo (alias Tompolo) now at large, Patrick Akpobolokemi, Global West Vessel Specialist Ltd, in 2012 in Lagos, within the jurisdiction of this Honourable Court, did conspire amongst yourselves to commit an offence to wit: Conversion of the sums of N601,516.13 and $1,766,428.62, property of NIMASA, knowing that the said sums were proceeds of stealing, and thereby committed an offence contrary to Section 18(a) of the Money Laundering (Prohibition) (Amendment) Act, 2012 and punishable under Section 15(3) of the same Act.The defendants, who were all present except Tompolo, pleaded not guilty to all the counts.Tompolo will be arraigned on another 22-count charge also pending before Justice Buba, who adjourned it until April 18. It borders on stealing, advanced fee fraud and money laundering involving about N22.7billion.In the pending charge, Tompolo will face trial along with Akpobolokemi, whose four brothers Victor, Nobert, Emmanuel and Clement said to be at large, were said to have aided the suspects to commit the fraud.They were accused of converting various sums running into over N22.7billion stolen from NIMASA to their personal use between December 12, 2014 and April 10, 2015.Justice Ibrahim Buba had, on February 8, directed security agencies to arrest Tompolo and held that the warrant of arrest issued for his arrest still subsists.Tompolos lead counsel, Tayo Oyetibo (SAN), had sought to set aside the warrant of arrest, but the judge dismissed the application and re-issued a fresh warrant for Tompolos arrest.The judge subsequently granted EFCCs application empowering it to seize all Tompolos traceable assets pending his arrest or appearance in court for arraignment. The properties will be auctioned after three months beginning from February 19 when the order was made should Tompolo refuse to turn up, the judge ordered.Tompolo appealed the order for his arrest and prayed the appellate court to order the transfer of his case from Justice Buba to another judge.His lawyers are urging the Court of Appeal to set aside the warrant of arrest on the basis that Justice Buba erred in law in refusing to nullify it.EFCC lawyer Festus Keyamo told reporters yesterday that Tompolo would stand trial whenever he is arrested. He said security agencies are on his trail.It is the duty of the security forces and they are still making efforts to get him. Hes on the run and he cannot continue to be on the run for ever. We will get him, Keyamo said.The other defendants lawyers urged Justice Buba to grant them bail in the most liberal terms. Keyamo said since some of the accused persons were already on bail in another charge before the court, they should be granted bail on conditions that would ensure their attendance in court.Justice Buba, therefore, granted the defendants N50 million bail with one reliable surety in like sum. Enisuoh was granted bail for N10million with one surety.The defendants who are already on bail are to perfect their bail conditions within 24 hours or be remanded in prison. Those appearing before me for the first time should perfect their bail conditions today or be remanded in prison, Justice Buba ruled.He adjourned until May 23, 24, 25, and 26 for trial. Governor Nyesom Wike on Tuesday lauded President Muhammadu Buhari for distancing himself from the re-run elections in the state, saying... The governor who accused the Minister of Transportation, Mr Chibuike Amaechi of allegedly plotting to rig the elections, said the former governor came into the state noisily and left quietly after results showed he could not deliver his candidates.Wike spoke in Government House, Port Harcourt while addressing his party faithfuls.The governor said the will of the people was stronger than any military and police might, adding that some Abuja politicians only came to intimidate the state with the name of Mr President who maintained neutrality all through the rerun elections.Amaechi plot to rig the rerun elections was for him to rubbish the Supreme Court Judgement. He came back to the state noisily, but left quietly and shamefully. No Army is stronger than the people. No police is stronger than our people.How many times will they cancel elections for the APC. Amaechi is not on ground in Rivers State .Those who were overzealous during the rerun elections did so without the knowledge of the president. At least eleven people have died and several injured after two explosions rocked Brussels Airport in a suspected terror attack. At least eleven people have died and several injured after two explosions rocked Brussels Airport in a suspected terror attack.Witnesses said they 'felt the shockwaves' of the blasts which are believed to have centred on the American Airlines check-in desk at 8am (7am GMT).There were reports that shouts in Arabic were heard in the building before the two explosion and shots were fired in the aftermath.Photographs from inside the arrivals hall showed the floor was covered in fallen roof tiles and dust as bloodied people hobbled out of the airport. Others injured were photographed lying on the floor.Video also shows terrified passengers running for their lives out of the terminal.In the aftermath of the explosions thousands of people waiting for flights this morning were penned inside the terminal as police sealed off the shattered arrivals hall.The explosions come just a day after the Belgium Interior Minister warned of possible revenge attacks after the arrest of Paris terror attack suspect Salah Abdeslam in the city last week.People already checked-in were then slowly evacuated through emergency exits but were told to leave all their hand luggage as police checked bags for more explosives.Evacuated air passengers are being ferried onto buses and are being driven to a 'crisis centre' away from the airport.Women and children are being moved first.Sky News Middle East correspondent Alex Rossi, who was at the airport en route for Tel Aviv, told the channel: 'I could feel the buildings move.'Pauline Deglume tweeted: 'My godfather is located at the airport and said he saw dismembered bodies everywhere.'Armed police in protective clothing combed the building for more wounded travellers and suspicious bags.All flights are being diverted from the airport this morning as it remains on lockdown.Flights due to land at Brussels-Zaventem, which handles 21million passengers a year, were sent to Antwerp, Liege, and Brussels Charleroi airports.The Belgian Interior Minister has raised the country's security level to 'maximum' this morning as it prepares itself for more terror attacks in the wake of the airport bombings.The incident came as the Belgian capital was on a state of high alert following the arrest of Paris terror attack suspect Salah Abdeslam in the city last week.Belgium's Interior Minister, Jan Jambon, said the country was on high alert for a possible revenge attack following the capture of 26-year-old Salah Abdeslam in a flat in Brussels on Friday.'We know that stopping one cell can ... push others into action. We are aware of it in this case,' he told public radio.Brussels is on high alert following the capture last Friday of Salah Abdeslam, the most-wanted man in Europe, in the Molenbeek neighbourhood of the city after a four-month search.(Mail Online) Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump called again for tougher U.S. border security following Tuesday's deadly attacks on th... Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump called again for tougher U.S. border security following Tuesday's deadly attacks on the Brussels airport, saying "we have to be very vigilant and careful about who we allow into our country."Trump's comments, in an interview on NBC's "Today" program, came a day after he expressed skepticism about the U.S. role in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and said the United States should significantly cut spending on the defense alliance."As president ... I would be very, very tough on the borders, and I would be not allowing certain people to come into this country without absolute perfect documentation," he told NBC.Republican rival John Kasich, the governor of Ohio, struck a different tone, pledging to "redouble our efforts with our allies" and saying the United States "must strengthen our alliances" in the face of acts of terror.U.S. Senator Ted Cruz, who is running second to Trump in the Republican delegate count, called the blasts in Belgium "the latest in a string of coordinated attacks by radical Islamic terrorists.""Radical Islam is at war with us," he said in a statement posted online.Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the U.S. House Intelligence Committee, said the Brussels attacks that killed at least 26 people at the airport and a rush-hour metro train, "bear all the hallmarks of an ISIS-inspired, or ISIS-coordinated attack," using an acronym for Islamic State.The attacks will likely revive national security as a key issue in the 2016 race for the White House, at least for now.Trump looks to take another step toward winning the Republican presidential nomination in contests in Arizona and Utah on Tuesday, aiming to deal another setback to the party establishment's flagging stop-Trump movement.The billionaire businessman has rolled up a big lead in convention delegates who will pick the Republican nominee, defying weeks of attacks from members of the party establishment worried he will lead the Republicans to defeat in the Nov. 8 presidential election.In Arizona, one of the U.S. states that borders Mexico, Trump's hardline immigration message is popular and he leads in polls, while in Utah Trump lags in polls behind Cruz, a U.S. senator from Texas. President Muhammadu Buhari on Tuesday night met with the National Leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC) and former Lagos State ... In attendance included many serving governors of the party and past state governors including Rabiu Kwankwaso (Kano).The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara was also at the closed door meeting taking place at the new Banquet Hall at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.But the Senate President, Bukola Saraki and the former Vice President, Atiku Abubakar arrived the venue of the meeting after it started.The meeting, which started around 8.30 p.m, was still in progress at the time of filing this report. Against the background of the violence that apparently characterized the rerun elections in Rivers State, Governor Ayo Fayose of Ekiti... According to the governor, the president superintended over elections that were remarkably bloody. The governor who spoke with Journalists in Abuja on Tuesday chronicled the lists of elections held under the present government, stating that power belonged to the God and and should not be abused by any individual no matter how highly placed. He said: I am telling you the truth. Power doesnt come from anywhere. God rules in the affairs of men.Oppressing, bringing and cutting people down, taking their blood, God is angry. The way this government is taking people down, God is angry. God isnt happy.Go to Rivers, they kill people. Go to Akwa Ibom, they kill people. Go to Bayelsa, they kill people, incarcerate innocent people.God is angry with Buhari. You cant continue to take the blood of the innocent.Look at my predictions for the year 2016 for Nigeria, everything has come to pass. This is a different ball game. He that will take me, he that will go against me must first of all defeat God.If these were the kind of violence that greeted Buharis election would he ever be president? Speaking further on the likely impact of the just concluded expanded retreat of the National Economic Council, NEC in Abuja, Governor Fayose stated that the present economic situations in the country indicated that president Buhari lacked technical competence to solve the problem of the country.Even though he specifically praised the idea, the governor wondered if it would not the just a talk shop. Governor Nyesom Wike has called on the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to declare results of the rerun elections that h... The governor who spoke Tuesday when the Federated Correspondents Chapel of Nigerian Union of Journalists, in Rivers state paid him a courtesy visit in Government House, Port Harcourt said it was shocking that the electoral body was still holding back several results already collated and announced at the various collation centres. Continuing, the governor said the commission lacked powers to cancel results that have been announced at the various local government collation centres, Does INEC have powers to cancel results that have been collated, announced at local government areas. You have no power.You know that a particular party has lost.They came with mights. Tell INEC to release results declared. You have announced that PDP won. What are you doing with them . Nigeria of today is not Nigeria of yesterday. People have becomed more aware., he said.The governor said the plan to impeach him through the state House of Assembly had failed, stressing that his party, the Peoples Democratic Party, was firmly on ground in the state. The governor said on the day of the election his opponents went about with intimidating military presence but his party relied on the people to coast to victory. . Part of the plan was to impeach me.Has the impeachment not died, it has died natural death. You planned to impeach me if you win all the seats in the House, what has happened now. Has the impeachment not died. Come and impeach me na. They plan they dont know what God plans., he said.,He further described as laughable call by the APC for outright cancellation of the rerun elections. APC is saying no proper training of adhoc staff. You can see father and son quarrelling. Imagine APC saying that they did not train their adhoc staff well.You may be laughing but it is a serious matter. I went about with 8 police. The DG NIMASA ,the former governor went about with over 100 soldiers.You will come to your fathers house, you stay in a hotel. In your state you stay in a hotel yet in Abuja you live in your house Wike said his party had raised alarm over the list of adhoc staff drawn for the election that they were mainly APC members but they were ignored.He said it was shocking now that the APC was saying that they should cancel the elections because the adhoc staff were not properly trained for the election.You were here, we were shouting that a particular party was recruiting its members as adhoc staff, you did not report it. We even wrote to INEC, attached the names. Any where PDP is winning, collation officers ran away so that collation dont take place., he said. Have you ever witnessed the level of soldiers they had here in any election. Look at APC saying inadequate security.One man was carrying over 20 soldiers, the Chairman of APC was going about with 20 soldiers., he said.On matters of insecurity, governor Wike said the politicization of heads of the various security bodies in the state was largely responsible. According to the governor, the frequent change of heads of these security bodies on the flimsy excuse that they were not giving him heat was having its effect on the system Are you not the one causing insecurity in the state by your actions, you change Commissioner of Police, Director of DSS frequently because you think they are not doing what they should do.A Commissioner of Police is planning and the next thing he is removed for fear that he is close to the governor, or not doing what he should do. Who is the person causing this insecurity. Those causing this insecurity know themselves. God who brought us here will make us solve the man made problems. If you are changing heads of security like that it must have effect on the entire system he said. He further enjoined the media to report happenings in the state accurately, stressing that stories of killings in the media on the state were exaggerated. I did not say you should report what will favour me, report what you are sure of,, he said. Meantime, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, cancelled a press briefing it had slated for 9am yesterday. No reason was given. Many highly-placed Nigerians, including a few ex-governors and money laundering fronts, have fled from Dubai to Singapore, Casablanca in ... Many highly-placed Nigerians, including a few ex-governors and money laundering fronts, have fled from Dubai to Singapore, Casablanca in Morocco, Dominican Republic and some islands in the UK and in the Caribbean for fear of being arrested.From the trip so far, many big Nigerians have already ran away from Dubai to escape being arrested by the UAE authorities. a security official said.Some of the ex-governors have also avoided visiting UAE until the coast is clear. They do not want to experience the same fate like ex-Governor James Ibori.The frequency at which highly-placed Nigerians fly to Dubai for parties has considerably reduced because they are under watch by the UAE authorities. By Ernies Sophia, For most women in Nigeria who are beyond the age of menopause, some days are just not lovely considering the bloatin... By Ernies Sophia,For most women in Nigeria who are beyond the age of menopause, some days are just not lovely considering the bloating, cramps, fatigue and discomfort that come with menstrual period.People take any of these women who may want to take excuse from work weaklings, including other women because it is erroneously believed that it is a no big deal to have painful period. Taking painkillers has become the common advice for these women, who show up at work unable to be effective and efficient in workplaces.But, this is not so in some East Asian countries that gives their women menstrual leave to rest and come back as better workers.In Nigeria, a common gender equality bill was treated as a taboo the first time it came to the lawmakers.Do we say that menstrual leave for Nigerian women may be an impossible dream? Not at all!The menstrual cycles have become a source of myths, jokes and legends over the years that we have failed to take it serious.The Gender Equality Bill that may be re-introduced to the lawmakers is not a battle of the sexes; it is not a bill that removes the submissiveness of women to their husbands neither is it a bill that seeks to erode the responsibility of the woman in her home.It is a bill that benefits the man even more than the woman. If it can be passed, menstrual leave may not be an impossible feat. What a lot of us may not realize is that women are not at their best to produce great results during menstrual pain.The reason why we do not take menstrual period important is simply because the men who make the law are not aware of what the women pass through during this period.A lot of women are scared of appearing weak in their workplaces or complaining of menstrual period and its associated health challenges because they do not want to lose their work to another lady who may pretend stronger.Today, countries are moving toward greater gender equality in their workplaces with bills passed and even a menstrual leave payment has been initiated so that the women can have money to buy drugs and sanitation pads.It is so sad that in Nigerian companies that are dominated by women are not willing to listen to their own complaints about painful cramps due to menstrual period.Japan has an exceptional support for their women. According to the 1947 Labor Standards Law, any women suffering from painful periods or whose job might exacerbate period pain are allowed seirikyuuka (literally physiological leave). The law is a symbol for womens emancipation. It represented their ability to speak openly about their bodies, and to gain social recognition for their role as workers.Nigeria is not the only country that is not fair on women equality. Once upon a time, a Russian lawmaker proposed that women should be give two days off each month, saying During that period (of menstruation), most women experience psychological and physiological discomfort.The pain for the fair sex is often so intense that it is necessary to call an ambulance Strong pain induces heightened fatigue, reduces memory and work-competence and leads to colorful expressions of emotional discomfort.However, this was rejected by Russian feminists. Some women are not even ready to accommodate such leave for themselves. It is not surprising because some women are not really affected by their menstrual period. If Nigerian women are allowed a menstrual leave even if it is a day, there is a higher tendency that they would come back stronger and better female workers in their place of works. Doyin Okupe, former Senior Special Assistant on Public Affairs to former President Goodluck Jonathan has called on the government to stop... Doyin Okupe, former Senior Special Assistant on Public Affairs to former President Goodluck Jonathan has called on the government to stop using members of the National Youth Service Corps, NYSC for election duties.Okupe said All principal participants must accept responsibility for this intolerable acts of savagery. By all principals I mean the PDP, APC and their leaderships, the INEC, and the entire gamut of our security agencies.''In 2016, the wanton destruction of lives and properties that accompany our elections in varying degrees is no longer excusable. The frequent deaths of citizens, electoral officials, members of the security forces has assumed highly barbaric proportions. Of particular importance is the reported death of innocent Youth corpers.''As a Nigerian parent whose children will still go through this national calling, I cease this opportunity to call on other Nigerian parents and well-meaning Nigerians to prevail on INEC to stop with immediate effect the deployment of our children for electoral services. We can no longer bear the pain of losing our wards to mindless acts of lawlessness by thugs and hooligans acting for and on behalf of reckless, desperate and irresponsible politicians and power mongers. The Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria in Kaduna State has described the controversial Religious Preaching Bill, currently before the Kadu... The Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria in Kaduna State has described the controversial Religious Preaching Bill, currently before the Kaduna State House of Assembly, as obnoxious.Taking away our rights to preach and evangelise is telling us not to practise our religion as we are commanded by the Lord Jesus, the PFNs Chairman in the state, Prof. Femi Ehimidu, said at a press conference at the Household of Love Church, Sabo-Tasha in Kaduna on Monday.The state governments team, led by the deputy governor, Yusuf Bala, had told a delegation of the state chapter of the Christian Association of Nigeria that the bill, when passed into law, would curb religious extremism and hate speech.But Ehimidu said the bill must be killed before being passed into law as according to him, it harbours the latent explosives to set the state on fire.He said the bill was unacceptable to the Pentecostal Christians in the state, declaring that the religious body (PFN) would do everything possible to resist the bill becoming a law.The PFN boss, however, ruled out any mass action against the government on the controversial matter.Ehimidu noted that the bill was not only obnoxious but directly offended the Christian faith.According to the chairman, the bill is completely against the nations constitution, the rights of Christians to practise their religion and should be jettisoned.The cleric feared that with the bill, El-Rufai had opened another vista of hostilities between the Christians and the Muslims in the face of discriminatory implementation of the proposed law.He said it was unimaginable for El-Rufai to exhume a military edit, which came into being when the constitution was suspended, arguing that it smacks of mischief.The PFN called on well-meaning Nigerians to prevail on the governor to withdraw the controversial bill currently before the state House of Assembly.Ehimidu added, We do not see any reason why restricting and regulating religious activities should be the government of Kaduna States priority when the issue prevailing in the state currently for every family is how to put food on the table.Even the Nigerian constitution guarantees the freedom of worship and our rights to propagate our religious beliefs. The Kaduna State Government is not wiser than the whole lot of eminent Nigerians who gave the nation the constitution. President Muhammadu Buhari has joined leaders across Europe and the rest of the world in condemning the atrocious terrorist attacks at t... World leaders have expressed concern over multiple blasts that rocked Brussels airport and metro station on Tuesday morning, killing no f... World leaders have expressed concern over multiple blasts that rocked Brussels airport and metro station on Tuesday morning, killing no fewer than 22 people.Two blasts hit Brussels airport and another hit a metro station close to the European Union headquarters.- President Muhammadu Buhari joins leaders across Europe and the rest of the world in condemning the atrocious terrorist attacks on the Zaventem Airport and Maalbeek Metro Station in Brussels earlier today. He commiserates with Prime Minister Charles Michel and Belgians over the loss of over 30 lives in the attacks.- President Barack Obama said: Brussels attacks a reminder that world must unite in fighting terrorism.- British Prime Minister, David Cameron, in London expressed displeasure at the blasts and promised that Britain would do everything they could to help.- Russian President, Vladimir Putin, strongly condemned the explosions in Brussels and assured the Belgian people of solidarity in times of difficulty.Kremlin spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said Putin has already sent and expressed condolences to Belgium in connection with the death of civilians in a series of explosions in Brussels.- Swedish Prime Minister, Stefan Lofven, also described the blasts as an attack against European democracy.He said in a statement we will never accept that terrorists attack our open societies.- Danish Prime Minister, Lars Loekke Rasmussen, also denounced the explosions as a despicable attack, saying that his thoughts were with the victims and their families.The chief of the NATO military alliance, whose headquarters are about 5 kilometres away from the Brussels airport, said the killings were an attack on our values and on our open societies.- NATO Secretary General, Jens Stoltenberg, said in a statement that terrorism would not defeat democracy and take away the freedoms.He said the NATO headquarters security alert has also been increased.- French President, Francois Hollande, held an emergency meeting with top ministers, including Prime Minister Manuel Valls and Defence Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian.We are faced with a global threat.The war against terrorism must be conducted across Europe, he said. A media outlet recently released a video of Azubuike Wonjoku, a candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC for the House of Assembly... A media outlet recently released a video of Azubuike Wonjoku, a candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC for the House of Assembly in Rivers State demanding a refund from an unidentified electoral officer.Wonjoku reportedly stormed the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) collation centre to confront the INEC staff. "Where is my money? Where is my N12m? He shouted at the INEC staff.Wonjoku contested for a seat in state assembly in Ikwerre Local Government Area.See the video below: Following the violence that occasioned the Rivers state rerun elections, the United States of America embassy has issued a statement. Following the violence that occasioned the Rivers state rerun elections, the United States of America embassy has issued a statement.The US embassy condemned the violence and irregularities that marred the election, expressing the country's dissatisfaction with the way things turned out at the polls on Saturday.The statement reads, ''The U.S. Embassy is concerned about reports of violence, including the possible targeting of electoral officials and irregularities during re-run elections in Rivers state on March 19, 2016.We condemn the use of violence and disruptions of the democratic process. We call upon the leadership of Nigerias political parties to urge their supporters to conduct themselves peacefully throughout the electoral process.We call on those dissatisfied to pursue a resolution of their grievances peacefully in accordance with the rule of law. The vultures are circling yet I am not disturbed because they cannot eat my flesh. The wolves are howling yet I shall not retreat becaus... The vultures are circling yet I am not disturbed because they cannot eat my flesh. The wolves are howling yet I shall not retreat because they cannot crush my bones. The bullies are threatening yet I shall not bow because they cannot break my spirit or conquer my soul. The demons are baying yet I shall not fear because they cannot drink my blood. The liars are lying yet I shall not be deterred for I know the Ancient of Days, the mighty God that I serve.The foxes are plotting yet I shall not be moved and I shall treat them with the contempt and disdain that they deserve. The snakes are hissing yet I am not perturbed knowing that their poison and hate cannot overwhelm or blind me. The dogs are barking yet I continue to rejoice, knowing that lions do not tremble at the bark of an accursed mongrel.The Accuser of the Brethren has begun his devlish work of slander yet I shall lose no sleep, knowing that in the end truth always prevails. There is evil in the land and the ravenous beasts of our dark forest are roaring, yet I shall not run.As always, I shall stand and I shall fight. As always I will speak against the persecution of the innocent and the cruelty and injustice of the wicked. As always I will resist the hidden agenda to violate our nations secularity and to Islamise our nation.As always I shall preach the equality of all men and the humanity of all souls. As always I will stand against the enthronement and the empowerment of bloodthirsty and evil men. As always I shall stand against the terrorists and jihadists in our midst who have wrought destruction on our nation and who have shattered the lives of so many.As always I shall speak up for the oppressed, the voiceless, the weak, the vulnerable, the misrepresented, the hated and the despised. As always I will resist the cruelty that has been inflicted upon the unlawful captive and those who have been subjected to an unconstitutional, unlawful and indefinite detention.As always I shall speak against the violation of court orders and the intimidation and humiliation of the Judiciary. As always I shall oppose a foreign policy that turns our nation into a shadow of her once glorious past and nothing more than an appendage of the Salifists and Wahabbists of Saudi Arabia and Qatar.As always I will speak out against violence, genocide, ethnic cleansing and all crimes against humanity. As always I shall speak up for the vulnerable, the weak, the less privilaged and the deprived. As always I shall stand against the tyrants and despots that use their position of power and privilage to destroy the lives of others.As always I shall stand against state-sponsored murder and politically-inspired and selective criminal prosecutions.As always I shall speak the bitter truth and voice my support for the self-determination and the liberation of the oppressed ethnic nationalities of Nigeria, including those of the Middle Belt, the south-east and the south-south.As always I will resist those that abduct our citizens, commit rape, indulge in mass murder and that torment our people with their satanic hordes and demonic herds all in an attempt to subjugate and conquer us and impose their will.As always I will oppose pedophelia, child rape and the abduction, enslavement and forced islamisation of little girls in distant lands and sinister palaces. As always I will fight a good fight and stand for truth. As always I will stand against the licensing of Churches and the violation of our constitutionally-guaranteed religious freedoms. As always I will stand against those who ban prayers in our schools. As always I will gladly offer my very life as a living sacrifice for my faith and I will defend the honor and dignity of Christianity wherever I go.No matter what they say or do, as long as God gives me life, I shall never be silenced. I shall fulfill my destiny because His love will see me through and it will nullify their evil projections and manifest hate. The vultures are circling yet I am not disturbed because they cannot eat my flesh. In my case they say it is personal and that they have a score to settle. They say that they have been told by their idol and their little god to punish me ruthlessly for my insolence and to give me hell.Others have tried before and I saw their end. I await them: let the God that answers by fire, let Him be my God. In the meantime I count it all as joy, for in the end my innocence shall speak for me and I shall prevail. Until then let them be rest assured of one thing: I have no fear because the Lord is with me. I make my boast in Him and none other.Without Him I am nothing but with Him I am everything. No matter how long it takes He will never abandon me because I have done absolutely nothing wrong. As long as Jesus is on the throne He will preserve my life and I shall fulfill the purpose for which He gave it to me.They shall not thwart that purpose, they shall not break me, they shall not destroy me and neither shall they have their wicked way with me. They shall fall into the pit that they have dug for me themselves and their end shall be bitter. The bible says He suffered no man to do them wrong. He reproved kings for their sake saying touch not my anointed and do my prophets no harm . They seek to touch the anointed of the Lord: let us put Gods word to the test. The two leading candidates for the US presidency did not come face to face, but they still managed to trade insults on CNN early this mo... The two leading candidates for the US presidency did not come face to face, but they still managed to trade insults on CNN early this morning,reports.Hillary Clinton, the Democratic favourite, launched her most direct attack yet on Donald Trump, accusing him of bigotry and bluster and bullying and inciting violence at his campaign rallies.The Republican frontrunner, meanwhile, renewed his claim that Clinton lacked the stamina and strength needed for the presidency, while also fending off charges of sexism ahead of the latest round of primary voting on Tuesday.Clinton and Trumps attacks were lobbed during a CNN event featuring all five remaining presidential candidates from both parties. They did not directly debate each other, rather they were interviewed by CNN stalwarts Anderson Cooper and Wolf Blitzer.Trumps principal rival for the nomination, Texas senator Ted Cruz, used the platform to argue that although he understands why people are supporting Trump, his entire campaign is built on a lie.The lie behind Donalds campaign is that he will stand up to Washington. He is the system. Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are flip sides of the same coin. Donald Trump has made billions buying influence in Washington. Hillary Clinton has made millions selling influence in Washington.Protesters blocked a Trump rally in Arizona, where Tuesday there are Republican and Democratic caucuses, in addition to Utah caucuses and Idahos primaryCruz predicted that he and not a surprise establishment candidate would beat Trump in a head-to-head battle if the Republican convention were to be contested.Clinton, who had earlier criticised Trump in a speech to Aipac, a pro-Israel lobby organisation, was even more specific in an interview with Cooper. I think its important to listen to what he says, she said. You have to take him at his word so to speak. He has been engaging in bigotry and bluster and bullying.And I think when it comes to understanding what he would do as president there are serious questions that have been raised in this campaign. Should he be the nominee well have to address them.Like Trumps Republican rivals, Clinton is regarded as a conventional politician who in a general election would have to devise a winning strategy against the maverick who thrives on his anti-establishment candidacy.Asked by Cooper if she believes Trump really is a bully, Clinton replied: Well, I think his behaviour certainly qualifies for that. I think his incitement of violence, his constant urging on of his supporters in large numbers to go after protesters, his saying I want to punch people in the face and telling somebody who did punch somebody I will pay your legal bills I think that raises very serious questions.She itemised some of Trumps problematic statements from the past few months, ranging from calling Mexican immigrants rapists and criminals, saying John McCain was not a war hero, being reluctant to denounce the Ku Klux Klan and David Duke. And the list goes on.Likewise Trump, who has prospered by attaching labels to his rivals, offered a clue to his potential line of attack against Clinton. He told Blitzer: I think she doesnt have the stamina. You watch her life. You watch how shell go away three or four days; shell come back.He added: Look, weve got to beat China in trade. Weve got to beat Isis. Weve got so many problems in this country; I say she does not have the stamina to be a good president ... doesnt have the energy, she doesnt have it. Doesnt have the strength to be president, in my opinion.During the interview with Blitzer, Trump was confronted with a recent TV advert from a Republican Super Pac in which women repeat some of his most outlandishly sexist comments including: A person who is very flat-chested is very hard to be a 10; Id look her right in that fat, ugly face of hers; Look at that face. Would anyone vote for that?; I like kids. I mean, I wont do anything to take care of them. Ill supply funds, and shell take care of the kids.After playing the clip, Blitzer asked Trump: Has your language come back to haunt you?No. I think people understand, Trump said. First of all, half of that was show business. The dropping to the knees, that was in The Apprentice. The Rosie ODonnell stuff. But I think people understand. Look, these politicians, I know them. They say far worse when theyre in closed doors or where theyre with a group of people that they trust.But thats not how you feel about women in those words?, Blitzer pressed.Trump replied: Of course not. Nobody respects women more than I do. Nobody takes care of the women and they take care of me because they do such a great job.Trump also defended his persistent attacks on Fox News presenter Megyn Kelly. Every night, the show, its like an infomercial, always negative stuff, always negative stuff, always. Not fair. So I will fight back with Twitter. I will let people know shes a third rate talent. I will say what I have to say, its very simple. But its not fair that she you know, let her not talk about me. And by the way, seriously, if she didnt talk about me, her ratings would go down like a rock.On a day when Trumps foreign policy credentials were under the spotlight at the Aipac conference in Washington, he said the US should rethink its involvement in Nato more than two decades after the end of the cold war. Its costing us too much money, and frankly, they have to put up more money, he said in remarks likely to raise eyebrows in Europe. Theyre going to have to put some up also.Were paying disproportionately, its too much, and frankly, its a different world than it was when we originally conceived of the idea and everybody got together. Were taking care of, as an example, the Ukraine. I mean, the countries over there dont seem to be so interested. Were the ones taking the brunt of it. So I think we have to reconsider keep Nato but maybe we have to pay a lot less toward the Nato itself.Republican primaries will be held in Arizona and Utah on Tuesday, and Trump, who is facing the possibility of the first contested convention in decades, insisted that it does not matter if he falls short of the 1,237 delegates needed to clinch the Republican nomination on the first ballot.Referring to past comments that an attempt to deny him the prize could lead to riots, Blitzer asked: Will you unequivocally say to your supporters, you dont want any violence, you dont want any riots at the convention?Trump answered: Of course I would, 100%. But I have no control over the people ... Wolf, these people have been disenfranchised. They lost their jobs. They make less money now than they made 12 years ago. .They see their jobs going to Japan and to China and to Mexico. Mexico, forget it, its the new China. You know what, theyre very theyre not by nature angry people, but I will tell you, right now theyre angry people.Cruz said that he understood why people were supporting Trump, since they were fed up with Washington but insisted that his rival had long been enmeshed in the corruption of Washington.Cruz insisted that he could achieve the 1,237-delegate target but acknowledged that he and Trump might both fall short. And if that happens, then the convention is going to decide, he said. Now theyre not going to do what people in the fevered swamps of Washington want, which is bring in a white horse who wasnt on the ballot, who wasnt running. Thats not going to happen.The delegates are going to decide between Donald and me. And if we go in with a bunch of delegates each, I believe we win that and we win that by earning the support of the delegates elected through the democratic process.Meanwhile, John Kasich, the governor of Ohio, who is trailing in third, gave no hint of dropping out. I dont think anybodys going to have enough delegates to win the nomination before the convention, he said. Delegates are gonna think about two things: who can win? Im the only one who can win in a general election. And number two: who can be president?He ruled out becoming Trump or Cruzs running mate. Theres zero chance I would be vice-president for either of them: zero. Less than zero.Despite the media reports in Washington suggesting that Democratic senators are gently leaning on Bernie Sanders to quit the race against Clinton, Sanders insisted: I think we have a road a narrow road but a road to victory. Were going to drive up the voter turnout in November no matter who the nominee is.I am not a quitter we are gonna fight this to the last vote, Sanders said, appearing on CNN via a videolink.Sanders also took a swipe at Clinton as the candidate of the establishment, adding: She has the support of public officials across America. What is also clear is that we are running an insurgent campaign across the country.I think as people look at our records, how we raise money, what our views are on income and wealth inequality, that is Bernie Sanders, and that is why we are creating so much excitement at the grassroots level. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has explained why he helped Goodluck Jonathan become President of Nigeria in 2011. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo has explained why he helped Goodluck Jonathan become President of Nigeria in 2011.Speaking during an interview session Obasanjo said, ''I believe that Nigeria politics will be strengthened even more if we have the opportunity to allow the minority in its own right to emerge as President, and I do not have any apology for anybody because the purpose I wanted Nigeria to achieve had been achieved. That any Nigerian can become president, it is not a regret for Nigeria and for me because Nigeria gave him that opportunity, he used, abused, misused as he wished and at the appropriate time, Nigerians said thank you for what you have done and what you have not done and Nigeria said bye bye, which is the beauty of democracy''. 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. 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. Any mention of the state of Utah in a national political story seems to be preceded by descriptions of its voter tendencies, such as deep-red or very conservative. The states Republican party, however, is far from conservative as it embarks today on what appears to be the most widespread of use of online voting for political office to date in the United States. GOP voters in Utah will be able cast ballots in the states presidential caucus in a watershed moment party officials hope will increase turnout beyond the traditional in-person caucus system. Were using big, bold words for a reason. If the online system being pioneered in Utah works, American elections could see a dramatic uptick in participation, which would be a huge turning point to making democracy the will of a larger subset of the population. If problems plague online voting, it will send a message that massive improvements will need to be made before officials roll out online voting again. Not surprisingly, Republican leaders in Utah have admitted that theres an element of risk to this trial including that the false suggestion of fraud or hacking could dampen this experiment. Utahs system, with its registration requirement and 30-character PIN, seems to allay any concerns. Obviously security is of the utmost importance, given the vital nature of the vote in American democracy. But those fears cant be allowed to derail what could be a pivotal time in this countrys election history. Such risk exists in anything for which we enter our personal information online these days, from banking to registering for a drivers license. Just a decade ago, these and many of the other things we now do with regularity and without second thought would have caused mass trepidation from most Americans. Regardless, online voting will become a part of the American democratic process at some point or another, as it has in some European nations. Any effort that will create an increase voter turnout is a benefit to the sometimes-fleeting notion of a government of the people, by the people, for the people. Some corners of Iowa, including one in Fremont County, had nobody attend a handful of precinct caucuses. In response, local party leaders expressed concern about the age of potential voters and access to the polls. If expanded to Iowa, which has one of the largest and fastest-growing percentages of elderly residents, online voting would offer real promise. Well be closely watching the results from Utah tonight. If things go off without a hitch, other states and municipal governments should strongly consider adding online voting as an option. So long as you can still get the same I voted sticker as those who physically cast ballots, of course. 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. Letter: Compromise not the best answer for St. Joes This is with respect to the recent Northern Life article in which it was reported that a compromise, middle of the road, solution had been reached by the Community Services Committee of the city with regards to use of the former St. Letters to the editor should be exclusive to Northern Life. Include name, address and daytime phone number. Keep letters under 300 words. Letters may be edited for length and clarity. E-mail: editor@northernlife.ca. This is with respect to the recent Northern Life article in which it was reported that a compromise, middle of the road, solution had been reached by the Community Services Committee of the city with regards to use of the former St. Joes parking lot. The option approved by a 3-2 vote would see only 100 spaces remain of the more than 300 current spaces at an estimated cost of $900,000. This amounts to a cost of about $9,000 per parking space much greater than the option of maintaining 200 parking spaces for approximately $700,000 or a cost of about $3,500 per space. Both options include regreening and/or enhancing the remaining space, provision of handicapped access to Bell Park from the parking area and storm water treatment of runoff from the parking space before discharge to Ramsey Lake. The local chapter of the Canadian Association of Retired Persons (CARP) has recommended the preservation of the maximum number of parking spaces due to the location of this already valuable paved parking area with controlled traffic light access off of Paris Street on the park side. As the lot will likely not be used in the winter, thereby, reducing the incidence of salt contamination and as storm water control will be part of the project, this will be the only parking around the lake, on lots now existing and on streets surrounding the park to be environmentally friendly with storm surface water runoff control. We hope that this decision by the Community Services Committee will be revisited by the full council and consideration of the more useful and economical 200 parking space choice for the benefit of resident and out of city visitors to the park and citizen taxpayers. Hugh Kuzel Chair, CARP Sudbury Sometimes ordinary people can make a big difference when responding to disasters that draw the world's attention. Sometimes ordinary people can make a big difference when responding to disasters that draw the world's attention. That's the conclusion Suzanne Bernier draws in her book Disaster Heroes, which tells 10 stories about ordinary people who helped rebuild their communities and save lives when faced with great challenges. There are thousands of amazing stories that the public never gets to hear, said Bernier. After nearly 20 years as a crisis management consultant Bernier has gotten to hear many stories of people responding to disasters, ranging from Hurricane Katrina to the 1998 Ice Storm of the Century in Eastern Canada. Bernier, who started her career as a radio reporter in Sudbury, will be at Cambrian College on Wednesday evening with one of the disaster heroes she profiles in her book. Brandon Fisher, the president and CEO of American mining supply company Center Rock, will join Bernier at the eDome stage, where he will talk about his role in the famous rescue of 33 Chilean miners in 2010. The only reason those 33 men are alive today, is because of that gentleman Brandon Fisher, from America, Bernier said. After the Chilean government's initial attempts to rescue the miners failed, Fisher, who had watched the drama play out on the news, decided to volunteer his services. His company designed a drill he said could reach the miners in half the time of any other solution. And he succeeded. Thirty-three miners at a mine in Copiapo, Chile, were trapped underground from Aug. 5, 2010, until Oct. 13, 2010, when they were all brought safety to surface thanks, in part, to Fisher's drill. Bernier holds Fisher, and those like him, in high esteem. In my opinion, our children should be looking up to these people, she said. The free talk starts at 7 p.m. Wednesday. Registration for the eDome is now full, but Cambrian has made space available in the Cambrian amphitheatre where it will livestream the event. Bernier will have copies of Disaster Heroes available for sale. The Sudbury Catholic District School Board is planning an accommodation review of its schools in the Valley East and Chelmsford areas. The Sudbury Catholic District School Board is planning an accommodation review of its schools in the Valley East and Chelmsford areas. Trustees with the board approved a staff report on the board's long-term accommodation plan last month, which made the recommendation to conduct the review during the 2016-2017 school year. Schools on the list include Bishop Alexander Carter Catholic Secondary School, St. Anne Catholic Elementary School, Immaculate Conception Catholic Elementary School and St. Charles Catholic Elementary School. Accommodation reviews involve an often-controversial process where school boards seek public input on reducing surplus space in schools. They sometimes result in school closures and the building of new schools. That's certainly been the case for Sudbury Catholic in other areas of the city over the past decade. They've closed several elementary schools and built two new ones, including Holy Cross Catholic Elementary School and Holy Trinity Catholic Elementary School. Grade 7 and 8 students are, in some cases, now attending classes at two of the board's high schools St. Benedict Catholic Secondary School and St. Charles Catholic Secondary School. Because of changes to the accommodation review process made by the province last year, the review won't start until the new school year, said the board's chair, Michael Bellmore. Staff will come back to trustees with more recommendations on a timeline for the accommodation review at a future meeting, he said. Staff has identified this as an area that is due for an ARC (accommodation review committee), he said. We haven't had an ARC in that area for awhile. We have some underutilization and some aging schools out there, and we want to ensure that we're maximizing the full potential of our schools. The utilization rate of the above-mentioned schools range from 56 per cent at Bishop Alexander to 94 per cent at St. Charles elementary. Enrolment levels in this planning areas are projected to increase slightly over the next 10 years, the board report said. But this is not enough to make a significant impact on the utilization of Bishop Alexander, which is expected to remain fairly low. The report said the board should also assess what the future impact may be of having all the schools in excess of 50 years old, and the cost of repairs that will need to be done over the next 10 years. This is an ongoing process that every board engages in on a regular basis, Bellmore said. Agreement smooths path to LU degree for Canadore students Canadore College has signed an articulation agreement with the University of Sudbury and Laurentian University to encourage its early childhood education students to complete their degree in French. Laurentian University has hired a full-time entrepreneurship co-ordinator who will build and implement a program to foster an entrepreneurial culture across Sudbury's three post-secondary institutions, in collaboration with NORCAT's Innovation Mill. File photo. Canadore College has signed an articulation agreement with the University of Sudbury and Laurentian University to encourage its early childhood education students to complete their degree in French. After successfully completing a two-year Ontario college diploma, students are eligible to transfer into Laurentian Universitys Bachelor of Arts in Folklore et ethnologie three year program delivered by the University of Sudbury. This is a tremendous opportunity for our students and graduates, said Brandy Champagne, program co-ordinator for Canadores ECE program, in a press release. The early education field is changing rapidly, and justly so, more emphasis is being put on matching a holistic approach to the stages of child development. Being knowledgeable in culture, traditions and customs creates a benchmark for greater meaningful education tailored to each individual. In this five-year renewable agreement, institutions are collaboratively committed to encouraging excellence in learning, providing training opportunities, improving access to post-secondary education program in French and mobility between the institutions, the press release said. College students will be able to complete their university degree within two years, dependent on the grade point average theyve achieved in their diploma program. They are also eligible to enroll in part-time courses at the University of Sudbury or Laurentian at the same time as their studies at Canadore College to accelerate the process of earning the degree. It is important to continue to expand the possibilities and various pathways a student can access to pursue their post-secondary education, said Sylvie Renault, registrar at the University of Sudbury. We are pleased to partner with Canadore College in our endeavours. The articulation agreement framework takes immediate effect, and students can begin taking advantage of transferring between institutions in fall 2016. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has issued the following statement after learning of a number of terrorist attacks in Brussels, Belgium that killed 31 people and wounded 187. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has issued the following statement after learning of a number of terrorist attacks in Brussels, Belgium that killed 31 people and wounded 187.I am outraged and deeply saddened by the news that so many have been killed and injured in terrorist attacks targeting the people of Brussels, Belgium, the statement reads. Sophie and I join all Canadians in extending our deepest condolences to the families and friends of those killed. We also hope for a fast recovery to all those who have been injured.Canada stands by Belgium in this difficult time and has offered all possible assistance. We will continue to work closely with our allies and the international community to help fight and prevent terrorism here and abroad, and to bring to justice those who are responsible for planning and carrying out these senseless acts.Canadians mourn the loss of so many innocent victims. Our thoughts and prayers are with the people of Belgium.Canadian citizens in Brussels requiring emergency consular assistance should contact the Embassy of Canada in Brussels at 32 (2) 741-0611 or call Global Affairs Canadas 24/7 Emergency Watch and Response Centre collect at +1 613 996 8885 or at +1 800 387 3124. An email can also be sent to sos@international.gc.ca Friends and relatives in Canada of Canadian citizens known to be in the area can contact Global Affairs Canadas 24/7 Emergency Watch and Response Centre by calling 613-996-8885 or 1-800-387-3124, or by sending an email to sos@international.gc.ca . Canada Reads-winning author to speak in Sudbury Vancouver-based writer, author and playwright Carmen Aguirre discusses her new memoir, "Mexican Hooker #1 and My Other Roles Since the Revolution," as the guest speaker at Celebrate Women on April 13. Hear writer Carmen Aguirre speak at an event at Laurentian University April 13. Supplied photo. Vancouver-based writer, author and playwright Carmen Aguirre discusses her new memoir, "Mexican Hooker #1 and My Other Roles Since the Revolution," as the guest speaker at Celebrate Women on April 13. Aguirre speaks about her experiences as a refugee, revolutionary and childhood rape survivor, as well as her eventual healing from PTSD on her journey to becoming an artist. Her first book, "Something Fierce," was a No. 1 national bestseller and won Canada Reads in 2012. The event takes place starting at 7:30 p.m. at Laurentian University's Fraser Auditorium. A reception and book signing to follow. Tickets are $10, and are available at Gloria's and Apollo restaurants, the LU bookstore and at the door. The event is put on by the Canadian Federation of University Women Sudbury, YWCA and the Women's Legal Education and Action Fund (LEAF). Funds raised support services and scholarships for women. Updated at 1:56 p.m.: KGHM International confirmed Tuesday it has eliminated 20 positions at its Victoria project in Sudbury, and suspended some contracts. Updated at 1:56 p.m.: KGHM International confirmed Tuesday it has eliminated 20 positions at its Victoria project in Sudbury, and suspended some contracts. As a result of the decision to revise the Victoria projects schedule due to the unfavourable macroeconomic situation on the metals market, the decision was made in March to optimize the employment structure of the Victoria project to adapt it to the projects tasks which are planned in 2016, said KGHM spokesperson Galina Meleger, in an email to NorthernLife.ca. This process will enable the project to optimize its activities in 2016 and at the same time will ensure maximum organizational cost efficiency. Original story KGHM International is expected to provide an update on its Victoria Mine project in Sudbury later today, said a company representative. NorthernLife.ca received emails last week from sources close to the mine that as many as 50 workers involved with the project have been laid off, and the company is shutting down a good chunk of the operation. After numerous calls the Polish miner would neither confirm nor deny reports of layoffs at the mine site. In its consolidated annual report, issued Friday, March 18, 2016, the company said about the Victoria Mine project: Due to the current macroeconomic situation, the Management Board of KGHM Polska Miedz S.A. decided to modify the adopted schedule for the project. The mining company (formerly FNX) signaled in its consolidated annual report it intends to reduce its copper production in the next year. KGHM posted a loss of US $1.3 billion at the group level in 2015. The past year was a period of increasing challenges on the international commodities market, KGHM board president Krzysztof Skora said in a note to investors. These challenges were largely due to falling commodities prices caused by unfavourable macroeconomic conditions. Also of significance was, among others, the economic slowdown in China and the record low oil prices. In an email to Northern Life.ca Myles Sullivan, area co-ordinator with the United Steelworkers Local 2020, said there have been no layoffs that have affected United Steelworkers members with the company. While the United Steelworkers represent workers at the majority of KGHM's Sudbury operations, they do not represent employees with the Victoria project. In February 2015 Trevor Eagles, KGHM's manager of engineering in Sudbury, said the Victoria project was on schedule to complete a mining shaft by 2019. In 2014 KGHM completed timbering at the site, located about two kilometres south of the historic Victoria Mine, which was first developed in the 1890s and then closed in the 1920s. The former Inco reopened the mine in the 1970s, and made a deal with KGHM's predecessor, FNX, in 2002, to take control. A long and thin ore body about 50 kilometres long was discovered in 2010, which the company wanted to bring into production. The company has reported measured, indicated and inferred mineral resources at the Victoria site are estimated at 13.6 million tonnes of ore, with average grade of 2.6 per cent copper, 2.7 per cent nickel and 8.3 grams per tonne of associated metals. KGHM has gone back and forth on whether it should build one or two shafts at the site. In October 2015 KGHM put its McCreedy West nickel mine in Levack into care and maintenance. The mine's closure displaced 25 United Steelworkers members, who could apply for jobs at the nearby Morrison Mine also part of the Levack complex but would in turn displace workers there with less seniority. In addition to layoffs at the McCreedy West Mine, 15 workers at Morrison also lost their jobs. NorthernLife.ca will provide more information as this story develops. Paul Carter and Sione Mata'utia have elected to challenge their respective charges from Round 3 at the NRL judiciary on Wednesday night. Carter (grade one dangerous contact - other) has pleaded not guilty but will challenge the grading of his charge, while Mata'utia (dangerous throw) has pleaded not guilty. The pair will also be joined by Raiders centre Joey Leilua at Rugby League Central, who has pleaded not guilty to a contrary conduct charge from Round 2 but was already suspended for a separate incident in Round 3. Penrith's Jeremy Latimore (grade one dangerous contact) and Wests Tigers' Chris Lawrence (grade one dangerous throw) will both miss Round 4 of the NRL Telstra Premiership after entering an early guilty plea for their charges. Parramatta's Kieran Foran (grade one contact with match official), Penrith's Sam McKendry (grade one careless high tackle) and South Sydney's Kirisome Auva'a (grade one dangerous contact) will all escape suspension after also entering early pleas. Manly pair Martin Taupau and Brenton Lawrence have until 12pm AEDT on Wednesday to enter their pleas. BRUSSELS Islamic extremists struck Tuesday in the heart of Europe, killing at least 34 people and wounding scores of others in back-to-back bombings of the Brussels airport and subway that again laid bare the continent's vulnerability to suicide squads. Bloodied and dazed travelers staggered from the airport after two explosions at least one blamed on a suicide attacker and another apparently on a suitcase bomb tore through crowds checking in for morning flights. About 40 minutes later, another rush-hour blast ripped through a subway car in central Brussels as it left the Maelbeek station, in the heart of the European Union's capital city. Authorities released a photo taken from closed-circuit TV footage of three men pushing luggage carts in the airport, saying two of them apparently were suicide bombers and that the third dressed in a light-colored coat, black hat and glasses was at large. They urged the public to reach out to police if they recognized him. The two men believed to be the suicide attackers apparently were wearing dark gloves on their left hands, possibly to hide detonators. In police raids Tuesday across Belgium, authorities later found a nail-filled bomb, chemical products and an Islamic State flag in a house in the Schaerbeek neighborhood, the state prosecutors' office said in a statement. In its claim of responsibility, the Islamic State group said its members detonated suicide vests both at the airport and in the subway, where many passengers fled to safety down dark tunnels filled with hazy smoke from the explosion. A small child wailed, and commuters used cell phones to light their way out. European security officials have been bracing for a major attack for weeks and warned that IS was actively preparing to strike. The arrest Friday of Salah Abdeslam, a key suspect in the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris, heightened those fears, as investigators said many more people were involved than originally thought and that some are still on the loose. "In this time of tragedy, this black moment for our country, I appeal to everyone to remain calm but also to show solidarity," said Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel, who announced three days of mourning in his country's deadliest terror strike. "Last year it was Paris. Today it is Brussels. It's the same attacks," said French President Francois Hollande. Shockwaves from the attacks crossed Europe and the Atlantic, prompting heightened security at airports and other sites. Belgium raised its terror alert to the highest level, shut the airport through Wednesday and ordered a city-wide lockdown, deploying about 500 soldiers onto Brussels' largely empty streets to bolster police checkpoints. France and Belgium both reinforced border security. Justice ministers and interior ministers from across the 28-nation EU planned an emergency meeting, possibly Thursday morning, to assess the fallout. The subway blast hit beneath buildings that normally host EU meetings and house the union's top leadership. Medical officials treating the wounded said some victims lost limbs, while others suffered burns or deep gashes from shattered glass or suspected nails packed in with the explosives. Among the most seriously wounded were several children. The bombings came barely four months after suicide attackers based in Brussels' heavily Muslim Molenbeek district slaughtered 130 people at a Paris nightspots, and intelligence agencies had warned for months a follow-up strike was inevitable. Paris fugitive Abdeslam was arrested in Molenbeek. A high-level Belgian judicial official said a connection by Abdeslam to Tuesday's attacks is "a lead to pursue." The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation was ongoing. Abdeslam has told investigators he was planning to "restart something" from Brussels, said Belgian Foreign Minister Didier Reynders. He said Sunday that authorities took the claim seriously because "we found a lot of weapons, heavy weapons in the first investigations and we have seen a new network of people around him in Brussels." While Belgian authorities knew that some kind of extremist act was being prepared in Europe, "we never could have imagined something of this scale," Belgian Interior Minister Jan Jambon said. Officials at the airport in the Brussels suburb of Zaventem said police had discovered a Kalashnikov assault rifle and an explosives-packed vest abandoned at the facility, offering one potential lead for forensic evidence. Bomb disposal experts safely dismantled that explosive device. A U.S. administration official said American intelligence officers were working with their European counterparts to try to identify the apparently skilled bomb-maker or makers involved in the Brussels attacks and to identify any links to the bombs used in Paris. The official, who wasn't authorized to speak publicly on the investigations and demanded anonymity, told The Associated Press that at least one of the bombs at the airport was suspected to have been packed into a suitcase left in the departures hall. Several Americans were among the wounded, including an Air Force lieutenant colonel stationed in the Netherlands, his wife and four children who were at the airport. Mormon church officials, meanwhile, said three of its missionaries from Utah were seriously injured in the blasts and were hospitalized. Three intelligence officials in Iraq told the AP that they had warned European colleagues last month of IS plans to attack airports and trains, although Belgium wasn't specified as a likely target. The officials, who monitor activities in the IS stronghold of Raqqa, Syria, said Brussels may have become a target because of the arrest of Abdeslam. One of the officials all of whom spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk about their knowledge of IS operations said Iraqi intelligence officials believe that three other IS activists remain at large in Brussels and are plotting other suicide-bomb attacks. European leaders already struggling to cope with a wave of migration from the war-torn Middle East said they must rely on better anti-terrorist intelligence work to identify an enemy that wears no uniform and seeks the softest of targets. They emphasized that Europe must remain tolerant toward Muslims as they seek to identify those on the violent extremist fringe. Leaders of the 28-nation EU said in a joint statement that Tuesday's assault on Brussels "only strengthens our resolve to defend European values and tolerance from the attacks of the intolerant." The U.N. lead official for Middle East refugees, Amin Awad, warned that Europe faced an increasing risk of racist retaliation against Muslim immigrant communities. "Any sort of hostilities because of the Brussels attack or Paris attack is misplaced," Awad said. Reflecting the trauma of the moment, Belgian officials offered uncertain casualty totals at both the airport and subway. Police conducted controlled explosions on suspicious abandoned packages that ultimately were found to contain no explosives. The government said at least 11 people were killed at the airport and 20 on the subway, where the bomb hit an enclosed train car. Later, a security official said the overall death toll had risen to 34, without providing a breakdown of where. In the airport, video posted on social media showed people cowering on the ground in the wake of the blasts, the air acrid with smoke, windows of shops and the terminal entrance shattered, and fallen ceiling tiles littering the blood-streaked floor. Some witnesses described hearing two distinct blasts, with shouts apparently in Arabic from at least one attacker before the second, bigger explosion. Zach Mouzoun, who arrived on a flight from Geneva about 10 minutes before the airport blasts, told France's BFM television that pipes ruptured, sending a cascade of water mixing with victims' blood. Marc Noel was about to board a Delta flight to Atlanta. The Belgian native, who lives in Raleigh, North Carolina, said the first blast happened about 50 yards (meters) from him. "People were crying, shouting, children. ... It was a horrible experience," he said. A random decision to pause in a shop to buy a magazine may have saved his life. Otherwise, he said, "I would probably have been in that place when the bomb went off." Anthony Deloos, an airport worker for Swissport, which handles check-in and baggage services, said the first blast took place near the Swissport counters where customers pay for overweight bags. He and a colleague said the second blast struck near a Starbucks cafe. Deloos said a colleague shouted at him to run as the blast sent clouds of shredded paper billowing through the air, and "I jumped into a luggage chute to be safe." Passengers on other trains said many commuters were reading about the airport attacks on their smartphones when they heard the subway blast. Hundreds fled from stopped trains down tunnel tracks to adjacent stations. Many told stories of having missed the bomb by minutes or seconds. Brussels Mayor Yvan Mayeur said more than 100 were wounded in the subway blast. Rescue workers set up makeshift first aid centers in a nearby pub and hotel. "It was panic everywhere. There were a lot of people in the metro," said commuter Alexandre Brans, wiping blood from his face. Political leaders and others around the world expressed their shock at the attacks. "We will do whatever is necessary to support our friend and ally Belgium in bringing to justice those who are responsible," U.S. President Barack Obama said, ordering American flags lowered to half-staff through Saturday. Belgium's king and queen said they were "devastated" by the violence, describing the attacks as "odious and cowardly." After nightfall, Europe's best-known monuments the Eiffel Tower, the Brandenburg Gate and the Trevi Fountain were illuminated with Belgium's national colors in a show of solidarity. NEW YORK - The New York City Police Department has stepped up security at sensitive sites and transit hubs around the city following Tuesday morning's terror attacks in Brussels, Belgium that left at least 30 people dead and more than 200 others injured. It comes as the Islamic State group claims responsibility for the attacks. At a press briefing at One Police Plaza, Mayor Bill de Blasio and Police Commissioner Bill Bratton reassured New Yorkers that there is no specific or credible local threat at this time. Bratton says the NYPD will work closely with the Joint Terrorism Task Force and the FBI to monitor the situation. "We are fully employed this morning, deployed with our VSU capacity as well as our transit officers so that we were able to the timing of this event allowed us to hold over the morning tours of duty on all of the units. So we were able to literally double the amount of officers available to us this morning during the morning rush hour on our transit system," Bratton noted. The Port Authority has stepped up security at its three major airports and also employing high visibility anti terrorist patrols at PATH stations and the World Trade Center. The NYPD says its specialized Critical Response Command (CRC) and Strategic Response Group (SRG) teams have been deployed to busy areas and transit locations "out of an abundance of caution." Meantime, Governor Andrew Cuomo has directed the New York National Guard to provide additional security at JFK and LaGuardia airports and assigned extra State Troopers to Penn and Grand Central Stations as well as the Queens-Midtown Tunnel and George Washington Bridge. Two of the blasts happened in the departures hall of the Brussels airport and a third bomb was later deactivated by authorities, the Associated Press reports. All flights to and from the airport were canceled and arriving planes were diverted as Belgium's terror alert level was raised to maximum. The Associated Press, citing a Belgian federal prosecutor, reports at least one of the blasts was likely caused by a suicide bomber. Another explosion took place inside a Brussels subway station that's not far from the headquarters for the European Union. The U.S. Military says one American servicemember and his family were injured in the attacks. Three American missionaries were also injured, according to the Mormon church. A Belgian transit spokesman says at least 15 were killed and more than 50 injured in that blast. All of the city's subway stations have since been closed. The explosions happened just days after police in Brussels arrested Salah Abdeslam, the prime suspect in last year's Paris terror attacks that killed 130 people. President Barack Obama was briefed on the attacks early Tuesday as he continues his historic trip in Cuba. Speaking in Havana on Tuesday, Obama said the world must unite in order to bring those responsible to justice. "We can, and will, defeat those who threaten the safety and security of people all around the world," Obama said. U.S. officials are said to be in close contact with their Belgian counterparts. Police arrested a Brooklyn middle school student for bringing a loaded gun to school Tuesday afternoon, sources tell NY1. This incident marks the third time in two weeks a student has been caught with a gun in school. The NYPD responded to MS 61 in Prospect-Lefferts Gardens at about 12:50 p.m. The police officers were directed to the school's administrative offices, where they concluded that a student had brought .9 mm semi-automatic pistol and nine bullets into the building, according to sources. A male, 14-year-old, student was taken into custody without incident, sources say. "This is profoundly disturbing and we are working in close partnership with NYPD to investigate this incident," a Department of Education spokesperson said. "There is zero tolerance for weapons of any kind and nothing is more important than the safety of all students and staff. Families will be notified and we are providing additional supports to the school community." Neighbors told NY1 they are shocked. "I've been told that this was a very good school for the children to be going to, and it's a shame that you find handguns at this school, because I'm afraid for the children," said one neighbor. "I've never heard about any safety issues, that's why I'm so surprised," said another. Recent data from the state show that MS 61 had several weapons related incidents last year. Last Thursday, a 15-year-old boy was arrested at York Early College Academy, which is off of 167th Street and 108th Road in Jamaica, after showing a gun to a friend. Two days before that, an 11-year-old boy brought a gun into PS 40 in Jamaica. The boy's grandfather was arrested and charged with criminal possession of a weapon, reckless endangerment and endangering the welfare of a child. Hersheys Reeses Peanut Butter Cups commercials from the 1970s and 1980s famously declared their candy had, Two great tastes that taste great together. It may be coincidence that the Internet of Things (IoT) and virtualization are evolving in the same time era of technology, but the serendipity of their co-existence cannot be dismissed. If, as Cisco (News - Alert) projects, IoT is to scale to 50 billion devices by the year 2020, it will require an agile and elastic infrastructure that only a mature virtualized cloud-based architecture can deliver. Looking at this from the opposite perspective, the virtualization of the network infrastructure may or may not see the return on investment in terms of cost and operational benefit if the demand for IoT does not develop. Visibility and automation is key The drive for virtualization began with cloud technologies and has evolved to include technologies like SDN and NFV. The lynchpin that holds the key to success for all of these cloud-enabled, virtualized architectures is the need for a unified and holistic management and orchestration system. This system must be able to understand the disparate components within the architecture through analytics, have the heuristics intelligence to analyze the data from a broad ecosystem perspective and orchestrate the environment through policies, as well as have the ability to enact changes automatically to adjust for shifting conditions. The base cloud technologies are relatively mature and proven. Application delivery technologies based on application load balancing and global server load balancing (GSLB) functions enable the cloud infrastructures to be available, resilient, and scalable. Today, there is considerable debate around the value in new virtualization technologies such as SDN and NFV. It remains to be seen if they are a passing fad or something of value. SDN is still being defined and NFV is barely out the gate, with isolated proof of concepts being tested. Meanwhile, IoT must find a way for devices with diverse functions and a myriad of connectivity models to function within the networks and Internet of today. WiFi (News - Alert), Bluetooth, and cellular wireless are just a few of the access technologies IoT devices will use to connect to the Internet. IoT must do this while scaling towards the predicted exponential growth to support billions of devices and applications. There are already wireless smoke detectors, connected cars, personal fitness aids, home security and automation systems, and kitchen gadgets including refrigerators and crockpots. IoT presents the biggest challenge to network design that network architects have seen in a long time. To properly manage the number of devices, their harmonic connections, and bandwidth consumption, a massive network infrastructure must be put in place to manage the peak loads. Virtualization provides the agility and elasticity for networks to deliver the resources necessary for IoT to flourish, without the need to overbuild network infrastructures. Network resources can be allocated and de-allocated as needed by the network-aware, ecosystem-aware management and orchestration system. Analytics The system must be able to collect information from unrelated technologies and multiple vendors. Data from network components, application health metrics, DNS information, routing topologies, and many other elements must be collected. The management and orchestration system must understand the inter-relationships between these different data points relative to the specific architecture and configuration of the virtualized infrastructure. Heuristics Once the data is collected, an intelligence needs to exist that understands the inter-relationships between these data points and how it relates to the delivery of the business applications and, in turn, understand how the application is impacted by the real-time analytical data. Individual customer and application-based policies have to be programmed into the system to provide a functional understanding that the heuristics engine can leverage to present meaningful and holistic information. Orchestration Once the intelligent management and orchestration system understands the architecture and behavior of the application delivery infrastructure, it can make recommendations and provide insight to enact changes to the current environment to adjust the cloud ecosystem to optimize the application delivery based on different application service level assurance (SLA) levels. Not all applications and functions are created equal. The HVAC automation system has different resilience and performance requirements than the assembly line automation infrastructure, which, in turn, has different requirements than the personal health and monitoring devices. Automation Ultimately, it is essential to automate the processes of the management and orchestration system because it is not feasible to have the analytics, detection, and proscriptive changes manually driven for each applications unique SLA requirements 24/7/365. Removing the human element removes the chance for human error and reduces the operational needs to support the infrastructure that may have thousands of devices and applications on it, if not billions. IoT and Virtualization Convergent Evolution IoT gives virtualization a clear and focused reason to exist and, in turn, the successful evolution of IoT depends on the flexible network framework that virtualization can deliver, forming a truly symbiotic relationship. It is important to note that the IoT devices and applications exist in a multi-technology/multi-vendor environment and the virtualized cloud infrastructure will also consist of multiple technologies and vendors. The management and orchestration system must be flexible and extensible enough to incorporate these different aspects to deliver a unified and holistic view of the entire application delivery ecosystem. There are potential benefits with either of these technologies by themselves, but together, like the Reeses Peanut Butter Cup, they synergistically work together to push us more quickly to the next generation networks and applications. About the Author: Frank Yue is the Director of Application Delivery Solutions for Radware. In this role, Yue is responsible for evangelizing technologies and trends around Radwares ADC (News - Alert) solutions and products. He writes blogs, produces solution architectures, and speaks at conferences and events around the world about application networking technologies. Prior to joining Radware (News - Alert), Yue was at F5 Networks, delivering their global messaging for service providers. Yue has also covered deep packet inspection, high performance networking, and security technologies. Yue is a scuba diving instructor and background actor when he is not discussing technology. Edited by Maurice Nagle While he's more than willing to help out with training, Police Commissioner William Bratton says he doesn't see the NYPD patrolling shelters anytime soon. NY1's Courtney Gross filed the following report. The NYPD may be retraining peace officers at homeless shelters, but don't expect New York's Finest to police shelters themselves anytime soon. "I have no intention of taking over security for the homeless shelters," said Police Commissioner William Bratton. Bratton made the comments at the City Council on Monday, where he was asked about the violence that has inundated the shelter system. All last week, NY1 uncovered hundreds of reports from inside shelters examining the graphic details of how violent city shelters have become. "It's a real issue and it has been for decades, and it really has to be fundamentally be addressed differently. So we brought in the NYPD," said Mayor Bill de Blasio. "They will create a security plan for each shelter and train the city security force that is in those shelters." But the police commissioner was not eager to go beyond that, drawing a firm line when NY1 asked him about it at City Hall. "WIth police more directly involved with security at the shelters, that's personnel. And right now, our personnel are all allocated for other purposes," Bratton said. "Right now, we are just going to do that evaluation and to lend assistance where we can." Beyond violence in homeless shelters, the police commissioner also addressed a recent spike in slashings and stabbings citywide. "We will begin turning those numbers around as we get a better sense of where it's happening, who is committing it and what we might do to prevent it," Bratton said. So far this year, there have been 899 stabbings or slashings. As of this point in 2015, there were 748. That's a 20 percent increase. Bratton and the mayor are expected to unveil a new initiative to address this violence on Tuesday. "We will be in a position that over time will have a much more positive impact on that issue," Bratton said. More than 500 illegal aliens expelled from Nigeria crossed the tiny West African country of Benin by road today after the Government let non-Benin nationals cross its eastern border, witnesses said. A convoy of Togolese and Ghanaians, escorted by the police, left a small frontier post and headed west along the coastal road to Togo, the witnesses said. After a day in which non-Benin nationals were forced to camp overnight in the no man's land between the Benin and Nigeria borders, the Government announced Saturday night that the aliens would be escorted by convoy on the 60-mile route to Benin. Last month Nigeria's military government announced that an estimated 700,000 illegal immigrants had until May 10 to regularize their status or leave the country, and on Friday Nigeria opened its borders to speed the expulsion. COTONOU, Benin, Feb. 11 - West African leaders on Friday summoned Togo's new president to talks in Niger on Saturday, threatening immediate sanctions if the Togolese leader did not attend. Faure Gnassingbe was installed as president by the army just hours after his father, Gnassingbe Eyadema, died a week ago. West African leaders denounced his appointment, which violated the Constitution, as a military coup. The Constitution was hastily amended to allow Mr. Gnassingbe to succeed his father and to run the country until 2008. African leaders, Togo's former colonial ruler, France, and the United States swiftly condemned the appointment, demanding that presidential polls be held and threatening an array of sanctions. Togo's transfer of power has dealt a blow to the declared efforts of African leaders to prove that the continent is able to govern itself and impose democratic principles. LOME, Togo, April 8 - Youths burned tires and hurled rocks at riot police officers in Togo's capital on Friday after security forces broke up a march that demanded that presidential elections scheduled for this month be delayed. There were unconfirmed reports of protests in other parts of Togo. A leading opposition party said one protester was shot dead and five injured in Yoto, northeast of here. Some 2,000 protesters wearing yellow T-shirts and scarves tried to march on the town hall in Lome to demand voting cards for the April 24 election, but the police blocked the protest by firing tear gas. Yellow is the color of the main opposition party. The marchers regrouped in Be, an opposition neighborhood, where bands of young men clashed with security forces. Residents said the running battles had died down by mid-afternoon. MANY art warehouses are so unobtrusive that you can walk by them and never know it. The Geneva Freeport isnt one of them. A quarter of a mile away, you can see the name of the place, Ports Francs which is French for free port in red letters on the outside of a windowless white building facing a commuter thruway. From a distance, it looks like a multiplex movie theater. Driving up, you expect a checkpoint, armed guards, retina scans, German shepherds and X-ray machines. But none are in sight. There is some fencing and barbed wire, but less than youd think. This isnt to say that security here is lax dealers, movers and collectors describe the place as impregnable, and locks and cameras abound. But nothing about the site says Fort Knox. Unless you notice the Swiss customs officials, who are not particularly obtrusive, this could pass for a large self-storage operation in Queens. It sits about two miles from the center of Geneva, next to a post office and amid a hodgepodge of gray and unremarkable bridges and streets. Media tours of the Freeport are rare, but there have been more in recent years as the government and the company that operates the facility strive to reassure the public that there is nothing mysterious or unscrupulous going on here. In part, this is a hangover of some bad publicity. In 2003, Swiss authorities announced that they would return hundreds of antiquities stolen from excavation sites in Egypt, including two mummies, sarcophagi, masks and statues. Some of the items were reportedly painted in garish colors so they could be smuggled in as cheap souvenirs. The ringleader of this group was eventually sentenced to 35 years in prison. The episode helped to spur some regulatory changes, including a rule that requires tenants to keep an inventory using a specific template. It is hardly a huge change customs officials were always allowed to ask to see any container they wanted but experts say the rules were enacted, in part, to counter the Freeports undeserved image as a place where anything goes. The legislative changes were in response to the criticism, says Eva Stormann, an attorney based in Geneva who specializes in art law. But much of that was based on a wrong understanding of how the Freeport works. It is a highly reputable place. On a June afternoon, a tour of the Freeport is given by Florence May and Gilbert Epars, marketing directors for Geneva Free Ports. The first stop is a wine cellar piled high with crates stamped with names like Chateau Mouton Rothschild, Dom Perignon and Chateau Petrus. For 100 years, anyone in Vienna could tell the time by looking up at the Cube Clocks positioned on poles throughout the city. With their octagonal metal frames, bold hands and crisp white dials marked with dots and deltoids rather than numbers, the 78 electrically powered timepieces bore the cross from the citys coat of arms and the word Normalzeit, or standard time, which became their nickname. The clocks were removed in 2007, but now fans can strap versions of the Normalzeit on their wrists. I always wanted to create a watch based on the Normalzeit, said Fredi Brodmann, a veteran watch designer (he also has created watches for the Army, Navy and Air Force), who grew up in Vienna and now lives in North Bergen, N.J. When he was a boy, his grandmother taught him to tell time with the help of the Normalzeit clocks in every train station. People used the clocks as meeting spots; they would meet for dates under the clock, Mr. Brodmann recalled. When the clocks were removed, the Austrian art trading company Lichterloh purchased the ones that were still working, as well as rights to the design. Mr. Brodmann ran into its representatives at a watch fair and expressed his eagerness to create a watch, and last May the Normalzeit was introduced in a limited edition of 1,907, to observe the clocks birth date. I feel like Ive come full circle, making a watch from my hometown, he said. The Normalzeit has a 40-millimeter octagonal, stainless steel case, a Seiko automatic movement and a dial that glows in the dark, like a green moon, Mr. Brodmann said. ROME Anyone who thinks of a snake as something sinister should reconsider. Throughout history, the snake has been a symbol of positive values: strength, wisdom, rebirth or reinvention (it sheds its skin) and, by extension, healing (medicines caduceus of intertwined snakes), seduction (Adam and Eve), sensuality and power, according to Jean-Christophe Babin, chief executive of Bulgari. To illustrate the worthy attributes of the reptile and perhaps repay it for providing decades of inspiration, Bulgari has mounted an extensive exhibition, called SerpentiForm, at the Museo di Roma in the 18th-century Palazzo Braschi through April 10. After all, the jewelry house has used the snake in numerous ways for more than half a century, ever since the 1940s when Constantino and Mario Bulgari created the first spiraling Serpenti watch. Others followed, often gliding up the wrist thanks to flexible Tubogas links. On bracelets with colorfully enameled scales and jeweled heads, gold evening bags etched with snakes, necklaces clasped with the clenched jaws of a snakes head, the Serpenti style has slithered its way onto so many of the houses creations that a snake just says Bulgari. Bob Adelman, a freelance photographer whose vivid images of unspeakable brutality and despair brought segregation and the civil rights movement home to Americans in the 1960s, died on Saturday in Miami Beach. He was 85. The police said that Mr. Adelman had head injuries that appeared to be consistent with a fall. The medical examiners office said on Wednesday that the cause of death was hypertensive and atherosclerotic heart disease. In 1963, Mr. Adelmans access as a volunteer photographer for civil rights organizations enabled him to capture dramatic close-ups of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. delivering his I Have a Dream speech at the Lincoln Memorial. Among his other poignant portraits was that of the Rev. Joseph Carter standing sentinel on his front porch holding a rifle against a possible Ku Klux Klan ambush after he became the first black resident of West Feliciana Parish, La., to register to vote in six decades. NCIS 8 p.m. on CBS. A Navy public affairs officer is murdered, and two women the officers wife and mistress point fingers at each other. On NCIS: New Orleans at 9 p.m., the team discovers a surveillance van filled with photos of Dwaynes every move after his daughter is attacked on campus. On Limitless at 10 p.m., Brians double life begins to unravel as secrets are shared. HEARTBEAT 9 p.m. on NBC. Melissa George stars as Dr. Alex Panttiere, an edgy heart transplant surgeon who is just trying to have it all in this new series about juggling love, work and motherhood. Other characters include her two children, her live-in gay rock star ex-husband and two brilliant, stubborn surgeons who make for a promising love triangle. (Image: Ms. George) BILLION DOLLAR BUYER 10 p.m. on CNBC. In this new series the mogul Tilman J. Fertitta chairman, chief executive and owner of Landrys Inc. travels around the country as he chooses how to spend his $2 billion annual budget on buying for his more than 500 properties and hospitality brands. In each episode he meets with two promising companies, gets to know their owners and points out any obvious flaws before choosing whether to buy anything from them. First up are two Houston businesses: the sibling-owned dessert shop Macaron by Patisse and Bravado Spice, a hot-sauce company run by two hardheaded friends. Several years ago, when I was working as a reporter based in Haiti, I came upon a group of older Christian missionaries in the mountains above Port-au-Prince, struggling with heavy shovels to stir a pile of cement and sand. They were there to build a school alongside a Methodist church. Muscular Haitian masons stood by watching, perplexed and a bit amused at the sight of men and women who had come all the way from the United States to do a mundane construction job. Such people were a familiar sight: They were voluntourists. They would come for a week or two for a project a temporary medical clinic, an orphanage visit or a school construction. A 2008 study surveyed 300 organizations that market to would-be voluntourists and estimated that 1.6 million people volunteer on vacation, spending around $2 billion annually. A few are celebrities supporting their cause du jour, who drop in to meet locals and witness a project that often bears their name. Many more come to teach English during high school, college vacations or during a gap year. Others are sun-seeking vacationers who stay at beachside resorts but who also want to see the real (name your country). So they go into a community for an afternoon to help local women make beads, jewelry or clothes. Volunteering seems like an admirable way to spend a vacation. Many of us donate money to foreign charities with the hope of making the world a better place. Why not use our skills as well as our wallets? And yet, watching those missionaries make concrete blocks that day in Port-au-Prince, I couldnt help wondering if their good intentions were misplaced. These people knew nothing about how to construct a building. Collectively they had spent thousands of dollars to fly here to do a job that Haitian bricklayers could have done far more quickly. Imagine how many classrooms might have been built if they had donated that money rather than spending it to fly down themselves. Perhaps those Haitian masons could have found weeks of employment with a decent wage. Instead, at least for several days, they were out of a job. Besides, constructing a school is relatively easy. Improving education, especially in a place like Haiti, is not. Did the missionaries have a long-term plan to train and recruit qualified teachers to staff the school? Did they have a budget to pay those teachers indefinitely? Other school-builders I met in Haiti admitted they werent involved in any long-term planning, and I once visited a school built by an NGO that had no money left to pay the teachers. If these brick-laying voluntourists overlooked such things in their eagerness to get their hands dirty, they wouldnt be the first. Updated, 7:08 a.m. Good morning on this glowing Tuesday. President Obama is wrapping up his trip to Cuba today an attempt to repair the decades-old, bitter relationship between Washington and Havana. Our city, on the other hand, has long enjoyed fruitful ties to Cubans and their culture. Salsa dancing, which is based largely on Cuban and Puerto Rican popular music, was forged here. And some of Cubas most famous exiles, like the author Reinaldo Arenas and the poet Jose Marti, have called the city home. Mr. Marti once wrote that New York was like a vortex: Whatever boils over anywhere else in the world spills into New York. Elsewhere they make men flee, but here they welcome the fleeing man with a smile. From this goodness has arisen the strength of this nation. Sifting through the crop tops and sheer blouses for sale at Junee, a boutique in Borough Park, Brooklyn, is an unexpected clientele: some of New York Citys most modest women. Filled with bright colors and the latest fashions, the store specializes in outfitting Hasidic women, who follow a deeply conservative sartorial doctrine that, among other things, requires their elbows, collarbones and knees to always be covered, and if married, their hair to be hidden under a scarf or wig. Junee and other stores like it have seen their sales rise in recent years because of a flood of new products designed to make modesty and fashion compatible. There are items like tape to tighten up a collar that sags toward impropriety, felt dots that muffle the provocative clack of pumps and cloth tubes that can extend a short sleeve into something more acceptable. Womens undershirts are so popular among those wanting to cover their collarbones that entire shops have opened selling nothing but undershirts, also known as shells. Even dickeys, shirtless collars once the purview of only the nerdiest of nerds, are getting a second look. In Borough Park, one of the most heavily Hasidic neighborhoods in New York, dickeys are a hot item: Fitted into a sweater, they can make even a cowl neck look demure. 9. Rob Ford, the combative former Toronto mayor known for drug and alcohol abuse, died. He was 46, and had been undergoing treatment for a rare form of cancer. Asked in 2014 how his tenure would be remembered, he said: People know that I saved a lot of money, and people are going to know that I had a few personal struggles. So you can remember it for what you want, but theyre definitely going to remember it. _____ Meanwhile, the post of secretary of the Army has been vacant since Nov. 1. Eric Fanning, who has had a swift rise at the Department of Defense, was nominated for the job in September. The Armed Services Committee didnt schedule a hearing for him until January and waited until early March to vote in favor of the nomination. The full Senate has yet to schedule a confirmation vote. That has left the Army, which has a $140 billion yearly budget and more than one million soldiers, without a civilian leader with the authority to set priorities and address the needs of a force that has been at war since 2001. At the State Department, Roberta Jacobson, one of the governments foremost Latin America experts, has been waiting since last summer to be confirmed as ambassador to Mexico. The embassy, one of the largest in the world, has been without an ambassador since June. Ms. Jacobson, the assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere affairs, had a hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in July. The panel waited until November to approve her nomination, which the full Senate has not yet voted on. There are few diplomatic jobs more crucial than that of the ambassador to Mexico, who has to deal with border security initiatives, the influx of Central American immigrants and counternarcotics efforts. Ms. Jacobson is exceptionally qualified to tackle that long list of challenges and opportunities in Washingtons fraught relationship with Mexico, Americas third-largest trading partner. Mr. McConnell could put an end to these inexcusable failures to conduct routine Senate business. But, of course, he and the rest of the Republican leaders long ago stopped doing anything in the interest of the country. Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush got 528 and 545 officials confirmed during their last two years in office. Mr. Obama has managed to get only 193 nominees confirmed since early 2015. Mr. McConnell and his colleagues are driven by a desire to retaliate against the administration when they have lost policy debates. So we have Senator Pat Roberts of Kansas holding Mr. Fannings nomination hostage over the administrations efforts to shut down the prison at Guantanamo Bay. Theres Senator Marco Rubio petulantly blocking Ms. Jacobsons appointment because she had a role in negotiating the change in relations with Cuba. And Mr. Szubin is being punished for the Iran nuclear deal. Instead of ousting Mr. Trump and forcing him to run as a third-party candidate, Republican elites now find themselves, or their preferred candidates, losing control of their own party. After the meeting of anti-Trump conservatives last Thursday, one of the meetings organizers, the right-wing radio host Erick Erickson, put out a statement from the group. We intend to keep our options open as to other avenues to oppose Donald Trump, he wrote. Our multiple decades of work in the conservative movement for free markets, limited government, national defense, religious liberty, life and marriage are about ideas, not necessarily parties. It is noteworthy that Mr. Trump is running a campaign safely within the two-party system, considering he is a Voltron-like candidate built using the most successful parts of past independent campaigns. Like George Wallace, the former Alabama governor who ran a third-party presidential campaign in 1968 after his segregationist views put him on the fringes of the Democratic Party, Mr. Trump uses strident racial language to stoke his supporters anger. Like Ross Perot, who won 19 percent of the popular vote as an independent in 1992, Mr. Trump is an eccentric billionaire who is fun to watch on TV, which has allowed him to move ahead without relying on traditional fund-raising channels. Like Pat Buchanan, the Reform Party candidate in 2000, he is repackaging warmed-over economic and cultural nationalism and selling it as the future of the conservative movement. Mr. Trump even has a bit of Teddy Roosevelt, whose penchant for strongman bluster made him a populist hero when he ran as the Progressive (a.k.a. Bull Moose) Party candidate in 1912. For now, the Republican Partys leaders are trying to maintain some semblance of control over whats happening to them. Appearing on ABCs This Week on Sunday, Reince Priebus, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, said it was both too early and too late for his party to think about starting an independent bid. The host, George Stephanopoulos, asked Mr. Priebus what he thought of the Stop Trump movement, and whether recruiting a third-party candidate would doom the Republican chances of winning back the White House. Well, sure it would of course it would, he said. But it isnt likely, and its probably too late, and there is no definitive answer right now as to who the nominee is going to be of our party. So I think all of its far too early. Its Schrodingers primary now: both alive and dead, too early to speculate about and too late to save. Worst of all, the anti-Trump movements only hope to save the party might be a Libertarian. According to Julia Azari, a professor of political science at Marquette University, a Trump victory would actually prove worse for the Republican Party in the long run than another Democratic presidency. Austin, Tex. AMERICA has a water problem. To put it simply, the national network for providing safe, clean water is falling apart. This state of affairs, which is the focus of a summit meeting on Tuesday at the White House, threatens more than our drinking water supplies. Water is used in every sector of industry, grows our food, affects our health and props up our energy system. The price of this neglect will be high. In Flint, Mich., the mayor has estimated that it will cost as much as $1.5 billion to fix or replace lead pipes. Over all, repairing our water and wastewater systems could cost $1.3 trillion or more, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers. We need to do this to improve water quality, protect natural ecosystems and ensure a reliable supply for our cities, agriculture and industry. The problem is a result of many factors, including old, leaky pipes; archaic pricing; and a remarkable lack of data about how much water we use. One important political outcome of the Syrian war could be a decision by Syrian Kurds to establish a semiautonomous region in the northern part of the country. The move entails risks and has been condemned by Turkey and even some Kurds, but could offer a model for decentralized governance in a federated Syria. The Kurds have taken advantage of the five-year war to consolidate control over three noncontiguous areas in northern Syria. Last week, Kurdish parties, including the Democratic Union Party, or P.Y.D., announced they were putting together a plan to unite areas controlled by Kurdish forces in a semiautonomous entity within a federal system. The Kurds are an ethnic group of perhaps 35 million in Syria, Iraq, Iran and Turkey, and they have long argued that they are the worlds largest ethnic group without a state. They have suffered persecution and had their aspirations for self-governance crushed. The American invasion of Iraq created an opportunity for Kurds living there to establish a semiautonomous region in northern Iraq, which has been reasonably successful. OUTLINE Atilano Short film WIP2 / 02.18.16 directed by Betzabe Garcia and produced by Daniela Alatorre TITULO ATILANO Un 13 de julio sacaron a nuestras familias a golpes. Nos sacaron de los pueblos. Cuando el gobierno construyo la presa practicamente nos despojaron de todo. On July the 13th, they kicked our families out by force. We were displaced from our towns. When the government built the dam, they strip away everything we had. TEXT OVER BLACK In 2009, the Picachos dam was built in Sinaloa, Mexico, leaving six towns underwater. (En 2009 se construyo la presa Picachos en Sinaloa, Mexico, que dejo a seis pueblos bajo el agua) Hundreds of families were forced to move to New San Marcos. Because of the unfair conditions of their displacement, they formed the Picachos Movement to demand a just compensation. (Cientos de familias fueron forzadas a mudarse a Nuevo San Marcos. Por las injustas condiciones de su desplazamiento constituyeron el Movimiento Picachos para demandar una justa compensacion.) Veias llorar a la gente que se consideraba mas fuerte cuando sus casas se estaban inundando. Yo creo que no hubo quien no lloro. La gente solo esta pidiendo lo que, en justicia, le corresponde. Lo justo es que las propiedades que quedaron bajo el agua sean indemnizadas de acuerdo a la ley. Por eso nace esta lucha que hemos mantenido durante 5 anos. Even those who considered themselves to be tough, would cry when they saw their houses flood. There was not one who did not cry. People just wanted a just compensation for what was theirs. They wanted to be indemnified according to the law, for their flooded properties. This is where the struggle that we have maintained for 5 years was born. Old San Marcos (Sinaloa, 2009) Nunca podre olvidar cuando vi a mi hija, que en ese entonces tenia cuatro anos... llorando porque veia que el agua estaba llegando a la casa. Me preguntaba ahora donde voy a jugar? I will never forget when I saw my 4-year-old daughter, cry because the water was coming into our house. She would ask where am I going to play now? En mi caso tuve que aprender a sembrar... cuando tenia 8 o 10 anos me toco trabajar porque mi padre murio cuando cumpli cinco anos y habia que ayudar en la casa. Aqui el trabajo del campo es dificil, es un trabajo rudo. Me di cuenta de que mis manos no estaban preparadas para el trabajo del campo. When I was 8 or 10 years old, I had to work because my father died when I was five. Working on the countryside is tough work. I was aware that my hands were not for field work. TEXT OVER BLACK Every saturday at 5am Atilano, leader of the Picachos Movement hosted the radio show This Is My Land. (Cada sabado a las 05:00 a.m. Atilano, el lider del Movimiento Picachos, conduce un programa de radio llamado Asi es mi tierra). Son las 10:29 y ya estamos de regreso a su programa Asi es mi tierra Vamos a prender la vela, Atilano. Vamos, vamos! El dia en que tu naciste, nacieron todas las flores... Como representante de la gente, no deberia mostrar miedo por la inseguridad que estamos viviendo en el pais. Y sobre todo hay que entender que primero es la gente y despues uno mismo. Radio: It is 10:29AM and we are back with the show This is my land We are going to light your candles, Atilano. Come on, cmon! The day you were born, all flower first bloomed... As the leader of the movement, I shouldnt show fear to the insecurity of the country. and above all understand that the people come first, and then oneself... Hubo momentos muy dificiles. Nada mas se pudieron rescatar el 60% de los cuerpos enterrados en el cementerio... Eso fue un momento traumatico para la poblacion, ahi estaban sepultados todos sus antepasados... There were hard times, only 60% of the bodies buried in cemeteries were rescued. This was a traumatic moment for the people, because everyones ancestors were buried there... Uno de los momentos mas dificiles de esta lucha, fue la manifestacion que hicimos en la carretera de Mazatlan a Culiacan un 20 de marzo porque nos asesinaron a seis miembros del movimiento... En los ultimos cinco anos han asesinado alrededor de 40 personas. Nos queda muy claro que es una forma de intimidacion del gobierno para que no se siga luchando. Tuvimos que decidir si valia la pena seguir luchando. La gente tuvo que decidir entre terminar la lucha, o seguir y eso nos subio el animo para hacerle justicia a la gente que dio su vida... La gente decidio que no ibamos a renunciar y no nos quedariamos callados. Vamos a seguir luchando aunque sigamos perdiendo mas vidas. One of the toughest moments of this struggle, was at a protest from the Mazatlan to Culiacan highway. On March the 20th, 6 of our members were murdered. During the last 5 years of the movement, around 40 people have been murdered. This is all very clear for me: Its a form of intimidation from the government, so that we stop fighting. We had to decide if it was worth to continue with our fight. The people had to decide whether to end the struggle then, or take it as the necessary strength to give justice to the people who gave their lives. People decided to not give up and not stay silent. They decided to continue our struggle even if we might loose more lives. (Image of Atilano inside the radio booth) (TEXT OVER BLACK) October 11, 2014. Radio booth of the Sol de Mexico, Sinaloa. Atilano on-air during his radio show This Is My Land. (Octubre 11, 2014. Cabina de la emisora Sol de Mexico en Sinaloa. Atilano durante su programa Asi es mi tierra.) En la radio: No... ademas de que era algo muy divertido tambien era algo bonito... algo Este es el momento en el que fue abaleado el lider comunitario de la Presa Picachos de Mazatlan, Atilano Roman Tirado... Esto que escuchamos es un asesinato en vivo... Parece una pelicula de horror... llegan y matan al locutor... Fue asi... Lo mataron en vivo, al aire, se escucharon las detonaciones, dos o tres balazos, al aire... Uno de ellos le disparo con una pistola 9mm. (On the radio): No... besides... besides it was something very amusing, but it was something beautiful... something... This was the moment when the community leader of the Picachos Movement in Mazatlan, Atilano Roman Tirado, was shot inside this radio booth. The sound we hear... a murder on-air... This looks like... something out of a horror movie... They walk in and kill the radio host. It sounded like this: They shot him while on-air. The 2 or 3 gunshots were heard live. One of them shot him with a 9mm pistol. Atilano Roman: Luchador social: Fuiste asesinado defendiendo a tu gente. Siempre viviras en nuestros corazones. La mision del movimiento es rescatar a estas 800 familias... Que sea un modelo para otros pueblos que lo han perdido todo y han tenido que resurgir. Yo creo que ese es el principal objetivo de la lucha. Resurgir de la nada, renacer, Esto es un renacimiento de los nuevos pueblos. Un renacimiento con fuerza, queremos demostrar que si se puede. (Atilano Roman: Social activist: you were murdered defending your people. You will Always live in our hearts). The mission of the movement is to rescue these 800 families, and for them to be a model for other towns that have lost everything, and have had to reemerge. I think that is the main goal of our struggle. Reemerge from nothingness, reborn. This is a rebirth of the new towns. A rebirth with force. We want to prove that a town can be reborn. TEXT OVER BLACK Atilano Roman Tirado (1965 - 2014) FRONT PAGE An article on Saturday about the primary elections in Arizona misstated projections for 2030 about the citizenship of Latinos living in the state. The study estimates that four in five not one in five Latinos will be United States citizens by then. A Man in the News article on Thursday about the life and career of Merrick B. Garland, President Obamas nominee for the Supreme Court, misstated the religion of Mr. Garlands father. He was Jewish, not Protestant. NEW YORK An article on Saturday about a foster father who was charged with sexually abusing five boys on Long Island, all of them his adopted sons, misstated the title of Gerard Gigante in some copies. He is the chief of detectives with the Suffolk County Police Department, not the police chief. Because of an editing error, an article on March 14 about the recovery of the body of a crewman who was on a tugboat that crashed in the Hudson River described the term slack tide incorrectly. It is the time when the current subsides, not when the water recedes. Despite their distinctly local designs, stepping into any of the Ace Hotels eight international locations where moody interiors attract familiar crowds of 30-something hipster types triggers a bit of deja vu. Such is the case at the chains ninth hotel in New Orleans, which opened last week in a 100-year-old Art Deco high-rise on the outskirts of the French Quarter. We are trying to make a cultural shift together, said Robin Standefer, co-partner of the design firm Roman and Williams, who helmed the project. Its beyond just making a living room and into the territory of cultivating a community. The notion is that this new addition to a formerly neglected part of the Warehouse District neighborhood will draw in locals as well as tourists. Even in the isolation room, people come and go: a nurse, giving a sponge bath; a doctor, trailing a herd of students; an orderly, carting away the trash. Only the pale bald figure in the bed remains, dying of some horrid unnamed illness. This is Marty, and he has a simple plan for escaping the tedium and pain: Retreat into his own mind and put on one last cabaret show. Ladies and gentlemen, please place your final drink orders, he says with an M.C.s pumped-up energy at the top of Carl Holders An Intimate Evening With Typhoid Mary, at the New Ohio Theater. Soon Marty (Mr. Holder) is doing an energetic a cappella number. When he spits up blood onto his diaphanous hospital gown, and the nurse (Molly McAdoo) helps him into a new one, he glosses over the indignity: A costume change already? Directed by Knud Adams for Glass Bandits Theater Company, this arrestingly designed fever dream of a play starts strong and ends gloriously. But it becomes awfully muddled in the middle. Martys drag persona is Typhoid Mary: the real-life Irish immigrant Mary Mallon, who in the early 1900s earned her nickname by unwittingly spreading typhoid fever in New York without ever appearing to be ill herself. Most of the survey respondents who registered an opinion said the Senate should vote on whether to confirm Judge Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, a new online poll shows. And, as weve found before, the more historical context theyre given, the more likely people are to think the Senate should vote now. Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, said this week he was sticking to his position that the current Senate should not vote on President Obamas choice to replace Justice Antonin Scalia, no matter how the November elections turn out. In the new poll by Morning Consult, 47 percent of registered voters said they thought the Senate should vote on whether to confirm Judge Garland, while 23 percent said the Senate should not. The remaining respondents said they didnt know or had no opinion. Partly because Supreme Court vacancies are rare, Morning Consult gave poll respondents nine bits of history after first posing the question, asking after each fact if the additional context would change voters opinions. In almost each case, more information made voters somewhat more likely to prefer a Senate vote now. A son of the rancher Cliven Bundy was ordered to remain in federal custody while awaiting trial after pleading not guilty on Monday in United States District Court on charges stemming from an armed confrontation with government agents in April 2014. A magistrate judge told the son, Mel Bundy, 41, and a co-defendant, Gregory Burleson, 53, that she believed they were a danger to the community and might resist returning to court. They face charges of conspiracy, obstruction, weapon offenses and assault on a federal officer. So far, none of the 19 people indicted in the case have been released since their arrests in recent weeks, including Cliven Bundy. A lawyer for Mel Bundy said his client had carried a flag, not a gun. Mr. Burlesons lawyer argued that he had gone completely blind in recent months, suffered seizures and used a wheelchair. The General Assembly will hold a special session on Wednesday to consider blocking a Charlotte ordinance that would broaden local protections for gay and transgender people. The measure which officials in Charlotte, North Carolinas largest city, approved last month is to take effect April 1 and forbids discrimination in public accommodations, like restrooms, because of a persons sexual orientation or gender expression. Opponents, including Gov. Pat McCrory, condemned the plan as a threat to public safety, and at least three-fifths of the Republican-controlled House and Senate agreed to the special session. In a statement on Monday, legislative leaders said, We aim to repeal this ordinance before it goes into effect to provide for the privacy and protection of the women and children of our state. WASHINGTON Donald J. Trump came to Pennsylvania Avenue on Monday and offered a freewheeling, circuslike glimpse of what the nations capital might look like if he is successful in his quest to occupy that big, white house on the 1600 block of the street. Mr. Trumps whirlwind day in Washington part of his effort to demonstrate that he is running a serious presidential campaign took him from an imposing law firm to a news conference at a hotel he is building here to a much-anticipated policy speech before a pro-Israel group, all with the Manhattan businessmans characteristic mix of panache, policy and showmanship. His first stop was at The Washington Post, for an editorial board meeting where he unveiled five members of his foreign policy team: Keith Kellogg, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, Walid Phares and Joseph E. Schmitz. Though Mr. Trump has been promising for months to release the names of his foreign policy advisers, those he presented on Monday have come under fire in the past. But the team will be led by Jeff Sessions, a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee. Still, while protesters have appeared at most of his recent rallies, Mr. Trump delivered his remarks uninterrupted. He stuck to tried-and-true formulations during his speech. Near the end, he noted that his daughter Ivanka is about to have a beautiful Jewish baby. The remarks reflected Mr. Trumps genuine frustration at being labeled anti-Semitic by some critics. Earlier in the day, at a news conference at his new hotel in downtown Washington, Mr. Trump appeared to suggest that Israel should be made to pay more for its own defense. A reporter pointed out that normally at his rallies, he demands that countries like Germany receive foreign aid and suggests that they can defend themselves, and then asked if the same standard should apply to Israel. I think Israel will do that also, yeah, Mr. Trump said. There are many countries that can pay and they can pay big league. I mean, were supporting South Korea. I order thousands of television sets a year from South Korea. Theyre a behemoth economically. Every time North Korea raises its head, they do anything, they sneeze, we start sending the ships, the planes, everything else. We dont get proper reimbursement for that. But when reporters pressed him to clarify later, he suggested that it should be assessed on a case-by-case basis, and that Israel had special status. Israel helps us in the Middle East, Mr. Trump said. Israel helps us greatly in the Middle East. Its our one ally that we really can count on. Mrs. Clinton is a familiar figure at these meetings, though she does not always bear as reassuring a message as she did on Monday. In March 2010, while serving as secretary of state, she sharply criticized the Israeli authorities for approving new Jewish housing in a Jewish neighborhood of East Jerusalem when the United States was trying to get the Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table. In that speech, which was less warmly received than Mondays, Mrs. Clinton described the American role in the peace process as, if not neutral, then as an honest broker between the two sides. Our credibility in this process, she said, depends in part on our willingness to praise both sides when they are courageous, and when we dont agree, to say so, and say so unequivocally. Mrs. Clintons Democratic rival, Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont, was the only presidential candidate who did not address the conference. A senior official at Aipac said Mr. Sanders had been invited to speak but could not come to Washington because of his campaign schedule. In a change of policy this year, Aipac did not allow presidential candidates to speak to the group by satellite. WASHINGTON The Pentagon acknowledged on Monday that it had established a small base in northern Iraq staffed solely by American Marines, a disclosure that followed an Islamic State rocket attack over the weekend that killed one Marine and wounded several others. The White House has contended that the military is not conducting a ground combat mission in Iraq. But the new outpost has long-range artillery that can help Iraqi forces as they try to reclaim land from the Islamic State. The base was attacked again on Monday, the Pentagon said. A small group of fighters, who appeared to be focused on a nearby Iraqi base, struck the outpost with small-arms fire. It was not close enough to do any damage, said Col. Steve Warren, the United States spokesman in Iraq, adding that no Marines were wounded. The Marines returned fire, killing at least two Islamic State fighters, Colonel Warren said. WASHINGTON The bitter impasse over the nomination of Judge Merrick B. Garland is raising a once unthinkable possibility: Presidents may no longer be confident of filling a Supreme Court vacancy unless their party controls the Senate. With incumbents more worried about primary challenges and activist groups wielding greater influence, senators from both parties have shown increasing reluctance to back otherwise qualified judicial nominees whose views and records do not align with their own or their partys. Now the Republican decision to deny Judge Garland any consideration is taking court politics to a hyperpolarized level, one that does not bode well for the future of an already seriously troubled confirmation process. The problem is the whole thing is just getting ratcheted up, and maybe now we are in a new era when the opposition party will refuse to confirm anyone, said Russell Wheeler, an expert on the federal judiciary at the Brookings Institution. Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary general, warned on Monday of possible election-related violence in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where recent months have also seen a sharp increase in tribal and interethnic conflicts. Mr. Ban urged the Security Council and leaders in the region to help United Nations peacekeepers preserve political stability in Congo by quickly finding a solution to the present deadlock over the coming elections. Congo is scheduled to hold elections in November. The opposition worries that President Joseph Kabila, meant to leave office in December, will postpone the election to stay in power. The European Union has expressed concern over reports of intimidation against political opponents and the media. Samantha Power, the United States ambassador to the United Nations, told the Council that civil society in Congo is threatened and democratic processes are being deliberately undermined. Morocco has asked the United Nations to close a military liaison office in Western Sahara, a spokesman for the organization said on Monday, an indication that an escalating dispute between the Moroccan authorities and Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon over the disputed territory is not abating. The request came a day after dozens of civilian staff members of a United Nations peacekeeping mission in Morocco that is known by the acronym Minurso left the country under threat of expulsion by the Moroccan authorities, who are furious over comments by Mr. Ban this month describing Western Sahara as occupied. Morocco has long asserted sovereignty over the vast southern region, where Minurso has been deployed for a quarter-century, helping to monitor a cease-fire between Moroccan forces and the Polisario Front independence group. Longstanding efforts to find a political solution have been frustrated for years. A United Nations spokesman, Farhan Haq, told reporters that the organization had received a message from Morocco asking the Minurso military liaison office in the coastal city of Dakhla be closed soon. He described the message as Moroccos first request targeting the military component of Minurso. HIALEAH, Fla. As he took a final bite of his ham croqueta at Morro Castle cafeteria, Carlos Sanchez distilled the significance of President Obamas visit to Cuba into one word: hope. Any change is good, because it couldnt get worse than what it was before, said Mr. Sanchez, 50, who arrived here from Havana when he was 15. Trying is better than nothing. But it takes time for people to change. They dont want to change. They have to be forced to change. In Miami, the United States most Cuban city, where many residents have relatives in Cuba, most Cuban-Americans welcomed Mr. Obamas journey to the island as the latest breakthrough in the stalemate between the two countries. It is a position that not long ago would have seemed as unimaginable as Mondays historic presidential meeting of the once-avowed Cold War enemies. Nowhere are United States-Cuba politics more personal than in this Miami suburb, home to longtime Cuban exiles and freshly arrived Cuban immigrants, former political prisoners who have never returned to the island and apolitical cafeteria and supermarket workers who go back every chance they get. And while some Cuban-Americans in this area still harbor bitterness and anger toward both the repressive Castro government and Mr. Obamas outstretched hand, many more see the shift and the visit as a logical development that stands to benefit the Cuban people in the long run. The State Department said on Monday that it had determined that Myanmar was persecuting its Rohingya Muslims, but that the governments treatment of the religious minority group did not constitute genocide. In a report to Congress seen by Reuters, the State Department said it was gravely concerned about abuses against the Rohingya, but did not determine that they constituted mass atrocities. Tens of thousands of Rohingya Muslims have fled poverty and persecution in western Myanmar since religious violence erupted there in 2012, prompting international calls for an investigation for evidence of genocide. MYTILENE, Greece Standing on the southern coastline of the island of Lesbos, Molhim Zreiki peered through binoculars across the narrow strait of the Aegean Sea dividing Greece from Turkey. During the past nine months, hundreds of thousands of refugees had crossed these waters on smuggler rafts to reach Europe. But how many rafts reached Lesbos on Monday morning? None, said Mr. Zreiki, one of the volunteers who have patrolled the beaches for months to help refugees as they came ashore. The Greek Coast Guard did pick up two rafts near Lesbos early Monday and brought the 56 people aboard to the island, according to the local police. By comparison, in October an average of 4,400 refugees landed on the island every day. For the European Union, the paramount goal of last weeks much-criticized refugee deal with Turkey was to shut off the enormous flow of people pouring in to the Continent and break the smuggling rings targeting Greece. By insisting that people coming into Greece will be deported back to Turkey, European Union officials say, they are trying to dissuade Syrians and other migrants from taking the smuggler boats in the first place. They hope Syrians will instead decide to stay in Turkey and apply for European asylum from there. Its been very frustrating, Mr. Kaner said in an interview last week at his office in the Bronx, the home of his family-owned business. He bought most of the equipment he needed before Oct. 1, he said, and has been waiting months to get it certified. The delay, he said, pointing to a tall pile of paperwork, has cost him thousands of dollars in payments for fraudulent purchases. Theres no recourse, Mr. Kaner said. The long delays are just the latest black eye for the deployment of the new systems. Some consumers have not yet received new cards. Many merchants have not bought the updated equipment. And even when the cards and the terminals have been updated, they have generated confusion and slow lines. Many of the complications were widely predicted, but the certification system has added an unexpected wrinkle and lots of finger-pointing. Banks say that retailers waited till the last minute to update their terminals. Retailers point to financial ties between the banks and the companies that provide certification, saying there is no motivation to move faster. I think there are merchants who should have been prepared and arent, said Thad Peterson, a senior analyst with the research firm Aite Group. I think there are merchants who thought they were prepared but arent. LONDON The Royal Bank of Scotland said on Tuesday that it had made a final payment of 1.19 billion pounds, or about $1.7 billion, to the British government, fulfilling a condition of its bailout package that gave the government priority for dividend payments. The British government owns about 73 percent of R.B.S. after having injected 45 billion into the bank during the financial crisis. As part of that bailout, the government received a so-called dividend access share, which gave it enhanced rights for dividends paid by the bank. By ending the dividend access share program, R.B.S., which is based in Edinburgh, moved one step closer to being able to resume dividend payments to its shareholders. The bank has not paid a dividend since 2008. R.B.S. is in the middle of a large restructuring as it shifts away from being a lender with global ambitions to focus on retail and corporate banking in Britain and Ireland. The lender announced plans last year to dismantle its global investment bank and to reduce the number of countries where it operates. New Yorks public advocate is pushing regulators to investigate the gun maker Sturm, Ruger & Companys disclosures to investors about the risks it faces. In a letter sent on Tuesday to the Securities and Exchange Commission, Letitia James, the citys public advocate, said that Sturm, Ruger, the Southport, Conn., maker of rifles, pistols and revolvers, had misled investors about who used its products and had not adequately disclosed the reputational and liability risks it faced. More and more, shareholder activists are questioning whether the gun companies and the retailers that sell their products adequately represent their reputational risks to shareholders, calling their lack of disclosure of these risks a violation of S.E.C. rules. Gun manufacturers must come clean about the dangers posed by their business and the risks it represents for even their own shareholders, Ms. James said in a statement. As public advocate, I will continue to pursue every possible avenue to hold those gun makers and sellers accountable. SAN FRANCISCO The group that is seeking to wrest the genetics analysis company Affymetrix from Thermo Fisher Scientific raised its bid for the company on Tuesday to $17 a share, escalating the takeover battle. The new bid by Origin Technologies, a shell company run by former Affymetrix executives and backed by a Chinese private equity firm, is up from an original proposal of $16.10 a share. Thermo Fisher agreed in January to pay $14 a share for Affymetrix. Origin also said that it had raised the size of a reverse termination fee payable to Affymetrix to $100 million from $75 million. In France, though marriage declined sharply over the last two decades, fewer French children than American children are overweight. Fewer French teenagers commit suicide. Far fewer French children live in poverty. Part of this might be because of cultural differences. Cohabitation out of wedlock is more stable in France. Even though fewer French children than American children live with two married parents, more live with their mothers and fathers. But culture cannot explain Americas deficits away. It is critical to keep in mind the role of the French welfare state in fostering this stability. The French government devotes about 3 percent of its total economic activity to what the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development calls family benefits. That is four times the share spent in the United States. Government transfers have typically reduced the child poverty rate to under 10 percent, according to O.E.C.D. figures. In the United States, they shave it by only a few percentage points. The point is, families at the bottom end of French society, and their children, did a better job of overcoming the economic transformations that shook the industrialized world over the last quarter-century because Frances welfare state did not let them fall that far. And when families did split up, the state doubled down: 36 percent of French children living with a nonworking single parent are poor. That sounds like a lot, but in the United States, according to O.E.C.D. statistics, it is 92 percent. If we are making policy for the sake of the children, its not hard to figure out who made the better call. From Hollywoods court docket: The battle lines are taking shape in what is certain to be a sharp fight and possibly a long one over the film ratings system and the way it handles smoking. The dispute centers on a class-action complaint seeking to prevent films with tobacco imagery from receiving G, PG or PG-13 ratings from the Motion Picture Association of America. On Monday, the complaint which was filed last month against the major film studios, theater owners and their ratings system was assigned to Judge Richard Seeborg, a 2009 Obama appointee who will now oversee the dispute in federal court. Days earlier, lawyers for the studios and the motion picture association had objected in a filing to the assignment of the case to a magistrate. If nothing else, the move signaled they were paying close attention. WASHINGTON The Supreme Court on Tuesday sided with thousands of workers at an Iowa pork processing plant who had sought to band together in a single lawsuit to recover overtime pay from Tyson Foods. Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority in the 6-to-2 decision, said the plaintiffs were entitled to rely on statistics to prove their case. The ruling limited the sweep of the courts 2011 decision in Walmart Stores v. Dukes, which threw out an enormous employment discrimination class-action suit and made it harder for workers, investors and consumers to join together to pursue their claims. The Tyson workers performed tasks that were grueling and dangerous at a plant in Storm Lake, Iowa, Justice Kennedy wrote, slaughtering hogs, trimming the meat and preparing it for shipment. They sought to be paid for the time they had spent putting on and taking off protective gear to prevent knife cuts. Tyson did not keep records, and the workers tried to prove their damages based on an expert witnesss statistical inferences from hundreds of videotaped observations of how long it took the workers to get ready. Headliner American Cut Like the chef, the bar area wears downtown black. But this branch of Marc Forgione and LDV Hospitalitys TriBeCa steakhouse is an uptown affair, in the historic Lombardy hotel, steps from Park Avenue in Midtown, so glamour rules. The main dining room, with 132 seats, has the original leaded windows, echoed in the chevron-patterned glass dividers and warmed with rich gold and rosy tones. A wine room with tasting tables runs behind the bar. Steaks are the mainstays, with a 42-ounce tomahawk and a 52-ounce porterhouse thats flamed with marrow butter. There are grilled fish options, a Caesar salad tossed tableside and the chefs signature chile lobster in a sriracha and butter sauce served with toast. Aiming for a piece of power-lunch action, the midday menu offers a sandwich of pastrami cured in-house and a quick prix fixe menu with the option of dessert to go. (Opens Wednesday): 109 East 56th Street, 212-388-5277, americancutrestaurants.com. Opening Fair Weather Bushwick Dinner is at 8 on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. With a mere 22 seats, the chef and partner, John Creger, who was at Artisanal and Le Cirque, serves what amounts to an inventive 10-course dinner party for $65. He may offer dishes like a deconstructed clam chowder and pork belly glazed with maple and harissa. Mr. Creger also matches his playlist to each course. On weekends, the menu is a la carte in this former coffee shop owned by Ebru Brun: 274 Wycoff Avenue (Linden Street), Bushwick, Brooklyn, 347-305-3736, fairweatherbushwick.com. Impero Caffe Scott Conant, the chef whose name one may still connect with Scarpetta restaurants (though he has only the Miami Beach and Las Vegas locations remaining in his portfolio), is back in New York. His new place is airy, neutral-toned and sleek yet casual, with an all-day menu that emphasizes antipasti and pastas. The pastas include cavatelli with duck and black truffles, pappardelle with rabbit and mint, and malloreddus (Sardinian gnocchi) with porcini and sausage. A few main dishes like roast chicken with polenta round out the list. (Monday): Innside New York NoMad hotel, 132 West 27th Street, 917-409-5171, innsidenewyork.com. Natsumi Tapas Barbara Matsumura, who created the Haru chain and opened Joes Shanghai in Flushing, Queens, bills this as an Italian-Japanese fusion, even though tapas are not Italian. In great measure, the menu is inventive Japanese, with riffs on sashimi and rolls often seasoned with chiles. Pasta dishes include shrimp fettuccine in an Alfredo sauce, and meatballs seasoned with spicy teriyaki basil pesto. An Italian chef from Perugia, Andrea Tiberi, is the consultant, and the sushi chef is Hiroyuki Nagao: 323 Third Avenue (24th Street), natsumitapas.com. WASHINGTON The Food and Drug Administration said Tuesday that it was requiring new warning labels for certain types of opioid painkillers, a step that it said would help ease an epidemic of abuse in the United States. The agency said the changes would mostly apply to immediate-release opioids usually intended for use every four to six hours and would include new boxed warnings, the agencys strongest type, about the risks of abuse and death. Immediate-release opioids account for about 90 percent of opioid prescriptions, while extended-release drugs, intended to be taken once or twice a day, make up the rest, the F.D.A. said. It was not the first time the agency had tightened opioid labels. In 2013, the agency toughened labeling requirements for extended-release opioids, which are often seen as a bigger addiction risk because of their potency. Now, many of those changes are being applied to the immediate-release version. HAPPY HOUR Theres a quietly beautiful scene well into Happy Hour when a young writer reads from a work in progress in front of a small audience. Her words are seemingly straightforward, yet their effect is disarmingly moving. The Japanese director Ryusuke Hamaguchi stages and shoots the interlude with the same unforced intimacy and unfussy, unadorned visual style (at times borderline utilitarian) that he employs throughout this absorbing female friendship movie. Theres nothing particularly pretty about the results the scene looks almost as if he just set up a camera and started shooting but this lack of obvious adornment is itself an aesthetic choice in a movie that feels closer to life than most. And so, as this woman speaks, as throughout much of this human drama, you are pulled in until youre hanging on her every sentence and fitting them together with the larger story of four friends and their relationships with one another and the world. The festivals website describes Happy Hour, which runs five and a half hours, as having novelistic depth and texture the right word here is cinematic. (M. D.) Though unheard-of in the United States, supervised injection sites have existed in Europe for years one of the first was in Switzerland, 30 years ago and in Vancouver, British Columbia, the only city in North America where the practice is allowed. They have been linked to a reduction in harm from heroin abuse: In Vancouver, fatal overdoses dropped 35 percent in the community surrounding its main injection site in the two years after it opened in 2003 and fell 9 percent citywide. Image Buffalo Street in Ithaca. In a span of a week and a half in 2014, there were more than a dozen heroin overdoses in the city, three of them fatal. Credit... Heather Ainsworth for The New York Times Here in Ithaca, a city of 30,000 in the Finger Lakes region, there were more than a dozen heroin overdoses, three of them fatal, in a span of a week and a half in 2014, shortly after Mr. Myrick appointed the committee that proposed the injection center. The Tompkins County Health Department does not break out overdoses by municipality, but in 2014, the most recent year for which data is available, there were 14 fatal overdoses in the county, where Ithaca is the only city. The proposal for an injection facility, part of The Ithaca Plan: A Public Health and Safety Approach to Drugs and Drug Policy, would require changes to a number of state and federal laws, according to state health officials. Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a Democrat who has mounted a forceful response to the heroin epidemic, told reporters at an unrelated news conference recently that he was unfamiliar with the details of the Ithaca plan and would not offer his opinion. Much of the Ithaca drug plan has been embraced by a cross section of the community. The plan calls for more drug education, both for children and adults; improved mental health screening; a detoxification center; and a methadone clinic. But the supervised injection program has divided local law enforcement officials. Ithacas police chief, John R. Barber, said he could not support the proposal because right now, heroin is considered an illegal substance under the law. But Gwen Wilkinson, the district attorney for Tompkins County who helped lead the committee that formulated the plan, said after its release that she was prouder than ever to be an Ithacan. To the Editor: Regarding the terrorist attacks that killed dozens of people at the international airport and a subway station in Brussels on Tuesday (nytimes.com, March 22): Once again the world awoke to the horrific sights of death and destruction in another European capital. It appears that a terrorist group carried out coordinated bombings, and ISIS later claimed responsibility. This time, the terrorists walked into unsecured areas of the airport and train station and exploded their bombs. Security measures are being heightened around the world, as I was made aware on Tuesday morning when I was asked by the New York City police to have my briefcase inspected at a subway stop in Manhattan. There is virtually no way to keep up with the methods and plans of radical Islamic terrorists, but what is quite clear is that we cannot sit back and wait for the next attacks. The major countries of the world must organize, commit ground, air and naval forces in every place these radicalized terror groups exist, and eradicate them from the face of the earth. HENRY A. LOWENSTEIN New York To the Editor: We are speechless. Words cannot express how deeply horrified we are by the attacks in the Belgian capital. By 1966, there were more than 25,000 American soldiers stationed in Thailand. Most American bombing missions were flown out of here, and the annual cost of the bombs dropped over North Vietnam and Laos exceeded the size of the Thai economy at the time. Meanwhile, Washington turned a blind eye to abuses and corruption. The Thai military exaggerated the Communist threat at home to curb dissent, sometimes resorting to political killings and summary executions. Gen. Sarit Thanarat, a staunch American ally who ruled from 1957 until his death in 1963, is said to have amassed over $100 million. Senior generals were involved in the trafficking of drugs grown in northern Thailand and bordering regions. Americas patronage diminished with the end of the Vietnam War, but its effects remain today. The leaders of the 2014 coup, who came of age during the 1960s and 1970s, appear to look on democracy like they once did on Communism: as a foreign ideology that threatens the network of Bangkok-based royalist elites they were trained to protect. The generals abhor the alternative power network centering on Thaksin Shinawatra, a telecommunications tycoon turned politician, that emerged in the wake of the 1997-1998 Asian financial crisis. Elected prime minister in 2001, Mr. Thaksin pursued various economic programs catering to the rural poor. This brought him widespread popularity, which meant he did not need to rely on traditional military and royalist patronage networks. Partly for that reason, the army deposed him in 2006; in 2014, it was his sister Yingluck, elected in 2011, who was ousted. (In both instances, the palace promptly recognized the military governments that took over.) The militarys methods today also reflect the legacy of past American involvement. The Thai armys Internal Security Operations Command, which recent military governments have relied on to clamp down on critics, is an offspring of the Communist Suppression Operations Command that was created with Washingtons assistance in the 1960s. Both outfits were implicated in Cold War-era atrocities. BARCELONA, SPAIN It is not working. President Obamas slow-but-steady strategy to defeat the Islamic State is clawing back a little territory in Syria and Iraq but is doing nothing to dent the charismatic appeal of the militant group, disrupt its propaganda or prevent it from killing Europeans. The Brussels attacks that left at least 30 people dead at the citys international airport and a subway station adjacent to the European Union headquarters the symbolism could scarcely be more potent came just four days after the capture in the Belgian capital on Friday of Salah Abdeslam. He was the sole survivor among the 10 men believed to have perpetrated the attacks that killed 130 people in Paris a little more than four months ago. The Islamic State claimed responsibility. The Brussels slaughter bore its hallmarks an apparently retaliatory attack, carried out by members of a large Belgian cell, many of them trained in Syria, all living in a European country that has permitted Islamist terrorists to infiltrate its neighborhoods. The message was clear: We can still hit you at will. Nothing that Western governments have done since Paris has changed that. President Obama began his speech to the Cuban people on Tuesday with humility and grace. Cultivo una rosa blanca, he said, reciting the opening line of one of the most famous poems by Jose Marti, the islands national hero. I plant a white rose. It was an inspired way of extending an olive branch to a neighboring nation with which America has feuded for more than half a century. Mr. Obama made a compelling case that the ties that bind Cuba and the United States are more powerful than their differences. I have come here to bury the last remnant of the Cold War in the Americas, Mr. Obama said Tuesday morning at the Grand Theater of Havana, drawing applause. He spoke movingly about the human toll the acrimony between the two governments has taken on Cuban exiles and those who remained on the island. He hailed Cubas rich culture and the tenacity and resourcefulness of its people. And he made it clear that the United States has neither the capacity nor the intention to impose change on Cuba. What changes come will depend upon the Cuban people, he said. We will not impose our political or economic system on you. We recognize that every country, every people must chart its own course and shape its own model. The recent defeats largely stem from this economic reality. But not exclusively. Too many Latin American leftist leaders fell prey to the regions endemic corruption and underestimated growing intolerance to it. By the time some governments, like Chiles and Bolivias, started to focus on the issue, it was too late. They had become as deeply enmeshed in Latin Americas tradition of corrupt practices as their conservative predecessors, civilian or military, elected or imposed. The continuing scandal in Brazil spread from high-level officials in the state-owned oil company, the federal government and Congress to the former president and his family. President Dilma Rousseff could be the next to go down, thanks to the confessions of senators from her own political party and of Joao Santana, the political consultant who directed her and Mr. da Silvas campaigns. It is increasingly likely that Mr. da Silva will be arrested and Ms. Rousseff will be impeached. But the implications go beyond Brazils borders: Mr. Santana also consulted on elections won by real or supposed left-wing candidates in Venezuela and Peru. There were other mistakes, too. While several leftist governments in Chile, Brazil, Uruguay and, up to a point, Bolivia resisted authoritarian temptations, many did not entirely. Some muzzled the press, stacked the judiciary, harassed opposition leaders and tampered with electoral systems. Others failed to deal with growing crime and violence. Given the poor state of the economy and the ubiquity of corruption scandals, the left looks likely to continue losing elections: in Brazil, if new ones are held soon; in Ecuador in 2017; and through a recall vote in Venezuela, perhaps later this year. One day, though, leftist parties will win again. When that time comes, the left of tomorrow should learn two lessons from the beginning of this century. First, saving money for bad times is not just a biblical precept. If the left is in power when the next commodity boom comes along, governments need to make provisions for the future. Venezuela and Ecuador should take advantage of higher oil prices if they come to create contingency funds under autonomous management. Chile and Peru should do the same with copper. Despite any reservations they might have about the new paper, virtually all climate scientists agree with Dr. Hansens group that society is not moving fast enough to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases, posing grave risks. An agreement reached late last year in Paris seeks to cut emissions, but it is not remotely ambitious enough to limit global warming to the degree Dr. Hansen regards as necessary. Among Dr. Hansens colleagues, some of the discomfiture about the new paper stems from his dual roles as a publishing climate scientist and, in recent years, as a political activist. He has been arrested at rallies, and he has joined with a group of young people who sued the federal government over what they said was its failure to limit global warming. Dr. Hansen argues that society is in such grave peril that he feels morally compelled to go beyond the normal role played by a scientist and to sound a clear warning. That stance has made him a hero to college students fighting climate change, but some fellow scientists fear he has opened himself to the charge that he is skewing his scientific research for political purposes. In 2009, nations agreed to try to limit the planetary warming to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, or 2 degrees Celsius, above the preindustrial level. The Earth has already warmed by about half that amount. The climate appears to be destabilizing, virtually all land ice on the planet has started to melt, and the oceans are rising at an accelerating pace. The paper, written by Dr. Hansen and 18 other authors, dwells on the last time Earth warmed naturally, about 120,000 years ago, when the temperature reached a level estimated to have been only slightly higher than today. Large chunks of the polar ice disintegrated then, and scientists have established that the sea level rose 20 to 30 feet. Like in no other industry, technology companies depend on their claim to the future. They have world-changing products like smartphones, social networks and Internet search, and exuberant bosses who pretend they know where all this is going. That makes it particularly awkward when big tech companies do not exactly seem in charge of their own futures. That is now happening to both Apple and Yahoo, in two very different ways. Apple is, of course, in a courtroom fight with the Justice Department over whether it should help the fed authorities unlock an iPhone that belonged to a terrorist. It has already traded legal barbs with the government over its rights and obligations about privacy and security. As Katie Benner writes, Apple was scheduled on Tuesday to make its case at a hearing in Riverside, Calif., in front of a particularly steely and unflappable judge. On Monday, however, the Justice Department was granted a request to postpone the hearing, saying it might have found another way to get into the phone. The labeling challenge is trickier with mobile sensor data. For example, a person contributing data has to log in when walking, running or biking. If a researcher wants to correlate mood with activity, the contributor might have to answer a question or two on a touch screen. Data from a personal device a smartphone or smartwatch is also sensitive, raising issues of data use and privacy, which complicates the collection of sensor data. The development of software models using mobile sensor data has been hindered, said Deborah Estrin, a professor of computer science at Cornell Tech, because of the absence of labeled data sets. And the reason for that is the lack of a community effort to do that in an ethical, efficient way. Ms. Estrin is one of several computer scientists from universities around the world who are advisers to CrowdSignals, as are researchers at companies like Microsoft and Intel. Most research using mobile data has tracked relatively small numbers of people in a single city or region, often using proprietary data from mobile carriers or device makers. CrowdSignals is intended to overcome those limitations, said Daniel Gatica-Perez, a researcher at Idiap Research Institute in Switzerland, who is an adviser on the project. Both Apple and Samsung have introduced software tools for collecting and sharing mobile data. Samsungs SAMI is a data exchange platform where developers can place their data and work with others. Apples Research Kit allows iPhone users to share their data for use in research projects, often health-related studies. CrowdSignals is trying to build a marketplace for data with financial incentives for people to participate and label their data. All the data will be anonymized, the organization says. Cruising to Cuba from the United States is now a reality. Carnival Corporation announced Monday that it will offer cruises to Cuba starting May 1, after Cuba granted approval for the company to begin travel there; its the first time in more than 50 years that a cruise ship has permission to sail from the United States to Cuba. In a telephone interview with The New York Times, Carnivals chief executive, Arnold Donald, said that the company is launching the cruises because of the high interest in Cuba among U.S. travelers. We take people to destinations they want to go, and there is a huge demand to see Cuba, he said. Carnival will operate the 704-passenger Adonia to the country through its newest brand Fathom on seven-day itineraries departing from the Port of Miami in Florida with stops in the cities of Havana, Cienfuegos and Santiago de Cuba. After the May 1 voyage, the Cuban Sunday-to-Sunday sailings will take place every other week. Passengers on these trips will be able to choose from an array of activities on the ground such as art, architecture and historical walking tours at each port; trips to coastal villages like Cojimar, a favorite of Ernest Hemingways; meeting local entrepreneurs; and exploring the burgeoning culinary culture through dining at private restaurants, known as paladares, as well as interacting with local chefs. WASHINGTON The presidential race shifts west on Tuesday, with voters in both parties deciding in Arizona and Utah, and Idaho Democrats holding caucuses. But political junkies following along from the Eastern time zone will have to stay up late: Polls do not close in Arizona until 10 p.m., and Utah Republicans can vote online until 1 a.m. Wednesday. Can Cruz top 50 in Utah? The most significant question looming over Tuesdays contests is whether Senator Ted Cruz of Texas can exceed 50 percent of the vote in Utah. If so, he would take all 40 of the states delegates and mitigate Donald J. Trumps expected victory in Arizona, a state that allocates all 58 of its delegates to the top vote-getter. Should Mr. Cruz fall short, Utahs delegates will be distributed to the three candidates on a proportional basis, provided each reaches a 15 percent vote threshold. Such a split decision would make the math more difficult for Republicans trying to prevent Mr. Trump from securing the nomination before the partys convention in July. Nearly as important, it would deal a psychological setback to Mr. Cruz and to the broader Stop Trump effort. Mr. Cruz must contend in Utah not only with Mr. Trump, who has performed poorly in Mormon-heavy areas of other states, but also with Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, who has made an aggressive play for the state with television ads and campaign appearances. Mr. Kasichs efforts and Mr. Trumps strength there are likely to make it difficult for Mr. Cruz to reach the 50 percent mark. WASHINGTON After a jury found a man guilty of several gun and drug offenses, he took his case to the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. In the spring of 1998, two of the judges on a panel that heard his case agreed to vacate two of his convictions, saying that the evidence was too thin to support one, and the trial judge had made a mistake that tainted the other. But the third judge on that panel, Merrick B. Garland, a former federal prosecutor whom President Bill Clinton appointed to the court a year earlier, sharply disagreed. In a dissenting opinion, Judge Garland who is now President Obamas nominee for the Supreme Court insisted that the evidence was good enough, and that the trial judges supposed mistake did not matter. Four months later, Judge Garland was assigned to a different panel hearing an appeal in another drug-related case. The two other judges threw out a conviction, saying that a prosecutor had violated the defendants right to a fair trial by misquoting a witnesss testimony during closing arguments in a way that suggested the evidence was stronger than it was. Once again, Judge Garland dissented. The prosecutor, he wrote, had made an innocent mistake, and the appeals court should overturn the results of a trial only for the most egregious of these kinds of errors. A high-ranking army officer, an ally of the president, was killed Tuesday in the capital, Bujumbura, officials said. The officer, Lt. Col. Darius Ikurakure, was shot inside the army headquarters, multiple military officials said. Colonel Ikurakure was commander of Camp Muzinda, in Bubanza Province, a position that put him in charge of security operations in Bujumbura districts seen as hostile to the government. He was seen as an enforcer, accused of being behind the extrajudicial killings and disappearances of civilians opposed to President Pierre Nkurunzizas government, said Vital Nshimirimana, a Burundian human rights activist. Burundi has been volatile since Mr. Nkurunziza announced in April that he would seek a third term, which he eventually won. Hundreds of people have been killed in the continuing unrest. Rob Ford, the combative former mayor of Toronto who gained international notoriety with his confession of crack cocaine use, his public drunkenness and his belligerent clashes with other public officials, died on Tuesday. He was 46. His office announced his death but gave no other details. Mr. Ford had been undergoing treatment for malignant liposarcoma, a rare form of cancer, since September 2014. Along with his brother Doug, Mr. Ford was a controversial figure in Toronto politics for years, drawing support largely from conservative residents of suburban communities that had been absorbed into the City of Toronto. In 2013 he acknowledged smoking crack cocaine during one of his drunken stupors, as he put it. After his cancer diagnosis, Mr. Ford withdrew from his mayoral re-election campaign in favor of his brother, who was defeated. But Rob Ford did win the seat on the City Council that Doug Ford had held. KABUL, Afghanistan The new commander of American and NATO forces in Afghanistan issued an unreserved apology on Tuesday to the families of victims of the United States bombing of a hospital in the city of Kunduz last year that killed 42 people. The commander, Gen. John W. Nicholson Jr., and his wife, Norine MacDonald, a security analyst, traveled to Kunduz on Tuesday to meet with local officials and families of victims of the attack on the Doctors Without Borders hospital in October. The couples trip was clearly geared toward adding a personal component to the apology. Its tone was a sharp contrast to that of General Nicholsons predecessor, Gen. John F. Campbell, who had sent confusing messages after the attack and had stopped short of apologizing. As commander, I wanted to come to Kunduz personally and stand before the families and the people of Kunduz to deeply apologize for the events which destroyed the hospital and caused the deaths of staff, patients and family members, said General Nicholson, who took charge of the forces this month. I grieve with you for your loss and suffering, and humbly and respectfully ask for your forgiveness. Assailants with knives killed a Christian convert in northern Bangladesh on Tuesday, the latest in a series of attacks on liberal activists, members of minority Muslim sects and members of other religious groups in the Muslim-majority nation. Three attackers on a motorbike stabbed the victim, Hossain Ali, 68, in Kurigram, north of Dhaka, the capital, the police said. Mr. Ali converted to Christianity from Islam in 1999, said the Kurigram district police chief, Tobarak Ullah. Chief Ullah said the killing bore the hallmarks of recent attacks by Islamist militants. In China, an overlapping of rich coal reserves, water scarcity and fragile ecosystems makes the problem especially pronounced, Harri Lammi, a Greenpeace senior global campaigner on coal, said in a written statement. Yet China continues to expand coal power plants in these regions. This must be halted. On a global scale, the study found that based on 2013 data, the worlds 8,359 existing coal-fired power plants consumed 19 billion cubic meters of fresh water per year, enough to meet the needs of more than one billion people one-seventh of the worlds population. Adding in water used for coal extraction and washing, about 23 billion cubic meters of fresh water is consumed each year. Globally, about a quarter of existing and proposed plants are in areas with high water stress, the report said. For months, Greenpeace has been urging the Chinese government to stop construction of all coal-fired power plants. Greenpeace East Asia, based in Beijing, recently issued an updated report that said Chinese officials last year granted environmental permits for 210 new and proposed coal-fired power plants. The plants would cost about $100 billion to build, and they would worsen the countrys huge overcapacity in coal-fired power plants. Chinas economic growth is slowing, coal use has flattened or dropped in the last two years, and the countrys coal-fired plants are, on average, operating below half-capacity. Chinese representatives of energy sectors other than fossil fuels have criticized the glut of such plants and the proposals to build more. The burning of industrial coal is the biggest source of air pollution and carbon dioxide emissions, the greatest contributor to climate change. China accounts for half of global coal consumption each year and is the largest emitter of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases; the United States is second. To fight air pollution in cities, the government has ordered limits on coal use in eastern population centers. The government is establishing 14 large coal bases around the country where coal use will be concentrated. Nine of these bases are expected to produce energy for the eastern regions. Three of the bases are in the upper and middle reaches of the Yellow River in northern China, where water is already scarce. BEIJING If President Obama was looking for encouragement after his meeting with President Raul Castro of Cuba in Havana, the Chinese news media was not the place to find it. Rapprochement with Cuba requires renunciation of U.S. arrogance, blared a headline in Xinhua, the state news agency. Long road ahead for U.S.-Cuba ties after visit, said the lead editorial on Tuesday in China Daily, a state-run English-language newspaper. Beijing has long had a special bond with Havana, even though Cuba is only a sliver of Chinas size and sits half a world away. China and Cuba are two of the few remaining Communist nations in the world, and in recent years Beijing has become one of Havanas leading trading partners. BEIJING Even as China, the worlds leading market for illegal ivory, promises to help safeguard elephants in Africa, a rare bird in Southeast Asia is in danger because its skull is being sold in China as an ivory alternative, conservationists say. The bird, the helmeted hornbill, is already threatened by habitat loss in the lowland forests of Malaysia and western Indonesia, but now poaching is rising sharply, according to conservation groups. More than 2,000 helmeted hornbill skulls, or casques, were seized by the authorities in Indonesia and China in the past five years, according to a new report by the Environmental Investigation Agency, a nongovernmental organization based in London. In some cases, Chinese citizens were caught trying to leave Indonesia with casques in their luggage. Charlotte Davies, a crime analyst at the environmental agency, wrote in an email that her agency would encourage all parties to the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora to report on whether they have made hornbill seizures so the international community may get a fuller picture on the situation. JAKARTA, Indonesia The center of Jakarta, the Indonesian capital, was paralyzed Tuesday morning by a violent mass protest by taxi and other public transportation drivers against ride-hailing apps, with demonstrators blocking major roads and highways and attacking other taxis that were not taking part. An estimated 10,000 members of the Indonesian Land Transportation Drivers Association had planned a protest march from the national House of Representatives complex to the Presidential Palace to demand that the government ban app-based transportation companies, including Uber and Grab, saying they were hurting their ability to earn fares. Instead, drivers ran amok in the district near the legislative complex, blocking roads leading to the Semanggi Flyover, the citys main highway artery, and Jalan Sudirman, a primary thoroughfare that runs through the heart of Jakartas business district. Traffic was backed up for miles in all directions, and some offices closed because of security concerns. LONDON It did not take long. Almost as soon as the bombs went off in Brussels on Tuesday morning, the new act of terrorism in the heart of Europe was employed in the bitter debate about the influx of migrants from the Middle East and North Africa. Even before the identities and nationalities of the attackers were known, there was an immediate association in popular discourse between the attacks on the airport and subway station in Brussels and the migrant crisis. Right-wing politicians and average citizens alike raised concerns that groups like the Islamic State, which claimed responsibility for the attacks, are slipping radicalized recruits, including European jihadists, through the vast migrant stream and into an unprepared Europe. The murderous attacks in another European capital just days after the Belgians finally tracked down the sole surviving suspect in a series of similarly coordinated attacks that killed 130 people in and around Paris in November prompted new questions about European solidarity and security. And they came during a period of severe self-doubt about the European Union, with low growth, high unemployment, and the threat of a British exit from the bloc, to be decided in a June referendum. PARIS Since the November attacks in Paris, the Belgian authorities have conducted dozens of raids, combed whole neighborhoods for well-known militants and even locked down the capital for days, all part of promises to step up efforts to root out jihadists. Yet none of that evidently disrupted plans for the attacks on Tuesday at Brusselss main international airport and a subway station in the heart of the capital of the European Union. The new attacks again underscored not only the weaknesses of Belgiums security services, but also the persistence and increasingly dangerous prospect of what several intelligence experts described as a sympathetic milieu for terrorist cells to form, hide and operate in the center of Europe. The attacks have set off a new round of soul-searching about whether Europes security services must redouble their efforts, even at the risk of further impinging on civil liberties, or whether such attacks have become an unavoidable part of life in an open European society. BRUSSELS Bombs packed with nails terrorized Brussels on Tuesday in the deadliest assault on the European heartland since the Islamic States attacks on Paris four months ago, hitting the airport and subway system in coordinated strikes that were also claimed by the militant extremist group. The bombings paralyzed Brussels, the headquarters of the European Union and NATO, prompted international travel warnings to avoid Belgium and reverberated across the Atlantic to the United States, where New York and other major cities raised terrorism threat levels. Anxieties intensified about the inability to prevent mass killings at relatively unprotected places. At least 30 people were killed by two blasts at the Brussels airport departure area around 8 a.m. and one in a subway station shortly after 9. The police found at least one other unexploded bomb in a search of a Brussels house hours later. And Europes most wanted person suddenly became an unidentified man in a white coat and dark hat seen pushing a luggage cart in an airport surveillance photo taken just before the bombings. Two other men in the photo, each wearing a black glove on his left hand, were identified by Belgian prosecutors as suspected suicide bombers who appeared to have died in the explosions. To those who have chosen to be the barbaric enemies of liberty, of democracy, of fundamental values, I want to say with the greatest strength that we will remain assembled and united, the Belgium prime minister, Charles Michel, said at a news conference Tuesday evening, declaring a three-day mourning period. BRUSSELS Simon OConnor, a European Commission official, had parked his car and was about to walk toward the departure terminal, en route to Rome for work. Salome Corbo, an actress from Montreal, was at the Air Canada counter, about to check her luggage. Elouan Preaud and his wife, Angelina Centeno, were having breakfast, waiting to board an American Airlines flight to her native Colombia. Then came the blasts. The first one tore through the check-in area at Brussels Airport just before 8 a.m. on Tuesday. Another followed, seconds later, near a Starbucks. Mr. Preaud and his wife, who is pregnant, hit the ground as people screamed, Get down, get down! After the second explosion, he looked up to see a giant fan part of an air-conditioning unit that had landed near them. They had been eating at a Delifrance, talking about Salah Abdeslam, the terrorism suspect who was arrested in Brussels on Friday after a four-month global manhunt. In 10 seconds, everything changed, Mr. Preaud said. It was an apocalypse. There was blood everywhere. Frances highest court ruled Tuesday that judicial phone taps between former President Nicolas Sarkozy and his main lawyer were legal and would be admissible as evidence in an eventual case involving accusations of corruption. Mr. Sarkozy is expected to seek the conservative nomination to run for president again next year, but the ruling paves the way for a trial that could hamper his bid. Mr. Sarkozy, who was president from 2007 to 2012, is under preliminary charges of corruption and influence peddling based on information from judicial phone taps in 2013 and 2014. The court rejected arguments by Mr. Sarkozys lawyers that the wiretaps were a breach of lawyer-client privilege. DONETSK, Russia A Russian court sentenced a Ukrainian military pilot, Lt. Nadiya V. Savchenko, to 22 years in prison on Tuesday after finding her guilty of complicity in the deaths of two Russian journalists, in a politically charged case that highlighted the strained relations between Moscow and the West. When the judge began to read out the sentence, Lieutenant Savchenko started to sing a song in Ukrainian. The judge had to stop the proceedings for at least five minutes. The hearing was interrupted again later, after people in the crowd began to sing the Ukrainian anthem. Simply put, Lieutenant Savchenko did not get a fair trial, and so her conviction is unsound and should not stand, Hugh Williamson, the Europe and Central Asia director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. There should be justice for the deaths of Kornelyuk and Voloshin, but justice wont be served by an unfair trial that was highly politicized from the start, he said, referring to the two journalists, Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin. They are like a man with two wives, said Ms. Khalil, best known for defending Saddam Hussein in his war crimes trial in Iraq. There is something you like in each one. Ms. Khalil, who compared Mr. Assad to de Gaulle, is a longtime supporter of his, with a flair for flamboyant statements, and her meetings with officials were not about the war but about a court case involving a son of Muammar el-Qaddafi, the deposed Libyan dictator. But her description of the inner circles mood and modus operandi was echoed by many others, both supporters and detractors, who have met with Mr. Assad or his advisers and allies in recent months. They include scholars, humanitarian officials, Syrian associates, diplomats and officials with the pro-government alliance that includes Iran, Russia and Hezbollah. Most of them spoke on the condition of anonymity in order to preserve their access to government officials or to avoid reprisals. Over and over again in separate interviews, these people described a leadership that is expert in playing allies off one another; often refuses compromise, even when the chips appear to be down; and, if forced to make deals, delays and complicates them, playing for time until Mr. Assads situation improves. Mr. Putin seems bent on capping a triumphant return to the world stage by presiding over a political solution for Syria, hand in hand with the United States. Several diplomats said that Russia defined victory as a negotiated solution that would leave Mr. Assad in power showing that Western aspirations for regime change had failed but that Mr. Putin might back a deal that would ease the Syrian leader out later or diminish his power. What we consider before using anonymous sources. Do the sources know the information? Whats their motivation for telling us? Have they proved reliable in the past? Can we corroborate the information? Even with these questions satisfied, The Times uses anonymous sources as a last resort. The reporter and at least one editor know the identity of the source. Learn more about our process. While Iran appears more attached to keeping Mr. Assad in power, it is becoming clear that without Russian air power, Iranian support is not enough to help Syrian government forces advance, despite thousands of ground troops from Hezbollah and other Iran-backed militias. So Mr. Assad most likely realizes that he has to engage in some kind of political process, at least to satisfy Mr. Putin, said Mr. Lesch, the biographer, who regularly visited Mr. Assad from 2004 to 2009 and has met with high-level Syrian government officials and opposition members since the civil war started in 2011. A bit more than three years after Meir Dagan was forced to end his long tenure as director of Israels intelligence service, the Mossad, he showed up at a discussion of the Middle East filled with contempt for the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who he feared was on the cusp of bombing Irans nuclear facilities. There is no one to stop him anymore, Mr. Dagan told me at Harvard University in spring 2014. Mr. Dagan had long argued that by pushing him and other intelligence and military leaders out of office, Mr. Netanyahu was seeking to silence those who argued that there were better ways to deter Iran from getting the bomb than attacking the countrys facilities. At best, Mr. Dagan said at Harvard, an Israeli bombing run would provide an illusory solution, temporarily flattening those facilities, only to have them return, this time deep underground. The result, the spymaster and former soldier argued, would be disastrous for the state of Israel. Mr. Dagan, who died on Thursday after struggling for several years with a liver transplant that never quite succeeded, could hardly be accused of being soft on Israels enemies. He ranked among the most brutal warriors of the modern Middle East. He famously kept a photograph of his grandfather, kneeling on the ground before his Nazi captors moments before he was killed. Mr. Dagan would show it to visitors, a personal never again memento that seemed to explain the ease with which he organized the elimination of Israels enemies. When patients land in a dermatologists office, frustrated with a line or fold, they often want to plump the offending crease with filler. See a wrinkle, fill a wrinkle. In his Upper East Side practice, Dr. Richard Swift, a plastic surgeon, sees more than 100 people for fillers every month. For many of those patients, his filler technique is surprising. One woman came to me with jowls, Dr. Swift said. I explained Id start injecting the cheek area to correct the sagging in the lower face. She stopped me: Whoa, why are you injecting up there when the problems down at my jawline? I asked, How did you look when the last surgeon injected you with five syringes of product in your lower face? She answered, Like a bulldog. He filled the cheeks. She left happy. Dr. Swifts approach is sometimes called anatomic filling: replacing volume (with injectables like Juvederm, Radiesse and Restylane) where it has been lost to restore the overall youthfulness of the face. Doctors have stopped looking at wrinkles and sagging skin in isolation and are considering how volume loss in one area affects others. Name Matt FX Age 24 Hometown New York Now Lives In the same two-bedroom apartment at the Westbeth artist complex in the West Village where he grew up. My parents spend a lot of time traveling, so theyre nice enough to let my girlfriend and I stay as glorified house sitters, said Matt FX, whose full name is Matt FX Feldman (and who is no longer with his girlfriend). I see Westbeth as one of the last bastions of the Village that Bob Dylan sang about. Claim to Fame Matt FX is a prodigal music supervisor for Comedy Centrals Broad City and Hulus Difficult People. He also supervised the music for MTVs remake of the British controversial teenage drama Skins in 2011. Big Break After a childhood steeped in classical music and choral performance, Matt FX enrolled in LaGuardia High School. There, a friend, the future rapper Azealia Banks, inculcated him into the world of pop music. She played me the indie bands of the time, A Tribe Called Quest and Nelly, Matt FX said. She caught me up. He began as a D.J. with the party collective Tribes NY. Around the same time, a friend introduced him to the Skins creator, Bryan Elsley, who hired him to select music for the show. Speculation, accordingly, ran to two prominent Cuban-American designers whose work Mrs. Obama has championed: Isabel Toledo, whose canary-yellow dress and coat she wore to her husbands first inauguration, and Narciso Rodriguez, whom she has worn several times, most recently to the State of the Union address in January. In the end, Mrs. Obama went with Naeem Khan, the Indian-American designer she has worn often. I had sent her a couple of different things, Mr. Khan said in an interview on Tuesday morning. I had no idea. You never know what shes going to wear. I guess I got pretty lucky. Mr. Khan is responsible for some of Mrs. Obamas best looks, including the gown she wore to a state dinner for India in 2009. (Cathy Horyn, then the fashion critic of The New York Times, wrote, She probably never looked better.) He has also become something of a family favorite: The first daughters Malia and Sasha Obama wore Naeem Khan dresses for their first appearance at a state dinner at the Canada dinner this month. (I guess they see their mom in all the glam and want to be like her, Mr. Khan said. I was very happy when they chose something.) The dress Mrs. Obama selected for the Cuban dinner, in a Kashmiri fabric embroidered with an Indian floral motif, is similar to one in the same fabric from the designers pre-fall collection. It was a lovely, sprightly choice, less glamorous than what Ms. Obama often selects for such events, but in this case, well suited to the occasion. The dinners dress code, Womens Wear Daily reported, was casual cocktail, so Mr. Khan sent cocktail dresses rather than the gowns he is known for. During her Cuban visit, Mrs. Obama has been on a floral kick, selecting a floral Carolina Herrera dress for her arrival in the country. Nobody can tangle a text like Iain Pears. His best-known novel, An Instance of the Fingerpost, explored a 17th-century Oxford murder and its aftermath through the memoirs of four unreliable narrators, each hotly disputing the others versions of reality, science, religion and justice. After nearly 700 pages of deposition, when the guilty are finally sorted from the hard-to-call-innocent, many readers will understandably have already lost track of their scorecards. Now, almost 20 years later, Pearss latest novel presents a complexly interwoven series of narrative entanglements that stretch across time, alternate universes and at least several textual realities from Elizabethan pastoral romance and multiple universe theory to a Narnia-like fantasy world and Cold War international intrigue. Whats the difference between all these systems of order, knowledge and storytelling? the attentive reader might ask. And the answer might well be: no difference at all. They are equally real and equally unreal take your pick. With a nod to Philip Sidney (and Tom Stoppard), Pears unreels a series of stories that travel in several directions at once: from past to future, from future to past, and from fictive to actual and back again. With one foot set in the 1960s, the novels central character, Henry Lytten, is an Oxford fellow with a fondness for the fantasy landscapes of local celebrities like C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien. When Henrys not working for the British government flushing out Russian spies, he meets with an Inklings-like group of popular-fiction fans at a local pub and reads aloud from his rapidly accumulating notes for the tale of a sociologically believable fantasy realm called Anterwold. There the political differences of the inhabitants urban and pastoral, rich and poor, insider and outsider are kept in what-should-be-eternal balance by a ritual known as the Abasement. In the meantime (or somewhere before or after the meantime, its not always clear) what Henry doesnt know is that a far-future totalitarian bureaucracy is trying to impose its own system of permanent order on a hysteria-prone population. In response, a psychomathematician named Angela Meerson designs a time machine, journeys back to 1936 and ultimately turns Henrys outline for a fantasy novel into a self-contained physical universe threatening the stability of her so-called real one. When her colleagues try to fetch her home, paradoxes and conundrums abound, and it grows increasingly difficult for even the most astute reader to distinguish the fictive from the real, the now from the then and the what might be from the what has already been. (To help readers keep track, Pears even designed an app to accompany the British edition: It resembles a choose-your-own-adventure plot or one of those multicolored subway maps that fill London tourists with the false assurance that they know exactly where they are.) Its hard to decide when or where a story like this begins or ends and what marks its most important stops along the way. Take Rosie Wilson, the teenage girl who feeds Henrys cat. Early in the novel, she descends into Henrys cellar (which is cluttered with Tolkiens displaced possessions) and crosses a doorway into Henrys Anterwold, much like her fictional predecessors in the Narnia novels. When she comes out again, she leaves behind a doppelganger who develops a stubborn ability to live her own life and send the Abasement ritual off course. And so it grows increasingly difficult to tell which story (and which Rosie) takes precedence over the other one. Who did what, where and when? Where does history (which the far-future totalitarians of this novel consider a form of the occult) end and fiction begin? Does any story possess a true origin or beginning, or is it always already implicated in the imaginings of other books, other people, othernesses? He who understood the darkness, one of this novels numerous altercating storytellers concludes, would also understand the Return, for the beginning and the end were one and the same. Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders share an upbringing in New Yorks outer boroughs and a repugnance for trade deals, but the similarities pretty much end there. Sanders routinely inveighs against corporate America; Trump is an executive of almost 500 business entities, more than 200 of which are named after himself. Trump lends his name to a line of power ties and cuff links; the adjective most often applied to Sanderss wardrobe is rumpled. Yet journalists routinely refer to both men as populists. How can a word that purports to describe both a proud socialist and an arrogant billionaire have any meaning? For half a century, most presidential campaigns have featured one or more populists from the right, the left or somewhere in between. In 1968, reporters and academics pasted the label on George Wallace, whose campaign literature asked, Can a former truck driver married to a dime-store clerk and son of a dirt farmer be elected president? In 1972, Time dubbed George McGovern a prairie populist because he had a modest plan to redistribute wealth and hailed from the rural heartland. In 1996, The Atlantic observed that Pat Buchanans hard-right-wing populism ... may be the shape of politics to come. In 2012, The Hill announced, Obama cranks up populist pitch after the president, who previously shied away from us-versus-them talk, called for higher taxes on the rich. There was a time when populist meant something more specific. The word originated with the decidedly left-wing Peoples Party that emerged in the Midwest and the South amid the economic turmoil and rampant inequality of the 1890s. Journalists who knew some Latin started calling them Populists as a shorthand, and the name stuck. Those uppercase Populists championed small farmers and wage-earners who thought the money power banks and industrial corporations had seized control of both Americas economy and its government. The party called for nationalizing the railroads, breaking up the trusts and strengthening labor unions. At times, their leftism toppled over into paranoia; to explain societys ills, they invoked a vast conspiracy against mankind, engineered by a plutocratic cabal. The Populists joined forces with the Democrats for the 1896 election and collapsed soon afterward. The word populist mostly disappeared into academic studies until the 1950s, when Joseph McCarthy, a previously obscure Republican senator from Wisconsin, rose to prominence with his claims that Communists had infiltrated positions of power in the American government and military. Many targets of his rants were members of the East Coast liberal intelligentsia. For years, Irvine-based Pacifica Hotels has quietly been watching properties, waiting for the right moment to pounce on hotels that fit its position as a boutique hotel owner and operator. Up next for the group? Renovating its newest purchases the San Simeon Pines Seaside Resort in Cambria and the Milner Hotel in downtown Los Angeles, with an eye on better positioning itself in a heated, competitive marketplace. Pacifica owns and operates six properties on Cambrias Moonstone Beach, for a total of 34 hotels. The hospitality group was created in January 1993 as a branch of real estate developer West Financial Corp. Alan Reay, president of Irvine-based real estate firm Atlas Hospitality Group, said Pacificas strategy has so far been successful. The locations they are purchasing in have huge barriers to enter, Reay said. They are buying in areas where they are separated from new hotels entering the area, and the type of hotels they are investing in offer very good return in investment. Debt is at historically low levels and Pacifica can get good economies to scale at an operational standpoint, since they own multiple properties in California. Pacifica Chief Executive Matt Marquis shared with the Register some of his plans for the future. His answers have been edited for length and clarity. Q. 2016 already has been a busy year for Pacifica. Why acquire property now? A. The market is very hot, is very high value, and theres also some opportunity right now. The last three assets weve acquired were off-market deals. We were able to get in there and tie them up before they were marketed. Thats an advantage we have. Because we are an owner/operator, we can come in and turn these assets around very quickly. We have our own interior design group that comes in and turns around these assets under a relatively quick time stamp. Q. How do off-market deals work? A. The two up in Cambria El Colibri (bought October) and San Simeon Pines, especially San Simeon Pines we have been watching for 10 years. San Simeon Pines was always this property at the end of the street with lots of land that had tremendous potential, but there were challenges with the former ownership in selling the property. With these types of assets, it is a game of patience and waiting for the right opportunity to present itself. These assets are what we call legacy locations. Eight acres on the Pacific Ocean in Cambria is hard to make a long-term mistake on. All three of our recent acquisitions were underperforming and underpositioned in their markets. Q. 2015 was a record-setting year for the hotel industry. Do you anticipate 2016 being the same way, or does it show signs of slowing down? A. The industry is a little more cautious in 2016 then it was in 2015. People are underwriting a little more conservatively. Growth rate and performance are being tempered a little bit now. Q. Does Pacifica have any plans to build hotels or acquire additional properties this year? A. We have two development deals that we purchased last year. Theyre in Santa Barbara and Pismo Beach. Those are raw land deals, and were working through the entitlement and development processes on those two. The opportunity to buy land and develop it today, with the land prices that are out there, is probably not as exciting to us right now. Were going to be opportunistic in looking for the right type of deal in todays market, not something widely marketed. Looking for off-market deals is really what were trying to do now. Q. What are your plans for the Milner and San Simeon Pines? A. Both will undergo extensive changes, the Milner especially. Its in downtown L.A., and that area has gone through a tremendous renaissance and theres quite a bit of redevelopment going on. San Simeon Pines will also undergo a renovation, less extreme than the Milner. It will get all new rooms and a facelift on the outside. It will be a fun lifestyle hotel. Q. What is a lifestyle hotel? A. Its all about engagement. We call it living locally. Youre having locally curated food and beverage items and activities. People no longer just go to their rooms; they want to go to a bar or restaurant and hang out at a firepit or enjoy wine or sit at a communal table. Q. Pacifica owns and operates a handful of properties at Cambrias Moonstone Beach. Why is this a valuable area for Pacifica? A. The Fireside Inn and the Fog Catcher up there were both acquired around the time I joined Pacifica, and both have done really well for us. Its a very small market with a lot of demand. People from Fresno, Bakersfield, L.A., even the Bay Area all feed into this market. Its a beautiful beach community, and weve had a lot of success with people wanting to come down and get away from busy cities. Q. Some have speculated the Milner will be converted to Pacificas Wayfarer brand. (Wayfarer offers both hotel-style and dorm-style rooms with common areas.) Is this the case? A. That is definitely an option that we are looking at. The positioning of a Wayfarer in downtown L.A. would do very well. Theres a lot of high-end hotels going into downtown and this would be upper scale, but it wouldnt be quite as expensive as other hotels. Q. The Wayfarer brand is a fairly unique model. Why has it become popular? A. A lot of it is the high design. Our design team really pulled the surrounding community into the hotel. We think the social engagement that happens is something that travelers are looking for. People dont want to be the lonely traveler anymore. They want to go and meet people and have social engagement and communication and share stories. Q. Are city regulations for dorm- or hostel-style regulations difficult to overcome? A. Most municipalities love hostels, but we dont look at the Wayfarer as a hostel. The Wayfarer in downtown L.A. isnt technically a hostel, its a hotel with hostel components like shared rooms and spaces. When you can buy a bed in a communal room for $49 to $99, that is a tremendous discount for what you would pay at a nice hotel. It opens up more options for travelers, especially in coastal communities. Were actually being brought in as advisers with large coastal developments that have requirements for affordable hotel rooms. They like the concept. Its not a cheap hotel in the way it feels or looks, but it is an efficient-cost hotel. Q. Are there any plans for the Wayfarer brand in Orange County? A. We are looking for a Wayfarer opportunity here in Orange County. Q. Most recently the Chinese company Anbang Insurance Group bought Strategic Hotels & Resorts Inc. for $6.5 billion. The same company has bid $13 billion in an effort to trump Marriotts deal for the Starwood hotel chain. Do you see any risks with outside companies coming in and buying properties very quickly? A. Its going to be interesting to see how foreign ownership works in our marketplace. Theres a lot of smart foreign owners who know what theyre doing, but would Marriott do more with the Starwood brand? Its hard to say they wouldnt. Marriott is one of the greatest hotel companies ever. But sometimes its also good to have more competition. Q. What do you see happening in the hotel industry going forward? A. There is a movement in the brands themselves for more authenticity. You have Kimpton, you have our type of independents and softer brands, nontraditional brands. People want an authentic stay. Some people want to look for the opportunity to go to a great restaurant where they are getting local cuisine and the experience of being part of the community, not just a visitor. Q. And whats next for Pacifica? A. Were looking to purchase a building and really establish our headquarters here. Were looking to do what we do at our hotels at our offices. Right now, we are crammed in a traditional office space. Were looking at this flex office space in Orange County and we want an open environment. A casual, communal, collaborative working environment. We miss that right now. We moved our company down here about two years ago (from Santa Barbara) and its been a sacrifice to not have us all under one roof. Contact the writer: hmadans@ocregister.com or Twitter: @HannahMadans Los Angeles International Airport boosted its police presence in terminals after Tuesday mornings attack in Brussels, while John Wayne Airport did not changed security measures. LAX spokesman Charles Pannunzio said no specific threats were made to the airport, and flights were not affected. As a precaution, we have increased the visibility of airport police officers at LAX, Pannunzio said. We will continue to monitor the situation in Belgium and make adjustments to security, if necessary. Security measures at John Wayne Airport remained the same on Tuesday, and travel was also not affected. We have not been advised of any threats to our operational area, said sheriffs Lt. Mark Stichter. This is our world today, and were constantly on guard and preparing for threats. Explosive-detection K-9s are regularly assigned to John Wayne Airport and Orange County Transportation Authority locations, Stichter said. Contact the writer: 714-796-7802 or aduranty@ocregister.com The U.S. Justice Department said Monday that it found an outside party that might be able to crack the security encryption of an iPhone used by one of the terrorists in the San Bernardino shooting a move that could end the high-powered court fight to force Apple engineers to do the work. If the method is viable, it should eliminate the need for the assistance from Apple Inc., the government said of the unnamed party. It said tests will be needed to make sure it does not harm the data that might be on the phone. Apple attorneys said Monday evening that they have no idea who the government is working with and that they had not been made aware during the litigation that the FBI still was seeking other parties to find ways to enter the device. The government disclosed the development Monday afternoon in a motion filed with U.S. Magistrate Judge Sheri Pym. She vacated a much-anticipated hearing today in Riverside federal court in a case that put the tech company and the government at odds over issues of privacy, encryption of electronic devices and national security. Pym also stayed her Feb. 16 order for Apple engineers to create software to help the FBI get to the iPhones data. Apple attorneys said the stay on the order had been granted because one of the governments chief arguments that only Apple could devise the software to get into the device had been undercut by the disclosure Monday that another party might be able to do it. Pym ordered the government to file a status update on the hacking work by April 5. The Justice Department wants to see if there is any useful data on the iPhone5c that San Bernardino County issued to health inspector Syed Rizwan Farook, who with his wife, Tashfeen Malik, attacked a gathering of Farooks co-workers Dec. 2 at the Inland Regional Center in San Bernardino. The shooting left 14 dead and 22 wounded. Farook and Malik died a few hours later in a shootout with police. The phone was recovered Dec. 3 in a warrant search of Farooks mothers car, the government said in the papers it filed Monday. Without knowing the pass code for the iPhone, which was set by Farook, the FBI obtained the order from Pym for Apple to create the software. Agents said the iPhone, with Apples iOS9 operating system, is programmed to shut down after 10 successive failed attempts at the pass code. The software sought by the FBI would allow it to bypass that shutdown and feed pass code combinations into the device until it got the right one. Apple attorneys said someone claiming they can get into the phone proves what Apple has been saying about hacking and device vulnerability, that the work to keep data safe is a continuing fight with hackers worldwide and that developments are constantly underway to counter their activities. At an iPhone product introduction event Monday, Apple announced the release of an upgrade to the operating system, iOS9.3. Among its features is encryption behind Touch ID for the Notes app. Since recovering Farooks iPhone on December 3, 2015, the FBI has continued to research methods to gain access to the data stored on it, the government said in a memorandum attached to its motion Monday. The FBI did not cease its efforts after this litigation began. (A)s a result of the worldwide publicity and attention on this case, others outside the U.S. government have continued to contact the U.S. government offering avenues of possible research. On Sunday, March 20, 2016, an outside party demonstrated to the FBI a possible method for unlocking Farooks iPhone. Testing is required to determine whether it is a viable method that will not compromise data on Farooks iPhone. Apples attorneys said Monday that they did not consider the development any kind of win for them in the case. They said the companys position has not changed on the issues raised by the challenge to Pyms order and that they were prepared to argue them if the governments effort fails to get the phones data. If the case does resume, Apple said, it will seek to talk to the government source that tried to hack the phone to see what they believed the vulnerability was. Contact the writer: rdeatley@pressenterprise.com President Obamas visit to Cuba well could mark the last big celebration of the communist Castro brothers sclerotic regime. President Raul Castro is 84, and his brother, the longtime dictator Fidel Castro, is 89. As with the 1976 death of Mao Zedong in China, the passing of the Castro brothers certainly will bring about market reforms and the demise of socialism on the beleaguered island. Indeed, some structural reforms, as Raul Castro called them, were introduced in 2006 when he replaced the infirm Fidel as head of state, such as allowing more foreign investment and farmers to own the food they produced. These economic reforms are essential because, as Nobel economics laureate Milton Friedman wrote, On the one hand, freedom in economic arrangements is itself a component of freedom broadly understood, so economic freedom is an end in itself to a believer in freedom. In the second place, economic freedom is also an indispensable means toward the achievement of political freedom. Such was the experience in Eastern Europe under communism in the 1980s. Greater trade with America led to personal ties between the free West and the socialist East, playing a roll in the tearing down of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the demise of communism throughout the former Soviet bloc. Freedom is crucial because the Castro regime continues to repress basic liberties, even arresting human-rights activists during Mr. Obamas visit. This is a new day, Mr. Obama said. We continue to move forward on many fronts when it comes to normalizing relations. Raul Castro said, Much more could be done if the U.S. blockade were lifted. The blockade/embargo was imposed in October 1960 under President Eisenhower and strengthened in February 1962 under President Kennedy at the height of Cold War tensions as Cuba sided with the Soviet Union. But the Cold War has long been over and the Soviet Union dissolved 25 years ago. Cuba has more religious freedom than does China, Saudi Arabia and other countries for which there is no U.S. embargo. We urge Orange Countys congressional delegation to work to end the embargo. PLATTE CENTER Residents of Platte Center look anxiously to the skies when spring storm clouds gather, knowing their community located near two area creeks will always feel the threat of flooding if rains come too fast. They have experience with the menace posed by heavy upstream rains rushing down Elm and Shell creeks and flooding their homes and businesses. Platte Center, named because of its central location in Platte County, experienced the mother of all floods in June 1990 when severe thunderstorms dumped heavy rains in the area. The storms sent high waters rushing down Elm Creek, runs through the communitys downtown business district, chasing residents out of their homes and businesses. In the aftermath of the flooding, residents got sick from working in the floodwaters, which were tainted with bacteria and chemicals from the runoff from farm and livestock operations. 1990 was the flood that really changed things, said Mark Borchers, current chairman of the Platte Center Village Board. The 1990 storm changed the landscape of the downtown business district along Fourth Street. Bruckner's Grocery Store, a backbone of the downtown for more than a century, closed a couple of years after the flood. Its hard enough for a small town to support a grocery store (without that kind of threat from Mother Nature), Borchers said. Nowadays, he said, some local residents make the drive to Columbus, sometimes two or three times a day, to run errands. The Polish Pub, which according to the date of 1912 drawn into the concrete above the front door, has weathered storms for more than 100 years. The Fourth Street bar reopened after the 1990 flood and remains a mainstay of downtown to this day. Betty Pilakowski didnt own the Polish Pub in 1990, but she can easily recall the flooding of eight years ago. The 72-year-old bar owner said floodwaters filled the businesss basement, but only a little muddy water ran under the front door. 1990 was the big one, said Pilakowski, who bought the bar 20 years ago. When the bar made the switch from propane heating, she said a new furnace was purposefully mounted on the ceiling of the basement to minimize the damage from another flood. We put it that way so the water couldnt get to it, she said. A second bar in the downtown area wasnt so lucky, closing its doors for good when floodwaters receded in 1990. Goering Construction, perhaps due to the retirement of the business' principals as much as flood damage, went out of business, too. Two barbershops are also gone. Schumacher Irrigation Inc., which marks 60 years in business this year, felt the wrath of the 1990 storm and made some changes to temper building damages from future floods. The business build a brick facade in the front of its Fourth Street office and wooden barricades outside warehouses to protect against the force of high waters and creeping mud. Were hoping that will help in the future, said Mark Schumacher, co-owner of the irrigation equipment company. High waters from prior floods left 4 inches of silt in the companys offices, forcing the replacement of drywall, wiring and insulation, and pushed in the doors of warehouses. The family owners of the business have discussed shifting locations to higher ground, but decided to remain downtown. Theres the threat of flooding, but whos to say Mother Natures fury wouldnt come in the form of a tornado next time, Schumacher said. Meanwhile, other businesses have sprung up in the 131-year-old community, which boasted a population of 336 as of the 2010 federal census. J & L General Store, a mini-mart/convenience store on Fourth Street, opened for business. Bank of the Valley has a new building, an insurance office occupies the old bank building, and Grubaugh Machine, Central Valley Ag and a trucking company have offices there. It would be 18 years until another severe late-spring storm struck the community. In 2008, residents had only minutes to escape their homes when quickly rising floodwaters along Elm and Shell creeks again flooded the communitys downtown area. The late-May rains topped Elm Creeks banks downtown, spilling over the bridge and flooding streets in several feet of water. Flooding along Shell Creek closed U.S. Highway 81 from 83rd Street north of Columbus to the Platte Center spur and a backed-up Elm Creek had nowhere else to go. Storm debris snagged on the railroad bridge and downtown bridge. Though some homes and businesses experienced major damage, including a collapsed wall in one house, there were no reported injuries. An estimated 10 businesses and 50 to 70 homes were damaged. Then-Gov. Dave Heineman declared a state of emergency at the time of the flooding, which allowed access to state and federal resources for storm cleanup. Platte Center made the funding requests to federal and state emergency management agencies in the late summer of 2008. The village received more than $40,000 from the Federal Emergency Management Agency and $4,775 from the Nebraska Emergency Management Agency to make repairs to Elmwood Park, George Hoadley Park and various streets. The 2008 flood wasnt nearly as bad as the earlier 1990 flooding, Borchers remembered. The village chairmans grandmother, in her 80s and living south of downtown in 1990, lost her home when 2 feet of gripping mud was left inside the residence by receding floodwaters. A lot of people bounced back, but some didnt, he said. The community received another calling card from heavy spring rains in 2010. Storm watchers kept their eyes peeled for rising waters along Elm Creek and volunteers readied sandbags, but improvements that had been made along the slopes of the waterway and increasingly popular no-till farming practices upstream played a pivotal role in slowing rushing waters that eroded soil and picked up debris along the way. The village and local natural resources district split the costs of the improvements that made the grade of the creek slopes gentler, allowing for more water to stay inside the banks. We just had to guesstimate the depth and speed of the rising water (in 2010), said Borchers, adding that early evacuation of residents is the top priority when flood fears climb. We get people out of their homes at the slightest threat. Some water also topped the lip of Elm Creek, which varies from 12 to 20 feet from the creek bed to street level, six years ago, but it just ran down the downtown gutters and into the storm drains. About 15 homes were threatened, Borchers said. Community improvements are continuing this year. The village has been embarked on a multiyear effort to replace a century-old water systems outmoded clay pipes with plastic piping. Were hoping the new, heavy plastic pipes will last another 100 years, said Borchers, adding that the community installed a new main line in town and has an ongoing process of replacing smaller offshoot piping as repairs are needed. Village officials also plan one more project this summer aimed at checking future Elm Creek flooding. The $25,000 project calls for improving a curve in the creek south of the downtown area. Its intended to allow high water to drain south away from the community faster, Borchers said. It will improve safety. The village chairman said there is also some potential new housing development on the horizon in the north-central part of town near the K-6 Platte Center Elementary School. A retired area farmer, Rod Hassebrook, is in the beginning phases of developing a subdivision with the possibility of 25 to 30 homes. Hes a good community-minded person, Borchers said. Call it the Million Student March. Thats the theme and call to action heralded by over 4,000 charter public school leaders, parents, teachers, supporters and advocates who gathered at the Long Beach Convention Center last week to celebrate the growth of parental school choice in public education. Hosted by the California Charter Schools Association, its president, Jed Wallace, declared, Over the last 20 years, charter schools have acted as a proven disruptive force for good in the public education system. California charter leaders are entrepreneurial thinkers who are scaling groundbreaking and innovative approaches to the way teachers teach and students learn. California became only the second state, after Minnesota, to enact into law the existence of publicly funded independent charter schools. Intended to advance innovation and reforms in public education, charter schools have become a symbol of the fight for parental choice in public education, where default assignment to a neighborhood school simply by ZIP code is no longer automatic. The fight for parental choice has not only increasingly become championed by middle-class families, but by low-income minority parents who, disproportionately, have found their children trapped in chronically failing schools with no interest by status quo bureaucrats to facilitate school transformations. Parents at Palm Lane Elementary School in Anaheim, for example, united to use the states Parent Empowerment Act (Parent Trigger law) to restart their school as an independent charter school. Although they obtained the necessary parent signatures to enact the change, they have been stymied by recalcitrant board members and district officials and abetted by district unions preventing them, to date, from enacting the change including even suing its own parents. Already, Anaheim Elementary School District taxpayers many unknowingly have footed nearly $1 million in legal fees to fight the parents in their quest to restart the failing school. Despite efforts by special interests in traditional public school districts to evade and defeat charter schools, charters growth continues. Today, almost a quarter century after the first law to create charters, Californias charter schools serve over 580,000 students in 1,230 schools. Yet, more than 158,000 additional students linger on charter-school waiting lists. This years theme and vision is to ensure a million students attend charter public schools by 2022, with charter public schools outperforming noncharter public schools by every measure. This year, the prestigious Hart Vision Award named for former state Sen. Gary K. Hart, who wrote Californias first law authorizing charter schools was presented to Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, D-Chula Vista, and Orange County Board of Education Vice President Linda Lindholm, who have fearlessly advocated for closing the achievement gap and setting a higher standard of excellence for all children. Lindholm has been key in shaking up the somnambulant previous leadership characterizing the board prior to her election. Joining forces with Board President Robert Hammond and Trustee Ken Williams, the new board majority has forged a new chapter of progress in enhancing parental school choice by supporting quality Orange County charter schools. The March to a Million is being challenged by old-guard special interests now organizing to file a state initiative suppressing charter schools. It will be up to California voters led by parents to ensure that those misguided obstructionist games will not impede the most successful advance in California public education: quality charter school choices and the right of parents utilizing those choices to truly become the architects of their childrens educational futures. Staff opinion columnist Gloria Romero is an education reformer and former Democratic state senator from Los Angeles. LOS ANGELES Los Angeles police are searching for a robbery suspect who fled the scene of a violent car crash that involved at least four other vehicles and injured two people. City News Service reported one victim was trapped and had to be rescued from a vehicle following the crash early Monday in Hollywood. Two people were hospitalized in unknown condition. Officials said there was no pursuit but the three suspects may have seen police and tried to flee. They were wanted in the robbery of personal property from a man. There was no word of any arrests and it wasnt immediately known if those injured were suspects. Police said officers are searching for at least one person. Restaurants throughout Orange County will be offering special menus for Easter Sunday. Here are some of the brunch options. Anaheim White House 887 S. Anaheim Blvd., Anaheim Enjoy a three-course Easter champagne brunch that includes selections such as escargot, ravioli formaggio, pasta e fasoi soup, calamari con grappa, traditional breakfast dishes, whitefish Florentine, hanger steak, pollo ripieno. Dessert options include puff pastry globes called profiteroles and vanilla cake filled with Chantilly cream called dolce al zabaglione. Adults, $32.50; children under 12, $16.25. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. 714-772-1381 or anaheimwhitehouse.com Back Bay Bistro 1131 Back Bay Drive, Newport Beach Champagne brunch buffet with omelet bar, a carving station, seafood, pastries and more. The Easter Bunny will also be on hand for photos. Adults, $79; kids 12 and under, $35. 9 a.m.-3 p.m. newportdunes.com/bistro or 949-729-1144 Bayside Restaurant 900 Bayside Drive, Newport Beach Three-course prix-fixe menu with free-flowing champagne. Entree choices include Canadian bacon frittata, crab cake Benedict, grilled prim culotte steak, slow-roasted American kurobuta pork chop, grilled Pacific swordfish, wild mushroom-crusted Chilean seabass, seafood risotto, open-face Maine lobster salad sandwich and more. For dessert, guests can choose from dark chocolate cake with Oreo crumbles and a strawberry almond tart. A special kids menu is available. 10 a.m.-4 p.m. $46.75; kids under 13, $21.75. 949-721-1222 or baysiderestaurant.com Fig & Olive 151 Newport Center Drive, Newport Beach The restaurants seasonally inspired menu includes Provencal carrot and thyme soup, crab salad, vegetarian quiche, marinated beef with herbs, seared salmon and a clementine vacherin for dessert. $40. 11 a.m.-3:45 p.m. 949-877-3005 or figandolive.com Flemings Prime Steakhouse and Wine Bar 455 Newport Center Drive, Newport Beach Guests will enjoy a three-course Easter brunch of potato leek soup, salad or fresh berries to start, followed by a choice of entrees including eggs Benedict and baked brioche French toast, prime rib and porcini-crusted filet mignon. End brunch on a sweet note with a choice of callebaut white chocolate bread pudding or mixed berry cobbler. $39.95. 10 a.m.-3 p.m. 949-720-9633 or flemingssteakhouse.com Hyatt Regency Huntington Beach 21500 Pacific Coast Highway, Huntington Beach This coastal resort will celebrate Easter with a live jazz trio, three Easter egg hunts, balloon artists as well as a brunch that includes fresh deli items, seasoned jumbo shrimp, stone crab claws, local halibut ceviche, herb and pepper-encrusted carved baron of beef, honey and tangerine-glazed ham, sushi, cedar plank-roasted salmon and more. For dessert, a gelato bar, assorted mini French pastries, bread pudding and a chocolate fountain. $85. Kids 6-12, $28. 5 and under, free. 10 a.m.-2 p.m. 714-845-4627 or huntingtonbeach.hyatt.com Las Brisas 361 Cliff Drive, Laguna Beach The prie-fixe Easter menu includes cucumber gazpacho or strawberry rhubarb salad to start and your choice of an entree: surf and turf, steak and eggs, shrimp and chorizo omelet, serrano ham eggs Benedict, halibut, stuffed airline chicken breast, lobster and grits and honey ham. The seafood tower consists of raw oysters, cocktail shrimp, king crab and Jonah crab. Enjoy pistachio cake for dessert. $50-$75 depending on entree; $100 for seafood tower. 8 a.m.-4 p.m. 949-497-5434 or lasbrisaslagunabeach.com Leatherbys Cafe Rouge 615 Town Center Drive, Costa Mesa This California French-inspired restaurant invites guests to enjoy endless mimosas from classic to strawberry lemonade and grapefruit, and a Lillet Rose sparkling cocktail. Main entree choices include market vegetable frittata, challah French toast, avocado toast, wild isles salmon, Angus beef hanger steak and jidori chicken breast. $45. Kids 12 and under, $20. 10:30 a.m.-3 p.m. 714-429-7640 or patinagroup.com/leatherbys-cafe-rouge Lucca 6507 Quail Hill Parkway, Irvine Brunch buffet options include an egg and omelet station, carving station, pastries, salad bar, Lucca pancakes and desserts. $34.95 ($39.95 with champagne). Kids under 10 pay their age (a 9-year-old would be $9, etc.). 949-725-1773 or luccacafe.com Oak Grill at Island Hotel 690 Newport Center Drive, Newport Beach Enjoy live-action food stations offering traditional brunch favorites. Buffet includes a build-your-own pancake bar, carving station, made-to-order eggs and omelets and chilled seafood. 10:30 a.m.-3:30 p.m. Adults, $75. Kids 11 and up, $25. Children 10 and under, free. 949-760-4920 or oakgrillnb.com The Phoenix Club 1340 S. Sanderson Ave., Anaheim Families can meet the Easter Bunny, participate in an Easter egg hunt and enjoy traditional breakfast specialties such as oven-roasted prime rib, glazed baked ham, a made-to-order omelet station, Viennese pancakes, cheese blintzes with berry sauce, Lyonnais potatoes, sauerbraten, pork schnitzel, fish, beef goulash, Easter mashed potatoes, chicken parmigiana and more. $32.25. Children 10 and under, $13.95. 714-563-4166 ext. 2 or thephoenixclub.com The Ranch Restaurant and Saloon 1025 E. Ball Road, Anaheim A prix-fixe brunch menu includes a soup or salad, choice of first course, entree and dessert. Entrees include white chocolate almond brioche French toast, beef brisket hash and shrimp and grits. Dessert options include espresso panna cotta, cinnamon cheesecake and vanilla rice pudding. Kids menu available. 10 a.m.-2 p.m. $75. 714-817-4200 or theranch.com The Ritz Prime Seafood 2801 West Coast Highway, Newport Beach Celebrating its first Easter, The Ritz Prime Seafood will offer an a la carte Easter brunch with choices such as egg with smoked salmon and caviar, crab and hamachi rolls, tempura veggie rolls, lobster benedict, brioche French toast, short rib hash and eggs, and a bison burger with foie gras, shishito aioli and onion marmalade. Sweets include sticky toffee pudding, chocolate flourless cake and an eight-layer coconut cake. 10 a.m.-3 p.m. 949-720-1800 or ritzprimeseafood.com Salt Creek Grille 32802 Pacific Coast Highway, Dana Point Easter brunch offerings include apple pastry fritters, bourbon caramel, powdered sugar beignets, slow-roasted pork huevos rancheros with citrus brown rice, black beans and corn tortillas, breakfast pizza made with mozzarella, applewood-smoked bacon, roasted fingerling potatoes and the chefs scramble with applewood-smoked bacon, diced ham, tomato, mushrooms and heirloom breakfast potatoes. Price depends on entree selection. 10:30 a.m.-2 p.m. 949-661-7799 or saltcreekgrilledanapoint.com Digital First Medias acquisition of the Register and The Press-Enterprise in Riverside creates a mammoth new player in Southern California media and represents a strategic business reset for the company, one of the nations largest newspaper chains. The company already owned 67 daily papers and 180 weekly publications across 15 states, including The Denver Post and the San Jose Mercury News. The purchase of the Register and Press-Enterprise is expected to close by March 31, which Digital First said would make it the largest news provider in the combined Los Angeles, Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino county areas. Our deep affection for local news was the motivation for pursuing The Orange County Register and the Riverside Press-Enterprise, Sharon Ryan, executive vice president of the companys Western region, said in a statement. We understand how to make local news both meaningful and profitable. But the recent history of Digital First Media and the continuing pressures on a legacy industry that has had to steadily cut costs to survive also poses new and as yet unanswered questions about how the consolidation may affect the Register and other dailies going forward. Company officials did not respond to repeated Register requests for interviews about their plans or for responses to comments from others about the companys record. The Denver-based company has long had its eye on the Registers parent company, Freedom Communications, which prints six of Digital Firsts local papers and is a direct competitor in the Inland Empire. There, Digital First publishes the San Bernardino Sun, Inland Valley Daily Bulletin and Redlands Daily Facts. Those papers have often gone head-to-head with the larger Press-Enterprise. In Los Angeles County, Digital First publishes the Los Angeles Daily News, Long Beach Press-Telegram, Whittier Daily News, Pasadena Star News, San Gabriel Valley Tribune and Torrance Daily Breeze. The Torrance paper won the Los Angeles News Group its first Pulitzer Prize in 2015 for an investigation of a local school district. That cluster of local papers has been operating under the LANG name, increasingly sharing content and staff. With the addition of the Freedom papers, Digital First announced Monday that the publications will be rebranded as Southern California News Group. One of the reasons the bankruptcy court awarded us these papers is because of our track record of profitability and dedication to local news, regional publisher Ron Hasse wrote in a memo to Digital First staff. With the addition of the Register and Press-Enterprise, he said, we will be one of the most dynamic news organizations in the world. Digital Firsts roots trace to MediaNews Group and the Journal Register Co. MediaNews snatched up the Long Beach Press-Telegram and other papers after the company was founded in 1983 by businessman Dean Singleton. He became an aggressive, pioneering cost-cutter in the early days of the newspaper industry downturn. In 2011, under the leadership of chief executive John Paton, the newly formed Digital First Media started managing MediaNews and the Journal Register Co., which operated dozens of small papers in the Northeast. Both companies had emerged from bankruptcy, with MediaNews Groups holding company filing in 2010 and Journal Register Co. filing in 2009. Journal Register, later called 21st Century Media, filed bankruptcy for a second time in 2012. Those companies officially merged under the Digital First name the following year. Today, Digital First is owned by Alden Global Capital, a private hedge fund founded in 2007 by New York investor Randall Smith. Its known for investing in distressed newspapers and took a stake in Freedom Communications after its first bankruptcy in 2009. Paton led Digital First on a high-profile if short-lived modernization effort intended to confront the challenges of the online media world head-on. A key initiative was the 2011 creation of the so-called Thunderdome, a New York City-based, mostly digital editorial and copy desk hub that distributed national and international content to the companys publications across the country. The project was scrapped in 2014 to cut costs. A couple years ago, everyone thought Digital First Media was this visionary newspaper company that was bent on dragging these mostly mid-market and small-market papers into the 21st century, said Gabriel Kahn, a USC journalism professor who studies the industry. After Thunderdome collapsed spectacularly, I havent seen any kind of real strategy to speak of from the company. Last year, an anticipated $400 million sale of Digital First to private equity company Apollo Global Management was never completed. Paton left Digital First soon after, passing the torch to chief operating officer Steve Rossi. More recently, Digital First has sold and consolidated a number of papers, reportedly triggering layoffs along the way. Earlier this month, the companys Bay Area News Group announced plans to consolidate six papers serving the San Francisco Bay Area into two. The move will mean the end of the 150-year-old Oakland Tribune on April 4 and a 20 percent cut to the BANG reporting staff, according to a report by the website of the San Francisco Chronicle. The Denver Post may also be preparing to cut up to 30 positions, media analyst Ken Doctor wrote Monday on the website Politico. Carl T. Hall, executive officer of the Pacific Media Workers Guild, a local chapter of the NewsGuild union that represents nearly 1,000 Digital First Media workers, said the companys roughly $52 million winning bid for Freedoms papers isnt sitting well with some inside the firm. Its very frustrating for many of our members to read about acquisitions and millions of dollars going to a bidding process for another newspaper, he said. The company seems to have a blank check for transactions like this one, Hall said. But when it comes to negotiating with their employees, the attitude seems to be, how much can we cut this week? The union launched a campaign in January to secure raises for employees many of whom, they said in promotional materials, havent received them in up to a decade. Those and other financially driven constraints layoffs, buyouts, cutbacks in foreign and national bureaus have become a hallmark of most major newspaper chains, as they continue to lose revenue and advertising as consumers shift from print to a broader range of digital media options. Hall and former Press-Telegram managing editor John Futch who worked at the paper for many years and chose to leave amid a round of cuts shortly after Digital First took over predicted cuts in the Register newsroom. However, Futch said he doesnt expect them to be radical reductions or come right away. Staff writers David Whiting and Ian Wheeler contributed to this report. Contact the writer: 714-796-7963 or bstaggs@ocregister.com BUENA PARK A 65-year-old man died Monday night after crashing his truck into several parked cars on a residential street, officials said. John Gaudenti of Buena Park was driving a Chevrolet truck around 6 p.m. when he crashed into multiple cars parked in the 6300 block of San Francisco Drive, police Lt. Frank Nunes said. Gaudenti had a medical issue while driving, which caused him to lose control of the truck, reverse up a driveway and hit the parked cars, Orange County Fire Authority Capt. Larry Kurtz said. Gaudenti wasnt badly injured in the crash, but his medical condition caused paramedics to rush him to Anaheim Global Medical Center in critical condition, where he later died, Kurtz said. It was immediately unclear what medical issue Gaudenti had, but coroner officials suspect Gaudentis autopsy will be finished Wednesday to determine his cause of death. No one else was injured in the crash and police closed the residential street for about two hours during the investigation, Nunes said. Contact the writer: 714-796-7802 or aduranty@ocregister.com With presidential campaigning in full swing, people may be giving a lot of attention to national politics, but there is still plenty of room for discussion about local government as well. Local governments regularly face important issues like low voter turnout and woes over civic engagement and finances. Its not all gloom and doom, though local governments may have some shortcomings, but they also have excellent opportunities to better the lives of their citizens if the right approaches are used. The strengths and weaknesses of local government were the topic of the second annual Conference on Local Government, held late last month at Chapman University. Organized by Fred Smoller, an associate professor in the Department of Political Science, this years conference was dubbed Reimagining Local Government: Strengthening Democracy in Our Communities. Smoller kicked off the conference with a few words on why local government is so important, especially to the lives of residents. Regardless of the outcome in the fall, I think we can say that the federal government will continue to be paralyzed and financially broke. I think thats going to be the case with the state government as well, Smoller said. We are really on our own if were going to solve major policy challenges. The day when we can look to the federal and state governments to save us those days are over. Because encouraging civic engagement is one of the biggest issues faced by local government, the morning began with a panel titled Improving Democratic Engagement: How Do You Create the Right Environment for Local Democracy? Appearing on the panel, moderated by Smoller, were Tom Tait, the mayor of Anaheim; Rick Cole, Santa Monicas city manager; Peter Hong, deputy chief of staff and director of strategic initiatives at California State Los Angeles; and Antonio Gonzalez, rresident of the San Antonio-based William C. Velasquez Institute. StructurAL problems One of the most painful things that can strike a local government on a structural level isnt a rash of graffiti or crime its the cold apathy of its residents who have become disinterested and lost faith in the political process. For any government to operate at its finest, a certain degree of civic engagement is needed. To put it another way, a certain mood has to be created an excitement, or interest at least, in getting involved and making a change. Two of the four panelists on the days first panel mapped out structural issues that can both cause and result from a lack of engagement. Gonzalez said low participation effectively results in a dictatorship, where interest groups and the corrupt can too easily use the lack of engagement to achieve their own interests unimpeded. Hong argued that a county structure no longer fits us the system was created in the days of rambunctious outlaws terrorizing innocents on horseback, and is out of its depth with the sprawling cities of our day. Los Angeles County is particularly problematic, with approximately 10 million residents and only five members on its board of supervisors. The board hasnt grown since the days of outlaws, and at this point the system effectively relies on nonparticipation with 2 million people to each supervisor, a directly engaged community is physically impossible. A kind solution Wishful thinking and simple kindness may not be the first concepts to come to mind for many when they hear the word politics, but a little goodwill can go a long way in government. Tait took an opportunity on the panel to talk about Anaheims Kindness Initiative. As mayor, Tait has strived to turn Anaheim into the City of Kindness, inspired in part by holistic medicine. Holistic medicine, rather than treating symptoms as they appear, stimulates the body to heal itself from within. Tait says a simple dash of kindness can work wonders for a city. One simple example of this is Anaheims Hi Neighbor program, which encourages neighbors to get to know each other. Just by getting along and learning about one another, neighbors will be that much more prepared to watch out for one another and work together in an emergency. When we have that big earthquake and we all know its coming forget about the fire department or the police department, Tait said. When your neighbors house collapses, its going to be the neighbors who dig that person out, and theyll have to know its a family of five and not a family of two. Tait said people are generally happier in kinder communities and backed it up by saying that since Anaheims Million Acts of Kindness effort in elementary schools, suspensions districtwide along with calls about bullying in one of the districts roughest schools were cut in half. Following up on that, Cole suggested a paradigm shift regarding how people interact with both the government and one another. He argued that most people see local government like they do a vending machine you put your money in, decide what you want and wait for the machine to deliver what you wanted. If you dont get what you asked for, some people might result to shouting or even kicking the machine. A relationship with a vending machine is ultimately a corporate one; you dont have ownership of it and you dont relate to it. Just about the most human relationship you could possibly have with it is getting mad at it for not giving you what you wanted. Cole suggested that, instead, we should look at government more as a barn-raising. In the good old days of the 19th-century frontier, people would work together to put up a barn to fulfill basic needs like food and shelter. In a barn-raising, everybody had a job to do, be they young or old, man or woman even folks from different religions set aside their differences. At the end of the effort, if the barn was less than perfect, nobody took it out on the barn, because they had all poured their efforts into it together. Cole argued that looking at government in a similar light turns a potentially dysfunctional relationship into a community effort where everyone has it in their best interests to work together. Local action Following the mornings first panel came the keynote speech by California Secretary of State Alex Padilla. Since being sworn in on Jan. 5 of last year, Padilla has been committed to improving voter registration and participation, as well as strengthening voter rights. Following up on the ideological approaches offered in the earlier panel, Padilla offered a practical example of how legislation can make a difference. Citing the gridlock of the federal government, Padilla said some of the most exciting policy innovation is happening on a local level things like the Uber debate and the move to increase the minimum wage. Padilla said when community involvement rises, the quality of life increases in turn. Voter turnout is a big part of making this happen, and Padilla says we might learn a lot if we look at how Colorados local governments handle elections. In Colorado, every voter has their ballot mailed to them, along with a variety of options on how to return them either by specialized mailboxes, drive-through stations and vote centers that use tablets and laptops with access to the county voter database, meaning voters can cast their votes from anywhere in the county not just their nearest polling place. The result of all of these changes? Voter turnout is up 20 percent and the costs of elections are down. Padillas proposal to improve Californias system based on these systems has been put into legislation by Sens. Ben Allen and Bob Hertzberg as proposed Senate Bill 450. In other panels throughout the afternoon, the conference sent one powerful message no change will come if nobody strives for it. Its all too easy to be cynical and claim that a system isnt working, but then the broken system will remain the status quo. As the King of Pop once said, if you want to make the world a better place, take a look at yourself and make that change. Contact the writer: jwinslow@ocregister.com KATHMANDU, Nepal Britains Prince Harry stayed at the village home of a former Nepalese Gurkha soldier who had served in the British army Monday as the prince continues his tour of the Himalayan nation. The prince flew to the Leurani village, northwest of the capital Kathmandu, Monday where he spend time with the villagers dancing and later feasting with the family of Mangali Tamang, 86-year-old widow of a former soldier. Villagers lined up the trail to the village offering flowers and cream-colored scarf which is offered to special guests. He stopped to visit two families who are building their homes after it was destroyed in last years earthquake. Press Association said Tamang was overjoyed to have her guest and, following Nepalese custom, referred to the royal as king: Im very happy. I cried when I die I can say I talked to the king of a foreign land. I could do nothing, put a garland of flowers around him and then I blessed him, Tamang was quoted as saying. I blessed him so that he may live to be 100 years and all his wishes become fulfilled, and where he goes success will follow him. Nepal abolished centuries-old monarchy in 2008 and Harry is the first British royal to visit Nepal since then. Heavy rainfall with hailstorm did not dampen the celebration of the villagers. Harry has close relations with the Gurkhas, Nepalese men who have served and fought nearly every war for the British army for two-centuries. Harry even served with a Gurkha battalion in Afghanistan. Earlier on Monday, he flew to Bardia national park home to rhinos and tigers where he talked about conservation. He spent hours discussing the local conservation officials and villagers about the tigers and even rode on a boat. Harry is on a five-day trip to Nepal where he already met the president, prime minister, attended an official function to mark 200 years of friendship between Nepal and Britain. The highlight of his trip was visiting the earthquake damaged areas and highlighting reconstruction efforts. He visited with families living in tents at a camp in Nepal for people made homeless by last Aprils devastating earthquake, toured old palaces and temples that were damaged. The earthquake killed nearly 9,000 people and destroying about 1 million homes. There has been little to help the victims even a year after the earthquake. It will be a tragedy if Madonna and her ex-husband Guy Ritchie dont resolve their custody battle over their 15-year-old son Rocco, a British judge said Monday. Judge Alistair MacDonald, who has been hearing a legal dispute between the queen of pop and her filmmaker ex-husband, said Rocco is a mature young man who is very great credit to his parents, and it would be best if both can spend time with him. I renew, one final time, my plea for the parents to seek, and to find, an amicable resolution to the dispute between them, MacDonald said. The judge said it would be a very great tragedy for Rocco if any more of the precious and fast-receding days of his childhood were to be taken up by this dispute. Madonna and Ritchie director of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels married in 2000 and divorced in 2008. Madonna wants Rocco, who currently lives with his father in England, to return to her custody in the U.S. She launched legal action in both the U.S. and Britain, where she asked for Roccos return under the 1980 Hague Convention on international child abduction. Madonna later asked to halt the British proceedings, and MacDonald agreed Monday that she could. Neither Ritchie nor Madonna, who is on tour in Australia, was at the High Court in London for the judges ruling. More court hearings are expected to be held in New York, where a judge has also urged the couple to put their sons interests first and end their months-long legal battle. A classical musician has been sentenced to more than 17 years in prison for beating and strangling his concert pianist wife to death. British judge Laura Cox says double bass player John Martin killed Natalia Strelchenko in a prolonged and ferocious attack. She sentenced him Monday to life with no chance of parole for 17 years and 174 days. Martin was convicted last week of murdering 38-year-old Strelchenko, who was attacked at the couples home in Manchester, northwest England, on their second wedding anniversary in August. Martin claims he has no recollection of the killing after taking a mix of alcohol and diazepam. Russia-born Strelchenko studied at the St. Petersburg State Conservatory and had performed at venues including New Yorks Carnegie Hall and Londons Wigmore Hall. Harry Sidhu, whos running for the state Assembly District 68 seat, is under fire from fellow candidates for incorrectly stating in his candidate statement that he has experience being mayor. Sidhu, an Anaheim city councilman from 2004 to 2012, served as mayor pro tem but never mayor. His candidate statement posted on the Orange County registrar of voters website reads, Harrys experience includes: Mayor and City Councilman; Orange County Water District Director. Sidhu, a Republican, said it was a typo and blamed state election law for not allowing him to correct the error, even before the filing deadline. This is a flaw in the law, Sidhu said. They should be able to make us correct it. The statement will appear as it is on the sample ballot pamphlet for the primary unless someone files a lawsuit requesting a correction and the court approves it. Irvine Mayor Steven Choi, one of seven candidates running in the District 68 race, said he wouldnt file the suit because it costs time and money, but questioned Sidhus integrity. I was so appalled, Choi said March 21. How can a candidate make such a false statement? Hes trying to cheat the public. The crowded pack will face off in the June 7 primary. The top two vote-getters, regardless of party affiliation, will advance to the Nov. 8 general election. The seat is held by Assemblyman Donald Wagner, who will be termed out. The district encompasses Anaheim, Irvine, Orange, Tustin, Villa Park and Lake Forest and surrounding unincorporated communities. Sidhu said he doesnt know why the words pro tem were left out of his candidate statement, written by political consulting firm Gilliard Blanning & Associates. He said he didnt catch the error when he proofread the statement. It was a simple accident, said Natalie Blanning, who worked on Sidhus statement. We write dozens and dozens of these statements, and when you copy something from the bio or whatever, words get cut out. Sidhus campaign website states he was mayor pro tem from 2009 through 2011 and in 2012 but doesnt say hes been mayor. Sidhu filed his statement with the Orange County Registrar of Voters Office on March 8, three days before the filing deadline, according to the registrar website. Sidhu said he spotted the mistake and asked the registrars office two days later to add the words pro tem. Orange County Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley denied the request, saying he is bound by state law, which prohibits candidates from changing their written statements once filed. Only a court can authorize the change, Kelley said. Fredric Woocher, an election law attorney at Strumwasser & Woocher in Los Angeles, said the law is intended to prevent candidates from changing their ballot statements based on what they find out from reading the other candidates statements. At this point, someone must file a lawsuit to make the change to Sidhus candidate statement. Such lawsuits are common during election seasons, Woocher said, adding that hes seen at least a couple of suits filed this election season to challenge ballot designations of candidates in Los Angeles. Sidhu wont face any legal consequences for his candidate statement, but his opponents may use it to attack his character, Woocher said. Konstantinos Kostas Roditis, an Anaheim Cultural & Heritage commissioner running for the District 68 seat, said candidates have the responsibility to make sure the information in their statements is correct. If he cant do the candidate statement right, how is he going to get legislation right in Sacramento? Roditis said. Sidhu faced scrutiny when he ran for county supervisor in 2010. At the time, he re-registered to vote so he would be in the proper district, changing his address from his 3.5-acre Anaheim Hills estate to one down the hill. A complaint was filed that he wasnt living at the new address. The district attorney found insufficient evidence to file charges. Sidhu lost that race to Shawn Nelson by 26 percentage points. In 2008, he ran for state Senate and lost to Mimi Walters in the primary by 48 percentage points. Staff writer Martin Wisckol contributed to this report. COLUMBUS A Columbus City Council member wants to look at the possibility of hiring a full-time fire chief to oversee the local department. Ron Schilling presented the idea Monday night to accompany ongoing discussions about building a joint police and fire facility to replace the downtown stations. City council members voted 7-0, with Dennis Kresha absent, to have staff review fire departments in other Nebraska cities for comparison, but there are already some reservations about the proposal. My biggest question about it would be what it would cost, said Mayor Mike Moser. Columbus is currently served by a part-time fire chief, a position held for more than 10 years by Dean Hefti. The fire chief receives a salary of $20,662, a figure that would likely rise significantly if the position is shifted to full time. Columbus has 15 paid firefighters, full-time city employees who also serve as paramedics or EMTs on the rescue squad, but still relies on a strong group of volunteers. There are about 55 volunteers who serve on the city department and another 22 for the rural department. City Councilman Terry Reardon, a longtime volunteer firefighter, called the volunteer system an asset that saves taxpayers money by limiting the number of paid firefighters needed to serve the city. The system we have works well, said Reardon, adding that the city should look for a candidate with experience working alongside volunteers if the position is shifted to full time. Although finding volunteers can be difficult because of mandated training and other time-consuming obligations, Reardon said the city should balk at the idea of hiring numerous full-time firefighters to replace the volunteers. Moser agreed, saying the city needs to maintain a balance between full-time and volunteer firefighters. We want to be careful not to upset that equilibrium, said Moser, noting that the chief helps bridge the gap between the career firefighters and volunteers. Schilling said he wants to maintain a strong volunteer base in Columbus. Hefti, who wasnt asked to speak during the city council meeting, also has concerns about potential expenses associated with reshuffling the fire department. I dont think the constituents or the taxpayers in Columbus can afford what would happen if you went to a full-time chief, he said Tuesday. Well wait for the study, but it could get expensive. IRVINE Samples of soil and soil gas will be taken from eight locations at the yet-to-open Portola High School and tested for volatile organic compounds and petroleum hydrocarbons under a testing plan devised by the California Department of Toxic Substances Control. Irvine Unified School District has scheduled a special meeting tonight to review the work to take place at the site of the districts fifth comprehensive high school, slated to welcome students in late August. This month, in response to complaints from residents who said further testing should be done at the site, the states toxics regulator ordered additional samples be taken for analysis to confirm it is safe. The school site is on the former El Toro Marine base and near a landfill. Construction at the 40-acre site, northeast of the Orange County Great Park, is about six months from completion. Representatives of the department toured the site with district administrators March 8. I am anticipating that this sampling exercise will answer the questions that have been raised with respect to Portola High School, and that this work can be completed quickly in the next couple of months, wrote Dot Lofstrom, the departments division chief, in an email to John Fogarty, the districts assistant superintendent of business services, following the visit. The plan for testing shows that samples will be taken at 5 and 15 feet below ground. Tests are intended to confirm the results of samples taken previously during the districts environmental assessment of the site. The Department of Toxic Substances Control approved that report in spring 2014. That fall, stained soil was discovered during the excavation of a storm drain near the school site. The soil eventually found to extend in a thin layer onto the school site was trucked away and tested, revealing the soil was stained with diesel fuel and other chemicals. But analysis showed the levels were too low to affect human health, according to the district, and the Department of Toxic Substances Control agreed. Irvine resident Harvey Liss, however, urged the department to do additional tests. Liss has written extensively in the Irvine Community News & Views, a political monthly, about his concerns. Former mayor Larry Agran co-owns the paper, which started out as a slate mailer. He wrote Gov. Jerry Brown last year asking for additional testing at Portola High. Staff from Irvine Unified and the Department of Toxic Substances Control plan to make presentations at tonights meeting. Contact the writer: sdecrescenzo@ocregister.com BEIJING The Digua Shequ community center in Beijing is painted in cheery pastel tones and festooned with colorful paper dragons hung from the ceiling. Inside are a hair salon, a cafe and a gym normal shops for a typical neighborhood except that they are underground. All of the storefronts are two floors below the street, built inside a former bomb shelter designed to withstand a nuclear war. Digua Shequ, a startup that turns unused basements into community centers and whose name is Chinese for Sweet Potato Community, has been renovating the shelter in northeast Beijing for the past year. It wants to reimagine the future of the citys underground spaces, once largely ignored but now contested by an unlikely combination of government, commercial and artistic interests. The centers founder, Zhou Zishu, a former designer at the National Museum of China, said he was inspired by the debate over what to do with Beijings bomb shelters, which house well over 100,000 people. Our work is not just about renovating basement spaces and making them look better, Zhou said. Its actually about improving the lives of residents and creating a new sense of community. We want to take these private spaces and make them public again. But not everyone agrees with Digua Shequs vision. The uncertain fate of the shelters, as well as the rules for their use, has drawn attention from several competing stakeholders. Beijings more than 10,000 concrete bunkers, built over 40 years ago, were a crucial part of Maos Cold War defense strategy. Some of the bunkers, which were handed over to neighborhood authorities in the 1980s, when the countrys economy was liberalized, were turned into shops or offices. Most were converted into living spaces and rented out to migrant workers or residents trying to duck Beijings soaring real estate prices. The news media called these subterranean residents the rat tribe, and the shelters gained a reputation for neglect. In 2010, Beijing announced that the residential use of underground spaces would be illegal by the end of 2012, a deadline that was extended to 2017. One pressing question facing the city is what to do with the people who still live in the bunkers. Estimates of their numbers range from 150,000 to 1 million. Nearly every apartment building in the Digua Shequ centers neighborhood has a former shelter or a basement. Most of the residential units in them are rented out for 500 to 900 renminbi a month, or roughly $77 to $138 about one-third of what it would cost to live aboveground. Workers wages arent rising as fast as the cost of living, said Xu Tong, who both rents out and lives in an underground space in eastern Beijing. If you get rid of these basement units, where will the migrants live? Government data shows that migrant workers wages increased about 14 percent in 2014 from a year earlier, compared with a nearly 22 percent increase in their cost of living. Xus lease illustrates the uncertainty about how serious the governments ban on underground dwellings is: Although the new rule takes effect in 2017, his contract does not expire until 2019. So far, Digua Shequs work remains an exceptional case for having legally repurposed the spaces under the new rules. Currently, the Civil Air Defense Department of Beijing grants one-year leases on former bomb shelters to individuals and companies. The order to end residential use means that some stand to lose a source of revenue, as few local officials and landlords are willing to spend to transform the units into commercial spaces. As a result, many shelters and basements occupied before the ban was announced are still being quietly rented out as housing. Its like a wave, said Wang Jinhui, who runs a hotel in a former bomb shelter near the Digua Shequ center. You just put your head down and wait for it to pass. He has rented out the space since 1998 and is optimistic that the political will to enforce the new regulations will dissipate. Theyve said theyd clean out these underground spaces for years and not succeeded, Wang said. It just might be that places like mine will survive. Subletting underground spaces can be lucrative. A lease for an entire basement or shelter typically costs about 150,000 renminbi a year, but subdividing the space can generate far more income. The shelter that Digua Shequ took over once housed more than 100 residents who together paid nearly 600,000 renminbi a year, Zhou said. A lot of landlords have spent money renovating the spaces they lease, so they dont want to stop renting out basements, said Guo Chengbao, a security guard who was once a basement landlord. He lives in an underground unit above the Digua Shequ center. Private investors have also been eyeing underground spaces. Renovating the basement that now houses the Digua Shequ center cost nearly 3 million renminbi, most of which was covered by Feng Lun, the founder of Vantone Holdings and its real estate subsidiary, Vantone Real Estate. In an interview with Zhou for the online series Wind Horse Cow, which Feng produces, the Vantone founder explained his interest in the project. Weve constructed a lot of buildings, he said, but theres no one today who is operating underground spaces like this. If other real estate developers came and saw your space, they might invite you to develop their underground spaces during construction. Feng did not respond to a request for an interview. Zhou said that underground dwellings might never be eliminated because of the different interests at play, but that he hoped the Digua Shequ model would be replicated in other neighborhoods. He said he saw it as a chance to transcend differences in social class and origin. Guo, the security guard, likes what it has done so far. After work, he sometimes eats dinner in the community space. Ive lived in Beijing for 14 years: Before, I didnt know any of the people who lived upstairs, he said, laughing. Now, were all familiar with each other. The University of California and the states community college systems announced a joint effort this week to help transfer students make their way into UC schools. The number of majors that are part of the Transfer Pathways program unveiled last summer increased from 10 to 21. And to expand outreach and support efforts for transfer students, the California Community Colleges board voted to spend $2.6 million before February 2018. The funds will increase outreach for the program, create week-long summer bridge programs for 1,500 students at three UC campuses, send out representatives to some regions, and support community college counselors with training and workshops. Their focus is on students from low-income backgrounds, foster homes, under-represented racial and ethnic groups, as well as those who are the first in their families to attend college. Also, veterans and U.S. military members are targeted. Admission to a UC campus is not guaranteed. As part of last years budget agreement with Gov. Jerry Brown, the UC aims to admit one transfer student for every two new freshmen. Currently, about 30 percent of UC students transfer from a community college. Until Pathways was created, specifying what courses are required for a particular major had different requirements for different UC campuses. The additional majors are: business administration, communications, computer science, electrical engineering, film and media studies, English, history, mechanical engineering, philosophy, political science and psychology. The 10 previously established Pathway majors: anthropology, biochemistry, biology, cell biology, chemistry, economics, mathematics, molecular biology, physics and sociology. Over the next three years, the UC schools will increase enrollment by 10,000 students, beginning with 5,000 more freshmen spread across the systems nine universities next fall. Contact the writer: 714-796-7829 or rkopetman@ocregister.com ATHENS, Greece Greece detained hundreds of refugees and migrants on its islands Monday, as officials in Athens and the European Union conceded a much-heralded agreement to send thousands of asylum-seekers back to Turkey is facing delays. Migrants who arrived after the deal took effect Sunday were being led to previously open refugee camps on the islands of Lesbos and Chios and held in detention, authorities on the islands said. EU countries are trying to avoid a repeat of the mass migration in 2015, when more than a million people entered the bloc. Most were fleeing civil war in Syria and other conflicts, traveling first to Turkey and then to the nearby Greek islands in dinghies and small boats. Efforts to limit migration have run into multiple legal and practical obstacles. Under the deal, Greek authorities will detain and return newly arrived refugees to Turkey. The EU will settle more refugees directly from Turkey and speed up financial aid to Ankara. The two sides, however, are still working out how migrants will be sent back. We are conscious of the difficulties, EU Commission spokesman Margaritis Schinas said in Brussels. And we are working 24-7 to make sure that everything that needs to be in place for this agreement to be implemented soon is happening. Commission officials said support staff needed to implement the deal including hundreds of translators and migration officers would not start arriving until next week. Returns, they said, cannot start until Greece changes its law to recognize Turkey as a safe country for asylum applications. The human rights group Amnesty International sharply criticized the plan. Turkey does not offer adequate protection to anyone, Iverna McGowan, the head of Amnestys EU office, told The Associated Press, accusing Turkey of routinely forcing Syrians back across the border. Migrants, meanwhile, continued to reach Greek islands in large numbers, as smugglers appeared to be opting for more overnight crossings and increasingly dangerous routes. Four people died Sunday while trying to reach Greece, two men off the island of Lesbos and two girls off the tiny islet of Ro, the coast guard said. More than 1,600 people made the crossing to Greece on Sunday, and 262 were rescued in five incidents after vessels sank or were in distress. We face an uphill effort. Implementation of this agreement will not be an easy issue, Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras said. He met in Athens with EU Migration Commissioner Dimitris Avramopoulos and urged him to increase pressure on Turkey to crack down on smugglers. Migrants and refugees have been stranded in Greece since Austria and Balkan countries started border closures in recent weeks. The number stranded reached 50,000 on Monday, with some 12,000 still camped out on Greeces closed border with Macedonia. On the Greek mainland, army personnel expanded refugee shelters at sites in the central and northern parts of the country mostly at former army bases so migrants who traveled to the Greek islands before the agreement came into effect could be resettled. We are creating between 500 and 1,000 additional shelter places every day and the total right now is 36,000, Migration Minister Ioannis Mouzalas said. On Monday, monitors from Turkeys interior Ministry arrived on Lesbos, Chios and three other Greek islands to help supervise the agreement and were to stay for at least one week. Thousands of refugees set up in a camp near the Greek village of Idomeni now have free access to Wi-Fi, thanks to an enterprising electrical engineer named Ilias Papadopoulos. Concerned that these people had no means of communicating with their loved ones either at home or waiting for them in other countries, he built a Wi-Fi station inside an old trailer, in September last year. Papadopoulos got the idea for providing the refugee camp with free Wi-Fi when he first visited Idomeni in August to see if he could be of any help. The village is an hours drive away from the city of Thessaloniki, where Papadopoulos lives. When he arrived at the camp, he realised that most refugees had smartphones, but none of them had access to SIM cards or an internet connection. He realised that communication was very critical for the refugees, so he set about building a Wi-Fi station from scratch. Photo: Fotomovimiento/Flickr In the next few weeks, Papadopoulos spent 5,000 euros of his own money to gather all the materials he needed to build a self-sustaining Wi-Fi hub. He installed solar panels that power the hub and recharge two high-capacity batteries during the day. The batteries are used to run the hub at night. He set up a used laptop to serve as the control panel, while two ADSL lines provide a slow, yet reliable connection. Papadopoulos revealed that hed much rather have used VDSL connections, which are a lot faster, but the village simply doesnt have that kind of connectivity. The connection is fed to eight different access points domed white discs that glow green (single-band) or blue (dual-band) across the camp. Papadopoulos chose both, because the smartphones used by refugees range from very basic models that can only access single-band connections, to the most advanced, which can access dual-band. And he wanted as many people as possible to have access. Photo: Fotomovimiento/Flickr There are limits, though. An access point can handle only 120 users at one point, and the entire system can handle only 960 connections. But the number of the refugees in Idomeni ranges around 15,000. This makes the connection slow and choppy during the day, but it works better at night when most people switch off their devices. And the refugees are really happy about just having access, even though the connection is mostly poor. Hes a lifesaver, a Syrian refugee named Yazan said, speaking to Mashable. Sinan, a refugee from Iraq, added that everyone is using Wi-Fi to connect to their relatives because most families scattered because of the wars in their home countries. Photo: Fotomovimiento/Flickr Given the success of his first Wi-Fi station, Papadopoulos now wants to install similar systems in other camps. For now, hes trying to find sponsors to fund his project. Terrorists hit Brussels Airport and a subway station in Belgium early today, killing at least 30 people by early accounts. ISIS has claimed responsibility. "Brussels Airport extends its deepest sympathy to the friends and relatives of the victims of the explosions in the departures hall earlier this morning," the airport's PR unit said in a statement. The airport said two explosions occured in the departures hall at around 8 a.m. this morning, adding emergency and rescue services are on the scene and are offering the necessary assistance. All flights at the airport have been cancelled. The attacks, believed to be suicide bombings, put the city of Brussels on lockdown and followed the arrest in Belgium of a key planner of the November 2015 terror attacks on Paris. In the aftermath, US airports and other major transportation hubs have tightened security, as well. Hotel giant Marriott said all of its guests and employees have been accounted for, adding the attacks have had no direct impact on its hotels. "We are deeply saddened by the tragic events in Brussels and our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims and all those impacted," the company said. Airline PR operations in the US responded to reassure customers. Delta said this morning that one of its early flights to Brussels landed safely and was parked remotely at the airport "with the local team working on plans to safely deplane passengers to a secure holding area." A second flight was diverted to Amsterdam. "Delta will be actively working with customers with flights booked to, from or through Brussels to reaccommodate their travel plans," the airline said. Chicago-based United said its first arrival from Washington to Brussels deplaned normally while its second flight from Newark was rerouted to a remote location. "The United family is deeply saddened by the tragedies in Brussels earlier today and our thoughts and prayers are with the victims and their familes," United said in a statement. American Airlines of Fort Worth expressed sympathies and condolensces to those affected by the attacks, noting the explosions did not occur in its check-in area at the airport. Its single flight to Brussels today was canceled. The Federal Communications Commission on March 17 gave Google permission to float high-altitude balloons that provide Wi-Fi in 50 states. Anti-Wi-Fi groups say they are dangerous but Google denies all such charges. "The proposed (Project Loon) experimental operations in fact present vastly less risk from radio frequency exposure than other transmissions the Commission routinely authorizes, Google told the FCC. Google said it respects the concerns of the critics but says there is no factual basis for them. Loon will comply with all existing technical rules governing radio transmissions, and the power levels used will be well below legal limits, said Google. It has taken extensive steps to guard against interference with other wireless activity. The company plans to conduct tests in all 50 states for a period of two years. A Loon balloon landed in Sri Lanka Feb. 17, 2016. The company said it had completed its test mission. GUARDS Fights Project Loon Global Union Against Radiation Deployment from Space says it gave FCC evidence that the Loon experiments in the U.S. would violate human rights and harm human health and the environment. The companys application to the FCC gives it permission to float the balloons at any time or continuously. That will pollute public and private environments indoors and outdoors with microwave radiation and does not include any requirement to tell people in the area who will be so exposed, GUARDS said. "Loon uses both ground-level and balloon-borne RF-generating equipment designed to encourage proliferation of RF radiation reiiant wireless communication systems, particularly in areas formerly without radiation saturation, says GUARDS. FCCs RF limits are based on the premise that if there is no heating damage to human flesh there are no biological effects, the group says. It quotes the 2012 BioInitiative Report that says the duration of exposure of non-ionizing radiation can cause harm to human tissues. After a two-month search, James Marcus has been named the newest editor of Harpers. Marcus, who becomes Harpers 16th editor, joined the 165-year-old publication in 2010, first serving as deputy editor before being appointed executive editor in 2013. Marcus was previously editor-at-large at the Columbia Journalism Review, and has contributed articles to the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Atlantic, Salon, Lingua Franca, the Village Voice, The Philadelphia Inquirer, the Nation and Story Quarterly. Marcus succeeds Christopher Cox, a former Paris Review senior editor who joined Harpers in 2010 and was promoted to deputy editor in 2013. Cox served as Harpers editor for only three months; after being appointed to that role in October, he was unexpectedly fired in late January by publisher John R. MacArthur. A February 2 The New York Times report on the incident posited that Cox had been terminated over disagreements regarding the magazine's editorial direction. Harper's in a statement said Marcus would assume the new position after completion of his latest book, which is slated for publication in 2017 from Metropolitan Books. Ellen Rosenbush, who Cox initially succeeded as editor in October, had been serving as interim editor while Harpers, the second-oldest continuously published monthly magazine in the country, searched for Cox's permanent successor. Rosenbush, who has been with Harper's since 1989 and was the first female at the magazine to fill the editor position, continued contributing to Harper's in the role of editor-at-large. She will resume that role in June. Ford Ireland Ambassadors Karen Koster and Kevin Dundon have taken delivery of their 161 registration cars. TV3 presenter and busy mum, Karen is driving the new Ford Kuga Titanium which has proved a huge hit during the January/ February 161 sales period. Ford has sold some 563 models of the sleek new Ford Kuga making it one of the top-selling vehicles so far this year. Underlining the success of Kuga during this period, the sales figure so far in 2016 is more than the total years Kuga sales tally for all of 2015. Chef Kevin Dundon who has recently launched his own range of craft beers under the Arthurstown Brewery brand, received the keys to his new Mondeo Vignale. The Mondeo Vignale is the first in what will be a range of models that will carry the Vignale brand. The Vignale range are specially manufactured premium versions of Ford models, including Mondeo and, later this year, S-MAX and Edge. However, Ford Vignale is more than just a range or specification, Vignale customers will discover a level of personal attention way beyond what they have experienced before. With a personal Vignale Relationship Manager for each customer, the concept of personal attention is taken to a totally new level in the Vignale experience. Ciaran McMahon, Chairman and Managing Director of Ford Ireland, said: We are delighted to present these sparkling new 161 registration models to Karen and Kevin they are two of our most eye-catching Ford cars and we wish Karen and Kevin many kilometres of happy and safe driving in them. Loading... OilVoice will be with you shortly... SCHUYLER Volunteers with Comite Latino braved the cold, wind and flurries of snow Saturday to register members of the Latino community to vote this election year. Victor Lopez founded Comite Latino in Schuyler to educate and encourage Latinos on civics and the U.S. political system, both nationally and locally. We see that need for our Latino community to be involved in the community, like with schools, school board, city council, all the things that have to do with the community, Lopez said. Seeing as how we are a pretty good portion of the population and we havent gotten involved. For many immigrants, one of the issues is the language barrier, but that is also compounded by the complexity and many positions in American politics. When I was in my hometown, when you vote you just think about the president or the county president, Lopez said. You dont see the rest like the city council, the school board. Mynor Hernandez, who is running for a seat on the Schuyler Community Schools Board of Education, said they handed out fliers about registering to vote at Cargill and churches for the last presidential election in 2012. We did some research and found that in the previous election (2008), there had only been 17 Latino voters, said Hernandez. One of our goals was to increase that number to 50, and instead it increased to 137. This year, volunteers are going door-to-door armed with phone apps and paperwork to check if someones eligible to register, and if they are, filling out the paperwork to get them registered. Gisela Chavez is a regular Comite Latino volunteer and member of the Schuyler Public Library Board. She started volunteering at the polls in 2008, then decided to join the library board to be more involved in the community. Im trying to get the Latino community more involved, she said. Theres a lot of people who want to get involved, but they dont know how. Patricia Acosta brought along her 10-year-old daughter, Vivian Gonzalez, who carried fliers in English and Spanish explaining the election process. When the residents invited everyone inside, Gonzalez watched as Acosta and Chavez answered questions, translated and helped Maria Gonzalez fill out the forms registering her to vote. The process takes a long time. Saturday was the second time Comite Latino volunteers have gone door-to-door, and they announced on their Facebook that theyve registered 30 people over the two weekends. The U.S. census in 2010 estimated that 65.4 percent of Schuylers population, or approximately 4,000 residents, were Latino. Though they have a long way to go, Chavez is undeterred. As long as we get as many people as we can, thats great, she said. LINCOLN Supporters of on-the-job protections for Nebraska's lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender workers are making their latest run at the Legislature. On Tuesday, more than 100 people rallied in the Capitol Rotunda to urge passage of a bill that would prohibit workplace discrimination based on sexual orientation or gender identity. The measure would help the state address its work force crunch, they said, showing Nebraska is "open for business." The rally came as lawmakers prepared to debate the bill, introduced last year by Lincoln Sen. Adam Morfeld. Employers are desperate for talent, said Linda Dugan, vice president at the La Vista-based Internet payment company Paypal. She said Morfeld's bill addresses a business, economic and human rights issue. "Paypal furiously and passionately supports this legislation," she said, drawing cheers from the crowd. The Lincoln and Omaha chambers of commerce support the bill, as do several of the state's major employers. But Greg Schleppenbach, executive director of the Nebraska Catholic Conference, said the bill's proponents have presented no evidence that such workplace protections result in economic growth. "If you're going to throw a definitive claim or assertion out like that ... give us some evidence," he said. Brandi Bosier, a transgender woman who owns a lawn service company in Hastings, said she knows of businesses that have avoided Nebraska because of its low rankings on national surveys regarding LGBT protections. She said while businesses are generally becoming more accepting, "religion is stepping over the boundaries." LGBT allies and some religious groups have sparred in recent years as nationwide recognition of gay rights comes in conflict with longstanding religious practices. Earlier this year, Sen. Mark Kolterman of Seward introduced a bill to protect Nebraska's faith-based child welfare organizations from losing state funding if they decline to work with LGBT people who want to become foster parents. Opponents of the workplace protection bill (LB586) say it would force business owners to employ people whose lifestyles conflict with their religious beliefs. "We all agree arbitrary discrimination is wrong," Nebraska Family Alliance said in a news release following Tuesday's rally. "This bill would exchange the consistent kindness and tolerance of Nebraskans for a law that would use the full force and weight of the government to punish those who hold different beliefs on marriage and sexuality." The Rev. Jim Keck of First-Plymouth Congregational Church in Lincoln said Morfeld's measure isn't just a bill, "It's an appeal to our better selves." He pointed to two Biblical teachings: that God created man in his own image and that Christians should "love thy neighbor as thyself." "This is what my Bible tells me," Keck said. WASHINGTON (AP) The Supreme Court has ruled for more than 3,000 workers at a Tyson Foods Inc. pork-processing plant in Iowa in a pay dispute with the company. The justices voted 6-2 on Tuesday to reject new limits Tyson asked them to impose on the ability of workers to band together to challenge pay and workplace issues. Instead, the court upheld a $5.8 million judgment against the Springdale, Arkansas-based company for not paying employees for time spent putting on and taking off protective work clothes and equipment before wielding sharp knives in slaughtering and processing the animals. Tyson argued in its appeal that it should not have been forced to defend a class-action lawsuit that claims it failed to pay thousands of knife-wielding employees for time spent putting on and taking off protective work clothes and equipment at its Storm Lake, Iowa, plant. Business groups that supported Tyson pressed the court to elaborate on its 2011 decision blocking a massive sex-discrimination case against Walmart Stores Inc. that would have included up to 1.6 million female workers. They wanted the court to rein in the use of statistical evidence to support the employees claims. But Justice Anthony Kennedy, in his majority opinion, explicitly rejected the argument by Tyson and its backers to broadly rule out statistical evidence in these sorts of cases. A categorical exclusion of that sort ... would make little sense, Kennedy wrote. The opinion relied on a 70-year-old Supreme Court decision that lets workers use statistical evidence in lawsuits over compensation when their employer doesnt keep adequate records of their hours. Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas dissented. Tyson has faced similar litigation around the country. In 2010, it settled a decadelong dispute with the U.S. Department of Labor by agreeing to pay workers at some poultry plants for time they spent putting on and taking off protective clothing. NEW YORK (AP) Marriott won over Starwood with a sweetened bid worth more than $14.4 billion just days after a Chinese insurance company appeared to steal it away from the hotel chain with a more lucrative offer. The buyout, which may still be contested by Chinas Anbang, would create the worlds biggest hotel company and give Marriott a stable of tony properties run by Starwood, including the St. Regis New York. Starwood, which owns Sheraton, Westin and St. Regis, over the weekend became the first U.S. hotel operator to gain access to Cuba, a day before the arrival of President Barack Obama. It is the first visit to Cuba by a sitting president in almost 90 years as relations between the two nations thaw. The revised deal would give Starwood shareholders $21 in cash and 0.80 shares of Marriott International Inc. Class A stock for each Starwood share. Starwood shareholders are also expected to get Interval Leisure Group stock valued at $5.83 per share. Taken together, that would value Starwood stock at $85.36 per share, or about $14.41 billion. Marriott has more than 4,400 properties in 87 countries and territories, under brands such as Ritz-Carlton, Residence Inn and Marriott. Starwood has nearly 1,300 properties in about 100 countries. Just days ago, Anbang put up an offer of $83.83 for each Starwood share, or approximately $14.15 billion. The writer is a former mayor of New York City and founder and majority owner of Bloomberg LP, the parent company of Bloomberg News, and the UN secretary-generals special envoy for cities and climate change. He wrote this for Bloomberg View. The value of the Canadian dollar and the price of oil, one of the nations top exports, have both tumbled to near record lows. But those details and the apparent demise of the Keystone XL pipeline dont begin to tell the story of what lies ahead for the economy of Canada, Americas second-largest trading partner. Last year, Canadian voters elected an energetic and pragmatic prime minister, Justin Trudeau. He campaigned on a platform of inclusion and tolerance, focusing on the need to bring people together to solve problems, including pulling the country out of its economic doldrums. His youthful energy and optimism have inspired comparisons to John F. Kennedy, and like Kennedy, he is promising to cut middle-class taxes and tackle the biggest scientific challenge of his time, which today is climate change. Trudeaus commitment to fighting climate change coincides with his recognition that the Canadian economy has been too dependent on oil for too long. The good news for Trudeau is that the market shares his view, as local governments are proving. In the United States, cities are often on the leading edge of change; in Canada, cities and provinces serve the same function. The most populous province, Ontario, has begun a 10-year, $100 billion program to improve its roads, transit and hospitals. The bonds sold to pay for those investments have been outperforming the national average, including in oil-rich Alberta. Investors have decided that governments with strong infrastructure are a better bet than those that are dependent on fossil fuels and they are right. Trudeau is committed to increasing investment in low-carbon infrastructure and clean energy technology, and market returns indicate that investors agree. So do local leaders. Cities from Montreal to Vancouver have set aggressive targets for reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and they are allowing the public to hold them accountable by making those targets public through a standardized reporting platform that more than 400 cities around the world have committed to. Various provinces have also adopted carbon taxes and cap-and-trade systems. By prioritizing greater investment in a low-carbon economy, Trudeau is swimming with the markets currents and local government trends. And those investments will help address another challenge facing the Canadian economy: individual and corporate cash reserves. As more infrastructure is built, more private-sector investment will follow, drawing more funds back into the market, which will spur more economic growth and tax revenue. With interest rates at sustained record lows, there has never been a better time for governments to borrow money to pay for new transit, schools and hospitals an opportunity the U.S. government has mostly missed. Canada faces its share of challenges, and whether the national government can live up to its carbon emission reduction targets will depend largely on how successful its bottom-up approach proves to be. But locally led actions that are aligned with market forces have the potential to drive a new era of growth and investment. Strong economic leadership, as Trudeau seems to understand, does not begin with protectionist or socialist policies that vilify scapegoats. It begins with uniting people around a hopeful and realistic vision that can be fulfilled if government works in concert with markets. "Part of his motivation was notoriety, and that's why I'm not gonna say his name," Sheriff Wagner said. "What he told us is that he was going to be famous." 108-foot statue of Kempegowda to be unveiled by PM in Karnataka: Basavaraj Bommai In Pics: Narendra Modi unveils Foundation Plaque of Dr. Ambedkar National Memorial Feature oi-Lisa By Lisa Prime Minister, Narendra Modi unveiled the foundation plaque of Dr Ambedkar National Memorial which will be constructed at 26, Alipur Road, Delhi where Dr Ambedkar breathed his last. Delivering Dr Ambedkar Memorial Lecture on the occasion, Mr. Modi said Dr. Ambedkar's contribution to the nation is immense. Most of the programmes being taken by the government now had been visualised by him only. Because of his ideology and vision for oppressed and downtrodden, he should be remembered as saviour of oppressed world over and not as the leader of Dalits only in India. Prime Minister Narendra Modi at the occasion: PM Modi also recalled the efforts and role played by former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee in remembering Dr. Ambedkar. Mr. Modi reminded people of why Dr. Ambedkar had to resign from the ministry and why asked why that part of history is either forgotten or diluted. Mr. Modi said that Dr. Ambedkar had resigned saying that when issue of equal rights to women come up he was clear that he can't be a part of such ministry. Mr. Modi had this to say on Dr. Ambedkar's vision for developing India's maritime strength, "There is a bill on waterways in Parliament but let me tell you this vision is of Dr. Ambedkar's. He believed in India's maritime strength." PM on Dr. Ambedkar's revolutionary thoughts and on Gaekwad family that strongly influenced him: "Dr. Ambedkar told society one thing- to get educated. It is like the inner power and he showed the way in that regard." "Bihar governor went to Vadodara & he honoured Gaekwad family. This family had a strong influence on Dr. Ambedkar's life." "Dr. Ambedkar called for labour reform and at the same time thought of industrialisation for the progress of India." On the occasion PM also asked as to why decision on Indu Mills where Dr. Ambaedkar stayed in London was kept pending for so long. He concluded his speech by saying that wherever his government gets an opportunity to serve Dr. Ambedkar they have done so out of reverence for him. Thawarchand Gehlot at the occasion: Minister of Social Justice and Empowerment, Thawarchand Gehlot said the Government has organised year-long celebrations to commemorate 125th anniversary of Dr Ambedkar and five places related with life and work Dr. Ambedkar are being developed as 'Panch Theerath'. He also said that Dr. Ambedkar Mahaparinirvana Sthal at 26, Alipur Road was dedicated to the nation by Atal Bihari Vajpayee, the then Prime Minister of India on 2nd December 2003. This Mahaprinirvana Sthal will have Exhibition Halls, Office, Library, Cafeteria, Dormitory and other purposes. It will also have Bheem Stumbh at the Entrance and Meditation Hall at the back. He said that, since this building is to be constructed as memorial of Baba Saheb who was creator of the constitution of India, it is designed in the shape of the book. The cost of this project is Rs. 95 crore and would be completed by end of March 2018. Krishan Pal Gurjar and Vijay Sampla, both Minister of State of Social Justice and Empowerment were also present on the occasion. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Tuesday, March 22, 2016, 13:10 [IST] Pakistan should continue to take credible action against terror: India Indias water woes far from over Feature oi-Shradha "We never know the worth of water till the well is dry"- Thomas Fuller We equate water with life. Over the years this indispensable resource has not only nurtured mankind, with civilizations having flourished around rivers and major waterways but has also been used for transportation of materials through rivers and canals as well as international shipping lanes- playing a significant role in the world economy. Every year, on 22nd March the world celebrates World Water Day to lay focus on the relevance of freshwater sanitation and sustainable management of the available water resources. This year's theme for World Water Day - 'Water and Jobs' - lays emphasis on how water quality as well quantity can impact livelihoods around the globe. According to reports, some 1.1 billion people worldwide lack access to water, and a total of 2.7 billion find water scarce for at least one month of the year. 2.4 billion people are faced with inadequate sanitation-they are exposed to diseases, such as cholera and typhoid fever, and other water-borne illnesses. Further on, two million people, mostly children, die each year from diarrheal diseases alone. Situation moving on from "bad" to "worse" In India's context, the situation in some of the drought-hit regions of the country has forced the inhabitants in larger numbers to leave their homes as lack of water had led to closure of a large number of industries, shops and establishments. Latur district and the entire Marathwada region in Maharashtra is reeling under severe drought for over four years now. Developed as a trading hub nine decades ago Latur is located at the center of three states, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Telangana, and was a major trading hub for soybean, groundnut, oils, tur dal and jaggery. However, the droughts have brought all trading to a standstill and the acute shortage of water has led to mass exodus of residents to other places, like Pune. The State administration fearing violence over water, imposed Section 144 recently and stepped up police patrols in the area. Sec-144 imposed in 6 areas of Latur(Maharashtra) as a precautionary measure to maintain law &order amid water crisis pic.twitter.com/suE0jE1jgi ANI (@ANI_news) March 20, 2016 No tanker is coming in our area,we've to wait in long queues wherever water is available:Local of Latur(Maharashtra) pic.twitter.com/aCkQhpI0qC ANI (@ANI_news) March 20, 2016 Interlinking of rivers (ILR) The idea to interlink the rivers of the country was first mooted in 1970 but significant developments have only shaped up recently. Successive governments had announced numerous projects over the years but were stalled due to red tapism, corruption, opposition to land acquisition and lack of coordination within the government. Earlier reports had mentioned that more than 200 irrigation projects worth some $36 billion have been stuck for years. The massive project to link Indian rivers by a network of reservoirs and canals aims to reduce persistent floods and water shortages in affected parts of the country. Since India is an agrarian economy with much of the agriculture dependent on rainfall, the situation faced by the farmers are challenging in the event of scanty rainfall during the monsoon season. In September 2015, after long planning and discussions, Godavari and Krishna rivers were finally linked with Andhra Pradesh's Pattiseema project- completed in record time of over 5 months. To expand irrigation and recharge aquifers the Central government has allocated a record $18 billion in the 2016-17 national budget, but how far the implementation of funds will be carried out it's only matter of time for the results to be visible. PETA asks people to turn vegan: Recognizing the severe stress that the "farmed-animal" industry places on water supply, PETA -the animal rights group has urged people to turn vegan (person who does not eat or use animal products). Neerja Khede, PETA India campaign assistant, said yesterday: "Meat production can require 10 times more water than the production of plant-based foods. To produce 1kg meat, it can require the same amount of water that is used for bathing 75 times -- an alarming drain on a precious resource." Other issues apart, animal slaughter houses suffer from very low hygiene standard threatening public health and environment due to discrete disposal of waste and highly polluted effluent discharge into the lakes and nearby water bodies, thereby magnifying the pollution levels several folds. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Tuesday, March 22, 2016, 0:15 [IST] Meghalaya's boundary dispute with Assam Feature oi-Lisa By Lisa Meghalaya and Assam's boundary dispute has reached such a level that Meghalaya has sought intervention of Home Minister Rajnath Singh to sort it out. Tensions occasionally develop along the inter-state border, which sometimes flare up into the incidents of violence especially between Assam and Nagaland. Thankfully despite having 12 areas of dispute between then Assam and Meghalaya both have not allowed violence to flare up. Dispute areas between the two states stretch in the Khasi-Jaintia and Ri-Bhoi district. Both the states have been having meetings at the Chief Secretary level from time to time to solve the boundary dispute. Till now both the sides have been sharing documents to prove their claim over the disputed area. Meghalaya's side of story: As per Chief Secretary of the state WMS Pariat, "It is a major issue as far as cadastral surveyed maps are concerned as we have very little documents on this account. We don't have the sort of maps that Assam possesses and that is making our task difficult". Mr. Pariat further informed that, "The Assam side have sought clarification on many of these maps and recently too we have sent clarification to support our claim over certain areas". Meghalaya has been presenting its case with "historical and electoral documents" during its discussion with Assam. Mr. Pariat further added that one of the major achievements of the Chief Secretary level talks is that though it tool long thanks to such talks for the first time both the states have started sharing documents in support of their claims over the areas under dispute. A problem that was highlighted by Mr. Pariat was that in areas such as Langpih and others underdevelopment has aggravated the situation as in such areas people have moved to either side of the boundary to get developmental assistance. To bring in early solution to the issue the Government of Meghalaya has started allocating specific fund for the development of areas under dispute. Previously government only used to allocate funds to develop region along the international border. Mr. Pariat further informed that, "Initiatives to develop road connectivity and other assets are being taken up by the State Government proactively in the past two years". Assam's side of story: Assam has been presenting its case with proper cadastral maps to prove its claim over the disputed areas. Assam minister Bhumidhar Barman informed the Assam assembly that, "Over 314 bighas of land in Guwahati have been under the encroachment of Meghalaya. Efforts are on to free the land in accordance with the Assam Land Revenue Rules 1886." Central government's intervention sought in past too: In March 2011 the Meghalaya Assembly had passed a resolution seeking Central Government to form a Boundary Commission that would resolve all the areas of differences between the two states. However, Assam Legislative Assembly passed a counter resolution that did not want the formation of Boundary Commission. Post this Home Minister had held meeting with the Chief Ministers of both the states and it was decided that the states hold the Chief Secretary level talks. When the Survey of India published maps omitting 153 villages along the Khasi Jaintia Hills a major controversy had irrupted. The Survey of India in its defence said that the maps were prepared on the interpretation of the North-Eastern Areas (Reorganisation) Act, 1971. For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Tuesday, March 22, 2016, 11:50 [IST] Bihar: Girls protest after being asked to remove Hijab during exam Bihar: When asked to take off hijab to check for bluetooth device, Muslim student leaves exam centre Central team roped in as dengue cases in Bihar rise to over 5000 Bihar govt to bring 'start up policy' very soon: Minister India oi-PTI Patna, Mar 21: The Bihar government would bring a new 'start up policy' next month to help promote business ideas, Industries Minister Jai Kumar Singh said. "Besides, the government is also coming up with the most attractive new Industrial Incentive Policy," Singh said while inaugurating 3rd Bihar Entrepreneur Summit (BES) here. An event like this one, where entrepreneurs and professionals from across the country and from abroad participate, would help in 'branding' the state as better investment destination in the country, he said. Start up policy would help in making job creators in the state, Singh said adding that Industrial Incentive Policy will offers one of the best tax exemptions in the country to the entrepreneurs. Industries Department Principal Secretary S Siddharth said the start up policy would soon be sent for the cabinet's approval. Besides this, the government has also created a corpus of Rs 500 crore as start up fund which would be utilised for helping young entrepreneurs of the state. Cooperative Minister Alok Mehta suggested to open a 'business counselling room' in every district for young entrepreneurs. PTI Government amends Atal Pension Yojana India oi-PTI New Delhi, March 22: Government has amended Atal Pension Yojana (APY) to give an option to the spouse to continue to contribute for balance period on premature death of the subscriber. It has decided to give an option to the spouse of the subscriber to continue contributing to APY account of the subscriber, for the remaining period, till the original subscriber would have attained the age of 60 years instead of present provision of handing-over lump-sum amount to spouse on the premature death before 60 years of the subscriber, Finance Ministry said in a statement today. "The spouse of the subscriber shall be entitled to receive the same pension amount as that of the subscriber until the death of the spouse. After the death of both the subscriber and the spouse, the nominee of the subscriber shall be entitled to receive the pension wealth, as accumulated till age of 60 years of the subscriber," it said. The changes were made based on the feedback received from various quarters which indicated that the present provision under APY of handing-over lump sum amount to spouse on premature death of the subscriber is not preferred by many subscribers, it said. It has also highlighted the fact that there is growing demand to give an option to the spouse to continue contribution after the death of subscriber to enable him/her to draw pension when the deceased subscriber would have turned 60 years of age, it added. The government had launched APY to address the longevity risks among the workers in unorganised sector and to encourage the workers in unorganised sector to voluntarily save for their retirement last year. Under APY, each subscriber, on completion of 60 years of age, will get the guaranteed minimum monthly pension, or higher monthly pension, if the investment returns are higher than the assumed returns for minimum guaranteed pension, over the period of contribution. "After the subscribers death, the spouse of the subscriber shall be entitled to receive the same pension amount as that of the subscriber until the death of the spouse. After the death of both the subscriber and the spouse, the nominee of the subscriber shall be entitled to receive the pension wealth, as accumulated till age of 60 years of the subscriber," it said. PTI Dhanteras 2022: How much gold can you buy from Dubai 2 Jet Airways crew injured in Brussels blasts India oi-IANS By Ians English New Delhi, March 22: Two Jet Airways crew members were injured in the blasts at Brussels airport today even as the authorities have relocated the airline's passengers in Brussels to a safe location. "Two of our staff have been injured and are receiving medical care," a senior airline official said. According to the airline, as per initial information, Jet Airways guests in Brussels have been re-located to a safe location by the Brussels Airport authorities. Passengers and staff are not allowed to access the airport terminals, it said. Jet Airways is closely monitoring the situation, the airline said. Brussels airport serves as Jet Airways' European hub for international operations. The airline had, however, recently announced relocation of this gateway to Dutch capital Amsterdam from coming. A string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station today, reportedly killing at least 13 people. In view of the situation, the airline has decided to cancel its flights to and from Brussels till tomorrow. The flights which stand cancelled are from Brussels to Newark, Toronto, Mumbai and Delhi as well as services from Newark and Toronto to Brussels for today. Jet Airways has also announced cancellation of its flights from Mumbai and Delhi to Brussels scheduled for tomorrow. The airline said for further information passengers can contact Jet Airways contact centre in India 1800225522, 1-877-8359538 (The United States) and 08081011199 (The United Kingdom). Brussels attacked in retaliation for Salah Abdeslam's arrest? I am in touch with Mr Manjeev Puri Indian Ambassador in Brussels. He has informed me that so far there is no report of any Indian casualty. Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) March 22, 2016 However, an Indian lady crew member of Jet Airways is injured. She has been rushed to the hospital./2 Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) March 22, 2016 PTI J&K government formation - Mehbooba likely to meet Prime Minister today India oi-Vicky The chief of the PDP, Mehbooba Mufti is likely to meet with Prime Minister Narendra Modi and discuss the formation of the Jammu and Kashmir government. The BJP had last week stated that the talks with the PDP had failed as they were not in any mood to accept any fresh demands. The formation of the government in the state was looking bleak, but a visit by Mehbooba to Delhi raised hopes. Also Read: J&K govt formation: After BJP snub, pressure high on PDP The PDP with 27 MLAs and the BJP with 25 had formed a government in March 2015, but following the death of Mufti Mohammad Sayeed, there has been no government in place. Mehbooba who took over from her father has been making several demands and this had not gone down too well with the BJP. Also Read: Under pressure to keep flock together, PDP chief to resume talks with BJP Finance Minister Arun Jaitley who had assured of a package to Jammu and Kashmir said yesterday that Mehbooba must make up her mind. He even said that the two parties are ideologically different but came together for the people of the state. The meeting with the PM which is scheduled for today will discuss the formation of the government and also the way forward. Also Read: Mehbooba's Delhi visit ups hopes of renewed parleys with BJP Both parties are not ready for an election immediately and will attempt to iron out differences. While the BJP has made it clear that no fresh demands would be accepted, it is however ready for some concessions. J&K: Govt formation on track as Mehbooba meets PM India oi-Vicky New Delhi, March 22: The trouble in the BJP-PDP alliance appears to be fading with Mehbooba Mufti meeting with Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The meeting between the PM and the PDP chief was a highly viewed exercise in Jammu and Kashmir as the stalemate dragged on for several months with no government in place. Following the meeting, Mehbooba said that the there are still hopes for a government in Jammu and Kashmir with the BJP. She said that the meeting with the Prime Minister was positive. The talks are back on track and both the BJP and PDP have decided to work towards a solution so that a government can be in place, sources informed OneIndia. The BJP had made it clear that it will not accept any fresh conditions from the PDP and the alliance would continue as per the terms and agreements that were set by the BJP and the late Mufti Mohammad Sayeed. During the meeting with the PDP chief and the PM it was decided that the two parties would work out a solution and ensure that a government is installed at the earliest. The BJP had made it clear that the ball was in the court of the PDP. In addition to this the BJP has also assured of a financial package for Jammu and Kashmir. The BJP says that although ideologically different, the two parties came together to set up a government in the interest of the people. While the union government was ready to assist the state with a financial package, the BJP made it clear that there can be no change in the agenda of alliance. OneIndia News AAP vs LG fight again and this is time it is on Gandhi Jayanti Mahatma Gandhi tried his best to save Bhagat Singh's life India oi-IANS By Ians English New Delhi, Mar 22: The 85th death anniversary of Shaheed Bhagat Singh, the revolutionary icon of the freedom struggle, who attained martyrdom at the young age of 23, falls on March 23, 2016. Shashi Tharoor compares Kanhaiya with Bhagat Singh: Twitterati hit out at Congress MP Alongwith Sukhdev and Rajguru, Bhagat Singh was hanged to death less than a week before the commencement of the Karachi session of the Indian National Congress, on March 29, 1931, a landmark event of India's freedom struggle in which economic freedom was equated with political freedom. The year 1928 was marked by an anti-Simon Commision upsurge everywhere in India. On 30 October 1928, the Simon Commission faced a large hostile crowd led by Lala Lajpat Rai at Lahore Station. The Lala was severely beaten by the Police under J. A. Scot, British SP and he later succumbed to his head injury. The whole nation was stunned by this savagery. As news of the attack on Lajpat Rai spread, the country reacted with anger. Bhagat Singh was appalled. He could not believe that a white man could dare take a stick in hand and set upon Lajpat Rai. The HSRA (Hindustan Socialist Republic Army) decided to undertake retaliatory action. On 17 December, Bhagat Singh, Rajguru, Sukhdev and Chandra Shekhar Azad mistook the ASP, J.P.Scot for Saunders, as they pounced upon him and shot him dead. A few months later, on 8 April 1929, Bhagat Singh and Batukeswar Datta threw a bomb in the Central Legislative Assembly Hall in Delhi. It was hurled from the midst of a packed gallery, not aimed at anybody, but to draw the attention of the House, the Indian people and the British rulers in India. As Bhagat Singh and Batukeswar Dutt had planned not to escape after throwing the bomb, they were arrested. While Dutt was sentenced to transportation for life in the Assembly Bomb Case, Bhagat Singh, alongwith Rajguru and Sukhdev, was sentenced to death for the murder of Saunders in what became famous as the Lahore conspiracy case. While in jail, Bhagat Singh took up the cause of bettering jail conditions and commenced a hunger strike. The Jail Committee requested Bhagat Singh and B.K. Dutt to give up their hunger strike but they declined. As the fast continued indefinitely with no solution in sight, Jawaharlal Nehru visited Bhagat Singh and the other hunger strikers in jail. Bhagat Singh & Valentine's Day: What's the controversy? Nehru gives an account of his visit in his Autobiography: "I saw Bhagat Singh for the first time, and Jatindranath Das and a few others. They were all very weak and bed-ridden and it was hardly possible to talk to them much. Bhagat Singh had an attractive, intellectual face, remarkably calm and peaceful. There seemed to be no anger in it. He looked and talked with great gentleness." Finally, it was Bhagat Singh's father who had his way. He came armed with a resolution by the Congress urging them to give up the hunger strike. The revolutionaries respected the Congress party because they knew of its struggle for India'a freedom. They called Gandhi 'an impossible visionary' but they saluted him for the awakening he had brought about in the country. As days of execution of Bhagat Singh and his comrades drew near, appeals from all over India, from all sections of people poured in, usually addressed to the Viceroy asking him to stay the execution. Gandhi met Irwin on i9th March and pleaded for the reprieve of Bhagat Singh and his two colleagues from the death sentences to which they had been condemned. He reinforced this oral request with a powerful appeal to the charity of a "great Christian" in Young India. Bhagat Singh, Rajguru & Sukhdev were hanged to death on March 23, 1931. As the news of Bhagat Singh's execution spread the nation went into mourning. There were processions throughout the country. Many went without food. People wore black badges and shut down their businesses to express their grief. A pall of gloom hung over the Motilal Nehru pandal at the annual Congress session in Karachi. When the session was scheduled for 29 March, 1931 nobody had an inkling that Bhagat Singh, Sukhdev and Rajguru would be hanged six days ahead of schedule. A procession to be led by president-elect Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel was abandoned in grief. Jawaharlal Nehru sponsored a resolution which was seconded by Madan Mohan Malviya. According to Kuldip Nayar in 'The Life and Trial of Bhagat Singh': "Gandhi chose Nehru to pilot the resolution because he was popular among the youth. Patel was heckled." A part of the resolution read: "This Congress while dissociating itself from and disapproving of political violence in any shape or form, places on record its admiration of the bravery and sacrifice of the late Sardar Bhagat Singh and his comrades, Sukhdev and Rajguru, and mourns with the bereaved families the loss of these lives. This Congress is of the opinion that this triple execution is an act of wanton vengeance and is a deliberate flouting of the unanimous demand of the nation for commutation." What soothed the emotions was a speech by Bhagat Singh's father, Kishen Singh. Delegates wept loudly and openly as Kishen Singh recalled Bhagat Singh's words: "Bhagat Singh told me not to worry. Let me be hanged. But he made a fervent appeal: 'You must support your general (Gandhi). You must support all Congress leaders. Only then will you be able to win independence for the country.'" Subhash Chandra Bose had told Gandhiji that they should, if necessary, break with the Viceroy on the question of Bhagat Singh and his two comrades: "Because the execution was against the spirit, if not the letter, of the Delhi pact." Still, Netaji added: "It must be admitted that he (Gandhi) did try his very best." Gandhi's secretary, Mahadev Desai also quoted the Mahatma as saying : "I was not here to defend myself and hence I have not placed the facts as to what I have done to save Bhagat Singh and his comrades. I have tried to persuade the Viceroy with all the methods of persuasion I had. After my last meeting with the relatives of Bhagat Singh, on the appointed date, that is , 23rd morning, I wrote a personal letter to the Viceroy, in which I had poured in my whole being-heart and soul-but it has all gone in vain... Pandit Malaviyaji and Dr Sapru also did their utmost." Lord Irwin took the public into confidence on his reasons for rejecting Gandhi's appeal. In his farewell speech on 26th March, 1931, Irwin said: "As I listened the other day to Mr. Gandhi putting the case for commutation formally before me, I reflected first on what significance it surely was that the apostle of non-violence should so earnestly be pleading the cause of devotees of a creed fundamentally opposed to his own, but I should regard it as wholly wrong to allow my judgment on these matters to be influenced or deflected by purely political considera-tions. I could imagine no case in which under the law the penalty had been more directly deserved." The jail diary of Bhagat Singh makes for an interesting historical reading. He wrote shortly before his death : "They (the youth) should aim at a Swaraj for the masses based on socialism. That was a revolutionary change which they could not bring about without revolutionary methods..." Bhagat Singh exhorted Punjab's youth to follow Nehru. He called Nehru and Bose as a "redeeming feature of the freedom struggle" during the 1920s. In his last letter to his youngest brother, Kultar, he quoted the popular Urdu couplet: Khush raho ahle watan hum to safar karte hain (Goodbye, dear countrymen, we proceed on our journey). IANS No, Vienna is no more the favourite address for 'James Bonds' today; its this city Nato summit 2018 begins in Brussels: What is Nato? Jaishankars Brussels visit would decide on Modis participation at UN summit EAM defends, decision on citizenship law, Article 370 at Brussels News Flash: Jet Airways guests have been accommodated safely: Officials India oi-Oneindia By Oneindia Staff Writer Bengaluru, March 22: Council of Ministers Meeting to take place today at 6:30 pm, to review status of implementation of decisions of cabinet and CCEA. Get all the latest news updates of the day: 10:45 pm: I have spoken to Manjeev Puri our Ambassador in Brussels. Our Embassy officials are attending on the injured in the hospital: EAM. 10:32 pm: Delhi-Chennai Jet Airways flight diverted to Nagpur airport after bomb scare, departed from Nagpur airport at 2101 HRS for Chennai. 10:30 pm: Fire broke out in a fire cracker factory in Kota (Rajasthan). 3 dead, over 12 persons injured. 10:10 pm: No such decision has been taken: HM on question of another paramilitary force replacing Assam Rifles on Myanmar border. 9:40 pm: UN chief Ban Ki-moon calls Brussels attacks 'despicable': AFP. 9:30 pm: Islamic State group claims responsibility for Brussels attacks. (AP). 9:25 pm: 13 candidates list for the ensuing elections to the Legislative Assembly of West Bengal released by AICC. 9:15 pm: Three armed men steal a car from a civilian at gunpoint in Sujanpur, Pathankot (near J&K border) around 8 PM today. 9:05 pm: We are working very closely with the Indian Embassy and are in touch with the Indian Ambassador to plan the next steps: Jet Airways 9:00 pm: Jet Airways guests have been accommodated at three locations by Jet Airways staff in co-ordination with local authorities: Brussels attack update. 8:55 pm: Army & Police carry out search op for suspected militants in Pulwama, J&K (Visuals deferred by unspecified time). Army & Police carry out search op for suspected militants in Pulwama, J&K (Visuals deferred by unspecified time) pic.twitter.com/wUPGVUAq4k ANI (@ANI_news) March 22, 2016 8:48 pm: Belgium calls three days of national mourning after attacks, says official. 8:46 pm: There are few areas along the border where India and China have differing perception of the LAC. There has been increase in assertiveness during routine patrolling by PLA: Defence Ministry annual report 2015-16 8:42 pm: As per assessment till Dec 31, 2015, 33 terrorists infiltrated successfully out of 121 who attempted: Defence Ministry annual report 2015-16. 8:40 pm: In 2015 in J&K, Army eliminated 18 infiltration bids resulting in killing of 30 terrorists: Defence Ministry annual report 2015-16. 8:10 pm: Myanmar's Suu Kyi to be foreign minister: party. (AFP) 8:00 pm: We stand in solidarity with them in condemning this outrageous attacks against innocent people. Will do whatever necessary to support our friend & ally Belgium in brining to justice those who're responsible: President of USA Barack Obama on Brussels attack. 7:50 pm: The thoughts and prayers of the American people are with the people of Belgium: President of USA Barack Obama on Brussels attack. 7.40 pm: PM Narendra Modi and other ministers arrive for the Council of Ministers meeting in Delhi. 7.30 pm: Jet Airways guests are being shifted away from Brussels Airport by the local authorities: Jet Airways 7.22 pm: We've been waiting for so many months for them to form the govt, we hope they'll form a govt: Farooq Abdullah on Mehbooba Mufti meeting PM. 7.01 pm: Delhi-Chennai Jet Airways flight diverted to Nagpur airport after bomb scare, sniffer dogs at the spot. 7.00 pm: Passengers evacuated at Jolly Grant Airport(Dehradun)after bomb scare in Jet Airways flight from Mumbai to Dehradun. 6.57 pm: Rahul Gandhi's one day Uttarakhand visit cancelled,he was scheduled to meet party workers in Haridwar. 6.55 pm: 20 Hyderabad University students detained by Police for vandalism. 6.39 pm: Moradabad Police to keep vigil on #Holi celebrations through a drone camera. Its equipped with night vision. 6.15 pm: I have again spoken to our Ambassador in Brussels. He hs informed that all stranded Indian passengers are being provided hotel accommodation, says Sushma Swaraj. 6.08 pm: NHRC Chairperson Justice HL Dattu appointed as a member of International Coordinating Committee Bureau in Geneva. 5.45 pm: Policemen injured during stone pelting by students at Hyderabad University VC's lodge. 5.34 pm: CRPF personnel defuse five bombs planted by Maoists in Bijapur (Chhattisgah). 5.33 pm: French President Francois Hollande: "Terrorists struck Brussels but it was Europe that was targeted." 5.15 pm: Police evict students from Hyderabad University VC's lodge as they protested over RohithVemula case. 4.59 pm: Mumbai: Congress workers protest outside BMC Commissioner's office over Deonar dumping yard fire. 4.58 pm: Bomb threats to five Jet Airways flights from Delhi to various locations, three of which have landed already. 4.23 pm: PM Modi is scheduled to also have some bilateral meetings on the sidelines of NSS 2016: Vikas Swarup, MEA. 4.22 pm: Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel says 'we know there are many dead, many injured'. 4.21 pm: Airport,subways,metro stations in Brussels under lockdown following explosions at the airport. 4.20 pm: From Brussels, PM will proceed to Washington to participate in Nuclear Security Summit on March 31st- April 1, says Vikas Swarup, MEA. 4.17 pm: PM will visit Brussels On March 30 for 13th India-EU Summit: Vikas Swarup, MEA. 4.16 pm: Our mission in Belgium is closely monitoring the situation: Vikas Swarup, MEA. 4.15 pm: I am really worried for them, I am very tensed: Abhijeet on his family stranded at Brussels Airport. 4.03 pm: London & Paris deploys extra police force at its transit hubs after brusselsairport explosions. 3.27 pm: In touch with Indian Ambassador in Brussels. He has informed me that so far there is no report of any Indian casualty: EAM's tweet. 3.17 pm: Indian Embassy's helpline in Brussels : +32-26409140 +32-26451850 (PABX) & +32-476748575 (mobile). Indian Embassy's helpline in Brussels : +32-26409140 +32-26451850 (PABX) & +32-476748575 (mobile) Pl RT Sushma Swaraj (@SushmaSwaraj) March 22, 2016 2.20 pm: We are taking the Bangladesh match seriously, we know what they are capable of, syas Ashish Nehra. 2.11 pm: Wait for a day, you will know from where I contest, says Sreesanth on reports of him contesting elections from Eranakula. 2.03 pm: Explosion at Brussels metro station close to EU institutions, says Belgian broadcaster RTBF. 1.30 pm: 11 dead, 20 injured in explosions at Brussels Airport. More bombs detected: reports. 1.22 pm: Two explosions rock Brussels airport. 12.25 pm: BJP protests against Shiv Sena over the Deonar fire issue in the Maharashtra assembly premises. 11.55 am: Hyderabad University students ransack Vice-Chancellor's office as he joins work for first time since Rohith Vemula's suicide. 11.40 am: Digitally empowered India is the ultimate aim of Digital India Mission: Ravi Shankar Prasad. 11.30 am: Solutions to people's problems in Kashmir becomes more clear after meeting the Prime Minister: Mehbooba Mufti 11.20 am: The meet was very positive, says PDP Chief Mehbooba Mufti after meeting PM Narendra Modi in Delhi. 11.10 am: Kanhaiya Kumar reaches Congress Vice president Rahul Gandhi's residence to meet him. 11.05 am: Delhi HC issues notice to Delhi police and AAP volunteer on plea of AAP leader Kumar Vishwas against Patiala House Court's order. 10.55 am: PDP Chief Mehbooba Mufti leaves 7 RCR after meeting PM Narendra Modi. 10.50 am: University of Hyderabad VC Appa Rao who was on a two month leave, resumed office this morning. 10.45 am: Maharashtra Advocate General Shreehari Aney submits his resignation to Governor after receiving flak over statement on separate Marathwada state. 10.30 am: PDP Chief Mehbooba Mufti reaches 7 RCR to meet PM Narendra Modi. 10.25 am: Locals protest at Azad Maidan against Deonar dumping ground fire which has caused thick smog in Mumbai. 10.11 am: Gangsters kill a police personnel who was trying to intercept them in Rajasthan's Nagaur late last night. 9.24 am: Kanhaiya Kumar to meet Congress Vice President Rahul Gandhi at 11:30 am today. 9.15 am: Central government's special team likely to visit Deonar dumping ground today, will meet BMC Commissoner & submit report within one week. 9.00 am: Four dead and more than six people injured after a truck hits auto-rickshaw in Allahabad. 8.25 am: PDP Chief Mehbooba Mufti to meet Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Delhi today. 8.00 am: Area continues to be under thick smog due to fire at Mumbai's Deonar dumpyard. 7.30 am: Mumbai Residents complain of discomfort and breathing problems as area continues to be under smog due to Deona fire. 7.20 am: ICG rescued 7 fishermen on March 21, 2016 from a sinking fishing boat off Ratnagiri(Maharashtra), after it received a distress alert. 7.15 am: Council of Ministers Meeting to take place today at 6:30 pm, to review status of implementation of decisions of cabinet and CCEA. OneIndia News Of Dazzling Jewellery And Benefits, Kalyan Jewellers Is Here To Make Your Festive Season More Special Protesting jewellers in UP say will not celebrate 'Holi' India oi-PTI Kanpur, March 22: A section of jewellers in Uttar Pradesh has decided not to celebrate Holi to protest against imposition of 1 per cent excise duty on jewellery items. "Around five lakh jewellers from Uttar Pradesh will not celebrate Holi this year including 10,000 from Kanpur", Uttar Pradesh Jewellers Association President Mahesh Chandra Jain claimed. Jewellers and bullion traders have been on strike since March 2 against the budget proposal to impose 1 per cent excise duty on non-silver jewellery items. "Thousands of wholesale and retail markets are closed and traders are continuing their protest", Jain said. The protest will continue on Holi and we have decided to hold demonstration at MLAs and MPs houses so that they raise the issues with the government, he added. "We are more concerned about employees, daily wages workers and small scale traders. They have the crisis of bread and butter now", Jain said. "We will not call off our strike till the Centre withdraws 1 per cent excise duty on non-silver jewellery," he said. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in the Budget for 2016-17 had 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. PTI Brussels attack: Shout heard in Arabic before blasts, says Belgian news agency International oi-Shubham Brussels, March 22: Belgian news agency Belga said shots were fired and Arabic was shouted before explosions rocked the city's Zaventem Airport, killing many and injuring several. Shocking pictures emerge from Brussels airport after explosions Explosion at Maelbeek metro station " title="Explosions rock Brussels airport, many dead Shocking pictures emerge from Brussels airport after explosions Explosion at Maelbeek metro station " />Explosions rock Brussels airport, many dead Shocking pictures emerge from Brussels airport after explosions Explosion at Maelbeek metro station The explosions at the airport were followed by a blast at the city's Maalbeek metro station, resulting in shutting down of the metro stations. The airport was also locked down with the authorities asking passengers not to go there. Tuesday's blasts came just four days after the arrest of Salah Abdeslam, the prime surviving suspect in the terror attacks that rocked Paris last November, killing 130 people. The Belgian police were ready to tackle for any retaliation. Belgium's Interior Minister Jan Jambon said on Monday the country was on high alert for a possible revenge attack following Abdeslam's arrest. French investigator Francois Molins told a news conference in Paris last Saturday that Abdeslam, a French citizen born and raised in Brussels, told the authorities that he had wanted to blow himself up along with others at the Stade de France on the day of the attack claimed by the Islamic State but backed out later. Oneindia News Islamic State claims responsibility of Brussels bombings: Foreign media International oi-Avinash Brussels, Mar 22: Dreaded global terror outfit, Islamic State (ISIS) has reportedly claimed responsibility for serial bombings in Brussels on Tuesday, which killed at least 26 and left several injured. (Brussels blasts: 28 killed as terror strikes Europe again) As per Egyptian media report, the statement by the group - based in Iraq and Syria- was published by Amak News Agency. (Brussels attacked in retaliation for Salah Abdeslam's arrest?) A series of apparently coordinated explosions ripped through Brussels airport and a city metro station today, killing at least 26 people in the latest attacks to target Europe. Security was tightened across the jittery continent and transport links paralysed after the bombings that Belgian Prime Minister Charles Michel branded "blind, violent and cowardly". "This is a day of tragedy, a black day," Michel said on national television. (Brussels explosions: No Indian among casualties) Two blasts targeted the main hall of Zaventem Airport at around 8:00am (1130 IST), with prosecutor Frederic Van Leeuw saying the assault likely involved at least one suicide bomber. A third hit Maalbeek metro station near the European Union's main buildings, just as commuters were making their way to work in rush hour. (We are at war: Francois Hollande on Brussels attack) Meanwhile, Sunni Islam's leading seat of learning, Al-Azhar, said attacks in Brussels "violate the tolerant teachings of Islam," and urged the international community to confront the "epidemic" of terrorism. "Al-Azhar strongly condemns these terrorist attacks. These heinous crimes violate the tolerant teachings of Islam," the Cairo-based Al-Azhar said in a statement. OneIndia News (With inputs from agencies) For Breaking News and Instant Updates Allow Notifications Story first published: Tuesday, March 22, 2016, 19:28 [IST] Brussels attacked in retaliation for Salah Abdeslam's arrest? International oi-Sandra Brussels, Mar 22: Brussels was rocked by multiple explosions on Tuesday, Mar 22. Two explosions were reported from Brussels Zaventem airport, whereas one explosion was reported from Maelbeek Metro station. Though no terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the attacks so far, Brussels was on high alert for a possible revenge attack following the arrest of Paris attacks accused, Salah Abdeslam. Brussels attack: Shout heard in Arabic before blasts, says Belgian news agency European cities put on alert after Brussels attacks; 13 officially dead at airport Abdeslam was arrested on Friday, Mar 18. Belgium's Interior Minister, Jan Jambon, said the country was on high alert for a possible revenge attack following the capture of Abdeslam in a flat in Brussels on Friday. Abdeslam, one of the most wanted men in Europe, is suspected of involvement in attacks in Paris. These attacks killed 130 people in Paris on November 13 last year. Brussels explosions: No Indian among casualties The attacks come a day after Jambon said, "We know that stopping one cell can push others into action. We are aware of it in this case." Meanwhile, according to latest reports, 13 people were reported dead at the airport and many were left injured. The death toll at the Maelbeek metro station is yet to be confirmed. Following the attacks, Belgian interior minister said that the terror level has been to maximum level in wake of airport explosions. Following Abdeslam's arrest it was revealed that Abdeslam was planning more attacks in Belgium. He told investigators that he ' was ready to restart something from Brussels.' OneIndia News Chile harvests the largest legal marijuana plantation International oi-IANS By Ians English Santiago, March 22: Authorities have started harvesting the largest legal marijuana field in Latin America in a rural area in southern Chile, the media reported on Tuesday. The initiative, which has been authorised by the Chilean government, will transform the buds of 6,000 marijuana plants growing near the city of Colbun into different phytopharmaceuticals for 4,000 patients free of charge. "It is an important day. We want it to be the first harvest of many more to come in Latin American countries," Ana Maria Gazmuri, president of the Daya Foundation, an organisation for the promotion and research of alternative therapies, which fosters the initiative, told Efe on Monday. The objective of the project is to generate three large clinical studies that will be developed by the Chilean National Cancer Institute and two hospitals. The research is funded by 20 municipalities of the country and is expected to benefit patients who suffer from cancer, refractory epilepsy and chronic pain. Last December, Chile passed a bill which allows the production and sale of drugs derived from hemp plants, legislation that countries such as Puerto Rico and Colombia have also adopted recently. At the end of 2015, Chilean President Michelle Bachelet signed a decree which establishes that the Institute of Public Health has the authority to allow and control the use of cannabis for the manufacturing of medicinal products for human use. In Chile, marijuana is currently on the list of hard drugs, which means that their cultivation and possession is penalised with sentences ranging from five to ten years in prison. However, the Chilean parliament is working on a bill to legalise the consumption and personal self-cultivation and to list marijuana within the group of less severe drugs. IANS Fact Check: Did Trump thank Musk for welcoming him back to Twitter Donald Trump favours non-interventionist foreign policy International oi-IANS By Ians English Washington, March 22: Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump favours a non-interventionist foreign policy focused on reducing the US engagement in conflicts abroad while vowing complete support for "our most reliable ally" Israel. He favoured a non-interventionist foreign policy to facilitate rebuilding infrastructure and the economy at home, the billionaire told the Washington Post's editorial board Monday. Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton lead respective parties in US poll Hours later, Trump -- whose promise to be "neutral" in negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, has caused concern among pro-Israel activists -- sang a different tune before the American Israel Public Affairs Committee's annual meeting. In any negotiation, he pledged, "we will send a clear signal that there is no daylight between America and our most reliable ally, the state of Israel". Trump also lambasted the Iran nuclear deal negotiated by President Barack Obama, who he noted was "in his final year, yay". He pledged to relocate the US embassy in Israel to the "eternal capital of the Jewish people, Jerusalem". Making a departure from his usual extempore speeches, Trump delivered a carefully worded address with the aid of a teleprompter bringing the crowd to its feet at times. "I didn't come here tonight to pander to you about Israel," he claimed, "That's what politicians do -- all talk, no action." There is no daylight between America and Israel: Trump He also reached out to the Republican leadership with a private meeting with Republican lawmakers amid efforts by the Republican establishment to somehow stop him from getting the party nomination. Also read: Anti-Trump protesters block major road before rally Earlier in the day, Trump was attacked by Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton for suggesting in past interviews that he would remain neutral in negotiating the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. "We need steady hands," Clinton told AIPAC, referring to the real estate mogul but not naming him. "Not a president who says he's neutral on Monday, pro-Israel on Tuesday and who knows what on Wednesday because everything is negotiable." "Well, my friends, Israel's security is nonnegotiable!" she said. "You'll get a glimpse of a potential US foreign policy that would insult our allies, not engage them, and embolden our adversaries, not defeat them," Clinton said setting a hawkish tone. "For the security of Israel and the world, we need America to remain a respected global leader, committed to defending and advancing the international order." The two other Republican presidential candidates, Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Ohio Governor John Kasich, also made their support for Israel and opposition to the Iran deal a centrepiece of their remarks. Clinton's Democratic rival, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, was the only major candidate who skipped the AIPAC meeting. IANS Trump is convinced Russia didnt interfere in 2016 polls; blames US for sour ties with Moscow Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton remain top choices: Polls International oi-IANS By Ians English Washington, Mar 22: Amid party establishment's 'Dump Trump' campaign, the billionaire continues to be the top choice of Republican voters for their party's nomination, while Hillary Clinton beats rival Bernie Sanders in the Democratic contest, according to new polls. A new CNN/ORC poll finds little appetite among Republicans for replacing the front-runner with another candidate at the party convention or through a third-party run, but most of those opposed to Trump's candidacy continue to pine for another option. With the field whittled to just three candidates, 47 percent of Republicans say they'd most like to see Trump win their party's nomination, about the same as the 49 percent who said they would be most likely to support him in February. Texas Senator Ted Cruz follows at 31 percent, with Ohio Governor John Kasich the preferred choice of 17 percent of Republican voters. Trump tops the enthusiasm race as well, with 40 percent saying they would be enthusiastic about a Trump candidacy compared with 28 percent who would be that excited about Cruz and 19 percent about Kasich. Democrats are more apt to see their own party as united, 38 percent say so, while 44 percent say it's divided now but will unite by November and just 15 percent feel the party won't be united come November, according to the poll. Clinton continues to top Sanders in the race for the Democratic nomination, with 51 percent saying they'd most like to see the former secretary of state atop the party's ticket in November compared with 44 percent who want to see Sanders lead the Democrats into November. US presidential elections 2016: Here is what you need to know about poll process That's narrower than the 55 percent Clinton to 38 percent Sanders margin in late-February, when voters were asked who they would be most likely to support. Both of the remaining Democratic nominees top Trump by a wide margin in hypothetical general election matchups, Sanders over Trump by 20 points and Clinton over Trump by 12 points. Sanders fares better than Clinton against each of the three remaining Republicans, topping Cruz by 13 points and Kasich by 6. Clinton runs even with Cruz and trails Kasich by 6 points. Meanwhile, a new New York Times/CBS News poll found that 60 percent of Republicans are embarrassed by their party's primary campaign, compared with just 13 percent of Democrats. Republicans were also much more likely to say they felt their party was divided, with 88 percent saying yes compared with 33 percent of Democrats. Members of the Republican Party were also less likely to say they had a favourable opinion of their party or its frontrunner candidate, and more likely to say the tone of their party's campaign has been more negative than in past years. Half of Democrats said they expected Hillary Clinton to be their nominee, and 46 percent of Republicans said the same of Donald Trump. Among all registered voters, asked how they would feel about each candidate if he or she became president, people were most likely to respond "excited" about Bernie Sanders and most likely to respond "scared" about Donald Trump. John Kasich received the highest percentage responses in both of the two middle categories of "optimistic" and "concerned." IANS Blacklisting Mahmood blocked by China: The man who raised funds under garb of religion in India No way out in sight for China's zero-COVID strategy China pledges, signs climate accord but how green is its promise? Now fresh air on sale in China International oi-Jagriti Beijing, Mar 22: In a rare and new way to combat pollution, vendors in China have started selling fresh air in plastic bags. The surprising move started at a popular hiking destination in China's southern Guangdong Province is being loved by trekkers. The bagged-up "fresh air" - can either be taken home to enjoy - or used straight away, reported Mirror.co.uk. The sale proves that it is possible to put a price on fresh air, as the village vendors dressed in traditional garbs set up shop in the mountains of China's southern Guangdong Province. The fresh air bags also contain flower petals to make the whiff of air even more pleasant than usual. Residents of major cities in the Pearl River Delta rushed for higher ground with an aim to cleanse their lungs as heavy smog in lower regions of the province have hit them badly. According to reports, a big bag of fresh air costs 30 renminbi (3) and small bags for 10 renminbi (1). The fresh air bags proved a luxury for the tourists. It is unclear whether the air-for-sale business is considered legal by authorities in China. OneIndia News Gatwick airport steps up security after Brussels attacks International oi-PTI London, Mar 22: London's Gatwick airport stepped up security today after a string of explosions in Brussels as British Prime Minister David Cameron prepared to hold an emergency cabinet meeting on the attacks. Brussels blasts: Airport warns passengers, says 'Don't come to the airport ' "As a result of the terrible incidents in Brussels, we have increased our security presence and patrols around the airport," the airport said in a statement. Cameron earlier said on Twitter he was "shocked and concerned" by the events in Brussels. "I will be chairing a COBRA meeting on the events in Brussels later this morning," Cameron said. COBRA meetings are held to discuss how the government responds to emergency situations and bring together ministers, police and intelligence officers. Brussels airport explosions: Shocking photos emerge on social media A string of explosions rocked Brussels airport and a city metro station on Tuesday, killing at least 13 people, according to media reports, as Belgium raised its terror threat to the maximum level. (AFP) High risk of theft of Pak nuclear weapons: US report International oi-PTI Washington, Mar 22: With Pakistan moving towards tactical nuclear weapons, there is an increasingly higher risk of nuclear theft, a US think-tank report has warned ahead of the Nuclear Security Summit here later this month. "Overall, the risk of nuclear theft in Pakistan appears to be high," said the report 'Preventing Nuclear Terrorism: Continuous Improvement or Dangerous Decline?' released by the prestigious Harvard Kennedy School. "The trend seems to be toward increasing risk, as Pakistan's nuclear arsenal expands and shifts toward tactical nuclear weapons, while adversary capabilities remain extremely high," it said. Over the longer term, the possibilities of state collapse or extremist takeover cannot be entirely ruled out, though the near-term probability of such events appears to be low. The report from the Harvard Kennedy School comes a week after a top American diplomat had raised a similar concern. "We've been very concerned about Pakistan's deployment of battlefield nuclear weapons," US Under Secretary of State for Arms Control and International Security, Rise E Gottemoeller told members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee during a Congressional hearing on Thursday. "Battlefield nuclear weapons, by their very nature, pose security threat because you're taking battlefield nuclear weapons out to the field where, as, you know, as a necessity, they cannot be made as secure," Gottemoeller had said. In Pakistan, a modest but rapidly growing nuclear stockpile, with substantial security measures, must be protected against some of the world's most capable terrorist groups, in an environment of widespread corruption and extremist sympathies, said the Harvard Kennedy School. US official criticizes E Asia plans for nuclear reprocessing By some estimates, the Strategic Plans Division, which manages Pakistan's nuclear weapons, has 25,000 troops available to guard Pakistani nuclear stocks and facilities. Pakistani officials report that sites are equipped with extensive barriers and detection systems, that the components of nuclear weapons are stored separately (though that may be changing as Pakistan moves toward tactical nuclear weapons intended to be rapidly deployed to the field), and that the weapons are equipped with locks to prevent unauthorised use. It said there are negative trends, which may be related to the absence of recent US expressions of confidence. "Pakistan has the worlds fastest-growing nuclear arsenal, and is shifting toward tactical nuclear weapons intended to be dispersed to front-line forces early in a crisis, increasing the risks of nuclear theft in such a crisis," it said. "This increase in numbers of weapons is probably leading to an increase in numbers of locations as well," it said, adding that terrorist groups continue to demonstrate that they are willing and able to launch complex, well-coordinated attacks on heavily-defended military targets within Pakistan. PTI US presidential poll 2016: Can Cruz get 50% votes in Utah today to check Trump's march? International oi-Shubham Washington, March 22: All eyes will be on Texas Senator Ted Cruz on Tuesday (March 22) when three states of the US will go to polling in the ongoing primary for the presidential nomination for November's general election. US election 2016: Who has won which state so far" title="Complete list of American presidential election primaries/caucuses schedules and results US election 2016: Who has won which state so far" />Complete list of American presidential election primaries/caucuses schedules and results US election 2016: Who has won which state so far Observers will be keen to see whether Cruz succeeds in getting excess of 50 per cent of the vote in Utah. If he does, he will take all 40 delegates up for the grabs in the state to put some check on Donald Trump's onward march to get the GOP nomination, something the establishment is not wanting. Trump, who has 19 of the 30 states that have gone to polling so far, has 680 delegates at the moment as against Cruz's 424. To get nomination, a Republican candidate has to win 1,237 delegates. The other candidate in the race, John Kasich, has 143 delegates so far. But if Cruz falls short, then the state's delegates will be distributed among all the three candidates on a proportional basis, provided each bags 15 per cent of the votes polled. In such a scenario, it will become all the more difficult for Cruz to get close to Trump and possibly stop his dominance. Kasich's aggressive campaigning in this state will also make things more challenging for Cruz to reach that magic 50-per cent mark. Besides Utah, Arizona will also to voting on Tuesday, besides Idaho which will hold Democratic caucuses. Oneindia News Yemen peace talks could resume in Kuwait this month International oi-PTI Dubai, Mar 21: A new round of UN-brokered Yemeni peace talks could be held by the end of this month in Kuwait, a Yemeni government official told today. The talks would be accompanied by a ceasefire in the war-torn country where a Saudi-led coalition launched a military campaign in support of the internationally-recognised government one year ago, said the official who requested anonymity. Yemen's warring parties who met with UN envoy Ismail Ould Cheikh Ahmed last week have agreed on "the principle of holding a new round of talks in late March in Kuwait", the official told AFP. Yemen's Foreign Minister, Abdulmalik al-Mekhlafi, on a visit to Doha, later said the government would attend the talks. On Sunday, the UN envoy wrote on his Facebook page that he held "positive and constructive talks" in rebel-held Sanaa with the Iran-backed Huthis and their allies -- supporters of former president Ali Abdullah Saleh. "Preparations are ongoing for the next round of peace talks on Yemen," he wrote, without giving a specific date or location. A resumption of talks must be accompanied by a "week-long truce that could be renewed if respected", he said, adding that discussions should focus on the implementation of UN Security Council Resolution 2216. The resolution states that the rebels must withdraw from seized territories and disarm, before peace talks can progress. Speaking at the Al Jazeera Forum in Qatar on Monday, Mekhlafi said the government was willing to negotiate. "We are going to go to these peace talks and ... we are hopeful that we are going to reach a solution," he told the conference, speaking in Arabic. AFP 2008-2022 One News Page Ltd. All rights reserved. One News is a registered trademark of One News Page Ltd. Kemi Olunloyo Reacts To Ademola Adelekes Victory At The Tribunal Controversial blogger, Kemi Olunloyo reacts to Ademola Adelekee victory at the tribunal as she says he should stop celebrating mediocrity. Gistvic Reports. She said: Adeleke my ass, no WAEC, one subject F9, no American university degree after lying he had one. Stop celebrating mediocrity. Money cant buy political positions, only intelligent voters can give you that. SOURCE: GISTVIC.COM Share this: Jubilation crept the air in Osun, particularly in Ede as the Election Petition Tribunal declared Senator Ademola Adeleke winner of the September 22, 2018 governorship election. The election petition tribunal while handling down its verdict declared Adeleke as the authentic winner of governorship election. It would be recalled that the Peoples Democratic Partys candidate, Senator Ademola Adeleke, had challenged the victory of the All Progressives Congress flag bearer, Alhaji Gboyega Oyetola, Adelekes supporters and well-wishers gathered at the late Isiaka Adeleke house to celebrate the tribunal victory amid drumming and dancing. The supporters were also seeing at different strategic location in Ede celebrating the victory. Speaking, the elder sister of Sen Adeleke, Mrs Dupe Adeleke who dedicated the her brothers victory to their late brother, Isiaka Adeleke. He praised the judiciary in Nigeria for its courage in adjudicating with fear of God, saying it ia now clare that judiciary can save the most the nation from imminent trouble. Appreciating the people of Osun, especially her own town, Ede, for the love they have for Adeleke family. She said, we are very happy for the judgment, we appreciate the people of Osun especially Ede for their love, support and steadfastness. Todays judgement is an indication that judiciary can save the most the nation from imminent trouble. I know my late brother would be very have in grave . I dedicate this victory to God and to my late brother, she said. However, Osun State Chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has expressed delight at the victory of its governorship candidate in the 2018 governorship election, Ademola Adeleke, who was on Friday declared winner of the poll by the election tribunal sitting in Abuja. The partys Chairman, Soji Adagunodo in a chat with our Correspondent in Osogbo, the state capital, said the victory was an act of God. Adagunodo enthused that he knew from the outset of the partys struggle for the mandate that God Almighty would do justice and had done it. He dedicated the victory to God Almighty and the people of the state. I thank God Almighty for the victory and we dedicate it to Him. It is a victory for the people of the state. It is a victory for all, Adagunodo said. I commend the good people of Osun for their faith in the PDP and senator Adeleke. He also commended the Nigerian judiciary, saying that they did a good job by standing on the truth. The PDP chairman also expressed confidence in the judiciary, saying: The judgement shows that the people in the judiciary are calibres of people of impeccable character. They are the last hope of the common man and have proved themselves as such. I give kudos to the judiciary. Adagunodo, however, said that the party was ready for appeal if the APC decided to appeal the case. Its normal. If they decide to appeal the case, we are ready. We are testing the Nigerian judiciary and we are testing the Nigerian democracy. Meanwhile, All Progressives Congress (APC), said it had rejected the verdict and would appeal the case. The partys Director of Publicity, Research and Strategy, Kunle Oyatomi said in a statement: The Election Petition Tribunal verdict has declared Adeleke the winner of the 2018 governorship election in the state. According to the party, the verdict cannot stand a superior legal scrutiny. Therefore we will appeal against it. Osogbo is calm and peaceful. Share this: Former Big Brother housemate, Dee-One, has criticsed the winner of 2018 Double Wahala Edition, Miracle. Dee-One speaking during Double Wahala Reloaded show with Ebuka Obi-Uchendu on Thursday night, described Miracle as a fake person. According to him, Miracle acted a fake life in the house to emerge winner and has since after the show being a snub to him. He said: Miracle is fake, yes I admit that. He left BBNaija WhatsApp group we created without saying a word, I sent him a Direct Message (DM) on Instagram about my show he snubbed me and never replied. He should not claim he is busy because everyone is also busy Share this: A well known Botswana pastor has wowed many after he allegedly killed a dog and ate it raw during church service on Sunday, March 17th. The pastor who has been identified as Apostle Kenneth popularly called Kenny of the Divine Fruit Church of Christ, Kanye in Botswana, has become a trending topic for reasons quite clear. According to the Churchs official Facebook page, apostle Kenneth killed a dog and ate it raw in the church after claiming it has been blessed. His church members were not left out as some partook in eating the raw meat including a little baby. The churchs official Facebook page while sharing photos of the incident, gave the below caption alongside, Eat of me, whoever eats of me will never die. No one will force you to partake but that which I give is of my Spirit to confirm my word. When you eat of me it will be unto perfection. Nothing can be given unto you unless it is given by the Father. If I eat you have already eaten because you believe in me. We eat everything, if it is blessed it is approved. Share this: Nurudeen Akorede, a 24-year-old technician turned robber, has blamed his ordeal on the spiritual influence by his stepmother. The father of two, who resides in the Alakuko area of Lagos, said he had lived decently until 2017 when his stepmothers spell started manifesting negatively in his life. He said he started by smoking, through which he met some men who introduced him to a robbery gang, terrorising the Aboru area of the state and its environs. City Round learnt that Akorede and other members of his gang had raided houses in the community in January 2019, dispossessing residents of their valuables, including laptops, phones and cash. Reportedly wielding guns and cutlasses, the bandits operated freely from one house to another, inflicting injuries on victims who refused to cooperate. In the wake of the robbery attack, residents lived in fear as the robbers reportedly vowed to return to the community. Our correspondent learnt that operatives of the Inspector-General of Police Intelligence Response Team were detailed to track down the gang after the community alerted the police to the incident. The effort of the detectives paid off recently when the suspects were rounded up at different parts of the state. Apart from Akorede, other members of the gang arrested by the police are Kunle Akerele, Ayuba Aransi, Adewale Toyin, Oluwatosin Adeyemi and Tunde Yusuf. Two locally-made guns, 60 mobile phones and 30 laptops were reportedly recovered from the suspects. Speaking to City Round during the week, Akorede said his life made an about-face after his parents separated and his father remarried. The native of Abeokuta in Ogun State claimed that his fathers new wife afflicted him with spiritual problems that made him to become an armed robber. He said, I fix aluminium doors and windows before I joined the robbery gang. My trouble started when my parents separated. I was in secondary school when they separated and my mother took me with her while my younger brother was with my father. After I finished from secondary school education, I went to learn how to fix aluminium doors and windows. My fathers new wife started tormenting me spiritually. She made my younger brother to go insane and she also poisoned my father. She then went after me. I started smoking in 2017. I used to attend church services and I was warned by a prophet to stop the habit. The prophet said my enemy was planning to ruin my life. One day, I went to visit my girlfriend at Egbatedo, Alakuko where I met people smoking Indian hemp. I met Kunle (Akerele), who introduced me to the robbery gang. I stopped going to church and shop. Aside from fixing aluminium doors and windows, I am a boxer. People knew I was skillful but my fathers wife was not happy about it. That was why she charmed me and turned my life into a mess. Akorede said he participated in four operations with the gang, including the raid on houses in Aboru the last he was involved in before his arrest. He said his role was to stay outside and watch out for policemen, noting that he got N20,000 share from their last operation. He stated, My gang members would steal huge amounts of money from our victims and give me peanuts. They said I should buy my own gun if I wanted to get bigger shares from our loot. I regret getting myself into this mess, but my predicament started because my father married another wife. Akerele, 29, who hails from Ekiti State, said he went into crime because of joblessness. He said Akorede initiated the robbery, adding that he (Akerele) bought a gun for N20,000. He said, Akorede linked me up with one Peter who took us to the areas where we robbed people. I approached one Yusuf, who lives in my area, and gave him N20,000 to buy me a gun. One of our members called Tunde also has a gun. He has not been arrested. I stole jewellery at gunpoint in Aboru and sold it for N400,000. It was the receiver of some of the laptops and phones that I stole who brought policemen to my house to arrest me. Yusuf, 33, said he joined the gang after he was sacked at a clubhouse in Ikeja, where he worked as a barman. The indigene of Ilorin, Kwara State, admitted that he helped Akerele buy the gun he used for operations. He said, I bought two locally-made guns from a security guard for N20,000. I gave them to Kunle (Akerele) and Tunde and they started giving me money after each operation. I also helped them to sell the phones and laptops they collected from their victims. Aransi, a cobbler with two children, stated that he got N35,000 share from the proceeds of the two operations he participated in. He said, I am from Oyo State, but I reside in Aboru. I joined the gang in January 2019 through a friend called Rasheed. I went with the gang to rob six houses in Aboru. During the operation, Peter (a member at large) chopped off the fingers of one of the victims. One of the receivers of the items stolen by the gang, Adewale Toyin, was also arrested by the police. The 42-year-old man from Esan, Edo State, stated that he had received about 60 phones from the suspects so far. He said, I repair laptops and phones at Computer Village, Ikeja. I didnt know that the phones were stolen. I could buy a laptop from them at the rate of N25,000 or N30,000 and resell it for N50,000 or N60,000. Invest In Social Force & Get 50% Click HERE >> To Buy Cheap MTN & GLO Data Click HERE >> Atiku Abuabakr, presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party, has affirmed his confidence in the judiciary. Reacting to the victory of Senator Ademola Adeleke, Osun PDP governorship candidate at the tribunal, Atiku said truly, the judiciary is the last hope of the common man. The election tribunal had revoked the victory of Isiaka Oyetola, incumbent governor and candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in the September election. It declared the supplementary election which INEC held as illegal, directing the commission to issue a fresh certificate of return to Adeleke and withdraw the one given to Oyetola. Atiku congratulated the PDP candidate and commended the judiciary. Truly, the judiciary is the last hope of the common man and the defender of our democracy. Congratulations Sen. Ademola Adeleke, he tweeted. National leader of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, says he does not believe in rigging elections, but rather uses his moral authority, skills as a veteran politician, and capacity to mobilise supporters to influence elections. Tinubu was reacting to an allegation by a political group that he was planning to influence the governorship rerun election in Sokoto State. The Sokoto State Coalition of PDP Supporters had accused Tinubu, Adams Oshiomhole, national chairman of the APC, and Abdulaziz Yari, Zamfara state governor, of meeting with Yakubu Mahmood, chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), of plans to rig the election in the state in favour of the APC. But in a statement issued on his behalf by Tunde Rahman, his spokesman, the APC national leader said he has been a champion of electoral reform and would do nothing to subvert democracy in the country. These allegations by a contrived PDP organ are desperate untruths without a basis in fact. But they are entirely in line with the delusional reactions of PDP to their loss in the presidential elections, Tinubu said. A prominent member of that panel, Prof Attahiru Jega later became the INEC Chairman and was able to implement the far-reaching reforms that have enabled us to have the free and fair elections that we witnessed in 2015 and now in 2019. If I were such a prominent supporter of electoral reforms, why will I now be among those trying to subvert democracy? My only tools for influencing elections are my moral authority, my skills as a veteran politician, and dedication to campaigning and mobilising my own party members. The Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) on Saturday condemned attacks on ad hoc staff, media, observers and other electoral participants during the supplementary polls. The CDD Director, MS Idayat Hassan who was represented by an analyst of CDD, Dr Jideofor Adibe in Abuja, said that the groups observers noted incidents of violence and disruption of voting process. Hassan said the cases were reported in Kano, Sokoto, Benue and Bauchi states where supplementary governorship and state houses of assembly elections held. In Kano State, violence and disruption of polling were widespread as an army of thugs reportedly took over polling activities in several local government areas, including Nasarawa, Dala, Karaye and Gaya. It is distressing that political thugs took over the elections, forcing voters to vote along a party line, stoning voters and violently disrupting the elections. Hassan said that this was because Gama ward in Nasarawa LGA in Kano State was strategic to winning the supplementary elections by either of the two leading candidates. She said that in Sokoto, particularly in Bodinga LGA, Bodinga ward (PU11), a dispute which eventually disrupted the election, erupted between the agents of the two leading parties. Hassan said that the way thuggery was instrumentalised in the elections queried the essence of the massive deployment of security agents to guard the polls, especially when brigandage ruled. She said in several instances, the security agents were reported to have turned a blind eye to the act of brigandage perpetrated by the political thugs. She said that the electoral cycle witnessed so much intimidation, harassment and attack on voters, journalists, observers and INEC officials. This unfortunate development, however, took an unprecedented turn in the Kano supplementary elections where party agents and thugs intimidated and attacked voters and observers in the course of exercising their franchise or monitoring the process. Hassan said there was a clear case of where party agents and thugs coerced and intimidated voters to vote for their candidates. She said that the high level of intolerance against poll monitors was not limited to observers. She said that in spite of several attempts to entrench peacefully electoral democracy in Nigeria, elections have been marred by upsurge of violence. She said that the level of impunity at which this gruesome act was being prosecuted by hoodlums at the ballot box and the inability of security agents to respond adequately and hold perpetrators accountable were sources of concern. Hassan said that incidences of underage voting and vote buying were also recorded where votes were sold for N10, 000 and N15, 000. She said there was need to emphasise that the act of vote buying was an offence punishable under the laws and those involved in the act should be arrested and prosecuted according to law. The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has declared the chairmanship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Danladi Chiya, winner of the supplementary poll for Kwali Area Council, FCT. Simon Kawe, a professor and the INEC Returning Officer, who announced the result said Mr Chiya scored the highest votes of 14,245, to defeat his closest rival, Ibrahim Daniel of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) who scored 14, 189. The supplementary election in Sheda polling unit 005 was however disrupted by some thugs which was regarded as Zero votes for all political parties as read by the INEC officer. The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that some residents were seen celebrating the APC victory in Kwali metropolis. (NAN) According to NDTV, a man who was trapped under the rubble of a collapsed building in Karnataka, a state in India for over 62 hours was brought out safely by rescue teams this morning. The number of people who died after the four-storey building collapsed in Karnatakas Dharward earlier this week has gone up to 15. Four to six people are still trapped in the debris as rescue teams are continuing the operation for the fourth day. As many as 55 people were injured in the incident. Senior Karnataka police officer MN Reddi shared a video of Somu, in green shirt, being rescued from the rubble. Visibly disturbed and shocked, the young man was seen walking out with the support of policemen. An officer embraced him just as a stretcher was brought to his aid. #dharwadbuildingcollapse After 62 hours of being trapped in the basement of the collapsed multi storied building, Dilip being rescued alive by our Fire Force just now !!! pic.twitter.com/VildP7lPYE M.N.Reddi, IPS (@DGP_FIRE) March 22, 2019 64 people have been rescued so far. The four-storey building, some portions of which were under construction, crumbled in Dharwads Kumareshwar Nagar, about 400 kilometres north of Bengaluru, on Tuesday. Over 300 personnel, including the National Disaster Relief Force (NDRF), State Disaster Response Force (SDRF), fire and emergency forces are on the ground to provide assistance to relief operations. In our previous column we discussed how the Racing Medication & Testing Consortium determines the regulatory thresholds for therapeutic drugs. We looked at this process because the National Horsemens Benevolent and Protective Association at its recent annual conference called for independent research to provide alternatives to RMTC-identified thresholds used by the National Uniform Medication Program. The HBPA is concerned several thresholds are too restrictive, resulting in an inequitable number of positives. The North American Association of Racetrack Veterinarians backs the HBPAs position and has begun spearheading research to produce alternative results it wants considered by the Association of Racing Commissioners International for its model rules. We didnt feel we needed to be involved in the process at first, said Dr. Clara Fenger about the RMTC thresholds. Fenger is a NAARV board member, practicing veterinarian, and former researcher at the University of Kentuckys Gluck Center. (Former HBPA CEO) Phil Hanrahan had been complaining and there was a lot of discussion but not a lot of action. Then the positives started coming out, and it was a kick in the teeth to the veterinarians. One problem, according to Fenger, was the 100 picograms per milliliter (plasma or serum) threshold for methylprednisolone, a corticosteroid sold as Depo-Medrol. There were more positives than not during the first week of the rule adoption in West Virginia, Fenger said. We thought there was a problem with the lab. I mean, this is not a drug of choice if you wanted an edge. It made no sense; 100 picograms is nothing. The level looked wrong. The HBPA and NAARV dont trust the RMTCs methodology for threshold evaluation, which is called the 95/95 tolerance interval. In short, the 95/95 method achieves a 95% assurance that 95% of the samples will fall below an established threshold. The methodology was developed in Europe as a way to identify drug residue in food animals and suggested as an appropriate method to Dr. Rick Arthur by a veterinary toxicologist at the University of California-Davis. Arthur is a member of the RMTC's Scientific Advisory Committee and the medical director for the California Horse Racing Board. "That toxicologist assured us it was a valid and robust approach to determining thresholds," said Dr. Rick Sams, also a RMTC Scientific Advisory Committee member, who was involved in the methodology decision. "Dr. Arthur also approached a statistician at UC-Davis because he wanted an independent assessment and assurance because he had concerns." Fenger and others don't trust the methodology for several reasons. One, they feel it is being applied to studies using too few horses. Second, they feel the thresholds identified are so low that they invite false positives that could result from contamination. "We can't have thresholds so low that a horse can trigger its own positive by eating contaminated hay or bedding," said Fenger. Sams said the calculated thresholds generated by the 95/95 methodology are regularly and substantially higher than any of the observed values from the research. Still, the HBPA and NAARV want thresholds based on field studies using horses in a racing environment. According to Fenger, studies on Depo-Medrol, betamethasone, dexamethasone, and mepivicaine are being shepherded by a group called the Equine Health and Welfare Alliance. The exact membership of the Equine Health and Welfare Alliance is not clear. The group's website does not list individual members, but states it is supported by a "core membership of veterinarians who understand the importance of humane care of all animals." Fenger identifies herself as the EHWA's secretary and said one of its board members is Dr. Don Smith, who is also a member of NAARV. Fenger said the research is being conducted by practitioners around the country and on multiple breeds. Im confident that population studies were always part of the plan with the RMTC, but they ran out of money, said Fenger. But you cant now take nine horses that eat the same feed and are handled the same way and come up with a threshold that works in San Diego or Buffalo. Sams said having data from properly designed real world studies could be valuable, noting the research done by the RMTC has involved only one drug at a time and has not looked at potential drug-drug interactions. Drug interactions have been rarely identified in horses, according to Sams, but he added that some exist. But while field studies can provide good information, Sams also said they are challenging to manage. It is difficult to verify that things were done when they said they were done, he said. And if the participants are volunteers, you may also argue that the people who participate in such a study have a vested interest in the results, so vetting the participants before the study begins as part of the studys design becomes important, as does the verification. The industry will get a first glimpse of some EHWA field work results during the ARCI annual conference March 22-25 in New Orleans. Several truths have emerged since weve been wandering the medication briar patch over the last several weeks. One, the industry is poisoned by a lack of trust. The RMTCs thresholds are criticized and considered suspect for being both too liberal and too conservative. Second, the funding available for research and testing is insufficient and heading in the wrong direction. In 2007 the RMTC had a $1 million budget and now operates with half that amount. A recent study re-evaluating a xylazine threshold cost $250,000 alone. Third, the industry wants and needs valid, enforceable thresholds because we know people in a highly competitive environment try to cheat. Its why we need regulations, even on therapeutics. Most people truly put the horse first, but too many are injecting joints with corticosteroids as soon as a horse is entered in a raceas a matter of course, not a matter of treatment. That is not looking out for the horse. A high crossover likely exists between people unhappy with the RMTCs work and those opposed to recent efforts to create a national medication testing and enforcement program through the United States Anti-Doping Agency. Many opposing the current method for establishing thresholds, however, are bolstering the argument for USADAs involvement. USADA would provide greater independence between the industry and the regulations. A USADA program would have access to the best equipment, would continuously pursue better research, and would be adequately funded with support from all racing states. Its time to drop the in-fighting and get behind a program that can work. Today, March 24, makes it exactly two decades since Nigeria lost one of its foremost heroic figures, the late Major-General AbdulBaki Babatunde Idiagbon, to the cold hands of death. He was 56 years old. General Tunde Idiagbon, as he was simply known, was a celebrated soldier, an accomplished statesman and a remarkable political figure who served as the Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters (de facto Vice President) of the Federal Republic of Nigeria between December 31, 1983 and August 27, 1985. He was an effective second-in-command to his alter-ego, Muhammadu Buhari, who at the time was also a Major-General. Mr Idiagbon, who was of Fulani ancestry, was born in Ilorin, Kwara State, on September 14, 1943. His father was the late Hassan Dogo, who died in 1978. Mr Dogo was a cattle merchant in the Oro-Ago axis of the present day Ifelodun Local Government Area of Kwara State, before returning home after retirement. Mr Idiagbons mother was late Aishat Dogo from the Bolanta area of the ancient city of Ilorin. Mr Idiagbon started life as a boy-herder who assisted his father in tending cattle. As a young boy following cattle about and around several Igbomina settlements, he was very famous at Oro Ago and environs as Baba Idiagbon. Just like most of his predecessors and contemporaries in Ilorin and the rest of northern Nigeria, the late no-nonsense military tactician adopted the name of his ancestral family compound as his official surname, which he bore with total respect and pride throughout his eventful sojourn on earth. That singular act of name-bearing not only explained his respect and affinity for his roots but also won for his illustrious forebears and their descendants, veneration of unimaginable magnitude, till date. General Idiagbon did not just embrace stardom or get connected to immortality, he worked for the two by struggling to be educated, building a worthy personality and believing so much in the dignity of labour. Whenever he was on holiday in Ilorin, Mr Idiagbon hawked water across the city before graduating to become a newspaper vendor under the then doyen of journalism in Ilorin, who later served as the national president, Nigerian Union of Journalists, Micheal Asaju, of blessed memory. The late general attended the Ilorin United School, an institution founded by the Ilorin Emirate Descendants Progressive Union (IEDPU), for his primary education between 1950 and 1952. In 1953, Mr Idiagbon proceeded to the Okesuna Senior Primary School, Ilorin, from where he finished his primary education in 1957. Among his mates, were Mr Yinusa, who was a commissioner for agriculture in Kwara and a former national president of the IEDPU, as well as his younger sister, Maimunat Oniyangi, the wife of A.S. Oniyangi, a former secretary to the military government of Kwara State and a former national commissioner with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Mr Idiagbon was probably among the first set of indigenes of Ilorin Emirate who enrolled in the Nigerian Military School, Zaria, which he attended between 1958 and 1962. He was, thereafter, enlisted as an officer into the Nigerian army and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1965 after successfully completing training at the Pakistani Military Academy, Kakul, from where he also bagged a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics. He was, by that, one of the first officers who obtained a university degree while in the military service. In 1976, Mr Idiagbon went back to Pakistan where he attended the countrys Command and Staff College. He also attended the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, Kuru, in 1981. In 1982, he was at the Naval Post Graduate School, United States, from where he obtained an International Defence Management Diploma. He was also a distinguished member of the Nigerian Institute of Management. As an industrious, brave and gallant soldier, Mr Idiagbon never missed any promotion. He became a captain in 1968 during the bloody Nigerian civil war. In 1971, he was promoted to the rank of major and in 1974, he became a lieutenant colonel. He was decorated with the rank of a full Colonel in July 1978. In May 1980, this enviable son of Ilorin was elevated to the rank of a brigadier-general. He was eventually promoted to the rank of major-general in 1984. In the course of his outstanding military services, this gallant soldier held various command posts. He was the commander, 4th Battalion of the Nigerian Army from August 1965 to February 1966. He was the sector commanding officer, 20 Battalion from October 1967 to February 1968. He also served in the same capacity at the 125 Battalion from 1968 to 1970. This remarkable apostle of discipline was the brigade-major and deputy commander, 33 Brigade between March 1970 and March 1971. He served as the commander, 29 Brigade from March 1971 to December 1972. As a result of the military involvement in the political administration of Nigeria, coupled with his glittering erudition and alluring leadership skills, the late Mr Idiagbon was a star in the succeeding military regimes which ruled the country from the end of the civil war to 1979 and between December 31, 1983 and August 27, 1985. He was appointed the general staff officer, grade 1, and later principal staff officer, Supreme Headquarters, from January 1973 to August 1975. He also served as a member of the governing council of the University of Jos, Plateau State. Mr Idiagbons direct political appointment, however, began in August 1978 when he was made the military administrator of the old Borno State. He was at the same time the commander, 33 Brigade of the Nigerian Army, Maiduguri, as well as a member of the National Council of States till October 1, 1979 when he handed over the administration of the then Borno State, which included the present day Yobe State, to Mohammad Goni who was elected governor on the platform of the Great Nigerian Peoples Party (GNPP). From October 1979, General Idiagbon was the director, manpower and planning, army headquarters, till February 1981. Between 1981 and 1983, he was the military secretary (army). He was on that position when he and his colleagues overthrew the government of Shehu Shagari, which they accused of mismanagement of the nations resources. While Mr Idiagbon was, no doubt, the engine-room, the brain-box, and the star boy of the military regime headed by Mr Buhari, the story of how he emerged as the deputy head of that corrective government needs to be shared for us to have an insight into that unique leadership partnership he built with his lanky boss and friend. It was, indeed, very clear that neither Mr Buhari nor Mr Idiagbon was the initiator of the coup that toppled Shagari. They were, however, the greatest beneficiaries of the plot, courtesy of their integrity and decency. Mr Buhari was said to have been invited to head the government as a way of adding the much-needed legitimacy to the desire of the military adventurists in power who initiated and executed the coup. Such invitation was premised on Mr Buharis profound administrative experiences and infectious integrity, which characterised his career as the military governor in charge of the present day north-east region, as well as being the minister of petroleum and chairman of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC). Mr Buhari was said to have accepted to lead the government only on the condition that he would be given the absolute liberty to select his deputy. Because Mr Buhari was so needed, he was allowed to make his choice and the lot fell on Mr Idiagbon because of their apparent compatibility in the realm of background, career path, integrity, personality, and political philosophy. It was, therefore, not surprising that the duo not only worked seamlessly throughout, but the latter was given free hand to operate. That alluring working relationship saw him dominating the government so well that for the first and only time in the political history of Nigeria, the names of the head and his deputy were used to nomenclate the administration as the Buhari/Idiagbon regime, even when the head of state did not pass on while in office. Adding credence to that assertion, Mr Buhari had said in an interview granted a news magazine in 1993 that Mr Idiagbon was among the three Nigerian military officers he trusted and respected most. He added that the case of Mr Idiagbon was even unique among the trio because Providence had always made Mr Idiagbon to either serve under him or take-over offices he had previously occupied, and he always left those places better off. For instance, the two at various times were sent for training at the Indo-Pakistani region. They both served as the chief executive of the Northern State of Borno, at separate times. Also, Mr Idiagbon took-over from Mr Buhari as the military secretary. Mr Idiagbon was a man who not only chorused discipline, he lived it throughout his career and life. He was a man who utilised the privileges of several offices he held to promote nation-building and national development. He demonstrated absolute honesty, loyalty, and comradeship to the extent that 35 years after he left public service and two decades after his death, no one has accused him of any form of moral or financial corruption. He was, in fact, an epitome of transparency, honesty, and incorruptibility. While he wished and worked for the unity and greatness of Nigeria, he also posted several patriotic contributions to his beloved Ilorin Emirate. He was among those outstanding patriots who assisted in placing the Emirate in the commanding position of the political configuration of Kwara State. He did this by teaming-up with like-minds from across the then Kwara State and beyond led by the late Yusuf Gobir to entrust the political leadership of the Emirate and that of the state on the late third Waziri of Ilorin and the Second Republic Senate Leader, Olusola Saraki. Mr Idiagbon, then a Lt Colonel, served as a member of the main committee, which organised the inauguration of the highly-resourceful Mr Saraki as the political leader of the Emirate and Kwara State through his investiture as the second Turaki of Ilorin on April 12, 1974. Mr Idiagbons love for Kwara State can also be appreciated in how he encouraged the Kwara state government under the leadership of Salaudeen Latinwo, a group captain, to initiate and launch the Kwara State Industrial Development Fund targeted at promoting the industrialisation of the state. Besides, Mr Idiagbon was also a silent community leader who influenced many of the developmental agenda of the IEDPU prior to, while he was in, and even after leaving office as the nations number two citizen. Apart from influencing the appointments of many of his compatriots into positions of authority in order to help others, he was always affording the IEDPU necessary and periodic advice on how the interests of indigenes of the Emirate could be propelled and sustained for community development. No one is too good not to have his fault. One of the weaknesses associated with the late Mr Idiagbon was his extreme taciturn nature, which brought him so many misrepresentations. Perhaps, particular experiences are responsible for his reluctance to open-up on issues and experiences that shaped his life. After his displacement from office and unlike his boss, he neither granted any press interview nor made any public statement for people to know where he stood on issues. His lack of will to put the account of his life and times, directly or through someone else, into writing has surely foreclosed for his countrymen and women, the privilege of learning one or two factors that accounted for his unique personality and statesmanship. I also believe that his involvement in military politics was also a mistake. Politics, of whatever nature, is too dirty for a man who believed and expected loyalty and who could neither lie nor withstand betrayal. He should have refused every effort to bring him into it and that would have made him a professional soldier to the core and saved him from the disappointment he eventually suffered from his colleagues. But having said these, I share the view of many others that the late Mr Idiagbon was an uncommon human and humane phenomenon who contributed a lot to the evolution and development of this country as a citizen and leader. I, therefore, suggest that for his heroic labour not to be in vain, the present and future crop of the nations leadership should endeavour to emulate his discipline, patriotism, seriousness, loyalty, and civility. The present government should also go a step further by renaming national monuments after him. While I urge the Kwara State Government to rename the Metropolitan Square, Ilorin, after him, I think it will also be appropriate to ask the federal government, led by his unassuming principal, friend, soulmate and comrade-in-arms, President Muhammadu Buhari, to confer an appropriate post-humous national honours award on him as he did to the late M.K.O.Abiola and Gani Fawenhimi last year. That will go a long way in appreciating his services and stimulating the interest of the present and future generations in patriotism and national development. Mr Imam is the deputy editor of Unilorin Bulletin and the national publicity secretary, Ilorin Emirate Descendants Progressive Union (IEDPU). The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is set to commence collation of results for the supplementary governorship election in Bauchi State. The supplementary elections held in 36 polling units scattered across 15 of the 20 local government areas of the state. INEC had earlier said elections would not hold in Tafawa Balewa Local Government due to a pending court case. The commission two weeks ago declared the states governorship election inconclusive following the cancellation of polls in 36 polling units spread across the state. Before the declaration, after the collation of 19 local governments out of the 20 in the state, the All Progressives Congress (APC) trailed the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) with 4,059 votes. The APC scored a total of 465,453 votes against the PDPs 469,512 votes. The supplementary election was characterised by drama up to the level of collation. On Saturday, voters at Kagadama polling unit in Dass Local Government Area of the state blocked politicians from entering the unit as part of measures to curb vote buying in the ongoing supplementary elections in the state. On Sunday morning, the Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) in the state, Ibrahim Abdullahi, blamed the delay in the commencement of collation for the supplementary governorship election on the absence of the State Returning Officer, Muhammed Kyari. The commission is now set to declare results from the state collation centre. Follow live updates here: HAVANA Laying bare a half-century of tensions, President Barack Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro prodded each other Monday over human rights and the longstanding U.S. economic embargo during an unprecedented joint news conference that stunned Cubans unaccustomed to their leaders being aggressively questioned. The exchanges underscored deep divisions that still exist between the two countries despite rapidly improved relations in the 15 months since Obama and Castro surprised the world with an announcement to end their Cold War-era diplomatic freeze. Obama, standing in Havanas Palace of the Revolution on the second day of his historic visit to Cuba, repeatedly pushed Castro to take steps to address his countrys human rights record. We continue, as President Castro indicated, to have some very serious differences, including on democracy and human rights, said Obama, who planned to meet with Cuban dissidents today. Still, Obama heralded a new day in the U.S.-Cuba relationship and said part of normalizing relations means we discuss these differences directly. Castro was blistering in his criticism of the American embargo, which he called the most important obstacle to his countrys economic development. He also pressed Obama to return the Guantanamo detention center, which is on the island of Cuba, to his government. There are profound differences between our countries that will not go away, Castro said plainly. White House officials spent weeks pushing their Cuban counterparts to agree for the leaders to take questions from reporters after their private meeting, reaching agreement just hours before Obama and Castro appeared before cameras. Its extremely rare for Castro to give a press conference, though he has sometimes taken questions from reporters spontaneously when the mood strikes. While the issue of political prisoners is hugely important to Cuban-Americans and the international community, most people on the island are more concerned about the shortage of goods and their struggles with local bureaucracy. Castro appeared agitated at times during the questioning, professing to not understand whether inquiries were directed to him. But when an American reporter asked about political prisoners in Cuba, he pushed back aggressively, saying if the journalist could offer names of anyone improperly imprisoned, they will be released before tonight ends. What political prisoners? Give me a name or names, Castro said. Cuba has been criticized for briefly detaining demonstrators thousands of times a year but has drastically reduced its practice of handing down long prison sentences for crimes human rights groups consider to be political. Cuba released dozens of prisoners as part of its deal to normalize relations with the U.S., and in a recent report, Amnesty International did not name any current prisoners of conscience in Cuba. Ben Rhodes, Obamas deputy national security adviser, said the U.S. regularly raises specific cases and some are resolved, but added Cuba typically insists theyre being held for other crimes. Rhodes said, Ive shared many lists with the Cuban government. Obamas and Castros comments were broadcast live on state television, which is tightly controlled by the government and the Communist Party. At an outdoor cafe in Havana, about a dozen Cubans and tourists watched in awed silence. One woman held her hand to her mouth in shock. Its very significant to hear this from our president, for him to recognize that not all human rights are respected in Cuba, said Raul Rios, a 47-year-old driver. Ricardo Herrera, a 45-year-old street food vendor said, Its like a movie but based on real life. After responding to a handful of questions, Castro ended the news conference abruptly, declaring, I think this is enough. Obama then appeared to lean in to pat Castro on the back. In an awkward moment, the Cuban leader instead grabbed Obamas arm and lifted it up as the U.S. presidents wrist dangled, an image that immediately grabbed attention on social media. White House officials said Obama did not plan to meet with Fidel Castro, the older brother of the Cuban president and his predecessor in office, hoping to keep the visit focused on the future of the island. Rhodes, the White House adviser, said there were also other considerations, including Castros health issues. Obama, in an interview with ABC News, said he has no problem with such a meeting just as a symbol of the end of this Cold War chapter. Obamas visit to Cuba is a crowning moment in his and Raul Castros bid to normalize ties between two countries that sit just 90 miles apart. The U.S. leader traveled with his family and was taking in the sights in Old Havana and attending a baseball game between the beloved Cuban national team and the Tampa Bay Rays of Americas American League. Several American business leaders joined Obama on the trip, many eager to gain a foothold on the island nation. Technology giant Google announced plans to open a cutting-edge online technology center offering free Internet at speeds nearly 70 times faster than those now available to the Cuban public. Obama said Googles efforts in Cuba are part of a wider plan to improve access to the Internet across the island. While Castro has welcomed increased economic ties, he insisted his country would still suffer as long as the American economic embargo was in place. Obama has called on Congress to lift the blockade, but lawmakers have not held a vote on the repeal. Obamas visit is being closely watched in the United States, where public opinion has shifted in support of normalized relations with Cuba. Still, many Republicans including some hoping to succeed Obama as president have vowed to roll back the diplomatic opening if elected. Castro was asked by an American reporter whether he favored the election of Republican front-runner Donald Trump or likely Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. Castro smiled and said simply, I cannot vote in the United States. Eden Hazard Chelsea midfielder, Eden Hazard, has rejected claims he has already agreed to join Real Madrid in the summer, insisting that theres nothing in the reports. It was reported in the Spanish press on Friday, that Hazard had agreed in principle a five-year deal to join Real in the summer, in a move that would make him their highest-paid player. The return of Zinedine Zidane to the Santiago Bernabeu, is said to have convinced the Belgian to leave Chelsea. However, Hazard who is currently on international duty, has refused to be drawn over the reports. Theres nothing in the reports. Im only focused on tomorrows game against Cyprus. Thats all Im thinking about, he told ESPN. According to the Returning officer, Action Alliance candidate got 2,549 votes while Jonas Okeke of the Peoples Democratic Party garnered 14,621 votes to come third. The Independent National Electoral Commission has declared Chike Okafor of the All Progressives Congress, the winner of Okigwe South federal constituency election. The announcement is coming two weeks after the electoral umpire had conducted a supplementary election in the federal constituency on March 9 and abandoned the collation of results. A winner did not emerge during the first ballot on February 23. Announcing the results on Sunday, the Returning Officer, Prof C.I Duruigbo said that the APC candidate who is a serving member of the House of representatives polled 23,815 votes to defeat his closest rival, Emeka Nwajiuba of the Accord party who scored 21,454 votes. According to the Returning officer, Action Alliance candidate got 2,549 votes while Jonas Okeke of the Peoples Democratic Party garnered 14,621 votes to come third. Okafor was a former commissioner for finance during Governor Rochas Okorochas first term. JFIF ` ` Exif MM * ; Ji T > Cyclo 10 97 97 2019:03:10 10:06:00 2019:03:10 10:06:00 C y c l o 1 0 http://ns.adobe.com/xap/1.0/ 2019-03-10T10:06:00.967 Cyclo 10 C '!%"."%()+,+ /3/*2'*+* C *************************************************** k" } !1AQa"q2#BR$3br %&'()*456789:CDEFGHIJSTUVWXYZcdefghijstuvwxyz w !1AQaq"2B #3Rbr $4%&'()*56789:CDEFGHIJSTUVWXYZcdefghijstuvwxyz ? @("cy+E\ h,dg(2sO$N 0piA (8@(3 Pq?8M=i| pR>bp( !u/@ N Rf`0h|Z`?xzST )4LC^)z E(diE&)E }M4P'-MS9@sK3J@6))TsLB\0j;fhiq@) E81HwSX|i?1w3C$'rP{QS@N#LsJzP &ym;M$!GTdKR3i +r*7jNP!t`IK i"0i 8 PDPs Gov Samuel Ortom has won in nine of 13 Local Government Areas (LGAs) in the supplementary polls held on Saturday. Results from nine councils will be announced today. The results of 13 councils as announced by various INEC Collation Officers on Sunday in Makurdi showed Ortom won Agatu, Apa, Ogbadibo, Gwer West, Buruku, Ukum, Kwande, Logo and Ushongo while Mr Emmanuel Jime of the All Progressives Congress (APC) won in Tarka, Otukpo, Makurdi and Ohimini LGAs. Ortom polled 144 votes in Agatu as against Jimes zero vote. In Apa LGA, the APC candidate polled 176 votes while Ortoms PDP garnered 296 votes to win the election in the local government area whereas in Otukpo the APC polled 255 votes to defeat PDP with 250 votes. In Ogbadibo the PDP won with 467 votes while the APC scored 241 votes. In Ohimini APC polled 2,223 as against PDPs 192 votes. In Gwer West, APC has 137 votes, PDP 481 votes, APC polled 550 votes in Makurdi, while PDP got 182 votes. The PDP prevailed in Buriku, winning 515 votes to APCs 189 votes. In Tarka, APC polled 409 votes and the PDP 202 votes, while in Logo, APC scored 34 votes to the PDPs 651 votes. The results showed that in Ukum, APC got 65 votes, the PDP won 616 votes, while in Kwande, the PDP got 193 votes, leaving the APC with just 3 votes. In Ushongo LGA, the PDP polled 352 votes to defeat APC with 94 votes. The results of the polls in nine more local government areas were being awaited. INEC will resume the announcement of results at 10 am on Sunday. Before the supplementary election, Ortom had 410,576 votes, while Jime of APC had 329,022 votes. The police in Akwa Ibom said 42 persons have been arrested for electoral offences in the state during the just concluded general elections. The police spokesperson in Akwa Ibom, Odiko MacDon, stated this on Friday while briefing reporters on the successes recorded in the state by the police in the past month. Those arrested committed offences ranging from unlawful possession of firearms, unlawful possession of electoral materials such as result sheets, political thuggery, and malicious damage to electoral materials, Mr MacDon, a deputy superintendent of police, said. Mr MacDon did not give details of those arrested but said the suspects would soon be charged to the court upon completion of investigations. Other suspected criminals were paraded before reporters during the press briefing which took place at the police headquarters, Ikot Akpan Abia. Mr MacDon said two suspects, Emeti Effiong Jimmy of Assana village and Akaninyene Silas Effiong of Minya Ntak, Mkpat Enin Local Government Area, were arrested on March 14 for a crime of robbery and murder. The police said the two men robbed their female victim, one Nsidibe Monday Tommy, in her shop in Ikot Ntuen village, Oruk Anam Local Government Area, and disposed her of N70,000. When the victims father, Monday Akpan, tried to rescue her, the suspects hit him on the head with sticks and iron rods. He later died while being rushed to the hospital for treatment, the police said. The police said it also arrested three men, one Benny Essien Effiong, one Emmanuel, alias Edworm, and one David, alias Miliphid of Mkpanak, Ibeno Local Government Area for robbing six people of their belongings in a compound in the local government area. One locally made gun, one expended cartridge, four Android phones, ATM cards, SIM cards, and memory cards were recovered from the suspects, according to the police. Four men who stole a Toyota Hilux truck from an estate in Uyo, and attempted to change its colour in Ikot Ekpene so they could sell off the truck were arrested by the police on March 1, following a tip-off. The police gave the suspects names as Uduak Stephen James of Ibiono Ibom Local Government Area, Oscar Albert Eyo of Uruan Local Government Area, Bassey Ntokon Otong of Ikot Ekpene Local Government Area, and Wisdom Okon Edet of Ikot Ekpene Local Government Area. Also, three men, Friday John, Joseph Effiong, and Eke Christopher, arrested on February 28 for kidnapping and raping a female victim, have been arraigned in court, the police said.